Posts by PerlyKing

Bids for ISS demolition rights are now open, NASA declares

Re: A better alternative

I believe that it's actually pretty tricky (and expensive) to get something into an orbit which intersects the sun. For a start you have to cancel your orbital speed, which at Earth's distance is a little under 30km/s. For comparison, escape velocity (from the Solar system) from Earth's orbit is just under 17km/s. So it would be easier and cheaper (but arguably less responsible) to send something out into the universe than into the sun. Cheaper than both is to lower the orbit enough for Earth's atmosphere to finish the job.

Meet Honda's latest electric vehicle: A rideable suitcase

Re: Mopeds

The last time I checked (which was a while ago; I'm lazy) the legal definition of a moped included a top speed of under 30mph (might have been "up to").

Scientists trace tiny moonquakes to Apollo 17 lander – left over from 1972

Re: El Reg comparators for temperature?

I was in an Indian restaurant once where the spiciness scale went up to "very extra hot" :-D

Linux distros drop their feelgood hits of the summer

The feel good hit of the summer

Is this a Fun Lovin' Criminals reference I see before me?

UK air traffic woes caused by 'invalid flight plan data'

Re: Functional spec

So what you're saying is that it might have thrown a YouCantGetThereFromHereException ?

Re: Resiliency – we've heard of it

Flight plans can be quite complex documents and doing a thorough input sanitation early on may not be feasible.

As complex as 800MB+ XML documents that can be validated against a schema? That sounds unlikely.

Concorde? Pffft. NASA wants a Mach 4 passenger jet

Re: The real problem with Concorde.....

It could outdrag virtually all the jet fighters. I'll give you the three hours thing ;-)

LibreOffice 7.6 arrives: Open source stalwart is showing its maturity

Re: "Now if I could just get LO to install without throwing repeated 2503/2504 errors."

I think it's a reference to Apollo 11's repeated computer errors (1201/1202?) during the descent from lunar orbit to the surface, which were (probably?) caused by the crew turning on the rendezvous radar in case they needed to abort back to lunar orbit. I think this was a last-minute (untested?) addition to the flight plan, and the extra computational load caused the aforementioned errors.

Sort of snarky, sort of a nerdy in-joke.

Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

Re: It is no more the duty of Facebook etc to police messages

I used to think along those lines, but there are a few key differences between a phone service and social media, including but not limited to:

* Phone calls are usually direct, one-to-one connections

* Phone services are fungible - if I don't like the one I'm with it's easy to change to another provider and I can still call all my friends no matter who they're with

The big one as far as I'm concerned is motivation: my phone company is (I hope) motivated to keep my custom by providing a good service so that I keep paying them. A social media company running on the business model of providing a "free" service which is paid for by advertising is motivated to put as many ads in front of me as possible. They do this by showing me things which will keep me engaged with the platform. This in turn means that they are not an impartial service provider, but they are actively deciding what to show me. Which means, to my mind, that they bear some responsibility for that content.

Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

Re: Bring back OS/2

The only experience that I remember with OS/2 was deleting the mouse driver. I can't remember how, or if, I fixed it, but I vividly remember how I deleted it: having selected the icon on the screen I intended to press Return (or Enter, whatever), but instead I managed to fat-finger Delete followed a split-second later by Return. Just enough time to form the memory of the "Are you sure you want to delete this?" dialog, with the default being "Yes" X-(

China succeeds where Elon Musk has failed with first methalox rocket

Re: Ignition out of print

It's not out of print at the moment. Probably available elsewhere too.

I do wonder whether the Audible version has sound effects :-)

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

Reproduction

All I can add to the discussion is Flanders & Swann's Song of Reproduction

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

I, a UK citizen, once went on holiday to Mexico via California. Flying back from Mexico to California there were two immigration lines: one for US citizens and one for Mexican citizens. So I chose the shorter one and had a short chat with a nonplussed customs officer who had never seen a British passport before. This was in the mid 90s, so it was an amusing incident rather than a harrowing ordeal.

Amazon Prime too easy to join, too hard to quit, says FTC lawsuit

Re: Poetic Justice?

Tragedy? Isn't that when you feel sorry for the company that comes to a sticky end?

