* Posts by JDX

6847 publicly visible posts • joined 28 May 2010

Splash! Three times as much water as ALL of Earth's oceans found TRAPPED underground

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Re: Bible Thumpers Rejoice

>>The only problem for the biblethumpers is that they happened more than 6000 years ago, so they either have to ignore them, or admit their basic calculation is wrong.

You wouldn't be claiming most Christians, believe in a Young Earth theory would you? Because that would be making an argument based on total ignorance which in the circumstances is rather ironic. Even among what you might call radical/fundamentalist Christians - proper bible-thumpers rather than traditional CofE grannies - the vast majority don't believe that!

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Re: Bible Thumpers Rejoice

Gen7:11 " in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open"

So clearly that's where all the water came from without the need to break matter conservation... and where it went afterwards ;)

Tom Hanks NICKED my COPYRIGHTED PIC, claims Brit photog

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Isn't Hanks one of the decent ones, and this is therefore most likely casual ignorance of the type "that's cool, I want to share it"?

Hopefully it will get a good outcome and my illusions won't be shattered :)

Google: Why should we pay tax when we make 'intangibles'?

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Google are nothing special, this is just what happens when you're multinational... you have to set up a company in each country you want to trade in (I think) so that when you work for Google in the UK, you are employed by Google UK rather than by a foreign employer... would you want to live by American employment rights?

All messy, and not easy to sort out since one country can't tell a company how it should act in other countries.

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Re: The solution is trivial

What about the times this is done for a valid reason rather than to minimise tax? You're suddenly going to tax every movement of money into/out of a country?

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the benefits it brings to the local economy are intangible

Is that something they want to say? "Hey, we shouldn't pay tax, we're worthless!"

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No Google, is a multinational corporation. Treating it like a couple of people you can say "Google are..." is laughable.

Scott McNealy to caddie for 18-year-old son at US Golf Open

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Re: That's great

He did name him Maverick though, unless that's only a nickname?

Dallas Cowboys to return 'dumbass' Texan's chopper

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Re: Return home ?

Do none of these drones allow you to control them through, say, mobile phone tech?

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Re: Nice

>>So, with training, you can carry a concealed gun in Texas; but loose your toy aeroplane and they go all seriously legal on you...?

If you leave your gun lying around in a sports stadium that might be unpopular too.

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Nice

They're into letting you do what you want in Texas. As long as it's not with another man, and you're white.

GAME ON: Top 10 tellies for a World Cup kicking

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Re: Why? Who?

I'm sure loads of people think "I could do with a new TV one of these days". Pushing sales around a big TV event like the World Cup or Olympics makes good sense really - catch all those would-be buyers.

I don't think many people would suddenly develop an interest from nowhere in a new TV, but it could well be a trigger for the many who watch TV but could do with a little push or "special occasion" to justify getting a new one (to themselves or perhaps their wife).

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Re: Reality bites (HDX)

Well that depends what TV you had to start with, duh. We got ours in the days when full 1080p was not ubiquitous and ended up with HD-Ready 42"... I am not convinced splashing out on a modern 1080p or even UHD would be worth it, unless we moved into a house where 50"+ made sense.

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Re: 4K!?

Well if you don't have the bandwidth, they should can the whole idea. Nevermind all those millions in inner cities with superfast connections, let alone plebs like me with regular ADSL who get 15-20Mbit which would probably be enough (we can watch HD streaming on 3 devices at once).

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Re: Best telly?

Why do you need a lock-in when pubs are getting licenses to open later, and most bars can already stay open late?

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Re: Reality bites

Um, 50" is hardly showing off. We have a fairly paltry 42" but the difference it makes to a 32" is massive with sport, sitting on the far side of the room.

And projectors are proven technology, hardly some new gimmick. Many people have houses big enough for them.

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Re: 4K!?

The article mentioned that Netflix is also already supporting UHD although what they define as UHD I don't know.

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Re: Curved screens suggest a single viewing position at a focus point.

Have you worked out the focal length of such a TV based on the curvature? If not you are not providing any more valid data than the marketing hype about curved sets.

I should clarify, since the down-voters seem unable to distinguish a request for objective information from an endorsement of the technology, I don't see the point of curved TVs either. But the claim they only work in a very specific sweet spot should be verified - is this the case or do they work over a larger "sweet area"?

