Interesting Links for 28-06-2015

[andrewducker]

• Bisexual Privilege, Bisexual Erasure
  • (tags: LGBT )
• I should be less surprised how annoying passport rules are
  • (tags: travel passport )
• There's now a training course on "How to talk to the SNP"
  • (tags: snp Scotland OhForFucksSake )
• Women are keeping their names after marriage in greater numbers.
  • (tags: names women marriage )
• Watch CNN Confuse a Bunch of

Comments

[rhythmaning]

You seem to be using the tag ohforfucksake with increasing regularity. Not without reason, it's true.

[andrewducker]

I suspect I'm feeling grumpier. And I seem to have started using it in place of "EpicFail" :->

[philmophlegm]

I run two businesses - in one, I'm a Google Analytics Qualified Individual and a Google Qualified Advertising Professional. In the other I sell new and classic roleplaying games, some of which are various Doctor Who roleplaying games, and I have been contacted by Doctor Who Online trying to sell advertising space. So I reckon I'm well qualified to offer an opinion on the Doctor Who Online story.

It is just about possible that the vastly overstated traffic statistics are the result of incompetence rather than fraud. We have a client where we took over management and replaced the previous web designer's proprietary analytics system with Google Analytics. The old system was overstating traffic by a factor of 2-3. I know the old web developer; he's a nice guy, he had done the old site pretty much voluntarily, and apart from a level of wishful thinking, he really had not motivation to defraud the site owner or anyone else

[andrewducker]

Glad you didn't get taken in. And yeah, individual bits I could see as being honest mistakes, but the situation as a whole feels manipulative and fraudulent.

I should be less surprised how annoying passport rules

[drdoug]

Yup, this.

And the US can be similarly annoying for visiting Europeans. The ESTA Visa Waiver system is irksome, and there are surprising exclusions - e.g. if you have ever been arrested, even if later released without charge. The immigration/border and TSA stuff is the worst I've encountered. It makes entering and leaving the US a miserable experience. Which is a crying shame, because individually Americans have in general always struck me as extremely welcoming and hospitable. Catching a connecting flight is always going to be dicey, unless you have a looong layover.

Although on recent experience, UK Border Force are working towards that low bar.

Traveling within Schengen is awesome, though. If you're white.

RE: I should be less surprised how annoying passport rules

[nojay]

I flew from Charles de Gaulle to Montreal for the Worldcon in 2009 in part because flying to the US and changing planes there for Canada would require me to pay for ESTA pre-clearance and go through US Immigration even though I'd never leave airside while catching a onward flight.

Things have changed though -- now even if I were to fly directly to Montreal from Europe I MUST now pre-clear through the American ESTA because the plane going to Canada MIGHT be diverted to a US airport.

RE: I should be less surprised how annoying passport rules

[darkoshi]

I hadn't even heard of ESTA before. So even if you're traveling to Canada with no intention of a lay-over in the U.S., you have to pay an ESTA fee to the U.S.? And you could potentially be prevented getting on your flight to Canada, if you don't get this U.S. authorization? That sounds infuriating.

RE: I should be less surprised how annoying passport rules

[nojay]

The fact that amuses me the most is that part of the cost of the ESTA pre-clearance is a $10 fee intended to fund the promotion of America as a more desirable tourism destination.

[don_fitch]

I think Drones can be either silly or pernicious, but... firing at one of them with a gun is (rightly, IMHO) illegal in many populated places, and dangerous anywhere. Those bullets/pellets come down to earth with about as much force as they leave the weapon (minus a little for friction). A shotgun pellet might or might not hit the top of your head hard enough to penetrate the skull-bone, but there seems to be some possibility that it will, and do you really want anyone to put a (small, admittedly) lump of metal into your brain? Or do you really want to do it to anyone else? (Zapping a drone with a lazer-beam I can see, despite the slight possibility of killing some random bird.)

[nojay]

Actually no. Small objects are exposed to a LOT of air friction -- imagine the terminal velocity of a handful of flour thrown in the air, for example. Shotgun pellets (if you're talking about typical no. 6 bird shot) lose a lot of velocity over a short distance compared to larger solid bullets. The larger the bullet the greater its effective range even with a similar muzzle velocity to smaller rounds. Battleship rifle shells can travel 30km and more due to their very high ballistic coefficient (basically a function of their mass versus their surface area exposed to drag and thus air resistance).

The legality of shooting at drones is another matter but if shotguns are being used the physics are not really something to worry about on the ground -- unless the downed drone hits someone, of course.

[don_fitch]

Thanks. There's a Reason I got a C- in highschool Physics -- the teacher realized that I was Trying Really Hard.

Mind you, I'm one of those Americans who think/believe that people should be discouraged from firing weapons under almost any conditions, so meh.

There's now a training course on "How to talk to the SNP"

[f4f3]

Pity that there isn't a Scottish Nationalist Party...