* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

US defence biz fined for busting China arms embargo

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: One law for corporations...

You seem to presume that the members of your govt and President are in charge of your government. Yet the US has a system of governance that effectively prevents that.

You have a highly homogenous group of politicians (Forget gender and ethnicity loot at their wealth, their inherit wealth and their employment) with what appears to be a very high level of autonomy and an agenda which usually starts "Get enough cash to get re-elected (by all means necessary)."

So in reality the President is "in charge" as much as his world view aligns with theirs. "W" did real well on this basis. How history will judge him is another matter.

Perhaps they should change the title from "President" to "Cat herder in chief"

Cynical? Moi?

Yes that is a copy of "Take back your government" sticking out of my pack.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: fine should have been much larger to hammer home the stupidity of the people in control.

"IMHO, the `fine` should be PERMANENT blacklisting of the affected companies from EVER getting any government contracts; and any existing ones revoked."

1 word.

Consolidation. There are not enough separate govt con-tractors *left* to ditch one and go with another. USG has created a situation where there many defense item are (involuntarily for them) *sole* source.

"If those ID10Ts in Washington DC had any brains (and I seriously doubt that many do), if any company is found violating ITAR regulations, that should be automatic grounds for revoking the contract - no notice required."

One of the key features of doing business with USG is they can cancel *any* contract unilaterally *without* compensation. Most other governments do not.

The billions govt con-tractors (I'd call any business that gets >50% of its revenue as a con-tractor) on "managing" their relationship with USG (or more likely the various Senators and Congresspeople on the relevant committees) is a key distinguishing feature of this sort of business.

"Now, wait a minute, I wonder if any of these incidents occurred AFTER the invasion of Iraq/Afghanistan? Because, that would mean that since we are 'at war'; and treason during wartime is a capital offense; those involved could be executed?"

Don't be silly.

Execution is for the little people.

Patent trolling cost the US $29bn in 2011

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Patents for encouraging innovation"

Actually that is *exactly* the idea.

You, Mr lone inventor, have just spent a decade in your basement making something *everyone* thought impossible work.

Patents give the *possibility* of turning your ideas into (perhaps) serious cash.

You might like to look into the subject a little more carefully.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

It's called "Suing for peace" and it's basically a way for lawyers to make money.

A nice description is given in the William Goldman book "Edged Weapons."

The term "Non Practicing Entity" is interesting.

Perhaps "patent parasite" is a more descriptive term for them?

However in IP generally are media companies NPE's or more "active" entities?

Their artists make the IP, *but* OTOH they do *actively* supply services to assist them turn an idea into a product. It could range from finding an artist to record it to setting up venue bookings, PR interviews or professional studio time (which I gather is pretty expensive).

You can guess what's on the Kindle in my pocket.

Join the gov consultation on net porn ... and have your identity revealed

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

The infomation the CCDP will collect will be *much* more securely held.

After all if PI's *allegedly* working for News International publications (since shut down) could get hold of it *without* needing to pay them off how would they supplement their incomes? UK civil service pay is not that generous and the cost of living in Cheltenham is shocking.

No way will *anyone* have copy or search privileges to the *whole* database and dump it to say a Lady Gaga CD for example.

That would just be stupid.

Teleconferencing 'shifts hundreds of NHS bed-blockers out the door'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Pint

Thats a 20:1 payback.Which sounds quite good.

Note

1) It's "lowest common denominator" tech. It just *works* and that beats the s**t out of some whizz bang system that's still in design after 2 yrs because all the groups involved cannot agree on the screen layout or some other stupid s**t. I'm convinced the larger the group, the lower the collective IQ.

2) It's a process *pattern* It could (and IMHO *should*) be used throughout the NHS. But there are *many* cases like this in the public sector (and I'd guess a few in the private) which require planning the actions of multiple stakeholders (I know I must lay off those management books) . Prisoner release anyone? Imagine every inmate coming straight out the jail into suitable transport (to the airport in the case of foreign crims), substance abuse counseling or just the nearest job centre.

