* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

A simple challenge to *all* climate models

Can they *backcast*.

Given your model with the *known* data for the last say 50 years (1960-2010) can they deliver the gross climate over that period?

How many times do they have to be run? What proportion of those runs come *close* to what happened?

In fact I'd like to see it run as an international contest.

If you can show you can do the *last* 50 years you should have a shot at the next 50 years.

And that's a timescale *most* people will be concerned about as (except for some areas of Glasgow in the UK) they have a pretty fair chance of being *alive* for it.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

IIRC Weather forcasters spent decades saying sun spot activity had *no* influence on the weather.

Well it looks like that was one of those little details they had not got round to putting into their models.

On humans affecting the weather. 1st CFC production 1933. Detectable effects on ozone by 1974.

Effect of the sun being removed. Well according to

http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/Encyclopedia.asp

the volume change from liquid Nitrogen to Nitrogen gas at 15c is x691 and for Oxygen its 854.

If you assumed an atmosphere out to c21Km / 70 000 ft it would contract to about a a layer of 30m of LN2.

Something to keep in mind.

DARPA issues call for notions on Starship-for-2111 plan

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Better find out if galactic cosmic rays are a problem first.

Otherwise getting out of the solar system will need a *lot* of shielding.

Closed cycle life support would be a *really* good idea, otherwise it's a hell of a lot of ready meals to the next star system

I've always quite liked the scheme in the Jerry Anderson movie Doppleganger / Journey to the far side of the Sun with the crew hooked up to heart / lung machines for the voyage. Sadly the record for this IRL (using hyperthermia) is about 45 minutes and the brainn activity really does seems to be completely flat, then starts up as the patient is warmed up.

. Bumping that up to say a month would be a real DARPA style challenge (IE apparently barking mad) but I can't think of a military application for doing so.

On the modern battlefield heart problems tend to be in the form of a large hole in the soldiers chest where their heart (and various other bits) used to be.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

How to ensure the *best* people at a conference like this.

Free coffee 24/7

Open bar.

Works every time.

Can Big Blue survive another century?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@s.pam

"try their damnedest to hide is that IBM's punch card systems were used to categorise, register, and (ultimately unfortunately) lead to the mass extermination of millions in Eastern Europe."

Actually East Europe was just where they were shipped to. They were taken wherever the 3rd Reich occupied a bit of country.

It also resulted in a subversion of one of their ad campaigns into "IBM, the (final) solutions company."

Most interesting was IBM Germany's work to *enhance* their tabulator hardware to make it more flexible. The original hardware simply wasn't letting the Nazi's pick and kill people fast enough.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Rippy

OS400 was pretty good. systematic command names. Object orientated (but they never made a big fuss of this) with security down to command/object level

Dull boxes to administer. Really only good for running companies *without* drama.

Hence no way for sysadmins to perform "heroic" feats like those reputedly needed on large farms of certain other OS suppliers.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Jim O'Reilly

"John Patterson "

I think he was once asked for his views regarding competition. "The best way to kill a dog is to cut it's head off."

What I like to think of as the Bill Gates management style.

Incidentally Watson was also one of the first corporate executives to do jail time under what was then newly introduced anti-trust legislation.

I do hope he was not the last.

What does mission critical mean, anyway?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Trevor_Pott

Good to know someone thinks of training the next generation.

That was probably not the best advertisement for Skype I've ever heard. If I had to pin it down I'd call it "Echoey"

Looking forward to your next one though.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Predicatablilty seems to be a *big* part of it.

Despite the view of some IT staff that users hate them most people people are pretty reasonable about down time *provided* they have been given notice and their provider makes *some* effort to schedule it so it does not have an impact (hence 3am local time being popular with land line telephone providers or perhaps Friday afternoons for manufacturing companies).

