Re: So...

Point one:

Security through obfuscation is NOT known to be crap, at least not in this instance.

To explain: With Bluetooth or WiFi your neighbours can see your traffic (assuming you're in a regular urban/suburban environment). They can't necessarily read it- you'll have encryption turned on- but they can see it. And breaking encryption is just a matter of time/processing power anyway. You can even outsource it to the Cloud these days.

With an IR network, your neighbours aren't even aware of your network- or at least can't see your data. Those above/below you have inches of concrete / wood / plaster and carpet between your network and them, and those across from you can be blocked by closing windows / shutters. I'm sure there's a range of glass coatings out there to block out IR as well, so for most 'home' applications you could even have the curtains open.

On a smaller scale, say touch-payments, it would be enough to have a squishy O-ring seal around the photodetector, or have it in a box (same idea as some Chip-And-Pin pads that have a 'mask' over the top).

Compare this with NFC cards which can be read through a pocket- or RFIDs that can be read from many feet away.

No interception of your wireless signal means there is NO external access or interception. That is a proper physically-secure wireless network, and on top of that you can add further security.

Point two:

Bluetooth (class 2) broadcasts over a sphere up to 10m in diameter. IRDA has a beam width of 30 degrees (less than 1% of the covered volume and a 'standard' range of 1m (though according to Wiki the newer standards include longer ranges).

Also, Bluetooth seems to drain power even when not being used. IR just sends data when you want to send it and receives it when you want to receive it.

So yes, it'll be lower power.

Point three:

If you have 3 IR LEDs in a known arrangement any mobile phone nowadays should be able to give a full 3D position fix just off the camera. So could be deployed to provide a low-cost 'local GPS' system for use in emergencies.

Or, more likely (and more profitably), you could have an Augmented Reality display like a dancing leprechaun in front of an irish pub. All while beaming the menu and current drinks promotions to you wirelessly- without interfering with the broadcasts of the shop next door.

Yes, this requires a bit more infrastructure in the real world, but then so does owning a Website or adopting NFC or printing up QR codes.

Point Four:

Nearly every gadget in my house (and, amazingly, car) has an IR remote control. With IRDA back in smartphones you could control your various devices just using the IR connectivity rather than using bluetooth/wifi as modern TVs etc seem to want you to.

Point Five:

IRDA is nowhere near good enough for a broadcast infrastructure like TV or mobile phones and I'd not claim it is. Even for wireless headphones it's not as good as BT.

But as an addition to a mobile phone, it's better than a lot of the currently "in" things. And even helps with advertising, providing location-specific location, etc.

Point six:

IR is far superior to LiFi, because, amongst other things, it doesn't need your lights to be on to use your Internet at home.

Rant re-stated!

Re: Terrorist communications

Or, you know, just talked in person about it? Clearly we should close all pubs and bars and ban all public gatherings!

Re: Scottish independence.

As an Englishman living in Scotland, and as a human being- so someone with no faith in Salmond's ability to run a country- this is still something that would make me vote for independence.

And that's a thought that makes me want a stiff drink!

Re: Old news...

You do know that you can light a lightbulb without wires in almost any home in the UK, right? Just take said lightbulb and stick it in the microwave.

Given the nature of some of his work (Tesla coils and stuff like that) it's pretty likely that he just stumbled across a similar effect- a high frequency current induced in the wire filament.

He wasn't tapping into the Earth's neutrinos, he was just using the same bit of physics that lets you heat a Carbonara in 3 minutes from chilled and sit and watch pictures broadcast from a nearby tower.

"Science.. er.. uh...

finds a way."

It might also have something to do with

about a billion companies around the world making- and selling- Android phones.

And those Android phones are now outselling the iPhone, suggesting that the total profit they're bringing in is going to be pretty much on a par with Apple.

And standing in a line isn't good User Experience. It's a sign of stock shortages, poor staffing levels and/or the need to drum up publicity for a product to make it sell. Again, WITHOUT needing people to wait in queues Android is outselling Apple.

