Posts by Falanx

Does Cameron dare ditch poor-bashing green energy?

The most potent irony...

Is that one of those 'green scientists' is holding a flask of potassium dichromate and one of chromic acid. Not exactly best friend chemicals with the green lobbies right now....

Police charge Scottish teen over Soca attack

Re: I thought he was supposed to be the wrong guy now?

When has that *ever* stopped the Met?

Two fat atoms get the nod

It's a lot nicer than some coffee tables I've seen...

Actually, that periodic coffee table has spaces reserved all the way up to element 118. So there. Theodore Grey's momma didn't raise no fools.

Second, Oakleys would almost certainly have a quiet word about trying to name anything after it's ear-sock and nose-piece wondermaterial.

Sandi Toksvig puts the 'n' into cuts - on the Beeb

...Ignored people like you

I find throwing a wobblie about the slip in moral fibre against your ephemeral and mostly-historically-inaccurate behavioural standards works very much better if you abide by your own cobbled-together standards.

Also, probably because as the BBC are aware, words with lots of 'e's are far more common.

'Humorously'. And the 'H' is redundant, unless you're often given to spouting opinions you only pretend to hold.

I take exception to people taking exception to my choice of words. Words only have their power, contrary to V, because their speakers give them such.

WTF is... 3D printing

Direction?

The only downside of course to 3D Printing structures is those that intended to have anisotropic mechanical properties, like, oh, I don't know EADS airframe parts.

There's a reason why we still forge metal.

With heat, and everything.

Ofcom steams ahead with Crown rights, prepares to sell family jewels

O.o

Somehow I can't see Simon Callow playing *any* role in this one...

Blackadder style chemists transform gold into purest ... purple

Re: True Alchemy

You beat me to it.

Now, if they'd pointed out a requirement of this experiment was something else, something nasty, further up the china, like aqua regia, just to make the gold chloride complex in the first place...

Wouldn't seem quite so simple after that, would it?

Police DNA retention ruled lawful by NI High Court

Re: DNA Everyone from birth

Ignorant troll is ignorant.

Rogue engineer supplied dodgy power to 1,500 homes

Re: He resigned, didn't he?

Now read which borough the CID spokesman was from, and think long and hard about the likelihood that bunch of Charlies have *any* idea what they're talking about, or even the moral fibre to do anything but blindly repeat whatever claptrap their press office printed out and shoved in front of them.

Lady vicar tells Anglicans to learn from Black Sabbath

Beard? Check. Long hair? Check? Asswhuppin? Check...

I even have a T-Shirt to that effect :-)

Surely, coming home to find someone's turned your father's house into a shop and kicking seven bells of sh*t out of the lot of them could *only* be described as metal?

Wikileaks publishes secret CIA memo

A modest question...

It's been said already in more grandiose prose, but succinctly:

What is this 'IF'?

PA school district avoids charges over webcam spy scandal

Criminals failing to prosecute criminals. Whodathunkit?

Seconded.

The Feds won't touch this with a ten-foot pole because it would otherwise take away a rung of their own already precariously-balanced-legality information gathering systems.

Cynicism, grumpiness cause heart attacks, strokes

Hogwash!

Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that people who *air* their greviances straight away, rather than bottling them like the 'aggreable' types*, are the least stressed of all people. Blow your stack, over and done with, get on with your day...

*There's no such thing as an agreeable human. We're predators, murderers and thieves, just like all the other animals. A substantial section of the populous just forgot that when they moved into houses. It's still there, bubbling under the surfaces, which is why all the news reports always say "He was a lovely young man, never hurt a fly, we can't believe he hauled off with a hammer and brutalised 85 people to death."

Oz greenies rattle politico cage with robocalls

Aye, there's the rub

"Young people have been a bit sick of hearing the spin on climate change, so this is a great way for them, a message for their politician about what they think."

Unfortunately the vast majority of young, or old, people who feel the need to tell someone what they think about climate change *don't* think. They merely regurgitate the second paragraph of the fourth page article in whatever newspaper they opened that morning. Much like those they refer to as naysayers or denialists.

