I'm still having problems with articles and pronouns. The other parts of speech are coming along OK and the idioms I've seen are all present in English and make sense with what I've learned about German grammar but I am still ****ing up the articles and pronouns, and it's almost all because I can't remember the gender of the nouns.

Still enjoying it though.

I like the way you can customise your car, even though your chances of getting it home from the garage in one piece are practically nil.

I don't know where you've got that idea.

Quote from Shotglass :

also english only took off well after your silly little empire was dead

But it wasn't a 'little' empire, that's the whole point. If it hadn't been so big then English wouldn't be used all over the world.

Quote from Shotglass :

the real reason for english being this ubiquitous is that what passes for culture these days mostly comes out of the us

The USA is a former British colony. But actually why do they speak English there? It was settled by the Dutch too, and the Spanish, and of course the natives had their own languages. And of course after the USA declared independence from Britain there was a huge rush of immigration from Europe. Why do they all speak English?

To be fair English is only the world's common language because Britain built the world's biggest empire, and it happened relatively recently. When there are people on every continent speaking English it becomes quite a useful language for everybody to learn.

It could just as easily have been German, French, Dutch, Portuguese or Spanish, but they weren't greedy or ruthless enough.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

most tasks have become browser based, or at least able to be done entirely in a web browser.

That's why I've been using an iPad at work - someone decided our product management web client should work on mobile devices. It does (although the UI could be improved a lot) but the iPad is still a stupid tool to use for it.

I suppose anything that involves input is a bad job to have to do on an iPad.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

... Other times I use Prompt to make emergency changes to my server, or sometimes even put sites live for work.

I've come across Kodiak JS and Kodiak PHP ...

Then there's Safari, the application that I use to execute most of my trolling plays.

Then Palaver for IRC (and IM as well using Bitlbee running on my VPS). ...

Yeah there are SSH terminal apps for Android but that doesn't make my phone a desirable device to use for remote server admin.

It seems to me the iPad is really just a browser. There's the occasional really nice, very specific app - like (for me) using it as a controller in Logic or using iRealB for jazz jams or whatever, but day-to-day it's a box with a browser in it.

Quote from flymike91 :

gotten

That is an ugly word and shouldn't be allowed, although it would look more at home in German. The other word I really dislike but Americans seem keen to perpetuate is 'Obligated'.

Quote from Shotglass :

luckily german only has 3 cases (nowerdays)

Shame on the rest of you German speakers for not mentioning this sooner. So which case can I safely ignore?

Also please send me a list of all the verbs that nobody really uses. Thanks!

Arr, ****in' German...

I have been trinke Wein, so excuse me, but we decided we're off to Bavaria in a few weeks so I thought I'd cram some German before we go, and bloody hell why are all European languages so stubbornly different to English?

Actually, given that English is derived (mostly) from Latin, French and Saxon, why do we not have the concept of gender applied to nouns? And given that it works just fine for us, why does the rest of Europe still concern itself with how masculine a computer is? Indeed it seems Germany and Austria can't even agree on the gender of some inanimate objects. Why not just stop trying to sexualise fruits and vegetables?

I've always admired the way German speakers can compound nouns until they are so long that they break websites designed by English speakers, but that was before I had to worry about which article to use before those nouns. Which part of the compound gives us the gender? Here in the western world, we get by with just 'The', and in spite of this, some quite well-regarded literature has managed to be written in English. Perhaps you don't need ten different words for 'The'?

I do like the way German sounds, and I will probably stubbornly persist with it purely on that basis, but your grammar is a load of shit just like the Spanish and the French. To be honest we only chose Bavaria because it's closest to ****ing, Austria.

I've been using an iPad 4 at work all week and I still don't understand what they're for, or why people want them.

Plus they are shit slow.

Man some people are really fussy about phones.

I've tried a couple of recent Nokias on WP8, the last three iPhones, a few recent Android phones from HTC and Samsung, turns out they're all good.

I always seem to drift towards Android but that's always been because, each time, one phone just stood out as being a better device for holding and putting in a pocket. Not really a feature-driven decision, just a design one.

Quote from Shotglass :

unfortunately the technology to promote brain cell growth past early childhood or to transplant a functioning brain into the head of a conservative isnt there yet

God made them conservative. Why would they go against god's will?

I don't know why they come to this forum anyway, it's like gay paradise in here.

I don't have a lot of time, but:

Quote from AlienT. :

lets face it we were on the guaranteed road to ruin as soon as the welfare state was initiated.

What's the alternative, for the millions of people who rely on state support? Or are you of the opinion that welfare's only use is to keep lazy job-refusers alive?

A pile of bin bags that will be cleared away long before anyone dies of cholera isn't quite the equivalent of the working poor being unable to heat their homes or feed their kids.

