Humor Random Comments Thread

[Linguofreak]

What on earth am I looking at here? :blink:

The Unicode codepoint that is one too many. That link is to the official Unicode website, and gives the actual official name for that codepoint.

That's right. An organization that publishes an important technical standard for text encoding has allocated a codepoint to a character called "Pile of poo", and said character is actually supposed to be a graphical representation of a pile of poo. If you create a file with Unicode codepoint U+1F4A9 in the file name, and have fonts that include the relevant Unicode block, you will see an icon of a little pile of dung as part of the name of that file. It works, at least, on Ubuntu 14.04.

The Unicode consortium has waaaaaaay too much time on their hands, and, evidently left too much room for expansion in Unicode. :lol:

EDIT: The way I discovered this was highly entertaining. A friend works at a hosting provider, and they'd had a group of servers stop responding to their management software. The servers were still up, but couldn't be managed. They found the management software was choking on something in their database, and figured out that it was the name of one of the VMs. After slogging through the database, they found the responsible VM name, which was U+1F4A9 repeated 5 or 6 times. Seeing the VM name without previously being aware of the existence of the character was quite a surreal moment. "That's in Unicode???!!!"

 

[RisingFury]

you will see an icon of a little pile of dung as part of the name of that file. It works, at least, on Ubuntu 14.04.

Somehow fitting to stick Linux together with a pile of poo. :lol:

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Anyone notice anything a little off about this article?

The evolution of US launch capability:

Small, Medium/Intermediate, Heavy, Super Heavy, Kerbal. :lol: Love it!

 

[Andy44]

This is something I've always found curious given the mix of Americans and Brits on this board (as well as people who learned English American or British style):

---------- Post added at 09:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:46 AM ----------

And oh boy it gets worse when we consider this, which makes me wonder how many unknown misunderstandings have been had on OF over the years:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-52AI_ojyQ"]How big is a billion? - Numberphile - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Bah

 

[Loru]

"billion - milliard" always made me check my numbers twice on O-F.

 

[RisingFury]

Slovenian language has the word "miljarda" - milliard in place of US "billion". That always made me so confused when I was a kid and learning English - why does "miljon" correspond with "million", but "miljarda" doesn't correspond to "milliard"

 

[Fabri91]

Same here: knowing what a "miliardo" and "bilione" are and then hearing a very different definition in English was a bit confusing.

 

[Linguofreak]

Slovenian language has the word "miljarda" - milliard in place of US "billion". That always made me so confused when I was a kid and learning English - why does "miljon" correspond with "million", but "miljarda" doesn't correspond to "milliard"

"Miljarda" does correspond to "milliard" in those places where "milliard" is used at all.

 

[kamaz]

Fun fact, Vsauce used this example in his "Juvenoia" video actually didn't, but still a good vid on the 'generation gap':
Juvenoia - YouTube

Very good primer on Strauss-Howe starting at 17:00.

 

[Loru]

Finally in the jet age

---------- Post added 02-08-16 at 04:27 AM ---------- Previous post was 02-07-16 at 06:01 PM ----------

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I'm sorry, but if you're paying $15 for a Bud, anywhere, you have a problem, and need a 12-step recovery program.

If you're paying $7 for water, you must be thirsty.

I suppose the security theater at the gates is banning liquids, so the vendors naturally are taking advantage of the situation.

 

[mojoey]

 

[Matias Saibene]

Right now at 01:27 (UTC -3), the antenna 63 of the DSN is downloading data from Voyager 1.

The probe bless the transmission.

 

[Artlav]

If you're paying $7 for water, you must be thirsty.

A cup of water is worthless near a faucet, and worth as much as you want to charge in the desert.

 

[Urwumpe]

We had a massive train crash in southern Germany this morning, with four deaths, 15 with massive injuries and 40 with serious injuries. Over 100 passengers had been injured. Two regional trains by the same private operator crashed frontally on a single-track railway between Bad Aibling and Rosenheim, in the state of Bavaria.

Technically, this should have been impossible, since after a similar accident on a single-track railway near Magdeburg, all such railways should have been equipped with the German automatic train protection system PZB.

EDIT: Now the casualties increased to 8 deaths.

---------- Post added at 01:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:55 AM ----------

9 deaths now, press conference going on.

Seems like a deviation from the regular schedule contributed to the accident, the trains had been supposed to meet in the train station Kolbermoor. The track was equipped with ATP, which should have stopped a train on passing a red signal. The collision happened in a turn with poor visibility where 100 km/h was allowed, it is assumed that both trains collided without warning for the driver and without time to brake at full allowed speed each.

Because of the confined terrain at the accident site, rescuers have to use boats for reaching the place, helicopters can't land directly near the train wreck and have to winch victims on-board. 500 firefighters, medics and technical emergency service (THW)volunteers are deployed. The two trains are really merged into one wreck.

(Only) 150 people had been sitting the the trains (only because its carnival in Germany right now and less people had been commuting to work as usual), 2 persons are still missing. Two of three black boxes have been secured. The Bavarian state police is asking for blood donations because of the high number of serious injuries.

In one of the trains, an apprentice train driver and an instructor had been in the cab.

EDIT: Looks like the cause was human error, the train dispatcher did disable the automatic signalling system for letting a train with delay pass, accidentally clearing the way for both trains on both ends of the one-track railroad.

 

[Matias Saibene]

My sincere condolences for this tragedy, in my country we had a serious train accident and I was able to see and learn from the media of these tragedies. Inertia and speed of the trains really scares me.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think I have found my dream car.... that has style... feels like Evil Genius.

http://bilenkin.ru/landing/

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Kinda cool looking. Almost like an Aston-Martin and a Studebaker had a drunken fling in a broom closet.

 

[Fabri91]

Well, it is based on the last-generation BMW 3 series coupé.