Posts by sisk

Hey, monkey: Just 'cos your mates eat FOUL corn, YOU have to eat it too?

Uh huh, sure, and that's why I make sarcastic comment like all the rest of the commentards, right?

CURSE you, EINSTEIN! Humanity still chained in relativistic PRISON

Meh

It's not as though the idea of a collapsar jump would be particularly useful even if it did work. Our distant descendants on a generational ship might be able to use one, but by the time they got there, assuming they were to leave right now, we'd have already colonized a couple of nearby solar systems.

Personally I'm still hoping for some brilliant physicist to come up with a practical way to make an Alcubierre drive. Of course they have to wait for some other physicist co come up with a way to harness exotic matter....and that physicist will have to wait till someone figures out how to produce exotic matter in significant quantities....which of course will have to wait till someone actually proves that the stuff exists....I'll stop now. My hopes of visiting Polaris in my lifetime are getting further away.

How long will it take Facebook Home to hit 1bn downloads? 76 years

wonder how many Linux users we have based on the number of Linux downloads

You and me both. I know that I download Linux about 3-4 times a year (sometimes to set up a new box, but more often to play with X-distro that someone said they liked for a couple hours before deciding I still like my distro of choice better).

Facebook Home?

No thanks. A Facebook app? Maybe, if it offers a better experience than mobile.facebook.com (which, currently, it really doesn't in my opinion), but letting Facebook take over my home screen? No, that is never, ever going to happen.

As for iOS, wouldn't a home screen replacement be one of the things automatically denied in Apple's walled garden according to their developer rules?

Amazon: We're expanding into TWO HUNDRED countries

200 huh?

That's quite impressive. Especially considering that there're only 189-196 countries (depending on how you define a country) in the entire world. So the question I have is which planet are the aliens they're selling to on and what's their bandwidth like?

Hardware hacker unifies 15 retro consoles in format frenzy

Re: Very cool but...

All I need is a SNES controller hack for the XBox 360.

Doesn't the Xbox 360 have standard USB ports? Just get one of the SNES controllers modded for USB (or, if you're not lazy like me, make your own);

Kudos!

Also, I want one, but who has 3500 hours to throw at building it? Other than this guy, I mean.

Boffins build ant-sized battery, claim it's tough enough to start a car

Re: A day?

I can get 2 days from my Galaxy S2 if I don't use it....

Moist iPhone fanbois tempted with golden Apple shower offer

Apple has admitted no wrongdoing.

Do they ever? Do they even know how?

Windows 7 'security' patch knocks out PCs, knackers antivirus tools

Microsoft's security gnomes also deserve credit for quickly determining there was a problem before the vast majority of corporates rolled out the problematic patch.

I disagree. They deserve the blame for failing to follow the basic step of TESTING THEIR PATCH before they started to roll it out. How many times does this have to happen before Microsoft figures that out? It seems like they've been pushing out a dodgy patch two or three times a year for ages. That's the sort of thing I expect in the beta software I run, not in a fully released product like Windows.

NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

Re: Orion Mk 2? (@ Neil Barnes)

2-3 people too many for regular launches but might well be justifiable for launching the components of a space elevator

Unless conventional launches cause deaths due to atmospheric pollution or something even a single death per year is too much for any method of launch.

Re: Vaporware

This and other reporting leaves a bit unclear if they have actually managed to magnetically crunch even a single pellet so that it produces fusion energy.

That's essentially what a polywell device does, isn't it? And according to publically available data they may be able to actually break the all important breakeven point.

In fact, making the FDR work as explained would mean they have also cracked the problem of making Earth-bound fusion power plants.

MAKING a fusion plant isn't difficult. There's probably a dozen research fusion plants dotted around the world. The difficult part is getting more electricity out of them than you have to put in to make them work. Since they're using it as a rocket engine that's not a concern.

Solar panels??

Doesn't the usefulness of solar panels degrade pretty much to "useless" once you get much further out than Mars? I get that right now Mars is the goal, but there are moons out further that might also, with a good enough energy source, be colonizable (yeah, yeah, now I'm making up words). Or, in the nearer term, this could be used to make mining asteroids a little more feasible, but only if you have enough power when the sun's a lot further away than it is on Earth.

Bitcoin gets a $100 haircut on rollercoaster trading run

$20 per bitcoin was the low???

How and when did that happen? When I was last looking at them it was more like $0.25 per bitcoin. Maybe I shouldn't have written them off quite so quickly.

