Posts by Vic1375 posts • joined Friday 7th December 2007 12:34 GMT
> That's a really smart idea, I wonder if they'll patent it
No.
There's prior art - Jaguar won a safety award back in 2006 for exactly this idea.
See, for example, this page for info.
Vic.
> 2000 is from the NT line, I didn't dispute that
You said : "it was a different development tree which started to join 9x (or more accurately replace 9x) at XP" - and that's simply wrong. It was Win2K which was intended to replace the 9x series. ME was purely for the hold-outs.
> aimed at the professional market
Not so. 2K was the fusion point - that's why they renamed it to 2k at the last minute. It had been NT5 up until then (and remained so under the covers).
> so whats your point?
My point is that they moved consumers onto the NT line at win2K, not WinXP as you asserted. IOW, they did pretty much what you bemoan their not doing...
Vic.
> Am I the only one that didnt mind the Aero interface?!?
I thought it was pointless, but I don't *mind* it - I'm just not really interested in it.
But binning it now seems ... odd.
Vic.
> real 'em in boys, real 'em in
What an incredible metaphysical allusion.
I suspect "reel" would probably have been the better word in this case, though...
Vic.
> WHMCS Security Question: "When was the War of 1812 fought?"
That's actually a very good security question - with the answer being something along the lines of "three squirrels and a lemon"
Vic.
> The whole Win95/98/ME train wreck could have been avoided
I disagree. Ignoring ME (which should have been avoided at any cost), 95 and 98 did the task they were designed to do, and did it adequately.
NT4, on the other hand, caused more consternation than any previous version of Windows - perhaps more than any other version ever. It was OK if you had an IT department to look after the rollout; moving the general public to NT4 would have been disastrous for Microsoft as a company.
> I ran the full version at the time, on a rig that was not cutting edge.
As did I. But note that we are hardly the typical "home user" that Microsoft was trying to entice.
> In fact, the games writers soon adapted when they had to.
IIRC, it was more Microsoft's moves to enable direct(ish) hardware access that made gaming possible. NT was originally built with the "brilliant" idea to trap all graphics memory accesses and re-write to a window canvas. This immediately gave you windowing capability for any application - it didn't need to be written in a window-aware manner - but at the cost of being *really* slow. The assorted DirectX APIs allowed you to get around that.
Vic.
> The kernel will however report that it is at the 2.6.39 level, but ignore that.
What? Is this true? Have they patched the kernel to mis-report its version?
Madness.
The whole point of version numbers is to know what you've got. Bodging the code to lie about its version is just going to end in tears.
Vic.
> started to join 9x (or more accurately replace 9x) at XP
Nope. Win2K was from the NT tree. It even announced intself as NT 5.0.
> They should have canned 9x and built upon NT4 long ago
They did.
Vic.
> http://cairoshell.github.com/
Looks quite a lot like Gnome2...
Vic.
> the phone charges up a 10kV 10uF cap and dumps it onto the external connections
They did that in "Tomorrow Never Dies".
Vic.
> why should English speakers change from the centuries-old usage of "Persian Gulf"?
Because we were forced to change from the centuries-old usage of "Persia"?
Vic.
> Or, how about this for a DIY low pressure switch ?
Here's a variant of that idea that might not need so much setup:
Put a condom in a plastic tube. Put a microswitch (or similar) at the end.
Seal the end of the condom.
As the pressure drops, the condom grows. By correctly calibrating the amount of gas in the condom / length of the tube, a firing pressure will be attained.
Make sure to debounce the switch heavily...
Vic.
> A friend had his insurance claim refused (third party fire & theft) after his car was stolen
Yeah, you'll notice I said that insurance companies are prohibited from avoiding *third-party* claims. I said nothing about theft.
Your friend made a claim against his own insurance because of theft. This is not a third-party claim.
Vic.
> the only time the EDS/HP board listen to an idea is when it comes
> from someone they are paying to come up with ideas
This is entirely normal. There is a class of people who can only value things - items or ideas - according to the price tag. For reasons I cannot explain, an enormous amount of management seems to consist of these people.
