Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Given the UK is the only country in Europe with the FPTP system you either vote to ensure whoevers in your seat remains in your seat or you vote for the runner up from last time as they have the best chance of getting them out.
If the incumbent, or the runner up is of the party you support that's a bonus.
But with the UK electoral system as it is those are really you're only took options that will make a difference.
"Autoland" has been available since the late 60's and was certified with a failure rate of 1 in every 10^9 hours of operation. Possible with hard wired systems and triple redundancy and necessary because the number of "tests" mounts up fast with the number of commercial aircraft (of a certain type) flying and taking off day in, day out.
But what happens if the sensors the aircraft is using to sense its surroundings fail? What happens if one of the engines fails? What happens if the controls fail but you can still control the aircraft through engine throttling (BTW following NASA tests that is now a flight computer mode on some A/C)? What happens if you can't get the undercarriage down?
Most of these are survivable throughout most of the flight (even an engine fail on takeoff within limits) but the system has to diagnose the fault and decide on a course of action..
Safe solution. Code detection tests and actions for all known (or at least probable) failures and trigger a re-evaluation if sensor data changes (but remember the sensor data may be the fault and the system may be operating normally).
Riskier solution. System that applies logic to the problem IOW a form of AI.
BTW NASA does this already for some of its probes and scientific satellites The trouble is can such a system a)Diagnose what's happened b)Develop a plan to mitigate it c)Implement it fast enough to save lives?
Fixed altitude/heading/speed cruise you could do with an 8 bit micro controller.
Or you just do what they do with microlights and fit a whole vehicle parachute and just fire that.
That's great if you're still in a seat with a Lib Dem MP or one of the 63 (37 of which went to the Conservatives) where they were runners up.
If all the Conservative seats where the LD are runner up went Lib Dem (with no other changes) that would turn their 17 seat absolute majority into a -20 deficit. Is now the time to remind people that Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly, West Wales and valleys had EU aid > 1000 euros/person and the Tees Valley (around Middlesborough) had more than 250 Euros/person here
There is an agenda.
But it's no more hers than the last 8-9 previous sock puppet Home Secretaries who spouted the "We need more surveillance" line.
It's funny how much s**t in the UK (desire for more spying powers, retention of DNA of anybody arrested, ANPR, inability to control immigration leading to the rise of UKIP) originates at the Home Office.
I'm afraid the evidence is that for data fetishists that is exactly what a terrorist incident is for.
These people don't see "1984" as a warning, they see it as a step to their Utopia (only a step, because people do still try to rebel, and in their fantasy no one can because it is no longer possible to express such an idea).
I'd suggest we start with PPE graduates.
Looking up the heads of MI5 and 6 and various other pushers of the data fetishists "security" agenda I note a surprising number with this degree.
Perhaps time to take a look at the lecturers and wheather their teachings should be viewed as "hate speech," against any kind of civil liberties.
2 days till the British elections. UK readers have an opportunity. Make a difference. Vote for someone.
Tim, we in the Home Office Conservative party share your noble vision. Over the last parliament we increased CCTV and ANPR, but there's still so much more to do.
Vote Conservative on June 8th and I promise you we will bring in a new order of surveillance that will keep you safe, wherever you are and whatever you are doing for the rest of your life.
Signed
Teresa May.
They do.
They understand that it will give them the government of the day the ability to find out and monitor exactly what anyone is probably thinking, along with where they are and what they are doing 24/7/365.
This has very little to do with catching terrorists/pedophiles/drug dealers/money launderers/threat de-jour.
It's all about "Give me 6 lines from an honest man and I'll find something with which to hang him."
No.
Funny how over the last decade "The security services have intercepted dozens of threats" yet come election time and a contentious (and confusingly named) new law is going through parliament we have a pair couple within a month.
BTW that terrorist threat in perspective.
Since 7/7/05 there have been 36 deaths due to terrorism in the UK.
That's 4hrs 3 mins of the annual deaths related to smoking in NHS hospitals for 2014.
That's 7 Days 13 hrs and 40mins of UK read deaths in 2015.
Or 3 additional deaths a year since 2005.
And let's not forget who has been in been in power for most of that time and who was the Home Secretary.
"14% witnessed" --> 86% have never witnessed an incident.
Which suggests that in fact the very great majority of FOSS interactions are quite well behaved.
"Documentation" is an interesting metric. It's a perennial complaint that no one likes to do it because its not "real" development work but who better to tell you what a function can (and cannot) do than the person who wrote it? Therefor a project with good up to date docs suggests the devs have a more mature attitude to the efforts than the my-code-is-brilliant-it-does-not-need-documenting-I-wrote-it-in-24-hours-on-Jolt types.
But maybe I'm just prejudiced because I've had to wade through the code these (self professed) genius types written.
Oh dear, someone thinks "NCIS:Los Angeles" is a documentary.
Multiplied by "Let's put BAe Systems in charge of running the competition."
What can possibly go wrong in this scenario?
