.. was like that at one time. You had to re-enter the password practically every time you did anything on it, almost to move the cursor. It is not so bad now.
Alan Dougherty wrote :- "The 'company' cannot see a large consumption if the meter has been bypassed."
I understood that point. The GP post made it.
My point was to question what is going on inside the heads of the electricity company. Because even if we assume that it does not occur to the company that the crooks bypass the meter, what would a Smart Meter tell the company that the quarterly reading would not? There would be a lot of consumption evident in any case.
Wrote :- "BC Hydro [claimed] that it would "help catch marijuana grow-ops" among other things (how? grow-ops bypass the meter)"
Even if they did not by-pass the meter, why did the company think a Smart Meter would make a difference? The game would be given away by the large consumption, as on the quarterly bill, for the type of premises, wouldn't it?
FrankAlphaXII wrote :- "in the UK. Can you guys go outside and check your own meters?"
Outside? To hell with that, most here are inside (except newest houses where it is a carbuncle on the front wall). The company keeps nagging me to convert to an outside one, which is ironic as these days they expect me to take my own readings most of the time (but I get a discount for that). When their own monkeys do read it they get it wrong half the time - I am not exagerating, that is the track record so far where I now live.
The older meters had a wheel you could see turning, and you could instantly see the speed changing. I remember helping my father by switching things on and off around the house while he timed the wheel - doing years ago just what is now being touted as a bright idea.
However, newer meters are wonderful wonderful digital and mine only changes every whole kWh. With that it is not practicable to "see" what you are consuming at any moment.
Years ago Which? magazine looked into a telephone meter that displayed the rising cost of a call while you were making it.
Many of their respondents said that they were surprised how LITTLE the call was costing them minute by minute, and hung on for longer than they would have done without the meter!
Of course, all those "little cost" calls added up and at the end of the quarter their bills were higher than ever.
".... interactive live tiles bursting with useful information ....."
........ priceless!!!! You should be on the stage! It was when I read that part that I went bursting with coffee over keyboard. Worth it though - I am going to remember that soundbite for a long, long time.
>> They should have canned 9x and built upon NT4 long ago
>They did.
But not soon enough. The whole Win95/98/ME train wreck could have been avoided because even entry level PCs would have been capable of running a lightweight version of NT from about 1996 (when NT 4.0 was released). I ran the full version at the time, on a rig that was not cutting edge.
The reason MS persisted in two parallel lines of Windows (DOS>Win3.x>Win95>98>ME versus NT>2000>XP>Vista>7) was internal rivalry in MS that Gates put up with, instead of banging their heads together as he should have. Maybe he thought internal competition was good.
The public reason for persisting with the 95 line for so long, rather than offering an NT-Lite, was that "games would not run on NT" (because NT would not allow software to have direct hardware access). In fact, the games writers soon adapted when they had to.
@Iain - Re: Did he get caught during TWO separate burglaries?
Iain wrote :- "the golden rule, do one thing well, see also drug couriers who get busted when they get stopped for a duff light or speeding or no insurance"
A better rule is never to break more than one rule at a time. Doing one thing well is not enough.
I remember the Aldershot Barracks IRA bombers; they were identified because the idiots drove the wrong way up a one-way street on the way to planting the bomb, attracting attention and getting thier number taken by a member of the public.
While I don't believe that premiums would go down, an accelerometer in the car might stop those bogus whiplash claims.
A workmate of mine was in a motorway traffic jam, had stopped, but did not apply his handbrake enough. He was tuning the radio to get some traffic news when he felt a very slight bump and realised he had rolled into the car in front (oh those motorway gradients!). No harm done, not even to the paint, and the five Asian gentlemen in the other car were all smiles about it; but they exchanged details anyway.
A week later a claim came through for five cases of whiplash.
@annodomini2 Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...
"It's been well proven through research that speed limiting with habitual speeders is actually more dangerous than letting them exceed the limit by a few mph."
So the most disobedient drivers are still bad even when partially harnessed? Reference please?
"Speed doesn't inherently kill"
Do they teach basic physics in school these days?
1) Available time to take evasive action (like braking) for a bad situation goes down as speed goes up, linear relationship.
2) Destructive energy goes up as the square of the speed, square law relationship.
There are also reasons for speed limits nothing to do with danger. Noise and road capacity are others.
At one point on my commute I turn right from the stem of a T junction. There is a lot of traffic doing the same as me, about 4 times as much as is coming along the "main" straight-through road. Although it is all in a 30 mph limit, the main road traffic is doing 40-45 mph. As a result, this light sprinkling of traffic on the "main" road holds back the much larger amount of traffic trying to pull out because much more space must be left in front of a faster vehicle.
So I (and about 30 other cars at any one time) waste 5 minutes every day at this junction, just so that the "main" road cars can drive at 40mph instead of 30mph for a 400 yd stretch (saving themselves about 7 seconds).
@Steve Evans Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...
It might come as news to some people, but in the UK the speed limit is 60mph on single carriageway roads. A 70mph limit is on a dual carriageway or motorway where [insert favourite rep car of the year here] can overtake you.
Unless you are in the outside lane and there are vehicles inside of you doing exactly the same speed as you, but that is a different issue
@JetsetJim Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...
You are right, speedos in the UK are not allowed to under-indicate, and that has been the case for a long time, from when they were all still mechanical and not as precise. This is to prevent motorists caught for speeding pleading "But my speedo only said 29mph!"
