I bet nowadays kids get expelled for that, at a minimum.
After the teacher found out, I got banned from using the school computers for the "rest of the year", which was about five days. I think the fresh air and sunshine probably did me some good. That was 1997.
(I didn't access any teacher's account or files. It was Windows 3.1, the "hack" was making a macro in word to open File Manager, then opening "progmana.exe", which was a copy/configuration(?) of Program Manager with the administration programs. I was 10, all I wanted to do was change the colours and the wallpaper.)
My new 42" LED backlit screen consumes about 1/3rd the power (50-60W vs 140-150) of my first generation 1080p LCD, it also looks better. I probably wouldn't have upgraded if it hadn't been for a ghosting artifact caused by my HTPC menu getting burned in on the old one but now I couldn't imagine going back.
With a delta of less than 100w it will take you a lot of TV watching to come close to a break even on cost from the efficiency gain (say, 30 _thousand_ hours if you spent $350 on your tv). Efficiency is a good thing, but it is important to know the context.
Americans average 34hrs/week watching TV, so it would take 16 years (less, assuming electricity costs decrease).
British people watch less, 28hrs/week, but electricity costs more (average £0.145/kWh), so a TV costing £250 and saving 100W would take almost 12 years to pay for the saving.
My plasma TV's consuming ~350W now, with a dark sci-fi film (brighter scenes use more power for a plasma TV). The saving here would be greater: about 5 years to pay for, less since we don't just watch dark films.
We have an "old" TV, given to us by someone that upgraded. I think it's HD resolution, but it doesn't do HDMI etc.
It's a plasma screen, and the watt-meter I have measures about 300-600W consumption depending on how bright the scene is -- it's usually about 400-500W. If I used it more than once a week I'd be more interested in upgrading it, but I don't.
If I used it as much as the woman next door uses hers, an upgrade to an LCD TV would pay for itself within a year in reduced electricity bills.
If you're somehow telling it what track it's on, you may as well use that system to tell it what the speed limit is -- which is what the European signalling systems do already.
No, that's no problem. The problem was not installing/using a suitable signalling system, which is present on high-speed lines in most other countries.
It seems to me that it would have been (and still is) possible to include a GPS receiver, a maximum-train-speeds database, and a speed-limiter on each train as a fallback. With that, as long as the GPS was working, even the dumbest/craziest engineer would not be able to make the train go faster than its maximum specified speed at any given location.
GPS wouldn't work in tunnels, and very often higher speed lines are adjacent to lower speed lines. here's an example, which I used to walk past sometimes. The fast lines have a 110mph limit, the "slow" lines 70mph, and the siding for a factory 20mph. The tracks are about 4-6m apart. Also, the maximum safe speed is much lower if there's a train ahead on the line -- the capacity of the line is much reduced if you have to enforce 10km distance at all times.
There are very safe signalling systems, like The TGV signalling system and ETCS. However, it seems they didn't properly implement the transition from high-speed to normal line in Spain. I don't know if that's a lack of investment, a lack of regulation, or a technical oversight.
The Vietnamese used to write using Chinese (Han) characters, but switched to Roman letters. It wasn't their culture though, so I don't think they had much attachment.
In China, one person I asked to read something said they "couldn't read the font", but I/think/ that was just an excuse to avoid talking to me.
I don't know how realistic your example is -- I'm sure it could happen, but I don't know how "stupid" the boy would need to be. Would 99% of 15 year olds have managed, or only 80%? I have an app on my phone that can do reliable, accurate OCR of the characters (Pleco), from touch or camera input, so it won't be too long before "stupid" people don't need to remember the rarer/harder characters. (The app is great for reading restaurant menus.)
The recent Spanish high-speed train "accident" was a disaster waiting to happen when you study it, there is no way a high-speed railway line should have had an 80kph-limit curve like that anywhere along its length.
No, that's no problem. The problem was not installing/using a suitable signalling system, which is present on high-speed lines in most other countries.
(I don't make a habit of remembering the speed limits of curves, but IIRC the speed limit through the Channel Tunnel is 100km/h.)
I barely use it, but there is OpenId Delegation, which allows you to use your own domain but delegate the authentication part to someone else.
I have this: <link rel='openid.server' href='http://www.myopenid.com/server'/> <link rel='openid.delegate' href='http://MYNAME.myopenid.com/'/> <meta http-equiv='X-XRDS-Location' content='http://MYNAME.myopenid.com/xrds'/> on the root page of my domain, so my OpenId is http://mydomain/.
Hopefully I'll be able to delegate to someone else (or run the OpenId stuff myself, if necessary).
