Hold on... you have to pay to receive texts? Some of which will be unsolicited? I wholly undestand charging to send a text but charging to receive one?
AC> Pilots are just nuts, with their knots and feet.
While the use of feet might be dubious, there's a good rationale for using knots. One minute of latitude is one nautical mile long. This makes it very easy to do quick measurements on a chart while in-flight - since however you have a chart folded, you'll be able to see a longitude line (which has latitude tick marks as it goes up the page).
Back in the late 80s, I used to play a MMORPG called Shades (in those days, they were known as MUDs). It was a proper hack-and-slash MUD, not one of these wimpy 'no PKing allowed' MUDs that came afterwards.
If you were killed by a bot or by another player, you lost half of your points. If you were killed by another player in a fight you started, you lost EVERYTHING.
There were ways out of fights - for a small points penalty, you could flee (or for a larger points penalty, quit or yank the phone cable out the socket). But in a battle in this *text* game, you felt a rush of adrenaline you just don't feel even in the most graphically pretty game because when you died, you took a really big hit. So if you thought you were in with a chance, you'd stay, keep casting spells, keep trying to steal your opponents weaponry, taking desperate glances at your remaining stamina and hoping that the enemy didn't have a trick up his sleeve. Then when the fight ended, and you'd survived, there was the mad race to find the Strange Little Girl (who'd heal you) and you'd feel terror at any 'bot or other player you saw (especially another player - since fight messages were broadcast, they'd know you're probably low on stam without having to cast a score spell to find out your status) who might have an opportunistic go at you. Or you'd feel "a slight tugging sensation" because every man and his dog knew your stam was low and was trying for an opportunistic summon-and-slay!
If that risk hadn't been there, it'd have been very much duller. However, every Shades player recalls the frantic flight and adrenaline when low on stam, just because another player gave you a funny look:-) Fun times.
Shades still exists by the way, but MUDs have unfortunately gone out of style, so there's hardly ever anyone on:/
Consistency is great when you're measuring fundamentally related things (like distances, volumes, mass etc.) However, memory is not at all related to any of those. 1000 bytes is a completely arbitrary number of bytes, and is not at all related to meters, litres or kilograms. There's no relationship whatsoever. The whole point of SI is so mass, volume and length are all related and can be used easily in calculations. But there is no calculation that turns mass into memory used.
Rather than use an arbitrary 1000 for multiples of memory, it's far better to use something meaningful - which 2^10 is. 2^10 converts much more easily with other measurements you might make regarding a computer. 10^4 _does not_ and it makes no sense to use it. 1000 is a meaningless figure in computing. 1024 is not. It would be a retrograde step to start measuring computer related terms in powers of 10. Well, unless you're in marketing. It's silly to use an unrelated measure to force a multiples system that makes no sense at all!
People, using measure that have meaning to the computer are good. Anything else gets your stack smashed and machine rooted.
It's common practise to use the highest number when representing something in an ad. Like for instance Cirrus aircraft advertise their aircraft's speed in MPH, when pilots actually use knots. This is because you get a number on the ad that's 15% bigger. And I bet Cirrus advertise the speed of their planes in Europe in km/h because this yields an even bigger number.
Personally, I wish we'd just get on with it and switch to base 16. It would be so much more convenient, and I'd be back in my early 20s again!
I know you're probably only joking, but it would take catastrophic climate change to make that true: coconut palms are extremely cold tender and die at about 10 celcius (about 50 deg. F). You might, however, be able to grow commercial date palms (phoenix dactylfera) some specimens have been known to survive -5 celcius, so long as you don't have prolonged freezes.
There are some palms that have some degree of hardiness (and cabbage "palms" aren't palms at all, but cordyline australis, a New Zealand native and relative of the yucca). In milder coastal areas there are quite a few hardy palm species that you can try. Coconut palms no (they die at about 10 degrees celcius - they are very, very cold tender), but possibly Phoenix dactylfera (the commercial date palm) which is hardy down to about -5 celcius. You should certainly be able to grow trachycarpus fortunei (hardy down to about -12 celcius) or trachycarpus wagnerianus (also hardy down to -12 or so, but MUCH more wind tolerant than fortunei). Canary Island date palms (phoenix canarensis) has actually produced viable fruits and seed in England, since English winters are now so mild that this palm can grow quite happily with no winter protection there.
