Comment Re:That depends (Score 1) 274
Thank you. That makes a lot of sense. It rarely gets much more than half a dozen degrees below freezing here except in the worst winters which explains the building habits here.
Comment Re:That depends (Score 1) 274
Just a quick question: what has a basement got to do with water and other service hookups? I ask out of genuine curiosity. I'm sure basements are convenient places but the vast majority of houses here (the UK) don't have them. My electric and gas come straight up out of the ground into my hall way by the front door (there's a little 20cm squared cupboard up the wall) and my water comes into my kitchen under the sink.
Comment Re:he did it because (Score 1) 226
Slightly off topic I know but I've always liked that particular quote. For interest it's on the edge of the British £2 coin with a design on the reverse in concentric circles showing progression from the iron age to the modern time (Picture)
I often wondered whether people have become smarter "recently" but have come to the conclusion that people have probably been of similar intelligence for many thousands of years but that the prior knowledge wasn't present meaning that progress was slow. If you imagine living in a society based on stones, the development of iron is a truly remarkable thing.
Comment Re:what's next? (Score 1) 288
Playing devil's advocate: why not? I'm not advocating paedophilia but the reason that it is illegal in a given jurisdiction is because the inhabitants of that jurisdiction have decided so. If enough people disagree and the society is truly democratic then laws can (and will) be changed. I'm sure that's among the ultimate goals of the Pirate Party here.
Comment Re:Technology outcome (Score 5, Informative) 220
I assume that you've seen the Farmville parody video that's been circulating for a while. Definitely worth checking out if you've got a couple of spare minutes. Had me in stitches.
Comment Where does the iron come from? (Score 1) 150
What I want to know is where the iron is supposed to have come from. Several sources I have read have neatly ignored this.
Sperm whales (or any other whales for that matter) do not manufacture iron. They must take it in in their diet. Surely this means that iron is just being circulated around? Perhaps the whale takes iron that would otherwise fall to the ocean floor and circulates it back to the surface?
Comment Re:Red Wave (Score 3, Informative) 328
This policy was changed in 2009 when the Department for Transport realised the error of its ways. It now encourages more of a 'green wave' approach where possible.
Comment Re:"Let's hope" (Score 3, Insightful) 389
I've always liked the phrase "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is". I think it's rather pertinent here!
Comment Re:"Once 4:30 rolls around..." (Score 5, Interesting) 208
Believe it or not, trading by computer has now become so quick that companies vie for server space closer and closer to the place where trades are taking place. This article" even goes as far as suggesting that a 1 millisecond advantage in trading applications can be worth $100 million a year to a major brokerage firm with such low-latency trading becoming more common.
I think the ping to Asia may be a bit more than that!
Comment Re:Why not all electronic? No really, why not? (Score 1) 494
Because you can pay a credit card bill (one of many examples) instantly from your own PC with no need to send a letter or wait five days for it to clear.
I make tens of transactions a month this way. It would cost me a small fortune in stamps if I sent a cheque every time.
Anti Terror Honor System 74
Fortunately for us, the FAA has imposed the honor system as our next best defense against terrorism. Hopefully this will allow them to increase the volume of non-bladder liquid I'm allowed to take on planes.
Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child
331
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Comment Re:Scroll lock! (Score 5, Informative) 939
It does actually lock scrolling (in supported applications anyway). If you've got Excel (an application I know supports it), load a spreadsheet then scroll down with the arrow keys. Then turn on scroll lock and try again. The entire sheet moves whilst the selected cell stays the same as opposed to just the selected cell changing.
I really wish more applications supported this. It's very handy when used properly.
Comment Re:So the dog go off on any dvd-r (Score 1) 283
I know exactly what you mean. There's a certain smell to burned media after the drive's got warm burning a few disks. It's quite a unique smell and certainly unique enough to train a dog on.
I do take the point made by a sibling about the scale of professional piracy and the liklehood of stamped media but in the case of 35,000 disks, this could be done on 10 10-disk duplicators in a month at 5 minutes a disk. Maybe possible...
When Does Gore Get In the Way of Gameplay? 141
Wired is running a story inspired by the level of gore in the recent Wolverine game that wonders: how much is too much? It mentions a study we discussed in February which indicated that violence tended to interest gamers less than other characteristics.
"... the longer you play a 'twitch' action game, the less you notice the cultural content — the gushing blood, the shrieks of agony. You're too busy focusing on the gameplay. I noticed this with Wolverine. For the first hour, I found the deranged bloodshed both shocking and exciting; it made me feel like I 'was' Logan, the grunting, killing-machine character from Marvel Comics' X-Men universe. But as I became more expert, the cultural shell of the game boiled away. In a sort of staring-into-the-cascading-numbers-of-the-Matrix way, I found myself looking past the visible aspects of the game and savoring the underlying, invisible mechanics of play. ... The game became pure physics and algorithms: Vectors, speed and collision detection. The gore had become mostly irrelevant."
