I personally don't see the point in having lights on most highways given that cars carry around their own illumination
Street illumination is more efficient than headlamps both in the sense of lumens-per-energy-input and in the sense of effectiveness per lumen. In traffic, as in most towns most of the time, most of the headlamp lumens end up buried in the tailgate of the car 10 yards or less in front. The effect of most of what does not is to dazzle oncoming drivers. The most effective illumination is from above.
Of course there is a cross-over point. On roads with non-continuous traffic, lights on the car become more cost-efficient.
Streetlights are OK, but headlights are better. An animal or other obstruction will only appear as a shadow against a glowing roadway.
Headlights are not better. Of all the directions of illumination, that from below eye level, and especially from directly ahead (as oncoming traffic's headlights are), is the least effective. Why do you think that football stadiums are floodlit from high towers and not from knee level? Aside from the fact that fixed lighting from grid power is more efficient than car headlights (in the sense of lumens per energy input) where the traffic is continuous, as in towns.
As for obstrucions appearing "as a shadow" - that's bang on; it is how street lighting at one time worked by design. Sodium lighting was of a wavelength that was relected by "black" asphalt and roadside masonry, so the background was actually quite a bright yellow. Unlit objects, which generally reflected sodium light less than the road, then appeared clearly as black shapes against that background. Vehicles, in turn, formed a dark foil for their own side lights (ie running lights, not headlights).
Given that, in the UK headlights were once only used on country roads where there were no street lights. I remember driving back then in London and could even see cats or dogs crossing the road at night 800 yards ahead. Anyone with headlights on (perhaps after coming from an unlit road) would be angrily flashed at. That "system" was destroyed however in the UK by a period of patchy electrical power cuts when drivers just left their headlights on rather than bother to turn themon and off as they went in and out of lit areas. Not using headlights all the time became frowned on, and now there is no chance of seeing a pedestrian crossing the road from the opposite side behind a barrage on oncoming headlights, until they walk into your headlight beam right in front of you.
My father-in-law always pays top price for everything and would not dream of trying to negotiate or walking away from an obvious rip-off. He would see that as loss of pride.
And he is as poor as a church mouse, so he does not buy things very often. Of course, paying top price for everything, and his general lack of financial sense, is part of the reason he is poor. If he wanted to buy a mobile phone (although he never would), someone, anyone, would only need to say to him that it should be the most expensive possible iPhone and that is what he would get, even if it took all his life savings; to do otherwise he would consider a betrayal of the other person's "friendship".
I suspect that the training costs alone would be an enormous part of the project budget.
Yes, I paid thousands to be trained to find that KDE start button, and thousands more to find that "Libre Office Writer (Word Processor)" entry in the menu. Then I needed to be shown where all the letter keys were again. Then that Ctrl-s to save what I'd done - took me months on courses to get the hang of it.
- one point a lot of people seem to be missing here is that as CEO Eich would have the power to decide how the company he heads throws its weight around in the political arena
As perhaps could the CEO of any company. Does that mean they should all resign if they have a personal political opinion? Or only the ones whose opinions do not happen to align wth yours?
the only people who think patents should be abolished are people who don't create anything.... Anyone who creates has a different opinion.. ranting around about getting rid of them just makes you look ignorant.
How patronising and presumputous.
I spend most of my time creating things, both as a professional engineer and as a hobbyist. But I am not money-minded and I don't mind sharing what I do. Back in the days of "Hobby" computer and electronics mags I had several magazine articles published with my designs. I was paid the magazines fairly nominal publication fee, but no royalties came of it and I did not mind. For example one circuit was for a buzzer to sound in a car if you were leaving it with the lights on; showing my age, that was before any production car had such a warning.
Maybe I should have patented it, but I don't care. But actually, the legal minefield of patents would deter me from going there, and indeed I would think twice now about even publishing a design these days. I think you will find most true inventors will think the same way.
I would not simply jump from a bank to another because.. the other bank [may] have the similar issue in the future.
I have four different bank accounts and can move money between them from this keyboard. I moved all but a token amount from one bank recently because they pissed me off.
