You're preaching to the converted. Though I never had an issue with Operation Flashpoint. Steam is indeed awesome and is a good way to do DRM. Being able to download your games to any system and not have to put in the discs to play is highly convenient.
Well, I don't consider them to be in the same market - put it this way, the DS is outselling the PSP 2:1 as well, and it's probably only doing that well because of recent facelifts and such? It has always done pretty badly against its main competitor, and I've seen people complaining about a lack of games etc. I also tried my cousin's one and thought the controls sucked (though my first gen DS also tended to give me cramp, and the power button was right above the d-pad resulting in me switching it off by mistake a few times:s ).
But compared to its main rival the Xbox, the PS3 is doing okay despite the Xbox having a massive amount of time to get its foot in and dominate the market, so I don't consider it to be selling 'badly' in the same way as the PSP is selling badly compared to its main rival. Anyway, as you or someone else pointed out, the machines themselves are a loss leader, it's games (and blu-ray movie) sales that are important to Sony. I know I've bought something like 10 games (that's not including downloadable content and games) and more than 10 blu-rays (including a couple of series) since buying my PS3 at the start of the year, so I think they're doing okay out of me.
I guess I have to concede that all major commercial software is developed in the US, I haven't found any good examples of commercial European competition, but I still don't think that is an indicator of code quality from different countries. The attitude of the OP seemed to suggest that the fact that we go for OSS is a result of us not being able to code as well.
I'm quite proud of the fact that we are seen to value freedom over price though. I go through phases of wondering how to reduce our reliance on proprietary software; partially that is just because it would be nice to save money on potential future upgrades that Microsoft like to force people into, but another major draw is that we can then switch to whatever operating system or other software we want in future and know that there won't be compatibility issues (hence the last few projects I've worked on have been web based with perl and apache).
What is there to 'trust' in a recommendation? They're very personal things. Personally I think it sounds interesting, but I don't read that much these days and I already have a pile of books to read for when I do read (and have just ordered "The Mythical Man Month" and "Code Complete" because I feel I need to improve my coding standards..)!
I basically agree, I have a Mac myself. It's nice when something is stable and well designed. If Windows were more reliable and better designed I wouldn't mind paying for it. Even if MS did improve Windows I'd still run OSX or Linux where possible just to continue to make MS sweat and put a bit of effort in - and have other vendors continue to produce software for more than just Windows.
I also don't mind paying to have a console, despite it in some ways being an ultimate form of vendor lock-in, because it works well and supports me in my primary goal of trying to help the world be free of OS lock-in (because I don't have to run Windows to play my games). Games publishers already produce for several different platforms anyway so I don't have to worry too much about the lock-in thing there. Again since I'm trying to "vote with my wallet" against Microsoft I wouldn't touch an Xbox though. I built up a deep resentment of Microsoft as a kid growing up with Amigas and Macs - it was annoying to see Windows take off despite it looking like shit and being a PITA to use, when it wasn't crashing. Windows is more stable these days, but it still feels the same - boring, stagnated and overpriced. I guess I like OSX just from nostalgia, but also I like being able to use a decent command line (Amiga's built in kickstart CLI was much nicer to use than DOS), and compile open source apps without having to pay for a dev environment or use a crappy ancient DOS based compiler.
There is a stage where even if a piece of software is known to be "what works best" that I still wouldn't pay for it though. I see no reason to pay hundreds of pounds to buy Photoshop when I can just use the GIMP to do my photo touch ups and other editing. I used Photoshop a few years ago, and the interface was sleeker than the GIMP, but I do care about cost too. My own cinema would also be a lot cooler than my 40" HDTV and PS3 setup, but the costs don't really outweight the benefits for me. It's all about balance (as is everything).
Presumably you're talking about Microsoft SQL Server then, because SQL is just a query language, not a database engine. Any open source project that is trying to emulate a Microsoft product rather than doing their own thing is going to have a difficult time.
Perhaps you should try postGRE SQL or some other more reputable database? I've never even heard of OpenSQL. Not that I'm a database expert by any means, but I did look into the different products available last year, and decided that SQLite was enough for what I was doing. If I was going to be writing more heavy duty applications I'd move to postGRE though.
Your first paragraph makes no sense. If it were true, then things would be the other way round - Europe would be worried a lot more about the cost of software than vendor lock in. As it is, if this article is correct it means that Americans don't care about feeding money into their economy, they only want stuff to be free and don't care as much if there is vendor lock-in. While Europeans are happy to pay money to American companies as long as it means they have a choice.
