pcstru

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I'm torn. On the one hand, only a trip to the USA could see something like Dirk Gently turned into the usual guns+guns+guns+body count and totally ignore the character of the character. Next will be Jeeves and Wooster with RPG's, car chases and Kung-fu, where Wooster works at a drive through and Jeeves is just her friend. Other than having nothing much to do with Douglas Adams creation and relying overly on the power through weapons and violence meme which no USAian show seems to be able to do without, I did quite enjoy this. They do seem to have stolen Dirks Nemesis straight from Orphan Black (Helena) and that's not all they have plundered. But they have woven it all into a nicely paced story with twists and turns at every opportunity and you know the craft is reasonably good when you want to watch ... just one more. But Guns America - get over them for goodness sake!

We have a dedicated repro room with three large copiers, one fancy colour thing and two high volume mono units with various finishing/sorting options. Additionally we have 16 other copiers round the place (we are a large, sprawling site). The volume units are trundling through ~3 million copies a year. We probably have an engineer visit once a month. Last time I did the figures, the volume units did make financial sense (just) but they also scored on overall reliability and are quite crucial coming up to exam time when departments start requesting billions of past papers for landfill and we need all of that 190 pages per minute to keep up with demand. The finishing options also save on post print faffing around.

IMO the biggest single issue in attracting a consistent response from quality candidates is pay. That's not to say you won't get quality candidates, just that the numbers will be lower. I think generally there is a shortage of people with good tech skills in breadth and depth.

Bought : Planet Coaster (PC). Basically the next Roller Coaster Tycoon. Very flexible building. Lacks good challenges but as a sandbox game in which to while away a damp Sunday afternoon, it's great.

There are two things to consider, the first is most important - there is no such things as a free lunch. If you can extract energy from the passing traffic, you have decreased their efficiency (so even if it did work, you would effectively be getting the energy from their petrol but extremely inefficiently). The second is the environment would be very turbulent, which is not a good prospect for the site of a wind turbine. Here there is just too little energy to get any return. Let's say a sink contains 10 litres of water, which should be 10Kg. Say we measure the drop to the turbine of 1 meter then the total energy available would be 10*9.8*1 or 98 Joules. Conversion will lose ~50% of that (more in this case as small generators struggle to achieve high efficiency) but probably a lot more (80-90% loss), so you will be left with at best 50 Joules. If we want that as power, 1 Watt is 1 Joule per second, so we can have 1 Watt for 50 seconds or we could light a 50 Watt bulb for 1 second. I wash up twice a day so I might get 100 Watt seconds a day, or 36500 Watt seconds a year. If I have a 1watt LED I would be able to light it once every 864 seconds or if I collected and stored all that energy over the course of the year I would be able to power my 1KW kettle for ~31.5 seconds, possibly enough for a tepid/lukewarm cup of tea.

When someone posts something, the only safe assumption it that it was worth the effort to them for some reason. I personally don't write for anyone else's benefit but mine so I have no expectation that anyone else will enjoy, benefit from or otherwise get anything of value from my posts. The only thing that matters to me is that I do. I might claim here that I was also somewhat 'bored' of that particular strand of the discussion but since I was obviously failing to write well enough to be understood by the person who was definitely engaged enough to reply, I thought I might learn something in the process of trying to be clearer. So even in doing that, I don't have the expectation that this has value to others. It seems rather ironic that people post to tell someone they didn't read the post they are replying to but I guess they too must get something out of doing that.

I don't see that it is necessary to introduce the idea of "entire character" (and the necessary debate on what exactly that might mean) and I was careful to avoid such a thing when I said : "There would seem to be no question that you must believe they are engaged in an immoral act from your point of view". It seems to be a problem that people do not recognise that there is such an inference when they take a moral position on the food they eat as evidenced by the surprise and disdain here from vegetarians that others seem to want to engage in passionate arguments with them about the subject (and how tiresome that is for them). In the case of me having a choice to have five pound notes with tallow, it would seem that Vegetarians do want to stop that choice. As a taxpayer, I will potentially be forced to a more expensive substitute, regardless of the fact that I do not find it immoral, unethical or in any way a problem. If that can be applied to currency, what other things might it be applied to? Where does this slippery slope start and end? !, err right. Great. you now seem to understand what I actually wrote - an immoral act. So it should be no surprise when at (say) a dinner party (or other social gathering) the reaction of someone to a statement "I don't eat meat because in my view that is immoral" might generate a rather more passionate response than "blue is my favourite colour" because the other party is implicitly designated as behaving immorally by eating meat from that point of view.