I fitted larger than standard tyres to my 4x4, which would give an under-indication. However, it was possible to change the speedometer drive gear because the transfer case on which it is fitted is used in many different vehicles with many different tyre sizes. For a week I did a series of timed measurements between motorway kilometer posts, enough to average out variations, and calculated what gear I needed to compensate, and fitted that.
@Steve Crook Re: Unfortunately, the facts are otherwise
Steve Crook wrote :- "The truth is, that as time passes we find better more efficient ways of doing things, and as standards of living increase worldwide, the rate of population increase will decline."
That needs framing as a fine example of a pious hope. Having lots of kids is, in some cultures, enshrined as something to be proud of. Better standards of living would merely enable even more kids. Osama bin Laden's father did not have 56 (or whatever) kids because he was hard-up.
Finding (if we can) more efficient ways of doing things does not necessarily even keep up with the population increase.
For example, copper is running short. There is not enough to go round the population (esp as it is also dumped in landfill as time goes on), so as the population increases aluminium is increasingly used for electrical conductors. Aluminium has greater electrical resistance than copper - so less efficiency there.
You say "Confront the problem of population growth directly". How? Mandatory contraception? One child policies? Forced sterilisation?" As time goes on, such measures may be the only alternative to mass extinction.
Even ignoring disability cheats, it does not take much to register as "Disabled". Just because someone is registered disabled does not mean that the cannot read a website or run a mile. They might be partially deaf for example. I had a girlfriend who's father was registered disabled, with a sticker in his windscreen and all so he could park in those "Disabled" slots, but I once saw him dancing non-stop all evening. I don't know what his disability was supposed to be (and neither did my GF).
People seem to lose their heads when "disablility" is mentioned. Why for example are the disabled exempt from the M4 Severn Bridge toll? You pay without getting out of your seat, and from what I have seen they still have to reach out the car window to sign a form. Being disabled != hard up; it would make more sense if people on social security benefits were exempt.
I was too, and I voted against the bitch. I also saw the long protest march of miners along Fleet Street and the Stand during the miners' strike, led by some London corporate dignitaries with Red Ken walking alone a few paces behind them - and I would vote against that blighter too.
Thatcher/NUM was not a binary choice. The miners lost their excessive power anyway due to increasing coal imports, because it was cheaper; there could have been a middle way. Meanwhile Thatcher (and her Thatcherite successors) effectively axed all sorts of technical industries (including ones I worked in, Railway Engineering, shipbuilding), which she hated with an obsession, with the aim of the UK becoming a "Sevice Industry" nation. With the Internet however it has since become even easier to outsource service jobs than manufacturing jobs.
One day we will have to go back to that coal and those industries. We will need to make our own stuff again from our coal, ore and scrap - because no-one else will sell it to a bankrupt nation.
Wrote :- "several more in the IT community who are now aware of Bahrain's terrible human rights abuses following Anonymous' targetting of the F1 championships being held there"
More to do with Bahrain drawing attention to themselves by hosting an event like that
And :- "there are probably a fair few that are now becoming aware of the growing discontent in Russia right now"
OK, I'm aware of it. Big suprise. Actually, there are billions of people around the world discontent with their governments. Me for a start, and I live in the UK, a democratic, liberal, fair, balanced country where there is no corruption, politicians never lie or take bribes or are influenced by charming and wealthy "personalities"; and what matters is merit, not money, and every decision is made as the result of intelligent informed debate, not soundbites. Oh, wait a minute ......
What do you know about Russia anyway - live there? I'd rather exert my energies on issues in my own country - there are plenty at close hand. It's not as easy though as sitting, with no risk of face-to-face encounter, pointing to real or supposed issues from a great distance, issues which are not always as they appear or what the media make them appear, sorry.
Maybe they are all sharing a single Wi-Fi connection that some dim-wit (or crusading commie) has left open.
In my experience people who are "short of money" still spend on anything important to them. It is well known that the poor on average spend more on fags, booze and lottery tickets than the well-off.
I have some in-laws who spend all the money they have left over (after buying the cheapest possible food from Lidl) on fags, chain smoked. They could easily afford the Internet on a fraction of what they spend on fags, and they have been offered a free PC. Their response :- "What's the point?" and they light up another fag.
If politicians believe they can get the whole population "connected" it is because they have never been acquainted with any real-world people like these.
pPPP wrote :- "A lot of people with poor sight will run their fancy large 1980x1600 screen at 640x480 in order to "make the words bigger". Increasing the font sizes doesn't seem to compute and as for the resolution, if your sight isn't that good anyway, are you going to care?"
That last bit is strange logic. A lot of people used to computing are now 50+, and it is a strain for them to read tiny words. You (Stacy) will find that out one day. I am not talking about people with defective vision who might want a big screen with 640x480 res, I am talking about average 50-70 yo's.
The solution is simple, a normal (ie high) resolution, for which most apps are designed, on a physically big screen. You don't want to throw away resolution just to make the device smaller and lighter.
People go on about lightness and slimness; I have a laptop, but use a desktop when at home and dont give a f#@K how big or heavy it is. The desk and floor take the weight, and the system unit (a hefty tower in my case) is away under the desk. If I wanted another 12 cubic inches in my room I would chuck away some of these old magazines I have lying around rather than make compomises with my PC.