3)It's people being interested in doing a better job rather than some top down IT plan. And I'll bet it was quite a job to get them to (virtually) sit down and do this to begin with.

4) It can be a prototype if they do decide to go some kind of more automated system (I sort of hope they don't).

BTW this problem seems to be a bit like that of scheduling lawyers into courthouses which IIRC has been under development (over several attempts) for about the last 10-15 years.

Human beings doing their job 1 Mindless bureaucratic drones 0

We salute you.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: wonderful

"But this is really a sticking plaster on the wider problem.. a properly thought out system and supporting process for patient records and management, that's unified for all hospitals.."

A sort of "National Programme for NHS IT"

What could possibly go wrong with such a notion?

Do you work in IT at RBS? Or at the next place to get hit ...?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

"Interesting thought. Consider your comment "understand the obscenely complex ways of ancient multi-layered systems". I've worked for a number of Banks, Pensions Providers and other non-FS businesses, and I can honestly say they are all getting MORE obscenely complex. Banking may have been complex before its time, but IT is getting more complex across the board."

Well duh.

IT is a support service and bank support service managers love to do 2 things.

Save money

Deliver the same level of f**kups (at this cheaper price) that the old system does. They'd like less but they know the predators up the food chain won't eat them if it's at least as good.

So how do you do this?

Well don't *redevelop* stuff that already works. That's a complete waste of money (I know better but I've seen systems whose core code ran on emulation about 4 layers deep. Yes it was a bank and no it had never failed since the early 60s)

Pull in other data from some other systems (on different hardware platforms & OSes) synch it all up, add in a (small) bit of new code and you have a whole new financial instrument for the front office to to play with.

Banks buy *lots* of middleware.

In *theory* the smarter move is to rationalize the data, clean out the 6 decades of cruft then upload to some super duper package so the support costs are spread across *all* package customers.

Making that work in one of the UK high street banks will probably take *huge* bespoking of any package up to the job (I guess SAP has an app module for that 'cause they seem to have one for everything else) and the selective assassination of certain senior staff (not advocating it you understand, just saying things might go a bit smoother if some of the obstacles to "progress" were greased out of the way).

Otherwise a first rate piece on how to survive the eternal battle between doing a piece of work you can be proud of while avoiding becoming the next prey animal for the backstabbing PoS who supervises you without resorting to lethal force.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

I smell some payback

<- Who they always call on to fix things when it turns pear shaped.

From the article he's met a few of these management types (not sure where the nearest golf course to BH is but not far by Merc S class) and not been too impressed when they're under pressure.

Head hunters live and die by their records

Amount of meat we eat will barely affect future climate change

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Why eat meat when you can eat vegitarians.

Low body fat, plenty of prime cuts for the freezer.

This could be a winner.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So that's why climate modellers assume *doubling* CO2

Because that's what they *expect* to happen.

It's fair that it's to say that *no* single policy change/law/investment/clever hack would solve this problem.

But 14ppm for a Draconian lifestyle change across the world. I don't think so.

But what about the low hanging fruit. of reduce *other* atmospheric pollutants as described in other papers listed in El Reg? Better stoves, toilets that collect biomass, Methane reducing diets for cows.

As for population changes better sanitation (fewer diseases), better healthcare (lower infant mortality) and better state support (don't need to breed your own care staff).

A planet of 7 billion people on starvation level resources is likely to be a desperate place to be.

A planet of 7 billion well educated well fed individual could advance further and faster than any civilization in history.

To the stars or the graveyard.

What would you rather have?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: Who are the "western mans" anyway?

Crikey. Actual numbers and a quoted source.

+1

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: Only one number that really matters

"I'm actually all for the government incentives. There are a lot of people out there who just see children as a way to get extra money from the government. "

With the proviso of course that this is in *developed* countries with govt run *welfare* systems (and typically *falling* overall birth rates).

While in the *developing* world you'll die without someone to look after you if your old age (which won't be what Westerners consider "old").

US nuke lab goes back for BlueGene/Q seconds

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Most of those problems have applications *inside* the firewall as well.

