Posts by Phil O'Sophical 7402 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2011
The RAM's turning out to be quite sizable. A square inch per bit !
Sounds like he's using static RAM, maybe he should have tried a dynamic RAM design? With decent capacitor sizes he wouldn't have too fast a refresh cycle...
I suppose core memory would be better still, if he's into knitting!
To make these systems accessible to the average user who just wants plug'n'play they need to work without requiring inbound connections to your home network from the internet, with all the security and dynamic-IP hassles that brings.
The solution they all adopt is to have the devices call back to a server for instructions, and the user then logs into that server, via browser or an app, to do the config.
All OK today, but:
Taken altogether, these latest revamps and iterations continue to keep Nest ahead of its growing competition in the smart-tech market.
so in 10 years time the new Nest devices will look nothing like the current ones, and any software to control the current ones will be obsolete. Does this mean that I will have to constantly upgrade my thermostat to the latest model ust to make sure it can still talk to the controlling server? I have an MP3 and streaming audio player that I bought maybe 10 years ago. It still works, but the server that supplied the radio stream info closed years ago. To get it to work I have to host a fake server on my home system.
Replacing bits of a HiFi every 5-10 years is something a non-technical user may be prepared to do, but I'm sure as hell not going to replace my home heating system that often. Maybe every 20-30 years when I have to replace the boiler, but no sooner.
All this stuff is just unnecessarily complex for the simple job of household automation. It may have a place in a business environment where refurbishment of offices every 10 years is normal. I can't help but think there'll be a flurry of early adopters of this, followed by disillusionment and decline into obscurity.
Hmm. Logically speaking, if you don't have rules in the first place you can't cheat...
If we did turn up we screamed and shouted as we learned to do at Eton and Oxford ("debating") and left in a huff when we found out that everyone else had been negotiating sensibly.
Exaggerations apart, this is one of the problems that countries like the UK face. When a stupid idea is proposed, it's the countries like the UK who reply "I say, old boy, that's a damned stupid idea" and so get into trouble.
The French play the game much better. They reply "Sacré Blue, quel spiffing idea, vieux garçon", then they return home laughing at the stupid idea and implement something ambiguously similar which works much better for them. Everybody says 'difficult bloody Brits, why can't they be like the French?"
Statistically the eurosceptic countries like the UK and Denmark have a much better track record of implementing EU regulations exactly as they were designed, but because they argued and negotiated first they get the bad press.
You don't have to join the Eurozone to join EU. Neither Czech Republic, Poland or Croata use Euro!
One of the conditions for joining the EU now is a commitment to join the Euro within a set time. Some countries, like the UK, negotiated opt-outs when they joined, but the EU has made it clear that no-one else will be allowed to do that. Czech Republic and Croatia do not, AFAIK, have an opt-out, and so they must join the Euro at some defined point in the future. Poland I'm not sure about.
Doesn't need them to be petty - they have a direct self-interest in ensuring that if they can.
And isn't that the root of the whole problem.
Prior to the EU, the common market, despite its failings, did a decent job. It provided a solid trading basis for large, sovereign nations and ensured free movement of people and goods. Left like that Europe could have gone on to decades of success and prosperity. It worked for most people, and most businesses.
Unfortunately that didn't work for the politicians, since "trade" was beneath them. They had no way to make their mark nor justify their existence with mere commercial work so they created the EU, a political masterpiece supposedly run by politicians, most of whom seem to get paid for doing nothing. They added their favorite vanity project, the single currency, fudging the convergence criteria to force it into existence. They're happy, they have their pointless elections with the laughable turnount and their 'legacy'. "Grexit" isn't going to do more than give them mild indigestion after the 2nd bottle of Chateau Lafitte, but it's been a downhill slide into mediocrity since then. Far from 50 years of prosperity, I think people looking back 50 years from now will see the EU much as we see the USSR; as a failed political experiment that ruined most of its members.
Ironically leaving the European Union and joining the European Economic Area
The UK is already a member of both the EU and the EEA, it signed the EEA agreement in 1992 and ratified it in 1993. There's no theoretical bar to it leaving the EU's political institutions while remaining in the EEA.
very sensible and forward thinking.
Well, if thinking forward to getting relected without having to give up the expense-account travel and lunches counts as sensible...
Frankly you could nuke the entire EU parliament tomorrow, and if it didn't make the news I doubt if anyone would notice this side of Christmas.
The people voted against Scottish independence, yet voted in overwhelmingly the party who has that as it's goal.
