Posts by Neil Stansbury180 posts • joined Monday 11th June 2007 11:38 GMT
Posted Monday 22nd February 2010 15:23 GMT
In The myth of Britain's manufacturing decline
The only long term conclusion you should draw from this graph, is that before too long you will be working for the Daily Mail too.
The IoP is made up of these industries:
Food, drink & tobacco (14.9%)
Textiles & clothing (2.6%)
Leather & leather products (0.3%)
Wood & wood products (1.9%)
Paper, printing & publishing (13.2%)
Coke, refined petroleum & nuclear fuels (1.7%)
Chemicals & man-made fibres (11.3%)
Rubber & plastic products (5.0%)
Non-metallic mineral products (3.6%)
Basic metals & metal products (10.9%)
Machinery & equipment (8.3%)
Electrical & optical equipment (11.1%)
Transport equipment (10.9%)
Other manufacturing (4.4%)
For all you know the rise since 1964 could be entirely due to North Sea Oil - ( and t4 by extension Rubber & Chemicals ) you don't have enough data to make any meaningfull assesment about the long term viability of British manufacturing from this chart.
In fact North Sea Oil production peaked in the mid 80s and late 90s
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=198
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=169
Posted Wednesday 17th February 2010 13:55 GMT
In 77% of domain registrations stuffed with rubbish
Hardly surprising. Many of the large registrars (not naming TUCOWS) have abused their position by block buying 1000's of TLDs on the cheap and then marking them up exhorbitantly.
The rules should be simple, registrars themselves should not be allowed to own TLDs other then their primary trading domain, and the 1000s of existing domains they currently own must be allowed to expire, they cannot be sold or transferred.
Posted Tuesday 16th February 2010 01:01 GMT
In IBM super is Met Office's 'chief weapon against British cynicism'
Their predicition was for a warmer UK '09 summer not international temp - it was. In the press release you cite:
"Although the forecast is for a drier and warmer summer than average it does not rule out the chances of seeing some heavy downpours at times."
Posted Monday 15th February 2010 13:59 GMT
In IBM super is Met Office's 'chief weapon against British cynicism'
What the Mot Office's ACTUAL prediciton was that 2009 would be warmer than 2008, which despite the rain it was:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091208b.html
"Barbeque" is not to my knowledge an official metrological term or measurement of temperature, so sounds like this is a media communication issue not a scientific one.
After all, when you are trying to communicate with Daily mail readers, you do need to dumb down your message, especially when it doesn't involve immigrants etc
Posted Wednesday 10th February 2010 16:20 GMT
In Arab conned into marrying bearded lady
I just can't help feeling rather sorry for the bearded lady.
She's got married (perhaps in good - albeit naive faith), got divorced and been told by the court she's a munter.
I'm sure her self image is on top form right now.
Posted Tuesday 9th February 2010 16:34 GMT
In Bishop Hill: Gonzo science and the Hockey Stick
There are far too many people like AO who typically have no scientific training whatsoever offering their unqualified illinformed opinons on AGW, and your point was perfectly made.
The sad part is, these people seem to think science is settled by "debate" and cheap point scoring, and live under the sad dillusion that the science or the facts gives a shit about their "opinions".
Either way, these people won't acknowledge the significant risk AGW poses until the glaciers are lapping around their ankles.
Posted Wednesday 3rd February 2010 12:17 GMT
In US plans crewless automated ghost-frigates
This is actually what the Americans are now implimenting for mine hunting (amongst other missions):
http://www.gdlcs.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Independence_%28LCS-2%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPufnytAMUk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1uZfwws2WI
This was the rather embarassingly implemented and ugly concept attempt by the Royal Navy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RV_Triton
As the LCS is a snip at $208 M each, we do seem to have rather managed to forget our Naval history lessons, perhaps we need to hire another Samuel Pepys.
Posted Saturday 30th January 2010 00:46 GMT
In UK.gov shutters half its websites
You mean you can think of at least one good reason why the British government needs to maintain 1,700 separate websites and the infrastructure overhead and costs that go with them?
It is called "Mission Creep", and British civil servants are true experts at it.
Posted Wednesday 27th January 2010 23:22 GMT
In Apple's iPad - fat iPhone without the phone
[...]The Reg first dubbed Apple's impending tablet the "iPad" last October[...]
