* Posts by I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

1355 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Dec 2007

NSA: Yes, some of our spooks DID snoop on overseas lovers

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

Re: Trust our security precautions, they say...

"In a jail I'm sure there is a locksmith who could use his knowledge to cause mayhem there should he decide to use his access to do so."

Employment prospects for members of a Family:

Priest

Locksmith

Scrap Metal merchant

Banker

Lawyer

Civil Engineer

Welder

Butcher

Systems Admin

Prime Minister in wartime

Hell I could go on indefinitely. An iconic hero of WW2 was the anarchic inventer of the Dirty Dozen. (Filthy 13; a great book by the way.) There isn't a position of trust that isn't occupied by some of the worst criminals imaginable. Sometimes they are there as a necessary evil. Sometimes they are there because shit rises. Look at Winston Churchill. How the hell did that disaster happen?

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Re: Disbelief

I don't think Machievellian politics works like that. A simple reminder in one's pay slip that the NSA has the first say who goes to Guatanamo on extended leave usually secures compliance. Going to Guatanamo on extended leave will accomplish the alternative.

Gone are the days when murder was used to secure internecine objectives. We are much more civilised these days.

Nokia demonstrates: White Space ploy can get more 4G handsets into same spectrum

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Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...

(As long as NSA keeps quiet long may that continue.)

Doesn't it seem to anyone else that this is a technology with an inbuilt design failure?

I know nobody in their right minds would ever consider creating a denial of service attack; I mean to say, it is against the ethics of freedom of speech right?

Not even the American Government would do that, right?

Sooooo....

Air mattress blast blows German man across room

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Boffin

Re: Explanation for the explosion

The trick is to insert them in a clay soil pipe with a vent that allows a large air intake just before the ignition. Aparently air fireballs are far more destructive than the good old fashioned WW2 firebombs.

No idea how they would compare with TNT though.

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Facepalm

Re: How do you become an expert in matress explosions?

You get someone to fill you in.

I was going to repair my leaky alloy wheels with that stuff. But I don't think I will go along for the ride now.

Cisco sued by East Carolina University

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Actually, Kiribati would be the proper owner of the "tomorrow starts here", at time zone GMT

Actually Greenwich mean time is the start of today which would make somewhere in Brazil (on the coastal side of the R. dos Pescaderos) the first place to see daylight for most of the year. (Not counting polar regions.)

Since neither Cisco nor the college would be places where tomorrow starts the whole thing is just a typical US meme.

Anger grows over the death of Aaron Swartz

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My sympathy to his family and friends

I'd never heard of him but it turns out he was my hero.

White House rejects Death Star petition: '$850qn too pricey'

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No. It wasn't really not finished.

Inside the new climate row as Mystic Met Office goes cool on warming

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Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

uk.sci.weather vigorously discusses the operation of the Met Office every day. There are very few who support either side of the argument wholeheartedly. I think this is because the majority of posters on there are adept and quite a few are expert.

Your assertion about warming is quite correct with one small caveat:

Earth's heat budget doesn't translate from hot to cold but from warm air to low pressure.

There is no balance for any equations for places with higher temperatures versus places with lower temperatures. When it gets warm it doesn't stay warm until it gets warmer, not as long as night follows day it doesn't.

Likewise when all that terrible, nutritious greenhouse gas gets warm, it rises and although a lot of it comes back down again some of it acts as a coolant, making its way out of the troposphere to place where it can divest itself of all that destructive warmth you worry so much about.

And guess what else can happen up there:

CH4 +2O3 = 2CO2 + 2H2O

Most of the ozone reaction are nice simple easily balanced chemical equations like that.

It's almost as if there is a god after all.

All your audio, video kit is about to become OBSOLETE

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Re: I remember 30years ago

Was it that long ago that Stock, Aiken and Waterman was making wankmusak?

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Quick

Get some Reg Hacks off to Vegas with all expenses pared. I want to hear more.

Twitter won't unmask racist Frenchie unless US judge says so

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Re: "We adhere to the laws of the countries in which we operate."

They also have fat ***ish lawyers.

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

Re: "We adhere to the laws of the countries in which we operate."

Kim Dotcom was willing to help US authorities if they used the legal protocols required. They never did. Besides which the man is still presumably innocent. Do you mean to say you haven't been following hisstory on here?

Drop that can of sweet pop and grab a coffee - for your sanity's sake

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

Smokin hot

>I'd like a life experienced for 70 years, than death avoided through sacrifice of that experience for 100.

My dad used to say that.

About tobacco.

Capstan Navy Cut.

Then he got cancer.

