* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

It's the oldest working Seagate drive in the UK

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Andy The Hat

"Oh, anyone remember having to rub the spindle eathing strap with a pencil to stop it squealing! Kids these days don't know what a hard disk is! :-)"

No. But I remember working the 10 DIP (2 groups, 4 and 6) switches on a 2nd hand one to get my PC to recognise it

At one point I had the 51/4, 31/2, internal and new one all on and the PC recognised *none* of them.

These young people of today blah blah....

Operation Ore was based on flawed evidence from the start

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

AC@09:30

You're right. 2 Journalists, Both left of centre and about the same age. Confusion practically guaranteed.

Thanks for that. I remember him from the ABC trial and it is the same guy.

I'm rather pleased to see him still working.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

interesting

*lots* of deleteds. Rude, unsupportive or just grossly offensive.

I agree that *had* this investigation been properly run tagged images with embedded (steganographic?) identifiers would have been found on the PCs of *real* culprits.

But then a *proper* investigation would have picked up the *faked* home page "proving" all subscribers must have known they were getting CP.

However that might not have played so well in the media as "15 people in UK buy *lots* of CP with hundreds of stolen credit card details"

Not forgetting the ever calm tones of CEOP predicting Paedogeddon on the streets of the UK.

BTW Is this The Duncan Cambell? I thought he'd retired years ago.

SCO trading suspended in US

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

or more precisely

HTF are these shares still traded.

whose buying them. Is it a group trying to ramp them up so they can dump them again?

"Hampered by falling sales"

Of what?

This microsoft funded open source killing FUD machine should finally be put down.

Anyone with a spare $1k fancy trying to help short them into oblivion?

Russia, NASA to hold talks on nuclear-powered spacecraft

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

A note on Nerva

Opening up Sutton 4th Ed to page 518 you'll find its target design was a T/w of 5.3:1 (75000lb thrust, 14000lb weight). with a fairly modest 450psi chamber pressure but a fairly hefty 100:1 expansion ratio nozzle.

The lowish chamber pressure + high expansion ratio nozzle and *very* poor (by normal rocket standards) T/W confirm this is something for use in Earth orbit at least.

Peak power during the NERVA test runs was 4200MW (4.2GW) in a ground test.

Compare this with the 5Kw(e) of a TOPAZ system.

While people *have* built GW nuclear power systems they are *only* to heat and eject Hydrogen out of a nozzle.

Do you think there was a reason the designers went this way?

The engineering of a nuclear thermal system (especially in the materials) is tough but *conceptually* it's know (from Earth power plants) that it works.

The alternatives are an ion derive about 1000x bigger than *anything* seen anywhere (yes that *is* quite a big scale up in 1 jump) or clustering *lots* of current sized devices.Plume interaction between devices *is* an issue (I think DS1 did some work on this). Putting *lots* of them in close proximity is likely to make things "challenging".

LIkewise the nearest anyone has come to a space nuclear power system IIRC was in the 100Kw class using either a Na/K metal vapor or an inert gas mix to drive a turbo-generator (check NASA for space Brayton and mini-brayton (MBU systems). The ones that got to (ground) test status were IIRC in the 10-15Kw range.

No one has got near a live trial of a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) direct conversion hot metal vapor -> power system. Possibly the holy grail of this sort of app. No bearings, no turbines and (in principle) no failure mechanism.

Big (MW) space nuclear electric is well *beyond* state of the art.

Big nuclear thermal (Isp c 850) is *within* the state of the art.

Just something to think about.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

@Banther dodo

"These things only work when there is a temperature differential between the reactor output and the ambient environment. As well as heating up the circulating fluid you have to cool it down again. Otherwise you can't extract power from it."

Err you might like to notice that *actual* pictures show a *very* large structure attached to the relatively small reactor core.

It's called a radiator. IRL its design is a *substantial* part of *any* space nuclear system.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

@Jan 8

"Has there been no progress in converting nuclear radiation directly into electricity? (Something I remember reading about as a child in the '50s - "Atomic Batteries")"

This is *probably* another name for what are called Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators which various US probes to the outer planets have carried. they are the RTG's protesters protest about and are chunks of usually Pu268 (The former Soviet union liked Po as well) heating the hot side of thermoelectric junctions.

Power levels are 500W and no actual control. Also there efficiency is IIRC about the 10% mark.

