Posts by TkH11 521 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Apr 2010
It's never acceptable for a supplier to call their customer's a liar, and coming from a customer facing department? ! As for him calling them monkeys? In one case their insult is aimed at an individual - him, in his case, he's not insulting an individual he is insulting the organisation.
So I don't see your challenge to him calling them monkeys is right.
>Yahoo can sue them also for unauthorised access to its systems.
No, I don't think they can sue. If they want to sue there would have to be a contractual arrangement in place between Yahoo and News International, and Yahoo would have to demonstrate that a) there was a breach of that contract and b) that Yahoo incurred a financial loss as a result.
Neither are true.
However, unauthorised access is a criminal offence, and it could be down to Yahoo to carry out a private prosecution for the criminal offence - in the even the British Police and Crown Prosecution Service dont' do it.
Given the ineptness of the Met. Police last summer, I'm kinda not suprised that such a useless bunch of idiots are still using software from 30 years ago, I'd love to know what they're running it on, Vax PDP11's? I bet they've kept them nice, not unplugged any cards for a few years, and probably just about kept them running (but I'm baffled by the disk packs, they'd never still be working today)
I can't see how anyone today can be running 80's hardware opertionally!! Must be also impossible to get spares.
"No. Say thank you to Stelyos of EasyJet fame. Automatic dynamic pricing algorithms based on demand."
That dynamic model is valid and acceptable for goods which are being manufactured, it's the simple supply and demand principle. The greater the demand, the price goes up because there's not enough manufacturing capacity. And you can't overcome that lack of capacity particularly easily or quickly.
But for electronic media which is being downloaded? Come-on, let's get real.
It's simply an algorithm to rip people off. The concept is no longer valid when it comes to downloads.
The UK doesn't appreciate engineers, IT people. Society doesn't.
When I went to see friends in New York some years back, they were mega-impressed with the field in which I worked in, satcoms, and they introduced me to others and they all wanted to know what I did for a living, and were impressed; here in the UK, no-one apart from fellow engineers understands it or is remotely excited by it.
Being in engineering, IT you are looked down upon in the UK. And salaries are crap.
I disagree with your use of the word NOC. NOCs don't route traffic. The NOC technically is the processes, people and technology which enables the service provider to assure their services. And this will typically consist of fault management systems: the applications and infrastructure to support that, trouble ticketing systems, performance management systems and so on.
Now some companies co-locate their NOC with operational network equipment in the same building, indeed the servers used to support the NOC can even be located in the same racks as the comms equipment but fundamentally the NOC does not route 'service' traffic.
They've made an announcement that a core switch died, and the back-up also died.
I just don't believe that. Both switches failed independtly of each other within 2 days of each other? I smell BS!
if it is true, given the level of criticality these applications have for their users, and many of those users are business users! a redundancy of one device is no way sufficient. Idiots.
If your primary fails you then switch over to your back up, that places you at high risk because you've got no futher backups, and it means your top priority has to get the primary device fixed as quickly as possible, incase your back-up also fails. So running off a single back-up, when that back-up is activated because your primary has failed, you're already running at a reduced level of service with an increased level of risk compared to the normally fully functioning state.
I would be surprised if this is a hardware failure in both devices, my betting is they've hit a software bug within the switch and both primary and back-up switches are identical: identical hardware, identical software, one bug hits one and then is liable to hit the other as they're identical. Idiots.
I'm not an expert on law, you're claiming the disclosure of emails would not be subjudice,
but if that evidence makes any future defendants look guilty, and presumably it does make certain indviduals look guilty, then this compromises the trial: given the level of interest in this case, the defendants would be able to legitimately argue that no jury can ever give them a fair trial, that the jury members could have all been influenced by the media before the trial even commences.
Whilst I'd love to see Lulsec spill the beans on that obnoxious woman (if there are any beans to spill), I'd like to see her banged up.
I just can not believe for one second that so much universal phone hacking has gone one on such a massive scale with large financial payments being made and that none of the managers, chief execs knew about it. Of course they did.
Going bankrupt is a method that can be used in a civil case. If someone sues another party and that other party doesn't have the means to pay, then bankrupty is an option the defendant may decide to adopt. Ocassionally, the plaintiff can initiate bankrupty proceedings against the defendant but that's not very likely: it's generally not in their interest to do so as the plaintiff is not likely to recover all the money they are owed.
