As opposed to cash transactions where if you lose the receipt or never get one are completely screwed if the other part claims they never got the money?
Then get a receipt and don't lose it. Don't assume that everyone is disorganised.
Studies have shown that people spend on average considerably more (15%+) simply by paying with plastic vs. cash. The reason? Cash is actually painful to part with. Try it out on yourself sometime.
Then I am a long long way from your average person, and I suspect most Slashdotters are too
I can honestly say that is not a factor in my decision whatsoever. In fact I HATE buying anything, not because of the money but because of the experience - doing shopping, seeing the tat and hype in the shops, surrounded by smart-arsed salesment and "consumers" with their shrieking kids. Apart from the waste of time and fuel actually getting there. I have to go some distance to significant shops (8 or 20) miles, I and I don't go unless I really need to buy something, and then I tend to buy bulk to save trips. I also keep all sorts of junk at home, like I save the wood from old furniture so I don't need to buy new wood much.
I don't even decide how to pay until it comes to paying. In some ways I prefer to get rid of the cash because it is heavy - I have a large cash box in front of me on my desk now full of low-value coins I would like to get rid of when I get the chance.
Without seeing his solution (no links given in TFA) and peer review I cannot get excited yet.
I had not realised this is an unsolved problem. How then does artillery calculate elevation, and how did those WW2 battleships, with only electro-mechanical 'calculators', and AA gun 'Predictors' work it out? Just from empirical tables? I do have vague memories of doing this in Applied Maths at school, even taking air resistance into account. Just asking, like I'm just being naive and curious.
But is this media hype? I have known people who have gained an achievement and were then "picked up" by the media, even national media, out of all proportion to the achievement. The media always want stories.
Im 25 years old and i never had a girlfriend. Why? It just happened that way.
Sounds a bit like me at that age. I was going crazy with sexual frustration. But I met some nice girls from about that age in dating clubs, no sex at first, but just knowing that a girl liked my company kept me sane.
i've actually tried dating sites and other means, but it doesn't really work for me for some reason.
This is nothing to do with it being dating clubs or sites, it would be no different how you met them. After the first 10 minutes talking about the dating site, conversation should move on. Try to think why it did not work. With some girls it just won't whatever you do/say, but with others it should. Tips : You need to [try to] take an interest in their life rather than tell them about yours. Don't get too serious about anything, no politics/religion/issues. Don't tell them you never had a GF or ask them what is "wrong" with you. Don't rush things, don't ask for sex on the first date, use old-fashioned courtesy, don't do anything or appear to be anything off-beat, and make them feel safe with you.
Also, don't be "overawed" by things. I thought dating clubs would be too "good" for me, only for beautiful" people, ditto speed dating; they are not. Nevertheless my first serious GF (from a dating club) was actually an ex-Bunny girl from the London Playboy Club, but was not the brash whore you might imagine - she was shy, poor and a bit low-class, and she was somewhat overawed by ME because I had a good job and education. Gorgeous figure though.
My friend who is married met his wife at a LARP 10 years ago, i tried going
I did not know what LARP was - looks like actors stuff. In at the deep end for a geek. Speed dating would be better.
Does he by chance have trouble differentiating reality and fiction?...
You could solve this quite easily by explaining that porn isn't reality.
Those making the porn are real enough. Believe it or not, those are really people you are seeing, and those things have happened.
In what sense is porn not real? Straight porn is no different from what many or most people do, in fact stuff I have done myself. The only "unreal" element is the presence of a cameraman (or woman), but the viewer is not concious of him/her. Even so, some porn I have seen on the web is obviously filmed from a tripod, so I guess it originates from amateur couples with no third party present. Nor are the "models" necessarily perfect - there is a whole genre of fat and/or ugly porn.
Perhaps you are talking about feature length porn films, with flimsy plots. They are "unreal" in the sense that the plot is fiction. However, most porn on the web is short clips of maybe up to 20 minutes, with no story, just sex. These are not "fiction" in any sense, but a record of an actual event.
There is stuff I have never done, and would not do, but no doubt some people do, and not just to make porn for the internet. It is real all right.
