CDs specify a pause before each track. Usually it's 2 seconds (my old player counts down -0:02, -0:01, 0:00, 0:01), but it can be set to zero, in which case there's no gap at all, and the index is just a pointer to a frame to start playback from.
I gave up trying to get monitors working perfectly in Linux. I have the normal setup working perfectly (one landscape widescreen monitor, one portrait standard-ratio monitor, windows maximising correctly, etc). That was very easy to set up in KDE's display settings. The problem is if I disconnect the laptop to do a presentation, or use it away from my desk. I gave up, and just made an extra username on the laptop with different display settings -- but that could be really annoying, fortunately I hardly ever need to do this.
"Reasonably well in Windows" is correct though -- this stuff isn't perfect there, and my colleagues (all on Windows) occasionally curse the system after reconnecting their laptop to their monitors.
I disagree about the lack of polish and smoothness, but in any case see it as irrelevant compared to the usability of the system. Basic stuff (holding alt and dragging/resizing a window, dragging a maximised window's title bar and having it shrink, responsiveness of the file browsing program) just doesn't work in Windows, and that's far more important. Other stuff requires weird registry hacks, and occasionally causes problems (swapping Ctrl and Caps Lock, using focus-follows-mouse).
Next task is to try and get VirtualBox running so I can boot my Windows install without rebooting the system.
I tried this.
It worked fine for a week or so, but then the whole thing locked up with some anti-piracy measure deciding I'd cloned the system onto too-different hardware (which, essentially, I had).
I'm not quite as fresh to Windows as you. I didn't use one at all while at university, but now I have a Windows PC at work, which I use only for email (Outlook) and Word. Supposedly, I don't have permission to install software, but I only found that out when I couldn't remove something and phoned the helpdesk. I'm not sure why I'm able to install things, but not remove them.
At work, we changed a lot of technologies we use (for software development) recently. A couple of colleagues complained that it was too difficult to install and set up all the software, so I found Npackd, which helps. That package manager has made Windows a bit more bearable for me (especially once I found that MSysGit includes a copy of Bash, so I get a decent shell).
You can right-click on the taskbar (start menu bar) for the Task Manager, or do Ctrl-Shift-Esc.
I went through the UK school system in a steelworks-and-mining area.
When?
My parents were both teachers. My dad, who taught in a machines-and-factories area (somewhere uses that steel and coal!) reckoned the late 1970s was the point where some cultural change meant general reduced achievement and trouble keeping discipline.
Note that the anti-bullying organisation could easily have done the survey and claimed that, say, social class was the biggest problem, or appearance, or whatever. I don't really see why they shouldn't be trusted on this.
Riiight....cuz no one was every bullied at a private school...
I went to a private school (a relatively cheap one, as these things go).
There wasn't much bullying. The teachers tried to deal with it, they have more time and a less-stressful environment than in a public school, and the parents care too, which really helps. It was good to get top grades, though some children got a bit envious of the ones that didn't seem to have to work for them.
Thinking back, I got bullied by the male sports teachers for a while. I was the smallest, skinniest boy in the class, and hated the muddy-field kind of sport they did (rugby, football, running). Those teachers were arrogant pricks, all ex-professional sportsmen, probably no formal teaching qualifications. I got on fine with the only female sports teacher, who was a genuinely successful athlete (ex Olympic team, came 4th in her event). She didn't have anything to prove. Once my parents realised the trouble was more than me not liking rugby, they wrote to the school and the problems pretty much stopped, although those teachers were never nice to me.
I imagine it could be worse (maybe a lot worse) at a boarding school, or a religious school.
Google knows the bad PR that would come with a kid looking up information on penicillin being presented with penis as a possibility. Of course, it wouldn't offend the kid (who would probably see it as reasonable), it would offend their PTA office-holding parents (who would probably just see dollar signs).
I wouldn't be surprised if most of those searching for "penis" (only that) are children, and any searching for "penicillin" know how to spell penis, and what it is. A long time ago I looked penis it up in the big dead-tree encyclopaedia my parents bought me. Admittedly, that was a "children's" encyclopaedia, but I'm pretty sure it had a cross-reference to sex.
The Google search directs me to three Wikipedia pages, followed by a British sex education page (with a gallery of pictures, intended to reassure boys that they're normal), and an NHS "penis health" page. Seems fine to me.
If you want Icelandic music then http://www.icelandicmusic.com/ is the real deal. Pretty good music that can be found there, but most of it obviously in a language that will sound like Klingon to most people...