Get lost, drivers: Google Maps is not for you – US judge

Re: I always use my phone for Google's GPS when I'm in California

The default position I have when driving is to assume the other drivers are about to do something stupid

They usually are. In my experience at any given moment on the road at least one driver within 50 yards is always about to do something stupid. Anticipating the stupid is one of the essential skills of a safe driver.

Even the GPS apps, all of them I've ever used anyway, tell you not to operate them while on the road. You're supposed to bring up the maps and set your destination while parked. That way you don't have to touch them while driving, thereby avoiding any trouble with the law.

Japanese boffins READ YOUR DREAMS with MRI

So how long before they hook it up to a DVR?

No, really. I've been keeping a dream diary for years, but it's a lot of effort. By the time I get the diary opened and start writing some of the details are already starting to fade usually. Recording them as they're happening would be much better.

Re: Beats me how anyone can sleep in one of those things.

Most people can tune out constant background noise like the hum of an MRI. I know I've slept in one before, but I had been kept up for 30 someodd hours before hand specifically so I'd fall asleep easily, so that may not be the best example.

Facebook prepares to dominate Android

Re: FB is Fox News in reverse

American media is taking all the BS this world and sticking it aggressively into people's heads. FB is taking all the BS from people's heads and broadcasting it to the world.

There fixed that for you. All the major American broadcasters are guilty, not just the one that jumped off the cliff to the right instead of following the rest off the cliff to the left.

Hey Reg!

You missed this one while you were adding the April Fool tags to the joke stories.

....It IS supposed to have one, right? This CAN'T be a real news story.....I hope....

Patent shark‘s copyright claim could bite all Unix

Re: You got me there.

I think the fact that so many people were taken in right up until the 'nsfw daemon' shows that we don't believe any claim too ridiculous for patent trolls.

Got me....

Right up until 'nsfw daemon'. I'd almost forgotten it way April 1, but that served as a handy reminder.

Second International Cat Video Festival coming to Oakland CA

So judging from what this article says it sounds like cats domesticated humans. Further it seems they did so for basically the same reason that humans domesticated cows: it makes getting food easier.

Just further proof that we are, despite what we think, a slave race to our feline overlords. Grumpy Cat will no doubt have some biting words for me for pointing this out.

Boffins brew eyes on bugs' wings

Re: Breaking News...

Now what are they going to do when someone tells them to stick it where the sun don't shine? Get some of the R&D people on that quick. You probably don't have much time before one of them will need an answer.

Even if it only works on bacteria this could be incredibly useful if the concept is used to create artificial materials for hospitals and such. Most of the superbugs floating around, like super staph, are bacteria.

FBI on trial for warrantless Stingray mobile spying

Here's hoping

I don't think the FBI has a prayer of winning this one. They're CLEARLY in violation of the 4th amendment, even if the last couple Presidents have largely ignored that part of the Constitution whenever they could get away with it.

If this case were to make it to the Supreme Court it could, depending on the wording of the official verdict, finally put an end to all the warrantless wiretaps. The things are already illegal, we just need a judge to say so and force them to stop.

*Waves to the friendly (or not) NSA agents who've been following all his recent rants*

Free speechers want into Apple and Samsung sealed court filings

Apple and Samsung are arguing that forcing companies to give up all their financial data will stop them from getting the courts' protection for their patents.

Sounds like a very good reason to force them to give up the data to me. Maybe we'd start seeing companies only bringing patent litigation when there's actually a good reason to do so.

I've got a super free multi-petabyte storage box for you: /dev/null

I've got a manager over one site who's never deleted an email in his life. The man literally saves it all, even the spam. Do you have any idea how much space 20 years worth of email takes up in backups? Thankfully he retires in a couple months. I think I'll do the final backup of his inbox to /dev/null.

Experts agree: Your next car will be smarter than you

Re: It must be us old fogeys with no perception of speed or distance

Aside from the technology barriers, are you really going to wait for one of those to come along before starting your journey?

Wait for one? No. Jump in behind one on the road? Sure. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in this little corner or the world it's danged near impossible to be on a major highway for more that half an hour without finding (and, since they tend to go slightly under the speed limit, usually passing) a big rig.

Personally if the system were set up the right way I'd have no problem slaving my car to a semi and getting to my destination a little later. Those guys are (usually) some of the most skilled drivers on the road. That's what happens when you've got a million or so miles of road behind you. Of course there's a lot of room for setting the system up wrong.

