Posts by CliveS 149 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Oct 2015
nVidia are socialists now?! Caring about your existing customer base is good business, not chuffing socialism. It's easier to keep an existing customer happy than to keep trying to find new ones. But you do you with your tinfoil, socialism, and other strange habits. Trump supporter perhaps? Or left pond libertarian?
The 2011 referendum was on electoral reform, swapping First Past The Post (FPTP) with Alternative Vote (AV). Neither system could in any way be considered a form of Proportional Representation. In fact, had the 2015 General Election been held under AV rather than FPTP, the result would have been less proportional.
"shame it's the democrats that are the war mongers".
Well history doesn't really support that assertion. You can ignore the War of 1812, as neither Republican nor Democrat parties existed. The Mexican-American War was pushed by the Democrats and opposed by the Whigs. While the Civil War was started by the Confederates (primarily Democrat), the Northern Democrats opposed secession, so looking for a partisan political cause won't wash. Spanish-American War was supported by Republican senators, but opposed by Republican President McKinley. WW1 and WW2 were nonpartisan in both House and Senate. Korea involvement was also nonpartisan. As for Vietnam, against both House and Senate gave almost unanimous support. Democrat LBJ was in favour, and Republican Barry Goldwater wanted to nuke the North Vietnamese. Gulf War was Republican. Afghanistan was non-partisan. Invasion of Iraq was predominantly supported by Republicans, with some Democrat opposition. So effectively 2-1 to the Republicans.
So on the 10th November, John Penrose MP, husband of Dido Harding was told to self-isolate. Yet Dido was only informed by her app 5 days after she was in contact with someone (14 days self isolation, 9 days left when notified). So presumably hubby wasn't the contact. Good illustration of how weak "her" system is, that she can wander around for 5 days as a potential "spreader".
The Shinkansen has experienced one earthquake-related accident. In 2004, in Niigata Prefecture, a Series 200 Shinkansen suffered a derailment of 8 out of the 10 carriages comprising the train. The train was pretty damn close to the epicenter, but the emergency systems functioned as intended. No injuries or deaths, though the train itself was scrapped as a consequence.
"The British, much thanks to the US and Doolittle, could fuel their spitfires with higher octane fuels, yielding higher power rates than available to the Germans."
The RAF had been researching 100 octane fuel since 1935, with trials commencing in 1937 (3 Squadrons; Nos. 90, 98 and 201). In March 1939 it was decided that 16 fighter squadrons would receive 100 octane fuel, and that a reserve of 250 million gallons would be required. By 1940 the RAF didn't have that volume of reserves, but it had sufficient. And the fuel came from not only the USA, but also Trinidad, Aruba and Abadan along with the plant at Stanlow. If you're going to mention Doolittle, then don't forget Eugene Houdry or Harry Ricardo, both of whom were far more important than Doolittle. As for the Germans, they had GM-1 and MW-50 as performance booster for their engines.
"Better for both parties, unless you're a mercantilist and believes that imports are a necessary evil rather than a good thing."
On balance, Japan gets more that it wanted over-and-above its agreement with the EU. 2 gains for the UK are in terms of cumulation and rules of origin, making British exports to Japan that have a lot of EU parts in them count as goods originating from the U.K.; and allows the U.K. to apply for up to 70 geographical indications (GIs) on special products instead of the current 7. There is some potential in the financial licensing and investment elements, though detail there is sadly lacking.
On the flip side of the cumulation and rules of origin benefit, the UK is reliant on the outcome of negotiations with the EU to determine the impact on UK exports to the EU containing a significant volume of Japanese components. And that area has a knock on impact on the ability of Japanese car and rail firms in the UK to export to the EU, which is important given that 54.8% of UK manufactured cars built for export are exported to the EU (compared with 3.2% to Japan). Looking at exporting trains, the UK sits a long way behind China, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Our biggest railway related exports are in tracks, signals and fixing.
