* Posts by Ian Davidson

10 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2007

Inventor promises bottle-o-wind car in a year. Again

Ian Davidson

Blowing Hot & Cold

It's a while since I filled a SCUBA bottle but I'm not sure that the air will heat up if you are charging the car from a precharged, ambient temperature bottle bank (rather than directly from a compressor) ? A further slight cooling all round (Joules Thomson) seems more likely.

In any event - airbank or direct compressor - some reasonably smart engineering should be able to press a heat pump into service, at least in colder weather (you could heat the house?).

Not sure what you do in hot places, say like the Middle East. But then again, maybe they don't really care about stuf that doesn't need oil..

Antarctic base staff in drunken Xmas punch-up

Ian Davidson

@Jim Hunter

Well Jim, I can remember similar 'difficulties' with some of the bears on Ninian Central in the old 'wild west days' – “Right, I’ll see you on the helideck then”

No beer then either, but plenty of NRBs* on the T cards though.

Have a good one with the grape Juice.

*Not Required Back - for normal El Reg folks, that’s the way industrial relations used to be (still are?) conducted offshore. Tribunals? Who needs them?

US surgeon snaps patient's tattooed todger

Ian Davidson

Not so Immune

While I agree that the petrol station ban is not safety based, I vaguely recall seeing an article (New scientist?) where a bunch of hospital equipment was tested for any response to mobile phones - and a third of the instruments promptly had tantrums (no, they weren’t running Vista as far as I know).

On a lighter note, presumably this gent didn't go to a Scottish tattooist I heard about years ago who had a sign in his window - "No Dicks, No Heads, No Dickheads"

Microsoft fires broadside of writs at China pirates

Ian Davidson

Yes but...

I watched a raid a few years ago in southern China - the police looked happy and (maintained face) by carting off boxes of old software, while the dodgy vendors were happy to get the shelf space freed up for the new stuff.

At one point the 'new' van was unloading at the back of the building while the police vans were being - very publicaly - loaded at the front.

It may take more than a couple of writs ....

Microsoft vs European Commission: the verdict

Ian Davidson

Not so Appealing

If I understood a gent on the radio very early this morning, there is one higher court available (ECJ?) but in order to lodge an appeal, MS apparently have to demonstrate that the present judgment contains an 'error in law'.

Securo-prof claims to invent new, much deadlier dirty bomb

Ian Davidson

Two per cent?

Not sure that reported 'Brazil incident' death rate of less than 2% (4 fatalities from 237 folks affected) sounds that horrendous given the numbers I hear associated with conventional IEDs in Iraq?

Presumably there is more to this radiological terror stuff than meets the eye...

Brit IT millionaire dies on Chinese mountain

Ian Davidson

Thin Air

Over the years I've spent a bit of time in Tibet and Northern Sichuan and I was really surprised at how badly the thin - very fit looking - 'lowland' Chinese faired, even at relatively low altitude (Lhasa is at about 3,000m and most places in Tibet are a fair bit higher than that). Apparently, the CITS tourist groups lose a fair few folks – Chinese and Westerners - every year, despite dishing out blue rubber pillows full of oxygen.

And apropos nothing in particular, I was recently told by a Chinese military bloke that Viagra has proven to be a pretty good mitigating measure against altitude sickness – so there’s a plausible cover story if you need it….

Three critical flaws mark July Patch Tuesday

Ian Davidson

Re: rephrasing and large patches

For folks with no choice but to use either limited bandwidth or high bandwidth/metered download capacity, a 100MB 'patch' (or ‘replacement as someone mentioned) download is not at all welcome.

Still, there is no apologist like a Microsoft apologist

Website honours battling Glasgow baggage handler

Ian Davidson

Try someplace easier next time

A salutory lesson to budding bombers then - Scotland is not the ideal place for part-time terrorists, jihadists and other assorted nancy boys.

Incidently, as someone who does explosions for a day job, a big bang is a bit harder to do than you might think and I'm not at all convinced that the car bombs (at least as reported) in London would have gone as planned.

Looks like this was the second eleven here.

China runs out of surnames

Ian Davidson

All in name

Not sure this story is quite right?

I spent a fair bit of time in Chia a few years ago and one of my Chiness pals told me that they had a unique numerical identifier (which also tied them to a specific place if I remember right).

It seems that Chinese folks can change their Western (if they have one) and also Chinese names if they wish.

I also recall that the vast majority of Chinese folks share something like twenty or thirty surnames (there are many more but just not used as much) - certianly I recall sitting in meetings where most of the folks were either called Mr Liu (pronouncdd Leo) or Ms Wang