Posts by Cynic_999

Re: @ Warm Braw

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But the main argument against flying cars is still the one that just stares you in the face at every commute : the people.

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Any practical system of flying cars for daily use would pretty much require such cars to be fully automatic and navigated under central computer control (with failsafes) in order to manage the complex 3D navigational chess game. Automatic piloting is far easier to achieve with a flying vehicle than a ground vehicle because in the air there are no unexpected obstructions (apart from relatively small objects that need not present a danger). At least 3 X redundancy of all critical systems together with the vehicle refusing to take off should all systems not be functional could be part of the design, making the risk of serious accidents low enough to be perfectly acceptable.

The main thing preventing such vehicles is that the technolgy allowing the design of a something that has a sufficiently long range and/or sufficiently short refueling time to be practical is not yet available.

It would certainly have a huge number of advantages - most roads would no longer be needed, saving a huge cost to the country's infrastructure.

Re: These kind of ideas go back a long way

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Working from home? My experience is that employers start off enthusiastic, but after a while they start to get twitchy and demand bums on seats unless there's a cast-iron reason for WFH.

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That's because in so many cases employees start off honestly putting in the same work as they did from the office, but gradually the time spent on non-work related activities increasingly encroaches into the work-related stuff until the decline in productivity becomes significant.

Re: We have the technology

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Large cities COULD however take steps to actually promote things like bicycles which can greatly reduce the intra-city traffic load.

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Excellent solution - except for those of us who like to arrive warm and dry at their destination most of the time.

Re: late capitalists

The reason that cosmetics are/were tested on animals is that we humans tend to value our own safety & comfort way, way above that of almost any other living thing. An attitude that is in my opinion perfectly reasonable. It's just the point at which you decide that the benefit to humans is worth risking the life of the animals that is open for debate.

Treating the lives of everything as being equally important would be absurd. You'd dare not even move for fear of treading on an innocent ant.

Many people believe that the benefit of having safe cosmetics is not worth the risk of animal testing. There are far fewer people who believe that the benefit of having safe medicines is not worth the risk of testing on animals. Fewer still who believe that the benefit of travelling above walking pace is not worth the annual death toll to the thousands of animals that get run over on our roads each year.

Re: CheckMate

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In my view it is a privilege to be able to own a business, run it and make money.

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While running a business carries different responsibilities, risks and rewards than other roles, I don't agree that it is any more a priviledge than being an employee - or even a parent.

Re: Lifestyle change

You are perfectly safe flying down a narrow blind valley in a helicopter. It's the fixed-wing pilot who has to hope it's the correct valley and the runway at the bottom is serviceable and he judges the approch adequately.

If the helicopter pilot suddely realised he cannot land, he can slow sufficiently (to a high hover if necessary), do a 180 degree turn and fly back out. The fixed wingpilot cannot either slow down nor has the space to turn around.

Although flying in a valley is *extremely* disorienting because you have a false horizon all around and so cannot determine the aircraft's attitude visually.

As for landing on an area "about a foot wider than the skids" - that's no more an issue than parking your car in a space that's about a foot wider than its wheelbase. Absolutely trivial for any qualified pilot. I regularly landed a helicopter on a trailer that was barely wider than the skids. In fact it's easier than parking a car because you can move the helicopter in any direction. If you misjudge laterally, you cannot move a car sideways!

Re: Lifestyle change

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... they have a wider autorotation envelope in case of engine loss ...

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Completely wrong I'm afraid. The rate of rotor decay increases with the inertia of the rotor so bigger is better, but decreases with the drag of the rotor, so lighter is better. Therefore there is no general rule, though bigger helicopters IME have a slower rotor decay when it all goes quiet.

A pilot in a small two-seat Robinson (R22) has about 1.6 seconds to lower the collective in the event of an engine failure before the rotor speed decays so much that it becomes irrecoverable. The pilot of the larger (but otherwise similar) 4-seat R44 has 4 seconds to react - more than twice as long.

I am not a commercial pilot, but I do have a PPL(H)

Re: Lifestyle change

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never been in a helicopter thank goodness

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As has been observed before, helicopters don't really fly. They beat the air into submission.

Re: Ah, degaussing

Erm - your organs are not affected in the slightest by magnetic fields. Do you realize how strong the magnetic field is that you are subjected to when undergoing an MRI scan? (And no, unlike the X-Ray or CAT room, nobody wears a lead apron in the MRI room).

I'm guessing that the same person who got you to wear the lead apron also sent you to stores and told you to ask for a "long weight".

Re: Erasing hard-drives...

I suspect that battery acid would be more effective than bleach ...

Re: Arbitrary law is reappearing

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Suppose you are an MI5 agent and are told to infiltrate, say, a drugs gang. You aren't going to get very far if you keep on refusing to have anything to do with illegal drugs.

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All well and good, but what's the limit? Heres your point slightly changed ...