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Re: Expensive & pointless

Have you tested that hypothesis - I've not seen a curved TV in person to check?

I find it hard to believe that it would be so directional a typical family sofa would be a problem, which is probably quite a wide slice of the market.

Texan parks quadcopter atop Dallas Cowboys stadium

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You could argue a quadcopter which defaults to being stationary is inherently safer than a plane which by definition is always moving fast, or a helicopter whose natural behaviour is to immediately crash.

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Couldn't he just have walked/driven round the other side of the building to regain radio contact?

Also, that video is really good, so stable... how much does one of these cost?

Flying cars, submarine cars – Elon Musk says NOTHING is beyond him

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Re: When you are clueless...

Except that he has a track record for succeeding.

Look inside ELON MUSK'S CAR! Tesla S wundervehicle has voom

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Re: 'everyone going to a shopping centre...'

I'm not sure making you stop for an hour where you used to stop for 2min is going to work, it seems far more sensible to install these in places people would choose to go to... but now people with such cars will always go to that place rather than competitors without the technology.

Maybe towns with Tesco and Sainsbury will see the two competing to win the charging spot.

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Site locations

He talks about people paying Tesla to use their locations or at least give them free use of space. Are we talking shopping centres here, or is this more a Starbucks type thing, tied to an individual store?

Report pegs Apple for October smartwatch release

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Re: Tringle

But how do we identify jackasses like you two? The Metallica T-shirts?

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Believe it when I see it

But it would be interesting to see what Apple can do to make the concept more appealing - is the core tech not useful or is it all about the implementation?

A device which is waterproof and can continuously measure heartrate, as well as recording sleep and activity levels and including a pedometer, AND DOES ALL OF THIS SLICKLY, could be a hit... I don't want to have to tell it "I'm going to sleep now" or "I'm swimming now". Slickness and polish are Apple's strengths and for something you wear on your wrist all day, tiny design nuances can make or break the experience.

But I don't think chaining it to an iPhone within 10 feet is a successful strategy, it MUST have standalone functionality. But then Apple just mentioned that whole "devices knowing what each other are doing" thing last week which could be ideal to let your watch know when to switch to autonomous mode and when to silently sync with your phone - leave your phone in your gym locker and the watch takes over, come back from the pool and by the time you pick up your phone, all the information has synced across. That sounds quite Apple-y to me.

Doubletalk: Geeksphone Revolution dual-OS smartphone

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Re: Given who makes the OS, unsurprisingly, the web browser is impressively efficient.

Since when is reported memory usage the only factor?

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Given who makes the OS, unsurprisingly, the web browser is impressively efficient.

Considering my last experiences with FF, it IS a bit of a surprise to me!

Please be seated at your FOUR-LEGGED PC

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@moiety

But it has to be tempered and surely you have to bevel (and do everything including drilling holes) before that?

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Re: EMC

Ah, the typical arrogant nerd. Nothing is subjective, things are either X or Y and since I think it's X, that's how it is.

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Re: Nice.. shame it doesn't go up and down

Up and down desks are incredibly pricey. I looked a while back and they all seem to run from about £2000! Self-building with hydraulic rams and servo motors is beyond my confidence and the parts are not cheap so I instead made a Heath Robinson effort for my home office which involves a tray-table with folding legs from Argos.

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Re: Next project, build one of these for <$100

Question: how will you cut the glass? Doesn't it have to be cut before being tempered so you can't buy a sheet and cut to fit? Obviously a glasser (?!) could do this for you but suddenly your costs have trebled.

Or is there a way around this? Of course, no reason it actually has to BE glass topped.

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If you could knock up a worse version for the same cost, and have to use a lot of your time, how can you complain it's expensive to pay the same for a better one and someone else's time?

It's niche, but I like the fact people are bothering.

Google: OK world, make our 'End-to-End' crypto tool SPOOK PROOF

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Plugins

So after telling us plugins are bad, Google is admitting they need to use plugins? Why not build it into Chrome?

'Press Like for 1MB of data': Facebook picks up Pryte in-app data tech

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Privacy aside

It's a clever bit of technology.

US bloke raises $250k to build robo-masturbation device

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"I deeply apologize to those who were offended by the sight of artificial human penises."