Fundamentally though, the deal is pretty much as we had before we left the EU. And is small in value. It's an independent trade deal - for which we should be thankful - but anyone trying to big up its significance (other than the symbolic) is being disingenuous.
And no, I'm not a mercantilist , just a realist.
"However that doesn't negate the fact that this is a better deal with Japan than the EU managed."
Better for Japan, as it includes the elements on digital services and products that it wanted including in its deal with the EU. It's worth about 0.07% of UK GDP, so financially and economically insignificant. And there are areas where the absence of a UK-EU deal would have a detrimental effect on trade with Japan. What is important is that it effectively retains the status quo that Anglo-Japanese trade had under the EU-Japan deal. It potentially aids in our signing up to the CPTPP in the longer term, though our government's cavalier approach to negotiations as evidence by the Internal Markets Act may make signing up more difficult, our "trustworthiness" appearing suspect.
I'd leave TSR2 off the list. It wasn't just politics which killed it - though the forced merger of aircraft companies to create British Aircraft Corporation didn't help - defence procurement and an inability of the MoD to define its role and stick to that definition didn't help. Neither did issues with brittleness in the initial choice of alloy to be used in the airframe. There's an excellent book on the subject, available online
https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/research/RAF-Historical-Society-Journals/Journal-17B-TSR2-with-Hindsight.pdf
CLdN have direct sailings between Rotterdam and Dublin on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, with return legs on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Zeebrugge to Dublin direct sails Tuesday and Friday, with returns Friday and Sunday.
Other routes include Cork - Santander, Cork - Roscoff, Rosslare - Roscoff, Rosslare - Cherbourg, Dublin - Santander, and Dublin - Cherbourg.
>You lost, get over it.
There should be an equivalent of Godwin's Law for any discussion that mentions UK standards. Something like "As a discussion of UK standards grows longer, the likelihood of a mention of Brexit and 'You lost, get over it', increases."
To which the only possible response is, "You won, own it". Icon for Brexit supporters who wilfully refuse to concede any downsides.
Dr_N> I'm guessing you don't cook or bake much if you're pulling up someone for using butter in a croissant.
I cook and bake a lot, including croissants (and other Viennoiseries ), but you obviously missed my point. If you're going to push a healthy eating range of foods, then maybe pick something that by its nature doesn't required significant quantities of fats. If you look at the nutritional information for his Deli range, there are only 6 items flagged "green" for fats out of 75 items in total, and 5 of those are fresh fruit (apples, green grapes, red grapes, pineapple chunks, and melon chunks). If you only look at saturated fats, only 22 are flagged "green", while 35 are flagged as "red". Salt content is predominantly "red" or "amber", and only on sugar does his Deli range score well with 50 items flagged "green". If the guy is going to criticise convenience food for being unhealthy then he should make sure his own range of what are most definitely convenience foods are healthy. Otherwise it is fair to brand him a hypocrite.
That'd be Jamie Oliver, noted hypocrite, whose Jamie Oliver Deli by Shell range of snacks includes a Croissant with 38g of fat ( a Macdonalds hamburger contains 8.5g) or a slice of carrot cake with 21g of sugar (a Macdonalds apple pie has 9.5g). He even does a BLT with more calories than a Big Mac ffs.
"BREXIT meant that WE decided that you guys need to start paying tax and not the pittance you did before thanks to your legal slight of hand."
Yeah, right. BREXIT means WE leave the EU which told us to reclaim illegal tax breaks that the British Government had given to multinationals since 2013 when the UK included an exemption for certain income of multinational groups active in the UK, the so-called “group financing exception” to the “controlled foreign company” rules.
> PHP MYSQL is so much more versatile than ASP or .NET,
Not a Windows fanboy, but would you care to justify that statement by giving an example of something that can be done in PHP and MySQL that can't be done using ASP.NET and SQL Server (or MySQL, as .NET can happily connect to a multitude of DBs)? Otherwise I'd have to say that what you think "versatile" means and what its actual meaning is are two different things.
> Exciting times. Something to raise a glass to on a Friday at beer o'clock.
