El Reg cuts ribbon on new Special Projects Bureau

We're delighted to inform our beloved readers that as of today, El Reg has a dedicated Special Projects Bureau, which will henceforth be Vulture Central's nerve centre of black ops and garden-shed boffinry. The Vulture 1 soars heavenwards under the helium balloon The resounding success of our our audacious Paper Aircraft …

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to see more IT shit blown up

That's all I have

[Anonymous Coward]

"what form the LOHAN beast should take"

Anyone else read another 'r' into that sentence? Or is it just me and Friday...

[sholby]

Acronym

Wouldn't you have been better off with Special Operations Bureau? Oh, well.

[Roger Greenwood]

Surely . . .

Special Technical Operations Bureau.

[David Pollard]

Surely...?

Verily.

[MattWPBS]

Lethal Object High Altitude Notation

Answering the question "What happens if you push a lot of bricks out of an airplane?"

[lawndart]

says:

Everyone knows* that you can water cool your processor to improve its speed, but can you modify a standard computer case with external cooling fins that will operate under water at a considerable depth? Will el Reg be the first to create a computer that has "water resistant to 100m" on it?

For paper, how about:

A nice high velocity hovercraft?

A bathyscaphe.

Catapults/trebuchets.

A huge replica skylon (the tower, not the spacecraft). OK, do both.

Go one step further with the paper than PARIS and incorporate a hot air paper balloon this time. You won't get the altitude, however.

Special Operations? Will we be getting paper cameras/pens/radios/lockpicks?

How many CD burner lasers does it take to punch a hole through X and can you make them sufficiently lightweight to enable them to be transported by a paper vehicle? You could out-DARPA DARPA.

* Everybody of any importance, anyway.

[Blofeld's Cat]

Lasers

"...can you make them sufficiently lightweight to enable them to be transported by a paper vehicle?"

Or by an average sized shark.

[SadBloke]

Wrong Approach?

Since the plan to shrink lasers isn't going too well I think more effort should go into breeding larger sharks

[Adam Foxton]

Pressure resistant computer

It wouldn't be that hard- if you get a modern motherboard with all-solid-state capacitors and solid state storage and stick it in a bag of oil it'll probably go a lot deeper than 100m.

I did a thing for work a few years ago and we were able to take an off-the-shelf microcontroller-based board down to pressures >500msw (that's >~50Bar or 725psi) before it stopped working. When a board is made of all-solid components with no air gaps in them (i.e. get rid of crystals, hard drives and electrolytic capacitors) it can go deeper still.

I've never tried it with a full PC... you know what, I'm going to get a quote for some time with a pressure tester!

If you just meant "can you run a PC inside a pressure housing" then yes, it's been done to at least 3000-or-so-m.

[G C M Roberts]

WOW

I love the title bar!!! That is brilliant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Satellite

Low orbit satellite broadcasting patriotic songs. Show the Norks how it's done.

[g e]

Low Orbit Holistic Astro Navigator

L.O.H.A.N

Which must navigate by the stars to a pre-ordained destination to blow shit up in a funky (yet holistic) manner

[Anonymous Coward]

Create a p2p 2 DNS system to rival icann

We all know its the future, thing is, i suspent the reg has the tech know how of its readers and editers to actually help create something that would be usefull, i also believe that the pr from it, would be real good....

[Anonymous John]

Special Aeronautics Research And Hardware?

Sarah may have gone, but she needn't be forgotten.

[Anonymous Coward]

It might just be me

But whatever you do next must end up really, really annoying the Americans.

[Mage]

Annoyance

That's far to easily done.

[John Bailey]

No problem..

Just use metric and talk geography.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about an elastic band powered car?

First donkey in space. (Burro Rises Into Troposphere Nerds Eulogy (to) Yuri)

[Mage]

LOHAN

Lethal Object High Altitude Navigation

A ground launched rocket with camera and telemetry that can reach edge of space, or North of the Watford Gap. Extra points for ISS flypast (it's only about 120 miles up?)

Or an Autonomous Stealthy Robot that explores London Sewers or Loch Ness.

[graeme leggett]

I'd like to wish the new Special unit all the best

And might I suggest a few inspirational titles for the library

Edward Terrell: Admiralty Brief

Macrae: Churchill's Toyshop

Nevil Shute (Norway): Secret War

which are all about doing things with a sense of improvisation and adventure and (more importantly) with explosions.

If you wanted a rename how about:

Technical Investigations and Research Directorate

or

Technology and Invention, Technical Testing, Investigations & Experiments Section

(I admit it's a bit of mouthful)

[Anonymous Coward]

First project title suggestion...

ahem...

light new development space yach - (a) low orbit/high altitude nuisance

*cringes on everyone's behalf*

--------------

Paris, because...

