Posts by davetalis

Nothing's working, and I've checked everything, so it must be YOUR fault

BRe: Blue flash

*sigh* Detective Doreau!

US nuclear submarine bumps into unidentified underwater object in South China Sea

Captain Ramius would be disappointed

Someone in that submarine wasn't doing a good job of clearing their baffles...

Space-wrecks: Elon's prototype Moon ferry Starship blows its top during fuel tank test

Watch out, Tom may be about with his Electric Rifle!

50 years ago, someone decided it would be OK to fire Apollo 12 through a rain cloud. Awks, or just 'SCE to Aux'?

The series From the Earth to the moon is a great watch too, especially Spider and the Apollo 12 episode

Lies, damn lies, and KPIs: Let's not fix the formula until we have someone else to blame

Re: One has to ask.

A similar issue is covered rather well in From the Earth to the Moons "Spider", probably the best way of dealing with it https://youtu.be/XuL-_yOOJck

Rocket Lab crows about launch, SpaceX zipwires, and a monster mock-up arrives at Kennedy

"Spider" is a fantastic episode and frankly my favourite of the series, showing real engineering challenges and solutions and somehow always reminding me for some reason of "The Great Escape" :-)

We're all doooooomed: Gloomy Brit workforce really isn't coping well with impending Brexit

Re: When to move abroad

I'm so with you on this, tired of asking for any possible upside in light of forecasts, warnings and analyses and getting no answer other than xenophobia in some cases. Sick of Brexiters, they make me ashamed of my country.

Vulture gets claws on Lego's latest Apollo nostalgia-fest

Re: Pricey

I could only afford the 918 Space Transport as a kid, but loved it! Felt more like a sportscar in comparison to 928 for me :-)

Oblivious 'influencers' work on 3.6-roentgen tans in Chernobyl after realising TV show based on real nuclear TITSUP

Re: On the bright side

Hmm, a decent population of wolves surviving well..they'll be standing upright and calling themselves Vargr next :-)

SpaceX's Crew Dragon shows up at pad 39A, nearly 8 years after the last Shuttle left

Re: lets try something new.

Let me introduce you to my friend Orion, much more bang :-)

NASA lights humongous rocket that goes nowhere ... until 2019

I laugh at you from my 8-million tonne Super Orion nuclear pulse detonation cruiser station built with 1958 technology :-)

PACK YOUR BAGS! Boffins spot Earth-size planet most likeliest yet to harbor alien life

Who needs planets?

Why not build an O'Neill style space habitat instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder

Listen: WORST EVER customer service call – Comcast is 'very embarrassed'

NTL Hell

In the UK, before ISP competition became prevalent there was much the same problem, if you wanted fibre cable you generally only had one choice dependant on where you lived, which actually got worse before it became better as one of the useless companies (Comtel) was taken over by another (NTL). With Comtel I spent hours on the phone to these people trying to cancel an account, in the end (even after being told I couldn't), I drove round to their corporate headquarters just down the road and dumped their set top box in reception. I moved to another area and had to get internet, the only fast choice was NTL.With NTL I again spent hours trying to solve the smallest network connection issue with them , being passed around departments until being sent to one that just cut me off without answering. Actually when i got to talk to a technical person, they were great, it seemed to be the customer service reps that were useless. When I'd finally had enough and asked them to disconnect me they said they had and would send a courier round to collect the box. I disconnected it and put it aside, and waited and waited, and phoned and was told to wait and wait. Finally two months later i got sick of it and dumped it at the nearest NTL shop i could find. Then found out they'd charged me for an extra 2 months despite confirming to me that they had disconnected me. They then got taken over by Virgin media, and i unfortunately I moved to a place which had Virgin media, my one encounter with them over the phone proved to me thay had kept the same customer servce policy. Same reason I finally left the undead grasp of Vodafone, and would never recommend it to anyone, horrible customer service!

'But we like 1 Direction!' Rock gods The Who fend off teen Twitter hate mob

Very true, there's too much brilliant talent around working hard with very little recognition while some total dross makes it into the charts on hype and publicity. Go to open mic nights around the country (i live near Guildford, which thanks to the ACM there is overloaded with really good musicians), and you'll see lots of great music.