Posts by Drunken 29 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jan 2008
Kaspersky was highlighted when a NSA agent took their work home and Kapersky software spotted strange security tools / threats on the machine. They told US authorities but somehow the tools got leaked and Kaspersky were blamed.
Huawei are partly targets as American security researchers worry Huawei are becoming too embedded into our infrastructure. They are one of the few companies who can provide the full 5g stack. Chinese trade war is probably part of it too.
I have been looking forward to Gaia's data. With this huge amount of data, astronomers will be able to test many different theories and gain a large amount of knowledge on galaxy formation and dynamics, dark matter, better measurements for hubble's constant and so much more.
I wonder how many 100's or 1000's of papers Gaia will spawn?
Microsoft, Intel, AMD etc have known about these bugs since June 2017 if not earlier. Yet Intel cannot release a full BIOS fix that doesn't crash some of its CPUs. Microsoft patch crashed older AMD CPU and Microsoft has not even patched Windows Server 2012 (non R2) yet. While the MS Windows 32 bit OSs do not have a Meltdown fix yet.
What have they being doing for 6 months?
The UK has no right* to deny Assange or any other person from being a diplomat of another country. It is up to the other country to decide who are their diplomats. The UK has the right to reject the chosen Ambassador to the UK, but not the diplomatic staff.
A diplomat is entitled to their privileges as soon as they correct ministry is notified.
1 .Every person entitled to privileges and immunities shall enjoy them from the moment he enters the territory of the receiving State on proceeding to take up his post or, if already in its territory, from the moment when his appointment is notified to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs or such other ministry as may be agreed.
However the UK can deny him a visa so he would presumably be ejected from the country if he left the embassy.
*According to The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Peer review screens papers for obvious errors, it is very rare for a reviewer to ask for raw data or computer code unless the paper itself seems flawed, then it is likely to be rejected. If the data supplied in the paper is not enough to convince the referees then again the paper is rejected or amended.
In essence a scientist could make up the data and claim wondrous results, see Jan Hendrik Schön for example. Trust is assumed. But if the claims are too outlandish or cannot be replicated then in time incorrect results will be found out.
So peer review is not perfect, it's good enough. It is not a guarantee of correctness but more a filter to take out the weakest papers.
According to the study, "our results indicate that several hundred nanograms per square meter of nitrosamines may be formed on indoor surfaces in the presence of nitrous acid". This is a shocking result as it shows that 1 square meter of wall in a smoky room in a badly polluted environment may contain as much nitrosamines as a smoked sausage or crispy bacon sandwich!
We are all doomed.
Annihilator! The problem is that heat can only be converted to useful energy if you have somewhere colder to dump the heat. The larger the temperature difference the more efficient the process. Therefore it becomes extremely difficult to extract energy from the ambient air temperature.
See Carnot cycle for more info.
Do the politicians really have a clue on generally how useless 99.99% of this data will be?
How many web pages, emails etc do all UK internet users send and receive?
This will cost a crippling amount of money which will be barely useful except in a handful of cases.
Hopefully no one has heard of TOR otherwise it will be completely useless.
Fun with numbers!
First to be clear the 0.028% figure from El Reg is for Total energy use in the UK. Everything including cars, heating and all the wastage in getting the fuel/energy there.
Or we could say the wind farm produces 0.14% of Total domestic use including heating.
Or we could say about 1% of Scotland total electricity consumption.
An interesting comparison with nuclear is for some recent proposals in the US they come to $3376 to $5144 per kW. Whitelee wind farm comes in at $5797. However this is upfront costs and does not include running costs and some other hidden costs like financing or decommissioning which will increase the nuclear figures more than the wind. So wind power is not too expensive, the truth is that nuclear is not cheap.
In short the problem is not with wind power, it's a problem with numbers. There are 60 million people in the UK. A car is terribly inefficient, have you felt how much they weigh? The typical house is a leaky bucket for heat and do we need street lights everywhere?
The human race have been asleep and now we are just beginning to wake up to what will be doing in 1000 years. Not fossils, nor fission there are really only renewable and fusion left. Well we could raid the cookie jar now and leave nothing for our children but hey we have been doing that for the last 200 hundred years.
Many people think this is a disaster caused by clueless politicians not looking a few years into the future.
How wrong they are!
Rather this is a brilliant political strategy to meet our targets for CO2 reduction. We now have many targets set in the near future to reduce CO2 usage. Obviously the government have done the talking but bugger all else, it would cost money you know.
So now we will be forced to use less electricity while the government can do the more important expensive things like PFI hospitals, ID cards and protecting children from their parents and the Internet.
Bravo!
To Elmer Phud:
How much will it cost to fuel it for 125 miles?
