Posts by The Axe

Which country has 2nd largest social welfare system in the world?

Re: Sorta

Another alternative health care system is that of the French, paid for by government but run privately. Even the WHO says its one of the best systems in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France

ASA raps vloggers over undisclosed ads

ASA still useless

Why do we need the ASA to tell us that vloggers are likely to be paid in promoting products, its a bit obvious that they are. Do the ASA think we are all stupid. Should the ASA make pronouncement purely on the basis that a few odd people are naive.

Google bags huge Times Square ad space for New Year's

Re: hope it has motion blur and judder,

Its LED, not LCD.

European Commission decides it won't have a science advisor after Greenpeace pressure

Re: Greenpeace is neither green, nor peaceful.

In the 70s we were warned about reds under the bed. Now I think we should be warned about reds in our vegtable beds, specifically watermelons.

Greenpeace use "green" as a marketing label, underneath they are promoters of the reds, socialism. And if you thought Labour was left wing, Greens are even further to the left.

BOING, BOING! Philae BOUNCED TWICE on Comet 67P

Re: EU rules

UKIP is against the EU controlling the UK, not against cooperation and trade between EU states.

If only 0.006% care about BLOOD-SOAKED METAL ... why are we spending all this cash?

Re: Would you care enough to pay more for ...

@Frankee Llonnygog, Coal miners switched to using the safety lamp, not because the law changed but because mine owners didn't want to lose their mines after explosions and were persuaded of its safety by Davy.

Laws were brought into to regulate the use of children to sweep chimneys before education laws cut the supply of children to nearly nothing. Education was required because capitalism needs skilled workers to do better more productive work. Only after compulsory education was a law brought into to stop the use of children to clean chimneys.

The abolition of slavery might have stopped plantations from using blacks for labour, but they switched to using labour from other countries like India which was slave labour in all but name. It was capitalism which cut down the use of labour with the use of machinery which was even more efficient than very cheap labour.

So in all the cases you highlight it wasn't laws that stopped the action, but capitalism.

Trickle-down economics works: SpaceShipTwo is a prime example

Re: it's so unlike Tim Worstall to get the wrong end of the issue, isn't it?

I think Tim understand more about economics than you do.

For instance you say rich people can invest their money, taking it out of supply. Have you not thought about where that money is put? Do you think rich people put it under their matresses?

When rich people invest their money they put it into business or into a bank account to name two. In both cases, the money gets reused. When used directly in a business, it's used to grow it, and in a bank to fund loans to other businesses who want to grow too. And as a business grows, it spends more on employee's wages and services/goods from other companies.

Re: Not Trickle-down economics...

You don't understand economics. It doesn't involve just money and cash, it also covers society, humanity, technology, and loads of other things. Economics is a study of how humans live, work, and play.

Re: A far better example

@ DrXym

That's your opinion, Branson thinks he knows better than you. And considering that he actually has paid people to look into this, he's probably more right than you (unless you're a secret rocket inventor).

The point is that the free market allows lots of different methods of space travel to be tried out. Some might work, some might fail, but over time the best will win. The other way of doing it, via big government and lots of planning or one person's view of what is the most viable way, has no guarantee that it is the best way, it's just one way - but until other ways have been tried no one will know.

Yes, Samaritans, the law does apply to you. Even if you mean well

DPA applies to processing of your tweets

No inconsistency exists. Tweets are public and can be viewed by the public, processing of the information in a tweet involves personal data. It is the processing of the tweet to determine the mental state of the tweeter that is against the DPA, not that the tweet can be viewed publicly.

Samaritans 'suicide Twitter-sniffer' BACKFIRES over privacy concerns

Re: Rather a sad story

Nope, no one would have said "hang on". The problem is all charities are populated by do gooders who think that they should do something, anything, even when the thing is counter productive.

ICO to fine UNBIDDEN MARKETEERS who cause 'ANXIETY'

Greenpeace

A sign that the ICO has balls would be if they went for Greenpeace and fined them. Greenpeace's standard operating procedure is to create anxiety with every single one of their marketing campaigns.

Game of Thrones man stars in sci-fi bit on comet-catcher Rosetta

What a waste of money

Nice film, but 15% of the film is set aside for the list of crew. So many people on the crew just screams out to me that loads of money has been thrown at this project for little return. Other production companies can produce better for less. But because the EU is involved, money is no object. In fact money IS the object in that as much as possible has been plowed into the film.

‘For the love of Pete, America, learn about decent chocolate’

Liberal?

