I'm glad you answered! Vista is a POS, as I said. On that Dell, it was excruciatingly slow. The graphics might have looked great statically, but the fact that every movement on the display took a year to redraw completely cancelled out any visual appeal that it might have had. It's like trying to watch an action scene in a movie where the video is choppier than the sea during a hurricane. Couple that with the fact that every keystroke and click of the mouse took a decade or two to execute in Vista and the reason I couldn't figure the damn thing out is that I don't have the patience to waste my life trying to find my way around a product that should never have existed in the first place and whose user interface was unnecessarily and dramatically changed from something that worked just fine. All said, I wasted half an hour mucking around with it and then I did what I should have done from the get-go: Rebooted into Ubuntu. (And I've never touched a Vista installation since.) Even Ubuntu's default slowcomotion X.org configuration is faster and looks better than Vista. And why get a Mac? Because everything just works. If you want a UNIX-like system, Mac OS X has everything a respectable UNIX system should have, and anything it doesn't can be downloaded and compiled in a matter of minutes. Combined with VMware Fusion, you can do anything, run anything, and open anything on a Mac. It's an OS for getting shit done and it looks damn good and stylish to boot. It's the difference between people who have technical ability and visual style and monkeys banging on keyboards and throwing chairs. Oh, and I don't have any iPods, dude...
Your corporate bosses need to be educated about the maintainability of Perl code versus other languages. So show them the winner of one year's obfuscated C code contest and tell them this language is the latest rage in the software community. Then show them an equally short snippet of Perl code that is written for visual attractiveness and ease of maintenance and explain that this is Perl. It doesn't take a great genius, or even a programmer, to see than clean Perl code is more maintainable than obfuscated C code. Clearly, the Perl is better because it is more readable and maintainable than some obfuscated C code. Once they agree, show them the winner of the obfuscated Perl contest. Then explain once again that the language is not related in any way to how good or bad the code is. It has everything to do with the programmer and nothing to do with the language. So if the latest rage is language X, you can turn that into a nightmare, too.
O'Reilly is selling zillions of Perl programming books. Every bookstore with one shelf of computer books has something about Perl. Obviously, it's not a long-lost forgotten language.
He was happy with XP and 98SE before that. He's happy using the wife's Mac. He couldn't figure Vista out because it's a POS. I know enough about computers that I'm posting bullshit on/. (and coding for four processor architectures) and I can't figure Vista out. He bought the Dell to sell shit on eBay, send/receive emails, browse the web, do a spreadsheet, and nonsense like that. All of those were easy to set up thanks to Ubuntu, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and some 1337 h4x0ring to drop in Sun's official version of Java. I got rid of all the icons and other nonsense. It boots right into his user account and there's (almost) nothing he can push that will fsck anything up. If the software update window pops up, it looks similar to the Mac one and he knows what to do. He's happier than a pig eating slop. I got a skateboard out of it. A damn nice one. So why don't you make like a tree... and get outta here.:-)
The infallible word of God, eh? So this Joe Sixpack dude at work came up one day and asked me what computer to buy. And I spoketh unto him, "Avoid Vista like the plague." And you know what? He bought a Dell with Vista. Six months later, he showed up and admitted that he never did anything with the damn thing because he can't figure it out. So he brought it in, I formatted that shit away and installed a Linux distro in its place (modified to be super duper easy for him to do the 5 or 6 things that he wanted to do with that computer). In exchange, he bought me a new skateboard. He's real happy with it now. Vista. Because monkeys write great operating systems.
The question in the title of this story is: "One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?" The answer is: This is a trick question. PCs are not being downgraded to Windows XP; they are being upgraded to Windows XP.
