Comment From a theory point of view... (Score 1) 117
this book is the standard intro to general space engineering according to my lecturer (I'm doing an MSc in Astronautics and Space Engineering)
Comment He was also a racist mysoginist (Score 1, Troll) 130
He was a fan of Enoch Powell (a racist)
He was anti equality legislation for women and non-white people
He was at one time a BNP supporter (British National Party - racist)
He wanted to ban women from the BBC
I wish all the fawning articles on the net today would mention some of this
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore#Activism_and_political_beliefs
Comment Re:Missing option (Score 1) 707
Its because we're all really, really scared that you might elect another GWB and we'll end up fighting stupid, ridiculously expensive wars again. I live in London (UK) and in 2003 a million+ of us on the street weren't a match for one man in Washington.
Comment Re:So What? (Score 1) 244
Where you live maybe. I live in a city, and use my car very rarely. Unlimited electricity could lead to wireless power (if efficiency is a minor concern, it wouldn't be too hard)
Comment Great article (Score 1) 244
But what is the point of getting experts to answer questions when seemingly the majority of commenters (and theoretically readers) will disregard their answers and/or bitch about tax?
Submission + - Google Cools Its Data Centre With Toilet Flushes (techweekeurope.co.uk) 1
judgecorp writes: "Google is cooling its data centre in Douglas County, georgia, using "recycled" water that has been through the bathtubs and toilets of the surrounding community. So called "grey" water is perfectly adequate for the data centre's cooling system which relies on evaporation (the wet T-shirt effect), says Google."
Submission + - DIY augmented reality head-up display (wordpress.com)
mkwan writes: A PhD student in Melbourne, Australia, has built an augmented reality head-up display using a baseball cap, an Android smartphone, and off-the-shelf optics. It won't win any awards for style or practicality, but it's a fun way to use Wikitude. All we need now is a Terminator-vision smartphone app.
Submission + - Physicists Discover Evolutionary Laws of Language 2
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Christopher Shea writes in the WSJ that physicists studying Google's massive collection of scanned books claim to have identified universal laws governing the birth, life course and death of words marking an advance in a new field dubbed "Culturomics": the application of data-crunching to subjects typically considered part of the humanities. Published in Science, their paper gives the best-yet estimate of the true number of words in English—a million, far more than any dictionary has recorded (the 2002 Webster's Third New International Dictionary has 348,000) with more than half of the language considered "dark matter" that has evaded standard dictionaries (PDF). The paper tracked word usage through time (each year, for instance, 1% of the world's English-speaking population switches from "sneaked" to "snuck") and found that English continues to grow at a rate of 8,500 new words a year. However the growth rate is slowing, partly because the language is already so rich, the "marginal utility" of new words is declining. Another discovery is that the death rates for words is rising, largely as a matter of homogenization as regional words disappear and spell-checking programs and vigilant copy editors choke off the chaotic variety of words much more quickly, in effect speeding up the natural selection of words. The authors also identified a universal "tipping point" in the life cycle of new words: Roughly 30 to 50 years after their birth, words either enter the long-term lexicon or tumble off a cliff into disuse and go "23 skidoo" as children either accept or reject their parents' coinages."
Comment Missing Option: Water/Liquid Proof (Score 1) 279
Admittedly I'm a massive klutz, but just yesterday I murdered my second keyboard of the year with coffee :(
Comment Stealing phones? (Score 5, Insightful) 135
Seems stealing phones just got a lot less risky...
Comment Re:Riots and inciting riots, NOT revolutionary act (Score 1) 400
Could the riots not be symptomatic of a disconnect among certain groups in society with their communities?
Just because the majority of the rioters were not expressing political motivations does not mean that there is not an underlying socio-economic cause to their actions. I work in a shop in south east london (we survived, but are boarded up except for the doors) and the general mood seems to be that the rioters were idiots, yes, but there is none of the bile and bitterness expressed by the government, more a feeling that something like this was inevitable.
Comment wow... (Score 1) 401
People are dead and all most of you can do is whinge because the headline might be slightly inaccurate, but in all likelihood isn't?
Comment Re:Still too much? (Score 1) 664
Its true, I went on holiday to the states a few years ago, and everything was effectively half price (the exchange rate at the time was particularly good/bad) :)
To be honest I think 4£ is fairly reasonable for something like that from a store.
Comment Re:Still too much? (Score 1) 664
mmm but the cheapest lead you'll see in a high street store over here at the moment is gonna be at least a fiver. I work weekends at a large electronics retailer here and our cheapest is 12.99£. So 4£ is really cheap for an actual shop.
Comment Fictional/sci fi/game girls names... (Score 1) 722
... for everything that needs naming. Quorra (on now), Cortana (my phone), Caprica_6 (my endlessly rebooting router) etc
