Re: Quality
But Fiat always stood for "Fix It Again Tomorrow" long before Betts got there.
4150 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2011
"Which gets you more money: 99c of 10k games ($10K), or where the game's free and about 25% pay an average of $10 in-game purchases ($25K) - which about the going rate. Do you see why it's popular now? Especially since more people get the game "because it's free!" who would probably pass it up even if it cost only a dollar."
I didn't say I couldn't understand why it was popular, I said it was bullshit. Because something is popular doesn't make it right. *insert reference to Hitler here*.
If you pay for a game you're paying for entertainment. If you have a game and you're paying for something in the game, you're paying for something that doesn't exist.
For 14,000 in game coins, they want the person to pay £79.99. That's £79.99 real, physical money, not £79.99 of in game money.
If they had charged 99p for the game they'd be rolling in the money. But no, they've succumed to this bullshit model of giving the game away for free while making it difficult to play unless you put money in to it. They aren't the only ones to do this, EA/Maxis did it with Sim City, and another developer did it with a Simpsons mobile game. I think in the Simpsons you would pay about £150 for coins or something.
"You'd need the entire crew to be involved in such a conspiracy, or one of the cabin crew would pop to the "toilet" and hit the button on the emergency locator beacon."
Not really, you only need one pilot to leave the cockpit for any of this to take place. It's very possible that one of the pilots left the cockpit, the door closed behind them, and the remaining pilot turned the pressurisation mode to manual. This would mean the cabin would start to depressurise, lose oxygen etc.
Doing this would trigger alarms etc, as well as automatically dropping the overhead masks to the passengers due to the plane knowing it has an issue. The oxygen though would only last 12 minutes with these masks. If there's a panic on board in this event (Which there would be), through that panic more oxygen would be used. Especially if the now outside pilot is banging against the door. The pilot flying the plane has a different oxygen system which (as far as I know) doesn't run out or lasts a lot longer than 12 minutes. The plane loses oxygen, everyone without oxygen passes out. This happened on Helios 522 when the ground crew didn't reset the pressurisation switch from manual. In that instance it took around 20 minutes for the plane to get to an altitude where there was no oxygen and for the pilots to succumb to it.
In this case the plane had already passed 18,000 feet with no issues (altitude warnings on Helios occured at 12,000 ft) after it took off at 12:40am. The last radio message with the flight was at 1:20am. So it had been flying for 40 minutes without an issue. The plane was last seen on secondary radar at 1:20am, then last seen by primary radar at 2:20am at an entirely different position. So the plane had made that sharp turn and deviated from it's course. But if you're the only soul on the plane then you have all the time in the world to go and turn all of the bits and pieces off.
"There are things to learn from this, and one of the big reasons for keeping looking is to find out what that initial event was, and why the pilots and crew did not communicate during or after it."
I know and understand, but by now there will be no physical evidence (in terms of autopsy) that could be performed on any of the passengers or crew. So you won't know whether or not what I said happened and whether the pilot topped himself with drink and drugs while the plane was on autopilot. Physical damage to the plane might be visible if you find enough parts, but even then you could be left with the scenario that the plane itself was fine.
"The aircraft itself did keep squawking, it just had nothing to say - so that's one obvious change to onboard systems."
You have to apply Arkhams Razor to this. The plane crashed through physical interaction as the flight moved in between radar corridors so it couldn't be tracked. The likelyhood this happened without manual input or was pure coincidence is so unlikely it couldn't be considered.
You're then left with trying to find a motive, and sometimes that goes with people to the grave.
This is something that will never be solved, because no one really wants to find it.
Take the idea one (or both) of the pilots did it, it isn't too hard for the black box and flight recorders to be turned off. It's been done before on different suicide flights. So even if they find the plane and the black boxes, there's a high chance nothing will be on them.
If it's a genuine flight issue that didn't have input from pilots (like a fire for example), the longer it's down there the more likely the data will be damaged beyond repair. So it'll be harder to get any sort of information from the black boxes.
If it was part of a conspiracy by a Government body, then I suppose you can roll it back to the first scenario where the data recording is turned off. Dump the plane somewhere that would make it super difficult to find, and even if it was found make it super hard to find out what happened to it. Add to this the high possibility that there is a nation in the world who has a satellite who spotted the plane and probably knows where it is, but if they ever said so other countries would start asking questions like "Why were you spying there?"
