@edps
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… quite frankly the trade aspect is a no-brainer, the UK holds all the cards.
EH? how’d you figure that, we are screwed?
Sorry I was perhaps too loose in using the term ‘trade’. I have always thought of ‘trade’ as synonymous with Manufactured Goods. I should have been more explicit.
The EU exports far more manufacturing goods to the UK than the UK does to the EU. Hence a no-brainer that this part should be relatively easy to negotiate. The problem comes with financial services where the converse holds true. The danger lies if Davis does not proceed on Financial Services first. He must not seek a quick win by agreeing manufactured goods before getting broad agreement on Financial Services.
I think the research points towards a smartphone being worse than any other sort of distraction as it has the capability of being salient either to you as an individual, the task at hand and any other things near the fore-front of your attention.
Perhaps work-places would be wise to require that all smartphones are left in lockers in a ‘break’ room!
Be very careful with your permissions for Powershell. It is a major vector for attacks against Windows Servers.
A major divert but (sort of) but computing related. When I was at college, digital computers were mega expensive, hard to program (assembler) and quite limited. So we turned to hydraulics to emulate electrical behaviour – it was quite amazing how fairly complex circuits could be emulated by fluids (though sometimes with a little cheating when it came to things like triodes! fluidics link
[edit] I should perhaps have said that fluidics was bleeding edge at the time and thought to have much more potential than digital with its limited accuracy and round-off problems!
Politically little will happen over Brexit until it becomes clear what a mess/success the negotiations are in. At that point all bets are off – quite frankly the trade aspect is a no-brainer, the UK holds all the cards. The really BIG problems are the financial sectors which are heavily biased to the UK and account for around £60Bn of the country’s income ~8% of GDP. If Davis screws that bit up woe betide us all.
@Alan, I thought that you did a great job of explaining it!
About the only thing you could perhaps have emphasized is that obviously the ‘sound’ being amplified consists of many different frequencies so if the impedences are not matched then some frequencies will get boosted and others muted so giving an overall lower sound quality.
“The Germans are right – and “leave” or “remain in” the EU is what the referendum asked – no “soft Brexit” third option so there isn’t a mandate to try and negotiate on”
Arguable, the pro-Brexit side made great play of their ability to negotiate a great deal with the EU and poured scorn on the opposing view.
In reality I do not think the majority of people had a clue what they were really voting for. I do know that a sizable portion in Manchester thought they were voting to kick out recent non-EU immigrants.
Agree Bob but I think the 1944 version was colour.
The English teacher at my old school hired it and I remember two year groups being plonked down in front of the screen to watch. The arrow scene was very memorable for a blood-thirsty 14 year old. i vaguely remember that after the film, the English teacher pointed out that this was first and foremost a propaganda film for American audiences, and secondly aimed at arousing patriotic fervour in the UK, hence the colour and the 1000+ squaddies made to act as extras in the film. Great teacher, he impressed on us the need to look beyond the obvious and to have little trust in authority. (I think a lot of teachers came back from the war very disillusioned with the UK and somewhat left-wing)
Boys from Brazil for a more SF and perhaps more believable take.
That is basically what I was suggesting John, but it is a LOT safer to let the Microsoft Disk Manager do the deleting.
I would not argue the need for a drawing pad/notebook but I think that the food technology practical sessions will probably need far more video clips than say a chemistry practical to make them more meaningful.
Just thinking that food technology now probably involves a whole lot of new techniques that may not make good notebook candidates. e.g. vacuum packing, waterbath cooking, use of liquid nitrogen, nitrous oxide etc.
Good point!
+1 The last few will take a lot of beating for this week’s ‘prize’.
The Scouser joke reminded me of a period when I was spending a lot of time in the Birkenhead area. The local police spent a lot of time trying to protect their cars from the local school kids!
The only downside to the B50-10 is storage 128GB does not leave a lot of room for video recording lectures. How about going for a second hand Ideapad?
I note that some have equated this fire and resulting tragedy to that of an aircraft disaster and subsequent national investigations there into – what becomes abundantly clear from such aircraft investigations that the ‘disaster’ was as a result of a series of minor incidents which cumulated in the final tragedy. I am almost certain that that is what will be found here.
