* Posts by Dodgy Geezer

1773 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007

Girls Aloud net obscenity case falls at first hurdle

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Pint

I have a problem with the assumptions in these comments...

"...it focussed on the rape, mutilation and murder of the popular group Girls Aloud for – presumably – purposes of sexual arousal..."

Has no one stopped to consider that maybe the purpose was that of maintaining good taste in modern music?

Ecopocalypse causes giant fish ears

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Have your cake and eat it time...

"The assumption is that anything that departs significantly from normality is an abnormality and abnormalities at least have the potential for having deleterious effects."

Um. Perhaps.

Also, if the environment is changing (as it does all the time), anything which remains significantly close to 'normality' (whatever that is) also has the potential for having deleterious effects.

So ANYTHING(tm) can prove Global Warming! We're all going to DIE!!!

In other news, sky may (or may not) fall. This is consistent with a climate sensitivity of 4.5Cdeg. So the IPCC predictions are proven, by peer-reviewed science....

Paris. Because I can....

Wikipedia kills legendary journalist

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Megaphone

He's not American...

how can he be notable?

PS - like the new icons!

Please don't eat your horse, EU asks owners

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
IT Angle

I think I see the flaw in this...

Surely contract law (and all other kinds of law as well) hold that a signature (or contract) enforced under duress is null and void.

There appears to be a requirement to sign this paper, enforced with a penalty of 2 years jail if you do not. In my book that makes the signature meaningless. And, as far as I understand it, this is in line with British Law. Or am I wrong... ?

Don't call me Ishmael

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Thumb Up

I've gone through all your comments..

and there isn't anyone who uses the same set as I do for my home network.

It's called 'Dulux', and unsurprisingly all the machines are Green, Blue, Red etc. That worked well for a while, but when I got over 40 systems connected (SETI farm in the attic), I started to run out of simple words.

So now my new systems are Gamboge, Teal, Advocado, Beige, Whitewithahintof....

PETA pronounces on Obama fly-swat

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

Shades of GKC...

" Some organization called the People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants and Vegetation (PETPV--pronounced "Pet Peeve") will start harping on celebrities for eating greens or stepping on the grass ("Let the plants grow in peace," they'll say). Next thing you know, we'll all starve to death because we can't eat without offending or killing *something* along the way."

Chesterton (as usual) was prescient in this field. Here is a paragraph from 'The Napoleon of Notting Hill":

"Then there was the opposite school. There was Mr. Edward Carpenter, who thought we should in a very short time return to Nature, and live simply and slowly as the animals do. And Edward Carpenter was followed by James Pickie, D.D. (of Pocohontas College), who said that men were immensely improved by grazing, or taking their food slowly and continuously, after the manner of cows. And he said that he had, with the most encouraging results, turned city men out on all fours in a field covered with veal cutlets. Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian, but at length declared vegetarianism doomed ("shedding," as he called it finely, "the green blood of the silent animals"), and predicted that men in a better age would live on nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the pamphlet called "Why should Salt suffer?" and there was more trouble...."

(the 'technical content' here is English Literature, but still likely to require degree-level education...)

Johnson shuffle returns ID cards to the table

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

First first principle...

Why?

The country isn't made of money. Why is seting up an identity control infrastructure the best thing anyone could do with N billion, where N is a large number?

As I recall, there was NO discussion of the merits or otherwise of an ID card scheme. It just sprang into existence. Suddenly one day we were hearing politicians asserting that this would stop crime, stop terrorism, prevent fraud, and usher in the promised land.....

I would like to know where all this started. Was it lobbying by industry? Was it a Home Office wet dream? I can't believe it was a political idea - they don't believe in spending money to lose votes. Unless we find out how this started and burn the evil out at source, there is no guarantee that it will not return once the recession is over and there is spare money again....

Junior astronomer spots junior supernova

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

Where's the critical data?

"...Using a relatively small telescope, Caroline Moore ..."

Astronomy buffs reading your piece will be completely uninterested in Miss (presumably) Moore's age. What they will want to know is, 'How big was her telescope?'.

