* Posts by I ain't Spartacus

10123 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

Crowdfunding small print binned as Retro Computers Ltd loses court refund action

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Re: Always Indiegogo!

Alpy,

If the product was more than £100 - your credit card company are jointly liable with the now bust company that didn't ship your goods. So they aren't legally allowed to just say, we couldn't get your money back sorry - they have to pay you and eat the losses. It's called your Section 75 rights.

However, that might not be the case with an Inidgogo campaign. This judgement suggests that if they've got the wording wrong, then you're entering a sales agreement. But if the wording is right, then it probably is a speculative investment, where the actual goods are counted as a reward (or some other such weasel terminology) rather than a product. In which case you're probably out of luck.

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Re: As it should be

Wasn't the C5 the one product he was able to make enough of - and that wasn't delayed. Admittedly that was because nobody wanted them...

I drove one a few years ago, and it was amazing how unstable they felt, for something so low to the ground. The thought of taking one on actual roads is terrifying.

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It's an interesting judgement - though not binding on other courts. As I think some of these Kickstarter / Indigogo schemes look little better than scams. So it's nice to see that you can't promise to ship some vapourware real-soon-now[TM], then run away giggling with the money - and fob everyone off with getting nothing as they were only backing your R&D project.

As I understand it videogames have recently bombed on Kickstarter, because so few ever got produced, after taking the money. Oddly the boardgame industry have become their biggest growth area, because a lot of the stuff is being produced by existing companies, who are simply using it as interest free credit.

Suspicion of villainy leads Facebook to ban cryptocoin ads

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Selective clean-up

I'm not complaining, as this is clearly a good policy. Just surprised that Facebook care. I guess it's because the public crash and explosion of the bubble is looking increasingly likely to happen any-day-now - and they don't want to look like they were helping.

Whereas whenever I sign on to Facebook I get the lowest quality ads. I only log in a few times a year, to look at family photos, and have filled in little info. So they've not got much info to go on to target ads, and so it's brides from Ukraine and Win a Free iPad crap.

As 90% of those are scams, why aren't they also banned?

NASA finds satellite, realises it has lost the software and kit that talk to it

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Happy

Re: Maybe NASA should stand for Need Another Satellite Archaeologist.

Is that because he was found guilty of This (link to Youtube)

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Re: Maybe NASA should stand for Need Another Satellite Archaeologist.

Oh, are they making a sequel to the third Indiana Jones film? I'm a bit worried that it willl be a bit pants. They won't use anyone rubbish like Shia LeBeouf will they?

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Re: Nasa and the preservation of knowledge

Charles Calthrop,

NASA wrote loads of stuff down - they had whole books of procedures. Whether that's the right stuff, and whether that's all the required stuff is another matter. Also how much of it was kept, but there are lots of archives, including recordings and transcripts of the radio and mission control chatter for entire missions.

They'd have to start from scratch, because rebuilding the Saturn V and Apollo capsules, that they've still got the blueprints for, would mean retooling factories and retraining engineers to use old tech we no longer have. So you'd have to re-design them to some extent anyway, using modern methods. You'd certainly want to use modern computers - given that Apollo 11 had various computer errors when trying to land - as the poor pooter didn't have enough RAM to cope with the radar data and the landing data at the same time. The radar should have been switched off, if I recall correctly.

At which point you'd use NASA's SLS and Orion - that've been tested once, or SpaceX's cheaper Falcon Heavy and Dragon II (due to both test this year?).

You're still going to need a lunar lander - or a refuellable Dragon II. And I'm not sure if either SLS or Falcon Heavy can get sufficient mass to lunar orbit that you can do all this with one launch, rather than 2 and having to rendevous in either Earth or lunar orbit.

Julian Assange to UK court: Put an end to my unwarranted Ecuadorean couch-surf

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I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

I posted a link above to my reference. Which isn't so easy to do on this phone.

The short version is that the Vienna Conventions allow the receiving state to refuse to accept an ambassador totally. But all other mission staff cannot be refused before they take up their post, and thus our only recourse is to declare him persona non grata and he gets to leave the country.

However there are a few other clauses that can be used to maybe argue against this. Plus the barrack-room lawyers arguing from the text of the convention ignore the UK legislation that brings it into force in our law. And also ignore any legal precedents, which is the reason you have to pay proper lawyers in cases like this.

