* Posts by Vladimir Plouzhnikov

3264 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2007

Orion: To Mars, the Moon and beyond... but first, a test flight through Van Allen belt

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Why a heat shield?

"Surely the craft could just spend longer gliding to earth?"

Yes, that's true but only if the spacecraft has enough fuel reserve so that it can slow itself down before beginning of aerobraking. The problem is that you need to bring that fuel all the way from Earth and that means you need a bigger rocket to start with.

Given that the Saturn V was the biggest rocket available and that it was already loaded to capacity with other stuff - like the Apollo craft itself, people, scientific equipment, consumables - the luxury of a longer powered braking was simply not available.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Bah!

"And this isn't new because they were doing this with Apollo and Gemini and for all I know Mercury too"

And they're still doing it with Soyuz on every flight (except when they have a short-circuit in the auto-pilot and then perform a "ballistic" landing, which presumably refers to the condition of the crew members' balls after the event).

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Looking at that picture....

"Then you have a handy helicopter. Yep, I'm joking."

Ever heard about Roton?

Hominid ancestors beat humans to the drinks cabinet, say boffins

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Only the pleasure of eating?

"That's because lactose isn't by nature toxic and mind-affecting. Ethanol is."

QED. Thank you.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Only the pleasure of eating?

"Tolerance for ethanol would make apes with the efficient ADH4 able to get more food, which would lead to the brain developing pleasure pathways linked to alcohol consumption."

This doesn't sound convincing to me. Tolerance to lactose certainly opened a whole new range of foods for humans yet we don't get drunk on milk as some kind of an evolutionary reward. OTOH, methanol gives you the same kind of pleasure, apparently, before killing you dead.

What I mean is that while tolerance to C2H5OH was clearly helpful as a way to a more, ahem, varied diet, the pleasure issue is a coincidental side-effect.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

ADH4 to its friends

Who is its friend? ADHD? Or is it a family relation?

Star Wars: Episode VII trailer lands. You call that a lightsaber? THIS is a lightsaber

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Yes, yes, there's a hilt...

It's a steampunk version. It works on kerosene and there is a small pump in the handle which you use to pressurise the fuel before lighting it up.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Everybody's bent out of shape over that Lightsabre

Yes, this is for taking the Mickey out... If you try to stab him in the head and he ducks (he, he), at least you chop both of his ears off.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Nah. Rubbish engineering

Should have crossed the side-(burns? -lights? -sabres?) forward, over the main blade.

Still stupid, though - you can never draw it quickly enough as it will snag in the folds of the Jedi robe/Sith cape/whatever...

Men, Women and Children: Shows how crap the internet is via the medium of crap film

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

This is not a comedy

It's a horror movie shot specifically for the Daily Fail audience.

Sounds like they simply took all the internet myths and scary tales in which the permanently morally outraged DF readers so want to believe and be frightened by, and made a "movie" out of it.

They only seemed to forget to iclude the "internet will turn you into an exploding jihadist" bit. I guess that takes one star off their rating...

Beyond the genome: YOU'VE BEEN DECODED, again

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Deciphered?

I don't think we have deciphered anything yet. All that was done was separating the whole cipher message into individual codegroups. From there to clear text is still a long way...

Maybe a more charitable analogy is that of reverse-engineering an unknown binary program. We think we've isolated individual instructions but we don't know the instruction set, so can't tell a MOV from a BCS and not sure about the addressing modes either. Also it's a bit of the mystery as to how the data is stored. And it would be nice to know which register holds the stack pointer. And... well, that's my understanding of the HGP status anyway.

Musicians sue UK.gov over 'zero pay' copyright fix

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: People won't know who to hate in this one...

I don't have anything against real musicians (not the mass-manufactured clones from x-factor etc). Not at all.

All the music I have in my collection has been paid for, often more than once (remasters, reremasters, special editions, what have you). I go to concerts when I can (dragging my family with me more often than not) and I even bought band-branded beer a few times (BBT)...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Compensation?

"It's relevant in so far as you are not actually allowed to make a copy of something without a license to do so."

But that's purely an artificial construct and a tautology if used in an argument - "it's not allowed because it is not allowed".

