Posts by YARR

What a farce...

I thought this sort of thing only happened when British companies tried to take over American ones.

Relatively massive

2.5x the mass of our Sun is not massive on the Main Sequence. Stars can be 10s to 100s of times more massive than our Sun, but they burn out faster. It's just at the upper end of the scale for stars with orbiting planets.

With a name like that...

... no wonder it bombed!

NeXT over iMac?

The iMac is a strange omission given that the original Mac and NeXT cube were relative product failures.

With £1.8bn...

... you could buy an internet connected spycam for every home in the country. Then stage one more fake terrorist attack as an excuse to pass legislation making them compulsory....

Something completely different...

Platform for Launching Enterprise Bytecode Images Across Networked Servers (P.L.E.B.I.A.N.S.) anyone?

MASS-ive overkill

The idea of moving something to a Lagrange point to block the sunlight is within reason, but moving the mass of an asteroid there is massive overkill!

By the time such a project were likely to reach fruition, technology should have advanced enough that we will be able to send molecular assembly robots there to collect space dust and re-arrange it into some kind of thread structure, then weave it into sheets thick enough to block sunlight. This way the sunlight can be blocked using far less mass. Admittedly we'd need a whole fleet of robots doing this in order to construct something of sufficient size in the timescale required.

A sheet would act as a solar sail and would be easily displaced, necessitating something like ion-drive shepherds to continually re-position it. The incident solar energy could be collected and used to power the ion-drives.

Canny business move for Google right now....

Introduce a Google Maps app for £499 that comes with an up-to £499 rebate when you trade-in your iPhone for an Android phone, plus on maps.google.com detect if the browser user agent identifies as an i-device, then display the message "Sorry, a flash plugin is required to view this content".

Irrelevant - that's why

RE "The 47-year old far-right sympathizer has funded racist and extremist groups in Sweden – a fact coyly ignored by copyright activists and Pirate Bay supporters"

Just what are you suggesting Mr. Orlowski, should he receive a harsher sentence for piracy because he has a particular opinion in an unrelated area that you'd like to thought criminalise? Must fellow pirates feel compelled to distance themselves from him over this unrelated issue, sparking dissent in their ranks which is precisely the goal of their anti-piracy opponents? Any group that attempts to unite people around one issue will have a diversity of opinion in all unrelated areas.

This fact is not "coyly ignored", it is ignored because it is irrelevant. If you believe otherwise then please present some evidence showing a correlation, or better still, a causal link between one set of political views and the likelihood of committing or supporting piracy. In the absence of such evidence then we must assume there is no correlation.

"Extremist" is a relative word. Many opinions now classed as extremist by those who wish to corral or claim to represent "public opinion" were once foundational beliefs of societies past. Historically most societies have valued what differentiates them from other societies over what they have in common with each other.

Top loader and no price cut?

Did they economise this by making it a top-loader rather than a tray-loader, which makes it less practical as a blu ray player under a telly - not to mention a PITA for swapping game discs?

This cut-down PS3 ought to come with a cut-down price tag, after all the 360 was about the same price nearly 5 years ago!

Big Brother's Fabian deception strategy

In the real world people don't walk around with name tags on all the time or with an ID number tattooed across their forehead, so why should we submit to this form of oppression online?

If we can go to a public place and express our views to anyone who will listen without being identified, tracked and potentially discriminated against forever after, the same right to anonymity should exist online.

Niemals kapitulieren to Big Brother, even if he bears a deceptive "don't do evil" charade.

And no LinkOfHyrule, expressing racist or homophobic opinions is not trolling, it's freedom. Get over it.

It's not evil when we say so.

Cultural imperialism is not evil. True or false?

Who will defend the right of children to be raised in a natural family?

Will Google and Bing defend equally vigorously the rights of those individuals unfortunate enough to have been born with a predilection to paedophilia, bestiality or necrophilia?

Not all good news

If you recall this earlier story:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/01/foxconn_1_million_robots/

then you'll realise that half the workforce wont receive this seemingly-generous pay rise because they will be made redundant.

No mention of Nanotechnology?