The more SF kind of device (which the Russian TOPAZ reactors use) is the "Thermionic" converter.

Normal electronic valves use a heater coil to trigger electron emission. Thermionic converters use reactor heat *directly* to trigger electron emission IE a current flow.

Again with limited efficiency but IIRC better than the straight thermoelectric junctions and AFAIK without the limits of a Carnot cycle (In *principle* the Cathode and Anode can be the same temperature. IN the thermoelectric system theis would produce no electricity at all).

"Or what about direct use of (ionising) radiation to power the ion drive?"

Does sound a good idea but I doubt anyone has actually *tried* it.

AFAIK the nearest that has been done is the use of reactor neutrons to drive a laser (not quite the same thing

"(Yeah, yeah, I'm well aware that there will still be surplus heat, but just using nuclear energy to boil water seems pretty low tech and dangerous to me.)"

It's pretty well understood and it delivers a *lot* of power.

Blighty's official Space Agency starts up on 1 April

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

A few notes on UK space policy.

The UK is the *only* country to have developed and then abandoned independent space launch capability.

It was believed that any those very nice American people would launch any UK government payload on a Scout at minimum cost.

HMG (or rather the assorted senior civil servants of the time) did not believe there was much money to be made in space.

A committee composed of an anatomist, an aeronautical engineer, a classicist, a nuclear physicst, an industrial chemist, an ornithologist, a botanist, an agronomist, an electrical engineer, a physical chemist, a medical researcher and 2 mathematicians agreed with them and concluded the UK did not need such a capability.

In testimony before a House of Commons committee Mark Hempsell of Bristol University made the point that the UK space industry is *smaller* than other European countries because of our specific *avoidance* of any work in launchers. this *might* be changing with the retirement of a whole generation of senior civil servants.

The UK's only involvement in hardware for the 50+ launches of the Ariane 5 is making the exhaust ducts for the gas generators (Meggit PLC). No doubt due to UK convincing the partners that "You can't get quicker than a Kwik-fit fitter."

OTOH had the UK had a bigger piece of the pie BAe might have ended up doing a large part of at least 1 of the stages.

But that would have probably given Europe the "WTF-you-overspent-by-how-much" 5 instead.

Just a few thougths to bear in mind.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Yet Another Anonymous Coward

"Remember Nasa's job is to do tax payer funded R+D for Boeing "

They do this for all rocket makers as well. The results of research programmes going back a *century* (to the day of the NACA) are available to all *qualified* US companies.

"(sorry support all US large passenger aircraft makers)."

who else is left? Lock-mart is a military con-tractor, as is Northrup-Grumman.

"Manage pork barrel contracts with whichever aerospace company has a supportive senator in it's state (or was Houston chosen for it's natural closeness to space?)"

Or anywhere else. The aircraft programme run by Tony Dupont, head of the NASP project was funded *solely* on earmarks from the NASA appropriations bill in California.

But for *real* pork you need to look at Marshall and *their* local Senator. The reason why in some quarters NASA stands for "North Alabama Space Agency". Latest "triumph" the SLS, a launch vehicle design *mandated* in a public law.

"It does all those very very well, it's crap at space exploration but that's not really important."

Well JPL still manages to put landers on moons and other planets and orbiters around them without crashing *too* often.

But yeah the bureaucracy needs a detox (and large enema) in my opinion.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Emilio Desalvo

"... aka the Italian Space Agency, has a budget running about a billion Euro a year..."

BTW When is Vega due to have it's first launch now?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Stop

@ravenviz

"I don't know, I quite like the X program, "

Which one did you have in mind.

There have been something like 54 X programmes.

Some have been brilliant X1 crossed the sound barrier, X15 got to the edge of space.

X33 p**sed $1.1Bn on some parts and did not get built.

Care to be a little more specific?

Judge hits police with massive bill over false Operation Ore charges

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Note that the bulk of the money will be the *costs* as in legal fees.

£20k of Hertfordshire tax payers money is the *minor* part. The legal bill will be in the 100s of £k, IE 10-20x that amount.

All because a useless DC decided to play CYA.

And an equally useless Chief Constable *agreed* with him.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Hertfordshire County Council tax payers might like to make their feelings known.

A few questions to the chair of the Police Committee or whatever body oversees the actions of the local police.

