Posts by BristolBachelor

Re: NFC

ISTR that the reason that Amazon don't tend to ask for the CVC is because the rules say that they must use the CVC instantly, and may not store in on their systems. Amazon only charge the card when they ship, and therefore cannot use the CVC on the order.

What I don't know is where other sellers stand on the consumer credit act, which AFAIK does not allow them to charge credit for something until you have it (but e.g. booking a holiday is not the same because you have actually paid for the booking, not the actual going).

I suppose that sites that store your credit card to re-use later (e.g. iTunes) must obviously use the numbers sans CVC for the later transactions.

Re: Tap Water.

In Madrid, the tap water is generally excellent (although a little pricy). In fact up in the mountains, you can drink the well water too, passes all the European tests without even boiling it first, although I wouldn't recommend that unless you get the tests repeated every week; you never know when things might change.

Elsewhere things may be different, and some zones & islands use desalinated water and it's not quite as nice to drink.

Re: Thank you, FAA...

The thing is that the rules allow things to fail in aircraft. The design of the systems says that the failure must be contained, there must be redundancy in the case of critical items (think flight control computer), and that the failure must not proagate to the redundant systems (and often requires it to not propagate to other sub-systems. There are often failures that might even be traced to a single component, but even then the root cause of that component failure is never known. As long as the failure is graceful (contained with no side-effects) then OK. Change the LRU (Line Replaceable Unit) and the aircraft goes back in service.

In this case, the solution seems to be to ensure that the failure in one cell is much less likely to propagate to another cell. What's more, the new enclosure is supposed to contain any failure to within the battery. In my book that's OK.

The problem is that we really just don't know. ISTR it was a Dutch scientist a while ago who worked out that CO2 in the atmosphere allows the Earth to hold on to heat energy from the sun. It was other people who said that there was a massive positive feedback mechanism, and quoted all sorts of things that would cause temperature to spiral to Venus like levels and perhaps lead would melt on the surface on the planet, like at Venus.

However, people have done scientific studies on the individual statements of how the positive feedback works, and found that not all of them were positive. The problem is that we really have no idea. If the Earth has had a climate with global temperatures with 1°C for 10,000 years, then perhaps we should wonder if there are a number of negative fedbacks.

For me, I think the climate models are like a drunken walk home. Heading generally in the right direction, with corrections added every few months as more knowledge about affects on the climate are known. Generally we are heading towards a more accurate model, but it seems at any particular time we might be heading away from the correct route. As long as people recognise this, and devote energy into improving our knowledge that is OK. But to put e.g. 95% on a model based on guesswork because we don't know yet, which then gets presented as 95% fact in the press or to politicians without stating what it assumes/ignores is dangerous IMHO.

Re: REminds me of a report in the 1970's "Coal Bridge to the Future."

" I do expect it to burn a lot less coal for the same leccy that such a station built in say the 1970's would have."

Why?

The last presentation I saw said that they were heating the water to ~600°C at ~600 bar to increase the efficiency of the plant. They then flash convert to steam at the point they generate the electricity. And this presentation was a fair time ago, comparing generation technologies before the final site of ITAR was chosen. The suggestion was that Chinese projects were leading the world in efficiency (out of necessity), and that some of that tech was going to come back to Europe later (A number of Euro companies were involved in the projects).

Re: @Steve

I would also say that the android system is well connected. Even using my Galaxy Note, I can plug in USB devices (flash sticks, HDDs, usb hubs, keyboards, oh and HDMI projectors).

I can even plug it into my camera (Canon 7D, 5DIII), control all settings, see the live-view display and take photos with it. By contrast, the Apple camera connection kit can't read from CF cards (used to but a firmware update a while back turns off the power when you try), and the "camera connection" just about manages to read a JPG file from the camera, but nothing else. With Android, I can happily copy the photos (JPG or RAW)onto the phone, the phones SD card, or upload by FTP / SMB to the web or my local server and use them in any application I want. Oh, and the android cost? £1 for USB host cable, £2.50 for the very nice remote control app.

Re: 15KWh?

You can actually buy UPSs that use this tech. The tend to have much lower running costs than battery which always tend to have a small leakage current. Also there are no annual maintenance and battery swap-out issues.

