Posts by Loyal Commenter

Boffins spot planet that could support life... just 12 light years away

Re: Great

Great. now I have the image of a ship that uses pandas as its reaction mass in my head.

"We need to go a bit faster, fire some more pandas out the back of the ship"

Phone-hack saga: Police cuff man in southwest London

Maybe it was that slimy papparazzo they someties wheel out for things like Newsnight, who is an unashamed apologist for snooping into people's private lives and publishing their intimate details in red-tops because they're famous, so must deserve it. What a repellent life-form he is. Can't remember his name though...

END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH: TalkTalk no longer worst ISP in UK

Re: could it just be that

With the exception that these figures are quoted per 1000 customers, so they now have fewer OFCOM complaints per customer. As noted above, it is probably a combination of them trying to get their act together, and the people most likely to complain having left.

Personally, I have had no problems with their customer service, and have been a customer for a number of years. y only gripe is that when I did have to complain about an ADSL fault, there was a 3-4 week wait before they could send an engineer out. Given that this was shorlty after all the flooding in the UK though, it is probably explained by a peak in the number of faults due to that.

Ocean seeding a dead duck as carbon solution

I wouldn;t give up on the idae so quickly

Large areas of the oceans are effectively deserys, because they have no nutrients for life to survive on. In many places, the bottleneck is the availability of iron. Add that, and plankton can gorw. Add plankton, and the rest of the oceanic food chain, which depends on it, can move in.

It might not be massively effective at long-term carbon sequestration, but on the other hand, could have a marked effect on ocean productivity. Essentially, add iron, get more fish.

Interestingly, it has been hypothesised that whales may play an important role in the cycling of iron in marine ecosystems. Because they move up and down the water column, they feed in the depths where iron is more plentiful, and excrete the waste matter nearer the surface, thus transporting nutrients. This is an important counter-argument to that which certain countries put forward for controlling whale numbers by culling in order to increase fishery reserves. It turns out the opposite may actually be the case, and allowing whale numbers to recover could lead to greater ocean fertility, and thus productivity.

Re: Depends on the fuel

"This just in: current thorium designs have nuclear weapon proliferation issues."

Thorium breeder reactors produce Uranium 233, which, whilst theoretically capable of being made into a bomb, isn't for several reasons, not least of which is the production of U233 always produces small amounts of U232 which has highly hazardous decay products which emit gamma radiation, so any practical bomb would have to be encased in several metres of concrete.

Re: I wonder if there is a way to process atmospheric CO2 into graphite?

I can only assume you are a troll, or an idiot.

Even if you were somehow able to convert carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen with 100% efficiency (which is not only practivcally, but also theoretically impossible), you would need to use energy to break the strong C=O bonds, in order to produce the weaker O=O and C-C bonds. Given that the sources of energy we currently use are currently overwhelmingly carbon-positive (i.e. produce a net positive amount fo CO2), you would end up releasing more CO2 inot the atmosphere than you ever managed to convert back into carbon and oxygen. The innate inefficiencies in the system would waste some of the energy as heat, so you'd actually warm the planet some more while you were doing it.

North Korean rocket works, puts something into orbit

Re: Puts "something" into orbit?

On eof the original design goals for the Shuttle was the ability to change its orbital inclination in such a way, an instruction that came from the military, and one of the reasons the eventual design was a compromise, and much more expensive than it could have been. Observers can't have failed to notice that the X-37B has the same basic shape as the Shuttle (albeit somewhat smaller), and so quite possibly shares the same design principles, and is able to shift orbits in exactly such a way.

Re: Why hasn't the US "brought democracy" to NK yet?

I too fail to see the threat from NK. If they were to develop the capability to deliver a nuclear warhead to anywhere else, and actually launch it, it would be game over. The result would be that all of North Korea would shortly thereafter be transformed into radioactive glass. Their leaders might be totalitarianist arseholes, but MAD is not in ther interests any more than it is in anyone else's*.

They know this, the US know this, China know this, Russia knows this. Everyone knows this. The only outcome with NK is that they continue to starve until eventually their leaders show some common sense and begin to engage with the rest of the planet on a rational level. The sabre-rattling is entirely in order to keep their own people subjugated, to everyone else it is a joke.

