* Posts by Steven Roper

1832 publicly visible posts • joined 10 May 2011

Harry Potter director takes on Doctor Who movie

Steven Roper

Have you seen Arnie lately?

It ain't the 1980s anymore mate, unfortunately. All those steroids have kinda taken a toll over the intervening years...

Tempus fugit and all that, you know.

IKEA cuts ribbon on 'I've Got A Screw Loose Street'

Steven Roper

You're forgetting cultural idoms

Does the Spanish word "tornillo" meaning "screw" carry the same idiomatic sexual double-entendre that it does in English? As in "to screw" meaning to have sex with, or does "tornillo" merely refer to a spirally-threaded fastening device in Spanish idiom?

Automatic translation of languages often fails because of this effect of cultural idioms and double-entendres that may exist in one language but not another.

'Do Not Track' standard edges towards daylight

Steven Roper

Wrongo

You come onto my website, which I am paying to run, and paying for you to read, then you abide by my website's rules. Which means that if I choose to use Javascript and my site won't work without it - well, there's plenty of other sites for you to visit if you don't like it, you don't need to see mine.

By way of analogy, how would you feel if I came to your house and started telling you how your furniture should be arranged and how your home entertainment system should be set up? You'd rightly tell me to fuck off in no short order.

That said, I do tend to make my sites fail over as gracefully as possible when a user with cookies and javascript disabled visits them, but there is some functionality that simply requires either or both enabled, and can't work without it. And I refuse on principle to lower my sites' functionality to suit the lowest common denominator in these matters.

Lego movie greenlighted by Warner Bros

Steven Roper

So when it comes out

there'll be millions of people paying good money to sit through a two-hour Lego advert. Huxley was right. Maybe they'd like some soma to go with that...

Google flings Bing into search engine bin

Steven Roper

Fair enough

Portal pages like iGoogle aren't for everybody. But I'm curious to know: what do you do if you want to know the weather forecast, the time in New York, or how many $US the pound is worth today?

Steven Roper

The reason I still use Google

is because of the iGoogle web page gadgets. My iGoogle home page has, on three tabs: a dictionary/thesaurus, currency converter, metric <-> imperial converter, world sunlight map, ISS/Hubble position map, torrent search, weather gadget, street map gadget centred on my home, Wikipedia search, world time clocks for 9 cities, several webcams in my home city so I can see what the conditions are like in town before going there, and a number of news gadgets (why don't you have an iGoogle gadget El Reg?)

Unless Bing or Yahoo can provide that kind of customisable functionality, I'm not even remotely interested. I shouldn't need to go scouting around the web to find out the weather, time, currency, unit conversions and other stuff that I can find out from a convenient gadget on my home page.

Facebook ad helps Scot cops seize fake goods, drugs

Steven Roper

Not what I meant

"plenty, but if they were procured illegally then they are fair game. who cares where the info comes from."

Agreed on that point, but that wasn't the point I was making. How many *innocent* people had assets confiscated and themselves stigmatised because of vindictive ex-spouses etc filing false reports was my main point.

Did the police actually check the provenance of complaints and obtain other evidence that the gains were ill-gotten before kicking in doors and walking out with someone's stuff? Given the way the UK seems to work these days, somehow I doubt it.

Steven Roper
Facepalm

And I wonder

how many of the confiscated assets belonged to the victims of vindictive ex-spouses, rivals and spiteful enemies...

Boozed-up ball-biting mum spared jail

Steven Roper

You're not missing any facts

It's called feminism* and its all about all women being innocent of any wrongdoing and thus getting away with murder, with all men being criminals for being born with a penis and thus lose their jobs for merely looking at a woman the wrong way. Been pretty much the legal and social standard for about the last 3 decades, actually.

(*Note: feminism != female)

Mozilla promises more speed with Firefox 9 beta

Steven Roper

The only reason

Chrome has overtaken Firefox is because of Google's malware-like tactics of embedding it in every goddamned free application installer. Miss those vital checkboxes, which are ticked by default, and BAM - your new default browser is Chrome. If Mozilla sank to the same level, no doubt Firefox would overtake it again. However, the Mozilla guys have more honesty and integrity than that.

I've lost count of the number of times I've had to scrape Chrome out of friends', relatives' and customers' computers because they installed something without looking out for that sneaky Chrome hijack first.

Results in on why life, the universe and everything exists

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Solipsism FTW!

