* Posts by cortland

1167 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Mar 2012

Technology quiz reveals that nobody including quiz drafters knows anything about IT

cortland

The winner is...

It's not about IT.

cortland

Were those questions

about IT?

FWIW, Moore's law isn't, strictly, about the number of devices, but the rate at which that number grows. IT isn't much about that, either, but what we do with what we've got. IMO, OMG, YMMV et cvm spirtvvs Vodka. Amen.

Antarctic ice THICKER than first feared – penguin-bot boffins

cortland

Re: Great word/Intel history play

I've never seen a mouse freeze on a REFRIGERATOR. Or a frieze!

Dawn raids on Orange over TROMBONING allegations were fine, rules EU court

cortland

So it was

A trombone -- but they let it "slide".

Your PHONE is slowly KILLING YOU

cortland

Re: He must be several tera-furlongs out of his skull

Also, momentum is slug fps (US) or Newtons/sec in EU and the UK; arguably Fig Newtons, if hit with a sack of figs. It wasn't so very long ago (historically) that I was being coached on farthing's, ha'pennies, tuppence, thruppence and the like. And weight in stones.

cortland

Why

Why were we not warned as schoolchildren that we were reading too much with books on a table or desk? Or writing there? Shall our parents, school teachers, and headmasters or school principals expect lawsuits? Is this now an officially recognized occupational health hazard that will have everyone writing and typing at eye level? Will the next warning add bursitis and shoulder injury?

http://www.ukessays.com/essays/health-and-social-care/shoulder-pain-among-office-workers-health-and-social-care-essay.php

FCC to Obama on net neutrality: We work for CONGRESS, SIR, not YOU

cortland

Zat was zen zis is now

"Congress specifically sought to regulate a new packet networking market differently from a national, circuit switched monopoly"

And now Congress (to be more accurate, those who send Congresscreatures money for "favors") seeks to regulate a national packet switching monopoly differently than a new network. It makes PERFECT cents! And not a few of them.

YIKES: Combination of LIVING WOMAN and MACHINE sighted in NYC

cortland

And snakeskin

Fangs for the memories.

Bible THUMP: Good Book beats Darwin to most influential tome title

cortland

in good old USSR...

...a man was once sent to the Gulag for claiming that Lenin's books were better than Stalin's, or so reports a book by an American held there.* They gave more heat.

*IIRC: An American in the Gulag, Alexander Dolgun, 1976;

http://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Dolguns-Story-American-Gulag/dp/0345250184

There it is! Philae comet lander found in existing Rosetta PICS

cortland

My bus driver vents gases too -- but it's not AIR.

Pre-digital computer 'cranks out' Fourier Transforms

cortland

Also note

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/22416/analog-computer#ref255067

Lights OUT for Philae BUT slumbering probot could phone home again as comet nears Sun

cortland

Re: A lot of people think...

Could be worse; they could get there at night. [NB: A joke, people!]

But see http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0e0_1390507888

VINYL is BACK and you can thank Sonos for that

cortland

And now we lose the needle...

http://www.elpj.com/about/laser-sound-quality.php

Got a STRAP-ON? Remember to TAKE IT OFF at WORK

cortland

No steenkin' watches...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETz0elhKvkM

European astronaut exposes eerie snaps of ISS in Twitter feed

cortland

In space

No one can see your THUMB.

LOHAN test flight: Results in from Oz jury

cortland

Re: Zeners

"In a 'Zener' diode either or both breakdown mechanisms may be present. At low doping levels and higher voltages the avalanche mechanism dominates while at heavy doping levels and lower voltages the Zener mechanism dominates. At a certain doping level and around 6 V for Si, both mechanism are present with temperature coefficients that just cancel. It is possible to make Zener diodes with quite small temperature coefficients"

http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/es154/lectures/lecture_2/breakdown/breakdown.html

Forget eyeballs and radar! Brits tackle GPS jammers with WWII technology

cortland

Re: Sextant

My Dad was a USAAF navigator during WW2 and used to boast, years later, about making landfall within 100 miles of Dakar on flights from Belem. IIRC, he wore his 1943 Army-issue watch until shortly before retiring from the USAF (as a optometrist, not a navigator) in 1967.

Hungary's internet tax cannot be allowed to set a precedent, says EC

cortland

2009 FCC Tax (spoof)

From http://forums.delphiforums.com/callahan/messages/?msg=33601.1

1. Enter the following totals on FCC/IRS Form 1040-T (Communication surtax reporting form):

a. Exempt words used to establish or conclude a taxable conversation. Add this number to the total in section 12, line 17.

b. Taxable words. (Expletives and audible interjections must be counted.) Add this number to the total in section 13, line 6.

c. Untaxable words. (Report all untaxable words spoken during the conversation. Untaxable words are: Words spoken by a non-resident, non-US citizen, and words used to further the National Security of the United States.) . Add this number to the total number in section 14, line 11.

