Posts by kiwi8mail 25 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2011
I had the same experience of Phil Kingston - users wanting to opt out need to enter information into four separate fields on four separate screens - in sequence: first name, last name, email address, and confirm email address.
It seemed needlessly complicated when a single personalised opt-out link could have been provided in the email body. The fact that they make opting-out so unnecessarily long-winded intrigues me.
As a general principle, it is not unknown for tax departments in various countries to find such a ratio acceptable. It seems stupid until you factor in assumptions about the deterrent effects of enforcement, and a calculation done on this basis may show it to be logical form of expenditure. I’m not defending such a tactic of course, and this story doesn’t relate to general taxation in any case. But they may have decided that deterrence is the best policy.
I am incidentally using an installation of Ubuntu that came with a bittorrent client pre-installed, so I’m automatically a suspect… Having said that, I have used it for legitimate purposes – and that does literally include downloading Linux disk images!
I'd hate to be accused of invoking Godwin's law or anything... but was this the same Henry Ford who sympathized with Hitler, and who was a recipant of Nazi Germany's Grand Cross of the German Eagle?
But apart from that, no, I can't abide Windows 8 myself...
I once had an hour free while passing through central Birmingham, and was browsing in the local PC World. Not that I buy there, I was just checking out the laptop market. It was around the time of the release of Vista.
An assistant made a half-hearted effort to sell me something, and I made a half-hearted effort to sound interested. But then I told them that yes, the laptops were all very nice, but I had heard terrible things about Vista, and I mused it would be ideal if they could instead sell laptops with no operating system on them at all.
I knew it was pointless to say such a thing, although I wasn’t deliberately trying to waste their time – I do make genuine purchases (three separate computers since then) from manufacturers who don’t bundle Windows.
“No, we can’t do that,” replied the assistant. “That would be ILLEGAL.”
It seemed the assistant was accidentally mixing up the idea of civil legal liability (in terms of the agreements that manufacturers have with Microsoft), with that of criminal liability. But as a sales tactic, it seems solid gold…
Yes and no. The Saturn 5 had a long and complicated development history, commencing in the late 1950's. The F-1 is important because it was a milestone in rocket engine development. The engine could have been used on any design of moon rocket, but without it (or an equivalent), the moon would not have been reached.
The point is that that work was already well underway prior to Kennedy’s speech.
I did a fresh install of Ubuntu about a week ago, and didn't see any sign of this Amazon search functionality. The suggested method of disabling it gave a message that seem to suggest the component wasn't installed.
Is it because I have switched to the Gnome desktop that this functionality is missing?
Anyone else experience this?
The Betamax/VHS format war comparison is a bit over the top isn't it?
The users who really care can remove the Kindle DRM, download Calibre for free, and convert books between epub and mobi in about 30 seconds.
I presume it won't take too long before the same thing is also possible with KF8.
From memory, he has some character making millions from a device that detects any preaching or religious reference on TV and censors them in some way - I think it was called "Preach-Nix".
Sagan was reacting I think to the evangelical US preachers of the 80's, which of course was when the novel was published.
... some sort of spirit level-type device (mercury switch?) on the launch arm.
The launch arm will presumably see-saw around, and the exact moment of ignition should be set to only happen at an instant when the launchpad is tilting out from the centre (i.e not towards the balloon.
But the point my posting was making was that it is actually more economic to do the opposite of what you suggest - if you want a replacement laptop drive, its far cheaper (in Malpins at least) to buy an external drive and crack open the case, than it is to buy a designated internal laptop drive.
The only thing I can think of is economies of scale - the manufacturers of external drives can buy these components in huge numbers, rather than individual people buying single internal drives at a time.
Is there a mechanical difference between a drive intended to be sold as an external drive, and one designed to be installed into a laptop?
In some cases its seems not – for example, last month I bought a 640GB Seagate external drive, cracked open the case, cloned my laptop Ubuntu install onto it, and slotted it into my laptop – it worked fine.
But can someone tell me why for the same price of that 640GB external drive, the biggest internal laptop drive I could get from Maplin was a 120GB drive?
I’m detecting a certain naivety in the slightly snarky tone of the original news item, and in the comments of many people responding on it.
These displays are one of the few ways that tobacco manufacturers can work to recruit new younger smokers. And they know from their market research that it works.
They are there to make money off you, and don’t care it kills you. Let me reiterate that point – they do NOT CARE if their product kills you. But they do care about recruiting the next generation of customers…
Actually the chainsaw being allowed on a plane story was from New Zealand:
https://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-336512.html
On one hand, as a kiwi I should perhaps be embarrassed by it happening. On the other hand, it's sort of good to know that because NZ is relatively free of the fear of terrorism, the passenger was allowed to board...
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