We'll now all be subject to H&S training material on the dangers of sex on work trips. Presumably I'll have to sign a certificate promising not to engage in activities (I can add it to my course certificate promising not to engage in human trafficking...).
For the record, blowers compress air to pressures intermediate between fans and compressors. They're used at wastewater treatment works to aerate activated sludge plants and aerobic digesters (the former are not shown on the hmi - presumably on another page to the 'left'?). The aerobic bacteria that eat the waste would otherwise use up the available dissolved oxygen very quickly and die. The process would then 'go septic' and be populated by anaerobic bacteria producing methane and hydrogen sulfide and various other gases that are foul-smelling, corrosive and/or explosive.
ie it's unlikely the blowers are there to 'disperse accumulated gas'.
I suspect the plant in question would be this one - http://g.co/maps/ybhvb
I'm actually pretty terrified about attacks on water infrastructure SCADA. Petrochem and Chemical plants are much more susceptible to going bang but equally have vastly more money thrown at them. For the most part water infrastructure is, once built, minimally funded until something finally breaks.
Personally I hope Qantas goes bankrupt, Joyce spends the rest of his life unemployed, and that Qantas staff and pilots never work again for an airline. I'm sick of the arrogant, incompetent Qantas bullsh*t.
As the owner of quite a few Apple products, starting to wonder whether I'm like one of those circa 1935 german intellectuals benefitting from the on-time trains...
if somebody knows a way to actually obtain video on demand legally in Australia, I'd love to hear it. I've tried Foxtel (fail because you need a PSTN connection - very high tech...), I've tried Apple (fail because you can't access a lot of material until after it's been broadcast on tv), I've tried Netflix (fail because I'm now outside the US). Just what the hell are the options?
Perhaps the most dramatic price differential I noticed after flying home to Australia from the US was the ~50% price increases on Steam. Nothing had changed except my IP address. Prices were still even quoted in US Dollars.
almost had the opportunity to upgrade to an android phone after almost broke iphone into very small, very *quiet* pieces.
astonished to discover many others at my office had the same problem. that NZ has apparently had this for a week and the fix still hasn't been released makes you question Apple's competence.
was looking forward to viewing pipework schematics in the field from iPad. now have to use their upload service - which will be inevitably be blocked by company's firewall - sigh...
surely it'd be cheaper to just put up proper targets on the pylons. give them something more interesting to shoot at (and which they might actually *hit*)
in 2003 about 16% of asian shipping was to Atlantic ports (and rising). so it is price competitive. I guess the point is a shipper can't just drop it off in LA and 'call it good'. It's about another 2400 miles to the north east cities (which I chose as a neat point of comparison with the UK). It is cheaper to ship to LA and rail overland but not so much as to make the apples vs apples comparison of the sea routes invalid.
Taking some quick measurements on Google Earth, it's about 18000km from Shanghai to UK via Suez Canal and about 19000km from Shanghai to NYC via Panama Canal. so distances can't be a factor.
Living in Australia where we're often blatantly ripped off (although to be fair it's not as bad as it used to be), it's pretty clear distances have no bearing.
At the end of the day pricing is a demand side as much as a supply side decision - they charge more because they can.
wonder why some sort of portable automated point defence kit hasn't been developed. I imagine even a TOW size warhead would be enough to disable a small pirate ship - might make piracy less cost-effective. would be more effective than combat teams who seem to do no more than deter an attack until the next ship. still, have a fair bit of sympathy for the somalis - we took their fish now they take our goods.
Doesn't surprise me that maths and reading skills decline. They're both skills rather than knowledge based and can't really see any educational value from a computer. I wonder though about the scores for subjects like history, geography and science. Wikipedia, Google Earth, Hyperphysics, myriad of specialist websites, etc would be astonishing resources. I certainly wish I'd had access to them when I was a kid.
Also I wouldn't discount the socialising value of access to Facebook et al. Irrespective of what you think about them, they are the predominant socialising tools for young people and the effects of being excluded on account of poverty must be pretty devastating.
we do live in a democracy (more or less). ask around and most Australians would *want* this.
had a surreal conversation with PhD lit student of Melbourne uni last week. she was shocked (and horrified) that the govt *wasn't* currently logging web traffic.
