Did you not watch the video? Or are you nitpicking some particularly technical definition of "explosion" that you don't think the event quite met? Because it sure looked like an explosion to me.
Seems like the vid may be looping. One hell of a flash though.
The BBC reported it as "a powerstation has exploded!"... Way to go for headline-grabbing misinformation (especially after the unfounded fearmongering over nuclear power stations potentially going to melt down that's been going on...)
Unless the organization is too small to have lawyers or human resources.
And this is why I gave up working for big organisations - I want to spend my time doing a useful job rather than constantly battling against other departments (such as HR) who seem intent on making sure there's as little productivity as possible.
Internet connectivity is a necessity in the UK, even those on unemployment benefits will soon be required to have access to prove that they're looking for work. But this plan is an absolute joke no matter what way you cut it. Thankfully there are other options that would be more than adequate.
Your local library will let you access the internet... (as will, I think, the jobcentre)...
The red button does something else entirely on my set top box. The BBC's digital services only work from within the UK.
Not true - the BBC digital services will work on any receiver that supports MHEG-5 - no requirement to be in the UK (as if the receiver knows where it is anyway...)
While I would prefer an unlimited plan, this doesn't seem particularly unreasonable, or am i missing something?
I would say that unlimited is an unreasonable thing to want (and also an unreasonable thing to offer. And it's very bad that a few years ago the ASA ruled that the word "unlimited" could be used to mean "limited" to further muddy the waters).
However, as for whether their prices are unreasonable, I'd be inclined to say yes if they want to appeal to a reasonable proportion of the population: most people wouldn't significantly benefit from LTE over the existing 3G network (especially since LTE is currently only being rolled out in urban centres where you can probably already find wifi anyway), and their prices seem extremely high compared to the under £5/month that I pay for 2GB of 3G.
Of course, they will likely get an exclusive deal on some new shiny bit of hardware in the future, and a lot of people will be pushed onto LTE by virtue of being unable to get their desired device without an LTE contract... which can only be a good thing for those of us who buy our own devices outright and only pay for connectivity that is actually useful rather than the latest marketing hype.
When IMEI numbers of stolen phones are universally banned, stolen phones have no value. See the difference?
This is what happens in the UK. However, there is no clear way to handle second hand phones at the moment. The original owner can phone their MNO and report the phone stolen after selling it and the new owner would be screwed. Hell, I suspect I could essentially report any IMEI as stolen, since my phone wasn't bought through any MNO and if I reported it stolen they would ask me for the IMEI so they could block it (and I doubt they would bother to check their records to see if I'd ever actually logged in with that phone).
What is needed is a centralised system to keep track of who owns which phone, including transfers of ownership so that only the current owner can deactivate it.
Nearly every debit and credit card in the UK issued now have contactless NFC in them, and lots of places take them
I'll dispute that one. Of all the credit/debit cards in my wallet, just one of them (a Barclays debit card) has a contactless smartcard in it... and I've not once seen anywhere that will accept NFC payment.
I think that's how everyone sees it. Except for the Americans who want to impose their law everywhere.
And the British politicians who agreed to an extremely one-sided extradition treaty with the US (and today, in parliament, a number of MPs defended the treaty as "fair").
If you know the distances between yourself and 3 satellites then you can trilaterate your position. However, with GPS you don't know the distances, or even the transit times (from which the distances could be trivially determined), you only know the time the signals were sent and the time offsets at which you received them (i.e. you know you got satellite A's signal Xmicroseconds after satellite B's). This is not the same as knowing the transit times, since you don't have a clock accurate enough to tell you the actual time you received the signals. So you need a 4th satellite in order to produce this extra piece of data. This is GCSE level maths - if you have 4 unknowns you need to solve 4 simultaneous equations in order to find them.
Oh, the budget for GPS will pretty much never be cut until the system becomes obsoleted by something newer. The US military relies on GPS. However, the more navigation systems we have, the faster and more reliable fixes can become for civilian use.
ISTR that due to budget cuts the newer GPS satellites don't operate in polar orbits, giving poor coverage at the poles.
WAAS is specifically the US SBAS (satellite based augmentation system). There are others - europe, for example, has EGNOS, which is compatible with WAAS receivers. However, both systems broadcast from geostationary satellites, which are very low to the horizon at high latitudes so hard to receive.
I presume there is a good technical reason why they don't broadcast the SBAS signals directly from the NavStar satellites, but I don't know what it is (I would be very interested if someone who knows could explain though).
