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2 November 2013 at 17:09 #19921
@D123456 – no one wants to get rid of anyone BUT we are very twitchy about trolls slipping genuine spoilers in all the noise. That’s why there is a hair-trigger response. Not hostility but an abundance of caution.
2 November 2013 at 17:07 #19919Spoilery mcspoilersteen speculation not technically spoilers but for the purpose of this site it is.
@D123456
I think I argued ages ago that one of the ways in which people might come to know The Doctor’s true name is when having to fill out a birth certificate….
It’s for pedigree an’all, innit?
2 November 2013 at 14:51 #19903I do get so tired of second rate media studies(1) students seeing everything through the lens of imperialism, when the real lens of of the island that stood, stopped and turned the tide of evil.
(1) Yes, I realised the implies the concept of the first-rate media studies student. Everyone has a lens. Mine is finishing a 90 min French CSE paper in 29 mins and sitting there for an hour wondering what I had done wrong (Dual-entering French when I should have done maths, it turned out. I have two French O Levels or equivalent! CSEs were easy, but maths exams kill me.)
2 November 2013 at 14:45 #199012 November 2013 at 14:40 #19899@Shazzbot @scaryb
This pretty much says it all (it’s not the model, it’s the implementation): http://xkcd.com/1283/
31 October 2013 at 12:42 #19708That depends entirely on which part of the t’north you refer to. Bear in mind that, to me, anything above Luton on a map is t’north, and Harpenden only just qualifies as the Midlands
My Mac’s UK language spill chucker has no objection at all to t’north. I take that to be definitive.
31 October 2013 at 00:15 #19657@Shazzbot
I saw it brewing – I suspect it wasn’t wilful trolling, but that sociopathic bone that seems too common on t’interwebs, a sort of narcissism-of-anonymity that makes some blind to context.
(A year or so back I was visiting relatives oop t’north and took their dog for a walk. Now, Zack is an amiable sort of mutt but does like to bomb around the park and especially to plunge into the stream. This is all well and good, expect that this time he plunged straight into the middle of a group of people who were scattering the ashes of their own much-loved pooch. They were rather more tolerant than I would have been…. For some reason @drtennant made me think of that.)
Anyhoo, it is nice to have a name for Christopher. I just read his last post on the Guardian Blog (thanks to @danmartinuk) – a comprehensive slamdown of asgill’s “I’m a better fan than you” shtick. When I first saw his posts I thought that @htpbdet had a touch of that about him (so we had a couple of tetchy exchanges), but I eventually realised that he was was simply strong of view and not, in any way, projecting or proselytising: just explaining as a true romantic.
29 October 2013 at 21:31 #19548Well. Blimey. Somethings just aren’t right, and @htpbdet not being around for the Big Five-Oh is surely at the top of that list.
I very often disagreed with Geoffrey (as one or two of us good-naturedly dubbed him, back in the Guardian days – I can’t remember who coined it) but you never doubted the presence of a true fan – not a Hard Core Fan, not an Uber-Fan or any of those other ridiculous epithets that gets thrown around: a true fan. No capitals, no adornments,
I had a suspicion something was more amiss than was being let on, both from his own posts – among his absences – and those of his nephew, so I find myself – in the words of the old cliché – shocked but, perhaps, not as surprised as I might be.
By coincidence I just watched Human Nature/ Family of Blood and, as it always does, the closing scene made me unspool a little bit.
I’m sure that’s it. I’m sure that’s why I seem to have something in my eye.
If you pass this way, nephew, it would be a delight to put a real name to the stubborn, perfectionist, discursive , thoughtful and deeply, deeply romantic enigma that was @htpbdet, so that a proper toast can be raised.
23 October 2013 at 00:19 #19091Oh for heaven’s sake calm down.
22 October 2013 at 19:56 #19077Not quite – I want the checkbox in the link dialogue to work as advertised.
Instead you get back by visiting the previous tab.
Well, no. You get back by clicking the little close box once you are done with the external site and TA DA! you are exactly where you were.
(BTW, something I noted a couple of weeks back but forgot to mention – the music page has loads of YouTube thumbnails (well, OK big thumbs) and as a consequence takes absolutely ages to load. Might be worth blocking embedding on there if it kills performance).
22 October 2013 at 01:00 #19016Adding target=”_blank” to links will not make clicking backwards and forwards between pages reliable,
The point is to remove the need to use the back button, because it is unreliable.
