Monday, October 22, 2012

lance amstrong stripped of 7 tour de france titles

Lance Edward Armstrong (born Lance Edward Gunderson, September 18, 1971) is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He was world champion in 1993. Later in his career, Armstrong competed in endurance competitions, including marathon running, marathon mountain bike racing, triathlon and Ironman competitions.

He is best known for his performances in the Tour de France but in June 2012 the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) charged Armstrong with having used illicit performance enhancing drugs,[4] and in August they announced a lifetime ban from competition as well as the stripping of all titles. On October 22, 2012, the Union Cycliste International (UCI), the sports governing body, accepted USADA's verdict and confirmed both the lifetime ban and the stripping of all titles since August 1998.[5] These included the Tour de France titles for the years 1999 to 2005.

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Also plagiarism leads to hungarian president's fall

Why this news item is here in this blog? Because I am a big fan of the Tour de France!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

would have had, had had, have had

  1. Mourinho has been given a two-match touchline ban and WOULD HAVE HAD to sit in the stands with a minder anyway.

    Here we are talking about the "future in the past".

    At the time the speaker is talking, Mourhino had already received the ban (past). He knew then that for the next match (future, when he got the ban) he would have to sit in the stands.

    Two weeks ago Mourhino got a ban. (past) Two weeks ago (past) he knew that in one week's time, (future) he would have to sit on the bench

  2. I realized I'D HAD it in my pocket all along.

    This is the past perfect form of "have". We use this when we are talking about the past and want to refer to a time in the past which was even earlier.

    So - "I realised" - past simple of 'realise' - (a short event which I now finished.)

    "I had had it" - the thing was in my pocket even before I realised that it was there.

    We could demonstrate this by putting times in, to give you an idea of the time line:

    "At 4 pm I realised that I had put the thing in my pocket at 2 pm." I am telling you about something that happened at 4 pm (I realised), and the thing that I realised had happened even earlier, at 2 pm (I had had it ...)

  3. I HAVE HAD the opportunity to interact with teachers" This is the simple perfect continuous (progressive), and we use it to speak about a finished action in the past, which is connecetd to the present.

    This is connected with the present, because presumably the speaker learned a lot about teachers, and he still has that knowledge:

    In the past I have had French lessons (past) and I can speak some French (present.)
Why? Dunno, just thought that the explanation was very nice

englishforums.com

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

CD is 30 years old

Sony announced the CDP-101, the world's first Compact Disc player, on October 1st, 1982. When the CD came out, it was like something from another planet.

In 1982, no one except computer nerds had computers. It wasn't until the late 1980s that hard drives were seen commonly, and then they were only 10 megabytes, an astounding number. By 1985, computers still only used 5-1/4" floppies, which held only 720 kilobytes if you had the HD ones. Microfloppies, the 3.5" kind with two sides, were crazy stuff when Apple first used them on a computer in 1987. They were small, tough, and held an amazing 1.44 megabytes. Even until about 1992, only engineers had computers at work.

The CD in 1982? It held an unfathomable 650 Megabytes, or as much as 65 hard drives would be able to hold three years in the future! Even in 1985, no one could afford a 10 MB hard drive. I worked in defense in 1985, and we did our calculations on computers with dual 5.25" floppies; no hard drive. That's why hard drives are called the C: drive; the A: and B: drives are your two floppies: one for the program, one for your data.

Anyway, CDs were always laser rocket science. It wasn't until about the year 2000 that anyone could afford a CD burner.


A piece of wood signed by Ohsone was used to show his engineers the size they were to aim for with the D-50.
"We're going to commercialize a CD player of this size," said Ohsone, head of the General Audio Division (of Sony) while showing his staff a piece of wood which was 13.4 cm across and about 4 cm thick. This was about the same size as four CD cases stacked one on top of another. He added, "I don't care how you do it, or whether you decide to put cicadas or grasshoppers in it, but just make this produce sound." Everyone laughed.

From kenrockwell.com