They tell you not to put metal in it because you probably don't know how to do so safely and so will end up doing yourself, or your oven, a mischief. They think that if you don't do it at all, you can't possibly do it wrong. If you want to try, remember microwaves are radio waves (they're about 12cm. IMMSMC) and obey all the usual laws of radio waves. Read some advanced physics textbooks and you'll learn how to put metal objects in a microwave oven without getting the usual light show.
To summarise the physics: metals, being good conductors, tend to get a current induced in them; so does water, but, not being a perfect conductor, it also gets a potential difference across it and the old "volts * amps = watts" thing kicks in. Hence why food gets hot in the microwave, and why filament light bulbs glow in the microwave. Air is an even worse conductor, and the potential difference across the air between a piece of electrically-charged metal and the earthed oven wall might well be significant. (And no, disconnecting the earth in the plug won't help. You'll just make the oven body live. Damn those Continentals with their lovely Schuko plugs that have no fuse and will fit into a non-earthed socket with nary word of a warning. At least the worst thing that can happen in this country is that you'll plant a bare foot on a 13-amp plug in the dark. Actually, make that a socked foot; lovely fibre fragments driven deep into the wound by the sharp-edged brass pins). Once you get a PD greater than about 3MV/m (or 3kV/mm, whichever comes first) air tends to make like a metal-oxide varistor and suddenly go from being a terrible conductor to being a really good conductor. Hence the fireworks.
Someone recently wrote a letter to my local paper suggesting that interest rates on savings should be pegged at least 1.5% above the rate of inflation. That sounds to me like a recipe for high inflation. After all, the only thing that causes inflation, is inflation: things get more expensive so people demand a pay rise, and then having to pay workers more makes things get more expensive.
I have a much more sensible idea. Peg the value of currency to a commodity. Not a capricious commodity such as gold or silver (which really worked in the past..... NOT), but a stable one whose intrinsic value is unchanging: energy. As the energy efficiency of industrial processes increases, a kilowatt-hour in the hand becomes more valuable (since it will pay for a greater quantity of efficiently-manufactured goods than inefficiently-manufactured ones).
Also, it would mean that instead of taking banknotes to a bank and exchanging them for gold or silver, people would be able to take just about anything that burns to the Sociedade Municipal de Iluminaçao e Traçao and exchange it for electricity meter tokens!
Yeah, precisely. On the upside of the "two weekly rubbish collections" is the fact that you no longer have to make the trek to the recycling centre under your own steam. For a non-car-owner (yes, we exist), that is more onerous than it sounds (at least if you have a car, you can load it up on your way to the supermarket -- all large supermarkets have recycling centres).
English has borrowed words from the languages of every other nation that either invaded, or has been invaded by, Britain throughout all of history. And, of course, all these people had their own peculiar spelling rules (the Spaniards even started a civil war over how to pronounce the letter "J". The "ch-as-in-loch" faction won and promptly revised everything to make it look as though it had always been that way. This intensely annoyed the "zh" and "y" factions, who still occasionally lob the odd bomb).
English also has apparently many more words than the languages of neighbouring countries. This is because we have assimilated words for the same thing from different languages, and then assigned subtly different meanings to them. For instance, in most languages, the word for an animal and the meat that comes from it is the same. But in Feudal times in England, the peasants (who spoke the Germanic-derived Anglo-Saxon language) were breeding animals which ended up on the tables of the aristocracy, who were speaking the French-derived Norman language. On the other hand, English relies heavily on pronouns and auxiliary verbs rather than using inflection (the exceptions being the third-person singular present tense, which takes "-s" or "-es", the past tense which usually takes "-ed", the past participle which usually takes "ed" and the present participle which takes "-ing".) The present participle can also be used as a gerund; however, there is little merit in explaining such things. Fully conjugating a verb in English -- except "be" and "have" which are highly irregular (except in the South West, where they say "I be [or rather, Oi be], you be, he/she/it be, we be, you be, they be), but that is the case in most languages; indeed, any race in whose language the verb "to be" is regular are intrinsically untrustworthy -- requires only four or five different words (not including the pronouns and auxiliary verbs, which are shared). However, for the purpose of counting vocabulary, inflected languages consider all inflections as being the same word.
And you really should pity the French: they have to use inflection and pronouns (je suis, tu es, il/elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes et ils/elles sont) whereas in Spain they manage with just soy, eres, es, somos, sois y son respectively. Of course they do have pronouns, they just aren't usually necessary and are just used emphatically; for instance, "yo te amo" as opposed to just "te amo" means more like "It is me who loves you".
So should it be incumbant upon the BBC to allow their programs to be received on ANY type of receiver?
Yes. The BBC does not exist to promote one make over another.
Back in the days when the BBC first started, you had to build your own receiver. Radio parts have never been restricted.
If I write my own operating system, can I complain that I can't watch the DRMed content on it?
Yes. You should, as a licence payer, have been told how to decrypt the content. For instance, in the case of audio broadcasts, the content is encoded in an analogue form, by variations in the frequency of a carrier wave in the 3m. band.
The BBC's insistence to use DRM (Digital RESTRICTIONS Management -- it does sod-all for my rights) goes against their charter.
