Posts by TRT

Dome, sweet dome: UAE mulls Martian city here on Earth ahead of Red Planet colonization

Re: Only $500k...

You'd get your arse to Mars.

Re: Just curious

The ka'aba being a big, black cuboid. However the dimensions of the sides are not in the ratio of 1:4:9

Now, if they find something like that whilst constructing the moonbase...

Playboy founder and dressing-gown wearer Hugh Hefner dead at 91

Re: I had a panic at one article

One was the Knightrider. The other, just a night rider.

"natural causes"

Naturally.

Ah well...

there goes the competition.

iOS apps can read metadata revealing users' location histories

Re: Mobile Tracking Device

I find iOS's preemptive calendar journey reminders to be a bit bizarre. Firstly, they don't happen for everything, just some times. And secondly, I tied our room booking system in to a set of Google calendars as a convenience and a back up. But even though the primary calendar which gets a copy of everything is hidden, I still get the odd reminder telling me that I need to set off now, walking (at 3am to get the first train from the junction station about 3 miles away) in order to be at work in time for Dr Chin's tissue culture room booking at 7am.

EasyJet: We'll have electric airliners within the next decade

Re: What happens if the battery meter is telling porkies?

You can save battery life by turning the GPS off.

Re: Simple solution

Float the batteries in a tethered helium balloon.

Mr Fusion - Atomic Powered Aircraft.

Providing that someone doesn't strap an auto bomb to the landing gear, and the radiation shielding isn't the sacrificial sort that decays inside of 12 hours. Mind you, if it was then you could always get some sort of remote controlled elevator car with huge tyres for the plane to land on.

Re: Call me old fashioned

If you drop the screw for the battery compartment cover, it's a long way down to retrieve it.

Re: Small steps...

At last! A sensible discussion starts to take place.

(1) Yes, hybrid airships are already in use. A deltoid wing filled with, say, hydrogen that can generate contributory lift under forward propulsion, though air resistance becomes an issue. It's not going to be a direct competitor for the speedier traditional aircraft, but it would be faster than a ferry crossing - maybe the same speed as a rail crossing to Europe, but with a greater range of destinations. What about the use of aerogels filled with He/H? Create a rigid structure that's buoyant using that. Aircraft designers are already designing very lightweight fuselages through the use of carbon fibre composites, so technology advances.

(2) The hybrid engine sounds like a possibility, though they do mention that they wish to reduce the drag of an underslung engine. Possibly the old tri-star configuration could work - a tail mounted single jet engine with electrical engines in the wing root. Ground assisted take-off is another possibility, though that could require considerable alteration to runways which would be expensive.

(3) Yes, it is a battery, but what about some biomimetic technology to generate "artificial petrol"? That could be along in a few decades - using just as a guess say, sunlight directly to knock electrons off molecules, triggering the formation of less stable complex compounds. Developments in other areas of battery technology may produce a "liquid battery", unsuited as a replacement for the pastes, gels and powders of current batteries, but usable in cars, trains, even planes.

Be interesting to see what technologies develop from this.

Re: Crashing with style?

It's raining AAs. Hallelujah!

Hm... it could work you know. Coupled with a hybrid airship envelope, a solar array for a bit of a boost, an AI-pilot that can optimise a gliding route based on wide-field satellite observation of weather patterns, realising energy from a thermal gradient by making use of different temperatures in different layers of air, or even picking charge up by flying through proto-thunderstorm cloud layers.

Re: So many negative people on here.

It sounds like a fantasy, but who are we if we are not the makers of dreams into reality? Once upon a time, saying that I could see and speak to an explorer on an antarctic plateau, hold a conversation with them, send them a photograph and a document and receive it back in a matter of seconds, one might have received a look of incredulity and a comment about training magic fairies as carrier pigeons.

Re: Small steps...

Woah! So many negative people on here. They have an ambition, they are willing to try it. What's wrong with you lot, have you got no imagination? No willingness to ponder over how one could achieve this aim?

Small steps...

(1) increase the buoyancy of the plane by, say, having some hydrogen or helium filled bag on the top.

(2) supplementing the main engines by way of ducted turbo fans so that take-off and landing thrust is generated by burning kerosene, but they can be throttled way back during level flight.

(3) using some form of chemo-electrical reaction to create the electricity needed. No idea what, I'm not a chemist.

Dyson to build electric car that doesn't suck

Re: Aircon pump...

