* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Climate models need revising: Droughts, heat waves not such a big deal

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Re: Why are all the Reg env articles anti-AGW?

Perhaps they all read the harryreadme file of the CRU at East Anglia University and concluded that with such p**s poor documentation, change control and data management that it's impossible to conclude *anything* valid about the data.

That's not a science view that's an IT view. It's a viable one given the highly secretive and at times down right obstructive way they have operated.

Perhaps as a precursor question you might like to find the graph where CO2 rise *preceeds* rise in average global temperature.

That would be quite a strong indicator that it was real.

But what if it was the *other* way round?

John Smith 19 Gold badge

AC@09:34

I was aware of this and have been aware of this for some decades.

The questions were

a) How much of that work had been *incorporated* into the various global circulation models of climate.

b)How vigorously has modellers looked for gaps in their models and updated their models accordingly.

I recall a Byte article in the early 80's about the Forth computer language in which (IIRC) a chemist was saying how cloud models were poor and Forth let him experiment with the necessary parameters very quickly.

A *decade* later I saw reports of climate modellers saying their models still did not *quite* account for how the real world behaved.

This effects of sunspots (or large solar plasma emissions) have been dismissed for decades and it seems only in the *very* recent past that modellers have admitted that *maybe* there might be some effect. CLOUD could have been performed any time in the last 20 (if not 30) years.

Such a poor attitude to investigating any *systematic* flaws in their models does them no credit especially when their conclusions (CO2 is too high and you must reduce it now) will cost *billions* of dollars/euros/pounds/ to implement (and will be irrelevant if the US/China and India don't agree).

that's not "science" as I understand the term.

BTW was AC really necessary to remind me of this rather harmless factoid?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: CLOUD

Good set of web pages which explain the details in *direct* language without analogies.

Frankly given the lack of *actual* understanding about what species are involved (*lots*) in cloud formation and how effective they are (varies but some are very effective) this should have been done *decades* ago. None of the experimental hardware looks like it needed a major breakthrough (unlike say the near perfect glass gyroscopes of the Stamford relativity experiment).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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The difference between "simple" and "simplistic" models

Simplistic models have few variables and *appear* to explain the facts. Places have seasons, if they have a drought and/or heatwave in the wrong season bad things happen.

Except they don't stand *scrutiny*.

In some ways the new model is still "simple" but of course it depends if this applies to the *same* 2 week periods in other parts of the world.

a nice object lesson in what happens when you trust "simple" models that turn out to be "simplistic" instead.

Is it just me or does the amount of *real* science involved in climate modelling appear to be rising?

Thumbs up for good science. Let's see a few more of the assumptions underlying climate models checked. It's better to *know* than to assume.

BTW I don't think climate models talk in terms of "seasons." It's just certain parameters (sunlight, rainfall, green coverage) vary in a systematic way at different times in the year.

Johns Hopkins and VMware forge medical records mega-cloud

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: Re: "an open-source clinical image and object management system."

"You should not confuse the two."

Good point.

I guess that raises 2 further questions.

The UK PACS systems seems to have been one of the *good* parts of the colossal cluster ***k of NPfIT. Did the UK system use this software (at least as a starting point) and if not how much did the base system cost.

Could the "objects" being managed have included all the data to constitute an electronic patient record?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"an open-source clinical image and object management system."

Well well.

So how much of the £15Bn did the NHS spend developing something to do this?

Note this approach is *probably* only possible because US healthcare (for those who can *afford* it) is a Terra dollar business.

In the UK it was an awesomely stupid architecture.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

Re: Image quality

"Image quality is only an issue on the initial diagnostic read, which is done within the first day or so. After a while, lossy compression can be used as the images are for reference only. Also, Mammography images are held at least 7 years from last exam."

I really hope this is your *opinion* and you have no idea what you're talking about.

Because AFAIK *lossless* data compression is the *only* type that's allowed for medical imagery.

Consider that *one* white dot on chest image that turned out to be a very small (and very killable) tumor.

Erased as the compression algorithm eliminates it as "noise".

Not noticed. Patient dies. Family sues and is told "Well we're not sure what the *actual* image is because the "lossy" compression algorithm threw some pixels away".

Police probing ‘threats’ over Canadian internet privacy bill

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: Hypocrisy

""The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.""

