* Posts by Alan Brown

15029 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008

France to tack weapons onto spy drones – reports

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Critics

Manned aircraft are piloted by individuals who are usually overloaded and in the case of Navy pilots well beyond exhaustion and kept going by amphetamines - which has provably affected their judgement in many cases.

Remotely operated aircraft can have any number of people involved, looking at the same things the pilot is looking at and aiming the weapons/deciding what to do whilst the operator/pilot gets on with the job of keeping the thing flying and pointed in the right direction. The bigger problem at the moment is that the operator is being tasked with doing virtually everything including pushing the fire button and this is causing situational awareness problems.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Geneal Atomics Reaper drone

" the nuclear-bomb-powered Orion spacecraft weighing in at 3000 tonnes."

You're missing a few zeros off that mass. The expected payload to Mars was 30,000 tons, let alone the gross mass.

Oracle ZFS man calls for Big Red to let filesystem upstream into Linux

Alan Brown Silver badge

"They'll dump it on someone when they no longer can be bothered with it,"

Perhaps, but in the meantime the openZFS project is moving along nicely thankyouverymuch and sychronisation amongst the non-oracle OSes is pretty good.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: time to buy shares in high grade memory fab then

"turn on deduplication and watch the RAM get sucked away."

That happens in any large system where you enable deuplication. The short answer is don't do that unless you know what you're doing and the benefits outweigh the costs (they usually don't unless it's a mail spool)

Even more warship cuts floated for the Royal Navy

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: ah the costs of buying abroad

"give each AugustaWestlands employee in Yeovil £1 Million ...and still be better off."

It works similarly with protectionist import tarriffs.

One example: modems. New Zealand had _one_ domestic manufacturer, so the government put a 20% customs duty on imports.

The local product was still the most expensive one on the market and ONE of the modem importers paid 5 times more in import duties each year than the local maker's gross reported sales volume. Even the smallest importer was paying more in duties than the local outfit's gross reported revenue.

The ironic thing is that the local guys actually did have some innovation in their product, but they'd have been thousands of times better off financially by licensing that back to Rockwell at 20c per chip (Rockwell actually offered this and they turned it down) than doggedly insisting on manufacturing locally. Unsurprisingly, they went bust.

Credit insurance tightens for geek shack Maplin Electronics

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: You cant have it both ways

"Gambling dens... I imagine the licensing laws have been relaxed because it's that or empty shops. "

Nope.

Paradoxically it's because the laws were tightened to only allow 2-3 fixed odds machines in each premises. The parasitical things are so fantastically profitable that if William Hill et al could put 5 completely shops in a row along the street, they'd do it. Various local authorities have been trying to stop the spread of betting shops and found that they can't use "there are already too many" as a reason.

In the meantime people who can't afford to spend money pump what they don't have into the machines in the hopes of a mega payout which is simply what all the other suckers put into it too, minus a scalping for Mr Hill and friends.

The overall average payout is about 87% of what goes in - but it's like having 10 apples, giving them all to 1 person in a group of 10 people and saying that on average they have one apple each.

Holy DUHK! Boffins name bug that could crack crypto wide open

Alan Brown Silver badge

"When in the army the type of encryption used depended on the value of the information being passed. "

Which gave an indication of the value of attempting to crack it and the value of targetting those sending it.

One of the first principles of crypto is that you should use the same crypto for everything and encrypt everything including your laundry lists so that attackers don't get clued into what's valuable or not (which in turn means it should be strong crypto)

The more sadistic might choose to only encrypt their laundry lists and watch the spooks pile in to try and decode the "valuable data".

Capacitor maker zapped with price-fixing charge

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: What pisses me off about this

"Not to mention the likely shorting whiskers of legally mandated lead-free solder which grow over time"

A good application of conformal coating does a pretty good job of preventing this happening.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: What pisses me off about this

"Instead we got treated to the bulging capacitors of the early 2000s"

Most of which were knockoffs of Chemi-con and the other big boys.

