10 years ...
Out of a planned 3 months. Hats off to the engineers!
(the Barmah again)
Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson
4257 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2007
Page:
Mystery 'doughnut' materializes in front of Mars rover: 'OH MY GOD! It wasn't there before!'
ESA rejoices as comet-chasing Rosetta probe wakes from 3-year nap
Good news: 'password' is no longer the #1 sesame opener, now it's '123456'
Tuesday 21st January 2014 09:15 GMT 
Re: It's not just about websites though is it?
Reminds me of the BOFH episode in which he recalls setting the minimum required password length to 32 and required users of said VMS system choose a new one each day (which meant they really had to use the password generator which gave results described as "vaguely pronounceable line noise". Now that's trying!.
EE BrightBox routers can be hacked 'by simple copy/paste operation'
Look out, Earth! Here comes China Operating System (aka Linux)
Rosetta comet chaser due to wake up for final rendezvous on Monday
MANIC MINERS: Ten Bitcoin generating machines
Friday 17th January 2014 10:25 GMT
Is it me?
I have this feeling that the safest way to make money out of bitcoins is to sell mining gear. Bit like selling mining gear during the gold rush of 1849. Sure, some miners struck it rich, but the people selling gear were profiting from all mining attempts, successful ones and flops alike.
Mexican drink-driver shopped to cops - by his own gobby parakeet
Boffins find ALIEN WORLD orbiting the Sun's LONG LOST TWIN
Tales from an expert witness: Prior art and patent trolls
Modern spying 101: How NSA bugs Chinese PCs with tiny USB radios - NYT
ASSAULT CORSE: Eager Walking Dead heads get a second series
Bloke hews plywood Raspberry Pi tablet
Chinese Moon rover, lander duo wake up after two-week snooze
Coffee a memory enhancing drug, say boffins
Monday 13th January 2014 15:01 GMT
Re: More important drink in the UK - Italian coffee?
Come and say that to my Italian PhD student (or my missus for that matter), you might get a response as depicted in the icon. ;-)
Curiously, people say I make very good coffee, but I will still opt for my tea (Keemun black for preference, or a good Assam or Darjeeling).
Monday 13th January 2014 09:55 GMT
Re: More important drink in the UK
Can't be too bad, given that tea also contains caffeine. I do not drink coffee, unless the alternatives are on a par with the poetry of the Azgoths of Kria (i.e. to me coffee is worse than Vogon poetry). Last time I drank coffee was 1986, around Xmas. It was Italian coffee, which according to all others present was excellent coffee, so apparently coffee is just NOT my thing. I do drink gallons of tea (Olympic swimming pools?) and apparently have very good memory (anecdotal evidence of course, I know).
The positive memory effects of tea and coffee can of course be negated by that other favourite drink, depicted above
Hubble 'scope snaps 600-LIGHT-YEAR-wide pic of star-spawning nebula
Monday 13th January 2014 13:27 GMT
It is really the scale that makes the Tarantula unique
An absolutely awesome image from Hubble again. The Tarantula Nebula (seen quite easily with binoculars from the southern hemisphere) is spectacular in its scale, but several other star-forming regions in our galaxy are of course much closer (the Orion Nebula, for example).
Light, fast ... and pricey: Toshiba's Portégé Z30 – now THIS is an Ultrabook
Woman whipped gun from vagina in SPACE ALIEN spat, reports Officer Zook
Intel and Asus put the dual boot in, offer 2-in-1 lapslab WinDroid
Thought sales were in the toilet before? Behold the agony: 2013 was a PC market BLOODBATH
Two white dwarfs and superdense star. Yup, IDEAL for gravity lab in the sky - boffins
ALIEN WORLD Beta Pictoris snapped by Earth's Gemini 'scope
Intel ditches McAfee brand: 'THANK GOD' shouts McAfee the man
Tuesday 7th January 2014 13:39 GMT
Worst software on the planet?
And there I was thinking that was the Symantec Norton mess (just try removing it). Early versions were OK, but as of about 2006 it brought a powerful quad core machine with MASSES of RAM (6GB, well, it was big in those days) to a crawl. After a lengthy uninstall process (I cannot count the times I must have said "Die, Symantec!! DIE!!!!"), and install of a competing (free) product, the same machine was back to it's responsive self again.
I am happy to take McAfee's word for it, but other contenders for the title of worst software abound, I suppose.
Should the reg introduce IT Razzies?
Fanbois, prepare to lose your sh*t as BRUSSELS KILLS IPHONE dock
Mosquitoes, Comets and Vampires: The de Havilland Museum
Friday 20th December 2013 11:07 GMT 
Great!
That's another place I should take the kids to. The Mosquito has always been one of my favourite planes of all time. I had the privilege of seeing one fly near Bude some time around 1990. Awesome sight.. My other favourite was the Hurricane IID: A tank-buster variant which showed just how amazingly versatile and rugged the Hurricane was.
Suffering SPITZER! Boffins discover Milky Way's MISSING ARMS
Thursday 19th December 2013 10:33 GMT
Men do not wear enough hats!
Indeed!! This is why I wear at least one every day (the roo leather Barmah today). Essential!!! The only way to fully appreciate the meaning of life!!!! Ask any wizard or witch about the importance of hats!!!!!!
Yes I'll have the kippers today! Hooray!! How do we do it? VOLUME!!!
