But as they come back down, the angular momentum is still preserved so the earth has to speed back up again.
Posts by Armando 123
1116 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2011
Virginia ponders tax breaks for (dead) human space flights
Android malware victims offered free WinPhones by MS
Royalty-free web vid spec sets sail with Apple's help
I dunno, Apple protects their patents vigorously but they've been pretty good partners on a lot of open source projects: cups, darwin, gcc/g++, etc etc etc.
Apple has been pushing H.264 for at least five years now. I recall a Keynote where Jobs showed its scaling abilities and it was phenomenal.
Cambridge puts Isaac Newton's notes online
FOI request turns up Carrier IQ surprise
Greenland 'lurched upward' in 2010 as 100bn tons of ice melted
Durban failed: Relax, everyone
RIM execs chewed through restraints after in-flight fracas
Malicious apps infiltrate Google's Android Market
Does anyone else remember
in the early days of Apple's app store, Apple pulled an app from the market and disabled it? There was much hue and cry about Apple overstepping their bounds, but Apple said the mechanism was put in place originally with the idea of stopping malicious code that made it through. It made sense then, and it does now, as well. I wonder if the diverse Android marketplace might have just shown a flaw. (Not that I'm saying Apple's approach is perfect, of course.)
North America makes entry into dino fatty league
Hm
Sauropods have never been entirely cool the way T. Rex or triceratops are, but when you start looking at them from an engineering perspective, they are fascinating. How did they have enough blood pressure to get blood to those tiny brains? How can they possibly process enough food for those massive bodies? How can those necks be that strong yet light enough to hold the head up?
I would love to see a (nearly) complete skeleton on one
Android, BlackBerry phone owners favour Apple tablet
No surprise
A lot of frustration with the iPhone has come from using AT&T exclusively until recently. That has changed, of course, but contracts don't end overnight.
However, most of the Android phones are lower end phones. They were smartphones whose great feature was "lower price". If the Android tablets cost the same as an iPad, the Android tablet is missing the one feature (price) that induced a lot of people to buy the Android phones.
Dell pulls Streak 7 from US online store
PC makers
Keep in mind that the PC makers are in a volume business. They can pump out more widgets, and pump out each one cheaply, quicker than anyone else. Part of that is that they use cheaper components.
Now, they are trying to get into the tablet market. They can't get access to the most popular OS, as they do in the PC arena. Android and Windows 7 are available but don't seem to be popular in the tablet market. (And while the market may be wrong, the market is still what you sell to.) Likewise, there aren't big corporate contracts for tablets like there are for PCs. So the market is very, very different, and if they can't get something to sell quickly enough in sufficient volume, they aren't set up to make money. It's only companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, who don't have the overhead and can deliver consumer content a la Apple with the iPad. So don't be surprised if the Old Skool PC and Phone makers leave the tablet market or flounder a lot.
Eyes on stalks: ancient predator a real monster
Bumblebee boffins rediscover long-vanished species
This is good news.
One of our neighbors has hives, but the doctor says they'll clear up soon. (But seriously, folks, ...)
No, he keeps bees and we've asked him about which plants to encourage, discourage, etc etc. Since they tend to keep the wasps and hornets away and encourage our black cheery and sweet crabapple trees to fruit, it's a win-win-win.
El Reg's life of Steve Jobs - now available on Kindle
Headmaster freezes schoolkids for Gaia
Three cheers for wood stoves
We have one and burn only 'scrap' wood - fallen limbs, dead trees - and that one that we had someone cut down because it was leaning WAY too far towards the house. It's a nice, dry heat and the furnace doesn't kick on. If it does, it pulls in the heat through a cold-air return and pumps it all through the house. Give me a roaring fire, an unending glass of Guinness, and a day of NFL football, and I am one happy ape.
US military pays SETI to check Kepler-22b for aliens
Solar winds are blowing away the Moon's topsoil - NASA
Secrets of the asteroid belt: Vesta actually more like a planet
Microsoft's futurologists virtualise the poor
US Senator demands answers from Carrier IQ
Calling you out
"former late-night funnyman Al Franken"
When the blazes was Franken funny? Seriously, I remember watching SNL a lot back when he was a regular writer, and I can't say laughs could ever be attributed to him, Al Franken.
Mine's the one with the Best of Garrett Morris dvd in the pocket.
Globe slowly warming, insists 'Hansen's Bulldog'
NASA probe now closer than ANY OTHER spacecraft to Pluto
Voyager probe reaches edge of Solar System's 'bubble'
@James Micallef
It's largely marketing; there is a logic to it, but it's a bit tricky. One probe was launched to reach Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The other probe was launched to reach Jupiter and Saturn and focus on Titan as it went by Saturn, and preferably to get there first.
