Posts by Heero Yuy

Quote from The Sun:

China is selling deadly ‘Blowfish’ drones which can decide who lives and who dies to armies in the war-torn Middle East, say reports.

The unmanned war machines are capable of launching autonomous strikes with their arsenal of mortar shells, grenade launchers and machine guns.

They are said to be "impossible to defend" against and the Pentagon has already made it clear it fears they will end up in the wrong hands.

Some military experts fear the proposed sale of the AI mini-choppers will spark even more bloodshed in the troubled region, reports news.com.

“They would be impossible to defend yourself against,” warns University of New South Wales Professor of Artificial Intelligence Toby Walsh.

"Once the shooting starts, every human on the battlefield will be dead."

US Defence Secretary Mark Esper revealed recently China's drones are programmed to decide for themselves who lives and who dies.

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Scary stuff, best to be sure and just blast it.

Had a lot of rain overnight that's now heading north. Sunny periods now but I can see big shower clouds with fuzzy tops out in the channel heading our way. Rather chilly at 3°C.

Can I remind members that where rumour and heresay claim something against an individual or organisation but there is no proof that use of the word "alleged" is recommended. This is to protect us and yourselves from possible legal action.

Quote from bryanluc

The novelty of seeing the sea wore off soon after moving here and now we don't even bother with it

Having lived in Worthing since I was 9 the novelty of being by the sea has paled. Can't even remember the last time we actually went down to sit on the beach or have a swim. I think if the shore was sandy rather than shingle we might go more often but parking on a good day is fraught.

Quote from bryanluc

I wonder how much of this flooding is down to modern farming methods

I would think a fair amount. When I was a schoolboy they taught us in Geography thet farmers would "contour plough" to prevent rain from washing down the hillsides. They don't seem to do this anymore round here: Just go straight up and down. It's causing quite a lot of soil erosion and exposing the underlying chalk.

Another culprit is the mania for converting front gardens into parking lots. When it rains instead of the water soaking into the ground it runs straight into the street and thence the drains and rivers. You're supposed to put a grill drain leading to a soakaway but few seem to.

On the rain radar today it looks like the Midlands is getting a respite. More rain is forecast for tomorrow, coming in from the south again. It'll depend where the fronts get stalled as to who gets a deluge.

Doesn't look good, thursday 12:00

BTW the black line with the dashes on is a convergeance line.

Quote from mali99

so where is the Oxygen, how do you breathe

Colonisation of Mars

The key as I stated above is water.

Labour also claim that they'll out-spend the Tories on the NHS by an extra £6 bn, which is ironically the estimate that a 4 day week would cost the NHS.

Quote from Little Wing

Amazing to see so much water!

They had a months rain in only a few hours. An occluded front stalled over the Midlands and only moved sideways rather then north or south. A similar phenomina known as a convergance line can also dump huge rainfall over a limited area such as happened at Boscastle in the west country.

Quote from Little Wing

This the town's official website.

Nice looking place, not over-developed.

Quote from Horizon

Boris seems to be doing well now:

Not surprising when Labour declare war on hard pressed motorists:

Quote from The Sun:

Jeremy Corbyn plans a war on motorists — forcing them to slash 60 per cent of trips within ten years.

An internal Labour party paper reveals punishing new measures to slash road use.

They include huge hikes in fuel duty and company car tax, mandatory road pricing and charges to park your vehicle at work.

Reducing motorway speed limits so cars go slower and pollute less is also proposed and all planned road improvements will also be binned.

Another stab in the back for the economy.

Quote from bryanluc

But what could they have done, you can't just magic floods away

Just blatent electioneering and cheap points scoring. I hope people see this for what it is.

Several hundred troups have been sent in together with Chinook helecopters to drop sand bags etc. Other emergency services are working flat out.

Quote from Little Wing

Rained all night and is still cool and overcast. Everything is turning green .

It's amazing how nature can bounce back with a bit of rain. Unfortunately in Yorkshire they've had rather too much and there are floods everywhere. A farmer on the radio this morning was saying that his 1,000 acres was inundated to between 6 and 10 feet all over and that although he has no crops in at the moment it will be at least a year for the ground to recover enough for tillage and planting.

At least where we are it never floods as the water carries on downhill.

Sunny and cold this morning.

Quote from Little Wing

Quite a lot seem to be falling off cliffs and balconies trying to take selfies

Natural selection in action.

Quote from mali99

Dont they realise there is no oxygen, no air to breathe???!!!!

