Someone has to do it...
If only the brown-banded bamboo shark had a fricken laser...
Shark versus shark in Barrier Reef DEATH MATCH
Researchers have known for ages that some shark species prey on other sharks if they get the chance, but now, researchers have caught happy snaps of the killer snack. The pics, taken by researchers from the ARC Research Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, show a “carpet shark” taking in a solid meal of brown-banded …
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Monday 13th February 2012 12:18 GMT Marvin the Martian
You just wanted to find a fault in article, didn't you?
"When people step on them" is the provocation it describes, so you just repeat the article in a vaguer way. And "usually not fatal" is what it says, being the opposite of saying "usually fatal" which would be a bollocks statement indeed, so you'd have to agree again with the article.
Now, "never fatal" is an obviously wrong statement as nature usually finds a way if it wants to screw you over. There's documented "death by misadventure" cases where a bitten diver panics and drowns, and arguably the nipped-only but distressed diver may attract larger sharks causing a frenzy, or may get blood poisoning and a toxic shock, or whatever. In all of those (very rare) cases the wobbegong bites are ultimately fatal.
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Monday 13th February 2012 13:09 GMT Loyal Commenter
God Bless America
The country that doesn't use the metric system, can't even spell it, and calls its units 'British' units despite their being different to the versions of imperial units that manage to still be in use in Britain, such as the pint. Oh, and puts the month before the day when writing dates, the bane of many a non-US computer programmer. I'd pretty much disregard anything that comes from there if I were you...
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Monday 13th February 2012 13:22 GMT Zaphod.Beeblebrox
Date notation
> and puts the month before the day when writing dates
You mean like the way ISO 8601 defines the international standard date format - i.e. 2011-02-13?
(Yes I know the average man on the street in the US doesn't use that format, instead tending to use 2-13-2012. But the format preferred in the US makes as much sense as any other non-ISO 8601 format, it is all a matter of what you are used to at that point.)
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Monday 13th February 2012 13:49 GMT mark 63
Thanks Zaphod!
I'm glad to find out that that is in fact the "international standard date format " now I can tell all my colleagues whining about the way I name and date documents to go get F**cked!!
I did it that way because they stack up alphabetically AND chronologicly at the same time, presumably thats also why the ISO folks came up with it!
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Monday 13th February 2012 19:38 GMT Clive Galway
Date orders
>You mean like the way ISO 8601 defines the international standard date format - i.e. 2011-02-13?
YMD is a logical order. In this format, you can order alphabetically and things still sort chronologically. It also is logical in the sense that the units are in (reverse) order of unit size.
UK format - DMY is also logical (it is simply the inverse of the above). Again, (reverse) alphabetical sorting still yields the correct chronological order. It is also in order of ascending unit size (As we do with normal numbers) so is probably the most consistent system.
US style - MDY makes no logical sense at all. You are not even using unit sizes in order. It would be like saying 123 as "Three and One hundred and Twenty".
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Monday 13th February 2012 21:38 GMT Bill B
It's worse than that
The date order MDY is fine if you are just an American company. Trouble is, international companies that originate in America (and whose servers reside in America) still use the MDY format. As a company just been taken over by an American, I'm waiting for that big order due on 3/5/2012 to go horribly wrong.
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Wednesday 15th February 2012 00:38 GMT Jonathan Richards 1
Normal == arabic
> In order of ascending unit size (As we do with normal numbers)
We do? If you're reading left to right, e.g. hours:minutes:seconds goes large to small, that is descending. So does 12st 10lb, or 7ft 6 in.
In ordinary decimal writing we write, left to right, from the highest power of ten downwards, which means that you have to read through the number before you know what that power is. However, the Arab mathematicians who invented the system intended numbers to be written, as they did then and still do now, from right to left. We've just lifted their notation and dropped it into our left->right writing without changing it. In an Arabic text, if a number is encountered such as 761, it's instantly clear that there is one unit, six tens and seven hundreds, without having to count digits. Much more sensible.
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Monday 13th February 2012 11:25 GMT deshepherd
Reminds me of a story of a zoo where two snakes were in the same tank and keepers didn't notice that when they put a couple of dead rats in at feeding time that both snakes started at opposite ends of the same rat, met at the middle and the larger snake opened its jaws a bit further than the other and started to consume it as well.
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This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