Where for example would you find metals being subjected to millions of atmospheres of pressure so they behave like a fluid?

High intensity laser exposure is always handy if your nuke might be facing a future energy weapon defense system.

In fact laser fusion started as a way of simulating conditions inside a bomb without needing a nuclear weapons test in the first place.

The dark matter search and HIV family tree sound like the only *truly* civilian apps.

No need to comply with data laws if it's too difficult - EU ministers

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Down

Note the UK position

"Oh it's too difficult to get people to consent"

But not too difficult to collect all comms data about every phone call, text message, IM, email and web site visited.

I smell the rank odour of the UK Home Office.

Wraps come off UK super-snooper draft plans

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

£500m -£620m a year *benefits* in the same period?

WTF is this coming from?

And seriously if its real time collection and *storage* of this data where's that factored in?

Cabinet Office promises to challenge 'culture of secrecy' on IT projects

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Including the CCDP?

The only figure *ever* give out on it's predecessor was £12Bn for a *centralised* database.

Making it the biggest UK govt IT programme ever *before* cost overruns (remmber the NHS IT project *started* at c£4Bn)

Does anyone doubt it's successor will be on *that* much a smaller scale?

The £1.8Bn given to the ISP's over 10 years will be *nothing* to the overall cost of a secret programme which will have little or no *effective* oversight.

Reborn UK internet super-snooper charter to be unveiled today

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

£2Bn to watch 2000 suspects?

That of course is what the ISP's are being *paid*, not what the hardware at GCHQ (and their staff and development costs) will cost.

That was the number of suspects that the head of MI5 said they were watching.

So £1m/suspect.

to save about 61 lives over the last 10 years of UK terrorist incidents.

Britards, not all your MP's are members of the govt and many who are know f***all about what is about to happen. This is driven by a small group of senior (and ex-senior) civil servants currently lurking in the Home Office with links to the various British organs of state security.

Fire up that printer and explain 1) It won't work 2) It treats *everyone* as a criminal (who just hasn't committed a crime yet, and might never commit one) 3) RIPA has shown how access will widen and severity of a case which allow access will fall (terrorism is the excuse, but most of the people who will, and *should* be terrorised, will be the British people).

Remember that this monstrosity, like ID cards, was needed to fight the IRA. WTF is it needed now?

Purdue researchers add ‘wakelock’ cleanup to phone power research

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: Sly

Substitute apps that fill up disk space and slow down your processor and you have a substantial part of the MS marketing plan.

It's worked for decades. Why change a good thing (for them).

Smart meters are 'massive surveillance' tech - privacy supremo

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

There are 3 problems here

Big utility companies like *big* gobs of generating capacity (which takes big gobs of cash).

The choice of solution is not simple, it's *simplistic* to the point of stupidity.

Govt (who mandated smart meters in the UK due to a nice little earner being passed to a peer in the Lords IIRC) because they know the "market" has not solved the problem (and they can't seem to alter the regulations to *make* it solve the problem, which is sort of the point of being able to change the regs in the first place).

There *might* be ways around this. To square this particular circle you need a) better renewables (IE more *predictable* sources) which can be rolled out in *small* units that smaller groups can (just about) afford. I'm thinking groups of 10-20 houses b) a legal and financial framework that will support *lots* of smaller generators (which *supposedly* the UK now has).

I'm thinking micro hydro, anaerobic digestion and low temp geothermal. None are cheap (at the moment) but all should be eligible for feed in tariff support and when up and running *all* are likely to be more *secure* when up and running than *any* wind or solar system. I'd guess the order would be low temp geothermal(single borehole house heating systems with down hole heat exchangers have been running since the 1930's in parts of the US mid West)/anaerobic digestion (human bowels are fairly predictable) and micro hydro (could freeze or hit low head in a drought) in terms of ongoing monitoring and attention.

I'm fond of geothermal as the studies at Reading U in the 70s suggests a single borehole would be good for 500-1000 Kw. until the radioactive decay heat wore out (it's only good for a few million years) but you're looking at a 2Km hole in a built up area as opposed to the original 900m North Sea boreholes.

