Posts by John Brown (no body) 25355 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"I must say though, as an IT person, I do get a perverted thrill out of asking "how do you turn this on?"
Same here, although the users are more likely to point out that that's why they called me in the first place. They never switch the screen off once it's on unless by accident, and that's when they realise they don't know how to switch it on/off because the buttons/touch sensors are too well hidden :-)
"Yeah, God forbid you have to spend an extra 10 seconds at a checkout, when you could be using that time to make the world a better place."
I think he was being ironic. I know, I know, it's a bit hard to believe that a USAian can do irony, but the internet is making the world a smaller place and even they can learn stuff :-)
"No mate, the UK has full coverage of patchy DAB. In my area it has the bitrate of a potato. Underwater."
I drive approx. 1000 miles per week and the national DAB is pretty good across the north of England and up to the Glasgow/Edinburgh corridor.
It's improved dramatically from the early days. There's there odd short duration drop-outs in dips etc. or when you get into the real countryside amongst the hills and valleys, but FM isn't all that great there either.
"I very much doubt if there is the headroom to accommodate a 25 kV overhead and the associated pantographs along their lengths; I expect the tunnels would have to be rebored in their entirety."
That's an interesting point I'd not thought of. If it is the case, I wonder if there might be an option for a third rail in the tunnels? Trains would need adapting to have something to make contact, possibly running less quickly, and some sort of animal grid/protection to make sure nothing too big gets in and fries themselves, maybe have the power only come on when needed. I'm sure the pantographs could be designed to automatically drop/fold down before entering the tunnel, either by signal or power loss sensing.
"Do you have a source for that? I mean, it seems intuitive to me that these things will consume more power - but I'd love to see some actual figures for how much more."
...and from which side of the meter does the meter itself draw power? Has anyone who has one ever tried shutting down their entire household supply and noted if the meter is still charging you for powering itself?
Maybe they should have stuck to a city or a state before making the obviously very, very capital intensive leap to going national.
It seems everyone wants to be the next Google, Uber, Apple, Amazon *now*, not after a few years of steady growth. Not helped by the "market expectations" that if a company isn't growing then it must be a "dead man walking".
"That means we're essentially talking arrow-straight tubes; which even in China would place a fantastic burden on the poor civil engineers tasked with routing the system."
On the upside, moving people, villages, even towns out of the way isn't such an insurmountable problem as it is in most other countries.
"Detained or arrested ? I know it might be splitting hairs. But here in the US Detained means stopped then let go Arrested usually means hand cuffed, questions and or take back to the stations for further interview."
At one time, in the dim and distant past, people may be detained by the police, or even "help with enquiries". The default these days seems to be to arrest everyone involved (or just nearby). Questioning while under arrest has different consequences than questioning while not under arrest.
"a festival of black culture"
I must admit, that phrase puzzles me. What is "black culture"? People come from a variety of heritages, often with wildly differing cultures (and often competing, sometimes violently), yet there is this thing that people of a certain range of skin pigments have a "black culture".
No one would ever dream of having a "white culture" festival with white people with heritages from all over the world and claiming it was all one culture. Is it a bit like football fans? Sunderland fans hate Newcastle fans but all are England fans and best friends at an international?
"Well, a mild headache but that was probably due to the seven total hours of driving there and back in a single day."
If you had the aircon on all the way there and back, that might just be a slight dehydration, especially if you are not used to driving long distances regularly.
"Hey at least buying from a trunk you know it's fake and you might even be able to inspect the goods . I got nice knock off leather jacket that way."
Unless they pull a fast switch and that nice "iPad" you inspected turns into an empty box with a couple of potatoes in it :-)
"A brick and mortar would be liable if they knowingly sold dodgy crap from dodgy sources. No one would say "dumb customer didn't research". Why should Amazon be any different?"
I can see the point that some are making. If you buy something off a market stall you don't complain to the market site manager. You complain to the market stall holder. If they do nothing, complaining to the market site manager may get them evicted but the manager still can't do much to help you.
In Amazons case, it's not always obvious who you are buying from. Sometimes it's Amazon. Sometimes it's "fulfilled by Amazon", other times, Amazon are just the site manager for a 3rd party "shop". It can be confusing for many and I personally think Amazon have a responsibility as well as their own business reputation management obligation to make things much clearer to the customers.
"For my primary domain name, there are 170 email addresses in the HIBP DB, only some of which are addresses I've used at times - many are usenet message header IDs"
Same here. 267 address lists, all but 3 are usenet basterdised headers IDs. All but one are listed as spambot. The one outlier is one I used unique to SVP and shows as the result of a hack. I emailed SVP 2 or 3 years ago when spam started arriving addressed to svp@mydomain, but they claimed they had not been hacked. As you can imagine, that svp@ address was specificially for dealing with SVP and never used anywhere else. I allege that they were hacked, denied it and have never, ever sent out emails to that address notifying of a hack. This tells me they don't care or still don't know. I've not dealt with them since but leave the address live since the spam is not an issue and one day they may notice the issue.
