* Posts by Randomyachtie

8 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jan 2009

Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM's wasted R&D billions

Randomyachtie

Time Capsule

For a real glimpse of how things have changed read the 1987 NYT article cited regarding the Microsoft Office acquisitions.

"Some industry officials think such ''desktop presentations'' have the potential to be as big a market as ''desktop publishing,''

"Microsoft is already the leading software supplier for the Macintosh."

Tearful NASA salutes space shuttle Discovery

Randomyachtie
Black Helicopters

From the image gallery

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/multimedia/discovery/2005-04-06.html

"Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao used a digital camera to photograph the rollout of the Space Shuttle Discovery at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center from an altitude of 220 statute miles."

Howly Mowly...

I know those Nikon supplied space cameras are good, but....

Shame it doesn't say what lense he was using.

BOFH: There's no 'I' in team, but there's a 'u' in suck

Randomyachtie
Coffee/keyboard

grin :) because it doesn't allow only emotes :(

Wake up, Cold shower, No hot water

Drive two hours to site, Realise left vital piece of equipment back in office

Manage to cobble together kit to get job done without client noticing

Complete an 18hr day

Get home & a new BOFH is waiting! There really is a God :)

FAA to pilots: Expect 'unreliable or unavailable' GPS signals

Randomyachtie

My tupence worth

To clarify a few for the comment above:

- Whilst the chart shows the origin of the test out at sea, it is most likely that any jamming system would be airborne flying above the ships, therefore drastically increasing its effective range both to airborne and ground receivers.

- Differential GPS can only correct relatively small timing (clock sync) errors and atmospheric / ionospheric errors of the satellite signals by comparing the computed position to the actual known ground position. This will completely fail if there are no satellite signals to compare ie signal jamming, or if they are testing a new system which is able to induce variable unknown latencies and errors into the satellite signal.

Interestingly Cellphones and Assisted GPS receivers (AGPS) may well fair much better than DGPS and aircraft systems as they can fall back on cell tower triangulation which whilst much less accurate, is an independent system and so depending upon the durations of the disruptions and the algorithms involved in the specific receivers they may be able to maintain a rough track plot.

Of course all commercial aircraft also carry Radio Direction systems which are used for navigation so a bit of GPS disruption shouldn't affect your transatlantic flight to America.

Apple Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server

Randomyachtie
Grenade

Great, apart from the lack of windows 7 support

I've got one of these in the corner of the office.

Serves everything we need to do and works seamlessly with out macs.

Management is incredibly easy the Server admin tools, both locally and remotely.

The only stumbling block is the lack of support for Windows 7. The fact that these can't authenticate is becoming a big headache. Here's to Apple sorting this ASAP.

LOST Vulture One PARIS spaceplane FOUND!!!

Randomyachtie
Pint

Exclusive Pilot Interview

Some f**king genius had the great idea of welding a couple of steel plates onto our deck to keep the General safe from ground fire…

Well, it was like trying to fly a freight train. Ok? Gross overload, trim characteristics all shot to hell. I nearly broke both my arms trying to keep her level. And when we released, you know, I tried as hard as I could. Tried to gain some altitude and still keep her from stalling, but we came down like a f**king meteor. This is how we ended up.

Apple chokes on Woolworths logo

Randomyachtie
Happy

@ Logo for 'Easy McApple'

Take the McDonald M and bend the outer legs in at the bottom to make it a bit more rounded, put a stalk in the dip at the top and colour the whole thing a uniform Orange. Take a bite out of the side if you must!

Now you can grantee that if woolworths win this case, they can then sue you too. Essentially giving you an extra product line for the duration of the case.

Droid sub goes under Antarctic ice on 5000 D-cells

Randomyachtie
Alert

Lets hope it doesn't suffer from a power failure.

These things are designed to be positively buoyant, so that in the event of a power failure they can pop up to the surface and activate an emergency transponder letting the mothership know where they are.

This doesn't really work if you happen to be under several kilometers of ice at the moment the power fails!