MONDAY, MONDAY Bumped

MONDAY, MONDAY Bumped

Update: Though we are not quite at the threshold where Blogger takes exception to the number of comments on any one thread, seemingly around the two hundred mark, I think it prudent to re-up the post and carry on afresh here. Thank You.

The Mamas and the Papas had plenty to say on the subject. The McCanns, on the other hand, had nothing to say on the subject, either when asked by police in 2007 or since (in Kate McCann’s ‘Account of the Truth’).

And now it appears they are silent once more – deaf to the question of why a computer file generated by CEOP and archived against a date of 30 April 2007 should have appealed for help in finding Madeleine McCann, who was not due to go missing until 3 May! The man who genuinely should know the answer, former CEOP supremo Jim Gamble, has also ‘assumed the foetal position’.

One cannot help but wonder whether Robert Murat booked his urgent early morning flight to Praia da Luz having read the CEOP announcement the night before. Or whether Kate really did take her famous ‘tennis photo’ on the morning of Tuesday 1 May, when Murat was heading home to Portugal.

You see, if Madeleine’s disappearance was known about on the Monday, it would have been when the child was still perfectly well and able to scamper around a tennis court the following morning. Should she then have been extricated from the family’s holiday apartment on account of some incapacity, this might suggest that CEOP also knew about that incapacity in advance.

You can hear the chorus from wherever you sit: “Oh no they didn’t! Kate McCann was confused. The ‘photo was already available to CEOP’s ‘mccann.html’ file (at 11.58.03)! The link was only broken temporarily - until the McCanns managed to communicate the image!” That very day - Monday 30 April; the morning when Madeleine’s group of infant crèche captives actually had an hour’s mini-tennis planned for 10 .00 a.m.

A ‘pic’ prepared within the hour then. Unless of course it was taken on the Sunday evening, following that impromptu social tennis session for newly-arrived adult guests (another truth accounted for by Kate McCann in her book). It does seem rather strange that a moment in time captured immediately following a group tennis session, be it a group of adults or a group of children, should show not a semblance of any one’s presence save that of the subject and her photographer.

And what of those CEOP internet ‘home pages’ that appear suddenly to have gone ‘tits up’ in October 2007? You know, the 10 October edition that cites the latest news to the 8th of the month and the 13 October edition that forgets all about it, but instead seeks to rival Reuters with a reference to what happened no later than the 2nd. Surely that and other strange perturbations can have nothing to do with the McCanns’ return to the UK, having been declared arguidos on 7 September, nor Jim Gamble’s protestations of their innocence a month to the day thereafter, and which were quoted in the Daily Mirror of the same date (7 October):

"We absolutely support the McCann family, they are to be applauded for their tireless work to keep the campaign to find their daughter in the public consciousness."

No, of course not. Pure coincidence, nothing more.

The current ‘hot topic’ though is that ‘30 April 2007’ archival date attributed by the Wayback Machine to certain CEOP internet files; files that make explicit reference to Madeleine McCann, the little girl who was not destined to leave the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, until 3 May.

Whilst interpretation of the information they contain, both visually and in terms of their source code, suggests very strongly that the incriminating date (30 April) is in fact correct, there is a rump of detractors who remain adamant that neither of the two files, which feature heavily in the dispute, was composed, ‘crawled’ (archived), or whatever on 30 April, but that they were legitimately configured on some indeterminate later date and simply ‘misfiled’ by the Wayback Machine, which dropped a stitch somewhere along the line. As a staunch proponent of the WBM’s inadequacies has put it quite recently:

“The same process that archived with an erroneous date will have updated the index with the same erroneous date.”

Note the involvement of a single process, an (as in one) erroneous date, and the inclusion of the latter within the (solitary) index.

Since the keepers of the Wayback Machine have been alerted to these specific shortcomings, they are no doubt busily preparing an announcement to the effect that, having identified the process in question and corrected the system error responsible for appending that one false date (in nearly twenty years of operation) they have ‘fixed the problem’, and we can all now go back to work.

Unfortunately no.

The whole being the sum of its parts in this matter, archive.org will have to do rather better than that. Considerably better in fact. They will have to examine the architecture of their entire system if they are to convince anyone other than themselves that the ‘error’ which has been brought to their attention is confined to the archiving of but two files in 485 billion, since there is now further evidence that it just might have been a tad more widespread. Either that or CEOP have even more explaining to do.

The Wayback Machine is something of a technological wonder of the modern world. Its database is unimaginably large and its retrieval systems concomitantly complex. Nevertheless, at the touch of a button almost, it is possible to establish just how many files associated with a specific URL it has actually recorded over time, even those files set up and administered by CEOP – all 8779 of them according to recent estimates (see following):

For larger image, right click open in new tab.

If one takes the trouble to review this inventory, it very quickly retraces events back to….30 April 2007. And what should we find listed among all those separately identified files with their unique URL terminations? Why, two image files labelled ‘madeleine’, recognizable as ’madeleine_01.jpg’ and ‘madeleine_02.jpg’:

For larger image, right click open in new tab.

There can be no question that the ‘madeleine’ referred to here is Madeleine McCann, as these terminators are exactly those employed within the structure of the CEOP home page as visible (and archived) on 13 May 2007, a construct which, incidentally, features several references to ‘mccann.html’, another data structure that according to WBM detractors was not created until later that year. (Why on earth would anyone program a computer to access a non-existent file? I ask myself):

For larger image, right click open in new tab.

To judge from the foregoing, either The Wayback Machine could be off-line for a considerable period, while their ‘techies’ rebuild almost their entire indexing and retrieval systems, or J. Gamble Esq. had better come up with some convincing explanation as to what CEOP would have been doing with photographs of Madeleine McCann barely two days into the McCann family’s fatal 2007 vacation.

Martin Roberts

Monday Monday by Dr Martin Roberts

Update: I have re-upped this post here: MONDAY MONDAY Bumped Please address your comments at the new post please.

MONDAY, MONDAY

The Mamas and the Papas had plenty to say on the subject. The McCanns, on the other hand, had nothing to say on the subject, either when asked by police in 2007 or since (in Kate McCann’s ‘Account of the Truth’).

And now it appears they are silent once more – deaf to the question of why a computer file generated by CEOP and archived against a date of 30 April 2007 should have appealed for help in finding Madeleine McCann, who was not due to go missing until 3 May! The man who genuinely should know the answer, former CEOP supremo Jim Gamble, has also ‘assumed the foetal position’.

One cannot help but wonder whether Robert Murat booked his urgent early morning flight to Praia da Luz having read the CEOP announcement the night before. Or whether Kate really did take her famous ‘tennis photo’ on the morning of Tuesday 1 May, when Murat was heading home to Portugal.

You see, if Madeleine’s disappearance was known about on the Monday, it would have been when the child was still perfectly well and able to scamper around a tennis court the following morning. Should she then have been extricated from the family’s holiday apartment on account of some incapacity, this might suggest that CEOP also knew about that incapacity in advance.

You can hear the chorus from wherever you sit: “Oh no they didn’t! Kate McCann was confused. The ‘photo was already available to CEOP’s ‘mccann.html’ file (at 11.58.03)! The link was only broken temporarily - until the McCanns managed to communicate the image!” That very day - Monday 30 April; the morning when Madeleine’s group of infant crèche captives actually had an hour’s mini-tennis planned for 10 .00 a.m.

