I think you'll find the only difference is that we get to SEE a lot of the oppression over here. In the USA, the land of the f(r)ee, a lot of it is hidden.
Just my $0.02
After 11/7 freedom was an illusion anyway.
Umm, My local store is already giving away two (admittedly crap) games 'free' with each Gameboy.
Is it now required by ettiquete to offer your game dealer a shot of your new game before you leave the store?
Always had pets but always had allergies too so my pet experience veers away from the usual cat or dog dillema. All the following have been very rewarding pets..
Hamsters - Cute, cheap and clean they are friendly (but nibbly) and you can go all out buying them all the plastic-tube-modular-habitat stuff you like. Need to be handled daily though. Mine tend to live three to four years.
Dwarf Hamsters - as above and can be housed in pairs. Smaller and cleaner than 'normal' hamsters but can be harder to handle due to size and speed.
Gerbils - Make great tunnel complexes in an earth filled aquarium. Best housed in a community. Fun to watch, can be handled. Relatively clean.
Rats - Very friendly, highly intelligent and relatively clean. Can be trained to do all sorts of cool things. Need stimulation, companionship and space.
Lizards - Very cool to look at, a couple of dragon-like star agamas in a desert styled vivarium look great. Practically untrainable (though mine used to sit on my shoulder happily) and can be quite hard to care for although most lizards should be relatively low maintainence.
Snakes - Very cool but often grow too big - I ended up with my 15ft Burmese Python trying to swallow my whole right hand once and was typing one-handed for a week. Can be easy enough to look after depending on breed. Many can be handled and are happy to hang around your neck whilst coding. Many potential mates get put off by the frozen mice in the fridge though..
Scorpions - Look great in a well appointed tank, low maintainence, easy to feed. Some can be handled but consider the 'yuk' factor if looking for someone to share your new apartment.
Spiders - More boring than most people think. Can be hard to care for. You will be hard pushed to find a flat-mate who finds large, hairy spiders attractive.
Tropical Fish - Require patience (allow three weeks to set up a tank before adding fish). Relaxing, undemanding and unlikely to make you sneeze. Lots of great hardware to play with.
Tropical Frogs - Very hard to care for but look great in a well set up vivarium.
Alternately get into BEAM robotics and build your own low maintainence pets;-)
..and this is why I read Slashdot/Register/Onion/Brains-Trust rather then watch or read the mainstream news. For over a month now all the UK media has talked about is The World Cup (some blokes kicking a ball around a field) and Big Brother (a brainless, voyeuristic and sensationalist TV show).
What people forget is that although it's not coming from a central source (unless you believe the conspiricy theorists) all media is propaganda of one sort or another.
We are being taught to consume quietly and without protest, to care only for our individual comfort and let the rest of the world go to hell.
I manage a lot of mission-critical servers and on the rare occasions they get into trouble my monitoring server sends an e-mail to my free e-mail account with my mobile phone service provider (orange) which then gets sent to me as an SMS.
I also use a free SMS to E-Mail gateway to remote control my PCs at home, I could do it via WAP but SMS is much quicker and cheaper:-)
My GF and I play chess, hangman, battleships etc via SMS when we are bored at work too:-).
Just get the users to share the folders, password protect them if neccessary, create links to them in a folder on a win2000 machine (windows - yuk) and back them up yourself with MS backup or something:-)
I was going to get an in-car MP3-CD player (actually now going for the IBM 1GB microdrive solution) but need to save some cash (about $500) first. So in the meantime I got a goodman's portable CD-MP3 player for around $70 and a car cassette adaptor (about $10).
The adaptor is a standard audio cassette size and shape with a lead that plugs into the headphone socket on the player. Slip the cassette into the car's tape player, turn it on and press play on the MP3-CD player. Great.
The player uses rechargeable batteries (about 5 hours on two AAs) and has a built in charger.
I get about 12 albums on each CD at 96kbps.
Not perfect but a lot kinder on the wallet and I can take it out the car and wander about with it:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I think you'll find the only difference is that we get to SEE a lot of the oppression over here. In the USA, the land of the f(r)ee, a lot of it is hidden. Just my $0.02 After 11/7 freedom was an illusion anyway.
