Posts by peter_dtm

Re: Oh come on... @Ross K

if your control system is embedded in your plant (as they tend to be)

and

your capex was based on a 15 to 20 YEAR life

and

a shut down of the plant of more than 3 hours means a total re-build of the line (or plant going bankrupt)

why would you take the risk ? By the way the plant I am thinking of has been running now with out break for about 10 years - another 5 to go before we can take out the Win2K kit in there; the one with the Win NT kit turns 15 next year and is being shut. The company expects to do a rebuild on the WIn2K plant - it will take about a year - the control system will be some 10% of the cost of the rebuild. It is a multi million euro bit of plant - when rebuilt it will be 1/3rd of the factory (currently just 1/4). The plan for the rebuild is currently 2018 to 2020 window. Fortunately this is not a validated plant - so its fairly cheap to do.

OR

your control system is VALIDATED so ANY change to it requires mountains of paper work and man weeks of validation; a MAJOR change (such as changing the control system to one that will work with the latest fad from the IT world) imposes a masive cost. Example - approx £20K of engineering time for a small upgrade in an Oil & Gas plant (less stringent than Pharma) after going through the validation process required to ensure it is safe put the final bill at £250K. AND there was NO PC hardware changes; the alternative we looked at with a SMALL hardware update doubled the final cost - but only added about 8 hours more engineering time and a couple of £k for equipment.

obviously; you sir; have NEVER been in a modern automated factory. Get hold of this fact : in a modern factory you can NOT just arbitarily change bits of the control system; and courtesy of MS nor can you mix not very old (XP) with more recent kit. We have to deal with 15 to 25 year PLUS life spans.

Re: Oh come on... @ Duncan Macdonald

Not to mention the factories - Pharmaceutical & Food & Drugs Admin compliant sites that would have to completely re-validate the entire control system - AFTER the control system supplier has validated their kit with the new system

That'll be a couple of million in Engineering costs per plant - the cost of the hardware and its licencing is trivial.

I have pharma companies running plant 24x7 on Win NT servers and NT clients.

Not to mention off shore rigs still running DOS box based systems

Engineers 1st rule : if it ain't broke - don't fix it

XP ain't broke - which leads to the interesting question - if MS release a patch that exposes XP boxes to risk; could the Pharma world start a class action ? (I think a few Pharma firms working together may be able to afford more expensive lawyers than even MS could)

Re: Fear and Piracy

I'd actually prefer the one proven way to combat piracy

Hang from the yardarm

simples

Re: back to Bing then

sounds a poor management decision to me

try asking your company management why they are GIVING company sensitive information for free to google.

https\\:duckduckgo should be every company's default serch engine; google; yahoo ect should all be firewalled (but uncle duckduck will still use them for you - and if you really must have google then start your search term with !google to get ONLY google search responses - see the duckduckgo website on how to use the ! search options)

Re: Business as usual

actually you need China and India to lead the way - do keep uup with who makes the most CO2/Plant food

LPF 20130423 11:46z

because the only reason you can't aford to go private is the hypocrites have stolen 40% (or more likly 55%) of your income; and then wasted it on crap; and because they 'protect' the management of the NHS (some of the most useless examples of phb going) the money needed to provision said service has been used to pay off some other phb who was going to tell the world just how appaling the NHS management really is

cs94njw @ 20130423 15:31z

AVOIDANCE is what the thieving hypocrites are complaining about; something that is not only legal but specificaly encouraged by the very people who wrote the laws - people like hodges

EVASION is ILLEGAL

$deity's sake you have fallen straight into the socialist trap; of getting the basics WRONG.

Avoidance is not only legal - it is your moral duty to your family/shareholders.

If you have ever bought something (taxable) as cheap as you can then you are also guilty of tax AVOIDANCE (cheaper selling price means less VTA which means you just avoided paying soem VAT) - do you feel guilty now ? If not why not ?

