Posts by Brenda McViking 397 publicly visible posts • joined 28 May 2012
Some of you might find the Scottish Whisky Flavour Map of interest.
Personally, I really like Ardbeg, but it's not something I'd necessarily reccommend to someone if they've never tried a proper single malt before - Glenmorangie would be my choice for the beginner just starting out.
I'll go over the basics of any phone costing over £500 upfront, as even Samsung keep missing the mark.
Things which MUST be included or they're not even considered:
Full HD screen, with MHL OR a micro HDMI slot.
A microSD card slot. 128GB support absolute minimum.
A removable battery. 2000mAh minimum. Actually, 2500mAh as it's 2014. (~10Wh in lithium)
NFC, Bluetooth,IR,2x cameras, 1 with full HD recording, a 3.5mm socket, LED for torch use, a light level sensor that works, wifi + tethering, and GPS.
Things they should have:
waterproofing, dedicated camera button, thin case options, quality finish, Qi wireless charging built in, stereo speakers, xenon flash, pay-by-bonk
Is it really so difficult?
Agreed.
The only thing worse than picking one of these Peugeots up at the corporate-hire-car-operator-du-jour is a Kia Carens. Give me a Hyundai over these any day. Or a Citroen DS5 - they're not that bad.
The new 308 (and the old - this goes for the 508 and 5008 too) has absolutely no feel in any of the controls. Steering - might be connected to the wheels, but I can't tell. I don't know whether a curved slip road requires 5 degrees or almost full lock - and neither does the car from the feel of it.
Brakes, might be connected to the wheels somehow - I honestly can't tell. I press it and something happens, but it doesn't seem to respond to how hard I push it or how quickly. Now Ford are guilty of the so-called "digital" braking system - i.e. "1" or "0" but this is too far the other way.
The accelerator just is a squishy mess - It doesn't give any feedback, just makes more noise as you press into the sponge of a pedal - doesn't appear to actually control acceleration.
But by far the most hideous aspect of these latest Peugeots are the automatic gearboxes - they have all the finesse of a learner driver with 45 minutes worth of experience, over-rev, jerky, or take 18 seconds to change - it seems to pick one of these options at random every time it wants to change gear. They also seem to have programmed gear changes to happen at bang on 30 or 40 mph. Which means it can never. make. up. its. mind.
It is the most disconnected driving experience I have ever had, and I've driven several american cars which had an entire design team focussed on being as mushy as possible. This was worse. I think it is best described as driving a bus with the handling characteristics of a bouncy castle.
I also had a HUD in the last one i was given, which was interesting for the first 5 minutes. I then realised that I still had to take my eyes off the road to read it - so it was no different to any other dashboard display.
This car is perfect for those who cannot be bothered with any intellectual effort whilst driving; for the person who when asked what car they drive replies "a red one," and expects a nod of recognition for that as a legitimate answer.
Plenty of them around though - I'm sure it will sell well.
Income is one side of the coin - Doing this would effectively destroy an awful lot of companies with low margins. If I get income from selling a chair, i have to buy the wood and the electricity for the lathe. If you tax the chair on sale (as in me, the manufacturer, not the customer who will pay VAT on top), without allowing me to offset the sale price against the wood and the electricity, then this all falls down.
Here's a radical solution - don't tax profits. Don't offer subsidies for losses either.
Why do profits need to be taxed? You pay workers, who pay tax
You provide customers with goods, who pay tax
You provide shareholders with income or assets, who pay tax.
Why should any more tax be paid on top of other taxes? you've already covered all of the money exit routes - it's not like a company is going to buy itself a fancy house and a yacht for itself - and even if it does, the housebuilders and yacht builders will be paying tax via one of the 3 methods above. I mean the only thing that "profit tax" allows the exchequer to get their hands on is a pile of cash hoarded by a company. And why would a company hoard cash when inflation means it's losing money? which shareholders are going to stand for it? It's all utterly pointless.
I mean, have I missed something? surely corporation tax is double taxation, plain and simple. I fundamentally disagree with double taxation, though I'm prepared to listen to how I've misunderstood the situation...
