* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

US Navy coughs $34.5m for hyper-kill railgun that DOESN'T self-destruct

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: How effective are they...

"Doesn't the US Government have enough ways of killing people yet?"

It's the military.

There are never enough ways to kill people or vehicles (and of course the ones you most want are never around when you need them)

Love in an elevator.... testing mast: The National Lift Tower

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Sounds good for acting as a drop tower for freefall experiments befor a sounding rocket.

At 128m I get about 5secs of pure zero g, 77m gives about 3.9s.

Both of which are not bad (there are not too many buildings >100 in the Midlands).

I'm surprised they haven't had calls from aeronautics and physics departments in the region.

Thumbs up for a most impressive erection.

Olympus trio escape jail but firm fined £4.6 MEEELION

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Woodford did the shareholders a *massive* favor

That sort of infection with a companies accounts can kill it.

The people involved got off very lightly.

Of course they have been publicly embarrassed.

I'm not sure that carries the weight it used to in Japanese society.

Decade to 2010 was hottest, wettest: WMO

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Perhaps a better question. How does this compare with the *models* of behavior

That all those climate modellers have been busily running?

If they are on track time to start being concerned.

If substantially below perhaps it's time to look at those models?

India's IT giants left gasping after water shortage

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Re: Water water (is needed) everywhere

"With a rapidly expanding population and economy water is now and will be the biggest thing to hold back social and economic development in India."

True.

Quantum of Solace is fiction.

For now.

Broadband rivals 'pleased' over Ofcom's market shake-up plans. Maybe too pleased

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BT "We own the cable and the access. ISP's are our bitches."

No obviously they won't say that.

But while Openreach is a BT tightly controlled BT division instead of something more like National Grid that's

exactly what ISP's are.

There is the illusion of competition, but their is only 1 gatekeeper for most UK homes.

Don't get me wrong. It would take a very brave ISP to start to lay their own network, either the last mile as a "fibre only" service and its growth would be slow. So far they all bowed down (except Virgin).

Droid X2 plus ActiveSync equals DATA SLURP

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

I wonder if there's a market for an automatic EULA parser to turn them into English?

Just a thought.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Let's be clear about this.

It's none of Motorola's f**king business what apps I use, who I talk too or where my email comes from.

You want to ask me then contact me with a marketing survey.

And just to be clear it's no other corporations business either.

This data fetishism knows no bounds.

Surface Pro for enterprise: We name the dates and the lucky partners

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Re: Through the looking glass again

" Is the MS legal department so fearsome that no one dare speak truth "

Post with your user name and email and you'll find out.

(signed) The Microsoft Legal Department.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"At least the SSD is actually removable if you need to recover data from a dead Surface, something you'll need specialised kit to do with embedded flash."

Like a fallen Borg having its memory chip harvested for analysis by the collective.

Not sure why that image popped into my head.....

Douglas Engelbart, PC pioneer and creator of the mouse, dies at 88

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You might like to compare that demo with what most people's desktops can do today.

Turn text into a file and vice versa seamlessly

Bush's essay (IIRC "As we may think") set a lot of heads thinking.

I'm sad to see another of the 1st generation pass.

Rest your head against a train window, hear VOICES in your SKULL

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Happy

Re: I had Sky Go once...

"...until I rooted my mobile. At that point I apparently became some kind of anarchistic IP-stealing Godless commie, and Rupert's app refused to play unless I repented. Uninstalled instead, don't miss it."

IOW

You had Sky Go once.

It went.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: AC@11:38

"Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development? Do you perhaps mean the OED?"

Oops. Typed without checking.

Which I think is what created it in the first place.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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AC@11:38

I see what you did there.

You've got the con from confidence trickster combined with, according to some dictionaries, a "person of loose morals."

It won't make the next OECD, but after that......

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Help the community

"Just a thought, would probably be better than smashing them all. Less fun perhaps, but certainly cheaper."

