I agree with Bjorn that Nordic is more inclusive, and it won't confuse people living in Scandinavia.
Bjorn, Finland and Iceland (and Greenland for that matter) was part of the Union of Kalmar, but not as countries in their own right. But, we are getting quite off-topic by now.
Bjorn, if Scandinavia was the Norwegian/Swedish peninsula, then Finland should be included as well. However Scandinavia is typically used to refer to the countries from the Union of Kalmar, where Denmark defacto took over Sweden and Norway.
"Scandinavia is technically only Sweden and Norway."
Bjorn, I beg you pardon? On behalf of the Danes, I would like to log a protest. Denmark is certainly part of Scandinavia (which consists of Denmark, Norway and Sweden).
Speaking of current Danish tradition, many people eat porridge made of rice boiled in milk (risengrød) on the 23rd - from the leftovers (or from fresh rice), rice pudding (or risalamande in Danish, funny enough) is made, containing lots of almonds, but only one whole one, which is used in the way described in Teresa's post.
A lot of people don't eat risengrød any more, but a Christmas dinner without risalamande would be considered wrong. A heated cherry sauce is used together with it (not rødgrød any more).
The bowl left out for julenissen contained risengrød, not risalamande.
Added fact that some might not realize, in Scandinavia, Christmas is celebrated on the 24th.
Historically, risengrød was eaten before the Christmas dinner, to lessen peoples' appetite - I guess that when people could afford more food, it changed into a desert, risalamande, instead.
Having said all that, I can't stand risalamande, and certainly don't have any intention of eating any, even though I am a Dane living in Denmark.
This was an interesting trainwreck - I missed some of the later posts in their original form, but I don't really think I missed much.
As probably one of the few people here who have absolutely no tendency towards writing, and as one who seriously doubt I'll get my name on any pieces of writing, except for articles related to computer science, I am probably less inclinded to be nice to someone like Mr. Rice - I know my writing is bad, I don't inflict it on others (heck, I don't even inflict it on myself these days).
What I'm trying to say, is that I am in awe of peoples' contraint.
No matter if we belive that there were someone higher in the ranks that wanted this to happen or not, it's clear that the mere presence of the untrained people in the prisons is a breech of the Geneva Convention (IV), namely article 144:
"Art. 144. The High Contracting Parties undertake, in time of peace as in time of war, to disseminate the text of the present Convention as widely as possible in their respective countries, and, in particular, to include the study thereof in their programmes of military and, if possible, civil instruction, so that the principles thereof may become known to the entire population.
Any civilian, military, police or other authorities, who in time of war assume responsibilities in respect of protected persons, must possess the text of the Convention and be specially instructed as to its provisions."
If they weren't trained in this, and didn't have a copy of the convention, it broke the convention. A convention that the US ratified in 1955.
Whoever was responsible for them being there (and that might very well be Rumsfeld), should be prosecuted for breaking international law.
It was pointed out that the link I made to the Cooper Black flash movie didn't work, so I'll just repost it:
Cooper Black flash movie
" I can even agree that a benevolent dictator can be good for a country (hey, it worked for Singapore)."
Well, it only worked if you are not homosexual and thus thrown in jail. There are many ways to look at what is good for a country.
There is a flash movie about the Cooper Black font - rather fun, and more interesting than one might think (well, perhaps not given the company).
It can be found here
As someone else pointed out, the US action in Bosnia was part of a NATO action supported by the UN, in which France and other European countries participated in. To say that the UN and France was opposed to it, would be, what is technically called, a lie.
momunt = monument of course.
One of the most stunning war memorials I've ever seen wasn't very big. It was in a small New Zealand town (can't remember which), and it simply had all the names of the young men who had left for WWI. Every single one of them had died.
What hit me even worse, was the fact that the momunt was standing next to a similar one for the WWII casualities. Here there might have been some survivors, but the simple fact that the town still sent troops even after what happened during WWI simply left me speakless.
Kristjan, that's an amazing story. I've never heard of the magnetic dust falling off the disks, though that may be because they fail before the dust can fall off. Any idea how long it had been running?
Teresa, a conservative estimate is at least 10 years, but it's really unkown, as none of the people who installed the system in the first place is still around in the company.
The retrieving company apparently hadn't tried anything similar before, so it must be pretty rare.
Oh, and about the former sysop, and his lack of backups. Let's just say that there were good reasons why there were a new sysop.
As an aside, I can mention that while I like the idea of a wind-chime, I'm using my harddisks differently - I'm building a nice bedside table out of them (so far I've got about 15 harddisks, but then I am studying computer science...).
The good news is, the data is probably still there, no matter what you've done. The bad news, it can be pretty hard to get to the data, and can cost quite a few $. There is a Swedish or Norwegian firm that specializes in retrieving data, and I've only heard about one case where they weren't at least partially succesful. I'm sure there is an equivalent US firm.
The one case were the firm wasn't succesful, was rather interesting. A company had a computer that maintained all their (electronic) locks, and allowed people to use their mag-keys to get in. The got a new sys-op, who wisely enough decided to take a back-up of the program used with all the data, as no-one had done that in all the time the system had existed. He turned of the computer, booted it, and tried to take a backup, but with no luck. Suddently the computer wouldn't start up - he inspected the machine, and found out that it was a hard-disk problem. Since it was critical data, the send the harddisk to the company that specializes in data-retrievement, so they could get the data back.
No luck. The harddisk was so old, that the magetic dust on the disks had fallen off, and the system had only run because it was running from the RAM. That's why no-one found out, until the system was actually turned off.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 11 |
| 2003 | 5 |
| 2002 | 1 |
Total: 17 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Kristjan Wager:
Show all comments by Kristjan Wager.