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In theory, we can test the idea with a direct experiment, but the cost would be in the multiple billions

Link this?

It'll be interesting to see how this works out. I'm not certain that a planar detector will work out like they hope.

...Pathfinder's job is to prove the metrology.

To do this, it will try to put two small gold-platinum blocks into a perfect free-fall and then track their relative movement using lasers.

The intention is to get these blocks following a line that is defined only by gravity. To do that requires that all other forces that might interfere with the demonstration are removed.

This means, for example, carefully controlling the influence of temperatures and magnetic fields. Even the vacuum state will introduce "noise" into the system if some residual gas molecules are allowed to collide with the blocks.

The experiment has been designed such that disturbances to the blocks as small as just a few picometres should be noticed. One picometre is a small fraction of the width of a hydrogen atom.

In theory, we can test the idea with a direct experiment, but the cost would be in the multiple billions

Link this?

They've been working on that a long time. Brian Cox visited there in a 2008 episode of BBC Horizon. I'm sure you can find a video on-line.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/gravity/

Not sure why you're posting as everything you said is a complete lie.

Infact, Britain is paying off the last of its' WW1 debt next week as it happens.

Everything else you said is wrong also.
Don't post on the internet.

The BBC doesn't say that, Professor Harrison says that.

The BBC does say that this year we will have paid off the last outstanding WW1 debt when we refinance the outstanding £1.9Billion balance of the 1932 war bond.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...

The author of the article you point to, Finlo Rohrer, has also been heavily criticised in the past of biased and misleading articles, so I would take whatever he writes with a pinch of salt...

The BBC says you are wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_...
"And while the UK dutifully pays off its World War II debts, those from World War I remain resolutely unpaid. And are by no means trifling. In 1934, Britain owed the US $4.4bn of World War I debt (about £866m at 1934 exchange rates). Adjusted by the Retail Price Index, a typical measure of inflation, £866m would equate to £40bn now, and if adjusted by the growth of GDP, to about £225bn.
"We just sort of gave up around 1932 when the interwar economy was in turmoil, currencies were collapsing," says Prof Harrison."

The BBC also show the actual dress:

Optical illusion: Dress colour debate goes global

I see white and gold, although the actual dress is blue and black.

there is more than one for example.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

Body found, no fingers and cell phone missing.

I know you're probably going for Funny (which it is!) but sadly chopping fingers off to fool biometrics has been done before.

Problem with using the machete technique on the iPhone is that it requires a live body.

That is a 10 year old story and technology has moved on since then. Not only the iPhone but any modern fingerprint sensor of any quality would require a live body.

Body found, no fingers and cell phone missing.

I know you're probably going for Funny (which it is!) but sadly chopping fingers off to fool biometrics has been done before.

Problem with using the machete technique on the iPhone is that it requires a live body.

US soldiers are dying in the ongoing and perpetual Afghan Opium War to bring the finest kind to Russia/Europe/America. As the graph shows they were entirely successful. Here Bush's *Mission* was definitely accomplished, in spades! I don't know whether prohibition or legalization leads to more profit in these times. Prohibition definitely *creates jobs*. So the incentive to abolish it remains diminished.

Tell me which of your local stations play Skrillex, or Deltron3030, or insert any random obscure or indie artist here?

That would be the BBC, most notably BBC Radio 1 for all that is dub 'n wub and BBC Radio 6 for a wider selection of music. Use a VPN or spoof a UK IP address and you too can listen to their internet streaming of their stations at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

I recommend you do something rather unreasonable. That thing is to learn about what you're talking about.

mmm

I'll also bring up that the UK has a horrible problem with violent crime in areas other than gun violence.

Hi. I'm in the UK and I don't think this is actually true. Also, I'm not the only one to think that way. The Guardian, The BBC and The Office for National Statistics all think violent crime is lower than ever:

• Crime statistics for England and Wales: violent crime and sexual offences
• Violent crime in England and Wales falls again, A&E data shows
• Crime Statistics, Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences, 2012/13

Sounds like Reason..