Let me explain. No, that'll take too long. Let me sum up. Windows XP is actually a very decent operating system, if you know how to install it. For that, there is a program called nLite. This is a program that allows you to insert your factory original Windows XP installation disc, choose basically all the various options that you would, on a normal installation, go through all the Control Panel windows, the registry, and maybe even some INI files, and then it makes you a new Windows XP installation disc that installs Windows with all those options set. So you can go ahead and switch all of Microsoft's defaults to their opposite. You tell it to optimize for best performance; get rid of those cartoonish looking blue and red windows in favor of the Windows 95 style; tell it to display extensions and hidden files; tell it to basically do everything backwards from the way Microsoft installs it normally. And once you do all those things, Windows installs in 30 minutes and runs like a meteor through cyberspace. A few additional utilities like CCleaner (set it to run on startup and check all the boxes) and a better editor than notepad (like UltraEdit-32, commercial software you have to pay for and it's worth every penny ten times over) and whatever other utilities you want... like FileZilla client and server for transferring files around your network (Windows SMB networking sucks -- that is unless you do it through Samba, in which case it works great), Wireshark for figuring out why Computer A can't "see" Computer B when you just transferred a file from Computer B to Computer A and that worked like a charm, those sorts of things. If you set it up using nLite to be a more businesslike OS and a less "let's make everything really easy so even the experts won't be able to move a file from one folder to another" then Windows XP is a wonderful operating system.
Windows Vista? I'll use it when it goes Open Source. (Hmmm, maybe I'd better be careful. Sarge was released; Apple did go Intel; and who knows, maybe Duke Nukem Forever will come out one of these days... You never know.)
The truly sad part of all this is the proof, once again, that if you're a big and resourceful organization, you can win any lawsuit, deserved or not, simply by wearing out the other party. Drag the case on forever. File motion after motion. Sooner or later, you'll win because the other party will run out of resources, or will settle with you just to cut their losses and get the damn thing over with. This is not justice. This is an insult to innocent people everywhere who can be victimized by other people who are using the law as a tool for gain at the expense, pain, and suffering of others. I think there needs to be a much bigger fight, where thousands (if not millions) of people will contribute to an organization that will fight to get the terms of copyright reduced to their original values and to get other ridiculous laws like the DMCA off the books. There is no reason in the world that copyrights should last as long as they do these days, nor is there any reason that the law should heavily favor copyright holders while neglecting the rights of everyone else. I say, if it's over 20 years old, it belongs in the public domain. Furthermore, I think a fund should be set up to collect donations for the victim of this case.
Perhaps instead of expending all that time, effort, money, and resources on suing the whole world (and causing the whole world to expend a similar amount of time, effort, money, and resources to defend itself), SCO should have concentrated on making technically superior products, marketing them effectively, and earning the rewards that come from making good business decisions. But no, they had to go play the lawsuit lottery. Well, playing that lottery is gambling and is no different than going to a casino and throwing millions on a Poker table. Maybe you'll win, but probably you won't.
I have a better idea. How about you go to the checkout stand and let someone else ring up the items. After all, if the store wants my money, they can put a real human there to collect it from me, to answer questions, etc. I can't stand the fact that I have to do all the work of ringing up my items on those automatic machines that say, "Please put the item back in the bag" when I never removed it in the first place. Or, better yet, if they want me to ring up my own stuff, there better be a 10% discount on my entire purchase, because if I'm doing all the work to save them the money of paying a cashier, then I want to save some money too.
I think Seattle made a mistake. No, the mistake isn't spending five million buckazoids on a few lousy toilets. After all, it is the purpose and mission statement of government to spend too much money on crap like this. And when the crap they spent tons of money on turns out to be a bad decision, they should spend even more money on even more crap to compensate for the problem, eventually building an entire bureaucracy around solving a problem that never needed to exist in the first place. So when the toilets became hangouts for crime, they should have hired security guards to stand outside the toilets to charge a security deposit and then check after each user that nothing has been damaged or vandalized before refunding it. This could be streamlined with the use of special toilet cards that you could apply for for a low annual fee of only $29. The card could be scanned upon your entering and leaving the toilet. Lost cards cost $19 to replace. Because all of this would be unfair for the criminals, they should build a structure near each toilet where crimes can be committed, in order to leave the toilets free for public use.