What I find disturbing is how and where the hell they find the women who agree to make this stuff, the supply of whom seems to be inexhaustable. Especially I have rarely found any woman who even wanted a conversation with me. I have certainly never known a woman who would make a porn film, even though I have met one or two who have agreed to tasteful "glamour" still photos. Is there some parallel society to which I have never been admitted? Are they being forced? Are they all doped up?
tmosley wrote:- Straight women find status, power, and money attractive.
Bollocks.
I have status, power, and money, plus old-fashioned courtesy to women, education and IQ, which we are also told women like. So explain why, whenever I have ever tried a cold approach to women, I am told to fuck off. They never give themselves a chance to find out about the status, power and money. A man cannot very well carry a notice round his neck, saying like "I have a good job and a 9" dick", but a woman OTOH CAN show her cleavage and legs, things that are high up on most men's list even if they are not everything. Now I will only speak to a woman if we have exchanged introductions in writing first (ie dating club).
In case you are wondering, I don't think I am particularly bad looking either - look a bit like Orlando Bloom, I'm told, in his blond phase. Friends (male) don't understand it. The only explanation that makes sense is that I do not have an expressive face. Women hate you for that.
The three things women like first and foremost, I have found by observation and experience, is ENTERTAINMENT, ENTERTAINMENT, and ENTERTAINMENT. If you don't look like you are an entertainer from the word GO (noting that entertainers have expressive faces), forget about cold approaches.
But hope you don't mind me asking about the elephant in the room. What do you do for sex? Hookers? Spanking the Monkey? Not interested?
I'm serious. It has always been a mystery to me regarding contented batchelor types. Plenty of examples in real life and fiction - Sherlock Holmes, Cecil Rhodes, Richard Hannay, Field Marshal Montgomery (widowed), Hitler (married later in life - but whoops!! Godwin's Law).
You have to wonder what advertising actually costs the economy, and the planet.
Apart from the vast industry it is, employing people, some quite able, who could be employed doing more useful things, there is the cost of people's time having to wait through adverts to see a TV show. I usually record TV films on VCR and skip the adverts when I view later, but I notice that in a 2 hour film there is at least 30 minutes of adverts on some of the UK minor channels. Multiply the value of that time by millions of people.
Before anyone says it is essential for the economy, most adverts aim at robbing Peter to pay Paul. Thus I see an advert for Ford cars, then a few minutes later one for VW, then one for Audi. Cancelling each other out in fact.
Or they are trying to persuade people to buy things they don't need, like a new kitchen, ripping out the old one for landfill, just because the new kitchen advert featured self-closing drawer or some such gimmick.
Personally, seeing something in a patronising advert makes me put a black mark against it. I have seen adverts for the car that I drive that are so silly it makes me feel ashamed to be seen in it next day.
Yes, but they still waste my time and are almost as annoying. They keep on about an upcoming show so much that I start to get bored with it before it is even broadcast. This sort of crap from the BBC has increased significantly in recent years.
I don't hate MS anymore due to the fact they have a few quite products now and Gates is trying to do something good
I guess you are referring to Gates' charities. But what else can he do with so much money that it would be physically impossible to spend it on himself over the remainder of his lifetime? Money he got from you and me by foul means remember. Sorry, I'm not impressed.
He is following the path of other staggeringly wealthy men as they got old and started to worry how history would record them, guys who were total arse-holes during their business careers. Nobel for example (described in his lifetime as "The Merchant of Death"), Carnegie and Rockefeller.
As you illustrate yourself, some people are taken in by it.
Seeing that your comment is addressed to "you", in reading it I take that to mean "me". I am perfectly capable of chosing a power cord appropriate for the load, thanks.
Let's forget that your radio cord can't handle the wattage of the toaster and it starts a fire that burns the house down.
Don't cords have fuses in the plug in your neck of the woods? Oh, in the USA perhaps they don't.
As for time, three hours to change a toaster cord? What else are you doing at the same time?
And in your calcs you forgot to include the time to go out and buy a new toaster. Though in a large city (Bristol, UK) I would need to travel 10 miles to the main retail park here, through traffic, or 2 miles into the centre through very heavy traffic and then spend ages trying to park - I would probably have to park a mile away and walk the rest. The whole expedition could easily be getting on for three hours.
For obtaining a power cord, a lifetime of saving things like power cords from otherwise scrapped things means I can source one at home.
