Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson
1875 posts • joined Tuesday 24th April 2007 14:31 GMT
Page:
A conversation coming Thursday
Student: "I could not o my homework because Wikipedia was down"
Teacher: "They announced that early enough, you could have started earlier."
Student: "What? You expected us to finish our work BEFORE the last minute?"
Adults can have such unrealistic ideas about kids ;-)
I could never get the hang of Thursdays.
Posted in The Sons of Khan and the Pascal Spring
You mean the Great Prophet Zarquon?
Was his second coming due yet? I thought we still had time!
Mine has the USB stick with the H2G2 radio plays in the pocket
New improved Criegee!
Gaia's own spring-cleaning solution!!
Seriously though, really interesting work. Anything that improves our understanding of the climate is great.
Phew!!!
that's all
And filleting them is out of the question, of course.
Of course the numbers are real!
Performances figures could hardly complex numbers, could they?
The question is whether they are accurate.
Mine is the one with the calculus book in the pocket
OOK!!
as the librarian of Unseen University said when asked to comment.
I could not agree with him more
So is this now a "killer app" for Linux?
Couldn't resist.
Awesome!!
And last year I was already happy about seeing two type Ia supernovae at 69 and 21 million light years respectively from my back garden. Granted, I only have 8 inches of aperture at my disposal, but 9 billion light years puts things into perspective.
Nuclear blast, because a supernova puts nuclear bombs into perspective.
As private Fraser used to say:
We're doomed! Doomed!! DOOMED!!
To paraphrase Lord Vetinari's comment of crime (and its organization):
"As we know they are going to get things wrong, we might as well do it efficiently"
for cats, as anyone with an unadulterated cat knows.
Posted in iPad SURVIVES FALL FROM SPACE
Like the BOFH might
But then he would let it drop on something soft (the head beancounter, the head of IT, the Boss, or the CEO, or anyone else who had got in the way of his plans (or just ticked him off)).
@ PC Paul
somehow that one never affected me
But does it update the information every time a gnat sneezes?
People have a right to know!!!
Now that would true BOFH style
or maybe PFY
Maybe the BOFH installed his own kind of predictive texting on this one
I remember there was an episode where he replaced the standard spell checker with one that introduced errors.
On a serious note, I think he did that on the machines some of my students are using at the moment.
Posted in Kodak heading to Chapter 11
But they did make some excellent CCD chippery even then
We used one of their early KAF chips in image analysed microscopy 23 years ago. The KAF series of CCD chips is highly regarded, but their use is mainly in the astronomy market (small niche), and in medical imaging cameras (smallish but lucrative niche). Some of their chips found their way into digital cameras (an early digital Nikon as I recall). Quite a few astronomers are seriously alarmed that only one big player will remain in the CCD manufacturing business (Sony). CCDs are more sensitive (through larger fill factor) than CMOS chips, but this is only really of concern in seriously low-light conditions (such as astronomy and fluorescence microscopy).
The problem seems to be they did not see CMOS chippery replacing CCDs as the norm on regular cameras. So apparently they fumbled in (at least) two ways: they did not judge the full impact of digital photography on their film business, and they kept focusing on CCD chips more than CMOS.
Posted in Lunar mineral turns up in Oz
Tranquillityite: Love the name
Can we also find narrativium in the same deposits?
Why not go for the Ankylosaurus wrecking ball. Just for the extra oomph!
Sirius Cybernetics anyone?
"All the doors in this space ship have a happy and sunny disposition, it is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done!"
I do not want chatty doors, intelligent elevators, and a computer who will get "one hell of a kick out of any program you choose to run through it." I want my machines to do my bidding, and not guess what I want, and then do it without my say so. Smart phones should look smart, but not try to be too clever for their own good.
I would rather have a chat with Marvin the Paranoid Android than have robots and computer like me.
RIP Douglas Adams
PTFE spray on your windows?
might be a countermeasure. Best simply not mess with the black ops guys.
New excuse for kids: the virus ate my homework!
So they did not back up properly, and they did not have adequate anti-virus protection. Methinks Ms Cowart is not the only one who might be fired.
Monumental cock-up indeed.
inimitable, that man!
Posted in Microsoft celebrates the death of IE6
Good riddance!
We had a website for a conference we were organizing, when people mentioned they could not read certain bits. We checked and rechecked our HTML (which we had run through various validators etc). We then asked what browser they were using: answer IE6. I forget which W3C standard made IE6 bork, but we could not be arsed to change it.
We simply added a statement stating that our site was optimized for Firefox/Opera/Safari/IE7 and left it at that. As it was a conference for computer scientists, we assumed they would be able to install a decent browser.
I'm incensed!!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I am actually allergic to the smoke of frankincense (a good reason to avoid certain churches and temples), but that does not mean I would like to see it disappear.