Perhaps they're doing it on purpose, but to harm Linux for the sake of harming Linux; rather to harm Linux in order to avoid its wider acceptance and, as a result, their future need to develop software for three platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux). On the other hand, perhaps if it were easier to code for Linux, more commercial software would be made for it which doesn't suck so badly. On the other (other) hand, perhaps Linux works correctly, which is why that program crashes, whereas Windows is so buggy that whatever would cause it to crash just silently goes and overwrites stuff in memory, which isn't noticed at all because there are so many bugs and viruses affecting Windows that crashes are written off as "oh, I need a new computer" by idiot lusers who don't know that by reinstalling Windows, it will be as if they got a new computer, but without spending the money. Use nLite to customize your Windows installation disc by altering all of Microsoft's defaults to their opposite (for example, DO show file extensions, DO NOT show animations, etc). By switching every option in Windows to its opposite, you actually get a pretty decent operating system. Disclaimer: I use a Mac and run Ubuntu and a homebrew LFS system in VMware. No need for Windows anymore. Between Mac OS X and Linux, you can do anything. Even watch Flash crap in YouTube in one window while executing buildroot in your LFS system in another window while figuring out why Samba isn't working quite the way you want it to in Ubuntu in yet another window. With all these "windows" open, you'd think this is Mac OS X Vista. Which is what will happen when Apple buys out Microsoft in a few years. Or Mac OS XII Bronco, which is what will happen when OS 12 versions are named after horses after OJ Simpson buys a 51% share in the company.
Another very very cool underwater vehicle that does projects like this on a regular basis is Nekton Delta, by Delta Oceanographics. This vehicle has made over 7,000 dives around the world, including being the first vehicle to dive in the extremely salty Dead Sea. A very cool site to check out if you're into underwater exploration.
I have a better idea. This will cure not only AIDS but all other ailments as well in one fell swoop. Invent a technology that permits downloading the entire brain content of a human being into a computer, and then uploading it into a new clone of that same human being. Now, if you get sick with some sort of disease, or if you get maimed or something, all they have to do is pop your brain content into a new body and voila! You're like brand new again.
If this were any other event, these reporters would be arrested a la Dmitry Sklyarov for violation of the DMCA, and should be sentenced to a billion life sentences without the possibility of parole without the unnecessary step of a time-consuming trial. But given that this is a hacking event, the reporters will probably be hailed as heroes. What is the world coming to?
Ok, I read the post you linked to. So Ryanair doesn't want to be on comparison sites because it will force them to drive prices down or lose customers. Point taken. And you know what? In my opinion, the entire airline industry can go screw itself because the service sucks completely. The entire flying experience, which used to be fun a long time ago, now sucks from arrival at the departure airport to departure from the arrival airport. There are no more meals served on planes to save money (well, at least here in the United States; I don't know about Europe where Ryanair operates), and if the current trend in airline security continues, they'll probably make it illegal to bring food past security, just like they've done for drinks, just to make the experience suck a little more. So what should a smart airline do? Let's say what it should NOT: try to avoid being compared, which is impossible because someone could still search the comparison site and then search Ryanair's site, and compare, it's not that difficult to do. That's precisely what I do: I go to a few comparison sites, and then I go to a few specific airlines' sites, search a bunch of options, and choose the best one. Price is not the only factor. I weigh the convenience of the date and time of the outbound and inbound flights and the likelihood of the flight being cancelled due to various factors, such as whether the airline has been blamed for anything particularly bad lately, whether there are connections, that sort of thing. Maybe not everyone operates this way, but rest assured there are people who actually use their brains and try to avoid and reduce the huge amounts of trouble that air travel is nowadays. Since there is so much disgust with airlines everywhere, a smart airline should actually charge more than others and advertise all over the place how they're like airlines were back in the good ol' days before the whole industry went down the toilet. So for me, it has nothing to do with prices shown on a comparison site. It has everything to do with how much all airlines suck and which one will suck the least. I'm sure it's this way for many people. Choosing what sucks less. Kind of like choosing the next American president. Both leading candidates are complete and utter idiots. They are stupid, dumb, unintelligent, ignorant, dense, brainless, mindless, foolish, empty-headed, idiotic, moronic, vacuous, imbecilic, simple-minded, asinine, obtuse, and they lack any form of intelligence whatsoever. In other words, I am suffering from a new condition called electile dysfunction -- the inability to become aroused over either choice of candidate.
I have this amazing product that will solve all your problems. And to make sure that my business is successful, I will punch anyone who dares to send me customers. Consider yourself warned!
