Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson
1875 posts • joined Tuesday 24th April 2007 14:31 GMT
Page:
Put differently
How long can SETI milk the military for funding?
Best of luck to them
Are you suggesting
they should have put AMERICAN guns on the Victory?
I remember the excitement of each planetary visit
These probes have done so much more than can ever be expressed in terms of money!
A toast to all those involved in making all that possible!
Posted in Former HP boss Patricia Dunn dies at 58
in any other article this comment might have been funny, in an obituary it is somewhat misplaced.
Coors light....
is only palatable when you have run out of all other options.
Here's to real beer, mine is a Westmalle Tripel
Sounds neat
but then Malta is somewhat short on permafrost, last time I looked.
There were pygmy mammoths on certain Siberian islands as well, maybe that is the better option.
re: no enforcement = optionality
Maybe this would work?
http://micom.net/oops/SpeedEnforcement1.jpg
Posted in Toads predict earthquakes: Official
maybe he has less sense than the average toad.
A hypothesis that seems to fit all available data
Or then again
maybe the Great Green Arkleseizure had a little hick-up.
Ready a B-Ark, and put all lawyers and bank managers in, but NOT the telephone sanitizers, this time round.
Clearly the astroboffins
got quite a present last Xmas.
Interesting stuff!
Posted in James Bond savages the Kardashians
Agreed!!
I especially loved the down to earth: "I'm not judging it – well, I am obviously."
ROFLMAO
Awesome
Maybe the set-up we are getting (48 core opteron machine with 256 GB RAM) , and parallel code we are developing for 1.2 and 2.4 GB satellite images (moving later to 1.5 terapixel) would find applications in that domain as well.
A patent is not for any idea, it is for an invention of a (feature of a) product or a process to create a product. So at the time of its invention you can patent a camera and assorted printing kit both as products in their own right, and as a means to create a picture. The idea to create a picture in itself is not patentable (at that point in time). Pure, abstract ideas such as scientific theories or mathematical equations are not patentable.
A nice paper in IEEE Computer argued that as all software can be expressed in an expression in lambda calculus (would you not hate to do that for say an OS kernel), all software is just a collection of mathematical equations, and therefore not patentable.
You can see I have been talking to IP lawyer too much.
Thumbs up to Mr Bot!
Some very useful things can come out of Europe!
Posted in The BBC Micro turns 30
Now that brings back memories
Mainly of the Acorn Atom and Electron, which were used throughout the 80s and well into the 90s in various labs here. Two key aspects were that you had the complete schematic, and that all external buses were buffered. It is quite hard to blow up buffered TTL buses, and believe me, various klutzes in the lab did their best.
Causing the marmite love/hate balance to tip in the direction of hate, I suppose.
Just needs a truck load of toast.
Hang the font!
That is one cool piece of astrophotography! Outstanding!
I will raise a glass to that
More plausible theory:
The shipboard computer of Phobos-Grunt has the all new GPP feature (genuine people personality) and is offended about being given such a silly name, and is moping in orbit. Meanwhile the telemetry system is angry about what the mission control computer said about its software, and is no longer on speaking terms with mission control. Mission control is offended that Phobos-Grunt did want to talk to the Aussies, but not to mother Russia. None want to work before someone else has apologised.
The lesson we learn from this is that the last thing you want is computers with human-like intelligence.
I'll drink to that!
Brilliant work. They may be amateurs, but they are of an Olympic stature!
SHAKIRA
Shrapnel and
Heat
Absorbing
Kinetic
Impact
Resisting
Armour
Am I the first to say
That is not a core!
I've got a bad feeling about this!
Better still
Use an Antonov 225
Was it the Dean of Unseen University?
always referred to as "two-chairs".
Mine is the one with the Unseen University logo.
Wouldn't any Gliesean Spaceship be rendered helpless
by the Trojan which no doubt hitchhiked along with this horrendous guff-blast?
After all, if SF movies are to be believed, all spaceships can be hacked using a Win-XP based laptop or MacBook.
Gotta love the acronyms
WIMPs vs MACHOs
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles vs MAssive Cold Halo Objects
You cannot get a better pair of names for a scientific dispute.
