Posts by John Brown (no body) 25376 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"Also last time I checked, every US astronaut+family has received free medical care for life."
Ah,. so THAT'S how it's done. Now we just need to qualify the other 99.99999999% of the population and find some way to get them all into space for a few minutes each. Paging Mr Branson, Paging Mr Branson, call for you at the green courtesy phone in the main concourse of Spaceport America :-)
"NASA has already addressed that. They are planning "the first woman, the first person of color, and the first Canadian[0]".
Tokenism is the new black. Get used to it, it'll be here until it runs it's course. Probably another eight or ten years or so."
Likewise ESA and disabled astronauts. While I may laud their ambitions, I don't think this is quite the "everyday experience" where we ought to be making adaptions for special cases just yet. We're barely past the early WW1 fighter plane level in terms of space travel at the moment.
"We never claimed that the sun never set on our Empire, either ... "
Mainly because if you had, it would not be true :-) That statement was meant literally at the time, it wasn't just jingoistic bravado, there was always some part of the British Empire in daylight. And no, I'm not defending "empire", just stating the facts :-)
"Developing assault rifles which can fire in an airless, weightless environment isn't that hard to do."
Finding something to brace yourself against might be a little more difficult. That big Russian gun did fire, true, but they were so concerned at the effect it would have on the Salyut that they only test fired it 2 or 3 times when it was unmanned and about to be de-orbited as end of life And FWIW, it wasn't an "anti aircraft cannon" which would be very large, it was a 23mm cannon from an aircraft, relatively small. The follow up Salyut was planned to have guided missiles instead, so I guess they saw the recoil from the gun and decided as a defensive measure, it might not be too good if it broke the space station when firing it but I think in the end that idea simply never flew.
"Really? That abundance of caution why starship blew up?"
He said "in the development phase", which is where Starship is right now. Just as with many of the early Flacon flights, they expected it to blow up and even said so before it launched. They did appear to screw up quite badly with the destruct mechanism though.
"The priority at the moment is getting Starship to orbit, so that shows up far more."
And since Machdiamond asked, yeah, getting Starship working is quite important to one of the missions, ie the orbital fuel depot. Without that reaching orbit, the cry-fuel transfer and the lander becomes a little less important. So, they are actually visibly working on at least one of the stated objectives. And if Musk ever wants to meet his stated aim of getting to Mars, that fuel tanker/depot is vital to that mission too.
Why yes, yes they are. Very good for aerodynamics :-)
Would you go to space in an Apple spaceship? based on their usual level of engineering, probably yes. But they are shite for repairs and maintenance :-)
I wonder what would happen if they built rockets too? Would the Apple Core Stage be reusable or would they expect you to buy a new one each time you used"broke" one :-)
I was thinking along similar lines re the tape that can't be accessed to be removed. If a new/extra coating is good enough for the inaccessible tape, then why isn't that good enough for the entire job instead of taking the time to replace the accessible tape?
It all sounds rather like a budge job with a side helping of porkies to me.
"Chair of the Electoral Commission"
Yeah, not the best person to be interviewed on the subject of IT security. I doubt that was on his CV when he was appointed. Maybe if they had got their director of IT to interview instead, we might have got more sensible answers. But that's not how it works. Pick someone "important" who can waffle a lot and later claim they didn't really understand the technology when they gave "potentially misleading" answers when responding to the eventual Parliamentary Inquiry which will be so far down the road, most will have forgoteen, few will care and plenty of time has passed to "bury the bodies".
There does seem to be a slight implication that the car was carjacked by a couple of people and that the "unknown woman" who handed the phone in may have been the one involved in the carjacking simply because she was now associated with the phone and a woman. At least that's the only thing I can think of since the victim was asked to try to identfy her as otherwise how could he possibly know what she looked like?
None of that is made fully clear by the article but the two associations I mentioned above do strongly imply the arrested man was not working alone. The cops were still looking for a second person and made multiple mistakes based on weak evidence bolstered by the facial recognition from the CCTV. And CCTV is notoriously poor quality with badly sited cameras giving odd angles in the recordings.
And then there's the savings in the generation of the 'leccy in the first place. What might the wind turbine or solar panel efficiency be if we have access to "room temp" superconductors? not to mention hydro and/or traditional generators? But as so many have said, it's all pie in the sky at the moment. A bit like those conversations you may have with friends about what you'd do if you won the lottery jackpot :-)
"The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
So, even Douglas Adams misinterpreted the final dolphin speech then? They were the Galactic Council representatives :-)
"Delta Vee is still a problem."