Actually, time is the only thing the human race HAS got in plenty. Several billion years to go before the sun finally blows up I understand. OTOH the resources like the copper in power leads will run out if a generation or two with people like you tossing it away.
"People bring in broken items: a skirt with a hole in it, an iron that no longer steams, and they fix each other's stuff and meet their neighbors. Now that's an idea worth keeping."
Special case of Tragedy of the Commons coming up......
There are people who will do the repairing, and others who will sit back and let them do it.
I have always been a repairer and saver. I hate throwing stuff away that can be repaired - partly because older stuff is often much better. Eg I'm using an IBM At keyboard right now, 20(?) years old that I have taken to pieces to clean at least 5 times. I have repaired huge amounts of stuff over the years - cars, PCs, washing machines, furniture and I have built up a vast arrray of tools and stock of metals, fasteners, timber, electrical components etc.
However I have never met anyone else remotely into repairing things at this level. I have done plenty of repairs for "friends", and things like designing their kitchens, with, I am afraid to say, little thanks (let alone a returned favour), maybe because they have no idea of the work and knowledge involved. Or maybe they are just self-centred. I feel that they regard me in the same light as the Eloi would regard a Morlock. In fact I believe I am the prototype Morlock.
The Eloi are pretty and the Morlocks are not
The Eloi are dumb and the Morlocks are not
The Eloi wear clothes, the Morlocks do not
The Eloi eat fruit, the Morlocks seriously do not.
Perhaps most important, the Morlocks work and the Eloi do not.
Now I only repair things for the immediate family.
DerekLyons wrote:- Not once [had a unexpected pop up from porn site.. that displayed possibly illegal content] in all my years of browsing some pretty shady corners of the web
Hard to believe that. I have looked at porn sites, and most of them turn out to be directories of other porn sites that also turn out to be directories (the InterWebs is ridiculously awash with directories in all areas). Following a link often leads to nothing like you would expect, like you might click on a thumbnail link that promises big tits and find it leads to a S&M directory or a small tits directory, or most likely another general directory. Step back and click the same thumbnail again and it takes you somewehere else at random. The Joy of Javascript I suppose.
The point is that you cannot predict where a link will take you. I have unintentionally found myself in a directory with thumbnails that distinctly look like under-age sex, with names like "Barely Legal Teens". At least they did not claim to be CP, but I am not sure how a court would decide whether it is.
I back out of it, but I don't know what it might leave in my cache.
...... behold, a party came into existence that had very few agendas safe one: Environment. And the second time they stood in elections, they gained a few seats in the parliament. And it grew because the established parties continued to ignore the issue.
30 years later the Greens are an established force in pretty much every parliament in Europe..... The Greens became part of the political landscape in Europe.
The Greens have only become serious politically because they ceased to be "green" and became just another socialist group. That happened when they dropped their target of reducing population numbers (in case it caused "misunderstanding").
In reality very few people, whether politicians or Joe Public, give a toss about the environment; or rather they define "The Environment" as something important to themselves, such as the presence or otherwise of something they have a personal issue or paranoia about, like food preservatives or background radiation. When "travellers" moved into a field by my town, the nearby residents suddenly became very "concerned" that the field might have some industrial waste in it, so the travellers should be moved on "for their own safety". That is the nature of most people's "concern" about the environment - to suit themselves.
That is not to say that posing and gesturing as being "Green" is not highly fashionable right now, such as my finding the instruction manual for my new $1000 camera looks like it is printed on toilet paper - and tells me on the cover that I should re-cycle it. Yet I see free magazines on better paper handed out and tossed away daily, by the ton.
"With the cost of gas and oil on its way up it's a wonder that any one would be against the use of renewable energy sources."
How about them being so damn ugly and intrusive. They are paricularly distracting because the blades are moving - the human eye/brain is tuned to be very sensitive to movement. They also tend to be put up in very conspicuous places, like on hill tops.
Here in the UK there is not much pleasant unspoiled contryside remaining - you know, places where you can go for a hike and get away from crowds, cities, offices, basements and industry. [Yes, I know many/.ers never want to leave their basements so this might not mean anything to some of you]. But if the wind farm fans (who have the nerve to call themselves "green") get their way these remaining scenic places would soon be ruined as they become wind generation sites.
