* Posts by Stoneshop

5951 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009

HP dumps Apotheker for Whitman

Stoneshop
Holmes

"HP used to be a great company. What the hell happened?"

They've started calling themselves Agilent, that's what happened. And there's a purveyor of printer ink that's been split off and taken the name HP with it.

Microsoft exec departs after tweet about Nokia phone

Stoneshop
Holmes

"Can't be beaten"

A Stanley Fatmax Fubar would be my tool of choice for that, although any heavy object down to the humble stone will do just fine. It will also beat fanboi reviewers.

Celebrating the 55th anniversary of the hard disk

Stoneshop

Head crash

Umpteen years back, when removable disk drives with those platter packs described in another reply were present at about every site:

Site manager (wiping the inside of such a disk drive, with visible deposits of brown-gray dust, with his finger): "What's this?"

Disk technician (busy getting ready with repairing the drive after, obviously, a head crash): "Your data."

LOHAN to suck mighty thruster as it goes off, in a shed

Stoneshop
Boffin

Ignition test

Note: "It doesn't really matter if the rig does blow its lid, as we're only testing the motor's ability to fire, not its performance across the entire burn."

*IF* it fizzles at first, there will be little exhaust and a a consequence only a un-energetic lid-blowing. So that aspect of the ignition sequence will be noticed.

But once such a solid fuel motor ignites, its resulting internal pressure will make the outside ambient pressure totally irrelevant.

Minister seeks to rip 'Like' buttons off German gov web

Stoneshop

Hey Commentards! [This title is optional]

Stoneshop
Headmaster

@AC 09:19

Your apostrophe catastrophe and misspelling of 'therefor' will cause your comment to be ignored.

DNS hijack hits The Register: All well

Stoneshop
Headmaster

If the final state is 'off'

you won't be seeing the defaced page either.

Stoneshop
Mushroom

Hackers vs. cracker

I consider myself a hacker (in the original sense of the word, and not limited to software or computer either), and the way I'd like to deal with the cracker/script kiddie end of the scale it through the business end of an AK47, or copious amounts of C4. Oh, and that includes spammers too. After buggering them with a splintery broomstick lovingly marinated in Mad Dog 44 Magnum Pepper Extract (look up its Scoville rating if the name is not explicit enough)

HP chief bows to Jobsian cult

Stoneshop
Flame

The company you're referring to with the name "HP"

is not the real HP. Agilent is.

COMET WILL DEFINITELY NOT HIT EARTH – NASA

Stoneshop

@Jimbo 6

Linguine? C'mon, just convert from brontosauruses.

Stoneshop
Headmaster

@NomNomNom

A quick shufti with your favourite search engine would have told you that the moon is 356400 km to 406700 km from the earth (it wobbles a bit due to the cheese gases escaping in random directions) (that's 2577283 to 2941024 brontosauruses, 13137 to 14992 PARISes, or 221451 to 252706 miles).

And for those moon landing images it was just a bit of driving to the Nevada desert, not hundreds of thousands of miles in some tin can on top of a huge rocket.

Google+ bans real name under ‘Real Names’ policy

Stoneshop
Flame

One anecdote does not data make

I know quite a few people who have G+ accounts under a nickname, but looking normal enough per Google's criteria. They haven't been suspended (yet).

I also know people who have been suspended from G+,even though they're using their "name friends and colleagues know you by" (as per the G+ user agreement) and haven't managed to get it reactivated. They've been using those names (as far as I know) well longer than Google has been around. So who's wrong here?

2nd-hand Popemobile, also used by Neil Armstrong, for sale

Stoneshop
Go

Pinging

I've had first-hand experience with a taxi ride from Cali to Popayan (Colombia, indeed) in a clapped-out 20-ish-year old land barge, probably a Chevrolet. I'm not sure what it ran on, but low-double-digits octane would probably be unjustly optimistic. At least it was mixed 50/50 with hope, perseverance and swearing.

