What's a VAT?
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So make something up. 0, THX-1138, NCC-1864
The secret code that protected our missiles from launch for all those years. To wit:
000000
Bah! What doesn't make any sense about this?
Like...everything!
How do we accommodate continental drift?
Like everything else non-urgent: Put it off until a just a bit after it crushes us.
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We already have latitude and longitude for ages...
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And in Poland.
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Living in a country of just over 400,000 inhabitants, it's a bit silly to have to fill in a state, county (thank you Brits) or region (Germans like that). I usually fill in the name of the particular island I live on, but Maltapost can actually tell from the postcode which island that is. Or from the town name. Or because they know my father-in-law.
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I see no
34100
in the above text... </missing the obvious>
The "obvious" that you are missing, of course, is that I fucked up. I originally was going to use 34100 but changed my mind to use 62100 and didn't update the other text...
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The "obvious" that you are missing, of course, is that I fucked up.
That's what the idea of that tag, yes.
I'm being too obtuse again I guess...
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Living in a country of just over 400,000 inhabitants, it's a bit silly to have to fill in a state, county (thank you Brits) or region (Germans like that). I usually fill in the name of the particular island I live on, but Maltapost can actually tell from the postcode which island that is. Or from the town name. Or because they know my father-in-law.
Well, technically, in the UK you could just address something with:
<house number> <post code>
Such as
221B NW1 6XE
And by and large it will get delivered to where you want it to.
Each postcode covers up to 80 addresses, so the house number (or equivilent) is usually enough to uniquely identify the destination.
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Yes, I am saying "stop enjoying talking about postal codes". Because that's pathetic.
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Yes, I am saying "stop enjoying talking about postal codes". Because that's pathetic.
You wait 'till you talk to someone who works on postal sorting machinery, and then you'll see real pathetic geekery. (UK addresses are TRWTF, apparently.)
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We already have latitude and longitude for ages...
Stop making sense! This is TDWTF and we will GUID all the things if we want!
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These days it's only street number and name, and postcode that's required (strictly speaking, house number and postcode should be sufficient information, but it's generally expected that you include the street name)
(emphasis added)It has been like that since the 1970s and possibly before, actually. The postcode where I lived from 1971 to 1981 covered six houses. I knew someone at school who lived down the posh-people street where each house had its own postcode.
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I'm fairly sure that postcodes are newer than the postal service, so there was a time when it wasn't. Whether or not that's in living memory I do not know: it's certainly not in my lifetime.
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(UK addresses are TRWTF, apparently.)
Addresses in general are TRWTF, in fact. I heard that there's a street somewhere in Germany where the buildings are numbered in chronological order of construction, so 1 is at one end, 2 is at the other, and 3 is somewhere in the middle.
And the street where I lived in upstate NY in the early 80s was maybe 300 yards long, and had no more than a dozen houses on each side. Ours was in the middle, roughly, and was number 914. (The house numbers were derived from the plot numbers, not anything to do with the street itself.)
And there is always the fun that can be had with streets with multiple names. Normally this is because different parts are in different towns, and as you travel along the road, the name changes each time you go from one town to the next. But of course the British have to be different. Boundary Road, Hove and Station Road, Portslade are opposite sides of the same road, not opposite ends.
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Yes, I am saying "stop enjoying talking about postal codes". Because that's pathetic.
But it's interesting. Any subject is interesting if thought about in an interesting way. I bet I spend a lot less time being bored than you do.
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I'm fairly sure that postcodes are newer than the postal service, so there was a time when it wasn't. Whether or not that's in living memory I do not know: it's certainly not in my lifetime.
Oh, sure, I agree that there was a time in the history of postal systems before postcodes and such. Wikipedia claims that the UK's current system started in 1959, but wasn't fully rolled out nation-wide until 1974, so the beginning of the roll-out is in someone's living memory, and the end of that roll-out is in my living memory.I was objecting to the air of extreme recentness associated with "these days".