I have a Washingtonia robusta in my garden. I live at about 52 degrees north latitude - further north than the entire lower 48 states of the US. This palm is from Mexico, and is growing just fine and survived the winter with absolutely no protection, with no more damage than a bit of wind burn on the leaf tips. Washingtonia robusta is hardy down to about -5 celcius. I also have some mediterranean fan palms (Chamaerops humilis, the only native European palm) which suffered no damage whatsoever this winter (and the larger one in front of my house is currently flowering).
No, it means less arable land. Forget the Mercator projection of the world map you have in your mind.
The most productive arable is in the mid latitudes. However, a possible outcome is that the mid latitudes will become increasingly desertified, and the productive zones of arable land will move towards the poles, i.e. northwards in the northern hemisphere.
So? you may say. But if you look at globe, rather than a Mercator projection of the Earth, simple geometry will tell you that there is MUCH less land closer to the poles than there is in the mid latitudes. Simple geometry. That's without seeing that the largest actual land masses are also at the mid latitudes.
It will also take time for the former tundra to be usable as arable. Not all soil is equal.
Then, of course, will be the human cost of losing all that productive coastal land to rising sea levels, and the economic misery caused by the inundating of populated coastlines and low lying areas. How many cities are currently barely above the high tide mark? Hint: Google can help you here.
Really? Given another 20 years of record breaking summers, I think I'll be up a ladder tidying up the lower fronds of my Washingtonia robusta (Mexican fan palm). That might not seem particularly unusual, except that this particular specimen is at 52 degrees north latitude, not the usual 28 degrees north. The winters are already mild enough that the plant (currently only 2 feet tall) requires no protection. In 1975, there would have been no chance that it would have survived even with protection.
I first heard about global warming at school. In 1986. So it's already had 21 years. RTFA and you'll see they actually put that global cooling prediction into context which the global warming deniers fail to do.
Download an 'ear tuner' program for your computer (there are plenty around) and train your ear. If you can recognise a song, you already have the equipment to do it - you just need to train your mind how to make use of it.
For many "bike" is actually viable. It's not for everyone, but I know a few people who spend several hours doing cardio exercise at the gym even during the summer months, when they can get better value out of their bike.
Now my normal drive to work takes 25 minutes each way. On a bicycle, it takes 50 minutes each way (so driving is 50 minutes per day, and cycling is 100 minutes per day). If I cycle, the first 50 minutes of the round trip is "free exercise" - it's time I otherwise would have spent travelling in the car anyway. Only the remaining 50 minutes is a time cost.
But in the summer, I drop my gym membership. I usually try to cycle to work three times a week. In the winter, I normally go to the gym for an hour three times a week - so during the summer, I'm actually getting much more cardio exercise in, yet the time cost is lower - only 150 minutes a week on the bike (while actually getting 300 minutes a week of exercise) vs the gym which is 180 minutes a week.
So the bike does work for some of us. Not to mention it saves a gym membership during the summer months, and on top of that saves a noticable amount of money on running the car (fuel is expensive in Rightpondia, at current exchange rates approximately US$8 per USG). But for many people who the bike would work, they still seem to rather use the gym (and therefore spend more time and money) during the summer months! (And then whitter on about how much energy they are saving with the CFLs they just installed.)
Some cars are different to others. My A4 gets the same mileage regardless of whether I drive it like a granny or drive it aggressively. I tried different driving styles over a period of 4 months or so - and got roughly the same fuel economy whatever I did. When discussing this, people said, "perhaps you need a tune up", but the engine is all electronic controls, so it tunes itself up all the time. It also gets the fuel economy that the car's manual says it should, so according to that, the engine is running perfectly already. The only convincing explanation is my normal drive has only one set of traffic lights (in 12.5 miles) and therefore, regardless of whether I drive it fast or slow, there's not many places where there's braking or accelerating.