(The link in your reply opens a new tab neither of the links in your tests does so).
Are you making a case for opening a new window every time you click on a link?
No, only when linking outside the site (to Youtube etc).
YOU can decide if you are returning, not the site…………I do think that “the overwhelming majority of users”, if that’s what they want, need to learn to Ctrl+click. It gives you so much power.
And how do you accidentally hit “back”?
With a track pad – warm hands in a hot room can do it.
That weird combo of hippy dippy can-we-all-just-get-along and libertarian indifference to others. Only found in the tech sector 😉
It’s kinda sweet and helpful really.
But it fails the obviousness test (despite appearances) because on way too many site – especially with the very modern fad for huge pages) it does not actually take you back where you were, or takes you to an arbitrary anchor that may more may not correspond to where you were.
21 October 2013 at 21:33 #18992@d12345 – that’s much clearer.
Thank you.
21 October 2013 at 21:31 #18991Urrgh.
1 – Trouble is those guides come from a time when the back button would reasonably reliably take you back to where you were – the remotest hint of scripting makes this either unreliable or PAINFULLY slow.
They also comes from the days before TABS. They change everything – an absolute redesign of the paradigm. It is web design fundamentalists who failed to keep up.
Also, it is a hangover from when the web was run and used by nerds and geeks descended from hippies. These days they let in people who don’t know the difference between “Windows”, Word” and “Internet Exploder”. I know, it’s a disgrace.
2. It makes clicking backwards and forwards between pages and unreliable pain in the arse – especially when a post-in-making (or any other form) vanishes if you accidentally hit “back”.
3. There is check box – it does not work with the forum software (fine with WordPress proper, I think). Where’s the choice?
4. Things taking the user out of a site should not assume that you do not want to come back (see 1 above).
Basically, hippy-dippy standards hung over from the days when browsers were crude, but 98% of users were geeks aren’t appropriate for the modern era.
In my experience the overwhelming majority of users want to close the tab and be back where they were without losing their place – or forms – or relying on coding to get them there (usually after a little walk around the houses).
The correct approach is to have a preferred method that minimises the risk of data loss. The tyranny of the back button gets in the way of this.
Nutshell: there are too many ways to arse-up the cache to rely on it, so a new tab is better on 99% of occasions. It is the Ford Focus’s electronic ignition NNG’s Model-T handcranked.
21 October 2013 at 17:44 #18942Harrumph.
Al right then. I’ll let you off.
THIS TIME.
21 October 2013 at 17:42 #18941@blenkinsopthebrave – that’s exactly what she wants you to think.
She’s plotting something. Be afraid.
21 October 2013 at 17:14 #18935@craig @Shazzbot
Theories even more insane than what’s actually happening
Shouldn’t the above read: “Theories even more bonkers than what’s actually happening”? I believe the term is “bonkers theorising”.
Also, can we pleas get target=”_blank” working in the forums?
21 October 2013 at 17:11 #18933Nobody likes a smartarse! 😉
21 October 2013 at 16:16 #18924my YouView TV box
If it works the same as BT Vision box, you can add 5 mins at the end of a scheduled recording….
21 October 2013 at 16:12 #18923Languages are very different , for example we Croatians write this kind of way only in formal occasions
Yes, but this is an English language forum: our house; our rules
But more to the point, a paragraph break after “i undersand what you are saying.” would make you post MUCH easier to read.
All of the seasons of Who have an “arc” – the main plot you refer to, but serial drama usually used the “A B C plot” structure. The A plot is the season arc – the main plot. The B plot may be the main plot of a single episode but the A plot will usually be referenced at least in passing. The C plot may be light relief, but will likely also provide metaphorical commentary on the A or B plot.
Some episodes will emphasise the A plot with a small B plot, some will have a big B plot and just drop hints about the A plot.
Sometimes, just as a spacer or because someone has a reallycoolfuckingidea(tm) an individual episode will be all B plot (see Blink, for example).
And in the case of Doctor Who, at least since Moffat took over, there has been one fucking huge A plot arcing over all else.
21 October 2013 at 15:20 #1891950 (count ’em) things to look out for
http://blogtorwho.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/50-things-in-50th-anniversary-trailer.html
21 October 2013 at 14:44 #18913mister i am not a fish,english is not my first language,
Then think of this place as an excellent venue to practise good English surrounded by people who share a common interest with you.
