Speaking english certainly helps living here, but it's not required.
Here in the UK we don't insist on English langauge skills, and I think it's a mistake! My godfather (not The Godfather!) was an anglo-indian who immigrated to the UK and he reckoned that if you came to this country you should have some time period (3 to 5 years) in which you should have learned the langauge and applied for citizenship or you'd get sent back. Perhaps a little over-zealous but he was an immigrant!
We now have the ludicrous situation where an English girl is arrested at school because she asked to be moved from a group of non-English speakers as she couldn't understand them. Now, granted, she may have been less than pleasent, but it does say that she was in a group with only one other English speaking pupil. That's just plain wrong!
The height of the robot climb is what got me. It's a timed event, and the height they had to climb might have been 10 meters further than the benchmark.
... and why couldn't they measure the stupid thing after the event? They really need to sort themselves out if they want people to come and play next time. And the 2 metre loop - they have to tell the competitors how it will be measured - maybe have a "measuring machine" that competitors can have access too. The competitors must load their own loop onto the machine to be measured too, so they can't cry foul thinking it was measured wrong.
It really has to all be above board with no room for arguments or people will get fed up!
Are you one of those crazy euro tpes who claims the standard of living is higher in you little country?
I think the standard of living is probably higher in Sweden - but I don't know that. I live in the UK. It's not perfect either, but we tend not to have gun wielding loonies shooting the place up all the time - though that is changing! We do have much more petty crime, and that's probably a direct result of the lack of gun wielding loonies!
But just because I like the UK, I'd still say I don't want the whole world to be like the UK. That'd suck too, though not as much as if the whole world was like the USA (IMHO)!
I like to visit different places, see different societies, hear different languages. One of the problems of the US, or at least the rest of the World's perception of the US, is that of homogenisation. Most US towns look the same. Same shops. Same cars. Same layout. Same-o-Samey-Same-Same. The UK is going that way too, with bloody starbucks on every corner. Europeans, for the most part, like variety. We're not scared by 'difference'.
True story, I was in Edinburgh (sorry, "Edinborrow") and popped into a pub for lunch. On the menu was "clapshot" so I asked the chap behind the bar what it was. Mince and peas and stuff - traditional Scottish food. An American gentleman at the bar says "I had to ask him what it was too. Why can't they just write it in English".
Sorry, but that just sums it up for me!
Oh yes, a friend's aunt is a tour guide and apparently overheard an American saying about Windsor Castle "sure is a lovely castle, but why do you think they built it so close to Heathrow".
You know I've never disliked a yank I've met. You are usually warm, friendly, and generous, but too many of you seem to wear blinkers. As a friend, I'd say you've got to wake up and smell the coffee!
And more to the point, what is the evolutionary pressure?
The pressure can be a number of things, for example, in the early part of the last century, certainly in the UK, being flat footed was a survival characteristic. This was because the armed forces didn't take people with flat feet, so a lot of young males with perfect feet were shipped off to war and were killed. There is a marked increase in the number of people in the UK who now have flat feet.
If you look at the local housing estates in the UK you will see the numbers of low (or at least lower) income families, often under-educated, having more children than the high (or higher) income, more often better educated, groups living in the "yuppie prisons". This means the average IQ in the UK is probably falling. I'm not saying the poor people are stupid, but that they usually don't get the benefit from intelligence and therefore being agressive is more likely to get you a mate than being clever. There is already the split, it's just that it's not yet quite so obvious (apart from the chavvy clothes choice, obviously!).
And its a shame the the world doesn't equal the USA..."
Not wanting to contradict you there friend, but no, it isn't a shame that the World doesn't equal the USA. The US has it's plus points (for example, I love your steak and oversized portions) but it sure as hell ain't perfect.
It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
This is why I never join any "club" whether a religious group or a political party or whatever that expects me to tow the line on every issue they're concerned with.
When arguing politics (but other subjects can also benefit from the technique - See Religion!) I have a favourite question to pose:-
For example, when arguing with a rabid Labour support friend of mine about how bad the Thatcher years were, I asked...
No government does everything wrong, so there must have been some good things she accomplished, so tell me some of the things you agreed with?
At this point, you get one of two results:-
1) They list the "good points" that they agree with.
My friend stopped and thought for a while and started to real off a list of stuff that Thatcher's Gov did that he agreed with. This really takes the wind out of their sales and we could go back to having a pleasent drink. I also became aware that he had a much better grasp of politics than I did (indeed, than I do!), mostly because being in opposition for many years creates not only the "rabid" nature but also fosters the "need to know" that finds the knowledge.
