That's nice, kyknos, but we weren't discussing you. The original poster left South Africa 10 years ago for the United States, and hasn't been back since. For someone in his position to prattle on about how much more progressive SA is than the US is, well, a bit awkward.
kyknos.org said:
of course, would prefer SA over US if I had to leave Europe
Haha, well, you're welcome to it. Hey, let's do one more statistic about how "progressive" South Africa is. According to The BBC: "It is a fact that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped, than learning how to read." Wow.
Just out of curiousity, are you yourself South African linving in South Africa?
I've never been to South Africa. My description based on a friend who grew up there, and joined the French Foreign Legion to get a passport and get the heck out of SA.
But hey, you don't need a friend who went to war in Angola (funny story: his unit caused an international incident with Zamibia by getting lost). A cursory examination of the CIA Factbook reveals a life expectancy of 45 years and infant mortality of 61 per 1000 births. Yikes.
Or offering your expert commentary from a safe distance much as you accuse me of doing?
There's nothing inconsistent about saying "South Africa is a shambles, I'm not going there". It's a bit more suspect to say "I've been avoiding South Africa for almost ten years, but it's way ahead of the US!"
Bottom Line: Progressive laws don't mean shit when basic things like murder and rape are out of control. More liberals in the US could remember this too. And, to be fair, more conservatives could remember that enforcing laws costs money, but in the long term it's a good investment.
I haven't been back in SA since the '94 elections, so I don't know how much of the new government's legislation has made it into actual practice
Ok, I'll fill you in. South Africa has perhaps the greatest divide between Law and Reality that has ever existed. Government wonks in gated communities debate protecting sexual orientation while half the nation live under the tyranny of warlords. There are whole cities in SA which, for all practical purposes, have no police presence. Expats like you talk about how great things are, but probably couldn't be paid enough to go back.
People call liquid cooling dangerious, unneccesary, and extravigant, (sic, sic, sic) and then buy video cards that have cooling such as this one
Water cooling a consumer electronic device is dangerous. And this things fan might be ugly but it's unlikely to cause a fire and kill the guy living upstairs from you.
Not that I'd buy a monstrosity like this (or your water-cooled system). But there are fire codes for a reason.
Right. And I'm not interested in paying for a "guide" service, and I don't really want such a service.
Rabid TiVo fanboys like yourself go on and on about how their TiVo will automatically record every Rock Hudson flick without them having to do anything. Hey, whatever floats your boat. I wouldn't use such a feature, and therefore I don't want to pay $10 a month for it. Nor do I want to pay a one-time fee of $250.
I'd pay maybe $300 for a TiVo that didn't require any subscription at all. I'm perfectly happy just telling the thing to record on Tuesday at 9:00 pm.
As for the "software updates for new features", that sounds like a great way to wake up one day with Digital Rights Management you can't get rid of. Any PVR that refuses to function without being plugged into a phone jack is not for me.
Bottom line: I don't want to buy a "service", crappy or not. I just want to buy an appliance.
The $250 option is for the lifetime of the TiVo unit. It is linked to the unit's serial number, and so it follows the unit if, for example, you sell it on EBay.
I don't want to pay ten bucks a month for the TV listings. That's not whining. It's me wanting to save ten bucks a month.
Notice to TiVo fanatics: Comparing prices between competing models isn't "whining". It's "capitalism".
I want to find something that offers the features of a TiVo, but I don't have to pay for every month. That doesn't make me "cheap", it just makes me a smart consumer.
Is there a process that can be followed to make the inevitable easier?
Yes. Learn English. It makes things wondrously easy.
Seriously, do these people think they're doing school kids a favor? Educating them in a language used in one part of Norway?
Re:NAT is hard to detect
on
802.11 RF Amp
·
· Score: 1
One way ISP's try to keep people from NAT'ing is by not giving them their bandwidth over ethernet. They will give you something that plugs into USB, and some Windows software. Install the software and BAM, your Windows box is on the network. But, of course, it will refuse to forward packets.
Obivously this is particularly worisome to the Linux crowd.
Libel cases based on Internet material could be mounted anywhere in the world, after a landmark judgment handed down by the Australian High Court today
It would be more accurate to say the cases could be brought in Australia. I don't believe the court made mention of the rest of the world in its ruling.
The real problem with gaming on laptops isn't the frame rate. These days, the type of one-generation-back video chips in portable computers can stil give you a good frame rate, even in modern games.
The rub is the display. LCD's just aren't very good at fast action. The switching times are too long, even on pricy units. Even screensavers tend to ghost and blur on an LCD.
BF1942 is easier to play on a CRT, and will be for the forseeable future. Maybe when new technologies like organic LED's come online, gaming on laptops really will be an option.
A lot of people seem to think the big retailers should be happy about "free advertising". The problem (from their perspective) is loss leaders.
A loss leader is something you advertise at a steep discount, with words to the effect of "while supplies last". The idea is to lose money on 50 units and bring 2,000 people into the store.
The problem is that the newspaper ads often need to be typeset days in advance. So if I find out they're going to be selling Model W-1005 Widgets for $59.97 on Black Friday, I can go buy one for $89.97 on Wednesday. Then I just go back a few days later for a price adjustment. Obviously the retailers don't like this sort of thing.
It's always been something that a few store employees (and their friends) would take advantage of, but like so many things, the web has amplified it to the n'th degree. I say screw 'em; it's bascially a deceptive sales practice anyway, so it's hard to conjure up much sympathy.
