Posts by Intractable Potsherd 4162 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
@Henry Wertz 1: I agree. This is a very strange definition of "non-discriminatory". The commenter below gives some very tortured examples of charities etc that simply don't work - Samsung and Huawei are both commercial entities making the same type of device for profit. They are directly comparable, and so to treat one differently from the other is, by definition, discriminatory. The question is, is it unfairly discriminatory, and I would say that by other definitions used in law, it certainly is.
The Supreme Court seems to have dropped the ball on this one, and made itself look infected by the "Huawei baaaaaaad" meme.
Let me guess - an AC Delco dizzy cap? My experience across several cars was that, whilst a lot of Delco stuff was better than Lucas, they couldn't make a dizzy cap that would last between services. Bosch were even better, but tended to be significantly more expensive than my meagre budget could stand.
I still quite miss the "doooooo-diddle-dup-diddle-dup-diddle-dup" coming through a speaker just before my mobile rings. Back in the late 90s, when I got my first mobile (I resisted them for quite a long time), I could make my elder relatives wonder if their phones were broken by answering before the ring-tone sounded at their end!
A very good book on the importance of driving has recently been published: "Why we Drive" by Matthew Crawford - https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/matthew-b-crawford/why-we-drive/
It is well worth a read because of the view it has of driving as one of the last activities that requires physical and mental skill to perform, with significant rewards and risks (which are important to actually live.
Why in the name of Zog does a car monitor *when doors are opened*??? Seriously, give me just one good reason, because I cannot think of one.
My plan to get an old Range Rover and a Ford Cortina or similar on the next round of replacements just took on more urgency.
I ran out of time to edit my post. I wanted to add that, if I had to choose between Trump and whoever his running-mate and Biden and his "new family member", I'd be voting for Trump. There is something deeply unpleasant about the Democrats' offering that inspires less trust than even Trump, which is an awful thing to say given that another term of of Trumpian excess and bloviation will take more than a century to wash away. If the Democrats *really* couldn't find anyone better to stand, then they are on their way out, politically.
"... most like me are going to vote for who is going to do the better job and protect my wallet and future."
Whereas people with scruples would vote for who is going to do the better job of protecting the wallets and futures of everyone, especially the poor. The trouble is, there isn't anyone like that either in the USA or here in the UK.
Whilst not having any inside information, it sounds like there was a section in the procurement process that asked for specific details of the system being touted to be presented in a particular way, and Neology wrote "See attached document" instead. Said document is the 68-page one mentioned in the article, which led to the entire application being binned. One thing I have learned is that, absent a specific statement that additional material can be used, you stick to the form. It is a pain in the arse transcribing e.g. an entire CV into a badly coded web form, but if that's the rule, you comply if you want to be considered.
Somewhat more esoteric, and much more expensive, was a chap I know who rallied a Lancia Stratos quite a long time after it's heyday. It was a wonderful thing to see (and hear), but he failed to finish events due to mechanical failure more often than he got to the final time control. The failure was almost always the gearbox, and happened on right-hand bends (I think - it's been a while!) Eventually, the owner and his service chief went to Italy to track down a long-retired drive-train engineer from the Stratos factory team. The conversation went something like, "What gear are you in when it happens?"
"Hmmmmm, changing from third into second. Why? " (again, the specifics might be different).
"Ah, yes, that has always been the case with the Stratos. [Long discussion about why it happens, which I can't remember.]"
"Really? Why isn't it documented?"
"Because it kept people who bought them coming back for new gearboxes."
"OK, so what did your team do to cure it?"
"We told our drivers not to change from third to second in the middle of a right-hand bend..."
<Pedant Alert!!> Ammonium nitrate isn't a high explosive (fortunately). If it was, then the pressure wave would have been supersonic (a "shock wave" and many more people would have been killed.[1] </Pedant Alert!!>
[1] See e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/tragic-physics-deadly-explosion-beirut/
@Eclectic Man: Let me reframe your question. If a number of people of the relevant groups were asked about the name of a galaxy, and they all said "It doesn't matter" or "I don't care", or "That's really nice!", do you think the do-gooders would think twice about this project? I don't.
@Binraider: "Impartiality is letting both sides speak and be challenged."
