In the closing months of our war with Germany, the Germans packed up tons of their research/secret weapons and shipped them to Japan. So, it wouldn't suprise me much if the Japanese had a much further along nuclear program than we suspected, mostly because the German research was transferred there.
Wasn't that supposed to be a 'dirty' bomb?- i.e. when I said 'true' atomic weapon, I didn't mean one that would just do the job by polluting.
And even if they'd had some idea of how to build an atomic bomb by the end of the war, was Japan in any position by that stage to actually develop the thing in practice? My understanding is that the Japanese military machine was in a very poor state by that time (as indeed was Japanese industry IIRC; wasn't one of the major reasons Japan did so well after the war that their industry destroyed in WWII, was totally rebuilt from scratch, leading to an efficient modern system?)
My understanding is that the form of the instructions, and some of the basic instructions themselves are the same as, or similar to the 4004; that is, it's not like they started from scratch when designing the x86 instruction set.
OTOH, I am not an expert on the x86 and I could be talking out of my backside, so don't use that as the basis for your PhD thesis.
"What if?" can be fun, especially when you apply it to wars. What if Hitler had never invaded Russia? What if he had invaded Britian earlier in the war?
What if Germany had been able to continue fighting for another 3-6 months?
Significance? Although the atomic bomb was used against Japan, it was developed in response to the threat of the *Germans* developing one themselves.
It was completed 2 months after Germany surrendered, and used against Japan approx. 1 month after that.
Although we now know that Germany was nowhere near building a true atomic bomb during WWII, this was not known at the time.
Well, bearing in mind that the atomic bomb was used against Japan, who- whatever else happened- were never a likely risk when it came to atomic weapons, I find it hard to believe that they would not have used them against Germany to bring the war to a swift conclusion.
VC: "Your business plan sounds quite good, but before I invest, I'd like to make a few suggestions."
Inventor: "Okay; what are they?"
VC: "Apparently there's more money to be made from robots that lust after geeks. Can you make them look like something from an X-rated Japanese sci-fi cartoon?"
Inventor: "You mean anime?"
VC: "Well... yeah. We'll sell them to people like you."
(Inventor's eyes glaze over in a manner which suggests he is having less than wholesome thoughts about a purple-haired, big-eyed automaton.)
I'm not sure what happened but startrek is not drama, it is sci-fi.
If Star Trek is 'sci-fi', it's only because any mildly geek-friendly show set in the future/space/etc is called 'sci fi'. I'm with Arthur C Clarke on this one; it's not sci-fi, it's fantasy.
The 'science' is made up, usually to suit the plot. The 'aliens' are humans; and I mean more in the way they behave than look. Frankly, if we discover real aliens, I'll be surprised if we can relate to them on even a rudimentary level.
Star Trek is fantasy that just happens to have borrowed the clothes of 'true' sci-fi. Star Wars is *definitely* fantasy that just happens to include some sci-fi elements (eg spaceships).
True sci-fi should at least have its roots in a plausible idea; so I'd call Asimov's robot stuff sci-fi, 2001 sci-fi, and so on.
Don't get me wrong; I enjoy some Star Trek (well, TNG mainly, having recently watched a complete season on DVD), but it's fantasy.
And it strikes me as ironic that geeks (myself included) enjoy watching a show that makes up as much stuff as Star Trek does.
And, actually I *was* listening to a science programme on Radio 4 in the shower yesterday morning.
Radio 4's problem is that many of its programmes give the impression of being aimed at middle-England, middle-aged, middle-of-the-road types. These are the types of rabid, letter-writing "core" listeners to the station that make those in charge fearful of change.
And radio drama is pretty horrid; it doesn't sound "natural" at all to me. Maybe that's what gets on my nerves about it. OTOH, TV drama isn't that naturalistic either, but perhaps I'm more used to its particular style.
But yeah, there is some good stuff on Radio 4 if you don't let the fuddy-duddy stuff put you off.
Nope, 2^8 is 256 therefor you can store 256 different values in 1 byte. And an unisgned data type (i.e. char) can store 256 different values. 0 != NULL in this case and you have to count it in with the other 255 possibillities.
0 isn't NULL, but it *is*.... zero.
Are we to assume that Christies are never out of stock and we can use the '0' to represent something else?
In an auction of the history of cyberspace, shouldn't there really be 256?