When the BBC first began, you had no choice but to build your own radio set. There was never any question that some essential part might be kept locked away out of the reach of the General Public for the specific purpose of preventing just any random person from constructing a receiver.
For the BBC to insist that their programmes only be received on one particular make of receiver (however it may be rebadged), and that an essential part (the Source Code for the decryption) be specifically denied to home constructors and experimenters, is nothing short of outrageous.
This country is becoming more and more like the former GDR every day.
A scientist has faith in exactly two things: (1) The laws of Nature are universal, that is they apply to everything without exception; and (2) The laws of Nature are immutable, that is they cannot change, have never changed and will never change. Everything else follows on from there.
If you assume that there is some isolatable system which does not obey the laws of Nature, or that the laws of Nature have changed at some point in time, science stops working.
Dogs don't think they are people: dogs think they are wolves.
Dogs also think people are wolves (it's easy to see where they got the idea; our caveman ancestors were predators who lived and hunted in packs. On the other hand, we take many small drinks and do one big widdle). But that is not the same thing as dogs thinking they are people.
The behaviour you have described is just classic learning and reinforcement.
It should be obvious to anyone who understands their history why CD sales are slowing down.
In the beginning was the LP. And we bought our music on LPs, and transferred it to tape (reel-to-reel at first, then cassette). In fact, if it hadn't been for someone wanting to link a record player and a tape recorder together sometime in the 1960s, there would be no AJS318 writing this; but I digress. We had our LPs. Some of them were good, and some of them were crap. And we had our tapes, including quite a few made from other people's LPs. Some of them were so good that we went out and bought our own copy of the LP straight away. LPs by design had a limited life, and many consumer-grade record players did little or nothing to prolong that.
We also had 45s; but these were mainly bought by a younger, more impatient market segment who had to have the latest song now and couldn't wait for it to appear on a long-player. Singles were also bought by those who liked a particular song but couldn't afford the full album -- or had already listened to it and decided it would not be worth buying for one song! The other main market for singles was with the amusement machine hire companies, for stocking juke boxes in pubs, cafés and leisure centres.
Then came the CD, and we began buying our music on CDs. Not everyone was convinced at first. Some of us began buying music on CD that we already had on a cassette made from somebody else's LP, or on an LP that we owned but which was beginning to sound worn-out. It's worth mentioning that the early CD players, even consumer-grade ones, tended to be well-made and put out a high-quality signal. Like the first transistor amplifiers a quarter of a century before, they represented a technology that had to prove itself in the marketplace; and the only way for the CD to succeed was to be noticeably better than the LP. One of the CD's distinguishing features was the provision of copious sleeve notes that had previously been associated only with some of the better LPs. While the page format is smaller than an LP cover, a standard CD case can hold a 16-page glossy booklet and a modified one can hold a whopping 32 pages. That is plenty of room for the full lyrics, band photographs and production notes -- and by design, it is difficult to reproduce well.
At this point we also ought to remember another important difference. The CD had an 80-minute maximum running time, as compared to about 45 minutes for an LP. Although it was possible to get over an hour of music onto an LP, this came at the expense of signal strength (and therefore quality) due to the need to pack the grooves more densely. Where in the past, a record producer might have had to make tough decisions about what to include on an LP and what to leave out, with almost double the space available on a CD there was a temptation to fill it all. This brought about a paradigm shift in album production. And whilst CD singles existed, CD juke boxes were designed from the outset to be capable of being stocked with albums.
Then came a generation of smaller and smaller hi-fis, made possible by the omission of a turntable. Some of us began buying music on CD that we already had on LP. Around this time, manufacturers also began cheese-paring; using cheaper components, polyester capacitors instead of ceramic, unshielded cables, tinned connectors instead of gold-plated, single PCBs instead of separate analogue, digital and power boards. The CD was officially no longer in competition with the LP, and it no longer had to try so hard to prove itself. (Cf. what happens to some people when they get into a stable relationship and therefore no longer have to advertise their availability to potential mates.)
Digital downloads are what the single-buying population -- i.e. teenagers and younger kids -- are buying. Without wishing to sound patronising, these people haven't yet felt the need to have a physical product to look after, to handle and to display. (Some are t
If a qubit Q is both zero and one at the same time, then surely its complement !Q is also both zero and one at the same time? If you had qubits Q and R which were both 0 and 1 at the same time, then wouldn't (Q & R) be all of {0, 0, 0, 1} at the same time (so more likely 0), (Q | R) be all of {0, 1, 1, 1} at the same time (and so more likely 1), and (Q ^ R) be {0, 1, 1 and 0} at the same time (so equally likely 1 and 0)?
Just because a wave function has to collapse into one eigenstate when it is observed, doesn't necessarily mean that will collapse into the one you were hoping for! And you don't need to lock a cat in a box with a time bomb to prove that.
It's hard to explain the GPL (which necessarily contains some overtly political language, because it is a political statement; and many words only used by lawyers, because it may have to be relied upon in a court of law one day) to people who -- sadly, but this is a separate issue -- have more or less been brought up to believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with copying and modifying software.