Australia has never had any particular culture of individual freedom and that's what needs to change - spitting the dummy at the govt doesn't help
been following these guys since before the first Falcon 1 blew up. absolutely remarkable achievement. congratulations. perhaps we might finally get the space industry we've all been waiting for ever since Apollo was concluded.
as others have pointed out - this article misses the point of the technology. fresh water is never in short supply providing you've got a coast line and enormous amounts of power. RO plants are springing up around the world for precisely that reason. the problems with RO are precisely that of energy. they are hideously expensive to run, particularly if they're going to use green power and not contribute to 'burning' through our limited fossil or nuclear energy supplies.
if it's even less efficient than ROs then this seems like a useful gadget but with precisely zero relevance to global water supplies.
Last time I felt that way was watching star wars for probably the 20th time at the age of seven. at 35 though - at least it seems he can hold down a job.
Apparently there was constant stream of defections from the New England colonies to the natives in the 17th century (and little in reverse), so Cameron's tapped into a real sentiment - more um 'aggressive darwinian pressures on that lifestyle' (suicidal maniac) not withstanding.
'Britain hasn't produced especially great tanks' - I was under the impression the Centurion and Chieftain were quite superb - they certainly had long and successful histories - and that the Challenger 2 is as good as any of its contemporaries.
also - the reliance on air power was what tripped up the Israelis during the early stages of the Yom Kippur War. It's a bit worrying that doctrine is becoming so reliant on having both air superiority and limited enemy air defense.
October used to kill me in the UK - all the while everybody crapping on about beautiful autumnal colours. one of the reasons I came back home to Aus. Beautiful weather here today by the way...
it's depressing to say but as an aussie we got the govt we deserve. on the whole we're a conservative/reactionary bunch - think Texas minus a bill of rights - and I'm convinced this is the sort of govt most people want. as I was saying - depressing...
Listening to the Savage Nation was one of the highpoints of my commute home in the states. Like a mini Nuremberg rally every night. Brits don't know what they're missing...
and how are these guys going to get through basic?
I can't really see the borderline aspies who're actually going to do this cyber warfare sh*t getting through the whole 'twenty push-ups - on your knuckles' business.
'and a link to Wikipedia will inform you of their details and statistics'
be replaced with
'and a link to Wikipedia, the controversial encyclopedia that can be edited by anybody irrespective of qualifications, will provide more information, although given Wikipedia's well established and intrinsic lack of reliability, it's a shame a more substantiated source wasn't used.'
What's with the amateur psychology? Bill Gates is reallocating pretty much all of his resources (over the long-term) to ameliorating diseases in the 3rd world (not pissing it away like those Live Aid idiots). The people whose lives (hopefully and probably) will be improved by this couldn't care less about whether he gets a warm and fuzzy feeling out of it. Steve Jobs so far has chosen not to - perhaps he will, perhaps he won't. That's his perogative.
@Psymon - indiscriminate bombing was never considered taboo by the nazis - think Guernica or Rotterdam. Bomber Command might well have perfected it (although I doubt it did much to assist the war effort in Europe) but it certainly wasn't a British precedent. I don't think it was a particularly strategic decision either - I gather it was more a matter of the RAF's inability to hit anything smaller than a town (without an equivalent of the Nordstrom sight), or protect the bombers on deep daylight missions (without an equivalent of the P-51). The yanks, who certainly weren't squeamish about slaughter in Japan, never bothered with carpet bombing over Europe.
my first response to all those slamming aus and aussies was basically eff-you - then had to concede you're basically right... I'd blame the govt - full (on both sides) of repressed, self-righteous luddites but then a people always get the govt they deserve. it's difficult to contain the contempt for my fellow aussies who passively or actively support this censorship.
sorry - after three Windows Mobile devices over the last 6 years I now feel physically sick when I see that windows logo. all that time I felt like an abused spouse - 'No it's going to change, it just needs more time...'
now my (brand new) iPhone - that's a thing of beauty
am deeply reassured that even the experts can't agree about how a bloody wing works. pretty hard to argue with Mark_T's power/weight ratio but as far as why the air seems to behave like a solid support - guess I'll just have to embrace my ignorance
happy I'm a water engineer where the fluid is nice and unsquishy and provided it stays in its pipes, reasonably well behaved.
