When is news No News?
When it is reported by The Register
Posts by Mips
514 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Apr 2010
British car parks start reading number plates
STONEHENGE: Attack of the RAYGUN HISTORIANS
Edge-of-space skydiver grounded by ANOTHER bout of bad wind
Rover spots 'possibly artificial' MYSTERY SHINY OBJECT on Mars
Stars spotted dancing superfast tango around black hole handbag
Tuesday 9th October 2012 09:27 GMT
Re: Yay!
"Can't we admire the wonder of the universe without using it as a chance to insult each other's beliefs?"
I can demonstrate scientifically (at least to my satisfaction) that god exists. Notice I use a small g because god is not anthromorphic. However, emphatically, I do not believe in religion. Religions are created by men for men and all religious text are written by men not God. Let me give you a nice recent example - Scientology. I will avoid mentioning the text starting with K because that will just get me death threats. You see what religion does to people.
Register SPB hacks mull chopping off feet
USAF declassifies ‘flying saucer’ design
HMRC: Moving our data to the cloud will make it MORE secure
Boffins suggest orbital dust-up to combat climate change
Wednesday 3rd October 2012 12:03 GMT
Re: Not radical, at least nolt compared to what is actually being done
Well supposing that climate change is not entirely due to our activities and that solar output has something to do with it. Historically this is a fact. Supposing then that this lunatics asteroid cloud is in place and we get a solar dip. Whoops! Iceball earth. And here is the problem: WE HAVE NO WAY OF GETTING RID OF THE THING.
I need I say no more. What a scarry cat.
Event Horizon Telescope spots source of black hole jets
Simon Cowell plans X Factor for Tech
Nominet mulls killing off the .co from .co.uk
Mmmm, delicious new sugar batteries keep gadgets up all night
Scientists: 'Castration is the key to a longer life'
iPhone to account for half of US economy by 2030 - projection
HTC's 4G patent beef could get iPhone 5 BANNED in US
Yikes. Supervolcano found under Hong Kong
Pret-a-porter: LG boffins' bendy battery can be worn as PANTS
NASA funds sexy, stealthy, sideways supersonic flying wing
Boffins confirm sunspot-weather link
Apple's patent insanity infects Silicon Valley
Tuesday 28th August 2012 08:37 GMT
Q: Why do people hate Apple?
(that's as a company not the products.)
A: Not because they are the biggest priced company. Not because the products are innovative. Not because their products work. No, it is because they do not want anyone else to be better or even half as good as they are. They are in fact jealous: frightened to be second best.
Is it time to think the unthinkable: to ban patents?
The cooler side of the Big Bang
Tuesday 21st August 2012 08:32 GMT
Oh inflation
On the other hand
If we think about the conditions before the big bang, the singularity, we have learned that distance and time have no meaning, if anything was to happen than it would do so through every particle (if that description can be used) at once. This could well describe a quantum entangled system: time has no relevance.
Time does not actually exist. What we see and deal with on a daily basis is vectors; absolute time is not important. We might know how a system was before, how it is now and we can predict how it will become but time is just a convent concept which we use to describe what we observe.
We never consider that “time” might be as flexible as anything else we see. Could it be that the big bang was the loss of the quantum entanglement and the realisation of the implicit vectorisation it concealed? The inflation beloved of cosmologists might be the revelation of the inner nature of the singularity following the loss of entanglement. A large object fully entangle would appear to be infinitely small. If the entanglement was lost, perhaps propagating through the object, it would in an apparently small “time” appear to be massive. Did this shockwave generate the background microwave radiation?
Inflation or entanglement loss?
Curiosity's laser turns Mars rocks to 'glowing plasma'
McIntyre: Climate policy crippled by pointless feel-good gestures
Monday 20th August 2012 08:57 GMT
"cheaper-than-coal low-carbon energy"
Which is precisely? Well no one knows, not even the politicians who seem to know everything.