For the really malicious I imagine it would be possible to re-program them to whisper some other semi-subliminal message into the poor commuters head.

I'll leave others to suggest what that might be.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: What an amazingly cunty idea

Probably thought up by a marketing conslutant.

Modern-day Frankenstein invents CURE for BEHEADING

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I think Rupert Murdoch has found a solution to the problem of his accession

He's not going to have one.

Bad luck for the boy Murdoch of course.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Prescient much?

"Who's read 'I Will Fear No Evil'..."

Well, after I got past my avoidance of any book that refuses to give any description of the plot.

Very much more "Stranger in a strange land" than "Starship Troopers."

And of course likely to create a new range of profits for the legal fraternity.

The downside of this is that it will probably be limited to the very rich.

Balmer could be leading Microsoft into the next Millennium. Trump could still be hosting The Apprentice while on his 50th wife and Branson could be working his way through the stock of jumpers he had made when he bought the entire years supply of the UK wool industry.

Yay. We are truly in an age of excitement.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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It's hard to appreciate just how much advanced research was done in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Implanted neural radio telemetry active brain structure changes. Dr Delgardo (late 50s to early 70s. Still alive).

Head transplants done in both USA and Soviet Union.

1st human incubator 1965.

Cutting edge medical technology but all extremely creepy. the human incubator item really floored me (Life magazine cover). I had thought we were decades away from trying this (and I mean in the future).

Cautious (very cautious) thumbs up.

Government IT contracts to be scrutinised by UK competition watchdog

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Holmes

£Bn suppliers because they keep issuing £Bn contracts.

"Sorry old chap but we need to a supplier with the necessary "financial stability" to give us security of delivery."

And other such BS.

So (surprise, surprise) only a few of companies have the financial stamina to handle years of procurement processes.

And as for that "In depth experience" that such outfits usually boast about their most useful asset is their phone book of specialist contractors or SME's that can actually do the work.

Does the UK Govt have the skills to partition systems into more manageable pieces. Who knows.

US states: Google making ad money on illegal YouTube vids

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Don't most people use AdBlock?

I find this s**t pretty annoying.

Forging a drivers license is tricky and I need to concentrate when I'm watching.*

*Purely for educational purposes. I might find myself working in a bar and need to spot one.

Home Office opens up anonymised crime data API

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it all adds up

Black Male 23, inner city, - please report to nearest police station, we expect to accuse you of something shortly

Now that's just plain wrong.

May (Theresa, not James) says only 10% of all stop and searches result in arrests.

She wants it to be much higher.

How this is to be achieved has been left in the hands of the senior plods.

What could possibly go wrong?

Boffins build telescopic contact lenses to battle blindness

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Holy s**t

That's some tricky optical engineering. Check the number of reflections going on those light paths.

Thumbs up for this. But I see just one small difficulty.

What proportion of codgers seniors wear contact lenses?

Only it seems a bit fiddly for those whose eye/hand coordination is not quite what it was.

British Bebo founder buys back social network for $849m profit

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

"Superstar" CEO's and their (allegedly) coke fuelled M&A advisors = company down toilet

Logic says this is a stupid move.

After all old owner acts as "advisor" and company goes from $10m -> $1m is not too impressive "advice."

Unless of course he was setting them up to sell him it knowing exactly (in principal) how to fix those problems.

Which makes him a sneaky f**ker and therefor exactly what's needed to bring a business back to life.

Ladies & gentlemen. Collect your popcorn bowls, sit back and enjoy the fun.

Space miners reach funding goal for telescope

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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$1.5m is *ashonishingly* cheap for a satellite *especially* doing optical work.

I can definitely see why people would be suspicious.

That said anything improving our knowledge of NEO is to be welcomed.

So (cautious) thumbs up.

Dubya: I introduced PRISM and I think it's pretty swell

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Dubya--one of the biggest reasons I gave up on the Republican party.