I wouldn't feel too bad about old Blighty's organising. At the 2008 JSOH at Andrews AFB we queued for two hours at a metro station (one of only two 'entrance' points) for security checks. Had a beautiful view of the B-2 flying from about 3 miles away. Would have been better off parking by the beltway. Never had any probs remotely like that Farnborough.
Register
61 posts • joined Monday 19th November 2007 19:55 GMT
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inevitable result
We'll now all be subject to H&S training material on the dangers of sex on work trips. Presumably I'll have to sign a certificate promising not to engage in activities (I can add it to my course certificate promising not to engage in human trafficking...).
Re: Putting the boot in
Funny that -
"Cambridge University (Engineering degree 1988-91, St John's College)"
http://lewispage.blogspot.com.au/
The. Greatest. Game. Ever.
I reckon I could still navigate Citadel Station blindfolded :)
turns *dead* seaweed into ethanol
I suspect the seaweed is mulched down first into nothing but a soup of smashed up dead cells.
I doubt the bacteria would have much success with living seaweed.
not when it comes to IT
I think it's usually something like A$1 buys US$0.80 worth of stuff...
tough <> hard
Cobalt is hard, not tough. (It's quite brittle).
water engineer
For the record, blowers compress air to pressures intermediate between fans and compressors. They're used at wastewater treatment works to aerate activated sludge plants and aerobic digesters (the former are not shown on the hmi - presumably on another page to the 'left'?). The aerobic bacteria that eat the waste would otherwise use up the available dissolved oxygen very quickly and die. The process would then 'go septic' and be populated by anaerobic bacteria producing methane and hydrogen sulfide and various other gases that are foul-smelling, corrosive and/or explosive.
ie it's unlikely the blowers are there to 'disperse accumulated gas'.
I suspect the plant in question would be this one - http://g.co/maps/ybhvb
I'm actually pretty terrified about attacks on water infrastructure SCADA. Petrochem and Chemical plants are much more susceptible to going bang but equally have vastly more money thrown at them. For the most part water infrastructure is, once built, minimally funded until something finally breaks.
a pox on both their houses
Personally I hope Qantas goes bankrupt, Joyce spends the rest of his life unemployed, and that Qantas staff and pilots never work again for an airline. I'm sick of the arrogant, incompetent Qantas bullsh*t.
not just IT
agree with the 'get it working' attitude. and not just got for IT. extends to engineering in general.
was he ever going to be a nationality other than Australian?
despite encroaching state nannying - we still manage to find imaginative ways to kill ourselves. makes you quite proud.
first they came?
As the owner of quite a few Apple products, starting to wonder whether I'm like one of those circa 1935 german intellectuals benefitting from the on-time trains...
and the options are?
if somebody knows a way to actually obtain video on demand legally in Australia, I'd love to hear it. I've tried Foxtel (fail because you need a PSTN connection - very high tech...), I've tried Apple (fail because you can't access a lot of material until after it's been broadcast on tv), I've tried Netflix (fail because I'm now outside the US). Just what the hell are the options?
video games
Perhaps the most dramatic price differential I noticed after flying home to Australia from the US was the ~50% price increases on Steam. Nothing had changed except my IP address. Prices were still even quoted in US Dollars.
now *this* is the article I was waiting for
worried all we were going to get was this...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/19/cameron_defence_announcement/
not a happy camper
almost had the opportunity to upgrade to an android phone after almost broke iphone into very small, very *quiet* pieces.
astonished to discover many others at my office had the same problem. that NZ has apparently had this for a week and the fix still hasn't been released makes you question Apple's competence.
and direct file transfer??
was looking forward to viewing pipework schematics in the field from iPad. now have to use their upload service - which will be inevitably be blocked by company's firewall - sigh...