If they slap in another lot, it'll roll round to 0. Damn those legacy systems!
Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up
on
Top 10 Apple Flops
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However, that's not to belittle that fact that the Spectrum was arguably the best home computer of the eighties.
Hey, I lived in the town where most of the Spectrums were built originally. The rubber-keyed speccy still pushes my "want" buttons in a way that later computers don't. It was wildly successful, and probably responsible for Britain's relatively strong place in the software development market.
But that doesn't make it a good machine.
What it *was*, was the first computer with true high-res, decent colour and sound at that price-point; the Vic 20 was more expensive and not as good (even its "real" keyboard wasn't that much better than the Spectrum's). Later computers were better specced and cheaper, but the Spectrum got there first; the popularity led to lots of software which made it more popular, which led to...
But let's not deny that the single-channel, ultra-faint audio that held up the CPU was even at that time, poor (yep; the BEEP command was accurately named).
And the graphics; yes, it had hi-res, albeit with a large border round the edge (256x192); but the colour was awful; partly because the palette was limited (black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, each in 2 brightness level). But mainly because of the ABYSMAL colour resolution (2 colours in an 8x8 square).
In spite of the fact that at first glance, the Spectrum had multicolour hi-res graphics that could beat (e.g.) my Atari 800XL, the palette and colour resolution limitations (and there was just the one graphics mode) were *never* overcome.
I *knew* my Atari was the better machine, but my jealousy of the (supposedly) multicolour hi-res and ability to swap games with everyone else made me want one all the same.
And looking back on it.... urgh. Although I saw a clever trick which got somewhat gritty 6-channel sound from the 1-channel buzzer (later 128K speccys had the same 3-channel sound as the Atari ST; pretty decent), I never saw a game with any level of detail that didn't feature colour-attribute clash or day-glo colours.
Of course, when the Spectrum was first released, most arcade-style games were against a simple or black background, and it did that fine. The problem came later, when games with lots of background detail were being created.
For all its brilliance at the time, the Spectrum seems to have been remarkably resistant to improvements in its performance by clever hacks alone.
The Atari 800XL's weakness was that it had the capability for sheer brilliance, but these were mainly in games designed around the machine's strengths, and by people who knew the hardware. Small market share meant that many conversions didn't use the Atari's custom tricks (palette change on each mode line, and mixed graphics modes on the same screen), didn't have much effort put into them, and often came out looking worse than the Spectrum/C64 versions.
Yeah, the Spectrum was a great achievement when it came out. Yeah, it was a great success. But I doubt it was the best home computer of the 80s. It dated horribly and would not have remained so popular if it hadn't been for the large software base.
Even the C64 is a better candidate for that award, IMHO.
And in turn the 8086 was hardly more than a 16 bit hack of the 8080 architecture.
Heck, wasn't *that* somewhat based on the 8008, which was in turn a hack of the 4004?
I mean, I'm not saying they're software compatible, but doesn't it seem incredible (and arguably dismaying) that the latest Pentium 4s include some design heritage dating back to the first commercially-available CPU, circa 1971?!
Channel 4 are not state-owned, they are paid for by advertisements,
Whether they show ads or not is irrelevant to whether they are state-owned.
at least any more - it was initially set up by the 1980 Broadcasting Act, but in 1990 it became a public corporation, but although it's not owned by the state, the government still exercises some control over it.
Can you clarify what you mean? Channel 4 is not privately owned. I'm not sure how it's set up (yes, I know it's a corporation), but as far as I know, there's no private ownership.
The fifth paragraph in this article states that Channel 4 is government-owned. As I said, I don't know how it's set up, whether the government own 100% of the shares, or what. I'd be interested to hear what you meant.
We wouldn't have got the lame response waffling about the PC industry, we would've could a half-honest response. Instead they chose Stephen Cole, a bumbling idiot with a lisp.
I've seen him reading news on BBC News 24 (*), and he seems competent enough doing that; however, on Click Online he comes across as trying to be amiable, and not frighten techno-phobes off.
Ironically, this sums up Click Online, which is no better than the similarly crap 'The Net' 10 years ago.
There are very few computer programmes on British TV, let alone ones that aren't about games, let alone ones that are any good. What is it with TV people that they feel producing a computer programme with *any* technical content is going to frighten people off?
