Posts by The Axe

How to build a starship - and why we should start thinking about it now

Re: 2 Things

Its amazing how we are living in such a well developed society with lots of nice high tech to play with. I wonder what created it? Oh, I know MONEY!

As for population pressure, that's decreasing. Malthusians bleat about the world being filled and it'll be the end of the world. Populations are actually decreasing (except for immigration) in developed countries as the pressure to churn out babies lessens due to the cost of raising children and the lack of a need to replace those children who die young.

Google UK coughs up £130m back taxes. Is it enough?

Like relatively unknown international conglomeretes like StemCor aren't highlighted for their tax dodging antics? I wonder why.

Criminal records checks 'unlawful' and 'arbitrary' rules High Court

Proportionate

So judge says "it seems to me, to be some machinery for testing the *proportionality* of the the interference, if the scheme is to be in accordance with the law"

Home office then say "This government remains committed to protecting children and other vulnerable people by providing employers with *proportionate* access to criminal record information in order to support safer recruitment decisions." yet implement a law which has no proporionality in it as it requires all and any crimes to be disclosed no matter what period of time has passed.

'No safe level' booze guidelines? Nonsense, thunder stats profs

Re: What's the point of living?

"What next, running in the corridor is dangerous?"

It is if you are carrying scissors.

The last time Earth was this hot hippos lived in Britain (that’s 130,000 years ago)

Re: Rate of change

Nice to call us deniers. We don't deny the climate is changing. What we disagree about is what is causing it.

Is it changing that fast. We have lots of records for the last 100 years or so, nothing much beyond that. The climate might have changed quickly in the past, the proxy records can't show that.

Are the stakes that high? Humans have filled Earth primarily because they are an adapatble species. We have adapted to the ice and adapted to the desert. We can adapt very quickly to anything the planet throws at us.

What's made climate change political is the Greenies who demand that the planet change to their whims. They're the ones who have had laws created to force people to pay more for their energy - just so that the Greenies' favourite businesses can get subsidies.

YouTube’s 10 years of hits: Global recognition at last for Rick Astley

Haven't seen any of them...

... in 2015. I might have seen one or two in previous years though.

Researcher criticises 'weak' crypto in Internet of Things alarm system

Re: Huh?

Who this "expert"? He doesn't seem to know much about criminals. I suppose he'll probably also say that car alarms need highly skilled IT experts to break and therefore it's unrealistic for cars to be stolen without actually breaking a window as criminals are stupid. It's the "expert" who is stupid. He probably advised the car makers when they were making their insecure car alarms.

This "expert" needs to realise that not all criminals are clueless. Criminals can come from all walks of life.

Getting metal hunks into orbit used to cost a bomb. Then SpaceX's Falcon 9 landed

Re: Bah!

@Esme, the problem with rotational derived gravity is the Coriolis Effect. That causes more problems than the artificial gravity solves.

DEAD MAN'S SOCKS and other delightful gifts from clients

Re: A dozen Easter Eggs.

I hear that Easter Eggs are on sale already in some shops. ;-)

Newspaper kills 'what was fake' column as pointless in internet age

Snopes

There is always snopes.com to find out what's fake and what's not.

'Personalised BBC' can algorithmically pander to your prejudices

Journalist's job

"What a journalist's job is to try and do, is go a tiny bit further than that, and actually try and open people's minds up, and ask, ‘Have you thought of looking at it this way?’ …"

Except if the topic is global warming or anything else to do with green isues. Then you will only get what the BBC thinks is the consensus.

Enraged Brits demand Donald Trump UK ban

Jeez

Some people like to be offended by anything and everything. Trump wants to do something in his own country and has chosen the perfect way to get the message out without having to spend millions of dollars in advertising. Yet people want to stop him from coming to this country, a country where he hasn't called for a Muslim ban or anything like it.

He doesn't hate Muslims, as shown by the fact that he does business deals with them, just that the ISIS issue needs to be sorted out. And yes, ISIS is a Muslim terrorist organisation.

As for Trump saying that our police are scared of Muslims, well the top brass might deny it (but then they're lily livered apologists & useful idiots for Islamists), but the normal policemen & women are saying he's right.

National Crime Agency: Your kid could be a nasty interwebs hacker

Porn

Parents, if your kid is showing signs as listed then he has probably discovered porn, not terrorism.

