Posts by Commswonk 1777 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2015
"Empires", ours and other countries' are things of the past. By attempting to enforce any sort of standard on another country are we not indulging in cultural and social imperialism, expecting them to accept our norms rather than being allowed to develop their own? And are we not doomed to fail?
Is trying to occupy the high moral ground not itself a bit immoral?
Tim Worstal wrote: "...I do generally argue that it is economic development which allows female emancipation and education.
It may well allow it, but it doesn't guarantee it; not by a long chalk. Some people in some places will enforce the non - emancipation and education of women at gunpoint, although to be fair the same places cannot be argued as being "developed".
In addition there are places which although economically developed don't allow women to drive, so using the availability of money as a definition of "development" does not ensure emancipation as we would understand it.
Nick Kew wrote: "As for dealing with poverty, the one thing that really matters is to bring birth rates down."
In fact the reverse is happening, in effect if not in actual numbers born. Quite justifiably "western medicine" is doing its best to eradicate the high mortality diseases that plague the developing world / third world (call it what you will) such as malaria and as a direct result the global population is growing much faster than it otherwise would. On another front West Africa has a higher population than it would have had if the west had not stepped in to contain the outbreak of ebola (should dideases be capitalised?) in the last couple of years; in turn the number of births will increase over and above what it would have done had the outbreak been left to run its course.
Now I am not going to suggest that western medicine should not have intervened, but it does seem a little perverse that we save people from early and unpleasant deaths (and in the case of polio literally crippling diseases) only for them to have to spend a life in poverty or at best near poverty.
I don't pretend to have a single clue about how to resolve the contradictions that a rapidly increasing world population brings; there are mouths to be fed and if third world parents see no option than to send their children to work than perhaps it is not for us to tell them they are wrong. It isn't that long since child labour in the UK was commonplace; the long summer school holiday is a legacy from the times when children were essential in being able to help bring in the harvest. At least the children of the time had schools to go to; in some parts of the world even basic education has to be paid for somehow - the word "free" doesn't come into it. The choice "work or school" isn't a choice at all if work brings in a little bit of money while school costs money that people simply don't have.
Child slave labour is another matter entirely, of course, but I can't see how we can get rid of that either; while it can be argued that the west's insatiable hunger for cheap throw - away clothing adds to the problem of child labour it can hardly be argued that stopping buying the stuff would make the children's lives - or those of their parents - any better.
What is really sad is that servile conditions do not end with the arrival of adulthood; think of the stories that emerge from time to time about the conditions under which fruit - phone assemblers seem to have to work.
Overall it's a much bigger picture than child labour, and the solution - if there is one - is far from clear. Perhaps there simply isn't one while the population increases at the rate it does.
... ping, ping, ping, and so on, very fast.
Many years ago I worked in a place where IT support (of which I was not a part) received a call from a distressed office occupant because his desk top was making alarming "pinging" noises; he even held his telephone handset near the offending machine so that support could hear it.
On investigating it was discovered that his clipboard was resting on the keyboard with at least one key depressed, filling the buffer to beyond full.
I'm not sure he ever lived it down, but it provided some much - needed amusement for a lot of people. What made it worse was the fact that the IT support 'phone had not been attended, so the "offending report" was recorded for all to listen to at leisure.
russel 6 wrote: "I can not believe that only VW are up to this and that the other car makers didn't know what VW was up to. You can be sure they have all reverse engineered each others cars to see how they go about things and would have been the first to call out VW if they were not also involved in similarly nefarious behaviour."
On the "balance of probabilities" test that seems quite likely; in which case it will be quite funny when the full truth emerges and it is found that Ford (Europe) and GM (ditto) have been playing the same games. The US seems to be working itself into a state of righteous indignation via the offices of the EPA; it will be interesting to see if there any shamed faces if & when it transpires that people closer to home were up to no good as well.
My car is a diesel, and although Vauxhall badged is, I understand, actually made by Opel in Germany. Its performance if I get a bit heavy with my right foot is quite impressive, and it is a bit hard to believe that it achieves that without breaching some of its emissions limits. OTOH I simply cannot make it belch smoke like an earlier diesel of mine back in the 1990s; that was British made (defunct Rover Group) although it may have used someone else's engine; my last car (again Rover, but a 75) was not bad on "smoke" but that was certainly not a UK engine - IIRC it was either a Peugot or BMW design under the bonnet.
From my own perspective none of those apply; see my original post.
It must be agonising to realise that your 'phone (fixed line or mobile) can only make one call at a time.
I am still at a loss to work out why broadband capabilities "have" to be scaled so that "n" things can take place at the same time. Do you expect your neighbours to pay over the odds so that your "needs" are met? I certainly don't.
