Posts by Barrie Shepherd

Re: proviso

We should go back to cycles per second - far more descriptive.

KayCees is a far better way to describe a radio stations shortwave operating frequency :-)

Re: There's also the antenna technology.

"Phased array "flat" antennas have been around for donkey's years."

Yes right back to the BSB Squarial - but those were to fixed satellites and had to be aimed - the Starlink ones are genuinely fully 'steerable' arrays.

"(numbers removed to preserve anonymity)"

Why? If they did it they deserve to be identifiable.

Re: We need a patent court

"We need to overhaul the patent system."

Agree but first we need the US Patent System to catch up in reality terms with the rest of the world.

Granting patents for almost anything without even a search for prior work or a 'it's bleeding obvious' check is why we are in this mess.

Re: forthright with outspoken opinions

Equally how can we have a democracy when the government have a majority of 80 because of a single 'democratic' populist decision?

Look at all the new laws they are planning to remove what we had thought were democratic rights.

Re: Who knew data centres were tinder boxes?

"I believe some DC used to use halon gas to suppress the fire .........."

There are alternatives to halon these days so it will be interesting to see if a fire suppression system had been installed.

"Any INS will drift over time, and is not something you want to rely on for an approach threading between mountains."

Don't know if it is true or not but some years ago (when passengers were allowed onto the flight decks) I was up front on a 747 SIN to LHR. I asked about the inertial navigation accuracy and the Captain said that if he dialled in the LHR gate No at SIN then the plane would be no more than 20 metres off when it got to LHR. Laser gyros can maintain very high accuracy - they got a little run around to Mars! (I think)

Re: It doesn't have to be this way.

"Items worth more than £135 - EU supplier should NOT charge VAT, as HMRC will collect VAT and any applicable Duty, at the Customs border.".........payment of which can only be made via courier/mail organisations who will add an inflated sum to the bill the end customer has to pay.

Under the old (£15 rule) Parcel Farce once tried to charge me £16 'handling fee' for two items from China that cost £8 each + £3.20 VAT. I dis-respectfully told them to send the items back and promptly ordered the items again in separate orders to stay below £15.

The fees collection model agreed between HMRC and the carriers is a rort. In this day and age end customers should be able to pay HMRC directly by bank transfer to free the goods up for delivery.

Re: How do they determine what "news" is?

"Most "news" that I remember in Australia was, at least on the commercial television networks,"...

When I was in Sydney 7, 9 & 10 evening news was at the same time, they covered the same stories, in almost the same running order. If there was Press Conference involved there was always a cutaway during the conference to a mass of tripods with 7, 9, 10 cameras and the camera manufacturers name (mainly Sony as I recall) clearly visible.

You got the idea that the content and running order was compiled as the ticker tape ran out of the Reuters terminal!

Re: Well....

".but since uber was, according to the ruling, an employer at that time, then they should have been paying VAT....."

...and probably National Insurance.

"but every TOC pretty much agrees that separating the infrastructure from the companies that actually use it is a bad idea."

Well they would wouldn't they - anything to detract from the shambles of franchising and their own management failings.

NR have to manage multiple TOCs (and freight) on shared infrastructure historically starved of investment, by privatised Railtrack, and undersized for todays expectations. Openreach rose from the private entity British Telecom who were directly responsible for starving the countries telecoms infrastructure in favour of Dividends.

"I can't see why Google threatened to shut off all search services (in Australia) when they could just prevent links to whatever Australian newspapers were required (all if necessary)."

The Australian Law prohibits Google from selectively blocking links to any or all Australian or other countries News sites.

The Law also has a very broad definition of what is News and what is a News source;

Core news content means content that reports, investigates or explains:

(a) issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making; or

(b) current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level.

Covered news content means content that is any of the following:

(a) core news content;

(b) content that reports, investigates or explains current issues or events of interest to Australians.

News business means:

(a) a news source; or

(b) a combination of news sources.

News source means any of the following, if it produces, and publishes online, news content:

(a) a newspaper masthead;

(b) a magazine;

(c) a television program or channel;

(d) a radio program or channel;

(e) a website or part of a website;

(f) a program of audio or video content designed to be distributed over the internet.

The ACCC has structured the Law so that Google has no wriggle room, they either comply or totally remove Search. If Google were to, somehow, run a 'No News Search' application but accidently dropped a BBC article about something like Brexit into a 'no news' search they would probably be in violation of the Law and up for a big fine. Also the Law calls for arbitration but not as we know it. The Arbiter can only decide between a $ offer Google may make against a $ request from the beneficial News groups - the Arbiter cannot change the $ values!

Re: Replies to above comments

"Oh, and in the UK they would be driving around 12 miles :-)"

Outside your local area cop a £200 Covid fine. :-)

Re: Was it Trump?