* The only people who might possibly be minded that it is a good idea would be those who are of a religious bent, and who believe that it is time for eveyone to die and the select few to take up their positions in the 'good' afterlife. Most people of this mindset seem to live in North America.

The best smartphones for Christmas

+1 for the neologism

'phablet'.

@Frank Bough

Best phone on the market?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To me it looks boxy and ugly, but who am I to argue with people who are willing to be told what to like.

'screamingly fast' - compared to what? AFAIK, other phones on the market are faster.

'the best apps available' - most apps these days are available on both Android and iOs. Unless you are referring to the vast array of high quality fart apps available on the iPhone? After the Apple maps debacle, making such a claim is risky.

'a pleasure to use and own' - wow! Did you copy-and-paste that from an Apple four-colour-glossy?

'geek credentials demand that Apple products must be denigrated' - so called 'geek credentials' would be more likely to demand that all products be evaluated on their individual merits. 'Hipster credentials' demand that you must love Apple products without question, just like all your barista mates with their lensless glasses and skinny jeans. Which 'credentials' do you possess? Or maybe you prefer not to join a clique?

Re: HTC One X

I constantly fail to understand why the One X has done so badly. I can only assume it is because pretty much nobody has heard of it, which is a shame really. HTC should be firing its marketing bods right now, if they haven't done so already.

On the plus side, it does mean that you can pick up the One X for considerably less than the S3. A quick look at a bookseller-who-shall-not-be-named's web site tells me the difference in the handset price is currently around £30 cheaper. When I got mine (albeit on contract) a few months ago, the difference was more like £100.

The two phones are comparable in most respects, with one coming out ahead in some features, and the other in others. There isn't really a lot between them, both are technically better than the iPhone.

My only real gripe with the One X is the fact that they have gone down the crapple route by making the phone a sealed unit, so you can't swap the battery or storage, although 32Gb is quite generous, so this isn't a massive problem. The battery life ain't great either, but show me a smart-phone where it is.

Google maps app is BACK on iPhones, fanbois spared death

Re: Works fine on my ipad

10 PRINT "I go to the school of not overreacting to an internet comment'"

20 GOTO 10

America planned to NUKE THE MOON

Re: I find it deeply disturbing

I think we agree that blowing up islands and deserts and populated Japanese cities is NOT generally considered to be a good idea; it's a bit of an oxymoron to conclude from this that blowing up bits of the moon therefore IS a good idea.

Global warming still stalled since 1998, WMO Doha figures show

Re: Wrong.

Mmm, freshly picked cherries. Yummy!

I guess we'll all be fine, since everyone on the entire planet lives in the Greater Alpine Region then?

What's that as a percentage of the Earth's populated surface?

I think that maybe what the OP was referring to, if somewhat opaquely, is that the severity and frequency of 'extreme' weather events, such as the flooding in the UK (which is more severe in many places than previously recorded at any time), is increasing. This is one of the consequences of 'climate change'. Others include changes to stratospheric wind patterns, which cause 'blocking', leading to unusual weather patterns such as the unprecedented droughts, heatwaves, and flooding that have occurred in recent years, and also changes to ocean circulation patterns, which alter salinity and temperature gradients, as well as increases in oceanic CO2 concentration, which affects organisms which build their shells out of carbonate minerals such as aragonite.

Y'know, things like that, rather than just the idiocy of building on flood plains. It's probably also worth noting that much of the flooding currently subsiding in the country is in places NOT built on flood plains

Antarctic discovery: ALIEN LIFE may be FOUND ON MOON of Jupiter

Re: Alternate basis for life

From a chemistry perspective, the viability of life based on other elements comes down to what bonds the elements involved can form, and their relative energies.

Carbon is such a suitable element for life because of the range of different bonding structures it can form with other abundant elements, particulalrly with hydrogen and itself. Carbon can form chains and cyclic compounds because the bond energy of the C-C bond is not too far from that of C-H bonds, meaning that not too much energy is required to shuffle the configurations around. C-O and C-S bonds are in a lower energy range (energetically favourable, hence the ability to burn carbon compounds).

