Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Any one who does some kind of text mashing should be aware of the corner cases. If you're writing any kind of dictionary manager/query you actually should be aware of this stuff.
Now if you know the longest word in English is <32 characters you could do a length count in 5 bits.
But if you want to be multi lingual the it's 6 bits.
"What happens if there's ever a virus similar to HIV, but capable of airborne transmission like flu - would we all be up shit creek?"
Actually it looks like Ebola is the one to really fear.
Death is in days, not months or years.
And there were reports that it did become airborne, but the mutation that made so also weakened it to give flue like symptoms. In which case the human race dodged a bullet that day.
That is one strange looking virus capsid.
Most of the ones I've seen have been regular polygons or like the Teven group regular polygons with an injector column and tail fibres. Very strange.
But I can't help wondering if chimps are immune why no one had tried developing a vaccine from them in the way smallpox vaccine was originally developed from cow pox.
Let's see what these simulations give by way of treatments.
A polite well structured letter to your MP. In order of easiness.
Liberal.
"I voted for you partly because of your principled stand on this issue. You can count on my continued support while the party continues to oppose this Draconian and ineffective legislation.
Conservative
"I voted for you partly because of your principled stand on this issue. You had correctly recognized that this plan would cost a great deal of tax payers money and create an army of virtually unaccountable bureaucrats who could invade our privacy without any limits, without in any serious way curbing terrorism. Laws already exist to watch suspects. Support for this legislation is the start of a move to a regime more like that under Joseph Stalin than a free people in an open society.
Labour
At a time of deep government cuts in health, education and social services supporting a measure that commits over £500m/yr to stopping what has turned out to be less than 60 deaths a decade is a grossly irresponsible and wasteful use of scarce resources.
It's your country. and your freedom.
Don't you think it's worth taking a few minutes to keep it?
"How does the "nature" of the call differ in meaning from the "content"; and how does "when & who" correspond to what would normally be meant by "nature"."
It's the difference between "Communications Data" and "Communications Content"
The law "promises" that it won't spy on what you say, what's in your email (not sure about attachments).
"If some bloke called Dave makes a call at 3:50am, how does that tell me that it was of an (e.g.) threatening or conspiratorial nature?"
It doesn't matter.
As far as this law is concerned, we are all guilty.
"Traffic-related death in UK: ~2000 (>5 per day)"
That I can believe, and it's been falling for decades.
"Deadly household accidents in UK: >5,000 (>13 per day)"
Are you sure about this? I also checked lethal home DIY accidents and it was in the 50-60 a year range.
ROSPA also gave that in that range (roughly the number of actual UK terrorist deaths in about the last decade) was the number of people killed in UK farm accidents (500Kg hay bales falling on them, tractors reversing into them etc).
It's just astonishing the amount of b***ocks politicians will spout about this.
"I wonder what that will be, "
It will probably be from Dettica, a BAE Systems subsidary.
And as it will be a piece of "Govt furnished equipment" to the ISP's it's price will be secret.
However as this is a) A govt IT project and b) A secret govt IT project we can deduce it will be
a)High b)Rising.
Remember the Conservatives are supposed to be the government for limited bureaucracy and greater personal freedom.
Govt policy determined by the death of one individual by 2 nutcases.
<profanity filter off>
Are you fucking kidding me?
</profanity filter off>
These data fetishists have no shame.
Rover sticks drill in soil and finds some water.
Good.
ME finds water in thousands of square kilometers.
The former is an interesting scientific discovery. The later is essential if you're going to do serious ISRU and not have to keep carting not just your propellant for Mars orbit insertion but also your return journey.
Thumbs up for its 10 year mission.
""the MD did the mental arithmetic on the cost of downtime, and decided it didn’t justify the expense of the second machine"
Sounds like he made the right decision then?"
Provided he factored in all the costs.
Pay of all the staff left hanging around while system is fixed.
Cost of inability to assign and warehouse good inwards.
Cost of inability to make JIT deliveries.
