Posts by Alan Brown 15090 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008
> Do you have a reference for that? I'd be interested in reading about that.
In most cases if an artificial island is created in international waters that is unable to sustain human habitation then it's regarded as a permanently anchored ship at sea. Up to now the vast majority of cases of such islands have been for aviation and given that aerial photos of all the sites in question consist of "a runway and not much else" I'd say they fall under this definition.
http://nghiencuubiendong.vn/en/conferences-and-seminars-/second-international-workshop/597-the-impact-of-artificial-islands-on-territorial-disputes-over-the-sparatly-islands-by-zou-keyuan
This isn't a case of building these islands in uncontested International waters.
Most of the spots China's laid claim to - and starting building up are shoals and reefs on other countries' continental shelves and recognised (except by china) exclusive economic zones. In some cases these sites are extremely close to or even inside 12 mile territorial waters and that's a big a problem. In the case of the Philippines (Scarborough Shoal) they've been blockading access by fishermen and the Philippine navy to shoals within 20 miles of the shore.
The few spots which don't match this are claimed by a number of countries as being within 200 miles of their shoreline and therefore within overlapping economic zones/territorial claims. They're _all_ a lot further than 200 miles from any recognised chinese land claims and as such chinese claims on them aren't recognised under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The "Pacified Southern Provinces" are unlikely to take this laying down but they've tended to rely on the USA as their guard dog. It's worth noting that the shoals in question aren't thought to have that much oil under them, but I can see them being used as jumping off points to laying claim to the large known fields which are in other countries exclusive economic zones.
The International court of the Hague decision at http://www.pcacases.com/web/sendAttach/1503 notes that China refuses to recognise the court because they claim that the Phils agreed to negotiation and going to court isn't negotiation (but it is what you do when you've reached an impasse) - that's pretty typical bullying behaviour and whilst they may say they don't recognise the court the ramifications for a lot of other stuff are such that they will probably blink.
In any case China has effectively recognised the court by filing arguments claiming that the court doesn't have jurisdiction on the grounds that this is a soverienty case, not a UN Law of the Sea one - the court has firmly rejected that claim.
https://amti.csis.org/massive-island-building-and-international-law/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-07-12/full-text-the-south-china-sea-ruling
"Now, the fact that nobody, but China has accepted said land reclamation ventures to be a part of a sovereign state is a different story."
Land reclamation ventures are explicitly _excluded_ from attempts to make territorial water claims and have been for a very long time.
In this case China's not just facing off against the USA, but everyone else in the area - who are all getting quite nervous about Trump's rather vocal statements tending towards isolationism.
It's worth noting that the last war the PLA got itself involved in resulted in them being given a sound kicking (by Vietnam) and being sent home with their tail between their collective legs, so whilst it might sound like this is China vs USA WW3, the reality would be much more nuanced and all the bordering countries are able to put up a hell of a fight if necessary, especially if they put aside their differences and unite against a common aggressor. Bear in mind that the chinese name for SE asia roughly translates as "pacified southern provinces" and I don't think Vietnam has gotten around to forgiving China about the plunder of its forests for Admiral Zhang's fleet, with other countries holding similar long-standing grudges.
In any case whilst this is chinese sabre rattling, the real issue isn't about the sea, it's about what's under it - oil - and lots of it. The best way to render that argument moot is to work harder on alternatives and I'm undecided if the chinese are doing this to prevent the stuff coming up (more carbon emissions) or to secure their oil future. The quandry faced by China is that a 10 foot rise in sea level means that they'll need to rehome ~400million people and that's one of the reasons they're frantically throwing so much R&D money at nuclear power research.
"Air launch looks good, but really you're only getting to 4% of orbital altitude and about 3% of orbital velocity before launching - it doesn't make THAT much of a difference."
Getting above 90% of the atmosphere's density does though, if you already have Pegasus (which they did) and want to increase the usable payload (which they did)
" if you transfer money from your account to someone else's why would you expect the bank to pay for your mistake?"
In a large portion of these cases, the victims _didn't_ transfer the money, someone else did.
Part of the problem is that in most of these cases the transfer is made to another domestic bank - hard to spot, but a series of random inward transfers can (and should!) set off security watchers, so a mule is employed to do cash withdrawals at daily intervals, handing the money over to someone else for a small cut (usually 5-10%) who takes it somewhere else to be deposited.