But not insurmountable. if there was the will and the finance, it should be possible to "launch" a fully fuelled rocket from LEO having refuelled in orbit, with a final stage ion engine for a much faster trip further out. Whether it would have a useful ability to gather planetary data on the way may not be an issue given the primary mission of catching up to the Voyagers and getting data from that part of space. But there's no way that sort of expenditure is going to happen anytime soon. (Possibly when/if Starship proves its mettle and SpaceX actually does go ahead with it's "space tanker" development)
"grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts."
Are they mutually exclusive? Is that why it's "only" $99 per night?
And this IS a bunch of IT nerds, so is breakfast whatever cold pizza is left from the night before?
I think he'd prefer the breakfast over the workout ------->
"Are they building their own space station?"
Not as far as the public knows, but there's always rumours about what they might be working on. I suspect the majority of R&D never produces a "product", although some of the results might work their way into existing products. Remember all the rumours about an "Apple EV"? IIRC that turned out to be Apple working car-based software and systems, but not an actual car.
True. The "notorious Flakes" are the ones made in the Egyptian factory that are too crumbly to survive either the transport or the insertion into the ice cream cone :-)
"but for this occasion we could go with the inaccurate tradition."
Yeah, why not, you already broke about three other traditions before you reached that thumbs down bit :-)
Only Senators wore togas and the were so long and heavy it took one or two people to dress you and even then, you'd be hard pressed to lay down on your "chaise longue" and/or get back up. The reason you see statues or images of Senators in togas with the arm raised and bet 90deg is because that's holding the toga in place. Pretty much all you can do while wearing one is stroll around doing nothing except talking :-) It's a far far cry from the Animal House bed-sheet toga party :-)
"Would you rather be in a fight with a single duck the size of a horse, or twelve horses the size of ducks?"
Hmmm, twelve tiny little horses with teeny tiny hooves to kick with or a huge duck with a honking great big beak at the front. Decisions, decisions.
Although, as others have pointed out, power/energy doesn't scale linearly with physical size. That horse sized duck would almost certainly be a tad slow off the mark and definitely not be able to fly.
Same here. I remember seeing the odd Fujitsu PC on my travels around many different customer sites, but I don't recall seeing any since Windows became popular back about Windows 3.0/3.1 era. My brain associates Fujitsu with hard disks and rolls of camera film and that's about it. In a way, that's even more odd. I'm "brand aware" of Fujitsu as a name, but can't think of anything current that they produce or sell apart from the Post Office Horizon scandal, so "brand aware" in a negative sense.
"(though they appear to last getting on for 10 years anyway)."
I wonder what a new battery will cost for a 10 year old Tesla? Will they even still supply the right type and size of battery packs? There's lots of 20 year old ICE cars still on the road, and much older too, of course, so 10 years life followed by a huge battery replacement cost that will probably be more than a 10 year old car is worth is going to totally hammer the "green" credentials of EVs. The transition to EVs is going to be slow and painful for the customers and many are going to feel ripped off.
"Of course the plan fails at point 6 when money doesn't arrive from Musk. It also could be considered fraud, but Musk's extravagant promise, made in public with no caveats leaves such shenanigans with a much higher chance of succeeding."
It could also fail at step 7 when the expensive lawyer successfully sues your mate's business, bankrupts him, he loses his house and everything, and you get nothing because the expensive lawyers cut exceeds the amount of your mates ability to pay. And being an expensive lawyer, do you really think s/he will split the fee if Musk does pay up? Who ya gonna call (to sue the lawyer)? :-)
"I'm not tuning in to anything of the sort."
