Anybody got a car analogy or something which might put these numbers into a little better perspective for those of us who don't work on scales like this?
The planet loses mass at a somewhat lesser pace than humanity burns through oil (100,000 vs. 133,000 tons per second). Take that, alien sun!
We use about 4.9 km^3 per year. Oil has a density of about 0.9kg/L, so that gives us 4.41 x 10^12 kg per year.
Or, about 140,000 kg/second.
So you are correct, although I did doubt your figures at first.
(Also, could the USA please stop measuring oil in volume, which changes density depending on composition, pressure and temperature. Also, please stop using archaic units like "bbl".)
Wow, I thought the skill involved in assembling surface-mount boards would be worth more than 7 pounds an hour. How much would I get paid for stacking shelves in a UK supermarket?
When I was 18, in 2004, I was paid about £7/hour for cleaning a factory (mopping up oil from around machines). That was completely unskilled -- they just checked I understood what the safety signs meant (which is easy in Europe, they're all pictograms) and gave me a mop. I asked the employment agency why that was better paid than the £5.50/hr (minimum, back then) I got for a different, slightly more skilled job (many more instructions to follow, variety of tasks). He said the cleaning was "man's" work, and the other job for men and women. Hopefully he just meant that there were more people willing to stick with the less-tiring job, so they didn't need to pay so much. (It obviously wasn't "man's" work. I was so scrawny many girls my age were as strong as I was...)
It's great in Europe. Major cities have fantastic detail, far better than Google maps -- footpaths, cycle paths, phone boxes, every bus stop, name/number of every building, etc. Last time I looked (2 years ago?) the place my parents live (small village in England) was just a couple of main roads, but since then someone has filled in the rest of the roads, and the public footpaths, electricity pylons, etc. Google still have "Xxx Road" instead of "Xxx Street" for the road my parents live on, which sometimes causes confusion for visitors. And Google is useless for walking or cycling directions, it's very car-centric.
(There is far more detail on the OSM which isn't shown on the normal map, random stuff like the voltage and gauge of an electric railway line, but also the number of cycle racks outside a building (good for the cycling map), or codes/URLs for bus stops to retrieve next-bus information (good for a public transport next-bus-near-me phone app.)
God you Slashdotters really are paranoid nutjobs, aren't you? Yes, I AM ANDREW LAMB. Moron. Thanks for proving my whole "crying wolf when he gets confused" theory beyond a doubt.
Funny, I thought the Raspberry Pi design was open-source. Funny kind of open-source if you all call "scam" on anyone who builds & sells them himself... but hey, you found out his business address is his home address. Damn garage operations, they should all be closed down in favour of corporations.
If you are Andrew Lamb, you're hardly going to get customers with an attitude like that.
You should demonstrate how you're going to fulfil orders. The thread on the forums points out the problems -- why not respond to them?
Here's the best post from that thread:
1) He claims to be VAT registered but doesn't seem to want to state his VAT number. That is a bit strange. I think I will ring up HMRC and check he is registered. I hope he is otherwise he is committing tax fraud.
2) In his terms and conditions he states "All items are covered by a manufacturers 12 month warranty. If an item develops a fault it is best to request an RMA directly with the manufacturer." WRONG!. UK consumer law makes it crystal clear the seller is responsible for goods sold not the manufacturer. It is the sellers duty to mess about with the manufacturer.
3) He is advertising a product he can not honestly expect to have in stock. I suspect he will take people's money and simply tread water until he can get his hands on enough units to send out to people. This could take months and months.
4) He is selling products based on the PI that don't exist yet. I suspect he will simply grab the first "in-car entertainment" project that comes along and sell that. Nice.
5) He is profiting on a charity selling devices. He is doing nothing than attempting to make £4 for doing nothing other than adding delay and bureaucracy.
It doesn't take an hour to assemble one, and even in the UK assemblers of these kinds of parts don't make $15 an hour.
PCB assembler, £7-7.15/hour, i.e. about $11/hour. (Minimum wage in the UK is £6.08/hour). Add in some overheads (cost of factory buildings and equipment, etc)...
