That said, my parents raise grass-fed cattle so I could get beef for cheap if I cared to.
So what? That doesn't (and couldn't) apply to most people on the planet, so adds nothing to the discussion beyond "Cool story, bro" pointlessness.
Really? You think there are 3.5 billion people in the world who are in a position not to be able to transition away from meat if they wanted to?
Wrong. I didn't say (nor think) that at *all*.
If you'd read what I posted instead of just skimming it, you'd have realised I specifically quoted- and was replying to- only the second sentence ("That said, my parents raise grass-fed cattle so I could get beef for cheap if I cared to.")
His or her first sentence ("[Easier solution]. I just don't eat meat.")- the one you wrongly *assumed* I was replying to- is reasonable if simplistic. The second is pointless.
Still have my TRS-80 CoCo. Haven't plugged it in about six years, but hey.
Apparently the TRS-80 CoCo is a totally different (and incompatible) machine to the original TRS-80 being discussed here. They're not even based on the same processor...
While I appreciate that they probably wanted to keep the brand recognition, it's slightly confusing that they reused the exact same model number on incompatible machines with entirely different architecture. You'd have thought (e.g.) "TRS-100" would be similar enough without the obvious- and incorrect- implication that both lines were part of the same family.
For what it's worth, the Dragon 32- a very close relative of the CoCo- celebrated its 30th anniversary this week.
However much truth there is in this story, there's one notable thing about Facebook's advertising. It's that they don't- or at least didn't the last time I looked into it (late 2011 IIRC)- provide any proper tracking or analytics service that you can easily integrate into your own website. Yes, they'd tell you how many clicks you got on your Facebook page, but so what?
IIRC apparently they'd had some analytics/tracking code available at one point but *supposedly* they were worried about the data it provided being misinterpreted, so they withdrew it. They were still providing it, but only to their large corporate customers. Hmm.
One could still use specialised third-party tracking solutions, but (e.g.) getting it to work properly with Google analytics proved more complicated than it might at first have appeared, involving faffing about with funnels and the like (which I still don't think I got working properly, as I was distracted by more important things shortly afterwards).
Given that this was around the time stories were starting to come out explaining how Facebook- which everyone had assumed would be the holy grail of targeted advertising- was in truth delivering very poor results for advertisers, a cynic might assume that it really wasn't in Facebook's interest to make keeping close tabs on the effectiveness of its advertising easy for customers. This might or might not have been the case, but I'm pretty sceptical.
It did a pretty good job of laying out why MS has failed to keep up with the leading edge of the industry, and why they will need radical cultural change to ever catch up. In particular, the article avoided overblown hystrionics, for example not claiming MS is dead, but pointing out that MS has become like IBM in how it operates.
I haven't had time to read the whole article yet. However, if the summary is accurate (ha ha), it's certainly not the first time that MS's internal politicking and entrenched interests since the late 90s have been pinpointed as a major obstacle to innovation and their continued success in a changing market.
Some time back I commented on (and cherry-picked) a similar article, which wasn't new even then- it dated back to early 2010. Still very informative though.
Among other things, it is the freedom to tell someone that you hate them and want them dead, rather than smiling at them while you speak ill of them behind their back and plot their downfall.
I very much doubt that even in the (supposedly) freedom-loving US threats of murder and extortion are excused under "freedom of speech".
Agreed. I think 'Pokemon' is more of a franchise than a single product anyway, so it has largely replaced itself with newer versions. Kids will always find things to collect and entertain themselves with, marbles, cards, electronic versions of the above etc. That Nintendo and Pokemon have clung on for 13 years is a testament to how well they've been able to understand and adapt to that market.
Though I was never into Pokemon myself (*) I did notice that this was one major difference between Pokemon and other "fad" toys, cartoons etc. Normally once their heyday is passed, such toys, etc. die the death and disappear almost completely (or at least shrink to a tiny proportion of their former popularity). For example, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the UK after about 1990. Or who's playing Tamagotchi today?
While it's undoubtedly subsided a bit since its late 90s peak, Pokemon never really seemed to go away, enjoying a steady level of continued popularity that seemed to get attention for new releases and the like. And that is somewhat unusual...
That said, are they still showing that epilepsy-inducing cartoon or any modern replacement for it? My gut reaction is that they probably couldn't get away with showing it- or at least the ones I vaguely remember seeing- to today's kids. (Actually, it looked pretty crappily made to me even then, but as noted elsewhere I was at least a decade older than the target audience even then, so I can't really judge it. But I still suspect that today's kids would expect more).
