* Posts by John Smith

578 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Feb 2009

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UK.gov international net clean-up plan gathers dust

John Smith Gold badge
Happy

Burnham

If only.

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

Remember

" Burnham insisted he was not aiming to impose a new international censorship scheme online."

You can't be sure it's Government policy until its been officially denied.

No sacred cows in NASA spaceflight review, chairman says

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Boffin

@The elephant in the room

"But its an expensive game to play"

And while the price to LEO is at *least* $7500 / it always will be.

John Smith Gold badge
Happy

@Justin Smith

I wonder if the review will include a re-evaluation of the cancelled VentureStar project? I can only hope so.

I presume you mean the X33 project. What particular part of the project did you think needed re-evaluating?

Raygun 747 to fight 'one-off' tag with twin '09 missile fryings

John Smith Gold badge
Boffin

Lordy, it's a bit of a beast.

Just looked over the patent. Although its described as an Oxygen Iodine laser that's a bit misleading.

From my (very rough) reading your going to need a supply of aqueous Sodium, Potassium and Lithium Hydroxides, liquid Oxygen and Iodine (powdered or in solution?) and a fairly large supply of Hydrogen Peroxide. Oh, and a Chlorine supply. So 7 consumables in all. None of them is exactly harmless. Most (5) seem to deal with producing "Delta Singlet Oxygen" which is what combines with the Iodine to lase. However the Hydrogen Peroxide also mixes with JP8 (I thought jet engine fuel was JP4?) to drives some turbo-pumps, so probably needs a few drums at least. The collection of carbon-carbon nozzles sounds a bit extravagant given that I always through Peroxide burns at a fairly low temperature (relative to say O2/H2).

I hope all of this gear is *very* carefully leak checked before flight. A bit much for the back pages of Scientific Merkin. No one's going to be cooking one of these up in their basement any time soon. It's not clear to me if O2 and I2 are the bulk chemicals and most of the rest are in litre quantities, but doing turbo pump drive with Peroxide suggest substantial quantities. In flight refuelling from a 3 way hose (including LOX) would be "challenging."

John Smith Gold badge
Boffin

NaOH(aq) + KOH(ag) + LiOH(ag) -> H2O2 ??

I think not. My memory on H2O2 mfg is hazy but the commercial method seems to involve an electroytic cell and a quinone cycle. In any case Hydrogen Peroxide is storable on time scales of months (at the *very* least) in properly cleaned compatible containers up to at least 90% purity.

That US patent # belongs to a bubble memory based computer device.

AFAIK the F16 APU is still fuelled by hydrazine and it is very nasty but its for emergancy use only following total engine failure.

John Smith Gold badge
Go

Slightly more realistic idea?

US forces abroad do come under missile attack and if this thing is is going to be any near term use it needs to capitalise on what it's good at. Flying to places and allowing you to deploy a big long range gun anywhere in the world within < 1 days flying time.

I think you'll find the "Cart" holding the machinery is actually a couple of pallets in size. It's the reactant tanks that fill the rest of the C17.

Now who wants to have a go at putting this baby down at Kabul International?

Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 delivers decent alternative to Adobe

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Happy

@Levente Szileszky

Nice to hear the voice of reason. I was afraid this thread was becoming a tad polemical.

John Smith Gold badge
Stop

We'll promise to support *any* platform you like

As long as your big enough and migrate your team to us now*

This decision may be subject to review at a later date.

Boffins develop bendy, squishy, foldable display

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Happy

@david S.

"he was shown a proof-of-concept style demonstration of the technology,"

Good grief that sounds like something Chester Carlson would have been demonstrating back in the later 1930s.

To be fair to your dad (who sounds like he declined this business opportunity) it takes a *lot* of imagination to go from that to a photocopier. And a great deal of trust in the team that's going to do the work. My reading on innovations suggests all serious innovations *never* run to anybodies original idea of a development or marketing schedule. While all of them *superficially* resemble existing things (printing is just a sort of mechanical writing) in reality they are the *start* of the art. Time will tell if this one is the tipping point into large scale acceptance.

