Re: Must say it..

> Hard to do when there aren't enough atoms or energy to keep that much data on the planet Earth.

About the energy, I can agree. The energy needed to sufficiently reduce entropy of whatever to make it meaningful storage for this kind of data mount would be hard to get.

But atoms are plenty. If you figured out the atomic level storage somehow and kept one bit per atom, you'd only need a Silicon cube with side of 18km. That may seem huge but it's tiny compared to Earth. And if you had lots of energy you could easily process entire Earth to common Silicon chips to obtain this kind of data capacity and beyond.

Practical? Perhaps not. But sure we have the atoms.

Re: Must say it..

> Just because WE can't know both momentum and position, has nothing to do with her Noodliness.

That's rubbish. Read about Bell inequalities that were pretty much conclusively disproved. And with them the idea that a logically consistent underlying state is possible which would define simultaneously both momentum and position (or the equivalent for polarisation-bases for photons anyway). So, there's nothing for her Noodliness to actually know.

Re: Lowest common denominator

Obligatory reference:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2628

Re: Lesson learned?

> Well, you think they would keep a name that would put anyone using it at risk of being taken off the web?

Anyone outside Europe and also anyone inside who wants the trademark invalidated.

If #!/usr/bin/python stops working because of trademark I'm going to start sending death threats too.

Gentlemen,

please check your irony detectors. They seem to be broken seriously.

Re: WTF?

> There is no such thing as a digital signal,

DVB signal is an MPEG stream. Please describe how to interpret it non-digitally...

Re: "so why does it keep pestering you"

> and this one tends to be more obvious in open source software land...

Hardly. Abrasive, arrogant, rude and thick-skinned personalities abound but minimum risk and effort? That does not get you far there.

Re: Makes zero sense

> by pirating

Please, enlighten me, what did he pirated?

Re: Sir

> i guess it is, in the same way you can use a sledgehammer to 'pick' a lock

You pick the lock if you open it without damaging it (and not using the key). Doesn't matter if you use a sledgehammer, ice cone or proton collider...

Re: What's this "ad" stuff people keep talking about?

> The web has no ads.

What is your post then?

Re: Not only is the patent pointless but it's worthless

> but is sufficiently different to not qualify as a violation of the patent itself.

But will that stop Apple from suing you?

Re: Excellent

Should have been a reply to http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/11/21/schoolgirl_expelled_rfid_chip/#c_1632382

Not sure how I managed to start a new thread....

Re: Mouse travel

> Actually, that menu is a lot easier to get at than the Windows ones:

> the pointer can't go beyond the edge of the screen at that point...

> so you have to be a lot more precise

Ah, the classic Fitt's law argument. With the classic flaw. Unless you just want to quit the program you also need to move the mouse *back* from the menu to the working area.

So, for maximized windows it indeed makes sense to place menus at screen edge (i.e. they'd better be fullscreen, not just maximized) while for everything else menus in the window win if the movement back is included.

Re: Non-FB user question

We don't talk about copyright but about personal rights (privacy). Most of us don't have their faces copyrighted...

Re: Fahrenheit?

More likely it was 30000 K because astrophysicists use Kelvins almost universally.

Re: I like Ribbon

I had to work with the ribbon thing for the first (and hopefully last) time two weeks ago. Took me 10 minutes to find how to print the document -- essentially by random clicking on everything, hoping that something useful will happen, until I found that the strange decoration in the top left corner is also a kind of menu. Talk about intuitive...

Re: Near-beer. "Small gains in productivity in the office"

So it's progressing to EMACS-style keyboard controls (except with different key combos)? That's encouraging, within the next 20 years they might get to the vi-style and then the thing can perhaps become usable...

Re: AC writes: "It isn't an anti-gay thing."

"A marriage is a (hopefully) permanent union between two adults who love each other and plan to spend the rest of their lives together. Period."

One word: Horseshit.

Lots of adults who love each other and plan to spend the rest of their lives together are *not* married and do not plan to get married. Whatever their sex is. Period.

Re: Scary

I prefer being culturally insensitive clod to my poop sprouting eyes and mouths, thank you very much. In fact your links made it even more scary.

Re: Dimensional analysis

"the units that it's billed in"

And that's the nonsense Ken Hagan suggested to fix. The unit in the bills should be MJ.

Re: Alternatively:

Exactly. Half of the stuff just demonstrates that you need to carry an additional bag full electronic crap to make your tablet as useful as a laptop.

Re: the civilised world of SI

Well, I got the number by converting 295 K using units(1) so I actually know what temperature 71.33 F means. But without that I'd be quite lost.

Re: The 'mercans seem to be doing OK with feet, inches and funny sizes gallons.

"Outside that range the moderately arithmetically challenged (roughly two thirds of the general population) tend to become befuddled"

Funny I live in a civilised part of the world where the metric system is used exclusively and don't observe anything like that. Probably it happens only in the imagination of imperial system proponents...

"If you do not have the internet you reduce your options and in some cases have no option at all."

If your parents do not have the right connections it also reduces your options and in some cases it means you have no options at all. So should it be also declared a human right?

Fundamental human rights are different -- essentially all negative, declaring that you should be free to mess up your life yourself as you see fit, not messing it up (or terminating in the extreme case) the way others might want to force you.

@FatsBrannigan

"And I'm willing to bet that if someone figures out how to build a worthwhile device for $25, then that will sell well in 'the West' too."

Price is not the problem, it's the form factor.

A phone is something you can easily carry in your pocket and can make phone calls (sic!) with. It should also endure rough handling.

A computer is something that can be used for typing and displaying pictures larger than a credit card.

So if smartphones are cheap and the only type of phone I can buy I might start using them -- for phone calls. Similarly to how I use maybe 5% of my dumbphone functions now.

Re: What about equations?

"The current use of LaTeX practically ensures that the contributor has to have a university education in a hard science..."

So? You don't need formulas in the Flatulence humour entry. And if you want to write an entry about particle physics I hope you have a university degree in physics...

"What sort of techie never writes an email... or a report... or a proposal?"

A happy techie.