Posts by Alan Brown 15045 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008
"Unless the UK version of the F35 has the satnav taken out? "
Nope, but the bomb bay is full of the UK avionics extension to the GNSS system, so there's no room for internal ordinance - and the tubby wee thing with stubby wee wings loses stealth with external stores as well as losing manouverability and speed.
Seems quite appropriate for an aircraft to be deployed on HMS Sitting Duck or HMS White Elephant.
"The underlying principle is the same across all these platforms"
Avoiding import duty on chipsets which don't support XYZ country's chosen navigation system.
Yes, really. That's exactly why Glonass and Beidou were rolled into phone GNSS chipsets.
Which only works if XYZ country has a market big enough to justify the investment.
"They looked at developing them, but don't need them, thier nulcear powered carriers have loads of free steam."
They're still developing them. Steam catapaults require a _LOT_ of maintenance and have two acceleration settings: ON and OFF, unlike electric launchers.
"This is one reason why the railways etc. were privatised as that allowed them to search for capital outside of government restrictions. 40 year sof state ownership did not leave British Rail in an enviable state."
BR's woes can be far more easily attributed to the factor that when it was "nationalised" the underlaying private companies, manglement and rivalries continued with business as usual instead of becoming a joined-up whole. The resulting clusterfuck was fairly predictable (and the destruction of the Central line plus several other important lines are traceable to those rivalries, not commercial or logistical realities which were already becoming apparant by the 1950s. "I'm alright Jack" was only partly fictional.)
The same problem happened at Leyland. You can't just jam a bunch of rival companies together and _keep_ all the individual groups of rival managment as.... groups of rival management, etc etc.
British industrial history is full of brilliant inventions followed by half-arsed development and outright shoddy implementations.. It's a cultural problem dating back at least 150 years and is tracable to a fixation on short term profit. It's no wonder that by the 1970s "Made in Britain" was treated as a warning label across the rest of the Commonwealth. (I grew up in one of the ex-colonies and had a chance to compare "quality british products" being foisted on us with stuff that actually worked. That's a lesson that brexiters seem not to have learned)
"A mission-ready F-35B or indeed any existing strike fighter can weigh up to 25 tonnes loaded for a mission and can require the plane to be travelling at over 150mph at the end of the catapult to clear the front of the carrier successfully and avoid becoming a sea dart (tm)."
Sea dart or not, It's going to need that vertical landing capability to dodge the holes in the deck after the DF21-D or DF26s have paid a visit.
Battleships were obsolete by 1925, but kept being made for quite a while after that - pretty much until a wee party in 1941 made the point they'd had their day.. Aircraft carriers have passed that knee point too (having a swedish submarine sneak up and "sink" an American supercarrier was a wakeup call for them too, but that's not the primary direction they're vulnerable from ) "Projecting power" is of no use whatsoever if you're forced to keep your boats a "safe distance offshore" that happens to be beyond the operational range of the aircraft that fly off it.
"BAE promised them electromagnetic catapults as a later upgrade, then jacked the price to the stratosphere to avoid having to make it work."
The price jackup was more or less what they would have lost in F35B maintenance costs. make of that what you will.
As for the F35s, they're still in the process of eating the pentagon.
>> "They profited heavily from the war while we were left in debt for decades."
> Yeah, but we won.
The USA put shitloads of money into _all_ the european countries after WW2. The UK actually got more under the Marshall plan than Germany or France did, but its politicians chose to piss most of it against the nearest wall instead of spending it wisely.
Funnily enough they did the same thing with 1970s oil and gas income.
"The original jet engine, patented and developed by Frank Whittle, was basically handed for free to the US "
And apart from a few low powered helicoptor engines, how many centrigual jet engines ever came out of that?
$HINT: Axial flow jet engines were a german thing, as found on the ME-262 and the americans took plenty of those home to study after WW2
"more was achieved by private entrepreneurs and inventors (Cockroft, Mitchell, Watt, Bolton, Parsons, Brindley, Stephenson, Newcomen, Trevithick ) than by Governments. "
The success rate for both was about the same. The difference being that governments tended to decide what was a "winner" long before fruition and continue to sink stupidly large amounts of money into it long after it had been left hopelessly in the dust, whist ignoring other more promising technology or even destroying it.
The Brabazon might have been a great R&D aircraft if the air ministry had been paying for it instead of just telling makers what to build and expecting BOAC to buy the results, etc. Instead they quite effectively destroyed the UK independent aviation industry. etc etc.