In general, I'm getting very disillusioned with TV. I think the problems are fundamental; TV is a low-content medium. I can watch a 50 minute program and figure if they'd left out the BS, they could have made an interesting 20 minute program.
Worse, I think it *is* possible to produce good, solid TV, but it doesn't seem to happen. The BBC's "Horizon" slot has gone from a reasonably in-depth science program to something that concentrates way too much on visual tricks and "human interest".
Don't get me wrong; there is a place for popular science, but not as a replacement for serious stuff. I wish it would replace those endless shitty lifestyle programs that don't actually *teach* you anything.
TV is cliched as well, but I could go on about that for weeks...
Basically, it's annoying that I don't read books because I associate them with work and no fun, because when I do find myself casually flipping through them, they're a hell of a lot more interesting and entertaining than TV usually is.
(*) Click Online is shown in Britain on News 24; it used to say it was produced for "BBC World"; i.e. the overseas TV services, but that's no longer on it.
Alas, the BBC really does show "lawn-bowling match among seniors" as top-flight sports coverage, because they can no longer afford the rights to anything decent.
They've been showing stuff like that for years, long before they lost the rights to all those top-rank sports.
(Channel 4- state-owned, but not part of the BBC- before they got the rights to show cricket, which they've since lost- used to show obscure sports, like Kabaddi (weird Indian thing) and, uh... American Football).
Personally, I'm glad to see boring dross like cricket off the TV (always thought it looked more fun to play than watch), but I'd laugh if the sports that are no longer shown on terrestial TV began to experience a decline in popularity in a few years time (this won't happen with football, but it might happen with some other sports).
Actually, even the football (soccer) clubs got bitten on the arse when they signed a massive deal with the non-free ITV Digital, who promptly went under, then had to go cap-in-hand to Rupert Murdoch.
Actually, I hate Rupert Murdoch way more than I hate football clubs, so scratch that. But sod 'em anyway.
I gave her a 10, she's cute. Although, I should point out that I'm a monkey battering away at a computer terminal, and it's purely random chance that something meaningful came out of this lep98q43ia 4wa4to iq433ddddddddddd40q63407nlkj]q ]\q\;;;;;;
A fat female is unattractive because it looks like she is pregnant.
Funny how not all societies associate fat woman with unattractive, then. It's speculated that in our society, fat women are unattractive because food (particularly fattening foods) is plentiful (and hence fatness is common), and associated with being unfit; whereas better off people eat healthy food and keep fit.
A bold man is attractive because his head looks like a big.. well, you know what.
Assuming you or others find bald heads attractive.... but that's not universally accepted. And frankly, most bald men don't have a red, sunburnt head with a line down the middle, do they?
People in uniforms are attractive, because they they look alike, which means they were so successful that they were able to multiply so much.
More plausible theory (again, not mine); people in uniforms (well, men at least) are more likely to be in dangerous professions where they are willing to risk their lives to protect people. Which would extend to their mate (female) and child; good mate --> attractive.
It's interesting that you don't hear of many strippograms dressing as traffic wardens, after all.
The above points apply to humans, but it's the same with monkeys I guess.
I'd doubt they apply to humans; they seem like some half-baked ideas you pulled off the top of your head. Although maybe you should dress in the uniform of a dictator of a banana republic and see if the monkeys at the local zoo find that attractive?
Besides, anything that strengthens the argument that watching p0rn is natural gets my vote for futher funding.
Were these monkeys deprived of normal monkey contact, including the opportunity to see other (real) monkeys, possibly indulging in sexual activity?
If so (and I suspect they weren't living in the jungle, so the answer is probably yes), then all this may prove is that watching pr0n (*) is natural IF YOU SHUT YOURSELF AWAY FROM CONTACT WITH OTHER HUMANS.
And the monkeys didn't have a choice I'll bet; unlike most humans.
(*) Dammit! It's "pr0n", not "p0rn". Learn to spell!
Nah, I lump rabid sports fans in the same catagory of Star Trek fans [..] But one is generally accepted and welcomed in pursuing their passion while the other is shunned and joked and beat-up by the other.
Because one is the bonding obsession of the socially accepted mainstream group, and the other is that of the 'outsider' group, that's why.
>>Give a monkey some spending money, and he'll blow it on pictures of women monkeys.
