Re: Gosh

Never mind shutting down the network. I just want my meter to run backwards.

Re: Albedo

Correction.

Tidal forces are not generated by the moon, or the sun come to that, but by the Earth. If the earth did not rotate there would be no tide.

The idea of taking energy from the tide is to take energy from the earth's rotation. Let me ask you do you fancy living on Earth with a 30hr day or even longer? It would be baking the day and freezing at night no matter where you tried to live.

Tidal power is total crap and never never ever renewable.

Re: Gap in the market..

That's so esoteric. You must be getting it right. No joke!

Re: Nordic spruce

Isn't it good Norwegian Wood?

Also "the second Criegee intermediate: namely CH3CHOO". Hum, can you see it? Looks like choo-choo to me.

Perhaps there is a wood fired steam engine behind all this

Re: Awesome pictures

The guy who designed the muon equipment must have had a bad night after watching "Event Horizon".

Re: Mmmmmm...

In the beginning was the void.

MS looked upon the void and said let there be light and there was light.

And MS separated the light from the darkness and behold it was good.

Then M$ said every thing you see belongs to me.

Here endeth the lesson.

Re: That's a real site?

I can understand the Chinese governments position since Google turned from good guy to bad guy but Alibaba is another proposition. China is a "me to" country. If there is one firm producing something then soon after there are tens or even thousands with identical looking devices but with wholly different properties. Here is the problem: like these mobes these products start to appear through Alibaba but are offered with insufficient information. Do they all do the same job? Probably not. So the Alibaba (of the forty thieves) name might be appropriate.

As said, Alibaba is huge: I was looking for information about the 5050 LED chip. Google took me to Alibaba and to a firm in Shenzhen with a capacity of 1000000000 per day, yes, 1bn per day. I do not think they would be interested in an order for 50 and I would not get the unit price quoted. So they don't take PayPal? So what? I have come to the conclusion that Alibaba whilst is interesting it not for the average punter.

Then there is the other issue: information. Putting it this way if you wanted car tyres: size 215/50/16, there would be plenty, but that is all the information you would get. Manufacturer, speed and load rating, performance rating all missing and they will not provide it. I would suggest extreme cautions when doing business with firms like this. Alibaba are not alone because a lot of technology offered on eBay comes from China and you have the same problem.

Am I ranting? Yes, but then I have good reason.

Re: Decimated? Decimated!?

I don't know "decimation" is reasonably accurate if they are removing one in ten. After all you don't really expect to see blood in the sand. The main difference is that unlike current business practice the Roman troops themselves decided who was going to go. It paid to be popular in the Roman army.

Re: Rationing, rebranded.

Now I am half way through cooking the Christmas turkey and oops the power is off. Sorry guys dinner will be late. Just not going to wash is it. Sorry that was not a pun but the washer is off as well. And if you were hoping to hang out the washing whilst the sun shines, too late again the power is off and the washing is not done. And the Met office could not tell us rain was coming so we have to use the tumble drier. Bloody hell am I ever going to get out of this loop!

As the song goes "it all makes work for the working man to do".

Anyway I thought that the Met Office is still part of MOD. All they have to do is tell MOD they are still using the spectrum. Simples!

Re: This kind of behaviour brings Robert Heinlein to mind

It brings to mind the comment that "Google may never have been a force for good, but have they now turned to the Dark Side?"

So it is.

Re: Is this the same Eric Schmidt

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Sound familiar?

Re: In which axis?

Containment is an issue but if you have containment for a vacuum it will only need small improvements to make it suitable to contain disintegration. I would be more concerned about mounting the device in a vehicle. It would have to be flexible to prevent reaction with the flywheel but then coupling to the power supply is near impossible.

Re: ICBM submarines, LOL

I can actually understand why they are twitchy. Having been involved in the UK version I know that you need virtually no information to be able to determine what it can do, mostly it is about the size of the mast; the rest can be assumed. So if you know where it is you can see how big the mast is, the rest is simple arithmetic. So now you know all you need to jam it or blow it up. Merde! Absolutely useless.

And they cost about £1000m each. The location of the UK version? Oh! The Navy found another way of doing it.

Re: Like a lava lamp for people with X ray vision

Carbon removal is a toxic subject. How do you get it out of the column? And it is at 1000C. Considerations here of spontaneous combustion (- like a loud BANG if is still hot). Anyway what do you do with all that carbon: loads of nano-tubes is suppose?

How do you get the metal hot in the first place? Some external combustion required here.

What metal melts at less than 1000C and that won't react with hydrogen or carbon? Sodium, potassium, lead, tin, antimony, cadmium, arsenic or some alloys of these; what a toxic bunch especially at 1000C.

Phew! I wish them well with the research.

Demonstrators.

Another point is: will they ever be able to do it with semiconductor lasers? They are not particularly efficient and have to be properly cooled so the cooling pack for a MW class laser is truly huge; hence that big lump on the stern of the ship. This for demonstration purposes against a vulnerable target. Demonstration? Yes. War zone? Not yet, if ever.

Re: Google vs Microsoft

Once upon a time Microsoft were the good guys: they brought light to the darkness that was the PC. Then they became commercial and turned into the name you love to hate.