Nice. I'll have to file that one. It sounds like Oscar Wilde.

"Go ahead, shag the baby-sitter. Just don't pretend to be holding the moral high ground when you're actually a low-life, amoral cad."

He's not big on "Family values" as well by any chance? I've noticed that those characters who are found 'nads deep in someone other than their spouses tend to bang on about the importance of marriage and abstaining from sex before marriage as well.

I guess talking about abstinence seems to make the *so* horny.

On the upside she was overage (?) and he's never touched his own children.

AFAIK.

Thumbs up for the quotes, not his behavior.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Re: Harper's trusted messenger

"If the British Army isn't ferociously busy, what are the chances of them invading Canada and bringing us some democracy? "

Well....

"Regime change" does not always bring democracy, as the people of Iraq know quite well by now.

But you do have oil.

The British Army should be free in a couple of years and may be able to book you in then. OTOH with Afghanistan winding down perhaps you could encourage returning troops to organize a coup?

You'd probably end up with a military dictatorship (but being Canadian) a very *polite* military dictatorship.

Might be a better bet, might not.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Trollface

@Destroy All Monsters

"So what about Jews?"

A good question.

There's *always* room on the statute books for one more law.

It's just a question of getting around to *all* the enemies of the state.

And in this context that would be *anyone* who disagrees with him.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

I think I've found the *biggest* internet prediator in Canada

That would be Vic Toews

All your data belongs to him, on demand 24/7/365. How much more predatory can you get?

The name change within 4 *hours* of the outcry tells you all need to know about the mans agenda.TOTC indeed.

Or rather whoever actually *wrote* the bill, as he appears to be ignorant of its contents and the annoyance it would cause. IOW just a higher grade of political sock puppet..

I'd look for a loose cabal of senior police officers and civil servants (possibly with links to some hardware mfg) with a real hunger for knowing about peoples private lives. The permanent hardware links from ISP to police station is a dead giveaway.

Canadians. Make it clear to your elected representatives (the people elected to represent *you*) this law wipes out your right to privacy without *any* kind of due process. It's the electronic version of the entry powers enjoyed by secret policemen in 3rd world and former eastern European countries.

Tiny transistor stays where it's put

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Senior researchers have to get *funding* to perform research. Try this.

SR "I'd like some funding to develop improve qubits"

Funder "What's that?"

SR"It's the potential building block for a conceptual computer architecture that people might build in the future."

Funder [thinks] "WTF going to license this off us. A might be building block for a maybe computer."

*or*

Our studies show by 2020 semiconductor mfg will need transistors 1 atom across. By skipping intermediate levels and starting on developing devices at this level now we will be in pole position to offer processes, devices and consultancy they can use for this purpose.

Funder [thinks] "Sweet. We'll be able to flog this to Intel and I'm off to a permanent spot at Bondi."

Funder "Application approved."

Watch the video, listen to the SR's description. It's not a lie, more a creative re-purposing.

BTW Building a 2 giga transistor processor (as at 2008)

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transistor_Count_and_Moore%27s_Law_-_2008.svg )

One transistor at a time is pretty stupid. OTOH *current* quantum computers using Sodium vapor atoms held by lasers have done significant work with 10s of atoms.

Which is *much* more viable using STM as a mfg tool.

I've still yet to see a quantum computer that can execute an actual *program*, So far they all seem like hard wired analog processors to me.

A first rate effort and congratulations to everyone involved.

Gov CloudStore opens for business

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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It'll be interesting to see what the takeup will be of the smaller suppliers

Say in about 1 years time.

My intuition says lots of "customers" will stick with BAU relationships with the people they know/have heard of/bought them a big lunch last week.

SME's thinking they just have to sit back and wait for the orders to come in will be *sadly* disappointed.

This gives you "credibility" with potential customers. You have to make them aware of who you are and what you do, preferably who you've previously done it with who they might recognize.

Need a backup system. Who you going to call?

Computacenter? SCC? Cognitive Network Solutions?

And remember most "Name Brands" will sub-contract some of the work anyway. You really *are* paying Harrods prices for Asda services.

But it's a *start* to (maybe) opening up the market so (cautious) thumbs up.

Intel shows off near threshold voltage chip wizardry

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Pint

Note that NTV as they like to call it is not that new

It's one of the keys to how ECL chips were clocking at 200Mhz when TTL was clocking at about 10Mhz. But the hardware had *huge* power requirements with many more transistors per gate.

