"Maybe they ought to have a poll concerning dictionaries. Might tell us more about our culture and times."
The BBC & Oxford English Dictionary Wordhunt is where the public have been asked to look into certain words and phrases that we don't know the origins of, or know that the dictionary is quite far off and needs public help to find the correct information and citations. That do?
Disturbingly, there's a law that requires a certain amount of christian worship at schools here in the UK. There was an article on the BBC site not long ago. I can't stand enforced worship, and personally went to CofE schools all through my school life and absolutely resented the schools for ramming christian bullshit down my throat.
As far as i know there is a requirement for an "Act of daily worship", i know we had something happen when OFSTED were in having a look about. However we usually just have an assembly (Which is required) and at the end of one once a week the school chaplian says a prayer and leaves a few moments for silent reflection. Although there is a CoE prayer by the chaplain, it's a pretty non-religious time in a school with a rather large number of faiths (And a healthy share of atheists etc.).
Can't we just dig up a lot of old exams from 25, 50, and 100 years ago, and have today's kids take them?
Not really, no. The curriculum has changed so much in virtually all subjects that it's not possible to do that sort of direct comparison. There's also a change in what is being measured by the exam. In subjects like Geography and History we now study more about the reasons behind what happens and the consequences of them, 50 years ago you had a list of important dates and facts that you had to memorise and regurgitate at will. Was that as useful an education?
This was found (As in a previous poster's response) in the UK TV show where kids took the old O-Levels. They all seemed like complete morons, however it wasn't all their fault. Just because they'd never been taught where all the major cities in each county of the UK were doesn't mean they're crap at Geography. I never once saw them being taught the mechanics behind volcanoes, earthquakes or the weather.
Also, it won't be available to anyone with a dialup modem (unless they've got a provider that doesn't cut them off every 2 hours like the ones I've used do).
I work at PC World in the UK, there are stacks of free SP2 CDs that are right by the PC Clinic where people bring in their PCs for help and by the checkouts too. They're not that hard to come by.
Working at PC World, the number of customers that go up to a PC that say: "So does it have a Pentium in it?" "I want a Pentium!" "It's an Athlon64? I want a Pentium 4" This is really going to screw Intel over, i think most places and people are just gonna shove the name Pentium in for any Intel CPU now.
2- When you buy the video, you buy the right to stream it only. If you try to download the video, it will only download a small file and STILL stream the actual video from Google, so you cannot view it offline.
Actually it downloads a 1kb file, runs it and saves the streaming file in My Documents\My Videos folder.
"I believe they're called New York, Tennessee Avenue and St. James Place." Along with all the other posts, the British press is using the standard British Monopoly edition.
"What does this have to do with '05? I've known that for a long time." The "10 things you didn't know this time last week" column is a light hearted section full of random facts that the majority don't know. It's often quoting unusual things that had come to light during the week that most people wouldn't know.
"That's a safe bet - but what do I get once my win has been confirmed?" It having an article linked to below obviously doesn't help. To avoid inheritance tax he placed a bet on his death this year, the winnings would equal what his tax fees would be. Normally they don't let people place bets on deaths, but accepted this due to the fair reasoning behind it.
And as for the "Should just be left out", i remember reading the first two you list (#11 & 67) on the BBC News website and they were new to 2005.
Worked really well for me. Gone from at least 9 calls an evening down to none with about 1 junk call per month. It was probably that bad for us as we had a London area code (0208).
Government Statistics - Take them or leave them: There has overall been an increase in the level of gun crime by less than one percent. The number of offences has risen each year since 1997-98, but the 2003-04 rise is the smallest.
Lets say the UK has 100 gun crimes which increases to 200, doubled. Lets say the US has 1000 gun crimes which increases to 1200, no-where near doubled.
My school's got a subscription to the Encyclopedia Britannica i can use, but if i were to reference the link to you in a debate, you'd have to pay for the priviledge. I find the ability to link to a Wikipedia article easy and mostly useful, especially if trusted sites are referenced (BBC News articles etc.).
