Re: ground test
OK - let's see that fly out of the atmosphere...
Posts by Dodgy Geezer
1773 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007
Page:
UK rocket-botherers rattle SABRE, snaffle big bucks
'Dear Mr F*ckingjoking': UK PM Theresa May's mass marketing missive misses mark
UK.gov expected to quit controversial harvesting of schoolchildren's nationality data
All the king's horses and all the king's men could probably put Huawei's P20 Pro together again
Hey, so Europe's GDPR privacy deadline for Whois? We're going to miss it ... by a year or so
Most IT contractors want employment benefits if clobbered with IR35
UK 'wife'-carrying champion named
Monday 9th April 2018 15:14 GMT 
Re: Where's the IT Angle then?
I listened to a Radio 4 news chat this morning going in to work.
The male presenter mentioned the contest, and got an earfull from the female on the grounds that this sexist rubbish made her feel sick, and should have stoped in the Middle Ages.
Funny. I can't remember her saying that last year when 'sexism' wasn't so popular a topic for the Islington chattering classes....
An easy-breezy attitude to sharing personal data is the only thing keeping the app economy alive
Friday 6th April 2018 09:59 GMT
Re: Better alternative
...It's like the idea that a sugar tax will make us stop buying sugary drinks...
Actually, it does. Have you tried to buy a sugary drink recently? They are no longer available. You do not have the option to buy anything apart from Asparteme or Sucralose.
Means that if you hate the taste of Asparteme or Sucralose (as I do) you are stuffed. The Govenrment is effectively forcing you to drink liquids you don't want to or like...
Virgin spaceplane makes maiden rocket-powered flight
Friday 6th April 2018 09:11 GMT
Re: Re how fast
...It may be meaningless above there as the mean free path may be so long that any wave front disappears in noise....
Another way of putting that is that the Mach number refers to your speed in relation to the local speed of sound in air - so it becomes irrelevent when there is no air around you...
Don't want to alarm you, but defence bods think North Korea could nuke UK 'within a few years'
I say, I say, I say: What's the difference between a king penguin and liquid?
Thursday 5th April 2018 10:29 GMT
Nothing unusual here...
Most moving particulate items can be modelled using fluid dynamics. Traffic is, often.
However, I can see the code for penguins finding nesting sites might be directly applied to cars finding car-parking spaces, or people sinding seats in a theatre... Look at that - three papers for only one piece of work.....!
Facebook want us to believe banning Putin's troll army safeguards Russian democracy
UK regulator bans slasher-flick parody ad for OnePlus 5 mobe
Thursday 5th April 2018 08:42 GMT
...Why is death and nature a problem?...
Because humans come with a built-in emotional sub-system which drives their actions, and one feature of this system is that the average human will feel upset if someone they like dies. Presumably this has some evolutionary advantage, such as helping them avoid situations in which death of a friend is likely?
Humans emotional sub-systems also have a built-in requirement to protect children from any upset or unhappiness. This is particularly strong in mothers, and it is a bad idea to be seen by mothers as an obstacle to the protection of the young.
Consequentally, we have a set of social pressures which support the cossetting of the young, hiding any unfortunate aspects of the workld from them, and providing as 'womb-like' an environment as possible for as long as possible.
2001 set the standard for the next 50 years of hard (and some soft) sci-fi
Thursday 5th April 2018 07:22 GMT
Re: HAL
...If we ever realise true machine intelligence, these issues will need most careful thought....
If we ever realise true machine intelligence, we will be able to discuss these issues with the machine involved.
Journalists and the public do not understand what they are talking about (Do they ever?). If our autonomous machines are simply machines with a decision tree (no matter how complex), then it makes sense to talk about us deciding how to program ethical issues into that tree.
If the systems we create are truly 'intelligent', then they will develop their own ethical guidelines, just as we do. We can discuss these with them, but we cannot force an intelligent being to do something against their will.
Incidentally, a truly 'intelligent' replica of a brain would presumably suffer from all the issues that our brains have, They would get bored, lose attention, behave immorally or recklessly and probably find a way to get drunk or high....
Microsoft: Yes, we agree that Irish email dispute is moot... now what's this new warrant about?
Thursday 5th April 2018 06:14 GMT
The way things work with US Extra-Territoriality......
... is the same way they apply their tax laws in other jurisdictions.
" We have passed a law in Congress that says:
1 - every country in the world has to obey this law
2 - if they don't then their assets in the US get confiscated, and
3 - they never get to export or work in the US or on US projects again."
So... if your business has ANY international connections that include the US, you must obey them. If push comes to shove, the US are quite capable of going after your suppliers, and their suppliers, to ensure that the only work you can do is growing your own food with no agri-chemicals or power tools...
Danish Navy expert finds no trace of exhaust gas in private submarine
Thursday 5th April 2018 05:54 GMT
Re: Has he ever come up with a story ...
...and apparently it is not as easy as most of us lay persons would expect...
Listen well, Blackadder.
I won't repeat this.
Put your underpants on your head and stick two pencils up your nose.
They'll think you're crazy and send you home.
Right.
Favour returned.
Blackadder goes forth - Series 4 Episode 6
Need a needle in an artery? Move over, doc, there's an app for that
Doomed Chinese space lab Tiangong-1 crashes into watery Pacific grave
Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin
Friday 30th March 2018 17:14 GMT
Re: Thanks to the British voters?
..Doesn't work like that. I'd say, "those who don't vote when a vote is offered are assumed to be happy with the status quo" which is the historical reality.....
No. you are completely wrong. If the vote is 'status quo or change' then it is NOT TRUE that a NO vote means 'status quo'. This is just self-delusion on your part.
Friday 30th March 2018 10:56 GMT
Re: Thanks to the British voters?
Those who don't vote when a vote is offered are assumed to be happy with however the decision turns out. Logically, it can't be anything else.
So the non-voter figures should be added to the figures of whoever the winner is.
In this case it comes out to (in round figures): 17,410,742 + 12,927,000 = 30,337,742 = 65%
Which is a good mandate....
Autonomous vehicle claims are just a load of hot air… and here's why
Friday 30th March 2018 12:43 GMT
...The only thing going for the hot air balloon is that it is, in a very practical sense, the only full autonomous vehicle in actual use around the world....
For a technology journalist you're not very good with technology.
A balloon - hot-air or gas, is steered by the pilot. He steers by raising or lowering the balloon, so that it passes through different air currents moving in different directions. Easy to google if you didn't know it already. https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/hot-air-balloon2.htm
A horse is a good example of an autonomous vehicle - I think someone mentioned this below....
Yes, Emergency Service Network will be late and cost more - UK perm sec
There are 10 types of people in the world, but there is only one Melvyn
Uber self-driving car death riddle: Was LIDAR blind spot to blame?
Thursday 29th March 2018 06:13 GMT
Well, there are not many choices...
..Uber self-driving car death riddle: Was LIDAR blind spot to blame?....
We assume that the system is designed to detect objects and avoid hitting them.
So it has to see an obstacle, correctly identify it, and take some avoiding action, like braking.
W know that the car took no avoiding action. So, assuming that the brakes were working, there is either a problem in:
1 - the detection
2 - the identification
3 - passing the message to the avoidance process.
I assume that 'a blind spot' refers to a failure of item 1). And without knowing anything else I have a 1/3 chance of being right...
Thursday 29th March 2018 04:57 GMT
Re: "...a [Lidar] blind spot low to the ground all around the car."
.... A lot of cameras have an IR filter to keep infrared from reaching the sensor. Since the focus point for IR is different than for visible light, getting a clear image is enhanced by blocking the out of focus IR,...
You are talking about a camera optimised for visible light. Of course that has filters cutting out extraneous light that it's not meant to respond to.
But why on earth should a sensor INTENDED to pick up IR have an IR filter? That makes no sense. I am pretty sure that the design engineers would have speciified technology wich was designed to do its job. And that its job was to detect obstacles around the car in varying lighting conditions - which includes pedestrians in a night-time street. That there was a failure there is obvious. But I don't think it was as simple as using a technology which was not designed for the task....
Tesla crash investigation causes dip in 'leccycar firm's share price
10Mbps for world+dog, hoots UK.gov, and here is how we're doing it
Wednesday 28th March 2018 12:52 GMT
...a vehicular access road, electrical power supply, fibre-optic data feeds, gas lines, sewage and other drainage, "service path utilities" (i.e. for the direct use of street lights, traffic lights, etc. separate from everything else), spare ducting reserved for future use, service hatches/manholes and anything else that every road is going to need eventually....
Perhaps becise all those services have different requiremnts for their holes? For instance, sewerage is always going to have to flow downhill, while gas wants a direct route from supply to house - and electricity wants a different direct line to its substation....
Privacy activists to UK plod: Wanna slurp folks' phone records? Come back with a warrant
Fatal driverless crash: Radar-maker says Uber disabled safety systems
Wednesday 28th March 2018 12:39 GMT
Obilgatory 2001 Quote
Dave: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin 9000?
HAL: Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error.
Frank: Listen HAL. There has never been any instance at all of a computer error occurring in the 9000 series, has there?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. The 9000 series has a perfect operational record.
Frank: Well of course I know all the wonderful achievements of the 9000 series, but, uh, are you certain there has never been any case of even the most insignificant computer error?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. Quite honestly, I wouldn’t worry myself about that.
Wednesday 28th March 2018 12:34 GMT
Re: Cause of Death: Ostrich Algorithm
...In a public environment, Humans should not be killed by autonomous things ever.
Autonomous cars are there for the benefit of humans, not the other way round....
Very good. Now consider this:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) 2016 data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day, in the US.
That makes an average of one death per 94m miles driven. I understand that autonomous cars currently have one death per 130m miles. So if we changed all cars to autonomous ones at the current state of the technology, we would drop the deaths to 27,087 - saving over 10,000 deaths per year.
Why do you think saving 10,000 lives a year is not for the benefit of humans?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
