imipak

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• Commented on What MP3 player should I buy?
  These comments are one reason I keep putting off and putting off replacing the slowly failing Sony car stereo. All I want is one that will play mp3 AND OGG. Faced with the hell of trying to find what I...
• Commented on Saturday Morning Science Experiment: B.F. Skinner Makes A Pigeon Do His Bidding
  @eustace Skinner's insight was that all behaviour up to and including speech is conditioned by environmental contingencies in exactly the same way as the pigeon is conditioned. "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" changed my life....
• Commented on Terrified London cops spending millions gathering useless intelligence on peaceful protestors
  This is emphatically /NOT/ just the Met, but a nationwide phenomena. I can't quite make out why the Home Secretary hasn't resigned over this outrageous and blatant breach of human and civil rights. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/26/police-challenged-protest-files http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=police+surveillance&sitesearch-radio=guardian&go-guardian=Search...
• Commented on Mystery School
  "a rich, fascinating, and colorful history" of mugs being duped by frauds, charlatans and fruitloops? What a depressing contradiction in terms. What next, a rich fascinating and colorful history of bowel disorders?...
• Commented on G20 police uses arrested student as trophy in group photo
  I was brought up to respect my fellow citizens, give back to society, and to always to remember that all coppers are bastards. I don't think it's true; but if you're a nice guy and you form a joint enterprise...
• Commented on Storm-sewer dwellers of Las Vegas
  Romania has it much much worse. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=bucharest%20underground%20living&meta=...
• Commented on Magnificent photos from space probes
  That's a particularly gorgeous image, but there are many, many more on the PDS and many other sites. Unlike ESA, NASA / JPL tax-funded work means all the data is released into the public domain. There are too many other...
• Commented on BBC wants to put DRM on the TV Brits are forced to pay for
  I wonder how much this is driven by the utterly wonderful Linux software get_iplayer . http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/ Can't recommend this highly enough. Enjoy it whilst it lasts :(...
• Commented on Space Shuttle scheduled to land near LA this evening, big sonic boom expected
  Bird strikes: yes. http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090115-shuttle-bird-threat.html With every launch/landing that passes into history, and very likely last-ever flight of a vehicle with wings into space, I get a bit more scratchy about emptying out my meagre savings and taking a trip to...
• Commented on Radical ideas to prevent global warming disaster
  The other ginormous issue with almost all geoengineering schemes are that ten minutes after the collapse of space-flight capable human civilisation and/or the other industrial bases needed to maintain them, they'll stop working, at which point the real level of...
• Commented on Banksy mural accidentally painted over
  Arse! Wrong bloody is.gd link. Should be http://is.gd/2VqhJ Apologies....
• Commented on Banksy mural accidentally painted over
  Here's the original piece: http://is.gd/2VqjJ...
• Commented on What the world will look like if/when the oceans rise.
  Those asking basic questions: realclimate.org and the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (and the rest of the Fourth Assessment Report) explain all. Warning, it's hideously complex. But yeah, we're all fucked. Oh yeah, and the American SouthWest is going to turn...
• Commented on Straight Outta Mordor: Notes from the LA Fires
  @Antinous / Xeni, #15/16: Sir / Madam, I fear you are mistaken. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72uJVMP5I38 @wolfiesma #23: very hard to attribute one event to changes in the climate, but it's accurate to say that many GCMs (models) predict long term drought in...
• Commented on Straight Outta Mordor: Notes from the LA Fires
  Airpillo: MODIS is your friend... remote sensing fom orbit: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?project=aeronet&subset=La_Jolla.2009243.terra.250m et cetera...
• Commented on Straight Outta Mordor: Notes from the LA Fires
  Oh yeah, this is what it's all about: chopper video PLUS CHAT from random yahoos trolls wingnuts, fruitloops and k1dd135. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/CBS-News #disasterporn++ KTLA is also good: http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-tivid-livestream-b,0,1174195.tividlivestream ...but I'm all outta bandwidth :(...
