Posts by Dave

So many errors...

This guy hit a stationary object.

It was Christmas day so the M1 would have been almost completely empty - hence the fact that the other driver fealt that it was safe enough to cross three lanes, twice, just to retrieve his phone.

With regard to the phone, the correlation is with the last text that was SENT. Reasonable enought to asume that he then got a reply, or was in the middle of texting someone else. In any case, as others have pointed out, three minutes is not long to get your wits together enough to phone the police after you have just killed someone.

With regards to ABS - on a dry surface, it is normal to see a series of very short skid marks: the sensor system works by detecting when the wheel has stopped rotating, or is turning much more slowly than the other wheels. At this point a skid is in progress, and only then does the brake get released, briefly. This actually makes things much more reliable, as the driver cannot reasonably claim to have lifted off himself.

The idiot should surely be hung drawn and quartered for this.

@PsyWulf

Bug? Its a helicopter !!

@Peter

The problem with a retro-reflector is not the alignment/precision, but the size - it has to be bigger than the target, and between the target and source: that is pretty difficult to do, even on a stationary object. The success would depend a great deal on the targetting method used: on an aircraft that is likely to be radar and/or laser, which may well be confused enough by your retro-reflector to avoid being hit in the first place. A tank is likely to stick with the largely optical sights that it already has, so the biggest danger is of blinding the gunner.

On an object similar to a tank, the aim (as ever) is to make the armour thick enough to survive for long enough, not to be completely impenetrable. In this case, movement would help, as would returning fire, with a nice quick kinetic round, which requires only a second or so: try making your nice big glass lens able to survive any kind of tank round.

Alternative cities?

So Geoff thinks that there are plenty of other cities that will be keen to have road pricing?

Perhaps Edinburgh? It has been almost two years since we last rejected road pricing, perhaps it is time to try again.

Why the insistence on tying public transport funds to road restrictions? The reverse is never happens - they don't build a new road when they shut down a railway line...

Chat bots

aManFromMars is getting a lot better these days, almost that entire first paragraph made sense!

<- In small print, 'commentards'

@Dick Emery

Actually, there are plenty of tools like this already, though intended for almost exactly the opposite purpose: steganographic security hides data in the least significant bits of an image, in exactly the way that you describe. The purpose is to hide small amounts of text, but the effect is the same: the original image is altered imperceptibly.

This is also the crux of why the Judge was correct: the intent of the hashing was to identify the files conclusively, regardless of how the file names had been changed. Regardless of how this was achieved, the entire purpose of the task was to match the files against stuff the government knew about. This could quite easily be extended to work at a lower level, identifying any files that contain the word 'terror' or ENRON or whatever.

@Lee

And why would we have any need to worry about China or Russia?

Of course, they have killed far fewer of our service-men than the Septics have, but the leadership of none of these is entirely on our side at the moment.

@Hans

At least it was us British that invented Concentration Camps! (Boer War)

Rating

Rated: Orgasmic

What else could I choose?

I wonder what the ratio of AC's to named users will be in this comments section?

<- Death of El Reg, 'cos this stuff won't make many friends in NuLab, or their close cousins "the Tories who haven't even found a new name yet"

Jaguar

For a minute there, I thought that you were saying that Jaguar had the fastest machine in history.

Well Done.

And well reported.

She's right

No, No, really she is right: I would love to have a few official British ID cards, particularly one in the name of Jacqui Smiff, one in the name of Gordon Brown, a David Cameron, a Charles Windsor, a few of my bosses at work - I think you get the drift. At least this is one step closer to me getting the first on my list.

And getting everything that is on the 'John Lewis List', twice.

@Chris C

If these lights were anything like the ones over here, then turning them off should have eased traffic for all concerned. Apparently human beings are collectively more intelligent than a small electronic box.

Offended

What could you possibly think that I would think that you meant with that title - the story content was almost exactly what I though it would be - except that I thought you might also mention that the technical quality was poor.

So What?

According to NuLabour, we are all under such a risk anyway - event those of us living in places like Thurso, or the Shetlands - hence the existing invasions of privacy / accidental executions of Brasilian visitors.

Warning:

This sounds a lot like Extreme Porn to me...

Quality

I love the way that (other articles) have talked about how this 'improves the quality of the music' on these CD's, which it clearly doesn't. It may reduce the number of read errors, but that's it.

@Suspicious Git

Good point: the most offensive photo I have ever seen was sent over from America: an extremely newly born child, still covered in placenta or whatever.

Apparently I was supposed to say 'How cute' or something like that, but if these laws make such things illegal I am all for it !

@Charles Osborne

You didn't read very carefully, did you? The saving is 'per enclosure' not 'per blade', though it would appear that they are assuming that all of the saving is achievable, and not wasted by the power supplies running in-efficiently...

Quite a surprise they didn't go the whole hog and quote the figure as 'per rack' assuming that the rack is 100% full - no UPS, KVM gear, networking etc.

Non-Complaint

I heard it, not the biggest chuckle of the night, but I certainly wasn't offended by it. Okay?

@Rob Farnell

Actually, it's not entirely about efficiency - quantity comes into it as well. Not that this provides much, but when the next power station has to shut down unexpectedly, we are going to need every watt available to keep ournew 'Leccy cars (and Milk Floats) charged up.

@Article

"people have been lapping up Silverlight"

Really? Who?

Summary?

Where's the last page summary gone?

