* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Scramjet X-51 finally goes to HYPER SPEED above Pacific

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: @Sulehir

"You'd probably find it wouldn't get anywhere *near* the surface."

Depends what you make it out of.

Tungsten has a melting point of 3000c+ and a specific gravity around 19. A big enough lump of that will survive to ground level and make quite a hole in whatever it hits.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"1 trillion USD in Iraq, "

But according to one report there are around $13 terra dollars missing from the people of Iraq, so the US is very much ahead on profits.

Of course if I were an Iraqi and knew that I'd be pretty p**sed off too.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: On course for UK - Oz in 30 minutes

"Shouldn't do; it might be uncomfortable* but not fatal. For comparison the shuttle crews generally pulled about 3g and the legendary John Paul Stapp took a sustained 25g with a peak of 46g** after ride on a rocket sled."

IIRC his last ever ride was to -60g as some documentary mentioned it was the same force that Princess Diana experienced when her limo hit the pillar in the tunnel in France.

Survivable in a 4 point safety harness if you're prepared to be treated for a detached retina afterward.

That is something you want to avoid.

Review: Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 WinPro 8 tablet

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Price: Quantity vs Quality

"The problem is the price."

Have you ever bought volume products for a company?

You buy by the 100s (or 1000s) and that price goes right the window.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Not really for home use is it?

This is more for companies that buy their field service kit by the 100s, if not 1000s.

That said it sounds quite good.

I think we are still a long way from the ultimate field service computer device that has the flexibility to capture any market.

I sort of miss the Husky, about the only laptop that had a connector for surface to air missile testing.

Mooreslaw: Chopping up chips for the future

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Curent gate widths are still about 140 atoms wide.

Given that gate dielectric thickness is about 1/10 the gate width that suggests 3-4 more generations at least.

Of course if you go for the 1 atom wide gate and the 1 atom thick gate dielectric.....

And at that point it really will be game over for the MOSFET in 2 dimensions.

But you could stick maybe 30 layers of working transistors in the current wafer thickness.

Crap computers in a crap box: Smart-meter blackouts risk to UK

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: customer benefits@Crisp

"FFS, don't swallow this Daily Mail codswallop. If you'd invested in my employers shares six years ago, you'd be sitting on a quarter of your original investment. "

Well that's terrible.

So how is it that electricity companies can continue to declare profits in the 100s of £m?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Whilst I can see the value.....@TheBig Yin

"Smart meters are a crap solution, and those who have mandated or encouraged their use should be thrown in prison. Hackers are far less of a threat to UK energy security than DECC."

IIRC they were included in the bill because some Peer took cash for clauses and had them inserted.

The benefits of the "display" are also optional as mos of them will not have it as standard.

Yet another Cabinet-level ID card farce

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Bah, spineless politicians."

"Advised" by senior civil servants with no personal stake in the outcome*

Note even the Chief Constables did not like it. Given their normally hand-in-blouse relationship with the HO this alone speaks volumes for what a deeply rubbish plan it was.

*Except of course the huge non-executive directorships they will pick up from some of the suppliers or operators of the scheme.

Tiny fly-inspired RoboBee takes flight at Harvard

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Very impressive.

We've seen things like this before they have been much bigger and at least some bits were bought in.

At this scale everything has be designed and a mfg process worked out to make it on a reasonable scale.

In amongst the various concerns about surveillance drones might I also suggest an anti-fly swarm that can engage in fly-on-fly combat to stop any airborne critter pestering you?

A sort of mosquito squadron.

The UK's copyright landgrab: The FAQ

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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I smell a version of Thatchers views on the Data Protection Act.

Get this bo**ocks in and it will over ride the EU directive, which seems quite sensible relative to this.

It's sneaky, underhand and undemocratic.

Putting the details in a Statutory Instrument is very evocative of the Dark Lords way of doing "business."

I suspect it will take many years to purge the IPO of this New Labor nonsense.

Fraudster gets ten years after selling fake 'ionic charge' bomb detectors

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Helped move a lot of money out of various hotspots for various people.

