* Posts by DaWolf

70 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Oct 2009

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How can UK.gov spend £35m on a website?

DaWolf

but why

does the business link website need all that? Will the world grind to a halt if it's down for a day? Does it hold the keys to the governments actual sensitive data, or could you get by with something of high security but not insanely high?

Why do you need procurement when any decent IT guy knows you could get it developed by a couple of inhouse devs no problem, call it half a dozen in the team if you wanjt to get crazy about it. It's not a ridiculously complex website. And because the guys would be inhouse, you wouldn't have to pay through the nose for every bloody change request.

DaWolf

my god

that is ridiculous. 340k?! Feckin hell. You could put together a better website with a decent programmer in a day.

Duff French missiles for Royal Navy finally fixed

DaWolf

why am I not surprised

Rather than saying Yay! It's finally working, instead Lewis turns this into Boo! Should have been American.

UK.gov preps bonfire of the vanity websites

DaWolf

this makes no sense

you have setup costs, and running costs

if their costs are that high for *running costs* then they should see whether it is better to minimise those running costs or eliminate the service

if their costs are *setup costs* then eliminating the service will not save a penny, and in fact will cost because the service will need to be provided in some other manner.

so, what proportion of those costs is which?

also, without knowing the benefit you're getting, how can you even start to calculate value for money?

Bloody George's Budget: How bad is it really?

DaWolf

interesting article

but this "So, to sum up, this is a budget that has more real Keynesianism in it than Brown or Darling ever managed;" is nonsense.

Regardless of the difference between structural and cyclical debt, trying to reduce either in the middle of a recession is anti-keynesian.

Tim must know that, so unfortunately he's talking the party line here.

Big EU imports of Sahara sun-power coming soon?

DaWolf

it wouldn't be solar panels

But Concentrated Solar Power, a form of Solar Thermal. Solar thermal heats liquids to very high temperatures and uses them to drive turbines. It's already been proved in some Spanish solar thermal plants that you can use this hot liquid as an energy storage, then get the energy back at some later time.

As for winter - the differences between summer and winter get less as you get closer to the equator. And we use less power in the winter at night than in the winter during the day.

I love the way you make up numbers both on how many gigawatts it would build, then others on how much nuclear costs. Both are completely wrong btw.

DaWolf

aye

nothing wrong with the article, until you get to the bootnote. Whish is a pile of pish.

Antarctic glacier melt maybe 'not due to climate change'

DaWolf

and yet again

elreg posts any and all articles that in any way at all cast doubt on global-warming, and none that are in the other direction (and there are very many stories they could pick). It's the worst type of confimation bias.....

Tech resource woes won't be solved with Afghan minerals

DaWolf
FAIL

ermmm, it's not written by Lester

so I'm quite confused

BOFH: Risky business

DaWolf
Thumb Up

great stuff

"Implementation plan: Click the mouse button on the ON radio button then click OK. Contingency plan: Click the mouse button on the OFF checkbox and Click on OK"

well played!

Giddens, Lawson argue quite sensibly on climate change

DaWolf
FAIL

I stopped reading at this point

">Are humans contributing greatly to atmospheric CO2: conclusively not, CO2 fluctuations from non-human sources are many magnitudes larger."

This isn't even under debate by anyone who can actually read scientific papers. Whether the influence of the extra carbon dioxide is causing warming...well, you can argue over that if you will. But the fact of extra carbon dioxide being caused by humans is extremely basic science.

DaWolf

costs of energy

oil prices are going up on a long-term basis. This is not going to stop. How can you keep the costs lower? Easy, create the energy in some other way so less oil, gas etc need to be used.

Practical result is that building renewable energy actually reduces the cost of electricity generally, although unless it's done on a large, worldwide scale you wouldn't see much difference.

I wonder, every time I read articles by Mr Orlowski: has he *ever* studied *anything* to do with actual energy policy or economics? I see his writing as a classic case of confirmation bias. Quite apart from Climate Change (which is, and will remain a real issue regardless of sticking fingers in ears and saying *ner ner ner* loudly), he shows really basic comprehension problems with the science & economics of energy, which is pretty awful for a writer in the field.

Still, hopefully he'll read this and go off and research for instance the National Grid and intermittancy, which is a good place to start with understanding the impacts of high levels of renewable energy penetration on the national electricity supply.

Google tilts with windmills

DaWolf

not that old chestnut again

wind is unreliable, etc. Wind is tied into a grid, and that grid has it's own variation due to both supply and demand. Figures vary based on the wind profile etc but up to about 40% wind there is no issue.

Student found guilty of obstruction in Sarah Palin email trial

DaWolf

20 years potential for obstruction of justice

that is more than for murder. Which do you think is a more serious crime? You say it is a form of theft - the maximum sentence for theft is very unlikely to be 20 years (unless you're talking grand larceny, that sort of thing).

I would hope he gets a suspended sentence frankly.

California's 'Zero Energy House' is actually massive fossil hog

DaWolf

awful maths

"Eighty-five therms is the same as 2491 kilowatt-hours per month. A normal household in the Western USA, according to the US government, uses 77 million British Thermal Units annually - which is the same as 1881 kilowatt-hours per month. The Zenergy house uses a third more energy than the regional household average, and one may note that by American standards it is by no means large (3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms)."

85 Therms in 4 months is 34 million BTU, and that's their heating season. You do know the difference between annual and monthly measurements, don't you Lewis?

Global warming dirt-carbon peril models are wrong, say boffins

DaWolf
Stop

unfortunately

this is just yet another in the "show one side of the story" elreg science report. Nothing wrong with this article, but you never see any articles on here showing the other side.

Bloated Office 2010 kicks dirt in face of old computers

DaWolf
FAIL

Your opinion does not count

You loved Vista = you cannot be trusted.

And should consider getting a nice white coat with wraparound sleeves.

New mega offshore windfarms could supply 2% of UK energy

DaWolf
FAIL

el reg seems to get worse

with every article I read on the environment or energy (especially by Orlowski, who is a troll, but Page is getting just as bad). It's already past the stage where I assume it's going to be a biased article, and into the stage where the only question is how biased.....

This one is pretty damn biased. Only 9% of the uk's energy supply ends up being used as Electricity? FAIL....

Physicists assemble world's smallest snowman

DaWolf
Stop

jog on

it will have cost very little if they already had the equipment, and is awesome. It's also on their educational section - it's supposed to get kids interested in science.

all the negative people on this thread should just jog on....

Globo-renewables all electric future touted again

DaWolf

Yet another anti-renewable article

You know, El Reg's articles on energy often remind me of spam posts, full of inaccuracies. And it doesn't matter how many times the errors are pointed out, the errors reoccur in the next post. It's a shame, because I actually like most of Lewis's articles, but the trend continues here....

his energy use on a per capita basis is based around a nations energy use divided by the population. So why does he then talk about streets of houses when that energy use includes business, transport, home, agriculture etc......none of which is reflected in a home energy bill.

But let's use his figures: 150 people, if you were to include ALL the items that their money is spent on, would spend well over £1000 per year each. 150 people: £150,000 annually. Or £3,000,000 over 20 years. And WOW, how much does a 3MW wind turbine cost? About £3,000,000.....

basically all Leiws has proved is that wind energy is fundable.

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