Really, that information is most important. Someone of any age can pick up a new dot on a big system - it takes skill to do it on a smaller one.....

Robosub prowls Pacific's hadal depths

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

A marker for all eternity?

"..It collected samples and "placed a marker on the seafloor signed by those onboard the surface ship"."...

Of course, the trench is a subduction zone. So the marker will be carried down with the descending plate, melted into the core, or possibly ejected again through one of the volcanos in the Ring of Fire.

Apart from that - good idea...

Storage world asks: Is a copy a backup?

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

P Lee is right. Very right

"..A backup is defined by intent, not format or medium..."

If I am going to run a new sort program on my database, I will take a copy first. That copy will stay on the same machine, but it will be a good defence against my sort program screwing my data.

Or I might copy the database over the company network to our branch office in New Zealand. That's as far away as I can get physically, and no use at all against a network virus that corrupts MySQL files.

A Backup is simply a copy that you use to recover from disaster. What that copy is, and where it's stored, depends entirely on what disaster you expect. And for any format or medium, I bet I can think of a disaster which would render your particular choice of medium useless.

So backup media and formats are entirely driven by what you think might happen to you....

Level 3 wilts in London sunshine (again)

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

to drum the point home yet again...

".. why are such data centres still situated in central London? Surely they pay more for land/taxes/staff than elsewhere? Typical London-centric UK..."

You try getting immediate massive bandwidth connections in the middle of the North York moors...

Russian blows off ex-boyf's todger with firecrackers

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Happy

Can I patent any...

Shot Down in a Blaze of Glory puns?

Dutch cat skinner publishes critics' personal details

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
IT Angle

Meeting of Minds - Art vs Software Engineering..

"She kills her cat for profit, then releases the private information of people who criticise her, for profit.

How is she not in jail exactly?"

Because she's an artist.

In other news, Bush and Cheney claim Iraq war was 'Performance Art' and submit it for the Turner....

Gov spunks hundreds of thousands on mobe condom clip

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Want to stop teenage pregnancy?

"Preventing teenage pregnancies is an important thing, and government money can be well spent that way.."

There's a simple answer.

Put the Government/Civil Service in charge of all teenage sex. Let them organise brothels, a 'date and screw' service, and provide free two-hour bedroom bookings in unused council houses.

I guarantee that, within 6 months, we'll have the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in the world, a generation of 30-year-old virgins, a plummeting population and nursery schools going out of business...

Summer debut for Judge Dredd computer smart-rifle

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

Umm...

"Afghanistan probably isn't winnable, but if it is possible, it won't be done by the mediocre. It's not just me who says this before anyone protests. Read, for instance, The Hollow Army by William Darryl Henderson, who was a colonel in the US army. He points out, for one, that, as a matter of policy, intelligent soldiers are taken away from combat roles and put into administrative positions...."

Pardon me for thinking, but isn't it possible that what you need to win a war IS intelligent people in ADMINISTRATIVE positions?

Anyone who likes shooting guns is pretty brain-dead anyway, and of no value in a guerilla war, or in a conventional one, come to that. There will always be more grunts to replace cannon-fodder. What you want are people who can develop tactical and strategic positions, and you don't want these rare beasts killed by friendly fire....

Nork nuke quite a lot less powerful than Hiroshima

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
IT Angle

Can someone tell me...

"US President Barack Obama said there had been "a blatant violation of international law"."

exactly which international law has been broken? As far as I know:

- NK ceeded from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003

- NK anounced that it was commited to disamament in 2005, but only if it received a 'quid pro quo' in exchange, which it never got

- any unilateral movement from the UN can hardly be claimed to be 'international law'....

Stolen RAF files are blackmailer's dream

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Heard in the RAF Careers Office

"when I fly close air support over Helmand Province I like to snort charlie and engage in phone sex with hookers."

I think we have just found the answer to our recruitment problem, sir...

@AC

"your moral relativism is insulting in the extreme"

What planet are you on? No one gets to ANY position of authority in our culture without lying their socks off. I wonder what you think of the famous security service quote that Saddam Hussein could have weapons of mass destruction pointed at us in 45 minutes?

