As I wrote earlier this month, the MEGA battery-electric van factory in Channas, France burnt to the ground on the first of December. Obviously things, to my UK eyes looked bleak for MEGA. The rest of Aixam’s lines were still able to make cars but I thought that the MEGA line could be out of action for months. Despite this, a confident press release at the time mentioned that MEGA had already rented a new building. Surely false optimism, I thought.

But no, as of the 18th of December, incredibly there is a new MEGA van on the production line at the new factory!

Orders received end of November will certainly be delivered within the end of
January 2008 – which means less than 8 weeks delivery time. People will
work hard between Christmas and New Year’s Day to speed up the
rehabilitation.

Well, I’ll never be able to accuse the French of being work-shy. Any British company faced with such a crisis of a destroyed factory and line would surely have either gone out of business or at least suspended the line. It must take some true grit and determination to get a line back in production in just three weeks.

I wish MEGA every success with their facelift MEGA Van model line.

You can read the full press release HERE

Et la version française est ICI

The launch date of US Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-122 which had been put back to the 10th of January has slipped once more while remedial work is carried out on the external tank ECO sensors.

Atlantis’ original December launch date was scrubbed due to the simultaneous failure of two of the four ECO sensors during tanking.

As we explained before, the ECO (Engine Cut Off) sensors reside in the bottom of the liquid-hydrogen portion of the shuttle external tank. Their job is to detect the exhaustion of liquid hydrogen prior to it running out completely and signal the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) to shut down. Normally, the Space Shuttle Main Engines would be commanded to shut down by the flight avionics with some liquid hydrogen to spare but should a fuel-line run dry at flight-power, the powerful turbopumps which force fuel and oxidiser through the engines would suddenly spin up beyond their rated rpm and fail catastrophically. Due to their proximity to vital systems such as APUs and avionics in the rear of the shuttle, the consequences of such a failure are not something NASA are willing to risk.

NASA appear to have now isolated the fault to the connections that lead from the External Tank carrying the ECO sensor signals. They intend to repair these connectors with the vehicle on the pad to make sure all of the sensors are functional for launch. No revised launch date has yet been set for STS-122

Such prudence with regard to safety is undoubtedly a good thing but it does raise an interesting problem for the remaining shuttle flights. The shuttles are due to be retired from service by mid-2010 (Atlantis is due to retire in mid-2008) which means that the ten remaining ISS construction missions will have to be flown at an average rate of one every 3 months, a rate which NASA has been unable to achieve in recent years. There is also a Hubble service mission scheduled for 2008 which, due to the different orbit and the inability to reach the safe-harbour of the ISS, will require a second Shuttle ready on the other pad for a contingency launch. It is planned that immediately after this flight, pad 39B will begin conversion for use with the new Ares I booster system which 39A is used for the remainder of the shuttle flights.

Personally, I’d be inclined to look at building Pad 39C which was projected but never constructed during the Apollo era, it would form the third pad in a row to the North of 39B and 39A which were themselves converted to shuttle use after the Apollo program. While 39C was never built, a short stub of crawler-way points toward it’s intended location from the dog-leg of 39B’s crawler-way. The construction of 39C would remove the constraint on Ares-I project testing as it is already intended that the VAB be fitted out to handle both Ares I and STS configurations at the same time during transition. The creation of 39C would also allow for more complex logistics when the Ares-V boosters come into service later. For the record, there were two further pads planned to the North of 39C but whether the VAB could ever need to service five vehicles at the same time seems unlikely.

I make the assumption that the construction of pads is a relatively insignificant cost in relation to the rest of the space program.

According to Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, soon you will have to pay royalties if you want to utilise a reproduction of a pharaonic site such as the Great Pyramid at Giza or the Sphinx. Egyptian MPs are expected to pass a bill into law which would effectively claim copyright for the design of these ancient constructions. Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities stated that this law “will be applied in all countries of the world so that we can protect our interests”.

Now, it appears that the media have taken AFP’s lead and just looked at how (if given credence) this law would affect people who already use the likeness of the pyramids. What they perhaps should have done is investigate whether this law could actually be enforced in any way outside of Egypt. What the Egyptians are essentially trying to do is two things. Firstly, they are trying to extend the term of copyright to ~4,000 years and secondly, they are assuming the right to hold the copyright which would have originally been held (had copyright law existed then) with the pharaohs themselves.

For a start, the law probably isn’t going to hold any water with countries who are not signatories to the Berne convention. Secondly, in countries that are signatories, the rule of the shorter term usually applies:

Berne Convention Article 7 (8)

In any case, the term shall be governed by the legislation of the country where protection is claimed; however, unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work.

