Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson

Re: Hmmm

If the former, does I hope it doesn't develop a pain in all the diodes down its left side.

Patents are valuable if they protect something truly innovative. In the US, the USPTO does a particularly bad job of sifting out the duds, that is the core problem. The USPTO lets past many patently false claims, or things for which prior art clearly exists. They then assume that the patent holders will fight over it in court. In Europe, the situation is very different, and the investigation into prior art is much more thorough (as it should be). This prevents the need for fighting over the validity of the patent in court. That also means such well-researched patent offer better protection to inventors with smaller pockets to pay legal fees.

So the patent system itself is not broken in my opinion. The the current implementation is bug ridden and badly in need of updates.

Re: He would

I have never had the privilege to meet the man, but aged seven I did successfully nag my parents to let me see the fuzzy image of Neil Armstrong stepping off that ladder. It was one of the things that set me off in a career of science (first astronomy, now computer science). I have seen many interviews with the man, and always appreciated his modesty. I will not miss Neil Armstrong at a personal level, because we never met. The personal loss is that of his family and friends. However, at this point it is fitting to express what a role model he was, both professionally, and as a human being. As his family stated to the press:

"The next time you look up and see the Moon smiling down at you,give it a wink and think of Neil".

That is the best monument to a modest, but great man.

Re: Correlation and Causation?

Yes there are: low sunspot activity means a weaker solar magnetic field, which leads to more cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere, which leads to more ionized particles, which leads to more clouds (as ionized particles are condensation kernels which seed clouds), which leads to higher reflectance of the earth, which leads to lower temperatures. Quite a series of steps, but there is supporting evidence.

Statistically there have been many studies linking the Maunder Minimum to a "little ice age". I read a paper by Danish astronomers in about 1990, showing a 98% correlation between sunspot activity and temperature on earth over a period of about 150 years. Of course, this is correlation, not causation, but it is a very strong correlation indeed. Besides, I would hesitate yo suggest that temperatures on earth cause an increase in solar activity ;-).

Assuming the changes on the sun do not affect climate in any way is saying the main energy source of all earthly weather has no effect on the weather. However, saying the sun is the only cause behind climate change, and pollution has no effect at all is over-simplification as well.

Igor! Pull the lever ...

Yeth, Marthter!!!!!

Looks more like a Celtic Triskelon. No wories

Re: Why - Oh Why waste so much money when Open Office & LibreOffice are free?

I have recently had to edit some docx forms in both LibreOffice and OpenOffice. It almost made me scream! Actually, the almost in that sentence is wrong. Things kept changing position in unpredictable ways, bits of text in tables became invisible. I have had similar hassles with MS-Office for that matter. Exporting stuff to PDF is colourful as well (words stuck together, layout shot to pieces).

Ultimately I just hacked together a LaTeX style file to generate the same forms (as they wanted PDF sent in). End of (my) problem.

Re: Patent Nationalism?

Not just recently: try looking at the Philips Philishave patent spat with (IFAIK) Remmington.