Re: Life on Earth, Santa and the Easter Bunny
"Water into wine anyone?"I can turn pay-cheques into wine. Will that do?
Posts by Pompous Git
3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014
Page:
Geoboffins claim to find oldest trace of life in rocks 4bn years old
Monday 2nd October 2017 00:43 GMT 
Re: I though God created the wurld in 1924.
Try this for Last Thursdayism. And it's Bertrand, not Bertram.
It's worth bearing in mind that the Big Bang proposes that the Universe started from a state of zero, or near zero entropy. The sudden appearance of such an entity is far less probable than the appearance of the Universe with its current entropy. Cosmology is such fun!
Monday 2nd October 2017 00:10 GMT
Re: More fake news
"It is a complete category error to refer to the Bible in any way when discussing the age of the Earth."So how would you address the issue of the long debate over catastrophism versus uniformitarianism? Or are you advocating that no teaching of the history of geology take place?
Sunday 1st October 2017 17:25 GMT
Re: More fake news
"And to think it was ordained ministers of the Church of England whose studies of geology led to the understanding of the fossil record and the age of the Earth. "Except for them who weren't: Etheldred Benett, Mary Anning, Charlotte Murchison, Mary Buckland... All denied ordination as ministers, university education and membership of The Geological Society.
Vibrating walls shafted servers at a time the SUN couldn't shine
Friday 29th September 2017 16:05 GMT
Re: Did anyone else expect something else?
" I've suggested this so often - it almost designs itself..."Not just designed — built! I've used one in my misspent yoof!
Byte Night: Bed down with tech chiefs, celebs ... or stay on your sofa
At last, someone's taking Apple to task for, uh, not turning on iPhone FM radio chips
Friday 29th September 2017 10:42 GMT
Re: My decorator...
"I don't see the need for great numbers of radio stations - I'd prefer a narrow choice of quality rather than a wide choice of crap."Good luck with that! We had an excellent radio station here in Oz called DIG Radio (digital broadcast in the TV spectrum). They played a very wide variety of high quality, but not mainstream popular music from the 1930s to the present. Then the manglement decided that the demographic (40+ yrs) was wrong and began catering to the under 30s.
I really miss DIG; it was like listening to random selections of my collection interspersed with material I'd not heard before, particularly Australian music.
Friday 29th September 2017 07:15 GMT
Couple of things...
I have a battery about the size of a mobile phone, but somewhat thicker that connects to my phone/Kindle when a recharge is needed. It's also capable of starting the car if needed and is also a flashlight.
What use is radio in an emergency? As we are reminded every bushfire season in the Land of Under, local radio can tell you when to get out and where to go to find food and shelter. Your life may depend on this information.
Sputnik-1 replica used to test the real thing goes under the hammer
Monday 25th September 2017 17:03 GMT
"Look at Victorian Britain. The richest, most widespread empire the world has known and industrially the most advanced but the majority lived in horrendous conditions with the country as a whole little more than a cesspit."Compared to the standards of today. Compared to what prevailed previously, not so horrendous. Unless you count more abundant and affordable food, better housing, more affordable clothing etc. as "horrendous".
Driverless cars will make more traffic, say transport boffins
Monday 25th September 2017 09:02 GMT
Re: A car is a tool.
"Git, I respectfully suggest they aren't friends, they are family."Touché; not related, Fran's a Londoner (originally) and Tony is from the bit of land to the north of Tasmania.
"Question: You lot need electric fencing, and don't have spares?"I could have run a line to the boundary fence, but as it happens a small strip-grazer around the garden to keep out the wallabies and possums that were not a problem prior to gun-control makes more sense (topographically). Some items are needed only occasionally and we figure why bother purchasing something that one of us already owns. Such items as sash clamps, specialised router bits, biscuit-joiners, Gripple-tool, wool-classing table, post-hole diggers, star-post pullers and too many other tools to mention are virtually held in common. My friend Doug has a lathe capable of making a replacement crank-shaft. A bit silly for all of us to own one, even if we had the kind o shed-space Doug has.
