* Posts by umacf24

245 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

Page:

Oi, missile boffins! Stop ogling web filth at work - Pentagon

umacf24

Do porn sites still carry malware?

Looking at our logs, malware is mostly from compromised WordPress sites and third-rank online merchants. Compromise victims. Like phishing sites, the porn-merchants don't want people blocked from their sites by their AV, so they keep them 'clean.'

But my data are incomplete. So it's a genuine question.

Using Facebook causes less eco damage than farting, figures show

umacf24

But have you allowed for the shorter half-life?

Methane: ~10 years, by oxidation

CO2: ~100's of years, by deep ocean circulation

RBS must realise it's just an IT biz with a banking licence

umacf24

Re: what about the money

I'm with Daren. The payment system that the banks co-operate in running is fantastically important to the nation, but not to each individual bank. Banks borrow short term and lend long -- that's how they make money and it's what defines a bank -- and they care most about managing that risk to ensure that they are able to meet their obligations over the counter every day. And that's not primarily about payments, whether it's phone apps or CHAPS. We think that's what banks do, but it's not what they think they do.

Nonetheless, the payment system is vitally important to the rest of us, and RBS have exposed the risks of leaving it, unsupervised, in the hands of people for whom it's always going to be a secondary interest. I think there's scope for regulation -- a technical assessment distinct from the banking regulator -- to ensure that every participant in the payments system, merchants, acceptors and banks, works in an efficient and recoverable way.

umacf24

Change Management

CM is a communications tool. It works if it puts the change plans in front of people who are technically and institutionally able to challenge them. It works better if those people include the ones who will have to fix what goes wrong. What can't work is a lovely paper trail with all the manager's signatures.

Solar, wind, landfill to make cheapest power by 2030

umacf24
Happy

Slow decommissioning

Decommissioning is the best advertisment for compound interest.

If you wait,

1) You get richer as your invested sinking fund compounds (assuming you haven't destroyed economic growth by insisting on high-priced solar and wind power)

2) The problem gets smaller -- at a compound rate -- as neutron-capture activation and any left-over fission product in the structure decays.

And there's a last point:

3) Your robots and remote handling equipment get better and cheaper. (But technology improvement is much less exponential, alas.)

Win-win-win. Sixty years is a thousand-fold reduction in some tricky nuclides. Definitely no hurry in decommissioning.

So, that vast IT disaster you may have caused? Come in, sit down

umacf24

Is there enough cynicism here?

Why has no-one accused Connor of stuffing up poor guileless engineers so they get sacked, and then reverting to his headhunter role and placing them for a fat commission?

umacf24
Big Brother

Re: Techys can't tell you the whole story...

+1 for the value of the logs. I would do +10 if I could.

There is nothing like a log. Nothing in the world. Of course you have to really understand them -- it's easy to make accusations on the basis of a superficial understanding of the event meanings. I did that once, and the culprit apparently confessed to what he was suspected of -- even though, as I later came to understand, the evidence was worthless. I told my boss when I realised and she laughed.

umacf24

Tape?

Lovely piece.

I wonder if Connor records these interviews. So many times I've had a sensitive meeting and then thought "did he really say that?"

War On Standby: Do the figures actually stack up?

umacf24
Meh

Re: actually

This isn't really comparing like with like. The point of electrically "fired" heating is that it uses a heat pump to recover head from the environment. So 1KWe yields 3+ KWt at central-heating temperatures. In the overall context of huge efficiencies of scale and temperature in big gas turbines (running at 40%+ efficiency) this consumes less gas than burning it at home and getting 1KWt from it. So I think CHP is a bust, and would be a total nightmare a) to administer if we had a lot of it to integrate with electricity consuimption and b) for obvious reasons to convert to carbon-free energy when we get that sorted.

umacf24
Happy

3) Pensions

What? No children? So WE'RE going through teenage hell and gadget/holiday/school-fee poverty to raise the citizens of tomorrow, so their economic activity will pay for YOUR retirement!

umacf24

CHP is a snare!