It's also pretty funny that you somehow think American software is magically superior to any equivalent software coded in Europe, unless that software is open source? Games perhaps aren't "serious software" but they tend to require more serious coding skills than developing other commercial client-side software, and there are plenty of talented European and Asian development houses. I don't know a lot of commercial office software, but how about SAGE?
Sure, most big software houses have their headquarters in the US, and Europe is the home of Linux and a lot of good open source apps. But look back again at your quote, and you could see that is because the US cares about money, and Europe cares about encouraging innovation and giving people good products. It is not necessarily because Europeans somehow can't code good code unless they are doing it for free.
RDesktop is a lot less resource-intensive than running Windows/Outlook in a VM.
That depends if you're talking about your own personal machine's resources, or resources in general. Running a whole machine just so that you can remote desktop into it is overkill for an email client, unless perhaps you had a spare server that could accept multiple RDP sessions and still have the local session going. I doubt most workers have 11 spare machines sitting around.
We do have a couple of machines that we have just for people to RDP into, but that's for running CFDs and other more specialised stuff, rather than just email clients!
Not a great solution. Yeah you could do this, but then you have to get the VM up and running (VirtualBox is good for this), make sure you have some sort of Windows license, install Outlook (again, with a license that works), join the VM to the domain (if you want seamless access) and set up your profile. Hey, now that's done, every day when you boot up, you boot up your VM, log in (if you joined it to the domain), fire up Outlook and watch as your VM chews up a good chunk of your processing power running a VM to run one app.
Yep, that's what I did/do:p I don't notice the lack of processing power because the only stuff I run in OSX the rest of the time at work is Apache, Firefox, Songbird and Live Messenger. I use the VM for Outlook, Remote Desktop (though I have a Mac client for that too) and any Windows development I have to do. I used to run a dual boot system and kept all my music on the OSX side, but it was getting too big for the partition.
I like having all my HD space available for music and other downloads now, and just using a virtual HD for Windows. Besides that, I now don't have to hold down 'alt' when starting up at work in the morning, and if I want to start using Ubuntu or something instead of OSX, or get a new laptop, I can move my VM over without having to reinstall drivers or software since I've already got 'legally' registered versions of XP and Office on my VM (they're legally bought but I don't know what MS would have to say about me installing on a VM instead of 'actual' hardware).
TFS even mentions web access.. and a PDF of the full feature list is available from the link from the summary. It mentions quotas, web access with full calendar support etc. You should do a bit more research before starting with the nay-saying.
As for MOSS, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Project Server, etc I don't use them and have no intention of every doing so. Do you not get that this is for people who want to move away from Microsoft products? There are alternatives available.
I expect that this would work with AD and group policy stuff, I don't see how it could work without it really. If you're that interested, go try it out yourself and then give a proper review rather than just complaining without looking into it. It sounds to me like it would be a good drop in replacement for a lot of small to medium businesses (the one where I work included), all we really need is email, calendar freebusy stuff and DirectPUSH for it to be a drop in replacement.
And don't get me started with how Outlook is written in VB.
I wouldn't mind you getting started on that, I've never heard it before. Despite me not wanting to use Visual Basic personally, I don't really care if an app was written in it as long as it works! Visual Basic scripting may be integrated into Outlook but that doesn't necessarily mean it was written using it:s I can't see anyone wanting to develop an application as complex as Outlook in VB.. yuck.
I tried setting up OpenExchange here a few years ago, but DirectPUSH from Exchange to WM phones really is a great application, and a lot better than the crapberrys that our sales people were using before (I hate getting blamed for things not working even though it's actually RIM's network that has the issues rather than any of our own systems - much better when I'm at least getting blamed for the things that I can fix!). If this thing is easy to setup and really is fully featured, I can see us moving to it eventually. The less Microsoft tax we have to pay, the better:)
My only concern is that even if this replaces Exchange, it still doesn't replace Outlook.. bleh. Outlook is the only reason I still get Office with new machines (there's another inhouse app that we have that utilises Excel but I'm redesigning it as a web app), because no other client I've tried integrates nicely in 'Exchange' mode - you have to go through IMAP, which is similar but not quite the same.
Hmm, let's see.. only 2 people with access to an account. Really difficult to work out who has been screwing around with your email there. The secretary would lose her job for doing anything dumb without permission. The boss could of course blame stuff on the secretary, but if I had that type of boss I'd look for a different job anyway.. there needs to be trust and incentive to be reliable before you set up that kind of situation.
