* Posts by John Smith 19

16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

WTF is... Weightless?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Deja-vu all over again

"My first job 25years ago was at a Philips spinout that was going to connect all your household appliances (or at least all the Philips ones) with a network that ran over mains wiring."

Neatly illustrating the proprietary lockin angle.

"After all the bold visions of your washing machine talking to your cooker to find out what you had spilled on younr shirt, the only non-laughable application anybody could come up with was having everything sync its clock correctly ever spring/autumn"

Neatly illustrating the "What do we use it for?" angle.

M2M is tricky because it takes humans out of the loop. So it has to be something people want to do but may be difficult for a human to keep up (maintaining safe car separation at the exact safe stopping distance for the vehicle speed and road conditions) in a way people are comfortable with.

How about a smoke alarm that shuts down all gas and electrical appliances (or their sockets) in the room its in when it detects smoke? Burglar alarm warns other appliances the property is now vacant so the power shower you left on shuts off. How about cars that automatically slow down to allow buses to pull out or traffic lights that tell vehicles their state and how long till their next change. Just an advisory but the potential effects on average road speed (and fuel consumption) could be huge.

The only actual M2M applications I'm aware of are things like industrial machinery monitoring, where sensors detect excess wear and book service appointments most spectacularly jet engines on airliners. Likewise vending machines reporting they have run out of brand X cans (eliminating 1 driver and their vehicle can deliver big savings over a year).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

How does this differ from the "Neuron" chip in everything concept.

I'm not sure.

The idea of "stuff" sharing various useful facts with other devices in the immediate vicinity has always sounded useful but the jokers have always been a)Proprietary lockin. I want whatever stuff I buy to work with the stuff I already got regardless of brand. b) What stuff is be being shared?

It'll be intriguing to see if this gets traction. A few big wins could move this form "interesting idea" up to "We've got to design this into our next mobile/satnav/cooker/doorbell/whatever.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

This might clarify things

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7L3iSZsNpY

First Google wants to know all about you, now it wants a RING on your finger

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Big Brother

Re: Let them have one finger...

"..and they will take your whole hand."

For starters.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: @John Smith 19 (was: Rev 13:16-17 a bit closer?)

"Read the original Koine Greek version of Revelation, and it's painfully obvious that it's the rantings of a brain damaged by syphilis "

I think I'll have to take your word on that one.

Mind you a dose of incurable syphilis has inspired many a piece of religious and philosophical thought.

Nietzsche is the obvious one but I'm sure there are a few more.

I'd also bet a few of the parables of various holy books could also sound like the come down from an almighty bender. Who hasn't "talked to god on the white telephone" on occasion?

"Thank gawd/ess for antibiotics, no?"

True but in these dangerous times I never go in without a raincoat on.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

Re: Rev 13:16-17 a bit closer?

"(16) It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, (17) so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name"

I've often wondered if shrooms grow in the Middle East.

I think they probably do.

But let Google into my personal business. F**k off.

Engineers are cold and dead inside, research shows

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Does anyone remember Richard Feymans comments on psychologists in an interview?

He'd found this paper that analysed all sorts of ways rat experiments could be biased. He thought this an excellent example of proper science. Finding out all the pitfalls that could contaminate your results for this type of experiment.

Then he looked at how frequently it had been cited to see how often psychologists used its findings.

They didn't.

He was unimpressed and concluded that if you don't use proper scientific methods to evaluate the data (including factoring out all the known biases) you're not really doing science at all.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: It doesn't add up.

"The psychology students probably decided to compute the stats themselves. Nuff said!"

The weapon of choice for the head hunting types is SPSS "Statistics Package for the Social Sciences"

Basically what you used before spreadsheets were available.

Hopefully it's not quite as ghastly as it was when I used it.

But I doubt it.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Engineers often simply lack understanding of emotional situations

" comparable in empathy to either cockroaches or starving wolves, or some evil genetic hybrid, in fact they possibly were some kind of evil genetic hybrid."

A cockwolf?

A wolfcock?

Scary either way.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Terminator

"By contrast the medical students were warm and bursting with empathy and love"

Probably 1st years.