I wonder why they chose Silverlight for their player?
Icelandic sounds like Norwegian/Swedish to me (which I don't understand). Picking the first video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ecT5j3zaps I can even understand a few words (just like Norwegian/Swedish).
Icelandic is much closer to English than, say, Gaelic. Try understanding a single word from Runrig - Alba (relatively famous Scottish folk-rock band).
Aren't there any virtual mobile operators in Norway? They're mostly branded as low-budget here (UK), and popular with students etc.
GiffGaff will give unlimited texts for £5/month, http://giffgaff.com/goodybags/5pound-unlimited-texts They're not even a real virtual operator -- they're a trading name of O2 (a major network), but targeting "budget" customers. I think they reduce costs by having very little customer support. Support is provided in the forum, answering questions earns extra phone credit.
An éclaire like that was a childhood indulgence:-D. I generally had to share one with my sister (not unreasonable, really).
I'm not sure how much they cost here. A crap one from a supermarket is $0.50 (that's still using real cream though). Probably $2-3, but a luxury bakery will sell them for double that.
Yoghurt is of unknown origin, according to Wikipedia, but possibly from modern-day India or Iran.
It's not Greek, however: The oldest writings mentioning yogurt are attributed to Pliny the Elder, who remarked that certain "barbarous nations" knew how "to thicken the milk into a substance with an agreeable acidity".
4. Call an international Postal Office congress. Get a cheap international tracking number and while at it, standardize all customs forms and registered form and other forms the world over with symbols. Too many packages get lost, too many registered packages with funny foreign postal languages go unheeded and the cheapest tracking number (unreliable) is with Express mail or Fedex/UPS with around $150 minimum ridiculousness, less for a business but still). Domestic tracking is like 0.75 cents. Even if they charge $5 for intl tracking, would be way cheaper than what's out there now and an untapped market. Especially for eBay sellers and the like.
I think all that exists. The language for post is French, the tracking numbers I've seen have started with an ISO country code (and foreign ones worked in my national postal service's website).
5. On the eBay sellers front, try to break down customs barriers, especially with the EU. It's ridiculous.
I've travelled several times on the high-speed (320km/h or so) trains in China. Every train I took was at least 90% full (i.e. seats used, standing isn't permitted).
They've built some *really* nice infrastructure, and are clearly planning on adding many extra lines (stations have many more platforms than are necessary for the current service).
The service is not much different to Europe -- stations in good locations, good public transport connections, restaurant carriage, etc. The differences are - The Chinese have lots of security theatre (metal detectors and must show ID to buy and use a ticket) - Their trains are wider, and the seats are slightly larger - The prices (to me) are really cheap, although I think they're pretty expensive for most Chinese people - The daft restrictions make it less convenient to buy a ticket, especially if you're a foreigner, and mean you have to arrive at the station sooner to go through security checks. - Their "limitless concrete plain" style of architecture means you have to plan for a 5-minute walk from the train to get out of the station, but that's the same as their airports.
I visited China recently, and paid £10 or so for Pleco. Its great:handwriting recognition of Chinese characters, OCR using the camera, and many more plugins I haven't paid for. All offline, I'd have used £10 many times over in roaming fees with an online app or site.
An app that's "all in one" doing something similar could easily be worth $50.
The relevance of "receiving broadcasts" is that is the action which legally requires the purchase of a TV license -- regardless of who is broadcasting. This covers TV cards in computers, recording devices, etc.
Your analogy with newspapers is more-or-less correct. In many countries the money for the public broadcasters comes from general taxation. The British way means only those who watch TV pay, and keeps the BBC a bit more independent of the government.
... but there's some hoops to jump through to get them to stop bugging you about it.
Not according to my British friends, there's not. They just keep bugging you. One of my friends (generally known in the Crome OS and Raspberry Pi communities as "Hexxeh") finally just gave in and paid the fee, even though he only ever uses the thing as a monitor. I told him he was nuts, but the lack of a BBC weenie calling him on his cell phone weekly apparently causes the license to pay for itself in reduced cell minutes.
I suspect if the UK ever got a working "do not call list", then the BBC would do the same thing the US companies and "free cruise!" scammers in the US have done, and just offshore the robo-calls.
Lots of things wrong with that.
1) The TV licensing people don't pester you if you tell them (possibly in writing?) that you don't use the TV to receive broadcasts. I have a TV, and haven't been asked to buy a license for over three years now. I was originally asked once, when I moved into this house and the previous resident's license (the license is for the property) expired.
