* Posts by John Smith 19

16326 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Who wants a Xeon-powered, 12-core, RAID 10 … LAPTOP?

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It's a bit of a beast

Title says it all.

Magnetic slurry could deliver heatsink-as-a-service

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Neat.

Focused heat removal where you need it.

Although I'd presume the particles are encapsulated to prevent settling and forming a lump in the low points of the systems.

Personally I've always wondered about about a sort of "liquid crankshaft" linking the cylinders on an internal combustion engine. The system acting as a regular hydraulic system with 1 way valves to keep the pistons cycling, then turning on the magnetism to shut down part of the engine (any part of the engine) and let the rest of the cylinders run.

Handy (I though) for any big engine that runs a lot in traffic, where a lot of the time is spent on ideal.

Thumbs up for bringing this out.

Google's Schmidt predicts end to global censorship in a DECADE

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Still creepy.

And wrong.

But as Snowden demonstrated in a connected world "secrets" don't remain secrets.

You THINK you're watching your LG smart TV - but IT's WATCHING YOU, baby

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So what about their competitors?

Is this just an LG thing?

You've got to wonder, and I'm sure there's a few people out there ready to check their router logs or run NetShark.

Looks like it's the same as the UK ID card b**lcks.

No need to ask.

No need to know.

Now f**k right off.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Linked to the TV Guarantee card

"Right with you but do people really fill out warranty cards?"

How much is the product?

Toaster, hair dryer not so much.

Big screen smart TV.

Bit more I think.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: For shame

"In my opinion and experience LG's answer is most certainly NOT going to fly if a complaint is filed, "

So it would seem that a complaint needs to be filed for the ICO to start taking action.

Would anyone (who has an LG smart TV) care to do the honours?

RIP Frederick Sanger: Brit bio-boffin who pioneered DNA sequencing dies

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Sadly missed.

Few manage a single Nobel, he got 2.

It would seem in both cases his work was not the "State of the art," it was the Start of the art.

That puts him in the company of John Harrison and Frank Whittle.

Space tourist Dennis Tito begs US to BANKROLL HIS manned Mars flyby

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No real upside to NASA, lots of cash from the govt. So Uncle Sam does the hardware.

Who makes the cash?

I think the Legislature may find this "offer" quite resistible.

It's like a "Flags & footprints" mission.

Without the footprints.

US senator asks: Will Bitcoin replace Swiss bank accounts?

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'guilt offensive'

exactly

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Honest senator

"Another senator was a little more honest in his appraisal. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia observed that Bitcoin could "dramatically transform" the role of central banks."

Didn't he also admit it took him 2 months to get his head round it?

A politician who admits stuff is "hard."

Google, Microsoft to drop child sex abuse from basic web search

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Happy

Re: Good News!

""hasn't she grown" site:www.dailymail.co.uk

"big girl now" site:www.dailymail.co.uk

etc...

Sorry."

You forgot "All grown up*"

*Alegedly

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Re: Good News!

"They Daily Mail often slavers over pictures of scantily dressed 15 year old actresses, so their "campaign" could backfire on them horribly."

Ssssh.

The last time anyone mentioned the DM's secret code for JB their site crashed for hours with all the search queries running.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

Re: A view from the other side

"It is NOT victimless, but the victims are not (just) the children in the pictures.

Anon, because I personally have been affected by this."

What makes you think this has anything to do with "protecting children?"

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Re: We all know where this is going

"Claire Perry - Your ideas may be very noble but you are being used."

All because she could not hire someone to set up her browser filter.

<sigh>

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@Bill the Sys Admin

"Mixed feelings on this. The disgusting things that are being blocked in this example is obviously good, but cant help but feel this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to deciding what people see and don’t see online."

That's why the TOTC routine works so well.

Whenever someone talks about "Saving the children" you better ask "For whom?"

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

And so it begins

I hear Call-Me-Dave is keen to get GCHQ involved in this.

