* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Sensor failure led to Soyuz launch failure, says Roscosmos

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"The LVDC was capable of executing 12190 instructions per second."

People often over estimate how much performance is needed to run LV's and their engines in steady state, with limited monitoring

OTOH if you're doing turbine monitoring using FFT's of the vibration spectrum of the drive turbines to decide if you need to shut down rather than get away with a throttle down (developed, but not AFAIK flown, for the Shuttle) and do fault diagnosis on the sensors (to decide if you can trust their readings) you need something with a bit more "oomph" (In Shuttles a whole separate processor board in the box).

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"Iirc, Apollo era fault detection, and probably Soyuz too, consists of a long piece of wire"

Hilarious.

Actually it was a bit more complex, as described here

The trick is to not identify fault patterns, then install sensors to find them (which need wiring and processing, and might themselves be faulty), but find the signatures they cause

Mostly viciously aggressive acceleration. The cause don't matter, just the results.

Apollo also put the 'nauts in the loop to track slower developing possible problems (which might get bad enough to go to a full abort, but might just as easily decay back to nothing).

It would seem a large part of the EDS was in fact hard wired, using diodes and (gasp) relay logic.

Note that the basic trajectory to orbit (and how fast it's traversed) hasn't actually changed in the 5 decades since Apollo.

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"can the fault detection system work fast enough. "

Well give it was mostly hard wired but IIRC there was a very slot processor in the loop (sub 1 MHz) I'd guess a 200MHz ARM would be substantially faster, or a discrete ECL SSI logic chip design at 1GHz (it'll guzzle electricity during the minutes of launch with the escape system is usable, then shut down).

30 spies dead after Iran cracked CIA comms network with, er, Google search – new claim

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

""It was never meant to be used long term for people to talk to sources," "

And yet it was.

"temporary" infrastructure used long after it should have been replaced. No PHB has ever done that before.

BTW the STUXNET malware was first discovered in 2010.

According to Wikipedia it was though to have been in development (and deployment?) from 2005.

So yes if the Iranians started noticing stuff earlier they would have been quite angry.

It seems actions have consequences, even in malware. Who knew?

Worldwide Web wizard Tim Berners-Lee sticks wellington boot into Worldwide Web's giants: Time to break 'em up?

John Smith 19 Gold badge

It was thought computers and computer networks would empower human kind

Instead they have just empowered some companies to make a great deal of money while raising barriers to entry so high it's effectively impossible to compete with them.

And make no mistake raising those barriers (of whatever kind) is absolutely part of their business model.

And has been so since at least the time Micrsoft and the "If you sell a PC that can run DOS, we get a cut, even if it doesn't have a copy loaded" contract clause AKA "The Microsoft tax."

Need electric propulsion for your satellite? Want a 'made in Britain' sticker? Step right this way...

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Actually British industry has been knocking out ion thrusters since the late 60's

Most of them for low thrust or test missions.

So quite a long time.

Apple's launch confirms one thing: It's determined to kill off the laptop for iPads

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

There's a place in Ayrshire called "Dufus"

Still puts a smile on my face.

Growing up there, not so much.

This one weird trick turns your Google Home Hub into a doorstop

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

No one knows it'sthere --> no one can exploit it.

Yup, security by obscurity strikes again.

And again.

And again.

The best way to screw the competition? Do what they can't, in a fraction of the time

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

"A brief history of ethernet"

Masterful.

Ex spy bosses: Cyber-warfare needs rules of engagement for nations to promptly ignore

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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when in doubt look for the PPE graduate.

Internet standards should stop treating anyone as friendly.

Everyone is a potential MITM attack.

Have you ever, ever felt like this? Have strange things happened? Is high-speed data going round the twist?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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A (potentially) astonishing step change in FO bandwidth.

Which Big Cable companies will take decades to roll out and throttle till you can almost hear the death rattle.

UK.gov should spend more on AI, bleat VCs and consultants. Oh? Why's that then?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

TL;DR versions.

It's a lot of BS bingo.

2200 pages of utter s**t.

