Now what we really need is to find a way to hardness the latent computer proscessing power of the George Forman Grill. You know it exisits.
Ah, but will it run Linux? (^_-)
Now, perhaps it might not run on that, but there must be a number of household items with moderate processing power that *could* run some hacked-about form of Linux.
Question is, which is the least "appropriate" appliance that Linux has been run successfully on? For example digital TV set-top box? Microwave oven? Toaster?
My local staples does carry lexmark however it has been a while since I have seen anything other than a low end Cannon or HP printer in one of there discount bundles.
Your local Staples carries low-end Cannons?
(Lights fuse.... BANG!) "Take that ye scurvy Lexmarks!!"
(Notices that the cannonball has gone through the Lexmarks, several more aisles, the wall of Staples itself and has caused extensive damage to 'The Bed Shed' next door)
"Cap'n! They be firin' back at us!"
(Cannonball comes at high speed from The Bed Shed and demolishes a display of overpriced Scanners and Microsoft software)
In reality, you have a better choice with a licence fee because if you choose to stop watching TV then you can get rid/store your TV and not pay for the licence, but you'll still be hit with a charge for advertising every time you buy a McD burger, pint of Guinness, packet of Ariel washing powder, litre of Shell fuel etc. - you can't avoid that TV watching 'tax' even if you don't have a TV!
That's right; if you're determined to buy MCDONALD'S hamburgers, ARIEL washing powder and SHELL fuel, then you're "paying" for the adverts.
Or you could buy other brands; that's your choice. Listen- TV programs are a way for companies to advertise; if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. It could be argued that the TV ads you don't watch aren't aimed at you anyway, so you aren't "paying" for them.
I mean, Tiny Computers advertise in the newspaper I buy, and newspapers depend on adverts. So, since I would never buy from Tiny, does this mean that a Tiny buyer who doesn't read the papers with Tiny ads is subsidising *my* newspaper?
The bottom line is that adverts are a *choice* a company makes to increase their products' prominence. You also have the free *choice* to buy different products. It would only be a tax in a market where you didn't have a reasonable opportunity to buy something else.
Then, of course, why should the companies waste money on advertising if they have a monopoly? If they kept the (former-) ad money to themselves, but the price stayed the same, would you be happier because money wasn't going to pay for something you didn't watch?
Bear in mind that the guy asked about *computer games*.
Even if he *was* interested in what you said (and there's nothing wrong with it per se; I'm quite interested in the idea of meditation personally), it's not really a replacement for a few minutes with the PS2 or whatever. With respect, your suggestion seemed vaguely patronising.
I have a number of friends with physical disabilities and they are always cracking "disabled jokes".
Reminds me of an episode of the "Extreme Ghostbusters" cartoon I caught a bit of a few years back. The van crashed, and one of the guys yells something like "My legs! I can't move my legs".
Which caught the attention of the others in the group for a while, until they realised that the character in question was in a wheelchair and couldn't move them anyway; then they gave him a dirty look and he gave a half-sheepish grin.
It surprised me because I'd have expected the makers to either gloss over the character's disability or treat it in a 'sympathetic' (i.e. cotton-wool and patronising) serious manner when it did come up.
The joke neither skirted round the issue, nor reduced the character to a one-dimensional cipher, but made him human and believable; as did the fact it was a throwaway line.
Of course, not everyone would- or should be expected to- act like that; the whole damn point is that the character was acting like an *individual*.
Well, I should probably make clear that I'm not disabled, but if I was (and it could happen to any of us), I wouldn't want to be patronised or expected to act in a specific manner because I'd lost the use of part of my body.
Hfolelupy yluol dvoicisr the utturnh - the irccoernt psmeire rieels eerillnty uopn sctnneees ctssiinnog selloy of spmile ricttresed lteetr wdros. A centrecod errofft to cuntsorct celmpox pyyasllliobc wdros elaisey perdocus grebibsih.
That's not English, that's Welsh.
No, I *don't* speak Welsh obviously.
