Posts by photobod

Re: Electric Kit Car

There are a lot of kits still for sale, though the market was hugely disrupted when the IVA (Individual Vehicle Approval, later rteplaced by Single Vehicle Approval) system was brought in some years ago. Previously, there were a few basic construction and use regs. to comply with, and your car had to pass a regular MOT test. Now, it's much more complicated and expensive. It was never particularly clear why the changes were introduced - kit cars never had a history of major safety issues, indeed insurance from specialists was usually much cheaper than for regular cars.

The vast majority of kits, then and now, were based on common running gear, but with custom chassis as well as bodywork. Most popular kits are of the single donor variety, meaning they only need parts from one standard car, plus the kit components and various accessories, to build.

Whether you regard the use of a subframe as 'not a proper kit car' is a different argument. A lot of kits used to use the mini subframes, for example, as they provide an easy and safe way to attach most of the running gear to a new body. I believe the Mini-Marcos would have been an example of such a car, which could hardly be regarded as 'not a proper kit car', given the involvement of Jem March and Frank Costin in it's development and it's success at Le Mans. Not many would use the VW platform chassis as a base, since that was usually the most rust-prone part of the donor.

Personally, I have built several single donor kit cars - a 30's roadster based on Morris Marina running gear which was surprisingly good to own and drive as day-to-day transport - a pickup truck based on Cortina parts (okay, with a larger Granada 2.8 V6 engine) which was also extremely practical - and a Marina/MGB based AC Ace replica. All involved custom chassis and bodywork to transform pretty dull but dependable rust buckets into much more interesting, eye catching, practical and fun vehicles.

Re: Reloading

If you're any type of professional, you don't go out on a job without backup for any mission critical equipment.

Re: Windows/Apple...

Agreed. It's a matter of separating aims and objectives.

- the true aim of any business is to make money. That is the sole reason for it's existence.

- the objectives of any business are the means to achieve that aim.

Making profit is an aim.

Offering products or services people want to buy is an objective.

Keeping the customer happy is an objective.

Despite what they may claim, no business *ever* puts the customer first. That would mean pleasing the customer becomes the aim rather than an objective.

Re: £40 too expensive...

There's one specific GIMP feature which makes the multi-window interface far better for editing - multiple live views of the same image, i.e. being able to work very close in on fine detail while simultaneously seeing the overall effect alongside. That's proven a huge time saver on many occasions.

Re: Have I missed something?

That's not actually a feature of the CD but rather an ease-of-use add on provided by KDE (possibly also Gnome and others, but I'm not sure about that.) The wav/flac/ogg/mp3 folders are virtual folders provided by the file manager and don't actually exist on the CD, but do make it very easy to save those versions as you say. It's just another of those great features Linux users value but isn't usually mentioned. Another is ftp connections within a regular file browser, allowing synchronisation of a remote web site with a local development copy to be as painless as managing local files.

Re: I'd be more shocked

..and buses

Re: Mega is actually decent

Me too, for video and picture files for my clients. Frankly, I trust it more than anything US hosted, even for files which do not contain anything particularly confidential.

Re: It is a French car.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by 'enjoying the driving'. I've had a series of big Citroens, and the single abiding feature was the ability to drive in comfort all day long and arrive without fatigue after any journey, however long. This was possible because the emphasis was on making the car quick for that type of driving, pretty much effortless in every conceivable way and also insanely comfortable. They didn't jar the spine when driving over anything thicker than a gnat and the noise was non-existent. That won't suit everyone, of course. Some people seem to be motoring masochists.

Re: toll lanes

'In a perfect world where everyone lived in Megacity One and worked in Megacity Two, then all trips for all people would be vectors from Megacity One to Megacity Two'

Actually, in a perfect world, everyone would both live and work in the same city, obviating the need to commute to work at all. All attempts to manage commuter traffic by whatever means of transport are, in reality, just treating the symptom. The disease is the perceived need to travel.

Re: Why do people need colour inkjets still?

Depends on the type of business you're in, so it's horses for courses. It's narrow minded in the extreme to believe that 'business' just means regular office work.

For my business, I use colour lasers for producing short run, full colour brochures. I can get away with mono lasers for letters, postage labels, etc. I need large format inkjet for printing posters, large scale artwork (which equates more or less to custom wallpaper) and high quality photographic artworks up to 24x36in for point of sale. There is no practical substitute LFP tech for inkjet for those applications.

