Posts by GettinSadda

Checkout is OK, delivery is not!

Why is it I keep going back to e-Buyer?

Well, OK this time it's because with the £10 Google Checkout discount my latest order was much cheaper.

But, what really gets under my skin so much that I am tempted to add e-Buyer to my router's black-list is what they do with delivery.

OK, so I live in Northern Scotland and that's "miles away" so is it my fault?

Well, whenever I try and order something from them I get really excited about all the options that are "in stock" and "available for Next Day delivery". Yay!!

I put them in my basket and select "Next Day" - everything is going well.

Then I press "Checkout" and... "Your chosen shipping method is not available for this address. We have selected a suitable alternative"

It seems that because I am so far away it will take a minimum of 3 working days to get to me rather than 1 to places a little further south. But I guess that's what I get for living up here...

Hang on though... e-Buyer are based in Howden in Yorkshire which is about the same distance from me as Dabs in Bolton, who don't have any problems getting stuff to me "Next Day". Even Screwfix never had problems when they were based in Yeovil (almost twice as far away).

But OK, maybe e-Buyer just don't have couriers that can manage the trip that fast. Sad and annoying, but I guess I have to live with it.

Um, no... hang on again. When I track my order on e-Buyer's website, and on the courier's site, it turns out that every time I am forced to use the "3 Working Day" delivery option the goods are not dispatched immediately to a snail-slow courier, they sit in the warehouse for 2 days, and are dispatched the afternoon before delivery!

So the courier is actually doing a next day delivery (and there is often a "Next Day" sticker on the package when it arrives!) but for some reason e-Buyer would rather the goods spend 2 days sitting on their shelves gathering dust.

Do they hate Scots or is there some marginally logical reason for this?

My fridge made me ill...

It's not just WiFi...

I had a new fridge delivered last week and ever since I have been coughing and sneezing!

It is obviously a potent effect because the guy who delivered the fridge was sneezing as well (he even sneezed on me!)

I think that it is obvious that these new fridges are giving out alien death rays to try and kill us all.

Unless someone can prove 100% that this is not the case we should write to our MPs and demand that fridges are banned!!

I even discovered that my childrens' school have one of these evil devices!!!

DIDN'T ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!

We have to mobilise now!!! Smash the fridges!!! And freezer's... there just bigger colder fridges.. smash them too!!! Argh... my cooker just went beep.. smash it... Oh my God look at the Microwave... oh, no, not the microwave I need my toasty hot microwave chips.... hang on... toast? Argh the toaster....

I think I need to go and lie down for a bit

(4,000kWh * 19% * 2) ?

I'm sorry, but you can't just pluck figures out of the air if you are criticising someone else's calculations. What are your sources for these dodgy figures?

Compare with this...

* An average house could be expected to light maybe an average of 4 rooms all evening (and morning through the winter)

* Say an average of 60W per room (some will be higher, some will be less, some will even use low-energy bulbs!)

* Assuming an average of 3 hours lighting required in the evenings and 1 in the morning throughout the year, so 4 hours per day.

So, using some "plucked from the air, but specified" figures:

Each house required ~ (4 * 60 * 4 * 365)Wh per year for lighting = 350.4KWh.

To reach your lower figure of £60 saving per year the council would have to be paying nearly as much as we are per unit! £60/(2 * 350.4) = 8.56p

I don't object in priniple, but...

I don't object in principle to road pricing - it could do much of what it says on the tin, but...

There are a number of issues that would need to be sorted, and some may not be fixable!

A few items are:

* Assuming that this will be sat-nav based, how do you stop someone simply blocking or jamming the receiver to get free miles?

* If this device is going to work to stop congestion it is no good just charging drivers more to use certain roads at certain times - the drivers need to be informed of the costs and given the choice (otherwise everyone will drive the same way and pay more!). I imagine a scenario where you program your destination into the box and are offered several routes with estimated durations and costs. But what if you just want to nip down to the shops, or out for a drive? Does the box warn you at junctions that "The road to the left is high cost"? If not, how do you avoid using the routes that this system is designed to relieve?

* If there are two roads very close, say in a built up area with poor sat coverage, how can I be sure that when I take a cheap road the box will not charge me for the nearby expensive one?

* I assume that there will be a record of the routes I am being charged for, so I can challenge a huge bill, but how will privacy be maintained? If I tell my wife I have to work on Saturday, but am actually at the match will she be able to find out? What if the wife of a violent husband drives to an advice centre to find out how to safely leave him - will he find out? What if I happen to park near a terrorist's house several times in the run up to an atrocity like 7/7 - am I going to be shipped to Guantanamo "just in case"?

* What about foreign cars? Surely they can't have to have a box fitted just to drive over here. If they don't need them I can see myself popping over to France to buy a French registered car...