FYI the air conditioner in a Toyota Prius (NHW20 onwards) is all electric. It's actually quite a feat of engineering because it's totally sealed with the motor coils sealed inside the unit with the refrigerant. So you do need a special gas with zero conductivity, but there's no drive shaft seal to leak it away again, so it should stay good for many years. Mine's been going 11 years now without a refill and there are no problems - works fine.

Re: a motor per wheel connected to some dampers...

automatically adjusts between driving over hard surfaces and carpet.

Re: I can already see the styling.

But the exhaust pipe can stretch all the way to the top of the stairs.

Re: "why he is being given public money..."

To ensure that any EV Dyson does produce will be faced wth a 220% import tariff into the American market and thus protect the big American EV manufacturers.

Re: What about Dyson Bagpipes?

He's busy building his sphere.

Re: Prediction

It will have two huge ball tyres and pivot in the middle to get into hard to reach parking places. And there will be a special version for pet owners.

Docs ran a simulation of what would happen if really nasty malware hit a city's hospitals. RIP :(

Re: Not surprising given the user base at hospitals

Meh. We had a Silicon Graphics with an optical mouse and a special mat with a graticule on it that did that. I'm still not sure how it knew it was in the centre of the pad.

Re: I was buying a new vacuum cleaner last week

If it was made by Microsoft, you can be certain it won't suck.

Yes. The principle is simply that the data are stored in a relational database, and you can do with it what you will. It was originally designed for chemists, so you can even put in floor plans and the system will alert you if you try to store too much of a particular class of material in the one space, or try to put two potentially hazardous reactants in the same area. On top of which it's web based and there's an emergency services access code so that responders can determine where stuff is in the building, what hazardous materials are there etc etc even from the back of a fire engine en route.

It's not computer controlled. It uses solid state zero-switching regulators. And very big pieces of metal that move. But the point was that hospitals can't survive without electricity, so turning the power off doesn't help with a cyber attack. Well, hospitals as we understand them. Obviously a field hospital in the middle of an African plain where the closest thing they get to electricity is a battery powered fob watch, a pen light and a solar rechargeable sphygmomanometer is another thing. I reckon they could cope.

Hospitals cope with a complete loss of grid electricity by having a mahoosive diesel fed generator and a contract with a major fuel distributor such that they can get a great big tanker there to refill it every 6 hours, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Hmm... not really. I mean, we have a lot of incubators, fridges and freezers and -80°C freezers and liquid nitrogen tanks etc. Currently they are monitored by a third party add-on thermal scanning system that beams measurements by radio back to IP connected base stations (thick walls), that then relays the signals to a central C&C computer. But the same C&C system can accept suitably formatted input from a device with an integral self-monitoring system. We just haven't bought any because a plain old fridge is cheaper.

And then there's the question of the fridge contents. We are currently implementing a sample labelling and storage system in order to track every single aliquot of DNA, tissue, plasmid, you name it, that goes into storage. We aim to be able to pin down the exact shelf, drawer and box location of every sample, primarily so that freezer doors need to be opened for a far shorter time leading to a reduction of energy use and defrosting requirement. It will also enable an exit policy so that ownership of samples will not "stutter" when someone leaves - it was discovered in a recent audit that around 40% of our storage capacity is taken up with ownerless legacy material. Now, each fridge, freezer and storage unit will have a barcode reader tacked to the outside for people to record what they put where and when. These records are tied into electronic lab books and electronic protocol lists.

I wonder what would happen if we lost all those data in a cyber attack?

Re: WannaCry and NHS

Believe me, if any deaths occurred directly as a result of WannaCry, it won't be just the IT guys that will have their feet in the fire. Clinicians must consider the possibility that devices, information, drugs, procedures etc will not be available and have alternative care plans in place. Certainly this is a wake up call to those who have become complacent about the previously good(ish) record of reliability in medical IT systems, but even so they will be acutely aware that it's just a tool, its not a replacement for good practice and patient care.

CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

Re: Coin Hive's pitch is

I thought this would be caught by bog-standard XSS defences.

Web devs griping about iPhone X notch: You're rendering it wrong

Don't give them ideas.

Re: I don't get it

And when you turn it sideways?

iPhone 8: Apple has CPU cycles to burn

Re: "Top consumer camcorders ... don't even come close."

And a battery that you can change.

You forgot that you hired me and now you're saying it's my fault?