Cal is not liberal in any definition of the word. Fascist more like as they impose each politician's favourite moral view in a new law every year.

Weekend reads: Russell Brand's Revolution and Joy Division's Ian Curtis gets lyrical

Crap

Mark Diston's review is just about the only review of Revolution that has any hint of positive about it. Every other review of it, even from fellow lefties, is totally negative about it. At least Mark says that the book is woolly and confused.

I would say that the book is total crap and not even worth using as toilet paper.

It's Big, it's Blue... it's simply FABLESS! IBM's chip-free future

Re: So why Starbucks?

Starbucks the brand is global, but the actual shops are usually local business, franchises.

This isn't a sci-fi movie: It's a human-made probe snapping a comet selfie

Re: one day...

Except that it won't be live but delayed by about half an hour.

Radiohead(ache): BBC wants dead duck tech in sexy new mobes

The state is the failure

DAB is a sign that state imposed technology is a failure. The BBC is effectively the state and it is trying to impose a technology on the public. Because the state is huge and cumbersome, it cannot react to advances in technology quickly enough and carries on lumbering through the process. The free market is a lot more agile and flexible and has already solved the problem of bad signal reception by going for the IP route. It didn't require any intelligence or planning or thought for this to happen, it just happens. Yes, the free market can be inefficient and there are many other solutions to digital radio that didn't work and fell by the wayside. But with them, only their investors lost out. With the attempt at a state imposed solution, everyone loses out.

Supercomputer water-cooling comes to solar power

Still inefficient

"IBM Research says the system can concentrate the Sun's energy 2,000 times, and turn 80 per cent of that into electricity."

Doesn't change the fact that overall photovoltaics are only about 30% efficient. They are cheating and making up numbers to fool people into thinking that they've suddenly found the solution to the problem with solar power.

X-Men boffins demo nanomagnets to replace transistors

Core memory

So all they've done is use the concept of core memory from the 60s and shrink it down?

iPAD-FONDLING fanboi sparks SECURITY ALERT at Sydney airport

Re: i hate this man

I don't. He made a simple mistake. Security theatre is what I hate. A total airport lock down and re-checking every passenger because one person showed up the security for being stupid highlights the stupid security officials and the waste of space in their brains.

Proper security would mean such things wouldn't happen in the first place. Proper security would mean identifying the person and getting just him to go through security. Proper security would mean ensuring there aren't queues of people queuing for checking but ripe for bombing. Proper security would mean checking those people who are security risks. Proper security means staying ahead of the potential terrorists not one step behind adding new checks after the terrorist has tried something.

Google grand fromage Eric Schmidt: Backing climate denier lobby a 'mistake'

Re: Irrelevant

@strum, so why are the IPCC reports so wrong with their guestimates of what the global temperature should be. They might have done a lot of work, but their results aren't that good.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/23/its-time-to-stop-the-climate-scare-stories/

Re: Irrelevant

We live on a planet with a complex and robust ecosystem. The planet changed many times over the millennia from hot periods to cold periods and back. Man wasn't involved in those periods and yet the planet survived and flourished.

The problem is the complexity, and the models from all the climate scientists keep failing to cover the complexity. They seem to think its simple and that CO2 has warmed the earth and that a very tiny change in CO2 will lead to positive feedbacks leading to a boiling hot temperature. Bit of exaggeration there but you get the point. They don't take into account any negative feedbacks that might exist and that might stop temperatures from running out of control. The fact that the global temperature has flat lined for over 17 years shows that they haven't taken that into account in their models. Even if they come up with the excuse that the heat has disappeared into the oceans it highlights that they were wrong in the past. So all those bad news stories about the sky is falling based on those original theories are bunkum and the current ones aren't going to be much better.

So what do we do? Do we mitigate like the greenies want us to do and throw away all the progress over the last few hundred years and get rid of all forms of efficient energy and go back to the dark ages or do we adapt just like humanity has adapted to live in climates from 0C to 50C? Looking at how much western nations are spending on mitigation and nothing much is happening to the global climate because China and India and other countries keep on using coal and churning out CO2 it seems that greenies are in the wrong.

I believe that climate change is happening, I deny that it's all due to man, and I want us to carry on using our sources of energy to progress to a better more efficient world where we spend money on the actual problems not perceived ones based on a crap precautionary principle. A change in climate will produce some good as well as some bad. Greenies think its all bad, but it just means everything changes, some positive some negative.

