* Posts by Boaty

2 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2016

A decades-old lesson on not inserting Excel where it doesn't belong

Boaty

A prestigious university in London, Student Union is on new version of Excel, College Administration is still on old. Financial data is forwarded on spreadsheets (because of incompatible systems - Pegasus Opera vs something written in PowerHouse). Of course, at some point, the 2^16 row limit is breached. The old version doesn't complain but merely drops the excess. Fortunately the receiving bean counter runs their own tests on the data and realises there is a problem - but not what it is. Took a while for the underlying issue to be recognised (and then for the admin departments to move forward).

Fifth time's the charm as SpaceX pops satellite into orbit

Boaty

Given geostationary is one of the more popular orbits, isn't it worth building facilities that enable a ground landing with the possible fuel loads? Or have the USA decreed this to be a domestic-only operation?