| Tuesday, August
22, 2006
Harry Erwin's Letter
from England
Subject: Letter from England
Diane and I spent the weekend in London. We saw the
play '39 Steps", which is a send-up of the Hitchcock movie (which was a
send-up of the book), did a couple of guided walks, and got our shopping
done. Later, I'll post some pictures to my blog so people in America can
have a small taste of August in London.
The UK security services are peeved about FBI leaks.
There is a certain amount of scepticism here about last week's terror
arrests, so charges had to be brought. <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1854503,00.html>
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1855601,00.html>
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2323085,00.html>
Israeli reservists angry with their government about
the mishandled war in Lebanon. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1855611,00.html>
The UK educational system is failing to teach the
basics--school leavers (at 16) are typically unable to write a coherent
letter correct in grammar and spelling. They also can't do simple
calculations as the they haven't memorised the times tables. A large part of
the problem is that exams can't possibly test everything a student should
know, so they're written to a syllabus, which the schools proceed to
emphasise to the detriment of everything else. I have seen the same thing at
the university level. A computing graduate should have mastered at least one
computer language, which takes about 18 months of practice, but you can't
test mastery on a three hour exam, so the students try to fake it without
the practice. <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1854349,00.html>
The Tories appear to be coming back: <http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1855568,00.html>
Sometimes you have to get the balance right. The
system here that handles youth offenders is underfunded, over-bureaucratised,
and poorly managed, so the police are discouraged both formally and
informally from making arrests for minor offences. That means the yobs run
wild, and you end up jailing them for more serious offences. You then
warehouse them with expert criminals, where they improve their skills. What
is really needed is to separate the sheep from the goats early and then
treat each subgroup appropriately, instead of waiting too long. <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1854331,00.html>
Here's part of the reason why. I don't doubt this is
part of the problem in America, too. <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1854340,00.html>
It's not just the research councils and the NHS that
have to cope with the Treasury shell game. The Army suffers, too. <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1854478,00.html>
National Health Service computer chaos. <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1854475,00.html>
<http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1855563,00.html>
NHS rationing of care. The NHS values one year of life
span at £30,000. If it costs more than that, no deal. One of the reasons I
leave my retirement funds in America. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5262760.stm>
Pension schemes in the UK. Another reason I leave my
retirement funds in America. <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1854506,00.html>
Cricket fiasco. <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2322944,00.html>
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information
Systems Security, University of Sunderland. <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw>
Weblog at: <http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/blog/index.php>
========
Joanne Dow recommends:
Subject: Robert Spencer on CSPAN
It's long. It's important! It's well done.
http://www.q-and-a.org/Program/?ProgramID=1086
Another long one comes from Czechoslovakia and is
important. A young man infiltrated Mohammedanism and brought back what is
REALLY there rather than their facade.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22203_Video-_I_A_Muslim&only
{^_^}
==========
Subj: Ed Felten: From DRM Wars to
PRM Wars
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1051
DRM Wars: The Next Generation
=... Policymakers, and music and movie companies, are
starting to realize that DRM won’t solve their P2P infringement problems.
And so the usual argument for DRM-bolstering laws is losing its force. ... [A]dvocates
of DRM-bolstering laws have switched to two new arguments. First, they argue
that DRM enables price discrimination — business models that charge
different customers different prices for a product — and that price
discrimination benefits society, at least sometimes. Second, they argue that
DRM helps platform developers lock in their customers, as Apple has done
with its iPod/iTunes products, and that lock-in increases the incentive to
develop platforms. ...=
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1052
DRM Wars: Property Rights Management
=... The new arguments have no real connection to
copyright enforcement so (I predict) the DRM policy debate will come
unmoored from copyright. ...= They apply to physical as well as to
intellectual property. =A good example is the use of cryptographic lockout
codes in computer printers and their toner cartridges [to prevent
refilling].= As Moore's Law makes such *Property* Rights Management techs
cheaper, they can be more widely applied. Will they? Time for a public
policy debate!
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1053
PRM Wars
Will the public be more skeptical about generalized
PRM than they've been about DRM for enforcing copyright? Will legislators
and courts? Will anyone apply any lessons from the DRM experience to the PRM
debate?
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
===========
Subj: Multiple cores, memory and
the future
At what point will stuffing more and more cores into
each CPU chip hit the memory-bandwidth wall?
It makes no sense to have a zillion cores on a chip if
almost all of them are always stalled, waiting for memory access.
Seems to me more likely that, somewhere around four or
eight cores, it'll make more sense to go to much larger caches, or even to
bring some of the main memory array on-chip, rather than to keep increasing
the core count.
In the eight-core Cell Broadband Engine for the
PlayStation3, each of the seven Synergistic Processor Elements runs from its
own private on-chip local store; it accesses the main memory array only via
DMA transfers between that array and its local store.