(I'd log into Slashdot with it, but I already have a very old account registered with the email address and can't be bothered to fix that.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_company -- says they can be limited by shares or by guarantee. I've heard of both (in the UK), I don't know what Ministry of Sound, or where I would find out.
I don't think they have shareholders. It's a private limited company, number 3299668 if anyone wants to see for themselves on http://companieshouse.gov.uk/
I went to the associated nightclub (Ministry of Sound in Elephant and Castle, London). I'm not sure the order of the tracks matters -- they all sound the same anyway!
I would never fly Ryanair, because my understanding is that if there's ever any problem, even if it's entirely their fault, their first and only reaction is going to be flipping you the bird, and I don't want to rist that.
That's what they'd like to do, and they will indeed do little more than the minimum they're legally required to do (so if you didn't book a round trip, but only a flight home, they may well just refund you in full and you'll have to buy an expensive ticket at short notice -- probably with Ryanair). However, they are one of (if not the) most reliable airlines in Europe, mostly because they fly to tiny airports that no other flights use. There's much less chance for something to go wrong.
The experience on the plane has become worse every year I've used it -- it's worse than a suburban train, they play several advertising jingles on a flight now -- but when I go to eastern Europe having a relaxing journey to/in a tiny airport, and landing exactly on time in England, for less money, can be preferable to the inevitable delay of Heathrow.
Some airlines now charge for a "large" cabin bag, e.g. http://wizzair.com/en-GB/useful_information/service_fees -- but I don't think this is unreasonable, since far too many people were taking maximum-sized bags. It really slows down boarding when there's no room for all the cabin luggage.
I use Thunderbird (unofficially, but not that unusually). It simply shows he had a keyboard when he typed the message.
Looking through my sent and received text messages, I abbreviate groups of words (LMK, TTYL) but not individual words. Most of my friends do the same. Most are between 24-29. I don't really know anyone under 20.
It would be interesting to know if 13 year olds still write things like "l8r" or "2mrw". That's generally harder to type than the full word.
Sorry about our deserts not being boiled, but froyo is frozen yogurt which even you should be able to get. How is it exactly that the limeys are unaware of lime pie?
Hey, it would be pretty boring if Britain was just a smaller, older version of the USA. Frozen yoghurt is available, but only quite recently.
Do we get to take credit for Frozen Yogurt? That's pretty cool. I didn't know that was ours.
You do indeed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_yogurt "Frozen yogurt was introduced in New England, north-east United States, in the 1970s as a soft serve dessert by H. P. Hood under the name Frogurt."
Its by far the healthiest desert I know of.
Full-fat yoghurt is perhaps healthier (fewer calories).
I've not heard of a Key Lime Pie before (I'm British). Wikipedia has a page, and it looks like a lemon meringue pie with a particular variety of limes rather than lemons.
Is this some new super villain with heat vision, the ability to morph into giant skyscrapers, and telepathy?
When 30 St Mary Axe (that's the street address) was under construction there were several proposed nicknames. Things like the Dildo. Fortunately "Gherkin" stuck, and since then several of developers / architects have tried to choose their building's nickname, but journalists have been more successful.
See also: the Shard, the Cheesegrater, and the Pinnacle / Helter Skelter.
What exactly did his desktop background disrespect? Why does it concern you? it's his desktop background, not yours.
Disliking portrayals of violence isn't uncommon, and it concerned me because I sometimes have to see it when I work with him.
There is obviously a scale. The plain, default blue background at one end, and something like pornography / gore at the other. In a normal office the violent film clip isn't far over my boundary line, but at a school it would be. At school, something gothic with skeletons is just a bit odd, but I'd choose something else at the hospital.
Essentially, I'm judging someone else by comparing their behaviour to mine.
Slashdot Mirror
The Imperial War Museum (also in London) has three Gyrojets in its collection: http://www.iwm.org.uk/search/global?query=gyrojet&x=0&y=0 .
But they don't seem to be interesting for their artistic design, which is what the V&A collects and exhibits.
I bet nowadays kids get expelled for that, at a minimum.
After the teacher found out, I got banned from using the school computers for the "rest of the year", which was about five days. I think the fresh air and sunshine probably did me some good. That was 1997.
(I didn't access any teacher's account or files. It was Windows 3.1, the "hack" was making a macro in word to open File Manager, then opening "progmana.exe", which was a copy/configuration(?) of Program Manager with the administration programs. I was 10, all I wanted to do was change the colours and the wallpaper.)
My new 42" LED backlit screen consumes about 1/3rd the power (50-60W vs 140-150) of my first generation 1080p LCD, it also looks better. I probably wouldn't have upgraded if it hadn't been for a ghosting artifact caused by my HTPC menu getting burned in on the old one but now I couldn't imagine going back.