Baliffs can seize posessions to repay the debt. As far the defendant is concerned, entering bankruptcy can be a good thing as the debts are wiped clean but there are consequences.
The application of the data protection act is criminal law, whether the defendant can simply declare themselves bankrupt as a way to avoid the sentence issued by a magistrate or judge, really depends on what's written into the law.
Failure to comply with the repayment order could result in imprisonment - often an incentive to pay up!
In a civil court case, you can't go to prison for unpaid debts. Having said that, I believe, if you keep on going bankrupt because of your own stupid behaviour, and failing to learn your lesson, I believe they can send you to prison.
So to answer your question, no, I don't think the criminals can declare themselves bankrupt as a away to avoid repaying the fines imposed.
So how is Microsoft going to recover the $8.5 billion? What's going to change in Skype..more advertising, higher charges?
No doubt Microsoft will then embark upon a campaign of modifying Skype, - evolution they call it - yes, XP - Vista - Windows 7 - that's a sort of evolution and not a good one..
Many large companies suffer from incompetent management that are absolutely fucking clueless. Too many managers and with not enough technical skill.
I work for one of the world largest technology companies, our managers haven't got a clue how to develop systems and if we carry on the way we're going, then a major business division is going to be history.
You end up with managers that are pure managers which don't have enough engineering expertise, they've got the MBA but they don't have the BSc or BEng. They move from one company to another taking on roles with greater responsibility - and the ever increasing bigger pay packets - but they have no idea of the problems going on in their engineering departments.
These managers are responsible for hundreds of people jobs but yet don't even know the basics of how to develop technology and systems.
Chris, the problem is not with USB, it's with the Zoom. USB was never designed as a mechanism to recharge batteries in electrical devices. The original design goal of USB was a data communications interface where low voltages and low currents are needed.
As for your specifying that USB specifies a maximum current of 500mA, I think that's BS. I haven't checked the electrical spec and I'm not going to bother. I think it's BS because they won't specify a maximum current, they will specify a minimum current.
If the designers of USB specify a minimum current then all 3rd party manufacturers designing products to run of USB they know precisely what current is gauranteed to be delivered by the USB connector.
If they specifiy a maximum current, which is what you state, then how can any designer design any product to run off USB and run reliably when they don't know what current will be supplied by the USB connector!
So I think your assertion that USB delivers a maximum of 500mA is wrong.
Battery life - the amount of charge it will hold - is not measured in Watt-Hours. It's measured in aH - Ampere Hours.
Yes, I do realised that Watt-Hours is equivalent to Joules. But what's important is the total amount of charge in the battery and that's measured in coulombs, Ampere Hours = (Amps x time_. Amps = coloumbs per second. So Ampere Hours = coulombs.
The correct units for the charge capacity of a battery is: Ampere Hours (or columbs). But it's industry standard to quote aH.
"The Middle Eastern and North African mess (TM) was created by Great Britain, France and Italy.
US and USSR only improved on a "stellar" piece of work"
No! The mess these countries are in today are created by *their* governments. It is wrong to try to blame GB, France, Italy for something which happened over 60 years ago. The middle east countries (and African dictatorships, which were once part of the British Empire) have had over 60 years to become the countries they are today. You need to be blaming individuals, the presidents, within these countries for the problems they have.
"My school had mandatory General Studies - and this was, IMO, a good thing. It exposed science kids to the arts, and art kids to the sciences, and generally helped with producing more rounded students."
Utter crap. What the hell is a 'more rounded student' and how does it actually help them?
I didn't do General Studies, I had enough on my plate doing the other A levels.
And I would have greatly resented my school forcing me to do a subject which I felt was a) completely useless, b) wasn't going to help me get into University to study my chosen subject c) would have taken my time away from the studies required for my chosen A levels.
And looking back all those years, do I feel as if I have lost something because I didn't do General Studies? No, not in the slightest.
As an adult, after I finished University, I have a lot more time, and I can choose what I want to do with that time, and if I choose to go looking at the arts, then that's my choice and I have the time to do it. Being forced to do General Studies against my wishes doesn't help me!