> Would there be anything wrong with this sentence: give a human some spending money and he'll blow it on pictures of female humans?
>I guess I'm objecting to the notion that being male is the norm.
Why are there way more women on magazine covers than men? Because in general, men like looking at pretty women... and woman like looking at pretty women too, albeit for reasons other than sexual attraction in most cases.
Did you sort them out into dollar piles, and then take them down to the bank?
Or did you just give your change to the restaurant? Poor sods....
My point is that, when you take all the overheads involved, including time taken by businesses (and remember, they have to get change in often, which banks charge them for) to deal with your money, the nuisance of it making your real change harder to deal with, and the time taken to stick it in the jar and sort it out, it probably comes out to less than minimum wage.
I still reckon the overheads must be *way* over any net benefit. No offence, but 1p is worthless, and just over half of worthless (1 cent coin) has got to be a joke...
You know that the current coins aren't the original? At some point in the mid to late 90s the copper in the coins became worth more than the coin, so they started making them of steel with a skin of copper. You can pick up the current 'copper' coins with a magnet. If you have ones that won't pick up, the copper is worth more than the face value of the coins.
So; let me guess. They'd have to update vending machines and the like anyway, and they still didn't take the opportunity to replace the 1p and 2p coins (and, presumably, get the value of the copper on the old coins)? Moronic.
Kinda weird to think how long these things stay in circulation... I've got a penny piece from 1978 in my pocket.
This is horribly ironic.
The UK 1p and 2p pieces are the *only* members of the original early 1970s decimal line-up still in circulation, in spite of the fact that they are hideously oversized for their current value. Frankly, they should have been the *first* to be replaced.... but at any rate, they're the only coins that are going to date back that far.
The 1/2p piece was withdrawn in the early 1980s.
The 5p and 10p pieces were replaced with smaller and lighter versions in the early 1990s (the pre-decimalisation shilling remained in use until then, as it was the same metal, size, weight and value as the 5p piece).
The 50p was also replaced with a smaller clone during the 1990s.
The 20p piece and pound coins weren't introduced until the early 1980s.
The 2 pound coin is only a few years old.
But we still have the ******* original 1p and 2p coins. The 1p coin is so worthless now (less than the 1/2p was worth back when they got rid of that, I'd guess) that they should probably ditch it altogether. Only 2p is a weird choice for a 'base' coin, and 5p is just a little too much, so they'll probably keep it at 1p.
But why- at least- don't they shrink them down?
Probably not worth it now.. *sigh*.
I hate small change; taking into account the extra time I have to wait to get 1p back, sort through the worthless coins in my pocket when searching for 'real' change, stick them in the change jar, sort them, and take them to the bank, it's NOT WORTH MY TIME WAITING FOR THE 1P CHANGE!
Yeah, I *know* someone has proved you could make a living picking up small-value coins from the pavement. *But*... when you take into account their use in real-life, the overhead isn't worth their face-value.
Of course, since the US cent is worth less than the UK (new) penny, it would make real sense for them just to ditch everything below a nickel (5c IIRC).
Actually, there's nothing obliging them to accept them at all. Technically, they're not legal tender, and they're only accepted as such by convention, as far as I know.
Yeah; as far as I know, this is the truth.
And I used to get annoyed about the English not accepting Scottish banknotes; but later on I grew up and realised that since most English (or Welsh or people from Northern Ireland for that matter) wouldn't be familiar with Scottish notes, they would have trouble differentiating the real thing from fakes.
If *I* was running a business in England, I'd be quite happy to let my staff refuse Scottish banknotes if they weren't familiar with them, for that very reason. Pissed off customers could talk to me about it...
At last the goatse guy can make an album! I've been waiting for so long. And hell, the hold is already built into the disc!
Want something even worse? Consider what a CD looks like when it's stored in an ordinary (single-CD) case. The part in the centre looks like a puckered... umm... and you have to stick your finger in it to get the CD out.
Slashdot Mirror
In the closing months of our war with Germany, the Germans packed up tons of their research/secret weapons and shipped them to Japan. So, it wouldn't suprise me much if the Japanese had a much further along nuclear program than we suspected, mostly because the German research was transferred there.
Wasn't that supposed to be a 'dirty' bomb?- i.e. when I said 'true' atomic weapon, I didn't mean one that would just do the job by polluting.