I mostly use Wikipedia to look up something of interest, especially if it's something factual, scientific or mathematical. Those can often be impossible to find easily elsewhere but can hardly be full of bias.
Before all the US gun-loving "If the police had guns..." people have their way, have a look at the BBC "Have your say" page on the question "Should the police be armed?".
A large number of both UK and US citizens have posted that they prefer a non-gun possessing police force, including a large number of police, some from Bradford where this happened.
A legal monopoly (In the UK) is 75% market share. Just ask Tesco about this and you'll see why they weren't allowed to purchase Asda (I think it was Asda), in the UK.
Is the headline meant to read "The UK is way behind the US in digital" or something? Because there are about 75% of people that recieve Freeview (Digital) TV in the UK. The main reason it's so high is that most people can recieve it (Within range of a Digital transmitter) and a set-top box is now as cheap as £29.99. This is after 2-3 years of digital TV being available and it's grown dramatically.
The majority of people that will be upset by this are those with very old TVs, ones without a SCART socket on the back or black and white (That pay a 50% licence fee). They need a new TV to recieve Freeview, whereas anyone with a relatively new TV has no problem plugging in a box.
There's also talk of Freesat (I think that's the name). A collaboration between the BBC (Public) and ITV (Private) to have a free satellite service for anyone to recieve. This will help those that can't get Freeview due to signal problems too.
[i]Face it -- no one has flown a plane into a building, hijacked a plane, or strapped on a bomb belt in the US since 9/11. The Bush Administration has done its job on this account. You might have valid gripes elsewhere -- but it isn't here.[/i]
How frequent was that before 9/11? So you're saying that years after an attack there have been no others indicates success, when there was the same lack of attacks before 9/11? Wow, your security has increased from stopping 0 plane or suicide bombings to...0!
No one's flown a plane into a building or stapped on a bomb belt since July in the UK, so the new Anti-terror stuff from 2001 and 2005 are great at stopping it! I'll be able to say the same thing in 5 years time too...
Hence my point of "Don't pull figures out realising what they mean". My main point was that crime statistics skyrocketing (Especially "violent crime") is likely due to the change in recording of crimes. As i said, if an attack on a group of people is now recorded as one per person and not one for the group, then of course it's skyrocketing.
Murder rates are higher in the US but violent crimes are much higher in the UK. Bollocks again, as i showed earlier US murder rates were 4x (.04 to.01) as much as UK ones, the site you quote says violent crime is just over 2x as high.
I'd like to see the sources for the "facts" on that page (You couldn't get a more biased site could you?). I've never seen those statistics anywhere else (Under the "Since the UK outlawed handguns" section). And the fact that British police are now routinely armed? If that's meant to mean with guns (Doesn't specify), then i think you'll find they're not. Anti-terrorist police (See No. 10) are, the standard copper doesn't carry a gun.
Ah, the American anti-gun rant. Panorama did an investigation into this, it was a very interesting one too. In 1997 they changed the ways that crimes are recorded. Whereas before say a group of 5 people being attacked by a gang was one "violent act", it is now counted as 5 acts, one for every person attacked. That can make statistics leap. The Bristish Crime Survey (A highly respected source for crime statistics) has not seen a rise in violent crime, and it has fallen at the same rate as previously.
And of course, there can't be other reasons for rising crime can there? Oh no! That's why you read in papers about increased immigration, gypsies, the European Court of Human Rights... trying to link crime to them. Granted, most of those are just tabloid rants, but there are other factors.
More laws = more crimes = more criminals = more prisoners = more money for the State. Where you got this bollocks on the other hand i have no idea! The prison population in the UK is about 77,000, but it's been rising since 1993, when there was a different government in charge! Infact it levelled off after 1997 for a short period. The average cost of keeping a prisoner was £38,753 (2002). By locking people up and providing full room and board, with none of them earning and able to contribute, is obviously another one of these:
Well, they already sell BBC America abroad and they are able to do this with no problems with the fee. The charter states that the British-based sevices and the Worldwide services are seperate companies (Or seperately financed). So if they were to do this, i can't see why they can't just charge foreigners in the same ways they do for BBC America.
