Posts by SkippyBing

US deploys robot submarine armada against Iranian mines

Re: "I am the Commander of the Ponce"

I believe it may be even better than that, I was once involved in a multi-national exercise based out of the USN base in Norfolk, Virginia. Whenever a Captain visited one of the US vessels they'd announce over the ship's tannoy 'Portland arriving' where Portland was the name of the visiting Captain's ship, presumably as a mark of respect/to make sure every on-board wasn't caught by surprise. One can only assume whenever the CO of the Ponce visits another USN vessel they pipe "Ponce arriving"...

Not to mention their habit of addressing other captains by the name of their ship, e.g. "Ahh, Hello Ponce".

Reg hack bumps into Cockfighter

Sorry but..

'me and Special Projects Bureau volunteer José María Pita', really, you're going to print an article with that in? It should at least be 'Special Projects Bureau volunteer José María Pita and me'. I know standards are slipping but really...

Chinese boffins build nuclear-powered deep-sea station

So they're building quite a small nuclear submarine?

Indian navy computers stormed by malware-ridden USBs

Re: Eh?

For general admin, e-mail etc. no, they're running XP.

For operating the submarine they'll have a separate command and control system, which breaks most of the rules in the user interface book and is no use if you want to store or create documents.

Re: Eh?

'Wtf? If they can train new recruits to fly an aircraft or drive a tank or conduct survellance, I'm damn sure they can train them to use a slightly different GUI or a CLI.'

Those are the smart ones, some branches of the armed forces are manned with those uncomfortable with the level of technology available in an anvil. I have on occasion had to explain such simple concepts as 'you don't need to watch the phone in case it rings, you'll hear it'.

For an example of a military specced IT system look at JPA the UK's tri-service administration software. A pig of a system that takes user unfriendliness to a new level while failing in its main job of allowing personnel to manage their own pay and allowances.

A proprietary system is just security by obscurity, it doesn't solve the problem of people taking the easy option like making a print out and losing that, but it does risk the entire defence budget being absorbed coming up with something that's the equivalent of MS-DOS, and not one of the good versions.

I think the shear trauma of trying to educate new recruits into the mysterious of a proprietary operating system would put most militaries off. And ultimately it still has to be used by humans who will circumvent security measures if it makes their lives easier.

Also the world's military forces are spectacularly inept at specifying any propriety system generally coming up with something that's more expensive and less capable than something you could buy off the shelves a decade previously.

BAE proposes GPS-less location

Presumably in the empty wastes of flashpointistan it can fall back on GPS, or cross reference with the array of broadcast satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

Actually with the number of known satellites up there you wonder if they need the GPS constellation anyway!*

*I'm being flippant, I know how GPS works to a boring degree.

Brit global warming skeptics now outnumber believers

Re: You have to wonder

Yes, climate change is a global not local thing, but most people live locally and in their experience it's bollocks. You can produce lots of tedious reports proving whatever you want but the average person on the street doesn't care, all they know is that they're being taxed more for no obvious advantage in the name of preventing climate change. Considering how most taxes seem to get pissed up the wall you can see how they might be a bit sceptical that it's all a scam to get more money out of them.

You don't just have to prove to people that climate change is real, you have to prove that any extra misery you inflict on them is worth it because most of them would rather just be left alone.

Tech giants on trial as report reveals more Chinese factory abuses

Tangental question

How do I set up a not-for-profit that can fund my poking my nose into other peoples business in various parts of the world? I'm thinking of investigating the horrors of the Brazilian Caipirinha industry and the degradation forced on the producers of Caribbean Rum Punches, but I'm open to suggestions.

NASA counts down to nuclear tank invasion of Mars

"We've got literally seven minutes to get from the top of the atmosphere to the surface of Mars"

Doesn't gravity take care of most of this? I mean I don't think it's a challenge getting from the top of the atmosphere to the surface, nor going from 13,000 mph to 0, although I grant you the last bit can be tricky if you want to use anything afterwards...

Apple desperate to prevent nightmare scenario of iPad in Iranian hands

Just checking

But it's still okay to make iPads, Dell PCs, etc. in China though. I mean it's not like they've given the Iranians any help in the making high-tech weapons area...