Unless it has lost sufficient mass through Hawking radiation that it chooses to go "Boom!" around 17:30 on a Friday afternoon. It'd take a round or too for the wavefront to arrive, but all that local radiation incoming might really ruin my pint.
"The government has accidentally created that class of zero-rights employees: no holidays, no sick pay, no pension, no redundancy, no employment rights, whatsoever. We must stop that happening, either accidentally or deliberately."
Nothing accidental about it. It's the future of employment, where big companies off-shore or out-source, and smaller companies are relieved of the burden of providing employee benefits. A win-win for Tory backers. I'd like to be able to say that this is an unintended consequence - and based on typical Government competence that could be considered likely - but for once I suspect the only element of incompetence has been the delay in implementation.
When I used to run my own business our phone number was a single digit substitution away from a local "massage" parlour. We would (too) often get calls requesting details of services and prices we offered (those were the better calls), or how much for massage with happy ending, bare-back without, and other services not provided by a small software consultancy. I now know more about that line of "business" than I would like... (Gimp mask icon for obvious reasons)
Airbus might even get a rocket design going, under the principle of being the "low cost alternative".
Airbus owns 50% of ArianeGroup, and ArianeGroup has a 74% share holding in Arianespace. Airbus also has a further 4% direct share holding in Ariancespace, so I can't see Airbus getting directly involved in building launchers when they're currently doing it by proxy, and spreading the risk financially.
Until 1969, Post Office branches and the Royal Mail delivery service were part of the General Post Office, a Department of State. In 1969 it became the Post Office, a statutory corporation owned by the State. In 1986, Post Office Counters Ltd was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Post Office, still effectively owned by the State. While the Royal Mail was privatised in 2011, Post Office Ltd is still owned by UK Government Investments.
tldr; The Post Office is not a private company, but remains State-owned.
The word is "gullible" so quite understandable neither can spell "gulliable", given that "gulliable" only appears in the Urban Dictionary...
gulliable
adj. A failed attempt at gullible, which only servers to show the speaker's idiocy and failure to comprehend the complexities of the English language.
A: Did you know gulliable isn't in the dictionary?
S: It's not.
A: Yeah it is! Haha got you!
S: No, gullible is. You are just fucking stupid.
USS Tang, in October 1944, was sunk by one of its own torpedoes whilst attacking a Japanese convoy. A similar fate befell USS Tullibee in March 1944. The british WW2 cruiser, HMS Trinidad, managed to torpedo herself whilst on Arctic convoy duty in 1942. While that didn't sink her, a subsequent attack by German bombers included a hit where she was previously damaged, and that finished her off.
The XPT was derived from British Rail's HST, with downrated engines, uprated suspension and a reduced top speed. As I recall, there was only 1 XPT crash at a level crossing, the notorious crossing on the Olympic Highway at Gerogery in NSW. In the run up to he XPT crash there had been numerous other crashes at the crossing, which ws eventually replaced with an overbridge called "Five Mates Crossing" after the five lads in the car who died as a result of the XPT collision.
Please, re-read your own post before being so daft as to claim I *make* your point. I'll help you out:
"Engines are not trivially scalable, and in any case a jet engine can have problems in a ground vehicle due to the considerable centrifugal forces of the high speed turbines causing problems when cornering. Although those can be alleviated by mounting it vertically."
The "considerable" centrifugal forces obviously aren't, as none of the examples mentioned had a) any cornering issues, or b) turbines mounted vertically. Scalability isn't a problem either, as there are plenty of examples of gas turbine applications ranging from the micro-turbines used in the C-X75 through to the larger turbines used in the Rover JET1 and APT-E.
There is an issue, one you completely fail to mention, which is throttle response on gas turbine/mechanical drive systems. It was this that caused issues with the JET1 (for example). The Jaguar C-X75 didn't go in to production as the market for an £800,000 - £1,000,000 million niche supercar was considered non-existent in 2010, less than 2 years after the financial crash.
