Posts by Scott Broukell 968 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Sep 2007
. . . the teddy bears' fur harbors some nasty bacteria that will give little Tommy a bad tummy, or worse! Now I need a bug-monitor for the sterility of the teddy, where is this going to end!
Or - have your kidz in a test tube/incubator and put them into a sealed bubble from birth, get fone appz and rest easy so you can fix your eyes to the smart TV for all that must-have advertainment and political messaging. Welcome to the 'modern' way.
Then you may also like to search out: The Institute for Transacoustic Research / The (Vienna) Vegetable Orchestra / Gomme Handschuhe Doodlesack(?). But I can't quite remember exactly who performed using the sounds from distressed computers in suitcases as they were savagely chopped and hacked with axes, anybody?
Holger Czukay, co-founder of Can, studied under Karlheinz Stockhausen, who, if my memory serves me well, once wrote a passage for piano wherein the pianist was required to use his/her buttocks.
Add to that the fact that if you do travel some 900 miles for work and you come from the 'wrong' region/ethnic group, you can come up against some pretty nasty discrimination that can leave you further out of pocket and generally make life rather difficult all round. Such matters aren't, of course, the sole preserve of China and it's economics.
@Tim Worstal
Not all but very many workers in China continue to be dawn to the cities for work because of economic allure, but the majority of those leave children, wives/husbands behind, sometimes many hundreds of miles away. Whilst the wages appear reasonable, when compared to subsistence farming, leaving the kids with grand parents who struggle with the burden, and not seeing them for 6-months at a time, is not an easy thing to bear. If you are young and single it's fine, but what sort of housing could you expect if starting a young family in the city - have you seen what's happened to property prices in big urban/city areas over the past 10-15 years.
@ Credas / @ Bloodbeastterror
Honestly peeps I was unaware that Apple "trumpet [their] wonderful ethical policies". If they make such a 'thing' about it then yes, I agree, they should be able to publicly put that to the test. (the only Apple (Macintosh) products that I own are over 30 years old and still work as intended).
I am just reasonably sure that almost every imported product is made at the expense of workers conditions and pay. Therefore I consume as little 'new' product as possible, make what I do have last as long as possible, recycle as much as possible and look for pre-owned alternatives to the latest shiny-shiny if indeed I really 'must' replace something and have a very, very, stern talk with myself about the merits of opening my wallet in any case. So I admit I am probably not representative of the general all-consuming populace, sadly.
T'was ever thus. I would have paid more attention to this if the Beeb had taken a swipe at working conditions for a plethora of tech/gadget manufacturers. Perhaps they could have approached it from the 'Demand' and 'Desire' angle and placed more emphasis on the habits / actions of consumers in the West. The majority of what we import / consume is made under pretty awful conditions for the workers at the sharp end, be it clothing, foot wear or technology. I realize that Apple apparently make something of an ethical approach to workers conditions etc. Well, good luck with that, it isn't going to be easy. Exploitation goes all the way down the slippery slope of the supply chain. If you happen to be at the bottom of that chain you are hit hardest because you have nowhere to move.
Since the 1950's I have been deliberately and harshly mislead by illustrated encyclopedias, comic books and all manner of other literature, as to the most common, 'proper', and frequently used technique of landing a space ship on earth by means of retro-rockets and a multi-legged arrangement, sporting up-turned dished feet. As and aside, if it hadn't been for the dear old Hawker Siddeley Harrier jump jet I might have given up all together! So, having had to endure many decades of watching lumps of metal plunge earthwards onto barren ground or into the ocean, I find that, personally, I have a lot invested in seeing this contraption 'do it's thing'. Good luck to all involved.
If, as has been postulated, there are two streams of gravitational time, each traveling in opposite directions, would it not therefore be reasonable to suggest that where they meet, or collide, is the moment of present, the now. Which then might infer that the present is stationary, unmoving, as the two streams cancel each other out at the time-event horizon, or present moment. Might we be able to only observe, or at least sense, the past, as the results of that collision moving backwards (from our standpoint), as if we were moving forwards, but only because we are only able to look backwards and document what has just happened. Walking backwards for Xmas as it were. If we are not able to look in the other direction might that explain why we cannot observe, or accurately predict, the future. By contrast, an observer in the opposing stream of time would be looking backwards (from our standpoint), at a past that is, simultaneously, the future of his/her opposing observer.
