* Posts by Vociferous

1921 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2013

Can't stand the heat? Harden up if you want COLD, DELICIOUS BEER

Vociferous

> And magnets, if you're a Juggalo.

Even if you're not. Quantum theory of magnetism is pretty hairy stuff. Virtual photons, anyone?

Vociferous

Re: @ Schultz (was: Total, complete & utter bullshit.)

@jake: I really wish people wouldn't vote you down for something they can easily check themselves is true.

Assange anounces candidacy for possible WA Senate by-election

Vociferous

Re: agrarian-socialist-conservative Nationals Party?

So, in other words a perfect fit for a libertarian conspiracy theorist like Assange.

Vociferous

Another cunning plan by Saint Julian.

Because politicians have diplomatic immunity, right?

I guess he's getting desperate. I wonder how long it'll be before he cuts a deal with the US; it's obvious he'll do and say absolutely anything to avoid going to Sweden to stand trial for those rapes.

Meh, who am I kidding? He's of course already tried to cut a deal with the US, and been turned down.

Google's Nexus 5: Best smartphone bang for your buck. There, we said it

Vociferous

"eight megapixels isn't as good as some of the competition"

Megapixels were a selling point early in digital camera history, one'd think that people would have learned by now that once you have more than 5-6 megapixel it's the LENS which is the limiting factor.

8 megapixels is already way more than any user of a cell phone camera will ever need, because the poor quality of the lens means that most of it is "dead" resolution anyway (so if you really DO print that 20 megapixel image at billboard size, it still wont look sharper than the 5 megapixel shot).

Microsoft CEO shortlist claim: It's just Elop, Bates, Mulally, Nadella and...

Vociferous

Re: Choices choices choices

> Ballmer

You know, Ballmer wasn't alone in wrecking Windows. He had an accomplice (who's also been fired), Steven Sinofsky, and incredibly I've actually heard people non-ironically suggest Sinofsky as a suitable replacement for Ballmer.

Vociferous

Sorry, I'm not interested.

Stuff to do, places to be, you know how it is. Ask Eric, I hear he's... oh you did?

Could Doctor Who really bump into human space dwellers?

Vociferous

Re: Mining ...

> If we find Coal or Oil on asteroid, I think there would be bigger questions

Indeed there would, as those are fossil fuels.

However, if we're just talking hydrocarbons in general, then Titan has whole lakes of methane.

Vociferous

Re: Lunar way station first

> Just because it is a bit bigger and has an atmosphere of sorts, why should it be any easier than the moon to start a colony on?

1) Mars got an atmosphere, meaning there's radiation protection. On Luna any permanent residents will need to stay underground.

2) Mars got an atmosphere, meaning temperature is more moderated, and wings and balloons can be used for lifting craft.

3) Gravity is higher, meaning less problem with atrophying muscles and bones.

4) Mars has has more raw materials. Mars is a planet like Earth, formed by direct conglomeration of star disk material, while Luna formed from the lightest parts of Earth's crust following a huge impact - this is why Luna is so low on heavier materials like iron.

5) Mars is not as well explored as Luna, and is also bigger and more geologically active, so there's more interesting science on Mars.

In fact, the ONLY thing Luna's got which Mars doesn't, is geographic proximity to Earth. It's easier to reach. There's no point in going there, a moon base doesn't help with things like building spaceships, but it's easier to get to than Mars. So if the point is to take the easy option and build a second ISS, then Luna is a good choice. If the point is space exploration and the furthering of mankind: Mars or Titan.

Vociferous

I think the more burning question is...

...if the Doctor could beat Batman in a fight.

Vociferous

Mars will be so separate from Earth that the colonists will no doubt use local time.

Space stations in orbit around Earth will likely use GMT, just like the ISS already does.

Vociferous

Re: Working both ends of the problem

The radiation isn't that big a problem. The radiation on Mars is manageable, and unless you get really unlucky and there's a huge solar flare the radiation during the trip wont kill you either. You'll get a slightly raised cancer risk, but nothing as bad as, say, smoking.

Vociferous

It's only a matter of time. And money.

Time because technology progresses in pace with people's motivation for getting off this ball. 3D printing, for instance, has solved a lot of the problems of getting spares when gear fails on Mars, while the Peak Everything scenarios pretty conclusively show that the Earth is not going to be a nice place to be in two hundred years or so.

Money because space colonies will take a very long time to become profitable. Yeah, there's fantasies about helium 3 and gold and diamonds and whatnot, but the cost of transport is so high that there's no substance it'd be cost effective to transport back to Earth. It might be cost-effective to transport humans out, tho, as the emigrants will sell/leave nearly all they have behind..

I expect I'll live long enough to see the first Mars colonies. With a spot of luck I'll even be in one.

ZOMBIE apocalypse! The 'LIVING DEAD' are HERE – Fox News confirmed it

Vociferous
Black Helicopters

That's what THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE!

The Dead Really Have Risen, But The Government Lies About It To PRotect Its Reptilian Masters!

Horrific FLESH-EATING PLATYPUS once terrorised Australia

Vociferous

Awww...

I bet that even at three foot and sharp-toothedly shredding fish, it was adorable.