Bates: Cops to defy courts over return of indecent material

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Happy

@ Peter Sommer

"I don't know the full facts of this tortuous saga though I have read the judgements - and heard the gossip. . "

In this case, of course, what is not being said is most interesting. No one in authority does this sort of thing unless they have a lot to hide. And the pathetic justification for not returning the disks suggests that the police are running out of excuses. If the police are really worried that they might be charged for distributing porn, will they also refuse to search a shoplifter in case they end up handling stolen property?

I hope the press, with the Register to the fore, are keeping a close eye on this one. There are the makings of a really big scandal brewing....

Facebook denies denying Holocaust deniers

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

I have always been curious...

about how historians examine the Holocaust in Germany and France, where I understand there are laws against studying it.

Presumably, if you were to examine and re-interpret source material, you might find evidence for differing numbers of people killed. If you find evidence for less people being killed than expected, does that make you a denier? Or is there some kind of range that the law allows you to work within?

Whatever the law states, it seems at least possible to me that evidence might be uncovered showing that the legal statement is wrong. Do you then have to go to jail?

Why isn't there an Icon for "Inquiring minds don't really want to go here"....

Firefox passive-aggressives adjudicate Nerd Law

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

You speak too soon...

" For example, under no circumstances will a police officer throw you to the ground and introduce you to his friend the Tazer if you crawl a website and disrespect the robots.txt file..."

I was going to say "Yet!", but then I realised that in several countries, such as Australia or Germany, placing links to a link to a Wikileaks article can get you raided (presumably with Tazers et al, or real firearms if you are a pensioner in the UK).

US states mulling Google book-scan pact

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Alert

Where the problem lies...

"Then the same deal should be available to anyone / everyone. ..."

I think that, in theory, it is.

The problem seems to be that, now that Google has scaned everything, and ammortised the cost, it can provide access to all the world's books essentially for free. Noone can compete against that.

So we now have (near enough) a monopoly supplier of all the world's information. Google has done what Microsoft did in the 1980s, and established itself as the only practical provider of a world-wide requirement. Even another free provider would struggle to compete, just like Linux.

Google may say it will do no evil, but how do you define evil....?

Why do we have four different 'I hate it' icons, and nothing for 'I worry for the future' or 'WTF?'

Can you talk and drive?

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

A modest explantion...

"If it is so dangerous then why do the police allow single-crewed police vehicles use their radios...."

Because it isn't dangerous per se. Just like speeding.

Doing 120 down a deserted motorway at 2 am in the morning is fairly safe. Trying to do 30 down a road near a street market 10 minutes after a nearby school has just emptied is very dangerous. Similarly, talking on a phone on a long straight dual carriageway is safe compared to talking on a phone while trying to navigate a magic roundabout at rush hour.

A sensible traffic policeman, unencumbered by legislation, would be able to make a balanced judgement on these examples. But we have moved imperceptibly into an oppressive society where extreme laws are passed using terrorism and mass murder of babies as justification, and then applied to any passing photographer or pedestrian who doesn't cringe suitably when an Officer of the Law passes...

The other reason is quite simple - there's one traffic law for the police and another for the rest of us. How many policemen actually get fined for speeding?

Torture case against Boeing subsidiary resuscitated

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

American Irony...

"Is that a Yank stab at irony ?"

It must have been ironic - everybody knows that Orville and Wilbur Wright didn't invent airplanes; that was Sir George Cayley, in 1799....

Whitehall to train pro-West Islamic groups to game Google

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Stop

Shades of TWTWTW...

This plan is an admirable attempt to do something - WTF?!!!

This is control freakery of the highest order, and doomed to fail before it has started. How would we feel if the Saudis provided govenment funding to re-interpret Church of England doctrines in a manner favourable to their current political aims?

The only good thing I can see in this is that, though we have piss-poor political satire at the moment (probably because all the satirists are left wing, and won't attack NuLabour), the govenment are stepping into the breach and making a laughing-stock of themselves without the benefit of Steve Bell.

