Re: "decent chap with decent values"

Especially, at one time, when the values were attached to credit cards.

Re: Resizeable/groupable tiles - meh

I installed Classic Start Menu 5 mins after Win 8, and I haven't seen a tile for months.

Re: Is he talking about the Perl 5 source?

Hahaha. True. But it's not clear to me why a Perl mess should evoke merely meh, wheres a C++ mess (or a C mess, for that matter) - and it is invariably code you didn't write - evokes the reaction that the author was an incompetent idiot who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a serious compiler.

Re: Quite scary really

Especially the line "...Home Office Permanent Under Secretary, shortly to be supersized as “Chief Executive”."

Which suggests the merger of Big Business with Government is almost complete, and then the two will no longer be distnguishable or discernable.

Re: Aha-

And the energy density of a unit eco-lune is...? Not that it matters much when there are so many available. A finite resource? Of course. One can never predict (oops, 'project') when the next bunch of incendiaries will turn up, only that the Creator seems to have guaranteed there always will be some for the rest of us to burn.

Re: What's new about this?

It's worse than we thought. Directional ultrasonic acoustic devices have been in existence 10+ years, operating in the utlrasonic 200kHz-220kHz range to carry audio which is demodulated using sum and difference tones within a small space confined by the acoustic collimation. For example, combining 201.000kHz and 200.000kHz creates an intermodulation tone of f1-f2 which is 1.000kHz. The perceived effect is uncanny - you take a step into the 'hot' spot and suddenly you u hear music. Practical devices havs been investigated by the Coca-cola company to create an 'ambience' around vending machines, and by the US DoD in higher power versions to create a different kind of 'ambience'.

Re: Gotta catch them all - her real test

Her real test shirley is whether the result is errr reproducible.

Re: Patten on the run?

>> The peer was the only person approached by the trust with an offer to take the DG gig.

There's Fat Pang in action for you. So while I would not quite say that Pang is on the run right now, if things don't get better PDQ (I won't ask How?) then he will have to walk.

Re: Streetlights etc have stolen so much from us.

Are you quite sure? I would have said banksters. Then rent-seekers,

Re: Alderson tramline

Are you quite sure? I would have said Birkeland current.

Re: Uh oh - potential PR disaster

>> The trouble is the people involved in researching this will be inclined to wet themselves with excitement at slightly hydrated minerals.

I see a great career ahead of you at El Reg.

Re: Impartiality about what?

Your are correct about Human-Engendered Climate Change being real, but not in the sense you intended. The danger, as the screed from the UN Durban jamboree showed, is the the eco-totalitarian astroturfers of the UN would like to implement policies which reduce atmospheric CO2 to levels at which plants fail to grow, thus endangering not just humans, but the whole food chain. Somehow the concept of eugenics doesn't quite cover this.

Re: i wonder

Given the attendee list, the supposition is not plausible. But let's entertain it anyway -- so would the back room meeting have been for those people on-message or for those off-message?

Re: "...that boffins thought might be extinct..."

Jolly bad luck sir. It seems we are adding to our inventory of species rather more than we know to be losing.

Re: Theresa in the Dark? ....... Let there be Light

I am cool about having amfM sort Theresa out in private sessions - just as long as he brings an appropriately big ray gun along for the ride.

Good spot there

Iceland. Whose banks in the UK were shut down by McCavity under anti-tourist legislation.

Re: Apple told us it had no comment on the matter

I’m at a loss that a company such as Apple would do this.

Re: Sums

rithmetik, innit?

Re: Sod the water

Betcha there's enough Na+ on the Moon to go with the OH- and hey presto... there's your soda water, well, somebody's soda water.

What Theory?

This >> Activities are open systems. When an activity system adopts a new element from the outside (for example, a new technology or a new object), it often leads to an aggravated secondary contradiction where some old element (for example, the rules or the division of labor) collides with the new one. Such contradictions generate disturbances and conflicts, but also innovate attempts to change the activity. <<

Is pure marxian dialectical materialism. And no-one at Nokia spotted it...? So, the USSR did manage to strike from beyond the grave.

Re: Catch 42 ...... at the 33rd Degree of Arrogant Ignorant Madness

To that 1st Quest ion, unfortunately Yes. Less 666 mod 20 IMHO, and more the retread of Hobbes nail boots (not as farce either).

Until WW1 - gas and guns - the biggest WMD was The Philosopher. Yet far from going the way of the DoDo, the intertubes and its democratization of publishing have made philosophers out of many more ordinary. But how many philosophers ever got it 100% right? None. So now there are many many more liars in circulation...