Note the reasons *why* people designed them that way.

Digital transistors with *big* switching margins are *much* easier to design on chips (compared to analog circuits) and their yield is better. At these thresholds your looking at the voltage variances produced by being at room temperature (kT anyone?). It has taken a *huge* increase in understanding the physics and architectural implications of doing this to make it viable.

Getting the operating frequency range is impressive as is RF with logic on *same* chip (I'll take a guess the clock frequencies of the logic are carefully *misaligned* to reduce interference but the article indicates they had to go much further). But doesn't SiGe already give this?

But honestly if you *really* want low power you need to go asynchronous so half your transistor budget does not go in clock drivers.

Bottom line. Do you want to watch Vista boot at 3Mhz? I'd prefer a chip with 0Hz as its sleep frequency.

On the upside they won't call them "bugs" anymore. They will "surveillance processors".

Glass duly raised.

Goldman Sachs developer cleared of code theft

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Never post soucrce code out of secure environment.

Always likely to cause trouble.

Two UK airports scrap IRIS eye-scanners

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Just a thought on facial recognition.

If it takes 3-5 secs for a system to decide if a picture of your face matches the one in *your* passport.

How long will it take for it to check A Passenger against the roughly 6 million faces of the EU suspect persons database?

While all the other gates (WAG about 10 000 across the sea and airports of the 27 member states) are doing the same?

Wasn't one of the "benefits" of this system going to be *reducing* the time through the gate?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Re: I understand it's your bread and butter.

"First, biometrics are the exact opposite of cooperative identification. They're adversarial in approach. "

"It invites rather than stops attempts at impersonation".

"They also have the exact opposite of the properties you need for a sustainable system. They don't stand compromise, for they're always easier to fake than to replace."

"Thus, using biometrics is elevating the needs of the system over the needs of the citizen it claims to seek to protect."

"Same thing with those new pervy eye-staring devices. You like them because they're spendy. Fat margins, good for the old CV. "

"It is touching in a sad way you still actually believe the security circus is about security. It is not. It is about being seen to do something, anything"

One of the neatest critiques of the whole security theatre.

Very neatly done AC.

PlayStation Vita OS in your phone and telly - Sony's saviour?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

So they want to follow Microsoft.

With "Vita everywhere" instead of "Windows everywhere," except from the games (and maybe phone) end toward the TV and (who knows) the PC?

Remind me again of how well that has worked out for Microsoft.

Whistleblower: Decade-long Nortel hack 'traced to China'

John Smith 19 Gold badge

AC@20:51

"I get your point, but it's not like you can do a netstat and a whois and automatically weed out anything that looks vaguely Chinese. "

Agreed. However I'm thinking a little wider. It's more the idea of a white list where *every* IP address (and the port they are sending to) is *accounted* for. Think of it more like a corporate phone book.

I'd expect *most* traffic to be going to *known* IP addresses (and ports) in the sense of IP addresses of other offices within the company, main suppliers and main customers.

The rest is more suspicious, *especially* if one or more of them are being sent data on a *regular* basis.

This would not stop traffic to a compromised supplier or customer (unless you're cross checking send time against when people are actually *using* those machines) but it would have picked up weird-stuff-is-going-on a lot sooner.

"Blocking traffic to China" is too simplistic a policy. They might have been the end users, they might not (I think China has the record for the most number of pirated copies of Windows, so no security updates to stop them being exploited as relays to somewhere else).

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Re: Re: Regularly sending data to an IP address in China

Sounds good (TBH my impression is that software development for *embedded* systems in the telecomms industry is fairly rigorous) but it depends how deep the security goes.

It's SOP in some development shops to run tests on database systems by stuffing the data files *directly*, bypassing the data entry & validation front ends.

That's not to say there is *no* audit trail, merely that it's on programmer, not the software management system. Depending on how well the source code control system is integrated it might or might not show access when the code .

And of course a *real* black hat would aim to disable the logging software *first* to prevent anyone following their trail as a matter of course.

Yes this is highly speculative and highly paranoid. It should be *impossible*.

However the chance to infect every unit of some major piece of Nortel kit would make a *very* tempting target, both for the access it can give to users *directly* but also as a beach head into other networks.

