* Posts by Vladimir Plouzhnikov

3264 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2007

Russian rocket goes BOOM again – this time with a crew on it

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Performed as expected...

1. An SRB explosion causing immediate structural failure of the craft due to excessive g-forces - something I can't see Soyuz surviving either. After all, Shuttle had emergency SRB separation available, if there'd been time.

Hmm... IIRC There was no SRB explosion. The fuel tank was breached by a dislodged SRB, which pierced it after a burn through... The fuel tank then burst and the fuel burned but there wasn't an explosion as such. The aerodynamic load tore the vehicle apart, yes, but the thing is that the Shuttle's crew cabin survived the structural failure and, if there was an escape system, the crew would have survived too instead of being smashed to pieces when the cockpit section fell into the sea.

PACK YOUR BAGS! Two Trappist-1 planets have watery oceans, most likely to be inhabitable

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: They might be the right temp

"Moderate amount of tidal heating" may mean the cores are actually still liquid while the planets not being gravitationally locked and so capable of sustaining a magnetic field...

Someone needs to go there and have a look...

Teen who texted boyfriend to kill himself gets 15 months jail

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

A different perspective...

Well, I'd like to ask a question - where were the parents of the boy?

Personally, I put most of the responsibility for what's happened on them. I know how some families work (or rather don't work) and it seems to be one of them. It's all nice to shed tears now and say how the boy was their "best friend" but they could not see what was going on in front of their eyes...

At the same time all the weight of their son's troubles fell on the shoulders of a 14-15 yo girl. People don't realise how hard it is when your loved one is severely depressed and suicidal. Difficult even for an adult to bear, let alone a teenager. She shouldn't have been put in that position in the first place.

I can easily imagine her endurance and resilience snapping and her just wanting it all to end and that was the only way she could think of how to stop their suffering - both his and hers.

WannaCry-slayer Marcus Hutchins 'built Kronos banking trojan' – FBI

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: What's that aroma?

Oh, you have a serious problem with ferals down there? Awww...

Teen texted boyfriend to kill himself. It worked. Will the law change to deal with digital reality?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

It's not clear why she'd done that. But there is something in the reports that made me think... It looks that for a long while in the past she was doing quite the opposite - trying to talk him out of his suicidal moods, urging to seek therapy... Then something's changed.

Close relationships with suicidal people are incredibly difficult. They eat at you every moment of every day. You never let yourself completely relax, even when things seem okay. Every word, every intonation can be a sign of an impending mood change and the black emotional abyss behind.

It may be that she has become burnt out. Unable to cope, unable to see any other way out of it.

What she did was still wrong and there can be no excuse. But her motivation might not have been the sadistic attention seeking or control freakery as is our first instinctive reaction to assume...

Crashed Schiaparelli lander's 'chute and shields spotted

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: What happens

What, in COBOL? :-P

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: What happens

Sorry, was my attempt at a joke :D

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Come on now...

ESA? Ah, no!

It's all the Russians. I'm pretty sure there are witnesses who've seen a big Russian rocket being launched at just about the right time to hit a target landing on Mars - back in March this year!

Oh... wait a moment...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

What happens

When you use Java to code your spacecraft automation... :-P And the coders are used to churning out buggy software, "cause we can always patch it up later"...

Apple: Crisis? What innovation crisis? BTW, you like our toothbrush?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Analogue versus digital? FTW!

Will audio quality get better? By abolishing analogue there’s now a clearer digital path to your ear, and the phones get smaller.

But hold on, hold on... How is there an abolishment of analogue - if there is an adapter with Lightning on one end and a normal headphone socked on the other? Or does that flimsy piece of wire somehow magically includes a self-contained DAC and an amplifier? I wouldn't think so...

My guess is that the analogue audio stage is still there, inside the phone, they just save on the 3.5 socket (which does take a lot of space inside, indeed) and output the analogue signal through the Lightning.

I don't know the pinout on Lightning but I'm pretty sure that's what they've done...

It's time for humanity to embrace SEX ROBOTS. For, uh, science, of course

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Dr Kate Devlin @AC

Geez, people... you've totally confused your doctors...

It's Dr Richardson who is the bigoted zealot.

Dr Devlin is the one saying she has no problem with all this bot sex and what not...

Or you read some other article than I did.

Watch SpaceX's rocket dramatically detonate, destroying a $200m Facebook satellite

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: cant see much

...or maybe the payload's engine igniting by mistake?

Won't be the first time it ever happened... The Soviet R-16 launch pad catastrophe comes to mind...

Robot babies fail in role as teenage sex deterrents

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Flawed design

It should come attached with a direct debit in favour of some obscure charity that will regularly clears out the money from either their or their parents bank account.

That will work with 100% efficacy...

'Flying Bum's' first flight was a gas, gas, gas

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: The next Ed Force One?

