Posts by James Micallef

Re: Well reported.....

Re economy and environment being "opposite sides of a coin", the biggest push to combat climate change may yet come from that backbone of capitalist money-making, the insurance industry. These are people who REALLY look at facts and will not fudge their science because their bottom line depends on it. When giant re-insurers liek Munich Re start looking at their massive payouts for severe weather events and connect that to climate change (which is starting to happen), then finally the economic costs of climate change will start being factored into teh economy through increased insurance premiums.

Re: I don't get it

I'm not sure why Google is particularly to blame. If the issue is the publication of information that Google is linking to, surely the way to protect people's privacy is to ask the hosting site to take down the source material rather than playing search engine whack-a-mole deleting all the links to such material.

The EU do know that there are other search engines besides Google, right? Right?

Re: NEO - MPLSD micro-satellite network not mentioned??

Other countries have strategic oil reserves. Canada has a strategic Maple Syrup reserve! Gotta love them canucks!

Re: re : It was "rightly" ruled out for the "wrong" reason.

one of FIFA's main arguments against TV replays is that elite competitions will have it and minor competitions won't I guess with GLT, that arguments' out of the window, the only valid argument remaining against TV replays is that it interrupts the flow of the game. Which means that it should be perfectly OK if each team gets 1 or 2 challenges per game, which can only be issued during a break in play. There can be TV ref in the stands as in rugby who is reviewing decisions as they happen (so, most likely will be able to have already reached a conclusion by the time the appeal is made). If after 30 seconds watching a replay the TV ref can't decide either way, the original decision stands.

It won't be perfect but it will be an improvement

Re: What lax security?

If it was just username and password, all they had to do was change the password after he informed them (if this is the case, it boggles the mind why the judge though that he didn't give the lab enough advance warning to fix the problem).

All in all though, looks like the judge had an uncommon amount of common sense. my feeling is that something similair in UK / US would have prosecuters baying for his blood (or at least for a dozen years or so of porridge)

Re: Naive & sentimental comment -

@AC 13:14 - I agree that there's a valid reason for companies to be able to carry forward losses, exactly as you mention since they can be incurring heavy initial losses for initial investment. But this is NOT the case here, the imaginary losses are being generated by executive pay. Double whammy on the taxpyer and the little guy, because the tax refund isn't going to fund infrasructure, engineer's pay, software improvements or (dare I say it) increased privacy for users (which could be justifiable for the reasons above). It's going straight out of the taxpayer's pockets and into that of FBs top executives... who are exactly those in the position to give themselves these mega-bonuses knowing full well that they'll get teh money back from the taxpayer.

Something very wrong in any tax code / accounting code that allows this to happen. is it that difficult to exclude giant executive bonuses from the ordinary salaries in a company P&L??

Re: Not 100%

37 out of 37... ever tried your hand at roulette?

Re: Simple

It's a well known fact small hands small...

...gloves?

Re: Bring it on!

Something missing - voltage?

Am I missing something here? If they're not saying what voltage the battery is operating at, the mA and mAh rating cannot be usefully converted into J and W so it's not possible to say anything about power and energy density.

as @itzman said, the big issue with batteries isn't power density, it's energy density. A three-fold increase is nothing to sneeze at, but still, improving a Lithium battery from 1.8MJ/kg* to 5.4MJ/kg still compares poorly to petrol at approx 46MJ/kg*

Having said that, current production electric cars get around (manufacturer-specified)180-250 miles per charge and (real-life) 100-150 miles per charge. So if that can really be tripled to a real-life 300-450 miles per charge, combined with a 10-minute recharge time AND 2000 charge cycles would make this a real alternative to petrol cars. **

So, to be expected in (current year + 5) for the next 10 years, and then when it arrives will have a battery costing more than the car?

