Posts by BristolBachelor 2200 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2009
Did you watch the uploaded version which cut out the first part that said "This is a complete work of fiction, and any resemblance to a real or existing story, or to characters you may already know happened by accident"
Reading books, I tend to consider that a film is like looking at a photograph of your favorite model (/actor/singer/person/etc.), whereas the book is like holding and feeling the actual person.
I already suffer from something similar on 1 of my accounts from Vodafone. On that particular account, Voda charge an arm, leg and 2 eyes for data, so the phone has all data disabled. The problem is that Voda send MMS adverts to the phone, which then asks for permission to access the data network to download the payload of the MMS advert. That permission is denied, so the sending fails. Voda then try to send the message again, and again, and again.
Not only can't the phone receive other messages while this is going on, but the fact that the radio is busy all this time talking to the network means that the standby time of the phone reduces from about 2 weeks to about 1 hour or less :(
"DNS, for the uninitiated, is the vital system that points browsers at websites when given a human-readable address, such as facebook.com or theregister.co.uk."
Oh, that's OK then. The internet is only browsers. Phew!!!
There was me thinking that DNS was used for video conferenceing, email, FTP, internet radio, telephone calls, controlling traffic signals, instant messaging, remote working, controlling power generation, controlling gas and water delivery, .......etc.
On the other hand, perhaps the uninitiated should go elsewhere for initiation first, and that includes AUTHORS (this is an IT site)
A few things. Firstly wtf is this doing here? a long ramble about finances; this should be in some pink newspaper or something. This should be 1 page at most.
secondly, Imation is what is left of 3M selling some good money making business divisions. Now while 3M carried on with R&D, Imation just carried on selling, until the point that what they were selling was old. Their failure was to stop looking forward.
As for RDX, I'd love to use it, but it's a standard laptop drive in a silicon sleve selling for how much money? All the crap they say about the drives being rugged apply to normal laptop drives too; it's just a fancy case but priced far, far too high.
The thing is that that $40B in the bank did not beling to Steve, and was not his to spend. It is collectively owned by the shareholders.
It was all very good for him to throw his toys out of his pram and promise to spend all of the money in laywer pissing contests, but I doubt the shareholders would have let him. People just have to look at what happens when you decide to transform your entire business into a lawsuit like the SCO Group. Regardless of any merits of the case, if they spent all their money on fighting, they would just get left behind as everyone else carried on moving forward.
As for this statement: "Do you not value the protection of invention, when you see it? You should; otherwise, there would be none." I fail to see how this stands up to any test. <sarcasm> Obviously, without patent law, nobody invented the wheel or levers and pullys. We still all live in caves and just hope to catch something to eat before we starve. </sarcasm>
I remember doing a comparison of Wordperfect vs. Word once. I seem to remember liking the fact that in Word, bold text looked bold on the screen, and underlined had an underline. Coming from texed and troff I thought that this was quite helpful.
However I think Wordperfect showed the same text as magenta with an inverse green outline or somthing similar - wtf??
For me Wordperfect was dead at that point. However some of my recent struggles with Word see me wanting troff again...
As for this trial, WTF!! The legal system always seems to surprise me; just when you think you have the lowest possible opinion of it, bang it gets worse!
You should've spotted your own mistake, when you said "Government contract" and then followed it with "project scope had been properly defined and the contract well-written." without an interviening NOT...
Government work means that everybody with a say hasa different idea about what they want, how and when, with requirements changing on a weekly basis.
What the hell has happened to Adobe recently?
Flash is well known to cripple browsers on any platform.
Adobe acrobat professional regularly crashes IE on my windows workstation.
Ligtroom 3 crashes if you are tagging photos (at least on Lion).
Photoshop also crashes very often on Lion (and sometimes takes the entire system down).
ADOBE SORT YOUR SHIT OUT !!!
Sorry Volker, but yes, the ISS has GPS (ISS is only about 250k, GPS more like 23k, so the ISS is well within the area of coverage). The ISS is not the only space asset that uses GPS either.
And yes, they are used for rendezvous (for spacecraft that rendezvous). For example, there is a receiver on the Russian segment that uses GPS to work out it's position in space. It talks to the ATV which also has a reciever to work out it's position in space. They use these to get reasonably close, and then the ATV does the rest by optical.
"Silent updates aren't just needed for IE; they are needed for Windows, too."
I wouldn't mind a silent update of Windows at home. However a silent windows update won't happen until MS have got your bank details for direct debit.
I'm stuck on Vista because I refuse to pay the ~£200 "reduced price upgrade fee" to move to Windows 7. For that price, I could almost buy a 2nd hand Mac Mini and run Lion on it.
I'd agree with that. I have a Sony "Smart TV". It even has a DLNA certificate (don't get me started!).