(not getting at you here, I just got triggered)
Tuning in is an odd phrase that ought to have died out even before "dialling" a phone number. Apart from some radios, no one tunes in a TV set these days[*], and probably hasn't in over 50 years. I can barely remember the old 405line VHF b/w TV when i was toddler, and even that had a knob to select either BBC or ITV. Tuning was something done inside the box once and then not touched again unless it needed "servicing" by dad, or the little man in the brown coat from the TV repair shop. It's all button pushing and digital nowadays :-)
"Film" at 11? Showing some "footage"? Icon of a floppy disk for "save"? It's all so quaint and kids today use the terms with no idea of the origins :-)
[*} Ok, some TV's etc still need to be "re-tuned" if/when the channels/multiplexes change, but even on the older ones where you need to initiate it manually, it's just pressing a button/choosing a menu option and leaving the digital electronic system to go do the "tuning" itself,
"Along the way I have fired many people. For consistent tardiness, drug use, ignoring safety procedures, embezzlement, creating ill-will with customers and co-workers, constantly lying, ignoring job responsibilities, outright sloth, and other things detrimental to the company as a whole. Are you suggesting that I should be forced by the government to keep these people on my staff? Shirley not!"
Of course not. All of those are valid reasons to fire someone, especially if repeated or persistent behaviour is ongoing. I bet even you never fired anyone for a first offence in most of those cases since it's common enough for people to make mistakes, have a bad day, or not know the correct way to go about things. "Gross misconduct" leading to on-the-spot dismissal is relevantly rare, it's usually an accumulation of problems in most cases. I think he's talking about the "at will" States where you pretty much can be fired "on a whim", in effect, just because the boss doesn't like your face.
UK employment law basically states that the employer should have documented disciplinary procedures in place and so long as you follow them, you're fine to fire people. It could get sticky of they go to a tribunal and it's demonstrated that your procedure is shit though :-) You'd likely lose an "unfair dismissal" case if your disciplinary process included terms like "staff not allowed to wear pink underwear, instant dismissal offence" since that would an be unreasonable or unfair contract.
I did some online training to be allowed to service some OEM equipment. The training said we had to wear chinos and be clean shaven. Well, thought I, fuck off, I'm keeping my beard and I don't work for you anyway LOL (and my boss agreed) since that breaks UK employment law. :-)
"It would require serious commitment though"
Yeah, the sort of commitment where you can hire a "sergeant major PT instructor" type as a personal trainer and promise, in legally binding terms, to pay them, no matter how rough they treat you, because it will take someone shouting very hard at you to get you going, giving "must be obeyed" orders etc., because the instructor is the expert, not the "victim". Can you imagine EGOn Musk doing that? :-)
So, let me get this straight. They are panicking and laying off people because profits are down? They aren't losing money, just not making as much as last year? And this is a full panic-mode disaster that requires extraordinary measures? Really? Can the CEO not afford that extra yacht this year or something?
Maybe instead of paying people off, they ought to be looking at consolidating the business and accrued expertise and looking for ways to improve thins rather than cutting back. It's the people who generate the income. If they really need to get rid of people, look first at the upper and middle management. Every large company almost always has far too much management as departments and admin grows during empire building and each department or division tries accrue "kudos".
"But presumably the reason for rushing is to ensure that their possessions don't go walkabouts, in which case having a friend at the other end might be much safer."
I'm not sure of the benefit. If you push the button and race up 4 floors, whose to know if someone two floors up that you just raced past didn't press the call button there and so the lift stops on it's way up anyway where said stranger might help themselves to anything "interesting"?
I was doing some printer installs a while back. Just the set up and commissioning, fortunately. I arrived at one site and the delivery guys had just arrived. I took one look at the tiny narrow staircase with a 180 turn half way up the early/mid 1800's building, asked if they'd already delivered to the other site, turned around and left them to it!
It was a replacement printer, so clearly it was possible to get it up there and they did have an electric stair crawler, but a) no way was I getting involved and b) I very much doubt there was room for three people at the same time even if they felt they needed my help. To this day i don't know how they managed it, I'd estimate they barely had a an inch or two of leeway. Hats most definitely off to those delivery guys! They certainly knew their job.
And back in the days of CRT screens, especially the earlier days of PCs, it wasn't completely unheard of for either or both the PC and screen to have fixed power leads at the device end, not a plug/socket arrangement, adding to the "boat anchor" effect rather than an IEC plug just flying loose.
"For my entire IT career I've been hearing about how the thin client will change the way we work."
I remember being part of the instal team that set up Windows thin clients for multi-national. They weren't bad, as such, but the system was dog slow on a morning when everyone came in and switched on at the same time. Slow to the extent that from switch on to usable desktop was well over the time it took to go make a coffee (real, not instant!) for pretty m uch the entire org. And entire offices would be offline if there was a network issue, no local working at all.
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