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* Posts by ElReg!comments!Pierre

2711 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

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Apple silences mute kids' speech app in patent blowup

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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@ Dana

You seem to work under the assumption that consumer satisfaction has anything to do with product quality or consumer service. This is extremely wrong. People like to complain endlessly about very good products, and they also like to praise crappy stuff that they bought at a premium. That is the "sheeple" effect. If you pay a lot for something that doesn work properly, and you admit it, then you admit that you've been had, and that you are not,, to use your words, "the sharpest knife in the drawer" On the other hand, complaining about a very good piece of kit makes you look good and knowledgeable, and disctinctive and flairy. That is crowd psychology 101.

It even works when you know how it works, which is remarkable. For example, I know how it works, and it still works on me. I don't have much Apple kit, and what I have is genuinely good, (yes Jeebus, they do manage to get good products on the market, too, even though it's not always the case) but I did buy a Fujifilm Finepix X100. While it is overall a good camera, it is (or was) very pricey and it has a lot of annoying quirks and shortcomings that should really be absent from a camera in that price range. It basically has very little over the likes of Panasonic's LX range or Canon's S range*, but is significantly bulkier and has limitations that the others don't have. It is also twice as expensive. But it looks cooler. I know all that, but I sometimes still catch myself talking about these quirks as "personality" of the camera instead of plain shortcomings as I know they are ( I do own a Panasonic LX3 and I bought my sister a Canon S90, so I do have side-by-side comparisons showing clearly said shortcomings. Some might be corrected in future firmware updates, but the softness of the lens for example is really not excusable).

*The viewfinder is good, but that's about it.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre

"We have pressed Apple for a comment, but have as yet received no reply."

There is a typo. It should read

"We have pressed Apple for a comment, but are yet to receive no reply."

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Apple juggernaut cranks out big, big numbers

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: A question on the subject of pixels

It depends a lot on the camera that took the picture, and on the quality of the printer. Assuming a good printer, let's focus on the camera. Cameras use 4 photosite per final pixel (1 red, 1 blue, 2 green). The colour image is then reconstructed using more or less complex algorythms. In order to cram more pixels on a sensor you need to reduce their size. The amount of noise a photosite generates is pretty muc constant, but the amount of light (useful signal) it gets drastically decreases with the size. That is made worst by the 4-to-1 ration of photosites per pixel because in most arrangements the proportion of lost space between photosites increases when the size of the photosite decreases. So, with megapickles a major sale argument, manufacturers began cramming more and more pixels on fixed-size sensors, which leads to a huge increase in the noise, and generally crappy images. The old 5D Mk 1, a pro camera of its time, had a 1Mp sensor. You can print that on an A4 page and it will look beautiful (assuming you have a very good printer).

Then there is the issue of the lens: with megapickles _the_ major sale argument for consumer cameras, manufacturers started to not pay attention to other "detail" such as the glass you put in front of the sensor. That is actually more important for image quality than the sensor itself.

Another point: images will no doubt look good on these "retina" display, but as soon as pickles density becomes a sale argument the market will be flooded with cheap multi-Mp monitors that will look like absolute shit because the (much more important) gamut, contrast, brightness etc will be complitely ignored. Then your average 5Mp display will look worst than the printout from the 5Mp camera you are talking about.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
Boffin

Trillions, billions, milliards, millions...

... methink

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Apple introduces 'next generation' MacBook Pro with retina display

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Pint

Re: Stop the pixel counting nonsense

I remember back in the days when people in El Reg comments actually read the comment they replied to.

Oh wait, that was never the case anyway.

Please do carry on.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Pint

Re: Stop the pixel counting nonsense

> You're kind of missing the point. It's not about the number of pixels but pixel density

Im not missing the point, you kind of are are. It's always about pixel density. On a 15" display 1080p is already overkill unless you're looking at it from 5 cm (in which case you have other problems). Retina display is purely a buzzwork which has no grounding in reallity. Proof is, they use the same for the same density in the iPhone and a laptop-sized machine. Ever wondered "retina display" would look like on a theatre screen? Exactly the same but you would need a 30-tons truck to carry the Blu-Ray disks.