Let's suppose I "lobbied" by council to let me draw a line across the street where I live and toll everyone who steps over it. That will be licensed and legal but the essence of it will still be a good old racket as I'd provide no value in exchange for the money I'd collect. Same thing is with the copyright if it is applied in the way the rights holders always want.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Strange argument

I never understood the logic behind the argument that musicians should be entitled to any "compensation" if someone rips a legitimately purchased CD to MP3 for their own personal use.

It just doesn't stack up - no new data has been acquired, there is no improvement of quality, any improvement in convenience is solely due to the technology involved (and paid for) and no reasonable person can expect somebody to be able to listen simultaneously to both the CD and the MP3 - so only one copy is in use at any given time.

Where is the value added by the musician during the ripping process for which they must be compensated?

Meanwhile, if every media item were to be taxed to pay to the poor artists why should I pay them anything if all I burn on my DVDs is my family home videos?

I'm with the UK on this, not with the continent.

Rosetta science team thinks Philae might come to life in the spring

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

In the meantime

Bored by waiting, NASA has made a nice 3D composite of a pair of the comet 67p's pictures it got from ESA :-)

Megaupload overlord Kim Dotcom: The US has radicalised me!

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

"Why is that people who share or release other peoples data on the internet and then get caught suddenly want to become politicians?"

Better them than those who have stolen the data in the first place, don't you think? Except those latter ones are already either politicians (bad) or bureaucrats (even worse) or spies (the worst).

Boffins find Jackie Chan's SUPERCOP is good for something

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Does the RIAA know about this?

Or they could simply bulk-buy the unsold BD stock from HMV. They could probably do a deal like 1 pound for a million discs. They could probably get HMV to pay for delivery too.

That should certainly cover mankind's needs for PV panels for the next few generations...

MI6 oversight report on Lee Rigby murder: US web giants offer 'safe haven for terrorism'

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

From the BBC > They [the findings] include:

- A four-month delay in opening an investigation into Adebolajo following his return from Kenya in 2010. He had been arrested in the African country after apparently preparing to fight with Somali militant group al-Shabab

- An eight-month delay before Adebowale was first actively investigated in 2012

- An application for intrusive surveillance on Adebowale in 2013 took "nearly twice as long as it should have"

- Had the original target been met "these further intrusive techniques would have been in place during the week before and on the day of the attack"

But with all that the Facebook, apparently, is to blame. Oh, LOL.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Want to have the cake and eat it, do we?

This complaint, that if only they knew they'd have prevented it and they didn't know because those bad American ISPs did not tell them ahead of time - is it coming from the same group people who already have the ability and actually have been caught reading people's emails and watching private videos whenever they feel like it?

And now they missed some would be terrorast's forum post or email or whatever and it's somebody else's fault?

I think if the head of GCHQ would be automatically given an hour of pillory every time somebody's head's cut off in the middle of London, we will never hear about that terrorism thingy again.

Businessman takes Google to High Court to block online abuse from search results

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Oh.

Moderator is the law on a forum. Whatever he says - goes. I'm OK with that.

I was just surprised to be nuked as I didn't think there was anything remotely defamatory of that banker in my post. Quite the opposite, actually...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Oh.

I mean, just, like,... Wow!

Did we set off a moderatorial Claymore mine on this thread?!

Renewable energy 'simply won't work': Top Google engineers

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: The whole article is misleading !!!

"we have now TWO huge portions of the Earth completely inhabitable"

Why, well, that's a good start. I thought we should still have had more than TWO though? Have the others been rendered uninhabitable by windmills or solar panels?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Then we're fucked

Well, if you don't want the gas - I'll sell it to the Martians. I'm sure, they'll pay good money for it. And with shorter turnaround time I'll do double the volume.

Come to think of it - you, Earthers, won't be able to afford my Jovian gas. Make your own stuff, man.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Then we're fucked

"Non-renewable energy sources will run out sooner or later, by definition."

Then we go out and find some more. I heard there is a big gas storage tank full of natural gas, a few blocksAUs farther away from the Sun then we are. It's called Jupiter or something...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: reducing energy consumption

Reducing energy consumption is simply impossible without killing off the civilization.

To me, anyone pushing for the former is implicitly calling for the latter.

Short of this, any attempts to use administrative of fiscal measures to reduce energy consumption will invariably result in the opposite - an increased use and/or the use of cheaper and dirtier sources (e.g. coal) as it will suppress investment into cleaner sources. Watch Germany to see how such things fail.

