* Posts by graeme leggett

2467 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2007

Movie review: Star Trek Into Darkness

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: The largely unsuccessful - but rather good - Star Trek: The Motion Picture

ST TMP - everything you could want in Star Trek, but spread over a large distance.

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Benedict Cumberpatch may be good, but ......

Ah Benedict Cumberpatch, as heard on BBC radio in "Cabin Bressure" and "Rumbole of the Pailey" among others....

10-day stubble: Men's 'socio-sexual attributes' at their best

graeme leggett Silver badge

can't just not shave

I get stubble from my cheekbones down to my collar line. Even if I was to not shave to get the stubbly look I would still have to shave the perimeter to keep things neat and tidy.

optimum masculinity stubble sounds like more hard work than clean-shaven.

Why next iPhone screen could be made of SAPPHIRE - and a steal...

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: whyPhone

some articles online say that Corning had invented a tough glass (Chemcor) in the 1960s which they stopped producing in the 1990s. Come the smartphone age, they started thinking what they could do, went back to Chemcor and came up with a new (and patentable) formulation which is Gorilla glass.

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Have a gorilla...

"lot of goons in today!"

...there's more where that came from...

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: But remember...

certainly not "where there is life"

FONDLESLAB market DEATH STRUGGLE: Latest rankings in

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Re: Interesting that some still prefer inferior hardware

perhaps as an adjunct to an existing ipad, or an established investment in Apple store purchases....

Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves

graeme leggett Silver badge

Overdrive

If it supports Overdrive, then (location depending) could just use it for library ebooks. More limited selection but no cost.

Branson's SpaceShipTwo succeeds in first rocket-powered flight

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Mach 1.2?

@Freetard

Right so now we need a "cool wall" for aircraft.

Concorde goes over on the right under "thermodynamically immobile"

And then we put everything else to the left. May I suggest Saunders-Roe Princess (that one might be more "oh my word!" than cool), Avro Vulcan, Supermarine Spitfire Mark V, as going up the chilly end.

UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now

graeme leggett Silver badge

One hope?

Since it is the Statutory Instruments that will have the actual content of the law, there is a possibility that

the appropriate SI does not come around for a while, by which point some opposition could have been mustered.

The Act includes some more headliney (even noteworthy) targets which might receive preferential treatment - eg "shareholders of UK quoted companies binding votes on directors’ pay"

Spotted this one in the mix "•Removing the need for retailers to notify sales and hiring of television sets" - presumably the requirement was linked to the TV license

Pirate Party wins seats in Icelandic election

graeme leggett Silver badge

Iceland not wanting to join EU

already tied in through through the European Economic Area, which affects most aspects,and the Schengen agreement. The fish and finance will be the sticky issue not links to disputed file hosting.

Student falsely IDed by Reddit as Boston bomber found dead

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Lazy Fat Americans.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is just fructose and glucose. And in a similar ratio to honey (about 55/45)

Profitably because it makes glucose syrup, which comes cheaply from Corn (Maize) , have a similar taste profile to sugar (sucrose). Sucrose when consumed is readily converted in the acidic stomach into its two components - glucose and fructose - in a 50/50 ratio.

Making large amounts of saccharide-laden drinks available at cheap prices, and then consuming then is the problem, not the specific carbohydrate profile.

Ubuntu 13.04: No privacy controls as promised, but hey - photo search!

graeme leggett Silver badge

unless you are already in the know, it's hard to tell without looking it upwhich comes after or before what.

How about building numbers into the names

"Knock on the door"

"Five Alive"

"Six of the best"

....

"On it's own - Eight!"

Guess who PC-slaying tablets are killing next? Keyboard biz Logitech

graeme leggett Silver badge

you forgot one area - webcams

Which except for a desktop PC or server are fitted to every other computing device these days....

Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Wonder if it will fit in an altoids tin?

If you're British, wouldn't it have to be a "St Bruno" or "Old Holborn" tobacco tin once used by your grandfather to keep screws in?