The internet is under US control because the US invented it. Geez. If other countries don't like the fact that the US controls DNS, they should invent their own internet
I guess the US will be inventing their own world wide web then?
Yes, your data is safer when monitored by the NSA. Because if the Internet is handed over to the UN, you will be monitored by the Russian government, the Chinese government, the Iranian government, the North Korean government, the Australian government, and any other government that wants to monitor you, i.e. all of them. And by the way, IT WILL STILL BE MONITORED BY THE NSA!
I sure hope you weren't planning on saying anything bad about Mohammed. Or saying anything good about Nazis. Or mentioning Tiananmen Square. Or calling Taiwan a country. Or browsing for porn. Because these would all be illegal once the UN took control.
I don't like what the US has done with its stewardship over the Internet, but I see it as the lesser of far more than two evils.
Whilst I hate the idea of being monitored, if we're going to assume that we're going to be monitored whatever we do, I would prefer the playing field to be levelled - if the US gets to monitor everyone then so should everyone else.
Ok, ignoring the fact that you're citing the Daily Mail of all things as a accurate source of information, it also doesn't say that there is any such legal responsibility. If you are an organisation operating a pool car system or hire car system then I can see this would be standard due dilligence, but for personal users where the car is shared by the family, you can't expect people to keep track of this. This is especially true on long journeys where families often swap driver regularly througout the journey - 14 days later when you get an NIP can you really be expected to know which member of the family was driving at that specific moment in time?
If you don't know who was driving you commit a different offence, but the original speeding offence cannot be charged. To avoid this being used frivolously the penalty is higher than is likely for a speeding offence. It is clear that if you don't know who's driving you should plead guilty to failing to identify the driver and take the fine and penalty points - not to commit purgery.
Yes, the law had a loophole in it that could be exploited by lieing, so they closed it by just penalising everyone, whether they are innocent or guilty - great job!
Actually if you can reasonably show you are unaware of who was driving, you CAN return the NIP (notice of intention to prosecute) with said information.
Maybe, but that is contrary to the information they provide on the NIP.
1) Not receiving the NIP in a timely manner - usually receipt outside of 14 days will be accepted here
Untrue - I received an "intent to prosecute" (or whatever they call the one you get if you don't respond to the NIP) a few years ago. I had never received the NIP, so I challenged them. They resent the NIP and gave me an extension, but they flatly said that this was a good will gesture and that legally they are deemed to have served the NIP if they have proof of posting. If the Royal Mail lose it, tough shit, you're still in the wrong for not having replied to the NIP you never received.
Yes, you can challenge this in court, and you may even win, but can you take the risk? The fixed penalty notice usually gives you the choice of a "training course" (no points) or points, making any kind of legal challenge causes the immediate withdrawal of the offer of a training course, and the courts can (and do) award much stiffer penalties than the fixed penalty notice if you lose.
The way the law applies to the police is, of course, completely out of line with the way it applies to the general public - several years ago I had to serve a legal notice, and I had to employ a process server to ensure it got there - a court would not have accepted just a proof of posting (or even a recorded delivery proof of receipt!)
Cunningly, the UK seem to have got around this issue. The letter you get when caught by a speed camera specifically asks who was driving. It has some FAQs on it. One of those FAQs is "what if I don't know who was driving", and the answer they give is something along the lines of "you are legally required to tell us who was driving". So there you go, they are stating that if you don't know who was driving you have a legal obligation to commit purgury.
(I don't actually know what the legal standing of this is, but to find out you would need to go to court, and the penalties for taking a speeding fine to court and losing are so high, most people just accept the points and fine even if they are innocent)
It seems strange that everyone so far in this thread is put off by PBX's. Systems like FreePBX's images are really, really easy and very flexible. As long as you have a decent internet connection the sip service has been great. Tie the voicemail back in to the email, route extensions to cell phones, handle faxes all in one system.
Actually, as a long time Asterisk user, I've just tried FreePBX for the first time this week. And despite the fact that I understand how to configure Asterisk itself very well, I've found FreePBX to be very difficult to use. Mostly because of a lack of documentation - what little documentation there is seems to be for the old UI, which has now been completely redesigned, leading to the docs saying things like "its extremely important you set this setting" and that setting being nowhere to be found on the UI.
Also, I'm heavilly disliking the way it is built to have Asterisk and Apache running as the same user - this may be ok on a dedicated server, but where its sharing a server with other software that kind of thing really doesn't fly.
For fuck sake get someone else to do phones, contract it out.