In the light of which, I think they've done a great job summarising it. Yes, the GPL has various subtleties (like, you can sometimes modify software and keep it all to yourself) but they don't apply most of the time. And the GPL isn't the only Free Software / Open Source licence (the terms are about as interchangeable as "Alsatian" and "German Shepherd Dog"; can you point out something that is one but not the other? Thought not) but it's one of the best-known.
The point of a simplification is for it to be true most of the time. And I think they have succeeded.
You can't compare bit rates of telephone and ethernet connections directly. It takes 10 bits to transmit 1 byte over the telephone because each byte has a start bit and a stop bit, which is an overhead of 25%. Over the network, everything is transmitted in 1500-byte packets with a 14-byte header and 4-byte footer; so the overhead per byte is much less at 1.2%.
I get the impression that the only thing keeping your 8-output sound card from working properly under Ubuntu is want of drivers. I'm not knocking you for sticking with Windows -- people have been forced to do worse things for flimsier reasons. But have you thought of at least contacting your elected representative, and requesting that it be made law for hardware details to be disclosed; thus enabling the creation of Open Source, third-party drivers?
I mean, you'd be pretty annoyed if the next version of Windows -- to which you were forced to upgrade for some unspecified reason -- didn't include drivers for your fine-up-till-now sound card. But that could happen, because hardware disclosure isn't enforced.
Please, take the time to knock out a letter, and post it -- second class, even, if you must -- to your MP. Point out the benefits that would result from mandatory disclosure (fairness to users of alternative OSes, prevents software-controlled obsolescence, right to make proper use of what you own, prevents mendacious claims wrt hardware capabilities [e.g. digital cameras' RAW formats, closely guarded by manufacturers, reveal the true pixel count -- which may be less than what is claimed in advertising], ultimately manufacturers sell more product), and why relying on voluntary disclosure is a bad idea (everyone is paranoid of their competitors).
BTW, I'm a Sky Plus customer (ex-Virgin Media, formerly NTL); and I view it more as paying to not be advertised at. It just takes a bit of discipline: 1. Change channel on time for start of programme (machine only records the station you are actually watching unless you have programmed a recording using Planner), 2. Do something else for 10 minutes or so (enough time to account for all advert breaks in show), 3. Rewind to start of programme, 4. Fast-forward through adverts, 5. If have got so far behind live broadcast due to rewinding and pausing that next show will start on a different channel before this one finishes, bring up now+next bar and set it to record, then at end of this programme go into Planner and start watching before recording has finished (yes, you can do that; why wouldn't you be able to? It's a disc FCOL!)
Going fab-less really worked well for Transmeta, now, didn't it?
The faxt is, the x86 party is over. Well, not quite over just yet; but the flowerbeds have been trampled and puked in, the only booze left is the stuff you've got to be already pissed to even think about drinking, the loud, obnoxious drunks are in evidence, there's no smoke left and the DJ has played Agadoo for the third time.
x86 only exists for one reason: to keep Microsoft's Source Code secret. It's a fact that other OSes besides Windows run quite happily on other architectures..... including all now known and any to be invented. RISC processor designs are ten a penny, and some of them actually could work (well, they'll all work, but most of them have performance bottlenecks which don't show up until you try to run actual software on them). If you didn't have to worry about Windows compatibility, you could build a whole new processor design, which would not necessitate paying a penny in royalties to anyone; and then once you've got a compiler together, there is an absolute stackload of software you could run on it, for little more than the effort of typing "make install".
Imagine somewhere like China, India or a coalition of several Latin American countries announcing a new, government-funded, Linux- or BSD-based, PC programme. Microsoft shout out "..... but these machines will end up being used for running pirated Windows Vista!" And the government there respond "Not bloody likely, mate, these machines will be physically incapable of running Windows, pirated or not!" Checkmate!
It's going to take a big effort, but it could happen. Look at the OLPC design. It's based on ax x86-class chip today, for sure, because that was what was cheapest right now; but there's no reason why OLPC Mk.II or III couldn't be transitioned to an entirely new RISC processor design. And because all the software it includes by default is either Open Source or interpreted, it would make hardly any practical difference.
Student loans in the UK are being privatised and sooner or later will be exactly the same as any ordinary loan..... if not more expensive, on the basis that the privatised loan company has a captive audience (same reason why a cup of tea in a motorway service station is so expensive, there's nowhere else to get one).
If you have savings and a loan, even if part of the loan isn't attracting interest because of the savings, you'd still be better off without the loan. The only exception would be if you're tied in with early repayment penalties or some such.
Your loan of £L attracts interest at the rate of £(L * r1) per annum (note, here r1 is expressed as a fraction, not a percentage; i.e. 0.0725 rather than 7.25%). Your savings of £S earn interest at the rate of £(S * r2) gross per annum. If you use an offset account, then your loan attracts interest at £((L - S) * r1) per annum, saving you £(S * r1); but you miss out on £(S * r2) of interest. So the difference is £(S * (r1 - r2)) p.a. Since r1 > r2 just due to the way the banking system works, you'd be better off offsetting even if you didn't have to pay tax on the interest accrued by your savings. However, offsetting does not alter the term of your loan. If, instead, you simply made a capital repayment of £S against your loan, you would still be paying the same £((L - S) * r1) interest per annum; but the difference is, you only have £(L - S) outstanding now, and so could end up paying it off sooner. Then it won't be attracting any interest.....