With a delta of less than 100w it will take you a lot of TV watching to come close to a break even on cost from the efficiency gain (say, 30 _thousand_ hours if you spent $350 on your tv). Efficiency is a good thing, but it is important to know the context.
Americans average 34hrs/week watching TV, so it would take 16 years (less, assuming electricity costs decrease).
British people watch less, 28hrs/week, but electricity costs more (average £0.145/kWh), so a TV costing £250 and saving 100W would take almost 12 years to pay for the saving.
My plasma TV's consuming ~350W now, with a dark sci-fi film (brighter scenes use more power for a plasma TV). The saving here would be greater: about 5 years to pay for, less since we don't just watch dark films.
Sources:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/annual-domestic-energy-price-statistics
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/market-data/communications-market-reports/cmr12/tv-audio-visual/uk-2.42/
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsen-numbers-article-1.1162285
We have an "old" TV, given to us by someone that upgraded. I think it's HD resolution, but it doesn't do HDMI etc.
It's a plasma screen, and the watt-meter I have measures about 300-600W consumption depending on how bright the scene is -- it's usually about 400-500W. If I used it more than once a week I'd be more interested in upgrading it, but I don't.
If I used it as much as the woman next door uses hers, an upgrade to an LCD TV would pay for itself within a year in reduced electricity bills.
If you're somehow telling it what track it's on, you may as well use that system to tell it what the speed limit is -- which is what the European signalling systems do already.
No, that's no problem. The problem was not installing/using a suitable signalling system, which is present on high-speed lines in most other countries.
It seems to me that it would have been (and still is) possible to include a GPS receiver, a maximum-train-speeds database, and a speed-limiter on each train as a fallback. With that, as long as the GPS was working, even the dumbest/craziest engineer would not be able to make the train go faster than its maximum specified speed at any given location.
GPS wouldn't work in tunnels, and very often higher speed lines are adjacent to lower speed lines. here's an example, which I used to walk past sometimes. The fast lines have a 110mph limit, the "slow" lines 70mph, and the siding for a factory 20mph. The tracks are about 4-6m apart. Also, the maximum safe speed is much lower if there's a train ahead on the line -- the capacity of the line is much reduced if you have to enforce 10km distance at all times.
There are very safe signalling systems, like The TGV signalling system and ETCS. However, it seems they didn't properly implement the transition from high-speed to normal line in Spain. I don't know if that's a lack of investment, a lack of regulation, or a technical oversight.
The Vietnamese used to write using Chinese (Han) characters, but switched to Roman letters. It wasn't their culture though, so I don't think they had much attachment.
In China, one person I asked to read something said they "couldn't read the font", but I /think/ that was just an excuse to avoid talking to me.
I don't know how realistic your example is -- I'm sure it could happen, but I don't know how "stupid" the boy would need to be. Would 99% of 15 year olds have managed, or only 80%? I have an app on my phone that can do reliable, accurate OCR of the characters (Pleco), from touch or camera input, so it won't be too long before "stupid" people don't need to remember the rarer/harder characters. (The app is great for reading restaurant menus.)
The recent Spanish high-speed train "accident" was a disaster waiting to happen when you study it, there is no way a high-speed railway line should have had an 80kph-limit curve like that anywhere along its length.
No, that's no problem. The problem was not installing/using a suitable signalling system, which is present on high-speed lines in most other countries.
(I don't make a habit of remembering the speed limits of curves, but IIRC the speed limit through the Channel Tunnel is 100km/h.)
Also, I don't imagine all of the former Soviet Union spoke Russian, or did they?
No. It was more common, and taught in schools, but not universally known.
If you travel round Eastern Europe you will find old people often know German or Russian, younger people learn English.
I barely use it, but there is OpenId Delegation, which allows you to use your own domain but delegate the authentication part to someone else.
I have this:
<link rel='openid.server' href='http://www.myopenid.com/server'/>
<link rel='openid.delegate' href='http://MYNAME.myopenid.com/'/>
<meta http-equiv='X-XRDS-Location' content='http://MYNAME.myopenid.com/xrds'/>
on the root page of my domain, so my OpenId is http://mydomain/.
Hopefully I'll be able to delegate to someone else (or run the OpenId stuff myself, if necessary).
(I'd log into Slashdot with it, but I already have a very old account registered with the email address and can't be bothered to fix that.)
Private limited companies have shareholders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_company -- says they can be limited by shares or by guarantee. I've heard of both (in the UK), I don't know what Ministry of Sound, or where I would find out.
I don't think they have shareholders. It's a private limited company, number 3299668 if anyone wants to see for themselves on http://companieshouse.gov.uk/
I went to the associated nightclub (Ministry of Sound in Elephant and Castle, London). I'm not sure the order of the tracks matters -- they all sound the same anyway!
