* Posts by Ninetailed

27 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2012

Lead ONTO your pencil: Bill Gates pours cash into graphene condoms

Ninetailed

"Is there anything the wonder material can't do?"

Be produced economically, apparently. People talk up all the wonderful things graphene can do, but it isn't doing any of these things because it's too bloody expensive to make.

Magnets too slow for disk writes? Use lasers

Ninetailed
Happy

Re: Lasers

It is a scientific* fact that lasers make everything better.

*not actual science, results may vary

100,000+ Earthlings star in 'reality TV contest' for ONE-WAY ticket to MARS

Ninetailed

Radiation Shielding

You've got to admit, while its efficacy is laughable at best, sticking your fingers in your ears and going "la la la I can't hear you" is rather more affordable than any other proposed method for mitigating radiation exposure.

It's not just that you don't have to pay for the expensive shielding and the murderous cost of launching it, you also don't have to deal with supporting the folk you've sent to Mars after the advertising revenue from televising Big Brother On Mars tails off because they'll all have died from cancer anyway. Sounds like a winner to me.

Upstart's 'FLASH KILLER' chips pack a terabyte per tiny layer

Ninetailed

Sounds Familiar...

Oh look, another memory manufacturer purporting to be just about to change the world, real soon now. Do they make batteries too?

Okay, maybe that was a little petty, but there are so many empty promises like this one floating around, it's hard not to become a little jaded. In short, I'll believe it when they actually start shipping product.

Laser-wielding boffins develop ETERNAL MEMORY from quartz

Ninetailed

"Ultrafast"

It's not clear how fast they expect "ultrafast" to actually be. Are we talking on the same sort of order as the slower tape drives? Writeable DVDs? HDDs? As high up as Flash? Slower than all of these?

Given the focus on archiving, the implication seems to be that it'll still be at the lower end of the scale, but I can't find anything that actually says what they're expecting.

Ninetailed

Re: Science Fiction is HAPPENING!

Would now be a good time to point out that we've had actual working ion drives since the 1960s?

Gadgets are NOT the perfect gift for REAL men

Ninetailed

I periodically remind friends, family, and associates that I don't "do" birthdays. I do not stress about getting presents for them, and don't even give them the option of doing the same for me by simply never revealing my birthday where it is not legally necessary to do so. Has caused offence a few times, but they all get the hint after a while.

BT earmarks super-speedy 300Mbit/s broadband for 50 exchanges

Ninetailed

Re: Have and have nots

@Ben Tasker

Surely you're not saying that the real world is a complex place and that "can't they just..?" arguments rarely hold water? I salute you, sir, but are you sure you're in the right forum?

BT boss QUITS telecoms giant for front-bench gov job

Ninetailed

Oh my. Remember that European commission investigating BT for being the only contender for all those govt grants for broadband? They're going to LOVE this.

1-in-10 e-tomes 'are self-published'... most are 'rubbish' says book ed

Ninetailed

Sturgeon's Revelation

"Ninety percent of everything is crap."

Really, it should not come as any surprise to anyone that the vast majority of self-published works are terrible, because the vast majority of big-name-published works are terrible. That's just how it works.

Wikimedia edges closer to banishing Wikitext

Ninetailed
Thumb Up

Re: "Seems a little behind the times."

Better late than never. They could do a lot worse than to copy Wikia's example.

New Tosh 'droid slabs include Newton-like scrawl-pad: We try it out

Ninetailed

Re: Easy to see that Win8...

Oh my. We seem to have an anti-Eadon now too.

Is the next-gen console war already One?

Ninetailed

Re: Pointless features

I'll start practising my "yelling American" impression.

'Google IS a capitalist country... er, company'

Ninetailed
Happy

Called it.

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/1834229

Eric Schmidt: 'Google IS a capitalist country... er, company'

Ninetailed
Go

"Google is a capitalist country... company"

That's this Friday's headline QOTW right there.

UK Serious Fraud Office queues up to probe HP's Autonomy allegations

Ninetailed

Question for the lawyers in the audience

So if they do find out that Autonomy really did grossly misrepresent themselves - not that I'm saying they necessarily will - what would the legal remedy/punishment be? Given that HP own Autonomy now, surely they can't order HP to give itself $8.8bn of its own money.

BlackBerry Q10: This quirky QWERTY will keep loyalists perky

Ninetailed

Re: Looks practical

You could well be right. The hardware keyboard has always been a Blackberry selling point (see about a third of the comments above), so I did wonder why the gap of several months between the touchscreen-only Z10 and what is more likely to be the flagship product, the Q10. Presented in terms of a public beta test, though, it starts to make sense.

Ninetailed
Happy

Not just for loyalists

Personally, I've never used a Blackberry before, but this one is ticking all the boxes for me. I'll want to give it a while to see how well the much-remarked-upon OS bugs are resolved, but if that works out well, I'm going to seriously consider getting a Q10 as my personal phone later in the year. I'm not saying it's a safe bet, but it's certainly likely to find itself on the shortlist come upgrade time.

The truth on the Navy carrier debacle? Industry got away with murder

Ninetailed
Flame

Chocolate Teapot

Good grief. It's a good thing no one actually wants to start a war with the UK, isn't it? The only actual military activity we've had this century has been offensive actions against middle-eastern countries who couldn't retaliate if they tried. If someone with an actual modern military had designs on these isles, there's not a lot we could do about it, if this debacle is any indication.

I count myself fortunate to live in a place and time where this is not actually a realistic problem, and the money really is the only issue.

UK games market clutches chest, bleeds out sales in 2012

Ninetailed
Coat

The idea that there has been a "dearth of attractive releases" is rubbish. 2012 was a year of absolutely stellar games.

Trouble for these people was that it was mostly online; they're losing their business to Steam and its lesser-known competitors, all of whom have enjoyed comfortable growth, though Steam still takes the lion's share.

It pays to study the habits of your email users

Ninetailed
Coat

Volume? Where?

I get maybe 5-10 emails per day. I'm not quite sure how I manage it, but it does make dealing with individual messages easier.

Google hires top US traffic fed for driverless cars project

Ninetailed

I can't wait for automatic vehicles to become the norm. Given the sorts of people on the roads, the less control they have over their cars the better.

Supersymmetry takes an arrow to the knee

Ninetailed

While supersymmetry's prospects may be looking a little bleak, it's too soon to completely rule it out. Recall the Higgs boson, which became the scientific topic of choice to point and laugh at as they ran out of places to look for it, right up until they actually found the thing this year.

Mmm, what's that smell: Coffee or sweat? How to avoid a crap IT job

Ninetailed

I must admit I envy you people who have the luxury of being able to turn down job offers, even crap ones. A bad interview starts to look a lot better once you've been out of work for six months.

Microsoft has no plans for a second Windows 7 Service Pack

Ninetailed

Wait a minute...

Does this mean that Microsoft are actually end-of-lifing Windows 7 before Windows XP?

Greens wage war on clean low-carbon renewable energy

Ninetailed

Goodness, the straw men are out in force today.

Sysadmins! There's no shame in using a mouse to delete files

Ninetailed

I agree entirely with the sentiment behind this post. I can't help but shake my head whenever I see a GUI versus CLI "debate", and just carry on using both side by side.