APT-E worked fine, with the gas turbines driving electrical generators, but was not adopted for production as Leyand stopped manufacture of the turbine it used. An additional concern was that BR have had to maintain a fleet of diesel, electric, and gas turbine powered rolling stock. The same issue that caused BR to eventually scrap diesel-hydraulic locomotives and instead use diesel-electric. In France SNCF operated the Turbotrains, two classes of turbine powered trains that were production models rather than one-off prototypes.
The issues around the widespread adoption of gas turbines comes down to infrastructure and economics. So yes, there were good reasons why none of the vehicles mentioned went in to production. However those reasons had absolutely nothing to do with the points you made.
In the UK, for railway use, I would draw your attention to British Rail 18000 and 18100, and to the APT-E, all gas turbine powered and the first completed in 1949. As regards road usage, I'd like to mention the Rover JET1 (1949), Fiat Turbina (1954), Chrysler Turbine Car (1963), Toyota GTV (1987) and Jaguar C-X75 (2010) as examples of gas turbine installations in practical cars.
There are variations of the quote attributed to John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Alan Shepherd,Gordon Cooper or Scott Carpenter. John Glenn was quoted as saying “My life depended on 150,000 pieces of equipment – each bought from the lowest bidder.” in a 1963 newspaper article, so I'm tempted to give him the credit.
>>If you specify fireproof materials and I fit expanded polystyrene foam tiles instead, who is to blame?
If only it were that simple, though from all I've read so far, the underlying cause was penny-pinching by KCTMO and lack of relevant competence by the architects.
The (unoccupied) ground floor was protected by Glass Reinforced Concrete panels which were fire proof to A1 standard, but which may well have required structural upgrades to the building if fitted. So Zinc cladding with fire-resistant core was specified, but KCTMO demanded a £300,000 cost saving, achieved by replacing with aluminium cladding with a Celotex RS5000 core. Emails released by Celotex include one from March 2015, Daniel Anketell-Jones, a technical manager at the cladding design company Harley, which said the aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding "will be gone rather quickly in a fire!" Another from fire consultants Exova, accepted the zinc cladding being considered at the time would fail if there were external flames. The response from the architects, E Studio, was that "metal cladding always burns and falls off". E studio had no experience of high rise cladding projects, but got the gig by accepting a tender of £99,000 which avoided the need for competitive tender.
August 1973 - Summerland, Douglas, Isle of Man - 50 dead - Clad with Oroglas flammable acrylic
April 1991 - Knowsley Heights, Huyton, Merseyside - No deaths - Reclad with flammable material
June 1999 - Garnock Court, Irvine - 1 death - Reclad with flammable material
July 2009 - Lakanhal House, Camberwell - 6 dead - Refurbished with flammable cladding
Grenfell Tower refurb architects unaware of fire safety advice for tall buildings, but were selected on basis of cost. Local building control rubber-stamped the design and specifications.
So more than 40 years of evidence that flammable cladding on tall buildings is a bad idea, yet ignorance and cutting corners resulted in loss of life. Seems comparable to a degree at least.
Blue Streak ended up as the first stage of the European Launcher Development Organisation's Europa rocket. ELDO eventually merged with European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) to form ESA, but not until after the UK had left ELDO. Europa in its various forms never had a successful launch. The UK,having left ELDO in 1969 was a founding member of ESA in 1975, signing the Convention in 1978. Post-Brexit the UK will remain a member of the ESA, the latter being separate from the EU.
>...some left pondian pressure...
The only Left Pondian involvement was an offer - prior to cancellation - from NASA to launch British payloads for free. An offer withdrawn after cancellation. It may have had an impact on the cancellation, but on the whole, I doubt it. Black Arrow's payload to orbit was insufficient for any communications satellites, and commercial applications at the time were virtually non-existent. The RAE had only one further payload planned after Prospero, so Black Arrow would never have had an economic launch cadence. And even buying launches using the US Scout rocket would have been cheaper. So the only justifications at the time were purely chauvinistic, for national pride. R0's failure was acceptable, but the subsequent R2 launch failure also added pressure to cancel. Industry was consulted and their feedback would inform the final decision.