1)Where did they obtain this "Legal advice" that said they had a good chance of winning when their *own* forensics person reckoned it was BS.

2) Will the Constabulary seek to recover some of that cash from the worthless DC who started this?

3)How much of taxpayers money has the Constabulary, sorry Police "Service" p**sed up against the wall on this.

Note this *could* have been terminated at nearly *any* point by the Police once they *knew* they were going to loose.

Little fuss. Little publicity.

But no,

The chief con-stable (tell me this sort of decision *cannot* be made at *any* more junior level) decided "F**k it, we're the Police. They *have* to believe us." (Besides it's not *my* money I'm wasting).

I rubbish DC gone. *Plenty* more to go I think.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Ad Fundum

"What a fucking joke. You'd have more chance of a fair trial if you were a gay man in Uganda."

But only if you *get* to the court house first.

TI acquires National Semiconductor for $6.5bn

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

But TI do DSP's and that neat flipping mirror video projector technology

Both of which I suspect are fairly high margin parts.

TI's 320 series for DSP were the must have parts, especially with built in telecomm interfaces.

Nat Semi have not been known for any kind of processor for a *long* time.

IIRC they both make LS7400 standard chips and their CMOS versions so I'll guess there's some room for consolidation.

so plenty of room for redundancies.

Hydrogen powered hybrid stratocraft prangs during test flight

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

@Magnus_Pym

"On the other hand if DARPA is involved it probably gets lift from captive badgers and pixie dust"

That explains it.

The badgers got loose and trashed the steering. you don't want to be near an angry badger.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

12 miles is c63000 feet.

This is in SR71 and concorde territory rather than most airliners.

About the *only* thing it could run into would be some falling meteorite or space junk.

As for a flight recorder well if it's military they might not like the idea of fitting one.

Awkward when thing s go wrong.

RSA explains how attackers breached its systems

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

PR skillz not getting much better

So *finally* they have explained *how* it was done.

No mention of what's (if anything) going to happen to the employee or even *if* they broke any company rules in doing what they did.

No *absolute* assurance that what has been taken will not affect securID (which I would suggest should have been a *key* feature of their network design, given it's, you know *quite* important to their company maintaining its business)

Nothing which sounds *remotely* reassuring to the customers who *buy* their products.

I'm not sure *whose* #2 in the security business but their chances of becoming #1 just got a whole lot better.

*Still* poor response.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

@4HiMarks

"Treat all unattended packages as highly suspicious."

You mean *even* the ones marked "Very large double chocolate cake from a shy well wisher" ?

Say it's not so!

WTF is... 3D printing

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

BTW f1 teams are meant to be using this for their gears

At first it was plastic cores for lost wax casting but progressed to laser sintering of metal gears.

Note this was some years ago. It should either be common practice or abandoned.

One thing that surprised me on seeing my first stereo lithography part was that it could make cylindrical parts at right angles to the direction of *travel* of the head which were pretty smooth. I'd expected to see grains like expanded polystyrene, but nothing was visible.

There was also a British Gas project to make fuel cells using a modified ink jet printer (as specialist gear did not even exist at that time).

Key challenges seem to surface finish and the ability to manufacture "power" components IE conductive/strong enough to handle the prime mover or the forces their operation will generate (the F1 gears *transmit* forces, are axisymentric and operate in compression)

A subset of this is the apparently limited ability to do semiconductors, which are obviously a key part of integrating more control components into a finished system-in-a-part.

I think people may be focusing on these systems as a *total* solution to making a part instead of a key part of a "think making" system.

While delivering a part that performs multiple functions can be *very* satisfying a design of multiple parts (possibly all made together) processed and assembled *after* manufacture may deliver a faster solution (which maybe *the* critical parameter for some people).

Not smooth enough?

Consider electro-polishing or "Liquid honing"

Too tough to release part from support?

Consider adding perforations around it to cut the part out with a saw, etching or electrochemical machining? Or build in flexures so most of the block is part and not filler (so less filler to strip) and then fold over the relevant joints to give the component. Consistent, reliable flexure design is considered *very* tricky so not for the feint hearted.

It is *highly* unlikely this will ever be a mass production technology but for short run (or *unique*) mfg purposes this is still near the *start* of the art. Your own unique laptop//iphone/mp3 case? Protective sports equipment that fits you like it was hand made?

In 1997 John Woo opened Face/Off with a color matched ear being built in a tank using stereo lithography.