That having been said, it's possible to make text look like Scottish Gaelic by doing letter replacements such as 'x' with 'cs' and so on. I think this works because Gaelic uses fewer letters; it always looks unwieldy written down, to me. Perhaps the same could be done with Welsh (both Celtic languages after all).
No, I don't speak Gaelic either. Nor Cornish, Irish or Breton. (BTW, I was surprised to note that Fedora Core 3 included Cornish in its list of (IIRC) installation languages- was this in response to 'The Simpsons'?- but not Scottish Gaelic).
Canon is not dumping the print cartridges. Even at $8, they are highly profitable. At the same time, HP is in big trouble.
Yeah. Don't get me wrong; I like Canon, but they're only "cheap" when you compare them with the ripoff prices (and tactics) of HP, Epson and Lexmark; the official color tanks for my i455 are still moderately expensive by absolute standards, though the black is reasonable.
So; Canon ink is reasonable, but not *that* cheap; the MAJOR advantage to their lower-end printers is that you can buy cheap compatible ink-tanks with absolutely *none* of the faffing about associated with Lexmark and friends (Or did I mean fiends? Ha ha ha ha... erm, sorry).
The seemingly durable print-head doesn't need replacement as did the one in my old Canon BJC-4300; great, because they were expensive when they *did* fail.
Also, it's a damn good printer for the price (UKP 70.00 inc tax from Amazon) and well worth the money over even cheaper Canons.
But idiot consumers will still buy Lexmarks because they get free ink worth $40 (or whatever). Irony being that the "free" ink is only "worth" so much because the refills are so grossly overpriced in the first place.
No offence intended, but going for #3 is blinkered geek naivity. Even if a large proportion of Slashdotters boycott Lexmark for this reason, it's the old "mistaking your peer group for a typical cross-section" mistake. I doubt socially-aware geeks make up *that* much of Lexmark's customer base (*) and the stupid sheep that *do* probably don't even know (or care) what the DMCA is.
Sorry, but it's #1.
(*) Especially since the average/.er has probably figured out that Lexmarks are *not* cheap when you factor in consumables, and will avoid them regardless of Lexmark's DMCA abuse.
Shakin' Stevens had a computer game; on his singles?! Very weird and geeky; not the kind of thing you'd have expected from him at all.
It's kind of like finding out that Britney Spears has secreted Marijuana in unused pits on the outside edge of her latest CD in an attempt to overthrow American society.
At any rate, it could be a shrewd move; let the war criminals in (knowingly, but don't tell them that), then you know where they are. Once they're all in Canada, arrest them and put them on trial.
Personally, I don't give a fuck how old they are. All I care about is whether they get a fair trial or not. If they can (admittedly a big 'if'), and they're found guilty, I'd quite happily make them suffer horribly for the rest of their squalid little lives.
I never got that 'old men' thing. On the contrary, the fact that they'd evaded justice up until the end of their lives means they should be punished more severely if anything.
By the time they get to that age, death would probably be a minor punishment; better to keep them alive in prison for as long as possible, with no visits, TV, radio, etc.
Too many people escaped justice at the end of WWII. I don't care that it's 60 years on; it's not acceptable that these vermin make it through their lives without meeting justice.
So; stop being a smartass. It was originally pronounced with a soft "g", and got to the present state thanks, no doubt, to the misuse of millions of computer geeks.
He's probably some genius physics Professor who was using the word before your Dad first got his hands in your Mum's underwear, and has his mind on something important in quantum mechanics instead of whether the graphics card in the computer he bought last month is out of date because it doesn't run Quake Nukem LXXIX.
Let's be honest; a lot of computer stuff is ephemeral crap that might be interesting today, but is entirely man-made and likely to be irrelevant in ten years time.
Your kids will probably pronounce it wrong too, because thinking in units of anything less than an exabyte will be obselete and archaic by then.
Okay; I meant *if* you have kids, which you won't, because you'll turn off the girls when you laugh at them saying "jigabyte".
Last I heard was that anyone with any sort of criminal conviction or blemish on their record had to get a Visa to visit the US.