A levels are about studying the subjects to sufficient depth to be able to get into University and then continue those studies on. Who gives a monkey's about General Studies A level if the course of study at Uni does not require it? !!
I don't believe for one second that an A level in General Studies and knowing about some painters or composers would have helped me one tiny bit in my engineering degree.
I know what would have helped me, an A level in Further Maths!!
I've never heard of a college forcing students to take any A levels!
At my college/school (a school with combined 6th form college) we chose all our A levels.
I can't see how any school can force any student to do any subject at A level.
Surely it has to be student's choice only?
What would happen if the student decided they didn't have enough time to do the General Studies A level and wanted to concentrate on the A levels that mattered to them to enable them to study their chosen course at Uni, and then a) failed to attend the lessons b) didn't turn up for the exam
What would the college do, kick them out of the college and bar them from studying for and going in for the other A level exams?
You are advocating that University lecturers should be spending time bringing up sub-standard students to the required level and enjoying the kudos that could come with that.
I disagree. Ok, you might have been a substandard pupil, and I don't how intensive your CS course was, but in my degree in Engineering, the lecturers don't have time in the curriculum to spend additional time bringing up substandard students that didn't do so well in their GCSE and A level exams.
I agree with your premise that students may learn at different rates, but it's for the school level education system to deal with that. A levels should prepare students for entry to university, that's why someone studies A levels.
When a student passes their A levels at the required grades, they should then be in a state to enter Uni. If an 18 year old doesn't have those required A levels as stipulated by the faculty at the University, or doesn't have the required grades then it is right that they should not be allowed to enter Uni.
if that means, the student doesn't pass their A levels until 19, or 24 then so be it.
The specification by the university of the A levels and grades required are the entry requirements for the Uni are set with good reason.
The university can not spend time catering for students of widely varying ability. Some do, and they do so by having a foundation year. If the university is able, is willing to design a course of longer duration or provide that additional year bringing the students up to the required level, then that's fine, but to expect the lecturers to spend time teaching you as an individual on a non-extended course to cope with your shortcomings isn't an option.
"It is strange how people with a talent for maths seem to think that everyone should have it as well and those that do not are either lazy or terminally stupid".
I have a talent for maths and I went to a second rate large state run comprehensive school. That talent for maths came about by sheer hard work and nothing else. I certainly wasn't born with the ability I can tell you, and I found it very hard work. But I was motivated, I knew I wanted to go off to University and I knew what A levels I need to pass to get there. So I worked and I worked.
No I don't think everyone should have a talent for maths, but I DO think everyone should come out of school with maths and english O levels. In my view, there is no excuse not to do so. It's important. It's essential. And that's how the education system and the government view it.
In your case, by your admission you obtained only 3 O levels, I don't know, but you correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing with 3 O' levels you didn't get both the maths and english.
"I left school with 3 O levels and never got to take any A levels"
You said you never got to take any A levels, you say it almost as if the school refused you the opportunity, as if you're not to blame for not getting A levels, that it wasn't your fault you didn't get the opportunity.
Let me assure you, it was your fault. Not a nice thing you want to hear. I certainly wasn't brilliant at school, far from it. But I did get enough O levels to qualify for going onto to do A levels, and there was only one reason why I got those O levels..again, sheer hard work and nothing else.
In my school, we needed to do 4 O levels minimum in order to go on and study A levels. A friend of mine only acheived I think 3 or 4 O levels, he didn't satisfy the minimum requirement but the school allowed him to do the A levels. Guess what happened? He dropped out of the A levels because it was just too tough for him. The minimum requirement was set for a good reason.
I'm going to support Mark Olleson's post fully on the issue of having a good education prior to University. Much of my experience reflects Mark's, I too went to a Russel Group university to study Electronic Engineering, (perhaps even the same one? Who knows?).
I knew HND students that had joined the BEng degree in Electronic Engineering that seriously struggled with the maths in the first year and almost quit. For us that had undertaken A level maths, our experience reflects Marks, that some of the first year topics in Maths were refreshers of our A level.
Our second year consisted of something like 10 different subjects of which 8 contained a lot of maths. And boy, did it get difficult. I still recall discussing with friends that we thought the transition from O levels to A levels was difficult, but the transistion from A level to degree level was far, far harder.
