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* Posts by Martin Budden

2493 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

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Astronaut yells FIRE ... from SPAAAACE

Martin Budden Silver badge
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Re: They also had to invent a new level of fire danger.

Maybe the fire danger warnings need to be more descriptive:

1. Go ahead and have a campfire, it's winter and you'll appreciate some hot marshmallows.

2. Please be careful with your campfire so it doesn't spread to the next tent.

3. Don't light a campfire because it might burn down a couple of nearby homes.

4. Definitely don't light a campfire because it'll probably burn down dozens of homes including your own.

5. DON'T BE A FUCKING IDIOT AND LIGHT A CAMPFIRE BECAUSE YOU'LL BURN DOWN THE ENTIRE STATE AND THEN YOU'LL GO TO JAIL. MORON.

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2012 was warmest year ever recorded in USA

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FAIL

We live on a tiny planet!

Really? "Earth’s surface area is 510 km2"

I know there is a Send corrections link, but errors like that in the very first line are just embarrassing.

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First rigid airship since the Hindenburg enters trials

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FAIL

Re: "As a cargo carrier it certainly doesn't look that useful."

"Wilderness firefighting?"

Completely unsuitable for wilderness firefighting: large fires create huge thermals and very strong turbulent winds, and can also generate lightning and fire tornadoes. In other words, even the largest airship won't cope with the 'weather' created by a large fire. Here is some El Reg reporting on the subject: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/21/australian_fire_tornado/

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Canadian astronaut warns William Shatner of life on Earth

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Thumb Up

Scrape 'em off Jim!

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Devil

Re: Some people play guitar in the bathroom for this reason.

Send *all* bagpipes to the ISS!!! None left here then.

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Biomass bummer: carbon mitigation could increase ozone

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Re: Use Australia as a test-bed

"Not sure about the sheep but the Koalas are so cute.

Surely they're harmless."

No way! They have enormous sharp claws and very bad tempers. If you try to cuddle one outside of a controlled zoo environment you will bleed.

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Martin Budden Silver badge
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Re: Use Australia as a test-bed

"Australia is a continent of mostly eucalyptus, people and maize/corn."

Australia is a continent of mostly desert, devoid of eucalyptus, people and maize/corn.

OK so there are a very small number of people in some of the desert, presumably only living there to avoid drop-bears.

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Leaping hedgehog probes planned for Martian moon Phobos

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Can they jump right off?

Given Phobos' low escape velocity (a person could easily throw a ball up fast enough that it never comes down) I wonder if these things could take a run-up at a suitable slope (e.g. Stickney's inner wall) and launch themselves into Martian orbit?

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Steve Bong's 3D printing special Xmas showcase

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Coat

As soon as it can print one Domino to order it can also print the other twenty seven (it should be fairly trivial to write software to handle the dot combinations). The printer won't be arrange them in a neat line ready for toppling, however you can easily build your own Lego robot to do that.

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Boffins use laser to move maglev disk

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Re: Brilliant!

Moggies are never amused. However, it could work as a Moggie Frustration Device.

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Polish man mistakes hot iron for mobe

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Pint

What a rebel!

Google Translate quotes him as saying "I like to run amok"... and he was drinking beer at breakfast time!

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Cassini spots Titan ‘mini-Nile’

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Or 90 deg the other way and it looks like the Gambia River.

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LOHAN fabricates full-fat fantastical flying truss

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Joke

Re: To Our Playmonaut:

And the acting won't be wooden.

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Did you ever wonder what £41 million looks like?

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Re: Did you ever wonder what £41 million looks like?

Two.

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US Army demos first robot Black Hawk helicopter

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Facepalm

Re: Send Corrections

True, but with at least three typos in this article, I can't help but wonder if it would be easier for everyone (including the author) if the author simply proof-read the article before clicking the "Embarrass Myself" button.

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Australian Prime Minister: Mayan calendar 'true'

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FAIL

@Chet Mannly

There could be another reason why Gillard called Abbott sexist: because he's sexist.

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Re: "unreconstructed"?

I think "unreconstructed" would mean constructed, broken, constructed again ( = reconstructed), then taken apart. Maybe.

