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User: EnglishDude

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Comments · 236

  1. Re:Smart move on After a User Dies, Apple Warns Against Counterfeit Chargers · · Score: 1

    Not always. Plug my partner's iPad into my HP Touchpad's 2 amps charger, it just flashes up something like "Charging not supported with this accessory" and flat out refuses to charge until I plug it into an Apple compatible charger. Plugging my S3 into the Touchpad charger works and it charges incredibly fast, going up to full in about a hour.

  2. Re:Smart move on After a User Dies, Apple Warns Against Counterfeit Chargers · · Score: 1

    If I plug my S3 into my girlfriend's iPhone charger, it only charges at 500mA. If I plug it into my HP Touchpad's charger, it charges at 2amps. It's because the device talks to the charger, finds out what's the allowed maximum. If the device can't talk to the charger, it limits the current to 500mA which is the basic USB spec. Apple uses a different charger communication protocol to most other manufacturers. I even have a car charger that has two ports, one labelled "Apple" and the other labelled "Non Apple". Plug my S3 into the "Apple" port, it charges but extremely slowly, taking 8 hours to fully charge. Move the plug over to "Non Apple" it charges fast, under a hour. So yes, it's USB but it's a different spec internally.

  3. Re:I know why it failed....or is failing... on America's First Eco-City: Doomed From the Start · · Score: 1

    Don't comment when tired... it's square metres... 387 sq ft for the Warsaw place, and 968 sq ft for my house... I see what you mean now!

  4. Re:I know why it failed....or is failing... on America's First Eco-City: Doomed From the Start · · Score: 1

    Amazing. My Polish girlfriend's flat in Warsaw is 36 sq ft, and she used to live there with her sister and neice for >10 years. Our house here in England is about 90 sq ft. Most certainly don't feel like a jail cell.

  5. Re:wtf on Supreme Court Decides Your Silence May Be Used Against You · · Score: 1

    Is there an equivalent for the UK? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

  6. Re:Makes perfect sense to me on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    Age of car shouldn't affect fuel consumption too much - my 9 year old car with 150,000 miles/240,000km on the clock gets 3.8L/100km which it has been doing for the past few years. I find air temperature affects it a lot more - it's sometimes 3.5 when it's very warm, or 4.2 when it's cold.

  7. Re:Makes perfect sense to me on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    I'm in the UK, we use MPG but even then, I know my car gets 4L/100km or 70MPGimp

  8. Re:Start here on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    Speedometers in the UK has been legally required to show both MPH and km/h since the 70s in preparation for our metrication, but it has stuck.

  9. Re:Start here on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    Temperature's the same whether it's Fahrenheit or Celsius - my parents still use Fahrenheit and I use Celsius - we confuse the hell out of each other every time we talk about the weather, when my mum says "it's 80 out" it makes absolutely no sense to me, and when I say "it's 15 out" it's the same for her. There's no benefit or disadvantages of either measurement system - I prefer Celsius because I'm used to it and my parents prefer Fahrenheit because they're used to it. If I grew up with Fahrenheit, I'd prefer it over Celsius.

  10. Re:Start here on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    The little orange posts on the side of motorways are not mile markers, but rather kilometer markers - they're placed 1/10th of a km apart. Every size of a new roadway is metric, even the road signs, just that they've got imperial markings on.

  11. Re:I don't know about roadway surveys on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    In the UK, we've "converted" but you still see old measurements everywhere, such as milk having to be sold in litres, but they're sized in pints - for example I can buy 1.136 litres, or 2 pints of milk. See this as an example.

  12. Re: Easy on Ask Slashdot: Wiring Home Furniture? · · Score: 1

    Amen. Once I hired a qualified electrician to install a RCD after the meter to protect the whole house in one go, a few days later, I had some strange problems with the electrics in my house and so I asked my dad who knew a little about electrics to have a look - the electrician had wired live and neutral the wrong way round, bypassing the protection given by the RCD, MCBs and the fuses in all plugs.

  13. Re:Diesel? on Wrong Fuel Chokes Presidential Limo · · Score: 1

    My car that has a conventional diesel engine uses electronic injectors. No electricity = no injectors = no fuel = no running. The engine alone has 3 separate computers required to run the engine.

  14. Re:So, uh... on Wrong Fuel Chokes Presidential Limo · · Score: 1

    Gasoline/petrol is a powerful solvent. Diesel is not as strong. If you look in the engine of an old diesel that has done high miles without oil changes, you will see tons of crud inside. Put petrol in, all crud gets dissolved, passes through the fuel filter and it's goodnight to expensive common rail injectors.

