The FSB, the spun off domestic branch of the KGB like to promote the use of the polygraph amongst companies in russia to ensure employee lotyalty (Yes, I was at one of their presentations a few years back). The joke is that itt was revealed by Vasily Mitrokhin (the KGB Archivist and defector)that faking your way through a polygraph test was simply a matter of training. In other words, the polygraph may catch the person stealing paperclips but it probably won't find the trained spy.
As with aviation security, this is basically smoke and mirrors. A policeman on the beat can see things that a camera can't. Cameras are cheaper but the level of low level alerts mean that most get ignored. Cashpoint muggings still happen.
It depends on where you are. Paying large sums of cash may be unusual in the UK but it is more usual in other European countries where credit card ownership is lower (due to exorbitant fees). There are no problems to say, pay for a last-minute holiday in cash at the airport.
The AML triggers depend upon your profile at the bank. If you do a lot of cash business, say run a pub then no problem - it is in your KYC profile which identifies what is expected of you as a client. Note that if you want to bank such a payment, just think of a suitable excuse. Note that saying "I just sold x grams of coke" probably isn't a good idea. OTOH, saying that you sold something that you might be reasonably expected to posess such as a laptop is fine.
As to the autopilot, I was under the impression that it was strictly landing, but I could be wrong. The truth is, that shuttle has the capability to be totally automated, but then what need would there be for pilots? And would you prefer that the person in control of your vehicle be in it with you? I would.
Buran's one and only out of atmosphere misson was flown unmanned. The autopilot worked very well. To be fair, the life systems weren't complete at that point so no human could have gone aloft, but it was still an impressive achievement.
Also Buran could accept detachable jet-packs that allowed full in-atmosphere flight. This means that the whole business of ferrying became much easier
I decided that I liked the Torchwood series after seeing one of the quad-panel LCD displays at a workplace with a post-it saying "out of order". Lots of high tech kiot means that you are more likely to having something down at any point in time (I worked in enough trading rooms).
Which republics as a matter of interest? I used to do Russia and Uzbekistan on a regular basis.
What the border guard were looking for (at least at the airport) was the visa info. This has the data that was laboriously entered at the issuing point. They just then compare this with the ID page. At least, that is what happens at the airport with the newer style visa vignettes (stuck on labels). The US Visa Waiver scheme requires machine readable passports. Whether they bother to read all that OCR or not is immaterial. It is now being implemented.
Uninsured accidents happen all the time in the UK, but that is because car ownership isn't tied closely to insurance (Elsewhere in Europe, expiry of insurance causes your road tax to be suspended). The problem isn't becuase of illegal use for hire.
In St Petersburg (Russia), you can hail any car, state your destination and haggle a price. Perhaps this is not adviseable for a woman travelling at night and alone but otherwise it works and apart from New Year's eve, the unofficial taxi system works very well. However, you had better know where you are going if it isn't a well known destination
In London, you have a good choice. You have black cabs where the license holder is allowed to pick up off the street. They will take you anywhere in Greater London at a fixed price (although on longer routes, you can negotiate). Note that the number of black cab licensees is controlled centrally and is not restricted by the number of applicants. After that, you get mini-cabs which must be prebooked. The drivers are also licensed and then lastly comes the so-called gypsy cab drivers. Personally, I don't feel that much safer in a mini-cab than a gypsy cab. Better insured, certainly but that is all.
Lastly, only the very top-end GPS systems work well in London. The streets are too narrow and the GPS signal drops out too often.
Most modern passports have an OCR section now on the ID page (and this is a condition of visa-less entry into the US now). All international passports cary the main data in Latin characters as well as the original Cyrillic, Arabic. Hebrew or whatever. Technically this is a French transliteration, which may actually be a slightly different to the English.
Yes, HTP (High-Test Peroxide) is great stuff. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get hold of and to manufacture. If you read some of Carmack's comments about getting enough for a flight you will understand it. HTP is also very nasty stuff. It isn't just bleach and gettiung enough on board to guarantee damage would be a difficult challenge and it won't go in a coke bottle. High concentrations are caustic and requires exceptionally clean handling as even dust can trigger decomposition.
