I know my roots... Most definately. I owe my computer science degree to an accountant (okay, "Master in Economical Sciences") which is my dad. One of my first encounters with computers were spreadsheets: My dad was working in Symphony (remember that? No? Oh, well... Youngster!) and I as a curious kid wanted to know what was so special about it. He found no better way to explain it to me to show me how to budget my allowance.
My dad is the perfect accounting-geek and I owe him a lot. Not only my computer degree, but I also owe him financial responsibility, the ability to get my paperwork done efficiently and the mania to keep lists about everything and nothing.
I just find it sad that most people didn't understand that I was joking in my original post. Seems I hit a nerve and was thus labelled "Troll".
Odd... I have Office 2003 on this machine and it's not a beta version. I rarely use it, I only have it because my job requires it. For all my personal stuff, I use OpenOffice.org
Next time, I'll try to use a smile so that all the humour impaired understand that I was joking. I worked for over five years in banking and know quite well that Excel is a capable tool and that accountants can be more nerdy than I am.
(Replied to your comment because, I found your comment the funniest one.... Geek Supremacist... Hilarious!)
What if Excel had used MEAN() instead of AVERAGE()?
Now, I know this is a joke... Still, have you ever used Excel in, say, French? The formula will not be =AVERAGE(A1:A10). No, it will be =MOYENNE(A1:A10). It makes it hell to find what functions you want. I can cope with multilingual menus, but multilingual functions are impossible.
Note that the functions are compatible: AVERAGE will show MOYENNE when opening it in a French Excel. Luckily...;-) Oh, and OpenOffice replicates this behaviour. Very annoying, but I suppose that it's good for the end-users.
Uhm, Father Ted never aired in the county that I live. So, well, no... Sorry... I have no idea who are Father Ted and Mrs Doyle. We don't get much English humour around here. When I was a student abroad I enjoyed English humour, but can't do much about the fact that we don't get it here:-(
Aargh... Sorry, I didn't see the whole thread. This was about powering a graphics card with this powersupply and I thought that the parent was saying nobody could use a 120W powersupply with modern machines.
Well, depends... I have a machine that is on 24/7. It's kind of loud, and I think that mainly due to the powersupply. It's an AMD64 2800+ (socket 754) with 768Megs RAM (3x256Meg), a 25Gig hardisk, a CD-Rom, a GeForce2 MX and a cheap-ass 100Mbps network card. That's about all there is in the machine, but it's all I need. If I'd find a fanless, quiet powersupply that could power this machine without making a single noise, I'd be very happy.
Alas, I think that 120W isn't going to be suffient. Should have bought a VIA C3, but I can't get them where I live.
Politically correct isn't required in the UK (and in most of Europe). Thing is, one needs a sexy female to attract male viewers. Why do you think that X-Files did so well with the non-geek viewers? Reason one was Scully, and reason two was Mulder. Both top of the line geeks, but with a clearly physical advantages.
I'd question that, from what I have heard the UK driving test is probably as hard or harder than the US one - we generally don't take the test in Automatics for a start !
Isn't that exactly what I said? Try to read that sentence again: I claim that getting your license in Europe *is* harder. I only used a negative. (="isnt' as easy") There is no European country where you learn to drive in an automatic. You can learn it in my country, but it isn't equivalent to a normal driving license: it only gives you the right to drive automatic cars. It has been introduced for the physically disabled.
Spaniards do drive like maniacs so I don't know what kind of test they take.
Many Europeans drive like maniacs. This has nothing to do with driving tests, but more with the traffic. Sometimes you have to adapt to that kind of traffic. I learned to drive in a small city. When I was a student (not student driver, but University student) I ended up in a big city. The first few months was hell, because my driving style was not aggresive enough to get fluently trough the traffic.
ABS does shorten stopping distances on wet or snow covered roads, but if the road is dry, the stop time will be much shorter if the wheels lock and you skid.
I think you should check your tires on your SUV. Over 6 years ago, I had a Audi 80 with none of the safety systems you find on modern cars. It handled wonderfully, and I knew very well about intermittent braking on slippery surfaces. This didn't stop me from crashing it due to a large ice plaque on the road, but nobody (except rally drivers) could have recovered the car as many people have told me on that particular situation.
