Posts by The last doughnut

Microsoft braces for Surface RT feedback storm

Take it out in the woods and shoot it. Twice.

Companies House website security 'a bit of a mess'

Sounds like its a lot easier to hack that it is to use.

Harley allows Apple to use 'Lightning' brand on 'playthings'

A bit like the deal between Triumph motorcycles (of Hinckley, Liecs.) and the Triumph ladies undergarment brand. But much slower obvs.

CERN rushes to install new anti-matter hunter

That would be a positron

Galapagos islands bombed with 22 tonnes of Blue Death Cornflakes

I say we nuke them from orbit - its the only way to be sure.

BOSS Bang boffins: DARK ENERGY spreading across the Universe

Re: I'm starting to blame Hollywood!

Its an interesting idea that's not occurred to me before: Universe expanding in all four dimensions. Certainly the idea that the speed of light has somehow changed over the eons, or that the basic electrical properties of free space may have changed has occurred to me.

Let me see - space expanding so it becomes less dense - so permittivity and permeability decrease - so EM waves speed up - or time appears to slow down.

I'm sure Mr Destroy All Monsters is about to flame me.

Sorority girls gone wild: '1 to 3' casual sex 'hookups' every month

I for one would welcome an encounter with one of their females

Supersymmetry takes an arrow to the knee

Re: whack-a-mole

Don't tell me they've made up a whole branch of science just to keep themselves employed?

Google to refund some pre-price drop Nexus 7 buyers

Well its just a bit of a slap in the face - buy shiny new gadget, see price reduction within a couple of months after the initial release. Seems a bit unfair and all credit to them for giving out these refund vouchers, even under limited terms. Still happy enough with mine despite these unfavourable events.

Quarter of Brits don't believe that cell towers improve phone reception

Cellular basestations

These are THE big investment in any mobile telephone network. The more you have, the more subscribers you can cram in and the more money you can make. Given the difficulty in getting permission to build new ones you can understand why EE would never start removing them.

Tomb-raid boffins find golden hoard of the warrior Thracians

Friday pint

I for one would welcome an encounter with one of their females

Obama win may mean NASA 'nauts to Deep Space as soon as 2021

Going to Earth-Moon L2

Makes sense to use this spot for science missions - I'm thinking telescopes and other sensors you want to be permanently shielded from Earth. But why send men there? Unless they are really really fed up with being in contact with Earth. Perhaps they are fed up with American political discourse. Or those annoying phone calls about reclaiming your PPI. Or X-factor.

L1 is much more useful for humans because you remain in sight of Earth.

I, for one, would like to welcome our Android overlord

Re: Proper graphs please!

Horrendous.

Editorial fail.

EXTREMELY RARE never-seen-alive WHALES found (briefly) alive

Re: Oh no, not again!

Yawn

Scientist plans to catch Bigfoot with remote-control blimp

Interesting how the human imagination is so open to the idea of a primitive forest-dwelling cousin.

I for one would welcome an encounter with one of the females.

Windows Phone 8: Exceptional tools, but where are the devs?

Well that all seems simple enough

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

Re: Obligatory Hitch-hiker's ref

Yawn

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

Re: SICK WIERDOS!

I'm surprised they don't chuck half a dozen bacon rashers on top as well. And a pineapple ring.

LARGEST BELCH EVER SEEN devastates gassy GIANT Saturn

Fascinating to hear that the gas eruption was odourless. I would expect something a lot more eggy.

Boeing zaps PCs using CHAMP missile microwave attacks

Dealing with the admin

That's an easy one. Disc-shaped edible foodstuff laced with poisonous substance, plus associated delivery system. I'm sure Boeing could build it for around a beeellion dollars.

Wonder why you live longer than a chimp? Thank your MOTHER IN LAW

Re: Not sure what you mean....

Plus as any fule kno, it is spelled "Worf"

How Bodyform's farting 'CEO' became a viral sensation

Way to go chaps

I for one am very pleased that the words "cool" and "awesome" were not used in the making of this article.

Microsoft: Welcome back to PCs, ARM. Sorry about the 1990s

ARM licensing business model

Back in the early 90's the ARM wasn't the only RISC micro available. What ARM did right was to recognize this and offer their solution with a low licensing cost and quality support, making it better and cheaper and lower risk to go with their licensed design than any other solution.

Astroboffins map GIANT MASS of dark matter

Re: Dark Matter ..

With respect, this is not an observation.

They have taken some images and written some fancy software that generates a new image, that may represent what they think the distribution of dark matter might look like if it fits with what they think it should do.

Mission to Pluto faces DEEP SPACE DEBRIS PERIL

Planetary defence system

That is all

Engineer designs glass slipper on Quora

All we need now is a hard-working 16-year old virgin that weighs 50kg or less .....

New telescope tipped to spot 700,000 galaxies

More detail please, we're technical folk here and can take it

Never mind the size of each dish, what is the size of the array (aperture)? What frequency bands will it look at?

New science: seas will rise due to CO2 ... but not for centuries

Re: Balance?

Well I for one appreciate a bit of scepticism and there is nothing wrong or even unusual in a publication taking a stance on an issue. If you don't like it, you don't have to agree with it or even read it (these are two different things by the way).

And as for balance, there is a balance to be struck between mankinds environmental impact (to be minimized I think even Lewis would agree) and its growth - by this I mean in particular the development of the poor parts of the human world - eliminating hunger, poverty, suffering ...

Re: Balance?

Well I for one appreciate a bit of scepticism and there is nothing wrong or even unusual in a publication taking a stance on an issue. If you don't like it, you don't have to agree with it or even read it (these are two different things by the way).