Mine is the one with the dried frog pills in the pocket (left one, the right has a miniature universe in it)
Two Brits face criminal trial for sending 'menacing' tweets
Wednesday 18th December 2013 09:54 GMT
Re: Bit sexist really
'I think the collective term for men is "barfull".'
Good suggestion. However, in this case the word "basket" could also be used, given that men who send threats to people campaigning for an image of a famous female author to be put on a banknote, should be treated as basket cases. If people make serious threats of violence in any media (or indeed verbally). simply because they disagree with them, prosecution should certainly be considered.
Former US POLITICIAN gets 6 years in slammer for FACEBOOK SCAM
Tuesday 17th December 2013 12:25 GMT
One down, which is good....
It is good to see somebody getting jail time for financial shenanigans. However, I do somehow wonder whether this was because he cheated (rich?) investors. Swindling poor people out of their homes by selling them mortgages you know they cannot afford, or breaking the financial system leading to untold hardship for many poorer people does not seem to carry any penalty. For the LIBOR scandal financial penalties have been handed out to the banks, but the responsible bankers seem to get off scot free, to name just a single instance.
But let's take a balanced view: One down, many more to go .....
HOLD THE PHONE, NSA! Judge bans 'Orwellian' US cellphone records slurp
Brilliant Brit bloke builds breakfast-belching BACON DRONE
Teary-eyed snappers recall the golden age of film
Tuesday 10th December 2013 14:28 GMT
Lovely piece!
Brings back memories. I tend(ed) to go to extremes: Ilford HP400 pushed to 1600 for theatre photography on the one hand, Kodak Technical Pan film developed in Technidol LC for super-fine grain landscape. I still have a print of water, reeds and willow tree taken with a Carl Zeiss 85mm F/1.4 at F/2.8 in my office. Closest thing I ever got to Ansel Adams (still a LONG way to go ;-) ).
I also did a whole lot of botanical photography on Fuji Provia, and the odd wedding of friends on Kodak Portra. Still have the camera lying around somewhere. Pity really.
Developer unleashes bowel-shaking KILLER APP for Google Glass
Astroboffins spot HOT, YOUNG GIANT where she doesn't belong
Monday 9th December 2013 08:48 GMT
Re: Orbiting, or just a passing rogue?
Good point, it could be an "orphan planet"
I can imagine they may have some indication of the planet's radial velocity, but I doubt the data are sufficient for full orbit calculation. There is of course also the possibility of capture, as in the case of the moons of Mars
Inside Steve Ballmer’s fondleslab rear-guard action
Friday 6th December 2013 15:46 GMT
Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.
New tools rarely replace old tools outright. Since buying electric drills and screwdrivers I have not thrown away my hammers, or manual screwdrivers, nor will I. I use tablets (just got an ASUS Transformer Pad cheaply, like the hybrid set-up) and like them for browsing, but I still use my laptop and desktop machines (writing articles and coding), and when I need more serious grunt (Gigapixel images) a 64 core compute server, and when I want to play with the big boys with big data: clusters or supercomputers. I use WIMP or touch as needed, but very often still use the command line. As new tools are added to the toolbox, we gain flexibility. Do most users need the command line? I would not think so. Do I see my students use the command line? Not as much as I do, but they still revert to it for certain types of work.
I love using editors, or word processors, but boy am I glad I still have pen, pencil and paper.
I might also suggest PC sales are going down because many people have PCs that work just fine, and are in no hurry to upgrade.
Creepy US spy agency flings WORLD SLURPING OCTOPUS into orbit
Blighty's winter storms are PUNY compared to Saturn's 200mph, 15,000 mile wide HEXACANE
NASA opens its Jupiter photo album to honour Pioneer 10
Calling Doctor Caroline Langensiepen of Nottingham Trent uni
Wednesday 4th December 2013 07:57 GMT
Neat, but...
a true compute science approach to generate an ElReg-style paper would be to write a script to turn an ordinary paper into and ElReg paper by auto replacement of terms like "scientist" into "boffin", "psychologist" into "trick cyclist", and convert every SI unit into approved ElReg units. Alternatively, adapt the SCIgen automatic scientific paper generator into an ElReg article generator
What is thy bidding? Han Solo’s shooter goes under the hammer
Top comet-watcher pens ISON's emotional obituary
Saturn's moon Titan had swamps, say astroboffins
Fun-killing fireshow-flunking ZOMBIE COMET ISON only LOOKED alive
India's Martian MOM leaves the nest
Monday 2nd December 2013 09:03 GMT
Re: Wrong Priorities
You are right. By not going on this mission they could have spent a whole $0.06 per capita on education and the like. Besides, by developing the capability to launch hefty kit into any orbit they please (cheaply), they are not gaining access to any kind of useful market. After all, satellites aren't money spinners, and level-headed business men like Elon Musk steer well clear of this kind of frivolous, money-wasting projects.
Aliens, because, well, it's about Mars, init?
China's Jade Rabbit takes great hop for mankind
Fancy knocking off early? Just run our fake computer crash 'virus', say admen
Friday 29th November 2013 15:36 GMT
Re: Utter Bastards
The UTTER bastard is the one wielding the cattle prods and sending abusive e-mails in your name to the CEO to get you fired. Oh, and his PFY would put you on some most-wanted (armed and dangerous) list to give you a well-deserved wake-up call by armed police.
Isn't that about right, Simon?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