Emma Watson urges UN to back feminism – trolls threaten to leak her 'nude selfies'

No ugly feminists

So why do women flaunt their beauty to get good acting jobs or use their feminine charms to get promotion, yet when men react to such actions they claim that men are misogynists.

Also, why do most feminists seem to be ugly? Is it because they are upset that they can't use their beauty or feminine charms and so are actually fighting against their fellow female than attacking men.

Read The Gods of War for every tired cliche you never wanted to see in a sci fi book

Thank you

Thank you for reading the book so that we don't have to.

IT jargon is absolutely REAMED with sexual double-entendres

Firmware

Then there are the terms hardware/firmware/software. My wife still giggles when I say I'm writing firmware. Even after 12 years.

Is there life on Mars? Cloud-gazing Curiosity accused of lacking scientific focus

Re: Climate change

Sarcasm, not irony.

Climate change

Curiosity is not looking for anthropogenic climate change so therefore is not a proper science mission. Just going there and looking for stuff and making up theories from the stuff that is found is not proper science. To do proper science you have to come up with a theory first, model it and then adjust the data from real measurements to match your models.

IT blokes: would you say that lewd comment to a man? Then don't say it to a woman

Re: What about a man in a female dominated environment

Yep, it is usually more nuanced than I put in my first comment.

What about a man in a female dominated environment

I've known a few women who worked in a primarily female dominated environment and the tales they told me of the innuendo they threw at the odd male would shock many. In any environment what ever group dominates will always pick on the weak or odd one out. If it's male dominated IT, women will be picked on. In a female dominated production line in textiles, the male will be picked on. In manual workforce with low education requirements, the brainy one will be picked on. In an environment full of scientists, the low paid techs will be picked on. Not nice in any environment, but if you think that you can get rid of it easily you don't know human psychology.

This is how I set about making a fortune with my own startup

Re: Trying to save the UK, whilst the world carries on regardless

Try this link instead - http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/8/25/kelly-on-the-engineering-challenge.html

Trying to save the UK, whilst the world carries on regardless

Good luck with trying to save the world. Read this presentation and think again about the point of your project.

http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/ECMA.Aberdeen.actual.pdf

Top Gun display for your CAR: Heads-up fighter pilot tech

Re: HUD better, gestures bad, starting calls or using social media bad.

#1. No you don't need two hands on the steering wheel all the time to drive. It depends on the situation. A lot of the time you can use one hand unless the road is windy or there is a lot of traffic - in which case don't gesture. The driver can make intelligent decisions.

#2 Better ban passengers too then as they can cause a distraction to drive with their incessant back seat driving instructions. Better ban radios and music systems as they can distract the driver. Why not just ban everything that could be a distraction - how you're going to police it I don't know because an ban that is unenforceable is a joke.

#3 Not a problem if it doesn't work in bright sunlight, it's an aid not something that is required to drive like a speedometer. That issue is only a problem with Navdy if people don't buy it because it doesn't work in the sun.

Ad regulator pulls down Branson-backed magic undies

ASA still useless

So wow, the ASA actually reads some scientific studies. Don't know why they ignore it for many other cases such as e-cigs.

Even if the magic undies are useless why should the ASA try and effectively become our parents and look after us and protect all of us just because a few people believe in silly things. The views of those in the ASA are a bit silly. Why aren't they banning ads for pro-biotic yoghurt and useless cosmetics but ban ads that show cars going a bit fast.

The best way of getting rid of such stuff is to allow the public to make their personal mistakes and find out that such products are a pile of shite and not buy them ever again. To have the ads hidden means that the few that get past the censor have the cachet of being seemingly validated. It doesn't matter that they are pulled after being shown, the lie has been gone around the world before the truth has a chance to catch up.

#ScrapTheASA

Intel forced to shoot down viral 'Israeli boycott' whopper

Left wing tactics - Ends justify the means

Sounds very similar to the case where a greenie environmental protester issued a fake PR in OZ.

Usual left wing tactics where the ends justify the means, even if the means mean committing criminal acts like fraud. And it is still fraud even if the "protester" didn't benefit directly themselves.

Surprise! Government mega-infrastructure project cocked up

Re: UK still leads the way in ripping off the taxpayer

The UK is densely populated but we mainly live in towns & cities. Over 90% of the UK is rural, park, or undeveloped.

Google's Pankhurst doodle doo-doo shows the perils of using Google to find stuff out

Re: Sources

"I can see the bureaucrat writing it down wrong..."

