Pedant alert...
Well someone has to...
> ...or license instead of licence?
These are different things, not spelling. Licence is the noun, license is the verb.
Icon for the coming flame wars... --->
33 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jan 2015
> You can still buy cheap laptops with that sort of screen res.
My work-issued 4 years old Dell laptop has a stunning 1366 x 768 resolution.
When I need to leave my desk with the external monitor and join a conference call in a meeting room, there's no way I can read any documents shared on screen...
I don't find captcha tests too bad, a little annoying - except when I'm travelling in, say, mainland China, stuck behind the great firewall, and unable to log in to my email provider's webmail page because all google services including the sodding captcha test are blocked.
> By being available on iOS, they are bringing a lot to Apple in intangibles, as are other big players. If those big players were not available on iOS, would iOS have as big a market share?
On the other hand, Apple have already shown that they are more than willing to remove Fortnight from the app store. It's Epic who are desperate to keep it on the store and complained when it was blocked for a time.
Both Techdirt and Ars Technica seem to have a much poorer opinion of these proposals.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200902/20220245240/copia-institutes-comment-to-fcc-regarding-ridiculous-ntia-petition-to-reinterpret-section-230.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200920/16382945341/busting-still-more-myths-about-section-230-you-fcc.shtml
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/trump-admin-sends-congress-its-blueprint-for-weakening-section-230/
I remember some years ago having to explain to a (non-English) customer team that Control Unit New Technology was perhaps not the best choice of name for their new hardware security module.
Then there was the monitoring system named by an ex-colleague, Data Acquisition and Verification Real-time Operating System (or something close to that).
Local tax laws are also highly regulated nowadays.
If we take visitors to dinner, even in a local Chinese restaurant, the expenses receipt must be an official form, computer printed, and must include the VAT registration numbers for both the restaurant and our company. Otherwise no expenses claim...
> An airline cracked a hard case but fortunately nothing was damaged. The service staff apologised and said we could either have a voucher or a new suitcase. The offered suitcase was a samsonite hard case of a similar size. Within 10 minutes we were out of the airport with a new case. Biggest hassle was disposing of the old case.
Sounds like you were very lucky with the airline service team. After one flight I collected a suitcase from the carousel and found two out of the four wheels ripped off. The staff at the airport were helpful with filling in the claim form, but the cost of the suitcase was only paid later after sending the airline photographs of the damaged case and a copy of the original sales invoice/receipt.
> even Aunty Beeb is at it, saying they're going to make a sign-in a requirement for use of iPlayer, purportedly to give one a personalised experience which personally, I do not want (I've contacted them to ask what the real reason they intend to insist on a sign-up is, as it's onl'y a bonus to users if it's an optional requirement).
This is preparation for allowing iPlayer access only if you have a TV licence.
And of course to track your viewing/downloading habits...
> I've seen a few bands in pubs using a virtual mixer on an iPad - the advantage is the soundman can stand amongst the audience and adjust levels accordingly.
I would guess that the iPad is simply a wireless UI for a real mixer on or near the stage, that it's not actually doing any real-time audio processing or mixing on the iPad itself. Otherwise you need a really big adaptor to connect all the XLR mic cables to the iPad Lightning or 30-pin socket...
The best, most robust systems are those where the designers expect failures and add features to deal them when (not if) they occur. It does not matter how low is the failure rate, when systems run continuously then eventually those rare failures will happen. This applies in IT just as in electronics, industrial controls, or other disciplines.
Not quite.
I believe it's a reference to Kanye West pushing himself on stage at the Grammy awards and telling everyone that Beyonce should get the award instead of Beck.
Even better, it seems Beyonce is not best pleased, it's ruining her carefully crafted image...
http://www.mercurynews.com/celebrities/ci_27523352/beyonce-isnt-happy-kanye-west
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/confidential/beyonce-fears-kanye-west-antics-hurt-image-jay-z-article-1.2113606
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/02/10/beck-kanye-wests-grammy-awards-stage-invasion-beyonce-outburst-grace_n_6651436.html
"The orbit of any planet in a solar system with more than one planet is chaotic. (Mathematical fact, mathematical definition of chaotic). Given infinite time, all but one planet will inevitably be ejected into interstellar space (or less likely swallowed by its sun or collided with another planet)."
As far as I remember "chaotic" in the mathematical sense does not mean unstable, it means unpredictable. A chaotic system's future state can only be predicted if you know _exactly_ the initial state. A small (infinitesimal) change in initial state leads to a large and undefined change in future state.
You'd be surprised.
Here in China, many of the local restaurants covering a range of regional styles (including Hunan, Sichuan and others), have some variation on a dish of sliced potatoes with chili/garlic/onions/ginger/bacon.
Definitely one of the ex-pat favourites :-)