Posts by squizzar

Re: How convenient...

Sellafield is a site dealing with a huge legacy of waste produced during hasty research, a lot of which was generated as part of the race to develop nuclear weapons. It is a huge mess.

It is also completely irrelevant in relation to new nuclear power plants which are constructed with a plan and budget for decommissioning, are operated with oversight and tracing of all nuclear materials, and have the benefit of the knowledge gained from the mistakes of the past.

Bringing it up in such a way as to suggest that all nuclear plants will have similar spiralling costs is hyperbole worthy of the Daily Mail - or a Greenpeace press release.

Re: Sad realities

I've still got my multiply-resurrected IHP-140. It's on it's second incarnation (blew one up when I accidentally plugged in a car adapter for one of those dodgy FM transmitters), second HDD (well the one from the first that I blew up), second battery (replacement higher capacity ones are awesome), and second OS (Rockbox).

Having the little remote pod means I can bury the brick in the bottom of a bag with the remote attached to a shoulder strap. All in all a brilliant little device (not that little anymore though!). It will get replaced one day - does anyone have a suggestion for something suitable though? That iRiver never really took off and everyone bought crappy iPods instead (smaller disks, more expensive, less battery life, crap processor that couldn't decode OGG) is one of the reasons I dislike Apple and the legion of 'ooohh shiny' people that buy their products instead of something good.

Re: "can soak up so much of the stuff ..."

Energy density, not mass-over-volume density. The density of the hydrogen in the storage medium may well be less than that of petrol.

Re: Confused about what they are buying.

Losing ground.

If anyone needs me I'll be in the angry dome...

Re: How many of those are for current products?

So presumably what they should be counting is the value of those licenses, not the number? E.g. a Windows 95 license has a value of nearly zero, a Windows 7 license is still worth what you'd pay for one now. These figures should be obtainable otherwise they'd be telling porkies about the value of their assets by pretending the software doesn't lose value over time.

Re: Lewis, you do love tilting at windmills don't you?

I'd hazard a guess that it's because:

1 - People listen to them

2 - They're not helping

Like celebrities their ill thought out plans and questionable numbers get given far too much credence and influence. If they were offering a reasonable and practical solution then I'd agree with you, but the whole point of the article is that the very solution they are proposing is prevented by their own requirements. Highlighting the preposterous nature of their proposals means that they might actually get ignored as they should, and maybe make them come up with something useful and factual.

Stupid stuff like this influences public opinion (see Greenpeace vs. Nuclear Power), causes faulty policies to be implemented (see feed in tariffs, excessive constraint payments, the whole wind can power everything idea), and does nothing to humanity.

Re: dark ages

An electric car that presumably has to pass safety testing and can only be driven someone with a license you mean? If you have a bike that can power itself up to about 25mph then you might as well be on an (electric) scooter, and the rules for one of those should apply to you: license, tax (a paltry £15 for little vehicles like that), MOTs and insurance.

And I do think that a lot of cyclists, mostly for their own benefit, could do with some training on how to use the road. I say that as a daily cyclist myself (and intermittent car driver and motorcyclist).

Re: reliable BMWs (sic)

As I read from someone on a forum somewhere: "It's the ultimate driving machine, not the ultimate reliability machine". On my old 318is the battery is at the front, but I think the 6 cylinder ones had it at the back - countering the extra weight of those two cylinders as I understand it. My girlfriends significantly newer one has no battery to be seen - apparently it will never need replacing... we'll see. It's had the swirl flaps removed though.

For a 20 year old car, my E36 is still one of the best things I've driven and just a really nice car to be in. Much more fun to drive than my much newer and significantly faster A4 - it just doesn't have as much feel as the BMW.

Just for reference: My indicators work, and the mirrors and windows do a perfectly adequate job of allowing me to look before I change lanes. As a cyclist and motorcyclist I'm quite aware of the problem of people who can't be bothered to look where they are going, or so much as flick a switch to let other people see their intentions. It's not BMW driving c**ts that are the problem, or Audi driving c**ts that are the problem, it's just c**ts that are the problem.

Aren't the debates supposed to be public?

Like the houses of parliament? Why would it be such a disaster to have people's thought process laid bare? Yes the press would have a field day, but once everyone cottoned on to their terrible SNR they'd have to tighten up their sensationalism anyway.