• Commented on Straight Outta Mordor: Notes from the LA Fires
  Hoorah! http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2n is working again (for me, here in the UK, YMMV etc.) I've been a broadcast news addict since the age of 12, but for ongoing disasters - fires, hurricanes, market crashes - it seems like following live data...
• Commented on Straight Outta Mordor: Notes from the LA Fires
  I've been squirrelling away California wildfire pics for some time now. I've some amazing shots of (I think) the Corral fire from a couple of years ago, views across (I think) the coast north of L.A., found on (I think)...
• Commented on The Los Angeles fires
  PS (sorry, couldn't find the links when posting above - c'mon BB, where are editable comments?!) A little climate-doom-porn; "U.S. Southwest Drought Could Be Start of New Dust Bowl": http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070405-us-drought.html , http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070524-drought.html Looking on the bright side, sand puts out...
• Commented on The Los Angeles fires
  JPL's safe; the incredibly historically valuable Mount Wilson Observatory, isn't. This is where Hubble measured the red shift of galaxies and found that space is expanding (hence, the Big Bang), and is still used for real science. http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002074/...
• Commented on London bus with 16 CCTV cameras inside
  Many non-British residents seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that the feeds from all these cameras is streamed to some sort of Big Brother centre. They are not. They are operated by tens of thousands of independent organisations. At...
• Commented on Space Shuttle Discovery STS-128 launch (Update: it was a real winner.)
  I managed to get up at 4:50am (UK summer time) and also remembered to wander outside, look up into the southern sky and also see the orbiter and external tank sailing majest here in the UK,ically across the sky -...
• Commented on Barney Frank pwns crazy lady at "town hall" meeting, effectively invoking Godwin's law.
  @DavidAsPosted and others asking variants of "Why does this sort of bad crazyness only happen in the USA?": False class consciousness. What puzzles me is this: * if y'all are all armed to the back teeth with assault rifles and...
• Commented on Everything you need to know about dubstep
  http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-%26-entertainment/dubstep-old-hat-as-fans-embrace-bumfunking-200809101243/...
• Commented on Everything you need to know about dubstep
  http://www.dubstepforum.com http://www.dubsteplife.com A cover of a classic pop tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTsEsOzStSg It DOES seem a particularly insular and in some areas cul-de-sacs of sterility, but there's potential in the style as others get drawn in, the sound seeps out into overground...
• Commented on Exhaustive index of fearmongering Daily Mail stories about cancer and its causes
  For the benefit of any unfortunates missed last night's episode of BBC Radio 4's "Now Show", there's a 27Mb podcast here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/fricomedy/fricomedy_20090807-1855a.mp3 (It'll be up until about 7pm UTC next Friday evening, 14th August.) Ben Goldacre's six minute slot starts...
• Commented on Bike seat sports a beard of bees
  That doesn't actually look big enough to be a full-blown swarm; they're significantly larger and more impressive to witness (size of a baseball rather than a bike saddle.) It's probably a small cast rather than a prime swarm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarming_%28honey_bee%29 (dig...
• Commented on Video: Mass of ascending hot air balloons
  Balloons? We gots balloon in Brizzle. My lover. http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_query=bristol%20balloon%20festival The night-time displays are awesome. One summer, a couple of friends who spent the night tripping their nuts off on microdots one summer went out and sat in deckchairs as dawn...
• Commented on DC's buried gubmint s33kr17 wires patrolled by rapid-response goon-squad
  Real actual professional network engineers - network in the sense of "autonomous system", not "my office network" -- the people who have to deal with routine fibre cuts and all the other assorted ways large (national/international) networks can break, discussed...
• Commented on Tory MP says it was OK to bill taxpayer for his 500 tree forest, critics are "jealous" of his private forest
  Little known fact, especially amongst the howling mob screeching about how politicians earn more than they do, is that their salary's been frozen since the 70s. It was always thought too politically embarrassing for MPs to be seen to be...