2. Calculation of alternative minimum words and tax due.

Add section 13, line 6, and section 14, line 11. Enter this number in section 17, line 4.

Divide the number in section 12, line 17 by three. Write this number in section 17, line 5.

Subtract section 17, line 5, from section 17, line 4. If the result is 0 or negative, multiply the number in section 17, line 4 by three and write the result in section 13, line 7.

To calculate your tax, multiply the LARGER of either section 13, line 6 or section 13, line 7 by .05. Write this number in section 13, line 22. This is your conversation tax due.

Pay not later than 12 days after the monitored conversation to:

Chief Cashier,

The Federal Communications Commission

Gettysburg, PA 02814-7734

Planning to fly? Pour out your shampoo, toss your scissors, rename terrorist Wi-fi!

cortland

Al Kyder and Terry Wrist -- 2006

http://www.domknight.com/in-defence-of-al-kyder/

excerpt:

The War On Everything team bought tickets on a Virgin Blue flight as Al Kyder and Terry Wrist, and when these individuals failed to board the plane, Virgin helpfully read their names out, giving the piece an excellent punchline.

RUMPY PUMPY: Bone says humans BONED Neanderthals 50,000 years B.C.

cortland

Re: Pääbo.

Taxing their btains, as it were.

Chipmaker FTDI bricking counterfeit kit

cortland

Re: All FTDI needed to do...

They would not have got all this BAD publicity...

cortland

This will be a real problem for thousands of computer users, who have NO way to tell if their devices will be affected when they buy them. Uncool doesn't BEGIN to describe it. And if FTDI can get away with this, so can Microfost, bricking the hard drives if you don't have a valid install.

The dog ate my tax return but here's the hard drive; it's on there somewhere.

Boffins want to put Quanta in containers, after docking

cortland

But

There's a cure: fungicide.

Edward who? GCHQ boss dodges Snowden topic during last speech

cortland

Before

Before one dissects a frog, one must pith it, presumably with perfect precision.

Before the experiment, you need to render the frog insensitive to pain. Pithing is one procedure to accomplish this. Pithing will destroy the brain. (For some experiments, double pithing will include severing/destroying the spinal cord.) Pithing is relatively painless to the frog.

http://www.mbc.edu/faculty/pdeeble/BIO354/Web/Lab%20PDFs/Pithing%20a%20Frog.htm

Are you a gun owner? Let us in OR ELSE, say Blighty's top cops

cortland

Personal defence -- and everyone will know them. For WEEKS.

A wax-sealed squeeze bottle of nuoc-mam. Something to remember the visit by, you know?

"Oh, just cooking, come in." (squeeze)

"Oops."

"In passenger planes nuoc mam is banned. Twenty years ago, a Vietnamese student violated the ban by slipping a bottle of nuoc mam into his bag. He escaped the vigilance of customs officers, but at the Berlin airport, slipped and fell full length on the floor of the waiting lounge. The bottle broke and the fluid spread in all directions. It is said that it took the cleaning staff many days to deodorize the room."

http://www.vietvisiontravel.com/vietnam/guide_81_of_tastes_and_smells_2707.html

Human spacecraft dodge COMET CHUNKS pelting off Mars

cortland

And trailing trash

Followed, no doubt, by unfrocked Unitarians, wailing wallabies and and xerodermic xenophobes.

You can crunch it all you like, but the answer is NOT always in the data

cortland

Re: Know thy data

Ah, that's when you start *torturing* the data.

COMET barrels towards Mars, machines of humanity race for cover

cortland

Are there

Any "cosmic rocks" in this neighborhood YOUNGER than mankind?

Apple SILENCES Bose, YANKS headphones from stores

cortland
Boffin

Re: Suing for the reality distortion field?

To 70-year-old ears with artillery induced tinnitus, even the cheap kit sounds good and a second-hand 1970's "Hi Fi" sounds just fine, thank you. I certainly have no need to pay high prices for sound I can't hear.

Oxygen-free copper? C37 varnish on the volume control? Heh!

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#reviewdares

http://sound.westhost.com/madashell9.htm#unbelievable

cortland

Re: Hmmm

Both strive for and sometimes attain 4 KHz response.

Cease fire! hisssssCLICK!

Microsoft: Yeah, about that 50% post-Christmas customer price hike...

cortland

Terminilogical inexactitude?

The term's not "passed along"; it's "p*ssed upon".

Protesters stop ground breaking on world's largest telescope

cortland

Re: Once again...

