Posts by Commswonk 1768 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2015
rather than go to fund massive royal wankfests in the UK
From which I conclude that you are one of those who believes that "somehow" the UK becoming a republic with a president at the top of the shitheap will be without cost to the taxpayer.
Poor deluded fool...
which is why Tetra runs on 410 to 430 MHz
Not quite; it actually runs on 380 - 400 MHz; 410 - 430 MHz was used by the "non - emergency" variant, i.e. Dolphin, which IIRC is now long - defunct.
Being even more pedantic, when I retired the frequencies used were actually 380 - 385 & 390 - 395 MHz with the unused 5 MHz blocks held in reserve.
There is nothing specific about the frequencies used that results in "low bandwidth" for data; the TETRA specification is such that it simply doesn't allow data to be sent fast enough for user requirements, whether they are real or perceived.
What on Earth is the government playing at? Why is it taking them so long to sort out what is effectively a private phone network, using nearly all existing masts, with push to talk capabilities!?
To answer your question... probably just twiddling its collective thumbs, for the very simple reason that "sorting it out" (i.e. making it work) is the responsibility of EE and (IIRC) Samsung; it is neither the government's nor the civil service's job to produce a working system.
I am not trying to say that the government is totally free of blame for the fiasco; opting for a system that worked on paper but that had never been tested as a practical reality was hardly the most sensible of decisions.
And when you say "existing masts" which masts do you mean? EE's or Airwave's? If the former you should note that numerous commentards point out that their 4G coverage is poor or non existent; if the latter, those masts belong to... Motorola. One way or another the "existing masts" provide at best a partial solution to the coverage requirements. In any event coverage is relatively easy to sort out, if not necessarily cheap. But what is the point of perfect coverage if the underlying system doesn't work?
From the article:
WD "implemented incident response efforts and initiated an investigation with the assistance of leading outside security and forensic experts
and
"As part of its remediation efforts, Western Digital is actively working to restore impacted infrastructure and services. Based on the investigation to date, the company believes the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and is working to understand the nature and scope of that data"
Please; somebody... anybody... please make it stop.
25 years ago TETRA was trialled as a working system in Jersey (Channel Island, not "New") and after tinkering was then adopted for UK - wide implementation. In other words, it was not ordered until it had been proven as a system, albeit with limitations on data transmission, which might not have been fully appreciated at the time.
This time round some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to order a replacement system "off plan", and look where it has landed us...
And while I have no particular interest in Motorola, IMHO easing them out of involvement with the ESN is yet another mistake; what other company has the experience to be able to put together a functioning system?
Round up the usual suspects...
Sounds like its bullsh*t if it doesn't cover everywhere its needed.
What good is an undergound radio network that won't /wouldn't interface with Airwave? However good an earlier system might have been there was a clear (as in blindingly obvious) operational requirement that emergency services had to be able to work within TfL so an entirely separate radio system would be of no use whatsoever.
Fully expecting downvotes from die-hard defenders, but it is time for the incompetents and charlatans to go.
As someone whose political views are more "conservative" than anything else it grieves me that I cannot at the moment think of a single argument in support of the current government.
Perhaps it really is time "for the incompetents and charlatans to go" but I cannot find any enthusiasm for anything any other party is likely to bring to the table. As a constituent of the present Mr Speaker I will have no vote at the next General Election so at least I am to be spared the agony of having to make a choice.
That was one hell of a landing. Fantastic job by the pilot and co-pilot.
If you liked that then you'll like this... even if it is a bit off - topic for this thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE
This is, I suppose, PR speak intended to demonstrate expertise. It fails to demonstrate that in respect of language.
Thank you for sparing me the trouble of making this point.
My only niggle with your post is that you missed out Hosted Exchange environment which is an abomination equally deserving of censure.
the building pictured...
...along with The Mound, curiously devoid of traffic on what is clearly a nice day, judging from the male pedestrians wearing shorts.
