Posts by John Brown (no body)

"Did you know the French took approx 80% of the total quota for cod, hake and haddock and we only got 6%, and then had to buy some of the rest back off them ?"

Every fishing boat has to buy a quota licence. Who was it who decided to sell so much to the French? Or was it just the the British boat owners decided they didn't want to pay as much as the French were prepared to pay? And if not, why not? Were the French boats subsidised or more efficient or something?

Re: Blame...

"Apple is certainly to blame in part but so is every other manufacturer of E-goods, all of them want you to buy new replacements as often as possible, it's called capitalism, our current system relies on consumerism and obsolete goods in the shortest possible time that they can get away with."

I see the TV manufacturers are now pushing 8K TVs. I did buy a 42" full HD TV some years ago because the "HD Ready" TV was to be moved into the bedroom. But I can't see a valid reason to upgrade to to 4K TV let alone 8K because a) an HD TV is easily good enough, b) even now there's still a huge amount of SD content, c) there's really very little 4K content available and d) what 8K content?

Re: General concern

Reaction Engines? (Only guessing here.)

Mind you, one company I did some work for some years ago, made replacement hip joints and knees. The boss was a medical doctor.

Re: General concern

"Where did you study? "

I was once asked that. I said Durham, which seemed to be an ok answer. The questioner made an assumption because I didn't add the context that my primary school was in County Durham before our area was wrenched out to became part of Tyne and Wear. I suspect the level of education he was referring to would mean saying "Sunderland Poly" would not have been a "right" answer.

Re: The great, the good, and the ugly

You may have missed the longer term plan there. Once UKIP got Brexit done, the UK needs to make trade deals. Any trade deals with India, such we likely need to have, will be dependant on Indian people having better access to the UK job market. That couldn't happen while we were in the EU.

Re: Rental sucks.

"Sorry, but the rental idea sucks for anyone but tourists. If they actually wanted to reduce traffic, then privately owned would be the way to go."

Absolutely! It could even be cost free to the Government. If suppliers want to sell "road legal" scooters, then they pay to have them approved by the DfT, just like other vehicle manufactures have to do. Maybe stamp serial numbers onto various parts of the chassis too. Yeah, that can be abused by some people, but then they already do that with cars etc now.

The Cycling Proficiency Test, which was well promoted and little short of compulsory, like school swimming lessons and water safety, are no longer pushed or funded as they once were. Hence the recent generations of kids drowning left, right and centre these days because they are poor or non-swimmers with zero risk awareness. Then there's the RNLI who provide paid and trained lifeguards to beaches, paid out of our taxes when we used to have volunteers, also trained and often competed in competitions to prove their abilities. Now you get "official" lifeguards who will make the effort to come over and shout at you if you have the temerity to swim in the sea outside their special flagged area.

"Why do you need a driving license to rent an electric scooter but any one can go to Halfords and by a peddle bike and ride down the road (or often the pavement near me even though the council spent money painting cycle lanes on the roads) without even having to have demonstrated they have basic road sense?"

Because it would require a change in the law that defines a "motor vehicle". E-bikes skirt the law because the electric motor is "assistive" and not the primary means of propulsion.

Re: Trials?

"So I expect we'll have their wretched scooters to deal with next."

Yes, and considering all the horror stories we are seeing posted here, from multiple countries, it does make one wonder just who the UK government are listening too when they talk about these sorts of schemes.

Like Facebook and Uber before them, the ideas seem to be coming out of US university/students, where the idea, on campus, seems like a good idea and quite possibly might even work quite well, But they really don't scale up to the real world where laws, licensing and real people are involved. Universitys on private land full of students paying a lot of money to be there are not a reliable analogue of the real world.

Re: Who came up with the £5bn figure?

Don't Surrey Satellite have a lot to do with building the Galileo sats? That's a lot of skills, equipment and manufacturing tools already in place. Not mention that building sats is something that the UK is actually quite good at. Launching them is another matter, but there are multiple launching options either available or coming on stream that are then doable at much cheaper rates than lofting 1.5 tons into high orbit. (that's assuming the modern technology can reduce the required size and weight and that it's possible to run a position constellation in LEO)

Re: Obvious things often don't seem obvious to politicians and their support staff

"it's obvious to anyone who understands the technology that a LEO satellite communications system depending on microsatellites cannot function as a positioning system."

I don't understand the technology. Why is many small sats in LEO not able to function as a positioning system?

Re: "What's wrong with a brass sextant and clockwork chronometer? "

He'd certainly not stand for calling it a SEXtant!

Re: Trolled?

True, but from the context in the article it seems more like trawling than trolling.

Re: "cartoons depicting lazy American workers"

Well, to be fair, it's racism. Just not the sort of racism that makes it into US and western news feeds :-)

Re: PSU fun

"The PSU on this server's failed, can you send a replacement?"

The Dell rep did exactly the correct thing based on the information given, Hell desk people have to deal with the full gamut of callers from total numpties to people who actually know what they are talking about. S/he did the right thing in not assuming you were correct without garnering further information from you.

Re: Been there, done that...

"UPS goes bang with smoke, fire and flame (mercifully brief but enough for it not to be as dark as it should have been)."

Oooh, a UPS with built in emergency lighting?

Re: All that money

About 180 degrees!

Re: Clarification

"Hope this helps."

Here's a scale for you to demonstrate how much use of the foot and hand in a game nominally called "football" by the locals"

Foot.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....Hand

Now, "foot"ball in the vast majority of the world is right up against the left edge of the scale because any use of the hand on the ball is against the rules. Now, where on that scale would you like to place US style "foot"ball"?

Re: Why use the phrase "White elephants"

And not forgetting that they went green before being replaced with white. The green ones were a nightmare due to the lack of contrast.

Re: Why use the phrase "White elephants"

"Consider a general move away from colour based phrases."

Oh, FFS! Grow up. Not all mentions of "white" or "black" are racist. Try some education instead, It can work wonders! After all, I don't see anyone complaining about you being green with envy over the education the rest of us have. Admit it, you were wrong. Or are you too yellow? Maybe feeling a bit blue now? Or are so angry it's all just a red haze now?

Re: Unprepared

Of course they can, FFS. They are just having to scale up. I mean, everyone remembers Curiosity and the "complicated" landing of burn through atmosphere, use parachutes then a rocket powered skycrane, but how many remember that that was actually just a step change from Spirit and Opportunitys landing methods, ie burn through the atmosphere, deploy parachute, inflate the ball cocoon and then a final rocket powered declaration before dropping them the remainder of the way to bounce!

Parachutes on Mars are a done deal. Trying out new materials and designs to cope with different load patterns and payload masses is what happens here on Earth

Re: The one true way...

I'm just an insane Yank with a t-shirt that reads "I am free of the tyranny of pants!"

It's what yous guys call "biscuits". Although considering biscuit comes from the French for "twice baked" it makes we wonder how hard your "biscuits" might be.

Re: It doesn't matter..

I also came here to add that suggestion. Also, jam, cream or cream, jam....really doesn't matter so long as the whole thing is dunked in batter and deep fried before serving with a chilled glass of Buckfast.

Re: Almost mouse free

...and the neighbour with the pond in the back garden is still wondering where fuck all his expensive young koi went!!