Posts by anothercynic

Re: What a complete shock!

You know, that was *exactly* my thought when I heard about this via the RAS... "Skynet is here".

I mean, if it overrides the Asimov Principles (the 3 Laws of Robotics) of "thou shalt not kill a human" because "my prime directive is to kill X, and if you try and stop me, I'll kill you instead", yeah... that's Skynet behaviour...

Re: optional?

Legroom has changed for the worse in cattle class, absolutely.

But if anything, the seat width has generally been 17" - 18" for decades (although the armrests have slimmed down a lot). The 707 (and later the 737) was designed for 6-abreast, the DC-8 for 5-abreast configuration. The 747 was designed for 10 abreast and wider seats. The 777, with a wider fuselage than the 747, was designed for 10 abreast. The 787 has a narrower fuselage than the 777 and makes it 9 abreast. The 787 is, despite the wider seats compared to the 777, one of the most uncomfortable planes (despite the lower cabin altitude) on the planet.

The A380 sits square on either side of the 777 with its two decks. The main deck was designed for 10 abreast, the upper for 8. At least on the A380 you should have wider seats; that was its primary selling point! It's certainly a lot more comfortable in economy than either the 787 or the 777. The A350 is narrower than the 777 but wider than the 787.

In my opinion, the legroom (the seat pitch) is a much bigger indicator of comfort than width, but for those adults who have slightly gone to seed, having the arm rest dig into your waist certainly does irritate.

You've clearly not been to several European and UK airports recently. LHR has had full body scanners for *years* (even pre-COVID), ditto for Amsterdam, Frankfurt (in some zones), Hamburg and Munich.

The only airline on the planet effectively charging by weight is Samoa Airways, and ultimately it's no-one else's business but the airline's what you weigh. Given this information is for ANZ's internal use (with no staff being able to see what an individual's weight is), the whole 'handled in a sensitive manner' argument is void :-)

There are *some* airlines (like Austrian) who will weigh your cabin baggage (and tag it as heavy if it's over their limit), but even that is not consistently done.

Re: Good.

The FAA has updated their 'average' human weight too, and I recall Thompson Airways (or was that Thomas Cook or Tui) who made a significant mistake in their calculations a while back that had an effect on their plane.

That ANZ is doing this is good, particularly given that their flights are primarily over the Pacific, and knowing you have sufficient fuel on board is pretty imperative. :-)

Well said. The difference is that Russia still have an aerospace industry, albeit in some ways still stuck in a time several decades ago, but in others absolutely right there. With the Sukhoi Superjet, the Russians are making a lot of progress replacing the Western components. They don't have a choice; the sanctions force them to.

The Chinese will have to play catch-up, but they will do so fairly fast, because they know they won't have that much time before the screws will be tightened some more. The amount of industrial espionage in the aerospace business has ramped up a lot in recent years for no doubt this reason.

Re: Europe ? Why ?

Usually I'll tell Brexiteers to stop being dicks, but seriously Pascal, you take the cake! Stop being one. You're not doing yourself favours.

The piece didn't say "The EU's biggest city council", so this isn't about politics. It's about numbers and size. And the last time *I* checked, Pascal, the UK is a country on several islands off the coast of... guess what! EUROPE. It is still, as much as you won't like it (and many Brexiteers don't either), a PART. OF. EUROPE. AS. A. CONTINENT.

So, yes, it is entirely ok to be referencing Birmingham's size in relation to its *gasp* geographical neighbours. Get it? Geographical? See? No politics? Just geography, you know, the study of land?

And it's not about the size of ERP disasters, or the number of ERP disasters. It's about the size of the local authority, in terms of population.

So, kindly, Pascal, stop being one.

Re: So what is the right answer?

