Appreciation of the BBC
on
BBC Launches APIs
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It's only when I see comments on Slashdot (this shows the extent of my reading) that I come to appreciate what the BBC does and what my licence fee pays for. I have always been moaning about being forced to watch EastEnders by my wife, which is a realistic a portrayal of London as Friends is of New York.
We do get a lot of American programs here and you start to think that the grass is greener. Then you actually watch an American channel and realise that most of the 40 minute program is made up of adverts. I was amazed the first time I saw an American channel. The titles started and then we went straight into an advert break. What!!. Talk about teasing you. You then watch 10 minutes of the actual program, which isn't bad, then you get the next ad break. You finally watch the last part of the program, which doesn't end with the titles but with another ad break. The titles then come after the ad break!?!
Any hoo. The BBC website is always my first port of call for news, sport etc...; after Slashdot of course;)
(if the above URL has a space in the word Immortal, don't blame me:) It looks fine in the comment, but the preview puts a space in. Anyone know why?)
They say/do something that goads people into flaming them and then they turn around and say that you're abusive and cannot argue reasonably.
They won't listen to reasoned argument because the're set in their ways and blinkered to other possible arguments or they have something to gain from putting down your side of an argument, whether it be tecnological (as in web server performance) or scientific (as in evolution).
We comment all functions and classes using the Doxygen format. This means that the comments can be used to generate HTML, PDF or man pages for the functions and classes.
It will also generate call trees if required.
Very useful.
At our company part of our interview process involves a UNIX test to ensure they are as competent as they say they are (we've had problems with agencies sending us people who don't have a clue).
One question was something like: what could go wrong with the following 'rm -fr $(FRED)/'?
Also, one of our more "experienced" engineers decided to show a newbie this example at a console...whoops...he pressed enter:) In the time he managed to frantically press CTRL-C a number of root folders had gone, most notably/dev . He's never lived that one down:)
A few years earlier a non-techy (support) was using one of the UNIX machines for some testing and was worried about diskspace. He didn't like or understand the contents of/dev/ so he deleted it!! I think his thought process was something like: "What are these for? I don't know and they make the file structure look messy, I'll delete them"
Slashdot Mirror
It's only when I see comments on Slashdot (this shows the extent of my reading) that I come to appreciate what the BBC does and what my licence fee pays for. I have always been moaning about being forced to watch EastEnders by my wife, which is a realistic a portrayal of London as Friends is of New York.
;)
We do get a lot of American programs here and you start to think that the grass is greener. Then you actually watch an American channel and realise that most of the 40 minute program is made up of adverts. I was amazed the first time I saw an American channel. The titles started and then we went straight into an advert break. What!!. Talk about teasing you. You then watch 10 minutes of the actual program, which isn't bad, then you get the next ad break. You finally watch the last part of the program, which doesn't end with the titles but with another ad break. The titles then come after the ad break!?!
Any hoo. The BBC website is always my first port of call for news, sport etc...; after Slashdot of course
By they way "Can't be installing the American version" needs to be read in a good farmer style West Country (Gloucester/Bath) accent.
I ain't be wanting any new fangled machines running on my farm!! Get orf my land!!
Why would I want American English? I don't understand it :)
Damn. Can't upgrade to 1.0.4 since the English (British) version is not available yet :(
Can't be installing the American version ;)
Maybe people are tired of hearing the same old FUD. I dunno. It seems like we are arguing with trolls that are working in a similar way to the anti-science and anti-evolution brigade: http://users.pandora.be/vdmoortel/dirk/Physics/Imm ortalFumbles.html/
:) It looks fine in the comment, but the preview puts a space in. Anyone know why?)
(if the above URL has a space in the word Immortal, don't blame me
They say/do something that goads people into flaming them and then they turn around and say that you're abusive and cannot argue reasonably.
They won't listen to reasoned argument because the're set in their ways and blinkered to other possible arguments or they have something to gain from putting down your side of an argument, whether it be tecnological (as in web server performance) or scientific (as in evolution).
We comment all functions and classes using the Doxygen format. This means that the comments can be used to generate HTML, PDF or man pages for the functions and classes. It will also generate call trees if required. Very useful.
In short...it's about a man on a search for a good cup of tea. The destruction of the earth is hampering him though.
At our company part of our interview process involves a UNIX test to ensure they are as competent as they say they are (we've had problems with agencies sending us people who don't have a clue).
:) In the time he managed to frantically press CTRL-C a number of root folders had gone, most notably /dev . He's never lived that one down :)
/dev/ so he deleted it!! I think his thought process was something like: "What are these for? I don't know and they make the file structure look messy, I'll delete them"
One question was something like: what could go wrong with the following 'rm -fr $(FRED)/'?
Also, one of our more "experienced" engineers decided to show a newbie this example at a console...whoops...he pressed enter
A few years earlier a non-techy (support) was using one of the UNIX machines for some testing and was worried about diskspace. He didn't like or understand the contents of