I'm having trouble with the notion of a fishtank's electrics being 'essential'... Important, maybe, but hardly live or death like your heating failing in a severe cold-snap might well be.
In this case I think we should all be thinking about life's essentials and not expecting to run our 63" plasma TVs uninterrupted through a week-long power outage... Never mind Peak Oil / Climate Change / etc...
I haven't served yet, and because I'm not an employee but rather a contractor/consultant, it would be monumentally expensive and inconvenient for me I expect, but I'll still try my damndest to do my bit when I can. I have been to court as a witness though in the end it was all over very quickly so it was more interesting than inconvenient.
(And I do pay my taxes and have stopped to help someone assaulted etc etc...)
Not all scientists (a) are American (b) have fixed party-political views or allegiance (c) use the word "liberal" like you do above or associate it with the same concepts, etc, etc, etc.
Just as a data point, Mrs Thatcher (UK Prime Minister 1979 to 1990) was a chemist and apparently was brought up a strict Methodist. Where does that appear in your world map?
My point being: scientists are not a homogenised entity, distributed along a small number of dimensions. There is an awful lot of variety amongst the humans that practise science. Generalisations are generally misleading.
Well, to not get too overexcited about this... I bought a MacBook some years ago because I wanted a *nx laptop that worked with no finger pointing, and by-and-large it still does. However, having seen Apple's disdain for my preferred computing language, and their tendency to walled-garden thinking, when I have always thrived in an open environment, I wouldn't consider buying the iPhone.
So, the point to act is *before* buying a walled-garden product rather than railing after, especially given that there are many alternatives. I'm still happy with my decaying Nokia Communicator for now, for example. Anything too clever or heavyweight for that gets run on a netbook or my (MacBook) laptop or... wherever.
So far the UK does *not* have a (universal compulsory) photographic ID card, and I'm hoping it stays that way.
There are driving licences and passports which have photos in them, but they are optional, and I may refuse to renew either if other biometrics beyond a photo are included in them. Which means it looks like my passport is not getting renewed in a few years unless our next government backs off the rather Big Brother approach of the current one...
Unless the school is (a) being heated with electricity and (b) not having to *cool* its computer labs, this is untrue.
Electrical resistance heating is a terrible waste of high-grade energy.
If you *were* to want to heat with electricity, a heat-pump would give you two or three times the heat for the same electrical input. (And thus $$$, CO2 emissions, etc.)
It already *has* hurt non-US financial institutions and runs entirely counter to all the rules that the US wanted the rest of the world to run by.
It's a travesty and should be undone entirely, not merely delayed.
And no, I don't believe that it has had much impact on gambling: maybe driven more of it underground and into the hands of criminals. Wasn't something called "prohibition" tried once (or twice)? How did it work out?
I've so far 3 times resisted posting my latest stats but you're tempting me! B^>
Actually, it's less bleak now than it was even a couple of years ago IIRC, and I do see the sum total of (say) es+fr+de getting close to en, but historically 'en' from the browser has been extremely unreliable and uninformative, so G may simply be playing cautious.
I also note that I have nearly as many people explicitly requesting 'es' on my Web interface as have set their Accept-Language header, which suggests to me that a lot of Spanish speakers either don't know how to set their browser or think my i18n sucks and are trying to notch it up!
I do agree with earlier comments that in general one should not override specific user locale requests with wild guesses based on IP, but in the case where no Accept-Language has been specified then I guess for some countries where i can or resort to a suitable one for the country in my mirror server's name, so my Australian mirror has a slight Aussie accent if you have no Accept-Language and come from somewhere that I can't make a good guess from the IP of.
Because my stats suggest that most people leave it set to a default of en-US, ie US English, so when Accept-Language has that in it it mainly means 'I left it the way Microsoft set it' rather than 'I speak US English'.
It makes providing any internationalisation frustrating, since the browser mechanism doesn't help much.
Rgds
Damon
PS. Conversely, if your 'Accept-Language' is set to anything other than English it's a pretty hot clue...
Can you be sure that the DNS code in the WinME that runs your building's lifts is 8-bit clean, just for example? Or your old-but-good HP laser printer with embedded networking?
This is pragmatically addressing the probability of code still in use but written long ago when UTF-8 and 8-bit-clean were woolly notions and twinkles in academic eyes, or just badly slapped together by some junior lowest-big developer who thought "oh, just (ASCII) letters and numbers" and it seemed to work...
I'd bet you a whole dollar that at least one piece of DNS software that you use, explicit or embedded, would break if fed, say, ISO-Latin-1, never mind the UTF-8 control codes, etc.
To avoid breaking all the DNS-related code out there that assumes (ie correctly, based on the current spec) only alphanumerics and '-' in each component.
If you wish to rewrite every single bit of DNS-dependent code, in every laptop, server, embedded network device, etc, etc,... well assume that it can't be done, and with this mechanism it doesn't need to be. Though I bet a few bits of code will barf at the '--' anyhow...
Slashdot Mirror
1) For our family ~40kWh would cover our electricity for a week (we heat with mains natural gas though).
2) Quite a lot of any given battery is unlikely to be just one of the reagents by weight!
3) Some rechargable Zinc-air batteries of similar or better energy density are on the horizon, FYI...
Rgds
Damon
I'm having trouble with the notion of a fishtank's electrics being 'essential'... Important, maybe, but hardly live or death like your heating failing in a severe cold-snap might well be.
In this case I think we should all be thinking about life's essentials and not expecting to run our 63" plasma TVs uninterrupted through a week-long power outage... Never mind Peak Oil / Climate Change / etc...
Rgds
Damon
"Gross", yes, accurate or respectful or meaningful, no.
Rgds
Damon
This seems to me (IANAL) grounds for 'estoppel': the cop relied on the statements of his superior who then then reneged on them without notice.