Monday 25th September 2017 07:43 GMT
Re: A car is a tool.
"In the past, I loaned out tools occasionally. They always came back in an inferior condition than they were when they left the shop. Thus the rule: No loaners, end of discussion."I must be lucky. My friends Tony and Fran return tools in as good as or better condition. I learnt how to sharpen drill bits from those guys. Fran dropped by a few hours ago with an electric fence energiser I need for a while and borrowed my star-post driver.
Monday 25th September 2017 06:55 GMT
Re: Am I stupid (be kind)?
Mrs Git picks Jo up as she passes her house in Franklin, then Jenny in Huonville and then drops them off in Hobart before proceeding to work on the other side of the River. On her way home the reverse happens. Jo's vehicle remains at home all day, as does Jenny's. Three commuters, one vehicle on the road rather than three. Jo and Jenny pay Mrs Git "petrol money" defraying her cost of commuting.
Don't panic, but.. ALIEN galaxies are slamming Earth with ultra-high-energy cosmic rays
Monday 25th September 2017 08:46 GMT
Re: Life
"Ever met any, AC? How would you know?"Back when I was a juvenile delinquent, rather than a senile one, I had a friend called Jeff Robinson (known colloquially as Superboy). In them dim and distant days, maths exams consisted of 10 questions; answer 6 for 100%. Jeff used to answer all 10, correctly, and frequently used a novel proof.
NBD: Adobe just dumped its private PGP key on the internet
Sunday 24th September 2017 04:24 GMT
Re: Really nothing new
"You may find that InDesign is used by many graphic houses for layouts but I wouldn't know about that."Development of InDesign began at Aldus and was acquired by Adobe when they purchased Pagemaker from them. To say the least InDesign is InDispensible as is Postscript. So it goes...
Orland-whoa! Chap cops to masterminding $100m Microsoft piracy racket
DRM now a formal Web recommendation after protest vote fails
Fancy that! Craft which float over everything on a cushion of air
Monday 18th September 2017 08:46 GMT
Re: A word can be patented ?
"Definition of patented::originated by or peculiar to one person or group :individualized"In the OED it is restricted somewhat:
"A licence to manufacture, sell, or deal in an article or commodity, to the exclusion of other persons; in modern times, a grant from a government to a person or persons conferring for a certain definite time the exclusive privilege of making, using, or selling some new invention."
There's also a special case for land in the USA. It's hard to see how a word can be an article, commodity or land.
Saturday 16th September 2017 00:13 GMT
Re: A word can be patented ?
"Yew shure ?"" For some years from 1961 registered as a proprietary term but now in the public domain." So no, a registered trademark, not a patent. C. S. Cockerell wrote in Hovering Craft & Hydrofoil that he and his wife tried to find a name and settled for the not altogether appropriate word ‘Hovercraft’. Up until then they were called sea-saucers.
Boffin wins (Ig) Nobel prize asking if cats can be liquid
Friday 15th September 2017 16:29 GMT
Re: Cats are neither a solid nor a liquid.
"Gambling is for people who can't do math(s)."Try telling David Walsh that.
"Walsh made his fortune by developing a gambling system used to bet on horse racing and other sports.....
In July 2012, Walsh was involved in a dispute with the Australian Tax Office, which demanded he pay $37 million from the profits of his gambling system. The dispute was "entirely resolved" in October 2012."
Facebook let advertisers target 'Jew-haters'
Friday 15th September 2017 10:29 GMT
Re: I had problems with Google
"When searching for Jew sons."
Little Jewson and Kinky Friedman - They Aint Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore
Hope that helps...
Boffins: 68 exoplanets in prime locations to SPY on humanity on Earth
Thursday 14th September 2017 23:19 GMT
Re: Deep Time
"And how does that differ from the summary in my post? Nobody who knows anything about the subject would expect evolution to be invariably gradual."
I pointed out that there was no change for 800,000 years in response to your post where you claimed: "human tool making evolved very slowly for a very long time (in our terms)". No change =! gradual change.
Sci-Fi titan Jerry Pournelle passes,
aged 84
Thursday 14th September 2017 17:16 GMT
Re: Pass? Why not die?
