Posts by Mips

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.

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.

Re: Why is a company evil for wanting to make money?

And Round Corners to you.

It used to be "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics", or

If it moves salute it, if it doesn't paint it, but now

The baby said a word, quick patent it!

Re: Personally, as a degreed mechanical engineer ...

"Brainiacs" ? Hey com'on this is Portsmouth we are talking about. You can't be serious, anything in a skirt looks good in Pompy.

Re: Flying pigs

And it not even a new idea. I seem to recall an article in these pages some years ago about a similar project in Spain which was solar heated.

That did not get off the ground either. Seems the warm desert wind are not enough (cue for a song).

Re: WTF?

Pitty Moore's Law is already taken.

Re: State intervention may well result in de-civilizatory effects

I have been using CFL for over 20 years and I prefer the light they produce to incandescent. It is just a question of taste. And clearly I think yours is poor. OK so some CFL are slow to run up to temperature, but others are not, so be selective with what you buy.

If you have a problem with LED don't buy cheap ones. You should remember that in China the slogan is "me to" even if they know nothing about the product and related issues, the result is much is crap. I keep saying don't go over to LED just yet. Wait a few years and it will all be sorted out and prices will be lower.

Philips lighting has the best handle on this market but even they have a dozen different product for one application. One example the replacement for the 50mm tungsten halogen spotlight, the 7W size replacing the 50W TH lamp has a cooling fan built in. Now you will not find that in a Chinese lamp. So be selective or wait.

Natch!

Re: Big Bounce

Everyone is trying to find alternative views to the processes at Time Zero. The Big Bounce view is nothing new, what would be new would be to put some numbers to the process.

I have never been convinced about the arithmetic of Time Zero. Clearly in a singularity the density is enormous however this also means that time is dilated so far as to be meaningless, so when someone declares that at 10e-38 sec after the Big Bang that matter condenses out of the primal cloud in current time this might be billions of years. Similarly if time is irrelevant then there can be no velocity, and consequently no distance. The primal cloud could be full of structures and yet be very small, from the inside we would not be aware of this. The view that without time there is not distance and without distance there is no time is paradoxical. However the standing of time as a dimension is dubious and is a convention we have developed to account for change, it is very much a result of what is happening rather than a cause. There is no question that time is flexible.

It might be that the big bang is no more than the realisation of time, what was very close is now extremely distant because time enables velocity acceleration and distance. The Big Bounce might be the collapse of time followed by the expansion of time.

Re: Yes of course.

Well no actually.

But we do need flexible brains and this is the way to get them involved in "creative thinking and doing" and just maybe getting them intersted in technology.

Who needs a nation of lawyers? (OK so Samsung and Apple do but that is beside the point).

Re: Begin settling space,

And make a shedload of money.

Let me see!

Bit of head scratching later 80,000 people at $0.5m: $40billion. Yes, cheap as chips.

And he wants the Government to contribute as well.

Re: Flattened gluons?

The thought that at relativistic velocity particles come apart is intriguing. It reminds me of the comment about the Avro Shackleton as being “10,000 rivets flying in loose formation”. I don’t think that flattened is the right description but the gluon assembly might be disk shaped.

Re: CFCs a sign of not intelligent enough inhabitants...

Two things:

Would the detectable level of chlorofluorocarbons not be so high as to presnt a risk to life on the said planet?

What "intelligent" lifeform releases planet destroying levels of chlorofluorocarbons anyway?