Yes, the HS2 tunnels are an expensive sop to rich Conservative donors. But the idea has history. On its way through Bath, the Kennet and Avon Canal is hidden away as much as possible so that the Jane Austen crowd didn't have to look at the grubby people who brought their coal in. The railway followed the same route. And the main road from Bath to the M4 has a hideous cutting which is visible from the city, but was built purely for the benefit of a pair of BBC journalists who lived on the hill opposite. Millions were wasted...
Which is why it is funny in a way that Lord Astor has suggested that HS2 is unnecessary and an improved Internet backbone for better video conferencing would be a more sensible use of the money. The fibre link from London to Birmingham could easily be laid along the existing railway or canal network.
In the next release, you can use the keyboard and tracker on your phone to control the tablet. And you can "print" directly to the documents folder on the tablet. I already swapped my Transformer for a PB because it is more portable and the browser is better, but RIM seem to be coming up at last with a convincing use case.
Nowadays, a university computer hub could well consist of a load of servers running VMs. The users can interact with them how they like - Windows, Mac, tablet. Thin clients. There are obvious cost and control advantages.
Universities are taking a long time to take the financial meltdown fully on board, but it will happen. The rape by the management is already coming under pressure in the UK, as enrolment falls due to excessive fees by underperforming universities.
In ancient history, if you needed a really low power microprocessor based system, there was a processor made by RCA called the 1802. It was CMOS, and I once demonstrated a development board running off two lemon halves with a copper and a zinc rod in each one. It was very slow but, and here is the point, it could be clocked down to zero. You could single step, not just instructions, but the entire cpu fetch/execute cycle, see the memory address go out on the bus, see the data. Although it had a stack pointer you had to manipulate it programmatically, and write subroutines to handle subroutines, nesting and returns.
It stuck me then it would be the most perfect teaching tool, because you could do anything with it from teaching the von Neumann architecture to running BASIC on a terminal. The processor and its support chips are long dead (I'm writing about the late 70s), and there doesn't seem to be any modern equivalent.
The last set of statistics I saw said that the weighted average of fuel consumption for the European car fleet was just over half that of the US, and the average for Japan lower still. Therefore, our actual fuel costs are on average pretty close to those of the US.
Have you compared your speedometer to a satnav? Most cars over-indicate by about 10%, so an indicated 77 is really 70. (Fiats can be an exception). My current car (Toyota) is out by exactly 10% from 30 to 70. I had a Ford in the 90s which was 10mph out at 70; this is legal. A colleague had a BMW, no less, that indicated 95 at a real 80mph.
Since the police normally ignore drivers who behave safely who are doing a real 80 on motorways, an indicated 85 is within what they will accept.
The rear view camera built into my car is the single really useful gadget it has over the last one. Until you have experienced reversing with a properly sited camera, you do not know how easy reversing can be. Mind you, I reverse into the garage...my years in the Mafia taught me that being able to drive straight out is a potential life saver.
If it wasn't for the insurance problems I would probably replace the wing mirrors with camera and in-car monitors too. The field of view is better, with no blind spot, the distortion is less. Perhaps some brave manufacturer will try it, possibly with emergency fold-out mirrors in case the camera fails.
You don't think that ordinary Iranians want this? Iran is run by three power blocks: the religious authorities, the "revolutionary guards" aka "just another set of Middle Eastern military rulers that have stolen the oil revenues", and the very weak civilian Government with a President who, just like a Republican candidate, has to pretend to be a religious fruitcake to keep power.
I doubt Iranians want any of this. But the three power blocks have to posture and jockey for position, and this is what happens.
I suspect you will find that is a "radio broadcast signal". It may be legal to receive signals from the police, but I strongly suspect that if you were found to be recording those signals and then using them to predict police movements, you would be in breach of the law. I think you are deliberately confusing simple reception, which is unavoidable in many cases and therefore cannot be illegal, and the use that is made of intercepts.
If this tracking system stores no user information whatsoever, that would be one thing. But if it tracks phones by following MAC addresses or other information, and if there is CCTV, it can easily be argued that this could be used to store personal data by the simple route phone tracking -> cctv records -> facebook recognition (for instance). As the user does not know that s/he is being tracked, or even that this is possible, has not agreed to it, and does not know where to go to find the information, this appears to be in breach of Europen data protection legislation.
I note that you suddenly switch from intercepting signals to recording signals and then say "is wrong is absolute and totally fails". This is some Netherlands legal formulation with which I am not familiar. You also write "This should be obvious to anybody with a brain". I am afraid that these are not legal arguments; they are content free attempted sledgehammers to close down discussion. The fact that you feel the need to do this shows, frankly, that you know you are writing rubbish. If you believed your own argument, you would not feel the need to justify it by pre-emptively announcing that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid. You must be huge fun at management meetings.
The gp has a sig which reads "Only on Slashdot does an AC get modded Informative for pointing out that the LHC is in Europe."