Not convinced. Not at all convinced. Waste heat is not free, small installations are desperately inefficient, and the assumption that you can sell the electricity when you want the heat is rash. (That is, you may get a feed-in tariff, but it's not necessarily economically efficient.)

I would have thought a big gas turbine station driving a three-fold electric heat pump would be more efficient in gas terms. And when we do convert to nukes, of course it goes completely carbon free with no retrofit.

umacf24
Meh

Ross, I think the point about comparing non-standby equipment and activities to standby is misplaced. The concern here is not "What consumption is better?" but rather "What to do?"

1) We're entitled to make choices within constraints, and I might well choose to leave the TV on standby and not iron my shirts. Over the year, that's going to come out way ahead (down) on energy consumption and that is what we are trying to achieve.

2) The standby thing appeals to the "every little helps" idea, and that's a fallacy that is leading people astray. If we all do a little, then in national and global terms we'll achieve a little. If we want to cut energy we have to make major changes: ending discretionary travel, wearing warm clothes indoors, making buildings, machines, clothes and everything else last much longer, having fewer children, buying in-season locally-produced goods and produce whatever the cost. That's what would help, not switching off the telly, no-matter how heartwarming it feels to do that. (There is another word for this plan, unfortunately, and it is "poverty.")

Or mayby we should stop messing around and build out some serious nuclear capacity.

Crypto boffins: RSA tokens can be cracked in 13 MINUTES

umacf24
Meh

Only if it plugs into USB

As far as I can see, this only applies to the smartcard which is packaged alongside the SecureID function in some tokens. Basically, if your SecureID token hasn't got a USB plug, it's not a smartcard and this doesn't apply. If it is a smartcard, it still doesn't apply to the SecureID function. I struggled with the paper, but I think the attack needs the PIN too -- and if you have the PIN and the token, you're in anyway.

So this may be a little overblown.

Renewables good for 80 per cent of US demand by 2050

umacf24
Happy

Where the devil is Lewis Page?

When you need him?

Oracle case crippled after judge rules APIs can’t be copyrighted

umacf24

Re: @EvilGav

As I understand it:

The Patent would be for "an encryption system that took in messages of such and such a sort, processed them with these steps, while asking the operators to manage the key in this way"

People feel that this ends up patenting the algorithm because, really, that's all the encryption system is. The protection would be a 20-year monopoly.

The text of the program witten to build the encryption system could be protected under copyright, gaining a 70-year protection in the UK (is this true? that can't be true!) But anyone else understanding the algorithm could write their own program and provided they didn't copy the original, they would not be violating the copyright. Apart from the length of the protection, I think software copyright is fine. It enables the GPL among other good things.

I share the general concern about patenting algorithms because I think it chills innovation, and patents are only there to ENCOURAGE innovation. But I have difficulty figuring out where to draw the line between a novel arrangement of parts and a novel arrangements of ideas.

umacf24
Happy

Re: To paraphrase Nelson from The Simpsons...

This is not a paraphrase. It's a direct copy and since it is apparently made in the UK, in all probability it's a violation of Fox's copyright under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The only real question is whether it meets the s107 test for a criminal offence, as that provides for a sentence of three months in the Scrubs.

Extreme? Well Oracle are taking a similar line in this case...

It's a good thing that IANAL

Yahoo! leaks! private! key! in! Axis! Chrome! debut!

umacf24

Re: uh-oh.. bad career move

I can't imagine why they needed to put the private key in in the first place. The private key should stay with the signer. Is every Yahoo developer given a copy?

Iran threatens to chuck sueball at Google over missing gulf

umacf24
Happy

Finally

Something that I agree with Ahmedinajad about. They'll be anonymising the English Channel next!

Roman roads get the web maps treatment

umacf24

Not just the ancient world

Transport speeds were static until the steamship and the railway. The world of ORBIS is very similar to the world of Pickwick Papers. Even the C18th turnpikes only brought land speeds back up to Roman levels.

I do sometimes wonder what the world would be like if the Romans had invented the limited liability joint stock company.

