Posts by John Smith 19
6621 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 19:28 GMT
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Re: Ok here we go again
You missed ID cards and their spy on everyone database.
Well at least one of those hasn't been adopted by the current government
Yet
Ah SARTRE
Proving that in future hell will be other people.
Re: Do not want, and in fact this kind of thing is a fucking 'orrible idea.
" I do worry about "big brother" getting mixed up in the equation though."
And on past experience you damm well better be.
Whenever someone spunks this idea out (2nd or 3rd time round for this I think) the government approach always turns out to be a)big b)centralised c)holds stupid amounts of data for absurd lengths of time d)outsourced
QED clusterf**k waiting to happen.
Re: Do not want, and in fact this kind of thing is a fucking 'orrible idea.
"They're called cabs and buses."
Some are even called <cough> "trains"
Astonishing.
In the 1970s CT scan processing was an early candidate for using massively parallel (well thousands) of bit serial processors. Good idea but never took off.
Now you can get literally 100s of times that power in (by medical hardware terms) tiny sums of money.
With enough resolution and political will every politician could be inside one when they speak. Instantaneous confirmation of lies (or a sociopathic character that literally cannot tell a lie from a truth).
The possibilities are endless.
Re: Build Nuclear
"Pensions
Social Security
Health
Education"
You missed defense.
And it also is a big item.
what is the HIV growth rate in the thrid world these days?
High IIRC.
I think this is an excellent idea. Making it work is going to be tricky but the payoff is huge.
HIV/AIDS and other STDs are a huge burden and barrier methods are the only real way that this is going to be stopped. It's sad someone gets these diseases and they cannot be cured but why should their wives/mistreses/prostitutes pay for their stupidity.
It'll be interesting if the get static from the swivel eyed loons religious right in America for this.
Thumbs up for working on a big issue that the US govt probably won't touch.
"Odd that they didn't have a category for reusable condoms. Wait before you throw something at me, they use to exist before the latex condoms came into vogue, but they were terrible things."
Geronimo!!
Very interesting. Surprising people have not looked into this before
Historically there has been the properties of the permeability permittivity (useful for capacitor design) of free space and the (derived) impedance of free.
All have measurable values but no one knew why they had those values (it's one of those "stop asking stupid questions, memorize the values and get back to work" conversations).
Given that it's been know the vacuum is subject to quantum fluctuations for decades it's surprising no one seems to calculated the implication what happens if a photon hits one (or more?) of these particles in transit. Just because they don't stay around for long does not mean that they are not "real" while they are here.
Even more amazing laser technology is at (or close) to being able to measure this effect.
Note that practically it would not change much. We would have to change the definition of the speed of a light in a vacuum to mean a vacuum with no virtual particles (which AFAIK is a complete abstraction).
Now if the rate and density of virtual particles remains constant then this just means you need to compute the speed of light slow down but if either varies then things could get muchmore interesting.
BTW GPS propagation already corrects for some quantum effects so this could improve navigation accuracy, especially over long distances or high speeds (but probably nothing moving slower than a serious fraction of the speed of light or ranges of several AU).
Thumbs up for picking up the ball and running with this.
A few points
Like It's always good to have some kind of upper or lower limit for an algorithm so you can stop wasting time looking for better (because there isn't one) but it's good to revisit those boundaries to confirm they really are boundaries.
And in this case they are not.
Note this limit applies to single layer PV cells. If you stack 2 or more different sets of semiconductors you can (so far) hit 43% total. But they are hellishly expensive (built for comm sat use).
How practical this research is remains doubtful. Upside is you push the maximum limit on a single layer PV. Down side is you add tricky nanowire fabrication (UHV chamber needed?) and I'm not clear if the spacing between the wires writes off that area of the cell for light collection. Incidentally resonance
implies an object with electrical dimensions close to the exciting photon, which suggests this is a narrow band improvement. Of course if that narrow band is at the peak solar wavelength (around 500nm, unfortunately Silicons band gap is around 1100nm) that could be quite a useful difference.
Re: it is possible
"At the moment, the thing that deters me from installing PV at home, is the cost and complexity around inverters and metering more than the cost and effort around the panels themselves."
So management costs, not technology costs.
BTW you might like to look at these hybrid PV/water heating panels as PV efficiency falls about 1% for every 4c rise in temperature
Every f**king time its the random number generator.