Contrast silicon, the next element down the periodic table from Carbon, and the one most often bandied around when people talk about alterntive chemistries for life. Silicon, like carbon has four electrons available for bonding, so like carbon, can form a myriad of structures. The bond energies are, however, less favourable. Si-O bonds are of a significantly lower energy than Si-Si and Si-H bonds (thus more favoured, forming the bond releases energy). Silicon dioxide, unlike carbon dioxide, is a crystalline solid. Once in this state, it is very difficult for life to do anything with it. Unlike carbon, the range and variety of structures that the element can make is largely dominated by such crystalline solids.

Whilst silicon can form chains, cyclic compounds, and liquids, these are predominantly compounds of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms. These are too stable to be easily broken down and therefore cannot store energy in the way a C-C bond can. Contrast silicone oil, and petroleum - one is virtually inert, whilst the other is a fuel source. Life needs to be able to shuffle energy about, store it, and release it on tap. Carbon is just too well suited to these roles for other elements to do a comparable job.

Pirate cops bust LITTLE GIRL, take her Winnie-the-Pooh laptop

Re: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The only way to 'steal' someone's intellectual property would be if that IP were in a physical form, such as an original master recording of a performance, and you were to steal that. In other words, if you were to permanently deprive an artist of the rights to their work by tricking them into signing a contract which allowed you to rent copies of their work to third parites, whilst keeping all the money for yourself.

Hey, that sounds like a good business model. I wonder if anyone has come up with it before?

Acid oceans DISSOLVING sea life

There's the 'truth', and then there's actual facts.

Basically, what that blog is saying is that because coastal pH varies over the short term in some locations, then we shouldn't worry about bulk changes in the other 99.9999% of the planet's seas. The author of this blog deliberately conflates coastal pH changes with oceanic ones. The coast is a highly dynamic environment, and it should go without saying that what goes into the sea there comes from the land. Given that most coastal areas are highly developed and have runoffs from agriculture and sewerage pretty much constantly being pumped inot the seas, it is hardly surprising that the pH there can vary a lot. Many hard-shelled organisms can cope with short term rapid changes to pH without their shells dissolving, mainly because aragonite does take a while to actually disolve and most bivalves and crustaceans have quite thick shells. When the pH rises again, the can redeposit whatever is lost. if the pH permanenlty decreases, however, the equilibrium is shifted towards greater solubility of calcium ions, and they are unable to build shells.

Re: Ocean Acidification is not as Arguable as "Global Warming"

Leap of faith?

You can quite easily show that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation.

You can also quite easily show that heat is lost from the Earth via infrared radiation.

Normally, the same amount of heat comes in from the sun as goes out through the atmosphere, and the average temperature pof the planet stays the same.

There is no leap of faith to say that increasing atmospheric CO2 would lead to a greater absorption of infrared leading to atmospheric heating. The infrared that is absorbed may be remitted by the atmosphere, but unlike heat radiated from the Earth's surface, this happens in all directions, approximately 50% of which are not into space.

This in turn leads to more heat being retained by the Earth as a whole. Just take a look at Venus to see the effect of this - Venus is further from the sun that Mercury, but a great deal hotter because it has an atmosphere high in CO2 which causes the heat from the sun to be retained.

Granted, tehe exact effects of atmospheric heating are not known, because we have not previously experienced a rise in CO2 levels like we are now. The best we can do is try to model the effects, or look at past warming through proxies like ice cores and tree rings. Climate 'skeptics' tend to fixate on the fact that these do not offer an accurate picture, when examining some in minute detail, whist purposefully ignoring the wider picture which deos seem to show that more CO2 = hotter planet. For example, tree ring data can only offer a glimpse at the temperatures in the area where the tree gre, not give a global picture. If the local microclimate changes (which can happen due to a number of reasons, such as volcanism, geographical changes, changes in rainfall patters, etc. etc.), then these factors can confound the figures. This is why averages have to be taken from large numbers of studies which study different tempertaure proxies, and why as many proxies for atmospheric greenhouse gas levels as possible are also valuable. Rmemebr too, that CO2 is not the only grrenhouse gas, others, such as methane and CFCs are also powerful absorbers of infrared radiation.

So, in summary, there is no 'leap fo faith' in saying that more CO2 causes global warming. The only 'leap of faith' is in predicting the precise effects on a localised scale. You will also notice that serious scientists will not even try to suggest what localised effects of global warming will be, principally because they don't know, and at the end of the day, science is not about making shit up. Just remember: science has no agenda, but those responsible for emitting large amounts of CO2, such as oil companies, power providers, and large manufacturers certainly do. It is in their economic interests to sow doubt about global warming; I'd advise you to ignore the propaganda and learn the science.