Then again you get the outsourced IT support that rolls into the office at 9am and shuts down the servers for an upgrade mid week (which turns out to be a days work rather than the hour or two promised). Partly this was due to the boss being clueless and believing it would not make much difference (didn't realise "servers" included email access) and an IT support company whose motto seemed to be "If you don't know any better we won't tell you."

IT is a service so delivering it in as convenient way as possible (within reasonable limits on cost and effort) just seems like good business to.me.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Most interesting.

But the audio *quality *

Sounded like it was recorded in a public urinal.

It's nice to hear someone say basically "You want 5 nines then *this* is what it'll cost you, but here are some alternative you *might* find acceptable at much less cost."

I do regret Trevor does not seem to have a PFY to mentor...

MP demands government rethink on Digital Economy Act

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Go

Britards time for a modest missive to your elected representative.

Politely outline why this Act is a PoS rushed through in the dying *hours* of a parliament and sticking their signature on this EDM is a *very* good thing for UK PLC.

X-51A hydrocarb scramjet flames out in second test

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Another year, another attempt at scramjet action.

I can see why some arch skeptics call it a scam jet.

MoD plans 'name and shame' crackdown on crap projects

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

Interesting comparison between UK and US govt.

UK Govt.

Operate to standard Uk contract law *including* penalty clauses and ones which (had they *fought* them) would be deem illegal under the Unfair Contract Clauses Act.

*Allow* themselves to get shafted *despite* the 20 000 staff in Bristol on MoD procurement.

US Govt.

*Absolute* right to cancel contract *without* compensation. Probably *the* defining feature that makes US Govt con-tractors the entities they are.

Hardly *ever* used due to *massive* political lobbying

Allow themselves to get shafted *regularly*.

The *awesom* power of the US govt's unilateral cancellation power should make them head and shoulders better than the UK, yet in reality it seems to make *no* difference. It is literally *too* powerful to use.

Note the UK's unending support of BaE (because they're "British". Well at any rate their CEO can drop in on Cameron whenever he feels like it) means that in reality it has *no* choice but to use them (or rather some part of them) because of the ongoing insane mantra of "Buy British, protect UK jobs (if they are so *damm* good and unique why can't they bid for foreign business and *win* it)"

Fox *should* be angry. His department costs a f**k of a lot of money, and a hell of a lot of it has b***er all to do *directly* with enabling HMG's servicemen and women to apply boot to backside of Johnny foreigner across the globe.

Nissan car secretly shares driver data with websites

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Frumious Bandersnatch

"is that a terrorist can get an easy lock with their smug-seeking missiles."

Hmmm. Yes.

Is that a bad thing?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Andrew 66

"I am genuinely surprised that there are still people this dumb commenting on El Reg."

You're rather easily surprised then, and quite trusting as well.

"Do you have no capacity for reading? If you don't want the data broadcast, DON'T USE THE FEATURE. Either don't use their stupid (and probably useless) software, or don't read RSS feeds on the cars display..."

For those who have trouble parsing English.

My statement about no opt out was based on the assumption that a driver *wanted* RSS in the first place. That was *implied* but not stated.

It would appear you read English like parsing a functional language and you need *all* the implications spelled out.

Mixing up this information (which has *nothing* to do with the users desires) is the equivalent of Microsofts claim that Internet Explorer was an intimate part of Windows and could not be removed.

This also was nonsense.

I trust I have resolved any ambiguities you persist in having.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

tmTM

"You think the Nissan Leaf is the way forward, the car that will be the saviour of our planet?"

I think expecting some eco freaks wet dream to be the *only* vehicle that will helpfully report *exactly* where they are on request is short sighted.

But it is is one of the first.

I doubt it will be the last.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

So no need to worry?

Well let's see

Nissan made *no* mention of this to their customers, but you do wonder if they did sell it as a "feature" to web site owners.

There is *no* opt out. You (the *customer*) have *no* choice in this information being coughed up.

It is an *automatic* opt in. Or did they think that (like Phorn) drivers are too stupid to understand the tech and make "informed" decisions?