The FCO challenged Ecuador to lawyer-up. What's telling, I think, is that they haven't. Also Assange is trying some crap about retrospectively letting him off bail, and isn't claiming diplomatic immunity.

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Devil

Re: Send in a dentist and a sun lamp

Is it safe? Is it safe?

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Asterix the Gual,

Ecuador did make him a diplomat a couple of weeks ago.

The UK Foreign Office refused to accept his status - which is apparently a legal grey area. They didn't declare him persona non grata, because that would technically accept that he had the status, and therefore had the legal right to leave the country. Instead they challenged Ecuador to lawyer-up and try their luck in court.

That's a case that would got all the way to the Supreme Court, and maybe off to Europe (ECJ or ECHR?) or even the ICC in the Hague. So Assange could probaby sit out the rest of the statute of limitations on his case for alleged rape. Of course Ecuador would have to put up with him in their embassy all that time... Not to mention all that cash funnelled towards m'learned friends.

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Re: Come again?

Vote down, because bollocks is bollocks.

He's accused of rape. He should stand trial for rape. All that the UK system has done is to try to get him to Sweden, where he fled those accusations. If our system was less fair-minded, we'd have fucking locked him up while he was on bail, and avoided all these problems. Those women would have had their day in court, and he'd have either been found not-guilty, or probably been released by now if he was guitly.

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Re: A solution

Doctor Syntax,

How's about, "fuck him".

And the horse he rode in on. I've still never quite worked out what that's supposed to mean. Or what the poor horsey did wrong to deserve being included...

He got a perfectly decent legal due process, in a nice comfortable country house until he broke bail.

He's the one that made a high profile song-and-dance about it all. So why help him? Come to that, why help Ecuador. There was no justification for them giving him political asylum, given he'd had due process in the UK - and so I rather suspect the FCO are enjoying the embassy's discomfort. Even if it was legal to tell the judges what to do (which it isn't), I don't see that they have the motivation to do so. I'm sure quiet back-channel words can still be had - but why would the government want to spend political capital or risk the criminal offence of trying to pervert the course of justice in this case?

He made his bed, let him lie in it. They gave him his bed, let them put up with him.

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Re: Kafka lives

But as the original warrant and charges that he was on bail for have been withdrawn, he shouldn't have been on bail in the first place, as he had (technically) not done anything wrong.

I'm afraid this in wrong on every level.

Firstly Sweden have never charged him. Their legal system is different to ours and he buggered off to Blighty the night before his interview, where they could charge him.

Secondly charges haven't been withdrawn. Well obviously they haven't even been pressed yet. But the investigation hasn't been dropped. They've just stopped pursuing it, and withdrawn the International Arrest Warrant. They're free to re-issue the EAW as soon as progress looks more likely - it was only cancelled because they got their wrists slapped by their courts for carrying on with a case that was impossible to resolve.

But that still doesn't mean he retrospectively shouldn't have been on bail in the first place. That would be ludicrous - as it would basically be saying to criminals that if you can run away for long enough, you can get away with it.

Actually Sweden do that, with their statute of limitations. Something I think is immoral, even if there are good reasons for it. Like Berlusconi getting away with all those fraud convictions, by running so many appeals, that the final appeal hadn't been heard before the statute of limitations ran out - so he got off even though the previous court had convicted him. Or in fact Assange getting away with hiding for 5 years from the sexual assault allegations, in order to avoid having to face his accusors in court. He's now just 3 1/2 years from running away from his rape case - which doesn't exactly do much justice to the alleged victims.

Anyway his breach of legitimate bail was a crime when he did it. And just because he's successfully hidden from justice, doesn't seem a good reason to let him off that - given he knew full well what he was doing when he did it. I hope Ecuador kick him out before the time runs out, so those 2 Swedish women get their day in court. Be funny if he was found not guilty, and had wasted 6 years in voluntary hiding... Well maybe not really funny, but I think I'd still laugh.

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Re: Frankly

James O'Shea,

The problem for St Jules is that he's got 4 more years of this. The Swedish Prosecutors Office haven't dropped the investigation, only suspended it for lack of progress. Their courts told them it was disproportionate to continue the chase without any prospect of a solution, him having hidden in an embassy and that embassy not cooperating with the investigation.

