Posts by Phil O'Sophical 6303 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2011
Dyson the company has been moving its production to Singapore for yonks and now makes nearly ALL its stuff there
He's also said to be working on electric cars, and China is the next big place for that, by all accounts. Makes sense to have an HQ in Asia, and Singapore's probably one of the better places to be in that part of the world.
"Small beer" used to mean a weak beer. The sort of thing you'd drink all day on the fields.
Because plain water often made people sick, but they'd discovered that beer didn't. They didn't know about bacteria, and hadn't made the connection that boiled water, as used in beer, was safe (and it was an excuse to drink beer all day anyway).
ISTR that back in the '60s Divis was relaying a signal from the IoM which was relaying a signal from Holme Moss.
That seems unlikely, Divis started in the mid-50s, and there was no IoM transmtter until long after that. People on the IoM west coast used to get their TV from Divis. Perhaps the microwave backhaul links to Tele House in Belfast followed that route? I have a vague memory of a mirowave relay on Snaefell.
Presumably you were in a location where you couldn't get Divis direct.
Indeed, although it was the 80s, not the 60s. There are some hills outside Newtownards that used to be mined for lead, they made a very effective RF screen if you were in their shadow, but the Cambret Hill relay on the Mull of Kintyre usually produced a watachable signal from Border TV. It was at fairly low altitude, hence the tidal fading Some relay transmitters were eventually installed around the area to fix the problem.
Why doesn't the high-tide dish work at all states of the tide?
You can get fading due to interference between direct and reflected (off the water) signals, so that when one path is ok the other isn't. We used to have that problem getting TV across a sea path between NI and Scotland, reception varied between great and almost unwatchable as the tide rose and fell.
Some websites can't even get ordinary data right, let alone the metadata. I recently tried to order a box for an electronics project from an electronics website. First I had the meta issue, was I looking for a case, box, instrument case, or an enclosure? Having tried to resolve that I then went looking for something that was about 20cm x 15cm, and 8-10cm high. I clicked the "width" menu., only to be offered a list of dozens of options such as 19.8cm, 19.9cm, 21.8cm and so on. Much further down in the three-digit section I then also found 210mm, 225mm, etc. Was there a simple "between x & y"? Nope.
Of course, that wouldn't have helped, since a search for a box/case/enclosure that was 20cm wide and 15cm long wouldn't have returned one that was 20cm long and 15cm wide.
I gave up and bought some sheet aluminium from a hardware store & made my own. Fortunately no nudity was required, or offered.
choose not to collect data on EU Citizens
GDPR doesn't apply only to EU citizens, it applies to natural people ("data subjects") who are present in the EU. It doesn't even explicitly say "resident". A US citizen working in the EU is included, and indeed even a US citizen on vacation in the EU is likely to be included, although I can see that having to be clarified by the courts at some point.
immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image
Profane just means not religious or respectful of religion, so while iThings are probably OK there are surely many other gadgets that should be banned under that ruling?
And to rehash a relevant old joke, there are four types of orgasm:
Postive: Oh yes, Oh Yes, Oh YES.
Negative: Oh no, Oh No, Oh NO.
Religious: Oh god, Oh God, OH GOD.
Fake: Oh john, Oh John, Oh JOHN.
51.7% is by any sane standards, & the government & EU's guidelines for the referendums far too small a majority for a major decision that will change the political, economic & social landscape for a generation.
And yet getting 51% (on 69.7% turnout) in a referendum was perfectly OK for France to agree to create the EU in the first place.
You can't have it both ways. If 51% is enough for "in", you can't reasonably claim that 52% is insufficient for "out".
This is why a Deal is so important.
Of course a deal is important, to both the UK and the EU, if it's a good deal with reasonable compromise on both sides. Your discussion above is a little ingenuous, not least because tariffs on imports to the UK will of course hit companies like BMW, Audi, Mercedes, etc. through a drop in sales. It's in everyone's interests to negotiate low tariffs in both directions, and that is, after all, the main purpose of the WTO. Also note that imported components which are later re-exported in finished products will likely not be subject to tariffs, which further changes the calculations.