Now, I do have a "sports car" three times more powerful than my Audi 80, with power brakes (which took a big time to get used to), ABS, ESP and whatnot. The first winter that I had it, I made the mistake of keeping the summer tires. ABS kicked in pretty much every time I had to brake harder than usual. (On wet roads or snow) The winter after that, I learned my lesson and I replaced my summer tires with winter tires. Result: ABS only kicks in very extreme situations (snow + very hard braking). It's all in the tires, after all the tire are the contact with the road.
On dry road my ABS never kicks in even with hard braking for emergencies (with tires adapted to the season of course) Finally: ABS will not shorten your brake distance. It is actually suseptible to make brake distances longer: this has been repeated to us many many times in driving school. (But then, getting your drivers license in Europe isn't as easy as in the US) ABS is designed to enhance the control of your car when braking: you cannot steer when your tires are locked and thus you lose control. The electronic intermittent braking that ABS does, gives you control because the tires are kept in a state between locking and rolling.
Also, it might be due to the mass of your SUV: both my Audi 80 and the car I own now weight about 1.3 tonnes. I don't expect a 2.5+ tonne vehicle to brake fast. There is not much difference between car brakes and SUV brakes and you have to take that into account when driving higher weight vehicles. (Note that my old car had drum brakes on the rear axis and disc brakes on the front axis. My current car has all disc brakes and that also makes quite a difference while braking. Check your SUV: at 13 years old it probably has drum brakes on the rear axis)
I also have ESP, which I can turn off when I want to. It only kicks in when you do extreme turns on wet or snowy roads. ESP uses ABS in order to brake specific tires, so that it can correct trajectory. If you go on a (empty) snowy parking lot, and floor the pedal and make a very hard turn you'll still skid with ESP on. With ESP off, you don't even have to do that;-) It's fun though, but you don't do this kind of shit on the public road.
Exactly: I found it very useful to make complex diagrams and schematics. I wouldn't even have thought to use it as a photo editor. For that I have The Gimp, for vector oriented I either use OOo Draw or Inkscape (but I find the latter a bit odd to use... must be me)
Many Europeans don't even own cars - in the cities at least. Gas is too expensive, and public transportation is too pervasive to make them needed.
Wow.... Sources, please? The only European I know that does not own a car is my grandma and (of course) those people that don't have an income. Also don't believe too much about the public transportation myth. Might be true in Paris (and even then: many Parisians own cars too!) and in very big cities, but there are many many smaller cities where the advantage of taking public transportation is quite restrained. I live in a small European city (which is also the capital of a Euopean country), and most people still take the car to work. The government wants to change that, but I don't see why I'd take the bus and and take 2 hours a day of commute compared to (less than) 1 hour with the car.
Sometimes I think that US citizens think of Europe as "one big city".
Personally I have a 25MPG gas guzzler. I thought it was a cool choice 6 years ago, today I cringe every time I have to fill her up.
It might be "newer and better" technology (never mind that one of the leaders in automatic transmission is a German car company - they make an automatic transmission that does not impact mileage in the same way as typical automatic transmission does), but most Europeans do not *want* automatic transmission. At least, that is my impression as a European.
Minivan?:-) You don't even need a minivan! Okay, personally, I drive a car that has my ass pretty close to the asphalte, but my wife drives a Mercedes A-Class and my dad drives an Audi A2. In both of those cars you sit pretty damn high, at least compared to the sedan car that I owned. So, no, you don't need a minivan to sit high. (Of, course, Audi stopped making the A2. Sad, I'd have loved to have A2 TDI because the gas prices are insane these days).
Of course, a minivan is bigger and if you have a family, it's probably the better choice (at least compared to a SUV)
I thought it was hilarious: Renault TV . Sorry, it's a Flash application: click on the sausage on the lower-left part. They don't destroy a hamburger (or hotdog) though;-) On that site they claim that it's a viral ad. Hmmm, don't think so: I saw it on (German) TV.