Jock and Awe: Scottish schools' sixty-mil 'slab splurge

Just one question:

WTF is the 'third sector'?

WWII HERO PIGEON crypto message STUMPS GCHQ boffins

"Captain Blackadder did not eat this delicious plump-breasted pigeon"

Swollen SUPER-GIGANTO PLANET sighted in Andromeda

If this is Kappa Andromeda b

Is there a Kappa Andromeda a in the same system?

Also, when I read the headline for this story, I thought it was talking about the Andromeda galaxy, rather than the constellation Andromeda, and became immediately alarmed that a massive swirly conglomeration of stars which was previously thought to be 2.5 million light years away had snuck up while we weren't looking to a mere 130 LY and is now lurking in our (relatively speaking) cosmic back-yard!

Astronauts (or other 'nauts) could find life on Mars quite healthy

Not to mention that if you breathed pure oxygen, you wouldn't last too long, we have evolved to survive in an atmosphere that is approximately 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen. Pure oxygen is, ironically, toxic.

Last time I checked, you couldn't get nitrogen from splitting water, so unless there happens to be a ready source of ammonia (NH3) to give the same treatment to, or a supply of another 'inert' gas to use, such as helium (which would all have been lost to space for the same reason there is pretty much no helium in Earth's atmosphere) or argon (which is considerably less abundant), the whole 'air from water' bit sounds a lot like a fantasy.

BOFH: Hasta la Vista... luser

Re: I only fix Windows machines once

A mac? Seriously? Apple are responsible for half the crapware that keeps trying to install itself on my PC in the first place. Why do I need to update Quicktime? Why do I also need to get iTunes and Safari at the same time? The day iTunes manages to install itself on my PC is the day the windows CD comes out and it gets wiped and reinstalled from scratch.

Automatic Facebook couple pages: Nauseating sign of desperation

Re: angry much?

"What is it you fail to get? No Zuckwit = no Facebook. No Facebook = couple not violently murdered for unfriending murderers daughter on Facebook. No Facebook incitement to murder = no murder."

No Zuckerberg = someone else comes up with the same thing under a different name.

No facebook = crazy stalker stalks people using some other means.

It seems more than a little like looking for someone to blame when someone goes crazy and kills a bunch of people. What was the last thing the killer drank? X Cola? Ban X cola now! What, he was wearing clothes when he did it? Ban clothes!

In other words, just because X might lead to Y, and Y might lead to Z, doesn't mean X leads to Z. I think you may need to go back to school and study 'causality 101' again.

Toyota motors ahead with radar crash avoidance tech

Ones! It'll slam on the brakes!

Or maybe, if you read the article, it says it'll increase the braking if the car in front slows and you don't brake hard enough to avoid hitting it, or if you are heading towards something too quickly to avoid hitting it, it'll decrease your speed (not bring you to a screeching halt). I would imagine that if a car was fitted with this, it would also have ABS which would prevent it from causing th car to skid - that would be a no-brainer really.

There really are very few situations where a car under control at lower speed is more dangerous than one at a higher speed. As long as this system doesn't cause the car to lose traction, it will mean a safety improvement. Does anyone here honestly believe that the manufacturers haven't thought about the need to maintain traction?

What happened to comics for kids? Hell, what happened to COMICS?

Re: Dandy, Beano, 2000 AD to Mad Magazine

"You'd never get any of the UK comic characters in a high budget film"

Except for Judge Dredd, eh? Twice.

Re: Four words

It has to be Simon Bisley for me, if only for the full-page frame in 'Judgement on Gotham' where the Sandman, from Batman's universe inflicts Judge Death's greatest fear on him, and he is surrounded by cutesy cartoon characters.

Finns look to bring Phorm style stalker ads to UK radio streaming

Re: What's the alternative to ads?

I do actually broadly agree with you. Advertising is a preferred funding model to subscriptions.

The problems arise when the advertising becomes intrusive. This can happen in several ways:

1) The volume of the advertising is significantly higher than the volume of the program / songs you actually want to listen to. It actually is supposed not to be, advertisers do sneaky things like reduce the same rate so that the average volume works out as less than it should and then ramp the volume up.