Small companies often have more time than money. When I started my business theres no way we could've afforded to buy in every piece of infrastructure, so we set it all up ourselves and have ended up with a very robust and flexible setup - far more flexible than anything we could've afforded to buy, and since its all open it has grown as we have. For example, we started off with just a couple of extensions and now have our phone system fully integrated with our customer support system. (And yes, we're using Asterisk for the core of our phone system, although we originally started on Callweaver.)
Real phones sound better, work just as well, and cost less.
Actually, I'd say the opposite. We use Grandstream SIP phones and they are excellent. We've largely standardised on the G.722 codec, which has a 16KHz bandwidth, making it clearer than the usual 8KHz analogue systems for internal calls. Of course, external calls still end up as G.711. When out in the field, we use SIPDroid on Android phones (using the Speex codec), which works well even over 3G.
In situations where I've had to deal with analogue stuff, dealig with stuff like echo seems to be a perpetual problem so my advice is just to avoid it.
As for cost, analogue phones can be cheaper if you get the basic models, but for anything moderately feature-rich they have reasonably comparable costs.
It works OK now, but a crappy FXO and some VOIP phones are the very last thing you need.
If you're using an FXO you're doing it wrong. Either install a BRI (for a couple of lines), a PRI (more than a couple) or just use a SIP-PSTN gateway on the internet (yes, these do work well, I've been using SIPGate commercially for years)
If I turn off the background data I get a good week or more from my Captivate Glide... With all my usual background stuff turned on its closer to 2 or 3 days though.
You realize this dumb bitch bidding up the price of a seat like this is going to force NASA to outbid her, costing the taxpayers (who provide NASA with the money they're going to need to spend to outbid her,) millions of dollars just so she can go play astronaut for a few days.
Or, with the public willing to pay excessive amounts to go into space, maybe the russians will lay on more flights and this will essentially subsidise russian space exploration without costing NASA any seats... Just a thought...
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Did you not watch the video? Or are you nitpicking some particularly technical definition of "explosion" that you don't think the event quite met? Because it sure looked like an explosion to me.
I'm nitpicking that transformer != powerstation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seMaLEqotUw - Transformer explosion at Consolidated Edison, Manhattan.
Seems like the vid may be looping. One hell of a flash though.
The BBC reported it as "a powerstation has exploded!"... Way to go for headline-grabbing misinformation (especially after the unfounded fearmongering over nuclear power stations potentially going to melt down that's been going on...)
Unless the organization is too small to have lawyers or human resources.
And this is why I gave up working for big organisations - I want to spend my time doing a useful job rather than constantly battling against other departments (such as HR) who seem intent on making sure there's as little productivity as possible.
Its legal in Europe though, since many years ago the European courts ruled that CSS is not an "effective anti-copying device".
Internet connectivity is a necessity in the UK, even those on unemployment benefits will soon be required to have access to prove that they're looking for work. But this plan is an absolute joke no matter what way you cut it. Thankfully there are other options that would be more than adequate.
Your local library will let you access the internet... (as will, I think, the jobcentre)...
The red button does something else entirely on my set top box. The BBC's digital services only work from within the UK.
Not true - the BBC digital services will work on any receiver that supports MHEG-5 - no requirement to be in the UK (as if the receiver knows where it is anyway...)
While I would prefer an unlimited plan, this doesn't seem particularly unreasonable, or am i missing something?
I would say that unlimited is an unreasonable thing to want (and also an unreasonable thing to offer. And it's very bad that a few years ago the ASA ruled that the word "unlimited" could be used to mean "limited" to further muddy the waters).
However, as for whether their prices are unreasonable, I'd be inclined to say yes if they want to appeal to a reasonable proportion of the population: most people wouldn't significantly benefit from LTE over the existing 3G network (especially since LTE is currently only being rolled out in urban centres where you can probably already find wifi anyway), and their prices seem extremely high compared to the under £5/month that I pay for 2GB of 3G.
Of course, they will likely get an exclusive deal on some new shiny bit of hardware in the future, and a lot of people will be pushed onto LTE by virtue of being unable to get their desired device without an LTE contract... which can only be a good thing for those of us who buy our own devices outright and only pay for connectivity that is actually useful rather than the latest marketing hype.
Also: UK data plans are worse than in the US.
Really? I get 2GB of 3G per month for under £5... that's a hell of a lot cheaper than any of the prices I've seen quoted here by americans...
When IMEI numbers of stolen phones are universally banned, stolen phones have no value.
See the difference?