Bill Gates offends Koreans after sticking hand down trousers

graeme leggett Silver badge

could have been worse

he could have had his hand down the front of his pants as the headline implied. Hey! that actually works for both sides of the Atlantic.

Human rights groups rally humanity against killer robots

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: And this will work how?

well, it'd give us another reason to go to war with them.

and it's easier to ban them before they appear rather than have to explain to upcoming nations the dichotomy of "yes, we've got (insert weapon of choice), but you're not allowed them"

graeme leggett Silver badge

@AC

naval defence is not so much the concern, and you imply there's still a human in the loop

the concern seems to be more over eg automonous drone flying across a city looking for insurgents with technicals or carrying rpgs and shooting them up without recourse to an overseer to say "actually that's a roll of carpet"

perhaps a ban would allow self-defence (anti-missile missiles) but not counter-offence (a missile automatically launched at the area where the anti-ship missile originated.

Harassed Oracle employee wins case, cops huge legal bill

graeme leggett Silver badge

The offer

Was Oracle's offer a "here's the cash, let's never talk of this again" offer or a "yes, we were in the wrong, you were treated badly but we think this is a reasonable sum to cover legal costs and your suffering"?

In the first case if taken up, while outsiders might suspect it was an admission of guilt, it's not been made clear and she would not be able to say that she was harassed while working at Oracle, there might also be some residual stigma/rumours implying that she made it up, "couldn't take the heat", "what do you expect from a woman" etc

Notebook makers turn to Android in face of Windows woes

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Good news

"time before they start selling something WITHOUT an OS installed!"

But they won't sell many to the average public.

My reasoning:

1) The ordinary person expects to switch their machine on and for it to work, not to have to load the software themself

2) Poor level of support from the OEM for the user. Though cheap for the OEM, and good for the local IT shop (bad for family members who have to support relatives unpaid).

Not to say there isn't room to sell bare machines to businesses and expert but the larger businesses would always be in a position to negoiate on licencing and the number of the latter alone wouldn't be a great dent in Microsoft's revenue.

Google Glass will SELF-DESTRUCT if flogged on eBay

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: strangest feature?

Didn't Slippery Jim use them in the Stainless Steel Rat books?

graeme leggett Silver badge

Why "sell" in the first place

Just make it a indefinite rental period, and all those lovely restrictions become enforceable.

Though I bet even with the restrictions on selling in place, someone will try and sell one, and someone will buy it - if the price is right.

Internet Explorer makes modest gains against Google Chrome

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Lies, damned lies and ...

I don't know about reliable as such but a well annotated article on wikipedia says that Twain attributed it to Disraeli though it doesn't appear in anything Disraeli wrote and was not a phrase known during Disraeli's lifetime

Bitcoins: A GIANT BUBBLE? Maybe, but currency could still be worthwhile

graeme leggett Silver badge

currency meltdown

Isn't the greatest worry about Bitcoins (or other digitial currency) not that someone might be able to nick, con or otherwise appropiate your coins for their own use, but that someone might try and do a Goldfinger (film not novel) on the whole kaboodle and reduce it all to a worthless memory?

Cutting CO2 too difficult? Try these 4 simple tricks instead

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: "Simple"?

Because it's easier to stop making soot than it is to stop making CO2?

Or because the effect of reducing soot and methane is more pronounced?

Guesses on my part......

Oz regulator “welcomes” debate on limiting net neutrality

graeme leggett Silver badge

Interesting development

I'm not so sure the statement about peer-to-peer automatically translates to "p2p is the criminals' friend" (though that may have been what he was thinking)

Some (not all) internet traffic may be compared to postal services. You might want emails, and definitely voice traffic, to get the equivalent of "Next day by 9am" while a software distribution could come 2nd Class. But post is paid for at the point of sending and internet by the (supposed) size/capacity of the pipe it comes down.

Perhaps a more granular form of service provision where you could pay per month for a certain speed for your ordinary traffic, and a different price for voice traffic and a separate price again for p2p traffic in a manner similar to paying for bundles of cable channels. But aside from the difficulty of getting a mechanism - and provider enthusiasm - for that, takeup would be dependent on customers. Not all would want to buy the Premium Sports voice speed but would accepting a lower speed for p2p see a saving too.