Dixons Retail: A mirror held up to Europe

Re: I can't wait for them to go under completely

Oddly I always feel sorry for the competent member of staff I once encountered in a branch of Currys. I mean can you imagine the hell of being the only person there who knows anything about what they sell, never mind talking to your 'colleagues'...

Supreme Court dismisses Assange bid to reopen extradition case

Oddly I'd have thought there was more chance of the US being able to extradite him from the UK than Sweden, or is that extradition treaty everyone complains about not as biased as some people claim?

Japan to get Android phone with built-in radiation dosimeter

'because this Pantone can be carried with one hand while doing something else".

How big are their other phones?!

Cameron's F-35 U-turn: BAE Systems still calls the shots at No 10

Re: E2D Hawkeye costs $210million

You can't really compare the cost of a V-22 to a Hawkeye as one comes with a massive radar, data link facility and one doesn't. By the time you've added that to the V-22 I'd expect the price to be >$210 milllion assuming you can figure out where to put the radome without getting in the way of the folding wings and rotors. The radar less cargo carrying version of the E-2, the Greyhound costs around $40 million so it looks like the cost of the radar is in the order of $170 million, add that to the cost of a basic V-22 and you're talking $240 million and that's assuming the development costs are amortized over a decent production run. Which they won't be.

The AW609 maybe cheaper still but you probably couldn't get all the systems in that, unless sir wants a bespoke option which I'm sure BAe would happily quote for and then fail to deliver a decade and several billion after the in service date...

Re: Orwell - Never so apt.

Trust me, the Koreans are knocking out cargo ships so cheaply no one would employ a UK shipyard to do anything but build things for the RN.

Re: Hang on a moment....

Not as such. What happens is

1. The democratically elected government decide what they'd like the armed forces to be able to do.

2. The armed forces explain how much this will cost.

3. The government give them less than this but still want their original requirement fulfilled.

4. To get round this changes are continually made to programs in a counter productive attempt to save money.

Ideally at point 3 the government should just sign the cheques as it would ultimately be cheaper than all the intervening dicking about. E.g. with the Albion class landing ships they managed to remove the hangar deck (along with medical centre) to save a few million in steel while costing several million in redesign costs, it's hard to think of any MoD program where this hasn't happened unless it's an Urgent Operational Requirement where things are so desperate people are allowed to just go and buy things.

Re: So Britain is building a couple VTOL carriers who's new planes are not yet ready?

I think you'll found we sold most of the fully upgraded in use ones to the US.

Breaking out any remaining ones in an emergency will be much less of a snag than getting any pilots up to speed on operating them. It's a skill that's subject to a lot of fade and I'm not talking about the take-off, land, fly about bit.

Re: Invicible class was restricted as well

But, the Invincible class weren't designed as strike carriers, they were designed as ASW carriers to carry helicopters, the Sea Harrier was a late addition to the air group (I mean in planning terms not in the life of the ships themselves). It was more a happy coincidence that we made an aircraft that could operate from the Invincible class than an actual plan.

The QE Class are designed as strike carriers something they'll now only achieve if the F-35B works, in the case of Invincible the Harrier already existed.

Re: A lot to agree with in this article

Depends how many warheads you put on it and where it hits, the middle of the runway is usually a good place to start, you'd be surprised how many airbases only have the one.

Re your first point, that's what was used before steam catapults, people don't use steam because they haven't thought of something else, it's because it works. The amount of energy released is quite impressive, you're accelerating 20+ tonnes of aircraft to >120 knots in under two seconds.

Your second point yes, if the F-35B fails then we've just built two rather large under armed ships...

Re: A lot to agree with in this article

As opposed to airfields which are really good at hiding from ballistic missiles...

Re: F18 -seriously?

That would be the Nimrod that was over 10 years and some billions of pounds over budget when it was cancelled, I don't think you could conceivably have given more time to it, ditto the AEW version that was another clusterfuck through trying to do things on the cheap rather than using a suitable airframe for the job.