2) They don't call, they send letters and -- very occasionally -- visit in person.
3) It's free to receive phone calls here.
4) A company you don't have dealings with is breaking the law to telephone you, as they don't have your permission.
The police's discretion in the UK is at least partly codified, it's not really the decision of individual officers. I think that's how it should be. Sometimes the laws are written to mean no crime is committed if the suspect changes their behaviour -- e.g. "failing to surrender alcohol in a restricted drinking zone".
We probably need to be careful with language, and in any case I don't know much about this -- I've never had a warning, caution or similar.
Exactly, one of the last conversations I had with my grandfather who fought in EU during WWII
That was Europe, not the EU -- the predecessors to the EU were founded after WWII, the intention was to prevent a repeat, which has been a great success.
I'm on holiday in China, and have been very frustrated with the slow, filtered web.
I've been SSHing to a machine at work, and using a dynamic SOCKS proxy through it (ssh -D 3128..., then set the SOCKS proxy in Firefox/etc to port 3128). I use Baidu for anything where the Chinese web should be just as good, e.g. weather forecasts.
Slashdot Mirror
An AC replied with this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap which is what I was thinking of.
I don't know any more about the subject, so I won't pretend to.
CDs specify a pause before each track. Usually it's 2 seconds (my old player counts down -0:02, -0:01, 0:00, 0:01), but it can be set to zero, in which case there's no gap at all, and the index is just a pointer to a frame to start playback from.
I have a few electronic albums like this.
I gave up trying to get monitors working perfectly in Linux. I have the normal setup working perfectly (one landscape widescreen monitor, one portrait standard-ratio monitor, windows maximising correctly, etc). That was very easy to set up in KDE's display settings. The problem is if I disconnect the laptop to do a presentation, or use it away from my desk. I gave up, and just made an extra username on the laptop with different display settings -- but that could be really annoying, fortunately I hardly ever need to do this.
"Reasonably well in Windows" is correct though -- this stuff isn't perfect there, and my colleagues (all on Windows) occasionally curse the system after reconnecting their laptop to their monitors.
I disagree about the lack of polish and smoothness, but in any case see it as irrelevant compared to the usability of the system. Basic stuff (holding alt and dragging/resizing a window, dragging a maximised window's title bar and having it shrink, responsiveness of the file browsing program) just doesn't work in Windows, and that's far more important. Other stuff requires weird registry hacks, and occasionally causes problems (swapping Ctrl and Caps Lock, using focus-follows-mouse).
Next task is to try and get VirtualBox running so I can boot my Windows install without rebooting the system.
I tried this.
It worked fine for a week or so, but then the whole thing locked up with some anti-piracy measure deciding I'd cloned the system onto too-different hardware (which, essentially, I had).
I'm not quite as fresh to Windows as you. I didn't use one at all while at university, but now I have a Windows PC at work, which I use only for email (Outlook) and Word. Supposedly, I don't have permission to install software, but I only found that out when I couldn't remove something and phoned the helpdesk. I'm not sure why I'm able to install things, but not remove them.
At work, we changed a lot of technologies we use (for software development) recently. A couple of colleagues complained that it was too difficult to install and set up all the software, so I found Npackd, which helps. That package manager has made Windows a bit more bearable for me (especially once I found that MSysGit includes a copy of Bash, so I get a decent shell).
You can right-click on the taskbar (start menu bar) for the Task Manager, or do Ctrl-Shift-Esc.
I went through the UK school system in a steelworks-and-mining area.
When?
My parents were both teachers. My dad, who taught in a machines-and-factories area (somewhere uses that steel and coal!) reckoned the late 1970s was the point where some cultural change meant general reduced achievement and trouble keeping discipline.
Note that the anti-bullying organisation could easily have done the survey and claimed that, say, social class was the biggest problem, or appearance, or whatever. I don't really see why they shouldn't be trusted on this.
Riiight....cuz no one was every bullied at a private school...
I went to a private school (a relatively cheap one, as these things go).
There wasn't much bullying. The teachers tried to deal with it, they have more time and a less-stressful environment than in a public school, and the parents care too, which really helps. It was good to get top grades, though some children got a bit envious of the ones that didn't seem to have to work for them.