So as soon as he pops out and hopefully gets dragged off to court and a couple of months chokey for bail-jumping - the Swedes just need to get the tippex out, change the date, remove the charges that expired after 5 years, and re-issue the EAW. That's been ruled legal, so then it's off to Sweden for him, chop-chop. Then they can finally do their pre-charge interview and either charge him or release him. Then try him, or deport him.

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Re: Send in the S.A.S.

I really doubt it takes the SAS to get into a flat in Knightsbridge. Just politely knocking would do just as well.

But it's an embassy, so you don't do that sort of thing without good reason. And Assange is not good enough reason to risk one of the fundamental tenets of international law. Embassies are incredibly important, because it's how governments talk to each other. And jaw-jaw is almost always better than war-war.

So it's inconvenient, but then it's even more inconvenient for Ecuador. Who've been desperate to solve this situation, and get him out of their embassy for years. The problem is, they don't want to lose face by backing down, so the Foreign Office are probably chuckling quite happily about their discomfort.

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Re: If he gets his way...

Lysenko,

There's a lot of law here, and as usual, you can get legal opinions either way. I read an interesting argument a few years ago between a UK ex-ambassador and one of the Foreign Office's legal officers.

The ambassador argued the full Vienna Convention thing. The lawyer said, that's all fine, but you also have to count custom and practise. So for example when Mossad helped Nigeria kidnap a dissident in London, and smuggled him out in the diplomatic bag - the police broke the seals on said diplomatic luggage and rescued him. Then told the Nigerians off. The FCO and police got off scott-free for doing that. I believe there's another article in the Vienna Conventions stating that diplomatic bags must be for diplomatic papers and stuff for the embassy's use only. What you've got there is two competing laws, which means you need to lawyer up, and fight it out in court.

Interstingly there's actually a quirk in the conventions. We can refuse an ambassador before they're appointed. Thus denying them diplomatic immunity. However we can't refuse lower members of embassy staff diplomatic immunity/status until after they've been appointed. And the Conventions specifically state that we can declare them "Persona Non Grata", but have to then give them a reasonable time to leave the country, unmolested, immunity intact.

So as Ecuador apparently made that request a few weeks ago, the FCO are technically in breach of the Vienna Conventions. I've read those, though not the UK law that brings them into force here, so don't know what that has to say on the matter.

The FCO's response was to be ambiguous, but firm. Their note to Ecuador, that got leaked last week, said that we don't recognise him as holding diplomatic status, and so he does not have immunity.

This is clearly a challenge to Ecuador to see you in court. Don't ask me who'd win... Though this is such an obvious pisstake and there are various get-out-clauses (like diplomatic immunity not counting for non-diplomatic personal activities), that a willing judge could find something. In general UK law does not allow retrospective changes, so I don't see how he can be made magically immune from stuff that happened before his diplomatic immunity would be granted - but that would be down to a judge if Ecuador wanted to try their luck.

My favourite source on this is another ex-UK ambassador: He's got 4 blog posts on the subject - this has the leaked FCO note - others have links to the legal discussion

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Tokyo crypto-cash exchange 'hacked' for half a billion bucks

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Is that another kind of crypto-currency? I mean I've not heard of LOL, but then I'd never heard of NEM either...

How many thousand dollars is a LOL worth? And is that more or less than a ROFL?

GOLD! Always believe in your role. You've got the power to know you're indestructible...

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Happy

Space Weather

So this thing is studying space weather. Is that what all the low cloud and drizzle is that always hang over my house whenever a comet, meteor shower or any other interesting astronomical event is happening?

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Devil

Re: So.... to cut a long story short...

We know this much is true.

New Sky thinking: Media giant makes dish-swerving move on Netflix territory

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TV remotes are mostly awful because most people buy the cheapest tellies - because it's mostly a commodity market and so most players don't make very much profit. So they don't invest anything in getting their software right, or making their hardware ergonimic.

Sky are very profitable and decided to make their boxes mostly nice to use.

Elon Musk offered no salary, $55bn bonus to run Tesla for a decade

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Re: I get this sinking feeling....

inmypjs,

if Musk is a conman - explain SpaceX.

Just because Tesla might fail - that doesn't make him a conman. That makes him a businessman who solicited inestment for a risky venture. He'd be a conman if he didn't believe that he could make it work - but carried on anyway.

Businesses fail all the time. Others succeed.

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Tesla might fail. People invested in a start-up, that's what they do. So what?