This was explained to me at a point when I was unemployed, by someone trying to recruit mules. The Met police were spectacularly uninterested in following it up despite the handler making few efforts to make her hard to find.
> Patents and copyrights are specifically mentioned in the Constitution with Congress being able to enact legislation granting patents and copyrights for the "promotion of arts and sciences".
It's worth noting that the original period of copyright and patents were actually reasonable ones.
"technologies become "lost" when their parent companies die, for example."
Or when there's no longer a demand for XYZ product and the people with the knowledge retire.
Amongst other things almost lost due to this: the ability to make seamless tubing.
NASA resorted to hacking the gun barrels off of Liberty Ships to get what it needed to build Space Shuttle Main Engines whilst simultaneously trawling resthomes to find retired metallurgists and pump their brains on lost lore before they expired.
"For really, REALLY big companies, patents are just ink on a page."
So is copyright
"They can simply bully you nonstop until either your patent expires, you cave, or they engineer a way to get around your patent."
Or steal your work and dare you to sue them. It worked for Microsoft.
"The question is: what is the benefit of electronic machines over paper?"
In a country where peope have been known to "vote early, vote often and vote from beyond the grave" it was sold as being less susceptable to ballot-box stuffing.
Which might have been true IF every part of the process wasn't opaque - at the insistence of people who realised that this could be used to manipulate vote counting without needing a massive conspiracy.
> Then a very embarrassed official turned up. "Sorry, chaps, we've just found this extra ballot box."
One of my relatives is a district returning officer in a relatively small country.
There is a _very_ strict policy about counting boxes out and back in - along with ballots and registers.
Whilst there's a preliminary count done at polling stations in front of observers before the ballots are returned to the boxes and resealed, central counting doesn't _start_ until all boxes are in and their seals verified (each official observer has their own seal and it must be present on the returned box).
if the number of ballots + spoiled + unused that comes back doesn't exactly match the number sent out, then heads start rolling - and the ballot serial numbers are all recorded going out, etc to avoid ballot box stuffing.
There are a lot of checks and balances in a paper-based system which are highly visible and auditable. Making the voting electronic makes impersonation a slightly bigger risk, but the real risk is in the ability to commit fraud at the backend. Various despots are attributed as saying there's no need to manipulate the voters when you can far more easily manipulate the vote takers.
"One of the older tricks was to "pre-vote" a bunch of ballots and when the polls closed, ballots were exchanged. "
Which is one of the reasons why every paper ballot in most countries has a serial number and those serial numbers are recorded against the voting register.
if one shows up that isn't recorded against a voter, you know something is off. It's still gamable but a lot harder if there are the requisite number of observers onhand.
"lunches are paid for by a fingerprint scanner"
Those are insecure and spoofable. Subdermal vein scanners are more accurate (even identical twins have differing patterns) and they generate a non-reversible hash of the scan (which means that fingerprints aren't actually copiable on a file somwehere).
They're also more hygenic, as you don't need to touch them (which saves norovirus doing the rounds, amongst other nasties - does your school insist pupils wash their hands _after_ touching the scanner?(*))
The problem with swipe cards is that they're easy to lose or be stolen, but I'd take that risk to my kids going down with some nasty virus.
(*) A similar principle applies to bathroom doorhandles, given the number of people who don't wash hands after wiping their arses.
"We went and checked up one night."
The IT director at a certain australiasian clothing catalogue company was caught doing something similar. He didn't even make it to the end of the day (management _really_ frowned on that kind of thing)
He showed up as director of the motor vehicle registry not long afterwards, insisting on trying to _email_ 200Mb files between offices overnight (in the days of 14k4 modems and mail systems defaulting to 10Mb maximum) and blaming all the ISPs along the chain for it not working.
"So Del whacks it and up it comes..."
You may laugh, but the old ceramic 286s used to get so hot(*) that they'd cause thermal problems with their sockets. They'd power up and work for a couple of minutes, then lockup. A whack would reseat the CPU socket fingers and off it would go until switched off and let cool.
The advice given was (obvoiusly) "Don't turn it off"
(*) Hot enough that touching one resulted in a sizzling sound and a blackend fingerprint left behind. I sported a huge fingertip blister for 10 days.(**) Very few of them were ever fitted with heatsinks despite the obvious benefits.
(**) The only other time this occured is when I inadvisedly made contact with a 1980s vintage photocopier fuser in the days when they weren't adequately protected against such things. Even old valve amps didn't get that hot.