Those are answers to two different questions. I would interpret those results as a clear message that they want to remain in the UK (the referendum), but that within the UK they want to be represented by people who have Scottish interests as the highest priority (the election). It doesn't seem a contradictory position to me.
apparently, in a group, if 10 people want to go to the pub, but each choose a different pub, but 2 in the group choose the same coffee shop, all 12 of them will happily spend Saturday night drinking coffee)
Not at all, that's confusing democracy with majority rule.
In the situation as you mention it, the two who drink coffee have a moral obligation to meet for their coffee in a pub at least some Saturday nights.
The PR situation is where 2 people only drink coffee, 5 people like lager, but are OK with coffee sometimes and 5 people much prefer ale but also occasionally drink coffee. Every saturday ends up in the coffee shop because it's the only thing that ever gets a majority agreement.
said he couldn’t believe the UK would be mad enough to vote itself out of Europe
I suppose that depends on whether "mad" is interpreted as "crazy" or "angry".
Anyway, I've not heard many people who want to break the economic, EEA-style ties with Europe, they just want to get out from under the political control. The real questions are how to do that, and whether the EU will let it happen. Many of the Eurocrats are just petty enough to do everything they can to ensure that a country which leaves will fail, if only to avoid the embarassment of it being more successful outside of Brussels/Strasbourg's political control.
The sensible Continental system of a new annual number plate seems to have been beyond us,
Which continent would that be? Are you suggesting that other countries issue a new number plate each year? I doubt that many do that.
but then we are the only country silly enough to obsess over personalised number plates.
The US has had them for years, but they're banned in most (all?) EU states. The UK does allow people to sell registrations, so that JUL 1 E and SUS 1 E go for silly money, but those aren't personalized per-se. There are some amusing ones, the Hastings Hotels group in N. Ireland is (was?) run by Bill and Joy Hastings, and they could be seen rolling around Belfast in cars with BIL 1066 and JOI 1066 plates.
UK law still prohibits the use of a license plate that could make a car seem younger than it is (i.e. a 1980 plate on a 1960 car), which can limit the fun & games a bit.
That's a problem with your insurance company policies (or more likely, their misspecced software). Nothing to do with the EU or local laws, etc. I presume you would still have been able to get insurance, after speaking to some actual human
Oh yes, it was entirely down to the software. The person just said "well, we'll have to lie about when you passed your test". My point is that it shows that the EU does not have consistent procedures where only the UK is out of step and being difficult. Its different in every country, but the tw*ts who write the software, for the DVLA and elsewhere, have no clue. Just like American website software which assumes every address must have a State field.
1) All countries in the EU use the same Driving licence format.
2) Britain is the only country that ever had a ruddy paper bit.
There were two standard formats specified in the mid-90's, and only in the past two years has the plastic one become the only type. Places like France still use a paper licence and France has said that it doens't plan to change all licences to plastic in the short term.
There are other differences. I had a UK licence which I exchanged for a French one, when filling out car insurance details it asked for the date I passed the test, and rejected it because it is < 18 years after my DOB. Impossible in France, not in the UK where you can get a licence at 17. The reverse situation could happen for motorbike licences. It's certainly not correct to assume that the EU is a big happy harmonised family with just the UK being difficult.
Do you want a non-expiring code that can be kept by (or leaked from) the car hire company...
No, I'd go for the low-tech approach. What about a date-stamped bit of paper kept with the licence which shows the details, and if necessary the online system just keeps a note of the date for the most recent revision? Sounds familiar for some reason, though.
Originally state-owned and state-operated
Owned yes, operated no.
Back in the 50s when the French government wanted to build autoroutes, it couldn't afford them. Instead it subcontracted the work to 5 companies, who had to bear the cost of construction in return for a 30-year lease to operate them as toll roads. The state remains the owner, but the concessions handle the finance, tolls + maintenance. 75% of the autoroutes today are still operated by the concessions.
It's always seemed curious that in a "socialist" country which places so much emphasis on "égalité" the state organised the building of a parallel network of privileged fast roads that only those who could pay could use, everyone else having to stay on the old national roads, whereas in "capitalist" Britain the state replaced the national roads with free-to-use motorways. Do as I say, not as I do?
The surprise for many is that they were (and no doubt still are) carrying out commercial espionage against their own allies.
Why? After WW2 the British government handed out captured German Enigma machines to its allies as useful technology to "help them secure their communications", without telling them that they knew how to break the codes. If Churchill was doing it to the French, what's so surprising about it being the other way around?
All intelligence services spy on their allies, you'd be foolish to assume otherwise. Alliances change.
