https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkhqNwupf5SV3SbmWfKf2SXvMI0WLKaQzk

Recent Actions

• Commented on Service announcement: upcoming outage(s)
  One trick that you may (or may not) find useful is to acquire one of the many usb devices which provide random numbers, and plug it into the server. Some of the overhead for SSL isn't actual CPU load, but...
• Commented on Service update
  One other aspect of an independent Scotland is that where foreign relations and a secret intelligence service is concerned, they would be starting from essentially nil. Most of the local players would be moderately interested in getting a few sleepers...
• Commented on Service update
  One interesting side of the debate which is note widely discussed is where the money financing the YES side of the debate is coming from. From the tenor of discussion, you'd think it a groundswell of political support from a...
• Commented on Message for GISHWHES participants
  Jokingly, in amongst a discussion of various networked services like NTP and the like, the suggestion came up for "Sod Off As A Service". I think its time has come....
• Commented on Gods and genre
  I think what Elf Sternberg may be getting at is that men don't actually have a huge amount of choice over sex. Huge testosterone levels mean that sex is fairly instinct-driven for us blokes; we don't have much actual say...
• Commented on Gods and genre
  Of some interest here may be the legend of how Odin's horse Sleipnir came to be. This was effectively a parable of why you don't accept any contract from gods at all, ever; a builder and his horse were contracted...
• Commented on Interstitial note
  One idea here is to use short-range gates as part of a hypervelocity accelerator of some sort; you have a long ship mostly constructed of superconducting coils and something to accelerate a mass, plus a gate at each end. Line...
• Commented on Interstitial note
  On that score, I do believe that there would be quite a bit of scope for a sci-fi type of game where the objective is to destroy a planetary ecosystem. The plot would be simple: you're a humble techie charged...
• Commented on Interstitial note
  Neal Asher is busily exploring the wild and wonderful fun to be had with hyperspace gateways. These operate essentially as a magic door; what goes in one door comes out the other one with unchanged energy (unless this is syphoned...
• Commented on Generation Z
  To benefit from genetic engineering you do not need to modify whole organisms (or people). You don't even need to modify bits of them. No, what you do is genetically engineer add-on components. This isn't a new concept. The basic...
• Commented on Generation Z
  One essential problem at present is the low official interest rates. These have been kept low for political purposes; the current party in power in the UK would very much like to simulate an economic recovery, and the only way...
• Commented on Heartbleed note
  The other reason not to bother with SSL unless you actually need it is because it places a demand on /dev/random and on a big server with a lot going on, you may start running low on truly random numbers....
• Commented on Yet another bad idea
  I am somewhat tempted to very tentatively suggest that this might indeed happen, as one of the side-effects of the US response to CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. My reasoning behind this is simple. The US equivalent to the Laundry does not...
• Commented on A hypothesis
  This is a good idea, but adds lots of complexity. Another ploy would be to add a secondary oxygen supply system for the pilots, based on a chemical oxygen generator such as the passengers get (the passenger emergency oxygen supply...
• Commented on Circumstantial connections
  Having read Charlie's take on this, I might tentatively hypothesise that the military in that area were supposed to have good radar cover, but for some reason did not have anywhere near as good a cover as they thought. Under...
• Commented on Dear Google, am I pregnant?
  Blood type incompatibility is not, repeat NOT an argument for a universal database of anything at all. When a patient presents with a need for blood, you do not go looking on a universal database to see what blood type...
• Commented on Dear Google, am I pregnant?
  Anonemouse, what you are feeling is actually mild unease. Once you've seen how cavalier and recklessly unsafe police officers can be with firearms on a shooting range, then you'll be feeling properly frightened......
• Commented on The latest Hugo awards storm
  Oops, buggerit! I didn't know about that; thanks for enlightening me. I shall now pipe down....
• Commented on The latest Hugo awards storm
  I would be moved to suggest Henry Gee; I've heard him speak in the past, and he's pretty good. He is also uncontroversial, and has a background in both science fiction and hard science....
• Commented on Rule 34, meet Kafka
  Sooner or later someone'll invent some malware that does just this, and target it against UK politicians. Hull University apparently used to do this, until the student population subscribed the senior staff there onto a quite bewildering array of explicit...
• Commented on Schadenfreude
  Sir, I do believe you might just be missing a point or two here. To begin with, the reason that Salmond wanted to use a strong currency such as the Euro or failing that the Pound speaks volumes as to...
• Commented on Schadenfreude
  Even banksters are subject to competition, and the banks are no exception. Large salaries for key staff aside, if you examine modern retail banks closely, you will find that they actually make only minimal percentages off the money they process,...
• Commented on Schadenfreude
  Actually gold is quite useful as a corrosion inhibitor in electronic contacts, and as a contrast enhancer in electron microscopy (for when you don't fancy double-nasties like osmium tetroxide). It is also used to sputter-coat specimens for scanning electron microscopy,...
• Commented on Schadenfreude
  You're missing the world's greatest untapped gold reserve here, sir: the sea. A truly staggering amount of gold is locked up in sea water, albeit at very low concentrations; the trick is to get at it. Biotech and genetic manipulation...
• Commented on Miscellanea
  From what I have read of the Laundry's internal secret-keeping, a quote from a Carry On film is most appropriate: Frying Tonight!...
• Commented on Miscellanea
  cough Simon "Nightside" Green cough... His elves are extremely long-lived, and long ago lost the battle about which hominid species would inherit Earth to H. sapiens due to the latter being much, much more prolific at breeding (which apparently elves...
• Commented on Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?
  To be brutally honest, we already have an equivalent of a flying car; the gyroplane. As aircraft go, it is about as forgiving as it is possible to get, as it is difficult to stall, will land almost vertically and...
• Commented on Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia?
  The problem I have with such a mass surveillance state is not the invasion of privacy per se, but merely the sheer inefficiency of the thing. The head of the NSA now admits that their electronic dragnet has not nabbed...
• Commented on How To Survive A Death March
  The key thing to remember here is that a deathmarch project is a failure of planning, or to put it simply, failure. Specifically, it is a failure of management. They knew the constraints of how things ought to operate, and...
• Commented on "The next big thing"
  The problem with comparing sci-fi films to books is that the films of that genre have traditionally not been viewed by the same target audience. Sci-fi films have traditionally been the province of teenagers, and they are not noted for...