It's David Irving thinks Wikipedia has defamed him

he should try suing for libel.

Re: Speaking of perspective,

from the about page of Apologetics* Press:

The entire material Universe was specially created by this almighty God in 6 days of approximately 24-hours each, as revealed in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:11.

Well, that's the big bang disproved then.

*The name was a giveaway but the I'm a bit of a masochist.

Re: Go on....credit Stellarium for the pic!

"If I want to look at Venus and Saturn from an Earth-centric perspective, I need only go outside of an evening".

Lucky you. Around here it's all tower blocks. (Oh, for the key to the roof.) Of course for the view from space it's Orbiter all the way for me. Nothing like a good docking, now and then.

Re: What's in it for the AIs?

Let's hope sorting out it's own space program doesn't involve realising project Orion.

Re: Not exactly a shock

"This ability would need to spontaneously appear in a large number of the species for it to thrive through procreation."

In 1860 that argument might have some plausibility. After Mendel it's just silly.

is that when it comes to spaceflight, mass is everything. Energy can come from solar or nuclear (there are no clouds or neighbours in space or indeed on Mars) but fuel (specifically reaction mass) is the real cost since every kilogram you bring with you has to be subtracted from your payload. Certainly the process would be technically complex and possibly dangerous, but what about spaceflight isn't. And yes, producing enough fuel for a return journey is likely to to take time but given the journey time to Mars it likely you'll want to stay there a few months anyway. Especially if the alternative is to stay there forever.

Backronym

of course.

No

but I couldn't find an acronym for Vegemite.

Re: Authoritative is as authoritative does....

"Mires and Peat" . Nah, not a patch on Bogs and Sod.

Yes, off course it was the voice acting.

Nothing at all to do with the lesbian thing. . .

But oddly not

"to gib" despite that being a common pronunciation.

I feel old now.

You must be a Microsoft shill

You didn't even mention the Kin.

Re: Quatermass and the pit

I've never seen the TV version, (The asking price on eBay was pretty prohibitive last time I looked) but the film version was one of the few genuinely scary pieces of cinema I've ever seen. Of course, it helped that I was a young teenager at the time. Even so, the evocation of a devil that even a confirmed skeptic like myself could believe in was an impressive achievement.

"Spike Milligna"

Any relation to "the well known typing error" Spine Millington?

Re: WTF can you fit into 140 chars?

Don't even think about messing with Big Poetry!

Re: I wonder how he feels

The traditional reply is that it's the company's money to be spent as it sees fit - conveniently ignoring the fact that the government's money is our money to be spent as we see fit.

What

could you possibly be doing on the toilet that would cause your balls to move at 160km/h?

Re: Will someone take these out the back and shoot them?

Except ,since the "you don't own it" argument is based on the fact that software is not a physical object, your comparison is invalid. What I can or cannot do with software is governed not by property rights but by copyright which, oddly enough, is a restriction on copying not on "changing". It's not like I can't go through a legally purchased copy of a Harry Potter novel changing every instance of 'wand' to 'wang' or draw a beard on a Mona Lisa print. It's my hardware to manipulate as I wish with the sole exemption that I can't use it to make unauthorized copies.

No you aren't

Just admit the depth of your disappointment.

Re: "Linuxes"?

You have no sense of tradition. It clearly has to be Linuxen.

I tried expecting the unexpected once

but nothing happened. I certainly didn't expect that.

Re: Not surprising

Surely that was not Velikovsky but the HHGTTG. The latter is at least rather more scientifically reliable.

Re: Linus in toys out of pram shocker!

Go ahead. Oh wait. I thought you said 'criticise'.

Re: Slow

Congratulations. (I'm not been sarcastic.) You've actually clearly stated the major commonsense assumptions that relativity violates.

If i'm travelling near the speed of light and fire a bullet from a gun i'm holding will the bullet slowly leave my gun because it can't possibly travel faster than the speed of light :)

No, because velocities in relativity don't add in that way as described above.

If stationary the speed of light is therefore c when moving light is potentially c + my speed is it not?.

No because a fundamental premise of relativity is that c is the same for every observer no matter how they are moving. This isn't just an assumption but an experimental result (look up the Michelson Morley experiment) that relativity explained. Also there is no such thing as 'stationary'. That's not strictly a result of relativity, but relativity's description of how relative velocity work pretty much put paid to any hope that the universe has some preferred velocity against which all others are measured.

because i'm nearly travelling at the speed of light whilst holding my gun would I be incapable of running around in my ficticious spaceship?

It follows from the last point that you're not really "travelling at the speed of light ". You maybe with respect to say the Earth, but if so it's equally true that the Earth is " nearly travelling at the speed of light " with respect to you. What matters is that if "nearly travelling at the speed of light " is say .999 c and your gun fires a bullet at say 0.002 c the velocity of the bullet with respect to the Earth is still going to be less than c. Counterintuitive, yes but the fact is space and time simply don't work in the way our commonsense tells us they do.

Slowing down light is trivial

The current record, if I recall correctly, is something like walking pace. (I'm sure it's been reported here if you care to look.) C on the other hand is a fundamental physical constant. Unless you happen to be a member of the Q continuum you don't get to change it. It's simply a part of how the world works.

Now that doesn't mean there might not be workarounds but those workarounds need to be compatible with relativity in much the way relativity is compatible with Newtonian physics.

Re: What about the Wales?

I vote for areas in Wales and volumes in whales - what could go wrong?

Re: New Opportunity for Office Theft

Why, is there a "firm but flexible" substitute for the resin?

Re: One thought does spring to mind

Don't wish for it. The contactless systems I'm forced to used nominally requires a tap but of course being near field the response can happen at anywhere between a few centimetres or a few millimetres which can be incredibly disconcerting like a keyboard with random lag. I'd imagine that slows things down significantly.

Sorry

It's just not the same without the bad makeup.

Re: When I were a lad...

You obviously went to the wrong school. . .

Re: so what?

Why is that a problem? The electricity distributers buy electricity at the market price add a markup and sell it at the retail price. That's how the business works. Explicit government subsidies aside (and if there are going to be subsidies they should be explicit) why should the consumer expect to sell their electricity at more than the market rate?

Re: Life is full

Shorter LarsG; "harden the fuck up because I will never be one of the vulnerable".

Your conspiracy theory

needs more conspiracy. I suggest something involving Dick Cheney.

"Taken over by Samsung"

Must... resist... obligatory .... joke ....about .... lack of rounded corners.

Re: hypocrisy of the human race

NASA has certainly done a great job of marketing it as such (since everything has to be marketed as entertainment these days) but no, it's not entertainment.

Re: Oh great...

And the hissing. Don't forget the hissing. Death would be sweet release.

Re: NBN challenge?

I doubt it. As soon as you even start to think about watching video 10GB starts to look pitifully small. For those of us who have switched to watching TV online wireless is simply not an option. I suspect the NBN figures can be explained by the fact that, at the moment, 12Mb/s is good enough for the vast majority of applications. When genuine high definition streaming video becomes available that will change.

It really looks like that

for the 500 milliseconds before your eyes fry.

Re: James Van Allen had similar issues

This being El Reg I suspect vodka and orange might be more appropriate.

I misread it as "quibble"

But maybe that only applies to the solicitor type.