Posts by John Brown (no body) 25368 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
It's a £33m investment in a company (not the Foundation) valued at £300m, so a little over 10% of the company being "sold off" to two investors. Not sure is either will own enough to demand a Board seat, but one or both may get one anyway as part of bringing not just money, but experience.
Maybe on the next delivery, they can replace the computer readable QR codes with human readable names for even easier identification. Colour is only really useful for gross identification, eg solid food, liquid food, drink etc. Putting actual names on the packages makes it much easier for people. Maybe keep the QR codes for stock taking purposes :-)
"I will always prefer pancakes smothered in Maple syrup, three spicy sausages and a side of scambled eggs with bacon bits."
OMG, Sweet'n'Sour breakfast! You heathen! I'll take a guess and assume you are a colonial who knows no better and that what you call bacon is actually thinly sliced belly pork, so getting maple syrup on it is probably doing it a favour.
Ginger Nuts are disgusting! Controversial, I know, but I'm sure the silent majority, afraid to post their true feelings in light of the proselytisers already posting here (probably astroturfers in the pay of Big Ginger).
My wife is one of those weird Ginger Nut fans (she also likes Marmite, oh the humanity!) and knows how to keep me out of the biscuit barrel. She "accidentally forgets" and puts Ginger Nuts in which then infects all the other wonderful biscuits with a disgusting Ginger infusion!
Yes, the colour implies an intense chocolatey taste should be forthcoming whereas actually biting into it thoroughly disabuses one of that notion. I felt cheated when I tried one for the first time and was sorely tempted to write to the Advertising Standards Agency before I realised that it would be a waste of my valuable biscuit eating time.
""without any admission, concession or finding of any fault, liability or wrongdoing by the Company or any defendant,"
Clearly they expect to lose in a fraud trial. Here's hoping their "bribe" to make it go away is rejected and it goes to trial. If it was a policy, likely IMHO, then someone, somewhere is holding the smoking gun and could go to prison. It's about time some of these $BigCorp were properly held to account instead of buying their way out of trouble.
Maybe it's the Roswell branch advertising A Probe? All we are seeing is a static image, cleverly snapped to make it seem innocent, when the reality could be a far more sinister scrolling message relating to aliens from the 7th planet offering free bodily probes with every burger!
On the other hand, it could just be as described, a Windows BSOD. But who in their right mind hooks up such a low resolution screen such that the system sees it as the primary screen?
"On the flip side, we have a current government that is raising taxes having promised not to in their manifesto. Although I'm sure someone is already weaseling up a view that National Insurance isn't a tax, so it's technically not a broken promise."
While I agree with the sentiment, no government of any colour would be able to avoid raising taxes somewhere, somehow after 18 months of a pandemic, various lockdowns, a massive spend on furlough payments, huge losses in the economy and so many other costs I can;t be arsed to list them all. Although it's interesting how the tax has been introduced. In one respect, you are right because technically it's a new tax, not a tax increase, but that takes time to implement and bring into law, so increasing another tax until the new one is introduced is technically both breaking and keeping their promise :-)
...and, FWIW, I just watched the first episode. that Jared Isaacman guy comes across as a really nice and down to earth guy (pun intended :-))
He appears to be self-made and is a self-confessed flight and space nut who put his dreams into action.
From the Wikipedia page "In 2004, Isaacman began taking flying lessons. In 2009, he set a world record for circumnavigating the globe.[7][9] He received a bachelor's degree in professional aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2011. He is flight qualified in multiple military jet aircraft.[4] In his 20s, he flew in many airshows, but by his 30s, he had stopped flying as such.[8]
"and possibly a movie deal,"
Netflix already have the rights to the documentary tracing them through training, lift off, orbit and landing. That's why there was so little video broadcast from orbit.
<innocent look>
I wonder why the downvotes? "Lock her up" and later "Lock them up" was the rallying cries he started and encouraged throughout his election campaign and on into his presidency, surely even the most ardent Trumpers must remember that?
</innocent look>
"Trump, wow, and I mean that in both senses. His tenure was just wow."
He's probably following the news from Russia, fuming and ranting that he just didn't manage to get that level of power over the opposition. He just sooooo would have loved to be able to just lock up the opposition :-)
"Seriously though, I see on Wikipedia he's credited as the inventor of the pocket calculator. Is this actually true?"
Depends how big your pockets are!
Seriously, no, he didn't invent the pocket calculator. Jack Kirby of Texas Instruments is usually credited with inventing the first portable calculator, but it took a few years, a few iterations and new technology, such as LED displays to get something truly pocket sized. (Kirbys used a paper tape for output!!)