Any excuse, eh?

this has f**ger all to do with protecting the children.

Instagram Act: UK.gov's latest copyright landgrab stymied - for now

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Sounds like the IPO needs to be shut down or re-structured.

Just the obvious thing really.

Micron takes on Intel with 'breakthrough' processor for streaming data

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Note if this is particuallary good at NDFA implementation that *suggests*

Very fast compilers (or more likely) cross compilers.

Handy if you're going to build compilers for all those interpreted languages currently using the shared runtime. that MS encourage everyone else (but themselves) to use.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Go

a lot of talk about 'automata' this is more normal finite state stuff

Pretty much what I thought.

That said fine state automata can be powerful abstractions.

But it does sound like the "pixel planes" PE's embedded in memory of Chapel Hill NC in the mid 80's.

I actually think using an interface common to memory modules is a pretty good idea.

JESUS battery HEALS itself - might make electric cars more practical

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

So it's a polymer membrane which is Li ion permeable

Which sounds pretty clever.

So the question has to be can they tailor that permeability and let other ions pass through (or not)?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Not that interested in rubber and batteries but expansion and contraction *three* fold

That spells MEMS actuator technology to me.

I'm thinking of an on chip container will etched pillars and sacrificial supports to create the "pellets" in the chamber and the use of flexures to maintain the activating fluid within the chamber. With the etched volume being less than 2/3 of the volume of the chamber as the Silicon is exposed it expands and exerts pressure on the membrane used to transmit force, effectively the "cylinder head."

The attractive feature of this is that (potentially) high pressure could be excerted without needing to transmit high pressures by some sort of micro hydraulic system (which AFAIK does not scale down well).

Vint Cerf: 'Privacy may be an ANOMALY, now over'. And it's no secret I think that

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

""Privacy may be an anomaly.""

Says man working for $Bn corporation keen on making it "an anomaly."

Old rule of Psych ops.

Once I have convinced you that resistance is futile and I will do whatever I want with you I have already won.

Don't believe the BS.

FBI sends memo to US.gov sysadmins: You've been hacked... for the past YEAR

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Re: (Not lice, not fleas but) Poly Ticks What's the big deal?

"What party politics? I'm Canadian. I have no "party" within the US. They're all bloody nuts, but some have recently been demonstrably more nuts than others."

Indeed.

Time was you only had to know about the religious nut jobs.

Now you have the Swivel Eyed Loons of the "Tea Party," with their Trotsky style infiltration tactics. I'm sure US readers can identify other types for whom their prime "candidacy" should be that of a room with mattress wallpaper.

I think it was actually Richard Condon in The Manchurian Candidate (which is actually more a political satire and black comedy than a thriller) who noted politics is about who you get to do it to you, about 30 years before Douglas Adams.

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Re: What's the big deal?

"Mitt Romney Style!"

Indeed.

Pro.

A politician you can't bribe.

Con.

Everything else?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Such enticing data

"Just wait until the fattest database gets hit "

Indeed.

When people find how much the Legislature is trousering for expenses I think they will be suitable annoyed.

OpenFlow love-in shows off SPEED-DATING protocol, quick config

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Actually trying to make interoperability work.

Who knew?

Biggest quantum cluster does not compute ... yet

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Usual answer for noise in low power signals is cooling.

So wrap the crystals in a cooling jacket.

Simple answer is a closed loop with anti freeze, being good down to a few 10s of degrees below C.

Beyond that you're into LO2, LN2, LH2 and LHe, with progressive levels of nastiness.

Thumbs up for the enormous enlargement but the computing procedure sounds more like the days of analog computing, when programmers re-configured the wiring between op-amp modules to change what was being computed. Keep in mind that tech was how the early flight simulators could give real time response to control inputs when the digital hardware of the day would take seconds to solve the equivalent equations and drive the actuators.