A ‘pic’ prepared within the hour then. Unless of course it was taken on the Sunday evening, following that impromptu social tennis session for newly-arrived adult guests (another truth accounted for by Kate McCann in her book). It does seem rather strange that a moment in time captured immediately following a group tennis session, be it a group of adults or a group of children, should show not a semblance of any one’s presence save that of the subject and her photographer.

And what of those CEOP internet ‘home pages’ that appear suddenly to have gone ‘tits up’ in October 2007? You know, the 10 October edition that cites the latest news to the 8th of the month and the 13 October edition that forgets all about it, but instead seeks to rival Reuters with a reference to what happened no later than the 2nd. Surely that and other strange perturbations can have nothing to do with the McCanns’ return to the UK, having been declared arguidos on 7 September, nor Jim Gamble’s protestations of their innocence a month to the day thereafter, and which were quoted in the Daily Mirror of the same date (7 October):

"We absolutely support the McCann family, they are to be applauded for their tireless work to keep the campaign to find their daughter in the public consciousness."

No, of course not. Pure coincidence, nothing more.

The current ‘hot topic’ though is that ‘30 April 2007’ archival date attributed by the Wayback Machine to certain CEOP internet files; files that make explicit reference to Madeleine McCann, the little girl who was not destined to leave the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, until 3 May.

Whilst interpretation of the information they contain, both visually and in terms of their source code, suggests very strongly that the incriminating date (30 April) is in fact correct, there is a rump of detractors who remain adamant that neither of the two files, which feature heavily in the dispute, was composed, ‘crawled’ (archived), or whatever on 30 April, but that they were legitimately configured on some indeterminate later date and simply ‘misfiled’ by the Wayback Machine, which dropped a stitch somewhere along the line. As a staunch proponent of the WBM’s inadequacies has put it quite recently:

“The same process that archived with an erroneous date will have updated the index with the same erroneous date.”

Note the involvement of a single process, an (as in one) erroneous date, and the inclusion of the latter within the (solitary) index.

Since the keepers of the Wayback Machine have been alerted to these specific shortcomings, they are no doubt busily preparing an announcement to the effect that, having identified the process in question and corrected the system error responsible for appending that one false date (in nearly twenty years of operation) they have ‘fixed the problem’, and we can all now go back to work.

Unfortunately no.

The whole being the sum of its parts in this matter, archive.org will have to do rather better than that. Considerably better in fact. They will have to examine the architecture of their entire system if they are to convince anyone other than themselves that the ‘error’ which has been brought to their attention is confined to the archiving of but two files in 485 billion, since there is now further evidence that it just might have been a tad more widespread. Either that or CEOP have even more explaining to do.

The Wayback Machine is something of a technological wonder of the modern world. Its database is unimaginably large and its retrieval systems concomitantly complex. Nevertheless, at the touch of a button almost, it is possible to establish just how many files associated with a specific URL it has actually recorded over time, even those files set up and administered by CEOP – all 8779 of them according to recent estimates (see following):

For larger image, right click open in new tab.

If one takes the trouble to review this inventory, it very quickly retraces events back to….30 April 2007. And what should we find listed among all those separately identified files with their unique URL terminations? Why, two image files labelled ‘madeleine’, recognizable as ’madeleine_01.jpg’ and ‘madeleine_02.jpg’:

For larger image, right click open in new tab.

There can be no question that the ‘madeleine’ referred to here is Madeleine McCann, as these terminators are exactly those employed within the structure of the CEOP home page as visible (and archived) on 13 May 2007, a construct which, incidentally, features several references to ‘mccann.html’, another data structure that according to WBM detractors was not created until later that year. (Why on earth would anyone program a computer to access a non-existent file? I ask myself):

For larger image, right click open in new tab.

To judge from the foregoing, either The Wayback Machine could be off-line for a considerable period, while their ‘techies’ rebuild almost their entire indexing and retrieval systems, or J. Gamble Esq. had better come up with some convincing explanation as to what CEOP would have been doing with photographs of Madeleine McCann barely two days into the McCann family’s fatal 2007 vacation.

Martin Roberts

Update: Comments for this post have been moved to here. Please address your comments there and not here. Thank you.

The Antikythera Mechanism The 2,000 Year Old Astral Computer

Now I know that on occasion I may wax rapturous about certain things, but I like to think that it is not without reason. Typically was a recent post on the modern wonder, 3D printers, 3D Printers Simply Amazing and believe me, they simply are.

But that which has brought about the latest bit of praise, for all of  its incredible complexity, its staggering sophistication and its mathematical genius, isn't a product of our modern scientific world, it is the two thousand year old product of ancient Greece.

This is not the first time I have watched this BBC4 production, and I find it no less amazing the second time around, staggering in fact. And no more staggering than that which is revealed at the thirty eight minute mark, it is, for want of a better expression, a fuck off moment, a moment where you say, fuck off, I'm not having that, not two thousand years ago I'm not.

Enjoy.

What is the Antikythera Mechanism?

The antikythera mechanism is currently housed in the Greek National Archaeological Museum in Athens and is thought to be one of the most complicated antiques in existence. At the beginning of the 20th century, divers off the island of Antikythera came across this clocklike mechanism, which is thought to be at least 2,000 years old, in the wreckage of a cargo ship. The device was very thin and made of bronze. It was mounted in a wooden frame and had more than 2,000 characters inscribed all over it. Though nearly 95 percent of these have been deciphered by experts, there as not been a publication of the full text of the inscription.

These are big images should you wish a better view.

Today it is believed that this instrument was a kind of mechanical analog computer used to calculate the movements of stars and planets in astronomy. It has been estimated that the antikythera mechanism was built around 87 B.C and was lost in 76 B.C. No one has any idea about why or how it came to be on that ill-fated cargo ship. The ship was Roman though the antikythera mechanism was developed in Greece. One theory suggests that the reason it came to be on the Roman ship could be because the instrument was among the spoils of war garnered by then Roman emperor Julius Caesar. X-rays of the device have indicated that there are at least 30 different gears present in it. British historian Derek Price has done extensive research on what the antikythera mechanism may have been used for. It was not until 1959 that Price put forth the theory that the device was used in astronomy to make calculations and predictions. In 1974, Price presented a model of how the antikythera mechanism might have functioned. When past or future dates were entered into the device it calculated the astronomical information related to the Sun, Moon, and other planets. Some of these findings have been confirmed by more recent researches undertaken by scholars and scientists. However, the full extent of the instrument’s functions still remains unknown. Price had also suggested that the antikythera mechanism might have been on public display in a museum or a public hall. Some others have also come up with their variants of the ancient computer, based on Price’s model. Australians Allan Bromley and Frank Percival devised one such model as did Michael Wright, curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum, London.

A joint project is also underway to further study this astounding example of the advancements of technology in ancient times. Known as the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, it is a collaboration between Cardiff University, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, X-Tek Systems, UK, and Hewlett-Packard, USA. This project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and supported by the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece. Since the study started more progress has been made. More than 80 fragments of the mechanism have now been discovered. An official announcement on the results obtained so far is expected to be made at a conference to be held in Athens in December 2006. antikythera-mechanism.com/

Tip of the hat to jonewscientist for the upload.

How it works.

H/T Maren.

3D Printers Simply Amazing

For some weeks now I have been promising myself to see just what 3D printers are all about, because in all truth I didn't know the first thing about them.

And having spent the better part of yesterday afternoon glued to YouTube, I can say, now I know a little something of them, emphasis on the little.

But, as we say oop North, eeh bah gum! what a piece of kit!

