Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
But isn't this inside a *simulation* software package?
As El Reg readers know almost *anything* is possible when you start with the "right" assumptions.
So how do you *implement* this IRL?
File with the Hong Kong university students and the Graphene fuel cell "harvesting" energy from ambient heat.
*highly* suspicious.
I don't know the current situation but there were definitely jobs which looked *very* suspicious.
A specific vacancy which will accept *any* language experience? Could be anywhere?
Either the recruiter has no idea what their *client* was talking about (not exactly impossible) or they are looking to plump up the CV bank.
I know what my money's on.
1) The USG retains the right to cancel *any* contract with *no* notice, *no* compensation and *no* negotiation.
2) Procurement is usually on a yearly basis, like UK local authorities. Large multi year programmes require Acts of Congress. Even NASA does not get multi-year funding, hence a couple of months after the *last* budget horse trading ends, the next one starts.
3)The USG operates on a "cash" accounting basis. The idea that some of next year's budget is *already* spent to cover costs incurred this year (and therefor *completely* predictable) does not exist. I'm unaware of any multi-billion dollar corporations that operate in this way.
4)I'd not heard of the "give us the same pricing as your *best* deal your commercial customers get" but it's another attempt to avoid being used as a cash cow by large corporates.
5)The Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FARs) with *endless* paperwork requirements and financial reporting, designed to *prove* that the USG is not being ripped off.
The goals are admirable but the result is breeding a *very * special form of business, the govt con-tractor. Lots of lobbyists to stop a contract *ever* being cancelled, *dedicated* paper shufflers to produce "evidence" that they are not stiffing Uncle Sam and ones who have *no* equivalent commercial customers to check pricing against. EDS and the Medicaid/Medicare system being a case in point.
For the person who down voted my previous post you need to separate someone *describing* a situation from *approving* of it. The clue was "Immoral and unethical." Directors are (likely) the highest paid *employees* of a business, the *stockholders* own it. In a well run company the Directors have good enough uses for the money that the stockholders are *happy* to leave it in the company, knowing it will be used fund something which will raise profits and/or the stock price IE their value, rather than wanting it *all* out in the form of dividends.
This is *not* happening with Oracle.
This is broadly the way joint stock companies work. Don't like it? Talk to the SEC, the NYSE and/or your elected representatives.
Strictly it's the money of the first round of investors who bought share *from* the company when it floated (IE the cash that went *to* the company, everything else is just a secondary market).
Pragmatically it's about did the Board know how badly their commercial pricing was know to the DoJ.
If they did not then the "play dumb" defense is not unreasonable (just unethical and immoral)
OTOH if they *knew* they were bang to rights and *still* tried to play the innocent that's just incompetent decision making (probably backed by a *lot* of corporate arrogance).
Shareholders *should* be critical of the latter. Those hits to the corporate piggy bank *wasted* funds that could have been put to more productive use (yes by this yardstick that *does* include bigger shareholder dividends).
"For myself I like to question assumptions. The assumption I would question is "is warming a bad thing?" I like warm. Warm is good. Cold is bad."
As always it's a matter of degree.
1 neat statistic I found. The melting of *all* ice sheets (Poles & Iceland IIRC) would raise the sea level by 65m
But how many people check the *altitude* of their home above sea level?
"9% is the reduction in the effect when CO2 is removed.
23% is the effect left when everything but CO2 is removed."
These numbers make no sense.
9% reduction in the effect ->91% of the effect *remains*
so 77% (100-23) is the *reduction* when *everything* else but CO2 is removed.
Should those numbers not be a mirror image of each other? is 14% (91-77) some kind of error bar? Does CO2 multiply the effect of other pollutants (by about 1.18x)?
Only IIRC the business with the CRU required *one* set of tree rings to be enough to hang the proof on the hockey puck curve
And would evidence that the *whole* of at least one polar ice cap be enough to demonstrate that such a warm period *probably* covered the rest of the globe?
Or just the polar ice cap the samples were taken from? And if so would that be sufficient to change GCM models to the point they would need revision
After all it's only one polar *icecap*.
Where do you draw the line?
Thumbs up for propelling us further toward the truth (although I'm not sure what that will be).
In which case it makes perfect sense.
That of course would suggest the problem was at a pretty low level and IRL you'd be better off training local Social Services departments to improve their ability to spot "care givers" whose behavior is "inappropriate", as you'd probably find most child molesters are too busy molesting to make videos.