Note that Carmack is only using the stuff as a mono-propellant, not burning the O2 that gets released thus wasting the potential energy. Most successful rocket propulsion systems based on H2O2 used it as an oxidiser together with another fuel. In the case of Black Arrow, it was burned together with kerosene creating enough specific impulse to get the payload into orbit.
However, I don't understand the secondary contamination. Whoever delivered the poison would deal with a closed bottle. Alpha get stopped by either glass or polyethylene so there *should* be zero contamination. However if someone else who had the poison administered to them travelled, then they would leak some radiation in their perspiration. This wouldn't be enough to hurt anyone, but it would show up if you started looking for alpha emitters in the seat covers.
The joke is that this radioactivity was discovered after all the heavy security measures were introduced on all flights to the UK and US. This was applied regardless of origin, even, theoretically, in Russia. Note that given the passenger volume, I think it might be difficult to get the inbound passengers because of the volume coming through Heathrow.
Putin may go, but it is unlikely that the Siloviki (interests behind Putin, primarily associated with the security services and military) are going to want to move out of the Kremlin.
There was that rather famous incident when a bunc of FSB people were caught with RDX inside the cellars of an appartment building in Ryazan and later the RDX seems to have transmuted to sugar during the investigation. Berzovsky's TV channel made much of this and this, along side his wanting to act as an intermediary with Chechnya that led to his downfall. However, the unstable security situation at the time contributed directly to Putin's success at the ballot.
Yes, the guy's death was very public. It would be impossible to prove a direct connection to the Russian state but this was a murder with a message. These were very popular with the Soviet security servivees too (remember Trotsky).
Good point. In those days there were a lot of rumours and it would have helped the GRU's reputation for such stories to go round. I've tried to substantiate the story about the execution of Penkovsky and cannot find any other source than Suvorov.
Thanks for that reference. It is pretty frightening. I once worked at a company that shared a building with a record company headquarters. This was one rich office. Apparently they weren't even investing in their studios, but marketing artists is always rather more improtant than making records.
The Brits certainly did. The quote from a Major who was attacked in the press for carrying an AK was "Of Course! It was the only reliable weapon available".
Actually, the modern US Army is a surprisingly agile and adaptive force. It's not like the Cold War Army of the 80s that used mass and raw firepower as a replacement for training.
Actually it is a behomoth. For every ten soldiers only four or less are active in a military sense (i.e, shooting). For the British army, the factor is more like six. This is just the green suits and totally ignore the vast number of civillians in the Pentagon.
Rumsfeld was right in that lean and mean is better. Unfortunately, with the current configuration, the Pentago couldn't field enough materiel to be an effective fighting force post invasion. Longer term actions are a major logistics issue for a high tech force. High tech doesn't like jungles or deserts and it tends to go wrong anyway over time. Not a lot of modern stuff can be field repaired. So Shock and Awe = Great, longer term - forget-it.
The big issue is asymetric warfare. Forget the big stuff, I really don't see the future being US vs China or any other single country directly. Why bother? Between the Iraqis and the Afghans, it has easily been demonstrated how a comparitively small and poorly equipped force can pin down a modern western force and that is even with the extreme news management in the US and the UK (=no blood and guts), unlike Vietnam.
The biggest problem of force projection, is to transport materiel to where it is needed. It appears that the Russians have been selling Zubr hovercraft. I had the pleasure of seeing some of these laid up in a St. Petersburg shipyard, 60-knots and about 540 tonnes. The PRC has ordered six at the moment. If they start to buy more or seek a manufacturing license, this could be a cause for worry.
In a leftover from the days of Shellac, record company's deduct 'breakages' from their artists fees for their product reaching the reseller. Unfortunately the advent of robust media such as vinyl and now the CD has not done anything for some of these ridiculous costs. Somewhere on the web there is quite a good explanation of where the money goes, and similar to films, it is amazing what can disappear as production costs.
I like that it finally uses non-boneheaded names for system directories (e.g. c:\users\blincoln\documents instead of c:\documents and settings\blincoln\reparse point that sometimes shows as 'my documents'Wow, someone learned from/home and similar concepts in half a dozen or so other operating systems. That came down to Windows design being around "one user/one computer" which isn't exactly the best in the networked world and really sucks on servers.
