Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"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.
"The first moral of the story is only let accredited people that know what they are doing install your stuff. The second moral is don't rush to declare a "built-in back door" without doing at least five minutes of browsing."
Wrong.
The first moral of this story is don't develop an installation process that requires such an account in the first place. If it's a brand new fresh-out-the-box product it should have no fixed accounts and part of the config should be to set up the first account (probably through the mfg's website).
That might make theft a bit easier to track as well.
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?
This is a perfectly logical set of decisions.
We make accessories, what should we make?
Stuff Americans like.
iWhatevers and guns
So we makes something that appeals to both areas.
Simple.
Logical and yet at the same time totally b**locks.
I've know assorted women devs (and sysadmins).
Perhaps its different in large company end user sites but most were not that nerdy, with looks ranging from good up to tall statuesque blonde (who was a contractor). Outside of work they would constitute a fairly attractive group of young women who happened to work in IT.
Media images around this subject are pretty pervasive so if you want a better eye candy gender balanced workplace you need to work for it.
It seems a long time ago since the founding of "F International."
During the 60's and 70's many weird and wonderful technologies were developed to solve the memory problem of basically how to store a page (about 80x24 characters) of data in the terminal.
IIRC Univac went with a "Torsional" ultrasonic delay line with a clever coupler that converted the efficient driving modes to the torsional wave. Torsional waves were slower so more delay (or more characters) per unit of (NiCr or NiFe) wire.
Keep in mind in 1970 an Intel 1024 bit DRAM was cutting edge stuff. You'd need 16 for the characters, 16 more if they each had an individual "attribute" byte associated with them.
Good luck with getting the model working.
"Seems a lot of effort to go to, though. Imagine how much simpler it would be if there were a ready supply of salt water at the surface instead of deep underground."
Sea water evaporation was the process used in Roman times to deliver all the worlds salt supplies.
Resulting in a material so expensive it was part of Roman Centurions annual pay (the "salary").
Salt mining lowered the price of salt a lot
Kind of like gas and fracking.
Might get some nuclear capacity on line. Perhaps Molten Salt (which would be sensible) or regular LWR, with some work on transuranic using reactors (or "waste burners").
Anaerobic digestion could give 50% of UK gas demands in a renewable way (and would scale with the human population :) )
Geothermal could give about 2GW from N.Sea oil wells (dead or not).
Tidal, wave and micro hydro could give several GW more.
All predictable consistent power supplies, but a bit complex to explain.
"I'm sure nothing bad will happen. Just like when we took all that salt out from under Cheshire."
Salt is an interesting comparison.
AFAIK the modern way this is done is to inject hot water and simply dissolve the salt out.
Rather like the way gas would be collected. The "environmental impact" of salt mining would make a very good comparison
Compared to the time between tomes of the average researcher his output was huge
Being the suspicious soul I am I always wondered how many "assistants" he had on the case, or indeed if it was a pen name for a bunch of guys (they never seemed to carry a picture).
That said it's sad to see him go.
"They're pitching it at mobile backhaul. "
That was my point about spreading the cost of the motorized antennas across their customers while the connection to their actual customers would be the usual kind.
Perhaps I was not clear enough
OTOH if the motorized aerials are supplied by the infrastructure operators, not the individuals then you can share that cost across all your customers.
For operators in some countries this sounds like a very good deal.
thumbs up for a clever idea.
"It's not cheap buying hippy costumes so PC Plod can get his leg over with a female eco-warrior. Love 'em, spy on 'em, fit 'em up, and leave 'em - the prison and single-mother population is exploding thanks to the Bill equating undercover with under-the-duvet."
Indeed.
"Pumped by the Met" in every sense of the word.
"Great to see them rolling out their own fibre though - "The gov are crap, we'll do it ourselves and get far more than 2Mbps"..."
I saw this.
Their figures for delivering it worked out about £1000/home but I'm not sure if that's FTTC or FTTH.
I wonder what the BT charge comes to?
Thumbs up for self help.
I think he coined the term "Daywalker" into the language. I'd call that a pretty good record.
I've read parts of the novel and know the context of the original title.
Like "The Cold Equations" it make uncomfortable reading. I found it sort of amazing that he was involved in all three adaptations. IIRC The Incredible Shrinking was was my first experience of a film with an unhappy ending. It had quite an effect on my pre-teen mind.
I'd like to see the Vincent Price version. He rarely got to play action heroes. I didn't know it even existed before I looked the Will Smith version on IMDB.
So fare well. I'll be raising a glass to you, Probably somewhere sunny, with my back against a solid wall.
As zemeric points out a bit bigger (and I think that might be in the "experimental error" range) could still give 1g (it's "little" g, not big G we're talking about).
And 22 LY is a lot closer than most of these candidates (IIRC the last one was 100LY+ away) so perhaps close enough for some people to start asking "What's it take to do this?"
Thumbs up for a positive use for data mining.
"We also need to know what the planet's radius is. If it's large enough, the surface might have a tolerable gravitational force."
I think the clue is in Earth sized rather than massed. I'd guess they normally refer to surface gravity when they give numbers like this.
IIRC bigger sized planets EG Jupiter sized, would have been spotted much sooner.
"Regarding cryptography, that can be considered a Problem Solved. Even RC4 is quite secure, if properly used. And, 128 bits of symmetric key secret is GOOD ENOUGH"
The EFF demonstrated brute force attack against the 56 bit DES using a single board full of ASICS clocked at 20MHz around 2000.
Toshiba* state they can do 21 MGates/sq mm at 250GHz toggle frequency.
a factor of 12 500 in speed and the NSA could fill rooms with this tech.