I can't think of a more appropriate piece of hardwear to bear the 'Intel Inside' sticker.
Yup, we have a filing cabinet here in the tech room with 'Beer' written on the front. This is misleading. It's full of whisky. :-)
Umm, My local store is already giving away two (admittedly crap) games 'free' with each Gameboy. Is it now required by ettiquete to offer your game dealer a shot of your new game before you leave the store?
Always had pets but always had allergies too so my pet experience veers away from the usual cat or dog dillema. All the following have been very rewarding pets..
;-)
Hamsters - Cute, cheap and clean they are friendly (but nibbly) and you can go all out buying them all the plastic-tube-modular-habitat stuff you like. Need to be handled daily though. Mine tend to live three to four years.
Dwarf Hamsters - as above and can be housed in pairs. Smaller and cleaner than 'normal' hamsters but can be harder to handle due to size and speed.
Gerbils - Make great tunnel complexes in an earth filled aquarium. Best housed in a community. Fun to watch, can be handled. Relatively clean.
Rats - Very friendly, highly intelligent and relatively clean. Can be trained to do all sorts of cool things. Need stimulation, companionship and space.
Lizards - Very cool to look at, a couple of dragon-like star agamas in a desert styled vivarium look great. Practically untrainable (though mine used to sit on my shoulder happily) and can be quite hard to care for although most lizards should be relatively low maintainence.
Snakes - Very cool but often grow too big - I ended up with my 15ft Burmese Python trying to swallow my whole right hand once and was typing one-handed for a week. Can be easy enough to look after depending on breed. Many can be handled and are happy to hang around your neck whilst coding. Many potential mates get put off by the frozen mice in the fridge though..
Scorpions - Look great in a well appointed tank, low maintainence, easy to feed. Some can be handled but consider the 'yuk' factor if looking for someone to share your new apartment.
Spiders - More boring than most people think. Can be hard to care for. You will be hard pushed to find a flat-mate who finds large, hairy spiders attractive.
Tropical Fish - Require patience (allow three weeks to set up a tank before adding fish). Relaxing, undemanding and unlikely to make you sneeze. Lots of great hardware to play with.
Tropical Frogs - Very hard to care for but look great in a well set up vivarium.
Alternately get into BEAM robotics and build your own low maintainence pets
..and this is why I read Slashdot/Register/Onion/Brains-Trust rather then watch or read the mainstream news. For over a month now all the UK media has talked about is The World Cup (some blokes kicking a ball around a field) and Big Brother (a brainless, voyeuristic and sensationalist TV show).
What people forget is that although it's not coming from a central source (unless you believe the conspiricy theorists) all media is propaganda of one sort or another.
We are being taught to consume quietly and without protest, to care only for our individual comfort and let the rest of the world go to hell.
Surely breasts OR penis?
I manage a lot of mission-critical servers and on the rare occasions they get into trouble my monitoring server sends an e-mail to my free e-mail account with my mobile phone service provider (orange) which then gets sent to me as an SMS. I also use a free SMS to E-Mail gateway to remote control my PCs at home, I could do it via WAP but SMS is much quicker and cheaper :-)
My GF and I play chess, hangman, battleships etc via SMS when we are bored at work too :-).
Just get the users to share the folders, password protect them if neccessary, create links to them in a folder on a win2000 machine (windows - yuk) and back them up yourself with MS backup or something :-)
I was going to get an in-car MP3-CD player (actually now going for the IBM 1GB microdrive solution) but need to save some cash (about $500) first. So in the meantime I got a goodman's portable CD-MP3 player for around $70 and a car cassette adaptor (about $10). The adaptor is a standard audio cassette size and shape with a lead that plugs into the headphone socket on the player. Slip the cassette into the car's tape player, turn it on and press play on the MP3-CD player. Great. The player uses rechargeable batteries (about 5 hours on two AAs) and has a built in charger. I get about 12 albums on each CD at 96kbps. Not perfect but a lot kinder on the wallet and I can take it out the car and wander about with it :-)