Posts by Brian

BOFH: Dodging the auditors

NICE!

Nice, very well played and I even understood the the fiddly bits :-P

Awesome!

The guys around the office were giving me strange looks as I laughed at this one!

eBay rethinks firearms policy

haha

"Guns don't kill people, burgers do"

That's the funnist thing I've heard all week!

Derbyshire cops get into deep water

snorkle

Hmmmm,

I wonder how much it would be to add a snorkle to the vehicles? You know.... just in case :P

German hurls computer from apartment block

cost

I hope it wasn't a terribly expensive one! I doubt the insurance/warrenty covers that...

US seeks mini-Imperial Walker mule-bots

interesting

Very cool! Sounds awesome, but to be honest, considering the fuel 'crisis' etc, it would be far far more effective to just bring normal mules, plus they would be easier to feed and deal with in general.

Although the Bigdog could be deployed in areas where a 'normal' mule may not be able to work, ie deep snow, awkward terrain, amphibius landings, air drop in etc....

I still think its very cool though! :-D

Parliament's sci-tech committee faces permanent recess

dilute

I hope they don't dilute the committee that is overseeing science, seeing as it'll be overseeing quite a few groups. It should be overseen by a group of peers, but seeing as its a number of different groups/branches, it could fall foul to not being scrutinised properly.

Netgear Storage Central Turbo SC101T network storage box

hmmmm

Hmmmm, Yes it doesn't have support for other OSes or streams stuff itself, but honestly, that doesn't bother me. That's not what I'm after. It sounds ideal for the network task that I'm after and its simplicity would mean I could even set it up at my parents place and I wouldn't have too many 'tech support' calls to fix it!

Speed is an issue for me though but the problem I have is the file system. I've had kit die before and if its not a nice decent file system, then there is little chance I could recover the data without getting another unit and that, for me, is a big issue!

It does have its uses, but I would get it to complement other devices on the network and have a decent backup setup too.

What's al-Qaeda's take on the iPhone?

Title

"robotic armadillos"?! Ohhhh, anyone got a link?

Sick to death of the bloody iPhone? Click here

YAY!!!!!

awesome!, Simply AWESOME! YAAAAAAAAAAAY! I wish I had a few hundred of them going on sync, it could be an orchestra!

Boeing rolls out 787 Dreamliner

Lightning + aircraft = sparky! :P

Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless lighting has a path to the ground (earth), it isn't going to be as bad to aircraft. Yes they'd get hit and instrumentation may be affected etc, but I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't be as bad as if it was sitting on a runway.

After a moment of reaserch:

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=000DBD54-3835-1C71-84A9809EC588EF21&catID=3&chanID=sa005

"Some modern aircraft are made of advanced composite materials, which by themselves are significantly less conductive than aluminum. In this case, the composites contain an embedded layer of conductive fibers or screens designed to carry lightning currents."

USSR Nuke Bomber...

a quick search came up with this...

"Following discoveries in the early 1990s it was alleged that the Soviet Union had flown a nuclear powered aircraft as early as 1961. They used a modified Tupolev Tu-95 bomber, the Tupolev Tu-119. To simplify issues of shielding, the crew had little protection. It had 2 conventional turboprop engines and 2 experimental 'dirty' direct cycle jet engines powered by a minimally shielded nuclear reactor in the main fuselage. The aircraft flew about 40 times."

Which sounds about right with what I've heard before.

(Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/nuclear-aircraft )

Sole competitor comes second in cake-baking contest

a triffle

I'd be a triffle dismayed at a result like that.

iPhone hackers disclose vulns and hunt for clues

Zealots?

Um.... this sorta sounds like religious zealots brandishing shiny pointy weapons about to 'go at it' with each other..... *steps slowly away from the field of battle...*

A glitch in the Matrix, or a hungry exploit?

Lag

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO The lag!!!!!!!!!!

Space nuke boffin: NASA Moonbase needs nuclear rockets

re: I'll tell you what I want...

You mean a Mass Driver?

US gov in Bill Gates inspired robot probe

3 laws of robotics

There are a Asimov's 3 laws of robotics, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the US Military has signed up to follow them per se.

There are another set of three laws that I say tongue in cheek, but hope I'm wrong about are...

1. A robot will not harm authorized Government personnel but will terminate intruders with extreme prejudice.

2. A robot will obey the orders of authorized personnel except where such orders conflict with the Third Law.

3. A robot will guard its own existence with lethal antipersonnel weaponry, because a robot is bloody expensive.

There is also a decent enough argument for the use of the 'zeroth law':

"A robot may not harm a human being, unless he finds a way to prove that in the final analysis, the harm done would benefit humanity in general."

Add pinch of salt and refer to; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

robot domination or convergence...

I was at a BCS Lecture not too long ago and the guy from iRobot had something very interesting to say.... that he didn't see robots revolting against humans, but that she saw convergence. We already have retina and ear tech to aid people, whats to stop us developing a wifi link to the web, so many things I'd love to google! Just think about it, the accumulated knowledge of 'civilisation' at ones beckon-call. Ok, sure, lots of adult stuff and not all of it is good, schools would teach search algorithms instead of classes, but there is still alot of useful info in there!

In truth, I'd rather see a meld of human+machine then not. Thuswise the machine is endowed with emotion, morals and ethical beliefs. OK, so maybe my toaster doesn't need to morally object to making me some toast, but there are suitable fields where this could prove exceptionally useful.

Yes this could lead to another 'Hitler' living on in my toaster, but it could also lead to say another 'Einstein' or 'Hawkings' living on and blessing us with their wisdom.

Discuss.....