A Pyrrhic victory (IPA:/ËpÉrÉk/) is a victory with devastating cost to the victor.
The phrase is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War.
The Greeks, of course, were the pioneers of democracy. However, there is no record of any microprocessor-based voting system being in use at the time (indeed, we had to wait bloody ages for the Romans to turn up before we got the words "semi" and conductor". Just another of the things the Romans did for us, Brian). A Pyrrhic argument might perhaps be an argument sent to a function call which came back incremented but always resulted in the program crashing, but I've never heard of it used in that sense.
Do you just mean "a pointless argument", or "an argument already lost"?
BTW, with the impending US election and the tendency for poor and ethnic minority voters to be excluded for various reasons from exercising their franchise, here's what Wiki has to say about democracy around the time of Pyrhic victories: "Only adult male Athenians citizens who had completed their military training as ephebes had the right to vote in Athens. This excluded a majority of the population, namely slaves, children, women and resident foreigners (metics). Also disallowed were citizens whose rights were under suspension (typically for failure to pay a debt to the city: see atimia); for some Athenians this amounted to permanent (and in fact inheritable) disqualification."
A passing resemblance? Are they by any chance related?
I think Franklin ahref=http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/scientst/electric.htmlrel=url2html-25902http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/scientst/electric.html> might have disagreed vehemently with you. Air breaks down as a dielectric, given a high enough voltage across it. And, of course, electromagnetic radiation of all kinds goes right on through air as if it wasn't there. And don't get me started on sound;-)
There used to be a band in the late 70s/early 80s, here in the UK, called the 4 Skins (there were 4 of them, and they were skinheads, in case y'all were wondering).
They played some damned good punk rocking stuff. Then people labelled them as fascists (accusing them of being aligned with the British Movement, a UK Nazi organisation), and it wasn't cool to like them any more - even though they were still playing the same music. After that, the band published a statement saying that they weren't fascists at all, they just liked a good fight on a Saturday afternoon with (basically) anyone who was up for it.
So then it was okay to like the music again on the basis that they weren't fascists, but you couldn't enjoy them if you were a pacifist, I guess!
Surely the band's manager is their agent, legally speaking?
If that's the case, then if the band are the copyright holders of their own work (a fairly safe assumption) and their agent is making it available in the public domain, I'd have thought it legal to download.
No black mark there. I'll be looking out for it on BitTorrent, as they've granted me the right to peruse the download link, I presume.
I'm originally from London but I live in Portsmouth, and have lived in a number of places around the UK. Please see my reply above about the new lengths of bus routes - they've been butchered over the years.
Of course, you're right... the fare is capped at GBP3 if you have an Oyster Card. If you don't, it isn't.
I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate place to delve into why some people don't choose to have an Oyster, but one reason is that some people don't like the idea of TFL being able to build up a database of where they've been at any particular moment (whether it's for marketing purposes or anything more sinister - and can I say at this point that this is simply something I've gleaned from various conversations, I'm NOT a conspiracy theorist!!).
And two reasons why I'd *expect* it to be cheaper:
(1) The GLA is supposed to have put out tenders to ensure the best value for the ratepayers' buck.
(2) The clue is in the name: it's supposed to be *public* transport.
That's the *average* local tax for outer London. The Council Tax is separated into several bands according to the value of your home. I deliberately didn't use inner London as it would include some very pricey residences indeed.
It costs 90p per journey (around US$1 - I haven't bothered to check the rate this week) *if you have an Oyster Card*... if you don't, it's GBP2 as I mentioned.
As for my suggestion of 4 buses being ludicrous, perhaps I could refer you to http://www.busesatwork.co.uk/ which gives a comprehensive breakdown (pun intended) of London bus routes over the years and how they've been tampered with.
You could, if you wanted, try the old route 37 (Peckham to Hounslow West) using the current bus services on http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/ which will give you a number of possible journeys - but none of them with less than 4 buses. It's not my suggestion that's ludicrous - it's London's transport services.
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
They've cut all the bus routes into a quarter of the length they used to be - meaning that you have to take 4 times as many buses to complete your journey, at 4 times the price and a much longer journey time.
