Posts by The Bug

Mac OS X Lion debuts in July as $29.99 upgrade

Re:tl;dw

It may surprise you to find out that not everywhere in the world is like the UK. Some countries, for example, are a relatively long way away from anywhere else and so building infrastructure to connect those places to the internet is reasonably pricey. Add in low population, and low population density and you get a great place to live and, unfortunately, a small number of people to pay for that pricey infrastructure.

So, whilst I am able to connect to the net through fast VDSL, I am unable to download a great deal without hitting my broadband limit and thus having to either pay large amounts of money for overage or having my connection speed dialed down to dial up speeds.

Having to use half of my download cap on upgrading the operating system isn't my prefered option. So instead I will be forced to buy a dodgy copy on a DVD from a local market. Which seems a little like shooting yourself in the foot when, if Apple were to sell me the DVD instead, they would be the ones getting the money!

Re: whine

What about those of us with 10GB allowances with no Apple Stores in the country? At least give us the option of buying it on DVD!

Google menaces penguins with Street View Antarctica

Oceania

Arguing that Europe and Asia should be one continent as the split is political not geographical and then saying that Oceania should be a continent is a little mixed up as Oceania is simply a political continent made up of the geographical continents of Australia, Zealandia, various atolls and other minor bits of, mostly submerged, continental shelf.

So you could say that Europe and Asia should be one continent but then you have to allow for Zealandia being one too.

Apple preempts Win 7 with fresh iMacs, Macbooks

@ Andrew Johnson 1

Take your Mac Mini back to the store for a refund - I think that you have a month!

I did it with my iMac when the intel chips came out a couple of weeks after I bought the G5 - no problems, they were happy to refund it and replace it with an Intel.

45th Mersenne prime revealed

The point

I have always understood, but perhaps incorrectly, that the point is that prime numbers are, for some reason, useful in encryption technologies. So having stupendously large ones allows for really pretty good encryption.

Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming

Re: Open Uni degree

I see you OU degree and raise you an Earth Sciences Masters from Cambridge.

Man made climate change is happening - most "skeptics" will agree on that. The climate in Central London for example is very different to that of the Home Counties. Furthermore cutting down forests and turning the land into agricultural fields will also change the local climate; as does irrigation and other changes in ecology due to animals introduced by mankind.

But as to whether CO2 will send the world into some sort of hellish inferno I think that most sensible people will agree that the Earth's climate, whilst being a chaotic system, is also well buffered such that positive and negative feedbacks will generally balance each other out to provide a reasonably stable climatic system. The only large scale changes to this are when the system is affected by large scale long-term changes like shifts in continents which change oceanic currents and thus rainfall patterns.

Increases in CO2 levels will almost never change the climate other than in extreme circumstances (for example a snowball Earth type environment could potentially have been ended by CO2 - but this is due to the main negative feedback (water vapour in all of its forms) being unavailable due to the frozen nature of the planet).

PunterNet thanks Harriet for massive upswing

Or better still ...

Legalise prostitution like most civilised countries. This therefore takes the trade out of the hands of traffickers and pimps and puts it into the hands of independent women and licensed brothels.

Tax gets paid on income and VAT on "services" and everyone is happy.

But that won't happen because some bloke in a dress with a funny hat believes that sex is bad.

Gmail in massive web outage

Down in NZ too

I can't get on Gmail here in New Zealand either.

Personally I blame Microsoft ...

Facebook slims down for developing countries

New Zealand

The trial is over in little old developing New Zealand too.

That said our bandwidth does cost a bomb so maybe they have assessed our telecoms infrastructure as being to third world standards!

Tasered Oz man bursts into flames

What is wrong with sniffing petrol

So the guy gets a little high and may cause himself brain damage - assuming he is an adult then that is entirely his decision to make.

It is only if he starts threatening other people that police should get involved.

People should fight for their rights to do whatever they bloody well want so long as it doesn't affect others. So good on the guy for going for the police with a lighter and petrol - bloody nanny state facists!

Visa dings teen for $23-quadrillion restaurant charge

Airmiles

Hope he still gets the airmiles for the purchase - or, better still, 1% cashback!

NHS Direct gets to be number one, one, one

Emergency

Over in these parts the emergency number is 111 - I guess the phone system isn't as old as the UKs so you don't get weather (or badgers) dialing the number.

You are also encouraged to call 111 if you aren't sure if it is an emergency or not and simply want to get through to you local police station.

Penguins 'cos they live at the beach down the road from me.

NASA, Japan (nearly) finish topographic map of Earth

Re: jsp

I'm sorry but colorized (or colourised) is not a word in English. My English dictionary doesn't contain it and searching for the English spelling of the word brings up a list of American sites. It may, therefore, be a word in American but it is most definitely not a work in English.

Colorized?

In what language is "colorized" a word? Surely it should be coloured or, at the worst, colored. But colorized?

Fiancée discovers boyf is grumble flick stud

Playmobil

If there isn't a playmobil reconstruction then it didn't happen!