And they're still around. I just found a bunch in the PSUs of my HP LTO robot.

Intel ME controller chip has secret kill switch

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: I guess I know what architectures to avoid...

"Anything after that most likely contains some version of the ME"

They've had the ME for a _lot_ longer than that. The venerable i815 chipset had it and that was released around 2000

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: The mind absolutely boggles.

"486SX, 487 CoPro and 486DX being a case in point"

As with many things, the seeming "deliberate disabling of parts of the chip" wasn't actually the case and it was actually a case of extreme binning.

Yes, sections of the CPU were disabled, but the reason they were disabled is that they FAILED testing - disabling the CoPro enabled Intel to sell a CPU which in other circumstances would have been a dead loss. Once yields rose to "better" values 486sx CPUs became a very rare beast indeed - because there's no added value in zapping a perfectly functional copro and selling the results at a knockdown price.

AMD are doing exactly the same thing now with their various RyZEN CPUs. Those lower-end chips with disabled CPUs onboard are sold that way because not all the CPUs passed testing.

The ME's existence and functionality has been documented for years - what's NOT documented is that it's there on the non vPRO chipsets too (just disabled - supposedly). Because the code and internals have always been a secret, we've always been a little suspicious of the things - to the point where we watch for network activity on the ports it uses.

MH 370 search to resume as Malaysia makes deal with US oceanographic company

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Good luck with your beacon

"Is it worth it for such a rare event"

No, especially when taking into consideration that aircraft affected by a mandate to have these are already capable of continuous telemetry upload - in the MAS case it was disabled for cost reasons, but airlines are effectively no longer allowed to switch it off and Inmarsat now pass tracking data at no cost.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Good luck

"There are already batteries in a plane which can't be shut down"

And sometimes they catch fire, even when the aircraft is parked and safed. Remember the smoke detector which burned up at Heathrow?

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Good luck

"Re: beacon - It comes down to the cost to implement against the insurance pay out."

Additionally, it's probably easier to arrange streaming upload of black box data these days.

The MAS 777 was fully capable of continuously uploading telemetry data, but the airline had switched the service off because it cost too much. The only reason there was any data at all was due to the fact that Rolls Royce paid for engine telemetry as part of their service contract.

One of the outcomes of the disappearance is that telemetry uploading (if fitted) is now effectively mandatory everywhere.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Glad the search is continuing

"That'd be like Mercedes Benz contributing to the costs of the investigation in to Princess Diana's death."

If there was a mystery about how the crash happened or how the car performed in it, they would.

Boeing and others have a huge interest in trying to find out how the whole thing happened. The problem is that unlike the Air France operation the plane clearly hit the water at speed - pulverising it, so there may not be enough left to solve the mystery.

To my mind the most likely scenario is a fire in or under the cockpit (possibly oxygen fed, there have been a few cockpit fires of this nature on the ground) causing the aircrew to switch off breakers (standard procedure) and turn back to Malaysia (it made a beeline for the longest runway in the area) with them becoming overcome by smoke shortly afterwards (which would easily explain why it didn't descend when approaching land and then flew where the winds blew it afterwards).

An oxygen-fed fire would easily pierce the pressure hull - the egyptair one being a good example, resulting in hypoxia killing everyone, or the fire could have knocked out the pressurisation system which would have had the same effect. Contrary to popular belief, jetliner oxygen systems - even in the cockpit - only last long enough to descend down below 10,000 feet - 20 mins at most. MAS was in deep financial trouble, with a dispirited workforce and had a number of major poor-maintenance related incidents in the months leading up to the disaster. This could easily have been another near-miss instead of a total loss.

Yes, British F-35 engines must be sent to Turkey for overhaul

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Total cost ...

> Can you imagine telling ISIS "If you don't start behaving we're going to build and staff several hospitals in your country"

If you made that a promise if they do behave, you could pretty much guarantee the local populations would ensure they actually did.

Didn't install a safety-critical driverless car patch? Bye, insurance!

Alan Brown Silver badge

Did anyone spot the fallacy?