This is how you count all the trees on Earth

Good work, but why worry about CO2

Why bother with a lower carbon footprint data centre when the time taken meant that so much CO2 was saved by doing the processing in a very short period of time. In any case the amount of CO2 used, even in the original case of 100 days would be so small as to make no difference to global climate. Don't forget that CO2 is a tiny percentage of the atmosphere, and man's CO2 is a small proportion of that tiny percentage.

Don't flip your lid: The Internet of Helmets has arrived

Aerial

Not sure about the aerial sticking up lasting long in a real building environment.

Chinese sat-snaps to help boffins forecast Antarctic sea ice

Ship of Fools

"passengers and crew on a Russian ship had to be rescued by a Chinese helicopter and transported to Hobart by Australia's Aurora Australis."

Should be pointed out that the passengers were "scientists" investigating where all the ice had gone. No wonder they got named as the Ship of Fools for getting trapped in the ice their climate models said didn't exist.

Bacon as deadly as cigarettes and asbestos

Re: Another balancing article from the 'Fail

I call it click-bait not balanced journalism.

Facebook's UK wing paid just £4k in corporation tax last year

Re: Companies don't pay tax

@tombo, its not the tax avoidance that's the problem, it's the tax itself. Lower taxes to be competitive with other countries and biz in other countries won't have the advantage.

Companies don't pay tax

Facebook itself paid tax, but it was only doing on behalf of the shareholders, the employees, and the customers of Facebook. In other words it was people who paid the tax, in lower dividends, lower wages or more expensive product prices.

Companies don't pay tax, people do. All companies do is collect it and act as a tax collector for HMRC. Even employers NI is really a tax that employees pay, it's just that they don't see it but it does affect their salary, making it lower.

So Facebook staff got a nice bonus. Well they pay tax. So Facebook itself paid a low corporation tax and did so by giving the staff a bonus. Tax was not avoided, just redirected and assigned to a different accountancy column.

PS. Corporation tax is on the PROFIT a company makes. If it decides to invest, or give large bonuses, or dividends which lower profit then it will lower the corporation tax. That is all legal, and moral, and ethical. Corp tax is not on turnover.

How long does it take an NHS doctor to turn on a computer?

Doctors are not bright

You might think doctors are intelligent. They are not, what they are good at is learning lots of information about a single thing, the body. They can regurgitate Latin names for every part of the body, but digress from the body and they are clueless. Richard Feynman's famous quote comes to mind, "I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy". Just replace scientist with doctor.

Dot-gay bid fails again: This time because it is too gay

Re: I wonder if ICANN would allow...

The real TLD they should be going for is LGBTQIAGJSUERMZNP* because any person who thinks they are an oppressed minority, and technically every individual is, should be able to join the group.

* Some random letters because that's what LGBT and it follow on letters is, just a label used by those who don't like being labelled.

Smartmobe brain maker Qualcomm teases 64-bit ARM server chip secrets

Mountain

"Qualcomm and its pals have a hell of a mountain to climb"

And also a huge market in which to take even a small amount of and make tons of dosh.

Or they might upset everyone and go the way of Google who were nobody when AOL where massive. Where's AOL now?

Has the UK Uber crackdown begun? TfL opens consultation on private car biz

Society seems to realize that. Over 80,000 have signed a petition asking TfL to back down.

See http://order-order.com/2015/09/30/public-flock-to-back-uber/

Uber's petition is here - https://action.uber.org/tfl/

Dear do-gooders, you can't get rid of child labour just by banning it

Re: Another crucial vector

But look at how hard they have to work to keep the women down.

Gold bugs, concrete bog roll holders and frolic-friendly furniture: What IS it with designers?

I saw you coming

All this stuff reminds me of the Harry & Paul show.

PETA monkey selfie lawsuit threatens wildlife photography, warns snapper at heart of row

Re: Utter Stupidity. Utterly Pissing Me Off.

"Anyway, attempting to calm down and explain rationally what is wrong with PETA's action here, imo, It's essentially a question of authorship."

Nope. It's essentialy an attempt at promotion by PETA and its working. They don't care if they win or lose, the aim is to create publicity. And the more articles are written about it, the more free advertising they are getting.

Uber is killing off iconic black cabs, warns Zac Goldsmith

Taxi drivers are luddites

Proof that they are against progress, just like the Luddites of old.

