Quantum cockup… and a more earthly one

Quantum cock-up

Sony unveiled the new PS3 on Monday. The graphics and so on look superb. They always do for 12 months until the pC catches up, anyway.

What grated was one of their representatives saying that it was a “quantum leap” forward in technology, or some such hyperbole. Now what he meant was that it was a huge leap. What he’s actually said is they’ve made the single smallest step forward they could possibly have made while still calling it forward motion.

Stripping away the physics-specific definitions, I got the following from “define: quantum” on Google:

• The smallest discrete amount of any quantity
• The smallest physically realizable unit of something
• Latin – amount
• the smallest unit of a discrete property
• The smallest ‘unit’
• energy and other physical properties exist in tiny, discrete particles
• the smallest amount
• Quantum, which means “smallest part”, is used today in general for the smallest unity of matter, space, time and energy
• the Latin word for a singular amount
• the smallest discrete quantity of some physical property that a system can possess
• A quantum is the smallest increment into which many physical properties are subdivided
• Quantum is a fictional character, an elemental supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe

OK, ignore the last one.

How the definition of the smallest thing measurable turned into something that even Princeton University define as “a sudden large increase or advance” is beyond me.

One rule for them…

Here we go again. A police officer doing 159mph gets off scot free. What a ******* joke. Double the speed limit in slower areas, too.

But it’s OK. He’s done an advanced driving course, he’s experienced, it was early in the morning so the roads were quiet and he was just testing the vehicle out in case he needed to drive it like that in the line of duty.

Cobblers.

Bullshit. Crap. Arse. Gobshite.

I’ve got a friend who has an advanced driving certificate, a clean license and is a very experienced driver. He used to own an Audi TT and he never drove it like that. He never would. Partly because he knows he’d get caught, but mainly because he’s not a ******* arrogant **** who knows he can get away with **** like that because he’s a copper.

What a ******* disgrace. An ambulance driver transporting an organ has to go to court to explain his case, in a bid to keep his job – and he was barely topping 100mph on an empty A1. This ****** was exceeding 60mph in residential areas.

Can anyone kindly explain how the **** this is justifiable?