The problem with privatisation, apart from it being an obviously short-term cash-raising practise, is that the services which were nationalised in the first place were services which were essential to the country's economic activity.

The railways is the funniest / most tragic example. Commuting by rail is now prohibitively expensive for blue-collar workers and the rail network is in receipt of more public money (yes, allowing for inflation) than it was when the public owned it.

Socially and economically critical services should not be given to the private sector to milk for profits. Competition in these sectors does not exist (not that cartels wouldn't form anyway) and they are too important to be left to private individuals.

I've noticed Google's "location services" eat battery really badly and they seem to keep the phone pretty busy even when it's supposed to be asleep. DWB maybe try switching that off (if it's on) and see if that improves matters at all.

I'm still on a Galaxy S2 but due a new phone in October. I always consider an iPhone when I upgrade but I still can't really see what the big draw is. I think the One looks the most likely at the moment although I like the look of a couple of the gimmicks on the S4, but it's nice to have a couple of phones that it's tough to choose between.

This conversation has been had before but Fordie and the 2003 people are now too old to remember it.

Edit: And out of curiosity I had a look at LFSWorld to see when the last time was I had a race in LFS, and discovered I've now spent more time not racing than I did racing.

It is a shame that development seems to have petered out, but y'know software projects don't live forever.

It would be interesting to hear what the devs are up to these days though, assuming it's commercial software anyway.

Quote from AlienT. :

Nigel Farage ... What are your thoughts on this guys theories and policies? Is he a right wing conervative dog?, jees I've even heard him called a racist and faschist!

'Fascist'.

He's your average common-or-garden Little Englander with half-baked ideas about how economics work. And for someone who's so opposed to the European Union he seems quite happy for them to have paid his wages for the last three years.

Quote from AlienT. :

This by people who cannot constructively argue against what he say's of course.

No apostrophe required in 'says'.

We benefit from open markets - all the cheap products that guarantee your standard of living are made in nations where the labour is cheap. When that cheap labour comes here and starts taking jobs, that's the same free market in operation. You cannot have your cake and eat it.

Quote from AlienT. :

Did you know that 3 un-elected presidents are accountable for 75% of the laws in the UK and the rest of the European Union? One of them was a communist, when he was a student, fair enough? The rest are puppets for the richest European state which is Germany. The North of Europe props up the south and it costs us North Europeans for this big time!

The whole world is ****ed economically, because the global economic system is based on the promise of infinite growth, conveniently ignoring the problem that we live on a decidedly finite planet. The business of some weaker European nations going bankrupt prematurely is just a sign of what's to come for the rest of us. It would make no difference to cut them loose - it's coming to us eventually anyway.

In difficult economic times the poor always turn on each other, because that's what the rich want them to do. I remember in the late '70s and early '80s the working classes in the UK blamed immigration from the Indian subcontinent for their poverty. Was it their fault?

The problem is that our government was bought, decades ago, and it's in the hands of private interests. Take a look at how many members of the current House of Commons are independently wealthy. Coincidence?

Your representatives are not representing you, they're representing the interests of their parties, who in turn are funded by corporations. Look at what's happened recently with the proposed minimum unit prices on alcohol in England, and the proposal for plain packaging on tobacco products. Both pulled. I wonder why.

And I suggest you look at how Nigel Farage manages his own finances if you think he's any different to the current crop of crooks in Westminster.

Think I've given up trying to find a DJ and I'm now thinking about buying some turntables, and while I wouldn't mind playing turntables it's hard to do it whilst playing bass, so I'll be stuck trying to find a decent bass player...

Looks like no gigs for Kev for the foreseeable, then.

Quote from 5haz :

Quite like to own one

So this thread got bumped and I saw this picture. I used to have one of these, sort-of. Mine was a '62 122S, a lot like this one:



I used it to transport my double bass, my surfboards, and my pet pig.

Also it only had AM radio, so I spent the whole time listening to stuff like reruns of The Green Lantern.

I think I'm going to get a One when I upgrade in October.

I don't use Windows on the desktop any more (I have an iMac and a Windows 7 box on my desk at work and I only turn the Windows box on to do IE testing) so I can't imagine tolerating it on a mobile device.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

Till you reform the election system, you'll keep getting the same old.

Which is why I was thinking a viral campaign to elect an indepedent house for the purposes of pushing through electoral reform might be worth attempting.

Look at how many Brits will happily register themselves as Jedis.

Quote from AlienT. :

The age of internet cannot be bought (yet) by the usual media propoganda, therefore people are free to watch what they want and not be brainwashed any more by the traditional media.

Yeah I think it could be a good way to do it.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Kev, it's probably more of a case of no one else would vote for an independant, so it's sorta like "throwing" your vote away as no one else will vote for them (or not enough to matter).

Yeah that old chestnut is all that's needed for an elite few to control the government for generations.