They work fine in France.
No they don't. The ones round here complain if you put your empty bag into the bagging area (there's no "did you bring your own bag" option), so you have to scan all your items into the bin and then hold up the queue while you perform a second move into the bags after you've paid. You still see lots of people queueing in the "10 items" line with a sandwich or a magazine, they hate the self-service tills so much.
Just before Christmas someone did try an innovative use for them though. She picked a few high-value items like Android tablets and bluetooth keyboards, took them to the fruit and veg area, and weighed them as low-value veg like carrots. The scale printed off a label barcoded for 500g of carrots for 3euro or whatever, which she stuck over the initial barcode and then tried to scan them through the self-service till. The till was happy, it saw 500g going into the bin which matched the scanned label, and she paid her 3euros.
She got caught, the radio news didn't say how. Probably the RFID tag under the original label, but it certainly showed initiative.
The same situation applies in the UK & Ireland. For the BBC to add the rights of 3m or so Irish househoulds to the cost of buying a programme is peanuts, not so for RTE to add the cost of 28m UK households. hence the BBC is freely viewable across Ireland, but RTE is not viewable in GB.
The BBC also makes lots of money via the BBC Worldwide arm by selling popluar programmes to other broadcasters. If viewers in those countries could watch it directly that revenue stream would take a hit.
It's a far from simple situation. Inconvenient though it may seem to be, any change, at least as far as direct broadcasting is concerned, could lead to substantial price rises.
What do you do with the rejects, then?
Teach them how to cope with failure and rejection when they're still young enough to cry on Mummy's shoulder and get over it. That is far better than making it seem that they never fail, until they finally get into the real world and fail at something important (as we all do). At that point they have no idea how to cope, but are too 'old' and self-conscious to ask for help. That's what leads to suicides.
It's not unusual now to leave the car in a "parking" in order to do some "shopping", having left the kids to kick a ball around for some "footing". "Le zapping" is normal TV practice. More odd is when borrowed words meet French grammar: we anglophones will pull on a "pair of trousers" where the French wear a singular "pantalon", so when it comes to Levi Strauss's best they wear "un jean".
Not all imports fare so well. wearing "un sweat"(shirt) or "un pull"(over) sounds odd, but the one that still jumps out at me is the use of "shit" as perfectly acceptable slang for cannabis. It leads to family newspaper headlines referring to seizing kilos of "shit" after a "go fast".
More amusing is how French sports commentators will describe something as "tres fairplay", suggesting a lack not only of an equivalent term in French but perhaps even of the concept?
And what about the indirect subsidies? Fill your electric car from the grid and, for the moment, you pay no fuel duty. Drive it into London and you pay no congestion charge, despite your Tesla taking up more space than a Fiesta, and don't forget the free parking at charging points.
Sooner or later Government will cotton on to these "tax avoidance" schemes, and move the goalposts. How will Musk & co. adjust to that?
I believe the Russian word for Tube Station is Vauxhall.
Railway station in general, not just tube station.
Allegedly one of those occassions when a visitor who had never seen a railway station pointed at a building and asked what it was (meaning "what is the purpose of that building") and got the reply "Vauxhall", from a local who assumed the visitor was asking "which station is that".
Legally at the moment you have to be behind the wheel, sober and qualified and paying attention.
Exactly.This could be offered as a sort of "autopilot" driver aid, which I can see being attractive for people who spend a lot of time stuck in motorway queues, but if it still requires a sober and qualified driver to be present it isn't going to replace ordinary cars.
Alternatively, as the article,suggests, it will become a kind of robot taxi, essentially a "robo-uber". That is likely to meet with pushback in two areas, just like the meatbag-uber:
1) Taxi drivers will hate it, loss of jobs etc.
2) Lawyers will love it. What happens when one of these vehicles is in an accident? The passengers (especialy in the USA) will look for someone to sue, and without a formal driver that will fall on (a) the owner, and/or (b) the manufacturer.
If the owner has to have insurance to cover the likely $$m claim because someone spilt their coffee and so missed a critical business meeting it will be offputting to say the least. If that owner risks jail on similar grounds to someone who keeps a "dangerous animal" which bites someone then there will be even fewer takers. It will require a whole new set of laws. If the blame falls on the manufacturer then you only have to look at the PR effects of cases like the exploding Pintos and accelerating Toyotas to see how that will discourage Detroit, or anywhere else, from getting involved.
As yet another driver aid gimmick, I can see it appearing. As to robo-taxis, though, I'm not holding my breath,
