* Posts by Andrew Torrance

23 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jun 2007

‘Alan Turing law’ to give posthumous pardons to 59,000 men for 'gross indecency'

Andrew Torrance

Hasn't parliament got more important things to do ?

Societies change , what is law today may not be law in a few years . Thats a healthy thing . But to then retrospectivly issue apologies to people prosecuted by the old law is surely a waste of parliaments time ? And how do we decide which reverted law should get an apology and which should not ? There is talk of somtheing similar for people shot for 'cowardice' in the first world war . We all know that just as in the cases of Gross indecency these people were wrongly treated by todays standards , and in retrospect the law appears wrong . But is helps no one to apologise for our great grandparents society .

So why exactly are IT investors so utterly clueless?

Andrew Torrance

Bottoms

This whopping 16-bit computer processor is being built by hand, transistor by transistor

Andrew Torrance

Instruction set type ?

If anyone is tempted to do something similar , a nice compromise might be to start off looking at the AMD 2900 family of chips . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Am2900 . This stuff starts at the ALU level . But being interested in this stuff , does anyone know if he went for a RISC setup with microcode ?

Andrew Torrance

Re: Beat the clock

My final year university project was something similar , building a bit sliced processor . The limiting factor on speed for us was the capacitance and length of the cabling . I expect it will be similar for this guy .

Radio 4 and Dr K on programming languages: Full of Java Kool-Aid

Andrew Torrance

Re: This is exactly the problem

Couldn't agree more . When something is about the arts or humanities or better still the media itself then the R4 goes into a decent depth . But give them something technical and they usually flounder . Have you heard PMs pathetic use of analogies to 'explain' numbers ? Its not everywhere , 'more or less' treats its listeners as being numerate , but apart from that then numeracy seems to be treated as the domain of the few .

Andrew Torrance

I missed them live except for Java , the idea being to listen later . But I am not going to bother . It seemed to dumb it down in some places and skim over vital info in others . They seemed to concentrate on gee whizz apps rather then the underlaying concepts . The JVM was not mentioned , and was only alluded to as a 'translator'. No mention of .NET which was odd given they are conceptually very similar. Aimed at those ignorant of software I think it was a missed opportunity .

Ford to save you from BIKE FITNESS HORROR

Andrew Torrance

Re: "there is no derailleur....so the prototypes are fixies"

Yep , its not a fixie . You cant have a fixie powered bike it would break your legs . Its a single speed . Also belts are being used on several bikes now instead of chains when no deraileur is used

Jupiter Ascending – a literally laughable train wreck of a film

Andrew Torrance

Re: Isn't it amazing that...

Seen both . Kingsman is hilarious . A superb romp of a film . Jupiter ascending is a contrived film. Its a 1930s cliffhanger with cardboard characters and formulaic script. Having said that , I quite enjoyed it . Its a brains out movie with excellent 3d effects . However it will be awful on tele . I thought Redmayne was good , in a sterotypical baddie sort of way .

BAD VIBES: High-speed video camera records your voice from trash

Andrew Torrance

Re: Er....

Yep , but that requires you to fire a laser at a target such as a window and look at the light coming back . In theory this method has the POTENTIAL , to be able to detect the sound from anything that can be viewed optically without giving away your position by firing a nice big juicy laser which can easily be detected .

Speak your brains on SIGNAL-FREE mobile comms

Andrew Torrance

Not a new Idea

Its a good idea , but not new . I can only think that vested interests have not added the ability for a rf data channel to enable peer to peer data communications ? From a consumer point of view I would jump at it . Seems ripe for the commercial pickin' ? If we had that then I guess the box that these chaps have becomes redundant ?

Satya Nadella: Microsoft's new man presses all the old buttons in LONG memo

Andrew Torrance

Lost the will to live

I could not read this drivel after a few minutes . Many many words to say very little .

Catch cack-handed baggage handlers in the act with Ericsson's SPY SUITCASE

Andrew Torrance

Oh how the x ray scanner operator laughed...

At least it will ensure you and your suitcase stay close together whilst the security services check it out . The following interviews should be hoots of fun . Much better than that holiday you were looking forward to .