English, arguably more than any other language, relies on rhythm and cadence to get its message across and these rhythms and cadences are denoted by punctuation and spacing. They are the most basic foundations of communication in written English and the most important rules are:
– A capital at the beginning of each sentence
– A space after each punctuation mark
– A paragraph at the end of each complete idea.
Everything else is secondary to this – spelling, syntax and grammar are all up for grabs, but not this.
@bluesqueakpip has given a compelling reason why.
You may find the following useful
- A full stop (or period) is a break in a chain of thought – or, perhaps more precisely, the end of a single complete thought. If in doubt, use a full stop;
- A comma is a pause which, properly placed, controls the emphasis within a thought, in particular clarifying (or confusing when used wrongly) the subject and object;
- A semi-colon is a slightly longer pause – which is why it is so useful in denoting items in a list – and to my mind this is why it can be very useful for creating a dramatic effect. But, as such, it is a little like a strong herb (rosemary, say): too much and it overwhelms the meat;
- The colon pause, of course, rests somewhere between a semi-colon and a full stop: it is best used, I think, where a thought is incomplete, but a big intake of breath would be needed if speaking. It can be used as a substitute for ‘and’.
I am happy to discuss further by PM, since this place is not an English course. So long as your remain courteous.
21 October 2013 at 11:41 #18879It would be epically helpful if you would use spaces with punctuation. Your posts reading like a kid who has been given WAY too much sugar. I try to avoid being a grammar Nazi, but seriously: show some consideration for your readers.
A single space after ALL punctuation. Capital letters at the beginning of sentences.
19 October 2013 at 10:46 #18754management focus on maximising their return to shareholders.’Shareholder value’ – a principle that has destroyed many fine companies.
Or asset stripping as it is otherwise known. All part of “the most barren, empty and vacuous era for economics since before Adam Smith”
19 October 2013 at 02:16 #18738(Start with what you want the story to be and never mind that the truth might not quite fit)
Jumpergate is the classic – Davey was maybe a bit naive in following a leading question, but that is no excuse. “A story” not “the truth.” And yes, of course truth is multi-faceted, but whether the Davey household wears jumpers is not one of the facets. Indeed it distracts from the truth: which is that very-high-fixed-cost utilities cannot be run as private businesses (and that customers, rather than shareholders, are being asked to pick up the tab for investment). Because that is a truth that the current conventional wisdom – led by the most barren, empty and vacuous era for economics since before Adam Smith – will not permit on the table.
But there is nothing in principle wrong with a newspaper or mag “writing to its readership” – indeed, in advertising-financed media it would be suicide not to. But have publishers clung for far, far too long to an obsolete business model (much as music, film and TV still try to). And with people now used to content being free at the point of delivery, putting the genie back in the bottle is no simple task. Apple (ooh, look: Apple again) demonstrated with the iTunes Music Store that if you make something available in a very easy to consume format at a reasonable and easy to grasp price, people will buy into it in bulk. So there is at least one alternative model.
But a rush to the bottom is not the solution in a democracy – except for the powerful, who don’t want to be investigated.
A free press needs to be free of much, much more than government interference.
18 October 2013 at 23:56 #18727Continued from here:
But it’s not their job, is it? They’re trying to get as much of their shit in the paper as they can
The smart ones know that that is exactly their job: anything they do to get a rep for making the hack’s day easier means that when they have something they want to promote (or …. er… unpromote) the more likely they are to get a sympathetic hearing (one of a former colleague’s favourite yarns was of his first editor picking up the phone to Tim Bell and – being a tad the worse for lunch – laying down the law about how to treat reporters). Trouble is most of ’em a Pretty Little Posh Girls too thick to get a proper job.
Actually, it’s all three. I know a lot of good reporters who don’t get the chance to chase good stories because they’re having to top and tail press releases and churn out nibs and fillers all day.
Likewise, but ultimately it is the training. If all they know how to do is spot “a story” they do a disservice to their readers. And the quality of the writing is fucking shit these days as well. And that brings up the lack of decent subs….
Put through in-house law courses and then dumped out there and left to get on with it. It’s how it always used to be done and I think it produces better journos than sitting in a lecture hall for four years.
Absolutely (I was fortunate enough to have an excellent news editor who taught me more in six weeks than my next one did in two years).
Don’t agree in the slightest. Apple gets an embarrassingly easy ride.
Clearly you don’t read the business pages.
