Posts by Ed Blackshaw

@A J Stiles

Got the source code for you computers BIOS have you? Thought not. How about the circuit diagrams for all the chips on your motherboard? I take it also, that you won't go and eat in a restaurant until you can see them preparing the food in front of you all the way from basic ingredients, performing such actions as milking cows and threshing and milling grain?

Don't get me wrong, I can fully understand why you might want the source code for the software you are running, but if you think this is some sort of fundamental right, you're as crazy as any fundie religious nutjob.

What next?

Double amputees sueing Nintendo because they can't use the Wii remote? Won't somebody think of the children, etc. etc.

@Scott 19

Sky news said so? Ah, that must be true then. Wait one minute while I cross-check it with Wikipedia just to be sure.

Oh Noes!

Microscopic black holes!

Would those be the same microscopic black holes that only contain the amount of energy you put into them, and then evaporate pretty quickly by re-emitting as Hawking radiation?

Of all the things likely to cause the destruction of the earth, I'd be MUCH more worried about our Merkin cousins...

@AC

Turns out I don't understand it correctly then!

@Circadian

I think the precise terminology is 'Troll with a straw-man argument'.

@BristolBachelor

Firstly, you are correct in your assertion that magnetic shielding would have no effect on neutral particles. However, these also don't have very high energies like charged 'cosmic ray' particles, which get accelerated by the magnetic fields of things like spinning black holes and supernovae.

In fact, the Earth's magnetic field also has no effect on such particles, the only defence being atmosphere. I really don't think such particles are a problem.

Secondly, the AMS-02 superconducting magnet on the ISS is only 'the first large superconducting magnet to be used in space' [1], which has a core magnetic field of 0.87 Tesla. This is less powerful than the magnet used in a modern MRI scanner, for instance. Furthermore, this won't be powered by a nuclear reactor, since there isn't one on the ISS (unless that's something else the Russians aren't telling us about), which could pump a lot more juice through it. In a superconducting magnet, the field strength is proprtional to the amount of power put into it, without heat losses (hence superconducting).

Finally, you claim that diverting the charged particles with a magnetic field would be pointless because, 'the magnets stear it a bit'. This is the whole point of magnetic shielding, and is pretty much exactly what the Earth's magnetic field manages (quite successfully) to do. All the Charged particles get diverted to the poles of the magnet (on Earth, this causes the polar aurorae). Any half-competent spacecraft designer would make sure that they didn't put the crew quarters there. In fact, they could probably do a bit of cunning design and use the magnetic shielding to eject the charged radiation from the reactor along the same axis, cutting down on heavy radiation shielding, since then they'd only really have to worry about gamma radiation.

[1]The academic paper concerning this magnet is here: http://ams.cern.ch/AMS/Talks/AMS_paper_B-Blau.pdf

Good good

The only issue I would have is that those 'massive daily fines' should be levied on those responsible, not the government in general. That way, it punishes the politicians and not the taxpayer, otherwise to them it is just another externality as they continue to strip the country's assets for themselves.

The Campersandbinet Conference, eh?

rolls off the tongue. Why not stick a couple of at symbols in there too, or more likely some dollar marks?

Give me a 5% tax cut

and the games industry will probably also benefit.

@How about the Christian mythology

yeah, 'cos there's lots of gods to name stuff after in a monotheistic religion.

I look forward with eager anticipation

to Peter Griffin et al mercilessly ripping the piss out of Microsoft over this one in a future episode of Family Guy.

Aha

That would explain today's XKCD with its deliberately bad HTML then.

@ Vista II = VII = 7

Actually, that does kind of make sense. I've tried, in my head, to figure out how they got to the number seven. My thinking goes like this:

3.1 = 3

95 = 4

98 = 5

ME (*choke*) = 6

2000 = 7

XP = 8

Vista = 9

7 = 10

Even if we consider 95, 98 and ME to be the same operating system (which in many ways they are), we still end up with Windows 7 being the eighth version. However, we could go the other way and include things like Server 2003 and bump the number up. Whichever way I look at it, I can't actually reconcile Windows 7 with a seventh version of anything.

Maybe Microsoft are trying to redesign the numbering system we have been using since the ancient Babylonians came up with the concept of zero?

Have a look at this map

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Timezones2008.png

Note where the red line meets the Northern coast of Germany, and instead of coninuing pretty much straight down, sensibly along the Western borders of Germany, Switzerland and Italy, leaps off to thge left a bit and goes down the west coast of Spain. Who's in the wrong time zone again? Pfft.

more to the point, does it need changing? No. Would it cause a load of trouble for everyone involved it a country's time zone were changed? Yes.

@Nick Woodruffe and matty99

I've not seen the patents in question, so I couldn't say whether or not they are being infringed by Apple.

