Interesting Links for 02-05-2013

[andrewducker]

• How the hell is this photo of the Moon even possible?
  (tags: moon viafanf photography )
• Nook ebook readers currently on sale for £29. An amazing price
  (tags: technology ebooks )
• What LOL now means.
  (tags: language internet )
• The 11 worst things about having an Irish name abroad
  (tags: Ireland names funny )
• Best. Game. Trailer. Ever.
  (tags: games

Comments

[gonzo21]

I... what... wait... hold on, the Sun posted something responsible that I actually agree with?

... I'm scared.

[a_pawson]

The Sun often says boobies are great too. Not my favourite seabird, but quite amusing to watch.

[nmg]

This seems like a good opportunity to air this userpic.

[bart_calendar]

The Irish thing makes me feel better about being named Bartolome-Jean. Which is no picnic either!

[alitheapipkin]

One of my French colleagues is called Jean-Marie, a very confused Scottish secretary came into the office the other day looking for a woman called Jean Mary...

[spacelem]

You'd have thought having a name like "Jamie" would be difficult to get wrong, but the day I graduated, they called me "Janice" (somewhat ironic because my wife is the person responsible for ensuring that people's names are pronounced correctly, but she worked for a different faculty).

Also my surname "Prentice" is surprisingly easy to mistake for either "Francis" or "Princess" over the phone. Or maybe I just can't speak clearly.

[naath]

My surname is "Cousins" which is a COMMON ENGLISH WORD; and yet ... people mangle it.

I think names are just really hard - there's an enormous range of possible names, many of which are homonyms or homophones; and of course names come from many languages, which really doesn't help with guessing the spelling from the sound or v.v.

Mortgages.

[danieldwilliam]

Part of me is very sympathetic to the folk who have interest only mortgages and now face real difficulty paying off the principle. (Also not good for all the people and businesses that were hoping for that these mortgage holders would buy things from them and instead will discover that the money will be paid into savings and investments and ultimately used to pay off debt and de-leverage

Re: Mortgages.

[naath]

I was under the impression that a fair number of these people's PLAN to pay it off was "sell the house"; hoping to make a bit of money in property speculation (and that the houses were meanwhile being rented out, covering the mortgage payment and making some money). Have house prices anywhere fallen so far that people are still short of money having done that?

"Interest only" mortgages for people who actually wanted the house to live in ... well, did people not hear about all the problems people had with "endowment mortgages" which were essentially the EXACT SAME THING only bundled with an investment product. (Some people did win at that game - my parents for instance - but a lot of people had big difficulties, even in a era of steadily rising house prices).

Re: Mortgages.

[ext_208701]

I'm not entirely sure why we should feel sorry that people who intentionally didn't pay off the mortgages suddenly discovered they aren't paid off. If they were interested in actually buying the house they could have taken out a more expensive repayment mortgage instead.

Re: Mortgages.

[naath]

I guess we "should" feel sorry for the people who were told "this investment product will pay off your mortgage if you put in money on this schedule" when that was untrue. Banks selling investment products to people who don't understand investments seems like rather a scam to me.

Then again people not understanding these things makes me despair of the state of financial education in this country.

[momentsmusicaux]

The Edinburgh council thing is just jaw-dropping.

Though hopefully people will stop complaining about the trams so much and see the actual problem!

[andrewducker]

Yup. Of course it's not just them - some of the contracts that both public and private organisations sign are amazing, assuming that the other side will treat them like friends rather than screw them out of every penny they can get.

[danieldwilliam]

My limited experience of doing contracting with an organisation that was really, really commercially aware was that signing a good contract and then operating it is really, really hard work and requires a lot of thought up front

[andrewducker]

Yup. And big service companies have _really good_ contract lawyers. Because that's how they make their money.

[ckd]

Sapphire is aluminum oxide.

In other words, smartphones may soon be made out of transparent aluminum. Scotty, beam me up!