Whether it's because I am a Toolmaker/Tooling Engineer myself that leaves me particularly impressed with this remarkable bit of innovation and technology, I don't really know. In a way I suppose it must, but do you have to be an engineer to appreciate this applied technology can make objects that otherwise would be impossible to manufacture, and I do mean impossible?

But it is the engineer in me that truly appreciates the 'one off' capabilities of such printers, being as they are, capable of producing prototypes or master models for a few hundred dollars, instead of  tens of thousands of dollars, if not more in certain cases.

I don't exaggerate when I quote such big numbers. 'One offs' are expensive, one offs of such complexity and tolerances as depicted in the clips below, would be prohibitively expensive. So expensive in actual fact, that many projects simply wouldn't get off the drawing board.

What I do need to do now however, is to go through the clips again in order that I might note and bring certain things to your attention. Not only that, the clips are all over the place at the moment, so they need to be sorted. Consider then for the moment, that I am still at the editing stage with this post, pop back later.

Editing complete, drive on!

What is 3D printing?
By Sebastian Anthony
January 25, 2012

3D printing is a method of manufacturing everything from shoes to jewelery, to guns and aerospace parts, using a computer-controlled printer. The fundamental rule of 3D printing is that it’s an additive manufacturing technique, unlike machining, turning, milling, and sawing which are subtractive.

While there are different kinds of 3D printing, all 3D objects are generally built out of layers. A 3D printer starts with the bottom layer, waits for it to dry or solidify, and then works its way up. This layering process differs depending on the printer and the material it works with — metal, plaster, polymer, resin — but it also depends on whether it’s an industrial or commercial 3D printer.

Industrial vs. commercial

While consumer- and small business-oriented 3D printing is only just taking off, mostly thanks to the MakerBot and RepRaps, 3D printing has been used in an industrial setting for 30 years. Industrial 3D printers tend to be very large and very expensive, but at the same time they are a lot faster than commercial printers. Some industrial printers can print with multiple nozzles at the same time, or even use metal (more on that later). For the most part, industrial printers are nearly always used for rapid prototyping (usually by architects, automakers), but sometimes 3D printed objects — especially in the case of metal objects — are used in final products.

Consumer-oriented 3D printers are cheaper, smaller, slower, and are usually lower resolution than their industrial counterparts. Consumer printers are still used for rapid prototyping, but they’re also used by people who just like the idea of printing stuff out. Generally, consumer printers use thermoplastic extrusion — i.e. it dribbles out tiny dots of melted plastic.

Different printing techniques

3D printing -- the original is on the left hand sideDepending on the material used, how many colors you want, the resolution you require, and how much money you’re willing to fork out, there are at least five popular 3D printing methods to choose from. Some are very similar, but some are really rather crazy (or brilliant).

Fused deposition modeling – The most common 3D printing method is fused deposition modeling (FDM). The raw material with this process is a spool of plastic or metal wire, which is melted and placed by the printer’s nozzle. It quickly hardens, and then the next layer can be added. As far as commercial printers are concerned (like the MakerBot), FDM always uses plastic wire (filament) and is usually called “thermoplastic deposition” in layman’s terms

Inkjet printing — Using special inks (resins and binders) it’s possible to build up a 3D model using a device that’s very similar to a home or office inkjet printer. Layer upon layer of resin and binder are added until an object is created. This is the only 3D printing process that allows for custom colors.

Selective laser sintering – Sintering is the process of creating solid objects from powders, and in the case of selective laser sintering (SLS) the powder can be metal, plastic, ceramic, or glass. Basically, SLS uses a pulsed laser to “draw” the desired cross-section. The powder fuses, and then then the laser forms the next layer on top. This is very much an industrial method, as it requires a rather strong laser.

Digital light processing – With DLP (yes, the same technology behind DLP projectors), a vat of liquid polymer is turned into a very strong solid by exposing it to light. Very high accuracy/resolution can be achieved with this technique — and again, this is an industrial method. Stereolithography is similar to DLP manufacturing, but a lot more expensive.

The others – Finally, there are a few 3D printing techniques that aren’t used extensively, but could be in the future. Resin can be cured using LEDs (similar to the DLP approach); 2-photon photopolymerization can be used to create ultra-small 3D-printed features; laminated object manufacturing uses bits of paper or card stuck together that are then cut out using a laser.

The future of 3D printing More

Below: Starting at the one minute mark, yer man picks up a manufactured sample that just about says all that needs saying. One doesn't need to be any kind of engineer to appreciate the sheer impossibility of manufacturing the product by any other means.

3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing technology where a three dimensional object is created by laying down successive layers of material. 3D printers are generally faster, more affordable and easier to use than other additive manufacturing technologies. 3D printers offer product developers the ability to print parts and assemblies made of several materials with different
mechanical and physical properties in a single build process. Advanced 3D printing technologies yield models that can serve as product prototypes.

Below: This HP sponsored clip highlights the (impossible) complexity of just what can be designed and printed.

The HP Designjet Color 3D printer sets the standard for office-ready, anyone-can-use 3D printing. In this video, Matias del Campo shows off his models and describes how he has been using the machine to save time and create difficult structures that would normally be unthinkable to a model maker in the same circumstances.

The thing really starts to come into its own when metallics are employed in the process.

How It's Made: 3D Metal Printing (Courtesy of Ex One)

Below: Advertising blurb from Zee Printers.




A bit from the UK.



Printing a bicycle with a 3D printer


The future?

3D printing will soon allow digital object storage and transportation, as well as personal manufacturing and very high levels of product customization. This video by Christopher Barnatt of ExplainingTheFuture.com illustrates 3D printing today and in the future.

Update: The Next Battle for Internet Freedom Could Be Over 3D Printing

Update: Short article here with link to a longer piece on printing pharmaceuticals.

Things You Might Take For Granted: The Hard Drive Platter

I could I suppose, have made the header read, Things We Might Take For Granted, but that wouldn't have been, for two reasons in the main, quite true.

The first of those reasons is that I am an engineer, pure and simple. The other reason being that I dismantled an old hard-drive for no other reason to have a look at some of the engineering techniques that went into manufacturing, what by anybody's standards, is a remarkable piece of kit.

What I want to do however, is not concentrate the function of the hard drive, remarkable that it may be, but rather to take a look at the platter itself as a manufactured item.

To describe the platter, or shall we be a bit familiar and call it a disc? To describe then, this three and a half inch, ninety millimetre disc, as a marvel of modern engineering doesn't quite do the thing justice. A more accurate description might be, a miracle of modern engineering; and it's all of that be assured.

To actually manufacture something so big and so thin and end up with something so flat, so parallel, so smooth and so true about its axis, does, without a shadow of doubt, borders on the miraculous.

Let me try to put a little perspective on things. The physical and the physics of slip gauges described below are a good place to start. If you can bear in mind that these gauges or blocks, are extremely stable due to the material from which they are made, hardened steel or tungsten carbide, coupled with there relative small size, approximately ten by thirty millimetres, then it's not such a wonder that they can be manufactured to tolerances that allow them to be used in the manner described.

Slip gauges

Slip gauges are blocks of steel that have been hardened and stabilized by heat treatment. They are ground and lapped to size to very high standards of accuracy and surface finish. They are the most accurate standards of length available for use in workshops. The accuracy and finish is so high that two or more slip gauges may be wrung together. The method of wringing slip gauges together is shown as followings. When correctly cleaned and wrung together, the individual slip gauges adhere to each other by molecular attraction and , if left like this for too long, a partial cold weld will take place. more

But to take those same properties and tolerances and apply them to, what at the end of the day is still basically a ninety millimetre aluminium blank, a couple of millimetres thick, and where when finished, it too will 'wring,' and they do, is as I said earlier, bordering on the miraculous.