(*) Er, that'd probably be because I was already well into my twenties when it first came out in the late 90s:-)
For statistical reasons woman boobs are bigger then mens.
No, women's breasts are (statistically) larger than mens for evolutionary reasons, not statistical ones. In fact, I doubt that statistics themselves have much effect on breast size at all!:-)
You're thinking about the geeky technical aspects, I'm thinking of average Joe.
The "geeky technical aspects" explain *why* Joe Average might want (and *isn't* a hypocrite for wanting) higher frame rates for games.
Of course, *he* himself doesn't know (nor care) about this, but he does know that games with low frame rates look bad at 24 fps, while films don't suffer from the same problem. The above simply explains the reasons behind that preference.
So regardless of whether he knows the reason for it, it's not a double standard for him to want higher frame rates from games in a way that he doesn't for films.
BTW, I considered elsewhere why there may be a legitimate psychological reason for preferring lower frame rates for (fictitious) films beyond simple prejudice and negative associations. I wouldn't bet my life on being correct there, but it's worth a thought.
My point still stands though. They expect more realism out of their games then they do live-action video.
No, it doesn't at all(!) That was the whole point I made and explained- did you actually read what I said?!
If you were to be shown video or film footage that had been shot at 24 to 30fps with no blurring on each frame (e.g. because the exposure time was 1/4000 second) it would look jerky and unpleasant for most uses as well. That's why the article I linked to states the recommended exposure time is approximately half the frame interval, which *will* give blurring of fast-moving objects, even with 60 fps video, moreso with 24 fps movie footage.
Ya it is just something that will take time. People have decided that shitty framerates look "cinematic" and thus that is the right way to do things. In time, they'll come over. I shoot video at 60fps (progressive) for instructional videos and it looks amazing. We don't host them at 60fps since there aren't any video services that'll let you that I know of, but I wish we could. They are just amazingly smooth.
I must admit that part of me wants to agree with this. But I also wonder if the fact that 24 to 30 fps footage somehow looks more "distant" and less "live" is part of why people prefer it, the "distance" it puts between the viewer and the action subconsciously aiding suspension of disbelief.
This might be wrong, I don't know- it's just a guess. I do know that I much prefer higher frame rates for my own "real life" footage though- for precisely the opposite (or rather, same) reason- even to the point of running an interpolation filter on the footage.
Funny how people expect better frame rates from their *games* than their movies. I expect some of these people crying about how 48fps looks "too real" or "video-like" would have a shit-fit if their game was anything under 60.
As far as I'm aware, part of the issue with games is that movement isn't blurred, which would mean that if you showed *that* at 24fps, it would look noticeably jerky.
I have a digital SLR with movie facility, and one of the annoying drawbacks with the video mode is that it in bright light, it frequently sets a very short exposure time (in 25 or 30 fps mode), meaning that each individual frame exhibits little or no blurring. Perversely, this actually makes the result look *more* jerky, even if it blurs less. (This is probably made much worse due to the fact the camera can only shoot "movie rate" 24, 25 or 30 fps, not 50 or 60 fps, along with the fact it wasn't designed primarily as a movie camera in general).
As a Wikipedia contributor and editor, I didn't find the article offensive so much as I thought "I really don't see where she gets that from".
Had I never used Wikipedia, I'd probably expect it- going by her description- to look like something basic and ugly from 1997. I mean, "Geocities"? It's nothing like the stereotypical Geocities page (garish and tasteless decorations and backdrops).
I must admit that I hardly ever think of Wikipedia's appearance- it doesn't look plain or boring to me, which would suggest it was underdesigned in the way she implies- it simply isn't a factor. That suggests that they got it right- it's nice and clean, and doesn't distract from the content, while not being gratuitously over-plain.
No, it's not covered in Web-2.0 shading, and there isn't an excess of distracting widgets. In all honesty, I get the impression that the author is really criticising the lack of *cutesiness*, over-designed attempts to appear friendly with "helpful" candy.
I'll definitely concede one point; editing is still too technical. I'm a geek, so I'm happy to directly edit markup, add templates with parameters, etc. However, I have thought quite often while doing this that it's almost certainly not friendly to average non-techie users. The visual editor is a step in the right direction, but it still probably needs more. I'm not talking about dumbing down things, simply saying that if something can reasonably be presented in a non-technical way without too much compromise, then the choice should be there.
