Posts by Geoff Johnson

ps4

Does the PS4 have this functionality? I see a lot of comments about the PS3, but not 4.

First stage

Does anyone know whether they're planning to bring the first stage down gently again?

Vimeo

Is it just my machine, or does Vimeo not work in Chrome?

Research

There must be some research that can be done in 5 minutes of zero g. The alternatives I can think of are 30 second bursts on the vomit comet, or full blown orbital flight. One may be too short, while the other may be too expensive. I expect this would hit the sweet spot for something, I just can't think what.

Just remembered drop towers, but they give really short times at zero g, comparatively cheap though.

Surface 2 runs between £359 and 3439.

Dodgy shift key, or very expensive tablet.

Why not use our internet filtering technology?

Just sell them our magic filters, you know the ones that will take out all the porn, and include backdoors into them. No undersea splicing required.

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.

which only covers the US

Says it all really. Over here we're stuck with Sky for legal access to recent films.

Sorry, got to say it.

It's rectangular with rounded corners.

Again, sorry.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

Next Generation.

So will the Second Edition be SmartARSE?

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.

Why not 2.5 bits per cell?

I'm sure it's doable, just a bit more logic around the edges.

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?

Monitoring site

Is it just some cache thing on my machine or is the monitoring site 2 days out of date?

E-Mail

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.

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.

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.

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.