Re: I can't disagree

Eddie,

Do you have the 12070 update installed? It's dramatically improved the battery life on my Lumia 800 to where it is as good as, or better than, my iPhone 4.

Go to Settings -> phone update or plug the phone into the Zune application on your PC if you haven't got it and you should be able to download the new firmware.

Re: Wagner's ring cycle

And of course we'd be competing against the majestic Bugs Bunny version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2VMqQ6XnmI

However, if this were to go ahead may I suggest Mel Gibson directing as he'd get the whole Wagnerian schtick, and for lead singer - well you need a viking who can belt out a tune (sort of) - brace yourself - Dolph Lundgren does Elvis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6U2-_Dhw4

Maybe Bette Midler could spring for Brunhilde?

Re: Extinction Level Events

You've seen our Cabinet I trust?

Re: My list

Don't get too excited - it's probably not out until next year.

Re: Anyone ever seen the e-gates at Luton working?

I used the e-Gates at Heathrow Terminal 3 a month or so ago. Thanks to millions of Pounds spent on high technology it only takes about five times as long to clear immigration as using the old method of going and talking to someone.

Re: I don't understand...

'Can someone please explain to me why the WinPho UI does not seem to fit on the screen?'

It's there to tell the user that not everything in this 'hub' is visible at the moment, if the user swipes to the right, the rest of the label and whatever is lurking over there comes into view. I quite like it as an approach for putting lots of content on a small screen, but until you see it move it really does look odd.

'Finally, at the end when he says 'want to see something cool?', I was really hoping that he was going to throw himself off of the roof of the building and the last shot would be the rapidly approaching ground.'

LOL

Very 'Strange Days'

Re: Now that's what I call ...

It would however make for an epic version of Sesame Street.

Re: Have the tabloids calmed down yet?

Balanced debate would be nice but it's somewhat undermined by government ministers announcing plans in the nakedly partisan 'Sun' rather than in Parliament.

Re: Britain responsible??

The steam and gas turbines are both British so we'll claim them too - so that's one million points to the British and 1 point to the Germans.

Re: Is this why lots of asteroids are made of Iron?

Supernovae are certainly where the iron in the universe comes from.

About 10% of asteroids contain sizeable amounts of iron and are classified as M-Type bodies. They show show in the early solar system, dust particles seeded with iron from supernovae accreted into planetismals some of which became large enough and hot enough, through impacts and radioactive heating to fractionate with the dense iron and nickel sinking towards the core. A few tens or hundreds of millions of years later, some of these bodies were in turn smashed up by major impacts producing asteroids and iron meteorites.

Re: All for one and one for all

Some McDonalds are being refitted to go all upmarket - well upmarket from say Burger King. Amongst the newness are row after row of tethered iPads - all of which come with 'The Sun' app. Although the reading age is well suited to small children, I wouldn't call the paper's content suitable for children.

Re: "...which has trawled through some old shipyard records..."

The theory of bad steel or bad rivets doesn't really hold water (ahem) when you think her sister ship, the Olympic, performed sterling service in those very same waters until 1935. Olympic not only had a nasty habit of hitting other ships in the cold Atlantic, but once ran down a U-boat - all without any major hull defects. Olympic was only taken out of service at that point because the merger of White Star and Cunard which left the company with too much tonnage for the TransAtlantic routes.

Re: Mac or FORTRAN?

Apple's also been ignoring interface designers for quite some time now. If it's not the horrible faux-reality interfaces of the new Address Book or the Calendar, it is (as the article says) the colour-vampire interfaces that have been foisted users with the grey-on-grey-with-grey-highlights favoured by iTunes. Apple have also produced some pretty nasty 'professional' interfaces in products like Aperture and Final Cut which can only be described as 'Depressing'. Frankly they both need to be taken out and recreationally beaten to death with a shovel.

Re: Its Cobblers

Better or worse than [insert name of Robin Williams feel-good-family-movie-here]?

Because I very nearly walked out of 'RV'.

I was 40,000ft over Greenland at the time.

I salute you

Passing high voltages and currents through random stuff in the pursuit of knowledge.

