Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Subway & Uber Eats

The law in the UK is very clear. Your contract is with the person you paid. If your goods aren't fit, then it is their responsibility to remedy it or refund you. They then have to take it up with their service provider.

Some companies ignore this. For example I had a problem with an iPhone 5 on contract from EE. They refused to fix it under warranty and said Apple insist on doing all that. Which was fine as I phoned Apple and they did fix it, but if they handn't, the contract was with EE and I would have made them sort it out.

Re: FRAND is not a part of patent law

One of the problems with FRAND has been that companies with other patents would just cross-license each others stuff. Which is fine, but then means there's no financial value set for others to follow. But also had Apple trying to refuse to pay by claiming that their look-and-feel "patent" on rounded corners was as valuable as proper expensively researched hard science stuff on signal processing.

I thought FRAND might die a few years ago. But it looks like the courts might enforce it - which means users being made to pay up - as well as patent pool members selling at reasonable prices.

Re: If you want irony ...

I had the same experience. Picked up a local paper to find out what was on, and when the big firework display was. Plot spoiler, there was a massive thunderstorm and it was cancelled - and we got stuck in a nice restuarant unable to leave, and the waiter liked me because I was the only one who'd drink his weird apple brandy stuff. Which was lovely, so I had 5.

But my bad spanish meant I struggled with the paper, until I accidentally picked up the catalan version. Which I could read easily - because of all the french looking bits. Bugger all idea how to pronounce it though.

I was surprised by how little english people spoke, I suspect that's changed in the last 20 years. But was able to get by in my rubbish spanish.

Re: Interesting

Or the 3 River Wye's in England, if you include the one that runs between England and Wales. Given that wye means river (or running water). So the river Wye means the River River.

Or there's Topenhow in Cumbria, which is made up of three words all meaning "hill". But sadly a quick google suggests that Tor and Pen can both mean hill, but together might mean the top of a hill, in which case we're down to it only being called Hill Hill.

Re: Interesting

Isn't that supposed to be a difference between the English and American accents too? The Americans have the rhotic R, and us English swallow our Rs and don't properly pronounce them.

Whereas the Scottish can roll there Rs - although the French are surely the champions at that. Perhaps it was enough to make a foundation for the auld alliance... We'll take on the non R-saying bastards! Arse to the lot of them!

Re: Interesting

It’s really important if you’re studying Restoration politics, or the foundations of the Royal Navy. Otherwise it’s a total irrelevance. Does anyone do Charles II at school?

Re: Local 'languages'

Not just biology either. Look what astronomers did to Pluto. The bastards! And yet does Neptune count as a planet under the new definition - if it's failed to get round to clearing Pluto out of its orbit?

It's a problem if you're stuck with scientific definitions that totally differ from language.

I was listening to some program or other talking about nuts and berries. Almost none of the fruits we'd call berries (strawberry, raspberry, blackberry etc) are actually classed as berries. The banana is though, so perhaps we should have strawbs and cream and bananaberry milkshake? Which sort of leads to the question, why not come up with some new definitions? Also, quite a few nuts aren't actually nuts.

I can cope with the tomato being a fruit, my Nan made tomato jam. But the raspberry and blackberry really ought to be berries. It's in the bloody name.

Re: Interesting

There weren't really centuries of war with England though - relations were pretty normal in the grand scheme of things for medieval and early modern European states.

The borders were a law unto themselves, so that there was pretty much permanent armed force required for centuries - but that was as much banditry as anything else. Although there was raiding by border lords, they seem to have cooperated against the bandits as often as they were fighting each other.

Edward 1 had a good old go at conquering Scotland, as to a lesser extent did Edward III - but other than Henry VIII's Rough Wooing - relations seem to have been a lot more normal in other periods. If England was fighting in France, then there was a risk that the Scots would launch a cheeky invasion, to see what they could get - but because England didn't really keep a standing army for most of its history the only time when it was ready to have a go at the Scots was usually when an army had been raised to go and nick a bit more of France - and that army was normally all needed for use in France.