London's bus companies have been privatised. Does this mean that any efficiency savings are passed on to the passenger? I won't bother to answer that one... just have a surf around and see how much subsidy they're getting.
You'd think, then, that local taxes in London would be real cheap. Oh dear me no, that would be a wrong assumption. One pays local tax (Council Tax) to the borough in which one lives, and then a further tax to the Mayor of London's Office. The *average* charge across outer London for this year is nearly US$3000 per annum.
I agree with you that this makes a mockery of freedom of speech in this country, and is a powerful argument for a written UK Bill Of Rights to sit alongside the European Human Rights Act, something which has long been campaigned for here.
However, there are limited circumstances where I can see that signs or words should fall within the sanction of the criminal law: "Incitement to kill or otherwise physically harm an individual or a group" and "incitement to racial hatred" being the two most promininent.
The City Of London Police have a rather chequered history generally regarding allegations of corruption within their midst: in the 1970s, Operation Countryman was launched to investigate allegations of widespread corruption in their ranks.
After six years, and at a cost of over GBP 4 million, Operation Countryman presented its findings to the Home Office and the Commissioner. Parts of the report were leaked to the public, and it was revealed that over 400 police officers lost their jobs during or after the Countryman investigation.
Comfortingly, though, despite Countryman's recommendation that over 300 officers should face criminal charges, no officer was ever charged with a criminal offence as a result of the investigation.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Countryman
Are you kidding? London has the most surveillance cameras per head and per square foot in the world (and will be using 500,000 CCTV cameras to "police" the 2012 Olympics http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/05/olympic_biometric_screening_plan/... one for every four spectators!) We've had posters about CCTV on the streets in London for years now. The sad thing is that nobody notices them any more.
Here in Mr Brown's Brave New World, we have a new law which allows the police to stop and search people on the street without ANY suspicion that they have committed, or are about to commit, any offence whatsoever. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3927040.ece
Mr Brown is also bringing in powers to make it a CRIMINAL offence (i.e. punishable by criminal prosecution and sanctions) to leave school between the ages of 16 and 18 without 'A' Level education (which in the USA would be one step further on than a High School Diploma http://education.answerbox.net/education-search-equivalent-396546332.htm)
Believe me, in matters Orwellian, we here in the UK lead the world. And that's not even touching on the particularly insidious form of Doublespeak invented by the New Labour party here in the mid-nineties and perfected by Mr Blair's spin doctors Campbell and Mandelson.
Yes, Microsoft just want to be left alone so that they can take great care of their customers. It's all this fussy regulation that's stopping them putting Christmas cards and candy bars in with Vista CDs and calling us every Friday to make sure we're eating well and keeping warm.
"The end goal is great technology and happy people. How we get there is much less important."
Are you one of Robert Mugabe's speech writers, by any chance?
Do you genuinely think that Microsoft's goal is "happy people" and technology which is any better or cheaper than the stuff they're churning out now for top dollar? Really? Really? Yyyyyyyeeeeeeaahhhhh... 'k.
Microsoft are very well financed and able, and are certainly trying to lead the majority of the people away. Does that make Gates a revolutionary or a herder?
Surely NBC must have secretly bought up the stock of all the big Linux distros?
That can be the only reason that they'd choose to highlight Vista's toadying to the broadcasters. Either that or they're trying to buy Yahoo and they want to drive Microsoft's price down to stop them making another bid.
I wonder how many times the phrase "revert to XP" has been Googled in the last week?
Slashdot Mirror
Rather quaintly, when I'm cleaning spam out of my GMail account, it shows me a context-based ad for "Spam Casserole Recipe".
A Pyrrhic victory (IPA: /ËpÉrÉk/) is a victory with devastating cost to the victor.
The phrase is named after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War.
The Greeks, of course, were the pioneers of democracy. However, there is no record of any microprocessor-based voting system being in use at the time (indeed, we had to wait bloody ages for the Romans to turn up before we got the words "semi" and conductor". Just another of the things the Romans did for us, Brian). A Pyrrhic argument might perhaps be an argument sent to a function call which came back incremented but always resulted in the program crashing, but I've never heard of it used in that sense.
