Posts by Chris

UFO damages Lincolnshire wind turbine

RE AAARGH

I'm with Ian Ferguson on this one. Too many people equate "UFO" with "flying saucer/alien spacecraft" when it is far from it.

A UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object. Since they don't know what it was (i.e. it was Unidentified) and it clearly had to be Flying to damage a turbine blade up in the air, and it must have been some sort of corporeal Object to do any damage at all, it was definitely, 100%, a UFO. No question. Now, let's set about identifying it. At which point it would become an IFO.

LG trumpets 3G wristphone

It's about time

Finally we get something Dick Tracy had 50+ years ago, but that picture looked more like a Casio wrist calculator from the 80's.

The next question is can I get one without the MP3 playback through a crappy speaker, and probably without the videophone capability since no one is going to stare at their wrist while talking. I guess I'd be wiling to accept Bluetooth, but I really just want a phone that makes phone calls I can hear, without dropping out.

Orwellian Apple ad celebrates 25th birthday

Re: Math vs Maths

I could just as easily (and more logically) ask: Why do Brits say "maths" instead of "math"? It isn't mathSematics, but mathematics. Why omit the e, m, a, t, i, and c, but then put on an unnecessary 's'? We also refer to Economics as econ, rather than econs. (Physics is short enough already).

Abbreviating it to math is 20% more efficient, and mathematicians are all about efficiency.

Orchestral Star Wars spectacle to debut in London

only Jar-Jar?

Hopefully, *most* of Episodes I-III will be left on the cutting room floor. Take the whole flipping "saga" and condense it to 2 hours - about right for the amount of actual plot...

ITU plots third dimension

RE: 3D-ready TVs

"The volumetric "voxels" based approach is coming along quite well, though its applications in TV are a little limited- people sat to the left of the screen would see a different image to people on the right of the screen."

Surely that's the point? I want a holo tank like in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. One where I can pause the game and walk around back and really see a "reverse angle replay".

For scripted programs think "Theater in the Round" in the middle of your living room. Just imagine the advantages! No worrys about having enough wall space unbroken by doors or windows. Without a "preferred" orientation, the room can be just as suited to conversation as watching "the box".

Oz men's mag recovers inflatable jubs

@Stevie

Yes! Could this be the start of a trend? Let's see those online "news" and "entertainment" sites try to match the feat. Maybe paper media aren't dead after all.

Entire class fails IT exam by submitting in Word format

File formats?

When I was a lad, not only were official theses and dissertations required to be submitted in hard copy, on acid-free paper, but with very specific margin requirements as well. If a single page had a map, chart, or diagram that exceeded the margin, the entire paper was rejected. On the other hand, if you cut it down to fit the margin, it would be accepted, even if the "edit" rendered it into complete nonsense. I.e. they didn't give a flying fsck about the content, as long as it fit into their mold. I would expect no different from any accredited educational institution, on either side of the pond.

It doesn't matter what their teacher told them. They are responsible for knowing the requirements and following them.

Hands-free kits make drivers even more dangerous

texting while driving

...is apparently becoming an even bigger problem, especially among teenagers, who aren't very skilled behind the wheel in the first place.

When I first read that Virginia was considering passing a law banning it, I thought "Surely no one would be stupid enough to text while driving in the first place." But I was wrong. The whole point of text messages (and email) is that it doesn't have to be in real-time. You can send me a message when you want, and I can read it and answer it at my leisure.

IAEA calls for mutated supercrops to feed world's hungry

not GM?

"The IAEA nuke boffins are keen to emphasise that their 'induced mutation' plans are not the same as genetically modified (GM) crops."

That's right. They apparently think that randomly changing an unknown number of thousands or millions of characteristics just to "see what happens" is going to be a much more efficient method of improving crops than intentionally varying one at a time, which they have a pretty good idea what it does, under tightly controlled conditions. And I can design a better computer circuit by randomly soldering a bunch of tranistors together! Or better yet, let's just dump a bucketful of them into a pail of molten solder a million times and see if one assembles itself into a computer.

Bzzz. Fail.