I too am a 'would be customer' who is completely put off by the lack of an uSD slot. the OTG option is a clunky workaround at best, and in reality, completely unworkable for me - I'd either forget the cable, or not have it on me when I was given 3 hours notice to get to the airport.
Same argument for lack of swappable battery for the '6, though with a 15min boost charge, I might be able to make it work.
Actually no, on second thoughts, the amount of times having a fully charged spare that can be changed in 30s has saved my bacon is too many to count. Typically when I've landed somewhere that nobody speaks English and google maps is the only thing that can get me to my destination with no hassle.
So no deal. Which is a pity because I've always wanted a Nexus and its lack of bloatware.
Samsung Note 4 it is.
Q: Why is the Apple still reporting record profits?
A: Because iPad users are just as oblivious to the looming recession as they are to the people around them!
Q: What do you call a bent iPhone 6 plus?
A: A dead wringer.
Q: What is written on Steve Jobs tombstone?
A: iCame, iSaw, iConquered, iLeft, iCameBack, iThinkDifferent, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, iCloud, iRIP
Q: How can you tell which one of your friends has the new iPad?
A: Don't worry, they'll let you know.
Q: Why did Steve Jobs live his last moments in regret?
A: They say your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. Unfortunately for Steve Jobs, his iPad didn't have a Flash player installed!
Q: How many Apple iPad early adopters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 3001. 1 to do the work and 3000 to go online and bitch about the lack of obscure features!
Q: What do the latest iPad applications do?
A: Whiten teeth and perform lasik eye surgery!
Q: According to Apple what is the leading cause of iPads overheating?
A: Downloading images of Katy Perry!
Q: What do you call a Scottish iPad?
A: An AyePad.
You jolly well can teach someone to multitask - it involves making neural connections to the point that things are done automatically without requiring a slow cognitive decision. E.G. manipulating the clutch whilst negotiating a busy hill junction with traffic lights. You get someone who has never driven a car before and they physically will be unable to manage it, because they haven't learnt how to multitask.
Same with aircraft. Flying a circuit (takeoff, go around the airfield once and land) - requires an intensive amount of multitasking. You have to be aware of your own aircraft, it's speeds, setup, altitude, engine setting and position in 3 dimensions, whilst negotiating with air traffic control via a radio and being aware of everything other aircraft in the pattern with you. Some of which will be going a lot faster (or slower) than you. If you haven't been taught how to multitask, you cannot do this properly, which is why you have to be trained to be a pilot.
This is why we have licences for these things - it certifies that you have the appropriate neural connections to be able to multitask properly.
But why not a smartphone?
I see this opinion a lot on here, but don't fully understand why - I'm genuinely interested. If you told me that I could ditch the wallet/purse entirely, and just needed to carry a smartphone, I'd be fine with that. I don't get why in 2014 I still need to carry around keys, metal coins, a wallet full of plastic loyalty cards and the odd paper note when the technology exists to just put it into my communication device, which I alreay take everywhere, and then control it via an app.
Is it the fact that mobiles run out of battery?
Is it the fact that it's an internet enabled device and entrusting bank details to it is asking for trouble?
Do you think it makes it more of a target than it already is to an opportunistic thief?
They have fixed it, yes - to the point where only you can pick up your weapon drops. However, it's completely random as to who drops what - certainly not a case of kill a boss to get a good piece of kit - "stuff" is just as likely to be dropped by a tiny minion which you can accidently kill with an unaimed spray of bullets, rather than a Tank which will take 600 seconds of sustained machine gun fire from 3 players to down.
I must admit I was hoping for more of a Skyrim length main quest as opposed to an average shooter like, say, Far Cry, Halo, Half Life, but it's a fair story, if a little short.
I've not played Player versus Player yet - certainly it was a lot less fun in the Beta than it is in Titanfall, but the game is good fun if you have 2 other friends to play it with, in the "single-ish" player mode.
Overall, I'd give it 7/10, so far. There is a lot more they can (and hopefully will) do with it to bump it up to 8. (and to give you an idea of my ratings, I'd give Skyrim 8/10,. HL2 ep2 9/10, Max Payne 3 4/10, Halo 7/10)
Sorry Lionel, it's you who are wrong.