I think you mean "all sides", since there are rarely only two points of view. Rarely do the people with a centre view get a word in - it is always the furthest reaches of the extremes that get to shout their cases, because that makes for good TV. However, letting multiple points of view in raises the question of how far do you go? Does a supported of the "Electric Universe" need to included in anything about cosmology, for example? If not, why not - at a time of no-platforming for people with "unpopular" ideas such as people can't actually change sex, then this really needs to be debated.
On the other hand, finding a major news outlet that considers Scottish independence in an even-handed way is very difficult - I'd be happy to have just one programme that gives equal coverage to pro-independence as it does to the status quo.
@RM Myers: "It would be nice if all studies could include a professional statistician, since many of the issues are not at all obvious to non statisticians."
Many studies would love to have a statitician on board, but there aren't enough statisticians to go around - there aren't even enough to go round for research ethics committees! My last REC was fortunate enough to have a really good statistician, and she (and, to a much lesser extent, I) used to get VERY frustrated with really fairly basic errors which meant that the project wasn't testing what it thought it was. All thus because no-one was adequately teaching stats to researchers, and there was no-one to run a project past.
No, my concern is with the deaths and disabilities that will result from the ruining of society. Like it or not, humans are social animals, and this atomisation of society will lead to as much (and likely more) heartache than letting the virus run free. This is *in addition* to the deaths from the virus - for me the calculus is very straight forward.
@Danny 2: there is no evidence that children are a vector in transmission, and quite a lot that they aren't. Look at it this way - there was no spike in cases amongst children, teachers, or parents prior to schools closing, anywhere in the world.
Of course, all the children are now well behind with immunities to the usual illnesses, so they'll all be ill within six weeks, and schools will be closing "just in case"...
@AC "If they dualled only on the basis of making it a toll-road to pay for the construction costs how much toll would you be willing to pay?"
Unless there was a free alternative running next to it (say, the existing A9), then £0.00 per mile. If the alternative route did exist, then maybe £0.10 per mile.
When it means that defence of the country becomes dependent on who the for-profit supplier is, and who certainly has different loyalties than the country, then yes. The same goes for other critical national infrastructure, including the NHS.*
*Yes, I'm very aware of the problem of cutting-edge medications/medical instruments.
The small number of UK residents that took advantage of freedom of movement is entirely down to the poor education in foreign languages, culture, etc. It isn't a coincidence that the majority of people who *have* taken advantage if it are generally better educated than average, and have been exposed to people from other European countries.
I have just come across the concept of the Overton Window*, which describes the range of policies people will accept as reasonable. More importantly, it describes how this can be manipulated by putting forward unacceptable ideas and then dialling back to something that would have been unacceptable if put forward initially, but which now seems reasonable in comparison (like negotiating a price, I suppose). I can't help thinking that, if the Russians are manipulating elections to get unacceptable results, they would than have a plan to offer "reasonable" results later. Just because the West had forgotten how to play long games, don't think others have (see also China).
*https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/politics/overton-window-democrats.html, amongst many sources.
But most people are not applying for jobs where an issue at a specific time-point requires life-or-death decisions*. By all means, stress-test these individuals, but there are so few of these roles that they constitute a special case, not a general condition.
*which are, by definition, high-stress and can't be dealt with by everyone.
The real screwing over was post-WW2 when Britain and the USA signed over vast tracts of land to the Russians. The Poles and the Czechs (at the very least - other countries were equally badly treated) should detest us for it. I understand that the statue of Churchill in Prague, put up during Thatcher's time by a toadying Czech president, is at last due to come down. I couldn't believe it when I first saw it!
"... would appear TomTom doesn't have a GDPR policy or a data protection officer."
Oooh - popcorn time!!
By the way, as Ellen Ripley said, "Have IQs suddenly dropped around here?!" I have a weeks holiday and find that normally sensible long-time commentards have lost reading comprehension. Mazda, as the initial seller of the car with the device fitted, is as responsible for the ICE system as it is for the brakes, clutch, mirrors, etc. At the time this happened, there was clearly no contract with either Mazda or Tom Tom. If Ben received a bill for new brakes on a car he didn't own, he wouldn't be blamed, so why all the "shoulda's" because it's software?
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