So; if you want to take a family holiday in Disneyland, but Mummy or Daddy have a driving conviction from way back when, you have to make a journey to London or Belfast (possibly over 1 or 2 nights and involving a journey of hundreds of miles) to get the Visa, with no guarantee of being let in.
Look; don't get me wrong. No country wants to let in hordes of convicted criminals/terrorists/whatever; and I'm sure bad motorists aren't the intended target of the legislation. In addition it would also be quite reasonable for the US government to say "we'll let you in, but you can't drive here".
But this is *way* over the top; apart from the unfriendly signal it sends to all holidaymakers, anyone in that position is going to realise it's more hassle than it's worth to even consider visiting the US, and go somewhere else.
If the stuff is already paid for the BBC should post all of their content on line for free for the world.
And Hollywood movies are "already paid for" once they've been made, so we should get them free too.
Put simply, I'm all in favour of British people being allowed to download BBC-owned material for free, because most of them paid for it through the license fee. But I don't have a problem in charging people elsewhere for (most of) it, unless they made a contribution towards the production costs.
Don't get me wrong; I support things like World Service radio being freely available across the world; if nothing else, the BBC are, for all their faults, a better news source than most others, and this is particularly important in countries where the government or other forces would like to censor the facts. (I'm not forgetting that people thoughout the world benefit from (eg) GPS, which is paid for by the US; World Service radio is semi-altruistic in the same way).
However, this does *not* extend towards (eg) letting Americans get "Fawlty Towers" and "The Office" for free, and so on. News; yes. Comedy, drama; no.
Sorry, but if you don't want to pay directly for the BBC, you shouldn't expect to receive their non-essential output for nothing.
What pisses me off about the TV license is that you can only pay for a full year, which is crap if you only have a TV for a limited period.
You can claim a refund for any unused quarter; so although stricly speaking you're correct (as you'd have to pay it all, then get the refund; bad if you're short of cash), you don't ultimately lose out by that much.
You omitted to mention the *reason* that global warming could well make Britain colder; the gulf-stream (ocean current), which keeps the British Isles warmer than they'd otherwise be at that latitude could be affected. If it moved away from the British Isles; BAM!
The loss of heat from the Gulf Stream would more than offset the increase due to global warming.
Also, I'm not sure if the predicted increase in precipitation (rain n' stuff) is due to that, or whether an increase in the temperature would cause the UK to get more rain.
Bear in mind that due to its position and physical shape, the UK weather system is complicated.
I've heard of people who thought the British interest in the weather was unjustified, and just an excuse to make polite, inoffensive conversation.
Until they actually came to the UK and realised that the weather really *is* that changable. Going from grey overcast skies with heavy rain to hot sun and back again in the period of 3 or so hours is not unusual, although it *is* annoying even if you live here.
Anyone complaining about British food has never spent any great length of time in Belgium or Holland though. A diet that consists of variants of chips, potatoes and mayonnaise is not exactly haute cuisine...
Hellmans (makers of mayonnaise in the UK- possibly elsewhere too; I don't know) have been running adverts showing a guy enjoying mayonnaise and chips (remember; UK "chips" == US "fries", UK "crisps" == US "chips"; the guy was eating fries).
Now, ignoring the fact that mayonnaise and chips are horrible, what I was thinking was "Yeah, great. So you're eating a food *loaded* with fat and calories, and now instead of ketchup, you're dipping it in mayonnaise, which is something like 90% fat and even *more* full of calories".
And then I noticed that the guy dancing around, dipping his chips in the mayo was pretty fat. Not slobbish, or anything; but definitely overweight.
I'm thinking; did the ad guys miss something here (adverts would normally try to avoid illustrating the drawbacks of their product), or are they just hoping people won't give a damn about their weight?
It's not the metric system which messes things up. It's the English system (which is pretty much not being used in England any more). If it wasn't for the US Media always throing out English measurements, I'd probably know just how tall 183cm was.
