Posts by Jan 0
283 posts • joined Monday 14th December 2009 01:55 GMT
@sisk "football as soccer"
Short memories in the UK? When I was growing up in South London, a "football" was something you kicked, "soccer" was a game that you played. (A contraction of Association Football.
What keeps the parachutes apart?
Title says it all? When you have more than one parachute, what force separates them? They are all tethered close together on the capsule. Why doesn't aerodynamic drag make them move together until they form a single, segmented, hemisphere? I could see how this could work if the parachutes or their vents were asymmetric, but then they'd need divergent tethers to stop them rotating.
No clues here
How nice to see the the word clew in print in the 21st century. (Page 1, "Preface: The Clew to the Labyrinth"). Who'd have thought that the NSA has people who cite Popper and Borges on the same page?
What next, will we see the phrase "tow rag" in the Register? Oh, wait.
Is that icon Ariadne's coat?
Re: The solution to your chickpea problem
Lester wrote: "I did soak the chickpeas for 10 hours. Didn't make much difference, evidently."
I don't know why I failed to notice that you had soaked them, sorry. In that case you may be right about what the shopkeeper has done. Maybe your dried chickpeas are literally dead. You need healthy chickpeas that would germinate if you planted them. However, the ones in the photograph do look as if the majority have swelled to some extent. Did you use them all and make a week's stew? If so it's probably too late to suggest that you soak them for a couple of days (and change the water twice a day).
I'll leave you Paris as food for thought.
The solution to your chickpea problem
is that they need soaking before you boil them. Put them in a pan or bowl with at least 6 times their own volume of cold water and leave them overnight, or start in the morning and they're ready to wash and cook in the evening. (Leave them at ambient temperature, or if you want to speed things up, they rehydrate splendidly in 2 hours at 40 to 45 C, if you have a space at that temperature.
To really keep the flavour in your soup and minimise energy consumption, you need a pressure cooker.
8 minutes at 1 Bar cooks chickpeas to the point where they're ready to gently fry with oil, garlic and cumin.
(Quick! Buy a pressure cooker before they get banned in the "Free World":)
Where's the Chef's Hat icon?
Re: UK already has an open map
OpenStreetMap isn't confined to the UK. It's world wide. For example, I've used it while cycling in Iceland and walking in Tenerife and I was just browsing the streets of Luang Prabang earlier today.
If you want to contribute mapping data, it's surely worthwhile to continue to add to an open project, than add to a project that may vanish behind a paywall.
@richard.cartledge
I'm amazed to see that people are asking £300ish for new 12v DVB-T tuners on eBay, let alone £400ish secondhand! What do they do that one for under £50 doesn't?
Let's get Retro
I'm so looking forward to being labelled a "running dog capitalist imperialist" again, a phrase I miss from the 1950s and the first US/Korean war. I mean, I want to hear rants about re-education, the purity of proletarian revolution and that I'm just a tool of capitalist gain. Why is the American ruling circle busily expanding armament, disregarding the hardship and misery of the people? Is it because their only concern is war and war profits and not peace and peaceful construction?
Holy "Tow shong", Batman. Come back Mao, all is forgiven!
>Not me... I have a ute.
You're Mongolian?
Re: A bit disappointed, actually
Me too, especially as I recall an article in New Scientist 2 or 3 decades ago introducing us to high strength un-reinforced concrete. By using a carefully controlled mixture of very fine aggregate the inventors were, for example, able to make coil springs for car suspension out of concrete. So I expected all or most of the jewellery to be made of concrete.
Posted in Review: HTC One
Re: No microSD AGAIN
> No, I mean what happens if you drop your phone in a puddle, and it's knackered?
> MicroSD, no problem, pop it out, dry it off, pictures intact. Simple.
Phone, no problem. Rinse thoroughly in changes of distilled or deionised water, shake, dry. Next?
Re: Ahem, numbers... @Sorry ... taken
Ahem indeed. As the "18.5ft by 12.2ft rockets" seem to have been infinitely flattened by the impact.
