Yes you can swap plates between vehicles. They are easily removable. Obviously, switching them between actual cars isn't allowed without actually changing the registration with the DVLA. But if you wanted to rent/borrow a trailer, you just need a couple of minutes with a screwdriver to make sure the registration plates are all attached in the right places.
Yes you can rent a trailer. No you don't have to rent a whole car. No it is not that complicated.
The problem (and it's mentioned in TFS) is that you will not be able to fill up with petrol. The pumps only activate once the camera has logged your number plate. If the camera can't make out your registration number, the pumps won't turn on. This (in theory) will happen whether you've blocked it with high-powered IR LEDs, or a black plastic bin bag. Friends of mine have found that a thick splattering of mud from off-roading will stop you getting petrol too.
What some people may not remember is that Encyclopedias were very expensive, and so they were considered an investment that would pay off over several decades.
Which seems rather like an inherent flaw in the whole concept of a printed encyclopaedia. By their very nature, facts change. A volume bought in 1990, for example, would have some very quaint geopolitical information about Eastern Europe and Asia. That info would have been desperately out of date within just a couple of years. It would still list Pluto as a planet, still have African Elephants as a single species (the current consensus is that there are two), there would be no info on Dolly the Sheep, and (if it were from the first half of 1990) there would be not a mention of the Human Genome Project.
When you can have an online resource which can be updated almost in real-time (Wikipedia, or Britannica's own online edition), the books look like a rather hopeless proposition.
I think the TFA deals with that question by "magic technology". That is, in the future we'll have exotic and fantastic telescopes which could detect these objects.
I've no idea what the future of optics technology holds, and I tend to be a technological optimist- but that still feels a lot like "hand wavium" to me.
Presumably a more measured approach by our Hollywood chums (ha!) would be to demand they remove the movie stills from their website and promotional material. Demanding a pub change its name of 20 years or close because of film rights purchased in the last 5 is still a ridiculous move.
It isn't like this pub is going to harm the studio's business- movies/merchandise and pubs aren't exactly overlapping businesses, and it's unlikely that people drinking in a bar in Southampton is going to cost the studio money. Indeed, if anything it'd be good for the studio- free advertising, and keeping the whole Tolkien mythology current and at the forefront of people's mindspace.
Nice place too. They do these great cocktails in a pint glass named after LOTR characters- The Frodo, The Gollum, The Legolas, etc. The kind of filth-in-a-glass that only a student would find appealing, but great fun.
Although that probably doesn't do their trademark infringement case much good, come to think of it...
But they are necessary if you want to fight a war anywhere without a local friendly airbase.
As it's in fashion again at the moment, take the Falklands War. The only way for the UK to operate aircraft in the region was to base them off of an aircraft carrier. With no local airbases to use, if they hadn't had a carrier they would have been fighting without air superiority. Which means they almost certainly would have lost. Carriers might be vulnerable compared to other fighting ships, but you couldn't win a war like that without one.
... but even the Royal Navy could take them at this point.
They've got one aircraft carrier. One. Not even a full one.
The Royal Navy doesn't have any aircraft carriers at all at the moment. Not working ones (with aircraft!), anyway. Not since the last of the Invincibles (Ark Royal) was taken out of service; and that class weren't "full ones" either- they were helicopter carriers with space for Harriers.
Their "First Gen" model, which would be cargo only, would allegedly be built on a mountain side (therefore eliminating the need for a levitating vacuum tube 1000 miles long) and only cost $20 billion.
If only I could believe that for even the tiniest of moments, I'd weep with joy.
They're promising a "first gen" Startram for $20 billion on their website. Which is almost absurdly low. The London Olympics are set to cost only a little shy of that- you could build a new one every four years at that price.
You won't get much of a Space Elevator for $20 billion, either.
And oddly, Apple's already done a microcosm of this on their own.
They came to fame with their own microcomputer (PC) range, such as the Mac. Macs are no longer their primary product, with them instead focusing on their iPod, iPad, iPhone range. But they haven't gotten rid of Macs. They're still there, still available, still doing the work- they're just not what defines the company any more.
I'm going to go with "designed by committee". It's "edgy", "cool", "stylised"; those trendy kids will definitely "get it"!
It reminds me of the London 2012 Olympics logo (a graffiti-style squiggle in electric pink which looks suspiciously like Lisa Simpson giving head). It's the graphic design equivalent of your dad enthusiastically dancing at a party disco.