We worked our nuts off at University, it was tough, the work load was very high and the subject matter, the concepts, the maths, difficult, and I think it would have been hard pressed for any university to have worked us harder.
I believe now that since then, that degrees have been extended from 3 to 4 years, presumably to cope with the lower quality of students going into the Uni as a result of all the tinkering, messing up of the GCSE's and A levels by the Labour government.
Those input entry standards to Universty Engineering courses have to be maintained and the maths is ALWAYS a pre-requsite.
I work in information technology, I don't have a degree in Computer Science ( I did A level computer science and found it incredibly easy) and I can blow the arse of any CS grad.
I had a lodger in my house at a highly reputable Uni, styudying Computer Science, could he design a computer with the knowledge they taught him? Not a cats chance in hell.
Maths is the key to understanding almost everything. Key to understanding the real world, how things change, and move - dynamic systems. Something CS grads are not taught.
I'm a professional engineer and have been for 20 years. In my early days I was very much in support of the profession, (still am to a degree) but I work in a company which is determined to outsource as much as possible to India. We bring in Indians and kick the English out (by making them redundant).
I talk to my native indian colleagues in the UK, I talk to Indian colleagues in India and I hear the same thing: there aren't enough jobs in India, so this is why they leave and come to the UK.
It's all very well saying, let's take positive action to increase the number of science, engineering, IT graduates but the fact is, given how many of these are being turned out by Indian Universities, there isn't enough jobs in the world for them!
If we as a country adopt a strategy of increasing the number of grads in these categories, then we're simply exacerbating the problem and salaries in these professions will drop further, and they're already too low!
An A level here - or the ones years ago when I did mine - took 2 years of studying and 3 could be done in a year. That was as a full time student.
So 11 A levels, at 3 every 2 years, equates to 6 years of continuous full time studying.
You're a liar or you've devoted a hell of a lot of time in your evenings and weekends in pursuit of a useless ideal. If you don't have a degree then you'd been far better off spending that time studying for one. If you do have a degree than that's a further 3 to 4 years of full time study, which means you've spent far too much time in education.
I can think of far better things to do with my time than simply studying for A level after A level which don't benefit you finanically.
AC, you're concerned that contractors aren't paying their full taxes, right?
The fact is, that the IR35 legislation has been proven to reclaim a very little amount of tax and it costs a lot of money to administer the legislation. ( As we told the government it would 11 years ago, as the accountants told the government 11 years ago too)
The overal 'profit' to the HMRC is tiny, truely tiny. So on a practical level, IR35 is almost not even worth bothering with as it's not effective at raising tax, which you think contractors aren't paying.
AC, you seem to be jealous. I've been both an employee and a contractor (for 5 years).
The real issue behind IR35 was that people could avoid paying the full amount of tax due by paying a low salary and high dividends, the dividends are still subject to tax (corporation tax because they're profit of the company, and the person pays has to declare the dividends as income and pay income tax on them), so the tax not being paid was simply the National Insurance contributions on the money which was taken out of the limited company in the form of dividends.
So, I'm in favour of people paying a reasonable salary and paying the NI on that, but for HMRC to force the director of a company in to how they should run that company and dictate to that company how they should allocate their money is entirely wrong. But this is in effect, what HMRC are doing with IR35, forcing the limited company to pay the entire income it receives as a salary.
It's not the job of HMRC (it shouldn't be) to dicate to company directors how they run their companies.
Your statements seem to be borne out of jealousy rather than real understanding of the issues.
I say to you, if you want to earn good money, then why don't YOU become a contractor?
Or perhaps you can't..perhaps you're not good enough.
You say you thought HMRC are supposed to make a profit. Unfortunately, no.
HMRC's job is to enforce tax law. A\nd they do this extremely vigorously.
They don't care what it costs to enforce something, they'll spend the money and pursue something. We're talking government employees here, that don't give two hoots about budgets and costs.
If the law is badly drawn up, HMRC seem not to care.
In a smart organisation, in private industry, if the costs exceed how much revenue will be gleamed, then private industry wouldn't pursue it, as private industry is focussed on making a profit. HMRC are not focussed on making a profit, they're focussed on enforcing the law.
Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Dawn Primarolo are to blame for the IR35 fiasco, and none of these, in my opinion, understood business, understood how companies make a profit.