It can play MPEG2 files (usually). However it doesn't work with the DLNA server built into windows or my NAS (but it does work with the PS media server app; but that won't stream to non Sony things). It won't even play the MPEG2 TS files that are EXACTLY THE BLOODY same as the freeview signal that it gets through the aerial!
It can play things from (some) USB sticks, and Sony only rates it to work with SONY USB sticks; have one from someone else and no support! Oh, and it only plays (some) MPEG2, MP3 and (some) JPEGs.
It won't touch anything else with a barge pole, so when I bought my latest TV, I went for the cheaper option which is just a nice big plasma screen with HDMI inputs.
I suppose that in theory you could do it, but there may be some issues...
The GPS receiver does some simultaneous equations to work out it's distance to each satellite. Each satellite also transmits it's orbit information, so the GPS knows the location of each satellite, and it's distance to each, so can work out it's own location.
Each satellite is about 20,000km away. Now imagine that you add another "satellite" that is 1km away. Perhaps the calculations don't bother trying to work out distances for 1km? If they do, should a sanity check reject the distance being 1km? Does the location information allow for a "satellite" with an altitude of 30m instead of 20,000km?
Then there is the other issue. If the relatively high-power signals transmitted from the ground blot out _all_ the satellite signals, the GPS receiver will now need to get a lock from 3 or more ground based transmitters to calculate it's position instead of using the sats. That means a lot of groundstations!
"from any licensed service which is operating within the terms and conditions of its license."
And there you have hit the nail on the head. The license is for transmissions FROM satellites. By the time they reach the ground, they are very weak, similar in strength to the GPS signals, and hence very easy to ignore.
However, Lightsquared has said that satellites are too expensive, yeah, sure they'll have 1, but they want all the other transmitters on the ground; where their signals will be many, many times the strength of GPS signals.
I'm sure that the GPS receiver in his car receives the correct bands just fine. And after all, when the car was manufactured, nobody expected it to need satellite navigation to work out what road it is on when it is next to a SATELLITE transmitting at an altitude of about 26000km.
Only the difference now is that Lightsquared want to put the "satellite transmitters" on the ground!
Tell me, how well can you see the stars if I am standing next to you, shining a million candle power torch in your eyes?
But if this were the case, then you'd have to pay VAT on £0, because they are not charging you to supply you with text, they are charging you a license fee. (How does VAT work on license fees?)
Presumably though if I buy an e-book which is just picures, since there's no text, there's no VAT?
However, since IP is "property", and copyright infrindgement is "theft" (of property), then I think enshringing digital items as property in law and with rights to use it sounds like an excellent plan.
Probably a lot of that extra money went on bureaucracy, meetings endless paperwork and mind-changing (leading to spec changing).
However, according to the ESA, "The total development costs for the ATV amount to approximately 1.35 billion euro. This includes the prototype (ATV 1 Jules Verne at around 1 billion euros)".
I don't think that the development costs of Dragon nor the launcher have been released. Nasa paid less that $1bn, certainly, but they certainly weren't the only contributors, and don't own the rocket or Dragon (they are just buying them like you buy a TV, and what you pay for a TV doesn't cover the design costs either). NASA is paying at least another 1.6bn to launch 12 missions, and with the re-usability that SpaceX is looking at, their costs here will be lower, and some of the profit will probably pay off some more of the initial investment.
As for the ATV, it already has life support and is supposed to be fully human rated (although not launched with humans on board). The ATV guidance system is also a fully autonomous docking system, whereas the Dragon is told to fly in a particular way and is plucked out of space using the ISS arm. The ATV pressure vessel is also a bit bigger than Dragon's, holding 7 1/2 tons of pressurised cargo vs. 3. (also 4T of ATV fuel can be used for reboosting the ISS), and the ISS stays docked for 6 months giving a sizable increase of habitable space, compared to the 2 weeks (and smaller space) for Dragon.
The proposed ARV variant that ESA has been umming and arring over for far too long would also solve the re-entry problem (but losing about 1/2 the pressurised volume/cargo capability in the process). However Europe needs to do a lot of work to get the knowledge / experience to do that, not having done that already.
All that said, for it's job I like the Dragon a lot. I like the way it doesn't need a huge fairing over it at launch; I like the way it is designed for hatches, windows, seats and integrated launch abort system from the outset. If it can be caught and manually docked, that simplifies the AOCS a lot, and seems to be acceptable (although how it will dock with a bigalow is another matter).
If I'm not mistaken, the Soyuz do this too; so it's at least 60's technology (if not earlier).
However, I do very much like the Dragon approach, which is to build the launch escape into the actual craft (so you don't throw it away at launch) and use that for the landing. I also like the way that the shroud is only a very small part (=lower weight) with most of the Dragon not needing a shroud during launch.
Agreed; the ATV is not really a similar beast to the Dragon. The ATV includes quite a sophisticated control (including autonomous docking) system and engines sufficient to re-boost (or even de-orbit) the ISS.
