Posts by H in The Hague

Re: Try living in a building...

Well, that's pretty well why they developed What3Words. It ain't perfect, but it has its uses. Also handy for conservation volunteering: most trees we deal with don't have postcodes.

Re: Hmm

"I suspect instead we have a choice of building on our competitive advantage ..."

Could you explain how potentially watering down data protection rules, which protect ordinary people (and extraordinary ones such as Commentards), gives the UK a competitive advantage?

And why potentially making it more difficult for UK businesses to trade internationally (which generally involves storing some personal information) gives the UK a competitive advantage?

I'm genuinely interested to know the possible upsides.

Incidentally, the UK has long had reasonable data protection legislation (which is why GDPR did not change that much in the UK, contrary to what a bunch of shyster consultants claimed), so watering down the current data protection legislation amounts to undoing homegrown British law rather than EU law.

Have a nice weekend.

Re: A number of sound decisions?

"Not the same issue but about the measurement laws. And primacy of EU law"

Not just the primacy of EU law, the primacy of any treaty a country signs up to. If national law could simply overrule an international treaty then any such treaty would be completely pointless.

If you no longer want to be bound by a treaty you can withdraw from it - losing both the obligations and the benefits associated with it.

Re: I had a similar "shock" once

"When I started clipping away with my wire stripper/cutters I got a big spark."

As I mentioned before, I always religiously follow the instructions in the procedures of one of my customers "Every point shall be proved dead before undertaking any work at that point."

Has proved to be v good practice.

Re: Built to repair?

"When I queried this, I was told they don't repair anything these days because it's uneconomic."

Here's a company with a rather different approach to supporting their, admittedly expensive, microphones. They give a 10 year guarantee and guarantee availability of repairs for 20 years:

https://schoeps.de/en/support-service/service.html

"Most capsules and modules of the Colette series (which started in 1973) can still be maintained and repaired today ..."

Not a shareholder, just a happy customer :)

Re: Calculator

"Replaced with an HP-11C when I got my first job - which is also still going strong and runs for ever on 3 button cells."

I got my HP 20S over thirty years ago, still works and still on its original set of batteries! (Admittedly I don't use it that much.) Now that's proper engineering and product design.

Re: system was running at 6-10 per cent of operating reserve ratio.

"On an unrelated note, does anyone know why a cable modem needs to take 15 minutes to reboot?"

Absolutely not an expert in this area, but I think they (and DSL kit) need that time to analyse the line and the signal so they can optimise the transmit/receive parameters and get the best speed. No need for that when we were only stuffing 300 bps down the line :)

"I think he means “should be”…."

Most likely the are - the police do make house calls to check that you're storing the kit as required. A friend of mine who received such as visit complained that the two officers were .... armed. For some reason he was rather put out by that.

Re: Great murder choice.

"If you are breathing nitrogen and don't get enough oxygen, that trigger doesn't happen and you drift gently off to sleep, eventually on a permanent basis."

Correct - you don't notice. Nitrogen is used on a large scale to inert chemical process equipment which may contain flammable substances. And sadly people enter those environments and collapse, then one of their colleagues tries to get the victim out and then collapses themselves, etc.

Similar accidents have happened inside barges which have been sealed up for a while and where rusting has resulted in an oxygen-depleted atmosphere. I think there are even types of clay which can cause anoxic conditions in trenches dug in them.

Re: Ha

"... look at what happened in Holland over the past month. They did the great reopening a month ago, and it's been followed by a huge locking down again as cases rose spectacularly."

Yes, cases shot up, especially among young people. No, there has not been a 'huge locking down', the reintroduced restrictions primarily relate to the closing of nightclubs and discos, and the recommendation to work from home where possible.

Alas, hospitalisations are now going up in NL and it looks like even fully vaccinated folk can spread the Delta variant :(

Re: French water meters

"@Pascal - we can do it, at least for light bulbs. The problem is that they don't want to, as then they'd go bankrupt after selling that initial everlasting one per socket when the income-stream dried up."

To get an incandescent light bulb with a v long life all you used to have to do was to "underrun" it (i.e. operate it at lower than the rated voltage). Disadvantages: 1) the light is too red, 2) efficacy (lumen/watt) is greatly reduced, so not actually saving you any money.

Re: Use early Microsoft formats where possible for interchange

"When they cooked this up to highjack the EU standardisation ..."

I don't think this has anything to do with the EU, I think it's an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 29500 Information technology — Document description and processing languages — Office Open XML File Formats?). But perhaps someone more familiar with the background could comment on this.

Re: Damn!

"I routinely made hand-written changes (each initialled and dated) to clauses I didn't like on engagement contracts."

A year or two ago I was going to do some subcontract work for an agency, so they sent me a contract and their terms 'n conditions as a PDF to sign. Didn't like the liability clause which put all liability on me. So went to their website and copied the liability clause in their contract with customers - which pretty well excluded all liability. Pasted it into the contract PDF and they never noticed.

Re: The feedback problem

All those comments make perfect sense and you could look at the results of machine translation where the same issues occur. MT engines feeding on stuff they've translated themselves (reinforcing flaws), output being quite good but with major errors which are sometimes not readily apparent, etc.

