Re: Weird is as weird does
It must have been just before that that someone said "we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway" :-)
568 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jun 2010
I believe that it's actually pretty tricky (and expensive) to get something into an orbit which intersects the sun. For a start you have to cancel your orbital speed, which at Earth's distance is a little under 30km/s. For comparison, escape velocity (from the Solar system) from Earth's orbit is just under 17km/s. So it would be easier and cheaper (but arguably less responsible) to send something out into the universe than into the sun. Cheaper than both is to lower the orbit enough for Earth's atmosphere to finish the job.
It could outdrag virtually all the jet fighters. I'll give you the three hours thing ;-)
I think it's a reference to Apollo 11's repeated computer errors (1201/1202?) during the descent from lunar orbit to the surface, which were (probably?) caused by the crew turning on the rendezvous radar in case they needed to abort back to lunar orbit. I think this was a last-minute (untested?) addition to the flight plan, and the extra computational load caused the aforementioned errors.
Sort of snarky, sort of a nerdy in-joke.
I used to think along those lines, but there are a few key differences between a phone service and social media, including but not limited to:
* Phone calls are usually direct, one-to-one connections
* Phone services are fungible - if I don't like the one I'm with it's easy to change to another provider and I can still call all my friends no matter who they're with
The big one as far as I'm concerned is motivation: my phone company is (I hope) motivated to keep my custom by providing a good service so that I keep paying them. A social media company running on the business model of providing a "free" service which is paid for by advertising is motivated to put as many ads in front of me as possible. They do this by showing me things which will keep me engaged with the platform. This in turn means that they are not an impartial service provider, but they are actively deciding what to show me. Which means, to my mind, that they bear some responsibility for that content.
The only experience that I remember with OS/2 was deleting the mouse driver. I can't remember how, or if, I fixed it, but I vividly remember how I deleted it: having selected the icon on the screen I intended to press Return (or Enter, whatever), but instead I managed to fat-finger Delete followed a split-second later by Return. Just enough time to form the memory of the "Are you sure you want to delete this?" dialog, with the default being "Yes" X-(
It's not out of print at the moment. Probably available elsewhere too.
I do wonder whether the Audible version has sound effects :-)
All I can add to the discussion is Flanders & Swann's Song of Reproduction
I, a UK citizen, once went on holiday to Mexico via California. Flying back from Mexico to California there were two immigration lines: one for US citizens and one for Mexican citizens. So I chose the shorter one and had a short chat with a nonplussed customs officer who had never seen a British passport before. This was in the mid 90s, so it was an amusing incident rather than a harrowing ordeal.
If the yellow foam earplugs do it for you, go for it!
Over years as a biker I could never find anything off the shelf that worked for long, so I ended up with custom made earplugs for about £80. Which last for years and may end up cheaper than disposable ones. As long as you don't lose them....
Are you sure you're not thinking of electrowetting?
At one place I worked, the helldesk boosted their stats with this little wheeze: any time I had to chase them about a job that was taking longer than expected (like getting me the access I needed to do my job when I first joined), they would open a ticket for my enquiry (about the first ticket, I hope you're keeping up with this) and then close it as successfully completed as soon as I hung up the phone. Well, they had successfully answered my question hadn't they? Even if the answer was "we have no idea" ten days in a row!
Define "steal". In English law the definition includes the intention to permanently deprive the owner of their property. I may have got the wording wrong, but the consequence is that joyriding (where the vehicle is abandoned at the end of the ride) is not theft, and a new offence of "taking without owner's consent" had to be created.
I'm pretty sure I've heard the same description applied to the Lancaster, but I can't provide a source for that.
My favourite quote which is definitely about the Avro Shackleton was from a documentary about them which was filmed shortly before they were retired, in which a pilot was asked whether he liked flying them and replied something like "we've got leather seats and Rolls Royce engines, it doesn't get much better than this!"
I'm sure I read a report somewhere recently that all of those CXXXs who say they work 60+ hours a week are including working meals (hmmm), gym sessions (gotta stay in shape!), networking events (you have to *hic* stay in touch with what your competitors are doing), and pretty much anything else that can be related to work, however tenuously.
I understand and agree with all of that, I'm just a bit surprised that nobody thought to have it traveling with its back to the direction of travel from the start. As you say, we've got enough junk up there already to know the risks, why use a multi billion dollar mirror array to confirm them?
I'm pretty sure that the Apollo 1 CM was pressurised to one atmosphere for the fatal ground test.
A tragic irony of that event was that the door was designed to open inwards because of the problem Gus Grissom had with his Mercury capsule in 1961: the hatch release was triggered early and he nearly drowned.
Recommended reading: "Rocket Men" by Craig Nelson.
When I was the spotty yoof in the story, I had a summer job in a government department, so competition wasn't a concern.
I finished some task or other and asked my boss for more work; she had a quiet word with me about stretching the work to fit the time. So, with some time on my hands I used the desktop PC to explore the LAN until I found a Unix box to play with. A week later someone from IT asked me to stop using time on their production box =8-O
I wish. One of my current projects is to use my Nextcloud instance to host my todo list. Should be easy, right? The free Nextcloud Web UI on the desktop has a free "Tasks" app which is pretty spiffy, all I need is an Android app to access the same thing on my phone. But no, none of the *many* apps I've found so far seem to be able to do this on their own, they need a separate app to sync to the server! The one which I used standalone for free, Tasks.org, wants $30 *per* *year* to allow me to do this =8-O