A patent on putting a sticker on a card. I have a better idea. I'm gonna patent the Flux Capacitor, which is what makes time travel possible. Oh, wait, someone beat me to it. Shucks.
It'll be like in that Disney movie where Christopher Lloyd was a Martian. The name escapes me right now. They'll find all kinds of fascinating stuff in soil and rocks and it'll be fascinating like crazy. Then, when the power supply dies and the rover freezes forever, it will be about ten feet away from where a city the size of New York would have come into view. That's a hundred quadrillion dollars well spent!
Duh, I think it really sucks that YouTube is doing this. I think that all videos should be in high-def H.264 and if they come in at a lower quality, YouTube uses Google's massive server farm to extrapolate, using math, AI, and other methods, the missing data, a la the computer in Star Trek that can remove a person from a picture who is obscuring someone standing behind that person, then extrapolate the missing information to show that person's face, even though there is no possible way to do that (except in a television series). So you'll be able to upload a JPEG image that has been compressed to such an extent that it appears as one solid color, and YouTube will turn that into the full 220 minutes of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (the 1956 version, not the 1923 silent version). I don't know how that could possibly happen, but this is Google we're talking about.
If the budget is 999 pounds (which is, what, 2000 bucks I think?) to access space, then now is the time to release the warp field technology I've been perfecting in my lab. I'll be the dude who changes the world when some folks from the planet Vulcan pass by Saturn and notice my warp-speed ship flying towards some darn place or another. I think 999 pounds is a typo. There's no possible way, hot air balloon or not.
Absolutely right that CEOs, like presidents, have every right to keep their medical problems to themselves. Imagine if Bob Dole had won the election in 1996?
I've never used any Exchange-based junk, so this might be totally ridiculous, but what if you forward every incoming email to an address that you create for the purpose of archiving the stuff?
If Microsoft is making hardware now, shouldn't they change the name of the company to Microhard? Or perhaps they should keep the name and in 50 years, when they come to the conclusion that there is no more money to be made in computer hardware or software, and they become an ice cream company, Microsoft will be an excellent name to market their popular soft serve.
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I'm glad you answered! Vista is a POS, as I said. On that Dell, it was excruciatingly slow. The graphics might have looked great statically, but the fact that every movement on the display took a year to redraw completely cancelled out any visual appeal that it might have had. It's like trying to watch an action scene in a movie where the video is choppier than the sea during a hurricane. Couple that with the fact that every keystroke and click of the mouse took a decade or two to execute in Vista and the reason I couldn't figure the damn thing out is that I don't have the patience to waste my life trying to find my way around a product that should never have existed in the first place and whose user interface was unnecessarily and dramatically changed from something that worked just fine. All said, I wasted half an hour mucking around with it and then I did what I should have done from the get-go: Rebooted into Ubuntu. (And I've never touched a Vista installation since.) Even Ubuntu's default slowcomotion X.org configuration is faster and looks better than Vista. And why get a Mac? Because everything just works. If you want a UNIX-like system, Mac OS X has everything a respectable UNIX system should have, and anything it doesn't can be downloaded and compiled in a matter of minutes. Combined with VMware Fusion, you can do anything, run anything, and open anything on a Mac. It's an OS for getting shit done and it looks damn good and stylish to boot. It's the difference between people who have technical ability and visual style and monkeys banging on keyboards and throwing chairs. Oh, and I don't have any iPods, dude...
Your corporate bosses need to be educated about the maintainability of Perl code versus other languages. So show them the winner of one year's obfuscated C code contest and tell them this language is the latest rage in the software community. Then show them an equally short snippet of Perl code that is written for visual attractiveness and ease of maintenance and explain that this is Perl. It doesn't take a great genius, or even a programmer, to see than clean Perl code is more maintainable than obfuscated C code. Clearly, the Perl is better because it is more readable and maintainable than some obfuscated C code. Once they agree, show them the winner of the obfuscated Perl contest. Then explain once again that the language is not related in any way to how good or bad the code is. It has everything to do with the programmer and nothing to do with the language. So if the latest rage is language X, you can turn that into a nightmare, too.
O'Reilly is selling zillions of Perl programming books. Every bookstore with one shelf of computer books has something about Perl. Obviously, it's not a long-lost forgotten language.