If we can't do *all* of that by now (I'm guessing color is likely to be the problem) then the next research project already exists. Temporary (convincing) prostheses which fit *properly* should absolutely be a target application for this.

W**k-O-Meter

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Joking apart

And there will be lots.

Inside this is a pretty clever bit of signal processing reading the accelerometers.

Got to know that with DSP you can make love (at least to yourself) and not war.

Scientists eye curvaceous Earth gravity map

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

spacex will be eying this with interest.

A significantly improved gravity map can *substantially* reduce uncertainty in capsule guidance at the expense of more CPU cycles.

When space rated CPU's (the Shuttles GPC upgrade bought it up to a whopping 1MIPS) this was an issue (part of the reason the speed of sound used in the software is 1000fps).

With modern space processors into the 100s of MIPS that improved accuracy can be taken advantage of. With propellant at c$60/lb this is a good thing to save.

Thumbs up to ESA for this piece of precision instrumentation.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

@Rob 101

This thing really is aerodynamic.

The extreme sensitivity of the sensors made it sensible to build it as a narrow and long shape rather than the proverbial slap-some-boxes-on-a-framework, with the ion drive to counter most of the deceleration. Likewise the usual solar panels would make for *lots* of additional drag.

*might* start a trend but you do take a hit on not being able to point panels at right angles to the sun when you want.

Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

To explain

I was going to call troll till I saw that line and realized I was in "Yes men" territory.

Recall their campaign against that most *insidious* industrial pollutant DiHydrogen Monoxide (or DHM)?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

You could blame Andrei Sakharov

Only I think it was he who ran studies of the mutation level Vs levels of radiation exposure.

The graph goes through the origin. There is *no* minimum exposure level that *guarantees* no mutations will result. Finite level of radiation -> finite *probability* of a mutation in some members of the population at some time

What did you think powers evolution?

Scary stuff, except that humans are complex and do self repair. So the *real* question might be what level *disrupts* self repair to the point where you can't recover?

BTW both Plutonium and Uranium are toxic metals even if *not* radioactive.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Troll

AC@17:28

Do not feed.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

AC@17:23

"We MUST make a earthwide ban on atoms and make sure that none are ever produced again."

Neatly played.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

@Roo

"Nuclear powered aircraft of Jetson's vintage were very heavy, needed long runway, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that it might be a bit iffy to throttle back a gas-turbine with an air-cooled nuclear reactor in it."

You forgot 1 other adjective for nuclear powered aircraft.

Non-existent

Unless you count the Fireflash featured in the pilot episode of Thunderbirds.

The Nuclear powered bomber was thought up by the deception department of the KGB as a hare for the US gov to chase and spunk lots of dollars over. It worked a treat. The US returned the favor some decades later with the Strategic Defense Initiative. 1-0 to the USA.

However *no* conventional design (including both PWR and BWR) of the time was up to the NPB requirement but the design developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory solved handled the key problem (a gas called Xe135) by using molten salts for the fuel. Like a central heating system the gas went to the highest point in the reactor where it could be extracted.

As it happens modernized versions of *this* reactor using molten Thorium or Uranium *can* dispose of that nuclear waste. Neutrons irradiate the long lived isotope waste and can move them onto shorter lived isotopes, leaving a much smaller volume of waste to fix. Unlike PWR (c140atm) or BWR (c70Atm. No it doesn't boil at 100c at that pressure) is basically a tank with some carefully shaped (but not interlocking) carbon blocks running at near atmospheric pressure. Home pressure cooker or central heating furnace (c2atm absolute) rather than industrial plant level.

However nuclear reactors are like razors. Companies make their profit on the replacement fuel elements (AFAIK the market in replacement reactor fuel elements is slightly less competitive than that in mainframe memory upgrades). In contrast this design can be refueled by a mix of powders and a guy with a shovel (obviously in an airtight suit.

Handy if your concerned that a core disruption (like an earthquake or internal explosion) might disrupt the core enough to prevent a controlled shut down by inserting some of those very close machined control rods into it for example.

Google for Molten Thorium or Salt Reactor (YouTube also has a number of videos).

"If you know of a solution for dealing with these by-products of nuclear power in an inexpensive manner "

You've just read about it.

"and set us sceptics straight. "

There *are* good reasons to be skeptical that nuclear power down by the existing suppliers will be cheaper/safer/delivered on time/easier to de-commission than their existing plants.

