Posts by Tim Bergel
129 posts • joined Tuesday 21st August 2007 22:42 GMT
Damn it all to hell and back
This news has completely ruined my day.
Laughed and laughed
Thank you Verity - most excellent!
Current votes
are about 90% in favour of keeping the old rules but as there are about 60K total votes cast the quorum of 300 million looks pretty out-of-reach.
Re: Immune Virtual Operating Systems for Attacking Defence Platforms ....
I'm convinced that amanfrommars1 is software........
I absolutely agree with you, trying to shoe-horn a desktop UI onto a phone was brain damaged and the reverse is equally so. Say what you like about Apple, they didn't make that mistake.
Re: "Google Play shop to which the Nexus 7 is tightly tied"
Bravo from me too - I've had no problems getting everything I wanted onto my Nexus 7 without having to use Google Play.
"that's a pretty speculative and wild-eyed bit of curve fitting"
... but fun though.
Re: Maxing out the device
I managed to nearly fill my N7 frighteningly easily - but I must say it was a real pleasure to do so as it makes such a good job of dealing with directory trees of data just dumped into it. Can't say I'm seeing it running slowly though - but I'm still going to trash 2-3 GBytes of music files...
Re: Fortune ?
"i won't buy another box until start menu appears and metro is switch offable at install"
Which of course is exactly what will happen. Eventually.
Win 8 is obviously going to be another Vista and MS will waste a huge amount of time and money telling us that it's great and we will all ignore them and about 2 years down the line they will come up with something (Win 9? Guess not - it's about time for them to change to a new naming scheme, no?) that allows you to completely conceal the Metro section and we will all ask ourselves why they could not have done this with Win 8...
I'm past caring really, but I'm certainly going to stick with Win 7 (& XP) on the desktop.
Re: I like the Metro interface... but it's so UGLY!!
I can't understand why any mobile phone user would want a user interface built out of those orange, purple, blue and green rectangles - I've always thought it looks horrible - don't get me started on putting this on the desktop....
Posted in Space Station crew enter the Dragon
Wasn't there supposed to be
some sort of surprise item included in the ISS cargo?
Posted in LOHAN to straddle meaty titanium rod
Would it be a good idea
to have the launching rail extend somewhat past the end of the truss so that by the time LOHAN becomes free from the rail it is sure to be completely clear of the truss?
Un-clickable links are fine
if using a recent Firefox, just select all of the link and right-click on it. Very useful.
What I want to know is where's the middle?
There is no middle. Its space itself that is expanding and its expanding everywhere (I think).
First thing I thought
was "Why did they bother to include that totally rubbish video?"
Steganography would involve altering the pixels...
not so I think. Steganography means "hidden message" and a wide variety of methods of hiding messages are referred-to as steganography, for example concealing data in apparently corrupted packets that are part of a Skype voice call. Agreed, meta-data is pretty poor steganography but I think the term is valid.
Yes
surely you can simply refuse to raise the armrest: "I've paid for all of this seat and if you cannot fit in yours then it is your problem"?
Another
person who joined The Register just to compare the Fire unfavourably with the iPad...
All sorts of aggravating issues
The best one was when I converted the internal email server to Win-7 and allowed it to use V4 or V6. All the Win-7 clients in the building immediately switched to using V6 to make their POP3 connections. That was OK with Thunderbird but I found that Outlook (inevitably) says that the connection works but when it actually tries to use V6 it manages to fail. I had to enter the server V4 IP address in directly to get them to stop it.
And of course the ISP can't cope...
But my real bugbear is the Kerio Control firewall, which will not work with V6. The latest version at least does not kill it off internally but all external access is blocked and all attempts to get Kerio to commit to providing V6 support at any time in the future have failed. So I'm going to have to replace it with something - pity as it was really easy to work with - any suggestions?