This IIRC is not the first time some network protocol relied on a number being "random" and it turned out it was not.
My instinct is despite it being an active research topic since the 1950s implementing the research is demanding and easily FUBAR'd.
Let me suggest that a)If you're implementing one and you do some tricky possibly non portable, possibly inefficient (but essential to algorithm correctness) thing you document it.
In the space shuttle flight software code they called these "alibis." If it's good enough for maintaining life threatening computer code it's good enough for you.
If you're reading it don't change it unless you really understand what's going on.
So voda run adult entertainment companies.
I did not know this.
Because if they don't this sounds like some veryh creative interpretation of the wording of the Ofcomm ruling.
Re: Operator A
"I for one would like to know who Operator A is - one that has garnered a lot of web commentary about it's pricing changes as well as new prices for it's super-fast mobile network?"
FOI request?
OftComm is a public body after all.
And so it begins...
The day the Earth fights back
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Is that rich melodic music I hear?.......
Martlesham Heath, PARC, Bell Labs
IIRC the Joint Speech Research Unit (part of Dollis Hill) gave the world speech transmission at 1200bps in the late 1950s.
All the institutions I listed may be world class research centres but apart from Prestel what is Adastral Park (I've only ever seen it called Martlesham or Martlesham Heath) actually known to the world for?
This is a *huge* step forward.
Although it sounds like there is still a lot of potential speed up to be had in the software architecture if 90% of the theoretical capability has not been used yet.
Thumbs up for move the idea of the "robot butler" (or for the slightly liess self indulgent a robot nurse) just a little step closer.
Of course that still leaves the mechanical elements.
Clothes recognition. Perhaps.
Pick up, iron and hang clothes on a hanger in your wardrobe. fuggeddaboutit (for now).
Re: Register dot co dot uk - exists merely to be nasty.
"True. On 4chan, you at least get acceptable images."
I think they can be considerably more dangerous if upset.
"that Dara Ó Briain (O'Brain?)"
The fellow with the Physics and Maths degree.
Probably a better choice.
Youu might add that Rowan Atkinson's degree is Electronic Engineering.
So probably quite a good choice for GPS or computers.
Re: Build Nuclear
" I don't understand why we would be doomed if we need to burn more gas (or even coal) occasionally. "
Because it will not be occasionally. As many have pointed out on this and other threads the target for onshore wind is 26% and offshore is 30% That's a little over 6 hrs in every 24 or 8 hrs in every 24 running. The expected situation is that A.N. Other power source will pick up the slack the other 16-16.8 hrs a day. Which sounds like a lousy use of that money.
The reason you're so impressed by the figures for the last few days is they are so damm rare. BTW at least one onshore UK site racked up 6% run time last year.
You seem to have a problem remembering those figures, despite them being mentioned frequently when this debate comes up and you seem interested in this subject.
"compare it to Google, Amazon (haha) and Microsoft -"
Wot, no Facebook?
Re: The point of Shares
"They are obnoxious. They spend more on lawyers, patents and market image than R&D or innovation. Jonathan Ives has even admitted the design styles are copied from Braun/Dieter Rams. The last worthwhile things they did was investing in ARM (for Newton) and Ditching OS9 for BSD based OS X."
Behold the iEadon.
Re: Don't blame Apple for the price drop
"but there was a brilliant article in Private Eye covering the success rate of these hedge fund recommendations in London over the last 5 years and how only one analyst has been able to make suggestions that would have given an investor a positive return"
Many people don't know Private Eye publishes a city column.
They should.
Re: Build Nuclear
"No additional capacity is required as power stations already exist, they just have to work less hard, in particular burn less gas - every Watt produced by a wind turbine saves about 2.5 Watts of gas."
The problem is not that wind cannot reduce gas consumption (like most other renewables, including biogas).
It's that it cannot do it reliably. Calm wind can persist for weeks over the whole of Europe
Without a very diverse set of renewables (with the support infrastructure, including the necessary energy market mechanisms) to take up the slack and handle many small(ish) generators this plan is doomed.
Yes the UK has windy sites, but it's also got tidal, wave, micro hydro, geothermal (every well in the North Sea, of which there are several thousand, could generate 500-1000kw) and biogas resources.
All of them are more reliable than wind, but they are a bit complex to explain to thickies ministers.