That frightened him.

But hey, he had a life full of experience right up until his 70's. 71 -and shitty health for decades.

He smelt like a red tide. I don't know what people dying of sugar poisoning smell like.

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Re: Thanks, Ace.

What you have to do is warm the oil condensate off the pot with hot water and then add the leaves and the boiling water. Instant coffee is OK~ish with warm water as it is a processed food that just needs rehydrating.

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Soda

Any idea how much soda there actually is in soda?

I get the impression that salt levels are similar to that of sea water.

That can't be right can it?

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

Re: Sweet Poison

Of course they don't.

The United States of Americans put it in their coke for them. How do you think the recipe is only known by two people when they have bottling plants all over the world?

Hint:

They make the syrup in the USA.

Please give me negative points. Points make prizes when they come from idiots like you.

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Moron Poison

Sad to see you marked down after taking on one of the Chimp's minders.

So I gave you one. I would have given you two. One for hitting at Donald Rumsfeld' company and corrupt politics and one for being right.

Unfortunately Internet forae are no place to be right.

(Unless you are a wing nut (with a penchant for bananas.))

Buying a petabyte of storage for YOURSELF? First, you'll need a fridge

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Re: 1 whole PB all for me..... Hmmmmm...

> > it seems madness to me that a decent proportion of the world’s storage is storing redundant copies of the same content.

> > How many copies of EastEnders does the world need to be stored on a locally spinning drive?

Regardless of how much data you need to store, it doesn't all need to be on a spinning drive. You don't keep a collection of DVDs in continual motion. The whole hypothesis was silly.

Scottish Highlands get blanket 3G coverage

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Re: Voda Femtocell

Check inside for the word AMSTRAD and you will know what happened to all SKY's dodgy kit.

First rigid airship since the Hindenburg enters trials

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Hosed down

The paratroops that dropped on the tank battalion were shot out of the sky. The egyptians did exactly the same thing to us when they took over the canal there. Hitler stopped the parachute attacks after the problems in (was it) Crete?

It was obvious that they were completely at the mercy of anyone below them if the home side was prepared. None has ever come up with a solution. But if you were a looong way behind enemy lines and had a night operation planned, you could successfully land an army with a few large airships.

An army that would be seen coming, quickly surrounded and have very little chance of surprise in the first place and no hope of supply or rescue in the second.

It isn't a military solution. But it should be a military project. Otherwise civilians will never reinvent it.

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Airships vs Helicopters

The cost effectiveness of the ships is the controlling factor here. Cost and maintenance of a large helicopter is huge. Fuel efficiency is very low.

Airships are likely to scale the way liners and oil tankers do, the bigger, the better.

The only problem is that they would need their own air force to protect them.

(Which would make them about even -except that if you had a fleet of airships you would have at least 1 spare air-force to play with when not invading Norway.)

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Re: How can this be viable

> If an airship was used to transport troops to take on a militarily capable country, surely it just presents a nice large slow moving target for a missile system to put a few holes in?

Correct.

This is the primary reason they are no longer used.

This is an extract from Storm a biography of Irvin Crick. (The rain maker.)

In the early morning hours of April 4, 1933, Krick's habit of searching out fronts on weather maps involved him in an event which firmly set the course of his future.

With an early morning class at CalTech, Krick took a nap each night during the five hours of little flying activity when the IIO-miles-an-hour Fokker F-IOs flew from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. As he turned in, he remarked to the radio operator, "I'm glad we're not flying off the coast of New Jersey tonight. There's a cold front coming down from the north-east and a warm front coming up from the south-west. When the two meet there is going to be one awful mix-up. It'll be very violent."

Krick was no sooner asleep than he was shaken awake by the radioman.

"My God, the Akron just went down in the Atlantic off Bamegat Light -right where you said all that rough weather was coming!" he exclaimed. The Akron was an enormous airship -78? feet long, large enough to accommodate five airplanes aboard. It was the pride of the United States Navy. Seventy-three men died in the disaster, the headline event of the day.

At school later in the morning Krick sought out Dr. Theodore von Karman. Known as "master of the wind" for his knowledge of fluid mechanics, this Hungarian-born scientist was chairman of CalTech's Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory, which later was to spawn the world-famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Von Karman also headed the Goodyear Airship Institute at Akron, Ohio.

"The Akron never had a chance," Krick said. "The wind shear set up by these two opposing air masses blowing in opposite directions was bound to destroy the ship. She should never have been flown into this kind of weather."

Von Karman was impressed by Krick's earnestness. "Get me the velocity of these winds and we'll calculate the stresses on the ship," von Karman told him.