And even if they'd had some idea of how to build an atomic bomb by the end of the war, was Japan in any position by that stage to actually develop the thing in practice? My understanding is that the Japanese military machine was in a very poor state by that time (as indeed was Japanese industry IIRC; wasn't one of the major reasons Japan did so well after the war that their industry destroyed in WWII, was totally rebuilt from scratch, leading to an efficient modern system?)
My understanding is that the form of the instructions, and some of the basic instructions themselves are the same as, or similar to the 4004; that is, it's not like they started from scratch when designing the x86 instruction set.
OTOH, I am not an expert on the x86 and I could be talking out of my backside, so don't use that as the basis for your PhD thesis.
"What if?" can be fun, especially when you apply it to wars. What if Hitler had never invaded Russia? What if he had invaded Britian earlier in the war?
What if Germany had been able to continue fighting for another 3-6 months?
Significance? Although the atomic bomb was used against Japan, it was developed in response to the threat of the *Germans* developing one themselves.
It was completed 2 months after Germany surrendered, and used against Japan approx. 1 month after that.
Although we now know that Germany was nowhere near building a true atomic bomb during WWII, this was not known at the time.
Well, bearing in mind that the atomic bomb was used against Japan, who- whatever else happened- were never a likely risk when it came to atomic weapons, I find it hard to believe that they would not have used them against Germany to bring the war to a swift conclusion.
VC: "Your business plan sounds quite good, but before I invest, I'd like to make a few suggestions."
Inventor: "Okay; what are they?"
VC: "Apparently there's more money to be made from robots that lust after geeks. Can you make them look like something from an X-rated Japanese sci-fi cartoon?"
Inventor: "You mean anime?"
VC: "Well... yeah. We'll sell them to people like you."
(Inventor's eyes glaze over in a manner which suggests he is having less than wholesome thoughts about a purple-haired, big-eyed automaton.)
I'm not sure what happened but startrek is not drama, it is sci-fi.
If Star Trek is 'sci-fi', it's only because any mildly geek-friendly show set in the future/space/etc is called 'sci fi'. I'm with Arthur C Clarke on this one; it's not sci-fi, it's fantasy.
The 'science' is made up, usually to suit the plot. The 'aliens' are humans; and I mean more in the way they behave than look. Frankly, if we discover real aliens, I'll be surprised if we can relate to them on even a rudimentary level.
Star Trek is fantasy that just happens to have borrowed the clothes of 'true' sci-fi. Star Wars is *definitely* fantasy that just happens to include some sci-fi elements (eg spaceships).
True sci-fi should at least have its roots in a plausible idea; so I'd call Asimov's robot stuff sci-fi, 2001 sci-fi, and so on.
Don't get me wrong; I enjoy some Star Trek (well, TNG mainly, having recently watched a complete season on DVD), but it's fantasy.
And it strikes me as ironic that geeks (myself included) enjoy watching a show that makes up as much stuff as Star Trek does.
Radio 4 isn't TV, though. :)
And, actually I *was* listening to a science programme on Radio 4 in the shower yesterday morning.
Radio 4's problem is that many of its programmes give the impression of being aimed at middle-England, middle-aged, middle-of-the-road types. These are the types of rabid, letter-writing "core" listeners to the station that make those in charge fearful of change.
And radio drama is pretty horrid; it doesn't sound "natural" at all to me. Maybe that's what gets on my nerves about it. OTOH, TV drama isn't that naturalistic either, but perhaps I'm more used to its particular style.
But yeah, there is some good stuff on Radio 4 if you don't let the fuddy-duddy stuff put you off.
Nope, 2^8 is 256 therefor you can store 256 different values in 1 byte. And an unisgned data type (i.e. char) can store 256 different values. 0 != NULL in this case and you have to count it in with the other 255 possibillities.
0 isn't NULL, but it *is*.... zero.
Are we to assume that Christies are never out of stock and we can use the '0' to represent something else?
In an auction of the history of cyberspace, shouldn't there really be 256?
If they slap in another lot, it'll roll round to 0. Damn those legacy systems!
However, that's not to belittle that fact that the Spectrum was arguably the best home computer of the eighties.
Hey, I lived in the town where most of the Spectrums were built originally. The rubber-keyed speccy still pushes my "want" buttons in a way that later computers don't. It was wildly successful, and probably responsible for Britain's relatively strong place in the software development market.