Equating Tesla's current Autopilot with level 4-5 automation.

Germany was right to demand it be called something else.

Alan Brown Silver badge

other parts of the article:

"Also included in the bill are future provisions to allow government to force petrol station operators to install electric and even hydrogen car charging points, and to advertise them. "

That's going to force a lot of places to close down - for economic reasons in rural areas, and for safety reasons in urban ones (Hydrogen/CNG storage tanks are effectively a large bomb waiting for a detonator. You can't have stations "too close" together (as in, less than about mile) in case one going off causes a chain reaction.

Linux kernel community tries to castrate GPL copyright troll

Alan Brown Silver badge

> Nah. He sounds just like a leaching parasite. Nothing more.

Actually he sounds like a pissed off dev.

The validity of GPL has been proven in german courts for nearly 20 years. Inflicting severe financial pain on the remaining offenders is likely to make the others come into line, because being nice to them won't work.

I'm not overly surprised. Despite the lawsuits to date, there are a LOT of devices out there which have taken the piss out of GPL - in the UK, topupTV recorders not only used Linux and Ext3 filesystems, but when called out on it they obfuscated things and tweaked the ext3 layout to make it harder to read.

Future of Misco UK hangs in the balance – sources

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Sad day.

"customer comparing with non vat paying european resellers (ie no 20% vat), "

Bullshit. Everything sold in the EU is subject to VAT.

I've seen this excuse bandied about by a number of resellers who try to justify higher UK pricing (sometimes as much as 50% higher) over the rest of europe with this line.(*)

Business quotes in the UK and the EU are both exVAT - and VAT is actually _higher_ in several countries, but they still work out cheaper.

(*) I actually had one dealer tell me he had an exclusive UK sales license for a product and he would take us to court to prevent us buying from Germany. I pointed out the "Single market" laws and suggested that the results if he tried would be very entertaining.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Back in the day

" At a higher cost than I'd been paying when I did the ordering, much slower than I'd been getting it, and often even more expensive than nipping down to Curry's or than I could negotiate at one of the local retailers down the road."

The fault for _THAT_ lays firmly at the feet of your purchasing staff.

Until 2007 Misco was one of our cheapest suppliers and Currys etc didn't get a look in. It changed after our procurement manager retired. His replacement would have trouble negotiating her way out of a paper bag and the prices crept up markedly over a 3 year period.

Aviation industry hits turbulence as Airbus buys into Bombardier’s new jetplanes

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Missed a point...

"Airbus's 60 Year Free Ride"

The Bombardier deal creates a new size range that Airbus previously didn't play in - and which Boeing got out of when they closed the 717 line 11 years ago.

Neither an improved 320 or 737 will play in this segment, and they're being resized upwards.

FWIW, whilst both airframes have had a long production life, the reason for that is that they were rightsized for the job at hand in the first place and nothing was to be gained by reeingeering from scratch. The NEO models of both types still keep the basics intact whilst allowing for improved manufactiring techniques and engines that couldn't be incorporated in the existing frames.

It's a bit like how the VW beetle kept the same shape and size for 40 years but the 1950s version doesn't have a single component in common with the 1960s one which doesn't share any with the 1970s one - but the 1970s one does look quite different to the older generation.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Missed a point...

"I presume the "country of origin" has to add a certain amount of value to a product."

There's the issue that if Boeing challenges that particular one, many of their own aircraft models would be affected.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "if carriers are willing to install Sardine Class on A380s"

"If ?"

They won't. It affects cargo capacity too much and cargo is where the profits are.

(a fully sardined A380 with 830 passengers only has 8 cargo container positions available below decks thanks to baggage (but 4-7 times the cargo MASS lifting ability than a fully sardined 777 that has 35 positions available)

Keeping pax numbers to 550 or so is an economic decision more than made up by the increased cargo capacity and the resulting deadspace gets turned into halo-class seating that you can use for marketing (bump a lucky few stiffs into the seats) or for wild profit (20-30k charges per leg, on space that's already paoid for twice over)

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Is a 2-3 layout radical?"

