Err, actually England (or more accurately the United Kingdom) does have a land border with France -- it's in the middle of the Channel Tunnel. As this is rather an awkward place to conduct border formalities, both countries have control of terminal areas at the other end of the tunnel, where their laws apply.
So, here's the dilemma: should one use non-free but objective Encarta or free but biased Wikipedia?
I've never used Encarta before, but in trying it out last night I was horrified by how poor its articles are in comparison to the equivalent Wikipedia articles. Checking up my original home town (Ruthin, Wales), Encarta has 66 words about the place, which wouldn't even get to the end of the first paragraph of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthin Wikipedia article about the town, which is about 20 times bigger. I wasn't impressed that in the 4th article I looked at (United Kingdom) I found some statements that are flat-out wrong - and unlike Wikipedia I can't fix them!
Admin Name........... na vanessa Miranda
Admin Address........ 1010 Grand Cerritos Ave
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ Las Vegas
Admin Address........ 89123
Admin Address........ NV
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... jzoh@yahoo.com
Admin Phone.......... +44.702413697
Admin Fax............ +44.7026413697
Hmm, no surprise there -- a Nevada address, and an invalid UK phone number (1 digit too short for a UK mobile number, as +44-7 numbers are). That admin fax number doesn't work either, I just called it! Anyone laying any odds that that yahoo.com address would work?:)
I'd say the US Senate was a bit more democratic in nature than the House of Lords, which is still stacked with aristocracy.
Well naturally, if they're in the House of Lords then they're Lords (or Ladies) by definition. If you mean it's still stacked with the hereditary aristocracy, then no, there's only 92 of them still there.
The Irish constitutional amendment only requires that the parents of children be legally resident in the country in order for the children to be citizens. Basically, they got fed up of 8 and 9-months pregnant women with no connection with Ireland arriving at their airports and then claiming residence rights throughout the EU as the parents of Irish citizens.
You have missed my point. What I mean is that in any case where relations with the USA are concerned, the current Australian government is far more likely to kowtow than to object, even if they know it isn't the right thing to do.
But don't you have a Federal election on October 9th? By the time the extradition's all cut and dried you could have a new government and a new Attorney-General!
Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised by BBC4's recent repeat of "The Prisoner" -- I hadn't seen it since Channel 4's showing many years ago (and before that, I can just about remember being puzzled by the original ITV transmission as I was far too young to have any idea what it was about!).
Well there was talk of the owners of Channel 4 and Five getting together a few months ago. Presumably the merged channel would be Chanel 9 (Scorchio!).
This will cause a collapse in everything but football and movies
Err, I think you mean "...everything but the very highest level football and movies". Have you forgotten the ITV Sport Channel which was going to pay the Football League teams £300+ million, while they conveniently forgot that outside the towns concerned no-one cares about FL teams, only the Premiership? Some of the ITV SC's matches had an audience that was too small to measure (less than 1000). That's a quick route to bankruptcy.
Yeah, but that would have been for a 1952 publication, no? The 1954 Worldcon didn't award any Hugos, so 1953 is still there to be covered, and we've had Hugos awarded every year since 1955.
it arose because in the "old days", they cut back any trees to about 5 yards away from the line, so relatively few leaves get onto the line. Since privatisation, they only cut back the trees enough to let the trains through, so the leaves fall on the line.
Trees have been growing near the track a lot longer than since privatisation. It was after the end of steam locomotives in 1968 that they stopped cutting back the vegetation so much, as of course diesel locos don't tend to set light to nearby vegetation during droughts the way that steam locos do.
15 June 1996. A ton and a half of high explosives next to the main shopping mall. Fortunately no-one killed thanks to a warning, but over 200 injured. It was a good excuse to rebuild the city centre (50,000 square metres of retail space and 25,000 square metres of office space) which badly needed it, so taken overall the IRA did the city a favour as it's a lot nicer now...
It is indeed sad that the BBC behaved like this, but corporate disasters are quite common in large organisations (NASA and 2 Shuttles for example) because "the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing", or as someone once expanded, because "the left hand does not know what the left hand is doing". Probably all large organisations suffer from corporate failure, many also suffer from corporate dishonesty, and a few from corporate greed. (Please note that I did not mention any company in Redmond as suffering from any or all of these, but I did not deny the possibility either.)
