nacmacfeegle

"what springs to my mind is the "Suicide-Bomber" heroically shot by cops as he was about detonate a bomb on a Tube-Train. Then there was that Chemical / Bio Bomb factory in North London that was raided (when another "Terrorist" was shot)... " Y'know, sometimes your humour is wasted on this mob, Mike..... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"it's the debt, dammit." So who are the creditors, and what sort of repo-man can you expect to come knocking?.... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"The Orwellization of the USA is almost complete." The pigs are running the farm? -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"So now, when somebody asks me: Whit's an Englishman living in Scotland fer?" Stock answer should be... Improving the gene pool. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

So sorry to hear this Jim, send my big hugs to all the friends down at Spacey. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Edradour, its from the wrong side of the A9 mate, but only just! Go West or North for the proper stuff. I prefer darker, more peaty variants, something along the lines of Talisker, Laphraoig, Jura, or Highland Park. Chaque un a son gout, as our Gallic pals might say. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Och I don't do the under the sand thing, I'm more intereted in the stuff under the water or under the ice. The US economy is the largest in the world, if its unstable its not good for all the other wee economies. Edit..Yep Rhys, I can see that might be an added side benefit.

Really, really, really, bad idea. Trading oil in any other currency than dollars might have a destabilising effect on the US dollar value as described here by others. The world needs the US economy to be stable, and thats just a fact of life. How's things J? I've not been around, been away digging up black stuff..... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Match it up with a Squeezebox.....http://www.slimdevices.comand you have whole house personalised WiFi radio stations. Access to your MP3s is a bit of a side benefit. The sound from a Squeezebox is awsome compared to running off a shitty PC soundcard and the usual speakers. Only problem is you need a US zip code to activate the account, I used Beverly Hills 90210. Its been working for about a month now. This set up blows Sonos and Phillips out of the water in terms of bangs per buck for wireless access to the choonz on the pooter... Cooltopia have just released a NAS which means you don't even need the pooter switched on! I have a NAS (QNAP TS101) talking to a wireless router, and a sprinkling of squeezeboxes around the house, they are great. The missus even likes it.

"What/who have I missed? " Sign up to Pandora and set up some of your favourites, then listen to them sending you similar choonz. www.pandora.com I got a free 90 day trial with my Squeezebox, http://www.slimdevices.com/ and its very, very, very cool. All you need is a valid US zip code, I used 90210. Squeezbox is way better than an I-pod for in-house choonz, not much use for jogging though. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"The UK is bringing in laws next year to ban smoking in public places, inc bars and clubs." Its been in Scotland for the last month or so, and it is actually working fine.

Why? I used to jump there a couple of years ago. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Yeppers, design and construction of petrochemical plants, mostly offshore and 'special' locations. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Are you the owner of an MP3 player that has silly DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions?" Been through all that pain with early Sony MP3 players, put me right off the idea of an i-pod. As an aside have any of you guys come across the Squeezebox MP3 player? I just got one and am loving having my 90GB or so of music available throughout the house, over the wireless net, quality is none too shabby either. http://www.slimdevices.com/ Me likeee

Don't convert the disc, convert your DVD player. Not only is the disc PAL, it will also be region coded for the European market. Google 'region hack' for info, most region hacks enable Pal/NTSC changeover. Otherwise you may be looking at DVD ripping software, again a quick google will let you know what is out there, assuming you have access to a DVD burner. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Post to a couple of religious threads in Speaker's Corner, and you will be good to go. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Its not got birdflu, its just pining for the fjords. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

