Posts by werdsmith

Re: A pound of water - in low grav

"The ISS isn't in low grav at all. It's only a few hundred miles up. Gravity up there is only about 10% lower than it is down here."

But the ISS does not meet the equal and opposite pushing back part of the equation that we have down here, so the picture is not quite complete.

Space Station has been up 22 years and a solar cycle is 11 years.

Some of it was up during the 2003 busy period.

Re: Call the RAC?

“ I think that retrofitting a GPS transmitter onto a low earth orbit satellite involves more than just fiddling. For a start you have to catch the thing and they are REALLY fast..... Assuming you can catch it as it whizzes by you “

Why would you want to mess with spacecraft in orbit when most of the constellation is yet to launch?.

Re: Clueless

Yes, a credible opposition leader would have destroyed May before Boris was in the picture.

Re: Budgets

Refurbishment of the flat is peanuts as by 1960 the buildings at 10,11,12 Downing Street were virtually condemned and had to be rebuilt behind the facia. This took almost 30 years. In about 2006 further structural problems were found and more major building took place. The place is constantly under remodelling and improvement so decorating the living quarters is really not anything to wet your bed about,

Re: Never been a better time or a lower bar for entry.

Not to forget, cleaning toilets and any kind of cleaning is extremely important, especially in a healthcare environment.

Yes, well known problem, it’s called “the curse of knowledge”.

The further into maths you go, the more it depends on understanding other parts of it. It builds on itself.

Re: Shouldn't be optional

Undergrad STEM subjects such as sciences (especially physics) will require coding skills and will include coding modules.

But, of course, CompSci is far more broad a subject than coding.

Re: Have they considered paying more for IT?

My IT salary in the UK is an issue for the business.

Because they can recruit three of me in our other location in another country for the same amount.

Increasingly work is going there.

Fortunately they over there often need me over here.

Maths is something I'm not cut out for, but I have to do it.

It's practice, practice and more practice for me. I am so jealous of people with maths aptitude who do it easily. Maths is much like learning a language, or learning to play a musical instrument (minus the motor skills part). It is enormous in breadth and depth and ultimately very satisfying to get the hang of.

Comp Sci will attract a certain type of person and there are less of those than might want an IT GCSE.

I'm an author and I do a bit of coding. The coding goes off into some other system and is never heard of again unless its causing some kind of trouble or is suspected of it.

But the author thing, you'll be surprised how much the success depends on promotion and getting it noticed, travelling round and appearing to do talks and signing sessions. Social media increasingly (ugh). These things are as much of the workload as the writing.

Like I said, it won't affect you when it happens and you won't notice it.

Re: And that would be one reason why

Being top quality is one saving grace for google, offering those map resources in exchange for your soul.

Docs are also good, but what is also unsurpassed and offered as part of the deal with the devil is their junk Mail filters. Absolutely uncanny levels of correct discrimination compared to anyone else. I guess thanks to their massive user base and wealth of machine learning resource.

When cleansing the W orld of toxic infiltrators, Faecebook is the abyss, the nadir the absolute scum pit. It’s not even very good.

I wouldn't be buying any stock, investing for the future, if they did float until I could see some effort made to overcome their production capacity limitations.

"Nice problem to have,"

I worked for a company that went through this exact process and now doesn’t exist.

Fortunately my shares that I was gifted as and employees, were sold at their peak before it bombed.

A French scientist speaking not in his first language but probably one of the other languages that he can communicate fluently in. I think he’s doing fine.

Re: Nothing there...

Even if they sound the same as if they'd been made on this one.

You really are missing something absolutely amazing and it’s very much your loss.

Re: radial engine

Chaining.

A chain is a set of links.

Re: "Some dealt with the RAM pack with..."

Bought mine from WHSmiths. Two chunks of polystyrene in a cardboard sleeve. Home on the bus, couldn’t get there quick enough.

Re: Retro-Wreckers

Put Sailfish on it.

My Gemini is still going strong. Had another update in February, to the Sailfish which is becoming really very nice.

Wouldn’t want any of the subsequent Planet devices, and even if I thought they were any good I wouldn’t want to be stuck with Android or a half baked Debian attempt.

I also have a ZX81 which has had an update (ZXpand) more recently than the Android Gemini.

Re: Still got one in the loft

The Stefano Merago re-writes of the ZX81 1k chess comes in multiple versions, each optimised in a different way.

Re: English is definded by it's users

And yet for all the language nazi sneering

One of the worst abominations in the English language is trying to equate people who prefer standardised grammar with a genocidal murderous fascist ideology.

English was once a set of building blocks that could be used in anyway to create communication, and any spelling that could be phonetically understood worked. Then Caxton happened. Later the Empire happened and a structure that could be more easily learned as a second language was required.

To this day, language is taught according to the rules and messing with them just make life difficult for folks who are learning the language. And teachers are exasperated by Faecebook thickos normalising “of” for “have” because GCSE examiners haven’t caught up.

And finally, “to reach out” makes me puke instantly. Someone is going to get a STFU one day for that one. Unless you are one of The Four Tops, don’t.

Re: Bad picture

Indeed, in the days when I worked in electronics manufacturing the by hand population of pcbs and the hand soldering was done in the “wireshop” entirely by women.

Re: The big book of what "hacker" means

12. To ride a horse for leisure.

13. A horse maintained for the purpose of 12.

Hacking, to go out for a ride on a horse around the bridleways and country roads.