* Posts by Charles Manning

3509 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jun 2007

Better Place electric car outfit goes titsup

Charles Manning

Leccy cars are not magic

They need almost as many spares petrol cars do: tyres, shocks, wheel bearinge, lubrication,...

Then they need stuff that gas cars DON'T need: monster batteries, heating elements, high current control electronics,...

If anything it is easier to make the free printer + ink extortion business model work with leccies.

Charles Manning

How petrol stations got established

In them old days, there were no petrol stations. People strapped spare petrol cans to their cars and various shops, cartwrights, ironmongers etc would also sell cans of petrol (~4 gallons or so). As more cars became used, shops atrted having bowsers and the industry slowly emerged.

The same could theoretically happen with battery switch-out tech. Regular gas stations could keep a few batteries around fro swap out (just like they sell pre-bottled LPG etc.).

The problem with this is that a battery is bloody expensive and having spare batteries lying around at gas stations in case someone drives past and needs one during the next 5 months is a very poor use of money. That will soak up all the start-up funds pretty quickly and ruin a company trying to make the tech work. In short, the numbers just don't work.

Clearwire to pull Huawei from network

Charles Manning

So what would a backdoor actually *do*?

If the Chinese govt could really install a back door, what would that do?

Packet sniffing/espionage would surely be useless since anyone sending sensitive information uses encryption (VPN, ssh,...).

About all they could do is instigate huge DDOS attacks or cause similar outage. Would they really do that?

The most logical way to look at this is congress/senators /whatever waving the Chinese threat flag for political advantage, and some businesses doing the same to be on-side with Japanese purchasers.

Charles Manning

xenophobia

Sickening really.

'Catastrophic failure' of 3D-printed gun in Oz Police test

Charles Manning

Gun deaths in 2013

"There were 51 gun related deaths last year in the UK"

I am betting that whatever this number does in 2013, none of the deaths will be caused by a printed "gun".

People come up with all sorts of theoretically possible bullshit, but in the real world things are not going to change.

Charles Manning
FAIL

The real questions....

Does this gun really put the public (ie potential victims) at increased risk? Is this really a tool of liberation that allows the oppressed masses to arm themselves against an oppressive regime?

Or, in other words, is this really the game changing weapon that the press has made out?

In all cases, Lewis' analysis is correct. The answer is No.

While the gun can shoot, it is hardly an effective weapon. A knife, a pool cue, a cricket bat would all be more effective and dangerous. If someone was to attack me with murderous intent, then I would hope they choose this printed gun.

A .380 through a proper barrel only gets to around 1000fps. Through a printed barrel it would be unlikely to get much over 200fps because the plastic cannot stand the pressure. That means a powerful slingshot is more dangerous.

In the gun realm, it is really easy to make a zip gun that is far more lethal using just $20 of DIY tools.

I do think it likely that the Oz police were being slightly disingenuous. If they had widened the barrel slightly, so that it would not have exploded, the bullet would have emerged far slower.

This is not a "changed world". There are much more effective weapons that are readily available.

What it is is a hysteria maker that all players seem to be milking for their political agendas.

Charles Manning

In many counties it is the ammo that is harder to get

In post-apartheid South Africa, it is really easy to guy an AK47.

When you buy one (for around $20 - probably a bit more now). It came with 10 rounds of ammo. When the ammo's finished you buy another AK47.

Or, to put it another way, 10 rounds of AK47 ammo cost $20. The gun is thrown in for free.

Charles Manning

Fudgery?

I suspect some fudgery here. The "gun" that the police fired only managed to penentrate that far because it developed enough pressure to explode the barrel.

If they had printed a gun that was loose enough to not explode then the penentration would have been pathetic.

The .380 only gets to 1000fps in a proper steel barrel of approx 4 inches. In a POS plastic unpressureised barrel it can surely not get much over 150-200 fps. A good slingshot could do better.

Phones for the elderly: Testers wanted for senior service

Charles Manning

Older means wiser, blinder and less distracted by "cool"

At 51, I'm an older techie. My eyes are not what they used to be. Nor is my patience for shiny faddish crap like twitter, facebook etc.

I have an Android. It has some useful features like the maps. And a real keyboard for sending texts when I need to (I can even use real words and grammar).

I often find myself wanting to steal my wife's dumb-as-a-rock phone which has HUGE buttons - easy to read without my glasses on and absolutely no shiny features.

I don't care about "cool" . It is pointless. I've seen so much cool stuff through the years (first man on the moon, Walkman, CDs, Segway scooters,...). Some of it was really amazing, some was just faddish crap. I fail to find "cool" amazing any more. Unless it has a real useful purpose I'm not bothered.