And where some might argue that it is the subsequent coatings that are applied to the disk that give it these remarkable properties, which in the case of 'smoothness' would be correct, there is still no getting away from the fact that the blank has to be perfect in every shape, form and plane before any of these processes can take place. And what processes they are! mind-blowing isn't a too fanciful description, but for that it's the text body you need, certainly not me.

But before you move on, let me try and give some perspective to what these tolerances actually mean. Or more accurately, let someone else explain, because one thing I have learned since I started researching this article, I'm not the only fellow who is in awe of the manufacturing process.

. . . . To better understand how data can be destroyed on a hard drive, let's consider what makes a hard drive work in the first place. The ubiquitous hard drive that everyone takes for granted is an absolutely amazing feat of engineering that requires the most demanding manufacturing processes imaginable. For the hard drive to work, the platter surfaces must be absolutely perfect to tolerances measured in Angstroms. An Angstrom is .1 nanometer or put another way, .0000001 millimeter. The surface of the blank, nonmagnetic platters must be flawless in every detail before an equally perfect coating of exotic magnetic material (that holds the data) is added.

Hard drive platters typically spin between 5,000 and 10,000 RPM with some high performance hard drives spinning platters even faster. The spinning platter creates a tiny air current on the surface. The read/write heads are designed to make use of this air current and fly about 2 nanometers above the surface of the platter. For reference, the smallest diameter of a human hair measures approximately 17 micrometers or roughly 8,500 times the gap between the head and the platter. Any platter imperfection will cause the head to crash and destroy the magnetic recording surface. More doktorkrusher.com

With that said, and with that in mind, the article proper.

How the humble hard drive is made

It's like a 747 flying 0.14mm above the ground
By Mike Bedford from PC Plus
January 31st 2010

A hard disk is an amazing feat of electronic and mechanical engineering

The fact that silicon chips start life as nothing more exotic than sand is amazing enough, but have you ever thought about that other important PC component, the hard disk?

Its origins couldn't be more different. The heart of a hard disk – the rotating platter where your data is stored – is made out of an exotic mix of elements including ruthenium and platinum, two of the world's rarest and most expensive metals.

Needless to say, this statement doesn't even hint at the complexity involved in transforming rare ores into gigabytes of data storage. The hard disk's high speeds of rotation and the close proximity of the head to the platter means that the processes must be carried out with the ultimate in precision and cleanliness.

Add to this the strange properties of magnetic media and the techniques required to achieve the optimum capacity, and the story of how disks are made becomes one that encompasses the fields of mining, metallurgy, chemistry, physics and involves the pinnacle of engineering and manufacturing technology.

As a whole, a hard disk is an amazing feat of electronic and mechanical engineering, but two parts – the heads and the platter – stand out for their sheer manufacturing complexity. As the part that actually stores the data, the platter is what many people consider the heart of a hard disk drive – and here we reveal the secrets of its manufacture.

Step 1: Mineral extraction and processing

Platinum is only the 70th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, making up just three parts per billion. Ruthenium comes two places lower with an abundance of only one part per billion. By way of comparison, silicon – the raw material from which microprocessors are made – accounts for around 27 per cent of the Earth's crust.

It's no surprise then that platinum is hugely expensive – today's market price is more than $1,300 per Troy ounce. Turning to ruthenium, the total annual production is just 27 tonnes, an amount that would fit in a 1.3m3 cube. Both are mined predominantly in South Africa.

Platinum is one of the noble metals, which means that it's relatively unreactive. Unlike metals such as copper – the main ores of which are compounds – platinum is normally found in its metallic form. This doesn't mean that extracting it from its ore is simple, though, as platinum is normally found mixed with other metals.

Obtaining pure platinum involves separating it from the iron, copper, gold, nickel, iridium, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium and osmium that it's invariably found with. Let's just say it's a complicated multistage chemical process that can take up to six months to complete. Fortuitously, though, the ruthenium that's also needed in disk manufacture is a by-product of the process.

A deep mine in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa might seem far-removed from a finished hard disk, and in this sense it's an ideal place to start our investigation. But we're not going to need the platinum or the ruthenium until well down the line, so for now we'll put them aside as we move to something more down to earth – and considerably more common.

Step 2: Making aluminium blanks

The manufacture of a hard disk platter starts with the fabrication of aluminium blanks, which are disks of aluminium alloy onto which the magnetic recording layer will eventually be deposited.

High-purity alloy that contains four to five per cent magnesium plus small amounts of silicon, copper, iron and zinc to give it the necessary properties is cast into an ingot weighing seven tonnes. The ingot is then heat-treated, hot-rolled and cold-rolled in multiple passes to provide a sheet of the necessary thickness (usually 0.635mm, 0.8mm, 1.0mm, 1.27mm, 1.5mm or 1.8 mm – just enough to provide adequate stability while rotating at high speed) from which the blanks will be punched.

GETTING STARTED:Hot rolling mills process aluminium ingots into thin slivers of metal from which disks will be punched

Punching takes place once the alloy sheet has been coiled into large rolls so that a single stamping process produces lots of blanks. This is then followed by a stacked annealing process to reflatten the blanks. Finally the blanks are ground to a high level of precision to achieve the necessary surface and edge finish. Bear in mind that this and all subsequent steps are carried out on both sides of the platter so that it ends up with two recording surfaces.

Step 3: NiP plating

The aluminium blanks are now precision-ground using 'stones' that are composed of PVA and which contain silicon carbide as the abrasive agent. However, even with all the care taken to produce a good finish, the surfaces of the aluminium blanks produced in Step 2 are not yet nearly perfect enough. Because there's a limit to the degree of smoothness to which aluminium alloy can be ground, the next step is to apply a hard coating that will take a better finish.

PERFECT FINISH:The soft aluminium is plated with a hard NiP layer so that it can be polished to an incredible degree of smoothness

This hard coating is an amorphous alloy of nickel and phosphorous (NiP). It's applied by an electroless process in which complex supersaturated solutions containing compounds of nickel and phosphorous react on the surface of the disk to leave the required NiP layer. This layer can now be further refined in the next step of the process. Go to page two of three.

A bit of nonsense I found on YouTube.

Hacker Uses 3-D Printed Keys to Crack Police Handcuffs

I really need to read up on this technology, because truth be told I don't really understand it. Without doing that, all I can assume is that once written the program is fed into a machine tool with a three axis capability. But then why printer?

Something else to add to my things to do list, but not at this ungodly time of day. Back to bed for me.

Hacker Uses 3-D Printed Keys to Crack Police Handcuffs
By Will Oremus
July 16, 2012

High-tech criminals typically use their hacking skills to unlock information. But in a presentation Friday at a New York hacker conference, a German security consultant showed how 21st-century technology can be used to unlock, well, locks.

Forbes’ Andy Greenberg reports that the security consultant, who goes by the name “Ray,” used a 3-D printer to cheaply produce plastic versions of the keys to high-security handcuffs manufactured by the English company Chubb and the German company Bonowi. Ray’s plastic keys easily sprung open both firms’ cuffs.

This is a serious problem for handcuff makers, because police departments typically use the same keys to unlock all of the handcuffs made by a given manufacturer. And while determined crooks have always been able to reproduce keys at metal-working shops if they have access to the originals, 3-D printing makes it possible for just about anyone to churn out their own copies if they have access to the digital blueprint.