@Chris Miller
If you can afford that kind of kit, fine! Still, seeing a supernova with my own eyes beats googling for images of it (making your own images is a thrill, I know).
Alternatively, you move to southern France, where skies are clearer and frost is rarer (a man can dream).
A good remark I heard on stargazerslounge.com:
"There are people whose sleeping patterns are profoundly disturbed by the positions of moon and planets. Such people are called astronomers."
LOL
Wishing on a star is astronomically stupid!
Lovely reading from the ofcom PDF:
“Advertisements for personalised and live services that rely on belief in astrology,
horoscopes, tarot and derivative practices are acceptable only on channels that are
licensed for the purpose of the promotion of such services and are appropriately
labelled: both the advertisement and the product or service itself must state that the
product or service is for entertainment purposes only”.
As an astronomer, I thoroughly endorse the notion that astrology is suitable for entertainment purposes only. Astronomy is better entertainment still, in my opinion, but I understand that not everyone wants to freeze their nadgers off while looking through a telescope.
So zey are uzink ze dark quantum state, are zey?
Next, zey will be uzink ze dark light itself!!!!!!! (cue roll of thunder)
It vill all end in tears!!!
Otto von Chriek
And so it ends
not with a grunt but with 30 or so bangs.
I observed this supernova for weeks
I got it with my 8" scope when it was at magnitude 11 (100x fainter than what the eye can see) and climbing, followed it through its maximum at mag 10 (visible in binoculars), and back down to just mag 13 (630 fainter than the naked eye kan see). It was amazing. The kids also had a peak and did their best to wake the neighbours with their shouts of "We've seen a supernova! We've seen a supernova! We've seen a supernova!"
Really neat to see such a bright one. It is odd to think all heavier atoms in your body were forged in the furnace of the core of a star, and that everyone is a supernova remnant.
@Ken 16
Woz said: "let people wear what they like" he did not say: " everybody must wear T-shirts". If you feel good in a suit, wear it! If you don't, no worries. That is pretty much the attitude in our research school. I only wear a suit at BSc, MSc and PhD graduation ceremonies. Suits are to warm and stifling for me, others like them.
Authority is obtained through force of personality, prior achievements, and (most importantly!!) through the quality of arguments given, but not through suit and tie. Again, this is a research setting. Quite a few businesses work differently. They should make up their own minds whether an informal dress code would suit them.
And only call off the lawyers when they promise to call it
LOHAN-2
Codefinger: Brilliant
Elon Musk has the better Bond-villainesque name however.
Now where has that white Persian cat gone?
Posted in Google gives £550k to Bletchley Park
Good for Google
Given the importance to code-breaking history, should MI5/6/insert number here not contribute. Or maybe they did but want to keep that secret (force of habit, presumably)
Agreed
They did not have to do that, but they did. Well done.
Precisely
And the Windows brand is the first name that comes to mind when "security" is mentioned.
I wonder why?
Posted in Jimbo Wales ponders Wikipedia blackout
Wikipedia on strike?
Why does this remind me of the national philosophers' strike proposed by Vroomfondel and Majikthise. Deep Thought's answer is memorable:
"And, pray, who will that inconvenience?"
In this case the answer must be school kids and students who now have to look for original sources themselves (tip: try the library, you know, the place with all them books ;-) ).
Maybe it was RIM's equivalent of the BOFH and PFY
they hacked into the navigation system before they were completely pissed out of their skulls. They would also go on junkets for the express reason to become plastered
Because many of us can handle it
I have regularly had a beer or wine with a meal, or a little night cap before sleeping on a plane, and never thrown any kind of tantrum on board. Why should I be denied that because some goons in suits get plastered?
Posted in Beeb rescues old Who episodes
But, couldn't they just ask the doctor?
........................................
What!? You mean it's not real?
Posted in Dell XPS 14z 14in Core i5 notebook
Looks like a candidate
to replace my aging Vaio SZ. Quite compact but with a decent (NVidia) graphics card. Could do some CUDA/OpenCL stuff on that.
So
as I comment, I am write about you writing about .......... turtles all the way down
recursion: see recursion
"And one WTF?? - Voyager 1 launched September 1977, Voyager 2 launched August 1977 - why did they invert the numbering / launch out of sequence?"
There was an accident with a time machine, but that was all hushed up!
Or then again
May the great green Arkleseizure sneezed just a little bit
Better get a B-ark ready and put all the lawyers, stockbrokers, and bank managers in it this time.
Whatever you do DO NOT put the telephone sanitisers in there
Windows will no longer be out of touch?
Sorry, I'll get me coat
BTW what is a "flay-away iPad"? Some SM fondleslab?
