Posts by Alan Brown

"was on a two lane motorway when a breakdown truck towing a van decided to overtake a lorrry"

It's _illegal_ for a heavy vehicle to be in the right-most lane of a motorway - which means in a two-lane situation they're not allowed to pass.

Dashcam footage can and has resulted in convictions for the drivers.

The Dutch have cameras on all the twolane sections of their motorways. HGvs which pass on them are spotted and sent $LARGE_FINE by post.

Re: It appears from the article that Mr. Wolmar is a railway enthusiast...

"who pays the road tax if no-one owns cars?"

For the most part, "who cares?"

Road tax (as in car registration VED) nets about £5 billion per year.

FUEL taxes (excise duty, various taxes and VAT) net something around £75-80 billion per year.

Maintaining the roading system costs £25-£35 billion/year depending who you listen to.

All that bluster about ringfencing VED for roads was misdirection. If that had been done the government could have kept its promise and _still_ reduced what it paid out in maintenance.

It also brings up another important point: Fuel taxes are a significant income for the exchequer. As soon as alternative fuels start harming that income the taxation will be transferred onto those alternatives somehow (either milage charges or mandatory fees per kWh used for transportation purpose).

Many years ago people who had CNG cars would invest in compression rigs that could "charge up" their car from the gas supply at home for about 1/4 the price of CNG on the forecourt. That was eventually curtailed. In a similar manner, if you're making your own biofuel there's a 2000 litre/year limit after which you must pay excise duty of 45p/litre on EVERY litre produced (not just the amount over 2000 litres).

e-fuels excise will likely be rated in the same way (2000 litre-equivalent exemption per household, then a large bill arrives)

Re: It appears from the article that Mr. Wolmar is a railway enthusiast...

"If we eliminate that from the equation, then an autonomous taxi service suddenly becomes dirt cheap. Like, public transport cheap. "

And, given that a 10 ton bus carrying 40 passengers does 1000+ times as much road damage as 40 cars carrying 1 passenger you're likely to see a blending of services happening very quickly.

Re: It's too Black and White

"Taxi's are inconvenient and expensive."

The most expensive part is the driver. As soon as self-driving cars can eliminate them the cost of taking a taxi will probably be less than that of maintaining your own car.

Re: My stuff

" It's been thrown/left in there the last time it was needed ready for when it might be needed again."

What you need is a thing your aunt gave you which you don't have any idea what it does but you can't get rid of it.

Re: They will never work in an urban environment.

"The driver clearly would not contemplate the possibility of putting a wheel on the verge"

Most of them won't contemplate being closer than 3 feet from the verge, or having less than 3 feet clearance - which is a problem on a road less than 15 feet wide.

Re: They will never work in an urban environment.

"Honestly, the whole "Holborn problem" as expounded here is fraught with unstated assumptions. "

Exactly. It's an extremely simplistic, rigidly thought scenario.

By the way, don't try arguing with a donkey and cart. After obstructing it for a while the donkey _will_ push you out of the way.

Cars only hurt if they nudge you at more than 2mph or they run over your feet.

Re: They will never work in an urban environment.

" In those areas there is one overlord - the pedestrian. "

Legally on UK roads (other than motorway regulated ones), the same priorities apply.

Re: They will never work in an urban environment.

"a Audi twat mobile... actually stopped when faced with a large puddle and waited for me to pass, so they could go round it"

Around these parts, some of those puddles conceal 6-8 inch deep potholes. It was rather funny seeing white van man beach himself in one recently.

Re: They will never work in an urban environment.

"In fact the passenger in the car would yell at the kids and the on-board video cameras would record their activity as evidence."

This is an easily solved problem in any case. The car would simply need to push ahead at 1-2mph and stop if it detected a bump, the same as humans do.

Anyone who's ever driven through a flock of sheep or mob of cattle knows this one.

Re: So, it's crap?

'If a system can be "fooled" in this way, it's probably not doing it right.'

Humans can be trivially fooled into mishearing things

(Excuse me while I kiss this guy, We built this city on sausage rolls, We're calling a trout, Le freak c'est sheep, I'll never leave your pizza burning)

They can also be relatively easily fooled into misidentifying the speaker.

Re: putting a fueling station into orbit

if anyone sets up a Space Hotel, they'd better install defences against Vermicious Knids.

Re: Probably not going anywhere near Mars

"So Musk is putting a bloody big piece of space junk out there"

It's somewhat smaller than the pieces of junk we already know of in that zone.

Re: ... the threat of a nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea

The Chinese have put up with Fat Boy Kim and his daddy for years, but it's mostly been "tolerated" - remember the Norks are a creation of Stalin.

The real threat that the chinese will be worried about is that of 11 million starving refugees heading north if the NK government collapses. That threat also seems to be one of the reasons they keep sending any escapees back (ie, KimBo saying "if you don't, we'll send a lot more")

It's going to be interesting what happens with the latest round of UN embargoes. China cut off power and oil supplies for 4 months a few years back but resumed them when it was clear the Pyongyang kleptocracy was taking everything and letting the peasants starve/freeze to death. If there's a refugee wave as a result of these embargos they have legitimate cause to ask the world to help out.

"It's standard for some hotel chains and conference venues."

Only for those who like $600k fines (USA - Mariott and Smart CIty) or criminal prosecution (UK - computer misuse act as well as Ofcom). It's the same across most of Europe.