My colleagues have stuff like that, although it's not so expensive (bikes, surfboards, skis). As far as I know, many of them take it on holiday with them -- that's half the point of having it.
I think we have the lowest legal holiday entitlement in the EU, at 28 days. Yes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6943667.stm (I'm surprised the Netherlands is as low as us.) But, obviously we don't have any crap like using "vacation days" when you're ill.
(I get 30 days, plus the 8 fixed public holidays. Legally, I must use 20 days per year (I'd be sent home if I hadn't used them by the end of the year). Contractually, if I have more than 10 days left over after a year I lose them. There's no worry at all about someone having replaced me after a week or two away -- I should have had at least that much time off in the first few months of working!)
I'm not American, so I haven't studied your history very much, but I thought the Unionists won because they had most of the manufacturing, engineering and technology. The Confederates had lots of manpower, but it was mostly unskilled; agricultural labourers and so on.
Re:It's been the case for years...
on
Who Goes To CES?
·
· Score: 1
I went to a computer/software industry trade show in the UK for several consecutive years when I was about 8-10. My dad took me.
It was great; there were at most about 5 pre-teenage children in the whole place, so I was a magnet for all the nicer free stuff (games, clothes, company branded sports equipment (?), etc). My dad just got pens and business cards.
Wasn't the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (HS1 as its called these days) completed on time and on budget?
True, work on it started years late due to political pressures over the route and the crazy idea that private enterprise had to solely fund it.
I think so.
And I think (but haven't checked) several projects in London have been on-time and on-budget -- London Overground, some projects upgrading bits of the Underground. Upgrading King's Cross station seems to be going OK.
Importantly, the people who want to see something up close are more likely to be from the other end of the country, as electronic communication improves.
But on a 100 mile journey most of the time is spent stopping and starting or stopping at intermediate stations. Perhaps they should consider simply improving the current track, or running express trains?
They already do, but when you only have one or two tracks in each direction, and still need to have local trains stopping at every station, and semi-fast trains only skipping some stops, it's not possible to have enough express trains. That's part of what they mean when they say the West Coast Main Line is approaching capacity.
(The UK already has some surprisingly fast freight trains so they can keep up with passenger trains on busy routes.)
Same in Germany. Booking ahead (and being fixed with the train) can bring a 50% reduction, usually 25%
No, it's much better in Germany.
Making up numbers to demonstrate: A return journey in Germany costs 40, or 30 if booked in advance, or 20 if booked way in advance. Going just one way costs 20, 15 and 10. A return journey in England costs 100, or 20 if booked in advance, or 12 if booked way in advance. Going just one way costs 95, 10 and 6.
Yes, the English tickets are sometimes cheaper, but the cost is a huge inconvenience (booking way in advance, probably at inconvenient times), and the penalty (missing the booked train) is a way overpriced fare.
Look at this example (click "Fares" at the top, and "Show single fares"). Why is a return journey only 10p more than a one-way journey (off peak)?
The GP did have a point about paying to use a restroom in London. I've seen this at railway stations in London and Paris, and was quite surprised.
Agreed. There are still some free public toilets, but a lot less than there used to be. Many have been replaced with a plastic "pod" thing, which charges 50p or something. (London isn't special here -- it's the same in much of England.)
I'm not sure what the thought is behind this. It just means more people piss in the street.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and reply courteously.
That's great that you, you know, live in London. As in, you can afford the outrageous cost of living there,
Other than housing, most essential costs aren't much different to the rest of the country (food, fuel, transport, etc). Socialising is more expensive, but outside the centre it's not that much more.
and take what must be an exquisite pleasure to lecture the rest of us on transportation.
You'll get a better experience of London if you use the public transport, rather than try and drive everywhere. Driving in London is frustrating -- it's difficult to find parking, there's a *lot* of traffic, the streets are narrow and dense, there are many one-way restrictions. That's the way things are here.