Google's self-driving car snags first-ever license in Nevada

umacf24
Happy

Re: On the one hand...but on the other...

That is a truly excellent list and thay all of apply to me (though not necessarily while I'm actually driving, and the heels were a LONG time ago) and I have a licence to drive a car completely unsupervised by a computer or anything else. Really, if that doesn't terrify you, it should.

The way to look at this is to imagine how we will feel in fifty years time about the selfish fucks who endanger everyone by driving their cars in manual on the PUBLIC HIGHWAY FFS! And if you think that an automatic system can't really drive, you've obviously never completed a routine journey and found that you've got no memory at all of the last hour...

Personally I can't wait. If I'm travelling, I want to read or sleep, not jiggle knobs and levers.

LinkedIn buys SlideShare

umacf24
Happy

They should have bought Prezi.com

Now THAT'S an on-line presentation tool!

GCSE, A-level science exams ARE dumbed down - watchdog

umacf24
Happy

Syllabus is fine but exams are easier, and the books are better

I've been helicopter parenting around the OCR GCSE Maths.

The content of the course is excellent, though obviously different to what I remember from O level. I certainly don't miss logarithms, and the extra statistics/data is much more use. But the exams really don't go anywhere near the level of the course. If you want an 'A' you have to get pretty much everything correct, as there aren't any tougher, high-mark questions. And you have to get an 'A' as decent sixth-forms discount everything else!

We often hear that the teaching has improved. Well, I don't remember bad teaching but I do remember (1976) absolutely shocking textbooks. The "official" textbook for OCR was a revelation, and things like a matching revision guide will inevitably mean that any willing child will be much better prepared for the exam than we ever were.

So, good news on the whole, but I wish that the exam would separate out the candidates more. But don't get me started on number-free physics....

You can flog 'used' software, but read Ts&Cs first – ECJ

umacf24
Coat

Hang on...

He's a bot!

SpaceX Dragon gets green-light for launch to Space Station

umacf24

FoB LEO

I hope they send up replacement solar cells for Sprit and Opportunity. Still a long way to go though.

Facebook accused of 'wanton' use of Canadian woman's pics

umacf24

high-handed, outrageous, wanton, reckless, callous, disgraceful, wilful

I call that thesaurus abuse. Wanton thesaurus abuse, in fact.

100 EARTH-LIKE PLANETS orbit stars WITHIN 30 LIGHT-YEARS!

umacf24
Meh

Fermi Frightens Me.

Billions of more-or-less earthy worlds. Zero artificial-like signals. Fermi's paradox: Where ARE they? Either:

a) We're really special -- one of a very small number of worlds that grow a civilisation, or

b) Civilisations don't survive.

I don't believe a) and I really dislike b).

Oxford Uni chucks big brains at ivy-covered cybersecurity hub

umacf24

I think this makes the point better than the original article.

Record-breaking laser pulse boosts fusion power hopes

umacf24

Re: Getting the energy out

Nice. Like catching the neutrons in little nets.

umacf24
Boffin

Getting the energy out

This is fascnating but one point with fusion reactors that never seems to be addressed is how to get the energy into electricity generation. A laser chamber seems to be even worse at this than the magnetic confinement systems we've played with since the fifties.

The reaction is inside what amounts to a huge vacuum tube so it won't convect out. You could let the radiance make the enclosure hot enough to allow decent thermodynamic efficiency but at the same time you have to keep the laser objectives or superconducting coils cool and stable.

Some sort of MHD generation might be a runner, but the fusion reactions that get discussed yield high proportions -- like 80% -- of the energy in fast neutrons, and neutrons don't play the magnetic game.

The only really practical means I can see is to line the chamber with depleted uranium and let the neutrons breed plutonium and other transuranics to fuel fission reactors. But that seems a bit of a palaver compared with running a fast breeder fission reactor directly. I'm flummoxed.

El Reg user forum opens to public, HTML for all (mostly)

umacf24

And another reason...

Many of the grosser and more extreme techies that read the Reg are dinosaurs.