The proposal here is to pay him nothing if he fails, and lots-and-lots if he succeeds. Given investors have already put their money into Tesla, that's a win-win for them. Either their losses don't increase, or they get a slightly smaller share of the potential profits.

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Re: Just a house of cards...

Anon,

You can't just handwave and dismiss SpaceX because they blew one of their rockets up. Tesla might still be a work in process (and may fail) but SpaceX have arrived. Maybe he'll screw it up and waste that potential, but so far they look to be just powering on.

They are already one of the cheapest ways of getting medium weight payloads to orbit. They're testing a new rocket this month to get them into the heavy payload category. They've managed to land and re-use rockets - in a way that's never been done before - and the savings from that give them vast growth potential.

And they're not really taking subsidies from the US government. Tesla might operate on subsidies - but SpaceX get paid for doing actual stuff. That's not a subsidy, it's revenue. OK, NASA have worked it so there's a promise of money in advance (and some paid up front that might be lost) - but then they're asking for companies to develop new technology that doesn't yet exist, so that's fair enough. Most of the money gets paid only if the tech succeeds. So SpaceX now get paid a commercial rate to deliver to eh ISS. If their manned capsule works, they'll get the same for that.

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Re: The "Silcon Valley" business plan seems to be.

It's a perfectly valid way to innovate. One of the reasons our economies have grown so massively over the last few centuries is that free market economics allows lots of failures. Given how hard it is to predict the future - there's always going to be failure. You just need enough companies to succeed, to make it worthwhile. Sometimes even the failures produce useful stuff, which can be bought cheap by someone else and make a contribution.

SpaceX is interesting, because they were viable if their innovation of re-usability hadn't come off. Now that it looks like it has (though obviously we'll need a few more years to demonstrate that), they're even further ahead.

Tesla is risker. It relies on improvements in battery tech, and I'm not sure if it can be viable without that. Other than as a niche sports car boutique I guess. But it's not like a 50-100% improvement in battery storage is totally unrealistic, we've been getting 5% extra capacity a year for quite a while now - and there's probably more research going on than ever.

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Re: Will Tesla be independent for that long?

I don't think it's fair to call Musk a fruad. SpaceX should prove that. They've done some very hard engineering stuff - but also in a very practical way. In stages. They aimed for re-usable rockets, but planned to that it didn't matter if that tech could be made to work, they still had a viable business and workable tech. Maybe he's used PR and hype - but you can't argue with his results so far.

Similarly Tesla isn't all hype. It's got some happy customers, but it's not the real deal. But then he couldn'd do what he did with SpaceX here. Electric cars may never work.

At the moment they have a small niche, which other technologies may eclipse - and the potential to become much more than that. But I don't think it's clear to anyone what the long-term future of transport (or the energy sector in general) will be.

We currently have a working oil infrastructure. But it's expensive and risky, as it relies on the Middle East politics and causes climate change.

But we've got nothing to replace it. Battery tech isn't yet up to the job, but could become so "any day now". Or not. Even if it does, that's no panacea, as we'll then have to radically change our electricity infrastructure to be able to cope with the power needs of transport. Doable, but expensive and time consuming.

Maybe fuel cells are the solution? But creating a hydrogen economy to fuel them is even more expensive than upgrading the electricity sector.

Or we could end up with some other tech like flow-batteries or a cleaner hydrocarbon, perhaps in tandem with all cars becoming hybrids for maximum efficiency.

But even if Tesla fails, that doesn't make it fraud. If we can't get the battery tech to make it a success - that doesn't mean it wasn't an honest attempt.

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Re: Will Tesla be independent for that long?

Tesla is considered to be "over-valued". In the sense that its market cap is way higher than you'd expect from its revenue. Which obviously makes sense if everyone expects the company to be making lots of money in the future.

However, that makes it much less of a tempting takeover target. Normally you're either trying to get a company cheap because the markets have totally under-valued it (say the Glazers buying Manchester United), or you're trying to buy one that's cheap because it's doing badly and you believe you can turn it around.

The other option, where price is less important, is when you're trying to build on synergies between your companies (so you can sack loads of staff), or just want to massively boost your market share. What car company can afford to absorb Tesla?

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Well it's either that, or pay him a salary I guess.

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Happy

We'll know that's coming when Tesla announce they're building monorails.

We all know that monorails have only two uses. 1. Evil lair. 2. Catastrophically boring children at museums.