This issue is the last ditch in the attack on the English countryside. Before anyone says NIMBY, I don't want to see these things anywhere.
It is about time people in the Western world went back to doing and making their own things instead of expecting the modern version of slaves to do it for them, either in the back yard or tastefully out-of-sight on the other side of the world.
We got to this point in consumer technological advancement primarily because of Microsofts marketing..... That alone changed the world. Forever.
That's is why people hate MS. It's the truth that never should have been. To the parent, it pains them too much to admit it. It's where idealism and reality clash head on.
What tosh. I was around in the 1980s when there were plenty of non-intel and non-MS personal computer stuff around both in corporates and for the home. People were very excited about it. I had an Amstrad at home myself.
Most of this stuff fell by the wayside because people went Intel/MS crazy. But if Intel/MS had never existed this area would still have gone forward fast. Probably faster.
Wasn't it MS who held PCs back for 10 years by pedalling their rubbish Win3.x, W95-WinME stuff long after they could have given us a lightweight version of WinNT, which even entry-level PCs wer capable of running by then.
What is wrong with tools exactly? If you don't have any I recommend them, they are dead cheap these days - I even got a set of 1/4" drive screwdriver and hex socket heads with a ratchet handle, ideal for taking PCs apart, free with some petrol once.
Where I am typing right now, I could swivel my chair and reach several tool sets, ranging from a set of jewellers screwdrivers to a hefty carry case I take with me in my car.
What are you doing opening a computer case without tools to hand, anyway? This is Slashdot, a techy's site.
I know the PS/2s you refer to. We had them at work and I took one apart once to take the HDD home (to install OS/2 on it, dual boot). The construction was horrible, looked like it was meant to be banged together by Taiwanese 10-year-olds with their fists. Hardly "finger friendly" - to get the HDD out I had to compress the nasty barbed plastic ends of some spacer pillars to get them out of their holes, risking breaking the plastic.
I had OS/2 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0. AFAIR there were apps included, and in the case of 3.0 (Warp) there was a set of about 10 floppies with mauve labels containing native apps such as editors and terminal emulators. (The OS itself came on about 15 floppies with red labels).
There was a combined dialer/browser which went to IBM's own internet portal (which sucked), and another dialer/browser with the catchy name "Dial other internet providers".
In the UK it was the reverse of that; Windows NT cost about £250 and OS/2 less than £100 AFAIR (I bought both).
I don't know what Windows-for-DOS (3.x) cost as it usually came with the PC.
The "fierce and underhand business tactics" were nothing to do with these retail prices, but about the pre-loading deals MS did with the PC suppliers. Such as refusing them any bulk discount if they sold a single PC without Windows pre-loaded.
I did manage to buy a PC with a blank HDD with a £25 discount (from Vale in Evesham) in about 1994, but it was an under-the-counter affair. I was a newbie at the time and did not realise it could be an issue, I simply asked for it that way, same as I might ask for a car without a sunroof I did not need.
What is Windows 3 if it isn't Windows 3.x (ie 3.0, 3.1 or 3.11)?
The GP said IBM "pivoted hard to.. 16 bit". A bit overstated, but they did waste a lot of effort getting OS/2 to run on 16-bit 286's. This is because at the time they (and many people) believed that 286s would exist alongside 386s for a long time to come, a bit like (eg) entry-level Nikon cameras exist alongside more expensive professional models. That was before the processor "arms race" began.
Not that dissimilar today, when many people say they do not see the point of moving from 32-bit to 64-bit.
You wrote:- You seem to have trouble reading..... OS/2 was released until 1994, several years later
And you have trouble typing? I was using OS/2 2.0 in 1992. 1994 was when OS/2 3.0 (Warp) was released, and according to Wikipedia, the last version of Warp 4 was released in 2001
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to cash transactions where if you lose the receipt or never get one are completely screwed if the other part claims they never got the money?
Then get a receipt and don't lose it. Don't assume that everyone is disorganised.
Studies have shown that people spend on average considerably more (15%+) simply by paying with plastic vs. cash. The reason? Cash is actually painful to part with. Try it out on yourself sometime.