Kudos to Iain Thomson
For a nice use of "them", since we don't know the sex of the researcher.
Re: 3 inch disc
Of course it's "disc". The word "disk" is a contraction of "diskette" (an IBM invention). There is nothing particularly British about "disc".
I'd always thought that the Microdrive had a continuous loop that was sort of folded inside the case. (Not with creases, but taking a sinuous path). What was that kind of tape drive called?
What would scare me
is if there was a crash landing on return.
I'd like to jettison all the bags just before reentry.
Stopping crap
The Eadon problem shows that what we need is the equivalent of a killfile for elReg.
How about it developers?
How did they measure the <sup>133</sup>Xe?
Presumably the North Koreans didn't release the map of 133Xe concentrations? Unless some North Korean leaked the data, this report doesn't ring true. Since 133Xe emits β- , which will be rapidly attenuated in the atmosphere, satellite observation doesn't seem promising*. I guess that North Korea takes steps to ensure that other nations can't fly over North Korea to take atmospheric samples?
*unless North Korea is so dark at night, that a satellite can measure atmospheric Cherenkov radiation.
Evidence
> "Just shows the quality of the police force"
Is it a question of quality?
I view the police force as an experiment that has failed. For example, there has been an abject failure to prevent the ownership of unlicensed firearms. Our police patently do not stop most crime and there's no evidence that there would be more crime if there were no police.
Instead of tinkering with 'police reform', our rulers could introduce competing institutions to control crime and further institutions to assess their results.
Re: They are out there...
Nice try, but you don't seem to have read the article! I see no evidence that you can install any OS suitable for Systems Administration on those devices.
Re: Dead boomers already?
Kudos because the author correctly said, 'baby boomers' is a US term. In the UK, we had the 'Bulge' in the late '40s and early '50s. I'm getting pretty fed up with youngsters* in UK media who don't know or care. I not a numb^H^H^H^Hbaby boomer I'm a Bulge Baby and proud of it!
Where's the Bulge Baby icon? Ah, that one's close enough.
*I think the rot set in when Trivial Pursuit introduced its mysteriously named "Baby Boomer Edition" to the UK.
Re: Wow. object with 100x surface area of other object reacts 100x faster on its surface
@chemist
I like the low-tech aspect of cacium carbide.
I suggest using a powdered alkali metal (much cheaper to produce and transport than silicon nanoparticles). Potassium or sodium might not be acceptable, but what about calcium? It's plentiful, nontoxic and calcium hydroxide is benign.
Like silicon, you'd need to reduce it first, then keep it dry under an inert gas.
Re: Is there anyone left..
What have you got against the Hmong?
Let's keep non-comedy racism out of the Register.
@Denarius - "Penny for your thoughts?"
Are you actually thinking about P K Dick? I dimly recall a story of his, where a ferry has it's superstructure sliced off slowly by a monomolecular filament.
Re: "We're talking audio with something like four to 16 times better fidelity."
It doesn't matter how much better they make the signal chain, until we get something approximating* fidelity in loudspeakers, we're never going to achieve "Hi-Fi". However, given that our brains are very good at interpreting horribly distorted sound, maybe we shouldn't get too upset.
*Just take a look at the frequency and impulse response curves of any loudspeaker and weep at their non-linearity.
Re: unsubscribe
> "Webshops need some kind of online marketing to exist"
If they would just list their products and prices on a static web page, then we could just use a search engine to find and compare offers just like we used to in the 20th century. When I want something, then I go looking for it. If "webshops" don't want me to use search engines, then I don't care if they go bust.
Posted in Review: Apple Mac Mini 2012
Ignoring shipping, they cost more here because Apple use UK staff, paid UK wages. Conversely European hardware costs less in the USA, because the US retail and supply chain staff are on lower wages.
Re: Soot? @AC 8th December 17:18
IIRC, back in the 90s, Philips washing machines used out of spec. SPARC Motherboards.
I have no idea what OS they ran, but Solaris would make sense.
