Posts by Rich

BNP DDoS 'mega-assault' not actually mega in the least

@AC

> In case you haven't checked their are millions of people voting BNP now and so you

> are attacking them too!

The BNP received 192,746 votes in the 2005 general election (0.7% of the total cast) and 18,020 in the 2008 London Assembly election (also 0.7% of the total cast), so "millions" have not voted for the BNP. It's a bit difficult to see how you could extrapolate those figures to suggest "millions" this year, especially when turnout is traditionally low for local and European elections.

Even if there were millions, it would still be right to attack a party espousing bigotry and hatred.

DARPA looking for mind-controlrepair brainplug tech

Defence posture

> Stimulation of non-human primates in order to evoke a biomimetic response

So they want to see what happens when they throw it a banana?

I have to go now. I'm having Donkey Kong flashbacks.

Russian schoolgirl invents inertioid-driven Venus rover

Lack of Truth

So 95% of the children born between 1972 and 1982 are "sensitive, gifted souls with an evolved consciousness"? I say bollocks.

Maybe Pravda is trying to bury its Soviet-era reputation: "There is no spark in the Truth and no truth in the Spark".

Boffins invent automatic net-hookup roboffinry machines

Coded attempt to warn us

Adam. Eve. Then Cain?

Start stockpiling the plasma rifles.

Junk science and booze tax - a study in spin

Full disclosure required

> In one meta study cited: "Four out of five cohort studies showed statistically significant

> reduction of all causes of mortality between 15 per cent and 25 per cent for moderate

> drinking." Moderate is defined as men who drink between 29g and 43g daily, and women

> between 14g and 29g daily.

Was this the only meta study which addressed the subject? And if not, how many came to a similar conclusion, no conclusion, or did not conclude this?

CERN declares Large Hadron Collider perfectly safe

@Colin

> Surely if the collider opens up a black hole, then we will all be dead in

> micro-seconds so we won't have anything to worry about.

If a black hole was created by the LHC it could only have the mass of the particles involved at most, so that's why it would be expected to evaporate very, very quickly. If somehow the hole was large enough to survive long enough to suck in more matter and grow, then it would fall towards the centre of the earth and start to orbit around the common centre of gravity, eventually carving out a large enough space in the core that we would start to see increased earthquakes, vulcanism, radiation effects and heating. Finally the earth's crust would collapse in, but that could all take months.

You're perhaps thinking of a black hole of stellar mass being conjured up, which isn't going to happen. However even then you wouldn't necessarily die in micro-seconds -- you might be far enough away to see just how long it would take those closer to the event horizon than you to die....

Tories would have to compensate ID vendors

Re: A prediction

> I predict that if Labour go ahead with this ID card project, and if they

> lose the next election, then the new incumbent government (presumably

> the Tories) will suddenly discover that ID cards are a wonderful thing

> after all, and given we've started, then we might as well finish it.....

Except they'll sell it to us as a population register rather than an identity database, on the grounds that we'll xenophobically agree to anything which claims to help expel illegal immigrants. It'll still be our day-to-day lives that get logged on it, though.

Want to buy Jacqui Smith's ID?

Plod squad

"...including establishing the City of London Police as the national lead on fraud."

Perhaps the 'national lead' should start by investigating their cultish friends.

Blighty to become old-time Inundation Nation

"hilltop deployable biodiversity payload flotation module"

Lewis Page. Never a man to use one short word when six long ones would be funnier.

Private sector saviours wanted for desperate ID scheme

@ nickj re: (untitled)

"That'll be the nice lady at the post office counter, then."

What post office counter?

Physicists go nuclear with online protest at funding cuts

@Anonymous Coward

> Particle physics has become expensive atom smashing. The major

> breakthroughs were done with pen+paper+genius not with a particle

> accelerator.

The major breakthroughs were indeed done with pen+paper+genius, but the resultant predictions were *confirmed* with a particle accelerator (or a damn good telescope). Without reliable predictions all you've got is a handful of pretty equations.

Church hall bans 'unchristian' yoga for nippers

Thermodynamics

> I also seem to remember a story told by a college lecturer that one of the

> pioneers of thermodynamics got pilloried for suggesting the pressure of a

> gas was due to the random movements of its atoms. The church got hold

> of this, spat its dummy out and said that this was obviously cobbnlers,

> because it inferred that there was free will, which, according to the church's

> interpretation of its teachings, didn't exist. According to the tale, the guy

> had the last laugh: He had the formula embodying this engraved on his

> headstone.

> I'm blowed if I can remember who that was, so if someone out there can

> enlihgten me, I'd be grateful.

That sounds like Ludwig Boltzmann, who had the formula for entropy (an aspect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics), S = k log W, engraved on his tombstone. He did do considerable work on the kinetic theory of gases, and was a strong supporter of atomic theory, but I don't recall hearing of the church ever laying into him for any of it. Then again, they probably wouldn't have been too chuffed that he committed suicide.

As US threatens to trash GATS, Antigua responds

Re: If we ask Her Majesty real nice, will England take us back?

> I am not saying you have a better government then the USA, but at least you have someone at the top that you love.

Not really. We just appear to have temporarily mislaid the guillotine we borrowed from the neighbours a while back. Must go have a cup of tea and think on it.

Aargh...Unless you think we love Gordon Brown? Hanging from a lamppost would be too good for the likes of him (not to mention his predecessor).