Statistical pattern recognition <> artificial intelligence.

IMHO the missing link is somewhere between what we know the brains hardware is (very low level) and the thoughts people think with it.

I spy a virtual machine

RIP Charles Wang: Computer Associates cofounder dies aged 74

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

On the upside

Some cancer charity gets a nice piece of change?

Just saying.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

They used to joke the Sales team dress code was "Sharkskin Grey"

To match fin on their backs.

Brit smart meter biz blamed Apple's iPhone 7 launch for its late taxes

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Your utiliy displays in the hands of these fine people.

You've been warned.

UK.gov to press ahead with online smut checks (but expects £10m in legals in year 1)

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

Not about porn really.

This is just the classic TOTC softening up BS so beloved of the data fetishists who support this to help populate their what-sort-of-person-are-you database.

Check the categories.

You'll find they include "Anorexia advocacy" and "Esoterica"

BTW I'd say most fetishists are normally harmless and only indulge their thing with like minded people.

OTOH Data fetishists want to do their thing with (or rather to) everybody, all the time. Forever.

John Smith 19 Gold badge

the parents should be bringing up their children and leading them into the world.

Except one particular "parent" in question (who couldn't figure out how to enable age barring on her browser) started all this BS.

I'll leave the name of the Conservative MP who I'm thinking of as an exercise for other readers.

FYI: Faking court orders to take down Google reviews is super illegal

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Or he could have just used the money to make his business not so crap

Just saying.

Core-blimey! Riddle of Earth's mysterious center finally 'solved' by smarty seismologists

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

Solid, yet not very hard?

Mini baby bells.

Brace yourself, Britain: Health minister shares 'vision' for NHS 'tech revolution'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So that's where a big chunk of that "350m/week" Brexit dividend is going.

Yet another "Cunning plan."

The fail is strong in this one.

You'd think that with an impending Brexit training more nurses and doctors in the UK might be quite useful. Y'know, reducing dependency on foreign nationals (I seem to recall that was one of the wishes that (some) Leave voters thought it was all about*)

*Instead of keeping the parliamentary Conservative party together and smoking the kippers,

Shortages, price rises, recession: Tech industry preps for hard Brexit

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Sir Ivan Rogers Cambridge speech TL;DR version

Brexitieers (of whatever party, but mostly Conservative) were a bunch of delusional f**kwits who didn't understand how the EU works or why it was formed but did press (vigorously, at full speed) for the massive expansion of it, and the deepening and widening of it regulatory powers to create a single market (something some members of the ERG very conveniently forget).

Brexitieers (of whatever party, but mostly Conservative) are still a bunch of delusional f**kwits, who believe they will be indulged, like spoilt children by some random adult who is not their parent and are about to discover that person has no incentive to do so.

Unfortunately so are the rest of the British people.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So boom times at Somerset Capital Management (London and Dublin branches) then?

SCM supposedly specializes in "Emerging markets" and I think it's pretty clear the emerging market in the UK (for currency and commodities) is "chaotic"

Excellent conditions for people who speculate in chaos to make large profits.

No doubt Christmas will be a joyous time in the Rees Mogg household.

The mysterious life of Luc Esape, bug fixer extraordinaire. His big secret? He's not human

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

""Who owns the intellectual property and responsibility of a bot contribution: "

Good question.

Along with "Who accepts responsibility if one of the coders f**ks up a piece of life critical software and someone dies"

Because it damm sure wont be any commercial OS vendor.

With sorry Soyuz stuffed, who's going to run NASA's space station taxi service now?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

NASA current budget is 0.5%

I stand corrected.

I think we can agree it's less than the DoD spends on AirCon for overseas bases (c $40Bn) or the size of the US home delivered pizza market (c $25Bn).

All those pies do add up.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"you don't seem to have noticed..NASA has programs going on all over the solar system"

Let me amend my comment.

Where human spaceflight is concerned Marshall (the bit that designs launch vehicles) is a one-programme-at-a-time center. JPL and Goddard (who do probes and remote systems) do rather more with rather less.

