The thing is, I didn’t have a day off in seven months until last weekend

You let yourself be treated like this? Your Mrs and the kids are the most important people in your life. Act like it.

It’s all so much easier to believe a YouTube video though…

Hehehehe…. yeahhh…. :(

And in the interests of sanity, from the NIST report in 2008:

The fires burned out of control during the afternoon, causing floor beams near column 79 to expand and push a key girder off its seat, triggering the floors to fail around column 79 on Floors 8 to 14. With a loss of lateral support across nine floors, column 79 buckled – pulling the east penthouse and nearby columns down with it. With the buckling of these critical columns, the collapse then progressed east-to-west across the core, ultimately overloading the perimeter support, which buckled between Floors 7 and 17, causing the remaining portion of the building above to fall downward as a single unit. The fires, fueled by office contents, along with the lack of water, were the key reasons for the collapse.

Can’t get the link to embed, take a look:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110721055820/http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf
I actually recommend it, there’s some pretty engineering images, I like this one:

Junkyard, you are an argumentitive sod.

So let me get this straight, you’ve realised JY is argumentative, and yet continue to engage him in an argument?!
No matter what you say, you won’t change him. It’s almost beautiful!

>You are seriously hampering your long term career plans imho.
>>This +1.

Unless the attitude expressed above strikes the OP as a challenge he wants to best, this sentiment is exactly the reason for avoiding the rat race.

You can’t design a thoroughly modern car to be as efficient as possible if you impose an external shape on the engineers from the off.
It’s impossible.

In this day and age, I’d suggest that there are diminishing returns to be gained from making (what you would call) a dramatically better car at this price range. There are however massive returns to be made from making a stylish car that sells.
Let’s not forget that both cars were designed to sell. I would suggest that the new MINI is better engineered to sell than the old Mini – it borrows from all of the Mini’s past heritage, glamour, style and nostalgia, without making an ounce of it itself! How much more efficient can you get?! ;)

The old cars had looks derived from engineering.
The new cars have engineered looks. Not to mention better engineering ;)

The MINI, Beetle and Fiat 500 are intellectually and aesthetically bankrupt designs, conceived by marketeers.

Funny, design of the MINI and 500 were overseen by the same guy.
One of Frank Stephenson’s other designs:
(Worked on “distinctive features” including the rear wing)
This:

Oh, and this (He is McLaren Chief Designer):

Allegedly, “Automotive insiders regularly refer to Stephenson as “one of most influential automotive designers of our time”

But, you know, cynicism and all that

:lol:
She’ll get her holiday pictures out in a minute

What outrage ?

EXACTLY!

Ignorance of the events being discussed should not be a bar on entering the debate or shoehorning in a dig at a politician you dislike…well done.

Are you trying to start an argument again? ;)

I’m talking about the outrage, not the price rises. This same topic comes up this time every year without fail. Next it’ll be the rail disruptions over Christmas. Has anyone mentioned EDF’s operating costs for their domestic operations yet?

Because that would involve critical analysis derived from the whole spectrum of issues that contribute to a situation! Don’t be daft maaaan!

I had no idea there was outrage – I’ve got a feeling the media are misreporting something that doesn’t actually exist again… Has that nerd from Labour said something again?

Moon landing was basic physics

lol
Personally I think it’s civilization as a whole.
The fact that we have this amazing system where we do sustained activities knowing the place you do it will still be there tomorrow. You can dig stuff up, work it and we have these systems in place to produce all this fanciful tat, complete with the logistics and fuel to ship stuff across the planet all so that Matey down the road, who is concerned with nothing but his own skin, self worth, appearance and shallow guff can swan around in something like this:

What the hell, mankind? What the hell?!

Thanks for the link johnners.

It was too linear and I could knew what was happening well in advance.

Korma-Spoiler: Aye, but the main point was that the protagonist couldn't which brings up some ideas to ponder over

I’m aware of the author’s views, I’ll likely see the film anyway (probably in a method that doesn’t give him any money) seeing as I read and enjoyed the book before I even knew homophobia existed. Bizarrely, the book taught me a lot about humanity, acceptance and understanding through miscommunication, something the author seems to lack.
It’s one of those lovely human things – art evoking a personal response in me that’s at odds with the personal views of the artist.

You’ve never been in a road rage situation? I’ve been in one… Different situation, but

Cool story bro. What’s it got to do with this?!
You still haven’t really explained how you’re supposed to avoid a bunch of bikers coming up behind you, boxing you in and brake checking you.

they didn’t decide to go out on a ride to beat someone

And you know this for sure…?

:D :D :D :D
The best bit is that it changes every time I hit F5

Ohh! That reminds me!
I always wondered (usually while astride the porcelain throne) why the Mr Muscle logo was a picture of South America

Or become a Premium user (no ads).

This!
I only stopped because I never received a free gift!

It’s not really a philosophical question, merely one of semantics. Unless the point is to show how people tie themselves up in knots trying to answer a question that disappears when you look at it from the right angle.

Only for it to reappear in the thread two pages later ;)

Throw off your shackles and avoid the medium shoving the ads in your face ;)

Did you pay cash for it?

Handbags!

Go on then ;)

dragon,
You’re bang on with that figure (and pedantry) – I’m saying not much more than 25k compared to the 60k figure, all things considered.
The girls are in the humanities pit unfortunately, one is seeking a training contract but it’s a battle. I agree with your numbers for Science / Engineering graduate starting salaries: Most of the big defence boys are offering around 25k – 30k for graduate schemes, without much variation with location: You can get this in Glasgow.

it was a question aimed at the STW demographic.