Ah, never miss an opportunity to make a passive-aggressive slight towards those who are under no compunction to let you use their service.

He sounds like he should get laid.... oh wait.

Apple: We'll tailor Swift to be a fast new programming language

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re:It's too difficult for him to learn. Poor baby.

Considering C is easier to learn than C++, or Java, that seems a rather weak attempt at an arrogant put-down. C is one of the easier languages because there is so little to it IMO. I learned C after BASIC and found it easy enough, learning C++ was a bigger jump.

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Re: complexity and obsequiousness

"Perhaps you've never had to maintain or debug code written by 4 different people over the course of a decade and reindent several hundred lines of code because someone, somewhere, changed the logical flow due to a misplaced bracket or inconsistent bracketing style. Personally, I enjoy being able to read, reuse and maintain code I (and others) wrote years ago."

If only there were incredibly easy ways to automatically impose a standard formatting... or if only it were possible for a lead developer to require people follow a convention.

Messy code serves a purpose, it tells you that the project has probably not been run well and you should be wary.

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Re: Just what the world needs

"In what sense does Apple 'force' you to use Objective-C? You can use as much C or C++ code as you like without having to hop any sort of barriers"

How do I call system APIs using native C++? I genuinely thought I couldn't - you end up with C++/OBJ-C files which are normal C++ with lines like:

UIInterfaceOrientation interfaceOrientation = [UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarOrientation;

How do I do that in pure C++, i.e. set the .cpp file as C++ rather than C++/OBJ-C in XCode? Maybe it's just because all the sample code I saw uses OBJ-C.

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Re: Just what the world needs

>>Go is finding fans all over the place, though mainly in systems, because of its concurrency support.

A few users is not a success. Where is Go in real-world use, something like 0.01% of developers? I bet there are more active Haskell developers

>>C# is, er, a rehash of Java for the MS runtime.

Yes, done very well. Who cares if it's a brand new paradigm as long as it works - which it does. It's very unashamedly "a better Java".

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Just what the world needs

Yet another new language. Apple are on thin ice using Objective-C already in my eyes, even MS don't force you to use their own MS-only language (.NET is only one option of many).

Google did Go - which hasn't. MS have gained traction with C# but that's really the stand-out counter-example in terms of a new "next best thing" language that has been adopted into the mainstream.

The enemy of my enemy is my, well, temporary ally: Apple and Microsoft in pact against Google

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Re: Noboby uses Bing for a good reason

Since people use bing are you saying people use bing for a bad reason?

It works OK on the rare times I use it. Kind of seems much of a muchness with Google really.

Glassholes beware: This guy's got your number

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There's plenty of stories about “Glassholes”

Far more stories about people being assholes to glass wearers than stories about glassholes themselves.

YOSEMITE GLAM: Apple unveils gussied up OS X

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Re: At what point will they...

Most developers working on Apple are developing for iOS so they'll make a business decision whether to suck it up or not.

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Maybe you should plug it in. Although the newer MacBooks use Haswell which does give you better battery life, so wish sort of granted!

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Re: Sync?

Yeah, because Linux users get loads more action than trendy hipsters. That's why they spend all their time in their bedroom with the curtains drawn - all the sex they're having.

Apple's steamy OS XXX picture leak riddle: Blurry snaps deleted

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iOS8

Oh not again - I only just got all the bloody icons and launch images figured out to work on iOS7!

Could a 'Zunewatch' be Microsoft's next hardware foray?

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I wonder

Will the future of watches lie with tech companies like Apple/Samsung/MS, at all?

Or will traditional brands like Rolex move into this market - none of them seem too keen that I know of but you'd surely think they must be investigating it lest they find themselves out-dated.

I know mechanical watches have survived digital, but digital took a big chunk of the market. A proper Rolex casing with smartware inside could be a much better option than some plasticky thing from Samsung.

if Apple buy Rolex we'll know the game is on!

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Re: not-metro

You mean the way Windows phones have fans in?

Do try a bit harder.

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Re: we now have supercomputers in our pockets, and want bigger, better screens for them

This year, yes - a couple of years ago the current trend would have seen silly and we were laughing at the monstrous sized Trigger Happy TV-esque phones.

No reason a new trend won't happen - in fact it certainly will, we just don't know what it will be.