Those are all connected via ethernet cables, hence a bit irrelevant to the article, but so was the 'you only need lasers for business' comment.

Re: That explains it...

"Famous Scientist/Mathematician syndrome" sounds a lot like "Member of Parliament syndrome", especially in the form of "Member of Parliament With Nothing But A Lawyer's Background Syndrome".

Re: you just canna make it up

Well, it wouldn't exactly be the first time a company 'leaked' information about vapourware in order to maximise press coverage of a product launch, would it?

Re: The unfairness goes much deeper

Not really the point of the comment, I know, but actually 'spy cameras' are pretty commonplace in the loos at clubs, bars and restaurants these days. The usual reason given is security, i.e. being able to spot if there are naughty folks selling illegal substances or causing criminal damage to property. And cameras have been far more commonplace elsewhere in shops and offices for far longer, often as a protective measure for staff. It's much harder for a violent customer (yes, there are lots of people who seem to think it's okay to take a swipe at shop staff who don't do exactly what they want, however unreasonable) to claim he/she was attacked first when it's all on cctv.

Re: Technically it is the monkeys

It's a gross oversimplification to say that copyright belongs to the person to pressed the shutter button. For copyright to exist at all, the photograph must be a creative work, hence it must involve a creative step. The party who makes the creative step is the author.

There were two parties involved in producing this photograph:

1) The photographer, who created the situation, set up and adjusted the camera and allowed the ape to play with it, in full knowledge of the likely outcome.

2) The ape, who pressed the button without any concept of what it was doing other than copying the previously observed physical actions of the photographer.

So, one of those parties thought about and planned the end result, while the just copied the pressing of a button. Which do you deduce was involved in a creative step and hence is the creator of the work?

Re: Lovely. Not.

Almost certainly.

Re: You need to carry an Android phone with you in order to use it?

It's the most logical and practical way to do this kind of stuff, and it mirrors the way desktop and laptop computing evolved.

Think of the phone in your pocket as a portable computer. This and other wearables are just peripherals, providing additional inputs and outputs.

There is a huge potential cost advantage with this approach, which helps to mitigate the - at present - limited extra features provided. As uses are found and the market grows, costs will reduce and the balance between price and functionality will shift.

Most people will understandably baulk at spending £200-£1000 on wearables like a smart watch, Glass or similar, because they don't presently see a need which justifies the cost. Over time, a range of cheap, functional wearables might cost £30 -£50 each and you'd choose which extra functionality you want, to suit your individual lifestyle. Those would be much more saleable devices.

But that can't happen if every device tries to duplicate the power and functionality of your smart phone, because they'll always cost far more to build, be far more expensive to buy, be far more power hungry, more bulky and more awkward to use.

Now do you see the logic?

Re: My network...

Well, I have to disagree, on the basis that your position is morally untenable to me.

I was taught to believe that that all power (such as the ability to impose rules on your own network) has an associated responsibility. It's one of my earliest moral lessons and still holds true.

The disassociation of responsibility from power is the cause of many of society's problems, and your statement is a perfect embodiment of a culture of entitlement, based on power and rights without any responsibility.

Sure, it's your network, so you can impose whatever rules you wish, but it is then your fault if you do not explicitly block something illegal when you could, because you have demonstrated that you have the power to do so.

Re: Who is liable

Mainstream insurance companies are stupidly over-cautious when the vehicle in question is an unknown quantity. They charge the highest possible rate until they have their own accident statistics to work with.

Specialists tend to accumulate those statistics much faster and can therefore calculate risk much more accurately. That's why vehicles such as kit cars are horrendously expensive to insure with mainstream companies, but dirt cheap with kit car specialists.

Don't expect the big boys to be first with realistic premiums for this type of car.

Re: A step backwards

Judging by the quality of most 'writing', they'd be better off asking a decent photographer to add some words to the pictures.

Re: I last built a PC

Video editing: Kdenlive, Openshot and others.

BluRay burning: K3b, Brasero and others.

Re: So does this ban smart-watches?

I'd have thought it's easy enough to prove 'driving without due care and attention' - it just takes an observation by the police officer of the accused doing something unsafe. The specific reason why the unsafe behaviour occurred is surely less important for safety than the behaviour itself, which I guess is part of the reason for the catch-all law in the first place.

In short, if there's no evidence of unsafe behaviour, there's no need to take action for safety reasons.