Whenever power was needed, which was quite often with the road going up and down hills and even slower traffic present, an entire xylophone orchestra would come alive under the bonnet.

Still, we managed not to break down somewhere halfway.

Stoneshop
Go

Astronauts

Let's all chip in and buy this barge to give LOHAN's Playmonaut a fitting parade.

Piles of unshiftable HP fondle-slabs choke Best Buy

Stoneshop

@Tom 38

"I think the original idea was to make some money,"

Two words: printer ink.

German tap-to-pay telco allies don't need no stinkin' banks

Stoneshop
FAIL

Time to check through?

A growing number from one chain of supermarkets here let you take a barcode scanner at the entrance to scan the items as you're placing them in the cart. At the "checkout", you place the scanner in a docking unit, pay (by PIN), it prints the slip which has a barcode to activate the exit gate, and there you go. Total time to check out, half a minute at most.There is supervision at the self-checkout, and you may be checked.

I suggest you not only stop reading, but stop dealing with those newfangled technologies altogether as you are picking faults with issues that have already been addressed.

Angry S Koreans mass-sue Apple over iPhone tracking

Stoneshop
Pirate

@AC 12:45

They're just taking a leaf from Apple's iBook.

Apple changed shape of Galaxy Tab in court filing

Stoneshop
Devil

"I wish all these patent litigations issues were put to an end"

s/ions issues/ors/

There, much better.

Wikipedia: It's not for girls

Stoneshop
Coat

Hmm?

What about the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri? What are they?

Sony distribution centre engulfed by fire

Stoneshop
WTF?

Did these guys know something?

http://www.heise.de/ct/schlagseite/2011/16/

Cisco warns over warranty discs of EVIL

Stoneshop
Headmaster

@Hardcastle the ancient

Downvoted? Perhaps because one doesn't normally restore Cisco firmware or default configs from *warranty info* disks. In other words, it's likely been downvoted for lack of reading comprehension.

Can you handle LOHAN's substantial globes?

Stoneshop

@Wibble

Would it be feasible to hang LOHAN from the balloon using a short line (to minimise dangly-type problems during ascent), which at the point of launch is cut, allowing the launch assembly to drop, unreeling a longer line (your 100m sounds quite sufficient), the end stop of which triggers the engine ignition, with a few seconds delay to allow the launch assembly to stabilise vertically again. As always, the problem is keeping the mechanism from icing up.

Stoneshop

@nyelvmark

The "horizontal" and "vertical" refer to the attitude of the plane, not the boom

Stoneshop

Do we have images of meteo balloons popping at altitude?

Because I'm not entirely convinced that launching when the balloon goes kablooie is a bad thing. It's an easily detectable event (loss of pull on the connecting line) and it guarantees you're at maximum altitude. Risk of encountering balloon debris depends on launch timing and angle.

What I see in videos I found is that the (party) balloon rips, but most of the time there are few if any loose pieces flying off. If meteo balloons pop the same way I'd expect LOHAN to be pretty safe from encountering scraps.

Also, if you were to launch 45 degrees up (with subsequent trim to near-vertical) I doubt there would be balloon parts in LOHAN's way anyway.

Stoneshop

Not a disk

That would add unneccessary weight. Just a circle, with the launch platform centered in the middle with nylon wire arranged in a spoke-like fashion.

Stoneshop
Boffin

@Mike Richards

No, they will arrange so that the center of gravity will be below the center of lift, which is not necessarily horizontal.

But the balloon is not stable enough to do that. If the weight on top shifts or the entire setup starts to lean over because of wind, the balloon will try to pop out from underneath, amplifying the shift.

Stoneshop
Boffin

That was 89k feet

So, 27km or 196 brontosauruses. And given that a decent rocket will easily reach 5km when launched from the ground (where air is much denser, so more energy is wasted to drag), it could, in my estimate, add several tens of km's to that.

Stoneshop

The horizontal spar and especially the counterweight

will add a lot of weight.

