Re: Oops

@John Smith 19: no more than 2 metres across? Why, that's no bigger than a wamp rat

Re: The *real* reason he's suing.

@ Ikoth - Either that or he'll be attempting to push a new album soon and wants to make sure people remember his name. Streisand effect used to self promote perhaps

Re: Role Reversal

Or was it Roll Reversal?

Million pound question: Did they use Ketchup or HP Brown?

Re: Dystopian

40k fiction also has a nice way around the tech-level issues some of the other commentators have mentioned - having a nice tech-reset where all the worlds knowledge is wiped and they have to reinvent most things by reverse engineering what few (relatively) relics they have left.

Considering it was only started as an aside for a gaming system, the 40k universe is one of the most expansive I have come across. it deals very well with the vast distances between planets so that you can have isolated story-lines that take place almost independently of the rest of the Universe, while also allowing for massive space opera story-lines that can span galaxies. such is the fickle and unpredictable nature of the Warp.

Re: Sci Fi recomendations?

Might not be a technique for everyone, but after El Reg did their poll of the top Sci-Fi movies never made, I copied it down as a checklist and am slowly making my way through them.

Once I've finished that list I plan on going through the "also-ran"s on the list. If I particularly like one of the authors I might take a look at some of their other stuff.

I really enjoyed Ender's Game by Orsen Scott Card. For me it hit the perfect pace of not so quick you get blown away and miss all the details, but quick enough you want to continue reading. I started on Speaker for the Dead but I am really struggling to get into it, the whole story moves a lot slower.

A nice short one that was great fun and had a couple of interesting twists was Deathworld by Harry Harrison. His is a name I've come across elsewhere as well so if his other books have the same flow I will certainly be looking for more. you can pick it up for free from Project Gutenberg.

If you don't consider yourself above some of the more "Mainstream" or cliché action Sci-Fi, the Games Workshop Black Library novels, particularly the Horus Heresy series, can be a very good read. I know some people have pretensions about how they could never stoop so low as to read books based on a series of toys, but the background fluff for the Warhammer 40,000 Universe is very broad and very detailed, and there's a lot of story to be found there.

While I dabbled in gaming beforehand, it was reading the Soul Drinkers series by Ben Counter that really got me interested in playing an army properly, modifying models and using less than competitive lists to capture the essence of the characters in the books.

More recently I have started another force based on the Gaunt's Ghosts books by Dan Abnett, about a force of Gaelic Ninja Soldiers in Outer Space... basically, and a great starting point for an interesting army. I think his inquisition Series Eisenhorn and Ravenour are better stories in general, and give more scope for unique characters, for me the Ghosts was a better series on which to base an army.

Re: Re: Earth to Grinch.....

14. Relaunch the show Robot Wars, but rather than have them all radio controlled - give them pi for brains and automatic battles with pre-programmed routines!

Re: Re: Re: Tesla is the future, old people....

Most of the miles clocked up on a regular basis in this country is probably down to various Sales Reps for whomever, and Long distance lorry drivers.

I know our Reps can comfortably clock up 200-300 miles per day when they're on the road. For long distance lorry drivers, the clue is in the name!

For electric cars to really take off, they need to have a place in the company fleet. That's when big businesses will invest in the infrastructure, and in 3 years time when they're all up for renewal, that's when there will be a flood of electric cars on the 2nd hand market.

Some minicab firms and local couriers are starting to introduce alternative fuels, but they tend to be short range city driving. We need to hit the nationwide oil burners.

Re: Re: Re: Apples are shit

Hitler - your argument is now invalid

Keeping the Godwin alive!

You're not alone... Like many things it seems the technology and effects have taken over from a good story line. Toy Story didn't have the toys and spangles of Avatar, so the writers wrote a story which would be timeless, as opposted to re-hashing Pochahontas, or Last of the Mohicans, in space... with smurfs...

Same is true all over the place; Ask an RPG fan their favourite Final Fantasy and 9/10 will prefer whiskers (no wait, that's cats. They'll say FF7). even though the gameplay mechanics, graphics and spangles have been superceeded by a huge margin. When Square released the tech demo of the PS3 by rendering the FF7 intro in high-def, I can't count how many people yearned for the full game, rather than the XIII that was thrust upon them in its place.

