I work as a ship inspector. I test the control systems in ships with Dynamic Positioning systems as my speciality, but I also occasionaly inspect tanks, including ballast tanks I thought I might give a bit of general background to the type of inspections that go on with vessels, and who does them. In addition to the Flag State, there is the Port State, and the Classification Society, so there are actually three sets of inspections that can happen to a ship. The Flag State's job is to interperate the International Maritime Organisation IMO rules for the vessel. These are the rules which have been agreed by all members of the IMO, so this will include SOLAS for basic safety, and IOPP which sets rules designed to limit oil polution as two examples. The Classification Society predates the IMO regulations, it started with Lloyds of London in the 18th century, and soon after it was required to have the stamp from a classification society in order to be able to insure your vessel/cargo. The classification have their own rules and encompass all the major systems and structures that make a vessel sound. In addition there is the port state who can ask for a spot inspection of any vessel that comes into the country's port, and detain any that does not come up to scratch. Detention is the nightmare for any trading ship owner, so this is the stick that they most fear. Port state is informed of any vessel coming into their harbours, and if the flag state, or class society has any oustanding deficiencies related to the vessel, or if the flag state or class society are not top rated, then they will board and inspect the vessel, and likely detain it. Both Flag and Class require wide ranging annual inspections, and larger scopes every 5 years (on what is refered to a 'renewal' survey) Panama by the way is not a bad flag as they go, it is in my humble opinion as good as the MCA or UK flag state. Hope this explains how it all works, must go I have a ship to inspect ...

I have an old GP4 station running debian.

Only used for some text input, word processing and reading the odd pdf.

works very well on debian

My n900 phone also runs maemo. The n900 is a classic, maybe in a few years time we will have vintage smart-phone rallies!

Similar thing with North Sea Offshore platforms that I have worked on. Day/Night shifts with various individuals using a shared PC with a generic login having password policy dictated from the office onshore.

The reality of course is that users have the current password taped beside the monitor, because who wants to be logged out of your information portal when that big generator is down in the small hours.

The chances of the IT department ever seeing the reality are very slim, they undertake all the maintenance via a remote connection or have the comms tech change out the equipment.

I agree with girlintraining, the closer to actual face to face communication the better. My wife is a psychotherapist and she has told me that sometimes she can smell the stress on a client, an indicator that would be missed even on Teleconferencing. So the ideal is to be in the same room with the therapist.

OK.

I said "I drive a Renault Espace". Your comment was "Why on earth did you buy an espace? You do know it's made by Renault, right?"

So why ask if I know that the Espace was made by Renault, when it is obvious that I do. Also why say "Why on earth did you buy an espace?" that is an unproductive and unfriendly way of asking the question

Next: "Was it because they once made an F1 car that looks like one?". Well if you ask anyone whether something looks like an F1 car they will not respond as if F1 commonly refers to a version of a people carrier made in 1995. It might seem clever for you to later put a url to that effect with a moniker "google is your friend". But if you think that the obscure version of a commonly used term is as valid as the commonplace usage because you can google for it, then I think google might well be you enemy.

Well your responses seem to be adversarial and unfriendly and. whether you intended them as such they appear trollish.

Renault made a car called the Espace F1, but they did not make a car that looks like a F1 car. Take a look at the Espace F1, it looks like a big van not a formula one car.

Renault Espace is a 7 seater people carrier very comfortable for long journeys through Europe. FYI there is no F1 car that looks like a people carrier. The idea is laughable.

Fault codes mainly. There is some obfuscation going on with Renault. There is no law that I know of that I can call on to make Renault give me detailed fault codes, although I do agree that they should be forced to make it easy.

And from the owner of the car. I drive a Renault Espace, when it is working. In order to get an idea of faults on my Renault I bought an OBD-II interface and bought a reader that was designed for a Vauxhall car, there is non available to the general public for my Renault.

If this proposed Android device allows the fault codes to be read from the engine so that I can phone around mechanics with symptoms of the car's problems then this will make me hugely less dependant on the dodgy big Renault garage in my area

Well at the moment I now have an interface for this car, but it was not easy to get the equipment I needed. Renault had no interest in letting me read the fault codes on my own car, they want me to go to the big Renault Garage on my town and hand over lots of money every time I get a fault light up.

Well I have a superb mechanic lives 5 minutes up the road from me who can do wonders with the mechanical side of car maintenance but cannot use the OBD-II interface, and having the fault codes is all he needs to get the car working.

So I would be delighted to have the android device connected to the car, but only if it gives me diagnostic information about faults.

I agree

TV is a system where the broadcaster pushes content at you according to their schedule

Entertainment on the Internet on the other hand is largely a system where the user pulls content when they wish to use it.

People prefer to pull content when and where the want rather than have it pushed at them. For that reason, in the long term, TV will lose out to internet based entertainment

Yes a slider would be good, you could still get a sense of history.

In fact it would add something you don't get with paper books in that you could see how information on a subject altered over time, say over 10 years. Yes I like that idea.

I think it is good that reference books change to keep up, but I think you are right to be concerned about there being a trail. It would be frustrating if information used in an essay was corrected and there was no way for the student to show that the information `was correct' at the time the essay was written

What I am thinking is that there are drawbacks as well as advantages in information constantly changing. The advantages are pretty self evident as the reference is constantly up to date.

One of the losses is the book as a historical artefact. I still get pleasure from reading my book `Modern Television' from the early fifties that would not be as interesting if it had been constantly revised.

Yes especially when there is a vaccine with obvious benefit.

Here in Scotland we have taken to a mass vaccination scheme for girls with a good take up see scotland archive for more info.

What I find most interesting is that the parents are all asked for permission for their 12 year old daughters to have the vaccinations, and there is about a 90% takeup. So happily not a lot of opposition to the vaccine here.

In the future, hopefully in the not too distant future, we will begin to utilise the moon.

Do you think that it will be possible to extend the terrestrial internet to encompass the moon? Would you envisage if that happened that it would be using an extended version of TCP? Or do you think that there would have to be two separate internets one on each body?

Same here, the biggest upgrade was the move to Linux.

I did the upgrade about 7 years ago on an old PC that spent all it's time virus checking itself and asking me to upgrade the firewall/virus checker/adware-checker software and automatically running pop-up ads for software upgrades and malware.

I upgraded it to a basic Debian Linux operating system that just worked.