And the perverse thing is, your so-called "English" measurements aren't the same as the old-fashioned ones still used in England (and the rest of the UK).
For example, the American pint is equal to 0.8 Imperial (British) pints; fluid ounces are also different.
The UK made moves to go metric over 30 years ago (when my Mum started teaching in the early 1970s, they were teaching kids in metric *then*!), but pints, miles and so on are still in wide use.
I default to metres/centimetres for distance (though I can visualise inches reasonably well), centigrade for temperature (have to convert fahrenheit), and yet I still drive in miles per hour, buy milk in (imperial) pints, measure my height in feet and inches, and weigh myself in pounds and stones (though when I was using the gym I did it in kilograms instead).
Oh yeah; stones. That's one measure you Americans don't have; 1 stone = 14 pounds.
To be fair, it's at least two months since I last posted something via Google groups; it might have changed since then, though I wouldn't bet my life on it.
IF *ALL* companies charged for usenet, maybe ther would be less USENET SPAM.
I thought this was insightful for about 5 seconds, then realised that spammers would do exactly what they've done with mail servers (especially since any accounts they paid for would get closed immediately after they violated the TOS by spamming).
Are you talking about the time that it takes for the article to be propogated to other NNTP servers? That's been a problem with some Usenet server since the beginning:)
Au contraire, the post normally appears on other news servers fairly quickly; but it doesn't appear on *Google's* for #%#$&@ hours!!!
Slashdot Mirror
bah!! No imagination!! Think outside the box!
:-P
The use of the expression "think outside the box" is one of the most box-constrained uses of language *ever*.
It reminds me of tedious management ****s who are too damn stupid to see the irony of this.
So there
Now what we really need is to find a way to hardness the latent computer proscessing power of the George Forman Grill. You know it exisits.
Ah, but will it run Linux? (^_-)
Now, perhaps it might not run on that, but there must be a number of household items with moderate processing power that *could* run some hacked-about form of Linux.
Question is, which is the least "appropriate" appliance that Linux has been run successfully on? For example digital TV set-top box? Microwave oven? Toaster?
My local staples does carry lexmark however it has been a while since I have seen anything other than a low end Cannon or HP printer in one of there discount bundles.
Your local Staples carries low-end Cannons?
(Lights fuse.... BANG!) "Take that ye scurvy Lexmarks!!"
(Notices that the cannonball has gone through the Lexmarks, several more aisles, the wall of Staples itself and has caused extensive damage to 'The Bed Shed' next door)
"Cap'n! They be firin' back at us!"
(Cannonball comes at high speed from The Bed Shed and demolishes a display of overpriced Scanners and Microsoft software)
etcetera....
In reality, you have a better choice with a licence fee because if you choose to stop watching TV then you can get rid/store your TV and not pay for the licence, but you'll still be hit with a charge for advertising every time you buy a McD burger, pint of Guinness, packet of Ariel washing powder, litre of Shell fuel etc. - you can't avoid that TV watching 'tax' even if you don't have a TV!
That's right; if you're determined to buy MCDONALD'S hamburgers, ARIEL washing powder and SHELL fuel, then you're "paying" for the adverts.
Or you could buy other brands; that's your choice. Listen- TV programs are a way for companies to advertise; if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it. It could be argued that the TV ads you don't watch aren't aimed at you anyway, so you aren't "paying" for them.
I mean, Tiny Computers advertise in the newspaper I buy, and newspapers depend on adverts. So, since I would never buy from Tiny, does this mean that a Tiny buyer who doesn't read the papers with Tiny ads is subsidising *my* newspaper?
The bottom line is that adverts are a *choice* a company makes to increase their products' prominence. You also have the free *choice* to buy different products. It would only be a tax in a market where you didn't have a reasonable opportunity to buy something else.
Then, of course, why should the companies waste money on advertising if they have a monopoly? If they kept the (former-) ad money to themselves, but the price stayed the same, would you be happier because money wasn't going to pay for something you didn't watch?
Bear in mind that the guy asked about *computer games*.