On the other hand, IF it becomes a selling point, the cheap-and-dirty manufactures WILL build extremely crappy displays with gazillions pixels per square cm, exactly the same as they built extremely crappy camera sensors with gazillions pixels per square millimetre.

The Canon 5D Mk I is dated but still a decent camera. Guess how many megapickles the sensor has. You don't know? Look it up while the rest of us watch your chin hit the floor (note: I am not in any way a Canon fan).

In most cases the number or the density of pixels is rather unimportant. The *quality* of these pixels, in the other hand...

On a standard-sized laptop display and unless you have very specific uses like high-res movie editing, 1080p is more than you will ever need. And if you need more than that, chances are that you should be using a multi-monitor workstation with some _real_ grunt, storage and graphics anyway.

Cheers

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
Mushroom

Stop the pixel counting nonsense

Pixel count is for morons. It has been used to sell crappy cameras to morons in the past decade, making photo buffs look like alien to the rest of the world when not giving a shit about the gazillion pixels on the new cameraphone-of-the-week. Please don't let that happen with monitors too.

I trust that the display on this particular model is good, but if MegaPickles begin to be a sale argument the market will soon be flooded by horrendous displays with very poor refresh, contrast, brightness and colour rendering but 16.5 GigaPickles. History shows that using pickles count as a sale argument lead to worse, not better, products.

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Brit judge orders Facebook to rip masks from anonymous cowards

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Not home and dry though

Court injonction. There's no technical way to enforce it rigorously but in case they slip again and are caught because someone complains the consequences are harsh enough that they would probably not take the chance, or at least be very careful not to offend anyone if they do. A bit like a restraining order.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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FAIL

Re: Not home and dry though (@ the voters)

It surprises me that at least seven readers here think that IP info must be approved as a proof of identity beyond reasonnable doubt, and thus taken as proof in a criminal trial. That denotes complete lack of technical knowledge.

Or do the downvoters think that the harrassers should be given a medal as opposed to the swift kick in the nads I was recommending?

Seriously, the audience here is going down the drain. Attention span of a goldfish on meth crystal.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: torn

> I'm on the opposite tack.

Erm, no you're not? Your post says the same as mine, minus the part where I say that IP and account ID must not be used as a criminal proof.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Not home and dry though

I'm a bit torn.

If she makes it a criminal matter I sincerly hope she loses, because we don't need more of the "account and IP are criminal proof" nonsense. On the other hand the trolling scumbags certainly need to get kicked in the privies. A permaban from FB would be a start, perhapsan injunction forbidding the use of "social networks" for a year or two so that they can go and have a life instead of harassing people. But it needs to be a civil matter.

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Apple's online store goes offline

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Pint

PS: Re: Or Maybe.....

On second thought Occam's razor tells me that in addition to poor knowledge of The Channel you probably did not read the post you answered to in full. I suggest you consider the last 2 lines about upgrade mechanisms, in place in most modern tech companies, including Apple sometimes. These make it possible for customers having bought an old version of the product soon before the announcement of a new product to return their purchase and have it replaced with the more current offering, at little or no cost.

The website blackout does definitely not serve any technical purpose.

Cheers

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Paris Hilton

Re: Or Maybe.....

Dear Lance,

you are talking total and utter rubbish. I do feel dumber for reading your post.

If you really assume that older models are fully available until 1 hr before the Big Annoucement but completely unavailable 1 millisecond after, and that is the reason for the site blackout, then you need serious councelling. Perhaps from an unicorn or something.

The big assumption in your post (which you present as a personnal knowledge, despite the obvious stupidity of the assumption) is that it is faster to switch an entire worldwide chain of manufacturing, storage, and distribution (traditionnally several weeks if not month*) than switching versions of a website (seconds, if everything goes according to plan. More often, minutes).

* years if you consider 3rd-party distributors

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Or Maybe.....