Re: The single biggest problem with PowerPoint is its fixed, linear nature

Oh yeah. You know, I remember an Apple brainstorming seminar / presentation thing I went to once. It was mainly for the education sector, and it was just as the iPad was coming out. They had a brilliant sort of two way Powerpoint like thing. You could draw on your iPad and it integrated with the "presenters" iPad. It was really good. But I never saw it again. It would be typical Apple, I reckon. Brilliant ideas, developed almost to the point of release, then the project evaporates and is never heard of again. It was the same when they were bringing PowerSchool to the UK. It was a superb product which just needed a slight bit of tweaking to get it ready for the UK market. I saw a pre-release of the UK edition and then POOF! nothing.

Re: Powerpoint - 'boring on-screen business wank'

Unfortunately I was asked as part of a job interview to prepare a Powerpoint presentation about how I would improve technical support in the new amalgamated school. I tried to get out of it. I wriggled and squirmed but my boss wouldn't let me get away with simply using a flip chart or an OHP.

I got the job, but I felt a little bit deader inside.

I also do not believe ANY report or analysis that is presented to me in landscape format. I mean, an incident investigation report, professional and independent, allegedly, was circulated as a landscape document. WTF?! That told me all I needed to know. Where's the real report?

NBD: Adobe just dumped its private PGP key on the internet

Re: Really nothing new

They are also key players in PostScript, typefaces and Illustrator predates Photoshop. There are large chunks of its catalogue, though, that were obtained by acquisition. In fact PostScript is where they began, really. Ha! Remember that code 0 feature that let you permanently disable a printer with a well crafted PostScript file? Ah, Adobe. You spoil us with your security related humour.

Shock: Brit capital strips Uber of its taxi licence

Re: The brains of London's Black Cab drivers...

...with the hippocampus growing disproportionately...

but does it then squash and inhibit operation in the areas of the brain responsible for (1) suppressing the conversion of internal monologue into external speech, (2) loving and embracing all of fellow humanity (including cyclists, "foreigners", scroungers, lay-abouts, the gubbermint, traffic wardens (not strictly counting as "humanity" but they are usually bipedal at least) and "nancy boys", (3) empathy towards the privacy of anyone even vaguely describable as a "celebrity"?

Re: Ben Hur Moment.......

I don't think it's the Prius drivers per se that have poor lane discipline, but the fact that many of them are taxi drivers. Having said that, as a Prius owner, I'm sick to f***ing death of pricks trying to get into my car when I'm picking my friend up at the station.

IT plonker stuffed 'destructive' logic bomb into US Army servers in contract revenge attack

Re: Where to hide a logic bomb?

In the wastebasket?

Re: Two fails

I mean delaying the payroll is bound to get someone to notice soon. Far better to just add an extra dollar onto everyone's pay-packet that month. Then an extra two dollars the next month... And keep going. No-one is going to complain, and the wages bill next audit looks like the investment in the new contract was more costly than anyone anticipated.

Microsoft reveals details of flagship London store within spitting distance from Apple's

Re: tumbleweeds

Are they still doing gigs?

Oh, I've got a brand new combine harvester...

I'm more concerned about this decor...

An 8-bit palette of eye-watering intensity and if they have shelves or pegs for accessories then they'll be arranged (no choice) alphabetically with a helpful letter "A" to tell you where that section starts.

Kebab and pizza shop owner jailed for hiding £179k from the taxman

Re: Sub heading should read

Oh stop with all the cheesy puns!

Tekagac?

Sounds like some dodgy IT outfit.

Ah, good ol' Windows update cycles... Wait, before anything else, check your hardware

"platform of built-in solutions to optimize your Windows 10 investment"

I hate them already.

Quebec takes mature approach to 'grilled cheese' ban

Re: If even the Canadians can do it

Two slices of bread! Of course! So simple. So much less messy.

That probably explains the Breville ban.

Re: The only one I didn't get...

It went whey over your head.

Re: If even the Canadians can do it

A cheese toasty is different from toasted cheese, grilled cheese, cheese on toast or Welsh Rarebit. I think. I'm pretty sure that if I was asked to do a cheese toasty, I'd do it in a toasted sandwich maker rather than sticking something under the grill.

Manchester plod still running 1,500 Windows XP machines

Re: Not lacksy-daisy.

I have one of those! I use it for printing out letters but it's a bit broken so the spelling goes all wonky. I suppose you could call it a lacksy-daisy-wheel.

Bill Gates says he'd do CTRL-ALT-DEL with one key if given the chance to go back through time

Re: BREAK

I seem to recall having a IIci that had two buttons on the front. There was a reset/reboot and a button that very, very occasionally let you type a command that could get you back to the finder, but it rarely worked. I wasn't an ADC member way, way back then. But the bent paperclip WAS an essential part of my tool kit.