Posts by Pen-y-gors

Re: Scott Walker is a criminal piece of garbage

Of course they vote for them - they may be a bunch of criminally corrupt scum, but they're OUR criminally corrupt scum.

I came across the same thing in Ireland. Chatting to a couple of people in a pub in the North-West, after the latest scandals involving one of the local TDs, and they said, Yes, he's as crooked as a paper-clip, but he's a great TD - you want to get planning permission for another hideous bungalow where it's not allowed? Have a word, and he'll sort it. You want tickets for the game? He can arrange it. I'm not sure now, but they may have even suggested he had undue influence over decisions by some of the local Gardaí. They didn't want an honest TD, they wanted someone who REALLY works for them!

Re: Pants - Best deal?

@Jeltz

I'll assume irony. But it does raise an interesting point. One has to define 'best deal'. Does that always mean the cheapest? Do you buy from a dodgy site in China that's a penny cheaper, rather than the big site in the UK? How much is avoiding fraud worth? Ditto complaint handling. Ditto fast delivery.

'Best deal' involves many factors. Arguably you can go a stage further than looking at the 'best deal' for you for a single product. Does buying local at a small premium over the S.American river help you in the long run? That local business employs local people. Who spend their money locally in the corner shop/post office, helping to keep it open for the next time you want a pint of milk at 9pm on a Sunday. They have jobs in the area so will stay, rather then moving away to find work. The corner shop offers part-time work for your teenage kids, on the door-step, rather than them having to travel, (or just sitting at home on the X-Box). And when they go to Uni they have some decent things on their CV so can get a better part-time job, which means they can spend more time working on their degree, and ultimately get a better job so they can support you in your old age. See - it's amazing what the impact of buying that one pair of underpants locally can be!

Buying locally often appears to cost more, but in the long term means you are likely to live somewhere where people have jobs, and where a community can thrive. One estimate suggests that every £1 spent locally actually generates £8 of local expenditure before it ends up in the pockets of a shareholder in New York.

Re: To reply to a few concerns

Some good points - I suspect battery-swapping would be the neatest approach. It's scaleable, and basically cheap. Fundamentally people would pay a deposit on the battery, and then buy a 'charge'. Like buying gas bottles (or, from what my Dad told me, what people did with the old lead-acid in glass batteries that powered radios in the 40s). Infrastructure is simple - a lorry arrives to pick up and drop off batteries. A small petrol station wouldn't need many, a motorway service station would need lots. No need for major new infrastructure overnight.

I'm not sure about the jumbo accumulator idea though. It would need to be stonking! At least the one half-way up the M6. Yes, that could then be on a lower-power feed to keep it topped up steadily during the day and overnight, but you're still having to move a lot of electrons to recharge a couple of thousand cars in a day, and that needs the mega infrastructure.

So, all we need now is an improved battery chemistry, and some universal standards on how big they have to be and how they connect to the vehicle. I'll start a company now!

Re: The inventor of Li-ion batteries already has the replacement ready

@Def

Useful info. My figures were based on "cheapo"(!) leccy cars, not Tesla, but the numbers work out about the same.

The idea of 300kWh batteries is great, but makes my point even more. If the battery chemistry allows them to slurp up 300kWh in 'a few minutes' we're now looking at a power feed that can supply say 20 x 300kW per hour = 6MW. How thick does the insulation on that have to be? Major pylons marching to every 'petrol' station. And even an overnight charge outside the hotel/house would need to provide about 40kW (150 amps?) - not something you'll get from a 13 amp plug.

The point I'm making is that it doesn't matter how good the battery technology gets (well, to an extent, it does of course), but the infrastructure to support getting 500 or 1000 miles worth of leccy into a vehicle is still way over the horizon. And we're just talking cars here. Start thinking about the needs for an electric light goods vehicle that's doing a few hundred miles on a delivery round. And has anyone done any sums on switching HGVs to electric from diesel?

Re: Lithium batteries are last century's technology

When streaming videos and video chats are becoming more common. 8 hours or one day of use just wouldn't cut it anymore.

If we end up with a society where an appreciable proportion of the population are watching streaming video or plugged in to some VR system for more than 8 hours every day, then it's time to give them some serious sedation and just let them starve to death without noticing.

Re: The inventor of Li-ion batteries already has the replacement ready

@Def

It's all very interesting and I can't wait for some really good battery technology to come along. But there is one wee problemette with car batteries. Overnight trickle feed, fine. But assume we have car batteries with 3 times the capacity of present ones (i.e. about 120kWh, enough for about 300-400 miles, still less than a tank of petrol). And, to make them useful, a capability for a full charge in say, 15 mins. (Still slower than filling with petrol). That means you'll need a feed that supplies about 500kW. (Which will take some decent insulation around the wires) That's the equivalent of the supply for about 20 average houses. So a single 'petrol station' with 12 'pumps' will need a feed equivalent to a housing estate. Do we have that infrastructure yet? No. Can we afford to build that infrastructure? Dunno, but someone needs to start building this in to their calculations for our wonderful, leccy-vehicle future.

Re: Garbage

One hit?

Remember 'Sink the Bismark' - what if the one hit is on the steering gear and you just steam in circles until they finish you off?