The calculations, by Frank Wattendorf, Karman's assistant, proved Krick to be correct:

The Akron, broken in two like a stick across the knee of a giant, was doomed from the moment the ship left the hangar, although the United States Weather Bureau had reported that the storm posed no danger to flying that day.

***

So that is major problem #2 covered. Modern meteorology can help plan journeys of 5 days and get most aircraft out of harm's way any old three days ahead. I don't know what metal fatigue and electro-static problems still remain.

Problem 3 is the gas and containers

And a loooooong way behind is the ballast problem. There is always going to be a problem with trim, even the most modern submarines have the same thing to contend with. With aircraft yawing and etc., is part of the fun of flying and is compensated for by computers in larger craft.

Boffins create quantum gas with temperature BELOW absolute zero

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

Re: T is related to the logarithm of available states

What is the answer in double decker bus lanes?

US military nails 'best ever' Microsoft deal, brags size does matter

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

Re: So, Windows is...

> 2,000,000 users and 15 years of custom ways

Not one of those 2000000 employees has a custom-way brain cell in their head?

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

And it's over to India

For some offshore support.

Good job with those injuns BTW.

US, UK probe HP claims of accounting mischief at Autonomy

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Re: Angling to get another Brit into a US Court?

> You say HP 'sells junk' but it still sells an awful lot of what it makes both to business and to consumers.

> HP has a lot of very big customers who are at least content with their products and services.

> Bill and Dave's life's work has not been squandered;

> HP may be going through tough times at present but it will survive.

You mean people haven't stopped buying new printers when their cartridges run out -and gone to play elsewhere?

That is all I know about the way that company does business. It's not even as sound a prospect as asset stripping. Well, is it?

I'm surprised it lasted as long as it has

(Not that I find it hard to believe people are so bloody stupid.)

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Shit happens

Every monolithic company loses its way eventually. Most of the electrical producers lost it when computers took over the world. The music industry has lost it Microsoft is on the way and it looks like it is going to be followed by Apple.

I remember walking up the north end of Manchester looking at all the cotton factories sans roofs a few years after the city lost its shirts. Sirt happens in Asia these days so does all the computing. Terry Pratchet wrote something about it in his book Making Money.

Forget your Adam Smiths and all the empty headed philosphies about the labour market. When someone else can do it better/cheaper, all it comes down to is shipping. No rich bastard gives a sod about anyone losing their job when the beans get counted.

Dead Steve Jobs' mega yacht seized by testy Philippe Starck

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I thought it looked like a WW1 German battlevaggen

But they got out of port, once.

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Re: Dead Steve Jobs

> Is there also an "Alive" Steve Jobs.

Do androids count?

Falling slinky displays slow-motion causality

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

Re: Centre of gravity

The bottom of the spring has already reacted to gravity when it was drropped from the launch site. It is at it's elastic maximum. The tension in the spring is still holding it up...

Feck!

My brane hertz!

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Re: Seems overcomplicated

You nailed it. My explanation of that simplicity was overcomplex. And wrong.

Well done.

I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

It is an overcomplicated explanation.

If the top of the spring is accelerating at the speed of gravity (just keeping the term simple, it is in free fall as the attraction of the spring to itself (its collapse) is equal and opposite) the reaction to that (tension / intention) is equal and opposite acceleration up towards the top of the spring (with an equal and opposite force.)

TC/DU:

The bottom of the spring is thus accelerating upwards at the speed of gravity.

Schmidt 'very proud' of Google's tiny tax bill: 'It's called capitalism'

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Anyone hear ever heard of Lord Vesty?

A family of slumlords who kept a huge set of derelict London docks before they gave the site to charity after container docks closed them. Well nearly. They never paid any tax at all and I don't know who the landlord of Canary Wharf is nor who any of the other old dockland owners are.

I do know as Britains biggest meat importers at one time, they famously never paid tax.

Patrick Moore: Lived with cats, accompanied Einstein on the piano

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Citation needed.

Agreed.

I don't know what he did in the RAF but as with everyone in the British military at that time from Monty down, they were nearly all socialists.

Not that that makes them any less racist if they are such. However I was friends with a bomber pilot in his last years and his biggest regret was bombing civilians in WW2. The idea that they were Germans never arose. People did what they were told in those days. And while they will swallow any old bilge even going as far as becoming antisemitic when it was safest to do so, most of the viable opposition to Hitler was knifed in 1938 IIRC.

And all the propaganda the Germans were subject in the decade leading up to WW2 to had to have a massive effect on the most obedient people in Europe.

