Posts by Bracknellexile

Headbanger plays Star Trek theme on floppy drives

Which is a neat trick given ST:TNG didn't première until 1987 :)

NASA nuclear Mars tank launch delayed by one day

Fair point, well made.

Looking at that video, once the parachute's detached, the Sky Crane looks remarkably aerodynamically unstable. A half-decent Martian sandstorm crosswind and it'll be all over the shop! I can see Curiosity landing on its back and flailing like an upended tortoise. Haven't they watched Robot Wars? Don't they realise that all good robots need a SRIMECH*?

* I'm assuming that's how it's spelt. I've never actually seen the shortened version of "self-righting mechanism" written down before.

So "Collision After Takeoff" (CAT) killed the Curiosity?

Swedish political party pledges War On Wolves

Urban Foxes?

I thought it was a campaign for the extermination of Liam Fox.

Eleven - if you will - rocktastic music movies

Everything's better with zombies

I would humbly nominate, from the annals of movies-so-amazingly-dire-they're-genius, Hard Rock Zombies, one of the worst/best b-movie rock flicks ever made :)

Steve Jobs' last words: 'OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.'

Presumably he was just lamenting the fact that the only sheeple cash-cow Apple didn't come up with or take over was World of Warcraft.

Painters wrap Forth Bridge job after 121 years

Like...

Edinburgh has a ready-made substitute right on the Forth Bridge's doorstep!

"...like building Edinburgh's tram system!"

Title

There are two bridges: "The Forth Road Bridge" and simply "The Forth Bridge". The latter doesn't have "Rail" in its name.

Europe rules against general passenger data slurp

You are...

...the bit that says, "every passenger entering or leaving the European Union."

Rhapsody bristles at Apple subscription grab

Apple already covered their backside on that one.

Apple's full statement also included the caveat that in-app pricing must match or beat the out-of-app price, so they can't just bump up the in-app prices or Apple won't let the app in.

“All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app." - from: http://www.tipb.com/2011/02/15/apple-announces-iphone-ipad-subscriptions/

And by "customers can easily subscribe" they mean "we still get a ludicrous chunk of your cash" :(

Most coders have sleep problems, need 'hygiene and care'

Cause and effect

So coders are poor sleepers, this is nothing new. However, I see nothing in this to show that being a coder makes you a poor sleeper, any more than being a poor sleeper means you're inclined to take up a career in coding.

Why oh why do so many media articles these days (and occasionally the research papers themselves) imply a cause and effect when the research merely shows a correlation? It drives me up the wall!

PARIS nursing mother of all hangovers

When I get old...

I wonder how many of the trees in the landing zone saw Vulture One go past and thought, "That's what I want to be when I grow up!!"

MYSTERY of vanished PARIS spaceplane, playmonaut

How high?

That's some branch given the balloon was still at about 17,000 ft when it passed over Vulture One's apparent landing site :O

Not the pilot

The pilot was fine. It was the Lego terrorist on board that wasn't spotted. Everyone knows that Lego and Playmobil have been involved in the "War on Plastic" for ages.

Lego plot to bring down Vulture One, Playmobil invade Legoland Windsor in retaliation.... Where will it end?!?!

It's....

...the signal from yesterday.

Success!!

Woohoo! Congratulations to all involved at a successful flight! Now ya just gotta find the bugger....

PARIS HAS LANDED!!! Epic supra-atmos flight ends

If Found...

You guys did remember to put an "If found, please return to Vulture HQ" notice on the side of Vulture 1 just in case it got lost, didn't you?

Didn't you?

Yahoo! unfurls revamped Yahoo! mail beta

POP goes the mailbox

Seems they changed some of their POP settings in the process too. Had to reconfigure my local mail client which has been failing to get mail from Yahoo! for the last 24 hours, despite it turning up quite happily on the Blackberry.

The list of settings on the Yahoo help page is definitely not the same as the, formerly working, config I had. Then again, this was the first time I'd actually logged in at the Yahoo! website in about 18 months. All I want is what is now a legacy mail account, not all the slow, buggy, pointless crud that goes with it.

MPs call for crackdown on pre-paid credit cards

Next logical step....

If anonymous transactions are such a bad thing, they'd better look at banning that awful cash stuff too - for the sake of the children of course.

Legal high fire sale starts now

Legal when convenient?

I was under the impression that the ACMD was required to have a veterinary expert on board to meet it's requirements so, after Polly Taylor resigned, I figured the three new members of the ACMD would include a vet, but no: A pharmacist, a dentist and a phytochemist.

Can anyone explain how the government is still pushing ahead when the makeup of the ACMD doesn't meet its own rules on membership to issue advice and ACMD-consultation is required under the misuse of drugs act before any ban can be put in place (besides the obvious "We only apply the law when it suits us" argument)?

Facebook gives you the clap: Official

(untitled)

But when did the media (or even half the scientific journals for that matter) ever let the difference between correlation and causation get in the way of a good story?