Supreme Court can't find barge pole long enough to touch NSA lawsuit

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Lose points for not ging through lower courts. But OTOH

This seems like something the Supreme Court should rule on.

Decades ago, computing was saved by CMOS. Today, no hero is in sight

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There are a couple of lines that could work for *specific* applications

One would be a "de-bloater" run of your favorite language system, like the old "development" (fast compile) and "production" (highly optimizing) compilers.

This would a) pull a copy of all needed library functions b)pack them into a minimal set of pages c)Renames all variables so that they could be found in the symbol table as quickly as possible (IE Long enough to be unique to the run time system but not excessively large).

Of course you could develop compilers for all those interpreted languages.

Two is much harder.

The core of parallel programs seems to mathematics. The true roadblock seems to be the core of that code where the results of parallel streams are combined

So you need to design a number system that allows numeric operations without carry between digits.

With no carry to worry about individual digits can be processed at maximum speed from different processors, without worrying that the last (slowest) processing elements result will kick over every other digit of the current partial result.

How you incorporate that into a FORTRAN/C/C++ or other compiler will be very difficult.

But until you do the true promise of parallel processing will not be fulfilled.

BTW for anyone wanting to take a crack at the new hotness and become the Intel of the mid 21st century.

1) The closer to room temperature the better. You're dead if you need an LHe cooler.

2)It has to be programmable in a language a substantial number of people already use. Anyone have any idea how to program a quantum computer?

3)Your new design technology will need a notation to describe your "gates" or whatever you're calling them. Ideally you'll also have a way so that EDA software can use them.

4) Transistors have a fan out and fan in of (typically) 10. Human neurons can go 1:10 000. Bigger is better, but at least matching a transistor is a start.

Personally I like optical systems, but the challenge is true optical transistor behavior IE light/light switching.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: The next giant leap

"Intel bought Kuck and Associates, and in due course KAP vanished from the market."

Presumably to incorporate it into their compilers.

You are aware Intel supply compilers, right?

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"lead to a mass culling of the management class "

Hmm.

Does anyone have a problem with this?

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: DRAMA!!!!

"2) At present the lower bound on latency is set at the speed of light (C). So far we haven't found a way to increase the value of C."

Actually a lot of the time stuff propagates at about 1/3 c on PCB tracks and normal wiring however by impedance matching the lines (which can be done on PCBs as well) you get close to c transmission speeds, and (AFAIK) that can be done at the chip level as well.

Men have LARGE APPENDAGES, are OXYGEN THIEVES: Science

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Conversly I find women with sharp beaky little noses

Tend to have sharp beaky little personalities to go with them.

Lavabit founder: Feds ORDERED email providers to stay open

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Re: "Forced" to stay open .. running up masssive losses

"Works for the banks."

Not quite.

They convinced the mugs politicians they were "Too big to fail." In some cases the senior managers of said bands were then hired to run the regulators (in the US).

Brit graphene maker poised to go public: Yes, wonder stuff WILL float

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At last. An IPO to raise capital for actual *stuff* assuming of course...

That the share will be being sold by the company (so the funds go into the company bank account, not the senior staffs).

Thumbs up for this but it will take a very strong management to remain independent and not get bought out by some American foreign conglomerate.

This could be one of the 21st century success stories of materials processing, in the way that say Gore Tex was in the 80's.

Nanowire laser is a GaAs, GaAs, GaAs (with a bit of arsenic)

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Clever mfg tech. But they talk about IR lasing in sub 1micrometre geometries

It's clever but the question the question is how well does it fit into a chip fab process flow.?

Thumbs up for practical work.

'FELSIC materials' find on MARS could rewrite Red Planet's history

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"lacks plat techtonics"

AFAIK the only way that happens is if Mars is solid all the way through.

OTOH that would also seem to kill any sort of magnetic field (no molten nickel iron to generate a current), but Mars does have one (although IIRC it's not very strong).

