Good back-of-the-envelope calculation here...
How much land mass would renewables need to power a nation like the UK?
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables.html
806 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jul 2008
"My colleague was not impressed when he was without his Samsung for over 3 weeks when it developed a fault"
The thing with any non-iPhone is that you simply pop the SIM out and slot it into another device (like a simple mobile, feature phone, or other Android smartphone) on the same network. We've got about 6 or 7 eligible Orange (sorry, EE) devices kicking around at home which would accept the SIM from a Samsung without skipping a beat.
iPhone of any vintage - not so much of an option...
"I plopped a Puppy disc into into another machine, I was surfing the internet before he had finished booting!".
Puppy Linux is indeed a very quick way to get online and surf the internet. Is that all you do with your computer? Get an iPad or cheap Android tablet instead.
And SeaMonkey Navigator is an even weirder browser than Safari.
Use Windows Hibernate and you'll be back in action in 20 seconds from power-up.
"Just wondering. I'm no Christian, but I do recall some parable about a rich guy putting a hefty chunk of silver on the plate, and a poor man giving away a few pennies.. everything he owned, basically."
Errrrrmmmm, I think you'll find it was a chick rather than a bloke.
Mark 12:44
> Actually, all New Testament bibles have the line "Treat others as you yourself would be
> treated", and "Blessed are the peacemakers".
So all New Testament bibles ripped-off The Golden Rule. Job's a good 'un! There is a liberal sprinkling of other good advice in the Bible. Seriously, lots of good old-fashioned common sense.
Unfortunately for Jesus (and your apologist approach), there's also a shedload of batshit-crazy Judeo-Christian specific claptrap that makes even the Santa Claus story seem positively plausible by comparison. The Enlightenment happened /despite/ the best efforts of literal, fundamentalist Christianity - as typefied by the WBC - not as a result of it.
There is no excuse for any scientifically-aware adult to buy into the nonsense peddled by a mainstream religion. Theory and experimental data trump dogma every time.
"They pretty much own the MP3 player market". There IS no standalone MP3 player market any more. Anyone who wants mobile music players already has one on their laptop, tablet or smartphone (and pretty much any feature phone, too). There is no reason to own a 'Personal Stereo', now. Don't bother coming back with 'sound quality' arguments. Mobile music players are used in noisy urban environments, totally unsuited to audiophile conditions. The new ergonomic Apple earbud thingies don't change a thing.
If you want background music on the go, use your phone and a pair of earbuds. If you want a glorious celebration of the music you love, fire up the hi-fi through speakers whilst chilling on the sofa of your own home.
"it is not entirely unrealistic for Apple to build there own fab"
Yes it is. 110% completely unrealistic. Since when have Apple manufactured /anything/, never mind semiconductors? The other major semi manufacturers are so far ahead, Apple would have to headhunt the talent AND invest serious dollars in a plant before they were even in a position to think about catching up. They need chips NOW.
Beer is nice, but I wouldn't go making tech business forecasts after 10 pints.
"Good scripts, the ones you are proud of, have Ifs and loops and other constructs that mean even a scripting ace will need time to make any sense of them and will be reluctant to change them."
A 'scripting ace', like a C++ ace, would have no fear in modifying another's work (if it made good sense in the grand scheme of things).
A script without Ifs and Loops is normally known as a Batch File. I mean.....SRSLY???
"The methods of working, the project timescales, even the raw components of defence work are utterly useless in the rest of the industry."
I beg to differ. Worked for 20 years developing simulators and trainers for a well-known UK defence contractor. Now I use that simulation knowledge developing software models for a commercial semiconductor company. Your argument is invalid (yet you still got a handful of upvotes - weird).
I found the UK military to be incredibly professional, disciplined and also very courteous to we civvy engineers. I'd far rather our military branches were better equipped and protected as a direct result of my work than some enemy state. Sure, I'd like war to be eradicated and for the military machine to rust away as a forgotten relic of man's inhumanity to man. I'd also like every home issued with a cute puppy and free electricity. Dunno which will happen first.
Funnily enough, the 6809 lab I worked in at Strathclyde Uni had Analogue to Digital Converters which consisted of a DAC and a comparitor. By doing a binary search on the DAC and reading the comparitor's one-bit output, you could 'home in' on the input voltage. I wonder how close that was to the Dragon joystick input configuration.
I too was taught by Mr Smeed at Strathclyde. I have fond memories of the microprocessor development lab. 6809 cross-assembler on a PDP-11/34 and 11/44. When there was a full class it would take 5-10 mins to assemble and download the binaries to your development system. But it was worth it to see your creations come alive via the attached terminals and I/O devices. Even though I was a Sinclair man (and thus Z-80 by default), the 6809 was my fave 8-bit micro by a long way.
I learnt structured programming with Dr Kingslake through Pascal on a PET in the Livingstone Tower, and later wrote up my final year project on the newly-acquired QLs in the same lab. I may even have the MicroDrive cartridge still in my possession.
Good times. Still working in the low-level world of bits and bytes, shift instructions and cycle times 25 years down the line.
I created a second bank account so that I had an autonomous 'pile of money' for my band. It meant we could take the proceeds from playing a gig and using it to contribute to pressing a run of CDs. None of this had an impact on my household bank account.
Until, that is, my wife signed a cheque from the band cheque book to pay a household utility bill. And the bank cashed it, despite my wife's signature being a different name and shape from mine, WTF is the point of all this security info, if it is all just lip-service at the end of the day? Surely CAPTCHA technology is good enough to automate signature recognition?
I've seen a remarkable number of people soldiering on with an iPhone with cracked glass, because they can't justify the outlay to repair or replace it. I'm currently using an Orange San Fran 2, which cost me £90. If the screen was to get damaged as substantially as that, I would simply buy another (or perhaps a similar sub-£100 Android).
Putting my phone in my jacket pocket instead of my rear trouser pocket.
Nup, sorry. The best way to surf the web is with a keyboard, monitor and mouse. Fondleslabs (in particular Apple devices) are the best of the ultra-portable devices, but I'm always more comfortable sitting at a desk or table with a real computer and real physical input mechanisms than a touch screen.
I'll repeat that iOS got it as right as possible with smartphones and tablets, but the interface is less intuitive, and more clunky than a WIMP environment.