Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward 26107 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2009
Unlikely, it started out as a way to avoid political problems naming their telescopes - we need the name of an astronomer who was 60% German, 20% French, 10% Italian ....
But it has become a deliberate (if slightly tongue in cheek) ESO policy to give them deliberately nerdy names - it's even regarded as an example of a German sense of humour.
The US system is ridiculous. You can take any process - like deciding to buy the cheaper can of baked beans, write "in a computer" and get a patent.
But the original ruling was like saying. You can take a drill bit, grind it in some rock and reinforce the bits that wear away - that's fine, it's a patent on a method of designing an optimal drill bit. But do the wearing away in a simulation and it's not patentable.
Or an F1 maker could pattern the process of relating drag to the design of a wing - if they did it in a windtunnel, but not if they did the experiments in a computer.
Assuming it's only applied to their own citizens in their own country.
Suppose you were an executive at a foreign company that competes with a German one, or you were bidding on a German project - you might want to be a little suspicious if your laptop is ever out of your sight on a trip to Germany.
Suppose you are a US defence contractor. You don't hand over your laptop to Chinese state security on a visit to China then plug it into your corporate lan - - well Germany just joined that list.
I think that was rather my point about the difficult of doing large scale epidemiological studies in the general population!
It is the reason for those MPRII stickers you used to get on CRT monitors. The swedish did a study on miscarriage rates of VDU users. Supposedly they chose stock exchange traders as the heavy VDU user group and an Amish like sect that didn't use electricity as the non-VDU users! Not surprisingly they found a higher rate in the VDU users !
That's the problem - there is a correlation. More people are using mobile phones and more people are getting cancer. They are also living longer and getting more cancer screening.
If you compare heavy cell phone users for 30 years eg. Wall St traders with non-cell phone users, eg. Amish farmers you will find higher rates of cancer.
The problem with the US and especially California's rules is that just about anything that might be a carcinogen gets the same "This facility contains chemicals found by the state of Ca to be hazardous...." warning.
It means that every office with laser printer toner or screen wipes has this displayed on the door. So you have no idea if the site really does contain something dangerous.
It's like putting "may contain peanut" on absolutely all products, because you can never know if there is a one in a billion chance that some particle of peanut got in there - the result is much MORE dangerous for anyone who is allergic, because they don't know what to avoid.
But all those examples, like the cot death, are from NOT using Bayesian.
Given that the chance of cot death isn't independent in two children with the same parental genes you need to use a Bayesian approach.
Using "proper" statistics is like saying that 1:4 people are chinese, my mum,dad and brother aren't - so I must be!
The nice thing about cherry picking profitable areas is that it lets you have a choice of companies that can make money in niche. If they were required to service 100% of the country then only a single big player could afford to do that and you would have a choice of BT or BT.
It's the reason government IT contracts always go to the same few companies - the contract always requires them to supply everything from the desktop to the WAN infrastructure - and so gives it on a plate to IBM and co.
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Filthy(*) foreigners invade worthless island that Daily Mail readers couldn't find on a map.
Unpopular Tory government looking for a boost in popularity.
BAe needing a sales boost
I bet Max Hastings is packing his Saville Row flak jacket.
* - Well they put mayonnaise on chips.
>I'm still not sure exactly why it is we didn't go nuclear on the carriers
Because our masters at BAe/Thales want to be able to sell other carriers to tin pot little third world dictatorships after they have got the MOD to pay for all the R+D and tooling.
Unfortunately there is all sorts of red-tape involved in a US arms company like BAe selling nukes to valiant allies in the war on terror like Pakistan, Libya 2.0, etc. So they need them to be gas turbines.
When external 1Gb SCSI disk got below £1000 in the 90s we bought one for every Sparc workstation - imagine having all your data available all the time without having to use tapes!
I just bought a 2TB external drive for >$99 to keep movies on.
The odd bit is we are still using file systems designed around those original 1950s drives
If they are a monopoly then the rules are a little tighter.
If say you were the only company providing bus and train services in most of the country and decided that you would sell tickets to gays then it might be regarded more seriously than if the village shop stopped selling readers-husbands.