But that doesn't make it a good machine.
What it *was*, was the first computer with true high-res, decent colour and sound at that price-point; the Vic 20 was more expensive and not as good (even its "real" keyboard wasn't that much better than the Spectrum's). Later computers were better specced and cheaper, but the Spectrum got there first; the popularity led to lots of software which made it more popular, which led to...
But let's not deny that the single-channel, ultra-faint audio that held up the CPU was even at that time, poor (yep; the BEEP command was accurately named).
And the graphics; yes, it had hi-res, albeit with a large border round the edge (256x192); but the colour was awful; partly because the palette was limited (black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, each in 2 brightness level). But mainly because of the ABYSMAL colour resolution (2 colours in an 8x8 square).
In spite of the fact that at first glance, the Spectrum had multicolour hi-res graphics that could beat (e.g.) my Atari 800XL, the palette and colour resolution limitations (and there was just the one graphics mode) were *never* overcome.
I *knew* my Atari was the better machine, but my jealousy of the (supposedly) multicolour hi-res and ability to swap games with everyone else made me want one all the same.
And looking back on it.... urgh. Although I saw a clever trick which got somewhat gritty 6-channel sound from the 1-channel buzzer (later 128K speccys had the same 3-channel sound as the Atari ST; pretty decent), I never saw a game with any level of detail that didn't feature colour-attribute clash or day-glo colours.
Of course, when the Spectrum was first released, most arcade-style games were against a simple or black background, and it did that fine. The problem came later, when games with lots of background detail were being created.
For all its brilliance at the time, the Spectrum seems to have been remarkably resistant to improvements in its performance by clever hacks alone.
The Atari 800XL's weakness was that it had the capability for sheer brilliance, but these were mainly in games designed around the machine's strengths, and by people who knew the hardware. Small market share meant that many conversions didn't use the Atari's custom tricks (palette change on each mode line, and mixed graphics modes on the same screen), didn't have much effort put into them, and often came out looking worse than the Spectrum/C64 versions.
Yeah, the Spectrum was a great achievement when it came out. Yeah, it was a great success. But I doubt it was the best home computer of the 80s. It dated horribly and would not have remained so popular if it hadn't been for the large software base.
Even the C64 is a better candidate for that award, IMHO.
And in turn the 8086 was hardly more than a 16 bit hack of the 8080 architecture.
Heck, wasn't *that* somewhat based on the 8008, which was in turn a hack of the 4004?
I mean, I'm not saying they're software compatible, but doesn't it seem incredible (and arguably dismaying) that the latest Pentium 4s include some design heritage dating back to the first commercially-available CPU, circa 1971?!
Channel 4 are not state-owned, they are paid for by advertisements,
Whether they show ads or not is irrelevant to whether they are state-owned.
at least any more - it was initially set up by the 1980 Broadcasting Act, but in 1990 it became a public corporation, but although it's not owned by the state, the government still exercises some control over it.
Can you clarify what you mean? Channel 4 is not privately owned. I'm not sure how it's set up (yes, I know it's a corporation), but as far as I know, there's no private ownership.
The fifth paragraph in this article states that Channel 4 is government-owned. As I said, I don't know how it's set up, whether the government own 100% of the shares, or what. I'd be interested to hear what you meant.
We wouldn't have got the lame response waffling about the PC industry, we would've could a half-honest response. Instead they chose Stephen Cole, a bumbling idiot with a lisp.
I've seen him reading news on BBC News 24 (*), and he seems competent enough doing that; however, on Click Online he comes across as trying to be amiable, and not frighten techno-phobes off.
Ironically, this sums up Click Online, which is no better than the similarly crap 'The Net' 10 years ago.
There are very few computer programmes on British TV, let alone ones that aren't about games, let alone ones that are any good. What is it with TV people that they feel producing a computer programme with *any* technical content is going to frighten people off?
In general, I'm getting very disillusioned with TV. I think the problems are fundamental; TV is a low-content medium. I can watch a 50 minute program and figure if they'd left out the BS, they could have made an interesting 20 minute program.
Worse, I think it *is* possible to produce good, solid TV, but it doesn't seem to happen. The BBC's "Horizon" slot has gone from a reasonably in-depth science program to something that concentrates way too much on visual tricks and "human interest".