Anything from Qualcomm 805 chipset onwards (eg: galaxy5 note4) onwards has Gallileo built in, along with Glonass and Beidou. It's just a matter of having supporting software.
So unless your phone is more than 2 years old, you probably won't need to buy a new one to use the service.
"Fortunately, my $WINESUPPLIER of choice appears to have ditched Yodel as a carrier."
Perhaps it's the same $WINESUPPLIER who used them to deliver a shipment to the right address (mine) in the wrong town (ie, I didn't order it). I refused delivery twice in 2 days then came home a few days later to find the previously rejected delivery dumped on my doorstep with an obviously broken bottle inside.
$WINESUPPLIER was duly informed and promised to arrange a pickup, but never did so.
I use the anecdote (and Yodel dumping stuff in the bushes outside $orkplace security gates because they can't be bothered using the intercom) as good reasons to warn people off such companies. It gets amusing when they try to use "Yodel have recorded the delivery" as a defence for breaching distance selling regulations.
"...was probably written by the same jokers that wrote the software in my (well known brand German) car."
Something similar happened in a friend's Mercedes(*). The onboard computer said about £2500 pf parts were busted, so the shop replaced them - and the computer still said they were busted, but friend was out £2500 in parts plus the labour.
I borrowed the car and took it to my friendly local wizard. We discovered very quickly that the thermostat was jammed open, the engine remained stone cold and this was confusing the hell out of the computer.
The stealership refused to accept responsibilty for this amazing level of servicing incompetence and tried to claim their warranty was voided by someone else looking at the vehicle. My friend didn't have the stomach for a legal fight and just replaced the thermostat (coincidentally also a £50 part on a merc), whereupon all the computer complaints went away.
Moral: If there are a lot of systems supposedly wrong, there's usually a common cause. You don't just replace everything that "computer says", but tales like this are depressingly common in the motoring industry (My own car blew an O ring in the steering rack at 3 years old. Nissan's answer was a new rack. A reconditioning outfit removed, serviced, replaced the O ring and machined a second groove for a second O ring(*), then refitted it for less than the stealership's quoted labour cost, which would have been 1/3 of the total bill)
(*) Unless AC has XX chromosomes, it's unlikely to be the same car.
(**) Apparently Input shaft o-ring weakness is a known issue that most makers have never addressed.
"you get the feeling Thales logic was cobbled together as they noticed things that didn't work..."
This is more than likely to be the case, most software end up like this even if it was more-or-less straightforward in the first place.
The question is whether it was designed to have software modules added/removed as required or if the programmers wrote a Spaghetti Monster from Hell (I'm betting the latter)
Now factor in that Thales not only write drone software, but also do stuff for transportation systems with critical safety requirements (such as railways and civil aviation) and that substandard programming ethos tends to be company-wide.
"There's probably a good reason why a radar altimeter isn't used, but I don't know what it is."
Probably the same reason why Thales deleted the WoW sensor instead of going to a more reliable one.
Cheapeset bidder, built to specification even if that spec is obviously missing critical parts - all such additions are off-contract extras at some exorbitant price.
It's not the matter of turning it on or off. It's the matter that Thales are apparently still using fragile mechanical switches to detect such things and they get broken on rough ground.
A strain gauge simply sticks to the strut and measures the flex that occurs as the aircraft settles - if you look at the pictures you'll see it's U-shaped. It's that way because it's a spring and springs flex.
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/c/automation-control-gear/sensors-transducers/strain-gauges/
This kind of thing isn't exactly new. Aircraft have been using strain-guage based WoW sensing for some time - precisely due to the fragility of oleo sensor switches (WoW sensors on manually flown aircraft are necessary for civil autoland systems but are more frequently used as lockout devices to prevent someone accidentally hitting the gear-up switch whilst on the ground. It happens occasionally and causes much embarassment to everyone concerned)
"I also suspect that as the earth warms it will lose heat more rapidly to the relative cold space,"
The relative change in planetary heat vs space is a tiny fraction of 1% (you need to refer it on the Kelvin scale). A warming capable of obliterating life on earth would result in a very tiny increased reradiation rate into space, so your suspicion is mostly wishful thinking.
"The bad news is that this carbon sink is already failing"
Even before that stage, our ability to put carbon into the atmosphere has been outrunning the sinks' ability to absorb it for some time. A reduction in sink capacity(*) isn't really proven at this point but it doesn't need to be if we keep emitting at current rates.
