Posts by John Smith 19

Things to think about for a backup system.

How many parts have to fail to render your media unreadable?

Can you remove the media from the box and stick it in another box and read it there?

Do you buy backup because it's cheap or because if your primary system f**ks up it's all that's standing between you and either personal or company bankruptcy?

Things *might* be under review.

http://www.bis.gov.uk/ukspaceagency/news-and-events/2013/Mar/access-to-space-what-will-the-uk-need-in-the-future

Don't get too excited. It's a study, not an investment programme. They are asking questions at this point.

The UK actually has 2 test ranges at MoD Arbopath (Cardogan bay) and South Uist (Outer Hebrides)

Always looks cool but probably more flexible to do this in simulation

Problem is if you decide (late in the day) you want to add some new kind of sensor you've got a lot of hardware to fiddle about with.

One of these ideas that appeals to lecturers but less so to their students, who get stuck with the upgrading.

Capitalism without bancruptcy is like religion without hell.

But as others have pointed out you moved your operation there for the low taxes and you weren't bothered by the infrastructure then.

I'd have to admit that a city that does not have good links even with its capital is not doing well.

That would be something like Birmingham not having a direct flight to London.

So were the i4i dmages against MS upheld?

Biggest patent infringement vedict upheld on appeal ever.

So every light bulb will have its own IP address?

Are you f**king kidding me?

Somebody need a few whacks with the clue stick.

So far "regualtion" has been down to who can afford a libel case to bring them to heel.

That's not regulation as I understand it.

And I think protecting it by Royal Charter, so no Minister can unilaterally start fiddling with faster than you can say "Statutory instrument" is a useful move.

Here's the thing. You can lay most of the blame at Rupert Murdoch's New International operation and its corrupting influence on media, the Police and politicians. But no one stopped (or tried) to stop it happening.

Now we'll see how this works out. Maybe most outlets will simply not sign up and take their chances with the aggravated libel damages. You did it to yourselves.

Odd there have been no other open source load sharing libraries before.

Hopefully this could go much further.

The actual comparison should be with Plastic Logic

They have spunked invested something like an order of magnitude more cash in this area to get (apparently) less result.

For those who don't get what the big deal is over thin film or thick film technology.

1)Flexible, not brittle substrates (unlike both) 2) Transistors mfg in situ (unlike thick film) 3)Significantly safer materials 4)Designed for very high volume production and disposable use 5) Typically mfg temperatures in the low 100s of C, rather than the 700-900c firing temps of hybrids. 6)Much lower clock frequencies than thick film (but above what I know of the SoA for thin film).

Interestingly they also seem to working on making an on substrate clock. This is very tricky but the ability to deliver a high quality clock without a separate quartz chip is a major step forward.

Home Office -> Root of most evil?

ID cards

Spy-on-the-internet

Border Agency

I've heard stories of BA PC's taking 30 mins to boot. But surely this is a UL?

I propose Operation Clean Sweep.

Round up the management staff

Nuke from orbit.

Ah SARTRE

Proving that in future hell will be other people.

what is the HIV growth rate in the thrid world these days?

High IIRC.

I think this is an excellent idea. Making it work is going to be tricky but the payoff is huge.

HIV/AIDS and other STDs are a huge burden and barrier methods are the only real way that this is going to be stopped. It's sad someone gets these diseases and they cannot be cured but why should their wives/mistreses/prostitutes pay for their stupidity.

It'll be interesting if the get static from the swivel eyed loons religious right in America for this.

Thumbs up for working on a big issue that the US govt probably won't touch.

Very interesting. Surprising people have not looked into this before

Historically there has been the properties of the permeability permittivity (useful for capacitor design) of free space and the (derived) impedance of free.

All have measurable values but no one knew why they had those values (it's one of those "stop asking stupid questions, memorize the values and get back to work" conversations).

Given that it's been know the vacuum is subject to quantum fluctuations for decades it's surprising no one seems to calculated the implication what happens if a photon hits one (or more?) of these particles in transit. Just because they don't stay around for long does not mean that they are not "real" while they are here.

Even more amazing laser technology is at (or close) to being able to measure this effect.

Note that practically it would not change much. We would have to change the definition of the speed of a light in a vacuum to mean a vacuum with no virtual particles (which AFAIK is a complete abstraction).

Now if the rate and density of virtual particles remains constant then this just means you need to compute the speed of light slow down but if either varies then things could get muchmore interesting.

BTW GPS propagation already corrects for some quantum effects so this could improve navigation accuracy, especially over long distances or high speeds (but probably nothing moving slower than a serious fraction of the speed of light or ranges of several AU).

Thumbs up for picking up the ball and running with this.

A few points

Like It's always good to have some kind of upper or lower limit for an algorithm so you can stop wasting time looking for better (because there isn't one) but it's good to revisit those boundaries to confirm they really are boundaries.

And in this case they are not.

Note this limit applies to single layer PV cells. If you stack 2 or more different sets of semiconductors you can (so far) hit 43% total. But they are hellishly expensive (built for comm sat use).

How practical this research is remains doubtful. Upside is you push the maximum limit on a single layer PV. Down side is you add tricky nanowire fabrication (UHV chamber needed?) and I'm not clear if the spacing between the wires writes off that area of the cell for light collection. Incidentally resonance

implies an object with electrical dimensions close to the exciting photon, which suggests this is a narrow band improvement. Of course if that narrow band is at the peak solar wavelength (around 500nm, unfortunately Silicons band gap is around 1100nm) that could be quite a useful difference.

Every f**king time its the random number generator.

This IIRC is not the first time some network protocol relied on a number being "random" and it turned out it was not.

My instinct is despite it being an active research topic since the 1950s implementing the research is demanding and easily FUBAR'd.

Let me suggest that a)If you're implementing one and you do some tricky possibly non portable, possibly inefficient (but essential to algorithm correctness) thing you document it.

In the space shuttle flight software code they called these "alibis." If it's good enough for maintaining life threatening computer code it's good enough for you.

If you're reading it don't change it unless you really understand what's going on.

So voda run adult entertainment companies.

I did not know this.

Because if they don't this sounds like some veryh creative interpretation of the wording of the Ofcomm ruling.

And so it begins...

The day the Earth fights back

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Is that rich melodic music I hear?.......

This is a *huge* step forward.

Although it sounds like there is still a lot of potential speed up to be had in the software architecture if 90% of the theoretical capability has not been used yet.

Thumbs up for move the idea of the "robot butler" (or for the slightly liess self indulgent a robot nurse) just a little step closer.

Of course that still leaves the mechanical elements.

Clothes recognition. Perhaps.

Pick up, iron and hang clothes on a hanger in your wardrobe. fuggeddaboutit (for now).