Posts by John Smith 19

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).

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.

Hold on. Computer files *and* hard copy.

I've worked in small companies that have this sort of thinking.

From the article.

"when a social worker *took* paper records home to work on them out of office hours"

Usually a sign of senior management being clueless. On the kind of money senior council management posts get there is *no* excuse for being this ignorant.

It's called *data* management for a reason. As in *all* data.

Not "file* management. Not "computer" management.

Quick & dirty solution. Scan *all* documents in and save to TrueCrypt locked hard drive.

The IT angle

Historically the early part of the has used heavily pre-computed on lookup tables. Each entry was subjected to a trajectory simulation to confirm the settings (for gimal angles and sometime for engine thrust) would keep the whole stack going in the right direction.

It's slow, time consuming and very inflexible if things go wrong that you have not already (expensively and extensively) simulated. But all that *recurring* work (for every flight) is expensive.

AFAIK SpaceX are looking at a full on board GNC. You give it a destination and it figures out what those settings need to be.

One of the *main* reasons cited for the delays has been to verify the full software load in a way that NASA is comfortable with. This means the whole tool chain and all the procedures that went into its writing. While Dragon/F9 should be mechanically simpler than Shuttle its on board self testing is pretty extensive.

The original benchmark for the Carnegie Mellon CMM model was the team who wrote the on board software for the Shuttle.

Hopefully Spacex will prove as good at identifying the fault and fixing it as the have proved in the past.

Now how much of that bandwidth is going to China.

So than can check that every page you view is malware free.

For your protection of course.

Remember there is *price* and *cost*

What will an EM catapult cost?

A hell of a lot less than what BAe will soak HMG for.

Despite something like 18000 staff in MoD procurement (a whole office blocks worth outside Bristol IIRC) it seems *none* of them could make even a BOTE cost estimate on this.

And let's not forget that nice piece of change BAe will be expecting from its subsidiary Dettica when the UK net snoop plan starts rolling.

Remember the golden rule

Microsoft has *no* friends in the software industry.

Just companies they have not taken over or destroyed yet.

You lie down with dogs expect fleas.

*only* 1 in 5 projects failing (for govt IT) would probably be a *major* achievenemt

If it's true.

But I doubt it'll be that low.

Interesting the *Treasury* department, the one *meant* to be looking after the countries cash, turns out to be the *worst* at running projects.

*Something* like this had to happen

It's a sign of moving out of the "Early adopter" phase into a more mature stage

It's the difference between private mobile radio networks (the sort run by cab companies) and cellular networks with roaming.

The joker in the pack is the chicken and egg timing between the infrastructure suppliers (who'll want to get the switchover started) and the EV mfgs, who'll want to leverage their existing (and incompatible) designs as long as possible.

Hopefully this decision will let new infrastructure developers start rolling out a *common* connector at last.

As usual with technology standards the question will be how fast will technology develop to the point this will have to be updated (are any of those pins "not connected" for later usage?).

"not a security risk to the organisation"

Indeed not.

That would be the person whose bag got snatched in Latin America.

The one with the memory stick full of the details of their Latin American contacts in the region.

Data security.

They've heard of it.*

*Planned lead agency for the Blair government's Interception Modernization Programme.

The "Send Claire Perry on an internet training course" fund is now open for donations

Modeled on the "Send M Night Shyamalan to Directors school" it has a similarly laudable (if equally unlikely) objective.

That of giving Ms Perry a f***ing clue.

Let's not forget her cunning plan to age rate *every* site on the internet (or rather get every UK ISP to do it for her, like that nice system the UK insisted on having to validate bank account details to online gambling sites like fulltiltpoker.com and thereby supplying them with a fat file of personal information).

Joking aside the question has to be Ignorant (fixable), stupid (unfixable), cheap( could be fixed but feels *such* a sense of entitlement that it's not *her* problem to begin with).

Sould that not read "will" be the death knell for this treaty.

Because it damm well ought to be.

non volatile sub-*microsecond* memory

welcome to the 1970's.

I'll get my flares and cheese cloth shirt out.

It really did not take the data fetishists long to come out of hibernation.

May like Wacky Jacqui Smith is another Whitehall sock puppet.

Watch the same clique of senior (and ex-senior) civil service Intelligence types "brief" her to get on her hind legs and generally sound convincing while spouting total garbage.

I've decided against my usual frowny or BB choice. While I've normally nothing against *any* group of fetishists exercising their foibles with *consenting* partners this bunch want *all* of the UK to be their partners.

As for "consent" their attitude seems to be "you know you want it (security), you need our discipline (IE cradle-to-grave surveillance) to have it."

Battlefield Earth. More a John Travolta vanity project than a Scientology project.