The gloves are on: Nokia emits super-sensitive £99 Windows Phone

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Ah noooooooooo

So £100 and take a hit on performance or pay £240 for those essential games.

graeme leggett Silver badge

O2 example

out of curiosity, I had a look at O2s offers on this phone.

24 Months cheapest is pay £60 and £11/month

18 Months cheapest is pay nothing and £19/month - there's no option to have a lower tarriff cost and pay more for the phone, I guess you're expected to buy it outright - in fact you'd get more for less money (certainly in data) on buying the phone and spending £10/month pay-and-go.

German boffins aim to burn natural gas - WITHOUT CO2 emissions

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: By "carbon"...

you can put the waste anywhere you like so long as you don't burn it.

You could bury it deep in the ground in case anyone came up with a a way of using it later.

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Why not run the exhaust through a large greenhouse?

In theory, that's what British Sugar do in one of their Norfolk factories.

Leaving aside the burning of fossil fuels to produce the heat and power needed to evaporate tonnes of water, one part of the process involves the deliberate production of CO2 from limestone which is then bubbled through the extracted sugary water to clean and clarify it. A lot of that CO2 is recombined with the calcium from the limestone to form new carbonate but there is a CO2 enriched exhaust which is directed into a big tomato growing greenhouse. Not 100% effective but economic, and the sugar industry has been relentlessly chasing any efficiency it can incorporate for decades.

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Where does the carbon go?

High carbon steel is at most about 2% carbon, beyond that and you are actually producing something like cast iron.

So to produce a ton or so (a tonne - forget the US, they don't know what a real ton looks like) of hydrogen gas you will have 4 tons of carbon giving 400 tons of steel.

I don't disagree its not a start, but there needs to be a way of removing the carbon as it is formed without diluting the liquid metal "reactor". Perhaps another adjunct - that doesn't react with hydrogen - is required to help the carbon precipitate out....

Stop with that LTE-B nonsense... it's NOT a thing - mobe standards guardian

graeme leggett Silver badge

standard compliant

perhaps providers should be made to state explicitly which agreed standards they do meet or put in a disclaimer along the lines of "LTE-B is not a term recongised by the standards body, and anyway the speed you do get will be entirely dependent on what you mobile provider gives you not what the technology is. If in doubt remember your home broadband is supposed to be super mega bleeding fast, but it isn't is it?"

Microsoft follows Apple into the dock over warranty terms in China

graeme leggett Silver badge

Genuine issue?

Is the department putting its best foot forward to defend China's emergent consumer nation from the rapacious foreigner, or angling for some sort of quid pro quo to "make the problem go away".

Tax man to take a bite of tech employees' free meals?

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Remember Luncheon Vouchers?

Apparently the tax relief on the vouchers was set up at about 15p (but in whatever it was in "old money" then) in 1948, but never adjusted for inflation thereafter.

So even by the 1970s the most a 15p voucher would buy was three packs of KP Outer Spacers, or about 4 packets of Rolo's. Hardly a square meal to set you up for another 3 hours in the office.

New rules to end cries of 'WTF... a £10 online booking fee?'

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: wood for the tress

reasonable to charge a bit extra if extra work is involved.

non payment example - gift wrap. "that box of chocs is a tenner, and for a quid extra, I'll put it in some pretty paper"

You see the hidden cost when you go to your corner shop and it says "minimum spend £5 for debit cards".

If you buy a Yorkie (other chocolate bars are available) shelf price 70p and pay cash, that's done and dusted.

But they don't want you paying for it by debit card because they'll be charged say 25p to do so, and that's a big chunk of the profit they would have made on your purchase

Movie bosses demand Google take down takedown notices

graeme leggett Silver badge

according to the BBC he has qualified his comments

"I am 100 per cent, completely and utterly against people illegally downloading anything," he told the Sydney Morning Herald."

