Posts by Dodgy Geezer 1773 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007
...Obviously Boeing need to think again about Li-Ion, they are clearly unsafe for aircraft....
I use LiPo batteries for model boats and aircraft. They are well understood to be dangerous by the modelling community, and usually charged in protective containers to minimise the impact of fire or explosion.
But laptop manufacturers were crying out for a new battery technology, and so the world was disinclined to do too many safety studies when they came out...
...Now lets see you do it in a storm, with wet decks, and the boat bobbing up and down in a strong swell....
Do you really think that a robot won't beat a human hands down on a complex moving situation with gusting wind and shifting target? That's the kind of calculation they are built for...
Why do people think that the politicians (of any country) are behind this? Or in charge of it?
I'm old enough to remember the late 60s/early 70s, when the UK Security Service were effectively out of control. They do the things that they want, and what they want is a big spying empire. The politicians just mutely agree - if they didn't, the Security Service have the entire set of politicians secrets in their databases, ready for leaking...
I don't know what you could try to stop this. Perhaps bringing back capital punishment for spying would help...
...Going 100 rounds over that allocation is comparable to stopping in a yellow box zone at a junction; yes, it’s illegal, but the harm is negligible....
You appear to be living in the 1950s, when a policeman on the ground was actually interested in maintaining law and order in his local area, and might interpret the law according to an outdated set of standards derived from the Empire, of upright dealing and fair play.
Dixon died in the 1970s. Now we are ruled by a bureaucratic set of thought police, whose primary aims are, in order:
1 - avoiding doing any real work
2 - covering up any mistakes they make, up to and including causing deaths
3 - arresting innocent people when the press pressure them to do so
4 - vindictively attacking anyone who exposes any of this....
...propulsion advances average out to about eg 2% gain in max speed per 30 years it could take us centuries (or longer) to feel it's worth sending anything into deep space which increases the amount of time we have to survive together in one place without blowing ourselves up...
You can pick any figure you like to be an 'average'. But progress usually proceeds in jumps as new technologies get invented.
For instance, an average shows us gradually learning to fly from about 1800-2000. But in fact we did the base theoretical work from 1800-1850, developed the first practical machines around 1900, had a huge technology jump between 1930-1950, and have been refining things ever since...
...And what was done with the massive windfall that came with the revenue from NSO tax revenues?...
As I recall, Thatcher got our National Debt down to around £17bn, what with the oil and associated boom. Even though there were few votes in it.
The Debt's now £1.2tn.
Anyone with any sense would spend a lot of that money on getting us out of this horrendous debt. But I don't suppose they will. No votes in it, you see....
....Massive campaign of media lies ought to do it, says prof...
Um...politics as usual for the beginning of the 21st century, then?
Downing Street has amongst its teams a 'Behaviour Modification Unit', who are tasked with thinking up novel ways to get us proles behaving the way politicians decide that we ought to behave.
And no one seems to be complaining about that as a fundamental idea at all. I despair of humanity, I really do...
Coat, then I'm leaving this planet...
...Interestingly enough, that's more or less identical to what happened under the Catholic (not just Spanish!) Inquisition. Or, of course, the Protestant dispensations of places like Salem and many others....
Or Walsingham's fitting up of Catholics under Good Queen Bess in the late 1500s,
Or the denunciations to the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution in the 1790s,
Or the Okhrana's way of supporting the Czar during the 1800s - who simply morphed into the VCheka in 1917...
This is hardly news. It's the way humans end up operating if you give them these sorts of tasks and then say that, because of secrecy, you will allow no outside audit of their activities. But that the THREAT has always got to be there, otherwise their funding will be cut...
...Erm, you obviously didn't pay attention to the timeline involved in the end of the cold war and now. I was military during the cold war and through its end long enough to know the difference...
Oh, I was paying very close attention to the politics inside the UK security apparatus during the early 90's, because of my job. But I wouldn't exactly have called myself 'military'...
...The *reality* is, DENOUCEMENT is the key. Denounce thy neighbor and get along OK or better....
Reasonably well presented by the BBC's 'A Lesson from History', I think. The lesson is:
Denounce your neighbour FIRST - before he does it to you....
...Now maybe NSA can get some better examples, but is suspect that their methodology only works after the perps are already known....
This is all a giant budget-justifying exercise after the loss of the Russians as major justifiers of funding when the Cold War ended.
For those of you who seem poorly informed, a typical Security Service MO follows this path...
1 - pick up someone a little dodgy in a Muslim area by asking the local police for names - perhaps get them picked up for a minor crime.
2 - 'persuade' them to act as an 'agent'. Forgetting the charge is very helpful here.