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

OLEDs, carbon nanotubes, fluorescent rubber.

This can only mean one thing.

HOUSE! on buzzword bingo.

Where do I claim my prize?

Seriously quite interesting but what about power requirements? And historically OLEDs have been failure prone doe to exposure to atmospheric contamination from things like Oxygen and water vapour. Any word on life expectancy?

VeriChip shaves 3mm off human RFID chips

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Thumb Up

@Dr Patrick J R Harkin

"Knowing which patient you've got on the table could be handy"

Don't all hospitals put a wrist band of some kind on their in-patients? It's not impossible to get off but it does take some effort.

"Also possibly useful for proving care - healthcare worker carries reader, reader can show doctor was with (or at least near) patient at X o'clock - or not, in accusations of substandard care. Though an RFID tag in the wrist-band would be as good for that."

Now this I like.

Especially if the reader (it could be as small as a pen torch) had a thumbprint reader in the end to match doctor to patient. Best of all would be *if* it cannot be tampered with, and maintains a chain of evidence. Something tells me that hospital managers in the British NHS might be a bit resistant to a device that can prove a junior doctor has been up for 80 hours when he made a faulty diagnosis.

I wonder if they're overtime rate is still less than their normal time rate (and does *any* other professional group operate that system)?

John Smith Gold badge
Happy

@Sean

Provided of course the doc who prescribed your meds understands your language well enough to proscribe properly. And has not been awake for 4 days.

While we're at it you'd also better make sure the nurse can read his notes and not shove 10x the dosage he asked for into you. Those pesky decimal points can be a real killer. And then they might have the idea that you (or your loved one) is somehow surplus to requirements and decide to knock on Heaven's door for your behalf.

But yes other than these little annoyances I quite agree with you.

ID scheme will cost £400m annually

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Joke

A grammatical error?

"ID scheme will cost £400m annually." Should that not read "ID scheme will cost £400m annually at least."

It's a government IT project that has not seriously started running yet.

John Smith Gold badge
Thumb Down

Real costs, virtual benefits?

I think the the total contracts handed out to CSC, IBM and their chums topped about £600m already. I presume these would count as set-up costs. So the statement about £400m on set-up costs is already flawed.

And I will note that £400m a year is 4x the increased revenue from the new 50% top rate for earners over (what is it?) £64k a year. And these are the know costs. Without any budget rises.

Now as for that £10bn net improvement. How solid are those figures? How many assumptions do they contain on what we (the customers of the government) do and how will we do it? Where they perhaps provided by the suppliers to show why having it in the first place would be such a great notion?

I note if these numbers were disclosed in the Gateway Reviews they might have had a lot easier time persuading people this was a good idea. But maybe they did not exist then. maybe they are still rather notional. IIRC the last time they tried to show cost savings the bulk of it was by listing savings from credit card fraud, which the Government has taken considerable steps to wash its hands of.

Gov 'smart meter' plans: Sky box in charge of your house

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Happy

AC@19:57

"..an Environmental Enforcement Order will be taken out against you. "

Ah, to think that a little while ago I suggested "eco-crime" as a fertile field for Mr Straw's minions to draft laws in.

From telling you what light bulbs you can use to cutting off whole households in just a few short months.

The pace of change in this new millennium is breathtaking!

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Thumb Down

Please respond to their request

But don't use email to do so.

Governing types are usually the product of a non-technical education. Lots of lawyers and journos (no disrespect to the scribes of The Reg. Long may your organ be mighty).

They tend to view email the way Reg readers view Twitter posts.

Note these bozos accepted ID cards and the IMP partly because they were presented well enough (and convincingly enough) that they did not look deeper to see the BS underneath. It all looked *so* plausible and who would disbelieve those nice men from IBM, EDS, CSC, Thales etc?

I will be responding. It will be on paper. Other readers might like to consider doing so as well.