However, evangelism in the name of the Church of Jobs, or comparing Nokia to SCO won't invalidate any patents they do hold, and you can be pretty sure that they DO hold a large number of telecommunications related intellectual property. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that the iPhone does infringe one or more of these patents, and it wouldn't surprise me. After all, Nokia has been a consitent innovator in the field, and Apple has come along late in the day and joined the market. Either thay have re-developed all the existing prior art in the field, in complete isolation, which is unlikely to say the least, or they should be licensing the patented IP that they are using. Which sounds more likely to you?

@Get a grip nutters!

Firstly, there is a world of difference between torturing an animal and chucking it about if it is already dead. Secondly, if you were to shoot a rabbit with a 12 bore, you would be unlikely to find all the pieces. Much better to kill it with a rifle shot to the head, then you don't have to burn it, which is bad for the environment, or bury it, which is a waste of perfectly good food.

I suspect, from your attitude towards killing animals, that you are a vegetarian. Not everyone shares your self-righteous attitude to eating meat, nor should they in my opinion. However, I shall leave that argument there, as I have found some vegetarians to be about as rational as right-wing Christian fundies.

String theory? Pah!

Come back when you have some testable predictions, THEN you can call yourself a theory!

To paraphrase Feynman, "String theory is not even wrong".

Well I'm sold

Who wouldn't employ someone with a tattoo on their forehead?

@John Smith

My point exactly! However, I do feel the need to correct you on the common misconception that identical twins have identical fingerprints. Although having fingerprints in the first place could be viewed as a genetic trait, the shape that a person's fingerprints develops into in utero is not genetically determined.

@hi_robb

No, I distinctly remember being the first...

<obligatory Total Recall quote>

You see, that's "my" body you have there, and I want it back. Sorry for being an Indian giver, but I was here first. So, adios, amigo!

</obligatory Total Recall quote>

Unfortunately, that Ad would get pulled in this country for entirely different reasons

As it is not permitted to use sex to sell alcohol. Boo, I say!

@DATmafia

Hahahahahaha...*gasp*...hahahahahahahahahaha!

"There's no older or more disputed rivalry than between Christians and non-Christians. "

Well, except for pretty much every other religious dispute. Relatively speaking, your cult, sorry, religion is relatively recent, being only 2 millennia old or so. If you were to take a quick look at the region where your cult started, you'll find that Jews and Muslims, for example, have been killing each other over whose god is bigger than whose for longer than that. Throw into the mix all sorts of ancient religions, such as Baal worship, which is mentioned in your bible, so by definition must predate it, and you might find that your starting statement is a little specious.

Also, you might find you are taken a little more seriously if you can grasp the concept of a paragraph.

Finally, to respond to, "Let's hope El Reg is open minded enough to let a Christian and their point of view to be permitted on the site. Although I'm not dumb enough to think I won't be ridiculed or made fun of for it". Make no mistake, I'm not ridiculing you for being a Christian. I'm ridiculing you for being an idiot who just happens to choose Christianity as his outlet, and seems sadly uninformed even on that matter.

@Lewis

To be fair, you do mention that that vid is of a stationary vehicle. However, you plonked the vid right in the middle of a paragraph about a moving target, and that little reference to it is a full five paragraphs later...

I do, however, stand corrected.

Let me get this straight.

"Globally, there is significant evidence to link software piracy with the frequency of malware attacks. While this correlation has not been measured with precision[...]"

So which is it then? Significant evidence, which implies at the very least some sort of measurement, hopefully done with precision, or anecdotal 'evidence' which isn't worth the double-quilted super-soft paper it's 'written' on?

Really, there should be a law against making stuff up and spouting it in a press release like it's some sort of scientific fact.

So it'll come out of the same vat as the John Smiths...

...but have a bit of caramel added to change the colour.

There's a point at which a brewery stops being a brewery and becomes a factory. I'll stick to a nice pint of St Austell's Tribute thank you very much.

Not only pirates,

but now file sharers are counterfeiters as well?

How long before copying something (which isn't even theft because it doesn't deprive the rightful owner of the original) starts getting referred to as 'terrorism'? Call it by its proper name (copyright infringement) and I will take you seriously.

I find it hard to sympathise with people who are so obviously trying to push an agenda, which is a shame because I am sure that people who make a living through their intellectual property have genuine and legitimate concerns over such copying.

@HFoster

"As I understand it, the typical terrorist cannon fodder are not typically the kind of people who would have the financial, social, or educational background to be professionals."

This is the understandable gut reaction, but it is actually wrong. I remember reading in New Scientist a while back that a surprisingly large proportion of suicide bombers are actually well educated:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18224475.900-the-making-of-a-suicide-bomber.html

Quite how that nugget managed to stay lodged in my brain for five years I'll never know...

@Errmmmmm

I think the 256 bands is referring to frequency bands, not vertical resolution. To compare, a webcam would have three bands (red/green/blue).