If you watch ANY television programmes as they're being broadcast even without an aerial, if you don't pay the BBC telly tax, you're breaking the law.
That includes internet streaming, sky programmes via satellite dish, periscope into the neighbours living room - any equipment which can recieve a broadcast (an aerial is just one type of such equipment, your dish is another), and it doesn't have to be a BBC broadcast either - which is why it is so ridiculous.
Personally, if you watch sky through a dish, I'd buy a TV licence if you don't want a fine. And next time, don't pander to their inane requests - there is only one reason for them, and that is to use against you in court - they serve no other purpose whatsoever.
Because if you reuse a slightly stronger password than remembering 18 simpler ones, your overall security is often still better. And be honest - what is easier? Everything needs a login nowadays. If recall is more than 1 second for the user then you're wasting more time and raising their stress level unnecessarily.
This is actually one of the few research papers that "get it" - realising that whilst the theory of entropy theoretically makes security stronger, adding in the meatbag actually MASSIVELY reduces entropy. If you're demanding a 6 character password with 4 types of characters, the entropy is orders of magnitude lower than a 6 character lowercase password, but the majority of people do not know that.
That and security is often completely unnecessary - who needs a password taking 550 years to bruteforce protecting the corporate "how to sit at your desk without becoming a paraplegic" Health and Safety intranet portal? even nuclear launch codes only really need a few months of brute force protection. (and indeed, 0000 0000 was the launch code for some types of nuclear weapons during the cold war. For 20 years. Why? because psychology trumps security where humans are involved.)
"Auto theft" as you describe it doesn't exist in the UK for the exact reason that it doesn't fit the definition of theft. In the UK legal system, you HAVE to know and understand definitions correctly, in advance. This is why we get so brassed off with Americans using our language improperly - because it breaks the meaning of what is being said and leads to stuff like this.
In the UK, if you "steal" a car, it is not theft. It is the criminal offence of "Taking without consent" or "Twocking" in the British Bobbys' common vernacular.
Your top of the range phones are actually very good at recording these things, in Full HD. In fact with their noise cancelling microphones they can actually pick up the sound very well too - and this wasn't the case 5 years ago.
Not that I agree with their use for such things. In fact the best gig I recently went to had a band that said "right. Everyone, record our next song. it's the one we're best known for, we'll be doing it again at the end, but after we've let you get it out of your system - put your phones/tablets/cameras and screens away and enjoy the gig. Anyone recording afterwards has my permission to get their head kicked in by fellow fans annoyed by your screen. There will be a professional recording on the website tomorrow that you can download free of charge, no catch, no restrictions, which will be much better quality than you guys can capture. Here we go"
Surprisingly, it had the desired effect, and we all agreed afterwards it was a very good way of doing it.
in the cinema, that is, and I must admit I was impressed - though there is a lot more that can be done from the filmakers side with setting up the soundstage - they'll learn though, in the same way they learnt that changing the focal point of the scenes too much in 3D gave everyone a massive headache.
Though naturally, the ticket office more than made up for the positives by slapping a £10.50 charge for the privilege of seing the film whilst being able to hear overhead (and that was with student discount!)
That's a ticket price increaseof 244% over 5 years, and people wonder why piracy is so rampant...
Modern Israelis != Biblical Israelites.
Unless you're trying to submit that actually Europe belongs to the Rome, and America to the native Indians. Countries, empires, and borders are all man made creations and do not last.
Besides, I'm a descendant of Pangaea, so you can get the hell off my ancestors land!
Granted, soya milk may not be to everyones taste, but it has finally meant that I can go out for coffee with my lactose intolerant mum. As allergies and intolerances go, it's a rather rubbish one (though not the worst by far), as milk in the western world is in sooooo many products.
Soya's image is really not helped when hipsters jump on the band wagon for animal rights and saving the planet purposes (which neither I nor Mum give a monkeys about) - but soya milk actually means she is able to drink something other than water, and even if I wouldn't drink it, the option is appreciated.
