Posts by xeroks 329 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2010
Interestingly, about 40 per cent of circumbinary planets are found in habitable zones, said Doyle, who added, “I’d like to find out why.”
Not sure if "habitable" is likely to be the right word in the context of two stars orbiting each other every 11 days. Sounds like a car crash already happening.
If intelligent life evolved on a system like this, it would have a STRONG reason not just to get off-planet, but off-system.
hmm, this all sounds like we need an Apple intervention.
Preexising, clunky HDD mp3 player, difficult to add tracks => cool, usable ipod =>previous incumbents get their act together.
Preexising, clunky mobile phone, difficult to install apps => cool usable iphone =>previous incumbents get their act together
Preexising, clunky windows tablet, unusable UI => cool usable iPad => OK, we're not quite there yet.
Preexising, clunky 3d printer, messy, unreliable, lots of user intervention to get it working =>???
For me, the 3 body problem was a good introduction to Chinese culture and history, rather than good SF.
The characters seem to shout rhetoric at each other a _lot_. It seems to be the only form of debate and discussion between characters who have wildly clashing view points. You're given some of the historical context of that from the cultural revolution and its impact, but I can't help but think that the revolution was itself a symptom rather than a cause. Humans can be more alien than we think possible, and culture could be the most significant difference between us.
From an SF/cool stuff point of view, it has some nice ideas in there, but suffered from trying to explain too much.
But to me the best of science fiction tries to uncover the truth about ourselves. Perhaps 3BP problem does that, but the people it describes are so different from the people I know, I can't tell.
(as a side note, the VR sections are very woolly, but I thought that was OK, it ignored the detail, to get to the meat of what the author was trying to get across. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was deliberately woolly (e.g. about things like UI), but that was a successful book.)
My current PC recording setup has a 20 ms roundtrip between audio in, processing in software and back out. This is unusable so I have to use the audio interface's direct out for monitoring of input.
My previous PC setup had a 10 ms roundtrip. This is noticable, and a bit annoying, but you can work with it.
I reckon that if you're able to perform a decent bit of non-linear processing on your signal, 1-2 ms would be fantastic. It would be a great starting point for some decent software-based sound applications.
But knowing that it is possible to have a fanless PC changes where you make those compromises.
When i bought my old pc, the company had made it silent simply by installing a fanless graphics card and disconnecting the case fans. About a year later, the inevitable happened and the graphics card went south.
I replaced it, but also added a fan controller with temperature read outs. Meant I could put it into stealth mode when required. And watch those temperatures soar...
It still works.
Current pc is from quiet pc: ft03 case, 65W i7 6700, geforce gtx750. Only makes a noise if I use the optical drive. It might not be bleeding edge but it plays Fallout 4 just fine.
I don't understand how the hackers methods "unnecessarily puts customer data and intellectual property at risk."
Did I miss the bit where he published the information he'd found to the wider community?
Surely the company not securing the database in the first instance "unnecessarily put customer data and intellectual property at risk"?
At least the company did acknowledge that he had helped them out.
I do hope the Server Tycoon devs are reading these comments. It's exactly the kind of thing they should emulate.
"Your stroppy engineer has said you need to spend $1M on an optional upgrade."
"Your Server Farm has stopped working, and your clients are complaining."
"Your stroppy engineer is halucinating after spending 48hrs manually retyping the entire contents of a key disk drive. Your clients are calling their lawyers"
Etc
it suggests that once we approach the cloud service demand plateau, pricing may become more nuanced, perhaps discounts applied when usage can be scheduled (or more likely: extra costs for instant access). Perhaps an element of prioritisation cost.
The main take away is that if your application is based around the concept of quickly spinning up compute resource, you may encounter greater expenses down the line.
given that one of the advantages of a submarine is it's secrecy, I'm pretty sure a drone sub would have to be able to operate - and complete any attack - while under conditions of radio silence. Meaning the people in those air conditioned cubicles would be blind and deaf at the critical points in a mission.
So still possible, but those subs need to be a bit more autonomous than the airborne ones.
This is still the same post-snowden smokescreen they've been blowing for a while.
"poor us, we can no longer see what the bad guys are up to! "
They are still able to pick up loads via message analysis, and if they're really interested, i dare say most software is hackable by various means.
I think you may be assuming the intersection between "people willing and able to buy an expensive car" and "car experts who favour Aston Martin" is bigger than it is.
Bond sells to the former, while the latter, as you say, need no further marketing.
As a marketing tool, Bond is also targeting people who are NOT buying the cars. By making them more desirous of AM, AM becomes more desirable in the eyes of potential purchasers.
I guess. I'm not a marketeer.
but the cash ain't one.
So Aston Martin charged the film compnay $900,000 for 3 cars that they knew were going to be trashed?
Don't you think they could have got away with sticking custom body work on - say - an old Zafira? It might even do the "going up in flames" trick for free.
this one on youtube is fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k2vkLEE4ko
It shows the orbits of the inner planets (plus appearances by the big yin) alongside the asteroids, as they are discovered.
The scary halloween bit is that all the asteroids swarming about the earth were always there, we just didn't know it.