EnricoS @ 29 March 15:12z

"CO2 (aka "Carbon") is not a "POISON"" - true, but CO2 is an asphyxiant. Too much CO2 and you would suffocate. As probably would plants, as they too need O2 to respire (aka live - CO2 is needed to grow). Too much CO2 will suffocate the planet.

OOPS

current CO2 approx 360 parts per million ppm

breathable with no bad effects up to 5000 ppm

then look up c4 and C3 photosynthesis and try understanding why CO2 is harmless plant food

World wide global temperature average (do some science and find out why this is a bad metric anyway) has in fact (as admited to by the UK Met Office; James Hansen etc) been stalled for 16 years AND THEY DO NOT KNOW WHY

Look at the mortality rates for cold v hot weather -- cold KILLS people

Why should we do anything when it is pointless - UK supplies <2% of human emmissions of CO2 so if we cut back by (pick amount) it is a total waste - this is not about peer group pressure (which sounds as though it fits your outlook far better) it is about effective action. Reducing the UK's CO2 output - wether or not CAGW is true - is pointless. Come to that - if every tiny little bit was worht doing how do you justify YOUR emissions of CO2 ??

May eb the grummpy old men actually know a little science and engineering; which is something you demonstrably do not; and neither do any of the politicains.

As to why we can't do anything about it; well; your lack of investigative ability and your mindless buying into the CO" is bad meme demonstrates why we are reduced to tryiung to educate people about what is really happening.

Re: people don't go green to save money only!

living is fatal

but living in a cheap energy environment is so beneficial in terms of human welbeing it is unquantifiable.

You want to live with no cheap energy - go on; stop using it for anything; grow your own veg/meat/fuel and leave the rest of us to live a civilised life

Only energy rich societies have so far managed to 'clean up' their acts; energy poor societies pollute. Ask any poor sod who has no electricity what its like to heat/cook on wood fires; and just how much soot do you think that will produce compared to a nice clean modern coal/gas/oil/nuke power station ??

charger9 @ 28 March 13:40z

You seem to have overlooked the fact that the 'green interventions' actually drive the p/kWh artificially low (and sometimes even negative when the wind is stronger than expected).

Pardeon ? WTF ?

when the wind blows stroonger than expected the windturbines are STOPPED (otherwise they break)

On the odd occaisions when all the wind turbines are working - we do not have peak deamnd; which means somewhere an effcieint power station is having to run IN-efficiently; and given most cost/kWH delivered ESTIMATES for windturbines assume 50% or better of faceplate capacity delivered which is already known to be a total LIE; then the FACT they rarely do better than 24% efficiency means the things never ever produce cheap electricity. EVER. It is an engineering fact that lots of piddly thongs cost far more to maintain than one or two big things. Windturbines belong on sail boats; islands and for charging some (currently unobtainable) storage system.

P.Lee @ 29 March 07:00 z

..A new nuclear/coal/gas facility would also push up prices as it would also need new network connectivity...

1) NO for the new nukes - they are all going on exisitng sites so they use the otherwise (soon to be) unused existing infrastructure.

2) Lots of piddly little part time generators (wind/pv) use up an awflul lot of new network infrastructure in some of the most hard to get to places going. A couple of 'proper sized' coal or gas plants just need ONE link each and can actually replace existing inefficent 'old(er)' power stations; something no windturbine or pv farm has yet managed.

And unlike windturbines & pv would not also push up your taxes and the cost of lecky - new coal fired stations are cleaner and more efficient than the older stock - and for as much as it matters produce around 15% less CO2 per MW than existing plant - thus beating our CO2 reduction targets using tech that actually works

AC 28 March 21:42z

me thinks your a re a very confused AC

EU != NATO

If we've left the EU how would you propose we join the EU defence force ??

perhaps you should aspire to managing 1/2 of double think ?

Alpha Tony

1) Question whether climate change is man-made at all

Good question - CAGW is definately a broken theory; and the models predicting any 'A' in AGW being measurable is still not proven

2) State that as China/India/The US won't reduce emissions why should we.