"iPad inbound" in a title subscript is hardly "dubbed" in the context of the article that read:
[...]Foxconn has also been named as the Apple tablet's producer in the past, though since the company also makes iPhones, iPods and Macs for Apple, it's one of the more obvious choices for the iTab.[...]
and
[...]Foxconn will punch out 300,000-400,000 iTabs initially, the insiders suggested.[...]
A close call maybe, but no banana.
Posted Tuesday 26th January 2010 10:33 GMT
In Oil companies hit by 'state' cyber attacks, says report
Well the conspiracy theorist in me suggests the UEA "ClimateGate" hack was far too convieniently timed, and was infact motivated/encouraged by "big oil", this is "their" response, (whoever "they" are) to show what they industry has been upto.
Posted Tuesday 26th January 2010 10:33 GMT
In Oil companies hit by 'state' cyber attacks, says report
Bless.. you do know silver bullets only kill werewolves right?
Posted Monday 25th January 2010 10:14 GMT
In NASA pegs Noughties as hottest decade on record
You seem to be under the sad and derisory illusion that scientific data is made available for "debate". That would be politics & religion - not science.
Posted Friday 22nd January 2010 16:55 GMT
In Chris Morris jihad film good to go
That's funny. Looking forward to this.
Posted Thursday 21st January 2010 10:07 GMT
In Cyber sleuth sees China's fingerprints on 'Aurora' attacks
[...]If it's that good, it's plausible that attackers not aligned with the People's Republic of China might have heard of it.[...]
Right and if it's only documented in Chinese, the person doing the translating must have been able to speak... Welsh? Cornish? Gaelic? Oh ok I give up.
[...]What's more, binary code used in Hydraq was either compiled on an English-language system or was edited after the fact to conceal its Chinese-language roots.[...]
The corollary of that point being that the alledged [Chinese] hackers didn't want everyone to know they were Chinese?
Rather like saying that the Pope wants to make sure that he doesn't conceal he's Catholic?
Nice one El' Reg Columbo would be proud of you.
Posted Wednesday 20th January 2010 20:05 GMT
In New York Times builds paywall - very slowly
[...]Rupert Murdoch - who has promised to charge for all News International's online content by the summer.[...]
Hopefully I won't have to filter through their crap in search results now either.
Posted Wednesday 20th January 2010 20:05 GMT
In Windows 8 and beyond: Microsoft's next decade
Dunno if it's UK only or not:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8462267.stm
Posted Wednesday 20th January 2010 19:07 GMT
In Air France offers two-seat deal for fatties
I quite agree, the cost of the ticket should be based on your total flight weight, as that is what fuel has to be burnt to carry you. Why should my gran pay the same as a lard arse with diving gear (et al).
Posted Friday 15th January 2010 23:20 GMT
In UK.gov dismisses Tory claims UK cyberspace is defenceless
Of you couldn't just stop acting like a bunch of 12 year olds and call it the Electronic Security Operations Centre.
Posted Wednesday 13th January 2010 10:31 GMT
In Browsers could host a (simple) database
That would be using the new HTML 5 API
Posted Wednesday 13th January 2010 10:31 GMT
In Browsers could host a (simple) database
This is no different to the caching the browsers already do:
HTML 5 File API + XML/RDF + SPARQL
Would keep the old fashioned relational crowed happy and allow the new graph crowed to query pages directly.
Posted Monday 11th January 2010 11:54 GMT
In Tax department targets IT downtime
"Continuous reviews of the quality of local power supplies"
Well my local power is fine - where the hell are they based - Afghanistan?
Posted Saturday 9th January 2010 12:06 GMT
In Greenpeace: Apple ain't so brown anymore
YOUR part of the planet might be fine, but then I guess It's not YOUR ground source water being polluted by YOUR computer waste.
Then again the people affected are generally poor, black and live somewhere else - so who gives a sh1t right?
It sounds to me that misanthropic better defines your behavour and attitude rather than Greenpeace's.
Posted Friday 8th January 2010 14:04 GMT
In IPS in cunning 'get an ID card, get crucified' scheme
Perhaps, but that would be amusing rather than ironic.
Posted Friday 8th January 2010 13:41 GMT
In Motorola's latest Android 'andset demo'd
Possibly the most innovative mobile device to come out of Motorola in like at least 25 years.
Posted Friday 8th January 2010 00:21 GMT
In Ion add-on to equip iPhone with full Qwerty keyboard
Please tell me there is a tilt mechanism to rotate the iPhone screen towards the typist?