How would they get such access? Well, Ray has one answer: According to Greenberg, “he plans to upload the CAD files for the Chubb key to the 3D-printing Web platform Thingiverse after the annual lockpicking conference LockCon later this week.”

Ray says his goal is not to undermine police, but to make them aware of their handcuffs’ vulnerabilities. Police are supposed to monitor detainees even when they’re cuffed, but a false sense of security could lead them to ignore protocol.

This isn’t the only way that 3-D printing can come in handy for criminals. Gangs have used the technology in the past to build better skimmers for ATM machines, and gun enthusiasts have printed rifle parts that would normally require a permit to buy.*

Reactionary security types will probably interpret these anecdotes as reason to regulate 3-D printers, but that would be premature. New technologies don’t create the arms race between criminals and authorities—they just change the rules.

*Correction: This article originally stated that 3-D printing allowed gun enthusiasts to circumvent the federal assault weapons ban. That ban expired in 2004. Slate

Wavy Scrolling Can You Help?

Update: After all that, my troubles were down to Firefox. I installed Comodo browser as a test, that was OK, so uninstalled Firefox 13 and installed Firefox 11. No more probs.

~

I run two PCs, one new, one not so new, both sharing a common wide screen BenQ monitor.

Prior to two weeks ago, everything was fine, but then I started to see a 'wave' on screen when I scrolled a web page, twitter etc on BOTH machines.

I have changed the line filter, bypassed the KMV, de-powered and re-set the router, tried a different monitor, a different mouse and installed the latest drivers on the new PC, but all to no avail.

The only thing the PCs have in common apart from those things mentioned, is the service itself and the router.

I do not have the same problem with a word document however.

Does my problem lie with the router? People I talk to seem to think it's unlikely.

Can you help please?

I Love XP: Support To End April 2014

My love for XP in fact, very recently earning me the title, Luddite. (and probably a grumble or two) What care I? Not over the grumbling of my geek that is, but rather the label he hung on me.

Being the splendid fellow that he is, and working for the very reasonable rate of free gratis, I was delivered of a new, equally splendid, PC quite recently. Needless to say, with it being a new build, replete with all the latest bells, whistles, gee gaws, and of course, Windows 7.

Now I don't think you have to be a soothsayer to imagine what comes next, the header giving some indication I'm sure.

Err, err, Geek, I don't like it, in fact, to be perfectly honest, I think it's a bollocks. Likening Windows 7 to some, not all of course, but to some modern day cars that have been designed for designs' sake and failing quite spectacularly in certain cases.

Granted, I'm more than familiar with XP, but it is good, and it's good because it's simple; well within the capabilities of us troglodytes. Whereas I can only liken Seven, on the user friendly scale, to a Phillips VCR.

So bless his little cotton socks, out came Seven, and back in went my familiar friend, the very user friendly, Windows XP.

And if like me, you love your XP, and you think you will carry on regardless after 2014, well you won't by all accounts, because the bastards in this world will attack it once the patches stop coming.

And by then (2014) XP may even be old enough to be have acquired a little retro chic. That won't protect the last few million users from the all-but-inevitable attacks criminals will unleash against the OS once the flow of patches ceases.

Still, there's a lot can happen in two years, let's worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

Windows XP support ends two years from now

Shutters to come down on April 8, 2014
By Simon Sharwood
7th April 2012

Support for Windows XP will end two years from today, on April 8th, 2014*.

Plenty bought it and plenty still run it: Gartner's July 2011 assessment of the global OS population suggested "Windows XP Home and Follow-Ons" had 68 million users, while XP Professional ran on 144 million machines.

A more recent Gartner study, the March 2012 Client OS and Office Survey reported 79% of business desktops and 45% of notebooks ran XP, based on responses from a 147-strong, self-selecting, group at its October 2011 US Symposium event. While the analyst firm notes that's not the most scientific of samples, the respondents represented organisations with a combined three million PCs in service.

Gartner's message to to those users is clear: flee migrate away from the OS ASAP, or as soon as is convenient before the end of its supported life on the date we note above.
Why is XP still with us?

The need for that warning, eleven years after XP's launch, seems odd. The specs of XP's launch version didn't hint at longevity. Processors with clock speeds of 233Mhz were supported, but you really needed 300Mhz to make XP sing. Disk drives greater than 137GB were frowned upon. USB 2.0 support only arrived with Service Pack 1 a year after launch.

Microsoft was nonetheless chuffed by XP’s slick new look and stability and felt sure the product would succeed. Your correspondent worked for a PR agency engaged by Microsoft Australia at the time of the launch, and one Redmondian colonist even suggested it would be a good idea to post a copy to every CIO in the land. The logic behind that idea was that XP's stability would prove that Microsoft's enterprise products were ready for the data centre and serious transactional applications.

That assertion seemed logical because XP was the first mainstream desktop OS Microsoft built on the Windows NT kernel**, which had rather more elegant plumbing than the Windows 9x family. But while XP was very usable it was a security mess, thanks in no small part to the decidedly leaky Internet Explorer 6.

XP nonetheless generated enormous sales and claimed colossal market share, although its tablet version was not a success.

Yet when Windows Vista came along with its unpleasant interface, XP’s modest virtues were thrown into flattering relief as users realised an upgrade to the latest version of Windows brought with it almost no tangible benefits. Netbooks then kept the OS relevant, as Microsoft realised the small machines’ underwhelming hardware would struggle to Vista.

XP, by then juiced up with a third service pack, therefore remained an option for new PCs into a tenth year.
Let the upgrade frenzy begin

Gartner believes 4% of PCs will still run XP beyond the end of its supported life, but plenty of migrations are afoot.

That's the case at Melbourne University, which has bitten the bullet and started to upgrade its desktops to Windows 7 after skipping Vista. The end of support is one motivator for the move.

But XP will live on in other places because apps written for or with it have become legacy software that users simply need to keep. A senior software engineer in a defence-oriented company, who cannot be identified for various reasons, told us that “our embedded systems use Serial-Link IP (SLIP) for remote comms and Windows 7 removed native support for SLIP, so we have a problem integration-testing our software on real hardware.”

“Things like unit tests rely on the old development environment,” he added. “So the most expedient way to do this is fire-up one of the old development PCs. We do plan to migrate the legacy code base to the new development environment (No more XP), but it's a low priority due to the rarity of occurrence.”

The OS will also continue to pop up in the virtual XP emulation mode available in the growing global fleet of Windows 7 machines. Yet support for XP will even disappear when used in that mode, leading Gartner to recommend that it “should be used sparingly and only for a limited time.”

“Relying too heavily on this method for application compatibility will add cost and management complexity, degrade performance, and delay the inevitable remediation of applications,” the firm warns in a document titled XP on Windows 7: Temporary Relief for Migration Headaches, but No Cure.

Even the virtual method keeping XP alive will vanish once Windows 8 appears in late 2012. While the new Windows will largely be Windows 7 beneath its Metro-fied skin, it appears XP mode will be omitted.

But XP won’t disappear entirely. It’s almost certainly fair to say that the XP-powered netbook acquired by your correspondent in mid-2010 is one of millions with a similar configuration. Many will still work by 2014. And by then XP may even be old enough to be have acquired a little retro chic. That won't protect the last few million users from the all-but-inevitable attacks criminals will unleash against the OS once the flow of patches ceases.

One last observation: while this story is published on Easter Sunday, 2012, Easter in 2014 falls on April 21st, 13 days after support ends. There'll be no XP resurrection.

*This story was filed from The Register's Australia bureau and timed to appear at 12:01 AM on the 8th of April, Sydney time. It may not be April 8th where you are just yet.