Is it a drone? Is it a balloon? Whatever it is the US warns locals not to let them fly in Iran

Re: Airborne Diesels? New breed of Zeppelin?

Diesel fuel, but not the Diesel cycle.

Re: Airborne Diesels? New breed of Zeppelin?

the last "successful" class of aircraft to use Diesel engines were Zeppelins

Does this mean the end of the horse-drawn Zeppelin?!

Can noise-cancelling buds beat headphones? We spent 20 hours flying to find out

Re: Old school here

If the yellow foam earplugs do it for you, go for it!

Over years as a biker I could never find anything off the shelf that worked for long, so I ended up with custom made earplugs for about £80. Which last for years and may end up cheaper than disposable ones. As long as you don't lose them....

Ubuntu 23.04 welcomes three more flavors, but hamburger menus leave a bad taste

Re: Ubuntu Cinnamon is better looking than Kubuntu

Stop holding back Liam, tell us what you really think! :-D

It's nice to have a reasoned critique, with examples. Maybe I'll have another look at Xfce.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

Re: Tempt fate

Derek & Clive?

When it comes to Linux distros, one person's molehill is another's mountain

Vi vs Emacs

It's definitely emacs :-p

SpaceX feels the pressure, scraps first orbital launch of Starship

T-0

As the official countdown says for T-0: excitement guaranteed!

Boffins claim discovery of the first piezoelectric liquid

Electrowetting

Are you sure you're not thinking of electrowetting?

Errors logged as 'nut loose on the keyboard' were – ahem – not a hardware problem

Re: Aaaaargh!

At one place I worked, the helldesk boosted their stats with this little wheeze: any time I had to chase them about a job that was taking longer than expected (like getting me the access I needed to do my job when I first joined), they would open a ticket for my enquiry (about the first ticket, I hope you're keeping up with this) and then close it as successfully completed as soon as I hung up the phone. Well, they had successfully answered my question hadn't they? Even if the answer was "we have no idea" ten days in a row!

Lenovo Thinkpad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

ThinkPad pricing

I think you may be missing a zero from the ThinkPad price....

Here's a fun idea: Try to unlock and drive away in someone else's Tesla

Re: Do not disturb

You must be so proud.

Re: you are breaking the law by stealing the car

Define "steal". In English law the definition includes the intention to permanently deprive the owner of their property. I may have got the wording wrong, but the consequence is that joyriding (where the vehicle is abandoned at the end of the ride) is not theft, and a new offence of "taking without owner's consent" had to be created.

Duelling techies debugged printer by testing the strength of electric shocks

Re: Obvious reply ...

And looking at it another way, "software is the part of a computer you can't kick" :-D

Spotted in the wild: Chimera – a Linux that isn't GNU/Linux

Re: Shackletons

I'm pretty sure I've heard the same description applied to the Lancaster, but I can't provide a source for that.

My favourite quote which is definitely about the Avro Shackleton was from a documentary about them which was filmed shortly before they were retired, in which a pilot was asked whether he liked flying them and replied something like "we've got leather seats and Rolls Royce engines, it doesn't get much better than this!"

Lockheed Martin demos 50kW anti-aircraft frickin' laser beam

DEIMOS

"Directed Energy Interceptor for Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense System"

OK, I can see DEIM, but it looks like they gave up on a proper backronym after that. 5/10, must try harder.

New IT boss decided to 'audit everything you guys are doing wrong'. Which went wrong

I'm sure I read a report somewhere recently that all of those CXXXs who say they work 60+ hours a week are including working meals (hmmm), gym sessions (gotta stay in shape!), networking events (you have to *hic* stay in touch with what your competitors are doing), and pretty much anything else that can be related to work, however tenuously.

NASA's meteor avoidance plan for James Webb Space Telescope: Turn it around

Re: WTF?

I understand and agree with all of that, I'm just a bit surprised that nobody thought to have it traveling with its back to the direction of travel from the start. As you say, we've got enough junk up there already to know the risks, why use a multi billion dollar mirror array to confirm them?

WTF?

How many years have they been planning the mission for, and they've only just figured this out? Big props for the technical accomplishments, but this has to be a bit of an "oops" moment.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/246923992039335615/

Orion reaches the Moon, buzzes surface, gets ready to orbit

Interesting. I shudder to think what would be made the Soviets cancel a mission on safety grounds!

