* Posts by Peter Allen

5 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jun 2007

Daydreaming? You're actually solving complex problems

Peter Allen
Paris Hilton

Bit obvious really...

Just think how hard the mental GPU has to work to provide that full-colour hi-res interactive pornstream-daydream! And that's before we even get to a physics model...

IBM Warwick data centre has a lie down

Peter Allen

Re: Five 9's

Here's some slightly better maths: five 9s is 00.001% time down, which is 315.36 seconds per year, or just over five minutes. So a 7 hour outage is still within your uptime requirement for the next century with a bit to spare...

Speed cams ditched in Wiltshire

Peter Allen
Pirate

thought required...

Too many kneejerk responses here...

Speed on its own clearly cannot kill, it's crashing that kills. Short version:

30 limits are generally there for a reason, like the little kids wandering around on the pavement. If you're doing 40 and hit one you will kill it, and you will deserve to be beaten. Often you should not even be doing 30, like when there's cars on both sides and kids coming out of school. If you do 45 and 'get away with it' by not actually killing anyone, then you deserve to return home and find a fine and points on the doormat.

40 limits, usually same goes (though there are some bits of 40 limit where you have to think they should be national limit... a long stretch of crash-barriered and inaccessible to pedestrian dual carriageway in Nottingham comes to mind here).

In general, you go at whatever speed you think is right. If it's wet, go slower. If it's foggy, go a lot slower. If it's a clear bit of motorway on a fine day, there is no good reason not to sit on 100, as the German autobahns prove.

@teecee - cyclists should be treated as normal road users, and they should behave that way. That means they should not ride ten abreast, hop on and off pavement, jump lights... but also if the cyclist pulls out to go round a parked car without looking, then that is his privilege. You don't look behind when you pass a parked car, nor does the cyclist. You're supposed to overtake safely, not expect the cyclist to stop and wait for you. That said, 18 inches is enough room if you're passing at a sensible pace (i.e. not 60), when I'm cycling I find I spend a lot of time waving cars past that seem to want to wait till they can give me six feet of room. If you're only going 5 or 10 miles an hour faster than the cyclist, just move a little over the centre line and you can overtake me easily without waiting for the other lane to be clear.

'Podestrian' risk rising for drivers, warns insurer

Peter Allen
Flame

3/4 my a**e

Too many made up statistics...

As a cyclist, I have a good idea of how many people wear ipods on the bike. More than should, yes - but 75%? I might believe 7.5%. Yes, there are cyclists who are idiots, who wear ipods, ride on the pavement, jump lights, follow left turn lanes then go right... many things. But these are, really, a minority. It's just that the driver doesn't notice the cyclist who behaves like a normal car and does the correct things, he remembers the idiots. Simply - what happened to on-the-spot fines for this sort of thing?

Also as a cyclist - most car drivers are nice, play sensible, even hold back too long in order to leave a 3m gap passing (note: if I don't think I can keep my bike within 50cm of the pavement, I shouldn't be riding it - just move to the other side of the lane and you'll have room to pass and leave me a 1m gap). Some assume a bike has no rights, but again this group is a minority (probably driving a taxi or white van). Doesn't stop the typical cyclist 'all drivers are idiots' complaint. Again, cyclists notice the idiots not the majority who are sensible.

As to pedestrians - why do so many think that they can step out in front of cyclists? Again it's only the few idiots - but, really. If I'm cycling at 30mph down your street and you step out in front of me, you'll get a lot more hurt than if you do that to a car at 30mph. In the first case you'll get hit in the hips by my handlebars and you'll maybe never walk again, in the second you'll get broken legs as you bounce over the bonnet which will heal in a few months. The fact that I'll get hurt too (while the driver won't) is probably not much compensation, and I do not have insurance, so you will definitely not get any money.

Two year old's IQ on a par with Hawking

Peter Allen

IQ and theorising

have only a passing relation. IQ is essentially a test of your ability to process various forms of not too complicated data at speed. Whereas generally a good theoretician (in maths or physics) is someone who is able to build a good mental model of their problem and has the persistence to keep attacking it. A good example here is the physicist Niels Bohr, who made substantial contributions to quantum mechanics, but who was also famously slow of thought to the point that he would lose track of movie plots.

I'm not saying IQ is unimportant - for a lot of real world technical jobs the guy with the high IQ will be the guy who gives the company the best value for money - but it doesn't really relate to model building or creativity all that well.