I'm with wikimedia on this one. the photographer set it up, but was not the author for copyright purposes. I'm not disputing the fact that it is unfair, unjust or that the photographer didn't put a significant amount of effort in to allow the photograph to be created, but if the monkey would have been the author (if they were human, for instance) and legally cannot be, then there is no author. We all know the law is an ass. This is a prime example.
If this photographer wanted the copyrights on these images then he should have taken the photographs. Classic catch 22 - as the percieved value in these images is that they were monkey selfies, and their actual value, because they are monkey selfies is 0. If he had taken the exact same images then they'd hold less percieved value, but more actual value. It's a technicality - but in law, technicalities matter.
Regardless, the photographer has finally got his front page and hence managed to get the full legal value of these images in terms of advertising. Watching him on the Beeb last night - I agree with him that copyright needs reform and is unfit for purpose in the 21st century. I hope he sells a lot more of his portfiolio due to this, sparks a proper debate on copyright and assists in inspiring others to get copyright reformed properly.
It's no different from mobile boarding passes, from providing advance travel information like we do with budget airlines here in the UK to speed up check-in.
A typical international flight experience: Queue for check in. sometimes then separate queue for bag drop. Queue for departure police check (often not present in the UK). Queue for baggage scanning. Queue for full cavity search. Queue for overpriced food, no-tax-but-doubly-marked-up shopping or airport lounge if you're so lucky. Stand around (maybe even in a queue) looking at departure board wondering why it still hasn't opened the gate yet despite that fact you were due to take off 10 minutes ago. Queue at gate. Queue for boarding pass scan at gate. Queue for airport security/G4S guy who glares at you, glares at your passport, glares back at you and waves you on. Queue for the bus. Cram yourself into the the last available space. Queue to get off the bus. Queue at the aircraft steps. Queue on the aisle waiting for the lady in seat 3B to unpack and repack her 3 bags of hand luggage looking for her flight pillow. Sit down. Fly. Queue for the toilet. Fly. Queue to be let off. Queue for the bus. Queue for immigration. Queue for baggage that doesn't turn up. Queue for baggage handling services to provide details of lost baggage. Queue at customs. Queue for the only atm in the arrivals area. Queue for a taxi/ train/hire car to get out. Queue for Psychatrist to check you haven't gone completely mad.
So yeah. completing any international travel qualifies you for your level 6 queuing proficiency at "Expert" level. - absolutely anything that avoids any queuing for any length of time is something I'm interested in.
It isn't linked to your bank account. it's linked to your phone bill.
I have wanted this for an age. My wallet is stuffed so full of RFID already that bonking a wallet no longer works. It can't tell whether it's my netherlands chipkaart, the oyster card, one of my debit cards or my work or student ID trying to communicate.
My phone goes with me everywhere and is separate. Paying with it would be useful - The way I see it, I have no need for a wallet - it's a place I use to store identification and payment methods, both of which can be done better by a phone. Yes, it's only a matter of saving 15 seconds, but why the hell not?
And yet, because my S4 isn't supplied by EE, it's fracking ineligable. And sod getting a monthly contract with them - that just means the liability is limitless. At least with PAYG it's limited to your account balance.
Since both the justice system and law enforcement have proven themselves completely inept when it comes to technology, I move that neither be able to use any technology in their jobs until they get an el Reg approved internet licence.
In it should be questions like: Little Jonny downloads a movie. What is he guilty of?
and: In terms of connectivity, what does IP stand for?
In the UK, not giving up your key is a criminal act.
In the USA, not giving up unencrypted email is a criminal act.
"Why does the Grid need to quadruple STOR power?"
Because we're running far too close to the margins. STOR is a last ditch attempt to make up for the fact that we don't have enough capacity. It's the payday loan of the energy sector which prevents it from defaulting (blackout). Renewables like wind do indeed provide unpredictable and spiky power which increases the margin requirement.