In fact in Marshalls case it's about 1 new system every couple of decades. (Shuttle in the 70's and 80's was the last new system they worked on.

Personally I think they should be shut down, but NASA is not allowed to to make that decision (about it's own centers). I'm not sure if any of the other 22 Federal agencies have that right. I think they do.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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This is great news for certain politicians.

They dream of Mars, but know that NASA is basically a one-programme-at-a-time agency (because those same politicians wouldn't dream of properly funding it)

Hence a desire to kill ISS.

Which explains the very grudging funding (usually below the requested level, while that for SLS/Orion has been above request)

Also note the progress Boeing and SX have made compared to Orion (which cannot even afford to build its own Service Module. It'll we be bought in from ESA on a barter deal for ISS access).

Funny how much progress when there's even a little bit of competition in the game, is it not?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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1969-06-20 (Orbit Yuri Gagarin) - 1961-04-12 (first moonlanding) is slightly over 8 years.

You forgot 1 little detail.

Apollo?/Saturn consumed c5% of the entire USG budget while that budget was inflated due to running the Vietnam war.

Today the NASA budget is 0.9% of USG spending. There is no clear goal for SLS or Orion (both of which have kept shifting) aside from shovelling cash and jobs into the Senators states that support it.

Remember they chose to put big jointed solids (which cannot be shut down) on SLS after Challenger showed what happens if the joint fails.

US may have by far the world's biggest military budget but it's not showing in security

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Sure. Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg came out in 1989,

Exactly.

If anything the trend seems to be working down the food chain.

1989

Pentagon computers accessible by internet.

2018

Combat vehicles and their weapons available through the internet.

The PTB should find this trend worrying, but obviously don't.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

How long have processors *connected* to a network been part of miltiary systems?

Decades at least.

And to save the implementation budget (not the overall budget of course) they'll use stuff they've picked off the internet or FOSS communities.

This reads like a catalogue of stupid, from the developers to the operators.

Once you hook kit up to a data cable (any data cable) you can no longer be entirely sure where that connection terminates. Is the box it connects to? The box that box connects to?

And that's before we get onto the wireless network connections that you can't even see.

Astroboffins discover when white and brown dwarfs mix, the results are rather explosive

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Pint

Interesting what a range of chemcials you can make just banging some near stars together

IE mostly Hydrogen.

Raising a pint of another interesting mix of chemicals in appreciation.

HMRC rapped as Brexit looms and customs IT release slips again

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"with the EU in multiple self inflicted crises?"

I'd say repeating the same thing over and over again won't change peoples minds but the success of "Taking back control" proves that to be a lie.

Still at least I know what that noise I've been hearing is at last.

It's the sound of Joseph Goebbels ROTFLHFAO as he cackles "The Big Lie, Ja. The Big Lie"

I do hope you enjoy getting exactly what you voted for.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Did anyone expect a government IT project to go well?"

No.

Which most people would have considered a good reason not to vole Leave, as it multiplies the clusterf**kness of the decision.

Of course if your a contractor you may think "More coin for me as the chaos increases."

It's looking more like the Leave voters split into basically 2 groups

1)Those who wanted to express some kind of temper tantrum at the government (they'd have done better calling the Home Office to account for the numerous management f**kups that are the main root causes of this situation) with a massive parambulator pacifier ejection event.

2)Those with assets who expect to make a killing through investments and are wealthy enough to be insulated from the direct consequences and feel its a case of "Head I win, tails I win."

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Remeber, Leave voters, this is *exactly* what you voted for.

Like a suspect in a police station signing a blank confession form and letting the cop behind the desk fill in the details. *

*I know, IRL no one would be so cretinously stupid to do such a thing. Except that is exactly what Leave voters did.

Surprising no one, Google to appeal against European Commission's €4.34bn Android fine

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Google may reportedly pay Apple $9bn to ensure it is the default search engine in the iPhone"

Using revenue from an effective monopoly to suppress competition less well funded competitors could never match.

Wow, straight out of the MS playbook.

What a surprise.