So far this is all about what the supply companies want.

US airforce looking at winged-rocket booster 'X-plane'

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Unhappy

Kneecapped from the start

One of the reasons Lockheed's Advanced Projects Division (the actual name of the Skunk Works at the time) worked was because they tended to have free reign about *how* to get the job done in very broad limits. Functional spec, not implementation spec.

It would have been much more interesting if the USAF had said no solids, no hypergolics but *no* limits on the launch mode.

That tail end statement about "will consider other modes as well" is very weak. I suspect one of the usual suspects (including Orbital Sciences) has already pitched a design that fits that spec. like a glove. When the customer issues artwork *before* the proposals have been received you know someone's a shoe in for this. How big an innovation is this? TSTO with returnable 1st stage. That's Kistler K1. Lox/HC engines, K1 again. Speaking of which all those ultra high performance LOX/HC engines should still be in store with Aerojet. Hmm.

This presumes that it is an actual project, and not another way to give some Big Aerospace contractor another life support payment to keep "Assured access". I also hope SpaceX don't get suckered into bidding for this. Rocket's with wings on them always *look* simple. They are anything but.

Unimpressive, disappointing but not exactly unexpected.

John Smith Gold badge
Happy

@Tim

The vehicle in Prelude to Space is IIRC 2 stages to the Moon. It's sled launched from an electro-magnetic catapult design (this was under development at Westinghouse in the US around this time so was SOA for 1947). It used ammonia which is a shade less efficient than H2 but a lot easier to store. Real rocket engineers were predicting LH2 for singles-stage-to-orbit. At least they were at RAND. The launch site is in the Australian desert and the time-frame is c1979.

For what actual rocket engineers considered possible in the 1960s you might like to looke at Maxwell W Hunters "Thrust Into Space," Holt Rhinehart 1966.

Fetish club forces ID scanner climbdown

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

Coming soon to the West End

<breathless Meth fuelled prose>

ClubPhorm

You asked for it (well you didn't but so what) and we're giving it too you.

When you arrive we scan all you ID before entry for your personal safety.

As you dance the night away our resident DJ MC Kent will be leavening the night with his very special take on life, data protection and the haters, while shipping a mash up of your most personal data to Russia, Over there our special ClubPhorm crew will work through the night to ensure that when you leave the following morning you'll be thoroughly trashed.

1 DJ, 2 decks, 5 floors, 12 door staff, 129 forms of ID scanned.

</breathless Meth fuelled prose>

John Smith Gold badge
Happy

AC@:08:43

"In fact we could be taking real risks by putting vast amounts of personal information in the hands of people at best incompetent and at worst malicious."

You might like to consider the context in which he was being interviewed.

A club is using special equipment to collect people personal ID.

They are holding this information for 3 years. They have not appointed a Data Controller under the DPA. They claim they did not realise they had to under the DPA, or seem aware of the ideas of such collection being reasonable and not excessive. But they are collecting the data.

On the basis of their actions the club management is incompetent in this matter. And given the number of people whose credit card details have been skimmed by bar and waiting staff that would cover the malicious remark. Why should anyone rely solely on the good nature of the staff not to rat their presence out to anyone from a private detective agency to a tabloid newspaper. Its botchery at best, burglary at worst.

And I am b*%%$£d if I know why any non membership club needs to know my name in the first place. If it is a membership place then the only thing they need to confirm is I am the person with that membership card. AFAIK all commercial premises in the UK have ROAR. No ID check needed. They don't like your face, you don't get in. They don't like your behaviour, you leave one way or another.

But maybe you're not worried about this creeping, case by case cult of surveillance. The fact you won't even put a name to your opinions says otherwise.

Happy face because TG promoters got a result with calm reason. Let's see if SE1 roll out 31 days only to all their venues and events. They should.

New service seeks to monetise microwaffling

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Joke

Was this not what the founder of SCUM* did

Albeit on a more one to one basis.