This weakness will be corrected in due course.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: I'll

""I dont want to listen to what you watched last weekend , or the latest ****ing football scores, I'm not ****ing interested in how many woman you shagged or ****ing fast your stupid iPhone is.. I'm here to solve problems and I dont ****ing well need your useless ****ing prattle putting me off, now **** off and bother someone who ****ing cares""

You're friend is far too emotional.

A simple STFU would have sufficed.

It's what I would have said.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Childcatcher

Re: Psychologists as a measure of normal?

"Here's a hint - 95% of the kids won't be engineers, scientists or mathematicians, but you still have to teach them. One of your staff at least is an emotional mess, one or two may not really like children. Explain how you will use your knowledge of integration by parts to get the GCSE results up."

Didn't you miss the one whose a bit too fond of the kids.

TOTC because well that's sort of the problem.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Scratch a cynic you will usually find

A disillusioned romantic.

They've measured people's rhetoric against their deeds and found them deeply lacking.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Holmes

Am I bothered?

Is this my bothered face?

Sounds like a candidate for this years (Ig)Nobel prize.

Germany's RTL pulls free-to-air channels off terrestrial TV

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

A schedule is something to build around.

A nominal time allows people to make decisions and gives advertisers a nominal demographic that they are looking for.

Otherwise how would find what shows you want to watch?

Choose a channel? They don't exist anymore.

Choose a time? But that's become irrelevant.

And have it delivered by a cable dedicated to doing this . WTF?

There's a reason that telephones were not developed as radio systems and television was not first delivered to subscribers by land lines.

One works better point to point, one works better 1 to many. While people's use of telephone services has changed to take advantage of mobile services has television use really changed that much to justify that bandwidth?

Another new asteroid-mining firm: 'First commercial space fleet'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: The race is on!

"Theres gold in them thar ills"

It's true that pills will pay your bills.

But the knife sets you up for life.

We trust computers to fly jets... why not trust them with our petabytes?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Indeed..

"But it won't happen - why? Because the senior management only look at the single figure of cost and despite the fact that they are supposed to be taking a strategic view are so myopic that they make Mr. Magoo look like Hawkeye."

Sounds likely.

I'd love to add up the cost of every change order and bug fix a piece of outsourced software costs over it's lifetime.

With my software-houses-are-machines-for-producing-sofware-faults hat on I'll guess eyewatering relative to the original project cost.

Global mercury ban to hit electronics, plastics, power prices

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"What's really fun though is that the biggest mercury emitter in the US is forest fires......guess we'll be banning them as well."

I remember cremating people is meant to be responsible for 25% of the Mercury in the environment but I can't remember if its the top cause.

But I do believe the ban on incandescents and the common shift to CFD will increase the Mercury level unless the recycling chain is as comprehensive as it is for car and truck batteries.

Just my 2 centimes.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: But Mercury is so good for you, and the environment.

Sponsored by the International Mercury Mining Association

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Fluorescents

"In the link to Osram they had researched alternatives to mercury like xenon for generating UV in fluorescents but the energy efficiency was much lower than mercury, although doubtless much better than hot wires."

There are other low melting point metals and at least one that melts at near room temperature.

Is it just price that stops them being used or are they as unhealthy? I'm thinking of things like Indium and Indium/Gallium alloys.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Fluorescents

"I wasn't aware that there was any kind of fluorescent bulb that didn't use mercury. They all need a UV emitter and there aren't many choices."

I joked regarding wind power this would be much greater threat to the environment (the massively increased use of them with what seems like poor disposal arrangements) than any number of gas powered generating stations.

Looks like I was right.

As chemist pointed out the individual quantity is in the mg range but the numbers are in use are going to be in the billions, (EU population c500m, 4-8 lamps a dwelling).

I think florescents without Mercury are stuffed.

Kerching go the lamp mfgs as they stiff the people for yet another new lamp tech.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Just like lead

"I only drink rainwater naturally, so no commie heavy metals in the groundwater to sap and impurify all of my precious bodily fluids."

Something tells me this strategy may end badly.

Fujitsu Tech Solutions boss: I am an industry 'insurgent'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

But the really important question has been left unanswered.