Re: Do not want, and in fact this kind of thing is a fucking 'orrible idea.

Actually some of these are good ideas. There are cars on the road now that detect when you're nodding off and nag you to pull into the nearest rest area or hotel. I always rather thought that was a good idea. It's not a feature I need (I have the sense to get off the road for a quick nap when I need to, which has annoyed my non-driving wife a time or two), but definitely one I'd like other people to have. And I have to admit I'd love to have a car that checks its own blind spots when preparing to change lanes. That would eliminate one of my bigger causes of road stress. For some reason I can't fathom my relatively small car has absolutely huge blind spots and no amount of fiddling with my mirrors has succeeded in shrinking them. I'd also love for the other drivers around here to have such a feature in their cars. I've had more than a few close calls because someone tried to make a lane change in heavy traffic without checking their blind spots.

Bill Gates offers big bucks for better condoms

Re: what is the HIV growth rate in the thrid world these days?

Actually recent (VERY recent, like yesterday) reports show that they may now be able to 'functionally cure' HIV if they catch it early enough. My medical knowledge is above average*, but I'm still not quite sure what they mean by 'functionally cure' and the article I read was in a medical periodical so it didn't go into details for the uninitiated.

*Mostly due to being around medical professionals (both my parents, several aunts, an uncle, my sister, and numerous friends of the family) a lot. Sort of like how my wife knows more about computers than the average person just from having had to puzzle out what I'm talking about so often even though she's not a geek by any definition.

Re: Psst, fancy a shag?

anyone got any solvent that releases rubber from an intimate fit.

Actually yes. Acid of the hydrochloric or sulfuric types works well for removing rubber. There's a slight flaw in there somewhere that I can't quite get a grip on.

Nanotech in condoms??

Wouldn't putting nanotech into condoms make them a bit too expensive to ever be as widespread as the current latex models are?

iPads in education: Not actually evil, but pretty close

1 to 1 with iPads

We have a one to one program with iPads in the district I work for. I was against it to, until I saw what a savvy teacher who's not wasting their time railing against it could do with the things. Quite frankly it's amazing how interactive a classroom suddenly becomes when every kid has an iPad.

I will also point out, backed by several years of experience in school based IT, that kids are actually easier on technology than grownups. I can hear you scoffing now, but it's true. 75% of our broken laptops have been due to abuse by teachers. Everything from coffee being spilled on them to them getting left of top of a car. Yes we have the occasional malicious kid. The one who threw a laptop out a 2nd floor window because 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' sticks in my mind, but that really was an anomaly.

We also have a number of measures in place for lost or damaged iPads. Each kid pays $40 for insurance which goes into a pool for replacing them when the need arises. We also have an iPad repair class (which Apple doesn't like, but meh) and some locator app that allows the people in charge of the iPad program to locate them anywhere in the world as long as they have internet access. Only twice has an iPad been lost and not recovered. One is somewhere in the high school. Somewhere in one of 4 classrooms covered by a single wifi access point in fact. When the battery finally died it hadn't moved for most of a week, but no one's been able to find it. The other one was stolen and has not yet popped up on the internet for us to track, possibly because the thief didn't grab the charger.

We've also saved a bundle in text books by using the iPads as ebook readers. Not quite the cost of the iPad itself, but one thing I will point out: the article is wrong about the cost of textbooks. They're $50-$90 a piece and most high school kids have 6-10 of them. They cost far more than iPads even before the hefty discount that we get.

Next from Microsoft: 'Blue', the Windows 8 they hope you don't hate

Re: Not what I wanted to see.

That would help, but really the entire idea of using a touchscreen interface on a PC is so broken that it simply can't be fixed. TIFKAM needs to go and that's all there is to it.

Re: Just a suggestion to Win 8 haters...

Has it only been one dogs age? I thought it was more like 3 or 4. They never did recover from that snafu when they had to stop and audit all of their code because of one developer's less-than-intelligent mistake. (I'm trying to be nice about it.)

MORE like Windows Phone??? Does Microsoft do ANY market research these days? They need to be LESS like an interface made for a phone and more like one made for a keyboard and mouse. It's almost like they're TRYING to fail.

isoHunt loses appeal against search ban

So they ordered the lower court to reword the ruling to allow him to get another tech job. I have to ask, though, what tech company is going to hire him with this ruling on his record?

Maybe don't install that groovy pirated Android keyboard

So basically....

Using pirated software is risky because it could be loaded with malware.

