"As you can tell, PC innards are pretty much a machinist's nightmare. Case screws and hard drive screws are made according to English units of measure (or more correctly United States Customary Units) whereas CD-Rom and floppy drive mounting hardware are made to metric standards. Whose brilliant idea was this?"
Well - er... When the rest of the world went for a logical standard of measurements, the USA clings to obsolescence in the name of traditionality. And then complain when people who use metric standards (like the Japanese) make things better than the americans (like CD-ROMS) and complain when they buy and install them them.
Kudos to the case manufacturers for providing the right screws.
How can the BBC be complicit in 'Sexing up' the dossier when it was them who broke the story and coined the phrase 'sexed up'
Many Americans seem to fall for spin every time, especially the subtle, well practiced British spin.
EG: Anybody who sees the middle east is such black and white terms must be gullable as phuc.
However, as a licence fee-payer I resent the cash being spent on 'damage limitation' when the BBCs TV content is going downhill and music programming pitiful.
The lev-ed for bf1942 is pretty good, nice n easy, stable, well supported.
Avoid UTx like the plague, the ed is a buggy bucket of shite.
also look into blender/gameblender
My dad uses Yahoo messenger and my sister uses MSN
I use linux for everything but play games - so they are "You buy Windows games... why cant you talk on yahoo/MSN?"
I had GAIM but Yahoo and MSN keep breaking itso they are "You PMed me last month why cant you now?"
At the end of the day, I dont want to buy Viagra or watch people get pissed upon so I killed GAIM/my ICQ# as the primary source of spam in my life.
i use Email now - because it just works
Until we have something better.
If there is an indefinite limit (battery life) it should be pushed for all its worth until it dies.
However the safe disposal/recovery of the unit should be discussed.
Gooogle is the only provider of ads that are useful. Primarily because its the first stop when I want to buy something.
Google is not as good as yahoo at filtering out non UK sites but it does provide ads for UK sites when you do a UK only search, which is pretty good when google provides info on what has been made and what is available in europe.
I would guess that about 75% of americans supported the recent massacre in Jenin...
http://this.is/jenin/text1_en.html
Under your logic, the american ambasador was a legitimate target?
I am sure that incident needs no link.
all true... but its still the nearest thing to Burning-Man in the UK - much closer than the BGG which would dissapoint the politically inactive fun seeker.
Back in the day - Glasto was very international, you would meet people from every continent, this year was very much lacking. There has always been some local objection, which has made the situation worse but the further people travel, the more likely they are to take in the more traditional tourist sites in the area which is holding the local economy up at the moment.
This is on my doorstep, its my local culture and the the comparison with burning-man is a little off the mark.
the BGG is an activists gathering, while there is music at night, by day it is not a hedonists paradise like Burning-Man but more a massive sustainability workshop where you can learn about non-violent resistance through to how to get web without a mains socket.
People on/. tend to see the iTrike as a festival gimmik that is less than practical, when it is realy a high profile proof of concept with a little humour thrown in.
I am realy glad the BGG got slashdotted because it rarely gets a mention in the UK, let alone internationally.
BTW - Heds from overseas looking for a Burningman Type experience should try Glastonbury festival - the BGG is for serious activists, travelers and the free-festival harcore, the first thing you notice is that there is no branding or commercialism on site which is wierd to say the least in this day and age.
As for cost... its difficult to know. Short of the tech itself, the iTrike is probably recycled bits and bobs from...
tis a bit like having your car stolen and used in a robbery, then being punished for the robbery itself.
The fact that the locks can be picked with a screwdriver, or that the dash just unclips for convenient hotwireage has no bearing at all.
Users on the whole dont knowingly open security holes - they are open by default. If any fines should be issued, it is to the people at fault not the victims.
If a user were to find a suspicious program or newe exploit - they would be less inclined to report the incident because of the fine.
"When your music distribution system is so screwed up that it is EASY to steal music but nearly impossible to BUY it...you've got big problems."
You pretty much summed it up. When I wanted that obscure and offensive beat poetry what went out of print in the 80s, Scour (defunkt) was the only place to find John Cooper Clarkes 'Beasly Street' in audio form.
