Next season's looters agree.
Posts by Marvin the Martian
1513 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2007
Page:
Google indoor Streetview images go live
We like zombies… because we are zombies
What's a bit rubbish in this is that words and concepts change meaning over time, and that's what's happened here. For example, "to stink" meant originally "to smell" [good/bad/sweet/strongly/faintly/...], but came to mean "to smell bad". The same is happening with "to smell" -- it can mean both, but without specification it's negative.
So here the zombie was taken from its voodoo context and changed. There was no zombie in western mythology, neither unguided nor voodoo-controlled, and modern mythologists (writers, directors, game designers) have filled that gap. There are many new creatures and concepts the last hundred years (especially in maths), does that mean that "humanity"'s mindset is changing in the same way (especially the maths)?
Apple plans big solar farm to clean dirty datacenter
With a lot of computer activity peaking late afternoon / early evening, and no strong seasonal trend, maybe windfarms would be more obvious choices than solar?
Tho cloudy business computing would be mostly 9-to-6 [serving one timezone westwards from NC].
Killing trees for greenness (greenicity? greenage?) is a think different idea though. Sure it will help the local ecosystem.
Greenpeace rant...
Think what you want, but in the 80s governments still thought it was a good idea to throw loose barrels of nuclear waste into the North Sea. It was only Greenpeace's suicidal zodiacs getting constantly in the news that put the pressure of public opinion onto legistlation to change this.
They may have run out of the more obvious, low-hanging-fruitcake insanely bad practice targets because of their earlier success, leaving them with more questionable aims now.
RIP greenpeace.
Man builds smartphone dock into arm
Larry Ellison takes a bath on San Fran mansion
Union enraged by secret driverless Tube plan
But is it losing *quality* jobs?
Yes, driving is a skilled job but no, it's not inspiring; it's driving circles under the ground with the occasional banter over the tannoy to relieve boredom. I'm sure the off-duty cameraderie is rewarding, but that can't be the aim of a job. You're mostly looking out for simple binary info (stop/go signals) that a machine can more reliably react to (push 'go'); the "human" task at hand is [1] gauging if too overcrowded, refusing to let on new passengers, and [2] seeing if all doors are clear, to drive off (or stop if the passengers suddenly shout), so within reach of computers by now, with a verify from central control if necessary.
That, and the unsociable hours --- with automatic trains there's essentially no reason not to run 24/7 if profitable, possibly over a reduced net like night buses. Yes, carrying out work on the track I suppose.
I'm guessing risk of strikes goes up: instead of balloting 1500 drivers, you have to just organise the 20 or so PFYs in the control room.
Apple shouldn't bother with TV...
Father-of-three attacked teen after Call of Duty jibes
Don't forget the three little helpers.
Has the bairns for fetching his slippers, crips, and the remote too.
Incidentally, what's this "tennager" of which the first line speaks --- Tennant's drinking teenager or so? Sounds plausible for the neighbourhood, with people named after UK beauty spots.
Now where's my little Slough with my fish lunch? Bet he's been goading Preston to steal Bexley's g-strings again.
China punts free condoms at iPhone owners
Linehan turns IT Crowd off but NOT on again
Ceglia's latest lawyer bungled child porn lawsuit
The legal view is that fantasizing about violating minors is never a good idea, under any circumstances. I'd say that's a reasonable viewpoint, and would rather not hear your personal reasons to the contrary, as I'd like to sleep tonight.
Fantasise about what you whatever you can do with a type of individuals who can give their consent, but not without those who can never --- animals and children.
UK shamed in high-speed broadband study
Google dumps + from Boolean search tool
And the asymmetry? What a horrible horrible choice.
Nobody seems to object to the illogic of it all: + is a symmetric operator, in logic and maths of course --- [a + b] equals [b + a]. "" isn't even a known operator in those (quite familiar: logic-->computer language notations, maths-->GCSEs) fields, up to now used to define units that would otherwise be broken.
It makes no sense whatsoever that [a "b"] equals [b "a"] (and certainly ["a b"] doesn't equal ["b a"]). I thought Google was stuffed with mathsy geeks.
Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'
A downvote for your first line.
"I thought that the battle on acceptance of climate change was a battle pretty much won." If you genuinely think that then you haven't really followed any news the last decade.
Well I thought religion and other superstitions were pretty much solidly debunked, too; quite a lot of people seem to interpret the evidence otherwise. And with evolution being genuinely unquestionable since several lifetimes, under overwhelming evidence, there's still a good quarter of Merricans solidly believing in being created.
Scientifically it's a no-brainer --- you pump out C02, it will trap heat, temperature will go up --- but proof of how fast and how much etc is far from solidly proven.
World Solar Challenge: Why the winners were so good
Asus names Eee Slider release date
Spamhaus and ISP spar over 'email DoS' blacklisting
"Curious that a director of such an outfit doesn't know this"
No, smart of him to softly fiddle the words to corroborate his (disingenuous) argument -- I read over it, and probably many or most would.
It's a bit strange that he's so happy to ruin the reputation of his company, starting a fight he cannot win (ask e360 or Austria's NIC).
Vegas man begs web for $1m to fix gigantic scrotum
$1,000,000?
I'm sorry, but that's a ridiculous made-up number. I guess he'll need it to retire on after the say $20,000 operation which made him the world's laughing stock.
For £300K you can have a series of operations to separate conjoined/siamese twins --- from flying them in with parents and lodging those for many weeks in London, to several operations to separate circulation and blood/brain barriers and bone and other tissues, and so forth and so forth.
As if the problem wasn't worth snipping off at 10kg... Or is he so massively overweight that he didn't notice given the overhanging belly?