England and France have been at war far more than England and Scotland. Who else has had a Hundred Years War? Black Death Stopped Play...

Re: Wee radge bastard

It's not the normal Irn Bru I'm objecting to. It's this ginger abomination. Or, Chrimbo Juice as Barr's called it.

Re: If you want irony ...

It must be a problem with languages that have gone into serious decline and recovered. English has just evolved, naturally and uncontrollably. Not that we don't have pointless arguments about grammar, but nobody runs the show.

The academie francaise, tried to keep things in order, but appears to have mostly failed. From what I've read they've sort of given up on policing french nowadays. Le Weekend won.

But it must be easier for self-appointed (or government-appointed) people to try and police a langauge where actual effort is being made to resurrect it, and grow it by getting others to learn it. Then you can just see them ignoring the people who grew up speaking it, or deciding there must be a rule where people speaking it natively would do things differently depending on local patterns of speech.

Re: Interesting

There were a lot of them viking buggers about - hence all the norse words that have made their way into local use in places like Tyneside and Yorkshire. As well as Scots.

Re: Local 'languages'

My french friend would always say that english was just a dialect of french - or she'd say patois / pidgin-french.

Although I'm sure I read a thing somewhere that pidgin-english should be (or actually is) recognised as a language in its own right.

Obviously she was going for comic effect, but I'd say that's not true because english is such a weird mix of germanic, norse and french. But we are either too stupid or lazy to cope with their complicated grammar, and so have dumped most of it.

I'd imagine this is a topic that linguists spend many a happy hour discussing. Or linguistics studens spend many a tortured hour writing essays about.

Mutual comprehension would be one criteria. But because language is so tied into identity - it's also a massively political question - meaning there's probably no right answer.

If you've got hours of your life to waste, an interest in the subject and can put up with a podcaster who's not got the best speaking style - then have a listen to "History of English", by Kevin Stroud. The name is misleading, as he's put together a podcast that combines linguistics, history and archaeology (amongst many other things) to cover how the original Indo-European language evolved into the modern languages we now know. It's very geeky, and heavy going, but every so often I listen to a few episodes and it's really well done.

Re: Wee radge bastard

Is numpty a Scots word then?

The first time I ever heard it was 20 years ago as an expat in Belgium. From someone from Gloucestershire - who told me it was a local word. I hear it quite a lot nowadays, so it's either become more popular or I used to be "numpty-blind".

Re: A pox on both their houses etc

Eponymous Howard,

Then they might be monopolists too. I've got to be honest, I know bugger all about modern console gaming, I've never had a console and its years since any of my friends have used them either - so I'm totally out of touch.

In the old days of console gaming you could buy a CD/DVD and then not have to pay any percentage to use the app store. Given that all modern games seem to come with bugs that need patching (not to mention downloadable content), I'm not sure if that's true any more.

Also do they take their cut of subscriptions if done directly through the company - rather than via the app store?

In the case of Android, it's clear. Google used the profits from their search/advertising monopoly to spend umpty billion dollars and developing Android and then giving it away free. And successfully drove all paid-for OSes out of business in the mobile market. Apple, of course, don't sell their OS either, they're an integrated hardware and software company. Should it be a surprise that Google now charge monopoly prices in their newly created monopoly?

Technical note: I believe the legal word is monopoly. Anybody with control of a market and over 30%-odd market share can be determined to be a monopolist. In an economics class you'd call Apple and Google a duopoly.

Re: A pox on both their houses etc

You come close to blaming the victim for the crime here.

Apple and Google are a duopoly in mobile phones. Both suspiciously charge exactly the same rate to sell software from their app stores.

In Apple's case you can't load apps in other ways. In Google's it is possible, but the mechanism for doing it is buried in a sub-menu somewhere.

If you wish to sell to the mobile gaming market therefore your choices are extremely limited. Either build your self a mobile device (like Nintendo) or sell into the app stores of the monopoly providers.

