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  see the americas in sixty-two seconds

1:02 mins

Viewing notes

• Watch this video in full-screen mode - click on this icon, to the bottom right of the YouTube video.
We have provided the video here in the highest resolution available, at 960 x 720 pixels.

• The flashes of light are lightning from thunderstorms.

• The brown-green arc above the Earth is aerosol haze. It is a glow caused by particles suspended high above the Earths’s surface and is not visible at ground level.

• The flight path “begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the Earth's ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy.” (Source: infinity-imagined)

 

This time-lapse video created from six hundred images taken from the International Space Station, and available online at Gateway to Astronomy Photograph of Earth (part of NASA). The video was made by James Drake.

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adieu to the recreator of colossus

Tony Sale, chief scientific officer in the MI5, rebuilt the first programmable electronic digital machine, Colossus, and played a major role in ensuring that Bletchley Park, home of wartime code-breaking, became a national museum. On 28 August 2011, aged 80, Tony Sale went to rebuild the great computer in the sky.

Tony Sale demonstrates how Colossus works

9:47 mins

“In 1993 Tony Sale collected all the information available on Colossus, which amounted to a few wartime photos, some fragments of circuit diagrams and some interviews with some of the surviving design engineers. Armed with this information he decided to rebuild a Colossus.
The Colossus Rebuild Project

“The rebuild project started in 1994 at Bletchley Park, on the site of the original Colossus number 9 computer. By June 1996 Tony Sale and his team were ready to switch-on (albeit only working at a 2 bit level rather than the full 5 bits).” [Quoted from picotech.com]

“In 1993 I gathered together all the information available. This consisted of eight wartime photographs taken of Colossus in 1945 plus some fragments of circuit diagrams which some engineers had kept quite illegally, as engineers nearly always do.

“The original drawings of the mechanical assemblies had been deliberately burnt in 1960. The first stage was to produce accurate drawings of the frames. The project began to acquire a more public face. The Bletchley Park Trust, which had been established in 1992, obtained permission to set up and open to visitors an Exhibition of wartime code breaking in the CAA assembly hall in A Block in Bletchley Park. Part of this Exhibition was about the German Lorenz cipher machine and the role of Colossus in breaking the Lorenz ciphers. The exhibition opened in February 1994.

“The ambition to rebuild a working Colossus to as authentic a standard as available information and analysis permitted was publicly stated.”
—
“Colossus was originally built at the Post Office Research Laboratories in North London and used a large number of standard issue components. Luckily a large number of old Post Office telephone exchanges were being decommissioned and changed to digital. We were able, through Gerald Palmer, to collect large amounts of equipment which otherwise would just have gone for scrap.

“The next problem was obtaining the large number of valves required. Mainly Mullard EF36 pentodes but also 6J5 triodes, 6V6 and 807 tetrodes and the GT1C thyratrons. I had myself acquired some of these over the years but not enough for a complete Colossus. I started going round various vintage radio dealers and found that the valves did exist, but at a price, which meant I would have to get some serious sponsorship. This came, but, inevitably, only later.” [Tony Sale, quoted from tnmoc.org]

Colossus will be hard to keep going in the future because the valves blow quite quickly, and finding replacements now is a problem. Tony Sale included the following on his description of rebuilding Colossus at the National Valve Museum web site.

“I have enough valves (tubes!) to complete Colossus but would like to build up a reserve so that it can be kept going for a few more years so more valves: EF36, EF37 or EF37A pentodes, 6J5 triodes, 6V6 tetrodes and GT1C gas filled triode thyratrons. The 6J5's and 6V6's should be the large glass versions to look right.

“Please send any contributions of valves to me at The Colossus Rebuild Project, The Mansion, Bletchley Park, Bletchley, MK3 6EB. email: tsale@qufaro.demon.co.uk ” [Quoted from r-type.org]

“The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park are on the lookout for old electronic valves in order to keep their rebuild of Colossus (the first ever electronic computer) running for years to come.

“If you've got an old box of valves stuck in the loft or somewhere, you can either take them to the museum on your next visit or contact me and I'll pass them along on my next visit there. Even if they are not the right ones, the museum can use the old valves to barter for the right ones.” [13.09.2010, quoted from wamug.org.uk]

Tony Sales built a robot, George, he was twelve years old. Sixty years later it still walks and whirrs. (Tony Sale can be seen helping the robot in this short video.)

1:22 mins

The robot and Tony Sale are also in this advertising clip for a Wallace and Gromit programme, World of Inventions: Meet the robots, from 0:09 mins.

