Reorte

I thought ME was, although I appreciate that that's best forgotten.

If stupidity could be prosecuted the prison population would exceed the rest. What law have you broken for being a plonker and driving in to a flood? Didn't think careless driving's really supposed to cover that sort of thing.

Probably because Microsoft's bigger and thus more easily noticed. To take it to the other extreme if you designed your own system from scratch, one that relies entirely on its own built-in stuff and can't use any other then no-one's going to pay any attention to that if it's got a userbase of half a dozen people. There needs to be sufficient market presence for it to be a concern. I know very little of iOS though. Is Safari built in to the point of being unavoidable, or is it merely a supplied option that can be easily removed and ignored, nothing in there to try to prevent or discourage you from doing so?

I don't like it at all personally (and got very annoyed when some *?!"@ at work decided that Firefox was to be removed from work machines and replaced by Edge), but as someone else has pointed out it's not Internet Explorer - by all accounts it's actually a decent browser, if you get along with the way it works. What I really don't like about it is it being pretty much integrated in to the OS, and the pushing from Windows to use it. A browser is just another application, a very commonly used one admittedly, so I've no issue with bundling one in, but it shouldn't be integrated in to the OS at all.

It would be rather less annoying if security and "feature" updates were kept separate. From Microsoft's point of view is obviously far simpler if they're not but in general I want security updates fairly quickly and usually to avoid others as much as possible. Mixing the two is quite possibly one of the reasons people end up putting them off, so it's a bit counter-productive there. And any attempt at taking control of someone's computer away to them to a degree (quite rightly) rubs some people up the wrong way.

You can get both 10 and 11 going without an MS account, although it's not at all obvious. I never see ads on either (thank heavens), "tailored" or not.

You were doing well there until the smiley made it clear it was sarcasm! 🙂 Never understood people who want these sorts of changes - which is quite different from people who say they're needed, that it simply gets impractical or impossibly uneconomic and so on not to.

I've always found airline seats on trains unusable for a laptop anyway. In any case in this ever more rushing world I think a train journey should be a good excuse to get a break and just sit back a bit.

It's both.

That sums up the whole thing. The only wrong approach to modelling is the one you don't enjoy. Realistic operation, bombing around a roundy-roundy, trying to get every little detail right - there are people who like all of those and they're all thus doing it right if that's what they're doing. I think there's always room for constructive criticism, but as soon as the person says something along the lines of "maybe, but I'm not interested" then that's that done. Nothing wrong with being unimpressed with someone else's layout either, just move on and don't be a ?@!* about it if you're not.

"Chateauneuf" sounds exotic but translates to Newcastle.

Complete guess, but as far as the keyboard electronics are concerned they're completely different keys, and it's possible that the OS was thus only ever programmed to use the keypad ones for this purpose - note that it works on the keypad whether or not num lock is on, it's the key that's been pressed that it's looking at, rather than what we'd normally expect it to eventually output.

You laugh - after all, what's the point of going if you're not going to pay attention to the journey? - but I did once fall asleep on the East Lancs.

Did plan to get somewhere, but didn't even really get started. Personally speaking it's not something I think I'd ever resolve to do, I find modelling something best done whenever I happen to be in the mood for it, setting a goal and feeling some sort of obligation might just put me off and turn it in to a chore. There's a good chance I'll never get anything even remotely finished.

Get a job at Kwik Fit. You can retire on the first day.

Apparently the Navy uses kiloyards, which seems to be a compromise designed to annoy everyone!

That feels like reading more in to it than is reasonable. The largest number is for the status quo, and there's a lot of imperial in that (propose chanigng all road signs to kilometres and see how far that gets you, even among those odd people who insist on measuring their height in metres). All it really says is that people don't like change, a sentiment I can usually get fully behind.

Yep, there's more to life than just money!

Some will cheer that on, others say it's ridiculous (I'm very much in the latter category, with some limited exceptions such as very narrow, very busy platforms on the Underground). But everyone will be able to find some example (whether it exists or not) that they find absurd and will tell you not to be silly - and probably find a few years later they're defending that too. There's certainly a point where I find living with a low level of risk less objectionable than anything done to deal with it (and it's more a cumulative effect of everything than any particular example). At what point does an increase in physical health outweigh a decrease in mental health? And I'm not being trite by that, various aspects of the world as it is are why I'm permanently suffering with depression. People will always make mistakes and do stupid things. We obviously need to limit the effects of those somewhat, but a world that always treats everyone like irresponsible children, that protects us from the consequences so much that they're a non-issue sounds like hell. If you're not prepared to say "this is far enough" at some point you're heading for humans being useless lumps of flesh with machines doing everything for them. No thanks.

The way they're going about things, not really. They should've seen this coming and they have had plenty of time to address the situation already, the ORR probably won't see any reason to delay things again until they comply, since they've not so far. Whilst I'd far rather live in a world that was quite happy to carry on as is on this issue companies that won't follow the rules, whatever they are, whatever I or they think of them (you could argue that that doesn't apply necesarily in extreme cases in dodgy countries but that's irrelevant here) are almost certainly going to be too casual in general; it smacks of cowboy. The occasional warning and so on, well, that could happen to anyone, but letting it get to this stage is not good at all.

Please note the degree of qualification - it did not amount to agreeing with WCRC, or even net sympathy in their direction. I've got sympathy because I don't personally have a problem with straightforward doors, and would prefer to live in a world where we're quite happy with them. I don't have any sympathy for them being on the wrong end of this legal issue, which they've had plenty of time to deal with and were trying to deal with it in a manner that was bound to fail - their overall attitude towards the legal side of things. If you were to say they've invited this outcome on themselves I'd entirely agree, and if you've no sympathy overall because of their attitude towards the rules, I'd also agree, because a responsible company works with them whatever opinions they've got.

Inevitable, yes. It's pretty much what I said earlier IMO - whatever they think of the rules (and I've sympathy there) they're going to get nowhere by fighting them, and it's not a sign of a responsible operator to try to avoid them regardless of what they think - if you disagree with them you follow them anyway, whilst trying to make your case. There seems to have been no sign of that, no sign of even attempting to comply.

I've got nothing against the loco, would love to see her keep running. But the amount of hype, and the type of people who turn up and act like pillocks has certainly got offputting enough that I'm starting to think being off the main line would be no bad thing.

Really going off on a tangent here but the link I got the above numbers from also had this video in it:

What does this system do in practice, if it detects a problem? Presumably a message has to get to the driver via some means.