Posted Thursday 7th January 2010 00:54 GMT
In Firefox 3.7 to feel need for speed with multicore boost
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/79655/gazelle.pdf
Posted Thursday 7th January 2010 00:54 GMT
In Firefox 3.7 to feel need for speed with multicore boost
Unfortunately BlueGreen all you have done here is prove how little you understand the web today, and especially how little you understand Firefox.
The real irony of your comment is that disabling JS in FF only disables it loading from web pages, not JS loaded via chrome:// URIs. The entire FF UI and almost all extensions make enormous use of JS - so disabled or not - care or not - you benefit greatly from multi-threading FF and esp. in their JS engine Tracemonkey.
Posted Thursday 7th January 2010 00:37 GMT
In Firefox 3.7 to feel need for speed with multicore boost
but 3.6 is a branch - 3.7 is a build directly from the trunk that will become 1.9.3, so "they" aren't feeding you anything, someone has just checkout the trunk and built it.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/
Posted Wednesday 6th January 2010 18:04 GMT
In Airbus: We'll cancel crap A400M unless we get more £££
[...]the aircrew ratio will need to take full account of the strategic role[...]
I thought the whole point of the A400M was that is was to provide tactical arlift not strategic?
Posted Wednesday 6th January 2010 14:23 GMT
In NASA's nuclear Mars tank gets improved cooker mod
Could someone explain why, now having had a high number of successful landings on Mars NASA would now choose such a horribly complex completely new landing process?
Posted Wednesday 6th January 2010 14:23 GMT
In Boffin calculates pi to 2.7 trillion digits
It's about getting closer to proving Pi is a normal number, and at least confirming it is as far as "we've" looked. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number
Posted Tuesday 5th January 2010 14:00 GMT
In U2 frontman bitchslapped by TalkTalk
You mean Bono not only fails to understand the complexities of international aid, but he's passing his opinions off on even MORE topics he's not qualified to comment or pass judgement on - who'd have thought it.
Bono - you sing songs in a band - get over yourself.
Posted Tuesday 5th January 2010 08:38 GMT
In O2 and Be Broadband speeds dip
New O2 LLU subscriber, 750 m from exchange. Getting 20,176 kbps downstream sync on 20 Mb service.
Still can't quite believe it, but I'm happily streaming BBC iPlayer HD with no hiccups whatsoever.
Posted Saturday 2nd January 2010 10:02 GMT
In Hacker rattles 21,000 iPhone unlockers
http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/unlockmyiphone.html
Posted Thursday 31st December 2009 08:53 GMT
In Firefox 3.6 hits ice - won't show up till Spring
[...]"Insisting that the decade ends on December 31, 2010 is correct. It is the end of the 201st decade. The fact that you are too ignorant to realise this is not the fault of the pedants. Spare yourself the embarrassment of revealing your ignorance."[...]
Wrong... your argument is nothing more than tautology, and your statement is only correct to the extent it justifies your orthogonal (and obvious but pointless) assertion about the 201st century.
Aside from the fact that the number of centuries were never discussed in the article, and your neat side stepping most notions of a "decade" - who cares it's the 201st century. Neither of your falicious arguments can escape the simple fact that December 31st 2009 is exactly (give or take) 10 years or a "decade" since this millenium began.
Posted Thursday 24th December 2009 14:07 GMT
In Top Gear tops iPlayer hit list
That's why people like you Dominic should be watching 5th Gear on 5 - that's the show for sado wannabe geeks with no sense of humour who dont ever seem to understand that TOP GEAR IS AN ENTERTAINMENT SHOW - Sheesh
Posted Thursday 24th December 2009 14:07 GMT
In Google Chrome OS goes native (code)
[...]Google is playing coy over the role of native code in its fledgling OS. But the company says its Native Client project - which executes native code inside today's Google Chrome web browser[...]
It is such a shame Google didn't take the Firefox option instead of rolling their own, Mozilla solved this issue from day dot with XPCOM. This solves all these issues and is variously exposed to C++, JavaScript, Java & Python.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/xpcom
Which then allows you to do stuff like this:
http://www.redbacksystems.com/xulu/
Posted Wednesday 23rd December 2009 13:10 GMT
In Lawyers scared of computers
The moto for the entire civil service should be:
Fear of own incompetence flushes country down toilet
Not sure what that would be in Latin.
Posted Tuesday 22nd December 2009 21:23 GMT
In Vatican awards self 'unique copyright' on Pope
Hmm wouldn't there be a case for arguing prior art - like 1300 years prior art from the first Pope...