**We're not willing to classify Windows NT Workstation as a mainstream desktop OS. The Register

Japan Will Be Nuclear Free By May

At the risk of sounding a tad cynical; for how long?

Japan's Second-to-Last Nuclear Plant Shuts Down - Nation Will Be Nuclear Free By May
Mat McDermott
March 26, 2012

Another casualty of the Fukushima nuclear disaster: Japan's nuclear power industry as a whole. The Tokyo Electric Power Company has closed the final reactor of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, leaving just one operational facility in the entire country.

This final reactor, on the northern island of Hokkaido and the 54th in Japan, is scheduled to be shut down in May for maintenance and is not expected to be restarted. Only if local support exists to restart the reactor will it come back online, BBC News reports.

Since the Fukushima disaster and resultant nuclear shut down, Japan has faced the problem of avoiding power supply problems during times of peak demand, especially the summer. Last year large companies were ordered to reduce their power consumption by 15%. Older non-nuclear power plants have been temporarily brought back online, with fossil fuel imports rising.

TEPCO's president issued the follow statement to its electricity customers:

As for the electricity supply and demand in the foreseeable future, we expect to maintain stable supply. However, we ask that you continue to make a reasonable effort to save electricity. In addition, while we have been carefully reviewing this summer's electricity supply and demand, the shut down of Unit 6 [the final reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa] will result in a significant reduction in our electricity supply capacity. We will continue to make efforts to maintain stable operations and maintenance of the power facilities in order to secure stable power supply. Treehugger

If I am slow to respond, it's due to teething problems with a new system. Thank you.

Something a Little Different: Solar power Car Race Australia

Of special interest to Brits might be the terrifying outback ordeal link, and there is also a Dutch interest in the race.

Watching the video however, I couldn't help but think how hot it must have been sat in that perspex bubble. I had a similar experience during my one and only shot at gliding, hot as hell it was.

World Solar Challenge: The Musical

Oz heliowheels race for your viewing pleasure
By Lester Haines
27th January 2012

Video Last October, we at El Reg's Special Projects Bureau jetted off to Oz in pursuit of the World Solar Challenge – a gruelling 3,000km test of the planet's most advanced solar cars.

It took us a while to recover from the terrifying Outback ordeal – five days of hellish survival which saw us deprived of the most basic human needs, including a decent net connection and professional skin-moisturising products.

Suffice it to say, the subsequent therapy paid off, and we've finally put together a video overview of the event, which we hope gives a flavour of what the WSC's all about.

Btw, it's not really a musical, but we threw a few bars into the mix to give the vid a bit more va-va-voom. Enjoy: The Register

Our Reliance on The Micro-Chip A Doomsday Scenario

As a blog writer, a fellow faces many decisions, none of them life threatening or earth shattering, some might say not even important, and they would probably be correct. Nevertheless, two decisions crop up almost daily, and those decisions often involve, how serious or how lighthearted be the content of what is offered up to you the reader.

Too frivolous the content; what would be the point in bothering at all? And on the other side of the coin, whereas nobody wants to read about a cat not stuck up a tree, I'm sure likewise, they don't want to visit a site where the blogger is only a merchant of doom, and constantly come away with an upside down smile.

Having said all that, what I'm going to offer you today is nothing more than a very glum post about a doomsday scenario. But it is an extremely interesting doomsday scenario nonetheless, nobody can argue with that evaluation, and all involving solar flares and our near total reliance on the micro chip.

Drive on!

More gifs @ Wikipedia Coronal Mass Ejection

Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe
by Michael Brooks
March 24 2009

It is midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colorful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that.

Over the last few decades, western civilizations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction. Our modern way of life, with its reliance on technology, has unwittingly exposed us to an extraordinary danger: plasma balls spewed from the surface of the sun could wipe out our power grids, with catastrophic consequences.

The projections of just how catastrophic make chilling reading. "We're moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster," says Daniel Baker, a space weather expert based at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and chair of the NAS committee responsible for the report.

It is hard to conceive of the sun wiping out a large amount of our hard-earned progress. Nevertheless, it is possible. The surface of the sun is a roiling mass of plasma - charged high-energy particles - some of which escape the surface and travel through space as the solar wind. From time to time, that wind carries a billion-tonne glob of plasma, a fireball known as a coronal mass ejection. If one should hit the Earth's magnetic shield, the result could be truly devastating.

The incursion of the plasma into our atmosphere causes rapid changes in the configuration of Earth's magnetic field which, in turn, induce currents in the long wires of the power grids. The grids were not built to handle this sort of direct current electricity. The greatest danger is at the step-up and step-down transformers used to convert power from its transport voltage to domestically useful voltage. The increased DC current creates strong magnetic fields that saturate a transformer's magnetic core. The result is runaway current in the transformer's copper wiring, which rapidly heats up and melts. This is exactly what happened in the Canadian province of Quebec in March 1989, and six million people spent 9 hours without electricity. But things could get much, much worse than that.

Worse than Katrina

The most serious space weather event in history happened in 1859. It is known as the Carrington event, after the British amateur astronomer Richard Carrington, who was the first to note its cause: "two patches of intensely bright and white light" emanating from a large group of sunspots. The Carrington event comprised eight days of severe space weather.

There were eyewitness accounts of stunning auroras, even at equatorial latitudes. The world's telegraph networks experienced severe disruptions, and Victorian magnetometers were driven off the scale.

Though a solar outburst could conceivably be more powerful, "we haven't found an example of anything worse than a Carrington event", says James Green, head of NASA's planetary division and an expert on the events of 1859. "From a scientific perspective, that would be the one that we'd want to survive." However, the prognosis from the NAS analysis is that, thanks to our technological prowess, many of us may not.

There are two problems to face. The first is the modern electricity grid, which is designed to operate at ever higher voltages over ever larger areas. Though this provides a more efficient way to run the electricity networks, minimizing power losses and wastage through overproduction, it has made them much more vulnerable to space weather. The high-power grids act as particularly efficient antennas, channelling enormous direct currents into the power transformers.

The second problem is the grid's interdependence with the systems that support our lives: water and sewage treatment, supermarket delivery infrastructures, power station controls, financial markets and many others all rely on electricity. Put the two together, and it is clear that a repeat of the Carrington event could produce a catastrophe the likes of which the world has never seen. "It's just the opposite of how we usually think of natural disasters," says John Kappenman, a power industry analyst with the Metatech Corporation of Goleta, California, and an advisor to the NAS committee that produced the report. "Usually the less developed regions of the world are most vulnerable, not the highly sophisticated technological regions."

According to the NAS report, a severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people (see map). From that moment, the clock is ticking for America.

First to go - immediately for some people - is drinkable water. Anyone living in a high-rise apartment, where water has to be pumped to reach them, would be cut off straight away. For the rest, drinking water will still come through the taps for maybe half a day. With no electricity to pump water from reservoirs, there is no more after that.

There is simply no electrically powered transport: no trains, underground or overground. Our just-in-time culture for delivery networks may represent the pinnacle of efficiency, but it means that supermarket shelves would empty very quickly - delivery trucks could only keep running until their tanks ran out of fuel, and there is no electricity to pump any more from the underground tanks at filling stations.

Back-up generators would run at pivotal sites - but only until their fuel ran out. For hospitals, that would mean about 72 hours of running a bare-bones, essential care only, service. After that, no more modern healthcare.
72 hours of healthcare remaining

The truly shocking finding is that this whole situation would not improve for months, maybe years: melted transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced. "From the surveys I've done, you might have a few spare transformers around, but installing a new one takes a well-trained crew a week or more," says Kappenman. "A major electrical utility might have one suitably trained crew, maybe two."

