Posts by Penguin

The truth on the Navy carrier debacle? Industry got away with murder

Re: Persuasive Arguments

A good question but when all is said and done it really is that simple. There is nothing that the F-35B can do that the F-35C will not be better at, unless you count melting through the steel plate it’s trying to take off from. The more pounds of lifting gear you are trying to carry with you means less pounds of capacity you have for AMRAAMs. Basically the MOD, the Government and BAE have absolutely no interest in providing a frontline fighting force and by extension no interest in keeping British troops alive and fighting, this whole farce proves it.

Asteroid-mining 'FireFlys' will be ready for action by 2015, vows space firm

Re: Refuelling geosynchronous satellites.

That's a real good point about refuelling but the more I think about it the easier I bet it will be. Satellite fuel (assuming Hydrazine) is really nasty stuff, heavily toxic, highly corrosive and surprisingly unstable. My guess is that when they go up they would want to fill them on or as close to the pad as possible which I guess would require easy to access refuelling gear already in place on the bird.

I’d be fascinated how this actually works, any satellite engineers out there care to enlighten us?

Brits are so outraged by Amazon, they voted it TOP for shopping

Re: Outraged by tax?

I'm sorry, I have to call you out on that, I don't care how moral a person is the simple fact of the matter is – If the government sends you two tax bills, one double the other and then says ‘pick one to pay, we don’t care which’. No one, not one single person, is going to pick the one at twice the price. Why would you; civic responsibility, some sort of vague moral implication that you have to “do what is right” or pay your way in society? I don’t think anyone, let alone a multinational corporation would be so naive.

Revealed: The Brit-built GRAVITY-powered light that costs $5

Re: Well gosh

>When will they harness the power of the annual Wildebeast migration (I'm thinking travelators along all those crocodile infested rivers they have to cross, but you would have to react the force applied by Wildebeat running from croc. into the travelator some how)

Best. Episode. Of Gladiators. Ever.

Look out, world! Are you ready for John McAfee: THE MOVIE?

It surely has to be

Maybe Willem Dafoe, that or Gary Busey. No one does the whole crazy thing quite like those two. I would gladly queue for the opening night of this masterpiece of modern cinema.

I guess the toss up between "Running in the Background" or "False Positive Detection" for the tagline depends entirely on the result of a trial.

Hero Playmonaut lost at sea as SPEARS ditches in Channel

Harmless?

"Harmless Scientific Experiment" ? Say that to the poor plastic person that you just deep sixed.

That is some pretty impressive distance covered, how much flight time did you actually achieve? When I read the headline my first instinct was "Why would anyone do this experiment so close to the sea." When I actually saw the track I ate my own words. No one would think of Newbury as "Costal".

US paper spaceplane disintegrates at 107,000ft

Not to say I told you so...

[Quote from last news article]

> "I don’t think that is such a good idea, compound release aids are very smooth at releasing bow strings and can hold 80 lbs + of draw weight without issue but even with something like a Tru Ball – which uses ball bearings on the end of the jaws – I don’t think they will survive the environment without locking solid, I’d be very worried about the cold. Plus, for obvious reasons the pull of most release aids tends to be fairly light and the sear quite sensitive to knocks and buffeting."

I do believe I have missed out on a lucrative career as a space plane / archery integration engineer. I’m now going to spend at least the next hour mixing the Schadenfreude feeling of smugness that I was right and sadness over the failure of some good ol’ fashion paper based boffinry.

Better luck next time Blofeld! Five Bond plot myths busted

Re: Helicopters (one) can have eject systems!

I fear this is going to be a tad controversial with the rotor heads but it has to be said; The British Army don’t get all the best gear on the battlefield so I won’t let you take away their ‘Fastest helicopter in the world’ accolade despite the fact it is quite questionable.

Fully loaded with AT then yes, the KA-50 is faster. Yes, in a dive it is faster (I believe it has 15 – 16 mph higher do not exceed limit than the Lynx without BERP rotors) Yes, the KA-50 is a real attack helicopter as apposed to a sky truck with some TOW missiles bolted to the door.

But darn it! The Lynx is faster. I need to cling to these hopeless, irrelevant numbers to make me feel better.