Ahh... but no conversation about music and R101 should be without mentioning Curly's Airships, surely, mm?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curly's_Airships

Captain Piccard's planet-orbiting solar aircraft in warped drive drama

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: "Green Prince of Darkness" at FauxScienceSlayer

Well, no matter how reluctant I am to agree with FSS but he is right - there is no sustainable energy in the world, in principle. All energy is depleted and turns into entropy. That's why eventually there will be the Heat Death of the Universe.

Alleged Aussie plum plucker pleads guilty to motel tissue swipe

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: "The fate of the allegedly excised testicle"

Crocodile.

Science non-fiction: Newly spotted alien world bathes in glow of three stars

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Where did the 16 million year planetary age come from?

And is it legal to take revealing pictures of a planet under the age of 18, anyway?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Three body problem

The question is - whether anyone by any chance has sent a message in the direction of that system. Cause if they had - we're in for a lot of trouble...

PM resigns as Britain votes to leave EU

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

One thing that is likely to change is that Facebook et al. will find it a lot more difficult not to pay taxes on the revenue they make in UK.

I don't actually think so.

What can the Government do to make that happen? Lock FB out of the Internet?

They may try to fiddle with VAT rules to make sure the UK advertisers paying FB cannot zero-rate it but in the end the cost will be on those advertisers and not on FB.

This may affect some other, non-internet related companies, currently structuring their tax affairs via the EU but if it will affect them too much for comfort - they'll just leave.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Well, when you do something and Trump praises you - you know, you've done the wrong thing...

Three non-obvious reasons to Vote Leave on the 23rd

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Has anyone pointed out... - Article 50

"3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period."

If the agreements are not reached and the EU will have not kindly agreed to give us more time - we'll be automatically kicked out in 2 years after we file the Notice of Intention to Leave...

Tinder bans under-18s: Moral panic averted

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Why is 18 improbably old?

@AC

How a 45 year old man could build a social life with a 18 girl that could be his (step) daugther?

Just because you can't imagine something happening it doesn't mean it cannot happen. All it means is that it's probably not for you. So - move along and don't interfere with private lives of others...

'Knucklehead' Kansas bloke shoots self in foot

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Clearly the only way to stop a gunman who hasn't seen the signs

Clearly the only way to stop a gunman who hasn't seen the signs is to equip the signs themselves with guns.

Ah - like they do in Gibraltar!

Go try to ignore these signs...

Close up here...

:D

Greybeard monobrow baldies rejoice! Boffins comb out hairy genes

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Ok, so this all is genetic

But what about hairy palms?

Don't take a Leaf out of this book: Nissan electric car app has ZERO authentication

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Don't put microcomputers into cars...

Oh, c'mon... Our atoms should never have left that nova cloud, in the first place!

Trump's new thought bubble: Make Apple manufacture in the USA

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: I Feel Dirty

"If you look after your workforce in your own country, give them jobs that can pay, then that money goes straight back in to your economy and further produces jobs. Money breeds money."

Why not just hand out moneys to people for doing nothing rather than make them toil hard and produce a product that doesn't sell or cost more than it can be sold for? Because that's what you are proposing.

Don't you think that there was a reason why MG Rover went bust?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: After the working class vote

I didn't think there were that many Indians left in America... They must have scoured all reservations to find the required number of replacement workers... And what's that with Indians, do they work purely for fire water and don't need wages?

City of London cops in Christmas karaoke crackdown shocker

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Why?

Why they are investigating? They are not... They are demonstrating to their masters that they earned their salaries, is all...

This is PIPCU - a Police unit in name but on a payroll of IPO. That's quite official. They are paid by the industry to be a bunch of enforcer thugs for the rights holders.

So, every now and then they walk down the Internet street, overturning the stalls, smashing windows and breaking legs - as thugs do.

Lower video resolution can deliver better quality, says Netflix

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Ow, wow!

What a wonderful discovery of an obvious fact known full well to anyone who has ever worked with digital video. Oh, I'm amazed, only took them what, 10 years?

Ofcom asks: Do kids believe anything they read on the internet?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: People want kids but don't want to be parents

I will also add that there is nothing on the internet that can harm a child (I'm not talking about things like malware - I mean information-wise) is he is taught to question things he sees and think before he acts. In this regard the 'net is way safer than real life, yet it causes a great deal more moral panic among the easily scared. A panic that is then exploited by politicians.

Pluto flashes its unusual pits

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: the sun light is coming from the upper right quadrant

Please tell me what you think - the cells in the left part of the picture - are they ridged depressions or bumps surrounded by troughs?

Not a loaded question - just want to compare my own perception of the image with yours...

Thanks.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: pits?

Seriously, they don't look like pits at all, morer like snowballs lying on the surface. And it's not the usual inversion illusion - before anyone tries to correct me... If you see the lighting on nearby cellular subsidence - it's opposite to that on the "dimples". And the sun light is coming from the upper right quadrant...

