The world of the future

Made in Wales.

Seriously *continuous* monitoring is tricky. Either you break the skin (infection, ulcers etc) or find some clever way to look at the glucose level through it.

Of course people have been talking about active monitoring/implantable pumps to do this since the 1970's.

Smart meters installation starts next month

Smart meter hacking starts 1 week later.

Who can contain their excitement at such an announcement?

They might start with finding a way to recycle Carbon Dioxide

Currently this is absorbed onto molecular sieves and then vented to vacuum, where the CO2 sublimes off. Even that is an *improvement* on the 1 use Lithium Hydroxide canisters of the type featured memorably on Apollo 13.

Leaving yet *another* load of O2 to be carted up Earth gravity well. BTW O2 is *denser* than water.

Roughly speaking of the 5Kg of supplies of food and water NASA reckoned a person would need c0.5Kg is actual *food* the rest is water and Oxygen. They seem to be getting a better at the water side but O2 recovery seems as far away as ever. It's *very* unlikely that they will use fuel cells that make water on a mars trip.

Downfall of civilization predicted *yet* again

As it was in the 50's, 60's and 70's

That's the 1850's, 60's and 70's.

Will all those who feel that way give in to *your* despair and kindly purge yourself from the gene pool.

No one is going to die on ISS because of this situatino.

It is likely they will not be able to resolve this for the 1st group to come down and they will come down in Sept. *If* they still can't resolve it by Nov them the 2nd come down, taking out the rubbish, switching everything to remote control etc.

Frankly I'd suggest getting Soyuz to fly on an Atlas is closer to flight ready (possibly with the Boeing CST-100 capsule behind as it's already had LAS tests) than

BTW if you think my words harsh you might like to look up Chuck Yaegers thoughts on hearing of the Challenger crash.

I smell Phorn's "Everyone whose not opted out is opted in" routine.

No doubt there are many who would be happy to have their behaviour tracked online if there was some sort of reward for them to do it.

But that proposal gives *nothing* for your co-operation. In fact it doesn't really *ask* for your co-operation

Fear not "They already are re-modelling"

So we can look forward to another well structured package of data and models from the CRU at East Anglia, crafted with all the TLC and attention to detail this group showed the last time round, as shown in the harryreadme file.

.

Quite a week for regime change.

And for much the same reasons (A desire to remain healthy).

Coincidence.

I think not.

Aye

But will it be prudent?

But think of the potential

For a limitless supply of room temperature (depending on where you live) water.

Of course it *is* 9 LY away.

Staggering

In pretty much every sense of the word.

Even handier they could string some large power cables inside and sell electricity from some of those Siberian reactors that seem to be still running.

Now does that price factory in the "OC" tax?

But have seen the *size* of the desktop?

Slightly more seriously looks like the sort of thing people are talking about to expose the next generation of silicon chips.

Although 40TW does not sound a small laser to me.

Note that £100k was what the govt *wants* to pay.

Time will tell if that's what they end *up* paying.

As others have pointed out it's the old byzantine *secret* data base schema which will lock the govt into them forever and a day.

Your product is managing *our* data. If we want to dump it we want you to be able to write out that data and it's structure in a way that *allows* us to re-load it into another system.

That's a *contract* issue. Not OSS or proprietary.

"Sage's market cap has fallen to *about* £3.1bn "

Well you may not like them (and if you've used the latest version of ACT unpatched you certainly won't) but they are *substantial* UK software house that does not depend on HMG.

Still MYOB customers have probably had a lucky escape.

Some of the *best* & *worst* of British innovation

Best

High density code using "prefix" coding on byte sized chucks, potentially allowing processors with external data buses made of *any* number of bytes, giving (with the right job mix) 10 MIPS at a time when 1MIPS was impressive.

Interrupt service routines coded *exactly* as a normal process attached to the relevant pins.

Stack architecture (internally the model used by many if not *most* compilers) in hardware. Could have support FORTH as readily as C.

Hardware scheduler for *all* processes, including "messages" on serial I/O buses (which I think live on as "Firewire").

Use of formal methods to verify the FPU.

Bit counting instructions which allowed software decoding of GPS in real time.

Software architecture *supporting* (rather than allowing) apps to be broken into processes and distributing across as many processors as necessary *without* change.

Tungsten Silicide gate material may have been what gave it high radiation hardness.

On chip clock generation from *relatively* low frequency shared clock, simplifying board design (not sure how modern chips do it theses days).

Worst.

It's designed to be used in *big* arrays but they premium priced it like an Intel processor as core of a system, at a time when you *desperately* want design wins to build volume.

No low end version (Like the 68008) which could have been 1 bit serial internally with a byte data bus. Poor performance but that *total* scaleability across the range would let a customer scale up as market and budget allowed.

No MMU, because it's going to be used in big arrays with no address translation (but it costs an arm and a leg)

No *nix port because no MMU (yes it's possible but it's a PITA without one)

Ran US DRAM operation as "Cash cow," which most start ups don't have and don't know how to make effective use of.

"Origami" editor. No doubt very neat but made *another* entry barrier to discourage people from learning it at a time you want *maximum* exposure.

Money from sale of Inmos went to Treasury, *not* Inmos, which somehow did not seem to be appreciated at the time. Inmos got nothing for the sale of itself to Thompson.

Welsh chip plant got stuffed one Christmas because they failed to realise the water company would dump a shed load of disinfectant in the water *without* telling them and clearing off for the holiday, trashing the ion exchange system.

I think ARM learned a lot of lessons from Inmos, but most of them were how *not* to do things.

Amdahls law was known 40 years ago and Intel still don't get it. 50 cores /1 *data* bus.

Can you spell "contention"?

