Posts by Reg. Blank

Researcher hacks aircraft controls with Android smartphone

It's worse than we thought

Those incompetent fools in civil aviation don't even encrypt voice communications!!1 I mean, _anybody_ could wave an accelerometer equipped mobe around and also use an air band transciever like an icom ic-a24 bought off ebay to impersonate ATC and cause just about any radio equipped aircraft to land away from their desired destination by saying it's closed or the weather's bad. They might as well be directly manipulating the controls... as if by remote control! They even use AM mudulation just like an AM RADIO!!!! and everyone can listen to an AM radio!!! even terrierists.

Climate sceptic? You're probably a 'Birther', don't vaccinate your kids

Re: Another Research Paper Brought to You by the University of the Bleedin' Obvious

To concisely summarise the warmist position, as I see it:

[ Collect climate data (interesting sciencey stuff) ] therefore [ Windmills FTW! (bullshit) ].

What I particularly object to, and am sceptical of, is the bullshit part.

The paper could just as easily say "Anybody who doesn't agree with me smells".

Proud to be a window licking climate sceptic.

Samsung to probe Galaxy S III blaze claim

There doesn't seem to be that many components in that area. Perhaps the (MEMS?) microphone released its white smoke. There are also a few inductors and capacitors near there. I expect either a dodgy microphone or dodgy assembly.

A MEMS mike would be on the power bus with excellent potential for shorting it, unlike an old style condenser mike which has only a whiff of electricity applied

Twitter bird reborn to the sound of whalesong

So, the bird is the word

A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird

B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word

A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word

A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word

A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word

A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word

[etc.]

[repeat to fade]

[Surfin' Bird/The Trashmen/ca. 1963]

Missed the Venus solar flyby? It's only 105 years to the next one

Small thinking.

Oh actually you mean the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun viewed from the planet Earth.

How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to

wind pump

Is there something inherent in the desalination process that produces CO2, or is it just the amount of energy used that the greenies say can only be generated by fossil fuelled power stations?

To me, this would seem to be the ideal thing to power with those unreliable wind turbines, which are otherwise pretty rubbish at supplying the grid. Use wind power to top off reservoirs with desalinated water. Provided the reservoirs have enough capacity for a week or so of no wind this should be fine, and even if there's no wind for two weeks you can use "regular" power as a back up.

The TARDIS through the ages

Sink plungers

I have no problem with the egg whisk controls. They are merely icons of the best possible user interface for the purpose.

The Tardis, like much Gallifreyan technology such as the Doctor's magic wand, has a telepathic interface providing many services including translation and flight control.

The console/control room, like your computer interface, can be designed to appear in any way you like, according to the owner's whims. It doesn't even need to feature a console. The actual Tardis command interface is telepathic. The physical controls are a metaphor, rather than physically connected to anything, where the physical manipulation confirms the intended action of the user. This requirement for physical action is to prevent the mere thought of something happening without actually meaning it. For example, launching all the missiles, or setting the controls for the heart of the sun, could be a bad thing to do if the idea merely crossed your mind.

The physical controls metaphorically control the functionality the user expects/thinks/believes them to, so to an observer the slidy/tweaky/plungy object's apparent functionality can vary over time depending on the user.

The telepathic user interface is designed and "tuned" for Time Lords, which is why only Time Lords can fly a Tardis. That, and the security software.

The brake fluid reservoir of the current design is probably some metaphorical level indicator. Possibly of brake fluid.

Not so fast: Italian boffins say neutrinos not faster than light

Dude/Babe!

Last night I was going to mention the supernova as an event possibly confirming the Newton's Quantum Smarties theory, but thought I had written enough. I certainly had that in mind after the initial report last month.

I have to say I'm not certain about that.

ICARUS are just jealous...

... that OPERA discovered warp drive and not them.

If we're doing untutored scifi explanations for Nobel prizes, try this one I came up with immediately after the original reports.

The neutrinos are indeed not travelling faster than C in space. Most of the time they don't interact with matter since matter is generally sparse. If they intersect ("smash into") a particle of matter you would expect other sensible particles to interact with, perhaps they appear to skip over it instead of smashing into it, using some quantummy Newton's Cradley magic smarties tube probability thing where the original neutrino becomes part of the particle and an equivalent neutrino "pops out the other side" of the field and Heisenberg strangles his cat. If that quantummy field jumping thing can happen at > C, then perhaps that is where Robert becomes your uncle. At other times (sometimes) when they smash into matter, they do whatever it is they do that is detectable.