* Posts by jon

37 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jul 2008

Royal Navy trials 'paging system' for submarines

jon
Pirate

Suggested Reading

The Dragon in the Sea (1956) by Frank Herbert describes a very similiar system that allows submarines to send radio signals without giving away thier location. It may be an old book but the theory is sound and technology has been up to this sort of thing for quite a while.

Site schools world+dog in browsing history pilfering

jon
IT Angle

Meanwhile on the other side of the screen..

I hope that I'm not the only one here who knows that there is a CGI version of this exploit.

Intel says new PCs will cost you nothing

jon
Coat

Humans in loop, the ongoing problem

Hmm, quad core processor, five Gb of RAM, 3d pixel shaded accelrated graphics and a terrabyte of storage all running the lastest windows version.. sounds wonderful and how fast will my staff type on the keyboard mr salesperson?

Homer Simpson 'nuclear waste spill' panic at nuke sub base!

jon
Coat

Sheeesh

Better not mention the radon emissions from the tarmac then.

Pirate Bay guilty verdict: Now what?

jon
Pirate

Google Ahoy

Movie - The Core (2003) run time 129 min

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3103880487117659001

Been up for months, page rank is excellent and most should find the link in the first page of results for the rubric "The Core". Casino Royale, Pulse and others are all easily found.

If merely providing links to copyrighted material is a crime then Google should be doubly slapped for supply "no questions asked" video hosting as well.

Nowak astronaut romanta-scuffle affair: New evidence

jon

What no forensics?

Am suprised that the fecal matter was DNA tested

as this tends to sort out whether its human or bull

DARPA AI will trawl petabytes of UAV vid for enemy cows

jon

Easy AI Now

Outsource the image analysis to the third world..

IT should only take only a couple of weeks to convert a call center.

Scientology spokesman confirms Xenu story

jon
Paris Hilton

Rumour Control

For those of you who are not entirely up to speed on the 'History' of Science Fiction..

It all started as drunken bet at a Sci-Fi convention between the late L Ron H and another writer. one Larry Niven of 'Ringworld' fame. Sadly the specifics of the arguement that led up to this challenge have evapourated into the mists of time like the methanol of cheap bourbon.

However the upshot of it was that to claim a victory one of them had to found thier own religion.

Faith will move mountains, all it takes is every pilgrim to take a teaspoon of dirt home.

Paris...because I'd take her home

Eric Schmidt reanimates el cheapo PC zombie

jon
Joke

Oh Well

Schmidt happens!

Gadget-buying Taliban 5th column in Blighty - shock!

jon
Paris Hilton

Knowledge is power

Why bother singling out specialist retailers with an electronics bias?

I cannot speak from first hand experience of every country on the planet, but from what I have seen so far I can safely say all the required 'ingredients' and tools can be found in many a small town supermarket and hardware store.

Paris..because... she can blow my mind any day

UK's best IT volunteers named, not shamed

jon
Paris Hilton

Where are the Mods?

Hour after hour of ceaseless toil moderating chat rooms and forums across the globe, the stress, the abuse, the drama queens and senseless posts of the drunk and deranged in the wee small hours. That's just the staff of course, the members are far more trouble LOL

So lets hear it for the those countless mods who give their time free of charge to keep the rabble under control.

Paris.... because she could make any topic sticky

Fasthosts to offshore support staff

jon

Ahh that explains..

Why they are offering six months free , no risk trials for reseller packages..oh well, we all know what's coming when the beancounters attempt to run an IT department.

Could this be the first warning toll of the death bell for all web hosting server farms in the UK?

Canadian boffins develop mindreader headband

jon
Joke

Are we missing something here?

"by shining infrared light into the brain" ... well at least they don't want to cut it into little chunks first.

Mines the forehead with the perspex plate

Apple banishes Macs to old folks home

jon
Happy

If it works then it's useful

though not a great fan of Macs have learned to appreciate them after having been given three G3 and two G4 systems for free (gotta love the WEEE directive). They are spending their golden years doing more work on daily basis than they ever did in the office where they once lived and now act as my own mini server farm running portions of my website.