I agree, Alec Guinness played the part with such subtlety. John Le Carre later admitted that Guinness 'took over the character' in his mind and the two remained good friends. On being interviewed, Stella Rimmington, the former head of MI5 admitted that le Carre's novels were pretty close to the services at the time, which were under a crisis of self doubt since Philby, Burgess and Maclean.
Funnily enough, we saw Karla in the television adaptation of Smiley's People, when he is blackmailed into defecting and Karla is played by a much younger Patrick Stewart who was probably quite fresh out of playing a devious imperial guard, Sejanus in I, Claudius.
You don't have to administer Po itself, just a salt of Po diluted in about 10ml water and carry it in a phial, whether glass or plastic. A few mm is all you need to kill the Alpha. It is low risk to you (unless you throw it around) and it could easily easily be administered.
Once they have it on a mass-spec then seperating one isotope from another is a doddle. They seem quite certain that the material was Polonium as opposed to other materials so I guess some tests have been done. Note that this incident is now classified as terrorist originated nuclear contamination so we are no longer talking just about the metropolitan police and UCL. The other hitter is the radiation level Po210 burns much faster with different byproducts (209 goes to lead and bismuth, 210 just goes to lead). Ironically, although Po209 is much more stable, it is much harder to produce.
Along with the other oligarchs, Berezovsky did some very unfortunate things. Many Russians say "he is Jewish" and leave it at that. However, the 'Siloviki' just seem to be replacing the old Oligarchs with new ones, in the process reducing any notion of private ownership. Before Putin, the view held by many in the Russian markets was that the Oligarchs had stolen their bit during privatisation, but overall they needed things to settle down for them to realise their investments. In such an environment, ordinary people could have investments, insurance policies, pension funds or whatever. The attack on Yukos and Khordokovsky was a lesson that Russia wasn't ready for transparency in business or government.
Actually it remains a lot cheaper but only if you go direct. Someone who is going to get a stand at CeBIT is generally to expensive, i.e., a large amount of cost is the payoff because your company is big enough to be 'noticed' and there is probably also a local company taking a hefty margin (yes I know some Russian/German companies). India is extremely expensive for an onshore/offshore project, the major vendors ask a blended rate of around 500 Eur/day for on-site and still 300 or so Eur a day for a senior person in India. However, despite the infrastructure issues in India, it is perceived to be a much lower risk by major customer, particularly in the area of financial systems.
People die all the time in India, from starvation or whatever. There is even terrorism as well. However, it is seen as being a much safer bet than Russia. High profile assassinations make people uncomfortable. So does the fact that the army/MVD can hang around Pulkovo airport and arbitrarily and illegally 'fine' foreigners with impunity.
Hit the credit card companies. Hit them hard. It seems too easy to get a merchant account for online trading with no valid product to sell. The Rolexes etc are usually sold as fakes anyway. Rolex would love to close them down, same goes for Pfizer and V1agra. Heck I've even complained to a software vendor about pirated software being openly sold. Microsoft replied with a orm letter but I had a more meaningful response from Adobe, but I had directed the complaint via an onsite consultant who took this seriously. The response was along the lines of "You close one down, another springs up".
The real route would be to order something that is being sold as genuine, such as MS Office. Get the fake confirm it is a fake with MS and refuse the CC payment. The CC companies will soon start being more careful if they get a lot of refused transactions. Sure the merchant doesn't get paid, but it costs the CC company lots of time to process the reversal.
Interesting idea, that Berezovsky was behind it all (did you forget to prefix his name "that Jew", which many do when criticising). In truth, Berezovsky originally behind Putin and met with him before he came to power (at Berezovsky's villa at Sotto Grande). However Putin seemed to align himself with the military/security service interests.
You are right though to link this to Politkovskaya. There is fundamentally about Chechnya and the alleged use of agent provocateurs. In Russia, there may be corruption, but I've heard people tell me that it is much, much worse in the military. Those who have been to Chechnya tell how bad it is there, but there are plenty of opportunities for business. Look at how well some of the senior officers are living, and what is their official salary? A war in Chechnya is convenient for many, which is perhaps why it is taking so long to contain it.
