Posts by bkcokota

Microsoft revives flight sim by giving it away free

I'm personally more of a fan of railworks, sure it can be a bit buggy but the latest patch has added a lot of fun new features. I believe the url is http://www.railsimulator.com

That Brit-built £22 computer: Yours for just £1,900 or more

I think you misunderstood me

What I was trying to say was as a student I didn't learn anything, however afterwards in university, I did learn, a few languages in fact, and yes, as far as servers go, it's a pretty sad old beast, but for a file host/ data slurper it's sufficient.

I'm going to be buying two of these when they become available, one for my son to learn on, and one for me to replace my server (which is running on a 500mhz p3), I think this is a great project, getting these into a classroom would be brilliant, nobody ever explained any programming to me as a student, and all the IT class taught was how to make a "movie" with powerpoint.....

Apple recalls first iPod Nanos over battery flaw

Turns out my ipod is eligible for this, it's a white 4gb nano, it actually has been having battery issues so hopefully this will sort it (not that I'd complain if they decided to give me a brand new nano instead), I'll be sure to let you guys know what it was that I got when it's returned.

Fire icon for the poor old batteries going up in smoke.

LOHAN spaceplane project starting to shape up nicely

Rocket shape?

I think using the tractor rocket idea is wrong, I do agree that it works on actual rockets, however, LOHAN is not a rocket it is too slow and does need to land right? I can think of very few rockets that have actually landed, it seems to be more similar to aircraft, as such I suggest use of a delta wing style instead, for example:

the Avro Vulcan bomber- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Vulcan

the Concorde- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

The Blackbird- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird

The space shuttle orbiter- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Orbiter

All these aircraft use some style of delta wing, and a lot of them are used at extremely high altitude where due to their large wing area they have better maneuverability and lift and as such are more energy efficient at such altitudes, the aircraft shape itself is very easy to make and can be built extremely strong, there is also the fact that when landing the high drag produced with a high angle of attack means it can shear speed rapidly, and that is one of my main concerns for the tractor design, the actual landing will have to be done at a high speed because of the wing area. I believe that the shape of delta aircraft lend themselves to be rocket powered craft also, you could build a large cylindrical body with lots of room for the required kit and an internal engine and it would still be easy to balance and strong which is important if things go badly during any of the stages. I can produce model designs to show the proposed shape if so desired and seriously suggest that this be a better idea than a nose-heavy tractor.

Google misses Russian trick with Opera snubs

Hang on one second....

If opera is such a top-tier browser shouldn't it be standards-compliant and any changes google make not cause any problems? As far as I can tell any change google makes to it's website is standards compliant, so why does opera have any problems with it? Browser hacks in such a browser is an insult to any user and justifies google's choice.

Dutch astronaut unleashes 155 mph 'Superbus'

Bus?

Hate to make a stupid comment, but it doesn't seem particularly wheelchair friendly, hell will freeze over before they make a public transport system that doesn't account for the disabled.

Paris because I'm sure even she could come up with a better idea than this (which is saying something sadly).

Naked at 30: Osborne 1 stripped to its chips

Untrue

I'm 20 and I used to use the terminals which managed the library system at primary school, the program was on 2 5 and a halves and were a nightmare to get working because the discs kept failing due to their age (they didn't even want to shell out for new disks). From what I know they haven't upgraded their systems yet... I also remember installing Fifa 95? (not so sure about the year) on the computers running 98SE we had there, Good memories.

Intel trying a flash cache again

typing too quick?

Seagate's hybrid HDD is the Momentus XT, not momentum as you accidently typed. Did you get too much momentum up typing the article? (sorry for the bad pun)