As a lowly 56Ker I do not have the bandwidth to download whole albums - but I do not have the cash to just buy every CD that is recommended - p2p helps me weed out the shite.
Before computers we used to swap cassette tapesI would listen to the tape my buddy sent me - I would buy vinyl if I liked it, then copied some other tracks onto the tape and send it back this went on, people spent out on records that we wouldnt have otherwise heard.
The RIAA are killing their own business by alienating customers and artists with overpricing and poor quality. P2P offers an alternative means of distribution to independant musicians who write non-mainstrem music. That is what scares the RIAA.
Musos need to agree on a p2p friendly licence and release enough music to to provide legal downloads on the networks.
"In 10 years he will pay $5k more. Person who bought hybrid already paid ~$4k more when he bought the car, and will pay at least ~$1k more for more expensive service."
Factor in the effect of T.W.A.T on oil prices over the next decade as big oil 'investment' goes up in smoke - the savings look far sweeter.
Also factor in the fact hat whatever % of your drive time is dead slow or sat still if you city drive - which still burns gas as you chug at the lights - mileage is not the best starting point.
And here is what people dont get - ITS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY!
It is ironic that a continent built on the blood of the 'indogen' and populated by willing and unwilling imigrants has become so hostile to imigration.
The USA has about 20% (before T.W.A.T - at least 86Billion less now) of the the worlds wealth, and supports 5% of the worls population.
When half the world is exploited to the point of poverty (by Europe too - to my shame) how can you not expect mass imigration.
The USA is less than welcoming - to the point of the internment of a Hindu buinessman on suspision of Islamic terrorism - go figure.
The guy was held without charge for months before being deported, he lost everything and has obvoius dificulties re-building his life.
I do not find it surprising that the Indian diplomatic service are a little less co-operative of late.
The problem the UK has is its reactors which are WAY past their use-by date and nobody has worked out how to switch the damn things off safely.
The dangers posed by waste leakage, meltdown or just realy stupid ideas are unimaginable and global (just to remind you that there is a world outside the USA) that is drowning in American shit.
Reprocessing is a joke (in the UK - other capitalist states too) being unprofitable and unreliable. not to mention the ultimate terrorist target.
When reprocessed fuel was sent to japan they sent it back because BNFL was cought out falsifying !SAFETY DOCUMENTS! sice then nobody wants our reprocessed waste.
So the reprocessing plant sends BNFL way into the red and they decide to cut their losses, but if you thought decommisioning a power station was hard - you should try switching off a reprocessing plant.
Other realy stupid ideas include nuclear powered satelites - if Columbia was carrying one we would all be dead by now. Do you trust NASA with your life?
and
Nuclear subs which sooner or later will leak into the sea and spread via bioaccumulation ito our food chain.
and
shipping waste across the world by ship or plane which are easy terrorist targets and risk crashing or sinking.
and
Burrying waste near a fault line - GWB does it again.
and
Allowing israel to develop nukes - triggering an arms race in the M.E
and of couse
Privitisation of the nuclear energy industry which puts profit above safety (see the Japanese incident above)
The onus is on citizens to waste less energy not the state to generate more - instead of that spangly screensaver TURN THE FRELLIN MONITOR OFF!
Be inc was dead - they had nohting to lose and the antitrust trial ad done all the work.
The money means nothing, but the precedent set in court would have real benefit to the community.
I smell corrupt execs.
A small commercial distro (slackware based) called Yoper (Yoper.com) from NZ uses the Knoppix hardware detection routines to install.
It worked well on my machine shot of an obscure winmodem, which was on disk 2 and needed source headers. although it still lacks a graphical partition tool. (Mandrake has its uses)
Bank on topic - The main opposition to the adoption of Linux is a lack of marketing (in Europe anyway) it gets a lot of column space in the computer press but to non techy types its still all gibberish.
Distros need to work on brand awareness... "You know, the one with the penguin" even if people dont care, they still need to know it exists.
Firstly I agree with your point (Chalupa) about ritalin.
