c4countdown

Rosemary Roberts

This is only very slightly computer related:
I have a new "energy saver" bulb in my office, right over my head. When I switch it on, the initial power surge wakes up the computer from suspended, which is usually quite convenient.

But is it likely to damage it in the long term?

Rosemary Roberts

Soph K wrote: it couldn't have been a prank because everyone was in class!

The person who first said they heard it must have been there. And could have been lying.

Rosemary Roberts

Lesley Hines wrote:I think if anything it's more likely to be a black withcraft curse.

It must be a truly awesome curse if it made them cut out whatever happened in the middle.

Rosemary Roberts

Thomas Carey wrote:Stick a load of square based pyramids together.

That might qualify as an engineering solution, but hardly a mathematical model.

Rosemary Roberts

Thomas Carey wrote:octahedrons have no purpose.

Not so! How would you make one of these

without them?

Rosemary Roberts

Ryan Taylor wrote:Need to change forum skin to prosilver. Votes don't work on aerogreen.

Is this policy or crap programming?

Rosemary Roberts

Jon O'Neill wrote:No, but I love them.

I missed it as well, but it's being repeated on 19th January.

Rosemary Roberts

Ryan Taylor wrote: He didn't win.

That's how you do the "not getting past first round". Actually I was surprised how little he scored.

Rosemary Roberts

Joseph Krol wrote:I seem to remember chris wills on pointless a month or two ago. Can anyone verify/debunk this?

I think I remember that too, but I don't remember how well he did.
I also heard him on Radio 4's Brain of Britain some time in December, but he didn't get past the first round.

Rosemary Roberts

FWIW, Michael and CF's first show was repeated last Friday, so their second appearance will be tomorrow.

Rosemary Roberts

Ryan Taylor wrote:Jesus, stop worrying about the law and start tormenting some woodlice.

I think on balance I prefer hiding sausages.

Rosemary Roberts

As far as I can tell, this isn't right. Incest still exists in Scotland: in this country, 'sex with an adult relative' is the new name for this offence, which is contrary to s.64 Sexual Offences Act 2003. In neither case is impotence, castration, lack of fertility etc a valid defence. Sorry, Granny...

Rosemary Roberts

Ok - this is an Ewwwwwwwwwwww one, but it's quite interesting. (At least if you live in more rural parts of the country, otherwise it's just ew.) Incest is only incest if it can produce offspring. Therefore it's illegal for Grandad to be banging (adult and consenting) granddaughter, but perfectly l...

Rosemary Roberts

To pass the time I like to play a little game involving a woodlouse. So find yourself a woodlouse, a healthy-sized one, and tip it onto it's back then time how long it takes for it to get back onto it's front. Then try and beat that time by adjusting how you position it on it's back. The aim of the...

Rosemary Roberts

Student house. Woodlice are some of the tamer things found on the floor and the game wouldn't really work with slugs. It might be interesting to see how good fleas and bedbugs are at turning over. The problem would be putting them upside down without letting them escape. Sooner you than me on that ...

Rosemary Roberts

To pass the time I like to play a little game involving a woodlouse. So find yourself a woodlouse, a healthy-sized one, and tip it onto it's back then time how long it takes for it to get back onto it's front. Then try and beat that time by adjusting how you position it on it's back. The aim of the...

Rosemary Roberts

Rhys Benjamin wrote:Challenge me and if I can be arsed to play you in a normal 15 please respond.

As well as the ability to play the game I think you need a certain level of bantering skills. And if that is your current standard I would think - not yet.

Rosemary Roberts

I agree with every word, Lesley. I would have liked to like it, but that seems to have stopped working.

Rosemary Roberts

I can still remember taking the wireles accumulater to the sweet shop to be charged up. The cost was sixpence. That's not so long ago, George. My Dad ran the little petrol generator that charged up people's radio batteries. A few years later he had a radio shop (and a few years later still it went ...

Rosemary Roberts

Michael Wallace wrote:...that aliens had overrun Earth (I've been playing a lot of Halo), and they'd captured me and were going to kill me, but put it off as long as I kept solving Countdown numbers games.

Variant suggestion?

Rosemary Roberts

I don't think I've ever seen any adults on the show who weren't terminally thick. Are they selected for it? Maybe you are overestimating the intelligence of the general populating... Maybe I am, and I do really know better: The other day I listened to an ancient recording of Much-Binding-in-the-Mar...