Melissa anniversary marks birth of email-aware malware

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Will Cluley call for the arrest of the person..

who wrote the WinWord.Concept virus?

That was the first Word Macro virus, and ushered in the huge expansion of viruses into high-level languages, being writen in Word Macros.

It appeared in 1995, shortly after W95 release, and shortly after the AV community had been bombarding Microsoft with calls to make their macro language less easy to write malicious code in. Microsoft ignored all their calls, but shortly afterwards I understand that this 'test' virus was found to be spread all over internal Microsoft offices, and thence into the world.

Everyone assumed that Microsoft had been experimenting, but no one dared say anything....

US mums sue anti-sexting crusader

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Alert

I thought Americans..

Had a fairly rapid approach to this sort of thing, either involving tar and feathers, or a shotgun.

Why do they keep wingeing about being allowed to keep their guns, if they won't use them to dispose of vermin like this?

Pentagon inks deal on portable milli-wave raygun tech

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Gates Horns

This sort of thing....

would be really useful for the politicians. Tie them to every CCTV camera and, given how common these are in the UK, you could fry everyone in the country in minutes.

In fact, you could play a low level of pain over all your subjects continuously, and only lower it as a present to the few who perform well in your eyes. Or perhaps you could have the occasional pain-free public holiday?

No need for expensive 'special rendition' flights any more. Torture your slaves from the privacy of your own luxury villa....

I really need a 'God of the Old Testament' icon, but Bill will have to do.

P.S. - where is the Paris angle?

US spy agency gains support for cyber security role

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

We have seen this one before..

in the UK, when CCTA (who by all accounts did a fine job) were kicked out of their central IT Security role by Security Service and CESG (who promptly lost the plot). That happened when the cold war had just finished, and Security Service no longer had a role...

When this happens you can be sure that the spooks are short of a job, and are looking to set up a new justification for their budget. So perhaps now that Obama's in, they're worried that the US will stop bombing the Middle East and causing all this fear of terrorism?

Never mind. I'm sure they can cause a lot of unrest and pain somewhere else soon!

Teen sacked for 'boring' job Facebook comment

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

Ivell Marketing... how to ruin your reputation...

What a bummer!

"....I find it ironic that the good people at Ivell Marketing & Logistics fired this young lady as they didnt like the bad publicity they where receiving as a result of her facebook posting. A posting which didnt actually mention the company by name....If you do any business with Ivell Marketing & Logistics, I suggest you consider that relationship because they seem to be arseholes. I hope they enjoy all this publicity...."

I second this. Slashdot it. Digg it. Generally spread it around. Do you think the company really appreciated what they were doing to themselves when they did this? Widespread publicity of this type may save many people, including ourselves and our kids, from a similar fate in the future...

Terabit Ethernet possibilities

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Go

Long time to wait...

"..Commercialisation of such technology is, of course, if it takes place at all, many years away..."

So we'll be seeing it in Japan in a month, and Germany the week after, then?

Satellites crash over Siberia: Iridium bird destroyed

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

A Response...

"It's in space, and is weightless, therefore has no inertia. So how can two weightless objects colliding in space blow each other to smithereens? .....I apologise in advance if I'm being thick. No, really I do...."

There are NO stupid questions..Only stupid answers.

My answer is that the satellites indeed have no 'weight', but that does not mean they have no mass. We only see weight and mass as identical because we all live in the same gravity well, but they are actually different.

Kinetic energy and inertia are dependent on mass, not weight. So each satellite will hit with 1/2 MV squared energy - which may be quite large....

UFO ruled out of wind farm prang

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

This article is short on understandability!!!

I can't follow the mechanics of this explanation.

First, we're told that they've ruled out extraterrestrial shennanigens.

Then, the Telegraph says that "bolts holding the blade to the hub failed", which makes me think 'fatigue'.

Then they say "they're carrying out further tests to establish what caused the bolts to come loose", which makes me think 'incorrect assembly'.

Then Dale Vince "elaborates":... "The bolt failure was the effect not the cause of the problem. They have ruled out bolt fatigue and design problems, and we know that they were properly put on."