Years ago, I had a real problem getting people to take my ideas seriously. I had many opportunities to do the "I told you so" thing later[1], but that didn't stop the project going pear-shaped in the meantime.
My solution was simple: I doubled my price. And all of a sudden, my suggestions were adopted.,
Vic.
[1] I learnt very early on that actually *taking* such opportunities is a bad idea.
> The anecdote of an anonymous interneteer versus the official IAM line.
Well, I'm going to chime in to support the anonymous interneteer; some (not all) of the IAM branches I've seen do exactly as he says.
Vic.
> They know how to follow a process
> They have very little ego problems
You've clearly never met any of my ex-girlfriends.
Vic.
> at least give them a black-line demarcation that makes a moderate degree of sense.
And that's exactly the inability to understand speed I was talking about. No such black-line demarcation can possibly make sense, beause hazard is inherently a probability function, relying on many other variables as well as speed.
By convincing the population that 29mph === very safe and 31mph === very dangerous, we are making a huge mistake. The amount of sleep the driver had the night before is likely to be far more significant than a few mph. Ditto the state of his personal relationships, his job, ...
What we need to do is to get people to take responsibility for their own actions, not give them trite little "rules" which bear little or no relation to reality.
> perhaps you also might rather I limited my speed to mitigate any potential damage?
No. I'd rather you be regularly assessed for competence to drive, and I'd rather you be held personally responsible for any damage you cause.
I disagree with mandatory sentencing, but I would like to see an *expectation* that any driver hitting a pedestrian or cyclist will do jail time.
Vic.
> most insurance companies will use No MOT as a get out on their policies
Insurance companies are legally prohibited from using such issues to refuse third-party claims. They must pay if the claim is proven.
They will, however, attempt to recover such losses from the driver.
Vic.
> Do accidents happen because of behaviour that can be reasonably
> assumed or expected to occur
Almost always, yes.
The problem is that so many road users simply don't put enough effort into working out what can be expected to occur.
Once again, I'm going to plug "Roadcraft". If you haven't read it yet - you should. It's cheap, and it *will* save you at least one accident. And make you feel very inadequate[1].
Vic.
[1] Strangely, it also made me much faster. Although I no longer drive or ride at the same top speed as I used to, the observational skills I learnt from the course mean that my average speed is quite a bit higher.
> Speed ... is easily understood
Actually, I don't think that's true.
By far the majority of the people I meet do not understand a square law relationship. They cannot see that a car at 40mph has approximately twice the energy of a car at 30mph.
But more importanbtly, IMO, a vast number of people cannot see that safety is not a black-line demarcation; it is categorically *not* true that $limit-$delta is safe, whereas $limit+$delta is dangerous.
So although speed does need to be considered when deciding if someone is driving safely, there are many other factors[1] which seem to be overlooked once an observer has decided to focus on speed...
Vic.
[1] Many of these are probably far more important than speed when it comes to the probability of having an accident[2]. Tiredness is the most commonly-ignored factor IMO - and it is arguably as dangerous as alcohol.
[2] Note that I am considering the chances of having an accident, not the aftermath of having had one. It is obviously the case that more energy is likely to lead to more damage. But I would rather people looked at ways to avoid accidents, rather than just mitigate the damage. I would much rather be missed by a car doing 40 than hit by one doing 30.
> When was the last time your insurance even held steady, let alone went down? I
Mine went down this week (renewal was yesterday).
It helps that I hadn't had a car for some years, so last year, I had no NCD. This year I have a year.
My insurer from last year still put the premium up, though, and didn't bother sending me a renewal notice - just told me over the phone that they were about to charge my card anyway., The bastards shouldn't even have had the number. Grrr.
So being pissed off with that company, I went looking. One quote that beat my renewal by £80 was - exactly the same company. Bastards.
I ended up going with someone else, for a lower premium, and a lower excess. I saved over £100, and got a better deal all round...
Vic.
> it is intentional
Yes.
When the traffic industry says "managed", don't take that to mean "does something I consider useful".
Traffic management is about affecting driver behaviour. The actual intent might be different to what you or I would consider sane. That intent might or might not actually do some good somewhere.
Vic.