Rosemary Roberts

The one occasion on which I watched the show, the adult taking part was either terminally thick or just letting the kids win in a patronising dad sort of way. Either way, he came across as being a knob. I don't think I've ever seen any adults on the show who weren't terminally thick. Are they selec...

Rosemary Roberts

Ryan Taylor wrote:they did that annoying thing "we'll find out after the break"

That's the main reason why I never watch anything live. I've got very skilled at fast-forwarding exactly 4 minutes 22 seconds.

Rosemary Roberts

Hugh Binnie wrote:They'd end up giving out twice as much money.

Good point!

Rosemary Roberts

For me, it's always only been Tarrant who drags, reiterating the current situation at every conceivable juncture and playing silly buggers with cheques. Somebody ought to tell the producers of quiz shows how stupid and tedious it is. Why can't they assume the viewers understand what is going on, ass...

Rosemary Roberts

I would guess that her attraction is to people who admire someone who worked their way up from humble beginnings by using their talents and sheer hard work to achieve great success, while still appearing to be normal and grounded. Such people would not admire self-pitying whingers. Most people woul...

Rosemary Roberts

I'm quite surprised to see the stack of vicious comments after each extract, all voted up many times over as well. She writes no worse than many other slebs and used to have quite a following, aside from Countdown. Perhaps this forum has more Daily Mail readers than I thought. Do you really think a...

Rosemary Roberts

I'm quite surprised to see the stack of vicious comments after each extract, all voted up many times over as well. She writes no worse than many other slebs and used to have quite a following, aside from Countdown.

Perhaps this forum has more Daily Mail readers than I thought.

Rosemary Roberts

I haven't been watching any of his recent shows, he seemed to be getting a bit Uri Geller. From what you are all saying I made the right decision.

Rosemary Roberts

This is a new question (to me) but I hoped some of you might be able to shed some light, or think more laterally than I'm doing on it. Some weirdo keeps taking out home insurance policies for my house. It's currently insured for £1.75 million with three different companies (for £1m, £500k and £250k...

Rosemary Roberts

Jon Corby wrote:Are you using Windows? If so, highlight the .pck file in Explorer, and press ALT+F4.

In fact that's a good way to make almost any problem go away.

Rosemary Roberts

I'm guessing, but perhaps to get rid of the static? ... As soon as you try to separate the layers you generate static that makes them cling even harder together - think how clingfilm prefers to cling to itself. But I've never tried wet hands - I usually have the problem in shops where you weigh you...

Rosemary Roberts

I'm guessing, but perhaps to get rid of the static? Possibly, but you'd hope repellant forces would help, not hinder, and it's not like plastic's polarised to start with. Certainly not if it's PE, it's a straight hydrocarbon chain. As soon as you try to separate the layers you generate static that ...

Rosemary Roberts

*bump* How come you need wet (or at least damp) hands to open things like plastic bags? Usually water decreases friction and makes stuff slippier, but it's almost impossible to open plastic bags with dry hands, but they conveniently stick to wet fingers. Why?? It should surely be the other way roun...

Rosemary Roberts

Tins of food that provide a pull on one end (which is relatively difficult to use for opening compared to a can opener), and a thickened based that precludes use of the opener on that end too. Disadvantages: 1) The pull leaves behind a lip which makes it more difficult to get all the liquid content...

Rosemary Roberts

Lesley Hines wrote:I recommend his whole book, "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre. It's informative, eye-opening, packed with thoughtful insights and in places lough-out-loud funny.

My kinda reading

Mine too. I had heard of it, but never got round to buying it. Which I have now remedied.

Rosemary Roberts

spurious nutrionalist pseudoscience Citation needed Let me help... Thanks for that, Leslie. I particularly liked most corrosive is the way they misrepresent, from their position of dominance in the mainstream media, what scientific evidence for a clinical assertion would actually look like. which i...

Rosemary Roberts

Kirk Bevins wrote:... it would make the programme quite boring ...

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Rosemary Roberts

Matt Morrison wrote:
Kirk Bevins wrote:I walked for miles looking for proper shops and pubs, particularly ones with dartboards or people in that didn't look like they were on drugs.
Alcohol is a drug!

Not to mention all that seawater - a well-agitated preparation of every conceivable homoeopathic remedy.

Rosemary Roberts

We spent half the show failing to read Gino's T-shirt. Can anybody tell me what it said? Not sure about the rest of it, but the main words were 'Divine Mantra'. Whether it was a reference to Buddhism or not, I cannot say. Thanks, Mike. We had half a dozen possibles for the words individually, but n...

