Posts by Neil Barnes

Re: because Microsoft do not call you.

And, not coincidentally, he lived on the Isle of Skye :)

Re: Cue for a song...

<cough> Los Bravos, surely? </cough>

Re: can squeeze 700km from a single full battery charge

At 2C (with heating) or 32C (with aircon cooling)?

Another paypal user here - it's one place less that has a debit/credit card stored if I can purchase via a single on-line point (though it does, as pointed out above, make paypal an obvious target - so the card linked at paypal is deliberately restricted in its access to cash).

A couple of points:

- in the vast majority of cases, there is absolutely no need for a company to store *any* details about me, whether that be my name and address or my payment details. If there are legal requirements to log the purchase, then surely all that is needed is an encrypted record that the purchase has taken place.

- every company with whom I might deal on the internet seems to suffer from the delusion that I am now in a relationship with them. This is emphatically not the case. Each and every purchase is a single discrete event. I am quite happy to spend the couple of minutes that it takes to fill out the details each time, but it seems that my co-habitees on this planet are happy to take the risk of having their details stored willy-nilly throughout the world. (Admittedly, this would not have helped in a scraping case like this).

- STOP allowing random scripts to run. The majority are trackers in one form or another: you are under no obligation to allow yourself to be tracked. Others are potentially dangerous - particularly if they call other scripts - or annoying, in the case of every advert ever made. Allow only those scripts that *must* be run to run, e.g. payment services. As a courtesy detail, if a site presents an empty page unless its scripts are allowed, I consider that site broken by design and avoid using it.

Re: What I want from a car:

You are me and I claim my five pounds!

I will believe in car automation when I see one that can reliably drive from London to the outer Hebrides - including managing the ferries - in any weather, at any time of day, at any time if year. Fleshy meatbags can do that without any great effort...

Allowing the owner to perform basic maintenance without requiring a main dealer to tell the on board computer that the maintenance has been performed would be a good first start. I have a suspicion that the only reason we see so much of this crap - auto lights, auto wipers, lane following, controls for the radio five levels deep in menus (and my personal bete noir - touch screens completely lacking in haptic feedback) is there solely because software is cheap, and manufacturers have to have something to keep up with their competition. This kind of 'driver assistance' is a toy and should be treated as such - restrict it to constant speed cruise control (no, don't make it follow the white line or adjust its speed to the vehicle in front - *you* should be making decisions when you're the person in charge. And you should never, when behind the wheel of a car, not be in charge.)

In the UK, yes. Dunno about other locations.

Re: Petunias, anyone?

I wonder if it will be friendly?

(yes, we were)

Re: What the hell is C++, Java, C# and the other drivel?

Might that board be a Sinclair MK14? There's a chap in Czechoslovakia will sell you a new board and bits - I'm currently negotiating some new proms. Enormous things; 512x4bits...

Re: Every day, in every way...

To be honest, no.

But now my inclination is *well* below zero and still going down.

the wonderful opportunity it is.

To change to Libre Office, if you haven't done already. Pascal is entirely correct, but I can't help thinking that people have been gradually eased into paying rental for things they would previously have owned over the last couple of decades or so. After all, you hardly notice all those leeches already drinking away at your blood; you'll surely not notice another.

Re: Eh?

If you've got a 50Hz heartbeat, you should probably call an ambulance now. Tell them tachycardia.

Average adult heartbeat is generally in the range 1Hz (resting) - 4Hz (exercising very hard).

Re: Instant Gratification

Of course they do. They provide *hours* of punditry while the experts debate what the result would be if they could believe the exit polls, then the results next morning, then more hours of pundits explaining why the polls were wrong.

Paper ballots are *made* for 24 hour TV.

(Anyone would think the results would be different if you stopped up all night to watch, instead of just waiting for the morning news...)

And therein the problem. If the signal *from* the cabinet isn't reliable, drops out when it rains or if a heavy lorry drives past or whatever, it doesn't matter how the cabinet is fed.

Re: 1 year warranty? I don't think so...

That was my first thought: the Consumer Rights Act requires that goods be 'fit for purpose' and it's hard to argue that a thousand quids worth of computer that dies after a year meets that standard - particularly when there are plenty of examples of other similar tech lasting five or more years. It strikes me that it is not for the vendor to define how long it should last unless explicitly stated at the point of purchase; the expectation is that of the customer based on previous experience. A one year guarantee is *not* a warranty that the device is only expected to last that long - if it was, would you buy one?

Sales of Goods act only applied until 2015 and has been superseded by the CRA which is supposed to be better for the consumer (but IANAL).

Re: I don't get it.

What, both of them?

Re: Cost

There seems to be this curious idea that money spent on space is 'wasted', as if dollar bills are being bundled up and launched into orbit. It seems to be forgotten somehow that each and every dollar spent in the Apollo programme (and since) was spent right here on Earth, and most if not all of it in America.