Zoo's polar bear breeding plan scuppered by girl-on-girl

baculae

Polar bears, like most non-human mammals, have a penis bone (baculum). Surely that would show up on an X-ray?

BBC relives The Day of The Triffids

Oh, you poor things.

At least you don't have to put up with remakes of Knight Rider and The Bionic Woman; not to mention Keanu Reeves in The Day the Earth Stood Still (although that will probably make it across the pond one day.)

My suggestion - use recycled cancelled TV license fee checks (or cheques) from the 70's to pay for recycled cancelled TV shows from the 70's.

It might be fun to see a remake of "The Prisoner" though. Perhaps they could come up with a more believable "Rover" than a giant inflated condom now.

Jamming convicts' mobiles works

why is this even necessary?

Surely convicts are not allowed to have "cell" phones in the first place? Yes, they might be able to smuggle in a small one in a bodily orifice, but how long will the battery last? I'm guessing a charger would be a little bit harder to conceal, and electrical outlets are fixed in position and probably well monitored as well (or they would be in any prison *I* owned).

Keeping every prisoner inside a Faraday cage should achieve the same effect, and that could double as a prison cell also. How many of those can you build for $150k?

Judge says tech-addled jurors undermine justice

juries

In the US, lawyers work very hard at eliminating anyone who can think for himself from a jury.

Then there is the jury pool makeup in the first place. I once heard it described as having your fate decided by 12 people who weren't smart enough to figure out how to get out of jury duty. Remember, half the population is below average in intelligence. But so are most criminals (the ones who get caught, anyway).

Over here our Constitution guarantees the RIGHT to a jury trial, but you can always waive that right and be tried by a judge alone. Hopefully, he or she will be smarter than average.

The "CSI Effect" does seem to be real, and causing some problems. Jurors want to know why there is no DNA evidence presented in a purse snatching, for example. We all laugh at how the various forensics shows seem to use infinite resolution cameras, since they can blow up and enhance grainy surveillance camera images until the logo on a suspect's watch is clearly visible, but lay people actually believe that stuff, and they think it can all be resolved in a hour.

DARPA: Self-repairing, learning kill-robot tech is go

SRS?

Good thing it isn't Auto-Regenerating Self-Effectuating (ARSE) or we can kiss our puny meat ones goodbye.

Over-feeding phishers struggle to make ends meet

@Iain

Not only are people still taken in by such a ruse, some of them actually seek it out. Almost every week, there are a few morons who see this story:

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2003/09/nigerian_millions.html and write to the author asking how to contact Mr. Ayele, even though the article clearly states "This article is a work of satire. Please do not send your sad stories."

Paris, because even she has more of a clue than that.

Royal Society of Chemistry defines perfect Yorkshire pud

yanks

I was in my 30's before I discovered that the delicious thingies my mother called Popovers were really known as Yorkshire pudding. My one and only attempt at making them fell totally flat (literally).

(Flames for a hot oven, my probable downfall.)

Texas cop tasers himself

RE: Fail

I've got the FAIL part (that's pretty obvious), but where in the heck did the "snap" thing come from? What's up wi'dat?

Retro piracy - Should the Royal Navy kick arse?

Not a new problem

The area around Dubai was once known as the Pirate Coast, because the residents engaged in pretty much the same activities against ships traversing the the Straits of Hormuz. Then, for the next 100 years or so, it became known as the Trucial Coast. Why? Because Queen Victoria et al got fed up with that behavior and sent the Royal Navy round to get them to sign a Truce (at gun point). Problem solved.

Of course that was back in the days when Britannia Ruled the Waves. Nobody wants to have an Empire any more. :-(

Universities reject Stasi role

assigned seating

It's that simple to report on missed lectures. You don't need to take attendence of those who are present. Just note the empty seats. Once the little sh*ts learn not attending can get them deported, there will be very little reporting to do.

Lord knows I tried to get them to come to class back when I was teaching. I made attendence and homework part of their grade in the futile hope that they might learn through sheer repetition. The lazy w@nkers still didn't do it even though all they had to do was copy the answers from the back of the book. They could have failed every test and still passed the course if they came to class and did their homework. I still had over 25% fail. And this was a remedial class covering material they were supposed to have learned in high school before they even got to college!