Higher-rate tax is a bit of a red herring. If you never even earned the money in the first place (e.g. because you had no savings due to having spent them on a repayment on your loan instead), you can't be taxed on it! Penalty fees may apply for early repayments; but if you end up making a saving which better than covers the fee, it's still worth it. As always, do the maths, without a calculator, and have someone check your results.
In the UK, you only compute your own tax if you're self-employed. The Government figured a long time ago that it was less bother to calculate the tax owed by the working classes, than to risk letting them do it themselves and end up chasing piddling sums of money all over the place for the rest of time. Your employer pays you your wages (in cash once a week, or into a bank account once a month) net of all taxes, although they are still legally allowed to quote the gross figure in advertisements and at interview -- so a minimum wage of "£5 an hour" is actually quite a bit less than that.
There used to be a similar provision for mortgage interest being non-taxable; it was called MIRAS (Mortgage Interest Relief At Source). No similar exemption was made for rent if you lived in a rented property, therefore the scheme discriminated unfairly against the less-well-off.
The product costs $5000 no matter if I take the financing or pay cash.
Not necessarily. I'm quite sure that that if you counted out $4500 in cash right there in front of the salesman, he'd sell you it for that. Or one of his competitors would.
France doesn't use SECAM for a long time now, so no worries about that.
Yes they do. However, the SCART socket on TV sets is designed specifically to allow for an RGB+sync connection, so the only concern is the scan rate. 625/25 and 525/30 have similar enough line rates (15625 and 15750Hz respectively) that most TV sets ought to sync to a 525-line, 30fps picture. When SCART is used in RGB mode, the timing signal is taken from the pin that normally provides a composite picture signal; so appliances such as consoles and DVD players put out a full picture signal and the RGB components from which it was constructed. Other pins carry DC voltages to indicate internal receiver / external input (pin 8; on a 16x9 set, also indicates 16x9 or 4x3 by 5V or 12V respectively) and composite / RGB (pin 16). A set which isn't wired for RGB (AV2 input usually is composite-only) will simply ignore pin 16 and display the composite picture.
Bollocks. You'll never get any investment account paying more interest than you're paying out on a loan. After all, that's how the banks make their money: they don't lend you money, they rent it to you. Interest is just the rent you pay on it. They get the money to "lend" out of people's savings accounts. They aren't allowed to charge you for the "service" of looking after your money (that would constitute a protection racket), but they sure as hell don't pay you anything like as much interest on money you lend to them as they would ask you to pay them if you borrowed the same amount of money from them.
If they're offering "0%" finance, that just means they have added the interest into the sale price. Offer them cash, even a good bit less than they're asking, and they'll practically bite your hand off.
The corollary of this is that if you have a mortgage (with an interest rate around 7.5%), it makes more sense to divert any spare money you may have into paying it off early than to set up a savings account (probably earning less than 5%). Even a so-called "offsetting scheme" (whereby your savings count against the portion of your mortgage on which interest is charged) favours the bank, as the term of your mortgage is not reduced. But don't clear your mortgage completely. Leave a few pounds outstanding. As long as the interest on this amount is less than the cost of a safe deposit box, the bank will be looking after your deeds for you "on the cheap" until the full term is up! Do keep enough cash about your person or in your home at all times to clear this outstanding amount, though..... you might need it to get rid of the bailiffs if the bank do try to repossess your home.
If I ever see an advertisement for a product (bear in mind I have Sky Plus to avoid adverts on the TV and an advert-blocking Squid proxy to avoid them on the Internet), I go out of my way to avoid it; and seek out alternatives made by companies who put their money into actually improving the quality of their product rather than into trying to tell me just how good it is.
You're only venturing into fraud / theft of services / obtaining by deception territory if a court of law decides that you had no intention to pay. You turning up at the office with actual banknotes demonstrates an intention to pay. If they refuse a reasonable offer of payment, they may well (inadvertently) be agreeing to give you something for free.
It's a bit like the case of the student who got a wealthy lawyer to sponsor his university education in law, on the basis that he would hand over the entire proceeds of his first case by way of complete and final recompense. Immediately upon receiving his degree, he signed on the dole and made no attempt to get a job as even a minor partner in a law firm. His sponsor took him to court for breach of contract; the graduate represented himself. Either his sponsor's payoff would amount to nothing (because he had lost his first case); or the decision of the court would be that he didn't have to pay his sponsor anything (if he won the case).
So, knock the transaction fee off whatever you pay them. This is what I used to do when paying bills at a post office that charge a transaction fee. If the bill was for £26, and they ended up getting only £24.50 due to the £1.50 transaction fee, that's their problem (and they aren't going to chase anybody up for a lousy quid fifty; it'll cost them more than that in ink just printing the address on the envelope). See how they like being charged a fee! If enough people do it, the system will change.
By the way, when paying bills by means of a cheque in the post, never, ever put a stamp on the envelope. Just write "RECIPIENT TO PAY POSTAGE" on it. BT used to write "Royal Mail will not deliver unstamped items" in the "stamp" space on their envelopes. I used to write "Oh yes they will!"