3 - get them to report on anyone they know who is discussing terrorism. This will, of course, pick up all sorts of people, including people that the agent lied about in order to have something to write down.
4 - bug their phones and watch them. This is where the justification for GCHQ and PRISM comes from. Depending on what people say when they're drunk, you can soon have lots of low-grade evidence that there is a terrorist threat of any level you want.
5 - If you need an arrest, get your agent to encourage some of the stupidest hot-heads to think that they could be Jihadis. Provide them with some incriminating literature. Suggest that you can find a bomb for them to put under a bridge...
6 - After delivering a dummy bomb/lots of castor oil seeds/WHY, arrest them in a dawn raid with armed police and full press coverage. Charge them with being a sleeper cell for Al-Queda and have them locked up forever.
7 - start again by bugging their friend's phones. Some of their friends should be really pissed off, and might well be encouraged to be the next on your list...
1 - This was Microsoft commissioned. And Microsoft seem to have influenced the tests at a technical level. The test report specifically states:
a) ...We purchased 10 computers specified by Microsoft...
b) ...At the request of Microsoft we set the Javascript timer frequency to 'conserve power' in the Windows Power options....
One wonders why Microsoft were so anxious for THOSE computers to be used...?
2 - There is NO indication that the tests actually measured like-for-like. For instance, Chrome might actually be doing more work in caching and preparing the web site for better presentation than IE - which would naturally result in a slightly increased power draw.
3 - I use Opera, so I don't need to get involved in silly prick-measuring contests :)
"...If you want to keep the tap running, be my guest,most of the UK won't run out of water soon. Especially not if it's just your little pipe that's leaking a bit. (Compared to most industrial users, even at full blast, your home tap uses a TINY amount of water)..."
This statement betrays a complete lack of knowledge of the water cycle, and resources generally.
The UK won't EVER 'run out of water'. Even if everyone turns on their taps full blast all the time. It might run out of storage and processing capacity if people did that, but the water isn't lost and will be there to be re-used again and again.
Thinking that resources such as energy will somehow 'run out' and that we must cut back on usage is a green fallacy, intended to get us to de-industrialise. What we need to do is consider what resources we need, how to provide them most cheaply and effectively, and how to mitigate any downsides of that provision. What we must NOT do is pretend that using resources is evil, and we must give it up, or cut back on them for no apparent reason and punish those who do use them...
Yes, lets cut that awful CO2!
After all, our great enemies the plants breath it in. They already have hardly enough. If we can completely eradicate it they will all die!
Ah, but there is a problem. The total human output of CO2 is rather small compared to that of microbes and insects. In fact, together, they put out about 100 times more than we do. Never mind - kill all the microbes and insects as well....
And yes, those attacks include Bitcoin mining – although The Register presumes you'd need a lot of televisions to get anywhere..
Not many items out there - it's not worth attacking.
But wait until ALL TVs are smart, and then you'll see the attacks.
PS - I use the OPERA browser for the above reason...
...Group differences were tested using analysis of covariance, with partial η2 as effect size measure. A priori contrasts were tested using α = 0.01 to correct for multiple testing; for all other tests we used α = 0.05, two tailed....
Modern data collection and processing systems using spreadsheets allow you to compute any complex statistical function you like at the touch of a button. Work that used to take skilled mathematicians weeks can now be done instantly.
Worse, you can also alter various parameters slightly and repeat the calculation - many times, until you get the best set of numbers to support your argument. This is probably what the η2 and α figures are: I suspect that the results would have been much weaker if different parameters were used.
The impact of this trick can lie anywhere between justifiable technical disagreement between statisticians, and downright fraud. It is extensively used in 'Climate Science' to maintain the fiction that earlier temperature variation was pretty flat, and that therefore the temperature rise from 1980-2000 was very unusual....
... The Panzers complained long and hard that the real reason they lost in Africa was because (a) the Luftwaffe fighters did not provide good enough cover against Allied air attacks, and (b) because the Luftwaffe's own air attacks on the advancing Allies were all too often intercepted because the Luftwaffe did not have a fast enough light bomber....
The Africa campaign was almost entirely a battle of logistics and intelligence - with both sides at the end of a long supply chain.
In the beginning the Germans had considerable success with intercepting US liaison officers reports - the US were not at war at that point, but talked to the Brits and then radioed off reports with poor security - as did the Brits, initially. But then the Brits wound up Ultra and used their wide Air Force/Navy reach to take out most of the German supply route. End result - Rommel unable to fight for lack of fuel....
If you were flying a Tempest V, with 2,500 HP of Sabre engine up front and a decent wing section without compressibility problems, interception speeds from behind weren't that much of an issue. Given that the V1 was a very small target, engaging from behind with matched speeds offered the best chance of a hit.