misdirection
surely it'd be cheaper to just put up proper targets on the pylons. give them something more interesting to shoot at (and which they might actually *hit*)
looks like some Googlers will now be on the fiddle
deprived of a square meal
16% of asian shipping is to Atlantic ports
according to
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/archive/Conferences/MTS/4C%20BombaPaper.pdf
in 2003 about 16% of asian shipping was to Atlantic ports (and rising). so it is price competitive. I guess the point is a shipper can't just drop it off in LA and 'call it good'. It's about another 2400 miles to the north east cities (which I chose as a neat point of comparison with the UK). It is cheaper to ship to LA and rail overland but not so much as to make the apples vs apples comparison of the sea routes invalid.
travel distances not a factor
Taking some quick measurements on Google Earth, it's about 18000km from Shanghai to UK via Suez Canal and about 19000km from Shanghai to NYC via Panama Canal. so distances can't be a factor.
Living in Australia where we're often blatantly ripped off (although to be fair it's not as bad as it used to be), it's pretty clear distances have no bearing.
At the end of the day pricing is a demand side as much as a supply side decision - they charge more because they can.
bolt-on point defence kit
wonder why some sort of portable automated point defence kit hasn't been developed. I imagine even a TOW size warhead would be enough to disable a small pirate ship - might make piracy less cost-effective. would be more effective than combat teams who seem to do no more than deter an attack until the next ship. still, have a fair bit of sympathy for the somalis - we took their fish now they take our goods.
what about science and history
Doesn't surprise me that maths and reading skills decline. They're both skills rather than knowledge based and can't really see any educational value from a computer. I wonder though about the scores for subjects like history, geography and science. Wikipedia, Google Earth, Hyperphysics, myriad of specialist websites, etc would be astonishing resources. I certainly wish I'd had access to them when I was a kid.
Also I wouldn't discount the socialising value of access to Facebook et al. Irrespective of what you think about them, they are the predominant socialising tools for young people and the effects of being excluded on account of poverty must be pretty devastating.
don't blame the govt
we do live in a democracy (more or less). ask around and most Australians would *want* this.
had a surreal conversation with PhD lit student of Melbourne uni last week. she was shocked (and horrified) that the govt *wasn't* currently logging web traffic.
Australia has never had any particular culture of individual freedom and that's what needs to change - spitting the dummy at the govt doesn't help
he actually *did* it
been following these guys since before the first Falcon 1 blew up. absolutely remarkable achievement. congratulations. perhaps we might finally get the space industry we've all been waiting for ever since Apollo was concluded.
now snipers will have to take shots while hopping on one leg...
sorry has to be said
could have been worse
oh well at least he wasn't beaten up, maced, arrested, convicted of assaulting a police office and deported. http://www.rifters.com/crawl/
only power!?
as others have pointed out - this article misses the point of the technology. fresh water is never in short supply providing you've got a coast line and enormous amounts of power. RO plants are springing up around the world for precisely that reason. the problems with RO are precisely that of energy. they are hideously expensive to run, particularly if they're going to use green power and not contribute to 'burning' through our limited fossil or nuclear energy supplies.
if it's even less efficient than ROs then this seems like a useful gadget but with precisely zero relevance to global water supplies.
what the f*ck is wrong with my country
rhetorical question
actually they were flying in international airspace
and they only emergency landed in China because an incompetent PLA jock kamikazed them.
spying yes - not stealing. they were simply passively listening in on chinese military signals. not aggressively hacking their systems.
poor guy
Last time I felt that way was watching star wars for probably the 20th time at the age of seven. at 35 though - at least it seems he can hold down a job.
Apparently there was constant stream of defections from the New England colonies to the natives in the 17th century (and little in reverse), so Cameron's tapped into a real sentiment - more um 'aggressive darwinian pressures on that lifestyle' (suicidal maniac) not withstanding.
and Conroy's a bloody pom!
just to add insult to injury :)
british tanks not great?