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-cbea.html
Cell Broadband Engine Architecture from 20,000 feet
The Blue Gene/L supercomputer packages CPU and RAM
chips together on a single module:
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/492/coteus.html
IBM JRD 49-2/3 | Packaging the Blue Gene/L
supercomputer
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/492/coteu2.gif
Blue Gene/L compute card
The compute card has two dual-core CPU chips and nine
RAM chips (total 512 megs RAM) for each CPU chip, soldered to an 8x2-inch
circuit board. The RAM chips are soldered to only one side of the board, so
it'd be straightforward to make a 2x4-inch module -- not lots bigger than a
DIMM -- with one dual-core CPU chip and a gigabyte of RAM.
Each CPU chip also has five network interfaces
on-chip.
It's easier for IBM to play these games than it is for
Intel or AMD: IBM's CPU cores are just elements in a *library* of circuit
modules that also includes controllers for off-chip memory, on-chip memory
arrays and interfaces to several kinds of off-chip networks, all designed to
be put together in various combinations. For Blue Gene, IBM added a custom
"Double Hummer" floating-point unit to each CPU core; Double Hummer has
special instructions to speed up complex-number arithmetic.
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
=========
Jerry
This is really cool. A "Smoke Angel:"
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Ed
The smoke angel picture is lovely, but the URL is for the "current day's
picture". For a static link to that picture, use:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060822.html
--Gary Pavek
=========
Subject: The future is here,
Jerry
The future is here - free TV over the Internet:
http://news.com.com/Disney+calls+Net+TV+
effort+a+success/2100-1026_36108000.html?tag=nefd.top
I have even found my daughter watching a TV show
on-line. After all this trouble we went through to make sure we can pick up
no broadcast TV, and have no cable TV, we are undone by our cable Internet.
We can run, but we can't hide.
Ed
=========
Subject: -- Age of Censorship?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060821/0255244.shtml
Tim of Angle
'Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor
yet the last to cast the old aside.'
==========
Israel and Lebanon
1) A roman legion commander would have handled missing
soldiers right there, communications slow in those days.
The blessings and curses of modern instant
communications. Problems get passed up the chain of command. Decisions get
handled at the highest level, regardless as to whether or not competent,
whether or not action at a lower level would have been appropriate.
2) It had to happen, finally someone figured out how
to fight the israeli.
Learning From Its Mistakes by Charles Glass
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/glass2.html
a) <begin quote 1> ... But what impressed most
Lebanese as much as Hizbullah’s victory over Israel was its refusal to
murder collaborators – a triumph over the tribalism that has plagued and
divided Lebanese society since its founding. ... <end quote 1>
This means poor people, people with their eyes on sack
of food, can work for israel and survive. Survive to tell hizbulla
everything they know.
b) <begin quote 2> ... Israel’s massive
destruction of Lebanon has had the effect of improving Hizbullah’s
standing in the country. Its popularity had been low since last year,
when it alone refused to demand the evacuation of the Syrian army after
the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Hizbullah sensed that Washington was orchestrating the anti-Syrian
campaign for its own – rather than Lebanon’s – benefit. <end quote 2>
Remember this: Syria was invited in to help put an end
to the civil war. Blowing up anyone would have been contrary to Syrian
interests.
c) <begin quote 3> ... Despite occasional Syrian
pressure, Hizbullah has refused to go into combat against any other
Lebanese militia. It remained aloof from the civil war and concentrated
on defeating Israel and its SLA surrogates. <end quote 3>
These guys understand the concept of: One enemy at a
time.
Now to see when the rest of the Arabs copy the example
of Hizbullah.
Scott Rich
Indeed. For an incident involving two
Legionnaires, the Legate wouldn't have bothered consulting the Governor;
he'd simply have crucified a dozen people from the local village, and made
it clear that the Legion policy was no better friend, no worse enemy.
And had the Governor been visiting, he would probably have left the matter
to the Legate. Only if one of those seized for retaliation plead that he was
a Citizen would the matter have been considered complicated.
And whether or not the Arabs understand
the concept of one enemy at a time, there are plenty of others in the region
who do. The Latin (Christian, with Norman kings) Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted
for generations, until Saladin, no Arab but a Kurd, used his Kurdish
tribesmen as bodyguards and power base and united the region; and then
defeated the over-confident Norman chivalry at the Horns of Hattin.
========
Subj: Has Bill Gates backed off on intellectual
property rights?
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1049
Bill Gates: Is he an IP Maximalist, or an Open Access
Advocate?
The Gates Foundation insists that AIDS-vaccine
researchers share their results promptly.
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
============
I asked John Carmack
for comments on the Register article on liquid explosives
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/
I just sent the following to the author, you can quote
anything you like:
I'm usually in the position of trying to use basic
statistics and common sense to combat fear-mongering about the dangers of
terrorism, but I have to tell you that you are just plain wrong about the
impracticality of binary liquid explosives.
I worked with concentrated peroxide for years at
Armadillo Aerospace, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that you can
reliably mix two clear liquids and get a high explosive that can be
detonated by a sharp impact.
