Posts by tath

Perfect sex minx calculated from 'deep' probe of X-rated flicks

Re: ::yawns::

"As a dude who has been in charge of finding workplace (and .edu) bandwidth wasters"

Oooh, literally a traffic warden, your job sounds amazing.

Earth-like planets abound in red dwarf systems

Re: Entropy: Big Problem!

You seem confused.

If something is red, that means it doesn't absorb red light, that's why it's red - it's reflecting those frequencies back at you and therefore not making use of them.

It absorbs the other frequencies, precisely the ones you don't think it does in fact, blues, greens etc, and uses them to drive its energy cycle because they ARE the ones available a few feet down.

Big Brother is prosecuting you: More cops to use court vid chats

Sure those numbers are right?

75,000 cases and 300 man hours saved? That's 14 seconds saved per case. Good work.

Not to mention the money that this presumably cost, saving what... £4000?

Apple supremo Tim Cook's pay packet slashed 99% in 2012

Re: @NumptyScrub re.

Credit creation, very basically!

You may "have" money in the bank, but unless you actually go to the bank, withdraw it and stuff it under your mattress, the bank will be doing other things with a proportion of it (keeping some as reserve for the proportion of people who withdraw some or all of their money).

Say you put £100 in the bank... They will lend out a proportion of it, call it 90%, so someone else now has £90, but you still have your £100 'in the bank'. The 2nd person spends their £90, the shop puts it in the bank and the bank then lends out £81 of it, and you get a series:

£100 + 0.9*100 + 0.9^2*100 + 0.9^3*100 ........... = £1000.

So £100 is now £1000, hinging around everybody not realising this, especially not at the same time, and definitely not if they find out the £100 they put in the bank went to a high risk and there's a chance they won't get it back, cue Northern Rock run.

tl;dr - it's all lies.

A year on the run: El Reg tracks 2012’s techno-fugitives

Just in case anyone hasn't heard it...

McAfee arrested?

I bet his trial lasts 30 days.

Facebook stock plunge halts - despite insiders being freed to sell

Re: Alternatively

You are of course quite correct, investors in dotcom business have historically been extremely savvy, never once overvaluing utter bollocks with no revenue stream.

HTC profits lobbed off a cliff by rivals Samsung and Apple

I've got a One X and have had since launch pretty much. Although there isn't much in it, I'd say it's better than my friends' SIIIs. Specs wise it's pretty much the same (gives away a bit here, gains a bit there). It doesn't feel as cheap as the Samsung though. Overall it's a good flagship phone and an improvement on the constant stupid name assembly line they had going last year.

HTCs problem isn't with the quality of the phones, they just don't have the 'coolness' that Samsung have bought through massive advertising and in fines to Apple (how better to tell everyone about a phones features than to constantly rant about them in the news and courts :facepalm:).

Astroboffins to search for mega-massive alien power plants

Re: Larry Niven had it right...

The tensile strength would be utterly insane at any speed that would keep an atmosphere in I imagine...

centripetal accel = v^2/r if memory serves, and earth orbital radius is 150 x10^9, so to get 10m/s^2 at that distance you'd need a v of root 150 x10^10, about 1224744m/s, or half the target gravity would only need root 75 x10^10, still a rather weighty number. Any less and the weather would be inclement and brief I would imagine.

So there probably isn't a velocity that would keep air in without coming apart, regardless of r and any material we could invent. I could have a go at working out more but it's friday night (see icon)

I've not read the Bigger Than Worlds essay but will have a look, thanks!

Larry Niven had it right...

Sphere has many problems, a ring is a much likelier proposition, not least because it's significantly smaller and spun would have gravity (and a lot of tensile stress admittedly). Not full of Kzinti for preference.

Alleged 'Xbox 720' dev box eBay'd for $20,100

Going to court?

Perhaps they decided it was cheaper and quicker just buying it back for $20k!

Dell Inspiron 17R SE 17in Ivy Bridge notebook review

The worrying thing is if this is the 'Special' edition, does the normal one have a 720 panel? At 17.3" the pixels will be about the size of scrabble tiles.

Door creaks and girl farts: computing in the real world

Re: insist on the Source Code?

The fact that Autodesk is worth around the same as a service that makes your pictures go yellow makes me wonder when the fuck someone replaced reality with this bizarre construct I seem to inhabit now.

Google denies Redmond report of a spamming Android botnet

You've got to laugh

Microsoft researchers say an OS may be insecure and leave you vulnerable to botnet shenanigans.

My irony meter just exploded.

CERN catches a glimpse of Higgs-like boson

goddamn...

What's especially irritating is it was an editor that decided "the goddamn particle" (originally called such as it was 'goddamn difficult to find') was too risque and edited the "damn" out, thereby ensuring far worse offence, connotations and arguing would immediately ensue.

'Inexperienced' RBS tech operative's blunder led to banking meltdown

Breaking news...

I'm sure this latest development is shortly to be "exclusively revealed" by the Guardian's investigative team, like yesterday's revelations were, several hours after I'd read them on here.