Rgds
Damon
I haven't served yet, and because I'm not an employee but rather a contractor/consultant, it would be monumentally expensive and inconvenient for me I expect, but I'll still try my damndest to do my bit when I can. I have been to court as a witness though in the end it was all over very quickly so it was more interesting than inconvenient.
(And I do pay my taxes and have stopped to help someone assaulted etc etc...)
Rgds
Damon
And do you have any amusing anecdotes about other civic duties you dodged such as paying taxes or helping injured people by the side of the road?
Rgds
Damon
On which God-given infinite real-numeric scale, eh? B^>
Rgds
Damon
Not all scientists (a) are American (b) have fixed party-political views or allegiance (c) use the word "liberal" like you do above or associate it with the same concepts, etc, etc, etc.
Just as a data point, Mrs Thatcher (UK Prime Minister 1979 to 1990) was a chemist and apparently was brought up a strict Methodist. Where does that appear in your world map?
My point being: scientists are not a homogenised entity, distributed along a small number of dimensions. There is an awful lot of variety amongst the humans that practise science. Generalisations are generally misleading.
Rgds
Damon
Which one? I have many...
Rgds
Damon
Java
Well, to not get too overexcited about this... I bought a MacBook some years ago because I wanted a *nx laptop that worked with no finger pointing, and by-and-large it still does. However, having seen Apple's disdain for my preferred computing language, and their tendency to walled-garden thinking, when I have always thrived in an open environment, I wouldn't consider buying the iPhone.
So, the point to act is *before* buying a walled-garden product rather than railing after, especially given that there are many alternatives. I'm still happy with my decaying Nokia Communicator for now, for example. Anything too clever or heavyweight for that gets run on a netbook or my (MacBook) laptop or ... wherever.
Rgds
Damon
Goedel-script, but it's never gonna get finished, well not consistently and completely...
Rgds
Damon
Not all currencies have two digits after the decimal point.
Rgds
Damon
So far the UK does *not* have a (universal compulsory) photographic ID card, and I'm hoping it stays that way.
There are driving licences and passports which have photos in them, but they are optional, and I may refuse to renew either if other biometrics beyond a photo are included in them. Which means it looks like my passport is not getting renewed in a few years unless our next government backs off the rather Big Brother approach of the current one...
Rgds
Damon
Unless the school is (a) being heated with electricity and (b) not having to *cool* its computer labs, this is untrue.
Electrical resistance heating is a terrible waste of high-grade energy.
If you *were* to want to heat with electricity, a heat-pump would give you two or three times the heat for the same electrical input. (And thus $$$, CO2 emissions, etc.)
Rgds
Damon
FRIST!
(I'm not a Verizon customer...)
Rgds
Damon
It already *has* hurt non-US financial institutions and runs entirely counter to all the rules that the US wanted the rest of the world to run by.
It's a travesty and should be undone entirely, not merely delayed.
And no, I don't believe that it has had much impact on gambling: maybe driven more of it underground and into the hands of criminals. Wasn't something called "prohibition" tried once (or twice)? How did it work out?
Rgds
Damon
(FIRST?)
B^>
Rgds
Damon
Didn't you notice that Sun is being bought up by Oracle, presumably to be extinguished shortly after? Sun only had a few more months of life...
Rgds
Damon
I've so far 3 times resisted posting my latest stats but you're tempting me! B^>
Actually, it's less bleak now than it was even a couple of years ago IIRC, and I do see the sum total of (say) es+fr+de getting close to en, but historically 'en' from the browser has been extremely unreliable and uninformative, so G may simply be playing cautious.
I also note that I have nearly as many people explicitly requesting 'es' on my Web interface as have set their Accept-Language header, which suggests to me that a lot of Spanish speakers either don't know how to set their browser or think my i18n sucks and are trying to notch it up!
I do agree with earlier comments that in general one should not override specific user locale requests with wild guesses based on IP, but in the case where no Accept-Language has been specified then I guess for some countries where i can or resort to a suitable one for the country in my mirror server's name, so my Australian mirror has a slight Aussie accent if you have no Accept-Language and come from somewhere that I can't make a good guess from the IP of.
Rgds
Damon
Yes, exactly. I use en-gb (not, not en-uk) for that reason.
Rgds
Damon
Because my stats suggest that most people leave it set to a default of en-US, ie US English, so when Accept-Language has that in it it mainly means 'I left it the way Microsoft set it' rather than 'I speak US English'.
It makes providing any internationalisation frustrating, since the browser mechanism doesn't help much.
Rgds
Damon
PS. Conversely, if your 'Accept-Language' is set to anything other than English it's a pretty hot clue...
Either way you might or might not be able to look them up, but shoving binary in those fields might make old implementations *crash*.
Rgds
Damon
Can you be sure that the DNS code in the WinME that runs your building's lifts is 8-bit clean, just for example? Or your old-but-good HP laser printer with embedded networking?
This is pragmatically addressing the probability of code still in use but written long ago when UTF-8 and 8-bit-clean were woolly notions and twinkles in academic eyes, or just badly slapped together by some junior lowest-big developer who thought "oh, just (ASCII) letters and numbers" and it seemed to work...
I'd bet you a whole dollar that at least one piece of DNS software that you use, explicit or embedded, would break if fed, say, ISO-Latin-1, never mind the UTF-8 control codes, etc.
Rgds
Damon
To avoid breaking all the DNS-related code out there that assumes (ie correctly, based on the current spec) only alphanumerics and '-' in each component.
If you wish to rewrite every single bit of DNS-dependent code, in every laptop, server, embedded network device, etc, etc, ... well assume that it can't be done, and with this mechanism it doesn't need to be. Though I bet a few bits of code will barf at the '--' anyhow...
Rgds
Damon