As I understand it some US non governmental organisations already have authority to access the DVLA database (for a fee no doubt) in Swansea to confirm ID - that is why the likes of AirBnB etc require you to send 'clear machine readable' photos of you with your driving license to validate an account.

How our government came to allow this is beyond me while we were in the EU, now 'free' of EU regulation I guess we can expect far more of this data base access fee collecting.

Re: Kinda

"........................organise a pissup in a brewery...... I was wrong.... they'd get lost on the way to the brewery.............

Nah - they didn't know the Brewery was in Tier 3 and was closed.

They should be fined £10,000 for being out of Tier area.

Ooops Wrong Bridge !

Should be Hammersmith Bridge

Re: The good news is that details of the cracks have not been released.

Google are omnipresent so don't need to be either invited or physically there :-)

"I can understand that certain ones would be beneficial to reduce crime or monitor traffic. "

I have seen a couple of studies that show that CCTV does reduce crime in the areas where it's installed e.g. town centres so is reported as a 'success' by local politicians. The caveat is that crime becomes distributed around the surrounding area where it is less obvious but no less.

So no more drug dealing in the town, where police have a chance of catching the culprits, but an increase in the residential areas where there are no police patrols so little enforcement.

Equally as the crims are dissuaded from shoplifting they move to house breaking. Overall the 'Net' result of CCTV on crime may be zero but the measured affect on town crime is hailed as a success by our Councils and Chief Constables.

Re: Price rises on their way then.

Virtually every other electronic device in your home can be purchased "spread over a 24 month contract" be it finance company or credit card.

The phone companies should focus on selling airtime not finance. You get your TV from Curry's on finance and get your programmes from whichever source you want, Bosch et'al don't sell the washer with an electricity provisioning contract.

If you don't pay the finance contract you are in breach, just like not paying the contract for your TV purchase. So why does buying a phone have to be different ?

""From January 2004 to the end of December 2011, 33 known UK citizens (including 6 with dual nationality) were extradited from the UK to the US. The US embassy in London reported that as of April 2013, 77 individuals had been extradited from the UK to the US."

So is that 110 or 77 sent to the US?

I don't follow the US argument ".....that this is not disproportionate, due to the US population being about five times larger than the UK population". Mind you their President has threatened to invade the Netherlands if the International Court of Justice tries any US military man for crimes so their imbalanced views are to be expected.

According to Wikipedia (probably the same page) only 38 individuals have been extradited from the US to the UK and apparently no US citizen was extradited for a crime committed while in the US.

In other words they won't send theirs to us if the crime was committed in the US, but they want ours irrespective of where the crime was committed.

In the case under discussion the crime was committed in the UK - the SW probably originated (or was modified) here, the perpetrator engineered it's download from here and the images were viewed here. Try him in the UK, by all means let any affected US citizen give evidence but it is a UK matter.

I don't follow the US argument ".....that this is not disproportionate, due to the US population being about five times larger than the UK population".

Re: 5G

....and a MPS (Moon Positioning System) constellation to keep it all singing from the same timing sheet.

Re: This is legislation which affects everyone, immediately and continuously

"A non-vote is a vote for the status quo."

That didn't work for BREXIT.

Re: What's a "Human Right"?

" if the Thin Blue Line accuse you of a crime in one place and AFR "catches" you elsewhere, it will help you. "

The problem with that argument is that 'you' don't have access to the ANPR and 'the thin blue line' will not go trawling through ANPR datasets because it may prove their suspicions wrong, and they may have to declare it to the defense.

Even if the ANPR data showed your car to be somewhere else the prosecution will claim that is no proof 'you' were in it (that logic only works in reverse when 'you' are considered the driver for all ANPR detected offences unless 'you' can prove otherwise.

Re: "we discovered a technical barrier that every other country [...] is also now hitting."

".............. our mainstream media sites are now written by semi-illiterate cheap or zero-hour arts grads who copy what they read on Twitter or what press release was emailed to them - without any sort of fact checking or independent thought at all."

As is Government policy it would seem.

Re: So what's the problem?

"So what's the problem?"

The problem is that this is a Public Health data, something which my be very personal.

Historically data about your health matters are personal and not shared outside of the medical practitioners who need access for your treatment.

The Government has refused to put any legislation around the Track & Trace activity to limit the reach of what the data may be used for or who can legitimately (for health reasons) access it.They intend to retain the data for 20 years! Why?

The data will be passing across the sight of at least three private organisations and will be viewed by employees of those organisation. Those employees will be using their own personal computers with, apparently, no audit of security. In other words the whole activity may have more holes than my kitchen sieve.

Then consider that, without legislation prohibiting it, the data will be available to any Tom Dick or Harry who has been granted access to data under the RIPA laws.

At least Australia rushed through very simple legislation to prevent abuse of the data or access for any other purpose than fighting Corona. I would urge those of you interested to read though the page and a half to see what abuses the Australian Government felt may occur if the tracking data was not protected

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2020L00480