Ubiquitous?
Ubiquitous it certainly isn't. There are platforms which Adobe does not support so they have to rely on !PDF, APDF, XPDF, Ghostscript etc. And of course Mac users have Preview.
547 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2007
Sounds a bit like what the Kremlin used to say about ageing leaders who hadn't been seen in public for a few months. Strangely I haven't had any CDs from AOL for a long time. It always used to be the company that gave you a three-month free trial so that you could (a) find out how bad it was and (b) find a decent ISP.
Pay the licence fees on behalf of all households out of general taxation at the agreed rate per household. 98% of households have televisions. You give the other 2% licences they don't need but save all the cost of collection, administration and enforcement. The BBC gets more and the tax payer is no worse off.
The 'post' is 50%+1. Using the same analogy the present system is 'furthest down the track'.
But AV is really no better than the single vote system because the best compromise candidate can get eliminated. Consider the following result for three parties:
1 Con, 2 Lib Dem 40%
1 Lab, 2 Lib Dem 35%
1 Lib Dem, 2 Con 15%
1 Lib Dem, 2 Lab 10%
Using single vote the tory would win with 40%.
With AV the tory would win with 55%.
However if you aggregate first and second choice votes you get:
Con 55%
Lab 45%
Lib Dem 100%
The only fair system is a truely proportional one. Whilst a minority party could sustain a coalition it couldn't force through unpalatable policies which are opposed by all of the major parties. In any case i can't see any of the main parties even entertaining the idea of a coalition with the BNP.
is that most of the money collected will go on collecting the money. The cost of equipment will have to be borne by the vehicle owner and taxpayer. Increasing fuel duty costs nothing, but fuel prices need to be kept roughly the same across national borders.
Road pricing isn't going to solve congestion unless it is so swingeing that it cripples the economy at the same time. Poorer people who don't live where they work just won't be able to afford to have jobs.
Agreed. If the Beeb wants R6 to succeed it should be on VHF/FM. The BBC needs a new stategy for digital radio - a high quality service which is compatible across all European countries. Surely the EBU could do something about this? The UK's current head-in-the-sand attitude is doomed to failure.
PDF is no longer Portable, it's Proprietary. Adobe doesn't support all platforms so documents produced with the latest versions of Acrobat can't be read on many platforms. This defeats the whole point of PDF. Adobe specualisees in buying up good products and wrecking them.
The Royal Borough's scheme, run by an American company, is a joke. Instead of encoraging residents to produce less rubbish, it merely encourages them to put more in the recycling bin. I generate very little rubbish, typically putting my bins out every four or five weeks. I recycle as much as possible, and would recycle more if the council wasn't so picky about what can be recycled - plastic bottles OK but other containers made out of the same plastic aren't accepted.
Moreover the scheme is open to abuse. I could easily pick up catalogues from Argos and put them straight in the recycle bin. I could have an arrangement with an opted-out neighbour. He would use my recycling bin whiolst I would use his wheely bin. We need to reward people for generating less rubbish, not for recycling more regardless of what goes to landfill.
"OK its now useless but then so were beta max videos, BSB Kit and god knows how many other things. Its life - get used to it!"
Betamax videos are just as useful as they ever were, and as useful as VHS is now! You can still play them. BSB kit is useless because there's nothing it can receive.
ID cards were always pointless because if you had the kit to take someone's biometrics you could surely check them against the on-line database. The card itself was irrelevant.
"Instead of coding for IE6 web devs should simply detect IE version and inform the user that the website will not render correctly and that their browser is broken and obsolete and needs to be upgraded."
I couldn't agree less. Web devs shouldn't have to code for specific browsers but should write compatible code. Not all browsers are available for all platforms so it may not be possible for users to "upgrade".
Indeed. Sucking is only one way to start a siphon, and immersing the whole pipe and putting your thumb over the end is another. A common type of lavatory cistern works by using a piston to start a siphon. The older type of high level cistern uses a heavy iron bell which is dropped over the down pipe to get the siphon going.
