Posts by The Indomitable Gall 1729 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
There are people who genuinely want to be "cured". Although most people (myself included) find the term "cure" both offensive and impossible, why stand in their way of making their own decisions?
The only valid argument against this app should be that it gives advice that has been shown to cause mental health problems.
IE: people should be free to look for a "cure" if they really, truly want, but at the same time, snake oil merchants should be closed down.
"But more importantly worldwide production of uranium last year was approximately 50,000 tons almost exclusively for power generation, compared to 5,990,000,000 tons of coal in excess of 5 billion of which is for eclectricity generation.
Coal is a naturally occurring mineral deposit. Uranium is found trapped in ores. One of the biggest sources of uranium is (IIRC) granite, and you have to mine a metric sh!tload of granite to extract a useful quantity of uranium.
"Do you not understand that the reactors survived a quake that was upgraded and registered 9.0?
That is beyond the designed rating. And yes, 9.0 is an order of magnitude worse than an 8.0.
"
As has been said several times -- 9.0 at the *epicentre* is different to 9.0 at the site. Most sources claim the quake was within operating margins at the site of the power plant.
The reactors failed as planned.
"The point is that the quake and tsunami combo punch was a disaster beyond what the designers comprehended."
Q. What is the main cause of tsunamis?
A. Earthquakes
If you plan for an earthquake in coastal Japan and don't plan for a subsequent tsunami, you are demonstrating a massive lack of judgement.
Nuclear plants in the mountains would be much worse in disasters. Any local fallout of radioactive particles would be carried in the run-off from the mountains and would have the potential to contaminate a massive area. Also, the elevated position would spread any such fallout wider to start off with.
You pays your money, you makes your choice.
"If this – basically nothing – is what happens when decades-old systems are pushed five times and then some beyond their design limits, new plants much safer yet would be able to resist an asteroid strike without problems."
You're ignoring the fact that this is a plant built by the Japanese, and the Japanese have always been meticulous in their nuclear safety.
The fact that the Japanese have built well-protected reactors doesn't change the fact that us pale-faced westerners have an ongoing habit of cutting corners and then when something goes wrong we shrug our shoulders and say "no-one could have anticipated a week of snow, not my fault guvnor."
" The main reason IR35 is hated is because it forces us to pay a whole bunch of EMPLOYERS NI on top of the EMPLOYEEs NI that permies have to pay. So us contractors end up paying MORE NI than permies do. For permies, the EMPLOYERS NI is paid by your employer, funnily enough.
<snip>
IR35 moves the ball too far into the other court, so we end up paying more than permies. "
I think you may have missed the point of contractor rates.
Contractor rates are higher than "permie" salaries because the contracting party doesn't have to pay for overheads such as bench time, holiday, sick leave and (drum roll) employer's NI contributions.
So paying more than "permies" is a natural consequence of being paid more than permies.
I'm on the verge of giving up the "permie" lifestyle and setting up my own limited company, and I'll try to duck any charging I can, but I'll not kid myself that I'm paying the same as permanent employees when I'm not.
@NogginTheNog
You might call it "fair reward for fair risk", but as a contractor your reward comes from the people who you work for. As a "permie" (for now), my reward comes from the people who I work for.
It is up to you to set your fees to offer fair reward, just as it is up to me to talk to me boss if I want a raise.
If you're out of work for 2 months between roles, you're not taxed for any income you make in that period, so what is the problem? Tax is calculated on annual earnings after all.
No-one's saying you're rich and should be taxed heavily -- we're saying that you should be taxed *just* *the* *same* *as* *us*.
The main problem with airships is that lighter-than-air is difficult to achieve in the stratosphere. Air pressure is around 1000 mb at sea level (IIRC). The stratosphere is between 1 and 10mb.
So while it can be done, it's not easy. At least an aerodynamic wing relies on the pressure differential of what little air there is.
This "invention" is not only obvious, it's actually just how current jacks work.
The locking mechanism on a standard jack socket is a single sprung contact, and the other contacts resist the motion in parallel. Most standard jack sockets would still work perfectly well if you took a saw to them and cut off the top and bottom.
In fact, I have a vague recollection of a gimmicky "credit card" FM radio that worked this way....
"
Plato -
- Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
"
Plato lived in an era when many "good people" treated other human beings as a type of livestock, to buy and sell at will.