[Oh, in case you think I am a Luddite, I write OS software and have done a lot of electronic design].

Spam and the Byzantine Empire: How Bitcoin tech REALLY works

Charles Manning

Re: Sunshine -> Money

Like growing cabbages.

Except people can actually eat cabbages.

The problem with this whole mining idea is that it is not even a real mine. Some folks decided "let there be a virtual mine" with scarcity. We can mine it easy in the beginning and basically do a huge land grab.

What is there to stop someone else coming along and saying "well bitcoin was a bit of a scam. We've stated a new currency that does it slighty differently and more green/democratically/whatever." Bitcoin goes out of fad and the next one takes over.

James Bond inspires US bill to require smart guns for all

Charles Manning

Meh!

"I like guns, and I'm a pretty decent shot. I would love to own a gun".

Horseshit. If you don't even own a gun then you're deluded that you are a good shot.

While the UK makes it hard to own guns, it isn't impossible. If you would really love to own a gun you could.

There is a lot of BS about guns, mainly spouted by armchair experts that have no experience or knowledge beyond FPS gaming.

People with real experience lack bravado, they know that using and carrying firearms is a huge responsibility and that things like identifying bad guy from good guy is never straight forward.

Charles Manning

Re: Need more reasons to carry?

I carried in the past - when I lived in a country where that was rather prudent.

Carrying is a huge responsibility.

It might be reasonably obvious who is the villain after the fact and you have watched it all on youtube, but things are seldom that clean in real time in real life.

See a man throwing a woman to the ground... Perhaps he's robbing her.... or maybe she way mugging him and he acted in self defence... or maybe she shoplifted something and he's trying to arrest her.

There is so often the argument that students carrying on campus would have been able to shut down a mass killer. Perhaps, but that would have to be weighed up against all the extra deaths caused when an argument gets elevated to a gunfight instead of just fisticuffs and a broken nose or two.

Carrying is fine, so long as the carrier is well trained - mostly in how to avoid using their gun.

Charles Manning

That's why I like what we have in New Zealand

Here in NZ a firearms license is basically a safety course and a formalised background check.Criminal: fail. Drink/drug problem: fail. Don't have adequate security (safe etc): fail. etc etc. Once you have that, you can buy guns and ammo.

It is illegal for anyone (including private individuals) to sell buy to someone without a firearms license.

There is no ongoing cost (NICS) or delays when purchasing. Like that rifle over there? Show your card and buy it. Feel like owning some .50 BMG ammo? Same.

Sure there will be a black market where crims can trade stolen/illegal weapons but at least the supply is limited without having to significantly impact on law abiding citizens.

Charles Manning

Militia in context

A "regulated militia" would not be under state control, but more likely organised at a village level.

Remember that at the time communications were pretty limited and getting instructions to/from a state capilat was too slow to provide the responsiveness required of militia. The state could not fly in a chopper load of troops at a moment's notice.

The militia were expected to form up and respond to threats at a village level to protect the village or whatever. To do that they needed to be able to act under their own authority until some higher authority arrived.

A better modern day equivalent would be an armed neighbourhood watch where everyone gets called out to protect the neighbourhood against rioters etc until the real police/troops could take over.

Charles Manning

Just political bullshit

This is just public posturing. People see 007 movie, politicians want to appear to be doing something....

Most gun "accidents" that this would prevent (eg. the 6year old shooting the 4 year old) could easily be achieved by what we have in our house: a gun safe.

Any criminal getting hold of a Smart Gun could make it work within 10 minutes by using a file/screwdriver/whatever to bypass the smartness and convert it back to a "dumb gun".

This tech will really achieve nothing except make the hand wringers feel like they did something.

Tipsters exposed after South Africa's national police force hacked

Charles Manning

Not even remotely responsible

In most civilised countries releasing the names of informants/police correspondents is - for the most part - just an invasion of privacy. While there would be some repercussions, they would be few.

South Africa is an entirely different matter. The place is completely ruled by criminals and swift "justice" can be expected for many on this list.

Kim Dotcom claims invention of two-factor authentication

Charles Manning

Re: He claimed a lot of things

s/was/is/

Charles Manning

Where's te logic to treat software patents differently?

While I dislike software patents, it is bollocks to claim that all software is maths and thus should not be patentable.

That Turing bloke showed that all software is equivalent to a machine (a mechanical thing). Surely therefore the same laws that apply to mechanical items should also apply to software?

Physicists tell us that all mechanics stuff is just maths. Perhaps on that basis we should not allow any mechanical stuff to be patented?