Then I am a long long way from your average person, and I suspect most Slashdotters are too
I can honestly say that is not a factor in my decision whatsoever. In fact I HATE buying anything, not because of the money but because of the experience - doing shopping, seeing the tat and hype in the shops, surrounded by smart-arsed salesment and "consumers" with their shrieking kids. Apart from the waste of time and fuel actually getting there. I have to go some distance to significant shops (8 or 20) miles, I and I don't go unless I really need to buy something, and then I tend to buy bulk to save trips. I also keep all sorts of junk at home, like I save the wood from old furniture so I don't need to buy new wood much.
I don't even decide how to pay until it comes to paying. In some ways I prefer to get rid of the cash because it is heavy - I have a large cash box in front of me on my desk now full of low-value coins I would like to get rid of when I get the chance.
Without seeing his solution (no links given in TFA) and peer review I cannot get excited yet.
I had not realised this is an unsolved problem. How then does artillery calculate elevation, and how did those WW2 battleships, with only electro-mechanical 'calculators', and AA gun 'Predictors' work it out? Just from empirical tables? I do have vague memories of doing this in Applied Maths at school, even taking air resistance into account. Just asking, like I'm just being naive and curious.
But is this media hype? I have known people who have gained an achievement and were then "picked up" by the media, even national media, out of all proportion to the achievement. The media always want stories.
And this : http://www.vip.it/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Shouryya-Ray-256x300.jpg is a German 16 year-old?
Im 25 years old and i never had a girlfriend. Why? It just happened that way.
Sounds a bit like me at that age. I was going crazy with sexual frustration. But I met some nice girls from about that age in dating clubs, no sex at first, but just knowing that a girl liked my company kept me sane.
i've actually tried dating sites and other means, but it doesn't really work for me for some reason.
This is nothing to do with it being dating clubs or sites, it would be no different how you met them. After the first 10 minutes talking about the dating site, conversation should move on. Try to think why it did not work. With some girls it just won't whatever you do/say, but with others it should. Tips : You need to [try to] take an interest in their life rather than tell them about yours. Don't get too serious about anything, no politics/religion/issues. Don't tell them you never had a GF or ask them what is "wrong" with you. Don't rush things, don't ask for sex on the first date, use old-fashioned courtesy, don't do anything or appear to be anything off-beat, and make them feel safe with you.
Also, don't be "overawed" by things. I thought dating clubs would be too "good" for me, only for beautiful" people, ditto speed dating; they are not. Nevertheless my first serious GF (from a dating club) was actually an ex-Bunny girl from the London Playboy Club, but was not the brash whore you might imagine - she was shy, poor and a bit low-class, and she was somewhat overawed by ME because I had a good job and education. Gorgeous figure though.
My friend who is married met his wife at a LARP 10 years ago, i tried going
I did not know what LARP was - looks like actors stuff. In at the deep end for a geek. Speed dating would be better.
Does he by chance have trouble differentiating reality and fiction?...
You could solve this quite easily by explaining that porn isn't reality.
Those making the porn are real enough. Believe it or not, those are really people you are seeing, and those things have happened.
In what sense is porn not real? Straight porn is no different from what many or most people do, in fact stuff I have done myself. The only "unreal" element is the presence of a cameraman (or woman), but the viewer is not concious of him/her. Even so, some porn I have seen on the web is obviously filmed from a tripod, so I guess it originates from amateur couples with no third party present. Nor are the "models" necessarily perfect - there is a whole genre of fat and/or ugly porn.
Perhaps you are talking about feature length porn films, with flimsy plots. They are "unreal" in the sense that the plot is fiction. However, most porn on the web is short clips of maybe up to 20 minutes, with no story, just sex. These are not "fiction" in any sense, but a record of an actual event.
There is stuff I have never done, and would not do, but no doubt some people do, and not just to make porn for the internet. It is real all right.
What I find disturbing is how and where the hell they find the women who agree to make this stuff, the supply of whom seems to be inexhaustable. Especially I have rarely found any woman who even wanted a conversation with me. I have certainly never known a woman who would make a porn film, even though I have met one or two who have agreed to tasteful "glamour" still photos. Is there some parallel society to which I have never been admitted? Are they being forced? Are they all doped up?
tmosley wrote :- Straight women find status, power, and money attractive.
Bollocks.
