Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
I think I know what this is about...
So many believed he couldn't win.
Looks like he didn't believe it either.
And then he did. But that's not enough.
Because deep down he still doesn't believe it. So he's never going to get past it. What does The D call such people?
And I think The D has shown he understands that idea quite well.
As for "Well it's not important let it lie" the fact The D's inauguration was not quite the once-in-a-universe turnout he expected, or the fact he lost the popular vote by 3 million and claimed (with no evidence shown) that was the number of illegal votes cast, suggests he's not very good at letting anything lie.
I'm still pondering which one I would feel safer with. A 9YO girl holding a loaded pistol with the safety off or The D with nuclear launch codes.
Silly question really. He's already got the codes and you cannot take them away from him.
The MIT team are testing one on the ISS now to try to counter the growth of the human spine by up to an inch.
With electroactive polymer threads they can put the put under roughly 1/3 Atm compression, equal to the pressure inside a normal space suit, which is their long term goal.
I'll note its the EA polymers that provide the last 0.05atm strength. The other 0.25 is by a carefully laid pattern of elastic threads (working out where to put these in the 1960's was the key breakthrough of the time).
The root cause of most of these vulns are not mysterious. The trouble is people seem to fix the fault they found and don't go back and fix the source.
Finding a bug does not leverage finding other bugs, or stopping that class of bugs from being written again.
I think this could be baked into a software house that was cost competitive with others in the market but produced less vulnerable software.
But I agree that this cheap'n'nasty approach will persist till something goes seriously wrong and several people get hurt or killed. That's pretty much how safety improvements have been made in the transport industry.
Which given that there was no manual control system (The computers and/or the APU fail you bail out or you die) and the design is too unstable for a human pilot to input control movements fast and accurately enough was just as well.
How you do it.
1)Design the code.Break it up into segements. Design the detailed equations it implements
2) SCC system tracked the history of everything. Code, scripts, test data sets on a line by line basis. Cutting edge in 1974, SOP today.
3)Structured walk throughs and documented fixing. Must be done in an impersonal way. It's a bug hunt, not a witch hunt. :-(
4)When a bug gets through understand why and search for that code pattern, then add that to your list of standard patterns to avoid.
BTW Shuttle was written in HAL, a high level language. A lot of the bugs in the early days turned out to be when people skipped this process and directly patched the code in assembler.
Test data generation for code coverage is not inn fact a black art. The books by Glenford Myers (who worked for IBM in the 70s and 80s) explain the process quite well.
If you want do to this today in the UK call Altran Praxis who will do this in SPARC, a safety critical version of Ada. but it's true multi tasking remains problematical. they will do the same but also using theorem provers and the Z language.
What I'll note is this is more expensive that regular code but not a lot more expensive.
And fixing IoS failures promises to be much more expensive due to the large deployments.
Incidentally the F35 ALIS logistics system is not written in Ada. It's written in C/C++. LM said getting Ada programmers was too expensive.
I wonder how much of the ALIS issues writing in Ada would have prevented? Obviously not a problem for LM. It's the US taxpayers who pick up the bill, and will continue to do so as the F35 is now to coin a phrase "too big to cancel."
I think you're lecturer is a bit behind the times. But the question is will companies pay to use these techniques?
Actually Rockwell Collins did (and for all I know still does) runs it's avionics software on a proprietary stack machine.
I've seen sample jet engine control software written in what looks like a stack based language. Might have been Forth, but the Forth philosophy is you extend Forth into a a task specific language and program in that.
And odds on bet I won't be hearing of any of them ever again.
I've never really thought of HP as one of the great corporate R&D labs but they did do some clever stuff in the HP instruments line, and the M68000 Unix running portable was pretty impressive.
But the elephant in the room is that within a decade line widths will be down to 10 atoms wide, making the oxide layer 1 atom thick. I have no idea how this will be made.
At that point you literally run out of road. Of course by then it will also likely be easier to make stuff by adding atoms together, rather than cutting atoms away...
Can it be sent to a phone Yes.
Can it alter devices configuration up to and including bricking it Yes.
Should we authenticate any such message before acting on it No.
If this is a part of the core Android built then that would suggest it's Google's fault. If not then it's Samsungs.
I'd like to think that this is a learning process and companies will tighten up over time.
Trouble is they never seem to learn from their mistakes.
IRL Mostly made from Methane, by adding a lot of energy.
Difficult to move as it will diffuse through most alloys quite easily and bolted joints are not good either. Ideally you want an all welded supply line.
It's stored at either 5000psi or -253c or -487F. The USAF classify tanks at that sort of pressure (used on launch vehicles) in terms of lbs of TNT if they fail. You will need 3-4x the energy needed to make the H2 to either compress it or liquefy it.
But yes Hydrogen cars are quick to refuel.