"Why are gas plants not more attractive to run,"
Because they've been winding them down for ages, because historically gas prices have not been competitive with coal, and because you can't just un-mothball a plant economically unless you've got some guarantees that it's going to stay economical. And because the EU say you can't add more fossil to the grid once you've taken it off. For smaller plants, it's far better to keep a gas plant on STOR - it'll earn it's money that way, rather than trying to compete with nuclear, coal or subsidised wind.
"Why is it the politicians that shut down plants?"
Because they're in charge. They provide the laws and regulations relating to the countries infrastructure. Unless you want the French and the Germans to be in charge of our energy (which they pretty much are, as our politicians don't give a shit and it's come to crunch time.) Energy companies HAVE been screaming for new capacity, for an energy policy, for plants to be given the okay to go ahead. But no, the politicans block it to get short term green lobby votes. And it takes years to build stations. And the politicians sign us up to EU directives that state that fossil is bad m'kay, and we're LEGALLY obliged to shut it all off.
"the energy companies screwed up, not the politicians."
See above. Politics blocks the energy companies from doing what they want, and spend so long fumbling around not giving commitment or guarantees to financing or permission, or debating whether "profit" should be guaranteed for someone making a national investment. National infrastructure is not something the private sector want to pay for - the public sector holds all the cards here, and it comes with high risks with little reward. You can spend £20bn on a new plant for the next politician to come along and give it to your competitor. Why would any sane person take that risk?
"If they shut down too many plants without building new ones the energy companies screwed up"
Politicians agreed to laws stating fossil plant must be shut down. Politicians didn't agree legislation to allow new plants to be built, unless they were wind turbines, which are not fit for purpose when it comes to a stable and affordable energy supply.
"If the grid operators did not enter into enough long term contracts ... then it's operators fault."
You can't enter into a long term contract with a plant that a) is due to be shut by law or b) hasn't been built yet. What exactly are national grid supposed to do? other than explain to the politicians what a fundamental mess they're in and whose fault it is (and they've been doing that)
"In the end the consumer pays, or puts PV solar on his roof"
You can pay as much as you want - but you can't buy what doesn't exist. As for Solar PV, at this latitude - you can choose to run your microwave, or your fridge, but not both at the same time, and not at night. You'd be better off with a domestic diesel generator - but once the power cuts start, they might be commanding a nice premium.
It's a farce, a mess and a frankly stupid, entirely predictable state of affairs, and in my mind, amounts to high treason by the current and historical crop of politicians we've had. But still, even with blackouts coming as early as this year, we're STILL not building new capacity - which will in all likelyhood take until 2020 to be operational.
Well to accomodate a potential for an additional 1.25MW peak load on a typical domestic distribution substation, you'll need some major, and expensive upgrades.
Mean load for a house is around 1.25kW - peaks at maybe 10kW if you've got the kettle, oven, tumble dryer and immersion heater on. A single Tesla on a "supercharger" is the equivalent of shoving 10-12 homes worth of peak demand on the grid - and at the lower distribution level our grid wasn't designed for it. I've heard estimations that more than 3 electric cars on your average domestic street is liable to knock it out as the substation simply can't cope. And it isn't like substation manufacturing is a high volume activity which can knock one up for easy installation with a weeks notice. Our grid is only slightly newer than those new-fangled victorian railways we still have lying around. It'll take decades to upgrade.
The fact that at an increase of 0.2% consumption for an infrastructure of 200 charging points which will service, what, 14000 vehicles? (10 cars a day charging themselves once a week) - you'll need to build 59x 1MW wind turbines at a generous 33% utilisation factor for that 164GWh requirement you have. List price ~ £1m/MW installed (2012) = £59,000,000, so a not insignificant £4200 per vehicle. (and they'll need replacing every 10 years.) That's just the capacity, let alone distribution and the rest of the critical infrastructure Not exactly cheap to save the planet, is it? Conventional fossil fuel is probably a quarter of that price, but even so, a 0.2% increase in UK consumption for vehicles which can be owned by 0.0002% of the population is actually still a rather concerning figure, if these things are going to become popular. If only our electrical infrastructure wasn't already on it's knees...