I also found that it made no difference what grade of fuel I used, either (either to perceived performance or fuel economy).
Oh come on, changing your car isn't all that hard. Compared to the technical challenges required to make available affordable solar power or storage systems, it's absolutely trivial and it's absolutely low hanging fruit of energy saving. Last time I bought a new car it took a *whole afternoon*. That's not exactly a giant effort. Changing a giant SUV for a fuel efficient car absolutely is low hanging fruit - especially if you're buying a new vehicle anyway (I don't know anyone who intends to drive the same vehicle for the rest of their lives). It's just not that hard. The lifestyle change (well, except the keeping-up-with-the-joneses image) is practically nil.
SUVs also have been shown to be no safer than a car. Don't forget that cars have to pass stringent safety tests. In many cases, when all options are considered, SUVs turn out to be more dangerous in a collision for the occupants - it's just PERCIEVED safety that doesn't really exist.
There's nothing wrong with having priorities in life, and I won't criticise someone for what their daily drive is. However, if they go on about how they are doing so much to save energy, and how much others should also be saving energy, and how they are waiting hopefully for $MYTHICAL_BREAKTHROUGH in solar technology, yet they drive a Chevy Suburban mostly with just one person on board, well, I think they are fair game. Especially, when they come to sell that SUV and buy something new, it's another giant 8mpg SUV. There's too much of this "real energy saving is someone else's problem", or "the government should wave a magic wand and make it all go away, but without making me change my lifestyle" around.
Evidently, saving energy to these people is a lower priority than finding a job closer to home, or a home closer to the job. That's what my post was about: saving energy is a pretty low priority to most people because they are unwilling to even pick the low hanging fruit, which includes (but is not limited to) using public transport, using a bike, or using a fuel efficient car. I can't comment about your particular situation (maybe you drive a car that gets 50 mpg), but looking around me, half the cars on the commute to work are giant SUVs with one person in them. Many of these people go on about how we should be saving energy - but I guess they expect others to do the energy saving if their daily drive to work is a Suburban that gets 8mpg on the commute.
Texas is a state that exemplifies this: giant fullsize pickup trucks with nothing but one driver (probably in a suit) and an empty truck bed that has never seen an ounce of horse shit. (I've even seen a pick up truck limousine in Houston!) The second car that people have is often also a giant SUV. The same people are feeling so good about fitting CF lights - yet they could save more energy in a week than all the light bulbs in their house in a year simply by commuting in something like a Volkswagen TDi instead of a giant Chevy Silverado. Just look around you - look how many gigantic vehicles are on the road in Dallas, often with just the driver. Look how many people drive huge pickups in Dallas with spotlessly clean truck beds.
They can always move closer to work, or get a job closer to home. I still assert that to most people, energy saving is a pretty low priority. It's fine to have a list of priorities, but people crow about how we ought to be saving energy, but then live so far away from work that it's impractical to get there by any other means than private car - then compound it by buying a giant SUV.
So the system admin scripts don't start with the "#!/bin/sh' shebang line that makes them run with the intended shell, regardless of what root's interactive shell is?
Eugh. There is a word for those scripts if they don't work properly if the user's shell is changed: "broken".
Our lab not only had a collection of test machines, racks and racks of them running automatic tests - but all our build servers and the CMVC server and all other assortment of interesting machines.
One day one of the higher ups was in the lab. It was one of those with a card lock entry to get in. He just assumed the big red button by the door was the one that released it, and what do you know, despite the button having a large sign in 72 point font right above it saying "EMERGENCY POWER OFF SWITCH", he pressed it, plunging the lab into silent darkness.
Yep, that button had a little perspex lid put on it after that incident.
If people were committed to the environment and energy saving, they'd at least be picking the low hanging energy saving fruit. Most people can probably save more energy by using a bicycle or public transport to get to work and back instead of driving their car - things that are cheap (certainly in the case of the bicycle) and exist right now. But they don't. They don't even go for energy efficient cars - they buy the most inefficient vehicle they can afford.