With solar energy oxygen can be made from water (with hydrogen as by product) That's why the discovery of water *could* allow people to live on Mars. There are of course a myriad of other issues like solar and cosmic radiation to be addressed.

Sunny today but cold and windy. 7°C

Quote from bryanluc

Of course there are well documented examples of those who tried to intervene and finished up getting arrested and charged themselves

Nothing the police hate more is someone having to do their job for them.

Quote from cheekyangus

So are all different techs set to the one channel (52 in your case) or do you have say 52 for Cable, 58 for DVD and Freeview just forwards on whatever frequencies are used in your local area?

The DVD doesn't have a specific RF output, when in standby it re transmits the input SCART (from the Cisco box) to the output SCART. When a DVD or HDD recording is playing back it substitutes that for the cable channel. The DVD to TV is component video (RGB) and L+R sound. Ouputs 576p here whilst outputting interlaced 576i on the SCART. Don't you just love Sony kit.

Quote from The Guardian:

Nigel Farage has said the Brexit party will not field any candidates against the Conservatives in the 317 seats they won at the last general election, after Boris Johnson committed to leaving the EU by 2020 and pursuing a Canada-style trade deal.

Farage said his party’s climbdown came after months of trying to create a leave alliance with the Tories, but it was time to put the country before the party and make a “unilateral” move.

As he spelled out his general election strategy, Farage said he had concluded that if the Brexit party had stood a candidate in every seat it could split the vote and usher in dozens of Liberal Democrat MPs and, in turn, create the circumstances for a second referendum.

That'll make Boris' day but must spell real trouble for Labour in leave voting constutuancies.

Breaking: Farage will stand aside Brexit candidates in 317 constituancies. Links to follow.

Quote from bryanluc

Will Clintons be the next casualty on our dying High Streets

I thought they'd already gone under as all the shops I know of around here had shut. Locally both the post office ( Hallmark ) and news agent do cards.

Quote from cheekyangus

RF stands for Radio Frequency doesn't it? What do they actually do and why would you want one?

I've seen RF modulators mentioned for years, in a TV context, though less so recently, and I'm curious.

RF is Radio frequency and ours is set to channel 52. This is commonly the one used by VCRs etc.

Our house is wired in each room with a TV antenna outlet fed from a distibution amplifier/splitter. The modulator converts the SCART signal to one that feeds these sockets this is combined with the Freeview signals from a loft antenna and the DVD recorder output.

Nowadays people tend to have multiple TIVO or V6 setups but historically you only had one STB.

Looks like VM are starting de-commisioning the Cisco VHD boxes from the end of this month. Just had an offer through to upgrade to a TIVO FOC with the advice that the Cisco box will start to lose functions progressively.

We don't really need the recording function, just not enough stuff that we want to watch, but at least the TIVO still has a SCART type output as well as the HDMI so we can continue with the DVD recorder and RF modulator setup.

I never had any cassette problems but the secret was keeping the pinch-wheel clean and the heads de-magnetised. I recently refurbished my Akai Hi-Fi cassette deck, posted elsewhere here, this has Dolby so the sound is pretty good. Not as good as my Akai reel-to-reel with Dolby at 7 1/2 inches a second.

Gravedigger: I had to bury the mother-in-law last week. I don't normally mix work with pleasure but in this case I made an exception.

Quote from cerberus

We'd need to built a lot more prisons?

I wouldn't be jailing the actual cold callers, just the CEO's of the companies that were the ones using cold calling. That would stop it.

I have caller ID on my public line and if I don't know the number they get to talk to the answer machine. Too many spoofed numbers as well. If I had my way all cold calling would be a criminal offence.

Quote from Horizon

So much for it being BritBox, more like censor box. It Ain’t Half Hot Mum won't be on the service either and I don't think anyone could ever consider that offensive.

Hardly a surprise with political correctness infesting every aspect of that broadcasters output. Even their interpretation of HG Welles War of the Worlds is stuffed full of it.

Quote from cerberus

Whose fault is it then? I've gone through official channels of the Mail Preference Service (yet another dysfunctional quango for bureaucrats ) but still it pours in - and the post office is paid for its distribution.

Yep, we tried that and it worked for a while but now the crap still pours in.

Quote from bryanluc

I remember copying the top 40 off the radio, and stopping the recording before the announcer spoke, or rather trying to

Oh how we thought we were so high tech savvy

I remember the efforts we went to to get a "clean" recording without the DJ idiot blabbing over the start or finish. What we didn't know at the time was that the copyright holders insisted that they did that so we couldn't get a clean recording.