Posts by BeefEater 42 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jan 2010
In first school mine was measured at 169 by someone trained in the art.
And after a similar test at a job interview at time of graduation I was told that I was "obviously very intelligent" (*)
I just happened to be quite good at the type of puzzles those tests included.
(*) They also said that I needed a high level of motivation, which I translated as being lazy - and they were certainly right about that aspect..
It wasn't "the Tories" it was a single MP, who happens to be a Tory.
He took exception to the method being used to introduce the measure you mentioned as it was technically breaking the rules for making new laws.
He is quite well known for doing this as he is keen to ensure that correct process is followed. He did not object to the intent of the proposal itself.
Not quite so complex a situation, but I remember from back in the '70s when we provided control systems complete with UPS's.
But these systems had massive Drum memory systems (possibly at least 1M) and when these started up they drew a lot of current until up to speed.
The additional cost of speccing the UPS for the resultant start up current was significant, so someone (not me) came up with the simple concept of adding a resistor into the supply circuit for the Drum; large enough to limit the current by dropping the voltage during start up conditions but small enough not to interfere with normal running.
It worked. And became a standard fixture.
I may be mistaken but it seemed to me that the patent application was all about the mechanics of the rolling process.
There are words such as "locally thinned", "compressive stress", but to me the key component is the "reverse bend" concept. This might be a real insight into handling brittle materials.
TBH I know nothing about how other manufacturers have implemented their rolled screens so there may not be any real innovation in this, as seems to be the case in most patent applications.
Your reference to Bruce Schneier's book reminds me of something I found amusing.
I put in a request to borrow a copy from my local Library.
When it arrived I noticed that the previous location was the Library at Gartree High Security Prison, which happens to be in the same county as I am.
I've often wondered whether anyone in that institution managed to get any further than I did before giving up because of the Maths.
Same here.
I can't remember how many times I have been in one of those machines, at least half a dozen
The noise is annoying, no problem with claustrophobia, but not being able to deal with an itch on my nose, or elsewhere, for up to half an hour is a torment.
I was sure that there were gaps in the sequence when some movement would have been possible if only they had told me when they were.
It was a bit amusing, and disconcerting, when one operator mentioned that any near-by metal could blur the results.
I presumed that the consultants that booked the scan knew that the bar that they had put in my jaw would not cause such an issue, but the operator still thought that it would, but went ahead anyway.
I once did something similar. I was drilling the wall to fit a curtain rail when there was a flash and bang and the drill stopped working.
I thought that I had damaged the drill itself, but it was only the drill bit that was damaged. It stopped because it was plugged into a socket directly below where I was drilling and the circuit fuse had blown due to me drilling through the cable.
I just couldn't believe how stupid I had been not to consider where that socket got its power from.
Luckily, being in the UK, it was a ring circuit and I had only damaged one of the cables, so I lifted the floor boards in the bedroom above and added a junction box to provide a single spur to the socket.
Probably against all the rules, but there was no way I was going to replace that cable myself.
Maybe a couple of decades ago there had been some scares involving packages containing something dangerous (Anthrax ?).
Early one morning a colleague who mostly worked on site arrived at his desk to find an envelope addressed to him but no other markings.
As he started to open it some white powder fell out.
He quickly dropped the package back onto his desk and walked away a bit, then explained to those around him what he had seen.
Someone called HR who instructed us to clear the area, which didn't take long as most people had not yet arrived. Some of us, including me, were tasked with standing outside the entrance doors to stop anyone else entering until officialdom came to analyse the situation.
Eventually the contents were checked and found to be a collection of Love Hearts, some of which had been crushed in transit. They were a gift from the girlfriend of the recipient. Much relief and amusement all round; well nearly all round. The recipient was so embarrassed by the event and the following comments that he left the company within the month.
I am trying to avoid getting annoyed at the references to "Chelsea Tractors"
I used to drive a BMW 3 series saloon, but when it came to replace it the new model it would not fit in my garage.
So I changed to an X3 as that had a SMALLER footprint and so did fit.
It is also a lot easier to get in and out of and provides a more comfortable seating posture.
Obviously there are larger SUVs than mine, but without any definitive data, my guess is that a there would be a similar comparison for those.