"The fee is to receive tv broadcasts, so if your PC or projector has no tv tuner then you don't have to pay. Put in a tv tuner and you do have to pay."
Not quite, if you have a device capable of receiving TV broadcasts you're not subject to the licence. It needs to be tuned as well. If you have a TV but don't have it tuned in to be able to watch BBC (Not sure about if this applies to ITV, C4 and C5, i doubt it though), then you don't pay the fee.
I was linked to this site by a mate a few weeks ago, and i'm very interested. I currently pay Pipex about that for a (great) 1Mbit service, although i'm currently getting 2. I'm in a trial area, i can get it, but i don't want to be the first person through and then switch back as the service was shit, so i'm waiting till after the trial period to look at this.
As for your point on the speeds, they make it pretty clear that 24Mbit is a maximum and state how and why you might get less, as well as by just how much you might expect it to drop. They're not hiding behind the limits of the technology and the "up to" and they're not capping it.
The one dropped out the window has lots of large "gashes", as i'd expect from any product dropped onto a road surface with lots of stone chippings in. But this is a very different situation to a pocket.
The GP's has lots of scuff-marks on it, they're not major scratches, but it's the number of them. I can see a nano in a denim change pocket easily pick up scratches like that. If it was marketed to fit in jeans pockets then they should design it out of something resistant to that sort of rubbing motion against a rough denim fabric.
the United States is the greatest nation in the history of the world and it will be thriving 5000 years from now
Odd, there was this empire called The British Empire, they were around for quite a while and were pretty damned powerful. I think if you asked them at their peak (Or even during the demise), they'd say they'd last 5000 years.
Of course, there's always the more classical empires of Rome to consider...
*Waits for FEMA to reject this assistance for some BS reason as well.*
They're already rejected the 500,000 ration packs sent by the UK (And apparently other packs from other EU countries), as they "might be contaminated with BSE". What bollocks.
Slashdot Mirror
"Maybe they ought to have a poll concerning dictionaries. Might tell us more about our culture and times."
The BBC & Oxford English Dictionary Wordhunt is where the public have been asked to look into certain words and phrases that we don't know the origins of, or know that the dictionary is quite far off and needs public help to find the correct information and citations. That do?
Disturbingly, there's a law that requires a certain amount of christian worship at schools here in the UK. There was an article on the BBC site not long ago. I can't stand enforced worship, and personally went to CofE schools all through my school life and absolutely resented the schools for ramming christian bullshit down my throat.
As far as i know there is a requirement for an "Act of daily worship", i know we had something happen when OFSTED were in having a look about. However we usually just have an assembly (Which is required) and at the end of one once a week the school chaplian says a prayer and leaves a few moments for silent reflection. Although there is a CoE prayer by the chaplain, it's a pretty non-religious time in a school with a rather large number of faiths (And a healthy share of atheists etc.).
Can't we just dig up a lot of old exams from 25, 50, and 100 years ago, and have today's kids take them?
Not really, no. The curriculum has changed so much in virtually all subjects that it's not possible to do that sort of direct comparison. There's also a change in what is being measured by the exam. In subjects like Geography and History we now study more about the reasons behind what happens and the consequences of them, 50 years ago you had a list of important dates and facts that you had to memorise and regurgitate at will. Was that as useful an education?
This was found (As in a previous poster's response) in the UK TV show where kids took the old O-Levels. They all seemed like complete morons, however it wasn't all their fault. Just because they'd never been taught where all the major cities in each county of the UK were doesn't mean they're crap at Geography. I never once saw them being taught the mechanics behind volcanoes, earthquakes or the weather.
Why? They were suicide bombers, why would you need a trigger built into a phone as opposed to just pressing the damned button.
Also, it won't be available to anyone with a dialup modem (unless they've got a provider that doesn't cut them off every 2 hours like the ones I've used do).
I work at PC World in the UK, there are stacks of free SP2 CDs that are right by the PC Clinic where people bring in their PCs for help and by the checkouts too. They're not that hard to come by.
Working at PC World, the number of customers that go up to a PC that say:
"So does it have a Pentium in it?"