They may or may not be able to pull a couple more transitions like that off without Jobs, but it seems unlikely to continue indefinitely. In fact, what I would expect to get them sooner than their inability to make good on a product launch is that anyone of their size quickly starts accumulating powerful adversaries, telecommunications carriers, movie studios, Microsoft, etc., who notice Apple taking a huge chunk of their prospective margins and each make efforts to claw them back. I suspect Apple would have a serious problem price-wise if AT&T and Verizon both decided they were done subsidizing iOS devices, for example. And we all know what Microsoft is capable of when you threaten Windows dominance, etc.
The real problem for Apple is that their share price (rating them as one of the most valuable companies in the world) is almost entirely speculative- it's built on the extrapolation of "if they were THAT good last year, and THIS good this year, next year they will be VERY GOOD!". This holds together for as long as they continue to have record breaking sales years, and ecstatically received new product launches.
All they need is one high-profile failure and the bubble will burst. They might manage to avoid a high-profile failure forever; but it's extremely thin ice to be skating on.
Compare and contrast with Microsoft. Even a colossal failure like Vista was barely enough to cause them to break their stride.
I can't really see the next Half Life game, Elder Scrolls game, or newest FIFA game being developed primarily for a 5" screen.
All the games you list are from a very specific sub-genre. While you're right that these sub-genres are very popular, I can't see the likes of Valve or EA giving up their core market without a fight.
Consoles are (and have always been) the main threat to PC gaming- and after decades of competing for the same mindspace, and with endless predictions of demise, PCs are still hanging on in there.
A 7 meter tsunami is serious business. For comparison, Kamaishi in Japan was hit by waves of less than 7 meters at their maximum, and the city lost some 1200 people. This is despite being the site of the worlds deepest tsunami defence system.
My netbook weighs about 1 kilo, and is small enough that I could fit about 4 of them in the laptop bag used for my work laptop. Was cheap enough new; practically throw-away price if bought second hand.
Honestly, the paper, media proofs and stationary in my laptop bag weigh far more than the weight of both my work laptop and netbook put together. It's not feather-light, but it's still not exactly working down a coal mine...
I doubt they'll mind him reading his favourite news website or going on Amazon on the new work laptop, you know. They might take issue with him installing a pirated copy of Crysis, or downloading porn.
The question isn't really whether they'll mind him doing stuff on their laptop, but whether they'll mind him massively messing with their software and hardware setup- live booting, partitioning, wiping and restoring, swapping out HDD, and all the other stuff suggested in this thread. If nothing else, it's classic "guilty behaviour"; how do they know whether he's doing it to hide his porn habit, or hide his massive illegal company fraud? If they think he's going to a lot of effort to deceive them and hide his behaviour, they're going to assume the worst.
Going on Amazon on the company laptop is the equivalent of going to the supermarket in the company car. Wiping the company laptop's HDD is the equivalent of popping the company car's bonnet and replacing components with ones you've bought on eBay.
I can understand reluctance to throw out a perfectly good computer just because of company policy changes. His PPC Mac could be as little as 6 years old, and (being Apple) could have set him back a large chunk of cash. I have cheap old x86 computers older than that which are still doing sterling service; I'd be pretty miffed if a machine worth £1500 when new had to go in the landfill after 6 years despite being in perfect working order.
That said, he can't be alone as a PPC Mac user. That community will have to step up and fork some of these FOSS programmes if they want to see them maintained.
I can see the point of a sample return- you can do far better tests in Earth's numerous fantastic laboratories than you can on Mars with equipment nailed to a rover, and it'd be even less feasible moving the equipment for a full laboratory to Mars than it would be on just sending some gravel home.
What I don't understand is why there's any advantage in using Curiosity for the job. The big cost of a sample return mission is the propulsion equipment required to get to Mars, land safely, lift off, get to Earth, and land safely again. I can't see the cost of a drill which can be left in transit anyway being the limiting factor in terms of cost or difficulty. But then, I'm no expert- maybe I'm underestimating the challenges involved in that seemingly simple element (or underestimating the versatility of Curiosity).
I live in the same town as my parents. It's a 10 minute drive in my car, or a 40 minute bus ride (with one change). The buses are old, the fare isn't cheap (£3.50 return), they run off schedule and are crowded during peak periods. That's just bus networks for you.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes you can swap plates between vehicles. They are easily removable. Obviously, switching them between actual cars isn't allowed without actually changing the registration with the DVLA. But if you wanted to rent/borrow a trailer, you just need a couple of minutes with a screwdriver to make sure the registration plates are all attached in the right places.