It is a hardcore anphetamine, developed to treat cocain/crack withdrawl, chosen for children due to its limited effects on sleep patterns (compared with Dex or similar) but still thrashes your liver, kidneys and digestive system. I have seen the effects of day-to-day speed addiction in adults who should know better (at 30 she looks 40-50 and gets sick when she drinks alcohol, is paranoid, depressed and has a poor immune system) it is upsetting enough when its the effects of abuse - but to feed it to kids is just wrong.
Sure, phet may deal with issues of motivation and self esteem in the short term but we are breeding a generation dependant on otherwise illegal substances.
ADD etc is real, but widely misunderstood (often by those who diagnose/prescribe) it exists in a spectrum of symptoms loosely termed 'learning difficulties' most people can identify with one or more symptoms to some extent and need not be a problem at all.
I was first diagnosed Dyslexic at about 9, which was just stupid because I was reading adult books and have never had trouble processing incoming data of any sort.
then at 12 I was diagnosed Dyspraxic (clumsy child syndrome) which didnt fit either but was the only dyslexia type thing at the time with no effect on reading.
At 19, I was tested again and was diagnosed 'Disgraphic' which is a hand-eye coordination issue (i see a straight line in my head - draw it and it comes out curved)
it all worked in my favour - my lazy teachers put me in front of a BBC micro and told me to type - now I am an acomplished geek who works in the book trade - no medication required.
Slashdot Mirror
That was worse than goatse.cx
We didnt have such a problem. All our socks were red and distributed EVENLY among the citizens.
"As you can tell, PC innards are pretty much a machinist's nightmare. Case screws and hard drive screws are made according to English units of measure (or more correctly United States Customary Units) whereas CD-Rom and floppy drive mounting hardware are made to metric standards. Whose brilliant idea was this?" Well - er... When the rest of the world went for a logical standard of measurements, the USA clings to obsolescence in the name of traditionality. And then complain when people who use metric standards (like the Japanese) make things better than the americans (like CD-ROMS) and complain when they buy and install them them. Kudos to the case manufacturers for providing the right screws.
How can the BBC be complicit in 'Sexing up' the dossier when it was them who broke the story and coined the phrase 'sexed up'
Many Americans seem to fall for spin every time, especially the subtle, well practiced British spin.
EG: Anybody who sees the middle east is such black and white terms must be gullable as phuc.
However, as a licence fee-payer I resent the cash being spent on 'damage limitation' when the BBCs TV content is going downhill and music programming pitiful.
The lev-ed for bf1942 is pretty good, nice n easy, stable, well supported. Avoid UTx like the plague, the ed is a buggy bucket of shite. also look into blender/gameblender
My dad uses Yahoo messenger and my sister uses MSN I use linux for everything but play games - so they are "You buy Windows games... why cant you talk on yahoo/MSN?" I had GAIM but Yahoo and MSN keep breaking itso they are "You PMed me last month why cant you now?" At the end of the day, I dont want to buy Viagra or watch people get pissed upon so I killed GAIM/my ICQ# as the primary source of spam in my life. i use Email now - because it just works
What chance my broadband connection - worried me.
Until we have something better. If there is an indefinite limit (battery life) it should be pushed for all its worth until it dies. However the safe disposal/recovery of the unit should be discussed.
Gooogle is the only provider of ads that are useful. Primarily because its the first stop when I want to buy something. Google is not as good as yahoo at filtering out non UK sites but it does provide ads for UK sites when you do a UK only search, which is pretty good when google provides info on what has been made and what is available in europe.
You forget about the high street customers who neither have nor recieve a windows disk with their machine.
I would guess that about 75% of americans supported the recent massacre in Jenin... http://this.is/jenin/text1_en.html Under your logic, the american ambasador was a legitimate target? I am sure that incident needs no link.
all true... but its still the nearest thing to Burning-Man in the UK - much closer than the BGG which would dissapoint the politically inactive fun seeker.
Back in the day - Glasto was very international, you would meet people from every continent, this year was very much lacking. There has always been some local objection, which has made the situation worse but the further people travel, the more likely they are to take in the more traditional tourist sites in the area which is holding the local economy up at the moment.