I personally think that the ATV is good at what it does. It is a shame that the docking ports it uses are not large enough for standard payload racks, but that is mroe to do with the age of the docking system. The docking systems for newer space stations should support moving a payload rack through them.
I also think that the Dragon looks good on paper, and does complement the ATV rather than compete with it (after all, your car can also tow things and deliver boxes, but does not compete well with a tow-truck or articulated lorry!)
There have also been plans considering upgrading/adapting the ATV to support transport of passengers, or the inclusion of a re-entry vehicle for experiment return, but they were not requirements and so were not built-in to start with (<troll> after all, the USA has the cheap quick-to-reuse shuttle system for that :) </troll>)
"When you buy a toaster, TV, fridge, washing machine and so on do you look for a hatch to open them up?"
You know what, I often open my fridge, washing machine and toaster. I'd find them pretty bloody useless if I couldn't.
Similarly OS X Lion in fact, where I have to copy files to the LIBRARY, or edit the HOSTS file, but St. Jobs said that I am not allowed access to them. That's great, but it means that I cannot access the file server (needs HOSTS file update), or use Photoshop (needs files copied to LIBRARY)
Got the Henge Dock. (Also reviewed on Reg recently). It's really good (although a touch expensive).
Also the MBP does not need to get out of the dock that much. It's a monstor brute and was bought for it's processing power, which at the time out did anything else from Apple (unless you bought the 12-core Mac Pro which cost about 4 times as much). I actually wanted the Mac Pro, but the MBP out performs a MAC Pro costing almost 2 times as much doing rendering so I'm just waiting for the new Xeons to get the Mac Pro.
Dell U2711.
It uses the same IPS panel, but with a proper backlight, so that it displays almost the whole AdobeRGB colourspace, as apposed to almost all of the sRGB colourspace.
Apart from DisplayPort, it also accepts inputs from HDMI (with HDCP), VGA, 2xDVI, component video, composite video. Oh you can also tilt the display with the Dell too, and adjust the height without needing a hacksaw to reduce it, or telephone directories to raise it :) Oh, and the Dell has a non-reflective screen, so you get to see what you want in all it's good-ness, instead of the hagged unshaven face that also looks at you in the bathroom mirror.
As for all the output ports? My MBP has them already, thanks so I don't really need them.
Oh, and sorry but it's not quite £750. More like £600 or less (and worth EVERY penny)
"unkindly dubbed her place of birth 'offensive' "
However they allow people to say that they are from Wales? *
* insert another place as fits the humour/customs where you live, in place of Wales **
** No offence meant to Welsh peoples, I used it just for humour and because if I said Liverpool, they would've killed me.
That is a very interesting point, but it all depends on where you are.
When I was playing with Li-Ion batteries, the "clever people" who won't let you take your water in planes in England said that all the spare batteries for your laptop had to be in the hold, for safety reasons. The clever people in the US said they must not go in the hold because of the issue you raised, for safety reasons.
Obviously you have to get out and go around to the boot while flying over the atlantic to perform the switch!
I'm curious; where did you read that the passenger switched it on? I read the media release from Rex, complete with the photo and it didn't say anything about it being switched on.
Or are you assuming it was switched on; because when it is switched off, it no longer exists and therefore cannot combust?
I would be very surprised if you could disable the thermal switch through firmware.
It is there as a last resort; it protects against the software crashing or having bugs for example (like that would ever happen!). It is probably a purely hardware device wired in series with the heater and possibly other circuits too.
Sounds to me like someone just trying to get 5 minutes of fame (or trying to justify that the breach really is dangerous, despite this little component that they forgot to check).
"...HTC was also on the docket for that patent, but FlashPoint chose not to pursue it after settling with the other three."
Well since they got some money from the other 3, and it looks like HTC would have contested the demand, better for them to get some money and shut-up, than HTC demonstrate that no money needs to change hands and have the others asking for a refund!
This is just complete marketing spherical objects.
As has already been mentioned, the system will still use exactly the same amount of power as the existing systems (and besides, I'm sure my current TV does this. Peridically a relay operates for just under a second, and I'm sure it does it to charge a capacitor to operate the standby function).
As for the "with two backlight modes that cut consumption by 50 and 75 per cent, respectively, by auto-adjusting the light intensity in response to what's being shown (or not) on the screen" Isn't this the same thing that everyone has been doing for years to claim 10000000000000000:1 contrast ratio?
Nice idea, but; I think that robonaut is not actaully built for vacuum use (where it would be good to save the risk of a real human astronaut; but step by step!), and so couldn't actually work on FG.
Another possible problem is that I think that there is only 1 fully built robonaut, and it is now on the ISS?
"So does chutney cause cancer or not?!"
Well I can tell you that it will NOT if you attach this special sticker to the side of the jar. It shields your brain from the emissions of the chutney because it is made from a special meta-material originally designed by NASA for the space program.
SPECIAL OFFER 2 for the price of 1!!! ONLY £79.99
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
