Posts by Graham Dawson

Re: Plastic

Plastic means flexible and soft. We tend to associate it with hardness because petrochemical "plastics" appear hard in comparison, but they're generally quite malleable.

Re: Apple fanboys...

Example below...

Re: Does it have a button "Old Faithful"?

Surely a BSJ would also be 150 feet tall and somehow made from bergamot and rice?

Re: mermaids

Most of the barmaids around here look like dugongs anyway...

If the doors jammed and you haven't got a battering ram handy, perhaps?

Re: May I be the first to say....

For I do not come to destroy Moore's Law, but to fulfil it.

Re: What's wrong with worshipping satan?

Oh shut up, you old goat. Who are you? I do not know you.

Re: There is only one answer to Washington's issues:

Ah but the thing is. IT Vet, a corporation has to have some status as a "person" in order to be taxed on its income (what we call corporation tax). Anything else gets complicated extremely quickly. Considering how complicated current tax law is, do you really want to make things even more convoluted?

And of course, if a corporation is a "person", then that "person", under US law, has to have the same constitutional rights as any other citizen, otherwise you re-establish the precedent that certain citizens can be deprived of their rights simply because they fall outside an arbitrary definition of "deserving".

It's a very difficult and complicated situation, something of a conundrum in fact. Expecting politicians to fix it is madness. Expecting the courts to fix it is wishful thinking because they tend to be extremely conservative when it comes to taking away "rights" once granted. There is no simple and easy solution, and certainly depriving corporations of "personhood" will not fix things and will only, in fact, make them worse.

You'll lose corporation tax, for starters. You'll lose the ability to enforce law and judgements against corporate entities because those entities will no longer have any legally recognised "body" against which to bring judgement - and at the same time you'll not gain the ability to enforce judgements against the owners or managers, as they can simply hide behind collective responsibility, because individuals can't be legally held liable for the actions of others. Corporations, however, won't lose the ability to fund lobbying or contribute political donations. They'll just organise a few employees to do it on their behalf.

Re: CF bulbs are fine here too

All fluorescent lights give me a headache. Every single one I've tried, no matter how cheap or expensive, no matter the build quality, they all give me a headache without fail. I can always tell when there's a CFL in a room - even the high quality ones that emit an otherwise pleasing glow. Fortunately there are "energy efficient" halogens to keep me sane and headache free.

Something being "old" doesn't mean it's inferior and being "new" doesn't make something better.

Re: And now for the Hoagland interpretation

Seems like he took Iron Sky to be a documentary...

@Chris

Yes. And then you stamp on it a few times and keep going.

(disclaimer: I own an xbox. I play two games on it. This proves nothing.)

Actually they used string.

Re: What's this "ad" stuff people keep talking about?

You realise that an advert is a paid-for recommendation, yes?

Anyway, not that it matters. Usually word of mouth is easier to assess for quality, whilst paid-for ads are more likely to be something I don't want.

Re: More fake numbers by Google....

"The parents" are people around my age. It's depressing.

Re: Earth orbit?

Presumably they mean LEO.

Re: Oooh

Just popped open the app drawer on my phone and, lo and behold, an essentially identical icon is used for the Voice Search app. It even has rounded corners!

These design patents are silly. At least they haven't managed to snag a real patent on the thing. Things aren't that far gone yet.

Re: Won't happen for that price

Apollo could carry 5 astronauts with the addition of two more seats in the equipment bays from the very start. Improvements meant it could probably have carried 6 or even 7 by the time it was used on Spacelab, though things would have been rather cosy.

Dragon has significantly more internal space due to the miniaturisation of much of the tech involved and it's not inconceivable that it could also carry 6 without any difficulty, or more if you want to get really friendly with your fellow passengers.

But lets just assume that they haven't made any advances at all on the Apollo-era tech and that they're never going to make any cost-saving improvements at all. Ever. That makes it so much easier to argue against the idea.

Re: Seriously!?

hplasm nutshells it. There seems to be this strange idea that everything should just be handed to "us" (us being teachers, students, workers or whoever) on a silver platter without any effort. Life is not like that. Life is hard and painful and requires that we do something to get something.

Re: This is assuming the products are the same

Oh fine, if you want to get picky about it, they're tin-plated steel, the point is that it would have been unthinkable to use tin for that in the not so distant past. Once it was used as jewellery, now it's used to prevent corrosion in disposable cans.

Re: Annoying bear thingies

Nah, the Ewoks were Lucas's idea.

Ruby developer?

Re: Or...

Did you just seriously compare a news and entertainment company to the people tasked with defending our borders?

Re: Planet?

Given "planet" descends from the greek for "wanderer", it's more accurately a planet than anything in our solar system.

Re: HD video? Good enough for me

Except it makes cheap ION gear look seriously overpriced for the performance you get.

Re: Impartiality and scientific theories

The very concept of "the scientific establishment" is unscientific. Scientific fact is not determined by authority, but by the establishment and exercise of verifiable, repeatable experiments.

Re: what do you expect them to do

The quickest way to tax profit is to tax where that profit comes from: sales.

I'm no randian. I simply start from the position that government is a necessary evil that we should have as little of as possible and work from there. Rand argued that government was unnecessary. Very different position.