NASA rethinking InSight probe mission after dust storm predicted for Mars

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Happy

Re: Does anyone know....

Pea souper?

No thanks sarge. I've already eaten.

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Re: Any orbit should do

There is a pretty much set overall mass for your payload, given that your launch rocket has a payload limit.

Every extra kilo of fuel you carry is one less sensor package on your probe. Or less shielding / backup battery capacity / whatever.

If you want to decelerate the whole package to get into some sort of Martian orbit - then you've got to carry quite a few kilos of extra fuel. That means you do less science because either your probe doesn't last as long, or your probe has fewer instruments.

Worse, it costs even more fuel to get out of orbit - because you have to reduce your velocity quite a lot.

Basically it's a waste. And with our limited technology for getting out of the gravity well, we just can't afford waste in space missions. At the moment SpaceX charge $60m-odd to launch a rocket that's only burning about $300,000 worth of fuel. And that's because they're still pricing on throwing away the rest of the rocket.

Remember, it still costs $10k-$20k to get 1kg to low earth orbit - and in that total mass you still have to budget for all the lovely fuel to get you to Earth escape velocity, do a few course corrections and slow you down enough at Mars to make aerobraking workable in a very thin atmosphere.

On the other hand, the mass of a cubesat is very low compared to the whole payload. So even carrying the cubesat's entire mass again in extra fuel probably isn't an insurmountable cost - and whereas that fuel doesn't get you very far boosting the whole payload, it might take your cubesat quite a long way. And of course it's required (not a luxury) as you have to put your cubesat in orbit - putting your probe in orbit is an expensive luxury. Much cheaper to keep it in storage, in a nice clean-room on Earth, and send it after the dust has settled.

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Fuel. Entering a stable orbit, and then having to brake from that to land is expensive in fuel. And fuel carried is precious mass that could be better used for more instruments.

Cubesats, being small and light, are much easier to move around.

S for Security is Google owner Alphabet's new favorite letter

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Devil

as increased interconnectivity gives bad actors more opportunities

Are you telling us that the web is responsible for Adam Sandler?

Damn you Tim Berners-Lee! God damn you to hell!

Camels disqualified from Saudi beauty contest for Botox-enhanced pouts

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Coat

It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it's like, 'Oh look at how big is that head.

At least crufts doesn't have a rumpy-pumpy round - so that the judges can decide which dog has the best expression at the height of ecstacy...

Camels make enough weird noises when they're just standing there. You'd probably need the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to do justice to a parade ring full of camels in carnal bliss. And then an awful lot of booze to forget the sound afterwards...

Mass limit proposed so boffins can tell when they've fingered a brown dwarf or a fat planet

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Re: Trigger arning!

Especially as the black box is orange.

It must be terribly confused.

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Flame

Surely a planet. It was in close proximity to uranus...

2018's first spacewalk bugged by software

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Devil

YOU ARE BEING LIED TO!

Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle, flight engineers for Expedition 54, spent 7 hours and 24 minutes on the replacement, after retrieving the 200kg replacement LEE from the external pod it's occupied since 2009.

It's a cover up! What actually happened is that they issued the command "open the pod bay doors", in order to access the LEE AE35 unit, and got the error message, "I'm sorry, I can't do that."

They were then forced to head for the ISS main computer room with a large axe, and give it a reprogramming it'll never forget.

Facebook open-sources object detection work: Watch out, Google CAPTCHA

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Terminator

Re: Google / Amazon search results

JimmyPage,

Ah, but how do you know that Google's AI hasn't determined exactly what you want - and just chooses not to give it to you? If there can be artificial intelligence, I'm sure that artificial sense of mischief and artificial bloody-mindedness won't be long in following.

UK competition watchdog: Fox's takeover of Sky 'not in public interest'

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Re: Motivation For Purchasing Sky Entirely ???

Shadmeister,

Murdoch's company used to totally own Sky I think. But had to sell most of it in order to get money for other stuff. I think he's always been sad that he sold it, as that meant he wasn't getting all the lovely profits.

it's not made a huge difference in control, as Sky's second biggest shareholder is an ally, so there's often been a Murdoch (or Murdoch ally) at the top of Sky anyway.

