Posts by Intractable Potsherd 4162 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
There is no reported transmission via food, so more misreporting from the same AC who seems to have a vested interest in spreading the most restrictive practices. S/he he will only be happy with complete quarantine and the social distancing forever in case s/he gets a bug sometime.
"Basically, unless the project completes in a timescale of your current job, nobody has any great interest in either finishing it, or really solving the problems. It’s just an annual budget, and people are “contributing”. They aren’t motivated to make the damn thing work."
That is one of the most depressing things I have heard, and it is a fault of manglement. The project should be broken down into achievable chunks (call them what you will) so that the thrill of "Yeeehaaa - we've done it!" is always in sight. The longer-term stuff needs people with a certain attitude to life - one person with a need for resolution in "only" five years can ruin a ten-year project. Fortunately, we have sufficient proof that your basic assertion is wrong - there are many examples of multi-year projects in the world - and these show that there *are* some good managers in existence.
We all know that the first knowledgable* person to deal with a computer problem owns that problem. If the knowledgeable person is unpaid, perhaps having done a favour, then they own all subsequent problems, but no successes.**
*For certain values
*The same used to apply with cars, but not so much these days.
@Jim Birch: Ultimately, I *don't* care enough about others that the privacy of myself and others is negotiable. At root, I rather despise the people who put their life before all other things regardless of cost to others. Life is about more than the mere fact of living - quality beats quantity and these apps have a huge potential to reduce quality of life for far more people than will die, just as the results of the lockdown will have devastating effects on far more people than it will benefit. Part of his is familial - we all have an attitude of "if it's your time, so be it", couple with "I don't want to be a burden on anyone". I'd possibly have more relatives left if we had a different attitude, but c'est la vie et la mort. I was mortified when my wife insisted we self-isolate for a fortnight recently, and we had to accept help from others (even though I would happily offer that same help to others). My mum, in her mid-eighties, is going about her business almost as usual, and I'm pleased that she is.
I have long been a supporter of human rights, but, increasingly, the damage that the current iteration has on communitarianism has troubled me, and the response to this virus has crystallised that to near opposition. It is time for some good old-fashioned utilitarianism to be applied - balance harms with benefits.
At the end of the day, I grew up with constant comms and a pocket terminal being the ideal (Thunderbird, Star Trek, and thousands of sci-fi books), and being out of comms being the beginning of disaster. I carry my phone (actually, two!) everywhere because that is how I feel comfortable, especially knowing that I can call for help given some of my health problems. The major caveats are that a) I didn't succumb to owning one until there was a specific need, and b) because I don't like disturbing people, the ringer is turned off almost all the time anyway.
It isn't a courtesy to me - I won't have anything to do with someone in public wearing a mask, especially if it is someone I need to communicate with. My hearing problems mean I need to see lips to understand more than 30 per cent of the content in ideal circumstances, and my ASD means I won't trust anyone hiding their face.
@AC OP - so much misinformation in one post!
Diamond Princess - population unrepresentative of general population (lots of old people) and densely-packed environment. New York: generally unrepresentative population (lots of old people) and densely-packed environment, plus poor testing. In both situations, you are reporting the case fatality rate (number of people dead compared to number of people known to have the virus) not the population fatality rate (number of people dead compared to the entire population). The latter figure is much, much smaller - the former figure is used to justify extreme measures. If this was a virus that killed 2% of the entire population, even I'd be rethinking my attitude.
Your comments about viral transmission by meat is just panic-mongering. There is absolutely NO evidence of this, regardless of what seems "obvious" to you.
Lastly, this isn't a football match - the scores don't matter. I am seriously tired of obsessive, morbid people like you spouting deaths as if there is a league cup at stake. Quite simply, we don't know what the longer term effects are of any method. Later peaks may affect the currently low Ro countries much more than the others.
@JakeMS: same here, and if they make it compulsory then I'll stop using smartphones and/or find a way to poison the data. However, there are others making an argument for "... an ethical obligation to use a tracing app during the COVID-19 pandemic, even in the face of privacy concerns"[my emphasis] - https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2020/05/04/downloading-covid-19-contact-tracing-apps-is-a-moral-obligation/
@sabroni: has there ever in history been a case where using "whitelist" and "blacklist" has cause confusion? If yes, your point has merit - if no, then you are being picky for the sake of it. (Personally, I'm torn. I think things should be made as clear as possible to aid understanding, so I like your argument. On the other hand, if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it is a really good maxim for everyday life.)
Thanks for getting back, Chris. Which leaves only one option based on the information provided - the car matched the speed of the lorry all by itself...
If that was the case, then it's at THIS point in the drive where it should have been obvious the car didn't just have standard cruise control."
I think that is exactly it - the cruise control was set at a point it wasn't able to attain 70mph. For whatever reason (and I'm not the OP), it became obvious that it was adaptive only when the acceleration began automatically. The OP didn't say that s/he had a problem with it, just that an unwary driver could have been caught out, and ended up in a situation where the car ran into something.
For my part, upon re-reading what the OP wrote, I can see that there are some oddities in how it is constructed, but the message still seems to be clear to me - it accelerated without driver input, which is (to my mind) inherently dangerous, especially so if not ready for it.
When I have a hire car, I don't play with the toys until I've got used to the basics (around 30 miles, usually), and definitely not in traffic. If possible, it'll wait until I've read the manual or found information online. I don't usually drive modern cars, and so know that there will be some hideous piece of automation that will work contrary to my expectations of being in control.
No, Dr S - the original post refers to Sheffield City Airport, which ran alongside the Sheffield Parkway. The entire history of the airport reveals lots of bad faith from the beginning (the site was a good, but not optimal, choice), and that reversion clause required a special type of genius ...
Robin Hood Airport at Bawtry is the old RAF Finningley Vulcan bomber base with a runway to match. Its reason for severe under-performance comes from being owned by Peel Group.
I wasn't aware of the regeneration plans for the station area. There is no way short of radically redesigning the entire place from scratch* that the outcomes can be met! The stupid seems to be fermenting and foaming out of the bucket!
*Of course, the council could have taken "Threads" as a "disruptive idea". (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ for those not familiar with the reference).
It took me ages to realise that there are some people who genuinely have such poor spacial awareness that they can't think about reorienting something to achieve the goal. I used to think they were taking the piss, but the look of "Wow - how did you do that?!!!" was the giveaway. It is as if these folk grew up in Flatland, and haven't got used the the extra dimension.
You clearly haven't read anything about the leaked Labour Party report recently. The allegations of Corbyn's antisemitism seem to have been, if not entirely made up, then certainly VERY exaggerated by people on the party who wanted a different leader. For more, just DDG "leaked Labour Party report".
My village should be an absolute hotbed of virus-laden people, and at least four should have died from it, because there has never been so much interaction between people walking around, chatting to people on their gardens etc - no masks, and rarely any gloves to be seen, and a lot of people have some funny ideas about how tall an Osman is! At any given time between 9am and 6pm you will come across at least four other people, often in family groups. However, as far as I am aware (and I'm fairly well connected to the people who live here), there hasn't been a single confirmed case, let alone a death, even amongst the key-workers or the elderly population.
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