Speaking of awwww, I googled for a reconstruction of this mega-platypus. I didn't find one, but instead I found this:

Modern horse says hi to oldest known horse

No, it's NOT Half-Life 3 – it's Valve's lean, mean STEAM MACHINE

Vociferous

Re: This will either save PC gaming or kill it.

Frankly I don't see much use for PC gaming if the advantage of the superior control of keyboard & mouse is removed. Better hardware, sure, but the games aren't written for PC, they're written for the consoles (that's why no game has pushed the PC hardware in the last five years), so the better hardware just translates to high framerates at very high res - but the steambox is made to use TV for display.

Vociferous

This will either save PC gaming or kill it.

Can PC gaming survive when even PC games are made for hand control instead of keyboard+mouse?

And should it?

IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE! Google's secretive Omega tech just like LIVING thing

Vociferous

Re: What behavior?

That WOULD be impressive, but I think we're really talking about differences in scheduling brought on by fuzzy logic and tiny shifts in timing, differences which seem counterintuitive to the operators (e.g. prioritized tasks occasionally being put on the backburner for no obvious reason).

Vociferous

Re: Ooooh... Omega!

For a counterpoint to the knee-jerk (and frankly pretty dumb) Skynet-will-kill-us-all, read the The Culture series by Ian M. Banks.

Vociferous

What behavior?

The article spends a lot of time talking about "weird", "interesting", "non-deterministic" behavior, but doesn't give examples.

What are we talking about here? Scheduling which isn't exactly the same between runs?

Galaxy is CRAMMED with EARTH-LIKE WORLDS – also ALIENS (probably)

Vociferous

Re: Either we're alone, or we're not

> Both possibilities are equally terrifying.

Not at all. If we're alone, we've got a whole galaxy to spread into - a mere technological problem. If we're not, there's competitors, and the principle of mediocrity suggests some of them are better competitors than we are.

Fermi's paradox can be rephrased as that it's surprising we've still not been extinguished by alien invasion.

Vociferous
Vociferous

Did I miss the announcement?

Because AFAIK not a single Earth-like planet has been found orbiting in the habitable zone of a Sol-like (yellow, main-sequence, G-class) star.

Estimates of how many life-supporting planets there are, based solely on tidally-locked super-earths orbiting around red dwarfs is really pushing the whole concept.

Staying power: The small screen spans of the eleven Doctor Whos

Vociferous

Tom Baker FTW!

My favorite Doctor.

Though I admit the most recent Doctors, after the hiatus, have had much better scripts and effects. Very very very much better.

Helium-filled disks lift off: You can't keep these 6TB beasts down

Vociferous

Re: leaks....

> the speed of sound is ~3x normal air

Oh, interesting point, hadn't thought of that. Is the sound barrier a problem for harddisks? A quick back-of-the-hand calculation suggests rotation speed in a 7200 rpm HD should be in the region 20-25 m/s, a far cry from the speed of sound (343 m/s), but I may be mistaken.

Here's what YOU WON'T be able to do with your PlayStation 4

Vociferous

Re: Yes you can't

> PS4 is the new Obama

No, it's like a GOP shill: impotent, downgraded and in the wrong forum. Fuck off.

Vociferous

Re: BetaMax comparison hardly fair...

> legacy formats

DVD and CD = legacy formats? Plus, Sony will have had to intentionally disable the support, which they do because they want to lock in users to Sony's online shops. It amazes me that people like you seem to think being locked in and deprived of options is _progress_.

> Who listens to music through their TV anyway.

Who doesn't have a surround sound system?

Vociferous

Re: 300 MB update

> No need to be concerned.

Do you believe that Linux filesystems do not get fragmented? Because, you know, they do.

Vociferous

Re: "Massive" 300MB update?

Well, the Zune media player software bundled with my POS Windows Phone is 300 MB, so in the spirit of Zune I'm going to guess that it's a whole giant shedload of DRM with some codecs and software tacked on as an afterthought.

Vociferous

Re: Console for Convicts

> Sony seem to be handing them the market

They're basically playing tennis with the market, fumbling it between them. Microsoft goes Evil Empire at E3 and drives users over to Sony, then Sony remembers that, oh yeah, I'm a litigious passive-aggresive bastard, and drive them back.

I hope the Steambox turns out to be all it's been cracked up to be, and I hope it utterly destroys PS3 and XBone. Because if it doesn't, we continue the slide into locked userspaces which are not so much a "walled garden" as a prison.

From Russia with Code: Edward Snowden gets job on website helldesk

Vociferous

Re: freudian much?

> Freudian in what way?

Penis.

Edit: Sorry, I meant "I don't know".

Vociferous

Re: poor form chaps

> Why the ad hom "blabbermouth"?

Because his claim to fame is that he is one.

Vociferous

So, which FSB-run venture could he get a token job at?

Oh, I know, the Russian Wikileaks site. It's thoroughly infiltrated, to the point that one of associate has been caught sending information about human rights activists to Belarus' psychopathic dictator Lukashenka.

Locked-up crims write prison software that puts squeeze on grub supplier

Vociferous

Re: Sysco and quality

...without a negation.

