Greetings from the future where it's all pole-dancing robots and Pokemon passports Happy 2021, everyone! No, I haven't typed that wrong, I really do bring greetings from the future. Someone launched a handheld short-jump time machine at CES 2021 and I persuaded them to let me test a review unit before they find out I'm not Matthew Hughes. Well, what a year it has been – or, in your case, will be! Things …
There's always a smartarse, isn't there? The fact that Dabbsy has already observed the outcome in his thread collapses the potential for me using the information in any successful manner and means there's still some surprises for him, too. He may even find that cache of Scottish Euros useless...
Don't say the P word. That opens up a whole new debate on cause, effect and free will.
We already have vacuuming robots - and they're helping monetise the layout of your home:
iRobot just banked a fat profit. And it knows how to make more: Sharing maps of your homes
But I warn you that the augmented reality enhanced biometric system at the border gate will be a bit of a bugger. Even now, it keeps identifying me as Psyduck.
Given my UK biometric passport seems to work everywhere in the world except UK airports, I think that part is already here. Either that or I look almost entirely too much unlike Pikachu...
Nice one anyway Dabbsy, and a happy new (old) year to everyone.
But why did el-reg seem to need to label this NSFW?
I use a Daisy Wheel occasionally, but it's hardly a new affectation ... and I have the receipt dated in the late 1970s to prove it. I don't have a 1053, but I do have a couple working 2741s. Prefer the 1403, mostly for speed (and shock value). And of course there is the Smith Corona portable, which works quite nicely even during power outages.
Nobody has ever accused me of being a hipster. Packrat maybe ...
I for one look forward to the revival of the phrase "letter quality".
The first printer I had at home was the then-new Epson FX-80, a nice improvement on their popular MX-80. We had the optional tractor-feed attachment, so it could do friction-feed, pin-feed for fan-fold paper of the appropriate width, and tractor-feed for smaller forms, such as checks.1
I printed my school papers using high-quality fanfold paper with "micro-perforations" for a clean look after the sheets were separated and the pin-feed strips removed from the sides, and a shareware program called lq.exe which provided "near letter quality" printing with a variety of fonts by printing everything using raster graphics sequences and the necessary micro-spacing and -feeding. It wasn't laser-printer quality but it was decent.
1Pin-feed and tractor-feed used similar mechanisms, but pin-feed employed sprocket wheels on either side of the platten, while tractor-feed had a separate pair of sprockets on a frame above the platten. Pin-feed could do reverse feeds, useful for some kinds of detailed work, but required paper of a specific width. Tractor-feed couldn't do reverse feeding but was adjustable-width.
.....So, no word on how saved the planet is then?
I'm of the opinion the only way to achieve that is for the human race to be content with less, and stop creating more and more 'tat' that has to be buried, burned or shipped three quarters of the way back around the planet where it originally came from to be buried, burned or torn apart.
you all don't realise that compared to India, China, Europe, USA etc nothing Oz does will have any measurable effect. Its not as if severe drought is unknown here. So for once, what exactly can the Oz gummint, any of them, do ? Aside from removing fire assisting anti-fire break laws and returning to traditional frequent small fires etc ? Oz aint Europe as the teams in the Womens World Gliding Comp are discovering. And they are some distance from fires at moment.
Sorry, fired off a post too quickly and it came out wrong. Should really be this:
Australia is the world's third-largest exporter of CO2 in fossil fuels, report finds
However a third of CO2 emissions means there is still something that Oz can do.
It's not a third of CO2 emissions. It's a third of exported CO2 emissions.
Note that China, which buys most of Australia's coal, doesn't even make the top 30 on that list, yet they are the largest producer of CO2 emissions ... and will stay that way thanks to internal mining capability, even if Australia shuts down all coal production completely.
As a result, Australia doesn't have the capability to even dent total global CO2 emissions, so they might as well profit from some nice Chinesium dollars while they still can.
"
.....So, no word on how saved the planet is then?
"
That problem was solved in 2021 by the simple measure of declaring that the Earth has self-identified as being carbon-flexible. After which it was declared illegal to force the climate to remain stable against its consent. The use of phrases such as, "It ain't 'alf hot mum," were declared discriminatory anti-gaia hate-speech and thus illegal. Getting flooded due to rising sea levels is of course indirect discrimination, so such things cannot be reported.
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Thank you for that, I've been trying to persuade my kin that there are better investment opportunities out there. Your summary is, er, to the point.
----
There sure are, I've just invested £500 with a nigerian multi-millionaire whos having trouble unlocking his crypto-currency wallet that has $50 million in it.
With his access to the computing power of my PC , plus use of my bank account to transfer the funds once unlocked, I'll stand to make a cool $5 million when he transfers the money out of Nigeria.
AND he assures me that there are several people like him who just need our assistance and are willing to pay for it.....