Doesn't make sense. These things cost and last enough that there is no difference between 10 minutes and 2 days. If you bought the old model 2 days before the new one became available you'll be as pissed as if you bought it 10 minutes before. People who care are wary enough to delay their purchase even a few month in advance, and people who don't care, well, don't care.

The real way to mollify people who care enough to complain but not enough to check the release dates is to provide an upgrade mechanism. Which Apple and several other companies have been known to do.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre

Why?

Why would a complete revamp of the site need a several-hours downtime? Surely you develop the new website offline and then just flip the switch between the old and new version? A few minutes of downtime should be the max.

These downtimes seem like attention-grabbing strategies. Or are Apple's webmasters really coding the site live?

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Climate scientists see 'tipping point' ahead

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Yes

> Because the only thing that can cause a war -- not just a civil war, any war -- is having too many un-laid young men around.

Historically speaking, the very reason why The Mighty British Army had a very, very hard time conquering the Zulu Empire despite the fact that it was "modern" rifles against sagaies is supposed to be that young Zulu warriors were not allowed to mate until they had killed an ennemy*.

Don't underestimate the sex drive!

> Do you think much, ever?

Do you?

* That, and they were fitter and accustomed to the land ("faster than horses", according to some reports).

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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@ Quxy Re: I like the sound of the homebrew...

> I take it you didn't bother to actually read the Nature article, which is pretty heavy on the facts, and pretty light on speculation.

I take it YOU did not read the paper, which is really heavy on (admitted) speculation and states that the available facts are pretty light. Which is a good summary of the whole field, socio-political and industrial agendas notwithstanding.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
Mushroom

future "tipping point" as a scientific argument

The "common sense" conclusions are not to be argued with. Pollution is bad, M'Kay?

That goes without saying.

But the "we can't see any effect today but once the tipping point is reached we're doomed" is incredibly bad science. Actually it's not science at all, it's baseless fearmongering.

Photosynthetic organisms today are litterally starving by lack of CO2. CO2 is currently the limiting factor for photosynthesis, any serious plant (or algae) biologist will tell you that. It doesn't mean that pollution is good. It, however, means that the buffering capacity of the biosphere is massively underestimated by the fearmongerers. They also tend to forget a little thing called "albedo" which has a major effect on how Mommy Earth deals with incoming solar energy (much more important than that "greenhouse effect" that gets much media attention". Basically deserts reflect a lot more energy than oceans or "planted" areas (be it forests, cultivated ares, and everything inbetween). When you reduce ice- or snow-covered areas, you decrease albedo, surface warms but the greenhouse effect is decreased. Concurrently, you might ingrease (or decrease, the numbers are not clear on that) the area of "hot" deserts (such as Sahara, areas in Central/ North America -Mexico, Arizona, ...-, large areas of China etc) which increases albedo, decreases the surface temperature, and increase the influence of the greenhouse effect. In turn, the oceans, which are by far the biggest store of CO2 on earth, do tend to release CO2 when surface temperature rises, and absorb more when temperatures go down. That's only a direct effect of CO2 solubility in water. Phytoplankton in surface waters show increased photosynthesis when CO2 rises, which has a buffering effect. But CO2 also increases water acidity (decrease in pH), with more acidic pH leading to realease of CO2 from accumulated seashells (basically, chalk in the making) as well as possibly slowing down seashel formation in the live biomass. No one, absolutely noone, nobody, not a soul on Earth, can pretend with a semblancy of likelyhood that they can put figures on all that. Conjectures and supputations is all we can deal with for the moment. Political pressure has a very deleterious effect on the advancement of knowledge in that area -in ANY area. Unfortunately, that nascent area of science is under overwhelming political pressure, even more so than biomedical research.

I am not arguiing one way or another, my personnal "carbon footprint" is pretty modest (but that's coincidental to my quite frugal lifestyle, not the result of a militant AGW position). All I am saying is, please let the scientists do their job. Socio-political pressure is ADVERSE to scientific progress. And yes, I do have a horse in that race. In the biomedical field rather than in the climate field, though.