I'm concerned that for an esteemed futurologist he made no mention of nanotechnology.

I had thought that the technology for producing ICs would transition into molecular manufacturing, bringing about a new era of mechanical nanocomputers.

When built in 3D, we'd fit the most powerful supercomputers into the size of a speck of dust, without the frequency, overheating and current leakage issues that affect electronics at this scale. Or did Eric Drexler get it wrong?

Yes, but what's the IT angle?

Comes with Windows Vista...

.... judging by the 3rd photo.

Optimal strategy for IT managers who support Windows clients

1. Buy enough site licenses for Windows 7 to cover anticipated future demand.

2. Transition all Windows-dependent applications to browser independent web applications before support for Windows 7 ends.

3. Switch to a sensible Linux distro at your convenience.

One for the lawyers...

So what legal steps are required to lawfully make and sell replicas of fictional objects like this? Would you need some kind of license / written agreement from Valve or can anyone do this?

Boring...

So no mention of an integrated Kinect-style gesture control interface to make remote controls redundant?

Discredited research

How can insulting less intelligent members of society as "thick dimwits" be considered morally permissible, while insulting people for other attributes of their make up is considered impermissible? This attitude would appear to be totally contrary to the stated aim of addressing "negativity toward out-groups".

There are several obvious flaws in how the data was gathered and the assumptions that it makes.

1. Have the samples been adjusted to compensate for how many years the subject spent in an educational (i.e. anti-racist and anti-homophobic indoctrination) institution? Those subjects who spend fewer of their formative years in such an institution will consequently be exposed to less indoctrination and thus be at a perceived disadvantage.

2. Given the environment of discrimination against racism or homophobia that exists within educational establishments, did those collecting the data not consider that anyone who has racist or homophobic beliefs is repressed within that environment? For instance, people are socially excluded, physically attacked and in some instances mandated to leave an educational institution for professing such opinions. Given this discriminatory environment, the researchers ought to have considered whether subjects provided truthful answers to all these questions.

3. The indefinite wording of the questions does not allow accurate conclusions to be drawn. For example, affirming that the subject "wouldn't mind working with people from other races" does not prove they are not racist. "wouldn't mind working with" does not discount a preference to work with people of their own race. Nor does it indicate whether they believe races are all equal.

By combining this new research with the conclusions of the Bell Curve theory (that racial differences exist in average IQ) we can infer that black people are most likely to have conservative, racist, homophobic (or "dark attitudes"). What possible benefit to society does this divisive research serve?

Flotation?

"Acorn's September 1993 flotation on London's Unlisted Securities Market"

"The Electron debuted in August 1983, just ahead of Acorn's flotation."

So the Electron debuted a mere 121 months before Acorn's flotation?

Nukes 4 all = Freedom 4 all

We should give nuclear weapons to Iran, and for that matter every other country in the world, then we can all be equal. It would be a cheaper way for the US, Russia and other nuclear powers to reduce their stockpile of weapons. Then the Iranians could spend all their money on improving their standard of living.

Once every country has nukes, there will be no more war, and all countries will be able to participate in international relations on an equal footing. Finally we will have real freedom and independence from the power mad NWO puppet masters!

Age of surface rocks?

Given that since the Earth was formed (after the Lunar impact) it has been hit by enough asteroids to form it's oceans and more, would this not mean that for a body like the moon with no volcanism or continental drift, that the entire surface down to a depth of perhaps several kilometers, would be formed from material acquired from asteroid impacts?

Hence, would any magnetism in the surface rocks not be attributable to a more recent phenomena?

Anonymous == Thought Police

We are all innocent until proven guilty of committing a crime.

The crime committed here was by members of Anonymous.

Freedom of thought must be a universal right, including the right to disagree with existing laws.

No one should have to resign just for having an opinion.

My prediction...

The reviewers are going to slate this one.

My guess is....

I've not written Chrome or Firefox extensions before, but I assume they're written in javascript and they require access to the global javascript environment for the tab in which they are active.

While you can isolate extensions that have instances in different tabs, I don't see how you can completely isolate two extension instances that are active for the same tab.

Anyone care to enlighten us?