Posts by TRT

Space caltrops!

Re: not just servers

Is that the old cruciform, which was wired up like an explosion in a cable factory, or the new blue and glass one, which has 300 times more wire in it, but at least it's all hidden away behind locked doors?

Re: How can you tell when a user is lying to you?

Yes, I emailed The Cloud yesterday to let them know that a user had clicked on a link to their instructions for connecting but thought it was a spoof site because of a spelling error and the screen grabs of How to Connect a Mac under OS X showed something very different to what they saw on their Mac. I saw that the images were from around OS X 10.3/10.4 era - when Powerbooks had separate AirPort cards, and got her connected anyway.

Reply back from The Cloud helpdesk - it's OK, it's the genuine site, but a recent server glitch has meant that some really old pages from backup had been made live by accident.

Really? I thought. I wonder what the newer instructions are. So a quick visit to The WayBackMachine... and the content of the pages hasn't changed since 2011, which is as far back as it went, although some of the window dressing had.

If you're going to bullshit someone, do it to someone who isn't going to check on your story and call out your bullshittery.

... or call the breakdown service.

Reverse

Automobile sur

Canard.

Re: Absolutely horrendous...

Is that like a rack of lamb?

I had the same on my home PC a few weeks back. Hours of hair pulling to figure out what was wrong. Fixed it, then last week two "home-brew" number crunching machines at work (bought in from specialist builders and that moved to our centre with a research group) went the same way. The BIOS screens were vastly different from mobo to mobo though, making it hard to find exactly where to make the tweak - on mine it was under advanced boot settings, on the other two it was under security on one and advanced settings - key management on the other . Anyway my reputation as a miracle worker upheld.

Re: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just 2 hours? I usually tell people 7 days allowing for all the updates and service packs, just to give myself a day in hand.

Re: Sounds like

But the people who apply veneer... they must be veneerereers.

or, as those are now known...

Semen Expressioneers.

Re: Not a 'thermal' printer...

Vaporised aluminium is NOT something that you want to be breathing in. See the thread about vaping and Alzheimer's.

Re: Good tip

We've got a family of feral faxes round our way. They keep rummaging through the recycling bins. I think they escaped from a local business park around the time of the millennium.

...filmed before the actual events.

Which is the point of the statistical analysis, yes?

Re: Bah!

Stingray anti-terrorist system? I didn't know Steve Irwin was a terrorist.

What? Too soon?

I almost read that as...

What time do I set my altar clock to?

*gets goat*

Re: On behalf of the human race

So... is Trump saying that America isn't great now? At least Britain's great. See? They even put it in the name. Or does that just mean "big"? Perhaps they'll rename the USA; Great America. Has a kind of ring to it, doesn't it?!

Re: A report based on evidence instead of prejudice ?

Nickel and Chromium per se are not dangerous. It's the particulate size as well. The study linking inhaled nickel nanoparticles and Alzheimer's was someone who worked in a car spray booth re-chroming classic American car parts. He got ill within 6 months of them changing the spray process - the new machinery made smaller particles.

Re: Effects of inhaling propylene glycol.

@Pompous git. The absorption is the crucial bit. It matters not where it gets in - if nano particulate (~5nM dia) nickel, aluminium or chromium gets into your body, into your cells, nucleic acids may wrap around them and if this happens in neurones, it may accelerate cell death by displacing linker histones which may disrupt mitochondrial function (neurones are very susceptible to mitochondrial failure). I'm saying may, it's all conjecture based on some studies and some as yet unpublished results from colleagues here where I work. I know down votes follow me whenever I point this out to people; I regard that as ostrich behaviour. Vaping is better than smoking, I *think*, because there is not sufficient research evidence one way or the other yet, but it is not risk free and there may be further effects - Alzheimer's is a very slow disease in general; a generational disease, and one with huge financial implications for society as it is structured today. If one wants an analogy, asbestos was hailed as a wonder substance, would save countless lives by slowing or containing a fire, looked harmless, far from it - I lost relatives due to that substance some 40 years after exposure.

So, I'm saying look carefully at the design you use - silver wire is probably better than nichrome or aluminium for elements, better still don't let the element come into contact with the vapour at all. Just to be on the safe (er) side.

Re: Effects of inhaling propylene glycol.

I'm less concerned about the chemical goop than the heating element itself. The most obvious choice for a heating coil is nichrome. The rapid heating and cooling of the coil will cause the surface of the coil to slough off nano-particulates of nickel and chromium. Some coils I know are made of an aluminium alloy which is just as bad. A study into the contents of the vapour - and this stuff is sucked straight into your lungs with the aim of getting as deep in there as possible - showed that these metallic nano-particles were present in the vapour, especially from cheap Chinese elements. Another study (unrelated to the e-cig one) showed that nano-particulate nickel and chromium, when inhaled, can trigger neurone death and start the cascade of cell death that leads to Alzheimer's disease. These metallic nano-particles are already present in the atmosphere as the result of car exhaust, mainly aluminium, copper, iron, zinc, manganese, magnesium, and vanadium - Nickel was found only in Marine Diesel fumes.

Anyway, the whole business of getting campaigns together to lobby legislators or convince the masses that this is safe or this is dangerous etc etc smacks to me of the whole Ad Men thing, with the smoking during pregnancy is good for you and the asbestos - wonder material! cover up and the thalidomide cover-up. Rather than anyone getting any decisive empirical evidence together, people just throw money out to try and secure more money. Damn the health of people, damn the future, money money money NOW! It will come clear in time, and certainly traditional tobacco products are an evil burden, I just say more research, please.

Of course, you could encapsulate the heating element in, say, glass.