Re: Murdoch

Murdoch was lining his kids up for leadership roles, but for various reasons it's not happened. However his kids don't seem to share his political views anyway, so it's not like there's going to be a continuation of whatever editorial line he's advanced. It should also be remember that his media empire is by no means monolithic - in that his outfits often push the political views that sell most copies. The Times and the Sun have completely different editorial lines, for example - as do Sky News and Fox News.

There's often an argument that the media agenda drives their readership. And to some extent, their must be some truth in that - as you can only be aware of the news stories that you actually see. But people also like to consume media that reflects their pre-exisiting prejudices back at them, rather than challenging them. Hence I think it's more likely that the readers influence the editorial line as much as the owners / editors do. And that an editor who consistently goes against what the readers want - will soon lose readers.

Re: and pour the milk in first.

My friend had the answer to this. Which I really should get round to copying, because it's nice. Buy glut of cheap lemons on market stall, cut into 5mm thick slices, stick in airtight plastic container in freezer.

Then take out and put in the bottom of the cup and pour your tea over the top. Cools it down, like putting milk in and makes it very lemony.

Re: Yesterday I had the following conversation

Pre-warm the teapot - yes! What do you mean you're not using a teapot?!?! Heathen!

Remove tea cosy from head and place on pot once filled.

Pre-warm the cups - can't be arsed. I want it to cool down so I can drink it.

Milk in first - I take mine black. I do it out of habit. But we don't have porcelain cups that can't take the thermal stress anymore, so do whatever. If I don't know how people take it, they get a mug of black tea, and a milk jug.

Re: Yesterday I had the following conversation

Supposedly tea shouldn't be made with reboiled water, because it removes some of the oxygen, and that's also why you should pour tea from the pot at a great height into the mug. I've no idea if this is true, I've certainly been unable to taste the difference. But you can taste that nasty scum and bits of scale floating in it when the water's really hard.

Scale tends to precipitate out of water much more once it's raised above 80°C - hence it's a good idea to rinse your kettle out, to get rid of all the nasty bits. Plus a regular clean with descaler / vinegar.

Limescale is actually good for you. People living in high limescale areas have slightly lower heart disease than those in soft water ones. The downside is they have worse tea. A terrible fate!

Yet another sad example of "people who like tech that I don't like are wrong!"

People have different requirements and preferences. For many people who don't touch type, full size keyboards are not as easy to use as you might think. Personally, every time I type more than one paragraph on my iPad's horrible (some people like it though) onscreen keyboard, I want to scream. And yearn for a nice stylus and handwriting recognition. Like my old HP Vista tablet edition thingamijig with the fold-away keyboard. Others think that is pants, which is why the iPad didn't have one until very recently, and even now have deliberately crippled it to make it a drawing tool that you have to bodge to get it to do handwriting.

Re: Stuff that, I want one of these!

In the UK part of the police training for carrying a Taser is to be tasered first. So you know how it feels. Which suggests they are safe enough to be used in non-extreme situations - given that they don't make armed officers do the same thing in their training...

I'd be prepared to bet that it's considerably safer than being hit with a big stick as well. What does a policeman have in his sandwiches? Truncheon meat*. ...Runs...

Although I remember a few years ago trying to find actual figures for how dangerous Tasers were. And being disappointed. I couldn't find a single death properly attributed to them in the UK - there were too many reports to check through for the US - where it was also a more controversial subject. But also couldn't find proper figures on safety. I did find some reports from US police forces on how introducing them had reduced injuries to officers - but they didn't cover injuries to suspects. Although I'd expect those to improve as well - as less fighting should mean less injuries to all.

*I wonder if you can still buy luncheon meat? I remember the stuff being truly horrible - like a lot of food back in the 80s. On the other hand, one of our local supermarkets was selling Sandwich Spread during lockdown. I wonder if that had been sitting on a shelf behind all the toilet rolls since the 1970s, and had only reappeared when they ran out. Ghastly stuff. God knows what it was made of - although even He may have his limits in this case.