Of course, I'd probably rather just edit the markup directly, and I'd want *that* choice to remain too, if it was so wanted.:-)
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical)
Why? Just because it's the most obvious layout, doesn't mean it's the optimal one for typing. At most it's going to make it slightly easier for complete beginners to find keys before they've learned where they are.
I'm not claiming that QWERTY is the best layout for typing- in fact, it's generally accepted that it almost certainly isn't.
But as you say, there have been countless attempts to do alternate layouts, and few have gained much traction. If we're talking about mobile devices (where, after all, people learned to "type" on a non-QWERTY 12-digit keyboard (*)) perhaps sticking with a full keyboard- albeit with different layout- isn't thinking far enough (**), and we should be considering something like Microwriter- which first appeared 30 years ago!
(*) And showed no inclination do use that on a computer
(**) I was going to say "not thinking far enough outside the box" but I really loathe that stupid cliche even though I can't think of anything better. Always found it ironic that "thinking outside the box" is such a cliched, unoriginal, unimaginative, corporate, stuck inside the damn box phrase(!!)
Don't judge the people around you, learn from them.
Learning helplessness is bad advice.
You clearly weren't paying enough attention. He wasn't simply suggesting that the OP follow their path or do what they say unquestioningly. "Learn from them" was meant in the more intelligent sense where one can learn from both good and bad examples. In particular, he comments:-
It is a good idea to find people who you want to emulate and to look up to, but it can be even more valuable to find people around you whose fate you are desperate to avoid and try to discern what happened then don't do that. [my emphasis]
Seems like history repeating itself here. As Slashdotters may know, the "Model A" and "Model B" designations are a homage to the two original versions of the BBC Micro. In that case (as Braben himself will be aware!), the more powerful Model B was by far the more popular of the two despite its higher cost. The "BBC B 32K" became the canonical version of the computer, with the Model A little more than a footnote.
So is this the same situation we're seeing here?
(just don't make an Electron version - even if it has Plus 1 and Plus 3 expansion modules like I had back in the day!)
Yes... given that the Acorn Electron- intended as a cut-down "home" version of the BBC Micro- was a flop (*) that led to Acorn being taken over, that would probably be A Bad Thing. Also, as far as I know, the Electron was pretty underpowered and needed those add-on modules for any "serious" expansion.
(*) Sort of- apparently what happened was that there *was* quite high demand for it, but they had problems with the custom ULA chip and couldn't get enough out in time for Christmas. By the time they had the problem sorted out in the New Year, those potential customers had bought rival machines instead and Acorn were left with warehouses full of unsold Electrons.
The article says that the 13-year-old computer hacker in question was male, but I strongly suspect they were thrown by her name and strange androgynous appearance.
It has been one of the wettest ever Junes here in the UK and it is still raining heavily. When it is not raining it's heavy cloud. Although that's stereotypical weather here, it's more like what you'd expect in the winter.
Even in Scotland, where it's not been quite as badly affected as some other parts of the UK, (*) it's still been pretty poor by our standards (even though the past few years have dragged expectations down). It's been quite easy to forget that it's even meant to be summer at all. And this was following a surprisingly mild winter and a pretty good spring (again, by our standards!)
(*) Though the west coast of Scotland in particular has very high rainfall on average to start off with. Fortunately, I'm in the east, where the average rainfall is much lower:-)
Stephen Conroy is a douche. Never trust an Australian who doesn't drink.
Indeed- it's well known that he was kicked out of the University of Woolloomooloo for breaking rule #4 (they don't want to catch anybody not drinking). There were also moves to kick him out under rules #1, #3, #5 and #7, but he maintained he wasn't a poofter.
Also, the fact that his name isn't "Bruce" caused too much confusion.
TFA follows the same scheme as many recent Slashdot submissions - ask an inflammatory question (to which to answer is usually "no") to generate page views and a heated discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, my parents raise grass-fed cattle so I could get beef for cheap if I cared to.
So what? That doesn't (and couldn't) apply to most people on the planet, so adds nothing to the discussion beyond "Cool story, bro" pointlessness.
Really? You think there are 3.5 billion people in the world who are in a position not to be able to transition away from meat if they wanted to?
Wrong. I didn't say (nor think) that at *all*.
If you'd read what I posted instead of just skimming it, you'd have realised I specifically quoted- and was replying to- only the second sentence ("That said, my parents raise grass-fed cattle so I could get beef for cheap if I cared to.")
