Coincidence?

Shill, Schiller/? Too close for comfort, methinks...

1 inch thick heat resistant stuff?

I think the material already exists - plastered to the outside of the Shuttle.

Geographically, there should be a Western Europe Time Zone

Given that time is a measure from when the Sun is highest in the sky - named Midday, and dependent on longitude. Since the difference in midday is one hour with every 15 degrees of longitude, al of Europe from Ireland and Portugal in the West should be on GMT until one reaches Poland and the Baltic states. There may need to be some shifting slightly, as the "heel" of Italy would be in GMT+1 if the line was strictly delineated. Sweden would be in GMT+1 (since most of the country is further East than 15 degrees), but Norway would be GMT. So physically it is Spain, France, Germany, Benelux and Denmark that are wrong.

Emissions, or consumption?

If the standard is for emissions, that would rule out plug in electric cars, since the electricity requirement would boost emissions at the power station enormously. If whoever it is simply mpg at the vehicle, then everything would be roses. Except of course at the power station...

Two monitors?

Does that mean you can have different pictures on both, or is it just the same screen duplicated?

Thanks

For clearing that up - like I say, no iPod of any sort, so I was genuinely puzzled.

Dock port?

I don't have any model of iPod, so I am just going on what I have seen of friends' units, but isn't the normal docking port wider than that? How does one get the tunes in to the player - a mini-USB port?

Forget giving offence

Why are they bothering to investigate, when the ads are already in clear breach of the "no prescription drug" rule?

Just open up more Brain Depositories

"After 5pm, please deposit brain through door"

Readers either love the iPhone or hate it?

Not entirely true. I couldn't care either way. I won't buy one, but that's because I don't need one. If you gave me one, I'd very happily use it.

Produces less carbon?

The only way a car running on battery power can move whilst producing less carbon is if it is powered by a nuclear power station. Assuming it lasts long enough to compensate for the extra carbon required to make the batteries, that is.

@Martin

Damn, I didn't think of that, digital TV on the Shuttle for teh win!

km/h please

"kmph" is too clunky, and not a usual measure (at least, not on any speedometers I have read)

How useful would 8 hours be anyway?

During the first 8 hours of a power outage due to a natural disaster, isn't it likely that the hurricane/tsunami/whatever will still be happening, and so people will still be sheltering and trying to stay alive. It is surely in the 24 hours following the abatement of said hurricane/tsunami/whatever that communications are most needed?

Nice nod to Xerox at the end

Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

Is it really so hard

to recreate the hardware from scratch? The engineering drawings must still exist, or at very least the data storage specification. we hear this kind of thing all the time - the BBC Doomsday project, this kind of tape archive, older picture formats. Surely, since the archives are on magnetic tape, as long as one has a read head wide enough (or in the case of the Doomsday, a laser travel assembly long enough), the rest is in the software?

@AC re. N810

I said DECENT keyboard, not half-arsed mobile phone push pad. And yes, Agenda please.

PDA anyone?

Will this mean that finally there will be a new "Psion" PDA? One integrating WiFi, Bluetooth and decent media applications, with a decent keyboard? One can only hope. As mentioned, there are plenty of apps waiting, just no-one wants them on a phone.

So its goodbye to Scouting

The Boys Brigade, Church Lads and their ilk. All that will be left will be "yoof clubs" run by paid members of the social Services. And of course, we know they are ALL trustworthy - just ask children's home residents in Jersey...

Great - another absorber of time

So when exactly will I have time to prepare and mark lessons, given that when I am in front of my class I am 100% focussed on their education?

Once again, teachers being expected to take on another social responsibility that parents should have, rather than performing their specific role - i.e. imparting specialist knowledge and preparing children for examinations.

=.33 "Donation"

Actually this is more likely to be the required "green tax" to offset the cost of recycling your old equipment. It's a French thing, you wouldn't understand.

Reminds me of the Kevin Bloody Wilson song

"I've got a tongue, that's ten inches long, and I've learned to breathe through me ears"

Power consumption CRT vs LCD?

Can someone point me in the direction of the figures showing that CRT screens consume less power than LCD? I am surprised, given that CRTs need hefty voltages in order to liberate the electrons from the cathode, and then steer them across the screen.

Is it to do with the backlight necessary on an LCD? Presumably the phosphor screen on the CRT glows without any further electrical input, whereas LCDs need a fairly hefty light source in addition to the "trigger" current that turns each pixel on or off.

@Glenn

Because sony already had their digital player, the MiniDisc, which was a higher quality sound than MP3. Of course, the file format was proprietary (ATRAC), and although it was licensed quite widely, Sony never really marketed the idea, not made it simple for users to download from the Internet (although ripping CDs is simple). Now of course, the Sony Connect Store is closed, so the only easy way is to rip CDs again.