The problem is, at the moment, that decisions appear to emerge fully formed, and often without any reliable evidence because the process is not transparent. The extreme example is along the lines of ACTA, which has had next to no public input (and, since you mention democracy, doesn't seem to be prompted by any public desire).

If there is a reason law cannot be engineered rather than seemingly pulled out of some politician's orifice (I think the naval-hatch idea gives many of them too much credit). Every law should have some reasoning behind it, and that reasoning should be clear, fully open and publicly accessible. If I wanted to build a bridge I'd have to show that there was a need for it, that it would correctly support the required load, would handle extreme conditions placed on it, would be built within a specified budget and countless other requirements. Why can't our lawmaking have a similar process? There should be some motivation for it, an analysis of the effects including unintended consequences, there should be a study of redundancy in case the target of this law is already covered by other law.

Yes there will be statements made that will cause outcry, politicians will be heckled for their idiocy and baseless assumptions, but my hope is that two things would occur: One, that the public would learn to differentiate between tabloid hyperbole and something that should genuinely concern them, and two that politicians may become willing to change their minds in the face of clear evidence that the foundations of their arguments are baseless. A more scientific approach, similar to peer review. Surely that would be better than developing the law, the arguments and the facts behind closed doors?

Not so hard to understand...

Why not? The whole point of Anonymous is about hidden identity. It's one of those everyone and no-one things. If it makes it easier, think of it like a representative of the country, or a religion, or anything else.

- Group A supports or performs an action X, Group B opposes or disrupts the same action X.

- Group A and B identify themselves as members of Group C.

- Someone from Group C then says they are a representative of Group C and makes a statement about the intents, workings, philosophy etc. of Group C.

So what do you know about this person from Group C? They could be part of Group A, they could be part of Group B, they could be completely unrelated, they could be doing it for the lolz. They can have it none, both, and several other ways. All entirely intentional: designed to subvert the normal categorization of people as one group or another and in doing so making life very difficult for a lazy media and public that would have to think a lot less hard if they would call themselves A or B.

Anyone can represent Anonymous, but Anonymous is represented by no-one. It's a label, and about as useful as every other sweeping generalisation: Read statements about anonymous and replace it with something equally useless like: People >6ft tall. People who's skin is lighter than Cadbury's Dairy Milk. People who watch television. Suddenly it makes more sense: People who watch television are do/say/believe/support X. Other people who watch television don't do/say/believe/support X. Someone, who claims to represent people who watch television, says that people who watch television have no connection with X, and actually people who watch television do/say/believe/support Y. It's nonsense, but that's kind of the beauty of it - you can't pin it down, you can't label it, and no-one has an identity because they are (big or little a) anonymous.

Fair point...

Good point. Why is the plastic 'bonded' to the cardboard? If it was a separate bag inside the cardboard it would be easily separable (possibly even mechanically - just cut round the spout and pull the bag free).

The cynic in me expects that it would probably cost a couple more pence a carton though. Fortunately the poor the supermarkets won't mind because they can push that cost onto the immensely profitable dairy farmers...

Shoe on the other foot

I've been overtaken by cars in residential areas (doing dead on 30 I might add) including on one occasion as I was stopping for one of those choke point traffic evasion measures. Guy stopped about 2 inches from the front of the car coming the other way that he hadn't managed to see. Oh, and that kind of stuff happens when I'm in the car, when I'm on the bike it's the same thing with people pulling out in front of you, cutting you off at roundabouts, blocking you from filtering (which is legal, read the damn highway code if you're not sure) and generally acting like fools. And don't even get me started on people who absolutely _must_ overtake me on my pushbike in the last few meters before a roundabout before slamming on the brakes and pulling over hard to the left hand side because there was someone coming.

The golden rule is that everyone else on the road is a selfish idiot no matter what you're driving. I've seen plenty of stupid motorcyclists, car drivers, cyclists, horse riders, pedestrians and anything else that can be on the road. So because some motorcyclists are idiots you take us all for idiots. By you're own logic I've seen plenty of car drivers that are c**ts, so you must be one as well...

PS: There are plenty of idiots out there who want to hurt themselves, but that doesn't provide an excuse for you to hurt them. You're attitude is equivalent to saying it would be ok for someone to go around setting fire to fat people and drug addicts because they don't deserve sympathy.