Posts by Graham Newton

Windows 10 collects colossal 0.375 per cent market share in July

Having tried and failed (at least 10 times and including using a USB stick) to upgrade my Toshiba tablet thing I feel the mobile Windows 10 penetration may continue to be "disappointing".

Ginormous HIDDEN BLACK HOLES flood the universe – boffins

Re: so...

It's no different to measuring the mass of any other object. It's not special just because it is a black hole. The obvious way is to measure the orbital period of orbiting objects.

The other way of looking at is if you can walk away from a car you can walk away from a black hole with the mass of a car.

This unfortunate fact along with Hawking radiation scuppered my invention of the black hole vacuum cleaner.

Server guys: Are you running fewer than 200 virtual machines?

Fantastic

What do magic quadrants do and where can I get them? Diagon alley perhaps?

Cinnamon 2.6 – a Linux desktop for Windows XP refugees

Re: So Far they haven't F*cked it up!

Exactly. When I am dealing with a unfamiliar machine it is a relief to be able to find the system console by just clicking on a menu option.. Rather than having to learn how to use the completely alien GUI I have never seen before to find anything at all.

BOFH: Getting to the brown, nutty heart of the water cooler matter

Amateurs

We used modeled Ginger nut biscuits swimming in lager in a chamber pot .

The future groom had to eat and drink it.

Then we got chucked out the pub.

In a galaxy far, far, far away ... Farthest ever star system discovered

It's full of galaxies

I think there is only one star in that image. To the top left.

MAYHEM in ORBIT: Russian cargo pod spins OUT OF CONTROL

Re: Re. spin

Seeing as the spacecraft will be in full sunlight for half an orbit it's presumably not a power issue due to lack of light.

LIFELESS BEAGLE on MARS: A British TRIUMPH!

Radio transmitter under four solar panels.

Having worked on Cassini Huygens, which I presume from the comments by the Beagle team must have been an uncontrolled European spacecraft landing, I find it strange that the radio transmitter was under four solar panels that had to be correctly deployed in order before radio transmission/reception was possible.

We were always concerned about single point failures and despite the compactness of Beagle's design having 4 single point failures before the radio is operational seems unthinkable.

Philae healthier: Proud ESA shows off first comet surface pic

Re: geo sync ?

Rotation period is 12.4 hours . Geosync orbit about 5km from the centre.

Motorist 'thought car had caught fire' as Adele track came on stereo

Re: @NUmbers

India and Thailand both have road rules very similar to the UK. But watching the traffic you wouldn't know it.

e.g. Turning right from a minor road on several taxi journeys in India the driver would positioned them self on the right of the road and left turning traffic would have to pass in front and drive round the taxi.

WTF is ... Virtual Customer Premises Equipment?

Been here before

If the VCE is designed by the same engineers that designed the homehub I was sent, which:

Wouldn't allow a 10.x.x.x subnet

Only allowed a specific set of ports to be opened

Changing the SSID was an advanced feature

Regularly drop the PPoE session

Regularly generated 255 phantom Wifi hotspots one after the other

it will work really well.

Spinning SPACE DUCK is comet-chasing Rosetta probe's PREY

Re: duck

Thanks -- pint of Lager please.

SPACE: The FINAL FRONTIER. These are the TEN-YEAR images of star probe Cassini

Spoiler

The final mission has already been decided and is known as "Grand Finale". The orbiter is to be manoeuvred into a polar (vertical) orbit such that the closest approach is between the rings and the planet which will give some fantastic photos of the planet. This culminates after several such orbits with orbiter falling into Saturn's atmosphere.

Nexus 1 put in orbit to prove 'in space, no one can hear you scream'

I know Surrey Satellites know their stuff BUT is the phone really unmodified? First of all it has to survive launch vibration. Once in space it will be exposed to radiation and be in a vacuum. Normal electronic don;t really work well in a vacuum. Circuit boards tend to arc so destroying themselves. Non radiation hardened parts will probably fail pretty quickly.