(Would it be lecturing to advise a European against taking Amtrak and buses round the USA, if they have a limited time for their trip?)
I love how you recommend thieves' dens of stolen merchandise (you called them 'museums' I believe, an interesting bowdlerism if there ever was one) with a straight face.
So don't visit the British Museum. The other museums have completely different collections. The Museum of London, for example, has artefacts from London, often from excavations, or donations.
Surely, being a well-heeled Londoner, you must be acquainted with the idea that if something is free, then it must be worthless. Otherwise, the Great Unwashed will be all over it.
You clearly don't know this city, and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
St Paul's Cathedral, the largest and best known and arguably most important religious building in London is definitely not free to visitors.
It costs £15 to get in! I was so shocked that I just turned around and walked away.
Many of the free museums are funded by the state (or part-funded), either at national level or from more local taxes. Others are simple charities, or are run by universities (etc) for public education.
St Paul's Cathedral claims they don't get any state funding. I think that's OK, while the building is still used as a church, but I agree it's annoying for visitors.
I have paid to see major cathedrals in other European cities, although there are many that are free.
I leave my main web browser logged in to my personal GMail, which over the last year or two has led to me being logged in on all kinds of other Google sites -- YouTube, Google search, G+. Presumably Google Analytics from anything I look at is tied to my account.
I already use a separate browser for anything "dodgy". I wonder if I should get a third browser, and use that only for Google-related things. Then I can block all cookies from anything related to Google in my main browser.
People can fly from all over the world for two bloody weeks of "games," but G-d forbid they buy a sim or pay for connectivity. All the while, the rest of England get fuck all.
15% of England lives in London.
Any anyway, "The deal, which will run at no cost to the councils or the taxpayer" and "O2 Wifi launched in January 2011 with the ambition to roll out free, fast and open wifi, via strategic partnerships, across the UK."
Wtf? Free wifi in a European country?! Does not compute. I was almost certain that "Free", "Insert any service here", and "" could NEVER coexist in the same sentence.... Go to London, pay eleventy pounds for parking, pay to use restroom, pay to breathe air, pay to blink eyes, pay to use sidewalk, but Wifi is now freeeee! Oh wait, only because of the Olympics.
The parking (and congestion) charges are to discourage car use. Many Londoners, including me, don't even own a car.
But there's plenty of free things to do in London -- more than any other city I've ever visited. Some great museums: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) at South Kensington are free. So is the British Museum, in Holborn. The Museum of London (in the City) is free, as is the Imperial War Museum (Lambeth). That's just the biggest ones, there are at least 20 more not-insignificant free museums.
There are markets, old buildings (cathedrals etc), big art galleries, parks, palaces, the river, theatre, many small gigs are free... and that's just the normal, year-round stuff. There should be free one-off events, though it's obviously worth planning if you want to see something in particular.
I visited the USA when I was 14, with my parents. We did a massive 8000km road trip.
I cannot off the top of my head think of a more boring holiday than driving hundreds of kilometres each day. And as a 14 year old passenger, I think I would have become suicidal.
We travelled for three weeks, and in the last two days covered about 3000km (my parents shared the driving for those days). That leaves about 260km per day. I "navigated" most of the way. I don't remember getting bored -- maybe occasionally.
We stayed somewhere different almost every day (cheap motels), and I think we saw and did things every day. Most of it was natural geography (Yellowstone National Park, Grand Canyon etc), plus some native American historical sites, and the occasional modern city.
We then spent a week lazing around on a beach, staying with some American relatives. Their preferred supermarket was 20km from their house. Driving distances for everything in America are always much greater than in Europe. At least once we drove 150km (each way!) for dinner (that was boring -- although my mum was threatened with arrest by the waiter when she let me sip her wine...).
However, I probably had a lower standard for excitement compared to my friends: I lived in a tiny village with nothing to do, and my parents were extremely over-protective, so I wasn't allowed to go anywhere alone. That was definitely detrimental to my mental health as a teenager. (According to my youngest sibling, my mum used to follow me to the end of the road every morning, staying just out of sight, to check I got on the school bus.)