His or her first sentence ("[Easier solution]. I just don't eat meat.")- the one you wrongly *assumed* I was replying to- is reasonable if simplistic. The second is pointless.
That said, my parents raise grass-fed cattle so I could get beef for cheap if I cared to.
So what? That doesn't (and couldn't) apply to most people on the planet, so adds nothing to the discussion beyond "Cool story, bro" pointlessness.
Still have my TRS-80 CoCo. Haven't plugged it in about six years, but hey.
Apparently the TRS-80 CoCo is a totally different (and incompatible) machine to the original TRS-80 being discussed here. They're not even based on the same processor...
While I appreciate that they probably wanted to keep the brand recognition, it's slightly confusing that they reused the exact same model number on incompatible machines with entirely different architecture. You'd have thought (e.g.) "TRS-100" would be similar enough without the obvious- and incorrect- implication that both lines were part of the same family.
For what it's worth, the Dragon 32- a very close relative of the CoCo- celebrated its 30th anniversary this week.
However much truth there is in this story, there's one notable thing about Facebook's advertising. It's that they don't- or at least didn't the last time I looked into it (late 2011 IIRC)- provide any proper tracking or analytics service that you can easily integrate into your own website. Yes, they'd tell you how many clicks you got on your Facebook page, but so what?
IIRC apparently they'd had some analytics/tracking code available at one point but *supposedly* they were worried about the data it provided being misinterpreted, so they withdrew it. They were still providing it, but only to their large corporate customers. Hmm.
One could still use specialised third-party tracking solutions, but (e.g.) getting it to work properly with Google analytics proved more complicated than it might at first have appeared, involving faffing about with funnels and the like (which I still don't think I got working properly, as I was distracted by more important things shortly afterwards).
Given that this was around the time stories were starting to come out explaining how Facebook- which everyone had assumed would be the holy grail of targeted advertising- was in truth delivering very poor results for advertisers, a cynic might assume that it really wasn't in Facebook's interest to make keeping close tabs on the effectiveness of its advertising easy for customers. This might or might not have been the case, but I'm pretty sceptical.
It did a pretty good job of laying out why MS has failed to keep up with the leading edge of the industry, and why they will need radical cultural change to ever catch up. In particular, the article avoided overblown hystrionics, for example not claiming MS is dead, but pointing out that MS has become like IBM in how it operates.
I haven't had time to read the whole article yet. However, if the summary is accurate (ha ha), it's certainly not the first time that MS's internal politicking and entrenched interests since the late 90s have been pinpointed as a major obstacle to innovation and their continued success in a changing market.
Some time back I commented on (and cherry-picked) a similar article, which wasn't new even then- it dated back to early 2010. Still very informative though.
Among other things, it is the freedom to tell someone that you hate them and want them dead, rather than smiling at them while you speak ill of them behind their back and plot their downfall.
I very much doubt that even in the (supposedly) freedom-loving US threats of murder and extortion are excused under "freedom of speech".
Also, if chess was invented in the 90s, I can almost guarantee you'd see similar bullshit marketing tactics.
But it wasn't, and fortunately we don't.
Agreed. I think 'Pokemon' is more of a franchise than a single product anyway, so it has largely replaced itself with newer versions. Kids will always find things to collect and entertain themselves with, marbles, cards, electronic versions of the above etc. That Nintendo and Pokemon have clung on for 13 years is a testament to how well they've been able to understand and adapt to that market.
Though I was never into Pokemon myself (*) I did notice that this was one major difference between Pokemon and other "fad" toys, cartoons etc. Normally once their heyday is passed, such toys, etc. die the death and disappear almost completely (or at least shrink to a tiny proportion of their former popularity). For example, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the UK after about 1990. Or who's playing Tamagotchi today?
:-)
While it's undoubtedly subsided a bit since its late 90s peak, Pokemon never really seemed to go away, enjoying a steady level of continued popularity that seemed to get attention for new releases and the like. And that is somewhat unusual...
That said, are they still showing that epilepsy-inducing cartoon or any modern replacement for it? My gut reaction is that they probably couldn't get away with showing it- or at least the ones I vaguely remember seeing- to today's kids. (Actually, it looked pretty crappily made to me even then, but as noted elsewhere I was at least a decade older than the target audience even then, so I can't really judge it. But I still suspect that today's kids would expect more).
(*) Er, that'd probably be because I was already well into my twenties when it first came out in the late 90s
For statistical reasons woman boobs are bigger then mens.