HTML, I know. But I never heard of BBCode or the others until I read the story...

Boffins boost fuel-cell future with 'nanowire forest'

umacf24
Thumb Down

Better than trees?

How much more efficient than a willow or miscanthus plantation does this have to be before it makes sense? Is there any hope that it will be? More efficient than PV with car-battery buffering?

Regardless of technical approach -- from biomass up -- the problem with solar energy is that it has to be physically huge (like 2 or 10% of UK's land area, truly impossible numbers) to make sense in the context of national energy demand. This lovely thing can't change the depressing physics of turning visible quanta into usable energy.

Nor is the limited automotive solar/hydrogen concept a runner. It's kept alive by corporate and personal dreamers who want to stick with combustion engines for cars while still sounding green. This research is brilliant -- just imagine a catalytic substrate built like this -- but solar hydrogen isn't.

New forum Wishlist

umacf24

Long comments

Could you have the preview display all text after about 150 words struck through with a note: "You do realise no-one is going to read this?"

Or you could do all long comments in green, to reflect the madness...

NASA snaps show Arctic melt

umacf24

Re: Ummm...

I was alive in the sixties (SE England). We used to have cool wet summers and cold (but not frozen) wet winters. Now we have cool dry summers and freezing dry winters. It's still all fields around here, but they're brown now.

Boffins uncloak G-rated teledildonic breakthrough

umacf24

Security

I am concerned about the risks of a man-in-the-middle attack.

Satellite phones lift skirt, flash cipher secrets at boffins

umacf24

Not since 1883

Kerckhoffs' second principle.

Microsoft exec says Safe Harbor framework is 'alive and well'

umacf24

Safe Harbor is a Joke

"With respect to personal data received from the EU, please state that you comply with these principles: ...."

"Thank you. You are now enrolled in the Safe Harbor scheme."

And that's pretty much it. No audit -- no oversight at all. Nothing for customers to inspect. And even though it's that easy there are operations claiming to be on the Safe Harbor list when they are not (not hard to check, though).

I can't see a way for Safe Harbor to be a wise basis for firms to export PID from the EU, regardless of what the EC says. I think a SOC2 type II with a clear and explicit listing of GAPP controls might actually do better. In an outsourcing context where the data has already been properly consented, and there are explicit contract provisions preventing disclosure, GAPP may be good enough.

NASA shuts off Voyager 1's central heating

umacf24
Boffin

No more deep space probes

Because the RTGs that power them are fuelled with Pu238, and they're not making it any more. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30621668/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/fuel-deep-space-exploration-running-low/

I blame our idiotic attitude to nuclear technology.

Man gets £12,500 after girlfriend probes his medical data

umacf24

I hope not

Authorised people looking at data they shouldn't is not really a security problem. Provided the access logs were in good shape I'd say the security team were pretty much in the clear. The app designers might have some questions to answer about granularity of access control.

Ideally there'd be an alert for accessing non-current patient records, but that sort of control can be frustrated by all sorts of organisational issues, poor identity management etc, and it's sadly not that common.

I don't see anyone getting sacked for this. I can imagine someone getting budget for more sophisticated log monitoring.

Common brain parasite 'can affect host's actions'

umacf24
Happy

This reminds me of the toxoplasma story from the Economist last year explaining that the French are mad because they eat cat shit (I paraphrase, you understand.) Some of my favourite science ever.

http://www.economist.com/node/16271339 (Last para but one)

Israeli gov nabs 6 for leaking population register

umacf24
Unhappy

"Let Go"?

What's the point of a .co.uk site if you're going to write in US euphemisms? Sounds like he was sacked.

Trust me, I'm a computer: Watson takes on health care challenge

umacf24
Happy

This is a liability issue.

If the insurers want this, it'll happen in a few years, at least in the States. If they don't, it'll never happen in a million. I guess the key will be the quality -- for a court -- of the "explanation" that the system can give for its choices. That has been the great failing of blackboard expert systems like Watson in the past.