"Trusted" websites. I "trust" a web site to do a certain thing or give me certain information.

That is as far as my "trust" goes with *any* web site. WTF would *I* want any random website to know where I was (which is essentially what this does).

It's Facebook on wheels, *without* the privacy options.

No need to ask. No need to know.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@SRS

"Hardly anyone will buy the car and for those very few sad folk who do, the 100 metre range before the car needs a full 16 hour deep recharge means that all these RSS sites will get is the rough positions of the three Nissan garages that will stock this woeful vehicle."

That's very amusing.

Just a little short sighted.

Stand by for more big, windfarm-driven 'leccy price rises

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

why is it that the UK government seeem to think about *one* non fossil sourrce at a time?

The assorted civil servants cannot seem to get the idea of a *split* energy policy and run lemming like for wind in the way their predecessors "Dashed for gas."

Micro hydro, geothermal, anaerobic digestion, tidal, *any* would be more reliable and *predictable* (people whine about tidal being cyclic but it will turn up each day *every* day till the Moon breaks up, 10s of 1000s of years from now. If anyone reading this is still on Earth by then you're either stupid or have a death wish).

And of course the N word (that's not a game).

Instead this deeply stupid energy mono-culture.

The UK energy "market" (and I use the term *very* loosely) is highly regulated.

The UK has the situation it has *because* of those rules. They are made by politicians. They are not laws of nature.

Siemens fixes SCADA holes found by hacker

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

@Charles Manning

"Only a complete fool....

...would set up SCADA on an open network."

You might like to review the recent history of attacks on pumping stations and other bits of industrial machinery and utilities.

There are quite a few of them about.

Phishers LAMP web hosts

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

1st rule of effective bullying.

Why *bother* going looking for a new victim (who might fight back better) when you come back and stomp the old one.again.

I think some of the posters on this thread have given out some *very* valuable advice to people who are not (but perhaps need to be) better informed about this threat.

Weather it *changes* anything about how they handle their problems (assuming they can work out what to do) is another matter.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

How many of these sysadmins are *paid* to do this job?

If they are not then maybe they are doing the best they can given the amount of time they have to devote to maintenance.

But if they are...

You don't realize your site could be useful to attack others? You can't detect intrusion attempts through router logs? You can't re-configure servers and directory trees with non obvious/standard names?

You're employer is wasting their money paying you. You're not really a sysadmin. You're an IT gimp.

Note the measure of *any* environments popularity is how often it's attacked. Despite shedloads of cash on MS's part that is still *not* Windows.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@dotdavid

"I restored my sites from a backup, upgraded all my software versions (both AMP and PHP-based) and changed all my passwords, "

The terrible truth is I suspect that is *much* more than a lot of other victims.

Royston's ANPR surveillo-plan goes to ICO

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Matthew 3

"but two years is taking the piss."

I seem to recall they were looking to expand the storage at Hendon to a 5 year limit.

You don't seem to understand one thing.

The hardware is policy *neutral*.

Weather it's used to identify vehicles with expired tax disks, stolen vehicles, ones on a "suspect" list (and just what *are* the categories of that list?) or track *every* vehicle in the UK is defined *solely* by the policy of its operators.

Who operate without *any* law or statutory instrument to stop them.

Your privacy is at *their* discretion.

Four jailed for million-pound abuse images ring

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Either *very* naive or *very* stupid.

Naive. Did not think their servers *could* be hosting CP.

Stupid. *Knew* they were but continued to host them in the UK.

Depending on how well they have managed to secure their £2.2m cash. They *could* come out of jail and could (having paid their debt to society) start up a new service.

Having demonstrated that their "Business model" has generated robust profits in a recession they might even be courted by various VC providers.

Capitalism, eh? Got a love it.