The ones I've seen are multi kWh, but are normally specified to operate in the deadtime that it takes a diesel generator to spin-up and get to temperature (~1 min). They too run the flywheel in a vacuum, and use a SR motor/generator combo. I saw them put in in a remote location because maintenance was going to be an issue (but as the primary back-up without generator). Another remote location had the same type of set-up, but fuel-cell. THe fuel-cell was very nice in that it jsut sat there doing nothing until needed. The down-side was a life of about 1000 hours on the membrane.

Paid for apps

Well I used to be happy to pay for apps, but that has changed. When you go into a shop, you get to look at what you want to buy to know if it is any good. Not so with "apps".

I bought a Spanish-English dictionary app. It seemed OK looking at the screen shots, and there were loads of comments that it was great. Except; in Spanish, nouns have gender. The dictionary failed to show this. Also it failed miserably as a dictionary, not actually having the meanings of words, and was more akin the list of words in a spell checker.

Fool me, I then went and bought another one, and found that it had similar problems and missed quite a few common words. Could I get my money back, no! Is it possible to see before you buy? No. Where was Apple's customer service? "So you did actually buy the app?" "In that case I'm sorry, but there is nothing I can do"

Result: No more paid-for apps on the ipod.

@JDX

I susoect that no one mentioned Android because that wasn't a question asked, or an accepted answer. As for me, I like my note, thanks and it's only about 6 months old. My next phone would probably be Samsung, but could also be HTC if I am convinced that it wouldn't be crap like my missus old one.

So I don't know what my next phone will be. The article suggests that means I have no platform lock-in, but I can tell you with>95% certainty that it will be Android.

Re: Unlike your cousins on the PC, you won’t be getting OneNote, Access or Publisher.....

So Office for Mac Home & Student comes with Outlook? That's good to know. I'm half way towards a Mac/Win setup so Office on Mac is an alternative to Office on Win. Outlook may not be great, but if you've been using it since it was called exchange & schedule, it's handy to stick with it.

MS dropped outlook from the Home & Student PC version from 2007 onwards. Then they went and published a blog about how Outlook was so useful to Students (although you could by a copy of Outlook 2007 to go with your Student Office for an extra £163, which was just over twice the price of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access combined.)

Re: Chrome starting to fall behind

And as I read this, I am reminded again how Firefox on Android renders each individual post in a different font size, and even manages to mix 10 point text with 26 point text on the same line, so that the words end up on top of each other. Ok I'll admit that it's trying to re-render a page that some nazi set as fixed width, but the fact is that my screen has more horizontal pixels than the HTML asks for, so for the love of his noodlyness, WHY?

Re: Exciting times

I'm not sure where the final magnet was made, but one of the links I just clicked still said that AMS-2 uses a super-cooled, superconducting magnet and it will be tested in 2010 by the ESA at ESTEC.

Well, it was tested at ESTEC, at CERN and other places and was very nice. In reality, that magnet didn't fly because the cooling helium would've only lasted for about 3 years, and the ISS is now set to stay up for a long time. Instead it has a permanant magnet, which while lasting longer doesn't help separate the really high-energy particles, which is a shame.

Re: Certainly not acceptable@Ledswinger

"it is the specific function of the power industry to meet demand, not to produce power when it suits them"

That's funny, because I thought that it was the job of the power industry to make money for their shareholders. If the country has enough power at the right times is not important to them. If power plants become old and more expensive to run they are turned off, because turning them off gives better shareholder returns, regardless of power availability. This is the system that was put in place at the privatisation of the power industry.

IMHO that is the root of the reason why there will be insufficient power, not because people are using more. If everyone's consuption had been different and we were now using 1/4 the power, we would probably be in almost the same boat; it wouldn't have been cost-effective to have all the generation that we have now, so much would have been shut down. Then when the remaining ones got old, they probably would've been shut down too, just like is happening now. (Yes, demand leveling certainly helps, but there is only so much you can do; turning on the lights, TV and oven during the day instead of the evening may level things, but since I'm at work then, doesn't help me because then I'd be sitting in the dark going hungry and unable watch celebrities in the jungle and such.)

Re: Morons at Vodaphone

"Really? Why can't they simply fix the price of pay-numbers in to a standard table and make any sex lines, etc, change their number prefix if they want to change the cost?"

