Posts by Stewart Haywood

The Best Way

to cut back on carbon output is sign up to get natural gas from Russia. That's what the rest of the EU has done.

Sloe Gin

I made sloe gin once. Perhaps becasue I used a fast glass it had the same effect as ordinary gin.

Really good security.

So, they will be able to listen to everyone but will be able to tell nobody about what they hear. That's what I call really good security.

Black helicopter because I wonder if those work or are they just for decoration?

@'I was just following orders! Guv'

Ah, so you think that there will be another election do you?

What is the betting that a general election will be left until a terrorist inspired state of emergency can be declared and the election postponed? UK law does already provide for such a thing to be done.

Pirates ecause the UK has already been boarded.

So,

They will no longer offer bog standard service then?

@What about sound recordings?

OH NO! They are not getting my library of slurping noises.

@Played it by AC

Use your left hand, it frees up your right hand for the mouse and also makes it feel like someone else is doing it. How can you not know that, your not a Banker are you?

That's what a left hand looks like.

Good grief

So she is going to ban things that are already banned. Sounds like a really good plan, well thought out.

She is going to prevent gang members from being in their gangs territory. First of all, it is dumb to recognise any area as being any gang's territory. This would be part way to making their claim on a territory legitimate. Second, this will have the effect of moving them into an area claimed by some other gang and starting a gang war.

Hiding your face will be illegal. That is going to piss off Muslim women again, well done. Motor cycle helmets are going to be a bit of a problem. I assume that Santa will have to be clean shaven and no masks for doctors or nurses. This one is obviously going to upset the SAS, not a good move.

Interesting behaviour

I am sure that in England and Wales people from 5 to 17 years can drink in private with no problem. To drink on licensed premises you have to be 18 or over. There is an exception, at 16 and 17 you can drink beer wine and cider in a pub or restaurant if an adult orders it with a table meal.

There is no problem with an adult going and buying booze, taking it home and allowing his/her 6 year old kid to drink it. There is, however a problem, if the 6 year old pays the parent for it.

Given the above, it really does not make sense to refuse to sell to someone who has a kid with them. But, most of the people at checkouts don't make most of the time.

The penguin because booze gives you happy feet.

It's simple

The cards could be issued with any language on them. Let people request what they want at the time of issue/application.

But, if you are stopped by the police, customs, immigration, mothers against normal people activists, RSPCA, etc., your interview must be conducted in the language that the card is printed in. If this means that the card holder has to wait hours and hours while an interpreter is found, so be it.

@don't patch, re-issue

Ah, you mean that you would like a government run by engineers in place of failed lawyers, failed accademics, failed accountants and failed doctors? A good idea but, when it comes to it, how many engineers would really want to do it?

This is what they are talking about

They have managed to demonstrate a battery pack that will run a vehicle at 60mph for 2 hours on a 10 min charge.

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070530005396

It is a 35kWh pack that is charged wiith a 250kW charger.

@"Radio Waves"

Oh dear. X-rays are between about 10^17 to 10^18 Hz.. So you were out by around 10000000 rather than 100. UV is around 10^16 Hz with visible light at about 10^15 Hz.

At present around 180 GHz is used for imaging. The paint would be useful for rendering surfaces non-reflective.

@Eight wheels

Well, just a thought, 8 wheels 80hp each that is about 0.48 MegaWatts with a heavy right foot.

That is going to be a rather heavy battery bank or two. I would imagine that the batteries are in two banks above the two sets of 4 wheels with the centre of mass between pairs of wheels.in each case. This would surely improve stability, especially under high acceleration. There may also be a problem with weight and wheel bearings.

To sum up

We want drugs, sex, fast trains and no electricity. The first two I get, but what happened to fast cars and rock and roll ?

