Posts by aje21

Re: Just the one letter?

I used to have a list of characters which were in the same place for UK, US and Swiss keyboard layouts simply to avoid any issues.

Re: Bigger Oops

Indeed, this taken from SpaceX's website:

On Wednesday, November 10 at 9:03 p.m. EST, 2:03 UTC on November 11, SpaceX and NASA launched Dragon’s third long-duration operational crew mission (Crew-3) to the International Space Station from historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage landed on the “A Shortfall of Gravitas" droneship.

On Thursday, November 11 at approximately 7:10 p.m. EST, 00:10 UTC on November 12, Dragon will autonomously dock with the space station. Follow Dragon and the Crew-3 astronauts during their flight to the International Space Station on the tracker below.

Re: "So my urgent 200-mile round trip ended, …

Not clear from the story what the old server was needed for after the new one was put in place, but assuming it was needed then replacing a duff keyboard seems like a better bet than changing the BIOS to ignore errors... well, that would be my thinking. Oh, and next time he would have known to ask someone to check the KVM for errors.

As a side note, in a previous job we had a server which had a BIOS error on reboot which was annoying when working remotely. One solution would have been a remote-access KVM switch, but they were more money than the boss was willing to spend. The server was eventually retired.

Re: Size?

I went with an Asus Zenphone 8, happy with it so far.

Re: I'd be much happier...

At least that has a top speed higher than 90kph - looked at the Twizzy but the limited top speed to qualify as a quadracycle means it's not appropriate when many of the roads near me are national speed limit; being stuck at 50mph means causing frustration for other drivers and possible accidents when they try to overtake.

Re: "a shift of emphasis onto greater personal judgement and responsibility"

Wash their hands, I see what you did there :-)

Re: Too big

Asus Zenphone 8 is not too big (and was what finally switched me away from my Lumia 1020, though I cannot understand why a modern phone does not do what the Lumia did out of the box, even if you search for ages for a suitable app - ho hum).

Re: Why has this not happened already?

I'd hope they already had a plan on how to switch to a backup module, which they knew worked because it was tested before launch [Edit: it does say in the article "done numerous times during testing of the hardware before launch and the operations procedures for doing this are in place"], but having never done space engineering it could be that things don't work out the way you expect. Visions of a small robot arm unplugging a DIMM and trying to get the replacement to click into place are probably not how they will do it ;-)

Further edit: My question was also based on "Degraded memory modules are easy to workaround thanks to spare components NASA installed in the telescope before launch", but of course I forgot that "easy" means "easy compared to other stuff in space" not "easy" in the more common sense.

My work and personal mobiles both allow you to select 64 megapixel resolution, but default to 16 megapixel using pixel binning, so some Motorola and Asus android phones do let you choose. My previous personal phone (up to earlier this week) also allowed native 38 megapixel or 5 megapixel (though 38 megapixel also included a 5 megapixel version), it was doing this seven plus years ago.

Re: Moon dust ...

Not just magnetic, but highly corrosive and abrasive?

Re: Transparent screens?

Correct, not as a replacement for a traditional screen, but there are use cases (including HUD for cars where I think there are already some examples - sorry no citation) and the sensible ways of using such tech will come along once we have it. Remember how going from CRTs to LCDs meant there were now ways to do something not possible before...

Re: O je

Worth remembering than an old banger, once nursed back to health, can do most of what you need a car to do... with retro computing you will still need some kind of modern-ish kit if you want to work / play.

Re: take care when abroad

Hotel safe = illusion of security.

Rather than stopping anyone stealing your stuff they are they to stop (1) casual theft from your room, e.g. when it is being cleaned and someone pops in claiming it is their room, and (2) the insurance company saying you have not taken suitable precautions. On point 2, I have no idea if that would actually work, so probably a case of illusion of insurance too. Just glad I never had to find out the hard way what happens if someone does take stuff from your hotel safe.

Re: FUD by chololennon

I used to find Cortana on my Windows phone really helpful and still miss the ability to set reminders, send texts by voice, etc. because Microsoft decided that they didn't want to keep it going on a platform where there was no competition. So I have no problem with it being pulled from platforms where there is an alternative. I know that Alexa tries her best, but "she" seems to lack the whimsy which Cortana had...

Re: Agreed

I did read it, but I voted remain so that could explain it...

Full disclosure, I voted remain and would have much preferred it to have been (as originally intended) an advisory referendum so the government could have found out how pissed off people were with the EU, our relationship with the EU, etc. My personal opinion is that the pro-leave vote could have been greater if the choices were "Happy with how things are AND don't mind where they end up" vs. "Not happy with how they are AND/OR want to get asked how things end up". If it had been such a question, I would have picked the 2nd option and hopefully we could then have had a constructive discussion on how to fix things. However, I now know that is a naive approach to take and this was going to get polarised whatever way it was tackled. So instead we got BBC Parliament becoming the most popular live UK channel for a while and more vitriol on the internet than I though possible.

My guess is that I may get some up-votes, I may get some down-votes, I may get a reply and some people may choose not to read what I wrote (which is all fair).

Re: Don't think there's anything worse than the motherboard of a smoker's laptop...yuk

Remember helping someone explain that "OK, you have spilled coffee on your keyboard - do you take sugar" was not a wind-up. Black coffee was not so bad, with sugar and cream...

Re: While not the first, still a good advancement.

Isn't part of the idea to launch where appropriate (e.g. source of the payload) and what suits the orbit needed? Agreed that weather is a key part, but if you can fly above the storms...

Re: "more pixels doesn't automatically mean better pictures"

When I first got my Lumia 1020 the high pixel count (given good light levels) was really something which I found useful. However, an update (Denim I think) messed with the image processing and after that any full resolution photos start to look like "art" when you zoom in too much. Real shame because the camera used to be one of the main features of the 1020 :-(

My thought was that someone mocked up an example of how it could work (PoC) using Excel and for some reason that is where things stopped...

By why, just why, was XLS used rather than XLSX, that bit seems almost like someone breaking things on purpose!

Re: RPG

Using an RPG in a room is not a great idea. The exhaust gases will hit the wall behind you and be reflected. Someone has already solved that problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armbrust

Re: Police told not to download Covid app

NHS staff are not meant to install it either because they wear PPE at work and so could be falsely flagged as being in close contact when not appropraite.