If they come over on a student visa and don't go to classes, that's fraud, and they ought to be sent back to East Bumfuckistan to try and scratch a living out of the rocky soil.

Mine's the one with the lecture notes on the back of a cocktail napkin in the pocket...

Visa trials PIN payment card to fight online fraud

RE: one time cards

I have an AT&T Universal Mastercard, issued by Citibank, that has had a "Virtual card number" for years. It generates a new cc number for each transaction, which expires the following month (to give the merchant time to process the purchase).

It also includes an "auto-fill" feature that pastes your shipping info the order form, but it is IE only so I'm not sure how well it works. I've been trying to get them to support Firefox for years. There is also a security hole in that the application is not tied to your user account - i.e. it loads no matter who logs onto the computer. I have filed complaints about that too, but nothing has come of it yet.

BBC's TV detector vans to remain a state secret

Wow

Thank goodness we here in the US have something called Freedom of the Press, which applies to the airwaves as well. I would not want the gov't controlling such a major source of information as TV programming. We already have enough ignoramouses who believe what they hear on Fox News.

If the gov't here tried to institute such a thing you would see pirate TV stations popping up on every corner.

BBC clarifies location of England

@Tony

This isn't about fuel prices or mileage. It's about geography. A three hour drive is a three hour drive, whether in an SUV getting 15 mpg, a hybrid getting 50+ or something that runs on compressed air. If railroads here were an option, it would still probably be a 2+ hour train ride.

Our country is much more spread out than Europe (including the UK). You all have been living there longer, and most of that time you didn't have anything that went faster than a horse. So mosy things are a day's ride apart.

P.S. How do you know your fuel prices haven't been kept artificially high all this time? Gasoline in the Gulf countries is even cheaper than the US. An imperial gallon of very high octane full service leaded gas in the UAE costs less than a gallon of water.

Err, no.

RE:Re: Elmer Phud:

"...New York (state) is bigger than Blighty" - Sorry Elmer but not everything this side of the pond is as big or great as 'merkins like to think!! NY State is a mere 1/5th the size of Blighty.

OK, first which one is Blighty? That one was not on Chris Hamilton's list. Is it the whole UK, or just Great Britain, or only England, or something else entirely?

In any case, the area of NY State is approximately 50,000 square miles (between 47,654 and 54,475 depending on the source you listen to). The entire UK, on the other hand, is less than 100,000 square miles, according to http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_total_area_of_the_UK.

Where I come from, although it is indeed greater, 100,000 is not even close to 5 times more than 50,000. NY state is by no means the largest state in the US. It isn't even the largest state east of the Mississippi.

In Blighty, whatever it may actually be, you really don't have a clue as to distances over here, and how we regartd them. Us Yanks think nothing of hopping in the car for a 3-hour trip to the beach or other recreation spot, just for the day (i.e. another 3 hour return journey that night). Some of us do it every single weekday, commuting to work.

Google Maps indicates London to Edinburgh is 404 miles, or about 7 hours, which is roughly the distance from NY City, on the eastern side of the state, to Jamestown, NY, near the western boundary. That's a bit much for a day trip, but no problem for a long weekend, say. Much more than that would almost certainly be undertaken by airplane, except by students and the unemployed, who have more time than money.

US judge rejects lawsuit against God

RE: Joking aside

Check the article again. The F*kwit is a STATE senator (in Nebraska), not a US senator. State legislatures in the US do all kinds of stupid, crazy things. I believe the GA legislature is purpoted to once have passed a law redefining pi to be 3. Nebraska probably has more cows than people (and definitely a lot more corn, aka maize to you chaps). It is also smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. It is adjacent to Kansas, and the Kansas school board ruling on Creationism is what led to the formation of the Church of FSM.

So the fact that a judge in Nebraska threw out the suit is actually a sign of progress! I would have thought it more likely that the judge would issue God a contempt citation for not showing up.

Web palmtop offers life-time no-limits mobile surfing for £60

Unlimited?