2) They say "No. Everything about _blah_ is bad" (See Religion!)
Now you know where you stand. You are NOT arguing with a sane person (See Religion!) and you might as well change the subject or just politely walk off, which is invariably what I do, unless I just want to wind them up!
Every cat I've had finds an area of loose earth and digs a hole, covering it over after he has finished.
So it's OK that I spend time and effort to dig over a patch of earth to plant vegetables and when I come to plant them I uncover cat sh1t buried just under the surface. It wouldn't be so bad if it was on the top where you could see it!
Best thing would be if other people's cats didn't crap in my garden!
The downside is that the energy cost of a semiballistic lob from Australia to Europe is almost as much as the cost of getting to orbit, so you almost have to build a space shuttle to get the idea to work.
Anyone remember HOTOL? As I recall there were talks of quick flights from the UK to Australia (or wherever) with a couple of orbits thrown in for free as it would also carry a satalite into orbit, and maybe recover old satalites for repair to help cover costs. Obviously, this was a LONG time ago and it never got built, but people have been thinking about this sort of thing for a long time. It's nice someone's actually doing something now, but Virgin Galactic should have an eye on moving people around the world and not just returning to the original base. Think how much more valuable the £100,000 flight would be if you could take off from Europe and land in Australia in a few hours.
Now if they can only breed out the other annoying undesirable traits cats have.
It's funny how dog owners are expected to pick up their dog's sh1t and put it in a bin, but cat owners are allowed to let their animals roam free and crap whereever the hell they like, but obviously not in the owner's garden because cats like to crap elsewhere! Nice.
Years back our dog got into the next door garden after chasing their cat and the neighbour came around to complain. My dad was quite happy to comply... "certainly, I'll keep our dog out of your garden if you keep your cat out of ours".
I know it's not cats fault that they aren't dogs and you can't really dislike something for being what it is, but what is it with cat owners? More often than not they are scratchy unpleasent unfriendly things with a God complex (the cats, not the owners, although...).
As a friend once said, the thing about cats is that you KNOW that if they were big enough they'd kill you and eat you!
I go to the University of Kansas, we've been doing balloon flights for some time now, were currently attaching a rocket to a balloon, were even calling it a Rockoon. Get it? Rocket Balloon,
Well, with the alternative name being Ballet, Rockoon doesn't sound so bad!
... we would like to add control systems sufficient to put it through a fairly small window in space and time, as a concept demonstrator for something that would latch onto a rotating space tether.
This sounds all very interesting... Is there a project page on the net, or otherwise further reading?
Something very similar happened in the UK a year or so back. Some new legislation was tabled that would mean it would be an offence to not provide the decryption key to data if it was suspected that the encrypted data contained evidence of a crime, and you were asked for the key. People told the Home Secretary that you might not know the key, etc, but the law was still going ahead.
Someone committed a crime, verified by a lawyer, and the evidence was encrypted and emailed to the Home Secretary. He now was in possesion of evidence of a crime that was encrypted and he didn't know the decryption key.
Unfortunately, he wasn't arrested and put in prison!
It seems it's one rule for politicians and another for the rest of us!
Does anybody know what kinds of problems they encountered with the Mir?
I'm glad you brought up Mir because in a previous thread about ISS some people (including me) suggested it might have been useful to have kept Mir in space, indeed, moved its orbit to allow it to link up with the ISS as a "safe haven". The idea was shot down in flames - cost of orbit change and the fact that it was so old and knackered.
Now we have a chemical leak on the ISS, though thankfully not too critical. What if it was a BIGGER problem though. Wouldn't it be grand to be able to scuttle off to sit in the old (and maybe reconditioned) Mir where there could be emergency supplies and EVA suits etc to give the incumbents time to diagnose and resolve the problems with the ISS.
Sure, Mir was junk, but it might just have been a useful piece of junk in an emergency, being pretty much self contained (you could have the options to join various of the systems allowing it to take a power feed etc if required).
The North Atlantic is one of the most hostile environments on earth
Which might be why they are sailing south from Seville to the Canaries, then south again to the Cape Verde islands before heading off across the Atlantic to St Martin, and thence Bahamas, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, then New York. Sure, they're sailing up the coast to New York, but they're not sailing straight across to New York.
5. Although batteries weigh a lot, so does fuel...
I'm not sure the weight of the batteries is actually an issue. How much ballast would a boat like this carry anyway, and why couldn't all the ballast be batteries!
What's the best way to mount solar panels onto a rolling and pitching surface?