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Study: The more science you know, the less worried you are about climate

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: This must be why

> Wikipedia provides this useful list of specific endorsements by leading scientific institutions:

Yeah, Wikipedia, right? I must fold then. My PhD, 5 years of post-doc and 1 year in an academic position in a major uni can't possibly match your overwhelming evidence. It's not like I've been trained to analyse data and litterature for more than 15 years, solid, including nights and week-ends, is it? (and don't even start talking about holidays. I've heard some people take them).

> Now I don't know about you, but if 98 doctors said my son was dying and needed urgent treatment and 2 said to wait and see or denied the illness outright I'd sure as hell know who I'd believe.

www. whatthefuckareyouramblingabout.swf.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Paris Hilton

Re: Plane crash

> PNAS estimates are [...]

I don't think you understand the concept of "scientific publication"

PNAS does not estimate anything, PNAS publishes stuff from external research groups.

PNAS also have a very convenient system where members can "fast-track" 2 papers per year without proper pear review (hence my stated contempt). In that case there's a disclaimer, but who checks that? Check their policies if you don't believe me. That's publicaly available material, everyone in the community knows that. Of course, armchair scientists might be oblivious of the fact.

The other references you cited are 15-lines opinion pieces, not proper scientific reports.

You claim you did some research, yet your posts show otherwise.

Back under the bridge you go.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Plane crash

> No one predicted the end of the world. Just the death of significant piece of the mankind as more areas become uninhabitable and wars are waged over scarce resources.

Just a quick note because I suspect that the irony factor might very well have been lost on you.

Why exactly do you think that the mighty USA went and annexed Irak, the very country in the world where oil is the cheapest to extract? Why did Saddam Hussein, former BFF with the USA, suddently became The Ennemy? Even thought Iraq was a laic state? In which Bin Laden and co were /persona non grata/?

That war you speak of started long ago.

And CO2 limitations are a part of it.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Plane crash

> No one predicted the end of the world. Just the death of significant piece of the mankind as more areas become uninhabitable and wars are waged over scarce resources.

Heh. Hehehe hehehe hehehe. snirf sorry. We have a channel called Z-Tele here, you might want to go ahead and submit a script.

> Nature 453, 84-88 (1 May 2008). Then this: Nature 453, 353-357 (15 May 2008) Of course

> Nature publishes sensationalist stuff mainly, right?

I fail to see the 50-years deadline in any of these articles. Actually I fail to see any definitive conclusion on anything expect from speculations based on previous predictions. Which failed to materialize. But again, I have access to the full text, maybe you don't? (although these are opinion letters, not research articles; these opinion ultra-short pieces devoid of data are often available even to the lowly heathen such as you...)

Nature does publish what sells. And these opinion pieces were reasonnably believable 4 years ago when they were published. I remember some 20 years ago Nature published a couple articles on the memory of water, all of which were withdrawn within a couple of month. And these were real articles with real data, not 15-lines opinion pieces.

Of course this is superfluous because again, there is nothing in these opinion pieces that supports your claims.

Now where is the data?

The PNAS paper does not support your claims, even remotely. (my contempt for PNAS notwithstanding).

Perhaps you should, like _read_ the papers you point to?

No icon.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: It is not profitable to think about global warming so we don't

> The term "scientific consensus" disturbs me

As it should. There is no consensus, far from it. It is a hotly (if I may) debated subject. As it should damn well be.

Special interest groups are trying to snuff the debate to preserve their funding sources but as you point out later in your post the evidence is indeed rather thin. And some of it has been proved to be outright fraud (North Pole ice and Hymalayan ice are melting indeed. Or not? Not.).

The scientific community (to use the buzzword) is not even sure where to measure the supposed effects of global warming. Different layers of the athmosphere react differently. and the widely-used measures along the north-eastern coast of Canada have recently been shown to be compensated or even out-compensated by variations on the western side (between Russia and Canada), a part of the globe that had not been probed before.

