h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I really wish the government would keep it's business out of our food.

Health, hygiene, labelling fine. These mean that the product is what it says it is, but allows the people to choose for themselves.

But it's ridiculous, and often completely ignored anyway by big business. For example, HMRC (Her Majesties Revenue and Customs (The Taxman) for our non-UK folks) says that to classify as a cider, and therefore a discounted tax rate for small producers, a cider must contain a minimum of 35% apple juice. Yet, all the modern ciders such as Somersby and Carling's offering contain a lot less. Yet, they can call themselves cider in their marketing because the trade description and legal definition of cider doesn't exist, only the tax definition. Which apparently doesn't count. So, since big business managed to get it so they could sell cider without apple juice (yes, there are some ciders out there that don't actually contain apple juice at all) the producers have constantly lowered the amount they've put in to the minimum they can get away with.

All because it's a cheaper product to make, and therefore more profit. It's got all to do with competing with foreign markets, it's about profit per item.

Turns out Motorola (Google owned) and Phonebloks have the same idea, modular phones are now set to become a reality:

http://motorola-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/goodbye-sticky-hello-ara.html

This is very good.

From the link -

"After the trip, we asked ourselves, how do we bring the benefits of an open hardware ecosystem to 6 billion people?"

Or, "How do we sell this?"

It's a little more complicated than that. For a start open hardware means that anyone can make parts for it. You could buy an Apple endo, fit a Nokia battery and Nikkon camera and a HTC screen.

So, it's not a case of "How can we sell it" it's more a case of "How can we let people pick and choose who they give their money to."

it would be nice if it worked out like that but I can imagine somehow most companies will make it so its virtually impossiable for there bits to interact with bits made by other companies and somehow manage to blame the other company for this... so as not to look like they are doing it on purpose

I read up on this a fair bit when I first heard of it, and it is actually possible. We've been doing it with desktop computers for years, and laptops to some extent.

Your motherboard is made by one company, the graphics card another. Memory, hard drive, dvd drive, all by different companies. The monitors, keyboards and mice too, all different companies. Unless you buy an iPhone, then it's all Apple and you're told what you want.

The operating system that we use has driver software that hooks it all together. With the new from Motorola, we know that it's Google owned, so it's almost certainly going to be run on Android. Already Android works on phones built by lots of companies, with parts from lots more. And again it uses hardware drivers to make it all work together.

The only companies that really stand to lose out on this idea are those that make tied in phones that you have to upgrade, sorry, replace constantly because they stop supporting the operating system. Again, that's Apple.

I agree I guess,
as long as we don't want apple (who probably would never get involved anyway and are far too reliant on there fans instead of actually making new things) then it should be good if it works

OMG!! The chattering classes will simply revolt! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-24746539

It's a report by Morgan Stanley, I'd ignore it.

Things they haven't taken into account:

1) Wine sales always fluctuate.
There's overall good, and overall bad years. This has always happened, and we've been having bads years for a while now.

2) The types of wine sold fluctuate.
Some years, only something like a Prosecco will sell highly, others something only like a Chablis will. It's impossible to tell what people will want two or three years (at least) from the grape harvest, which is why the big companies heavily promote/market the types of wine that they have a lot of stock of that's ready. It's also why a huge amount of wine sold isn't a single grape, or even just the grapes listed on the label.

3) Not all grapes are made into wine, and not all wine is made directly from grapes.
Okay, this is a little tricker to get your head around, it's only because I used to work at a wine importers that I (sort of) understand this: wine is made from grapes, not grape juice. Grapes are pressed and the juice is turned into wine. Or grapes are pressed, the juice is concentrated, often sugar added, blended and messed about with, and sold as grape juice. A *lot* of wines on the market (mostly the house wines) are made from a stored juice. After the blending part, it's stuck into big vats and stored for up to a couple of years until needed, *then* it's used to make up any shortfall in wine supplies. This is not the best quality of wine by any standards, but it sells. A lot.

So, wine sales have gone up, there wasn't enough wine this year. Doesn't matter. Wine is harvested years in advance, so it's those supplies producers will be looking at, and then getting their juice out to make up any shortfall.

The only sensible mention in that article is of the vine diseases that some parts of Europe are suffering at the moment. But that's fine, in a way, because a lot of Europe wants new world wines at the moment anyway, and countries like China that want the traditional old world wines are able to buy up stocks from (still) emerging markets like Slovakia who produce some really good whites.

Now that was far more interesting than the article

There's a huge amount that goes on behind the scenes as it were in the wine industry, I was only marginally involved for a couple of years, but learned a *lot*. And that was only tip of the iceberg.

October 2006.

NHS is safe in our hands - Cameron.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5403798.stm

October 2013

Mental health services in crisis. NHS in-patient capacity being reduced.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24537304

Oct 2013

Mental Health Act admissions top 50,000 a year. A 4% increase in a year. (And by the way, an increasing number of these are made to 'independent' hospitals. That is private and for profit organisations.)

http://www.hscic.gov.uk/article/3668/Mental-Health-Act-detentions-top-50000-a-year

PP.

It seems some earthlings have written a book for future aliens,
a kind of Galactic Hitch Hikers' Guide to 21st Century Earth.

http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/10/29/5041988/book-encodes-modern-culture-into-binary-patterns-as-time-capsule-for

Like the Golden Record duct taped to the Voyager mission the
thing is encoded in binary so they will have to figger all that out
before they can read it. And they'll have to come by within the next
millennium according to the designed shelf life. Oh, and there's only
gonna be 8 copies.

Sounds to me like its creators wanted to give the whirled one more
of them basically useless hobbies and collectables for the insanely rich.
Like Justin Beiber's dirty undies, Madonna's tin bra, nails from the Cross
or Dorothy's 'ruby' slippers.


~jwf~

One I've been saving for the Halloween theme

Man turns Pumpkin into a boat and crosses from the Mainland to the Isle of Wight and back:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-24653190

<BB<

I know why he turned back.

"Sorry mate, we're full'.

I know why he went, he read all the wonderful entries on it in the Guide

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24823846

Saudi Arabia is going nuclear. This is truly the things nightmares are made of.

The only thing that relaxes me is that the next country to use nuclear weapons is going to die. End of.

Another good one from APoD today:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131107.html

>> The only thing that relaxes me is that the next country to use nuclear weapons is going to die. End of. <<

Countries can't die but people can. The Saudi Arabian elite can fly out at a moments notice to their bunkers or to their mansions & villas dotted around the world.