Hang on. So if I have a pay number, say starting with 0845, and Vodafone want to change how much THEY charge their users to call it, I have to change my number? (even if BT et al. don't change how much they charge their users?)

Isn't the idea that when operators change how much they charge for a number (service, etc.), they have to tell their users first.

Re: re: Just out of curiosity

Nano wires used in quite a few places. Particularly silver nano-wires are found to have good anti-biological (and other) properties. Buy yourself some silver nano-wire socks and wear them all week without smelling of cheese :)

Re: Look on the bright side.

I know a few people in Madrid City. Their fibre connection requires no bolt-ins. Telephone, TV, etc. are separate (at least one of them only has data, using VOIP and terrestrial TV for everything else.)

Tell me how much a data only connection in the UK costs, and where you can get one.

Re: 3 hours docking

Yeah, but you don't double / tripple check everything with cross-channel ferries. Tell them to look-up the Herald of Free Enterprise.

Re: Where is the HTC ONE ???

I also expected to see the new Galaxy Note 8 in the list since it's currently here in Barcelona, and is in fact a phone as well as tablet. Maybe the SPB budget doesn't stretch to a ticket to mobile world congress; it's not cheap :/

Re: Apple mainstream

I'd agree with you, that you see a lot of devs with MBPs, but unless you are developing for iOS (which I admit a fair number will be), you don't necessarily need to run Mac OSx. I've spoken to a fair few who only buy the MBP for the hardware and then run Win or whatever on it.

@ Big Yin

"If a patent is required to implement a standard, (e.g. OOXML) said patent is null-and-void (or transferred to some public defence organisation)."

and you can't really claim ignorance, when all these companies / organisations are registered under the data protection act (although that does just seem to be lip service; my previous employer forgot to mention in their registration that they had a CCTV system installed, including in the offices to watch employees, and at one time, even in a toilet).

It seems to me that the current system is not enough of a deterrent. Maybe they could gaol time to the registered DPA officer at these organisations, but probably the DPA officer does not have the power to change things. I think that the Chief Executive should be held personally responsible. Perhaps a change of law is in order, together with notices sent out by the ICs office just to bring the message home.

It should not be too hard to meet the requirements, and I don't know if the IC does something a bit more that just say that you should use protection; giving some examples to help small outfits would be nice (Physical locks tend to have BS numbers stamped on them so that people know, perhaps the IC could say things like: does the cncryption built-in to windows meet the requirement? is a password protected zip file OK?)

"The one built into my car already does it....

It's always amusing to watch it trying to match the maneuvers I'm making in an underground car park to the roads above....

Yeah, the one in my TomTom does it too, but only using a built-in accelerometer.

However sometimes I have to drive into Madrid city, where they have quite a long section of motorway underground, complete with junctions. The TomTom guides you into it, and then half-way through it suddenly decides that you are on the surface, and starts trying to snap your location to the roads up there. Meanwhile, it forgets to tell you which junction you were supposed to take to get out of the tunnels in the right place.

For me issues like that, and closed/new junctions on the 2nd busiest motorway in Madrid not being updated for >2 years is more of an issue than the inherant location accuracy.

@Dave W Thompson

"Last year, Microsoft was reported to be licensing Windows Phone 8 to ZTE for $23 to $30 per device. For tablets it's worse: $85 per device."

Are you f**king kidding me?

Well, considering that Apple wanted a similar amount for features like slide to unlock and rubber-banding, MS is not asking too much for a whole OS/eco-system if what you want is something that isn't android. (In comparison to Apple)

Re: Adversity breeds ingenuity

@Phil 27

Yes, load balancing will be fun, but at least at the moment, the meter doesn't measure the imbalance, like the meters in England do. Cooking is changing from Propane, because the tank here requires the ministry of miners, plus the civil engineers, plus other crap that I don't want to have to deal with (including if you reduce your consumption, you have to pay them for what you don't consume to compensate them!). The new induction hob is a bruiser, but at least it is balanced 3-phase! The other major consumers are the well pump and swimming pool pumps which are both 3-phase.

First of all though, I have to get the structure sound, and insulated; heating system installed, internal walls etc. Power is a long way off except to operate demolition hammers :)