But we can predict the future, because prediction is not the same as recording or documenting a happening. I can say that in approximately six days time a machine will be turned on that will appear to chaotically juggle 49 spheres, each with a different numeral written on them, in space-time and then randomly select only six spheres as lucky, winning, numbers in a lottery. But I cannot, however, and to my continued immense frustration, accurately predict which six numbers are going to be drawn in six days time - at that moment of 'now' when two streams of opposing time collide in such a way as to determine the outcome of that lottery. When a seemingly chaotic system reveals a static, ordered, outcome and one which can only be observed looking back upon it. But, in all probability, for a few lottery participants at least, that moment of 'now' will change their futures, or at least the probable predictability of their futures, as determined by the amount of cash they each have available.
So we get the sense of traveling 'forward' in time, but are, in fact, stationary, only able to observe moments 'past', which implies a 'forward' momentum and gives us the impression of travel. A bit like that peculiar sense one gets when sitting on a train known to be at rest, at a platform of the station, when suddenly the train on the next track starts moving and for a brief moment the laws of space-time seem to have been broken and one starts, at the very least, to worry about the implications that Waterloo station and indeed the rest of London, the UK and the entire known universe, are all heading towards the West Country in time for tea.
I need a little lie down now, but I am happy to contemplate upon the probability that my opposite, babbling, commentard of the future El Reg, coming towards me at this very moment, can say something to the effect of: “T, that I doing, the get, shirt”.
Dear Sir, I have been avidly watching this television series for some years in the hope that it would one day focus on the subject matter described in the title. After all I very much welcome progressive program makers dealing with all manner of contemporaneous human activity. However, I am sad to say that watching groups of people bobbing about in boats entrapping fish is not at all what I was anticipating. Therefore I find myself in agreement with those wishing to ban such abundantly erronious and frankly misleading material(s) being transmitted by means of the interwebs.
A growing number of road users have a greater sense of entitlement and a diminished sense of consideration for other road users - something it may be possible to address in driver training. A few hours training on a bicycle/scooter might go some way towards trainees understanding the vulnerabilities faced by some other road user groups. It doesn't really matter where you are driving, two things should always be foremost in your mind, speed and distance - along with the condition of the road surface and the state of the vehicle you are driving. Other than those points, it has to be said that competent drivers need to comprehensively learn how to use the controls (see very first posting - Stephen Tompsett). But, bad habits can be picked up along the way, so it's perhaps not a bad thing to have follow-up tests. I would be happy to have my own errors pointed out to me by a trained instructor. Perhaps the hardest part of driving for the younger generation these days are the elements of distraction provided by mobile devices and yobbish, thoughtless passengers.
@PCS - Have you tried the large clear plastic drinks bottle, stripped of it's label(s), at least one third full of water and left, at a jaunty angle, on the lawn / patio (whatever). Apparently the sight of a motionless body in this form is enough to unsettle the majority of tom cats who come across it.
It is thought that, in the UK alone, as many as 2.5m people may have starved to death over the past fortnight due to the global I.O.T. system malfunction that has left people unable to access their locked-down fridges and larders. On top of this I.O.T. devices have been unable to contact supermarkets via automated ordering systems and some people have met their deaths whilst rashly venturing outside to find edible food stuffs. As their vehicles cannot self-navigate properly these people have had to take drastic action and try to walk to the corner store only to have been run down by errant self-driving vehicles which have been circulating in and around urban areas and out-of-town hyper-markets, desperately trying to synchronize their on-board auto-shopping systems data with the failing I.O.T. system. In some horrific cases the occupants of these errant vehicles have themselves been found to be deceased.
The reason behind this latest I.O.T outage is blamed on the increasing space radiation that has struck the Earth in the past year, and not, as was at first thought, by yet another update patch being applied hastily, late on a Friday evening, by a discouraged system-admin. The increased levels of nasty space radiation and the reduced strength of the suns magneto-sphere has led to satellites and power grid systems being taken down or damaged. This has had an unforeseen and negative affect upon global I.O.T. Systems.
In other news, shares in long-life milk, egg powder, dry biscuit and mint-cake products have shot up.
It's just nervous about being on camera, happens to the best of us. I mean what's it all about, you spend billions of years treading the same path around this giant planet without very much to write home about and then all of a sudden up pops some shinny little box-of-tricks out of nowhere and starts filming you and all that.