Reason allows users to specify in advance the decision they want it to reach, and only then to input all the facts. The program's task was to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion. The only copy was sold to the US Government for an undisclosed fee.

Based on this post, it looks like the BBC radio audio stream is encoded at a constant rate of 320 kbps using AAC-LC, delivered in the MPEG DASH container, and implemented in HTML5 using Media Source Extensions (MSE).

It is not clear to me if the BBC radio audio is being carried in MPEG DASH as MPEG-4 file format fragments or as an MPEG-2 Transport Stream, but I would suspect for audio-only it is MPEG-4 file format fragments.

The US never showed any interest in finding MH370. The ongoing international search effort is being conducted by China, Australia, and Malaysia, with help from others.

Wikipedia

BBC

Considering a US built plane has disappeared without trace, one would expect them to be very interested...but alas no.

It's damn fishy if you ask me...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

LOL! You're 100% right, except in the eyes of the shareholders, and consumers. They're (almost) literally printing money:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...

------------
US technology giant Apple has reported the biggest quarterly profit ever made by a public company.

Apple reported a net profit of $18bn (£11.8bn) in its fiscal first quarter, which tops the $15.9bn made by ExxonMobil in the second quarter of 2012, according to Standard and Poor's.
------------

You're saying that they were making more money before 1999, and that's when they started going downhill? Perhaps you're just talking about your own opinion?

To this day. A deeper investigation is needed into the Afghanistan opium war. The Taliban had nearly cut off the flow in 2001. The following year it was business as usual.

What is assistance? Asking advice on the most painless, quick and reliable way of doing something?

Why not look at what other countries have done?

If you're able bodied enough to actually do the work, how do you do it reliably?

Easy: nitrogen asphyxiation. More or less infallible, and not only does it not cause any pain, it actually gives the subject a sense of euphoria before death. BBC did an entire documentary on nitrogen asphyxiation in the context of replacing random drug cocktails for executions. Death penalty fetishists oppose it, though, because of the aforementioned sense of euphoria....prolonged suffering is a feature, not a bug, for them.

Yes, links have been established with increase of antibiotic use and increase in weight. When I read the summary this was the first thing that came to mind as the likely cause.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/heal...

http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

-1, eh mods?

The world is full of self-confident rock-star developers who turn their noses up at professional software engineering practices.

As for the other thing, here are the good old citations: Amazon 1, Amazon 2, Amazon 3.

If you are in a group, having a dinner, it can be a great stress release. But that is not the eating, it is being together with people you like and who like you. If you eat alone, and that releases your stress, you are bound to have a problem. You will learn that eating releases stress so if you have stress you have to eat. I don't know if you can watch this program: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme... It describes there are three kind of eaters. One of them is emotional eaters. Using food as a stress release is not a good idea.

Pinhole cameras can be surprisingly large.

Largest in the world
Industrial wheelie bins
And many other sizes

Size, shape and construction doesn't matter. A pinhole camera can look like a bomb, a bomb can look like a pinhole camera.

If you want to deploy such things in public, then the scheme needs publicity and the co-operation of public bodies. Otherwise, the official response (in this case) is largely correct.

strictly speaking, above the waist is frowned upon (depends on circumstances, a short diving tackle might end up above the waist but a semi-experienced referee can spot the difference between a short tackle and a deliberate mid-high intended to knock the wind out of you) but above the shoulder is right out. http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/s... is apparently a good video describing rules and good technique, but not having Realplayer installed I can't comment.

Rugby Union rules of tackling and a wordy description of good technique here: http://www.talkrugbyunion.co.u... (no speshul plugins or magical decoder rings required).

Oh noes, you're going to be disappointed -)

According to the BBC

but its makers have also promised it will be able to support Microsoft's next operating system at a later date.

"For the last six months we've been working closely with Microsoft to bring the forthcoming Windows 10 to Raspberry Pi 2.

Oh for crying out loud, can't that myth fucking die?

Even the police suggest its as low as 1.85 million...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-1...