Then all this question can hope to achieve is determine whether your views on the STW demographic are correct.

Take a look at unemployment figures. Take a look at the swathes of young people coming out of university who have been sold the dream of ‘get a degree get a job’. A lot of them are likely better educated than you. A chap I know gave his two daughters the best middle class upbringing imaginable. They were both educated by top universities and exceeded the average throughout the entirety of their academic lives. They do not make 25k between them.

Consider a Post-doc working now to cure Diabetes at a top 10 university, with a First Class degree and PhD from Oxford. Not much more than 25k.

Sure, they’re all under 30. And hey, this is anecdotal evidence, but that’s the kind you wanted.

Right handed, hold lid with left, twist entire jar with right

Apparently Apple designed their own custom chip as a 64-bit ARM wasn’t going to be ready in time.

Manufactured by Samsung, based on the ARM instruction set.

Not because kids will become terrorists, but because they are quite likely to injure themselves significantly.

You’re not really suggesting that kids can injure themselves with knowledge alone, are you? ;)

Brand new house, never been occupied.

THE LETTER STILL COMETH!

I personally think it should be illegal to threaten people through automated letters. Copy and Paste legal action by robots is killing society :)

LHS: I’ve given my rational, don’t really need to explain anymore. As I said, it’s an individual choice and i choose not to let my kids go to school and eat the school dinners.

Poor effort! This has got another 8 pages left in it, why don’t you double post some more to get the count higher? ;)

The fact you’re unsure how to handle your own situation tells you how qualified you are to help with her situation.
You want to help her out of decency, which is courageous, but ultimately all you can do is offer as much support as you are comfortable offering. Point her in the right direction and go get the things from life you feel you’re currently missing.
Make sure she knows she can always talk to you, give her a call regularly and give her every opportunity to express how she’s feeling to you, be patient and listen as much as you can but ultimately live your life.

What are you going to do about it?

You think the “effort and cost” of a government security agency like the NSA accessing the records of another gov agency like Passport Control is somehow GREATER than the effort and cost of secretly conspiring with Apple to breach international privacy and data protection laws and secretly develop the ability to covertly transmit fingerprint data without hackers, competitors or foreign agencies ever noticing?

No, I don’t. I’m arguing against the following line of reasoning:
“This privacy concern is invalid because this privacy can already be violated if person A does X Y and Z”
on the grounds that the new privacy concern potentially skips steps X Y and Z and makes it more economical to violate the privacy.
As for your little situation you made up – I’m not for one moment suggesting they’d do it, let alone secretly :)

with an incredibly simple solution. don’t buy one.

lol.

I disagree with the fingerprint paranoia (and I’m a tin foil hat kinda guy) and doubt that the fingerprints will leave the device. However:

As footflaps points out, such groups have far better ways of getting full high quality fingerprints of all your fingers if they really want them. I believe many banks in the US fingerprint you when you open an account for example.

This isn’t a very good argument. While I agree with you on the “if they really want to” case, to me this case isn’t the issue. The effort and cost involved in the above is vastly greater than the effort and cost involved in aggregating data collected from a phone which knows who you are, where you are and what you’re up to. The fingerprint thing could represent the establishment of a method that systematically achieves the fears of the paranoid with minimal economic cost. This brings it within reach of those wishing to perform mass surveillance, as opposed to targeted surveillance. Seeing as all the ethical problems of recent months arise from the deployment and aggregation of systems designed to create and store data from untargeted mass surveillance, I hope you can see why this could be considered a serious problem.

Your point about the application of this data for nefarious purposes still stands, I just didn’t want anyone to lose sight of the issues at hand.

Cougar – Moderator

Do yourself a favour.
Steady on, this looks a little like mod arrogance to me ;)

40mph – prosopagnosia is the proper term for ‘face blindness’, but I suspect that your 2nd explanation may be more true.

I first realised I had this when I got punched into a fight, the police got involved and I couldn’t pick the guy out from a row of printed mugshots. Funnily enough though, he was walking into the police station when I walked out and I recognised him straight away because of his walk, height, outfit, twitches, smell etc.

As a result, I often have women come up to me asking where they recognise me from – it’s great fun, I haven’t got a clue whether they’re my mate’s girlfriend’s friend who was at that party the other night, my old mate’s sister in law, or whether they’re tring to chat me up.
I always assume they’re a complete stranger who thought I looked attractive enough to start a conversation with, it makes the conversation more fun and memorable, although I still wouldn’t recognise them if I saw them again week later!

It doesn’t work so well for blokes though.

“…to be fair,”

SHUT UP. SHUT UP NOW. You’re not interested in fairness, you just finally realised how to phrase the point you thought of half way through my sentence and didn’t bother to listen to the rest of what I was saying, using ‘to be fair’ as the universal “It’s my turn to talk now but I can’t retort to your actual points because that would mean being able to think and listen at the same time” phrase.

I’m on to the lot of you.

Link is still live, I wouldn’t bother though – they only want attention :)

andytherocketeer, I hope you pay in cash – they can easily read your name from your card y’know, or maybe get you to sign a bit of paper if the chip and pin machine is down… In those cases it’s very much their business to know your name.

They don’t do it if you’re “having in”. Don’t want to felt tip on the porcelain probably, which is why it falls within “gimmick” to me.

The barista boys always ask my name and get all wide eyed when I reply ‘Cosmo’…