'Britain hasn't produced especially great tanks' - I was under the impression the Centurion and Chieftain were quite superb - they certainly had long and successful histories - and that the Challenger 2 is as good as any of its contemporaries.
also - the reliance on air power was what tripped up the Israelis during the early stages of the Yom Kippur War. It's a bit worrying that doctrine is becoming so reliant on having both air superiority and limited enemy air defense.
holy sh*t - I thought it was just me
October used to kill me in the UK - all the while everybody crapping on about beautiful autumnal colours. one of the reasons I came back home to Aus. Beautiful weather here today by the way...
depressing but not surprising
it's depressing to say but as an aussie we got the govt we deserve. on the whole we're a conservative/reactionary bunch - think Texas minus a bill of rights - and I'm convinced this is the sort of govt most people want. as I was saying - depressing...
don't know what you're missing
Listening to the Savage Nation was one of the highpoints of my commute home in the states. Like a mini Nuremberg rally every night. Brits don't know what they're missing...
and how are these guys going to get through basic?
I can't really see the borderline aspies who're actually going to do this cyber warfare sh*t getting through the whole 'twenty push-ups - on your knuckles' business.
not too late
to rail against other forms of impersonal communication like telephones and letters
this got past Reg editorial control?
shouldn't -
'and a link to Wikipedia will inform you of their details and statistics'
be replaced with
'and a link to Wikipedia, the controversial encyclopedia that can be edited by anybody irrespective of qualifications, will provide more information, although given Wikipedia's well established and intrinsic lack of reliability, it's a shame a more substantiated source wasn't used.'
there - I think that should pass muster
this isn't a bloody race
What's with the amateur psychology? Bill Gates is reallocating pretty much all of his resources (over the long-term) to ameliorating diseases in the 3rd world (not pissing it away like those Live Aid idiots). The people whose lives (hopefully and probably) will be improved by this couldn't care less about whether he gets a warm and fuzzy feeling out of it. Steve Jobs so far has chosen not to - perhaps he will, perhaps he won't. That's his perogative.
only 'taboo' for the allies
@Psymon - indiscriminate bombing was never considered taboo by the nazis - think Guernica or Rotterdam. Bomber Command might well have perfected it (although I doubt it did much to assist the war effort in Europe) but it certainly wasn't a British precedent. I don't think it was a particularly strategic decision either - I gather it was more a matter of the RAF's inability to hit anything smaller than a town (without an equivalent of the Nordstrom sight), or protect the bombers on deep daylight missions (without an equivalent of the P-51). The yanks, who certainly weren't squeamish about slaughter in Japan, never bothered with carpet bombing over Europe.
uh-huh
so we can get rid of all that concrete shielding in nuclear power plants and replace it with 'radiation-proof' textile. sure
depressed aussie
my first response to all those slamming aus and aussies was basically eff-you - then had to concede you're basically right... I'd blame the govt - full (on both sides) of repressed, self-righteous luddites but then a people always get the govt they deserve. it's difficult to contain the contempt for my fellow aussies who passively or actively support this censorship.
pavlovian response to WM
sorry - after three Windows Mobile devices over the last 6 years I now feel physically sick when I see that windows logo. all that time I felt like an abused spouse - 'No it's going to change, it just needs more time...'
now my (brand new) iPhone - that's a thing of beauty
just write your bloody novel already, Lewis
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what the hell's this doing in the Reg?
slow news day, huh?
@Martin
ah - but the fourth one stayed up! - and that's what you'll get son, the strongest rocket in the country
51st state?
according to Geotool the IP number is somewhere in Kansas
http://geotool.servehttp.com/?ip=8.15.32.33&host=www.number10.gov.uk
anybody care to explain?
my head hurts
(obviously) devout christian pays 50k for scientists to 'play God' with a dog named from Revenge of the Nerds?
reassured
am deeply reassured that even the experts can't agree about how a bloody wing works. pretty hard to argue with Mark_T's power/weight ratio but as far as why the air seems to behave like a solid support - guess I'll just have to embrace my ignorance
happy I'm a water engineer where the fluid is nice and unsquishy and provided it stays in its pipes, reasonably well behaved.
organization
I wouldn't feel too bad about old Blighty's organising. At the 2008 JSOH at Andrews AFB we queued for two hours at a metro station (one of only two 'entrance' points) for security checks. Had a beautiful view of the B-2 flying from about 3 miles away. Would have been better off parking by the beltway. Never had any probs remotely like that Farnborough.
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