I have status, power, and money, plus old-fashioned courtesy to women, education and IQ, which we are also told women like. So explain why, whenever I have ever tried a cold approach to women, I am told to fuck off. They never give themselves a chance to find out about the status, power and money. A man cannot very well carry a notice round his neck, saying like "I have a good job and a 9" dick", but a woman OTOH CAN show her cleavage and legs, things that are high up on most men's list even if they are not everything. Now I will only speak to a woman if we have exchanged introductions in writing first (ie dating club).
In case you are wondering, I don't think I am particularly bad looking either - look a bit like Orlando Bloom, I'm told, in his blond phase. Friends (male) don't understand it. The only explanation that makes sense is that I do not have an expressive face. Women hate you for that.
The three things women like first and foremost, I have found by observation and experience, is ENTERTAINMENT, ENTERTAINMENT, and ENTERTAINMENT. If you don't look like you are an entertainer from the word GO (noting that entertainers have expressive faces), forget about cold approaches.
Looks like you have got your life sorted.
But hope you don't mind me asking about the elephant in the room. What do you do for sex? Hookers? Spanking the Monkey? Not interested?
I'm serious. It has always been a mystery to me regarding contented batchelor types. Plenty of examples in real life and fiction - Sherlock Holmes, Cecil Rhodes, Richard Hannay, Field Marshal Montgomery (widowed), Hitler (married later in life - but whoops!! Godwin's Law).
You have to wonder what advertising actually costs the economy, and the planet.
Apart from the vast industry it is, employing people, some quite able, who could be employed doing more useful things, there is the cost of people's time having to wait through adverts to see a TV show. I usually record TV films on VCR and skip the adverts when I view later, but I notice that in a 2 hour film there is at least 30 minutes of adverts on some of the UK minor channels. Multiply the value of that time by millions of people.
Before anyone says it is essential for the economy, most adverts aim at robbing Peter to pay Paul. Thus I see an advert for Ford cars, then a few minutes later one for VW, then one for Audi. Cancelling each other out in fact.
Or they are trying to persuade people to buy things they don't need, like a new kitchen, ripping out the old one for landfill, just because the new kitchen advert featured self-closing drawer or some such gimmick.
Personally, seeing something in a patronising advert makes me put a black mark against it. I have seen adverts for the car that I drive that are so silly it makes me feel ashamed to be seen in it next day.
Yes, but they still waste my time and are almost as annoying. They keep on about an upcoming show so much that I start to get bored with it before it is even broadcast. This sort of crap from the BBC has increased significantly in recent years.
Wrote :-
I don't hate MS anymore due to the fact they have a few quite products now and Gates is trying to do something good
I guess you are referring to Gates' charities. But what else can he do with so much money that it would be physically impossible to spend it on himself over the remainder of his lifetime? Money he got from you and me by foul means remember. Sorry, I'm not impressed.
He is following the path of other staggeringly wealthy men as they got old and started to worry how history would record them, guys who were total arse-holes during their business careers. Nobel for example (described in his lifetime as "The Merchant of Death"), Carnegie and Rockefeller.
As you illustrate yourself, some people are taken in by it.
Seeing that your comment is addressed to "you", in reading it I take that to mean "me". I am perfectly capable of chosing a power cord appropriate for the load, thanks.
Let's forget that your radio cord can't handle the wattage of the toaster and it starts a fire that burns the house down.
Don't cords have fuses in the plug in your neck of the woods? Oh, in the USA perhaps they don't.
As for time, three hours to change a toaster cord? What else are you doing at the same time?
And in your calcs you forgot to include the time to go out and buy a new toaster. Though in a large city (Bristol, UK) I would need to travel 10 miles to the main retail park here, through traffic, or 2 miles into the centre through very heavy traffic and then spend ages trying to park - I would probably have to park a mile away and walk the rest. The whole expedition could easily be getting on for three hours.
For obtaining a power cord, a lifetime of saving things like power cords from otherwise scrapped things means I can source one at home.
Actually, time is the only thing the human race HAS got in plenty. Several billion years to go before the sun finally blows up I understand. OTOH the resources like the copper in power leads will run out if a generation or two with people like you tossing it away.
"People bring in broken items: a skirt with a hole in it, an iron that no longer steams, and they fix each other's stuff and meet their neighbors. Now that's an idea worth keeping."
