"Black holes are strange objects that can grow to monstrous sizes."
Surely black holes don't grow in size at all, just mass. It's the event horizon that grows, not the black hole.
86 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Feb 2011
...but didn't we used to live in a free market economy that was driven by competition? Ok, so the banks made a complete farce of the free market thingy by not going bankrupt when they were bankrupt, but surely that was a one-off due to the fact that all bankers are all cunts. Now I frequently see legal challenges to stop people competing. Are BT and Virgin also cunts now?
I'm not sure about this. Space 1999 had one good thing going for it and that was the design of the Eagle transporter. I hope that the designers will take the Enterprise approach to this and update it without actually changing it fundamentally. If they can do this then Space 2099 will probably have one good thing going for it. I agree with Jason 7, the premise was ropey, very ropey indeed.
It's not that complicated Ken. We have a system where you need money to get elected and as soon as you're elected you are effectively a despotism and do exactly what the hell you like as long as you don't upset big business or the Daily Mail too much. You aren't legally bound to do the things you said you were going to do to get elected and you take money from lobbying groups (who by default are also people with money and are therefore allowed to "lobby" which is somehow different to "bribe") who want laws changed and then make the appropriate changes just like you were paid to.
We call it a democracy but better words to describe what we have would be plutocracy or plutarchy.
"Its easy to blame the "ruling classes" isnt it than to admit your parents and grandparents as part of a democratic society have an equal responsibility for the electing of a body that passes or refuses to repeal distasteful legislation."
I'm sorry Gordon but I can't agree with you here. I have actively demonstrated for most of my adult life against unjust laws that this and previous governments have passed or refused to repeal, and I still do. Do I too have to accept responsibility for being part of a democratic society that elected these people even though I never voted for them and did everything in my power short of taking up arms against them to stop just a little bit of their madness? Do you honestly believe that the average man or woman on the street has any say in what laws are passed or repealed?
About 2 years ago, Blizzard made a statement to the effect that under certain circumstances a WoW authenticator could be compromised. The attack that they outlined was identical to this one, not surprising as the hardware is effectively the same. Last year my bank sent me an authenticator (about 2 years after I got the one from Blizzard) and must have been aware of the security issues but failed to mention them (I hope that's the case, the other alternative is that they were unaware which is worse by several factors). Why is it that Blizzard seem to care more about my security than my bank does?
"We have reviewed our operating model in order to make the business more efficient and productive" = Although we know we need you to fulfil our contractual obligations to our customers, fuck them and fuck you! We'll just employ another grunt to manage the complaints and dance all the way to our big fat bonuses.
I have also had the misfortune to work for Capita. I took redundancy as soon as it was offered.
Neutrinos don't really react very well with other matter, that's why they are ably to pass straight through the Earth. You can't bounce them back as you have nothing that will act as a reflector. If your idea was to send another separate neutrino back to CERN each time the detector detected a neutrino then this factors in a lot more uncertainty about timing and would also require another Large Hadron Collider to be built under the Italian Alps.
"The breaches relate to claims made to members of the public on an interactive dating website that he was a serving police officer and that he had committed criminal offences including drug-taking and a sexual offence," said the IPCC.
And this breached their rules as they have been given explicit instructions never to admit anything after committing criminal offences.
As opposed to everyone being, say, a Christian or a Muslim? It's hard for people who don't believe in anything to invent divisions on which to draw battle lines but religions will always manage it. If god didn't exist as a concept (he doesn't exist as anything else) then there would certainly be a lot less for us mortals to argue about so the world would indeed be better.
All Waterstones have to do is cut the crap about eBook pricing. We all know that the production costs of an eBook is a lot less than a printed book (paper, ink and distribution are expensive) so just stop bullshitting us and give us eBooks at a reasonable price. Just because it's out in hardback doesn't mean I'm willing to pay £12 for an eBook. You can't justify that price. I have invested in hardware at a substantial cost so stop ripping me off!
Forget your own eBook reader, just sell eBooks at a reasonable price and you will have the majority of the market share overnight.
Liam, I've already grown tired of this conversation. I don't care that you don't understand my argument, it doesn't matter to me one iota that you think you know what's going on here, subjectivity can be tough to fathom, but I still find the irony mildly amusing. I realise that I should have taken my own advice from my first post. I'll let you have the last word if you wish, all you have to do is type a suitable riposte and hit submit.
"There is one big logical problem with saying mass hysteria caused all those poor people to do bad things and that is all the people who resisted the urge. Was everybody out on the streets looting, or was it just a minority? What did the others do to resist the urge - sit inside a pentacle?"
The people who didn't go out looting didn't have any urge to resist, they were not caught up in the hysteria. Anyone who felt the urge and resisted it was a very strong individual but there are few of them around. Do I really have to explain this? Wouldn't it be easier for all of us if you looked up "hysteria" in a dictionary before posting?
Mob mentality is not the same as any the mentality of any individual within that group. You may believe (I think that you do) that you are immune to this effect and yet here you are on the other side of the coin caught up in a similar (you may say righteous*) mass hysterical outburst.
Did I mention the irony?
*in fact, I'd put money on it that you do.
I find it ironic that all the people decrying Danny5 for stating that mass hysteria is the probable cause are actually now suffering from mass hysteria. It's a bandwagon thing - the looters got caught up in it and did some wrong things, the commentards on this forum are now caught up in it and are frankly talking bollocks.
They all now love the Met and support them wholeheartedly for stopping the riots when in fact they did absolutely fuck all. They've already forgotten that poor chap who was killed by the Met during the G20 protests (and for which nobody has ever been prosecuted). They've already forgotten the suspicions about the Met taking bribes from journalists for information about ongoing cases.
Danny5, you're an idiot! You are a free-thinking idividual who believes that everyone has your capacity for intelligent thought. I hate to be the one to tell you but you're wrong. We are all victims of the Dunning Kruger theory. Don't try to reason with the Daily Mail crowd, hysterical people follow the masses, they lose the ability to think rationally - commentards and looters alike.
Oh the irony!
Flame on to prove me right.
I used to play Elite constantly for 18 months when I was 16 and I've never once attacked a real wireframe spaceship. The only thing it really did for me (apart from keeping me out of the 80's riots as I had more important things to do with my state-imposed unemployment) was give me an appreciation of Mussorgsky.
Is that I can't vote against anything. It's alright getting 100,000 people to agree on an issue but that doesn't account for the 500,000 who may actively oppose the issue. I can hardly start a petition to stop the death penalty as it's not an issue - we don't have one - so where is my representation on this issue?
Another huge problem with this site is that most of the issues that will be raised (apart from the ones from the legalise drugs lobby) are the issues that the Daily Mail tells people to raise (until recently this would have been News International but there you go).
I may however start a petition to have paediatricians flogged in public but that's just because, at a very fundamental level, I'm a bad person.
The reason I won't be updating in the forseeable future is that I too own a PRS-505. Had it almost 3 years now and I reckon it'll be good for another 10. I don't need wifi or a colour screen, I have a computer that is permanently connected to teh interwebs and a handy USB cable, and I read books, not comics. There are some niggling issues like not being able to use it while it's recharging but nothing to warrant spending a couple of hundred quid to fix. Overall I'm very happy I chose this model.
I agree with you entirely Richard, Sony's hardware is excellent.