    My previous 2001 Opel Astra had an Isuzu 1.7 litre diesel engine designed in the 80's[1] with a distributor type fuel injection system. It could run fine on a 50% petrol, 50% diesel mix, but would require a new fuel filter before refuelling and no more petrol for a few more tanks after that. Using biodiesel was possible but had to have a filter change every time I filled up the first few times. Running 100% petrol would work but would destroy the engine quickly.

    My current 2005 Opel Astra has the exact same engine but with a common rail fuel injector system. If I ever accidentally put petrol in, I'm going to disconnect the battery and forbid anyone from even turning on the ignition as the primary fuel pump in the tank is electric. Biodiesel cannot be used here.

    [1] gets 70mpg and emitting 119g/km CO2 before you say it should be junked

  15. Re:Um... on Wrong Fuel Chokes Presidential Limo · · Score: 1

    Diesel in the UK is a lot more expensive than petrol, that hasn't stopped a huge surge in diesel cars on our roads....

  16. Re:Um... on Wrong Fuel Chokes Presidential Limo · · Score: 1

    My friend recently brought a second hand family MPV made by Citroen built in 2005 that has a 2.0 litre diesel engine with 4 cylinders & 16 valves giving around 320 horsepower and 500lb.ft torque and it's not even the sporty version!

  17. Re:Not a gas-hybrid on Ferrari Unveils World's Fastest (and Most Expensive) Hybrid · · Score: 1

    My first thought was "Awesome! Ferrari developed a car with a gas turbine engine!" Imagine my disappointment when I realised they meant "gasoline"...

  18. Interesting bit about the Skye bridge here in the UK - after ridiculous tolls, the government decided to buy the bridge and abolish the tolls even though they paid many times more than the actual cost of the bridge.

  19. Re:Staring on Ask Slashdot: Really Short Time Wasters? · · Score: 2

    The problem with this car colour counting game is that I just think to go to Autotrader (I'm in the UK) and look at the cars for sale - they show how many cars of each colour is being sold. So:

    362,941 cars currently for sale

    Black: 75,777
    Blue: 65,412
    Green: 9,804
    Grey: 46,167
    Silver: 89,634
    White: 23,617
    Red: 32,050
    and so on.

    So that ruined the game for me...

  20. Re:US Metric System on Petition For Metric In US Halfway To Requiring Response From the White House · · Score: 1

    Not exactly. I have a milk bottle in front of me and it says "1.136 litres, 2 pints". I've yet to see a milk bottle to contain exactly 1 litre. Ditto for the other sizes.

  21. Re:112 on ITU To Choose Emergency Line For Mobiles: 911, or 112? · · Score: 1

    I'm a Brit born in the 80s and I don't understand pounds, ounces, feet and inches at all - and barely understand pints but that's only because that's what they serve in the pub. Whenever my parents talk to me using imperial units, I always have to convert them to metric. The only imperial unit I use daily is miles for driving, but even then I often use km - my GPS is set up for km and I think of fuel efficiency in litres per 100km. Also, I'm a skydiver and am forced to use imperial units because it's linked to the aviation regulations. That's pretty much it.

    My experience is that anyone born before the 70s think in mainly imperial units, and anyone born afterwards think in mainly metric units, it's related to the metrication in education in the 70s.

    It's painfully annoying when people mix units though, my dad was dictating size of wood to me once - "3 inches by 5 inches by 2 metres" "Dad!" "But that's the units the shop sells by!" and he's right. We need to get off our collective butts and either use 100% imperial or 100% metric not this annoying mix of two.

  22. Re:Yes, yes it will on Will the Desktop PC Live Forever? · · Score: 1

    That's not a good comparison. I mean, in the past, you could access the Internet on dial-up modems, coaxial networks and the like. Do you see them around nowadays? No. What you're describing is what is in use today and slightly different to each other such as HTTP is entirely software and Ethernet is entirely hardware. Laptops, desktops, tablets etc are equivalent devices that in theory can do the same thing (watch video, send emails etc).

  23. Re:Terminal velocity? on Felix Baumgartner Prepares for Supersonic Skydive Attempt in New Mexico · · Score: 1

    "Most skydivers are pretty physically fit"

    You've not visited my dropzone then, and obviously don't know me!

  24. Re:Here is more from John Gruber of Daring Firebal on Why Apple Replaced iOS Maps · · Score: 1

    25%+25%+75% = 125%?

  25. Re:And, cue shitstorm.. on Three Mile Island Shuts Down After Pump Failure · · Score: 1

    Pumped storage is not a new idea. For example in the UK we've got Dinorwig power station which was built in 1974 in anticipation of all the nuclear power stations that was going to be built. As it didn't happen, Dinorwig was re-purposed to be a peaking power station, and to be used in case the National Grid needed a black start.