Agreed. Some of these (eg Titanic, War of the Worlds) are simply films that people have seen relatively recently and did not like. They are no-where near the league of the worst 10 ever made.
It is accepted by most film buffs that the worst ever film was the 1959 "Plan 9 from Outer Space", not even in this list.
It was a combination of corny Sci-Fi and horror, directed by the cross-dressing and fetish expert Ed Wood. It is laughable both for the plot, the painful slowness of the action and the childishly obvious cardboard-and-string props. "Best" of all, the elderly star (Bela Lugosi) died during the production, so Ed Wood filled in with bits of home [silent] movies of Lugosi wandering around in his garden.
The film helped to get Ed Wood awarded the title of "Worst Director of All Time". You have to see Plan 9 to believe it - try to find a copy. It has cult status, giving its name to a Unix operating system and a rock band, among other things.
Elmer Phud wrote :- "and some folks wonder why the punters don't adopt Linux - can you shove in a disc and let it do the set-up work for you? No."
What was it in Tracyanne's post that made you come up with that? Sounded to like the only particular effort she had, if it amounted to much, was to install Mono+Mono Develop. Installing a development suite is not something most punters ever do.
The extra effort needed to install Linux is to put the disc in at all, seeing that Windows comes pre-installed on almost every PC sold. Until Linux is widely available as an option when buying a new PC (which it is not thanks to Microsofts continuing dirty business methods), even at the same price as a Windows one, Windows will indeed still be there.
Suits me though; as long as Windows is still there it acts as a safety valve for all that malware and it deflects users away from me who might want me to fix their PC if I used the same OS as them.
"MS did not have a half-decent (preemptively multitasked as the chip designers intended) OS until Windows 95, a full 9 years later ! OK, you could count NT on its technical merits released in 1993 so only 7 years later"
I don't know why you mentioned NT as an afterthought. It was NT that was half-decent; Win95 was crap.
Only problems with NT were its cost and the fact that it would not run apps that needed direct hardware access - mostly games, but some other stuff too like Logitec scanners.
What MS should have done in the mid-90's was to produce a lightweight version of NT; by then even entry-level PCs could have run it. Instead they persisted with the 95/98/ME line in parallel with NT. They said it was to support games, but the real reason was MS internal politics. There was rivalry between the two separate teams (95 vs NT). Either Gates thought this was a good thing or he did not have the bottle to bang their heads together.
As a result the 95/98/ME crap reputation got associated with everything with MS / Windows branding, at least with people who knew there was better to be had.
When they eventually dumped ME and and went to NT entirely (in the form of WinXP) the games writers soon adapted after all.
Anthony Hegedus wrote :- ".....so what exactly is so good about word perfect?"
The "Reveal codes. " function.
When I use Word it manages to get its knickers in some awful twists, which seems to be beause it is putting in layer upon layer of formatting codes, most of which are contradicting each other.
Reveal codes in WordPerfect and you could see what is going on and clean it up if necessary. MS thinks we are dumb and need to be "shielded" from the formatting codes.
It is true that IBM wasted a lot of time making earlier versions of OS/2 compatible with 286s. But they had dropped that idea by v2.0 AFAIR.
I was around back then, and what you need to understand is that there was no processor arms race then. It was assumed by most people that 286s would be around for a long time to come and that 386s were only for power users and servers. When I first bought a PC I seriously considered getting a 286 even though 386s were already available. Then suddenly everyone went CPU power mad and we got 386/486/Pentium/Pentium2 in rapid succession, and I actually got a 486.
To think of an analogy today, the 286 and 386 were regarded like entry-level and professional level Nikon SLR cameras. No one is expecting Nikon to drop their entry level SLRs just because their professional model is more powerful.
But that was not the reason OS/2 lost the race. It was the MS tactic of getting Windows pre-loaded onto every new PC, apparently "free", and the negative attitude of the computer press towards OS/2. I am sure a lot of money changed hands under the tables for MS to get into this position, because OS/2 v2.x was certainly better than the contemporary DOS/Windows v3.x
Some of the underhand MS tactics have become public knowledge since then, but I suspect we still do not know the half of it.
My post on WordPerfect looks a bit OT where it is, but I was actually replying to Spanners who was comapring Windows licensing policies with WordPerfect's.
Why (since the new software in this forum) do replies get separated from the parent?
It was in the WordPefect for Windows v5.1 Licence Agreement that if you had a company copy, you could also load it on a PC at home. It was not "pirating".
I am looking at a copy of that agreement right now, because I still have my boxed copy from work, with floppies, heavy manuals and everything. When my company went over to Word, most people tossed their WordPerfect boxes in the bin, but some of us took it home.
We all (except some PHBs) thought Word was crap compared with WP. We especially missed the "Reveal Codes" feature, and Word would render our old WP files in peculiar fonts; they had only been in Times Roman, but this was Microsoft punishing us for ever having used WP.
I used WP right up until I went to Open Office. I must try re-installing it one day.
Re: "I have worked for the UK nuclear generating industry and I do not recall"
Thanks for pointing out that incident. I don't recall it, although it does not sound very memorable.
Your link does not give the cause of this collision, but the vast majority of level crossing accidents are caused by road traffic jumping the lights. I see that this is an ungated crossing, which would be particularly tempting, and which is why the train would have been under a severe speed limit. That line is a long branch just for the power stations at Dungeness.