So long as you abide by the Data Protection Act, the British Government have no issues with you operating a CCTV camera. Let me repeat that - so long as you abide by the Data Protection Act...

So, if you follow the rules you are fine. Just as Google would have been if they had followed the rules.

That phrase "fair share" is dishonest. It is vague and subjective,

A tax code which permits corporations to hide profits while taxing citizens normally is dishonest.

Normally?

The United States is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to taxing citizens abroad. It stands alone with the glorious state of Eritrea by taxing nonresidents on their worldwide income. If I'm not living in the United States, I'm not driving on its roads, my borders aren't defended by US troops, and I'm sure as hell not benefiting from its business climate. If you argue that the ability to go to a US embassy or consulate is somehow worth the hassle of filing $1000 worth of paperwork with a cross-border accountant to prove to the IRS that yes, I still owe them $0.00, might I remind you that every other nation on the fucking planet (except, well, Eritrea) manages to have embassies and consular staff without taxing non-residents.

The US tax code does not tax citizens normally, and indeed, is responsible for a lot of US citizens saying "Fuck this shit," and expatrating.

Yeah, just like the subway, the railroad, the ATM, the vacuum tube, the computer, the car phone, the television camera, the CRT, and the gas/street light.

Too bad Europe is lagging in all of those things due to their entrenched legacy systems.

William Shatner's kidney stone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/mid...

"During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA. "

They were talking about Kinect - not the Xbox. And "fastest selling entertainment device" is a flexible term - as you can define whatever period you want to base your judgement on.

Going off this it seems to have managed 8 million sales in 2 months. That's certainly got to be a contender for "fastest selling over 2 months". The PS2, Wii and PS4 all might have been able to manage faster, as might some of Apple's portable devices, if they hadn't been constrained by supply shortages.

Of course, Kinect sales flatlined after the first few months, nobody's disputing that. But there is certainly a defined period over which it seems to be "fastest selling".

Sub freezing temperatures aren't necessary.

In the UK, for example, for every one degree drop in temperature below 18C, deaths in the UK go up 1.5%. The risk of heart attack and stroke seem to increase with dropping temperatures.

And in the USA, the mortality rate is highest in January.

Vietnam shows a similar pattern.

Check out this mindless Asian attack that occurred in my town earlier this week.

"The most annoying thing is that we don't have the sequence of events recorded through the radio beacon that we were intending to put on Beagle 2." @2:00m podcast Colin Pillinger Dec 27, 2011

"The most annoying thing is that we don't have the sequence of events recorded through the radio beacon that we were intending to put on Beagle 2." @2:00m podcast Colin Pillinger Dec 27, 2011

We've had lots of cats that have wandered off and... but that was the thing about the name, everybody congratulated us on the name Beagle 2 as inspirational, until after it didn't call in and we had all manner of e-mails, texts, telephone calls, letters saying didn't you realise that Beagles are the worst dogs you could possibly have to let off the leash - they run off, they chase something, they don't come back when they're called, they only come home when they're hungry and they show no sign of remorse.

Bad example -- Dr. Aldrin was not just provoked by the dumbass moon hoaxer saying something offensive, but the hoaxer was following Aldrin and his daughter around, harassing them after he was asked to leave the couple alone. Aldrin had a plausible defense that he and his daughter felt physically threatened.
"Beverly Hills police investigated the incident, which occurred 9 September, but said that the charges were dropped after witnesses came forward to say that Mr Sibrel had aggressively poked Mr Aldrin with the Bible before he was punched." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ame...

I know parent is trolling, but that's actually a real problem with real world consequences that they've been running into:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sou...

Yes, here's the actual problem, map of alcohol consumption by country where darker colours are more alcohol consumption and lighter colours are less and grey is no data:

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/news/...

Original article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/heal...

Long story short, is that Russia's driving accidents problem is almost wholly down to the fact that it's a nation of rampant alcholics. The rest comes down to poorly maintained cars and roads and a nation with weather that results in terrible driving conditions for half the year.