Failure to re-process is a *policy* and/or *cost* problem, not a technology issue.

Coalition to float prototype for single government web domain

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

OK I'm feeling a bit more generous.

And I've looked at the list of Maude's.

He's certainly got a couple of the big fails on the list

" procurement timescales are far too long and costly, squeezing out all but the biggest, usually multinational, suppliers"

" too little attention has been given at senior level to the implementation of big ICT projects and programmes, either by senior officials or by ministers. Similarly, senior responsible owners (SROs) have rarely been allowed to stay in post long enough."

and *maybe* some ideas to fix them

# greatly streamline procurement and specify outcomes rather than inputs

Tell them what's wanted, every little bit of information they expect to collect.

# create a presumption against projects having a lifetime value of more than £100 million

I think that would call BS to the claims of ID card savings.

# impose compulsory open standards, starting with interoperability and security.

Goodbye IE6?

# expect SROs to stay in post until an appropriate break in the life of a project/programme; and

Stopping the game of project pass-the-parcel so helpful in avoiding civil service blame. Managers *might* not get an annual bonus

No word on data centre co location. (FFS 190+ data centres for a country the size of some US *states*. I'm not *even* suggesting consolidation. Just sharing power, data and air con and security. All areas where bigger is *always* better. Cables from *multiple* sub stations. Fat FO backbone straight into the nearest exchanges).

The more I know of the UK Home Civil Service the more it resembles NASA *before* it unified its accounts systems across 11 sites under SAP (and discovered $546 *billion* in funds they could not account for, according to CFO magazine).

Some bits are not bad and do deliver benefits above their cost like JPL

Some bits work better when they are split up (like the Home Office -> Ministry of Justice and Home Office)

Some bits should be shut down and most of the staff just let go. MOD Procurement springs to mind. If it's not the MSFC of the Civil service I don't know what is.

Neither is anywhere *near* as unified as you would expect what are basically different departments of the *same* government to be.

But remember even *relatively* small systems are reputed to be s**t.

The prison management system (NOMIS). Pretty much ticks *all* the fail points on Maude's list. I've also heard claims of 30 minute login times for the Borders Agency Oracle based "Adelphi" system (No that that zero after the 3 is not a typo).

*Cautious* thumbs up but we'll see if they can make a difference.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

"We will end the oligopoly of big business supplying government IT"

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I'll make a more positive comment when I've stopped laughing at this BS.

Deleting 'innocent' DNA will cost £5m

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

But watch ouf for the old "National security" clause

The impact assessment is here.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/about-us/legislation/freedom-bill/pof-bill-ia

It states that "Evidence" from police and security services state national security investigations could last 25 Years (no doubt without *any* convictions). But they wouldn't mind if such a case was reviewed every 3 years or so.

And yes it does think that there are about 1 million people wrongly on the DB so that is c£5 each.

For what I have *no* idea. Perhaps the National Police Improvement Authority (who run the NDNAD) could explain the intricacies to someone from Vulture Central.

It's a very *grudging* start. 3 years is *still* too long IMHO for some not *charged* or convicted.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

So the sooner they get started the fewer they will have to remove.

Let me guess they *still* have not implemented the rules on *not* putting people on in the first place.

RM revenue declines in face of UK.gov slash fest

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

How have RM lasted *this* long?

Sure the 380z was built like a tank.

25 years ago.

So *how* have they kept on in this niche for *so* long?

Why do schools *still* buy them?

Was it Becta anointing them as the *chosen* PC?

Google to NASA: Open source will not kill you

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

Er, NASA are already quite heavy users of open source in their Mars landers.

There is an article about it where they outline where it fits in.

IIRC it incudes stuff like mySQL for data management but specialized stuff for logic analysis and schedule planning (when it takes 30 mins to send the commands to Mars and another 30 to see if they've actually worked you want to be *very* sure they don't interact in some subtle but totally destructive way).

NASA does use open source. Just because they are not mainstream packages most people have heard of is not their problem.

Irish cop child abuse image plan attracts data protection ire

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

@Old Handle

"But even without the additional concerns raised by this approach, I'm really not behind the whole blocking/censorship idea in any shape or form--I'm just not convinced it truly accomplishes anything."

But it sounds *so* good.