Vociferous

Slave labor is big business in the USA

People have this belief that prisoners only make license plates or break rocks. Not so:

Prison labor exposed

Much of the US manufacturing jobs have disappeared behind bars, not to China.

SR-71 Blackbird follow-up: A new TERRIFYING Mach 6 spy-drone bomber

Vociferous

> Debts in dollars. Dollars that they print. Inflation is the constraint - not debt. There is no inflation.

I've often wondered how this simple point can be so impossible to explain to americans?

Vociferous

Re: @OrsonX "too fast for missile"

It will be interesting to see what the upcoming laser weapons will mean for aircraft. What countermeasures can you employ against a megawatt-class laser?

Vociferous

Not as pretty as the Blackbird, tho.

Still the coolest-looking aircraft ever.

Dead PC market? In the UK? NEVER

Vociferous

Re: You have be careful old chap..........

Even Win 8 can't keep a good platform down.

Vociferous

There'll be an unexpected bump in PC sales in 2014...

... as next-gen games start getting ported to PC, and people realize that for the first time in six years their computer no longer cuts the mustard.

Mark my words, there'll be a lot of people acting surprised starting the second quarter.

Windows Azure Compute cloud goes TITSUP planet-wide

Vociferous

Re: "calling into question how effectively Redmond has partitioned its service"

> It hasn't even been possible to only have a single partition since Windows 7

I guess the people downvoting you haven't noticed the hidden 100 MB partition on their harddisks.

Shiny doodad blog Engadget clubbed with Reddit banhammer

Vociferous

Re: not exactly holier than thou

Reddit occasionally cracks down on the worst subreddits, and one of the most prominent CP peddlers at Reddit got exposed. But since Reddit is very haphazard in its approach to CP and violent porn, it always comes creeping back.

That said, the ugliest smut stays in their own designated cesspools, and don't really disturb the rest of the site much. Personally I find the countless shills and paid propagandists more annoying, as they're everywhere.

Study: Arctic warming at 'stunning' rate – highest temps in 44,000 years

Vociferous

Re: I'm Sorry

Pretty sure that first "and" should be an "or".

Anonymity is the enemy of privacy, says RSA grand fromage

Vociferous

So basically we should have MODERATE privacy...

...so law enforcement, secret services, laywers, ISP:s, copyright organizations, employers, prospective employers -- in short everyone + dog EXCEPT private citizens -- can track and monitor us on the net, instead of the excessive privacy we have today when we may say things which might upset our governments, RIAA or Paris Hilton without anyone knowing it was us who said it.

And the irony of it is that this "excessive" privacy is already mostly an illusion, at least in Europe, where in most countries ISP:s are required to keep records of what you do on the, for law enforcement to peruse at their convenience.

Why Bletchley Park could never happen today

Vociferous

Re: War or no war

> A TRUE Libertarian distrusts government, period. They're essentially anarchists.

No, not really. Libertarianism is simply egoism elevated to political principle, the credo of libertarianism is "fuck you I got mine". Yes they hate the state, but not out of principle like leftist anarchists do, but because the state is funded through tax money, they're anti-tax, because taxation, dontyouknow, is theft.

All their positions follow from that: they're opposed to war not because people die but because wars cost tax money; they're opposed to environmental protection not because they don't believe nature is being damaged, but because environmental protection cost tax- and corporate money; they're in favor of legal drugs and guns because it doesn't cost tax money (plus companies can make money off them); they're opposed to immigration because that costs tax money; they're opposed to aid to disaster victims because that costs tax money... and so on and so on.

There isn't a single position of libertarians which isn't motivated by Fuck You I Got Mine.

As long as they, personally, don't have to pay taxes, they're perfectly OK with the state being an oppressive dictatorship to everyone else.

Vociferous

Re: War or no war

> Libertarians want to lead their own lives as free of government interference as possible

No no no, libertarians just want theirs. They don't give a shit about anyone else, and in Russia and China, if you're rich and connected (and all libertarians imagine that they would be if it wasn't for the nanny state getting in their way) you're above the law, and can do whatever you want. Free of government interference.

That the plebs get thrown into prison - well, that just serves them right for being statists.

US aviation watchdog approves $75K balloon ride into SPAAAACE!

Vociferous

What keeps this thing from rotating...

...like high altitude balloons seem wont to do?

Nine hours at 90 rpm (+ alcohol) would have me begging for a "gravity powered screaming plunge of terror", anything to Please Make It Stop(tm).

Play Elite, Pitfall right now: Web TIME PORTAL opens to vintage games, apps

Vociferous

Re: David Braben's supposed to be quite litigious, isn't he?

> Really, these are all of interest only for the nostalgic value to those who played them back then.

Running them in the emulator makes you realize that memories are cheating and they are all horrid crud.

They were good for their time, but times have changed. A lot. After some bad experiences replaying old games like Lords of Midnight, I now avoid replaying my old favorites because I know I'll just be disappointed.

They have nostalgic and cultural value and were in their time great games, but they're not good games if judged by their own merit against todays games.

(But since they at least were good once, they're still firmly ahead of ancient gnostic manuscripts!)