IMHO if you want an electric car economy you need to design a fuel that will do the job. Something renewable (so it can be renewed), liquid (because that's what existing fuel transport networks can handle) and easy to make (IE does not use a lot of additional energy).
My ideal fuel is a sugar solution driving a fuel cell. Renewable, does not waste energy turning sugars into alcohol, difficult to burn and carbon neutral. Sadly it's technology is much less developed than that for other options.
Will if some of these are mis wired at the factory that might well be the truth.:-)
Personally I see the sort of company CEO who'll want this installing it in their satellite offices with a set of remote control web cams (to go with the mics) for that "Your Great & Glorious Leader is always Watching" feel.
So that's basically $5k and $1440/yr (minimum) for this.
How does that compare with internal US airfares and motel rates?
And not the first cutting edge bio story to come out of Spain recently (fushing the living cells out of a heart to create a scaffold for stem cells to grow into a new, beating heart). The ability to use a subjects own cells suggests you can avoid rejection problems as well.
Possibly the most curious tidbit of this is that this field is well enough developed to have a journal. Who'd ever heard of "Biofabrication" as title before this?
True.
Most Merkins think IED's kill most of them abroad.
In fact it's traffic accidents.
They're not very good at driving on anyone elses roads but their own.
I wonder if that's sign those are the roads they should stick to?
A marker symptom for this is not just the very short attention span for 90%of the world. It's the very obsessive focus on a narrow part of it.
So that would be switching channels incessantly, then hitting one and watching nothing else.
In a decade we may think this is a small step forward to actual AI.
Or not.
They can inept.
They can be lazy.
But as long as they don't fiddle with the kids or swear (too often) at the Head they cannot be fired.
Which may explain why they are left to f**k up kids views of education for decades when they should have been shown the door the week after they arrived.
"Because you can dump those expensive messy humans and replace them with machines that dont go on strike/toilet breaks/lunch breaks/need to sleep"
Farmyard robotics maybe the savior of UK farmers once those hard working and reasonably price East Europeans have to go home permanently.
And making a robot work on a farm is way tougher than a factory,
Exciting times indeed.
In "In The Line of Fire" it's "Traveler."
I thought "Nelly" (the elephant packed her Trump) but that seems a bit whimsical for the SS.
"Storm Trooper" is a bit long on the radio. "Trooper" not quite senior enough.
"Siegfried" is maybe a bit Wagnerian (and I'm not sure how many have seen Django Unchained).
Perhaps they should just cut the subtlety and refer to him on radio as "The Leader."
">Propose a constitutional amendment that imposes term limits on all members of Congress."
Limiting the ability of new members to say "Hook up with and I'll look after you for the rest of my life."
Limiting the ability of existing members to threaten new members with "You cross me and I'll f**k you up forever on every vote."
Requiring parties to consider accession planning when that term come to an end.
>A five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service.
Lunches at this level should definitely be on the official calendar. If it looks like a lobbyist and behaves like a lobbyist..
>A lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
No problem as British Petroleum no longer exists (and hasn't for decades). Now had you said BAE...
>A complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
Sounds good to me. After all isn't it people who elect candidates? Or does "personhood" of public companies extend to them making campaign donations and getting a vote? How is that vote decided? CEO, Majority stockholder? Stockholder ballot? Board ballot?
Here's the thing. Trump is not the disease. Trump is the symptom. BAU produced Trump.
I don't like the man. I don't trust him and I wouldn't vote for him. Hence we'll see if it's all talk or wheather he will actually change anything for the better. I'm sure he will change things.
But a large part of the US voting population felt that conventional candidates would rather look after themselves than their voters.
Both parties should look at that and ask why voters think that.
Here's an idea. Maybe the voters are right and the system has encouraged career politicians who view the taxpayers money as their own. Who've never had a job, just a political life style. Who first and last question is "What's in it for me/my main contributors/my party (in that order. No voters don't count)?"
Let me repeat. The system is ill. Trump is a symptom. I don't think he's the cure either.
Propose a constitutional amendment that imposes term limits on all members of Congress.
A five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service.
A lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
A complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
Personally I actually think these would improve the USG. Let's see which (if any) get implemented.
Infect machines on the networks of suppliers near to the facility.
Wait till it infects their whole network.
Wait till someone plugs in a device that's going to be plugged into the centrifuge control network.
Device plugged into centrifuge control network.
Boom
The "Pro tip" "No system is really air gapped."
Not necessarily.
As long as you've bagged a fairly hefty salary and found some way to "return value" to your personal fortune the fact you've failed to deliver an actual product (SW, HW or service) is not a problem.
As the CEO of that medical testing chip company knows quite well.
That's not the surprise.
The surprise is that so many (2/3s) are trading above their issue price.
Given the notion that VC's (who will always push for an IPO as an exit strategy, usually sooner rather than later) are looking at a 60-90% failure rate that most of those IPO are >= IPO price is really pretty astonishing.
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