Yes you can rent a trailer. No you don't have to rent a whole car. No it is not that complicated.
The problem (and it's mentioned in TFS) is that you will not be able to fill up with petrol. The pumps only activate once the camera has logged your number plate. If the camera can't make out your registration number, the pumps won't turn on. This (in theory) will happen whether you've blocked it with high-powered IR LEDs, or a black plastic bin bag. Friends of mine have found that a thick splattering of mud from off-roading will stop you getting petrol too.
What some people may not remember is that Encyclopedias were very expensive, and so they were considered an investment that would pay off over several decades.
Which seems rather like an inherent flaw in the whole concept of a printed encyclopaedia. By their very nature, facts change. A volume bought in 1990, for example, would have some very quaint geopolitical information about Eastern Europe and Asia. That info would have been desperately out of date within just a couple of years. It would still list Pluto as a planet, still have African Elephants as a single species (the current consensus is that there are two), there would be no info on Dolly the Sheep, and (if it were from the first half of 1990) there would be not a mention of the Human Genome Project.
When you can have an online resource which can be updated almost in real-time (Wikipedia, or Britannica's own online edition), the books look like a rather hopeless proposition.
I think the TFA deals with that question by "magic technology". That is, in the future we'll have exotic and fantastic telescopes which could detect these objects.
I've no idea what the future of optics technology holds, and I tend to be a technological optimist- but that still feels a lot like "hand wavium" to me.
Presumably a more measured approach by our Hollywood chums (ha!) would be to demand they remove the movie stills from their website and promotional material. Demanding a pub change its name of 20 years or close because of film rights purchased in the last 5 is still a ridiculous move.
It isn't like this pub is going to harm the studio's business- movies/merchandise and pubs aren't exactly overlapping businesses, and it's unlikely that people drinking in a bar in Southampton is going to cost the studio money. Indeed, if anything it'd be good for the studio- free advertising, and keeping the whole Tolkien mythology current and at the forefront of people's mindspace.
I've always imagined it more to do with the writer's widow/widower, than their adult children.
But otherwise yes, I agree with you.
It's a student pub- I'd expect no less.
Nice place too. They do these great cocktails in a pint glass named after LOTR characters- The Frodo, The Gollum, The Legolas, etc. The kind of filth-in-a-glass that only a student would find appealing, but great fun.
Although that probably doesn't do their trademark infringement case much good, come to think of it...
But they are necessary if you want to fight a war anywhere without a local friendly airbase.
As it's in fashion again at the moment, take the Falklands War. The only way for the UK to operate aircraft in the region was to base them off of an aircraft carrier. With no local airbases to use, if they hadn't had a carrier they would have been fighting without air superiority. Which means they almost certainly would have lost. Carriers might be vulnerable compared to other fighting ships, but you couldn't win a war like that without one.
... but even the Royal Navy could take them at this point.
They've got one aircraft carrier. One. Not even a full one.
The Royal Navy doesn't have any aircraft carriers at all at the moment. Not working ones (with aircraft!), anyway. Not since the last of the Invincibles (Ark Royal) was taken out of service; and that class weren't "full ones" either- they were helicopter carriers with space for Harriers.
Just no-one tell the Argentines, 'eh?
Their "First Gen" model, which would be cargo only, would allegedly be built on a mountain side (therefore eliminating the need for a levitating vacuum tube 1000 miles long) and only cost $20 billion.
If only I could believe that for even the tiniest of moments, I'd weep with joy.
They're promising a "first gen" Startram for $20 billion on their website. Which is almost absurdly low. The London Olympics are set to cost only a little shy of that- you could build a new one every four years at that price.
You won't get much of a Space Elevator for $20 billion, either.
$20 billion is only a shade more expensive than the 2012 Olympic Games. Sod it, build one every 4 years!
And oddly, Apple's already done a microcosm of this on their own.
They came to fame with their own microcomputer (PC) range, such as the Mac. Macs are no longer their primary product, with them instead focusing on their iPod, iPad, iPhone range. But they haven't gotten rid of Macs. They're still there, still available, still doing the work- they're just not what defines the company any more.
I'm going to go with "designed by committee". It's "edgy", "cool", "stylised"; those trendy kids will definitely "get it"!
It reminds me of the London 2012 Olympics logo (a graffiti-style squiggle in electric pink which looks suspiciously like Lisa Simpson giving head). It's the graphic design equivalent of your dad enthusiastically dancing at a party disco.
