What a load of balls. People like you give the open source movement a bad name with your one-eyed, misinformed, deceptive nonsense. If you expect people to take your anti-Microsoft stance seriously, try and deliver your argument without such an obvious chip on your shoulder.
Balls to all that - go solo and fill yer pockets with as much of that 800 grand as you can. Sounds to me like you've got tha skillz - why facilitate IBM lining their pockets with it in order to get a fraction of the proceeds when you could have it all yourself?
Cars sure as hell aren't getting more expensive here in Europe. My car's just about ten years old now (not that you'd know it), and it cost about 20,000 when it came out. For that, you get no air-con, no airbags, no remote central locking, no fancy trip computers, but an extremely high-quality, well-constructed car. For the same money now you'd get something faster, safer, more comfortable, better equipped, and cheaper to run.
Well, the RX-8 has a normally aspirated 1.3 engine and makes 240BHP. And doesn't fall apart or give three miles to the gallon, either. Rotary engines are clever. There is a replacement for displacement.
Big isn't the same thing as safe. Just ask Chrysler (Grand Voyager got a tremendous no stars in the widely-recognised Euro-NCAP tests). Whereas Renault can knock out a Megane that gets full marks, the first car of any size to do so, and it's the same size as a Focus. And don't even start on the appalling safety standards of pick-ups and SUVs, whcih are classified as light commercial vehicles and so don't have to meed the same safety or economy standards.
Let's face it, the heavier a car is, the harder it is to slow down, and the harder it hits stuff when it crashes. And the taller it is, the worse it's going to handle. Big, tall, heavy cars are deathtraps.
Oh, they already do. The Audi A2 is sealed shut, and the grill folds down at the front so you can top up the fluids, and that's it. It can go for something like 20,000 miles between services, though, so why worry?
The Porsche Boxter is to all intents and purposes sealed, too - there's precious little you can do to that engine without a garage full of kit.
It's not Soviet engineering, though, they licensed the design off Fiat - it was an old cast-off of theirs. That mad stuntman Remy Julienne favoured them for some reason that I can't understand, given how difficult they were to steer, change gears, get moving without a hill and a tailwind...
Did you know that, for that reason, the original Land Rover was designed so that everything could be worked at using a single spanner? No? well now you do.
You get all that over digital satellite TV here in the UK. Sit down to watch a Premiership football match on Sky Sports and you can get in-game stats, player biographies, game highlights on demand, Playercam, alternative viewpoints, all sorts. To be honest, it's yet another one of those things where it's quite nice to know it's there, yet you never really actually use it, you just wait for the half-time analysis. Multiple angles to watch the game from sounds great, but in reality it's pointless when there's a trained person paid plenty of money to pick the best shots for you, and could do it better than you ever could.
What a fantastic game that was. In fact, the time from when it came out until a couple of years later was the golden age of computer games to me. 16-bit machines like the Atari ST and Amiga were new and infinitely powerful compared to what we were used to, and developers embraced this wholeheartedly and brought out grandiose, innovative, imaginative games at a rate we haven't seen since.
For those that don't know, Carrier Command put you in charge of a futuristic aircraft carrier equipped with unmanned aircraft, amphibious tanks, and various other bits and pieces. It was set in a huge archipelago of 64 islands, and the object was to colonise these islands faster than the computer's carrier, which was trying to do the same as you starting from the opposite end of the archipelago. It combined combat (the enemy islands had defence systems which you could overcome and take command of the island, and eventually you might come into direct combat with the enemy carrier itself)and strategy (you had to decide whether the islands would produce raw materials, or equipment, or act as defence outposts, and build up supply networks to keep you in missiles, aircraft, fuel, etc) to brilliant effect, and managed not to be overblown or overcomplicated. Frankly, there's been nothing like it since.
And while we're at it, what about Starglider 2 (it had an entire solar system), Interphase, or the too-ambitious-for-its-own-good Midwinter 2? Let's get them remade, pronto. They'd be legendary.
Indeed. Do we all know about giFT, a p2p thingy which can do gnutella, Fastrack and OpenFT (whatever that is...) on your Linux system, and Apollon, a nice KDE front end for it? There's a gtk+2 frontend too, somewhere.
Actually, now you mention it, Jesus Christ is some pretty serious vapourware - nigh-on 2000 years they've been telling us he's coming back Real Soon Now, and is there any sign of him? Is there bollocks...
There's no end of European cars that could fit the bill if they imported them. I find it a bit strange that the smallest car VW offer in the US is the Golf - in Europe, there's two smaller cars than this, the Polo and the tiny Lupo. They must think they wouldn't sell in the land of the SUV, I suppose. But city driving in America's just as bad as in Europe in my experience, so you'd think they could shift them in numbers in the big metropolitan areas, if not in the wilds of Wisconsin or something.
Considering how many people in America have served in the Armed Forces, I'm surprised reversing into parking spaces isn't a lot more common. Generally in the military people are taught to park nose-out in order to facilitate a quick getaway should the need arise. Is this not policy in the American forces, or do people lose this habit once they move onto civvy street, or are the numbers of service personnel just not significant enough to show up?
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What a load of balls. People like you give the open source movement a bad name with your one-eyed, misinformed, deceptive nonsense. If you expect people to take your anti-Microsoft stance seriously, try and deliver your argument without such an obvious chip on your shoulder.
Balls to all that - go solo and fill yer pockets with as much of that 800 grand as you can. Sounds to me like you've got tha skillz - why facilitate IBM lining their pockets with it in order to get a fraction of the proceeds when you could have it all yourself?
In fairness, it's a copy of the Morris Oxford, which came out in 1948, so you can't really expect it to be cutting-edge.