How is 5p a minute for roaming unlimited lifetime access?

DARPA seeks Special Forces submersible aeroplane

USOS Seaview and FS-1

It was done back in the 60's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Sub#Refit_and_the_The_Flying_Sub

Mine's the neoprene drysuit...

In-body electric eel tech to make 'leccy from body fat

I want my watch implant

Just imagine, if we combine these with luciferase (I think that's the enzyme in fireflies) generating cells, you ought to be able to embed a watch directly into your wrist.

Interwebs page channels Palin twaddle

@Last minute Candidate

Sorry. To be eligible for President, you must be a native born American citizen. aManfromMars wasn't even born on this planet! He probably hasn't atained the minimum age requirement either.

Brings up an interesting question though. Suppose he were an American. For purposes of eligibility, would his age be measured in Earth years or Mars years?

Tiny MyCar named electric vehicle of the year

Fore!

And this differs substantially from an enclosed golf cart in what way, exactly?

Mine's the one with a 3 wood in the pocket.

'I can see dinosaurs from my back porch'

Yee Haw!

Nothing like a friendly debate on issues that don't mean much ;-)

To all the evolutionists - give up. Reason is fundamentally incompatible with faith.

To all the creationists - give up. Faith is fundamentally incompatible with reason.

To all the America bashers - give up. I have lived and travelled abroad, and as bad as things are in the US, they are much worse almost everywhere else. To paraphrase a former British PM, "a democratic republic is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

I assume that RE refers to "Religious Education" or some similar phrase. No such thing in the US public schools due to the Separation of Church and State. This is also why the Creationists, now known as "intelligent Design proponents" have been trying to get the creation myth taught in science class.

I have no problem with the study of old, discredited "theories". When I was in college we studied Ptolemy, Phlogiston, and the "action at a distance" theories in addition to Copernicus, Priestly, and Maxwell. However, they had actual theories to study. When there is a theory of Intelligent Design, with hypotheses, experiments, and formulae (especially formulae. If it doesn't have any math in it, it ain't science), then I would welcome it, too, in a science class. Until then, it isn't worth consideration.

Also, regarding the could/couldn't care less debate. Anyone ever heard of sarcasm? When you say "I could care less," it is supposed to be spoken in a voice dripping with sarcasm, to convey the exact opposite meaning. By that token, it is much more disdainful than the nearly indifferent "I couldn't care less."

-Chris

Blockbuster: DVD to Blu-ray shift slower than VHS to DVD

It's in the digits

In addition to all the convenience features mentioned by other posters (2-D vs. linear access, extra features, smaller form factor, etc.), DVD replaced VHS so rapidly because it was digital instead of analog.

Just like the transition from vinyl to CD, with digital, the difference in playback quality between a $50 player and a $500 player is practically nil. Even a $5000 player is only slightly better. So you can get essentially the same quality (or better) that a $500 S-VHS VCR offered in a $50 DVD player. Can BD offer similar value? No, because you're just swapping one digital format for another. You can only make the analog-digital leap once.

Digital TV could have seen the same phenomenon if the sets weren't also almost an order of magnitude more expensive. CDs and DVDs could be attached to existing playback equipment.

Grey hat hair hacker suspect charged in Maserati extortion case

a meal at Omaha Steaks?!

Omaha Steaks is a mail-order meat company. They have some brick & mortar stores as well, but I wouldn't want to eat a meal at one. If I was able to afford a Maserati, I wouldn't need (or want) my meals delivered by FedEx. Just who was this promotion aimed at?

What's the cost of global warming?

@56 pence per kg

"1 litre of petrol is 2.32 kg of CO2"

Huh? Given that the specific gravity of gasline at 60 F is 0.739 (from http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-gravity-liquids-d_336.html) then a litre of it would mass approximately 739 g, or slightly less than 3/4 of 1 kg. Most of that is carbon.There is a bit (by weight) of hydrogen in there as well, but practically no oxygen. So for that to be able to contain more than three times its mass in carbon dioxide is totally ludicrous.