I was involved in the early days in the campaign to fight IR35, and helped fund (along with many other contractors) the judicial review of the law.
This was 10 years ago and even from the day the law was created, the Inland Revenue (as it then was) were taking all sorts of factors into consideration, including subsitution.
It's long been known that substitution is an entirely valid concept which helps demonstrate a 'strong pointer' to self employment, of not an employeer-employee relationship.
Why is HMRC now 10 years later deliberately ignoring this?
There's clearly something wrong with the law (and we all knew, we said at the time it would be unworkable) when 10 years later, the government and other parties involved are still trying to clarify points of that law!
I disagree with your POV. I have absolutely no sympathy for this woman,
The fact is, there have been high profile cases of exactly this kind of scam which have hit the national headlines recently. I very much doubt she failed to see these headlines.
Secondly, most of the dating sites have explicit statements plastered on their webpages telling members never to send money to anyone.
Thirdly, she gave away money she couldn't afford to give away. Whether in love or not, you never, ever do that.
Fourthly, this guy kept calling her and she never checked the phone number of where he was calling from,until *after* contact suddenly stopped. If she'd checked before she handed over any money, she'd have suspected something wasn't right..an alledged American calling from Nigeria.
She failed to even the most basic checks on this guy before handing over large sums of money.
She was foolish. It seems to me that no matter how much the media (and the dating websites themselves) publicise this kind of scam, there's always people out there that fall for it.
My current girlfriend was subjected to the same kind of scam, this guy kept calling her up, night and day, pestering her, wanting money. She checked the phone number, discovered it was West Africa, refused to answer the phone to his mobile number, so the guy started using another number, but it was still from Nigeria. She ended up contacting BT who blocked all calls to her from Nigeria. Persistent little bugger.
A few basic checks and she realised what was going on.
You say mechanically the Nimrod was an Airbus.
Uh, no it isn't. The Airbus was mechanically a Nimrod.
Nimrod was around way before the Airbus was even invented, even before the Airbus company existed; the implication that the Nimrod was copied or inspired by the Airbus can not be true.
The Nimrod MR4A contains a wealth of electronics that couldn't be carried by a Shackleton, and the Shackleton airframe was way past it's use-by date.
But the MR4A wasn't just about maritime reconnaissance, there was to be on board technology which provided another key capability which would have been extremely useful on the battlefield over land, but as this hasn't been in the news, I'm not going to mention it's name or how it works.
You can find out yourself if you look hard on the net.
This aircraft was far, far more than a martime surveillance plane.
Rubbish article. Factually incorrect. For the sake of big headlines the author seems to have deliberately sacrificed the accuracy of the alleged facts.
He's comparing the total project cost of £4bn and claiming that's the cost of building a single aircraft and claiming that's higher than the cost to build a single stealth bomber or space shuttle.
I suppose it makes for good headlines, but it's an invalid comparison.
The project is still in development (or was) and would have led to a number of aircraft being refurbished and kitted out with new technology, to write an article implying that the total project cost of £4bn is the cost of a single aircraft is disingenuous to say the least, and I really do not believe for one moment the author of the article doesn't know this.
Dishonest reporting.
I don't know why anyone would want a career in IT when you can earn considerably more as a plumber.
I for one,. am fed up with being paid peanuts for my 20 years experience and qualifications, and the constant battle to keep myself educated, up-to-date.
It seems to me, the only way you can earn a decent wage that reflects your qualifications and experience is to become a contractor or work for an investment bank.
With the increased pressure from companies to outsource, we are quite literally losing our jobs to Indians, and this is applying downwards pressure on salaries.
My employer now, we have more Indians in our department than indigenous whites. Some are permanent employees, some are contractors based in the UK, others are part of our indian operation that come here for a couple of months to train up and for knowledge transfer - where we transfer our knowledge to them and they take our jobs but carry out the job in India - and we employ Indian based outsourcing companies too.
The IT industry in the UK is seriously going downhill.
I'll tell you how to save money in councils, get rid of the tossers, the managers that haven't got a clue what they're doing. I can't tell you the details of what's going on where I live because I'm kicking up some stink over it, it's not the council per se that's causing the trouble but an offshoot which employs the exact same council employees and managers and f**k me, the money they're wasting, creating projects based on completely unsafe and incorrect justifications is incredible.
