Posts by John H Woods

At best...

"At best, it would have hit her at 11.5 m/s or thereabouts (24mph)." - Lee D

Firstly, and decent car can brake at 1g. An XC90 has a 100km/h stopping distance of 36m. So, a=v²/2s gives us a deceleration of 10.7m/s² or 1.1g

(Surely the car deceleration increases as the velocity drops, so this is a minimum.)

A single second (1.0s) of full breaking could therefore reduce the impact speed from 40mph to 16mph. Its still gonna hurt, but it's an order of magnitude less likely to be fatal. Even if your calcs were right and you can only get down to 24mph, it must be at least 5x more likely an adult would survive such an impact than a full 40mph impact.

Note also that you only need another ~0.5 seconds to avoid the impact altogether.

Re: Dictionary anyone?

@Vimes: "It's a mistake to portray leave voters as stupid in my opinion, especially when the government itself didn't know initially what leaving would entail."

Insert the word "all" and I'd agree.

Before the referendum I engaged with over 1000 people about Brexit on social media and news media comment pages. Of those, 956 engaged with 2 or more responses to my questions. 37 of those were "it's just how I feel" type answers, and 9 had serious arguments that actually made me think.

All of the rest were absolute, utter, irredeemable morons. Now it's quite possible that 99% of remainers are also morons. But they were voting for the status quo, which is a slightly different thing.

Way back when I was a lad, people who had no real knowledge or understanding or interest in politics used to say so. Now it seems that a lot of those same people have unaccountably strong opinions. Here's a typical exchange:

Brexiteer: "Why do Remainers treat me like an idiot? Show me some respect and you'll see I have good reasons, I've done a lot of research"

Me: "Ok, give me your one best reason for voting Leave"

Brexiteer: "Well, there's so many, but probably the most important one for me is the status of the Commissioner. He's like a godlike figure: he's not elected, he can't be censured by the commission, and what he says goes"

Me: "Errm, he is elected, he can be censured, and he doesn't really have much executive power"

Brexiteer: "You see, you're just dismissing my arguments out of hand"

Me: "Not really, I'm just pointing out that, after "all that research" and the opportunity to give me your very best reason for voting Leave, you've just said three things that a few seconds of internet search would confirm to be false"

Brexiteer: "Well, I still stand by my original position"

Re: Upvote Tor The Headline Writer

Yep, nothing we like more than to pick up an earworm from our first Reg check of the morning!

Re: Perhaps I need a forwarding email address for every shop

A lot of web forms incorrectly reject it but a "plus form" address (RFC2822) is what you are looking for.

yourname+anythingyoulike@yourdomain.com will be delivered to yourname@yourdomain; but you can still see the originally used recipient name, so when you get spam/phishing to, for instance, yourname+CW@yourdomain you know who leaked it.

Re: Undecimate?

"But that immediately causes the problem that there is now no verb for reversing a decimation" --- Smooth Newt

How about 'cimate' --- I'm pretty sure the tithesis society would be gruntled with that.

Re: Good luck with that.

"UK tort law starts with having to show a "loss", and your time is worth .... nothing." --- JimmyPage

But, if you can't fix it yourself, and you pay someone to fix it for you, I think* their time is worth something, and you might well be able to claim that having to pay them is a 'loss' you might expect to be at least partially reimbursed.

Perhaps, by making the updates compulsory, MS have increased their exposure to such claims?

*IANALBIPOOTI

Hi Vis...

... especially effective if a suit and tie is visible underneath

Re: Scripting

On Android you can do all that with Tasker

Re: Indeed on the pork ...

I'd have worn a bow tie... Medics wear them for similar reasons.

Re: I presume that public money is spent on this.

Money doesn't just disappear from an economy.

If you give researchers, or any normal citizens, money to do stuff, you'll get some back immediately in tax. The rest will be spent on goods and services, and more tax will come back, ad infinitum.

The only way to "disappear" money is to give it to the people who are equipped to move it out of the country where it escapes national taxation. And where, even if it is used, none of that money comes back because even if it is subjected to taxation, it now benefits other national economies.