What's actually needed is (in IT terms) a systems integrator to drill hole (or water wheels or digestor) /source & supply hardware/set up deal with electricity market. Engineering a drilling rig the size of one of those mini excavators (that can get through a doorway) is likely to be non trivial.

The downside. Someone in the group gets an extra shed in their garden, and there will be ongoing replacement costs every 20-30 years shared between all homeowners (economies of scale should make them fall in *real* terms over that time).

The upside. 50-100Kw of electricity 24/7/ to use or sell for (roughly) the next 10 000 centuries.

No grid connection -> no excuse to need a meter.

The question is does anyone have the combination of cash, skills and vision to form such a company in the UK?

All of Europe's data in US servers? We're OK with that - EC bod

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

EU commission <> EU Parliament

For non European readers.

The "Commission" is the unelected group that basically runs the EU Civil Service.

They appear to have learned many important lessons from studying the British Civil Service.

Most of them bad.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: There are a lot of differences between EU and American rules.

"cos Pres Obama said so."

Err I think you'll find the PATRIOT (It is an acronym) Act was brought in under "W".

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

He is joking right?

No, she is not.

*officially* US (and Israeli) data protection is as robust as the rest of Europe.

Look it up.

Pint-size gizmo shoots X-RAY LASER for first time

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

"Desktop" X-ray lasers have been around for a while.

And El Reg has covered one or two of them.

However the "desktop" has been the size of a small warehouse and usually worked by pumping a large current through a hollow fibre filled with gas. Strictly a one shot system.

This looks a lot smaller and capable of *continuous* operation

Not likely to be very efficient in terms of wall socket power conversion (electricity -> 500 Mid IR photons -> 1 high energy photon).

Flexible Willow glass displays thin and curvy gadget future

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Oops. Corning *do* have their own glass process

It works by filling a trough (or "isopipe" as they call it) which has a triangular cross section tapering to a point at the bottom. When over filled the contents form a sheet dripping down each side. The sheets merge to give the final result.

The key benefit is that the inner and outer faces of the new sheet have *never* been in contact with anything (even Tin) and their smoothness can be very good and the sheet can be stretched further.

Some of their patents suggest the isopipe is machined out of Silcon Nitride or Carbide (which needs to made in a low Oxygen environment) then surface oxidized to form a silica outer layer to reduce contamination even further.

It's not very well explained in the article and I'd never heard of it *ever* before. Apparently it was developed in the late 60s to make car windscreens. Other than not being the Pilkington process I'm not sure what benefits it would have bought to that application.

My bad

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: Vidoe long on pretty, short on information.

"I would have thought that most combinations of steel and modern ceramics would be good to beyond 500 C"

And how many of those substrates are routinely transparent?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Vidoe long on pretty, short on information.

BTW the "spilling out of a trough" is basically the Pilkington process where the glass floats on molten tin.

However the equilibrium thickness for this is set by surface tension and density of the glass and the tin to around IIRC 7mm, but surface quality is excellent. The *thinning* process that Corning have developed sounds amazing.

Note You know have a substrate that can take 500c process temperatures without damage which is also transparent.

This *could* open up lots of more speculative ideas (if the price is right) which have been handicapped because some of the other pieces need high temperature process that existing substrates would be destroyed by.

Thumbs up for some clever engineering.

NTT demos double-sided see-through smartphone

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Cool looking tech turns out to be a PITA to use.

I'm shocked.

Big Data is now TOO BIG - and we're drowning in toxic information

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Of course that won't stop CCDP

Surprise data <> information.

No matter *how* much of it you collect.

Look out, world - Mad Leo Apotheker's back!

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Well you cannot deny the man has "experience"

Sadly it's not *good* experience.

On the plus side if Steria is privately held the share price does not have to reflect anything like it's true worth.

Which (judging by past performance) is about to take a bit of a nose dive.

Boffins develop nanoscale vacuum tube running at .46 THz

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: @John Smith 19 - - Anyone notice 460Ghz operating frequency?

I'm not arguing with anyone. It's a matter of scale.

