Posts by Sorry that handle is already taken.

French officials: 'Don't worry about fatal nuclear explosion'

Where?

The only hysterics I can see here so far are from those people mocking a ridiculous caricature of anti-nuclear campaigners that they made up themselves.

Four terabytes (but five platters)

What?

No doubt that last sentence in the article is bait.

Righthaven may have to file for bankruptcy

I found "litigation outsourcing" in the dictionary

It said "See also: Scum".

Seagate pulls out the biggest hard one in the industry

2000 high definition movies?

Surely it should fit 2001...

Samsung unveils 20Mp EVIL shooter

Eye-level isn''t the only viewfinder paradigm

A rear screen showing a live view image is technically a viewfinder; it allows you to do what it says on the box. You don't press your eye against it, but that's not a requirement.

Putting our existing DSLR lenses on an EVIL

The advantage a mirrorless camera has over a DSLR is that you can design much smaller lenses, since you can go to a much shorter focal length before you need to start using retrofocal designs. This makes them smaller, cheaper and better quality. Compare the size of a fast wide angle lens for a DSLR to that of an equivalent Leica M system lens and you'll see what I mean.

Using existing lenses that were designed for DSLRs on an EVIL camera negates these advantages and IMO beats the point of using an EVIL in the first place. A 17-55/2.8 with an EVIL stuck to the back of it is going to be just as bulky as a 17-55/2.8 with a small entry level DSLR stuck to the back of it, and the ergonomics, handling and performance are going to be heavily compromised by doing so.

Oz teachers lugging obsolete lappies

Re: Wonderful Pay

$62k is around the maximum level "teacher" pay grade in most Australian states, above that are head teachers and senior coordinators. Takes a while to get there.

And while you're simplistically comparing salaries using foreign exchange rates, you might consider that not so long ago the rate exceeded $2.50/£1.00, rather than the $1.50 it's at now thanks to Australia's economy not following the rest of the developed world down the toilet. It hasn't made the cost of living here any lower.

Fuck off, you imbecile

Some things call for eloquence, this is not one of them.

There's a strong possibility you're joking, wathend, but in case you aren't, see above.

One last production run for TouchPad

Money down the drain, but it depends where the money is now.

They may well have already paid for these parts, so putting them together and selling them is less revenue negative than just disposing of them.

The parts might also be spares, continued storage of which would be unnecessary for an unsupported product.

Seven lessons from the HP Touchpad fire sale

Android

What proportion of buyers do you think bought one of these with the intention of waiting for Android to be ported to it?

And by the looks of it, the proportion of profiteers who had no interest in the system at all was pretty high.

Apple's Tim Cook gets one million reasons to stay on as CEO

Pedant Alert

Actually if he decimates the stock value the bundle will be worth $345m.

Supercomputer and superboffins spot rare baby supernova

34 teraflops per second? Wow!

It gets more powerful the longer it runs!

VW Scirocco BlueMotion Technology TDI 140

Re: why would you take one of these onto a track?

All that tells you is "you took your road car onto a track and broke it, you moron".

Apple after Steve Jobs is still Steve Jobs' Apple

The new turtle-neck...

...is a suit jacket over a T-shirt.

Ridley Scott confirmed for Blade Runner pre/sequel

Dunno...

It might end up being the first 3D movie worth watching...

2nd-hand Popemobile, also used by Neil Armstrong, for sale

Blimey

A 21ft car riding on a 13ft wheelbase. That's some overhang.

id Software Wolfenstein 3D

Blastowicz?!

It's Blazkowicz!

Also, what's that seemingly 3D modelled source port in the second image?

US breakthrough in Oz bomb hoax case

Australian for fucked proper mate ? Part 2

She's cactus mate.

"Madeleine Pulver, daughter of software millionaire Bill Pulver"

There isn't much information now but the story may turn out to have some industrial intrigue associated with it.

Apple sells world's most expensive flash drive

Re: Nothing of the sort

"Note: I just saw the "OEM" price for Windows 7 Pro at $35. Boxed Retail price is $299 but nobody is getting all crazy about the over priced DVD and cardboard box Microsoft ships!"

OEM and Retail are two different licences. You also can't buy OEM as a consumer for much less than about $150.

NSW buckles: R18+ game rating clear for take-off

Drug use?

"it’s almost certain that games depicting drug use, or games perceived as encouraging criminal activity, would still be refused classification"

...they say as I shoot my Fallout/2/3/NV characters up with enough opioids, amphetamines, steroids, cocaine and alcohol to kill a small town.