We do no know precisely how much energy came in (These solar flares are a bitch to quantify retroactively), we certainly do not know for sure how much energy is absorbed or sent back for the Greenhouse effect to deal with (albedo varies greatly from year to year, and from region to region), we certainly lack understanding on the buffering effect of the biosphere (right now with ~0.04% of CO2 in the biosphere, plants are positively starving. Believe it or not, the current low CO2 availability is the limiting factor for plant biosynthesis).

And I could go on.

I am all for reducing energy consumption and waste production. It just makes sense. But the doomsday scenarios are so out of touch with the reality that it's risible. Or it would be, if they were not the basis for schemes like the CO2 credit scam which has only one aim: ensuring that "developping" countries stay underdevelopped.

Oh, and by the way, about the "guilt" argument that many posters here seem to swallow hook, line and sinker: domestic CO2 production is in the low single-digit percentage, even in the US. You guys are tricked into cutting your personal "carbon footprint" so that you feel entitled when geopolitical decisions are made, aimed at choking developpement in 3rd-world coutries. The Man you think you are fighting, is playing you for fools.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Plane crash

So to date that's 4 thumbs down. 4 persons who honestly believe that the "scientific community" as a whole predicts that man-made carbon emission will wipe out the human race in 50 years.

Because that is the very assumption in the post I answer to.

We are well and truly doomed. Not by carbon emissions but by rampant stupidity.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Plane crash

No, I am not making any claim. I am just a bit surprised that the scientific community as a whole has predicted the end of the world in 50 years. Which was the claim I answered to.

And which I know for a fact to be wrong, despite your and the OP's claims to the contrary.

and that 90% is not understated: it's pulled out of an ignorant's ass whose culture on the matter consists entirely of mass-media sensationalist claim (and perhaps a bit of Greenpeace spice on top).

As for sources for the lack of consensus I am pretty damn sure that all you have is spin from the IPCC and Greenpeace so I am just going to point you towards PubMed* and let you do your homework. Focus on papers that try to describe or explain climate variations, not the ones that make a passing mention of climate variation.

As for sources for the "man-made CO2-caused global warming is not going to wipe humanity in 50 years", well I'm trying hard not to laugh, I don't think that even needs sources. Even the whoriest attention whore in the field or the looniest loony in the surrounding loony bin never dared to pretend that. Which is why I repeatedly asked...

*http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: This must be why

That is not what I believe. The fact that only the man -> CO2 -> apocalypse fraction is the only one you hear in the media doesn't mean that it is the consensus in the scientific community. The fact that their concerns about the extent of political pressure they feel is only revealed when private emails are leaked doesn't make it less true either.

If you read a bit of the litterature (I mean the real one, not the politico-economic propaganda by one side or the other) you will see that there is in fact no consensus, and that the man-made CO2 hypothesis consistently fails to deliver in terms of fitting real-world data (it fits reasonnably well /a posteriory/ but that's easy, it's just some fiddling with the model's parameters; predictions on the other hand consistently failed to materialize). Which doesn't necessarily means that it's wrong, by the way.

Climate science is not an easy thing, especially as we have a very flimsy handle -at best- on the ins and outs of it. People babbling about "scientific consensus" on that issue are either crooks or morons.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Plane crash

You sure?

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Mr. Page is lamely (intentionally?) obtuse and ethically bankrupt.

That's an interesting take on selfishness.

Has it ever occured to you that the so-called "Western world" is almost devoid of "carbon-heavy" manufacturing these days? That countries most impacted by CO2 regulation are developping countries, who need a lot of cheap energy to raise their living standard to something acceptable? (not talking "2 SUVs and air con on all the time" here, just clean water and basic medical care). Ever thought about whose interest it is to keep these countries underdevelopped to keep labor cheap and docile? Think it is a coincidence that the best way to keep them that way is to deprieve them of cheap energy? Who is selfish now?

Not even to mention how scared the US-centric economy is of China and India... whose economic growth just so happens to rely a lot on carbon-heavy energy (especially India).

Of course that doesn't mean we should not watch our energy consumption and waste production. Not for judeo-christian guilt and the sin of global warming though. This is a red herring.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Plane crash

> Ummm, you are wrong.

Am I?