"I want a Pentium!"
"It's an Athlon64? I want a Pentium 4"
This is really going to screw Intel over, i think most places and people are just gonna shove the name Pentium in for any Intel CPU now.
2- When you buy the video, you buy the right to stream it only. If you try to download the video, it will only download a small file and STILL stream the actual video from Google, so you cannot view it offline.
Actually it downloads a 1kb file, runs it and saves the streaming file in My Documents\My Videos folder.
"I believe they're called New York, Tennessee Avenue and St. James Place."
Along with all the other posts, the British press is using the standard British Monopoly edition.
"What does this have to do with '05? I've known that for a long time."
The "10 things you didn't know this time last week" column is a light hearted section full of random facts that the majority don't know. It's often quoting unusual things that had come to light during the week that most people wouldn't know.
"That's a safe bet - but what do I get once my win has been confirmed?"
It having an article linked to below obviously doesn't help. To avoid inheritance tax he placed a bet on his death this year, the winnings would equal what his tax fees would be. Normally they don't let people place bets on deaths, but accepted this due to the fair reasoning behind it.
And as for the "Should just be left out", i remember reading the first two you list (#11 & 67) on the BBC News website and they were new to 2005.
Worked really well for me. Gone from at least 9 calls an evening down to none with about 1 junk call per month. It was probably that bad for us as we had a London area code (0208).
Government Statistics - Take them or leave them:
There has overall been an increase in the level of gun crime by less than one percent. The number of offences has risen each year since 1997-98, but the 2003-04 rise is the smallest.
Lets say the UK has 100 gun crimes which increases to 200, doubled.
Lets say the US has 1000 gun crimes which increases to 1200, no-where near doubled.
I've had two Maxtors die on me, but my other drives have been perfect. One that died was the replacement drive for my already dead one.
When trying to get a replacement i wondered if their returns system was well designed out of good customer service or frequency of use.
My school's got a subscription to the Encyclopedia Britannica i can use, but if i were to reference the link to you in a debate, you'd have to pay for the priviledge. I find the ability to link to a Wikipedia article easy and mostly useful, especially if trusted sites are referenced (BBC News articles etc.).
I mostly use Wikipedia to look up something of interest, especially if it's something factual, scientific or mathematical. Those can often be impossible to find easily elsewhere but can hardly be full of bias.
Before all the US gun-loving "If the police had guns..." people have their way, have a look at the BBC "Have your say" page on the question "Should the police be armed?".
A large number of both UK and US citizens have posted that they prefer a non-gun possessing police force, including a large number of police, some from Bradford where this happened.
A legal monopoly (In the UK) is 75% market share. Just ask Tesco about this and you'll see why they weren't allowed to purchase Asda (I think it was Asda), in the UK.
Is the headline meant to read "The UK is way behind the US in digital" or something? Because there are about 75% of people that recieve Freeview (Digital) TV in the UK. The main reason it's so high is that most people can recieve it (Within range of a Digital transmitter) and a set-top box is now as cheap as £29.99. This is after 2-3 years of digital TV being available and it's grown dramatically.
The majority of people that will be upset by this are those with very old TVs, ones without a SCART socket on the back or black and white (That pay a 50% licence fee). They need a new TV to recieve Freeview, whereas anyone with a relatively new TV has no problem plugging in a box.
There's also talk of Freesat (I think that's the name). A collaboration between the BBC (Public) and ITV (Private) to have a free satellite service for anyone to recieve. This will help those that can't get Freeview due to signal problems too.
[i]Face it -- no one has flown a plane into a building, hijacked a plane, or strapped on a bomb belt in the US since 9/11. The Bush Administration has done its job on this account. You might have valid gripes elsewhere -- but it isn't here.[/i]
...0!
How frequent was that before 9/11? So you're saying that years after an attack there have been no others indicates success, when there was the same lack of attacks before 9/11? Wow, your security has increased from stopping 0 plane or suicide bombings to
No one's flown a plane into a building or stapped on a bomb belt since July in the UK, so the new Anti-terror stuff from 2001 and 2005 are great at stopping it! I'll be able to say the same thing in 5 years time too...