......
:- http://www.shmoop.com/time-machine-hg-wells/plot-analysis.html
Special case of Tragedy of the Commons coming up
There are people who will do the repairing, and others who will sit back and let them do it.
I have always been a repairer and saver. I hate throwing stuff away that can be repaired - partly because older stuff is often much better. Eg I'm using an IBM At keyboard right now, 20(?) years old that I have taken to pieces to clean at least 5 times. I have repaired huge amounts of stuff over the years - cars, PCs, washing machines, furniture and I have built up a vast arrray of tools and stock of metals, fasteners, timber, electrical components etc.
However I have never met anyone else remotely into repairing things at this level. I have done plenty of repairs for "friends", and things like designing their kitchens, with, I am afraid to say, little thanks (let alone a returned favour), maybe because they have no idea of the work and knowledge involved. Or maybe they are just self-centred. I feel that they regard me in the same light as the Eloi would regard a Morlock. In fact I believe I am the prototype Morlock.
From
The Eloi are pretty and the Morlocks are not
The Eloi are dumb and the Morlocks are not
The Eloi wear clothes, the Morlocks do not
The Eloi eat fruit, the Morlocks seriously do not.
Perhaps most important, the Morlocks work and the Eloi do not.
Now I only repair things for the immediate family.
DerekLyons wrote :- Not once [had a unexpected pop up from porn site .. that displayed possibly illegal content] in all my years of browsing some pretty shady corners of the web
Hard to believe that. I have looked at porn sites, and most of them turn out to be directories of other porn sites that also turn out to be directories (the InterWebs is ridiculously awash with directories in all areas). Following a link often leads to nothing like you would expect, like you might click on a thumbnail link that promises big tits and find it leads to a S&M directory or a small tits directory, or most likely another general directory. Step back and click the same thumbnail again and it takes you somewehere else at random. The Joy of Javascript I suppose.
The point is that you cannot predict where a link will take you. I have unintentionally found myself in a directory with thumbnails that distinctly look like under-age sex, with names like "Barely Legal Teens". At least they did not claim to be CP, but I am not sure how a court would decide whether it is.
I back out of it, but I don't know what it might leave in my cache.
Seems quite common on /. these days that the First Post is a deliberate wind-up, as if from a MS shill for example as in this topic.
I guess these are deliberate plants, to get the discussion going.
Just to say I posted the parent comment, as AC accidentally.
...... behold, a party came into existence that had very few agendas safe one: Environment. And the second time they stood in elections, they gained a few seats in the parliament. And it grew because the established parties continued to ignore the issue.
30 years later the Greens are an established force in pretty much every parliament in Europe..... The Greens became part of the political landscape in Europe.
The Greens have only become serious politically because they ceased to be "green" and became just another socialist group. That happened when they dropped their target of reducing population numbers (in case it caused "misunderstanding").
In reality very few people, whether politicians or Joe Public, give a toss about the environment; or rather they define "The Environment" as something important to themselves, such as the presence or otherwise of something they have a personal issue or paranoia about, like food preservatives or background radiation. When "travellers" moved into a field by my town, the nearby residents suddenly became very "concerned" that the field might have some industrial waste in it, so the travellers should be moved on "for their own safety". That is the nature of most people's "concern" about the environment - to suit themselves.
That is not to say that posing and gesturing as being "Green" is not highly fashionable right now, such as my finding the instruction manual for my new $1000 camera looks like it is printed on toilet paper - and tells me on the cover that I should re-cycle it. Yet I see free magazines on better paper handed out and tossed away daily, by the ton.
"With the cost of gas and oil on its way up it's a wonder that any one would be against the use of renewable energy sources."
/.ers never want to leave their basements so this might not mean anything to some of you]. But if the wind farm fans (who have the nerve to call themselves "green") get their way these remaining scenic places would soon be ruined as they become wind generation sites.
How about them being so damn ugly and intrusive. They are paricularly distracting because the blades are moving - the human eye/brain is tuned to be very sensitive to movement. They also tend to be put up in very conspicuous places, like on hill tops.
Here in the UK there is not much pleasant unspoiled contryside remaining - you know, places where you can go for a hike and get away from crowds, cities, offices, basements and industry. [Yes, I know many
This issue is the last ditch in the attack on the English countryside. Before anyone says NIMBY, I don't want to see these things anywhere.
