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Comment Re:Cue the straw men. (Score 1) 210

I expect, within a week, to find at least one person rambling that 'All the liberal ecocommies want us to go back to living in caves and mud huts.'

You've not read the comments on TFA then. Sensible move.

Republitarian at 2:41 PM March 19, 2012
Exactly how liberals would like us to live, shivering in caves, using no energy and no water, i.e., regressive.

I also enjoyed:

ericdb at 2:06 PM March 19, 2012
And to think their communist society began on the "promise" to take care of the poor, now they have one of the highest poverty levels in the world, not including the cave dwellers.

...which conveniently misses out (a) that people have been living in houses like these for centuries, and (b) that China is not communist in any meaningful (at least economic) sense, and it's much closer to an unregulated rampant free market economy. Which is why it has very, very poor people and very, very rich people.

(posting to remove accidental negative mod).

Comment Re:It goes without saying (Score 1) 343

Not only not an Amiga, but not remotely in the spirit of the original Amiga platform.

Sticking some off the shelf hardware together and running Linux on it is nothing special in the slightest. The Amiga was special because it was designed as a coherent whole - it had lots of co-processing going on (Fat Agnus, Denise et al), powerful graphics abilities and a multitasking, inherently GUI-based OS which was for the most part an absolute pleasure to use.

Also, although AmigaOS was loosely based on UNIX type systems in the way the filesystem worked, it feels much more transparent somehow - largely because the hardware was controlled by Commodore so that there was no need for the layer upon layer of abstraction of modern Linux (NB: I'm not a programmer so this may well be bollocks). Of course this also meant that upgrades could be a pain - notably graphics cards which were not supported by 95% of programs which did not run on the Workbench. FTR, I now use Linux which I enjoy but I do miss the simplicity of AmigaOS.

Comment Re:silly idea, far easier to put servers on ships. (Score 1) 329

This was my first thought - what's the advantage of an aircraft rather than a ship (or buoy)? Two or three strategically placed should minimise the chances of weather putting the service offline. Also - using Raspberry Pi? I'm not in IT, but I'm thinking that the server power and bandwidth required by TPB is in the order of "quite lots".

Comment Re:Math? (Score 1) 294

First, they say the network will be built in three years.

8 (diggers) * 0.1km / week * 52 weeks / year * 3 years = 41.6km 73 miles (117.5km)

But then, they said the project would complete 2018... so then it adds up... but still a little unclear.

The underground length is about 22 km, i.e. around 44 km of tunnel (one for each line). 3 years gives enough time for the tunnelling and ancillary work on the underground parts. Once that is done there's still building the stations (including connecting to the underground), laying the track etc, a lot of work on the existing suburban stations required, and aquiring the trains (something the Department for Transport are notorious for; the invitation to tender has only just been released and it's likely to be a touchy issue for the government) - hence the estimated 2018 date.

Comment Re:EU Ratification (Score 5, Informative) 348

The biggest problem is that LED (CREE etc) based streetlights have not yet been ratified by the EU and so cannot be used on public highways in the UK. If they do become ratified then there will be huge power savings. In China, they have whole motorways lit up using this technology. Not only do they burn less power, but the lantern lifetime is much longer than the standard sodium units that have a warranty lifespan of 3 to 5 years.

Actually, the power saving for road lighting are negligible at best, or negative at worst. Low pressure sodium lamps currently in use produce up to 200 lm/W, compared to 100 lm/W for the better white LEDs around. There's not much that can compete with LPS for pure lighting efficiency, partly because the light emitted is near the maximum sensitivity of the human eye. Of course, LPS lamps produce monochromatic light which means they're not so popular for lighting urban/pedestrian areas, as people feel safer in a more "natural" light where they can see colours. But for roads alone, there's no need to see colours. Also, LPS is the least objectionable form of light pollution to astronomers, as being monochromatic it's easy to filter out (and there's not a lot of glowing sodium in space, so you're not blocking out anything of interest).

Image

UK Police Force Posts All Its Calls On Twitter 66

Stoobalou writes "One of the largest police forces in the UK is posting every incident reported to it today on Twitter. Greater Manchester Police began its 24-hour experiment this morning at 05:00 BST, tweeting all incident reports in the hope of highlighting the complexity of modern policing. 'Policing is often seen in very simple terms, with cops chasing robbers and locking them up,' Chief Constable Peter Fahy said in a statement. 'However the reality is that this accounts for only part of the work they have to deal with.'"
Robotics

Ethical Killing Machines 785

ubermiester writes "The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.' The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built without anger or recklessness ... and they can be made invulnerable to ... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.' Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."

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