Hobbes had a peculiar political philosophy: it is wrong to overthrow the govt whatever. Ergo, anything which prevents a putsch is right and proper. Of course sh..IT happens. But the song remains the same: it is wrong to overthrow the new lot as well! Perhaps Hobbes was really the original Guardianista - terrified of The Libertarian.

As for J Sa vile, one wonders if evil is socially fractal. And, as interesting a question, under what conditions a society could be fractally evil. Somewhat irrelevant perhaps, since the resurgence of the Spirit of Hobbes also implies the imminent rebirth of Locke - a much less paranoid fellow, who inspired the original US constitution. Sometimes the glass is so close to half filled, that in trying to determine the measure, we find the delta is smaller than the least observable quantum.

Re: New anti trust case please

Onto something there. $7bn is well enough to write a new OS. My suggestion: buy up BEOS and virtualize it. Then make it mandatory in the EU natch.

I see what you did there to Lewis' whack a mole analogy

Chemistry, innit? As for mining all that goody methane hydrate, it won't be necessary for some time. There seems to be enough shale gas around to keep us going for a millennium without having to get our feet wet. But in a thousand years, it will be well worth their while, as there seems enough of the stuff to keep them going for oh probably 10,000 years.

Re: Human Telescopes?

As opposed to human canonballs.

Re: How to fix it...

Peer review? As in University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit and pals?

Re: Good system, gone bad

> Patents and copyright are useful when there is a direct link between the inventor/creator and their use.

You mean like the link between the means of production and the consumption of the surplus value derived therefrom? As outlined in Marx, Das Kapital, volume 1, which alleges it to be the fundamental problem (nay, contradiction) in capitalism?

Judge Dredd and his Jury

1. A judge's directions ("instructions") to a jury are not binding. That they are nevertheless forcing is recognized in law by the fact that they may in themselves be so erroneous or misdirecting as to render a verdict unsafe, and therefore be the basis for an appeal. In this case, an appeal on that basis is most unlikely.

2. The jury's job is not to interpret the evidence, but to weigh it. It is the court's job to determine what the facts are, and to the extent any are ambiguous the court will make a 'finding of facts' in those situations to dispose the case. This is why appeals are made on points of law. But while the court establishes the facts (and those facts may include the fact that testimonies conflict), the jury establishes the verdict. In the UK, at least, it is not unknown for a jury not-guilty verdict to imply the law is an ass, the facts themselves being overwhelmingly in favour of a guily verdict.

Re: So, from the title...

I would presume it's metaphor for the latest Clampdown nee neo-Feudalism. Metaphorized droit de seigneur, all your copyrights are belong us, mortgages for all for ever, perpetual war on the people, corporatism without end. You didn't think M$ wouldn't be at it too?

Re: I actually LIKE aero, but MUI is mooey on stone tablets

I suspect the decision on Aero was determined by useability considerations outdoors. Punters would just shoot themselves in the foot with it, and blame M$.

Re: a whole hour?

8 minutes. That's about the time it takes for light to get here from the Sun (give or take the odd Deferred Procedure Call of nature). Coincidence?

+1

All the best functions permit variable numbers of arguments - as functional and declarative languages demonstrate. As we are propelled half-knowingly towards 2013 Intel cores, so procedural languages with their prescriptive command-and-control metaphor look increasingly merely as the outmoded paradigm.

[exciting headline]

with Alien eggs on the side!

Re: Blue

Here's a frackin' good idea. Instead of using water+additives to frack wells, why not use an alkane gel? Comes back up as gas, and contamination of water is impossible.

Been done. The process has already fracked over a 1000 wells. More expensive than water, so with shale gas prices at historic lows in the USA, the bak-of-envelope calc needs looking at by a bean-counter - and I don't mean bean-eater.

Frackin' marvelous. Enough to make a Green green with envy. Ideas - the Greens just don't have new ones.

Quite.

So what's not to like? While 'humanity' sits on assets, it is not revolting, revolving, or revoluting. With 24/7 media-infotainment complexity, it won't even be thinking about any of those things. What's not to like?

A practical measure

The lawyers on all sides need to be put back in the box.

In the case of the major labels, mostly run by lawyers, this will automatically ensure new management with a can-do attitude, since lawyers' creativity is demonstrably restricted merely to inventing opportunities (ie laws) for other lawyers' to inhibit creativity.

Why encourage lawyers? The problem is that too many people see lawyers simply as heavy artillery in a zero sum game. But it is not a zero sum game - creativity is an inexhaustible resource.