All morality is relative, and the law codifies any given society's morality, giving the "good people" a benchmark of that morality.
"Corruption" is usually thought to apply to bad people, but in truth you can only corrupt what is good to begin with. Good people will make concessions to themselves on the grounds of being good people and therefore deserving.
I often find myself tempted to skip a red light on my bike, or ride up on the pavement for a bit, and it's OK because I normally don't do it, so I'm only rewarding myself for being a good person, and wasn't that convenient, and it didn't harm anyone, so I'll just do it this one more time, and again, and... and very quickly I was habitually breaking the law.
This is how society's morals decay. Everyone treats themselves as deserving to bend the rules. If the rules aren't codified (either by legislative means, or through a religious scripture), the bent rule becomes the new norm. And everyone treats themselves as deserving a bit of leeway from that norm.
This gives us the paradox of the Greek civilisation -- ruled by democracy, but maintained by slavery.
"IIRC Caló is actually something akin to Cockney English, with similar origins (criminal argot)."
Nope. Caló (the Spanish variety) is one of several creole languages that emerged from the Romani gypsy community in Spain, through contact with the local languages -- see also Erramintxela (a mix of Romani and Basque) and Catalanorromani (self-explanatory).
These are certainly not criminal argots -- they didn't need new languages in order to "hide" from being understood, because Romani would have served that purpose fine. Romani is now dead in Iberia, replaced by Caló, Erramintxela and Catalanorromani in Spain and Calão in Portugal.
The various dialects that emerged from the kingdom of Mercia after the collapse of the Danelaw (ie the traditional dialects of Scotland and NE England, not the modern "educated" Standard English spoken there) are less influenced by Norman than dialects spoken elsewhere in Great Britain, and they have strong influence from the language of the Danish vikings that are not found in the dialects spoken elsewhere in Great Britain.
These differences are systematic and consistent, and therefore describe two distinct... things. I call these two things "languages". You may not agree to the word, but linguistically, there are two collective "things" of some sort.
"If you want to be consistent, however, and you count Galician as a distinct language from either Portuguese or Castilian, then you would need to recognise Geordie or Scouse (say) as a separate language from English, which few people are willing to do."
Actually, you've picked a very good comparator here.
Geordie is more similar to Scots than English, and it's alignment as a dialect of English is more geopolitical than linguistic.
This is the situation with Gallician. Gallician is part of the same language group as Portuguese, but is aligned to Castillian for political and geographical reasons.
But Gallician is very definitely a different language from Castillian, and "if you want to be consistent", then if Gallician is a dialect of Spanish then so are Portuguese and Italian, and English is a dialect of Afrikaans, and eventually we ratchet back until all our languages are rebranded as dialects of "Earthish".
Seriously, he should get out of his ivory tower.
Very few sciency things ever become profitable enough for private investors' liking until long after the initial research is done.
"Waiting" is not an option, because then the research that later investors freeload off will never be done...
Wales was certainly a single kingdom at one point (under Gruffydd ap Llywelyn).
Wales is one of the "constituent countries" of the United Kingdom.
The word "nation" comes from the Latin from birth, and has nothing to do with kings or governments, which is why some groups (eastern European Roma and Native American/First Nation tribes) have their own nationality.
So Wales has been a kingdom, it is recognised as a country, and it's a nation if the people born there associate with each other in some way.
So I have to say I disagree with you.
'the predominant usage of the term APP STORE is as a proper noun to refer to Apple's online application marketplace.'
The predominant usage of the term COMPUTER is as a proper noun to refer to an electronic number-processing machine running Microsoft Windows.
Ergo a Mac is not a computer.
Except that's rubbish.
Basically, this argument taken to its logical conclusion says (paradoxically) that generic terms are the trademark of the biggest player in the market in question.
Well, if they're not allowed to discriminate in terms of gender, expect insurance forms to find other ways to identify them. Bodykits and spoilers will have to be used to consider the cost of insurance. Heck, even things that don't effect the mechanical efficiency of the car (eg cold cathode tubes, overpowered speakers, chromaflare paint and decals) will be fair game in assessing a driver as high risk.