My honest advice, is to get a fucking life. Seriously, get away from the computer this whole summer and meet new people, socialise, have some fun, do some normal teenage things, drink beer, get laid, go travelling, teach English, whatever.
Maybe it's an America/Europe thing, but are you suggesting the teenagers interested in computers don't do this stuff? Some of them don't, but as many "normal" teenagers don't either.
I remember the last week of secondary school (16), when the "normal" people were talking to us "nerdy" people. They were quite surprised that several of us had girl/boyfriends -- just not from the same school; that we'd all been drunk as often (or more often!) than they had; and had done things like visit London (long way, 30x bigger city) alone when we were 14. We just didn't announce this to everyone all the time, as we didn't care what they thought.
When I was 14, one of the sporty kids walked into the classroom in the morning, announced loudly "I had sex last night, now I've done it twice, beat that! I was first!". He wasn't, but my friend hadn't felt the need to tell anyone except possibly his closest friend. It's private, obviously.
the ones who memorize pi to 100 digits and wear capes... do quirky things for the sake of being quirky because their identity is built around being the "quirky outsider". It's irritating.
(I'll ignore that the earlier post implied the people memorising pi were also building robots.)
What's wrong with being a quirky outsider? Do/did you envy the attention they had? Were you not able to be quirky yourself, perhaps because of parental or peer pressure?
While I was at school I socialised with the goths, and copied their clothes to a small extent. I enjoyed being a bit different to most people but fitting in with my friends. Then, at 18, I wondered if this was reason I didn't have many friends, so at the start of university I decided I'd "be normal", and did normal things with normal people. It was no better, sometimes worse. They had roughly the same number of friends, but listened to music I couldn't make myself enjoy and talked about crap I didn't care about (TV shows etc).
So I went and bought some blacker clothes:-). I socialised with people who didn't care for social norms, and had no problem chatting about quantum physics in the pub. Open-minded people generally don't care what I look like, so I socialise with them too -- and I don't feel I'm missing out if closed-minded people avoid me.
At your age it would be far more healthy, and a far better use of your time, to seek out an opportunity to get laid.
Going to America should be good then. It'll be "OMG I love your accent!", and he's automatically more interesting as he's from halfway (ok, ¼-way) round the world.
It sounds like a great idea -- the only "summer camps" I ever heard about in my country are religious, so I never went to one, but apart from the religion they sounded like great fun. The best bit will be meeting/socialising/playing/working with other people, so most of the reason for choosing the right kind of event is to meet the right kind of people.
I've no idea how long summer camps last, but presumably there'll be plenty of time for socialising with existing friends in the rest of the summer.
Why would you want to come to this gestapo country? Stay in Europe. What are you going to want to do next summer, go to summer camp in North Korea?
To learn about the USA, and make up his own mind. Then he can return to Europe, and be pleased with what he has, but see what should be improved.
(I visited the USA when I was 14, with my parents. We did a massive 8000km road trip. This is said so often by Europeans that it's a cliché: it was a great place to visit, but I don't want to live there.)
I'd estimate that in Manchester's Trafford Centre (which I think is the biggest shopping centre in the UK outside of London), more than two thirds of the shops were selling over-priced clothing and accessories.
The two big, new shopping centres in London (Westfield Shepherd's Bush and Westfield Stratford) are the same, possibly worse. I've not been to the Stratford one, but the Shepherd's Bush one has a whole "Village" (building) of super-over-priced clothing.
Both were meant to regenerate the area. As part of that, transport was improved -- the Shepherd's Bush one has one station at each corner, served by four different lines tube/rail lines. The Stratford one is similar. All that means is people arrive directly into the centre, shop, and leave. The area around -- which I go through about once a week -- is the same as it always was.
Slashdot Mirror
The planet loses mass at a somewhat lesser pace than humanity burns through oil (100,000 vs. 133,000 tons per second). Take that, alien sun!
We use about 4.9 km^3 per year. Oil has a density of about 0.9kg/L, so that gives us 4.41 x 10^12 kg per year.
