Posts by Annihilator
2468 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 12:27 GMT
Page:
Re: Bah!
Jeez you must be a miserable nightmare to work with.
Just to cheer you up, it was intended to be a flight-ready shuttle but just not the first. They carried on designing and building the first one (Columbia) while the ALT tests were being conducted by Enterprise - a rather necessary step given the timelines. The design changed significantly enough during this period that it just wasn't cost effective to retro-fit Enterprise with these design changes. I sense you're feeling betrayed/conned by NASA back in the 70's - it wasn't some big secret, just an evolution of space flight design.
Congratulations New York - you got a rare piece of space flight history. Hopefully it'll slightly offset the miserable office workers who get irate about it.
To quote Homer
"slipped the surly bonds of Earth" and punch the face of god...
Looking forward to next trip to NYC to revisit Intrepid!
Posted in Ten... eight-bit classic games
Jeff Minter
Strangely missing from the list unless I've overlooked something?...
Posted in Hands on with the Nikon D3200 DSLR
Re: The Sony sensors seem quite remarkable
Bloom ain't flare. It's the airy disk effect, or bleeding light, but yeah it's a symptom of lenses not focusing perfectly.
Prime example is taking an indoor picture of a window on a sunny day - the light will bleed out over the walls. It's what HDR in gaming tries to mimic.
Re: <-- See Icon @Big dumb guy
Good one. Now that you've mastered sarcasm, try mastering the caps lock key. Then read the story again and realise the guy lives in Texas and has a "girlfriend" in Sydney. Then look up the difference between "their" and "there". Then you're ready to move on to punctuation, such as the apostrophe, comma and question mark.
Then, with luck and a lot of concentration, we can get you wearing big boy pants and stop you having those accidents.
Posted in Ten... Bedroom Gadget Treats
Re: Best way to get to sleep...
Good shout, but think I'd need more material than 30 minutes each week, on a 6 week on/off cycle that the News Quiz operates on...
Posted in Ten... Bedroom Gadget Treats
Re: Missing item...
Cuisinart make my coffee maker - phenomenal machine (DGB900BCU) that goes from beans to coffee all by itself in about 5 minutes, works on a timer and delivers into a thermos-ey pot waiting for me in the kitchen when I haul my sorry ass out of bed. Just make sure there's enough beans in the hopper and water in the reservoir.
Think it's around 120 notes, but worth it when you consider it's doing it properly, compared with a ridiculous Tassimo or Nespresso machine at the same price but with overpriced coffee to boot.
Posted in Ten... Bedroom Gadget Treats
Re: I'm dubious
"what use is an alarm clock that wakes you up 20 minutes before or after the time you set it for?"
The alarm clock wakes you up at the optimal time between any window you choose, you set the latest time it can wake you, it's not an enforced +/- 20 minutes. The idea is (and it's a good one) that chances are you'll be semi-awake close to your alarm going off that it would make sense for you to be woken then instead of letting you fall into a deeper sleep and waking you 15 minutes later.
So if I want to wake up by 7am, I tell it between 6:30 and 7, knowing that a 6:32 wake-up call where I'm ready to be woken is a damn sight better than a groggy 7am alarm.
Re: <-- See Icon
There's nothing in the police's investigative arsenal that beats a criminal being stupid. Fortunately America are proud to claim some of the stupidest criminals in the world.
Posted in LOHAN dives into Reg forums mosh pit
Question
Have you considered hydrogen instead of helium?...
*cough*
Re: Why He?
You're overlooking one key aspect. Top boffinry demands that a pipe is smoked and chewed on throughout the experiment. The playmobil 'naut would be fine, but we need to reduce the risk on the ground for Lewis and his fellow boffins - rocket fuel is going to be hazardous enough! :-)
@DF118
"Precedent" isn't "oh I know someone who says it so it's ok". It's pronounced Isle-La because that's the name of the island. I know people who pronounce Culzean as Cull-Zeen, doesn't set a precedent.
Re: Pedantry alert
Further pedantry says that the 3 years has to occur while in Scotland before it's whisky.
Though it could be whiskey, which pretty much has the "anything goes" rule :-)
Up up and Islay?
Pun would work if Islay rhymed with "away", but given it's pronounced "aisle-lah" (like the name Isla, as in Isla Fisher) it doesn't really work. Unless you're on TV in American where I often hear it pronounced wrongly.
3/10 - must try harder.
Posted in Dark matter hits you once a minute
Looking forward
to the Daily Mail article explaining how this causes/cures various cancers.