Slashdot Mirror
- kyknos.org said:
- of course, would prefer SA over US if I had to leave Europe
Haha, well, you're welcome to it. Hey, let's do one more statistic about how "progressive" South Africa is. According to The BBC: "It is a fact that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped, than learning how to read." Wow.- Just out of curiousity, are you yourself South African linving in South Africa?
I've never been to South Africa. My description based on a friend who grew up there, and joined the French Foreign Legion to get a passport and get the heck out of SA.But hey, you don't need a friend who went to war in Angola (funny story: his unit caused an international incident with Zamibia by getting lost). A cursory examination of the CIA Factbook reveals a life expectancy of 45 years and infant mortality of 61 per 1000 births. Yikes.
- Or offering your expert commentary from a safe distance much as you accuse me of doing?
There's nothing inconsistent about saying "South Africa is a shambles, I'm not going there". It's a bit more suspect to say "I've been avoiding South Africa for almost ten years, but it's way ahead of the US!"Bottom Line: Progressive laws don't mean shit when basic things like murder and rape are out of control. More liberals in the US could remember this too. And, to be fair, more conservatives could remember that enforcing laws costs money, but in the long term it's a good investment.
- I haven't been back in SA since the '94 elections, so I don't know how much of the new government's legislation has made it into actual practice
Ok, I'll fill you in. South Africa has perhaps the greatest divide between Law and Reality that has ever existed. Government wonks in gated communities debate protecting sexual orientation while half the nation live under the tyranny of warlords. There are whole cities in SA which, for all practical purposes, have no police presence. Expats like you talk about how great things are, but probably couldn't be paid enough to go back.People call liquid cooling dangerious, unneccesary, and extravigant, (sic, sic, sic) and then buy video cards that have cooling such as this one
Water cooling a consumer electronic device is dangerous. And this things fan might be ugly but it's unlikely to cause a fire and kill the guy living upstairs from you.
Not that I'd buy a monstrosity like this (or your water-cooled system). But there are fire codes for a reason.
Microsoft has $40 billion dollars in cash tucked away.
If they wanted to, the could be the world's biggest just-about-anything.
Well: newsflash. You get what you pay for.
Right. And I'm not interested in paying for a "guide" service, and I don't really want such a service.
Rabid TiVo fanboys like yourself go on and on about how their TiVo will automatically record every Rock Hudson flick without them having to do anything. Hey, whatever floats your boat. I wouldn't use such a feature, and therefore I don't want to pay $10 a month for it. Nor do I want to pay a one-time fee of $250.
I'd pay maybe $300 for a TiVo that didn't require any subscription at all. I'm perfectly happy just telling the thing to record on Tuesday at 9:00 pm.
As for the "software updates for new features", that sounds like a great way to wake up one day with Digital Rights Management you can't get rid of. Any PVR that refuses to function without being plugged into a phone jack is not for me.
Bottom line: I don't want to buy a "service", crappy or not. I just want to buy an appliance.
The $250 option is for the lifetime of the TiVo unit. It is linked to the unit's serial number, and so it follows the unit if, for example, you sell it on EBay.
I don't want to pay ten bucks a month for the TV listings. That's not whining. It's me wanting to save ten bucks a month.
Notice to TiVo fanatics: Comparing prices between competing models isn't "whining". It's "capitalism".
I want to find something that offers the features of a TiVo, but I don't have to pay for every month. That doesn't make me "cheap", it just makes me a smart consumer.
Think about it. By 2005, shadows cast by all the flying cars will kill solar.
Is there a process that can be followed to make the inevitable easier?
Yes. Learn English. It makes things wondrously easy.
Seriously, do these people think they're doing school kids a favor? Educating them in a language used in one part of Norway?
One way ISP's try to keep people from NAT'ing is by not giving them their bandwidth over ethernet. They will give you something that plugs into USB, and some Windows software. Install the software and BAM, your Windows box is on the network. But, of course, it will refuse to forward packets.
Obivously this is particularly worisome to the Linux crowd.
where is the outcry of support for Apple as they stand virtually alone resisting DRM?
Umm, what about the EFF?
Libel cases based on Internet material could be mounted anywhere in the world, after a landmark judgment handed down by the Australian High Court today It would be more accurate to say the cases could be brought in Australia. I don't believe the court made mention of the rest of the world in its ruling.
The article backs up its own point about running webservers on Linux:
bash-2.03$ telnet www.crn.com 80
Trying 66.77.24.17...
Connected to crn.com.
Escape character is '^]'
GET / HTTP/1.0
two minute wait.. three dropped connections..
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
The real problem with gaming on laptops isn't the frame rate. These days, the type of one-generation-back video chips in portable computers can stil give you a good frame rate, even in modern games.
The rub is the display. LCD's just aren't very good at fast action. The switching times are too long, even on pricy units. Even screensavers tend to ghost and blur on an LCD.
BF1942 is easier to play on a CRT, and will be for the forseeable future. Maybe when new technologies like organic LED's come online, gaming on laptops really will be an option.
A lot of people seem to think the big retailers should be happy about "free advertising". The problem (from their perspective) is loss leaders.
A loss leader is something you advertise at a steep discount, with words to the effect of "while supplies last". The idea is to lose money on 50 units and bring 2,000 people into the store.
The problem is that the newspaper ads often need to be typeset days in advance. So if I find out they're going to be selling Model W-1005 Widgets for $59.97 on Black Friday, I can go buy one for $89.97 on Wednesday. Then I just go back a few days later for a price adjustment. Obviously the retailers don't like this sort of thing.
It's always been something that a few store employees (and their friends) would take advantage of, but like so many things, the web has amplified it to the n'th degree. I say screw 'em; it's bascially a deceptive sales practice anyway, so it's hard to conjure up much sympathy.