I cannot go to the toilet, cook, wash the car, sleep, and so on simultaneously so why should B/B by definition be multitasking? I'm sure if you asked BT (or whoever) to provide multiple lines at your location they would do their best to oblige, provided that you agree to pay for it.
Just don't ask me to subsidise your needs by paying for more bandwidth than I will ever require; that would be the only way in which BT (or whoever) could roll out a super duper network. Better by far, IMHO, is that the maximum number of people get some sort of usable service than a few getting eye - wateringly fast speeds.
You can buy a really nice sporty Italian car if you want, but it will cost you. My motoring ambitions are more modest, and it costs me less as a result. Ditto broadband.
Can someone please tell me exactly why I might want 1Gbps download speeds?
I currently have >30Mbps via FTTC and it is more than fast enough for my needs. I don't want my TV provided via the internet; neither do I want to play games. Given that a faster service would involve greater cost (why wouldn't it?) I simply cannot see the general population rushing to fork out for very fast broadband once they realise the financial penalties involved.
For the avoidance of doubt "I" actually means "we" because there are two of us; even if there were offspring in the house I don't think I would be greatly motivated to hand over much more money so that the kiddywinkies could do their own thing at the same time.
Clearly I accept that ADSL speeds are not good enough, but I honestly cannot see the real need for some of the speeds being suggested; note the use of the word "need" rather than "want".
Broadband speed has become something of an obsession, and an unhealthy one at that. It is the modern equivalent of penis envy... at least of the "size matters" variety.
They can have some subset of the data, but I stay in charge of what that is, thank you.
The next burst of data sent by your appliance(s) will include that fact that the software has been tampered with, and this will be repeated at intervals.
It will be a specific offence to tamper with or alter in any way the software embedded in domestic equipment. You don't imagine that the VW "crisis" will be allowed to go to waste, do you?
See Rahm's Rule
myhandler wrote: Clearly it means all testing must be done by independent bodies. The issue is can the consumer ever trust anything they are told about how a product performs.
I suppose it might work, but this route hasn't been as effective in the electronics industry as one would wish. Some computer power supply units - all CE marked - have been found to generate an awful lot of RF "hash" to the detriment of nearby receiver equipment. On closer investigation it has been found that although the internal PC boards have marked places for filtering components the places themselves are empty, meaning that the manufacturer - having got the PSU passed certification - cut corners and wilfully omitted the parts in question, just to save a few pence. (Other currencies may apply) This has led to the "CE" mark meaning "China Export" in some circles. How much this may actually be true and how much is myth is not for me to say.
So can the consumer ever trust anything they are told about how a product performs? More importantly can the Regulators?
Much better to assume that CE means Caveat Emptor; does the the US have a corresponding "label"?
"It is however doubtful that Transatlantic relationships would allow an USA government agency to bankrupt the pride of Germany..."
It doesn't seem to have troubled them when BP had a mishap and spilt oil in the Gulf of Mexico, funnily enough when employing US Contractors. All sorts of highly suspect claims for compensation have been allowed along with legitimate ones causing something of a major dent in BP's finances.
At least the Germans have a word for it... schadenfreude for those who didn't think quickly enough.
...has man managed to survive and develop without all this guff? The same way as he can continue to do.
At the frequencies and powers Ofcom is discussing, we are looking at long range, low bandwidth applications: using wirelessly connected sensors for “smart” farming, where fertiliser and water are automatically distributed across a farm to increase efficiency; <snip>
Brilliant; a means of determining the need for water and fertiliser that necessitate every bit of arable land to be permanently plumbed. Yes; some crops do need irrigation (leafy ones, ISTR) but farmers and growers tow the necessary machinery to site and tow it away again when they have finished.
Smart farming would see sensors sown into fields with grain to measure moisture at different depths below ground, or put into grain silos to monitor for temperature.
Similar comment applies. "Smart farming" will see farmers not spending a penny more than they have to on gimmicky toys. A smart farmer monitors his land and its crops / stock himself and reacts accordingly.
OTOH sensors that could detect and send out an alert when gates have been opened would almost certainly be of benefit to try to contain and hopefully stop the problem of sheep and cattle rustling, but doing that in a way that does not betray the system's presence to the determined snooper might not be easy; any such system would be frustrated by simply cutting the fence, so perhaps it isn't such a good idea after all.
"All this could be done and would have no effect on operational Policing. This would more than likely return monies back to front line."
It would return nothing until all the costs associated with setting it up had been amortised; of course any additional non - personnel related costs would have to be covered as well.
From where, exactly, do cost savings come? Unless existing HR (and other) departments are grossly overstaffed (which may or may not be the case) any new super - system will need the same number of people operating it, less perhaps a few managers.
In addition although basic HR functions may be common to all services the different services do have different things to record about their employees, so either any individual record would have a load of blank fields not relevant to the function or different services would have completely different sections of an overall software package, which would mean a potentially underused system.