Amazon Echo: We put Jeff Bezos' always-on microphone-speaker in a Reg family home

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

WTF?

I already have to talk to people, sometimes shout, to get them to do something. Now - talk to a machine too?? No way. Machines only understand buttons and switches and the only good talking machine is a dead one.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Love mine

Hmmm, it only has one speaker with two tiny drivers - how can it play anything?

Mars water discovery is a liberal-muslim plot, cry moist conspiracy theorists

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Someone's lift... @Grikath

Can you please clarify why do you think the concept of a space elevator is such a bonkers idea?

Yes, it's clear that most people don't understand how it's supposed to work and, yes, we don't yet have the technology to build one... But, most people still don't understand how aeroplanes fly, yet it doesn't stop the airline industry from being one of the most important transportation systems in the world.

Google literally dangles its new dongle in front of gasping TV audiences

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Hmmm...

Which part is "hi-fi" in all that, though?

POLAR DINOSAURS prowled ARCTIC NIGHT, cast doubt on COLD BLOOD theory

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Hadrosaurus?

Does that family includes Mesosaurus and Baryosaurus and is distinct from Leptosaurus?

Global warming stopped in 1998? No it didn't. If you say that, you're going to prison

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Interesting law to apply

There is a bigger chance of sea levels rising by 25 meters tomorrow morning than of a US court accepting a RICO complaint such as this.

BAN the ROBOT WHORES, says robot whore expert: 'These AREN'T BARBIES'

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

What she really wants

Is to ban penises.

Jeremy Corbyn wins Labour leadership election

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Congratulations!

Frank - you're absolutely right. I spoke to many NHS doctors and they are all unanimous about the Blairites completely screwing it up and turning it into a feeding trough for their cronies.

Manger is sitting on manager and managing managers ever since. Most of the money NHS burns is going on admin and "management". They would send a "manager" in, no one would hear a thing from him for 6 months, then he'd fire off an email telling people how they all do their jobs wrong and how they should do it from now on - and, pffft, off he flies to greener pastures as a party functionary with a "work experience"...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Congratulations!

@Arnaut:

Nationalise everything, turn on money printers, tax you more than you earn then hand you out benefits to make ends meet - that's as ultra-left as they go, short of nationalising all women and renaming days of the week...

And you really don't understand who Stalin was or that you don't need to physically murder someone to be a Stalin in an organisation. Well, let's not argue too much about it now. I've made my predictions in my OP - let's wait and watch this show...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Congratulations!

Ah. A party for ordinary people! How romantic. Just like a Greek tragedy... :D

Every time people elect populists who promise them the horn of plenty they end up paying five-fold for the brief political orgasm that follows the election. Just like getting clap from a cheap hooker...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Congratulations!

The Labour Party has successfully transformed itself from a party of incompetent jokers to that of raving lunatics. LOL!

The mini-Stalin they've just elected will first purge the old guard, then proceed to turn the party into an ultra-left greenish irrelevance. Unless, of course, the parliamentary LP functionaries manage to assassinate him (politically) before he wrings their necks. Ah, what fun to watch!

British killer robot takes out two Britons in Syria strike

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: OK, mixed feelings about this...

Oh, dear... How did you manage to get yourself so frightened? The world outside must be a scary place for you, dear boy.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: OK, mixed feelings about this...

Just a slight correction - under Muslims you mean adepts of satanist cults mascarading as Muslims.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

OK, mixed feelings about this...

Clearly, the simple reason for this operation is to show other half-wits with British passports that going to that dusty shithole and making a video about yourself killing infidels will eventually get you killed too.

There is a question of legality of that strike in absence of a war declaration - that's bad. But, that place has no recognised government and therefore no law. Anyone can be killed there without it being illegal. And Geneva convention doesn't apply either. So, killing a holder of a British passport in a place where it's not illegal to kill holders of British passports, according to local law - is that a crime back here?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: All it will take for get everyone on the PM's side

Blair succeeded beyond measure - the whole national security lobbying machine and the Home Secretariat have been living off 7/7 event ever since.

Let's NUKE MARS to make it more like home says Elon Musk

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

What he forgot to say

Is that to do that he will need to be entrusted with the biggest nuclear arsenal compared to any nation states on Earth.

I appreciate his honesty about the volcano lair but... Not mentioning "total world domination" as the motive behind all that was a bit disingenuous of him.

Reg reader shares AshMad blackmail email about which he gives 'zero f***s'

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Dear blackmailer

You can buy all that for just BTC 5.25???

Daredevil Brit lifts off in 54-prop quinquaquadcopter

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Typically British!

Seeing how it's totally opaque - I'm sure that canopy is to prevent the pilot from being terrified by the view around him. A bit like the blinkers they put on horses, you know...