Well if it is too long for you or anyone else to read, please don't feel you have to. I'm not sure why that is worthy of comment but given you have posted it, you obviously feel it needs saying. No. The issue is very specific and distinct and that is not it. Perhaps if you eliminate the DR in your TL;DR that might resolve itself without further elaboration and unnecessary length after all, I'd hate to bore you further.

Perhaps you should go back to my original comment that you were responding to and re-read it. You do seem to have missed the point entirely and I'm not sure I can make it any clearer. I'll give it one more try. The issue as looked at from your point of view would be : you are at dinner with someone who rears animals. In conversation you tell them that you believe that the way some animals are reared is immoral. In exploring "some animals" you describe the terrible conditions inflicted on yummy veal. The person you are chatting to raises veal cattle. There would seem to be no question that you must believe they are engaged in an immoral act from your point of view. The point is that in making some personal choices you are not just saying something about yourself, you are saying something about how you view the world and the people in it. You are saying that people who act in a way that is incompatible with your beliefs are, in your view, immoral. Why is this relevant in the thread? My point simply relates to the comments by vegetarians on the reactions of people to vegetarians. Vegetarians seem surprised that their personal choices often engender a rather passionate response. The surprise seems to be because they think the personal choice is just a reflection on them, it doesn't matter to anyone else and they are not "forcing a view down anyone's throat" etc. What that IMO misses is the intrinsic logical implication that a judgement is made on the actions of others. You are not only declaring yourself moral as a vegetarian, you are declaring others - the person with the passionate response, immoral. That is why such conversations are more loaded than (say) a discussion over the fact that blue is your favourite colour.

From the evidence of your actual use of the word, it doesn't appear that way to me. Your words were in response to "Regardless of the actual reasoning behind that, there is an implication that eating meat is an immoral/unethical choice, so a vegetarian is not simply declaring themselves moral, they are declaring the meat eating world immoral.", So I'm now totally lost as to the point of your response since it does not in any way impact on the fact that taking a stance (for whatever reason) that not eating meat is 'moral' automatically implies that those who do eat meat are, in your world view, immoral. This was offered simply as an explanation as to why these types of conversations (say at a dinner party) can be controversial and heated. Taking a moral stance might be personal but it the implications are not limited to judgements on self, in other words in taking a moral stance such as "eating meat is immoral" it is intrinsic that those who eat meat are viewed from such a perspective as immoral.

I understood it to be your opinion, but it was your opinion that : "Eating meat is of itself is not intrinsically immoral, but the way a lot of meat is farmed kinda is". Your opinion didn't acknowledge that morality was a personal choice and seems to imply that there is some objective measure "intrinsically immoral" (intrinsically means belonging to a thing by its very nature, the implication would seem to be that this is not a matter where opinion will make a difference - if it did then it is not intrinsic to the thing).

Is not immoral to you. But people have their own individual reasoning as to the how and why of morality. For some people the act of eating meat might well be immoral but killing animals itself might be perfectly OK. For some, the way that an animal is killed and prepared makes the difference. The word vegetarian or vegan simply tells you about diet and perhaps clothing and perhaps (but unlikely) goods and possibly (but even more unlikely) containments. The word Vegetarian or Vegan does not really give you insight into the actual reasons for that stance.

I'd have to resist quipping "well, when you grow up, I do hope you will be able to choose what you eat". Part of the reason why there is contention is because for some people being a vegetarian IS a moral and ethical position. Regardless of the actual reasoning behind that, there is an implication that eating meat is an immoral/unethical choice, so a vegetarian is not simply declaring themselves moral, they are declaring the meat eating world immoral. Even if you take the position that you don't "force your views on others" etc, the implication is still there. So it is not really surprising that the subject (like many other personal choices about lifestyle and belief) can be contentious and heated. However, they can always be sidestepped by simply denying the choice is predicated on moral considerations.

