Posts by Dodgy Geezer

I'll bet

that the marketing team that thought up this story are now looking at huge bonuses...

Remember CCTA?

The government used to run its own internal civil service consultants, in a body called CCTA.

They were closed down after extensive lobbying by consultancy companies.

'nuff said.....

What I find interesting is...

The fact that the early IT Security standards were written by CCTA, and tended to stress technical countermeasures...

then Security Service took over their jobs, and now the standards all include terrorist vetting and having yourself approved by a member of the leather apron brigade....

Here's to pure maths, and may it never be of any use....

@...So now I have question - a dumb one; but one I hope somebody in the particle physics arena can answer.

What precisely will knowing if there are larger mass particles or prove symmetry or the existence of Higgs particles mean for us?

I mean - longer life batteries, faster cars, improvements in energy consumption....?...@

The way it works is that pure research is usually completely without application when it's done. It simply raises the curtain about how things work a little more. Like Democritus around 400BC, when he developed the concept of the atom - there was nothing you could do with it then.

Fast forward a couple of thousand years, and you get a limitless source of energy for mankind....

I don't precisely know what this and the large financial investment is all meant to lead to.

Lots of prior art with optical equipment...

In particular, that's the very same technique used by the WERRA series of 1950s East German cameras to illuminate their 'match-needle' viewfinder exposure display.

They used a curved frosted-glass window to conduct light into the display, directed it through a prism, and used it to back-illuminate the meter needle. This made a black band appear on a white bar at the bottom of the screen, and you centred this to get the correct exposure.

Lovely cameras, the Werras, with a lot of clever engineering, and quite underrated, even though they used top-quality Zeiss lenses. Just the camera range for a geek to collect....

Security by 'keeping your head down...'

"The problem Microsoft has is they have a big market share, said Vreugdenhil, the hacker who attacked IE. "I use Opera, but that's basically because it has a tiny market share and as far as I know, nobody is really interested in creating a drive-by download for opera. The web at the moment is pretty scary, actually."

Yup. I used to run a virus lab, and that's the reason I use Opera as well. That, and the fact that it's fast, and very standards-compliant....

If that's what you get for watching 6 seconds of sex...

what are they going to give us for watching this government fuck this entire country up the a*** for 13 years?

As far as I can see, this government has fucked us up illegally, and non-consensually , and is keeping doing it even though we are yelling 'STOP!'.

If we are watching that, current laws should have us all put away for life....

Oh, and why isn't there a dildo icon when you need one...

Hollywood called.....

They want to make a film of this. Who would you like for the lead part....?

I Want....

the free electricity we were promised in the 1950s, when they started building nuclear power stations and everyone said to output would be too cheap to meter....

Flame because the greenies don't seem to understand thermodynamics....

I'm on Virgin Media fibre, NOT ADSL....

I'm meant to get 10Mb/sec, and I only get 2. But I can't complain, because I use Opera, and whenever I phone up to complain they invariably say that they will not support me because of that.....

Joke icon because that's what the service is....

Surely.....

only 0.2% of politicians ever misuse statistics by making up figures...?

I'll get my coat....

Fallen right into it....

"..Another thundered: "Thanks for going 'Orange' on St. Patrick's Day. If you thought this was funny, you are wrong. Now I know you aren't the kind of people I want to do business with."..."

Brilliant! 'Doing business' with El Reg presumably means 'reading your news items for free'?

So our irate American has just authorised you to block his IPaddress......

Why does nobody mention Opera?

Opera iwas the only browser to maintain a policy of full compliance to web standards. And the net result was that everybody ignored it.....

Was this bought with a credit card?

"The LHC was designed to be capable of firing two even more outrageous 7 TeV beams into each other for an ultimate collision energy of 14 TeV, but following previous superfluid explosion disasters engineers now consider that a major refit will be required before such power levels are safe."

Doesn't the EU have Customer Protection legislation?

We ought to be able to send it back it it's not of merchantable quality, and get a replacement, or our money back....