I think the first pocket sized one was in Japan. But, as we see from Sinclairs other products, he was first to market with a cheap and affordable pocket calculator. Much of what he did wasn't new as such, just better and cheaper (if sometimes mechanically a bit unsound!). I don't think he laid claim to inventing the calculator, but some of the press seem to be people who don't do proper research and often credit him as the inventor. Unlike Apple, where the fanbois credit Apple with inventing anything they have success with and Apple do nothing to dispel the myths :-)
Sinclair didn't invent new devices, everything he produced already existed in some form or other. He invented new, cheaper and better ways of creating things that were already possible by doing the impossible so the rest of us could afford to own them. Almost the polar opposite of what Apple has become :-)
"The do-it-yourself ZX81 was a joke when compared to the Acorn Atom, but, yes, it was of course cheaper. "
Odd. I never owned either of those but didn't remember the ZX81 being sold as a kit, just the ZX80. But I do remember the Acorn Atom being sold as a kit too (and the possibly apocryphal story of an Acorn Atom kit being sent back as "not working" where the customer had glued rather than soldered the components in place)
Funny how memories can change over time, what we remember and what we forget. But then I'm nearly 60 now, and had a part time job while in 6th form by the time the ZX80 came out so could afford to spend 4-5x as much on a Video Genie instead :-)
"it may have used a 32bit 68000 CPU, but only had an 8-bit data bus."
FWIW, the 68000 had a 16-bit external data bus. Sir Clive, on another cost cutting exercise, went with the 68008 which is the version using the 8-bit external data bus in the QL. Internally, it was still a 68000 inside the silicon but the 8-bit data bus and the reduced size address bus hobbled it down to about half the speed of the equivalent "full fat" 68000. Unlike the Amiga 500 and others that did use the "proper" 68000
You're still missing the point though. Someone had to be first. No one else was aiming for that price point or form factor at the time. Even the Oric-1 (pre Atmos, that was later), the closest in price and form factor, was competing with the Spectrum, not the earlier and revolutionary ZX-80/81 models.
Something which is obvious in hindsight isn't always obvious at the time. What Sinclair did was to make very cheap computers that were usable. It was only after this that some others copied his money saving ideas. Without that to copy, they may not have been quite so price conscious as prior to the ZX-80 and 81, there was only a niche market, not a mass market. The VIC-20 and maybe the Atari 400 beat Sinclair to "mass market" to some extent, but were vastly more expensive by an order of magnitude. It cost less than a weeks wage for many. Other computers cost a month or more of most people entire wage.
As for your last point, even when cars, radios etc became mass market, they were still "complicated", as was every computer on sale at the time of the Sinclair launch, so I'm not sure what you last point actually is.
"Oddly they overlook the QL, which also fell flat on it's face (overtaking the Mac and PC wasn't likely in business, even back then)."
Yes, it was associated with the Spectrum (a "toy" computer), and was so much cheaper than the business competition that it was "too cheap" to be taken seriously. But the Psion office package it came with, and when paired with a proper monitor rather than a TV, made it a very decent business machine, even though few could see that through the "too cheap" and "toy" connotations it came with.
Oh, and it was really only the PC it was competing with. The Apple Mac was released 12 days AFTER the QL was released and both came a full year before the more traditional-like Amstrad PCW "cheap" business computer.
Stupid comparisons. A better comparison would be to the steam engine, especially the steam locomotive. Or the internal combustion engine. Or the telephone. Or radio. Like the computer, all started off as complicated, unreliable playthings of the wealthy until someone came along and made then cheap enough for the masses.
"Just who did they think the owner was?"
The owner is the sender. Simple as that. That's who they have a legal contract with. They have no legal contract with the recipient. Althoiugh you may have paid the sender for the carriage costs, you contract is only with the sender, not the courier. The sender paid the courier, even if they used your money to pay them.
Of course, the obverse is that the couriers reputation depends on a successful delivery, so getting it to the recipient is very important. But it's not the couriers fault if they've been given the wrong address by the sender. Why would they believe some random stranger telling them what they think the correct address ought to be?
(All the other issues with courier drivers lying, not waiting, throwing parcels over fences or even leaving them inside bins notwithstanding of course!)
"down-to-the-centimetre GPS co-ordinates in one of the extra "address line" fields would help or confuse matters"
Yeah. So the fat-fingers driver, under pressure to do a minimum number of drops per hour can fat-finger the digits and end up re-directing it to another country? Or if you are lucky, only as far as the next town over.