There's only about five people in the whole world actually thinking about it. And none of them working at NASA.

Wikileaks falls out with human rights groups

And all the pocket-Mother Theresas put their oar in...

Or, alternatively, being the subject of a many-sided smear campaign that our gloriously easily led friends in the charities are beign unwittingly dragegd into. Have you ever dealt with any of the Red Cross/World Vision (especially) lot? As dumb as a box of rocks.

Let's see what comes out in the wash. After all, it's not like most of the world media is as honest and agenda-free as this here august organ.

Extreme porn law on the ropes

We *are* blaming them

The stick they receive is rightfully deserved on all and every account. They choose which prosecutions to proceed with, and the buck stops *there*.

This is the same bunch of spineless, fascist s$%tweasels that chose *not* to prosecute in the case of the murderer of Ian Tomlinson. Or the attackers of Mark Aspinall and Nicola Fisher. And who didn't even notice when Jen Charles de Menenzes was assassinated in a tube station.. or...

You get the picture.

'Toothed' condom hits rapists where it hurts

Dumber than a box of Ehlers

As was said before, and before, and before...

About the easiest way to turn a rape into a murder.

Can we have some new news, please?

Beijing security know-how rules irk suppliers

Yerwhatyerwhat?

I was gonna refer to the slightly more heartfelt Wesley Snipes' Blade in the circumstances:

"M*th*rf*ck*r, are you out of yo' damn mind?"

We need a pissed-off vampire icon.

'iPhone 4G' loser outed

Re: Why name the poor sod?

Because there' s nothing like riding the wave of iPad indifference into fresh new rolling vistas of free PR for another upcoming sh*tty device by 'accidentally' leaking a hush-hush prototype to the kind of bottom-dollar journoscum that Gizmodo have become.

What other kind of twisted reality do you expect from those fruit?

OpenOffice 3.2 - now with less Microsoft envy

Has Jarred from Anandtech found another job?

My install of OO has always started quicker than I can reach over to throw the kettle switch, let alone walk downstairs to grab coffee. You want to stop trying to test computer software on a TI pocket calculator if you want some credibility in these reviews :-p

Although I'm not trying to run it on a bloaty MS OS, so maybe that's where I'm going wrong... :-)

Compulsory perv scanners upset everyone

Re: Nigel 11

Actually, no. You have no inalienable Human Right not to die at all. In any way, shape or form. What you have are human rights concerning the moments while you are still alive. Murder, assassination, collateral damage for a bloody message, call death by terrorism what you will, it's still death, and completely irrelevant to your human rights. The mode of your death is even less relevant. it's not even happened until it's over. It's merely potential. But scanning your childrens' bits and then format shifting it to some ephemeral media that not even the manufacturer will tell you the real functionality of is utterly *real*.

Sorry to make it so stark. When you've nearly died this many times just making it to 30, familiarity breeds boredom and you can't fear the boring. While it's the Undiscovered Country, and exploration of it will be fun for those of us who believe there's something more after, I'd like to take part in as much of what's on this side as possible with the minimum of ill-conceived, brigand, pestilent interruptions by the machinations of the essentially soulless.

It pains me that commentators on websites such as this, TechReport -et al you know, the ones where the consumers are meant to be educated, still trot out some kool-aid supping, credulous claptrap.

New Labour bring old Nuremberg Laws to Britain

RE: Malice

For far too long people have been quoting that expression ass-backwards and infinitely wrong.

In-depth probe fails to hit the G-spot

A finger of fudge is all you.. hang on. Am I doing this right?

Wow, was I beaten. I'ma have to stop returning to work straight after lunch whether or not I was about to first post and rip the reporting here a new one...

Let me get this straight - this article is based on the first half of a report in New Scientist from last *year* - whoops, two years ago now - the entirety of which is smackdowned by the second half of the same report in which some actual science happens, yet it's deemed not only newsworthy, but also implied as accurate research? Lesta, please.

