Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson
1891 posts • joined Tuesday 24th April 2007 14:31 GMT
Page:
Is it just me,
or does Browsium sound like a Discworld element like Narrativium?
Mine is the one with "Thud" in the pocket
Interesting piece. It has strong echoes of how someone like Darwin saw nature. In excerpts of his journal published in "A Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Beagle" his descriptions of landscapes and natural scenes are surprisingly utilitarian, focusing very much of how the landscape could be used to man's benefit. Not at all what many modern environmentalists would expect.
I think Kareiva is dead right that a more balanced view is needed. I have seen several efforts to set up reservations and protect species at the expense of the local population in Africa fail. Likewise I have seen other efforts in which the local population benefits be highly successful. Not really surprising when you think of it.
Re: iPhone users <> Apple fanbois
or:
Pascal programmers .NE. Real programmers
Mine is the one with the Fortran 77 Manual
"so could this thing lift the Brooklyn Bridge?"
Yes, and so can you. If I give you a long enough and strong enough lever and a place to stand you can lift the world, as Archimedes would say (but then in Greek)
;-)
Re: Yes
quite likely
But will it run Crysis?
Mine is the one with the MPI manual in the pocket
Posted in Condom compartment hidden in iPhone case
According to "Good morning Vietnam!"
the sizes are:
Large
Medium
Caucasian
Stellar dyspepsia?
A serious case, by the sound of it
Geo-social exploration
Now that is a euphemism to remember:
"I can assure you, I am not looking to get laid! I am conducting a geo-social exploration!"
Ok, if the flying car has been sorted
When will we get jet-packs?
So will this new IDE work on my old Hercules card?
Just a thought
Re: peer reviewed
You are right that publicly funded work should be available publicly. However, note that in all cases any scientist without access to a journal simply contacts the corresponding author (I still have some of those quaint reprint request postcards in a drawer somewhere). The author emails you the PDF, end of problem. IEEE and some other publishers allow you to put your stuff on the web for research and education purposes, provided a suitable copyright statement is included.
The same holds for code we produce: ask and ye shall receive.
Press releases are NOT under embargo in all cases except one (where patent applications are involved, nothing to do with the publisher), in my experience. In those instances where we want to do a press release, the university takes care of it, and the publisher has no say. We do often let this coincide with the (on-line) publication of the paper, so journalists can check out the paper.
Posted in Steve Jobs biopic
Balmer?
Option 1: Alexei Sayle
Accent may be a problem, but the thought of him chanting "developers, developers, developers!!" in a strong Liverpudlian accent has a strange appeal.
Option 2: Danny DeVito
might have to practice chair flinging, however.
Re: Isnane or Welsh!
So do you use Llanfairpwyllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch as pass phrase?
Cwmtwrch is a shorter favourite
Re: so...
You could always go for:
"Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number. Its number is 666"
A bit long, but very memorable.
Would be a good BOFH password, once he has given up on "Grievous bodily harm"
Icon, because, well....
What is this figure in double-decker buses per fortnight?
'Smooth, gentle' mating at 28,000 kph
I trust that is with respect to our earthbound frame of reference, not the speed of the podule with respect to ISS.
Re: The other thing about red dwarfs
They have far less UV radiation output than the sun. Because the temperature is lower. If we put the planet near enough to the red dwarf to be comfy temperature-wise, the amount of shorter wavelengths (including blue light) hitting the atmosphere is less. Charged particles release might be energetic, but with a strong enough magnetic field a planet could be OK. One worry is actually that there is not enough UV and other hard radiation to cause enough mutations to keep evolution ticking over, but that is a rather speculative argument. There are many sources of randomness which could supply enough mutations.
Incidentally, the colour of light emitted by your typical red dwarf equals that of an incandescent light bulb (3200 K colour temperature) to that of a halogen light (3600K). So they are really yellowish red, whereas our "yellow" sun emits white (5800K) light.
They avoid us because of cricket!
It's in very bad taste, you know.
Um, what's a Facebook?
Potential answer if you really do not want the job
Should this craft not be manned by Kryten?
Looks like the perfect pilot for it
Sounds interesting. Might give it a try on the windows machine at home.
Posted in Sitting down all day is killing you
Re: Cycling
Yer doomed, doomed, DOOOMED!!!!!
Private Fraser
Re: At least...
genius in its simplicity
Re: Couldn't have that, now.
Exactly, we want fact-free politics!
Sounds like they like Gordon Way's inverse expert system: don't reason based on facts to get the best possible conclusion, but enter the desired conclusion beforehand (along with the known facts) and let the program come up with a plausible reasoning to support the conclusion.