Don't get me wrong; there is a place for popular science, but not as a replacement for serious stuff. I wish it would replace those endless shitty lifestyle programs that don't actually *teach* you anything.
TV is cliched as well, but I could go on about that for weeks...
Basically, it's annoying that I don't read books because I associate them with work and no fun, because when I do find myself casually flipping through them, they're a hell of a lot more interesting and entertaining than TV usually is.
(*) Click Online is shown in Britain on News 24; it used to say it was produced for "BBC World"; i.e. the overseas TV services, but that's no longer on it.
Alas, the BBC really does show "lawn-bowling match among seniors" as top-flight sports coverage, because they can no longer afford the rights to anything decent.
They've been showing stuff like that for years, long before they lost the rights to all those top-rank sports.
(Channel 4- state-owned, but not part of the BBC- before they got the rights to show cricket, which they've since lost- used to show obscure sports, like Kabaddi (weird Indian thing) and, uh... American Football).
Personally, I'm glad to see boring dross like cricket off the TV (always thought it looked more fun to play than watch), but I'd laugh if the sports that are no longer shown on terrestial TV began to experience a decline in popularity in a few years time (this won't happen with football, but it might happen with some other sports).
Actually, even the football (soccer) clubs got bitten on the arse when they signed a massive deal with the non-free ITV Digital, who promptly went under, then had to go cap-in-hand to Rupert Murdoch.
Actually, I hate Rupert Murdoch way more than I hate football clubs, so scratch that. But sod 'em anyway.
I gave her a 10, she's cute. Although, I should point out that I'm a monkey battering away at a computer terminal, and it's purely random chance that something meaningful came out of this lep98q43iaq ]\q\;;;;;;
4wa4to
iq433ddddddddddd40q63407nlkj]
There are clues.. I have theories.. For example:
A fat female is unattractive because it looks like she is pregnant.
Funny how not all societies associate fat woman with unattractive, then. It's speculated that in our society, fat women are unattractive because food (particularly fattening foods) is plentiful (and hence fatness is common), and associated with being unfit; whereas better off people eat healthy food and keep fit.
A bold man is attractive because his head looks like a big.. well, you know what.
Assuming you or others find bald heads attractive.... but that's not universally accepted. And frankly, most bald men don't have a red, sunburnt head with a line down the middle, do they?
People in uniforms are attractive, because they they look alike, which means they were so successful that they were able to multiply so much.
More plausible theory (again, not mine); people in uniforms (well, men at least) are more likely to be in dangerous professions where they are willing to risk their lives to protect people. Which would extend to their mate (female) and child; good mate --> attractive.
It's interesting that you don't hear of many strippograms dressing as traffic wardens, after all.
The above points apply to humans, but it's the same with monkeys I guess.
I'd doubt they apply to humans; they seem like some half-baked ideas you pulled off the top of your head. Although maybe you should dress in the uniform of a dictator of a banana republic and see if the monkeys at the local zoo find that attractive?
Besides, anything that strengthens the argument that watching p0rn is natural gets my vote for futher funding.
Were these monkeys deprived of normal monkey contact, including the opportunity to see other (real) monkeys, possibly indulging in sexual activity?
If so (and I suspect they weren't living in the jungle, so the answer is probably yes), then all this may prove is that watching pr0n (*) is natural IF YOU SHUT YOURSELF AWAY FROM CONTACT WITH OTHER HUMANS.
And the monkeys didn't have a choice I'll bet; unlike most humans.
(*) Dammit! It's "pr0n", not "p0rn". Learn to spell!
Nah, I lump rabid sports fans in the same catagory of Star Trek fans [..] But one is generally accepted and welcomed in pursuing their passion while the other is shunned and joked and beat-up by the other.
Because one is the bonding obsession of the socially accepted mainstream group, and the other is that of the 'outsider' group, that's why.
>>Give a monkey some spending money, and he'll blow it on pictures of women monkeys.
> Would there be anything wrong with this sentence: give a human some spending money and he'll blow it on pictures of female humans?
>I guess I'm objecting to the notion that being male is the norm.
Why are there way more women on magazine covers than men? Because in general, men like looking at pretty women... and woman like looking at pretty women too, albeit for reasons other than sexual attraction in most cases.
Not to me.