I think males, especially, are being told that it's simply "part of their nature" to enjoy these kinds of things... what happened to the heroic, positive male role model? Chivilry was good and alive just decades ago. Now, we have "Everyone Loves Raymond" which teaches us that men are supposed to be insensitive, unintelligent slobs with no sense of moral judgement.
I think "Everyone Loves Raymond" and similar programming is much more detrimental to society than Manhunt will ever be.
This is one of the most insightful and relevant things I have read on here in a long time.
Take a look at the advert breaks, too..... how often do you see an advert whose short plot boils down to "a woman gets the better of a man"? Often enough to look like the norm rather than a subversion of the norm?
In some perverse, nose-chopping/face-offpissing way, I'm actually looking forward to the creation of an all-women society; for no better reason than, just for once, they won't be able to blame men for their problems.
Slashdot Mirror
They tell you not to put metal in it because you probably don't know how to do so safely and so will end up doing yourself, or your oven, a mischief. They think that if you don't do it at all, you can't possibly do it wrong. If you want to try, remember microwaves are radio waves (they're about 12cm. IMMSMC) and obey all the usual laws of radio waves. Read some advanced physics textbooks and you'll learn how to put metal objects in a microwave oven without getting the usual light show.
To summarise the physics: metals, being good conductors, tend to get a current induced in them; so does water, but, not being a perfect conductor, it also gets a potential difference across it and the old "volts * amps = watts" thing kicks in. Hence why food gets hot in the microwave, and why filament light bulbs glow in the microwave. Air is an even worse conductor, and the potential difference across the air between a piece of electrically-charged metal and the earthed oven wall might well be significant. (And no, disconnecting the earth in the plug won't help. You'll just make the oven body live. Damn those Continentals with their lovely Schuko plugs that have no fuse and will fit into a non-earthed socket with nary word of a warning. At least the worst thing that can happen in this country is that you'll plant a bare foot on a 13-amp plug in the dark. Actually, make that a socked foot; lovely fibre fragments driven deep into the wound by the sharp-edged brass pins). Once you get a PD greater than about 3MV/m (or 3kV/mm, whichever comes first) air tends to make like a metal-oxide varistor and suddenly go from being a terrible conductor to being a really good conductor. Hence the fireworks.
Someone recently wrote a letter to my local paper suggesting that interest rates on savings should be pegged at least 1.5% above the rate of inflation. That sounds to me like a recipe for high inflation. After all, the only thing that causes inflation, is inflation: things get more expensive so people demand a pay rise, and then having to pay workers more makes things get more expensive.
..... NOT), but a stable one whose intrinsic value is unchanging: energy. As the energy efficiency of industrial processes increases, a kilowatt-hour in the hand becomes more valuable (since it will pay for a greater quantity of efficiently-manufactured goods than inefficiently-manufactured ones).
I have a much more sensible idea. Peg the value of currency to a commodity. Not a capricious commodity such as gold or silver (which really worked in the past
Also, it would mean that instead of taking banknotes to a bank and exchanging them for gold or silver, people would be able to take just about anything that burns to the Sociedade Municipal de Iluminaçao e Traçao and exchange it for electricity meter tokens!
Yeah, precisely. On the upside of the "two weekly rubbish collections" is the fact that you no longer have to make the trek to the recycling centre under your own steam. For a non-car-owner (yes, we exist), that is more onerous than it sounds (at least if you have a car, you can load it up on your way to the supermarket -- all large supermarkets have recycling centres).
English has borrowed words from the languages of every other nation that either invaded, or has been invaded by, Britain throughout all of history. And, of course, all these people had their own peculiar spelling rules (the Spaniards even started a civil war over how to pronounce the letter "J". The "ch-as-in-loch" faction won and promptly revised everything to make it look as though it had always been that way. This intensely annoyed the "zh" and "y" factions, who still occasionally lob the odd bomb).
English also has apparently many more words than the languages of neighbouring countries. This is because we have assimilated words for the same thing from different languages, and then assigned subtly different meanings to them. For instance, in most languages, the word for an animal and the meat that comes from it is the same. But in Feudal times in England, the peasants (who spoke the Germanic-derived Anglo-Saxon language) were breeding animals which ended up on the tables of the aristocracy, who were speaking the French-derived Norman language. On the other hand, English relies heavily on pronouns and auxiliary verbs rather than using inflection (the exceptions being the third-person singular present tense, which takes "-s" or "-es", the past tense which usually takes "-ed", the past participle which usually takes "ed" and the present participle which takes "-ing".) The present participle can also be used as a gerund; however, there is little merit in explaining such things. Fully conjugating a verb in English -- except "be" and "have" which are highly irregular (except in the South West, where they say "I be [or rather, Oi be], you be, he/she/it be, we be, you be, they be), but that is the case in most languages; indeed, any race in whose language the verb "to be" is regular are intrinsically untrustworthy -- requires only four or five different words (not including the pronouns and auxiliary verbs, which are shared). However, for the purpose of counting vocabulary, inflected languages consider all inflections as being the same word.
And you really should pity the French: they have to use inflection and pronouns (je suis, tu es, il/elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes et ils/elles sont) whereas in Spain they manage with just soy, eres, es, somos, sois y son respectively. Of course they do have pronouns, they just aren't usually necessary and are just used emphatically; for instance, "yo te amo" as opposed to just "te amo" means more like "It is me who loves you".
