I've never had more than the odd tracking cookie (thank you Doubleclick) when I've run AdAware. I suppose not using IE helps, as does having a reasonably well tuned bullshit detector.
Anyway, all these people who are buying new PCs because their old ones are full of crapware can send the old boxes to me. I'm sure it's nothing a quick reformat won't fix.
I'd be surprised if China or North Korea hadn't had something worse and covered it up. In terms of deaths, Bhopal is the worst we know about, but Seveso and Minamata were (and still are) pretty nasty in terms of ongoing birth defects.
For spectacular destruction Flixborough in England is pretty impressive. Think of the accidental detonation of one of those daisy-cutter bombs and you have what engineers call an "unconfined vapour cloud explosion". If you're happy to include military disasters, the Fauld explosion in WWII left a crater a quarter of a mile across and shifted a truly prodigious amount of earth, as well as vapourising 70 people. The crater still shows up quite nicely on Multimap.
a country sitting atop a substantive percentage of the world's oil supply, draped in medieval-level religious fanaticism, and armed with newly-minted atomic weapons
Yeah, I agree. (reads on) Oh hang on...you weren't talking about George Bush's America, were you...
Nah. The only way politicians (who start wars) can be reminded that war has a price is if they, or their sons and daughters, are required to lead the first cavalry charge. Henry V, Richard I etc are good examples of the old school.
Soldiers are considered expendable by amoral politicians. Hitler rather liked wars because it provided a convenient way to "get rid of all the stupid people" by sending them off to fight. After all, if your soldiers refuse to fight for an unjust cause you can just shoot them at dawn.
Real TV piracy has been around for ages
on
TV Piracy is Next
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· Score: 1
And I don't mean time-shifting or lending people shows that have already been broadcast. Piracy of smart cards for satellite and terrestrial digital systems is rampant in Europe, especially (for some unfathomable reason) in Scotland, where cards for ITV Digital were sold openly on market stalls. ITV Digital's final collapse may have been precipitated by their overpaying for the rights to show minor-league soccer, but the fact that half the UK was watching for free didn't help.
Sky TV (Rupert Murdoch's UK satellite service) has never been pirated to the same extent as the encryption is unusually hard to break. ITV Digital used the Canal+ system, which was cracked wide open. In a nice twist for conspiracy theorists, Canal+ later tried to sue Sky in the belief that they had funded the hack - and it was a really, really deep tech hack involving electron microscopes - which was perpetrated by an Israeli lab.
No, the licensing costs are excessive and there are some serious instability bugs that need working out. They never, ever, suffer from memory leaks though - especially if it relates to something you said in 1987 about her arse looking big in those jeans.
Predictive texting is crap (everyone I know turns it off) so I can't see this being much better. Now a *really* smart phone would recognise telemarketing calls and refuse to ring, or just play a recorded message telling them you're dead.
The method of producing hydrogen kind of reminds me of the way acetylene lamps used to work; dripping water onto calcium carbide releases the gas. No environmental benefits though, since you release CO2 when you make the carbide *and* when you burn the acetylene, which (being highly unsaturated) has a high carbon content and is far dirtier than gasoline. Acetylene has a notoriously smoky flame unless you burn it in pure oxygen, as in an oxy-acetylene torch.
Microsoft are pushing the AMD architecture now. They want people to be running 64-bit in two years' time, and they're not talking about Itanium 2. Intel themselves have admitted that Itanium 2 is now only aimed at big iron, as it was a flop in the desktop and standard server markets.
That's just Microsoft FUD. A keygenned copy of Windows XP will happily accept either Service Pack - and Windows Update works fine. If the vendor was stupid enough to use one of a handful of really well-known pirate keys then the SPs might not install, but that's unlikely.
I read that article yesterday. It basically says the DVD player has replaced the VCR. They aren't directly comparable products. The VCR's main selling point is it allows you to record TV content to watch at another time. The DVD's main selling point is it allows you to watch pre-recorded content.
Two words: DVD recorder. Hell, they're not even expensive - cheaper than a decent VCR was a couple of years ago.
Re:I think this is a mistake...
on
The VHS is Dead
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· Score: 1
You can't afford 250UKP for a Philips DVD recorder? My last VCR cost 400UKP in 1997. It's just that VCRs (and pre-recorded tapes) have collapsed in price since the late 1990s because the manufacturers can see the writing on the wall.
Try a DVD recorder. After initial reliability problems, the cheap Philips ones are now very good. When dual-layer ones become popular, they'll be even better.
The only excuse for keeping a VCR is if you have a huge tape library, and you could easily rip that to VCD on your PC (DVD is a total waste for a VHS conversion, and most DVD players will take VCD).
Isn't total bollocks, as we say in Britain. The Fujitsu drives that were failing a couple of years ago could sometimes be revived long enough to back them up using this method. The fault was in the drive electronics, not the physical disk.
