Posts by CrazyOldCatMan 6355 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2015
Problem being, it spelt out the first name
My parents, upon deciding what to call me, realised that my initials spelled out the name of a well-known tinned dog food. So they changed the order of the first and middle names.
The problem was that now my initials were the sames as my dads. Which lead to all sorts of awkward silences when he opened by post while I still lived with then post-college..
name which worked in Portuguese, German, English, and Hebrew
Friend of mine is English and married to an Italian - so when they came to name their daughter, they wanted something that worked in both languages. They ended up chosing Matilda.
(We did suggest Boudicca but that suggestion wasn't well received :-) )
mine only goes back a thousand years or so, to the Norse
Both my given names are based on Greek names. (much Anglicised). Two of my brothers have names derived from Greek or Hebrew names with their second names being of Germanic origin.
Our cats have various names - the oldest two are TP-inspired, the rest are Cornish or Welsh in origin.
I think the habit of slapping names together to produce 'new' names is something that has come across from the US - over my namy years of watching the NFL I've seen the names of the players gradully convert over to this pattern - firstly the black players, layer the white ones. So it's not a new thing and, like with most things, we slavishly follow the US, about 10 years behind.
windows a closed OS, only available on MS equipment?
I don't think even MS would be that foolish at the moment. It would take away a huge chunk of their revenue for no recognisable advantage.
In 5 or 10 years time - maybe. Depends on the uptake of their applications on other platforms (and how stagnant the PC market gets)
If a US company takes over a UK company and loses money as a result
Don't worry - just look at the corporate soverignity provisions in the various US trade agreements and this is a part of it - if a US company loses money as the result of a foreign government decision then that US company has the right to take the country to a special court and sue them for all the money they think they have lost..
Still think a US trade deal is a good idea? I can easily a big tobacco or oil company suing the UK because Government policy limits their ability to make money here..
forcing everybody online
This *really* annoys me - if only for the reason that my wife (and otherwise fairly technical person) absolutely hates doing anything vaguely official online so I have to do it on her behalf..
And if she hates it (despite her techical background) imagine how much worse it is for someone older with no technical backgound or built-in technical support?
Why wont it and no I wont just accept it because you say so
Because it will be a 'trade' deal where the US holds all the cards and we hold none. Unlike our previous life in the EU where we at least had a say in the rules and regulations involved - a trade deal with the US will be presented as a "this is what we want and you have no negotiating power" deal.
Especially if Trump wins re-election.
.. were not as simple as the author suggests - there were a number of factors involved:
Britain wanted tea, but didn't have enough silver to buy it (the Chinese didn't particularly value gold - their currency was almost entirely silver-based. This was partly solved by the British stealing tea plants and exporting them all over the Empire - which is how India became such a major source of tea).
China had a vast demand for opium since the whole country was wracked by internal division caused by the breakdown of the Imperial system at the time. Starvation and poverty was rife - which meant that the market for opium got vast because people wanted escape from a rigid system.
The British (and French and Russians) were happy to exchange opium for tea - it was cheaper than silver since it could be made easily in India and places like Afganistan. Much cheaper than paying in silver..
China tried to stop the import of opium because it was bad for the economy to have their worker classes drugged out of their minds.
The UK/French/Russian alliance didn't like having their drug industry infringed upon so fought the Imperial Government - which the Imperial Government lost because they didn't have access to modern weaponry.
Because the mperial Government lost so much face (aka "Mandate of Heaven") more and more internal revolutions started to occur leading to millions upon million of deaths from war, starvation and brutality and, eventually, the overthrowing of the Chinese Imperial system and the abominations of Chinese civil war and external invasion (Manchukuo etc) that lead to yet more deaths.
It's really, really not a pretty story - but it's one repeated time and time again throughout history (albeit with different products involved).
Until the inevitable Apple appeal.
Which they will probably win due to the theory of patent exhaustion - in other words, they bought stuff in good faith from Broadcom and thus BroadCom itself should be liable for the entire sum since they are the ones who were the patent licensees (or should have been).
VERY unhappy that someone else is eating their lunch
As happened many years ago to Motorola (when they made cellular infrastructure) - they coasted along, fat and happy, for many years since they had the lead in capabilities and people (pretty much) had to buy their base stations of they wanted to build a mobile network.
They didn't notice when Nokia and Ericcson started to sell kit that was cheaper and better. Until their sales types started getting their calls refused rather than automatically getting an order for £xxxx-worth of kit.
