Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"It's up to MS - they'll either provide a caching binary cross compiler or they won't. And since they have already clearly demonstrated on the X-Box 360 that they have the required technology available, the evidence is strong that they can provide this with the ARM version of Windows 7."
So it won't because they can't.
It's because they don't *want* to.
Seriously.
1 amp -> 1 Coulomb /sec and 1 electron carries 1.6 x 10^-19C of charge.
I imagined an electron to be a cube 1x10^-9m on a side (which is *hugely* bloated)
Now take that Ah capacity and work out how much of that battery volume is actually *holding* charge.
You may find the result quite surprising.
"Err, no, that is not acceptable. The battery has to be "safe" in the event of a crash (at least no more of a hazard than a tank of fuel) and from materials that are not too toxic to use, and that are not in such a short supply that the cost of £68/kWh can still be met when the global demand is in the 10s of millions per year (and some country with the only viable deposits decides to enjoy the profits a bit more)."
Some excellent practical points, but I suspect just hitting *those* storage & price targets will be difficult enough as it is, although the safety items should apply to all entrants.
*if* more contestants step up then I guess those would be deciding questions.
"Furthermore the costs of implementing a charging grid needs to be considered, both the practicalities of charging stations and the infrastructure to deliver enough power. Hell, just now we are looking at brown-out in the near futures due to lack of capacity WITHOUT adding the demands of motoring."
True but IIRC HMG does have some plans to start looking at this. it's not a minor point but it does not require *breakthrough* technology, but it does require *lots* of cabling, generating capacity and some way to incentivise people and companies to install them.
As has been pointed out lots of people's daily commute is within the present capacity of EV's *provided* they could re-charge at work (which if they had no *offstreet* parking is also the only place they could get charged up).
Which suggests a *useful* place for govt to put its money in.
Perhaps a prize? £50m (that's 10k new EV/hybrid subsidies) to the first company to meet that spec. No limitations on form factor, weight, materials etc. Only it would seem if you can get a battery pack with that range and that price people might actually start to *want* to buy them without a "Sweetener."
Note that this reports seem to have been sponsored by a group which *wants* EVs & hybrids to succeed, so presumably some of the assumptions are on the *generous* side in terms of uptake, TCO etc.
20 Yrs ago NiCd was still a common battery technology for mobile phones.
Who uses it now?
Onshore wind *expects* to run 26% of the time and offshore *targets* 30%.
So WTF generates the power the *rest* of the time?
And then there are wind turbines generating 5% of the time.
WTF *authorised* this rubbish? There appears to be no *minimum* limit to stop turbines being put up *solely* to harvest the rich crop of Renewable Obligations Certificates.
Meanwhile anaerobic digestion *could* supply 50% of the UK gas budget *before* getting on to shale gas
Micro hydro can supply dispersed chunks of generating capacity 24/7 (and possibly 365 depending on the temperature of the water source)
And the UK has access to a *vast* radioactive slow cooker called Scotland (where did you think all that Radon came from). Research in the mid 70's indicated "single borehole" systems using dry (or nowadays abandoned) N. Sea oilwells would be good for 500-1000Kw/Well (NS platforms typically drill 20 wells at a time).
But the big issue is this. 20-25% of the UK electricity supply *is* nuclear and those reactors are either getting to or just past their design lives. Either electricity demand goes *down* by that amount or quite soon there will be a big hole in UK generating capacity unless people have those nukes re-inspected and effectively given a life extension.
Britards it *might* be a good idea to put ink drops to paper and (politely) ask what your elected representative is going to do about it.
"As for stability - rockets usually use fins to get the centre of pressure below (behind) the centre of gravity. Most simple ones spin-stabilise (canted fins) and even the V2 had gyroscopically vectored thrust to keep things more or less vertical (V2 used exhaust vanes but most modern systems wiggle the nozzle.)"
Have you taken a look at a modern launch vehicle? Fins went out with the elimination of narrowing the rear end of a rocket, IE shortly after the V2.
"So far Team Bezos have achieved about 1/5 as much as the Delta Clipper/DC-X of mid-1990s fame. At least that managed a few retrorocket landings before it fell over and went boom."
Impossible to say how much they have achieved. This is at least flight 2 so they've managed the landing part *already*.
"What surprises me is that none of these guys are using airbreathing ducted fan engines where they can (or aerospikes)."
If you knew the difference between those two concepts you'd probably know why one was a bad idea and the other had no existing flight history. Look up the T/W ratio of ducted fans Vs rockets.
" Fixed-nozzle based systems are generally wildly inefficient outside of a vacuum and need a lot of work to keep running happily at varying altitude."
What figure did you have in mind?