Re: Stupid is as stupid does.
Quite. When travelling in India there were a number of people on the streets begging who I noticed were missing various limbs. I was told by a local that it was common for people to pay to remove limbs in order to generate more sympathy and increase their income via begging. The prominence of the missing limbs went some way to validate this claim.
Re: Memories!.......on 1.44 MB disc
Except as I recall they were DMF formatted disks, so technically they were 1680KB disks :-)
I'll climb back under my pedant rock now
Re: You have rights beyond any warranty.
@Mark 65 - I think it has to burn out "beyond economical repair" too (more vagueness ensues depending on "economical" and who's repairing it). A simple breakdown of a component is to be expected within the lifetime of the unit. You're right in that it's the reasonable person argument, but how many retailers allow their employees to be reasonable?
I know modern Sony's are drag-drop, I'm talking about literally not forgiving them from 12 years ago when I owned a Net Walkman (NW-MS9). T'was a lovely little thing that was ruined by the software :-)
Re: You have rights beyond any warranty.
I believe that you (the consumer) have to prove to the retailer in question that the fault wasn't caused by expected wear/tear and was a genuine failure before its expected life. The 6 year rule is so vague as to be practically impossible to get any traction on.
O/T, you don't buy into iPods due to iTunes, yet have forgiven Sony for their OpenMG Jukebox abomination? To each their own! :-)
Posted in Battling remote-control helicopters
Re: 5 minutes?
Granted the AR gives you 12 minutes flight time, but a staggering 90 minutes charge time is required Suddenly 30 minutes for 5 minutes flight seems quite attractive.
Having said all that, I'd still sell a kidney for the Parrot AR Drone.
Re: Global Payments Download.
"Greetings Professor Falken... Shall we play a game?"
Re: communication irritation
"yes I live near Liverpool..."
To be satirically fair, the call centre could have been anywhere then and had the same troubles...
Posted in Griffin Reserve Battery Case
Dock connector
Bizarre that they don't just have a dock connector on it. At the very least they could have let the USB cable work as a dock connector for syncing.
Transparent
"We might end up wearing our memory devices"
Not sure about you, but my preference for my clothing would be firmly described as "opaque" - although transparent isn't always objectionable in specific examples of the opposite sex..
Also a fine choice for some emperors I hear
Re: almost puzzled
Oh FFS, not everything is a slight against Turing. In terms of breaking Enigma, Turing was nowhere near the first to do it - he joined Knox's team (who was mentioned).
Presumably you're of the simplistic view that "Enigma" = "Bletchley" = "Turing". The initial cracks of a (weak) Enigma were done in Poland, the findings handed over to the Brits when it became clear Poland would fall to Germany and generically broken by Knox, as mentioned in the article. Turing helped to break Naval Enigma, and also designed the British Bombes that automated the cracking.
It's actually far more complex than what I've just wrote, so I suggest you stop seeing homophobia everywhere, go to Bletchley and learn about it - I'd also suggest looking at the memorial to Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki.
Re: I'd be satisfied
I didn't mention the age of the phone :-) If it was the same provider you would have just swapped in the SIM from the old phone - it's that which usually inhibits 3G - it usually has "3G" written on the card itself, so worth checking out.
Re: I'd be satisfied
Well, assuming you're in a 3G network I'd be suspicious you're carrying a very old SIM. Not many people realise that you do need a specific 3G SIM as the older ones didn't permit the functionality. Though if you got the SIM card in the last 4-5 years you're probably just in a not-spot, but worth checking with your provider.
How things change
Funny how back in October Schiller was keen to avoid the 4G label for the iPhone 4S as there was no consensus on what 4G was and Apple didn't want to get bogged down in that debate.
Skip forward 6 months and it's suddenly sure of what 4G is, made it a key feature of the iPad and wants to sell it in countries where it matters not a jot.
One could almost begin to be cynical about this stuff..
Re: Baaa!
Ah yes, because "popular" means "sheep". It couldn't be that it's a good game that a mere 10m people like, or think that it's great value for less than a quid... I suggest not telling anyone what you like, lest they agree with you, causing it to be popular and thus causing you to think it "uncool" in response.
Here endeth the post with the obligatory "if you don't care, why are you reading and subsequently posting?"...
Obligatory Simpsons
Hello, and welcome to the Springfield Police Department Resc-u-Fone. If you know the name of the felony being committed, press one. To choose from a list of felonies, press two. If you are being murdered or calling from a rotary phone, please stay on the line.
You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one...
