Posts by Andrew 13

Hawking: Aliens are out there, likely to be Bad News

Stick to the knitting

Physicists should do physics. Speculating on the sociology of space civilisations is not their forte. I am put in mind of Penrose's stab at explaining why artificial consciousness could not exist (a computer cannot answer the question "how do you feel"). Hawking also made the bold statement that if we could find the grand unified theory we would "truly know the mind of god". Try defending that argument in an undergraduate level philosophy course. If this theory was the only justification for the spending money on NASA, I'd pull the plug.

Channel 4 raises Bing word-extinction alarm

Microsoft, home of innovation

It's hard not to laugh at the way Microsoft perceives itself, a beacon of innovation, compared to the way I see it, a shop for hackers which nicks other people's ideas two years later. 3D search my foot - my money's on a search engine called "google".

Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

I like it as much as beer

Been using it since Thursday - fresh install on my Thinkpad X60s. I like it as much as beer. But for joe public, I'd recommend always waiting for the LTS version. That's what my wife, mum, dad,sister and parents in law are using now - only issue is wireless support is flaky for my sister's laptop, and that should be fixed by the new LTS version in April.

Ryanair requires web check-in, shuts down website

Anti-Irish? No, just a feck-awful airline

The only Irishman these comments are against is Michael O'Leary. I doubt many of the commenters here would stoop to insulting the Irish nation by associating it with that feck-awful airline. It's a bit like using Trabant to represent German engineering.

Nice work on the oil price hedging too, by the way. Bought at $140 per barrel did they? Ouch.

Customer's fault

This is the fault of the idiot customers. If they choose to fly with an airline which puts tiny cost savings over a decent service, then they are helping that airline and it's model grow to dominate the industry. I'm glad they're installing coin slots on the toilets - it makes it more clear what the choice is. You either pay for a basic modicum of comfort, or you race to screw down the prices as low as possible.