Been coming for a *very* long time.

There's an old DDJ article about a guy trying to unscramble the serial port data from his glucose monitor.

As the actual *device* sets smaller (more concentrated insulin, more efficient pump design, smaller batteries) the UI (the buttons) become the limiting factor on reduction.

But what's OK for a *Monitor* should change *radically* when you can actually effect stuff IRL.

Logging the last changes is just a *start* (and note I'll bet that's just a good idea, *not* mandatory in the design of medical devices).

BTW some countries have a "Grandfather" provision for medical devices *unlike* drugs.

So I say "It's an insulin pump, just like insulin pump X" and the licensing authorities say "Fair enough type X passed you're clear to go."

It doesn't have to be *better* it just has to be *different* (but not *too* different).

While the idea that no one would investigate a diabetic whose just going along and suffers a massive insulin OD should be *very* far fetched given competent forensic techs and autopsy it's less clear cut if they were *doing* something which damaged the body. Driving a car would be the obvious one but I'm sure someone motivated to do this would find others.

Sage now own the ACT CRM product

I had personal experience of it straight out of the box.

What a dog. For some reason they moved the development team to a different state and seemed to have lost some key people. Result 10-20 secs moving between records in a 2000 rec database.

As always benchmark software (fully patched) *before* you buy.

Expect your MYOB performance to go down the gurgler ASAP.

Damm right

Now what are they going to *do* about it.

Joking aside I'll remind people of Spacex

3 launches

3 Failures

4th launch. Success.

Mind you I'd hoped for a bit of an improvement and some "Lessons learned" being applied.

And some would argue that flying M20 *inside* the atmosphere is *lots* harder than just getting to orbit It's like all the problems of re-entry *continuously*.

Better luck next time?.

Nobody will see this coming

Unfortunately no one can predict where it's going either.

A few pointers

GPRS is a *data* transmission standard separate from voice. it is one (of lots) of standards within the whole GSM standards package.

In the 2nd decade of the 21st century it is p**s poor that *all* subscriber data channels on *all* networks are not encrypted.

How serious this is to any *real* subscriber depends on what services rely on GPRS for delivery and how much encryption they apply *before* their data goes into it, and how easily it would be to shift to another delivery mode by sliding in a different element in the protocol stack (you did implement your app as a layered architecture, didn't you). I'm not sure what does use it IRL.

*All* GSM neworks have tapping by *authorised* users built into the network standards. Who "authorised" is depends on that countries record on observing human rights. Hopefully there would be some kind of *legal* oversight and audit trail.

This looks like yet *another* case where the GSM standard relies on "Security by obscurity," which has worked *so* well all the other times the network operators have depended on it in the past. See previous El Reg articles.

And in case anyone thinks I don't think this is a big thing let me repeat that In the 2nd decade of the 21st century it is p**s poor that *all* subscriber data channels on *all* networks are not encrypted.

Italy may know something about this.

Look at "Made in " label on half of the modules of the ISS.

Of course it does nothing about the umpteen paint chips, nuts bolts (and at least 1 ISS toolbag) but it's a start.

Getting a substantial package to 850Km is still pretty challenging

How polite of them *not* to name names

I guess it'd be likely some people might feel their "User experience" had been fiddled with.

The National Identity Card register is dead

Long live.

This smells of Lenin's comment about "Push the bayonet in. If it finds fat push harder."

The thin end of a long, *sharp* wedge.

Bet they don't have a date management policy either

so the DB will get bigger and bigger and backups (if they do them of course) will get slower and slower.

Might I suggest they fire the admin and hire the student part time.

I'm guess the student would not do something so dumb.

Note this should be widely publicised so parents know how much care will be taken of their personal details.

Has to be said

One API to rule them all.

Anti-proton catalyzed micro fisson/fusion is what I think you're looking for

Originated from the U. Pennsylvania IIRC.

There is a paper but basically 200g (roughly golfball size) spheres (199g Lead, 1g Uranium and some Gold) are hit by multiple ion beams (or lasers, but the ion beams are more efficient to make which helps) and start to be compressed up to a fission density. Then they get hit by a small burst of anti-protons and things really start to cook.

But where to get the anti-protons? The team writing the paper reckoned 1 years production would do it but the containment traps were not up to holding onto them long enough to be ready for the deceleration burn when you got to Mars/Venus/Jupter. This is being worked on.

However if there is a *natural* (and renewable?) supply that changes things quite a bit.

Note also any *solid* object passing through that zone would be *guaranteed* a nasty dose of high energy X and gamma rays. A magnetic shield that repelled Protons, wound attract Anti-Protons.

The SAA is the weakest part of the Earths magentosphere, roughly where the field lines channel incoming particles to. The field of view of a satellite mounted camera show *lots* of bright flashes when the shutter is closed in a way it does not anywhere else on orbit.

An astonishing piece of serendipity.

Police on the receiving end of an extortion racket.

That is all.

Anyone *heard* of mantech before?

Just asking.

Although I think they're about to get a lot more famous.

Hope they aren't computer security specialists.

My BS detector is pinging.

My 2nd thought was "An AP for every users."

An Australian Politician for *every* user.

I never knew Aus had so many of them.

"compared the empirical evidence against six climate models."

Crikey. Compared *actual* data with the soothsayers prognostications.

He is an unbeliever

Burn him!

the early indications were it was going to take off late October and dock about Dec 8th

Looks like they have negotiated with NASA to knock that down a bit.

I wonder if they managed to get the payment for *both* the flights. Given up to now it's been payments for milestones reached they deserve them.

it will be slightly over 1 yr from the 1st Dragon flight to that point, which is pretty impressive.

Still no word on first launch of its Taurus2 competitor.