And quietly downgrading the little issue of workers’ rights in the factories etc. on many occasions
Or – as is actually happening – ignoring that all electronics makers use the same factories, but that only one of them is signed up to the Fair Labour Association, only one that has run audits since 2007, only one that a track record of firing suppliers who employ child labour (after it’s own auditors caught them). Which one do you think that might be?
Of course, the most high profile story about Apple’s abuses turned out to be a complete 100% fabrication.
Foxconn’s suicide rate is lower than China’s as a whole and when Apple made them cut back on shifts it was the workers who complained. The problem is not Apple, but the West’s jumping so enthusiastically into bed with China in the name of cheap trinkets. The same factories build for Samsung, HTC, Moto, Blackberry etc etc.
But the headlines only mention the one firm that has tried do some little thing about it (the same one that was one of the first in the USA to treat gay couples on exactly the same footing as straight for workers rights purposes)
“The Story” vs “The Truth”.
The lack of the most basic fact checking is appalling. I bought one of their toys once, so thought I’d do some checking.
(If you want an entirely different subject, look at the way Barry Hearn gets treated about his attempts to blag Orient into the Olympic Stadium – again, basic questions not being asked)
Doesn’t matter.
It very does matter. Hypocrisy is not a sound basis for a creed.
Besides, news should be defined as “Stuff voters need to know”. Everything else is entertainment.
‘More people are buying life insurance, a survey by an insurance company has found.’
That’s changed then – I used to write that shit on a Friday (‘cos I could actually interpret the research and weed the puff out).
But I have now more or less washed my hands of the whole grubby business now and am now trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my working life….
You and me both. The occasional feature like this: Of metaphors and monsters but little else (excuse going via my blog, but EG slightly arsed up the intro on the online version).
18 October 2013 at 23:13 #18724@shazzbot @jimthefish
Actually, I will move over to t’pub.
18 October 2013 at 20:57 #18715Hmmm. Exactly once in all my time in news, a press officer somewhere took the time and trouble to think carefully about what the story was worth (not much, a NiB, maybe a downpager if it happened to be a quiet week) and craft the press release exactly to our requirement – even designed to be cut from the end. Exactly once – you would not have been able to detect it as churnalism, but technically it was…
Nah, angling a story to your readership
…Every other press release – ever – was (and is) full of the bullshit market-speak and slack use of language that PR’s specialise in (I wrote the style guide for my last mag, which included a list of banned phrases – but now they routinely appear in the mag). I had space for 35 stories – from splash to p8 NiBs and ideally I wanted none off the 200-300 press releases in my in tray of a Monday morning. Now it isn’t even hard to spot that everything below second length is PRed and you can pretty well hear the “off the record briefing” for about 70% of the rest. That’s why it is so easy to spot.
And there are more staff now than when I was there. They just know fuck all. One-source stories and opinion dressed up as news is the norm (see every story ever featuring H Redknapp).
It isn’t time or resources – it is training: too many young hacks are looking for the “Story” and forgetting to look for the truth (look at the tech press coverage of Apple, say – it is almost as if there is a campaign to drive its share price down. But it isn’t – it’s just people afraid to break from the pack. The combination of factual inaccuracy and utter bollocks is shocking, while Samsung – one of the most morally bankrupt companies in the world – gets an easy ride because Steve Jobs is dead so Apple just has to fail).
I would ban journalism as an undergraduate course and make people study a proper subject – English, History, Geography or a physical science – before doing it at masters – or work up from the courtroom or crime beat.
Beaverbrook
See there’s the problem. Look at any newspaper proprietor’s pronouncements and you see nothing but self-serving drivel. What he wanted was to pursue a vendetta against Lord Mountbatten for shagging his wife.
What’s always shocking is seeing the number of journalists who meekly fall in line, unable to grasp that their own and their bosses interests are rarely aligned.
released on Sunday afternoons
The Times term was Sunday-for-Monday and were usually dropped on Friday. The Sunday Times, on the other hand, got the Friday Drop, usaully on Wednesday. My trade’s ultimate joy was torpedoing the Sunday Telegraph‘s Friday drop. Now the ST just copies the story out of the trades, rather than letting us sell them on.
/vent closed.
18 October 2013 at 17:03 #18702So, anyway, today 50 years ago the first instalment of the broadcast version An Unearthly Child was shot – and the crew were told to halt all production for future serials (including Terry Nation’s futuristic story) owing to the high cost of production.
