Posts by Christoph

Re: COP/EOD

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

at least some of them are hoping to find a loophole in it...

They are desperate to find a loophole in it.

We have two astoundingly successful theories, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, but they give completely incompatible descriptions of how the Universe works.

At least one of them must be flawed somehow, but physicists have been trying for nearly a century to find such a flaw.

It hasn't happened. Neither of them have ever produced incorrect results in an experiment.

Re: Pilot Error

"looking beyond that and finding out WHY that pilot error happened."

The pilot misheard a message about waiting for takeoff and thought it was clearance for takeoff.

Fix: Aircraft now wait for 'departure'. The word 'takeoff' is used ONLY when giving or cancelling clearance for immediate takeoff.

Result: No more Teneriffe.

Re: Sorry but no.

"I'm sorry you can't see Venus or whatever due to assorted tin cans wafting about low orbit"

If you obstruct my view of Venus you will face my Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator!

Re: Seems there would be an easier solution

There might not be another side. Just hook it out.

Take an old wire coathanger, use pliers to roughly straighten out all but the hook. You now have a few feet of stiff wire with a hook on the end. Perfect for ferreting round in narrow gaps and hoiking out whatever rolled/fell there, or grabbing things which are just out of reach.

Re: Re - speedometer accuracy

There is presumably a slight lag in GPS speedo readings? It can't measure your actual speed, it must measure the time you took to cover some distance - which it can only calculate after you've covered that distance. If your speed is changing rapidly it's not going to be instantaneously accurate.

Re: Too broad: You can't work in IT for 2 years.

Not quite, it's published law so already public.

Except for Section 3.

There's also the problem of ground-based astronomy trying to see the stars through all the satellites.

Re: If the job is important, neverruse untested technology

I gather the point was to test smaller, lighter engines. Putting three bigger heavier engines in probably would not have fit in a cubesat?

Re: Split second?

in very high G wells

H G Wells?

Ours was on the wall outside in the general office so you could hit it after escaping a halon dump. Shortly afterwards it had a box put over it with a flap opening.

Re: Work from office

Does he expect his female staff to move to a coathanger state? Texas abortion laws on someone used to California?

Re: Catch-22

"I think there's a better than even chance Twitter will be permanently done before the end of the year."

I think there's a good chance it won't outlast a lettuce.

Re: run Twitter permanently on a full-time basis

I gather it's the ones on work visas who will be deported if they lose their jobs.

Re: Failed as a manager

The commission for that sale isn't small for that sales rep.

Re: Use inclined solar panels

A simple robot arm with an air blower on the end. Only needs a swivel mounting to swing round and a single elbow to wipe up and down, so should be easy compared to the arms already out there.

Have a read of "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn

Re: Green screens were great!

You 'ad screens? Luxury! At university we handed in the stack of punched cards and got back the results on music-ruled fan-fold paper.

Re: Rollbacks & Paranoia

The main engines and the SRBs were designed to be reusable, and the shuttle did reuse them. The highly advanced SLS throws them away after a single use.

Re: The d in £sd

3d a thruppeny bit, 6d a tanner, 1s a bob, 2⧸6 half a dollar (from the time a US dollar was about the same value as a crown (5s), £1 1s 0d a guinea.

But then you have to supply the extra oxygen for the hamster to breathe to provide the energy to turn the wheel to produce the oxygen for the hamster to breathe . . .

I think the in-system losses are likely to make this solution impractical.

In the mid 70s we had a Wang computer that used an IBM golfball as its printer - they had stuffed a slab of electronics in the base to drive it.

Re: Measure twice, cut once

"After a run of these in the late 20th century, "some" training programs now emphasize that junior staff should be proactive and senior staff have to accept it."

On a fully laden, just refuelled jumbo jet at Tenerife, the junior staff didn't want to question the captain's misunderstanding of a radio message as clearance for immediate takeoff.

Some of the people in the jumbo that was taxiing up the runway in thick fog survived.

Aircraft now wait for departure. The word takeoff is used only for authorising or cancelling immediate takeoff.