Posts by Toltec 349 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Apr 2012
"Perhaps if our white goods had the capability to communicate with the grid and run when there is the most capacity available it would also make sense."
I visited a friend in Atlanta earlier this year and he told me there was a meter system you could sign up to which coordinated home air-con units to balance power draws. You got a discount on your electricity if you took the system.
What about persons with hearing loss or wearing iPods, plus there is the number of languages that the announcement would need to be made in.
Clearly they will need to issue laser safety glasses to anyone within range, these should be to prescription if required and full training in their use given. Deployment of the aircraft will require a 60 day notice with letters sent to all households as well as adverts on TV and in the press. A team of carers should conduct house to military target calls to ensure everyone has their safety glasses and knows how to deploy them. Special cot or pushchair screens may need to be provided and notices at travel terminals and road connections should be erected for the safety of any visitors to the area.
"In this case, an idiot stepped out into the road unexpectedly. Even at 20mph, this can happen, and the results can be serious."
There are two fundamental approaches to setting speed of travel, at the higher end you need to be able to stop or steer around hazards, i.e. avoid collisions entirely. At the lower end in hazard dense unpredictable environments you set a speed to mitigate the damage done by a collision.
"I can't afford a driverless car, the truck company can't afford to not have driverless trucks."
The same logic does not appear to apply to trains, particularly underground ones, they are much simpler to automate and the drivers cost a lot more.
I agee though, trunk route distribution of non-hazardous loads would seem to be an obvious first step.
I am thinking of other laws which have numerical limits to determine legality.
Age related such as drinking, sex and of course driving. Something which is easy to determine, precise control on approach to limit and with a single inflexion between states.
Working hours, driving goods vehicles is the obvious one, easy to determine, monitor and fine control at the limit possible, repeated inflexion points, but status determined on a scale of hours.
Drink drive limit, difficult to determine on a continuous basis and a lot of lag between input and result, lack of control on approach to limit means a large leeway is required so effective limit much lower.
Air quality
Noise
Are there any other laws which require humans to control a value related to legality so closely as speed? At some point the control needed is going to be like walking with a broom balanced on an outstretched arm, you can take the easy option of leaving the broom on the floor and pushing it along with your foot, but that gets tiring and it will take you a long time to get anywhere.
I was going to suggest that providing work for the intellectually challenged was a necessary part of society. Then of course you start to wonder who the smart ones really are, the ones that can produce and be paid well for spouting 'bollocks and only subjective opinion' for people even dumber than them or the ones that do stuff with no meaning* to 98%** of the population that need to fight for funding.
* Unless it involves them getting a new phone every year.
** Based on real research and can be quoted in a socialogical paper, honest.
You vote for your local MP and the party they are a member of will run the government if enough of their MPs are elected. You do not get to vote for the PM, unless you happen to be in their constituency, in which case it will be a safe seat and your vote makes no difference anyway.
As a member of a party you may be able to vote for someone to be head of the party, however again you are not strictly voting for a PM.
I may have ended up voting Conservative last time, but only because that seemed marginally less worse than not voting for anyone. I most definitely did not vote for Cameron, he was a negative contributor to my vote evaluation, his party candidate got my vote despite him.
Perhaps a leave vote was the only way we had of registering dissatisfaction with democratic process used by the EU. While voting by proxy is well established I would like to see a requirement in the treaties that form the EU that a new treaty has to be voted in by referenda in all member states that then achieve majority agreement in all states.
Living in a democracy means that if you accept the method used then you must accept the result of the vote and move on. If you do not accept the method then that is a different campaign, see the UK referendum on proportional representation.
The principal of a college I worked at saw a shiny plasma screen in the foyer of another college he had visited so decided to buy one. Not only did he pay an obscene installation charge, 20% over RRP for a screen available for 60% of RRP, but assumed that the IT department had a magic cupboard they could pull a piece of kit out of to drive it.
Much fun ensued when he tried to get the cost assigned to an IT budget after the fact, he was pointed at the new protocol he had signed off requiring all IT purchases to be run past the IT manager prior to order. I think it ended up on his slush budget used for buying his biscuits, personalised crockery, redecorating his private bathroom or any other vanity purchase he could not foist on another department.
@ themunkey - I agree, too many people missing the point of this referendum
Flinging insults is the last resort of the desperate without a good argument or indeed any respect for an opposing argument. It is happening on both sides of this debate. It seems bizarre to dislike or insult everyone holding a particular view just because you dislike someone else due to specific personal characteristics that also espouses that view.
Not to mention the logical fallacy-
This person believes A and B therefore everyone that believes A also believes B.
To put it another way, voting Out is simply that, not a vote for or agreement with the reasoning of any person or party that is also voting or campaigning for Leave.
Then again I may be voting out to kick our government for not using the last six years to try to turn the EU into something I can vote to stay in. Which I would really like to be able to do.
The wrong question is being asked.
What many people are really using the vote for is to register if they are for or against the current path and operation of the EU.
I doubt we will be leaving whichever way the referendum falls, however individual politicians must know that they will lose the votes of those that previously voted for them, but disagree with their EU stance. The question then is who will the voter then choose, a candidate from the opposing party they would never normally vote for, but that has the same EU stance or someone else entirely?
Politics in this country is going to get messy.
"Finally, if we do vote to leave, this will split up the UK. Scotland will want another referendum, possibly Wales as well"
I think you mean the SNP not Scotland, that aside I don't think whichever way this goes we are going to have a good time. Somehow I doubt the result is going to be clearcut, this probably means we will stay, which begs the question how exactly are the people that want exit going to vote in the next set of elections? If I were a politician I would be quite nervous at the moment.
