Posts by MarkieMark1 112 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2010
the ASA, Ofcom, the lot of them; as someone said recently the UK should consider an application to make itself the 51st state, as the influence of BigCorp is equaliy pervasive both sides of the pond, while at least in the States there's a comparatively democratic justice system, that while it responds to money as most legal systems do, at least tends to prove its irreverence for 'social' status
As an aside, the FS Ombudsman is one more instance of a stooge, it's as though the regulatory bodies – including, in the UK, the courts – are designed simply as a waste of peoples' time that could be more usefully employed taking more appropriate action
</Fume>
work = Energy / time
so it's the work to move a 'tonne of stuff' in a set amount of time that you are thinking of, while the Energy involved is a different question
although I acknowledge that I said 'work' done riding a bicycle when strictly it was Energy I was referring to;
so say you call 1 – strong – human power = 0.5 horsepower ~= 375 watts, that's 375 J/s, would allow acceleration of 100kg at a tad less than 3 ms^-2, deceleration similarly.
conversion back to F=ma gives F=300N, similar to the weight of a 30kg load at normal gravity, so sounds right in a 'constant load' scenario, although human peak power reaches closer to 1kW => 4+ ms^-2 for that 100kg load in say a <10% duty cycle. As Andus says, that could be a surprise when sent Tesco style – NASA Breakfasts are high protein :-)
compare a cricket fast bowler who bowls a 150g ball at 150km/h, kinetic energy of 130J, baseball pitcher 105mph, kinetic energy 163J; the difference being that the amount of time for acceleration is an important limiting factor
= (mv^2)/2
so per tonne @ say 2 m/s => 2 kJ, 4 m/s => 8 kJ, 6 m/s => 18 kJ, etc
without counting the – quite important factor of – inefficiency of say astronauts needing to move themselves around, absorb momentum, change trajectories etc
similar to the work done to ride a bicycle, without the friction
4.2 tonnes is more manageable though, when you consider it's 840 parcels of 5kg; so even at 5 minutes per 5kg parcel, that's a mere 70 person-hours of work*
* - chances are they'll be <1 minute per parcel, a few astronauts involved in a chain though, so somewhere in the region of 14 hours' work for say 3 astronauts.
Royal Commissions are in fact the method that frequently leads to legislation, as it's better-considered, more authoritative, usually non-partisan etc; although legislation restricting the freedom of the press is kind of a special case, consider for instance the Royal Commission into Criminal Procedure of 1981 leading to PACE, the Royal Commission into Criminal Justice of 1991 leading to the Criminal Cases Review Commission; hardly toothless delaying tactics
The danger of hamstringing the press is that in the kinds of cases we'e heard of - albeit the NotW clearly overstepped the mark - the basic action is a kind of supervisory action of how the police behave;
without the press' freedom to 'listen in' to a police investigation, in the public interest, there's a danger of a return to the old days when it took years for the truth of the incompetence / laziness/ improper motives/ occasionally corruption/ of the police to surface.
Now obviously it's difficult to reconcile post mortem deletion of Milly Dowler's voicemail messages with supervising the police; however we must be careful how far we go; even illicit ways of checking up on the police may be justified in some cases;
That is to say, possibly it's the nature of the 'gutter press' that revolts us, rather than the actual methods employed, we should remember that when supporting changes
as a matter of fact, google talk allows free calls from google talk to google talk as skype does - video quality much better at least when the connection is fast - while its mobile rates to the UK for instance are cheaper than skype; the only trouble being, for now, that to add credit you must be in the states - needs an US telephone number connected to the account at least temporarily
that government utterances such as Francis', kind of similar to some words from Sarkozy recently, are constructive in the sense that they encourage us to think sensibly how to really address the priorities;
For instance, some kind of OpenID addition that would allow more guaranteed identification, then individual sharing settings according to requester/intermediary website that have ICO-authorized data use/sharing policies, *could* work, providing the democratic nature of the internet prevents government from taking over.
Add that to a legal 'right to anonymity' = no tracking, no spying, no tracing of IP addresses, in the general case, when ID is not strictly necessary, then that could be the start of a working 'internet 3.0' :-)
the travel booking system, is based in France; the French national research lab, INRIA, regularly produces ground-breaking work; however it is fair to say that the French grasp of the internet is 'different'
Bringing me to the main bone of contention; that many people feel that we need to stop internet fraud somehow; not, it must be said, the way the Sarkozys of this world would stop it, although as I say, somehow.
the Middle East's troubles go back further than the Bronze age, they are internecine struggles between clans who are basically cousins of varying distance, documented as far back as Cain vs Abel, although prevalent for many centuries before even oral histories.
The current iteration dates back to the Romans, who while sacking the Holy Land in the First century AD caused the Jewish diaspora, so that the remnants who stayed in the Holy Land were converted, in due course, at swordpoint to Islam, then provided the reception committee for the knights of the Holy Cross, the rest as they say is history :-)
well you'll need a degree in computing to understand that the El Reg spoolchucker was subcontracted to <Your Browser> Inc, who in their infinite wisdom have set <Your Preferred Language> settings to US English. Try [Firefox] right-click->Languages-> / [Chrome] right-click->spell-checker options->
Incidentally, could you notify all your colleagues who it seems are constantly making similar comments re: the 'El Reg spellchecker/spoolchucker', thanks :-)
As for those of us living in Europe; according to the EU directive 1999/44/EC http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31999L0044:EN:NOT - Article 5(1), all manufacturers are bound to guarantee their products for at least 2 years; the way it's phrased it should be applicable even when for instance you pick up electronic goods in the US, originally from some worldwide manufacturer, then ship them across the pond - the definitions of consumer/manufacturer/etc are geographically non-specific, all you need is a defendant in the EU. However, I know that Nokia at least are pigs to try to make them respect the law - even for a cheap repair such as reflashing the firmware. National law implementations are patchy too.
All that most of us have to hide could be a few business secrets; most of the time those would hide nicely in a few disguised truecrypted files; beyond that, even the goons really would rather not look at all the photographs of your auntie's birthday 2007
Saying that, goons are goons, I once needed a laptop sent to me in the states, far from ever turning up - it went 'missing' for a month+ before returning to sender - it seemed to have picked up motherboard burns around the integral modem; looks as though someone put 110v into the modem! :-D You have to laugh now although the cost of the replacement motherboard was less humorous at the time
that should be 'new motherboard' rather than 'new keyboard' :-)
As far as I know, it is a valid 'defense' to a patent infringement lawsuit, in the US as in the UK, that the patent is invalid / not patentable
so the actual lawsuit is a perfectly predictable way to question whether the patent should ever have been granted, there would be no need for a proactive lawsuit from a prospective defendant against the patent office to declare a patent invalid
Now there are questions of general patentability of software, the appropriate penalty for patent bullies, the way the law generally is a bullies' playground, etcetera; these are not however justifiable criticisms of Google's actions in waiting until it was sued to raise the question of whether the patent should ever have been granted
Obviously it would be bizarre for police to monitor twitter for hashtags such as #emergency #911 etc to see whether they are in the local area;
However there are many people putting up aggregation websites that read the public feeds then add danger level overlays to google maps for instance, it would not be asking so much for the police dispatcher to have that in front of them would it?
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