The plan to reduce the number of Fire Control Centres went horribly wrong at tremendous expense, and the amalgamation of Police Forces in Scotland has not been without its problems. Reducing the number of Police Control Rooms is not without its risks (OK that isn't a back office function) as local knowledge vanishes; I have tried to report a couple of minor problems to my local force and their mapping system was unable to even vaguely identify locations by road number.
"More IT" is not always by definition an improvement.
... elected politicians fall into the trap of believing that a win at the ballot box confers on them knowledge, understanding, and wisdom on each and every subject under the sun? In the case of IT there is more than enough evidence that grandiose plans for big systems always end in tears and a humungous bill for the taxpayer... along with a system that doesn't do what it was specified to do.
Apart from anything else what each of the blue - light services needs to do with its IT systems is not the same as the others, whatever Mike Penning may think; "It simply doesn’t make sense for emergency services to have different premises, different back offices and different IT systems when their work is so closely related and they often share the same boundaries." Since when did the fire or ambulance services need custody suites and rooms for recorded interviews to evidential standards; other contradictions also apply.
Of course he has "previous", being the name most closely associated with the idea of providing blue - light communications on 5G cellular systems.
That thudding noise in the background is people who know this is a bad idea banging their heads on their desks; mine would be among them were it not for being retired. As a taxpayer it still hurts.
I am a bit suspicious about the reported radio costings, because it can all hinge on whether the radios - sorry "terminals" in TetraSpeak - are bought outright or leased from an MSP (and no, I don't mean a parliamentarian from north of the border*) and if bought when the purchase actually took place. On top of terminal costs there are also access charges for them to work on the Airwave system, and it may be that some forces included that in the figures and some did not; it would all hinge on the precise wording of the questions they were asked and possibly on the interpretation of the answers. There is not much competition in the "terminal" market, with two (three if Nokia are still in the game) providers of portable equipment and three for vehicle equipment. I don't think Nokia were ever in the "vehicle" market so that company isn't one of the three.
Edit, having just spotted a comment that has just arrived: "more powerful radios" doesn't apply - handset equipment is by definition limited to 1 Watt (IIRC) and vehicle equipment to 3 Watts.
*That would be another can of worms entirely, of course.
"Traffic lights: the car can 'see' the lights, it doesn't just detect other cars. If it sees red it stops."
Perhaps; firstly how far away does it stop, and secondly where does it look for the lights? To know how far away the lights are the vehicle really needs to be carrying data onboard that can be compared with knowledge of its own actual location. The "position" of traffic lights varies with the distance from them, and even when "at the line" the position of the lights is not necesarily defined. And how does it detect a green left filter when there are other red lights showing? IMHO for there to be any prospect of such a system working then every junction would need to have some sort of real time interaction with every vehicle in the vicinity, and every vehicle would have to know where to look for traffic lights both in location and "space". Furthermore temporary lights tend to be in a very different position w.r.t. the traffic they are there to control.
"How can a car overtaking you from the right look like a car going around a roundabout"
Because at some point its relationship with the car it is overtaking is going to look to the various sensors as though it is approaching the "side" of the vehicle it is overtaking. IMO the potential for the on - board electronics of one or other or both of the vehicles to become confused is simply too great. The fact that the "entry angle" to roundabouts is not a constant won't help.
Simon wrote: "Predicting how mischievous/evil/stupid people can be is harder."
True, and yet the human eye / brain combination is able to deal with quite a high level of any or all of them, subject to sufficient driving experience. This perhaps raises the further question "would the availability of autonomous cars render driving lessons and a test irrelevant?" And of course driving an autonomous vehicle would reduce the extent of experience in hazard recognition that anyone could hope to gain.
All this raises another point: by what percentage would the existing level of fatalities and serious injuries be reduced? Have those developing the technology made any predictions, or set any targets? Reduction to zero might be nice but at the moment it could only ever be an ambition for, er, marketing purposes. Oh dear...
Wilful interference aside I simply don't see the concept of autonomous cars working, at least not without a great deal of "upgrade" to road systems. Given there could not be a "big bang" changeover between conventional and autonomous vehicles, there would be a long period (possibly infinitely long) where the two had to coexist. Then think of traffic lights; if my autonomous car is approaching lights at red and there is a stationary car ahead of me then my car will stop. (I hope!) If, however, there is no car ahead of me how will it know (a) that there are traffic lights there, and (b) that they are on red; put simply it won't unless there is data being permanently fed to the vehicle about what is ahead; "lights ahead" _could_ be incorporated into an in - vehicle mapping system + GPS, but the state of the lights won't be. Note that we cannot dispense with the lights because of legacy, i.e. non - autonomous vehicles on the road. Of course the "lights ahead" information has to include some sort of algorithm to deal with the lights being out of action.