Q. How many Disabled People's Rights activists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. It's not the light bulb that needs changing, it's the rest of Society's attitude that needs changing!
Back in the days when the BBC first started, you had to build your own receiver. Radio parts have never been restricted. Yes. You should, as a licence payer, have been told how to decrypt the content. For instance, in the case of audio broadcasts, the content is encoded in an analogue form, by variations in the frequency of a carrier wave in the 3m. band.
This is in no way acceptable.
The BBC's insistence to use DRM (Digital RESTRICTIONS Management -- it does sod-all for my rights) goes against their charter.
When the BBC first began, you had no choice but to build your own radio set. There was never any question that some essential part might be kept locked away out of the reach of the General Public for the specific purpose of preventing just any random person from constructing a receiver.
For the BBC to insist that their programmes only be received on one particular make of receiver (however it may be rebadged), and that an essential part (the Source Code for the decryption) be specifically denied to home constructors and experimenters, is nothing short of outrageous.
This country is becoming more and more like the former GDR every day.
Bollocks.
A scientist has faith in exactly two things: (1) The laws of Nature are universal, that is they apply to everything without exception; and (2) The laws of Nature are immutable, that is they cannot change, have never changed and will never change. Everything else follows on from there.
If you assume that there is some isolatable system which does not obey the laws of Nature, or that the laws of Nature have changed at some point in time, science stops working.
Dogs don't think they are people: dogs think they are wolves.
Dogs also think people are wolves (it's easy to see where they got the idea; our caveman ancestors were predators who lived and hunted in packs. On the other hand, we take many small drinks and do one big widdle). But that is not the same thing as dogs thinking they are people.
The behaviour you have described is just classic learning and reinforcement.
It should be obvious to anyone who understands their history why CD sales are slowing down.
In the beginning was the LP. And we bought our music on LPs, and transferred it to tape (reel-to-reel at first, then cassette). In fact, if it hadn't been for someone wanting to link a record player and a tape recorder together sometime in the 1960s, there would be no AJS318 writing this; but I digress. We had our LPs. Some of them were good, and some of them were crap. And we had our tapes, including quite a few made from other people's LPs. Some of them were so good that we went out and bought our own copy of the LP straight away. LPs by design had a limited life, and many consumer-grade record players did little or nothing to prolong that.
We also had 45s; but these were mainly bought by a younger, more impatient market segment who had to have the latest song now and couldn't wait for it to appear on a long-player. Singles were also bought by those who liked a particular song but couldn't afford the full album -- or had already listened to it and decided it would not be worth buying for one song! The other main market for singles was with the amusement machine hire companies, for stocking juke boxes in pubs, cafés and leisure centres.
Then came the CD, and we began buying our music on CDs. Not everyone was convinced at first. Some of us began buying music on CD that we already had on a cassette made from somebody else's LP, or on an LP that we owned but which was beginning to sound worn-out. It's worth mentioning that the early CD players, even consumer-grade ones, tended to be well-made and put out a high-quality signal. Like the first transistor amplifiers a quarter of a century before, they represented a technology that had to prove itself in the marketplace; and the only way for the CD to succeed was to be noticeably better than the LP. One of the CD's distinguishing features was the provision of copious sleeve notes that had previously been associated only with some of the better LPs. While the page format is smaller than an LP cover, a standard CD case can hold a 16-page glossy booklet and a modified one can hold a whopping 32 pages. That is plenty of room for the full lyrics, band photographs and production notes -- and by design, it is difficult to reproduce well.
At this point we also ought to remember another important difference. The CD had an 80-minute maximum running time, as compared to about 45 minutes for an LP. Although it was possible to get over an hour of music onto an LP, this came at the expense of signal strength (and therefore quality) due to the need to pack the grooves more densely. Where in the past, a record producer might have had to make tough decisions about what to include on an LP and what to leave out, with almost double the space available on a CD there was a temptation to fill it all. This brought about a paradigm shift in album production. And whilst CD singles existed, CD juke boxes were designed from the outset to be capable of being stocked with albums.
Then came a generation of smaller and smaller hi-fis, made possible by the omission of a turntable. Some of us began buying music on CD that we already had on LP. Around this time, manufacturers also began cheese-paring; using cheaper components, polyester capacitors instead of ceramic, unshielded cables, tinned connectors instead of gold-plated, single PCBs instead of separate analogue, digital and power boards. The CD was officially no longer in competition with the LP, and it no longer had to try so hard to prove itself. (Cf. what happens to some people when they get into a stable relationship and therefore no longer have to advertise their availability to potential mates.)
Digital downloads are what the single-buying population -- i.e. teenagers and younger kids -- are buying. Without wishing to sound patronising, these people haven't yet felt the need to have a physical product to look after, to handle and to display. (Some are t
If a qubit Q is both zero and one at the same time, then surely its complement !Q is also both zero and one at the same time? If you had qubits Q and R which were both 0 and 1 at the same time, then wouldn't (Q & R) be all of {0, 0, 0, 1} at the same time (so more likely 0), (Q | R) be all of {0, 1, 1, 1} at the same time (and so more likely 1), and (Q ^ R) be {0, 1, 1 and 0} at the same time (so equally likely 1 and 0)?