To the majority, saving energy is somewhat below having a nice haircut in the priority list.
If you don't want national ID, don't vote for Labour at the next election. At least one party has said it will simply cancel the national ID register and associated cards if it wins the next election.
Airline pilots are specifically trained very frequently in the failure of their on board systems. Planes wouldn't be crashing due to the lack of GPS. Anything long haul still uses inertial navigation. VOR/DME and friends are still plentiful (and certainly in Europe, there are no plans to withdraw ground based navaids).
Farmers would adapt by simply looking out of the windows of their combine harvesters.
Yeah, right. There's no global warming. That's why I'm successfully growing a fucking Mexican fan palm in my garden... at 52 degrees north. Not to mention I have ten jalapeno seedlings from seeds saved from last year's jalapeno plants - they grown outside without even a polytunnel. A sub tropical plant setting viable seed this far north (not to mention being just about the hottest jalapenos I've ever tasted). Last summer we broke all summer heat records. The Met. Office are forecasting that there's a good chance we'll have another record hot summer this year. On top of a record mild winter.
I got carded at a bar in San Fransisco two years ago... at age 32! First time in a few years, and we all found it very amusing. The bar tender singled me out out of my friends (all of a similar age), so I got to gloat about my "obvious youthful beauty" for the rest of the evening. Although it was outdoors, close to sunset, with the sun behind me which had probably more to do with it.
Perhaps that's how we got away with blatant underage drinking then, we didn't do any of the above:-) (Of course in those days, carrying photo id in Britain was rare, so just in case, we always had a borrowed photo-less drivers' license of a friend over 18, and happily handed it over as id. I don't think the bar staff were checking that hard anyway, and the most rigorous thing they ever did was ask what the date of birth or address was on the id, and when borrowed off a good friend you knew that like it was your own personal information anyway).
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Hold on... you have to pay to receive texts? Some of which will be unsolicited? I wholly undestand charging to send a text but charging to receive one?
AC> Pilots are just nuts, with their knots and feet.
While the use of feet might be dubious, there's a good rationale for using knots. One minute of latitude is one nautical mile long. This makes it very easy to do quick measurements on a chart while in-flight - since however you have a chart folded, you'll be able to see a longitude line (which has latitude tick marks as it goes up the page).
There's also having too _little_ risk.
:-) Fun times.
:/
Back in the late 80s, I used to play a MMORPG called Shades (in those days, they were known as MUDs). It was a proper hack-and-slash MUD, not one of these wimpy 'no PKing allowed' MUDs that came afterwards.
If you were killed by a bot or by another player, you lost half of your points.
If you were killed by another player in a fight you started, you lost EVERYTHING.
There were ways out of fights - for a small points penalty, you could flee (or for a larger points penalty, quit or yank the phone cable out the socket). But in a battle in this *text* game, you felt a rush of adrenaline you just don't feel even in the most graphically pretty game because when you died, you took a really big hit. So if you thought you were in with a chance, you'd stay, keep casting spells, keep trying to steal your opponents weaponry, taking desperate glances at your remaining stamina and hoping that the enemy didn't have a trick up his sleeve. Then when the fight ended, and you'd survived, there was the mad race to find the Strange Little Girl (who'd heal you) and you'd feel terror at any 'bot or other player you saw (especially another player - since fight messages were broadcast, they'd know you're probably low on stam without having to cast a score spell to find out your status) who might have an opportunistic go at you. Or you'd feel "a slight tugging sensation" because every man and his dog knew your stam was low and was trying for an opportunistic summon-and-slay!
If that risk hadn't been there, it'd have been very much duller. However, every Shades player recalls the frantic flight and adrenaline when low on stam, just because another player gave you a funny look
Shades still exists by the way, but MUDs have unfortunately gone out of style, so there's hardly ever anyone on
Consistency is great when you're measuring fundamentally related things (like distances, volumes, mass etc.) However, memory is not at all related to any of those. 1000 bytes is a completely arbitrary number of bytes, and is not at all related to meters, litres or kilograms. There's no relationship whatsoever. The whole point of SI is so mass, volume and length are all related and can be used easily in calculations. But there is no calculation that turns mass into memory used.