So now I think the bolts didn't 'fail', they were snapped or undone by some unknown force. Back to the UFOs!!!

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Boffin

Some Answers..

Are there any wholly scientific, properly recreateable (to nab a useful term "open source") climate models that predict anthropogenic Climate Change?

ALL the climate models predict anthropogenic climate change. That is what they are DESIGNED to do. They tie themselves into knots trying to predict larger and larger temperature rises from small increases in CO2. Unfortunately, if you look at the recent Muana Loa figures, CO2 is still increasing while world temperatures go down. Kinda ruins the hypothesis.....

Also, are there any long-term graphs that suggest it could actually be a real effect?

Yes, these are made by Professor Mann. Made up, in fact, because they are now comprehensively disproven, but still used to assert that current global warming is unusual, when it is actually perfectly normal.

R2-D2 robots with frikkin lasers on them in development

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Unhappy

Cynical response

"Would Phalanx be more effective at countering home-made Hamas missiles than invading Gaza with tanks and shooting civilians?"

Yes, but no so much fun for the IDF this close to elections...

World's fastest production car to gain electric twin

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
IT Angle

A few corrections...

@Stephen Hunter

"I guess you have an aitch-two station in your area and everywhere else you want to drive? Also, perhaps you've invented a new energy efficient and non greenhouse gas producing method of producing hydrogen which is also cheaper than gasoline or electricity? Oh, you'll also a volume efficient way of storing the aicht-two on board the vehicle so as to give it a range equal to current gasoline powered cars and still have some amount of trunk space.

'Cause those are the obstacles still preventing fuel-cell based cars from being produced."

So no obstacles, then? Because none of those are obstacles to a car being PRODUCED. They might be obstacles to it gaining rapid market penetration, but that's a different matter.

Incidentally, gasoline or electricity vary so much in price that you can hardly claim that hydrogen has to be cheaper than either before we can start producing. And since global warming is a lie, greenhouse gas concern is a bit overrated...

'Miracle' plane crash was no miracle

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
IT Angle

I see that everybody is a hero....

Me, I'm wondering why he couldn't make it to the nearest airport, which was closer to him at the time of the birdstrike than the place on the river he eventually ended up.

There could be good reasons for choosing the river, but, from looking at the track he took, it does look as if he could have used Teterboro. Given the dangers of a water landing, I wonder why he chose it...

Demon ends porn-less Internet Archive block

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

Your answer...

"It is not the job of anyone to filter anything. - To start, it doesn't work...To end, it makes impossible to track the criminals. So why waste so much money with something that doesn't work?" Kindian

"LA LA LA LA LA LA" UK Government

Child porn in the age of teenage 'sexting'

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
IT Angle

How did we manage...

before all these stupid laws?

If I recall correctly, we weren't that fussed about kiddy-fiddlers hanging about by bus-stops. Our kids had a pretty robust introduction to the ways of the world, and could take care of themselves.

If anyone kidnaped and raped anyone, there were laws against that. If the kidnapee or rapee (?) was a child, you can bet that every effort would be expended to catch them and throw the book at them. But minor sexual activity, particularly between children, and of a non-coercive kind, was seen as more of an indiscretion. And someone who liked hanging around the playing fields on the girls' sports day would gain a bad social reputation rather than a sex crimes register entry.

I wonder if we have gone backwards or forwards....?

IWF confirms Wayback Machine porn blacklisting

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

What lies behind...?

"...Would that more ISPs would say "show us your credentials to pronounce upon the legality of a given image." I suspect that the IWF actually has no more legal standing than any random troll standing at a bus stop..."

If an ISP employee were to say that to the IWF they would cease to be an ISP employeee shortly after that. The complaint would never see the light of day.

The best way for an ISP employee to raise public concern would be (surprise, surprise) to mis-configure a few things 'by mistake' and block a few things which shouldn't be blocked. What you are probably seeing IS a revolt from the ISPs.

Don't knock them, knock the whole principle behind unannounced and unaccountable censorship....

Could the Airbus A380 be the new Air Force One?

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

No, this is not an issue...