Certainly I agree that is probably the case with respect to the cause and spread of the fire to the outside. The rapid vertical propagation is however the main factor in the scale of the tragedy. It appears from accounts so far presented that this board consists of a polyethylene fibre interior encased (at least on one side) by aluminum sheet. Choosing a board containing low melting point( (130c) polyethylene fibres was almost certainly the critical error. It would not take much fire exposure to turn the insides to runny flammable liquids just looking for ways to wick down onto any ignition sources. Once started this would be like a vertical chain reaction.
I found the instrument that should be used. It is the Fire & Safety Legislative Guidance page 52 et seq.
All it requires is that a notice is issued from the HHSRS governing body (the Minister) to all local authorities stating that evidence from numerous cases of fire has shown that use of the insulation board in question fails to meet fire safety standards and that all dwellings greater than 18 metres in height constructed using this material as an exterior cladding have now been found to have a risk assessment rating of one, requiring immediate remedial measures by local housing authorities.
It requires a simple approach as the Government has ham-strung the abilities of the Fire & Rescue bodies through lack of funding. It is a pity it requires action by this inept Government.
I agree that a lot of additional factors/causes should be considered at the Public Inquiry, but I think the scale of this disaster is similar to that of an air accident. In that situation if those involved identify a potentially common issue there is an immediate inspection recall on all similar aircraft and immediate remedial action taken. The air accident inquiry proceeds at its own pace and could take months/years to complete. I’m thinking for example of the Air France tragedy off Brazil, the recall for inspection/modification of air-speed pitot tubes was done within weeks of the accident, the air accident inquiry took many months more as the aircraft frame etc had to be found.
Maybe this is a case where the HSE could earn its salt for once and issue appropriate prohibition orders. Someone needs to step up to the plate – the ‘strong & stable’ Government has already shown itself to be totally incapable of such action.
The inquiry will eventually confirm their views of probable causes of the inferno but it appears that an event inside one apartment on the seventh floor was sufficiently severe to ignite the external cladding.
According to this report (and confirmed by other different sources) the fire initiated when a refrigerator exploded following an electrical fault. I assume this means that the fridge was leaking propane a moderately common event due to improper fitting/damage/faults. The building itself was also reportedly suffering frequent major power surges that actually destroyed electrical equipment in apartments so a power surge may possibly have initiated an electrical fire that in turn ignited an explosive propane-air mixture within the kitchen unit.
TBH I think that although a kitchen fire is a frightening event, it is a fairly common occurrence as a result of various very different events. Of most importance is how an internal kitchen fire ignited the cladding situated outside the kitchen window and the consequent implications for building materials and the provision of domestic fire-fighting equipment (fire blankets, small extinguishers etc) within apartments
The cladding should have been in accordance with the Building Regs set out in simple terms below:
“The guidance note includes three options for compliance with BR 135 and Approved Document B:
Option 1 The use of materials of limited combustibility for all elements of the cladding system both above and below 18m. This includes the insulation, internal lining board and the external facing material. Smaller gasket parts and similar low-risk items can be excluded from this requirement.(A polyethylene core obviously fails this provision, so options 2 and 3 are the only way it could have been approved)
Option 2 The client submits evidence to Building Control that the complete proposed external cladding system has been assessed according to the acceptance criteria in BR 135 – that is, the fire tests in BS 8414 Part 1 or 2. The test should be carried out by an independent UKAS-accredited testing body. (If it did pass such a test then the test procedure is obviously faulty and needs to be changed.
Option 3 If no actual fire test data exists, a desktop study report from a qualified fire specialist should be undertaken.” (This is the big weak point of the Building Regs., pass or fail depends on the knowledge and experience of the specialist, however any such opinion such have comprehended experience of this material elsewhere in the UK/World where it was known to have failed).
Some of these outcomes obviously lead to criminal prosecutions. To some extent this is irrelevant to the current situation. Regardless of all else, it is self-evident that this material is unsafe as all the cladding in every location on the building above ~70 feet was damaged by fire. It would be sensible to immediately address this problem and identify all other buildings at risk.
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