What about taking a long boom hanging down from the balloon, with the plane at the lower end of it. Halfway down the boom is a hinge point created from a bit of rope (a real hinge would ice up at altitude). A ring or disc just over the hinge blocks the lower end swinging up past right angles respective to the upper part. The plane hangs horizontally underneath the lower part of the boom.

As the plane launches from the balloon it should initially stay attached to the boom which wil then cause it to swing from horizontal to somewhere near vertical, at which point the ring/disc blocks the boom from swinging further and the plane separates.

The tricky bit is designing the attachment so that the plane is pretty securely coupled during ascent, holds during the swing, but separates easily once the hinge hits the stop.

Stoneshop
Thumb Down

Those balloons

are anything but stable, rather fragile, and increase a fair bit in size between ground level and launch altitude.

Once you get around those three factors, a platform on top becomes viable.

DIY aerial drone monitors Wi-Fi, GSM networks

Stoneshop
Headmaster

@Chronos

Yes

Reg readers ponder LOHAN's substantial globes

Stoneshop

Angle

"Do we want to launch vertically, I thought the optimum angle was 45degrees for some reason?"

45 deg is when you want to lob a projectile the greatest horizontal distance. Which is not a design criterium for LOHAN (apart from that, it's not a projectile but a glider). Altitude is what we want, hence you want as much power as possible to be spent in a vertical fashion.

Stoneshop
Boffin

Hydrogen plus oxygen

Plus a pump to get that hydrogen from the balloon into its tank, because pressure in the balloon is just over atmospheric. Which it has to do in a few seconds.

Doing the math on the energy equations shows you're seriously way better off leaving that hydrogen to dissipate into the upper atmosphere unburned. Really seriously way better off.

Stoneshop

Lawnchair Larry

He went up to about 15 kfeet, IIRC. If PARIS' performance is anything to go by, LOHAN's jubs will lift her to well over five times that, meaning way more expansion and thus weaker skin.

Apple eyes phallic iPhone, iPod charger

Stoneshop

Dedicated earphones

And frequent replacement because of wire fatigue. The sales department must be having wet dreams already.

Stoneshop

That won't fly with Apple's design dept.

Closing the loop through the earbud and the case means the contact area need to be bare metal, not the anodised aluminium alloy that the iThingies cases tend to be made of. Furthermore, the minimal contact provided by a earphone bud weighing just a few grams on a not-too-clean metal surface (fingerprints and other environmental influences) is rather weak at best. Nothing you would want to run the 100mA or so current required to do a reasonable bit of charging in a reasonable bit of time.

If they can't spare the extra space for a charging socket, and they can't make the earphone/host socket function for charging either, they should just look into two contact points somewhere on the back of the case, and a stand that has matching contact leafs. Just like most cordless phones, walkie-talkies and such.

Stoneshop
FAIL

Physics are no barrier for the Mighty Church of Jobs

In the real world however, transformer coils need to form a closed circuit with 9primary) power source and the (secondary) device to be powered.

Just wrapping a length of cord, with only one end connected to anything, round an electromagnetically excited dick won't do create such a closed circuit, and hence very little charging will occur.

Google claims 'bogus patent' conspiracy against Android

Stoneshop

@Tom 15

I can only agree with your first paragraph; the jury's still out on the second (excluding the bit about the USPTO), and in the third you're using a definition of 'free' with which I'm not familiar.

Sure, the consumer doesn't have to pay directly for Android, but Google are no filantropists. Ad revenue, which if you get to the start of that chain is provided by consumers, is what's funding the entire Googlopoly, and using part of that to catch more ad-viewers is basic business sense; no need for respect there.

Stoneshop

@AC 08:43

"Ask youselves this, do you want to be in a world where there is no MS, no Oracle, no Adobe, no Yahoo, no Nokia?"

Only if you extend that list to include Google. And Sony.