Flying through the explosion wasn't too bad either - much of the debris went sideways. One point of interest - as you went through the pressure bubble caused by the detonation your aircraft encountered marked variations in gas density, including a partial vacuum. With the torque from the 4-bladed prop, and no air to bite on, the aircraft would often emerge from the fireball upside down....
...I doubt they would sell a fully working one...
I see no reason why not. The internals are fairly simple items anyway, which could easily be reproduced nowadays.
Of course, it depends on what you mean by 'fully working'. They would not sell one fueled up, with a functioning warhead. And damage may have occurred to the items during the elapsed years - for instance, any battery inside would be long past its best. But I don't suppose they intentionally broke all the fins off the turbo pumps and drilled holes in the fuel tanks.
Costing work on trains is pointless, but there MUST be advantages in better rail links which can be evaluated.
Producing a more comfortable and convenient journey must be worth something. Also, once a journey drops below a critical time, you get many extra people taking advantage of it.
I'm not saying that these figures would justify the HS2. But they would at least be useful.
I understand that the real reason for HS2 anyway is that it was ordered by the EU. So we have to do it - we have no option. Might as well face facts...
...saying the combination of clever software and a startup mentality were needed to kickstart an electric car industry.
Actually, the Electric Car industry is doing just great.
Set up a company, gather massive subsidies from taxpayers, pay yourself a healthy wage and pension pot as director, run it a few years and then go bankrupt when the subsidy people start looking for a return.
What's not to like? Post-modern commerce!
... Many studies suggest that if people with Alzheimer's are surrounded by the trappings of their youth - interior decor, music etc* - they are happier and less likely to be confused, so replicating the familiar 'Hello operator, please connect me to...' experience of their youth is a good idea.
*There is a elderly care home /community in Holland, I believe, with an entire street set out as it might have been several decades ago. The shops are real, but with products and layouts reminiscent of the 1950s,..
So, when we're old, we'll be provided with cramped apartments strewn with empty beer-cans and X-Boxes....?
...imagine terrorists and pedos working in conjunction. we need to do something before this happens....
If anything cried out for a 'Won't somebody think of the children! this is it...
Terrorists and Pedos, eh? How about Terrorists VERSUS Pedos? Terrorist Ninjas Vs Pedo Pirates? I think we have a film title here somewhere. Or at least an internet meme....
...Surely it would be better to increase the numbers of MI5 officers who would then be able to maintain surveillance on "persons of interest", rather than decide happily to monitor the entire electronic spectrum (exaggerating for effect) on the off-chance of finding something? ...
They don't want that. And they really don't have a great interest in monitoring everyone in the UK either. What would be the point?
Basically, what they want is to be able to do anything they like, without any barriers, checks or controls. The easiest way to achieve this is to put through a law saying that they can snoop on anyone, and then there is no need to produce a reason every time they want to snoop on a person they think might be dodgy.
After that law, they'll want a law saying that they can pick up and hold anyone they want without charge... Oh, sorry - I forgot - they already did that....
So long as you have done nothing wrong, or don't look as if you're going to do anything wrong, or don't get accidentally confused with someone who might possibly be looking as if they might do something wrong, you are quite safe....
(N.B.) The words 'Something Wrong' are generally defined to mean anything that a person in authority thinks should be stopped from happening...
...Wouldn't surprise me if the spooks let a few known terrorists run loose to help them revive the fear and demand more powers. 7/7 did after all happen many years ago, the plebs need to be scared again....
That was near enough what was done with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. They were wars with no specific achievable aim in mind, but they DID stir up a lot of bad feeling in the Middle East. And bad feeling in the Middle East is ALWAYS good for the intelligence and military budgets...
Remember that the Berlin Wall had come down ten years earlier, and the Cold War had finished. That was VERY BAD for said budgets and career paths. They were frantic for a reason to continue to exist, and really needed a 'single really powerful enemy' - as anyone who watches James Bond films knows. That's why all these occasional random attacks by various groups or individuals pissed off by what is happening in the Middle East are 'really coordinated by the shadowy master-minds of Al-Qaeda'...
...The chances of being killed by a terrorist or other nutter is substantially less than that of being killed by a police car * - are we terrified of police cars? Do we call for them all to be locked up?...
These are, at least, mostly accidents - though few policeman ever get done for 'due care and attention'..