Re: Not limited to DEFRA

Can you imagine a corporate doubling it's size with consultants with no background in its operations

Sadly, yes....but they do tend to be consultancy firms.

Re: Lies, damned lies and ...

@codejunky

The problem of bureaucracy, they never seem to find an end to their work yet they always find need for more resources

How true - like the tales of HR departments having to expand to handle a major forthcoming round of redundancies.

Re: Brexit

@Smooth Newt

If they can find them e.g. try and hire 1,400 Java programmers overnight

You misunderstand - it's 1399 policy consultants and 1 trainee Java programmer - who also has to fix all the old COBOL they've got knocking around on a mainframe somewhere.

Can people bring their own self-inflating alpine mats and 4-seasons down sleeping bag?

Re: Unfortunately I suffer from insomnia . . .

(c) Robert Garnham in The Grauniad 10 best jokes from the Fringe, 15/8/2017

Lobachevsky is watching over us all....

@Timmy B

Communism has arguably done far worse for society and Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Hitler. Are we going to remove that too? These things are about thoughts and we should all be free to express thoughts and ideas freely.

No, people attempting to implement what they called 'communism' have done far worse for society, in some cases deliberately, as they didn't give a toss for the ideals of communism, merely personal power. Think ISIS and their corrupt ideas of Islam.

Stalin? Not a good example. The millions he killed didn't die because of something he thought. Thoughts have a nasty habit of being turned into actions, good and bad. Anyone advocating setting up a Stalinist state should be suppressed in just the same way as nazis or other violent, intolerant extremists.

Re: Oh well...

Yes, it's about domain registration. But no-one has said they can't have a particular .com domain - however a number of businesses have said they won't help them register it through them. I'm sure there's a Russian company who'll help them out.

Re: As much as I hate nazis...

@imanidiot

Banning any kind of speech is a really bad idea.

Hmmm...not ANY kind of speech. We have laws (in the UK at least) about incitement. You can't post on FB saying "Go out and slaughter all the sub-human <insert-name-of-minority-here>" and then expect to be able to get away with saying "Oh, I didn't think anyone would take me seriously" as you're surrounded by a pile of bodies and a mob with bloody pitchforks, or even when a paediatrician gets their front-door daubed with threats. (The UK has a wonderful education system)

But - 'banning'? I'm not aware that anyone has 'banned' this odious bunch of moronic, hate-filled scum. Various private companies have decided they don't want anything to do with them, that is not the same as a 'ban'. More of a boycott, which seems perfectly reasonable.

P.S. Never mind "As much as I hate nazis, but..." I hate Nazis. Period (as the USians say) I learned to hate them. I will not learn to love them. Ever. They must never be allowed to triumph again.

Re: As much as I hate nazis...

@another-AC

Yes, just imagine what democracy would be like if people could vote for whomever they wanted.

Democracy is a great principle. I like it. <obligatory Churchill quote about democracy>

But...there are times and places where the basic ideals are being stretched to breaking point. Go back to the original attempts - Athens in BC whatever. All citizens get together, debate an issue and vote. (Of course, women and slaves weren't citizens, but they don't count anyway)

Later we introduced representative democracy. Britain led the world. The local rich bastards get together and vote for one of their mates to represent them in Parliament. (Obviously poor people, women etc don't count)

Later we gave more people the chance to vote for some crook to go to Parliament on their behalf. Elections used to be important occasions. People actually got involved and debated the issues - at the pub, at work, at home - they went to packed meetings with the candidates. The newspapers debated the arguments. Voters had a fair understanding of what they were voting for (or against).

Now? I'm not so sure. People complain they can't vote online - it's too much hassle to walk to the polling station. In many cases votes are cast on the basis of prejudice and ignorance, without any attempt to understand the issues. Remember, in Athens, ALL the voters debated the issue in public before voting.

I'm not sure how to fix the system, while retaining the basic principles, but it badly needs fixing. At the rate we're going we'll have the "Pi should be 3" Party winning a referendum on the basis of emotive FB posts and blatantly lying headlines in the Mail and Express. Even more worrying, the Tories and Corbyn will attempt to make it law as "It's the will of the people".

If it's not broken, don't fix it. But if it IS broken...

Re: As much as I hate nazis...

@one-of-many-ACs

If it was a paper publication would you support the printers removing it from print?

Yes. In the same way that if they came to me to build them a website promoting their poisonous ideas I would flatly refuse. Why shouldn't a printer have the same right to decide who they work for? Let them find a fascist printer, or set up their own print shop. It's not difficult (although hopefully no-one would sell them the equipment).

If it's okay to have trade embargoes against Russia and the Norks, why not against nazis?

I think the Free Speech equivalent discusses the freedom to shout 'Fire' in a crowded theatre for fun.

Cost of repairs?

The cost of repairs is irrelevant if the purpose is to prevent injury to humans. They are even more expensive to repair.

Makes you wonder though, why they can't just use a permanently soft or resilient material anyway - an inch-thick layer of expanded foam over the whole body with a thin skin for colour and aerodynamics. Combine a seriously impact-absorbing outer shell with a seriously rigid cabin shell and you have the making of something useful.