Posts by Geoff Johnson
175 posts • joined Monday 30th April 2007 12:22 GMT
Must be more to this than sharing the hardware.
Google or NASA could afford a 15 million computer n their own. Presumably this is a joint research project and the new toy is just a tool that they'll be using.
Re: The future of home computing
I did a calculation a couple of years ago and found it took about 12 years for the MIPs value of the worlds top supercomputer to be available on a single graphics card.
which only covers the US
Says it all really. Over here we're stuck with Sky for legal access to recent films.
Re: So what's the airspeed of an unladen Instagram?
It's a montage of shots from the arm. Kind of myspace style. Careful stitching of shots with the arm in different positions to remove the majority of the arm its self.
Posted in Samsung SSD 840 series storage review
Sorry, got to say it.
It's rectangular with rounded corners.
Again, sorry.
Re: Isn't about time we built another Voyager?
We are / do / have.
New Horizons is heading for Pluto.
Dawn is off to Ceres having already surveyed Vesta.
Cassini is orbiting Saturn.
Curiosity is trundling around Mars.
And that's just the few that spring to mind.
There is a tendency to go to other planets and stay there rather than doing a tour of the solar system, but you can get a lot more science done it you have a few years in orbit, rather than an hour flying past. New Horizons is the exception to the rule but the physics of getting there make an orbiting probe a bit too tricky.
Thinking out of the box.
So, navigating by on-board sensors is proving tricky, but remote control is going ok.
Why not have the brains of the beast in a stationary location controlling the mower remotely using a stationary camera that can see the whole lawn. If you mod the camera for IR ( See http://www.hoagieshouse.com/IR/ ) and paint the mower black there'll be a really good contrast between the mower and the grass. Of course, the higher the camera the better, as you'll get a more plan view, do you have a roof overlooking the grass?
If you still want the whole thing in one unit, maybe you could use a downward looking wide angle IR camera mounted well above the mower body grass will be bright white to an IR camera so it should see the lawn edges. You'll still need a coarse position from a GPS or something similar though.
Re: Yes, this is a serious question.
Thanks, I may have a try myself then.
Over here in England we have more problems with floods than fires, and the extra moisture should protect the roots from excess heat.
By the way, I found a patent for this has been filed.
http://www.google.com/patents/US4952222
Yes, this is a serious question.
Has anyone tried a hot wire cutter to cut grass?
A foot of nichrome wire or something similar at a few hundred degrees C.
Posted in LOHAN sucks 27 inches
Air admittance valve
Stick in a T piece with a valve to let air back in if the engine fails to fire. As mentioned before, you'll have to let the vacuum out before you can open the chamber.
to get from airport queue to airport queue really fast.
Posted in LOHAN ideas..
if the rod is an I section with teflon sliders that fit around the bottom flat bit. This and many more problems are solved.
Re: Ultrabook?
Did anyone else notice the "Small Cheap Computer" died out when they dropped the Cheap part?
"any de-listings would be published "
Excellent, a directory of all the best free download sites.
Not a Problem
Their streaming selection is rubbish anyway.
Hopefully all these issues will be fixed soon as Netflix is coming to the UK.
Maybe there's another way...
Have two people carrying a box each linked by some wireless data transport mechanism. One person holds their box next to the victims pocket. The other person buys something at he supermarket and waves their box at the payment terminal. The two boxes relay signals from the card to the terminal and back. The terminal and card think they're in proximity and talk quite happily via the wireless link. Money goes from victim to legitimate retailer. Goods go anonymously to the bad guys to be sold on e-bay.
So, buy your RF screened wallet from Geoff's shielded wallet store now.
But the Peltier effect can be useful the other way around.
I'd guess that this will act as a heat pump if given power. These kind of things usually work both ways.
OEMs and BIOS people
Has anyone asked the OEMs and BIOS manufacturers for comment on this issue? Surely UEFI has a configuration system like the old BIOS settings system, and surely there'll be an off setting in there.
plenty of time to get saving
No problem there. Just bid an absolute stack of cash from your savings account, then use the car to go back and deposit a small amount in the account. Maybe a few lottery tickets too.
You've probably already considered this, but...
Put the vacuum pump tube near the top, then you don't need to go through the outer tube.
Get the temperature low before pumping out the air - the thermal conductivity of a vacuum is pretty low.
And as mentioned above, make sure your lid doesn't get frozen on. I've seen rigs like this blow their top due to frozen relief valves and it gets pretty violent.
...half a dozen spellings of Mohammed...
So it's a Not-For-Prophet organization.
Next Generation.