Fair enough, it's defense related, no furriners allowed (if this was the US DoD you can bet that would be the first rule) but "Furriners allowed, but you can't have a prize if you win" WTF?
At all levels.
The best test environment I've used had a level above "company" in the DB hierarchy. Although there was only 1 real company (no separate divisions) there was a second test company and it duplicated all the structure of the main company, so anything could be tested on it. If it didn't work, no problem. Scrub the stuff you created (or copied off the live branch) and start again. Your (faulty) code just nuked the (test) database? Well your co-workers are going to be a bit p***ed and Ops will have to recover a version so everyone else can get on with their work but otherwise not a disaster.
It's an obvious tactic (once you've used it or think about it) but it takes someone on day 1 to realize you want to have this feature in your system and make sure it's put in.
Indeed.
But I could never get the image of him as a New York taxi driver chewing a cigar out of my head.
"How 'bout that Quantum Chrono Dynamics, huh? Virtual particles mediating force transfer in a vacuum. Tricky stuff. You in town on business?"
Joking aside the world is poorer, not just for his intellect and vision but also for his ability to explain complex ideas. His rubber band in a cup of ice water (modelling the root cause of the Challenger crash) was a classic. Simple enough for even the "I don't understand science" crowd to grasp.
IIRC several versions of their accounts software could not be upgraded to each other either.
About the only thing they shared was a number at the end, indicating roughly how many users the package could accommodate.
A little more detail on Act. It seems after the takeover they relocated the devs to another state. Not all of them came along. The result. An unpatched next release gave a DB with a few 100 records that could (literally) take 10s of seconds to go to the next record, even in physical record order. Pro tip. Make sure your version is fully up to date (I know, obvious really).
People complain Sage is not "glamours" but (whatever people may think) that's a substantial software business (in the North East of England as well) that does not depend on government contracts.
If they made more than they bought it for then they came out ahead.
Let's see what they do with this bag of cash.
I guess if you need such a drug then you'd need it pretty badly.
I made the comment because Deuterium is a natural isotope. Logically a certain (small) percentage of all Hydrogen will be Deuterium. A trivial Google search here says background level of D are 150ppm (and Oxygen 18 is 2000ppm). Should be insignificant in normal mfg but still present, which was my point.
Pharmacology assumes all humans are the same and most of the time that works. It's not always the case as, for example the British soldier who had his leg blown off in Afghanistan who discovered that his body could not process Morphine.
Given the likelihood you might need Morphine in combat it would seem a good idea to find out if it's going to work on someone. IIRC there was a report that said there are about 200 drugs that simply don't work on a certain percentage of the population. Someone who had more than one of these "immunities" could have some trouble if they developed a serious medical condition.
"Indeed it is and has even been suggested for final drugs although I don't know of any that use it. "
Well technically I'd say all drugs use it.
Deuterium is a naturally occurring isotope of Hydrogen so there's a natural background level of it which will find it's way into the bulk raw materials chain for drugs, just like anything else, unless actively filtered out, which I suspect remains pretty expensive.
Likewise I would expect a drug with certain parts of made specifically with Deuterium would also be pretty expensive. As Dr RV Jones ( about using it for measuring "Aether drift") said it's "In the experimental locker if needed."
"Only briefly."
Physicists will tell you that there's no chemical difference between how different isotopes behave chemically, which makes them very useful for radioisotope tracking of chemical pathways through the body.
So IRL it's very unlikely that bacteria would evolve to preferentially absorb U235, which in any case is very much in the minority of available Uranium.
What has been talked about is how uranium deposits with flowing water running through them, have been sufficiently concentrated to trigger the starting of a chain reaction. Water gets warmer, becomes a less efficient moderator, reaction quenches.
Note this was about 1.7 billion years ago when natural Uranium would have had a concentration of 3% U235, not the current 0.7%. IOW it would already be at the enrichment level needed by modern reactors. It helps that most of the major fission poisons are gases and would be carried away by the water. the place was the Oklo region of Gabon.
Since all nuclear reactions rely on statistics while a natural nuclear reactor is very unlikely it is not impossible, and it was a very long time ago.
Other bacteria can secrete sulphuric acid to dissolve (IIRC) Copper and use it for similar processes.
It's useful if Oxygen and sunlight are in short supply or non existent.
Another example of evolution in action.
The obvious tactic is grow a lot of this bacteria then inject it into a bore hole in a Uranium deposit and then suck it back up with the Uranium on board.
Now if the bacteria absorbs U235 preferentially things could get interesting.....
Whatever happened to companies making a profit before they had an IPO?
I can see two groups investing in this.
a) People who are very familiar with this market and can judge if this company really does have an edge over their (wide) range of competitors or
b)People who nothing but have the necessary amount of cash (quite large I think) need to take such a gamble.
Note that a) assumes they really do have some sort of "Special Sauce" (C Andrew Orlowski) that makes them better.
Since I am in neither group I won't be going anywhere near this.
Sorry to interrupt your little rant but Shuttle sacrificed everything to keep its development budget under $1Bn a year, with no allowance for inflation or cost overruns and no ability to retain money not spent for large item spends in following years.