Sky flaunts F1 app with split-screen functions

You don't need Sky Sports...

...just the HD pack which is a little bit more bearable at a tenner a month for F1 in high definition (yes I know before someone points it out).

Ebuyer knocked out by own £1 deals site

Not convinced there was a sale...

Since I'm at home with manflu and nothing better to do I managed to get on a few times over last few hours and order some stuff, although F5 no longer has any paint on.

I got a mobo, a monitor, and a few other £100+ items each time for a quid. Paid for them all separately, did all the verified by visa stuff and got confirmation emails.

Since then, I've had a series of emails saying each item is out of stock, meaning I have a grand total of fuck all for my two hours of refreshing. Did anyone actually get anything apart from a crushing feeling of how empty one's own life is?

Motorola Razr Android smartphone

To do what now?

If you mean "precise tolerances" as a few microns, then yes maybe. But for stuff in the same range as injection moulded plastic, then no. It's just a bit of posh GRP using aramid instead of glass - they're not laying up a monocoque! Mould + cloth + resin + cheap labour = kevlar (ish)

And according to Motorola's site, it's made with "KEVLAR® fibre" so I'm guessing it is 'real'.

Ten... Blu-ray disc players

Presumably why Sony has been forced to offer a stonking good player at about £30 less than a PS3...

Old Napster guy’s fan letter to Spotify upstart

Don't be obtuse, you take the free option and suffer adverts, how is this different/worse to Spotify?

Some people pay to get rid of the adverts and get extra features on Spotify AND Grooveshark, with the added bonus of supporting a model for the industry that may actually work, and some people don't... Just because you're one of the ones that don't, there's no need to boast.

You don't work for grooveshark do you?

Essex police charge BlackBerry user over inciting violent disorder

the kids...

I must live in a very strange place, because I keep hearing how well the iphone is doing but I'd estimate that easily more than half my student chums have Blackberries (i'm a semi-mature student). They are all over the place; sat in lectures and there's just rows of them on the desks, while iphones are rare, to say the least. The kids do love the BBs apparently.

Everybody's BBMing each other all the time, "It's only a fiver a month!" they cry, "You can send short messages comprised of text on this service!!",

Imagine that!

It's like the 90s again except worse, because this time you can only send these messages to other Blackberries.

Murdoch muscles BBC out of Formula One driving seat

Re "I doubt if any of the Murdochs were even personally involved"

Exactly!

It would have been the guy that runs Sky that dealt with all of this, what's his name again? James something iirc

Ten... in-ear headphones

Cheap Sennheisers...

If you buy cheap Sennheisers off the internet there's a hefty chance they're fakes... For those that have been disappointed.

I can't see many people being interested in several hundred quid in ears tbh, I would've been more interesed in what you could get for less than £50. In ears are verging on disposable the way I get through pairs.

Philips BDP7600 Blu-ray player with Net TV

PS3

I'd be quite interested in BD player reviews to know how they stack up against just using my PS3 (which now costs the same as this)? Is there much benefit to be had from a standalone player?

News of the World TO CLOSE

"our commitment to journalism and a free press"

How does he manage to say these things? Really? Has he no shame at all, even if he is a Murdoch?

Anyway, the cynic in me would say that this is a desperate measure to stop the BSkyB deal unfolding, by dumping a publication that has no chance of being profitable for the foreseeable future.

But I am deeply cynical.

Cameron backs public inquiry into NotW hacking claims

Only the Guardian?

Most remiss of me not to mention Private Eye! However, they're not a newspaper so I'll use that as a fairly bombproof excuse.

El Reg of course have not shied from reporting it either, as have several other sources, but of the as-was Fleet St papers, most have treated it like a scab. They acknowledge its presence but refuse to pick at it in case it turns into a bloody mess that gets on them too.

unfortunately

this is probably true although you could have made your point a bit better.

Only the Guardian has been vocal over the past few months in its attacking of these methods, a lot of other papers have been eerily quiet...

Formula 1

Murdoch = Devil Incarnate

This won't happen hopefully, one of the conditions of the Concorde Agreement is that it must be free to air in major regions, purely because the team money comes in large from sponsorship and if you slash the audience then the sponsors will bail.

I refuse to give Murdoch money.

Peugeot 508 Active e-HDI micro-hybrid

Coasting in neutral, bad idea...

You obviously don't know how modern engine control units work then. The injectors don't open when the throttle isn't pressed and the revs are above idle, it's only the fact the engine is connected to a moving car that keeps the engine turning.

When you dip the clutch as soon as the revs reach about 1000rpm it has to start fuelling the engine again to stop it stalling, so you're actually using more fuel if you coast.

Re the oiling, the big ends and mains need about a bar to float safely, it isn't just about having oil in the right place, it needs to be at pressure.

Yahoo! downs! mail! servers! for! essential! and extensive! work!

Experiencing problems?

Yes, they deleted all my emails a few days ago, dating back to the account's creation in 1998. I was not a happy camper when I logged in to find an empty inbox.