Posts by Andrew Cannon

Greenpeace: UK gov trying to strangle wind power

You need a mix, idiot!

Okay, so Greenpeace have seen the word "nuclear" and are getting in a tizz about it? What all the greenies seem to forget is that wind power, even if it is offshore, only operates _at best_ at a load factor of 30-40%. In other words, if you shut down Drax (which I think produces 4000MW) with 4000MW of wind power generation (or over 1000 wind turbines spaced about 200m apart for good power generation, how big will that be???) you will, on average, produce only a maximum of 1600MW.

Where is the remaining 2400MW going to come from? More wind turbines? Hydro? Geothermal?

Nah, it'll be gas. Easy to build these gas fired stations. Just don't mention the C word and you'll be fine.

Nuclear stations, on the other hand, will be designed for a 60 year life (4 times the life of a wind turbine), will operate at better than 90% load and won't produce CO2.

Renewables have their place, but so does nuclear and fossil fuel. You can't exclude any from the mix if you want to save the planet.

Windows Vista has been battered, says Wall Street fan

Re: AC

MS got so big by using clever license agreements with OEMs (you can only sell OUR software or we won't do business with you) and being very very sharp when it came to eliminating the competition (legally or not).

The problem is, it is now too big. The corporate inertia is such that they couldn't change direction if they wanted. Yes, as some posters have said above, they should introduce a new OS for Windows 7 (or 8), 64-bit only, limited backwards compatability, adherence to standards (I wish) etc, but it won't happen, precisely because they are so big. Too many people would just not buy the software because it wouldn't work in their environment and would cost too much to upgrade all of their applications/hardware to support the new OS. It would be corporate suicide for MS.

MS are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they introduce something completely radical (see above) then it won't sell because of the cost of upgrading to support the new OS is prohibitive.

I have to say though, IMHO, the best OS is the one that works best for you. For me, I have XP, Vista (x64) and Fedora 9 (x64) ar home, and I rarely use the Vista install. Most of my computing is done under Fedora and most of my gaming is done under XP. Vista (despite costing me £60) is rarely used.

Andy

Microsoft to ODF, PDF - let's get it on together

Only ODF v1.1

How typical of MS to support an unreleased standard. V1.1 was never released. OO.o is moving to support ODF v1.2 with the release of v3. Why doesn't MS support that instead?

Andy

Fedora 9 - an OS that even the Linux challenged can love

BKB and others

I've been using Fedora9 for a while now (yes, I'm one of the thousands of beta testers) and I've had only one problem, Network Manager. After disabling it and modifying the init directory (something that any new user can do fairly safely) the system has worked flawlessly.

Firefox 3 is amazingly good. I've got it installed on Fedora and now Windows and it is my main browser (I don't use FF2 now).

KDE has surpassed GNOME in useability and features. And I'm finding F9 to be the best Linux distro I've ever used.

Oh, I tried Ubuntu, but didn't particularly like it. But that's one of the benefits of Linux. You don't get a vendor forcing you to have a 'one size fits all' OS.

Andy

Public don't want internet filters, MS tells MPs

MS speaks, so the MPs will listen

Otherwise the money will dry up.

Andy

Thumbs up because MS is actually speaking sense for a change...

Dial-a-phone 4u?

I got my Wii from Dial-a-Phone

And a damn fine piece of kit it is too. I can't see them offering deals like that in the future. I hate Phones4U. Last time we went in there they were offering to pay the last 6 months of my wifes O2 contract just to try and get a contract sale.

All we wanted was a cheap pay as you go phone...

Madness (or desparation, you choose).

Andy

Ofgem, MoD attack pricey terror-friendly windmills

Subsidy for cleanup? Ask the government where that went...

In the great cash grab that successive governments seem to like, the decommissioning fund that had been set aside by the nuclear operators was "donated" to the treasury and conveniently lost (sound familiar?). The cash was there, but it went towards paying for some chavs dole/booze money.

Oh, as for the link to the F4 test, how many links would you like?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=SUNA,SUNA:2006-05,SUNA:en&q=phantom+nuclear+reactor+crash

Nokia shutters German handset factory

China

China manufactures 50% of the worlds consumer goods and 90% of the world's toys.

Draw your own conclusions.

Forget learning French or German at school, you might as well learn Mandarin (or whatever dialect the Chinese actually speak). We'll all be speaking it in 30 years time when China rules the world.

Andy

UK nuke-power plans leak early

Wind? It's a load of hot air!

Okay, so I work in the nuclear industry (Me? Biased? Never!) but I can appreciate the use of renewable energy and having a balanced energy mix. However, even the most die hard renewables supporter must agree that the renewable energy sources we have are "low density" energy sources.

For example, I think the biggest wind turbines are rated at 5MW. So, to replace a power station of the size of Sizewell B (1100MW) requires 220 of these turbines. Assuming that each turbine requires a "footprint" of 100m2 to me most efficient, that equates to a wind farm the size of a small town. Also, wind turbines are only 30% efficient anyway (the wind is not a constant supply), so you have a supply problem that needs to be plugged by something.

Taking Sizewell as the example, the station operates at 100% power for 17 months in an 18 month fuel cycle. Even taking the occasional outage into account (the safety systems are very sensitive to the slightest fluctuation in plant operating parameters) it is reckoned that Sizewell will have a load average of over 90% by the end of it's operating life.

As to the expense of the waste, well, in the great finance grab of the 80's and 90's the government, in it's wisdom, decided that the cash that had been put aside by the Nuclear operators for decommissioning was really revenue to be used by the Treasury, hence the problems about funding the NDA at the moment.

I don't live anywhere near a nuclear plant (I work in Cheshire), but wouldn't have any problems living in, say Leiston (near Sizewell) or near the Sellafield site.

Oh, by the way, new nuclear builds are engineered to have a public and operator radiation dose of less than the recognised background radiation dose rate for the public (which is about 2.5microSieverts per hour). In fact, if airline cabin crew were subject to the same dose limits as workers in the nuclear industry, most of them would be grounded in 6 months for exceeding their dose limits!

Just some thoughts. Feel free to comment... :)

Restored Vulcan takes to the skies

Vulcan website been hijacked?

I went to the Vulcan website earlier today and, although slow, was quite interesting. Now I go there http://www.tvoc.co.uk and I get Reeds Rains Estate Agents! WTF???

Microsoft spins standards defeat into victory

And we're surprised by MS's activities?

MS has tried to do what it always does, stronarm the body that could irrevocably harm it's biggest cash cow after Windows.

The fact that they haven't yet got an ISO standard for an Office format will not worry them, until the February vote. If that goes against them, then we can expect to see lots of negative PR about standards bodies, rival formats and rival programs.

Why? Well, if MS have to impliment an ISO standard that they haven't got control of, there is no "vendor lock in". No reason to use MS Office and every reason to save lots and lots of money (even if you use Star Office, you're saving 75-90% of your Office package outlay). Governments have mandated that their software should use ISO standards (note, not Open Standards, that's different), so why should the Office software be any different?

Compact Disc: 25 years old today

Loss of quality compared to LPs

What no-one seems to remember is that you lose the lower and higher end of the audio spectrum with a CD. Yes, you don't get the hiss and scratch, but when you compare a good quality LP to a CD, you'll notice the depth of sound is much better with the LP.