I never had bad Maxtors until this year. Earlier this year, I bought two Maxtor 160Gig PATA drives and the first one failed within 3 months, and the second one failed after 10 months but hadn't been used much so it might have failed in 3 months with normal usage.
The first one has been replaced under warranty and purrs nicely in the machine I'm typing on. The second one has been away for a month or two and I still didn't get a replacement.
The disk that has the longest active life in my "collection" is a IBM 18Gig SCSI harddisk that is in the server of my parents. It has been working for over 4 years 24/7. Before that it lived in our (heavily used) family desktop for at least 4 years (IIRC). 8 years and still having an active and useful life. Not bad for a harddisk.
Slashdot Mirror
My dad is the perfect accounting-geek and I owe him a lot. Not only my computer degree, but I also owe him financial responsibility, the ability to get my paperwork done efficiently and the mania to keep lists about everything and nothing.
I just find it sad that most people didn't understand that I was joking in my original post. Seems I hit a nerve and was thus labelled "Troll".
Odd... I have Office 2003 on this machine and it's not a beta version. I rarely use it, I only have it because my job requires it. For all my personal stuff, I use OpenOffice.org
(Replied to your comment because, I found your comment the funniest one.... Geek Supremacist... Hilarious!)
Now, I know this is a joke... Still, have you ever used Excel in, say, French? The formula will not be =AVERAGE(A1:A10). No, it will be =MOYENNE(A1:A10). It makes it hell to find what functions you want. I can cope with multilingual menus, but multilingual functions are impossible.
Note that the functions are compatible: AVERAGE will show MOYENNE when opening it in a French Excel. Luckily... ;-) Oh, and OpenOffice replicates this behaviour. Very annoying, but I suppose that it's good for the end-users.
Excel? Has this site become "News for Accountants, Figures that matter"???
No... What is that?
(/Me hoping that I didn't miss a pun or so)
Uhm, Father Ted never aired in the county that I live. So, well, no... Sorry... I have no idea who are Father Ted and Mrs Doyle. We don't get much English humour around here. When I was a student abroad I enjoyed English humour, but can't do much about the fact that we don't get it here :-(
My fault... :-(
Well, depends... I have a machine that is on 24/7. It's kind of loud, and I think that mainly due to the powersupply. It's an AMD64 2800+ (socket 754) with 768Megs RAM (3x256Meg), a 25Gig hardisk, a CD-Rom, a GeForce2 MX and a cheap-ass 100Mbps network card. That's about all there is in the machine, but it's all I need. If I'd find a fanless, quiet powersupply that could power this machine without making a single noise, I'd be very happy.
Alas, I think that 120W isn't going to be suffient. Should have bought a VIA C3, but I can't get them where I live.
Check out that cleavage, man! Don't you like boobies? Tsssss....
No problem :-) Everyone can have a reading lapse from time to time...
Politically correct isn't required in the UK (and in most of Europe). Thing is, one needs a sexy female to attract male viewers. Why do you think that X-Files did so well with the non-geek viewers? Reason one was Scully, and reason two was Mulder. Both top of the line geeks, but with a clearly physical advantages.
Isn't that exactly what I said? Try to read that sentence again: I claim that getting your license in Europe *is* harder. I only used a negative. (="isnt' as easy") There is no European country where you learn to drive in an automatic. You can learn it in my country, but it isn't equivalent to a normal driving license: it only gives you the right to drive automatic cars. It has been introduced for the physically disabled.
Spaniards do drive like maniacs so I don't know what kind of test they take.
Many Europeans drive like maniacs. This has nothing to do with driving tests, but more with the traffic. Sometimes you have to adapt to that kind of traffic. I learned to drive in a small city. When I was a student (not student driver, but University student) I ended up in a big city. The first few months was hell, because my driving style was not aggresive enough to get fluently trough the traffic.
Linky to video mentioned in above post
I think you should check your tires on your SUV. Over 6 years ago, I had a Audi 80 with none of the safety systems you find on modern cars. It handled wonderfully, and I knew very well about intermittent braking on slippery surfaces. This didn't stop me from crashing it due to a large ice plaque on the road, but nobody (except rally drivers) could have recovered the car as many people have told me on that particular situation.