Yeah, sad about Stanza
I wanted to upgrade my iPod touch to iOS5, but I can't unless I'm willing to kiss goodby to the 200+ books I've accumulated in Stanza.
There is a good reason for wireless
"There is absolutely no reason for any of these kind of drug delivery devices to have a radio control system. None"
Not quite. If you connect almost any sort of electronic equipment to a human for clinical purposes it has to undergo extraordinarily stringent safety tests to *prove* beyond almost any doubt that it cannot pass mains voltages through to the patient and thereby kill them. The pump assembly will have to be tested but as it is presumably battery powered that will not be quite so bad.
If the controlling system connects to the pump assembly wirelessly the existence of a 1 meter+ air gap allows you to say 'its safe' without any testing of the controlling PC. Which is a great advantage believe me.
Not that any of this excuses the completely insecure link design - even 10 years ago.
Hey Lester
Can you tell us how many non-finishers actually broke down and how many were still moving, but didn't make the deadline?
Beer icon as you will probably prefer to drink it than dig out answers to trivial queries...
Charging during rest stops?
I noticed that the pictures at the rest stop seem to show a number of upper car panels being held up sideways to catch the evening sunshine - are they getting a bit more charge into the batteries?
Posted in Belgian buccaneers invade Rockall
there's a few more "outcrops" which are a tad more remote
for example the majestic Bergel rock - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergel_Rock
We are all doomed
"No one should be in any doubt that patents are a key part - if not the key part - of any strategy to gain or hold market share in tech industry"
and it used to be innovation & engineering quality that was important.
Sounds good to me
and I would guess it's much harder to get a plastic pipe to generate shrapnel when it bursts ... but maybe not if it's cooled in dry ice now I think about it.
@fatal flaw
Buy it ten times, no?
What are you on about?
The *real* eye opener was that numerous Arab governments have encouraged the US to attack Iran, something which your story seems to have passed over!
Agreed, an awful lot of the rest falls into the 'bleedin obvious' category, but that one definitely is not. Even if it could have been guessed-at, the number of different governments doing this is a big surprise and the information will have major repercussions.
I feared I was just being dumb
and sadly it was so. In my defence it doesn't look like I would have had much chance to see this in the UK - only broadcast on children's daytime TV. But still... hat, coat
Milky Way is cube-shaped?
Matt, can you tell us where you got that information? I am having a great deal of trouble believing it ... or am I being particularly slow at getting the joke?
Posted in PARIS joins the 17-mile-high club
Wonderful stuff ...
... indeed and thanks for all the fun. Looking forwards to LOHAN
Posted in PARIS nursing mother of all hangovers
Fantastic location for the launch
what else can I say. Really looking forwards to more photos and the video.
Are you going to try for launch #2 or will Vulture 1 now be retired?
Nice one
Enjoy your well-earned booze & send us pics soon please.
... or it didn't happen ...
Posted in Vulture One spaceplane NOW AIRBORNE!
Something has landed...
...clearly, but who knows what. How did frank get data showing the plane at the same locn as the balloon? I'm still seeing data from yesterday. Different callsign?
Meanwhile back near Avila, it looks like the chase car has broken down again.
All good fun and the tracking works really well. Thanks!
Posted in Vulture One spaceplane NOW AIRBORNE!
Looking weird
> # G6UIM-11: The main payload back-up transmitter, broadcasting "EA PARIS Balloon"
> on 144.800MHz.
> # G6UIM-12: The Vulture 1's GPS/APRS board, transmitting on 433.800MHz.
Anybody have any idea why the location of G6UIM-12 (the plane) is nowhere near the location of G6UIM-11 (the balloon) and at an altitude of 3400 feet while the balloon is at 37000 feet (and falling)? Did you leave the plane behind on the ground when you launched the balloon?
Posted in PARIS team cracks Vulture 1-X wing
@Neil Barnes
From my experience of building balsa and tissue wings, I heartily endorse everything that you suggested. In particular loosing the internal bracing & relying upon the ribs.