A proper ERP covers all aspects of the business. If the HW that runs it is down, then effectively your business is down. If you think it's just an (expensive) server that can be broken and fixed at your leisure either the VAR or the IT dept have failed to explain their case well enough.
Or the MD is clueless and could not understand the explanation anyway you put it.
That last option is not quite as uncommon as you might think.
But until such an evaluation is done the USG can claim "We don't know."
It might also be interesting to find out how many peoples address and credit card details have been stolen from the membership lists of people on "fast track" clearance schemes whose details were held on laptops stolen from inside the secure employees only area of airports.
And how much stuff has been stolen as a result.
"Unfortunately you're far more likely to be shot by some nutcase in the US who's off his meds than by a terrorist."
True.
But you will be shot by an American nutcase, probably with an American mfg'd gun bought in the US.
And Americans, (or at least the American gun mfg's who sponsor most of the NRA) are happy* with that state.
*except of course the victims of the (roughly) 1 mass shooting a year that's taken place in the US since 1983. But they're dead, so they don't count.
"max dead = ~350
open the doors, max dead = ~3,500"
Actually rather more if they'd got to the Pentagon, which United 92 targeted.
But it gets very hard when you have to put into practice the principle that "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
I wonder if anyone has done a study of how many lives have been saved by the TSA? IE Actually catching terrorists getting on planes, the role they were created for.
Not criminals on warrants, not drug smugglers, actual terrorists
I suspect the answer is "not many."
The PARC Alto "invented" most of this stuff. They recruited a bunch of HS kids as testers, some of whom went on to work for Apple (perhaps lured by the siren call of Jobby).
My jacket would be the one with a copy of Newman and Sproull in one pocket and "ALTO: A personal computer" in the other.
What exactly is your complaint?
Feel that Google has been mis-treated? It's a $50Bn/year company.
Locks in patents? Well has anyone asked you personally for a contribution?
Can't post/download stuff on Youtube because it's copyright and the holder keeps issuing DCMA notices? What's BitTorrent mostly used for?
Just to be clear I believe software patents are (and let me make this extra clear for the slow ones out there) STUPID. I'd prefer they did not exist at all.
However I don't trust Google one bit. They're in it for the bucks and they don't take prisoners. this seems a slightly better use for S/W patents than most tit for tat suing that has gone on.
I do believe people who do creative things should be fairly and directly rewarded. but 70's years on creative works because Disney wanted to protect The Rat (not TM) is just taking the p**s.
So please, what is your problem?
Something to keep in mind in all those "Privacy is dead, yadda yadda" doomsayers.
Does anyone doubt a Google codec would come with built in reporting back to the Chocolate factory?
Thumbs up not for software patents but for co-operation and not reaching for the lawyers, as several of MPEG LA's members have done.
BTW Did anyone else think the LA was just a reference to them being based in LA?
"But Britain has a plan (that looks like going ahead for reasons that no sane person can fathom) for HS2, phase 1 of which (London - Birmingham) is estimated* to cost $50 billion for 100 miles of 225 mph track."
Apart from being a nice round number (always good for inspiring unthinking knee jerk hatred) do you have, dare I say it, a reference for that figure?
Enquiring minds etc......
"1. shipping
A term used to describe fan fictions that take previously created characters and put them as a pair. It usually refers to romantic relationships, but it can refer platonic ones as well. (Just think of "shipping" as short for "relationSHIP".)"
I did not know this.
"Sinofsky and Win 8 shipping?."
I have not felt this bad since an old web search inadvertently threw up a detailed description of the term "furry"
And as the US has been fighting 2 wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) they have had plenty of "test subjects."
There is a reason for the phrase "Necessity is the mother of invention."
It is very impressive but boy are those motors annoying.
Kudos for the result but sadness for reason why it's become a topic of interest. .
Actually this is a bit sensible for DARPA. A propoer DARPA project would be pushing for full limb regeneration in a support tank, Starship Troopers style. Within one week, in a field hospital.
