Also, rule of thumb: 100% clean installs are always the safe way to go. Back up your stuff, wipe the HD, then restore as needed.
I couldn't agree more, though in my case I use a upgrade as an opportunity to clean my system of any of the junk I've installed and not used since the last upgrade. This time it was Office 2004 (replaced with iWork 08) and Thunderbird (rec.sport.rugby.union was getting bad for my blood pressure) plus a whole host of other utilities and bits and pieces I've tried and used once. Not that having them there causes problems, I just like to tidy up now and again.
Of course you should always buy as much aperture as you can afford, but your aperture budget shouldn't cut into your accessories budget. What I was really saying was: if you are torn between two scopes of the same aperture, buy the cheaper one (i.e. buy a Dobsonian over a Mak)
I can go with that.
However, if you look at planets or the moon, a small aperture high focal length scope is better than the opposite. I moved to urban sprawl, so I can't view deep sky stuff. My 8" Newt is mostly useless. If I could, I'd trade it in for a good 4" high focal length refractor.
That's the problem I face, light pollution that is. And too much light from the surrounding buildings. I need to find somewhere relatively secure, dark and close by. In SE London that's going to be a challenge:(
Keep the cheaper telescope and have more money to spend on accessories such as...
No argument with most of what you said but I disagree on cheaper scopes if it means a smaller aperture.
With telescopes aperture is everything, the bigger the better. A few quid saved on aperture for some accessories will soon be regretted when you find you should have gone for the light gathering power of an 8'' as opposed to a 6'' or 6'' as opposed to 4''.
Amen to that. I thought the price of Software in the UK was bad compared to the US until I looked at 'scopes which manage to run it close. My Celestron 6inch SCT cost £699 over here and Celestron have it on their site with a $150 rebate bringing it down to $936 or about £470. As I recall the LX range is even worse:(
Banks has gone off the boil slightly, IMHO, but Alastair Reynolds is just getting better and better with each book he writes. Pushing Ice is a masterpiece and Century Rain not far behind. And the Redemption Ark trilogy lag behind only in that the quality of his writing wasn't as polished; the stories themselves are excellent.
Banksies early stuff is still some of the best around though - The Player Of Games/Consider Phlebas/Use of Weapons are all fantastic pieces of work.
Anyone would be better than Orange. From stolen credit card details (two cards of my wife's over three weeks, the second the replacement for the first) to price-match that doesn't and outrageous data charges.
Series 60 turned me off Nokia phones completely, so much so that I won't buy one that uses it regardless of any claimed benefits. I now have a K800i which I know isn't a smartphone but you're right, it's a very good UI and very usable. Although oddly there seems to be no way to enter flight mode other than by powering off and on again, though being as I'm with Orange it could be hidden under the bastardised front-end they always seem to stick on phones.
However, I just watched the iPhone video from Apple and in terms of usability and integration of applications its a long way ahead of anything on the market from any other vendor. OK, so it was a video demo which is bound not to show you any of the downsides that you'd find with general usage but as a package the whole thing looks very well integrated.
I may just have to look at one when they come to the UK. Which means that I'll probably end up buying one. Even if the price plans are similar to those in the US, although they're bound not to be. I just hope it's not on Orange.
At last year's WWW conf., there was a panel between various mobile web representatives discussing why the mobile web had not yet taken off. One (the Orange guy, I think?) pointed out that extremely high expectations had built up around mobile browsing. It wasn't so much that the current experience as of today's Nokia smartphone is particularly bad - it's more that there was a huge mismatch between expectation and experience.
I think that's part of it but in the UK there's the added factor of the high cost of mobile internet connectivity along with, in most cases, bizarre fair use restrictions - unlimited use means capped at 1GB per month. With my current tariff I have free evening and weekend use and if I use it during the day it's capped at a maximum of £1.50 per day. Add to that the £5.00 I pay for the weekend/evening access, that's still a charge of up to £35 per month.
And I'm explicitly barred from using my 3G phone as a modem for a laptop or any other kind of device.
I actually find the browsing experience not too bad - I use a Sony Ericsson K800i - but the costs are just too high.
Well, here's what Brendan Eich, Mozilla's chief technology officer, has to say about multithreading
You know, as someone who invested a reasonable amount of my youth reading EE Smith's Lensman series, I find there's something unsettling about someone called Eich.
As a result, I can't help feeling that Mozilla must be a tool of Eddore and that anyone who opposes them is fighting for the good of humanity and civilisation.
Or a slightly different analagy... I create a project in VSE and VSE doesn't include functionality to place that project into a repository, e.g. subversion.
If I then use a separate application to place the project under source control in subversion, have I worked around a "technical limitation" in VSE? I think that I have, but that the wording of the clause is too vague to be applicable, particularly as if it were applicable I would be being prohibited from following best practice for protection of my work, regardless of whether I'm a professional developer or not.
And in the same way, I think the clause is too vague to be applicable in this case. JMHO.