18 October 2013 at 16:20 #18700Yeah – but the wires aren’t exactly renowned for their investigative prowess (or even fact checking)….
For me the defining feature of churnalism is the failure to remove spin: PRs rely on this for their living.
(All news stories are artificially manufactured – the “angle” that makes the papers is all-too-often not the most important one, especially now there are very few proper specialists left)
18 October 2013 at 09:49 #18677@Shazzbot
Churnalism?
No. Churnalism is the recycling of press releases without critical input from the journalist. Everytime you see an abundance of “marketing-speak” in a news story or feature where plain English belongs, that’s the key indicator.
17 October 2013 at 17:35 #18655*Innocent face*
(Re viewing stats – I’ve been banging on about timshift since shit-for-brains started trolling on the Guardian. Apart from a brief peak in the run up to DT’s exit, 8m-ish has been the mark, but made up differently. As Moffat says, the BBC knows very well how many viewers they have)
17 October 2013 at 14:30 #18636Plus something @phaseshift has previosuly brought up, some fans don’t consider the first two changes to be regenerations as such as the term was never used at the time.
To be fair, those people should be taken out and shot. Harsh, I know, but fair.
16 October 2013 at 11:54 #18583A modest proposal which does n0t involve eating children: set the “a: visited” colour to the same as the regular “a” colour.
16 October 2013 at 11:52 #18582@Shazzbot – I think he is asking us to count in the same way that psychologists ask us to count the number of times the basketball gets passed – so that we don’t notice the man in the gorilla suit.
@scaryb – that clip for Day of the Daleks appears to have Klingons in the background…
15 October 2013 at 23:02 #18564@craig – actually, 0.75em does it 😉
15 October 2013 at 10:10 #18536Or you could change the font size in bbp-author-name to 80% and see what happens *files finger nails*
End discrimination against the loquacious !
14 October 2013 at 17:47 #1850214 October 2013 at 17:45 #18496Speak of universal praise for the redesign, I see my username still wraps over there <<<<<
Harrumph.
14 October 2013 at 17:42 #18494*Makes like a shark circling*
14 October 2013 at 17:41 #18493@Shazzbot @craig
(ps: you might want to look at the multiple apostrophes … )
Nice work! Suck in with praise, then dob him in to the apostrophe police!
PS I’ve got that sodding troll song stuck on my head now.
14 October 2013 at 17:38 #18491Ka and, indeed, BOOOM!
14 October 2013 at 16:28 #18483@craig – Well played that man!
*@Shazzbot !!!!! – fetch the shotgun!!!!!*
14 October 2013 at 14:27 #18473OI! I look exactly like my avatar!
14 October 2013 at 00:23 #18446So my theory may be quickly dismissed by most
You really are new around here, aren’t you?
(Actually, I rather like your theory)
13 October 2013 at 00:04 #18383Jif is what I clean my kitchen with.
12 October 2013 at 21:59 #18370Not sure this link’ll work, but if it does it’s the best gif ever.
11 October 2013 at 15:32 #18265Registered 2 hours ago…
Posting apparently to get post count up…
Drops troll question number 37b (compare real world statement with controversial canon, re regen)….
Axe falling in 3,2,1……
11 October 2013 at 14:26 #18261Yes – rights are complex (and can get horrifically expensive – that’s why we will never see The Wonders Years on DVD). Even the broad brush strokes we are using would need a lawyer to sort out.
Yet people want the BBC to fork over for them, but not seek to cover the cost. That, to me, is the very definition of ARSE.
Money should not be the only criteria for them.
But if they can’t afford it, no other criteria even come into play.
11 October 2013 at 10:44 #18240Yes and if a Dell users gets used to using iTunes then discovers that everything they bought will automatically transfer to an iPad and JustWork(tm), which in turn will Airplay to an AppleTV and JustWork(tm) or video-out to HDMI….
….then their next PC is much more likely to be a Mac (as sales figures clearly show).
11 October 2013 at 10:39 #18239@craig @wolfweed @fatmaninabox @shazzbot
Every time a BG episode is broadcast, the BBC has to get the pocket calculator out and find out what to pay to the creators of the monsters, becuase that is how it work backed then and a contract is a contract.
We nearly didn’t get the Daleks back because the estate of Terry Nation wasn’t inclined to play ball at first…
But nobody “invented” the Home Guard or chippy Geordies….
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