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Comment: Re:One hundred *billion* dollars? (Score 1) 103

I think the dead give-away is when somebody quotes a nice even number - $100B - how convenient!

If people are going to make up numbers and hope that they will be believed, then at least make an effort and select something that looks like a "real" number, even if it vastly inflated to suit your argument. Quite frankly, it's depressing how people nowadays are too lazy to even lie properly.

Comment: Re:Hail UTC (Score 2) 158

by oobayly (#47372613) Attached to: Russia Moves From Summer Time To Standard Time

The problem is that tide tables in the UK are [as a rule] published with times explicitly in UTC. However, tides are occasionally published on the sailing instructions (regatta race information) without any mention of timezone, so do you assume that they're using local time (most likely), or UTC. It's easy to check, but it annoys me when it's done by a big event organiser such as Cowes Week - three letters are all you need to make everything completely unambiguous.

Comment: Re:Hail UTC (Score 1) 158

by oobayly (#47366821) Attached to: Russia Moves From Summer Time To Standard Time

My car's clock live on UTC, mostly because I'm too lazy to adjust it. The problem is that when it's serviced the mechanic "helpfully" adjusts the time, which caused a fair amount of confusion the first time. Same goes for the clock in my flat - fortunately it doesn't get messed around by my garage.

Funny you mention tides and ambiguity - what really winds me up is when things like tide tables are published with no mention of a time zone, Pop quiz hot shot, you draw 2.2m, do you assume you're at HW+3, or HW+4 and hope that there's a roller skate on the keel.

Comment: Re:Good. (Score 1) 138

by oobayly (#47333643) Attached to: Google Starts Removing Search Results After EU Ruling

I don't expect a link to a dictionary, just something to support calling a person a bigot. You did so here, and somewhere else down the thread:

You always bang on about Muslims. You really should read more unbiased news outlets, as you clearly have been corrupted by forces just as evil as the evil Muslims you think exist. See how that works? Of course not - you're a hate-filled bigot.

jareth further up the thread just went for the "you're a racist" argument.

Comment: Re:Good. (Score 1) 138

by oobayly (#47332231) Attached to: Google Starts Removing Search Results After EU Ruling

Yeah, about 10% of his posts mention "Muslim". A fairly large percentage of them are based on the Muslim - terrorist stereotype, a fair few have references to support criticisms of Islam. Nothing beats a bit of Friday afternoon Slashdot stalking! Quite frankly, he's got every right to be highly critical of Islam, but tarring everyone with the same bush certainly isn't reasonable.

The problem I have is that people are quite happy to throw around accusations racist, *phobic, bigot as an argument against somebody's comments without ever supporting their argument, or even understanding the terms they're using. It's like a feminist calling a man a misogynist when he doesn't agree with them, or being accused of being anti-Semitic when criticising Israeli policies. More often it's just a knee-jerk reaction rather than a reasoned argument, and quite frankly the laziness of it pisses me off.

Comment: Re:stupid comparison (Score 1) 501

You would never say something like "Alpha C is 4.3 light years away, while the voyager spacecraft has already traveled 18.2 billion kilometers! The stars are ours, if we take the time!"

Well, to be fair you were originally complaining about the authors mixing units, and nowhere did they do so in a single sentence.

Your "metre by a yard" comparison is cute, but relying on people to know that a metre is about 3 inches more than a yard certainly is something that can lead to troubles.

i made this comment (I can't remember what it was about) in front of a group of friends in uni(engineering, management, nursing students) - some of those I knew would understand. Those that didn't, they asked, because it was obvious there was a difference, otherwise I would have said "a metre by a metre". Now they know, or at least knew for a period afterwards. As far as I'm concerned, there's no reason to be embarrassed about being ignorant of something simple. Choosing to stay ignorant is a different matter.

Comment: Re:Good. (Score 1) 138

by oobayly (#47331487) Attached to: Google Starts Removing Search Results After EU Ruling

Right, so you chose the wrong word that had the biggest negative weight behind it.

As for Islamophobia, I doubt many people are actually frightened by Islam, more that they are disgusted by its attitudes to other religions, women, apostasy and homosexuality. So again, wrong word. Anti-Islamic would probably the best description, and many people would not feel that being described as such would be negative, for the reasons stated above. I'm wouldn't really class myself as an anti-theist - believe what ever makes you happy, but if your beliefs start impinging on the rights of people who don't toe the line, then fuck you, you deserve no respect.

So we're left with prejudice and bigotry. Prejudice may or may not apply - it was preconceived, but not necessarily without reason. As for bigotry, it is a result of somebody's prejudices which as I said may not be a valid argument for him being a bigot.

It's quite possible that Muslims were mentioned because Catholics priests (who may want to remove any mention of themselves from google) would fall under the paedophile group already mentioned.

Of course ChrisQ may be a complete Islamophobe (who shakes with fear when he sees a niqab), and loathes every Muslim, no matter how moderate, but to base that opinion on a line of text is just plain stupid. What's certain is that both yourself and myself are both being prejudiced against ChrisQ as we've been passing preconceived comments on him without knowing the actual basis of his comments.

Comment: Re:stupid comparison (Score 1) 501

Yes, but you can't build the wall just to survive prevailing winds, what happens if it *does* get hit by a tornado?

The problem is also that a long wall isn't like a rectangular tower - the drag coefficient will be far higher as a wall of this size can be assumed to act similarly to 2d flow (~2), compared to a tower (~1.3 -> 1.5), so loading will be much higher too. I might load up OpenFOAM to have a look.


Comment: Re:stupid comparison (Score 1) 501

Even if you're skimming the summary, if you see "1,000 foot" in the title, and then see the number "300" in the body text, then the immediate reaction should be "oh, they're probably using metres here". That's even if you're ignoring the fact that explicitly states the units used.

mixing them should be a capital crime.

Bollocks - I regularly mix units, because it sometimes makes a lot of sense. I've described something as a metre by a yard (it wasn't quite square). Similarly, I've described items in feet or inches in area, but thickness in millimetres (it tends to be anything less than 1/4 inch).

Before you complain that not everyone knows basic conversions (not everyone's an engineer), it helps if you do any amount of travelling, especially if you're from the US or UK. Also, this topic is physics/engineering, so it usual to see mixed units - we see them when talking about rocket payloads all the time. Similarly, would you complain about the mixing of AUs, light years, millions of km/miles in an article about astrophysics or astronomy.

Comment: Re:Who is that? (Score 3, Interesting) 268

by oobayly (#47313689) Attached to: Wikipedia Editors Hit With $10 Million Defamation Suit

What was more interesting was reading the comments for that article. Out of the 9 comments, one commented on the Nobel Peace Prize, one commented on show business (I didn't really understand the comment). The remaining 7 were scathing about the journalism, used the standard "well what have you done" argument and questioned the journalists motives. Interestingly enough, all 7 users have only made a single comment each. Clearly that article hit a nerve.

Comment: Re:This is brilliant!! (Score 1) 268

by oobayly (#47313575) Attached to: Wikipedia Editors Hit With $10 Million Defamation Suit

Sounds a bit like Kent "there's no fucking carbon in it" Hovind's ethics - lie, cheat and commit fraud as long as it's for God.

For anyone who doesn't get the reference - Potholer54: "Carbon dating doesn't work -- debunked". I'd normally link to the actual time-stamp (4:51), but the video is good enough to watch on it's own. I go back to that clip whenever I need a laugh.