Or, about 140,000 kg/second.
So you are correct, although I did doubt your figures at first.
(Also, could the USA please stop measuring oil in volume, which changes density depending on composition, pressure and temperature. Also, please stop using archaic units like "bbl".)
Wow, I thought the skill involved in assembling surface-mount boards would be worth more than 7 pounds an hour. How much would I get paid for stacking shelves in a UK supermarket?
Very slightly less -- £6.75 is the first figure I've found. (Right after a write-up of graduate work as a petrol station checkout assistant ...)
http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Employer=Tesco_PLC/Hourly_Rate
When I was 18, in 2004, I was paid about £7/hour for cleaning a factory (mopping up oil from around machines). That was completely unskilled -- they just checked I understood what the safety signs meant (which is easy in Europe, they're all pictograms) and gave me a mop. I asked the employment agency why that was better paid than the £5.50/hr (minimum, back then) I got for a different, slightly more skilled job (many more instructions to follow, variety of tasks). He said the cleaning was "man's" work, and the other job for men and women. Hopefully he just meant that there were more people willing to stick with the less-tiring job, so they didn't need to pay so much. (It obviously wasn't "man's" work. I was so scrawny many girls my age were as strong as I was...)
It's great in Europe. Major cities have fantastic detail, far better than Google maps -- footpaths, cycle paths, phone boxes, every bus stop, name/number of every building, etc. Last time I looked (2 years ago?) the place my parents live (small village in England) was just a couple of main roads, but since then someone has filled in the rest of the roads, and the public footpaths, electricity pylons, etc. Google still have "Xxx Road" instead of "Xxx Street" for the road my parents live on, which sometimes causes confusion for visitors. And Google is useless for walking or cycling directions, it's very car-centric.
(There is far more detail on the OSM which isn't shown on the normal map, random stuff like the voltage and gauge of an electric railway line, but also the number of cycle racks outside a building (good for the cycling map), or codes/URLs for bus stops to retrieve next-bus information (good for a public transport next-bus-near-me phone app.)
God you Slashdotters really are paranoid nutjobs, aren't you? Yes, I AM ANDREW LAMB. Moron. Thanks for proving my whole "crying wolf when he gets confused" theory beyond a doubt.
Funny, I thought the Raspberry Pi design was open-source. Funny kind of open-source if you all call "scam" on anyone who builds & sells them himself ... but hey, you found out his business address is his home address. Damn garage operations, they should all be closed down in favour of corporations.
If you are Andrew Lamb, you're hardly going to get customers with an attitude like that.
You should demonstrate how you're going to fulfil orders. The thread on the forums points out the problems -- why not respond to them?
Here's the best post from that thread:
1) He claims to be VAT registered but doesn't seem to want to state his VAT number. That is a bit strange. I think I will ring up HMRC and check he is registered. I hope he is otherwise he is committing tax fraud.
2) In his terms and conditions he states "All items are covered by a manufacturers 12 month warranty. If an item develops a fault it is best to request an RMA directly with the manufacturer." WRONG!. UK consumer law makes it crystal clear the seller is responsible for goods sold not the manufacturer. It is the sellers duty to mess about with the manufacturer.
3) He is advertising a product he can not honestly expect to have in stock. I suspect he will take people's money and simply tread water until he can get his hands on enough units to send out to people. This could take months and months.
4) He is selling products based on the PI that don't exist yet. I suspect he will simply grab the first "in-car entertainment" project that comes along and sell that. Nice.
5) He is profiting on a charity selling devices. He is doing nothing than attempting to make £4 for doing nothing other than adding delay and bureaucracy.
It doesn't take an hour to assemble one, and even in the UK assemblers of these kinds of parts don't make $15 an hour.
PCB assembler, £7-7.15/hour, i.e. about $11/hour. (Minimum wage in the UK is £6.08/hour). Add in some overheads (cost of factory buildings and equipment, etc)...