What can you offer your top Sales reps to drive?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Clearly need to lubricate the sales channel better.

I know. It's Friday.

Time to be gone.

Microsoft's ARM blunder: 7 reasons why Windows RT was DOA

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: designed to convince users an ARM cannot run a "real" OS

"The Office VBA engine is based on VB6, which compiles to x86 "

So either the toolchain cannot support other processors or no one knows how to do so. Either show a real contempt for any users not running on Windows.

As for macros they are the reason Excel was once described as the most common programming language in the world. Because it allowed accountants to program without realising they were.

Wheather they should be used to construct complex financial models of various things is debatable they have certainly been in the past.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: It's all about the long term strategy

voted up for being loathsomely accurate, not for being liked.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Down

Would appear to be designed to convince users an ARM cannot run a "real" OS

That's why you need the "Pro" version.

This feels like another part of the ongoing MS/Intel relationship. The Micky & Mallory Knox of the IT world.

However should someone succeed in a reasonable jailbreak of the Surface you have a quite nice piece of hardware to act as a Linux host.

And quite a few should be on eBay by then as their current OS design is rubbish.

What I simply don't get is why MS insist on making it macro incompatible with their desktop version.

It's nowhere near the bare metal and most of it does not even address the screen.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: So the conclusion is...

"I do favour Intel winning out in the end just because of their manufacturing capabilities will remain 1-2 generations further than anyone else "

Perhaps in your universe mr AC.

" which means they can manufacture more power efficient CPUs negating any advantages a RISC (ARM) vs CISC (Intel) architecture may have"

But Mr AC if Intel have had that "more power efficient" ability enabled by their technology lead why have they never used it?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: If I had to buy a tablet, I'd buy a Surface before an iPad or Android.

"If it comes with Office then its about 10X as useful as an iPad or any Android tablet."

How about if it's not real office but some half assed hybrid that can't handle macros.

This is the strategy MS pursued when they advertised Office for Palmtops.

It looked compatible.

But it wasn't.

NASA sends Mona Lisa into space by LASER

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: More detail on the error budget?

"The narrow beam spread of a laser would give much better energy density on the target but would make steering and pointing more difficult."

It's a subject JPL have given much thought to.

I think the phrase "nanorad pointing" will give some idea of their work.

You're right a lot of the errors are likely to be in the last 100km or so as all that air turbulence leads to the beam "wobbling" about. Adaptive optics or serious post reception processing are probably involved.

Brits' privates furtled in TWO-THIRDS of UK fraud cases

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Oh really.

"You have to tell adults to keep their business to themselves! Kids have a better idea than their parents"

Unless they have a Facebook account, in which case they will tell you anything

Ah the facebook fools of today are the identity theft victims of tomorrow.

Smarm-bot Siri seeks side-splitting script-writer for charm transplant

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Given this thing is a phone voice recognition / response makes a lot of sense

But computer generation of viable dialogue is still a research topic.

So I guess it's less about "writing" dialogue as setting various weightings on random variable and identifying which ones define someone's vocal "personality"

If done properly this is not quite as simple as it sounds.

UK.gov told to get a brain in wake of £1bn IT deals collapse

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Devil's advocate

IIRC the usual government IT project overrun is 3x.

That's 300%, which is why % don't make a lot of sense in central IT overspend.

John Smith 19 Gold badge

The UK civil service is somewhat like al qaeda

It's not really centralized.

Every department (and possibly agencies) has their own payroll.

It's all about the "We are so special no one can handle our special needs."

I think the idea of a Civil Service wide software house is brilliant, but it would be pretty big, given the huge range of platforms, development languages, operating systems etc.

I'd love to find out how things that are run Civil Service wide (I'm pretty sure some do exist, but I'm not sure what they are) were established and maintain ongoing support (IE avoid "departmental capture").

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Devil's advocate

IIRC the usual government IT project overrun is 3x.

That's 00%, which is why % don't make a lot of sense in central IT overspend.

ESA, NASA agree on Orion module supply

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Tell me something

"So if we had told the failing banks to go fuck themselves we could have had SEVEN Apollo program equivalents and probably be colonising the asteroid belt by now? I am so glad we have our priorities right."