Hey! Where! are! the! white! women! at!? It's! Yahoo!

Andrew Torrance

Once we have equality of opportunity , ( which I believe we have) . Then quotas should rank somewhere near the company flag in how much time should be spent considering them .

Google's driverless car: It'll just block our roads. It's the worst

Andrew Torrance

Your missing the point

Ok . this is version 0.1 . And it will have issues . But what if .... What if we can get driver-less vehicles ? Ok , people who can't currently drive will be able to use them . Me ? I can go out and get slaughtered and still be driven home . You can call your car to you . You can work on your desk in the car on the commute . You can send your car to the garage while your in work . You can send it to pick up your shopping . With the ability to call a car to you then it will not be long before pooled cars become popular . I guess it could be the end of the road for taxis. Basically its a huge game changer . Ok V0.1 will be pretty poor but I guess we have to take it one step at a time .

You know all those resources we're about to run out of? No, we aren't

Andrew Torrance

You might want to dial back on the smugness . What about unobtanium ? If that was so plentiful then why do we have to go so far to get it ?

Brits to vote: Which pressing scientific challenge should get £10m thrown at it?

Andrew Torrance

What a waste . All worthy but .. none of them moved me to spend any of my brain cycles considering them . I can imagine a few research groups getting hot and bothered , but not much of an opportunity for a modern day John Harrison . There should be at least one option where little people have a chance . And while I am on this pedestal , where the heck is the option of a better form of energy storage ? Wind and Solar are not dependable for the base load until we crack that one . Kind of dwarfs CO2 emissions by planes .

Douglas Adams was RIGHT! TINY ALIENS are invading Earth, say boffins

Andrew Torrance

So let's assume that this hypothesis is correct then space should be swarming with similar miniscule little buggers ? Most would burn up on reentry , so unless the little green man is targetting earth and squirting them at just the right velocity then probably millions (billions?) burn for each one that makes it through the atmosphere. So space should be relatively awash with diatom soup . Perhaps the 'scientists' here are right , perhaps the missing matter in the universe is a gigantic starter , but no one ever thought to set the remotascope to scan using the minestrone setting .

Bionic Brit Babbage Bear boards brilliant balloon, bests ballsy Baumgartner

Andrew Torrance

Surely he beat the other record too ? The one for the highest jump without oxygen . I feel the guinness book of records needs to be contacted.

The terrifying tech behind this summer's zombie assault

Andrew Torrance

How its called 3d is beyond me

At best its 2 and 1/2 D . Can you walk around it ? Nope. Can you look at it from above and below ? Nope . Just every now and then you get depth perception in one plane , and even then you have to wear special glasses . Fine if you dont already wear glasses but a pain if your a speccy like me . I was enthusiastic when the latest wave of 3D started but I have seen too many turkeys where the emphasis was style over substance. I generally opt for the 2D version .

Minister: Waste wood is 'huge potential resource'

Andrew Torrance
Thumb Down

Yeah Right

I live down wind of Port Talbot where one of these word burners on steroids is being plaved. Waste wood ? B@ll@x all the local forestry is crammed full of recently felled trees all sitting there for when the power station needs them . They are basically chooping down the forestry to feed it and they have not even started yet

419-lite scammers target pet lovers

Andrew Torrance

419 Puppies

I came up against something similar a few months ago . I was looking for a specific dog and there were dozens of people saying they could send a dog by frieght . They mostly had cameroon telephone numbers . It was sickening because they targetted my daughter with pictures of puppies .

Channel 4 refuses to pull Diana crash pics

Andrew Torrance

Public Interest

I despair with the scum who peddle this lowest common denominator 'news' . It seems to be that in the public interest now means anything that the public might glance at . Its anything that raises the viewing figures , because more viewers means more advertising revenue .

2012 Olympics logo debuts to whalesong

Andrew Torrance

2012 logo

You know I cant decide . Sometimes its a big haired person giving a blow job , then its London taking it up the cadbury highway but the two '2's remind me so much of the Nazi SS symbol that I can't get it out of my head .