Like it's already been said, it's more or less certain now the people on this plane are dead. We're going through this process of finding a plane that is most likely in bits in a part of the world that's difficult to recover things from, let alone find it. What happens if they find the plane but it's useless because they can't extrapolate any data from it? The families will suffer more, because surely it's worse to think you will never know what happened to your loved one compared to not knowing where they are?
Bullshit.
It's the typical Tory mentality that the fact a foreign company has bought out a UK business means it benefits the country. How? It benefits those with shares in the company yes, it doesn't benefit the long term prospects for those who work for that company. What then? No job, dole office, then the same Government will turn around and call them lazy and force them to work for the £40 a week while they have some dickhead in the job centre tell them they should give up trying to find a job in technology and focus on securing a job in the retail sector*.
* personal experience.
"But he was also completely bonkers. Mad as a hatter. Fell in love with a pigeon. He is quoted saying things that were just wrong. 'Power the world with six towers...', no. 'Knock down a building with a small clockwork mechanism...', no.
Somehow he lived in a hotel, but died penniless. I assume that the hotelier was extremely generous.
But yes, a great inventor. A genius. A half-mad genius."
You make it sound like his achievements are worth less than those of others because he lived his life differently to what you would consider normal.
Einstien treated his wife like shite, but everyone kisses his arse.
Startrite asking people to change passwords is more to do with what you would expect to do in such an event, rather than the hackers actually getting hold of those passwords. Imagine the stink if Startrite didn't ask you to change your password after they'd been hacked?
However, to me, whats more shocking about this is that they didn't say it was a sophisticated attack and that they take customer security very seriously as a priority.
"It got clotheslined - not scanning more than a couple of feet from the road.
I've nearly been clotheslined - by real clotheslines - when motorcycling, for the same reason. You don't expect to find an obstacle at head height with nothing underneath it.
Regardless of the Tesla's involvement, turning across oncoming traffic in such a way that this _could_ happen is an illegal turn (evasive action required) at best and more likely dangerous driving, in most jurisdictions. In that particular case there's also the question of where did this guy's dashcam get to - he never drove without one, but none was found in the vehicle. Tampering is obvious."
I see. I know I'm using the example of the guy who died with his Tesla going under a truck, but surely the system should be looking for obstacles within the height of the vehicle to avoid such a thing? Obviously you could have low flying birds etc, but the driver could also be asleep at the wheel and driving in to a road sign? But they're selling a car that has a feature on it that is called Autopilot, and Joe Public would think it could drive itself. The fact it isn't sold as that doesn't really matter. There are plenty of products sold every day designed or sold to do a specific job but are then used for different things.
And yeah totally agree with the dashcam thing. I would argue now though, however, the next update Tesla come out with will be a way of recording when the autopilot system is engaged and disengaged...
"Autopilot does use radar.
It also uses ultrasonics.
The richest information source is still a forward facing camera though.
This is going to happen because people can't use their brains enough to accept that a driver aid is and aid to driving. The Tesla is not a self driving car."
So how can radar and and ultrasound get confused by a white sided truck against a bright lit sky?
I think anyone who has worked on someone elses code has smashed a screen or two when they've found poorly written comments, poorly formatted comments, or absolutely no comments whatsoever. It's vital for a piece of software, especially one as large and complex as Linux, to have a standardised way of commenting and have those comments easily readable. Otherwise mistakes will happen.
"The election among Conservative party members is for party leader, only convention dictates that party leader must be PM."
I understand the convention. However, that PM decides who does what job while that party is in Government, which then impacts on the lives of the people in the country.
The fact of the matter is when you go to vote, a lot of people vote by party or by PM. Those with no great interest in politics will vote for the man or woman they see on the TV who wants to lead their country, and vote accordingly. Whether this is right or wrong is beside the point. The fact remains that 36% of the 66% of the country who voted, voted for a Tory Government ran by David Cameron. They didn't vote for a Tory Government with any old clown in charge.
It should be the fact that any representative, at any level, should be voted for if the incumbent in office leaves their post.
"I suspect few people have actually witnessed a "proper" drunk, and that is not a criticism as it's not something anyone should have to do. I've been "surprised" by just how much some of my friends change when intoxicated - not totally plastered as in your anecdotes, but just "had a few too many at the pub". Extrapolating to "totally plastered" I could easily see what a handful they'd be."
Agree with this. In my experience* there are:
- happy drunks
- sleepy drunks
- angry drunks
For the most part happy and sleepy drunks are easy to deal with. Happy ones will annoy you at some point but they'll never look for trouble. Angry drunks though, you only have smile at them wrong and they'll try and swing for you. It's not a nice situation to have a grown adult in front of you who, lets face it when they're super drunk, to have all of the reasoning abilities of a 5 year old child.