Even if he *was* interested in what you said (and there's nothing wrong with it per se; I'm quite interested in the idea of meditation personally), it's not really a replacement for a few minutes with the PS2 or whatever. With respect, your suggestion seemed vaguely patronising.
Well, I hope I *am* wrong. If people respect your opinion and you can get them to avoid Lexmark, great!
BTW, I like Canon, but the lack of free Linux drivers is an issue. Turboprint is available, but you have to pay for it...
I have a number of friends with physical disabilities and they are always cracking "disabled jokes".
Reminds me of an episode of the "Extreme Ghostbusters" cartoon I caught a bit of a few years back. The van crashed, and one of the guys yells something like "My legs! I can't move my legs".
Which caught the attention of the others in the group for a while, until they realised that the character in question was in a wheelchair and couldn't move them anyway; then they gave him a dirty look and he gave a half-sheepish grin.
It surprised me because I'd have expected the makers to either gloss over the character's disability or treat it in a 'sympathetic' (i.e. cotton-wool and patronising) serious manner when it did come up.
The joke neither skirted round the issue, nor reduced the character to a one-dimensional cipher, but made him human and believable; as did the fact it was a throwaway line.
Of course, not everyone would- or should be expected to- act like that; the whole damn point is that the character was acting like an *individual*.
Well, I should probably make clear that I'm not disabled, but if I was (and it could happen to any of us), I wouldn't want to be patronised or expected to act in a specific manner because I'd lost the use of part of my body.
Hfolelupy yluol dvoicisr the utturnh - the irccoernt psmeire rieels eerillnty uopn sctnneees ctssiinnog selloy of spmile ricttresed lteetr wdros. A centrecod errofft to cuntsorct celmpox pyyasllliobc wdros elaisey perdocus grebibsih.
That's not English, that's Welsh.
No, I *don't* speak Welsh obviously.
That having been said, it's possible to make text look like Scottish Gaelic by doing letter replacements such as 'x' with 'cs' and so on. I think this works because Gaelic uses fewer letters; it always looks unwieldy written down, to me. Perhaps the same could be done with Welsh (both Celtic languages after all).
No, I don't speak Gaelic either. Nor Cornish, Irish or Breton. (BTW, I was surprised to note that Fedora Core 3 included Cornish in its list of (IIRC) installation languages- was this in response to 'The Simpsons'?- but not Scottish Gaelic).
Canon is not dumping the print cartridges. Even at $8, they are highly profitable. At the same time, HP is in big trouble.
Yeah. Don't get me wrong; I like Canon, but they're only "cheap" when you compare them with the ripoff prices (and tactics) of HP, Epson and Lexmark; the official color tanks for my i455 are still moderately expensive by absolute standards, though the black is reasonable.
So; Canon ink is reasonable, but not *that* cheap; the MAJOR advantage to their lower-end printers is that you can buy cheap compatible ink-tanks with absolutely *none* of the faffing about associated with Lexmark and friends (Or did I mean fiends? Ha ha ha ha... erm, sorry).
The seemingly durable print-head doesn't need replacement as did the one in my old Canon BJC-4300; great, because they were expensive when they *did* fail.
Also, it's a damn good printer for the price (UKP 70.00 inc tax from Amazon) and well worth the money over even cheaper Canons.
But idiot consumers will still buy Lexmarks because they get free ink worth $40 (or whatever). Irony being that the "free" ink is only "worth" so much because the refills are so grossly overpriced in the first place.
No offence intended, but going for #3 is blinkered geek naivity. Even if a large proportion of Slashdotters boycott Lexmark for this reason, it's the old "mistaking your peer group for a typical cross-section" mistake. I doubt socially-aware geeks make up *that* much of Lexmark's customer base (*) and the stupid sheep that *do* probably don't even know (or care) what the DMCA is.
/.er has probably figured out that Lexmarks are *not* cheap when you factor in consumables, and will avoid them regardless of Lexmark's DMCA abuse.
Sorry, but it's #1.
(*) Especially since the average
Shakin' Stevens?!