So absolutely nothing in this new law will fix the problem it purports to fix, hence, it's safe to assume that it's in fact wholly about minority oppression.

France has marginalized 7+% of her population. This breeds resentment and makes it that much easier for people to make irrational decisions. Blinding yourself to this reality helps no one. I am not excusing the behavior. Nor am I really attempting to explain it.

There is no explanation or justification for this but the sad truth of the matter is that such incidents are going to continue. What do you suggest doing about it? Walling off a large portion of your population into de-facto ghettos is not a winning strategy in the long term. The only way to defeat an ideology is to demonstrate that your own is superior; treating 7% of your people as second class citizens does not seem like an effective way to do that, from my perspective, but what do I know?

Europe needs to figure out how to welcome and assimilate immigrants, as the United States and Canada do, or just man up and close the borders. Either outcome would be preferable to the status quo. The current situation benefits no one.

"Its also a little too convenient that a country which outright bans american films and that would never have to tolerate its citizenry watching it, happens to care enough to make a retaliatory strike against what for all intents and purposes is a nonthreat."

Apparently dodgy Chinese DVD copies regularly make their way into North Korea, and a number of Hollywood Films are quite popular regardless of their actual legality so I think you're wrong about that. See this story going back to 2012 for example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

This page explains how it happens quite well:

http://www.libertyinnorthkorea...

Frankly I'm getting a little tired of the "security experts" who decry the claim that it's North Korea because all they seem to be doing is saying "No it wasn't" without providing any counter evidence and simultaneously contradicting each other. We've got some telling us GOP didn't claim to be doing it over the Interview until a little while after the leak as if it was just taking advantage of that as misdirection, and now it turns out some North Korea IPs were involved we're being told that that's not evidence because anyone could hack North Korean IPs. Which is it? was it planned to be pinned on North Korea or not? The "security experts" need to start providing a bit more meat to their counter claims rather than just putting out a whole bunch of contradictory and sometimes outright nonsensical speculation. They're all coming up with different stories, none of which has any evidence, and all of which stop making sense at various points (generally ranging from lack of motive through to inconsistency of argument).

I agree the information released by the US to date is a little poor but I don't see it as particularly out of the ordinary. Maybe the FBI don't want to give away their methods, maybe it was a trivial hack and Sony doesn't want to be embarassed. Maybe it was an advanced hack and the FBI is worried about others figuring it out. Maybe they just don't care enough about internet conspiracy theorists to really give a shit that they even need to.

But I prefer to go by what the people involved have said. First we have the North Korean regime bitching about the film, then the hack happens, when asked if they did it North Korea says "Wait and see", then GOP comes along and takes credit, and then seeing the flack they got North Korea denies it, then when Sony finally cancels the release and as a result the US government gets involved and starts counter-striking North Korea suddenly GOP goes all quiet.

Given that North Korea is the only place that gives two shits about the film, I don't see it as being a particularly far fetched scenario that North Korea actually did it, realised in the face of non-stop media reports creating a Streisand effect it had maybe gone a little far and made the problem worse and so washed it's hands of it. Maybe they didn't even do it themselves, maybe they paid someone. Maybe you're right, maybe they didn't do it at all, but right now no one's providing any evidence and I don't frankly see any reason to disbelieve the North Korean theory, they're the only ones with any real motive and there's nothing to make the story unbelievable. If you don't think North Korea would care about a film like this then you're wholly naive about how important to the North Korean leadership maintaining Kim's image as a magical deity is.

The fact the US authorities have lied so many times about so many things doesn't mean we should instantly disbelieve everything they say. God only knows if we're going on who to trust based on lies told then I've no idea why you'd favour North Korea's very delayed claim of innocence - this is the country that's claimed it's leader has cured AIDs and found unicorns or whatever the fuck they've come up with lately. As lies go North Korea's have always been more blatant, more obvious, and often more fantastical than anything the US has told. Why believe that's changed now?

I was actually surprised the BBC posted a few.