No, women's breasts are (statistically) larger than mens for evolutionary reasons, not statistical ones. In fact, I doubt that statistics themselves have much effect on breast size at all!:-)
What a boob you made of that... (^_^)
When you start adding in drugs, you won't get any ceilings, no responsible use. Once people start bulking up, they often don't stop.
Yes, here is a very good example of someone who started out as a skinny teenager then let the "bulking up" get *way* out of control...
> tl;dr your a failure
should read
> tl;dr your'e a failure
No, no, it should read you're a..... wait, what were those two "whooshing" noises that just went over my head?
Anyway, yeah, "you're a failure".
Signed,
Grammar Hitler
(Oh wait, did I just call myself Hitler??!!)
I just clicked "like" on a picture of a kitten and it registered as a vote for Mitt Romney
The opposition slogan could then be "Kill a Kitten for the Big O".
Roy Orbison is running for the Democrats? That's pretty impressive for a guy who's been dead over 20 years...
You're thinking about the geeky technical aspects, I'm thinking of average Joe.
The "geeky technical aspects" explain *why* Joe Average might want (and *isn't* a hypocrite for wanting) higher frame rates for games.
Of course, *he* himself doesn't know (nor care) about this, but he does know that games with low frame rates look bad at 24 fps, while films don't suffer from the same problem. The above simply explains the reasons behind that preference.
So regardless of whether he knows the reason for it, it's not a double standard for him to want higher frame rates from games in a way that he doesn't for films.
BTW, I considered elsewhere why there may be a legitimate psychological reason for preferring lower frame rates for (fictitious) films beyond simple prejudice and negative associations. I wouldn't bet my life on being correct there, but it's worth a thought.
My point still stands though. They expect more realism out of their games then they do live-action video.
No, it doesn't at all(!) That was the whole point I made and explained- did you actually read what I said?!
If you were to be shown video or film footage that had been shot at 24 to 30fps with no blurring on each frame (e.g. because the exposure time was 1/4000 second) it would look jerky and unpleasant for most uses as well. That's why the article I linked to states the recommended exposure time is approximately half the frame interval, which *will* give blurring of fast-moving objects, even with 60 fps video, moreso with 24 fps movie footage.
Ya it is just something that will take time. People have decided that shitty framerates look "cinematic" and thus that is the right way to do things. In time, they'll come over. I shoot video at 60fps (progressive) for instructional videos and it looks amazing. We don't host them at 60fps since there aren't any video services that'll let you that I know of, but I wish we could. They are just amazingly smooth.
I must admit that part of me wants to agree with this. But I also wonder if the fact that 24 to 30 fps footage somehow looks more "distant" and less "live" is part of why people prefer it, the "distance" it puts between the viewer and the action subconsciously aiding suspension of disbelief.
This might be wrong, I don't know- it's just a guess. I do know that I much prefer higher frame rates for my own "real life" footage though- for precisely the opposite (or rather, same) reason- even to the point of running an interpolation filter on the footage.
Funny how people expect better frame rates from their *games* than their movies. I expect some of these people crying about how 48fps looks "too real" or "video-like" would have a shit-fit if their game was anything under 60.
As far as I'm aware, part of the issue with games is that movement isn't blurred, which would mean that if you showed *that* at 24fps, it would look noticeably jerky.
I have a digital SLR with movie facility, and one of the annoying drawbacks with the video mode is that it in bright light, it frequently sets a very short exposure time (in 25 or 30 fps mode), meaning that each individual frame exhibits little or no blurring. Perversely, this actually makes the result look *more* jerky, even if it blurs less. (This is probably made much worse due to the fact the camera can only shoot "movie rate" 24, 25 or 30 fps, not 50 or 60 fps, along with the fact it wasn't designed primarily as a movie camera in general).
Recommended exposure times are given in this article.
I must admit that I hardly ever think of Wikipedia's appearance
See that? That's called good design.
My point exactly. :-)
As a Wikipedia contributor and editor, I didn't find the article offensive so much as I thought "I really don't see where she gets that from".
:-)
Had I never used Wikipedia, I'd probably expect it- going by her description- to look like something basic and ugly from 1997. I mean, "Geocities"? It's nothing like the stereotypical Geocities page (garish and tasteless decorations and backdrops).
I must admit that I hardly ever think of Wikipedia's appearance- it doesn't look plain or boring to me, which would suggest it was underdesigned in the way she implies- it simply isn't a factor. That suggests that they got it right- it's nice and clean, and doesn't distract from the content, while not being gratuitously over-plain.
