Posts by Paul 25

Sigh - missing the point about research

So many of the technologies that we now take for granted have come about through pure blue-sky research which didn't set out with a concrete aim, but with the target of understanding more about the world.

If all you do is fund research into using what we already know, then you will be at a severe disadvantage to other nations who are doing pure research. When they discover the next big thing guess who is going to best able to make the most of it? It won't be us, we'll still be working on the last big thing and won't have anyone able to work on the new stuff.

The reason we are so big in bio-tech is partly because there are many UK based research groups doing the blue-sky pure research, who are then able to feed this knowledge into the commercial stuff. Without that we'd be dependent of other people to come up with the new stuff in order to follow them.

This is something the US has generally understood. A lot of their research, like that conducted by DARPA is very long-sighted, has few real short term gains, but means they can make the most of it fifteen years down the line when some of the whackier ideas suddenly become feasible.

Once again, short sighted politicians and business types are selling the future for short term gains and a few shiny gadgets.

Colour me surprised.

Simple answer for these cases...

If you want to name your kid something stupid you can, but they get immunity from prosecution if they kill you in later life due to mental instability bought on by a life of mockery.

Simplez

Surely satellites are safe?

I was under the impression that most/all satellites used rad hardened chips with redundant circuits and built in checking systems?

I seem to remember that being the reason that Hubble got upgrade to a 486 about a decade ago (can't remember exactly), when the state of the art at the time was much faster Pentiums: the 486 in question was thoroughly rad hardened.

Or is this only the case for top of the range sats, and cheaper ones are at the mercy of cosmic chance?

"the wrong Gmail account"

Does that imply there was a "right Gmail account" to send highly sensitive data to?

Yikes!

Funny thing about quality...

My usual station of choice is Radio 4.

You'd think that quality would be less of an issue with it than a music station, but you'd be wrong.

Periodically I go into my local Curry's and try out the DAB sets there, few of which are less than £50, and most require mains for any sensible period of listening.

They all sound like the presenters are talking from beneath a pillow. We have decent reception, there is no garbling or breakup of the sound, it just sounds utterly flat. Weirdly this is much more noticeable when listening to speech than music.

It all compare very badly against my £10 Sony FM set that I use in the bathroom, which picks up the signal without problems, sounds absolutely fine, and lasts for three months or so on a pair of cheap rechargeable AAs (and has been repeatedly dropped without any problems).

I really just don't get what benefit I'm supposed to get from DAB in its current incarnation. I know what station I'm listening to, I know what I'm listening to (that's what the DJ is for), and I don't need to retune while on the road (surely that is what RDS is for).

This guy *really* needs to stop believing his own BS.

Very underwhelmed by it all.

And please stop all this bollocks about listening to the Radio through the TV. I don't want to have my TV or computer on all the time, just to have the radio on in the background. iPlayer is great when I'm at work or otherwise using a computer, but not terribly useful while in the shower, or making my breakfast.

Personally I love the audio plays

I've recently started listening to the Big Finish audio episodes. While some of them are a bit by the numbers, many of them are absolutely terrific.

And of course, being audio, the pictures are *much* better :) There are no clunky special effects in my head. A lot of the story-lines are much grander than you could possibly get away with on TV since it's all in your head. Some of them are genuinely very scary as well, but you can't hide behind the sofa.

Worth checking out.

For "targets", read "contacts"

@Pete 2

For a radar, not everything you track is something you want to shoot down, sometimes it's your own people (which I guess for the yanks might be the same thing).

And just because you can't shoot them all down, doesn't mean you don't want to keep a bloody good eye on them. They rarely fly solo, so the destructive capability of a single plane in combat is pretty irrelevant when considering the number of contacts you want to track.

Also, you missed the bit in the article about it's spreadspectrum facility helping to keep it "stealthy" (which doesn't mean totally invisible to radar, just much harder to spot and track).

Obviously not very bright

Not sure that printing a description of how you drove without due care and attention/consideration (to the point of causing people to crash off the road) in a national newspaper is a smart way to go.

If I were one of cycling organisations I'd find the cyclists in question and then prod the plod to prosecute rather than pratting around on wikipedia.

Having said that, I agree with him to a point.

Current advice is that you should cycle in a position such that people notice you (i.e two abrest, or near the middle of the lane), HOWEVER you are then supposed to note that people are following you and let them pass, not just carry on your slow and merry way, blocking the road.

As a non-lycra-wearing, red-light obeying, law-observing, occasional cyclists, the condom clad peddlers really get my back up, because they annoy so many other people, who then assume that we are all the same.

Some of us actually remember what we learnt in our cycling proficiency lessons at school.

And why *IS* a tosser of a chef reviewing a car? Jeeze, the Mail really are scraping the barrel.

Can The Reg find out more?

Can you please find out more about that case you've now mentioned twice in these articles?

"...a recent case where pictures were taken of children clothed and with parents present. Despite courts accepting that there was no paedophilic intent on the part of the photographer, a guilty verdict was still upheld."

That is such a bizarre summary of the case that I can't help thinking that there was some other factors at play. The summary essentially says "despite not having committed a crime, they were found guilty of one anyway", which just doesn't sound right.

I get the feeling that there is much more this case than is being mentioned in these articles, and by vaguely alluding to it in this way paints the situation as stranger than it may actually turn out to be on closer inspection. The way it has been summarised here, it looks like a miscarriage of justice, or at best the law being a right ass (possibly the judge had no choice due to the way the law is written). However without more background it it impossible to tell if it was actually entirely reasonable.

So, either give us more info on the case, or please stop mentioning it and inflaming the issue *possibly* unnecessarily.

UK Pricing

@ Vision

Remember that US prices don't include VAT.

A straight USD -> GBP gives, £17.5800194

Add 15% and that ends up as £20.22 (rounding up to nearest penny).

So still £4.78 more than it should be, which is a bit annoying, but hardly going to break the bank.

Supplier?

Does anyone know a supplier of the NAS box? I've been waiting for someone to release something like this for ages. Something simple, that will let me plug any old drive into it, and stick it on the network.

Whatever the cause...

... surely that should not cause an "inferno"? Is car upholstery not fire proof?

You can't buy a sofa that will catch fire that easily, so why do Saabs appear to be highly flammable?

"Counter terror cops prep for recession funding squeeze"

Counter terror cops prep for recession funding squeeze....

by making sure there is the inevitable uproar in the press about government cutting funding for police terrorism squads, leading to firm commitments from the major parties that they are "thinking of doing no such thing, and will protect counter-terror funding", for fear of being labelled as "soft on terror".

Seems like a nice bit of political manoeuvring by Yates of the Yard to protect his budget.

Dumb schmuck

"I still love Haylie and would have stopped doing porn if she had asked me to."

Riiiight.

It's a bit hard to ask you to stop if you neglect to tell her.

Well, that's made my morning :o)

This has put me in a better mood for the day.

I'm still curious as to exactly what remains, and what the Tories will carry on with. There is still the database, and the whole biometric passport stuff. I can't help thinking we will still end up with some of the worst aspects of the ID card scheme, but without the more public elements.

Is this just Barclays ATMs?

Or is it any ATM when used by a Barclays customer?

Either way, rather shonky.

/me puts bet on it being a fat-finger moment.

"a global agreement on what constitutes acceptable content"

Riiight, so you are going to get the Iranians and Dutch to agree on what is acceptable?

Can I have some of whatever they are taking, it's obviously strong stuff.