This is the 2nd test flight they *told* anyone about.
I'll remind people that Spacex crashed 3 times in their first 4 flights for Falcon 1.
BO is also working on 2 *different* vehicles at the same time. I'll guess their capsule for fitting on the Atlas V for the CCDev 2 NASA contract may be getting a bit more priority.
I'll guess they learn quite a lot about their vehicles behaviour under extreme loads from this. The old X programme rule that "If you don't break one you're not pushing the envelope hard enough".
BTW the fondness for fitting lumps of explosive to rockets dates from 1947 when a captured V2 fired from White Sands went off course and landed in Mexico. Fitting a self destruct was a *political* decision to stop complaints, *nothing* to do with saving lives. BO's systems AFAIK just shut the valves, leaving 1 falling object to get out of the way of, rather than a cloud of fast moving (and sharp) fragments.
Well..
The ones reverse engineered from the mechanism that drives bacterial flagellum and sperm tails about 12 years ago could generate enough thrust to form the basis of a airborne skateboard.
Provided you had a ready supply of ATP, a large supply of them (feasible with engineered bacteria), a framework for them to mount to and (*most* important) a viable control system so if you fell of it would shoot along hit it hit someone.
This new research suggests you could make it electrically powered.
Too bad batteries have such poor P/W ratios.
For more mundane uses how about *truly* water and dirt repellent fabrics. Every water droplet passed along from collar to hem before being dropped on the ground.
The earths atmospheres is the *biggest* force on an object below 1000Km. At 100 statute miles during solar max (Peak of 11 yr-ish sun spot cycle) that was 7 micro g. (E Ring Propellants and pressurization systems). If that's 1 unit gravitational forces on the same object are at 0.061.
And these are *small* objects like paint flecks, which regularly penetrated 2 of the 3 layers of the Shuttle wind shied (BTW AFAIK this is one of those no backup situations which pretty much guarantee LOC)
The top of the Earth's atmosphere can grow or shrink 10x depending on time of year and day.
In GEO satellite drift in a rectangular "box* something like 25 (E/w) by 4 (N/S) Km. They therefor *all* have relative motion as well and if the propellant fails they start to drift out of their box.
If an object is in a wildly varying orbit (apogee >> perigee) it can have a *very* big relative velocity compared to *any* object in a roughly circular orbit anywhere between those limits. You need to keep in mind the *vectors* of the 2 objects. Stable orbit is *mostly* along, little up/down. Cross orbit it's mostly up/down, little bit along -> massive side impact.
Note 100mph -> c44m/s. Speed of sound is 340m/s. Delta v to trigger re-entry can be 10s of m/s. LEO orbital velocity (*along* track) is c7795m/s. You won't like a side impact from that.
They're small and there are *lots* of them, so low scrap value.
I'll note that if you can charge these objects their passage through the Earth's magnetic field *should* create enough drag to get them to do-orbit, while the *very* low atmospheric pressure (yes it's the largest force but by human standards it's virtually a vacuum) would prevent them discharging once charged up.
How you do that is the tricky question.
"Not really, IRRC it was the 11th or 12th Keyhole / Crystal, so it must have been pretty much surplus / spare change by then. "
A popular UL bolstered by 2 things. The solar panels "waggled" badly because they had been picked up from a US surveillance satellite design operating at higher altitude with lower atmospheric loads and the company who manufactured the optics did those for at least some of the US spy sats.
However it was NASA that detected the testing machine bug that meant the mirrors had been precisely the *wrong* shape.
Both had to be fixed during a Shuttle servicing (the first?) mission.
"Has everyone forgotten SpaceX and the other private space companies? This is their moment to step up to the plate and show what private space enterprise can do. The Falcon 9 has successfully put stuff in LEO, and its already got the ISS resupply contract. Time to speed up the program?"
On the basis you're not a troll here's why you're wrong.
Spacex and the other CCDev winners (Boeing, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corp) all need a *crewed* station to dock to and *none* have completed the work to allow *them* to carry crew yet.
Spacex's schedule calls for their LAS to be ready by April 2014 at the latest. In *principal* the Boeing CTS-100 is the most advanced as it's LAS has *already* been ground fired. But like the rest (IE not Spacex) it depends on crew rating the Atlas V, which does not seem to have a timetable.
NASA is *highly* unlikely to allow a 1st launch with a crew and will want 1 or 2 tests of the launch escape system (on the pad, at maximum dynamic pressure in flight or both) and multiple cargo flights first (The Russians are expected to fly 2 cargo flights first before allowing another crew flight). It's not a disaster but it's pretty serious.