Agreed on the rest, this smells more like revenue protection than a reasonable technical limitation of the product.
one of the articles, I forget which of the two, specifically quotes the new project manager as saying that they will be doing further research into improving efficiency before they attempt to create a product.
Seems reasonable to me. If they ship a low efficiency product, the world yawns, scratches it's arse and rolls over and goes back to sleep and the chance to sell the idea goes away.
If they get an efficient and usable product out, we all wake up, eyes wide open and reach for our cheque books.
OK, so it's not quite like that but I'd be happier to go to market with a product that hits the headlines rather than one that could end up a damp squib.
Telecom New Zealand has a new Go Large plan. The advertising says no limits but the conditions say more than 750Mb in one day is deemed excessive. Then there is the Traffic Managment that is not advertised. mmmm
Ouch! The sound of that clanger being dropped must have echoed all round both islands.
I'm pretty lucky with my ISP - I managed to get an effectively unlimited account when I signed up some time back - but I understand your pain. I have no context for the cost of comms to and from Australia but surely the infrastructure must be good enough now to not have such caps?
But even then, to be honest I would think reduced download speed was a better way of restricting over users rather than cutting them off or terminating contracts.
It's not "marketing friendly" to anyone with half a brain, which I hope covers most people who sign up for mobile data to that kind of level. My supplier in the UK, Orange, has an unlimited data plan which has a 1GB per month cap and I can blow that in far less than a month and know that all to well which is why I'd never sign up to a plan like that.
If a service is unlimited then there should be no limits to it other than the laws of physics, and you all know we canna defy the laws of physics. If you have a fair use clause which allows a supplier to terminate your account if you breach it, then it's not an unlimited account and I'm really surprised it can be advertised as such.
Call it a 1GB plan or whatever, as others have suggested, but not unlimited when it clearly has limits.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear America, Keep it up! Love, Your competitors in the rest of the world. I wonder if this is how the British Empire collapsed too.
No, the British Empire didn't collapse, we gave it away. Well, before anyone took it away.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Also, rule of thumb: 100% clean installs are always the safe way to go. Back up your stuff, wipe the HD, then restore as needed.
I couldn't agree more, though in my case I use a upgrade as an opportunity to clean my system of any of the junk I've installed and not used since the last upgrade. This time it was Office 2004 (replaced with iWork 08) and Thunderbird (rec.sport.rugby.union was getting bad for my blood pressure) plus a whole host of other utilities and bits and pieces I've tried and used once. Not that having them there causes problems, I just like to tidy up now and again.
...have never heard of Mindbridge.
A book by Joe Haldeman. I believe Forever War have just moved from Linux to OSX and their costs have gone up significantly.
Of course you should always buy as much aperture as you can afford, but your aperture budget shouldn't cut into your accessories budget. What I was really saying was: if you are torn between two scopes of the same aperture, buy the cheaper one (i.e. buy a Dobsonian over a Mak)
:(
I can go with that.
However, if you look at planets or the moon, a small aperture high focal length scope is better than the opposite. I moved to urban sprawl, so I can't view deep sky stuff. My 8" Newt is mostly useless. If I could, I'd trade it in for a good 4" high focal length refractor.
That's the problem I face, light pollution that is. And too much light from the surrounding buildings. I need to find somewhere relatively secure, dark and close by. In SE London that's going to be a challenge
Keep the cheaper telescope and have more money to spend on accessories such as...
No argument with most of what you said but I disagree on cheaper scopes if it means a smaller aperture.
With telescopes aperture is everything, the bigger the better. A few quid saved on aperture for some accessories will soon be regretted when you find you should have gone for the light gathering power of an 8'' as opposed to a 6'' or 6'' as opposed to 4''.
I suspect one-off telephone sales may not be high on their list of priorities.
I'm presuming that there should have been an optical qualification in TFA as the ones you list appear, to my untutored eye, to be radio telescopes.
Amen to that. I thought the price of Software in the UK was bad compared to the US until I looked at 'scopes which manage to run it close. My Celestron 6inch SCT cost £699 over here and Celestron have it on their site with a $150 rebate bringing it down to $936 or about £470. As I recall the LX range is even worse :(
Banks has gone off the boil slightly, IMHO, but Alastair Reynolds is just getting better and better with each book he writes. Pushing Ice is a masterpiece and Century Rain not far behind. And the Redemption Ark trilogy lag behind only in that the quality of his writing wasn't as polished; the stories themselves are excellent.
Banksies early stuff is still some of the best around though - The Player Of Games/Consider Phlebas/Use of Weapons are all fantastic pieces of work.
I believe that's "All you Zombies" from the short story collection "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathon Hoag".
Anyone would be better than Orange. From stolen credit card details (two cards of my wife's over three weeks, the second the replacement for the first) to price-match that doesn't and outrageous data charges.
I really do need to switch.