He was happy with XP and 98SE before that. He's happy using the wife's Mac. He couldn't figure Vista out because it's a POS. I know enough about computers that I'm posting bullshit on /. (and coding for four processor architectures) and I can't figure Vista out. He bought the Dell to sell shit on eBay, send/receive emails, browse the web, do a spreadsheet, and nonsense like that. All of those were easy to set up thanks to Ubuntu, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and some 1337 h4x0ring to drop in Sun's official version of Java. I got rid of all the icons and other nonsense. It boots right into his user account and there's (almost) nothing he can push that will fsck anything up. If the software update window pops up, it looks similar to the Mac one and he knows what to do. He's happier than a pig eating slop. I got a skateboard out of it. A damn nice one. So why don't you make like a tree... and get outta here. :-)
The infallible word of God, eh? So this Joe Sixpack dude at work came up one day and asked me what computer to buy. And I spoketh unto him, "Avoid Vista like the plague." And you know what? He bought a Dell with Vista. Six months later, he showed up and admitted that he never did anything with the damn thing because he can't figure it out. So he brought it in, I formatted that shit away and installed a Linux distro in its place (modified to be super duper easy for him to do the 5 or 6 things that he wanted to do with that computer). In exchange, he bought me a new skateboard. He's real happy with it now. Vista. Because monkeys write great operating systems.
The question in the title of this story is: "One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?" The answer is: This is a trick question. PCs are not being downgraded to Windows XP; they are being upgraded to Windows XP.
Let me explain. No, that'll take too long. Let me sum up. Windows XP is actually a very decent operating system, if you know how to install it. For that, there is a program called nLite. This is a program that allows you to insert your factory original Windows XP installation disc, choose basically all the various options that you would, on a normal installation, go through all the Control Panel windows, the registry, and maybe even some INI files, and then it makes you a new Windows XP installation disc that installs Windows with all those options set. So you can go ahead and switch all of Microsoft's defaults to their opposite. You tell it to optimize for best performance; get rid of those cartoonish looking blue and red windows in favor of the Windows 95 style; tell it to display extensions and hidden files; tell it to basically do everything backwards from the way Microsoft installs it normally. And once you do all those things, Windows installs in 30 minutes and runs like a meteor through cyberspace. A few additional utilities like CCleaner (set it to run on startup and check all the boxes) and a better editor than notepad (like UltraEdit-32, commercial software you have to pay for and it's worth every penny ten times over) and whatever other utilities you want... like FileZilla client and server for transferring files around your network (Windows SMB networking sucks -- that is unless you do it through Samba, in which case it works great), Wireshark for figuring out why Computer A can't "see" Computer B when you just transferred a file from Computer B to Computer A and that worked like a charm, those sorts of things. If you set it up using nLite to be a more businesslike OS and a less "let's make everything really easy so even the experts won't be able to move a file from one folder to another" then Windows XP is a wonderful operating system.
Windows Vista? I'll use it when it goes Open Source. (Hmmm, maybe I'd better be careful. Sarge was released; Apple did go Intel; and who knows, maybe Duke Nukem Forever will come out one of these days... You never know.)
The truly sad part of all this is the proof, once again, that if you're a big and resourceful organization, you can win any lawsuit, deserved or not, simply by wearing out the other party. Drag the case on forever. File motion after motion. Sooner or later, you'll win because the other party will run out of resources, or will settle with you just to cut their losses and get the damn thing over with. This is not justice. This is an insult to innocent people everywhere who can be victimized by other people who are using the law as a tool for gain at the expense, pain, and suffering of others. I think there needs to be a much bigger fight, where thousands (if not millions) of people will contribute to an organization that will fight to get the terms of copyright reduced to their original values and to get other ridiculous laws like the DMCA off the books. There is no reason in the world that copyrights should last as long as they do these days, nor is there any reason that the law should heavily favor copyright holders while neglecting the rights of everyone else. I say, if it's over 20 years old, it belongs in the public domain. Furthermore, I think a fund should be set up to collect donations for the victim of this case.