"In fact, I would be surprise if he hadn't taken a lead in creating this program. "

GW Bush, System Architect.

I think not.

Although something along the lines of "Wouldn't it be great if we knew what everyone was saying everywhere" would not be beyond his ability. The rest is a detail, and AFAIK shrubs not really a "detail" guy.

Between career members of the Legislature (with 70+ years in office), religious nutters and other assorted SEL's the US political system needs an enema.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Bush said

""Ultimately, history will judge the decisions I made.""

He says that a lot.

So far history is calling him a either a dumbass stooge for much smarter businessmen or an actual just-don't-give-a-f**k psychopath with bags of the sort of good 'ol boy charm that comes from being a true vacuum.

Still who knows, endow a couple of libraries (no I don't think a good book is exactly his idea of entertainment either) and they might be kinder.

D-Wave IS QUANTUM, insist USC scientists

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: As backed by NSA

"D Wave are backed by In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA/NSA.

Funny nobody mentions that."

VC's often invest in companies that turn out to be complete rubbish.

They are hoping for the one that makes the 1000% ROI to justify it all.

Will D-Wave be it? Who knows?

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"they’re certainly the first to do so with so many superconducting qubits,"

8?

That does not sound very high to me.

BTW WTF is this new layout? Commenting in the "Age of Austerity?"

A short, sharp tool kit to get you to the top in financial IT

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

"Good ideas" and jail time.

Something the like of Enron seemed to have trouble balancing.

As ever an entertaining (if somewhat ruthless) read.

But is Jake really your long lost American brother?

3-2-1... BOOM: Russian rocket launches, explodes into TOXIC FIREBALL

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OOps

I think that's one of those loaded with the highly toxic NTO/UDMH mixture.

Nasty.

PRISM leaks: WTF, you don't spy on your friends, splutters EU

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Benjamin Disraeli put it this way.

Countries have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

You might hope for friendly treatment, but you should not rely on it.

BTW Suez was the point at which both the UK realized it no longer ruled the waves and the US did.

The behavior of all parties in the matter shaped a large part of the 20th century.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Sauce for the goose

"> bugging friends is unacceptable

Isn't that exactly what citizens keep telling their governments whenever a new, more intrusive, form of surveillance is announced."

But that's different.

Under the Newspeak dictionary the term "Citizen," is replaced by "Suspect."

Your assistance (or lack of) in this matter will be noted citizen suspect.

(Signed) MinLove.

Energy sector under increasing attack: DHS

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Virus and trojan writing is a game for *any* number of players.

and of course if the US tax payer picks up the pieces (and the bill) why should the companies invest in making their systems any less vulnerable.

Unless of course the Directors face criminal negligence charges.

India's low cost tablet dream lives on with Aakash IV

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Could do better with the name.

Who would not want an Al'kesh in their pocket.

Yorkshire police lose 9,000 guns in rogue BOFH database blunder

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Re: Northern Pride

"But since the miners strike, Hillsborough and so on there has been a real renaissance in the quality of northern gestapo and now - except in the matter of talking to journalists - S Yorks police can hold their head up with the best of S America's finest. It makes you proud to be from Sheffield."

They not the originators of the legendary gag that goes.

Cop. If someone kicked in your front door, beat up your kids and raped your wife who you gonna call?

Miner. Not the S. Yorks police for sure, they're already round my house.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Actually there *is* a use for this register.

"I often wonder what would happen if the Cullen report was made public now. Sadly it's too obscure for Anonymous and the like to bother ferretting it out."

100 Years.

I smell a very large cowpat indeed under this skin.

I maybe being paranoid but my instinct is Hamilton was known quite well to the McPlod in the area and you can imagine them seething at their inability to actually arrest him on anything substantial .

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Actually there *is* a use for this register.

Previously IE for the 10 years after Dunblaine if you were refused a gun license by one force you could apply to others around you and they could not check if you had done so and might give it to you.