My colleagues have stuff like that, although it's not so expensive (bikes, surfboards, skis). As far as I know, many of them take it on holiday with them -- that's half the point of having it.
I think we have the lowest legal holiday entitlement in the EU, at 28 days. Yes: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6943667.stm (I'm surprised the Netherlands is as low as us.) But, obviously we don't have any crap like using "vacation days" when you're ill.
(I get 30 days, plus the 8 fixed public holidays. Legally, I must use 20 days per year (I'd be sent home if I hadn't used them by the end of the year). Contractually, if I have more than 10 days left over after a year I lose them. There's no worry at all about someone having replaced me after a week or two away -- I should have had at least that much time off in the first few months of working!)
I'm not American, so I haven't studied your history very much, but I thought the Unionists won because they had most of the manufacturing, engineering and technology. The Confederates had lots of manpower, but it was mostly unskilled; agricultural labourers and so on.
I found this: http://www.hackman-adams.com/guns/Technology.htm
I went to a computer/software industry trade show in the UK for several consecutive years when I was about 8-10. My dad took me.
It was great; there were at most about 5 pre-teenage children in the whole place, so I was a magnet for all the nicer free stuff (games, clothes, company branded sports equipment (?), etc). My dad just got pens and business cards.
Wasn't the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (HS1 as its called these days) completed on time and on budget?
True, work on it started years late due to political pressures over the route and the crazy idea that private enterprise had to solely fund it.
I think so.
And I think (but haven't checked) several projects in London have been on-time and on-budget -- London Overground, some projects upgrading bits of the Underground. Upgrading King's Cross station seems to be going OK.
Importantly, the people who want to see something up close are more likely to be from the other end of the country, as electronic communication improves.
But on a 100 mile journey most of the time is spent stopping and starting or stopping at intermediate stations. Perhaps they should consider simply improving the current track, or running express trains?
They already do, but when you only have one or two tracks in each direction, and still need to have local trains stopping at every station, and semi-fast trains only skipping some stops, it's not possible to have enough express trains. That's part of what they mean when they say the West Coast Main Line is approaching capacity.
(The UK already has some surprisingly fast freight trains so they can keep up with passenger trains on busy routes.)
Same in Germany. Booking ahead (and being fixed with the train) can bring a 50% reduction, usually 25%
No, it's much better in Germany.
Making up numbers to demonstrate:
A return journey in Germany costs 40, or 30 if booked in advance, or 20 if booked way in advance. Going just one way costs 20, 15 and 10.
A return journey in England costs 100, or 20 if booked in advance, or 12 if booked way in advance. Going just one way costs 95, 10 and 6.
Yes, the English tickets are sometimes cheaper, but the cost is a huge inconvenience (booking way in advance, probably at inconvenient times), and the penalty (missing the booked train) is a way overpriced fare.
Look at this example (click "Fares" at the top, and "Show single fares"). Why is a return journey only 10p more than a one-way journey (off peak)?
The GP did have a point about paying to use a restroom in London. I've seen this at railway stations in London and Paris, and was quite surprised.
Agreed. There are still some free public toilets, but a lot less than there used to be. Many have been replaced with a plastic "pod" thing, which charges 50p or something. (London isn't special here -- it's the same in much of England.)
I'm not sure what the thought is behind this. It just means more people piss in the street.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and reply courteously.
That's great that you, you know, live in London. As in, you can afford the outrageous cost of living there,
Other than housing, most essential costs aren't much different to the rest of the country (food, fuel, transport, etc). Socialising is more expensive, but outside the centre it's not that much more.
and take what must be an exquisite pleasure to lecture the rest of us on transportation.
You'll get a better experience of London if you use the public transport, rather than try and drive everywhere. Driving in London is frustrating -- it's difficult to find parking, there's a *lot* of traffic, the streets are narrow and dense, there are many one-way restrictions. That's the way things are here.
(Would it be lecturing to advise a European against taking Amtrak and buses round the USA, if they have a limited time for their trip?)