@ Phil O'Sophical & SImon Hobson
Glad to see I am not on my own then. I'd like to see an EU that exists to promote co-operation between individual states not a bureaucracy that finds reasons to exist for its own sake.
That though is equally true of our own government, a good arse kicking is required.
I'll admit it did strike me as buying the natives with beads, but then that could be said of most of the economic arguments to remain or leave.
I find it interesting that a number of my friends, that lean towards the left/socialist and are at least mildy anti-capitalist, are pro remain given the number of megacorps that are also for remain. I am for leave because I am pro Europe and hope that by making the hard choice we can push the EU into a new and better path that will better serve the great individuality of the member countries while improving social and standards of life for all. I think the choice is very complex and have full respect for everyone that makes the effort to learn enough to make a reasoned decision. The only people voting wrongly are the ones doing so based on beads and soundbites.
They should have added a case where the electromagnet was turned off with a delay after the box was inverted.
Even so it proves little, very few humans that can ride a bike understand the physics, I doubt many are even aware that they use countersteer.
Alternate experiment.
A treat/toy is is dropped in sight of the cat. If the cat gets the timing wrong the treat/toy drops through a hole into a catch box.
A treat/toy is is dropped in sight of the cat, it then disappears behind an opaque barrier before re-appearing in front of the cat. If the cat gets the timing wrong the treat/toy drops through a hole into a catch box.
A treat/toy is is dropped in sight of the cat, it then disappears behind an opaque barrier behind which is a device to delay re-appearence in front of the cat. If the cat gets the timing wrong the treat/toy drops through a hole into a catch box.
A treat/toy is is dropped in sight of the cat, it then disappears behind an opaque barrier behind which is a device to catch the original treat/toy but release another that will appear in front of the cat at the right time, but the wrong speed. If the cat gets the timing wrong the treat/toy drops through a hole into a catch box.
If cats understand physics the last two will really mess with their heads.
Other analogies
Someone you know tells you they want to kill their wife, you provide the telephone number of a fixer that can supply a weapon or an assassin, dependent on budget. Would you expect knowingly providing information that facilitates a murder to get you in trouble with the law or not?
Someone asks you for the number of a specific person you know is 'dodgy', they contact the person and arrange for their wife to be killed. How culpable are you in the comission of the crime?
You run a directory service that, unknown to you, is used by people offering criminal services, how responsible are you for the crimes committed?
Every eight weeks I pay £8.40 for a prescription containing a couple of quids worth of tablets. I cannot buy them without a prescription, a private one costs £25 and an NHS one cannot be used for a private purchase.
Given I have a yearly blood test why does the prescription only supply eight weeks?
It is functionally accepted as one for low security confirmation as it has your name, address and photograph on it.
As for the electronic version, it is already part way here as the removal of the paper counterpart means you now need to supply a code for third party verification.
Interesting that converting to an electronic version will mean you need to carry a device that it is illegal to use while driving.
"Yes officer, here is my licence"
"Thank you sir, I note that your engine is still running therefore here is a ticket for using your phone whilst driving!"
The flux capacitor will be fine, you simply use the additional energy for the acceleration up to 88mph, which should take about a tenth of a second*
* Delorean = 1230kg therefore approx 1.5 tons with a couple of passengers and extra time travel equipment.
Terms and conditions apply, internal organs may be affected.
"all about grammatical construction"
Going on recent news items about the testing of primary school children it appears English is being taught like that now. I don't remember having to identify anything much past verbs, adverbs and adjectives, it meant that French and German teachers used terms to teach us the structure of those languages that might of well have been a foreign language themselves.
Try and get the French to agree to it being anything other than French!
I am not sure about other languages, however English is fairly dynamic and words or phrases from other languages are often adopted into regular usage, as well of course adding new ones. It would be easy to imagine an international language evolving from an English. In the way we already label variants as American or Australian there would be an International English, it would be a version not controlled by the English...
You are connected with all of the objects in your life via an underlying realm not perceptible to humans, even knowing about it can damage your sanity so it has to be approached in the same way as the Game, damn. As noticing linked failures can lead to considering the possibility of this underlying medium, this is becoming a serious public health risk as before the internet it was just one of those things and never widely discussed so rarely a problem.
Fortunately those in the know, that are still sufficiently sane, have come up with a solution. It is called the Internet of Things, going forward all objects in your life will indeed be connected in an equally inexplicable, but easily blameworthy way, therefore any failure clusters can be atributed to this technology.
I just need to go and lie down in a dark, no not the dark, blibble...
If the laser is space based and solar powered when you are not using it to launch space probes you could send the beam down to a solar collector array* on the surface. Near IR would get most of the energy through the atmosphere, though the rest might contribute to global warming and some odd weather effects...
* Or an enemy city.
Hey, a reason to wear tinfoil hats!
"But everyone else I meet seems to insist on hard copy. My employer even likes documents of the print-it-out-and-sign-it-and-fax-it-back variety - hardly good for the forests."
Had one of those the other day, I printed the one page of eleven that had to be signed, took a photo of the signed section, uploaded the photo to my PC and cleaned up the image, pasted the image into the original word doc, then finally printed it as a PDF and emailed it back. Mainly because I couldn't be bothered to work out how to make the company, network connected, scanner send me a copy of a scan though rather than to save the paper.
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