Occam and Darwin did conspire

To make James Usher out a liar.

Dear Reg readers. I want Metro tiles to replace all icons in Windows. Is this a good idea?

cortland

After he got defenestrated

Stopped using Windows?

ESA's comet-chasing Rosetta eyes up 67P's vital statistics

cortland

J?

Imagine that! Squared!

Microsoft WINDOWS 10: Seven ATE Nine. Or Eight did really

cortland

I thought it was

DOS 5's Love Child.

Google ordered to tear down search results from its global dotcom by French court

cortland

I'm thinking libraries of case law might be affected as well, but that would be like an injunction against Hell; they've got the cleverest lawyers.

cortland

Whoops!

Is THIS article enough to be defamatory in France?

Apple blacklists tech journo following explicit BENDY iPhone vid

cortland

And bending the case may

Defeat its electrical shielding and make it an unlawful emitter of RF under EN 55022 and Part 15 of the US' FCC Rules.

X-Men boffins demo nanomagnets to replace transistors

cortland

Re: Core memory

My late brother had been a US Army computer repairman in the 1970's and kept what looked like framed abstract art on his wall; a core memory module with a bullet hole it it. The user site had apparently taken enemy fire in Vietnam.

Atlas snubbed! Ad blocker says it can kill Facebook's stalker tech

cortland

FB wont be the only ones

I can no longer comment to articles on the Huffiness Post site; apparently they don't like Adblocker either.

WHY did Sunday Mirror stoop to slurping selfies for smut sting?

cortland

Re: Depends on the context of the incitement, surely?

Typical of the genus. See http://www.twainquotes.com/Congress.html

cortland

Re: Do they not read the news?

"It causes global warming *and* ebola."

Also, unfortunate digestive consequences related (loosely) to milking. They involve a stool, anyway.

Oi, London thief. We KNOW what you're doing - our PRECRIME system warned us

cortland

Late to the game but...

I daresay that if footfall is indicative of criminal activity, one need look no further than for poor lighting, the presence of lurking places, and roads and walkway conditions that make it more difficult to flee from an assailant.

CURSE YOU, 'streaming' music services! I want a bloody CD

cortland

Oh Mister Dabbs

I can quite understand; you are still a young feller and enjoy getting angry at greedy businessmen who try to trick you into spending money to get something free.

I have only 127 CD's in my 330-disk changer, and doubt I'll fill it before I go where the only music is dull stuff played by ethereal harpists (whoin'ell's their publicist?) . Meanwhile, I'll buy old music, folk music, classic, baroque and privately published music -- USED CD's -- and SCR*W the RIAA.

It takes days to play my little collection just once.

BENDY iPhone 6, you say? Pah, warp claims are bent out of shape: Consumer Reports

cortland

So

Don't SIT on it.

That glass of water you just drank? It was OLDER than the SUN

cortland
Pint

Re: Panic!

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/search?q=dihydrogen&state=closed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax#cite_note-29

My own favorite: There may still be a few credulous engineers wondering what a dithyrambic synthesizer is. What fun these mortals be!

Beer will do. Bring on the maenads.

Japan develops robot CHEERLEADERS which RIDE on BALLS

cortland

Reminds me of

Somewhere in "The Blues Brothers", on seeing Sister Mary Stigmata -- "the penguin", when they think she can't hear them-- glide mysteriously across the floor, Jake asks Elwood, "How does she DO that?"

'Space bubbles' may have helped Taliban down 'copter in bloody Afghanistan battle

cortland

Re: National Security.

It has long been known that radio propagation is affected by solar and even weather conditions; communications problems that pilots ascribed to defective radios of one unit I was assigned to in Vietnam were quite often caused by flying above inversions that would not support propagation between aircraft and ground stations they were trying to reach.

That the ionosphere is often irregular is likewise well known by radio propagation specialists (and Amateur radio operators!), and mission planners knew that (lawyers would say "knew or should have known") -- and could have assigned alternate frequencies.

The remedy in my unit was simply to use a lower frequency less affected by inversions, and reports of defective UHF radio's dropped off substantially after I was able to alert our pilots to this phenomenon.

Take a look at William Hepburn's Worldwide Tropospheric Ducting Forecasts; to respect copyright, I have not linked to that site.

Euro chiefs: Hi Google. Here's how to REALLY protect everyone's privacy. Hello? Hello?

cortland
Unhappy

Google? A bagatelle, sir, a mere bagatelle!

Imagine the great fun to be had selling, if not personalized data, then anonymized information to be had from documents, images, drawings and spreadsheets when suites of software exist on far-away servers and users devices are only terminals. How shall the EU react when every document is sent abroad as it is created?