
Fruck 'em
/rant-on
Microsoft? Fuck 'em. Preferably up the butt with the spikey end of the pineapple.
/rant-stay-on
46 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2008
My neighbour is one of many in the UK who get paid ( approx £40/annum! ) to make daily recordings of local conditions (In his case Bucks) and send them on to the Met Office. His message to me today reads :-
This morning there was the years 161st ground frost beating last year’s new record of 160. Given the forecast available to 23rd December, it appears we shall reach at least 176. The possible of 184 looks attainable, taking frost frequency to just over 50%!
The big one is still outstanding, climate change from Temperate to Arctic Tundra. As at today this has a probability of 52%. Currently we have 21/30 days towards the change with 111 days during 2010 where the mean temperature has been below 6˚ C.
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Makes you ponder, huh?
Thank (insert choice of deity) for that. I accept that until they have a scanner they need to limit liquids carried on board. What I have never managed to swallow(!) is that there is no potable water available once you pass security unless you pay the RIP-OFF prices charged in the airport shops. Any supermarket will sell you a 1.5 litre bottle of agua for about 10-15p (just 12 cêntimos here in Portugal) but they want £1.50 for a litre at the airport.
I don't know why I haven't written to the DM about this.
Oh yes, I don't read it.
It would appear that we have an apple fan happily abusing Caesar's rigid digit.
Come, come good Sir, do not be shy. Put virtual pen to paper and give us your thoughts. It is always good to at least hear all sides of an argument before ignoring the ideas that don't agree with ones own opinion.
Don't mean to diss you pal but if you are really
_fully conversant_ with Linux you are exceptional in the EXTREME, and will be soon be getting multitudinous offers of employment. (From me among others)
But... CMD is better than bash! Let alone ksh!!!
Ahhh, sorry, I get it. Don't fish myself.
I take my hat off to you Sir and give you a well deserved thumbs-up
My eyes welled as I read your beautiful prose. In fact I was so taken with the strength and elegance of it that I went to look at all the other postings you have made. Nice, very nice. If I had half that sort of skill with words I would be over the moon (sorry, just keeping on topic).
Pray allow me to offer you a virtual pint.
In the dim and distant past pretty much every bit of Hi-Fi and consumer electronics I owned was Sony kit.
You paid more but got a top quality product.
In time other manufacturers began to raise the quality bar up to (and beyond) the Sony level, but the Sony *brand* was always more expensive.
Being geared more towards quality than brand loyalty I began to buy a more mixed bag of kit.
Then Sony decided they were big and important enough to force their customers into their over-priced proprietary Memory Stick *standard*. Since then, I haven't bought a single Sony product. Why would I lock myself in?
If their move toward SD continues I might begin to consider buying Sony again. (Although not this particular overpriced piece of poo)
Good on you girl. A little bit of honesty could (perhaps) go a long way in politics. I think ( and actually, hope ) that the Lib Dems have as much chance of making a significant political impact as a fart in a thunderstorm, But I wish you well and hope you make a real impact on politics. All the very best to a real champion.
I know mileages vary, but who buys from some of these companies?
Never bought Dell 'cos of the web horror stories regarding their after sales (dis)service. It seems that if you get a _good one_ you end up with a fine product at a reasonable price. If you end up needing service; the word seems to be... Dump it and buy something else, from someone else.
Would not buy HP again after my suffering with one of their colour laser printers. Hardware seems fine but the consumables prices are WAY high and the control software is, IMHO and only on a good day, shit. Massive, flaky and stuffed full of sales guff and phone home attempts is about the nicest thing I can find to say about the software. ( 'tho printer works fine under Linux which is nice : )
Have bought Acer products and never had any problems ( unlike Asus, shudder ) but not with Windows so perhaps I have been lucky.
I act as IT everything for my wife's company and while I have given up buying desktop computers, as I reckon they can be home built cheaper and better, laptop purchasing is still a nightmare. The last one I bought was a Lenovo as it was the right spec and available with XP Pro rather than Vista. I spent so long removing all the crud that had been loaded on as _extras_ ( and they dump EVERYTHING into the C: drive root ), and partitioning so that data was separate from programs and Linux could be loaded (she has promised to move to Linux in the near future), that I think I could have built it quicker out of raw materials. That PC was such a mess that Lenovo is definitely off my list.
I want to be able to buy a product without all the extra crap that the producers get paid £15 a unit to add, even if it costs me more. And I want an original software disk with drivers so I can always do a repair or clean install. Is that really too much to ask?
And another thing .......
It seems to me that using those GPU cycles is a really groovy way to crunch. But....
Comparing apples & pears is always interesting/difficult/wasteoftime/essential/etc.
The pears are mildly well described:- _128 Opteron cores on its Cray XT3 super_, _1,024 Power cores on its BlueGene/L super_.
The lemon, sorry apple ( 'tho I doubt it ), are somewhat more nebulous:- _personal supercomputer with two Tesla C1060 GPU co-processors_.
Of course, I am an old fart who has been locked in a cage for a few millennium, so what do I know? Help me out here folks. A _personal supercomputer_ (that well known er, appliance?) consists of what approximately? Running what approximately? At what cost approximately?
Not that I want to get picky or anything.
Paris, 'cos the angle is in the dangle.
As long as we lock ourself into the belief that our gravity/oxygen/temperature/etc is the only way that life could reasonably exist we severely limit our chance of alien rapport.
Think structure/methane/nitrogen/dontknowwhatitisen/etc and hug an alien.
Mines the one with an xxxx in the pocket. Well - they might Bee gorgeous.
It's a netbook for lawds sake - why does it need 120Gb HD?
My view FWIW.
Just put in an 8-16Gb SSD and make sure it can use SDHC cards.
Make the screen 1024x768 and the web will be more usable.
Battery life should be 5Hrs+ whilst using WIFi.
It should not be made by Asus 'cos they rip you off re. battery capacity.
XP is good for people like me (6 months ago)
Linux is good for people like me (now)
Weight should be less than 1.2Kg
Keyboard must go right to sides of the case.
Yada, yada, yada............
.
Dear man.... You appear to be somewhat stressed. What you need is a nice glass of lightly taxed alcoholic beverage and an evening in front of the box watching something original and entertaining.
Hmmmm .... I see what you mean. AARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
Mine is the one with a passport in the pocket.