While I would love to agree with you on principle if nothing else, I hold that if I were the only thing in actual existence, then my control over my existence would be absolute. Which means I wouldn't be working a day job, in fact I wouldn't even get out of bed, because everything would just be done for me as and when I wished by a harem of hot virgins.

Since, however, that is not the case, and I have to do some things and will be punished if I do others, I have to accept that something, regardless of what form it takes as opposed to my perception of it, exists outside of myself and beyond my control. That something, I call "the Universe".

TL;DR If nothing exists outside yourself why can't you control what you experience?

Mexican drug runners torture and decapitate blogger

Steven Roper

There's just one small problem...

Legalising drugs, and even prostitution, won't cause these criminals to simply evaporate into thin air. They'll simply diversify into other areas - protection racketeering, numbers, fraud, embezzlement, extortion, loan sharking, slavery, gun-running - the list is endless.

While I support legalisation of marijuana for general purchase, and other drugs available on prescription, it isn't a solution to rid the world of the crime cartels. The only way to do that is to understand and then rectify the social conditions that enable and empower them. But that would mean reducing poverty and wealth redistribution, so it isn't going to happen.

HP earns Greenpeace eco-purity snog

Steven Roper
WTF?

HP? Top of the green list? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Are we talking about the same company here, HP as in Hewlett-Packard, the company that ships single memory sticks in 5 concentric washing machine boxes with half a ton of shredded newspaper and polystyrene beans and enough copper staples to run a 220 kV line from London to Glasgow? And they're now on top of Greenpeace's treehugger list?

I somehow find that difficult to believe... even creationism seems a more likely proposition than this!

Are we in the middle of a patent bubble?

Steven Roper

Well then, Tom 38,

don't. Take your eleventy billion dollars and invest it on the stock exchange. Meanwhile, somebody else with money and a bit more vision beyond the ability to see only as far as his own hip pocket will invest in inventing cold fusion instead.

And in a century's time, whose name will be getting taught to kids in history class as the man who freed civilisation from the shackles of the fossil fuel industry? As opposed to Tom 38 who would have merely replaced one hydraulic despotism with another?

Martian simnauts emerge from spaceship outside Moscow

Steven Roper

Given America's woeful status

I'd wager that the first person on Mars will be Chinese. Or possibly Indian.

America had their chance back in the 70s and they blew it.

German website offers custom cow killing

Steven Roper
Trollface

For every animal you don't eat

I'm going to eat THREE.

Manufacturers testing wider cars for swingbellies

Steven Roper

No,

they'll just take up two fucking parking spaces by parking across them at an angle like the fat bastard in the Volvo at my local shopping centre the other day.

I seriously wanted to do this to the arsewipe: http://xkcd.com/562/

Ginormous sunspot spews solar guts towards Earth

Steven Roper

How he saw the sun at night

Maybe he lives in Iceland or Svalbard? You know, one of those places they call "the land of the midnight sun?"

Belkin Chef Stand and Stylus for tablets

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

And precisely how

did you manage to get whisked egg white over every exposed surface in your kitchen? Getting some in your pie would have been a good idea. Were you whisking it with a Dremel or something?

NASA: Martians likely lived underground

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

You're forgetting...

...that the question of another attack from Mars causes universal concern. Is our planet safe, or is this time of peace merely a reprieve? It may be that across the immensity of space, they have learned their lessons, and even now await their opportunity. Perhaps the future belongs not to us, but to the Martians.

It's lookin' good, it's goin' good, right?

600,000 hacks a day, welcome to Facebook

Steven Roper

Porn sites are no more a source of malware than any other site

The last time I detected a malware infection from a porn site was back in 2002. Porn sites, contrary to the propaganda spewed out by feminists and sex-haters, don't distribute malware any more than any other site. It's the same thing as the copyright lobby claiming pirated movies and music give you malware - it's bullshit designed to discourage people from accessing it.

Miley Cyrus cracker: 'I'm too short for the slammer!'

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Agree with you there mate

I was actually feeling sorry for the little turd right up until I read that bit about him posting that comment on Facebook - at which point any sympathy I might have felt went straight down the gurgler. He's begging not to go to prison while openly admitting he's planning to offend again? My next thought was chuck the little shit inside and toss the fucking key!