The SI unit that equals 1000kg is a tonne. But the United States, in a fit of parochialism, has decided to rename it a "metric ton". To quote:
Thus the spellings “meter,” “liter,” and “deka” are used
rather than “metre,” “litre,” and “deca” as in the original BIPM English text; (ii) the name of the unit
with symbol t and defined according to 1 t = 10^3
kg is called “metric ton” rather than "tonne";
So, my little joke was in fact directed at the parent poster, who commented adversely on USA-centricism but used an Americanism for his unit of mass. Personally, I stick to the original SI.
I once worked for a company that tried to get something like this to work. Wetting was a major problem. PCB traces are prone to oxidation anyway, and if they are in buried layers then they are prone to surface contamination from the epoxy. Although in theory cracks should be clean surfaces, the GaIn has to get there in the first place, and in doing so its own surface may be contaminated. Even a very thin layer of oxide or an organic monolayer may well be enough to prevent wetting. I suspect that this will succeed up to the point they try to make it work successfully in real circuit boards.
A properly designed fall through switch (commented, obviously) is an extremely efficient decision structure. If someone tells me at an interview that they would never use it because it is bad form, I immediately ask them if they have ever done any real time or high throughput programming. The answer is always no.
When you can use the Internet to find out that the middleman is cheating you on fertiliser prices...and paying you below the market rate for your crops...when you can use the Internet to find which markets are best to sell at...or what the rents should be in your area...you realise why so many people in positions of power are afraid of what it can do.
Not the Internet per se but mobile phones have been used by yak herders to decide the best time to take their yaks to the valley to sell, and by fishermen to decide where to take their catch.
Economics 101 tells you that power st6ems from asymmetric information. The Internet is a leveler of playing fields.
A friend of ours is in Nepal at the moment and using the Internet to relay back exactly what can be done most effectively to support the charity she's working with. The result is that they get aid months earlier than they would have done. I'm afraid that your argument is about Western media consumers, not real poor people.
The UK is one of the most advanced states in terms of using the Internet for commerce, and one of the most backward in using it to inform citizens and allow things like document filing on line. Even former Soviet countries do better than the UK, and Malta (where most people are within walking distance of the nearest Government representative) is better at supplying official information on line than we are.
So, interestingly, your argument (which I completely agree with) seems to have been taken on board by the poorer EU States.
The EU is, exactly, a relationship of States, bound together by treaties and with two political structures to maintain the relationship. The difference between the US and the EU is the powers delegated to the States, but the US also has two structures (the Federal Government and the representative government). In English English - i.e. the sort that still, for now, is used in the EU, we refer to the "British State" because "country" is inappropriate - the British State comprises four countries. In EU documents the word "states" is used.
Not all the world is the USA, and you do not have a monopoly on enforcing the meaning of words.
Further down you mention a "meatspace wife". I really hope she's suing for divorce, poor woman. Though I suppose a self proclaimed sociopath is better than a Pentecostal.
Many spider species give birth to live young and have internal nutrient-secreting structures in the reproductive cavity. The kangaroo has a teat in its pouch. An arrangement which has evolved several times in different body plans is likely to be one that has many benefits. Given the advantages of being upright, freeing the front legs for other purposes, the advantages of holding the baby where it is easily visible, thermal management and other factors I haven't been thinking long enough to remember, the chance is that our body plan is not too uncommon.
If it can be found by an automated process, there is no novelty or inventive step. Mind you, I realise that the USPTO hasn't been worrying about that for years.
If you were designing it, wouldn't you arrange for it to fail gracefully if it lost the control signal? like by a slow descent onto an area marked as water or desert on the built in maps? A responsible designer would.
Actually they missed a trick; it's QNX neutrino (and it is a very nice, solid OS for a phone...) but at the time nobody knew that neutrinos would suddenly become exciting.
BB Neutrino - slightly faster than light if you believe some Italians. Yes, that's a Canadian style marketing campaign.
Once you get past the deliberately downbeat entrance and get to the management suite, it's all naked Russian whores, Jacuzzis, champagne fountains, all-you-can-eat Michelin starred restaurants, and cash machines that don't need a card, they just pay out on the secret budget.
Of course, once you take the job and sign the Official Secrets Act, it's forty years of standing in freezing bus shelters waiting to make contact with a pissed-off FSB clerk in her 50s in the hope of finding out where Putin's going on holiday next month. Unless you went to Eton and Oxford, in which case it's back to the management suite for the rest of your career.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why it is funny in a way that Lord Astor has suggested that HS2 is unnecessary and an improved Internet backbone for better video conferencing would be a more sensible use of the money. The fibre link from London to Birmingham could easily be laid along the existing railway or canal network.
In the next release, you can use the keyboard and tracker on your phone to control the tablet. And you can "print" directly to the documents folder on the tablet. I already swapped my Transformer for a PB because it is more portable and the browser is better, but RIM seem to be coming up at last with a convincing use case.
Universities are taking a long time to take the financial meltdown fully on board, but it will happen. The rape by the management is already coming under pressure in the UK, as enrolment falls due to excessive fees by underperforming universities.