"Not sure of Jerrys religious beliefs, but as a non-believer I always cringe at "pass" since it implies pass over to something else, ie an afterlife of some sort."Jerry was a Roman Catholic and frequently quoted from the liturgy in Latin. Euphemism in avoiding offence tends more to do the opposite.
Tuesday 12th September 2017 00:26 GMT
Re: Science provides facts, you decide.
"The IPCC is tens of thousands of scientists, not politicians."This is manifestly untrue. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri claims 2,500. Dr Mike Hulme: "Claims such as '2,500 of the world's leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate' are disingenuous ... The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was only a few dozen."
"it is no longer rational to dispute the greenhouse effect (as any gardener would tell you) or that it is the direct and indirect consequences of human activity that is the overwhelming contributor to the accumulation of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere."You conflate two very different processes here. The greenhouse in the garden works by inhibiting convection. "Carbon pollution" does not inhibit convection.
"When Jerry Pournelle wrote about it, the science was less clear cut."Warmists regularly invoke Svante Arrhenius' (19 February 1859 – 2 October 1927) and his erroneous explanation of how greenhouses work in support of their case. I make no doubt that none of them have ever read what Arrhenius wrote:
"We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind."[Emphasis mine]
Worlds in the making: the evolution of the universe 1908, p63.
Monday 11th September 2017 16:22 GMT
Re: IT angle
"Your thesis is entirely wrong.You appear to contradict yourself....
For the record, the term was "microcomputer," to denote a computer smaller and less powerful than a minicomputer or a mainframe, suitable for use by a single person. The term "personal computer" quickly (and long before 1980) became more or less synonymous."
Monday 11th September 2017 15:58 GMT
Re: Jerry will be sorely missed
"Western profligacy, that the USSR couldn't match, won the 'war'. SO it's just as valid to say The Beatles won the war, or Levi's Jeans won the war."If you can't tell the difference between nuclear-powered X-ray lasers and a pop group, I guess the following might reinforce your beliefs.
I have no idea whether министерство обороны российской федерации financed this, or not. Enjoy...
Monday 11th September 2017 11:18 GMT
Re: IT angle
"I'll assume that's not willful misunderstanding."Australian Personal Computer magazine was first published in May 1980. It's my understanding that IBM released their PC on 12 August 1981. It's also my understanding that PCs had been around for some time prior to Australian Personal Computer magazine's debut.
Monday 11th September 2017 08:44 GMT
Re: Jerry will be sorely missed
"SDI was a catastrophic and expensive failure, not one of the projects succeeded."Jerry's thesis was that US investment in SDI led to USSR investment in retaliation. The US economy could withstand the economic impact, that of the USSR could not and consequently led to its collapse.
Monday 11th September 2017 08:41 GMT
Re: RIP Jerry.
"Jerry was griping about a couple cheap made in Taiwan Ethernet cards that someone had shipped him having the same exact MAC address ... I checked mine, and you guessed it."Not just cheap Taiwanese cards with that problem. Friend had a carton of mainstream USA-manufactured Ethernet cards with the exact same problem.
As Jerry always said: "We do these silly things so you don't have to".
US government sued by 11 pissed-off travellers over computer searches
This article has been deleted
Wednesday 13th September 2017 15:52 GMT
Re: Anything they can do..
"I'll see your Peter & Gordon and raise you :"
Back at ya! :-)
Edit: missed your reference below....
Wednesday 13th September 2017 15:09 GMT
Re: Anything they can do..
"staffed by topless young ladies in Coventry."It's in the nature of the place...
The new, new Psion is getting near production. Here's what it looks like
Monday 11th September 2017 17:18 GMT
"Reminds me of the Olivetti Quaderno from circa 1993, which was a fine form factor but embuggered with NECs take on the 8086 processor in an era when the 386 was well established."I still have mine and the manual says March 1992. I thought the cpu was a 286, but looking it was a V30HL running at 16 MHz. I thought it an excellent replacement for my Tandy 200 when I purchased it. Twenty meg of hard disk!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