Rather than use an arbitrary 1000 for multiples of memory, it's far better to use something meaningful - which 2^10 is. 2^10 converts much more easily with other measurements you might make regarding a computer. 10^4 _does not_ and it makes no sense to use it. 1000 is a meaningless figure in computing. 1024 is not. It would be a retrograde step to start measuring computer related terms in powers of 10. Well, unless you're in marketing. It's silly to use an unrelated measure to force a multiples system that makes no sense at all!
People, using measure that have meaning to the computer are good. Anything else gets your stack smashed and machine rooted.
It's common practise to use the highest number when representing something in an ad. Like for instance Cirrus aircraft advertise their aircraft's speed in MPH, when pilots actually use knots. This is because you get a number on the ad that's 15% bigger. And I bet Cirrus advertise the speed of their planes in Europe in km/h because this yields an even bigger number.
Personally, I wish we'd just get on with it and switch to base 16. It would be so much more convenient, and I'd be back in my early 20s again!
Sabal palmettos are very hardy - if I remember correctly they can take on the order of -10 celcius.
I know you're probably only joking, but it would take catastrophic climate change to make that true: coconut palms are extremely cold tender and die at about 10 celcius (about 50 deg. F). You might, however, be able to grow commercial date palms (phoenix dactylfera) some specimens have been known to survive -5 celcius, so long as you don't have prolonged freezes.
There are some palms that have some degree of hardiness (and cabbage "palms" aren't palms at all, but cordyline australis, a New Zealand native and relative of the yucca). In milder coastal areas there are quite a few hardy palm species that you can try. Coconut palms no (they die at about 10 degrees celcius - they are very, very cold tender), but possibly Phoenix dactylfera (the commercial date palm) which is hardy down to about -5 celcius. You should certainly be able to grow trachycarpus fortunei (hardy down to about -12 celcius) or trachycarpus wagnerianus (also hardy down to -12 or so, but MUCH more wind tolerant than fortunei). Canary Island date palms (phoenix canarensis) has actually produced viable fruits and seed in England, since English winters are now so mild that this palm can grow quite happily with no winter protection there.
I have a Washingtonia robusta in my garden. I live at about 52 degrees north latitude - further north than the entire lower 48 states of the US. This palm is from Mexico, and is growing just fine and survived the winter with absolutely no protection, with no more damage than a bit of wind burn on the leaf tips. Washingtonia robusta is hardy down to about -5 celcius. I also have some mediterranean fan palms (Chamaerops humilis, the only native European palm) which suffered no damage whatsoever this winter (and the larger one in front of my house is currently flowering).
No, it means less arable land. Forget the Mercator projection of the world map you have in your mind.
The most productive arable is in the mid latitudes. However, a possible outcome is that the mid latitudes will become increasingly desertified, and the productive zones of arable land will move towards the poles, i.e. northwards in the northern hemisphere.
So? you may say. But if you look at globe, rather than a Mercator projection of the Earth, simple geometry will tell you that there is MUCH less land closer to the poles than there is in the mid latitudes. Simple geometry. That's without seeing that the largest actual land masses are also at the mid latitudes.
It will also take time for the former tundra to be usable as arable. Not all soil is equal.
Then, of course, will be the human cost of losing all that productive coastal land to rising sea levels, and the economic misery caused by the inundating of populated coastlines and low lying areas. How many cities are currently barely above the high tide mark? Hint: Google can help you here.
Really? Given another 20 years of record breaking summers, I think I'll be up a ladder tidying up the lower fronds of my Washingtonia robusta (Mexican fan palm). That might not seem particularly unusual, except that this particular specimen is at 52 degrees north latitude, not the usual 28 degrees north. The winters are already mild enough that the plant (currently only 2 feet tall) requires no protection. In 1975, there would have been no chance that it would have survived even with protection.