Stoneshop
Alert

Middle managers, telephone sanitisers, hairdressers and SEO Specialists

will have to wait until all the patent litigation attorneys, intellectual property middlemen and other such scum have been irreversibly transferred to their hold in the 'B' Ark.

That virulent telephone-based disease looks to be the lesser risk of fucking up our society, and anyway, those patents covering medication will be out of the way.

It's official: Journos are dumb as a bag of IE users

Stoneshop

Why?

You might strike oil, or ore, or some pirate's long-hidden treasure.

LOHAN spaceplane project starting to shape up nicely

Stoneshop
Boffin

@caffeinated

The balloon is not a rigid platform. Furthermore, it's quite fragile, so putting anything on top of it *) will, providing it stays put in the first place, induce stresses that will cause the balloon to stop being one prematurely.

*) this advice provided free of charge by a card-carrying member of the Society for Putting Things on top of Other Things.

Stoneshop
Boffin

Absolutely not right

LOHAN will be equipped with functional stabilisers, unlike the rockets described in the Wikipedia article. Of course, the trick is to get them to keep the craft at roughly 45 degrees nose-up during engine burn (I can't readily find burn time numbers, but it appears to be just a couple of seconds max for most sizes). As long as your sideways momentum is small relative to the total length of the craft, nothing much is going to happen in that time, and even if it did pitch down immediately, it's at some 25km altitude, still quite some time and distance away from becoming a lawn dart.

Stoneshop

Conical rocket motor assembly

Would an alternative (to get around the need for synchronous, reliable ignition of multiple motors) be a single large motor with a titanium cone sitting behind the exhaust?

Stoneshop
Boffin

Multiple balloons

With one balloon providing the main lifting force, and a cluster of three partially-inflated smaller balloons you could trigger on the main balloon bursting (IMO the best and simplest way to signal that maximum altitude has been reached) while still keeping the tether taut after bursting and thus the launch platform at the predetermined attitude.

Stoneshop
Flame

It's been stated before

that due to the incompatibilities between hydrogen and several of SPB's members lifestyle, it's a no-go.

Shetland 'Topiary' suspect extended in custody for 3 days

Stoneshop
FAIL

@AC 17:14

Shoddy trolling.

It wasn't LulzSec, it was a rival group claiming that the arrested man wasn't the real Topiary. And ElReg did report it as such, mentioning exactly that caveat.

Try to read as well as try comprehending what you've read, and keep in mind that the average Reg reader is a bit sharper than you're apparently used to dealing with (including yourself).

Apart from that, the police have never shown to be fallible, eh? Especially in the area of cybercrime, their eminent area of expertise.

Now go away before I taunt you a second time.

Intel: Apple has online app sales exactly backwards

Stoneshop
FAIL

@Guido

""what if you don't know what you are searching for? → #"

That by implication means you do not want anything."

Bzzt, wrong.

Quite often, I know I need something, but barely know how to look for it. And that's not because I don't know how to use Google/Yahoo/Bing.

The biggest problem I currently have with searching for an item I need is simply getting the right keywords to feed all those search boxes. Anything from inconsistent naming (yes, I'm looking at you, conrad.nl) down to "what the hell does one call this widget anyway?" is the main hurdle to finding things online, whereas in a brick-and-mortar store I can wander the aisles until I hit a shelf that has thingummies that are kindof similar to the widget I'm looking for, then narrow it down.

World first: UK boffins print out working 3D aeroplane

Stoneshop
Boffin

Geodesic airframe

Pity Barnes Wallis isn't around anymore to see this

UK data watchdog 'looking into' Google+ mission creep

Stoneshop
Big Brother

No, you're not obliged to provide this info

But the fact that G+ is asking you to provide this link, instead of allowing separate accounts under nicknames (quite a number of which are perfectly valid identities in their own right, having been around longer than Google itself) speaks volumes. to me.

Stoneshop

WHOIS anonymity

For the .nl TLD, a whois only gives you the registrar, not the owner.