Dear Darpa
Steam is not sexy enough. So yesterday. We want Mr. Fusion, please?
Posts by storng.bare.durid
135 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Feb 2007
Robot land-steamers to consume all life on Earth as fuel
Hollywood prepares to battle Asteroids
Satanic blob beast menaces North Carolina
Friday 3rd July 2009 15:00 GMT
E-ver
You know, the more I think about it, the more I believe it's true.
Premise: Us slackers that waste our time posting comments up here possibly are more alike than we'd care to imagine.
I was about to post that quote verbatim, E-ver, only to see you beat me to it.
And it's certainly not the first time I've seen someone beat me to, say a pun, or some other silly pop-culture reference.
Aliens reference? done
Lovecraftian gothic reference? done
'Get cameraphones out of nurseries' plea
Friday 3rd July 2009 14:34 GMT 
Some things are just not practical
I am completely for the protection of minors, but seriously, these days where most mobile phones have cameras in them whether you want them or not, this harebrained idea is a little impractical.
I am not in the least interested in getting the latest greatest mobile phone. To me a phone is a phone is a phone, my phone is like 4 years old, replaced only because my prior one died, replaced in the cheapest possible fashion
...and guess what? It's got a camera built in. I didn't want it. It's shite, but it's there.
So, if this gets passed, is the protagonist going to go get all these child-care related workers new mobile phones sans cameras?
Will it extend to other child-related fields? Will paediatric health professionals have to junk their phones? School teachers?
Don't be absurd. Deal with the fact mobiles are here and most have cameras built in. Employees probably need a bit more vetting and ultimately if you don't trust them, what sort of system have you got?
Chickens could 'power hydrogen cars'
DARPA: Can we have a one-cabinet petaflop supercomputer?
Monday 29th June 2009 08:38 GMT
RoTM
It is possible, maybe, one day, we will create a machine smart enough to create another machine, which would be even smarter... etc and bootstrap the creation of something pretty interesting.
Whether we have anything as benevolent as a Iain M Bank's 'minds' or something more akin to Skynet, lol, is an interesting question.
Olympus shows off lens-swapping 'Pen' camera
RIP Personal Computer World
Oz cops in Taser fatality
Friday 12th June 2009 13:31 GMT
Mostly Harmless.
Most certainly not. But certainly not mostly lethal.
To the taser detractors - Have you ever seen what a knife can do? Have you ever seen how fast it can be done?
I personally believe tasers used appropriately are the right sort of kit cops should be armed with. However, like a conventional firearm, use should be in dire circumstances only.
In this case, the perp was armed. He had apparently also cut himself.
It is unfortunate that there was a death but at least it was not like the other taser death fiasco recently in, was in Canada? Now that was grossly inappropriate.
Hindus take divine mace to Sony Playstation
Ireland bucks trend with anti-blasphemy law
Department of Homeland Security to destroy swine flu victims
NASA gets cold feet on Moon base plan
Koreans cook up glow-in-the-dark beagles
Intel says new PCs will cost you nothing
London gym floors hoodies with Chav Fighting classes
Wednesday 29th April 2009 09:18 GMT 
Is this gym for real?
Honestly, can anyone confirm this place is real and not satire? lol
And .. what's the IT slant? There ain't even downloadable saucy vids :P
Misc comments.
1, Disappointed I could not see 'Boob Aerobics'. *wonders at what that might entail*
2. Nike-Fu is under-rated. This is real imba if you can pull it off.
3. 'Glaswegian kisses' have been known to backfire. Useful? yeah but last resort technique for sure. Especially for sickly nerdy PFY's who've never taken a hit to their heads before.
Yorkshire man wakes up Irish after brain surgery
Swine flu apocalypse: Batten down the hatches
US lawmakers to de-silence electric cars
Saturday 25th April 2009 11:13 GMT 
Silly.
No. Just Flipping stupid.
Car noise is annoying enough as it stands, why scupper attempts at silencing them?
There are other alternatives.
1. Equip all 'deemed silent' cars with a radio emitter.
2. If you care about hearing them, you can go get a receiver that will give you a proximity alert. Blind people could get this heavily subsidized/free from the government.
3. Even better - build this alert device into some sort of high visibility jacket with LEDs which could flash at a certain proximity etc.
4. This would even benefit deaf and blind people. Rig the receiver to a vibrating alert.
Revealed: Mega City One's top e-car - according to Peugeot
For security's sake! Send your kid to hacker camp
Apple double takes on shaken babies
Self-replicating machine replicates
Flying-rifle robocopter: Hovering sniper backup for US troops
Profs: Human race must become Hobbits to save planet
Tuesday 21st April 2009 13:13 GMT 
If we shrink...
will our absolute penile lengths remain the same?
lol just kidding.
Seriously, the advantages of using the BMI calculation is it's quick and easy to use. It may not be a specific indicator of obesity but you have to admit it's pretty sensitive, depending on your cut off points of course.
If you have someone with a higher than 'normal' BMI you could then eyeball him, or /shrug get out the calipers. That should give you an idea if that individual needs any help with weight loss.
Not completely useless a measurement, it's a useful tool but you have to know its limitations.