Sure you can get smaller cars, but people that drive large large SUVs are unlikely to switch to Fiestas, they would drive BMW/Mercedes/Jaguar/etc saloons. Maybe they think that the status symbols do have a point, or maybe they are just more comfortable.
A couple of weeks before my cancer surgery I had a meeting with the anaesthetist.
According to him Surgeons consider any operation a success if the patient survives for 2 weeks.
And for me the odds were 90%.
Up until then I had thought that I had 50% chance of surviving for 5 years. Suddenly now 10% chance of being dead in 2 weeks.
That was back in 2015, so beating both options.
I bought a pair of IMF speakers while at University (50 yrs ago) - think that they were Super Compact II s - and they used KEF units.
After a couple of years one of the tweeters failed and they replaced it without question.
I forgot to mention that I had been using a self built 75W amplifier even though they were only rated at 50W. Probably not a factor.
They have been in the loft for the past 20+ years because SWMBO said that the stands were ugly. Now using KEF free standing units.
I'm not so sure about that range.
My mate has just had Open Heart Surgery to remove the one he was fitted with back in the '70s. (So that they could give him a replacement).
Normally that wouldn't be necessary, but in the past 40 odd years some of the wires got a bit tangled up with the living organ and had to be removed very carefully.
I also had problems with that sentence. But convinced myself that it could be correct because the (singular) committee is voting.
But on re-reading your quote I see that that is not what was said.
In my case it wasn't only the teacher of English but also the ones teaching French and German who drummed that into me. And now the same is happening with my teacher of Spanish (who is also a Spanish teacher).
I can't help feeling that here in England (*) you only learn these things if you learn an additional language.
(*) From my limited exposure to those north of the border I get the feeling that their education may have been different
I expect that there are rules about when a STOP sign is needed, but they are probably a bit loose.
I only know of one on the roads that I use regularly: it's at a four way junction and it's only on the approach that has the most traffic. The other 3 approaches are all GIVE WAY. I think that it is because one approach is a small residential road with much less traffic than the other three and the other two of the better used approaches have good visibility of all the other approaches whereas the one with the STOP sign has NO visibility of the residential road.
Actually, now I think about it, I have never used that residential road so it also may have a stop sign.
But this whole discussion reminds me of my driving instructor (50 years ago) frequently taking me on a route used by the testers because it included an approach to a junction with a STOP sign. If you didn't actually come to a stop, apply the handbrake, and get into neutral before ostentatiously checking for traffic before moving on then you would fail the test.
I have a link to that Met Office facility in my bookmarks and always check it before going out on my bike.
This process is way more accurate than looking at the actual weather forecast.
My only observation is that the radar seems to record a level of rain (drizzle) that is barely noticeable when standing in it, so it is a bit too pessimistic.
Strangely, I received two notifications from Google yesterday that it would rain in my locality in 2 hours time, and both were accurate (within a 10 min window). Have they rolled this out already?
I'm curious.
It wasn't on the curriculum when I was at school, I only heard about it when my daughter had a course during her A level years.
So when did it start and when did they stop?
From the little I heard about it while she was on the course it sounded like it should be compulsory from an early age.
Not so apocryphal in my case.
Back in 1988 (I think) I was in a hotel bar in Baltimore and there was an Olympic Ice Hockey game on the box. I wasn't really watching it until I heard the commentator apologising to the audience for missing a goal (if that is the right word) because the broadcaster was showing an advert.
His apology was along the lines of - we are sorry that we are not empowered to stop the olympics while we show adverts. I was stunned. I think that the game probably involved the USA team as I got the impression that only such games were shown.
"So if your getting supplied 230v then your probably getting it from something connected to the grid recently (ie a wind farm), whereas if your getting 240v then your getting it from nuclear, gas, coal etc"
Can you explain that please?
You seem to realise that all the generators are connected to the same Grid (usually run at about 440kV but with some other voltage levels in places) but seem to believe that after passing through various shared transformers the voltage at your house might be different according to what type of generation was involved.
After previously always saying that I was waiting for the SMETS2 variety I was a bit flummoxed recently to be told that this was now their standard. So I just stalled again.
But after being a supplier of equipment to the electrical networks for 40 years I am now thinking of turning the tables and requesting a full technical description of the capabilities and a copy of an independent security report, which is what we always had to supply.
On a separate aspect; I noticed that a recent TV Ad had moved from talking about saving money to saving the planet.
