Posts by Paul Renault

It might be more accurate than..

..the bloody keyboard on the iPhone's screen.

Sheesh!! It's not pronounced 'kilometers'...

It's 'kilometers'!

Next thing you know, you'll be pronouncing that planet 'Uranus', instead of, well, you know.

So, she took it on the chin, eh?

I mean, if you're going to use Scottish words and all, and if Scotland's second language is STILL French...I can't believe I'm the first to say it.

/sigh... Look up 'menton'.

Idea for a new iPhone accessory:

A tripod for when you want to be in the group shot, but with a little 'cupping flag' to shield the delicate iPhone mechanisms from the harmful effects of light.

Really. Crappy. Products. Really!

LRRRDIMM?

Is this what used on Omicron Persei 8?

I have an old Targus CLC1 Leather Convertible Backpack.

I've packed this pack completely full (Toughbook, portable Canon BJC-50 (sigh, since discontinued), spare printhead, the very nifty IS-12 Scanner printhead, inkjet paper, notepad, pens, mouse, plus all the other usual paraphenalia. The zippers still hold well.

The leather is good quality and the pack looks good. I've gotten compliments about it (and the Toughbook) from the Commissionaires at airport checkpoints. The dividers and pockets are all handy and useful. And the price was reasonable - in 2001, I paid 169$CDN. Bonus: it holds up to 9 floppy disks!

I guess that's why they had to discontinue it.

It'll be a long time before I get another Targus product - their 'lifetime replacement warranty' policy replaces your 'I finally found a case/back/pack that has everything that I want' with a clearly inferior model... (Even when you'd accept having it repaired. When this one breaks, I'll find a good shoe/leather cobbler. Or perpaps get a Rush 24.

A more important question, IMHO...

Are the Linguiboffins Pastafarians?

I'm confused...

Shouldn't that first guy in the photo be wearing a shirt that says "Left Scale"?

Not 'biologically correct' at all!

The hips move up and down too much - the repeated shock on the spine and brain would eventually disable you. Even when running, the body keeps the head the same height off the ground, so that the brain doesn't bounce around in the skull.

In walking, the forward (not under your hips) leg puts the heel down first - which does two things: provide shock/energy absorption via the Achilles tendon, and lengthen the leg so that it can reach the ground. The rear leg does something similiar; lengthening the leg by angling down the ball of the foot, and kicking off via the calf muscle.

No, no, no, this is actually a good idea!

'Cuz there's not enough e-waste in the world, eh.

If only...

...that had been a multimillion-pound hoard, instead of a multimillion-pound hoard... It would really have been a sterling find!

Oh well.

Just to pick a nit on a totally unrelated detail...

It's not Summer yet.

Nope, not for another month. That's why the weather's so dreary there, right now.

Brother MFC-7460DN - £239 ? Ouch!

I purchased a MFC-7860DW about two months ago - for $250CDN.

It's the MFC-7860DN plus Wifi interface - you can D/L a free app to print and scan from iOS devices. Very happy.

Actually, I've had a few Brother printers over the years, they're great value. And work as advertised.

"Apple Store staff outnumber queues". Well, of course!

Just how many queues do you need? Do you really need more than one queue?

Anyway, from what I could tell from the photos, even if there would have been more than one queue, the store staff would STILL have outnumbered the queuees.

Unless you count empty queues.

Seriously, go the website, look up the list of its members and trustees.

[Dr.] Benny [Peiser] is a social scientist and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Buckingham. His research focuses on the effects of environmental change and catastrophic events on contemporary thought and societal evolution.

Not a physicist, not an engineer.

As for the rest of em:

Trustees:

Secretary of State for Energy and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Vice-Chairman of the BBC, Senior Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister, (Assistant) (Deputy) Private Secretary to the Queen, Bishop of Chester, Deputy Chairman of Barclays Bank and Director of the Bank of England, Economist, MP for Devon West and Torridge, Permanent Secretary - Environment Department (Ooo! Half a hit!) and Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service.

Academic Advisory Council:

Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Consulting editor (science), Economic commentator for the Financial Times, Chairman of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, Research Professor (Almost a hit: palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist), Professor of geophysics (Yeah, I'll concede this one), Theoretical physicist, Leading transport policy expert and past President of the French Federation of Motor Clubs, independent scholar and member of the US delegation that established the IPCC (Actually qualified for the job!), Physicist who has specialised in the study of optics and spectroscopy, Medical biochemist, Metallurgical scientist, British development economist and Professor of International Development Studies, Professor of Meteorology (Bingo!), Canadian economist specialising in environmental economics, Professor of Economics, Professor of Economics, Professor of Mining Geology, Professor at the London School of Economics, Geologist, Professor of Medical Entomology, Science writer, Electrical engineer, Professor Emeritus of Biogeography, Research Professor responsible the research areas energy and environment, and an astrophysicist and BBC Science Correspondent.