"He had a point I think, there are a good number of authors (CS Lewis, Isaac Asimov for two) on record as stating that all the analyses of their work that they had seen were utterly wide of the mark. "
I vaguely remember a short SF story many, many years ago. It was a time travel thing in a university. Shakespear was pulled into the "present" and attended a course on his work and failed the test. It might even have been an Asimov work :-)
"Some credit and debit card data was also slurped, but CeX says that's not a problem because the store stopped taking that data in 2009,"
Why were they keeping credit card data? And more importantly, why have they STILL got that data from 7 or more years ago, especially since they now don't collect/keep that same data?
"You are hardware manufacturers, you will fail hard at producing software people want to use."
My company car, 2 or 3 cars back, had a special connector which, in conjunction with the line-in 3.5mm jack and a special cable (supplied) allowed me to control some version of iPod from the steering wheel controls. Except it didn't work with the just released newer iPod. Not being an Apple user, I just used the Line-in with a portable CD player that played MP3 files. Current car just has a USB port so pendrive media can be played and controlled from the steering wheel controls. At least that ought to be a bit more future proof than a propriety connector.
"I've worked for companies both large and small, and i've never known one who would be happy for you to stick random drinks, snack, coffees on expenses. Always breakfast and dinner if you're overnight, always all your travel expenses and always anything you need to buy to do the job when there.
Never your random 10am coffee/redbull/can of coke though."
Same here, although they'll cover 5 or 6 quid for lunch on days between hotel stays, ie staying over more than one night.
"I work from home, but if I ever went to a UK company office then I wouldn't even get free hot water - it's 12p per cup - to make my own tea, with my own tea bag."
Over the last 20 years I've been to thousands of UK companies from multinationals to one man bands and can't remember even one which didn't at least have a kettle you could freely use.
I think you are looking too far into the future. This is a trial of a slightly more advanced networked adaptive cruise control. Each truck will still have and need a properly trained and licensed driver. It's a step change, not a paradigm shift and despite Brexit, the law is being adapted to take this trial into account such that it will be legal.
"perhaps if vehicle manufacturers provide that growing vehicle investment, they will also put funds into generation. (No, too idealistic perhaps)."
No, they'd be more likely to spend R&D money coming up with new and proprietary ways of charging the car so you can only use their charging points. It's not like there are any legally enforced standards, as Tesla have shown by installing multiple charging points just for their own customers, often more in number than the generic ones that everyone else has to use, especially at motorway services.
"You'll see a few tightwad car drivers doing the same - tucking in behind a briskly moving high HGV, and you'll get about 33% better fuel economy, at the risk of more stone chips."
Company car driver here. Don't give a toss about stone chips, but quite happy to make a "profit" out of the mileage allowance by getting better mpg than the break-even point at the cost of getting home 10-20 minutes later. Most months, my mileage claim works out to more than the total fuel cost so that's my private mileage paid for and some extra in my pocket :-)
"We have such a system: it's called fuel duty."
This!!!!! It really pisses me off when people talk about road pricing. We already pay an annual fee for permission to use the roads (VED) then we pay per mile in fuel duty, which generally keeps going up year on year anyway. It even has a self-limiter built in in that if people want to pay less, they drive more efficiently and take a little longer getting there. And not forgetting that the tax we pay on fuel (fuel duty) is itself including in the fuel cost for VAT purposes, ie we get taxed on the tax we pay! Adding tolls or per mile "road pricing" would be a real kick in the balls for all drivers. Every time a politician gets up and talks about road pricing without promising to abolish fuel duty, I just want to punch them in the face!
Also, not forgetting that the vehicles that cause the most wear and tear on the roads are the HGVs who use more fuel and pay more, as well as the idiots doing 80-90 down the motorways who see their own self importance as being more valuable than the 30mpg they are getting. Fuel duty IS per mile road pricing. No special technology or GPS devices needed.
"i.e. if you have a flower delivery truck that has only a dozen stops in a day over a 200 mile route that's a lot of wasted time for a guy sitting in the truck,"
Sounds like an ideal job for students to pay off their university costs. Most of the time they can be on line studying or "attending" lectures on line. Lots of time for study, a bit of physical effort every now and then to help keep them fit and with a bed in the back, could also save a fortune on rent. Win, win, win :-)
"Surely the simpler solution would be to legislate to permit road-trains instead on certain routes."
But to do that would require the (re-)construction of a network of terminals where the "trains" arrive and depart and smaller lorries can then take the loads into the towns and cities. Maybe call them "Freightliner Terminals" or something. And since we're going to all this trouble to build special terminals at special locations, we could maybe include a rail line into the terminal so actual trains on rails could take part in this new fangled freight network.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
