I found that here in the UK, doctors tend to develop shorthand just in case anyone (like a nosy relative) looks at the patients notes in hospital... a nice one that stands out in my mind is "NFN" which is taken to mean that the patient is mentally impaired and thus requires extra care/attention when being spoken to. When I asked a doctor friend of mine what "NFN" stood for he chuckled and said... "Normal for Norfolk".

Top Gear is not a factual/scientific car review show. It is an entertainment show, hosted by three stereotypical caricatures of "the male". Top gear is to serious car review shows what Blackadder is to history documentaries. The tongue in cheek point they were making is that their CHARACTERS were too stupid to cope with an electric car that required some forethought and planning with regards to charging.

Other antics on the show include Jeremy's toolbox consisting of about twenty very large hammers etc

a wiring problem could be as simple as using an incorrect thermistor on a Li-ion pack or not wiring a thermistor in at all. These are often used to alter charge/discharge rates in response to the battery pack temperature. A battery will still work in every other respect, except it won't respond accordingly in response to overheating. This is a fairly simple example of what could go wrong to cause a fire that would not stop the battery from working (until it failed by going on fire). The trouble with Li-ion packs is that if this happens (and it does) then the fire can very easily spread to the surrounding cells. I can see how this could cause short voltage spikes that would overcome resistance in a line to "flicker" a light.

I'd just like to add, I may be totally wrong, but I thought I'd weigh in for the fair minded rather than the conspiracy theorists on this one. Also, before anyone assumes I'm a Boeing employee, I'm not. I'm just a bloke who works with Li-ion batteries and who has seen faults similar to this in the past.

OK, I'll bite

I take it from your post that you would actually consider using a .NET language without the base class library? Without the base class library, any .NET language is simply syntax without any actual working bits. While the syntax of a language is important your urge to re-write the .NET base class library just to keep the syntax makes me question your sanity! Here... go read what you'll be missing without the BCL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_Class_Library then come back and tell me you're still OK with your statement.

if I had mod points I'd mod you up.

The open source community is not trying to sell you anything pal. I stand by my analogy. It is interesting how you rate names however. What makes a name good or bad in your head? You seem he'll bent on proving something I'm just not sure what it is? Your world must be a very confusing place, names are for the authors to come up with. If software takes off we will all end up knowing its name and using it, if it doesn't, we won't. No amount of ranting on your part will change that!

Seriously? you would consider having a conversation with a car manufacturer to tell them that they named one of their cars badly?

That's a bit like telling your neighbour that you think Timmy was a shit name for their son and they should really rather have gone with Walter like you told them to.

A name is simply a name, a word to help you distinguish one thing from another. Arguably descriptive names are more useful to someone who is unfamiliar with the thing being named. But they are not a requirement for most use cases.

Do you find yourself unable to fly because you can't find the plane because it was called "747" instead of comfy-flying-thing-that-makes-me-happy? or perhaps you never have ice cream because "Rocky Road" bares no resemblance to the frozen dairy product in the tub? I could go on with examples to highlight the ridiculous nature of your assertion all day but I choose not to.

Good point sir

but I believe war4peace is even nuttier than that, referring to installed binary files by name e.g. abcde, he no doubt refers to "Microsoft Word" as "winword.exe" in casual conversation as well.

Someone should show the poor guy how to create menu items, or use a package manager that would create them for him, he's clearly uninformed

When I open Ubuntu Software Centre (on my desktop OS at work I might add) and I enter "database" or "web browser" or "word processor" in the search box I actually get meaningful results back showing examples of each with package names and brief descriptions of what they do.

I can also browse the software centre and click on things like "Developer Tools" then "Web Development" and once again get a meaningful list of things to install complete with descriptions.

I fail to see how this is in any way difficult when compared to sourcing your windows software from the Internet. Windows has finally got a software repository to call it's own with windows 8 so maybe it will become as easy as Linux and OS X for finding and installing applications now?

I suspect you've been self-harming by trying to use a Linux box the same way you use a Windows box with regard to finding and installing software by package name from the Internet? Package managers are your friend, they remove much complexity from this process, you should try one some time

Good luck with that idea, you have just completely disregarded all of the people and infrastructure in existence in one fell swoop! If you're going to make crazy suggestions, you may as well say "hell... what we need is teleporters, then we won't need cars at all". I feel these things have an about equal practical chance of being realised. Meanwhile in the real world, new design and invention typically has to improve on something or be so damn good that people rush to change their behaviour to include the obviously better new thing. New inventions that don't do one of these tend to stay on the drawing board, or on the shelves. Also I'd like to point out that it's better to have a "wrong solution" to the right problem than a "right solution" to the wrong problem. Many of the most useful things I've come across can be described this way. Cars are locally efficient for the user, but traffic is nasty and inefficient for the system. Trouble is... the user does not care! The average user ponders trains and thinks... "trains don't go where I need them to go; thus trains suck ass for me". This is a great example of the "wrong solution" to the "right problem". I don't think this simple problem will ever be solved with transport that runs on rails when users are free to choose alternatives. A good compromise is to make a better, cleaner car. It does not take away choice (we can still build super-sonic trains), but it does solve some of the problems that concern us the most about the environment. We also get to use the existing infrastructure we spent so much money on, and we don't have to somehow deal with the massive congestion centralising the whole frikkin population in cities would cause. There is no one true way, diversity rules