I think she made it pay too. With a bit of hooking on the side.

*Society for Cutting Up Men.

Microsoft to EU: Cut me down, and Google will rule the world!

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Happy

@Albert Stienstra

"The discussion is just as crazy as the forced dismemberment of Bell Telephone."

Actually it is somewhat less crazy. My impression of the Bell System was that it was a US government regulated monopoly which did innovate. IIRC the US MS / DoJ anti-trust suites were shut down by one of other assorted Republican presidents in the last 20 years.

"There are not many American companies in IT that are worth mentioning, "

Which suggests you know little outside of PC land. You should know IBM and HP (and that they bought up DEC and EDS) and of course Oracle. But do you know Computer Associates, Computer Sciences Corp or SAIC? Unisys? I'd suggest their combined revenues run over a trillion dollars, weather you have heard of them or not.

If you admire MS as the Bell telephone of IT you are comparing apples with oranges. MS has no where near the track record for innovation that Bell Labs had. Its major skill has been to use a huge budget to club rivals (in whatever sector) to destruction. Only an effective monopolist hell bent on protecting a monopoly in all but name can afford to do this. And it still fails sometimes.

Sure its got a strong Marketing and Legal team. Does that make it a strong innovative company that will compete with the Chinese. Time will tell.

John Smith Gold badge
Happy

I suggest a technical challenge

One of MS objections (which for some reason I hear being delivered in a high pitched whinny voice) I will paraphrase as "We can't put all those browsers on there because it'd would take up too much space. And our users *have* to have a browser to access the internet"

Nevertheless my PC's keep coming with a dozen icons to ISP services which I can just click on and hook up with. Most of which I will dump at the first opportunity. But won't all of these use the same TCP/IP stack that's built into Windows anyway?

So how about a folder full of browser icons as well? Once you chosen your ISP (click on icon) you choose your browser to download (click on icon). Most of which I will also dump at the first opportunity. Naturally one of them will be for IE. Of course deciding which others are on the list will be a PITA. Some minimal level of market penetration and must support automated downloading of a complete basic package might weed out the unfit. If it's good it'll will grow onto the list.

I haven't played Windows developer for a long time and sorting downloads were never part of my brief. So, Reg readers can you do a (very minimal) download client using just features and support built into Windows by default? No compiled binaries or umpteen MB of DLLs, but assuming an ISP has been selected. If not what bits of Windows make it impossible?

John Smith Gold badge
Happy

@Daniel

"...rather than seeing the ownership of the browser as some sort of backdoor to owning the Web. "

What a charming and positive view of human nature you do have. It's quite beautiful.

Sadly past experience of MS is that is *exactly* what they view the browser market as being for. It it the reason a chunk of web sites don't render properly on other browsers, because their owners have skewed them to *need* IE.

One of the lessons of studying monopolists is that unless force is exerted on them from outside they lack *any* will to innovate. They prefer to spend the money on marketing incentives to lock people out. Why compete with someone who might challenge you when you can kill it in its cradle. It's the King Herod school of Management.

US govt hydrogen highway runs out of road

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@David Halko

"Next generation modular nuclear power plants, which use pellets and don't use rods, are the wave of the future."

I also like the pebble bed design, at least one of which also dates from the about 1974 (the German design) and there is I believe a newer one from South Africa. For some reason I always think of a coal fired central heating boiler when I see them. However to be fair I think all "Next Gen" reactor designs are *much* more aware of loss of coolant accidents and are placing more reliance on passive safety, IE back up gravity feeding. Note that for some countries utilities the usually quoted sizes are a bit on the small side. They want them in GW sizes. I'll admit to a certain fondness for the molten salt design pioneered (IIRC) at Los Alamos. Again simple geometry but also burns multiple fuels (including Thorium) and nuclear wast.

I think India is having a go at this.

"The same way Hydrogen is distributed today."