I love how you recommend thieves' dens of stolen merchandise (you called them 'museums' I believe, an interesting bowdlerism if there ever was one) with a straight face.
So don't visit the British Museum. The other museums have completely different collections. The Museum of London, for example, has artefacts from London, often from excavations, or donations.
Surely, being a well-heeled Londoner, you must be acquainted with the idea that if something is free, then it must be worthless. Otherwise, the Great Unwashed will be all over it.
You clearly don't know this city, and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
St Paul's Cathedral, the largest and best known and arguably most important religious building in London is definitely not free to visitors.
It costs £15 to get in! I was so shocked that I just turned around and walked away.
Many of the free museums are funded by the state (or part-funded), either at national level or from more local taxes. Others are simple charities, or are run by universities (etc) for public education.
St Paul's Cathedral claims they don't get any state funding. I think that's OK, while the building is still used as a church, but I agree it's annoying for visitors.
I have paid to see major cathedrals in other European cities, although there are many that are free.
All you have to do is sign out and search.
I leave my main web browser logged in to my personal GMail, which over the last year or two has led to me being logged in on all kinds of other Google sites -- YouTube, Google search, G+. Presumably Google Analytics from anything I look at is tied to my account.
I already use a separate browser for anything "dodgy". I wonder if I should get a third browser, and use that only for Google-related things. Then I can block all cookies from anything related to Google in my main browser.
People can fly from all over the world for two bloody weeks of "games," but G-d forbid they buy a sim or pay for connectivity. All the while, the rest of England get fuck all.
15% of England lives in London.
Any anyway, "The deal, which will run at no cost to the councils or the taxpayer" and "O2 Wifi launched in January 2011 with the ambition to roll out free, fast and open wifi, via strategic partnerships, across the UK."
Wtf? Free wifi in a European country?! Does not compute. I was almost certain that "Free", "Insert any service here", and "" could NEVER coexist in the same sentence.... Go to London, pay eleventy pounds for parking, pay to use restroom, pay to breathe air, pay to blink eyes, pay to use sidewalk, but Wifi is now freeeee! Oh wait, only because of the Olympics.
The parking (and congestion) charges are to discourage car use. Many Londoners, including me, don't even own a car.
But there's plenty of free things to do in London -- more than any other city I've ever visited. Some great museums: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) at South Kensington are free. So is the British Museum, in Holborn. The Museum of London (in the City) is free, as is the Imperial War Museum (Lambeth). That's just the biggest ones, there are at least 20 more not-insignificant free museums.
There are markets, old buildings (cathedrals etc), big art galleries, parks, palaces, the river, theatre, many small gigs are free... and that's just the normal, year-round stuff. There should be free one-off events, though it's obviously worth planning if you want to see something in particular.
Try these websites:
http://www.visitlondon.com/tag/free-attractions
http://www.timeout.com/london/feature/1424/free-london
http://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/free-london
http://londonist.com/tags/lotclist
I visited the USA when I was 14, with my parents. We did a massive 8000km road trip.
I cannot off the top of my head think of a more boring holiday than driving hundreds of kilometres each day. And as a 14 year old passenger, I think I would have become suicidal.
We travelled for three weeks, and in the last two days covered about 3000km (my parents shared the driving for those days). That leaves about 260km per day. I "navigated" most of the way. I don't remember getting bored -- maybe occasionally.
We stayed somewhere different almost every day (cheap motels), and I think we saw and did things every day. Most of it was natural geography (Yellowstone National Park, Grand Canyon etc), plus some native American historical sites, and the occasional modern city.
We then spent a week lazing around on a beach, staying with some American relatives. Their preferred supermarket was 20km from their house. Driving distances for everything in America are always much greater than in Europe. At least once we drove 150km (each way!) for dinner (that was boring -- although my mum was threatened with arrest by the waiter when she let me sip her wine...).
However, I probably had a lower standard for excitement compared to my friends: I lived in a tiny village with nothing to do, and my parents were extremely over-protective, so I wasn't allowed to go anywhere alone. That was definitely detrimental to my mental health as a teenager. (According to my youngest sibling, my mum used to follow me to the end of the road every morning, staying just out of sight, to check I got on the school bus.)