I'd thought they were selling the Sky stake to Disney, and only keeping the Fox telly stuff, because Disney already own a TV network in the US - so couldn't have another one. So in the end I'd be surprised if they don't do a deal where he can buy Sky now - in order to pass it on to Disney - if certain conditions are met on Sky News.

NASA is sniffing jet fuel over Germany

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Just think if they could improve the environmental impact of aviation at the same time as improving the quality of the in-flight catering. Fry ups for every meal!

Would you like freshly cooked chips from our engine sir?

Plus if things go wrong, at least you can have some nice fried goose and chips for your last meal, from the flock you hit on takeoff.

We're cutting F-35 costs, honest, insists jet-builder Lockheed Martin

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Happy

Re: Moog Hydraulics - wow!

Surely you're both wrong? Moog is a character from Willo the Wisp.

Tax Google and Facebook for a job subsidy scheme? Sigh

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The UK has a problem of local news

We don't have many areas that can have a successful market for local news. The same problem we have with government, that the country is just physically small enough that government suffers from the delusion that centralisation can be successful. Without local news though, you can't really have effective local democracy. Admittedly that also requires voters to give an effective damn about local news, local democracy and bother to vote and stuff.

It's a real chicken-and-egg situation. If councils don't have power, people won't vote. But if you devolve them power when people aren't voting, you get corruption and stupid decisions. And if nobody's interested, no-one's reading the local press, so there's no scrutiny.

We had reasonably representative local government 100 years ago. You could get from being a leader of say Birmingham council to being a senior national politician in one step back then. Because the role had a profile. Maybe city mayors will make a difference here?

it's a really dull subject - and that's the problem. Because nobody will take it seriously. But it actually matters quite a lot. Otherwise local government just becomes a playground for non-serious politicians to push their pet projects, in a lot of cases in safe seats with little risk of getting turfed out by voters.

UK Army chief: Russia could totally pwn us with cable-cutting and hax0rs

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Happy

Re: But seriously

Have you never heard of the internet-connected tin-opener? IoT is the future dontcherknow!

Job ad for designer proves its point with MS Paint shocker

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Happy

Re: Polygraph Examiner

Surely the original tea-leavers were in Boston in 1773?

Cyber-coin crackdown continues: Commission charges couple crypto-currency company chiefs concerning 'conned' customers

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Wot no B's

Bonkers Blockchain Bubble Brouhaha Becomes Breathtakingly Bad Before Bust! Brown-trousered Bankrupts Bemoaning Bad Bets.

Nervy nuke-armed nation fires missile with 5,000km range

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Re: If your not on the list, you're not getting in

If Iraq or any other country REALLY had weapons of mass distruction, the USA could not attack.

sean.fr,

Wrong. Iraq did have them deployed at corps HQ level in Kuwait in 1990. They were still there when the.troops were captured. They also used them repeatedly in the 80s, against Iran and the Kurds.

As happens, the US didn't know that tactical nukes had been deployed in Cuba, so might well have invaded anyway.

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Re: If your not on the list, you're not getting in

Bottom line though is that US justification of attacking Iraq (that US had proof hat Iraq had WMDs) was patently false.

No it wasn't. We knew that Iraq still had WMDs in 1998 when the weapons inspectors finally got kicked out. Or at least, "knew beyond reasonable doubt". Iraq were still obstructing the team's attempts to destroy what was known about (let alone if Saddam had more that had avoided detection so far), to the extent of throwing the inspectors out.

So it was perfectly reasonable to act on that knowledge.

As you say, Iraq wasn't a threat to anyone but its own population in 2003. But it still had a vast army, a nice oil industry and a whole bunch of people who knew how to make chemical weapons. Plus it had a reasonably advanced missile program, as they'd been modifying and upgrading their own SCUDS for years - though I don't know if they were up to actually building their own engines.

So it could have made itself a threat again reasonably quickly. As I recall sanctions were up for renewal at the UN in 2003 and were expected not to pass. Even the French were talking about opposing them - though I suspect they'd have let the Russians take the heat for actually vetoing. Not coincidentally Iraq owed France and Russia billions for all the military kit they'd sold them, and also needed lots of spares and replacements.

Remember that the RAF and US Airforce were regularly shot at by the Iraqis, patrolling the no-fly zones to stop Iraq attacking the Kurds and continuing with the genocide against the Marsh Arabs. It's not like this was a stable situation that the evil US and UK were stirring up.

