Posts by Tannin

Re: Feature request for a Firefox scrapbook or better still not considered - too bad!

You are talking back to the future stuff here. Opera - real Opera, not OperaChromeClone - has done this for years.

Re: 50k hours vs 20k cycles

If I reember correctly, it is THE busiest international route in the world.

Re: Niche item

"If you really thinking about it, 99% mobile sites suck monkey balls and don't have the functionality of a full website, so what's the point of using a tablet?"

The fact is, 99% of full websites these days are dumbed-down to be little better than the mobile sites anyway.

Re: Please drop the pedophile priest stereotype

Clueless about this topic, aren't you. Or possibly just gaslighting. If you actually don't believe that there are and have been massive numbers of abuses of little girls and boys by the priesthood, try looking at the evidence. The findings of the recently concluded Royal Commission in Australia - https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/ - are truly horrifying.

As for your report, it was commissioned by the church itself. What a bloody joke. Headine conclusion: "PAEDO CHURCH REPORTS THAT CHURCH'S PRIESTS NOT PAEDOS". Gosh! Who would have guessed?

Re: Mixed Messages

Two different governments. Rail is a state responsibility.

Re: Really?

"jets offer a better quality of ride particularly in bad weather ..... after one particularly stomach-churning flight on a DeHavilland Dash, I always made a point of booking the trip with the airline that flew 737s/A320s."

More nonsense. Quality of ride is largely determined by two things: size, and wing loading. Bigger aircraft have a smoother ride in exactly the same way that larger ships do on a choppy sea. All else being equal, an A380 will always ride better than an A330 which will always ride better than a 737 which will always ride better than a Dash 8, which will always ride better than a Metro, which will always ride better than a light single.

Heavier wing loadings also produce a smoother ride. A smaller wing relative to all-up weight (i.e., a higher wing loading) presents less surface to wind gusts and provides a smoother ride. In general, larger, faster aircraft have higher wing loadings (for higher cruise speed and better economy at those speeds), while smaller, more flexible aircraft have lower wing loadings (for better low-speed economics and, in particular, for the ability to lift heavy loads off short strips).

Of course a 737 has a better ride than a Dash 8. It is twice the size. A turboprop the size of a 737, designed to do the same sorts of jobs, would ride just as well. And a jet the size of a Dash 8, designed to do the jobs a Dash 8 does, would ride the same as a Dash 8.

This is all just basic physics. Bigger wings, smaller wings, more or less all-up weight. Nothing at all to do with type of engine.

Re: How about something small

"I don't wear a watch anymore since nothing is available these days of a modest and small size. EVERYTHING on the market even for normal "dumb" watches is "statement" sized and feels like strapping a smegging brick to my wrist. Even ladies watches are massive.How about something under 5 mm thick and 50mm diameter for a change. It was possible in the past, why not now?"

That's because of the technology gap. Nobody has figured out how to make electronic circuts as small and reliable as all those wheels and cogs and springs and things. It is probably impossible.

Er ...

Re: it is not the customer's job to adapt

Good response, Jmch and I agree with most of it.

As economists (or at least competent ones) like to say, a "market" is a thing with many buyers and many sellers, and that is exactly what the office productivity caper is not. As you say, it's a quasi-monopoly, and in monopoly markets the rules are different.

A couple of points, however. First, on market share. I suggest that MS Office's market share, while huge, would be a good deal larger still if it wasn't for their arrogant UI changes. The fact that products like Libre Office and Corel Office survive at all says something; the very large market share of the Google products says a lot more.

More speculatively, I'd suggest that one reason (among many other reasons) for the very rapid take-up of phones and tablets at the expense of PCs is that many users found the brain-dead UI tricks of things like Office with its ribbon and Metro with its tiles off-putting. I doubt that they actively drove users away, but in failing to maintain the consistent, simple, powerful PC interface the industry had spent years improving and refining, they made defection easier and faster.

Second, nobody ever got anywhere by defeatisim. Do not give in. Ever! There have been many remarkable back-from-the-dead recoveries in the history of computing, and a great many sudden implosions of products once thought unbeatable.

A classic example of the former is Netscape, which was as dead as a very dead thing but morphed into the wonderfully successful Mozilla/Firefox products, which absolutely nobody expected. (Firefox is on life support today, of course, but in its pre-Australis heyday it was a mighty thing indeed and pretty much single-handedly saved the web from Internet Explorer strangulation. A classic lesson in not giving up.) As for an example of the latter, it's hard to go past MySpace. But there are many others.