IIRC without inflation adjustment the bank bailout (for that year) was equal to the total NASA budget for the last fifty years.

Wheather you think that's a bargain of space research or a ridiculous amount of money spent on a bunch of arrogant ingrates who've colossal f***up has been well rewarded (so they will probably do it again) I'll leave to others to decide.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: But this ESA product doesn't need to survive reentry...

Every previous support module has been jettisoned prior to CM separation and reentry.

That includes the Dragon "trunk."

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: For all of you that felt Orion was going to LEO & ISS...

" There were cracks (and it needs improvement to have no more cracks). "

The point is Apollo managed to build their capsules without cracking during mfg.

"The Apollo capsules all had such cracks after reentry."

Reentry is reputed to be somewhat stressful on hardware.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: "presuming the project isn’t budget-cut to death"

"Plus the first time they pressure-tested the capsule at KSC, it cracked with a loud bang. "

I don't think I've ever heard of this happening before. Main stage tanks yes, capsules no.

Machined stiffener plates have been in use since the 1960's, when they were invented by Douglas.

There is a NASA design handbook on the subject

And an update on how to improve the safety factor.

And modern methods of FEA allow much better prediction on behaviour.

So all in all a bit surprsing.

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"The capsule side of things we can already do(jules vern)"

Wrong. All ATV's burn up on reentry.

ESA has already done re-entry.

Look up the ARD programme.

ESA does have more of a problem with life support.,

Why no one wants to Joyn GSMA's Skype-killing expedition

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

why should I only be able to talk to people to people who are signed up to MS

Now they own Skype.

Just a thought.

US general: Beware of Iran's Revolutionary Cyber-Guard

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Stop

CO of cyber weapons command seek worthy opponent for mutual improvement of funding.

After all we've hit them with a targeted cyber attack.

They'd have to be saints not to retaliate rather than just stay defensive.

At least he can hope they will.

Cynical you bet.

Paging Dr Evil: Philips medical device control kit 'easily hacked'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Down

"Current Xper IM systems do not use this version of software"

Because of course medical organisations always update their software to the latest version.

Yeah right.

Obama calls for study into games ‘n’ guns link

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: White House Accused of Lateral Thinking

"American right wing groups have a long history of rejecting science or experts in any field and being damn proud of it."

Including (but not limited to) evolution.

Soot forces temperatures more than thought: AGU

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: Solutions in the 3rd world

Wasn't that one of about 40 areas that Nature reported as "low hanging fruit"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/06/warming_low_hanging_fruit/

Here we go again: New NHS patient database plan sets off alarm bells

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

*Where* is this "cloud?"

In the UK?

Ireland?

Mainland Europe

The United States.

Israel.

Because by EU data protection all of the have equivalent data protection.

Including the home of the PATRIOT ACT.

I smell the DoH data fetishists, hence the icon.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Ambulances

"have an equivalent of France's "Carte Vitale" scanned, and the GP has immediate access to my records, including prescription history, so they can re-issue a prescription for example. "

Very commendable.

That is not what is being proposed.

It's too human scale for the DoH bureaucrats.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: Here is what happens when you try to opt out......

"She has not been "denied access to a GP". She won't register with a GP unless that GP will opt her out of proactive health mailings, and no GP is able to do that. "

So the "opt-out" clause is meaningless in the NHS.

The process being with a lie.

Not a good way to build trust, is it?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: and these days that bracelet could contains USB storage

"Last time round a justification for the national database was to prevent multiple x-rays being taken by each hospital that someone with complex problems,"

IIRC the capture and storage of X-rays digitally was one of the jewels of the almight cluster**ck that was the NHS PfIT. That is already taken care of.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

" Instead, they defined a standard for the operation and interaction of domain name servers. Anyone could set up a server as long as it complied with the standard, resulting in a gloriously simple and scalable distributed database. "

In fact the internet is a family of standards designed to share date between wildly differing computers back when there were many more different systems (a dozen operating systems at least in widespread use).

People see the WWW and think they are seeing the internet. They are wrong.