Come fly with me. But first we need to find a boot device

We're all a bit jittery about travel as things in the UK open up. Paperwork is needed and there's always that worry that a surprise visit to one of Her Majesty's Hotels might be needed. Still, at least you aren't the person responsible for today's instalment of signage silage. Today's example of the breed was sighted in the UK …

[Anonymous Coward]

Stansted is about 1hr 15min from "The City"

...so is Heathrow. So if you think it's an affront to call Stansted "London Stansted" then perhaps we should rename Heathrow as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

20 mins to paddington on the tube from liverpool street. 15 minutes on the paddy express.

add in a 5 minute transfer

That's 40 mins

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you, but it we're starting from Liverpool St that also makes the Stansted journey shorter too.

Plus you forgot the 15 minute walk from the station to the terminal at Heathrow (or the 20-25 minutes if you're going to T4 or T5), whereas Stansted has the station in the basement.

Anyway, the point I was making was that people act like Stansted is two hours away from London and Heathrow is just a couple of minutes, but the difference isn't as great as people think it is.

[tip pc]

Heathrow is actually in a London borough, Longford TW6.

Stansted definitely is not a London borough

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longford,_London

[Pascal Monett]

Administrative definitions have nothing to do with distance.

[Peter Mount]

About the same as "London Ashford Airport" which is actually located just outside Lydd on the Kent coast... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydd_Airport

[TRT]

Pff! I hear the same arguments about Harry Potter London Experience - it's in Watford, not London. Disneyland Paris? 20 miles away. I've no idea what sized cell constitutes a unit of geographical / topological awareness... I expect it varies from culture to culture. Do we need a reg unit, perhaps?

[Xalran]

Disneyland Paris

Well Disneyland Paris was originally called Euro Disney, it changed name a few years after opening.

[Bogga]

Is Heathrow in Greater London - yes

Is Luton/Stansted/Gatwick - No

[Gene Cash]

This is the same situation as "Orlando/Melbourne International Airport" and "Orlando/Sanford International Airport" which are 1hr 10min and 45min away respectively.

Orlando finally got the high powered lawyers involved, and now it's Melbourne Orlando International Airport, which is slightly better.

I've had a dozen people ask for rides, and then get a rude shock at the price of an Uber or taxi.

[gandalfcn]

How about Chester Airport in Hawarden, Wales.

"Hawarden Airport (also known as Chester Airport) is situated 4 Miles W of the City of Chester"

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Sentient Urinals?

I stood and wondered why the urinal in the motorway service station in Germany needed to reboot Android.

More cryptically, another such urinal had the message "Slave cannot connect to master ... Retrying"

Next up, urinals with the GPP feature, or defocused temporal perception, causing them to start sulking in basements

[MiguelC]

Re: Sentient Urinals?

was the urinal called Marvin, perchance? being pissed on all the time would make for a really depressed Android...

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Sentient Urinals?

Especially with seepage into the rat cavity.

[Stu J]

Could be worse...

The company I worked for commissioned hundreds of displays in a US airport about 10 years ago. Unfortunately someone forgot to update the commissioning instructions to confirm that the "AC Power Failure" behaviour was correctly set in the BIOS to "Power On", and a bug in the BIOS meant that it forgot the previous power state.

When the airport power failed for no more than 15 mins, a small group of panicked 1st line guys had to scurry round the airport with step ladders and scissor lifts to poke the Power button on every single display controller... And then go round them all at night with a USB keyboard and change the BIOS settings to ensure they always powered back on after a power failure!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Could be worse...

BORK - BIOS Options Require Knowledge

I'll be here all week.

[Russ T]

What's the best way to submit bork submissions?

I have a few from a trip earlier this year :)

[TheFirstChoice]

Onelan boxes do this

Onelan digital signage Net Top Boxes do this if they have a power interruption and they fail to boot from the on board SSD (or if the drive fails). Most of the time power cycling them with a suitable 20 seconds or so with them switched off will restore them to a working state... shame that a lot of them are installed in intentionally difficult to access positions behind a screen!

I imagine other signage boxes based on similar hardware will behave in the same way.