Curiosity needs OS upgrade before getting down to science

Data rate

I don;t think the data rate information is correct.

Doesn;t agrree with this.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communicationwithearth/data/

I'm surprised that they have had to upgrade the OS especially after such a short trip. I wrote the s/w for the SSP experiment on Cassini Huygens and the last thing I would have wanted to do was significant s/w upgrades. I didn't use an OS as they are too resource hungary..

On that my data rate allocation was about 2 to 10 slots of 100 bytes per 12 second cycle. (From memory)

However having carried out such an audacious landing procedure an OS upgrade should be a walk in the park.

Plods to get dot-uk takedown powers - without court order

Is this Digital Spy?

Apart from a few notable exceptions I am astounded at the comments on here. I expect this type of hysterical ranting on Digital Spy which is why I don't go there.

So Nominet changing its rules to allow Websites that are engaged in serious criminal activities to be shut down rather than having to find a loophole to do the same thing is bad?

Nominet obviously think there is a need to be able to do this so they are looking for solutions. Which don't appear to be found here!

Here lies /^v.+b$/i

Windows!!!!

Please contact your system administrator.

Unfeasibly vast amphibian found croaked on video card

Dead frogs

We have a pond with frogs in it. When then die they do tend to bloat and then float to the surface presumably because of gases being created and held inside the frog. Really nice to remove -- not!

So I suspect that is what happened in this case and was probably aided by the heat as a previous commenter has noticed.

Get ready for the revolution: internet TVs

Is it me?

When I read Internet TV I think of TV distribution over the internet NOT the internet on the telly which is quite easily done anyway.

Boffins plan Titanic balloon trip

Thank you Nano nano

For making me smile on this grey November day. You surely must be worthy.

Economical with the truth?

"and there were no instruments designed to do surface science after landing"

This is untrue. There was a surface science package (SSP) on the Huygens probe that was designed to measure surface properties. Hence the name. Whilst there was no experiment to determine the properties of a solid surface by a direct sample there were several experiments to measure liquid properties for a potential liquid landing. Also the penetrometer and accelerometer data were used to determine the surface composition.

I know this because I designed and wrote the SSP s/w!

Having said that I think it is a great idea anyway.

Laptops to blame for Qantas jet plunge?

Passenger with laptop question

Did you see a dialog box with the following ?

New hardware found: A330-300

Install driver yes no ?

Bloke crams 13 into Volvo S70

For those of you that think it is ok to do this

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050531/ai_n14648019

Jane Fonda c-word slip shocks US

Missing the point

Another 'outrage' that demonstrates that no one knows what they are talking about. Anybody with even a cursory knowledge of The Vagina Monologues would understand the whole point of Jane Fonda actually saying the word.

Brit stargazers get Gemini reprieve

Chile in northern hemisphere!

How do they view the "northern hemisphere skies" from Chile?

Schoolkid chipping trial 'a success'

I remember registration

"Philips"

"Sir"

"Preston"

"Sir"

"Roberts"

<silence>

Sigh "Where's Roberts?"

"He's been put away sir" (Sent to prison)

Smiles "Really?"

"Yes Sir"

"Great"

Mars rovers can keep on rovin'

Re. Operating System?

VxWorks

Nissan builds twirly-cab sideways electric pod-car

Uh-oh... part 2

"It looks like you're trying to park your car. Would you like some help?"

"NO I'M TRYING TO RAMRAID THE OFFY"

"Tesburys do a GREAT discount when you buy 6 or more bottles of wine why don't you let me drive you there or should I just call the police?"

"I don't think that crowbar will he...."

Music pirate convicted in Led Zep bootleg case

Why now!

I'm stunned. The last Led Zep concert was in 1979. Has it really taken 28 years to catch him!

China reveals nuclear lunar rover

"We want it to be better than the early US rovers"

It's like comparing a Ferrari (Apollo rover) to a JCB (Chinese rover). The Apollo rover didn't dig but went a lot faster so the Astronauts could dig further away.