Posts by jgb

The true, tragic cost of British wind power

Perhaps one of the 'wind experts' fighting a gallant (but ultimately suicidal) rearguard action here could explain to me something about the reliability of land-based turbines.

See http://www.quietrevolution.com/roof-mounted-turbine.htm. These 8 units mounted on top of a building in Croydon have not turned productively (as far as I know) for at least the last several months. There WAS an admitted generic problem with bearings on this type of machine, that the manufacturer said it had fixed. But that was at least a year ago and these machines are still stationary.

Given the high profile of these particular units, if whatever problem they have was easily fixed, it would be. Leaving them as thinly-disguised White Elephants must be a PR disaster.

There was also the brake-failure incident in Scotland, leading to fire, explosion and total loss of a much bigger, very expensive turbine.)

If the likely frequency of mechanical defects on turbines is combined with lack of wind, what is the actual availability of wind-power then??

Isolated human genes can be patented, US court rules

Let them have the Poisoned Chalice

Exactly so!

Let them have their patent (based on the false claim they've invented something or made an 'inventive step') and then sue them for their shirts when their invention 'runs amok' (causing cancer) or, more subtly, their 'ownership' threatens your capability to detect yourb cancer (or whatever) and therefore infringes your human rights. That really does sound like a no-brainer!

They really should be more careful what they wish for!

Student suspended for posting random satire on YouTube

EVERYONE'S toys fiy out of the prams!

If Mr Christie had taken out all the F words and shouting but left everything else (ESPECIALLY the irony and bile) in the message to the school board, being small-minded and not very bright, their reaction would probably have been the same. THEN someone at a higher level would have intervened the next day (or hour!), sacked them and reinstated Mr Christie.

As it is, the School Board can stand on their 'principles' such as 'protecting the good name of the school' from 'abuse' with a small measure of legitimacy. Giving them that as a gift was a silly mistake.

In reality, no-one comes out of this very well. They're ALL exposed as a bit juvenile. I guess Mr Christie is the only one with an excuse!

GCHQ man: Powerline networks do interfere with radio

Smog in Channel - World isolated

[quote]

buy a license for some spectrum where you can reasonably expect QoS. Then you can complain. ......Otherwise you're just a whinging freetard cheapskate who's getting exactly the level of service you're paying for. Anything above zero is a bonus.

[/quote]

Given the existing (and rising) level of RF smog, especially in urban areas everywhere, this Not My Problem attitude won't work! PLT USED to be standardised so that it couldn't create much smog, however many devices were used. Then the regulatory mechanisms fell apart and we're now in a mess.

If you transmit at broadband speeds in any unconstrained medium (radio itself, unshielded cables that act as antennas, ...) you WILL almost inevitably create possibly-unexpected crosstalk and interference. There MAY also be risks to health from the general RF Smog level and / or specific sources (mobile phones, WiFi, possibly PLT - see latest Sunday Telegraph front page!). Personally, I doubt there is much real risk (inverse-square law etc.) EXCEPT from high-power point sources such as mobiles close to sensitive areas such as your head - but clearly others do. Add on some unexpected sources (combi boilers - see Ban PLT website, very fast PC processor chips in VAST numbers, ...) to the Usual Suspects, and we're looking at a future where permanent, quite dense RF smog will be a GENERAL phenomenon.

Two choices: Get over it. Or fix it before it gets really bad.

Given our startlingly unsuccessful attempts to even agree that human impact on the environment (Global Warming, ...) is even A Problem, I'm not optimistic!

Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

A Useful Lightning Rod?

To reduce the level of uninformed comment immediately followed by patient corrections here, maybe readers should look at http://atomicinsights.com/2011/04/visualizing-the-danger-of-fukushima-related-radiation-levels-measured-in-seattle.html and other items on that site before posting here.

Rod Adams has been around for a long time, and amongst other things is a qualified nuclear plant operator. He also must have broad shoulders by now and will hopefully forgive me for inadvertently sending over members of the Tinfoil Helmet Fraternity who will of course try to spread alarm and despondency ever more widely.

Dr Breen, I presume. - Not in fact

If the title above refers to Dr Wallace Breen (a fictional character in 'Half-Life' ), then no - NOT derivative. Believe it or not, I've never played (or even seen a screenshot from) Half-Life and was until today unaware of Dr Breen. All ideas expressed here are what I believe personally. Any quotes would appear as such.