And the jokes have started already.... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"as to the cause I find it a little hard to believe that humans are playing as big a part as many people are saying" All we need to do is 'tip the balance', human effects may not be entirely to blame, but we are contributing. In cases like this, its the little things that can make a huge difference. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"The British ran an army of occupation in Ireland for several hundred years. " Say what? Northern Ireland is part of the UK. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Speaker's Corner is kind of like Chinese fortune cookies only you put "George Bush" at the end of whatever the post says." Hmm, true and valid point, but if its facts and good advice you seek, the fortune cookies beat Speaker's Corner any day. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Don't get me wrong, the likes of Billvon and myself share your opinion of Mr Bush. Check the history of these pages, many of us have been pretty vocal in our criticism of his performance over the last couple of years. However to be taken seriously around here, you have to attack him in a credible way. Suggesting some sort of conspiracy by your govt is, in my mind, not really credible. He may not have managed the aftermath particularly well, but I really don't think that he orchestrated this attrocity -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"There are things like sand-oil which are unprofitable at $2.00 per gallon, but which can be tapped as prices rise." Yeppers John, shale oil sand is really nasty stuff though, other things also exist to squeaze existing reservoirs include gas lift, water injection, electro submersible pumps, multiphase pumps, jet pumps, and a whole pile of gismos that are still kinda secret. As the price of oil goes up, more and more previously uneconomic prospects and methods to exploit them become viable. For example I am currently working on a project to extend an oil field life by twenty years on what was previously seen as an asset in its twilight years (its already way past its original design life). What we are also seeing in the North Sea is the emergence of leaner operating companies that can exploit reservoirs at margins way below the profit expectations of the majors like Shell, Mobil, Chev Tex etc. We are also seeing many more aliances to bring onstream relatively minor fields by combining license and operating agreements. So we see, say, Texaco producing small subsea fields onto say CNR rigs, then into a BP pipeline. The future is not as dark as many people think. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"BUT, they have all sorts of stuff between each floor, not to mention the 3' of steel reinforced concrete and support beams." Such as.....? SRC weighs around a tonne per cubic meter, I can't imagine 'all sorts of stuff' resisting that once it gets in motion. "Here is another document from a company that has shown that a steel building will not collapse in a fire." No its not, the Steel Construction Institute is a UK organisation, its is uncontrolled, unregulated, and known over here as a QUANGO, some of the stuff they produce is sensible, some of it is not. I've done a load of work with the SCI, mostly on fire and blast resistance of offshore platforms, I spent 18 months setting fire to, and blowing things up in Spadeadam in Cumbria. I see your 36 page document waxing technical on things like HP/A ratios, PFP, etc, its all pretty much established stuff all they are doing is bringing it all tigether in one place. However, I don't see anything within this document that says that steel constructed buildings will not fail during a fire. What I see is a pile of current (the doc is dated a couple of years after 9-11) best practices to extend life expectancy of structures under fire conditions. These guidelines were not available when the WTC was constructed. It also uses the BS 476 standard fire test which should not be used in the instance where Avgas is the primary fuel, as was the case in the WTC. This differs from the more pertinent 'hydrocarbon fire curves' in that the speed at which ultimate fire temperature is greatly increased. Look once again at the fire curves on page 16, you will see that typical steel will reach a point where its strength is reduced by about 50% at or around 550 deg C, match the time for this temp on the graph next to it, its a remarkibly short time. Even using a more sensible 650 deg C for the lower flange of an RSJ, the time for cellulosic fire to reach this temperature is around 6 minutes. If you look at a hydrcarbon curve, this temperature is achieved in around 3 minutes. Okay so we established that fires get hot really quickly, how would the structure respond?..... Well if you remove a level of lateral stability, IE a floor, either by fire or an aircraft impact, you double the effective length of a support column, in effect you have decraesd the column's ability to support a load. Take a pencil, you can bend it a bit till it snaps, now take one of the half pencils, and try to bend it till it snaps, it not as easy, is it? This is the same effect as doubling the effective length of an unrestrained column. So, with a jet fuel fire, within 3 minutes steel will go beyond its normal design capacity, if you compound this by removing lateral retsraints, thereby halving its load bearing capacity, you are looking at exceeding design limits within 1-2 minutes of a fire. The fact that the WTC stood for a over an hour during these conditions is a credit to its original designers, and the guys who put it together. Surely if someone wanted to demolish the tower for some evil (but as yet unspecified) purpose, they would have detonated their thermite pretty soon after the plane impacted, not wait over an hour to bring it down, yes/no? -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

I'd have preferred to have seen more windblades.