Only inasmuch as it's a return to layouts seen on some 1950s aircraft

"Looking at the list of Bombardier patents it includes"

Are those design patents or technology ones?

Bear in mind that the USA uses the name patent for both trade dress (design) and actual innovation.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Canada and the UK together were too small and weak to fight Boeing."

300% import duties on aircraft just create opportunities for creative ownership setups.

As in, a subsidiary company in Canada which wetleases the aircraft to US interests.

Interestingly, Bombardier's actual competition in this market segment are Embraer and (soon) COMAC - neither of whom will be fazed by US sanctions.

Super Cali goes ballistic, small-cell law is bogus. School IT outsourcing is also... quite atrocious

Alan Brown Silver badge

"It's part of the social contract a business has with it's neighbours and hosts"

The USA has been actively tearing up the social contract starting in California around 1968 under governor Ronny Raygun. It went into high gear after said governor became USA president.

For an example of where the endgame goes, look at places like Honduras - https://www.salon.com/2015/03/02/my_libertarian_vacation_nightmare_how_ayn_rand_ron_paul_their_groupies_were_all_debunked/

It's rather telling that Ayn Rand relied on government welfare to survive. Her books were fantasist works which didn't take any account of human nature, but that doesn't stop Randian accolytes trying to put the ideas into practice.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"However if you've never had the displeasure of working with a city authority in California it's hard to understand just how absurdly obtuse they could be."

The Land of the Free has some of the most complex, inane and bureaucratic sets of rules on the planet, with overlapping sets of government full of jobsworths who make Vogons seem pleasant to work with.

For a country which raves about its freedoms the amazing thing is how few the citizenry actually _has_.

Seriously, doing business in almost every other part of the world is a breeze compared to doing almost anything in the USA, but on the other hand if you're a large business there you frequently have the ability to steamroller just about everything in your path and due process/civil rights be damned.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Translation...

"That meant stringing cable as fast as possible, without any concern for safety of the other utility workers who had to use the same poles."

Not in the USA, but one company sued the city for the right to string cables along the poles.

The problem was the city had undergrounded all utilities 30 years earlier. Those poles were _lighting_ poles and they'd refused permission to string cables because the weight would have caused those poles to buckle and fall down.

Europol cops lean on phone networks, ISPs to dump CGNAT walls that 'hide' cyber-crooks

Alan Brown Silver badge

CGNAT is a clusterfuck

But this has to be one of the more surprising objections to it.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Unless there's also a record of the IMEI a phone number or anything linked to it doesn't even identify a phone"

IMEIs can be changed and frequently are, regardless of legality.

Supreme Court to rule on whether US has right to data stored overseas

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Of course, the DoJ will win

> Judging by his actions in office so far I think "Make America Great" in Trumpese translates to "Make Donald Trump richer and more powerful" in English.

and "Making America Grate" for the rest of the world.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: If it's in Ireland ...

"The fact is that Microsoft U.S. could tell its Irish office to send over the data, and the Irish office could hardly refuse to obey an instruction from head office. "

They can if it's illegal under irish law.

Head office might rail about it, but if they sack the refusniks they'll not only be in trouble for attempted illegal activities, they'll also be in deeper trouble for unjustified dismissal.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: If it's in Ireland ...

"unless I missed something really important recently, Ireland is still a sovereign state."

Historically that's never bothered the US much when it's wanted something.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: What data did DOJ seek?

"Don't know about Microsoft, as we detected alleged "EU only" traffic spooling via US resources we didn't even bother trying any further."

Google won't offer any guarantees whatsoever that EU data stays in the EU. (in fact they pretty much guaranteed it won't)

If you have some documented evidence of MS pulling this, then a number of places I know would like to see it.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: What data did DOJ seek?

"I reckon the DoJ is going to win this one."

If they do, it may trigger electronic trade wars which will have lots of unforseen results.

