Posts by OldTimer1955

Re: "E-Mail is a TEXT medium"

"I'm of the school that considers HTML email to be a security hazard".

Well, yes - because it is.

I've worked with a major email server software company for many years on data integration applications - and although that software does all sort of whizzy things, because that is what the market has demanded, corporately we only ever use Plain Text.

HTML emails are stripped back to Plain Text before receipt (by the client) and any that don't have a Plain Text counterpart are treated as toxic and are opened using rubber gloves and a pair of tongs.

Re: Ticket less entry

Print the name on the ticket as a previous poster said. Simples. And you can put someone else's name on - just like you can for an air ticket. Named ticket plus id* (or the threat of random verification) gets you in.

I'd much rather go down a RyanAir path of being charged to make a change than suffer the online ticket scalpers.

* http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/06/feature_when_you_can_be_id_checked_in_uk/

Re: Doctor stories

A champagne flute? At least it wasn't a coupe.

Re: How about ....

It was suggested to me that for low and slow drones a fishing rod and line with a small weight (rather than a hook) is sufficient: cast and entangle. Sort of like a walking stick in the spokes.

Re: Get a life times 4

Ah, yes - the Lithium Iron battery.

iirc that is what is/was used to provide backup power in submarines. Long life, high cycle capacity and reluctance to burst into flames.

Seems ideal for off-grid storage, so why is it not more popular?

Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

"Except if you make parking free then all the parking spaces will be filled all the time by people parking all day..."

This canard is flown every time. It is nonsense. You don't let people park all day, you still time limit the parking, you just don't make them pay for it. ....numberplate recognition... in answer to the next question.

"Cars are horribly inefficient ways of getting lots of people into a small area."

No they are not. They are a very efficient way of moving a dispersed population into and out of a small area. We have run the experiment in real time. No more efficient method exists.

Town planners have to accept that people prefer (now need) to use their car to get from home to 'the shops'. Once they are in their car they can either go to the big box on the outskirts and park for free, or go to the town centre and pay through the nose to park. People are not perverse taken as a whole. If public transport was efficient it would be used, but it is systemically impossible to have efficient public transport with a dispersed population.