Street illumination is more efficient than headlamps both in the sense of lumens-per-energy-input and in the sense of effectiveness per lumen. In traffic, as in most towns most of the time, most of the headlamp lumens end up buried in the tailgate of the car 10 yards or less in front. The effect of most of what does not is to dazzle oncoming drivers. The most effective illumination is from above.

Of course there is a cross-over point. On roads with non-continuous traffic, lights on the car become more cost-efficient.

Headlights are not better. Of all the directions of illumination, that from below eye level, and especially from directly ahead (as oncoming traffic's headlights are), is the least effective. Why do you think that football stadiums are floodlit from high towers and not from knee level? Aside from the fact that fixed lighting from grid power is more efficient than car headlights (in the sense of lumens per energy input) where the traffic is continuous, as in towns.

As for obstrucions appearing "as a shadow" - that's bang on; it is how street lighting at one time worked by design. Sodium lighting was of a wavelength that was relected by "black" asphalt and roadside masonry, so the background was actually quite a bright yellow. Unlit objects, which generally reflected sodium light less than the road, then appeared clearly as black shapes against that background. Vehicles, in turn, formed a dark foil for their own side lights (ie running lights, not headlights).

Given that, in the UK headlights were once only used on country roads where there were no street lights. I remember driving back then in London and could even see cats or dogs crossing the road at night 800 yards ahead. Anyone with headlights on (perhaps after coming from an unlit road) would be angrily flashed at. That "system" was destroyed however in the UK by a period of patchy electrical power cuts when drivers just left their headlights on rather than bother to turn themon and off as they went in and out of lit areas. Not using headlights all the time became frowned on, and now there is no chance of seeing a pedestrian crossing the road from the opposite side behind a barrage on oncoming headlights, until they walk into your headlight beam right in front of you.

I thought they were metrosexual.

My father-in-law always pays top price for everything and would not dream of trying to negotiate or walking away from an obvious rip-off. He would see that as loss of pride.

And he is as poor as a church mouse, so he does not buy things very often. Of course, paying top price for everything, and his general lack of financial sense, is part of the reason he is poor. If he wanted to buy a mobile phone (although he never would), someone, anyone, would only need to say to him that it should be the most expensive possible iPhone and that is what he would get, even if it took all his life savings; to do otherwise he would consider a betrayal of the other person's "friendship".

Anne Thwacks wrote :-

Anne Thwacks ....... Miss I Cane, Ms Whiplash - is that you?

Definitely. Microsoft are douchebags.

Yes, I paid thousands to be trained to find that KDE start button, and thousands more to find that "Libre Office Writer (Word Processor)" entry in the menu. Then I needed to be shown where all the letter keys were again. Then that Ctrl-s to save what I'd done - took me months on courses to get the hang of it.

So ........ please tell us more about the certain future of the Windows desktop.

That is about the damn silliest statement I have seen in quite a while.

Crunchygranola wrote :-

As perhaps could the CEO of any company. Does that mean they should all resign if they have a personal political opinion? Or only the ones whose opinions do not happen to align wth yours?

BitZtrean wrote :-

How patronising and presumputous.

I spend most of my time creating things, both as a professional engineer and as a hobbyist. But I am not money-minded and I don't mind sharing what I do. Back in the days of "Hobby" computer and electronics mags I had several magazine articles published with my designs. I was paid the magazines fairly nominal publication fee, but no royalties came of it and I did not mind. For example one circuit was for a buzzer to sound in a car if you were leaving it with the lights on; showing my age, that was before any production car had such a warning.

Maybe I should have patented it, but I don't care. But actually, the legal minefield of patents would deter me from going there, and indeed I would think twice now about even publishing a design these days. I think you will find most true inventors will think the same way.

I have four different bank accounts and can move money between them from this keyboard. I moved all but a token amount from one bank recently because they pissed me off.

It's worse than inconvenience. Lloyds and TSB's systems went down last September (AFAIR) during their break-up. I went in the red as a result and they slapped a bank charge on me. I went into the Lloyds branch (Chepstow, UK), saw the manager, and his attitude was that I "should have kept an eye" on my account. Told him that interent banking IS the way I keep an eye on my account..

I did get my bank charge repaid eventually. But meanwhile I withdrew everything but 1GBP from all the savings accounts I had with them (my mother's as well - I have power of attorney) - a six digit figure all together. Idiots.

Timber and nails have been widely available for centuries (or millenia), but they have not put furniture factories out of business yet.

It is slate (artificial, but slate-like). I should think a nail gun would shatter it. But they also used hammers to fix the underlying battens.

Not sure what advantage a nail gun would bring unless someone is making something like cheap furniture in a mass-production factory, the gun fed by nails down a flexible tube. Have guys become such pussies that they cannot move their arms any more, or is it that the 'Elf & Safey Nazis ae terrified someone will hit their thumbnail?

I suspect the "advantage" of a nail gun is that it de-skills the task. I am often using a hammer and find it fast, accurate and satisfactory, and havn't hit my thumbnail since I was a child making a box-cart. I suspect that the "professionals" who use nail guns are the ones fresh from the local job centre, the ones who don't bother to move their feet to do the further nails, which therefore end up at a crazy angle (not so easy with a hammer) . Real experts would use the hammer.