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I bet I spend a lot less time being bored than you do.
Being bored is basically my life goal. It means I can drink beer and play video games.
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I heard that there's a street somewhere in Germany where the buildings are numbered in chronological order of construction, so 1 is at one end, 2 is at the other, and 3 is somewhere in the middle.
I read that's how they do addresses in Japan, in general. The "street number" is actually a block number, and represents, as you say, the order of construction.
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Oh I see. You're not complaining that I'm talking about a subject you think is boring, and as a result boring you. You're complaining that I'm having an interesting conversation about something that could be boring, and as a result not boring you.
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You're complaining that I'm having an interesting conversation about something that could be boring, and as a result not boring you.
There was a guy in Catch-22 who wanted to (subjectively) increase his lifespan by being as bored as possible as much as he could, the idea being that time slows down when you're not having fun.
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You know I meant to mention that in that post, forgot, and was just about to save an edit adding it in when you posted that. Thanks a lot.
[url=http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/496826-dunbar-loved-shooting-skeet-because-he-hated-every-minute-of]It was Dunbar[/url].
Filed Under: shortening @blakeyrat's lifespan
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There was a guy in Catch-22 who wanted to (subjectively) increase his lifespan by being as bored as possible as much as he could, the idea being that time slows down when you're not having fun.
People only die because their cells get bored and don't want to live any longer. So the solution to immortality is to simply keep your cells entertained.
(For the record, since that wiki article is so goddamned dead-pan, the chamber was a joke in the show, not a serious sci-fi invention.)
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Being bored is basically my life goal. It means I can drink beer and play video games.
This makes no sense. Drinking beer and playing video games are generally considered things you do as forms of relaxation or for entertainment. In other words, they are generally viewed as things to do to eliminate boredom. Therefore, you should not play video games or drink beer, as they would be counter productive to achieving your life goal.
Unless your real life goal is to drink beer and play video games. In which case, your statement is simply fallacious.
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Unless your real life goal is to drink beer and play video games.
I can't talk about Blakey, but I've got other life goals as well. I genuinely like hacking on code. (Provided it isn't Java. That just pays the bills and stuff. Or C++, which I hack on only so I can do interesting things with interesting libraries.) If I just play games, I get really bored after a day or two and have to start doing something constructive.
I'm also not too insistent on it being beer. A nice wine is good too. :D
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The postcode where I lived from 1971 to 1981 covered six houses. I knew someone at school who lived down the posh-people street where each house had its own postcode.
Where I used to live, the ZIP+4 covered four apartments in my building. OTOH, sometimes postal employees ... make mistakes. Years ago, a letter was sent to an address in the city of San Fernando, but the sender abbreviated the name of the city to S. F. It was returned because there was no such address in San Francisco, despite the fact that the address included the correct ZIP code for San Fernando.
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Where I used to live, the ZIP+4 covered four apartments in my building.
When I lived in upstate New York, the college had its own zip code, and it allocated one +4 to each dorm room. I happened to live in the first building alphabetically (I guess) so my room number matched my zip+4. So my full address was
Frost Cat
Blatherskite 107
Hamlet, NY 13456-0107but in theory (I never actually tried it)
Frost Cat
13456-0107Should've been sufficient.
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The secret code that protected our missiles from launch for all those years. To wit: 000
000DESTRUCT0FTFY
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I got a flag! I wasn't even trying. Had I been trying I'd have pointed out that VAT number is not redundant like 'PIN number', and that VAT by itself not only isn't what is meant here but is a mass noun so 'a VAT' is always incorrect.
Let's try expanding that: 'a VAT' ===>'a Value Added Tax'. Hmm. Sounds reasonable to me. Well, if you drop the initial caps: 'a VAT' ===> 'a value added tax'.(I'm off, seeya...)
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Let's just assign a GUID to each square inch on the Earth and use that for addressing.
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Because that's pathetic.
At least they aren't videos of someone playing video games.