Shakin' bleedin' Stevens?!
Shakin' Stevens had a computer game; on his singles?! Very weird and geeky; not the kind of thing you'd have expected from him at all.
It's kind of like finding out that Britney Spears has secreted Marijuana in unused pits on the outside edge of her latest CD in an attempt to overthrow American society.
German war criminals?
Wonder how long ago they got in?
At any rate, it could be a shrewd move; let the war criminals in (knowingly, but don't tell them that), then you know where they are. Once they're all in Canada, arrest them and put them on trial.
Personally, I don't give a fuck how old they are. All I care about is whether they get a fair trial or not. If they can (admittedly a big 'if'), and they're found guilty, I'd quite happily make them suffer horribly for the rest of their squalid little lives.
I never got that 'old men' thing. On the contrary, the fact that they'd evaded justice up until the end of their lives means they should be punished more severely if anything.
By the time they get to that age, death would probably be a minor punishment; better to keep them alive in prison for as long as possible, with no visits, TV, radio, etc.
Too many people escaped justice at the end of WWII. I don't care that it's 60 years on; it's not acceptable that these vermin make it through their lives without meeting justice.
It's pretty well known that Canada takes in foreign criminals, terrorists, and et cetera.
Criminals by which judicial system and under what sort of regime?
If you're going to come out with stuff like that- which may well be true- you should at least give some examples to back it up.
So; stop being a smartass. It was originally pronounced with a soft "g", and got to the present state thanks, no doubt, to the misuse of millions of computer geeks.
He's probably some genius physics Professor who was using the word before your Dad first got his hands in your Mum's underwear, and has his mind on something important in quantum mechanics instead of whether the graphics card in the computer he bought last month is out of date because it doesn't run Quake Nukem LXXIX.
Let's be honest; a lot of computer stuff is ephemeral crap that might be interesting today, but is entirely man-made and likely to be irrelevant in ten years time.
Your kids will probably pronounce it wrong too, because thinking in units of anything less than an exabyte will be obselete and archaic by then.
Okay; I meant *if* you have kids, which you won't, because you'll turn off the girls when you laugh at them saying "jigabyte".
Last I heard was that anyone with any sort of criminal conviction or blemish on their record had to get a Visa to visit the US.
So; if you want to take a family holiday in Disneyland, but Mummy or Daddy have a driving conviction from way back when, you have to make a journey to London or Belfast (possibly over 1 or 2 nights and involving a journey of hundreds of miles) to get the Visa, with no guarantee of being let in.
Look; don't get me wrong. No country wants to let in hordes of convicted criminals/terrorists/whatever; and I'm sure bad motorists aren't the intended target of the legislation. In addition it would also be quite reasonable for the US government to say "we'll let you in, but you can't drive here".
But this is *way* over the top; apart from the unfriendly signal it sends to all holidaymakers, anyone in that position is going to realise it's more hassle than it's worth to even consider visiting the US, and go somewhere else.
If the stuff is already paid for the BBC should post all of their content on line for free for the world.
And Hollywood movies are "already paid for" once they've been made, so we should get them free too.
Put simply, I'm all in favour of British people being allowed to download BBC-owned material for free, because most of them paid for it through the license fee. But I don't have a problem in charging people elsewhere for (most of) it, unless they made a contribution towards the production costs.
Don't get me wrong; I support things like World Service radio being freely available across the world; if nothing else, the BBC are, for all their faults, a better news source than most others, and this is particularly important in countries where the government or other forces would like to censor the facts. (I'm not forgetting that people thoughout the world benefit from (eg) GPS, which is paid for by the US; World Service radio is semi-altruistic in the same way).
However, this does *not* extend towards (eg) letting Americans get "Fawlty Towers" and "The Office" for free, and so on. News; yes. Comedy, drama; no.
Sorry, but if you don't want to pay directly for the BBC, you shouldn't expect to receive their non-essential output for nothing.
What pisses me off about the TV license is that you can only pay for a full year, which is crap if you only have a TV for a limited period.