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FAIL

Re: I can fell the anger rising within me

Except that the Labour Party are currently to the right of centre. Just look at their policies on immigration, gay marriage, environment, information... all to the right.

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New research cuts Kepler's exoplanet count by one third

Martin Budden Silver badge
Joke

Diversionary tactics.

French sperm rates have reduced by a third, so now they want us to think about something else reduced by a third.

Huge space balls are still way more impressive than frog's balls though.

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UK climate expert warns of 3-5 degree warmer world by 2100

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Re: I'll be dead by then...

I take it you have no kids then.

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Martin Budden Silver badge
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Re: The other elephant...

IANAScientist but this carbon capture thing just doesn't make sense to me. The carbon leaving the coal power station via the smokestack is not just lumps of solid carbon: it's chemically bound up in CO2 gas. The thing about gas is that it takes up a lot of room: too much to be able to hide it under the carpet. This means we'd need to chemically change it somehow into some other form eg a solid, and that would mean un-oxidising the carbon: this is going to take a lot of energy... my guess is that it would take approximately the same amount of energy as we got out when we oxidised the coal in the first place, plus extra to cover inefficiencies in the system... doh! See? It just doesn't add up (to me at least). I'll be very happy if someone cleverer than me (I've set the bar pretty low there) comes along and explains a way that carbon capture can work for real.

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Martin Budden Silver badge
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Re: Carbon Neutral

Actually there are forms of energy generation that are carbon neutral. For example: Grow a tree, break off some twigs, let them dry out, rub them together really fast while blowing on them, and hey presto you have a fire which you can use to make a cup of tea. Later on when you fancy another cuppa: grow another tree... OK I never said it was practical.

Seriously though, burning waste biomass for electricity generation instead of just letting it rot is actually a carbon negative way of generating electricity. This is already being done with waste biomass from growing cane sugar. The lifetime energy output exceeds the up-front energy investment needed to build the furnace & generator, hence carbon negative.

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Martin Budden Silver badge
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Re: Long before 2100, China will be a first world nation

Agreed, and the Chinese government is already making statements about climate change and has even started implementing a few policies, so your prediction about China becoming self-regulating is already becoming true. I get the feeling a lot of westerners don't realise how quickly China is advancing in many areas and assume China is still in the grips of the Cultural Revolution: it's not.

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Martin Budden Silver badge
Mushroom

The other elephant...

"I find it very hard to believe that we'd have an efficient low-carbon system without carbon-capture storage and/or nuclear power," he said.

Is carbon-capture storage actually possible on any real scale?

Bring on the nooclar! But here is the other elephant: nooclar has had some, shall we say, bad press.

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Frenchmen's sperm plunges by a third in quality and quantity since '89

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How did we manage to get through an entire article and almost two pages of comments without mentioning the word "mayonnaise"?

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Boffin

Many working together can effectively tunnel through the goop but one by itself will be stuck in the mire.

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Court ruling means Kim Dotcom can sue NZ spooks

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Coat

I'd have thought that *not* raining massively in NZ would be more tweet-worthy.

Mine's the waterproof one.

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Optus tests new approach to New Years' Eve mobile woes

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It makes sense. I assume the extra blades would also be handling, for example, other corporate business data which would have very low demand outside normal office hours e.g. during NYE and the grand final.

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Help-desk hell

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Pint

Re: Ask it where I live!

Hello, fellow O.W.! By the time I was there in the '80s we had a big shiny new building for all things technical, the lower floor had a large computer lab with at least 20 BBC Model Bs, and those of us who were keen were having fun with fractals.

Beresford, in case that matters.

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Long-distance robot makes landfall in Oz

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Coat

Re: Another boat arrival

It's refusing to eat anything.

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First pic of Ashton Kutcher as the great Steve 'jOBS'

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Childcatcher

@Corinne Re: Kelso has experience of the 70's

"(whether you like him/Apple or not, he WAS a very smart man)"

There are smart people, then there are people dumb enough to try to beat cancer by refusing their doctors' medications, instead relying on alternative "treatment" including juice diets and consulting a psychic.

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Re: Looks

Which one?

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Fred Flintstone may not have been real but his pet Dino WAS - boffins

Martin Budden Silver badge
Headmaster

SI units!