This is what happens in the UK. However, there is no clear way to handle second hand phones at the moment. The original owner can phone their MNO and report the phone stolen after selling it and the new owner would be screwed. Hell, I suspect I could essentially report any IMEI as stolen, since my phone wasn't bought through any MNO and if I reported it stolen they would ask me for the IMEI so they could block it (and I doubt they would bother to check their records to see if I'd ever actually logged in with that phone).
What is needed is a centralised system to keep track of who owns which phone, including transfers of ownership so that only the current owner can deactivate it.
Nearly every debit and credit card in the UK issued now have contactless NFC in them, and lots of places take them
I'll dispute that one. Of all the credit/debit cards in my wallet, just one of them (a Barclays debit card) has a contactless smartcard in it... and I've not once seen anywhere that will accept NFC payment.
I think that's how everyone sees it. Except for the Americans who want to impose their law everywhere.
And the British politicians who agreed to an extremely one-sided extradition treaty with the US (and today, in parliament, a number of MPs defended the treaty as "fair").
The older one went on to learn Java with his friend over the summer.
My condolences. :(
If you know the distances between yourself and 3 satellites then you can trilaterate your position. However, with GPS you don't know the distances, or even the transit times (from which the distances could be trivially determined), you only know the time the signals were sent and the time offsets at which you received them (i.e. you know you got satellite A's signal Xmicroseconds after satellite B's). This is not the same as knowing the transit times, since you don't have a clock accurate enough to tell you the actual time you received the signals. So you need a 4th satellite in order to produce this extra piece of data. This is GCSE level maths - if you have 4 unknowns you need to solve 4 simultaneous equations in order to find them.
Oh, the budget for GPS will pretty much never be cut until the system becomes obsoleted by something newer. The US military relies on GPS. However, the more navigation systems we have, the faster and more reliable fixes can become for civilian use.
ISTR that due to budget cuts the newer GPS satellites don't operate in polar orbits, giving poor coverage at the poles.
WAAS is US only.
WAAS is specifically the US SBAS (satellite based augmentation system). There are others - europe, for example, has EGNOS, which is compatible with WAAS receivers. However, both systems broadcast from geostationary satellites, which are very low to the horizon at high latitudes so hard to receive.
I presume there is a good technical reason why they don't broadcast the SBAS signals directly from the NavStar satellites, but I don't know what it is (I would be very interested if someone who knows could explain though).
The internet is under US control because the US invented it. Geez. If other countries don't like the fact that the US controls DNS, they should invent their own internet
I guess the US will be inventing their own world wide web then?
What confuses me to a certain extent is that these countries that we don't want influencing our internet typically try to push their own version.
The countries that we don't want controlling our internet, are typically those who already do (US, UK, etc.)
Yes, your data is safer when monitored by the NSA. Because if the Internet is handed over to the UN, you will be monitored by the Russian government, the Chinese government, the Iranian government, the North Korean government, the Australian government, and any other government that wants to monitor you, i.e. all of them. And by the way, IT WILL STILL BE MONITORED BY THE NSA!
I sure hope you weren't planning on saying anything bad about Mohammed. Or saying anything good about Nazis. Or mentioning Tiananmen Square. Or calling Taiwan a country. Or browsing for porn. Because these would all be illegal once the UN took control.
I don't like what the US has done with its stewardship over the Internet, but I see it as the lesser of far more than two evils.
Whilst I hate the idea of being monitored, if we're going to assume that we're going to be monitored whatever we do, I would prefer the playing field to be levelled - if the US gets to monitor everyone then so should everyone else.
No - the point is that the registered keeper is legally responsible for knowing who was driving.
Ok, ignoring the fact that you're citing the Daily Mail of all things as a accurate source of information, it also doesn't say that there is any such legal responsibility. If you are an organisation operating a pool car system or hire car system then I can see this would be standard due dilligence, but for personal users where the car is shared by the family, you can't expect people to keep track of this. This is especially true on long journeys where families often swap driver regularly througout the journey - 14 days later when you get an NIP can you really be expected to know which member of the family was driving at that specific moment in time?
If you don't know who was driving you commit a different offence, but the original speeding offence cannot be charged. To avoid this being used frivolously the penalty is higher than is likely for a speeding offence. It is clear that if you don't know who's driving you should plead guilty to failing to identify the driver and take the fine and penalty points - not to commit purgery.
Yes, the law had a loophole in it that could be exploited by lieing, so they closed it by just penalising everyone, whether they are innocent or guilty - great job!