As the Americans realized *decades* ago *most* abuse is not by Mr Random Perve, but by someone the child sees regularly.
This is one of those problems that IT can help a *bit* but the root cause is *people*, not pictures.
Well to put it bluntly in the words of Ray Wyre.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/08/psychology.ukcrime
"Because they like it."
It's not your thing. It's not my thing. It is however *their* thing.
An observation that *could* be made of all of the paraphilas. The difference is its effect on the object of their "affection".
You feel disgust. They feel arousal (and *possibly* some disgust). You don't have to understand *why* but you do have to understand they don't see the world the way do.
"Not really - for the 'hands-on' philosophy, the surgeon's hands are on the surgical tool itself, so the surgeon maintains direct contact with the tools and patient. Since the tool is connected to the robot, as the surgeon manipulates it, it backdrives the robot and the robot senses the position of the tool and forces applied to determine whether and how much it should push back to keep the tool within the correct area."
My use of terminology has been inexact. I had presumed there was some kind of force feedback built into the system.
For those of a certain generation we'd call this a Waldo. A force-feedback teleoperator (now with added computerized limit stops).
"Surgical planning can be done from scans of the patient for true patient specific surgery to take into account the variation in shapes and sizes and bits not conforming to the standard model. And, yes, bits of patient do move during surgery, but there are tracking devices that can monitor that and update the plan to take into account the movement (admittedly easier for orthopaedic surgery where we're talking about solid objects than for soft tissue which can distort)."
That's sort of my point. While those points *could* have been used to argue "Robots are just not flexible enough to handle the real time problems of internal surgery in real time." But I'm not current on the SoA and was not certain this was the case yet.
You seem to be saying that those factors can be taken into account *today*.
No one denies that a modern Surgeon is a highly skilled (and highly rewarded) medical professional.
It's perfectly clear that the ability to deliver *consistent* reliable surgical procedures at reasonable speed and cost will bring about a revolution in the profession. This is obvious to anyone thinking about the social consequences of new technology.
I'm quite sure the surgical community is fully aware of what has happened historically to jobs whose core skills are manual dexterity and eye/hand co-ordination and been de-skilled by automation. The core skill of a printer was their ability to read a page of hot lead set text back to front and upside down (or not if they worked for the Guardian). Now it's a niche skill used by a small group of people who still do things that way for customers who still *want* it done that way.
It's a clever bit of mechanical engineering and (to a layman) very non-intuitive in design, which *might* reduce surgical trauma and improve stay times in hospital.
However had the goal of full automated surgery been pursued from the project in 1997 I would expect they would have a working robot surgeon by now.
I remain a pessimist about the *full* application of the technology. My original point stands. Surgeons will resist *full* person-out-of-loop fully computer controlled surgery more vigorously and longer than the Fleet Street print unions resisted the introduction of journalists being able to set their own type.
No one wants to take a status or pay cut but you don't see much hot metal being used in *any* newspaper anywhere these days.
I'll get excited when a person can be handed over to surgical team *minus* the surgeon and they run a full operation. I'd settle for one that takes 2x as long as a human (to begin with) but has a higher *average* success rate due to its better consistency.
To anyone thinking such resistance is unethical as a violation of their training to do the best for their patient I would point out that a robot surgeon eliminates the need to *be* a patient of a human surgeon so it's not like they are blocking an improvement to patient care or more cynically Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.
"More recent surgical robots that we worked on at Imperial College (and indeed, I still work on) were geared to a more cooperative approach between the surgeon and the robot - something we called 'hands-on robotics' or 'active constraints' whereby the robot knows the volume of material that needs to be removed, but rather than moving on its own, the surgeon pushes the robot's tip (or 'end-effector') around (typically the cutting device), but when he or she reaches the edge of the cutting volume the robot pushes back preventing the cutting tip from moving outside of the surgery volume"
So having built a robot it then operates as effectively a remote manipulator with a set of software limit switches on it's motion.
I accept the problems of automated surgery are *formidable*. The Australian experience with their sheep shearing robot would have warned of that (and that was only working on the surface of the body). Patients come in all shapes and sizes. They move (hopefully not too much) when your working on them and in extreme cases their bits might be in the wrong place to the standard model (EG the heart).
*difficult* certainly but not beyond the bounds of modern hardware give the amount of information that can be collected and analyzed *before* you start work coupled with the ability to scale manipulator size to whatever would be most convenient.
