Posts by The Stainless Steel Cat

Apple fanbois warned: No, Cupertino HASN'T built a Bitcoin mining function into Macs

Re: No sympathy...

All the women went with the guy who was firft. Fecund gets you nothing.

Why James Bond's Aston Martin Top Trumps the rest

Modesty Blaise probably had the Interceptor waiting list bought up (though she may only have written one off, I can't remember.)

PS, Willie Garvin could have taken James Bond, no problem.

Ancient 16m-yr-old beastie caught riding on much bigger flying mount

"...tiny aerial equestrian"

So the bigger story here is that horses evolved from mayflies?

Mine's the one with the Latin dictionary in the pocket.

Endeavour: donuts and a Toyota ease shuttle's drive through L.A.

You mean the trees didn't hinge down out of the way? Truly US ingenuity's gone downhill since the '60s.

(Brains, for obvious reasons)

It's Lego's 80th birthday party, but only the boys are invited

Re: "Single use" pieces?

There's nothing wrong with that, it'd make a great core piece for a larger model. Just off the top of my head (and in 12-year-old mode) I could use it as the central piece of a model of the Ro-Busters' rescue ship (Starlord/2000AD) The pegs would fit into the front and back sections which could then split off.

http://mangamax-aieeee.blogspot.co.uk/2011_03_01_archive.html

RIP Harry Harrison: Stainless Steel Rat scurries no more

Deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the Big Three.

You can guess which of his works are my favourite, but he produced so much work that was good in so many different ways. The stand alone SF books were especially good, e.g. In Our Hands The Stars, and for me the best of his alt-histories were The Hammer And The Cross books which are an excellent mix of adventure, history and religious philosophy.

Sad now.

Curiosity success 'paves way for Man on Mars by 2030s'

Re: Please could you run this past me again?

No, "three times the initial mission length" would make sense, or "three times the expected working lifespan of the rover as a whole" maybe. Then again, the RTG powerplant's expected to last 14 years, maybe the parts are designed to last 42 years?

Does this mean...

...we'll get to hear from AmanfromMars again?

Does Britain really need a space port?

Re: Does Britain really need a space port?

Is Professor Jocelyn Peabody all that obscure? I don't remember her having a particularly square jaw, though her eyebrows could certainly have done with some prettying up to compete with Daniel McGregor Dare's...

Leaping lizards, Dig! Fire up the old Gyrocar and let's get down to Spacefleet HQ at Dover. I need the old face-fungus trimmed or the Mekon'll never let me hear the end of it!

Yahoo! investor! accuses! CEO! of! embellishing! resume!

Dilemma:

If you went to a technical college with someone who's now a CEO on the other side of the world and claims he went to the University of Oxford rather than the technical college, would you / should you out that person?

European boffins on voyage of discovery to the Earth's core

Ob. Dr Who reference...

...and I turned round and they were *all* wearing eyepatches!

Apple accused of iPhone ban on 'all single-station radio apps'

Multiple Radio Station apps?

Can't see the point myself. If there are people out there who listen to *both* Radio 2 and Radio 4, then stick them in the same app.

After all, Radio 1 listeners won't be using iPhones/iPads until they evolve opposable thumbs, Radio 3 listeners won't give up their valve-driven wirelesses and surely there's no-one reading here who would listen to a commercial station with all those ads being pushed at them and no possibility of filtering them out?

Hefty physicist: Global warming is 'pseudoscientific fraud'

I knew it!

All those multi-trillion-dollar environmental corporations pouring their money into pro-GW PR, corrupting poor innocent scientists away from life-enhancing, energy-industry-funded research.

Freeman Dyson OTOH, is only against GW because he wants us to build one of his spheres to grab *all* available heat and light...

Aggrieved boffins to march on Whitehall

@JaitcH

The "arts" are going to do B. all to generate economic growth, and I'm unconvinced that the Olympics will contribute either. Better to suspend funding for arty stuff and jumped up sports days and pour the money into something useful.

Are plasma TVs killing radio?

Rich, chocolatey Radio 4...

That would be Jamaican, Neil Nunes. 3rd best voice on Radio 4 after the sainted Charlottle, and the soothing Kathy Clugston.

US book giant confirms Apple tablet

Good point!

I was *so* looking forward to getting an Apple tablet, but the presenter brought up a deal breaker; *I* like to smell my books too!

(Is that bad and wrong?)

NASA preps Mars rover rescue plan

Oblig. BBT quote...

"Do you have a plan?"

"Actually, I was just checking my e-mails."

Lily Allen exits Twitter, bins BlackBerry

And tomorrow...

"First day as a neo-luddite! OMG! LOLZ! Don't miss tweeting at all! Only back on to plug my new album: http://..."

Most Mac owners getting Windows on the side

Microsoft's own making...

I wonder how this changed after MS intentionally crippled Excel 2008 by removing Visual Basic and hence many of the advanced features of Excel like regression, solver and data analysis. Now, to show my students how to use these features, I have to run Parallels and switch between Keynote and a Windows... um, window.

Twitter meltdown raises questions about site stability

Surprise!

So the two security software shills say this couldn't have been caused by something as simple as people clicking on links, but rather must have been something that their products would be able to stop if only more people would buy them...

Tesla unwraps Model S

@ROI

Yes, absoluetely. Though with the figures *I've* pulled out of my backside, I reckon you can break even in three months. Your go.

Take a hammer to your hard drive, shrieks Which?

Thermite?

I'm not sure whether thermite's up to the job; I notice from an IT documentary series I've been watching that it's best practice to *first remove* the control chip *before* burning a Terminator's body with thermite. That suggests to me that it's considered insufficient to destroy the really important bits.

(A boot heel is apparently the better option.)

Dell's dinky designer desktop

Dinky or Tonka?

"Dinky"? It's still a big beastie compared to the Mac Mini.

Still, wood-veneer is very 1970's so at least that's a step forward for Dell...

BBC redesigns and 'widgetizes' homepage

Retro Styling

I love the clock. Takes me back, that does.

Miserable Brits declare War on Comfort

Deal with *stupid* patio heater use

Yesterday afternoon, walking through town with an air temperature in the mid-high 60s F, I passed a pub with tables on the street and a long line of these heaters spewing out more heat. No matter whether you think these things are a threat to the environment, whoever made the decision to switch those things on yesterday is too stupid for words.