"During his short, unhappy life, Bob was ridiculed, ignored and finally abandoned....
Sure, he was only a computer program, but still: Let us now pause a moment to pay our respects to Microsoft Bob.
RIP: Bob, 1995-96"
And I bet Melinda was sleeping with the boss before Bob was even cold in his grave. Some people have no sense of loyalty.
The corollary to that is that Darth Vader redeemed himself before he died (by heaving the Emperor into a big hole) and therefore he *should* appear as the Sebastian Shaw version of Anakin.
Slashdot Mirror
"I will not look at lemonparty, I will not look at lemonparty...AAARGH! MY EYES!!!!"
Don't tell me...Han shoots first - and MISSES!
Are 40x more likely to click on ads, especially those jiggly dialog boxes which say "YOUR COMPUTER IS BROADCASTING ITS IP ADDRESS!!!"
And the rest of us just get a warezed copy of Photoshop CS from a friend :-P
Anyway, all these people who are buying new PCs because their old ones are full of crapware can send the old boxes to me. I'm sure it's nothing a quick reformat won't fix.
For spectacular destruction Flixborough in England is pretty impressive. Think of the accidental detonation of one of those daisy-cutter bombs and you have what engineers call an "unconfined vapour cloud explosion". If you're happy to include military disasters, the Fauld explosion in WWII left a crater a quarter of a mile across and shifted a truly prodigious amount of earth, as well as vapourising 70 people. The crater still shows up quite nicely on Multimap.
- Doctors kill in ones.
Yeah, I agree. (reads on) Oh hang on...you weren't talking about George Bush's America, were you...
Soldiers are considered expendable by amoral politicians. Hitler rather liked wars because it provided a convenient way to "get rid of all the stupid people" by sending them off to fight. After all, if your soldiers refuse to fight for an unjust cause you can just shoot them at dawn.
Sky TV (Rupert Murdoch's UK satellite service) has never been pirated to the same extent as the encryption is unusually hard to break. ITV Digital used the Canal+ system, which was cracked wide open. In a nice twist for conspiracy theorists, Canal+ later tried to sue Sky in the belief that they had funded the hack - and it was a really, really deep tech hack involving electron microscopes - which was perpetrated by an Israeli lab.
No, the licensing costs are excessive and there are some serious instability bugs that need working out. They never, ever, suffer from memory leaks though - especially if it relates to something you said in 1987 about her arse looking big in those jeans.
Predictive texting is crap (everyone I know turns it off) so I can't see this being much better. Now a *really* smart phone would recognise telemarketing calls and refuse to ring, or just play a recorded message telling them you're dead.
(yes, I would like one, but the price is barking mad)
The method of producing hydrogen kind of reminds me of the way acetylene lamps used to work; dripping water onto calcium carbide releases the gas. No environmental benefits though, since you release CO2 when you make the carbide *and* when you burn the acetylene, which (being highly unsaturated) has a high carbon content and is far dirtier than gasoline. Acetylene has a notoriously smoky flame unless you burn it in pure oxygen, as in an oxy-acetylene torch.
Microsoft are pushing the AMD architecture now. They want people to be running 64-bit in two years' time, and they're not talking about Itanium 2. Intel themselves have admitted that Itanium 2 is now only aimed at big iron, as it was a flop in the desktop and standard server markets.
That's just Microsoft FUD. A keygenned copy of Windows XP will happily accept either Service Pack - and Windows Update works fine. If the vendor was stupid enough to use one of a handful of really well-known pirate keys then the SPs might not install, but that's unlikely.
Two words: DVD recorder. Hell, they're not even expensive - cheaper than a decent VCR was a couple of years ago.
You can't afford 250UKP for a Philips DVD recorder? My last VCR cost 400UKP in 1997. It's just that VCRs (and pre-recorded tapes) have collapsed in price since the late 1990s because the manufacturers can see the writing on the wall.
Try a DVD recorder. After initial reliability problems, the cheap Philips ones are now very good. When dual-layer ones become popular, they'll be even better.
The only excuse for keeping a VCR is if you have a huge tape library, and you could easily rip that to VCD on your PC (DVD is a total waste for a VHS conversion, and most DVD players will take VCD).
My DVD recorder also does this. In fact, it remembers where you were on the last few discs you've used.
Isn't total bollocks, as we say in Britain. The Fujitsu drives that were failing a couple of years ago could sometimes be revived long enough to back them up using this method. The fault was in the drive electronics, not the physical disk.
For those who haven't seen it yet...one of the b3ta award winners last year. Goodness knows how long it took to do.
And I bet Melinda was sleeping with the boss before Bob was even cold in his grave. Some people have no sense of loyalty.
The corollary to that is that Darth Vader redeemed himself before he died (by heaving the Emperor into a big hole) and therefore he *should* appear as the Sebastian Shaw version of Anakin.
I believe there is a .torrent floating around that was ripped from the original laserdiscs, all ready for burning to DVD.