Posts by Andy The Hat

I believe that's exactly the sort of accident that Public Liability Insurance is for ... along with paying compensation for colliding with a pet dingo or impacting a cuddly Koala.

Re: Given the average incandescent bulb is 60W

How many do you need? Still relatively easily available as the "phase out by ..." EU rules were not written correctly, allowing producers to continue to supply the EU market. Hard to find? From the biggies on the high street perhaps but otherwise available and not illegal to sell as was the intention.

Re: One word.

tried that as well ... could never just blow single 6522 i/o ports

Re: Third party "displays causing artificial issues, disabled features, and warning messages"

... great except when the Windows license is hardware locked and needs reactivation ... doh!

Re: Wake me up

are you just milking this thread?

Re: My car's window ...

that reminds me, I need to grease my mechanism before the friction makes my knob break off ... ooh err missus, nay nay and thrice nay! and other such phrases of a similar age.

Re: Maybe its just me

Harken! Has my Dob-troll detector gone off?

A $5000 APO and a massive equatorial is great but, for the average Joe who couldn't give a jot about "measurements or put numbers on things", dobs are quick, easy to use and cheap to transport to a dark sky site to enjoy great views.

Re: Does that include TeleScreens?

Is it the fault of the device or the app? I don't believe any smart tvs are guaranteed to run any particular catch-up or streaming service (except some specifics instances like Netflix). Broadcasters can change their specific "technology" at any time and that may break delivery on a device but it's not the fault of the manufacturer who could not predict that change.

Welcome to the world of "not me guv'" and guaranteed obsolescence.

Re: "a process that Lieberman said takes about four seconds"

I believe that was measured using Microsoft Variable Time.

The proof is the "percentage complete" timeline where seconds become minutes ... And when/if a rollback or restore is required hours become days ... by the book ...

Couldn't agree more. This is the new world of social media where influence - whether truth, irrelevance or misinformation - is all that is important and is open to control by whoever is has a hand or even a finger on the puppet strings ...

Re: Could we not just....

The whole point is getting rid of the friction contact - monorails with small guide wheels were the traditional method of ensuring things followed a track but supercooled superconductors and oodles of refrigeration power can circumvent that design requirement as the system is self guiding. One reason why room temp superconductors may be a holy grail of transport technology.

I appreciate this is a mission failure but it was a successful demonstration of the automatic abort system. From what I've seem it would have been a hard time for occupants on a "live cargo" mission but better alive and bruised than toasted and blown to bits ...

At least this shows rockets should not be treated as toys for the rich to ride in ...

Re: Just wondering

If all the workmen had to take a gallon of water with them each day, by the time the project was finished it's likely there'd be enough water collected to exceed the designed collection of the plant so they wouldn't need the H2 extraction facility ... So just build a big solar harm, a big water tank and a road to be used by the "workers" - the plant is cheaper, the workers are cheaper, the unit achieves it's "collection targets" and everyone's a winner.

Re: Because we can?

I thought it looked great but it needs an 80W psu, chunky cpu heatsink and general board cooling at which point it's the size of a mITX which is not so much of a story ...

Re: Last week

I had a small Muntjac deer decide to wander from the hedge to play at being a chicken and stop in the middle of the road. I braked hard (after all deer+car=mess). No anti-lock and the back end started to come around - so deer or me rolling down the road and potentially wiping out myself and any oncoming traffic? I accelerated to pull the vehicle straight, hit the deer full on, bent my steering rods and the vehicle following got a crumpled front end from the rolling carcass. No-one apart from the deer was hurt, there was vehicle damage but that's just money.

What would "autopilot" be expected to do in that situation? What if it wasn't a deer but a child? What if a child was in the car?

Spurious hard braking is dangerous (though in the UK it is the lawful responsibility of following drivers to keep a safe distance, I don't know about the US) but that is not all the plaintiff says - he also uses the phrase "slowing the vehicle" which may be a pain for a 30-year-old driver but is no different to Uncle Albert who brakes before every sharp bend "just in case" ... so do we ban Uncle Albert too? Decisions on when to brake are not simple and clear cut "brake" "don't brake".

... or our digital broadcast tv transmission technology, sold to the lovely Mr Murdoch for peanuts then licenced back ...

Re: Why isn't it user replaceable?

Dear Mr printer designer, I suggest a procedure called "Change the sponge": remove one screw, drop a plastic tray containing saturated sponge, place tray in self-seal plastic bag and bin it. Place new tray containing new sponge in the obvious location, replace screw.

Perhaps they consider arduous work of this nature to be a very difficult procedure that the average user would probably need specialist Epson training to perform?

Re: There's a sucker born . . .

They don't make scams like they used to ... :-)

Re: Let's start

At least a GCHQ director thinks scanning his feeds is ok, and someone at an organisation owned by GCHQ agrees with him ... Perhaps the Government who "owns" GCHQ will think the same ... oh, they do?

Have they just suggested all politicians have mandatory scanning of communications under the control of the current Government? Dangerous or what?

Re: This is probably because I'm extremely dumb

Only marginally different to LPG and I was happy to drive one of them for years.

It may be interesting to read between the lines and say that electric will be fine for cars but, when the NG can't cope with all the charging requirement, commercial vehicles can still run on hydrogen from whatever source ...

Re: Gosh, really ?

Interesting set of comments - references and/or full citations please?

Re: Touching Cloth?

I don't believe that's useful unless you plan a mission to Uranus

Re: Vassal State

"Where is Jacob Rees-Mogg when you want him?"

Under what conditions would anyone in the right mind write such an abhorrent sentence?

More to the point, you pay for and "own" a physical licence and *are* allowed to sell it on second hand.

The user subscription model is a hands down win for the provider on all fronts. At least the user gets the benefit of automatic licence control, updates, price increases etc ...

Look at it another way - if it wasn't a cash cow Microsoft and Adobe wouldn't be doing it. :-(

Re: While the Pi 4 Model B remains resolutely sold out at time of writing...

blimey ... what were they charging - normal or "market" prices?