Garages, beach huts, woods etc

kabayiri

Beach huts can be more trouble than they are worth.
Sis had what she called a shack on the beach bit of a Canadian lake. It was ramshackle, so it seemed reasonable to knock it down and put a kit house in it's place.

Then....you find out there are no real foundations; the water sewage arrangements need upgrading; the power needs increase; etc etc.

Suddenly that $120K kit house doesn't look good value when you've spent much more on what has become a money pit.

If you have a shack or a hut, leave it as is! Much less stressful.

mystic_trev

padington wrote: »

What's your thoughts ?

I believe in Wood Green they're referred to as Pied-à-terre's and available circa £500,000.

westernpromise

Conrad wrote: »

Do you watch BBC4 documentaries?

No. Apart from a documentary about the Triumph Stag and 10 minutes of the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony, I have not watched TV of any kind since 1998, unless you count sitting with toddlers while they did.

Loads of examples from history of things dismissed that became reality, including the motor car, at a time when people said they could see no case they would ever become popular, after all a horse was faster. Brian Cox and Jim Alkalilli have documented case after case of progress being dismissed.

To be clear, I'm making a distinction between things that already exist, and things that supposedly are about to. There is a big, big difference between holding a mobile phone in 1982 and observing that these things will be ubiquitous one day and the network is already being constructed, versus announcing that in the future, everybody will eat cuboid sausages, own a flying car, or swallow pills instead of eating.

Lots of what is in electric cars is in conventional cars and a great deal of infrastructure is going to be needed to replace them (and is not being put into place). Once it becomes clearer that global warming is trivial and benign, the well of subsidies for such things is likely to dry up rapidly (or will do so for the opposite reason, which is that coal-fired electric cars are much, much dirtier than hydrogen gas powered cars).

Gary Numan was ridiculed by the music press in 1979/80, they dismissed electronic music as an unwelcome passing fad

His particular brand certainly was.

westernpromise

antrobus wrote: »

I think that's the issue with self-drive cars. Coping with other self-drive cars that will behave in a logical and consistent manner is one thing; coping with cars driven by humans is something else enitrely, and much trickier to deal with.

If there's an accident, whose fault is it?

Also, consider this scenario. You're in your self-driving car, observing the speed limit, and there is an oncoming truck, whose tyres are illegal. Suddenly a stolen car with four teenage scrotes in it overtakes the truck and a head-on collision is imminent.

Your car duly minimises the casualties by steering your car into the truck. You, the only driver driving lawfully, are killed, your wife is widowed and your children are orphaned. The truck driver survives because he's above the impact point, and so do the scrotes in the stolen car.

That would all be fine, would it?

The idea that computer nerds could decide this is terrifying. Computer nerds, the most socially inept people in all of history, have decided that their model of how dating should work should be everyone else's too. Putting them in charge of cars is a really bad idea.

mwpt

westernpromise wrote: »

The idea that computer nerds could decide this is terrifying. Computer nerds, the most socially inept people in all of history, have decided that their model of how dating should work should be everyone else's too. Putting them in charge of cars is a really bad idea.

Computer nerds are coming for your job you out-dated, opinionated, ignoramus.

antrobus

westernpromise wrote: »

If there's an accident, whose fault is it?....

When you say "fault" what are you really trying to establish; criminal or civil liability?

westernpromise wrote: »

......That would all be fine, would it?....

Dunno, what would you do?

westernpromise wrote: »

....The idea that computer nerds could decide this is terrifying. Computer nerds, the most socially inept people in all of history, have decided that their model of how dating should work should be everyone else's too. Putting them in charge of cars is a really bad idea.

You appear to be a ragbag of irrational prejudices.

padington

mystic_trev wrote: »

I believe in Wood Green they're referred to as Pied-à-terre's and available circa £500,000.

£550k now for a newly painted one, so I'm told.

martinsurrey

westernpromise wrote: »

Putting them in charge of cars is a really bad idea.

who, the driver of the illegal lorry, or the scrotes? your probably right, its both of them.

and what would you have done in the same situation, you've got a fraction of a second to decide where to crash.

99% of crashes are caused by people, I cant wait for the day they are ALL removed from the equation (me included).

westernpromise

martinsurrey wrote: »

who, the driver of the illegal lorry, or the scrotes? your probably right, its both of them.

and what would you have done in the same situation, you've got a fraction of a second to decide where to crash.

99% of crashes are caused by people, I cant wait for the day they are ALL removed from the equation (me included).

My point is that your car, or all three vehicles jointly, may decide to kill you, rather than the car thieves or the driver of the illegal truck, because picking the blameless driver to die reduces the casualties to one. The software might decide, depending on what else it knows, that as the blameless driver has no dependants, she's clearly the most expendable, so another reason for her to be the one who gets to be killed in the inevitable crash.

These are not decisions I'd be prepared to entrust to software.

DRFC1879

All interesting things that need to be carefully considered.


The other worry for me is the reliability of the software. Generally a couple of times a day Excel, Outlook or SAP crash on my computer. The most I can lose there is a couple of hours' unsaved work. If the car crashes it could cost me my life and there's a lot more to process than a few numbers in a spreadsheet so the technology has to be spot on.