So we then got Google and I admit to being an original Google user. They brought light to the darkness which was the Internet and we believed the "do no evil" motto. But as ever the road to hell is paved with good intentions and Google morphed into another Money Munching Monster.

So where do we go now for honesty. For some time best value has been Firefox. OK so money is an issue but I get the feeling that Mozilla is made up of people who just want to make a living out of making things work and giving a service, not this Mega Money Madness that has struck others. So more power to Mozilla I say.

Re: Upsetting luvvies...

Seems like the words dick and head should appear in the same sentence.

Re: Galactic scale canival ride

Yes. It looks like they are developing a Spindizzy (James Blish: Cities in Flight). All we need now to prove it is to watch it jump across space.

Re: I like what Philips bring to the table...

Also like Philips: they are a lighting manufacturer with history in electronics and vice verse: a very rare beast indeed. BUT they have no idea what cost the market place will bear The LED replacement for fluorescent luminaires is approximately 4 time the price but whilst you can dim them and switch them on and off all day with impunity do they save the additional cost? So wait a few years and things might be different; there is the equivalent of Moor's Law operating in LED lighting.

Zigbee is very expensive and a big overkill in the domestic market. OK it might work fine but who is going to buy it? Do not look for it to appear in your local supermarket. Lower cost technology will appear soon.

You need to be careful reading Philips technical performance claims. Whilst items do "what it says on the tin" this might not be what you want and they conceal the downside of some devices. Some customers will be disappointed. One example is the replacement for dichroic lamps. The equivalent size produces the same beam intensity but only half the lumen output. So if you are replacing lamps in a room using downlighters you will be out of luck. Philips are not alone in this but as they lead the field all the rest work on a "me too" basis. Another matter is that some of the Philips high power LED have cooling fans; if you have several in a room, they all run a slightly different speed, it sounds like a swarm of mutant bees. They are only suited for shop front lighting but this is not the way they are sold.

Lastly who wants colour change lamps at home anyway? They are naff and best reserved for your local curry shop.

Re: NASA has found.....

Of course the clue is in the name "fine-grained, veiny sedimentary rock". Sedimentary: laid down in a liquid aka water. But alternatively I suppose the liquid could be hydrocarbon etc. Now that would be interesting.

Re: Donald Trump

Editorial note:

The words "Donalt Trump" and "hairstyle" should never be used in the same sentence. This is defamatory.

Re: Is distance charging really such a good idea?

And. You are broadcasting power and most of that will disappear into the void so a miniscule percentage will get into the object you wish to charge. Efficiency requires coupling and this is what you do not have with distance charging.

It might work but whilst the rest of us are trying to save the planet it is a load of phooey.

Re: It's Japan

Squatters?

Crikey! This is Japan we are talking about.

Re: God arrived by comet!

He may well have done, but what sort of shielding did He use to prevent incineration on entry to the atmosphere and the thermal event of impact?

Re: Reason for an older couple?

Woman: I thought we would go to Mars. It will only take 500 days

Man: Yes dear. That's great (saves me from going to your Ma's for 500 days. Whoo! Whoo!)

Re: Bah!

Any just how long do you think it will take before we find out?

I'm not waiting round, just turning to dust.

Re: Colombian boffins.

So have we decided that it is not the latest attempt by the cartels to get past the FDA?

Re: That Ergosphere is gonna whip the wheels off Hawking's chair!

Relativity would have it that as an observer approaches velocity c time dilates and at c time stops. This means that the observer cannot measure velocity and hence distance because there is nothing to measure it with, also the typical observer A observer B questions are not relevant because at velocity c there is no distance in a black hole and a singularity exists. Is this what the event horizon is?

One could argue that a singularity is where everything has the velocity c, that relativity has broken down and only quantum physics apply, further one could postulate that all the particles are entangled. As for exceeding c obviously not.

Britain in space

That' about money not ability.

Re: B-Ark....

It was the hairdressers that survived. So get that beard off NOW!

Re: Either that, or,

Er actually -4^(1/4) means the fourth root of -4, i.e root 2: 1.414 etc and that is exactly what you get.

I don't know what you have been smoking.

In Russia, you don't hit meteorite, meteorite hits YOU!

This is true. And it is a good job that the meteorite came in at an oblique angle so as to dissipate most of the energy in the atmosphere. If it landed ant anything like vertical. Wow. Goodnight!

Re: Cunning Linguist

I thought the trick was with "cunning stunt".

Re: Good to see...

I don't see why El Reg think this is news. And there is no report that other bacteria are working in the same environment to generate methane. This is just as newsworthy.

Re: We can't annoy the farmers!

Oh! I heard it was the German farmer that are the problem.

But then again there is all the tobacco growers in Eastern Europe.

Polyfilla?

Nah! That's sand and cement.

"Wonder what the oil companies will do in response to this...?"

What they have always done join in and claim they thought of it first.

As for distribution, we used to have a perfectly good system but unfortunately someone filled it with methane and started using it to sell gas to the power companies to use for power generation. Now we are proposing to use power to generate hydrogen! I think we have things in the wrong order somewhere.

Re: There has to be a joke in their somewhere...

HOW DARE YOU - compare me to an Olympic size swimming pool.

My weight in gold - well that alright.