In any case, the liability here, *if* the stop lights were at fault, would be Railtrack's, not the nuclear industry's.
As you recognised in your second post, I do not work for the industry now so I am more likely to speak my mind on the subject. However, there were no specific "company rules" against doing so when I was employed as long as we did not make it sound like the "official" view if it were not.
Fine. I have worked for the UK nuclear generating industry and I do not recall it causing any damages to third parties apart from traffic accidents involving company vehicles. (The Dungeness A flask lorry crushed a parked Jag a couple of years ago while manouevering at a garage where it had gone for its routine service).
Unless they count damage to the nerves of people who whip themselves into a frezy of paranoia over anything nuclear, and who, US style, claim their nerves are worth £1B.
Or claim that they are dying of cancer because they heard there was a fire in a canteen chip pan, seeing this as easy money. Like the guy who tried to sue the railways because of the alleged damage to his nerves caused by hearing about a train accident in which he was not even involved.
There were two photos of IKB in front of those chains (which was during the launch of the Great Eastern). The first was an "official" one with him posing self-consciously, and the photographer realised that it was no good. IKB relaxed with his cigar while the photographer was changing plates and then the photographer took the second without warning him.
The second picture was vastly better and is the one we always see today.
He is sad for queing since 3am, but maybe he hung around because he does not get to see inside a store like thet very often, so wanted to look at their other stuff.
I tend to browse around tech stores (Maplin, Jessops, PC World - not that I'd buy from PC World) to see what new kit is around. I even browsed round an Apple store once - I'd never buy their stuff but wanted to see what the hype was about.
As for possibly opening a box in the store - what sort of idiot does that? Maybe dropping guarantee cards, instructions and little accessory bits all over the floor. I open all my buys at home, and carefully keep the packaging too, in case I need to return under guarantee
"I haven't queued in a super market since they started doing online ordering with home delivery"
Tried that.
The fruit and vegetables you get are the inferior ones that customers on-the-spot would leave.
If you chose something that is on offer and they [claim to] have run out of that line, they substitute an "equivalent" that will be dearer, and maybe one you simply don't prefer.
Then they can simply cock-up the order. Once I got six big cabbages which I certainly did not order - I hate cabbage.
Bring up a full screen bash terminal session on one of their demo laptops, type a random comand like "ls -al" and leave it that way. It won't fit their image.
I used to be a regular customer of Dabs. Then one day a salesman called me and told me (proudly) that BT now owned them.
I pointed out that BT were the bar stewards who chaged me an "admin" charge to pay my own phone bill, so Dabs and anyone else connected with them could go to hell. I am glad they now have.
The IT industry would exist without Apple. The comms industry would exist without Apple.
So even without Apple, those comms industry workers and IT workers would still be doing more-or-less what they are doing now. People would still be writing books and business analysts would still still be analysing businesses.
If Apple were suddenly teleported into the centre of the sun, their place on Earth would be filled in like a hole in the water.
One of the most striking things to learn about human affairs is that nothing and nobody is indispensable. Life would continue much the same without them.
Please also learn to recognise marketing bullshit when you see it.
Seeing that Thailand seems to have exported half of its womanhood as Thai-Brides, or to work as hookers around the world (take a look at the number advertising in your local paper classifieds); and the half that don't leave work as bar hostesses for foreign sex tourists, I should not think there is anything else for straight sex-starved young Thai men to do except get over it by kicking each other in the balls.
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.. was like that at one time. You had to re-enter the password practically every time you did anything on it, almost to move the cursor. It is not so bad now.
Re: @nuke
Alan Dougherty wrote :- "The 'company' cannot see a large consumption if the meter has been bypassed."
I understood that point. The GP post made it.
My point was to question what is going on inside the heads of the electricity company. Because even if we assume that it does not occur to the company that the crooks bypass the meter, what would a Smart Meter tell the company that the quarterly reading would not? There would be a lot of consumption evident in any case.
@ AJames - Re: Open your wallets
Wrote :- "BC Hydro [claimed] that it would "help catch marijuana grow-ops" among other things (how? grow-ops bypass the meter)"
Even if they did not by-pass the meter, why did the company think a Smart Meter would make a difference? The game would be given away by the large consumption, as on the quarterly bill, for the type of premises, wouldn't it?
Re: Just a question
FrankAlphaXII wrote :- "in the UK. Can you guys go outside and check your own meters?"
Outside? To hell with that, most here are inside (except newest houses where it is a carbuncle on the front wall). The company keeps nagging me to convert to an outside one, which is ironic as these days they expect me to take my own readings most of the time (but I get a discount for that). When their own monkeys do read it they get it wrong half the time - I am not exagerating, that is the track record so far where I now live.
The older meters had a wheel you could see turning, and you could instantly see the speed changing. I remember helping my father by switching things on and off around the house while he timed the wheel - doing years ago just what is now being touted as a bright idea.
However, newer meters are wonderful wonderful digital and mine only changes every whole kWh. With that it is not practicable to "see" what you are consuming at any moment.
Consumption might INCREASE
Years ago Which? magazine looked into a telephone meter that displayed the rising cost of a call while you were making it.
Many of their respondents said that they were surprised how LITTLE the call was costing them minute by minute, and hung on for longer than they would have done without the meter!
