Interesting Links for 30-11-2011

[andrewducker]

• Welsh paralympic great Tanni Grey-Thompson criticises absence of women on BBC Sports Personality Of The Year list
  (tags: women sports uk bbc gender )
• The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin (I find it fascinating. Sticking to pounds for now though.)
  (tags: bitcoin currency economics money Technology )
• Good Lord, Windows phones seem to be selling. (Always

Comments

[bart_calendar]

I have never once been in a situation where someone from Ireland was asked where they were from and the response was "I'm Irish

Scottish accents

[meaningrequired]

I have trouble with accents, it takes me a while for my brain to "click" onto them. However, I moved from the north of Ireland, to Scotland, not a great distance, and both accents have similarities. First day at the supermarket, and I had absolutely no idea what the checkout lady said to me. It was probably, "That'll be 23 pounds and 40 pence," but it could easily have been "Three gorillas and a bottle of beer". Since, I have developed a Scottish accent modulator in my head.

Re: Scottish accents

[bart_calendar]

Yeah, there are a lot of Scottish people in the city I live in and for the first six months here I often had no idea what the Scots were saying, but now, I can understand it, but it can be a royal bitch of an accent. And still, after 10 years here and many Scottish friends there are still times when t hey use words and phrasing that I don't understand.

The use of "wee" is an amusing part of their accent.

Re: Scottish accents

[andrewducker]

West Coast accents (in my experience) are a lot "thicker" than East Coast accents. Heck, if you're from Edinburgh then you can be mistaken from one of those English types.

The North of Scotland, again, has a different accent, but one I don't find I struggle as much with.

[andrewducker]

I respect people's right to hold whatever beliefs they wish to. I don't have any respect for ideas though, which is what beliefs boil down to.

So if someone wants to believe, in their own head, that the world sits on the back of a giant turtle, and doesn't want to talk about it, that's fine by me. If they start having a discussion about it then that makes the belief fair game.

I do believe that being nice when talking to people helps to engage with them, so I tend to approach things that way. But it wouldn't mean that I'd find certain beliefs any more likely.

[andrewducker]

I agree on the axioms+rules approach. If someone has different experience to me then their axioms will likely be different, at which point _if_ both people are willing, my approach is to take apart both of our axioms until I find the one that's different, see if it's a difference that's open to provability, and if so find some evidence.

Axioms that come down to pure aesthetics are obviously not things you can prove one way or another, and when it comes down to "I've seen a lot of people who do X" there's not much you can do except acknowledge your differences.

And yes - there's no point blaming people for their opinions, it doesn't do anyone any good.

[supergee]

The 17 Reasons tempts me to be proud to be an American.

[daveon]

I must be honest, while there are still a couple of apps which I'm using my iPhone for, my go-to phone is now the Nokia Lumia 800 which is basically the best smartphone I've used in years. It really needs some more apps but that could be a self correcting problem.

[andrewducker]

Glad to hear it. I must have a play with one at some point. Anything which puts more pressure on Android to keep getting is good by me!

[eatsoylentgreen]

emails are used a lot by people who don't have much to say. I'd like them largely replaced by forums, and meetings replaced by forums as well.

[andrewducker]

Forums aren't enough by themselves. For a start, they're pull, you only get to them when you go trawling through them all.

We have a few thousand people working here, how would I find the message that someone wanted me to clarify a point in a specification in all of the other messages?

[eatsoylentgreen]

the same way that I found out that you wanted a clarification here, through an email notification. But it's a smart notification, I'm not being emailed every single comment everywhere, just targeted ones.

Plus as a techie, you need somewhat of an exception to this rule, same reason you need conference calls.

[andrewducker]

So we're not actually getting rid of email, we're just supplementing it with a big discussion forum where people store the important data?

That I can go for :->