"I would point out that the STI cell microprocessor was running at more or less the same speed (almost fifteen years ago) as current processors."
True - but the power consumption was a lot higher.
The chase for MHz ended some time back. Efficiency and density matters more once you learn how to make use of superscalar architecture.
"Is he or is he just trying to get around the ban on assault rifles "
If you want that to be effective, then simply impose limits on the barrel length and make civilian carbines (short barrel rifles) illegal along with short/pistol/folding stocks (which are banned in most places anyway).
Carbines trade accuracy for portability and usuability in a fracas. That's why militaries favour them.
It's hard to hide a tennessee long rifle under your jacket, which is why criminals like carbines.
A lot of countries have these kinds of restrictions (usually something like a 27-32 inch minimum overall length depending on the bore), with shorter versions either being outright banned or subject to heavy licensing conditions. Under those conditions the receiver is a secondary consideration.
"Just like how not too many people have trouble getting cannabis in this country despite it being a Schedule I controlled substance (this was true even before the recent wave of state recreational and medical legalization)"
The more interesting unsaid part of that paragraph is that in areas where legalisation has occurred, access to cannabis by underage users has pretty much been completely cut off - vendors do NOT wish to risk their licenses (unlike your average illegal street dealer who doesn't care), people have found they're less exposed to being aggressively marketed (or "gifted"(*)) substances they don't want AND they know what they're getting in terms of actual strength. (interestingly, actual honest to god stoners seem to be getting decent assistance with their mental health problems too)
(*) One of my friends was a victim of "unwanted extras" being laced into his purchase. The dealer thought it was funny. My friend didn't - he and 3 people ended up in ER with major panic attacks thanks to an unwitting dose of "P" and not knowing WTF was happening.
The average violent criminal is an opportunist who picked up a gun for $100-200 or less. They're not going to have the time or patience to setup a 3D printer to do this shit - and in countries with stronger gun controls there's already a cottage industry of underground gunsmiths making illegal weapons from untraceable parts for those who want them. They may buy a 3D printer to make things faster but the average thug is still going to go to his local armourer for a weapon, not try and make it himself - apart from anything else, a gun is no use without anything to fire and ammunition sales are usually also controlled/monitored with batches being traceable.
This is mostly a free speech issue but married to the US 2nd amendment penis extension fanaticism and people wanting to be the next Timothy McVeigh/Unabomber floating around you have a potentially explosive mixture.There's a valid point in there (thought crimes and censorship) but it's all pretty muddled up. and the more extremely the US waltzes into outright authoritarianism the more extreme the voices on the other end become too.
"In my area, there are four machine shops that have CNC mills."
In 1998, ONE of my customers in a town of 75k people had 12 CNC mills and was steadily buying more as expansion permitted.
As he explained it - the more he had, the more readily they were instantly available for (lucrative) contract work - and when they weren't doing contract work they were loaded up with 50mm stainless steel rod, profitably turning out automotive towballs if they only did that 6 hours per day, let alone running 24*7*365 less downtime for maintenance.
On the one hand a full blown 3 axis CNC mill is overkill for making towballs. On the other hand that's only what they were doing when they weren't otherwise occupied.
I'll warrant there are a lot more shops like that around the world now than there were 20 years ago.
"3D gun plans have been out for years"
And idiots have been making guns out of odd shit ever since they laid their hands on gunpowder or compressed air,
The story is only unverifiable because the people supposedly involved won't say anything about it (+) but in the 1950s at my high school there was a fad for making .22 single shot pistols out of fountain pens which only stopped when a pupil(*) was accidentally shot with one(**) during some horsing during a chemistry class(***)
(+) As in "refuse to confirm or deny". The shooting and subsequent crackdown on dangerous metalwork projects made the local paper though.
(*) now a prominent retired local medic and parent of one of my classmates
(**) Supposedly by my 1980s 4th form chemistry teacher(++)
(***) This was a school where we made ammonium triiodide booby traps under adult(?) supervision and where a teacher(+++) split the school swimming pool open using a "substantial quantitity" of sodium wrapped in newspaper during a demonstration (it was eventually paved over after 15 years of failed repair attempts)
(++) Yes, it was the kind of school where ex-pupils returned after university PhDs to teach chemistry... and other things.
(+++) Not the same teacher. This guy was mad as a box of frogs (in a good way) and inspired a lot of people to take up science careers. He was (of course) also an ex-pupil.