Hence my point of "Don't pull figures out realising what they mean". My main point was that crime statistics skyrocketing (Especially "violent crime") is likely due to the change in recording of crimes. As i said, if an attack on a group of people is now recorded as one per person and not one for the group, then of course it's skyrocketing.
.01) as much as UK ones, the site you quote says violent crime is just over 2x as high.
Murder rates are higher in the US but violent crimes are much higher in the UK.
Bollocks again, as i showed earlier US murder rates were 4x (.04 to
I'd like to see the sources for the "facts" on that page (You couldn't get a more biased site could you?). I've never seen those statistics anywhere else (Under the "Since the UK outlawed handguns" section). And the fact that British police are now routinely armed? If that's meant to mean with guns (Doesn't specify), then i think you'll find they're not. Anti-terrorist police (See No. 10) are, the standard copper doesn't carry a gun.
Anyway, we're off the topic by far now.
And of course, there can't be other reasons for rising crime can there? Oh no! That's why you read in papers about increased immigration, gypsies, the European Court of Human Rights... trying to link crime to them. Granted, most of those are just tabloid rants, but there are other factors.
More laws = more crimes = more criminals = more prisoners = more money for the State.
Where you got this bollocks on the other hand i have no idea! The prison population in the UK is about 77,000, but it's been rising since 1993, when there was a different government in charge! Infact it levelled off after 1997 for a short period. The average cost of keeping a prisoner was £38,753 (2002). By locking people up and providing full room and board, with none of them earning and able to contribute, is obviously another one of these:
Please don't drag up random crime statistics and figures without realising what they mean. The US has 726 prisoners per 100,000 people, the UK has 145. The US has 0.04 murders per 1000, the UK has 0.01 per 1000
Well, they already sell BBC America abroad and they are able to do this with no problems with the fee. The charter states that the British-based sevices and the Worldwide services are seperate companies (Or seperately financed). So if they were to do this, i can't see why they can't just charge foreigners in the same ways they do for BBC America.
"The fee is to receive tv broadcasts, so if your PC or projector has no tv tuner then you don't have to pay. Put in a tv tuner and you do have to pay."
Not quite, if you have a device capable of receiving TV broadcasts you're not subject to the licence. It needs to be tuned as well. If you have a TV but don't have it tuned in to be able to watch BBC (Not sure about if this applies to ITV, C4 and C5, i doubt it though), then you don't pay the fee.
I was linked to this site by a mate a few weeks ago, and i'm very interested. I currently pay Pipex about that for a (great) 1Mbit service, although i'm currently getting 2. I'm in a trial area, i can get it, but i don't want to be the first person through and then switch back as the service was shit, so i'm waiting till after the trial period to look at this.
As for your point on the speeds, they make it pretty clear that 24Mbit is a maximum and state how and why you might get less, as well as by just how much you might expect it to drop. They're not hiding behind the limits of the technology and the "up to" and they're not capping it.
The one dropped out the window has lots of large "gashes", as i'd expect from any product dropped onto a road surface with lots of stone chippings in. But this is a very different situation to a pocket.
The GP's has lots of scuff-marks on it, they're not major scratches, but it's the number of them. I can see a nano in a denim change pocket easily pick up scratches like that. If it was marketed to fit in jeans pockets then they should design it out of something resistant to that sort of rubbing motion against a rough denim fabric.
the United States is the greatest nation in the history of the world and it will be thriving 5000 years from now
Odd, there was this empire called The British Empire, they were around for quite a while and were pretty damned powerful. I think if you asked them at their peak (Or even during the demise), they'd say they'd last 5000 years.
Of course, there's always the more classical empires of Rome to consider...
Ah the BBFC, uniting Film, TV and Games ratings:
Basically:
U
12
15
18
If you're under age, you can't get them. Legal requirement to abide by the BBFC ratings.
*Waits for FEMA to reject this assistance for some BS reason as well.*
They're already rejected the 500,000 ration packs sent by the UK (And apparently other packs from other EU countries), as they "might be contaminated with BSE". What bollocks.