Long story short, this is a hell of a lot more complex than you make it out to be, and points to a growing problem throughout the EU. The US sees only a small fraction of this issue (see also the town of Dearborn, MI) by comparison.

That's because the EU treats their immigrants like shit in comparison to the United States. France goes so far as to tell people what they can and can not wear in public spaces then wonders why they have a backlash from their non-assimilated immigrant populations. I lived in the EU for a time (Finland) and the treatment I saw there of the immigrant population was genuinely shocking. Hell, I encountered some of it myself, as a temporary resident, while being a white person of European descent who shared a common language with the locals. I can only imagine the day to day experiences of someone trying to establish themselves there permanently, with a complete language barrier to overcome and open contempt/hostility directly towards their faith.

The United States is far from perfect but we do a much better job of integrating immigrants than Europe. You don't see nearly as many disaffected second or even third generation immigrants leaving the United States to join ISIS or similar organizations. The EU needs to confront this reality and deal with it sooner rather than later.

...say chocolate isn't good for you.

Pure BS. Even if someone was retarded/insane enough to build such a product, no store would sell it,

Yeah because people wouldn't design such a product. (Well, to be fair, they wouldn't - but hardware, like software, can have bugs)

And even if they did make such a product, people would spot *before the thermostat got fitted* that something may go on fire months, possibly years after installation. (Remember the problem with a certain car and their brakes? Came down to a part that was worn down in a slightly unexpected way)

And nobody has ever made any defective product that has gone on fire before. (Everything from phone chargers to laptops to cars,cars,cars to washing machines...)

We live in a very strange world when "piracy" has gone from "armed crews of criminal specialists seizing tonnage shipments of goods on the high seas with cannon and sword" to "a regular schmo paying the regular price to use a regular product in the regular way in his regular living room."

the signs of the rot were there when they went after DVD Jon for having the audacity to provide a work around so that he could watch DVD's he'd legally bought on his own personal computer that just didn't have their blessing as it was running Linux...

when you open the latest gadget, it's black boxes, nothing that you can see working, or replace without just desoldering a chip.

Prof George knows this of course:

"All of these things in our home do seem to work most of the time and because they don't break we just get used to them. They have almost become like Black Boxes which never die. And when they do we throw them away and buy something new."

The Daily Telegraph, knowing its readership (traditionally rather conservative and not exactly in the first flush of their youth) has chosen to emphasise the 'young people are lost generation' angle, which is reflected in the summary. But the message she's putting across in the Christmas Lectures is much more positive - the talks are intended for a general audience, especially kids, and she wants to get them excited about using everyday technology in creative ways, in the spirit of the Maker community.

Nice article here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

If you have a UK IP address or VPN, the Lectures are available here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...

They're part of a series goes back to the time of Faraday, and has featured many eminent scientists (including several Nobel laureates). They've just been broadcast on national TV, as they have been since the 60s (I suspect quite a few of us who ended up being scientists in the UK got early inspiration from one or more of these lectures).

So how many times have organizations of the Federal Government had information beforehand on suspects and have failed to put the pieces together and act vs. actually succeeding at stopping something? They've never given any evidence that they have been able to stop anything significant based on prior knowledge and yet I've lost count of how many times they have traced back having information and the threat *still* happened.

• 
     
• Why did U.S. intelligence fail on September 11th?

•    

• The 9/11 Comission Report

•    

• The Boston Bombing Intelligence Failure

•    

• Obama calls Christmas day attack an intelligence failure

•    

• Long history of intelligence failures

That doesn't even consider the many times when there is no intelligence failure and bad things still happen. Thinking that knowing everything about everyone will prevent problems only infringes liberties with no promise of protection. At some point you have to see through the claims that ". . . if only we do X we can ensure that this will never happen again!" as being unworkable and it's better to protect liberties than to infringe them . . . including liberties of foreign citizens. Trying to blame Snowden's disclosures for why bad things aren't prevented is ludicrous.

Of course there's always the root of the problem: who effected the bad thing? We should blame the implementors of the evil rather than some fringe player . . . unless all you want is a scape goat that's in arms reach.