You can claim a refund for any unused quarter; so although stricly speaking you're correct (as you'd have to pay it all, then get the refund; bad if you're short of cash), you don't ultimately lose out by that much.
You omitted to mention the *reason* that global warming could well make Britain colder; the gulf-stream (ocean current), which keeps the British Isles warmer than they'd otherwise be at that latitude could be affected. If it moved away from the British Isles; BAM!
.
The loss of heat from the Gulf Stream would more than offset the increase due to global warming.
Also, I'm not sure if the predicted increase in precipitation (rain n' stuff) is due to that, or whether an increase in the temperature would cause the UK to get more rain
Bear in mind that due to its position and physical shape, the UK weather system is complicated.
I've heard of people who thought the British interest in the weather was unjustified, and just an excuse to make polite, inoffensive conversation.
Until they actually came to the UK and realised that the weather really *is* that changable. Going from grey overcast skies with heavy rain to hot sun and back again in the period of 3 or so hours is not unusual, although it *is* annoying even if you live here.
Anyone complaining about British food has never spent any great length of time in Belgium or Holland though. A diet that consists of variants of chips, potatoes and mayonnaise is not exactly haute cuisine...
Hellmans (makers of mayonnaise in the UK- possibly elsewhere too; I don't know) have been running adverts showing a guy enjoying mayonnaise and chips (remember; UK "chips" == US "fries", UK "crisps" == US "chips"; the guy was eating fries).
Now, ignoring the fact that mayonnaise and chips are horrible, what I was thinking was "Yeah, great. So you're eating a food *loaded* with fat and calories, and now instead of ketchup, you're dipping it in mayonnaise, which is something like 90% fat and even *more* full of calories".
And then I noticed that the guy dancing around, dipping his chips in the mayo was pretty fat. Not slobbish, or anything; but definitely overweight.
I'm thinking; did the ad guys miss something here (adverts would normally try to avoid illustrating the drawbacks of their product), or are they just hoping people won't give a damn about their weight?
It's not the metric system which messes things up. It's the English system (which is pretty much not being used in England any more). If it wasn't for the US Media always throing out English measurements, I'd probably know just how tall 183cm was.
And the perverse thing is, your so-called "English" measurements aren't the same as the old-fashioned ones still used in England (and the rest of the UK).
For example, the American pint is equal to 0.8 Imperial (British) pints; fluid ounces are also different.
The UK made moves to go metric over 30 years ago (when my Mum started teaching in the early 1970s, they were teaching kids in metric *then*!), but pints, miles and so on are still in wide use.
I default to metres/centimetres for distance (though I can visualise inches reasonably well), centigrade for temperature (have to convert fahrenheit), and yet I still drive in miles per hour, buy milk in (imperial) pints, measure my height in feet and inches, and weigh myself in pounds and stones (though when I was using the gym I did it in kilograms instead).
Oh yeah; stones. That's one measure you Americans don't have; 1 stone = 14 pounds.
Them that there varmints with their goin' around burglarizing honest folks houses.... it's making a mockery of the judiciarialary system
To be fair, it's at least two months since I last posted something via Google groups; it might have changed since then, though I wouldn't bet my life on it.
IF *ALL* companies charged for usenet, maybe ther would be less USENET SPAM.
I thought this was insightful for about 5 seconds, then realised that spammers would do exactly what they've done with mail servers (especially since any accounts they paid for would get closed immediately after they violated the TOS by spamming).
Are you talking about the time that it takes for the article to be propogated to other NNTP servers? That's been a problem with some Usenet server since the beginning :)
Au contraire, the post normally appears on other news servers fairly quickly; but it doesn't appear on *Google's* for #%#$&@ hours!!!
Go figure that one out if you can.
I liked the Deja interface. Pre "consumer portal", that is.
You mean when it went from deja-news.com to deja.com.. sorry, I meant deja-fruit-machine.com.
That was ******* *horrible*.
Good old days my arse; thank $DEITY Google took it over. Don't forget that even the old deja-news.com had (animated IIRC) banner ads.