"Taxi Drivers descended on City Hall today to protest Transport for London’s stance on regulating Uber. It was all going so well untill Boris called them “Luddites”…

A member of City Hall staff was reportedly knocked out in the ensuing melee. The Taxi drivers rather proved Boris’ point…"

http://order-order.com/2015/09/16/taxi-drivers-shut-down-mayors-question-time/

Brown kid with Arab name arrested for bringing home-made clock to school

Re: Hysteria

Also looks like Hollywood has won too if the cops and authorities think a bomb has to look like a movie bomb. Have they not seen a real bomb? No need to answer that, its obvious.

As we all know, snark always comes before a fall. Mea culpa

Re: Is this an admission that some markets shouldn't be free?

You can still have a free market with regulations. The free market bit is that the prices are not controlled. The product can be though. That might lead to some external factors on the price (regulations are a cost) but businesses are free to set the price as they wish and in competition with others.

Jeremy Corbyn wins Labour leadership election

Re: Pyhrric victory

@x7, "we're now just one election away from unilateral nuclear disarmament and the destruction of our conventional armed forces."

No we're not. You're thinking 200,000 votes in a limited election can translate to the whole population in a general election. No way. These are 200,000 emotionally disturbed people and some Tories who sabotaged the Labour election which is not the same as the general population.

Batteries on wheels are about to reshape our cities and lives

Solar on every roof

Even if we had solar panels on every roof (and not every roof faces the right direction for the sun), we would still not be able to power our modern life. We'd be back in the middle ages.

Re: Typical...

Or there is a sudden demand for kettles after Corrie finishes and the mobile batteries having sought out some nice sun and charged up now supply their saved power to the grid. What happens to all the people who want to use these mobile batteries on wheels which now don't have much charge left because they gave it to the grid. Its one or the other, not both.

Well, what d'you know: Raising e-book prices doesn't raise sales

Rent control is substitutable. If there is rent control in one town/area, then people wil go elsewhere to find the property they can rent. Only if rent control was implemented nationally so that there was no choice would the argument fail.

The problem with rent control is that it tends to do the opposite of what those in charge think it does. They think it makes rents lower, when it actually makes the number of houses available for rent smaller. The rent might be low for those lucky enought to get a rental, but more people are unable to rent.

Re: Cars?

Nor is there any correlation between searches using the term MPG and actual car buyers. Those searching might be wanting to check their own car's MPG, or just comparing, or just showing their friends how good their car's MPG is.

Net neutrality: How to spot an arts graduate in a tech debate

Re: Er, but...

What's wrong about letting ISPs charge different amounts for different levels of service? Maybe I should ask for smart phone neutrality. It's not fair that Apple can make crap phones* and charge massive amounts whilst I have to make do with a OK phone.

* Clickbait for Apple fans. IGMC

The good burghers of Palo Alto are entirely insane

Re: Ownership and liability

And to correct IDS (if it was him) further, the price of a house is nothing - until it is put up for sale.

Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell: El Reg on the hydrogen highway

If the wind & solar farms are generating power for making H2, what do the rest of do when we want energy. So renewable energy is only used to make H2 in times of glut - storms for wind, or summer for solar? Fine, but then how do the hydrogen fuel cell powered car travel when there is a dearth of renewable power. Do they use power from the national grid which is mainly fossil fueled?

The problem with renewable power is that there is more to energy than just electricity. Also, even if through some miracle of technology, non-hydrocarbon power supplied 100% of our electricity, we still need to drill & dig up hydrocarbons. Fossil fuels are a major feedstock for many manufacturing & industrial processes.

Enjoy vaping while you still can, warns Public Health England

Re: Let me expand your reference frame a bit..

"vaping is costing an established industry a fortune"

Yep, the state. The government is losing out on the tabacco duty, big style.

Could our fear of fracking be appeased with CO2 sequestration?

Re: Misses the point

Real concerns like climate change? Then we should be using nuclear as much as possible. Oh, it's dangerous too. Well we as a society (and not a shouty minority) should decide if we want plentiful energy to live our modern lives with a tiny risk of something going wrong or if we should favour a bubble-wrapped existence living hand to mouth but knowing that our children & grandchildren will live healthy lives (if they can work out how to get lots of energy to keep the hospitals and pharma industries going).

Re: It is called fracking for a purpose

"Not quite. Fracking breaks the local rock integrity ..."