It's worth tracking down the Penney Report (author William Penney was part of the Tube Alloys team, and leader of the British delegation to the Manhattan Project) which is very detailed and thorough. One of the things it recommends is to push forward supporting industry to develop an indigenous satellite design and manufacturing capability in preference to launcher development. It concludes that:
"The disappointing performance of Black Arrow launcher R2 in September 1970 was not due to poor project management, bad fundamental design, or low grade effort. We know we were taking a gamble in trying to make do with so few test launches, and the gamble went against us.
The cost of launching of the X3 satellite on the R3 vehicle is almost fully incurred, and the best policy would therefore be to launch X3 in July 1971 as planned. But in spite of all the work being done to follow up the R2 failure, we cannot be sure that the gamble will not go against us again on R3. The Ministry has neither the time nor the resources to build up greater confidence in Black Arrow before X3 is ready for launch.
It is probable that with the present launch rate of one Black Arrow a year, we will still not be fully confident of its reliability by 1974 when we are planning to launch X4, the second major technological satellite. Even if the Ministry agreed to fund an increase in the launch rate, only one or two extra Black Arrows could be built and launched by 1974.
There is a three-year gap between X3 and X4, but Black Arrows are being built at the rate of one a year. This mismatch between the production rates of launchers and worthwhile satellites may well continue beyond X4, and cannot easily be remedied by adjustments to the launcher programme which is already running at about the minimum level for efficiency.
The current programme gives us too few Black Arrow to establish the vehicle as a proven launcher in a reasonable timescale, and too many to meet our requirements for satellite launches. It is therefore not a viable programme at present, and there is no easy way out of the dilemma.
Black Arrow has no alternative use, and the nation would have much to gain and little to lose if it were cancelled in favour of American launchers. We would be abandoning a certain political independence and a guarantee of commercial security payments, but on these two points satisfactory safeguards should be available from the US authorities.
Unless a formal approach is made quickly to the inhabitants on the availability of Scouts and other launchers for our technological satellite programme, further commitments will have to be made on Black Arrow vehicles as an insurance move.
As soon as we are satisfied that we can get the launchers we need from the Americans on acceptable terms, the Black Arrow programme be brought to a close as soon as possible. However, the launching of X3 on the R3 vehicle should proceed, and there may be a need for a further launch if problems arise with X3/R3.
I therefore recommend that:
The Ministry should make a formal approach to the US authorities as soon as possible about the availability of launchers for X4 and subsequent satellites in the National Space Technology Programme, and terms on which they can be provided.
Commitments on R5 and subsequent Black Arrow vehicles should be kept the minimum possible level while the Americans are being approached, and all work on them should be stopped as soon as satisfactory arrangements have been made for the supply of US launchers.
The X3 satellite should be launched as planned on the R3 Black Arrow vehicle in July 1971; the R4 vehicle should be completed in all major respects and used as a reserve for R3 up to the launch. If X3 goes into orbit successfully and functions as planned, the Black Arrow launcher programme should be brought to a close without further launches.
If X3 fails to go into orbit successfully or fails to work in orbit, the Ministry will have to decide whether to bring the launcher programme to a close at that point or repeat the X3 experiments by launching the X3R on the R4 vehicle. Unless they are sure that the R4 vehicle has a better chance of success than the R3, and it is worth spending £1 million to repeat the satellite experiment, a further launch should not be sanctioned.
The X4 satellite should be launched on Scout; and Scout or Thor Deltas should be bought as necessary for later satellites in the series.
The Ministry should determine at a high level the views of British industry on the value of a technological satellite programme. If no such value can be identified the programme should be brought to a stop. If it is established that the programme is worthwhile, a plan should be drawn up for a series of future satellites so organised as to give the maximum benefit to British firms in their attempts to win contracts in the international market."
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