.. Google "uk banks glitch" for the least year or so....Would I leave a bank/service if I were personally inconvenienced? Absolutely. Not to `send a message` because the companies don't listen to `messages`. But to not be inconvenienced again.
It's worse than inconvenience. Lloyds and TSB's systems went down last September (AFAIR) during their break-up. I went in the red as a result and they slapped a bank charge on me. I went into the Lloyds branch (Chepstow, UK), saw the manager, and his attitude was that I "should have kept an eye" on my account. Told him that interent banking IS the way I keep an eye on my account..
I did get my bank charge repaid eventually. But meanwhile I withdrew everything but 1GBP from all the savings accounts I had with them (my mother's as well - I have power of attorney) - a six digit figure all together. Idiots.
Did you have some kind of special roofing? I definitely hear the guns for asphalt. Not sure how they handle slate or metal.
It is slate (artificial, but slate-like). I should think a nail gun would shatter it. But they also used hammers to fix the underlying battens.
Not sure what advantage a nail gun would bring unless someone is making something like cheap furniture in a mass-production factory, the gun fed by nails down a flexible tube. Have guys become such pussies that they cannot move their arms any more, or is it that the 'Elf & Safey Nazis ae terrified someone will hit their thumbnail?
I suspect the "advantage" of a nail gun is that it de-skills the task. I am often using a hammer and find it fast, accurate and satisfactory, and havn't hit my thumbnail since I was a child making a box-cart. I suspect that the "professionals" who use nail guns are the ones fresh from the local job centre, the ones who don't bother to move their feet to do the further nails, which therefore end up at a crazy angle (not so easy with a hammer) . Real experts would use the hammer.
I am a nuclear power station engineer, in fact I am in line of signing off everything that might affect plant safety. I recognise most of what you say, such as the plant not relying on any one safety system, but on two or even three (depending on potential severity) independent and differently designed control systems (not counting the human watchkeepers) - the jargon being "redundancy and diversity". An earlier poster implied that a digital system would save people being called out of bed at 3 am for a plant event, but on my nuclear plants this would happen anyway. The station manager would certainly be called up for a plant trip (at the very least because he would want to know about it), as would several other personnel, even though safe shut-down would not depend on their presence as it would be done automatically anyway.
However, the plant operators are engineers (this is the UK) and the senior ones and fast-track juniors have degrees (though a degree does not mean so much these days), even though the Operating Department is separate from the Engineering Department. Personnel do move from one to the other, and it is expected that even senior management will have had at least a few months experience "on the desk" (ie in the Control room).
There is no way whatsoever, no-how, any-which-way-but-loose (how else can I say it?) that these sysems would have any connection to the outside world or even within the plant itself to other than to the essential control panels.
There is however a problem with modern "smart" devices such as thermocouple local amplifiers/transmitters with microchips in them. This is that we don't always know how they are programmed. I am not talking about malware, but simply the programmer making errors (or well-meaning assumptions) such as buffer overflow after a certain future date. For this reason we prefer the old-fashioned analog versions of devices at this level.
But the community had to pay for a bit of yellow paint to mark the bus-stop and a Festivus pole to fix a sign with 'Bus-Stop' on it.
Perhaps things differently in the US. In the UK cities, there is yellow (no parking) paint everywhere. The only difference at bus stops is that the pattern is different. As for the pole and sign, the bus companies themselves pay for that, naturally.
Gran Torino was set in a lower-class neighborhood. You may or may not have noticed the street gangs. Street gangs are not a feature of a middle-class neighborhood.
Everybody thinks they are "middle class". I am also sorry to break it to you that, evidently, you are lower-class.
Well, I am always willing to learn more about US culture, and if that, a district of detached houses with lawns and garages, was a lower class area the US is wealthier than I thought. Admittedly, it did look a bit run down, but I would have judged a lower class area as one with old, run-down terraced houses divided into apartments, and I've seen those in US movies too. The fact that street gangs were in an apparently middle class district was my point.
As for my being lower class, well, LoL, that's a very rash assumption about someone you do not know! I have been called a lot of things, but that's a new one. Keep then coming! No surprise though that most (not all) people think they are middle class because most people are middle class, in the UK anyway..