Perhaps instead of expending all that time, effort, money, and resources on suing the whole world (and causing the whole world to expend a similar amount of time, effort, money, and resources to defend itself), SCO should have concentrated on making technically superior products, marketing them effectively, and earning the rewards that come from making good business decisions. But no, they had to go play the lawsuit lottery. Well, playing that lottery is gambling and is no different than going to a casino and throwing millions on a Poker table. Maybe you'll win, but probably you won't.
I have a better idea. How about you go to the checkout stand and let someone else ring up the items. After all, if the store wants my money, they can put a real human there to collect it from me, to answer questions, etc. I can't stand the fact that I have to do all the work of ringing up my items on those automatic machines that say, "Please put the item back in the bag" when I never removed it in the first place. Or, better yet, if they want me to ring up my own stuff, there better be a 10% discount on my entire purchase, because if I'm doing all the work to save them the money of paying a cashier, then I want to save some money too.
I think Seattle made a mistake. No, the mistake isn't spending five million buckazoids on a few lousy toilets. After all, it is the purpose and mission statement of government to spend too much money on crap like this. And when the crap they spent tons of money on turns out to be a bad decision, they should spend even more money on even more crap to compensate for the problem, eventually building an entire bureaucracy around solving a problem that never needed to exist in the first place. So when the toilets became hangouts for crime, they should have hired security guards to stand outside the toilets to charge a security deposit and then check after each user that nothing has been damaged or vandalized before refunding it. This could be streamlined with the use of special toilet cards that you could apply for for a low annual fee of only $29. The card could be scanned upon your entering and leaving the toilet. Lost cards cost $19 to replace. Because all of this would be unfair for the criminals, they should build a structure near each toilet where crimes can be committed, in order to leave the toilets free for public use.
Perhaps they're doing it on purpose, but to harm Linux for the sake of harming Linux; rather to harm Linux in order to avoid its wider acceptance and, as a result, their future need to develop software for three platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux). On the other hand, perhaps if it were easier to code for Linux, more commercial software would be made for it which doesn't suck so badly. On the other (other) hand, perhaps Linux works correctly, which is why that program crashes, whereas Windows is so buggy that whatever would cause it to crash just silently goes and overwrites stuff in memory, which isn't noticed at all because there are so many bugs and viruses affecting Windows that crashes are written off as "oh, I need a new computer" by idiot lusers who don't know that by reinstalling Windows, it will be as if they got a new computer, but without spending the money. Use nLite to customize your Windows installation disc by altering all of Microsoft's defaults to their opposite (for example, DO show file extensions, DO NOT show animations, etc). By switching every option in Windows to its opposite, you actually get a pretty decent operating system. Disclaimer: I use a Mac and run Ubuntu and a homebrew LFS system in VMware. No need for Windows anymore. Between Mac OS X and Linux, you can do anything. Even watch Flash crap in YouTube in one window while executing buildroot in your LFS system in another window while figuring out why Samba isn't working quite the way you want it to in Ubuntu in yet another window. With all these "windows" open, you'd think this is Mac OS X Vista. Which is what will happen when Apple buys out Microsoft in a few years. Or Mac OS XII Bronco, which is what will happen when OS 12 versions are named after horses after OJ Simpson buys a 51% share in the company.
Another very very cool underwater vehicle that does projects like this on a regular basis is Nekton Delta, by Delta Oceanographics. This vehicle has made over 7,000 dives around the world, including being the first vehicle to dive in the extremely salty Dead Sea. A very cool site to check out if you're into underwater exploration.
Did you know that people with HIV have just as much right to live as do population alarmists such as yourself?
I have a better idea. This will cure not only AIDS but all other ailments as well in one fell swoop. Invent a technology that permits downloading the entire brain content of a human being into a computer, and then uploading it into a new clone of that same human being. Now, if you get sick with some sort of disease, or if you get maimed or something, all they have to do is pop your brain content into a new body and voila! You're like brand new again.
If this were any other event, these reporters would be arrested a la Dmitry Sklyarov for violation of the DMCA, and should be sentenced to a billion life sentences without the possibility of parole without the unnecessary step of a time-consuming trial. But given that this is a hacking event, the reporters will probably be hailed as heroes. What is the world coming to?