(And I like some genres of electronic music...)
Ah, I was calling a landline from a mobile phone which she paid for (since I was 11).
Also, it was 1997. The network system might have been different.
I would never fly Ryanair, because my understanding is that if there's ever any problem, even if it's entirely their fault, their first and only reaction is going to be flipping you the bird, and I don't want to rist that.
That's what they'd like to do, and they will indeed do little more than the minimum they're legally required to do (so if you didn't book a round trip, but only a flight home, they may well just refund you in full and you'll have to buy an expensive ticket at short notice -- probably with Ryanair). However, they are one of (if not the) most reliable airlines in Europe, mostly because they fly to tiny airports that no other flights use. There's much less chance for something to go wrong.
The experience on the plane has become worse every year I've used it -- it's worse than a suburban train, they play several advertising jingles on a flight now -- but when I go to eastern Europe having a relaxing journey to/in a tiny airport, and landing exactly on time in England, for less money, can be preferable to the inevitable delay of Heathrow.
Some airlines now charge for a "large" cabin bag, e.g. http://wizzair.com/en-GB/useful_information/service_fees -- but I don't think this is unreasonable, since far too many people were taking maximum-sized bags. It really slows down boarding when there's no room for all the cabin luggage.
because he's 18 he cant get a hotel room
Is that in the USA? How old do you have to be?!
There's no legal minimum here (UK), although searching brings up a few websites saying they won't take anyone alone and under 16.
You do realize in the old days cell phones were expensive right? My first contract was 35 cents a minute @ $35 /month for 100 minutes.
In 1997 I (well, my mum) would have had to pay 50p/minute (minimum 50p) if I'd called her. Around 70-90c, I don't know what the rate was back then.
Fortunately, we had a system: 3 rings, I've missed the bus and will be late (on the next one); ... I can't remember any more.
(Also, the phone was about £25, so the calls were really expensive to make up for that.)
I use Thunderbird (unofficially, but not that unusually). It simply shows he had a keyboard when he typed the message.
Looking through my sent and received text messages, I abbreviate groups of words (LMK, TTYL) but not individual words. Most of my friends do the same. Most are between 24-29. I don't really know anyone under 20.
It would be interesting to know if 13 year olds still write things like "l8r" or "2mrw". That's generally harder to type than the full word.
Sorry about our deserts not being boiled, but froyo is frozen yogurt which even you should be able to get. How is it exactly that the limeys are unaware of lime pie?
Hey, it would be pretty boring if Britain was just a smaller, older version of the USA. Frozen yoghurt is available, but only quite recently.
Here's some (supposedly) quintessentially British desserts: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/9213506/Famous-British-desserts-in-pictures.html (including a few I've never heard of).
None boiled, though a couple are steamed. (None deep-fried either, the author clearly wasn't from Scotland)
Do we get to take credit for Frozen Yogurt? That's pretty cool. I didn't know that was ours.
You do indeed!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_yogurt "Frozen yogurt was introduced in New England, north-east United States, in the 1970s as a soft serve dessert by H. P. Hood under the name Frogurt."
Its by far the healthiest desert I know of.
Full-fat yoghurt is perhaps healthier (fewer calories).
I'm not sure I buy the "not familiar with" story.
I've not heard of a Key Lime Pie before (I'm British). Wikipedia has a page, and it looks like a lemon meringue pie with a particular variety of limes rather than lemons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_meringue_pie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_lime_pie ("Key lime pie is an American dessert...")
However, it probably is just marketing. An unknown (to me) American dessert was already used: froyo.
Whoosh!
Tungsten-hydroxy-osmium-hydride? Sounds expensive!
Thunderbird strips out "-- " and anything following it when I reply. Outlook doesn't -- that's a shame, I think it used to.
Is this some new super villain with heat vision, the ability to morph into giant skyscrapers, and telepathy?
When 30 St Mary Axe (that's the street address) was under construction there were several proposed nicknames. Things like the Dildo. Fortunately "Gherkin" stuck, and since then several of developers / architects have tried to choose their building's nickname, but journalists have been more successful.
See also: the Shard, the Cheesegrater, and the Pinnacle / Helter Skelter.
What exactly did his desktop background disrespect? Why does it concern you? it's his desktop background, not yours.
Disliking portrayals of violence isn't uncommon, and it concerned me because I sometimes have to see it when I work with him.
There is obviously a scale. The plain, default blue background at one end, and something like pornography / gore at the other. In a normal office the violent film clip isn't far over my boundary line, but at a school it would be. At school, something gothic with skeletons is just a bit odd, but I'd choose something else at the hospital.
Essentially, I'm judging someone else by comparing their behaviour to mine.