Posts by John Brown (no body) 15012 posts • joined 21 May 2010
"Where did you study? "
I was once asked that. I said Durham, which seemed to be an ok answer. The questioner made an assumption because I didn't add the context that my primary school was in County Durham before our area was wrenched out to became part of Tyne and Wear. I suspect the level of education he was referring to would mean saying "Sunderland Poly" would not have been a "right" answer.
You may have missed the longer term plan there. Once UKIP got Brexit done, the UK needs to make trade deals. Any trade deals with India, such we likely need to have, will be dependant on Indian people having better access to the UK job market. That couldn't happen while we were in the EU.
"But rental ones are NOT going to be useful for commuters/shoppers in general - they'll only be in the city centres (so wont help with the first bit of the supposed last-mile leg from house to tram/train station), and the end bit/city centre bit is usually not a problem for commuters/shoppers on foot."
Yes, arriving in the city centre is often not a problem for many people. Public transport is invariably designed around getting people to and around the city centre. The bit that is missing is the part where many people need to move around the outskirts, get to the local shops, local doctors/dentists etc, or even live on one edge of the city and work on a business/industrial park somewhere else on the edge of the city. Those sorts of trips often require a trip to the city centre, change bus/train, then out of city again, vastly increasing the numbers travelling into the city and so causing the planners to think the route is more popular than it is. Few traffic surveys do any more than measure people/vehicle going from A to B. They rarely check if B is the ultimate destination.
"Sorry, but the rental idea sucks for anyone but tourists. If they actually wanted to reduce traffic, then privately owned would be the way to go."
Absolutely! It could even be cost free to the Government. If suppliers want to sell "road legal" scooters, then they pay to have them approved by the DfT, just like other vehicle manufactures have to do. Maybe stamp serial numbers onto various parts of the chassis too. Yeah, that can be abused by some people, but then they already do that with cars etc now.
The Cycling Proficiency Test, which was well promoted and little short of compulsory, like school swimming lessons and water safety, are no longer pushed or funded as they once were. Hence the recent generations of kids drowning left, right and centre these days because they are poor or non-swimmers with zero risk awareness. Then there's the RNLI who provide paid and trained lifeguards to beaches, paid out of our taxes when we used to have volunteers, also trained and often competed in competitions to prove their abilities. Now you get "official" lifeguards who will make the effort to come over and shout at you if you have the temerity to swim in the sea outside their special flagged area.
"Why do you need a driving license to rent an electric scooter but any one can go to Halfords and by a peddle bike and ride down the road (or often the pavement near me even though the council spent money painting cycle lanes on the roads) without even having to have demonstrated they have basic road sense?"
Because it would require a change in the law that defines a "motor vehicle". E-bikes skirt the law because the electric motor is "assistive" and not the primary means of propulsion.
"So I expect we'll have their wretched scooters to deal with next."
Yes, and considering all the horror stories we are seeing posted here, from multiple countries, it does make one wonder just who the UK government are listening too when they talk about these sorts of schemes.
Like Facebook and Uber before them, the ideas seem to be coming out of US university/students, where the idea, on campus, seems like a good idea and quite possibly might even work quite well, But they really don't scale up to the real world where laws, licensing and real people are involved. Universitys on private land full of students paying a lot of money to be there are not a reliable analogue of the real world.
Don't Surrey Satellite have a lot to do with building the Galileo sats? That's a lot of skills, equipment and manufacturing tools already in place. Not mention that building sats is something that the UK is actually quite good at. Launching them is another matter, but there are multiple launching options either available or coming on stream that are then doable at much cheaper rates than lofting 1.5 tons into high orbit. (that's assuming the modern technology can reduce the required size and weight and that it's possible to run a position constellation in LEO)
"it's obvious to anyone who understands the technology that a LEO satellite communications system depending on microsatellites cannot function as a positioning system."
I don't understand the technology. Why is many small sats in LEO not able to function as a positioning system?
"It also allows for trademarks to be removed if consumers have come to think of the term as generic"
As I mentioned in another post a few days ago, I'm hearing more and more people refer to pretty much any tablet computer as an iPad these days. I'm very confused as to what an iPad is now so clearly the name iPad should not be trademarked. Likewise, I've hear people refer to things being "on my iPhone" when clearly it's a Samsung Galaxy in their hand.
...and no one noticed, no one complained or no complaints reached the relevant people. The action taken depends on which of the preceding happened.
Hopefully someone checked to see just how many site visits occur via the re-direct and how they got to the old .org.uk site in the first place, ie is it people still using the old address or is it links from other sites not yet updated?
"The PSU on this server's failed, can you send a replacement?"
The Dell rep did exactly the correct thing based on the information given, Hell desk people have to deal with the full gamut of callers from total numpties to people who actually know what they are talking about. S/he did the right thing in not assuming you were correct without garnering further information from you.
"Hope this helps."
Here's a scale for you to demonstrate how much use of the foot and hand in a game nominally called "football" by the locals"
Foot.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....Hand
Now, "foot"ball in the vast majority of the world is right up against the left edge of the scale because any use of the hand on the ball is against the rules. Now, where on that scale would you like to place US style "foot"ball"?
"Consider a general move away from colour based phrases."
Oh, FFS! Grow up. Not all mentions of "white" or "black" are racist. Try some education instead, It can work wonders! After all, I don't see anyone complaining about you being green with envy over the education the rest of us have. Admit it, you were wrong. Or are you too yellow? Maybe feeling a bit blue now? Or are so angry it's all just a red haze now?
Of course they can, FFS. They are just having to scale up. I mean, everyone remembers Curiosity and the "complicated" landing of burn through atmosphere, use parachutes then a rocket powered skycrane, but how many remember that that was actually just a step change from Spirit and Opportunitys landing methods, ie burn through the atmosphere, deploy parachute, inflate the ball cocoon and then a final rocket powered declaration before dropping them the remainder of the way to bounce!
Parachutes on Mars are a done deal. Trying out new materials and designs to cope with different load patterns and payload masses is what happens here on Earth
"One can't take the non-votes of people who "don't care", or are "happy to have what those who do vote choose", as votes against. That's no more sound than letting the other side have it the other way."
A non-vote is a vote for the status quo. Simples :-)
I've never quite understood the reasons for making vegetarian (or for the tiny minority, vegan) equivalents of meat products. Why would someone choosing not to eat meat still want the taste of meat? Especially those with an axe to grind over "murdering" animals. (We'll leave the argument over whether "meat replacements" actually taste like meat for another day)
"also during which it suffered a spectacular data breach "
FWIW, TWO spectacular data breaches in consecutive years before she ran away from the mess. Lessons clearly NOT learned.
NB, edited title down as "the title is too long" since the Re: got auto added.
"As for the Post Office ex CEO (what about previous CEOs ?) she says (in essence) we relied on what we were told and it wasn't really our role to oversee this stuff anyway."
Clearly one or more people further down the food chain were "shielding" the board from the bad news and thus were criminally negligent. Someone, somewhere was hiding the bad news and lying by omission at the very least. Or the board DID know but made sure they were only ever told orally, so no paper trail.
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