We're still centuries away from the autodoc of Niven & Pournelle, but *not* because of technology.
Lets face it the surgeon's union will *never* let *any* operation be done on a human that does not use a surgeon in the loop. There will always be *some* reason why it just *cannot* be automated.
Remember that cutting people up used to be a side job of the local *barber*.
The fight to allow fully automated surgery (and the potential *massive* reduction in resulting health care costs) will make the fight over the introduction of computerized typesetting (which UK print unions resisted on national newspapers resisted for *decades* after it was SOP elsewhere) will look like a spat over the last piece of cake in a children's birthday party by comparison.
Only it's quite popular on MBA courses. If a process is within some (stated) tolerance band *ignore* it.
Flag it otherwise.
Note this is not *just* for the perimeter. It should apply to *all* machines, including servers. Is log analysis software *that* difficult to use? Aren't most of them just line orientated *highly* structured text files, or am I missing something. I cannot believe MS "Log Parser" is the *only * tool that can do stuff like this.
The key question to ask is *why*?
Why is that PC sending 5000 emails an hour with *no* user logged in?
Why is program X sending to socket nnnn when no other *copy* of that program does so?
Why has user A requested issued 300k record delete requests on the companies main ERP system?
Sure if you're operation is valuable enough (to *someone*) it's penetration is *inevitable*
But they have to get the loot out. Or the they can't get to the backup to corrupt it. Or they can trash some of the database. *Provided* users programs and processes are adequately boxed in.
Of course this is irrelevant unless *management* recognizes that *proper* security is an expense in both money and *convenience*,. Sorry "Mr CEO but dumping your daughters party pix to the offices A0 printer is no longer an option. You'll have to go to Kwickprint like everyone else."
As a whimsical aside are there *really* people out there who specialize in breaking into adult sites *just* to steal their contents? Do pornjackers really exist?
"Sorry, but I don't see any downside to that. If it wasn't for Bradley Manning, we never would've known what kind of skeezy, reprehensible shit the USA was/is up to in Iraq and Afghanistan. You go, Bradley Manning."
Me either. I've no problem with the act or its results. It's just my sense of professionalism that was *really* p***ed off. Someone (presumably *several* someones) are *paid* to stop this happening and it's pretty clear they did a *very* poor job.
I'm not going for they "They were clearly asking to be robbed" defense but how is their incompetence *not* liable for some kind of disciplinary hearing, up to a Courts Martial?
Bottom line when it comes to disaster recovery ( and this *is* a branch of that area) how *far* down the chain does your trust go.
Secure copy in offsite safe?
Hand assemble from *source* code?
Hand enter on front panel switches (I know but there are still *some* systems where that is *possible*).
Key parts of Charles Stross's novels Accelerado and Glasshouse hinge around what happens when critical technology (which is also a *monoculture*) are totally compromised.
Couldn't happen IRL? Intel are keen to put AV in their chips, but just *suppose* some malware gets in the chip and locks out *any* attempt to erase it? Once you start putting *erasable* ROM on the processor chip you open the possible of something have first sight of *anything* running through the chip.
Forever.
"Just because your OS of choice has been seen by a 'BUNCH OF PEOPLE' does not make it more secure or any less likely not to have back doors in it. ( I read both your links)"
Actually, in principle, it does.
One of the key techniques developed and used by the people who built the Space Shuttle software was *exactly* that.
Multiple *eyeballs* on the same piece of code.
Likewise putting "If userID = john-q-hacker copy(unencrypted_password_file, local_output) in the source would also be pretty obvious.
Relying on the fact the software *is* closed source is just another version of security-by-obscurity.
IT security is one area where *transparency* is the best policy. The *odds* are that the white hats outnumber the black hats and will find more bugs faster. SBO did not work for GSM, the Charlie Card, the Ti Keylock remote car and garage door opener chips or a bunch of other systems.
The (open source) DES standard stayed secure for *decades* and people where able to recognize *when* it was starting to become insecure because they knew its computational complexity, like RSA key lengths.
*If* the Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning (IIRC a Marine PFC, not even an *officer* FFS) did copy all that diplomatic telegram traffic and walk it out on a Lada GaGa CD .
a) Why did he have permission to access this data?
b) Why does the Pentagon have access to State dept traffic in the *first* place?
And BTW how long ago was a Cybersecurity CEO appointed by DHS to oversee *all* IT security in the federal govt?
