Posts by Mike Richards
3337 posts • joined Wednesday 28th February 2007 21:13 GMT
Page:
Not forgetting
It all gets much easier if you assume your shark is spherical.
Posted in Honda Jazz Hybrid
Bless
It's nice to see the 'English as a seventh language' crowd are here practising their skills.
How many components are there in the Shuttle?
It runs into the hundreds of thousands, every one of which has a likelihood of failure, put enough of them together it's incredible that a machine of this complexity can ever be made to work. The Shuttle is probably too complex, but it is far from ramshackle.
Posted in Beyoncé sued over aborted videogame deal
If this is true
Beyoncé is well-positioned for the 2011 Naomi Campbell Person of the Year Award.
Encryption - yay!
Though knowing Sony it was a Caesar Cipher.
None of my friends with PS3s nor myself have received emails either. 77 million emails is a lot, but Sony's new pals in the criminal underworld seem to be able to send that many in a lot less than a week.
Thumbs up - you've earned your beer
But there'd better be a PlayMobil recreation of tomorrow's gushtastic events for those of us who are naturally intolerant of wall-to-wall fawning and cringing from the likes of Nicholas Witchell and Vernon (I am so not making this up) Kaye*.
Feel free to add velociraptors and shape-changing robots to the guest list if it promises to make things more interesting.
* Memorably described this week by Marina Hyde as the missing link between the BBC and the vegetable kingdom.
Fantastic system
They take the money from you but only inform you what you've got a MONTH later? If only there was a machine that could authorise purchases and issue receipts within seconds...
'Basically it turns into a protracted version of "Deal or No Deal"'
Ooooh as if the Olympics weren't gruesome enough with the likes of Tessa Jowell and Seb Coe, now you've thrown Noel Edmonds into the mix.
Posted in 2011 Ford Focus
Nice car
Just a shame Ford has continued to row back from the radical styling of the original Focus towards something much more mainstream.
Posted in Five amazing computers for under £100
Huge fan of the Z88
I probably wrote a couple of million words in my time on that machine. You're quite right, it really was way ahead of its time in being truly portable, incredibly frugal with power and (unusually for a Sinclair) extremely robust.
I wonder where mine is? I think I'd better go hunting through the cupboards tonight.
Flying Nokia phones
Have previously only been sighted in Naomi Campbell's household.
It didn't end well.
Benzine
Is a mixture of hydrocarbons obtained by distilling crude oil. It also goes by the names petroleum ether, petroleum spirits or naphtha.
Benzene may be a minor consituent of benzine, though for all sorts of reasons you'd prefer if it wasn't.
'Squeeze, bang pew pew, blow, suck'
Oh Paris - is it you?
Lasers
Okay, this is a great application. But why am I still waiting for dental lasers to replace drills? This was promised when John Craven helmed the mighty 'Newsround' and still nothing.
Longer Sundays?
If you've ever been to Wales you'd know just how long Sunday can last.
Encrypt my backup
The data on the phone is plaintext.
Don't forget what he does in his spare time
http://www.teslamotors.com/
He must be having a blast developing the future.
Wrong complaint
Had ofcom investigated the god-awful singing then I feel the complaints might have been upheld.
The Reg has already covered this
A while back Lewis used science to prove that spiders in Greenland would soon qualify for the congestion charge:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/07/armoured_spiders_out_of_greenland/
'When, following the DEA implementation, profits don't soar.'
They'll demand more from Vaizey and Hunt - stiffer fines, more interceptions, fees for using the Internet / buying a blank disk / buying a music player - honestly there is no end to the creative parts of the media industry (apart from actually creating good material). We'll hear more heart-bleeding stories about artists living in poverty and the trillions lost each year through privacy and once again the government will roll over to the media business.
If they stopped treating their customers quite so badly it might help. New Blu-Ray, popped it in - ten trailers none of which were for the same demographic as the movie I wanted to watch, then when I got to the movie itself, an unskippable advert for Maltesers.
Last week when travelling abroad I wanted to buy an eBook for the flight home. Waterstones refused to deliver the book to a computer located outside of the UK even though I had logged in to my own account and provided the correct CVS number on my card. One sale lost.
It's down to choice
By the time the iBooks app came to the UK Kindle was already well established on iPad. Those of us with iPads took a look at iBooks when it was first released, saw the horrifying prices and piss-poor selection and have never looked again.
I don't own a Kindle (I have a Sony Reader), but the whole Kindle ecosystem is brilliantly thought through and Amazon deserve their success.