I fear I have been misunderstood. A distribution network implies something made somewhere then sent somewhere else to be used. It is my understanding there are *no* H2 distribution networks anywhere in the world. There are networks for transmitting the *raw* materials for H2, but not H2 itself.

Your 2 web page references ended with one fail to load, the 2nd worked but one of its links lead to a site flagged by my AV.

I had in mind what would be needed to take over the current natural gas supply network for hydrogen and AFAIK the answer is quite a lot, as its physical properties are substantially more awkward than Methane or Propane

While in *theory* it can be made at home the complexity of the process and its efficiency is, I would suggest *very* poor. Either your going the steam/natural gas process (boiling water is one of the best ways to absorb *very* large quantities of heat) or you electrolyse. You need 2 moles of electrons (2 Coulombs) to get 1 mole of H2. If your running 220v and a 100A mains fuse with a cell that needs 2v you could get 11000 amps in the secondary. That would be a *very*substantial transformer however. 1 mole of H2 in less than 2 seconds! That's 2g of hydrogen. So in less than 70 mins. you have a full Clarity charge of 4kg. But your real problem is compressing the 44.8 m^3 of 1at H2 by the factor of 340 needed to put it in the tank.

If the concern is CO2 then methods which use carbon cyclically, IE renewable fuels, would seem the way to go. I believe anaerobic digestion of cow dung,Kudzu (fast growing highly prolific weed) or human faeces will generate plenty of Methane, which is substantially more tractable to store and transport.

With regard to oil and its use as a chemical feed stock you may like to look at microwave assisted pyrolysis. By mixing shredded paper waste with charcoal its possible to do a controlled burn of things like aluminium lined cartons to produce a chemical feedstock cocktail, while recovering the aluminium.

John Smith Gold badge
Boffin

AC@16:14, Geoff Cambell

AC@16:14

".. do a bit of reading about metal hydride storage systems? I remember when looking into 240v solar / fuel cell kits a few years ago that they were available even then."

I am aware of this tech. but I don't think it's been mentioned as no actual mfg. has sold any cars using it. I suspect there is a perception its heavy too as the alloy foam used is several time the mass of H2 stored. However with the Clarity needing c4kg of H2 that is not that heavy and you should gain on overall tank weight. I think there are also issues with speed of absorption / desorption. I don't think you don't get the 5-10 min. fill-up you can have with high pressure H2 or LH2.

@Geoff Cambell

" wouldn't particularly worry about hydrogen, either. Rather safer than petrol, I would think."

See my comments to Dave Halko. But I'll add the Clarity storage tanks are not running at 10bar. They are running at c333 bar. You could drive a significant pneumatic motor just on the pressure energy stored in the gas, without ignition. If you go the liquid route LPG is well understood tech. LH2 requires storage temperatures 11x lower, with 11x better insulation.

I've driven LPG cars and am not concerned either. You might like to re-think your view on H2

John Smith Gold badge
Boffin

@David Halko

I have a copy of New Scientist which discusses the use of high temperature reactors (>800c) to produce Hydrogen for energy storage and chemical feedstock.

It's dated January 3rd, 1974.

They've been talking about H2 generation from nuclear plants (its a planned outcome, not a by product) for a *long* time. But assuming you can make it how will you distribute it?

Hydrogen's boiling point is 5.5x less than Methane and 11x lower than Propane. Its density is 1/5.9x of Methane and 1/8.2x that of Propane (when its liquid). They can use plastic foam as insulation. Some stainless steel grades are resistant. Mild steel (which is what I think most of the US gas distro backbone is made from) is not. Liquid Hydrogen is typically moved in 2 wall vacuum jacketed stainless steel line. IIRC tanker lorries are off the shelf down to liquid Nitrogen temperatures. Hydrogen is a special order. Liquid Methane storage tanks originally used balsa wood insulation in the late 1930s. Hydrogen requires vacuum jacketing, with multi-layer-insulation to prevent radiation heating of the contents. Hydrogen temperature leaks condense oxygen into pools around its pipes. Not a good idea. The H2 molecules small size makes it very able to diffuse through poor quality welds, and indeed solid metal. Screw threaded joints don't really cut it. If the system joints are not welded then high-precision connectors are needed. But maybe you can lay special sections (to filling stations) with impermeable layers inside the pipe. Note the ability to diffuse rises with temperature. But provided this works out that just leaves you with that 5000 PSI compressor and storage tankage you'll be needing.