Having looked him up and traced the (supposed) author of the plot-lines and scripts (Marc Laidlaw), I was a bit disappointed to find that Mr Laidlaw's philosophies seem to be limited to Half-Life and similar. A pity: the more people prepared to put thoughts such as these into the meme-sphere, the better. The only way superstition and supid instinct-basd behaviours will ever be exposed for what they are and the damage they can do isto make people THINK. Sometimes I wonder whether some people can actually put one thought in front of another! Which brings us back (eventually) to irrational fears and bullshit aroused by Fukushima.

My other current on-topic thought is that if people were NOT so stupidly irrational, irresponsible, Nimby-ist, dishonest, greedy, completely insane, ... there's be less need to site nuclear facilities in groups behind human-proof security perimeters. As things stand, it's easy to see why they exist in clumps, although logically every town should have (a small) one.

Humans behaving like ..... humans

Unfortunately, we are products of our own evolution and can only (so far, unfortunately) behave as such. (That's assuming we can agree that evolution happens!) Our 'belief system' includes many irrational things: Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden, 'fate', telepathy, optimism about the future WITHOUT taking any responsibility for it......

There are countless examples of human behaviours that may (or definitely will!) compromise our own futures and those of our children, let alone the more general prospects of Planet Earth. It's like an addiction: we convince ourselves that we can't help <insert name of damaging behaviour> and carry on doing it.

Excessive breeding is the key example, unfortunately. If we could overcome this instinctive behaviour (maybe by the power of rational thought), we'd be some way towards solving other problems, including those from obtaining energy, using it and disposing of the consequences. But stopping population growth, even long term, seems impossible, given the monumental arrogance of the primitive savages that seem to comprise most of the planet's human population.

So we NEED large energy sources - NOW. We clearly can't afford to carry on ripping the guts out of large areas of the Earth just so as to burn the result and then contaminate still further large areas with the resultant waste. Nuclear energy is the ONLY practical short-term solution available. The nuclear waste problem CAN be solved and MUST be. Fusion is a possibility but not any time soon, in quantity. Renewables ARE NOT, in practice and anyway cannot possibly provide the teraWatts of power that are needed.

Get over it.

And, by the way, I resent the comparison between nuclear waste and cancer, based on the assertion that 'remission' implies you HAVE cancer. As someone 'in remission', I can tell you that 'remission' is when the oncologists and surgeons CANNOT TELL whether you have (still) have cancer or not OR that you do indeed have cancer but it won't kill you for a while (and maybe they're trying not to worry you with bad news), OR some intermediate position between the two. Definitely not a valid comparison with anything to do with nuclear energy.

Obama to overhaul heinous US patent system

US (and other) patents - too much junk!

Scarce mention in your article about the KEY problems with US and other patent:

-applications with no chance of success placed simply as 'spoilers' to forestall competition. These SHOULD never succeed but while present in the system contribute to the huge backlog and delay grant of legitimate applications.

- supposedly legitimate applications which get granted but ultimately prove defective. Just more money for the (patent) lawyers to fight these cases through the very slow legal process.

- defects in US patent law which should NEVER have been enacted in the first place! EG. allowing patents of bits of human DNA, certain types of application for software (mostly where there is no inventive step and/or the claim is based on what should have been 'self-evident' based on prior art (or common sense!). While this legal situation persists, it's hard to see any serious propsect of the backlog EVER being reduced.

Spanish whispers on Microsoft and Nokia

Don't blame the axe, blame the axeman

I remember when Symbian was the OS that drove the Psion personal organiser box.

And EVEN THEN I considered it 'better than Windows (95)' because it NEVER CRASHED (not during my 4 years using it, anyway).

What feature of Symbian was it that defeated development into an enhanced platform for smart phones? My best guess is the problem was with the developers/ designers. ;=(

Oh well - I suppose David Potter et al did OK out of Symbian, at least.....

Frenchman cuffed for naughty lip-slip email to MEP

Don't be complacent about UK!!

Be careful in your complacency about our wondrous 'freedoms' here in UK!

A LOT of people were apparently Asleep at the Switch when the RIP Act was passed here. It came as no surprise to me when Local Authorities started using it to investigate people cheating on school allocations for their kids!

It's quite easy to envisage a scenario where a draconian piece of anti-Freedom-of-Speech legislation got slipped through (AGAIN without any effective public protest) and then RIPA used in 'fishing expeditions' to find newly-illegal emails or whatever.