"IIRC, the A380 can not land in all international airports, as it requires wider runways than previous passenger planes to accommodate its wider wingspan. So choosing this plane would limit the places the president can visit in AF1."

"As Torben pointed out, there are airport concerns with the aircraft. The A380 is so large that it's currently fairly limited in the number of airports it can arrive and depart from, though many airports are in the process of upgrading."

The A380 can land at any airport and use any runway or taxiway that a 747 can.This was a design specification.

The reported problems are not to do with the runways. They are to do with the terminal buildings being able to handle large numbers of passengers at once, and the need to have double-decker walkways to disembark.

A presidential jet would NOT be disembarked through a terminal. They are usually parked in a secured area of the airport, and steps are used for disembarkation. So, no problem...

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Hardly pork...

Surely the Head of State of any country should buy locally and support their own industry? What would it say about the US if they picked a foreign aircraft? I would expect them to buy US goods, even if they were worse.

However, I would expect Airbus Industrie to point this out, and ask for some assurance that they were not wasting their time before responding. In fact, I think I would ask to be paid for providing my submission, since it is highly unlikly to be used for anything more than beating down Boeing's price....

Black Helicopters seem suitable for this conversation...

UFO wind turbine prang site sealed

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Joke

Aaargh!! The acronyms!!

"an ultrasecret robot stealth aircraft project"... ...would actually be a "UFO" wouldn't it?"

Nope. It would be a "URSAP".

Myself, I think it was an "ultrasecret stealth colliding robot aircraft project".....

New York mulls terrorist cell phone jamming

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Why is it ...

that the authorities make a lot of noise about brute force actions like blocking all phones?

When the obvious thing to do is let the 'terrorists' (asuming there are any out there) communicate happily and monitor their messages. For god's sake, so long as the phone is on, you have a radio tag on each 'terrorist'. As well as prior warning of everything they are planning.

Similarly for things like porn on the net. We should be looking to catch the child abusers who make it, not the saps who look at it. So take resources away from banning it,and put them onto tracing it back to source. There would soon be much less of it around than the current situation, where making it is virtually risk-free.

I suppose it's a bit much to ask the 'intelligence' services to display a bit of intelligence...

Droid sub goes under Antarctic ice on 5000 D-cells

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Joke

Funding for UK Boffins...

"...I wonder what's wrong with just replacing the Alkaline "D" cells with off-the-shelf NiMh ones and adding a charging circuit and plug? Ok, nowhere near as interesting as designing a new Li-ion battery pack, but it'd work and cost sod all to do.."

Actually, Southampton Argos were doing a sale price on pallet-loads of batteries in the run-up to Christmas...

Columbia disaster 'not survivable', NASA concludes

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Boffin

@Adrian Coward

"If you re-read the report (especially Fig 2.1-27) you will see that the G-forces were likely not so severe as to prevent closing the visors for 20 seconds or so. It only takes 4 or 5 seconds to close and lock the visors."

The obvious response to your point is 'OK, but they didn't. Why didn't they?'. And I cannot see that NASA have shown that this was because of unconsciousness.

If you read the report closely you will see comments that the astronauts spent their entire time on 'solving the problem' and none on 'preparing for survival'. They would have ignored minor bumps.

Why should you close a visor during the start of the tumbling? There is no problem with the shuttle air pressure at that point - the craft is not breaking up. The air only starts leaking out when the shuttle breaks up, and at that point the astronauts are unable to close their visors due to the high accelerations. It seems obvious to me that the astronauts were alive when the craft started breaking up, and the immediate cause of their deaths was trauma due to G force, impact with shuttle debris, or the slipstream.

The key sections for crew consciousness are the depresurisation sections (2.3.2 - 2.3.4, pp209-211). Here there are bland assurances that the crew were rapidly incapacitated, combined with a total lack of hard evidence about the depressurisation timeline. They reckon it started 'several seconds after 14:00.18', and was complete by 14:00.59. That could give almost any period of low air pressure, but I am struck by the poor evidence adduced - just ballistic data from crew suit patches. There is effectively no evidence about the onset of depressurisation, and the end of depressurisation is just assumed to be at total breakup!