Credit card companies plan to sell your purchase data to advertisers

Steven Roper
Mushroom

They don't need to

link the card number to your browser. Every time you buy something with your Mastercard or Visa, the transaction is recorded by them regardless of where you use the card. You know, the data presented to you on your credit card statement each month?

This is the data - your card's purchase history - that these fuckers are planning to sell.

I've already sent an email to Mastercard advising them that my purchase history is my personal data and therefore my intellectual property. I've explained that I am willing to sell them this data for use in their advertising campaigns in exchange for a permanent waiver of any and all interest and credit card fees. Unauthorised use of my data will result in an infringement case being brought against Mastercard in my local court. I have yet to receive a reply, but rest assured, I will not sit still for this.

Urban legend nips iiNet 'subliminal' campaign

Steven Roper

I have to disagree this time, Richard

That law is one of the very few in this country that actually makes sense. While the idea of influencing people by 1-frame "subliminal" messages specifically has been discredited, the principle behind the law is valid, given the mind-controlling sociopathic mentality of the advertising industry. As you point out, the key point is outlawing "attempts to convey information to the viewer by transmitting messages below or near the threshold of normal awareness".

In other words, the advertising industry is not allowed to use ANY form of consciousness-bypassing techniques to try to make the viewer want something they normally might not want. Considering that the raison d'etre of the advertising industry is to get inside our heads and psychologically manipulate us into buying useless tat, this law is based on sound principles.

Cryptoboffin: Secure boot a boon for spooks' spyware

Steven Roper
Facepalm

Oh, no, not the old "nobody is forcing you" bullshit again

Read my text: YES. THEY. ARE.

When the time comes, Microsoft will simply use its market power, as it has done many times before, to force mobo makers to ship their boards with UEFI or face losing their supplier/OEM discounts. No manufacturer will risk cutting themselves out of that market for the sake of being able to sell untainted boards to a few techy geeks.

As to nobody forcing us to use an iSlab - Apple themselves are doing that, by suing every competitor off the market on every stupid round-corner patent they can abuse. I live in Australia. Because of Apple, my only choice if I want a new tablet is an iPad, because they've gotten Samsung's offering banned here, and they're busy trying to stop other tablets too.

So enough with the "nobody's forcing you" crap already. Most people are aware by now that there are ways of forcing things on to people without resorting to machine guns and rocket launchers.

Anonymous shuts down hidden child abuse hub

Steven Roper
Mushroom

"taking these arseholes down by any means"

So the end justifies the means where protecting children is concerned, eh, Mr. Stirling? Legal process be damned? Doesn't matter if innocent people's lives are ruined so long as they get the filthy bastards? Oh, won't somebody PLEEEEEZE think of the children? Fuck you. Hopefully you'll get your own chance, as you so richly deserve, to be falsely accused and meet the "challenge" of "proving you 'didn't do it' to a raging mob" - a raging mob, Mr. Stirling, of pitchfork-wielding dicks like yourself.

And yes, I'd stand toe-to-toe and say that to your face if we met.

Reg hacks confront really wide Oz load terror

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Here in Adelaide

which is known for having more murders per capita than any other Western city, Coober Pedy is known as the "pop 'n' drop" place.

You see, Coober Pedy is riddled with literally thousands of abandoned opal-mining shafts, most of them a mile deep or more. Nobody ever goes down them -they're way too dangerous, unshored, and in imminent danger of collapse. Which makes them the perfect place to "drop" an inconvenient corpse where it will never be found, after you've "popped" a cap in his arse...

Google dumps + from Boolean search tool

Steven Roper

Yes, I like my minus sign

Search: " web dev information I'm looking for" -buy -purchase -order -join -members -subscribe -vote -experts-exchange...

Yep, the only way to actually find any useful information and avoid all the sharks and scammers trying to sell you shit flooding the first five pages of results with their SEO fuckery.

Last mystery of first recorded supernova laid to rest

Steven Roper
Headmaster

What were they doing beforehand?

They were being very hot and very dense, but not being thermonuclear, since all thermonuclear activity has ceased in a white dwarf. The heat and light from a white dwarf comes entirely from the tremendous pressure its gravity exerts on the degenerate matter that comprises it. Remember, compression produces heat - in the case of a white dwarf, enough heat to make it glow for hundreds of billions of years.