Of course, all those "little cost" calls added up and at the end of the quarter their bills were higher than ever.
@dotdavid - Re: Differentiation is trivial
I had a TV with a remote with two sides - simple and comprehensive. You could turn it round in its outer case to expose the side you preferred.
@AC - Re: And the funny thing is....
AC wrote : "By the end of the day that it launches Win8 will be running on a larger number of PCs than Linux has been installed on."
So we mustn't discuss a new release of Windows, or compare it with Linux or anything else because there are more copies of Windows than Linux?
Like we shouldn't discuss a new Ford model, or compare it with a Chrysler or any other car, because there are more Fords around than Chryslers?
Not sure I get your point or follow your logic.
@AC - Re: For your own good
You are being funny, right?
".... interactive live tiles bursting with useful information ....."
........ priceless!!!! You should be on the stage! It was when I read that part that I went bursting with coffee over keyboard. Worth it though - I am going to remember that soundbite for a long, long time.
@Vic - Re: Wow, I think you noticed it...
>> They should have canned 9x and built upon NT4 long ago
>They did.
But not soon enough. The whole Win95/98/ME train wreck could have been avoided because even entry level PCs would have been capable of running a lightweight version of NT from about 1996 (when NT 4.0 was released). I ran the full version at the time, on a rig that was not cutting edge.
The reason MS persisted in two parallel lines of Windows (DOS>Win3.x>Win95>98>ME versus NT>2000>XP>Vista>7) was internal rivalry in MS that Gates put up with, instead of banging their heads together as he should have. Maybe he thought internal competition was good.
The public reason for persisting with the 95 line for so long, rather than offering an NT-Lite, was that "games would not run on NT" (because NT would not allow software to have direct hardware access). In fact, the games writers soon adapted when they had to.
@Benjamin 4
Yes, but there's never a sledgehammer handy when you are stopped for a search at customs.
@Voland's right hand - Re: Shades of Mission Impossible?
Maybe the Mac will explode instead.
Just hoping.
@Iain - Re: Did he get caught during TWO separate burglaries?
Iain wrote :- "the golden rule, do one thing well, see also drug couriers who get busted when they get stopped for a duff light or speeding or no insurance"
A better rule is never to break more than one rule at a time. Doing one thing well is not enough.
I remember the Aldershot Barracks IRA bombers; they were identified because the idiots drove the wrong way up a one-way street on the way to planting the bomb, attracting attention and getting thier number taken by a member of the public.
Re: Shirley not
Where the hell do you meet these women?
@Magnus_Pym Re: If they really knew...
While I don't believe that premiums would go down, an accelerometer in the car might stop those bogus whiplash claims.
A workmate of mine was in a motorway traffic jam, had stopped, but did not apply his handbrake enough. He was tuning the radio to get some traffic news when he felt a very slight bump and realised he had rolled into the car in front (oh those motorway gradients!). No harm done, not even to the paint, and the five Asian gentlemen in the other car were all smiles about it; but they exchanged details anyway.
A week later a claim came through for five cases of whiplash.
@annodomini2 Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...
"It's been well proven through research that speed limiting with habitual speeders is actually more dangerous than letting them exceed the limit by a few mph."
So the most disobedient drivers are still bad even when partially harnessed? Reference please?
"Speed doesn't inherently kill"
Do they teach basic physics in school these days?
1) Available time to take evasive action (like braking) for a bad situation goes down as speed goes up, linear relationship.
2) Destructive energy goes up as the square of the speed, square law relationship.
There are also reasons for speed limits nothing to do with danger. Noise and road capacity are others.
At one point on my commute I turn right from the stem of a T junction. There is a lot of traffic doing the same as me, about 4 times as much as is coming along the "main" straight-through road. Although it is all in a 30 mph limit, the main road traffic is doing 40-45 mph. As a result, this light sprinkling of traffic on the "main" road holds back the much larger amount of traffic trying to pull out because much more space must be left in front of a faster vehicle.
So I (and about 30 other cars at any one time) waste 5 minutes every day at this junction, just so that the "main" road cars can drive at 40mph instead of 30mph for a 400 yd stretch (saving themselves about 7 seconds).
@Steve Evans Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...
It might come as news to some people, but in the UK the speed limit is 60mph on single carriageway roads. A 70mph limit is on a dual carriageway or motorway where [insert favourite rep car of the year here] can overtake you.
Unless you are in the outside lane and there are vehicles inside of you doing exactly the same speed as you, but that is a different issue
@JetsetJim Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...
You are right, speedos in the UK are not allowed to under-indicate, and that has been the case for a long time, from when they were all still mechanical and not as precise. This is to prevent motorists caught for speeding pleading "But my speedo only said 29mph!"
I fitted larger than standard tyres to my 4x4, which would give an under-indication. However, it was possible to change the speedometer drive gear because the transfer case on which it is fitted is used in many different vehicles with many different tyre sizes. For a week I did a series of timed measurements between motorway kilometer posts, enough to average out variations, and calculated what gear I needed to compensate, and fitted that.
@Steve Crook Re: Unfortunately, the facts are otherwise
Steve Crook wrote :- "The truth is, that as time passes we find better more efficient ways of doing things, and as standards of living increase worldwide, the rate of population increase will decline."