Probably to use a ship design that doesn't roll and pitch (as much), like SWATH for example. It would also seem eminently sensible to have the ability to raise a rudimentary sail if there's wind running in the right direction, and maybe raise some wind generators if there's wind running in some other direction, though it's possible that a wind generator of sufficient size to "make a difference" in propulsion might offer sufficient resistance to the wind that the craft would be blown off course.
I understand the prevention of monopolies, but this is silly. Should automobile manufacturers not sell airbags with their cars, just so other companies can manufacture them?
I _think_ the problem is that Vista actively prevents other companies from providing a substitute for the bundled applications, so even if someone wanted to run Norton or whatever, they couldn't. But I might be wrong on that!
but it makes sense to me that proprietary software would best be secured by the people who wrote it
If you are saying that they re-engineer their OS so that it cannot be hacked (or even so that it is difficult to be hacked!) then I'd agree with you, but if they are packaging some other tool (that they probably originally purchased from some other company!) to try and address the fact that their OS is full of holes then I'm not so convinced. Phrases such as "paper over the cracks" and "polishing a turd" spring to mind.
I'm not quite sure why the EU has it out for Microsoft.
Microsoft have been successful in part because they have made good business decisions, like buying competitors or pricing them out of the market. This is all good business from MS's point of view, but it can be seen as a bit sharp when viewed in the wider context of The Industry and it isn't surprising (at least to me!) that "The Industry" fights back in various ways, and one of those ways is to point out that MS's perfectly reasonable (IMHO) business decisions are actually anti-competitive and verging on the monopolistic and encouraging of a monoculture. A monoculture is NOT good for The Industry, but is VERY GOOD for MS (assuming they are the monoculture!), so they have to be reined in every now and then.
If MS could pull their horns in a bit they might piss people off a bit less.
Instead of a gambling business he is selling access to child pornography to people...
Ah... the "Think of the Children" defence... OK... continue...
... which is not illegal in his country for some reason.
OK... so other than the "child porn" thing, we have the same situation, right, but it's children now, so that must change it right? Er... well, no actually. If he is actively marketing his wares at Americans and his wares are illegal (whatever they may be) then he is indeed doing something wrong. If he isn't actively marketing his wares at Americans then I don't think he is doing anything wrong, in the same way Western companies selling bikinis on the internet shouldn't be arestable in Muslim countries for showing women without veils.
No, actually it is up to the businesses to make sure the business they do in other countries is legal. If you want to accept money from country X then make sure you are allowed to conduct business there.
Sure, but if he isn't targetting Americans then it's not his fault if US citizens discover his website and gamble. You also can't really stop people using US moneys (ie credit cards) as they may be somewhere where it is legal. I guess you could have a check-box to allow the user to state that they are not in the US. Actually, that's probably all he needs!
As it happens, I think he is marketing his wares at US folks as he apparently has a specifically "US" domain name (sportbettingusa.com or something), so he's a berk!
... and on top of that, where are all the prosecutions of the punters who use his website from the US? If they have evidence of people in the US gamboling online, are there the prosecutions of the gambollers too? I'd say it's up to the individual to decide if they want to break the law in their own land, and if they do it is up to them!
Your analogy of selling guns is interesting. If you had a website that allowed people to buy guns online, could you be arrested if you flew into the UK? By your arguments you could be!
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Here in the UK we don't insist on English langauge skills, and I think it's a mistake! My godfather (not The Godfather!) was an anglo-indian who immigrated to the UK and he reckoned that if you came to this country you should have some time period (3 to 5 years) in which you should have learned the langauge and applied for citizenship or you'd get sent back. Perhaps a little over-zealous but he was an immigrant!
We now have the ludicrous situation where an English girl is arrested at school because she asked to be moved from a group of non-English speakers as she couldn't understand them. Now, granted, she may have been less than pleasent, but it does say that she was in a group with only one other English speaking pupil. That's just plain wrong!
It really has to all be above board with no room for arguments or people will get fed up!
I think the standard of living is probably higher in Sweden - but I don't know that. I live in the UK. It's not perfect either, but we tend not to have gun wielding loonies shooting the place up all the time - though that is changing! We do have much more petty crime, and that's probably a direct result of the lack of gun wielding loonies!
But just because I like the UK, I'd still say I don't want the whole world to be like the UK. That'd suck too, though not as much as if the whole world was like the USA (IMHO)!
I like to visit different places, see different societies, hear different languages. One of the problems of the US, or at least the rest of the World's perception of the US, is that of homogenisation. Most US towns look the same. Same shops. Same cars. Same layout. Same-o-Samey-Same-Same. The UK is going that way too, with bloody starbucks on every corner. Europeans, for the most part, like variety. We're not scared by 'difference'.