They also have the advantage of recording the data stream so can decode offline
Still think 128 bits is enough?
*Found after almost 2 whole minutes of searching the interwebs.
Which in theory was OK because you could only access the network through the connector (well you could pull out one of the CANbus connected devices on the outside and spoof it if you know enough about its details, like its internal serial number. But outside an episode of "Burn Notice".... ) and that's inside the car. So if your smart enough to break into a modern car to begin with (figure the mfgs) you're smart enough to steal it and they are off the hook and all bets are off.
Then they included the Bluetooth interface and the in car entertainment gizmos on the network.
Can you say "Standardized attack vectors with multiple known exploit tools?"
Does anyone recall the words of Mr Scott that "The more advanced the system, the easier it is to screw it up" ?
They say the dots are 3nm wide to ensure they only carry a single electron at a time (which is quite clever) but they seem to be saying the large dimension needs to be in the micrometre range to make it work.
Not good news if you want to push for the ultimate density in devices
That would suggest switching nodes would need to be > x Micrometres apart. I hope I'm wrong on this one.
Note that while this uses quantum effects it's not really the common usage of the term "quantum computer", qubits, all solutions generated simultaneously, no registers, no programming language.
OTOH it is the sort of thing which you could put in a chip carrier and solder to a circuit board, which mfgs like a lot
Sorry folks but I just don't see any of those weird and wonderful devices beloved of SF computers any time soon.
Doing it at room temperature and with single electrons is a huge step forward.
Note that's not really "transistor" action. What you've got is conduction by quantum tunneling. You have a potential difference between 2 contacts and current flows. That's a description of any conductor
But you've done it through a material which is basically an insulator.
What you need is some way to control that conductivity. The 3rd terminal crossing the BNNT.
Given the very one dimensional nature of the conduction it would seem that a BNNT chip would be a series of nanotube pieces spliced together or criss-crossing each other, as opposed to just laying the switches on top of a semiconductor as happens with current chips.
Manufacturing that structure (in bulk) is going to need people who are much smarter than me. Perhaps some kind of biomemetic or emulsion technology for the quantum dots?
Thumbs up for room temp and a very different but still electrical system.
"Sydney Hilton Hotel Bombing 1978 targetting CHOGRM, three people killed!"
My point exactly. It's not exactly down town Baghdad is it? Or even London in the mid 70s (There were a fair few bangs throughout the decade, mostly down to the IRA).
There is little justification for unlimited net surveillance and there is even less of it in Australia.
Beyond of course "Because we can."
I predict they will fall back to Plan B. "Hordes of paedos are grooming your children without your knowledge ready to lure them abroad for unspeakable practices. Only by watching everyone all the time can we keep...." Blah Blah Blah.
Except that AFAIK Australia has had no domestic terror attacks.
The European Data Retntion Directive (6-24 months) was bought in by the UK when it had the chair of the EU following the Madrid rail bombings. Note that Spain did not draft it or request it. The did not see the need for it (and Spain knows a lot about domestic terrorists).
"significant extension of the power of the state over the citizen"
Correct.
The principles of the UK Data Protection Act are below. Note item 3. This behavior is grossly disproportionate to the threat (what threat?) and basically says "you're all going to be criminals, we might as well start the paperwork now."
1. Processed fairly and lawfully.
2. Obtained for specified and lawful purposes.
3. Adequate, relevant and not excessive.. Read 1000 000 peoples data to (amybe) find 10 genuine bad guys. How many would only be caught by this and no other methods?
4. Accurate and up to date. Well I don't think that will be a problem as it'll be snooping 24/7/365
5. Not kept any longer than necessary.
6. Processed in accordance with the “data subject’s” (the individual’s) rights.
7. Securely kept. (99.99% of the data has no need to looked at. All storage should be strongly encrypted)
8. Not transferred to any other country without adequate protection in situ.
The Australian desert being used as a Taliban training ground is a very bad straight-to-video film script (I've seen it). IRL it's simply BS.
Is that like trying Julian Assange for Treason (He's Australian at the moment)?
Have they issued an international arrest warrant or are they under the delusion that a US arrest warrant is good anywhere?
Because if they haven't a "request to hold him" is just that, a request, which can be ignored or refused. He has committed no treason against China and AFAIK no crime while in Hong Kong.
Let's not forget that back in the day the US seemed to have trouble picking up convicted IRA and loyalist terrorists on the grounds their crimes were "political."
Pot meet kettle.
Seems a bit complex.
You're sort of looking at the mechanism of a mechanical mouse turned inside out. So the ball could be driven by rollers rather than the other way round
For carrying some kind of non contact sensing package (optical, radio or magnetic) this has some attractions.
Pushing a vacuum? Ironing clothes? Cooking breakfast? Not so much.
"Better Place were smart enough to start from markets like Israel where people do not drive long distances and relatively few battery swap station would suffice."
People say that.
Israel is a pretty small country.
So why would you bother to swap batteries in the first place?
Whereas the US is known for being large.
But somehow people just keep coming back.
This is evidence of a)The indomitable will of the human spirit b)The failure of a bunch of butt headed stupid people to invest in a home that was a) In an area known as "Tornado Alley."* b) Referred to as a flood plain* or c) Coastal area at negative altitude above sea level.
Note the old areas of New Orleans recovered from Katrina relatively quickly because the original settlers sited their parts on locally "high" ground.
You can argue that "The Dutch never had this trouble and most of their country is below sea level, so there." This is true.
Anyone remember the last Category 5 storm the Netherlands had?
*"How cute, the area has a name."
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