I have not seen any convincing argument that software should not be patentable, but other things should be. It seems to me that either:

* Software should be patentable

-or-

* Nothing should be patentable.

In embedded systems it becomes a lot more complicated. Micro controllers (ie. software) are replacing what was previously mechanical control logic in washing machines, cars etc. If someone has a patent for "gear changing when torque reaches a threshold" should it be possible to bypass the patent if the algorithm is moved from a mechanical or electronic mechanism to software?

Sure, USPTO really struggles to understand the complexity in software patents and issues a lot of crap patents, but that is just USPTO failing to execute - it is not a fundamental software vs other stuff issue.

Stephen Hawking nixes Intel voice upgrade plan

Charles Manning

I used to mildly tolerate of $Deitists....

until we had the Christchurch earthquakes.

If god is omnipotent, then he either caused the earthquakes or knew they were coming and could have stopped them. At worst he's a bloody murderer. At best he's culpably negligent (like an adult watching a toddler play in the road as a truck comes driving along).

Then we had all the christians tell us to go to church and be thankful for not being killed..... So hang on a bit.... you snuff out Johnny, and not me... so I should be thankful!

-ENOCOMPUTE. Tis enough to break any rational brain!

Now there's a whole lot of bun-fighting about restoring the Christchurch cathedral. I say just leave it standing as a tumbled wreck... a monument to the ignorance that is religion.

Marks & Sparks accused of silently bonking punters over the tills

Charles Manning

Well lapdancers for one....

Surely they'd think it a good idea.

Acorn founder: SIXTH WAVE of tech will wash away Apple, Intel

Charles Manning

Not human-level machine learning

While the AI followers might be keen to see human-level machine intelligence, the truth is that much more basic "intelligence" still evades us.

We still have not yet replicated the intelligence shown by an insect - let alone a lizard or a mammal.

Charles Manning

This is bollocks

This is nonsense on at least two fronts:

First, the waves don't necessarily wipe each other out. The new waves just go into new market areas. We still have mainframes, PCs and phones coexisting. Sure, minicomputers got wiped out. The "sixth wave" is not going to replace any of the other stuff.

Even if you have a driver-less car, you'll still want an iphone to tweet about it and a mainframe to run your banking services.

Secondly, we've really had this "sixth wave" for a long time already. It is embedded computing that puts computers into cars, digital thermometers, washing machines,... For years now an Intel-inside PC has had more ARMs than Intel cores. Heck, even the typical hard drive has two or 3 ARM cores.

Hemp used to make graphene-like supercapacitors

Charles Manning

Re: We are all saved!!

Except... diesel is actually a power source.

Batteries etc are just a power store. They have to be charged, and all that leccy has to come from generators (already overloaded) through a grid (which is already overloaded) .

I predict that by the end of the decase, we'll still be using oil as our primary fuel... and not in out flying cars either!

Charles Manning

Re: If you want to claim a high capacitance, reduce the working voltage

Not forgetting ESR.

If th ESR is high, then the supercpa just loses everything in heat.

Bing uncloaks Klingon translator

Charles Manning

So...

What's "Dear Aunt" in Klingon then?

Your Flying Car? Delayed again, but you WILL get it, says Terrafugia

Charles Manning

Re; Diesel electrics

You do realise that many (most?) rail locomotives don't have to fly?

Diesel electrics are bloody heavy. They are essentially a replacement for a mechanical clutch/gearbox and are not a power source of themselves.

Charles Manning

Well it really is 4D

With a car you can just stop when things get aa bit ahiry. With a fixed wing you have to keep going. That means you don't just worry about where you are (3D), but where you are going to be there. That adds another DOF.

Charles Manning

I smell horse feathers

"A megawatt of power lifts you". That's 1,341 horsepower. Golly!

You want to put 3D gun designs on the web? You'll need a 2D printer

Charles Manning

"Innumerable people"

This is the greatest defect in democracy.

The few well educated people who think things through well get one vote each.

The many uneducated morons with no ability for critical thought get one vote each.

No wonder the politicians pander to the latter even when they are capable of thought.

Samsung sends gigabit '5G' signal TWO WHOLE KILOMETRES

Charles Manning

Re: Heating the air

Higher frequencies are limited in range due to being absorbed by water. That is not necessarily a Bad Thing. It means that the cell towers can be placed closer together without interfering with eachother as much.

Where higher frequencies break down is that they don't make it through walls etc as well.

Charles Manning

Is this going to be like MS releases?

1G was good, 2G was crap, 3G was good...

Microsoft splashes big bucks to blast Google Apps

Charles Manning

Will this backfire?