I think the biggest shame is the films which think "we've got threedee now, we must make the most of it" and so fill the film with as many instances of stuff rushing toward the camera as possible, completely lacking any substance to weave them together (Final Destination, I'm looking at you!)

"You should beware what your scanner does and make sure that in case of doubt you'll be the one calling the shots."

If only more people had this sort of thinking, there'd be less stories of motorists finding themselves stuck in a canal after following a satnav.... Why is it that Common Sense, much like Common Courtesy, is now an oxymoron

Personal?

There seems to be a lot of discussion about servers which is missing the point of the original statement "but the personal computer industry (and later servers) is founded upon the strength of Windows and Microsoft's inclusive partner vision. "

Yes servers came along later, but primarilty what Matt appears to be saying is that the PERSONAL computer industry is founded on windows, and truely, if it weren't for the partnership of MS-DOS and IBM in the early years, the PC wouldn't be the ubiquotous home electronic device it is today.

From the server perspective, they might not necessarily be the most reliable, or market leaders, or anything... fact remains that MS Operating systems are a massive influence on the servers running today, whether it be that they are running Windows Server themselves, or that they contain features inspired by MS AD server arcitecture, or even if they meerly have to interface with other systems running MS... your web server can be running any OS it likes, it would be pretty useless if if didn't cater for MS Internet explorer alongside all the other browsers!

<Insert Title Here>

Nice to know I'm not the only one who thought it.

Aston have had that distinctive grill shape in one form or another for best part of 60 years, I'm not sure if I'm happy or outraged to see it displayed so proudly on their more reasonably priced cousins

@david Lawrence

The trouble with using dinosaurs as a disproof of creationism and intelligent design is faith. When God created earth he put the fossilised remains of dinosaurs and the like underground to be discovered as a test of faith. The faithful will see the remains as a trial and still believe in their devine creation, the unfaithful will see the fossils as proof of an era long gone where giant lizards roamed the earth before it was meant to have been created.

It's a way of explaining away any "missing links" in evolution too; anything discovered as before the missing link is clearly a test of faith from our Creator, and anything post missing link is as planned by His divine will.

I personally am yet to be convinced either way. I don't subscribe to any organised religion but at the same time I am open to the concept of a higher power in the universe. It's not impossible that we were indeed put here by a higher power, or that perhaps our evolution was encouraged to a points of intelligent design.

From the bible persepective, it's possible that one of God's 7 "days" is an epoch to us mortals, and that the day between him creating sea creatures and beast was infact the evolution of fish through amphibians to mammals, and the creating of light on day 1 could be likened to the big bang? that being the case, and bearing in mind the timescales involved being millions/billions of years, it is plausibly still God's sabbath, and God is still resting.

Richard's War Cry

FOR PONY!!!!

That is all

www.lfgcomic.com/

proof of the pudding

This just shows how similar the logos are, from your descriptions even you have managed to muddle them. The SE logo is the 3d design, where the CW is the flat one with the spiral.

I'd agree with Doc Spock that Ocado probably have a bigger case against CW for the similarity, but I don't think CW are heading into the home groceries business any time soon....

innuendo and tits

and why not? it's almost Friday afterall!

true... but

while I agree that this would be dangerous if just left to a simple twin+earth plug, with proper safety precautions kept in mind I don't see how this is any worse than we do now.

Perhaps a locking mechanism which won't allow the "pump" to be powered on until the plug is locked in place, and won't allow the plug to be removed until the pump is powered down again, similar to the Gas pumps used for LPG, at no point will anyone be at risk from electrocution.

Alternatively the batteries could be charged in parrallel. Instead of a single cable charging at thousands of amps, several cables could be used each charging at hundreds of amps. The more cables, the less amperage required down each one.

It's no worse than a hose-ful of highly flammable liquid/gas - if done well it could even be safer!

I'm sure someone more intelligent than I will work out a way of making money putting this tech into cars!

I knew I would be the only one to think it

Now we only need to work out how to mount an MGM Mirage Hotel atop a plane and aim it at some missiles