The BBC has implemented the EU cookie directive - rather elegantly

Angstweevil · 2012-05-25T14:01:09.300368+00:00

A task-focused user would simply have no reason to click on "find out more" - they are at the site to do something specific like look up information about their favourite BBC TV show or something. There's no reason they would want to learn about some technical-sounding problem before achieving what they set out to achieve.

Angstweevil · 2012-05-25T08:48:19.260619+00:00

Oh, if that is the case then I must give myself a whooosh

Emperor_Tamarin · 2012-05-25T08:47:34.839495+00:00

45 seconds: long enough to really annoy people, short enough that they are at least willing to give it a try.

poznasty · 2012-05-25T07:58:40.398937+00:00

There is a cat on Twitter called Sockington which your cat's name reminded me of, you may be interested in following him too https://twitter.com/#!/sockington

poznasty · 2012-05-25T07:56:51.712747+00:00

You should explain video games for a living. That was a really good and simple explanation.

poznasty · 2012-05-25T07:55:44.245206+00:00

Consider it your lucky day

Emperor_Tamarin · 2012-05-25T07:49:16.513459+00:00

Not to be confused with a Persian pussy cat.

Emperor_Tamarin · 2012-05-25T07:48:35.359791+00:00

I am seriously creeped out by what little of that video I saw before I closed the tab out of creepiness.

Emperor_Tamarin · 2012-05-25T07:46:48.761792+00:00

You just haven't waited long enough.

At about 45 seconds in, he sneezes fire.

linucs · 2012-05-25T06:19:43.412237+00:00

I was just curious if anyone still said that..

People do still say that. The thing is, every time they say it, it gets a little bit - not a lot, mind you, but just a tiny bit - more true than the previous year that it was said. Linux is headed in the right direction on the desktop, at least so far.

However, it is laughably delusional to say that it is anything near market dominance this year or any prior year, or in the imminent future. Those who say it do so out of ignorance/naivety, or to make a sensational-sounding headline (or an ounce of both).

If things kept going they way they are going, the claim may eventually become a fairly reasonable one. But it also may never. The future is hard to predict.

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T06:03:46.283344+00:00

TL;DR:

Negative numbers are some crazy made-up shit we've come up with for when you start subtracting a larger number from a smaller number. They don't exist in the real world, but they are a concept that has some uses. We write "1 subtract 2" as "-1". "-" is the symbol for the "negative" number.

Imaginary numbers are some crazy made-up shit we've come up with for when you start taking the square root of a negative number. They don't exist in the real world, but they are a concept that has some uses. We write "square root of -1" as "1i". Or i for short. "i" is the symbol for the "imaginary" number.

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T05:55:59.177882+00:00

I have (sadly) yet to encounter imaginary numbers in school

It sounds like you really don't need that school.

My advice: Pursue your own intellectual interests. Learn stuff for the hell of it, even if it's totally unconnected to "school" which you have to attend (and will probably be able to coast through well enough).

Not only did I thoroughly understand trigonometry years before it was ever taught to me in a school, I was programming computer game engines that made use of it. If your brain wants to learn stuff, feed it. Otherwise feel the burden of what it's like to feel unfulfilled.

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T05:48:44.265305+00:00

Why would naval reactors require that enrichment level?

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T05:46:49.252024+00:00

You'd basically have to send in people in hazmat suits, shielded as best as you can manage, to physically break up the Uranium

What would a pool of molten Uranium actually look like, if you could see it?

It's hard to get the cartoonish concept of a bunch of glowing green goop out of my head, even though I know that's just fiction.

I imagine it would be glowing, but that would be simply due to heat, just like any other molten metal. Am I wrong?

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T05:35:42.523569+00:00

What is a worry (and we engineer against it) is if the fuel melts, then drips down, melts through the reactor pressure vessel, and enough of it pools up in the area below the reactor pressure vessel, enough could pile up to go critical again (in which case we're in deep, deep shit).