Time to say goodbye to Risc / Itanium Unix?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Some excellent points

"The point is that one should choose the software for the task then the hardware and OS it best runs on. Anything else is the tail wagging the dog."

Still, IMHO the best advice in business. Any other view is likely coming from con-sultant/con-tractor/reseller BS.

And some remarkably restrained commenting as well.

In reality companies have inertia. It takes a *very* strong management to say "We know that to cost justify our future plans we are going to migrate some of our *core* systems to a platform we have *no* current experience of (but we're going to acquire it)" and actually do it.

IRL buying more (or an upgrade) of something is always easier than buying different.

Some of those software licensing prices are quite incredible. I suspect COTB's comments is nearer the mark than a lot of people would like to admit.

But I think scalability is *very* much under appreciated. It's understanding *those* issues *before* they become issues that separates the professionals from the amateurs.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

@Steven Knox

Tricky to explain.

Complex to carry out.

Gives an honest answer at the end.

Lulz warns NHS of sick security

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Black Helicopters

Someone's been using Google translate?

Key players don't have English as a first language?

Or just want people to think that?

Can cloud save the NHS?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Havelock

Irrelevant.

The question is why does the UK need *so* many government data centres in the first place. For the record Oregon's population is 3.8million in 2010. I doubt their administration is any more paper based than the core of the UK's systems.

Is the speed of light slower in the UK? The round trip time Lands End to John O'Groats at the speed of light is just under 7.8ms. Most humans would find response times 10x that acceptable. Putting them somewhere nearer the centre would roughly halve that.

I'm not suggesting actual *consolidation* of departments sharing hardware. Just putting most of that hardware in fewer (but much larger) centres. Physical security, power and thermal management and comms are all subjects where *bigger* is better

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

The UK surface area is roughly that of the state of Oregon.

Specifically 94058 sq miles Vs the 95,996.79 Sq miles of Oregon. So how many state and federal data centres does *it* need to cover this area I wonder?

IIRC El Reg mentioned the UK has about 194 government data centres.

Why?

Seriously. Why?

Equally seriously why do specialist staff *have* to be located *at* the centre?

Experienced good quality staff who get to *practice* their skills regularly are about the most valuable resource *any* IT operation has. Unlike *any* bit of hardware you can't just order up a blank copy and clone the software.

NuLabor spent shed loads on broadband links in the NHS. It's long *past* people started making them useful to allow IT staff to be shared across sites (and the number of IT sites to be *radically* reduced).

One of the *few* successes of the NHS IT programme (often mentioned as there seem so few of them *to* mention) is the medial imaging archival and transmission system.

*Why* can't something like that exist to share the highly skilled IT specialists across multiple sites?

As for the cloud. A big system stores all the data remotely at a site users cannot get to cannot change (if they don't like the data security polices of the country it's in) and cannot even find out what country it's in in the first place.

Yeah. What can go wrong with *that* plan.

Inside the 'funky' history of Groupon's biggest shareholder

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

I'd hesitate to use the term "<REDACTED>"

I'd hesitate to use the term "<REDACTED>"

But that massive rise / sudden crash scenario does look to be a bit <REDACTED>.

No doubt he can explain it due to the difficult trading conditions of the market post merger.

Note that while *individual* investors might avoid him no doubt he'll find a bunch of investment funds, pension schemes and others will look at him ("He turned down *Google" for Mannon's sake" the question might be why) and say "I'm in"

He reminds me of one or two of my former employers.

Icon reflects my feeling of what will happen to <REDACTED>.

Looks like the era of the <REDACTED> is back.

Intel teaches machines to build own device drivers

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@Charles Manning

"For example most of the complexity in a USB driver is handling all the state transitions and building a robust state machine. Is that really something an automated driver can do?"

Various chip design tools will take a boolean logic spec and spit out the layout for a piece of hardware (used to be a PLA) for said state machine. This has been available since at least the mid 80s.

