terminology and common usage

On Mon, 1 Dec 2014 23:29:37 -0000, "Max Demian"
wrote:

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
Which reminds me, I listened to a recent PC world advert on the radio, and
they said the items being sold were available in pink and blue, laptops as
it happens, and I thought, this sounds like stereotyping to me, I thought
we had got away from pink for girls blue for boys years ago. Brian

Apparently it used to be the other way round:

"Back in the days when ladies had a home journal (in 1918) the Ladies' Home
Journal wrote: 'There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject,
but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl.
The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger colour is more
suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is
prettier for the girl.'"

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...5/genderissues


I had it in my mind that the "Lloyd George" envelopes used for medical
records were pink for male patients, and blue for female.

I just asked my wife who is a receptionist in a surgery, and she
confirms it is so.

Confirmation here also.
http://www.rotadex.co.uk/medical-pro...cal-files.html

--

Graham.

%Profound_observation%

On 3 Dec 2014 19:15:58 GMT, "Ashley Booth" wrote:

Terry Casey wrote:

In article ,
says...

"NY" wrote in message
...

Our convention on dates is probably more logical too because it
lists the day, month and year in ascending order or significance
(a month is bigger than a day and a year is bigger than a month).

yyyy.mm.dd is better for automatic sorting by character code, and
corresponds to numbers (thousands, hundreds, tens and units). I
think only Sweden and Japan use this format officially.

Isn't there an ISO standard way of expressing date and time?

IIRC it goes from largest to smallest, thus YY MM DD hh mm ss


It's known as a DTG (Date Time Group)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date-time_group

I remember using it when I worked at a NASA satellite tracking station
in the 60s.

I haven't seen or heard a time suffixed Z or Zulu for many years, and
I had wondered if it had gone out of fashion.

--

Graham.

%Profound_observation%

On Wed, 3 Dec 2014 20:29:13 -0000, "NY" wrote:

"S Viemeister" wrote in message
...
On 12/3/2014 3:01 PM, Dave W wrote:
On Tue, 2 Dec 2014 10:21:54 -0000, "NY" wrote:

Interesting how different countries adopt different conventions. Our "u"
in
words like "colour" and "humour" doesn't really add anything to the
words
and could probably be omitted, and "theater" is probably a more
straightforward spelling, given the pronunciation, than "theatre".

I agree, but the Americans should spell it "theeder", given their
pronunciation,

I've heard it as thee-AY-dur/thee-AY-duh (ay as in hay).

And somehow many American accents make "laboratory" (UK: la-BOR-a-t'ry)
sound like "lavatory" (LAB-o-TOR-y) :-) When I used to watch US
medical/science dramas (eg Quincy) it used to baffle me why US researchers
seemed to spend so much time in the loo ;-)

And US doctors work in their office. It must be a little scary for an
American over here to have to visit a surgery.

And although we might see it as inverted snobbery, I am not sure
foreigners are altogether happy being operated on my a mister.



--

Graham.

%Profound_observation%

On 12/3/2014 3:29 PM, NY wrote:
And somehow many American accents make "laboratory" (UK: la-BOR-a-t'ry)
sound like "lavatory" (LAB-o-TOR-y) :-) When I used to watch US
medical/science dramas (eg Quincy) it used to baffle me why US
researchers seemed to spend so much time in the loo ;-)

If you listen very closely, it's more like LAA bruh TOE ree.

On Thu, 04 Dec 2014 00:28:17 +0000, Graham. wrote:

And US doctors work in their office. It must be a little scary for an
American over here to have to visit a surgery.

Then use "a surgery" for operation.

And although we might see it as inverted snobbery, I am not sure
foreigners are altogether happy being operated on my a mister.

They would have been even less happy - and more confused - when my last GF
first qualified. The FRCS sent her missives addressed to Mr. Helen...
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

In article , Graham.
wrote:
On 3 Dec 2014 19:15:58 GMT, "Ashley Booth" wrote:


It's known as a DTG (Date Time Group)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date-time_group

I remember using it when I worked at a NASA satellite tracking station
in the 60s.

I haven't seen or heard a time suffixed Z or Zulu for many years, and I
had wondered if it had gone out of fashion.

IIRC I've noticed it in the BBC metadata XML files for their iplayer radio
files. e.g. if you get an example using

wget http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlist/PID

for a program with a current PID you should be able to find a Z time and
date string in the file showing when the programme was broadcast.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

"Wolfgang Schwanke" wrote in message
...
Indy Jess John
wrote in :

On 01/12/2014 11:05, NY wrote:

Obviously you'd only want the assistant to read the messages for you
- you would want to be sure that they weren't also looking at which
digits you typed as your PIN.

If you were blind, how would you know?

Another problem is that keypad layouts can differ. Most are

123
456
789
*0#

But I've seen

789
456
123
*0#

and I don't think they were Braille coded. It confuses a sighted
person, I can only imagine how it irritates blind people.

Telephone layout versus calculator layout. Shame that whichever layout came
first couldn't have been adopted by the other.

In message , NY
writes
"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
Shop staff can also be very annoying when they don't know about stuff.
Recently M/S tried to refuse a friend of mines card as it was a chip
and signature one. The blind do have issues with when to put in pins
etc, as they cannot read the display, so hence the old chip and
signature card are often used.

The cashier in my bank always says "OK, can you type your PIN in now"
and "Right, you can remove your card now", even though I can see
perfectly well. Maybe he's got into the habit of doing it for the
benefit of the relatively few blind customers and now (maybe without
realising it) does it for everyone.


That would require some initiative, which is unlikely, as it's the same
in my bank.

Universal training probably.
--
Ian

"Ian" wrote in message
...
In message , NY
writes
"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
Shop staff can also be very annoying when they don't know about stuff.
Recently M/S tried to refuse a friend of mines card as it was a chip and
signature one. The blind do have issues with when to put in pins etc, as
they cannot read the display, so hence the old chip and signature card
are often used.

The cashier in my bank always says "OK, can you type your PIN in now" and
"Right, you can remove your card now", even though I can see perfectly
well. Maybe he's got into the habit of doing it for the benefit of the
relatively few blind customers and now (maybe without realising it) does
it for everyone.


That would require some initiative, which is unlikely, as it's the same in
my bank.

Universal training probably.

So evidently for the card readers in banks, the cashier can see when the
card reader is asking for a PIN and and see when I've successfully typed a
PIN (although hopefully not what PIN I've typed!).

So I wonder if the equivalent card readers in shops allow the cashier to see
the prompt messages and read them out if the customer is blind. If so, all
it needs is the customer to say "I'm blind - can you read me the prompts".

On Sunday, November 30, 2014 10:49:22 PM UTC, The Other John wrote:
On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 21:37:59 +0000, NY wrote:

This is even more of a problem in Germany where numbers are said in
"four-and-twenty blackbirds" notation with the tens and units the
opposite way round.

I find French numbers confusing when things like 79 is said sixty, ten, nine
and 90 is four twenties, ten - weird.

and isn't it laborious to have to say 99 as Quatre-vin-dix-neuf