He should be extradited to the various places he sold this BS too but his pals on the inside won't want him anywhere in their country laying out how much he had to bung back to them.

Unless of course they want to silence him permanently.

Note the operators were probably not in much danger because AQ and the Taliban probably pretty soon rumbled that it was complete b***ocks and they could drive a truckload of semtex up to a mosque without any worries. So he's probably responsible for several thousand of the Iraqis who've died in such bombs.

The complete sense of plausibility and lack of guilt suggest he's a psychopath. I wonder if he realizes just how strong the tradition of private vengeance over public justice is in some of those countries?

NASA boffins: Space 'scope JUST missed dead Cold War spy sat

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Looking at the ion drive and solar sail options

Are not quite as dumb as people think.

The collision takes place at both a point and a time in space.

Speedup (or slow down) the satellite just a little over the remaining 3 days and the miss would be as good as a mile.

4300Kg. IIRC sunlight can do 1x 10^-9N and lets say an ion drive at 10x 10^-3N. I'd guess you could have a 10 sq m PV array you could use as a sail (the other is folded up) so maybe 10 nN giving 2.3 x 10^-12 m/s-2 using distance traveled as S= 1/2 x acceleration x time^2 (about 260 k secs squared) gives a shift along track of about 77mm. OTOH the ion drive gives a position shift of 78604m.

If you have an ion drive on board able to run for the 3 days needed.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Bit surprised this satellite could re-fold its panels and antennae.

AFAIK most them unfurl as a one shot deal. Lots of pyrotechnics and springs.

I think the take away from this story is meant to be.

CARA is a very cost effective way to stop very expensive bits of hardware (mostly NASA's but possibly others) from getting destroyed by lumps of dead space crap.

Something the US Legislature might like to keep in mind come the annual funding round.

EFF report identifies which internet firms 'have your back' on data

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

It's a start.

I especially like Twitters stand on the French racist.

Privacy is not just for people you like.

I find such views repugnant (and he's French, so I might find him repugnant anyway, boom, boom).

UK.gov's love affair with ID cards: Curse or farce?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

And lets not forget the audit trail to see whose been looking at your NIR ID file.

I'm joking of course.

The UK plans were to have no such trail (after all it generates a lot of file writes on a population of 66million and rising).

OTOH Estonia (Charles Clarke was very keen on their system) does have.

But then again Estonia has less than 5 million people and seems to have started with a more or less clean sheet in government IT systems when the former soviet union packed up.

Like the Snoopers Charter. No need to ask, no need to know.

Now f**k off.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Northern Ireland

"I can see why you would think that Joe, but because of the Good Friday Agreement I can be Irish/British/Both if I like and the Goverment can't force me to be one of those that I don't want to be. Making someone get a ID Card would be forcing them to be recognised as British Citizen from what I remember the rules to be and therefore a no no."

Hilarius. I always wondered given NI was about the most highly surveilled piece of the UK how their ID card system worked should have taught many lessons about this plan.

But I rather suspect they simply ignored it.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: The sad thing about ID cards

"Is that they could be genuinely useful things that members of the public would want."

Name a few of them. It's your conjecture.

"it missed this point and bought a great deal of public mistrust in the process."

Most British people don't have nearly enough mistrust of their politicians and their alleged assistants, the civil service.

"Labour also missed another very vital point. We already have an optional, robust form of ID called the passport. "

How many times did the price rise during the ID Card scam programme? Quite a few, supposedly to cover the "increased production costs," but what looked remarkably like trying to fund the scheme under the (passport office) counter.

And let's not forget this was meant to be self financing

You didn't by any chance lose a load of contracting work when it finally folded, did you?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Bad ideas never die...

"So what are Passports and National insurance cards for?"

But they wouldn't give civil servants the elected government of the day the cradle-to-grave monitoring that was to come with the National Identity Register.

'Chinese' attack sucks secrets from US defence contractor

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Government con-tractor IT

Much like every other kind of corporate IT except taxpayers pay for it and more people could end up dead as a result of the leak.

Atoms star in ball-bothering boffins' Big Blue movie

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: How cold?