My honest advice, is to get a fucking life. Seriously, get away from the computer this whole summer and meet new people, socialise, have some fun, do some normal teenage things, drink beer, get laid, go travelling, teach English, whatever.
Maybe it's an America/Europe thing, but are you suggesting the teenagers interested in computers don't do this stuff? Some of them don't, but as many "normal" teenagers don't either.
I remember the last week of secondary school (16), when the "normal" people were talking to us "nerdy" people. They were quite surprised that several of us had girl/boyfriends -- just not from the same school; that we'd all been drunk as often (or more often!) than they had; and had done things like visit London (long way, 30x bigger city) alone when we were 14. We just didn't announce this to everyone all the time, as we didn't care what they thought.
When I was 14, one of the sporty kids walked into the classroom in the morning, announced loudly "I had sex last night, now I've done it twice, beat that! I was first!". He wasn't, but my friend hadn't felt the need to tell anyone except possibly his closest friend. It's private, obviously.
the ones who memorize pi to 100 digits and wear capes ... do quirky things for the sake of being quirky because their identity is built around being the "quirky outsider". It's irritating.
(I'll ignore that the earlier post implied the people memorising pi were also building robots.)
What's wrong with being a quirky outsider? Do/did you envy the attention they had? Were you not able to be quirky yourself, perhaps because of parental or peer pressure?
While I was at school I socialised with the goths, and copied their clothes to a small extent. I enjoyed being a bit different to most people but fitting in with my friends. Then, at 18, I wondered if this was reason I didn't have many friends, so at the start of university I decided I'd "be normal", and did normal things with normal people. It was no better, sometimes worse. They had roughly the same number of friends, but listened to music I couldn't make myself enjoy and talked about crap I didn't care about (TV shows etc).
So I went and bought some blacker clothes :-). I socialised with people who didn't care for social norms, and had no problem chatting about quantum physics in the pub. Open-minded people generally don't care what I look like, so I socialise with them too -- and I don't feel I'm missing out if closed-minded people avoid me.
From my point of view, in the UK, it seems to be preventing the British government from removing our existing freedoms.
Also, I voted for an MEP -- using a fairer voting system than for the national elections, too.
At your age it would be far more healthy, and a far better use of your time, to seek out an opportunity to get laid.
Going to America should be good then. It'll be "OMG I love your accent!", and he's automatically more interesting as he's from halfway (ok, ¼-way) round the world.
It sounds like a great idea -- the only "summer camps" I ever heard about in my country are religious, so I never went to one, but apart from the religion they sounded like great fun. The best bit will be meeting/socialising/playing/working with other people, so most of the reason for choosing the right kind of event is to meet the right kind of people.
I've no idea how long summer camps last, but presumably there'll be plenty of time for socialising with existing friends in the rest of the summer.
Why would you want to come to this gestapo country? Stay in Europe. What are you going to want to do next summer, go to summer camp in North Korea?
To learn about the USA, and make up his own mind. Then he can return to Europe, and be pleased with what he has, but see what should be improved.
(I visited the USA when I was 14, with my parents. We did a massive 8000km road trip. This is said so often by Europeans that it's a cliché: it was a great place to visit, but I don't want to live there.)
I'd estimate that in Manchester's Trafford Centre (which I think is the biggest shopping centre in the UK outside of London), more than two thirds of the shops were selling over-priced clothing and accessories.
The two big, new shopping centres in London (Westfield Shepherd's Bush and Westfield Stratford) are the same, possibly worse. I've not been to the Stratford one, but the Shepherd's Bush one has a whole "Village" (building) of super-over-priced clothing.
Both were meant to regenerate the area. As part of that, transport was improved -- the Shepherd's Bush one has one station at each corner, served by four different lines tube/rail lines. The Stratford one is similar. All that means is people arrive directly into the centre, shop, and leave. The area around -- which I go through about once a week -- is the same as it always was.