Back in the day, when our hardware support bussiness used to do home address visits for certain large retailers, I had on a number of occasions to visit addresses in small, very long established villages (think Domesday Book entries that have never grown in size since then) and you were lucky to find street names behind the overgrown hedges and whatnot, n ever mind house name. They were the sort of places when you enquired about door numbers, you were met with "Nmberrrrs. Yerrrr, we 'eard o' them new fangled thangs. We don' 'ave no truck with confusin modern stuff loik that 'round 'ere"
I usually aimed for the sort of time the local Postie was likely to be about (pre-mobile phone days), hoped the village was big enough to have a shop, or at worst, found the one village phone box (or a neighbouring village;s phone box) and rang up for either a description or request they come and stand by their gate :-)
Most were very nice and helpful. Partly because they were expecting me and had broken kit that I was there to fix, or just because they were used to it and accepted the "issues" as part of the rural idyll :-)
"Oh, and did I mention that there is another building, with exactly the same name, about half a mile away on a different road, and with a completely different postcode."
One of the customers I infrequently visit was a bit of an issue the first time I went. The postcode takes me to a building on the wrong side of a very busy junction. The reason is that the building is named and so has no door number, and they moved from where the postcode says they are to the new building on the other side of said busy junction. And for some reason, they retained their postcode through the 750 metre move. Neither my SatNav nor Google Maps seemed to be aware of this move, which had happened well over a year previous to my fist visit. Luckily for me, that's a pretty rare occurrence :-)
"The hubs have been described as "iconic, digital smart city communication hubs" with creative roots that tap into modern, edgy, urban street design.
I assume that was put out by the BT marketing department? It's incredibly rare for a new structure to gain "icon" status at it's unveiling. That's the sort of description that comes over time, either because people like it (often after initial misgivings), or because it's been part of the landscape for so long, eg power station cooling towers.
Yes, I think you nailed it. People learn at different rates and technology, especially internet access, allows the high achievers and the motivated to race ahead, get the work done and move on. They are less likely to be held back, possibly getting bored and disruptive, by the teacher having to go at "average" pace. This can also mean the slower learners get left behind because the class moves on before they understand the lesson. Again, tech helps in the latter case, because it's easier to get the slower learners to go over the stuff again. Those with less motivation are still stuffed though because that can only be resolved by having a very good teacher. The best ones will be able to motivate most oifnot all of the class, but even good teachers, let alone those less good, may not have the time or resources to deal with that problem.
Worse, with kids not at school for so long, and it still being a bit patchy, the gaps in previous years learning will be different for each child. Even the best parents can't always help with schoolwork, not to mention that many of them still had to put in a full days work from home too. And that's not even touching on the issues of less able or willing parents, lack of space and resources etc etc etc.
"This was because if you had to explain the problem in simple terms and get your thoughts in order, you often could solve the problem yourself."
On the rare occasions I've been stumped out in the field and had to phone back to base for additional help, there's probably about a 33% "ah ha!" moment while dialling, another 33% of "Ah ha!" moment while explaining the problem to a colleague and another 33% where said colleague has made a blindingly obvious suggestion i already knew but for some reason my brain hadn't bothered to tell me about sooner. The final 1% is where it's a genuine head scratcher and we're all struggling for a solution :-)
Sometimes, walking away from a problem and thinking about something else for a few minutes helps the brain to reorganise itself :-)
They were trespassing on private land based on, what it appears from the article, a misconception that the farmer was breaking the law with regard to trapping songbirds. The article doesn't appear to specify whether the farmer was actually breaking the law or not in that regard. Where he did break the law was in defending his property from illegal intruders and seems to have gone too far in his efforts, hence the assault charge. This means the film crew were also there illegally and filmed him on his private land where he has a legitimate expectation of privacy, IANAL nor am I French. All of the above is my untrained and ill informed opinion.
It was, IIRC, published sometime in the 1970's. One of the future predictions in it was submarine cargo ships. The artists impression from what I remember was something quite large, very wide and long, probably nuclear powered and was intended for world-wide transport. I think it might even have had a helicopter landing pad on the deck too.
As a side note, they also published "silly" ideas of the past too, like a railway engine with a couple of horse on a treadmill and other similarly hilarious even if meant seriously at the time inventions. And there was always a a short SF story at the back from the likes of Clark or Asimov, and was one my first forays in my lifelong love of SF :-)
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