- UK <<2% of Glabal CO2 emission - --> what we do makes no measurable difference; so why kill people pointlessly (at all)

3) Blame the EU for everything that they can.

well very little that the EU has done has benefitted Briton or any one living here

4) Blame the government for anything else.

like the true underlying causes of the financial crisis ; Govermments do tend to be responsible for a lot of the crap now days

5) Suggest Shale Gas and fracking as the solution to all of our problems.

Not ALL - but does look like it will allow us to have cheap gas on demand for 50 to 150 years - at least; what's not to like ?

You presumably have proof of your contention that 1) is wrong ?

Proof that 2) is wrong ?

any reason not to blame the EU for many of the UK's problems ?

any proof that the last 20 years of government have not been pretty disasterous ?

what is it about shale gas (other than giving cheap clean power) that is not to like (facts; not movie fiction please) ?

I detect leftie ad hom; play the man not the argument as usual.

Re: peter_dtm

30 GW is normal minimum demand (although it does occaisionally go lower)

If you don't understand the problem of intermittent un-predicatable generation then ther is no hope for you.

When the sun ain't shining sunshine; in the UK - in winter it tends to be COLD - so demand tends to be high.

Now if ALL the PV is OFF; and the wind aint blowing just where are you going to magik all that electricity from ??

Pull it out of a hat ?

Oh I know - says the non technocal I don't know or care how it works clever dick - we'll use pumped storge.

So if we have no coal; no gas no nuclear you need to make 30GW. If your backup to useless windmills and low efficiency PV is pumped storage you'll need 30GW of pumped storage.

Or are you happy for the lights to go out ?

What else could we use as backup to PV & Wind ? -- well since you need to provision for when it's night time & the wind aint blowing; why don't we use err ??

Nuclear; Coal & Gas are good reliable ways to produce on demand electricity. Until someone comes up with a way to store 30GW any thing ellse currently proposed (wind/solar/tidal) is a waste of money/resources/effort

Re: A mole of an anthill?

best of the year so far

have a pint

Re: parse AC @2013-3-21 12:47z

sorry there is nothing wrong with the original sentance; except, perhaps; the lack of semi-colons; which appear to have been replced by commas.

Hint - use a comma to break up a sentnce into speach rythm (breathing points); use a semi-colon to break up noun/verb phrases; that could be stand alone sentances. Should the author have wished to make lots of baby short sentnaces; you normally find that he does so; but then, that is because he's wrtting a children's book; not a comment for adults to read and appreciate.

So in fact your parsing is wrong; you should have replaced most of the commas with semi-colons. 0/10

@Lusty

you are kidding

My day jopb is not being a professional type setter; it's being an engineer.

The TOOL I am given to write reports in; is a piece of unmittigated crap called MicroSoft Word.

All I need to be able to do is

open ANY document (odp; amw etc as well as M$ - oh and 5 year old docs)

type using simple effects - bold underline italics sub/superscript proper paragraph; proper bullets and some simple tables.

I do not need to be able to reproduce the skill set of a type setter working pre-Murdoch.

I use the buttons - why the hell wouldn't I ?

I expect at the very least a wysiwyg interface.

I do not expect some pointless relocation of options; or the hidding of options just for the sake of it

Enter key -- inserts new line & carriage return charecters into document - if some random half arsed program wants to use it for something else; it is the publishers of said programe who need training

If the ribon is supposed to stop people 'misusing' word; I wish you joy; I for one use it the same way I've always -used WORD PROCESSING programmes :-

(supposedly) to EASILY and EFFICIENTLY write WELL PRESENTED documents.

The solution to YOUR problem is not training for the vast majrity of users but to cut out all the bloatware in Word(excell) that isn't needed by 90% of its user base. Then you can be given a PROPER tool for correcting our miserably incompetent attempts to play at being typestters.

If Word & Excel worked properly PowerPoint would NOT be needed