*Wikipedia-sourced number caveat applies

** Even estimating conservatively 200 miles per charge (batteries are also powering heating and other gadgets after all), and 1000 charge cycles (half of what they claim), that gives a battery lifetime of 200,000 miles, so finally also a battery with a life expectancy that matches that of the rest of the car

Re: @proto-robbie RE naughtyhorse

@Dan Paul - The US has a far higher rate of violent crime than otherwise comparable western democracies. If, as you argue, that has absolutely nothing to do with the availabilty of guns (because guns are just tools, and it's people who kill people, not guns)... then does that mean that the US has a disproportionately large amount of violent paranoid homicidal arseholes.

Yay

Scalectrix cars :)

$1.3 billion revenues, no profits

which begs the question, WTF are they spending well over a billion dollars on?? They can't have THAT many servers / infrastructure and developers, so my guess is mostly that's payouts to FB to get their games hosted there.

And a very large chunk of Facebook's revenue is coming from Zynga for exactly that privilege.

House of cards?

Re: Dear USA: You make your laws; we'll make ours.

All of the stuff I have is MADE in China / Taiwan etc anyway. Some stuff designed in US (iPod), but mostly it's European brands anyway. As OP says it's mostly software and movies that come from there. Movies no problem there's a big and growing EU + international scene with extremely high production values, quality etc. Only main advantage of US films is they're in English... but then again British films >>> US films anyway.

Software ditto though I suppose I could easily switch to Linux. All the embedded software in my kit is probably linux-based anyway. The real biggie is web-based services... Google / Bing search, Google maps, Google translate, Facebook etc... nothing essential and nothing that can't be replicated (albeit less polished / capable) although it would be annoying.

Oh... and Android / iOS / Windows phone OS. I guess we can all switch to the new Blackberry :)

Re: James Thickiellef James Micallef Ledswinger resolution 1929 WTF??

Hmm, see up until then I thought you did have some clue, now it appears clear that you are contradicting anything I say for the heck of it. Have you ever been to Dubai? Do you really know ANYTHING about it? It was an 'important business centre' in the sense of regional boat trade up and down the gulf. 30 years ago it was just a desert and no international company except oil was present, and sure as hell no tourists ventured there. 20 years ago it was half-skyscraper-half-desert. Dubai was clever that it re-invested oil revenue very heavily into infrastructure like cheap hotels, relatively cheap intercontinental flights with Emirates, big salaries to attract ex-pats. Having an oil industry 'smaller than it's neighbours' still means it's huge resource, which they used to build an infrastructure for financial services and tourism.

You can have all the intelligent and innovitaive taxation systems in the world, no-one is going to put their money there if there isn't any stability. Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco are old established and STABLE states with clear rule of law, thinking Palestine can turn into Monaco is optimistic at best, and will anyway take decades. According to you Palestinians should say "OK, you know what, we can have Israel have big chunks of our land because after all we can develop into a financial services hub in a few decades"??

Re river Jordan - Once again, it's you who are showing your ignorance. 'Largest river in the region', how about 'ONLY' river in the region! Again, have you ever been to Jordan or West Bank, have you ever SEEN the river Jordan? I have, and calling it a 'river' is a joke, even 'stream' would be pushing it. According to historical roman records it was at maximum 1km wide. Now an olympic-level long-jumper can clear it. Jordan river levels and levels of dead sea are at record historical lows due to over-use of water and lack of rainfall. Jordan is the country that is listed as 4th dryest in the world. Obviously there are no records for West Bank as it's not classified as a country, but ball-park precipitation will be the same as Jordan.

As for the rest of your reality checks, I am talking about West Bank, you keep banging on about Gaza. I know Gaza is a complete basket case / lost cause, I'm not talking about it. I'm talking only about establishing Palestinian state on West Bank territory pre-1967 lines (possibly with some land swaps), and the inadvisability of Israel building settlements there. The only 2 arguments you have given in defence of this are (1) "Palestinians aren't using the land so it's OK". This is a spurious argument that can be easily debunked by hypothetically reversing the roles. Can Palestinians just wander into an unoccupied area of Israel and set up camp there? Of course not, they would be kicked out in no time.