Yeah but when they're really small they're not that efficient, in thermal terms. They're also expensive to build and maintain, require expensive materials as the average temp at the back is soooo much higher and are still very thirsty. Not to mention it'll easily drown out the noisiest boy racer Corsa driver who has drilled a hole in his exhaust.
GTs are extremely power dense, and therefore fine for when you want an insane amount of power from something that doesn't take up much space or weigh very much - thus for land based vehicles they really don't make sense - you're much better off with a diesel running at it's optimum driving a generator, if you're after maximum efficiency with minimal losses... Unless of course you're trying for land speed records.
But don't let me stop you wanting a jet car. I do too!
They'll porbably go the same way as other outdated forms of transport - provide a mild annoyance for normal road users stuck behind one on the very rare occasion that they're on their way to a vintage rally, or be used in sporting events. Like horses, traction engines and classic cars are today.
But that isn't the whole story, is it.
The medical community came up with many studies showing that smoke-related healthcare was actually costing more than the tax it bought in. Without that the smoking ban would never have happened - it wasn't for the good of the countries health, it was about money. It always is.
Now, you will probably get people lasting longer, from a statistical point of view across an entire population, but due to the fact that fewer people will need the more expensive treatments that smoking increases the likelyhood of them needing, then overall, caring for people for longer without requiring so much expensive specialist equipment (say ventilators, oxygen-equipped wheelchairs, lung transplants, chemotherapy or whatever) is cheaper.
Yes, this is a gross simplification.
Yes, they'll die of something else.
But a human dying of a heart attack is cheaper than being kept alive with lung problems for 20 years, and that, effectively is the crux of the matter, only simplified (a lot). If smoking killed you stone dead, really quickly, then it wouldn't cost more than the tax it bought in, and it wouldn't be such a public enemy, and we wouldn't have seen the smoking ban, which is pretty much being rolled out worldwide, at least in the west.
This disaster resulted in the entire aviation community agreeing that TCAS advisories are to be given priority over controller instructions. As a result, if a TCAS resolution advisory is telling you one thing, and the meatbag another, you follow TCAS - because it is provenly safer to do so.
What is much more likely is the average "mom and pop" investor will not update their stop-loss orders and get stopped out of the market.
The other thing is that employee share plans are pretty difficult to do with a 3 digit share price.
But in the markets there are plenty of people (even rich ones) who don't really know how stocks work and will not have bought Apple because it "was too expensive."
I'll have you know we here commentards are fair and balanced in our opinions
We hate Microsoft on here, and we hate Apple even more. But the one thing that really irks us the most is when Microsoft try and be like Apple - like they did in Vista, and like they're doing in Windows 8. And 8.1
It was an US design back in the 50s for the first generation, but they have since been upgraded several times over, without any help or know-how from the US.
Unless you're arguing the same analogy that all motorcars are heavily supported with US know how from the model T as well, in which case, fair enough, but it's not really all that relevant in the capabilities of today's world.
Funny,
I'll just tell the 8,000 enginers in the UK at Rolls-Royce that they don't manufacture anything complex, let alone half the engines for the worlds widebody jetliner fleet shall I, or the thousands employed at Bombardier, manufacturing rail stock, or how about Coventry, where Jaguar Land Rover are recruiting THOUSANDS of new engineers to assist with their R&D and manufacturing plants (seen any Range Rover Evokes around the states recently? Indian Owned but British Made in Liverpool). Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce - British made. JCB industrial and construction equipment - you may have heard of them. Head up to Scotland and you'll find all manner of marine, oil and gas activity - none of which is known for requiring simple manufacturing.
