Posts by I am replete.

No Sky tv in France.

No Sky tv in France.

We live in SE France. Since last Thursday, we have lost Sky tv, completely. We cannot obtain any UK channels at all. Our local technician says it is the same all over, even their own private tv's are not getting any Sky programs. I have noticed all of the excitement in El reg about Skype losing phone coverage, for a short while, and how it was covered as if the world had just ended (apparently not it has restarted).

But why isn't El Reg getting excited about the thousands of people who have been cut off from all Sky tv for 5 days now?

Forgive the grumpy tone of this note, it's because I'm completely p*ss*d off.

OBTW, it appears that you lot, Sky UK clients, have no trouble at all. What fun for you.

UK's annual PCB waste = 81 HMS Belfasts, says National Physical Lab

It can be done now, today. Just note the draught marks on the sides of the ship, there might even be 6 sets, and then consult the book which is onboard. The various weights for the ship can be read off.

National Grid's new designer pylon is 'too white and boring' – Pylon Appreciation Society

Watch the rugby on tv. A player has the ball and is awaiting an inevitable tackle. His legs are apart and as firmly planted as he can manage. When the charge comes, depending upon the individuals, the ballplayer either remains standing, or falls. Now, suppose he decided to resist the charge by standing as firmly as he could but feet close together.

As the cartoon writers say SPLAT!!!!

The existing pylons have spread legs, on the whole they resist the charges very well.

I rest my case.

Brawling neighbours challenge 'quiet' cul-de-sac myth

Gosh, it's so exciting today!

Today, so far has been hectic. The dustbin men passed by sometime before dawn, we didn't hear them but the bin was empty. Not many people steal dustbin contents, so we figure it must be the dustbin men.

A (small) car passed by about half-an-hour ago, going to the left, (that's leaving). There's a good chance it'll be back sometime later, neighbours for the bread perhaps. If it's going to the right (that's returning) we'll know it's them.

If not, oh, oh, should we be getting worried?

Gosh it's so exciting today.

Hubble 'scope snaps 600-LIGHT-YEAR-wide pic of star-spawning nebula

"....These pockets will likely eventually merge into larger clusters, helping researchers to answer questions...."

Erm, yes, I suppose so.

But at that time will there be anyone around here to observe it?

Will there be anything here at all?

OHM MY GOD! Move over graphene, here comes '100% PERFECT' stanene

It's a devious and inscrutable plot, I think. The name obviously derivers from Stanford (a university, I think, somewhere) and "ened-u"p to give it a scientific lustre, or lustrene.

John McAfee talks of sex, drugs, and bad coding

Can anyone say which is the best AV and also the best in value for money.

I have McAfee and the computer certainly appears free of infections, but also, it is really, really slow, it is 4GB memory and 320Mb HHD.

Universe gains an extra hundred million years

""As NASA explains in this release, the CMB “provides scientists with a snapshot of the universe 370,000 years after the big bang. Light existed before this time, but it was locked in a hot plasma similar to a candle flame, which later cooled and set the light free.”"

So....It appears that a hot candle flame is dark, and a cold (?) candle flame is light. Presumably this aspect of a flame applies to all flames, or are their different classes of flames?

Does it follow then that the best way to get warm from a fire is to put it out?

Come to think of it, we could save the planet with this one. By not lighting fires, we can see the not-light, get warm and avoid consuming all of those scarce resources, all at the same time.

Heroic Register reader battles EXPLODING COMPUTER

Re: No-brand power supply

A bit clunky, a water tank on top, could really mess up the innards as well.

Better might be a little cylinder of Halon, poof and the fire is out.

Mind you, Halon doesn't cool, so you'll need a second or third shot of Halon available, means money.

More elegant, possibly least weight, might be a small air pump attached somewhere. The air pump suction should be at an opening in the casing. Start the airpump and voila!, the resultant vacuum starves the flame. The little airpump can run and run. make sure the airpump suction is the only opening in the casing.

Perhaps you could have a reversible cooling fan!

Or cast iron computer innards, don't care about a little excess heat.

Just speculating....

Metric versus imperial: Reg readers weigh in

Peter Melia

Not many of you out there remember, but in the old system you could go into any shop and order, say, 2 lbs potatoes, 4 carrots, 3 pints of milk, half a gill of cream, and hand over a quid, worth 20 bob. Without any hesitation she’d reply, “That’ll three and sixpence ha’penny love, and if you can give me a couple of half crowns that’ll save breaking into your pound note”.

Nowadays, you’ll order, say, 2 kg potatoes, 4 carrots, 2 litres of milk, 1 box of cream and stick a credit card in a slot. She’ll punch it all in and the machine will tell us the amount and the change.

A smaller shop will have the assistant struggling with a calculator.

The point is, the first shopkeeper was really, really mentally agile, and so were everyone, the workshop floor worker would work out his wages taking into account deductions, calculate extraordinary betting odds, all in his head.

When we did a mental calculation we had a good idea of the size of the end result. Now a child can have no idea of what is number crunching might end up with, and whether it’s wrong or right, or even near.

So the end result might well be more efficient calculations, but in fact we are all becoming numerically more illiterate.

LOHAN is heading towards REHAB

A lot about nothing.

You mention a vacuum for test purposes. I think the best your fridge compressor (compressor!) can do will be about plus 5psi. No vacuum I'm afraid.

If you are serious about a cheapo vacuum producer, get you hands on an old, very small, air compressor, reverse the pipe connections, and hey presto you've a vacuum maker that will really suck!

Use a plastic tube water column for measuring your "vacuum", looks extremely Heath Robinsonish but it will give you an indisputably accurate measurement. First principles, you see.

Good luck chaps.

LOHAN flashes fantastical flying truss

I am replete

Coupla things.