So a Mars with no volcanoes ever would be a very surprising beast.

thumbs up for the analysis.

Why not build a cluster out of WORKSTATIONS?

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A lot of applications benefit from seeing the big picture

People like chemical simulation, magma flow and seismic viewing

Excellent idea.

TrueCrypt audit project founder: 'We've set our sights high'

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Sounds like hotel reservation systems need to upgrade their security.

Admitedly they could just be snaffling the email.

GCHQ tracks diplomats' hotel bookings to plant bugs, say leaked docs

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Re: all your base belong us

"When Nikita Khrushchev visited Vienna in 1961, for a summit meeting with Kennedy, the CIA allegedly rented the hotel room below his and tapped (groan) the plumbing to gather K's bodily waste."

Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase "Side channel attack" does it not?

A steam punk VDU ?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

The *only* absolute rule is *no* electricity

BTW the idea of an EL with a memory device (or more accurately a layer) was discussed in a big book on photoconductivity I cam across some years ago.

The system used (IIRC) an EL panel backed by some kind of Ferroelectric storage device.

Infosec bods scorn card-swiping Coin over security fears

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

Another firm that wants to turn you *into* the product?

Thanks but no thanks.

Should be popular with the ignoranti.

CEO of bloated outsourcing firm Capita quits after 26 years

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

CEO states "I have lined my pockets well. Now get back to work you scum."

Not so diplomatic.

Considerably more honest.

Fukushima fearmongers: It's your fault Japan dumped CO2 targets

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@Itzman

"Anybody who says renewables are the future

- hankers after the Dark ages

- wants to kill most of the human race (not an unreasonable position given how crowded with green idiots its getting)

- is lying

- has an interest in a renewables company"

Or maybe has a very narrow definition of what "renewable" means.

Can include

Anerobic digestion

Micro hydro

Geothermal from every oil well that has ever been dug and is no longer producing.

Space solar.

But these options are a bit complex and "industrial" for the wigwam living Jades.

And of course if you want large scale compact, no CO2 then logic --> nuclear systems.

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Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

"This just goes to show how ignorant your average person is about CO2. Whether you believe in global warming or not - the third world cranks out *a miniscule fraction* of anthropogenic CO2 - because they don't have any bloody industry. "

That depends where you put India and China.

I'd say both countries have quite a few people with "3rd world" living standards.

Budget decay kills NASA plutonium drive project

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"Adequate" production of U238?

I doubt that.

Historically only certain kinds of "high neutron flux" reactor have been used to make the fuel for NASA's TEG's but I think people are realizing that the US has a lot of commercial reactors that could take a specially loaded fuel pin or two. Individually their output would be small but with 10-20 of them it adds up to a tidy haul.

That said this technology did give about 28% output over the 7% currently.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

"I predict that the only productive output of all the recently announced rich-guys-mining-asteroids projects will be U-235, enabling an end run around the pussies who won't let us put more reactors up on rockets."

NASA does not put nuclear reactors on rockets.

The US has not flown a nuclear reactor in space since 1965.

Deep beneath melting Antartic ice: A huge active volcano

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Ooops. Can you say "Tipping point"?

Very large quantity of ice + very large quantity of molten rock spewing over it --> trouble.

This is not a problem now but for those with a worst case planning turn of mind it's definitely not a happy discovery.

However thumbs up to the team for field work and finding this out before a whole bunch of people wake up one morning and find they need a boat.

Boffins warn LIMPWARE takes the pleasure out of cloud

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So need some kind of "node profiler" tool?

I guess up to now most HPC systems have been by assuming that identical hardare == identical performance.

A reasonable idea.

But wrong.

Except I can't help think that things like Tivoli and what was CA Unicenter were meant to have tools like that a decade ago.

Cocky Microsoft strokes soft tool in public for 3D printing on Windows 8.1

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Any colour as long as it's white?

Just that seems like a theme with all these 3D printed things.