Grossly overdriven analog stages with feedback -> Digital

Lower the signal levels and the feed back -> small signal effects -> analogue operation (In a pinch smart designers have used individual inverters from a TTL chip as analog amplifiers. These are *highly* constrained designs where you simply cannot add a package).

This is the milliamp/millivolt level down to micro amp/volt levels. Signal levels that would get lost in the hash of the power lines on a digital board (part of what makes putting sound and video signals on PC so "interesting").

Lower it further . 1mA is still 6.25 x 10^12 electrons. In the 1950s people made op-amps with input currents at the *pico* amp level. That is still 6.25 million electrons. At the single electron transistor level there is *one* electron. It is either there or not, which is about as *indivisible* as you can get (image intensifiers are also quantum devices. That "flickering" you get in NV devices is *not* a mfg fault. It's the quantum nature of reality itself)

If you *really* want to go digital you're looking at electron transitions in atoms. The levels are fixed, *highly* stable and (AFAIK. IANAQP) they cannot be sub-divided. You can't get an electron caught half way between two levels.

Engineering a system to link atoms together and use those transitions to build a "true" digital system is left as an exercise.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Before cat's whiskers ...

Also from the 1950s (and more relevant) Sylvania's ceramic multi-component modules (think: macro-scale I.C.s). incorporating thermionic valves, and intended for space use."

Hmmmmm

Project Tinkertoy?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Anyone notice 460Ghz operating frequency?

Not bad for a prototype.

There are articles in the GEC Journal of research (the UK GEC) dating IIRC from the late 80s, early 90s on individual triodes and the articles mentioned at least one of the US national labs (Lawrence Livermore or Los Alamos most likely) due to the exceptional radiation hardness.

The GEC stuff was IIRC evacuated rather than being ambient pressure and relying on the device scale being small enough that the mean free path would not matter.

I suspect this will also have link into what are referred to as "Ballistic" transistors due to the path the electrons take within the silicon.

As for the power levels people are complaining about doesn't that depend on how *many* electrons are needed to be moved to switch from 0 to 1? Single electron transistors *already* exist.

On a general design note *all* digital logic is essentially *analog* circuitry driven hard enough to suppress (in principle) any sensitivity to low level analog problems while taking a hit on speed (ECL traded complexity for speed by going sub saturation and so being 10x faster than top end TTL but with huge power needs).

Large scale and/or high frequency digital design problems arise when they can't be driven hard enough (usually there's so damm many transistors you can't pump enough power into the chip without melting it).

460Ghz processor anyone?

Yes. I think it will play Krysis.

Richard Branson gets nod to strap rocket on SpaceShipTwo

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Not sure I would personally risk the Virgin flight

The SS2 / White Knight combination was designed by a team directed by a guy called Burt Rutan.

It was IIRC his last job before retirement.

He's quit well known as an aircraft design. I guess you've never heard of him.

Publishing barons: Free speech a 'cloak for tawdry theft'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

With copyright of *some* media at 70+ years. *all* to protect the rat.

f**king Disney.

Vatican in pact with Microsoft to initiate world's youths into Office

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

He who sups with the devill...

Needs a very long spoon.

The meal is just commencing.

And the worst film NEVER made is...

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The dark side is strong in this one.

SpaceX joy as Space Station robo-arm grabs Dragon's tail

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

An interesting question would be.

NASA mandate capture by an arm for berthing and the berthing hatch is *much* bigger than the one other vehicles dock to.

But Dragon has thrusters as well driven by state of the art (by space processor standards) computers.

Could it "berth" at this hatch *without* the arm?

Just a thought..

WTF is... Li-Fi?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

People have been trying this for years. LED's not needed.

IIRC Mitsubishi have patents for flashing the keyboard backlights of phones for reception by the ambient light sensor on other phones, again low bandwidth data like your phone book entry.

Likewise fluorescent lights in shops and meidal facilities have been looked at as LF comms for mobile devices, patient tracking and updating price labels in near real time.

The key phrase seems to be "smart ballast".