According to the 'creative geniuses' in the industry
It's illegal to copy a CD you own to your MP3 player, it's illegal to import a DVD from another country, it's illegal to play a DVD from another region. It's illegal to read a ebook out-loud to your child.
I just ignore the whole business - haven't bought any new music in 10years, it does mean I have missed out on Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga though
So instead of having to search for torrent/rar/mp3 etc you just have to select "show me only sites that I can download pirate content for free" as an official feature ?
This form of government crackdown could catch on.
Night clubs where you can buy drugs will be forced to announce it (and prices) on their advertising.
Pubs caught allowing underage drinking will be forced to include it on their pub signs
There must be something pretty attractive about this homosexuality business.
Schools attempt to promote 'community' leads to riots, years of say no to drugs in every lesson produces a cabinet that has more (ex-)drug users than a Grateful Dead concert, promoting healthy eating and exercise has lead to chicken nuggets and kids that can barely carry an LCD TV out of Dixons.
And yet all schools would have to do is mention that Alan Turing was guy and the entire youth of Britain would be turned in Julian Clary overnight.
" in that uses one-time passwords transmitted over mobile or land-line phones."
So to log in to Gmail from Iran (or China or the UK) you get a secure encrypted https session and this is secured by an in-the-clear text message sent over the Iranian state cell phone network by the Iranian state owned cell phone company to your handset ?
ITER - . The 1960s design, conservative and you can't be blamed for backing it. Unlikely to lead to anything and mostly a big backhander to Eu engineering and construction companies. Costs $12Bn (8 months of Afghan tent A/C, or a carrier load of stealth fighters)
Wendelstein 7-X, a different kind of Tokomak - bloody difficult to build but more likely to work if you managed it . A good backup plan and only costs $1Bn
NIF - not at all a justification for keeping doing nuclear weapons research, no not at all. The funding from DoE, AWE and LLNL is just a coincidence. About as practical a solution as dropping bombs in front of a row of wind turbines. Cost - that's classified - although of course there are no links to anything secret, like designing nuclear weapons, no not at all.
>I hope the whole scheme is reasonably regulated.
I think the point is that the government just removed "the red tape" - ie any requirement to show that you are providing training.
So they have just announced to industry that you can hire 16-19 year olds for 2.50/hour and if you can't afford 2.50/hour they will pay it for you - just sign upto the scheme.
Now obviously it will mostly be companies like Rolls Royce, ARM and merchant banks who will be queuing up to offer real training to these kids - there is no way it will be used by lots of cleaning, french fry frying, and shelf stacking companies to replace their current workers with cheaper labour.
After all we are a modern skill based economy ruled by a far sighted and business friendly government.
Yes most of them will just be used as cleaners until they get old enough for minimum wage - when they will be fired and replaced.
But outside the big city a lot of them will end up in construction of farming and with no HSE inspections required there will be accidents.
Doesn't matter what you are paying them, put a bunch of 16year olds together and give them a some tools to play with and they are going to have accidents.
MSFT is too late to get all the cool kids on windows tablets - even Balmer's kids aren't clamoring for a Win8 phone to play minesweeper.
So most of these devices, like all win-ce are going to be used commercially and industrially. That's one place they can beat Apple and Android.
Try getting an expensive or restricted commercial app on appstore. Even if you are happy about giving Apple a 40% cut, or finding that only customers in the US could download it, having no way to attach an XYZ brand bar code reader or portable printer, then having your FDA approved medical note taking app rejected because there is no way to follow a patient on twitter or some other Apple style mandate.
Android is even better, if you don't mind coding for 57 different varieties and having an appstore that guarantees your app is pirated onto the chinese app store as soon as it's uploaded.
Most of the 3D TVs are active shutter glasses. If you are already making 120hz set then it's already capable of 3D, just needs a firmware mod on the assembly line. Then you just have to get the punters to shell out for some glasses - which you can charge more for than the TV and finally make some margin.
Trouble is that longer term, conning people into paying 200quid for a 30quid pair of shutter glasses that need to be pointed straight at the set, need recharging every time you come to use them and are impossible to wear if you already have specs is going to put people off.
