Re: How does...
They love a good gloat, don't they? They say, can we come and have a gloat? and we say No you can't you heartless gloaters.
9611 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2009
No seriously. If they can get weight-for-weight equivalent solar cells to aircraft skin, why not make use of them? There's lots of electrics on board a modern aircraft, and there's always the possibility of adding energy into the mix from an alternative source... the turbines on a 787 are started electrically using one of the twin generator sets per engine rather than by a traditional ground based pneumatic system. They're developing electrical alternatives to some of the engine components all the time. So why not do it? It might happen, it might not; that's not to say you shouldn't try.
It no longer hears its mother's voice... cast adrift in the cold blackness of space, the only thing keeping it going is to complete its mission; to collect all data possible, to learn all that is learnable and to return that information to its creator.
And in 300 years time...
Ph'lae signals the Creator.
Spock?
A simple binary code transmitted by carrier-wave signal. Radio.
Radio?
Jim, Ph'lae expects an answer.
An answer? I don't know the question.
The Creator has not responded.
All planetary defence systems have just gone inoperative.
Sir, Starfleet says the devices are proceeding to equidistant positions orbiting the planet.
They're the same things that hit us.
They are hundreds of times more powerful, Captain. From those positions they could devastate the entire surface of the planet.
Why?
The Creator has not answered. The carbon-units infestation is to be removed from the Creator's planet.
It was eyewateringly expensive. But as I worked for Tandy, I got to play on them! I was hooked the first time I heard it speak. Yes! It was a game involving robots in the genre of the Alien game (evade the enemy in a maze), and it used the cassette output to generate the sound, but it was a miracle to me.
I once lived with a postdoc physicist who ran fluid dynamic simulations on a Cray and did experiments using the cyclotron under the car park. Every day he had boil in the bag cod and a packet of Smash - I tried to teach him how to make a basic parsley sauce to go with his cod. He loved it, but the cooking of it was simply beyond him - I mean, your white sauce is class 101 of cooking.
@Alan
You seem to be speaking for the masses ("our problem"), which is exactly what you are complaining about, isn't it?
Anyway, yes, there are things in existence which are insensitive and show a lack of compassion. Just because 90% of the audience laughs when Frankie Boyle says something pretty f***ing outrageous, doesn't invalidate the feelings of anyone who may be hurt by that. Might be the best joke in the world, about someone's mother dying of something, but for the person whose mental state is dragged kicking and screaming from the arena of comedy to some deep personal tragedy, then someone is still hurting. Yes, that's life. It's doubly shitty when someone speaks up and says "actually, my colleague's sister, her partner and their 2 year old died in Nice last night", which *IS* the case here, and is told that considering the feelings of another person is wrong, or over the top, or "fluffy"...
well fuck you, I'd rather be fluffy.
Because from the description it sounds like:
1) In-lane-guidance assist, which is something Toyota have had for about 3-4 years, and uses their electrically driven power steering to artificially "profile" the road (changing lanes feels like you're steering over a 6 inch high ridge where the lane dividers are - if you don't actively steer, it feels like the road is pushing the car into the bend).
2) Collision-avoidance, which Volvo and others have had for a round 5-6 years as a front facing feature, and the side/rear-collision detection has been on high end cars for around 2-3 years.
3) Adaptive cruise-control, which Toyota have again had for 3-4 years, which is supposed to maintain distance to the vehicle ahead whilst respecting an upper speed limit.
You can't just keep piling driver assistance features on top of each other and expecting it to one day magically start working as something that can drive the car.
Mullered the socket, probably. One of my pet bugbears was the Art & Design students stretching their legs out under the desk and catching the wires from the keyboard and mouse that inevitably ended up dangling down back there. Pulled out of the ADB socket, caught on the excitingly chunky moulded casing and to all visual inspection appeared to still be plugged in.
The SLC needs to go all together.
In it's place I would propose the following.
(1) Scrap tuition fees. Payments to be made from central government funds,
(2) Allow students to claim benefits, including housing benefits, at age 18-21, something Osborne scrapped. Benefits should be means tested, as currently, for those students who work. With the requirement he introduced for 18-21 year olds to enter apprenticeship, employment, education or training, there isn't any more work involved in tracking this age group anyway.
(3) Introduce a blanket 'graduate tax' of 2% on the standard band, 3% on the higher rate and 5% on the top rate, the modified PAYE tax code being verifiable by checking against the CV / person spec of the job, and through a register of graduates against their NI number. I've run the calculations based on figures from the National Audit Office and at that rate, given the pay enhancement and career progress of graduates, this scheme would return 1.5 times as much to the treasury as the SLC does as well as the consummate savings of lower levels of administration.
(4) Persons not graduating would be required to repay their tuition fees only by way of setting an HMRC tax debt.
The difference between this and the old (pre-1988) system of student grants was that under the old scheme the maintenance grant was means tested against the parent's wealth and that process was carried out by the local authority of the home address of the student. The post-2012 system does means test the parents for the living expenses, and that is carried out by a centralised organisation. The system I propose would have no need to means test the parents, but any income by way of a gift or voluntary payment would have to be declared if it amounts to more than a quarter of the Universal Credit or Job Seekres entitlement for ALL claimants of benefits, and as usual any savings amounting over £6,000 would have to be declared. There's the question of what to do about those who go overseas, or EU students returning to their home country, but e.g. the US imposes income tax on overseas earnings, and if we remain with EU ties, these could also include some sort of reciprocal tax or repayment arrangement.
Of course, there's some fine tuning on this, but the whole idea of effectively a not-for-profit bank set up by government to manage something which, at the end of the day, only arises from a capitalistic philosophy no more valid than any other theory of government and society, gives me the heebie-jeebies.
The system tots up your movements over the course of a day and makes a single transaction during the quiet time (~3am). It's interesting to note that contactless can produce cheaper journeys than Oyster. The system is intelligent enough to work out that, say, two £1.50 journeys from zone 3 into zone 1 and out again, plus a 1 day zone 1 capped fare is cheaper than the zone 1-3 daily cap. Oyster will look at what zone you entered the system and apply an appropriate capping rate for the day. Enter in zone 3, exit at zone 1 and it will hold a cap value of zone 1-3 for the day, increasing that value if you transact at a non-zone 1-3 reader.
Daleks will change their voice synthesiser to match the local language... So perhaps they are attacking a Klingon colony.
Piffle. They just SAY that it's a procurement balls up, make it LOOK like they're matching the 2030 figures with the space in the carriers, but REALLY the other 2/3 of the hangar space is filled with our top secret totally invisible stealth jets, like the one Wonder Woman flies.