One thing is sure: that coal base technology is cheap and the only way to make anything cheaper is to make coal more expensive. Yes! Tax carbon.
The only snag with this is that it will increase the price of production (note I said price not cost). And that will knock a countries trading position compared to other countries with untaxed energy costs. Could we do this unilaterally? Yes, but we need to have in place energy tax on imports and rebates on exports. To some this might look like an old fashioned trade war; as our trade balance is so poor this might not be a bad thing.
When it comes to saving the world, who is going to blink first?
Korean boffins discover secret to quick-charge batteries
Wednesday 15th August 2012 07:01 GMT
Re: Fast charging
Erm!
That would be 60Amp for a normal house to 100Amp for a large house.
--FAIL--
To charge a car battery in minutes would need 10x this capacity.
Remember the power supply in this country only works because we do not all take the maximum capacity of our house at the same time. The average capacity of the distribution system for housing is only 2kW (might be slightly more or less depending where you are). The implied capacity to charge a car in minutes might be 600kW!
--FAIL--
NASA’s new lander CRASHES AND BURNS
Murdoch pitches battery for renewables
Apple patents shopping lists
Climate change behind extreme weather, says NASA
Experts stroke beards over LOHAN's vacuity
Monday 6th August 2012 08:42 GMT
Re: @phuzz
There is a fundamental difference in altitude flight and vaccuum chamber testing. What might be appropriate for altitude ignition could be dangerous if used at low level (after the pressure chamber is popped). If on the other hand you could maintain the vaccuum. But hey howdedodat! Will Farnborough let you put the test motor in the hypobaric chamber?
Higgs boson chasers: Now only 1-in-300 MILLION chance we're wrong
Wednesday 1st August 2012 13:24 GMT
> Nevertheless, upping the significance of the particle find brings us a step closer to knowing that this is a new and Higgs-like elementary particle that has never been seen before. ®
HARRRRUMPH!
And you haven't SEEN it now either. But you can prove it or something like it exist.
Pedantic or what?
Solar, wind, landfill to make cheapest power by 2030
Humanity increasingly sitting on collective arse
Giant super-laser passes 500 TRILLION watts
Asteroid miners to strap 'scopes to new Virgin Galactic rocket
LOHAN to brew thermite for hot ignition action
LOHAN fizzles forlornly in REHAB
Thursday 12th July 2012 09:03 GMT
Re: A bigger hammer?
I bigger actually better?
If ignition requires air to transfer heat from the head to the fuel there is no way it will work. What you need is direct heat impingement from say a small motor with integral igniter if there is such a thing. Looks like you might be stuffed.
It is a good job you did a ground test.
Can neighbours grab your sensitive package, asks Post Office
Museum of Computing recognised as PROPER MUSEUM
Thursday 12th July 2012 08:29 GMT
Re: Who wants to go to Swindon?
I always thought that Swindon was a perfectly acceptable place, I mean the Magic Roundabout is absolutly hilarious.
But the thought of a Museum of computing; anyone who would want to visit abviously did not live the experience. All those anonymous boxes and tape machines, and blinking lights and bloody great line printers crashing away. The first one I got my hands on had punched tape input; oh, paper mangling tape readers. The thought gives me the willies. You get more fun in a car factory. Did I say Honda is in Swindon.
Revealed at last: Universe's intergalactic dark matter skeleton
Tuesday 10th July 2012 08:24 GMT
Without denying the existance of dark matter..
..just consider the following.
The Big Bang happened about 14bn years ago (give or take a few). When we look out we can see no further than 14bn light years. We would be foolish to think that we are located at the centre of the Big Bang so if we think about an observer on another planet at the edge of where we can see, what do they see? Will it be blank on one side and light on the other? I think not. So it is likely that the universe is a LOT bigger than we can see. If the universe is 3 times bigger than we can see to then the mass which is out of sight is 26 time what we can see. That mass is invisible not dark.
Why then do we need to invoke dark matter as a solution?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