We know a lot about human language

"This assumes that human "understanding" is anything more than brute-force statistical extrapolation. I'll grant that what we do naturally may be an order of magnitude more complex that what we're currently able to program computers to do, but we don't know enough about how our own brains work to say that we don't work on similar principles."

Wrong I'm afraid - we know far more about the way the brain understands language that most people think! Try reading "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker and you will see that it has been proved that the human brain has a set of clever rules that are used for building and understanding language. Sure, there is stuff that we don't know, but its amazing how much is known!

Some pacemakers will kill if they malfunction...

The majority of pace makers just regulate the speed of the heart, but not all. Some are designed so that they take over all control and the heart has to be deliberately damaged to stop it beating on its own during installation.

If one of the majority type goes wrong the heart will beat out of rhythm or at the wrong speed, but the patient will be ok and once the device is back to normal the patient will recover.

If one of the full-function type pacemakers stops, so does the heart so I would give the patient a low chance of surviving.

Nevertheless, I would tend to doubt the methodology of the test as I suspect that the EMI protection on a pacemaker would be pretty good!

I wish I was in control of my DVDs!

I am really getting fed up with the annoying things that modern DVDs do - so much so that I am buying and renting less these days and just wait until a film is shown on TV (then record it myself!)

I am even starting to wonder if it is worth buying some of the better quality pirate copies instead of the official ones.

What is it that I find so grating?

Firstly many of my newer DVDs demand that I enter my country or language first (which is odd because I had to program the DVD player to also know what language I prefer). And being in the UK it is always the last item that needs selecting on page 2 or 3 (or sometimes even 4 or 5!).

Next I have to sit through a 2 or 3 minute lecture on those nasty pirates and how I mustn't buy DVDs from them. Generally you can't skip these and they seem to be trying to stop you fast-forwarding them too.

Then you get anything up to 10 trailers for other DVDs, even if you already own them, and I swear each DVD I buy has more trailers than the last! Even if you are allowed to skip or fast-forward these that sometimes only gets you to the start of the next trailer.

When you get to the actual menu you then have to sit and watch all the best bits of the film (in many cases totally ruining the plot as key bits are often given away) before it becomes clear which bit you need to select to start the film.

Come back VHS, all is forgiven!

Simple Solution

Surely they just need to program a mobile phone to set off the bomb after having no signal for 30 seconds or so - then when the jamming signal starts (or comes in range) the countdown starts also...

But I wouldn't fancy being the one to turn it on unless I was really sure the signal was good!

Windows is just easier!

I have yet to find something that is easier under Linux than Windows - which is a pity because I so want to jump ship from Microsoft!

As an example I run a number of Virtual Machines for software debugging. Below are the steps to install the VMWare tools package on Windows and Ubuntu Linux (the most user friendly one I have found).

Windows:

Select Install VMTools, Hit Install, then Next and Finish. If the PC needs rebooting the installer will do it for you.

Ubuntu:

[First check that you have a full build environment set up] Select Install VMTools, open the CD that now gets mounted, unzip the archive file onto the hard drive, open a terminal window, login as root, move to the unzipped directory, run the install perl script, select the default answer to all the questions, wait while the tools compile, when you are told the location of the new tools, open System>Preferences>Sessions and click Add, locate the tools, Manually restart your X-session. Every time you log in from now on, minimize DON'T close the tools window.

Note: Also, when I recently update Ubuntu to version 7.04 the installer wiped the drive and installed from scratch with no option to perform an upgrade. The last time I remember Windows doing this was probably 3.1

Looks like I won't be buying another Dell

My Dell laptop is due for replacement, and I was considering another Dell.

I think I will try elsewhere!

What's wrong with my numberplate?

Strangely enough, several systems seem to have difficulty with my number plate - it is:

SN06 PRQ;drop database

Eek!!

Living under the proper flight-path from Aberdeen to Shetland I can tell you that it is a nice safe route over flat terrain.

If you deviate to any significant degree to the west then you do find some lovely picturesque terrain - mountains!

What was he thinking?!

"Lets see now... I'm flying fairly low as its a short trip and I have decided to fly through cloud to an area that I know to contain lots of lovely mountains... that's funny, why is the warning system telling me to pull up?"

Gotta hope you don't have CCTV in France

Or you could be in big trouble if there is a fight within its field of view!

Ever tried cutting open a living human with a "pointless" knife?

I am sure that surgeons would have difficulty if all knives with pointed ends were banned!

Shurely Shum Mishtake?

So, let me get this right...

A country, known to have nuclear weapons, is using the Eurovision Song Contest to complain about the danger of another country, known not currently to have nuclear weapons, wiping everyone out with their atomic bombs?

What is the world coming to?