I think you could have got multiple licenses to hold different weapons as well.

IOW the usual games you can play with multiple paper databases held by different organisations.

It's a good idea. Should it have taken Dunblaine and 10 years to get it. No. Did the UK need even stricter gun control laws. No. Let's say I smell something funny about the local cops involvement with Thomas Hamilton. Predatory paedophile wakes up one morning and decides to attack a primary school. No one putting him under pressure, he just does.

Yeah right.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: “We are in a situation not of our making,” said Chf Supt Odell.

"Well, that's an interesting new bit of spin. "Our employee screwed up, but then we sacked her, so the fact that she's not part of our organisation now means the screw-up was nothing to do with our organisation back when she still worked for us.""

Indeed. The cutting edge of blame avoidance of management technology.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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10 *years* to get a national firearms register, a fair chunk of whose data they already had.

Funny they did not throw the book at her. She is after all a)A woman, b)Not able to give the Masonic high five and c)They are the South Yorkshire Police.

But you'd trust them with being able to get a complete dump of all your phone, text, IM and email traffic, right?

Well you'd better, cause they want it.

Sage stakes ERP cloud on Azure platform

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Incompatability you say? Try between their *own* products

IIRC Anyone who thought they could just transfer their data into a large company model was delusional.

Major ETL ructions.

Still harmless enough unless some large US company wants to steal your customer base.

FCC orders wireless carriers to protect customers' call info

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

@Tom Dial

"One of the main questions is whether the democratic excesses of the period immediately after the Al Qaida attack on New York City and Washington exceeded the bounds set by the Constitution and Bill of Rights."

"democratic excesses"

That would be the Legislature passing THE PATRIOT Act without reading it first I take while shrub played the old "If you don't vote for this you're a terrorist" care?

"democratic excesses" I'll have to remember that one for the Book of Euphemisms.

I'd suggest the "excesses" were very far from being "democratic"

Jiggy Pennsylvania couple busted by 25 bike cops

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"What has been seen cannot be unseen..."

True.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: Brain bleach required

"Now I know there is no God."

On the upside.

Ugly people get laid too.

But that's why they call it "Doing the nasty."

Twisted photons get another spin

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Well you know what happens when you assume, don't you?

It's good to question assumptions because the history of science is littered with stuff that turned out not to be as assumed.

Although in this case it looks more like a case of "We thought it would be too difficult to make a fibre that can do this. Turns out it was quite easy."

Thumbs up for this new technique.

Boffin's claim: I have found how to get girls into tech

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Completely OT Is "conslutant" the *best* mixed up word ever?

A perfect confabulation of ideas that express a deeper truth?

And at least a few Beavis style Hehehehehehehe's.

HP Enterprise scores major win with $3.5bn Navy network contract

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

With that kind of deal under his belt he'll be moving up. IOW

He'll be "posh" Toti in future.

I know, but some times it's just impossible to resist.

HP StoreOnce has undocumented backdoor

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Allison Park userid pw

"it was a joke..... funny ha ha......btw..and i know you know this I really hate being called anything but Allison. Maty"

He does come across as a bit humour impaired at the best of times. I also thought of that old Blackadder line about "Still worshipping God, eh Melchett? Last time I heard he was worshipping me, woof"

Probably best to include the Joke icon.

NASA to flip ion engine's 'OFF' switch after brilliant 5.5 year burn

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Thrust level (according to Wikipedia) is 236mN. That's 24 gram or 0.857 oz of force

And I'm b***ered if I can tell you what that's in poundals or any of those other stupid former Imperial units.

I'll note that the SP100 space reactor was designed to deliver 100Kw of electricity and it's resulting power to weight ratio was around 46kg/Kwe.

Sadly RTG's don't really cut it for this sort of power level. Large thin film solar arrays (with or without concentrators), full scale reactors or beamed power (yes JPL have looked at this) are viable.

The question is when will it be used on a mission?