All you need to do stateside is notify the FCC. They've been pretty good at stomping on this behaviour.

"If you do that, your own kit performs de-auth against any nearby clients trying to join those networks, which results in only "your" networks working and everything else literally disconnecting for everyone within seconds."

If anyone complains to Ofcom (or the FCC if you're in the USA) you'll find yourself in for a world of hurting. It's classified as deliberate interference and penalised as such.

If they're spoofing your SSIDs then it'll probably squeak past the lawyers but actively interfering with anything else is on extremely dodgy (and expensive) ground. Ask the Marriott chain about that.

(I have the wifi network here setup to log those SSIDs in use and reconfigure the network so that nearby access points jump to other channels. After that it's a matter of taking a walk to the location and having 'a quiet chat' with whoever's operating the rogue AP - which is almost always a phone unintentionally left in tethering mode.)

In the UK, DEAUTH attacks additionally fall under the Computer Misuse Act, which has a lot more teeth than Ofcom. As the admin, I really wouldn't want to risk personal prosecution for activating that "feature" on our APs.

Re: Saying that .....

"dole scroungers on disability benefit who go snowboarding whilst being unable to walk"

The number of these that exist is statistically so small as to be nonexistent - time and again the costs of the people hired to investigate such claims (or drug use amongst beneficiaries) has been proven to be higher than the money saved in detecting them.

There are something like 20,000 people investigating what may be as much as £500 million in benefit fraud, yet only 1500 investigating £70 billion in tax fraud/tax evasion. What does that tell you about priorities?

And for what it's worth the entire disabilities and unemployment budget is about £10billion (less than 5% of the budget), whilst pensions account for more than 2/3 (68%) as a direct cost, with pensioner perks (fuel allowance, council housing, free travel, etc) accounting for another 5-7% (yes, more than the unemployment/disability benefits in pensioner perks/vote bribes)

Baby boomers are only just starting to retire. The peak will be in another 5-7 years and by 2025 pensions are likely to account for 80% of the country's budget. Remind me how going after a few benefit cheats is going to make this sustainable?

Re: It's all fun and games until someone's toes freeze solid and shatter,

> town gas (coal gas)

Which was mostly hydrogen with a bit of carbon monoxide thrown in for lethality.

Re: ( @ John Riddoch)

"Afterwards, I told the management that I'd never work in those conditions again."

Sometimes it's better to say the conditions are unworkable at the outset.

After you've finished, they won't pay you extra.

"I'd hate to have had to work in that kind of heat...."

A long time ago as an apprentice, I fairly regularly ended up in house ceiling spaces running cables (the "boy" always does this stuff, mainly because he can fit through the manhole that the average electrician's gut precludes).

Steel roofing, summer days and insulation below usually meant the ambient temperature was in excess of 50C + a blasting space heater above you. Being fibreglass wool insulation for the most part, stripping down to shorts and tshirt was not advisable, it was bad enough getting it between skin and coveralls. In low pitched roofs there was often only 2 feet of space to work in and touching the roof on the inside, even through the waterproofing, meant blisters.

Re: @Alan Brown

> 336 calories to melt 1 gram of ice at 0deg C

(actually 334 joules/79.5 calories)

79.5 calories later, you have water at 0C

> 1 calorie to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree C

(which is more or less right)

what happens when you put in 334 joules/79.5 calories to 1g of water at 0C ?

As for BTU, the only time you see that used in the UK is in adverts derived from US equipment. All our suppliers use kW (latent and sensible)

Re: Shall we block email too?

"And just to be safe, perhaps we should add DNS to the list..."

ISPs _could_ redirect all port 53 requests to their own servers to prevent people circumventing their blocks. Just be glad they don't (yet).

Re: Talk-Talk Customers

"I always enjoy telling them I would not touch TT with a bargepole."

I prefer telling them I wouldn't touch TT with someone else's bargepole. Loudly enough that other people can hear it.

Then again I'm the guy who loudly tells High street chuggers fo fuck off and stop pestering people.

Re: Begs the question(s) ...

"The US is wondering what the lack of Net Neutrality leads to"

This (and at least here in the UK you have the option of going to another provider)

MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.

COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.

TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites.

AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.

WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results.

MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices.

PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites.

AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.

VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11 free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications allowed users to circumvent Verizon’s $20 tethering fee and turn their smartphones into Wi-Fi hot spots. By blocking those applications, Verizon violated a Net Neutrality pledge it made to the FCC as a condition of the 2008 airwaves auction.

AT&T: In 2012, AT&T announced that it would disable the FaceTime video-calling app on its customers’ iPhones unless they subscribed to a more expensive text-and-voice plan. AT&T had one goal in mind: separating customers from more of their money by blocking alternatives to AT&T’s own products.

VERIZON: During oral arguments in Verizon v. FCC in 2013, judges asked whether the phone giant would favor some preferred services, content or sites over others if the court overruled the agency’s existing open internet rules. Verizon counsel Helgi Walker had this to say: “I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these rules we would be exploring those types of arrangements.” Walker’s admission might have gone unnoticed had she not repeated it on at least five separate occasions during arguments.

Re: Hmmmm

"As can Dido."

Um...... no. Ew.

Re: Ghost redirects.

"makes me wonder how much this invisible redirect practice is going on"

A lot. It's regarded as link piracy and some sites check their referrers to try and stop it.