I'm also not sure why all the knockers are tied up on the age of the F-18, the Super Hornet is only about 10-15 ears old and to be honest aerodynamics hasn't advanced that much in the intervening years, hell the F-35 is in some ways inferior due to the stealth aspect.

As it is we're now tied to a specific aircraft for the future carriers, if they fail we've got two large helicopter carriers. No one's making Harriers any more and they're antiques now anyway in terms of systems and sensors

Evil plot to control souls via Wi-Fi thwarted

Re: Why would you care, one way or another, what an ignorant fool thinks about you?

Because these days some of them have vests made of semtex they like to use against the unbelievers...

UK Ministry of Defence eyes GPS patent payoff

This does involve the MoD

So if they display their usual level of competence it's safe to assume the majority of the defence budget will soon be spent paying GPS manufacturers to include the modulation scheme rather than the other way round...

Stray SMS leads to aborted landing

and you just try sitting in the cockpit and making announcements over the tannoy. It's like there's one rule for them and one for the passengers...

HTC One S Android smartphone

Re: An iPhone wannabe which doesn't even touch the wannabe status

Seriously, how stubby are your thumbs?!

Asda knocks out Kobo e-reader for £49

Re: Great deal, it's not a Kindle

"The ability to convert formats is the ONLY major influence on the choice of which ereader to buy"

For you maybe, but for the general public I'd guess ease of use is the main driver. My mother for example doesn't care about converting formats, she just wants to easily buy books and get them on her e-reader, as do I because I can't be doing with even more phone calls for tech support on something I've never even seen.

To that end the Kindle is great, go on-line, buy a book, have it delivered direct to the Kindle over the air, or buy it direct on the device itself if you're away from a computer. That's the factor that won my mother over, she doesn't give a **** about converting formats or reading a PDF she just wants to easily get books on it and for that Amazon got it spot on.

This interactive wind map is a Big Data lava lamp

The wind should appear to be coming from high pressure areas and going towards low pressure areas, note it's slightly more complicated than that due to the Coriolis effect. High pressure areas are where air is sinking down from higher levels as it cools while low pressure areas are where it's rising, generally through heating of the surface, e.g. the Equator. Once it gets to the surface it tries to equalise by flowing horizontally.

Google Global Circulation for a less cack handed explanation...

Re: Wind up

Works for me in Opera, maybe it's just you?

Snowboards and BIG DATA for WORLD PEACE

Live ship tracking?

So like this then?

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

Watch a 747 refit in just 105 seconds

Re: Old but cool

The difference is the B-52 gets a lot less use than your average airliner, as do all military aircraft. It costs the military to use them whereas it costs an airline not to. If BA were operating the B-52 it would have run out of airframe life years ago!

Pirate Bay plans sky-high flying proxy servers

International waters are interesting from a legal point of view, it's hard enough for naval forces to stop a suspect pirate vessel unless they're actually doing some piracy.

On the flip side if the blimp is presenting a danger to air navigation* then there's still probably some grounds for someone to take action against them, I don't see that it necessarily has to be the U.S. it's not as if the Pirate Bay's activities are considered above board in many countries.

*Interpret this as you want if you're the aviation authority being affected, and they'd presumably have to be within line of sight of the coast to be of any use so high enough to be considered a nuisance at least.

Act of War

I think he's a bit confused, shooting one of these down would only be an act of war if they were registered and marked as belonging to the government of a nation state. Otherwise it's just a police action.

FAA mulls scrapping in-flight iPad, Kindle ban

Re: Can people start using e-reader instead of kindle?

I fear you're tilting at a similar windmill to those people who get upset when I call it a Hoover and not a vacuum.

Re: while flying a friend down to Gloucester

Actually most airline fleets use the newest aircraft they can because they're more fuel efficient. Certainly in Europe/North America the 737s being used will have been built in the last decade or so.

I have used a mobile phone in an aircraft but as its electronics were hardened against the EMP from a nuclear blast it wasn't really a problem.