In short, it's my horse, it's not dead, and I'll flog the bloody thing if I want to.

Re: Bah!

Two different words meaning two different things. Look it up.

http://grammarist.com/usage/obsolescent-obsolete/

Re: you must accept the scientific fact that placebo ... works.

Just because a couple sects of one religion have objections to medical treatment is not a reason to ban ALL religions.

Quite so. There are, however, plenty of other reasons.

Re: Save us from uneducated politicians

Good Reg readers, allow me to recommend Milton's long post above. If I could I'd up-vote it twice.

Re: Utter garbage!

Since when did the fact that an idea is utter garbage make the slightest difference to an American in an airport with a gun and a uniform?

Re: In the early days...

"I thought the reason receipts are always printed with thermal printers is because they're cheaper and there's no ribbon/toner/ink to replace, just paper."

No. they are done with thermal printers so that, three weeks later when you are trying to get your accounts straightened out, you can't read the bloody things.

It also saves on warranty costs.

"Do you have a receipt sir?

"Umm ... I have some blank receipt-sized papers here. One of them is probably it."

"Sorry Sir, can't do anything under warranty without a receipt."

Re: Firewalls?

"But for personal use, what vital service does Microsoft provide?"

Well, for single people with no romantic prospects on the horizon, Microsoft provides a simple and very reliable way of getting screwed. Every day.

Re: So WTF is wrong with the US school system?

It has guns in it.

"a hydrogen balloon that stands a good chance of being in the exhaust of a rocket engine just seems like a bad idea"

Just think of it as an unorthodox sort of afterburner. :)

.

Re: I think it was well known....

"The question is, could a "new" Harrier done a better job with modern avionics and technology, for far less money?"

Not a snowball's chance in hell. Could a hypothetical New Super Harrier do all that it required? Sure it could, if you spent enough money - i.e., something an order of magnitute greater on a per-seat basis than the F-35. (Or anything else for that matter.) Most of the cost in producing an aircraft is in the design and development process. To get the cost per unit down to something sensible, you need to produce hundreds, if possibly thousands, of units.

Same with any high-tech product.

Q: How much does it cost to produce one modern CPU chip? Ans: Hundreds of millions.

Q: Having made the first one, how much does it cost to produce the second one? Ans: small change.

Now, if you could sign a customer up to pre-order, say, 450 New Super Harriers and pay cash up front ....

I'm sure they did screw Airbus for a bargain price - below cost most likely. But I doubt that Airbus mind. From their point of view, the main thing is to keep the A380 line open because the time will certainly come when other airlines order more of them.

What the A380 really needs is a modest stretch and an engine refresh. It was designed right from the start to be easily stretched (the wing is considerably bigger than it needs to be for this very reason) and there are some city pairs where a 1000-seater would be just the thing (not that they'd go that far, an extra 20% would be more likely). But it's a lot of money to spend for a model that wouldn't sell in volume in the current climate. Maybe in 5 years time - which, of course, is why it's good to keep the line open so as to keep that option open.

Re: Another happy traveller

Every other airline apart from about half of all airlines operating in the general area, you mean. MAS was flying the exact same route as, for example, Lufthansa. Not to mention many, many others. Please try to get your facts right before spouting nonsense.

Well said Matthew.

It is a pity that your downvoters haven't even bothered to explain what it is you said that they disagree with. One is forced to assume that they are simply parasitic download junkies who dislike any hint that they should no longer be allowed to leech off the rest of the community.

Alternatively, you could learn to read.

After you have done that, and read the article, feel free to get back to us.

Re: Price gouging.

Why does .clinic cost$55 quid more?

Because any tool dumb enough to want .clinic instead of something sensible like .co.uk is just about certain to be dumb enough to pay 55 quid extra. Or 155 quid extra for that matter.

Re: Feed this

Second factor questions are an utterly stupid idea. On those brain-dead sites which still use them, I NEVER provide sensible answers. (Not that there are any sensible answers: most of those questions either ask for something that any fool could guess if they know anything about you, or else for something you don't know yourself.)

Much, much better to provide nonsense answers and keep them somewhere secure. E.g., Q: "What is your favourite colour?" A: elephant. Q: "Who was your first girlfriend?" A: Glasgow". Q: "Where were you born?" A: Uncle Arthur. Q: "What is your favourite song?" A: sodium pentaflouride. Or, if you prefer, instead of "Glasgow" as your first girlfriend answer, use "kdKYTEKYE&J$KDTY9".

(Unless, of course, you are from the robo-sex generation and your first girlfriend really was named kdKYTEKYE&J$KDTY9.)