Only Apple could have 'standing in a queue for 16 hours' as a plus point!

Example- I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy Note. Took me- from getting to the store to walking out, new contract and phone in-hand- under 45 minutes. THAT is an excellent user experience.

I went onto the Internet and was able to use it's web browser to browse regular web pages without daft 'missing plugin' icons. THAT is excellent user experience.

It took about 30 seconds to download my Google account data- without having to connect the device to anything. Again, an Excellent user experience.

To be fair to them

Just think how long it'd take to get out there to put another quid in the meter!

It's been pretty well documented

that Jobs was a pain to work with. Same with Ballamer and a lot of other high-level managers.

The design of every famous Apple iProduct was done by Johnathon Ive

The technical work and design behind the first Apples was done by Woz (and probably the other one). Further designs were done by other engineery types.

The OS that Jobs brought with him (OSX) was taken from NeXt- with the core based on BSD and the rest done by paid programmers. It was then given to Apple's larger pool of programmers who did more work on it.

Jobs wasn't a designer. He was a manager. Most importantly, though, he was almost certainly the Worlds Finest Marketeer.

Voyager's code:

10 keep going

20 goto 10

So what you're saying

is that getting 3D images from static pictures is impossible? Or that you can't georeference static pictures? How about knowing where you are in the world using GPS (with INS providing a higher update rate)? Oh, wait- it'll be the HMDs with headtracking. Those will never happen. Yeah.

Maybe your problem is someone navigating using a 3D map?

Maybe your problem is with the idea of 'not talking over comms' to cut radio comms emissions. I'd have thought that not deliberately creating any radio emissions would have done a good job of cutting radio emissions, but hey- that's just me.

The helium-chilled fuel was a bit of a stretch, I'll admit. The insulation would be pretty bulky. And the meta-materials bit may be another stretch.

Aside from the chilled fuel, perhaps you'd like to enlighten me about what's impossible or even massively hard about it?

* Stereophotogrammetry is a common trick- there are even FOSS programs that'll do it.

* Showing a 3D environment is done every day by millions around the world.

* Georeferencing maps is pretty simple, so lining up your 3D map with the real world would take very little time.

* GPS and INS tracking is done every day by... well, by a handful of vehicles. But it's still done daily.

* I'm pretty sure turning off the radio and radar would cut down on the EM emissions pretty significantly.

* With a satellite link, there's nothing stopping the map from being updated 'live' with data from a UAV.

Aside from the chilled fuel and sound deadening, It's barely even DARPA's normal level of science-fiction project.

Once they're no longer in-transit, they can turn on the whole sensor suite/open the windows and start shooting.

And it explains the use of the term 'Jedi'- you'd be flying 'with the blast shield down', relying on something other than your own eyes to tell you where you're going.

Do you own a cat, or have any intention to ever own one?

No? Then you're fine. :P

Just wait until the mainstream papers get a hold of this- there'll be people using 'THE BRAAAAIN WOOOORMMS!' as a legal defence, 'Holistic Medicine' shops selling expensive water that fixes or neutralises the parasite, etc.

You're surprised at Apple?

They're the company that made infamous "you're holding it wrong". How do you think they'd react to a person wanting to have it mounted in their arm?!

Actually, we CAN say

that WiFi power output will never exceed a certain value.

number of channels x maximum power output of a device connected to these channels. Even if you have 200 devices connected to the same AP, they can still only talk one at a time on a given wavelength- so the overall maximum power is no different for 200 taking turns than it is for 1 talking all the time.

So with 13 channels and a 0.1W maximum output (figures plucked from a quick google search; may be bullturds- but your 'tens of watts' thing would lead to phone batteries lasting minutes rather than hours!), that gives a massive... 1.3W of power added to the background noise- if you were fully saturating every frequency that can be used by WiFi. Which is less than one mobile phone that's struggling for signal, and a tiny fraction of what the human body puts out as heat (a significant proportion of which will be radiated or absorbed by surrounding materials and re-radiated later as Infrared !!!RADIATION!!!). There's probably more EM being generated by the church power cables.

