Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: @Neil Barnes -- coccyx-centered comforts in cold climes

...slow cooked sweet meats?

Re: coccyx-centered comforts in cold climes

"But I can't help feeling that the whole 'own nothing' culture has a fundamental issue: sooner or later, _somebody_ has to own the stuff. And that seems likely to be fewer and fewer people (companies, of course) as time goes by."

It's the new "pension time-bomb". What happens when you retire and you own nothing? You're gambling that your pension will be worth something. What if it's not worth as much as you hoped? Your pension is tied to the value of the stock market in most cases.

Scalextric[*] scaled up to human drivable size?

The pickup/guide is sort of a tine keelboard and solves to battery weight problem of EVs all in one fell swoop. It might involve some cost "upgrading" the roads to match though.

Re: So let me recap...

"The web was created to lift us up..."

...and a laudable intention it was too. But it rapidly became a dumbing down tool, removing text, replacing with pictures and videos :-(

Re: Mopeds

Yeah, I remember when Mopeds could barely reach 30mph, but as the engines got better, a new legal definition was made and so the speed limiter was added. many back street garage mechanics made a mint removing them. Of, and the "ped" part of Moped was because they had actual pedals you could use to, you know, pedal it along if the 1/2 Gallon tank ran dry so the "mo" part of moped, the motor stopped working..

Re: Remember the Honda 50?

"But, yeah, one of these days some kid is going to be corpsified on one of those things."

It's already happened, multiple times. And since you said "pavement", I'll assume you are in the UK. If so, privately owned ones are not allowed on the pavements or public road and rented ones are only supposed to used by people with a driving licence, full or provisional. Parents who buy them for under 17s and then let their kids ride them all over town should be fined or otherwise legally punished for knowingly allowing the kids to break the law and putting them in harms way.

Re: Remember the Honda 50?

"(slow down and check traffic before turning into it?? Who does that??) in front of me at night."

Just the other day, major city centre, traffic lights on red and even the cyclist actually stopped at them. Not the e-scooter riders though. Straight through, barely slowing enough to look and check if there was any cross traffic. Death Race 2023!!

Re: Remember the Honda 50?

"Honda 50 was reliable, if somewhat slow. But could be driven on a car licence. A Honda 90 needed a motorcycle licence."

That's because a Honda 50 was a moped, ie you could pedal it like a bike if you ran out of fuel. A Honda 90 was a motor scooter, so a very different beast in road vehicle definition terms. And, in reality, you could ride either if you had a full car licence, the difference being that your car licence could cover you fully on a moped but only acts as a "learner" licence on a scooter or sub-250cc motor bike. (at least that was the case 40 years ago, last time I cared to look!)

Re: "plus an added dignity tax"

Careful how you pronounce Dignity Tax, That;s a bit too close to Dignitas for comfort!

Re: How dare Honda have fun with an idea?!

I'm certain there was one ~20 years ago. And 30 years ago. And possibly 40 years ago. It's an idea that seem to keep resurfacing every decade or so and technology changes. Previous ones had little petrol engines, were probably more powerful and had much larger range. For some reason, they never seem to catch on. Maybe because the "suitcase" part of it is a bit heavy to carry and has no storage space left once the power unit and "fuel source" are installed. Not mention the tiny wheels they invariable have, so not much use anywhere other than a perfectly smooth surface.

Re: They sure surprised me

"Apple surprised almost no one on Thursday". They sure surprised me. I thought it was Tuesday

Nah, just a different timezone. If you travel around the world fast enough, you can get to yesterday or even tomorrow. Apple have simply improved on the Reality Distortion Field, travelled twice as fast and got to The Day After Tomorrow! :-)

Re: Where do we go from here...?

"then we're stuck with (the many variants of) USB-C"

In a way, yes. On the other hand, the EU ruling included wording to allow for change. It's not writ in stone. It's actually quite forward thinking for something to come out of a bureaucracy :-)

Re: "can reach out for help when there's no cell signal coverage over satellite connections"

Exactly. You are quite rightly pointing out that any phone manufacture could have done this in recent years with existing technology. But the Apple fanbois will downvote you for pointing out that Apple didn't invent this tech despite implying that they did. The fanbois will continue to believe that Apple invented the smartphone and everything included with it or since added to it :-)

"A furlong is 201.168 metres long, so your comment doesn't even make sense!"

Your mistake is to use metric metres. He was using American Imperial meters :-)

Re: El Reg comparators for temperature?