Multitasking may be overkill, but I'd certainly like a washing machine that I could program myself. E.g. to overcome bulletproof Zanussi's inability to rinse satisfactorily.
Lo-Fi earphones
Neither earphones nor headphones can reproduce that feeling when your lungs and stomach are being massaged by the bass of a live concert. What we need are whole body 'phones or acoustically isolated rooms with monster 'speaker stacks.
What proportion of Banking Staff actually stay for a year nowadays?
When I werked in an investment bank, 50% of the staff would move, mostly to another bank, during a year. I left after 6 months. Is the rate higher or lower in 2012? If staff are that mobile, do they really get caught by appraisals? Doesn't appraisal time signal that it's time to move to the next employer?
iMacs
Curiously, my local store said they didn't have any iMacs to sell. No pre-October announcement thick iMacs and no new iMacs. The 21.5 inch new iMac is supposed to arrive in November, so they don't have many days left to deliver.
Either way, there were no discounts on iMacs, nor the 27 inch Thunderbolt monitor that I'm thinking of buying. That too could do with the thin edge treatment and a bigger screen. While I'm whinging, why has the 30 inch cinema display shrunk to a 27 inch display? My desk would accommodate a 40 inch display and my eyes would love it if with a reolution of say 4000 x 2250. (Yes, i agree 4000 x 3000 would be even better:)
Posted in Nokia HERE iOS maps app review
Re: TomTom?!?!
Well it's good, but in a rather different price league. It's also pathetically unaware of the iPhone's compass*, so you don't know which way to go at the start. 50% off the time on a motorcycle that means having to do an annoying u-turn and if you're walking it means having to turn back after 50 to 100 metres. Tom Tom is also unaware of useful short cuts for cyclists and walkers, presumably because their informants can't be bothered to get out of their cars. The 'winding roads' option can be fun.
*I realise that a compass isn't entirely accurate when mounted on a vehicle containing a lot of iron and electric currents, but it makes a reasonable stab at whether your pointing roughly east or west, north or south.
Re: Something wrong here
No, something fancy is needed. The muscles 'round the lens change its shape.
An acrylic lens is rigid. What we need is to implant flexible lenses and the microsurgical skills to attach them to the ciliary body. It's true that you can also make changes to the focal length of the eye by stretching or squeezing the eyeball, but it's hard to sustain for more than a few seconds. (For example "squinting" lets a long sighted person see close up objects more clearly. Squinting means screwing your face up around the eyes to increase the curvature of the front of the eyeball and has nothing to do with being squint eyed.)
An acrylic lens is a wonderful improvement for an elderly cataract sufferer, but you wouldn't be so made up if you were in your twenties.
Final touch
When you wash keyboards, phones or any other electronic gadgets, you should always give them a final soak and rinse in distilled or deionised water*. Otherwise you will leave traces of salts. In a normally humid atmosphere, those salts will become conductive paths generating spurious signals.
* Disregard this if your tap water is filtered rain water.
Re: Skeptical...
Errm, I remember proper ACLs back in 1980s' Primos and VMS, but I don't think they were in 'Windows'.
No, using your bizarre imagery, the vulva is the entrance to the tunnel, the gunwales and oars. Or what native English speakers call a 'fanny'. Anyway, what kind of boats do you sail that have tunnels?
Let's point the finger of blame at the illiterate TV executive(s) that named a programme 'Pimp my Vagina'.
Re: Does that mean decent Marine Nav software exists for OS X ???
Karen Nakamura of GPSy seems to be doing alright.
http://www.gpsy.com/
"a minimalist design that most fans will recognize"
I take it that you mean fans of Mies van der Rohe, rather than Apple fans? It certainly has the look of his pre-war buildings.
BTW, a design that extends structures beyond their functional boundaries is not minimalist, but I'd still like to party on it on a suitably calm lake.
Re: " ..the (odourless) gas ethylene."
Wikipedia? Does nobody else remember the smell of ethylene from organic chemistry practicals? (A bag of ripe bananas might reawaken the memory.)
