Posts by Chris 244

Here at the Register

"The base unit of volume shall be the EU standard (5cm radius) grapefruit."

64 US fluid ounces = 3.61gf

White House budget plan

Google search "white house budget plan" first result:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Overview/

Covers all federal departments, 216 detailed pages. Admittedly I couldn't be bothered to read it either. Then again I'm Canadian. What's your excuse?

RTFA

Ever hear of a "suggested retail price"?

"Although ostensibly priced at around £70, you should be able to find it available for £50 or thereabouts."

"They both work"

Owned 2 iPods, both failed in well under a year. Have several other older cheaper but still functioning MP3 players, none of which have failed on me despite abuse.

What was your point again?

In fact no

"In fact if the KT layer was a mass extinction event would there not be loads of dinosaur bones in that layer, not the zero we have so far found???"

The idea that a mass extinction should produce a mother-load (or conversely an absence) of fossils is an easy mistake to make. All of the dinosaurs killed in an impact event had to be alive at the time of the impact. All of those dinosaurs would have died (and therefore be available for fossilization) regardless in the next few years/decades, which is still essentially instantaneous in geological terms. So no sudden burst of fossils.

Subsequent re-population of the Earth would also happen quite quickly, geologically speaking ("Nature abhors a vacuum") so no sudden decline in fossil formation either. Just a sudden shift in the fossils found.

A very skilled...

...bush pilot.

Software depreciation

Digital software doesn't depreciate? Please don't tell Canada Revenue, they allow me to claim an annual depreciation rate of 100% on my business software purchases. This would include any video games I purchased for the purpose of renting out.

British death tech does work.

One Canadian sailor died getting them home from Britain.

@AC14:59

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/section/17

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/section/21

They HAVE illegally accessed a computer system.

Patents already taken

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind-Hydrogen_Hybrid_Power_Systems

http://www.nalcor.org/assets/nalcorenergyrameareport_january2010.pdf

Wow, 3 wind turbines with attached hydrogen-storage infrastructure (backed up by diesel generators) can probably power 34 homes! Now just sit back and wait for the royalty cheques to flow in. Just don't forget to watch out for invisible hydrogen gas fires.

Too bad it makes paying producers to dump the excess power look cheap in comparison.

And two becomes one, one becomes none

Consider the possibility that with RSA compromised, one-factor authentication became zero-factor authentication.

Step One: identify target(s), compromise passwords

Step Two: compromise RSA

Then the one week of delay between breech of RSA and public notification opens a huge window of opportunity.

Gnat's eye

15 light days * 1 year/365 days / 12 million ly = 3.43e-9

1 gnat eye at 100 km = 0.000125 m / 100 000 m = 1.25e-9

So, more like only discerning the entire gnat eye at a rather underwhelming 33 km. Pathetic, really.

Loose, lose...

...oh why do I even bother?

I believe you mean "lose". "Loose" means not tight.

ANG Professionalism

A professional doesn't disobey a direct order and drop a bomb on 12 Canadian friendlies below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident

USB port and SD slot

The USB spec 2.0 port provides 5 volts and a maximum current draw of 500 mA. The Xoom has a 24 Watt-hour battery that provides "up to" 10 hours of video playback, so doing the math (5V *500mA / (24Wh / 10 hours) = O crap i just fried my computer trying to watch video on my Xoom while charging via USB. The problem doesn't lie with Motorola but with USB. Do you complain that you can't charge your laptop via USB?

P.S.: Does the iPad even have a USB port or SD slot (or HDMI port)? Thought not.

@AC @yap yap yap @Opera "built in spell checker"

Correct usage is "built-in". So much for Opera.

"More efficient repair mechanisms"

I suggest you re-read the original post I was replying to. The poster was suggesting that letting a few thousand humans breed in a high-radiation environment for a few generations would lead to mutant super-humans with improved DNA repair mechanisms. The odds of this happening are vanishingly small.

We have been living in a radioactive environment since the dawn of time. The optimization of DNA repair mechanisms occurred long ago over a billion+ year time-frame. Any new germ cell mutation to DNA coding for DNA repair is overwhelmingly likely to be negative, especially to humans living in a higher-radiation location.

DNA is not homogenous. Highly-conserved regions of the genome are highly-conserved for a reason: errors in these regions cause a complete system crash requiring a hard reset.

Must use fire

If I recall correctly, trolls can only be killed using fire. Or was it acid?

Better just use both.

@Ha Ha!

Godwin!

Au contraire!

Every 9th vertical line is only 2 pixels wide rather than 3.

More accuracy in your comments please

The Reg UK editorial office is located at 22 Glasshouse St, Westminster. According to Google mpas, there to Chatsworth ("one of Britain’s best loved historic houses and estates") is brum brum hum hum 157 miles. Maximum range of the Leaf is 138 miles (at 38mph on a cool day with AC off), but more like 70 miles if driving to Peaks District (55 mph on a hot day with AC).

On the plus side, adding a bit of walking to your weekend trip will be excellent for your health.

http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/tags/show/range#/leaf-electric-car/theBasicsRange/index

Archimedes IP Troll

Always trying to screw someone.

Not just Brits

They've proven adept at killing Canadian troops as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarnak_Farm_incident

You need to buy yourself a better dictionary

Methodological: 1. of or relating to methodology (a body of methods employed by a discipline).

Methodical: 1. performed with method: SYSTEMATIC 2. the state of being marginally easier to spell than another word with a different meaning. 3. a word thankfully requiring few enough letters for Drop Table to be able to count them all without having to take off his socks and sandals.

It hardly took but a momment

Godwin's Law proven once again.

Re: Armchair metallurgy

The bubble source is completely different. In concrete the bubbles result from air entrapment, can shake them out before the concrete solidifies. In metal casting, bubbles form at the point of solidification. The molten metal contains dissolved gases that come out of solution when the metal cools and solidifies. Can be reduced by casting in a vacuum or inert gas.

I suspect casting a high-temperature alloy would pose some problems.

Damn, I lost my missiles! What do I do now?

Losing your missiles is bad for you.

Loosing your missiles is bad for the enemy.

Mellencamp?

You mean the artist that was critical of The Big Gipper, the Iraq War, called George W. a liar and a clown, performed at political rallies for Obama and H. Clinton despite neither of them being liberal enough for him, and has publicly expressed support for gay marriage rights?

That Mellencamp?

Button pressing

What's to say IBM's win wasn't also down to expert button-pressing? I certainly saw Jennings and Rutter trying to ring in, but repeatedly got beaten to the punch as it were.

Sure, Ralph, I'll work for you "for free"...

...but you have to give away at no charge any and all products I have even a peripheral involvement in, as well as any derivative products, in perpetuity. Oh, and also at no charge give a complete description of how to create the product from scratch to anyone that asks. Deal?

Yes, just a quick little jaunt

Edmonton to Seattle is about 800 miles one-way, a good part of which is through mountains. Really big ones. The drive would include Rogers pass, at 1330m elevation.

You were trying to be funny, right?

Nope (again)

There is in fact a perfectly ground primary Hubble mirror in existance, made by Kodak and on public display at the National Air and Space Museum (seen it myself). The flown mirror was made by Perkin-Elmer, using a improperly assembled null corrector. Testing by Perkin-Elmer showed they'd cocked up, but delivered the mirror to NASA anyway who never tested it themselves before sending it into space.

Funny thing is, do a search at perkinelmer.com for "hubble" returns autocorrected results for "bubble".