Posts by BristolBachelor

@AC

"So by your standards it'd be fine for us to eat people rather than cows? "

Now there's an idea. The criminals can feed the homeless and do something worthwhile.

To be fairer...

"I'm not sure you can necessarily expect enterprise like levels of backup and speedy restores."

Given that they have said that they hope to do it soon, but it may take longer than that, I think that they may still beat "enterprise like levels of backup and speedy restores."

Steve X

That's fine Steve, but I do hope you realise how much of your cash you'll have to redistribute to buy land and tarmac it to drive your car :)

I read somewhere that a recent motorway re-surfacing cost £1M per lane per mile, and that was with the land already owned and with the foundations already in place!

Anonymous Coward

You calling me a moron? What's your name? I'm sueing you...

@Rob Dobs

Why do Chinese people have to be 100 times smarter than the rest of the world combined to do something better? If Intel processors are best, does that mean that American people are 100 times smarter than the rest of the world combined?

Another question, if China only has things that they steal, where did their original inventions come from? Did they steal paper, the compass and rocket technology from aliens? And if so, where did the rest of the world get if from when they caught up; from the same aliens?

Orbital mechanics for dummies

The orbit of the ISS is due to it's speed. Basically it is always "falling" towards the Earth because of gravity, but because of it's speed it "misses"; If the Earth was not there, it would be travelling in a straight line, but the gravity of the Earth "bends" it's path around the Earth.

The height of the orbit depends on how fast the ISS is travelling; the faster it is going, the less curved it's path (in other words a larger circle, and hence further from the Earth's surface). You can also think of swinging a brick on the end of a piece of string; the faster you swing the brink, the harder it pulls outward, and this pull is what counter-acts gravity's attempt to make the ISS crash into the ground.

The atmosphere of the Earth does not just stop at a certain point, it keeps on going far far out into space (although the higher you get, the less there is). As the ISS passes through this atmosphere, it suffers from drag, which slows it down. Slowing it down causes it's path to be more bent by gravity, so it's orbit is lower.

The ATV is used to compensate for this by speeding the ISS up. (You can't just push the ISS away from the Earth to raise it's orbit, it would just fall back; you need to speed it up so that it's orbit is less curved.)

Not random

Didn't you read the article. They are books of PHOTOGRAPHS.

Probably the guy owns a camera, and the police noticed him taking photos of the seagulls at the end of his street and suspected him of being a terrorist. (If you think that doesn't happen read Amateur photographer).

After that, they probably pulled his house apart (looking for anything they could get him on, or at least really messing up his life).

Crappy software?

"It is buggy bloated and ugly in comparison - and that's saying a lot. Then there's the expensive support staff and poor interoperability."

It is a bit ambiguous in your post, but I assume that this is referring to MS Office?

bloated:

Comes on twice as many DVDs as the whole of Linux, Open Office, Gimp and thousands of other things put together.

ugly:

Do mean that ribbon that you can't get rid of unless you buy extra software from someone else that gives back the menus that everyone learnt on their training last year?

poor interoperability:

The software that you need to upgrade to open the new files that the one person with a new version has saved, but then cannot open the files saved from the old version?

Or perhaps the one with a macro and programming interface, but that doesn't run the macros and programs written in the one you just upgraded from?

Using two update loaders

Ah, so all I have to do is two update loaders, and it makes it impossible to brick something?

It doesn't matter if the update loader is a complete pile of %%%%, the mere fact that there are TWO of them prevents it doing anything wrong?

splitting CO2

"I'm waiting for portable technology that splits CO2 back into carbon and oxygen..."

That would commonly be called a plant. You can find a holder for one in the new beetles :)

Definition of Coherence

I believe that coherent signals have the same polarisation as well (or spin depending on the signal type).

@Tom 260

"The explanation is there in case our understanding of the physics involved changes in the future"

That would be a very good reason for the explination to be correct then, no?

Pentax

As a long-time Pentax owner, including owning a lot of Pentax mount top quality glass, I was very very disapointed that they took soooo long to come out with a DSLR worth having. So much so I sold everything and switched to Canon (now it seems like a shame, but because of that I've had a DSLR for a few years).

Pentax used to be top of the heap (including first autofocus SLR), and I still look at their stuff fondly (including the new digital 645 last year). It's a shame that they lost their market share. I'd happily recommend their stuff to people.

The in-body stabilisation sounds like a good idea, but you can't beat in-lens stabilisers. (With my long lenses, it was hard to keep the focus point over something without a tripod, and in-body stabilisers don't help). Also not all stabilisers are equal.

ATV re-use

There is actually a tunnel (although small) that goes through the service module of the ATV. Also you'll notice that the ATV thrusters are not mounted in the middle of the aft panel, but the outer edge.

There was an idea kicked about of adding an extra docking port to the back of an ATV to allow you to stack them.

I won't even talk about the pros, but some negatives I can think of are:

The docking port will probably add considerable weight to the ATV, which reduces the cargo capacity. (Also the service module is currently unpressurised, so pressurising the tunnel will also add to the weight. I think that the tunnel is also smaller than a docking port?

The life of the ATV in orbit is considered to be months. Add more time to it and you get problems due to radiation degredation of the electronics, and degradation of the construction materials from the atomic oxygen which exists up there (and other things).

You need a way of getting rid of stuff from the ISS, and the ATV is a very convienient way of getting it out of orbit quickly (avoiding risk of more space junk problems).

If ATV gets a docking port on the back, it will probably be used to actually extend the current station, or possible used to dock a small RTV (Return transfer vehicle) which can be driven to a nice return trajectory by the ATV service module and then dropped, before the service module burns up like normal.

(By the way the ATVs dropping out of orbit when they run out of fuel needent be a problem; the last one on the stack just boosts the whole lot!)

However often this question is similar to "why don't you take all the cardboard boxes your things come in, tape them together and use them as an extension to your house?" They may be fine to carrying a TV home, but often aren't useful for anything long-term. By the time we can freely get up into space and back and handle recycling up there, most of what we had previously parked up there wouldn't be any use!

Oh another example is why do software people write new programs, why don't they just stick lots of old ones together? :)

Lewis icon

Yeah, and he can prob use the same icon as our dear moderatrix too, but I see he prefers something more familiar :)