It's there, ladies. You don't need man who's entire 'research' history is essentially an attempt to soothe his injured pride at being unable to satisfy women to tell you otherwise. Those of you who've been lucky enough to locate it, well, you're either endowed with a prominent mass of hemiprostatic tissue, or a skilled partner, or both. Those who haven't, well you still have a joy button :-) (my girlfriend is reading this over my shoulder and told me I should have written 'well, sad face', but she's cruel and unusual, or at least elfin.)

Glad to see that the UK medical fraternity is still flying the flag for a level of incompetence unseen outside of the fourteenth century.

Oz anti-censorship site is censored

Remember, Remember...

...The 21st of December...

US politico calls for cancer warning on cell phones

...As a box of rocks...

So it's not only Kansas and Utah that are likely to not so much be related to monkeys, as surpassed by them, then?

IBM chums with Swiss to build 3D brain-density processors

Poof!

I would love to see you pump any appreciable volume of a high-surface tension fluid down a pipe with an ID significantly less than a human hair. That goes for gases too, which in these volumes would be just as viscous. I wonder how loud the pump detonation would be...?

As for the pure water to avoid gumming up the coolant paths, it's not going ot make a difference if the water is purely atomic or swimming with fish. Two minutes of pure water flowing through an arrangement of semiconductor this porous will very rapidly become a contained circuit of the same cutting fluids used for water jet machining of metal blocks.

Although a high pressure jet of silica in water lancing under the skin of a the first techie to stick their fingers in this diesel-injector-alike would serve as a suitable warnign to others...

Just my two penn'orth.

'We must all stop washing to save the planet'

Qualifications, schmalifications

Biology. So, not a real science :-p

Discuss

Boffins fight pacemaker hacks with ultrasound security

Anatomy 101

Or they could, you know, just REST IT ON YOUR DAMNED RIBCAGE

US special forces tool up with 'plasma blades'

Honour, guide me....

Ah, a weapon after a Zealot's heart...

New antimatter atomsmashers 'may destroy themselves'

Switzerland browns out...

And where are they going to get the energy required to make antimatter, and then hold it away from all the 'real' matter until they want to poke a hole in reality?

Bridge made of recycled plastic supports 70-ton tank

@ AC 11:59

"Structural steel for 100 generations? 2000 years? I don't think so. Swords yes, building not. Even structural *iron* is only 18th century."

You might want to check with the Chinese. They were making ductile iron over 2000 years ago, and that's steel in all but carbon morphology.

Besides - I can't think of a more structural application than a spring-temper, impact-resistant, standalone spar of steel. Can you?

Brochure Bullsh*t

"The recycloplast bridges are also said to be corrosion resistant compared to other bridge materials, meaning that they need almost no maintenance."

Looks like they've never heard of UV degridation. Serves them right for employing accountants instead of materials engineers.

"The firm sees it as taking on many structural and building tasks in coming years, replacing "last-generation" materials, such as wood, steel or concrete".

Last time I checked, we'd only been using steel, wood and concrete for, oh, around 100 generations...

Microsoft tells US retailers Linux is rubbish

Re: Llama-made

It was actually spelt 'Cnut'. Not joking :-) Ironic, that...

Nuke-nobbler raygun 747 scores 'surrogate' test success

Re: Corner Reflector et al.

Which is exactly why you shouldn't have stopped at high-school level.

It's very, very easy to keep a highly polished, highly refelective surface in that state in an environmentally sealed chamber, like, oh, for example, a laser unit built into a plane. I have yet, however to see any missile launch that did not develop a substantial amount of dust and garbage. Nor have I ever seen a missile launch that wasn't flown through a not insignificantly dirty atmosphere that, due to your highly polished gold layer with its concomitant enormous surface energy wouldn't be attracted all over that lovely shiny surface.

Oh dear. Not so reflective anymore. That's all it takes.

Just a little degree level physiscs there for you.

AMD demos live Magny-Cours migration

Mangey French?

A man with a double barrel surname has difficulty with his Modern Languages? Perish the thought. The home counties education standards have slipped further than we thought.

Amazon affiliates nixed in two more states

Pay? Pay you say?

State sponsored theft is hardly moral. You do not pay taxes. They are taken from you. As the Right Honorable Chris Rock once put it, that's not a payment, that's a jacking.