This sound like a gimmick to sell more LED's but I think non domestic lighting has a) a *huge* installed base and b) is fairly efficient. That makes a *lot* of market inertia.

Personally I quite liked a system to allow a daylight patrol of street lights. Any council vehicle could have a van top box that at normal road speed could pick up a data packet of up to about 1500 bits. More than enough to report if the the various parts are failing/failed and schedule a call out. Yes in many places the only way the local authority knows if a street light has blown is if it's reported by the public.

SpaceX does what it HASN'T done before: Dragon in close ISS flyby

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Re: Economics of reusability

"I thought the Space Shuttle demonstrated that the nice idea of reusable rockets being cheaper didn't really work with space vehicles"

You'll need a few qualifications on that statement. They would include :-

That's built to a fixed constant cost cap which took *no* account of inflation (in the 1970's).

Part of whose goal was job preservation at a series of NASA and contractor sites in various political, constituencies.

That would *force* the winner to develop a newer higher performance engine an an engine cycle they had no experience with.

With a thermal protection system driven *solely* by weight consideration and thermal capacity, not cost or replaceability.

To lift a payload 3x what NASA wanted for their internal use.

With a cross range to fly a mission it *never* attempted and which would have probably triggered WWIII if it had.

Under NASA's micro management culture with the *complete* authority to demand tear down and redesign if *any* thing did note meet with their complete approval.

You might like to consider what sort of vehicle you could come up with that set of constraints.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Tough spec.

You forget.

It's American.

And not made by BAe.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Well done.

It's not *their* money. NASA is paying for everything except on a fixed-price instead of cost-plus basis.

That ignores the c$500m that Spacex (mostly from Elon Musk) put up to build 5 rockets (4 of which failed) *before* achieving orbit + the F9's they have also bank rolled.

The money that NASA has put up so far has got them *two* capsules (Orbital Science has yet to fly) plus a new launcher (the Orbital Taurus II, but I think they've changed the name as the Taurus LV was not one of their more successful designs and virtually a new build) *plus* Dreachaser (from the biggest space company nobody has ever heard of) and the Boeing CST100 moving forward.

All for about 1/2 what NASA spunked away on the X33 b***sup.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Great but oversold?

"Wait until they get their spaceships into mass production."

Actually more a case of wait till their launcher is *reusable*.

Because the capsule (but not the trunk with the solar arrays sadly) already is.

Vulture 2 trigger triggers serious head-scratching

John Smith 19 Gold badge

A low tech variation of the Apollo S Band system might work.

High(ish) power ground transmitter sent out a pseudo-random signal. At Apollo the signal is frequency shifted to a down link. Range accuracy is set by the digital data rate with all the heavyweight correlation done on the ground (IIRC Apollo did something like 1 metre at 250 000 nm while consuming <5W total with something like a 1 or a 10 mbs data rate range rate was set by the doppler shift that needed to be cancelled out to recover the signal. Minimal in this application)

But Lohan does not need this performance. Effectively if you could detect a *single* bit shift between the transmitted and returned signal (IE at a straight up distance of about 30480m). I estimate a data rate of 10 000 bps would be enough. The longer the slant range the bigger the gap. With 2 channels and some geometry precision release should be possible (IE where the 2 lines meet in the sky) , again with all the clever hardware on the ground.

Of course the classic one is carrying a radar reflector to track its range then hit a radio transmitter to fire it.

Council fined £70k after burglars nick vulnerable kids' files

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

*no* change until senior people get fined/fired/jailed.

Everything else is BS.

ALL NHS patient records online by 2015

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Are they f***ing joking?

That is all.

Does Britain really need a space port?

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"That said, Reaction Engines believes it will need a cool $12bn to make a Skylon fly: and it remains unclear that it can pay such an investment back on the time scales that money men demand. "

That statement sounds *very* speculative by Lewis. REL have always been *very* conservative on costs (IE *worst* case) and on ROI

The "money men" are expecting to talk up the stock price further then dump them on the next bunch of buyers. It's not their problem how Facebook manages to make the growth needed (either in terms of revenue per user or increasing the number of users).

