Lay of the TV marketing crack, Google. True HD means 1920 x 1080 pixels.

Surely the resolution depends massively on the screen size. 1920 x 1080 is considered True HD but that is a term used for televisions which are normally at least 19 inches. Saying that you can't call a 4.7" screen True HD when it will have a pixel density far higher than a 'True HD' tv seems a bit ridiculous. This is exactly why pixel density and screen size are much clearer measurements than resolution.

When the Honda was getting old and would stall (often as I was slowing to a stop at intersections) the sudden loss of power assist in the steering was disconcerting at best, and certainly added effort and therefore time to react as I tried to limp to the side of the road.

Why would you need to pull over to the side of the road because you stalled? Surely slow to a halt and then restart the engine. Hardly a manoeuvre that requires a lot of hard steering.

except that we tend to say 'lollies' where you would say 'sweets'. Not sure 'lollies' actually counts as a legit word or as slang

In the UK lollies is short for lollipops which is normally a boiled sweet on a stick. In the USA I believe these are referred to as 'suckers'.

Sports, particularly anything on grassy pitches involving balls, seems to be torture for most compression algorithms. They don't know that the ball is more important to render correctly than some random spectator, and they seem to get rather lost with the subtle detail of the grass.

It is more the speed of movement that causes the problem with sports coverage. In a sport like football there will be multiple players all moving at once across the whole video stream. This makes it very difficult to compress because there are big changes from frame to frame. Compare this to something like a sitcom which normally has people standing and talking meaning very little changes from frame to frame enabling very efficient compression.

Sun Q, Spiegelman D, van Dam RM, Holmes MD, Malik VS, Willett WC, and Hu FB. “White Rice, Brown Rice, and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in US Men and Women. Archives of Internal Medicine. June 2010; 170(11):961-969.

That is a study of the difference between white and brown rice and how they affect rates of type 2 diabetes in grown men. It doesn't mention anything to do with a connection between foods that infants are fed and their preferences later in life.

When you make a statement like "There is good evidence" then you really need to be able to back that up with compelling evidence from a reliable source.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't do the same if I happened to have the medication in an emergency but let us be clear. Giving prescription drugs to someone who hasn't been prescribed them can be extremely dangerous especially if you don't know without any doubt that they aren't allergic to them. There is also the risk of complications when they are able to be treated by paramedics or when they reach hospital. The pills you gave them to dull the pain in the short term may react badly with later drugs or anaesthetic needed for surgery. Raising the possibility that your altruistic actions could cause serious harm to the person either through unanticipated drug reactions or delaying surgery.

Aside from the safety concerns, giving prescription drugs to a person who hasn't been prescribed them is illegal and you open yourself up to prosecution for supplying narcotics. In a real emergency a prosecution probably isn't that likely but recommending that people hoard drugs so they can hand them out to others if necessary is pretty irresponsible.

Storage is something both costly and tangible.

Are you not aware of the practically unlimited storage Facebook provides every member in the form of photo albums? Facebook is where most people keep their pictures, it is one of the first mainstream places that people can actually put pictures in order to allow all of their friends to effortlessly look at them. For a lot of people it has changed their photographs from something that is looked at on the back of a camera and then filed away, or something that is printed out and then put in a drawer.

Yes I know a lot of other sites offered this before Facebook but the likes of Flickr never reached the same kind of critical mass needed for it to work in this way and have now largely been usurped by Facebook for casual users.

And the part where they just smiled as they looked at me, telling me they would take my food, and eat it inside my apartment...I will never share another apartment with anyone.

I think the problem was that you shared an apartment with inconsiderate douche-bags. There are plenty of people in the world who aren't, it is just a case of making sure that you know one way or the other before you let them move in.

QR codes are a scam by domain registrars to sell domain names with cute-looking QR codes.

They are more a scam perpetuated by the printing and publishing industries in a desperate attempt to stay relevant in an increasingly online world. "Use QR codes to add value to your print adverts!" they whine as print spends and advertising revenue continue to spiral downwards.

QR codes are so incredibly niche they are pretty much pointless from a marketing point of view. Unless you are marketing specifically to tech savvy people who have smartphones they are completely useless.

Points of failure for a QR code

1. Must know what a QR code is
2. Must have a smartphone
3. Must have a QR reader app
4. Must be close enough to scan code
5. Must be quick enough to leap of the sofa and scan TV (for QR codes in ads)

Points of failure for a URL

1. Must be familiar with browsing the web
2. Must be able to remember a short word or phrase

The times I've used Joomla or Wordpress took me longer to configure the design to my specifications than it would have to just do it all in HTML to begin with.

I'm not sure what you were doing in Wordpress to "configure the design" but normally to produce a Wordpress theme you start with a flat HTML design and then add in elements to loop through posts or pull in widget areas. If you are referring to hacking about with an existing theme to try and make it look how you want then yes that isn't an efficient way to work.

To be honest these days it is rarely worth the effort to do it myself I use PSD to XHTML services like XHTMLChop who will take a layered PSD and convert it into standards compliant XHTML and CSS for $100 or so. I can then take that and create a theme for whatever CMS I want to use for the site.

That isn't to say I can't produce standard compliant templates myself by hand but why be the brick layer when you can be the architect.

Not for mobile phones (this thing is for Android), since you typically want to hold it in one hand while typing with the index finger of the other.

Generally on smartphones when people want to type quickly they hold the phone in both hands and type using both thumbs. So they do benefit from a layout like where key presses tend to alternate between left and right hands.

Grounding the lighting rod in a moving vehicle is problematic.

Not really, a lot of vehicles already have a grounding system which is essentially a conductive strip that hangs down at the back of the car. When the car is stationary the strip is close enough to the ground to discharge any static build up on the car body so that you don't get a static shock when you get out of the car. Making a more robust version that is connected to a lightning rod would be fairly trivial.

Of course it would also be pointless, the occupants of the car would be protected by the skin effect even if they were touching a conductive surface inside the car, which they probably wouldn't be.

I've always bought my phones unlocked and at retail prices, always top-of-the-line phones too, and the most expensive phone I ever bought was $550.

Yes and the point the parent poster was making was that if that phone had been built in the USA it would cost $2000 rather than the $550 you paid for it.

Nonetheless, the credit-card companies want them to pay for a quarterly "network penetration test" on their website, and to provide detailed technical information on the website set-up. Since their web-site is hosted by a big ISP, they have no access to the necessary technical info, and the ISP doesn't really want network penetration tests pounding on their infrastructure all the time. This is a mess.

It is called PCI-DSS Compliance and it has been standard practice for years. If you don't store any credit card details then the compliance process is relatively straight forward, it takes a couple of hours and only has to be done once. The security scans are to verify that the web server is secure. If you use a web host that is already PCI compliant then the scan is just a formality.

On the other hand if you choose to store credit card details on your server, which there is no valid reason to do then it does becomes much more complicated. You also open yourself up to huge liability and a PR nightmare if you ever have a security breach and those credit card details are stolen.

Either use a third party processor and pass the credit card details straight on to them, or if you want your customers to be able to re-order without having to put in their credit card details again then use a token system. There is no reason to store the card details yourself even for a short period of time. Why doesn't the retailer you work with just store a transaction id to show the transaction has completed successfully?