Within a month, then, the handful of spare transformers would be used up. The rest will have to be built to order, something that can take up to 12 months.

Even when some systems are capable of receiving power again, there is no guarantee there will be any to deliver. Almost all natural gas and fuel pipelines require electricity to operate. Coal-fired power stations usually keep reserves to last 30 days, but with no transport systems running to bring more fuel, there will be no electricity in the second month.

30 days of coal left

Nuclear power stations wouldn't fare much better. They are programmed to shut down in the event of serious grid problems and are not allowed to restart until the power grid is up and running.

With no power for heating, cooling or refrigeration systems, people could begin to die within days. There is immediate danger for those who rely on medication. Lose power to New Jersey, for instance, and you have lost a major centre of production of pharmaceuticals for the entire US. Perishable medications such as insulin will soon be in short supply. "In the US alone there are a million people with diabetes," Kappenman says. "Shut down production, distribution and storage and you put all those lives at risk in very short order."

Help is not coming any time soon, either. If it is dark from the eastern seaboard to Chicago, some affected areas are hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away from anyone who might help. And those willing to help are likely to be ill-equipped to deal with the sheer scale of the disaster. "If a Carrington event happened now, it would be like a hurricane Katrina, but 10 times worse," says Paul Kintner, a plasma physicist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

In reality, it would be much worse than that. Hurricane Katrina's societal and economic impact has been measured at $81 billion to $125 billion. According to the NAS report, the impact of what it terms a "severe geomagnetic storm scenario" could be as high as $2 trillion. And that's just the first year after the storm. The NAS puts the recovery time at four to 10 years. It is questionable whether the US would ever bounce back.

4-10 years to recover

"I don't think the NAS report is scaremongering," says Mike Hapgood, who chairs the European Space Agency's space weather team. Green agrees. "Scientists are conservative by nature and this group is really thoughtful," he says. "This is a fair and balanced report."

Such nightmare scenarios are not restricted to North America. High latitude nations such as Sweden and Norway have been aware for a while that, while regular views of the aurora are pretty, they are also reminders of an ever-present threat to their electricity grids. However, the trend towards installing extremely high voltage grids means that lower latitude countries are also at risk. For example, China is on the way to implementing a 1000-kilovolt electrical grid, twice the voltage of the US grid. This would be a superb conduit for space weather-induced disaster because the grid's efficiency to act as an antenna rises as the voltage between the grid and the ground increases. "China is going to discover at some point that they have a problem," Kappenman says.

Neither is Europe sufficiently prepared. Responsibility for dealing with space weather issues is "very fragmented" in Europe, says Hapgood.

Europe's electricity grids, on the other hand, are highly interconnected and extremely vulnerable to cascading failures. In 2006, the routine switch-off of a small part of Germany's grid - to let a ship pass safely under high-voltage cables - caused a cascade power failure across western Europe. In France alone, five million people were left without electricity for two hours. "These systems are so complicated we don't fully understand the effects of twiddling at one place," Hapgood says. "Most of the time it's alright, but occasionally it will get you."

The good news is that, given enough warning, the utility companies can take precautions, such as adjusting voltages and loads, and restricting transfers of energy so that sudden spikes in current don't cause cascade failures. There is still more bad news, however. Our early warning system is becoming more unreliable by the day.

By far the most important indicator of incoming space weather is NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). The probe, launched in 1997, has a solar orbit that keeps it directly between the sun and Earth. Its uninterrupted view of the sun means it gives us continuous reports on the direction and velocity of the solar wind and other streams of charged particles that flow past its sensors. ACE can provide between 15 and 45 minutes' warning of any incoming geomagnetic storms. The power companies need about 15 minutes to prepare their systems for a critical event, so that would seem passable.
15 minutes' warning

However, observations of the sun and magnetometer readings during the Carrington event shows that the coronal mass ejection was travelling so fast it took less than 15 minutes to get from where ACE is positioned to Earth. "It arrived faster than we can do anything," Hapgood says.

There is another problem. ACE is 11 years old, and operating well beyond its planned lifespan. The onboard detectors are not as sensitive as they used to be, and there is no telling when they will finally give up the ghost. Furthermore, its sensors become saturated in the event of a really powerful solar flare. "It was built to look at average conditions rather than extremes," Baker says.

He was part of a space weather commission that three years ago warned about the problems of relying on ACE. "It's been on my mind for a long time," he says. "To not have a spare, or a strategy to replace it if and when it should fail, is rather foolish."

There is no replacement for ACE due any time soon. Other solar observation satellites, such as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) can provide some warning, but with less detailed information and - crucially - much later. "It's quite hard to assess what the impact of losing ACE will be," Hapgood says. "We will largely lose the early warning capability."

The world will, most probably, yawn at the prospect of a devastating solar storm until it happens. Kintner says his students show a "deep indifference" when he lectures on the impact of space weather. But if policy-makers show a similar indifference in the face of the latest NAS report, it could cost tens of millions of lives, Kappenman reckons. "It could conceivably be the worst natural disaster possible," he says.

The report outlines the worst case scenario for the US. The "perfect storm" is most likely on a spring or autumn night in a year of heightened solar activity - something like 2012. Around the equinoxes, the orientation of the Earth's field to the sun makes us particularly vulnerable to a plasma strike.

What's more, at these times of year, electricity demand is relatively low because no one needs too much heating or air conditioning. With only a handful of the US grid's power stations running, the system relies on computer algorithms shunting large amounts of power around the grid and this leaves the network highly vulnerable to sudden spikes.

If ACE has failed by then, or a plasma ball flies at us too fast for any warning from ACE to reach us, the consequences could be staggering. "A really large storm could be a planetary disaster," Kappenman says.

So what should be done? No one knows yet - the report is meant to spark that conversation. Baker is worried, though, that the odds are stacked against that conversation really getting started. As the NAS report notes, it is terribly difficult to inspire people to prepare for a potential crisis that has never happened before and may not happen for decades to come. "It takes a lot of effort to educate policy-makers, and that is especially true with these low-frequency events," he says.

We should learn the lessons of hurricane Katrina, though, and realise that "unlikely" doesn't mean "won't happen". Especially when the stakes are so high. The fact is, it could come in the next three or four years - and with devastating effects. "The Carrington event happened during a mediocre, ho-hum solar cycle," Kintner says. "It came out of nowhere, so we just don't know when something like that is going to happen again." Jim Pedan blog not been updated since 2009 hence full text coppied here.

H/T Michael Moore

Captain Slow Opens Dedicated Turing Exhibition at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park gets personal with new Alan Turing exhibition

Steampunk speech-scrambler, a note to mum and more
By Brid-Aine Parnell
6 March 2012

Letters, academic work and personal belongings of wartime codebreaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing, including a letter to his mother explaining his role in the outcome of World War II, went on display at Bletchley Park on Monday.

The new display, which will eventually also include a rebuild of Turing's speech-scrambling machine, codenamed Delilah, was officially opened by Top Gear presenter James May.

James May, Captain Slow.

The exhibition came about following a high-profile public campaign last year to save a bunch of Turing's papers collected by his friend Professor Max Newman, which had been put up for auction at Christie's.

Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the Bletchley Park Trust, said at the event today that the fight to save the collection was kicked off when director of museum operations Kelsey Griffin spotted the auction and tweeted for help.