How I nearly sold rocket windows to the crazy North Koreans

graeme leggett Silver badge

Mixed lessons from history?

On one hand, the US dropped nuclear weapons on Japan to avoid a ground war involving lots of military deaths (and also -according to some - to find out if an atom bomb was really as devastating as a British scientist had calculated for them ).

On the other the US and its allies had a stand-up fight back and forth across the Korean peninsular without using atomic weapons on the enemy.

So what's an unworldly regime suppose to work out from these two events - that the US hate Japanese facism more than the Asian communism?

Giant solar-powered aircraft to begin cross-country flight

graeme leggett Silver badge

Not having a film about it with Jimmy Stewart and lacking a glamorous landing seems to have counted against them.

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Maybe Boeing should talk to these people...

Electric plane, 1 example, 1 flight, 1 pilot, no passengers

787, lots of aircraft, 2 pilots, rest of crew, hundreds of passengers on each.

Balance of risk very different

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: I , for one, am fascinated with this

On the plus side , at the end of a flight you would still have those tons of batteries to fill again

On the minus side, you would still have those tons of batteries and need stronger undercart for the heavier landing.

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: The video is wrong.

Lindbergh (1 person) got $25000 alcock and brown(2 persons)got £10000

The R34 airship which flew both directions in 1919 and carried 30 or so on board got bugger all.

But an electric powered airship makes more sense than an electric aeroplane

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Units and comparisons...

But if possible flights take a great circle route so calculating flight speed in degrees of that circle makes sense.

Tim Cook eats necessary crow, apologizes to China

graeme leggett Silver badge

Is anti-greed stance in China public and/or official or private and/or personal ?

Rocket boffinry in pictures: Gulp the Devil's venom and light a match

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: I aim for the stars @ Graeme

Yes now I rethink what I wrote I had probably meant to Phrase it as somewhere between "decided" and "realised" but betwrrn this Blackberry virtul keyboarf and text prediction I have ended up implying the government of the day WAS correct when my actual position is more they MIGHT havr been right

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: I aim for the stars

I think the government realised that despite launching some V2s directly after the war, developing our own icbm ( and the missile silo along the way) and putting a satellite in space that it was just too expensive to do on its own.

Apple denied trademark protection for 'iPad mini'

graeme leggett Silver badge

but why?

Having got ipad stitched up good and proper as their trademark, under what conditions could anyone else use the phrase "iPad mini" without infringing?

Reg man bested in geek-to-geek combat - in World War 3 nerve centre

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Where it is?

regarding the accent...

BBC Radio 4 Extra has the moderately comic "Alison and Maud" in its schedule (should be available on iPlayer) Set in/near Norwich one of the supporting characters - Mr Mullet - has a fairly authentic accent. Not as impressive as Samuel in NIck Warburton's "On Mardle Fen" series though. Also the work of the Nimmo Twins.

One last thing - the homonyms. My wife criticizes the way I pronounce "bear" "beer" and "bier" exactly the same. Best thing to do though is to get yourself down to Neatishead and afterwards go for a listen to the locals. But remember to leave before night falls!

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Where it is?

Do you leave Naaridge on the Wroxham rud. When yew git ter Hov'ton, go roight ter Hornin.

Then in Hornin, arrsk someone.

In all seriousness, I live about 10 miles away and not been yet. I really should get out more.

Revealed: Vendors’ worst sales fluff

graeme leggett Silver badge

If a company has to say that a piece of prose is it's a mission statement (rather than just saying what it does) , then they have already gone down in my estimation.

I'm not expecting English Literature in a company's brochures or website, but ordinary plain English Language would do.

(shouldn't be one to talk - I got a B in the former but only a C in the latter when I took my O-levels. And in the former I answered the question about Macbeth without having read the text only going en masse with the class to see the Polanski film)

Blighty's revolutionary Cold War teashop computer - and Nigella Lawson

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Blue Streak Unsuccessful?

And when we went with the American suggestion of Skybolt - they cancelled it.