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Comment Trouble in the UK (Score 1) 159

Recent figures suggesting (very) modest growth in the UK have been greeted with enthusiasm, but I still think as a country we're in trouble, and a big part of that I think is that wages have not in any way been keeping up with the huge rises in house prices over the last 20-30 years.

The government is encouraging banks to lend to house buyers by guaranteeing a portion of the mortgages, but it seems to me to just be encouraging another bubble.

The average full-time, permanent employee salary in the UK is around £24,500; the average house price is around £230,000 and rising; it'll be more in the South and less in the North, but even so, the average house price is nine times the average salary. It's just not sustainable.

Comment Re:Too much sacrifice for openness (Score 1) 359

don't think its hardware. power off and power fixes hardware bugs? in what universe do you live?

The software runs on the hardware. If there's a hardware fault, the software may run incorrectly and find itself in a corrupt state. Turning on and off would reset the software state, thereby (temporarily) fixing the problem.

In your case, what if there's a fault in the touch sensor controller? Perhaps there's a counter that gets incremented with each tick and one of the bits in it is faulty and won't flip. After a certain number of ticks the counter might effectively reset rather than increment, which could force the controller into an invalid state which might prevent it from sending any sensible values to the operating system. A hardware fault that causes a software failure.

Comment Re:PETA kills more animals than anyone (Score 1) 418

I admit that it's possible that what they claim is true. However, given the record of the fast food, tobacco and alcohol industries of dishonesty when it suits their bottom line, I see no reason to consider that website a reliable source. Why would I? They have a history of dishonesty, why should I believe this is any different?

Comment Re:Complexity (Score 1) 181

With respect, you can't possibly suggest that the Wii and 360 are using Cell processors! The defining characteristic of the Cell are the Synergistic Processing Units, which neither the 360 or the Wii have.

As far as I remember the aspect of the Cell design that Microsoft used was the in-order execution PowerPC cores, not the SPUs. The Cell was very definitely a custom processor - just because it has a couple of PowerPC cores in it does not make it off-the-shelf!

Comment Re:Impressive engineering feat (Score 1) 118

I think if you went for a sprinter, a cyclist would probably be a very good choice.

I read that Chris Hoy can put out around 1000W for just over a minute. Obviously he weighs a bit more than the student in the film, but I'd imagine he'd have what it takes, so long as he could adjust to the riding position.

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