Richard Dawkins writes: "If a single, well-verified mammal skull were to turn up in 500-million year-old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed" [The Blind Watchmaker, 3rd ed., p. 320]. J. B. S. Haldane also said that "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian" would constitute evidence that might contradict evolution.
Dinosaurs didn't appear until about 230 million years ago. Mammals were about 200 million years ago. Reptiles didn't show up until about 300 million years ago. So yeah, a 500 million year old mammal skull would be damned interesting since we haven't found any land plants for them to eat (assuming this is a land mammal). The Precambrian is even farther back. 542 million years ago according to Wikipedia.
Crafications such as 'London, England' are only necessary when it is likely that the reader could be confused.
There's a sizable city in Ontario also named London. It's usually pretty easy to figure out which London is being referred to (if the news source isn't based in Ontario, it's almost certainly the one in England). The really annoying thing is there are duplicate names for other locations within the two cities. Both have a Hyde Park, a Thames River, and a Covent Garden Market. It's probably a good thing London, Ontario didn't become the capital of Canada or it'd be even more confusing.
Is there a scenario where it would be possible for Major General Lord to obtain the title of "Lord"? Because then he'd be Lord Major General Lord. And that would be awesome. Not quite as awesome as Major Major Major Major, but still awesome.
When I was 7 or 8, I went into my room one day and closed the door, and didn't notice that the lock accidentally jiggled itself to locked. (The knobs were cheap junk and the locks were overly loose, so this happened occasionally.) My father tried to come into my room moments later, and flew into a rage when he found the door locked. He refused to believe me that I had not intentionally locked the door, and as punishment he removed the door from my bedroom - for two years.
I could understand changing out the knob for one without a lock, but taking away the door entirely? What the hell? That's like not having a door to the bathroom.
"You don't have anything to hide, sure, but there's a reason we close the door to the bathroom before we drop our drawers. Everyone poops, but it takes a special kind of person to want to do it in public." - Cory Doctorow
It al depends on what you want to do with your money For example, most people, given one million Euros (tax-free), would immediately buy a big car or something similar. I'd put it into a stable savings account at 4% p.a.
You've got the right idea, but a savings account? If you've got a million Euros sitting around, you can do better than 4%.
Look, having "technology of the gods" means that you have the power of a god, which in turn means that you don't need to do anything. Given that, why wouldn't you terraform Mars, just for fun ?
Here in Canada, we blocked the "DMCA" thanks in large part to Michael Geist, but it was the 30k+ people who signed up as facebook-friends, and the untold number of people who sent e-mail and snail-mail to Jim Prentice and others that I think really made the final difference.
You think that it's over? The Canadian DMCA will keep coming back over and over until the US Ambassador and lobby groups stop putting pressure on the government to reintroduce it. Either that or it'll pass at some point.
Once their in they will suddenly show up for dinner telling you what you can eat, telling you what you can watch or listen too, let alone eventually telling you what doctor your allowed to see.
Why are Americans so obsessed with this fear that the government will tell you what doctor you're allowed to see? Is that some talking point used against socialized health care? Because in Ontario at least, we're not told what doctor to see. We do have problems with not having enough doctors in more rural areas, but I suspect that that's a problem in the US as well.
The worst part of this (beyond Microsoft's outright self-serving lies) is that most Canadians are horribly uninformed/misinformed about copyright laws and will believe virtually anything they hear making copyright FUD north of the border very effective. It would be nice if more people, like Michael Geist, tried to get the truth out there but sadly his sort are rare...
Most people are uninformed/misinformed about every political issue. The thing about copyright is that the news media doesn't normally talk about it. They think it's an issue that puts everyone to sleep. Basically the only people who talk about it in Canada are Michael Geist, Cory Doctorow, a few other bloggers, and Jessie Brown on the CBC Radio show Search Engine. People are listening though. As of this writing there are 39,962 members of the Fair Copyright for Canada group on Facebook. Ok, it doesn't take much effort to join a group on Facebook, but it does mean there are about 40,000 people who care enough about Copyright in Canada to click a mouse a couple of times.
Both of Britain's main sports (Football and Cricket) are played quite widely internationally, yet American football does not seem to have taken the world by storm. I suppose one consolation of this is that the US always wins, but wouldn't it make more sense to concentrate all those resources on games that are more popular internationally?
Basketball (the big US sport you left out) is slowly spreading around the world too, although our National Basketball Association still outclasses any other league in the world. (In basketball, I'd guess that the average NBA team could easily beat any other country's national champion.
US sport? Would you care to mention what country the inventor of the sport came from?
I can't show movies to raise money for my non-profit (even if a donation is not required for viewing) unless I pay the copyright holders a fee. I don't see why a church should have a different set of rules.