Proactive. Stopping abuse *before* it happens etc.

And such a convenient way to allow the police to start collecting all manner of information on someones browsing habits (it *presumes* they deliberately chose this address and did not go to a website whose links had been corrupted first). Ooops, we *never* thought that might happen.

So handy for the Police.

These ideas *always* look good in a superficial red top headline sort of way. I'll suggest the readers are as ignorant of the ways round this as they are of the true scale of the problem IE (a *lot* smaller than their overheated imaginations believe it to be).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Big Brother

I'm always suspicious of extreme reactions around porn.

Of *any* kind.

The AC's at 15:54 and 15:56 (the same person ?). So righteous in your stance yet so *shy* in naming yourself.

I tend to want to get my digging spade out and see what's underneath.

The obvious candidate is you've been a victim and you feel only more surveillance will stop it happening to someone else.

You're *very* trusting that the Police would not misuse such powers to conduct fishing trips and that people who have such interests are dumb enough to pursue them in a way that will make them easy to find.

Your reaction to authority is submissive, as might be expected of someone who had been told to keep a secret by an adult.

Lets face it the Republic of Ireland has been something of a wonderland for child abusers of all kinds for decades, provided they took holy orders first. Authority figures here have not done much to but a stop to it. I'm amazed that more priests have not been murdered by former victims but then I suppose the hard part of being a *successful* predator is in choosing your victim.

Or how about option 2.

You've seen some children somewhere and noticed some of your reactions are not appropriate to the norms of western society. You're revolted and sickened with your self.

Perhaps you might have (inadvertently) gone on to find some CP and feel "If *only*" there was someway to *warn* people when they might be exposed to this disgusting material that they might be warned off (not that I'm saying you're addicted) it for life.

Your reaction is the rankest hypocrisy. You lack the guts to seek treatment for you're condition or to face your own character flaws. You seek to divert suspicion of your own behavior and seek to cage all of society when in reality it's your own behavior that needs to be controlled.

If CP and paedophillia had the kind of profile and availability that campaigners *claim* it has it would virtually be the *norm*.

This is clearly BS.

With *no* supporting evidence to a growing "interest" I'd say the number of real paedophiles as a *percentage* of the population is fairly constant and fairly low (IE <<1%).

Sadly the number of power seeking data fetishist control freaks is somewhat higher and society does rather less to control what I'd call their *equally* deviant appetites.

BB because as usual this has *nothing* to do with TOTC but everything about control and the accumulation of power.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Headmaster

Did anyone else read that headline and think

So *who* is this Irish cop and how are they planning to hang on to all these images (and of course for what purpose)?

Stop sexing up IT and give Civil Servants Macs, says gov tech boss

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Fred Flintstone

Intriguing PoV.

If real this suggests interesting times ahead for govt IT.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

AC@00:32

"MI5(spooks) 'ave em. → #

Don't forget those spooks on BBC1 have macs and they keep the country safe, so they must be good."

By George, I think you've got it.

Tesla Motors sues BBC for defamation

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Lionel Baden

"http://static.autoblog.nl/images/wp2011/TopGear_limo_test_2.jpg"

Thanks for reminding me of that one.

From their Ideal cars for Albanian gangsters special IIRC

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Smart PR would have handled it a differnt way.

Consider

TG unimpressed by Toyota Pious.

Cameron Diaz appears and says she drives one.

Clarkson smitten.

No more Prius gags.

Given Clarkie's drool glands can salivate at anyone from Cameron Diaz to Kristin Scott Thomas I'm sure there's at least one famous, attractive Tesla owner Clarkson would love to spend some quality drool time with.

Network failure closed hospitals to ambulance admissions

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

24 hours to fix a network.

What would it take to make the repair process *that* slow?

1) No up to date network (logical) map linked to a physical location map. So not sure how the data gets from A to B.

2) No remote monitoring of critical network devices, so someone has to go out there and *look* at a front panel (possibly reporting back what they see to someone in a network admin office). Not a good idea when hospitals tend to be big and hardware tends to be stuffed in locked cupboards blocked by heavy equipment or the odd dying patient on a trolley.

3) No on site spares to do the replacement.

4) A network vulnerable to *multiple* single point failures (which *might* have been picked up if 1 had existed and a competent person had looked at it) so you know the *whole* networks down but you don't know how.