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: This must be why

> Every prominent climate agency and scientific academy is skeptical about global

> warming. Oh wait, none of them are. They all publicly endorse the notion of climate

> change and of it being man made.

Absolutely not. And the very well-publicized fraction who does endorse it is worried about the extent to which they are teleguided by external interests (see the leaked emails from East Anglia). They might be right, or they might be wrong (but the data strongly suggests that solar activity may very well be the major factor there, with CO2 _following_ due to it's lesser solubility in warmer ocean water - by far it's biggest reservoir. Not that we should not watch our energy use and waste generation of course. That's another matter. That's science and it can be discussed. The topic of this article is not science, it's indoctrination).

My point is, the idea of a "scientific consensus" on that matter has been invented by crooks for consumption by science-illiterate idiots.

And I _am_ a filthy commie.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Plane crash

> So we should ask ourselves-what are the chance the scientific community is right? 50%? 30%? 10%?

I think the point is that the scientific community does not say what you think it does.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre

"Tell them lies...

... it's for their own good".

Not much of a change if you ask me.

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Euro 2012: England is semi-final probability

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: "Dr Ian McHale, senior lecturer in statistics in the University of Salford"

Perhaps he, you know, love his job?

I am seriously underpaid for the job I do but I don't plan on retiring even if a huge pile of dosh falls in my lap.

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At last! The Wi-Fi chip that'll beam video from mobe to telly

ElReg!comments!Pierre
Joke

Apple patent lawsuit in 3, 2, 1...

As much as you hate itm, you know they'll at least try. Especially if the telly and/or the handset have rounded corners.

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Bradley Manning in court as lawyers wrestle over secret docs

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Irrelevant you say?

> It tends to be strict liability i.e. "Did the defendant do this?", "Yes, but he had a reason", "The reason is irrelevant - prepare the firing-squad".

I might very well be missing something, but that's true only for the "computer misuse" part. For the "endangered the lives..." they still have to show that some lives were put in danger. If he is found to have "stolen" and disseminated that info, the prosecution still has to prove that said release had the consequences they claim it had (helped the enemy/endangered lives/whatever).

The number of rolls of bog paper used by the US military in 'stan is probably classified info so a private could go to martial court for releasing it. However it is hard to claim that it would endanger anyone's life or aid the ennemy in any way.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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@ 1Rafayal

> Ironic that this is all coming from an Anonymous Coward

That's logical if you think about it. Posting under a genuine handle may compromise their security. I'm sure whatever dream enemy they have is waiting for them to slip and publish a patriotic comment under a valid pseudonym so that they can invade Alaska, take the chinese-built Canadian train to the US border and kill them. Or something.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Manning is a hero

> So seriously, the leaks threatened the lives of informers in Afghanistan? If so, the leaks are still up there -- show us!

Ah, but that would be "greymailing" the CIA. To Gitmo you go!

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Irrelevant you say?

Prosecution: "You endangered the life of our men, and for that you shall spend your life behind bars."

Defense: "Oh yeah? show me the docs that prove it."

Prosecution: "Stop 'greymailing' us! Die scum die, and stop defending yourself!"

And some US citizen think Iran is bad....

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Apple to 'pay AUD$2.2m fine' for 4G claims

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Mushroom

4G is > 100Mb/s

There ARE proper 4G networks in Australia (LTE and WIMAX), only the new iPad won't connect to them.

The ITU never changed the definition of 4G, it issued a warning note saying that salespeople were calling 3G tech "4G". The Aussies are right and if watchdogs in other countries were not as toothless as they currently are this whole mess would not have started to begin with.

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MPAA sympathetic to returning legitimate Megaupload files

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Wow, how generous

> Why? It's their own data, it's none of the MPAA's business what it is. If they want to inspect it then they should show probable cause to a judge and get a warrant.

Plus, how will they determine that? It's a breach of copyright only if you distribute the stuff, as long as you paid for it you can store it on Megaupload for your own use, that doesn't breach copyright AFAIK.

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1,000 Foxconn iPad workers trash dorms in riot against guards

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Stickers?