The US is exporting movies.. stereotyping the "lifestyle" to the rest to the world. It is not unexpected for people out there to think that life in the US is easy and everyone has a 2 garage home and bimbo for wife.
I also see in US movies gratuitous violence, racial problems and people blowing each other's heads off with guns. Gran Torino for example, and that's set in a middle class area. I'll just stick to the movies, thanks.
When you're escaping from a hellhole, you don't have to know a whole lot about the place you're going to. All you really needed to know was "it beats the hellhole I live in now".
No, you do not need to know it. You just need to assume it.
I was a long-term MS hater but google has taken spot #1 for my big company mistrust and hate..... I know what MS is up to. they sell software and I'm their customer.
google does not consider me a customer and so I am not part of the 'sales cycle' at all, I have no say in what happens
So you have a "say" in what MS does? That's interesting.
There are lots of companies I don't trust so I have nothing to do with them. Don't trust Google? Then don't have anything to do with them.
But don't trust/like MS? Sorry, you need to jump through hoops to get a PC (in the UK anyway, and I mean a PC, not a Mac/Chromebook/Android) not preloaded and prepaid with Windows, or without MS's Secure Boot shit in the BIOS (or whatever they call it now). Nor can I avoid the MS file formatted documents thrown at me from government, public bodies, corporates. Just yesterday, tried to pre-pay the postage on a parcel and told I must use Windows to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
They had me until "flying car".
I personally don't see the point in having lights on most highways given that cars carry around their own illumination
Street illumination is more efficient than headlamps both in the sense of lumens-per-energy-input and in the sense of effectiveness per lumen. In traffic, as in most towns most of the time, most of the headlamp lumens end up buried in the tailgate of the car 10 yards or less in front. The effect of most of what does not is to dazzle oncoming drivers. The most effective illumination is from above.
Of course there is a cross-over point. On roads with non-continuous traffic, lights on the car become more cost-efficient.
Streetlights are OK, but headlights are better. An animal or other obstruction will only appear as a shadow against a glowing roadway.
Headlights are not better. Of all the directions of illumination, that from below eye level, and especially from directly ahead (as oncoming traffic's headlights are), is the least effective. Why do you think that football stadiums are floodlit from high towers and not from knee level? Aside from the fact that fixed lighting from grid power is more efficient than car headlights (in the sense of lumens per energy input) where the traffic is continuous, as in towns.
As for obstrucions appearing "as a shadow" - that's bang on; it is how street lighting at one time worked by design. Sodium lighting was of a wavelength that was relected by "black" asphalt and roadside masonry, so the background was actually quite a bright yellow. Unlit objects, which generally reflected sodium light less than the road, then appeared clearly as black shapes against that background. Vehicles, in turn, formed a dark foil for their own side lights (ie running lights, not headlights).
Given that, in the UK headlights were once only used on country roads where there were no street lights. I remember driving back then in London and could even see cats or dogs crossing the road at night 800 yards ahead. Anyone with headlights on (perhaps after coming from an unlit road) would be angrily flashed at. That "system" was destroyed however in the UK by a period of patchy electrical power cuts when drivers just left their headlights on rather than bother to turn themon and off as they went in and out of lit areas. Not using headlights all the time became frowned on, and now there is no chance of seeing a pedestrian crossing the road from the opposite side behind a barrage on oncoming headlights, until they walk into your headlight beam right in front of you.
the Feminine flows and curves of the artistic iOS
I thought they were metrosexual.
My father-in-law always pays top price for everything and would not dream of trying to negotiate or walking away from an obvious rip-off. He would see that as loss of pride.
And he is as poor as a church mouse, so he does not buy things very often. Of course, paying top price for everything, and his general lack of financial sense, is part of the reason he is poor. If he wanted to buy a mobile phone (although he never would), someone, anyone, would only need to say to him that it should be the most expensive possible iPhone and that is what he would get, even if it took all his life savings; to do otherwise he would consider a betrayal of the other person's "friendship".
"Miss I Cane" (or Ms Whiplash)
Anne Thwacks ....... Miss I Cane, Ms Whiplash - is that you?