The added factor of the risk of a few gigatonnes of methane burping out off the north coast of Siberia(**) thanks to incursions of warm water into the arctic ocean shouldn't be discounted. What's allegedly come out already is probably enough to account for the "mystery methane level increases" that have been recently reported (and blamed on farming) as methane watching satellite instruments haven't been looking that far north(***)
(*)An "Anoxic event."
(**) Leptav Sea methane emissions.(****)
(***) They are now, but the instrumentation has an extremely hard job seeing methane emisions on water (not enough contrast)
(****) Some US researchers are actively poo-poohing these reports, because there's no easy way of verifying Russian reports(+) - but they're also trying to discourage anyone looking to see if they can be verified.
(+) Russia makes life hard for its own scientists, let alone foreign ones wanting to come and verify observations and the researcher's reports are accused of being extreme exaggerations.
150% isn't high enough,
We're talking about a product which _if used as directed_ will kill or seriously disable about half its users (it was previously believed to be about 1/3 but the numbers have been revised upwards after longer studies.)
On the bright side, the ones that die young won't be a tax burden in their old age. Perhaps we should be encouraging baby boomers to resume smoking like chimneys.
"A colleague and I had managed to uncover certain indiscretions"
At that point you document everything and hand it to "the authorities".
Whistleblower protection laws apply from that point.
On the other hand if you don't notify "the authorities", then you're potentially an accessory once someone else discovers them.
"Take the meat out of the aircraft and it will be capable of performance which would mince a human pilot inside their G suit."
Up to a point. You can only pull so may 9G turns in a 35 ton aircraft before the wings fall off and that limit isn't programmed in by the squishiness of the flight control computer.
"There is always the possibility that Trump will can this scheme."
No, he can't do that. Not that he might not try, but the fact is, he doesn't have the power to do so.
The F35 embodies the lessons learned from the F111B debacle - specifically the ones which showed how programs are vulnerable to shutdown. Lockheed has made damned sure that it's impossible to shut the program down.
"(2) who do you think owns all those US T-bills that financed the F-35 and all the rest of it?"
The _interest_ from those T-bills pays for virtually the entire of the PRC military.
The chinese economy is now the largest in the world and they're in a pretty good position to weather an economic storm just on their internal markets.
"should change his name to"
I was hoping for Trumplethinskin
"Could he be impeached by his own party?"
Yes. They actively dislike him and would prefer Pence to be well and truely in the driving seat.
All this is presumptive, of course. The _actual_ presidential election is still 4 days away.
" Superiority plane, well, if the weather is fair and the enemy has nothing able to take off! "
You may be jesting, but that's pretty close to the design truth.
The F35 isn't designed to go up against enemy aircraft or ground-based air defences. That's the F22's job.
Relabelling an air support/strike plane as an air superiority fighter - and then selling it to other countries is one of the more egrarious frauds I can think of.
"No, they had designs that would have failed Allied standards for employment, and were only used because the Germans were desperate."
A large chunk of the reason that the germans lost was that they spent huge amounts of time and effort turning out highly advanced (but buggy) designs that ended up being trounced by their fuel consumption(*) or sheer superior numbers of inferior weapons(**). The desperation part only kicked in in the latter stages of the war.
Japan's war effort was doomed from the moment its fuel supplies were cut off, the fact that they kept fighting after that was sheer bloodymindedness on the leadership's part (same for the final days in Germany)
Napolean is attributed as saying "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" - and most countries unfriendly to the USA are more than happy to let them keep making mistakes with the F35.
(*)Tiger tanks - it was easy to disable them by targetting their fuel supply. From that point you could simply stay out of range and arrange for them to be picked off when attackers were ready.
(**) Shermans might have been tommycookers, but for every one the germans destroyed with their superior Panzers there were 3 more behind it firing back. Ditto on the soviet T34s.
"G.fast is pretty much very selective vapourware, in terms of real world results "
Expensive vapourware that BTOR can charge 150% of installation costs up front for without having to go to the expense of new cable.
Widespread installation of FTTH requires they amortise the cost over 20 years (they can charge for the terminal equipment, but not the cable laying)
" the only method of getting an update on when the VDSL cab might perhaps be fixed seemed to involve opening yet another fault with BT (the previous one having been mysteriously closed) "
The reason for _that_ being that Openreach techs only get paid when the fault is closed, so they close it no matter what.
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