Now, if you want to talk about the amount of CO2 produced by BURNING a litre of "petrol," in the presence of oxygen, that is another story entirely. How much oxygen? How complete is the combustion? What is the octane rating? Any other compunds present in the petrol? What happens to the exhaust afterwards?

Japanese call on deities to discipline wayward PCs

It's been done

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/11/faith_based_firewalls.html

Secret of invisibility unravelled by US researchers

The Emperor's new tank

Invisibility is the perfect research topic. When the government comes along and asks what happened to all that grant money they've been giving you, you tell them you've perfectected an nvisibility cloak. "What, you can't see it? There's the proof!"

After that, you "sell" invisible tanks to the Emperor (uh, I mean Army) who then parade them in public...

I'm already wearing a coat. No really,...

Microsoft 'proves' six degrees of separation theory

How does this prove anything?

The research seems to actually DIS-prove the 6 degrees theory - "the researchers said some users could only be connected by 29 hops."

OK, they might be connectable by less if you go outside MSN, but in order for the theory to be "true" (or more acurately "correct"), it would need to work for ANY two people in any large group.

If it doesn't work for the group of MSN users, being a subset of humanity, it can't be true in general. Unless you want to argue that MSN users aren't human...

'Series of tubes' senator indicted for false statements

Read the article

before making dumb comments. The company made extensive renovations (hundreds of thousands of dollars worth) to his home, AND gave him a gas grill, furniture, etc. (including a Land Rover).

Celebrity publicist develops mathematical 'fame formula'

re: math teacher's horror

How many people with no mathematical training whatsoever follow Mr. Borowski's lead and create a formula which ignores the standard order of operations and think that 1/10t is the same as 1/(10t)?

I don't know how many such formulae there are attempting to quantify the unquantifiable. So we will now have Celebrity "Science" as a field of study alongside Political "Science" and all the other subjects with "science" in their name, that aren't.

I once heard that Policticians all believe they are Economists, Economists all believe they are Sociologists, Sociologists all believe they are Psychologists, Psychologists believe they are Biologists, Biologists believe they are Biochemists, Biochemists believe they are Physical Chemists, Physical Chemists believe they are Physicists, Physicists believe they are Mathematicians, and Mathematicians believe they are God. But God is an Astronomer.

As a mathematician, I resemble that remark, but I sure hope we don't have to put publicists on that list.

-Chris

Chinese takeaway biodiesel man in garage explosion horror

industrial scale conversion

The amount of waste cooking oil in the entire country is only enough to provide fuel for a small number of dedicated (as in miserly) amateurs. Start trying to operate a siginificant fraction of vehicles (even just diesel vehicles) on it, and you will run out in a hurry.

Security shocker: 75% of US bank websites have flaws

RE: Citibank

[quote]Much worse is Citibank. With all their billions they can't figure out how to give me access to my multiple accounts through one web account. Have pity on them - please don't hack their site. That would be sad.

[/quote]

AT&T is just as bad. At one time I had three accounts with them - for long distance, for wireless service, and for a "Universal Mastercard". I called all three to ask about combining accounts as I was starting to lose track of which bills were paid and which weren't, since they all arrived (sporadically) in nearly identical envelopes with AT&T printed on them. One of them (the cc) didn't even understand what I was asking. They kept saying, "Sure, we can set up another account for you."

Of course the credit card is actually adminstered by Citibank. It has one useful feature though - virtual credit card numbers. You can generate a new, unique cc number for an online transaction that then immediately expires, making it impossible for a hacker or unscrupulous merchant to commit cc fraud with it.

Unfortunately they only support the autofill option under IE, despite repeated entreaties on my part. They also refuse to tie it to a specific user on the local machine, so anyone who logs in to my computer, using any account, gets the sotware loaded automatically.

Jeremy Clarkson tilts at windmills

Meanwhile, across the pond

A woman in a suburb of Washington, DC was issued a speeding ticket by a live cop for doing 42 mph in a 30 mph zone. The ticket carried an $80 fine and one point on her license.