There is one direction for us - increase efficiency and intensity of power generation and soon. And that means - nuclear.

@Khaptain - reduction of population is impossible in anything approaching long term. Your only hope is a reduction of the rate of growth of the population and that is only possible with increased per-capita energy use. The rule of thumb is - people leaving in shit multiply fast, while people living comfortably barely sustain replacement rate. The higher the living standards, the more expensive are children to make and bring up.

Sony quietly POODLE-proofs Playstations

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Am I being naive

To think that the issue is solved simply by unticking the "Use SSL 3" box in Firefox's settings?

'Regin': The 'New Stuxnet' spook-grade SOFTWARE WEAPON described

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Who dunnit?

No - it's the French! Russia and others are just decoys. Did you see - Belgium's on the list.

Apple Fanboi? Stand by to get Beats Music LIKE IT OR NOT

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

And you can't complain as it is totally pro bono...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: The important question is....

In the meantime, Ms Swift has risen by 12 points in the US chart on the back of her public spat with Spotify.

As if there ever were any doubts that she was performing a cunning stunt....

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Not so much the name but I would not be able to bring myself to look for music on a service founded and run by a rapper as I believe these two are intrinsically incompatible concepts...

GiffGaff spanked for clumsy attempt at mum-and-dad-humping humour

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Admageddon!

Welcome to the Internet of Ads...

By the way, the word "Ad" means "Hell" in Russian.

Has your STARFISH been DRIBBLING awful SLIME? Scientists now know WHY

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: "A method implies an actor"

"sweating is a mechanism used by the body to regulate temperature"

Aha, I sense the need for an engineer-mechanic here...

Mystery Russian satellite: orbital weapon? Sat gobbler? What?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Expert opinion

"It could have a number of functions, some civilian and some military."

No. Shit.

The Nokia ENIGMA THING and its SECRET, TERRIBLE purpose

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

It's obvious

It's an 8'' floppy disk drive. Configured as NAS.

VINYL is BACK and you can thank Sonos for that

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Watch that term audiophile

And on the other side of the scale are those who claim that quality of reproduction kills music and that it can only be truly enjoyed if listened to through the built-in speaker on an iPhone.

Those are called "audiopunks" (or "audiochavs" maybe?).

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

"Vinyl: Reproducing sound by dragging a scratched piece of low grade plastic past a tiny rock on the end of a tiny stick held between two magnets at the end of a longer stick."

OK. Now, please describe me the components and the process of producing original sound out of, say, a violin... Something about inducing standing waves by rubbing ribbons made of horse hair against dried and twisted strings of animal intestinal fibres mounted in wooden frames varnished with cooked vegetable oil...

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: There is at least one upside to vinyl.

"They managed to fit a chip in video recorders to stop copying. The macrovision chip."

And then some other clever people fit yet another chip into video players - time-base corrector chip. Oh, what fun - and Macrovision couldn't do anything to stop it, just had to swallow it, unlike with modern DRMs and DMCAs.

Kindle, meet my partner. Darling, play nice with Kindle, please

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Xerox, anyone?

"Yes, but then it only takes 1 person to put a drm stripped copy on bittorrent from which a hundred thousand (or more) copies are made."

OK, and so what?...

It's not different to someone putting their originally DRM-free copy on bittorrent, is it? Yet, there is no apocalyspse happening and the publishers that sell DRM-free are doing not worse, if not better then those who insist on DRMs. And they all keep on selling.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Xerox, anyone?

"but it is a bit nerve-wracking to consider that the value of an $8.95 eBook can be diluted with a flood of free copies made from one sale"

This seems like a compelling argument... until you remember that the basic human nature would prevent 99.999% of those who paid $8.95 for it from mass-producing them and giving them away for free. Simply because they have paid for it with their hard earned cash out of their own pocket.

I know it's true because a) I myself am one of such selfish and greedy bastards and b) ebooks are still selling like hot potatoes even though only the lazy and the stupid are not yet able to strip DRMs from them...

P.S. Oh, and houses like Baen are selling their ebooks DRM-free as a matter of policy, even through Amazon.

I'M SO SORRY, sobs Rosetta Brit boffin in 'sexist' sexy shirt storm

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

I hope

Next time he wears a shirt with pictures of totally naked women.