Wouldn't you be better off teaching a Cat quantum physics?

I imagine that once you hit Schroedinger it'd be a lot more alert... and keep out of enclosed spaces with hammers!

Even better,

Qui Gon jumps at him to save him, and he lands on a landmine- killing Jar Jar in a dramatic, bloody manner from which he can never return but somehow leaving QuiGon unharmed. :)

Not only that

but Fusion research is expensive. Very expensive. And that's one 'very expensive' sized lump of cash that's been taken away from the bomb-maker's abilities to make bombs and put towards advancing science and- in future- powering hospitals.

How about

he's helping erode confidence in the Government's security processes. Which helps Terrorists.

Not reporting this sort of behaviour if discovered in other workers means that things can be brought in past security as well as sneaked out- potentially aiding Terrorism.

Removing high-value items from travellers' bags (especially laptops etc from government employees) could lead to the dissemination of classified information or login details- potentially aiding Terrorism.

So it's clearly a terrorism offence and should be treated accordingly. They should hang the fucker.

Neither Windows nor SATA drives

are explosive. Lithium batteries can be if you screw with their controllers.

Don't know about that

Facebook yeah- they don't do anything other than sit there creaming off developers. Well, off Zygna. No-one else makes enough money to be bothered with. Advertisers, too, are a source of income- but they're pushed to one side of the page and don't appear at all on the mobile version so that's not a sustainable solution.

Google, on the other hand, has a mobile phone platform (soon to be joined by another- Chromium), more processing power than God, their own (surprisingly good for most uses) office suite, their own (popular) web browser, /paying customers/, links to governments and major arty and engineery organisations around the world and is used several times in a day-potentially several times a minute- by people around the world. They even have their own fibre infrastructure carrying data across the planet.

There's a difference

This time, they're not just phone hacking. They interfered and set back by at least days the investigation into the disappearance of a young girl.

They deleted evidence (whether relevant or otherwise to the actual case, it was still evidence even if it was just "no, no-one called her by now") in relation to this case

And jumping slightly into speculation, if they hadn't knocked back the investigation and if they hadn't deleted evidence they might just have caught the fucker who did it earlier. Not an unreasonable bit of conjecture, eh?

Well if they HAD caught the guy sooner he wouldn't have been able to kill two more girls in the following years. So, potentially, they caused the death of two more kids.

Now if THAT can't get the other (competing) papers to get the masses in a rage then nothing will. The News Of The World needs to fall for this, the people involved sacked with prejudice and then jailed.

Pressure resistant computer

It wouldn't be that hard- if you get a modern motherboard with all-solid-state capacitors and solid state storage and stick it in a bag of oil it'll probably go a lot deeper than 100m.

I did a thing for work a few years ago and we were able to take an off-the-shelf microcontroller-based board down to pressures >500msw (that's >~50Bar or 725psi) before it stopped working. When a board is made of all-solid components with no air gaps in them (i.e. get rid of crystals, hard drives and electrolytic capacitors) it can go deeper still.

I've never tried it with a full PC... you know what, I'm going to get a quote for some time with a pressure tester!

If you just meant "can you run a PC inside a pressure housing" then yes, it's been done to at least 3000-or-so-m.

A good condition

dark-coloured S2 convertible still looks gorgeous these days. I mean it looks a bit dated, but it's aged better than a lot of other cars it's age!

That said, a knackered S1 in badly-aged white and a dodgy 2.5 engine doesn't look good. And you can kill any date stone dead explaining how its got the gearbox mounted at the back for near-perfect weight distribution, giving you a much nicer drive on those track days you've been on. Or how the 4-cylinder engine is actually half the 928's V8 but with a weighted balance bar thing instead of another set of cylinders.

Anyone still reading this? Ah, well. I'll just get the ol' anorak...

You've got to be a troll.

I can take photos of the night sky without seeing stars.

In fact, if you get a big-ass telescope you can see more stars than you can with the naked eye. So by your logic, eyesight is also a lie. Good luck reading this comment.