The book is so *obviously* a two hander between a hero and a villain with the action roughly split 60/40 in favor of the hero.

Sure it's a B movie, but it could have been a *good* B movie.

I *may* have to consider re-assesing Sunshine as well on DVD.

But I saw it in a *cinema* where you don't get a Brian Cox narrative of the back story.

It's just not *exciting* enough. Seriously a space that looks the side of Wembley stadium being de-pressurised within 8 hours? Are you sh***ing me. I think quite a few people found 2001 a fairly profound experience despite either Kubrick or Clarke having any major religious hang ups to work out. It's probably more about what you bring to it than what the film makers put there.

Sorry Mr Boyle. You do people quite well but I guess you don't get good SF is about what happens when humans interact with *technology* (and the tech starts acting up) and I don't think you get the tech well enough to build a story.

For UK terror in space I think the bench mark is Event Horizon. Enough ambiguity for people to think what they like about what's causing things to happen and enough actually happening to keep the cast on their toes.

Seriously. Try building the phone to meet the battery *capability*

Instead of hanging endless s**t on their design and then "discovering" that (gosh) it's battery life is not very long.

If if govt CIO's are not very good, why *exactly* should they magically get better?

it's sometimes called aspirational management and goes something like this.

Boss "This year we're going to be #1"

Me "Great. So what's your plan?"

Boss "We're going to be #1"

Me "Yes, but *how*?"

Boss "We're going to be #1"

Me "Right well I'll get back to work and as soon as you need me give me a shout."

this might give the impression I've worked for the odd complete cock in my time but of course that would be entirely wrong.

consumer electronics is the *worst* of both worlds

*properly* done its military grade reliability at wholesale prices.

It's about as "embedded* as it gets. Telecomms devs use various methodical development processes to handle the problem but I'll guess it's a bit more hit and miss for set top boxes, sat navs and down to the proverbial microwave oven controller.

How about tightening up the accuracy of the meters they use in the *first* place.

We should be able to get a better than +/- 1% readings by now.

*highly* suspicious

Seems hard to believe htere are that many *directly* employed IT staff left in govt service.

I smell an accountant trying to show they are "lowering" costs.

Yet something tells me the projects for these 4 departments will manage to be near the top of both the overdue and *overbudget* lists for Whitehall projects.

The fact the MoD are on this group pretty much guarantees it.

Worst effect. Brain washing kids that Cisco and Microsoft are *all* there is.

which is pretty disgusting.

Possibly the *best* kind of science.

Go looking for something.

Find something else.

Realize something weird is going on.

Intriguing. No idea where it will go but sounds like it could have some legs.

Thumbs up for good science

"National Fraud Authority?"

You mean the UK has an "authority" to help people commit fraud *better*?

*Finally* someone actually starts giving a s**t.

Not of course about the privacy implications or the possible subversion of the remote kill switch capability.

No.

That despite *all* their intelligence they still don't stop the power company being ripped off.

Any one wondering how different the ones that are being planned for the UK will be?

China cuts back on mining for "environmental reasons."

I think my BS detector is red-lining.

excellent article. it's the issue of *control* that really p***es me off.

Governments have exactly the same attitude. They force you to supply it and then feel you they have no need to tell you who will use it (or more usefully who accessed it without a good reason) or even how long it will be stored.

It'll be interesting to see how interested companies remain in personal data when they have to *pay* for it.

Break the Internet? B***cks.

Break Google? Now that might be a truer statement.

And civil servants so *dumb* they can't ask the first follow up question (One of those PPE types not wanting to show their ignorance?)

Thumbs up for the article. P**s poor behavior by Google and the governments.

Don't like a "public interest" defense?

Well say good bye to any new story based around revealing unethical or illegal behavior of *any* corporation.

Information stored in company files (duty of confidentiality during and when you leave a firm plus specific contract clauses, theft of company documents etc)

Information on computers (Computer Misuse Act. Data Protection Act etc in the UK).

*none* of that would be an option to report. Not to mention the Draconian UK libel laws that Robert Maxwell ofter used to muzzle claims he was a large stale thief and fraudster (which turns out to be exactly the case. Although it remains libelous to suggest he stashed the £400m in the family trust).

The PI defense may well be misused but that's up tot he *courts* to decide.

I could not give a s**t which celebrity is hoovering up huge quantities of drugs (because someone got their the texts to their dealer) but I definitely want to know if some banker was sleeping with a colleague who *happens* to be a bank auditor and is giving him a clean bill of health.

In the UK it's one of the few *defenses* against being thrown under the wheels of a large corporations legal team.

So thumbs up for the Public Interest defense. But perhaps a bit of tightening up from the judges.