So will the Second Edition be SmartARSE?
Posted in Jaguar hybrid supercar gets green light
Wimps.
Should have gone with the jet engines. If they're sticking a standard petrol engine in it, I won't be buying one.
I want one.
That's pretty much all I have to say really.
Oh, and a few General purpose IO pins would be nice.
Another PC myth
On the IT front, they (well actually the other team on the show I believe) also tested whether a laptop in a bag can stop a bullet.
Just short of breaking the sound barrier.
He beat thrust SSC by just over 2kph. Therefore he must have broken the sound barrier.
If only he could have gone the other way too, he would have the land speed record and two speeding tickets.
Nautical instruments
What happens if you're looking for a sextant?
And I dread to think what happens if you want to do any analysis.
Posted in Tosh has tiniest flash bits
Why not 2.5 bits per cell?
I'm sure it's doable, just a bit more logic around the edges.
Posted in Lexar Echo ZE ultra-compact backup drive
Readyboost
These mini USB flash things look like good devices to use for Windows Readyboost in a laptop. Just depends whether the speed is any good.
What do we call it?
If a Binary digIT is a BIT, what's a Ternary digIT going to be called?
Posted in Google accused over China censorship
Monitoring site
Is it just some cache thing on my machine or is the monitoring site 2 days out of date?
Does this mean we'll finally be able to read e-mail with HTML in it?
Rats
"the Iranian space programme is entirely peaceful in nature."
Unless you're a rat.
Posted in O2 and Be Broadband speeds dip
Looks about right.
http://www.hoagieshouse.com/weather/myhouse_ping.png
This is the ping time for my house to the server where the image is.
Posted in Spirit rover clocks up six years on Mars
Instruments
The Rover chassis has proved to be an excellent design but maybe some new tools would be nice.
Something (laser maybe) to vaporize rock, and a Mass Spectrometer would be nice. The mass spec could also sample the atmosphere to see where the methane is coming from. Above all, now we know the platform can last as long as the solar panels stay free of dust, let's add a feather duster.
Posted in Googlephone Nexus One leaks more news
blackberry batteries
My blackberry has a removable battery so you can reset the phone when it locks up.
Posted in Mars rover faces icy death
Make some wheels sink.
Surely if they can't move it, they can at least make some wheels sink deeper by spinning them. Maybe that would allow them to tilt the rover towards the sun and keep it alive.
Then you have a stationary lander rather than a rover but it's still good for some of it's science work.
RE: balance... #
The Harrier had a few little thruster vents in strategic places (I think they called them puffers), these were used as a fine balence control mechanism. I believe this new toy has a similar system.
Posted in NASA: the world will not end in 2012
Planet X?
Pluto (formerly the 9th Planet) was stripped of it's planet status in 2006 so surely any Planet X would be Planet IX now.
Unless NASA are hiding two planets.
However many, we should be told exactly where they are so the astrologers can be more accurate. How many of us aren't buying lottery tickets because our horoscopes are not telling us how lucky Nibiru will make us this weekend. Not to mention how many get run over because they didn't know how unlucky they were due to be.
html?
I notice they carefully avoid showing the e-mail capability. I bet it's still text only.
Also noticeably absent was a demo of the web browsing capabilities. But then there's not a lot of WAP compatible pages out there these days.
Posted in Intel debuts Atom SoC for set-tops
home server
Lets see what the total system power consumption is. Hopefully I can get something sub 20W and replace my Geode system.
Posted in Skype founders sue former Joost boss
Quick and easy sale?
They missed free listing day on eBay last weekend.
RIAA
Rumour has it that the RIAA persuaded Microsoft to disable a PC's ability to record the audio it was playing. Looks like they need to persuade the rest of the world now.
Could be good marketing
How many people have looked at that page who otherwise wouldn't.
Nano lego?
From one of the links... "The tail is made out of 15,000 Lego bricks..."
That's a lot of bricks for 30 cm.
Understandable to announce this now.
Let the world (+ dog) know they've submitted it to Apple so the world (+ dog) knows if Apple reject it.
They proved it wasn't filmed in Nevada
Surely it was in Australia. That's where the tapes showed up.
Welcome to our world.
Where an _already_censored_ image on Wikipedia can can cause half the country to be banned from editing articles.
Where a configuration blunder by an ISP can block the whole internet archive.
Where we live with it all for the sake of the anti-terrorist industry.
ICESat should help slow the melt.
Ice melts much faster when it's broken up to expose more of it's surface to the elements. Therefore we can slow the arctic melt by stopping Icebreakers full of scientists from cruising around the place measuring things.