True story, I was in Edinburgh (sorry, "Edinborrow") and popped into a pub for lunch. On the menu was "clapshot" so I asked the chap behind the bar what it was. Mince and peas and stuff - traditional Scottish food. An American gentleman at the bar says "I had to ask him what it was too. Why can't they just write it in English".
Sorry, but that just sums it up for me!
Oh yes, a friend's aunt is a tour guide and apparently overheard an American saying about Windsor Castle "sure is a lovely castle, but why do you think they built it so close to Heathrow".
You know I've never disliked a yank I've met. You are usually warm, friendly, and generous, but too many of you seem to wear blinkers. As a friend, I'd say you've got to wake up and smell the coffee!
The pressure can be a number of things, for example, in the early part of the last century, certainly in the UK, being flat footed was a survival characteristic. This was because the armed forces didn't take people with flat feet, so a lot of young males with perfect feet were shipped off to war and were killed. There is a marked increase in the number of people in the UK who now have flat feet.
If you look at the local housing estates in the UK you will see the numbers of low (or at least lower) income families, often under-educated, having more children than the high (or higher) income, more often better educated, groups living in the "yuppie prisons". This means the average IQ in the UK is probably falling. I'm not saying the poor people are stupid, but that they usually don't get the benefit from intelligence and therefore being agressive is more likely to get you a mate than being clever. There is already the split, it's just that it's not yet quite so obvious (apart from the chavvy clothes choice, obviously!).
Not wanting to contradict you there friend, but no, it isn't a shame that the World doesn't equal the USA. The US has it's plus points (for example, I love your steak and oversized portions) but it sure as hell ain't perfect.
It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.
When arguing politics (but other subjects can also benefit from the technique - See Religion!) I have a favourite question to pose :-
For example, when arguing with a rabid Labour support friend of mine about how bad the Thatcher years were, I asked ...
No government does everything wrong, so there must have been some good things she accomplished, so tell me some of the things you agreed with?
At this point, you get one of two results :-
1) They list the "good points" that they agree with.
My friend stopped and thought for a while and started to real off a list of stuff that Thatcher's Gov did that he agreed with. This really takes the wind out of their sales and we could go back to having a pleasent drink. I also became aware that he had a much better grasp of politics than I did (indeed, than I do!), mostly because being in opposition for many years creates not only the "rabid" nature but also fosters the "need to know" that finds the knowledge.
2) They say "No. Everything about _blah_ is bad" (See Religion!)
Now you know where you stand. You are NOT arguing with a sane person (See Religion!) and you might as well change the subject or just politely walk off, which is invariably what I do, unless I just want to wind them up!
I, for one, welcome our new Swedish overlords, but welcome even more our new Swedish overladies!
So it's OK that I spend time and effort to dig over a patch of earth to plant vegetables and when I come to plant them I uncover cat sh1t buried just under the surface. It wouldn't be so bad if it was on the top where you could see it!
Best thing would be if other people's cats didn't crap in my garden!
Anyone remember HOTOL? As I recall there were talks of quick flights from the UK to Australia (or wherever) with a couple of orbits thrown in for free as it would also carry a satalite into orbit, and maybe recover old satalites for repair to help cover costs. Obviously, this was a LONG time ago and it never got built, but people have been thinking about this sort of thing for a long time. It's nice someone's actually doing something now, but Virgin Galactic should have an eye on moving people around the world and not just returning to the original base. Think how much more valuable the £100,000 flight would be if you could take off from Europe and land in Australia in a few hours.
It's funny how dog owners are expected to pick up their dog's sh1t and put it in a bin, but cat owners are allowed to let their animals roam free and crap whereever the hell they like, but obviously not in the owner's garden because cats like to crap elsewhere! Nice.
Years back our dog got into the next door garden after chasing their cat and the neighbour came around to complain. My dad was quite happy to comply ... "certainly, I'll keep our dog out of your garden if you keep your cat out of ours".
I know it's not cats fault that they aren't dogs and you can't really dislike something for being what it is, but what is it with cat owners? More often than not they are scratchy unpleasent unfriendly things with a God complex (the cats, not the owners, although ...).
As a friend once said, the thing about cats is that you KNOW that if they were big enough they'd kill you and eat you!
Phlegm.
Nice to know there'll be a similarity between this and most of the hotels I can afford!
You appear to be a dab hand at these fish jokes, and I don't want to carp and knock you off your perch, but maybe you didn't do it on porpoise?
Well, with the alternative name being Ballet, Rockoon doesn't sound so bad!
