Posts by Anonymous Custard 2797 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2008
Which presumably are a tad on the large side to ship up to the ISS and then have laying around there for a few years.
Hence adding the shavings to the liquid is the next best thing to having it in contact with the inside of a barrel. Thus also leading to the use of the word "simulated" in the quotes one would presume.
Thermite doesn't work quite as well as you would think/hope, although of course it is fun to watch (from a very safe distance).
el Reg actually covered this topic not so long ago -
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/09/how_to_destroy_your_hard_drives_without_burning_down_the_data_centre/
Nah, if you're doing it right you can just get Shakespearian and insult away to your hearts content. It's always fun to do and watch the confused look on the targets face as he slowly works out exactly what you've just called him.
So if I'm talking about faggots of wood (a bundle of brushwood or similar), or indeed eating the pork offal meatball of the same name then I'm basically ****ed?
OK, so who's the lucky astronaut who's going to end up wearing Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 suit?
Still I guess it could be worse, it could be the Apollo 13 ones (if they ever got the stains out after their fright...).
But then I suppose some styles never go out of fashion... ;-) A bit like my coat over there...
The problem is the amount of remote control/management, security and general corporate software bloat that most IT departments deem necessary has more than doubled over the same period. Not to mention the built-in bloat of the OS underneath in many cases.
Anyway it's productive time, as long as you go and make the tea or coffee whilst it boots.
You can sign up for NASA email alerts when the station is going to pass over your location here at their Spot The Station site.
I have it, and get updates most days of appearances. Seen it a good few times, always amazes quite how fast and how bright it is, and indeed how large it appears even to the naked eye. This is of course when it isn't being obscured by the great British summertime, aka cloud and rain.
1. Take two items never designed to go together; the more idiotic the combination, the better. The level of naivety displayed must be staggering.
Don't forget that at least one of the items must be a time-limited one (in this case the bulb illumination itself), so that when it does go TITSUP it renders the whole device non-useful and destined only for the recycling bin, even if the other abilities are still arguably usable.
And it has the added bonus of doing two things at once, so not only can you not turn the bulb off if you want any noise out of it, but once the bulb itself blows (and presuming that doesn't take the speaker out as well) then you've got the dilemma of keeping a non-functional bulb in your light socket just to keep the speaker functionality, or chucking away a fair chunk of investment in something which is still actually at least partially functional.
Someone in IoT marketing definitely had a lightbulb moment, at the expense of any practical sense.
Also doesn't Edge use cloud-based cookies, which you can't turn off and which will be of course available for MS to use as they wish. Hand in hand with Cortana, we also have
"...collects and uses various types of data, such as your device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how often you interact with them on your device. ... also learns about you by collecting data about how you use your device and other services, such as your music, alarm settings, whether the lock screen is on, what you view and purchase, your browse and Bing search history, and more."
And
"We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to protect our customers or enforce the terms governing the use of the services"
I'm reasonably sure at least some of that is illegal under UK laws, and bits are positively Orwellian.
I think that's fairly standard across most makes though.
Over the years I've had similar discussions with mechanics who have services my company cars (VW, Vauxhall Peugeot and Ford) and they've all said the same thing. And if you look at the cars those mechanics drive, it's very rarely the make that they are employed to work on...
Although its a bit of a shame, as one of the early ideas mooted for the prototype was as a wearable (basically a programmable badge or pin depending on which side of the pond you are). Having a couple of AAA's hanging off it would I guess rather spoil that.
My eldest is going up to year 7 in September, so will be interesting to see what she and her class (and their teacher) make of it, or if it ends up coming home and joining the Pi in extra-curricular education of coding and suchlike.
Anyone else think that having a contingency plan involving pushing out a "Slam Code" to a probe doing a fly-by is just asking for a misunderstanding or is tempting fate...?
Still heavy kudos and pints to all involved. Another in a series of good jobs for the probe, rover and satellite mob.
To which add "Management have scheduled crisis meetings for every hour - your attendance is mandatory".
My usual answer to such is "Do you want me to talk about fixing it, or do you want me to actually just fix it and we can then discuss it later?" I usually find that focuses the mind, even of managers.
This is doubly true when they also insist that you have a full and nicely tuned PowerPoint presentation to bring to the meeting, as they need pretty graphs and whizzy animations to have a hope in hell of understanding anything even slightly technical.
I would certainly agree with the sentiment, but from experience "senior manager" and "gets the work done" are mutually exclusive. At least unless the only privs and accesses you need relate to arranging meeting rooms and issuing minutes.
Normally asking for enough priv's "so I don't have to bother you again asking for what I need" to the IT person is usually enough, especially if requested over a pint (or the promise of one, duly delivered).
The usual answer to "What is your role" has to be either "minion" (which in this case would ironically have been right), "blame magnet", "unsung hero" or "ground zero", depending on situation and whom you are talking to (whether they have a sense of humour and/or the right to get you fired).
Either that or you just pick the role that has the rights/privs/access/whatever you need to actually get things done, although most of the time "miracle worker" seems not to be on the list when it's needed...
Oh, and for those who want to waste a bit of time, I give you:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/great_egg_race/
Complete with 13 episodes from 1979-1986. Includes the first one (Egg Mobiles), in which the Prof was only a judge, not the presenter (that was Brian "Playschool" Cant, plus Charlotte Allen). Learn something new every day researching el Reg posts...
Indeed, met him a few years back and he's still on cracking form.
Alternatively I also give you Scrapheap Challenge in a similar(ish) mad engineering vein.
TGER never did rockets (at least that I can recall), but SC did them in some form or other at least twice - S01E06 and S10E07.
The second one's rocket powered trains, not quite the same but great fun and includes a home-made jet engine. First one's proper rockets though, albeit with snow globes rather than eggs. And had Bowser Munson in it, which is always a bonus.
You don't even need the Play Store, just download it directly from the Kodi website.
And if all else fails, the Fire stick can just be replaced by an Apple TV 2 or a Pi. Not quite as convenient a form-factor, but both are still very usable for the job (my Kodi runs nicely from a Pi mk 1, as well as on my laptop and Nexus 7).
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