Now, I do have a "sports car" three times more powerful than my Audi 80, with power brakes (which took a big time to get used to), ABS, ESP and whatnot. The first winter that I had it, I made the mistake of keeping the summer tires. ABS kicked in pretty much every time I had to brake harder than usual. (On wet roads or snow) The winter after that, I learned my lesson and I replaced my summer tires with winter tires. Result: ABS only kicks in very extreme situations (snow + very hard braking). It's all in the tires, after all the tire are the contact with the road.
On dry road my ABS never kicks in even with hard braking for emergencies (with tires adapted to the season of course) Finally: ABS will not shorten your brake distance. It is actually suseptible to make brake distances longer: this has been repeated to us many many times in driving school. (But then, getting your drivers license in Europe isn't as easy as in the US) ABS is designed to enhance the control of your car when braking: you cannot steer when your tires are locked and thus you lose control. The electronic intermittent braking that ABS does, gives you control because the tires are kept in a state between locking and rolling.
Also, it might be due to the mass of your SUV: both my Audi 80 and the car I own now weight about 1.3 tonnes. I don't expect a 2.5+ tonne vehicle to brake fast. There is not much difference between car brakes and SUV brakes and you have to take that into account when driving higher weight vehicles. (Note that my old car had drum brakes on the rear axis and disc brakes on the front axis. My current car has all disc brakes and that also makes quite a difference while braking. Check your SUV: at 13 years old it probably has drum brakes on the rear axis)
I also have ESP, which I can turn off when I want to. It only kicks in when you do extreme turns on wet or snowy roads. ESP uses ABS in order to brake specific tires, so that it can correct trajectory. If you go on a (empty) snowy parking lot, and floor the pedal and make a very hard turn you'll still skid with ESP on. With ESP off, you don't even have to do that ;-) It's fun though, but you don't do this kind of shit on the public road.
Exactly: I found it very useful to make complex diagrams and schematics. I wouldn't even have thought to use it as a photo editor. For that I have The Gimp, for vector oriented I either use OOo Draw or Inkscape (but I find the latter a bit odd to use... must be me)
Wow.... Sources, please? The only European I know that does not own a car is my grandma and (of course) those people that don't have an income. Also don't believe too much about the public transportation myth. Might be true in Paris (and even then: many Parisians own cars too!) and in very big cities, but there are many many smaller cities where the advantage of taking public transportation is quite restrained. I live in a small European city (which is also the capital of a Euopean country), and most people still take the car to work. The government wants to change that, but I don't see why I'd take the bus and and take 2 hours a day of commute compared to (less than) 1 hour with the car.
Sometimes I think that US citizens think of Europe as "one big city".
Personally I have a 25MPG gas guzzler. I thought it was a cool choice 6 years ago, today I cringe every time I have to fill her up.
It might be "newer and better" technology (never mind that one of the leaders in automatic transmission is a German car company - they make an automatic transmission that does not impact mileage in the same way as typical automatic transmission does), but most Europeans do not *want* automatic transmission. At least, that is my impression as a European.
It drives exactly the same as a Mercedes A-Class. Of course it handles differently than an A3, A4 and anything beyond.
A swedish cracker. It's a reference to nordic cars: think Saab, Volvo.
for an audi.
From that sentence I take you don't like Audis in the first place, so why even bother despising the A2?
Of course, a minivan is bigger and if you have a family, it's probably the better choice (at least compared to a SUV)
I thought it was hilarious: Renault TV . Sorry, it's a Flash application: click on the sausage on the lower-left part. They don't destroy a hamburger (or hotdog) though ;-) On that site they claim that it's a viral ad. Hmmm, don't think so: I saw it on (German) TV.
The first one has been replaced under warranty and purrs nicely in the machine I'm typing on. The second one has been away for a month or two and I still didn't get a replacement.
The disk that has the longest active life in my "collection" is a IBM 18Gig SCSI harddisk that is in the server of my parents. It has been working for over 4 years 24/7. Before that it lived in our (heavily used) family desktop for at least 4 years (IIRC). 8 years and still having an active and useful life. Not bad for a harddisk.
I'll check that out! Thanks! (It must have speedstepping, since it's a P-III mobile)