Re: I am still surprised

On the other had I wouldn't be surprised if they are still sending and carrying unencrypted material by post or handler... How long is it since the last load of sensitive documents was accidentally left on a train or in a taxi?

Re: A career in television?

Episodes was pretty funny

Re: One does wonder

Robert Harris' eponymous book heartily recommended... The first half is almost an engaging documentary of Roman life, the latter half an unputdownable thriller.

Re: Or...

@tea hound

Fairy nuff. I've upvoted you for giving me a laugh!

Re: lowest common denominator

More numerate types should remember: it's a thin line between them and the lowest common denominator

Strength of GoogleFu

Yes, some people just can't search and/or evaluate results. My daughter's partner is always saying "Hey Siri..." and then managing to bork the question in a way that would make it almost impossible for an intelligent human to decipher.

Re: How can just a new privacy policy be compliant

"but they're not supposed to remember it"

Not without your consent, what's your point?

Re: Presecutions

It's probably in the orthinology book

Re: Smart TVs?

I wouldn't be too sure we won't end up with devices with WhisperSync like technology or mesh networking that doesn't rely on your own network.

There is a magic money tree*

Not a big fan of Corbyn but we've got to realize that questions about how things "are going to be paid for in reality" are, at least to some extent, enthymematic, and the enthymeme they contain is, at least to some extent, false.

A national economy with its own central bank and a still decent national credit rating is not 'like a household budget' and the ingrained idea that it is, in my opinion, perhaps the worst legacy of the Thatcher era.

There are clearly some very good reasons for controlling the amount and type of government spending (a quick look at the litany of failures of command economies is instructive) but "where's the money going to come from?" isn't, as far as I can see, a very useful question. Better to ask, for instance, "will spending this money now be worth it, in terms of economic growth (or indeed some other social good)?"

* In fact there are two magic money trees: both the state (public sector), and the banks (private sector), can simply create money. I'm not saying whether the existence of these trees is good or bad, or which it is preferable to eat from: I'm just saying "there is no magic money tree" is, purely and simply, not actually true. Those reluctant to borrow should say: "we don't want to spend that amount of money on that issue, and here's why" and those who want to borrow should say: "we think this is a good investment and here's why" --- then we can have a proper debate and get away from this "sorry there's no money left" nonsense.

Whilst I agree ...

... many people already drive far too close.

Re: Fascinating!

"Too little radiation and you don't get the chance of potentially beneficial mutations occurring in living organisms" --- [sequence of mainly digits with a hidden 'I']

Pedantic note: there are plenty of sources of mutations even without ionizing radiation, and even without any radiation at all: I should imagine the errors in the genetic processes themselves are a significant cause.

But I have no idea if anyone has attempted to quantify the relative rates associated with relative causes; I can't see anything obvious out there on the web and I'm no longer in academia. Anyone got any ideas?

Re: Automatic or intelligent?

'My proposal for an agreed definition of AI: "It seems to do things that look to us as if it's thinking, but we have no idea why."' --- Jonathan Richards 1

Isn't that just the Turing Test?

Re: Basic skill of slide rule

I used to teach remedial maths to biology undergrads. Nearly all of them had been taught that logs were historic and related to the time before calculators, and they weren't that happy to hear that they were fundamental to science. One day, one of my mature students, who understood the maths back to front but nevertheless dutifully turned up to even the maths tutorials, asked if we'd like to see his slide rule. "I'm an old fossil" he explained apologetically.

By the end of the hour the three students still struggling with the concept of logs had got it absolutely solid. The "old fossil" gave me the slide rule and I used it for years: some people massively benefit from a degree of "physical learning." I think the same must be true for computing and projects like this are invaluable.

"There are a few others left"

Can be a bit hit and miss, but Private Eye needs an honourable mention.

El Reg - Well done, we're proud of you.

Re: Ikea trip rules...

Learn the shortcuts!

+1

Look for doors that look like they're missing a staff only sign!

Re: I can forgive 'Matt' for all of his sins...

Sorry, but literally doesn't literally mean literally any more.

"First they came for R. Kelly, then..."

... they came for the other paedophiles?

Not bothered, sorry.