They may or may not be able to pull a couple more transitions like that off without Jobs, but it seems unlikely to continue indefinitely. In fact, what I would expect to get them sooner than their inability to make good on a product launch is that anyone of their size quickly starts accumulating powerful adversaries, telecommunications carriers, movie studios, Microsoft, etc., who notice Apple taking a huge chunk of their prospective margins and each make efforts to claw them back. I suspect Apple would have a serious problem price-wise if AT&T and Verizon both decided they were done subsidizing iOS devices, for example. And we all know what Microsoft is capable of when you threaten Windows dominance, etc.
The real problem for Apple is that their share price (rating them as one of the most valuable companies in the world) is almost entirely speculative- it's built on the extrapolation of "if they were THAT good last year, and THIS good this year, next year they will be VERY GOOD!". This holds together for as long as they continue to have record breaking sales years, and ecstatically received new product launches.
All they need is one high-profile failure and the bubble will burst. They might manage to avoid a high-profile failure forever; but it's extremely thin ice to be skating on.
Compare and contrast with Microsoft. Even a colossal failure like Vista was barely enough to cause them to break their stride.
I can't really see the next Half Life game, Elder Scrolls game, or newest FIFA game being developed primarily for a 5" screen.
All the games you list are from a very specific sub-genre. While you're right that these sub-genres are very popular, I can't see the likes of Valve or EA giving up their core market without a fight.
Consoles are (and have always been) the main threat to PC gaming- and after decades of competing for the same mindspace, and with endless predictions of demise, PCs are still hanging on in there.
A 7 meter tsunami is serious business. For comparison, Kamaishi in Japan was hit by waves of less than 7 meters at their maximum, and the city lost some 1200 people. This is despite being the site of the worlds deepest tsunami defence system.
Whereas in Soviet Russia, memes post you!
(I'm going to hell for that, I know).
My netbook weighs about 1 kilo, and is small enough that I could fit about 4 of them in the laptop bag used for my work laptop. Was cheap enough new; practically throw-away price if bought second hand.
Honestly, the paper, media proofs and stationary in my laptop bag weigh far more than the weight of both my work laptop and netbook put together. It's not feather-light, but it's still not exactly working down a coal mine...
I doubt they'll mind him reading his favourite news website or going on Amazon on the new work laptop, you know. They might take issue with him installing a pirated copy of Crysis, or downloading porn.
The question isn't really whether they'll mind him doing stuff on their laptop, but whether they'll mind him massively messing with their software and hardware setup- live booting, partitioning, wiping and restoring, swapping out HDD, and all the other stuff suggested in this thread. If nothing else, it's classic "guilty behaviour"; how do they know whether he's doing it to hide his porn habit, or hide his massive illegal company fraud? If they think he's going to a lot of effort to deceive them and hide his behaviour, they're going to assume the worst.
Going on Amazon on the company laptop is the equivalent of going to the supermarket in the company car. Wiping the company laptop's HDD is the equivalent of popping the company car's bonnet and replacing components with ones you've bought on eBay.
I can understand reluctance to throw out a perfectly good computer just because of company policy changes. His PPC Mac could be as little as 6 years old, and (being Apple) could have set him back a large chunk of cash. I have cheap old x86 computers older than that which are still doing sterling service; I'd be pretty miffed if a machine worth £1500 when new had to go in the landfill after 6 years despite being in perfect working order.
That said, he can't be alone as a PPC Mac user. That community will have to step up and fork some of these FOSS programmes if they want to see them maintained.
I can see the point of a sample return- you can do far better tests in Earth's numerous fantastic laboratories than you can on Mars with equipment nailed to a rover, and it'd be even less feasible moving the equipment for a full laboratory to Mars than it would be on just sending some gravel home.
What I don't understand is why there's any advantage in using Curiosity for the job. The big cost of a sample return mission is the propulsion equipment required to get to Mars, land safely, lift off, get to Earth, and land safely again. I can't see the cost of a drill which can be left in transit anyway being the limiting factor in terms of cost or difficulty. But then, I'm no expert- maybe I'm underestimating the challenges involved in that seemingly simple element (or underestimating the versatility of Curiosity).
Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?
Has he ever given it back? Has he started speaking in the Senate on the issue for you, where before he wasn't?
The effectiveness of your tactic is debatable.
And you think that's different to the UK?
I live in the same town as my parents. It's a 10 minute drive in my car, or a 40 minute bus ride (with one change). The buses are old, the fare isn't cheap (£3.50 return), they run off schedule and are crowded during peak periods. That's just bus networks for you.