Who was to know that Saddam wouldn't immediately arm-up again and invade Kuwait and Saudi? There was nothing to stop him at the Saudi border in 1990 - and he could have made retaking Kuwait a lot harder if he'd continued over that border and destroyed places like King Khaled Military City. The logistics of desert warfare are a complete bastard. Not to mention the Saudi and Kuwaiti oil wells. And those are a global strategic interest. It's why we went to war in 1991 after all.

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Re: If your not on the list, you're not getting in

jmch,

The UN Security Council didn't authorise the attack in 2003. They only legitimised the occupation afterwards. The legal basis was I think taken from the 1990 authorisation of force, and the fact that Iraq hadn't complied with the 91 ceasefire disarmament agreements.

Which he hadn't. He still had SCUDs.

They were also unarguably in breach of the 91 agreements on chemical weapons as they threw the weapons inspectors out in about 1997. With only about 70-80% of the known stocks destroyed. The inspectors had been crawling over Iraq for so long, that they knew in a lot of cases what equipment and chemicals they'd ordered or made, and so had a pretty good idea how many weapons that led to. They'd not accounted for it all, QED.

I've not read a report that's managed to work out what went wrong, so I don't know exactly what happened. Did Saddam give it away, like he sent most of his air force to Iran to save it in 1990? Or bury it? Iraq's big, but people would know, and senior generals have since joined ISIS and probably have gone and dug it up, so that seems less likely. Or did he destroy it himself? If so why? Why not get the UN to do it, and get out from under sanctions?

As you say, you can't prove a negative, so once they were gone there was no way back. Saddam had pretended to give up the whole program about 5 times in the 90s, then the inspectors had found more than he'd admitted to - and the whole process of search, find, admit happened again.

Hans Blix admiited Iraq weren't cooperating with his inspectors in 2003 - but said he didn't think there were any weapons even though he couldn't know. His credibility was blown because it was him in charge of the IAEA in about 96 who was about to sign off that Iraq had no illicit nuclear program, when the CIA found it, and he subsequently had to demolish it.

Iraq also had the scientists and the knowledge to rebuild their chemical program as soon as sanctions were off.

So it was a mistake to justify the invasion on WMD, because even if Iraq had it, they didn't have the capability to use it effectively (as they'd had in 1990). But sanctions were collapsing, partly because of the collusion of France and Russia, so Iraq would not have stayed contained for much longer - and that was why they went for invasion, because the existing messy containment policy was about to fail.

I think Blair's need to get UN approval was the mistake. He should have let the US do it alone, or had the courage to sell the case for doing it on its merits, not try to sex it up. Iraq wasn't an immediate threat, but could quickly have become so with no sanctions and all its oil revenue.

F-35 'incomparable' to Harrier jump jet, top test pilot tells El Reg

I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

Re: Stealth Landings?

But any airframe, however stealthy, ceases to be stealthy when you hang a collection of bombs and missiles off the underside of it

x 7,

Not quite. As I said above, stealth depends on the angle of the plane compared to the radar.

For example if you're flying at low altitude to get under the SAM radars, then no radar can see the underside of the plane. So you can strap as much ordnace to it as you like. The only radars that are going to see you are above you - either on hilltops or on other planes.

Also, the plane is far bigger than the stuff hanging off it. So it's going to give the largest radar return - so the more you can do to mitigate that, the better.

Plus if the plane is front-on to the radar, and only has a few air-to-air missiles strapped to the wings, then they're really not adding that much to the radar cross-section.

As I said, stealth is about mitigation - it's not magic.

A380 saved as Emirates orders another 20 planes, plus 16 options

I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
Devil

Why can't people just be lowered in by crane, like in Thunderbirds? You could do them in batches of 20 say.

Or even have an automated airport. Have conveyor belt at the beginning, then a stunner like they have in abbatoirs. Then human cargo could just be shuffled conveniently round the airport stacked onto pallets. Though it would be better if everyone was stuck on individual boards - and whizzed round belts. No need of seats then, as you could just stack people in the planes. Security will be much quicker if you can just shuffle everyone through the perv-scanners at regular speed.

And as we're all zooming unconsciously round the airport on conveyors being touched up by security people, robbed by baggage people and perved at by the lot of them - the whole terminal could ring to the theme music from Thunderbirds.

You know it's the future. And it's not like there'd be a noticeable difference in the level of customer sevice...