"How many people use x86 outside of the PC these days"
That depends on how you define PC.
There are thousands of embedded boards available that have a standard PC architecture but end up running one of several RTOS implementations and are used in the wider control systems market. The nearest that these come to being a PC in my mind is that they may run one of the versions of WinCE but are more likely using something like VxWorks.
There does not seem to be any suggestion that "critical" systems were either infected or connected to the Internet.
As far as I can recall, no new reactors have been built in France for nearly 20 years, and at that time the internet was barely noticed.
The architecture of the approved control systems would not have included anything like Internet connectivity. If I recall correctly, the operator workstations were not even empowered to perform control actions and were limited to monitoring functions - there was no way that a computer that ran any sort of sophisticated graphics could meet the SIL rating required to be involved in control.
Over the intervening years there have almost certainly been some system upgrades, but the SIL aspect of computers has not improved so I would expect that the actual control is still performed by dedicated embedded computers using relatively primitive operating systems. That's not to say that they are automatically immune to network issues (if they are network connected) but your average computer virus or other malware would not get a foothold.
Whereas some Power Stations may use Siemens style PLCs to control them, Nuclear ones would not. They have to meet other regulations.
If that were true then it would be a travesty - but one that I might get my colleagues to copy in our area of expertise.
It does sound as if they are trying to patent a process, which I thought was against the rules.
There would have to be something else involved that has not been disclosed and that is not "obvious to an experienced practitioner" (or whatever the phrase is).
Not sure what they mean by "superconductors" but we've spent several years trying to get HTS to work in an industrial context; and it is not easy.
So wrapping your average pacemaker in several layers of exotic materials then hanging a cryogenic chamber off them does not seem to me to be a goer.
Same is nearly true for minesweepers.
It may only be an ASSEMBLY plant, but that does not mean that there is not a considerable amount of skill involved. The same could probably be said of the oil rigs littering the North Sea.
And AFAIK there has been nothing said about where the components to be "assembled" are coming from. These involve state of the art generators, power electronics, automation systems, switchgear (and those are just the aspects that I know of).
I do not believe that there is a factory based in Germany (or more likely Denmark considering Siemens Wind Power roots) that turns out a kit of parts for wind turbines to be assembled by monkeys wherever the tax situation calls for it.
Although I do admit that the engineering design of the turbines is probably done elsewhere.
Bearing in mind the size of these things, what is the difference between "assembling" a turbine and "making" a ship; which used to be called ship-building.
As an employee of a company that is also trying to ride this gravy train by supplying all sorts of fairly high tech equipment to Siemens (and similar) I believe that you are being a bit too heavy handed with your derision.
I can't say what it is that is going wrong with these "drivers", but I have a fair idea - and it's nothing to do with software.
But the technology is definitely British, and is very similar to that being provided by the same British company to some new/recent USA ships. (albeit being built in the USA for political reasons)
Add two different things and the total is always wrong.
I can't see any reference to Cimplicity in the articles about eTerra.
When I had a training course on it (under an older name) it was Unix based (but supposedly capable of running on Windows & VMS). I know it's moved on but I doubt that it's switched to a different supplier's platform.
Areva has long been in the Nuclear industry. a few years ago it bought the T&D division from Alstom to bolster the latter's balance sheet. (French Gov had major share in Areva and couldn't allow one of its major companies to fold). I do not believe that there has been any technical corruption between the T&D arm and the nuclear bits. So I think that that link fails.
But I'm not surprised that the suppliers are trying to remove some of the complexity in order to reduce costs. Hopefully the regulators will stand their ground.
Well that goes without saying surely. I for one don't expect to live forever.
But I did think that the initial comment about WinCC being used to manage Nuclear Power stations was verging on scaremongering. It all hinges on what you mean by "manage".
Undoubtedly Windows is used within such places, it may even be used to monitor some aspects of the plant, but I would be amazed if it were used to CONTROL any part of the process.
Another fast growing consumer of these materials is the maufacture of motors and generators for use in Renewable Generation.
It is expected that virtually all the new ranges of Wind Turbines will use Permanent Magnet Generators (PMG), because otherwise they would not be ecomonic.
China is possibly the largest constructor of Wind Farms and is moving into the construction of the generators themselves. Maybe we won't be allowed to build them for our own needs!
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