What's all this nonsense about "ten-foot-long" and "3ft high"? Hmm? How about 3 metres long and one metre high. Go sit on the naughty step and think very carefully about what you've done.

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Elon Musk jumps overboard from Paul Allen's GIANT MOTHERSHIP

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Re: Size of that beast

Wow, that really puts it into perspective. Thanks!

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AI boffins take on Angry Birds

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Re: Random levels required

The input is much more complex than just angle & power. You also need to tap to activate four of the five birds' special moves during flight, which is very complex because each bird's special move is different:

  • speed up (and recalculate bird trajectory and damage)
  • drop egg (and recalculate bird trajectory and damage, plus calculate egg damage)
  • split into three (now we have three trajectories to handle)
  • explode (and if we choose not to tap to explode instantly, work out where the bird will have rolled to when it goes bang by itself)

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NASA planning Curiosity v2.0 for Mars touchdown in 2020

Martin Budden Silver badge
Childcatcher

"...and not have to worry about an unproven design as a side benefit."

Good luck with that. Despite the protests of the engineers, the project managers won't be able to resist the urge to tweak the proven design just a little bit here and just a little bit there, so much and so often that the final product is completely different, orders of magnitude more complex, with new functionality expected to run on a legacy platform which was never designed to cope... I've seen all this happen on far too many version 2.0 projects.

Pessimist? Me? Try imagining it as a BOFH episode...

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Einstein almost tagged dark energy in the early 1920s

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Re: Huh?

Hofstadter's law! (as any programming fule kno)

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'Abnormal' thruster halts South Korean space rocket launch

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Baldrick had an abnormal thruster

shaped like a turnip.

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Hero Playmonaut lost at sea as SPEARS ditches in Channel

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...soon he'll write an autobiography and reveal his true identity, thus ruining it for everyone and proving once and for all that even people with really cool jobs (e.g. ex-Special Forces racing drivers) can be total dicks.

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European Space Agency clears SABRE orbital engines

Martin Budden Silver badge
Go

Newquay as a spaceport?

The runway there is already very long, with room to extend if needed.

It's right on the coast so the noise is quickly over the sea instead of many miles of inland towns.

The local planning authority is (allegedly) easy to bribe.

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MONSTER QUASAR BLAST blows stunned astro boffins' WIGS OFF

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Flame

Re: Energy output like that...

Basil: Ever seen my wife making toast Polly?

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Real sci-fi space ships coming at last? NASA tests nuclear engine

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Headmaster

Re: "That's not even enough to heat up a kettle..."

Of course one kilowatt of electricity can heat up a kettle. Granted, you won't be getting a nice steaming cuppa in time for elevenses, but the kettle will get slightly hotter.

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How to launch people into space...

Martin Budden Silver badge

why 12 degrees?

Why is 12 degrees from horizontal even better than zero degrees? At zero there would be even less Gz at the cost of a bit more Gx, and we are told that "Gx is a much more pleasant sensation than Gz". Enquiring minds etc.

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New Forum Wishlist - but read roadmap first

Martin Budden Silver badge

Can I please stay logged in forever, not just for 24 hours?

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Martin Budden Silver badge
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re Nesting

Proper indenting is all that is needed. You know, 40px for a reply, 80 for a reply to a reply, and so on. Easy peasy.

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Badges for Commentards

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Coat

Gold badgers? I thought they were all stripey black and white?

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Your brain, the Internet and the Universe

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Re: Wow!

Wow! The universe is a giant Twitter!

Sorry.

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Sandy Island does exist - on a 1908 chart

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Re: Pumice Island

In that case it would be called "Pumicy Island".

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Galapagos tortoise 'Lonesome George' might NOT be last of his kind

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WTF?

Re: What they really need...

"the Catholic church's insistance that tortoise are fish"

Fish? Really? FISH????? So they've decided to ignore the reality of nature in order to suit their own personal agenda. Anyone would think they are a bunch of religious loon... oh.

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Hefty beauty GAGA gets voluptuous new undercarriage

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Re: Some glider pilots might get jealous...

I was wondering about the castor wheel too... it will work best if the castor wheel is at the back.

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