Thermonuclear reactions in a white dwarf can only occur when fresh, non-degenerate matter falls onto its surface (as from a main-sequence / red-giant companion star) and is compressed by the white dwarf's gravity to the point where thermonuclear reactions can begin. When the amount of material reaches a sufficient amount that the thermonuclear activity can finally break free of the white dwarf's intense gravity, it does so - in a single brilliant burst, known as a Type 1a supernova.

BTW, regarding the plural query in the article - the correct plural of supernova is in fact "supernovae", not "supernovas".

Crap alchemist jailed for poo-into-gold experiment

Steven Roper

Re: Mythbusters and polishing turds

Mythbusters may have debunked the "can't" part of the old saying regarding polishing turds, but the original metaphor of the saying still stands. Because a turd, no matter how much it is polished, is still a turd...

Steven Roper

@ Just Thinking

"Intent" only works for the favourites of the ruling class, as in Phorm and BT were not prosecuted for flagrant violations of the DPA because they had "no criminal intent". However, such protections do not apply to us mere plebeians. It's called "democracy", don't you know, which I think once had something to do with the Greek words for "people" and "rule" but the meaning seems to have changed over time.

4chan founder bashes Facebook, Google+ on identity

Steven Roper
Mushroom

No-one is forced?

Yes, you bloody are being forced to use their service, if not now then you soon will. I read an article on here a few weeks ago (can't be arsed looking for it now) where they were discussing requiring people to use Facebook logins to access certain online government sites and services. Then there's the Spotify fracas just recently. I've noticed increasing numbers of sites and blogs where, in order to comment, you have to login with Facebook. If you want to participate in the Internet on any meaningful level, it's becoming more and more vital to have that all-encompassing Facebook account. And this shit will just spread and spread.

So to those idiots saying "nobody is forcing you to use Facebook" - YES THEY FUCKING ARE. And ignorant fools like you with your heads up your arses are letting it fucking happen.

As US sinks, Apple sees a glorious future in China

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Tariff on foreign labour same as imported goods

That's a really bloody good idea. If you ever want to run for office, you have my vote!

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

To the person who downvoted this AC

I think your sarcasm meter is broken, mate.

Steven Roper
Pirate

Unfortunately for Apple

China's views on "intellectual property" do not mirror those of the West. The moment Apple tries to hit Huawei or some other Chinese conglomerate with one of its ridiculous black-rectangle lawsuits over there, I'll be looking forward to watching the mighty communist machine skin and gut the fuckers. Popcorn please!

Libel reform vows to slay anonymous trolls

Steven Roper

You missed a point

"Q. Is there anything that I have to prove in a libel or slander action?

A. In both libel and slander cases, you need to prove that: ...etc"

You also need to prove that the allegedly defamatory statements are false or misleading. Publishing true and factual information about someone, no matter how unpleasant, is not defamation. It could potentially be a breach of privacy, however, if the information is of a personal or private nature. But for defamation, slander or libel, the published statements must be shown to be untrue.

Did a Seagate sales bloke just say 5TB drives are coming?

Steven Roper
Go

That's how I read that sentence as well

"That's too much data, too loose, at once."

I pictured all these tiny sparkling bits, a la Tron's "Bit" but much smaller, all scampering away beeping and bouncing from a newly opened hard drive. Maybe if they hadn't been so loose, if they'd perhaps tightened the bit restraints a little more, then you wouldn't have had so many of them escape!

Astronomy crowd spots PLANET KILLER!

Steven Roper

It's probably

only around the size of your average bus, hardly enough to do more than flatten a few suburbs at best, since all the bigger stuff has pretty much been found and tracked by now!

If anything's going to take out the Earth in the near future, it'll be a comet kicked in from the Kuitper disc by Jupiter, there's not much left that's closer that we don't already know about. - Aside from Geographos and Apophis, none of it poses a threat, and even they are long shots to actually hit us.

Dennis Ritchie: The C man who booted Unix

Steven Roper

Thus passes one of the true gods of computing

Along with the likes of Alan Turing and William Shockley, Dennis Ritchie was one of the founding fathers of modern computing, and I was saddened to learn of his passing. Without his genius and insight, we would not have home and office computing today. He will be sorely missed by the IT community. Condolences to his family, may the great man rest in peace.

Billion dollar telescope snaps galactic head-on

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

@Annihilator

We ARE moving away from the earth, just at our scale and point in time the universal expansion is so small as to be unmeasurable.