Thinking back, I got bullied by the male sports teachers for a while. I was the smallest, skinniest boy in the class, and hated the muddy-field kind of sport they did (rugby, football, running). Those teachers were arrogant pricks, all ex-professional sportsmen, probably no formal teaching qualifications. I got on fine with the only female sports teacher, who was a genuinely successful athlete (ex Olympic team, came 4th in her event). She didn't have anything to prove. Once my parents realised the trouble was more than me not liking rugby, they wrote to the school and the problems pretty much stopped, although those teachers were never nice to me.
I imagine it could be worse (maybe a lot worse) at a boarding school, or a religious school.
Google knows the bad PR that would come with a kid looking up information on penicillin being presented with penis as a possibility. Of course, it wouldn't offend the kid (who would probably see it as reasonable), it would offend their PTA office-holding parents (who would probably just see dollar signs).
I wouldn't be surprised if most of those searching for "penis" (only that) are children, and any searching for "penicillin" know how to spell penis, and what it is. A long time ago I looked penis it up in the big dead-tree encyclopaedia my parents bought me. Admittedly, that was a "children's" encyclopaedia, but I'm pretty sure it had a cross-reference to sex.
The Google search directs me to three Wikipedia pages, followed by a British sex education page (with a gallery of pictures, intended to reassure boys that they're normal), and an NHS "penis health" page. Seems fine to me.
If you want Icelandic music then http://www.icelandicmusic.com/ is the real deal. Pretty good music that can be found there, but most of it obviously in a language that will sound like Klingon to most people...
I wonder why they chose Silverlight for their player?
Icelandic sounds like Norwegian/Swedish to me (which I don't understand). Picking the first video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ecT5j3zaps I can even understand a few words (just like Norwegian/Swedish).
Icelandic is much closer to English than, say, Gaelic. Try understanding a single word from Runrig - Alba (relatively famous Scottish folk-rock band).
Aren't there any virtual mobile operators in Norway? They're mostly branded as low-budget here (UK), and popular with students etc.
GiffGaff will give unlimited texts for £5/month, http://giffgaff.com/goodybags/5pound-unlimited-texts They're not even a real virtual operator -- they're a trading name of O2 (a major network), but targeting "budget" customers. I think they reduce costs by having very little customer support. Support is provided in the forum, answering questions earns extra phone credit.
Another virtual operator, TalkMobile, offer unlimited texts to pay-as-you-go customers for the next month, whenever they top up: http://www.talkmobile.co.uk/pay_as_you_go.html
Get off the grass, Junior. When we were kids, the only porn available were stained copies of Playboy and Penthouse.
The research suggests more British children see sexual material on DVDs or TV than on the Internet.
(I read that in the Open Right's Group's response to the survey: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/response-to-dfe-consultation-on-parental-controls )
An éclaire like that was a childhood indulgence :-D. I generally had to share one with my sister (not unreasonable, really).
I'm not sure how much they cost here. A crap one from a supermarket is $0.50 (that's still using real cream though). Probably $2-3, but a luxury bakery will sell them for double that.
The mass-produced what-sell-by-date? thing is still available, e.g. http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=254948221 (on http://www.cadburycakes.co.uk/range/cadbury-mini-rolls/ "THESE CAKES DO NOT CONTAIN DAIRY CREAM". Also I note that the serving is one roll, 27g, and the serving for a Ho-Ho is three rolls, 85g! http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-hostess-ho-hos-i113324 )
Yoghurt is of unknown origin, according to Wikipedia, but possibly from modern-day India or Iran.
It's not Greek, however: The oldest writings mentioning yogurt are attributed to Pliny the Elder, who remarked that certain "barbarous nations" knew how "to thicken the milk into a substance with an agreeable acidity".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoghurt#History
4. Call an international Postal Office congress. Get a cheap international tracking number and while at it, standardize all customs forms and registered form and other forms the world over with symbols. Too many packages get lost, too many registered packages with funny foreign postal languages go unheeded and the cheapest tracking number (unreliable) is with Express mail or Fedex/UPS with around $150 minimum ridiculousness, less for a business but still). Domestic tracking is like 0.75 cents. Even if they charge $5 for intl tracking, would be way cheaper than what's out there now and an untapped market. Especially for eBay sellers and the like.
I think all that exists. The language for post is French, the tracking numbers I've seen have started with an ISO country code (and foreign ones worked in my national postal service's website).
5. On the eBay sellers front, try to break down customs barriers, especially with the EU. It's ridiculous.
That's not much to do with post.
I've travelled several times on the high-speed (320km/h or so) trains in China. Every train I took was at least 90% full (i.e. seats used, standing isn't permitted).