Like the update to ATM's in Eastern Europe (Hungary?) that allowed a dump of all users card details and PINs.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

Regularly sending data to an IP address in China

For *years* and no one notices or asks "Why?"

A thought occurs to me. If you can't *account* for why a program (any program) is sending messages to the outside world why *let* it? Did you *ask* for some kind of security backup to be engaged? In corporate land isn't it safer to have them justify themselves *before* being allowed to open a port?

And BTW It's not only what the perpetrators (*wherever* they were really based) got out of Nortel.

It's what (if anything) they were able to *install*

Changes to the source code running its switches to create (for example) hard coded engineering test passwords into *every* future Nortel product using that code base?

That would make this the crack that just keeps on giving.

It *should* be impossible *but* if no one's actually eyeballing the code why would they go looking for a section they were not assigned to? They don't know it's even there And it *should* have been impossible for a major *manufacturer* of comms equipment to have been penetrated like this for so long

500 Brit techies at risk over NHS IT fiasco

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

And even if CSC retain the staff what will they be assigned to?

Some exciting new project perhaps?

Or perhaps one of those other CSC project on the sick list because they are over running but they've got the "client" (or "mark" as I like to think of them) to cough up more green to hire more staff on to bring it in on time.

Mine's the one with a copy of "The Mythical Man Month" in the pocket.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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I feel a concertio coming on.

For the world's smallest violin.

There are no doubt lots of "reasons" why despite the *years* of time and 10s of £Bn (what was it £Bn12? £Bn15? as the official total. The real price will probably never be known) spent on this system it did achieve it's objectives. Someone actually *stating* what those were in a measurable way, and how they would be measured (and *not* changing them every few days), probably would have gone a good way toward success.

But they could have jumped ship or complained to their managers about lack of actual direction (or backed up their managers as *they* complained tot he NHS about a lack of direction).

But none of that actually happened.

Like the people on the National Identity Register project they kept quiet and took the money. They just ploughed on with this colossal p***take of taxpayers money.

The smart ones knew this day was coming and have their escape plan already.

I feel a distinct lack of sympathy for any of them. You can raise that to the 10th power for any *management* types in there.

As for the "500 high tech jobs at risk" routine does anyone detect the rancid fragrance of eau de BAe? That heady blend of easy access to the PM and special case whining.

Thumbs up but it's only when companies that routinely f***up start loosing *serious* amounts of work that they they might *consider* improving the actual *delivery* of their project.

'Predictably random' public keys can be cracked - crypto boffins

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Good PRNG?

I've heard there's some fellow called Knuth whose written a big book, some of which is about PRNG's, what makes a good one, how to generate them etc.

He's a mathematician so I'd guess he might know what he's talking about.

It seems not many developers have read it.

Southwest One gets £10m IBM loan amid 'staggering' losses

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Introduction of a new SAP system"

Which should have set alarm bells ringing from day 1.

Note. SAP has been supplied in various "pre-configured" versions set up for best practice (at least SAP think its best practice) in various industrial sectors.

Pre-load on new servers, bring them in on a weekend, Upload historical data to new servers and your ready to go Monday morning. It *can* work.

*Provided*

SAP have a version for your business sector (local govt?).

Your way of working maps to SAP well (or can be made to).

You've done *serious* work on data mapping your existing systems to SAP's and cleaned the data *before* you do the transfer.

You've made proper arrangements to handle the *complete* ETL process, starting with a *full* backup of all your core systems.

And in the case of *multiple* local govt bodies they *converge* there business processes into a *single* path to eliminate all that "If council = little-dunny-on-the-wold then set majority to Conservative" special case coding.

What's the betting they got the full fat swiss-army-knife SAP version with *lots* of bespoke coding (at full contractor rates)?

Note an SAP financial system delivered to NASA gave *unified* accounts across all its sites for the first time *ever* and identified roughly $876Bn in misaccounted money dating back to the founding of the Agency. NASA used to have the same auditors as Enron. They don't anymore. See CFO magazine for details.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

"the impact of market conditions"

What f***ing market?

Canadians revolt over draconian internet privacy bill

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Big Brother

"Protecting Children from Internet Preditors"

Nice piece of NewSpeak..

You can bet the language of the bill itself will have *no* such limits.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Stop

so how difficutlt is it to get a log of an internet users activity in the UK.