The movie you were showing was going to come off of a DVD though. If you got a group together in a room and turned on the TV to Channel 10's Sunday afternoon showing of Sister Act with Ultramatic commercials every 10 minutes, why should that matter? It's being broadcast over the public airwaves and intended for viewing by the public. As far as I can see, the only people who lose out on anything are the TV manufacturers. And they only lose out on sales to the small subset of people who would have bought a large TV to watch the Super Bowl on, but decided not to because the church had one to watch it on. And I suspect that that is a very small group of people.
At my last company the union specifically negotiated a redundancy settlement that discriminated against me. Being a single white healthy man in your 30s means you have absolutely no protections under law, and the union takes advantage of that to fuck you senseless. Yeah, I can back that up: My disabled black girlfriend picked up 40 weeks pay for her redundancy; I got 6.
How many weeks pay would you have received if there was no union to negotiate that settlement in the first place?
Let me explain. What this means is that the guy who wrote the comment is the owner of a hovercraft, and he's complaining that it's full of eels.
I think you're reading too much into the statement. He may not be complaining that his hovercraft is full of eels, he may be letting you know in case you happen to be in the market for some eels. He may be bragging about his large number of eels. He may think that you asked to borrow his hovercraft and is letting you know that you can't...because it's full of eels.
First off, there's kindergarten, which can be taken at the age of 4, and usually has to be taken when you're 5. Then elementary school starts at grade 1 when a kid is 6 (so long as he's six by the end of the year, not the school year). This goes up to grade 6. Then there's a kind of junior high in grades 7 and 8. Then high school from grades 9 to 12.
I don't know of any junior high schools in my area (London, ON). Most of the elementary schools here are Junior Kindergarten to grade 8. Junior high schools may be something mostly in the Toronto area. If you want to get really confusing, Ontario used to not have Junior Kindergarten but did have OAC/Grade 13 as an extra year of high school.
Don't feel bad, I have lived in Canada all my life, and it's sadly no different. I had to learn Canadian and world history largely on my own time. I had to repeatedly hound my teachers in High school to include CANADIAN content in their curriculum, but found out too late that I knew more that the teachers did, and finally gave up trying to shame them.
Really? Maybe it varies from province to province because the only history I learned in required classes was focused on Canada. Off the top of my head, I remember learning about Loyalists, the war of 1812, the Metis and French fur traders, Confederation, and bringing in the other provinces and the small rebellion that went with that. That was in grades 7 and 8. Grade 9 was all 20th century Canadian history which basically meant the Boer war, WWI, the 20s, the depression, WWII, and a little bit of the 50s and 60s. We also did something to do with the Quebec referendum that was going on at the time (1995's separation vote), presumeably because it could have been history in the making.
If you took a modern day scientist and put him in a time machine set for 1000 years ago. When he arrived he would be able to teach the local scientists a world of knowledge. This is science in action, during those 1000 years we have learned a lot about the world and how it works.
Except for when the modern day scientist is stoned to death for heresy.
I always find these joke hilarious, but I have to tell you, yours set them apart. I like the way you went on the imitation rant and then worked into it. And the originality of making the ??????? step number 5 instead of 3
To be a purist about the joke, the ?????? step should be step 2. As in:
If that's a typo I apologize for the following, but it looks like an idiomatic misunderstanding to me so, in the interests of the free exchange of information, I feel the need to tell you that the expression is write off, not write down.:)
Write down is an accounting term. When you have inventory that won't sell because it's overpriced for the market, you lower the value of it as an asset. Say you've got a big pile of widgets in a warehouse. They're selling quite well, but then someone comes out with a widget that is better than your widget, but costs the same. Now no one is buying your widget so you have to write down the value of your pile of widgets because they suddenly aren't worth as much.
However, often they don't even want to hear what I've done. They are reading off of scripts and have no idea how to actually fix the problem. They are in the same voodoo category, and very rarely end up actually helping. A shame, actually, because they either seem unable or (worse) unwilling to learn what they're trying to support. It wastes everyones time.
It can also be that they're not allowed to deviate from the script. This is especially true in large ISPs. First level support agents are randomly monitored by quality assurance and in places where you're not allowed to deviate from the script, doing so can mean a reprimand or worse.
The other problem for first level support is that it's difficult to tell if a person who says they're technical actually is or if they just think they are. Plenty of people call up and say that they've tried the first few suggestions, but when they do them again with the tech on the phone, it will magically start working.
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Richard Dawkins writes: "If a single, well-verified mammal skull were to turn up in 500-million year-old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed" [The Blind Watchmaker, 3rd ed., p. 320]. J. B. S. Haldane also said that "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian" would constitute evidence that might contradict evolution.