I first heard about global warming at school. In 1986. So it's already had 21 years. RTFA and you'll see they actually put that global cooling prediction into context which the global warming deniers fail to do.
Download an 'ear tuner' program for your computer (there are plenty around) and train your ear. If you can recognise a song, you already have the equipment to do it - you just need to train your mind how to make use of it.
For many "bike" is actually viable. It's not for everyone, but I know a few people who spend several hours doing cardio exercise at the gym even during the summer months, when they can get better value out of their bike.
Now my normal drive to work takes 25 minutes each way. On a bicycle, it takes 50 minutes each way (so driving is 50 minutes per day, and cycling is 100 minutes per day). If I cycle, the first 50 minutes of the round trip is "free exercise" - it's time I otherwise would have spent travelling in the car anyway. Only the remaining 50 minutes is a time cost.
But in the summer, I drop my gym membership. I usually try to cycle to work three times a week. In the winter, I normally go to the gym for an hour three times a week - so during the summer, I'm actually getting much more cardio exercise in, yet the time cost is lower - only 150 minutes a week on the bike (while actually getting 300 minutes a week of exercise) vs the gym which is 180 minutes a week.
So the bike does work for some of us. Not to mention it saves a gym membership during the summer months, and on top of that saves a noticable amount of money on running the car (fuel is expensive in Rightpondia, at current exchange rates approximately US$8 per USG). But for many people who the bike would work, they still seem to rather use the gym (and therefore spend more time and money) during the summer months! (And then whitter on about how much energy they are saving with the CFLs they just installed.)
Some cars are different to others. My A4 gets the same mileage regardless of whether I drive it like a granny or drive it aggressively. I tried different driving styles over a period of 4 months or so - and got roughly the same fuel economy whatever I did. When discussing this, people said, "perhaps you need a tune up", but the engine is all electronic controls, so it tunes itself up all the time. It also gets the fuel economy that the car's manual says it should, so according to that, the engine is running perfectly already. The only convincing explanation is my normal drive has only one set of traffic lights (in 12.5 miles) and therefore, regardless of whether I drive it fast or slow, there's not many places where there's braking or accelerating.
I also found that it made no difference what grade of fuel I used, either (either to perceived performance or fuel economy).
Oh come on, changing your car isn't all that hard. Compared to the technical challenges required to make available affordable solar power or storage systems, it's absolutely trivial and it's absolutely low hanging fruit of energy saving. Last time I bought a new car it took a *whole afternoon*. That's not exactly a giant effort. Changing a giant SUV for a fuel efficient car absolutely is low hanging fruit - especially if you're buying a new vehicle anyway (I don't know anyone who intends to drive the same vehicle for the rest of their lives). It's just not that hard. The lifestyle change (well, except the keeping-up-with-the-joneses image) is practically nil.
SUVs also have been shown to be no safer than a car. Don't forget that cars have to pass stringent safety tests. In many cases, when all options are considered, SUVs turn out to be more dangerous in a collision for the occupants - it's just PERCIEVED safety that doesn't really exist.
There's nothing wrong with having priorities in life, and I won't criticise someone for what their daily drive is. However, if they go on about how they are doing so much to save energy, and how much others should also be saving energy, and how they are waiting hopefully for $MYTHICAL_BREAKTHROUGH in solar technology, yet they drive a Chevy Suburban mostly with just one person on board, well, I think they are fair game. Especially, when they come to sell that SUV and buy something new, it's another giant 8mpg SUV. There's too much of this "real energy saving is someone else's problem", or "the government should wave a magic wand and make it all go away, but without making me change my lifestyle" around.
Evidently, saving energy to these people is a lower priority than finding a job closer to home, or a home closer to the job. That's what my post was about: saving energy is a pretty low priority to most people because they are unwilling to even pick the low hanging fruit, which includes (but is not limited to) using public transport, using a bike, or using a fuel efficient car. I can't comment about your particular situation (maybe you drive a car that gets 50 mpg), but looking around me, half the cars on the commute to work are giant SUVs with one person in them. Many of these people go on about how we should be saving energy - but I guess they expect others to do the energy saving if their daily drive to work is a Suburban that gets 8mpg on the commute.