French design
Why is it the famous French flair for design seems to elude them when it comes to building cars? The tech is nice, the body is horrid.
Also looks like
Max Faget's original DC3 design for the Shuttle orbiter which would have sat on top of an even larger winged booster. They'd have weighed nearly 2000 tonnes all up and taken off and landed horizontally. The DC3 would have had 11 SSMEs on the booster and another 2 on the orbiter.
It was canned once the USAF demanded a large cross-range ability and forced NASA to adopt a delta wing design. But in sheer Gerryandersonatiude it takes some beating - this might just be it.
But hold on - a 0.5mm shell on this beast - how robust would it be to bird strikes and the like?
Good idea, but
His sister Kylie would have been even better.
'Typhoon was built to a specified requirement.'
You're quite right - that requirement was the Cold War.
What have the poor Swedes done to deserve that?
I think it's the UK's unstated policy to piss off the nordic countries one by one. Having had a couple of year's fun at the Icelander's expense it's time to turn on the Swedes (the Norwegians will be left until last as we need their oil and gas), flatpack furniture and Dolph Lundgren movies not so much.
Posted in Nissan Leaf electric car
Sounds like the Tesla S is almost there
The base model will have a 260 km range with other models having 370 and 480 km ranges. Charging times will be 3 to 5 hours, depending on the battery capacity with a 45-minute QuickCharge will be possible when connected to a 480 V outlet.
And it looks gorgeous, sort of when Mrs. Jaguar loved Mr. Mondeo very much indeed...
http://www.teslamotors.com/models
Antimatter?
As you said yourself - this is DARPA. You aren't thinking crazy enough.
They'll store solar power as biomass in giant hydroponic gardens fertilised by squaddie crap. The plants will then be fed to the genetically modified cyborg slugs which in turn will be consumed by the flesh devouring killer droids.
There's a lot of room at the bottom
But is there any money to be made in flogging ultra-cheap tablets? Or are most of the Android developers going to be competing with one another for the lowest cost, lowest margin part of the market - a place where there is precious little scope for innovation or to distinguish your product against those of your competitors.
Apple will be delighted to see the Android market spending its energy competing against itself. And I expect Google will one day follow Apple and Microsoft in having 'favoured' partners who are willing to develop a more premium product in order to offer something different and exciting.
Posted in Russian Vostok capsule sells for $2.9m
A shame
That Russia is still selling off its incredible history as a space pioneer rather than using it to inspire the next generation of Russian engineers.
Fashion tips
The pirate about town of tomorrow who wants to be noticed but not overdone can't fail to impress in this outfit inspired by a Christmas turkey. He's modelling a fashionable ensemble of Bacofoil pants and hoodie charmingly offset by these risque welding goggles. Trust me it'll be 'hello sailor' on the yardarm tonight.
Yes of course it is
You should probably make a proper expedition to the museums of Northern Iceland - because if you get as far as Hólmavík in the NorthWest you can go and visit the Witchcraft Museum and see their most prized exhibit - a pair of necropants.
What are necropants? I hear you cry.
Well they're for finding gold. To prepare your necropants you have to make an agreement with a friend that he (and it must be a he as you'll see shortly) will help you in the next life. Your friend must then die of natural causes and be buried. Shortly after he's been interred you dig up his body and skin his lower half to make a pair of trousers. Put on your fashionable new pair of strides and place a piece of gold in the erm - handily provided pouch and you will be guided to treasure.
Before satellite TV, I'm sure this must have passed many a long winter's evening on the edge of the Arctic.
It's just missing one thing
A hen party.
Agreed
Does this mean a defence of 'I stopped being a serial killer just as soon as someone explained that I had genuinely misunderstood the law.' is now acceptable in court?
Hmmmm
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is nothing more than people finding uses for a particle accelerator they just happened to have lying around the place and they're now trying to explain the electricity bill to their bosses.
'shoot ahead of what customers want today'
As usual with Microsoft they've come late to the party and are claiming to have invented the future. Much of this is available already on the Nissan LEAF where it is called CARWINGS:
http://www.nissan.co.uk/GB/en/vehicles/electric-vehicles/electric-leaf/leaf/discover/leaf-carwings.html
(sorry about the Flashtastic site)
An update is available for your car
Your car will shut down in 30 seconds to complete updating which may take up to an hour. When it restarts you will be asked for your unique Microsoft Serial Number which can be found on the underside of the vehicle's chassis.
Humpbacks
Can't wait to see ACTUV's strategy for handling amorous whales.