But if the Big Rip theory holds true (and I hope it does, because the idea of the entire universe tearing itself apart before our very eyes is one that holds a lot of appeal for me) this expansion WILL become noticeable at our scale about 50-80 billion years from now.

The Big Rip theory states that as universal expansion accelerates the Hubble radius (the distance from an observer at which the universal expansion rate reaches the speed of light) must become smaller over time.

Eventually, other galaxies will be moving away from us (technically) faster than light and will therefore no longer exist in our frame of reference - or we in theirs. In the last few years, even other stars will be moving away too fast for us to observe, then the other planets and the sun, and finally, in the last few seconds, the moon.

At the very final moment of life, your feet would be accelerating away from your head faster than light, and each of us will be in our own private universe for a fraction of a second, before the atoms, subatomic particles and even the quarks and strings that compose them are also ripped apart by the accelerating expansion.

I'd love to live to see that happen!

Steven Roper

@ Fuzz Re: differing weather

You obviously have never been to Australia then. Here in Adelaide, it can be sunny and clear on the plains while it's pissing with rain in the hills just 5 kilometres away - much less 10 miles (16 km). In fact, it's not unusual to see "rain walls" here - as in, it's pissing down at my house but my neighbour's house is bone dry.

I'm not saying the same conditions prevail at the Atacama but here at least, 10 miles is more than enough distance to be experiencing completely different weather!

Win 8 haters are just scared of change, say MS bosses

Steven Roper
FAIL

Re: Use of force

No, Gav, they don't come around your house with guns. What they do is they force all OEMs to stop selling PCs with their old stuff, on pain of losing their supplier discounts. So for those of us who wanted to remain on, say, Windows XP, there came a time when you could no longer buy a new computer with Windows XP.

So yes, we did have a choice. Continue working on old, failing hardware (that was deliberately designed to fail so as to FORCE people to buy new stuff after a few years), bite the bullet and allow ourselves to be FORCED to downgrade to Windows 7, or give up on computers entirely and go join the Aboriginals in the outback. Which, considering the way computing seems to be going, is starting to seem like an ever more inviting idea.

So no, Gav, they don't use guns to force us to change because they don't need them. They just use their market control and politics instead.

Biker gang plunders Covent Garden Apple Store

Steven Roper

Aren't you

supposed to be camping out the front of an Apple store or something?

Boffins fear killer gamma death blasts from space

Steven Roper
Go

Why FTL?

You don't need to have FTL to get an Ark type ship into space, just the ability to create and maintain a self-sustaining ecosystem. We could build huge "generational" ships, perhaps like long cylinders rotating on their axes to produce artificial gravity, on which people live out their lives and pass the baton to their children over the thousands of years it takes to get anywhere. Arthur C. Clarke described such ships in his novel "Songs of Distant Earth", a brilliant story about how people in these ships and their colony worlds remember Earth only as a distant legend from thousands of years in their past.

You could also have "seed" ships, such as those described in Brian Aldiss' "Helliconia" trilogy or James Blish's Pantropy stories, in which ships crewed by robots and carrying modified human DNA adapted for life on new worlds travel outward, automatically raising new people from the seed DNA once the ship nears its destination.

Finally, there is the NLS (Near-Light-Speed) ship, such as the Ship of the Law in Greg Bear's "Forge of God / Anvil of Stars" diptych, which accelerates to speeds approaching light, causing time dilation for the crew. Thus, a journey that in Earth time takes hundreds of years, passes in a few short years for those on board the ship.

I actually worked out that if you accelerated at 1 G (0-100 km/h in 2.8 s) continuously, you'd approach light-speed after just over 11 months. So for a trip of any distance, a journey on such a ship would, to its crew, appear to take around 2 years - 1 year to get up to NLS, a few seconds to cross whatever distance (by time dilation - at 0.999999 c, centuries would pass in seconds for the crew), and a year to decelerate.

The downsides of this last method are a) the consequences of hitting a grain of space dust at such speeds - an explosion in the megaton range comes to mind there - and b) the stupendous amount of energy required to sustain such acceleration; for a ship the size of the ISS, the entire output of the Sun for a few weeks might do the trick.

But both of the first two methods are realistically within our reach, likely within the next century or so, and no FTL needed.

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Dont forget

the Gamma Ray Tax and GRB Credits that our governments need to bring in, in order to fund efforts to Do Something(tm) about this looming anthropogenic disaster!

