Posts by DamnedIfIKnow

Big data at sea: How the Royal Navy charts the world's oceans

Re: I suppose at least the RN have one ship that works

Lars,

It's Friday, so just a gentle little point - light travels at only one speed. It doesn't vary according to the medium.

Think of it this way: a beam of light travels from point A towards point B. It's going at the speed of light - it can do no other. Later, a beam of light, also traveling at the speed of light, arrives at point B.

When the time is measured, it seems to have taken too long, and therefore was 'slowed'. It wasn't - it can't be. It took the shortest possible route, as light always does. But, roughly speaking, the route was longer than imagined. Off for a beer now.

Bright spark dev irons out light interference

Re: Have you ever put something apparently useless to good use?

This has glottal stop before it goes too far.

In Windows 10 Update land, nobody can hear you scream

Re: Speaking of the UI being a mess..

@ Unicorn Piss

I used Classic Shell.

Am now using Classic Start Menu (free version).

It's fine. I need dark menus, and I need Apps to never be visible unless I want them to be. I just want to click on the Win flag or whatever at bottom left, and have all the menus come up in columns (one of which is Control Panel), like the old days. It does all that just fine.

I don't know what extra the paid version does, but this is fine for me, and I recommend it.

Sorry, Neil Armstrong. Boffins say you may not have been first life-form to set foot on the Moon

Re: We are scientists, not "boffins"

Apple Dave:

I think you are 100% wrong.

Kids like 'boffins' and 'propeller heads'. They want to be them.

They the like the pics of the older Einstein with the wild hair, and the white - coated lunatic professor who blows himself up for the Nth time, shrugs, and just says 'Oh well, back to the drawing board'.

If all science had to offer was stern admonitions from the likes of you to act grown up, they'd never go in for it.

They're not grown up, they're kids. The very first thing it must do is appeal to their sense of fun.

Actually, that should apply to all who do science, child or adult.

Re: Bacteria are not space aliens

It's a shame you couldn't be sent there with them.

Since you believe it was all shot on a sound stage, you won't mind being the one without the space suit then, will you?

Trump’s new ZTE tweet trumps old ZTE tweets that trumped his first ZTE tweet

Re: In other news

@ooFie

You are the living embodiment of the saying that there are none so blind as those who won't see.

Speaking of which, you don't happen to have any relatives by the name of Hovind, do you? Or Ham?

I ask because you seem to be displaying the same dogged determination to completely ignore facts that those two gentlemen are justly famous for.

Apple MacBook butterfly keyboards 'defective', 'prone to fail' – lawsuit

Re: Quote of the year...

They would have answered - but couldn't get their keyboards to work.

CEO insisted his email was on server that had been offline for years

Re: Deleting emails

Funny you should say that.

In my old firm, around 20 years ago, we were frantically busy over a weekend and trying to calibrate some equipment over and above the normal spec. It was like herding cats because as soon as one parameter was what we wanted another one would drift out.

The test gear output results on a continuous 'till roll'. My boss - whose temper could go nuclear in one second flat - had it happily spooling into a convenient waste basket below the bench, and took himself off for breakfast.

While he was away, in came the cleaner...

Luckily the results were retrieved, but I thought we would need at least one ambulance before the day was out, if only for the onlookers who were going into shock!

Don't panic... but our fragile world is drifting away from the Sun

Re: Where's my towel?

No.

Because eventually the sun will expand to meet us!

PPI-pusher makes 75 MEEELLION nuisance calls, lands £350k fine

No Collection?

How come they don't collect the fines?

And if that's the case, what's the point of the whole exercise?

Ex-cop who 'kept private copies of data' fingers Cabinet Office minister in pr0nz at work claims

Re: No chain of custody

The former forensics copper is either lying or has broken the law.

So, either way he's broken the law!

Re: Two points

'Tip of the iceberg'?

In that case, bring on global warming!

Re: The issue I have with this

Simple. It's illegal for him to have kept private copies of stuff when he was a copper, and doubly so now.

He has openly admitted committing a criminal offence - obviously because he thinks nothing will happen to him. He should be facing prison for this.

Sadly, he's probably right.

Wait, did Oracle tip off world to Google's creepy always-on location tracking in Android?

Re: Google: "It is not "location services" so it's not reporting on you. So you can't turn it off.

Presumably each tower has an ID.

They just look it up and get the tower location.

Simplest.

Two drones, two crashes in two months: MoD still won't say why

Re: FFS

'And we're happy to let the police fly drones over populated areas, unlike amateur users, because what ?'

I didn't know we did. I'm not happy.

Mind you, I bet the yanks were amazed to discover that the FBI had a permanent fleet of over 100 planes spying on their fellow citizens a while back. Wonder if they still are.

You need 100 planes to stop people being run over by vans. Obviously.

I was about to correct you, when I realised you didn't mean that the locals in West Wales were friendlier. My East Wales friends don't like them, and prefer us English bastards, which is saying something!

Re: MoD relies on spin and secrecy to deflect criticism

@Mage

Please could you state in each case what wrong you think was done, and by whom? We aren't all tin foil hat wearers as you seem to be.

£1m military drone crashed in Wales after crew disabled anti-crash systems – report

Re: The shape of things to come ...

Yup.

And this became AVIATE, NAVIGATE, COMMUNICATE when an emergency happens. Basically, fsck the automatics - keep straight and level at a speed above stall, then make sure you're not about to hit something big and rocky, then - and only then - tell world +dog what you're doing.

The Air France flight spending a long time flying into the Atlantic was absolutely unforgivable. Excuses were made, but it was 100% pilot (culture) error.

But with these drones it seems maybe they should only fly on nice sunny days.

Re: The shape of things to come ...

The guy accusing Nish wasn't a flat-young-earth-no-moon-landing-oswald-didn't-do-it-alone-creationist, was he? They know what they know too. Which is 3/5 of 5/8 of fusk all. Problem with creationists is that they don't use the brains their god apparently gave them.

And yes, a French Israeli would make even an entitled little minor Saudi royal family sprog living in London feel inadequate! (And I can't wait to see one of those little shits declared PNG.)

Perhaps we should let Elon Musk have a go at designing these drones.

EE looks at its call charges, hikes a bunch, walks off giggling

Are you British?

No slur intended, it's just that I thought it was obvious he was exaggerating to make the point.

Anyway, this very day I picked up a friend from the airport who'd been in Latin America for two weeks. Just before he left, Vodafone sent him a series of 4 texts in as many seconds. The first said he owed £15 for data costs, the next said £30,the next £45 and the final one said £60.

He isn't very technical, and said he hadn't used any data. I said 'No, but your phone has'. I've not been able to discover if he left data roaming on, but I assume he did. Nevertheless, anyone got any comments on the texts he Got?