Posts by Silent but Deadly 37 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Sep 2010
The plane would have taken off with enough fuel for a planned great circle route. When France and Spain denied access, in flight, to their airspace, a longer route and more fuel was required.
Expect Spane and France to win some US contracts soon for 'enforcing their sovereign airspace' over a diplomatic flight. Either that or some choice PRISM data dumps will arrive in their in boxes.
Real product. Real Company. Patent has been around since the late '90s. Cast your mind back to that time and try and remember how you encryped your work then. This would have been cutting edge stuff in those days and it is quite clever, removing (L)users from the loop and ensuring their work was encrypted when it mattered most.
Save your contempt for those that have ripped off the idea and are selling it as their own.
Anything that encourages gangsta idiots who wear reversed or side facing baseball caps to wear them the right way can only be applauded.
Now we just have to incorporate Exposed Underwear Recognition (EUR, you read it here first), and they might pull their pants up and wear a belt too.
Wind farms are best placed away from built up areas.
Much of that is close to water.
Utilisation does not always match periods of demand.
Why not 'make' hydrogen? It can be stored and burn or stuffed into fuel cells to make bateries. Use hydrogen powered boats or vehicles to move it to market. Sure, it can make a bit of a bang, but it leaves no residue.
Stock Dell Alienware X51
US $699
AUD$1300
Mostly COTS components, apart from the case, and they are probably made in one place, further lowing the cost per unit.
It is possible that the Aussie market machines are assembled in Asia and the US market machines in the USA. However, that should lower the price as labour costs are lower in Asia.
So how is it that even with the Australian dollar at close to parity with the US, we pay nearly double? Even if all the boxes were built in the USA and shipped direct, it would not justify the difference. I also compared the do-it -yourself option with locally sourced, retail components and it came out at about the US price.
Why don't you have a read Wikileaks? If you then feel that you know something that you previously didn't, then the first answer is yes.
As to question/statement 2: How would anyone know if anything has changed? Geopolitics is hardly a test environment where you can run one scenario with Wikileaks and one without.
We will never know for certain, unless someone leaks a document detailing significant things that were canceled/prevented/changed due to Wikileaks material being available. (Hardly likely).
Perhaps you questions are better directed at Facebook? It seems to be more on par with your level of 'concideration'.
It is good enough for trades, doctors, engineers, vets and teachers to be registered to practice. Some paths are granted automatic registration or exemption from further requirements based on the standards of education.
Maybe then we get some Professional behaviour in the IT profession. I meet too many IT people that only have a job because their standard of work would not be tollerated in any other industry.
My current sysadmin is a walking Denial of Service Attack and somehow managed to blag his way into the job with no certified training. Despite demonstrating his incompetance several times during his probation the firm kept him on. (He must have naked pics of the MD or something.) If the firm's insurance company was to turn around an treat that as the risk that it is, a non registered Syadmin would not be worth the increase in premiums.
Registration won't make a person a good practitioner, but the best ones will be registered.
"to let someone go" means they were made redundant. Redundancy is not the employee's fault.
"fired", "sacked", "given the boot", usually implies that it is the employee's fault.
The use of the term 'local' is interesting. Could that mean that the replacements have been sponsored to come to the UK by another branch of Huawei and then rehired by this firm as 'locals'?
Western nations should be looking at Singapore's model for skilled migration. Essentially, you may import management staff and temporary labourers, but anything in between has to be a native local. Or you can FO back to your own country.
Cloud infrustructure is an Activity Based Cost. With cost per user services you can make relatively quick responses to increases and decreases in head count.
There is no need to commit to until you actually needs the capacity and then you will be billed in the next invoice.
Cutting back? reduce the user count and reduce the costs. You can't do that with the gear in your server room. It costs the same to run for 0, 1 or 100 users.
Ben Rich's excellent book Skunk Works mentions that before Stealth 'bombers' were first used in anger, they were almost used on Gadaffi. Apparently the Colonel 's regime didn't warrant the revelation of what was a secret weapon back then. True secrecy is not even letting your opponent know that the secret exists. Anything else is Privacy.