Street View vehicle kills Bambi

jon
Joke

Re: 11th Commandment

"Thou shalt not not get away with it "

USAF seeks diamond gunports for electropulse ray-cannon

jon
Joke

I like it..

How many 'D' cells does it take?

14-year-old charged with impersonating Chicago PD

jon
Flame

Surprised

It's a wonder they did not give him a gun as well..

US Army working on 'exploding marmalade' missile tech

jon
Boffin

For all the amateur boffins

It's all about the physics of ketchup or thixotropy if you want to be more technical . Stable when at rest behaving like a gel but becoming fluid when agitated. The thing is though, who is s going to want a rocket with the instructions

'Shake well before use' ?

Online campaign urges MPs to block secret expenses

jon

Standing the problem on it's head

Can almost smell the press headlines now.. "shop an MP win fabulous prizes".

Fantasy author hired to pen Doom 4 plot

jon

Hurrah

Hurrah for a Brit ! , personally I would of gone for one the writers over at a 2000AD but let's not lynch him before he's made enough rope.

Judge OKs webcast in RIAA music file-sharing case

jon
Pirate

Can't Wait

Who's got the movie rights ?

This has all the makings of a modern 'Erin Brokowitz' for the internet generation.

New York judge OKs Amazon Tax

jon
Paris Hilton

What next

Anybody know how the folk over at Ebay feel about this ?

Paris: because I'd like to know how she feels..

UFO damages Lincolnshire wind turbine

jon
Black Helicopters

another cover up

and another dodgy mysteries type secret facts revealed thingy book is probably being typed as we speak. All we need now to really put the icing on the blades are the gathering UFO hunters (sorry , investigators) to get really paranoid and start accusing each other of being MIBs.

On the plus side it did happen in a remote area, and the headline "UFO hits Wind turbine" will be forgotten in a week. Had a turbine blade ended up skewering somebodies house I wonder what gem of a headline the tabloids would come up with.

The IT angle.. well one thing is for sure.. If a UFO did hit, then all the data logging for the turbine will have been altered, corrupted, mysteriously erased or lost in the post by now.

Send old Shuttles to Mars, says Scotty ashes prang man

jon
IT Angle

Mars - a step to far?

The leap Mars is 'do able' though granted a bit ambitious. However the technology to make it possible has been public domain information for some thirty years so maybe one day perhaps. Until then you will just have to make to with the free space flight simulator.

Now I wonder if anybody thought of using the old shuttles for a shorter haul flight, say the moon and back on a regular basis or perhaps one of the Earth crossing Asteroids after all in terms of Delta V requirements they are more reachable.

The IT angle... what OS would you trust with your life?

Companies burying themselves in IT gear

jon
IT Angle

Cannot Complain

If it were not for BOFH and the PFY dumping some of the older unwanted but perfectly serviceable hardware into a 'recycling' skip on occasion we would be short of at least one server, two monitors, a scanner /printer /fax combo... you get the picture

Online storage start-up pitches 'USB stick on the internet'

jon

Prosumers?

'Prosumers' , ye gods somebody slap his speech writer with a kipper

anyhow I hope he does well, Fasthosts was never quite the same after he left.

Battlestar Galactica prequel shuns space, spaceships

jon

Not Sci-fi just business

Every few years they need to rotate the old stock in the wardrobe department and give it an airing. This could be another 'warp drive western' in the offing , they have had a couple of goes at this kind of thing before, perhaps they will get it right this time?

Satanic net neologisms - nominations invited

jon
Paris Hilton

No Fluff to tough

Web 2.0 gets my vote...

Quite simply the biggest piece of computer related 'fluff' since makers stopped fitting dust filters to the average PC.

Paris: because I'd hoover her fluff any day

UK.gov says extreme porn isn't illegal if you delete it...

jon
Paris Hilton

Barking & unworkable

Unless of course the government plan kicking in peoples doors at random to perform detailed house and hard drive searches

ahh.. can just hear old Judge Dredd laughing

Paris: because she knows all about the problems of having a dodgy video

McKinnon faithful to stage further US embassy demo

jon
Boffin

Sod that

Give him a work permit, he's obviously better with computers than they are.