Ok, I read the post you linked to. So Ryanair doesn't want to be on comparison sites because it will force them to drive prices down or lose customers. Point taken. And you know what? In my opinion, the entire airline industry can go screw itself because the service sucks completely. The entire flying experience, which used to be fun a long time ago, now sucks from arrival at the departure airport to departure from the arrival airport. There are no more meals served on planes to save money (well, at least here in the United States; I don't know about Europe where Ryanair operates), and if the current trend in airline security continues, they'll probably make it illegal to bring food past security, just like they've done for drinks, just to make the experience suck a little more. So what should a smart airline do? Let's say what it should NOT: try to avoid being compared, which is impossible because someone could still search the comparison site and then search Ryanair's site, and compare, it's not that difficult to do. That's precisely what I do: I go to a few comparison sites, and then I go to a few specific airlines' sites, search a bunch of options, and choose the best one. Price is not the only factor. I weigh the convenience of the date and time of the outbound and inbound flights and the likelihood of the flight being cancelled due to various factors, such as whether the airline has been blamed for anything particularly bad lately, whether there are connections, that sort of thing. Maybe not everyone operates this way, but rest assured there are people who actually use their brains and try to avoid and reduce the huge amounts of trouble that air travel is nowadays. Since there is so much disgust with airlines everywhere, a smart airline should actually charge more than others and advertise all over the place how they're like airlines were back in the good ol' days before the whole industry went down the toilet. So for me, it has nothing to do with prices shown on a comparison site. It has everything to do with how much all airlines suck and which one will suck the least. I'm sure it's this way for many people. Choosing what sucks less. Kind of like choosing the next American president. Both leading candidates are complete and utter idiots. They are stupid, dumb, unintelligent, ignorant, dense, brainless, mindless, foolish, empty-headed, idiotic, moronic, vacuous, imbecilic, simple-minded, asinine, obtuse, and they lack any form of intelligence whatsoever. In other words, I am suffering from a new condition called electile dysfunction -- the inability to become aroused over either choice of candidate.
I have this amazing product that will solve all your problems. And to make sure that my business is successful, I will punch anyone who dares to send me customers. Consider yourself warned!
No, in Back to the Future, Christopher Lloyd was "a real nutcase" according to actor James Tolkan's character, but not a Martian.
A patent on putting a sticker on a card. I have a better idea. I'm gonna patent the Flux Capacitor, which is what makes time travel possible. Oh, wait, someone beat me to it. Shucks.
It'll be like in that Disney movie where Christopher Lloyd was a Martian. The name escapes me right now. They'll find all kinds of fascinating stuff in soil and rocks and it'll be fascinating like crazy. Then, when the power supply dies and the rover freezes forever, it will be about ten feet away from where a city the size of New York would have come into view. That's a hundred quadrillion dollars well spent!
Duh, I think it really sucks that YouTube is doing this. I think that all videos should be in high-def H.264 and if they come in at a lower quality, YouTube uses Google's massive server farm to extrapolate, using math, AI, and other methods, the missing data, a la the computer in Star Trek that can remove a person from a picture who is obscuring someone standing behind that person, then extrapolate the missing information to show that person's face, even though there is no possible way to do that (except in a television series). So you'll be able to upload a JPEG image that has been compressed to such an extent that it appears as one solid color, and YouTube will turn that into the full 220 minutes of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (the 1956 version, not the 1923 silent version). I don't know how that could possibly happen, but this is Google we're talking about.
If the budget is 999 pounds (which is, what, 2000 bucks I think?) to access space, then now is the time to release the warp field technology I've been perfecting in my lab. I'll be the dude who changes the world when some folks from the planet Vulcan pass by Saturn and notice my warp-speed ship flying towards some darn place or another. I think 999 pounds is a typo. There's no possible way, hot air balloon or not.
Absolutely right that CEOs, like presidents, have every right to keep their medical problems to themselves. Imagine if Bob Dole had won the election in 1996?
I've never used any Exchange-based junk, so this might be totally ridiculous, but what if you forward every incoming email to an address that you create for the purpose of archiving the stuff?
If Microsoft is making hardware now, shouldn't they change the name of the company to Microhard? Or perhaps they should keep the name and in 50 years, when they come to the conclusion that there is no more money to be made in computer hardware or software, and they become an ice cream company, Microsoft will be an excellent name to market their popular soft serve.