We've all been there, thrown something out that we later found out we needed.

Not on this scale though :o)

The dump is the size of a football pitch and the drive could be anywhere from 3-5 feet deep in it.

I wonder how many people are heading up there for a wee look themselves.

What was this guy doing throwing a hard drive into landfill: It should have been recycled, imho.

From the news report that I heard he put the drive in the electricals recycling section but when he realised and went back he discovered that the staff had put it in the landfill.

I would have expected him to have made a minimum effort to either remove content or make the drive unusable before disposing of it.

"A foole and his monie be soone at debate,
which after with sorrow repents him too late."

Thomas Tusser (1524 – 3 May 1580)

If that's the case, it's pretty bad of the council throwing that away into landfill.

I know exactly how he feels, i lost my favourite trousers moving house once.

birdbrain, have you any idea what happens to an en dash when the page has already been forced to Latin-1? Not pretty.

Hi there Lucy,

...have you any idea what happens to an en dash when the page has already been forced to Latin-1?

1. I do not have any ideas as to what happens. :(
   
2. I do not know what an "en dash" is. :(
   
3. I do not know what "the page has already been forced to Latin-1" means. :(
   
4. I am not really sure that I care. ;)
   
5. Please feel free, though, to enlighten me and others who may share my lack of erudition. ;)
   

On the plus side, I do acknowledge my cerebral shortcomings by signing them...

birdbrain

Dashes come in two lengths. Referred to as em - as long as the letter m and en - as long as the letter n (ie a bit shorter). If it is critical you can always guarantee that your keyboard will be typing the wrong one.

On my system, one is option-dash while the other is shift-option-dash, but I never remember which is which. And, of course, they're indistinguishable to the naked eye in a fixed-pitch font such as the one used in the Quick Reply box. (I'm sure I never changed a setting-- if in fact it can be changed-- so it's got to be the default.)

I am not really sure that I care.

You do. Trust me on this. It's the reason each of your own pages includes a charset declaration (or global equivalent in config/htaccess/iis-thingy). It's how you keep a dollar or pounds sign from turning into a question mark inside a black diamond-- and, conversely, how you keep a longish dash from turning into a-circumflex, Euro, open double quote. (The latter two are technically Windows-Latin-1, not 8859-1 at all, but that's a whole nother discussion.)

Hi there Lucy,

It's how you keep a dollar or pounds sign from turning
into a question mark inside a black diamond

The only "question marks inside a black diamond" that
I see in this thread, are in engines's original post. ;)

Of course, I should point out, when coding I do use
HTML entities. :)

And the quote in my original post to this thread was
"Copy & Pasted" rather than typed. ;)

birdbrain

The only "question marks inside a black diamond" that
I see in this thread, are in engines's original post.

Exactly. If-- ahem, cough-cough-- the page had contained an explicit "charset" declaration, everyone would see them as the intended pound signs. As it is, you can either view the OP as intended, or view your ndash as intended, but not both.

Of course, I should point out, when coding I do use
HTML entities.

This works fine as long as you stick to English. But your average European coder will probably not want to wade through html littered with é ü and worse-- to say nothing of ᐀ or ᐀ and so on when you get to characters that have no named entity.

html 5 supposedly retains only the essential entities & > and <. I consider this a big mistake-- but it doesn't mean people should use entities for letters that are recognizable to the naked eye.

And the quote in my original post to this thread was
"Copy & Pasted" rather than typed.

I kinda figured that.

:: descending from soapbox ::

:: idly wondering what it is with birds and hard line breaks ::

Is it wrong of me to be more interested in the dash discussion than the OP?

Not wrong at all. Why not start a discussion on the topic? ;)