Electric Monks

I recall the idea of an electric monk from a Douglas Adams book, "The Long Dark Teatime of The Sole' I think. I just imagined a whole flock of rural vicars wizzing around on these things and thought of electric vicars. A large bible nailed to the handles would allow them to read the lesson as they crashed from house to house leaving a trail of spilled tea and squashed cucumber sandwiches in their wakes. Oh, I have just realized that I have been seeing the Dick Emery vicar with the teath riding one of the things.

@Lionel Baden

Your son is 1.7 months old? Wot an odd way of measuring time. It is of course 51 days for a 30 day month but we haven't had one of those recently. It could be 50.202003 days if you are using lunar months but that gets a bit silly with all those micro seconds and so on.

Being 0.57 centuries old, the memory goes a bit, but I am sure that at that age my daughter would have eaten a mouse rather than used it for anything useful.

All been thought of before

All digital mobile standards have provissions for groups or classes of mobiles that are intended to control or limit access. So, limiting network usage to emergency services only over an area is no problem.

New York needs to talk to the network operators.

Splat

A little while ago, an aircraft in Australia decided that it was flying at the wrong altitude and splattered the passengers all over the ceiling. Now, aircraft systems tend to be engineered to slightly higher standards than the average car. So how long would it be before a car decided that it needed to slow from 70 to 30 on a crowded motorway?

A tombstone is the obvious result..

@ iweiner

I wonder if it would stand up to the abuse.

Not new

My daughter had one of these things several years a go. I must admit that hers kept quiet about the whole process rather than announcing it with pride.

A word of warning to parents who think that it is cute. When your kid decides to see if it can eat other stuff (the doll not the kid), you are in for regular bouts of surgery to unplug the ugly looking thing (sorry the doll not your kid!).

Validation of models.

In the main, my experience is with modeling physical porcesses. I have, however, looked at modeling of human behaviour when it comes to telecom's traffic.

With any model, the really interesting bit is the validation of the model. To do this with this type of model, it is best to go back in history and use the model to predict the last 50 years. They have not done this. The model validation (section 4.2 page 165) takes about half a page. The model, thay say, agrees with the Home Office analysis for 2008. Wow, what a surprise.

I have only had a quick look, but it looks as though they have used brand price sensitivity to come to conclusions on overall consumption price sensitivity. This is a bit iffy because of the adictive nature of booze. At one end of the spectrum we have the full blown alcoholic and at the othe we have Granny who can only get a good nights sleep after a couple of glasses of sherry. With a price change, I can see granny going for a cheaper brand but not giving up or going to a single glass.

Overall, I think that the report contains sufficient BS to baffle most political brains.

Alergies good

I am not alergic to anything edible. This has ruined my life because I eat everything I can lay my hands on and have turned into a fat b*st*rd.

Just off to get a seafood cocktail in peanut sauce.

Creap up on it

and drop a tin foil hat over it's satellite antenna.

Goodnight network node.

That's what an alien would do.

@Flawed argument

Hey Mole, that gives me a good idea.

How about tests for the clubs. Fit testers with an "angle of dangle meter" and let them into the club. The angle measured is 180 straight down and 0 straight up. Any angle of 90 or less is a fail for the club.

Paris because she would make a great angle of dangle meter maid.

That's nothing!

When I was a lad, computers came in boxes so big that we lived in one in middle of road

Stealth transports need

Stealth parachutes, like this one http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/leonardo/parachute.html

Why not pretend to be French........

and sell arms to the pirates? We must have lots of stuff that doesn't work and is more dangerous to the user than the person they are pointing it at.

@This could go horribly bad

Rego would have to be made out of meramine with red based paint and be chewable!

The icon, watch out for the rittle yerrow ones.

Have a larf

Come on, have a larf. This is new Mexico where people live in underground houses, they have Roswell and the city of Hot Springs that renamed itself "Truth or Consequences" after the well known TV show. They also have Los Alamos and the site of the first atomic explosion, the White Sands misile range and the VLA radio telescope. No wonder half the population is nuts.

@@Stop IT

Call it the Eve phone. She used an apple to con Adam and it's been downhill ever since.