Not very.

It comes under RIPA but if its just what websites and email addresses I *think* this just needs the support of a senior police officer. If you want content *then* you need a warrant from a judge.

But in the UK (so far) there are no *direct* boxes in the ISP offices. And the ISP's can *charge* for the date.

Which (so far) seems the *only* thing that stops more police fishing trips.

However there is the ongoing GCH "Controlling the Internet" programme and Dettica (part of BAe) who *do* want to copy all that data to Cheltenham to find the terrorists by building their contact graphs.

Expect Dettica (formerly Smith Associates) or some Canadian subsidiary to be sniffing around if there's hardware involved. IIRC Lockheed Martin have some involvement in this sort of stuff as well. As full service govt con-tractors no trough goes without their snout getting into it.

Can you say NP complete?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Childcatcher

AC@02:00

You have to wonder about these sheet sniffers.

Think of the children. Indeed he never seems to stop thinking of them.

Lumpy nanoparticles improve thin film solar cells

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Clever science but the bottom

Wh/$

You gotta fight for your right ... to net neutrality

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Excellent idea.

Sane, rational and within the rules.

I wonder if Google shareholders would do the same?

After all with something like 10% of *all* internet traffic going through their infrastructure what rules do *they* apply?

thumbs up for this approach.

Mars, Europe losers in Obama's 2013 NASA budget

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

AC@23:48

Nice.

But to expand a little.

A neat and elegant summation of a companies entire ethos encapsulated in one simple line.

BAe are a government con-tractor. Their last major business that actually involved selling stuff to *real* companies was Airbus and they sold that off *years* ago.

Now they will sort out any govt with everything from arms (up to nuclear submarines but I'm not sure how good those hand welds are likely to be) to Identity Cards (although they were smart enough to get out of the UK scheme) to spying on a countries internet users wholesale (they bought Dettica, the company that makes the boxes for this about the time they got out of the NIR shambles. They've always had a strong ability to dump losing projects and find the cash cows. While the Interception Modernization Programme is no longer heard from that's not to say it's successors have gone away).

Of course what they will stiff GCHQ for will be an Official Secret.

And the final price?

I reckon the AC has got that nailed.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Curious. All my posts getting 1 vote down.

Well I'm no expert on US budget games but I recently had to take a crash course in the subject. If someone did not like my description please tell me what I got wrong. AFAIK its quite accurate.

Unless..

No. Surely not.

Someone hasn't got in a strop about my description of the (imported) Grey squirrel, have they?

That would be *too* childish.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Further note.

Presidents Budget Request <> Authorization (Senate & congress) <> Appropriation (Senate & congress)

So sneaky politicians can vote yes on an authorization bill (looking good to their voters) while voting no on the appropriation bill to avoid actual *spending* (making them look "fiscally responsible")*.

Note also.

Congress & Senate can just decide to fund stuff *without* this process.

The "Earmark" system allows specific amounts within *any* bill to be ring fenced for *any* purpose. 1 Senator bank rolled $63m to an aircraft mfg over a roughly 20 yr period despite *repeated* evaluations by various branches of the military saying it was both dangerous and ineffective.

It might be an interesting idea to extrapolate from what is known of them what the founding fathers would have made to how the system they devised has evolved.

*Not that I know any US politician who would behave in such a dishonorable fashion.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Note this is one of *three* budgets that will be kicked around.

Because both the Senate and Congress will issue there own.

Then the horse trading begins.

AFAIK the US system dates from the 1776 and works well *provided* all the players are like minded people with similar goals and a consensus view of how to achieve them.

Today it's a brilliant system for all the piggies to get their snouts in the trough with anyone who can block a course of action (unless they can be "persuaded") having power.

And then of course we have the Militant style party-within-a-party tactics of the tea-party. Obviously without someone as well tailored as Derek Hatton.

Usual caveats. NASA budget << than US spends on home delivered pizza or aircon for US forces abroad and that $830m on commercial launch would be a *big* improvement on what they ended up with last time. It *might* even be enough to get *all* the entrants past Critical Design Review and into construction. Last time it got chopped to (IIRC) about $500m or less while bumping up the amount for the SLS (although not to a level outside observers think will give it anything like a reasonable flight rate).

Once again let the games begin

ESA's first Vega rocket blasts off without a hitch

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Facepalm

Voted down?