America mounts attempt to top the Register's world record spaceflight

Re: Bow release

I should imagine they will be running a linkage from a servo to the trigger of the release aid. I don’t think that is such a good idea, compound release aids are very smooth at releasing bow strings and can hold 80 lbs + of draw weight without issue but even with something like a Tru Ball – which uses ball bearings on the end of the jaws – I don’t think they will survive the environment without locking solid, I’d be very worried about the cold. Plus, for obvious reasons the pull of most release aids tends to be fairly light and the sear quite sensitive to knocks and buffeting. I may be wrong, I’ve never shot a bow at that sort of altitude before but I would hope they would give it some serious testing (I’m half tempted to put a release aid in the freezer myself and see what happens).

Good luck to them, surely their next step is going to be a rocket powered beastie.

Valve's Half-Life

I'll always remember when myself and a few friends were heavily into HL, one of my friends got a graphics card to improve the experience (still nothing compared to my beast of a Voodoo card). He was so proud of himself, dragged me over to show me how amazing Half Life looked, of course he felt very stupid when I went into the options menu and changed the Render from 'Software' to 'Direct3D'. He still gets occasionally ribbed for that to this day.

My personal LAN poison of choice was Day of Defeat, I can even remember how excited I was when I realised you could deploy the bipod on the Bren gun. Deployable bipods and grappling hooks will always be the high watermark of FPS excellence.

Brighton marathon munchers banned from all-you-can-eat diner

Re: @mark 63

[...] flatscreens on all the walls showing a leaderboard of how many litres each table has poured [...]

Finally, IT and competitive drinking brought together beautifully. This is without a doubt the best idea for IT implementation in a Leisure Retail environment I've heard in months (and you'd be surprised how many I actually hear.)

Reg hack uncovers perfect antidote to internet

Re: Amateurs

A Spade? Luxury! We used to have to get out of the well at six o'clock in the morning, clean the well, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hour day digging holes with our face for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky.

And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

UK.gov's web filth block plan: Last chance to speak your brains

Easy -

#FF7D40

(To be honest I suspect that would work better as a filter than any junk we may end up opting out of)

NASA captures mind-bogglingly gorgeous solar video

Re: Awesome

Unimaginable, I wonder how much energy that mass takes with it through space, at 900 miles per second it must be incredible.

Still, it puts those sneaky two chocolate hobnobs that my GP tells me I shouldn’t have into perspective.

Assange's fate to be revealed at high noon

This is probably just embarrassing.

I should imagine that none of the involved parties want this to go on anymore, I would wager that Ecuador have taken so long because they realise that Assange has dumped them into a political and diplomatic quagmire that really doesn’t have a happy ending for them. Maybe they are hoping that CO19 will storm the embassy after which they can throw their hands up, pretend to be disgusted and then wipe there brow and be glad it’s all been dealt with for them. Either that or maybe they are kicking their heals over it and hoping he eventually dies of old age. Realistically there is no answer that doesn’t have a counter by any party. If the Yanks really want him (which I highly doubt) then I guess a CIA snatch team would have no trouble what-so-ever operating in Ecuador. If the Swedish really want him (which, beyond legal proceedings, I doubt too) then the KSI (literally translated as “The Office for Special Collection", I kid you not) could do the doing just as easily. It just seems that it is a big old mess for everyone and that every government involved are just trying, and failing, to not look stupid.

Long and short of it – even if the charges are a bit hoaky and it’s all a bit weird, if you get accused of sexually assaulting a woman, which is truly a most heinous of crimes, then you lawyer up and go to court. If you are guilty of this then Gitmo, the CIA, SIS or miscellaneous black ops death squads should be the least of your worries because you deserve everything you get.

Euro NCAP to mandate auto-braking in new-car test

Re: @Hmm..

Motorcycles are just too hard to fit safety gizmos to and expect them to work,

Combined Brakes, ABS and Traction Control - You're still going to crash, eventually. If you really want to save some lives, stop idiot car drivers using the bloody phone while driving, the last time I got taken out on my bike some idiot on a phone changed lane with no warning, no indicator and didn't look. It amazes me how many people still drive on the phone. Why concentrate on high tech solutions when the problem is the driver being either unable to drive safely or so distracted that they aren't paying attention. When you are driving a two ton suit of armour then people think they are invulnerable. I have a plan for this - make people commute to work for one week a year on a little 50cc scooter - let's see how much attention you have to pay to traffic now without crumple zones.