This is on my doorstep, its my local culture and the the comparison with burning-man is a little off the mark.
/. tend to see the iTrike as a festival gimmik that is less than practical, when it is realy a high profile proof of concept with a little humour thrown in.
the BGG is an activists gathering, while there is music at night, by day it is not a hedonists paradise like Burning-Man but more a massive sustainability workshop where you can learn about non-violent resistance through to how to get web without a mains socket.
People on
I am realy glad the BGG got slashdotted because it rarely gets a mention in the UK, let alone internationally.
BTW - Heds from overseas looking for a Burningman Type experience should try Glastonbury festival - the BGG is for serious activists, travelers and the free-festival harcore, the first thing you notice is that there is no branding or commercialism on site which is wierd to say the least in this day and age.
As for cost... its difficult to know. Short of the tech itself, the iTrike is probably recycled bits and bobs from...
Rinky-Dink
http://www.baka.co.uk/rinky/
Raymundo's Renewable Lounge
http://www.ray-mundo.co.uk/
and some road protest site somewhere.
The Europe is an essencial component of a system that is entirely transparrent to most American users
- that system is the rest of the sodding world.
tis a bit like having your car stolen and used in a robbery, then being punished for the robbery itself.
The fact that the locks can be picked with a screwdriver, or that the dash just unclips for convenient hotwireage has no bearing at all.
Users on the whole dont knowingly open security holes - they are open by default. If any fines should be issued, it is to the people at fault not the victims.
If a user were to find a suspicious program or newe exploit - they would be less inclined to report the incident because of the fine.
"When your music distribution system is so screwed up that it is EASY to steal music but nearly impossible to BUY it...you've got big problems."
You pretty much summed it up. When I wanted that obscure and offensive beat poetry what went out of print in the 80s, Scour (defunkt) was the only place to find John Cooper Clarkes 'Beasly Street' in audio form.
As a lowly 56Ker I do not have the bandwidth to download whole albums - but I do not have the cash to just buy every CD that is recommended - p2p helps me weed out the shite.
Before computers we used to swap cassette tapesI would listen to the tape my buddy sent me - I would buy vinyl if I liked it, then copied some other tracks onto the tape and send it back this went on, people spent out on records that we wouldnt have otherwise heard.
The RIAA are killing their own business by alienating customers and artists with overpricing and poor quality. P2P offers an alternative means of distribution to independant musicians who write non-mainstrem music. That is what scares the RIAA.
Musos need to agree on a p2p friendly licence and release enough music to to provide legal downloads on the networks.
"In 10 years he will pay $5k more. Person who bought hybrid already paid ~$4k more when he bought the car, and will pay at least ~$1k more for more expensive service."
Factor in the effect of T.W.A.T on oil prices over the next decade as big oil 'investment' goes up in smoke - the savings look far sweeter.
Also factor in the fact hat whatever % of your drive time is dead slow or sat still if you city drive - which still burns gas as you chug at the lights - mileage is not the best starting point.
And here is what people dont get - ITS NOT ABOUT THE MONEY!
You cant put a price on our childrens future.
It is ironic that a continent built on the blood of the 'indogen' and populated by willing and unwilling imigrants has become so hostile to imigration. The USA has about 20% (before T.W.A.T - at least 86Billion less now) of the the worlds wealth, and supports 5% of the worls population. When half the world is exploited to the point of poverty (by Europe too - to my shame) how can you not expect mass imigration. The USA is less than welcoming - to the point of the internment of a Hindu buinessman on suspision of Islamic terrorism - go figure. The guy was held without charge for months before being deported, he lost everything and has obvoius dificulties re-building his life. I do not find it surprising that the Indian diplomatic service are a little less co-operative of late.
The problem the UK has is its reactors which are WAY past their use-by date and nobody has worked out how to switch the damn things off safely.
The dangers posed by waste leakage, meltdown or just realy stupid ideas are unimaginable and global (just to remind you that there is a world outside the USA) that is drowning in American shit.
Reprocessing is a joke (in the UK - other capitalist states too) being unprofitable and unreliable. not to mention the ultimate terrorist target.