If we look at your cite, we see 18 seconds of 'bumps', followed by 18 seconds of major tumbling, during which the craft was breaking up. Nasa's own figures suggest that you get about 14 seconds of consciousness when exposed to a vacuum, and die about 2 minutes later. http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html refers. If a guess is taken that depressurisation was complete halfway through the tumbling process (and the NASA report suggests that the crew module stayed intact for longer), then the astronauts would have had approximately 5 seconds of consciousness left at the point when the craft completely disintegrated. (Assuming they were not unconscious or dead already from the battering they were receiving)

The more I look at this report, and compare it to the Soyuz 11 one, I am struck by how anxious the writers were to claim ' they didn't suffer'. The impression I get is that all space authorities are scared stiff of having marooned astro/cosmonauts dying slowly, and will do anything to avoid that circumstance. This may be good public relations but it is bad science, and it is bad journalism to read a report without noting the sort of discrepancies I have highlighted above...

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Unhappy

Wishful thinking...

"C - Confirm/maintain the pretense (take your choice -- I prefer to believe the first) for the bereaved families that the crew didn't suffer more than a few moments of anoxia and were not conscious of burning to death nor of falling at transsonic speeds from 30 miles up."

After a careful read of the 400 pages of the report, I was struck by one thing - how anxious the writers were to insist that the astronauts were 'probably' unconscious before they were spilled out into the flaming wreakage. They have no real evidence for this, beyond the fact that the visors were not closed, which they interpret as meaning the astronauts collapsed from anoxia before they could close them.

Unfortunately, there is another thing which could stop astronauts closing visors - rapidly varying high g forces. Once the shuttle hydraulics were burnt through the craft went out of control, tumbled and broke up. This tumbling caused the breakup, and the astronauts' seats were not designed to hold them in securely in place with those forces. Their first indication of a problem would have been their being rapidly dashed from side to side, suffering considerable injuries in the process. NASA speculates that some of these might have proven fatal or rendered them unconscious. Then the structure of the shuttle started collapsing, and the pressure dropped. Almost immediately the astronauts would have been exposed to a Mach 18 plasma slipstream while still secured to their seats and whatever portion of the shuttle was still connected to them. The slipstream seems to have torn away much of their suits, and probably tore them apart as well. A quick death, though a messy one....

Send old Shuttles to Mars, says Scotty ashes prang man

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Coat

I sugest...

that we start this hare-brained scheme the same way the Montgolfier brothers did - with a dog and a basket full of chickens....

Mobiles finally admitted to English hospitals

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Dead Vulture

I think what we have here is a lack of communication...

"Doctors and nurses doing their rounds should not have to constantly wait for patients to finish phone calls and night-times on wards should not be disturbed by the chirruping of text messages."

Um.. who pays their wages? I can see that everyone's fed up with doctors thinking that they're any better than glorified mechanics. The state pays them to repair us - they seem to have forgotten who is doing the paying. The sooner the Conservatives bring a bit of the private sector service ethos to the NHS the better I'll be pleased, though I doubt that I'll use it even then...

(Tombstone for the typical result of not having private health insurance and being treated by an NHS hospital)

Spinning the war on the UK's sex trade

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Flame

Bear and Wood coverage in other news...

"Forgive me reiterating the point that I'm a classical liberal, but wouldn't you prefer not to be ruled this way too?.."

You are asking, "would we prefer to be ruled by politicians who don't use scare mongering lies to justify everything from recycling fines to large wars?"?

Would it surprise you to know that the answer is "Yes!"?

Now, how do you think we are going to manage it? It seems to me that there is no man in a white suit waiting to come to our rescue, and more and more of our rules come from Europe, where we effectively have no voice anyway. Are you suggesting a revolution?

UK gov to issue child boozing guidelines

Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
Unhappy

A modest proposal..

Why don't the government stop beating about the bush, and come out with a law that says what they really want to say? I Suggest the following title:

A Bill to Prevent Anyone having Any Fun At All (2009)