That needs framing as a fine example of a pious hope. Having lots of kids is, in some cultures, enshrined as something to be proud of. Better standards of living would merely enable even more kids. Osama bin Laden's father did not have 56 (or whatever) kids because he was hard-up.
Finding (if we can) more efficient ways of doing things does not necessarily even keep up with the population increase.
For example, copper is running short. There is not enough to go round the population (esp as it is also dumped in landfill as time goes on), so as the population increases aluminium is increasingly used for electrical conductors. Aluminium has greater electrical resistance than copper - so less efficiency there.
You say "Confront the problem of population growth directly". How? Mandatory contraception? One child policies? Forced sterilisation?" As time goes on, such measures may be the only alternative to mass extinction.
Re: Power requirements
JetSetJim wrote :- "VTOL stuff obviously use a shed load of fuel to go up/down, though."
Dead right there. VTOL, as advocated by the professor, is massively inefficient.
@ John Robinson : Re: Fly home....
Wrote : "they can just fly off home until you need them in the evening"
Great, you just doubled the fuel consumption.
Re: Parking on a skyscraper
Why the dig at the SUV? Goes for most cars.
Re: What???!!!
The number is meaningless in this context.
Even ignoring disability cheats, it does not take much to register as "Disabled". Just because someone is registered disabled does not mean that the cannot read a website or run a mile. They might be partially deaf for example. I had a girlfriend who's father was registered disabled, with a sticker in his windscreen and all so he could park in those "Disabled" slots, but I once saw him dancing non-stop all evening. I don't know what his disability was supposed to be (and neither did my GF).
People seem to lose their heads when "disablility" is mentioned. Why for example are the disabled exempt from the M4 Severn Bridge toll? You pay without getting out of your seat, and from what I have seen they still have to reach out the car window to sign a form. Being disabled != hard up; it would make more sense if people on social security benefits were exempt.
Re: I wonder
I was too, and I voted against the bitch. I also saw the long protest march of miners along Fleet Street and the Stand during the miners' strike, led by some London corporate dignitaries with Red Ken walking alone a few paces behind them - and I would vote against that blighter too.
Thatcher/NUM was not a binary choice. The miners lost their excessive power anyway due to increasing coal imports, because it was cheaper; there could have been a middle way. Meanwhile Thatcher (and her Thatcherite successors) effectively axed all sorts of technical industries (including ones I worked in, Railway Engineering, shipbuilding), which she hated with an obsession, with the aim of the UK becoming a "Sevice Industry" nation. With the Internet however it has since become even easier to outsource service jobs than manufacturing jobs.
One day we will have to go back to that coal and those industries. We will need to make our own stuff again from our coal, ore and scrap - because no-one else will sell it to a bankrupt nation.
Adam Gale looks happy
... on that Twitter page, looks like he's cracked the champagne open.
https://twitter.com/#!/CBruniOfficial/status/200283282896723969
@h4rm0ny
Wrote :- "several more in the IT community who are now aware of Bahrain's terrible human rights abuses following Anonymous' targetting of the F1 championships being held there"
More to do with Bahrain drawing attention to themselves by hosting an event like that
And :- "there are probably a fair few that are now becoming aware of the growing discontent in Russia right now"
OK, I'm aware of it. Big suprise. Actually, there are billions of people around the world discontent with their governments. Me for a start, and I live in the UK, a democratic, liberal, fair, balanced country where there is no corruption, politicians never lie or take bribes or are influenced by charming and wealthy "personalities"; and what matters is merit, not money, and every decision is made as the result of intelligent informed debate, not soundbites. Oh, wait a minute ......
What do you know about Russia anyway - live there? I'd rather exert my energies on issues in my own country - there are plenty at close hand. It's not as easy though as sitting, with no risk of face-to-face encounter, pointing to real or supposed issues from a great distance, issues which are not always as they appear or what the media make them appear, sorry.
That's it ..
.. the last time I buy a Seagate HD. I don't know what dirty tricks might now be put into hidden sectors. Similar to UEFI Secure Boot stuff perhaps.
Re: Easy
Maybe they are all sharing a single Wi-Fi connection that some dim-wit (or crusading commie) has left open.
In my experience people who are "short of money" still spend on anything important to them. It is well known that the poor on average spend more on fags, booze and lottery tickets than the well-off.
I have some in-laws who spend all the money they have left over (after buying the cheapest possible food from Lidl) on fags, chain smoked. They could easily afford the Internet on a fraction of what they spend on fags, and they have been offered a free PC. Their response :- "What's the point?" and they light up another fag.
If politicians believe they can get the whole population "connected" it is because they have never been acquainted with any real-world people like these.
@ Stacy and pPPPP, Re: Wise article
pPPP wrote :- "A lot of people with poor sight will run their fancy large 1980x1600 screen at 640x480 in order to "make the words bigger". Increasing the font sizes doesn't seem to compute and as for the resolution, if your sight isn't that good anyway, are you going to care?"
That last bit is strange logic. A lot of people used to computing are now 50+, and it is a strain for them to read tiny words. You (Stacy) will find that out one day. I am not talking about people with defective vision who might want a big screen with 640x480 res, I am talking about average 50-70 yo's.
The solution is simple, a normal (ie high) resolution, for which most apps are designed, on a physically big screen. You don't want to throw away resolution just to make the device smaller and lighter.