My gut feeling. There's *lots* of basic (but dull and detailed) work that can be done to tighten up security *everywhere* but it takes effort by *knowledgeable* people with support at a *senior* level to get change.
But then I suppose that's true of *every* major organization everywhere.
On the upside. It *should* be impossible to offshore this work to some Indian/Chinese/<Next great cheap labor hole>, right?
"We recently asked an off-shore team-member to add 3 columns to a grid in one of our applications. After 7 days - and hand-holding - we got back broken code. We then spent 3 hours doing the job ourselves. This is not a one-off issue; this is about average of my experience of working with off-shore development teams."
This is where it is time to start collecting evidence. *track* the faults, the delays and most of all the additional *costs* of fixing their faults.
You only fight this ground on the benefits of in-sourcing and the fact that it is (when *everything* is accounted for) cheaper.
Their outsourcer is 1/3 the hourly rate of a local specialist. Whoopee. When they spend 3x the time to still *fail* to carry out the task they are not.
It's a light weight OO C framework for for adding things like inheritance and methods to C *without* the heavy overhead of things like garbage collection.
The compiler *has* been identified as the 2008 version of Visual C.
It's apparently very non SOP for malware writers but still a fairly popular option with professional developers.
For those who don't know.
In assembly language pointers-to-functions are usually called *addresses*. Pretty much *every* OS function list is a table of addresses or jump table. Even *DOS* could have been turned into a reasonable OS as the poorer versions were swapped out and better ones substituted. TSR's did it on the fly (Hacking the the jump table has been used in software up to mainframes).
Historically the C++ *pre-processor* the Bell Labs originally developed mapped the methods to a virtual function table (and AFAIK most modern full compilers still do).
Delphi was basically object orientated Pascal and (internally) also used this. Full Pascal *did* include a way to do pointers to functions. Perhaps if Turbo Pascal had included them from first release the development landscape would be *very* different.
It might a bit surprising it's taken this long to spot that it's C all along but given the almost *infinite* ways the OO functions could be *implemented* (and given it's a framework how the developers *might* have over ridden them by hacking the C source) perhaps the big breakthrough was to stop looking at *as* language X but C wrapped in framework X.
This *totally* different approach suggest a completely separate team using it's in house developed framework, or possibly someone who has *inherited* this from a much larger effort. A little going away present taken by a disgruntled ex-employee, re-purposed for a bit of private enterprise?
So either a big team developing a fairly complex code base from *scratch* or a team that is leveraging an *existing* way of doing business.
While I could believe there would need to be little communication between the teams (penetration and payload) I'd find it very hard to believe the payload team would be ignorant of *what* they were building.
BTW the Kaspersky team even hit the *version* of Visual C (2008) that was used which is pretty impressive.
Something tells me we have not seen the last of this gangs efforts.
If you think so ignore him.
Is he wrong?
Then if you don't *care* about getting another salary rise ignore him as well.
But note this. I'm *very* well aware that some offices have people in them is whose *only* friend is the MD or CEO.
They don't care.
They just take care *never* to turn their back on their co-workers.
If you've never had to deal with one of these f***ing weasels you're very lucky. The *only* good news is they are *occasionally* almost as smart as they make themselves out to be.
The one's I've know followed the play book to the let. But note you don't have to *be* a weasel to get the spot. It's just that the ones I've met *have* been.
If you are not, you get to keep the weasels *out* and other people get to work for someone they *accept* rather than merely tolerate.
let me suggest the simple idea that (in meetings) don't come up with a problem without having a *solution* (even a bad one) thought up first.
Your choice ladies and gentlemen.
"To take someone else's example: what is the "profit" from last night's backup?"
There is a case study.
An accounts department does it's backup at the end of the *despite* policy being twice a day.
Power fails 5 mins before backup.
Teams pends about 1 week of dept time recovering.
The case study is for *accountants* not IT staff.
Let me suggest the take away from this piece is "It's not what you do, it's what you're *seen* or *perceived* to be doing" that will raise *managements* opinion of you (which is highly unlikely to raise your opinion of them) which matters if you have *any* interest in a higher standard of living.
It's very sad. It's also very *true*.
I think the white dwarf sucking matter off another star sounded much more *likely*
*two* white dwarfs in a collision sounded *highly* improbable. What are the odds?
Yet the latter appears to correct.