Do you just mean "a pointless argument", or "an argument already lost"?
BTW, with the impending US election and the tendency for poor and ethnic minority voters to be excluded for various reasons from exercising their franchise, here's what Wiki has to say about democracy around the time of Pyrhic victories: "Only adult male Athenians citizens who had completed their military training as ephebes had the right to vote in Athens. This excluded a majority of the population, namely slaves, children, women and resident foreigners (metics). Also disallowed were citizens whose rights were under suspension (typically for failure to pay a debt to the city: see atimia); for some Athenians this amounted to permanent (and in fact inheritable) disqualification."
A passing resemblance? Are they by any chance related?
I think Franklin ahref=http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/scientst/electric.htmlrel=url2html-25902http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/scientst/electric.html> might have disagreed vehemently with you. Air breaks down as a dielectric, given a high enough voltage across it. And, of course, electromagnetic radiation of all kinds goes right on through air as if it wasn't there. And don't get me started on sound ;-)
There used to be a band in the late 70s/early 80s, here in the UK, called the 4 Skins (there were 4 of them, and they were skinheads, in case y'all were wondering).
They played some damned good punk rocking stuff. Then people labelled them as fascists (accusing them of being aligned with the British Movement, a UK Nazi organisation), and it wasn't cool to like them any more - even though they were still playing the same music. After that, the band published a statement saying that they weren't fascists at all, they just liked a good fight on a Saturday afternoon with (basically) anyone who was up for it.
So then it was okay to like the music again on the basis that they weren't fascists, but you couldn't enjoy them if you were a pacifist, I guess!
Surely the band's manager is their agent, legally speaking?
If that's the case, then if the band are the copyright holders of their own work (a fairly safe assumption) and their agent is making it available in the public domain, I'd have thought it legal to download.
No black mark there. I'll be looking out for it on BitTorrent, as they've granted me the right to peruse the download link, I presume.
I'd force myself one of those nice women in the hotel lobbies. But then, I do take a lot of taxis.
I'm originally from London but I live in Portsmouth, and have lived in a number of places around the UK. Please see my reply above about the new lengths of bus routes - they've been butchered over the years.
Of course, you're right... the fare is capped at GBP3 if you have an Oyster Card. If you don't, it isn't.
I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate place to delve into why some people don't choose to have an Oyster, but one reason is that some people don't like the idea of TFL being able to build up a database of where they've been at any particular moment (whether it's for marketing purposes or anything more sinister - and can I say at this point that this is simply something I've gleaned from various conversations, I'm NOT a conspiracy theorist!!).
And two reasons why I'd *expect* it to be cheaper:
(1) The GLA is supposed to have put out tenders to ensure the best value for the ratepayers' buck.
(2) The clue is in the name: it's supposed to be *public* transport.
That's the *average* local tax for outer London. The Council Tax is separated into several bands according to the value of your home. I deliberately didn't use inner London as it would include some very pricey residences indeed.
It costs 90p per journey (around US$1 - I haven't bothered to check the rate this week) *if you have an Oyster Card* ... if you don't, it's GBP2 as I mentioned.
As for my suggestion of 4 buses being ludicrous, perhaps I could refer you to http://www.busesatwork.co.uk/ which gives a comprehensive breakdown (pun intended) of London bus routes over the years and how they've been tampered with.
You could, if you wanted, try the old route 37 (Peckham to Hounslow West) using the current bus services on http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/ which will give you a number of possible journeys - but none of them with less than 4 buses. It's not my suggestion that's ludicrous - it's London's transport services.
The cost of using public transport in London borders on the ridiculous. It's around US$2 to go 200 yards on a bus with an Oyster card. If you haven't got a card, it's over US$4.
They've cut all the bus routes into a quarter of the length they used to be - meaning that you have to take 4 times as many buses to complete your journey, at 4 times the price and a much longer journey time.
London's bus companies have been privatised. Does this mean that any efficiency savings are passed on to the passenger? I won't bother to answer that one... just have a surf around and see how much subsidy they're getting.