It's not just an incremental change. Its quite major.

Chip cooler launches liquid nitro at CPUs

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Happy

@John Savard

"...because of the latent heat from the phase change"

The MEMS proposal relies exactly on that.

"..the best way to maintain a chip at a specific, desired temperature is to use copious amounts of a working fluid just slightly below that temperature. "

I'd agree that there is probably a temperature where chips work best. The point at which the free electron concentration (the conductivity) is high enough for the chip to operate properly but low enough to avoid any thermal damage. However IIRC modern high pin count chips are mounted face down in the package. All the heat generating action is happening in the top 0.01mm of a chip. That heat then has to diffuse up through the wafer thicknes (0.3-0.6mm total. 0.6mm is a 12" SOA wafer) then the package lid. So if that fluid temp is *too* close to the ideal circuit temp the heat will not be picked up by it as there will be no temperature difference. Untill the chip overheats and stabilises at a temp that will move the heat into the fluid.

I am wary of open loop cooling systems. OTOH a heat pipe allows you to take a fluid and dial in whatever boiling temp you want, within limits. Water at 0.1 atm for example would boil at c45C. Its tricky to find a substitute that's both non-toxic (no methanol), non-flammable (so not butane, propane etc) and not a CFC. The thermophysical properties site for the US NIST http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/fluid/ can be quite interesting for searching. You'll be looking at saturation properties of fluid

John Smith Gold badge
Boffin

Some idea of how much heat that is.

From the Toms Hardware Guide Intel P4 is 84W on 1.12 cm^2. That's 75W per Sq. .

Apollo re-entry heat shield design. 77 W Sq. cm.

However.

MEMS Handbook 2nd Ed (M. Gad-el_Hak) pg 10-29. Potential for cooling IC's by MEMS array of water spraying through boiling. 300 000W Sq. cm. This is not a typo.

You can guess what is in my (over sized) pockets.

John Smith Gold badge
Thumb Down

A note on the explosive nitrogen

Liquid Nitrogen is inert. It does not burn or support combustion. If your in a room which is 100% nitrogen you suffocate. It's also the stuff used to store sperm. You may have seen the long handled tongs they tend to use for handling this.

But it is *very* cold so special purpose clothing, face masks and gloves are strongly advised. The potentially big danger is expansion. All cryogens expands hugely when they boil, and they can boil fast. Nitrogen vapour density at normal atmospheric pressure is about 1/196 that of its liquid, and that's at -196. That ratio goes *up* with rising temperature. 1 drop of liquid N2 in a confined space at anywhere above -196c will boil. When it hits a container wall it will start to exert pressure. If the container can't hold it the walls will fail, explosively. Its not how much is trapped. Its how strong the walls and how hot does it get. This cooler presumably works by dropping LN2 onto the surface and venting the boiled gas to lower the average temperature. It should be a very small flow as Silicon based semiconductors work poorly at very low temperatures. That valve had better be *very* reliable. Flooding that surface will a full open valve should (without *very* extensive emergency venting) make quite an effective fragmentation grenade. I can live without this ever being demonstrated. Making sure even small amounts of cryogen does not get trapped in joints, valves etc is a key part of designing cryogenic plumbing.

I think its an expensive and potentially dangerous gimmick. It'd be interesting to find out how often you need to top up that flask as well. So expensive, may be dangerous and tedious to use as well. Still uses should be able to put LN2 handling experience on their CV's.

OpenOffice 3.1 ready to lick Microsoft's suite?

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

1000 000 column models

That would the risk assessment model for one of those mortgage backed collaterised debt obligation that banks were so keen on I imagine.