So what you're saying is that you're fine with money going to Red Hat but not Microsoft?
Definitely. Microsoft are douchebags.
I suspect that the training costs alone would be an enormous part of the project budget.
Yes, I paid thousands to be trained to find that KDE start button, and thousands more to find that "Libre Office Writer (Word Processor)" entry in the menu. Then I needed to be shown where all the letter keys were again. Then that Ctrl-s to save what I'd done - took me months on courses to get the hang of it.
I suspect that the uncertainty around the future of any given Linux desktop environment is a good reason for companies to stick to Mac OS or Windows.
So ........ please tell us more about the certain future of the Windows desktop.
The protests were not about him having an opinion. The protests were about the content of that opinion.
That is about the damn silliest statement I have seen in quite a while.
- one point a lot of people seem to be missing here is that as CEO Eich would have the power to decide how the company he heads throws its weight around in the political arena
As perhaps could the CEO of any company. Does that mean they should all resign if they have a personal political opinion? Or only the ones whose opinions do not happen to align wth yours?
the only people who think patents should be abolished are people who don't create anything. ... Anyone who creates has a different opinion .. ranting around about getting rid of them just makes you look ignorant.
How patronising and presumputous.
I spend most of my time creating things, both as a professional engineer and as a hobbyist. But I am not money-minded and I don't mind sharing what I do. Back in the days of "Hobby" computer and electronics mags I had several magazine articles published with my designs. I was paid the magazines fairly nominal publication fee, but no royalties came of it and I did not mind. For example one circuit was for a buzzer to sound in a car if you were leaving it with the lights on; showing my age, that was before any production car had such a warning.
Maybe I should have patented it, but I don't care. But actually, the legal minefield of patents would deter me from going there, and indeed I would think twice now about even publishing a design these days. I think you will find most true inventors will think the same way.
I would not simply jump from a bank to another because .. the other bank [may] have the similar issue in the future.
I have four different bank accounts and can move money between them from this keyboard. I moved all but a token amount from one bank recently because they pissed me off.
.. Google "uk banks glitch" for the least year or so. ...Would I leave a bank/service if I were personally inconvenienced? Absolutely. Not to `send a message` because the companies don't listen to `messages`. But to not be inconvenienced again.
It's worse than inconvenience. Lloyds and TSB's systems went down last September (AFAIR) during their break-up. I went in the red as a result and they slapped a bank charge on me. I went into the Lloyds branch (Chepstow, UK), saw the manager, and his attitude was that I "should have kept an eye" on my account. Told him that interent banking IS the way I keep an eye on my account..
I did get my bank charge repaid eventually. But meanwhile I withdrew everything but 1GBP from all the savings accounts I had with them (my mother's as well - I have power of attorney) - a six digit figure all together. Idiots.
Timber and nails have been widely available for centuries (or millenia), but they have not put furniture factories out of business yet.
Did you have some kind of special roofing? I definitely hear the guns for asphalt. Not sure how they handle slate or metal.
It is slate (artificial, but slate-like). I should think a nail gun would shatter it. But they also used hammers to fix the underlying battens.
Not sure what advantage a nail gun would bring unless someone is making something like cheap furniture in a mass-production factory, the gun fed by nails down a flexible tube. Have guys become such pussies that they cannot move their arms any more, or is it that the 'Elf & Safey Nazis ae terrified someone will hit their thumbnail?
I suspect the "advantage" of a nail gun is that it de-skills the task. I am often using a hammer and find it fast, accurate and satisfactory, and havn't hit my thumbnail since I was a child making a box-cart. I suspect that the "professionals" who use nail guns are the ones fresh from the local job centre, the ones who don't bother to move their feet to do the further nails, which therefore end up at a crazy angle (not so easy with a hammer) . Real experts would use the hammer.
and it's been a long time since I've walked by a construction site and heard [a hammer]
You should have walked past my place 4 weeks ago. Contractors were re-roofing my house and they used hammers. Made a good job too.