Rosemary Roberts

Matt, do you know how to persuade Microsoft to transfer a license from a dead machine to a live one? This is a package I bought separately (Visio 2003), not one that came bundled with the machine. Is there any way of submitting a query that will be read by a human? Absolutely no idea, sorry. Never ...

Rosemary Roberts

Matt, do you know how to persuade Microsoft to transfer a license from a dead machine to a live one? This is a package I bought separately (Visio 2003), not one that came bundled with the machine. Is there any way of submitting a query that will be read by a human?

Rosemary Roberts

We spent half the show failing to read Gino's T-shirt. Can anybody tell me what it said?

Rosemary Roberts

Charlie Reams wrote:FWIW all tosses are included, it's just that some of them (the tails) are effectively counted twice.

Oh bugger. Not my day. Not my week.

Rosemary Roberts

Just to humour you, here's a simulation I wrote . The princess is awoken 904 times and the coin was heads 296 of those, which is 32.7%. I ran another for 1,000,000 iterations and that was 33.3% (can't be arsed uploading that one). I think you get the idea. I'm impressed, and of course surprised. Ho...

Rosemary Roberts

When you toss a fair coin it comes up 50:50 - no question, no argument. This is the definition of "fair". What you afterwards do with the decision is entirely irrelevant. If Gavin seriously claims otherwise I'm guessing that he worded the question a trifle more loosely than he intended. Is...

Rosemary Roberts

More money attracts more people, so you get more applicants and hence you pick the best of them. I know it's appealing to think that well-paid people are a bunch of useless toffs but fairly basic economics tells you that they can't all be. That might work if that were the way it was done, but so fa...

Rosemary Roberts

The distinction I am trying to draw is between people who chase jobs with interesting and challenging work that they feel capable of and those who chase only the numbers. There is the added factor that many "management" jobs are advertised in terms that are entirely meaningless, which mean...

Rosemary Roberts

Incidentally, I have always thought that this principle (i.e. public body pay = taxpayers' money) ought to mean that nobody in a publicly-owned enterprise should ever, under any circumstances, be paid a bonus. Bonuses should only come out of "spare money", and public services, by definiti...

Rosemary Roberts

People like him would be unable to pass up the chance to make some easy money That is not a crime in itself - I much prefer to make money easily, the more, the merrier. But MPs and other public figures, including people who work for bodies such as the NHS and the BBC (which has its own body of taxp...

Rosemary Roberts

Apologies, then. I think the problem in your question, as I understand it, arises from the difference between 'want' and 'need'. Essentially, it doesn't NEED to know it's the default - as the control over web page files and URLs being associated with whichever is the default browser is handled by t...

Rosemary Roberts

What is the point of "Always check to see if <...> is the default browser on startup"? All the browsers I have tried have such a setting, but why? Who benefits from the browser I have chosen to run knowing whether or not it is the default? You do. For what I thought should be obvious reas...

Rosemary Roberts

What is the point of "Always check to see if <...> is the default browser on startup"? All the browsers I have tried have such a setting, but why? Who benefits from the browser I have chosen to run knowing whether or not it is the default?

Rosemary Roberts

I've aged badly but got a lot thinner.

Rosemary Roberts

Lionel Blair should host it - he's plenty old enough to qualify for a desk job.

Danny John-Jules could take his place in a team.

Rosemary Roberts

The fact that 50% of people on a Countdown forum are in or have been in any sort of relationship with another human being greatly surprises me. There are over a thousand registered members, so it's more like 2% that admit to a relationship. And most of the rest aren't saying. Do you feel more at ho...

Rosemary Roberts

Charlie Reams wrote: {{citation-needed}}

I wasn't planning to field a formal proof or carry out a survey of my own, but it's my contention - based on my observations of myself and others - that most people don't know most facts (and many of those who do cannot remember stuff under pressure).

Rosemary Roberts

In a real-life situation a really obscure question is quite likely to score 7 Pointlesses out of ten and nothing scoring more than 20, but I haven't seen it happen yet. And is it the same 100 people every time? Or 100 people cherry-picked out of a few thousand?

Rosemary Roberts

I was surprised that they included Dido's Lament in the music round featuring arias composed for castrati, given that it was actually composed for a girls' school. Oops. It's a pity that Alex Guttenplan didn't point out the mistake to Jeremy Paxman. Perhaps it was a girls' school that placed unusua...

Rosemary Roberts

I know I'm hours too late to surprise anybody, but I did get it within the time:

Second numbers game: (75 * 8 + 9) / 3 = 203

I particularly like solutions that use the much neglected divide operator.

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