It stuck me then it would be the most perfect teaching tool, because you could do anything with it from teaching the von Neumann architecture to running BASIC on a terminal. The processor and its support chips are long dead (I'm writing about the late 70s), and there doesn't seem to be any modern equivalent.
The last set of statistics I saw said that the weighted average of fuel consumption for the European car fleet was just over half that of the US, and the average for Japan lower still. Therefore, our actual fuel costs are on average pretty close to those of the US.
Since the police normally ignore drivers who behave safely who are doing a real 80 on motorways, an indicated 85 is within what they will accept.
Get a reversing camera. You will thank me the first time you don't drive over something below the rear sill.
If it wasn't for the insurance problems I would probably replace the wing mirrors with camera and in-car monitors too. The field of view is better, with no blind spot, the distortion is less. Perhaps some brave manufacturer will try it, possibly with emergency fold-out mirrors in case the camera fails.
I doubt Iranians want any of this. But the three power blocks have to posture and jockey for position, and this is what happens.
If this tracking system stores no user information whatsoever, that would be one thing. But if it tracks phones by following MAC addresses or other information, and if there is CCTV, it can easily be argued that this could be used to store personal data by the simple route phone tracking -> cctv records -> facebook recognition (for instance). As the user does not know that s/he is being tracked, or even that this is possible, has not agreed to it, and does not know where to go to find the information, this appears to be in breach of Europen data protection legislation.
I note that you suddenly switch from intercepting signals to recording signals and then say "is wrong is absolute and totally fails". This is some Netherlands legal formulation with which I am not familiar. You also write "This should be obvious to anybody with a brain". I am afraid that these are not legal arguments; they are content free attempted sledgehammers to close down discussion. The fact that you feel the need to do this shows, frankly, that you know you are writing rubbish. If you believed your own argument, you would not feel the need to justify it by pre-emptively announcing that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid. You must be huge fun at management meetings.
The SI unit that equals 1000kg is a tonne. But the United States, in a fit of parochialism, has decided to rename it a "metric ton". To quote:
So, my little joke was in fact directed at the parent poster, who commented adversely on USA-centricism but used an Americanism for his unit of mass. Personally, I stick to the original SI.
Perhaps you should rename them "freedom tons".
I have some indium, a sample rescued from a waste bin. I would really like a tonne of indium. You could buy an apartment with it.
I once worked for a company that tried to get something like this to work. Wetting was a major problem. PCB traces are prone to oxidation anyway, and if they are in buried layers then they are prone to surface contamination from the epoxy. Although in theory cracks should be clean surfaces, the GaIn has to get there in the first place, and in doing so its own surface may be contaminated. Even a very thin layer of oxide or an organic monolayer may well be enough to prevent wetting. I suspect that this will succeed up to the point they try to make it work successfully in real circuit boards.
A properly designed fall through switch (commented, obviously) is an extremely efficient decision structure. If someone tells me at an interview that they would never use it because it is bad form, I immediately ask them if they have ever done any real time or high throughput programming. The answer is always no.
Not the Internet per se but mobile phones have been used by yak herders to decide the best time to take their yaks to the valley to sell, and by fishermen to decide where to take their catch.
Economics 101 tells you that power st6ems from asymmetric information. The Internet is a leveler of playing fields.
A friend of ours is in Nepal at the moment and using the Internet to relay back exactly what can be done most effectively to support the charity she's working with. The result is that they get aid months earlier than they would have done. I'm afraid that your argument is about Western media consumers, not real poor people.
So, interestingly, your argument (which I completely agree with) seems to have been taken on board by the poorer EU States.
Not all the world is the USA, and you do not have a monopoly on enforcing the meaning of words.
Further down you mention a "meatspace wife". I really hope she's suing for divorce, poor woman. Though I suppose a self proclaimed sociopath is better than a Pentecostal.
Many spider species give birth to live young and have internal nutrient-secreting structures in the reproductive cavity. The kangaroo has a teat in its pouch. An arrangement which has evolved several times in different body plans is likely to be one that has many benefits. Given the advantages of being upright, freeing the front legs for other purposes, the advantages of holding the baby where it is easily visible, thermal management and other factors I haven't been thinking long enough to remember, the chance is that our body plan is not too uncommon.
If it can be found by an automated process, there is no novelty or inventive step. Mind you, I realise that the USPTO hasn't been worrying about that for years.
Siri, how do I overcome Apple troll patents?
I'm afraid I have to inactivate your life support before I tell you that, Dave.
If you were designing it, wouldn't you arrange for it to fail gracefully if it lost the control signal? like by a slow descent onto an area marked as water or desert on the built in maps? A responsible designer would.
BB Neutrino - slightly faster than light if you believe some Italians. Yes, that's a Canadian style marketing campaign.
It is also nice, and looks like a very solid platform for BB in future - if they are allowed to have a future.
Of course, once you take the job and sign the Official Secrets Act, it's forty years of standing in freezing bus shelters waiting to make contact with a pissed-off FSB clerk in her 50s in the hope of finding out where Putin's going on holiday next month. Unless you went to Eton and Oxford, in which case it's back to the management suite for the rest of your career.