One-eyed woman wants techno-vision

jon
Paris Hilton

Some old fashioned espionage ?

It's a modern spin on an old idea, there is an old Sci-fi movie.. "Journey to the far side of the sun" aka "Doppleganger" that has a great opening sequence of a eye spy technology.

Sat here looking at my own digital camera ,small enough to fit in a box of matches or hang from a keyring one has to admit is possible. Going that extra bit and interfacing the electronics to the optic nerve could also be done, as for image quality that's open for debate. Microsurgery has come a long way in repairing severed nerve bundles but this would be a highly experimental procedure, though there are some previous examples for it.

Paris .. because she knows how good a digital camcorder can be

Vintage IBM tape drive in Apollo moon dust rescue

jon
Paris Hilton

Archiving Hiccup or c**kup

My organic long term storage module is a bit vague on this but... , was not NASA ordered to destroy all Apollo related documention by congress as part of the terms & conditions for getting funding for the present shuttle? I always assumed the Lunar data would of been exempt from this but has anyone actually read the small print?

Paris because she knows the difference

Forcefields will guard Mars ships from solar ion storms

jon

Plasma radiation shielding

Eric Hannah an associate of Gerry O'Neil first proposed the theory way back in the summer of 1975. Using an electrostatic field in conjunction with a magnetic one reduced the overall mass and strength of the magnetic field required. This moved the whole concept into the realm of where it was do able.. that is if you had the will do it. Magnetic shielding on its own is just to heavy to ever be practical.

Now if we could just get to Earth orbit more often we would be halfway to anywhere.

Judge Dredd smartshell shotguns to hit Iraq in '09

jon
Paris Hilton

Trivia

Like Science fiction the arms industry seldom has anything that is truly new. Heckler & Koch demonstrated an automatic shotgun with mixed load capability in the late 80's as part of the CAWS (Close Assault Weapons System) competition. The ammunition was 12 gauge but fully metal jacketed, so putting one of these in your pappys shotgun would not be advised, and came in a variety of flavours such as Armour piercing, Incendiary, High Explosive and Flechette.

Ps: for all the sci-fi fans and readers of 2000AD... name the bounty hunter who used a variable ammo blaster...

[Paris.. because she knows the importance of having a good load]

Now Hollywood is chasing UK downloaders

jon

Go figure

What we are witnessing are the death throws of a business model and you can bet this is going to get ugly and linger for some time to come.

Just in passing.. scan of the web reveals a curious situation, GOOGLE video has been hosting one particular copyrighted hollywood movie for nearly a year now. It was not difficult to find either.

If the lawyers want to go after someone for the crime of making copyrighted material available freely then here is a good place to start....

http://video.google.com/videofile/TheCore.flv?docid=3103880487117659001&itag=5

Why chase the small fry when you can have a bite of the real money?

Attack of the Italian space pod parachute babes

jon
Boffin

Terrrorise the Galaxy

With reference back to an earlier post, yes it does appear in the 'Lensman' series and more recent variation using hang-gliders can be found in the 'Cobra' trilogy by Timothay Zhan. Harry Harrison also used it in 'The Stainless Steel Rat for President'

But enough fantasy.. where does one sign up for the Space Marines?

Fasthosts brings down Edugeek - and leaves it there

jon
Boffin

Inside Fasthosts -

Curious internal structure, attended an interview there some time ago for a role in front line support. Failed miserably.. I was under the misconception that front line support was there to resolve run-of -the-mill tech support issues. It's not, it acts merely as means of checking the human beings username and password against account details before passing the fault report up to second line. About twenty of them man the phones on the cramped upper floor built into the roof space during the day, on nights just a couple of very bored lost souls handle the calls. BTW the aircon is frankly not up to it.

On the plus side if you can accept the job involves the mindless chanting of the service level agreement to distraught customers then the take home pay is quite good and they do look after the deskbots [sorry employees] The coffee rooms are the stuff of legend each fitted with soft drinks on squirty nozzle and an expresso machine cum bean grinder that the local Starbucks would dearly like to get hold of.

Shame the rest breaks are not actually long enough to enjoy a good mug full.