* Posts by John

5 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Oct 2008

BOFH: Defiling the profile

John

Nice one

It's nice to see the boss doesn't have to die every time. Loved it. Humiliation is SOOOO much better than Quicklime and a tape safe.

Upper-atmos ion drive dart sat launch delayed

John

@Frank re: any lift?

Lift isn't the problem. The craft is traveling fast enough around the earth that it "falls" in an arc the same diameter as it's orbit. The problem is drag at that low an altitude, so the wings would actually make the problem worse.

The Ion drive is to keep the speed up once it's in orbit. It doesn't do any lifting.

US Navy orders new electric hyper-kill railgun

John
Happy

And the answer is....$$$

"How long before the 'simple' iron slugs becomes heavily computerised course correcting beasties than can attempt to fly through the front door? You just know the US navy won't be able to resist the attempt. Yes I know any deviations would only be slight given the initial vector and lack of thrust on the slug but..."

The MOST important part of any defense project is the upgrade. Every major weapons system manufacturer depends on these to make the real money.

Satellites crash over Siberia: Iridium bird destroyed

John
Happy

What conspiracy?

DoD just wants some new Cray's or IBM's to track Sats with, along with new radar, comm centers, etc. Now they can justify the spending.

Oh, yeah, as long as the checkbooks out, howz about a couple spare sats while we're at it.

Microsoft gives users six months longer to flee from Vista

John

So why don't businesses use Vista....

Go to Dell's website. Select a workstation or laptop like the M series (Precision Line).

Hit customize, and you will see the default is XP downgrade. Why?

Try adding a video card.

If you want a business graphics card like the FX series, Dell is just now, finally, offering Vista as an option. They weren't offering it just a couple of weeks ago, and the same was true of Alienware. The unit I speced out to purchasing with an FX 3600m last month has "available only with Windows XP" on the same line of the quote with the graphics card.

We do modeling with high numbers of cloud points and need 64 bit/16 Megs RAM. XP 64 sucks and we use Vista on that, but for our CAM packages the Vista driver is horribly broken. No choice but XP. Microsoft really should have worked with developers earlier on the drivers. It costs a lot of money to develop drivers for these, and the lead time is long. MS should have known this and put some of that advertising money into customer support.

What is obvious for most businesses: What I have isn't broke, and I'm not going to pay money to break it.