"Now if only you can find out how to block that faceboob pixel from "phoning home"..."
It's called "Disconnect for Facebook" amongst other things.
However as you have to use as the _only_ available method to explicitly block FB from snooping in your activities, it's more or less proof that FB are NOT indulging in "informed consent" when it comes to their data gathering activities.
Consent is not fungible. Someone else cannot give it to a 3rd party on my behalf.
" In the UK the ICO has already ruled that Queen Mary University London (QMUL) did not have to comply with a request to provide the raw data used to produce the results of the discredited PACE trial."
The ICO has issued a number of flawed decisions, but an ICO decision is far from the end of the line - it's not even precedent setting on the NEXT decision they make (never mind they're not a court of law).
There are ICO appeal procedures and then the law courts - and the courts have been less than kind to the ICO's strange interpretations of the law in the past, with particular criticism given to the way they side with orgs declining to disclose data. (Judges understand the principles of FOI far better than the ICO - remember that most ICO employees handling cases are underpaid, underqualified, overworked civil servants and that's exactly the way Whitehall wants it)
"You could put the original blame on verizon selling an annoying package or the fire department for not paying attention."
Or you could invoke laws about truth in advertising.
Saying "Unlimited" in large print and then imposing strict limits in the small print is the kind of thing that generally makes regulators very unhappy.
The fact that people have leapt to Verizon's defence on this shows how many Stefs(*) there are reading El Reg. There have been a huge number of legal decisions around the world that you can't contract out of advertsiing offers using weasel terms like Verizon have done (Or that Verizon has a number of stooges here)
(*)As in Userfriendly.org
"I noticed that in our new building lobby the fluorescent light panel above each elevator door would brighten slightly when that car was about to arrive."
back in analog mobile phone days my phone used to emit a couple of quiet but distinctive clicks when it was being polled for an incoming call - time enough to be ready when it started ringing.
After switching to GSM there was a ringtone that buzzed for 5 seconds before the audio tone started.
My employees eventually told me that some customers had commented that they were disturbed by the fact that I'd take my phone out of my pocket and stare at it BEFORE it started ringing.
"If they are failing. First thing we do is ask if they want them back or not. If they don't, then lots are drawn, and the winner grabs a big hammer and takes the drive out back to smash it to pieces."
Alternatively there's this: https://youtu.be/wb3Xa1h_RqM?t=24s
Satisfying to watch
"the HD had probably got a coil gone in the motor so once in a while it wouldn't spin up"
HDD motors have very low torque. The cause was a little wierder than that - called "sticktion" by many.
Grease from the motor bearing would get past the end seal, vaporise and deposit on the HDD platters. It wasn't much, but it was _just_ enough (when cold) to make the parked drive head (they used to park on the drive platter, not off the edge) stick to the platter(*). Of course this only happened when the head settled onto the deposited grease vapour when warm.
Giving the drive a sharp twist on the platter axis was usually enough to jar the head loose and allow the drive to spin up, but people would do all kinds of violence to get them spinning(**)
Startup friction is always a little higher than moving (going from stationary to moving friction before the heads get airborne) and makers used to pulse the drive motors quite hard to ensure they'd start but as drives got smaller this got less practical to do. Quantum's early 1990s 40MB scsis (used in Macs) were pretty notorious for this - probably pushing awareness into the mainstream.
(*) Sometimes they'd really stick hard to the platter, and then the spinup after the "twist" would result in the unmistakable sound of heads tinkling free on their wires.
(**) Hitting them with some kind of hammer or dropping the drives (or entire machine) was a favourite - and generally shagged bearings when overdone. Bear in mind that HDD platter assemblies have a motor at one end and are usually unsupported at the other. That's a lot of shock twisting torque on a heavy cantiliever when the drives are mounted vertically (and when horizontal sometimes the drive motors would simply detatch from the HDD body)
"This kind of fixing is quite common, so much so it even has its own term "Percussive maintenance", which I first heard on a (now old) comic:"
It goes back even further than that. There's a cartoon referencing it in one of my archive magazines of "Radio Television and Hobbies"(August 1964)
Extra credits to anyone who can remember what that magazine changed its name to.
"several companies registered "iWatch" before Apple developed its wearable, which is may explain why the Apple Watch is called the Apple Watch"
That stems from "iPhone" - which was being marketed in several countries many years before Apple got into the game - Apple found its attempts to steamroller those existing trademarks didn't go well, or cheaply.
