Comment Re:The industry can take all the time it needs (Score 1) 313
rip your dvds let me know how fast the storage goes then.
OK Just ripped all my DVDs and they take up 0GB. I do not want to re-watch anything enough for it to be worth buying.
Comment Re:This is second place (Score 1) 1260
That's why they use BCD or some other type of decimal encoding. Spreadsheets can be a problem, though. I remember (back in the early days of PCs) trying to explain to a financial analyst that there wasn't a bug in his spreadsheet when the cross checks on his calculations where coming up with a (very small) inequality.
I would guess that they store currency in the smallest unit possible (cnets in USA pence in UK) so £100 is stored as 10000 pence and then put the decimal point in dor display purposes only. Far eaiser to do calculations with than BCD.
Comment Re:This is second place (Score 1) 1260
Have you ever seen the programming example of how binary computers are not very good at representing decimal fractions? I dont know if it is still as simple to prove but on a bbc micro you could do this (my bbc bsic is very rusty)
10 a = 0
20 for i = 0 to i = 10
30 a = a + 0.1
40 print a
50 next a
and you would get something like
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1.000000001
This is because it is impossible to represent 0.1 in binary
I hope banks use pence in all there calculations not pounds (cents and dollars for americans).
Comment Re:Mac vs. PC (Score 1) 453
Back when I was a kid we had these definitions:
Micro computer: 8 bit computer
Mini Computer: 16 bit computer
Mainframe: 32 bit computer
Super Computer: 64 bit computer.
Nobody talked about PC apert from IBM PC (or IBM PC-compatible) which has now been shortened to PC.
However wouldent the Mac adds be funny if it was Mac verses PC when PC stands for Police Constable? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Constable
Comment Re:Impossible? (Score 1) 426
And oddly, I also know a number of people who are generally right-handed, but left-handed when it comes to sports/athletics.
I guess this is something to do with them actually being more left handed than right handed and there is less preduice against left handedness in sport than in the rest of the world. How many right handed people would be left handed if the world was generally left handed?
Comment Re:Impossible? (Score 1) 426
I guess that only 10% if not 5% of people are naturally right handed as well and 80% are somewhere in between. As we live in a right handed world 90% of the people who are neither left or right handed learn to be right handed from there parents who learned to be right handed from there parents. Hopfully in 2 or 3 generations time we will have the majority of people able to use either hand.
Submission + - Save Money - Fly Standing Up (foxnews.com) 2
pickens writes: Fox News reports that an Italian aircraft interiors company is proposing a new semi-standing 'seating' configuration that airlines could use to create a 'basic' class to maximize passenger count and profits, while lowering ticket prices. The company, Aviointeriors, says that its SkyRider chairs could be stacked together with only 23 inches of legroom between them — compared to the 31 inch minimum now typically found in coach. Earlier this year, Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Irish budget airline Ryanair, said that he was considering adding similar seats and also considering creating a true standing room area. Ryan says that the standing room area would use handrails like those found on a train or bus. "The argument against it is that if there’s ever a crash, people will be injured," says O'Leary. "If there's ever a crash, the people in the sit-down seats will be injured, too."
Comment Debian or IE to last? (Score 2, Interesting) 225
So there are two important aprts of the internet with birthdays very close together. I wonder if Debian or IE will last the longest?
Submission + - Rise in Latvian botnets prompts Spamhaus row (theregister.co.uk)
netsuhi.com writes: Concerns over the rising tide of nuisance and malicious email from Latvia have sparked an acrimonious dispute between anti-spam organisation Spamhaus and the country's top-level domain registry.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/spamhaus_latvia/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/13/spamhaus_latvia/
Bookmark Rise in Latvian botnets prompts Spamhaus row (theregister.co.uk)
Comment Re:not quite. (Score 1) 324
No it's just that it looks much better when everyone is looking at an interactive wall and doing things on it than some small fiddley padd. The look at this served to move the plot on like many people working on an application with a wall for a display device. How booring would it have been to watch someone working on a PADD.
Submission + - How an ancient printer can spill your most intimat (theregister.co.uk)
Bookmark How an ancient printer can spill your most intimate secrets (theregister.co.uk)
Comment One more thing to delete (Score 1) 548
Along with the unnessary server software on a desktop or the unnessary X on a server.
Comment One more thing to uninstall on a new system (Score 1) 548
This is one more thing that will need to be uninstalled on a new system when removing 50 or so packages, disableing most of the unnessary cron jobs and services. Not to mention the instalation of all the packages that need to be installed but can not be put in the default instalation because of the RIAA.