They've built some *really* nice infrastructure, and are clearly planning on adding many extra lines (stations have many more platforms than are necessary for the current service).
The service is not much different to Europe -- stations in good locations, good public transport connections, restaurant carriage, etc. The differences are
- The Chinese have lots of security theatre (metal detectors and must show ID to buy and use a ticket)
- Their trains are wider, and the seats are slightly larger
- The prices (to me) are really cheap, although I think they're pretty expensive for most Chinese people
- The daft restrictions make it less convenient to buy a ticket, especially if you're a foreigner, and mean you have to arrive at the station sooner to go through security checks.
- Their "limitless concrete plain" style of architecture means you have to plan for a 5-minute walk from the train to get out of the station, but that's the same as their airports.
I visited China recently, and paid £10 or so for Pleco. Its great:handwriting recognition of Chinese characters, OCR using the camera, and many more plugins I haven't paid for. All offline, I'd have used £10 many times over in roaming fees with an online app or site.
An app that's "all in one" doing something similar could easily be worth $50.
I never commented on whether it was or was not a tax, I'm not sure why (if?) you're trying to argue with me.
It is a tax, in the general sense, but is specifically referred to as a license fee, in the same way the tax on beer or petrol is called a duty.
converting to the gram which isn't the SI unit for mass.
The gram is not the SI base unit, but it is an SI unit.
The relevance of "receiving broadcasts" is that is the action which legally requires the purchase of a TV license -- regardless of who is broadcasting. This covers TV cards in computers, recording devices, etc.
Full details here: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/what-if-a-tv-licence-is-not-needed-top12/
Your analogy with newspapers is more-or-less correct. In many countries the money for the public broadcasters comes from general taxation. The British way means only those who watch TV pay, and keeps the BBC a bit more independent of the government.
... but there's some hoops to jump through to get them to stop bugging you about it.
Not according to my British friends, there's not. They just keep bugging you. One of my friends (generally known in the Crome OS and Raspberry Pi communities as "Hexxeh") finally just gave in and paid the fee, even though he only ever uses the thing as a monitor. I told him he was nuts, but the lack of a BBC weenie calling him on his cell phone weekly apparently causes the license to pay for itself in reduced cell minutes.
I suspect if the UK ever got a working "do not call list", then the BBC would do the same thing the US companies and "free cruise!" scammers in the US have done, and just offshore the robo-calls.
Lots of things wrong with that.
1) The TV licensing people don't pester you if you tell them (possibly in writing?) that you don't use the TV to receive broadcasts. I have a TV, and haven't been asked to buy a license for over three years now. I was originally asked once, when I moved into this house and the previous resident's license (the license is for the property) expired.
2) They don't call, they send letters and -- very occasionally -- visit in person.
3) It's free to receive phone calls here.
4) A company you don't have dealings with is breaking the law to telephone you, as they don't have your permission.
The EU has 27 member states: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union but last time I checked, there were 48 countries in Europe.
We have the right to free expression, but it is subject to certain limitations, to balance it with other rights.
(Some rights are absolute, like the right to no torture, but even the right to life has exceptions.)
The police's discretion in the UK is at least partly codified, it's not really the decision of individual officers. I think that's how it should be. Sometimes the laws are written to mean no crime is committed if the suspect changes their behaviour -- e.g. "failing to surrender alcohol in a restricted drinking zone".
We probably need to be careful with language, and in any case I don't know much about this -- I've never had a warning, caution or similar.
See https://www.gov.uk/caution-warning-penalty
In any case, after an arrest it's for the public prosecutor to decide whether to press charges.
Exactly, one of the last conversations I had with my grandfather who fought in EU during WWII
That was Europe, not the EU -- the predecessors to the EU were founded after WWII, the intention was to prevent a repeat, which has been a great success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU#History
Or, recently: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/12/european-union-nobel-peace-prize
If it were still British it would be protected against flooding, and all the electricity lines would be underground.
The thames Barrier is a flood barrier protecting London: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/38353.aspx and electricity wires on poles are very rare -- only seen in remote rural areas.
I'm on holiday in China, and have been very frustrated with the slow, filtered web.
I've been SSHing to a machine at work, and using a dynamic SOCKS proxy through it (ssh -D 3128 ..., then set the SOCKS proxy in Firefox/etc to port 3128). I use Baidu for anything where the Chinese web should be just as good, e.g. weather forecasts.