The Beeb are not a government organisation. They are independent of HMG (at least in name).

They are not directly tax-funded. Subjects in the UK pay a TV licence (currently about £145, IIRC) that subsidises the organisation in the UK.

The BBC in the UK are, I believe, non-profit - meaning only that they spend all of their £5 billion+ endowment each year. The details are less clear on BBC Worldwide, at least as far as I can find; I have a sneaking suspicion that that organisation is actually a for-profit centre and somewhat independent from the BBC in the UK. Don't quote me on that, however - it's conjecture and speculation on my part.

I fall rather squarely into the prescriptivist class of grammarians (as opposed to the extreme corpus linguists who seem to feel that language is entirely fluid and dynamic and should be bound by no rules whatsoever), but find it perfectly acceptable to use the third-person plural forms for persons of indeterminate gender or identity. While it has often been taught that using the 3rd person plurals in that way is incorrect, there are a number of pragmatic and historical reasons why it isn't so. A couple:

1.) It is readily understood by native speakers; we've been doing it that way for a very long time! Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Bernard Shaw, George Eliot, Elizabeth Bowen, C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, all have used 'them' as an indeterminate singular pronoun.

2.) It fulfills a need. Using 'he' causes an assumption, as does using 'she.' Some authors choose to alternate between the two, but that is just confusing. Saying 'he or she' and 'his or her' every time is far too wordy and cumbersome. Considering that English only has a neuter third-person plural, 'they' is a perfectly good stand-in. (Heck, the Germans use 'sie,' 'sie,' and 'Sie' (her, they, You) without any issues. Aside from some fun and intentional linguistic wordplay, ambiguity is resolved through context.)

If you can't trust that the entity with which you're exchanging information has the security of the information as their highest priority, no amount of securing of channels is going to help.

How do you know the person handing you the fingerprint hasn't switched it for a manky one?

How do you know the server that generated the key hasn't been compromised?

For that matter, how do you know that the remote entity hasn't been strong-armed into simply giving over all of your information? A government threatening to shut down a business or jail its workers shifts the priority to their own self-preservation, which means that in most cases, you're fucked.

The Certificate Authority model is the best one we've been able to come up with to date. It's been around for 20+ years, and while it does have its flaws, it is the least flawed system I've seen proposed.

No, I'm fairly certain the Chinese Army uses metric units, not imperial.

OTOH, it may actually make it easier for us. Canon in D is very clearly in the public domain, and if every song using four chords is a derivative work, then all the songs you mentioned are themselves ineligible for copyright, at least in part. So while I couldn't reproduce the lyrics of "It Was Good" by Better than Ezra, I could reproduce the chord changes exactly and be entirely worry-free* that I was infringing on his copyright.

*worry-free that I was actually infringing. I would still have to worry about a potentially very-expensive court case.

I have a pair of the Plantronics Backbeat Go 2. For a $70 bluetooth set, they are more than adequate. I have used them daily for nearly a year with no major problems.

Battery life is approximately 4-5 hours for phone conversations; slightly less with louder and/or bass-heavy music. Recharge time is slower than I'd like (about 0.5x discharge time), but they're not bulky, are fully flexible (no hard parts between the buds), and very comfortable in my ears. I wear them around my neck constantly so there's no risk of damaging them in pockets. I also run 5-10k with them at a stretch with no discomfort or real risk of falling out.

My only complaint is there's no way to disable the 'play' button functionality on android devices over bluetooth (only with wired headsets, argh), but overall they're as close to the holy grail of bluetooth talking/running phone/music buds as I've ever found.

I'd like to see your reference for this statement "A ton is and has always been metric".

As I understand it a "ton" is typically non-metric (either Imperial or US) whereas "tonne" is metric and "metric ton" is the term typically used in the US that refers to tonne. This has been my understanding for years but a quick check on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...) seems to agree, although I notice there is some confusion when talking about an Imperial ton (or long ton) and a tonne as they are very similar mass and therefore "ton" has been used interchangeably for both.

I am curious which country you are from and if you are familiar with the non-metric terms for mass.

So just to be clear... "Well it's better than nothing (so better than Canada)" are you saying that Canadians cannot unlock their phones? If so then either you or I need to update our information because as I understand it we can now request our phone be unlocked after 90 days (in contract) or immediately if you purchase the phone outright. Of course there can be a charge for getting the phone unlocked, unfortunately.
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info...

Yes, except... if your machine still has updates outstanding then from what we have seen it is best if you "check for updates" again before installing them. It looks like if the patch was already downloaded then it will install unless you refresh by checking for updates again before installing.

After some investigation it looks like the update may not have been configured to do a silent install properly and actually hangs as it is waiting for user input on an invisible dialogue box.

If you have a machine that does hang we have found the following:
1. wait until there is virtually no disk activity (counting on you have a light that shows you) and then power the machine down, or
2. use either PowerShell remoting or psexec to kill the two processes involved in the update: "Setup" and "vstor_redist".
With PowerShell: Invoke-Command -ComputerName hostname -ScriptBlock {Stop-Process -Name Setup,vstor_redist -Force}
With PSExec something like this will work:
Psexec \\hostname cmd
Taskkill /im Setup /f
Taskkill /im vstor_redist /f
Exit

If the machine is doing a number of updates killing the two processes above will allow the machine to continue with the rest of the updates.

Of course the standard disclaimers apply: No guarantees the above will help and not harm you computer, your mileage may vary, batteries not included, objects in code are buggier than they appear, yadda, yadda.

Yep. I work in patents, where a small incorrect use of grammar or terms of art can mean losing millions of dollars. The classic case in point:

Patent A:
"A vehicle comprising 3 wheels and a motor."

Patent B:
"A vehicle consisting of 3 wheels and a motor."

Assuming it is 1700 or something and no prior-art exists,

Patent A can go on to claim 4-wheeled motorized vehicles (since a 4-wheeled vehicle does after all have 3 wheels), 3-wheeled vehicles with shark fins, whatever. "Comprising" is open-end and interpreted as "it has at least this," or as you say, "including."

Patent B is strictly limited to 3 wheels and a motor, no more and no less. If a competitor uses 4 wheels, or adds shark fins, or two motors, then it isn't covered by the patent. "Consisting of" is a closed phrase interpreted as "having exactly."

The incorrect grammar "comprised of" would be an ambiguity, and as such, interpreted in the strictest way -- limiting as in Patent B.

It may seem worrisome that scientists and engineers of all people -- some of the absolute worst butchers of language and grammar out there! -- are the ones who become patent agents or patent attorneys, but all-in-all, the ones who do so tend to be some of the smartest folks I've met. You need to be well-rounded to do the job.

There was a large amount of negative bias in your question. ("Why was he even...") Hence the negative reaction it garnered.

Try phrasing your questions in a more neutral manner and you'll see a lot of that disappear.

I presume by your use of the word "decimated" you mean to be reduced by 1/10.

It's too venerated a word to have its definition incorrectly memed.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

How about a nice game of chess?

Unless I am wrong (and I am never wrong), "blue" is the correct spelling of "blue" in English.

So the French 'sacré' and the English 'blue' yields an (intentionally) inherently mixed-language phrase.