I was once asked onto an interview panel and posed the question "Would you consider getting them out for the lads?" to a particularly pretty and well-endowed young woman interviewee. A split second later I realised that, more accurately, what a colleague had said minutes before the interview was such questioning was "Taboo" and not "To do" as I had interpreted it. I wasn't invited onto many more interview panels after that.
Or just a bi-directional universe. One which is massively small, no less. We search so intently, in either direction - drilling down into the sub-atomic quantum zone whilst also starring out at the big (relatively), stuff beyond. In either direction we see, or at least, interpret, some pretty awesome things, material and strangeness. Perhaps one day we will see the connection and understand the origins of it all. But just what does happen to both time and matter that goes beyond the event horizon of a black-hole? I find it intriguing to think that it may behave in a manner not unlike our present understanding of the quantum state of time and matter. Alternatively, and I'm no astrophysicist (you may be able to tell), maybe time/matter/the universe just stops within a black-hole, a bit like a 3D model of a rabbit warren, where some tunnels just come to a dead end - but those 'dead ends' still have their uses - everything has a purpose. (I'm tired now - nurse!)
The weather is very unsettled, undergoing some sort of not-so-well understood change at the moment, it rains a lot, violently at times, and is known to be a bit nippy in just the right places for occupation. This meteorological trend is thought to be gathering pace. There would appear to be significant quantities of a variety of pollutants which may contribute towards proportionate negative outcomes with regard to plant cultivation and animal ingestion thereof. Desertification has been expanding for some time in many areas once considered prime for possible habitation where sustained human existence would very probably come up against major obstruction going-forward. It would seem that over many years some sort of discarded/waste material has built up in the seas and on land, to such an extent that it too threatens the sustainability of both plant and animal existence globally. So, on the whole, it should feel just like home (yeah!).
The bad news is; we haven't got a cat in hells chance of getting there in time before the devastating results of all of the above take hold here on Earth. But hey!, you did ask us to go look and we would like to thank you for the funding whilst it lasted.
So this fella used to work in a wheel barrow factory and would often leave of an evening pushing a brand new wheel barrow with a sack draped over it. The chaps on the gate would lift up the sacking and look underneath, whereupon, seeing there wasn't anything in it, they would wave him through the factory gates with a smile.
Thank you for flying with O'Rion Space Travel. Passengers who remembered to book and pay for the 'Landing Supplement' can now make their way to the Landing Podules at the rear of the craft. Anyone wishing to pay the supplement now will have to pay an additional supplemental administration charge of 2m Credits. All other passengers have the option of staying on board or enjoying a short break on a nearby asteroid. Either of these options requires payment in full of an additional supplemental administration charge to cover extra accommodation cost etc. Thank you for flying with ......
(Plus ca change)
@Dave 126 - Well, if you're sure, but I thought about the crushing and or heat to release the bonding, I guess once crushed, magnets could separate the glass from the metals and sieving / vibration might then release any lighter plastics due to the differing mass. But am not aware of any current process specifically designed for recycling such glass-encapsulated tech devices. There would seem, therefore, to be a lot of work in achieving the materials separation and that's where I see a potential problem, but I guess the costs would come down once this construction mode becomes more widely adopted.
Just wondering how such a construction method fits with recycling/safe disposal regulations currently in force, or waived (apologetically too), around the world today? Oh yes, I forgot, we just send it all to <insert third-world country name> and let the poor sods smash it all up with bare hands and a hammer whilst breathing in the toxic dust, silly me.
So it's like right now we're soo lucky to have like a choice between living in like harmony with the planet or like living in harmony with our shareholders. Short term gain versus like long term aim, sort'va thing. It's, like, kinda wow, I never really realized that was like a thing until now. And, like, because there's soo much less of everything right now we really should, like, go with the shareholder thing because it's all gonna be messed up anyway so let's, like, make the profits whilst we can, sort'va thing. I get it now, I really, really, do, like wow!
@Primus Secundus Tertius - I'm sure they do indeed have other things to do with their lives, but if you use a device like a mobile/computer for on-line purchases or banking, or just about anything!, you need to be aware that: A) You leave behind a trail of digital information each time, and B) That there are folk out there with the means to access it and who will then wreak havoc with the time you would otherwise be spending doing those other things. The potential risks are too great, we can all fall foul at times, I am just saying we should all treat it all with a lot of caution - 'great servant, terrible master' and all that.
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