Posts by Spikehead

Re: This really isn't helping anyone.

There isn't an either-or decision. GNSS receiver chipset manufacturers have all available GNSS built into their chips.

My phone is able to track GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou.

@Bronek Kozicki

You do not need a reason to own a shotgun. A shotgun licence is a "shall issue" if there are no reasons not to. There is no limit on how may you can own once you have a licence, no limit on the amount of ammunition, and you do not have to prove they are being used regularly.

A firearm licence (rifles, shotguns that can hold more than 3 shells) are "may issue" and you need to have a reason to own them, belong to a rifle club and regularly use them. You have to state which calibres you wish to own, are limited to buying only what you've asked for and are limited on the amount of ammunition you can hold.

You were lucky. There are still some swathes of India that are blackspots. Spending 3 weeks in Sriharikota with no mobile reception, no alcohol, and no real freedom to go anywhere - not fun!

Depends when her birthday is. If it's close enough to 18 she may be tried as an adult

Re: Economics fail

And has since been corrected.

Re: It's getting to the stage

There will always be those that have an over-inflated view of themselves that feel hard done by when overlooked for opportunities. If you are in a minority in a pool of equally suitable applicants, then the chances of you being given the job is low. That's how equality works. Trying to induce gender balance in senior positions where the pool is not in balance is a positive discrimination scenario - unless you are lucky to have your minorities being more suitable for the role. But would you then have that niggling thought that you only got the role to satisfy a quota?

Re: I bought a Nest before Google bought Nest.

I hate the idea of cloud connected control mechanisms - be it central heating or home security.

I could be home from work at any time between 5 and 9pm. What time do I set for my central heating to be "on". This situation lends itself quite well to being able to set my central heating state remotely, ideally using my VPN connection to home and connecting to my central heating control directly.

Re: Connection?

I had noticed that, hence in the original post I had stated that Dell would have to release a patch to remove the stoooopidly installed cert/priv key pair.

Undeniably a huge cock up, and seriously damaging to their reputation.

That convention says no nation can own them - there is nothing against private ownership.

There is a Moon treaty that turns jurisdiction over to the international community, It is in effect a failed treaty as none of the main protagonists in space exploration have ratified it.

Re: First built by SSTL, rest by Astrium (after they bought SSTL)

The platforms are built by OHB,the payloads are still built by SSTL who are only 99% owned by Airbus.

Someone beat me to the robot comparison. I was going to go for a different angle. Maybe a robot generated article will be a better read. All AD's articles are conceited egotistical drivel. Don't think I've got past the first paragraph of any of his pieces without thinking "Jeez, what a moron!"

There is no such thing a "Road Tax" - that was abolished in 1937.

Vehicle Excise duty on the other hand is solely dependant on the size of vehicle and the emissions generated by said vehicle and not on the amount of time the vehicle is used on the public highway. To make things fairer we need to monitor where and when you're going. If only there was something that we could use for that - Oh, the Galileo navigation system. Now if only they can get them into the right orbit!

As someone has already said, this would more than likely be installed onto a system that an image is then made from. This would be done using a tool called "Sysprep" which brings the system back to a just installed date, with all the applications still installed that were done before the sysprep tool was used.

Once this image is created, a new PC can be "installed" in less than 5 minutes with a 500GB image over a USB2 interface (yes, I've done this many times!)

Re: A third Tesla went up in flames this week

All three have been due to accidents.

One encountered a large piece of metal that apparently if it was a regular car would have penetrated the passenger cabin and killed the driver.

One drove across a roundabout, through a wall and collided with a tree. http://jalopnik.com/another-tesla-model-s-caught-fire-after-a-crash-in-mexi-1453376349

The latest incident is being investigated but by all accounts was involved in a non-standard incident.

So at least two have been due to extreme external influences.

Re: Lithium + water?

There is no pure lithium in a Li-Ion battery. In thermal runaway all the constituents for fire are within the cell. CO2 or foam will have no effect. Water is the most effective extinguishant - the more the better - to kill the heat (the only thing you can control in a Li-Ion fire)

Re: Wait a second...

Well, the satellites do tend to "roll out" from the integration hanger, where they are bolted to the rocket , to the launch pad...

A lot of the tech in SSTL satellites has been consumer grade electronics:-

http://www.sstl.co.uk/Downloads/SSTL-Brochure-pdfs/SSTL-25-years-brochure

Re: "even if "six-tenths of a kilometre" still has a ring of old school about it."

The most common abbreviation for km is Klicks. So they could have referred to the distance as "Point 6 of a klick" downrange..

Re: And then there is the weather

You design and build a decent enough vehicle, then weather will not stop a launch. I have only heard on one launch from Baikonur scubbed due to adverse weather conditions, and that was due to high winds. Cloud, rain, snow they'll launch whatever the weather. http://www.universetoday.com/90939/soyuz-launches-to-station-amid-swirling-snowy-spectacular/ and that was a manned launch!

Seems this process is on xbox too. EA have this in their new titles on both formats.