Gulf of California terrorized by ONE-EYED MUTANT SHARK!
what simplistic explanation?
Google some shark eye pics: it's not about the white --- that's in every eye below the "not in use" part. It's that you have a black centre with a circular iris around it like in many mammals; shark eyes don't seem to look like that.
As for its location, it made me think they have a baby goblin shark, and they've plugged the fake eye between the nose and the extendible mandible. [e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin_shark .]
Robot resolves Rubik's Cube in record time
Apple slips, moneymen pounce
Bit trivial, but "Sell Sell Sell" may be the right conclusion.
Half the predictions in general should be too optimistic, the other half overly pessimistic --- if the average was nonzero, you'd have to add/subtract that difference: nothing new here then.
But given that the current stock value is based on the assumption that the prediction was right, it is correct that the value goes down as fast as the correct data is shown (or up if it proved pessimistic)... So what is your point?
Whether "sell" or "hold" depends on how you see it --- will there be a great new computer soon? There's little marrow to be sucked from the bones of the iPod, iPhones are in a crowded market and not making technological leaps forward, ... : how do you justify predicting another say 40%-80% higher profits next year? Ifyou don't actually expect shrinking turnover? Ah, you don't see an explanation? Well, "sell" it is then.
Groupon IPO could be as soon as Monday
Too late I'd say, it was ready for a "pump&dump" IPO.
There was a buzz about it a few months ago, it was going to be bigger than Google and MS combined --- but the last few months most reports have been negative, pointing to the unsustainability of the discounts and so forth. Momentum lost, game over; it can happily persist as a bunch of local clubs but that's it.
Intel mocks PC slowdown, laughs at skittish economy
Nipples and teen lesbians sexy even when ironic, ASA rules
Ballmer disses Android as cheap and complex
DeLorean goes electric for 2013 roll-out
Speaking of time travel,
It's like being back in 2000 when people thought it a good idea to get a built-in GPS.
I remember my sister around 2003 spending about 1000quid on one that was hilariously outdated after 2y or so, low res/ stupid+slow/ monocolour/ limited. And the maps didn't really update themselves either.
Winning new UK pylon design may never be used
The same as what's wrong with cast-iron bridges.
They're fine, just cost a lot of material and a lot of maintenance, while having been drawn up for an outdated spec sheet.
As for the suggestion that the public with a set of crayons can come up with a better design (especially the sackful of colourblind hedgehogs that constitutes ElReg's readership), that's just idiotic.
What scarring of the landscape? There's no deeper scars than those stone walls all through wales & england, visible from miles (where barb wire would have been visible only from say 500m)! Oh, they're "natural" or somewhat? No they're not, they were both built by man as the best tech they could lay their hands on.
I for one salute the new 50% lighter 40% shorter T-pylons.
Hard-up OpenOffice whips out begging-cap website
Why?
People need something that can make head & tails of unstable .doc and .docx files, so that basically fills the work schedule up with reverse-engineering. For a lot of people, the only time they need Word is to fill in .doc job application forms or periodic report forms; say a science student will be using LaTeX for their actual work.
What original thing you need in what is essentially a runaway typewriter? Integration with another program in the suite -- ah no that's the same as Office.
Solarcars are hot!
Which actor should play Steve in upcoming biopic?
Homeland Security bungles 'pre-crime' tech test docs
Scientists break card that secures homes, offices, transit
Storage is ending in tiers
This Dianamania is a slur on Jobs
Lightsabres to illuminate Christmas dinner
Amazon to whup Apple rivals when Kindle Fire hits UK
UK punters happy to pay £3 to top up e-wallets
Oracle accuses Autonomy chief of telling 'whopper'
Microsoft's Android patent ransom to 'total $444m' next year
Computer sim explains why hippies became extinct
Apotheker severance outrage: $2.4m 'bonus'
What are you babbling?
He was FIRED. F-I-R-E-D. My mate got made redundant last week and he didn't get into a week-long negotiation with his employers/golfbuddies to end up with 2-3y worth of pay, he got a months' pay. And my mate didn't halve the company's value while he worked there, he just got laid off with 10% of his colleagues.
Giving one-man losing streak any cent not strictly legally necessary is not doing any good for the company (he's gone, forever, no goodwill to bank on); it's just stealing from your reserves and/or shareholders.
ISPs get flimsy self-help leaflet on net speed ads
Wot?
So you accept 20% of your public getting LESS than 1/5th of the advertised speed as "good"?
Alternative: How about scaling cost with speed? Say £10/month is base cost, and the rest of the bill is speed-related: [any average below 5% of advertized = reimbursement of base cost,] any average below 25% of advertized speed is free, 25% costs £10/month, 50% costs £15/month, 75% £20/month, 100% £25/month so max is £35/month --- all these numbers to be scaled in function of maximum monthly price.
Or easing the price function so that 75% costs about as much as 100% --- for diminishing returns: in the end, as long as streaming HD works, whether your new Lucid Linx downloads 20% faster or not, what does it matter. Of course theres will be few people between 75% and 100%: your local top speed is not achievable on late afternoon/early evening due to crowding.
HP recruits Goldman Sachs to grapple activist investors
Acer Timeline X 5830T
Journo register gaffe a boon for media overlords
No, no, no, you see it the wrong way.
It's a positive thing: if you're photographing on the street and you can show you're on the list to the bobby that immediately pops up, then you can go on with your business. (Otherwise, it's buy-bye to the camera.) So it's for journalists own good, really.
Now, let me get on the board of the quango that administers the list, letting people on for only £8/year ("citizen journalists/bloggers"), or £80/year ("professional journalists"). Cheap even at twice the price, and remember, for in own interest.