5) Written authority required from some senior management type who *absolutely* must sign off any drastic action (although they won't understand what it does even if *explained* to them) who is naturally out of contact, probably at a conference on improving network reliability.

I'm not a network admin so I'm sure you guys who do this for your day job (one or two of whom I'll bet work in the NHS) can find plenty more ways to turn what I would think should be no more than a 1 hour task (That includes getting the replacement box to where it has to be and swapping the plugs) into a *minimum* of a 10 hour job (when they say normal ambulance service resumed)

McAfee site crawling with scripting bugs say researchers

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

Call me dumb but

1) A software company specializing in *security* software is only as good as its reputation. It takes years to build up and days to destroy. RSA springs to mind.

2) Tools exists to scan websites for vulnerabilities. If McAfee can't find one they should have the skills in house to write it.

3)Being owned by Intel should give them access to the corporate coffers if they are stupidly expensive.

Given what they do 1 month should have been *more* than enough time to get the problem elements disabled or replaced.

Antarctic ice breakup makes ocean absorb more CO2

John Smith 19 Gold badge
FAIL

@A 28

"-When that finite resource runs out we loose the negative feedback mechanism"

That *assumes* that the ice is not re forming.

Know what happens when you assume?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@damocles

"Ability of humans to cause changes to the climate with of CO2: Unproven (by either faction)"

Nicely bracketed. I agree with you to a point. I believe we are changing the climate but the "science" as practiced by the CRU has been so poor it's shameful.

But the lesson of CFC (first production date 1933. Detectable effects on Ozone levels by the mid 70s at the latest) demonstrate that human activity *can* influence something as large as a planets climate.

Something to keep in mind.

Council loses £2.5m claim against Big Blue

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

No *written* requirements and no council witnesses called

HTF could the council (this would seem to need the support of *elected* officials, not just senior unelected staff) *believe* they could win this one to the point they'd hire QC's at whatever an hour they charge these days and put it in play.

"We trusted the supplier" only works if you made an actual effort to find out if what they were selling was *fit* for purpose in the first place.

I feel for the council tax payers who, one way or another, will get the sh***y end of this particular pole in reduced services one way or the other.

Artificial leaf produces electricity through photosynthesis

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Badgers

I'll go with *all* the questions people have raised and a couple more.

1) Life cycle cost. It uses Silicon. If that's single crystal *device* grade Silicon, rather than photovoltaic grade (currently chip industry leftovers) the *real* cost (including all the energy used to make it) might not be greater than the energy it produces over its life. So did they use Silicon because it's available as a prototype or can they use cheaper grades (poly or amorphous grown on a cheap substrate) or replace it altogether?

2)It splits water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. Whoopee. Just like a string of photocells with each terminal in a bucket of water and couple of funnels over them to collect the gas. If they can't beat *that* baseline (but see 1 above) this is not much of an improvement. Keeping the gases you just made well apart is also quite important given how keen they are to re-combine.

Not much tech in this hardware section.

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Always keep in mind the *first* objective of the media.

To stay in *business*.

You feeling you've been "informed" is a side effect.

And when it comes to staying in business and (in the words of mega-media-mogul-not-based-on-Rupert-Murdoch Elliot Carver) "Nothing sells like *bad* news"

The flood waters have subsided, the aftershocks have gone so no real chance of anyone *not* in Japan being affected. But a radioactive cloud *potentially* cover the *whole* globe...

That'll keep the viewers watching. That'll keep them tuned in for the *slightest* change in wind direction or radiation level. No one's actually *died* of radiation exposure (unlike the current death toll of about 20 000 due to drowning and being hit by bits of assorted buildings, but they're Japanese) but it could *always* get worse.

I note that the Channel 4 News in the UK has tried to be quite balanced by using people from the Dalton Institute of Manchester University (nuclear engineering) for opinions and when they stated a sensor in Edinburgh had measured 300 micro Bequrels of Iodine they put that in context by pointing out that Radon gas in houses exposes people to 20 000 000 micro Beqs (IE 20 Bequrels) which I think would give most people the idea this ain't much.

Europe rules against general passenger data slurp

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

"demonstrate the necessity and the proportionality of a system"

Not necessary.

Not proportional.

US Navy to field full-on robot war-jets as soon as 2018

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Pirate

Carrier jocks will *never* go for this.

*something* will happen that will demonstrate that they are not *quite* there yet.