When MS ignored Google Docs, there was the impression that MS Office was the real stuff and Google was the "unprofessional stuff"" on the www, although many people are actually using it and finding it useful.

By taking an adversarial position, MS have actually endorsed Google Docs as being a serious enough contender to fear. I think this will backfire on MS because - apart from some cheesy ads, they really don't really put forward any rational reasons why Office is better.

New Zealand to bar software patents, again

Charles Manning

Re: Unfortunately...

"kill innovative kiwi companies before they get to the size where they can afford to export"

Well I don't buy that only large companies export.All the small companies I am associated with export.

So how does it help NZ companies to build up their technology in a patent shelter, then when they "get big" they can't turn into an exporter because all the tech they've developed is not useless to them?

Charles Manning

Re: Unfortunately...

Perhaps you miss my point.

Having worked in NZ as an embedded software developer for over 20 years, every product I have worked on has ended up being exported.

NZ is a very tiny market. Almost none of the software developed in NZ is only going to be shipped within NZ (except for stuff like custom database applications for an NZ-only retial chain or a government body - stuff that will typically not be subject to any patents). Anything else (ie stuff that will have to be exported at some stage) will still have to be free of patent infringements otherwise it can't be sold overseas and is not worth developing.

Let's for example say I work on the design of a nifty new NZ designed and manufactured washing machine that uses an SD card and uses FAT file system to log washing info Two fingers up to MS and their dumb FAT patent... yes, we'll show them.... Except that 95% of those washing machines get exported - mostly to patent honouring countries. MS will block the sale of that product. outside NZ.

So, again, it might seem all David vs Goliath, but it really isn't. As a software developer I still have to honour the patent laws of the markets my product sells into and no NZ manufacturer only manufactures for the NZ market.

Thus, for practical reasons, this is just a token gesture. It really has no impact on software development in NZ.

At least with NZ's other ground-breaking laws (gay marriage etc), some people get to change their lives because only the domestic situation matters.

This patent law means nothing until the major markets come on board.

NB Again, I am not saying this was a dumb decision, just that it has no practical impact.

Charles Manning

Unfortunately...

The NZ domestic market for NZ-developed software is incredibly small and almost all of the software developed in NZ is exported to jurisdictions with software patents. Thus us kiwis will still have to abide by foreign software patents.

Of that domestically consumed NZ developed software, almost all of it is database/desktop software for corporates/government. Very little is the sort of thing that gets encumbered with patents (OS software etc).

Thus it is just a token gesture at best. When the celebratory champers has been consumed people will realise it has almost no practical benefit.

Charles Manning

Naah

It is mostly due to the fact that we're a really small country.

Until I moved a few weeks ago, I knew my MP personally. Not as friends or anything, but I know where she lived etc and she would help out at public working bees etc. It is good to see your MP working hard pushing a barrow full of compost. That's not the sort of thing you'd get in most countries.

Most of the MPs have an electorate office where you can pop in and visit. Most will respond well to emails etc that you send to them.

It's really hard for an MP in NZ to hide or play the them-vs-us game. As a result, they're very accountable and NZ has the most transparent government in the world.

'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer

Charles Manning

Re: Its a start,

"if you can't get better." A zip gun (Google will find you plenty plans) is way better. Even a knife is way better.

"brit asses with clunkier muzzleloaders." Nope muzzle loaders are far less clunky. They typically used "Kentucky rifles" which are real rifles - with rifling and use patched balled as projectiles. These are highly effective weapons because the patch provides both a good gas seal and a good grip on the rifling.

This plastic crap has no rifling and would not take the pressure caused by a good gas seal. It would explode.

Charles Manning

It is not proof of concept, it is a diversion

The www is full of sesigns for zip guns which are far more effective and easy enough to make with $20 of DIY hand tools.

A 3D printed gun is not "proof of concept" because the materials just don't exist for making an effective 3D printed gun.

It's like duct taping some cardboard wings to a car and saying you have "proof of concept" for a flying car.

This was an exercise in hysteria... and it worked.

Rules, shmules: Fliers leaving devices switched on in droves

Charles Manning

What does "off" mean anyway?

Unless you actually yank out the batteries (impossible to do with some devices), none of these devices actually turn off all the way. They will at least have some circuitry ticking over, even if it is just the RTC and the power supply required to keep it alive.

3D printed gun plans pulled after US State Department objects

Charles Manning

The politicians love this

It is a great way to divert discussion from the hard stuff.

Pro-gun lobby are prepared to have these banned. Throw them under the bus to keep everyone off the backs of legitimate owners of real guns.

Anti-gun lobby: An easy win.