Posted Tuesday 22nd December 2009 14:35 GMT
In Firefox 3.5 wins top dog browser crown - sort of
Saw adverts at Baker St. Station on the London Undergound the other day for Googles chrome browser, first time I'd seen a browser ad in a general public area.
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 16:51 GMT
In 'CRU cherrypicked Russian climate data', says Russian
It just goes to show why the general media shouldn't be reporting it, passing at best ill-informed, at worst woefully inaccurate judgements on highly complex, widely disputed, cutting edge research, when most people will never be able to distil the complexities into a usefully relevant or informed opinion.
For all the fhe facts as complex as they are, the consequences are simple - adjust our behaviour and learn to live more in balance with the world around us, or suffer the ( in many cases unknown ) consequences.
You don't have unqualified people passing judgements on the validity of data as to whether super symmetry exists in the latest string theory models, why should you on climate change?
Science is not about what you think or what you believe, it's about what you can prove, and until the majority of (qualified) scientists tell me otherwise, I am a polluter, an energy waster and am risking the stability of future human habitation on this planet as a consequence of my behaviour.
Climate it science it maybe - but rocket science it ain't.
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 16:49 GMT
In MoD does everything right for once in Xmas shocker
Yep decimated they were, the Americans were stunned (and not in a good way) by what the Tornado pilots were expected and trying to do.
Our losses were staggering and unsustainable and the reason they went for high altitude/precision guided/standoff weapons to deal with the Iraqi air defenses in the end.
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 12:17 GMT
In UK judges reject Lucas' appeal in Star Wars helmet case
Well AC, if you'd like to purchase the full legal report so you might become one of those educated and "learned men", then please feel free:
http://rpc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/96/25/551
Alternatively you might like to read the reference reports from the Parlimentary Stationary office here:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/ld199900/ldjudgmt/jd001123/design-1.htm
and then focus your inadequate and uneducated little brain on Section "6. Ideas and expression".
Of course I personally would hold out much hope of it meaning you'd engage your brain before your mouth in future - but it is Christmas - so here's hoping.
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 00:17 GMT
In UK judges reject Lucas' appeal in Star Wars helmet case
Especially since the Stormtroopers were designed from ILM drawings originally, and in English copyright law, a copyright in a drawing is infringed by manufacture of the depicted object:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LB_%28Plastics%29_Ltd._v._Swish_Products_Ltd.
Where as the US it is the opposite!
Posted Wednesday 16th December 2009 15:22 GMT
In Wireless e-car recharge tech within range?
Why is everyone getting so breathless about this tech - even the EV1 used "electric toothbrush" inductive charging, and the park-over-charging-pad has been around for ages.
http://www.uniservices.co.nz/uploadedfiles/uniservices/UniServices%20Wireless%20Car%20Charging%20Brochure_1.pdf
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=2591
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/20/nissan-electric-car-plug-free
Posted Wednesday 16th December 2009 10:33 GMT
In Google demos image rec 'quantum computer'
This is of the training process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_m17HK97M8
And then presenting their findings:
http://videolectures.net/opt08_neven_tabcwt/
Posted Friday 11th December 2009 14:49 GMT
In Microsoft urges Flash makers to pay fat dollar for exFAT format
Unfortunately because Microsoft won't support them in Windows - and when you plug in your "flash drive" device you want to be able to read/write without having to install 3rd party filesystem drivers.
Posted Friday 11th December 2009 09:54 GMT
In Steel-woven wallet pledges to keep RFID credit cards safe
Thinks this is a great idea, but I need need one slot out side my faraday wallet for my Oyster card - damn!
Posted Thursday 10th December 2009 11:02 GMT
In Durham police demonstrate DNA will stuff you
Unfortunately, the Police never seem to engage their brains enough to realise, that if they are tasked with "protecting, helping and reassuring the community" then that includes protecting ALL aspects of the indiviual - including their human rights as equally as any other right - be it of life, limb or property.
Posted Wednesday 9th December 2009 11:17 GMT
In US judge excoriates Harvard team's P2P defense
As it's a civil case, surely the RIAA (et al) must prove that Tenenbaums filesharing of 30 songs cost them $675,000 in lost revenue or reputation?
The award can't be punative (can it?), as the industry have now valued their own product at 99c per track, this equates to those tracks causing the loss of over 6,800 sales (at 99c ea.), which seems untenable and unproveable.