[Reverend Brown]

Selective nosh interest

I'm still waiting for the deep fried guinea pigs, don't think I forgot. Kebab, parma, and rodent onna stick. There's a night to remember in the gutter.

I do look forward to the exploits of Vulture Central's Black Ops division. More garden shed science, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lunokhod

How about emulating the Soviet Lunokhod rovers by building a really remote controlled vehicle that children/people can control over the Internet to explore Lester's little hideaway?

Either that or go the whole hog and build a deep frozen aircraft carrier aka. Habbakuk. Doing that in Spain only adds to the irony.

[Tim #3]

So...

Does this mean Rui's getting a new frock too?

[MrT]

Too many parmos...

...and "the ultimate post-pub nosh deathmatch" might be more real than anyone wants...

And another title for the shed library:

"Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945" by Nicholas Rankin.

[John Gamble]

Jetbelts!

In keeping with the tradition set by the PARIS project, a playmobile figure re-creating a classic Bond episode.

[Petrea Mitchell]

N-Prize!

I've sent an e-mail as requested, but let's try and drum up some support here too!

After PARIS, the only direction to go is up!

Toward (a little bit of) actual fame and fortune!

http://www.n-prize.com/

This seems like just the sort of challenge for the Special Projects Bureau, despite the slight risk of providing an actual benefit to humanity in the form of demonstrating that space transport doesn't require a billion-dollar budget...

[Anonymous Coward]

A robotic bar tending machine?

I have plans and parts :-)

[Marcus 5]

Fusion reactor- no I'm serious

Build a Fusor, the whole cost (if you're efficient and good at scrounging) can be from 500-3000 dollars. What self-respecting spec ops bureau doesn't deal with nuclear equipment? It also makes cool glows even if it you can't get the fusion reaction going.

Suggestions for project acronyms include

PARticle Injection System (PARIS)

Large Organ for Hydrogen AcceleratioN (LOHAN)

Link for information

http://www.fusor.net/

[Tim Worstal]

Eh?

"I'm still waiting for the deep fried guinea pigs, don't think I forgot. Kebab, parma, and rodent onna stick."

Why do you want Peruvian food?

"Cuy chactado: A dish more popular in the highlands is this meal of fried guinea pig. Often the indigenous women of the Peruvian Andes will raise the guinea pigs in their huts where they run around loose on the floors of the dwellings. "

Actually, quite yummy.

[jai]

a space elevator

because the world needs one, and surely it can't be that hard can it?

[interested_reader]

Sheer brilliance

It's time to think big. If El Reg can send PARIS to space, how about some El Reg - themed gadgets and hackery we all could use and appreciate? I'm thinking if the world's largest ad broker can come up with Go, our collective minds amongst the Register staff and readership can forge Vulture to one-up them. And a question: how many of us would buy a shiny new El Reg - themed red Nokia N9 loaded with cool apps dreamed up by the Register hive mind? I know I would. There's no reason the Register can't turn into the world's largest brilliance broker out of this, and maybe even make a few of the team (whether hard-driven employee or avid reader) rich in the process.

[Goat Jam]

What?

No mention of the project where you will be recreating the Moderatrix as a clone?

Do you mean to say you haven't already started?

I assume you have the necessary DNA samples stashed safely away at the very least.

[Andus McCoatover]

"staring into an oscilloscope while puffing on a pipe"

Made me chuckle.

Many years ago, when it was permitted (almost obligatory*) to smoke at work, I was using a 'scope. Tektronix, I think.

It was raised by its stand, and I'd stuck my ashtray under it, with a fag burning. Then went for a piss. Little smoke trail from under the 'scope.

The total panic of my manager as he reached for the fire extinguisher would be BOFH material.

* The late owner used to get us youngsters to nip over the road to the shop to fetch him a pack of 20 Dunhill cigarettes. "Better, Andus, make it 2 packs". Jeez, when we finished work, it was up to the boardroom for a few whiskies. Happy days....

[Anonymous Coward]

Paris and Lohan

So first time round you exposed Paris's private parts, for the new caper, presumably it will involve a lack of sobriety and pinching stuff.

But have we got the right man for the job?

[Poor Coco]

LOHAN the ekranoplan!

You should build an autonomous ekranoplan (a.k.a. ground-effect vehicle [GEV] or wing-in-ground-effect [WIG] aircraft).

“LOHAN, Our Hovering Autonomous Namesake” is an obvious acronym expansion, which is nicely recursive and has a sort of meta quality to it.