"Quick mental exercise, would parliament be able to disband GCHQ and have the staff transferred to non-intelligence jobs?"
Depends if you mean from the legal point of view or actually doing it?
To actually do it, you'd have to somehow organise the required parliamentary shenanigans without letting on to GCHQ. If they knew about it, they'd be able to do a Sir Humphrey-like civil service judo move on you.
If they didn't know about it, or weren't able to execute the avoidance manoeuvre, then they weren't worth keeping anyway...
A more effective solution might be the use of an occulus/hololens type device to present the data to a single user.
I don't believe anything out there is capable enough as a monitor replacement, but I wonder if HP have any devices like this in the pipeline. This might be the first step in a bigger marketing campaign.
Or a cheap trick to make a quick buck.
without having to go down the "impossible girl" route of survival...
We know that the doctor knew about the message long before the medieval tourney. He's manoeuvred the ladies and the tardis to get picked up by snakeboy at the time of his choosing.
"did you suspect it was a trap?"
"I still do..."
Not sure who is being trapped by who at this point though.
A previous posted noted that both ladies were wearing handy time machines, begging the question - why were they effectively jumping up and down shouting "shoot me?"
From a plot point of view, I'm expecting more from the invisible planet thing. That's such an awesome concept that it demands more use as a plot device, and not just a way of dropping the characters onto a planet they supposedly weren't expecting. If this one wasn't going to be used later, moff would have just had the daleks teleport them there directly, saving that further star wars reference to hyperspace.
I can see where you're coming from , but a PRS is a bit bland.
A good alternative I heard on twitter was a classic 60's Burns: British and a bit weird.
I can easily imagine Tom Baker hamming it up with a wild sparkly reverse body flying V...
Jon Pertwee might have borrowed one of Prince's custom jobs?
I'll bet the "which guitar would this doctor play?" was interesting:
Strat - too "establishment".
LP - fractionally less so (though Les Paul's personal guitars had a touch of the Tardis about them).
Gibson SG/Tele/Jaguar have the rebel edge but are a bit too predicable.
Flying V and Explorer - a bit impractical and 70s.
The answer - a Yamaha SG7 (remake?) is a great one: A well respected, cult, mid-sixties guitar which still looks (to me) a bit ultra-modern.
Ah-ha! That probably explains why i can get to the bottom of your articles without blowing a fuse; something even the most innocuous Daily Mail piece tends to do.
I suppose then, in rhe interests of balance, el reg should look for contributions from a more right leaning economist?
I think it's well understood that there various types of porn available in mainstream media : property porn; food porn; car porn; gadget porn; sex porn and the rest. It's also understood that the audience these cater for, are quite interested in the subject, but not enough to actually do anything about it.
So the people watching Masterchef are less likely to whip up a beef stroganoff from scratch than the people actually in the kitchen with ingredients scattered over the worktops.
I think these economic articles are great, I feel I have learned something, but don't have to get down to properly understanding anything, or having to apply it.
One time in the pub, a few months back, I tried to explain this idea of the "give EVERYBODY cash but tax it back from the earners". (I'm sure Tim covered it in a previous article) No one got why it was a good idea, and, frankly, i didn't completely understand or remember the economic benefits myself.
Still it's a start. Though I'd feel happier if el reg also had an equally accomplished economics writer with leftish leanings as a balance.
Ok, she wasn't a Doctor, but I think she was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I don't recall actually watching an episode with her in it, so she might have been fantastic. She just had too much establishment baggage with her.
The production values, etc, and weekday slots were probably the real issues.
The reviewer's testing didn't cover one of the bigger aural annoyances on flights: the screaming child.
It's well established in psychological circles that the howling of babies is more stressful than the mechanical noises. A pair of cans which cancels out those noises entirely would be worth a lot of money.
If a mozzie is flying around the vicinity, I get slightly stressed. If it's a wasp, more stressed. If it's a giant hornet monster thing, more so. Following this entirely logical path suggests that a hovering thing the size of a drone should cause mad panic.
This finding proves that bears are far, far cooler in the presence of potential danger than we thought possible.
being a tech website, I reckon a large proportion of commentards are predisposed to identify glitches and bugs, it's how we make our money, whether directly or indirectly.
As a rule of thumb, if it's new, and not run in, there's probably something wrong with it somewhere, it's just a matter of finding the symptoms.
For this - as others have said - without a control group, it's impossible to say whether the reported shunts are a indicator of a problem or not.
If there is a problem with chocmobiles being shuntmagnets, it's likely more to do with the kind of signalling we all do inadvertently - road positioning, pre-turn wobbles, unneccessary braking etc. These give other road users information about us as drivers. If a googlecar gives contradictory signals, or none, then shunts may occur more often as people misread what the car's about to do.
except...
When only bad guys and weirdos use encryption, detecting bad guys is easy: just pay attention to the encrypted communication - who sent it, who received it, and when it happened. Presumably it's easier, when required, to crack a small number of emails.
However if ALL comms are encrypted, suddenly it's all a lot harder to spot the bad stuff.
perhaps they should have thought twice before retaining all that unencrypted data in the first place...
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