Titan was a tantalizing world at the time (still is). It was known to have an atmosphere of methane and be larger than Mercury and the Galilean satellites and was speculated as a place where some form of life might conceivably have formed. In fact, Titan was considered important enough that, if something happened to the probe that was to fly close by it, the second one would sacrifice the trips to Uranus and Neptune for a good look at Titan.
Because of this and the alignment of the planets, the craft going to all four planets had to launch first to arrive at the right time on the right trajectory to reach all four. I think I read once that, to reach Uranus and Neptune, the margin for error at Saturn was very very small, the equivalent of sinking a 900 ft putt without rimming the cup. However, it would also arrive at Jupiter AFTER the Jupiter-Saturn-Titan probe, partly from the math and partly to know which trajectory to take (Uranus-Neptune or Titan). Since the later launching probe was arriving at Jupiter first, it was called 1.
Beer, because my brain hurts
'I'm the first to admit that we've made a bunch of mistakes'
Happy birthday, Apple QuickTime
Why the hate?
I get that Quicktime isn't perfect, but it effectively brought real multimedia to personal computers. Look back at the specs of the computers it first ran on and tell me that what it did wasn't impressive. Like C++, it had its flaws and was kinda clunky (especially at first) but it paved the way for everything else.
UK lays carbon plan before Earth Goddess
Facebook disses Effin Irishwoman
Antarctic ice formed at CO2 levels much higher than today's
iPhone 4S owners love Siri, hate the battery life
Malcolm Gladwell, tipping points and Climategate
I blame the Danes
Severn Darden did this while working in the comedy troupe that became Second City back in the 50s. He told Elaine May that he wanted to offend a group that had never been offended before and chose the Danes, because what was there to object to about the Danes?
So every show, he would take at least one time to spout off about the horrid, nasty, evil, dastardly Danes ... particularly as his character Professer Walter von der Vogelweider.
At one point, the Danish consul in Chicago wrote a letter asking what had happened to make him feel that way and if he could help Darden in any way.
So blame the Danes, you might get the autograph of an ambassador.
Quite right
"but one thing's for certain, the planet won't care and will continue to be here for an exceptionally long period of time way after we've died out."
Anyone who's seen a tornado will agree with that. We just don't matter and the planet/sun/universe doesn't care one way or the other. Then again, there seems to be a teenager-like egocentrism among the ecomentalists that means they don't get this and they don't get that they don't get this.
Hollywood siren invented key phone tech TRUE
Apple: Siri isn't anti-abortion
Christmas gamma burst stupendo-explosion DEATHMATCH
Nokia is past its best-by date, warns analyst
James Bond savages the Kardashians
UK Met Office: World temperature back down to 1997 level
I know that correlation and causation are not the same thing. I know it's complex, but there is a pretty tight correlation in longterm and short term solar changes, there is data supporting this over hundreds of years, and we have other planets following similar but obviously not identical patterns to the earth. In addition, CERN researchers have worked out a possible explanation for the correlation with a certain amount of evidence to back it up.
If I leap, it's certainly far less of a leap than others who are are gobbling up taxpayer money in poor if not dishonest science.
It's the sun, folks
We're just coming out of a VERY quiet solar period, in which global warming stalled and reversed. In other words, we're seeing a smaller version of what happened during the Maunder Minimum.
At the same time, temperatures of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter's moons, and Uranus all increased up to about 2000 and have dropped a bit since. (Jupiter can't be used in this as it's still emitting IR radiation, as it's still compressing from its formation.)
But then, I only have a Master's in radiative transfer theory, I obviously don't know as much about this as the average ecomentalist.
NASA wants space washing machine for ISS, Mars bases
I don't know what world you live in, but here in Middle America, the lads do their own cooking and cleaning and laundry. If you don't, you'll never attract a woman, because they eat out, hire maids, and take clothes to the cleaners. (No wonder single men are more likely to afford a house downpayment sooner.)
True story: a while back, the elder lad came home from school and told my wife that he needed to bring in baked goods to school the next day. (He wasn't slacking to let us know, the unfireable teacher did that.) She nodded towards me and said "Ask your step-father." So the lad and I made them. When he complained, I told him "The way to a woman's heart is through your wallet. We're not wealthy, so your best shot at a girlfriend is food."
Two years on, he's in junior high and boy, does he remember that lesson now.