Of more interest is the total number of police-related deaths: 121 for last year alone. The greatest number of these (62, or about 50%) are deaths in or after police custody - many related to police 'restraint', tasering or incapacitant spray. The next largest number (32, or about 25%) is of 'suicides in custody'. RTAs are about 15% of the total...
http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/Documents/research_stats/Deaths_Report2011-12.PDF gives more data
...Seemingly the horsemeat ice-cream or other products would be ideal as a dietary supplement for those needing "specialised protein products", such as "sick people, the elderly and athletes"....
Why does it only seem 'ideal' as a supplement for people who may not have much choice about what they are given to eat? They could have added baby food....
I am looking for EU funding to make a nutritious gruel out of mud, to be served at orphanages...
Umm...this was mentioned two posts (about 3 hours) ago....
But it bears repeating. A few known sceptical scientists who did not believe in AGW have been found to have their papers included in the 97%.
Apparently the categories worked by counting ANY mention of AGW as explicitly supporting it, unless this was followed by outright rejection of ANY human influence at all. From Cook's own methodology:
..."To be classified as rejecting, an article had to clearly and explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false or, as happened in a few cases, that some other process better explains the observed warming. Articles that merely claimed to have found some discrepancy, some minor flaw, some reason for doubt, I did not classify as rejecting global warming. Articles about methods, paleoclimatology, mitigation, adaptation, and effects at least implicitly accept human-caused global warming and were usually obvious from the title alone....
So, unless you wrote a paper saying "ALL AGW is completely wrong", you were counted as supporting it. A paper that said: "This basic aspect of AGW is disproven" would count as supporting it....
Rik Myslewski should be ashamed of himself. It was his job to ensure that the story was a valid one, and not a propaganda scam. It would be nice to have his excuses in these comments....
...*Which makes you seem amazingly smug...
Yes, that is correct. I am. That is an unfortunate by-product of knowing everything... :)
...You see I was asking whether there's a site that helps people analyse this data, without bias. I'm not exactly sure where to start, and it would be helpful methinks to have somewhere that tries to sort it out without having its own agenda, apologies for wishing we could have some sort of scientific neutrality in the hope of maybe getting the reasonable truth or giving people the tools to help make some sense of it all....
This is a highly politicised subject. You really will NOT get one site which everyone agrees is balanced. Your best bet is to read one side, then the other, and decide for yourself who you think is telling the truth. Be prepared for brickbats along the way. I have provided a start for you, but I didn't hear any thanks...
...that's obviously why I am asking questions you muppet.
I want to be Statler or Waldorf.....
P.S - there IS a site which provides temperature data. It's Wood for Trees The data collections themselves may be biased, but this gives you a look at the raw data. No need to thank me again, your effusive protestations are just too embarrassing....
Some interesting news just coming out at Popular Technology.
Apparently the lad who runs that blog was surprised at the findings of this paper, so he emailed a couple of scientists whose papers had been categorised as supporting AGW, but whom he thought opposed it.
Sure enough, they both emailed back to say that their papers did NOT support AGW theory. Both papers were pointing out an error in the AGW hypothesis, but because they mentioned the hypothesis and said that 'this bit is wrong', they were counted as 'endorsing it 50%'
Link is HERE
I suggest that this news renders your attempt to justify Cook's bit of propaganda rather pointless....
...I do believe that we should work to lower carbon emmisions, and we should work towards more carbon neutral or greener forms of energy production where capable. But this is simply for a health point of view...
Why? Lower CO2 emissions are nothing to do with health!
I would be with you if you said that we must stop emitting chemicals which are provably shown to cause damage. I think that it is likely that, other things being equal, we should work towards lowering emissions of chemicals which are alien to the local environment and might cause unwanted side effects, even if these are not fully understood yet.
But our biosphere runs a major CO2 cycle. Just like the Water cycle. It's not an alien chemical, it's totally benign and, in fact essential for life. Put a bit more into the environment - the plants eat a bit more. Nobody is claiming that we should cut back on water vapour - CO2 is similar. It's only the activists who are trying to make CO2 into some kind of poison gas...
...I think you mis-understand how science works. I know quite a few climate scientists and every one of them would love to be able to prove that Global Warming isn't happening, why? Well, when you publish that paper, with definitive proof, you're made for life...
You may be 'made for life', but you'll be out of a job!
Of course, there ARE a number of climate scientists busily publishing papers showing that Global Warming theory has major holes in it. Lewis has just put a piece up advertising three of them. But they don't seem to be 'made for life'.
And the Cook piece about 97% of scientists supporting AGW? Popular Technology blog has two of those scientists pointing out that their papers were classified as supporting AGW when in fact they were pointing out big errors in it.
So I'm not sure I believe you when you say the Climate Scientists really want to disprove AGW. It rather looks as if any disproof of AGW will simply not be accepted....
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