My advice to vegetarians who want to avoid 'dinner party' arguments about ethics and morals (both personal value judgements, so ripe for heated debate) is, when asked why they are vegetarian to just reply it is because they do not like meat. As an argument to support a personal choice it is unassailable and quick. Watch the eyes of tipsy the party debater light up as you tell them you are vegetarian and then watch the instant deflation as you tell them why. The BOE say they were unaware that tallow was used by their subcontractor and for manufacturers substitutes are more expensive. There really is no law that says a supplier of (say) paper pulp has to list trace ingredients and if they do, be able to distinguish between chemicals that were produced from animal carcases or produced by other means (mining and refining say). So for example, animals contain a reasonable amount of salt - certainly enough to fill an average family salt cellar. Salt, NaCl, is Salt; given 100g of salt you will be unable to tell where it came from, it might be expensive Waitrose "evaporated on maidens knees in the tropical sun and then hand picked crystal by crystal etc" or hacked out in huge quantities by huge hairy miners in dark caverns or rendered from animal products. Currently companies would have to tell you that salt contains salt, they are obliged to do so by law because salt is sold as a foodstuff. They do not have to tell you how that salt was arrived at (for the pedants please do note that salt is just an example to illustrate the point).

Restaurants may prepare dishes without nuts, but if they are aware that there is a risk of contamination because either a) they are preparing foods which do contain nuts or they are preparing food which they cannot guarantee does not contain nuts, they must inform the customers of the risk. I'm asking if this apparent right to know what the ingredients are in money should be on a similar basis? How far should it extend. Your view would seem to be that they do not have a duty to warn you that money may be contaminated with meat but they do have a duty to tell you if it is part of the manufacture. Does this apply to any and every product? Should your library tell you that your books may contain meat products etc? As above, the claim of vegetarians who are objecting to this is, at minimum they should have been told. There are many possible reasons for being a vegetarian. Unless you presume to know the reasons of all the people who are objecting to money containing tallow AND insisting that the Bank of England has a duty to inform customers of what their money might contain, then I don't see how you can rule out such containments as an issue. However, the point was meant to illustrate some limits on the duty to inform, where that duty ends and where the duty of the individual to be responsible for what they come into contact with begins. The cry so far has been mainly vegetarian outrage that a) Money may contain animal products. b) people should at least be informed of that c) the BOE should not use meat products at all because vegetarians shouldn't have to put up with that. With a&b there is a implication that vegetarians are ignorant that tallow (or other things rendered from animal carcases) might be used in various processes and then appear in various goods. I'm curious that there seems to be very little talk of personal responsibility in the objections (i.e. do vegetarians not have some responsibility to find out about products and then avoid those that are incompatible with their chosen moral code?) and I'm curious about how far the obligation on suppliers to list ingredients on non food products should go. I don't think those are unreasonable questions. When we get to C, there are a number of arguments that could be made about discrimination and inclusion in the provision of goods generally or perhaps just 'state sponsored'. I don't think I've touched on them yet but there has to be some interesting debate on where the line should be drawn.

I wonder how long will it can be before alt-right *demands* meat money.

You can avoid sources of potential contamination. People with severe allergies do exactly that. Yes. The question is whether that matters to you sufficiently to act in some way to avoid that or ask others to act in some way to inform you of that. Should the Bank of England list poo in the ingredients so you can make a reasoned choice to avoid handling it too? Indeed. But an important part of this issue is who is responsible for ensuring the 'facts' are put in hands. The owners of the hands or those who should be in control of the facts? As far as I know, there is no model of consciousness that could exclude plants or include insects. There are reasonable ways of looking at the world in which rocks can't be excluded from 'consciousness'.