Discounting the radioprotective additives what's left?
Up the permitted exposure limit, which seems possible but note that (AFAIK) Astronaut exposure limits are substantially above civilian workers.
Faster ships.
NASA does have a (low key) nuclear thermal rocket programme that is currently doing engineering archeology on the NERVA programme to recover lost skills and knowledge. A longer shot is the NAIC replaceable liner fusion system using Lithium and the long awaited VASIMR test on the ISS
OTOH NASA also has a programme to divert a small asteroid into Earth or Lunar orbit
I can't help thinking that a 10m layer of solid rock would make quite an effective radiation shield and even with relatively low thrust you could cruise to Mars as slowly as you liked, the radiation would not be a problem.
Perhaps some parts of NASA are playing a longer game than people realize?
NASA were going to look at the idea of radioprotective additives to food and atmosphere that would counter some of the effects.
Which sounds like the sort of thing you should be doing if you're serious about long term space expansion.
But the Senators wanted the SLS and a good 10-20 years more for the SRB casting shop in Utah.
"That said, land mines have caused death and injury to many more non-combatants than drones ever have. So, why is the UN wittering on about drones instead of getting on with the more important job of banning land mines?"
Because fewer companies in fewer countries make them?
Whereas landmines (cheap ones with mechanical triggers and no shutdown timers) are made in nearly every country.
It makes for a more level sales mine playing field.
"But that increases cost for no benefit. "
Not so. It enables several features.
1) Your battery gets charged off line. If you told the garage "I won't be back for it till Wednesday" they could plan their charging schedule and maintain an even load on the grid, but with access to 3ph power they could get a faster charge without hammering the battery using a "super fast" charge. When you arrive its a quick swap.
2) It's a local solution. If a local garage near where you lived offered the service, that would be all you needed. Most UK car journeys are commutes. It could increase the viability of EV's without needing a nationwide infrastructure roll out. If every UK employer provided charging points for EVs that would probably eliminate the use of this idea. Now how likely is that to happen soon?
3) A lot of car owners do not have off street parking and charging at home is not an option either.
I'd agree in the ideal world where everyone had off street parking and there was a strong enough grid to supply every home with enough power to charge your EVs battery overnight, every night this would be redundant.
But we don't live in that world. This is an incremental solution to making EV's a viable option for the bulk of people who don't drive 1000Km a week across country but do drive maybe 40Km a day to and from their work, with the odd side trip to pick up a takeaway.
"Why do you care if it goes into someone else's car?"
Convenience and control.
It's a curious effect that if no one feels they "own" something (at least in the UK) it tends to get destroyed more quickly than otherwise.
The battery is yours. And as it is yours you don't have to worry about going down to your local garage (well "filling station might be more appropriate) and discovering they have no charged battery in, as with other models.
Yes it would primarily tie you to a particular garage near your home. But IRL that is the pattern for most journeys in the UK. It does not demand some nationwide network of stations to exist already,
It's evolutionary and incremental, but it does require either the support of a big chain (perhaps those at a supermarket chain, where petrol is not their core product) or enough independent garages (how many are even left ?) to feel there is a market they can serve and maybe make money on.
Naturally it all hinges on how complex it is separate the battery pack (packs?) from their vehicles and the complexity of the interface their mfgs have given them.
I'd like to think it's within the bounds of modern power electronics to accommodate most types.
This is a bit impractical.
You're looking at (and I mean this literally) melting concrete powder using a sound based containerless levitator (to prevent re-crystalisation) and then controlled cooling.
Note that once it's hardened it should remain solid in water but sadly I don't think anyone is going to be sticking a bag of this in a mixer and laying down their next PC on say the kitchen floor.
OTOH this is v 0.1 tech and while this is the first technique to do this it might not remain the only way to do this.
Now could be get on and start doing something about them in terms of effectively modelling them?
BTW weren't people saying it was going to be a 2 deg average rise by 2050, or have I mis-remembered?
Not quite worth a thumbs up as no new data or better model yet.
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