Posts by Dan 37

Microsoft now licensing Windows by the user, across multiple devices

Re: Could this be a first?

If your tablet's screen is smaller than 10.1, I'd imagine it continues to be smaller than 10.1 regardless of any external device you may connect it to.

Totes AMAZEBALLS! Side boob, binge-watch and clickbait added to Oxford Dictionary

Re: QFT

I'd think light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation might confuse the average punter - it could be argued that that particular sequence of words can be used to describe a standard lightbulb, perhaps controlled by a dimmer switch (you can amplify it, right?) whereas laser describes a much more specific cohesive light scenario.

I see no such specific additional meaning for FML or YOLO. At least yolo is pronounceable, change FML to effemel and I might agree it is a word. A bollocks made up word not deserving of entry into a dictionary, but a word.

Re: QFT

after further thought, the definition should read:

Definition:

(Individual definition of every word contained in the original text, concatenated into a single paragraph)

Also, upvote for John, above, who basically said the same thing while I was typing mine :)

QFT

"Each year we get the 'new words' announcement...

...and each year I despair" see title (quoted for truth - is it in the dictionary yet?)

How is FML even a word? It's an initialism for 3 words that are all already well defined and in this combination no specific additional definition seems necessary.

The other entries seem similarly redundant side-boob: the 'side' of a 'boob'. Does anybody fail to understand the meaning of those two words, or their meaning in this specific combination? 'Binge' and 'watch', also take on no additional meaning in the specific combination? I fail to understand why any of these require a specific definition. Or are we now entering all meaningful combinations of words as individual dictionary entries. Not even limited to pairs - FML is 3, YOLO is 4… how far can we take it:

Oxford English dictionary Volume 9847652

(Entire text of Romeo and Juliet)

Pronunciation:

(Entire text of Romeo and Juliet, phonetically)

Play, fiction

Definition:

(Entire text of Romeo and Juliet re-written in modernised English)

Origin

William Shakespeare

Facebook's request to the flash industry: 'Make the worst flash possible'

Re: So what he's asking for is...

Indeed they could, we have a fair bit of rarely used Data we just have to Klingon to.

WikiLeaker Bradley Manning found not guilty of 'aiding the enemy'

I don't suppose he has the option of taking his 112 day reduction at the start of his sentence?

Curses! Reddit plan for fat old beardy to 'smell hot pop girl Taylor Swift's hair' FOILED

Re: Inspiration

The banged one? outside the US (or at least inside the UK) that would imply another celebrity sex tape rather than a new album.

"It also meant that thousands of young girls would miss out on the chance to be photographed with the dirty blonde, be-fringed one."

not thousands, surely? Just the one that would have won if he hadn't been involved.

Burger-rage horse dumps on McDonald's: Rider saddled with fat fine

Re: Eh?

i think we have the same set of geniuses at our lacal McD's. Pedestrians entering from the car park cross the entrance to the drive through lane, pedestrians from the street side cross the exit from the drive through lane.

I guess the pedestrians crossing the road at least have the option of paying attention to traffic whereas the guy being served at the drive through counter wouldn't notice a car approaching as he will be lost in thought over that deep philisophical conundrun: would you like to 'go large'?

Re: Eh?

The problem isn't so much his own darwinism, but the danger he poses to other road users. Can't count the times we've had near misses between daughter's push chair and cyclists on pedestrian crossings because so many cyclists are fuckwits that don't know what red lights are for (for the fella that complained about my homicidal urges - don't like it, don't pose a danger to my family). And yes, I'm aware many drivers are also fuckwits.

Re: Eh?

"give me ONE valid reason why that is"

erm.. lets see..

for pedestrians - it's a narrow, winding lane wrapped tight around the building, where drivers are not expecting to see pedestrians. They should be going slow, but pedestrians shouldn't be there.

also for pedestrians - if you're on foot, go inside and join the queue like everyone else. If the drive through lane is empty then the drive through attendant may be helping fulfill orders placed at the counter. Therefore if you walk up to the drive through and get served then you are essentially queue jumping.

for cyclists - your hands are on the handle bars right? both of them? then how are you holding the fucking mcdonalds anyway. (I know in a car the driver should have hands on the wheel but the passengers can eat, or the driver can put his bag of food on the passenger seat until he gets to wherever he wants to stop and eat). p.s. saw a cyclist soar through a red light at a junction of probably the 3rd and 4th busiest roads in my town - both hands busy eating a bag of crisps. Things like this give me homicidal urges.