Why is this [rickb928] modded Troll?
It is about time people in the Western world went back to doing and making their own things instead of expecting the modern version of slaves to do it for them, either in the back yard or tastefully out-of-sight on the other side of the world.
Ditch Gnome 3. Go for KDE, I use it on OpenSUSE
You need Windows for e-mail, documanting and diagramming? What the heck are you doing?!
We got to this point in consumer technological advancement primarily because of Microsofts marketing. .... That alone changed the world. Forever.
That's is why people hate MS. It's the truth that never should have been. To the parent, it pains them too much to admit it. It's where idealism and reality clash head on.
What tosh. I was around in the 1980s when there were plenty of non-intel and non-MS personal computer stuff around both in corporates and for the home. People were very excited about it. I had an Amstrad at home myself.
Most of this stuff fell by the wayside because people went Intel/MS crazy. But if Intel/MS had never existed this area would still have gone forward fast. Probably faster.
Wasn't it MS who held PCs back for 10 years by pedalling their rubbish Win3.x, W95-WinME stuff long after they could have given us a lightweight version of WinNT, which even entry-level PCs wer capable of running by then.
What is wrong with tools exactly? If you don't have any I recommend them, they are dead cheap these days - I even got a set of 1/4" drive screwdriver and hex socket heads with a ratchet handle, ideal for taking PCs apart, free with some petrol once.
Where I am typing right now, I could swivel my chair and reach several tool sets, ranging from a set of jewellers screwdrivers to a hefty carry case I take with me in my car.
What are you doing opening a computer case without tools to hand, anyway? This is Slashdot, a techy's site.
I know the PS/2s you refer to. We had them at work and I took one apart once to take the HDD home (to install OS/2 on it, dual boot). The construction was horrible, looked like it was meant to be banged together by Taiwanese 10-year-olds with their fists. Hardly "finger friendly" - to get the HDD out I had to compress the nasty barbed plastic ends of some spacer pillars to get them out of their holes, risking breaking the plastic.
I had OS/2 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0. AFAIR there were apps included, and in the case of 3.0 (Warp) there was a set of about 10 floppies with mauve labels containing native apps such as editors and terminal emulators. (The OS itself came on about 15 floppies with red labels).
There was a combined dialer/browser which went to IBM's own internet portal (which sucked), and another dialer/browser with the catchy name "Dial other internet providers".
In the UK it was the reverse of that; Windows NT cost about £250 and OS/2 less than £100 AFAIR (I bought both).
I don't know what Windows-for-DOS (3.x) cost as it usually came with the PC.
The "fierce and underhand business tactics" were nothing to do with these retail prices, but about the pre-loading deals MS did with the PC suppliers. Such as refusing them any bulk discount if they sold a single PC without Windows pre-loaded.
I did manage to buy a PC with a blank HDD with a £25 discount (from Vale in Evesham) in about 1994, but it was an under-the-counter affair. I was a newbie at the time and did not realise it could be an issue, I simply asked for it that way, same as I might ask for a car without a sunroof I did not need.
What is Windows 3 if it isn't Windows 3.x (ie 3.0, 3.1 or 3.11)?
.. 16 bit". A bit overstated, but they did waste a lot of effort getting OS/2 to run on 16-bit 286's. This is because at the time they (and many people) believed that 286s would exist alongside 386s for a long time to come, a bit like (eg) entry-level Nikon cameras exist alongside more expensive professional models. That was before the processor "arms race" began.
:- You seem to have trouble reading. .... OS/2 was released until 1994, several years later
The GP said IBM "pivoted hard to
Not that dissimilar today, when many people say they do not see the point of moving from 32-bit to 64-bit.
You wrote
And you have trouble typing? I was using OS/2 2.0 in 1992. 1994 was when OS/2 3.0 (Warp) was released, and according to Wikipedia, the last version of Warp 4 was released in 2001
... complete with all the fake fossil records and our fake memories of anything earlier.
... But I suppose we all might just as well go along with the illusion as there is nothing else to do.
Or : we are just wired-up brains in jars set up three days ago and controlled by a megalomaniac sky fairy.
Prove me wrong