The Exchange Server obviously logs all messages too but I've never had to deal with a situation where someone was accused of sending spurious emails or whatever. I think that in some cases the emails will say 'blah blah on behalf of whomever' anyway, unless the person has direct mailbox access.
There is a known and testable association of p(airplane_terrorist)->p(male, muslim)
Okay, I get that.
Don't make the mistake and reverse the implication - or accuse others of doing it and try to claim p(muslim)->p(terrorist); that's not true and was never meant or intended and with you as a Slashdot reader I'm sure you know enough about logic.
If that is indeed the case, then how exactly do you plan to make any use whatsoever of your first assertion?
Plus, like I said I think you are concentrating too much on the airports. This type of device would be a lot more useful than simply for airport security (which is already pretty tight). If people think that they're going to be killed and possibly blow up the Whitehouse or whatever by their plane being crashed by terrorists (or shot down by US fighter planes wanting to make sure there isn't another 9/11), they're going to do their damnedest to stop the terrorists. Before 9/11 they would just have expected a standard hostage situation where their best chance was just to sit down and stay quiet, but now I expect people would fight back (like one set of passengers on 9/11 once they realised the others were crashed into the WTC)
Oh and my other point would be that "common sense" does not involve harrassing one racial group and "relaxing checks" on others just because of the colour of their skin. There are white muslims, asian Christians, whatever, and asking people their religious affiliations (which they could always lie about) before the get on a plane and frisking all the muslims is not a sensible way to go about security either. There are fundamentalists in most religions, and you don't know that the IRA or some other group wouldn't try something on if they knew that they were going to have an easier time through security because all the attention is on muslims. I get your point, that statistically air terrorism is likely to be carried out by muslims these days, but I still think it is pretty narrow-minded and leaving yourself open to attack from other angles that you failed to consider because you were too busy looking out for men with beards.
So you mean when you said "these terrorists" it was obviously implied "any terrorist on an aeroplane in the last 30 years", because the last airplane attack to not involve muslims seems to be from 32 years ago, and the incident I found in 2000 was in a helicopter so that doesn't quit fit your amazingly obviously implied criteria either..
My point was that there are plenty of terrorist groups who have no connection to Islam (ever heard of the IRA? Unabomber? meh). Just because they don't do plane hijackings (which to me has always seemed rather dumb and risky for hostage taking missions - you're going to get shot as soon as you get off the plane..), does not mean they are not terrorists. This technology isn't just for airports. The next terrorists attacks are not very frickin likely to involve airports, are they? You don't go for the most heavily secured place you can, you hit people in an unexpected way like the 9/11 guys did. Concentrating all your attention on commercial airline flights is the dumbest thing you could do.
Please quit your suggestive advertising campaign for penis hardening and enlargement compounds or I shall be forced to complain to your ISP and have your account disabled.
I'd forgotten about that, but there is another article on the front page about 'nano' football, where people are complaining about units - so I still found it funny:)
Right! We all have to save the world from Nazis before we can have an opinion on political matters. That makes sense.
I've always thought politics is shit, and I didn't need Winston to tell me. All the spin, downright lies, hidden agendas and backstabbing - it's pretty tiresome and gets in the way of the real running of a country. I wouldn't have a problem with a dictatorship or patriarchy, as long as the leader wasn't a complete jerk, but what are the chances of that happening?:p We have the Queen here in the UK but she has sod all power, which makes the whole 'royalty' thing rather pointless.
Wiis are pretty damn cheap for what they are. iPhones.. not so much. Xbox Elites or PS3s (which also mean you end up wanting a HDTV) would perhaps be better mentioned instead of Wiis.
I was regularly in my overdraft at the start of the year, after buying a 42" HDTV and a PS3 in quick succession (both which have seen a lot of use so I still think it was worth it), but I've not been overdrawn for a few months now as I've been trying to be more sensible.
My credit card balance is fully paid each month (I only use it when I have to import stuff from the US):) Encouraging people who can't afford something to buy it is pretty damn stupid. I can understand loans for houses (though I'm still pretty nervous about buying a house because the whole market is so crazy right now), maybe even loans for cars, but buying everything on credit is stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
You're preaching to the converted. Though I never had an issue with Operation Flashpoint. Steam is indeed awesome and is a good way to do DRM. Being able to download your games to any system and not have to put in the discs to play is highly convenient.