Boffins hide cute kitty behind invisibility shield

Re: Shopped!

if my cat is anything to go by then the simple act of paying more attention to any given object than the cat is likely to cause the cat to go and sit there. Makes wrapping christmas presents fun.

LOHAN team regroups for second pop at SPEARS

Re: Training

along with swimming lessons, for when it comes down?

Judge GIVES APPLE THE FINGER in multitouch iDevice patent case

Re: PATENTS MUST BE INVENTIVE and NON OBVIOUS!!!!

Strange that they made the mistake of bringing it - surely they would have preferred to buy it.

http://www.learnenglish.de/mistakes/boughtvsbrought.htm

EE sets October date to power up UK 4G network

Re: Pricing

"I pay for the amount of data that is transmitted, not the speed that it moves."

So if they choose to throttle you down to early dial up speeds but allow you to use all the data you've paid for eventually then you'd consider that ok?

Rapper rips up Microsoft's Atlanta store during performance

Re: This article was updated to reflect the fact that this was not a Microsoft event.

"A spokesman from The Source agreed that the behavior wasn't suitable for the venue, and thanked Microsoft for letting them use the venue."

That there is, I think, the only other indication. I could be wrong and I can't be bothered re-reading the article to check.

Boffins program peripheral visions for ultra TV immersion

Re: DIY nightmare

yes, that is exactly the term I was looking for while drifting through the fog of brain failure.

Re: DIY nightmare

I imagine you could get some kind of white rollerblind style setup that can mask your shelves etc when needed.

I also imagine there's no way I could actually be arsed to arrange that kind of setup though.

I also imagine that even if I could be arsed, there's no way the missus would let me.

Finally, I imagine that if I could be arsed and I managed to persuade the missues, the end result would almost certainly be hardly worth the bother.

Girl Geek Dinner lady: The IT Crowd is putting schoolgirls off tech

meh

Seems to me the male shareholders are just as daft as Jen in the scene where the internet gets broken. in fact none of the male characters exactly scream 'role model' do they?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTBsm0LzSP0

I do think sexism in nurseries should be clamped down on - My little girl loves playing with cars, trains, computers, 'planes etc. just as much as (or more than) dolls and cuddly toys 'n stuff but she did go through a phase of not wanting to play with the cars and trains 'because they're for boys'. Since she didn't get that from her parents/grandparents it must be from nursery, probably the other kids, most likely boys who've been told by parents not to play with dolls cos boys play with cars 'n stuff. This is entirely my own, probably sexist, supposition. Tough.

Seems to me we shouldn't be worried about things like the IT Crowd, which just highlight and caricature stereotypes rather than creating them. Much more useful to eradicate prejudice during the formative years which may have a real impact on the rest of a person's life. I wonder how many women aren't interested in science/tech because they grew up thinking (or being told) that was 'boring stuff for boys'.

How many people don't like/aren't good at maths because they learned maths was hard before they learned maths?

Preconceived notions are bad m'kay? (Admittedly there are exceptions)

Passing them on to our children is worse.

Blaming a comedy TV programme for pre-existing stereotypes is retarded.

Most of Home Office's savings scored from haggling over ICT deals

"savings on new goods and service requirements generated through effective negotiations with suppliers."

Buyer: Quote me for 5 USB mice please

Seller: £5000 + VAT, £500 delivery charge

Buyer: Bit pricey! Recession blah blah...

Seller: Ok then £2500 for the mice and I'll throw in delivery.

Buyer: Woohoo! I'll tell my Boss we can add £3K to our procurement savings total. Hmm... wonder if I can renegotiate that £30k blank CD deal.

I wish I could use the joke icon, I really do.

Potent proton pulse to BOMBARD EARTH Tuesday morn

yes, unless you get less speed.

change in speed is not always the same as increase in speed. Still, acceleration can be positive or negative so that's ok. The real issue is that acceleration is change in velocity per second whereas delta v is simply change in velocity (or speed, delta v can generally be used as a scalar or linear quantity). So while delta V can't really be said to be acceleration we could probably get away with saying acceleration is delta v per second.

erm... not 'rate of change', just change in velocity. The point that it's not necessarily acceleration stands, just for different reasons.

phew! think i got that in time to save my pedants club membership.