Just because a wave function has to collapse into one eigenstate when it is observed, doesn't necessarily mean that will collapse into the one you were hoping for! And you don't need to lock a cat in a box with a time bomb to prove that.
It's hard to explain the GPL (which necessarily contains some overtly political language, because it is a political statement; and many words only used by lawyers, because it may have to be relied upon in a court of law one day) to people who -- sadly, but this is a separate issue -- have more or less been brought up to believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with copying and modifying software.
In the light of which, I think they've done a great job summarising it. Yes, the GPL has various subtleties (like, you can sometimes modify software and keep it all to yourself) but they don't apply most of the time. And the GPL isn't the only Free Software / Open Source licence (the terms are about as interchangeable as "Alsatian" and "German Shepherd Dog"; can you point out something that is one but not the other? Thought not) but it's one of the best-known.
The point of a simplification is for it to be true most of the time. And I think they have succeeded.
So how long until the place is closed down because of health fears about this evil radiation, then?
You can't compare bit rates of telephone and ethernet connections directly. It takes 10 bits to transmit 1 byte over the telephone because each byte has a start bit and a stop bit, which is an overhead of 25%. Over the network, everything is transmitted in 1500-byte packets with a 14-byte header and 4-byte footer; so the overhead per byte is much less at 1.2%.
I get the impression that the only thing keeping your 8-output sound card from working properly under Ubuntu is want of drivers. I'm not knocking you for sticking with Windows -- people have been forced to do worse things for flimsier reasons. But have you thought of at least contacting your elected representative, and requesting that it be made law for hardware details to be disclosed; thus enabling the creation of Open Source, third-party drivers?
I mean, you'd be pretty annoyed if the next version of Windows -- to which you were forced to upgrade for some unspecified reason -- didn't include drivers for your fine-up-till-now sound card. But that could happen, because hardware disclosure isn't enforced.
Please, take the time to knock out a letter, and post it -- second class, even, if you must -- to your MP. Point out the benefits that would result from mandatory disclosure (fairness to users of alternative OSes, prevents software-controlled obsolescence, right to make proper use of what you own, prevents mendacious claims wrt hardware capabilities [e.g. digital cameras' RAW formats, closely guarded by manufacturers, reveal the true pixel count -- which may be less than what is claimed in advertising], ultimately manufacturers sell more product), and why relying on voluntary disclosure is a bad idea (everyone is paranoid of their competitors).
BTW, I'm a Sky Plus customer (ex-Virgin Media, formerly NTL); and I view it more as paying to not be advertised at. It just takes a bit of discipline: 1. Change channel on time for start of programme (machine only records the station you are actually watching unless you have programmed a recording using Planner), 2. Do something else for 10 minutes or so (enough time to account for all advert breaks in show), 3. Rewind to start of programme, 4. Fast-forward through adverts, 5. If have got so far behind live broadcast due to rewinding and pausing that next show will start on a different channel before this one finishes, bring up now+next bar and set it to record, then at end of this programme go into Planner and start watching before recording has finished (yes, you can do that; why wouldn't you be able to? It's a disc FCOL!)
Going fab-less really worked well for Transmeta, now, didn't it?
..... including all now known and any to be invented. RISC processor designs are ten a penny, and some of them actually could work (well, they'll all work, but most of them have performance bottlenecks which don't show up until you try to run actual software on them). If you didn't have to worry about Windows compatibility, you could build a whole new processor design, which would not necessitate paying a penny in royalties to anyone; and then once you've got a compiler together, there is an absolute stackload of software you could run on it, for little more than the effort of typing "make install".
The faxt is, the x86 party is over. Well, not quite over just yet; but the flowerbeds have been trampled and puked in, the only booze left is the stuff you've got to be already pissed to even think about drinking, the loud, obnoxious drunks are in evidence, there's no smoke left and the DJ has played Agadoo for the third time.
x86 only exists for one reason: to keep Microsoft's Source Code secret. It's a fact that other OSes besides Windows run quite happily on other architectures
Imagine somewhere like China, India or a coalition of several Latin American countries announcing a new, government-funded, Linux- or BSD-based, PC programme. Microsoft shout out "..... but these machines will end up being used for running pirated Windows Vista!" And the government there respond "Not bloody likely, mate, these machines will be physically incapable of running Windows, pirated or not!" Checkmate!
It's going to take a big effort, but it could happen. Look at the OLPC design. It's based on ax x86-class chip today, for sure, because that was what was cheapest right now; but there's no reason why OLPC Mk.II or III couldn't be transitioned to an entirely new RISC processor design. And because all the software it includes by default is either Open Source or interpreted, it would make hardly any practical difference.
Student loans in the UK are being privatised and sooner or later will be exactly the same as any ordinary loan ..... if not more expensive, on the basis that the privatised loan company has a captive audience (same reason why a cup of tea in a motorway service station is so expensive, there's nowhere else to get one).
.....
If you have savings and a loan, even if part of the loan isn't attracting interest because of the savings, you'd still be better off without the loan. The only exception would be if you're tied in with early repayment penalties or some such.