One, two, three....

Pols: Six, seven?

Economists: Ten?

Scientists: Thirteen, minus the five who make you wonder "why?", eight.

If you must read this report, get drunk first, this way you won't remember any of it.

A black bar, à la Borat chasing Azamat,...

...'covering' (well, exagerating) his peener's length, and he'd have said "Great Success!!"

Wow!

One of the games I play is to do a GIS for random paired words, and see how much porn the search returns. It would make a good drinking game.

'Muffin apocalypse' is one of the rare pairings that results in no porn! Colour me surprised.

OK, I'll be first:

..So, which security company will be doing the penetration testing?

Why would anyone miss CNN?

..Like, y'know?

They lost me, a long time ago, at the time of the OJ Simpson trial - "Trial of the Century!" Trail of the Century? I thought that was the Nuremburg Trials.

And it drives me crazy that they seem to set the agenda on the CBC News. Aaargh!

Now, when I need news, I reach for Al-Jazeera.

Canon Printer, and that soundbar...

I have a nifty Canon BJC-50; it's markedly smaller and lighter than the Pixma iP100, albeit not photo quality, and not very fast.

If you can find one, there's was a very cool print scanning print head available for it. You remove the regular printhead, put this one in, and voila!, you have a scanner. Yeah, it's slow but it has all the coolness of a vintage Minox spy camera.

http://www.itreviews.com/hardware/printers/canon-bjc-50/

BTW, logitech doesn't make that speaker bar any more.

Is BAE the same company...

...that built the four leaky, fire-prone, dented, almost-always-in-drydock Victoria/Upholder Class submarines that you guys pawned off on to us about ten years ago?

Oh look! It IS the same company!

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/sub-support-contract-creating-canadian-controversy-04563/

Ack! Thbbft!

What a gawdawfful film the first one was!

How could anyone willingly pay money to see that dreck again and more?

I could list many plot annoyances of the film. Lemme just start with a few tired cliches and bad 'science' and tech:

1) older man with the younger attractive girlfriend;

2) said attractive girlfriend, a paleo-BOTANIST, look at the triceratops' tongue's booboo, and confidently asserts, sans biopsy, that it MUST be something she ate;

...oh, I can't go on. Too many bad memories. I'm getting flashbacks.

I have to go see Koyaanisqatsi a few times.

So, I'm watching old British comedies on Netflix here.

What would someone in the UK watch on Netflix?

Reruns of The Beachcombers and The Forest Rangers?

From the flawless outline of that B-52...

..I'd say it was Star-Trek Transported there.

I'd recommend some the the World Weekly News photoshoppers. They're probably looking for work.

"They set the example..."

"[politicians claiming excessive expenses, alleged police corruption and bankers getting rich] set the example," said one youth after riots in the London district of Hackney. "It's time to loot."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/10/us-britain-riots-austerity-idUSTRE77953X20110810

Really, is anyone surprised? Not me.

Me, I'm amazed that this hasn't happened in the USA yet.

Shale gas likely worse than coal.

Howarth et al find that shale gas produces _at_least_ as_much_ cargbn dioxide as coal.

See here:

"Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations"

http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/howarth/Howarth%20et%20al%20%202011.pdf

Alternately, you can read The Guardian's article about this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/20/fossil-fuel-lobbying-shale-gas

..not to mention the huge risks in damaging water tables... Shale gas has 'bad idea' written all over it.

The dude which/who wrote the EMC document,

..must be the same dude who liked to insert "This page and the next eight pages are intentionally left blank" in the IBM documentation of yore.

Hand-motion controlled?

I have a few ot these.

I do have to touch the radio while I move my hand, but they work flawlessly.

Closing a door against a boner?

Let me be the first of thousands to wince and say "Ouch-ouch-ouch-ouch!"

/wanders off, looking for a bag of frozen peas...

Is that prototype missing the bionic eye?

...and maybe they can fix one of Steve Austin's shortcomings: give him a bionic back so that when he lifts a car, his spine doesn't collapse.

C'mon, you're expecting a lot from journalists...

...most of whom pride themselves on not understanding science or math...

Consider two examples:

1) Journalists falling for these: Iraqi's 'close support of Al Quaeda, and their huge cache of Weapons of Mass Destruction

2) Policy makers: At the time that the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, Condeleazza Rice admitted said (out loud! I heard her say it) that she didn't see it coming.

(According to Wiki: Her dissertation centered on military policy and politics in what was then the communist state of Czechoslovakia. So, she was a export on the Soviet Systems.)

Yet, when 12 year olds fall for an old hoax, THAT makes the news...

So, how long..

..until the hard drives show up on eBay, with all the data intact and in plaintext?