Oh right they're not known by those names in the games. That's alright then!

Sharp Aquos Quattron LC-40LE831E 40in LED 3D TV

Colour and Image Quality

Do we have anything better to go on other than the reviewer's subjective judgement?

Perhaps some colourimeter tests perhaps, I'm genuinely interested.

Google points finger at human after robo car accident

Priera

cf. Genus -> Genera.

Bullfrog Syndicate

Yep, works fine in DOSBox

There are some problems with your post.

The post is required, and must contain letters.

RFID drives the self-service pub

Antipodeans?

What's any of this got to do with Australia?

Swede cuffed for cooking nuclear reactor on kitchen stovetop

Nuclear Isomer (Was Re: Isomer is not the same as Isotope)

Thanks for the "science lesson".

242m is the metastable isomer of Americium 242: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_isomer#Metastable_isomers

Not sure where he's going to get 242m though.

Jupiter spacecraft mounted atop bloody big rocket

Sourcing Energy

It'll be in the right orbit for it but to extract enough electricity from Jupiter's radio emissions I suspect a comically large antenna would be required.

To extract energy from a magnetic field you have to move a conductor through it, and then what you're really doing is converting the kinetic energy of the conductor's motion into electrical energy. That kinetic energy needs to come from and be replenished from somewhere, e.g. the liquid fuel stored onboard, or your orbit will decay. If you're doing that, you might as well use a fuel cell.

In comparison, electricity from solar panels is free as far as spacecraft are concerned.

And if it relies upon Jupiter for its electricity generation, what does it do for electricity before it reaches Jupiter?

De-orbit

From http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

Key things to know about Juno:

▪ Spacecraft scheduled to launch between Aug. 5 and Aug. 26, 2011

▪ Five-year cruise to Jupiter, arriving July 2016

▪ Spacecraft will orbit Jupiter for about one year (33 orbits)

▪ Mission ends with de-orbit into Jupiter

Truck nuts swing onto US freedom of speech agenda

Useful

It's a good warning that there's a halfwit behind the wheel, enabling everyone else to avoid them.

Canon EOS 600D 18Mp DSLR

Re: EF-S STILL?

"When will Canon see the light (no pun intended) and start installing 35mm sensors in the entire SLR range?! EF-S is hideously compromised and precludes full usage of decent glass because of the crop."

Who am I to argue if you've decided entry level bodies should cost $2000?

They're not making them smaller

550D: 129 x 98 x 62 mm, 530g

600D: 133 x 100 x 80 mm, 570g

So err... they're not.

Re: Perhaps they still like making cameras for photographers...

Features you don't use don't eat battery life.

Re: Re: EF lens mounting makes it (AC@14:31)

Don't want to turn this into even more of a Canon vs Nikon bunfight because both systems are great, but there are a few things that need to be clarified.

Nikon's entry level bodies don't have a focus drive screw and so won't AF with AF lenses that don't have a built-in motor. They also won't meter with non-CPU lenses, so while "Any Nikon-mount lens will mount onto a Niikon DSLR", that is true only if you're willing to accept variable values of "will work".

Meanwhile as Thomas pointed out, all EF lenses will work properly and completely on all EF and EF-S bodies. And as a bit of irony, using a mount adaptor any Nikon lens will meter on any Canon DSLR, albeit with stop-down metering, and with a focus confirmation chip in the adaptor they'll also trigger the body to indicate focus lock.

Ten... in-ear headphones

Re: Pretty poor selection

"doesn't make you sad when the cable frays and you have to replace them (as has happened to many of my Shure owning friends)."

Your friends need to learn to solder!

Etymotic (any of them)

Not in the list obviously but I have to give a recommendation for these. If you can tolerate the sealed ear tips that are required, they'll give better isolation than anything else out there that isn't custom moulded, and are designed to have as neutral a response as possible. Couldn't be happier with them.

Checking the response graphs on HeadRoom suggests that they compare pretty well to the Shure 535, despite costing less than 1/5 as much.

Dell Streak 7 Android tablet

Re: Dell

Consumer desktops presumably? I haven't had a serious configuration problem with their workstations, laptops or monitors.

LiveJournal groans under 'immense' DDos attack

That old thing!

It's still alive!

Apple MacBook Air 13in Core i5 laptop

Re: You Mean

A 27" LCD sounds like just the portable port replicator Fred was after.