TATP is an unstable molecule that can slowly form in
acetone / peroxide mixtures, even fairly dilute ones. Synthesizing and
purifying that is probably something better done in a lab, but a simple
solution of concentrated peroxide and acetone (or any other soluble fuel
like methanol or ethanol) is also an explosive that is just as powerful.
Many explosive, like gunpowder or ANFO, are not compounds at all, but simply
mixtures of oxidizers and fuels.
You do need concentrated peroxide to do this, the
common 3% peroxide from the drug store won't cut it. We have first hand data
points at a couple of these concentration levels, but there are some papers
available that map out the sensitivity / concentration / mixture ratio
diagrams with a lot more tests.
50% peroxide / fuel mixtures won't detonate, even with
a blasting cap. We used a very large amount of this safely as a rocket
propellant, which does demonstrate that just mixing them is not hazardous.
60% peroxide / fuel mixtures can be detonated with a
blasting cap. A blasting cap would probably be caught by explosive sniffing
equipment, so it probably wouldn't be useful for terrorists.
85% peroxide / fuel mixtures can be detonated by
modest impacts. Shaking a plastic bottle of mixed solution with a few ball
bearings in it would probably do it.
98% peroxide / fuel mixtures can be detonated by
static electricity.
30% concentration peroxide is available in jug
quantities from many places on the net. 50% peroxide is available in drums
from many suppliers. We bought over ten tons of it while we were doing
mixed-monoprop propellant work a couple years ago. 70% peroxide is what most
manufacturers produce, but it only gets delivered by tank car to qualified
receiving stations. The only remaining domestic supplier of 90 / 98%
peroxide essentially only sells to government contractors.
This does mean that you can't just pick up the
chemicals you need, but don't overstate the difficulty of doing the
concentration. We did decide that it wasn't worth our while to do large
scale (tens of tons) concentration ourselves, but here we are talking about
just making enough to fill a couple water bottles. We concentrated a few
gallons ourselves early on with vacuum distillation, and there are a couple
people you can find on the net that will sell you a ready-to-use
concentrator system for modest quantities. For the water bottle quantities,
all you have to do is leave some 30% peroxide in an open crock pot under
modest heat for a few days, and you are left with a much smaller quantity of
85% peroxide. A member of the Sacramento L5 society wrote a nice report on
this process.
There is no immediate reaction when mixing these fuels
into even 98% peroxide. Left on a shelf for a long time, or in the presence
of various chemicals that can catalyze the reaction, you will get some of
the organic peroxide molecules that chemists usually think about when you
mention peroxide explosives, but this isn't at all important for just making
a bomb.
I can say this with certainty, because we have
actually done it. When we began working with concentrated peroxide as a
rocket propellant, we did many tests to sort out the mythical dangers from
the real dangers. One of these tests was the explosiveness of peroxide /
fuel mixtures. We used methanol with 98% peroxide, but not at an optimal
mixture ratio. It would do just fine to blow a hole in the side of an
aircraft. No doubt about it.
I wouldn't advocate any additional regulation or
security measures based on this, but promulgating a new myth that binary
explosives aren't a valid danger isn't helping anything.
John Carmack
www.armadilloaerospace.com
www.idsoftware.com
=============
Subject: More on Steorn: the plot
thickens
Jerry, I do wish that the next free energy claimant
would come up with a simpler name to pronounce than 'Steorn'. What's the
matter with 'Joe, inc.'?
Steorn now states that the patent referred to does not
constitute the sum total of their invention. The following is from their
website at
http://www.steorn.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=41&page=1#Item_0
:
"the patent refered to (the low energy
magnetic actuator) is not a patent on the core steorn technology. Due to
the fact that the US patent office does not allow patents with this
claim we have filed a sequence of patents wich describe various aspects
of the technology.
The patent refered to is at the PCT stage
and hence is available to the public. Our other patents are currently
pre-PCT and will move to the PCT phase (and hence be available to the
public) in the near future.
Thanks,
The Steorn Team"
Wikipedia is carrying a largely neutral, somewhat
skeptical and quite informative article on the Steorn claims at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn ; they report that
"According to information available from
the Irish Companies Registration Office <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companies_Registration_Office>
, Steorn has not filed accounts since October 28 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_28>
, 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004>
. Under current Companies Registration Office practice strike-off
procedures could begin against Steorn by the end of October 2006. A
strike-off would have serious consequences, such as the loss of Steorn's
limited liability status. Furthermore, any assets of the company,
including any patents or other intellectual property, would become the
property of the Irish State."
However, further investigation indicates
that failure to file accounts is a common failing among Irish based
firms, and should not be used to indicate an unusual instability in
Steorn.
Meanwhile, I fail to understand what prevents them
from simply starting to manufacture a small, useful object that demonstrates
the technology. To me, that is the fatal chink in an otherwise excellent
story.
Regards, Charlie
No one ever actually builds a Dean
Drive, Free Energy machine, or anti-gravity. They all could but they don't
because the theory is so beautiful there is no need to actually build the
thing. They want to get you interested in supporting them, and they have
great PR programs; but they wouldn't need the PR or the theory if they just
built one.
Free, live free.
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