Well, I don't consider them to be in the same market - put it this way, the DS is outselling the PSP 2:1 as well, and it's probably only doing that well because of recent facelifts and such? It has always done pretty badly against its main competitor, and I've seen people complaining about a lack of games etc. I also tried my cousin's one and thought the controls sucked (though my first gen DS also tended to give me cramp, and the power button was right above the d-pad resulting in me switching it off by mistake a few times :s ).
But compared to its main rival the Xbox, the PS3 is doing okay despite the Xbox having a massive amount of time to get its foot in and dominate the market, so I don't consider it to be selling 'badly' in the same way as the PSP is selling badly compared to its main rival. Anyway, as you or someone else pointed out, the machines themselves are a loss leader, it's games (and blu-ray movie) sales that are important to Sony. I know I've bought something like 10 games (that's not including downloadable content and games) and more than 10 blu-rays (including a couple of series) since buying my PS3 at the start of the year, so I think they're doing okay out of me.
A couple of my friends happily use OpenOffice for their University work..
I guess I have to concede that all major commercial software is developed in the US, I haven't found any good examples of commercial European competition, but I still don't think that is an indicator of code quality from different countries. The attitude of the OP seemed to suggest that the fact that we go for OSS is a result of us not being able to code as well.
I'm quite proud of the fact that we are seen to value freedom over price though. I go through phases of wondering how to reduce our reliance on proprietary software; partially that is just because it would be nice to save money on potential future upgrades that Microsoft like to force people into, but another major draw is that we can then switch to whatever operating system or other software we want in future and know that there won't be compatibility issues (hence the last few projects I've worked on have been web based with perl and apache).
Sorry, it's getting late. I need sleep. I better *whoosh* myself.
*whooooooooooooooooosh*
What is there to 'trust' in a recommendation? They're very personal things. Personally I think it sounds interesting, but I don't read that much these days and I already have a pile of books to read for when I do read (and have just ordered "The Mythical Man Month" and "Code Complete" because I feel I need to improve my coding standards..)!
Unfortunately since Spore is quite a unique game, the only real alternative is really to pirate (or wait for the console version)!
I basically agree, I have a Mac myself. It's nice when something is stable and well designed. If Windows were more reliable and better designed I wouldn't mind paying for it. Even if MS did improve Windows I'd still run OSX or Linux where possible just to continue to make MS sweat and put a bit of effort in - and have other vendors continue to produce software for more than just Windows.
I also don't mind paying to have a console, despite it in some ways being an ultimate form of vendor lock-in, because it works well and supports me in my primary goal of trying to help the world be free of OS lock-in (because I don't have to run Windows to play my games). Games publishers already produce for several different platforms anyway so I don't have to worry too much about the lock-in thing there. Again since I'm trying to "vote with my wallet" against Microsoft I wouldn't touch an Xbox though. I built up a deep resentment of Microsoft as a kid growing up with Amigas and Macs - it was annoying to see Windows take off despite it looking like shit and being a PITA to use, when it wasn't crashing. Windows is more stable these days, but it still feels the same - boring, stagnated and overpriced. I guess I like OSX just from nostalgia, but also I like being able to use a decent command line (Amiga's built in kickstart CLI was much nicer to use than DOS), and compile open source apps without having to pay for a dev environment or use a crappy ancient DOS based compiler.
There is a stage where even if a piece of software is known to be "what works best" that I still wouldn't pay for it though. I see no reason to pay hundreds of pounds to buy Photoshop when I can just use the GIMP to do my photo touch ups and other editing. I used Photoshop a few years ago, and the interface was sleeker than the GIMP, but I do care about cost too. My own cinema would also be a lot cooler than my 40" HDTV and PS3 setup, but the costs don't really outweight the benefits for me. It's all about balance (as is everything).
Presumably you're talking about Microsoft SQL Server then, because SQL is just a query language, not a database engine. Any open source project that is trying to emulate a Microsoft product rather than doing their own thing is going to have a difficult time.
Perhaps you should try postGRE SQL or some other more reputable database? I've never even heard of OpenSQL. Not that I'm a database expert by any means, but I did look into the different products available last year, and decided that SQLite was enough for what I was doing. If I was going to be writing more heavy duty applications I'd move to postGRE though.
Your first paragraph makes no sense. If it were true, then things would be the other way round - Europe would be worried a lot more about the cost of software than vendor lock in. As it is, if this article is correct it means that Americans don't care about feeding money into their economy, they only want stuff to be free and don't care as much if there is vendor lock-in. While Europeans are happy to pay money to American companies as long as it means they have a choice.