No, it's not covered in Web-2.0 shading, and there isn't an excess of distracting widgets. In all honesty, I get the impression that the author is really criticising the lack of *cutesiness*, over-designed attempts to appear friendly with "helpful" candy.
I'll definitely concede one point; editing is still too technical. I'm a geek, so I'm happy to directly edit markup, add templates with parameters, etc. However, I have thought quite often while doing this that it's almost certainly not friendly to average non-techie users. The visual editor is a step in the right direction, but it still probably needs more. I'm not talking about dumbing down things, simply saying that if something can reasonably be presented in a non-technical way without too much compromise, then the choice should be there.
Of course, I'd probably rather just edit the markup directly, and I'd want *that* choice to remain too, if it was so wanted.
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical)
Why? Just because it's the most obvious layout, doesn't mean it's the optimal one for typing. At most it's going to make it slightly easier for complete beginners to find keys before they've learned where they are.
I'm not claiming that QWERTY is the best layout for typing- in fact, it's generally accepted that it almost certainly isn't.
But as you say, there have been countless attempts to do alternate layouts, and few have gained much traction. If we're talking about mobile devices (where, after all, people learned to "type" on a non-QWERTY 12-digit keyboard (*)) perhaps sticking with a full keyboard- albeit with different layout- isn't thinking far enough (**), and we should be considering something like Microwriter- which first appeared 30 years ago!
(*) And showed no inclination do use that on a computer
(**) I was going to say "not thinking far enough outside the box" but I really loathe that stupid cliche even though I can't think of anything better. Always found it ironic that "thinking outside the box" is such a cliched, unoriginal, unimaginative, corporate, stuck inside the damn box phrase(!!)
Don't judge the people around you, learn from them.
Learning helplessness is bad advice.
You clearly weren't paying enough attention. He wasn't simply suggesting that the OP follow their path or do what they say unquestioningly. "Learn from them" was meant in the more intelligent sense where one can learn from both good and bad examples. In particular, he comments:-
It is a good idea to find people who you want to emulate and to look up to, but it can be even more valuable to find people around you whose fate you are desperate to avoid and try to discern what happened then don't do that. [my emphasis]
So is this the same situation we're seeing here?
(just don't make an Electron version - even if it has Plus 1 and Plus 3 expansion modules like I had back in the day!)
Yes... given that the Acorn Electron- intended as a cut-down "home" version of the BBC Micro- was a flop (*) that led to Acorn being taken over, that would probably be A Bad Thing. Also, as far as I know, the Electron was pretty underpowered and needed those add-on modules for any "serious" expansion.
(*) Sort of- apparently what happened was that there *was* quite high demand for it, but they had problems with the custom ULA chip and couldn't get enough out in time for Christmas. By the time they had the problem sorted out in the New Year, those potential customers had bought rival machines instead and Acorn were left with warehouses full of unsold Electrons.
The article says that the 13-year-old computer hacker in question was male, but I strongly suspect they were thrown by her name and strange androgynous appearance.
It has been one of the wettest ever Junes here in the UK and it is still raining heavily. When it is not raining it's heavy cloud. Although that's stereotypical weather here, it's more like what you'd expect in the winter.
Even in Scotland, where it's not been quite as badly affected as some other parts of the UK, (*) it's still been pretty poor by our standards (even though the past few years have dragged expectations down). It's been quite easy to forget that it's even meant to be summer at all. And this was following a surprisingly mild winter and a pretty good spring (again, by our standards!)
;-)
:-)
And this isn't really offtopic, because it's all related to the heatwave in the US. Yeah, I'm blaming the Yanks for our shitty weather.
(*) Though the west coast of Scotland in particular has very high rainfall on average to start off with. Fortunately, I'm in the east, where the average rainfall is much lower
Stephen Conroy is a douche. Never trust an Australian who doesn't drink.
Indeed- it's well known that he was kicked out of the University of Woolloomooloo for breaking rule #4 (they don't want to catch anybody not drinking). There were also moves to kick him out under rules #1, #3, #5 and #7, but he maintained he wasn't a poofter.
Also, the fact that his name isn't "Bruce" caused too much confusion.
TFA follows the same scheme as many recent Slashdot submissions - ask an inflammatory question (to which to answer is usually "no") to generate page views and a heated discussion.
Indeed!