Couple this insane spending cap with a failure of both engine suppliers to deliver their promised Isp on the SSME and the SRBs and complete failure to design the support and you get the fragile, maintenance heavy hangar queen.
In theory the AR22, will have a known Isp to begin with, but AJR can still f**k that up.
Impossible.
Shotwell was talking $5-6m a launch for a fully resuable F9. 1st stage, 2nd stage and (in hindsight) fairing, itself a $5m item.
If you throw away the upper stage that price target is impossible.
If you need a 54 tonne capacity to launch 3000 lb that target is impossible.
Only partly right.
ULA makes those rockets and Boeing only gets money for Delta launches, which are very much the minority. LM's design choices mean Atlas still gets non-USG launches on a regular basis. Delta IV is pretty much only a USG LV.
I presume when ULA transitions to Vulcan the JV agreement will mean they get 505 of all launches.
IIRC Boeing was quite keen to sell ULA to AJR, who mfg the RS68 on the delta and rebox mfg the RD 180 on the Atlas V and RL10 (more touch labor than a Lamborghini)
LockMart, not so much. They forbid the sale and ULA remains a JV of Boeing & LM.
Bad news for AJR. When Vulcan flies, assuming Blue Origin delivers that looses themRS68 and RD180 and with ACES upper stage probably RL10. No wonder they were desperate to talk their way onto the XS-1 progrqamme (won by Boeing) with talk of a pair of new built SSME's (well "new built" from the spares around the workshop, not actually mfg from scratch today).
I suspect a round of serious whining lobbying as AJR tell the USG they are "too big to fail" and that (future) National Security" needs will depend on them, as they are the only "independent" engine supplier (provided you limit the list to a)Big and b)American).
At which point they and there boosters are loaded with the propellants that the engines run on.Multiplying their weight about 9x.
Which is also how SX does it.
NASA did move the Saturn V full loaded to the pad, but only vertically. SRB's are either moved vertically (like Ariane 5) or built up on the pad like Shuttle (an astonishingly dangerous process, demanding the precision location of pieces of high explosive weighing 10s of tonnes).
IRL you can't take a rocket designed to be fully loaded only when vertical and hang it from a single point on its side. TBH if you want to be avant garde in your rocket design go the whole hog. Optimize the shape as more of a flying wing (or lifting body) . High altitude flight at < M1 is pretty cold so let it cool the propellants and then top them up from tanks in the fuselage. Go LOX Methane if you're trying to be low price and so on.
I'm not sure where you get this from.
Equatorial launch is normally reckoned to give about 400m/s impetus. IE about 1400Kmh.
You've also missed one of the bigger benefits. Roughly speaking atmospheric pressure halves every 18000 ft. Flow separation on a rocket nozzle starts at about 36-40% of ambient atmospheric pressure (depends how good your design software is). That means you can put a bigger nozzle on the back as it can exhaust to a lower outside pressure to begin with. Bigger nozzle --> Higher Isp. Alternatively you can run with a lower chamber pressure, which usually makes engine design simpler.
The question however is
a) How big a payload can it carry on its back (which it was designed to do)?
b)What's the maximum speed the plane can go while still allowing safe separation of the payload?
c)How available is it?
In cost terms the An224 is the OTS shelf solution if you wanted to go to orbit this way but the devils in the details.
Actually the NHS in the UK regularly denies orthopedic operations on grounds of weight and has made gastric bypass surgery (which is drastic and very effective) much harder to come by.
Gastric bypass (the clue is in the name) re routes your digestive tract so most of your stomach and intestines are not available to absorb food. It can both cut weight by literally a stone a month (6.34Kg). It also can reverse 40-60% of the cases of type II diabetes of the patients who are diabetic and have had this surgery. AFAIK *unlike gastric banding) it's permanent. You will learn to eat in a whole different way.
It's quite common in the rest of the EU where it's considered both effective and a lot cheaper than coping with the (very expensive) long term effects of obesity.
But in the UK obesity is still viewed like smoking used to be IE it's a lifestyle choice and you "Just lack will power."
Indeed, it seems a popular pastime in companies with the staff having the chance to inflict some good natured (good for the staff that is) bodily injury on the management while the management has been know to view this as a way of correcting underperforming staff attitudes.
People block their outgoing phone numbers as a matter of course (hence the shrinkage in the size of phone books in countries that still use them).
If subscribers (note that word, as in "it's a service") report nuisance calls then their originating number can usually be unblocked and I'd always assumed the police could do this.
Kevin Mittnicks books "The Art of Deception" mentions that call spoofing has been available to anyone with a PBX certainly in the US for decades. I'm not sure if these used VoIP already to support 30+ lines or under another protocol.
If they did they could probably stand up and walk out of the capsule.
I can't help reading about "a new record for the amount of scientific work done " and think "Imagine that. And without the assistance of a PFY either."
My coat. It's a thick one because landing on the steppe can be chilly.
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