This sounds all very interesting ... Is there a project page on the net, or otherwise further reading?
Someone committed a crime, verified by a lawyer, and the evidence was encrypted and emailed to the Home Secretary. He now was in possesion of evidence of a crime that was encrypted and he didn't know the decryption key.
Unfortunately, he wasn't arrested and put in prison!
It seems it's one rule for politicians and another for the rest of us!
I'm glad you brought up Mir because in a previous thread about ISS some people (including me) suggested it might have been useful to have kept Mir in space, indeed, moved its orbit to allow it to link up with the ISS as a "safe haven". The idea was shot down in flames - cost of orbit change and the fact that it was so old and knackered.
Now we have a chemical leak on the ISS, though thankfully not too critical. What if it was a BIGGER problem though. Wouldn't it be grand to be able to scuttle off to sit in the old (and maybe reconditioned) Mir where there could be emergency supplies and EVA suits etc to give the incumbents time to diagnose and resolve the problems with the ISS.
Sure, Mir was junk, but it might just have been a useful piece of junk in an emergency, being pretty much self contained (you could have the options to join various of the systems allowing it to take a power feed etc if required).
It just seemed stupid to throw it away!
CRIKEY!
Which might be why they are sailing south from Seville to the Canaries, then south again to the Cape Verde islands before heading off across the Atlantic to St Martin, and thence Bahamas, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, then New York. Sure, they're sailing up the coast to New York, but they're not sailing straight across to New York.
I'm not sure the weight of the batteries is actually an issue. How much ballast would a boat like this carry anyway, and why couldn't all the ballast be batteries!
Probably to use a ship design that doesn't roll and pitch (as much), like SWATH for example. It would also seem eminently sensible to have the ability to raise a rudimentary sail if there's wind running in the right direction, and maybe raise some wind generators if there's wind running in some other direction, though it's possible that a wind generator of sufficient size to "make a difference" in propulsion might offer sufficient resistance to the wind that the craft would be blown off course.
Interesting concept though.
I _think_ the problem is that Vista actively prevents other companies from providing a substitute for the bundled applications, so even if someone wanted to run Norton or whatever, they couldn't. But I might be wrong on that!
but it makes sense to me that proprietary software would best be secured by the people who wrote it
If you are saying that they re-engineer their OS so that it cannot be hacked (or even so that it is difficult to be hacked!) then I'd agree with you, but if they are packaging some other tool (that they probably originally purchased from some other company!) to try and address the fact that their OS is full of holes then I'm not so convinced. Phrases such as "paper over the cracks" and "polishing a turd" spring to mind.
I'm not quite sure why the EU has it out for Microsoft.
Microsoft have been successful in part because they have made good business decisions, like buying competitors or pricing them out of the market. This is all good business from MS's point of view, but it can be seen as a bit sharp when viewed in the wider context of The Industry and it isn't surprising (at least to me!) that "The Industry" fights back in various ways, and one of those ways is to point out that MS's perfectly reasonable (IMHO) business decisions are actually anti-competitive and verging on the monopolistic and encouraging of a monoculture. A monoculture is NOT good for The Industry, but is VERY GOOD for MS (assuming they are the monoculture!), so they have to be reined in every now and then.
If MS could pull their horns in a bit they might piss people off a bit less.
Ah ... the "Think of the Children" defence ... OK ... continue ...
OK ... so other than the "child porn" thing, we have the same situation, right, but it's children now, so that must change it right? Er ... well, no actually. If he is actively marketing his wares at Americans and his wares are illegal (whatever they may be) then he is indeed doing something wrong. If he isn't actively marketing his wares at Americans then I don't think he is doing anything wrong, in the same way Western companies selling bikinis on the internet shouldn't be arestable in Muslim countries for showing women without veils.
No, actually it is up to the businesses to make sure the business they do in other countries is legal. If you want to accept money from country X then make sure you are allowed to conduct business there.
Sure, but if he isn't targetting Americans then it's not his fault if US citizens discover his website and gamble. You also can't really stop people using US moneys (ie credit cards) as they may be somewhere where it is legal. I guess you could have a check-box to allow the user to state that they are not in the US. Actually, that's probably all he needs!
As it happens, I think he is marketing his wares at US folks as he apparently has a specifically "US" domain name (sportbettingusa.com or something), so he's a berk!
Your analogy of selling guns is interesting. If you had a website that allowed people to buy guns online, could you be arrested if you flew into the UK? By your arguments you could be!
That's OK by me dude ... fill yer boots!
If he was using IE, Bill Gates had better high-tail it out of there before the Feds come and pick him up!