1st scheduled docking with ISS by a COTS winner was the Dragon on Dec 8th (*exactly* 1 year to the day from Spacex's 1st Dragon launch).
*Could* still happen. Depends how much *active* help the docking system needs and if it can be handled from the ground.
It's the lauch escape system Spacex is working on that's on a 36 month development schedule. c April 2014 latest.
However the Boeing CST-100 has *already* test fired it's escape system and *might* be capable of being carried by Falcon9.
The head of the programme claimed they could launch a Shuttle within 18 months.
However given the final round of redundancies completed last week and NASA's tendency for shall we say optimistic schedules call it 21/2 to 4 years.
The ISS larder is well stocked, but not *that* well stocked.
As it was in the 50's, 60's and 70's
That's the 1850's, 60's and 70's.
Will all those who feel that way give in to *your* despair and kindly purge yourself from the gene pool.
No one is going to die on ISS because of this situatino.
It is likely they will not be able to resolve this for the 1st group to come down and they will come down in Sept. *If* they still can't resolve it by Nov them the 2nd come down, taking out the rubbish, switching everything to remote control etc.
Frankly I'd suggest getting Soyuz to fly on an Atlas is closer to flight ready (possibly with the Boeing CST-100 capsule behind as it's already had LAS tests) than
BTW if you think my words harsh you might like to look up Chuck Yaegers thoughts on hearing of the Challenger crash.
"Put a panda in your tank"
It doesn't have quite the same cachet as a tiger somehow.
Yes those WWF logo's make them look too sad to be dangerous.
Except a panda in *reality* is close to 3m tall and weighs 1/2-3/4 of a metric ton. A "playful" slap from those paws can easily knock your head off or rip out your spine as some brown bear loving Merkin discovered a few years ago.
Very cute as infants but not really a pet.
Made in Wales.
Seriously *continuous* monitoring is tricky. Either you break the skin (infection, ulcers etc) or find some clever way to look at the glucose level through it.
Of course people have been talking about active monitoring/implantable pumps to do this since the 1970's.
Currently this is absorbed onto molecular sieves and then vented to vacuum, where the CO2 sublimes off. Even that is an *improvement* on the 1 use Lithium Hydroxide canisters of the type featured memorably on Apollo 13.
Leaving yet *another* load of O2 to be carted up Earth gravity well. BTW O2 is *denser* than water.
Roughly speaking of the 5Kg of supplies of food and water NASA reckoned a person would need c0.5Kg is actual *food* the rest is water and Oxygen. They seem to be getting a better at the water side but O2 recovery seems as far away as ever. It's *very* unlikely that they will use fuel cells that make water on a mars trip.
"Data analysed and available based on classifying postcodes - individuals aren't identifiable."
Quite true. But the information is *derived* from the post code data base. While it could be brought down to the individual it's not delivered by default.
Unlike the UK census which *is* handed to a US company in detail (The UK census used to operate down to the *household*, now it's down to the individual).
Why the hell...
.was a project involving personal details of UK citizens handed over to a US company in the first place?
Because it worked so well when Lockheed Martin handled the national census this time round.
And the last time round as well.
(HMG. "What's that you say? The PATRIOT act give UG govt departments unlimited to any data held by a US based company. What's "The PATRIOT" Act?")
No doubt there are many who would be happy to have their behaviour tracked online if there was some sort of reward for them to do it.
But that proposal gives *nothing* for your co-operation. In fact it doesn't really *ask* for your co-operation
Even bigger bit of luck that what crashed was *not* a Soyuz but a Progress supply ship.
Same origins, different design.
You might also note early indications are the 3rd stage was to blame. Had this *been* a crewed mission they would have hit the abort button or manually separated if too high.
Time will tell if that's what they end *up* paying.
As others have pointed out it's the old byzantine *secret* data base schema which will lock the govt into them forever and a day.
Your product is managing *our* data. If we want to dump it we want you to be able to write out that data and it's structure in a way that *allows* us to re-load it into another system.
That's a *contract* issue. Not OSS or proprietary.
Best
High density code using "prefix" coding on byte sized chucks, potentially allowing processors with external data buses made of *any* number of bytes, giving (with the right job mix) 10 MIPS at a time when 1MIPS was impressive.
Interrupt service routines coded *exactly* as a normal process attached to the relevant pins.
Stack architecture (internally the model used by many if not *most* compilers) in hardware. Could have support FORTH as readily as C.
Hardware scheduler for *all* processes, including "messages" on serial I/O buses (which I think live on as "Firewire").
Use of formal methods to verify the FPU.
Bit counting instructions which allowed software decoding of GPS in real time.
Software architecture *supporting* (rather than allowing) apps to be broken into processes and distributing across as many processors as necessary *without* change.