Dinosaurs didn't appear until about 230 million years ago. Mammals were about 200 million years ago. Reptiles didn't show up until about 300 million years ago. So yeah, a 500 million year old mammal skull would be damned interesting since we haven't found any land plants for them to eat (assuming this is a land mammal). The Precambrian is even farther back. 542 million years ago according to Wikipedia.
Crafications such as 'London, England' are only necessary when it is likely that the reader could be confused.
There's a sizable city in Ontario also named London. It's usually pretty easy to figure out which London is being referred to (if the news source isn't based in Ontario, it's almost certainly the one in England). The really annoying thing is there are duplicate names for other locations within the two cities. Both have a Hyde Park, a Thames River, and a Covent Garden Market. It's probably a good thing London, Ontario didn't become the capital of Canada or it'd be even more confusing.
Is there a scenario where it would be possible for Major General Lord to obtain the title of "Lord"? Because then he'd be Lord Major General Lord. And that would be awesome. Not quite as awesome as Major Major Major Major, but still awesome.
When I was 7 or 8, I went into my room one day and closed the door, and didn't notice that the lock accidentally jiggled itself to locked. (The knobs were cheap junk and the locks were overly loose, so this happened occasionally.) My father tried to come into my room moments later, and flew into a rage when he found the door locked. He refused to believe me that I had not intentionally locked the door, and as punishment he removed the door from my bedroom - for two years.
I could understand changing out the knob for one without a lock, but taking away the door entirely? What the hell? That's like not having a door to the bathroom.
"You don't have anything to hide, sure, but there's a reason we close the door to the bathroom before we drop our drawers. Everyone poops, but it takes a special kind of person to want to do it in public." - Cory Doctorow
also, as I understood it, Sweden & Finland were instrumental in disabling Germany's hard water (read nuclear bomb) plant
Hard water must mean something different in Germany. Unless nuclear bombs require water that is difficult to get soap to lather.
Remember when two guys with a typewriter took down a US President - and used their real names.
Yes. It's a sad day in history and something that we must never let happen again.
If Mexico or Canada invaded[1] the USA
Shhhhh. You're giving away the plan.
It al depends on what you want to do with your money For example, most people, given one million Euros (tax-free), would immediately buy a big car or something similar. I'd put it into a stable savings account at 4% p.a.
You've got the right idea, but a savings account? If you've got a million Euros sitting around, you can do better than 4%.
Look, having "technology of the gods" means that you have the power of a god, which in turn means that you don't need to do anything. Given that, why wouldn't you terraform Mars, just for fun ?
I'd do it just to spite the grandparent poster.
Here in Canada, we blocked the "DMCA" thanks in large part to Michael Geist, but it was the 30k+ people who signed up as facebook-friends, and the untold number of people who sent e-mail and snail-mail to Jim Prentice and others that I think really made the final difference.
You think that it's over? The Canadian DMCA will keep coming back over and over until the US Ambassador and lobby groups stop putting pressure on the government to reintroduce it. Either that or it'll pass at some point.
Once their in they will suddenly show up for dinner telling you what you can eat, telling you what you can watch or listen too, let alone eventually telling you what doctor your allowed to see.
Why are Americans so obsessed with this fear that the government will tell you what doctor you're allowed to see? Is that some talking point used against socialized health care? Because in Ontario at least, we're not told what doctor to see. We do have problems with not having enough doctors in more rural areas, but I suspect that that's a problem in the US as well.
The worst part of this (beyond Microsoft's outright self-serving lies) is that most Canadians are horribly uninformed/misinformed about copyright laws and will believe virtually anything they hear making copyright FUD north of the border very effective. It would be nice if more people, like Michael Geist, tried to get the truth out there but sadly his sort are rare...
Most people are uninformed/misinformed about every political issue. The thing about copyright is that the news media doesn't normally talk about it. They think it's an issue that puts everyone to sleep. Basically the only people who talk about it in Canada are Michael Geist, Cory Doctorow, a few other bloggers, and Jessie Brown on the CBC Radio show Search Engine. People are listening though. As of this writing there are 39,962 members of the Fair Copyright for Canada group on Facebook. Ok, it doesn't take much effort to join a group on Facebook, but it does mean there are about 40,000 people who care enough about Copyright in Canada to click a mouse a couple of times.
Both of Britain's main sports (Football and Cricket) are played quite widely internationally, yet American football does not seem to have taken the world by storm. I suppose one consolation of this is that the US always wins, but wouldn't it make more sense to concentrate all those resources on games that are more popular internationally?
Why do you think Canadians Curl?
Basketball (the big US sport you left out) is slowly spreading around the world too, although our National Basketball Association still outclasses any other league in the world. (In basketball, I'd guess that the average NBA team could easily beat any other country's national champion.
US sport? Would you care to mention what country the inventor of the sport came from?
I can't show movies to raise money for my non-profit (even if a donation is not required for viewing) unless I pay the copyright holders a fee. I don't see why a church should have a different set of rules.