""a 2 ton scanning tunnelling microscope operating at -286 degrees Celsius"

are you sure about that temperature?"

Google units translator strikes again?

Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: It's worse than you think.

It would seem that Adobe are *literally* blind to the needs of anyone who is blind/partially sighted.

Is the IT industry short on Cobolers? This could be your lucky day

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

I read a book about CICS.

200 pages in I finally understood why it exists.

COBOL and CICS are to IT what Phobos and Deimos are to Mars.

Fear & Panic.

On a slightly lighter note. No comments on using these CV collecting job sites like monster. I'd guess the multiple CV plan works best with specific job agencies instead.

Red faces as Pentagon leases Chinese satellite

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Actually the simple ability to shut it off remotely is just as potentially effective.

When someone else provides your infrastructure you're not in full control.

Ever

"But their prices were so good," that's the CEO Nurenberg defense IIRC.

Fine. Just hope they don't get a call from Beijing telling them to pull the plug.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Of course it's nothing at all to do with Michigan having loads of aerospace suppliers :) Nor anything at all to do with the campaign contributions from defense \ aerospace \ telecoms companies he gets."

When I pay my dog to bark, I expect him to bark.

This looks like one of those situations where some of that "responsive space" the Pentagon has been talking about for the last decade or so might have come in handy. The idea of smallish short lived satellites to provide services over specific areas for short periods while the DoD was on tour.

Seems like all that produces was a load of Power Points.

Credit safety net ripped from under elder IT distie Northamber

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Obvious question is this good, bad or average *relative* to other companies in the sector.

My guess is not good.

And that £299m -> £101m is not the right direction. What's the good news? "This year our annual turnover reduced less than in any year in the previous decade."

Staying debt free is good to a point but loosing all those big names. WTF happened there?

Branson's SpaceShipTwo succeeds in first rocket-powered flight

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Note this is about more than flying a vehicle.

This is the first of a projected fleet. As such and problems in test flight have to feed back into the production line.

It also interfaces with the US domestic aircraft regulatory bodies. It's flying out of (basically) an airport, not a rocket launching range.

The hurdles this thing has to overcome are huge and frankly most are unlikely to be technical. SS2 is the pathfinder for this whole process.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Mach 1.2?

"Why not just build another Concord?"

Wrong flight profile. WK2/SS2 will hit M3 (for a couple of minutes) and give you (IIRC) about 15 mins weightlessness.

All jigs and fittings destroyed decades ago

About 1/3 the size of vehicles projected to be economic to run at this speed. Concorde made money for BA and Air France because they more or less got them for free. They met the running costs which were more than covered by the seat prices. That's fine if you own both the mfg and the airline but IRL you have to also sell them at a reasonable price as well.

Note As I've learned more of Concorde I've realised what a huge body of work was done to make it happen. It really was on a par with the Apollo programme and had to tackle quiet a few problems the SR71 had but side stepped with a near unlimited black budget. Both the airframe and the engine mfg had a lot of additional plans they wanted to incorporate starting with the 17th Concorde, but as they never got above 15 most were never tried (breaking the sound barrier and M2 cruise without after burner would have knocked down the fuel bill for a start).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Or perhaps he feels that having complete a detailed test flight programme (like normal aircraft do and which ELV's by their nature cannot ever) before paying passengers get on board the risk is as low as reasonably possible.

As always with Virgin and Branson, read the small print.

NATO proclaimed winner of Locked Shield online wargame

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

IMHO in the best war games the home team don't win.

They teach you more lessons.

Especially about acceptable ways to wage war and blind spots.

Which it would appear Mr Riper brilliantly exploited.

I hope some year (not too far from now) someone like him gets to lead Red team.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Paul Van Riper you say?

No relation to Col Jack D. Riper?

I think I'm learning to stop worrying and learning to love the bomb.

Another negative climate feedback: Warmer plants cool the planet

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Reading the Science Daily description and the Nature Geoscience preview is interesting

The emphasis is a bit different.

The preview

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1800.html

describes biosphere produced aerosols as contributing "roughly 50%" of cloud condensation nuclei across Europe.