Tungsten Silicide gate material may have been what gave it high radiation hardness.
On chip clock generation from *relatively* low frequency shared clock, simplifying board design (not sure how modern chips do it theses days).
Worst.
It's designed to be used in *big* arrays but they premium priced it like an Intel processor as core of a system, at a time when you *desperately* want design wins to build volume.
No low end version (Like the 68008) which could have been 1 bit serial internally with a byte data bus. Poor performance but that *total* scaleability across the range would let a customer scale up as market and budget allowed.
No MMU, because it's going to be used in big arrays with no address translation (but it costs an arm and a leg)
No *nix port because no MMU (yes it's possible but it's a PITA without one)
Ran US DRAM operation as "Cash cow," which most start ups don't have and don't know how to make effective use of.
"Origami" editor. No doubt very neat but made *another* entry barrier to discourage people from learning it at a time you want *maximum* exposure.
Money from sale of Inmos went to Treasury, *not* Inmos, which somehow did not seem to be appreciated at the time. Inmos got nothing for the sale of itself to Thompson.
Welsh chip plant got stuffed one Christmas because they failed to realise the water company would dump a shed load of disinfectant in the water *without* telling them and clearing off for the holiday, trashing the ion exchange system.
I think ARM learned a lot of lessons from Inmos, but most of them were how *not* to do things.
Amdahls law was known 40 years ago and Intel still don't get it. 50 cores /1 *data* bus.
Can you spell "contention"?
There's an old DDJ article about a guy trying to unscramble the serial port data from his glucose monitor.
As the actual *device* sets smaller (more concentrated insulin, more efficient pump design, smaller batteries) the UI (the buttons) become the limiting factor on reduction.
But what's OK for a *Monitor* should change *radically* when you can actually effect stuff IRL.
Logging the last changes is just a *start* (and note I'll bet that's just a good idea, *not* mandatory in the design of medical devices).
BTW some countries have a "Grandfather" provision for medical devices *unlike* drugs.
So I say "It's an insulin pump, just like insulin pump X" and the licensing authorities say "Fair enough type X passed you're clear to go."
It doesn't have to be *better* it just has to be *different* (but not *too* different).
While the idea that no one would investigate a diabetic whose just going along and suffers a massive insulin OD should be *very* far fetched given competent forensic techs and autopsy it's less clear cut if they were *doing* something which damaged the body. Driving a car would be the obvious one but I'm sure someone motivated to do this would find others.
"Are there really no commercial solutions available off the shelf?"
But, but,but that would mean buying something "Off the shelf"
As every (defense IT con-tractor) knows the MoD has a *wholly* unique set of problems which simply *cannot* be met by *anything* other than a lovingly hand crafted software solution developed by skilled software artisans in Mumbai/Beijeing/Tijianna/Some-other-s***hole.
Of course buying a wholly unique solution costs a *little* more (3x, 4x, 5x...) but nothing's too good for the boys in the front line.
Would you want them to have barcode scanners that jammed in the sand?
Of course not.
I had personal experience of it straight out of the box.
What a dog. For some reason they moved the development team to a different state and seemed to have lost some key people. Result 10-20 secs moving between records in a 2000 rec database.
As always benchmark software (fully patched) *before* you buy.
Expect your MYOB performance to go down the gurgler ASAP.
3 launches
3 Failures
4th launch. Success.
Mind you I'd hoped for a bit of an improvement and some "Lessons learned" being applied.
And some would argue that flying M20 *inside* the atmosphere is *lots* harder than just getting to orbit It's like all the problems of re-entry *continuously*.
Better luck next time?.
GPRS is a *data* transmission standard separate from voice. it is one (of lots) of standards within the whole GSM standards package.
In the 2nd decade of the 21st century it is p**s poor that *all* subscriber data channels on *all* networks are not encrypted.
How serious this is to any *real* subscriber depends on what services rely on GPRS for delivery and how much encryption they apply *before* their data goes into it, and how easily it would be to shift to another delivery mode by sliding in a different element in the protocol stack (you did implement your app as a layered architecture, didn't you). I'm not sure what does use it IRL.
*All* GSM neworks have tapping by *authorised* users built into the network standards. Who "authorised" is depends on that countries record on observing human rights. Hopefully there would be some kind of *legal* oversight and audit trail.
This looks like yet *another* case where the GSM standard relies on "Security by obscurity," which has worked *so* well all the other times the network operators have depended on it in the past. See previous El Reg articles.
And in case anyone thinks I don't think this is a big thing let me repeat that In the 2nd decade of the 21st century it is p**s poor that *all* subscriber data channels on *all* networks are not encrypted.
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