Posts by James Pickett 1321 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2007
My experience with 'homeplug' devices in three installations is that they are all flaky and curiously sensitive to location. One only works on a particular socket in an office with half a dozen outlets all on the same wiring loop, and another only works in certain parts of a house, thus defeating the object, as it was to replace a wireless system that only worked.. etc.
Perhaps speed is not the issue that needs to be addressed.
"I can still hear the difference between CD's and vinyl"
So can I - the vinyl ones have the clicky, scratchy background noise and need constant cleaning to stop them getting worse.
Bear in mind that virtually all recordings are now made digitally, even when they are later transferred to vinyl. I'm not really sure why transferring the code to CD should spoil it...
"Ron Oxburgh.. did not reassess the science, and now says it was never in his remit. "
So why was his team called the 'Scientific Assessment Panel', I wonder?
According to the UAE's website, Oxburgh's panel was set up 'to examine important elements of the published science', but since they signally failed to comment on it, one can only assume that when they looked, it wasn't actually there...
“a company that prides itself on harnessing the best in new thinking and funneling ideas into innovative products”
I think you mean “spotting the best in new thinking and acquiring the company responsible”. You’d think by now they’d be able to handle acquisitions better, though - they’ve had enough practice!
@Marcus Dubious (and his critics)
We have red squirrels here on the Isle of Wight, and a research project a few years ago was having difficulty making ends meet. Then someone found a Global Warming (as it was then called) angle and redefined the project’s aims, and funding wasn’t a problem after that...
BTW, the Arctic is melting right now because it's summer there. This is nicely balanced by Winter in the South - until half-time, when they change ends.
“Since when was this an AGW story?”
Fair point, but warmists are sensitive souls and they don’t like any suggestions that evidence they had previously considered rightfully theirs might have an unrelated cause. Ice melts because of AGW, not volcanoes, hotspots, cyclical warm periods or, er, summer...
"I want to USE my computer"
I think that's why some of us consider time spent on Linux worthwhile. It certainly beats time spent chasing bugs and file-space on Windows, not to mention re-installing when it's got so slow you don't know whether it's still loading or has just seized up (and then discovering that you saved the address book but not the emails).
"GCSE science subjects are: science; additional science; additional applied science; biology; chemistry and physics"
Says it all, really! If someone told me they had a GCSE in science, I would ask, "which one?".
Still, I suppose if you're halfway good at the sciences, you can get 6 GCSE's for it!
The standard of questioning above reminds me of Peter Ustinov's exam experience . When asked to name a Russian composer, he put Rimsky-Korsakov, but was marked down, as the correct answer was Tchaikovsky...
"The possibility that they might be wrong does not seem to have crossed their minds in 13 years"
The amusing thing is that it still doesn't, now that some common sense is prevailing!
WRT the CRB system, I would remind anyone listening that it is still run by Crapita, possibly the most inept consultancy firm on the planet, who have thus far wrongly identified several thousand applicants as criminals, ruining their jobs/prospects/lives for ever (who's going to believe that your record has suddenly become clean?) and putting even more people off working with children because of the NL 'guilty until proven innocent' culture arising.
One effect is that there are now almost no male teachers in the primary school system.
Scrap all of it - we managed before!
And what teeth has the Information Commissioner got? Even if he could impose huge fines, there wouldn't be much point, as it's all public money. The only thing that will concentrate minds is some senior heads on sticks, IMO.
I also suspect that the problem is far worse than stated. My partner's childhood medical records have mysteriously gone AWOL, but we haven't told the ICO about it, because it will just make more work, and nothing will happen...
“could you really give a monkeys when you're listening to Jeremy Vine in the kitchen preparing lunch”
I wouldn’t listen to Jeremy Vine if you paid me, but I do have decent radio in my kitchen, fed through a nice little 2.1 system to improve the bass and separation, and it sounds fine on FM. My objection to DAB isn’t that I mind people with cloth ears having one, but I mind very much being told that I have to have one too, and that ultimately I won’t be able to use the 7 or 8 FM radios currently dotted around my house and vehicles.
We needed a new portable recently, and I found a decent tranny with FM and LW, running off D-cells (which will probably last a year) for £10.
What Thorfkin said. I would add that I’ve been wrestling recently with a friend’s Blu-ray version of Avatar, which is so heavily DRM’d (by Fox, natch) that it won’t work in a number of players, instead putting up a message that the player needs a software update. All sorts of excuses have been made, including the suggestion that the player and TV have to match (!), but since my chum has both items made by Pioneer, this doesn’t seem to hold water. As this film is allegedly the most pirated of all time, one wonders what it will take for the message that DRM doesn’t work to penetrate the bony heads of those sweaty media execs...
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