There will still be plenty of room for medical incompetence though, and Watsonesque systems will increase the percentage of incompetence that has its arse well covered: "I followed the 80% recommendation."

Attention metal thieves: Buy BT, get 75 MILLION miles of copper

umacf24

Off topic....

Control Technology was CSE. Totally my favourite subject, but looked down on because I was supposed to be doing O levels.

How gizmo maker's hack outflanked copyright trolls

umacf24

Not necessarily.

Everyone owns a copy of the key -- or at least everyone with HDCP equipment. The key is in the displays as well.

So one way of getting it would be to break into the tamper-proof hardware where key origination is done.

Miind you, protecting a secret with licence agreements with multiple players, multiple jurisdictions and (of course) multiple employees, is totally for the birds.

British warming to NUKES after Fukushima meltdown

umacf24
Boffin

Chemistry

The chemistry is certainly daunting, though you didn't mention the bit which sets my teeth on edge which is fluorination to "bubble off" UF6!

Two-salt designs mean that you are not dealing with fission products in the breeder circuit. Thorium is cheap enough that simply abstracting the entire irradiated breeder salt might be simpler than attempting to do anything useful to the protoactinium.

(And apropos of nothing, fission-product Xenon can bubble straight out of a liquid core, which saves neutrons but results in a less satisfactory waste product -- swings and roundabouts. I don't know much about iodine fluorides but I imagine that they do something simlar too. Liquid core win!)

My personal view is that liquid core reactors are well worth a look, as I suspect that passive cooling is going to be an essential part of the safety story for public acceptance, and if you want a large high power core to cool passively, changing its shape is a believable approach. Thorium cycle breeding is much more of a challenge: one neutron to continue the reaction, one to breed and 0.5 or so to cover all losses seems tight to me. But the potential payoff is so colossal that I would like to see it get its best shot, and that's online reprocessing...

umacf24
Boffin

Solid vs Liquid

Thorium/U233 cycle is a breeder cycle, and like all breeders there's a requirement for timely chemical processing of the reactor core.

Thorium is more dependent on this than the U238/Pu breeder cycle because thorium involves an intermediate which can be poisoned by neutrons if it remains within the core. Conventional reprocessing of solid fuel can work for U238/Pu, but the Indian design of solid thorium oxide in among the fuel is, apparently, too hard.

So the approach that's being talked about now is an old reactor design where the nuclear materials are disolved as fluoride salts in molten lighter fluorides. The core is just a cauldron of the molten salts with a moderator, and the same material fills the primary coolant loop.

This approach has a number of intrinsic safety features as the core can swell out of the moderator (and thus throttle down) when it gets too hot and can flow into subritical, cooling efficient shapes to shutdown with passive cooling. And because it's not using water it's not pressurised, so it won't explode in the TMI/Fukushima style.

But breeder designs benefit from liquid core for a different reason. Liquid chemistry is easier than the engineering needed to open up fuel rods and dissolve them in nitric acid. The re-processing can be done conveniently at the plant, little and often, without shipping rods and radioactive stuff all over the country. I'm guessing that a liquid core is required to make thorium/U233 practical.

So this one approach offers:

- The huge waste reduction and fuel efficiency of breeders

- Passive walkaway safety of liquid core

- And, as a bonus, it'll run at temperatures that can run efficient air-cooled gas turbines, so they can be built on small sites inland.

You can find any amount of stuff. Google "LFTR" or "MSR Thorium" to find stuff from enthusiasts like Kirk Sorenson (who was in London last week BTW).

Cloud startup's business model defies laws of physics

umacf24
Black Helicopters

Put your complete hard drive on line

Crunchfund may be an investor, but this feels like the NSA will be the infrastructure provider! *Adjusts aluminium foil skullcap*

Teen tags disintegrating comet

umacf24

or any other meticulous or investigation role ...

I'd hire her for audit on that basis alone!

umacf24

I suppose we're sure ....

these mass ejections ... it's not ... well ... braking ...

A Farewell to Oates: Adios, El Reg

umacf24
Unhappy

The Register tone of voice

Hope it stays the same!

Page: