Posts by hammarbtyp

Is NASA planning to send LAVA LAMPS to Jupiter?

Special Projects Bureau next project?

Launching a rocket plane from a balloon in the Jovian atmosphere. Come on, I have faith in your abilities

Tax dodging? It's harder to do - and rarer - than you think

No simple answers

A good article and as the quote goes there are always simple answers to complex problems and they are always wrong.

At the end of the day my opinion is that it is not a question of how much tax we can squeeze out of corporations but whether the playing fields are even. So a book distribution company based in the UK is unfairly penalized compared to amazon because it does not have the resources to do the tax shenanigans which amazon with it's army of accountants can do. As a result amazon can undercut the local opposition and eventually competition suffers.

However I think a radically rethink of tax policy is required rather than what is proposed at present which is nothing more than politicians posturing. Maybe the problem is with the whole concept of capital gains tax. The more you think about it, it is a tax purely on profits, so penalizing success, which is a little strange. Also remember that big corps do pay tax in this country via income tax, NI etc. So maybe it is in those areas that we need to look and drop corporation tax to 0 or maybe VAT on sales as well as purchases? Non of these are in the least politically palatable whichever side of the divide you are on so I won't hold my breath.

Peter Capaldi named as 12th Doctor Who

Doctor know to Doctor Who (I'll leave it to you to find the thick of it you tube reference)

Intel's homage to Raspberry Pi: The much pricier Minnowboard

Re: Missing the point.

I agree, yet intel really do need a competitor. The pi is training the next generation of embedded engineers and on intels biggest competitor.

Intel need to get their game together and offer a similar product at a competitive price, however i feel the sales guys would fear it would undercut existing products so reducing the high margins, without thinking about the long term effect.

WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters

Re: Better get busy

Don't forget those 'hot strip mills'.

Actually our company used to have filters on terms like that. Played havoc especially considering we sold a lot of control systems to the steel industry

Surface RT: A plan worthy of the South Park Underpants Gnomes

Re: Not only Surface RT

<quote> It isn't a PC-replacer, it is the thing that people buy instead of a PC because a PC is too much trouble for what they want to do with it</quote>

I think that hits the nail on the head. Microsoft big Achilles heel has always been that they cannot perceive a world without a PC, either as your primary workstation or the way you access content.

As the world moves to a more cloud based model, using lower power tablets to access them, Microsoft have been reduced to hawking Office compatibility as a must have to a world that no longer cares. Google and Apple get the new order, MS doesn't

Star Wars missile intercept fails for fifth year running

Re: Never failed....

Not only that but it has supplied beeelions of dollars to poor defense contractors. So job done

Upturned boat sails to Shed of the Year title

Old news

They've been doing that on Lindisfarne for at least a 1000 years

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Lindisfarne_Upturned_Boats_in_Harbour.JPG

Ecuador: Snowden is Russia's problem

Time to come home...

The irony is if the situation was reversed i.e a Russian was in a US airport with Russia's espionage secrets then he would be suffering a large dose of polonium poisoning by now.

I actually have very little sympathy with Snowden. He is trying to make out like he is some sort of hero of freedom, but actually he is a low level technician who is seriously out of his depth in the murky world of international politics. He basically confirming what every else already knew, that everyone listens to everyone else.

The Russians will use him to their political advantage then chuck him in the garbage when their was nothing else to gain.

Exclusive: SNOWDEN and ME. TRUE MOSCOW story of OPEN DATA HERO

Best line of the week

"I threw the world’s most wanted information freedom fighter into the Smeg"

Rise of the Machines: How computers took over the stock market

Re: Fascinating article

"However whilst inflation remains uncontrolled and house prices are constantly pumped we all have mouths to feed and roofs to provide thus this will continue."

and do you think there is no a correlation that and financial instruments that no one has any control?

The thing that annoys people outside the financial industry is that all the effort only ends up transferring money from one place to another. It does not produce wealth only redistributes it among those who don't really need it. It is akin to betting where you get the horse results 5 minutes before the rest of the suckers.

If half the effort was put into manufacturing real things then maybe the country would not be the financial mess it is now.

Sorry <Rant> over

Fascinating article

You have to be impressed by the technological effort put in to make these systems, but you do wonder whether the effort could be better spent than trying to sell virtual stocks to make quick buck(or two million)

Girls, beer and C++: How to choose the right Comp-Sci degree for you

Computers are not about the languages

Good article and I would broadly agree with the statements.

My advice would be to find a course with the broadest curriculum from high level to low level. It is not about the languages you learn but what you do with them. I would worry if the university only teach declarative languages and did not touch embedded. From what I see in CV's it appears many universities only seem to use Java nowadays and this is a big mistake.Just as important is learning how to work, manage and interact in teams(virtual as well as local). Also I would add a smattering of cyber security

Also remember that universities are only the start and don't most universities are 3 to 4 years behind the industry standard. Industrial placements are valuable, but so is life long learning

Apple at WWDC: Sleek new iOS, death of the big cats, pint-sized Mac Pro

Re: Nitpick

"Designed in California, built in China, taxes paid in the Cayman isles"

Amazon launches own currency

Next step to nationhood

Virtual money to go with virtual tax policy.

Maybe the next step is to pay all Capital gains tax in Amazon currency...

UK.gov's love affair with ID cards: Curse or farce?

Re: The sad thing about ID cards

while not keen on a national ID scheme(large database + government = disaster), I have been asked for ID many times without having to leave the country. CRB checks, opening bank accounts, changing money at tesco, etc.

Fortunately I drive and have a passport so this is not a problem. I don't know how someone who does not have either of these documents actually manages. The biggest problem is actually proof address. It used to be by the use of household bills, but with so many online it becomes a challenge.

In many ways I could see an advantage in a national ID card, but this was mollified with the fact it would be run by a government department.

One of the world's oldest experiments crawls towards a fall

Re: A long time but...

There is even some evidence you will soon be able to get a decent cup of tea on the other side of the Atlantic.

If that ever happens America will be instantly replaced by something equally inexplicable.

A long time but...

It could be argued that the park grass experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Grass_Experiment) running since 1856 is a longer running experiment.

No webcam however to watch that grass grow

General Electric pours $105 MEEELION into Pivotal Initiative

The next big idea?

This is all tied into what GE sees as the growth of the "Industrial Internet", which is a bit of a nebulous term. One way of looking at it is that as sensors etc get more powerful as a natural result of Moores law, there abilities grow and the amount of data generated from increases as well.

The idea is that the data can be captured and analysed and services built on the data, which are then fed back to the customer. In many ways this is akin to what google does with search data, although in this case the primary source is from machines.

This is already done with things like Jet Engines and GE sees the whole industrial landscape as ripe for this sort of innovation.

Whether they will succeed of not of course is uncertain, but I like big ideas, and this is definitely one of the biggest

Salesforce: Internet of Things is 'third wave of computing'

There is method to his madness...

The whole concept comes from large companies seeing services as the new cash cow. However whether this can be applied to consumer products is questionable.

if you are buying say a jet engine, there is a lot of value in the monitoring of that part so that you can analyse performance over time. You can use this information to advise on maintenance schedules, more efficiently schedule servicing, and better analyse potential failure modes. The idea here is that by using the same techniques used by companies such as google to analyse big data, you can better support your customer, producing a win-win scenario. This is already being done by companies like RR and GE

This makes sense with a big ticket item, but it is questionable about whether it scales. You could argue that it would work with cars, since these are big purchases and require constant maintenance. So you could argue that by constantly analyzing performance via the cloud, the customer can be given better servicing advice and advised on possible upcoming failures, before they actually occur(for example by measuring battery life-cycles you could predict when it was likely to fail) . Another possible usage would be AC units or Central heating boilers. Again it could be used to better schedule maintenance.

However would be of any use for something like a fridge or a TV? Seems unlikely. In these situations the benefits to the customer seem to be outweighed by the benefit accrued by the data collector. Here we have a situation akin to extended warranties, where customers would be made to pay for a service which they accrue very little net benefit.

FAA: 'No, you CAN'T hijack a plane with an Android app'

The 4 stages of security response

First they ignore you

They they say there is no risk

Then they say there is a risk, but it is not exploitable

Then you are hacked.

The most worrying statement was "For more than 30 years now, the development of certifiable embedded software has been following strict guidance and best practices that include in particular robustness that is not present on ground-based simulation software."

Yes, for safety, but as anyone who has developed secure embedded systems will tell you a different mindset is needed compared for safety assured systems since with safety the faults are not actively trying to locate and exploit weaknesses(although it does feel like they do sometimes).

Probably there is no risk, but that is no excuse for trying to sweep these things under the carpet

LOHAN chap to launch Raspberry Pi eye in the sky

Nice easter egg

Probably being slow here, but nice web page header...

Free online Uni courses pressure vendors to drop training costs

Re: With regard to the 20:1 ratio between entrance and success

To be fair to the OU, the price rise was not by choice but was due to the government funding reduction meaning the OU had to pass the real cost of the course not the subsidised cost.

On the other hand you can now like any other degree take a loan out to cover the cost which is only paid back when you are earning X much.

It's not the great but for a 21 year old looking to carry on there higher education its an option. The big problem is the older students who are not interested in completing a degree, but only want to expand the knowledge. Then the cost of the courses become and issue and maybe MOOC's will become the only option

Maggie Thatcher: The Iron Lady who saved us from drab Post Office mobes

Showing my age but...

I don't remember this lean, privatised, competition centric BT the article alludes to. Must be my memory.

I do remember however a privatised monopoly, who did there best to hold back the implementation of fast broadband because it cut into there lucrative voice line and international call monopoly.

It also doesn't explain why our broadband speed is so behind some of our industrial competitors such as Sth Korea and Japan.

It couldn't be the need for government oversight and investment for large infrastructure projects, that are just to speculative for privatised industry, could it?

Provider of FIFA goal line tech chosen, tracks ball in space and time

If FIfa think they have problems

Its nothing compared to the issues we had when the goals were a couple of jumpers.

Not only did we have to judge the goal line, but also whether the ball went through the posts and how high it was had to be judged.

Where's the technical solution for that eh?!

Blighty's revolutionary Cold War teashop computer - and Nigella Lawson

Yank's rewriting history again

Great article. It will be a great reference when I read another article claiming GE had the first commercial computer such as

http://www.csulb.edu/~murdock/histofcs.html

Apple debuts two-step verification for Apple IDs

Step in the right direction but...

hopefully you won't need that ID when your away from home.

Of course in the case of Mat Honan, the original authentication would of worked if they had used something other for authentication than the last 4 digits of his credit card address(which could be easily obtained from his amazon account) and the staff followed their own procedures in asking the authentication questions.

Wind farms make you sick … with worry and envy

Not a surprise

I have always thought that windfarm 'sickness' was more psychosomatic than real. Partly because wind farms are not new things. They have been on the continent for years and no signs of vast numbers of Dutch, Danes and Germans coming down with it. So unless our European cousins have different ears than us, it seemed unlikely there is an issue there.

However I have every sympathy for those who feel they are suffering. Such conditions can feel very real. I remember once living next to some noisy neighbours and even when they were not there your mind would magnify every imagined sound. However it does not make a good reason to stop the implementation of renewable energy policy.

Build a BONKERS gaming PC

welcome to th 1990'2

Playing games on a PC - How quaint

Ten pi-fect projects for your new Raspberry Pi

Photo viewer

My most likely project would be a photo/video frame. Stuff you 10" digital photo frame. 14 inch LCD+one Pi and you should have a digital frame worthy of your content. Plus if you add wifi you will be able to easily access new content as well

Oracle wants another go at Google over Android Java copyrights

It a crap shoot out there

Oracle had the bad luck to come in front of a judge who seemed to semi-computer literate, and could even write simple code.

However the American legal system is such that if you don't like the judgement you can keep paying your money and throwing the dice in the hope you get the result you want. This will go on for years, but you can't help wondering whether they would be better off spending there money on developers rather than lawyers

Billionaire baron Bill Gates still mourns Vista's stillborn WinFS

Re: XP Search Function

It's a disaster. I always resort to using inforapidsearch(http://www.inforapid.de/html/searchreplace.htm)

Why mergers LOSE money, but are GOOD for the economy

Problem with mergers

The problems with mergers is that Megacorps buys up a smallcorp company in an area it has limited expertise. Now the small company is doing well because it has a small management overhead, is agile and therefore adapt quickly to a new and expanding market. The only thing small corp hasn't got is the capital and resources to take advantage of the market, which of course Megacorp can provide

However as soon as the merger is completed, Megacorps puts a whole new management structure on top of it making less agile, it shoehorns it into its company management structure tying it to some part of the organisation which doesn't understand the new market. Meanwhile people who made the company successful in the first place leave because they get tired of the new bureaucratic structure, the lack of opportunity and are attracted by the outside possibilities in an expanding market. In the end a possible new industry player is strangled to death and then discarded by the Megacorp management with only a few patents to show for it.

What htey should of done is keep the 2 companies separate, Megacorp by a substantial shareholding in smallcorp and bank roll the company so smallcorp has the advantage of agility and access to Megacorps resources and capital. However managers would hate the lack of control so this is never considered

Another way of looking at it is say MegaCorp is a large company say making OS and servers whose markets are steadily shrinking. It may also have a very successful word processing division but this division is held back from taking advantage of all its opportunities by the OS division and corporate strategy. It would make more sense to separate the two parts so both can concentrate on making the most money without worrying about affecting the market share of each other. Of course this never happens because the management are scared of losing control so are willing to let both lifeboats sink together when untying them would save at least one.

Making MACH 1: Can we build a cranial computer today?

Mobile phones are nothing new

My favorite book when I was a child was Tom Corbett Stand by for Mars. I must of read that book 30 times before I was 10. Despite being wrong on many aspects(Canals and breathable atmosphere on mars) two things I do remember were at the start when he has to give up his mobile phone before entering the space academy and complaining he couldn't use a shave mask to shave with.

Of course we are still waiting for shave masks, but they sound like a great idea, but the concept of a mobile phone was a good one for 1952. This may of had something to do with the great science writer Willy Ley providing the technical direction. Of course mobile video phones were foreseen in Dick Tracey before then.

One more thing. Despite Star Trek's good science predictions they constantly failed to foresee the advances in computers. Even their best computers seem slightly old fashioned compared to what w have today. For example I can never work out why the photon torpedoes are so dumb, often missing the target the size of a starship

What killed Motorola? Not Google! It was Moto's dire software

Re: My mum loved her razr

My Wife still has hers. Keep suggesting she upgrade, but she loves it. I have to say as a piece of industrial art it knocks even the iPhone into a cocked hat.

The mystery is why they didn't keep the design and just improve the innards and UI

GE study pimps ‘industrial Internet’

Correction...

The plan is less about about connecting industrial systems to the internet, but more about integrating industrial systems with enterprise systems.

One of the reasons that industrial systems traditionally have such lousy security is that for many years they were considered isolated from other systems so didn't have to follow the same rules. Then someone stuck them on the internet for convenience and voila, all the insecurities were suddenly writ large.

Ironically by looking at industrial systems as part of a whole, security has to embedded from the outset rather than adding it on as an after thought. At the same time you vastly increase the services provided such as advanced prognostics, better robustness, and easier configuration.

The truth is industrial automation is no longer confined to small areas of a factory. Things like the next generation smart electrical grid which will require integration across a huge number of industrial and management devices require a rethink on how we access and control our devices. The advantages are to huge to be ignored, but it has to be done right from the outset using the latest techniques in both security and technology.

Sorry, bit of a boring comment really....

Liquefied-air silos touted as enormo green 'leccy batteries

Re: @proto-robbie

The reason why AC won over DC in Edison's day was more to do with generation than transmission, plus issues with stepping up the voltage. You can transfer HV DC a lot more efficiently than HV AC. This is why most power lines from off shore wind farms are DC.

With modern power electronics it is far more efficient to convert fro AC to DC and back again. Similarly renewables such as wind farms are moving to DC generators so removing another inefficiency in the chain. World wide energy transmission is more an element of cost and politics than technical issues.

You are welcome to your opinion as to the beauty of wind, personally I find them quite elegant. Certainly I would prefer living next to a wind farm than the local coal powered station I do now.

Japan enacts two-year jail terms for illegal downloading

The Spartacus defence

All that is required to kill this law dead is for everyone in Japan who has ever downloaded anything to stand up and demand they be punished to the limit of the law.

Swiss boffins jump in Lake Lugano for Cray super

Re: :Never mind the birds

and had 3 eyes

Juries: The only reason ANYONE understands patent law AT ALL

Legal not technical

From what I understand from Groklaw et al is that the issue wasn't so much that the Jury did not understand the technical issues but instead the foreman of the jury instead decided to apply his own definition of prior art rather than the one laid down by the law. The real danger is(and why these things get appealed) is that the jury uses some sort of bias to make judgements contrary to the law.

While(in the UK anyway) judges ruling can set precedent and law, I'm not sure we want to get into the situation where juries do

Mio Spirit 695 LM satnav review

Eagerly requested features on a new sat-nav

A favourite game in our car is annoy the sat-nav. Ignore the instructions and wait for the mandatory "u-turn when safe to do so". However it would be far more fun if the sat-nav voice got more and more frustrated, ending with "Oh please yourself"

A back seat nag mode. "your going too fast","mind the traffic at the next junction", etc. For those times when your normal co-pilot is not with you

'Picture of Dorian Gray' borrowed in 1934 is finally returned

Re: does that mean

Actually Mr Fry has already spent time at her majesties pleasure for stealing credit cards I believe in his early years

LOHAN rolls out racy rocketry round-up

James Van Allen had similar issues

I was only reading recently that when James Van Allen(he who the radiation belts are named after) had similar problems getting his test "rockoon" to fire at altitude due to extreme cold he solved the problem by heating cans of orange juice, attaching it to the firing mechanism and then wrapping the whole lot in insulation.

Of course those mechanism's were clock work and we have progressed a long way since then. For instance we now have pot noodles

Russian rocket fails to orbit 2 satellites after booster bungle

Re: AMERICA, F*CK YEAH!

I haven't checked it out but I'm willing to bet that it is the debate about the cost effectiveness of manned space station versus earth based or automated low orbit platforms.

It is a valid discussion, however even if you ignore the benefits of having a large configurable platform with plenty of power for doing space science that you couldn't place economically on a satellite, there is a more fundamental question as to what the long term goal of space exploration is.

As impressive as Curiosity is, at the end of the day it is no more relevant to the human experience than the early moon rovers sent by Russia in the 60's. Far more inspiration was achieved by physically sending men to the moon, however difficult that was, than a million robotic probes. For me it was one of my first memories and inspired me to go into science.

If you, as I, believe that manned exploration must be the end goal of any space program then we need a manned laboratory to develop technologies that make the long term habitation in space feasible. Not only in terms of human physiology, but the equipment and tools for long term exploration.

At the end of the day this only be achieved by having a viable manned orbiting laboratory such as the ISS.

Re: AMERICA, F*CK YEAH!

What are you smoking?

"NASA can order up a Saturn V type rocket, with the latest tech anytime they want"

NASA don't even have the blueprints for the Saturn V anymore. Anyway why upgrade 1960's technology instead of creating something more efficient and cheaper. Saturn V was impressive, but it was brute force technology. Effective but expensive. The mars rover was launched on a Atlas V which has no relationship with the Saturn V. In fact the main engine is the RD-180 which is Russian designed and built.

The ISS is still doing great science and space science has come a long way from the Skylab days. Understanding how to combat the long term effects of space travel is our ticket off this rock pile. But there is a lot of fundamental science being done there as well which could only be achieved in a manned lab.

I am sure NASA would like there manned launch system, but the truth is NASA and congress dropped the ball on this one. It was not by choice or design.

As for making the Titan IV heavy human rated. This is a little bit more difficult than ticking some boxes. If it had been that easy ISS astronauts would not be riding on Soyuz rockets these days. It is also not being made anymore.

Whichever way you cut it, NASA and America blew there lead in manned space flight and no amount of sticking your head in the sand and shouting" well we never wanted to do it anyway" hides that fact.

Ex-Soviet space gunboats to be FOUND ON MOON

Why go to the moon, when you can go to mars?

What a coincidence, I only recently received this email from Nigeria...

Dear Sir

I am happy to offer you an exclusive return trips to Mars. We have recently obtained a fleet of secret North Korean spacecraft fitted with a FTL drive personally designed by the dear leader himself.

A deposit of $100 million will guarantee a place on the priority short list for the first launch in 2030

Please send the money to P.O Box Lagos 124567

Microsoft's $1bn Yammer gobble gabble blabbed by insiders

Re: Eh?

We use it in our company and it has been probably the most successful attempt to introduce social networking concepts into the business. However that is not saying a lot since most previous attempts died quickly through lack of interest.

Yammer itself is quite slick and the interface is not bad, especially compared to our internal tools. However I think its success in our case has as much to do that it has bee set-up, used and supported outside the company sanction and our IT dept. and therefore users do not feel quite as restrained in using it as an internal company product. Saying that we have been surprised that it has not been blocked by the company firewall yet.

Truth is data security is a concern and how the company will feel if all the internal company discussions are being piped through Microsoft is an interesting area.

Hitchhiker shot while researching 'Kindness of America'

Re: for our Euro friends

Having a gun owning culture didn't do much to stop the Columbine school massacre either did it.

The fact is if someone wants to do something like this enough there is very little we can do to stop it. However the reason that Breivik stands out is that it is so unusual for a society like Norway to suffer such a tragedy, while in the gun-lovin states there seems to a new event every couple of years and public institutions such as schools have to be more like armed camps than place of learning, with armed security, metal detectors, sniffer dogs etc.

The fact is gun ownership is not the only cause of these tragedies. As previous posters have said other countries have a liberal gun ownership and do not suffer the same issues(Switzerland, Canada, etc). However what is a problem is a toxic mix of general fascination with gun culture, acceptance that it is perfectly right to use guns to defend yourself and carry guns in public(i.e stand your ground laws) and large scale inequality in the society which alienates a large part of it.

Horde of customers storms Dixons – too late to save 2012 sales

I've given up with dixons.

I noticed recently a camera I was interested in at a sale price so I asked for one and was told they did not have any stock, but was told there was some in a store 20 miles away. When I got there I found the same camera, but a £100 more. When I eventually managed to grab a member of staff to inquire, they said the price was wrong, but they had no stock either only the the grubby display model which they very kindly offered to sell me for the same price I could get on the internet.

So apart from poor service and stock control, they appear to be advertising the display model price as a new price. What a waste of my time

Never again will I go to dixons. They staff are unhelpful and have no knowledge of the products they sell, there price is not competitive compared to the internet and they have no idea of customer service.

Developer leaks Microsoft product plans for next two years

They have plans ??!!!!

I thought the development plan was to see what Apple does and then copy it