The decline was pretty swift.
e-paper is just so much better for reading in all lighting conditions
This. I use my e-reader (A Kobo) a lot and I'd be really, really loath to swap it for a standard tablet. Even though the 'reading hours' stat that the e-reader manufacturers quote is pretty much bunkum (I have to charge mine every 3-4 days - during which I'll get through 4-8 ebooks) it's still a magnitude better than any of the tablets I have.
doggy bag for a cat with very expensive tastes
Or, as my cats prefer to call it "we know what we like and you *will* provide it".
And it's not dead bird and pond water, it's fresh goldfish with pond water.. Fortunately, the remaining goldfish know that when a cat-shaped object appears, it's safest to dive to the bottom of the pond. And their offspring have inherited that caution.
NSA's own backdoors in it to make it easier for them to slurp data
And the incestuous union continues - the NSA sniff our data, GCHQ sniffs the US' data and it all somehow ends up being blended together.
So that the NSA/GCHQ can say, hand on heart, that "no we don't do surveilance on our own citizens" - but only because they have already outsourced it to each other..
Do you not have unions over there?
Sort of - most prevalent in public service (NHS/local government et. al.) In private industry they are still present but so heavily neutered so as to be mostly irrelevant.
Sure, they needed their power curbed (the unions in the 1970 were far, far too powerful - the British car industry is a shining example of failure due to a number of factors - a major one being industiral action by unions. Also a failure to invest and bring in modern working practices - again partly due to the power of the unions) but I think that the balance has swung too far in the opposite direction.
Home Office will have new better IT systems by the end of the year
Does several bits of paper with scribble on them qualify? Because that's about all they'll get..
(Along with lots of jobs for the hard-of-thinking who can be trusted to foolow their orders without much of a conscience - if we follow the US model anyway)
pay comparison usually demonstrates employers don't.
That's because many of the care professions (especially home care) is outsourced - and the outsource companies need to make moeny and the only way they can do that is by cutting staff costs. The easiest way of doing that? Pay only minimum wage.
Bring those roles back in-house. Then the 20% markup that the outsource companies slp on top of everything disappears and the people actually doing the job can (hopefully) benefit by either having higher wages or having more people to spread the load.
Outsourcing is a pernicious poison that reduces quality, raises cost and destroys morale.
what it the purpose of a bay leaf?
Flavour dear boy, flavour.
Used in a number of cuisines (Italian & French being but two - lightly used in some Indian cuisines too).
It does have a distinct flavour - it's not strong but acts as a flavour enhancer/modifier for other things.
if you have to focus but want more "blockage"
Oddly enough, music actually helps me to concentrate. And, during a migraine, if I *don't* have music on then the pain seems a good deal worse. I suspect its because my subconscious is trying to visualise the intricacies of the music and is able to ignore the "ow ow ow" messages..
infusion of oil, frankincense, tree sap, herbs and soil, and administering this to the external ear
Tinnitus can sometimes be caused (or magnified) by solidified wax in the ear canal so (in those cases) removing the hardened wax with something that softens it (like warm olive oil) can help.
Not sure about adding soil to that mix - I suppose if it was sandy soil it wouldn't be too bad.
Under no circumstance use a hard object to try and dig the wax out. That way lies perforated eardrums..
My wife (60+) suffers from tinnitus and hasn't been to a concert nor worked in loud environs
Same is true for me (other than the 60+ - I'm only in the 50+ bracket). I rarely go to gigs (other than prog gigs - maybe 3-4 a year) and, when I do, tend to wear my old motorbike custom-moulded earplugs[1]. In my case it seems to be triggered by using opiates - if I don't have any for about a week then the tinnitus subsides. Since my regular prescribed painkillers *all* contain opiates, that ain't gonna happen any time soon - not if I want to be actually upright and mobile.
[1] Riding bikes at high speeds and for long periods without earplugs *will* destroy your hearing. When I used to ride bikes a lot, I'd always wear earplugs for journeys of more than 10-15 minutes. I got some custom-fit ones made at one point - which involved having foam squirted down the ear canal. Not an entirely pleasant experience..
It emits a cricket chirp at random intervals & random volumes in order to be as annoying as possible
Or you could take the much less techie route and just have a multi-cat household. With a mixture of ages so that exciting "chase each other over the humans in bed" game happens at random intervals during the night.
With extra bonus points for "ooh look - human toes! I wonder what they taste like?".
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