I do not identify with the experience you describe, perhaps it is because I use long term support releases of Linux? The ones built for WORKING? If you want to be on the bleeding edge then you need not be surprised when you bleed! I can't speak for everyone, but I have been using Linux as my main operating system for work since late 2000. I am a software developer, my main tools are C, Java, PHP and lately even some C#. I work and interact with windows users (i.e. Office documents come my way). I also publish a lot of written work (documentation, proposals, white papers, manuals etc). I have simply NEVER needed or wanted to use a Windows machine for anything work related for well over a decade. Linux and OSS have provided for my EVERY need at work during this time. I don't play games on my Linux machines. I have a windows box for that! I see this as using the right tool for the job. My wife uses an iMac for gaming because she mostly just plays Guild Wars 2 (previously WoW) and these work fine on iMac. The server at home is a Linux box and I even have a Mac Book Pro I use at home for everything that is not gaming or work (photography, browsing, email, writing, genealogy). As you can see, I'm not wedded to any particular OS. I find trying to pick "the best PC OS" somehow futile because the only measure of which one wins is what the mob buys. Right now, the mob seems to be going mobile and forgetting that PCs exist. I think it's great that Valve are giving Linux a whirl, there is nothing to stop them picking a few large Linux partners and getting the stability they require to support their product. I'm betting they'll be using proprietary drivers from AMD and NVIDIA for 99% of the games because that what we pragmatic sorts do, and they are the ones that will WORK THE BEST with the games. There is no sense messing around with a sub-standard OSS driver when a free closed source one exists. Canonical know this and make it VERY easy to install proprietary drivers with a click of the mouse.

Just because you can do something does not mean you should, nor does it mean that you are entitled to do it. Stealing a car that had keys left in the ignition IS STILL STEALING A CAR. Equally, this guy installing his software on some kit in a shop that does not belong to him because he can is both rude and wrong. I think getting the secret service to raid his house was probably over-kill (don't you yanks have regular police for this sort of thing?) but it does not excuse his actions.

They're both correct (as much as a constantly evolving language can be). They were both independently derived from the same French word "orienter" which is a verb as it happens. Orient was first used in the 1700s and Orientate was first used in the 1800s. One was not derived from the other. Pedants begone!

Screw that, I'm an omnivore! I offer my dentition as evidence of this fact. Vegan humans (especially raw vegan humans) make about as much sense as frikkin pandas. These evolutionary oddities struggle to subsist on the WRONG diet! It really does not matter how you feel about this... the world will not convert to your way of thinking. People are fundamentally concerned with themselves and their own tiny corner of the planet and they are not likely to do anything that does not directly benefit themselves or people they are directly involved with. While I understand your motives and even agree with them (concerning efficient use of energy, not leaf-eating); I suspect it's far more likely that we (as a species) will back the guy who figures out how to make a better/cleaner power plant than the veggie-toting-overlord mandating thrice daily lettuce! On a more serious note (yes flamers, the above was less than serious); reducing consumption of energy will only be happily/willingly embraced by consumers if they do not have to give up their addiction to the stuff the energy gets them e.g. car, computer, light, TV, tasty food etc. The unhappy consumer votes for the opposition even if the current government is doing the right thing for the planet. Yup, that's the mob for you, about as smart as dirt. This simple sad fact is why voters favour green policies only as long as the prices don't go up and the lights stay on. I'm not really sure what this has to do with the state of affairs in Africa however. I grew up in Africa myself and my own feelings after LIVING THERE for more than half my life is that the west needs to leave Africa alone. For crying out loud stop sending aid! The west is a bit like that annoying relative that keeps giving you shit you don't need or want. There is a whole generation of Ethiopians that think food comes in 25Kg bags labelled "Food Aid". Many African countries have wonderful diverse eco-systems with excellent soil quality and many African countries have active (and advanced) farming techniques. It is wrong to assume that Africa is a continent of totally backward cavemen (indeed talking about "Africa" like it's a country is bloody stupid as well, it's huge!). If you truly want to enable Africa to succeed, then allow it equal trade opportunities usually only afforded to 1st and 2nd world economies. Another sad fact... if equal trade opportunities became available to African business people then Europe and and US would find themselves facing yet another rising industrial power fuelled by cheap (and I mean DAMN cheap) labour. This cheap labour is eager to earn and even more eager to learn, given the chance African economies would boom. Aid and outside interference retard Africa's development, African people need to BE the masters of their OWN destinies and they are never going to do this if the rest of the world constantly intervene and feed/clothe/poke/subjugate/exploit them. Peace, stability and wealth cannot be given to a continent, these things must be built by those who live there otherwise they will not value them and guard them and they will soon be lost again.

You want one of these... http://www.xgaming.com/store/category/arcade-joysticks-and-game-controllers/