True. They do ship stickers with their stuff but that's a bit different ANGKOR. Perhaps the sub-headline was not to be taken too litterally (or too seriously, for that matter)?

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Earth bathed in high-energy radiation from colossal mystery blast

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: How widespread was the effect?

Given the way 14C is produced and its half-life, it would be have been extremely surprising if it had been a localized observation. Actually it would have been a strong indication of an experimental error.

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Steve Jobs speaks from beyond grave: 'iPads are toys'

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Trollface

Re: Foxconn-rebranders

> At least she's gone a whole Apple related article without calling them Foxconn-rebranders.

Ha, but the article is about Steve Jobs... he never did any Foxconn-rebranding, ever. That was the job of the rebranding department.

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Apple's Ping has fatal pong, says CEO

ElReg!comments!Pierre
Joke

I must have missed something

From the article it is unclear how this is due to massive copyright theft by treetards and free huggers. Surely at least a paragraph is missing?

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Assange loses appeal against extradition to Sweden

ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: @ Windrose

Look up "temporary surrender". Sweden actually doesn't even have to ask the UK.

There is also solid hints that the US already have a sealed indictment ready to be ripped open as soon as Assange sets foot in Sweden.

Marianne Ny (the prosecutor) also insisted to have him kept in pre-charge, pre-trial /incommunicado/ custody.

All that for an alleged minor offense that doesn't exist in the UK (in the whole world bar Sweden it would be called "lack of manner"), and doesn't carry prison time in Sweden. Only a small fine comparable to what you get for not paying parking.

That seems a bit disproportionate, doesn't it?

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: £50 says...

£100 says... he doesn't spend a single day in jail in Sweden.

Actually, make it £1000 says... he doesn't even get charged in Sweden. The Swedish prosecutor publicly declared that they would not press charges if (read, when) the US asks for him to be extradited. (no he can't just be extradited from the UK. He is an Australian citizen. Once in Sweden all the UK has to do is say "oh OK do with him as you please", but international treaties prevent that while he is in the UK).

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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Re: Allow me to preface....

> what can the US do with assange in Sweden that they cant do with the UK.

Get him extradited. In the UK they can't. They could if he was a UK citizen, but he isn't, and the UK is tied by a treaty with Australia. Otherwise he would have been in Gitmo for a while now.

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ElReg!comments!Pierre
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@ Windrose

> Except ... if he is extradited to Sweden, it is under an EAW. Which means the UK must consent to him being extradited further.

Except, under current treaty the UK cannot directly extradite him without creating a major diplomatic incident with Australia.

Once he is in Sweden, and when the US asks, the UK can (and will) just bend over and give consent.

The tools arguing that Assange will me more protected in Sweden than he is now, or arguing that the Swedes intend to prosecute him (which they themselves said they won't) have absolutely no clue. The whole extradition thing (under allegations of what is a minor misdemeanor in Sweden, and not even remotely illegal in the UK) is a way to avoid that pesky Commonwealth treaty that prevents the UK from extraditing him directly.

End of.

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People-powered Olympic shopping mall: A sign of utter tech illiteracy

ElReg!comments!Pierre
Pint

Footstep energy is the way to go.

That was the way my imaginary moonbase was powered when I was 12. That, and pressure changes in the suits (due to movement and breathing) for outside exploration.

Quite the visionary, was I?

The Belgian inventor Gaston Lagaffe had designed a system that allowed simple tasks such as squeezing oranges and grinding coffee to be performed thanks to the energy of people opening office doors. Only it made said doors all but impossible to open.

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'Biocoal' fuels steam train comeback

ElReg!comments!Pierre

And what about water?

With an electric loco you don't need to stop every now and then for clean water (which also might or might not become a precious ressource soon enough).

Although I guess you _could_ use a condenser design I suppose, but you'd need to work on the design a bit, I seem to recall that existing models are not terribly efficient.

Although I can see how biocoal could be made to match or beat diesel, I really doubt it can ever even see the like of the MagLev and the TGV from down there.

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