OS X Lion paves way for "Retina Display" monitors

Really?

"P.S. For those of us not born in the last decade there is a technology called CRT that is capable of much higher DPI than all this new fangled LCD nonsense."

Until a couple of years ago (when manufacturers switched from 16:10 to 16:9) 17" laptop screens were available with a pixel pitch of 0.19 mm (1920x1200), and the LCDs used on smaller devices can be below 0.1 mm. Were there any CRT monitors less than 0.2 mm?

Most mainstream CRT monitors were no less than 0.25 mm. The high resolution 27" LCDs of today are 0.23 mm. That said, I do lust for more pixels.

While the colour, contrast and response time of a good quality CRT is still superior in most cases, LCDs don't suffer from scanning error, or distortion, or electromagnetic effects, or flicker or etc. etc.

I think

The idea is to increase smoothness, not to make GUI elements so small you have to be a trained marksman to hit them.

Adobe releases lengthy list of Apple Lion woes

Re: LaeMing

"CS5 requires a 64-bit OS (XP-64 is as flakey as a certain yellow-wrappered chocolate bar)."

...what?

MacBook batteries susceptible to hack attacks

State of the art

I thought that opening line read "state of the art security problems", which seemed plausibly Reg style so I didn't immediately pick up on it. Got a chuckle out of it nonetheless.

Apple unveils 'World's First Thunderbolt Display'

It's just honest

They've quoted static contrast ratio, i.e. the one that actually means something.

The previous incarnation of this monitor had a contrast range of 850:1 to 2,400:1 depending on brightness, although those were at extreme ends of the range that you'd never use (maximum and minimum brightness respectively). In practice it's probably closer to ~1,200:1 (see the two last figures on this page http://www.anandtech.com/show/3946/apple-27inch-led-cinema-display-review/5)

Static vs Dynamic Contrast Ratio

NoneSuch: The numbers you're quoting are dynamic contrast ratio. This is a system that dynamically adjusts the backlight brightness, while watching a movie for example, to make the dark scenes very dark and the bright scenes very bright. It is a meaningless metric when looking at a static image on the screen, and I generally turn it off because it usually likes to make white "brighter than the surface of the sun" to get those ridiculous numbers.

Meanwhile, Apple has quoted the static contrast ratio, and based on the previous 27" Cinema Display it's most likely telling the truth, although unlike most CCFL monitors that monitor has a very wide range of contrast ratio depending on brightness.

Colour Gamut

"The Dell and Apple appear to actually be using the same panel."

This is correct.

"No, the Dell does not have better colour gamut."

The Dell uses a higher gamut CCFL backlight. Anandtech tested the Dell at 96% of the Adobe RGB colour space and the 27" Cinema Display at 83%. I don't know whether they've bumped it up in the Thunderbolt Display, but they've made no noise about doing so so I doubt they have.

"You cannot buy a better monitor at close to the price."

No, but you can buy a better monitor for much less. As a docking station the Dell doesn't compare because it isn't one, but as a monitor it's much more versatile.

Hmm

I'll grant you that the Dell doesn't have ethernet or firewire ports, but if you use those the computer you'll plug in to it probably does already. A few seconds of convenience for *how much* extra money?

The Dell certainly has built in USB ports, and you should see the hilarious number of different inputs on the back of it. An HD webcam costs $40.

High quality audio? Built in to a monitor? Surely you jest.

<troll>I see Apple still haven't worked out how to allow the user to adjust the height of their screens to optimise their workstation ergonomics without phone books.</troll>

I don't think cheap is the right word

In Australia the Apple is 50% more expensive than the Dell, and that rises to 75% if you use an autoclub membership to buy the Dell. I think the new bezel is an improvement but it's still got that glossy surface finish.

An LED backlight is not automatically better than a CCFL one. The equivalent Dell monitor has a high gamut CCFL backlight, so it's (ironically?) a far superior choice for creative types, photographers etc.

For those that like low quality speakers the Dell supports the full range of clip on soundbars.

Apple to release Mac OS X Lion on Wednesday

Know Your OSX Meme

http://static.images.memegenerator.net/Instances400/8/8625/8832182.jpg

Valve strengthens Steam setup

Nice

Perhaps they can improve the client while they're at it. I'd even be happy for it to improve from "molasses" to "warm molasses".

Hacking Baseball

I'd have said cycling, myself

Or lawn bowls

Or darts

Or soccer

Troll icon for that last one.