Which sounds pretty significant.

SD OTOH says they counter 1% of global temperature rise but possibly 30% in rural, forested areas.

So I'd say the journal preview is a bit more positive than the science website.

But thumbs up for more field work (11 sites around the world) to capture actual data and hopefully incorporate it into the GCM's.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Albedo

"Like I said though, clouds in themselves are a multi-Phd subject and not accurately reduceable into nice little soundbytes like "the are cooling because they reflect the sun back into space.""

I think (like a lot of climate modelling) clouds are a case of "it depends."

High altitude they reflect sunlight away from the Earth. Lower down they reflect re-emitted IR back to the ground. And of course possibly the simplest question (to ask, not to answer) clouds of what? Water vapour, Sulphur compounds, soot etc.

Japan forgot data wipe on ship sold to Pyongyang

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

"General Association of Korean Residents in Japan"

Isn't that another description of the entry requirements for the Yakuza?

BTW Doesn't anyone else find NormNormNorm's comments a bit suspicious for someone whose a champion of the AGW theory?

Like someone's passed his PC and decided to have a bit of fun?

Cat ladies turned brand-squatters poke fun at religious right

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Purrfect

Amazed I came in late and it was not already taken.

Outsourced space trucks battle for US middleweight lifting title

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Space will soon no longer be the exclusive domain of governments!

"Arguably if the ISS was truly international, then why are the Chinese and probably soon the Indians going to have their own stations also flying overhead? If done properly anyone who has the capability to get stuff up there should be invited and incentivised to join the team."

All sorts of reasons could be in play but lets start with a willingness to operate with safety standards that other ISS partners would not accept and a desire to conduct experiments that they would prefer that other not see, for example in orbital surveillance.

There is also the simple concern that others would see what their state of the art in orbital tech was and they'd be embarrassed by it.

The fact I think the latter sounds crazy does not stop it happening.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: A bit one-sided

A dramatic difference in capabilities.

If it were true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_%28spacecraft%29

Delivered payload for Cygnus (which is the spacecraft Antares will carry) is 2000-2700Kg.

Even NASA won't pay quite that much for so little.

Perhaps you might like to try a little fact checking first.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Antares has been developed *soley* with NASA COTS funds

IIRC Wallops wanted to upgrade from a sounding rocket launch site to an orbital rocket launch site, ideally with multiple occupants and were willing to help Orbital build a pad (IE dump in a bag of cash).

Orbital also mentioned that their launches can be seen from Washington and would let the legislature know where their money was being spent.

Given that Orbital has been given an ISS supply contract before they had even got to preliminary design review this is money in the bank, but note those prices are already set. It's been suggested that they were specifically set "generously" to ensure Orbital would make a profit, and Spacex would have been happy with a considerably lower price per launch.

Wheather Orbital get a follow up contract after the 1st CRS one is another matter. They are also hoping to target the old Delta II payloads for NASA and anything on that size on the DoD EELV contract, although Spacex is pursuing that area with the F9 and F9H, which are much nearer Atlas V/Delta IV capability (and in the case of the F9H substantially above either).

And of course there's still no word on restarting production of the AJ26 either in the US or Russia, which is the ultimate limit on how many launches they can every make, while Spacex expect to be churning out Merlin 1d's for a long time to come.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Jobs for US workers

Because unlike jobs in McDonalds aerospace design and engineering jobs are a)Fairly well paid b)generate goods that people might come to America to buy.

" Service is the new manufacturing idiom."

Ever noticed when people talk about "strong" economies they tend to be ones that actually make stuff? The higher value the goods they make the stronger the economy is.

Now if you're talking about financial services that would be the people responsible for the almighty clusterf**k that flush the global economy into recession.

Or perhaps software. That's a nice stable high value industry, right? Except with the web your job gets off shored to China/Pakistan/Bangladesh/other 3rd world s***hole.

Perhaps you'd like to pop your ideas back in the oven for a bit before you bring them out. And before you ask I'll have fries with it as well.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: American jobs

" Isn't the tin can (MPLM) that Orbital intend to launch at the ISS made in Italy?"

