Posts by Captain DaFt

Re: So Windows 10 will have an edge?

"Will we get cut badly like we did with Windows 8?"

I'd say Win8 was more like blunt force trauma to the brain.

"Nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."

Sorry, no go. Politicians are too much like cockroaches, they'd survive.

Re: What?

""Watch" is both noun and verb, y'know..."

And that would be why Apple got so snippy with reviewers that said 'Apple Watches' instead of their preferred 'The Apple Watch'.

Re: Whenever I need corporate guidance,,,

It's all the same answer set isn't it?

One or more of the following:

Panic,

shuffle CEOs,

layoff workers,

buy a small company for a ridiculously large sum of cash,

sell small company they've already bought for ridiculously small sum of money or shut it down completely,

Pass out large bonuses all around at top levels...

lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm sure there's an executive dartboard for sale somewhere that has these options as targets.

Re: Trust

"I think you have to make a leap and trust something to hold everything."

I find that this works best these days: http://www.angryflower.com/986.html

Re: So they're finally out!

And already old news. Smart watch? Bah! I got my Smart Ring ages ago!

Re: Lenoneveragain

"Lithium-ion and Lithium polymer batteries are pretty fucking dangerous, and when they get damaged or otherwise explode, they can spew flames and burning liquid metal everywhere.

-Snip-

If I didn't care about wasting something that cost me about a thousand bucks only a year ago, I'd run my ThinkPad over with my truck repeatedly"

Sound like just the thing you'd want happening under you vehicle... But I'll bet it gets lots of views on YouTube!

Re: I'm suggesting it.

"to it being a nuclear power station that was hit, rather than - say - a coal power station."

Ironically:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045.short

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

A coal fired plant could deposit way more radiation in its environment through normal operations than this plant did by accident, but since it's not nuclear powered, who cares?

Rich white guy thinks the rest of the world is like him.

More likely: Rich white guy has business that makes him billions. Sees other countries to exploit with it, sugar coats it as 'aid'.

Re: Some questions still remain

Well, there is debate over whether the dorsal plates were fixed or moveable.

It's not entirely unlikely that a female in heat could lay the dorsal plates flat to allow a male to mount her.

Re: $28.8m, versus $55.9m last year

This type of thinking always struck me as the farmer that claimed, "This tree would support so much more fruit if I cut off all those useless roots."

Re: Come on guys

Well, I will confess to once 'rebooting' a recalcitrant machine so hard I broke my big toe.

Re: It's my computer

"Then install an Adblock-detector on your site and refuse to serve content to people running Adblock."

And wonder where everyone went when they switch to one of the hundreds of sites showing similar content to yours without acting like a prick.

Re: Are we participating now ?

And what if the ultimate question turned out to be, "Pick a number, any number."?

Which isn't actually a question, but raises so many more questions about the nature of life, the Universe, and Everything.

Re: So, why do we even have social security numbers?

Well, Social security numbers are how the government tells John Smith from John Smith and John Smith. It's basically just a more unique 'name' than a person's regular name.

As such, its only use in security should be the same as a person's name, no more, no less.

Re: The most important metric

Pah, all these newfangled metrics. In my day we used Smoots, and liked it!

Re: the good stuff

"This and New Horizons (along with lots of other great endeavours) make me really excited about these times we live in."

True, but for me, also a bit depressed. After all, it's all 'look but can't touch'.

I want to walk on a distant world under an alien sun, but it'll never happen.

Re: Yum!

"Mate, you'll be knocking up a bloody quiche next"

Ah, but us smart ones caught on to that ruse. The meterosexuals knew that if they called it 'bacon pie' as it rightfully should be, us real men would take it away from them!

Re: No shit. We've known this for over half a century.

"mutations that result in horribly deformed offspring unable to live more than a few days will go unnoticed "

Oh, it was noticed, but it was also noticed that surviving generations are healthy and thriving, despite being radioactive:

"Some animals in the worst-hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. Mice embryos simply dissolved, while horses left on an island 6km from the power plant died when their thyroid glands disintegrated.

Cattle on the same island were stunted due to thyroid damage, but the next generation were found to be surprisingly normal.

Now it's typical for animals to be radioactive - too radioactive for humans to eat safely - but otherwise healthy."

From: http://pripyat.com/en/articles/wildlife-defies-chernobyl-radiation.html

Re: It takes a real pilot.......!

"It needs politicians to apply some serious common-sense."

That was one Hell of a punch line!

Jim, you should give up the day job, because you definitely have a talent for comedy writing!

"I must be getting old....I thought "APT" stood for "Advanced Passenger Train""

These days it's "All People (are) Terrorists" according to the NSA.

Re: All will be well then...

"lets automate the carriers too - drone carriers, automated 3d printers fabricating automated drones. I can't see anything going wrong with that...."

You mean... Berserkers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_%28Saberhagen%29

Re: Which is it?

"Bored minds need to know..."

Well Wired has a nice diagram showing how it works here:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-06/14/isspresso

I was a bit surprised. I was expecting something similar to a 'siphon' pot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_coffee_maker) since they don't need gravity to work, but it actually uses a pump to force the water through the system.

Re: SpaceX is seriously cool

"Someone needs to commercialise velcro socks, footboards and headboards first"

Well, the habitat is inflatable, so it's like a zero-G bouncy castle, so just keep a grip on your partner(s), hump away, and enjoy the ride! (boingy boingy bonk)

Re: @1980s_coder A real OS.

"I would bet dollars to doughnuts that it would be easier for a partially sighted person to use UNIX with a braille terminal than any Windows OS."

Uh, think again:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16984742

Quote: "Fewer than 1% of the two million visually impaired people in the UK are users of Braille."

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29882719/ns/us_news-life/t/fewer-blind-americans-learning-use-braille/

Quote:"Fewer than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind people in the United States read Braille"

Simply put, Braille is hard to learn, hard to teach, very slow to use compared to normal reading, so few bother.

Plus, Braille books and equipment (like keyboards and readers) are freakin' expensive, when you can get them.

"If a watch can't even last a whole day then what flipping use is it?"

So you can look at it to tell how many minutes of charge you have left on it.

See? It generates its own uses!

Re: Why bother?

"But then some agency (or perhaps the existing ones since they would know everything, everywhere that's going on) would have to take out the spammer's, miscreants, etc. no matter where in the world they are. Simples... After all, isn't these agencies goals "to keep us safe"?"

A chorus of Spooks: "But, but... Then we'd have to do our job and do real WOOOOORRRRK! {WAAAAHH!} Work is too hard!"

Re: Research

"When I read about what people have to do to earn money in the field of physics, it makes me glad that so many of them are unemployed."

Yeah, because 'understanding' and 'learning' are such bogus concepts.

Back in the day it was all 'Spirits' and 'Gods' and that worked soooo much better for us, dinnit?

Re: Excellent

Well done, sir or madam, you called it:

http://m.forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2486427