Re: 0118 999 881 999 119 7253
Dear sir stroke madam. Fire, exclamation mark. Fire, exclamation mark. Help me, exclamation mark. Look forward to hearing from you
Posted in Ten... new games you may have missed
Re: You lost all credibility
+1
In their defence though, "Jane's" was previously synonymous with flight sims. Not entirely sure why they decided to tarnish that reputation by launching JASF but I nearly fell for it when I saw it in a shop - almost purchased it but stopped to check reviews.
Re: Boring arrogant factoidery
Maybe, but try discharging a car battery in 23 billionths of a second in a single highly focused beam, I think you'll struggle. They didn't just drop a spanner on the batteries terminals and see what occurred...
Better than savings or ISA?
Not sure where you're getting your ISA rates from, but 3% is a good rule of thumb, higher if you shop around. The 2.6% return on shares would be subject to tax, too.
Fnar, fnar
"Pair of double-As give you a cheap, quick charge"
But they won't get you featured in Zoo or Nuts...
Re: Alternatively...
Oh well played sir :-)
Posted in Galaxies to get the Pluto treatment?
Re: Galaxies have...
Not quite - it's accepted that nearly all galaxies have them. Besides, supermassive black holes can exist outside of galactic centres...
Re: I can only hope
Everybody loves cool wHip...
But to stay on TBBT topics, I can only hope you meant Wheeeeeeeaatooonnnn!
Thanks
"(5am to 6.30am on 15 March GMT)."
I generally bitch when GMT isn't quoted, so should say thanks for this :-)
Posted in Galaxies to get the Pluto treatment?
Re: This is taxonomy - not science (Some Beggar)
"Which muppet downvoted this?"
I suspect whichever commentard took his comments and went home in a huff...
Cool
TBBT usually do well with cameos (George Smoot and Woz spring to mind) so should be good.
“In fact, we’re not exactly sure how we got him. It’s the kind of mystery that could only be understood by, say, a Stephen Hawking.”
Indeed, I think Hawking would understand quite well how he ended up on the show...
"Heading for Africa"
Lest we be accused of resorting to imperialism again, maybe there should be a similar range safety system so you can remotely blow up any disastrous launches that may be interpreted by foreign nations as a pre-emptive strike :-)
Posted in Galaxies to get the Pluto treatment?
Re: This is taxonomy - not science
"Everything from 'grain of dust' to quasar follows the same physical laws"
Except they don't, that's the problem. Galaxies (as the proposed definition describes them) only follow Newtonian physics if we assume there is some mass/energy in them that we can't detect - dark matter.
Either dark matter is real and we figure out what it is at some point, or dark matter is the equivalent of Vulcan to our latest theories - something that's covering for our lack of understanding at the moment.
Missed op
Surely a missed opportunity to describe it as "downloading more advanced than brownloading"?
Posted in TuneIn Radio Pro
Phenomenal
It's an amazing app (iOS version in this instance) that I use quite often, particularly for a sneaky listen of Popmaster at work..
Only thing that's unclear to me is the bandwidth requirements. I rarely use it on a cellular network for that reason, though find it works very well.
Correction
"Now the software biz behemoth has put its hands up and admitted in a detailed dissection of the blunder how a calendar glitch trashed its server farm. It's also a handy guide to setting up your own wholesale-sized cloud platform."
Surely that should be "a handy guide on how not to set up your own wholesale-sized cloud platform?"
Re: ROFL at this...
Weirdly though, over on the iPad 2 comments sections you have people complaining that Apple are bad for artificially creating demand...
4G in its vagueries
IIRC at the iPhone 4S launch they said they weren't going to get bogged down with 4G labels as it was ill-defined etc. Have they forgotten that? Or just changed their minds?
Posted in Job-seeking IT pro? Head for China
Re: an understanding of what is required culturally to work in a Chinese office
Downvote me all you like, but just because *you* didn't see them, doesn't mean they don't exist - if anything the ones you've seen are put in to keep you happy (particularly if you worked/lived in the ex-pat community). My point is that many cultures squat, and to imply they must be 3rd world countries to do so is just rude.
Not a hobby, just well travelled for business and pleasure.
http://news.sky.com/home/strange-news/article/1310066
Posted in Lego space shuttle hits 114,000ft
Re: To bold Lego...
"To be fair, I don't think I was the first to say that."
Cough, not even the first on the reg forums..
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1296148
Not that I begrudge you ;-) I was loathed to credit it to Chris Evans, and think it might even have been a listener who texted it in.