Yes, there are many friends of Russia here, but to be a friend of Russia doesn't mean being a friend of certain interests that may be connected with the Kremlin. What upsets me is how far Russia is going backwards. There was one major success of the soviet union and that was universal education. Outside the military, there is little industrial devlopment (not even in the poorly run oil/gas sectors). I know businessmen scared to let their companies grow for fear of state intervention. I know others who have been forced to leave their companies to allow state appointed directors to take over. Why is it so much easier for me to outsource to India or even China than Russia?
Why is it that Russia is being held back and who is doing that?
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The FSB, the spun off domestic branch of the KGB like to promote the use of the polygraph amongst companies in russia to ensure employee lotyalty (Yes, I was at one of their presentations a few years back). The joke is that itt was revealed by Vasily Mitrokhin (the KGB Archivist and defector)that faking your way through a polygraph test was simply a matter of training. In other words, the polygraph may catch the person stealing paperclips but it probably won't find the trained spy.
As with aviation security, this is basically smoke and mirrors. A policeman on the beat can see things that a camera can't. Cameras are cheaper but the level of low level alerts mean that most get ignored. Cashpoint muggings still happen.
It depends on where you are. Paying large sums of cash may be unusual in the UK but it is more usual in other European countries where credit card ownership is lower (due to exorbitant fees). There are no problems to say, pay for a last-minute holiday in cash at the airport.
The AML triggers depend upon your profile at the bank. If you do a lot of cash business, say run a pub then no problem - it is in your KYC profile which identifies what is expected of you as a client. Note that if you want to bank such a payment, just think of a suitable excuse. Note that saying "I just sold x grams of coke" probably isn't a good idea. OTOH, saying that you sold something that you might be reasonably expected to posess such as a laptop is fine.
Buran's one and only out of atmosphere misson was flown unmanned. The autopilot worked very well. To be fair, the life systems weren't complete at that point so no human could have gone aloft, but it was still an impressive achievement.
Also Buran could accept detachable jet-packs that allowed full in-atmosphere flight. This means that the whole business of ferrying became much easier
I decided that I liked the Torchwood series after seeing one of the quad-panel LCD displays at a workplace with a post-it saying "out of order". Lots of high tech kiot means that you are more likely to having something down at any point in time (I worked in enough trading rooms).
Which republics as a matter of interest? I used to do Russia and Uzbekistan on a regular basis.
What the border guard were looking for (at least at the airport) was the visa info. This has the data that was laboriously entered at the issuing point. They just then compare this with the ID page. At least, that is what happens at the airport with the newer style visa vignettes (stuck on labels). The US Visa Waiver scheme requires machine readable passports. Whether they bother to read all that OCR or not is immaterial. It is now being implemented.
Uninsured accidents happen all the time in the UK, but that is because car ownership isn't tied closely to insurance (Elsewhere in Europe, expiry of insurance causes your road tax to be suspended). The problem isn't becuase of illegal use for hire.
In St Petersburg (Russia), you can hail any car, state your destination and haggle a price. Perhaps this is not adviseable for a woman travelling at night and alone but otherwise it works and apart from New Year's eve, the unofficial taxi system works very well. However, you had better know where you are going if it isn't a well known destination
In London, you have a good choice. You have black cabs where the license holder is allowed to pick up off the street. They will take you anywhere in Greater London at a fixed price (although on longer routes, you can negotiate). Note that the number of black cab licensees is controlled centrally and is not restricted by the number of applicants. After that, you get mini-cabs which must be prebooked. The drivers are also licensed and then lastly comes the so-called gypsy cab drivers. Personally, I don't feel that much safer in a mini-cab than a gypsy cab. Better insured, certainly but that is all.
Lastly, only the very top-end GPS systems work well in London. The streets are too narrow and the GPS signal drops out too often.
Most modern passports have an OCR section now on the ID page (and this is a condition of visa-less entry into the US now). All international passports cary the main data in Latin characters as well as the original Cyrillic, Arabic. Hebrew or whatever. Technically this is a French transliteration, which may actually be a slightly different to the English.
Yes, HTP (High-Test Peroxide) is great stuff. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get hold of and to manufacture. If you read some of Carmack's comments about getting enough for a flight you will understand it. HTP is also very nasty stuff. It isn't just bleach and gettiung enough on board to guarantee damage would be a difficult challenge and it won't go in a coke bottle. High concentrations are caustic and requires exceptionally clean handling as even dust can trigger decomposition.