It might also be similar to supposedly self-driving cars: the better they get, the more difficult it is for the operator to stay alert and correct them where necessary.

Yes, I now I'm an old f..rt.

Re: Keys

"As you can tell by the reference to the Selectric, we have been married a while."

Lovely piece of engineering!

Re: Oh, right.

"... it amuses me now to hear the likes of Tim Martin of JD Wetherspoons pleading for special treatment now that the reduction of labour in the hospitality industry caused by Brexit means that he can't get enough staff."

The staff shortages could be solved by raising wages in the hospitality sector. After all, one of the arguments in favour of Brexit was that it would reduce the supply of cheap labour from Eastern Europe, leading to an increase in wages for the native workforce. So it is a little surprising that Mr Martin now complains about an outcome of a policy he actively promoted.

"Or maybe they're just looking to bork, totally, the financial/insurance system?'

That's already started. I used to have my Professional Indemnity insurance through MFL, a broker in Manchester. Due to the loss of passporting they can no longer help me so I'm now sending a couple of hundred euros every year to a broker here in the Netherlands. Such a great way to support British businesses :(

Re: EU Commision <> EU Parliament

"The Parliament is a bunch of self-elected ..."

I don't get that. The European Parliament is directly elected by European citizens.

The fact that you get that wrong makes it a bit difficult to take the rest of your argument seriously. Or is this simply a typo and did you mean to say something different?

Re: Flashing leds on PDP-11

"Worse are people who refer to plugs as "plug tops" no its a plug not just the top."

Don't worry, you've come to the right place. We feel your pain, we understand.

Re: Sometimes though....

A decade or two ago they decided to do a soil pollution survey at an oil refinery, by taking samples with a drilling rig. The rig operator discussed where to drill with the maintenance team, they selected locations without underground services and issued him a digging permit.

Before starting work the rig operator decided to test his kit by drilling a hole in the car park - going straight through the rather thick power cable for the refinery boundary fence. Oops!

Re: Music industry all over again

"The music industry would have a little more of my sympathy if the actual creators were seeing a larger piece of that pie."

Which is why I get most of my music from bandcamp.com The have a wide range of stuff, also classical and contemporary classical. You can download in a range of formats, including FLAC, and you can download your purchases again later if you need them on another PC or something.

Re: There is no UK vaccine booking website

The article states:

"The booking page, aimed at English NHS patients wanting to book ..."

I don't think it refers to "UK booking site".

"right to dump electric scooters wherever they want on pavements"

Different pavement. As far as HE is concerned pavement is what cars drive on. You are referring to what highway engineers call the 'footway'.

"Clearly, you've never driven in Boston."

The original one, in the Parts of Holland (now Lincolnshire), or the new one, in Massachusetts?

Re: This topic should be mandatory reading for ALL developers

"Serif's Affinity team has a great one going"

Yup, and good, reasonably priced software too.

Now if only they developed a similarly priced alternative to Lightroom/Capture one.

Re: Great quote

"Protestant Germany"

Ermmm, not sure if that's correct. I _think_ that in Germany the cultures of the North and South, and religious allegiance, are quite different. Pretty sure the Catholic thing is still very significant in the South. But I stand ready to be corrected.

Re: Seriously?

"Where we got lucky was that the local biomedical community got together and presented the govt. with a fait accompli comprising the basics of a vaccination programme."

What might also help is that the UK has a national health service (actually, four of them). In many other countries (such as NL where I currently live) the health service is a network of much smaller, independent organisations - perhaps not the best structure to deal with something that requires coordination on all fronts.

Re: NHS England <> "The UK's National Health Service"

"... and the other nation's MPs still vote on devolved English issues."

Ah, the West Lothian Question.

This has largely been solved, I think, by the introduction of EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) in 2015:

https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/english-votes-for-english-law-evel/

I quote:

"The EVEL process is designed to ensure that legislation that affects only England, or England and Wales, is approved by a majority of MPs representing English constituencies, or English and Welsh constituencies."

Re: My dad had a Moskvich....

"The Russian tank needed a new wing bolting on and was good to go."

A few years after you I had a similar experience: a Beamer hit my Austin Maxi (I know it wasn't universally loved, but served me v well). Did a lot more damage to the prestige motor than it did to mine :)

Re: Automotive qualified parts take a long to time

"If new_part_cost <= (old_part_cost - 50p) then bite supplier's arm off."

No!

I used to have a steel industry customer which made very, very basic parts for a motor manufacturer. When they had quality problems, their customer didn't replace them - qualifying a new supplier for even these basic parts (which you could make in your shed) would have taken a year or so. Instead, they sent a team to the supplier to help them iron out their quality issues.

True, the automotive industry is very price sensitive, quality and reliability of supply are just as important.

Re: What's so controversial?

"diesel buses"

Here in The Hague, NL they changed over to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses a few years ago to reduce emissions. I've noticed they're also rather quieter, can no longer hear them coming around the corner like I used to in the past. And there are some electric buses. All seem to be working rather well. (And a tram system, but that's only appropriate for larger cities.)