Posts by John Smith 19

Cockup versus conspiriacy.

Well..

4 cables in a *very* short space of time does look pretty suspicious. While 650 feet is one serious anchor cable.

Now there are people who do sea bed trawling for things like shell fish. They would go along the sea bed and an unscrupulous captain *could* read "restricted" area as "unfished" area, hence loaded with booty and worth a go.

Which begs the question of how common sea bed trawling is in Africa?

I don't think there's a shortage of unscrupulous captains who would try.

rising processor power -> "uncrackable" sytems become crackable

And "Security by obscurity does not work very well either." Which GSM party relied on as well.

One the people who specify standards that involve *security* elements will realize that a standard that does not expect to *evolve* over time will become obsolete.

DES was the classic case of this.

So 3G is *supposedly* (IE when security features *properly* implemented, switched on and configured) is more secure, but for how *long*?

Remember DES? secure in its day but probably used *long* after people from the NSA down could crack it. Only deprecated when the EFF *built* hardware to prove a crack in < 3 1/2 days was *well* within the budget of crime cartels or successful terrorist groups (or < 3 1/2 minutes if you're Elon Musk and wanted to get a *whole* lot richer fast).

So does this mean they are actually starting to work through the backlog

of so-called asylum seekers.

Probably not.

Mellon memory. Time for a comeback?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellon_optical_memory

With the *greatly* improved fabrication methods and materials tech of today this idea *might* be substantially more viable today.

Note that at *no* point does it have a need for a single crystal material. Everything *could* be done using the larg area techniques developed for flat screen TV's.

Just a thought.

This just leaves one small question.

Now that snow has fallen where does it *go*?

It's an excellent source of fresh water but in reality it'll likely go down storm drains and (eventually) dump to the sea.

So will there *still* be an overall sea level rise?

Note that *electric" car is not *necessarily* a battery car

True the options are *limited* but just consider.

Fuel cells. Yes you need a reactant deliver infrastructure but so what? One of those already exists. My *ideal* option would be to use *sugars*, eliminating the conversion to Ethanol or Hydrogen and allow sourcing from any sort of plant.

Kinetic energy storage. High speed flywheels can be pretty light weight and store substantial energy. Vacuum housing and *very * strong magnets have been known since the early 80s.

The issue is that the best form factors for *conventional* batteries are not those of flywheel systems.

Just a thought.

On sea level rise a brief note.

One of the papers linked to listed a period when *all* the worlds major ice sheets had melted.

The *total* sea level rise (listed in the paper) was IIRC 65m above *current* levels.

Now I cannot rule out that the global supply of free water *might* have increased since then but (to a first approximation) That suggests anywhere about say 70m (from the *datum* altitude for sea level at *your* location, which varies) should pretty much cover *total* sea level rise.

This would pretty much stuff *any* existing port city (and any underground system they might have)

But I'm prepared to believe that leaves a pretty large chunk of land which is *not* under water.

*Now* I remember why this all looked so familar.

It's Carver Mead's 1989 book "analog VLSI & Neural Systems" where he and his team described ways to deliver low power (but brain cell density level) computer systems with the dynamic range of biological systems (which is *formidable*).

Of course I'm sure that Intel's way of doing this stuff is *completely* different to how the Mead team did that.

You know what's in this jacket pocket.

Pesky things, clouds.

and now it seems their *average* height of formation has dropped 1% in 10 yrs, which (if carried to the logical extreme) means *ground* level by the next millennium.

So, yes given the age of the planet that *is* pretty significant.

So it would seem this is another of those *little* details about clouds that isn't modeled very well.

And by implication has not *been* modeled very well by *any* model up to the present.

Hopefully this will begin to change.

As for *why* it exists I cannot say, it's as one (or more) of the mechanisms that form clouds were *somehow* appearing at a lower level in the atmosphere, either something coming upward from the ground getting higher or something coming down from outside getting lower.

Whatever could that be?

Once again congratulations to the team (hence the thumbs up). To me it's *amazing* that something as simple as essentially a stereoscopic pair of pictures can yield such precision.

Ian Fleming introduced me to a charming term.

C**k tax.

It's the price you pay for exercising the old feller.

Strangely no matter *how* smart people are they never seem quite smart enough to learn this.

I thought 1.1mbs as "slowest" was *way* too high

Looks like I was right.

Because if it *was* OFCOM would be close to declaring "job done" on this.

Note Both *main* service providers comes out of this pretty poorly.

VM don't seem to fill in gaps in their coverage so one neighbor get the *choice* of high speed, other does not. But perhaps given the sort of *contention* claims people are making that's just as well. Of course weather or not VM are upgrading their back haul infrastructure (as they *should*) before their next round of marketing is another matter.

While BT seem to upgrade *only* where VM are a presence and stuff their existing subscribers.

Note both companies are behaving like b***ards for perfectly understandable business reasons. The question is what (or who) can exert pressure on them to behave better?

Customers switching? Might make a bit of difference if you're a BT BB user and switch to AN Other as the cash goes to BT Openreach, but what if you already moved?

OFCOM. Do they have *anyone* who understands the technology to understand *why* people are p***ed off at the BS claims people make?

Other BB suppliers (or even perhaps local groups of *subscribers*).

Bottom line as long as *only* BT or VM lay actual cable to someones *door* they are the only *real* players in the game. It's low margin, high effort but *absolutely* essential and frankly they both inherited their infrastructure and have had a pretty easy time of it.

C;oudn't help thinking

Ethan's less athletic little brother?

This sounds like a smear campagn.

So what's the *purpose* of spreading this blatant lie?

Where's the cash coming from?

*big* cuts to local authority support grants

So are they doing it off their *own* bat or their a (govt supplied) pot of cash out there for them to dip into. The classic govt wants the policy but bankrolls the locals to take the heat

With these "crime maps" the HMG is so fond of it should be easy to plot the crimes versus the poles.

Either get them to a state where they *can* deliver evidence you can *convict* on or *stop* installing them in the first place.

So, more dangerious than giant solar storms destroying the power system

Or less?

Just asking.

Could anyone explain to me why *returning* the number of observation stationss

to 1975 levels would not be classed as "low hanging fruit" with which to improve the accuracy of the weather forecast?

Not necessarily in the *same* places (IE siting the new ones to bring about the *maximum* reduction in uncertainty).

Of course this will be *running* (IE for the foreseeable future) expenditure rather than capital spending.

Who was it who described the UK BA as "Not fit for purpose"?

Only it does not seem to have gotten much better since.

It's true it's better to keep people out than have to find them and turf them out *years* later.

Good idea and talk a good game but basically BS business plan?

You're toast.

The question is will VC's go *too* far in how much growth their *has* to be in the business plan to get the funding?