And as for balance, there is a balance to be struck between mankinds environmental impact (to be minimized I think even Lewis would agree) and its growth - by this I mean in particular the development of the poor parts of the human world - eliminating hunger, poverty, suffering ...

Liquefied-air silos touted as enormo green 'leccy batteries

Re: Better idea, sea level pumped storage.

Ah ok, so as long as the estuary was a marine desert with little marine life and only a few migratory birds to worry about, and the tidal system wasn't entirely stopped but merely attenuated, this would be ok?

Because that's what was proposed for the Severn barrage.

New I-hate-my-neighbour stickers to protect Brits' packages

Optional, sometimes expedient

I like my neighbours and get on well with them. I hate having to make the 40 minute round-trip to my "local" collection office to retrieve the undelivered package.

Still, I would rather they didn't receive my badly-disguised copy of "Busty Housewives IV" for obvious reasons.

Hand-based icon for similarly obvious reasons.

Optional, sometimes expedient

I like my neighbours and get on well with them. I hate having to make the 40 minute round-trip to my "local" collection office to retrieve the undelivered package.

Still, I would rather they didn't receive my badly-disguised copy of "Busty Housewives IV" for obvious reasons.

Hand-based icon for similarly obvious reasons.

Chip strip reveals 'handmade' Apple A6

Re: "Hand layout" ?

The article is referring to the layout of the top-level blocks. Obviously the blocks themselves are done automatically.

Yes it does look like there is some wasted area in the design. All this does really is make the chip more expensive to produce (fewer chips per wafer, you see) hence lower margins. But it lowers risk - if some blocks turn out bigger than planned, you don't have to rip-up and re-do the whole thing to make it all fit. Time is money - lots of it in Apples case.

If they are shipping 5 million in the first week it seems they can afford to re-spin it in a more area-optimized form before very long. Probably already on its way.

Scientists: 'Castration is the key to a longer life'

Bollards

In my old comprehensive school there was a traditional method for extending the life expectancy of the younger boys. It involved several older boys and a concrete bollard.

ENCODE’s ‘junk DNA’ claims spark biological bunfight

Junk

I regularly check my own DNA and can confirm that so far, to the best of my knowledge, it has all been wasted.

Freeview kit to require retune tomorrow

STNG

On PickTV at the moment. Social life has been banished to the neutral zone.

Brummie plod cuffed in Facebook troll hunt

Times are changing

Sites like Facebook are not anonymous - they are based on the precept that your on-line ID is the same as your real-life one. Consequently, you cannot just behave like an obscene child and get away with breaking laws such as libel (or whichever apply), or worse.

The police regularly interact with the likes of Facebook in their day -to-day work in pursuing criminals.

Facebook co-founder Moskovitz scrambles to offload his shares

Re: How low

You have to be somewhat bullish to say the least to buy into stock and shares in these uncertain times. Facebook always looked like an over-hyped company. Its flotation doubly so. Indeed the only ones who will be left hanging their heads in shame is those foolish enough to stump up the cash at the height of the bubble.

When its going down, there is almost no bottom. Residual value is very limited as its actually a pretty small operation. Its chief exec is a loose cannon who can and has spunked no less than a billion on another small company. Sooner or later they will have to dump him, or he'll leave in a huff.

How 'cool' is that?

[/Unlike]

Endangered aphid-stroking ants don wee radio backpacks

So they are livestock farmers?

I knew that leaf-cutter ants cultivated mould on -suprisingly- leaf cuttings and ate the mould. I didn't know they did this! Superb.

Boffins confirm sunspot-weather link

Rhine less likely to freeze

Because of all the power stations located along it. Power stations either use sea water, river water or cooling towers to raise their thermodynamic efficiency. They can and do raise the river water temperature by small amounts.

Because of increased agricultural run-off. More stuff dissolved in the water will lower the freezing point, again by small amounts.

Because of bigger ships using it.

I could go on ...

Red hot chilli peppers floor Bristol shoplifter

I for one ...

mourn the loss to the musical world of a potentially great clarinetist.

Boffins pump hot, vivid fluid into squidgy robostarfish

I want his job.

Beck's open-source challenge to freetards: play it yourself!

Its not recorded music that's in danger, its the music publishing industry.

Like, roll over, Beethoven. Y'know. Yeah.

Chinese man blows off hands, builds new pair

Re: Lemme get this straight.

Given that he was preparing to go dynamite fishing, you can file it under "serves him right".

Having said that, I am in the fortunate position of not having to do anything so dangerous to feed myself or my family.

High tech toilets receive big prizes from Bill Gates

I hate to tell you this but ...

Mine are considerably larger than that

Undead galaxy cluster spews 700 zombie baby stars A YEAR

Just a thought

Suppose this is the actual center of the cosmos?

British radio telescope genius Sir Bernard Lovell dies

Great photo

Great man, RIP.

Aside: Why all the Brit/Yank aggro? Leave it out for once.

Captain Cyborg accepts another degree from puny humans

I used to think he was a bit of a self-publicist

But considered it likely he was just good at getting media attention, raising the profile of the subject and so on and therefore an acceptable annoyance. Then he went further and further, I suppose the media tend to encourage you to do that once they have focused on you as a public image (the Colin Pilinger effect).

Then I found out he got his batchelors at my old university.

Skydiving daredevil Baumgartner leaps from 96,000ft

Huh, the dude can be as much of a daredevil as he likes - he's never going to convince anyone he hasn't got a silly name.

Alcatel Lucent axes 5,000 staff, takes right shoeing from rivals

Mergers

What senior management do when they've run out of ideas. Not surprising when those same senior management got where they are at the expense of every product or project they ever worked on, and to the detriment of all their former colleagues.

Managed decline. Perfect. Call it a transformation to keep the shareholders happy.