Jackalope gets jaunty with Ubuntu nip and tuck
Tuesday 21st April 2009 12:03 GMT 
I might even give this a try
The notebook remix on my Eee 701 that is. But I don't know that the screen size of the thing will make it a more usable environment than my 'somewhat' tweaked up xandros (yep I still use it, main reason for not changing is screen real estate).
Still have this reservation of shelving debian on my desktop.
As one other has commented, it's awfully excrementy brown.... Hmmm.... You think....? Na....
Doc invents videogame sedation headset
Microsoft conjures imaginary 'Apple Tax'
Sunday 12th April 2009 01:12 GMT 
Do not ever forget...
Apple is just as evil as M$.
That said,
OS X is pretty good at what it does. My main productivity machine runs OS X and has NOT crashed in all of 2 years being up.
My linux box crashes significantly more often more due to my tinkering I suspect but at least I think I know why.
My windoze box I do not trust and only use for gaming.
I look forward to the unlikely day Apple releases OS X to the public and we don't ever have to run hackintoshes again. (BTW I also own a real mac) Evil bastards that they are I doubt this very likely.
Boffin: Titan moon largely made of LPG, not cheese
Animal rights group protests seal clubbing in World of Warcraft
Apple Mac Pro
Friday 3rd April 2009 10:52 GMT
Games
Why didn't you do it? Put this thing thru' its paces in games. I for one would be interested to see how it fares as I have heard conflicting information.
1. I hear you need bootcamp to run windows natively and the drivers supplied (which I understand are the only ones you can use) are not as good (? slower) than generic windows box drivers,
2. When virtualised, ie VMware I'd be interested to see what sort of performance degradation occurs. While inevitable, it may be small enough to be negligible possibly, depending on the demands of the game.
I don't have a mac that can game (no decent gfx card) so I can't really put this to the test. Would make a good article.
My guess is this top of the line thing will probably not differ too much from the performance you get from a similarly rigged up quadcore generic windows box which would possibly cost 1/2 the price at best, or even lag behind, if what I have heard of the bootcamp drivers is true. Nevertheless....
Compare this to, say a an Alienware Dell XPS gamer whatsit or an Acer gamer thingie... assuming similar storage/RAM/GFx card setup. Or heck you could even build your own. But this sounds more like a tomshardware article I guess.
Israelis' invulnerable, 60-tonne robot bulldozer force to double
NYC granny shoots mugger with .357 Magnum
BOFH: Defiling the profile
Blizzard: Game designers aren't Shakespeare
Friday 27th March 2009 12:36 GMT
Who reads the Quest flavour text anyways?
Find Mankrik's wife and then return to him in the Crossroads.
Beaten Corpse: 0/1
We battled in a small tauren camp when we were separated--she held three of the Bristlebacks off by herself. But the odds began to overwhelm us. I led some away only to see her overwhelmed by newcomers. In my rage, I turned to face my enemies, but they brought me down easily with their vast numbers.
I awoke to a tauren druid tending my wounds--he had come across me on the Gold Road as I fell.
Please, noob, find some sign of my wife.
Have you found any sign of her at all? The pain in my chest tells me that the worst has happened, but I have hope you will find her safe and sound.
Battlestar Galactica eyes 'technology run amok'
Man turns finger into storage
US Navy's robot stealth carrier plane unveiled
Saturday 20th December 2008 19:43 GMT
@Aidan Whitehall
It's not a frakkin' air intake or window, I tells ya.
It's that black bit with the red blip that goes whoop, whoop... whoop, whoop... For the last time, it's a frakkin' Cylon.
The link you gave
http://www.is.northropgrumman.com/systems/nucasx47b_assets/photos/low/0012.jpg
... just shows a happy space invader. (Why? Cos he's just landed at the northrop grumman base innit?)
L2id_your_alienz_plz
Designer pitches solar-powered AA battery
Applers howl over Mac OS fix
Apple's holiday Mac sales flatline
Thursday 18th December 2008 08:20 GMT
Little Suzie...
Who on earth buys their kid a mac desktop?
Seriously.
Seeing as the only decent desktops Apple produce are the Mac Pros which are a tad overpriced for the hardware they offer... and the rest iJUNK.
Seriously, I believe a mac laptop is the better Apple buy if Mac OS X is being contemplated as OS of choice. While I would buy (and have bought) an apple laptop, I would probably never buy an apple Desktop ever as a DIY one is cheaper. Or even something like a Dell, if you have to buy a pre-built system. And if you know where to look, you can still mac-ify it. And let's face it, the low end Apple ones are a crock of shite.
Story withdrawn
ArseASA rules 'Feck' non-offensive
Shuttle X27D
Thursday 11th December 2008 13:50 GMT
The Atom ...
all the disadvantages of x86 + all the disadvantages of in-order execution...
The only really great thing about it is its power consumption allowing really long life on devices like Eees. This ain't bad, it's pretty darn good but I would have preferred my Eee running a powerpc derivative of similar nick.
Apart from that if you expect any decent performance out of it, my God, even the instruction set is against you.
Would that the powers that be would junk x86 in all its guises .... and give us some other alternative.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