It's also pretty funny that you somehow think American software is magically superior to any equivalent software coded in Europe, unless that software is open source? Games perhaps aren't "serious software" but they tend to require more serious coding skills than developing other commercial client-side software, and there are plenty of talented European and Asian development houses. I don't know a lot of commercial office software, but how about SAGE?
Sure, most big software houses have their headquarters in the US, and Europe is the home of Linux and a lot of good open source apps. But look back again at your quote, and you could see that is because the US cares about money, and Europe cares about encouraging innovation and giving people good products. It is not necessarily because Europeans somehow can't code good code unless they are doing it for free.
RDesktop is a lot less resource-intensive than running Windows/Outlook in a VM.
That depends if you're talking about your own personal machine's resources, or resources in general. Running a whole machine just so that you can remote desktop into it is overkill for an email client, unless perhaps you had a spare server that could accept multiple RDP sessions and still have the local session going. I doubt most workers have 11 spare machines sitting around.
We do have a couple of machines that we have just for people to RDP into, but that's for running CFDs and other more specialised stuff, rather than just email clients!
Not a great solution. Yeah you could do this, but then you have to get the VM up and running (VirtualBox is good for this), make sure you have some sort of Windows license, install Outlook (again, with a license that works), join the VM to the domain (if you want seamless access) and set up your profile. Hey, now that's done, every day when you boot up, you boot up your VM, log in (if you joined it to the domain), fire up Outlook and watch as your VM chews up a good chunk of your processing power running a VM to run one app.
Yep, that's what I did/do :p I don't notice the lack of processing power because the only stuff I run in OSX the rest of the time at work is Apache, Firefox, Songbird and Live Messenger. I use the VM for Outlook, Remote Desktop (though I have a Mac client for that too) and any Windows development I have to do. I used to run a dual boot system and kept all my music on the OSX side, but it was getting too big for the partition.
I like having all my HD space available for music and other downloads now, and just using a virtual HD for Windows. Besides that, I now don't have to hold down 'alt' when starting up at work in the morning, and if I want to start using Ubuntu or something instead of OSX, or get a new laptop, I can move my VM over without having to reinstall drivers or software since I've already got 'legally' registered versions of XP and Office on my VM (they're legally bought but I don't know what MS would have to say about me installing on a VM instead of 'actual' hardware).
Quotas anyone? OWA?
TFS even mentions web access.. and a PDF of the full feature list is available from the link from the summary. It mentions quotas, web access with full calendar support etc. You should do a bit more research before starting with the nay-saying.
As for MOSS, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Project Server, etc I don't use them and have no intention of every doing so. Do you not get that this is for people who want to move away from Microsoft products? There are alternatives available.
I expect that this would work with AD and group policy stuff, I don't see how it could work without it really. If you're that interested, go try it out yourself and then give a proper review rather than just complaining without looking into it. It sounds to me like it would be a good drop in replacement for a lot of small to medium businesses (the one where I work included), all we really need is email, calendar freebusy stuff and DirectPUSH for it to be a drop in replacement.
And don't get me started with how Outlook is written in VB.
I wouldn't mind you getting started on that, I've never heard it before. Despite me not wanting to use Visual Basic personally, I don't really care if an app was written in it as long as it works! Visual Basic scripting may be integrated into Outlook but that doesn't necessarily mean it was written using it :s I can't see anyone wanting to develop an application as complex as Outlook in VB.. yuck.
I tried setting up OpenExchange here a few years ago, but DirectPUSH from Exchange to WM phones really is a great application, and a lot better than the crapberrys that our sales people were using before (I hate getting blamed for things not working even though it's actually RIM's network that has the issues rather than any of our own systems - much better when I'm at least getting blamed for the things that I can fix!). If this thing is easy to setup and really is fully featured, I can see us moving to it eventually. The less Microsoft tax we have to pay, the better :)
My only concern is that even if this replaces Exchange, it still doesn't replace Outlook.. bleh. Outlook is the only reason I still get Office with new machines (there's another inhouse app that we have that utilises Excel but I'm redesigning it as a web app), because no other client I've tried integrates nicely in 'Exchange' mode - you have to go through IMAP, which is similar but not quite the same.
Hmm, let's see.. only 2 people with access to an account. Really difficult to work out who has been screwing around with your email there. The secretary would lose her job for doing anything dumb without permission. The boss could of course blame stuff on the secretary, but if I had that type of boss I'd look for a different job anyway.. there needs to be trust and incentive to be reliable before you set up that kind of situation.