@Alex \m/

Wrong Donington mate - the festival is in Leicestershire, not Shropshire.

Stuart

At last, a sensible advertising model

I like this idea - unobtrusive, obviously opt-in, targeted and ubiquitous - and, it seems, easy. Apart from having to switch to visible, I don't see many problems with this idea.

Stuart

@Deep Tank

Because he made his cash by illegally squeezing out legitimate competition, and pushing substandard software and services on a public which had little choice, due his illegal monopolistic practises.

Stuart

Not the only find & replace cock up

Back in the day, there were many more British exam boards than the "big three" that now exist in England. One, the Midland Examining Group (or MEG) was responsible for many Physics papers. This board amalgamated to be become Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (or OCR), and all the old syllabi were duly converted to the new name. So we Physics teachers had to teach (if we were to follow the syllabus to the letter) that electricity was counted not in Megawatts, but Ocrawatts....

Stuart

@Mark

Mozilla, running on eComStation. What are you using?

Stuart

@Walter Brown

Oh come on! WMD found "in small amounts scattered throughout iraq, [sic] to the tune of 3 times the amount initially reported to congress", and you say "they refuse to report this though, that would make them look bad!". I am sure that Fox News, Sky News would LOVE to report this, if it were true, so close are they to the Republican opinion. Even the BBC would report it, as they are (still) fairly unbiased. The fact is, NO weapons of mass destruction have been found, in any kind of quantities.

And what exactly is a "rouge" country? One that has turned a little red?

Stuart

Another lift from the BBC News website

Has anyone else noticed the "special relationship" that seems to exist between the BBC News and El Reg? General news starts on the Beeb, ends up here, tech news appears here first, pops up on El Beeb later the same day?

If I didn't know betterm I'd say there was a conspiracy...

Stuart

Electric/hybrid cars are NOT the answer

Basic Physics (Fleming's left and right hand rules) should indicate to anyone the wasteful nature of generating electricity from raw fuels, and then using that electricity to generate motion. Optimistic calculations give the overall energy transfer rate for these two processes to be 10%. Electric powered motion only makes sense with mass transport - trams and trains - and for reducing LOCAL pollution (i.e. within a town). The overall pollution, and global warming due to energy use (which nearly always ends up as heat), rises overall in all cases.

The best way to reduce energy loss is to use mass transport, or individual transport (i.e. a bike or a motorcycle, where you only cart around enough "deadweight" to carry yourself). In terms of energy used per passenger (the best comparison), my diesel Long Wheel Base Land Rover when carrying my whole family (7 of us) beats a hybrid car carrying one person.

Stuart

Ah! A blast from the past

In the spirit of the "retro" PET article, finally a code listing that we can type somewhere, and then wonder why it doesn't work. Do we get a "corrections" section in next month's issue?

In honour of El Reg

I've gone titsup

Aerovironment?

"It has a bit of special tech sauce, too: rather than coupling its propeller mechanically to the car engine, like Orion, it seems to use a generator and electrically-spun props."

So it loses 70% of the stored energy in the fuel converting it to electricity, and 70% of the electrical energy converting it to kinetic energy? Very fuel efficient... I guess that the generator is a backup to solar cells, but even so, they are carting a lot of mass in the fuel, generator and motor for a 10% (theoretical maximum) conversion rate.

Stuart

Minority report...

First, I agree with the findings of the court - child pornography is despicable, but forcing people to record the ages (and, IIRC the addresses) of anyone photographed, whether naked or not, whether for commercial purposes or not, is the wrong approach.

However, and only slightly related to this, has anyone else noticed the tendency for these decisions, when made by a panel of judges, to be made by the smallest majority? Two in the case of three judges, three in the case of five, four in the case of seven. It seems that the attitude is one of bet-hedging: we'll make a decision, but in the event of that decision being later shown not to be the correct one, the judges can say "oh well, we were nearly right. If only X hadn't tipped the balance" etc. etc.

Stuart

Thge next filing will be

"A method for restricting the use by an unlicensed third party of an idea or business process with commercial value, for a defined and agreed period of time, whilst allowing the details of that idea or business practice to be published."

In other words, I wish to patent patents. I should make a mint - there are millions of them, and of course I shall request that the patent apply retroactively. I'll just have to remember to pay myself the fee for using my own patent.

Stuart

@Chris

It means the same in British too. I don't understand the title, either...

Security and quality? Hmm

"Some open source projects cannot meet our needs for quality or security,"

Given the insistence on MS products, obviously HM Gov needs poor quality and shoddy security. She's right then, open source won't meet those needs.

Stuart