This is a bit unfair to the BBC. At the time (early 1970s) what they did was perfectly logical -- the old b/w programmes had all been shown, and sold to whatever foreign stations were likely to show them; colour TV had arrived and no-one would want to look at the old non-colour stuff, they thought. Apart from which, transmission videotapes of that era were huge reels of 1" and 2" tape which took up a hell of a lot of space (and the BBC produces LOTS of programmes), and were enormously expensive -- it made perfect sense to wipe old programmes and reuse the tape. Back in 1976-9 I helped at my university's student tv station, and even domestic standard (Philips VCR) tapes cost GBP 20 an hour.
You shouldn't blame the BBC for failing to foresee a time when videorecorders and DVD players would be things you could pick up at the local supermarket, with the consequent demand for nostalgia material!
Was all BBC programming in black & white back then? In the US, most TV shows were in color by 1965. I guess maybe it is due to aftereffects of the war..?
Err, no. European broadcasters decided to wait for a better colour TV standard than NTSC, so the BBC were the first European colour broadcaster when BBC2 started transmitting in colour in 1967 (the channel opened in 1964). BBC1 and ITV started colour broadcasts in 1969, but it was quite a few years later before all programmes were in colour.
If I remember correctly, the first UK programme to be produced in colour was Stingray in 1964 (cue another nostalgia thread!). John Logie Baird demonstrated his Chronoscope 3D colour TV in 1944 -- perhaps we'd all have been watching in colour much earlier if he hadn't died in 1946!
A couple of weeks ago I bought "Tubular Bells 2003" (OK, I'm an aging hippie:-) ). On the front it's got a sticky label saying "30th Anniversary 2003 Re-recording includes: CD + DVD with 5.1 Digital mixed tracks and video". When I get home I notice that despite that, there's no official "CD" logo, only what looks like concentric C's and D's on the back, which I've never seen before, with "Copy Protected", underneath which there's quite a lot of writing. Unfortunately I swear that print is about 2 or 3 point, and there is absolutely no way I can physically read it (even with my reading glasses) to find out what it says. If I can't read what conditions they're imposing, I absolutely refuse to be bound by them.
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Err, actually England (or more accurately the United Kingdom) does have a land border with France -- it's in the middle of the Channel Tunnel. As this is rather an awkward place to conduct border formalities, both countries have control of terminal areas at the other end of the tunnel, where their laws apply.
I've never used Encarta before, but in trying it out last night I was horrified by how poor its articles are in comparison to the equivalent Wikipedia articles. Checking up my original home town (Ruthin, Wales), Encarta has 66 words about the place, which wouldn't even get to the end of the first paragraph of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthin Wikipedia article about the town, which is about 20 times bigger. I wasn't impressed that in the 4th article I looked at (United Kingdom) I found some statements that are flat-out wrong - and unlike Wikipedia I can't fix them!
Yup, the amount of money stolen from Northern Bank represented somewhere between 5% and 10% of all the money issued by that bank.
Hmm, no surprise there -- a Nevada address, and an invalid UK phone number (1 digit too short for a UK mobile number, as +44-7 numbers are). That admin fax number doesn't work either, I just called it! Anyone laying any odds that that yahoo.com address would work?
I'd say the US Senate was a bit more democratic in nature than the House of Lords, which is still stacked with aristocracy.
Well naturally, if they're in the House of Lords then they're Lords (or Ladies) by definition. If you mean it's still stacked with the hereditary aristocracy, then no, there's only 92 of them still there.
Heck, she's the only person in the country that's not entitled to vote - that's how "powerful" a role she plays in British politics.
Apart from people in prison, certified lunatics, and people convicted of electoral fraud in the last {five/ten?} years.
The Irish constitutional amendment only requires that the parents of children be legally resident in the country in order for the children to be citizens. Basically, they got fed up of 8 and 9-months pregnant women with no connection with Ireland arriving at their airports and then claiming residence rights throughout the EU as the parents of Irish citizens.
You have missed my point. What I mean is that in any case where relations with the USA are concerned, the current Australian government is far more likely to kowtow than to object, even if they know it isn't the right thing to do.
But don't you have a Federal election on October 9th? By the time the extradition's all cut and dried you could have a new government and a new Attorney-General!
Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised by BBC4's recent repeat of "The Prisoner" -- I hadn't seen it since Channel 4's showing many years ago (and before that, I can just about remember being puzzled by the original ITV transmission as I was far too young to have any idea what it was about!).
Well there was talk of the owners of Channel 4 and Five getting together a few months ago. Presumably the merged channel would be Chanel 9 (Scorchio!).
Well, Five was one of the co-producers of Lexx...