The original article says
> it really isn't, as England has used a similar program for several years now to
> weigh garbage output of its citizens
am I loosing it or is this complete rubbish ... I heard of councils threatening to do this but I didn't think any of them actually *had*?
@AC
My suggestion was scrapping Trident and use some of the money saved to deploy more infantry, particularly snipers.
Bet you it never shows up in the list of options to vote for ...
Kikkar? Shekels?
No idea where Elon found that quote, but as far as I can tell the Kikkar and Shekel are both units of currency, with 360 Kikkars to a Shekel (maybe), so I don't think this will help much in sorting out fuel/oxidiser ratios ... looks like a pretty dodgy translation to me.
Australians seem to have issues with road signs
... it's the only country I've visited where I've seen a road sign telling you to pay attention to the road sign coming up in 100 meters. I thought that highly odd (but it was in Queensland which does seem to have a bit of a reputation) but maybe they know what the drivers are like ...
Bad maths
Sorry AC, you have got it wrong because the frequency of meteoroid impacts is generally very low.
Suppose that, over 100 years, about 1 in a thousand homes worldwide get hit once. That seems a very high level to me but I'm making it more common to prove the point. Then, over the same period, one house in 10**18 would get hit six times. As the total population of earth is a rather less than 10**10, giving us maybe 3*10**9 houses, this isn't likely to happen.
If the rate of being hit once is a more reasonable one in 100,000, the the chance of six hits is now 1 in 10**30 - so this is *really* not going to happen.
For myself, rather than blaming ET for throwing rocks at the house, I would take a hard look at the local kids...
Not worth worrying about
a) because it's probably impossible due to power requirements
b) certainly not any time Real Soon Now
c) if we can ever make smart spyware dust, then we can also make smart dust to detect & remove it - which will start off a happy little arms race...
18 times???
Out of the twenty 27-million-year markers shown on the graph, about 8 (depending on how fussy you are) don't really have an associated mass-extinction. Two of the circles appear to be (fairly) precisely in the middle of two of the markers, and two markers have a pair of extinctions.
There is no way I can see 18 occurrences no matter how generous I am. And how anybody can describe this as "regularity of the extinctions" is beyond me - looks like complete rubbish.
Come on
"namely that the person in possession of a particular image had a "legitimate reason" for doing so"
You mean like being a major museum rather than someone suddenly inventing some "research"? Come on - surely if the legitimate reason let out applies to anybody it applies to a museum - I think you are simply scaremongering.
Posted in Phoenix Mars Lander officially dead
@Giddy Kipper
Chalk *is* calcium carbonate - one of a number of types of calcium carbonate rocks. The most common form is limestone.
Designed?
Are you sure about that? All the reports I have been able to find state that what they did was to sequence an existing, wild, bacterium, use a DNA synthesiser to construct an exact copy of the wild genome and then insert that into a (different species of?) bacterium whose DNA had been destroyed. And away it went.
All very advanced stuff to be sure, but there is no design going on here.
Posted in BT fibre upgrades hit full speed
Milton Keynes not in south east?
WTF is AC at 14:21 on about? If Milton Keynes isn't in the south east then where is it?
Rather annoyed to see that Cambridge - our much-hyped high-tech area - is still not being converted. Maybe they think that too many people will want to use it?
Posted in Netgear ReadyNas NVX Pioneer Edition
NetGear ReadyNAS support
I was amused to read about all the initial setup issues you had - seems typical of user's experiences with the ReadyNAS systems.
But the real issue is NetGear's support. There doesn't appear to be any - though I note that jberger seems happy with it - maybe I've been going to the wrong places. All I could find was a user forum with endless problem reports and nearly all support coming from other users - very little visible activity from NetGear people at all.
So unless other users can say 'you get great support by going to xxxxx' I would advise against having anything to do with ReadyNAS systems at all.
Jberger - how and where did you get support?