This means that when the protection of copyright is claimed or utilised in legal action by the author, the legislation of the country where the claim or infringement occurs will be in force. So, if somebody in England made a copy of the Great Sphinx, UK law would be in force and if the Sphinx were categorised as an ‘artistic work’, it’s copyright would have lapsed 70 years after the death of it’s author or creator. Upon it’s lapse, the copyright of the Sphinx would transfer into the public domain in the UK. Now, we estimate that the Great Sphinx is around 4,500 years old and it’s creator (presumably a pharaoh or similar) would not have lived into modern times*. We can’t be certain of the actual date but we do know that the Sphinx was first depicted in a photograph around 1867 [pictured] and the copyright of this private work is now lapsed too.

It would appear that the Egyptian MPs are either unaware of how copyright law works or are perhaps being supremely arrogant by assuming that Egyptian law can be enforced throughout the world. It is also possible, of course, that the media have misconstrued a story that did not come out well in translation.

*It did cross my mind that they might be trying to claim copyright due to the pharaohs having ‘eternal life’ as gods but I don’t think that will wash with most Berne Convention countries.

Header Photo: Ricardo Liberato cc-by-sa-2.0
Article Photo: Przemyslaw Idzkiewicz cc-by-sa-2.5

The Halifax has released it’s 2007 annual first-time buyers review which looks at the state of the housing market for FTBs within the United Kingdom.

They have found that the number of First Time Buyers has dropped to it’s lowest level since 1980 at the start of the 80’s house price crash.

New Halifax research estimates that the number of first time buyers (FTBs) is at its lowest since 1980. An estimated 300,000 first time buyers entered the market in 2007 – 44% less than in 2002 (532,000).

First time buyers cannot afford* to purchase a terraced property – traditionally the least expensive property type - in 71% of towns across the UK (322 out of 454). In 2002, the typical FTB could not afford to purchase a terrace in only 11% of towns across the UK (51 towns).

It seems clear that FTBs are not buying simply because they are unable to. The initial symptom was that they became priced out due to the massive house price inflation and the new symptom is that as a result of the credit crunch, they can no-longer obtain the frightening amounts of credit required to purchase a home.

It is now speculated in various circles that the prices of houses will fall as their current heady heights are the result of ‘bubble-market’ which, without the credit to support it, will collapse.

The full Halifax report can be read HERE. Watch out, it’s a Microsoft Doc format file but you can read it by downloading OpenOffice.org Note to HBoS: Portable Document Format (PDF) is your friend.

How do you like my tabloid headline?

Well, it’s true enough, British Forumula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton has been banned from driving after being caught at over 120mph on an Autoroute in Northern France.

The F1 Championship runner-up was pulled over by traffic police near the town of Laon, fined €600 and banned from driving for one month.

Although not specifically stated in news reports, the ban probably also attracts 6 points which can be applied to his UK driving licence via the reciprocal arrangement between the UK and France (in fact, the ban could be applied). Hamilton was lucky that the full force of the law was not applied as the French are nowadays very strict about speeding and could have taken his licence for up to 3 years.

The Mercedes Benz CLK that was reportedly driven at excessive speed by the 22 year old has had to be collected from the French police on Hamilton’s behalf.

Inline Photo Credit: AngMoKio cc-by-sa
Header Photo Credit: Martin Pettitt cc-by

The UK Home Office who famously, this year, lost the personal details and bank account information for every child-benefit claimant in the country have now admitted that they have lost the personal details of (count them!) three-million driving test applicants.

But it gets better.

They weren’t lost in the UK, oh no, they were lost 7 months ago in Iowa in the United States of America!

You really couldn’t make it up; it appears that a hard drive in the (former) possession of Pearson Driving Assessments Ltd, a contractor for the DVLA, has gone missing from their Iowa offices.

Pearson Driving Assessments seems to be part of the Pearson company, an international manufacturer of educational materials and examinations. Quite what they wanted with the personal information of learner drivers though is anybody’s guess.

The data lost this time includes:

• Name
• Address
• Phone number
• Fee paid
• Test centre
• Payment code
• E-mail where provided

Futher to this, the details of about 7,500 vehicles and their owners were lost.

It would be interesting to know whether this transfer, to the United States, of data relating to British Nationals contravenes the 1998 Data Protection Act which states as Principal 8:

Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data.

It would seem exceptionally clear that an adequate level of protection has not been given to the rights of the citizens to not have their data lost in a foreign land.