Maybe it thought the the Red Centre was Mars
Good going by the Aussies! hopefully something can be salvaged from the mission
Posted in Chromebooks: the flop of 2011?
I never saw the point in Chromebooks
Tight cloud integration is fine, until you are abroad, and data roaming charges apply (arm+leg, generally), even assuming you have connectivity at all (try mountain tops in Indonesia, or Uganda, or even in many national parks in the US). I want something that works really well locally, without internet connectivity, AND has good cloud integration for when internet is available. Other offers at the same price point just make more sense.
First et it get there in one functioning piece!
Fingers crossed!
If successful, it could far outstrip Spirit and Opportunity
Should this not have been posted under "Open.... and shut"?
Carbon fibre?
The casing of my (aging) VAIO SZ series machine is made of carbon fibre, and has withstood severe bashing around for years. Not perhaps as elegant as Apple, but if you want a tough, lightweight case, carbon fibre takes a lot of beating.
The MacBooks do look good in their simple cases, but I chose my machine mainly on combined merits of compute power, gpu power, and light weight. As we had just got extra funding price was not an issue. Looks did not come into it.
Anyone remember the Apollo-Soyuz project of 1975
Collaboration was possible in space even then
We make small steps, some forward, some backwards. Hopefully our random walk shows net progress.
Did the name SAM after Commander Vimes?
Would be appropriate to have him looking for water (though deep down he just wants a drink)
Schrödinger’s Cat has tunneled away years ago
Any cat can always appear at the other side of a closed door, even when you just observed it on THIS side.
Posted in Jaguar to Titan? Not so bad…
Dare I ask?
Will it run Crysis?
Mine's the one with the MPI manual in the pocket
They just want you to think they are calibration patterns!
where's my tinfoil hat!!
What if it wasn't just diesel?
Some BOFH style additives should provide some more OOMPH!
Or should that be WHOOOOOOMP!!!
Here, et me install a new switch for you.
As Terry Pratchett put it:
"The IQ of a mob is equal to the IQ of the dimmest member divided by the number of mobsters"
See, simple math explains it.
Finally!!
A chip that can get completely spaced out!
I'll drink to that.
Posted in Go back to the future with Red Dwarf
I did miss it
13 years should be enough to get some original ideas. I will look forward to seeing it.
Posted in BOFH: Licence to grill ... stupid users
Someone has just had an upgrade foisted upon them
Blessedly, it is not me!
Nice episode
Not really
Extracting energy from the tides could theoretically increase the tidal friction which is drawing rotational energy away from the Earth-Moon system. This would make the moon recede faster and the earth's rotation slow down more quickly. The process stops when 1 day = 1 month = 50x24 hours (if I recall correctly).
So black it hurts the eyes!
According to Zaphod Beeblebrox, at least
To put the resolution into perspective
resolving 4m at 300,000 km is an angular resolution of 0.00275 seconds of arc. My 8" telescope does just 0.57 seconds of arc.
So yeah, HD would be possible easily, if you pad the image with a sufficient number of black pixels
AH, A CLUE
If they have buttons which are labelled black on a black background which when pressed let a little black light up black to show that you have done it, it must be the HAGUNEMNONS!
Look out for horribly beweaponed, chameleoid death-flotillas!!
Interesting find
I for one had never heard of the Garamantes culture. It does sound like someone wants to enhance the idea of a Libyan cultural identity that transcends tribal differences. Might not be the worst thing to try, but let's hope that political aim does not bury the science, which might find that, rather than being a single, unified culture, the Garamantes were a loose association of tribes, who bickered as much as current tribes (or the Gauls for that matter).
Fingers crossed.
Just look at the surface of the moon with a telescope
You will see it has been hit by FAR worse that a poxy little 300m pebble. There are several craters more than a hundred km in diameter (Bailly at 287 km for example).
That's not a moon !!
Had to be said
As life arose at least 3 billion years ago
I do not think anything is changing in a big hurry.
I just thought the Greeks were charging for the use of their letters, you know, just to start balancing the books