Your loan of £L attracts interest at the rate of £(L * r1) per annum (note, here r1 is expressed as a fraction, not a percentage; i.e. 0.0725 rather than 7.25%). Your savings of £S earn interest at the rate of £(S * r2) gross per annum. If you use an offset account, then your loan attracts interest at £((L - S) * r1) per annum, saving you £(S * r1); but you miss out on £(S * r2) of interest. So the difference is £(S * (r1 - r2)) p.a. Since r1 > r2 just due to the way the banking system works, you'd be better off offsetting even if you didn't have to pay tax on the interest accrued by your savings. However, offsetting does not alter the term of your loan. If, instead, you simply made a capital repayment of £S against your loan, you would still be paying the same £((L - S) * r1) interest per annum; but the difference is, you only have £(L - S) outstanding now, and so could end up paying it off sooner. Then it won't be attracting any interest
Higher-rate tax is a bit of a red herring. If you never even earned the money in the first place (e.g. because you had no savings due to having spent them on a repayment on your loan instead), you can't be taxed on it! Penalty fees may apply for early repayments; but if you end up making a saving which better than covers the fee, it's still worth it. As always, do the maths, without a calculator, and have someone check your results.
In the UK, you only compute your own tax if you're self-employed. The Government figured a long time ago that it was less bother to calculate the tax owed by the working classes, than to risk letting them do it themselves and end up chasing piddling sums of money all over the place for the rest of time. Your employer pays you your wages (in cash once a week, or into a bank account once a month) net of all taxes, although they are still legally allowed to quote the gross figure in advertisements and at interview -- so a minimum wage of "£5 an hour" is actually quite a bit less than that.
There used to be a similar provision for mortgage interest being non-taxable; it was called MIRAS (Mortgage Interest Relief At Source). No similar exemption was made for rent if you lived in a rented property, therefore the scheme discriminated unfairly against the less-well-off.
Bollocks. You'll never get any investment account paying more interest than you're paying out on a loan. After all, that's how the banks make their money: they don't lend you money, they rent it to you. Interest is just the rent you pay on it. They get the money to "lend" out of people's savings accounts. They aren't allowed to charge you for the "service" of looking after your money (that would constitute a protection racket), but they sure as hell don't pay you anything like as much interest on money you lend to them as they would ask you to pay them if you borrowed the same amount of money from them.
..... you might need it to get rid of the bailiffs if the bank do try to repossess your home.
If they're offering "0%" finance, that just means they have added the interest into the sale price. Offer them cash, even a good bit less than they're asking, and they'll practically bite your hand off.
The corollary of this is that if you have a mortgage (with an interest rate around 7.5%), it makes more sense to divert any spare money you may have into paying it off early than to set up a savings account (probably earning less than 5%). Even a so-called "offsetting scheme" (whereby your savings count against the portion of your mortgage on which interest is charged) favours the bank, as the term of your mortgage is not reduced. But don't clear your mortgage completely. Leave a few pounds outstanding. As long as the interest on this amount is less than the cost of a safe deposit box, the bank will be looking after your deeds for you "on the cheap" until the full term is up! Do keep enough cash about your person or in your home at all times to clear this outstanding amount, though
Yes, but the whole of advertising is a crock!
If I ever see an advertisement for a product (bear in mind I have Sky Plus to avoid adverts on the TV and an advert-blocking Squid proxy to avoid them on the Internet), I go out of my way to avoid it; and seek out alternatives made by companies who put their money into actually improving the quality of their product rather than into trying to tell me just how good it is.
You're only venturing into fraud / theft of services / obtaining by deception territory if a court of law decides that you had no intention to pay. You turning up at the office with actual banknotes demonstrates an intention to pay. If they refuse a reasonable offer of payment, they may well (inadvertently) be agreeing to give you something for free.
It's a bit like the case of the student who got a wealthy lawyer to sponsor his university education in law, on the basis that he would hand over the entire proceeds of his first case by way of complete and final recompense. Immediately upon receiving his degree, he signed on the dole and made no attempt to get a job as even a minor partner in a law firm. His sponsor took him to court for breach of contract; the graduate represented himself. Either his sponsor's payoff would amount to nothing (because he had lost his first case); or the decision of the court would be that he didn't have to pay his sponsor anything (if he won the case).
So, knock the transaction fee off whatever you pay them. This is what I used to do when paying bills at a post office that charge a transaction fee. If the bill was for £26, and they ended up getting only £24.50 due to the £1.50 transaction fee, that's their problem (and they aren't going to chase anybody up for a lousy quid fifty; it'll cost them more than that in ink just printing the address on the envelope). See how they like being charged a fee! If enough people do it, the system will change.
By the way, when paying bills by means of a cheque in the post, never, ever put a stamp on the envelope. Just write "RECIPIENT TO PAY POSTAGE" on it. BT used to write "Royal Mail will not deliver unstamped items" in the "stamp" space on their envelopes. I used to write "Oh yes they will!"
Take a look at the advert breaks, too
In some perverse, nose-chopping/face-offpissing way, I'm actually looking forward to the creation of an all-women society; for no better reason than, just for once, they won't be able to blame men for their problems.