All of those astronauts and cosmonauts definitely had balls of steel!

Parody Elon Musk Twitter accounts will be suspended immediately, says Elon Musk

Wehrmacht != nazi

I haven't seen the picture, but bear in mind that the wehrmacht was the regular German army and not all soldiers were nazis.

Confirmed: Asteroid shoved by Earth crash probe DART

BBC coverage

I loved this part of the BBC's coverage:

It saw the refrigerator-sized Nasa satellite drive straight into Dimorphos at 22,000km/h (14,000mph), destroying itself in the process.

Emphasis added. See icon for details.

California legalizes digital license plates for all vehicles

Won't somebody please think of the cons?

The "company" that has a monopoly on the metal licence plates must be gutted.

Good news for UK tech contractors as govt repeals IR35 tax rules

Re: Wake me up

Wake me up when all the companies which switched to only hiring through umbrella companies switch back again.

Crypto biz Wintermute loses $160m in cyber-heist, tells us not to stress out

Re: Yay !!!

+1 for the subhead!

Time to dig out my copy of "Neuromancer" :-)

Chemical plant taken offline by the best one of all: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂

Re: Phosphoric acid

... aka paint stripper. Literally.

NASA scrubs Artemis SLS Moon rocket launch

Re: One of the things not tested

I'm pretty sure that the Apollo 1 CM was pressurised to one atmosphere for the fatal ground test.

A tragic irony of that event was that the door was designed to open inwards because of the problem Gus Grissom had with his Mercury capsule in 1961: the hatch release was triggered early and he nearly drowned.

Recommended reading: "Rocket Men" by Craig Nelson.

You can never have too many backups. Also, you can never have too many backups

Re: Hardly on topic

Unless my memory is failing (which is quite possible!) it also had a renumber command (REN?) to tidy up after you'd added line 55 and messed up the numbering. Happy times :-)

In a time before calculators, going the extra mile at work sometimes didn't add up

Re: in a competitive world

When I was the spotty yoof in the story, I had a summer job in a government department, so competition wasn't a concern.

I finished some task or other and asked my boss for more work; she had a quiet word with me about stretching the work to fit the time. So, with some time on my hands I used the desktop PC to explore the LAN until I found a Unix box to play with. A week later someone from IT asked me to stop using time on their production box =8-O

We were promised integrated packages. Instead we got disintegrated apps

Re: Cloud access?

Thanks Bob, that's pretty much where I've got to. Unfortunately while OpenTasks supports recurring tasks, the Nextcloud app doesn't, and it seems a bit hit and miss how long they recur for, as in "forget" that they should recur.

Re: Cloud access?

I wish. One of my current projects is to use my Nextcloud instance to host my todo list. Should be easy, right? The free Nextcloud Web UI on the desktop has a free "Tasks" app which is pretty spiffy, all I need is an Android app to access the same thing on my phone. But no, none of the *many* apps I've found so far seem to be able to do this on their own, they need a separate app to sync to the server! The one which I used standalone for free, Tasks.org, wants $30 *per* *year* to allow me to do this =8-O

Be careful where you install software, and who installs it

Re: Linux Bros'

Linux has a GUI? ;-p

Post-quantum crypto cracked in an hour with one core of an ancient Xeon

Re: keep banging the rocks together.

Thumbs up for the HHGTTG reference :-D

The perfect crime – undone by the perfect email backups

Re: Logs

We're only getting the stories about the people who got caught....

Apple's grip on iOS browser engines disallowed under latest draft EU rules

The irony

Can anyone else remember the early days of iPhones, when Apple resisted publishing an SDK and said that developers should do everything in Web apps?

The month I worked for DEADHEAD: Yes, that was their job title

Re: art copies real life

In the places where I've worked recently none of the lowly Managers have had secretaries (or even PAs). You'd have to be Head of Something or Other to qualify for human help.

When product names go bad: Microsoft's Raymond Chen on the cringe behind WinCE

The BASTARD system

My boss tried to get our new system named the Buy-sell And Sell-buy Transaction And Reporting Database, so that support calls would be along the lines of "The BASTARD system's gone down again!" :-)

Someone higher up with no sense of humour nixed the idea :-(