I could go on to explain how those who complain about depiction of beautiful female bodies are actually being the real misogynists but they are obviously too dumb to understand anything, so I won't.

Jony Ive: Apple isn't here to make money. And students shouldn't use computers so much

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Good to know what offends him

I never realised that cunts of the first order even exist...

I mean - in my experience, cunts are normally of the second or higher order, so that an arbitrary line intersects them in at least two places...

UK PM Cameron says Internet must not 'be an ungoverned space'

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Extreme Government

Not sure I understand - how would a party of personal assistants help the democratic cause?

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Most "bad stuff" is hosted overseas

He won't need to - he will simply call the Crazydent of the United States of Bomberica and they will get the server with drone.

Sorry.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Don't waste your breath, David

"Cameron said [PDF] poverty and foreign policy are not the source of terror. “The root cause of the challenge we face is the extremist narrative,” he said,"

Lemme see, David - so you think that if offered, you would find a proposition to go to some godforesaken desert and live in shit without running water and electricity and proper food, all for the chance of getting your arse shot off from under you and possibly, just possibly, get a number of women to play with *after* you die - irresistively attractive? You would instantly drop your nice lifestyle - houses, cars, chauffers, golf, whatever, just for a chance of strapping on your suicide belt (and a pack of condoms?) and fulfill your destiny?

Would you say - "I suffered all my life going through private education, fine dining, shagging, occasional pot smoking, trying to get that lousy PM job and you never told me that I could just happily die in shit, trying to cut off some schmuck infidel's head while under American drone fire instead??? WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME BEFORE???"

No, I thought so, you wouldn't...

C'mon, David, YOU know very well that "terrorist narrative" will not work without there being poverty and discontent in the first place. YOU only want to lay your hands on our Internets, that's all.

Oh, and we know it too, so don't waste your time feeding us your counter-terrorist narrative...

Comet lander drill cliffhanger as last dregs of power used

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Just like in earlier documentaries

This is where it always fails - drilling. Why didn't they ask Willis?

ZZZAP! Climate change means getting hit by lightning is likelier

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

I can has more lightning please?

Given that lightning is my favourite natural phenomenon and that london seems to actively repel/de-fuse/silently absorb them for some reason - I'd say: bring it on! The more, the better.

Bible THUMP: Good Book beats Darwin to most influential tome title

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: "most important book"

"These are not built in to the universe, they are simply the best choices we know of for a society comprised of individuals with freedom of thought and (to a certain extent) of action. Morality is NOT fundamental."

I'm afraid you contradict yourself in the above statement.

Basically, you are saying that a society comprised of individuals with freedom of thought will have a range of choices available to them. If they consistently choose sub-optimally, they will either suffer or die. This is determined solely by the combination of natural laws exisiting in this particular Universe. A social thermodynamics, if you will.

Any society exisiting and prospering in this Universe will therefore follow a similar path of best decisions and will work out a set of key rules that guide them in making those decisions. Those rules will be common across the Universe and will describe the fundamental principles of successful social behaviour = morality, built into this Universe.

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: "most important book"

"I'd argue that they didn't, or at least that no society had hitherto been founded upon them. The Roman and Persian empires, China, Japan, the other ancient empires I have read about, ran on completely different moral codes."

Don't confuse morality and customs. Morality is fundamental and is the same for everyone because it is determined by laws of nature. Customs are whatever rules and edicts considered expedient for inclusion by the author of the particular rule book, given his own baggage of life experience, understanding (or not) of it and political ambitions.

Every religious book starts with the fundamental morality and then tries to distort it to justify and support enforcement of unrelated, petty and self-serving rules designed to preserve the position of power of the authors or their sponsors.

"hence much trouble in today's world"

I believe that the fact that our moral code is being routinely ignored by our own leaders has more to do with that then some fundamental difference in moral principles of different cultures in today's world.

And also the internal conflict of some of the tribal/cultural/customary rules with those determined by fundamental morality.

ESA sends back PRE-LANDING COMET CLOSE-UPS

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Forget about the one round hole

The whole area looks like a honeycomb to me.

Tech bubble? No, no way, nope, says Silicon Valley investor

Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Re: Here's the real red flag...

Growth in a loss making company means only more losses for investors. That is the only metrics there is... It's also called "burn" for a reason.