Stallman: Jobs exerted 'malign influence' on computing

Steven Roper
Coffee/keyboard

Maladjusted neckbeards with the social skills of a camel

I just spat my curry over my keyboard and monitor as I read that line, thanks for that. I'll be putting that line aside for later use in conversation, if you don't mind!

Steven Roper
FAIL

Re: Gun to Head

No, but Apple are holding a gun to my head to try force me to buy an iPhone. What I want is a Galaxy Tab but I can't get one because Apple have paid off some judge to have it banned from sale in Australia. So those bastards are most certainly holding a metaphoric gun to people's heads by systematically exterminating the competition. Which is why Apple products and software do not come onto my property.

Genetics and technology make Columbus Day a fraud

Steven Roper

Outside Context Problem

It wasn't the Spaniards' technology or guns that defeated the Mesoamerican civilisations. Consider that the Spaniards had logistical problems (they had to ferry supply trains across the Atlantic, and the fact that the Mesoamerican people knew the terrain and had the home-ground advantage. Their Jaguar and Eagle warriors with their maquahuitl swords and effective bows and arrows were more than a match for the slow-loading Spanish musketeers and cannoneers.

Motecuzoma II, the Reverend Speaker or king of the Mexica people (who we today call the Aztecs) was an expansionist tyrant who had gone to war with a neighbouring nation, the Texcalteca, at the time the Spaniards arrived. At first, the Mesoamericans thought the Spaniards were the returning god Quetzalcoatl, but their behaviour quickly disabused them of that notion, and Mexica soldiers posed a serious problem to the newly arrived Spaniards.

However, the Texcalteca were losing the war against Motecuzoma (who the Spaniards called "Montezuma") and the Mexica, and so they agreed to aid the Spaniards against their enemies. It was their assistance and inside information that made it possible for Cortes to cross inland and see the Mexica capital, Tenochtitlan, for himself. He admitted, at the time, that the power and culture of these people was too great to overcome. But there was one factor that he - and the Mexica - failed to foresee.

What really won the war for the Spaniards, and ultimately the English, was the first-world diseases they brought over - notably smallpox, great pox, bubonic plague, measles, gonorrhea and syphilis - to which the Native Americans had no immunity. Some estimates show that as many as 80% of Mesoamerican deaths in the first century of Spanish colonisation were the result of these diseases, much more so than guns and horses. The survivors were too disfigured and demoralised to fight back, and the rest is history.

Had we not brought those diseases to America, or had they been immune, history would likely have turned out very differently. While the northern tribes were largely nomadic, the Mesoamerican people were an advanced city-building civilisation technologically on par with Europe at the time. They gave us many inventions we take for granted - indoor plumbing, the flush toilet, hydroponics, the list goes on. They lacked only the wheel, rideable animals and gunpowder. Not having the wheel makes them sound more primitive than they were; but the terrain they lived in was not conducive to roads or wheeled transport anyway, as the Spaniards found to their great cost. It was only with the greatest difficulty, expense, and lots of slave labour that the colonists were able to build trafficable roads through the region over the next few centuries.

So it's interesting to think what might have been if the Mesoamericans had not succumbed to disease - if they had driven the Spaniards back into the sea. Today's America would be a very different place, and seeing what uses the Mesoamericans would have put European technology to, as China and Japan did, would have made it a more interesting, and perhaps less generic, place.

Oz broadband speeds leap 917% in TWO WEEKS!

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Pando's a good bloke

and loved his kid for all that he was a murderous crime boss. Watch the movie "Two Hands" and all will be explained - and you'll never look at the name "Pando" in the same light again!

Laptop shoots spike into owner's hand

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: CD spinning

Assuming a 52x read speed, and with the normal speed of a CD at 300 rpm, let's do some calculations here:

52 x 300rpm = 15,600rpm

120mm (diameter) * pi = 376.991 mm circumference (we'll say 377 for simplicity)

377 mm * 15,600 rpm = 5,881,200 mm/min

5,881,200 * 60 = 357,872,000 mm/hr

= 357.872 km/h or ~ 220 mph for our American friends.

So the outer edge of a CD spinning at 52x read speed is travelling at pretty much 360 km/h, about the speed of a paintball pellet. And I know those things sting like hell if they hit bare flesh, and they're simply gelatin capsules. A sharp shard of hard plastic travelling at 360 km/h is going to go through flesh without too much difficulty, as is any tray rail or loose component it catches on its way out.

Ouch!