It is not a limit but it could at least be argued that it is a necessary starting point against which to judge a moral/ethical position. I'm not at all sure how you get to that from what I wrote. The simple answer to that would be no. I haven't mentioned hypocrisy. I'm sympathetic that anyone has a right to know what is in a product. I'm interested in how far that might extend since it does not currently seem to cover things like currency or other paper/packaging products. Perhaps people are being forced to handle tallow at work? Perhaps we are all involved in that? There is also an obvious problem in that things will get contaminated along the way (and the amount of tallow in currency might be comparable, so who am I to say that will not be a problem for someone). I don't think bringing up these points is accusing anyone of anything and I don't see how your response actually addresses any of them. Perhaps you were replying to a different post than the one you quoted?

I would 'feel' that was wrong. Killing humans is illegal and there are laws against it. Which begs the question of how to do that since these things get contaminated as they pass from hand to hand. However, the question as posed sort of misses the issue of choice (if the issue is ultimately to avoid contact, then you presumably need to avoid containments as much as the original ingredients). There is currently no requirement to list ingredients on things that are not food or cosmetics so this is unlikely to be an issue that is restricted to money. If people have a right to make the choice, then they need to be told and that will need to apply to everything. I imagine some people will be in for a nasty shock when they find out how extensively used animal products are.

Actually, I'm just curious, I'm not trying to make anyone sound like anything, I'm trying to get to the why of their choices. I was a vegetarian for 7 years, 2 of those were while I was working as a gamekeeper, which some would say was 'incompatible' but they would in my case be wrong. I'd expect individual attitudes and answers to vary but the question does highlight a problem (that you don't know what what you come into contact with has come into contact with) and that if that does happen to be vitally important to you (the case of money it may or may not be depending on the reasons you are vegetarian) then the only solution would seem to be to avoid contact with things like money. The original manufacturer of the money can only tell you what went into it's manufacture. They can't tell you what is in it when it reaches you so if that is important as it seems to be to @witch, what are they going to do?

I'd be interested to know what the reaction would be to handling a ten pound note that had previously been handled by a butcher and was found to contain trace quantities of animals from that source?

Could it be someone's BMW in the car park trying to phone home?

Here's my prototype to hopefully show how it works. Thinking about it, the initial sequence could be eliminated but ...datetest.xlsx

The easiest way would be to write a bit of VBA. However, you can do it without : You should be able to sort the data so that the dates and times are in temporal sequence going down the sheet. This seems to be how they are displayed. Insert a column C and blat in an integer sequence, 1..n, running down the sheet. In column D, from the third row enter the forumla =IF(TEXT(A2,"mm/dd/yyyy")<>TEXT(A1,"mm/dd/yyyy"),"D","S"). In the second row just hardcode S. This tells us whether the date has just changed compare to the cell above. In column E on the second row enter 1 and the third row the formula =IF(D3="S",E2+1,1). Copy that down the column. In Column F starting on the second row enter the forumla =TEXT(A2,"dd/mm/yyyy")&E2 . Copy that down the column. In Column G simply enter the formula =B2 (a copy of the time). Copy that down the column. On a new sheet, in column A row 2., enter the first applicable date. A3 will then be =A2+1, so that you have a column of dates in sequence. In column B, convert the date to text with =TEXT(A2,"dd/mm/yyyy") On the first row, starting in column C and ending in (say) column L, enter another sequence from 1 to 10. In cell C2 the forumla should be = IFERROR(VLOOKUP($B2&C$1,Sheet1!$F$2:$G$10,2,FALSE),0). Copy this across and down the grid. Here we are looking up the first time for that day and if there is no time found we substitute 0. Because we sorted the data, the first time should always be the earliest time. In column 0, copy the data from A, in column P copy the data from C (the earliest start time). In column Q enter the forumla =MAX(D2:M2), which should be the latest time it encounters (use TEXT function to convert to readable time or force a format. Columns O,P and Q should now contain the data as you want it. Working out the hours should now be just arithmetic.

Thanks but it appears not to have been successful. We have essentially been told that we can't be appraised of future developments (a detailed roadmap) in a timely manner because often even the developers are unaware what features will not be worked on until a few weeks before release. That kind of thing sets the alarm bells ringing in my head.