2) Advertisers start tracking what I'm doing and where I am. This is creepy. I don't trust people I don't know by default, especially if they work in marketing.

3) The adverts break the content. Channel 4 on demand (4OD) is a good example of this. The programs often stream fine, but when they reach one fo the (frequent) ad breaks, teh ads slow down, stutter and often halt entirely, so that a 30 second break lasts five or six minutes. Stopping and starting the streaming goes back to the beginning of the adverts. These are also often the same five or six adverts over and over again. Oddly enough, all this does is make me take a mental note to avoid the product being advertised.

4) You apy a subscription and then get landed with adverts anyway. Sky, I'm looking at you.

BOFH: Can't you just ... NO, I JUST CAN'T

Re: F***ing brilliant

@Ian Johnston

1) Doctors don't like it if their patients go to them and tell them how to do their job. Try going to your GP and asking for "XYZ medication because I have ABC syndrome, I know because I googled it." You'll probably find some special acronyms written in your patient file, such as PRATFO (Patient Reassured And Told To Fuck Off). Doctors spend five years at medical school leartning the intricacies of the human body and how it can go wrong. Have a little respect for them.

2) The same for lawyers (although maybe with less of the respect for a portion of them)

5) The same goes for experienced IT staff, this artcile is about how they have to enforce policies that are put in place for good reason, not for the benefit of 'people who do stuff and earn money'. It seems likely that in your job, you do too little 'stuff' and earn too much money for doing it, because you seem to be lacking in the intelligence to understand what this article was about. You don't work in sales or recruitment do you?

4) tl;dr? If you can't be bothered to read the article, then why bother to come and comment on it?

5) It seems to have escaped your attention that BOFH articles are humorous, not serious. Maybe it is because you have your pompous head stuck too far up your arse.

Apple is Superman's digital Kryptonite

Apple's Walled Garden

Where the walls are so strong not even Superman can break in.

This could lend support to the idea that Apple is now being run by Lex Luthor...

Stob on Quatermass: Was this British TV's finest sci-fi hour?

I thought I saw Jesus on a tram

I said, "Are you Jesus?"

He said, "Yes, I am."

HIV vaccine safe for Phase II human trials

A little too cynical

A few salient points:

1 - The vaccine is developed by a university research department, not a pharmaceutical firm. They almost certainly have no financial interests in whatever antiviral treatments are currently available.

2 - Most scientists working in a university setting follow their research interests, not Mammon. I know it is popular to slag scientists off and claim that they are given free money in the form of research grants, but if you actually look at these claims in any detail, it quickly becomes obvious that they are total bollocks, and if they were after money, they would be doing privately funded research which is MUCH better paid.

3 - Not everone is a complete sociopath that looks to make profit form the suffering of others, although the sad fact is that too many people are. This is no doubt one of the principal reasons the world is so screwed up.

Firm-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's tax dodge profit shift? Totally legit

It worked in Ireland, right up to the point that we had a financial collapse.

I can see why businesses do this

After all, they are businesses. It is in their interests to make as much profit as possible, and if they have shareholders, it is their duty to teh shareholders.

However, it surely can't be too hard to pass some legislation that states that if you do business in the uk, intangible international trades with companies wholly or entirely owned by, or owning the company in question do not count when it comes to taxes. i.e. you cannot take your £1bn profit in the uk and pay it to your swiss parent company for intellectual property rights, but you would still be allowed to buy your coffee beans from your Colombian subsidiary. Additional legislation may be required to assure that those coffee beans are bought at a fair rate, rather than £100 a kilo, or something similar.

If this means that some multinational companies decide that they can't compete in the UK, and close their UK business, then it leaves a gap in the maket for someone who can. boo-hoo.

Slideshow: A History of First-person Shooters in 20 Games

What no Serious Sam?

Oh well...

Naughty-step Apple buries court-ordered apology with JavaScript

Re: Stupid, stupid move.

"Errm, aren't they IE-only non HTML attributes?"

Indeedy, but I'm sure that HTML5 that Apple are so keen on, and the overzealous use of JavaScript that they seem to enjoy can replicate the effect of having the judgement scroll past as if in a marquee tab, in blinking 24 point magenta Comic Sans. Maybe the court should also mandate some 'comedy' animated GIFs, maybe of poorly-drawn exploding iPads in 16 colours?