Computers do logic pretty well, when they have been given the framework in which to operate.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

At what point does "device spec" become "device *model*" ?

The *idea* is good and simple

But what happens when the result comes back ERROR and error recovery *depends* on diagnosing the error, working out the options depending on additional state information because the hardware mfg has not *given* it to you.

Humans would start firing up their debuggers at this point and expect to be staying late.

But in *this* system all you would have is "this is an error". In reality the spec is incomplete and the mfg can't be arsed to fill in the details because you have some of their hardware in front of you so you figure it out.

Unless it's *not* a spec, its a black box with a fairly detailed model of the hardware internal function

How many mfg's would let something like that out of their offices?

IMHO device driver construction *could* have been automated *decades* ago but OS APIs and device interface specs have never been available in a form standardised enough and detailed enough to automate the process.

Anyone wondering if the person giving this presentation has a cunning plan to make money involving underpants?

Unique imagery of Shuttle docked to ISS released

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@Len Goddard

"Dammit, we should be on Mars already!"

And Von Braun thought we would be.

Of course if NASA is forced to work on a launch vehicle *designed* by Senators in an appropriations act you can pretty much forget it in your life time.

Look up "Tanker mode" and the findings of the last Augustine commission to see how.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Boffin

@Aleph0

"We can't, because shuttles haven't got solar panels. Their electricity is provided by fuel cells, which entails their max autonomy is about two weeks; in the '70s energy efficiency wasn't a major project consideration for crew-carrying space vehicles."

I thought this also. It is no longer the case.

"A shuttle could probably be made to work with a hookup to the ISS power systems,"

This *does* exist and the Shuttle is modified to use it, but it came late to the party The burn to undock and trigger reentry comes from storable propellants and they have on orbit storage for *years*. Likewise the APU's that drive the control surfaces use a storable monopropellant.

*But* the electrics, including the flight computers run off those fuel cells. US crewed spacecraft have *always* used H2/O2 fuel cells since Gemini as they supply drinking water and it's quite a power requirement (9-12Kw on takeoff/landing IIRC) to keep up for up to 14 days.

That would make Shuttle problematical for emergency undocking/return to Earth.

I'd like to think a modern design would make different trades. NASA *should* have either learned to get comfortable with *long* term on orbit cryogenic storage or gone the other way with a direct drive electrical generation system off a mono propellant APU, ideally with electric actuators (you might like to find a report called "The electric shuttle" written in the mid 80s). Note that Hydrogen peroxide *is* such a monopropellant but can be catalytic ally broken down into water and Oxygen. It's dense and *relatively* safe to handle (heavy rubber gloves and overalls, not nerve gas proof suits and separate air supplies). The boiling hot O2/steam mix coming from a cat pack is hypergolic with pretty much any reasonable hydrocarbon.

However it fails the NASA "Performance uber alles" test being inferior (but currently 6x cheaper) than the nasty MMH/NTO/UDMH stuff Shuttle uses for it's different systems.

Solar panels are a red herring. A Smart car battery pack could do the re-entry (but *not* the on orbit power and NASA would worry about "But what if you can't open the cargo bay doors, you'll run out of power with no way to recharge the batteries for the reentry".

The development of Shuttle systems really failed to find or use *any* cross sub system efficiencies.

BP world energy review: Chinese coal drives up CO2

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

@Andrew Orlowski

"the discovery of vast supplies of deep shale gas in the US, along with advanced extraction methods, have created stable supply and predictably low prices for most of the next century. "

Interesting. I seem to remember Peabody Mining were big contributors to shrubs campaign.

However the *scale* of this resource (if Sen Kennedy's statement is accurate) is staggering.

The question is *would* this be used to make a serious effort to move to an energy system that is sustainable, *predictable* and/or continuous (wind scores badly on *both* counts).

John Smith 19 Gold badge

@Luther Blisett

"and find out who's making the puppets dance."

Indeed. When bad things *keep* happening that everyone agrees *are* bad look for the cash flow.