The Exchange Server obviously logs all messages too but I've never had to deal with a situation where someone was accused of sending spurious emails or whatever. I think that in some cases the emails will say 'blah blah on behalf of whomever' anyway, unless the person has direct mailbox access.
There is a known and testable association of p(airplane_terrorist)->p(male, muslim)
Okay, I get that.
Don't make the mistake and reverse the implication - or accuse others of doing it and try to claim p(muslim)->p(terrorist); that's not true and was never meant or intended and with you as a Slashdot reader I'm sure you know enough about logic.
If that is indeed the case, then how exactly do you plan to make any use whatsoever of your first assertion?
Plus, like I said I think you are concentrating too much on the airports. This type of device would be a lot more useful than simply for airport security (which is already pretty tight). If people think that they're going to be killed and possibly blow up the Whitehouse or whatever by their plane being crashed by terrorists (or shot down by US fighter planes wanting to make sure there isn't another 9/11), they're going to do their damnedest to stop the terrorists. Before 9/11 they would just have expected a standard hostage situation where their best chance was just to sit down and stay quiet, but now I expect people would fight back (like one set of passengers on 9/11 once they realised the others were crashed into the WTC)
Don't worry, there should be a dupe along soon*
*actually, I've not noticed many dupes recently - perhaps the Universe really is being altered by this Dark Flow
Oh and my other point would be that "common sense" does not involve harrassing one racial group and "relaxing checks" on others just because of the colour of their skin. There are white muslims, asian Christians, whatever, and asking people their religious affiliations (which they could always lie about) before the get on a plane and frisking all the muslims is not a sensible way to go about security either. There are fundamentalists in most religions, and you don't know that the IRA or some other group wouldn't try something on if they knew that they were going to have an easier time through security because all the attention is on muslims. I get your point, that statistically air terrorism is likely to be carried out by muslims these days, but I still think it is pretty narrow-minded and leaving yourself open to attack from other angles that you failed to consider because you were too busy looking out for men with beards.
So you mean when you said "these terrorists" it was obviously implied "any terrorist on an aeroplane in the last 30 years", because the last airplane attack to not involve muslims seems to be from 32 years ago, and the incident I found in 2000 was in a helicopter so that doesn't quit fit your amazingly obviously implied criteria either..
My point was that there are plenty of terrorist groups who have no connection to Islam (ever heard of the IRA? Unabomber? meh). Just because they don't do plane hijackings (which to me has always seemed rather dumb and risky for hostage taking missions - you're going to get shot as soon as you get off the plane..), does not mean they are not terrorists. This technology isn't just for airports. The next terrorists attacks are not very frickin likely to involve airports, are they? You don't go for the most heavily secured place you can, you hit people in an unexpected way like the 9/11 guys did. Concentrating all your attention on commercial airline flights is the dumbest thing you could do.
And most, if not all of these terrorists fit the description of being male and describing themselves as being affiliated to Islam
[Citation needed]
Dear Mr.. Bonehead,
Please quit your suggestive advertising campaign for penis hardening and enlargement compounds or I shall be forced to complain to your ISP and have your account disabled.
Thankyou.
I'd forgotten about that, but there is another article on the front page about 'nano' football, where people are complaining about units - so I still found it funny :)
Right! We all have to save the world from Nazis before we can have an opinion on political matters. That makes sense.
I've always thought politics is shit, and I didn't need Winston to tell me. All the spin, downright lies, hidden agendas and backstabbing - it's pretty tiresome and gets in the way of the real running of a country. I wouldn't have a problem with a dictatorship or patriarchy, as long as the leader wasn't a complete jerk, but what are the chances of that happening? :p We have the Queen here in the UK but she has sod all power, which makes the whole 'royalty' thing rather pointless.
Wiis are pretty damn cheap for what they are. iPhones.. not so much. Xbox Elites or PS3s (which also mean you end up wanting a HDTV) would perhaps be better mentioned instead of Wiis.
I was regularly in my overdraft at the start of the year, after buying a 42" HDTV and a PS3 in quick succession (both which have seen a lot of use so I still think it was worth it), but I've not been overdrawn for a few months now as I've been trying to be more sensible.
My credit card balance is fully paid each month (I only use it when I have to import stuff from the US) :) Encouraging people who can't afford something to buy it is pretty damn stupid. I can understand loans for houses (though I'm still pretty nervous about buying a house because the whole market is so crazy right now), maybe even loans for cars, but buying everything on credit is stupid.
when teh hosue was wobbling
That's a great name for an album.