A few weeks later, she gets another ticket in the mail after a camera caught her doing 39 on the same stretch of road, at the same time as the ticket she already got. (OK, there was a one minute difference and a 1000 yards distance, but it was the same offense.) This one was $40 and no points (The Bill of Rights, you know). She wanted to claim double jeopardy (also forbidden by the Constitution) and get out of one of them.

The mayor of the town that owns the camera says he'd be willing to waive the fine, but she wants to pay that and fight the other one in court. Not sure how she'll fare, but I don't think her chances are good.

-Chris

UK boffins roll out video periodic table

Hydrogen

The dandelion-haired professor somehow got a doctorate in chemistry yet he only *thinks* hydrogen is a major component of water? It must be, he states, because the formula for water is H2O.

Uh, I think you have cause and effect reversed, Einstein. The formula is H2O *because* it contains hydrogen.

No wonder the yoofs in Blighty are falling behind in science education...

-Chris

Homer Simpson's email address hacked

letters on phones

In Arabic-speaking countries, the phones all have Arabic letters above the numbers. This caused me no end of trouble when I lived in one and wanted to call a US number that was given only in (Latin alphabet) letters.

When touch tone phones first came out, the phone company discovered it had to reassign people whose numbers corresponded to well-known simple tunes, like "Mary had a Little Lamb". So if you wanted to put a number in a film or TV show that wouldn't bother "granny," but wasn't 555-xxxx either, you could use one of those.

-Chris

Google and the End of Science

cooking with potential energy

Data without theory puts me in mind of an article from the late lamented Journal of Irreproducible Results about the subject line. The "researchers" repeatedly threw a frozen turkey off the roof and measured its temp. The data points perfectly fit an exponential curve, asymptotic to ambient air temp. But they decided to do a least squares best fit straight line, and came to the conclusion that if the experiment continued long enough, the bird would eventually reach a temperature of 350 degrees F. The energy crisis solved!

Oh, and isn't it a *lack* of pirates that causes global warming? I.e. they prevent it, presumably because pirates are so cool.

-Chris

Prius hybrid to get rooftop solar panel

high mileage, veg oil

I believe the original Honda car (1200 cc 2cyl., curb weight about 1000 lbs) got over 50 mpg. My family had one in the mid-70s. It was so small and light, the neighborhood kids used to pick it up and turn it sideways in our parking space as a prank. The next model year it was replaced by the more conventionally-sized Civic.

Running a few vehicles on used vegetable oil (aka biodiesel) is probably feasible, but total conversion to several million? There aren't enough deep fat fryers in the entire world to provide enough veg oil for the cars in one large city (say London) much less the entire UK, or the US, for sure. Enough corn is already being diverted to ethanol production that it is having an effect on food prices. I suppose some of that could also have oil extracted from it, but it isn't sustainable agriculturally.

King Arthur was English 'propaganda', French claim

French legends

Let's not forget Charlemagne as long as we're talking about legendary national kings.

Paris is where?

-Chris

Force listeners onto DAB by killing FM

Explanation please?

So what is the difference between this DAB, and the digital radio they are promoting in the US under the misnomer of HD Radio? I have one of those in my car, and ignoring the many dead spots one near my work, and two near my home) the clarity is amazing. Even HD AM is better than analog FM, and HD FM is CD quality or better. It alos permits sub-channels.

-Chris

Microsoft says ‘hasta la vista XP’ - well, kinda

RE: Deluded

Our boss announced to us some months back "Vista is the best operating system Microsoft have ever produced".

Damning with faint praise.

Mine's the one with the Shakespeare First Folio in the pocket...

Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap

solar power satellites

As long as we're going to look at pie-in-the-sky solutions, what about power in the sky? The sun shines 24/7 in space. No clouds, no night. Collect it and beam it to Earth via microwaves.

Or just put up a bunch of mirrors and reflect it down to stations in remote parts of the world where it can be converted to heat to drive conventional turbines.

Or get that space elevator built and run cables down the inside of the shaft...

Lots of options "up there".

-Chris

British Columbia stray foot tally hits six

Canada is metric

Since they are on the metric system, Canadians obviously have no use for feet, so they are apparently just discarding them.

-Chris