I don't know how you propose to smell anything at 220K. The worry that my nose might break off would outweigh any desire to sniff.
Re: @guyr @Dave 126
Shame! You may cook, but your arithmetic has 2 errors in it. (You're out by a factor of 10 and you've inverted the density calculation!)
Kudos for spotting that Boeing probably uses short tons rather than UK long tons.
Re: Aditional...
Minor correction, it was International Computers and Tabulators that built this computer.
ICT got transformed into ICL a bit later.
Re: Looks as though...
> ...the specific meaning of the noun 'troll' and the verb 'trolling' has now been completely lost owing to the incomprehension of the press.
Not really. The fault is in reusing words with multiple meanings instead of making new ones up.
Those of us who've used the Internet for decades use the word 'troll' derived from the fishing term. (I used to catch mackerel by trolling when I was a kid.) Internet 'newbies' think it's derived from the Scandinavian monster alluded to in the "Three billy goats Gruff". In both cases we could have made up new words for the Internet phenomenon. Mind you, long used phrases like 'provocative git', for the former, or 'bully', for the latter, would do nicely.
Re: Why cull ?
Erm, no. People did care about milk as a transmitter of TB infection. Up to the 60s, Tuberculin Tested (TT) milk was widely available. Around then the lazier approach of pasteurising milk to kill the TB bacilli was adopted. Nowadays few people in the UK or USA know what, or how nice*, uncooked milk tastes. Surprisingly, UHT milk is closer to raw milk in taste than pasteurised milk.
*I mean nice for milk drinkers. Frankly, I don't understand why any adult wants to drink milk, or why the food industry is so eager to put milk products into things that don't need them, like dark chocolate or Chinese ready meals.
Posted in Why is solid-state storage so flimsy?
Golf considered harmful.
Well done Alistair! It's never cool to play golf, not when even you reach 50. I wouldn't be seen dead playing golf! Surely I can go hangliding or mountain biking when I'm in hell. Oh wait, will hell have compulsory golf:-(
Pedantic note:
Of course you should still be spelling 'disc' with a 'c'. 'Disk' is a contraction of 'diskette' an IBM neologism for floppy discs. Unless you're writing about floppies, there's no justification for the 'k'.
Re: There aren't any
> The New Scientist is the same :(
It took longer than Scientific American but, sadly, you're right.
How long before the lights go out?
Posted in Momentum builds for iPad Mini launch
Re: £300?
As the owner of a Nexus 7 I'd say that it's worth paying another £100 just to make it simple to transfer from iPhoto to tablet*. I'm buying one if it has a 4:3 screen.
*yes I'd pay that just for making one function easier.
Posted in Toyota kills city 'e-car for everyone'
Re: Obvious
The obvious answer is to wear warm clothes in the car. That way you don't feel cold when you step out of the car. It works on a motorcycle, why not in a car?
Mine's the one with goose down filling.
@Michael
> All you need to do to Root a Galaxy Phone is throw a Three Finger Salute at it.
> (e.g. Volume Rocker down, Home Button and Power at the same time).
What other examples of three finger salutes work on Galaxy 'phones?
Posted in Ten external battery packs
@Caleb
> Ah, solar chargers. I have yet to be impressed, but I do remain optimistic about the concept.
I'm more than optimistic, I've been impressed.
Last summer I took a Powermonkey Extreme to Iceland and it kept my iPhone working for 3 weeks. By working I mean reasonable rather than continuous use of camera, phone and GPS. Typically I'd use the external battery to charge the iPhone 2 or 3 times a day and let daylight keep the battery topped up. The sun is a lot lower than in the UK, although its available for longer. Besides, it charged even on cloudy days.
Drawbacks of the model I have are that the charging plug doesn't latch into the battery socket and it would be useful to have more options for attaching the solar panel to static and moving supports.
Beer for the Powertraveller guys.
Re: Money well spent?
It's far from clear whether the 'works' have anything to do with dualling, or are just Elveden estate works (e.g. to stop the serfs escaping, or Kubrick film buffs entering).