This will cause a collapse in everything but football and movies
Err, I think you mean "...everything but the very highest level football and movies". Have you forgotten the ITV Sport Channel which was going to pay the Football League teams £300+ million, while they conveniently forgot that outside the towns concerned no-one cares about FL teams, only the Premiership? Some of the ITV SC's matches had an audience that was too small to measure (less than 1000). That's a quick route to bankruptcy.
The week before ROTK opened the Filmworks in Manchester was showing the extended editions of FOTR and TTT a couple of times a day each.
Is the book in the public domain yet?
Good grief no. Tolkien only died in 1973. UK copyright law is life+70 years, so you have to wait until 2043.
At first, zh was blocked in and around Berlin a couple of days before the anniversary...
:)
Or even in and around Beijing!
Yeah, but that would have been for a 1952 publication, no? The 1954 Worldcon didn't award any Hugos, so 1953 is still there to be covered, and we've had Hugos awarded every year since 1955.
To realise that I've read {and remember) almost all of the retro fiction nominees, but only 1 (as far as I remember) of the 2003 nominees.
Well you've had an extra 50 years to find the time to read the retro nominees...
it arose because in the "old days", they cut back any trees to about 5 yards away from the line, so relatively few leaves get onto the line. Since privatisation, they only cut back the trees enough to let the trains through, so the leaves fall on the line.
Trees have been growing near the track a lot longer than since privatisation. It was after the end of steam locomotives in 1968 that they stopped cutting back the vegetation so much, as of course diesel locos don't tend to set light to nearby vegetation during droughts the way that steam locos do.
Huh? Most of them are electric, but since the locomotive is always at the London end of the train you might not have noticed...
East of London? Hmm, I wonder how the trains to Ipswich and Norwich get their power then...
Except for part of Co. Donegal which goes further north than any part of Northern Ireland...
15 June 1996. A ton and a half of high explosives next to the main shopping mall. Fortunately no-one killed thanks to a warning, but over 200 injured. It was a good excuse to rebuild the city centre (50,000 square metres of retail space and 25,000 square metres of office space) which badly needed it, so taken overall the IRA did the city a favour as it's a lot nicer now...
It is indeed sad that the BBC behaved like this, but corporate disasters are quite common in large organisations (NASA and 2 Shuttles for example) because "the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing", or as someone once expanded, because "the left hand does not know what the left hand is doing". Probably all large organisations suffer from corporate failure, many also suffer from corporate dishonesty, and a few from corporate greed. (Please note that I did not mention any company in Redmond as suffering from any or all of these, but I did not deny the possibility either.)
This is a bit unfair to the BBC. At the time (early 1970s) what they did was perfectly logical -- the old b/w programmes had all been shown, and sold to whatever foreign stations were likely to show them; colour TV had arrived and no-one would want to look at the old non-colour stuff, they thought. Apart from which, transmission videotapes of that era were huge reels of 1" and 2" tape which took up a hell of a lot of space (and the BBC produces LOTS of programmes), and were enormously expensive -- it made perfect sense to wipe old programmes and reuse the tape. Back in 1976-9 I helped at my university's student tv station, and even domestic standard (Philips VCR) tapes cost GBP 20 an hour.
You shouldn't blame the BBC for failing to foresee a time when videorecorders and DVD players would be things you could pick up at the local supermarket, with the consequent demand for nostalgia material!
Was all BBC programming in black & white back then? In the US, most TV shows were in color by 1965. I guess maybe it is due to aftereffects of the war..?
Err, no. European broadcasters decided to wait for a better colour TV standard than NTSC, so the BBC were the first European colour broadcaster when BBC2 started transmitting in colour in 1967 (the channel opened in 1964). BBC1 and ITV started colour broadcasts in 1969, but it was quite a few years later before all programmes were in colour.
If I remember correctly, the first UK programme to be produced in colour was Stingray in 1964 (cue another nostalgia thread!). John Logie Baird demonstrated his Chronoscope 3D colour TV in 1944 -- perhaps we'd all have been watching in colour much earlier if he hadn't died in 1946!
A couple of weeks ago I bought "Tubular Bells 2003" (OK, I'm an aging hippie :-) ). On the front it's got a sticky label saying "30th Anniversary 2003 Re-recording includes: CD + DVD with 5.1 Digital mixed tracks and video". When I get home I notice that despite that, there's no official "CD" logo, only what looks like concentric C's and D's on the back, which I've never seen before, with "Copy Protected", underneath which there's quite a lot of writing. Unfortunately I swear that print is about 2 or 3 point, and there is absolutely no way I can physically read it (even with my reading glasses) to find out what it says. If I can't read what conditions they're imposing, I absolutely refuse to be bound by them.