Note the current round of REL funding is looking to get £200m providing the results are favorable. One point REL have always been very quiet on is the way that figure has been lowered by the work they have done over the years. The cutting edge nature of both the engines and the structure suggest that even the *fairly* modest investments made so far (c£60m) have lowered the level of uncertainties a long way.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Interestingly I'd have thought REL would have been dead set *against* governement involvment

Getting *someone* to fund the Skylon spaceport was *always* one of the things I thought was risky about the project. It's a serious chunk of cash which *only* pays off if Skylon sales happen and it has to be in place *before* that happens.

Speculation is that the spec for the runway would be no worse than that of the B36 runways built in the US to carry its nuclear deterrent in the 1940's Thick (IIRC about 5' of steel reinforced concrete) and 15000' long. Uncommon but not *beyond* the state of the art.

Lewis fails to note 2 things which have a *serious* impact on the idea.

1) Skylon is *reusuable* You buy one, use it the use it *again*. Buying an F9 right now is a one shot deal. Sure they are busting their a**es to make it at least *partly* reusable but that's still got a long way to run.

2)Virgin is *not* the only player in the sub-orbital game. Xcor aerospace are getting there. While sub-orbital is a *long* way from orbital it's a pretty good place to start a *small* fully orbital launcher from. They estimate that between those "joy rides" testing of zero gee experimental kit (for deployment to orbit in a satellite or the ISS) and acting as a launch base for (small) sat launches will make a viable business model.

A brief note on propellants. The cost of *all* propellants (as a proportion of the *total* launch cost) is *literally* so small as to be an accounting error. Elon Musk stated the propellant bill for an F9 launch is about $150k. The *whole* launch cost is about $60m, so the propellant is 0.25%. The *most* expensive fuels are the storable hydrazines. The cost c$60/lb and would make quite viable WMD's in their own right

A brief note on the SABRE engine. It does *not* liquify air. It "deeply pre-cools" the air. That "slight" difference saves a hell of a lot of Hydrogen and is one of the things that makes the idea work (worked out by Alan Bond in the mid 80s on his Sinclair Spectrum according to the 1989 article in Spaceflight).

Queen unveils draft internet super-snoop bill - with clauses

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Some useful numbers and links on CCDP and its predecessor Govt IMP

£12Bn

Only listed number for price of the IMP, which was for a centralised DB.

I think merging the outputs from the various ISP hosted systems will bump that up a bit. But that part is secret, not the £2bn the govt say they will give ISPs to do their work.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/07/detica_interception_modernisation/

Number of terror suspects former head of MI5 said they had listed 4400.

Number of UK terror suspects watched by MI5 in 2007 2000 (likely to have grown a bit by now).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6613963.stm

Number of UK terrorist deaths 2000-2012

52 victims of 7/7/5 bombings. 4 bombers

http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0472 only lists the victims.

Jean Charles de Menezes 22/7/5 Intelligence FUBAR.

Northern Ireland 2 8/3/9

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/08/northern-ireland-soldiers-killed-antrim

Total 59 in 12 years..

Estimated value of a human life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

$6m (US DoT)

$7.9 (US FDA)

UK average lifetime earnings at average UK salary 18-70 @ £26,244 £1364688

UK population 2010 62.3million

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/npp/national-population-projections/2010-based-projections/sum-2010-based-national-population-projections.html

So the UK govt plans to spend £1m *each* to watch these suspects (Note that's just the stuff for the ISP'. There is *no* stated figure for the GCHQ end of the bill). or they will spend £33.8m each to save 1 life.

Or it plans to watch *every* person in the UK because 0.0032% *may* actually do something that will endanger other peoples lives, possibly. It will spend at *least* £2Bn to do so.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: http://www.random.org?junk=a-long-string-of-random-garbage

"I wonder how long this new surveillance regime will survive if some malware gets "

Simple.

Forever. The people who *want* it are basically *senior* current or former civil servants in the Intelligence and security services.

IE Oxford PPE graduates, not Cambridge CS grads.

They'd view it as the price of protecting the British people from *themselves*.