Actually if you can reasonably show you are unaware of who was driving, you CAN return the NIP (notice of intention to prosecute) with said information.
Maybe, but that is contrary to the information they provide on the NIP.
1) Not receiving the NIP in a timely manner - usually receipt outside of 14 days will be accepted here
Untrue - I received an "intent to prosecute" (or whatever they call the one you get if you don't respond to the NIP) a few years ago. I had never received the NIP, so I challenged them. They resent the NIP and gave me an extension, but they flatly said that this was a good will gesture and that legally they are deemed to have served the NIP if they have proof of posting. If the Royal Mail lose it, tough shit, you're still in the wrong for not having replied to the NIP you never received.
Yes, you can challenge this in court, and you may even win, but can you take the risk? The fixed penalty notice usually gives you the choice of a "training course" (no points) or points, making any kind of legal challenge causes the immediate withdrawal of the offer of a training course, and the courts can (and do) award much stiffer penalties than the fixed penalty notice if you lose.
The way the law applies to the police is, of course, completely out of line with the way it applies to the general public - several years ago I had to serve a legal notice, and I had to employ a process server to ensure it got there - a court would not have accepted just a proof of posting (or even a recorded delivery proof of receipt!)
Cunningly, the UK seem to have got around this issue. The letter you get when caught by a speed camera specifically asks who was driving. It has some FAQs on it. One of those FAQs is "what if I don't know who was driving", and the answer they give is something along the lines of "you are legally required to tell us who was driving". So there you go, they are stating that if you don't know who was driving you have a legal obligation to commit purgury.
(I don't actually know what the legal standing of this is, but to find out you would need to go to court, and the penalties for taking a speeding fine to court and losing are so high, most people just accept the points and fine even if they are innocent)
It seems strange that everyone so far in this thread is put off by PBX's. Systems like FreePBX's images are really, really easy and very flexible. As long as you have a decent internet connection the sip service has been great. Tie the voicemail back in to the email, route extensions to cell phones, handle faxes all in one system.
Actually, as a long time Asterisk user, I've just tried FreePBX for the first time this week. And despite the fact that I understand how to configure Asterisk itself very well, I've found FreePBX to be very difficult to use. Mostly because of a lack of documentation - what little documentation there is seems to be for the old UI, which has now been completely redesigned, leading to the docs saying things like "its extremely important you set this setting" and that setting being nowhere to be found on the UI.
Also, I'm heavilly disliking the way it is built to have Asterisk and Apache running as the same user - this may be ok on a dedicated server, but where its sharing a server with other software that kind of thing really doesn't fly.
For fuck sake get someone else to do phones, contract it out.
Small companies often have more time than money. When I started my business theres no way we could've afforded to buy in every piece of infrastructure, so we set it all up ourselves and have ended up with a very robust and flexible setup - far more flexible than anything we could've afforded to buy, and since its all open it has grown as we have. For example, we started off with just a couple of extensions and now have our phone system fully integrated with our customer support system. (And yes, we're using Asterisk for the core of our phone system, although we originally started on Callweaver.)
Real phones sound better, work just as well, and cost less.
Actually, I'd say the opposite. We use Grandstream SIP phones and they are excellent. We've largely standardised on the G.722 codec, which has a 16KHz bandwidth, making it clearer than the usual 8KHz analogue systems for internal calls. Of course, external calls still end up as G.711. When out in the field, we use SIPDroid on Android phones (using the Speex codec), which works well even over 3G.
In situations where I've had to deal with analogue stuff, dealig with stuff like echo seems to be a perpetual problem so my advice is just to avoid it.
As for cost, analogue phones can be cheaper if you get the basic models, but for anything moderately feature-rich they have reasonably comparable costs.
It works OK now, but a crappy FXO and some VOIP phones are the very last thing you need.
If you're using an FXO you're doing it wrong. Either install a BRI (for a couple of lines), a PRI (more than a couple) or just use a SIP-PSTN gateway on the internet (yes, these do work well, I've been using SIPGate commercially for years)
If I turn off the background data I get a good week or more from my Captivate Glide... With all my usual background stuff turned on its closer to 2 or 3 days though.
You realize this dumb bitch bidding up the price of a seat like this is going to force NASA to outbid her, costing the taxpayers (who provide NASA with the money they're going to need to spend to outbid her,) millions of dollars just so she can go play astronaut for a few days.
Or, with the public willing to pay excessive amounts to go into space, maybe the russians will lay on more flights and this will essentially subsidise russian space exploration without costing NASA any seats... Just a thought...