Posts by John Smith 19

Defense business accounting does not help

In *most* industries a new product is priced roughly by taking the startup costs and production costs and working out what price customers will *likely* pay for the goods. In reality it's likely in several price points will be worked out and from those a "break even" number of sales worked out. *If* product sales > break even -> Profit on *any* further sales (and the element in the costing to cover start-up is now *also* profit). If not tough.

In defense.

There is typically *one* customer. (Pop quiz. How much of UK designed stuff, mostly from BAe, found *other* foreign customers *outside* the original customer or partnership?)

When you've *finally* got a workable design (AFAIK still a pretty profitable process as I suspect Cost+ is still pretty common in the UK defense biz, although *perhaps* not quite as common as it was).

Tot up *all* the start-up, mfg costs and divide by the number of unit the MoD is asking for.

*That* is the price they pay. It also the reason why the next (if there *is* a next) batch ordered in a reasonable time frame (IE before they lay off the workforce and break up the tooling) is substantially cheaper.

It's a subtle difference but quite an important one. It makes the defense biz about a^&e backwards to just about *every* other product in the world.

Mine will be the one with some spare Ferranti f100L's in the pocket. The world's first (and only) bipolar single chip microprocessor sold AFAIK to 1 customer.

Care to guess who?

@Kevin Rudd, PM

There comes a time when you have to accept some unpalatable truths.

The PLP think you're rubbish and reckon their only chance of winning the next election is by electing a women for the first time ever to the top spot (Bit like the British labor party with Tony Blair but with an *actual* election. Look how well that turned out).

Time to choke it down, keep your head high and make a dignified (and *permanent*) exit to spend more time with your lovely wife, kids and sheep and not to start blubbing to the press.

Of course this still leaves that nutter Conroy running around loose. He might make Labor unelectable for a generation if enough people realise what he's got planned for them.

Good night and God bless.

I think this is your coat.

At least 4 groups will be cheering

1)Laser confinement fusion looks a *bit* more plausible as the efficiency levels go up and (IIRC) the emission frequency moves down.

2)Space launch by laser also benefits. The classic method uses focused light onto the rear of a highly reflective craft to heat the air behind it (while in the atmosphere). More recent approaches use a high temperature absorber to heat a fluid (usually expected to be Hydrogen) before exhausting it through a nozzle.

3)Laser ignited pyrotechnics should be a lot less prone to electrostatic discharge and lightning in particular. More powerful diodes -> smaller numbers to fire multiple devices. To put this in perspective the space Shuttle had 300 pyrotechnics, of which 100 are routinely fired. Each has 2 pyrotechnic ignitors. All are electrically driven. The Shuttle cannot launch in bad weather at *all*.

4)Evil billionaires looking at a more viable piscine mounted weapon for disciplining unsatisfactory subordinates, secret agents etc.

AC@08:57

"Only if you belong to the church of "State Control of Everything".

Which, you'll be pleased to know, is pretty much morality-free."

As did the "Rev" T. Blair.

The UK got rid of their bunch.

Perhaps it's time the people of Aus who are not afraid of the rest of the world to clean out their their nations closet.

Just a thought.

4 rotors?

I think Ryan looked at that in the early to mid 60's.

As others have noticed the rotors on that rendering of the winning design are definitely off scale.

A fiar price *might* be the *only* curb on their enthusiasm

As it seems the charges ISP's and Telcos are one of the *few* curbs on law enforcement fishing trips under RIPA.

"Vintage Thatcher"

I think not.

Letting 880k off the bottom of the tax system *entirely*

Rather on the damp side of Thatcherite behavior.

No public sector pay rises for earners *over* £21k

I'd say that's that would be the reverse of her policy.

Minimum wage not abolished.

Thinking the the plebs had some sort of *right* to a wage they could live on.

A levy on UK banks to protect depositors.

Practically Marxist.

All told a budget practically slopping with wetness and guaranteed to make the rust spots start breaking out on the iron lady.

"Mary Ellen Callahan, head of data protection"

Irony alert!

This is the outfit that wants to hoover up the personal details (and credit card details) of *everyone* coming to the US.

This is the outfit that wants to hoover up financial details from the EU in large chunks while requiring *named* searches for it's citizens.

This is the outfit that allowed private contractors to set up "Accelerated" checkin services for frequent (top class) passengers and whose contractors then had their details (on an encrypted laptop) stolen from a secure area in an airport.

That outfit.

Quite a neat data logger

Handy for various transport and wildlife studies. It'd be interesting to find out if it works inside a container on the back of a lorry for things like refrigerated meat transport.

Probably a bit big for tracking a lot of smaller mammals but OK for bigger things like wild boar, deer, bears etc.

The review says an 80 hour life on a standard charge but I suspect that's at a 1 sec sample rate. At a 15 mins sample interval (900x slower) that's nearer 1200 days, over 3 years of use.

I'd guess the other popular options would be pressure and light sensors but you can't have everything.

If they give bulk discounts they could be onto a winner.

So when you don't have all the facts

and have not *noticed* you don't have all the facts

You can generate doom laden explanations (glacier sliding faster -> glacierheating up) for behavior which can be have much less harmful explanations (basically the lower level of friction of the surface the glacier is now sliding over).

I really begin to think that a course in basic magic tricks should be a part of *any* Science curriculum.

If you can't see *all* sides of the problem (and once again it seems not even *looking* for them) how are you going to know if you've missed any *big* factors.

Now lets run some of those climate models with the data that's been collected over the last 30+ years and see what they say. No twiddling, no fudge factors. We're *living* through the real answer. Let's see what they say.

E-ink is not an accident

It's *critical* to getting the kind of long battery life people have started to *expect*.