If you will insist on artificially breaking these reviews across several files, then you could at least make it easy for us to get the executive summary.

WTF?

Let me get this straight? You are saying that the earth's resources are NOT limited?

That this planet can continue to support more and more people infinitely?

@AC

Those are neither wings nor stabilisers: they are solar panels, built so that some are always pointing at the best available angle towards the sun.

@Jake

"I get the impression that you don't have much knowledge of the underpinnings of TCP/IP, nor how the guts of the Web work, nor human nature."

Maybe not, but you certainly don't!

Now shut up, both of you.

@AC 11:38

What do you mean: "Terrorists and children"?

If you had any of your own you would know that the two are synonymous.

@Roger Stenning

"Laser, cause it's the closest icon to an electric spark we have here"

Not sure which icon you meant to use, but the one you ended up with is a black helicopter...

As for the Yank that thinks it is easy to hit a head at twenty yards, would you mind telling me how often you get the chance in real life to shoot at a stationery target that is twenty yards away or less?

When I was in the Army we were told that the effective range of the Browning pistol was twenty metres, so if you wanted to do the job properly chuck a grenade: that had a lethal range of thirty-five!

So what's the IT angle - just remembered: already said by a few others, but water is more of a semi-conductor - imagine what would happen if you topped up a car battery with something that was indeed a 'good conductor' ? !

@Daniel B.

"Oh, and supporting a zillion components shouldn't turn OSX into "bloatware". Linux seems to manage pretty well..."

Sorry, I must have missed that one: when did the Tux become the dominant force in the OS marketplace?

Check

"... binding the employees with the very handy black fur handcuffs ..."

Are you sure that was done as part of the robbery?

@Sarah Bee

"The point is, give it a rest, you Brit-tards."

Wait a minute: are you trying to tell us you're not British?

Please tell me you're not a septic too? 'Cos my step-Mother-in-Law is one of them, and she's mental, which would mean that you were mental too...

TV Senders

So I could by a 'TV Sender' that works on microwave frequency radio links, for say £40 quid, and they want to charge me £200 for much the same thing?

Idiots

It is the Nimrod _Airframes_ that are worn out. There is nothing inherently wrong with the design. Building a brand new airframe to a trusted design is not a bad idea - ask anyone who flies in a Boeing 747 (There are probably much older designs out there, but I'm not that much of an expert.)

@Everyone

Please pay attention: the patent has been granted. Prior Art is therefore largely irrelevant.

Okay?

Good Stuff

I'm glad to hear things like this. It means that we are hearing the truth. Far too many people these days keep quiet for fear of offending, when it is not the words, but rather the attitude, that is offensive.

Best of all, this might show one or two more people that ALL religious observers are fruit-cakes, by definition.

M25

So it will jamb up totally, twice every day then?

Expectations

I was expecting so much more, after reading that title.

I presume this latest model has merely been photo-shopped into the only interesting picture, as she cannot possibly read the screen at that angle.

Sunlight?

A little more in the way of facts would be nice: where does the 22kW/h figure come from? Is that based on 24hours of sunlight per day? ( a common trick with these sorts of things.)

If there wasn't enough sunlight at the show to keep it going, does that mean the same for my home? Do I need to leave it outside all day - I'm not worried about it getting pinched if it is that crap, but it would end up covered in bird poo...

Formula*

What is it then?

Or have they sneakily managed to copyright it, so that we can never know?

And where's my frickin' badge? or other trivial reward? Every other forum I am involved with gives me a nice 'label' depending on how many posts I make (errr... isn't that the same as described here?)

GPL

Sounds like we need a system like the GPL etc - then instead of having to read it every time, the policy would simply be reference - 'This site uses privacy policy 5b. Click here to read more. {Link to Policy site}'

Too dense

Who in their right mind would buy something that acknowledged that the drives were packed too close together?

What stops all of the drives from spinning up at the same time? Would it be a limit on the power supply, or is that rated for the max draw, and therefore rather in-efficient?

Random access being what it is, from time to time you can expect to see what looks like big co-incidences, and therefore still need to take account of the worst case -max power, max cooling, or else throttle the peak access, and who is going to accept a product that is deliberately crippled?

Don't get me wrong, I think they have some good ideas, but seriously, who cares about a little floor space?

@Douglas Crockford...

Douglas, we both know that you have better things to do with your time than showing the world that you don't understand humour. First post too, how sad are you, really?

Still okay if they call it 'Hardy Heron' ?

'Led Zeppelin' ?

'Earth'?

<--

Where's the 'Stevie is an angel' icon? Or the 'Golden Apple'?

@Jonas Finnemann Jensen

This was always going to happen - the OSI should really have chosen a better name than 'Open Source'. That term, as used by a layman, would clearly apply to these projects.

What OSI are interested in is 'copyleft', to coin an existing phrase.

Actually...

At the risk of going decidedly against the flow, there is a lot to be said for introducing some science to this: for too long nothing significant has been done to model the little guys. All the big corporations, (and Government) seem to think that the smaller companys and the individual consumer have an unlimited supply of cash - they expect year-on-year growth to be above inflation, for ever and ever. I don't believe that this is sustainable, but maybe a bit of modelling might be able to prove this, and get people to act a little more sensibly.

@Article

"a precision made possible by Google's own satellite imagery"

Don't you mean by simple aerial photography? No satellite has that kind of resolution.