John Smith Gold badge
Gates Horns

Remember MS is an ecology also

If they did not change the interface (and liberally sprinkle in a few new bugs to break some bits that had worked for years) how would they keep the army of MS Training Course Providers in business?

Major law firm drops filesharing threats

John Smith Gold badge
Stop

In British law

People who don't turn up are guilty. You did not turn up to fight *because* you know you have no chance of winning. This is not the same as just sending your lawyer instead. As Bill Cumming has put it show your willing to fight and they will back off. £16k buys a hell of a lot of albums.

Is this a case of work migrating down the legal food chain? What's the betting when someone does stand up to them and go to court they blow away like blossom on the wind?

Wall Street Journal wants your micro-payments

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Happy

Perhaps a payment service across multiple websites

Wasn't that what Paypal was meant to be?

In truth my sense of fair play says that there should be some direct reward for time and effort spent. But the question is how much of what you are getting is thoughtful analysis by a clued specialst, who knows both the players and the game, and how much is unquestioning regurgitated press release.

I would definitely want a display of available credit and a cap to stop any further access so users could manage their usage.

Now will users pay for the Sun's "premium content"?

Good luck with that.

Tram driver crashes while texting

John Smith Gold badge
Coat

"No evidence of cell phone use."

Provided he wipes his outgoing calls and text list before he hands it over of course.

This stuff is mildly amusing. Until someone ends up in a body bag. Underground collisions in tunnel are no joke.

Yes it can be a dull job, and yet it requires concentration to react promptly to unexpected.

Maybe it would have been better if he did have that last pipe of crack before coming on shift instead...

Mine will be the one with a Charlie Card in the pocket.

Pilots plot air raid on Jacqui over ID cards

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

The new lads from lagos

Are the replacement airline pilots

All your takeoff slots belong to us.

SCO threatened with Chapter 7 destruction

John Smith Gold badge
Flame

Burn baby burn

That is all.

XSS flaws poke ridicule at entertainment industry

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Thumb Up

RIAA should have been expecting this.

But obviously were not. They should be grateful. This was a little prank which demonstrated that in fact all your links do not belong to you any more. It could have been much worse. * They informed media outlets fairly quickly so no slow burning embarrassment as regular viewers get re-directed. No re-direction to phishing site.

BTW do our Merkin friends pronounce RIAA like rear or diarrhoea?

Thumbs up for the level of restraint.

*not that I advocate terrorism.

ModBook Mac tablet turns up in Blighty

John Smith Gold badge
Thumb Up

2 questions

Mass? Battery life?

Why do companies persist in believing people will cough up £2k for this form factor?

Provisional thumbs up as it is not Windows. But other than that.....

Ofcom works out why Wi-Fi doesn't work

John Smith Gold badge
Alert

8Mhz bandwidth for a baby monitor?

I'm presuming this is a sound only gadet and not video?

You are having the laugh, non?

US Forces 'black' budget = 2nd biggest military on Earth

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry"

We've heard of them.

We're not bothered.

They're watching America Idol.

'Lunatic' Smith doubles ID card costs for Mancunians

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Thumb Up

@ElFatbob

Met one of these developers on a train once. Said that in effect terrorism would be a thing of the past, once all till receipts could be cross referenced against people's NIR entry.

He had to be winding me up as only a moron who'd seen too much Spooks would believe it possible.

Wouldn't he?

“Cayenne Turbo S, eh? Your choice of vehicle says everything about you.”

Quite. Hence the thumbs up.

Of course if all the developers are signed up for this it will make them much easier to identify in future. I wonder if the senior civil servants who are pushing for it are as well.

Hmmm. All those responsible on one single database. How convenient.

Home Office to keep innocent DNA samples

John Smith Gold badge
Coat

The Crown Prosecution Service

Is so called because it *prosecutes*. It has *no* interest in finding evidence that will acquit you. Finding evidence is the job of the Police. Finding evidence to clear your is the job of the lawyer for the defence.

