Posts by Andy Gates

Re: I would be willing to agree that ...

Here you go: https://skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

Honestly the core predictions from the 80's still hold.

Re: I don't mine a skeptic. I prefer a skeptic in this position

"Earth has stopped warming" is flat wrong, though. That's not a skeptic position, that's a political one. Similar non-factual political opinions run to Lysenkoism and "rain follows the plow", so, yeah, no. Educate that man before he gets promoted anywhere important.

You lucky bastard

You lucky, lucky bastard.

Critical stuff in Flash. So despite eye-rolling and memos when the decision was made to buy the critical stuff that uses Flash, we're still committed. I need a drink.

Re: the fire rises

WinCE is like Highlander 2. We just don't talk about it.

Re: Trust is gone

Since the quality of posts - and boy howdy, the quality of comments - has dropped so much, I'm just not here much. This thread with it's uninformed screeching confirms the wisdom of my decision.

See, I'd agree with that, but Sony? It'll be a cold day in Pyongyang before they release something free when they could monetize it. It's not so much "free speech" as "valuable product", y'see.

I'd love to watch the exec's faces when some intern suggests that they put it up for torrent. :)

Re: ECJ

That's harder than you think: *which* Fred Bloggs do these results refer to?

It's also not relevant. Fred might not want his bad business dealings from 2002 being found, but be entirely happy to have his current stuff up.

Of course, as it stands Fred can only get anything enforced if he is prepared to spin up a lawyer, which makes this a right and a rule for the wealthy only.

Re: Missing 9 - A bad idea, and here's why.

Even Star Trek movies and odd Windows versions. I'm a'feared.

Re: Conflicted

When I buy a waterproof gadget, the first thing I do is dunk test it. When a salesdroid came into work touting rugged tablets, I drop tested it right in front of him to a delightful squeak.

...now, iphones don't claim to be rugged, but they do claim to be phones, and we know how people handle phones. Vewwy woughly. If Apple want to launch the "dress phone", as pretty and delicate as a dress watch, they're welcome, but if it's a regular phone it oughta survive regular phone abuse.

Re: What's the towers are for.

They're water towers for the sound suppression system - those jets of water that spray over the flame trench, they come from here. By muffling the thunderous acoustic battering of the engine somewhat, they prevent damage to the rocket and the pad.

Also, they're lightning rods.

Re: Cashless Underground

It's not a cashless underground ... it's just a payment vendor trying to get you to use their product. Competing products will come, and the ticket machines will continue to take regular payment.

No Barclays bank account needed (that would reduce customer potential), just feed the account the way you'd feed any other PAYG. The Pride ones are available (and in black as well as pink, if you're funny about such things).

So, clip the chip out and attach to your fairy wand. :)

Re: just me ??

" the battery life just isn't acceptable. I wear a Basis, one of the fitness watches, and its battery lasts four or five days. That's already short enough to be a major hassle. "

Charging when you've noticed that it's run out of charge and gah, you wanted to go for a run -- that's a hassle.

Charging every day is ritual, and if it's easy enough (no connectors), it'll be ignored.

Hold your horses on the HRM until it's tested; I'm told by the nice folks at Runkeeper that these devices aren't doing continuous HRM with their optical sensors as it's a battery hog. Might be some trickery needed before they're ready for a lazy parkrun round El Reg Towers.

Re: Useful stuff

And in China, they've just done a vertebra. Invest in titanium sintering, say I.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2014/08/19/peking-university-implants-first-3d-printed-vertebra/?utm_campaign=techtwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

I wouldn't be surprised to see the big orthopaedic centres getting their own fab facility for both practice parts and implantables.

Re: wait, what?

More the use of lots of freshly-created accounts. Hide that shadiness for maximum shade.

Re: MOXIE

Nope, it'll just crack atmospheric CO2 into 2x CO and O2. As seen in Zubrin's Case For Mars, and in fiction in KSR's Red Mars and recently Weir's The Martian.

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/july/nasa-announces-mars-2020-rover-payload-to-explore-the-red-planet-as-never-before/#.U9tpGOOzHgg

It's already decided; this just adds resolution to the picture. Knowing where natural sinks and seeps are means we can look at emulating them to scrub the extra out, for example.

Re: Superchargers Free!

How, I wonder, does the eebil government tell the difference between juice for a car and for a kettle?

If I were a betting man, I'd say he pranged his X4 (quadcopters being crashing machines that sometimes fly) and rather than faff with repairs, got wonderfully silly.

It's a pity cruciferous veg aren't more cruciform or we could crew up the Sprout Patrol...

Re: "such a significant development change"?

You're confusing activities with orientation. The debate has kinda moved past that now.

Also note how many have "this till closed for a technical fault" when they're just closed for any reason. Always blame IT. :(

Re: Quaint already

There are videos of simulations like that. From overhead they are absolutely beautiful algorithmic shoaling. From inside... I'd want blacked out windows. Yoy!

Re: Post-Death Updates

Well, the public sector just got a year of patches. A very reasonable £5.5m, too. Given the porosity of the internet, those updates will get public smartly. Getting updates from random sources of course opens the home user to the risk of fake XP updates... fun fun.

My Y2k-sense is tingling. I think more of a whimper than a bang, but I'm ever so glad for the extended support while we grunt through updating our zillion desktops.

Re: Occam's Razor

Aye. "Just dropping out of the sky" is a thing that quadcopters *do* - they're crashing machines that sometimes fly. Having it close over the racers might have made for some thrilling shots, but you have to leave enough clearance to be safe.

The "magic jib"-ness of a camera drone is sometimes too magical for the safety considerations to be remembered.

"OMG hax" ... sounds weak to me.

Re: HES Data

Various analyses and extracts are. I bet they'd look at you funny if you said "giz the lot".

Re: Which third parties?

If it were properly anonymised (with a route back in case of clinical need) and if it were restricted to real research organisations, I'd be gung-ho for it as a great case of Big Data doing useful things.

If it's sold to Experian or that bloody Meerkat, who jigsaw it back together to deny me a good credit rating or insurance premium because of my last peak flow or my old genetics tests -- that's incredibly sucky. That's a *gross* violation of patient-doctor confidentiality.

We expect the latter. If the intent was the former (Hanlon suggests it was), there's more than communication problems.

Re: What is the long term goal?

Ostensibly it's a rollercoaster.

It's also mostly a technology demonstrator - Scaled and Virgin have always been clear that they have an SS1 / SS2 / SS3 plan in mind, with each model proving stuff for the next step up. Sky-launched re-entering rocket rollercoaster is preamble for something with beefier engines and actual LEO capacity.

Re: It's a question of trust

Ads?

I'm a bit surprised that anyone savvy enough to torrent isn't savvy enough to adblock.

Re: If they are anything like ATOS

It's not stopping him from working.

Re: They have to do something

We tackled that with the Clean Air act and its friends. Low-emmissions fuel and a big push to electrify (and gasify) domestic heating.

Should be relatively easy for a more centrally-controlled setup to reproduce. Wrap it in a 5 Year Smog Plan and Chang-e's your bunny.

Re: Aren't they breaking the law?

Computer Misuse Act, anyone?

Re: not a galaxy killer at all

I would have thought no SD was a killer, but apparently I've only got 11 Gb on my 32 Gb card in this ol' stuck-at-Gingerbread Defy+, so maybe it's not such a big deal after all. The 16Gb versoin looks very tempting.

Re: not entirely fair

I've certainly seen "so what? you can't sack me" from some of my bigwigs in more than one job.

One rule for the plebs, another for the hoi polloi...