In other news...

CSOC warn against use of the new-fangled 'telephonic communication apparatus' - claims civil servants could be seduced from their duty by communications from 'external untrusted sources'....

Return to the status quo ante...

@CN Hill

"...I can see why publishers have gone with DRM [and quite why this should be illegal, I have absolutely no idea], but in the long run, it won't work. ...

What's the answer? I have no idea, other than I think that in 10 years time, authors and composers will be shafted even more than they are at the moment..."

Long ago, authors wrote and artists painted and musicians sang. They do NOT do this to earn a living. They do this because they want to - because they have a skill that they need to exercise. There is no shortage of artists or authors or musicians. There will always be a shortage of good ones, but there is no way to improve this.

Creative types who are driven to create used to get shafted. Van Gogh is a good example. Generally, they scraped a precarious living or got a rich patron. Then came mass marketing, and suddenly creative types could earn a living wage. However, the ones who got very rich were not the creative types (save for a select few). The rich people in the creative business are the marketing companies. Most creative types still just scrape by - the music industry is a good example.

Now the creative industry is suffering because its practice of limiting access to art (in it's widest sense) is being undermined by technology. The publishing houses cry crocodile tears for the artists, who they had been shafting before. It is interesting to note that few artists are calling for copyright extensions - it's the publishing houses, usually on behalf of artists who are conveniently dead.

The best thing that could happen is that the publishing industry middle-men will go out of business. They have lost their business model, and I can see no reason for them to continue to exist. The new technology allows artists to address their public directly, and cut whatever deal they wish. They may not earn a lot, but they will be being shafted less...

Look on the bright side....

Mr Alex Turner is lucky that he's not mildly schizophrenic, like JFL. Otherwise he would now be looking at a 13 month sentence.

Let's do something positive!

All you techies - what is the best technical (or other) way to disrupt this invasion?

Get thinking, get preparing and get publishing...

I am old enough to remember..

the Cold War, and the reports of the way the Soviet Bloc treated it's citizens.

The UK press would regularly say that a 'dissident' had been arrested and interrogated, then either charged with a catch-all crime like 'endangering the Soviet Union', or alternatively remanded to a mental institute. Frequently, the UK press would contrast the Soviet system (where there was no right to silence or proper defence) with our 'free western' one.

I was brought up to believe that arresting people on vague suspicion based on random searches and their unwillingness to cooperate was the mark of a totalitarian dictatorship. Even on the television, western police would say something like: "Well, we know he's planning a robbery, but he has rights - we can't arrest him until we have clear evidence...", and the villains would say "You can't hold me, copper, you've got nothing on me..."., while the chilling interrogators in a spy drama would point out that "No one can help you now", and "We will keep you here until you rot..".

Now, in a few short years, I see our authorities are matching their Soviet counterparts precisely - even to the use of mental institutions for people who 'won't cooperate'. And amazingly, there are citizens who support them, who argue that everyone should be totally subjected to the authorities so that we can 'catch paedophiles and terrorists'.

What we should learn from this is that dictatorships are NOT the result of one strong man seizing control. The monster is NOT Stalin, Saddam or Pol Pot. The monster is ourselves, and the attitudes of those amongst us who would cheerfully throw freedom away because they cannot see why it is important. And, for a free society to exist, it is vital that those of us who do value freedom make our voices heard at all times, on this and other platforms, and counteract the collaborators whose attitudes will pave the way for a genuine dictatorship...

Environ-mental hazards to consumers...

In breaking news, Apple refuse to repair machines which have been used by 'climate deniers'.

A spokesman said - "These machines could be used to support thoughts which threaten humanity. This is a crime ..."

Don't cross the beams!

"The Collider has as yet done no colliding, where the two beams - racing in opposite directions at almost the speed of light - are crossed, producing sub-subatomic particulate prangs of such violence as to mangle the very fabric of time and space..."

Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.

Dr. Peter Venkman: What?

Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?

Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.

Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?

Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.

Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

Colour me sceptical...

but I don't think this is a cause for rejoicing.

We've always assumed there was SOME water on the Moon - there's SOME everywhere, bound into crystals and the like. What we had hoped for in a shaded crater was sheets of solid water ice. And getting 24 gallons out of a kiloton-sized explosion is a very small amount - you would get more out of the Sahara sand.

There still might be solid water ice on the Moon, but I don't think we found it with this experiment. And if this is all there is, I suspect we will be hauling water up from Earth for quite a while yet....

IE down, Windows next?

"...Whether IE can take back the slow erosion of users with Windows 7 should be an interesting statistic to follow in the months ahead..."

Let us hope not.

I, for one, welcome the slow decline of our erstwhile monopolistic overlords...

It's worse than that (Jim...)

"...best delete all those "grow your penis now" and "if you send me £x ill pay you £million when i get it from wherever" spam mails, wouldnt want them to be considered links to terrorism now would you?.."

James 68

What! Delete them and be found guilty of hiding evidence, perverting the course of justice, etc, ect?

Only MPs and the police can hide evidence and get away with it...

Government Announcement

Future contributors to this thread should note that voicing ANY opinion on future government plans for control of subjects is grounds for entry on our surveillance systems and a disciplinary mark on your state record. We assume that any positive comments are sarcastic.

People who have already contributed are hereby fined £1000, under the new Government Civil Penalty scheme, which enables fines to be levied without the tiresome inconvenience of going through the courts. It will be automatically docked from your next pay packet.

Good piece...

but where is the button for us to press to contribute or join?

There is nothing new ...

about government grasping incompetence.

I recall back in the 1960s having to fork out £5 ( a lot of money in those days) for a license to use a model boat radio control transmitter. We got nothing for it, it was just a tax.

Then the CB radio craze started, and the radio control frequency became effectively useless. The Home Office Radio Regulatory Department di not seem to understand frequency allocations in those days, and was completely uninterested in doing anything about the issue. But we still had to keep paying the tax....

There are two ways to approach this issue...

You could ban Photoshop (and The Gimp!), and thus protect children from being misled in this area...

or you could educate children beter, and give them the tools to prevent being misled in EVERY area....

But, you're politicians, aren't you...? You DEPEND on being able to mislead people... so better education isn't really on the agenda, is it?

To answer everyone who has asked 'Why?'...

The primary reason this is going is that it still has a budget, and is therefore employing people...

If you want a military reason, an air-breathing jet will always have a much greater range than a comparable rocket. For air-to-air engagements, outranging your opponent is very important, but you have to do it with something quick.

Slightly larger missiles come under the heading of cruise missiles. Here. scramjet technology would enable you to build a comparatively small cheap weapon which flies rapidly round the world and then behaves like a cruise missile/Predator. So when the US get some intelligence that a 'Bad Guy' (tm) is having a meeting in Mogadishu, they can attack a nearby wedding party within minutes from the comfort of their own burger bar.

These two justifications have allowed the budget to remain, which takes us back to reason #1....

It's interesting to see the Americans..

trying to re-invent British ideas of 70 years ago. However, Barnes Wallis's work on this seems to have been completely forgotten, or misunderstood, by a nation which lives by the 'it wasn't invented here' slogan.

For the avoidance of doubt, Barnes Wallis's theory did NOT involve weapons which penetrated all the way to a deeply buried target (though they could). His weapon was designed to be used in one of several modes depending on the target.

For soft surface targets, such as railway marshalling yards, the weapon was set to explode at the optimum distance below ground to create a huge and wide crater, designed to be hard to fill in and repair. For large heavy targets such as bridges the weapon was to be detonated somewhat deeper, directly under the target; creating a 'camoflet' - a hole into which the target would drop, as happened at the Bielefeld viaduct.