True. In Turin.

" (Actually didn't the Italians manufacture a fair amount of the ISS?)""

Also true. About 50% of the ISS really is "international" as in not built in the USA.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Brits complaining about space?

"Isn't that a bit rich considering you can barely put a lego figure on a balloon?"

Black Arrow achieved orbit with an LV not much bigger than the V2, which managed about 300Km.

But yes, the Orbital system is apparently a method for diverting COTS money to some DoD pork barrel buddies, since Boeing has totally failed in their attempt to grab some."

For cargo Orbital took up the slack after Kistler (heavy with ex NASA good ol boys) failed to get much done. OTOH Boeing are still viewed as #2 in the human carrying CCiCAP programme as they got the other full award and aren't competing in cargo. Only Spacex decided to go vor both and leverage their cargo experience in developing (well adding various bits to) Dragon to carry humans. I was truly amazed no one else went for this approach.

"You missed the fact that the Antares first stage is basically Ukrainian designed and made, even ignoring the engines."

All true.

But the first rule of Government con-tracting is "All that is not ruled out is permitted."

While you (or I) might have thought one of the goals of COTS was to avoid having any foreign companies act as sole suppliers of (major) chunks of the LV (there simply is no engine as good as the AJ26 anywhere in or out of production) that is not written into the contract.

Still no danger as long as Orbital have drawn up a reasonably tight contract with their major suppliers in the US and abroad, right?

Bogus gov online test tells people on dole they're just SO employable

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Lot of +ve comments from AC's on this topic

Are you from monster.com, developers of this iteration of the Universal Jobmatch (which cannot in fact match a specific job ID if you give it one) or or the professional torturers staff motivators at behaviourlibrary.com?

Don't be shy.

After all you are proud of your handiwork, are you not?

I'm sure you also subscribe to the theory that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear as well.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Is this The Register...

"he Behavioural Insights Team seems to do good work - see, for example, the work they did on changing Council Tax demands to increase the response rate."

That's admirable.

Do they ever stare at goats also?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

The irony is so many of those *non* computer literate candidate are *exactly* right.

No drive.

Just want a job.

Do as they are told.

and (best of all) completely non threatening to the deeply incapable layers of UK management who live in terror of actually having to deal with a subordinate disagreeing with them or (nightmare) asking them for a long term plan to follow (requiring them to formulate such a plan in the first place).

Pity these "perfect" candidates will never be seen by managers who would think them perfect.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: so what?

" Try being out of work & signing on, they seem to use every trick in the book to try to make you feel shame if you don't manage to get a job within a couple of months."

Not surprisingly.

Some have very high quotas of claimants they have to "sanction"

Latest wheeze, making updating the online "notepad" for the Universal Orifice mandatory so they can monitor you automatically.

Bad news for job centre staff. I see a "reduction in force" coming real soon now.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: so what?

"we're bombarded by propaganda about how you should "feel no shame" for sitting on the dole while watching the big screen TV and getting season tickets to your favorite sports team. "

Really?

This would be on Sky New?

The Daily jailbait Mail?

The Jeremy Kyle Show perhaps?

The Germans are coming - Software AG borgs LongJump

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Headmaster

Long Jump has *not* been "borged"

The correct German word is "Assimilated."

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

"lets folk build applications without knowing how to code"

I've witnessed a few website like that already.

I'm pretty sure you don't need a very expensive software development package to do it either.

Hunt on NHS data sharing: Obviously we HAVE TO let people opt out

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

*nothing* is ever "blindingly obvious" to a Cabinet minister

Especially when it conflicts with what they (or rather whatever group of vermin senior civil servants) is advising them.

Announcement of 'churnalism detector' gets furiously churned

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Hilarius stuff.

Personally I'm rather excited by the mass media conglomerates mass rejection of the proposals.

It'll be interesting to see if the libel hit they take in later cases was worth the stand

BTW requiring a 2/3 majority of all MP's to change how a body is run makes it a damm sight tougher for any govt minster to change than slipping in the old "statutory instrument" into legislation.