Note that Carmack is only using the stuff as a mono-propellant, not burning the O2 that gets released thus wasting the potential energy. Most successful rocket propulsion systems based on H2O2 used it as an oxidiser together with another fuel. In the case of Black Arrow, it was burned together with kerosene creating enough specific impulse to get the payload into orbit.
However, I don't understand the secondary contamination. Whoever delivered the poison would deal with a closed bottle. Alpha get stopped by either glass or polyethylene so there *should* be zero contamination. However if someone else who had the poison administered to them travelled, then they would leak some radiation in their perspiration. This wouldn't be enough to hurt anyone, but it would show up if you started looking for alpha emitters in the seat covers.
The joke is that this radioactivity was discovered after all the heavy security measures were introduced on all flights to the UK and US. This was applied regardless of origin, even, theoretically, in Russia. Note that given the passenger volume, I think it might be difficult to get the inbound passengers because of the volume coming through Heathrow.
Putin may go, but it is unlikely that the Siloviki (interests behind Putin, primarily associated with the security services and military) are going to want to move out of the Kremlin.
There was that rather famous incident when a bunc of FSB people were caught with RDX inside the cellars of an appartment building in Ryazan and later the RDX seems to have transmuted to sugar during the investigation. Berzovsky's TV channel made much of this and this, along side his wanting to act as an intermediary with Chechnya that led to his downfall. However, the unstable security situation at the time contributed directly to Putin's success at the ballot.
Yes, the guy's death was very public. It would be impossible to prove a direct connection to the Russian state but this was a murder with a message. These were very popular with the Soviet security servivees too (remember Trotsky).
Good point. In those days there were a lot of rumours and it would have helped the GRU's reputation for such stories to go round. I've tried to substantiate the story about the execution of Penkovsky and cannot find any other source than Suvorov.
Thanks for that reference. It is pretty frightening. I once worked at a company that shared a building with a record company headquarters. This was one rich office. Apparently they weren't even investing in their studios, but marketing artists is always rather more improtant than making records.
The Brits certainly did. The quote from a Major who was attacked in the press for carrying an AK was "Of Course! It was the only reliable weapon available".
Actually it is a behomoth. For every ten soldiers only four or less are active in a military sense (i.e, shooting). For the British army, the factor is more like six. This is just the green suits and totally ignore the vast number of civillians in the Pentagon.
Rumsfeld was right in that lean and mean is better. Unfortunately, with the current configuration, the Pentago couldn't field enough materiel to be an effective fighting force post invasion. Longer term actions are a major logistics issue for a high tech force. High tech doesn't like jungles or deserts and it tends to go wrong anyway over time. Not a lot of modern stuff can be field repaired. So Shock and Awe = Great, longer term - forget-it.
The big issue is asymetric warfare. Forget the big stuff, I really don't see the future being US vs China or any other single country directly. Why bother? Between the Iraqis and the Afghans, it has easily been demonstrated how a comparitively small and poorly equipped force can pin down a modern western force and that is even with the extreme news management in the US and the UK (=no blood and guts), unlike Vietnam.
The biggest problem of force projection, is to transport materiel to where it is needed. It appears that the Russians have been selling Zubr hovercraft. I had the pleasure of seeing some of these laid up in a St. Petersburg shipyard, 60-knots and about 540 tonnes. The PRC has ordered six at the moment. If they start to buy more or seek a manufacturing license, this could be a cause for worry.
In a leftover from the days of Shellac, record company's deduct 'breakages' from their artists fees for their product reaching the reseller. Unfortunately the advent of robust media such as vinyl and now the CD has not done anything for some of these ridiculous costs. Somewhere on the web there is quite a good explanation of where the money goes, and similar to films, it is amazing what can disappear as production costs.
I like that it finally uses non-boneheaded names for system directories (e.g. c:\users\blincoln\documents instead of c:\documents and settings\blincoln\reparse point that sometimes shows as 'my documents'Wow, someone learned from /home and similar concepts in half a dozen or so other operating systems. That came down to Windows design being around "one user/one computer" which isn't exactly the best in the networked world and really sucks on servers.