The movie you were showing was going to come off of a DVD though. If you got a group together in a room and turned on the TV to Channel 10's Sunday afternoon showing of Sister Act with Ultramatic commercials every 10 minutes, why should that matter? It's being broadcast over the public airwaves and intended for viewing by the public. As far as I can see, the only people who lose out on anything are the TV manufacturers. And they only lose out on sales to the small subset of people who would have bought a large TV to watch the Super Bowl on, but decided not to because the church had one to watch it on. And I suspect that that is a very small group of people.
At my last company the union specifically negotiated a redundancy settlement that discriminated against me. Being a single white healthy man in your 30s means you have absolutely no protections under law, and the union takes advantage of that to fuck you senseless. Yeah, I can back that up: My disabled black girlfriend picked up 40 weeks pay for her redundancy; I got 6.
How many weeks pay would you have received if there was no union to negotiate that settlement in the first place?
Let me explain. What this means is that the guy who wrote the comment is the owner of a hovercraft, and he's complaining that it's full of eels.
I think you're reading too much into the statement. He may not be complaining that his hovercraft is full of eels, he may be letting you know in case you happen to be in the market for some eels. He may be bragging about his large number of eels. He may think that you asked to borrow his hovercraft and is letting you know that you can't...because it's full of eels.
First off, there's kindergarten, which can be taken at the age of 4, and usually has to be taken when you're 5. Then elementary school starts at grade 1 when a kid is 6 (so long as he's six by the end of the year, not the school year). This goes up to grade 6. Then there's a kind of junior high in grades 7 and 8. Then high school from grades 9 to 12.
I don't know of any junior high schools in my area (London, ON). Most of the elementary schools here are Junior Kindergarten to grade 8. Junior high schools may be something mostly in the Toronto area. If you want to get really confusing, Ontario used to not have Junior Kindergarten but did have OAC/Grade 13 as an extra year of high school.
Don't feel bad, I have lived in Canada all my life, and it's sadly no different. I had to learn Canadian and world history largely on my own time. I had to repeatedly hound my teachers in High school to include CANADIAN content in their curriculum, but found out too late that I knew more that the teachers did, and finally gave up trying to shame them.
Really? Maybe it varies from province to province because the only history I learned in required classes was focused on Canada. Off the top of my head, I remember learning about Loyalists, the war of 1812, the Metis and French fur traders, Confederation, and bringing in the other provinces and the small rebellion that went with that. That was in grades 7 and 8. Grade 9 was all 20th century Canadian history which basically meant the Boer war, WWI, the 20s, the depression, WWII, and a little bit of the 50s and 60s. We also did something to do with the Quebec referendum that was going on at the time (1995's separation vote), presumeably because it could have been history in the making.
If you took a modern day scientist and put him in a time machine set for 1000 years ago. When he arrived he would be able to teach the local scientists a world of knowledge. This is science in action, during those 1000 years we have learned a lot about the world and how it works.
Except for when the modern day scientist is stoned to death for heresy.
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF
Only one of the 7 formats is DRM'ed (ie. "locked")
Audible's material is DRMed as well.
I always find these joke hilarious, but I have to tell you, yours set them apart. I like the way you went on the imitation rant and then worked into it. And the originality of making the ??????? step number 5 instead of 3
To be a purist about the joke, the ?????? step should be step 2. As in:
Step 1: Collect underpants
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: Profit!
If that's a typo I apologize for the following, but it looks like an idiomatic misunderstanding to me so, in the interests of the free exchange of information, I feel the need to tell you that the expression is write off, not write down. :)
Write down is an accounting term. When you have inventory that won't sell because it's overpriced for the market, you lower the value of it as an asset. Say you've got a big pile of widgets in a warehouse. They're selling quite well, but then someone comes out with a widget that is better than your widget, but costs the same. Now no one is buying your widget so you have to write down the value of your pile of widgets because they suddenly aren't worth as much.
Theoretically though, in time, the e-books should be much cheaper than the equivalent books.
Just like CDs got way cheaper than records and cassette tapes?
However, often they don't even want to hear what I've done. They are reading off of scripts and have no idea how to actually fix the problem. They are in the same voodoo category, and very rarely end up actually helping. A shame, actually, because they either seem unable or (worse) unwilling to learn what they're trying to support. It wastes everyones time.
It can also be that they're not allowed to deviate from the script. This is especially true in large ISPs. First level support agents are randomly monitored by quality assurance and in places where you're not allowed to deviate from the script, doing so can mean a reprimand or worse.
The other problem for first level support is that it's difficult to tell if a person who says they're technical actually is or if they just think they are. Plenty of people call up and say that they've tried the first few suggestions, but when they do them again with the tech on the phone, it will magically start working.