I doubt very much any politician is worried about being shot by one of these. If anyone is going to take a shot at me, I'd prefer them to use one of these rather than a $100 handgun they buy from a street gang.

This thing is probably more dangerous to the person behind the gun than a person in front.

Charles Manning

How long before....

Someone figures out how to make a gun from plastic without a $8000 printer. You know, something just made with $20 of DIY hand tools?

Well they have... zip guns have been around for decades. Want plans? Uncle Google will find heaps. Most of these have steel barrels, but with some experimentation, a $50 drill press a plastic barrel is easy enough to make and that would be way more reliable than this 3D thing.

Israeli activists tell Hawking to yank his Intel chips over Palestine

Charles Manning

Intel Isreal should do their own counter-boycott.

When they design their next chip they could thumb their noses at Hawking and his theoretical physics nonsense.

All the info you need to design a chip is in the Old Testament.

The Metro experiment is dead: Time to unleash Windows Phone+

Charles Manning

Don't you remember?

Microsoft told us it was bad when they released XP. That's how MS works. When they bring out a new OS they tell you the last one was crap.

Win 8 is different. They're telling people it is crap before they bring out a proper replacement.

Does a cloud have to be public, or can it be private?

Charles Manning

Seriously bad logic

What you're basically saying is that you think Joe and Jane Enterprise can do a better job of sys admin than Google, Amazon and other cloud providers.

That might be true for very few companies, but for most companies that is not the case. The average small company (or even medium size for that matter) just lacks the dedication and IT expertise to run effective back ups, run redundant servers, etc. For most companies, the cloud providers do it way better.

Many companies that I know still use cloud providers even though they have the skills. Why? It is a way better use of their time to deal with customers and generate revenue than it is to piss around with IT.

Watchdog: Y'know what Bitcoin really needs? A REGULATOR!

Charles Manning

Rarity does not make value

There are 21M bitcoin. I have these 3 painted stones that I promise to never make more of. Yes, ONLY three. They must therefore be worth 7M BC each due to their rarity value.

Apart from a bit of novelty (eg. some geeks feeling the nerdy desire to own a few BC), value is only worth what people think they can trade for the currency.

I'm willing to sell you my horse for $1000 because I know more or less how many sheep I can buy for that, and that most people agree more or less on the value.

Currencies only really got their value from being underpinned by something tangible and the need to trade. In the past it was gold etc, now it is a slice of GDP.

Ultimately if people want to buy stuff from USA, then USD go up. If nobody ever wanted to buy anything from USA then USD would tank. There is no Bitcoin-land from which to buy products. It is a slice of nothing.

Charles Manning

I think you miss their point.

If the US legislation says that BC is to be treated like any other currency then it will have to be under US law. That means anybody using BC would have to play by the legislated rules or they'd be breaking federal law.

We all know that BC makes it hard to trace, but that does not make it legal. If you're deliberately using BC to hide your transactions, then you'd be up for money laundering/tax evasion/whatever.

Of course they can't stop people in UK dealing with people in Australia, but they can control transactions within US and across US borders.

Charles Manning

Well it is taxable

It is a common myth that, in USA, that transactions conducted in anything other than USD are not taxable. For instance bartering eggs for apples or services is taxable.

Any income is taxable and that would include BC income too.

Politically-correct 'Fairphone' goes on pre-sale next week

Charles Manning

THere is no such thing as fair

It is unfair that those with the connections can preregister and get one before everyone else.

It is unfair that these will not be given out on a whatever-you-can-afford basis. eg. $1 for a poor person, $1000 to a well employed person and $100k to an Evil Corporate Bastard.

Truth is that this world never has been fair and the electronics industry is about the least fair of any industries. Calling anything Fair is just greenwashing - or whatever the Think Of the Starving Masses equivalent is.

Acer reveals 'floating' screen to save desktop, self

Charles Manning

re: "There is no too small, too light or too heavy"

On the flip side, every bit of kit is both too small and too big.

It is too small when you want to use it and too big when you want to carry it. What the punters really want is a 24 inch screen in a wristwatch case. Something we don't know how to deliver.

That same problem does not just exist in laptop land. People want a 12 inch iPad that is easy to read, yet small enough to fit in their pocket when they carry it.

So what happens is that most people end up compromising or using docking stations etc. As a contractor, I have docking stations at home and spare screens at all my clients' places. That allows me to carry around a mid-size laptop, yet actually get work done when I get there.

Thousands rally behind teen girl cuffed, expelled in harmless 'explosion'

Charles Manning

Her other mistake....

was being a model student.

The system seems to bend over backwards to make life easy for problem students (aka disadvantaged/troubled/whatever).