Posts by Dr Kerfuffle

How Sinclair's QL computer outshined Apple's Macintosh against all odds

Re: outSHONE

The word I hate most is 'burglarized'. As in ' I came home and found my house had been burglarized'. NO NO NO, it is 'Burgled' ! It always has been. Why make up longer words unnecessarily?!!!

Voyager 2 found! Deep Space Network hears it chattering in space

Re: Contact!

The Dara O’Briain programme about the moon was good BUT it was wrecked by the constant breaks for adverts every 10 minutes. Without the adverts the whole thing could have been condensed down to about 20 minutes. Best watch it on catch-up if you have the ability to skip the ads!

Paul

Makers of ad blockers and browser privacy extensions fear the end is near

Delayed ads?

Talking of blocking adverts, is there an extension that will block those annoying delayed adverts that pop-up a few minutes after you have started viewing a page?

Often they are trying to get you to subscribe to the site or tell you something you don't want to know. They always manage to obscure the bit you are reading!

Blocking normal pop-ups doesn't seem to get rid of these delayed ones.

Paul

Voyager 1 space probe producing ‘anomalous telemetry data’

Hope it doesn't turn evil !

I hope that it doesn't turn all evil and decide to return home to find its creator. And destroy all others as an 'infestation'.

I'm pretty sure I watched a documentary about that once.

Paul

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

I was offered a job at Sinclair!

When I was working for Tangerine/Oric computers in Cambridge, I was offered job at Sinclair for £21,500. Which was pretty decent in 1983.

However before I had a chance to decide whether to accept it or not, it was announced on the news the next day that Sinclair had closed down!

Oh well

Paul

This drag sail could prevent spacecraft from turning into long-term orbiting junk. We spoke to its inventors ahead of launch

Well having played Kerbal Space Program for the last couple of years, I discovered that the whole orbital dynamics thing is counterintuitive. If you slow down a spacecraft, it just puts it into a higher orbit (so, further away from the Earth). If you speed up the spacecraft then it reduces the orbit (thus bringing it closer to the Earth). This is what makes rendezvous between 2 spacecraft in orbit so tricky, because things work in the opposite way to what you would expect.

Paul

Samsung: We will remotely brick smart TVs looted from our warehouse

Sure. they can brick the TVs but ...

So, sure they can brick the TVs, but how come they still can't fix the BBC Red Button/Text service on my brand new Samsung 2021 model TV ?

Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone

Re: If Marvel taught us anything

Not only will Roger Waters re-join Pink Floyd, but he'll find some way of blaming Israel for the boars/pigs!

Roger Waters tells Facebook CEO to Zuck off after 'huge' song rights request

I have to agree here. Roger Waters has arrogantly decided that other musicians should boycott Israel and actively lobbies them not to play there. His understanding of the situation there seems to be minimal and he just jumps onto whatever trendy left wing bandwagon happens to be passing by.

Despite loving Pink Floyd for many years, I now boycott his music and refuse to listen or buy anything by him. See how he likes it now!

You can listen right here to the whir of a robot helicopter flying on an alien world

Duty Free on Mars ?

What is the situation regarding duty free purchases while on Mars? I assume that as there is no tax authority or customs & excise there, that any purchases (such as booze or fags) would be supplied tax free. Although perhaps there might be duties to pay when you brought your purchase back to Earth?

Paul

Re: Ho hum

Pah! - The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

'iOS security is f**ked' says exploit broker Zerodium: Prices crash for taking a bite out of Apple's core tech

Bugs in Microsoft Basic

I wrote to Bill Gates in 1982 about bugs we found in their 8K ROM BASIC, that was licenced for use in the Tangerine Microtan 65 single board computer (which later became the Oric 1 computer). It is now 2020 and I am STILL waiting for a reply from him. Jeez, are these bugs never going to get fixed?!

Paul

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

State Control is the likely result

Oh great - just what we need, a state controlled internet infrastructure.

Forget about how nice it would for rural areas to get a decent internet speed.

That is just the window dressing. The true purpose is to let in state control of content access through the back door.

Do you trust Corbyn and his cronies to decide what websites and content you can access?

See how well this works in China or North Korea (if they can get internet access at all!).

For them it is worth the high cost to be able to control what you can or cannot see.