Someone's having a full blown queen out.

As it happens looking over the list of specialties today it did occur to me that this would be quite a good review group to look at the evidence on AGW. Chemistry, physics, maths,botany, birds and agriculture would seem to be a good mix of skills to access the validity of both the data and the models it's being fed into.

Which has *not* been subject to detailed scientific analysis in the UK, *despite* claims of the 3 investigations into the behavior of the CRU.

However I don't think I could have picked a *worse* panel to decide the fate of the UK independent space launch capability.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@Will Godfrey

Quite true. The UK is the *only* state to develop independent launch capability and *abandon* it*

This was partly as a result of a committee of the "Great & the Good" deciding there was no future in this rocket lark and those nice Americans could handle any launches HMG was going to need.

The committee's composition was 1 anatomist, 1 aeronautical engineer, 1 classicist, 1 nuclear physicist, 1 Industrial chemist, 1 ornithologist, 1 botanist, 1 medical researcher, 1 agronomist,1 electrical engineer, 1 physical chemist and 2 mathematicians.

So probably pretty good for getting to the bottom of the truth about AGW but a bit s**t for developing future UK space policy.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

@Robert E A Harvey

"I'm old enough to remember Britian putting up a satellite with Black Arrow. I wonder how this compares?"

Well Vega 3 solids +liquid upper stage

Black Arrow 2 liquid + 1 solid upper stage. Note the solid stage was *critical to getting to orbit. The first more or less got the vehicle across Australia and over the ocean. 1st stage delta v < 2000ms^-1.

Black arrow physically *much* smaller (Could fit into a 60' ISO container)

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

It'll be interesting to see what kind of ride it gives the payloads

Historically solid rides are dog rough. They are the reason the first vibration control systems were developed by the USAF to allow re-purposed *solid* ICBM stages to act as launch vehicles.

The fairing jettison was also quite high. IIRC the Shuttle SRB's separated at about the the top of the sensible atmosphere at around 70Km. Trying to keep the acceleration levels down perhaps?

As for fast takeoffs that *was* fast compared to normal *initial* acceleration off a launch pad (unless you've seen a Sprint ABM takeoff.

It's curious the commentator did not mention 2 things.

1) Not only is the first stage the first *ever* to use electromechanical actuators of this size it's also the first to be powered by *batteries* (although they are pretty hefty).

2)Despite the emphasis on the the "all solid" launcher the 4th stage is actually a storable liquid design, much like that on the OSC Pegasus when they are launching multiple payloads or need precision orbital injection.

It's still a pretty astonishing achievement, and mostly made by a subsidiary of Fiat.

Blighty's gov to spunk up to £2.9b on crim-stalking tech

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: I propose a V4 Dynamics CRM implementation.

Dynamics?

You mean Microsoft dynamics?

The bastard child of 2 completely different ERP systems basically bought for their user bases but with little actually in common?

"What could possibly go wrong, how could there possibly be cost overruns? "

You jest surely?

Sadly even this *looks* like a better bet than what they will probably get, likely 99% bespoke proprietary because (of course) *noone* has to do this sort of thing.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

HMG serious about getting SME's involved.

Yeah right.

Now that a top end of £290m/year.

"little better than sticking an android phone in a secure box gaffer taped to the leg of a scally and using locatemydroid to check in from time to time."

TBH in an era when small boxes on high value containers allow tracking by *satellite* in Geosynchronous orbit is that not a huge about to spend?

Child abuse files stolen from council worker in PUB - £100k fine

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

@Winkpop

I think you'll find it's a whole troupe of chimps.

As for no money a few £100k is not uncommon for a management post. You need to get promoted out of front line work ASAP if you want the decent green.

Meanwhile the UK death rate for children known to social services departments remains about 7-10 children a week as the average case load can be around 30-40, rather than the target 20+.

Icon because in the UK socail Services *do* fail the people they are meant to protect, often by protecting the *wrong* people instead.

Chip boffins demo 22-nanometer maskless wafer-baking

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Nothing is new (but it might work differently this time).

"Direct write" has been around since the early 80's and direct electron beam lithography was tried on a *commercial* scale by Electron Silicon Structures (ES2) offering a niche small scale production/rapid prototyping service. AFAIK the company went out of business but I'm not sure why. The *theory* was sound but I suspect their management made 1 or more mis-judgements.