Like the USA no longer being the hub of our communications electronic universe(*)

(*) That's already happening, but the difference will be traffic actively routing _around_ the USA and US_based multinationals being shunned everywhere.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: What data did DOJ seek?

"legal discrimination on grounds of citizenship is unconstitutional in itself. Check the 14th amendment."

And yet it's not only routine in the USA, it's condoned by most levels of government.

A bit like the 15th amendment is widely ignored.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: What data did DOJ seek?

"They're not after specific data about a specific individual but open access to the servers."

There's the companion thought to this, that the US Ferals are only going for this because they haven't been able to rummage around quietly already.

Perhaps MS have improved their security.

Xperia XZ1: Sony spies with its MotionEye something beginning...

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Sony design....

"These days the Sony quantum dot stuff is good"

You'll find that these panels are actually made by Samsung and that the cheaper Sony european TV sets are actually made by BEKO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_liquid-crystal-display_manufacturers - note that Sony don't appear there.

Seconded on Oled, but QD comes in a close second thanks to their efficiency.

Alan Brown Silver badge

planning permission...

(They successfully fought a planning permit to extend a transmitter in the middle of Highgate Woods. Well done, everyone).

I've always wondered why the mobile phone companies don't simply say "Take it up with these people" when there are complaints about shitty reception in an area.

As for "godawful mobile towers" these are all in-fill poles, not much taller than a standard telegraph pole and visually almost indistinguishable other than the tiny (under 2 foot long) phased array on top. Sectorised ones are a bit larger but they're still very small.

The older generation of such poles is summarised at http://pedroc.co.uk/monopoles.htm - but as these newer ones are covering a much smaller area, they're also a lot smaller.

Ernst & Young slapped with £1.8 MEEEELLION fine for crap accounting

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: EY - My experience

you missed "with a vastly bloated opinion of their abilities and importance"

I've crossed paths with EY auditors a couple of times and they can get downright vindictive when challenged.

San Francisco uni IT bods to protest Tuesday over cuts, outsourcing

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: I'm not a fan of outsourcing IT..

"when IT staff initially start as part of a department before being merged into the IT department later, I've seen that a couple of times over the years."

The more common case is that departmental IT staff get the boot as central IT expand and take over, but central IT then find they need more than the original complement of departmental staff onsite to keep up with demand.

US Congress mulls first 'hack back' revenge law. And yup, you can guess what it'll let people do

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Hacking back against forged attacks

> Yes Bob, considering your batshit insane attitude to everything

It covers why he's ex-military. The Batshit Insane ones generally get weeded out early in their careers.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: erm isn't this what law enforcement is for?

"So folks, if you want to know what's wrong with America, I give you Bob - AKA Exhibit A. This is how they train their soldiers...."

That and USA 'justice' is about "retribution with interest" rather than "repair and reconciliation"

Such policies have always led to escalating cycles of violence.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: erm isn't this what law enforcement is for?

i would have thought that men with big balls would be extremely careful to avoid any situations where they might get bumped. After all, a good kick in the nuts has most guys laying on the ground vomiting.

Elon Musk says Harry Potter and Bob the Builder will get SpaceX flying to Mars

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: In the spirit of the BFR...

"I figure all he has to do is paint a giant letter "F" on the inside of the thing, and he can say it's a "Big F in Rocket"."

That, or get Love Honey to sponsor one.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: In the spirit of the BFR...

It's the best falcon rocket in the falcon business!

Who needs fracking, flaming farting or other choices? It even sounds "almost" right.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Colonist motivation

"I would hope that the other red button activates the nurse"

You mean like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FaH7ATXkWg

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: 14 days long nights on the moon?

The position of the earth may be endlessly stable in the Moon's starry sky but there is definitely a 28 (earth) day light/dark cycle.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "The Moon is harder because it has no atmosphere"

Mars suits can be a little easier, but not because of the pressure differential. Ultraviolet light levels are lower due to distance from the sun and the atmosphere is going to prevent most of the micrometeors getting to the surface/slow down the bigger ones somewhat, which means less kevlar is needed.