Texas is a state that exemplifies this: giant fullsize pickup trucks with nothing but one driver (probably in a suit) and an empty truck bed that has never seen an ounce of horse shit. (I've even seen a pick up truck limousine in Houston!) The second car that people have is often also a giant SUV. The same people are feeling so good about fitting CF lights - yet they could save more energy in a week than all the light bulbs in their house in a year simply by commuting in something like a Volkswagen TDi instead of a giant Chevy Silverado. Just look around you - look how many gigantic vehicles are on the road in Dallas, often with just the driver. Look how many people drive huge pickups in Dallas with spotlessly clean truck beds.
They can always move closer to work, or get a job closer to home. I still assert that to most people, energy saving is a pretty low priority. It's fine to have a list of priorities, but people crow about how we ought to be saving energy, but then live so far away from work that it's impractical to get there by any other means than private car - then compound it by buying a giant SUV.
So the system admin scripts don't start with the "#!/bin/sh' shebang line that makes them run with the intended shell, regardless of what root's interactive shell is?
Eugh. There is a word for those scripts if they don't work properly if the user's shell is changed: "broken".
Yeah, and the Daily What The Fuck was much better as the Daily What The Fuck than the rather tame 'Worse than Failure', too.
Our lab not only had a collection of test machines, racks and racks of them running automatic tests - but all our build servers and the CMVC server and all other assortment of interesting machines.
One day one of the higher ups was in the lab. It was one of those with a card lock entry to get in. He just assumed the big red button by the door was the one that released it, and what do you know, despite the button having a large sign in 72 point font right above it saying "EMERGENCY POWER OFF SWITCH", he pressed it, plunging the lab into silent darkness.
Yep, that button had a little perspex lid put on it after that incident.
If people were committed to the environment and energy saving, they'd at least be picking the low hanging energy saving fruit. Most people can probably save more energy by using a bicycle or public transport to get to work and back instead of driving their car - things that are cheap (certainly in the case of the bicycle) and exist right now. But they don't. They don't even go for energy efficient cars - they buy the most inefficient vehicle they can afford.
To the majority, saving energy is somewhat below having a nice haircut in the priority list.
If you don't want national ID, don't vote for Labour at the next election. At least one party has said it will simply cancel the national ID register and associated cards if it wins the next election.
Airline pilots are specifically trained very frequently in the failure of their on board systems. Planes wouldn't be crashing due to the lack of GPS. Anything long haul still uses inertial navigation. VOR/DME and friends are still plentiful (and certainly in Europe, there are no plans to withdraw ground based navaids).
Farmers would adapt by simply looking out of the windows of their combine harvesters.
Yeah, right. There's no global warming. That's why I'm successfully growing a fucking Mexican fan palm in my garden... at 52 degrees north. Not to mention I have ten jalapeno seedlings from seeds saved from last year's jalapeno plants - they grown outside without even a polytunnel. A sub tropical plant setting viable seed this far north (not to mention being just about the hottest jalapenos I've ever tasted). Last summer we broke all summer heat records. The Met. Office are forecasting that there's a good chance we'll have another record hot summer this year. On top of a record mild winter.
I got carded at a bar in San Fransisco two years ago... at age 32! First time in a few years, and we all found it very amusing. The bar tender singled me out out of my friends (all of a similar age), so I got to gloat about my "obvious youthful beauty" for the rest of the evening. Although it was outdoors, close to sunset, with the sun behind me which had probably more to do with it.
Perhaps that's how we got away with blatant underage drinking then, we didn't do any of the above :-) (Of course in those days, carrying photo id in Britain was rare, so just in case, we always had a borrowed photo-less drivers' license of a friend over 18, and happily handed it over as id. I don't think the bar staff were checking that hard anyway, and the most rigorous thing they ever did was ask what the date of birth or address was on the id, and when borrowed off a good friend you knew that like it was your own personal information anyway).