Posts by The last doughnut

We're ALL Winston Smith now - and our common enemy is the Big Brother State

Re: Niven has this one covered

@BillG

If this idiotic ditty is what passes for political theory then its no surprise we are all of us in such deep doodo, with clowns and morons like Cameron and Milliband as leaders.

Semiconductor boffin: 3D NAND don't need NO STEENKIN' TSVs

Regular monolithic chips have vias and in reality these are through silicon vias too - they would be pretty useless otherwise.

Only the TSV your article refers to are intended to mean the sort of vias you would need to make a stack-of-chips work. Through Chip Via would have been a more accurate term, but that's not your fault.

Balls to the World Cup: Brazuca wins in the wind

A bladder full of hot air.

TOADOCALYPSE NOW: Madagascar faces down amphibious assault

Deploy the cricket bat

Ballmer SLAM-DUNKS $2 BEEELLLION bid for LA Clippers

Clippers

So can someone explain the name of the team/franchise for us UK citizens?

Are their roots in a barbershop union? Or bus conductors perhaps? More to the point, is Ballmy missing his old chum from Windoze days, good ol' Clippy?

SPB's mountaintop HQ menaced by wolves

Farming vs local mammal species

We have the same problem here but in our case its dairy farmers trying to exterminate badgers.

Save the badger.

Did NASA probe detect a KILLER GAMMA-RAY burst in Andromeda?

Re: The Culture...

They would never be so indiscreet

Disney plans standalone Star Wars movies to go with the main trilogy

Re: Tolkien's in the top 5??

I think it was the hippie generation who rediscovered Tolkien. Boring old fart. Come to think of it, its the same bunch that are now running things. Hence lots of films that are only watchable if you turn your brains to mush before entering the cinema. Yes this is all making sense now.

Klingon and Maori roar into 'mutt's nuts' dictionary

Dothraki

I think you've missed this rather in-vogue language. Any real fans out there willing to translate? Perhaps something along the lines of "teats of the Khalisi"

Scientists capture death star in violent explosion

That is tremendous

Hunt's paperless future: NHS watches £60m vanish down plughole

"integrated digital care"

I think someone needs to pull their finger out

Indian climate boffins: Himalayan glaciers are OK, thanks

The developing world

Of course it is in India's interest to debunk the MMGW hypothesis. They have a lot of coal to burn and a very large number of people to lift out of poverty.

I am a skeptic and a leftie, so, go India!

Stop bullying SUPER FAT GODZILLA, urge movie stars

Apparently Iguana tastes a bit like chicken.

Anyway I think we need to know his BMI. Anyone seen the film and can contribute estimates of height and weight?

Brit chap weaves silver bullet for wireless health scare bollocks

I salute your sir

For inventing this little money-making scheme. Someone will buy it. Lets have a beer and consider some more means of making money out of idiots.

‘Scapegoated’ BBC tech boss calls foul, kicks off unfair sacking tribunal

Seniormanagementzilla

There! I've coined a new phrase for the teenies.

We have it here too.

Sony on the ropes after revising losses UP to $1.3 BEEELLION

Re: Pride goeth before a fall

They used to make nice kit. Nowadays its Sammy who make the nice kit.

Actual spin doctors eye up alien world Beta Pictoris b: Young, hot ... and really fast

Re: Question regarding the Big Bang

"It is really a no-brainer once you think about it."

I see what you did there :-)

Asteroids as powerful as NUCLEAR BOMBS strike Earth TWICE YEARLY

Re: Would this sort of frequency be described as 'random and light'?

No point panicking the populace until we are numerous enough and technologically advanced enough to put up a decent fight.

New FEMTO-MOON sighted BIRTHING from Saturn's RING

Orbital mechanics

Ok so start with a large cloud of matter rotating around a gravitational body such as a planet. After a while it tends to settle into a broad disc under the effects of its mutual gravity. Gradually the disc starts to form rings with distinct gaps between them, with small moonlets orbiting at both edges of each ring (what we see here). Eventually the moonlets gather up all of the ring material. What we are left with is a system of moons around the planet.

The Saturn system just has a lot of stuff that hasn't settled into moons yet.

Seems obvious to me?

Citrix, Google kick XP's still-twitching corpse

Re: Instant classic

Not to mention ways that make sense in the context of at least some anticipation of future business needs.

Internet is a tool of Satan that destroys belief, study claims

Something he probably didn't control for

The rise to dominance of a right-wing media and the decline of reasoned debate.

The... Windows... XPocalypse... is... NIGH

At least its not going to get any slower

BT befriends Google's lonely TV dongle – and saves YouView

YouView isn't bad but unfortunately the box manufacture was farmed out to Lord stingy-arse Alan Michael Sugar so you can guess what the hardware quality is like.

Artists install Monty Python silly walk signs in Norwegian town

That sign is clearly blasphemous.