Sad news though. I know he was drunk, but even still if you're ever that low just ring someone. Anyone.
Peston called him out on that. He hasn't said sorry. Not really.
He's "sorry" for the "mistakes" he made in planning. He isn't sorry for going to war, for picking and choosing what bits of evidence, isn't sorry for effectively writing a blank cheque of "Yes America we're with you 100%".
And even if he was sorry, why has he let this drag on for 7 years and cost the tax payer £30 million?
The man is, has always been, a fraud. A monster. And I hope to God he gets whats coming to him.
He also emphasises how much of a loss Charles Kennedy and Robin Cook are to politics in the UK. They both called him out on his lies. And David Kelly for being thrown under a bus by the government.
RIP to those who lost their lives over this, to those who died wanting the truth to come out. Thoughts have always been with the families of the young men he sent out to die for a nothing war. Thoughts are always for the people our democracy has destroyed. All for a lie.
No actually, the "lie" (which it isn't) was from this article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/ramadan-2016-israel-water-west-bank-cuts-off-a7082826.html
What hatred do I have for a country I live and work in? That I pay taxes to and will be marrying an English woman?
None.
My hatred is reserved for people like you who do use the lives of 13 year olds to legitimise a country's actions. You are the one who brought it up. I certaintly didn't. And regardless of whether we're talking of the British Empire or Israel the case is the same: One country encroaching on to another and pushing it's people out.
You are using the murder of a 13 year old for point scoring, that is sick. I don't care who you then say "Oh well such a such a person said X about Y" to legitimise your example. It's wrong.
Of course I don't. But do you think it's absolutely fine to bomb the shit out of the homes of 13 year old Palestinian kids who didn't even know about that girl?
Is it OK for a country to push people in to smaller and smaller "camps" to increase it's population?
Is it OK for a country's water supplier to cut off water to those people with no warning?
Is it OK for a country to encroach upon land that doesn't belong to it?
Is it OK for a country to block (or try to) the recognition of it's neighbour in the eyes of the UN?
Is it OK for a country to use severe force against population that isn't just or like-for-like, to only then escape sanctions because of the single veto held by America?
I grew up in an Irish family where my family for years lived in the west of Ireland, and it was the place where Oliver Cromwell sent the rebels proclaiming "Go to hell or go to Connaught". Those families would be pushed in to an acre of land which would be shared with 4, 5, 6+ other families who were never rich enough to pay the rent the foreign (mostly Scottish) landowners. Those families suffered during the famine, and suffered more because Britain didn't want them so they didn't help them.
My great-grandfathers and uncles fought for freedom in 1916 and against the Black and Tans in 1921. They fought and died for their country because it was ruled by foreign land who a) had no right to the country and b) didn't want them in it.
My Dad came to the UK as an economic refugee (you would call them now) and worked from the day he was 17 until the day he died in Birmingham at the age of 72 from Asbestosis in this country. All the time during the IRA's bombings in the UK, an Irishman in Britain wasn't wanted. Wasn't liked. Wasn't trusted. "No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish".
My Dad didn't do anything to the UK other than work on Spaghetti Junction, the Childrens Hospital, Villa Park, thousands of homes across the West Midlands. But he was spat at, beaten up etc by British people who saw him as evil because of what a small group of people did without his consent.
So don't you dare use the life of a 13 year old girl as justification for the bombing of children in Palestine in response to the actions of a group of people those children don't even know. Don't you dare use the life of a 13 year old girl as a way to make someone guilty for critising your country. Don't you dare.
"Great. Now the register is infected by anti-semites."
I have been brought up to respect people, of all faiths etc. I treat those of the Jewish faith the same way as I treat those of the Islamic faith, Catholic faith and Atheist faith - which is no faith, but you get the idea.
However, to call me an anti-semite is wrong, misguided and slanderous. Me critising the actions of a government of a country does not equate to it being anti-semetic towards the religion of that country. By definition, anti-semitism is:
"discrimination against or prejudice or hostility toward Jews.*"
Me pointing out that Israel are occupying land that they've encroached upon, and killed Palestinians in the process, does not come under this. Why? Because it's happened. I'm not in to lying, I'm not in to ignoring the truth. That is what Israel are doing, and it's their Government that are doing it.
*source: Dictionary.com