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@thegoryone said:
So make something up. 0, THX-1138, NCC-1864
Oh my goodness. I knew that was USS Reliant straight away.
I have problems.
You probably also recognize ISO-8601. How do you feel about CRM-114?
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@thegoryone said:
THX-1138 [...] (I've also seen it and thought it was pretty shite tbh).
Glad I'm not the only one.
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Glad I'm not the only one.
But it stars Donald Pleasence, The Human Egg!
... yeah. Interesting premise and world-building, definitely, but pretty lame plot.
Donald Pleasence is also in Raw Meat, which is much better. And I never miss an opportunity to bring that movie up, because it has the craziest premise of all horror movies ever.
Except perhaps Q: The Winged Serpent.
FUCK
FUCK
FUCK
FUCK
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For me it's normally 13:37
Yeah, that one too.
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When I have an urge to look at the clock, it's typically: 10:08 (NOT on HTC smartphone ads, on real clocks), 12:34, and 13:37.
Also, I tend to routinely wake up at 3:25 at night, dunno why.
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Also, I tend to routinely wake up at 3:25 at night, dunno why.
Underpants gnomes are waking you up ;)
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Sure enough, I just looked at the clock a minute ago and it was 13:37.
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Who ever reads those pop-ups? Certainly not normal users
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Addresses in general are TRWTF, in fact. I heard that there's a street somewhere in Germany where the buildings are numbered in chronological order of construction, so 1 is at one end, 2 is at the other, and 3 is somewhere in the middle.
I once lived in a house that was numbered 6710. This house was not at 67th Street, it was closer to 70th. Any food deliveries would always have a call from the driver (who did not read the additional instructions) that 6710 was the park. No, just drive a little farther north... The very next block was 7100's. Go figure.
And there is always the fun that can be had with streets with multiple names. Normally this is because different parts are in different towns, and as you travel along the road, the name changes each time you go from one town to the next. But of course the British have to be different. Boundary Road, Hove and Station Road, Portslade are opposite sides of the same road, not opposite ends.
Once while out of town on a project, we were in an area where all the cities and towns ran together and we did not realize that the change in municipality also had a change in street names. We left the hotel to go grab dinner and the concierge gave us directions to get to the restaurant. Those directions included all the street names where we would turn at and we assumed we could just back track them to get back to the hotel. Nope, none of those street names existed on the return trip and this was years before GPS was ubiquitous.
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I heard that there's a street somewhere in Germany where the buildings are numbered in chronological order of construction, so 1 is at one end, 2 is at the other, and 3 is somewhere in the middle.
The whole of downtown Tokyo is numbered that way (numbers are per block, IIRC). Even without the whole moonrune thing, it's still impossible to find your way to an address without consulting a map.
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I once lived in a house that was numbered 6710. This house was not at 67th Street, it was closer to 70th.
Where I work, the building number is 3102, but it's not on the 3100 block, it's actually on the 3000 block. This confuses people on a regular basis.
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That phenomenon is way more common than it should be.
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That phenomenon is way more common than it should be.
It was the first time I had happened to see it (in places that use block-based numbering).
First time I showed up, for an interview, I went across the street because that's where the building should've been. Turns out the primary tenant in THAT office is apparently a lawyer specializing in auto repossession, and so they had a security guard who freaked right the shit out because he didn't like the fact that I drove up to the building.
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The Defiant? I never cared for the design of that craft, though it's such a little bad ass ship.
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is a great little ship.
punchy as heck, a decent tank, great stealth.
sure it's not a looker, but i don't really care so much about that if i have that much firepower.
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The Prometheus class ships looked so much cooler in my opinion, especially with the ability to split into 3 warp-capable ships.
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yeah they looked cooler, but for the price of one of those i could build twelve defiant class ships, each of which could hold its own against the prometheus.
i mean when docked together a full two thirds of the weapon points on the prometheus couldn't fire without firing through another part of the ship!