BTW You are aware that roughly 20% of the UK's electricity is nuclear generated and most of that is due to go out of date over the next next 5 years or so?
"India are already researching "flexible riser" tech that will work at 6km. they have remote controlled mining machines on the seabed that slurp the material and send it skyward to a platform."
I did not know this.
I had thought this sort of deep vacuum cleaner tech was pretty esoteric with no one really looking at it due to the lack of demand.
Sounds like I was wrong.
Excellent news.
Re: Umm, I'm not sure how cool I am with this
" I was on the receiving end of an awful lot of "affectionate teasing" in school and it made my life a misery."
A fair point and in a 1 to 1 workplace environment can be very nasty.
However he has somewhat set him self up as a a bit of an all round know it all in public and in that situation you should either be very well prepared when you talk about something or admit your ignorance if called out. After all he is likely to earn considerably more money for doing it than anyone informed or smart enough to trip him.
Re: "you can still be a twat !!"
"Interestingly, "twat" is Neil Gaiman's past tense for "tweet". Example: "Stephen Fry twat six times today"."
I did not know this.
I like it.
"unfortunate" failure of Belgium connector *triples* spot gas price.
Unfortunate for customers that is.
Not so for suppliers or (in reality) the gas companies.
Conspiracy theory. Moi?
Re: Too right we are running out of gas.
"It's not just the last 4 days were wind power was close to 100% continuously and produced record amounts of electricity "
Is that 100% of 24 hours in a day or 100% of the usual 26% of the time that onshore wind is expected to run for.
Not trolling just being clear on the baseline you're using.
Re: Gas-based energy policy for a country with no (more) natives reserves?
"40% of UK electricity being generated from gas is the problem"
Time to consider more biogas?
Centrica reckoned it could be good for 40% of UK gas requirements and would make the UK less vulnerable to Russian extortion "negotiation."
Re: Gas-based energy policy for a country with no (more) natives reserves?
"Yes, and the "Future Prime Minister" Ed MicroMiliband was the one happily signing us up for the stupid enviro-commitments while he was in the Labourast Government together with his bro."
He didn't sign anything.
That would be Tony Blair. And despite being told it could be done for electricity but not all UK energy needs went ahead and signed it into law anyway.
He wouldn't have to implement it and it was a nice ..|.. to Gordo on the way out as well.
One giant leap for stuffed hedgehog kind
I'll get my coat.
Ah, Austrians and metal reinforced concrete
A match made in heaven?
All hinges on the cost of extraction.
5.8Km is a long way down. Pressure at this depth is about 580 Atm.
Of course if the concentration <bis</b> great enough. ...
thumbs up for an interesting discovery.
Home town of Frank Sinatra
IIRC some politician was offered a Senatorship and turned it down. He said "I can make more money being the Mayor of Hoboken."
Why not just rename it RICO Town?
Re: What is this article supposed to be?
"Tables for layout are the devil's own work."
Thank $deity I thought I was going crazy and it was just me.
The danger with this should be obvious
All their data could disappear into Finn air.
Posted in Voyager goes off a (helio) cliff
Re: It's an impressive feat.
Actually neither is correct.
Re-checking Computers in spaceflight, the NASA experience indicates the main cycle was 28 microseconds, or 35.714kHz. It's about 9% better than the Apollo AGC, which weighed about 90lbs (Voyagers was about 20lbs but only doubly redundant). Using COTS parts (albeit the rad hard SOS versions of 4000b parts) also probably made it a lot cheaper.
The 4kHz signal is something I read in an E&WW article and was described as the "heartbeat" but the NSA book describes it as being about 0.5-1 Hz.
TTFN
A very clear explanation of a very complex subject
This could have been buried in pat numbers and stats but I found admirably concise. Some writers seem to feel that technical subjects have to be complex to understand, like you have to prove you're smart enough to read their work.
I'm no expert but I felt this gave me a good enough understanding that R-DMA gives you an 8x speed up in data throughput to a GPU, which sound s a pretty worthwhile gain.
Given what we now know about how many FLOPS it takes to animate a face this is not to be sniffed at.
Thumbs up for a nice write up.
Bottom line Intel wants to sell x86 chips to mobile phone makers at PC processor prices
Because if it didn't PC mfg would howl they'd been ripped off.