Could you speak a bit more about what would happen then?

I ask this simply out of curiosity - the same sort of curiosity that may result in a person watching YouTube videos about major building or bridge disasters until they don't even realise it's 4am.

fastparticles · 2012-05-25T05:25:56.702061+00:00

This is also not a phenomenon that is limited to granite. Lots of natural stone will have a natural radioactivity.

Not to mention concrete. Or a human being.

And all three of the above would be beaten by a banana (on a per mass basis).

linucs · 2012-05-25T05:02:42.534041+00:00

Before you start ridiculing me for running Windows as a CS grad

I want to be clear about this: I am not going to ridicule you.

There is money to be made and careers to be had in supporting Microsoft products.

linucs · 2012-05-25T04:56:28.885335+00:00

The concept of conquering the desktop is becoming less and less important over time.

Linux is becoming more dominant than ever, but not on the desktop. However, the desktop is becoming a smaller piece of the computing pie as people increasingly turn to smartphones, tablets and the "cloud", all three of which are dominated by Linux at the moment (well, maybe not tablets at this stage, and Android may not be a traditional Linux distro, but still - it's not Microsoft, who dominates on desktop).

Do people still say "year of the Linux Desktop" with a straight face?

Well, I didn't have a straight face when I said it. It's common to joke about it. But the joke is not that Linux is laughably irrelevant (on the contrary, everything I said about mobile devices and servers holds true), but that the claim of "year of the Linux desktop" was always so hopelessly mis-predicted and over-hyped and so predictably missed the mark. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft has a lot more inertia than that on the desktop.

linucs · 2012-05-25T03:57:33.312437+00:00

There is a giant ecosystem of hundreds if not thousands of different tools, from compiler suites to IDEs, text editors to scriptable GUIs, frameworks to visual development tools to source code management tools, and they are infinitely varied in what they do best and who they serve.

linucs · 2012-05-25T03:50:21.247907+00:00

MS distributed easily over £10,000 for each student

Not really. This is essentially costing Microsoft $0 per student. Software doesn't have per-unit costs to produce. And it pays off in the form of free vendor lock-in for them if you then go on and have a successful career supporting Microsoft products.

And consider again my previous point. There are other operating systems that give free development tools to everyone. To say Microsoft is going above and beyond by giving free limited licenses for their software to certain students is putting things out of proportion.

Angstweevil · 2012-05-25T03:45:05.364919+00:00

I have to disagree that this is elegant.

This is confusing and alienating to users and doesn't help them make a decision at all. It refers to "cookies" several times, but fails to explain what they are. It doesn't even mention the word "privacy" anywhere.

This isn't to say that users aren't concerned about privacy. But they aren't going to understand this message. To launch into a discussion of cookies and changing cookie settings requires that users should already know what cookies are and why they would or wouldn't want them.

How are people supposed to understand what "happy to receive all Cookies" really means or how it will affect them? They didn't come here to learn about some scary-sounding thing that they may or may not want.

The alienating language used here is the BBC's fault. The fact that it has to be there at all is of course the EU directive's fault.

Matuski · 2012-05-25T03:32:58.543721+00:00

Do you have any unnecessarily filters or other glass in front of the lens?

Even multi-coated filters, but especially filters with single- or no coating, will add flare ghosts like this. If you use a UV filter for "protection", remove it before taking pics like this one.

If not, then it could just be reflections inside your lens, which you can't solve as easily.

dansul · 2012-05-25T03:19:45.303142+00:00

Whereas what has Google contributed to Facebook?

It unleashed Google+...

dansul · 2012-05-25T03:19:24.971571+00:00

You call that an upgrade?

dansul · 2012-05-25T03:18:49.672887+00:00

It would be like mocking Kim Jung Un for his Fresh Prince haircut.

It's fairly trivial in the scheme of things. But not offensively so.

neon_overload

TROPHY CASE

neon_overload

TROPHY CASE

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