The thing I find really amazing is that a non-government organisation is effectively dictating European policy because, as you correctly point out - most people won't buy a car without an NCAP rating.

India: We DO have the BlackBerry encryption keys

Re: How It Actually Went

You're forgetting the 16 forms that would need to be signed in triplicate by random government employees that only accept the ‘official’ bribes on the second Tuesday of every month that are needed to request permission to attempt to threaten a prison sentence.

Google ordered to censor 'torrent', 'megaupload' and more words

Re: I think people are missing the point

I worry that it's even worse than the judicial system exerting control on the internet, the statement;

“This decision in principle is a first in France, which shows that search engines should participate in the regulation of the internet,” SNEP chief David El Sayegh said in a canned statement.

says to me that they are encouraging a foreign private company to police the access of information for a whole country and washing their hands of resposibilty for the whole thing. Participate how, and with what oversight? I know Google “Do no evil” but what’s to stop them from blocking searches to other search engines that don’t censor questionable material? I bet that Googles army of high priced lawyers could make the line “Participating in the regulation of the internet by filtering access to unscrupulous search engines” fly (extreme example, I know).

LOHAN finally checks into REHAB

Nice view of the hot action.

Mirrored ceiling for the chamber? LOHANs namesake would surely approve.

Lenovo intros carbon-fibre ThinkPad Ultrabook

That Trackpad

The wrong way round Fn key is a woeful mistake and I can honestly say it frustrates me at least once a week by not actually copying something because I've pressed Fn+C. I've used them for about 6 years and still can't do it without thinking about it first.

Worse still is the new trackpad that the X1 seems to have, we've got some new(ish) T420's in the lab with the same one and basically the bottom of the whole pad is hinged as the left / right mouse button, doesn't sounds so bad until you try to click and drag, it is a finger bending feat of impossibility, plain and simple bad design. They've lost what it was that made them good.

-- By the way, this post was brought to you from my old, buckled and battle scared T60, definitely the toughest laptop I've ever used.

Ford unwraps Evos cloud-connected concept car

This makes me sad

It makes me sad to see a car like this - I just wish that they would actually build that. The hints of Mustangs old and new in the lights, grill and nose are fantastic styling cues, really call on the heritage. The side view is pure Aston Martin though - The wheels even look like the ones on the Rapide. Those quarter panel rear doors are just pure indulgence and absolutely lovely .

I hope future Fords really take the design style and run with it - you can say a lot about Ford but they really can develop a look over a product life - Just look at the new Focus.

Next Palm to drop physical keyboard, says mole

Yep...

That's pretty much why I bought one, I should imagine that the other couple did too. Shame as well, I always liked the slider QWERTY combo - even Blackberry has only just copied it.

I just hope that WebOS 2 will be supported on old Pre's like mine (Although I think if it wasn't Palm/HP would be committing smartphone seppuku). The new OS is much more interesting than some boring JesusPhone copy piece of hardware.

Druva delivers deduping laptop backup

@Cameron Colley

I think from an infrastructure angle your point is sound but the problem comes when laptops are actually used as they are intended, 80% of our laptop estate is field based and central storage versus instant field access is an ongoing headache of mine. In the end I think it is best to accept that computers should in essence be standalone units first and foremost.

Druvaa (incidentally it is double 'a') has worked wonders for us and along with encryption software has allowed us to let them out the door as individual units that require very little in regards of maintenance (WSUS and other updates not withstanding) whilst maintaining an effective level of control and security on the assets. After all, as I keep being reminded, IT should not be the anchor on the ship of progress.

... Or at least I think they are saying anchor.

Drunken employee pops cap in server

Actually, Its the price you pay....

For letting any bloody moron into the server room.

Vodafone bags UK first for BlackBerry Torch 9800

Choose o2 choose crap.

The reason o2 do it is so people actually have a reason to use their truly awful network - rubbish 3G, constant network problems (as of the past 6 months anyway), expensive and with horrid customer 'service' department (every time I get off the phone with them I feel like I’ve been serviced alright!) -- But hey! At least you can get a decent phone (and Sean Bean always sounds cool too). I love my Pre but hate o2, unfortunately as I want a Torch to replace my current phone I guess I'm stuck with them for the time being.

Gulf spill to annihilate all earthlings, says seer

It had to be us ....

