* Posts by Jez Ockenden

3 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2007

Republicans hammer Brit artist's Bush

Jez Ockenden

Portrait

As good an idea as it is, what I wasn't expecting was that it's actually a really good portrait

Sony says no to Euro PS3 price cut

Jez Ockenden

Re: Re: Oh Look. A USA Price Comparrison ...

Yes those of us in the UK speak english natively, but the rest of europe really doesn't (though that doesn't stop half of them speaking better english than most of us).

The split between the US/Japan and Europe historically has less to do with language than display frequency. With the Region 1 (US/Japan) areas adopting a 60HZ refresh rate, and the Region 2 areas (Europe) adopting a 50HZ refresh rate. For that reason both the consoles and the games need to be different. So it is not just the cost of translating games into different languages, there is a significant cost implication for redesigning the console to work at 50HZ (rather than 60) purely for us europeans and our crappy TV's.

One would have hoped that now HDTV's are available this problem would disappear, however some b@stards out there still haven't bought themselves new TV's, so the split endures.

Maybe by the time the next console generation comes around everyone will have HDTVs (or whatever standard comes after) and a single console will work everywhere in the world (providing a power adapter is provided). At that time only those who don't speak english (or chinese/indian) will have to wait for their games to get translated at extra cost!... Maybe pigs will fly too!

Even then I'm sure europe will still get screwed because were now used to getting screwed... and so we do!!!

'al-Qaeda' puts on big shoes, red nose, takes custard pie

Jez Ockenden

@Try a different gas next time...

Though it is all well and good laughing at these guys, it really is actually quite difficult to make a really decent explosion using flamable gases or dusts.

As pointed out Propane in particular has quite a narrow band between the Lower and Upper Explosive Limits (these are upper and lower ratios of fuel to air/oxygen at which a well mixed gas will explode), at which the stuff will actually go bang at all. To get the mixture just right to make an even halfway decent explosion is really very tricky as the futher you move away from the stociometric mix (forgive my spelling) the engergy released drops. As pointed out they may have been better with Acetylene which has a huge band in which it will explode, which allows for less precision, though to get a really good bang you still need just the right mix of fuel to air.

The fact of the matter is getting things to blow up at all is a tricky business. High explosives are very difficult to make,transport and store even with a good level of know-how becuase by their nature they're unstable; and making an effective explosion out of common flamable gases and dusts is likewise very difficult to do outside of a controlled environment.

God forbid that terrorist actually ever work out that blowing things up isn't always very effective way of killing people and that something much more mundain such as a fire in the wrong location could easily be far worse, and far easier.

Though it's easy to laugh, the fact of the matter is however that they still intended to commit mass murder on a large scale, and that is what is worrying.