First, Have you got the assembly right? It clearly consists of small-diameter wooden sticks, with flat ends which are joined to the circular the circular surface of similar sticks. So the actual contact area between the sticks is a line, there is no area contact. To try and increase the area by squeezing the sticks closer together will cause distortion in the sticks, and result in internal pressures. The super glue will have a contact line area, the rest is an illusion of strength. The benefits, if any, of the addition of woodglue to the assembly may be doubted. Certainly the woodglue will add weight.

Second, steel structures are usually tested to six-times calculated failure strength, do you have plans to do this?

The nearest parallel to what you are doing would appear to be the wooden fighter and bombers produced during WW2. Those little aircraft were subjected to enormous stresses, and the designers specified very precise construction and gluing (for they were glued!) techniques. Have you studied the work of those early aerial design geniuses?

Third, why bother about 2 balloons for lift. Why not use one, larger one to do the same job? You'd get the same lift for much less ballon material weight. It is not necessary, although prettier, to have two balloons, nor an horizontal lift-off configuration. The thing would probably work better, albeit less elegantly, if simply slung vertically from your bigger ballon (with 2 strings, in case one failed).

Come eject time the aircraft will shoot away safely from the carrier at whatever angle it lies at launch moment, think about Polaris-type missiles, launched under water, they straighten themselves up dramatically as they leave the sea.

Inside WD's flooded Thai factory

Yes, it was foolish, but the Thais are not alone.

Consider the foolishness of building a nuclear power plant

astride an earthquake fault

which just happens to be in a

sunami affected coastal region.

The amazing shipping container: How it changed the world

I am replete

In England there is a busy stretch of the M1 motorway that

runs alongside a main railway track which,

runs alongside a main canal,

and the canal runs alongside an old major road,

which almost certainly started out in life as a cart track track,

wide enough to allow Roman chariots,

and before that a horsepath,

and before that a footpath,

and before that....

That railway nowadays carries, in addition to everything else, containers, of course. What will be the next incarnation of this really useful bit of English land?

The government is considering a high speed railway and in doing this they are doing no more or less than dozens of governments throughout the world. So the next generation of British container trains will whistle along at high speed.The nation that invented trains, and the industrial revolution, is now content to trail along behind just about everything else.

The container, that wonderful, ugly box, which has revolutionised world ocean commerce, halts the revolution abruptly at the world’s seaports and reverts to a transport system which is constrained by the width of ancient Roman chariots.

Isn’t it time to continue the container revolution inland?

Consider a really creative alternative, a broad-gauge railway line. Not just any broad-gauge but a gauge capable of supporting a train that can carry multiples of standard industrial containers? The standard container is 8 feet wide, 8 feet high and 20 feet long. Suppose our new train was based on a gauge which would allow, say, 3 containers abreast, and say 2 or 3 containers high? These large trains would be able to do for railways what jumbo aircraft did for world air transport, and large ships did for world sea transport. That is, it would enable the trains to carry more cargo more cheaply than at present.

Having been held up in my car at a Texas railway crossing by a train of approaching 100 cars in length, pulled by 3 or perhaps 4 huge diesel engines, travelling at a seemingly leisurely speed, I have long been aware of the potential of fat trains. One fat train the container car the same length as a single Texas container car, but 3-wide and 3-high, would have replaced 9 conventional cars that day.

Boeing invented the jumbo jet, and transformed aviation.

Brunel invented large ships, and thereby transformed marine transport.

Isn’t it time trains got “invented” into large vehicles and took their rightful place in the world cargo scene as large medium speed, cargo and people carriers?

Australia cuts solar subsidies, and not before time

Economic Tipping Points

Henry Ford, turned the world upside down with nary a subsidy.

At the time he came along, motor vehicles were a rich man's extravagence.

As a result, there were very few decent roads, no filling stations, few mechanics and so on.

Henry, who was an electrician by trade, saw that if he could produce a car which the middle classes would want, and afford, then perhaps he could earn a living selling a few.

Now.

Please tell me how anyone on this planet with a BIG IDEA, needs a govsub to get it off the ground?

Surely the question is quite simple.

"Is it economically viable, or not?"

The rush to solar, wind, etc was fueled by worries about man-made global warming, now proven false.

Then the "Peakists" took over, with their cry, "The oil is running out!"

But Shale Oil has put paid to that.

Watt, with his steam engine, became a tipping point in mankind's economic history.

Future generations will regard the advent of Shale Oil as the second economic tipping point.

Hubble celebrates 21st with gorgeous galactic 'rose' snap

The Stalk of the Rose.

The rose appears to have 2 major spirals or petals.

Below is a similar object, but seemingly pointing downwards, reminiscent of the stalk of a flower.

The path of this stalk is quite different from the paths of the petals, how can this be?

Can anyone either in Register or NASA give a convincing reason for the stalk?

After that, the hard one, we'll get onto discussing origins!

The Stalk of the Rose.

The rose appears to have 2 major spirals or petals.

Below is a similar object, but seemingly pointing downwards, reminiscent of the stalk of a flower.

The path of this stalk is quite different from the paths of the petals, how can this be?

Can anyone either is Register or NASA give a convincing reason for the stalk?

After that, the hard one, we'll get onto discussing origins!

Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA

Peter Melia

"All other forms of infrastructure – transport, housing, industries – have failed the people in and around them comprehensively, leading to deaths most probably in the tens of thousands."

There must by now be hundreds of photos of ships and boats of all kinds washed ashore. Take a close look at them. The vessels are shown in their final resting places (at this time) in the most extraordinary positions and angles, yet the vast majority of them appear to be completely intact. Ships and boats live in a 24/24, 7/7, etc earthquake environment, from initial entry into the water until final dismantling. Their design and construction caters for this. Perhaps something can be learnt here.