"Approximately half of all UK traffic lights are at junctions, and thus potentially offer some benefits to wheeled traffic as well as pedestrians (though this may only be true at certain times of day, or in many instances not at any time for either motorists or pedestrians). The other 50 per cent of lights are purely for pedestrians' benefit, being situated at crossings."
I would say that pelican crossings are of vast benefit to vehicular traffic in busy urban areas, more so than to pedestrians
Why? Because the only real alternative is a zebra crossing, where pedestrians have priority 100% of the time. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has been confounded by a constant stream of pedestrians leading to traffic being blocked for several minutes at a time.
Simple: Apple is really effective at skewing the market. Many people who want a portable media player go into a shop and ask for "an iPod", and people who want a tablet will now ask for "an iPad". The shops will sell them what they ask for.
It feels invasive to have entire product categories defined by a not-particularly-special example of the genre, and it's a threat to competition and choice.
Of course, the diagram rarely stands alone, and context aids or hinders comprehension.
So if a series of diagrams are presented after their descriptions, and then one appears *before* its description, this can lead to a great deal of confusion. See also "mindmaps" and "floorplans". ;-)
Apple isn't just demanding 30% for new business -- the subscription model is supposed to be an ongoing 30% for renewals.
Consider that an average magazine costs about £5 in a newsagent. The same magazine is often about half price when delivered as part of a subscription. The subscription is advertised in the magazine that you buy in the newsagent.
Now, the in-app purchasing guideline say that:
a) You're not allowed to offer the same service cheaper elsewhere (so that 30% comes out of your bottom line)
b) You're not allowed to encourage users to shift to using alternative subscription methods.
If Apple is a retailer, it's like telling magazines that subscriptions have to be the same as the cover price, and don't publish ads for your own subscriptions in the mag.
But in the world of IAP, Apple is *not* a retailer. The purchaser doesn't go to Apple real-estate, but simply connects to an Apple payment system. Visa, Paypal, Western Union, whoever... no other legitimate company demands such a high cut on what is essentially a cash transfer. *That's* the 1-2% comparitor: transaction handling fees.
Apple's problem is that they're not demanding cash when they deliver the app. If they made a distinction between truly-free apps (hobbyist produced vanity publishing) and free-with-strings-attached apps (including both commercially-sponsored advertising apps and free clients for subscription-based services), then they could charge a delivery cost for the latter, and that would be all fair and good.
But right now, Apple are happily giving away free ring binders and demanding a 30% cut of all paper that goes into it at a later date.
"Likely outcomes are (i) dump iOS; (ii) introduce a higher subscription rate for all mobile customers. And the latter just adds weight to any consideration of the former further down the line."
Or (iii) introduce a "premium package" with near valueless "bonuses", and offer the basic subscription to Android phones, but only the premium for the iPhone.
"Plus, if Facebook (the site) continues as it is, Facebook (the person) is presumably going to have to grow up dealing with "I'm on Facebook"; "all my friends are on Facebook"; and so on..."
Well, considering that these puns work in English, and Egypt isn't an English-speaking country...
People just don't think sometimes.
Side tabs don't need to be written left-to-right. If you look at any old-school organiser or dividers for ring binders, the convention is to write vertically. And by that I mean write as if the screen was 90 degrees round. It's not as quick to read as conventional left-to-right (assuming you are a left-to-right language user, that is!) but as it's just the tabs, that doesn't matter as you aren't going to need to read them very often or for very long.
"why can't you judge an organisation which claims its morality is based on teachings from 2000 to 5000 year old on events that happened merely 800 years ago?"
Because the hierarchy of the church is composed of human beings, and the corruption of the clergy during the so-called Holy Roman Empire is well documented and accepted both within and outside of the church.
Changes caused by the era include the introduction of celibacy for priests (to avoid dynastic empire building and misappropriation of funds), a ban on clergy taking most positions of public office (effectively separating church and state) and the reform of the doctrine of "papal infallibility" from "the pope's always right" to applicability in vastly more restricted circumstances.
If you're going to try to judge the catholic church "in its own terms", you need to know what those terms are first, otherwise no-one's going to give any serious consideration to your argument.
Viagra was discovered by accident when trying to treat heart conditions, and a good commercial pharmaceutical goes a long way to covering the research costs of the whole lab. A little blue pill for baldness will be pricey, because it's cosmetic, and will help keep the costs of real medicine down.
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