If the comment about the "Standard candle" is correct then it sounds like quite a lot of astronomical stuff is about to change.
Thumbs up for continuing to expand our knowledge of the universe.
Keep in mind who was #1 in *not* meeting its loan target to SME's
Step forward the peoples bank RBS.
*all* of them include essentially *repeat* business as part of their target.
Of course while the BoE base rate continues to be at near an all time *low* they have charged *double* figure rates.
If anyone wants some of this you can bet they will have to *fight* to one of them.
I try not to despise whiny ass bankers.
But that don't make it very easy.
I'm late to this one so let me see if I've got it clear.
No fees as the UK license fee *already* covered the costs and you have a right to it.
So you don't mind entering your license number at log in as you check out whatever you want, citizen? Don't worry the information will not be sold to more than a couple of marketing companies. The rest of you can just hand over your credit card details now.
If I wanted that kind of welcome I'd go through C&I at a US airport. The TSA excel at making you feel like they'd prefer you just got back on the plane and f***ed off where you came from.
In short there are a whole series of *choices* that can make this *reasonably* acceptable or *universally* hated.
a) Is there a free option like iPlayer. Limited life view it or loose it, no transfers but no cost. Remember the BBC *could* make *all* online content PPV. They have not done so *yet*.
b)DRM. Option of cheaper (but tied) version versus play on anything (with the right codec, which is *another* issue).
c) Payment method. It'd had better be simple (as there is likely to be a fair bit of impulse buying) and be able to buy a whole series as easily as a single episode.
d)Price. The biggie. The various markets have shown there *is* a price most people will pay to hold something *permanently*.
The rights issue is *very* important. "New Tricks" was not done by the BBC, "Men Behaving Badly" was done by a subsidiary of Thames and so on.
I'm not sure if a flat fee or pricing by frequency (the more people download it the cheaper it gets) but at least it must cover the *infrastructure* and rights costs, which are going to be *substantial*.
A quick check suggests the largest D2 digital tapes (3.5 Hrs) have an uncompressed capacity of 226GB. C.Hill noted the BBC has about 240 000 of them. That's about 55 *Exabytes*. The tape silo (either with them directly or transferred to some higher density media) may *still* have a place in the architecture. And I'll bet there's still a fair bit on film and analogue video. This is rather more than some 2nd had Dell sitting in some teenagers bedroom and will call for *proper* systems admin skills.
*Properly* run this can be a way to for people to *own* things they remembered but never quite understood or introduce new generations to stuff they never knew about (Top Of The Pops as a cultural time capsule anyone?) while generating a substantial cash flow to fund upgrades and new programming.
There is also the road less traveled.
Turn it all over to the National Archives and let them sort it out. Hence my smile.
Are any of the components being *consumed*?
If (as they say) they are collecting the kinetic energy of the ions there should be no *irreversible* chemical changes going on in the cell and all elements should be at their same concentrations as the ions pick "re-charge" from the ambient room temperature
Note there are a number of groups working on "environmentally powered" sensors for things like structural monitoring. Major methods use vibrations "harvested" from PZ films and thermoelectric stacks operating on temperature differences.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary *proof*.
*Might* be real but highly suspicious.
Nicely pointed. I'll presume you're *not* agreeing with it.
I think it's fair to say that there is a *segment* of the green movement that does feel that economic development cannot be *allowed* for some countries because of its *believed* impact on the planet and that a few billion in a poverty level existence is a small price to pay.
Naturally this is not a price *they* will be paying.
I'd suggest *some* tree huggers can be remarkably Stalinist in their outlook. Love the trees, hate the people. I'm no great humanitarian but blaming people for where they were born (which when you strip the rhetoric away is what they are saying) is pretty snobbish.
Actually in the 1920s in the East End of London families could have 10 children, 5 of who would die before their 5th birthday. Decent plumbing, a working economy and a welfare system that meant you did not need your children to support you after retirement cut the next generation family size down to 2 children, who both survived.
BTW. Spell check is good. Proof reading is better.
The cynic in me wonders "What f***ing parts of the process *do* you understand with sufficient confidence exactly?"
But my better side..
reckons he's looking for some follow on funding and I'd certainly say that if this lays down some more anchor points (like the study running back IIRC 60million years and dropping the absolute *worst* case to about a 5c rise) he *should* get it.
Thumbs up for providing more *solid* data and hope their findings feed into the GCM's soon.
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