> Southampton, a city with such bad traffic management
Much of the traffic industry sees Southampton's management as *good*.
Quite a bit of the industry is around Soutrhampton/Fareham, so we get trials...
But the Bitterne Road junction is world-famous - traffic engineers around the globe know of it, even if they don't know which country Bitterne is in. Shame the whole design[1] went pear-shaped the minute they deregulated the buses...
Vic.
[1] The plan was to stop people buying the cheaper housing on the East side of the river, then driving in and out of the city every day,. So there is a complex set of junctions between Athelstan Road/Bullar Road and Bursledon Road that make driving private cars harder if you venture off the main road, but prioritises buses (top bit of Bitterne Road, Garfield Road). The idea was to make public transport *much* more viable than private. And then they deregulated the buses, so it isn't.
> nice habit of turning red on the main road, to allow side traffic to join
You want to try living in France.
Some parts of the road network still use the "priorite a droite" law, which means that slow traffic joining from minor roads has right of way over traffic already on the main road.
Other parts of the road network do not use this rule.
Vic.
> taping a couple of neodymium magnets to the frame or pedals.
I wouldn't bother with that.
The sensor loop is a parallel tuned circuit - you've got a big coil of wire in the road, and a capacitor across it. The whole is driven by an oscillator - you've got a high-Q filter, so when in tune, there is negligible current flowing.
When something metal passes over the loop, the circuit loses tune, so current starts flowing. This is a very sensitive detector.
Over time, the components and road environment age, and you'll get some drift in the tuning. I did read about an idea to allow the loop driver to auto-tune, but I've no idea if that ever made it into production - it's a long time since I've done anything in this field.
Vic.
> I'm sure some can
When properly set up, they all can. It's part of the design spec.
Some of them are not properly tuned, and so the discrimination is not as tight as it should be.
Vic.
> I've seen bicycle specific sensors
Standard vehicle sensor loops are supposed to be sensitive enough to pick up bicycles.
I know of one in Southampton that is clearly out of tune, because it doesn't detect my bike.
Vic.
> What this guy is proposing is a city-wide model
Existing traffic systems have been using a city-wide model for decades.
He *might* have come up with a clever new algorithm. He probably hasn't - most such "innvoations" have a fundamental flaw that has been overcome many times[1]. But what he has *not* done is to create something entirely new - a city-wide, flow-modelled control system with feedback loops of varying sizes is in existence in most major cities around the world, and has been for a very long time.
Vic.
[1] My favourite is the single signal head: every year, some educator uses his influence to get in front of the bods at one of the big traffic companies to show off his latest protege's idea. This idea will inevitably be a signal head with a single lens, and a multi-coloured illuminator behind it. This used to be separate bulbs and a bit of optics, now it's assuredly LED. He will go through all the supposed benefits of simplified maintenance etc. Eventually, one of the audience will crack, and utter that fateful observation "red-green colour blind"...
> But how do you fix Bushey Arches?
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Vic.
> If that is the case, why did they teach the Green Cross Code?
Because being right doesn't help much when you're dead.
> pedestrians only have right of way when crossing a side street and you are
> turning into said side street
Rule 206 of the Highway Code says differently. RTA probably has a section to make that enforceable, but I can't be arsed to check right now.
Vic.
> they had those black rubber bars across the road
The black rubber tubes are actually a census point. They are connected to a box chained to a pole somewhere close, and are used for gathering information about road use for planning purposes - they can determine class of vehicle, speed, wheelbase, etc.
But you're right that VA junctions are old news - only the sensors are predominantly buried into the road.
Vic.
> Using sensors to measure variables like the amount of traffic already in
> a road section, how quickly it is moving, and how long to the next change
> of lights, Dr Helbing’s approach is designed to respond to unexpected events.
Traffic systems have been doing that for decades.
If you look at an approach to a set of lights, there will generally be two sensors embedded in the road - either a diamond or a rhombus shape, depending on which manufacturer put them in. There may also be IR sensors on top of the signal heads.
Each junction has its own local controller, and is also networked to all the others in the area.
I've not been near the traffic industry for about 15 years, but all this was established technology when I was doing it...
