Posts by John Brown (no body) 25434 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"I suppose the proper thing to do would have been to change the engine mounts or move the wings farther forward, but doing that would have counted as a significant design change and necessitated a costly re-certification. Which is what they were trying to avoid."
I'm probably wrong here, but from what I've been reading, MCAS is only required because they wanted the aircraft to handle like previous models and so save costs on simulators and training. If proper simulators and training is intriduced and thus pilot certification on the 737-MAX, then MCAS wouldn't be needed at all. Can someone in the know confirm this or tell me I'm an idiot for suggesting it?
"I'll hazard a guess you're not a Brit. We make jokes about the grimmest of events - it seems to be a coping mechanism, and deeply rooted in our culture. It's not a sign of disrespect or dismissing the gravity of an awful event."
Correct. And it's much cheaper than having a therapist on speed-dial :-)
"They are much more energy efficient per passenger mile than anything else when used a decent percentages of capacity."
And there's yer problem. The same one all mass transit has. Travel off peak and either the mass transit vehicle is running at a financial and pollution loss or it's simply not there.
"Finally, a flying car has the same fuel issues that rockets have. If you want to go far, you need to store more fuel, which increases weight, which uses more fuel to lift off, thereby diminishing your range. "
And not forgetting that many if not most concept flying cars seem to be battery/electric so you don't even have the advantage of the "fuel" mass decreasing over the journey.
Bill was willing to accommodate the use of HP parts, from the lab stock, to assist the engineers in their off-duty hobbies"."
...meanwhile, I tried to buy some parts from our company through the staff discount scheme. I ended up at ebuyer as a normal retail purchase and bought the exact same parts at about 20% less!
"It fits in well with the recent right-pondian politician-speak of 'more' meaning 'not losing the ones we've already got' though..."
Yes, that was a bit weird. It did actually make a kind of sense, but when she was confronted on it, managed to splutter a lot and make it seem much worse than it actually was. After all, if you normally lose 10% of your workforce every year through reasons other than retirement and can't easily replace them, then changing things such that many of those leavers now stay on and don't leave, that reduces the amount of new recruitment needed and retains experience as well as reducing the amount of work needed to increase staffing levels from a limited pool.
"By this stage Khosla is probably well into vexatious lawsuit territory but because he is one of the biggest political donors in the Valley, mostly Democrat, none of the local pols are willing to set the dogs on him."
Hence why elected and /or politically appointed judges can be a bad idea.
"Like the last one. In the US, the local is the really important one, the state level next, the federal far less so. What happens in City Hall and in Sacramento is far more important to my day to day life than what happens in DC. Very much the equivalent of the European Parliament in the EU. Its only real power is to cause mischief."
FWIW, you just pretty much showed how US and various EU country elections work. In most EU countries, local elections are important to most people. The national elections, equivalent your state elections, are the next most important or the most important, depending on country. At the "top" is the EU Parliament elections, as you say, equivalent to US fed elections and, to most people, least important.
Having said that, based on media coverage, from the outside it looks like the US presidential election is the only one that matters, especially to the party faithful. Although I hope Trump is watching the UK very very closely. Heartland Labour areas went Tory in significant numbers last time around. The lesson to learn is that if you piss off your core supporters enough they will change sides, even if as a protest, despite generations of faith.
"FWIW -- The rules in California state that all the beach up to the high tide mark is public property, everyone has the right to be there."
I take it that means anything above the high tide mark can be privately owned and therefore fenced/walled off and thus cause subsequent hilarity when the tide comes in and there are only certain access points? You need to check the tide times before visiting the beach just in case there's no public beach when you get there?
Yep. Go to the provided link and....blank screen unless I allow scripts to run. Exactly the behaviour they raise as the ingress for the malware. I took a chance and enable scripts for their domain. They have a tool I can use to see if my modem has been compromised. Their link takes me to github where I'm expected to download and install some executable then download and run a Python script.
How do I know for sure that this isn't an elaborate hoax to get be infected?
"Plus as eScooters are all about the convenience of short term rental, does a 'one size fits all' helmet add extra security, or are we going to get accidents as oversize helmets slip and obscure vision, or hands are taken off handlebars to correct etc?"
Not to mention hygiene issues. Would you put on a helmet some large number of random strangers have used before you?
Their majority mainstream viewpoint ? What numbers do they have that substantiates that declaration ?
Obvious. Everyone he knows, everyone he deals with, everyone in their web forums, so naturally that means everyone who matters. They're all in the same bubble. No one else matters.
"Good grief, hopefully the 'poor' guy doesn't believe that legend about how many insects humans eat in their sleep..."
Not to mention the flora and fauna inside the human gut (and the rest if the body) which may be killed by eating various foods, eg by changing the gut environment in the short term.
"Who recalls the excellent Radio 4 adaptation of the Foundation trilogy? With sound effects from the incomparable Radiophonic Workshop."
Yes! I listened live. I didn't have a tape recorder back then :-(
I think I read somewhere that Netflix/Amazon/Apple/Someone is looking to make a series/miniseries of Foundation.
"Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers (novel)"
Yep. Brilliant. I loved the bit where the pretty young thing took so long making her mind up over the two heroes that they eventually discovered they were gay and got together :-) Even that was pretty revolutionary for it's day as a plot point.
From the artiice; " Permanent lock-outs, the ORR report explained, are a safety feature to prevent drivers from re-electrifying damaged components and exposing people to the risk of electric shock."
Of course, what the real risks are and whether this is just overzealous precaution is another matter.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