I am a nuclear power station engineer, in fact I am in line of signing off everything that might affect plant safety. I recognise most of what you say, such as the plant not relying on any one safety system, but on two or even three (depending on potential severity) independent and differently designed control systems (not counting the human watchkeepers) - the jargon being "redundancy and diversity". An earlier poster implied that a digital system would save people being called out of bed at 3 am for a plant event, but on my nuclear plants this would happen anyway. The station manager would certainly be called up for a plant trip (at the very least because he would want to know about it), as would several other personnel, even though safe shut-down would not depend on their presence as it would be done automatically anyway.
However, the plant operators are engineers (this is the UK) and the senior ones and fast-track juniors have degrees (though a degree does not mean so much these days), even though the Operating Department is separate from the Engineering Department. Personnel do move from one to the other, and it is expected that even senior management will have had at least a few months experience "on the desk" (ie in the Control room).
There is no way whatsoever, no-how, any-which-way-but-loose (how else can I say it?) that these sysems would have any connection to the outside world or even within the plant itself to other than to the essential control panels.
There is however a problem with modern "smart" devices such as thermocouple local amplifiers/transmitters with microchips in them. This is that we don't always know how they are programmed. I am not talking about malware, but simply the programmer making errors (or well-meaning assumptions) such as buffer overflow after a certain future date. For this reason we prefer the old-fashioned analog versions of devices at this level.
But the community had to pay for a bit of yellow paint to mark the bus-stop and a Festivus pole to fix a sign with 'Bus-Stop' on it.
Perhaps things differently in the US. In the UK cities, there is yellow (no parking) paint everywhere. The only difference at bus stops is that the pattern is different. As for the pole and sign, the bus companies themselves pay for that, naturally.
Firefox and Opera are on my list of good ones so far.
You can't live without having both of them ??
Gran Torino was set in a lower-class neighborhood. You may or may not have noticed the street gangs. Street gangs are not a feature of a middle-class neighborhood.
Everybody thinks they are "middle class". I am also sorry to break it to you that, evidently, you are lower-class.
Well, I am always willing to learn more about US culture, and if that, a district of detached houses with lawns and garages, was a lower class area the US is wealthier than I thought. Admittedly, it did look a bit run down, but I would have judged a lower class area as one with old, run-down terraced houses divided into apartments, and I've seen those in US movies too. The fact that street gangs were in an apparently middle class district was my point.
As for my being lower class, well, LoL, that's a very rash assumption about someone you do not know! I have been called a lot of things, but that's a new one. Keep then coming! No surprise though that most (not all) people think they are middle class because most people are middle class, in the UK anyway..
The US is exporting movies .. stereotyping the "lifestyle" to the rest to the world. It is not unexpected for people out there to think that life in the US is easy and everyone has a 2 garage home and bimbo for wife.
I also see in US movies gratuitous violence, racial problems and people blowing each other's heads off with guns. Gran Torino for example, and that's set in a middle class area. I'll just stick to the movies, thanks.
When you're escaping from a hellhole, you don't have to know a whole lot about the place you're going to. All you really needed to know was "it beats the hellhole I live in now".
No, you do not need to know it. You just need to assume it.
I was a long-term MS hater but google has taken spot #1 for my big company mistrust and hate. .... I know what MS is up to. they sell software and I'm their customer.
google does not consider me a customer and so I am not part of the 'sales cycle' at all, I have no say in what happens
So you have a "say" in what MS does? That's interesting.
There are lots of companies I don't trust so I have nothing to do with them. Don't trust Google? Then don't have anything to do with them.
But don't trust/like MS? Sorry, you need to jump through hoops to get a PC (in the UK anyway, and I mean a PC, not a Mac/Chromebook/Android) not preloaded and prepaid with Windows, or without MS's Secure Boot shit in the BIOS (or whatever they call it now). Nor can I avoid the MS file formatted documents thrown at me from government, public bodies, corporates. Just yesterday, tried to pre-pay the postage on a parcel and told I must use Windows to do so.
And perhaps you missed this news.
Google says, 'Standing alone in the corner of a room staring at people while recording them through Glass is not going to win you any friends.'"
Funny, that sounds like me at any social function, and that's without wearing Glass :-(