I think ARM have more of a shot at penetrating into big servers than Intel has of expanding into phones.
Provided the servers don't need to run Windows to supports some lump of code.
Keep in mind this "Great British Succsess Story" was mostly bought to you by Acorn Computers (UK based), Apple (US based), VLSI (US based). Wonder who got most of the money?
I'm glad they will continue to work their business plan for the time being. Thumbs up for their efforts but how many others has the British business environment created?
Not many.
Sort of reminds me of Marlon Brando in Apolypse Now.
Although it probably speaks faster.
Re: Why sell a cure for baldness when I can sell you a pill that stops your hair falling out as long
"By the way the current worries about antibiotic resistance are partly the result of the cost research combined with the limited returns due to the short treatment courses. "
So it would give a better return on investment if the course was longer. IOW the drug was not quite so effective. If the drug company had a choice that's what they'd go for. Sadly for them it seems the discovery and development process is not quite so fine tuned to their profit predictions.
I think you've demonstrated my point.
Re: Well that problem will soon be solved
"SCADA systems currently are hard enough to get running at all (ever gotten DCOM to run?)"
I'd rather it not be installed in the first place.
"Contrary to what many believe, TETRA (formerly known as Trans-European Trunked Radio) is a Open Standard and is primarily hawked around the place by EADS / Cassidian and Motorola."
Depends what they've been reading and where they've been reading it. TETRA has always been an open standard.
"Smartphones likely could provide similar services in most cases."
No.
Try setting up closed user groups,
P2P means this can work underground without assistance.
Frequency band means better penetration.
It looks like a clunky somewhat retro phone. It is not.
Re: "This is a wake-up call for operators of these infrastructures"
"Ha ha! No."
I wrote should not "will" for a reason.
"I suspect it'll take aggressive and concerted government intervention with hefty penalties to wake up any of the folk responsible for these systems."
Perhaps loss of rights to any bonuses might focus their minds as well.
"Natanz was a USB stickjob IIRC, so no Internet involved, at least directly."
I think that's sort of his point.
If SCADA systems are vulnerable even when not connected to the internet PHBs can say "well it got infected anyway so why give up on linking them to the net and using that fixed (and expensive) leased line tech instead.
Re: amanfromMars home movie ..
Err not to spoil your fun but consensus for AMFM is that they are (mostly) a bot, as in an NPC.
Suggested explanations for their posts are mostly.
a) A simulation of mental illness like the "parry" program (sort of the flip side of Eliza)
b) A sort of textual "numbers station," issuing instructions to assorted (human) agents around the world for unknown purposes.
Historically mental hospitals ran guided tours of their patients (look up the history of Bedlam asylum for example). Another way to make money out of the mentally ill, perhaps (they'll probably call it "therapy" this time round).
Why sell a cure for baldness when I can sell you a pill that stops your hair falling out as long
as you take it for life
Drug companies main business is making money
A product that actually cures your condition (so you don't need to keep buying it) is actually a failure of R&D from their PoV.
Anyone who does not realize this has a fundamental misunderstanding of what they do and why they do it.
Re: I thought
"the whole FacebooK IPO was a Ponzi scheme."
No. In a Ponzi (I quite like the term "rollover") you use money from initial investors to pay later suckersinvestors.
In Facebook you run a campaign to convince people the "value" of the company is way more than it's total asset worth and its revenue (IIRC the P/E ratio for Facebook was in the 100s. IE if Facebook distributed all their profits back to their stockholders it would take them centuries to get back what they paid for them unless the price rose above what they paid for them).
That's more like a "pump and dump" scheme. Which appears to have been plaid with fake press releases for some firms and can happen amazingly quickly.
Posted in Voyager goes off a (helio) cliff
It's an impressive feat.
As for the IT angle.
1 of the first NASA processors to use CMOS for the logic and the memory (no core store. Even the Shuttle GPCs were not prepared to go that far).
4Khz processor. <64KB of RAM. Try writing an image compression routine in that space.
Bulk data storage by reversible tape drive.
BTW it's true the parabolic aerial radiates about 15W but radio engineers talk in term of EIRP, effective isentropic radiated power, which would be the power you would need to deliver the same energy density in the beam across the surface area of a whole sphere. That number is quite impressive because the beam is such a small fraction of a sphere.
Well it's amazing what you can find for sale
on eBay.
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