Anyone who has seen Blackhawk down knows that when speed is of the essence, US doctrine is to use air assets to come in from above. With 2 possible outcomes (dismount and enter via the ground floor or come through the roof), potential opponents have to plan for both, dilluting their Concentration of Force(s). Maybe the ground troops were a diversion, maybe that was plan B if a Helo went down (which is about the only undisputed fact). Lots of 'maybes' and not enough to say if this was an assasination mission by design.
Finally, 'Zero Electro Magnetic radiation' may be a relative term. As the writer (of the book) is not a scientist, I think we can cut him some slack. Previous Stealth improvements have reduced emmitions by orders of magnitude. Suppose a normal, current generation helo emits 1000 units of noise/IR/RF and then defensive systems are looking for around 1000 units. If THEY doubled the sensitivity of sensors, 500 becomes the threshold. However, if I work realy hard and throw money, science and materials at the problem and reduce my emmissions by an order of magnitude (2nd generation), MY low noise/IR/RF helo emits 100 units, one fith of what the sensors are looking for. If I do it a second time (3rd generation), I'm emitting 10 units.
Arriving with 10, when they are looking for 500-1000 is zero emisions in my book, paricularly when you factor in other sources that are making more noise than you.
To use Desktop OS's as an analogy:
Apple is being Apple. Gated community model. Very safe and all trust is placed in them to give you what they think you need. Step outside that and if the fanboys don't get you, the lawyers will. Fortunately they invest in form over function which is a lotter better than most tech companies do for their customers who want things to 'just work' and look good.
Android is a more mainstream Linux. Wild west/middle east model. Nail 2 bits of code together and you are a developer. Releatively open market using the "lets throw lots at the wall and see what sticks model". Good if you are the like your freedom and like being part of the pioneer crowd, but not the sort of thing that is sustainable for corporate types etc that want certainty and COTS solutions.
RIM used to have the potential to take the Corporate/Government market and keep it, but they have pissed off their users and those that make the purchasing decisions at the big end of town. They no longer hold superior Form or Function status to be considered and reliability is starting to slip. News this week is that they are dominating the yoof prepaid market, but as witnessed in the UK riots, they don't usually pay for their gear. They are the former Gold Rush town, complete with tumble weeds.
Enter Microsoft. Windows for the mobile set. Safe, the promise of portability between desktop and mobile OS's and large corporate backing that already has home and business user bases. DEV environments on tap, but priced to stop the rif-raf poluting the offering. They have the ability to define or redefine the App market particularly as in the past their model was100% of the sale price doing to the DEV.
It is more of a case that cheap GPS units are keeping civilians out of his airspace.
MIL GPS usage is either hardened against jamming or has a fallback such as INS, a Pilot or map.
Read the previous notes. Lighsquared does not operate outside its licenced spectrum. If it did, then the FAA would be locking them up and throwing away the key. The problem is shortcuts in the design of gear that uses the adjacent spectrum means that they detect Lightsquared frequencies and suffer.
A suitable analogy is White Trash complaining that middle class Blacks or Asians have moved in next door. Just because you were nearby first, doesn't mean you have the right to lower other people to your standards.
And another thing, as GPS units are receivers, their makers do not pay licence fees for the spectrum they do use. Sine the US turned off significant signal degradation under Clinton, they have access to the high accuracy signal in real time. They are freeloaders watcing their gravy train slowly derail.
There are many good ideas out there but unless you put a price on inaction, they will never get past the bean counters and more costly inactions. Fines for (and publication of) breaches puts a cost to inaction and should be welcomed.
I am concerned about the need to use USB sticks in the first place. Where is the un-networked place that the data is to be taken to and what controls are in place there? Is it an employee's home PC? Another agency? Is the sharing of such data even authorised by the people under care?
We tried that down here in Oz. Do a bit of a search for "RAAF" "Wedgetail" "Delay". Cutting edge MIL systems and integration into a modern, proven airframe. In the end they had to dumb down the deliverables because it was going to be too hard to do.
The risk from that project was being the lead customer that in a project that was commissioning new systems and integrating them. Fortunately the maker knew that there are other buyers in the pipeline and they will offset the development costs.
We keep upgrading our Orion maritime patrol aircraft, however once the P8 gets to market I am sure we will be lining up for that. If we are smart we will stay out of the development and purchase a v2 or v3 model right off the production line.
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