That bagged the campaign some help from Google and private donations, but not quite enough to meet the collection's reserve price at auction. Bletchley then went to the National Heritage Memorial Fund, which provided the shortfall to buy the collection.

After the papers were saved, members of Turing's family came forward with some of his personal belongings from school and university days to add to the exhibition.

Letter to Alan Turing's mother

The letter to Turing's mother was written by Brian Randell, professor of computing science at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 20 years after his death and tells her for the first time the value of his contribution to the war effort and to computing as we know it.

"[The Government's] information release states that Charles Babbage's work in the 19th century and your son's work in the 1930s laid the theoretical foundations for the modern computer," the letter read, adding that a book published in the US credited Turing with breaking the German's Enigma Code, thereby having "vital importance" in the war.

The work done at Bletchley during the war remained a secret until the 1970s, despite the fact that thousands of people had worked there by the end of the war.

Lord Asa Briggs, a Bletchley Park codebreaker, told The Register that he had married his wife in 1955, but she didn't find out about his time at Bletchley until 20 years later.

"We didn't keep those secrets because we'd signed the Official Secrets Act, we kept them because we knew they were essential to winning the war," he said.

Lord Briggs said Turing was a genius, a sentiment echoed by another wartime codebreaker, Captain Jerry Roberts.

Stephen Kettle's statue of Alan Turing at work

"In the spring of 1941, Britain was losing the war," Captain Roberts said. "The German wolf packs (u-boats) were sinking the ships bringing in food and raw materials to Britain left, right and centre... and of course we didn't know where they were out there, waiting, lurking.

"At that juncture, Turing made his fantastic achievement of breaking naval Enigma ... At that juncture, there was no other salvation for Britain, there was nothing else that could have saved Britain, and of course Europe at the same time.

"Once naval Enigma was broken, the sinkings dropped by 75 per cent." More and photos.

Previous: Alan Turing New Petition Calls for Criminal Pardon

Obama Administration Comes Out Against SOPA, PIPA

Why do I have trouble with Obama pledges? Why am I not filled with confidence?

Obama Administration Comes Out Against SOPA, PIPA

Carl Franzen
January 14, 2012

The Obama Administration on Saturday took a stance on two pieces of anti-online piracy legislation moving through Congress — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate —- saying it would not support the bills as currently written, handing the biggest victory yet to a growing chorus of critics of the bills.

Fittingly enough, the Administration’s response came by way of a blog post published in response to two online petitions. As the post states:

“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet….

Even more promising for critics of the bills, the Administration came down firmly against one of the most vehemently opposed portions of the bills — the part that would give the government the power to force Internet Service Providers to stop loading overseas webpages accused of piracy. Under the original versions of SOPA and PIPA, ISPs would be required to change their Doman Name System settings to block sites accused of piracy, a measure that critics said would essentially break the Internet and make it more insecure.

The Administration statement basically agrees with the critics wholeheartedly on this one:

“We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

The two primary architects of the bills — Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) both decided late last week to remove the DNS-blocking provisions before even the Administration released its public statement.

Further, SOPA’s passage through the House seems to have been indefinitely stalled, as SOPA critic Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said on Saturday that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) promised not to bring the bill up to the full House for a vote until a consensus is reached, The Hill reported. TPM

Murdoch slams White House over SOPA in Twitter row
Accuses Google of buying political favor

GoDaddy Accused of Interfering with Anti-SOPA Exodus

I've been watching this story unfold all week. 70,000 accounts moved, as a result of a net/twitter campaign targeting GoDaddy.

GoDaddy accused of interfering with anti-SOPA exodus
by Declan McCullagh
December 26, 2011

An effort by GoDaddy customers to boycott the domain registrar over its support for Hollywood-backed copyright legislation has sparked allegations of foul play.

NameCheap, whose chief executive last week likened the Stop Online Piracy Act to "detonating a nuclear bomb" on the Internet, said today that GoDaddy has intentionally thrown up technical barriers to prevent its customers from leaving. It lost over 70,000 domains last week.
NameCheap has seized on a dispute over the Stop Online Piracy Act as a way to lure new customers.

NameCheap has seized on a dispute over the Stop Online Piracy Act as a way to lure new customers.

It's not alone: at least half a dozen GoDaddy rivals have seized on their competitor's pro-SOPA lobbying to lure its customers away. NameCheap dubbed December 29 "move your domain" day, offering below-cost transfers with the coupon "SOPASUCKS" plus a $1 donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Other registrars such as Dreamhost, HostGator, and Hover.com, and Name.com have offered similar SOPA-related promotions.

"GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete Whois information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process" in violation of rules established by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, NameCheap wrote in a blog post today. By this afternoon, the company said that GoDaddy had "finally unblocked our queries" and that transfers should now "go smoothly."

For its part, GoDaddy, which has reportedly called customers to ask them to return, denies any wrongdoing. In a statement sent to CNET this afternoon, the company said:

Namecheap refused to say who at GoDaddy was contacted or when. Instead, chief executive Richard Kirkendall sent CNET a prepared statement saying "all we know on our side is that GoDaddy was preventing us from conducting normal business with our clients, and in turn causing harm to our reputation and at the same time overloading our support channels."

"We were quite confident after significant analysis that this issue was not on our end, and after the issue had persisted for more than 24 hours with no response from the other party, we made a blog post clarifying what we felt was causing the issue," the statement said. In a separate forum post, a Namecheap community manager said, without providing any additional information, the company tried "reaching out to GoDaddy" but received "no response."

Criticism of GoDaddy coalesced around a protest thread on Reddit and was aided by Jimmy Wales' announcement last week that "Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy." It inspired GoDaddyBoycott.org, which urged Internet users and companies to "boycott GoDaddy until they send a letter to Congress taking back any and all support of the House and Senate versions of the Internet censorship bill, both SOPA and PIPA." The Protect IP Act, or PIPA, is the Senate version of SOPA.

On December 23, GoDaddy partially caved, announcing that it was no longer backing SOPA, but stopping short of saying it will oppose the legislation. And not until today did it post a clarification saying GoDaddy "does not support" Protect IP, either. (The GoDaddyBoycott.org site, which hasn't been updated, continues to say that GoDaddy endorses the Senate bill.)

A GoDaddy representative did not respond to a question from CNET this afternoon asking whether the company now opposes SOPA and Protect IP.

SOPA, of course, represents the latest effort from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and their allies to counter what they view as rampant piracy on the Internet, especially offshore sites such as ThePirateBay.org.

It would allow the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines, Internet providers, and other companies forcing them to make a suspected piratical Web site effectively vanish, a kind of Internet death penalty. It's opposed (PDF) by many Internet companies and Internet users. (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA.)

Accusations of hypocrisy help any boycott, and, as TechDirt helpfully noted, GoDaddy condemns intellectual property theft while encouraging customers to buy domains "that are perfect for infringing sites." If you try to buy the domain Chanel.com, for instance, you'll get offered "RealChanel.com" as an option.

Prior to its current public relations debacle, GoDaddy had been an enthusiastic supporter of expanding copyright law to deal with "parasite" Web sites. In testimony (PDF) before a House of Representatives hearing this spring, GoDaddy general counsel Christine Jones endorsed Domain Name System (DNS) blocking as a way to prevent Americans from accessing suspected piratical Web sites.

Jones said that DNS blocking is an "effective strategy for disabling access to illegal" Web sites. It can "be done by the registrar (which provides the authoritative DNS response), or, in cases where the registrar is unable or unwilling to comply, by the registry (which provides the Root zone file records -- the database -- for the entire TLD)," she said. Cnet story with links