By a curious coincidence, the Mercedes M-Class is built in America. So's BMW's crappest car ever, the Z3...
Cars sure as hell aren't getting more expensive here in Europe. My car's just about ten years old now (not that you'd know it), and it cost about 20,000 when it came out. For that, you get no air-con, no airbags, no remote central locking, no fancy trip computers, but an extremely high-quality, well-constructed car. For the same money now you'd get something faster, safer, more comfortable, better equipped, and cheaper to run.
Well, the RX-8 has a normally aspirated 1.3 engine and makes 240BHP. And doesn't fall apart or give three miles to the gallon, either. Rotary engines are clever. There is a replacement for displacement.
Is it any relation of the European Ford Escort of the time? Because it looks uncannily like it.
Big isn't the same thing as safe. Just ask Chrysler (Grand Voyager got a tremendous no stars in the widely-recognised Euro-NCAP tests). Whereas Renault can knock out a Megane that gets full marks, the first car of any size to do so, and it's the same size as a Focus. And don't even start on the appalling safety standards of pick-ups and SUVs, whcih are classified as light commercial vehicles and so don't have to meed the same safety or economy standards.
Let's face it, the heavier a car is, the harder it is to slow down, and the harder it hits stuff when it crashes. And the taller it is, the worse it's going to handle. Big, tall, heavy cars are deathtraps.
Oh, they already do. The Audi A2 is sealed shut, and the grill folds down at the front so you can top up the fluids, and that's it. It can go for something like 20,000 miles between services, though, so why worry?
The Porsche Boxter is to all intents and purposes sealed, too - there's precious little you can do to that engine without a garage full of kit.
Oh yeah, that pushrod, two-valve-per-cylinder V8's real cutting-edge, all right...
Er, have you seen the 350Z?
Now that's a sports car. Nissan have found their direction again, and it's because they're being pointed there by Renault.
Heh. That good old Russian sense of humour, naming a car after a dog...
It's not Soviet engineering, though, they licensed the design off Fiat - it was an old cast-off of theirs. That mad stuntman Remy Julienne favoured them for some reason that I can't understand, given how difficult they were to steer, change gears, get moving without a hill and a tailwind...
Did you know that, for that reason, the original Land Rover was designed so that everything could be worked at using a single spanner? No? well now you do.
How ironic, considering that Winston Smith's job in 1984 was rewriting old newspaper stories so that they reflected the current state of affairs.
You get all that over digital satellite TV here in the UK. Sit down to watch a Premiership football match on Sky Sports and you can get in-game stats, player biographies, game highlights on demand, Playercam, alternative viewpoints, all sorts. To be honest, it's yet another one of those things where it's quite nice to know it's there, yet you never really actually use it, you just wait for the half-time analysis. Multiple angles to watch the game from sounds great, but in reality it's pointless when there's a trained person paid plenty of money to pick the best shots for you, and could do it better than you ever could.
What a fantastic game that was. In fact, the time from when it came out until a couple of years later was the golden age of computer games to me. 16-bit machines like the Atari ST and Amiga were new and infinitely powerful compared to what we were used to, and developers embraced this wholeheartedly and brought out grandiose, innovative, imaginative games at a rate we haven't seen since.
For those that don't know, Carrier Command put you in charge of a futuristic aircraft carrier equipped with unmanned aircraft, amphibious tanks, and various other bits and pieces. It was set in a huge archipelago of 64 islands, and the object was to colonise these islands faster than the computer's carrier, which was trying to do the same as you starting from the opposite end of the archipelago. It combined combat (the enemy islands had defence systems which you could overcome and take command of the island, and eventually you might come into direct combat with the enemy carrier itself)and strategy (you had to decide whether the islands would produce raw materials, or equipment, or act as defence outposts, and build up supply networks to keep you in missiles, aircraft, fuel, etc) to brilliant effect, and managed not to be overblown or overcomplicated. Frankly, there's been nothing like it since.
And while we're at it, what about Starglider 2 (it had an entire solar system), Interphase, or the too-ambitious-for-its-own-good Midwinter 2? Let's get them remade, pronto. They'd be legendary.
Bet they're sick looking at ScanDisk running...
Maybe it's just scared of the dark, and they forgot to pack its teddy bear?
Indeed. Do we all know about giFT, a p2p thingy which can do gnutella, Fastrack and OpenFT (whatever that is...) on your Linux system, and Apollon, a nice KDE front end for it? There's a gtk+2 frontend too, somewhere.
Jesus Christ, Half Life II? Doom III?
Actually, now you mention it, Jesus Christ is some pretty serious vapourware - nigh-on 2000 years they've been telling us he's coming back Real Soon Now, and is there any sign of him? Is there bollocks...
There's no end of European cars that could fit the bill if they imported them. I find it a bit strange that the smallest car VW offer in the US is the Golf - in Europe, there's two smaller cars than this, the Polo and the tiny Lupo. They must think they wouldn't sell in the land of the SUV, I suppose. But city driving in America's just as bad as in Europe in my experience, so you'd think they could shift them in numbers in the big metropolitan areas, if not in the wilds of Wisconsin or something.
Considering how many people in America have served in the Armed Forces, I'm surprised reversing into parking spaces isn't a lot more common. Generally in the military people are taught to park nose-out in order to facilitate a quick getaway should the need arise. Is this not policy in the American forces, or do people lose this habit once they move onto civvy street, or are the numbers of service personnel just not significant enough to show up?
That, and if you're ever unfortunate enough to drive your car into water, you'll find it a whole lot harder to escape a watery grave.
Oh, I'd kill for air-con in my car. It's all black on the inside and it's like an oven on the three days of summer we get in Britain...
(My car's got electric everything, thanks, and it weighs several hundred kilos more than I'd like it to)