*Someone* is backing a shed load of cash.

Netherlands first European nation to adopt net neutrality

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

Crazy Dutch guys.

They are crazy.

and here are a few more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRqAOyXL15Q

This does deserve some thoughtful well considered comments and serve as a reminder that policy *can* be changed by concerted education and action.

But I just can't be asked.

Intel invests in 'personal robot' future

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

Medical robots?

In the broad sense these already exist for handling samples in a highly flexible way in pathology labs.

But actual work in hospital rooms or wards? Interfacing with that most troublesome component of modern health care systems the patient.

Change a bed? Change a dressing? Give an injection?

How about stitching someone up?

The joker is at what point does the pay off of a general purpose robot out weigh having various single purpose (but *reliable* ) devices hanging off each patient.

Robotics researchers have tended to view these sorts of tasks as *beneath* their attention.

Until they try to automate it and discover they are *damm* hard word for robots used to a *highly* structured and benign (for a machine) environment of a factory.

I wish them well but honestly I'm not sure they really understand the task.

RSA appoints security chief amid blistering criticism

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

"RSA has appointed its first chief security officer"

Remind me again what RSA *do*.

Icon expresses my view.

Lanarkshire wristslap after vulnerable adults' data lost

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Nothing changes will someone gets fired or goes to prison.

That is all.

NAO calls for new ambulance data systems

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Flame

How many billions did NuLabor pump into the NHS *without* doing this?

This sounds like a pretty good saving.

RAF Eurofighter Typhoons 'beaten by Pakistani F-16s'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Meh

So IRL is this *likely*

I think if I was flying a state of the art fighter and my sensors spotted an incoming fighter I'd want to destroy it at the range that gave me a *good* chance of a successful kill with what I was armed with.

Presumably some of these super duper AAM's Typhoon is meant to be carrying.

It's not *exactly* cricket but I'd be aiming to finish my tour alive.

Mind you, bearing in mind what some members of the Pakistani cricket team have got up to.....

Breaking wave 'big as the USA' spied on Sun's surface

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

"Moving at 6-14Km/s"

or roughly M17-M42

Sadly if it's density is *anything* like most plasmas you'd need a board the size of truck to surf it (assuming the radiation didn't cook you first)

One thing about space weather, it's *huge*.

Surfs up.

1000 day wait for Sarah Palin emails nearly over

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@kain preacher

"If it's not then it's great mystery how these folks can wipe there own ass or figured out how to have sex."

If only that were true.

The problem would correct itself in 1 generation.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

Looking forward to John McCaine's comments to her prospective son in law.

I'm sort of hoping they something along the lines of...

"So you're the little punk who knocked up my running mates daughter. I bet you're proud of yourself. Where I come from you'd be an RSO. Mommies no rocket scientist but that lil girl is close to retarded. S**t son weren't you ever told never go on without a raincoat on?"

Or was I the only person thinking of Sen. McClaine's somewhat *interesting* choice of running mate "He wants a trophy VP?"

John Smith 19 Gold badge

@Mike Richards

"And that's in one email where she provides the definitive explanation of how Paul Revere's warning to the British allowed General Custer to defeat Lex Luther before the South could bomb Pearl Harbor in order to emancipate the Louisiana Purchase to Adolf Hitler."

It's English Mike, but not as we know it.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Happy

@hplasm

"That by 'bless her', you do mean- 'anoint her , on an altar, with her own blood'?

Anything less would be, em, churlish."

Isn't that only done with virgins?

But I do like the sentiment.

Brit censor stamps on The Human Centipede

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

@Shades

There are reports of a US remake of "Oldboy" whose core plot drivers haven't been seen in a mainstream US movie since Chinatown.

If some US studio thinks they can do this and get a movie at the end of it BR will seem *easy* by comparison.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

You know that someone, somewhere

Will be fapping to this.

Soon.