Posts by albaleo 238 publicly visible posts • joined 20 May 2009
Rik doesn't understand that CO2 molecules don't care where their photons come from. So they'll absorb, and almost immediately re-radiate a photon that comes from any direction, from space or from the surface.
CO2 molecules may not care where photons come from, but I understand they have a preference for protons of certain wavelengths.
Not sure where you get your numbers from. I've read that the average income of House of Representatives members is over 22 million yen.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/07/03/national/lawmakers-income-2022/
I would probably trust GlasgowGPT over ChatGPT in terms of honesty.
Example:
Question: Can AI be trusted to provide accurate information?
Answer: Ha, trustin' AI is like trustin' yer pal wi a gammy leg to lead ye oot the pub - ye might get there, but yer gonna have tae drag him along the pavement on the way. But seriously, AI is only as good as the data that's fed intae it, and we aw know how much bullshit is on the internet. So ye cannae always rely on it tae provide ye accurate info, but it can be helpful at times. Ye just gotta take it wi a pinch of salt and use yer ain brain too, know whit a mean?
as light travels at a speed, it is not instantaneous
This often hurts my head. From the light's point of view, is it not instantaneous? Doesn't distance shrink to zero at the speed of light? And so doesn't a photon know its destination when it starts its journey? (i.e. you can't intercept a photon) So how did that photon from the past know I was here?
Gentle answers please.
If you are arrested for an alleged crime in Japan, you are facing a 99% chance of conviction.
That's not quite right. Following arrest, if the prosecutor decides to pursue the case, you face a 99% chance of conviction. Many cases are dropped and don't reach the court.
"Why would any competent engineer write an education system where the answers need to be in the client source instead of checked during submission?"
It's not always so straightforward. Tests have different purposes and different procedures. For example, there are tests where the question sequence will depend on the answers to previous questions. In such cases, sending data to the server after each student answer and then waiting for a response can be problematic when many students are taking the test and the school has poor infrastructure.
I work in the school testing field, but luckily in the test results reporting side and not the test delivery side. On the test delivery side, many things have to be considered, especially the importance and purpose of the test. For tests that really matter, the general guidance is that they be taken on school administered equipment.
About half of Fukushima prefecture is further away from the nuclear plant site than parts of other neighbouring prefectures. Yet the word "Fukushima" seems to cause fear. An equivalent in the UK would be an accident at the Hartlepool nuclear power plant, and the problem being labelled "Durham".
My mum used to make something she called Australian Fudge by crushing tea biscuits, mixing various things (butter, sugar, dead flies, etc.), spreading it on a tray, and coating it with chocolate. And when I was about four, I got to do the crushing with a rolling pin - an important life skill.
Tea biscuits also tend to be safer for dunking in your tea - an important lesson we all learned as youngsters.
You make some good points.
I was an early user. The article talks of LiveCard being inspired by Hypercard. LiveCard was directly derived from Metacard which was originally a Hypercard-inspired program for Unix systems.
Although you can make full applications for various platforms and phones, I've tended to use it for small, personal tasks - password generator, report writing, calculations, name anonymizing, whatever. I tend to think of the LiveCode "stacks" more as clever documents than applications. And I imagine that is seen as an advantage at schools. Drag out three fields and a button on a "card/page". Add code to the button to multiply the content of field 1 by the content of field 2 and put the answer into field 3. Label the button "Multiply". Then take it from there.
I know to some, the English-like language is attractive, but I don't see it that way. Personally, I'd prefer if it was more Javascript-like, but that's just me (I like curly brackets).
"If it is to protect the cloud service and ONLY ever done on syncing photos, why not scan it there and avoid the whole privacy blow-up as it is widely know the iCloud is not encrypted and has already been handed over on demand"
That's not my understanding. I read repeatedly that everything stored on iCloud is encrypted. My understanding is that's why they are to hash pictures before they leave the device - so they can continue to keep encrypted content on iCloud. Can you point me to something that says I'm wrong about that?
I don't think these have been mentioned yet (a salt-pickled plum/apricot thingy). They are considered a standard hangover cure in Japan, and are a common breakfast accompaniment. Some will describe their nutritional benefits, but I think the big thing is their alkali content. The main benefit is that you can eat one or two when you wake up rather than wait a couple of hours for the black pudding and bacon. It makes the wait more comfortable.
"whilst at the same time contributing significantly to the death of the High Street"
Is it not us plebs that are contributing more to that? We have a choice, and we choose to buy online (sweeping generalization).
But anyway, AWS is a little different from the Amazon shopping setup, at least in terms of target customers.
I work in the education field - test results, etc. We give access to teachers and administrators. But recently, we give access to students. I point out possible issues and suggest that student access be completely separated from other users - different servers, different database, etc. I'm told not to worry - our students are not that clever, etc. Right, I think. The average student may not be that clever, but there are more of them than us. It takes only one clever bugger.
I think the Italian community in Scotland mostly arrived long before World War II started. Many were interned during the war (and many died on the Arandora Star sinking).
Regarding Italian POWs, my mum used to tell me of a POW camp for Italian soldiers near where she lived in Kendal. No locks on the premises, and many girls cycling up there in the evening (for the cultural enhancements no doubt).
There are also many Polish descendants in Scotland from during the war.
"Another example is the distortion of the word "literally".
I'd say that's quite different. The complaints about the usage of "decimate" typically refer to its original meaning in Latin. (But even there, the original meaning is not so clear. Some say it was Latin slang.) In English, it has generally been used to refer to extensive damage or destruction of people or places. How many other words do we use in English with a meaning somewhat different from that in the original language? Century, ovation, forum, missile, toilet, ...
"It amazes me that some readers of this august forum seemingly expect the tool to read the mind of the user"
I think it's the opposite. By changing data without any express instruction, Excel does try to read the mind of the user. It wouldn't be so bad if it only changed the appearance of the data, but kept the original data intact behind the scenes.
"There wasn't any use case for doing both .Net and PHP on a single site I was ever requested of."
I work on a web project that uses both PHP and .Net on IIS. The PHP is used mainly by myself for one web application, and is used mainly to retrieve data from an MS SQL database. It works fine. I know there are those who would like to ditch the PHP element, but development work with .Net seems to take longer.
Thanks for that. It stirred memories. I also got an OM10 to replace a Zenit (forget the model). I couldn't afford on OM1. I eventually added a 100mm lens. Then I decided to move to Japan and sold the camera to pay for the air fare. But I held on to the extra lens. In Japan, after my second-or-so pay cheque, I bought an OM2. 40 years later, my son is still using that OM2 and the 100mm lens.
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