Well according to Wikipedia the Tesla uses 10.9 kW·h/100 km (this figure includes charging inefficiencies). 125 miles is 201 km so the Tesla would require 21.909 kW·h to travel 125 miles. NPower charges 8.40p per kWh, so that would be £1.84 for 125 miles which is much better than petrol or diesel. I expect the Tata Indica EV would be comparable to the Tesla as they both use similar batteries and are not too different in size.
To Dazed and Confused. "Of course it won't make sense for longer runs. It won't be possible to drive to the South of France"
Well you never know, I was driven to the south of France a few months back and I did actually see one or two charging stations for electric cars along the way. Don't know how long it would take to charge though.
Compared to hydrogen powered cars, electric cars are simpler, cheaper and more efficient. The only real problem with them is the storage of electricity. However the storage of hydrogen is also a big problem.
If your argument is that it takes ages to charge, well here is a simple idea, exchange the batteries!
The hydrogen powered economy is a dream, one which has got surprisingly far despite reality. There again so is carbon sequestration yet they will spend billions on it (before shelving the idea) even though it is obviously not economical.
Why do they need this, surely they should be monitoring every phone call in real-time. As soon as a political agitator has been heard simply locate the cell they are in and pull everyone off the streets.
At least some of those people would have committed a crime!
Sorry got to go, they found my book on how to make fireworks - see you guys inside.
Why do they make it so hard, regulating the Internet would be easy. Just make a large "firewall" around all UK connections. Any UK sites have to get a license for £1000 each, evil foreign sites would have to be on a white list. I'm sure our politicians have some friends somewhere in the world to sell them the technology.
The government should concentrate on the more important things like regulating the weather, no more wet summers like 2007.
Also regulating the planets would be highly advantageous, we could control the future!
P.S. Lobby the government to ban ponds and large puddles, before we are left with no children in the country at all.
While I agree partly with this statement
"For this privileged elite their was to be no surveillance, no interception of communications, no restraints, no culpability, and no databases profiling every aspect of their lives.".
I think it will only apply to a few like Rupert Murdoch.
The "lowly" politicians" will not be so immune. Look at the past scandals uncovered about politicians when phone taps were tricky and few had computers. Who better to dig up some dirt on then the ones with the power! Every dodgy sexual relationship, financial deal and others will be up for grabs. The media will hold onto this and when the time suits them, totally destroy their reputation. Of course the politicians will not see it until it happens - but then it will be too late.
The first page of the article threw me completely, what does this mean?
"if we covered the windiest 10 per cent of the country with windmills, we might be able to generate half of the energy used by driving a car 50 km per day each"
Is that every car in the UK, or is it if every person drove a car they would get to 25km each? Or has he taken the actual average consumption of each car? I have no idea.
And why compare cars which generally run off fuel, and not electricity. Electric cars are generally much more efficient, just their range is pretty poor.
Oh well I'm confused. Time to have some beer, that will clear it all up.
I agree with Anonymous Coward, whats it for?
Either the goverment can't help but waste money, especially if it's an IT project. Or erm, think...
Ah well with all the grade inflations over the years maybe everyone's grade will increase year on year to keep it fair.
I'm sure if I did my GCSEs now I would get all As so please sign me up. I want to look cleaverer ;)
OK,
the article is someone having a rant but there are so many things wrong with it I can't help but respond.
First is the common non sequitur that as climate scientists are paid to study the climate then somehow they can't be trusted. When you need a plumber do you find an electrician? I mean surely the plumber is going to lie and get as much money as they can!
Is climatology really that new, it seems to be older than electronics but I guess Mr Atkinson would buy his computer (made from wood) from a carpenter as those sold state physicists must be liars.
Then rambling on about feedback systems and the extinction of the dinosaurs, but there are five known big extinction events all related to huge changes in climate. The Cretaceous–Tertiary event is the only known extinction caused by an impact and probably having the least to do with climate. So don't these show that climate is not always stable as do ice ages? 99% of species that have ever lived are extinct not just the dinosaurs, many of these were caused by wild climatic swings in Earth’s oh so stable climate. A climate that in the last 10,000 years has been unusually stable, till now.
This is a gem, "Ignoring the biggest effect on global warming - water vapour". So is Mr Atkinson truly saying that the scientists just totally forgot about water vapour? Ok ok I realise now that the article is a joke or some troll so I won't continue further.
I don't understand how the Energy White Paper in 2003 is ignored and they have to re-go over this again. If these papers are trying to predict energy policy for the next 20 years could they not forsee high oil prices and carbon credits in 2003?
Either these documents are not as well thought out as they should or maybe the future direction is already known and these reviews are purely there to back up a decision already made.
Regarding nuclear power I think it's a good way to generate electricity, certainly better in the long term than gas, oil or coal. (Bad decision in my view to go gas it was only ever going to be a short term solution). However how much does nuclear power truly cost? At the moment we will be storing this waste for 1000's years.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