Funnily enough, we saw Karla in the television adaptation of Smiley's People, when he is blackmailed into defecting and Karla is played by a much younger Patrick Stewart who was probably quite fresh out of playing a devious imperial guard, Sejanus in I, Claudius.
You don't have to administer Po itself, just a salt of Po diluted in about 10ml water and carry it in a phial, whether glass or plastic. A few mm is all you need to kill the Alpha. It is low risk to you (unless you throw it around) and it could easily easily be administered.
Once they have it on a mass-spec then seperating one isotope from another is a doddle. They seem quite certain that the material was Polonium as opposed to other materials so I guess some tests have been done. Note that this incident is now classified as terrorist originated nuclear contamination so we are no longer talking just about the metropolitan police and UCL. The other hitter is the radiation level Po210 burns much faster with different byproducts (209 goes to lead and bismuth, 210 just goes to lead). Ironically, although Po209 is much more stable, it is much harder to produce.
Along with the other oligarchs, Berezovsky did some very unfortunate things. Many Russians say "he is Jewish" and leave it at that. However, the 'Siloviki' just seem to be replacing the old Oligarchs with new ones, in the process reducing any notion of private ownership. Before Putin, the view held by many in the Russian markets was that the Oligarchs had stolen their bit during privatisation, but overall they needed things to settle down for them to realise their investments. In such an environment, ordinary people could have investments, insurance policies, pension funds or whatever. The attack on Yukos and Khordokovsky was a lesson that Russia wasn't ready for transparency in business or government.
Actually it remains a lot cheaper but only if you go direct. Someone who is going to get a stand at CeBIT is generally to expensive, i.e., a large amount of cost is the payoff because your company is big enough to be 'noticed' and there is probably also a local company taking a hefty margin (yes I know some Russian/German companies). India is extremely expensive for an onshore/offshore project, the major vendors ask a blended rate of around 500 Eur/day for on-site and still 300 or so Eur a day for a senior person in India. However, despite the infrastructure issues in India, it is perceived to be a much lower risk by major customer, particularly in the area of financial systems.
People die all the time in India, from starvation or whatever. There is even terrorism as well. However, it is seen as being a much safer bet than Russia. High profile assassinations make people uncomfortable. So does the fact that the army/MVD can hang around Pulkovo airport and arbitrarily and illegally 'fine' foreigners with impunity.
Hit the credit card companies. Hit them hard. It seems too easy to get a merchant account for online trading with no valid product to sell. The Rolexes etc are usually sold as fakes anyway. Rolex would love to close them down, same goes for Pfizer and V1agra. Heck I've even complained to a software vendor about pirated software being openly sold. Microsoft replied with a orm letter but I had a more meaningful response from Adobe, but I had directed the complaint via an onsite consultant who took this seriously. The response was along the lines of "You close one down, another springs up".
The real route would be to order something that is being sold as genuine, such as MS Office. Get the fake confirm it is a fake with MS and refuse the CC payment. The CC companies will soon start being more careful if they get a lot of refused transactions. Sure the merchant doesn't get paid, but it costs the CC company lots of time to process the reversal.
Interesting idea, that Berezovsky was behind it all (did you forget to prefix his name "that Jew", which many do when criticising). In truth, Berezovsky originally behind Putin and met with him before he came to power (at Berezovsky's villa at Sotto Grande). However Putin seemed to align himself with the military/security service interests.
You are right though to link this to Politkovskaya. There is fundamentally about Chechnya and the alleged use of agent provocateurs. In Russia, there may be corruption, but I've heard people tell me that it is much, much worse in the military. Those who have been to Chechnya tell how bad it is there, but there are plenty of opportunities for business. Look at how well some of the senior officers are living, and what is their official salary? A war in Chechnya is convenient for many, which is perhaps why it is taking so long to contain it.
Yes, there are many friends of Russia here, but to be a friend of Russia doesn't mean being a friend of certain interests that may be connected with the Kremlin. What upsets me is how far Russia is going backwards. There was one major success of the soviet union and that was universal education. Outside the military, there is little industrial devlopment (not even in the poorly run oil/gas sectors). I know businessmen scared to let their companies grow for fear of state intervention. I know others who have been forced to leave their companies to allow state appointed directors to take over. Why is it so much easier for me to outsource to India or even China than Russia?
Why is it that Russia is being held back and who is doing that?