In any case atmospheric pressure is greater at the lower end of the pipe so it plays no part in maintaining the flow (if anything it acts against the flow).
We don't need big music/video stores with racks and racks of pre-recorded CDs and DVDs. Surely the technology exists to burn CDs and DVDs to order (including printing the artwork), or to download tracks to customers' media in the store? That would offer much greater choice in a vastly smaller space.
"The difference is that police drivers are (a) massively more competent than the average driver and (b) trained to use Airwave and drive at the same time."
Police driver training is not what it used to be, and is not given to every plod in a car. In any case it's not the physical use of the equipment that is the danger, but the distraction caused by thinking about the conversation. The law only targets use of hand-helds because that's what can fairly easily be enforced.
There are such things as "unfair terms and conditions". Suddenly disabling functionality that the end user paid for may be regarded as unreasonable whether or not it was permitted by the EULA.
Anyway perhaps someone will come up with a crack that allows gaming without disabling OtherOS.
I'm fed up with Russian spammers trying to register on my forum. They don't succeed because they invariably fail email verification but it's a pain having to delete the partial registrations. The email addresses given are either .ru or gmail.com. I've now blocked registration by guests. Genuine applicants contact me by email.
A"s I don't use the railways, I'd much rather you paid for any changes than it being extracted from my taxes.
"HMG never contribute to a new crash hat for me."
As a motorist, I am happy to subsidise the railways so they get as many people as possible off the roads! I am not happy that those subsidies get creamed off to pay shareholders and for bosses' bonuses.
"Why don't the contracts stipulate that the train companies leave all assets as they found them ..."
What we need is a single company - let's call it British Rail - that owns all the stations, collects the fares and specifies all the services and liveries. The rolling stock can be leased and the oeration of services can be contracted out to the operating companies. That way the TOCs would know exactly what services they had to provide and what they would get paid, so no risk. There would be competition at the tendering stage.
ScotRail has the right idea by designing a single livery style to be applied as trains are repainted. The franchisee can apply small branding stickers. DfT Rail has also stipulated that Southern's new station signs should remain.
Walking for free is killing the transport industry. People who walk to work or school are causing millions of jobs to be lost in the bus and rail industries, and by the manufacturers of excessively large 4x4s. And of course there's the oil companies and road builders to consider too. People who disregard warning letters telling them not to walk should have their shoes confiscated and their doors restricted so they can no longer get out.
Yes of course jobs are lost because of new technology. You don't need to manufacture CDs, print inlays, have warehouses and van drivers, so you don't need to have people maintaining the vans or the warehouse computer systems. You don't need big shops stocked with thousands of CDs and DVDs many of which won't be sold. So jobs are being lost but not because of illegal downloads.
Btw if I put money in my pension fund it isn't lost to the economy, as it would be if I stuffed it in the mattress. The fund managers invest my savings thereby providing capital for new enterprises.
But what the article doesn't mention (and others above have) is live music and radio. Digital music isn't a closed economic system. If people don't pay for downloads they'll be able to attend live events so the performers benefit that way.
The switch to digital broadcasting means many more channels, so it's possible to listen to your kind of music (if you have limited tastes) 24 by 7 without having to download it paid for or otherwise. And of course you can record off the radio as people have done since the invention of the tape recorder.
Incidentally I don't use Photoshop; I use Photodesk which I bought.
I assume these plugs are not rewirable. That's not a problem, but you don't say how the live and neutral pins are connected. This must either be by flexible wiring or more likely by contacts within the plug - presumably in the central part because the sides fold flat. This means that the current handling capacity is limited and there is potential for arcing due to wear or the ingress of dirt.
One improvement to the design would be to provide a cover for the pins when in transit.
The ring main system is fine where you have a lot of low powered devices such as with computers and entertainment equipment. High powered devices such as room heaters and kettles would be better served by separate circuits. However we now have so many wall warts that it would make sense to have houses wired with permanent low voltage circuits.