Unless Holyrood has made The Mound a traffic-free zone the photographer must have had a long wait for an empty road...
That would mean that as long as it doesn’t bother the fire service
It shouldn't; fire appliances do not normally rely on supply pressure to fill the hoses, at least not completely. A fire appliance is equipped with serious pumps driven from the engine to pressurise the hoses so that the water can reach a suitable height and come out of the nozzle ("Monitor" IIRC) at some speed*.
Where necessary an appliance can draw water from a static supply (e.g. a pond) although an additional "portable" pump may also be required.
That said, there has to be a potentially significant flow rate available; LFB ran into trouble during the Grenfell Tower fire because of the extraordinary volume of water needed and they had to ask the water board (whichever one it is) to pump harder to get enough.
* I find myself wondering how the fire services will manage when they have to use appliances powered only by batteries...
So we could use electric pumps to raise the water and then put generators in the downward flow. With any luck the magic would permit perfect matching of the energy conversions so the generators would power the pumps.
I wish you hadn't written the above; it won't be long before a politician opens his or her mouth in the belief that you were serious, followed by "why isn't this happening now?" Politicians and anything technical do not make a good mix.
Here are a few - note that I'm talking about hypothetical future vehicles with working self-driving:
Interesting that you should include the word hypothetical because not only are the vehicles currently hypothetical but so are the benefits that you listed; they will remain as a wish list until such time as they have been proven to have been realised.
One in particular warrants further comment: Driverless freight vehicles cut freight costs by around a third. I'd like to know how that has been calculated; just the fuel cost for an hour's running is well in excess of what the driver costs.
In addition, the driver is normally responsible for assisting with unloading / loading the vehicle; in his or her absence who will carry that out? Loading is singularly important because it is essential that the load is properly spread to even to distribute the weight on the various axles and that it is secure and cannot move when the vehicle is moving. It is a legal requirement and if he / she gets it wrong the driver can be held liable in Court.
I'll believe that AI really exists when it can reverse an articulated vehicle round corners / into a tight space / etc without mishap. Will this hypothetical LGV be able to refuel itself with either diesel or electricity when the need arises?
this illustrates a serious problem with drivers more than it highlights problems with "driver assist" or whatever the manufacturers decide to call it.
Perhaps instead of trying to develop "better" AI the whole idea of "driver assist" ought to be dropped completely until there has been some proper research into driver behaviour in the hope of finding out whether eliminating human error (for which read downright stupidity as often as not) is a realistic prospect.
Whence cometh the clamour for "self-driving vehicles" anyway? I know the concept seems to make politicians salivate but that offers no insight into whether the idea is a good one or not.
Do you have a citation for the implication of what you have said that a director of a UK (by which I _probably_ mean English or Welsh) company is legally obliged to accept collective responsibility for board decisions?
No, for the very simple reason that that is not what I asserted. I did not use the word "legally" so IMHO you have wilfully misrepresented what I said.
A Director and the Board of which he or she is a member is legally required to act in the best interests of the shareholders. (OK; it is not hard to argue about what is and is not in the best interests of the shareholders!) You are asking me to support a statement that I did not make.
Obviously if he does dissent outside board meetings, he is unlikely to endear himself to the existing establishment at Nominet - but I have a funny feeling that "endearing himself to the existing establishment at Nominet" is rather a long way down his list of priorities.
Both statements might well be true, but he must avoid running the risk that the "majority" of this or any other Board of Directors get so pissed off that they seek the removal of the dissenter(s) by way of a vote at an AGM / EGM, which is why I wrote Dissent has to be practised with care...
Non-execs, indeed all directors HAVE to execute their responsibility independently. He CAN express dissent.
Of course they can, (and sometimes must) in an appropriate forum such as a board meeting.
However losing an argument (and I don't mean a slanging match) at a board meeting does not confer on the "loser" the right to moan in public about what went on unless (for example) there was clear evidence of malpractice on the part of the "winners".