Have you tried a doughnut?

Bloat 'n float

Is an accepted palaeontological term for when terrestrial fossils are found in marine sediments. The dead beasty gets all puffy and bob, bob, bobs down a river until it goes flat and sinks to the bottom.

Unless of course they all died in the Flood.

The Earth has one permanent natural satellite - the Moon. There are however a number of objects that are in 1:1 resonances with the Earth which are called quasi-satellites. The orbit of a quasi-satellite is not stable over the long term and the object will eventually go off into another orbit around the Sun.

There are five quasi-satellites of Earth: 3753 Cruithne, 2002 AA29, 2003 YN107, 2004 GU9 and 2010 SO16. In 2002 the Earth temporarily captured J002E3 which turned out to be the third stage of Apollo 12 which had been discarded into solar orbit. After a few swings around the planet it was ejected into a new solar orbit.

Re: The China Syndrome again?

'Would you trust a Chinese company who's CEO, Ren Zhengfei was a Major in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) where he served as a military technologist to supply a national broadband network?'

The technological geniuses at BT thought Huawei were just splendid. And I'm sure they'd never do anything that would affect the security of their users.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/30/huawei_threat/

Re: Dublin surely

Until now they've had a big office near Victoria Station, which if you're ever allowed in has to be the most terrifying place ever (and Lester's photos aren't too far off). Thousands of terrifyingly bright, terrifyingly young people sitting around doing stuff surrounded by old fashioned telephone boxes and beach furniture.

The food is great though. And if you're very well behaved you get goodies.

Re: "or do I err?"

'It's equivalent to 1000* the entire US electricity consumption but not for very long.'

EDF would still find a way of overcharging you.

Re: Don't feed the troll

If people read the paper (and it'd be interesting to know if Lewis did), the authors are much more hesitant about their results than this article makes out. They use the words 'tentative' and 'suggests' as well as being clear that they cannot precisely age all of the crystals.

It's a shame that Zunli Lu et al's work is being sensationalised by people who don't have a background in the subject to sharpen their own axes.

Re: does this support Manual Olivers nova hypothesis ?

Not at all.

The inner planets are denser for two reasons - none of them are massive enough to hold on to hydrogen and helium atmospheres, and secondly because radiation from the Sun has either cooked off, or blown off a large proportion of their volatile elements.

And one for Virgin Atlantic's rather handsome new livery:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZAc2IOpBr4

Going out for a takeaway

There's some fascinating genetic research that's been done in Iceland on the origins of the settlers. Looking at mitochondrial DNA passed down through females, it is clear that 80%+ of the male settlers were Scandinavians, but anything up to 60% of the women who accompanied them were of British and Irish extraction. The suggestion being that settler's left the fjords, found themselves a wife in Britain and Ireland and then went to Iceland. There's also a small, but significant genetic component amongst Icelanders which is today only found in North American Indians, suggesting that there was prolonged contact (ahem) between the two cultures.

And from the article:

It was possible that Vikings landed on the coast of Canada, but any human settlements there died out.

The Vikings DID land on the coast of Canada, many times. There is a well preserved settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland.

Re: Happy?

With you on this one.

Many of the staff are genuinely knowledgeable about games, but the stores have been disastrously managed from the top. Every store has two huge two sections - one encouraging people to preorder and containing nothing but shelf after shelf of empty boxes of games that haven't been released yet. The other part of the store is pre-owned games piled up at random. A few shelves will contain the top ten games, cheap peripherals and precious little else.

Gamestation is marginally better, but all the stores have that teenager odour about them.

Re: How easily we forget...

Anyone know if cane toads are immune to spider venom?

It'd be just our luck if Australia's unrivalled ecology of teeth, spines, venom and general fuck-you attitude had found its match in the one animal less cuddly than a funnel web spider.

Re: Wrong Angle

I thought the instruction to stow electronics was an attempt to reduce the number of heavy, hard objects that would be flying around the cabin in the event of an accident during approach or takeoff?

And think of the publicity

LOHAN drops truss, stuns children! See the shocking video.