For heavily armoured targets such as bunkers, the weapon was set to explode deeper still, so that a strong explosive pressure wave would develop inside the ground and be entirely contained there. Ideally, the weapon would be dropped slightly to one side of the target. The pressure wave would then pass through the target, shaking it heavily and destroying both equipment and the building's structural integrity.

The only requirement for ground penetration was to ensure that the weapon's explosive charge was fully transmitted to the surrounding medium. The shock wave traversal then did the rest. If you try (as the Americans seem to be doing) to penetrate all the way through to the target, you have to waste much of the explosive payload by armouring your penetrator, thus reducing the 'earthquake' effect. Further, if you explode your payload inside a bunker, the air passages dissipate the shock wave, which will not couple well to the ground. So you only get localised damage, which will be repairable. Note the attack on La Cupole - an impossible dome to breach, yet the whole thing was made unusable by TallBoy and Grand Slam attacks on its foundations.

I was always amused to see the US SAC hidden under a Colorado mountain, which is indeed proof against air and surface nuclear blasts, but which would transmit buried pressure waves like a bell. It would be interesting to drop a few of B-Ws old 10-tonners from the right height over that mountain - I strongly suspect that they would render the whole complex unusable quite easily. Rock is strong in compression, but quite weak in tension, and the B-W theory made use of this fact.

If the Americans would try 'clever' as opposed to 'powerful' they might do better. They might, for instance, have created the world's first supersonic car, as oppose to leaving it to a retired British engineer who used brains rather than just raw power....

A problem for all of us...

"..For most new-build homes in the u.k you need to be a contortionist to get in the loos. They make the airline ones look spacious..."

While thinking of something funny to write here it gradually dawned on me that this could be a growing problem. Loos ARE getting smaller and smaller in modern homes. And people are living longer and longer.

Space that is suitable for a young person may be inadequate as they get older, and their limbs become less strong and supple. If an old person falls, they will have problems getting up in a confined space. I wonder how many deaths have already happened, and when it will start to register in the stats as a cause of death with a separate title...

Get it right!

"As the husband of a writer, and barring security concerns, I am actually happy to hear this story and that the writer's rights were successfully protected thanks to technology. :)"

The writer's rights have NOT been protected. He has been dead these 50 years...

But some faceless company now 'owns' the right to let you see his books. It is THEIR 'rights' that are being protected - their 'right' to tax people for eternity to view something which used to be a free gift from our past to all humankind.

Obvious answer...

Go back to using film cameras - then at least the Pigs will have to pay for the film processing...

I'm sick....

of hearing endless made-up justification for green facism. Just go ahead and do it. All the figures I believe suggest it would be a major catastrophe, and shaft the country's infrastructure so much that we'll lose what remains of our manufacturing capability. It will probably cost many lives as well.

Perhaps this is what you want? All I know is that environmentalism will be politically dead after a year of green power, and will probably never rise again. I have enough money to leave the country, and both my parents are dead, so I'm going to be all right. Go on. Do it.

READ THE STORY!!!

He ISN'T saying we should cut the cameras. He's saying they can't be used to their full capability of minutely examining all of our lives at the moment, because the police need more staff.

So he's calling for MORE STAFF. He WANTS to cover the country with cameras, but he wants them all to be 100% effective. So, if anything, he's even worse than the people who just call for more rollout.

Once we get to his ideal state - 50% of people being employed watching the other 50%, you can bet he'll be crying out for more cameras somewhere.....

Note that...

the arrested party-goers will have had their DNA taken and be on the Police National Computer database. I hope they are not applying for a job at the moment....

The one thing missing from this item...

Is the explanation of what the Catlin expedition was doing. If we can measure Arctic Ice thickness from orbit, and from low-flying aircraft, WTF was the Catlin expedition ever about?

Penguins, in support of the VIZ cartoon showing British explorers braving the cold to get pictures of Penguins attacking Polar Bears. Which might have been one of the aims of Catlin....

I feel like starting a charity..

To provide deprived people with things that they are missing. There should be no deprivation and poverty of experience in NuLabour Britain!

