Posts by M. Poolman

Some of it was funded by UK

There's quite an interesting Sky at Night program on BBC iPlayer about it. The sensors were developed in Oxford.

Chalkboard erasers.

Yep, really did used to happen, good old days...

Re: It's an opinion. This story may even boost name recognition for ReactOS.

Sure does,

I'd never heard of ReactOS until now. Don't think I'm likely to switch to it any time soon though.

Re: Its the updates

The only only advantage the ~15yrs has given me is to reinforce the message always stick with the defaults unless you are absolutely sure you need to do something different, you understand why you need to do something different, you understand how the alternatives work, and then try it out on non-production system first.

14.5 years ago, I only had 6 months experience with apt, and I'd never seen a dependency problem. That is why I now have 15 yrs experience. 99.9% of what I have ever installed has come from the standard repo's.

PS when I mentioned apt in my OP, I meant the overall packaging system, not necessarily the command line. The synaptic package manager provides a very nice gui and is what I use most of the time, and would certainly recommend to noobs.

Re: ScyFy?

I wish I hadn't asked now!

But only if you remember to use: "software respected for its fastidious bit-accurate transcriptions"!

Re: Not a nuclear scientist here... (Nuffield Physics)

Happy memories. In those bygone days my physics teacher used a fag paper to demonstrate how easily alpha particles could be stopped.

Also I think from the place where the bloke took some platinum mesh home to make a trellis.

Re atril seems to work for me,

Okular is well worth looking at if you want something more featurefull than atril.

Re: Surely some mistake

Many zeroes dropped, I make it ~160THz

Mass of Mercury = 3.3x10^23 ( https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/)

3.3x10^23 / 2x10^4 = 1.62x10^19

So at 1.54 x 10^19 kilograms, they’re slightly less than 1/20000 the mass of Mercury.

Or a fraction more than 10^16 skateborading Rinoceri

And Dizzy.

And Lemmings

Re: Tilting at Windmills ..... is the Old Way They Jousted with Ghosts

Ye Gods! why all the downvotes for aman ?

Re: Not my idea of sport

I eat some venison in Portree and it was *very* gamey

Just as long as it didn't come with its own disco rice you'll probably be OK

Re: Controlled experments: thats the ticket

...including but not limited to: ... Zappa

Doubtless featuring Suzy Creamcheese

Re: Oh-Oh-Whoah-Oh-Oh @ Michael Strorm

Beat me to it!

Re: Fascinating stuff

Sad to say it, but this schemes funding this sort multidisciplinary, multinational project(EU2020/Marie Curie) will shortly no longer be available to UK boffins, and there is no sign the government is planning (or even able) to provide a substitute.

Re: Ah, Enlightenment...

I remember it well, a very nice WM it was too. I'm tempted to give Elive a spin just for the nostalga.

Re: Sense of humor

@ GruntyMcPugh

That's a pretty grizzly joke.

Evidence?

Can you provide any evidence for these assertions?

Re: In what universe is this hard science?

I think that that is a rather simplistic view of the way in which scientific ideas develop. The reality is more nuanced, and indeed the authors of the paper state that:

"The mechanism could therefore be a natural explanation for the observed correlations between past climate variations and cosmic rays, modulated by either solar activity or caused by supernova activity..."

Furthermore, there was a degree of hypothesis testing. The authors, after having used some nifty mathematical modelling, raised the hypothesis that cosmic rays could increase the size of cloud condensation nucleii, and tested this experimentally, and in doing so failed to disprove the hypothesis.

Very few things are absolutely (dis)provable in science: hypothesis are put forward, tested and evidence accumulated. This leads to a "best current view" of the world, although what "best" is is rarely uncontentious, and most scientists would anyway acknowledge that their "best current view" is a best incomplete, and very likely incorrect in some aspects.