Well, that's a good point. How did you pay?
Did you sort them out into dollar piles, and then take them down to the bank?
Or did you just give your change to the restaurant? Poor sods....
My point is that, when you take all the overheads involved, including time taken by businesses (and remember, they have to get change in often, which banks charge them for) to deal with your money, the nuisance of it making your real change harder to deal with, and the time taken to stick it in the jar and sort it out, it probably comes out to less than minimum wage.
I still reckon the overheads must be *way* over any net benefit. No offence, but 1p is worthless, and just over half of worthless (1 cent coin) has got to be a joke...
That'd be OK... as long as they made the 5p and 10p's bigger (or non-circular).
;)
The 5p and the 10p are pretty indented; relatively even more so in their current shrunken form. They could make the 1p really tiny, as well.
Anyway, shouldn't it be the bronze coins getting lost in your pocket fluff?
'shrapnel' = slang for low-denomination loose change.
Never heard of that before.
"Standing On The Shoulders of Giants"
Naaah.... it's "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants", according to Noel Gallagher
You know that the current coins aren't the original? At some point in the mid to late 90s the copper in the coins became worth more than the coin, so they started making them of steel with a skin of copper. You can pick up the current 'copper' coins with a magnet. If you have ones that won't pick up, the copper is worth more than the face value of the coins.
So; let me guess. They'd have to update vending machines and the like anyway, and they still didn't take the opportunity to replace the 1p and 2p coins (and, presumably, get the value of the copper on the old coins)? Moronic.
The silent cursing was really the fun part, especially one time when the offender was an internationally known cathedral.
How did you know they were cursing if it was silent? Did they use telepathy?
Kinda weird to think how long these things stay in circulation... I've got a penny piece from 1978 in my pocket.
This is horribly ironic.
The UK 1p and 2p pieces are the *only* members of the original early 1970s decimal line-up still in circulation, in spite of the fact that they are hideously oversized for their current value. Frankly, they should have been the *first* to be replaced.... but at any rate, they're the only coins that are going to date back that far.
The 1/2p piece was withdrawn in the early 1980s.
The 5p and 10p pieces were replaced with smaller and lighter versions in the early 1990s (the pre-decimalisation shilling remained in use until then, as it was the same metal, size, weight and value as the 5p piece).
The 50p was also replaced with a smaller clone during the 1990s.
The 20p piece and pound coins weren't introduced until the early 1980s.
The 2 pound coin is only a few years old.
But we still have the ******* original 1p and 2p coins. The 1p coin is so worthless now (less than the 1/2p was worth back when they got rid of that, I'd guess) that they should probably ditch it altogether. Only 2p is a weird choice for a 'base' coin, and 5p is just a little too much, so they'll probably keep it at 1p.
But why- at least- don't they shrink them down?
Probably not worth it now.. *sigh*.
I hate small change; taking into account the extra time I have to wait to get 1p back, sort through the worthless coins in my pocket when searching for 'real' change, stick them in the change jar, sort them, and take them to the bank, it's NOT WORTH MY TIME WAITING FOR THE 1P CHANGE!
Yeah, I *know* someone has proved you could make a living picking up small-value coins from the pavement. *But*... when you take into account their use in real-life, the overhead isn't worth their face-value.
Of course, since the US cent is worth less than the UK (new) penny, it would make real sense for them just to ditch everything below a nickel (5c IIRC).
Actually, there's nothing obliging them to accept them at all. Technically, they're not legal tender, and they're only accepted as such by convention, as far as I know.
Yeah; as far as I know, this is the truth.
And I used to get annoyed about the English not accepting Scottish banknotes; but later on I grew up and realised that since most English (or Welsh or people from Northern Ireland for that matter) wouldn't be familiar with Scottish notes, they would have trouble differentiating the real thing from fakes.
If *I* was running a business in England, I'd be quite happy to let my staff refuse Scottish banknotes if they weren't familiar with them, for that very reason. Pissed off customers could talk to me about it...
At last the goatse guy can make an album! I've been waiting for so long. And hell, the hold is already built into the disc!
Want something even worse? Consider what a CD looks like when it's stored in an ordinary (single-CD) case. The part in the centre looks like a puckered... umm... and you have to stick your finger in it to get the CD out.
I'm listening to nothing but MP3s from now on.