I'll shortly be giving them a good kick-up the jacksy and proving to them exactly why their rationale for their latest high profile project is completely flawed. And no longer being part of the council, they're not accountable to anyone, but nevertheless, it's our money, tax payers money they're wasting.
I'm looking forward to my meeting with them, but alas, the tossers have already signed up contracts with external suppliers, which I doubt they can break, and the humiliation they'll face if they have to admit to 60,000 people they've got the whole thing wrong, that's going to be too much to stomach, so no-doubt they'll press on with the project and claim that my technical expertise isn't as good as I make out..we'll see.
My experience with the local newspaper isn't particularly good either, they're not particularly strong on technical matters, and generally I find them to be a complete bunch of muppets that couldn't careless what goes on in the locality, so I don't expect to get much truck with them in publicising what's going on.
So, we'll see what happens.
Yes, this is bollocks. Ok, I got a 5 percent pay rise last year but I was a lucky on, but I work in a company - can't mention it's name or what market sector it's in, because I know my boss reads this forum!! - but the trend is to outsource work to India (and other countries) and trust me, you only have to see the number of Indians in our office, the indigenous whites are being phased out.
Even new permanent recruits ....are Indian!!
The fact is, in the medium and long term our jobs are under threat. And this is the trend, this the way the IT sector in the UK is going, more and more of us will lose our jobs to the Indians; and because of the oversupply of people, salaries will drop, not rise.
I genuninely believe, the outsourcing of IT is the biggest threat to our jobs, our careers, our lives, the IT industry has ever experienced.
"In the late sixties Nimrod was being developed as airborne early warning and tales were released that it was being abandoned because it saw traffic on German autobahn."
This wasn't a tale, it was true, and it wasn't the 60's, it was either the 70's or 80's.
They developed a fancy new radar for the Nimrod and they discovered it was picking up quite successfully vehicles moving along the roads.
So with all this additional clutter, they commenced development of further processors to try to remove that clutter.
I have forgotten who the prime contractors were, possible GEC and Marconi; in those days the MoD (PE) dished out most of its contracts in the form of what was called "cost plus" contracts, which I suppose today would be called Time and Materials.
The projects in particular the Nimrod AEW project was a cost plus, it wasn't a fixed price contract, and the project dragged on for years and years. It wasn't delivering, but the costs just keep mounting up. The technological achievements were great, but eventually the government decided enough was enough and terminated it.
If I recall correctly, the two prime contractors blamed each other, and cited poor information sharing between the two companies, claiming that each company couldn't share information because the information any one particular company had, was secret.
The whole thing was a long running farce.
For years later, the Nimrod AEW aircraft that had been converted, were just left lying around, including one at RAF Finningley, if I remember!
The project was abandoned and this led to the RAF/MoD leasing the Boeing 737 AEW aircraft from the USA, which are still in use today by the RAF.
It was a contraversial decision, people wanted the UK to develop a UK aircraft with newer more advanced technology, and in particular newer computing/processing technology, but the Boeing 737 was a larger aircraft and had more space inside.
Orbits are either geostationary (I include geosynchronous too), or polar.
The difference between them is simply the distance from the earth, (and speed the projectile needs to attain).
The idea that a particular geographic location on earth can only launch one or the other is nonsense.
The location on the earth where satellite launches takes place is down to safety reasons or for other reasons such as being on a particular continent where the assembly of the space craft has taken place, and thus transportation of the craft to the launch site becomes easier and cheaper.
(But rarely, do satellites exceed approx. 5 tons, so, a transport aircraft could transport them to a launch site).
As one person pointed out, polar orbits can be useful for spy satellites, and not just because the orbit eventually covers the entire surface of the planet, but by being in a lower orbit, better quality pictures can be achieved!!
Geosync or geostationary orbits are great for communication satellites but at 33,000km they're quite far out.
Ru's got a point. It's a bloody expensive camera and I'm not conviced it's worthwhile, when compared to the price of a film based version.
I have done a lot of film based photography on 35mm, and recently using a digital SLR.