Ahem, that's what the Cabinet Office *tried* to do with gov.uk! They tried to get systems rationalised, more cost effective and more flexible. And every little fiefdom kicked up an almighty stink and refused to play along. I know a few people from the Cabinet Office who were there for the early years and they said it was extremely difficult to persuade some mandarins to move with the times, while it was dead easy with others. Trying to persuade departments like HMRC, DEFRA etc to work better together by looking at their processes to see if there were things that people in different departments did the same and that could be shared somehow was like trying to get an oil tanker to turn on a dime (well, we've seen how well *that* works with the Evergiven, which, granted, is not an oil tanker, but you get the gist).

So yes, government (whether national or local) suffer from the same malaise of trying to break through decades of gathered cruft (or institutional memory) to improve things, make things better, and free up funds for delivering services, rather than being swallowed up by inefficient processes.

Re: ...but....

Funny you should be slagging off the 747 given that Stratolaunch, the people who recently lobbed a test vehicle from their Roc plane (you know, this one), bought Cosmic Girl (said Virgin Orbit 747). I wonder why that would be? Possibly because they *don't* consider it 'worthwhile 10 to 15 years ago', and instead consider it to be a viable platform for their business?

It had 3 failed launches in a row that put the company on the brink of failure

The story of the Falcon 1 was fascinating to read. Elmo, for all his crazy stuff he pulls these days, deserves credit for going up against ULA and NASA and persuading the USAF that he was serious. Ironically, that's where Gwynne Shotwell comes in with her smooth talking!

Virgin Orbit and Virgin Galactic (the latter is the one of WhiteKnight fame) are two different companies, both founded and funded partially by the Beardy One.

Virgin Galactic are the successful ones who got Scaled Composites to build their big carrier plane (and Stratolaunch, the late Paul Allen's effort, copied the concept with its huge plane that recently launched their first test article that was covered here), and their SpaceShipTwo 'space planes'.

Virgin Orbit were trying to replicate (and improve on) the concept that NorthropGrumman (through Orbital Sciences) revolutionised, i.e. launching a rocket from a mobile platform. After all, if you can avoid having to make your rocket work its way through 13 kilometers of the densest atmosphere (which costs a lot in fuel), then you're already improving your chances. Unfortunately, just like SpaceX in its *very* early days with Falcon 1, Orbit got screwed by an equipment failure (in Orbit's case it was a fuel filter that messed things up). There just wasn't enough money to try again, and the funders weren't willing to stump up more.

SpaceX on the other hand was lucky in that Elmo stumped up the dosh for three launches, and his boffins managed to eke out four (as mentioned by mishak above), with the fourth being the perfect launch that convinced people that SpaceX wasn't a millionaire playtoy like some others. Orbit didn't get that far.

Sure, that would be sensible, but that requires startup capital, which is a different bucket to operational budget. The accountants won't like it. And you maybe end up with something like USS, which all universities have a stake in, and yet which then shaft their pension holders with dodgy valuations. And you know how well that plays out.

Well, they (the councils) are expected to deliver value for money by their constituents, so any penny counts (especially if it comes to keeping their pension management costs down). But this breach widening and catching more and more organisations out means that Capita cannot be trusted and should a) lose all the contracts, and b) be fined to yazoo (without being able to recover the costs from the councils through charges). Oh, and paying for fraud monitoring for *every* member of the public impacted, that would be nice too.

It's time that organisations like Capita learn that you. do. not. fuck. with. personal. data. without. consequences!!

Re: We do have rights

They can't defend it, when three of the biggest perpetrators (USA, China, Russia) sit on the UN Security Council to veto anything that prevents them from doing what they want to do.

Re: It's the humans that are insecure here

Irrelevant of what happened... the data was (possibly) exfiltrated. According to the USS press release to its members, Crapita has told USS to consider the data exfiltrated until specifically told otherwise, and to warn all their members that are affected of this.

Of course, no offer to pay for fraud monitoring (should exfiltration have occurred) has been forthcoming from Crapita.

Because those running USS are idiots?

I don't like Elmo much either, but dear God, breathe. In, hold, out, in, hold, out. Breathe.