People go on about lightness and slimness; I have a laptop, but use a desktop when at home and dont give a f#@K how big or heavy it is. The desk and floor take the weight, and the system unit (a hefty tower in my case) is away under the desk. If I wanted another 12 cubic inches in my room I would chuck away some of these old magazines I have lying around rather than make compomises with my PC.
Re: Not the absolute worst
Agreed. Some of these (eg Titanic, War of the Worlds) are simply films that people have seen relatively recently and did not like. They are no-where near the league of the worst 10 ever made.
It is accepted by most film buffs that the worst ever film was the 1959 "Plan 9 from Outer Space", not even in this list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Outer_Space
It was a combination of corny Sci-Fi and horror, directed by the cross-dressing and fetish expert Ed Wood. It is laughable both for the plot, the painful slowness of the action and the childishly obvious cardboard-and-string props. "Best" of all, the elderly star (Bela Lugosi) died during the production, so Ed Wood filled in with bits of home [silent] movies of Lugosi wandering around in his garden.
The film helped to get Ed Wood awarded the title of "Worst Director of All Time". You have to see Plan 9 to believe it - try to find a copy. It has cult status, giving its name to a Unix operating system and a rock band, among other things.
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@ Elmer Phud -- Re: Migrate before ...
Elmer Phud wrote :- "and some folks wonder why the punters don't adopt Linux - can you shove in a disc and let it do the set-up work for you? No."
What was it in Tracyanne's post that made you come up with that? Sounded to like the only particular effort she had, if it amounted to much, was to install Mono+Mono Develop. Installing a development suite is not something most punters ever do.
The extra effort needed to install Linux is to put the disc in at all, seeing that Windows comes pre-installed on almost every PC sold. Until Linux is widely available as an option when buying a new PC (which it is not thanks to Microsofts continuing dirty business methods), even at the same price as a Windows one, Windows will indeed still be there.
Suits me though; as long as Windows is still there it acts as a safety valve for all that malware and it deflects users away from me who might want me to fix their PC if I used the same OS as them.
Re: MS = perfection in 1992 ? Are you kidding ?
Clean_state wrote :-
"MS did not have a half-decent (preemptively multitasked as the chip designers intended) OS until Windows 95, a full 9 years later ! OK, you could count NT on its technical merits released in 1993 so only 7 years later"
I don't know why you mentioned NT as an afterthought. It was NT that was half-decent; Win95 was crap.
Only problems with NT were its cost and the fact that it would not run apps that needed direct hardware access - mostly games, but some other stuff too like Logitec scanners.
What MS should have done in the mid-90's was to produce a lightweight version of NT; by then even entry-level PCs could have run it. Instead they persisted with the 95/98/ME line in parallel with NT. They said it was to support games, but the real reason was MS internal politics. There was rivalry between the two separate teams (95 vs NT). Either Gates thought this was a good thing or he did not have the bottle to bang their heads together.
As a result the 95/98/ME crap reputation got associated with everything with MS / Windows branding, at least with people who knew there was better to be had.
When they eventually dumped ME and and went to NT entirely (in the form of WinXP) the games writers soon adapted after all.
Re: Fsck Word
Anthony Hegedus wrote :- ".....so what exactly is so good about word perfect?"
The "Reveal codes. " function.
When I use Word it manages to get its knickers in some awful twists, which seems to be beause it is putting in layer upon layer of formatting codes, most of which are contradicting each other.
Reveal codes in WordPerfect and you could see what is going on and clean it up if necessary. MS thinks we are dumb and need to be "shielded" from the formatting codes.
Open/Libre Office is not much better.
Re: OS/.2 was shite
It is true that IBM wasted a lot of time making earlier versions of OS/2 compatible with 286s. But they had dropped that idea by v2.0 AFAIR.
I was around back then, and what you need to understand is that there was no processor arms race then. It was assumed by most people that 286s would be around for a long time to come and that 386s were only for power users and servers. When I first bought a PC I seriously considered getting a 286 even though 386s were already available. Then suddenly everyone went CPU power mad and we got 386/486/Pentium/Pentium2 in rapid succession, and I actually got a 486.
To think of an analogy today, the 286 and 386 were regarded like entry-level and professional level Nikon SLR cameras. No one is expecting Nikon to drop their entry level SLRs just because their professional model is more powerful.
But that was not the reason OS/2 lost the race. It was the MS tactic of getting Windows pre-loaded onto every new PC, apparently "free", and the negative attitude of the computer press towards OS/2. I am sure a lot of money changed hands under the tables for MS to get into this position, because OS/2 v2.x was certainly better than the contemporary DOS/Windows v3.x
Some of the underhand MS tactics have become public knowledge since then, but I suspect we still do not know the half of it.
Re: How did it win? Simple economics
My post on WordPerfect looks a bit OT where it is, but I was actually replying to Spanners who was comapring Windows licensing policies with WordPerfect's.
Why (since the new software in this forum) do replies get separated from the parent?
Earmark a Darwin Award
Is there a such a thing as a provisional Dawin award? That becomes a full version in due course?
Re: Dodgy stats
So it counts if your router is Wi-Fi capable, but you are not using it?
Re: How did it win? Simple economics
It was in the WordPefect for Windows v5.1 Licence Agreement that if you had a company copy, you could also load it on a PC at home. It was not "pirating".
I am looking at a copy of that agreement right now, because I still have my boxed copy from work, with floppies, heavy manuals and everything. When my company went over to Word, most people tossed their WordPerfect boxes in the bin, but some of us took it home.