I ran of a load of shots one night at a firework display last year on the DSLR, I worked out that had it been film it would have cost me £300 in film and developing costs. The DSLR cost me nothing (the cost of the images!) Then the hassle of scanning it all in, had it been film.
So the DSLR in the time I've had it has paid for itself in film costs alone.
But this beast, at £18K, that's a shed load of film, or may be even 2 shed loads of film!!
I'm not convinced anyone can justify spending this amount of money on the basis it will be more cost effective than a film camera. And I'm not convinced the image quality, even if it is 37MP is superior to film: the negative format size is so much bigger on this camera compared to 35mm, and we can achieve 15MP on 35mm format DSLRs. You'll be amazed at just how much detail there is in film when you blow it up.
Do Prince Alberts count as metal enhanced..
My second question...what do people with Prince Albert's do at metal detectors at airports?
Do they carry around with them a doctor's certificate stating they have PA's and then just hand that to the security guard?
May be to have a PA you have to be mentally challanged, and covered in tattoos and so you don't have a well paid job, and therefore can't afford to go on holiday and take an aeroplane flight, so problem solved.
"How much impact do vapour trails and even the heat from high altitude jet aircraft have? Even if a single aircraft would be immeasurably small, what about the entire fleet? Given what other silly stuff boffins busy themselves with, they might as well look into this. We still might run into that pesky chaotic butterfly."
It's been shown - very recently in fact - that the vapour trail of aircraft - one in fact - in a holding pattern does lead to the formation of a cloud. Clouds absorb radiation from the sun.
There's validity in the butteryfly effect, chaos theory, indeed, weather forecasters - particurlarly the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading employ mathematical models where they nudge the input stimulas to the mathematical model and re-run the simulation, and they do this for many repeated simulation runs and then compare the outputs, and you can get quite a wide range of output results, this then leads to a weather forecast being prepared of lower confidence.
But they won't have the processing power available to them to take the model down to a very fine, high resolution so certainly they couldn't simulate the effect of a single cloud produced from the vapour trail of an airliner or a butterfly flapping its wings, but the principle is known about and valid.
The difficulty is proving that a storm on one side of the planet was caused by the installation of some wind turbines on the other side of the planet.
I'm not an expert on aerodynamics, but one thing I've learnt over the years from my engineering background and knowledge of mathematics, is that few things in nature have a a simple directly linear relationship with a fixed constant of proportionality. There are some things, agreed, but I'm fairly sure the interaction of eddy currents in fluids created by two neighbouring obstructions isn't one of them. If things in aerodymamics were that simple, we wouldn't be using supercomputers doing highly intenstive computational fluid dynamics calcutions.
Think about it, when the two objects are close together, there's going to be a signficant amount of interplay between the eddy currents, but as those turbines are spread further apart, the interplay will drop dramatically and beyond a critical distance will almost be zero.
Accordingly, I'd expect a negative exponential relationship, and definitely not a simple linear relationship.
You state:
"Of course wind energy is indirectly solar energy and we don't know just what meddling with the climate does."
but then you go on to say how you would cover the planet in PV cells! How do PV's work? They absorb sunlight, not indirectly but directly!
So your argument the possible effect on the climate of wind farms is also entirely valid for PV cells!
Then you go on to say that you'd rather PV cells are placed in space, presumably because they then could have no effect on the earth's climate.
Seems to me that we're suffering from global warming, so where's that heat energy coming from? The sun, obviously. So, seems to me that a better idea would be to place those PV cells on the earth where they can absorb that radiation and convert to electricity instead of heating the earth and causing us problems.
Now, I agree, we don't know the effect of it all, if we were to implement these alternative strategies in such a large way over the entire planet, perhaps the climate could be affected, no-one in their 40's can not have failed to notice that our weather is getting worse, the more frequent floods, hotter summers, colder winters are definitely occurring.
Could we really make it worse by using lots of PV's, perhaps it might improve things. At the end of the day, we just don't know, but we can see how our climate is worsening if we don't do anything.
This looks like a case of the employer trying to blame the employee claiming they had policies in place. But, if the employer treated patient confidentiality and data protection seriously, they'd be checking the laptops, they'd supply the laptops with encryption software pre-installed (as one of my earlier employers did).
They'd have the processes in place to ensure people were complying with the rules, they'd provide the tools - which it looks as if they didn't.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
