Posts by Bob F

Segway shock army to invade Department of Transport

The statistics on pedestrian deaths on pavements are interesting

I looked at this a while back: number of peds killed on the pavement per year by cars was between 50 to 80, average number killed by bikes was very close to zero.

LIke jumping red lights. Go and stand at Hype Park Corner or similar and count the number of cars who do it practically every light change. I'd like to see the stats for peds killed by cars jumping lights vs bikes.

Idiots are idiots regardless of mode of transport, and people have it in for bikes because the riders are going faster and getting fit.

People who lump all cyclist into one big, redlight-jumping, granny-scaring group are facists looking for an easy target IMHO.

Man powers up PC to pop popcorn

Actually there were clearly two bulbs in series...

...which would work pretty well off 5 volts.

Power consumption would be in the region of 1.5 watts.

Even assuming:

- 100% efficiency on power transfer to heat within the can

- the system was isolated and within a vacuum

- specific heat capacity of steel as 500 J/kg C

- steel can mass of 100 grammes

by my calculation it would take about an hour and a quarter to increase the temperature of the can by 130 degrees C from a nominal room temperature of 20 degrees C.

In reality the system would reach equilibrium at much lower than that, although there may be localised points at the base of the can that reach the temperature required to pop one or two kernels.

Mines the white one with the pen protector..

Private sector saviours wanted for desperate ID scheme

re: very poor journalism

I find it difficult to see how you got from: "In order to enrol fingerprint and photograph biometrics in the most convenient and cost-effective way, we now plan to provide this through the open market. This will result in a cost reduction." to closing, sorry, "pulling the plug" on the ABI interrogation suites used to grill passport applicants.

"Ok, minister we plan to change direction (not a u-turn, mind) and call in a private sector organisation to run the centres that we've just spent X hundred million setting up. I understand that we are in the run up to a difficult election, and the ID cards thing is a bit of a mess, but I'm sure the public will understand.)

Can't see that happening, the government would have to be insane.

Oh, hang on a minute, maybe you have a point...

Very poor journalism

ID cards axe to grind aside John, I think you must have linked to the wrong report.

How did you manage to conjecture that the interrogation centres were closing from that? Shameful reading between the lines to push your own agenda.

No wonder govt gets away with so much incompetance when 99% of journalists can't even be bothered to check the basics and repeatedly spew up the same tabloid misconceptions.

Based on intellectual ability and integrity, Paris would make both an excellent Reg hack and gov IT contractor.