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Comment Re:Ocean orienting (Score 1) 520

Her: Turn left here.
Me: *turns left*
Her: Oh, I meant stage left.
Me: Grrrr!

Nowadays I usually just ask for the address and look it up in a map. Here's why.

This has happened to me a couple of times:
friend (sitting in the back seat): Go that way.
me: Which way?
friend: That way.
me: Straight on or turn right?
friend: That way!
me: OK, I'm going straight.
friend: (at the very last possible moment) No, turn right!

This can end in a couple of ways. Ending A:
me: (twist twist twist the wheel / gently down the street / merrily merrily merrily merrily / tires make a squeeeeek...) You could have just told me, I can't see you from here...
friend: ...oh, sorry...

Ending B:
me: You could have said it earlier, we're in the wrong lane now... We can turn back over there. You might want to be a bit more specific...
friend: ...oh, yeah...

Then there's the annoying habit of giving "used to be" directions - it's especially popular where I live. If something is in the older parts of the town, and an older inhabitant is giving directions, they're bound to be of the form "where x used to be, turn towards the former y, then where z was before it moved, turn left. It's right next to the ex-..." This is usually based on a landscape that ceased to exist before I was born, and completely ignores the fact that I moved into this town in 1995.

I haven't gotten around to getting a navigator. I do use online map services to look for shortest routes, but then I just print a route description or just jot down a few key road numbers and directions. I do have a good road atlas in the car, and I know how to use it.

Comment Re:Stupid prices (Score 1) 827

So what happens when you cross the border from Finland into Norway or Sweden? How much additional does it cost to make a cell phone call?

Or a more relevant to most U.S. geography, what happens when a Belgian cell phone user crosses in the Netherlands or France? When I do the equivalent (New York to New Jersey or Connecticut)here, it has absolutely no effect on my cell phone bill.

If a Finnish TeliaSonera user gets a TeliaSonera Finland base station, charges are minimal, whereas if the base station is in Sweden and belongs to TeliaSonera Sweden, charges are exorbitant. The EU was supposed to mandate a ceiling on roaming fees, making the charges somewhat less exorbitant...

Comment Re:State of the art (Score 1) 293

I don't know where you are that a bank account number is sufficient information to withdraw money from a random account.

The United States. And it's technically not, but since banks here are not very vigilant about these things, but with the account number, bank routing number and a check number, it's possible for fraudsters to do so.

Bank routing numbers are public information; anybody can come up with a check number; so the only possible secret is the account number...

In contrast, see here.

Comment Re:State of the art (Score 1) 293

But, here at least, if someone has your bank account number they can wreck havoc on your life, everything from identity theft to fraudulently withdrawing money from your account. How do they prevent that?

I don't know where you are that a bank account number is sufficient information to withdraw money from a random account. The only thing you can do with a bank account number is deposit.

Comment Re:State of the art (Score 1) 293

OTOH, I do get checks on occasion, for instance, from mail-in rebates, or when my electric utility issued a refund of my initial deposit in the form of a check. I figure there's gotta be something like that still going on in Europe.

Nope. They just asked for your account number and deposit the money.

Comment Re:cutting edge considerd harmfull (Score 1) 378

There's nothing wrong, however, in using CSS for features that are nice if present but not absolutely necessary for displaying the content. Box drop shadows and special fonts are two things that won't prevent you from reading a website if you don't see them. It just won't look the same and that's fine because that's the way the Web works.

Except it's not the way the corporate client works. The corporate client insists that the web site look exactly identical to all users. It takes effort to convince them that it's actually a good thing that the page looks generally OK, although not exactly like the printed brochure, when the alternative is essentially telling customers "You have the wrong opinion. Go away." (opinion being choice of browser for whatever reason).

Comment Re:Quit Whining (Score 1) 423

From wikipedia:

The theme of the manifestos is how to avoid the 'object-relational impedance mismatch'...

Electrical impendance mismatch between balanced and unbalanced lines is handled by an autotransformer, a balun, short for balanced-unbalanced. What we need, obviously, is an object-relational transformer, an obre, if you will.

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