oh yes

Netbooks are just right for me.

most of what I need is text based, so by the time yo put a keyboard on a screen of a 'pad' then you are down to a very small screen.

yes, I have a laptop, but its too big and power hungry to do a full flight across the pond,

yes I have a pad, used for games and tv / internet film watching,

yes I have smart phone, lots of apps,

but typing / general most things,

, give us the key board of the netbook,

it does everything in a small package that just works

Nuc, why not

Strikes me that its not the Nuc thing thats the worry, its the shocking in competence of the operators and managers that's the killer.

did any one else see the bbc 2 Challenger program the other night ?

could be re titled, Nasa ups and downs Apollo 1 to Challenger.

So laser to a geo stationed sat then seems a good idea,

file formats

it is sad, to me anyway,

that I already have MS documents that are no longer even readable in MS programs.

its back to paper records me thinks,

he will be missed ,

I once as a kid in the 60's was at the London planetarium,

he gave a special presentation to the school kids.

he had us all wanting to be scientists.

BTW: re " Young Moore was present in NASA ground control for the Apollo landing"

was he not in the BBC studios in the UK ? I seem to remember him crying at the landing. bu tit wa sa long time ago..

the world is a better place because of him.

silly hardware

yep,

this hub does have the worst reputation , and massive set of problems.

its amazing the company that makes the hardware and the firmware has not pulled out, they must be getting a terrible reputation.

personally, I had lots of hassle with it,

I ended up reseting it each night, and that seems to help,

fingers crossed,

but do I feel happy having to cross fingers to have a hub, NOPE.

yes, I'd be happier with a small , low power modem only, not this dammed great big power guzzler / heater.

and no, modem mode is no answer, the hardware is still there,,

coloured ballons

so some one looks at the background,

and decides what colour to squirt into the baloon !

now the micro channels done by 3d printing is interesting,

super hub , too much in one box ?

thought,

I purchase an adsl router, and I might get one or two updates,

After a few years, it might be missing the latest features features, but it works reliable

The super hub,

which 'upgrade' are we on now ?

hay the last one even changed the gui on the log in page,

talk about deck chairs on the titanic.

now if they could split the function in two,

the basic cable modem part, and the add on parts,

I guess thats what the modem mode does, but that turns off the second part.

it still chews up power etc,

Hand warmers

I do not know, and its a question,

hand warmers I think work on a reaction between iron and oxygen.

at altitude, I'd imagine there is not sufficient oxygen to actual make them heat,

are they 'just' working by thermal mass ?

If so, would thicker insulation,

and a hotter lump at the start be more efficient ?

sort of thinking heat a LUMP inside the unit up to a HIGH temprture on the ground,

? mains power ?

then unplug and launch. no need for access flap to chuck in hand warmers,

so could make better insulation ?

cubics

i wonder ,

what is the volume of ice that has dropped off each 'month' .

is thee as trend forming,

technical

it has puzzled me,

technicaly, we can build large pressure containers to hold nuclear reactors,

is not under water pressure vessel 'just' a big version of the same ?

the small vessles we currently have for sub sea are limited , by the fact they have to fit on a ship, or are to be stealthy.

If you can build BIG, with lots of concrete, how hard can it be to build a container that can sit at any depth ?

its not like you have to fly it into space, it can float .

Look at the size of the big oil rigs, instead of building tall, make stong,

...

think BIG.

Arduino

Just a thought

An Arduino must have about the same 'power' as a psion II or even a 3 ,

they can run for a few days on a PP3.

I wonder

dollars

just charge the world in US dollars the same price ?

or is that too easy ?

user friendly

And whats more,

it has mounting holes, and all the connectors on one side

so end users can fit it easily in a box with their own add ons,

unlike the Rpi ,

ada / ocam / modula 3

yep

cache

what would happen if a ssd was made out of different speed cells.

one big lot, slow, but small,

one smaller lot faster and bigger,

and one lot very fast, but big.

you add a cache controller system,

and I'xd have thought that there is a long way to go,

spinning

just a thought

what causes the spinning for a single balloon ?

I seem to remember a video of a guy jumping out of a balloon very high, in a space suit,

he was under one very big balloon , and I can't remember that spinning, else he could not jump.

second thought, does spinning matter ?

launch down wards, drop,

let the gyro stabilise the plane and point the plane up !

I know nothing about balloons but a thought, and I wish you luck.

2G DDR3

interesting it has 2 G DDR3,

most netbooks seem to ship with 1G.

I'm running a netbook on 7 home, with 2G and its a nice travel companion,

never leaves my side,

another file system

why another file system ?

whats wrong with the other ones out there

apart from they are not Microsoft locked.

how can companies and governments insist on open file structures, but not open file systems ?

if I plug a disc into a different system I'd expect , with the appropriate pass words etc, to be able to read it,

Ha

why

why another file system,

are there not some perfectly good ones around, open source even ?

come on MS, you support ish open file formats , so why not file systems,

come on governments , you need to sort this out too.

look in the shops

did my twice yearly mull around the electronic shops at a big retail park this weekend, whilst the wife and daughter were doing there big shop.

noticed how few hard drives there are on the shelfs, and how many empty spaces on the shelfs there are.

glad I don't need a new hard drive soon.

software raid, windows NT rules

oh dear,

why cant redmond just use existing stuff,

raid , zfs , vlm.

how things change

once there was eeprom,

450 ns cycle times,

then flash,

45 ns cycle times,

now pcm,

4.5 ns cycle times,

works for me

blast wall

OK, if that is a serious blast wall

its totaly useless,

in fact it will make the blast worse, as the blocks will be tumbled over, and you'll have gravity assisting.

try a big bag, filled with earth,

those bags that bulk sand comes in would be ideal.

much more transportable,

and as for the baloon,

a) use Hydrogen not Helium ( it will go higher, )

b) fill ballon only to the point it just lifts the weight, and attach a smaller balloon fully inflated to give initial fast lift.. That then will burst, but the main balloon has the maximum amount it can expand before it bursts . or till the latex freezes / becomes brittle and bursts, what ever is first.

responsibility

but what a weight on their shoulders if they got the code wrong !

oops does not cover it

parallel language

what another new parallel language.

OCCAM did that a good few decades back, with the transputer

oh well,

PSION

an american article ?

no psion, amazing.

cache

Quick thought,

is the idea of a cache file not part of the OS.

it uses it to move data out of memory when memory is 'full'.

so set the ssd as the cache drive, the spinning drive as the other drive, and don't you automaticaly get a ssd cache ?

cd formats

Once apon a time, there was a format bit in the cd sec that was something like 'compresion'.

it was intended for just this,

so a cd could play normaly, or with the compression turned on.

the thought was that compresion amounts controled by the studio engineer and written to the cd, would be better than one generated in the car cd player.

MP101

looks very similar to the old Netgear MP101 does it not ?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/15/review_netgear_mp101/

coal power plant

How do these numbers compare to a coal fired power station, or a wind mill / PV cells breaking down ?

hybrid drive

would this not be the same as a hybrid drive

like the segate baby, that can already be fitted to laptops and net books ?

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=momentus-xt-seagate-delivers-fastest-pr&vgnextoid=afb2308aaecb8210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD

popular

so microsoft,

make the cost of windows 7 much lower,

say all versions gbp 10,

see what that does to old versions,