BTW the *multiple* electron beams idea is *not* new either.

SRI at Stamford were demonstrating how a single electron beam could be accelerated to high energy and then *split* using (IIRC) a wire mesh into about 20 "beamlets" in the early 80's. However while the *concept* has been around that long it's not clear from the animation how they make it work (some sort of side illumination seems to be involved and it's not clear if the beamlets are under *individual* control, which would be unnecessary in a production application).

Note in the 80's the *big* hurdle was 1 micrometre (people were saying X-ray is the only way even then). So the linewidth has gone down by 50 but (it appears) the number of beams has gone up by 50 000. OTOH the wafer diameter also doubled (roughly 6" ->12" for SoA lines and rising. 320mm is in sight)

So at present this needs a x300 improvement in speed versus a x60 speedup for EUV.

Windows 8 on ARM: Microsoft bets on Office 15 and IE10

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Remember NT

"It's just Windows"

Only internally it's not.

I like ARM and an *official* Windows version has been a long time coming.

Time will tell if this reduces the *very* unhealthy Microsoft/Intel co-dependency.

IT guy answers daughter's Facebook rant by shooting her laptop

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Dave Lawton

Historically the Grey is an import.

From North America.

It's fatter and more aggressive than the native Red.

I'm not sure it's mating calls are louder as well.

CSC confirms $1.5bn NHS IT write-off

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

OMG. NHS actually gets money *back*

I'm going to have to sit down.

Seriously how often does a major UK institution get money *back* from one of the usual suspects?

Trouble is they will be back sniffing round for the next round of reforms, no doubt pitching some kind of "accreditation management system" (WTF that is as it won't exist when they actually start talking about how great it is) to "help" those (budget holding) GP's hold their budgets (and get a chunk of them in the process).

Personally I think the only think that *really* improves these guys will be being publicly *banned* from bidding by an organization they screwed over for X years.

Otherwise it's the banking crisis all over again. Personal gains are kept and the stockholders pick up the pieces, no matter *how* insane the implementation plan was.

Heads I get a $1m bonus, tails you see your shares drop 50%.

Thumbs up for the NHS growing a set big enough to get something substantial off them.

but I suspect CSC will learn nothing from the experience other than cover their tracks better next time.

New sat data shows Himalayan glaciers hardly melting at all

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

@DrSteve

Most of your post is factual. However you describe ice melting as "fast."

Isn't that rather more of an *opinion* than a fact?

I'd also raise the question if this method has been applied to the *other* areas (Greenland/Antarctica) you mention and do those figures *also* fall?

Overall that suggests a fall from 1.48 mm/Yr to 1.36 mm/Yr.

Which raises the question how many communities would be affected by a seal level rise of roughly 14cm in the next century? I'm sure there are a few and port cities are vulnerable anyway, but how many?

UK.gov: We really are going to start buying open-source from SMEs

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Stop calling them "Billion £ contracts" when its £100m a year running for 10 yrs might be a start

A £1Bn contract split into 10 sub contracts is *still* £100m each.

Which is still firmly in "usual suspects" territory.

In *reality* that's £10m per *year*, which is definitely in the (larger) end of SME land.

The bottom line is *always* proprietary lockin by the supplier.

This is *all* about the rules in the contract on documentation, source code, compiled versions etc.

Government systems are *likely* to be 1 off sales, as it is *highly* unlikely you can build one flexible enough to accommodate the UK NI systems (NIRS II anyone?) and then sell it to someone else (Although IIRC that's *exactly* what one of the US wanted to do with it or another system, when they pitched the system as client server).

Things would probably go easier if customers accepted 3 things.

1)No software is bug free.

2)Suppliers will release software with bugs. The question is what is an *acceptable* level, what should be done about them and who is responsible (IE who pays for the work).

3)Suppliers can (and *have*) botch the requirements analysis and know they will make any money they lost low bidding the contract by charging through the nose for change requests. CSA system anyone?

More creative mapping of government tasks to COTS software would probably save quite a bit. Looking for the right *class* of COTS software to work on and being prepared to *change* your existing (non computer) procedures to improve the fit.

The trick is to avoid excessive "customization." ending up with effectively yet another proprietary system that cannot leverage later upgrades to the core software (a perennial screw up of in house modified MRP systems back in the day).