Vic.
> then there is their other name :Doners
They're kebabs?
Vic.
> The trouble with motorcyclists is that the the menaces are in a majority.
This is not true.
Sadly, many car drivers feel the need to "educate" motorcyclists, despite not actually knowing what thay are talking about...
Vic.
> I think that was my point.
So why are you telling me to do my research when what I posted was entirely factually correct? Are you that desperate to pick an argument?
Vic.
> That is silly
Yes. That was the purpose of my post - to demonstrate that it was a crazy position and a good part of the reason that Sony's venture into 1394 went nowhere. Well done for getting that.
> Best to ignore that and carry on
It's much easier to ignore it when you're not in danger of getting fired for doing so.
> Same socket anyway
That would be because it is the same interface, as I mentioned in my initial post...
Vic.
> Do a little research
Do your own research.
Just because someone built a monowheel does not mean that they are useful. They fundamentally cannot brake hard., as just a few minutes' reading or thinking would dsemonstrate.
It's possible to build a 1200cc unicycle. That doesn't make it a practical vehicle.
Vic.
> It all sounds to me like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
Not so.
It's arguing that the pin manufacturer needs to buy a licence to put a head on that pin... :-(
Vic.
> I found out that 1394 = Firewire = iLink
Yes, of course it is.
The point I was making is that Sony would not allow me to tell anyone that. We had to pretend that i.Link was some uber-proprietary interface that only Sony had.
And that is why Sony got nowhere with that strategy.
Vic.
> some smug arse having to chip in about the healthiness of the activity.
I'd interpreted it as some smug arse poking fun at the availability of the Raspberry Pi...
Vic.
[Still waiting eagerly for a board...]
> The youth is already trying to avoid having to have a car.
Not round here, they're not...
Vic.
I downloaded the Android app mentioned in the article.
It requires a full-time Internet connection. Which I'm unlikely to have when outside[1].
Without a connection, it just throws up an error box until you reconnect.
So I uninstalled it.
Vic.
[1] I'm on a very cheap PAYG tarriff, which means having a net connection costs money.
> They insist on introducing proprietary formats
Actually, much of the time, the formats are not proprietary. It;s just the name...
Years ago, there was an article on ZDnet (IIRC). The author was making a fuss about Sony having introduced yet another compression format called i.Link.
i.Link wasn't a compressor. It was a data link. I was permitted by corprat to write a reply to the article explaining that - but I was *not* permitted, under penalty of $unspecified, even to hint at the fact that this magical i.Link was simply 1394...
Nobody bought i.Link because they were scared of being locked into a proprietary standard.
Vic.
> more like a W-turn
Strange attractor?
Vic.
> Nice interview Lewis ;-)
Which programme?
I'll go snaffle it from iplayer...
Vic.
> in which Cabinet minster's skull is the Coalition brain cell residing today?
Bzzzt. Assumes facts[1] not in evidence.
Vic.
[1] And brain cells.
> My last camera was in the bad CCD period, but deck was playing up
I've got a camera in my workshop. A customer left it with me, as it was BERed by Sony.
It's a Mavica camera with quite a nice lens on it. It writes images to 3-in CDs.
Well, this camera had stopped writing to the CD. It kept failing, which was of no use to anyone. My customer took it to the local camera shop, who sent it back to Sony for testing.
Sony said that they tested it thoroughly, and the drive was knackered. A new drive was £600. I shit you not. The camera was written off, and a replacement (not a Sony) purchased.
I put a decent-quality CD in the drive, and it's yet to fail on anything...
Vic.
> Mr Garrison of South Park invented the vehicle you are thinking of
Actually, they were a real invention dating from the second half of the 19th century. People really thought they could work. People were wrong...
Vic.
> And those 2 things are really not that bad.
Yeah, they are...
> Sony make great products
Sony *used to* make great products. When I joined, the kudos was simply fantastic. I was proud to be associated with the Sony quality.
During my time there, the pennies were ever-more pinched. In the end, the kit we were shipping was at best just the same as everyone else's, but with a higher price tag. At worst, there were serious difficulties with what went to market.
Vic.