Apple must apologise for its surly apology on its website on Saturday

Re: Arial

Damn right - should have been Comic Sans.

Re: Great fun

I'm not so vindictive to wish for jail time for lawyers, who no doubt were just acting on their client's instructions. On the other hand, a massive fine against Apple would certainly not be a bad outcome IMHO, and potentially be a nice injection of cash into the treasury, assuming that's where it would end up...

Re: No XMAS card this year

"Future coverage of Apple products will continue to come from 3rd hand sources and rumours gleaned from the internet. Surely this is an own goal ?"

As opposed to advertising and spin? Egads!

Debenhams cafes ban outré terms like 'espresso' and 'cappuccino'

Easy solution:

Don;t buy coffee from anywhere with the word 'grande' on the menu. names like 'espresso', 'americano', 'cappucino', etc. are fine - that's what the various drinks are called after all. IMHO, quantity should be expressed as 'single', 'double', etc., referring to the number of shots of espresso the drink is made with, or at a push, 'small', 'medium', or 'large'.

Either that, or maybe we start insisitng that all foodstuffs be ordered with the quantities specified in the language of the country the food comes from. Go into a bakery and ask for 'deux croissants', or into the kebab shop and ask for a 'megalo giros me saltsa tsili', see how far you get.

BOFH: Tenacious B and the Printer of Destiny

Re: Nitwits

Whoosh!

Hear that?

Lab mice drown in their THOUSANDS as Hurricane Sandy fills NYU basement

Re: Tragic waste of research of course

Sadly, the most probable reason for them being in the basement is that this is the safest place to put them away from the animal rights nutters. Put them on a floor with windows, the nutters can see in; put them on a floor without windows, and the existence of a floor without windows begins to be a bit suspicious in itself...

Re: Any risk of contamination?

What if...

Further proof that idiots don't know what theya re talking about

Animal testing for cosmetic purposes is already banned (in the EU ast least). If you have a viable alternative to in-vitro animal testing for drug safety and efficacy trials, and for models of human diseases vital for creating new treatments for horrible diseasses like cancer and alzheimers, then queue up to receive your Nobel Prize right now.

If, however, you are just spouting some ill-informed knee-jerk reactionary nonsense, then next time you need something from your doctor, be sure to refuse any treatment that has been developed with the use of animal testing, and reduce your life expectancy to 35 accordingly.

Re: embryos

Liquid nitrogen storage is generally open at the top, to allow for the contents to be accessed, and for pressure to be equalised with the atmosphere. I would imagine seawater pouring in through the opening would not be helpful.

El Reg acquires wildly dangerous laser cannon (with lightsabre option)

Re: This is no toy

@dogged, a good point, well made.

This is no toy

"For real penetration, though, check out the stats on the 532nm green Krypton. At full power, its NOHD is the same as the Arctic - 149m. However, its FL1 is a staggering 137,120m."

To give that some perspective, that is 85 miles.

I can see few reasons why anyone working outside of an industrial or research setting using such lasers would need something that can project a visible spot of light onto a building in London, from Swindon.

Uh-oh! Kim Dotcom is back with a brand new Megaupload site

Re: Far enough the USA were Tards

I don't want to weigh in and defend the guy here - I know nothing abut whether he is a nice chap or not, but I jave to clear you up on one point - copied is not stolen. Stealing something deprives the owner of it, copying it does not, although it may prevent them from profiting by metering access to it.

Copying != theft != piracy.

Whether copying is morally right is another question, but by sttempting to conflate it with other 'serious illegal' activities, copyright owners are doing themselves no favours when it comes to credibility.

Dry martini, shaken not stirred: Cracking the physics of Bond's martini

Re: So much nonsense

@Boldman

An interesting theory. Unfortunately, your taste buds aren't what does the tasting of a martini (red bull, which is mostly sugar is another matter). The volatile organic compounds are 'tasted' by the smell receptors in your nasal cavity. In the case of a martini, the chilling prevents these from evaporating before they get to your mouth. Limiting the amount of water, by keeping the mixture below zero centrigrade (which also slows doen the kinetics of the reactions) is what prevents them from being broken down in the mixing stage.