About eight weeks later, I took him for a walk along the same canal and let him off. Rounded a corner where he'd got a bit ahead, and he was just gone, disappeared without a trace. I started off as quickly as I could down the canal, passing various people who (as if it were some kind of joke) said things like "oh yes, going very fast that way". Eventually, got him back because a cyclist had the common sense to apprehend him and wait for me - "my dog does this all the time." This was after almost a mile, so the dog hadn't been hanging around.

Beardies have a reputation for going AWOL, but on this occasion I can only presume he had some memory of that fine young spaniel he'd pursued previously, and decided to rejoin the chase. I haven't been back there since. Have considered getting him neutered but we basically like him as he is and have learned to be super-careful at any time. Helps to be warned if someone has a bitch who is likely to be especially interesting at a given time, most owners are good about it but a few just don't seem to understand.

In the UK at least, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is a powerful lobby group. Car sales are used as a key economic indicator. Cars have long been seen as aspirational and a measure of personal success. Cars support other sectors of the economy such as civil engineering (roads, bridges), petroleum sales and car accessories, parts and repairs..

Cycling and walking on the other hand? Not so much, despite the many benefits. Just recently, there has been a move in some areas to introduce low-traffic neighbourhoods and create more cycle-ways. The hoo-ha has been deafening. It causes congestion, it blocks emergency vehicles, it increases air pollution because cars are at a standstill. (According to critics.) Newspapers have been running stories about how evil and undemocratic this is, and dear old Nigel Farage seems to have re-invented himself as an anti-cycling campaigner.

I don't think there's an actual conspiracy - there usually isn't. But the status quo serves the interests of some powerful and wealthy groups, and it takes a strong-willed government to overrule them. They'd rather hand-wave about meeting 'green' targets by 2060, and meantime hope that electric vehicles arrive in sufficient numbers to eliminate or ameliorate the problem. The alternatives cause so much political friction that they seem impossible to implement, at least without more courage than our politicians are used to showing.

You might as well say not enough credit goes to Tommy Flowers, a man I have always admired for his ground-breaking work building Colossus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers

The popular imagination is not renowned for its grasp of detail, but the histories give due credit.

I would just say, antagonistic comments like "the Brits barely mention" and "they can't give credit where it's due" is nationalistic nonsense which has no place here.

No it isn't. Is this "pop" really such a big deal that they've been holding back on the redesign for so long?

Back when Resilio Sync was known as Bittorrent Sync, I proposed it as a file-sharing solution between multiple locations for the company I was working for. Immediately returned with an emphatic refusal to use any kind of software that had "Bittorrent" in the name, regardless of what it was for.

This is the same company where they picked up I had "Bittorrent Software" installed on my work laptop, and the people who ran the auditing software freaked out because, you know, it's Bittorrent! I told them it was a single icon in my PortableApps folder but they just kept saying "There's a Bittorrent client on your PC, you could be fired!" until I deleted the icon.

So yes, the fact it's associated with piracy has made a huge difference in some places.

It's a curiously convoluted sentence.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24282118

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My father-in-law forever refused to buy an upright freezer because "as soon as you open the door, all the cold air falls out." Which I now know to be only partially correct.

The origin myth I heard was along the lines of 'I don't want to play rugger, but I do fancy a game of assoc-er' where it was an attempted play on words with 'association football' by someone at an independent school. I doubt the truth of this, but anyway...

I was told that using a 'z' is old-fashioned, and using it or an 's' is optional - just be consistent. Only recently have I noticed a trend to condemn it as 'American', and if anything is sure to bring out a rather nasty, old-fashioned snob in some English people, it's being 'American'. Personally I cringe at this and quite happily use the 'z' form.

On the subject of anti-American snobbery, one of my friends whom I have known for over 30 years was adopted by a very old-fashioned English couple and (sure enough) often had a disparaging word about anything American. When he was about 20, his natural father made contact with him ... from America! After things had settled down a bit and he had met his 'new' family, I put it to him that, you know what, you are basically an American now. Foolish to pretend otherwise. He's changed his view quite a bit since then :)