Posts by Zimmer 276 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Feb 2009
Putting 'stuff' on the web is akin to leaving it lying in the street (much as this post is like me being in a Town Square, standing on a box and shouting this to anyone within earshot).
Putting a book out in front of a store, on the street, (or even displaying the book inside on a shelf) affords the passer-by to read a little of it (or even - shock! horror! - make away with it..).
Attempting to use the medium of the web to sell items that can be copied was always going to end in tears and tantrums. Especially when the business model was going to be based on charging the same for digital content as the hard copy and taking all the profit that would have been made by the retailer, distributor etc and keeping the savings from NOT producing hard copy. .... (which appears as 'greed' to the consumers).
Not sure if there is a solution..Search engines effectively advertise your stuff.. no advertising=less sales...
Everything you say is true; but that's not the point. The point is to encourage and to practice methods of analysis in general terms. That way, when something does happen that is outside the knowledge or experience of a scientist, they will have the intellectual methods and ability to deal with it...........
Agreed! Whenever reading Sci-Fi the curious mind will always try to reason whether or not something is possible (and often some of the best of the genre can be discerned in this way) and curious scientific minds are necessary if new things are to be discovered..
But when reading for enjoyment never let impossibilities get in the way of a good yarn :)
After all, it's impossible to say we could drive a car remotely on Mars, isn't it? Oh, wait....
...I remind all computer users that police do not use (will soon be using!) such a method to impose or enforce fines, so if you are confronted by such a page . . .
...then you can pay the fine either by PayPal, VISA credit or debit card direct to your local constabulary.
Please remember Big Brother has to recoup the £Billions it spent setting up the monitoring in the first place...
They may have planned that the camera had sufficient battery and memory card storage for the trip for HD video footage. However , they may have overlooked the small detail regarding the 4.3gig maximum single file size of FAT32.
(I overlooked this last week when recording an event. 40-odd minutes at 640 res was enough to do the trick.. so if they went HD .......)
2000AD suggested lasered ads on the moon, um, about 30 years ago, probably.
God I'm old.
Not OLD enough, evidently.
You are several decades out for those adverts.
Robert Heinlein, The Man Who sold The Moon (1950) , if I recall the short story correctly; (might not have been'lasers', though :) )
Just think of the cost (not just in Tippex) of changing every roadsign. Even at a pound a go it must add up to a tidy sum (and you can bet it will cost 100 a go using a friendly Govt. appointed contractor) and therein lies the reason we have not rushed into changing miles for km.
Looking on the bright side, thoae who want a reduction in speed limits could argue for adopting km and leaving all of those signs as they are... (cue J Clarkson brigade downvotes as they fail to see the joke....).
Apparently a Miller is essentially an Atkinson with a supercharger , to add boost to replace the loss of power experienced in the true Atkinson cycle. In both their cycles( Atkinson and Miller) the compression stroke is effiectively 'shortened' by leaving the inlet valve open longer so that compression occurs later in that phase of upward piston movement....
We experimented with this in the late sixties and a lot of people made money selling reflective gear for schoolkids who had to go to school in the dark. Have they found the abandonned warehouse with the the leftover stock?? Has Del Boy bought it on the cheap?
The public must be told :)
(On a serious note: there was an increase in road casualties in the mornings....)
....That said, it would spark misery for millions of people in flats as everyone starts putting their washes on at 3 in the morning.......
Washers go on at the night time for cheap rate ..(the ex pats switch on Eastenders repeats on the Freesat so the cockney shouting drowns out the noise of the machines... or else it's down to the Cafe for Karaoke... same result...)
Took a WD Passport drive back the same day when I I found out at home it had some bespoke partition/setup that required a hack or three to 'maybe' turn it into a sraightforward HDD ( and therefore useful for both Linux and Windows use).
I resisted the urge to hack and partition and went straight back...
The store found me a Verbatim from their stock that was not on display.... Hmmm..
Yes, they have been penalising you women since the 90's in this respect.
The actuarial tables used to calculate the cost of your pensions/annuities showed you lived longer than men and worked(paid in contributions) less. Therefore your Final Salary pensions were comparitively more expensive than men's. (Commutation factors were always higher to reflect this, too, so you got a good deal when commuting pension to a lump sum).
By then women had become more commonplace in the workplace than ever so a greater burden on the Pensions for less contributions than envisaged 20 or 30 years previously.
Net result is the 'need' to take away that privileged position to save money (as always) : a levelling down to the same situation as men wil happen (eventually).
As for Annuities, I reckon it was always more expensive to purchase one for a woman, so that will have to change. (No prizes for guessing that the price of a man's Annuity will go up to compensate and pay for it...)
Pension: probably the most expensive and valuable thing you will ever purchase . Keep an eye on it.. :)
Pensions are taxed, funnily enough. Lump the NI into income tax and pensioners have no way of negotiating with an 'employer' for a compensatory wage increase from the 'employer's ' NI contribution . So the government's aim is to get the pensioners to take a significant pay cut ?
40 odd years ago it was realised that the ordinary worker would not voluntarily save for a pension in retirement so Final Salary (and Government top up ) schemes were introduced.
When the good times showed notional surpluses in the schemes in the 80's and 90's the employers managed to convince the governments of the day to give them various means to leech them away. (Actuarial valuations based on spot market prices being just one...)
Result? When the bad times came along the funds showed alarming deficits and were/are deemed 'too expensive ' for you lackeys, so it's back to square one for the workers.
rant over... :( (until my pension gets clobbered for more tax!)
Constant Velocity Transmission... roughly, a system of gear structures that rotate at a constant speed but alter shape to give a higher/lower ratio to match the power input and resistance. (from what I remember of the DAF system that consisted of cone like structures). Thus no 'actual' swapping of cogs.
Crazy suggestion, I know, but why not put all this info on that paper stuff and lock it away in heavy filing cabinets in a locked cellar? Access restricted to asking security for a key , presenting credentials and signing for it.
An effective way to to stop data trawling and it would take a truck to remove the data, never mind the effort of copying... and how many people really NEED to see that kind of data in an instant?
Depending upon how your bank considers additional payments.... in my case they made them future payments which went into a separate 'account' rabbit hole and reduced the principal sum by absolutely nothing.
Out come (if left unchecked) would have been paying off the mortgage early (when the amount of additional payments equalled the amount of payments agreed to mortgage term) but not reducing interest payments at all...
Solved this by taking a payment holiday until the future payments 'account' reduced to nil. That money was NOT accruing interest for me, nor reducing interest on the principal of the loan.
Contact bank and find out HOW to pay part of the principal sum, if what you want is to reduce a mortgage . It is not often achieved by simple overpayment...
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