Douglas Adams, you are sorely missed!
Posted in Sitting down all day is killing you
Does going to the pub for a quick pint count?
Sounds plausible, especially if we include earlier reports that beer is good for you.
So male scars are tough and do not bleed?
Was that published in the Journal of Dermatology, or was it Annals of Improbable Research?
Brazillian policemen chasing blonde women?
is this unusual behaviour?
Sorry, I had to ask. Mine is the one with the ticket to Rio in the pocket.
Re: Lucky lady
Elderly bones can be rather fragile. The septum (which I assume got broken) is not very strong to begin with. It is the only bone I have broken, and I can tell you it is pretty painful. Having it set is not fun either.
I really do not know what happened, so I will not jump to conclusions.
So how many sheets of A4 (sorry, Letter) size paper would be needed?
to get the equivalent amount of paper.
Nice attempt, but could not match PARIS for altitude!
Re: No tinfoil hats
Good points.
Really smart meters could be of benefit when you have really smart equipment in the house to negotiate good (=cheap) moments to switch on (like the washing machine automatically picking suitable times to do the washing to minimize cost). Whether there are any benefits now is debatable.
Re: Tinfoil Cures All
That and duck tape!
Re: All the symptoms described...
"watching too many Republican Party nominees' speeches"
that is a major cause of stress ;-)
$300 savings for the company perhaps,
but what about costs incurred having to visit people to measure usage?
Very high levels of shortwave radio signals (we are talking powerful radar here) have been documented to have adverse health effects. I think some people do a linear interpolation between zero effect at zero W to a handful of points of massive problems in the MW range, with little or no data in the intermediate range. I very much doubt that damage at the levels experienced is real. All the symptoms described (including those of the diabetics) could be explained by stress (caused by the fear of the effects of radio signals, perhaps?). BTW, I am not saying the complaints are not real, I am saying that the cause might be different.
A QR-code for "42"
is what would like to stick on every QR-code I find.
Mine is the one with the cassette tapes of the Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy radio plays in the pocket
Re: Free stuff
We use Linux (and OS-X and Windows) at our research institute. My own work is mainly on Linux systems (but I am at writing code that is cross-platform portable). I do not consider my work a hobby.
Posted in BOFH: Dawn raid on Fort BOFH
The description of the box is spot on, as many have said.
I still have an old 8" floppy somewhere (staggering 128kB capacity). It's got (or at least had) a legit copy of CP/M 2.0 on it. I sometimes fancy lashing up an old 8" drive with a USB interface (where is that soldering iron), and see if I can "upgrade" someone to CP/M 2.0 running on some Z80 emulation software. Unfortunately, I doubt the drivers will be available.
Still, a man can dream.
Cool!
In more ways than one.
Re: Even worse
For some brands of beer, that might be fine, in other cases (fill in your least favourite here) it is cruel and unusual punishment
Ye cannae break the laws of physics, capt'n!
As Scotty would say. He might well add:
"Powerrr, we need more powerrrr!!"
Re: Gullable?
page 478, Concise Oxford Dictionary, 6th Edition (and showing its age)
Gullable, I agree is not in that dictionary, though it may be in Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary of Every Language Ever"
Posted in New supernova pops up just over there
Spotted this on March 19!!
Quite easy through an 8" scope. My fourth supernova to date (seen, not discovered). There is another one in the constellation of Virgo, which I am still hoping to catch.
Re: Don't see why the fuss
It's written in Murphy's Laws:
a) The chance of a demo crashing is an increasing function of the number of people watching
b) The chances of a demo running flawlessly is proportional to the inverse of the importance
Interesting
I doubt this simulation will be the last word, but for now it explains the data quite well. Of course, the observational bias will also be there, but that does not mean the effects simulated do not exist. It does make the "habitable moon scenario" seen in star wars more likely. Whether they are inhabited by bear-like creature who using stone-age technology defeat an army equipped with technology as advanced as faster than light travel is another matter entirely (although the movie did show the physical disadvantages of walking tanks with a comparatively narrow spacing between the legs compared to the height of its centre of mass)
Did the guy miss paparazzi.xxx?
Just asking
Re: Why bother with steganography?
Amanfrommars, is that you?
Re: Yeah, who could possibly tell that a random-appearing string of characters .....?
And besides, a random appearing string of characters might be a program in Perl
I just had this mental image of a supersonic Swordfish hurtling towards Bismarck
Which would be "interesting" for the crew in their open cockpit.