0:20 mins

external web site
Tony Sale’s Codes and Ciphers
related material
Computing machinery and intelligence - A.M. Turing, 1950
On computable numbers, with an  application to the  Entscheidungsproblem - A.M. Turing, 1936

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criminals just can’t rely on anything these days - the transparent society

Trails of data left everywhere:

• One contact was traced to a computer at a public library.
• The two other contacts were traced to a public computer at a video store.
• Authorities reviewed recordings from security cameras at the library and at a liquor store adjacent to the video shop. The individual caught on camera matched the victim’s description of the attempted extortionist.
• Investigators also examined the USB flash drive.
• In addition to instructions for payment, the drive contained a deleted file that had been written on a computer with an identified owner of “Paul P.”
• ... Police examined vehicle registration data for all similar make Range Rovers located near the library and video shop.The police located registration and license information for Paul Douglas Peters. His photograph matched the security videos.
• Armed with a name, police discovered that Peters had left Australia on Aug. 8 on a United Airlines flight to Chicago and that he transferred to another flight on to Louisville, Ky.
• Security video at Sydney Airport matched earlier video and the drivers’ license photo.
• Police also discovered that roughly a month before the alleged extortion attempt, Peters used his MasterCard to purchase a USB flash drive and purple lanyard similar to the drive and lanyard recovered around Pulver’s neck ....
• The major break in the US part of the investigation came when Australian authorities found documents showing that Peters had wired money in 2009 from Australia to the home of ex-wife in the Louisville suburb of Le Grange, Ky.

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swarmanoid, fetch me that book

“The main scientific objective of this research project is the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system. The system will be made up of heterogeneous, dynamically connected, small autonomous robots. Collectively, these robots will form what we call a swarmanoid. The swarmanoid that we intend to build will be comprised of numerous (about 60) autonomous robots of three types: eye-bots, hand-bots, and foot-bots.”

eye-bot and two foot bots

hand-bot taking the book

And here’s the fillum!

5:25 mins

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  another step forward for civilisation against the savages

“Give me start wars”, said Ronald Reagan.
“It’ll never work”, cackled the Luddite Lefties.

“A battery located near the southern coastal town of Ashkelon brought down what was thought to be a Grad rocket fired from the Gaza Strip.”
—
“The manufacturers claim to be able to hit anything from a missile to a 155mm artillery shell in all weathers.”

Forget the BBC propaganda. The prices will fall rapidly, and next it’ll be linked to lasers or some such.

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the sky is falling - iodine-131 in water

Tokyo not safe for children under one year, oh woe.

“The government said it detected 210 becquerels per kilogram of iodine-131 from a sample collected Tuesday at a water facility in Katsushika ward in northern Tokyo, which accounts for about 22% of Tokyo's overall water capacity. The level is about double the government's permissible limit for infants, 100 becquerels. An initial check Wednesday showed a similarly elevated level, of 190 becquerels.

“A sample gathered at a second location found 32 becquerels Tuesday, though on Wednesday the level had dropped to zero. At a third water facility, no radioactivity was found either day.””

But it’s only two samples at one water facility comprising 22% of Tokyo water supply. What can we possibly do?!

“None of the radioactive iodine levels in Tokyo tap water exceeded 300 becquerels per kilogram, the broader limit set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan. Japan's threshold, in turn, is stricter than the international level for intervention of 3,000 becquerels—a measure that represents one radioactive event per second—per kilogram.”

Oh, Japanese ‘safety’ levels are two-thirds lower than the nuclear safety levels, and two-thirtieths (one-fifteenth) of the international levels.

Run for the hills or you'll glow in the dark, screech the moonbats.

Meanwhile,

“Iodine-131 has a half-life of roughly a week, which means levels could fade if new radioactive material isn't added.”

Reality - with in a week or so, even the low level of iodine-131 in just one reservoir, based on two samples, will be down to even the low low levels prescribed for infants in Japan [not “could fade].

This article even has this:

“...becquerels—a measure that represents one radioactive event per second—per kilogram.”

Reality - Becquerel (Bq)

The unit of measurement for radioactivity. An activity of one Bq means that one decay takes place per second. [Nothing to do with kg.]

Meanwhile, millions suffer and some die from asthma and other problems caused by filthy fossil fuels.

Governments must build deep shelters to keep moonbats and The Children safe.

The greatest threats from nuclear power is idiots panicking, and society reduced to poverty by running out of cheap, clean, safe power.

But moonbats are in a flat panic about nothing and they have votes! Most leftist politicians are interested only in pandering to such people, ably egged on by the leftist fossil scribblers with ‘degrees’ in English and knitting design.

Even Germany’s Angela Merkel, who should know much better, is pandering to moonbats as her political tenure comes under threat. How rare are real leaders who put country before votes.

related material
ionising radiation and health—risk analysis

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