We all (except some PHBs) thought Word was crap compared with WP. We especially missed the "Reveal Codes" feature, and Word would render our old WP files in peculiar fonts; they had only been in Times Roman, but this was Microsoft punishing us for ever having used WP.
I used WP right up until I went to Open Office. I must try re-installing it one day.
Re: "I have worked for the UK nuclear generating industry and I do not recall"
Thanks for pointing out that incident. I don't recall it, although it does not sound very memorable.
Your link does not give the cause of this collision, but the vast majority of level crossing accidents are caused by road traffic jumping the lights. I see that this is an ungated crossing, which would be particularly tempting, and which is why the train would have been under a severe speed limit. That line is a long branch just for the power stations at Dungeness.
In any case, the liability here, *if* the stop lights were at fault, would be Railtrack's, not the nuclear industry's.
As you recognised in your second post, I do not work for the industry now so I am more likely to speak my mind on the subject. However, there were no specific "company rules" against doing so when I was employed as long as we did not make it sound like the "official" view if it were not.
That's OK
Fine. I have worked for the UK nuclear generating industry and I do not recall it causing any damages to third parties apart from traffic accidents involving company vehicles. (The Dungeness A flask lorry crushed a parked Jag a couple of years ago while manouevering at a garage where it had gone for its routine service).
Unless they count damage to the nerves of people who whip themselves into a frezy of paranoia over anything nuclear, and who, US style, claim their nerves are worth £1B.
Or claim that they are dying of cancer because they heard there was a fire in a canteen chip pan, seeing this as easy money. Like the guy who tried to sue the railways because of the alleged damage to his nerves caused by hearing about a train accident in which he was not even involved.
Re: Petition signed
There were two photos of IKB in front of those chains (which was during the launch of the Great Eastern). The first was an "official" one with him posing self-consciously, and the photographer realised that it was no good. IKB relaxed with his cigar while the photographer was changing plates and then the photographer took the second without warning him.
The second picture was vastly better and is the one we always see today.
@ Steve Evans
He is sad for queing since 3am, but maybe he hung around because he does not get to see inside a store like thet very often, so wanted to look at their other stuff.
I tend to browse around tech stores (Maplin, Jessops, PC World - not that I'd buy from PC World) to see what new kit is around. I even browsed round an Apple store once - I'd never buy their stuff but wanted to see what the hype was about.
As for possibly opening a box in the store - what sort of idiot does that? Maybe dropping guarantee cards, instructions and little accessory bits all over the floor. I open all my buys at home, and carefully keep the packaging too, in case I need to return under guarantee
@ Cazzo Enorme : Re: I would NEVER
Wrote : -
"I haven't queued in a super market since they started doing online ordering with home delivery"
Tried that.
The fruit and vegetables you get are the inferior ones that customers on-the-spot would leave.
If you chose something that is on offer and they [claim to] have run out of that line, they substitute an "equivalent" that will be dearer, and maybe one you simply don't prefer.
Then they can simply cock-up the order. Once I got six big cabbages which I certainly did not order - I hate cabbage.
Re: I bought one!
Were we criticising Apple in this context?
I thought we were criticising the dicks who would queue for up to 4 days so that they could have one a bit earlier than other people.
Apple Staff Wind Up
Bring up a full screen bash terminal session on one of their demo laptops, type a random comand like "ls -al" and leave it that way. It won't fit their image.
And the point is .........
...... what ?
@ Dale 3 .. Re: "previews of a digital image on an LCD screen"
The idea of preview (obvious in the first place IMHO, and I don't think it was ever patented) already existed.
In a digital world, the idea of continuing to provide a preview is obvious. In fact I should not even call it an "idea", just a routine provision.
I would not dealt with a BT Company
I used to be a regular customer of Dabs. Then one day a salesman called me and told me (proudly) that BT now owned them.
I pointed out that BT were the bar stewards who chaged me an "admin" charge to pay my own phone bill, so Dabs and anyone else connected with them could go to hell. I am glad they now have.
Best Way to Create Jobs
1) Replace all electronic communication by runners.
2) Replace all corporate computers by rooms full of clerks with Ready-Reckoners and filing cabinets.
3) Replace all power stations by men in treadmills.
4) Replace all recorded music by live performers.
5) Replace all cameras by artists.
6) Replace all forms of transport by men rolling stuff on logs
............. Oh wait! The Greens are already have these targets.
Re: Underestimated
The IT industry would exist without Apple. The comms industry would exist without Apple.
So even without Apple, those comms industry workers and IT workers would still be doing more-or-less what they are doing now. People would still be writing books and business analysts would still still be analysing businesses.
If Apple were suddenly teleported into the centre of the sun, their place on Earth would be filled in like a hole in the water.
One of the most striking things to learn about human affairs is that nothing and nobody is indispensable. Life would continue much the same without them.
Please also learn to recognise marketing bullshit when you see it.
Seeing that Thailand seems to have exported half of its womanhood as Thai-Brides, or to work as hookers around the world (take a look at the number advertising in your local paper classifieds); and the half that don't leave work as bar hostesses for foreign sex tourists, I should not think there is anything else for straight sex-starved young Thai men to do except get over it by kicking each other in the balls.
Maybe there a few ugly girls left.
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