Suppose you are an MI5 agent and are told to infiltrate, say, a terrorist gang. You aren't going to get very far if you keep on refusing to have anything to do with bombing crowded shopping centres.

Re: Oops

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usually turning it off means its not set for current measurement dosent it?

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Unless it is a mechanical meter, in which case there is no "off" position.

Re: Oops

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I only vaporized the multimeter probes when I did the same when the leads were set for current instead of voltage.

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Don't try using that meter for measuring current - it will probably also have vapourised the internal shunt resistor. Which tend to melt long before the protection fuse does.

Re: Cheques still relevant... at leastt for someone

I've not even owned a cheque-book for over a decade. If I was asked to pay by cheque it would be a significant inconvenience.

Re: A very stupid thing to do.......

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That's what separates us from bad people.

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Everyone has a breaking point as to how much bad treatment they will put up with before taking revenge. The "good" people just have a higher threshold than the "bad" people.

Re: All so plausible

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Yeah, Royal Mail, when all I had to do was put letters in boxes.

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After extracting any £50 notes you found inside birthday cards???

Re: Good

Maybe he was the person who set up the printer account for the very purpose of providing him with a "back door" if needed? He certainly must have known about it, otherwise he would not have known to use it.

Re: Your lessons are an argument for legal reform of a different kind

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Would you want a sex offender convicted of a minor assault years earlier to be employed in your kid's school because the conviction was spent?

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I would say that a person convicted for, say, groping a woman while drunk in a single's bar presents no more risk to your kid than any other random male. Probably less in fact, because he would be all too aware of the consequences of "crossing boundaries".

Re: Wow, looks like Oracle and ICANN could find some board material here.

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This is what I don't understand about the criminal justice system. Once a verdict is reached then by definition surely either the prosecution or the defence witnesses must have been lying?

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See my previous post. The vast majority of untruths are not lies, they are mistaken beliefs. Also, whilst a court's verdict is taken as being unquestionably correct for all legal purposes, in reality the courts fairly regularly get it wrong.

When the Guilford 4 were found guilty (when they were later proven to be innocent), were the judge and jury lying?

Re: Wow, looks like Oracle and ICANN could find some board material here.

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Presumably about 50% of all people at trials. One side says 'innocent', the other says 'guilty', and they can't both be right.'

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Two points:

1) Saying something that is later shown to be untrue does not make you a liar. It is far more likely that you were simply mistaken. If you phone your wife and say, "I'll be home in 30 minutes," but an unexpected traffic jam makes you an hour late, it does not make what you told her a lie. To be a lie you must say something that you *know at the time* is untrue. This is why Boris Johnson did *not* necessarily lie to the queen (not that I particularly like the man, but he should not be unjustly accused of something he did not do).

2) A plea of "Not guilty" in a criminal court is a legal statement that basically means, "I demand that the prosecution prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that I am guilty." It does *not* mean, (as many people believe it does), that the defendent is officially stating that they are innocent. Thus you cannot be charged with perjury over your "not guilty" plea.

Re: Good for them & the judge

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To claim malicious prosecution don't you have to have:-

A) Won the case and; ...

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Well yes - but having a conviction overturned on appeal (which no doubt will now happen to those convicted) should (I should think BICBW), amount to the same thing.

Re: Good for them & the judge

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This is not a malicious prosecution. A malicious prosecution is simplistically when you take out a lot of spurious cases just to force the target to expend resources defending them.

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You appear to be referring to what is known as "Vexatious litigation" (which refers to civil cases) rather than "malicious prosecution" (which applies only to criminal cases).

Malicious prosecution takes place when a criminal prosecution is instigated by a person or persons who know that there are no reasonable grounds for bringing such a case. Essentially, someone is charged with an offence by a person or body that knows that the accused is (most probably) innocent.

Re: Good for them & the judge

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... litigation costs appear to be swallowing most of the compensation ...

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That should not be the case. All costs are usually paid by the losing side, so the winning side should recoup every penny it has spent on its legal costs.

Re: Ooooh first post....

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... and courts ( who are supposed to have access to competent IT opinions) ...

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It is the lawyers (on both sides of a case) who are responsible for seeking and bringing as witnesses experts who then advise the court. If the lawyers do not provide such expert witnesses, then the court, through no fault of its own, will not have access to competant IT opinions.

Unfortunately expert witnesses are very expensive, and legal aid will often no agree to pay, so defendents are often unable to provide the court with their opinion (and the CPS lawyers would obviously not want to present a witness who will almost certainly serve only to weaken their case).

Re: Ooooh first post....

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Um. I take it that you remember that the news reported that rape cases were being chucked out because the CPS didn't disclose relevant evidence disproving their cases not too long ago?

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Erm - ITYWF that the reason the CPS did not disclose the relevant evidence was in most cases because the police had not informed them that it existed. I'm afraid that the police still routinely cherry-pick and exaggerate evidence (especially when persuading a magistrate to grant a search warrant), only now instead of only misleading the court, it serves to mislead the CPS lawyers as well.