You'd think, then, that local taxes in London would be real cheap. Oh dear me no, that would be a wrong assumption. One pays local tax (Council Tax) to the borough in which one lives, and then a further tax to the Mayor of London's Office. The *average* charge across outer London for this year is nearly US$3000 per annum.
In London, there is no such thing as a free ride.
The good news is that we're about to send another shuttle up, maybe they can throw some parts in.
Let's hope the new shuttle is soon on-stream.In Space, No One Can Hear U-Rine!
Breathing powdered shit is dangerous.
Yes, that's why cocaine hydrochloride is a Class A controlled drug.Perhaps they'll ask the Cubans if they can open up another "naval base"?
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virtual TDeity SingleOmniscientDeity() = 0;
virtual TWrath SinSanction(TBehaviour) = 0;
virtual TParadiseOrEternalTorment LifeEndDestination(TPerson) = 0;
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I agree with you that this makes a mockery of freedom of speech in this country, and is a powerful argument for a written UK Bill Of Rights to sit alongside the European Human Rights Act, something which has long been campaigned for here.
However, there are limited circumstances where I can see that signs or words should fall within the sanction of the criminal law: "Incitement to kill or otherwise physically harm an individual or a group" and "incitement to racial hatred" being the two most promininent.
The City Of London Police have a rather chequered history generally regarding allegations of corruption within their midst: in the 1970s, Operation Countryman was launched to investigate allegations of widespread corruption in their ranks.
After six years, and at a cost of over GBP 4 million, Operation Countryman presented its findings to the Home Office and the Commissioner. Parts of the report were leaked to the public, and it was revealed that over 400 police officers lost their jobs during or after the Countryman investigation. Comfortingly, though, despite Countryman's recommendation that over 300 officers should face criminal charges, no officer was ever charged with a criminal offence as a result of the investigation.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Countryman
I am Inspector Knacker of the City of London Constabulary. And you, me old china plate, are nicked!
You do not have to say anything, but it may hurt your defence if you fail to say anything which you later rely on in court.
Do you understand the caution?
(As they are obliged to say here)
Are you kidding? London has the most surveillance cameras per head and per square foot in the world (and will be using 500,000 CCTV cameras to "police" the 2012 Olympics http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/05/olympic_biometric_screening_plan/ ... one for every four spectators!) We've had posters about CCTV on the streets in London for years now. The sad thing is that nobody notices them any more.
Here in Mr Brown's Brave New World, we have a new law which allows the police to stop and search people on the street without ANY suspicion that they have committed, or are about to commit, any offence whatsoever. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3927040.ece
Mr Brown is also bringing in powers to make it a CRIMINAL offence (i.e. punishable by criminal prosecution and sanctions) to leave school between the ages of 16 and 18 without 'A' Level education (which in the USA would be one step further on than a High School Diploma http://education.answerbox.net/education-search-equivalent-396546332.htm)
Believe me, in matters Orwellian, we here in the UK lead the world. And that's not even touching on the particularly insidious form of Doublespeak invented by the New Labour party here in the mid-nineties and perfected by Mr Blair's spin doctors Campbell and Mandelson.
Yes, Microsoft just want to be left alone so that they can take great care of their customers. It's all this fussy regulation that's stopping them putting Christmas cards and candy bars in with Vista CDs and calling us every Friday to make sure we're eating well and keeping warm.
"The end goal is great technology and happy people. How we get there is much less important."
Are you one of Robert Mugabe's speech writers, by any chance?
Do you genuinely think that Microsoft's goal is "happy people" and technology which is any better or cheaper than the stuff they're churning out now for top dollar? Really? Really? Yyyyyyyeeeeeeaahhhhh... 'k.
Microsoft are very well financed and able, and are certainly trying to lead the majority of the people away. Does that make Gates a revolutionary or a herder?
Surely NBC must have secretly bought up the stock of all the big Linux distros?
That can be the only reason that they'd choose to highlight Vista's toadying to the broadcasters. Either that or they're trying to buy Yahoo and they want to drive Microsoft's price down to stop them making another bid.
I wonder how many times the phrase "revert to XP" has been Googled in the last week?
How much Karma is enough? You'll know when you reach Enlightenment.