Series 60 turned me off Nokia phones completely, so much so that I won't buy one that uses it regardless of any claimed benefits. I now have a K800i which I know isn't a smartphone but you're right, it's a very good UI and very usable. Although oddly there seems to be no way to enter flight mode other than by powering off and on again, though being as I'm with Orange it could be hidden under the bastardised front-end they always seem to stick on phones.
However, I just watched the iPhone video from Apple and in terms of usability and integration of applications its a long way ahead of anything on the market from any other vendor. OK, so it was a video demo which is bound not to show you any of the downsides that you'd find with general usage but as a package the whole thing looks very well integrated.
I may just have to look at one when they come to the UK. Which means that I'll probably end up buying one. Even if the price plans are similar to those in the US, although they're bound not to be. I just hope it's not on Orange.
At last year's WWW conf., there was a panel between various mobile web representatives discussing why the mobile web had not yet taken off. One (the Orange guy, I think?) pointed out that extremely high expectations had built up around mobile browsing. It wasn't so much that the current experience as of today's Nokia smartphone is particularly bad - it's more that there was a huge mismatch between expectation and experience.
I think that's part of it but in the UK there's the added factor of the high cost of mobile internet connectivity along with, in most cases, bizarre fair use restrictions - unlimited use means capped at 1GB per month. With my current tariff I have free evening and weekend use and if I use it during the day it's capped at a maximum of £1.50 per day. Add to that the £5.00 I pay for the weekend/evening access, that's still a charge of up to £35 per month.
And I'm explicitly barred from using my 3G phone as a modem for a laptop or any other kind of device.
I actually find the browsing experience not too bad - I use a Sony Ericsson K800i - but the costs are just too high.
Mmmkay, I'll take your word for it.
So you don't find it ironic that a grammar-based flame includes a grammatical error?
Jesus christ, hopefully you didn't get the job, it was harder then fuck to understand what the hell you just said.
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
Well, here's what Brendan Eich, Mozilla's chief technology officer, has to say about multithreading
You know, as someone who invested a reasonable amount of my youth reading EE Smith's Lensman series, I find there's something unsettling about someone called Eich.
As a result, I can't help feeling that Mozilla must be a tool of Eddore and that anyone who opposes them is fighting for the good of humanity and civilisation.
I'll get my coat.
Or a slightly different analagy... I create a project in VSE and VSE doesn't include functionality to place that project into a repository, e.g. subversion.
If I then use a separate application to place the project under source control in subversion, have I worked around a "technical limitation" in VSE? I think that I have, but that the wording of the clause is too vague to be applicable, particularly as if it were applicable I would be being prohibited from following best practice for protection of my work, regardless of whether I'm a professional developer or not.
And in the same way, I think the clause is too vague to be applicable in this case. JMHO.
Agreed on the rest, this smells more like revenue protection than a reasonable technical limitation of the product.
I'd prefer LaTeX over buggy MS Equation Editor any day.
Then why not upgrade to MathType? Seriously, MathType is so much better than equation editor it's unfnny.
one of the articles, I forget which of the two, specifically quotes the new project manager as saying that they will be doing further research into improving efficiency before they attempt to create a product.
Seems reasonable to me. If they ship a low efficiency product, the world yawns, scratches it's arse and rolls over and goes back to sleep and the chance to sell the idea goes away.
If they get an efficient and usable product out, we all wake up, eyes wide open and reach for our cheque books.
OK, so it's not quite like that but I'd be happier to go to market with a product that hits the headlines rather than one that could end up a damp squib.
Telecom New Zealand has a new Go Large plan. The advertising says no limits but the conditions say more than 750Mb in one day is deemed excessive. Then there is the Traffic Managment that is not advertised. mmmm
Ouch! The sound of that clanger being dropped must have echoed all round both islands.
But see that is the problem, we are talking about people who work in Marketing, brains don't even figure into the equation.
Doh! Sorry, my bad.
I'm pretty lucky with my ISP - I managed to get an effectively unlimited account when I signed up some time back - but I understand your pain. I have no context for the cost of comms to and from Australia but surely the infrastructure must be good enough now to not have such caps?
But even then, to be honest I would think reduced download speed was a better way of restricting over users rather than cutting them off or terminating contracts.
It's not "marketing friendly" to anyone with half a brain, which I hope covers most people who sign up for mobile data to that kind of level. My supplier in the UK, Orange, has an unlimited data plan which has a 1GB per month cap and I can blow that in far less than a month and know that all to well which is why I'd never sign up to a plan like that.
If a service is unlimited then there should be no limits to it other than the laws of physics, and you all know we canna defy the laws of physics. If you have a fair use clause which allows a supplier to terminate your account if you breach it, then it's not an unlimited account and I'm really surprised it can be advertised as such.
Call it a 1GB plan or whatever, as others have suggested, but not unlimited when it clearly has limits.
Are you sure? My PSP will play un-DRM'd AAC files as will the music player on my N800.