If anyone had to bring about the end of the world then I'm glad it's us.

Man uses meat cleaver to fashion UK-ready iPad

A suitable analogy….

Seems to me that meat cleavering a network operators SIM to fit within the Apple device is quite apt.

The iCleaver? Developers beware, Jobs has got a new ‘Human Interface Device’

McAfee false positive bricks enterprise PCs worldwide

Justification is at hand.

Ever since I was forced to use McAfee ePO 4.x I insisted that we always run -1 on the DAT. This is the third time that this approach has saved the companies bacon and do I get any thanks? Noooooooo, they still wax lyrical that we ‘aren’t up to date, the network is at risk.’

Seriously though – I’m glad this has happened (My apologies to all the BOFHs out there cleaning this mess up) hopefully this will convince the company to ditch this POS when the contract is up. And I can go back to real work instead of babysitting 1 piece of software.

McAfee, Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

Ofcom consultation brings out the tinfoil hatters

What?

Where do these people learn how to use the internet? My hats off to a Mrs Wright.

"This is (in my opinion very stupidly) discounting the rising cost

of health care for the increasing level of sickness and disease in our society - not to mention the criminal and terrorist activities which are greatly enhanced by these devices."

What?

BlackBerry sees iPhone shrink in rear view mirror

Oh Poor Pre

Oh my poor little Pre, why can't Palm market you properly?

Those bloody fools couldn't sell a steak to a starving man! They've got a 'just different enough to be interesting' product that is actually pretty good (especially WebOS) and they have failed on a grand scale. They really have no one to blame but themselves. I'll miss them but I suspect I will be on my own.

Flood, fire at BT Paddington node causes widespread problems

Nice Redundancy BT!

Wow, I know this is a major exchange but surely this is the reason this kind of thing is planned for. I wouldn't mind but we were running a DR scenario today that has been pulled due to this, irony indeed.

We've lost one satellite office and it is still chunking up our network nicely - If anyone is interested BT have informed us that they should have a solution in place by 16:15 - Although by the sounds of this article I am beginning to doubt it.

World braces for Lindsay Lohan sex tape

You can't say things like that on the internet!

Dear The Register,

Hopefully you will have now received the bill for 1x Lenovo T61 that your wit has cost me as with your statement of, and I quote "it's Lohan who gets the eyeful" it is now coated in a mouthful of coffee (although the quality of the coffee is questionable, even before it was deposited onto said laptop.)

Crude? Yes. Funny as hell? You bet. El Reg, Bravo.

Second-gen TTxGP e-bike unveiled

Why oh why?

Hey I got on just like that in the garage only mines white. No, my mistake. Mines hugely more powerful, runs for more than 6 yards at a time, has the glorious Austrian V twin howl and cost LESS THAN HALF THE PRICE.

Fair enough they've slapped enough tech on a KTM chassis to give most PCs some serious horsepower envy (Mines the orange leather one please). My problem is that electric power just isn't suitable for a bike. Bikes rule the road for only one reason, they're light. Thats the reason that (ironically) KTMs EXC & SX bikes are so good off road. It's the reason companies spend huge amounts desigining a bike that is as paired down as possible and it's the reason a 180bhp bike can kiss the double ton. I've got a lot of respect for a company like Brammo who know that 'leccy is good for city commutes and that's where it will work and makes sense but until there are some serious battery innovations petrol will always have the edge.

Who wants to ride a bike that sounds like a Flymo anyway?

KIlling ID cards and the NIR - the Tory and LibDem plans

Blinkered Populous

The thing that truly frustrates me about this, more so than the fact that the MPs themselves don’t care enough to actually find out what the issue really is (or perhaps more worryingly - and likely - know damn well but twist what’s needed for their own gains.) is that people just simply don’t care.

This sort of thing isn’t exactly taking a list of peoples names and keeping them in MS Access, this is incredibly detailed personal data stored en-masse and with that kind of data hanging around anything goes. Data Protection Act be damned, if they want to use it, they will justify it somehow. The NIR isn’t something that can be undone, once that threshold has been crossed I think that we will be the wrong side of a see-saw and the uncomfortable end is border line totalitarian, don’t get me wrong it’s not Orwell time just yet but with the NIR specifically it’s a big step in the wrong (or right if you are still crying about your second home) direction.

It’s going down a path that could all of a sudden become very dark indeed.