All donations of bukkake and anal DP should be sent to Baroness O’Cathain at her House of Parliament address. No need for a plain brown wrapper.

Paris because she will surely be an early contributor....

Pedant Rules..

"Every new media....has to ultimately be controlled by the government."

By Anonymous Coward Posted Tuesday 7th July 2009 12:36 GMT

Every new MEDIUM!! (or ALL new media)

Even if the sky is falling, nouns must agree with their verbs in case and number. Besides, I want to use the new Pedant icon...

Two points...

Point 1 - The huge advantage of a huge carrier is that it is huge.

There have been several incidents of major damage suffered to US carriers which did not result in the ship loss because it was big enough to absorb the hit. In contrast, if you make a smaller boat, an accident or single bomb/missile hit can sink it.

The Royal Navy went for small carriers in the 70s because, the theory had it, you could have a lot more for the same money. What happened was that the Treasury simply cut the costs, and provided the same NUMBER of small carrriers for a lot less money. Shafted!

Now we find we have TWO problems for naval aviation. One is that small carriers can't field adequate air support (enough fighters or topside radar). This is the problem everyone keeps mentioning. The other, which is not so well appreciated, is that the small carriers are hugely limited in tactical manoeveuring because of their vulnerability. You can't sail them into danger and take a risk that you might be hit a few times. So big is critical if Royal want to do anything dangerous...

Point 2 - We invented linear motors. Why aren't WE the ones using them for catapults...?

Call for Action...

"Let's stop agreeing with each other. Instead of posting here, let's post to the Daily Mail's message boards."

Seconded. In fact, we should be posting to the web site involved, the local newspaper, and the local MP.

If you don't make your views known early, you will have an uphill battle to fight when they do kick off their knee-jerk reaction...

Drug Wholsale work..

"..A drug dealer does not try to kill his customers..."

His competitors, on the other hand...

@ Tom Paine

"What I don't understand is how the reconcile the cognitive dissonance of fundamental physics and basic climatology, which presumably they accept, with whatever flavour of denialism they're clinging to. (I say presumably the physics is accepted because if thermodynamics didn't work as it does, electricity wouldn't work, and stars and planets wouldn't grow in the first place, and so forth - could be wrong there. Anyone from the wingnut community care to respond to that?)"

I happen to have 5 minutes free, so here is an answer.

Fundamental physics indicates that CO2 does 'trap' (Ok - inaccurate, I know) heat, but to quite a small degree, and by a diminishing amount as the concentrations increase. All parties agree that increasing CO2 - from, say 300ppm to 400ppm - will change the world temperature by a minimal unimportant amount.if just the CO2 is considered.

The AGW claim is that a miniscule change of CO2 concentration will result in increased H2O evaporation, and it's this water vapour which will create a runaway climate disaster. For this to be the case, our climate has to be very sensitive to these gas concentrations, and there needs to be a positive feedback for H2O (more water vapour means more heat trapped, which means more water vapour)

We actually knew very little about climatology when this theory was first put forward. All the theoretical predictions were, and still are, developed by feeding calculations which comply with this theory into computer models, and not by any practical measurement. However, current research now indicates that:

- CO2 levels have varied and been much higher in the past - up to 1500 ppm, and no runaway has resulted

- More water vapour results in more clouds, which reflect and convect (again simplistic) large amounts of energy back into space.

- The net result is a stable, insensitive climate with strong NEGATIVE feedbacks from H2O

- although temperatures were rising in the 1990s, they have now leveled out and started to fall.

- CO2 levels are still rising though temperatures are falling, which indicates that CO2 levels do not cause unequivocal warming.

- the predicted signs for CO2-driven global warming, such as a hot spot in the Troposphere, have been found not to exist

So Ithe wingnuts have no cognitive dissonance. Science works. It's the AGW theory which is wrong. Would you care to share with us whatever bit of basic science you think disproves any of the statements I have made above?