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Re: The end of an Era

Probably more the fault of the BBC than yours. That buch of fairies are more interested in buggering children than doing the nation a decent service.

Republican staffer fired for copyright reform suggestions

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Got a link?

NT

Arbitrators side with Foxconn in brain-damaged worker case

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The beauty of the slave trade

Once it is set up it is too powerful a money maker to be removed without considerable violence.

We have it Britain too when supermarkets (for just on very obvious example) work a ring to underpay farmers etc and force their labourers to work in what would normally be considered Victorian regimes if it were not for Britain's vital need to police everything from Terrrrsts.

John McAfee rushed to hospital over heart attack fears

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He has already got his own reality and a computer.

If he can just lay off the coffee long enough to use it we will all be happy.

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I love your colonial coloquialisms.

> If he steps foot in US soil he can be tried and given the death penalty.

It translates like poetry:

If he sets foot on US soil he can be tried and given the death penalty.

Which translates:

If he sets foot on US soil he can be fried.

And then there is what you may have meant:

If he is deported to the USA he could face a trial and if the trial was held in ?insert suitable state here? if found guilty he might be sentenced to death. If the unlikely were to follow, he might be executed.

And the beauty of your prose is that it states a truism that everyone reading it already knows.

Just like poetry.

(And the stark, staring obvious.)

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Re: He's not an alleged murderer

> There is a little known law that says if an American kills another American in foreign county, they can be tried in the US.

You mean if he is guilty he doesn't have to be tried don't you?

How little is this law known and not by whom?

Court ruling means Kim Dotcom can sue NZ spooks

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Do tell.

> NZ Govt which has allowed Jackson and his Hollywood mogul mates to destroy basic worker protections

Is this anything like the Star Wars scandals where everyone except the actors and screenwriters and whoever make money?

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Thanks for clearing up the badge thing.

So its silver for Silly version.

What would the yellow ones be?

Brassed off but has no life?

And Oh Glod! another post by *-for brains?

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1 slut: Canada

> I salute Canada for refusing to extradite in capital cases, unless the death penalty is taken off the table.

Is that a joke?

They had the Mounties kidnap one of their own ambassadors and let the CIA bungle it so he died in their custard.

They shouldn't be letting anything go over the border to a country that is so trigger happy and shit for brains when it comes to dealing with furrrners and terrrrrrists and has no mechanism for telling the difference.

Moon riven by colossal cracks

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Re: Request for technical information

I note on the NASA page that the anomalies run in spirals that were not mentioned at any time. No more than the probability of any part of the surface being impacted from an head-on collision (as would be the case with a neat hemispherical crater.)

Come to think of it, if the washing machines were following the same N/S course all the time, wouldn't the craters appear eliptical?

How would they correct for that in an application working in miligals?

(Which if I read the article correctly is 1/1000 of 1/10 of a meter per second per second acceleration.) I mean they cross this bordeline of inches (2.5ish cm multiples) (N0 1D34 what that is in Regespik.) and manage to adjust the loops they are getting so that the craters are corrected for the books.

Is that likely?

John McAfee blogs from Guatemalan jail, says coffee excellent

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Re: why is a free trial gag not in the story

I loved the idea he can get a computer in a Belize gaol. As for being crazy, I don't understand why everyone thinks that about him. What gets me is that in a ralatively well off country we have about 1/3 of the male population in prison at one time or another and the only access we get to electronics is TV and radio if we deserve it "for being good".

So we come out with no real contact to reality and expect to start again with only Coronation Street and News At Ten for points of contact with the free world. We can't even get to read the Register.

That's cruel and inhumane treatment isn't it?

McAfee seeks asylum in Guatemala

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No apple for you

Errmm.. I'm only doing it for the downvotes.

I do care, honest.

Apple share dive scuppers trader's alleged get-rich-quick fraud scam

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No kidding.

Is your name Shelock or did you read the article?

Record €1.47 BEELLION EC fine for price-fixing display cartels

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Re: CRT monitors?

I wonder why you got a downvote for that.

The foot note on the article should have said which senior mangement were still in office and which had been paid to play golf full time in very expensiver parts of the world and how much dosh that could have been spent on hard not working Greeks and Icelanders went with them.

But we got told that they were already playing golf instead.

Data cop slap for Brit text pests

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One thing this is going to hit

I have no feelings about ignoringf those kids that accost me on the street these days asking me to give to charity.

I know they are just aching to find decent jobs and that they are being made slaves by the people who mine into charitable causes. And that even if most of it goes to managing directors, overheads and evil b\stards in governments I don't know about, some of it gets through...

I just don't care much.