F1 technology and motorsport- an awful lot manufactured in UK, gearboxes, energy recovery systems, engine development, brakes - Prodrive (UK R&D and Manufacturing) quite literally were the only name in the world rally championship a few years back, supplying technology for virtually all the teams. BAe Systems you've mentioned - in decline at the moment due to the global defence cuts, but defence is a fringe case because as you've mentioned, sovereignty comes into it - so anything made for a country will have it's IP and final construction completed there. Which is why we don't buy US military hardware, just as you don't buy UK (except where we share risk - F35 is a classic example - US do not have the capability for STOVL variant, UK does, designed using UK IP, manufactured in US)
Manufacturing simple things with skinny margins in the UK? not a chance, not at any scale anyway - there is no way you can compete with Asia. We make highly complex equipment that they cannot, due to a lack of adequately qualified personnel and established R&D resources, infrastructure and protection which the east cannot offer (except maybe Sinagpore or South Korea). That does mean that the blue-collar manufacturing on production lines that people "fondly" remember back in the 60s and 70s has largely disappeared, as minimum wages here mean automation/offshoring is cheaper. But to say we don't manufacture anything complex is simply wrong. If anything, it's the only thing we still do. ARM electronics, Imagination technologies - plenty of the IP in your smartphone belongs to British companies, despite what Apple would like you to believe.
I think I've made my point that Britain does do complex manufacturing, and lots of it. I should know as I work in it.
Getting back to topic: putting a manufacturing centre in London, where space is at a significant premium and commands extorsionate rents, is not an idea anyone would seriously entertain. If you have lots of people making lots of money in high rise offices (banksters, insurers, financial services etc) then locating in London makes sense. If you have need of low density (by which I mean warehouses, factories with a few stories) manufacturing needs, you'd be bankrupt within a year if you put it in London. Just like putting an automotive factory in downtown Manhattan - it's a stupid idea.
So there was no way it was ever going to win the top tech city award - it's too expensive to manufacture anything there.
So let me get this straight. He was asked to provide the keys so that the g-men could snoop on the data they were "entitled to" and refused. They take a court order out to force him to, and he stands fast for 2 days before relenting and challenging the legality of the request, in the meanwhile axing the service - and that is contemptuous because he should have taken them to court the first time they asked?
What planet does this judge live on?
If a copper came around my house and asked for my keys "because terrorism", I'll tell him to leave and slam the door in his face, not take him to court for asking. If he then persists, bringing back a court order, then that is the appropriate time to take it to court, surely. That is surely how escalation works.
Otherwise you'll be in contempt next time you don't take a policeman to court should they pull you over for speeding when you weren't (faulty speed gun, for instance). Rather than fighting it once you have the ticket, like any sane, normal member of society would.
Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?
Just sink it. Radioactivity from fuel rods isn't dangerous to humans when it's below 3m of water (which is why we have spent fuel ponds at most reactor sites where the spent fuel cools off.)
Yeah, greenpeace will be shouting "won't somebody think of the fish" but compared to an atmospheric release, it's a no brainer.
By its definitition, Bitcoin is not FIAT. It doesn't derive its value from any government or legislation, and relies instead on its scarcity (due to it theoretically being finite) to attain value.
Of course, once trust in a currency is gone, it becomes worthless anyway - MtGox is certainly the most trust-damaging event to date, but bitcoins are still trading.
Come off it. Futures markets exist because they take the gambling out of the equation for the consumer/provider, and give it to those who deal in and have experience in that area (the bankster).
It's primary advantage is that it allows a certain amount of certainty about the future, which very quickly diminishes risk for those all those involved, from investors, suppliers, consumers, and the entire chain in between them all - as described by posters above.
Cloud computing, aside from being ill-defined (but can probably be offered as CPU cycles, or storage), is no different. If trading it offers no advantage to building it yourself, as you suppose, then the market will dry up, and all the speculators will be left high and dry. Hell, Amazon AWS pretty much does all this already - you can buy cloud at spot prices or at pre-determined prices in the future, and they, together with their customers, are doing well.
And why is a shedload of megapixels a requirement for a phone camera? My old Sony DSLR has 10MP, and due to the physical size of the sensor and the quality of the glass in front of it, It'll still take a far better photo than the 41MP Nokia, EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I have an S4, with a 13MP camera. It still takes shite photos. My Nokia N95 with a 5MP camera had a much better lens and took much better pictures. I miss that phone...
Buying a phone camera based on megapixels is a game only the uninformed play (and don't salesmen know it!) - there are far far far more important things to consider, and anything above 5MP is only really useful if you happen to be printing images the size of motorway advertising billboards, head over to photography forums and they'll tell you all about it.
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