Yep, transcription errors can occur, but they don't typically get it wrong by one day. A 7 could look like a 1 in bad handwriting, but a 4 or 5 are very different.

"and I can see the parents lying in order to comply with a time-limit dictat."

If that was the case, then her real birthday was over 6 weeks prior.

Pankhurst herself was there at her own birth but the one person who has the least knowledge of the event. If her parents had said that she was born on the 14th then why has she not said that. Instead Pankhurst says it should have been Bastille day, not because the 15th was wrong but because the 14th is more right for her cause.

Read the proposed US ASTEROIDS Act to green-light mining IN SPAAAACE

Law doesn't enable, it recognises ownership

Blame a badly written article. There is no law stopping anyone from mining asteroids at the moment. And this new law doesn't enable people to mine asteroids. What it does do is recognise the legality of the ownership of the mined materials when they are brought to earth. Without the law material could be taken from the miners and there wouldn't be any law that said it was theft as no country would have recognised the ownership.

'iPhone 6' survives FRENZIED STABBING. Truly, it is the JESUS Phone

Tim Worstal

So Tim, and by extension El Reg, was right over a year ago about Apple using sapphire for their screens.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/02/gorilla_glass_ipads/

Manhattan drone pair cuffed for NYPD chopper near miss

Range dependent on radio quality

The range of a quadcopter is dependent on its radio signals. If FPV is used, then distance is a lot shorter than without as the video return signal needs better quality than just the control signals. Building also affect radio reception. So a boosted signal with high quality aerials in the open will have a better range than a standard radio in an urban heavily built up area.

BBC offers briefest of teasers for the next Doctor Who

Troool

Upvoted for fanstasic trolling

British Gas Twitter account hijacked by mystery phishermen

Does "Joe" know how twitter works? Users can't delete tweets they've received, only the sender can delete tweets. Does he mean block? In which case the customer won't get any further help from BG.

Supermodel Lily Cole: 'I got a little bit upset by that Register article'

Re: Never...

"Her" Art Matters series? So she produced it, directed it, scripted it. No, she is the pretty face fronting it. She might like art which is good for a presenter to be interested in the subject they present (like Attenborough), but she hasn't scripted it, or directed it, or produced it - so it's not her.

Greenpeace rejoices after getting huge renewable powerplant cancelled

Re: And who will not be happy

Look up the meaning of the word "fascist" in a dictionary - "a person who is dictatorial"

Re: And who will not be happy

They didn't change their policies when the facts changed, the facts have always been constant. What caused them to change their policies is the realisation that they were causing problems. So they quickly buried the fact that they were for it.

Re: And who will not be happy

FoE are worse that Greenpeace, if that's possible. They are both fascist organisations that want to control how we get our energy and think they know best about how to run the world.

Look at bio-diesel. They were all for it initially. Now that it's been shown to be a pile of poo, they are against it.

Everything GP and FoE touch is eventually seen to be a lie.

Look at the debacle with the oil rigs in the North Sea where GP campaigned to not have them sunk but rather dismantled at shore. Turns out that GP lied and that it would not have been a problem to sink the oil rig. In fact it would have created a nice reef for the fishes.

Re: Lower CO2 emissions maybe

Methane is a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny amount of the atmosphere. 0.00017%. CO2 is a bit more but still less than 1% at 0.039%.

So the hippies are up in arms about tiny little things. No wonder they are against drilling for gas. The fractures created are tiny micrometer sized cracks. But I don't see the hippies protesting outside coal mines clamouring for the huge multi-meter sized holes to be closed down.

Fuel for jets DOES grow on trees

And how many percent of the actual land usage would that cover? Millons of acres set aside for producing bio-fuel - yep that went well in the US and elsewhere. Not!

Be the next tech hotshot – by staying the hell away from regulators

Incredible Edible Todmorden

As someone who lives in the place (I know someone has to), I can state that Incredible Edible is not all it's cracked up to be. It is not a great advert for people getting up and doing their thing without permission. Its an abuse of tax payers' money. It gets grants, freebies, and loads of help from the council using tax payers' money. Its message of getting the town to feed it self is laughable - a couple of small patches of land do not feed a town of over 10,000.

Our Reg reader 'mutt's nuts' dictionary is le chien's biens

Persian

In persian dog bollocks is "toock-me saq" (or something sounding like that). However it's not a term used for praise as its one of the most offensive swear words possible - dogs not being seen as clean animals in the Muslim country.