> Haven't heard "best of breed" in a while.
Yeah, but the breed might be "sewer rats", when what you actually need is "ploughing horses"
That was my experience whenever I ran into outfits using that term - it just meant they weren't looking far past their own walls at how anyone else was solving problems and defined themselves based on comparisons with anyone else in the same very narrow speciality.
A best of breed buggy whip maker isn't going to sell much product to Eddie Stobart...
"If they want the original documents as part of the contract, it can be a real pain."
Especially if they want them for legal reasons - have you ever tried to open ancient word documents in the latest version of Office?
LO/OO can at least open them quite well (and it's fairly well known that MS used to (probably still do) use OO to repair hopelessly damaged word documents for clients)
Why would you ever trust stuff that may be needed in ten years to be stored in a proprietary format that's a constantly moving target? That's the essence of PDF or ODF (especially as the former _is_ a ratified standard these days)
" at many symposiums and other events I've been to, you have had to submit your presentation 3 days in advance and it was put on a dedicated laptop that was on the podium, "
3 days in advance is plenty of time to discover problems.
What I see is far too many people showing up hopelessly underprepared and then expecting the local IT folk to drop everything to make it work.
"Libreoffice is free and just fine."
I am a _huge_ fan of LO, but whenever I bring this up the fanboys at work bring up 3 issues.
- macros (yes, apparently people really do use them)
- spreadsheets (supposedly calc is far inferior to excel)
- powerpoint enough said)
My feeling is that it's more about "dunwannas" than "itdondothas"
"you get screwed by moving you costs from CAP-Ex to much more expensive OP-EX"
For businesses you get to write off the opex off against tax 100% each year vs capex being on a depreciation schedule.
That doesn't apply with governments or public sector of course, except as a notional thing for residual book value.
The scarier thing is that many of the orgs which have waltzed unquestioningly into the arms of office365 or google for outsourced mail have _NOTHING_ in the way of exit plans.
" they certainly didn't "hack" the election to change any vote once the vote was cast."
Given the proven vulnerabilities and lack of audit trails on the voting machines being used, this can't be determined one way or another.
There's a lot to be said for pencil and paper. No chads, nothing happening behind the curtain.
" setting up a group of torrents named after this weeks top 40, is there still such a thing?, selling records containing a sound track of me reading a poem I wrote "
This has been done, the results of such trolling are relatively funny and the music cartels haven't modified their tactics in response.
It's worth noting that in order to _prove_ that copyright materials are being circulated in a swarm, the accusers must actually participate in them rather than just monitor the advertisments and that means uploading as well as downloading - being employed by the cartels means they're authorised to do so, which starts raising questions along the lines of "Prenda Law?"
"Every data contract that I have seen includes a "fair use" clause which says that they will continue to provide unlimited access, but beyond a certain cap they will slow down the data rate. "
Such contracts have been repeatedly ruled illegal in Europe.
Fair use clauses over here are such that if a customer's usage is extraordinary the company is _olbliged_ to contact the customer before doing anything at all to their connection.
In any case this year's outliers are next year's ordinary bandwidth users.
"wanting to avoid having a PC behind each screen"
When that entails _literally_ a desktop box behind each screen (which was the case not so long ago) you can understand it.
That doesn't excuse having the important bits offsite though. Airlines and airports are complex IT operations (core business) that happen to run logistics and aircraft. Outsourcing your core stuff is a bad idea.
"Which is exactly the type of connection we ordered from Vodafone (not in the UK though). "
Voda do offer this kind of connection in the UK.
It was amusing when they offered us a 1Gb/s ethenet connection with 3G backup.
"Our average never falls below 100Mb/s. Can your fallback handle that?"
"Each radio link can go about 7Mb/s" (we'd already measured it and knew it was slower)
"7 is a lot less than 100. If we need more, we can run a bunch in parallel?"
(Some days later).... "Um.... no. We don't have that capacity"
"How much total capacity can you offer on the backup?"
"7Mb/s"
"and there is a gigantic tidal wave of fraud that's reported through Action Fraud that just doesn't get dealt with."
The utterly _clueless_ responses I see from Action Fraud from attempts to both report fraud and supply intelligence are a pretty good indication that the primary problems there related to the volume of reports.
Mind you, their press release are also a pretty good clue about that too. Jobs for the boys and all that.
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