ECCENTRIC, PINK DWARF dubbed 'Biden' by saucy astronomers

Re: That's awesome, exciting and awesome (yes, I said awesome twice).

It may well be awesome but tremendous it is not.

Inmarsat: Doppler effect helped 'locate' MH370

Re: Gatso

I don't know anything about how the Gatso actually works. But clearly there are other methods of measuring an objects speed other than Doppler. Ping it every 10ms and see how far it has traveled in that time, for example.

Surf's up near Saturn as boffins spot waves on Titan

Re: Hang Five?

Five lost to frostbite. Cheap wetsuit, see.

Don't stare: SHRUNKEN Mercury lost 7km, but only 'cos it's COOLING

Re: Extending the methodology

You should ask your mum. She knows this sort of thing.

Forget superstars, this HYPERGIANT star is 1,300 times the size of OUR SUN

That is tremendous

Should point out that it is only yellow on the surface. Inside all of that hot fog is an extremely hot core. No need to start worrying until it starts to collapse again.

Steve Ballmer: Thanks to me, Microsoft screwed up a decade in phones

Schmuck.

Funny to hear him still underestimating his opponents and attributing their success to "magic."

Samsung and android kicked your ass because you didn't (and still don't) think they would be able to just on their own abilities and initiative.

New radio tech could HALVE mobe operators' bandwidth needs

I think anyone who really knows anything about radio system engineering will tell you this just isn't worth spending any time effort or money on.

Update your iThings NOW: Apple splats scary SSL snooping bug in iOS

That's it for me

I bought into a closed system that's turned out to be insecure because of sloppiness. My 4 will remain on iOS 6 and my next phone will be an android.

Doomed Cassiopeia star was sloshed just before deadly supernova blast

That is a tremendous amount of neutrinos. Thank you for confirming - what I only worked out for myself - about them being spin or angular momentum carriers.

@DAM: Maybe its time to STFU. Then again maybe not.

Ericsson and Kodiak in Europe WALKIE-TALKIE-style push-to-talk push

Nobody mentioned Japan

Where PTT has been popular for years. Text messaging is not so useful for them but a short voice message does perfectly well.

Play.com tech titan snaps up 'VoIP-tastic WhatsApp' firm Viber

Re: Cyprus based?

So at least someone will get to enjoy the photos your mum sent me

Plan 9 moves out from Lucent licence space

Lucent

Bell Labs - A company with a serious history in technological innovation behind it.

Lucent - A company named after what they did with all the investors money.

IT executive at JP Morgan dies in fall from bank's London HQ

There are a great many self-important idiots on these comments pages

Spanish cops tweet handy dope-smuggling advice

Your country doesn't need you

I seem to recall from my yoof - narbis use makes you crap at learning and I suspect not very good at working either. My yoof coincided with the early eighties and my inability to learn soon morphed into an inability to get into any of the few jobs there were for uneducated yoof back then. So I gave it up and got educated.

Anyway the point of all this is, if your country has failed you - no job prospects, having to live with your parents etc - you may as well fail your country, and get high.

Amateurs find the 'HOLY GRAIL' supernova – right on our doorstep

That is tremendous

Mystery 'doughnut' materializes in front of Mars rover: 'OH MY GOD! It wasn't there before!'

Nothing to do with me

No, honestly

Optical filters head to Germany for Solar Orbiter build

Interesting, but

helping in turn to predict the behaviour of solar winds and geomagnetic storms, which will feed into climate models

What? I thought only carbon dioxide emissions could affect the climate.

Intel shutters BRAND NEW chip factory as PC market storm rages

Re: so over it.

We do quite a lot of that here. I'm hoping he's finally going to get the message and retire.

Staffs Police face data protection probe over 'drink drivers named' Twitter campaign

This merely betrays the intellectual prowess of the Staffordshire plod force.

Never mind bungled Universal Credit rollout, Maude wants UK to be 'most digital' gov by 2015

Re: 'announced plans to put Brits' driving records online.'

In your dreams, haggis boy

China ALSO building encryption-cracking quantum computer

Re: Re. magnets

Ferromagnetic materials saturate at around the 2T range. To go stronger you need electromagnetic coils probably superconducting ones.

Bit negative?

Or indeed learn to use the apostrophe.

Why 2014 might just be the year of the Google Chromebook

Re: Dear Google

What makes you think that's your hard-drive?

Low power WON'T bag ARM the server crown. So here's how to upset Intel

Like, er, hello

Why is anybody listening to this dude?

I've seen the future of car radio - and DAB isn't in it

Dead As Betamax

And just another reason never to buy another BMW again.

Antarctic ice shelf melt 'lowest ever recorded, global warming is not eroding it'

I've seen Lewis on the TV

And he looks quite normal. Can I be downvoted now please?