Supersonic silent biplane COMING SOON ...ish

The problem with laminar flow is

It's a bugger to maintain, even a layer of rain drops on the wing can turn the laminar flow back to a turbulent one on a laminar wing. Boscombe Down did laminar flow tests during WW2 and they had to climb up above the layer you'd find insects in to avoid the results being ruined by them changing the surface when they hit it.

Austrian daredevil Baumgartner skydives from 71,581ft

Am I the only one

wondering what happens to the pod thing?

NASA orders study for all astronauts over vision concerns

Re: Scurvy

I think you'll find sailors of the time were more than aware of the risk of scurvy. Knowledge of it was so widespread it had a common name, scurvy.

Less sarcastically manning a sailing ship was actually a healthier profession than many shore based ones. Partially because there were less sources of infection as waste was dumped over the side rather than lying in the streets. Additionally the nautical method of sealing any amputations in molten pitch gave them a much lower risk of septicaemia as any nasties were killed off.

Hands on with the Apple iPad 3

Re: eye strain

On the flip side, I get a headache if I use a monitor for ~8 hours a day but not if I read my Kindle for that length of time, generally on a long haul flight.

If I've got a headache after using a monitor for an extended period it goes away if I then use my Kindle. I mean I'm not saying it cures the headache, but it doesn't effect the recovery. My eyesight's fine incidentally, it gets checked annually.

Scosche MyTrek health monitor

Re: I'm possibly out of my depth here technically so apologies for the naive question.

Actually it's more like watching the rev counter. Depending on what you're training for it can be useful for setting your pace, e.g. to improve stamina you work at 70% of your max for an extended period.

HMRC cuts IT spending in half in 2 years

Re: the only scary thing is why this wasnt done sooner....

I can only guess it's because previously if someone said it's going to cost £XXX Million to do, they said OK and asked for an increase in their budget which they got. Now they're being told they can't increase their budget they're presumably looking at options other than throwing money at the problem.

Steve Jobs' death clears way for Apple-Android peace talks

I'm fairly sure my parent's have prior art that pre-dates Apple's existence.

Venus BELCHES solar wind in shock weather explosion

' the point where the supersonic solar blast slows down'

How can something be supersonic in the vacuum of space?

UK.gov holds summit to stop satnav-driven smash-ups

All excellent points

However, it's very unlikely that politicians are going to enact rules that punish stupidity as that will directly affect the kind of person who'd otherwise unthinkingly vote for them. And I'm not even sure I'm joking...

Epic net outage in Africa as FOUR undersea cables chopped

Re: Re: 650 feet is shallow waters?

I believe he's including the anchor scope in his calculation, the weight of the cable on the seabed is as important as the hook at the end in holding a ship in position so you need more than enough cable to touch the seabed. 650' is still shallow in the grand scheme of things though, trans-oceanic cables are several miles down.

Unions: MoD 'mad to fire staff while increasing consultant spending'

Re: Dodgy Maths

' £8k per year for a pension??' Actually after 12 years in the RN, my pension when it starts to pay out in about 25 years time will be ~£8500 per annum in 2012 Pounds, so it's not that far out for certain cases. However it's often more complicated than that as many people will stay in until their immediate pension point where they'll start to receive an amount per year as soon as they leave the service, that will then increase when they hit pensionable 60/65. Of course the rules have changed in the last few years so there's an extra layer of confusion when considering anyone on the new scheme.

North Korea labels phone users war criminals

Pasties, the plural of Pasty

God's own foodstuff

http://www.properpasty.co.uk/

US killer spy drone controls switch to Linux

One option would be to use something less ubiquitous than a USB stick. PCMCIA memory cards work quite nicely and have the advantage that the average Soldier/Sailor/Airman doesn't have their own chock full of viruses and porn that they might be tempted to use to save time/play videos on the workstation/change the desktop picure with.

Although for some reason the maintainers get all upset when you pry it out of the reader with a knife after inserting it the wrong way for the nth time...

iPad SURVIVES FALL FROM SPACE

Just because the marketeers at BA say 100,000 feet is the edge of space doesn't mean it is, they're an airline not an aviation authority. I also can't find any reference in AP3456* to space starting at 100,000 feet so the RAF don't seem to be saying that either.

*RAF Manual of Flying