Convenient switch hides an inconvenient truth

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

So labelling stuff is tedious and boring. Until it saves you doing stuff like this

Something to keep in mind perhaps when you next have to install some new stuff and think "Nah, what's the point of labeling it?"

On the seventh anniversary of Steve Jobs' death, we give you 7 times he served humanity and acted as an example to others

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"You think I'm an arrogant asshole who thinks he's above the law," "

You don't usually get that level of self awareness from someone that high up the PCL-R scale.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

A fair assesment of Steve Jobs

A Great man to some

A Greater bas***d to the rest.

UK space comes to an 'understanding' with Australia as Brexit looms

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Here's a link to the Brexit red line slide,

Excellent.

If only this had been circulated during the Referendum, eh?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

WTF does the UK need to build it's *own* sole use nav system?

Answer.

F**k all.

Seriously, could you imagine a bigger waste of taxpayers money?

This is driven by

a) Massive MoD egoism and some fantasy that the UK is as big as the US/China/India/Russia (all countries with active or planned sat nav systems, and the tax base to afford it )

and

b) A desire to support a chunk of the British satellite industry, which the morons who voted for this bu***hit didn't think twice about throwing under a bus.

And yes, the UK satellite industry is worth quite a lot of money in terms of foreign revenue, and is growing quite fast.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"this is going to achieve the frictionless trade..UK factories & farms need for their survival,"

Of course it is.

Inside the head of the delusional f**kwits who voted for this nonsense anything is not just possible but virtually certain.

Laser-sharp research sees three top boffins win the Nobel Prize in physics

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Pint

fS laser pulses are qualitiatively different than longer ones.

Effectively matter has no time to react or "relax" to absorb the energy. So it pumps a great deal of energy into a small surface zone of the object. This makes machining metals (especially if they are under a thin sheet of water) much easier.

It also helps if you're building very big lasers for fusion research.

So a pint to all of them (and yes you can make a laser with alcohol).

Robot Operating System gets the Microsoft treatment

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Warning! Warning! Will Robinson, out of control microsoft robot approaching!

"Dr Smith has flashed my hard drive. Danger! Danger! Run!"

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

"safer to be around. " runs Windows.

I think not.

Send up a satellite to zap space junk if you want Earth's orbit to be clean, say boffins

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@Aquilus

47 posts since 2007.

Just got out of jail?

Perfect timing for a two-bank TITSUP: Totally Inexcusable They've Stuffed Up Payday

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"If you don't leave, TSB will continue to not give a fuck."

Correct.

And they won't until customers start moving and (OMFG) they might loose revenue.

That is the only thing that will cause them to change.

Sopra Steria exec on warpath as its UK Government profit crashes ... by millions

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Coat

"The random punishment beating will continue until morale improves."

Is that what you really need in your life?

Never mind Brexit. UK must fling more £billions at nuke subs, say MPs

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

We could track your subs in the 80s.

No, he means to within a few 10s of metres.

That tracking is within a few 10s of Kilometres.

And in a hot war those passive sonar arrays (and their shore bases) would be some of the first casualties.

"Under Siege" maybe a laughable Steven Segal shoot-em-up but it's quite realistic about that.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

stamp out of the EU in a geriatric tantrum..bit like a West European version of N. Korea.

Yes that sounds about right.

Right down to the age group who voted for the lunacy.

US cities react in fury to FCC's $2bn break for 5G telcos: We'll be picking up the tab, say officials

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Sweet" Pai enarning his remuneration*

But not his government salary.

It really is amazing how much of the US Federal Structure was modeled on Ancient Rome.

Most of the bad bits that allow a nominally independent decision making process to be hijacked by basically one man to allow them to line their pockets.

One of the reasons humans developed better models of government.

Several 100 years before the War of Independence.

UK.gov won't Airwave bye for another 3 years, plans to phase in ESN services

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

So once again the Home Offices proves itself

A Centre for Evil (C) in the UK*

*And does anyone believe that "Substantially the same" claim about what Motorola charged them for that 3 year extension?

Remember UK readers, it's not the Home Offices money.

It's UK taxpayers money.