Now we come to a roundabout; I must give way to traffic approaching from my right, so my car has to have some means of detecting such traffic in the "relevant" place to know it must wait. Fine; now I am driving (or my car is!) in lane 2 of a motorway, and it detects a vehicle coming up to overtake me in lane 3; how does it know I am not somewhere in a roundabout and do something which might be correct at a roundabout but which would be downright silly on a motorway.
Or does it suddenly throw up its virtual hands, announce "does not compute captain" and cede control to me with zero warning. Now get out of that big boy...
Some of the potential problems might well be soluble with data fed more or less continuously to my car from roadside systems, but the same datastream has to go to other vehicles to which any given bit of data may be not just irrelevant but actively incorrect.
At the centre of all this will be a big in - car display which is less likely to read "Don't Panic" in big friendly letters than it is to read "Prepare To Meet Thy Doom". If you're very lucky you might just be able to absorb the true horror of the situation before it's lights out.
Some of the above may sound a bit facetious, but I invite you to think about it. It is meant in all seriousness.
Ok I'm retired so such knowledge that I acquired whilst gainfully employed may be rather out of date, but not by _that_ much.
As things stand my 'phone line has 50 volts DC (nominal) on it when my 'phone is On Hook. The exchange knows when I pick the handset up by the loop current that flows as a result, reducing the PD at my instrument. If I have to feed some voltage _back_ the local BB equipment how is the exchange going to know that my 'phone is On or Off Hook?
Also as things stand one thing that will _still_ work if the power goes off - rare, yes, but not wholly unknown - is my fixed line telephone; that is why purchasers of DECT 'phones are advised to have an ordinary instrument available "just in case". If instead of my 'phone supplier (OK I'll own up to it being BT) feeding a supply to me I have to feed a supply back to _it_ how is my phone going to work if the power goes off? In fact I cannot see how my 'phone is going to work at all unless the entire system is redesigned.
And if power is being fed by "everybody" aren't all the lines going to be more or less in parallel, give or take the odd diode, or is there going to be a DC - DC converter on each and every line to provide isolation?
Grumble grumble... </Meldrew Mode)
Although there have been some persuasive comments in support of the "rule of law" come what may, I am currently of the view that justice of a sort _has_ been done. Those who stray on to the battlefield simply have to take their chances.
Another way of looking at the "termination with extreme prejudice" is as follows: what if the same two people had been killed either by action on the part of the Syrian government (which we don't like) or by Kurdish forces whose aims are more akin to our own? Would we expect our government to protest to whichever was responsible that two innocent British lives had been lost? I certainly wouldn't. The two concerned had taken up arms to fight for a cause; the fact that we may regard that cause as thoroughly appalling is almost neither here nor there. Given that their cause sees nothing wrong in beheading anyone who is not to their taste I cannot shed any tears about their demise.
I worry about saying this but our strict adherence to legal process - in particular to the HRA - could well be our collective downfall; before anyone tells me I am fully concious of the fact that saying that opens up a Pandora's Box of potentially unimaginable horrors. Which is the least worst option?
And in any case "shit happens".
I am struggling to work out exactly why it is in any way "irrational".
"However, the industry, much like the aviation sector which would also benefit from computer-controlled pilots..."
At the moment a lot of flight is indeed computer controlled, but at the same time the pilot is unambiguously responsible for the safety of the aircraft and its contents and is able to override the automated systems if circumstances demand it. Unlike land - based vehicle drivers pilots generally have a "bubble" around them which gives them a bit of thinking and manoevering space, a luxury not always available to cars and their drivers.
"...sensor can detect lane line markings..." yeah right, if the markings are actually there in the first place; quite a lot near Chez Commswonk are barely visible due to normal wear and tear. Oh and one or two roundabouts have mysterious markings - understandable to the human eye and brain - that _cross_ the line of travel to move vehicles into the most appropriate place for where they are going. Well that's the intention anyway, but I'm far from certain that any computer will be able to make sense of it.
Oh and lane markings often vanish after a light fall of snow or even after rain under overhead lights.
Another solution in search of a problem.
Like other contributors I find the idea of an IoT horrifying; like others I want no part of it. But just wait...
"To register your <appliance of choice> guarantee it must be connected to the Internet. Please check why we cannot connect with your appliance and click Try Again to continue." (I cannot even download new software for my printer without it being connected to my computer and t'web.)
Followed later by:
"We are unable to detect your <appliance>. For your safety its power supply has been switched off; to restore normal operation please ensure that its connection to the Internet is working then click Reset."
And (when you know you are going for a decent curry, but your fridge doesn't) "Unexpected item in the Icebox Area"
Does anyone really imagine that ignoring new features will be allowed once these things hit the market?
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