AGGGGHHH Jesus Fuck... Me hand! Mmmphh. By dongue ith shtuck!

FTFY :-)

Re: Who are you catering to who has been living under a rock?

Although, having just tested a search on Google with the search term a solitary x, the first result is twitter.com/x

It's pretty much the same certification process used in most countries. A set of rules and regulations that the manufacturer must adhere to, but they self-certify in most cases and there's simply far too many products on the market such that it would be impossible and counter-productive to have everything tested before being allowed to market. Mostly, it's spot checks on items that may be coming from markets with known low standards, eg checking for sharp or detachable parts or lead based paints on kids toys, or basic electrical safety checks, but again, mainly spot checks on wholesale imports. Most likely this incident has arisen because something took an interest, maybe a university student doing some related research, or a consumer review/safety/rights orgs was doing comparisons. Things like this crop up quite frequently because there is always someone trying to make bigger profits somewhere in the world, but this being Apple, it's headline news because they are both huge and have a reputation for quality. Like Boeing used to be :-)

"This is just MS ramming their shonky crap down people's throats, as ever."

I think that sums it up nicely. Other than trying to force people to use Edge, there's no other reason to have "special" links to force one browser over the users own choice. I think that's called anticompetitive behaviour, hence the EU ruling. I'm surprised the US isn't all over this too, it's not as MS doesn't already have form in these sort of monopolistic, anticompetitive actions. On the other hand, the US seems to be even slower than the EU in this sort of area, tending to wait until it's more or less too late.

MS next step, of course, will be for those external links to fail in some way if not using Edge because every one will absolutely require some "special" feature that is only in Edge.

"Thanks for reminding me that cars have parking brakes, I had virtually forgotten. They do their thing automatically,’no need for a human to get involved or worry about where it is."

I assume your are talking about driving an automatic gearbox vehicle? Yeah, not so useful there assuming you remember to put in Park and/or don't leave the engine running. Doe Park actually apply the brake too or just use the engine a a "brake"? If not, I'd not like to leave it on a steep hill without finding that Parking Brake!

As it happens, my car does have a partial automation on the brakes that i find very useful and a true benefit. If I stop at a junction or lights facing uphill, on releasing the foot brake, the brakes stay on for a couple of seconds making a hill start simpler. Of course, if I'm arriving at the junction just as the lights go red or it' clear the cross traffic on a more major road is busy and I'll be there more than 30 second or so, I'll use the hand brake and allow the auto-stop to activate and rest my feet for a bit :-)

I think you misunderstood what I meant. The app is using the cellular data network and almost certainly contacting a remote server which then contacts the car. At least that's how these things usually work.

"the government would collect more licensing fees"

Er, what? I doubt all cars having MW would encourage more MW stations on the band, so nothing extra for the Govt.

Re: a £25 per year subscription to a service that identifies traffic cameras

IIRC, London is one of the larger "Departments" of France by population :-)

Or at least it was prior to Brexit, so could have changed since I read that info.

Re: a £25 per year subscription to a service that identifies traffic cameras

Ta for the update/correction. I was working from a hazy memory :-)

Re: Interesting...

No, which I why I closed with "Having said that, I doubt there'll ever be such a large human presence on Mars to have a measurable effect!" :-)

Re: Plus ca change....

"At this point, using a 9-[pin sub-D connector for anything but a serial port is negligent design. Pick something else."

As others have already pointed out, 9-pin d-sub was in use for many different devices on computers before it got used for a serial port. Even before IBM standardised on 9-pin d-sub for serial, the Olivetti PCs (M20??) used 9 pin d-sub for both video and keyboard, one male, the other female. Yes, even PC keyboard connectors were not yet "standard" by then.

Re: Plus ca change....

I guess its one of the hazards of having a multipurpose connector - it can have many purposes, one of them inevitably being "finding out who actually read the fine manual before connecting random cable A to connector B"

yes, also very common in the early days of standalone personal computers. 9-pin and 25-pin D plugs were common, and there were no standard yet as to which was used for what. Male or female, 9 or 25 pin, could just as easily be almost anything from a joystick to a printer to a keyboard to a video out and whatever you think it might be, if you don't look at the manual or, if lucky, the on case legend, very likely is NOT what you think it is. In some cases, they may even be edge connectors directly to the motherboard, eg IEEE and other interfaces on a Commodore PET which may or may not be keyed, or if it is keyed, the plug isn't!!