I'd imagine delta V is 'rate of change of velocity', which could be acceleration but could equally be deceleration or simply change of direction.

mine's the one with pedants weekly in the pocket

Tiny frog claimed as smallest vertebrate ever

""18mm, making it similar in size to the UK five pence coin"

really? cos the 5p's I've got appear to be 17mm"

This probably explains the choice of the term 'similar' rather than 'identical' or 'the same'

Hubble shows images from record-breaking 13.1 billion light-years

I was thinking about that too yesterday - if EVERYTHING was expanding at the same rate, would we even notice? would it have any measurable effect? For this to even work various universal laws/constants would probably have to auto adjust to give consistant results as the universe grows - ants (after a few billion years of expansion) collapsing under their own gravity to form stars/black holes would be amusing perhaps, but only briefly.

The balloon (ballon/baloon) metaphor still holds up if you assume a molecule sized dot painted on a single molecule of balloon(etc) surface - molecules get further apart when the ballo(ohforgetit) expands, without increasing in size (probably - I've never examined a balloothingy expanding under a microscope).

further to the above, I would like to disavow the many and varied incorrect spellings of balloon. These can be blamed on the early hour, lack of coffee, lack of typing ability or lack of brains, at your discretion.

also no expert but the universe expanding comments here have me thinking of 2 dots painted on a balloon - when you inflate the ballon the dots are further apart although they are both painted on the same bit of baloon surface they were to begin with - they haven't 'moved'. Theoretically the dots could move in opposite directions, each at the speed of light relative to the balloon surface and the balloon could also be expanding to increase their seperation further. If I'm not mistaken, an outside observer would only see them moving apart at the speed of light anyway, cos relativity says so. or something.

Intel caught faking CES ultrabook gaming demo

Daley Thompson's Supertest, Spectrum 128k - 13 minutes if memory serves. These days I get shit off our users if it takes more than 10 seconds for their publisher doc (including dozens of multi mega-pixel images shown at thumbnail size) to load.

DARPA drops another HTV-2

yep

Not to worry though, it'll turn up on ebay or craigslist in a couple of days described as an unwanted birthday present.

Malaysian politico gets knighted in Photoshop

doh!

"Sir" Wong issued a press release detailing his award…”

...

"This is a personal matter. It has nothing to do with the public, and it is becoming politicised."

Apple apologizes for iPhone 4 gaffe

huh?

umm... either you need to read the article again or I do. I'm not entirely sure how apple's online ordering system shitting the bed has anything to do with stock levels.

School IT quango to be expelled

scissors 'n stones

I'm clearly hard of learning but by using a few well chosen resellers that are happy to bend over backwards to ensure they continue getting a decent chunk of my budget I regularly buy kit well below retail and I have a contact list full of account managers who are keen to do all the legwork in checking out specs 'n prices to offer me the best deals. There are a couple of resellers in particular I tend to go to for large/important orders as I know their after sales service is also excellent.

Of course, I'm sure it would be better to leave the hard of learning camp to join the hard of thinking brigade and just buy whatever becta tell me to.

Becta who?

As a school network admin I can't say I'll miss them - never really paid much attemntion to them to be honest.

Any idea what the government plans for the BSF programme? Would be nice to hear they've been told to piss off as well.

BT rolls out new, 'competitive' consumer deals

blatantly self serving ad, apologies in advance

pop along to www.moneysaversecret.co.uk

select 'internet', then broadband and phone - more info, then 'check availability'.

Insert your phone No. and it'll tell you if and what services are available to you from the UKs best* phone & internet bundle provider.

*best for customer service, billing & value for money according to a couple of surveys carried out by a leading independent consumer organisation.

Economics backs net neutrality, say researchers

this is teh title

"US. Telecoms companies there have said that they believe that they deserve a share of the revenue earned by businesses which depend on consumers connecting to them over the internet."

Maybe I'm missing something here, I was always under the impression that consumers already pay for the connection they use to access the internet and businesses already pay for their connection, bandwidth, hosting etc.

3 flings bribey fivers for new subscribers

is that all?

Only £5 eh? If I recommend friends & family to my mobile/phone/energy supplier I get a % discount every month for as long as they remain a customer. So thanks but no thanks to 3.