In other news, Sol will be visible in the sky today between dawn and dusk except where cloud cover obscures it.

Ten pi-fect projects for your new Raspberry Pi

Re: Security System

Actually using a NAS simplifies my software list. I was originally using HTTP to push the data around, but there'd be no need for that with a NAS, so all you'd need is the software to take pics whenever there's a significant change to be noted. You'd use motion, configured to save to your NAS with a filename that includes a reference to the camera and datetime stamp. You'd still want a control box with the ability to clean up old files probably, but with a good sized NAS it wouldn't be strictly necessary.

The other option, video, would use streamer instead of motion, but the setup would be a little more work. I think it might also need a server to catch the stream. It's been a while since I put together the details.

Or, if you want a REALLY nice setup, check out ZoneMinder. It's a bit overkill in my opinion, especially if you're only thinking of one camera, but it'd make things easy.

Security System

Especially with the (relatively) new Raspi specific camera, the Raspi makes for a great security system. Get several of them, along with the above mentioned camera, and load them with software that either streams video out (if you have storage to burn) or clicks off a still whenever there's a certain threshold of change in the image. Pipe that to a server in your back room that saves the data. Extra cost: about $20 per Raspi for a cheap USB wireless card plus whatever the camera costs (I actually made plans for this before the Raspi cam was available). You'll need one more Raspi with a big external hard drive or an old PC to act as a storage node. The software is all in the Debian repository (though I don't have my list with me right at the moment to tell you exactly which packages you need).

By my math when I first looked at doing this you end up with the functional equivalent of a $700 security camera system for about $250 total. Of course I haven't yet convinced the other half that we have any need for such a system and thus have not been granted the permission to spend the money.

New nuke could POWER WORLD UNTIL 2083

I've been saying for years that if you give me a better alternative for dealing with nuclear waste that's going to be around for several hundred thousand years than burying it then I would get behind nuclear power. Looks like it's finally happened. Sure there's still waste, but much less waste that's dangerous for less than 1000 years is something that can be dealt with.

Microsoft unveils even more tempting Kinect offering: Open source

Based on my understanding of how it works I would guess that there is a hard limitation there. You could probably compensate somewhat with code, but at some point you're simply going to be too close or too far away for the cameras to reliably detect your movement.

Heavily armed dolphins on rampage in Black Sea

Squeek squeek click

*Dolphin for "My that's a big gun you've got there sailor"

Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan

Re: Any love...

Really? I steered clear of it. By that point I'd learned that anything with Kubrick's name attached to it was most likely artsy-fartsy to the point of tediously missing its own point. I reached that conclusion with 2001 actually, it being the third tediously-missing-its-own-point Kubrick movie I saw.

Ah yes, Blade Runner

I love Blade Runner. I haven't seen it in years though. Something about a particular scene, about 15 minutes in, throws my epileptic wife into a seizure. The first time I thought nothing of it, the second time I thought it was an odd coincidence, but the third time she tried to watch it with me only to have a seizure during the exact same scene I learned my lesson. This great movie is now sadly banned from my house. The things we sacrifice for the sake of love.... :-(

Carrie Fisher dusts off THAT bikini for Star Wars VII

No. Just no. She was hot 30 years ago, but (and I hope I'll be forgiven for this) I have no desire to see someone my mother's age in a bikini.

BRITAIN MUST DECLARE WAR on Cervinaean menace

Venison for all!

If we had numbers like that around here I wouldn't have to buy meat for years. And I'd have yummier meat to feed my family than the greasy beef I can get from the grocery store.

Dangit, now I'm in the mood for venison steaks and deer season is months away.

Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL

Ubuntu doesn't work. It's buggy as hell (by Linux standards anyway) and is responsible for turning a lot of people off of Linux. For non-techies it simply requires too much fiddling under the hood to get it to run (not to mention the mess that is Unity). If you want user friendly, use Mint or Mepis, but for the love of Tux stay away from Ubuntu.

I must say from the problems he's describing it sounds to me like he never learned to set up a Linux desktop properly. That or he's been using Ubuntu (which, in my experience, is impossible to set up properly). All the things he listed as desktop Linux problems (suspend, wifi, and audio problems, kernel recompiling, graphics drivers) have been non-issues for me for years with Debian. Wifi just works, audio just works, I've not had problems with suspending or resuming in probably seven or eight years, I don't even remember the last time I recompiled a kernel, and the newest AMD graphics drivers are as easy to install in Linux as on Windows (I haven't used nVidia in quite a while).