Rough Science
Became very expensive when the presenters found themselves in demand for other programmes.
'Bang Goes the Theory' is the replacement and it's pretty good fun even if there has been something of a lack of thermite.
Welcome to mineralogy 101
Where, rather than trying to remember cleavage patterns* you spend your time looking up rude mineral names in the index.
Also includes arsenolite, welshite, fukalite, kinoshitolite and my all-time favourite, fornacite.
* so much less interesting than you might think.
Blueprints
All of the designs for Saturn V exist and can be referred to. The production lines were all closed and the jigs disassembled after the completion of the backup booster for Skylab. It was never used and now hangs out in pieces at various museums. The sobering thought is that most of the people who designed Saturn are either long retired or dead, so a lot of the expertise has gone with them.
PS3
Everyone I know who has a PS3 is using it almost exclusively as a Blu-Ray player because they feel they've been stiffed by Sony. The games are frequently more expensive than those on the 360 and rarely as good featuring cruddy frame rates and murky textures. I don't think I've bought a game for mine in nearly a year.
Not so fast....
Plutonium's toxicity is much less than commonly stated. Long term studies of people who have been exposed to plutonium either in weapons manufacturing, fuel reprocessing and bomb detonations have found no excess deaths due to its toxicity. It is most certainly not the poisonous substance on Earth as Ralph Nader hyped it, it may in fact be less toxic than caffeine.
Plutonium is an alpha emitter, and in theory can produce a wide range of cancers if ingested or inhaled; but once again, long term studies of people exposed to plutonium particles have failed to show a significant risk.
However, plutonium in the environment is a sign that other nasties which are biologically active and have much higher radioactivities are probably also slopping around in the outside world.
The Pu-238 found at two locations at Fukushima is almost certain to have come from the reactor rather than a bomb test because Pu-238 is only likely to have been made in a reactor by one of two processes:
U-235 + n + n -> U-237
U-237 beta decays to Np-237 over a period of days
Np-237 + n -> Np-238
Np-238 beta decays to Pu-238
There is no time in a bomb explosion for significant numbers of intermediate neptunium to be created and to undergo beta decay so Pu-238 is a good indicator of reactor plutonium.
The second method for making Pu-238 is for Pu-239 to be hit by a fast neutron that rather than fissioning the nucleus ejects a second neutron. This can happen in bomb detonations, but it will not create significant amounts of Pu-238 to affect the isotope ratio.
Clearly there is a leak either in the reactor itself or in the spent fuel pond.
Done by Douglas Trumbell decades ago
It was called ShowScan and used 70mm film at 60fps. I saw a demo in the 1980s and the illusion of solidity is astonishing.
Posted in Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin Air speakers
Remote?
Have they improved the remote over the original?
That was an anonymous black on black pebble which was really cheap and nasty to hold and not easy to use without looking at the buttons.
The original works fine with AirPlay if you have an Airport Express - mini TOS from the Airport's optical out to the Zeppelin's optical in. It appears as Airport Express in the drop down menu on iTunes, all you have to do is toggle the Zep until the power light turns green.
Bless!
No doubt it and its contract paid for through expenses.
What's still unknown
Is how long the phytoplankton lock up the CO2. Once all of the nutrients have been released from the melting ice, the bloom will come to an end and the plankton will die releasing the carbon once again. Likewise if they're eaten, most of that CO2 goes straight back into the atmosphere courtesy of respiration - only a fraction goes into skeletons, muscle and lots and lots of crap.
Some plankton secrete calcium carbonate exoskeletons which can sink to the ocean floor to form what geologists (with their never-knowingly undersold sense of drama) call 'ooze'; which does remove carbon from the atmosphere and ocean, but many do not.
On the upside, phytoplankton produce lots of dimethyl sulfide which is linked to cloud formation over oceans and might act to cool the planet.
Boy, if only this climate malarkey was as simple as a boiling water reactor.
'The reactors endured a Force 9 earthquake'
No they didn't.
Magnitude 9 was the force at the epicentre of the 'quake. The reactors survived about 100th as much energy.
Only some graphite reactors
Gas-cooled reactors don't have void coefficients; in fact the AGR won't melt in the event of a total loss of coolant. What made the RBMK so dangerous is that in normal operations the light water coolant absorbed neutrons so the operators had to keep the control rods way out of the reactor in order to keep enough fissions going on. At Chernobyl, as the coolant boiled away, absorption fell, the number of neutrons in the system increased - causing more reactivity and the reactor ran away.