When reprocessed fuel was sent to japan they sent it back because BNFL was cought out falsifying !SAFETY DOCUMENTS! sice then nobody wants our reprocessed waste.
So the reprocessing plant sends BNFL way into the red and they decide to cut their losses, but if you thought decommisioning a power station was hard - you should try switching off a reprocessing plant.
Other realy stupid ideas include nuclear powered satelites - if Columbia was carrying one we would all be dead by now. Do you trust NASA with your life?
and
Nuclear subs which sooner or later will leak into the sea and spread via bioaccumulation ito our food chain.
and
shipping waste across the world by ship or plane which are easy terrorist targets and risk crashing or sinking.
and
Burrying waste near a fault line - GWB does it again.
and
Allowing israel to develop nukes - triggering an arms race in the M.E
and of couse
Privitisation of the nuclear energy industry which puts profit above safety (see the Japanese incident above)
The onus is on citizens to waste less energy not the state to generate more - instead of that spangly screensaver TURN THE FRELLIN MONITOR OFF!
Be inc was dead - they had nohting to lose and the antitrust trial ad done all the work. The money means nothing, but the precedent set in court would have real benefit to the community. I smell corrupt execs.
A small commercial distro (slackware based) called Yoper (Yoper.com) from NZ uses the Knoppix hardware detection routines to install.
It worked well on my machine shot of an obscure winmodem, which was on disk 2 and needed source headers. although it still lacks a graphical partition tool. (Mandrake has its uses)
Bank on topic - The main opposition to the adoption of Linux is a lack of marketing (in Europe anyway) it gets a lot of column space in the computer press but to non techy types its still all gibberish.
Distros need to work on brand awareness... "You know, the one with the penguin" even if people dont care, they still need to know it exists.
"Government-controlled? Is that why Blair and Alistair Campbell and friends are so upset with them lately?"
There is only upset because the BBC didnt tow the lie for once.
If they were not expected to it would not be an issue.
Try the british C4 for news that offends Conan Powel (www.channel4.com/news)
Firstly I agree with your point (Chalupa) about ritalin. It is a hardcore anphetamine, developed to treat cocain/crack withdrawl, chosen for children due to its limited effects on sleep patterns (compared with Dex or similar) but still thrashes your liver, kidneys and digestive system. I have seen the effects of day-to-day speed addiction in adults who should know better (at 30 she looks 40-50 and gets sick when she drinks alcohol, is paranoid, depressed and has a poor immune system) it is upsetting enough when its the effects of abuse - but to feed it to kids is just wrong. Sure, phet may deal with issues of motivation and self esteem in the short term but we are breeding a generation dependant on otherwise illegal substances. ADD etc is real, but widely misunderstood (often by those who diagnose/prescribe) it exists in a spectrum of symptoms loosely termed 'learning difficulties' most people can identify with one or more symptoms to some extent and need not be a problem at all. I was first diagnosed Dyslexic at about 9, which was just stupid because I was reading adult books and have never had trouble processing incoming data of any sort. then at 12 I was diagnosed Dyspraxic (clumsy child syndrome) which didnt fit either but was the only dyslexia type thing at the time with no effect on reading. At 19, I was tested again and was diagnosed 'Disgraphic' which is a hand-eye coordination issue (i see a straight line in my head - draw it and it comes out curved) it all worked in my favour - my lazy teachers put me in front of a BBC micro and told me to type - now I am an acomplished geek who works in the book trade - no medication required.
If the English sent their criminals to OZ, the pilgrims and traders went to the US - and look how that turned out.
I know where I would prefer to be - but immigrants to turn up in OZ get caged on guano island. - and it sucks when we (brits) do it too.
But if you want it all to fall into place read Vurt, Pollen and Automated Alice (in that order) for that moment of clarity.
Vurt and Pollen are set in a parallell manchester where they use feathers to access another paralell universe - too wierd to explain, just read.
Naturally gibson is the obvious choice, but since the Matrix, everybody luvs Gibson - I recommend the Difference Engine for pure originlity
Anothe tip is the sword and sourcery title 'monument' (out soon - UK) for the ultimate drunken bastard antihero.