No this is not just wild conspiracy theories - socialist/marxist governments just can't help themselves if they allow the opportunity.

Astroboffins baffled as Curiosity rover takes larger gasps of oxygen in Martian summers

Damn those pesky kids!

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

Staples through disks?

When I used to work for GST software in Cambridge in the 80's, most of our products were supplied on the blue 3.5" Atari ST disks. I was constantly surprised when customers were advised, after reporting a faulty disk, to return it to us for testing, would post us the disk with a complement slip STAPLED to it to tell us what the fault was or what their return address was. How they managed to get a staple through the entire thickness of the disk often baffled me. They'd also do it with normal 51/4 inch floppies. Obviously completely wrecking them!

I also remember a customer complaining that he could not get his 1st Word Plus document to print. The shortcut was just 'Ctrl-P', so I told the customer to do that. I heard his keyboard rattling and then he came back to me complaining that nothing was happening. I told him to try again, with the same result.

So this time I asked him to tell me EXACTLY what he was doing. So he said 'ok, I am now going to the keyboard, I am now typing C, O, N, T, R, O, L and P.

So after picking myself up off the floor, I had to patiently explain that there was a CTRL key that he was supposed to use!

Sigh.....

Paul

Boffins: There's a ninth planet out there – now we just need to find it

How about Klendathu? (from Starship Troopers) !

If it is full of nasty insects the size of cars, then Klendathu would be a good name.

I was thinking Vulcan, but that implies a hot planet. Kronos might be good.

Mind you, if they are looking for a gas giant, they should check out my mother in law first (with apologies to Bernard Manning) :-)

Paul

ALIEN HUNT: Water similar to life-bearing Earth lakes FOUND ON MOON of Saturn

Snakes

I once saw a very poor documentary about Snakes. I think it was called 'Snakes on a Plane'. However I don't think the snakes actually evolved on the plane.

To be honest it didn't really have much to say that was useful about snakes.

Or planes

:-)

Paul

NASA's Messenger craft SMASHES into Mercury: See ya later, alien crater

Let's hope that there was nobody down there!

It seems to me that they have crashed Messenger into Mercury without any consideration of the poor Mercurian citizens living down there. How would we like it if a space probe from another world suddenly came thundering down on top of us. Even now I bet that they arming themselves for a retaliatory strike against us. Probably.

Still, the chances of anything coming from Mercury are substantially less than anything coming from Mars. Perhaps we should start building our cities underground. I have a plan !

:-)

Mars was a WET mistress: Curiosity probes once-moist bottom

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one - IMHO

:-)

Paul

PS. But still they come!

Too late, Blighty! Samsung boffins claim breakthrough graphene manufacturing success

If the previously mentioned cat tried to go to sleep on the single layer of graphene hammock, wouldn't it risk slowly being diced as the downward pressure of its body forced its cells through the mesh of the hammock?

I think a similar thing happened to Homer Simpson in one of the Treehouse of Horror episodes of the The Simpsons.

yours spread very thinly.

Paul

Mars rover Curiosity snaps 'pale blue dot' image of Earth, Moon

"And slowly and surely they made their plans against us".

I'd stay away from Horsell Common for a while!

Paul

Who's to be the next Dr Who? Sherlock beats Maurice - says you

How about Dawn French

I think Dawn French would make the perfect female Dr Who.

She is funny, witty and is a great actress!

Paul

So, who ought to be the next Doctor Who? It's up to YOU...

Where is Dawn French on the list? she has been mooted previously for position of the Doctor and would be perfect for it - funny, witty and a great actress!

Please add DAWN FRENCH now !!!!

Paul

World's oldest digital computer successfully reboots

Angry Birds?

This is all well and good, but can it run Angry Birds?

Furthermore, once they have finished working on this project, do you think they could take a look at my laptop? I haven't been able to get it to boot up for the last 6 months

:-)

Paul

BBC shrinks Red Button: Loses 8 channels after the Olympics

Any 3D channels?

I saw that the BBC were doing some 3D tests on their Freesat service a few months back. I'm hoping that at least some of the Olympic coverage will be in 3D - I just bought a new 3D telly and I am eager to get some proper use out of it!!

Have the BBC made any promises this time about not disrupting their normal schedules just because of the Olympics? I hate it when they cancel programmes or change the times simply to accomodate a sports event.

Paul