Yes I get you can do an Android running LCD screen thingy for c£200, which is what $300-350?

So what. It's a lite netbook or PMP, and probably has battery life like a lite netbook or PMP. Why would I pay a *premium* for that when I can already get something very similar.

As volume ramps up and these too (and hopefully others) start to seriously compete we might see them at a reasonable price.

Let's be honest. They are currently bookstores who sell a reader. Perhaps it's time for them to start looking at the mobile phone model or the games console model. A portal device (possibly supplied at below cost) they supply to encourage people to buy *more* books at prices people think are *reasonable*. What is a novel in data terms? <100MB? 10c of disk storage? Dead tree prices for something that's *never* been near a tree, dead or otherwise.

BTW if someone were *really* serious about running with this some heavy investment in translation support (I doubt machine translation is anywhere near yet but machine *assisted* translation could keep the roll out time short. Once set up it could keep a translation team permanently employed). It's likely that it would not *all* be from English either. There appear to be a number of Russian rocket engineering textbooks which are substantially more up to date than the leading US introductory textbook, which if anything seems to have regressed in what it teachers

<rant>

(An engineering text book with *no* software included, pump performance specs for the V2 and a tone which can be summed up as "Rocket engineering is *hard*. We can't teach it too you in a textbook. Hire a company to do it for you, OK?")

</rant>

1 book. 1 launch. $1. 200 languages from day 1.

All handed to 1 US conglomerate in a no bid deal

Like Iraqi oil and Haliburton perhaps?

Sheffield Forgemasters. More of the Dark Lords work

It seems it was a promise of Lord Mandelscums opening of the empty chequebook.

Looked up the PR about the 15Kt press. It seems there are 5 companies *globally* who can forge this kind of stuff at this kind of size.

While in *theory* banks should consider this as a reasonable business proposition I'd love to find out how well the UK domestic banking (Barclays, LloydsTSBNAtwest, HSBC) actually handle these sorts of requests. Badly I suspect. Nowhere near the 3% they were *offered*

BTW Forged components have the highest mechanical properties and can be near net shape (little or no final machining) giving a complex part made in nearly 1 step.

Flame because giving people such hope *knowing* there is not a cat in hells chance of funding it is just about the lowest kind of political opportunist.

Amusing comments but there is a serious point as well

Newly released prisoner (although it did take 2 years to get him wound up enough to do this) + no permanent home +doubtful job prospects -> desire to *want* to go back to prison.

At c£35k/PA of UK taxpayers money.

AFAIK one of the new super-duper Offender Management Systems (The one the UK GAO described as a "Masterclass in poor project management") aims was joined up handling of the newly released (so the 5000 non UK residents could come straight out of the prison gate into the van taking them to the airport) which cost UK taxpayers c£400m (Nice work EDS as was).

Their new version IIRC is scoped at c£200m but will remain 3 separate systems (consolidated from standalone systems per prison) and *might* have a nationality field included.

Anyone think he's the *only* person whose decided prison is better than living for 2 years in what I suspect is a hotel (and which AFAIK in the UK can charge market rates for the room he's in. Knowing you're living in a dump and the owner is charging through the nose for the priviledge)

BTW UK repeat offenders were c66% under the last Conservative government. Under Labor that went up to 77%.

EDS (now HP). The company that just keeps giving (customers S£$t).

There is an internal cross-model MS WIndows API

But developers will not be allowed to see it.

Oh wait wasn't part of MS anti-trust settlement something about revealing *all* their Windows API's?

Guess that doesn't apply to Mobile.

Ho I expect this to play out.

Divide the competition.

Watch product launches using this feature (and on what phones) carefully.

Select features from the best.

Build cross-model version of product with them in it.

Destroy competition.

Start charging.

Only US phones mandate GPS on *all* models. Elsewhere download-able maps + built in sensors can give adequate position and orientation. For directions *attitude* is more important than location to the nearest metre.

thumbs down for MS BAU.

Might cause some annoyance in Turkey

But how much work goes through these websites?

OTOH were the ministries to find all outgoing calls on their PBX's barred they might find that rather more inconvenient.

Just a thought.

But robots don't need work permits and passports

OTOH having an undefended robot carry valuable drugs around a Scottish hospital does sound a mite unsafe.

Mine will have a copy of "Trainspotting in the pocket"

Choose life, eh?

So what *is* the Australian terrorist threat this is all for?

Authentic/Continuity//Real/Accept-n0-substitute IRA?

Would they not be more likely to be blowing stuff up in NI, or the UK mainland?

Fundamentalist Christian anti-abortionists?

Not that barking mad.

Aboriginal rights?

Hardly likely to be in the ANC catagory.

Seriously, when was the last terrorist "incident" on Australian soil?

So WTF is this pervasive surveillance *meant* to be countering?

For all European Reg readers

There is a *vote* on this coming up.

Perhaps its time *all* European Reg readers put pen to paper and reminded their "representatives" that this is *grossly* asymmetric, rather like the UK/US extradition treaty which (the Home Office seems to having second thoughts on.

Just a thought.

"Take back your government" is not just for Merkins.

How many reg readers are thinking "Healthspace"

What's that?

Note the fact that the *real* (as opposed to the claimed) benefits are difficult to measure does not *necessarily* mean they were not worthwhile.

The question would be how *much* of that £12.7Bn was spent on this part of the project.

£10m would make it a pretty good ROI.

£100m. Not that bad (in context of a £12.7Bn, which IIRC is roughly a 1005 overspend)

£1Bn Taking the p£$s.

I've not kept an eye on the details of the project. Perhaps someone can put a number on its share?

But until I see otherwise.

No accident.

Thank you for a lucid and balanced view of Google's behavior.

This sounds like a RIPA violation.