Drone deliveries up your street every 3 or 4 minutes. Similar to having a leaf-blower passing back and forth outside your window. Mangled sparrows littering the pavement, dogs driven mad. Jeff Bezos waving at us all from Mars, where the atmosphere is too thin for drones anyway. He can enjoy his morning cuppa in peace.
And the tell-all docu-drama revealing that makers of AI driving programs resorted to hiding midgets -- whoops, vertically-challenged humans -- inside dashboards to control vehicles after their AI went rogue and began awarding itself "population-reduction" points for hitting pedestrians. Can't admit you went down the wrong path, boys?
Thanks for the future memories, Dabbs.
If there's an aparment block in your view, you could very well kill someone on the 20th floor while trying to shoot a drone. Instead, you should use a fishing pole. After a few tries you should be able to lasso one with ease. Also, you won't have to leave your back yard to go pick up the package an the pieces.
Fishing pole and lasso? Seems to me that a net would be easier. I haven't tried either, though.
If one came close enough, I wonder if it would be feasible to hit a rotor with a blast of Silly String.
As for "a few tries": This is 2020, man. Automate that sucker and train an ANN to hit the drone. Presto: Drone-downing "AI" robot. You can have it spin around a pole if you like. Adding blockchain is left as an exercise for the reader.
(Fortunately, drone deliveries aren't likely to appear near the Stately Manor anytime soon, and even less likely to show up near the Mountain Fastness.)
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No : to be really smart buy a boatyard, build them and sell them.
My own wanderings in time into next year resulted in the discovery of something called the Brexit Boatbuilding Company (as that acronym had somehow become available again), which was prospering thanks to the calls being made at the moment in the Daily Telegraph for vigilante boat fleets in the channel carrying out citizens border patrol duties (this last bit is sadly not a joke). Unfortunately when I skipped forward another year, it became clear that the patrols were being used to prevent people from leaving the UK, rather than arriving........
Having moved to an island two years ago, I have occasionally entertained the idea of buying a boat.
But AFAICT, they're expensive to buy and expensive to own. They are also fairly slow moving, so I might need longer vacations to get to where I want to go. Which also will set me back a fair bob. OTOH I can probably jury rig the autopilotsoftware from a Tesla to pilot the water vessel while I'm sleeping.
Any advice? Apart from skimming my e-mail for plausible "get rich quick!" schemes?
Boats aren't all that expensive to buy. They ARE, however, expensive to repair. More so if you're not handy. Even more so if you're not handy and think you are. It's easy to get in over your head. Before purchasing, remember your Latin: Caveat Emptor.
Owning a boat is cheap. Just keep it away from the four things guaranteed to ruin it: Sunlight, oxygen, water, and salt. People in the know add humans consuming alcohol to that list.
You can get a used autopilot in excellent condition, built for a boat, for under $500. Bolting it onto your boat would be a lot less work than adapting an automotive product to do the job. Took me about a day to install one in my Monterey Clipper, and that included testing & tuning as I pulled half a dozen crab pots.
Speed is relative. And expensive. You can get a go-fast that'll take you across an ocean faster than legal driving speeds in most civilized countries, if you choose to throw enough money at the problem. At my age, I've leaned boating's about the journey, not the destination. My advice is to spend money on reliability and comfort, not speed.
> Speed is relative. And expensive.
Definitely: On the lower end of the "speed" scale you can chose the "sail" option, where moving is free and your autonomy is unlimited, the only limiting factor being the weather (and it usually does a very good job at that too). But as Jake said, sailing is about the journey, not the destination.
As about the general costs, you'd better have money to spend, unless you can throw a lot of time at your boat. There is always something to fix, change, repair, paint, not to mention getting her out of the water to clean the hull from barnacles once a year, not to mention the costs of parking your boat (which depend on the size of that boat, and can get considerable for bigger ones in tourist milking regions). Add taxes and insurances, and keep in mind everything "yachting" is more expensive than the exact same item or service in the normal world.
Last but not least, the autopilot is a must-have, but it won't allow you to sleep at night during a long trip nevertheless, not unless you are willing to risk some cargo ship running over you, because they didn't see you, or because their cheap untrained crew was off the bridge without permission. Obviously they won't even notice if they hit you ("Did you hear that crunching sound?" "Naah, you had one too many"), so it's a little like a Russian roulette game where both players shoot the gun at you: The only way to win is not to play, and have someone on deck all night, taking bearings of those small lights on the horizon... Obviously this is less annoying with a bigger crew: What would be a harrowing 24h watch for a single person becomes a merely bothersome 2-hour watch for a bigger crew. Even with only 2 persons you can make 12-hour watches, and both get a full night's (day's) sleep and enough me-time to wash, cook, etc..
"Even a quick jaunt by sea from France to England across the Channel is going to take longer. OK, this is partly due to the robo-sharks (complete with lay-zers strapped to their heads) that will be introduced post-Brexit."
Actually, this is more due to the strikes in Paris public transportations :)
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