However it astonishes me that either the Police or CPS don't perform even *basic* sanity checks on the people and evidence they are relying to get a conviction. It seems the assume the witnesses (that agree with them) are *always* telling the truth and the ones who don't are lying (Barry George comes to mind as a sample of eyewitness testimony).

And I'm sure Reg readers know what happens when you assume things.

Still if your normal looking, reasonably articulate and have a half way competent lawyer you should be acquitted. No harm done, right? Yes I am being sarcastic.

Of course if you're quite large and sinister looking with learning difficulties you'll need a damm good lawyer to get you off first time round.

Mine is the one with the freshly vacuumed out pockets, which hasn't been hung up in a ballistics testing lab for 18 months and a copy of Joe Orton's Loot in it. Richard Attenborough shows how an old school policeman gets a result.

You'll be clutching yourself with mirth.

John Smith Gold badge

@Paul

Err

If he copies out "Innocent unless proven guilty" that is the Police view of the quote. Anyone they arrest is clearly Guilty, *because* they arrested them. Those dumb Juror hoes are there to agree with us. Because (naturally) we *never* make mistakes.

The expression for the presumption of innocence is "Innocent until proven guilty."

iPhone compass evidence surfaces

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

Real innovation.

The I-am-lost-give-me-directions-back-to-my-hotel button.

Call for heads to roll over failed spook IT system

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

Any one remember "Top Cat?"

Because no one messes with big Gus.

US air traffic faces 'serious harm' from cyber attackers

John Smith Gold badge
Coat

So US Air Traffic Controllers can now work from home?

Because I cannot think of any other plausible reason for these systems to be directly connected to the general internet.

What any ATC organisation does is pretty specific and pretty specialised. Like SCADA systems in utility companies. The bulk of people who have a *legitimate* interest in their detailed operations are similar bodies around the world.

To be fair the quotes "IDS sensors are installed in only 11 ATC facilities" and "What's more, none of the IDS sensors monitor mission critical ATC operation systems" may be misleading. If the truly "Mission critical" systems are on an entirely separate network there would be *no* need for an IDS. Likewise if those 11 sites are the main data centre, and the *only* points of net access they *should* be the only places you need IDS installation. Not saying that is how it is. Merely that it *could* be that way. The tone of the report suggests it is not.

But "ensuring all web apps are configured in compliance with governmental security standards"

This should be a level 1 requirement in the boilerplate for *any* new US Gov. system. And I'm prepared to bet that all of these systems have a *lot* of development doc. attached to each of them. Yes there is probably a big book of stuff to be waded through to ensure this. That's part of the difference between being a professional software developer and a hacker (in the pejorative sense).

The real cost benefit of using internet derived (and open source) standards is the freedom to change suppliers *provided* you follow those standards. Don't like your server farm suppliers deal. Dump them and port it. Tired of browser X's botched rendering engine. Roll out Y. Database not cutting the mustard in response time. Start a new procurement and comment out those xxxx specific macros.You don't *need* to use the *actual* open internet itself to get these benefits.

And not a word on virtual private networks, which would seem an elementary security precaution.

Understanding these questions, and their implications, is the difference between being a Network Architect, a network plumber and a bean counter.

We can hope European ATC organisations are a bit tighter. But who knows?

Mines the one with Die Hard 2 in the pocket. Obviously on the basis of this report they were clueless amateurs.

Microsoft rebrands WGA nagware for Windows 7

John Smith Gold badge
Thumb Down

So the MS test plan is

Keep on releasing "Release Candidates" until the complaints drop to a tolerable level.

change name to Windows 7 Release version.

Mine will be the one with a copy of Linger, Mills, Witt in it.

Conservative US shock-jock to sue Wacky Jacqui

John Smith Gold badge
Joke

21 only

That's at least 100x smaller than the US no fly list.

I'm sure there must be lots more people Jacqui doesn't like.

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