Not quite. Fracking opens up existing natural fracktures in the shale rock. The propant in the frack fluid help keep the factures open when the water pressure is reduced. The chemicals in the frack fluid help the propant get to where its needed and ensure that the nasty chemicals in the ground don't attack or block the pipework.

YouTube bloggers told to slap 'advert' stickers on their vid posts

Re: Numpties

@Dave126, the situation you describe would not occur. The more people are allowed to learn from their mistakes the more they won't be fooled the next time. By regulating advertising and protecting the consumer too much, the public aren't allowed to learn. So in effect, the smart people look at the regs, find the loopholes (because regulators are stupid too), and take advantage of them - till the regulators catch up and close that particular loophole. But tech & society changes so much and so fast that regulators are always playing a game of catch up.

It might have been the case in the past with very little communication abilities amongst the population for scammers to take advantage of this lack of communication and go from place to place performing their scam each time. But with social media the public can quickly let everyone know about the scam which limits the ability of the scammers to go from place to place. They're left with a single attempt before they get found out and the public ignores them at worst or actively ostricies them. An ignored scam is a failed scam is a loss making scam.

So yes, people will get hoodwinked, but the point is that they then learn to watch out for themselves rather than use the state as a crutch all the time and not think for themselves either. If people get lazy and just assume that the state is regulating then when advertisers (or any other body) fool them, they will assume it's perfectly OK but the regulators are looking after them - aren't they?

It's plain human psychology. Look at it in the context of teaching a child. Do you watch everything they do like a helicopter parent or do you teach them the rules of life and let them learn from their mistakes. Or in the context of training a person up in a skill. Do you allow them to make mistakes and so learn more about the subject or do you get them to perform by rote the skill which doesn't cater for any variation in the environment or allow enhancements to be found.

Numpties

If viewers of a youtube vlogger's output can't tell when they are plugging a product then they deserve to be fleeced as they are stupid. It doesn't need a nannying state organisation to protect them. The org might be able to protect them in this case, but life is full of surprises and scammers and charlatons. Will such stupid people need protect by yet more state organisations. Or should they learn from their mistakes so that they can spot when they are having the wool pulled over their eyes themselves.

Indian Mars probe beams back 3D canyon snaps

Aid?

So UK aid to India has effectively enabled them to get their probe to Mars. Shouldn't we have asked for a little Union flag on the side of the probe, just like the EU insists for all the projects it supports.

Hey, folks. Meet the economics 'genius' behind Jeremy Corbyn

Re: Utility not income

You've obviously not watched the latest TV series presented by Ben Fogle where people make the decision to do more utility and make less money.

Re: interesting on Murphy's education

No he did not get an economics degree. He did accounting of which part of it was economics. He didn't take the economics part. Murphy is an accountant, a small time accountant at that.

If you think being an accountant makes you an economist then feel free to believe Murphy's opinion. I do have a bridge you might like to buy too.

European-style health system

France is a good example of a European-style health system. Managed and run privately but paid for by the state. The state collects your taxes and when you need health care it pays the company that runs the hospital or doctor's surgery.

In effect it extends the current UK system where GPs are privately run and paid by the state to include hospitals too.

It is known fact that the amount of tax everyone pays that goes into the NHS is many times more than that that would be paid if everyone went with BUPA*. And that's taking into account that under a fully private system expensive health care would still be covered.

* Other private health care providers exist.

Re: Not impressed

Corbyn has fire in his belly, but his policies are total fairy stories.

The problem is that the public at large has been fed lies about the depression being all due to evil bankers and so won't understand or want to understand economics theory. Now its true that economics has not been totally sorted out, that's why we have Adam Smith people and Keynes people with polar opposite views as to what is true economics, but just looking back at history and using empirical evidence from countries like Venezuela, Corbyn's economic policies can be seen as a total disaster.

Worstall is an ex-UKIP press officer and someone who controls the world's supply of Scandium.

Re: At least you declared an interest this time

@ Will 28, Its only abusive if Richard Murphy thinks it is. You cannot guess how Murphy sees it, nor do you have any right to assume how Murphy sees it. Now considering that Murphy has the thinest of skins and can't take any criticism at all and such an huge ego it could be true that the Murphy sees the article as abusive. But seeing as he doesn't care one iota about Tim's views of him (look at Murphy's twitter feed to see how much he cares), its unlikely that he takes it as abuse.

Hacking Team mulled stopping Ethiopia sales – because of idiot g-men

Re: "O" dear

One country's laws are another country's illegal activity.