(2) Defensibility - This is the only argument that at least makes sense. I have argued that military outposts will do teh job just fine for now without needing settlements and long-term if there is peace then Palestine can have that land. If you don't believe that, fine, believe what you want.

BUT please stop inventing pipe-dreams like Palestine can survive as a state the area of Monaco by being a financial services centre, or that the river Jordan is a plentiful supply of water

Re: 1980s?

Except that 'cap-and-trade' is NOT really market-based economics, because the amount of the cap is artificial and arbitrary. The woman making this quote:

“Reducing our individual energy use, particularly that of our travel, our houses, and our appliances, is the quickest and easiest way to reduce our own carbon emissions"

seems not to understand that a cap does not mean "this amount of emmissions AT MOST", it means "DEFINITELY this amount of emmissions", because whatever I save of my allocation I will sell to someone else to emit (the article mentions this specifically. My personal energy savings will not amount to a net energy saving)

Under cap-and-trade, the only way to reduce emmissions is to reduce the cap, and every time that comes up for review it will be all talk and no action - Kyoto all over again. The main beneficiaries of cap and trade will be traders who will take a cut off every trade even if they are really not offering any added value.

The best way of approximating a true market-based carbon reduction system is to add the externalised costs of burning fossil fuels back into their price through a carbon tax*. That way, fossil fuels will only be burnt if the value released from burning them is greater than the cost including externalised costs, and overall consumption will go down since trivial / wasteful uses will get cut out.

A carbon tax as opposed to cap-and-trade is a LOT simpler, and therefore cheaper, to administer (no need to audit all carbon usage, no need for complex trading schemes), and also instead of financial benefits going to banks and traders, teh tax money is collected by government (in an ideal world, to be ringfenced and spent ONLY on renewable energy research)

*Of course there still will be much wrangling as to what the correct level of tax should be, but it's a start

Re: Prior art ?

It seems trivial and obvious, but there is a subtle difference. Pretty much every store I've been in uses desks / stands, not tables (and definitely no stools / chairs). Their wares are there to be looked at, not played around with.

On teh other hand when I've been to an Apple store I could stop here and there and take 15-30 minutes to actually tray something properly instead of playing around for a few seconds.

So, may or may not warrant a trademark, but what they're doing is definitely better than what everyone else is.

Re: I want a new netbook

Me too!

My EEE 901 was ace as a backup PC, when used on the go I could live with the small screen and keyboard, and it had double the battery life than my wife's 'fake' Sony netbook*. I also have an ASUS transformer tab which is great for most 'consumer' uses, but, as article poits out, sucks at doing anything creative (and if you're complaining about the keyboard.... mine has a French physical keyboard, and Android steadfastly refuses to gracefully combine this with a virtual English keyboard layout, and complains vociferously every time I dock / undock)

* 'fake' in the sense that since it had windows installed, it could only run more than a couple of hours by crippling performance. To do anything power-hungry like watch a movie - it typically would have JUST enough juice to get through a movie**

**of normal running time, no LOTR etc

"the saddle is way up high on the kangaroos back "

LOL :)

Re: Nuclear always costs more than it's supposed to

I'm not doubting that nuclear always costs more than it's supposed to.... however I would suggest that every single friggin' capital project in the world, ever, has come in over budget. It's in the nature of suppliers / proponents to play down costs and talk up advantages. It's true about nuclear, it's true about wind, it's true about every energy technology.

With nuclear, theer is the question - are costs being inflated unnecessarily by insisting on 'safe' radiation levels that are far below natural background radiation? Also, historical costs of nuclear are based on 1st / 2nd generation reactors, and the decommissioning thereof. Latest-generation reactors could be designed with future decommissioning in mind to reduce decommissioning cost.

Ultimately, whatever source of energy we will end up using, we need to accept that it will cost a LOT more than digging up ready-to-burn fuel from the ground where it has been pre-packaged in the most convenient and energy-dense manner possible.