The chances of the EU agreeing to such a deal pre-Brexit are fairly close to zero, though, because that would mean them trying to make Brexit work in good faith, and that's politically very difficult for any EU politician. This is why we've got Theresa May's appalling sell-out deal, it's all the EU could ever offer.
After the Brexit dust settles, when all these negotiations go back to being shady negotiations between civil servants in back rooms, and not on the 6-o'clock news every night, I'm sure many workable deals will be done that will save face on both sides. That's what politicians are best at, especially when lobbied by industry.
In the absence of (an impossible) fair deal up front, it's far better to have a clean no-deal Brexit with full freedom for post-exit negotiations than to accept a bad deal for the UK which the EU will then simply refuse to change in any way.
"It's one of the most welcoming countries in Europe". WTF, did you read that in the Daily Mail?
No, because I prefer facts to red-top bigotry.
The UK comes second (behind Germany) in the percentage of asylum requests accepted. It consistently scores well above the EU average in opinion polls asking if immigrants are welcome. In my personal experience it is far less institutionally racist than France, to take just one example.
The UK does charity quite well, but it does not do 'welcoming'.
Educate yourself.
If that happens, oh fuck, we're going to see the case of UKIP trying to put forward MEPs, aren't we?)
Where have you been the last few years? UKIP came top in the last UK european elections, 27% of the vote and a plurality (24) of the 73 seats.
I think the non-UK vote will be much more interesting, my money is on the populist parties cleaning up. That should give the EU elite something other than Brexit to worry about.
However if in an unbiased referendum without interference & criminality leave won a supermajority of at least 60% of the vote, I would accept it.
If only we'd had one of those in 1991 when John Major signed us up to Maastricht to create the EU. But he didn't, because he knew he'd lose. Even the French, great Europhiles, only accepted that by 51%. If we'd had an EEC-wide referendum, with a supermajority required, to create the EU it would never have happened, and we wouldn't be in this mess.
Yes, which is why I suggest one of the ways to 'fix' EU is more powers to parliament rather than commission.
You have more faith in that toothless parliament than I do. The monthly Strasbourg-Brussels charade shows how powerless it is to take any difficult decisions. By all means take the powers from the commision, but don't give them to EU politicians, give them back to national parliaments who have a direct stake in the outcome.
The major strength of the EU is in simplifying day-to-day living and business (ie economic rather than political integration). The grand plans to make a Europe-wide superstate are as stupid now as they were in the time of Napoleon.
True, but try convincing Macron etc. of that.
Unfortunately not too much that the EU as a whole or any European country can do about that one. A lot of African / middle eastern countries are in a mess
Also true, but a mess of Europe's making, thanks to the likes of Tony Bliar. Governments are happy enough to charge in and remove unwanted dictators, if they applied the same level of money & committment to deal with the gangs of people smugglers they could make good inroads into the migrant problem at source. Unfortunately a war is always more appealing to politicians than police action, it tends to be over before the next election.
So in any case there will be a flow of refugees, and the EU needs to be able to welcome them humanely and integrate them as productive and contributive elements of society.
Absolutely, but there's a need to differentiate between genuine refugees, and those economic migrants who have an unrealistic idea of a "promised land" where they can make more money that they can at home. Some of them may be welcome, if they can genuinely be productive in their new society, but in most cases it would be better for both countries if they stayed at home and worked to improve their home countries, instead of chasing some imaginary El Dorado where the reality is that they'll end up in shanty towns, no better off than before.