Dissent has to be practised with care...
I just hope being elected to the board does not prevent continued investigative activities and public statements concerning that organisation ... (My bold)
Er... perhaps not. Kieren will have to adhere to the responsibilities and decisions of the board as a whole; the scope for "freelancing" is likely to be limited and could easily result in the collective displeasure of others who may then take steps to ensure that his tenure as a director is a short one. That would negate everything he has striven for so far, which in turn could would turn out to be disastrous.
I would hope that he resists the temptation to "tell tales out of school" just in case it compromises his position.
It's also disappointing how hard it is to draw even the simplest diagrams.
I wholeheartedly agree. Prior to retirement I did a lot of diagrams / drawings using the drawing capability in 3.11. We then migrated to (IIRC) NT and while most would open without problems some finished up with a lot of misalignment that required sorting out. New drawings were as easy as they had been with 3.11.
In retirement I was able to do such drawing as I still wanted to do using XP on a desktop; no changes from earlier versions that I could identify. The laptop I then acquired offered me all the benefits of W7, one of which wasn't the ability to do drawings easily / at all.
I reluctantly had to retire the PC using XP and migrated to W10 (no great surprise there!) and found the same problems with the drawing tools as I had encountered in W7.
A serious retrograde step IMHO.
Change is inevitable; progress is not.
We never worked out how he managed to cause a transistor (I think it was) to lose its magic blue smoke.
Sometimes it does not require any external action to cause this, or something similar. Half a lifetime ago a colleague and I had a radio base station* open on the bench; it wasn't faulty - IIRC we were modifying the EEPROM program that master - minded the remote-control system.
We made some changes and were sitting back after checking that our changes had had the desired effect when the (large) room suddenly filled with what I can only describe as a "Dayglo - Grey" fog.
On later investigation we found that a small tantalum capacitor in the power supply had developed a tiny anus through which it had farted an inordinate quantity of magic smoke of a quite startling appearance; it was truly impressive.
We then found that the equipment continued to function perfectly well despite this loss so rather than spend quite a long time stripping the PSU apart to replace the exhausted capacitor we just left it as it was.
As Steve Kerr also said... truly Fun times.
* A Storno CQF6334 for anyone interested...
Truss was selected because she actually espoused policies that the party membership could support.
That may be true, but for myself I would have preferred policies based on pragmatism rather than party dogma.
I feel more than a little let down, but at my age I doubt if I have any right to be surprised. She would have been better to find a policy / policies that would have the support of the wider electorate, not just those who happen to be card - carrying members.
,,,that they are meaningless in the face of the 50-plus percent increase in household bills and a further 80 percent next month in the UK.
That is simply wrong; the only unknown is whether its wrongness is accidental or wilful. The House of Commons Library document linked within the above makes it clear that it refers to household energy bills, not "household bills".
The situation is bad enough without avoidable misleading statements adding to the misery.
Worked for many years but they had to close it down because it wasn't going to last much longer.
For some reason this rang a recent bell; see
https://www.roofingtoday.co.uk/34-hospital-building-roofs-at-risk-of-collapse/
The description of the material in question sounds very like "cinder block".
What epic stupidity to build a hospital (at enormous cost whichever way you look at it) when critical parts of it only have a 30 year life before failure is likely? This goes well beyond negligence and is more like wilful stupidity both from the point of patient and staff safety and from the point of long - term costs to the taxpayer; save pennies in the short term so that there is a mega - cost in the future because the whole building has to be demolished, hopefully after a replacement has been built.
Having said that the fact that Grenfell Tower happened is a deeply painful demonstration that the problem is deep - seated.
What other horrors await us?
Tens of thousands of BT Group engineers and call center workers...
Had this been about a group of employees in the US I could cope* with the use of the word "center". However, it is about a group of UK employees working for a UK business.
I am getting to the point where I see the enforced Americanisation on this site (and anywhere else for that matter) as being insulting and offensive.
* Just about, anyway...
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