* Posts by Sean Inglis

13 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Feb 2007

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

Sean Inglis

What do you mean by "wrong paper"?

The point I'm making is that Gergis et al 2012 is the last paper that CA has scrutinised where the methods were incomplete and found wanting; CA asked for details; the papers' authors refused, preferring to mock the hosts statistical expertise; CA pressed ahead and even with vanishingly little information found flaws that meant the paper had to be withdrawn and it is not resubmitted to this day.

If Lewandowski comes out of the affair merely having had to withdraw his own paper he'll be fortunate.

Sean Inglis

Lewandowsky's paper is currently being fisked on climateaudit.org where the influence of his personal bias, sloppiness of his methods, and paucity of his understanding are being steadily exposed.

He'll be lucky if it ends as well for him as it has done for Gergis and Karoly.

Are you an ECO POET? Climate science needs YOU

Sean Inglis
WTF?

Wrong date...

...it's April 2nd today.

I for one hope that many, many people take up the course, rather than dabbling any hard sciences, for which they would clearly be ill-suited, by the mere fact of having considered taking this course in the first place.

E.ON to flog stake in wind farms to private firms

Sean Inglis

Subtle withdrawal

Perhaps a clever way to withdraw from a market that is collapsing, without apparently losing any green credentials.

If building more is predicated on additional private investment, and that private investment also sees the writing on the wall and fails to appear, who could blame them?

System Shock

Sean Inglis
Thumb Up

System Shock / SS2 were masterpieces, a leap up from the environment that Doom et al offered in geometry (is that really a translucent bridge!) and in the flexibility your character had to lean round corners, peak over edges etc.

Sneaking around in the dark and jumping out of your skin with headphones was a rewarding and genuinely memorable experience, and the soundtrack and in-game sound effects were perfectly matched, whether creaking self-destructing service robots or psychotic vending machines.

I can still feel a sense of amazement at finding a hoverboard late in the game and seeing it transform the gameplay and present the environment in a new unexpectedly fluid way.

Still got the PC version sitting on my shelf.

Climategate ruling: FOIA requests cover backup servers too

Sean Inglis

There is far more at issue than the data series made available / not made available by the CRU.

Certain versions of the *processed* data were made available, but it is the *unprocessed* data, and the methods used to process that data that has generally been a point of contention. Even a shallow examination of the ClmateGate 1 tranche of email shows that the record keeping that accompanies different versions of various series was something of a shamble, and the source control for various processing methods is practically non-existent.

CamScanner

Sean Inglis

I've used CamScanner+ for a while, and although I'd recommend it for all the reasons given here, on on IOS / iPod 4G, there seems to be a substantial quality difference between snapping a page in the standard camera and then importing, as opposed to snapping from within the app itself.

Aussie retailer accuses UK shops of HDMI 'scam'

Sean Inglis

Mechanical failure

@alex makes a valid point. *Very* cheap cables can suffer mechanical defects, can be a bit less flexible than you'd like, fit poorly etc. etc.

I've replaced exactly one cable because of this, and just get whatever cable is the right length for about a fiver.

Oz filmmaker to flog virgins for TV doco

Sean Inglis

Collective Noun

I think a "Venality" is a bit more felicitous. Nice idea, though.

Cowon D2 premium digital media player

Sean Inglis

YouTube reviews

For any other readers considering a D2, YouTube have a number of videos that explore the interface in a fair amount of detail.

Sean Inglis

SDHC Support Source

As far as SDHC support is concerned, I've seen the same comment on Engadget. Is this the source for the information that support will be offered, or is there any "official" Cowon source?

Making sense of Ruby

Sean Inglis

Leaning against open doors...

...is a favourite hobby of mine.

But I'd guessed you must have at least a love-hate relationship given the reasons for your original supposition :-)

I can understand people liking IntelliSense, I just think it pushes you onto a slippery slope of consquences that ends up having a disproportionate and damaging influence on the software development lifecycle (at least in

some "classes" of software system/application).

Sean Inglis

Loaded Language

Not a big fan of dynamic languages then, Huw?

Despite your (half-joking?) assertion Ruby is not "random" or "unpredictable" any more than any other language. Dynamic languages present fewer constraints, but also confer greater responsibility; you generally need to know what you're doing.

Intellisense may be absolutely essential in a framework with a billion methods but, if used properly, dynamic languages allow a level of abstraction and conciseness of form and syntax that reduces the volume of information you need to commit to memory.

I've used C# fairly extensively, and I just don't buy the "benefits" in comparison to dynamic languages. It *needs* a huge supporting structure and crutches like intellisense because it's complex and monolithic.

And don't get me started on they way's that increasing reliance on Intellisense, and all it implies, constrains the design process...