You just argued there were multiple leave options and not everyone who voted leave wanted the same thing. In fact, I doubt many had even considered the consequences; it was a non-binding vote and many took it as a general protest vote
I honestly doubt that, given the celebrations after it and the immediate collapse of UKIP which was then seen as "job done, now irrelevant". Those who voted leave did so because they wanted to leave, and I suspect most expected that leave to be basically "no deal" with some minor clarifications, followed after departure with new trade negotiations. The suggestion of a pre-leave divorce bill etc. certainly didn't go down well.
the one negotiated with the EU by such Leave politicians who were prepared to take on the job, let's note
Well, no. The Leave politicians weren't allowed to negotiate anything, they were overruled by remainers like May who forced them to either resign or negotiate an agreement that is essentially worse than either "remain" or "no deal".
"Given that there are really only a couple of leave options available to vote for then a second preference vote works fairly well."
True, that could be an option.
I think the sensible people asking for another referendum are asking for one that really seeks to establish what people wan
But realistically you can't do that, because there would only be one possible "remain" option, the one decided by the EU which controls the terms of membership, yet multiple ways to leave. Give people a choice between, say, three types of "leave" and one of "remain" then obviously the "remain" option would get the highest number of votes, even if the total for the leave options still exceeded it. For many people I suspect that "kill off the EU, go back to the EEC" would be a preferred option, but clearly that isn't a choice that can be realistically offered by one country alone.
The black and white stay/go option was the only viable one.
Have you given any thought on how much cost your ridiculous queen and her family?
Absolutely nothing. The Crown Estate provides ~ £330m income to the treasury each year, of which only £82m is paid to back the Royal household as a grant. We actually make a substantial profit from them, even before you consider intangibles like tourist income.
I think one of the problems with the EU is that it's very real benefits founded on lasting peace
The peace was the result of the post-war economic stabilty of the common market, allowing neighbours to trade together while building trust. Ever since it was converted into the EU there has been a steady rise in nationalism and populism, to the point where the EU is becoming a leading cause of conflict (cf the Brexit arguments) within European countries. Free trade brings peace, empire-building politicians do not.
Immigration needs to be better managed but is not going to be stopped, short of surrounding Europe with barbed wire and machine guns
Very true, which is why immigration itself is not relevant to the debate.
What is relevant is the control of it, and controlling it on an EU-wide basis clearly isn't working. The Dublin agreement is largely ignored, the weaker countries can't police their own borders. The centralized solution is to attempt to manage the uncontrolled flow it by issuing quotas by diktat, which simply adds to the internal conflicts. Migration needs to be tackled at source, before people leave their homes, not after arrival in Europe when it's too late.
The UK is, and always has been, largely welcoming to true immigrants and asylum seekers. It's one of the most welcoming countries in Europe, and should continue to be so post-Brexit, but that has to be on its own terms.
You only need to change the address given in the registry to one in the EU.
So pick one in Belfast. It's (officially) in the UK, but Ireland considers it to be in Ireland. People born there can claim both UK and Irish nationality. Let's see the EU unpick that one.
This is a chocolate orange in Dublin.
They grow cocoa in Ireland?
Look at the whole picture, what taxes were paid to import that chocolate to Dublin from outside the EU? Where was the metal for the foil mined, and where was the cardboard made? Then recalculate the whole thing on a non-EU basis, without any double-dutch-irish-sandwich tax trickery. It's far from your simplistic "EU good, non-EU bad" theory.
How many people with .eu domains actually have them because they want them, and not just to prevent cybersquatters grabbing them?
In short, it's a bad deal for everyone, everyone knows it, there are other better options, yet for some reason politicians and bureaucrats are insisting on continuing to rush headlong off a cliff.
The reason is obvious, Brexit must be made to fail. It will be embarassing for the EU if it actually works, since more people might begin to question the value of the EU.
We had a similar problem. Sysadmin came in one morning to some complaints of missing files. They continued over the course of the morning, and it was only when he noticed that the complainants were arriving in roughly alphabetical order of username that he twigged what had happened. QA test system was doing "rm -rf ${TESTROOT}/" with TESTROOT unset, but with the NFS automounter configured. Not running as root, so the damage only really started when it got to /home and found all the files with "group" delete permissions...
Many people were very relieved that we had nightly offline backups.
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