Re: Thumbs
Boxing gloves? Could also have ahem side effects.
48 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Sep 2007
I have a toshiba NB 200 NetBook, I considered buying a chromebook but to save beer vouchers I decided to buy an extra gig of ram + SSD for the old Tosh. Added Mint XFCE edition and chromium. This is now my go too carry on. Unlike my mk 1 iPad the browser don't crash and I can upgrade to a later OS. Give me a chromebook over an IPad anyday. I also read somewhere that a computer lab of twenty five or so kids can share one mac pro from chromebooks with special software at a one off cost per seat of a few bucks. How much does 25 MacBooks cost eh??
Nokia 630 free Global downloadable maps. Turn by turn navigation, turn off all the mobile data I don't use because I'm to tight to pay for a data plan. Turn of the WiFi until needed and the battery lasts a week for me. 100 quid sim fee. What's not to like. Can't.buy a garmin ( they use Nokia maps) for that amount of money and garmin want to charge for updates plus they don't give you a free phone either.
I'm over fifty. We did a pretty good job on the Germans without Nukes. The other 9/11 (Darmstadt) in 1944 212 Lancasters & 14 Mosquitos killed between 3 to 4 times the numbers killed in the World Trade Centre. 10% of the towns population, hardly rated a mention back then. No CNN in them days. The bomber offensive also supposedly shortened the War by tying up a lot of assets defending the Fatherland.
I have an old Toshiba NB200 netbook. This has had Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Unity on it in the past. A couple of weeks ago I tried Mint 17Xfce. so imressed am I that I have ditched plans for a new Chromebook and bought 2GB of RAM + a 128GB SSD instead.
A better computer for an 80 quid investment. Mint + Chromium, it's a no brainer. Mint is a lot nicer XFCE than Xubuntu.
History being rewritten by the victors is just as bad as it being written by those with an agenda. 1969s giant leap for mankind was made possible by War criminals who also thought up the idea of a fleet of subs firing V2 rockets at the continental USA. But NASA won't be mentioning that anytime soon.
Firstly it was the Reliant Robin not the other way round. Secondly far from flying it was known for falling over going round corners as famously demonstrated by Blowhard Clarkson on Top Gear. No need for one of them to get airborne to crash and burn. In fact after a burnout to one, i've know everthing apart from the chassis & running gear / drivetrain being shoveled into a couple of dustbins. No TUV in them days.
It does flash, email, web & GPS. Has 64 GB of flash storage to which you drag & drop video or any other files to over a Wifi network from Windows, Macs or Linux boxes just using Samba so nothing to install.all for the price of the cheapest iPod 135 quid at Currys. Whats not to like ?
Don't forget Bill Tutte
who Turing rejected. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._T._Tutte
Lorenz was a lot bigger deal & was carried over into the cold war as the Ruskies blagged it from the Nazis and used it for years thinking it was uncrackable. Churchill told Stalin about Enigma but Lorenz was never mentioned. It was the greatest secret of Bletchley park. It remained so till the end of the 20th century and many people took it to the grave. It was the Hot Line to Hitler. His personal Fax.
I wish someone would do a chromebook capable of either logging in to either google or to a local server. The Mac Mini seems ideal as you can download the server addons from the app store. Then after you get your Mac server you could add macs for the rest of the family for a couple of hundred quid a pop. Thin client see.
My problem is that due to the Nvidia graphics on my laptop most of the live CDs fail and freeze up. I could get round this by using the alternate Ubuntu text based install CD. But now they have abandoned it. Last time the upgrade failed. The workaround I used was to install Xubuntu who still do an alternate disc. Then install the Nvidia driver and apt-get the unity desktop. Then I decided to try Cinnamon. Added the PPA, downloaded it and never looked back. I have Mint on Virtualbox on Win vista and if I could I would probably install it as you get all the multimedia goodies. I would probably choose the Debian edition of Mint rather than the Ubuntu based flavour.
As it stands though I will stick with my custom Ubuntu + Cinnamon cos it rocks & I can't be arsed to mess about with the computer anymore. If Windows Vista was anywhere near as good as OS X I would not have bothered with Linux in the first place.
Tutte was the bloke at Bletchley who cracked the Lorenz cypher after bring rejected by Turing for the Enigma team. then Tommy Flowers built the computer to automate it. This crack was more valuable than Enigma even after the war. As the USSR plundered it from the Nazis unaware that GCHQ monitored it right through the cold war.
Also cracking Enigma had a lot to do with the Poles who smuggled a machine out and the sub hunters who captured a naval machine. Enigma cracking was far was far from the one gay achievement some would have you all believe.
Got short arms have ya? seriously though for the money I'd prefer an iMac, or even cheaper something like my own setup a Mac mini hooked up to a 32" LG Full HD telly. You would have enough left to buy yourself an iPad + a smartfone & enough change for a great night out & a bottle of Talisker!
Is a 32 bit Intel Mac Mini 1.4 GHZ I love it dearly. I have had the memory & hard disc upgraded. It does sterling work these days connected to a 32" LG HD telly with an Elgato Eye TV added plus front row as my media hub. My Notebook still has Vista on it cos I have plumped for the better option of Ubuntu. No new kit required for gmail etc so i'll be pouring the cash saved down my neck.
I have a intel core solo Mac Mini. The upgrade path is assured simply because it dual boots Linux Mint Debian Edition & Snow Leopard vie Bootcamp & rEFIt. You could probably do the same with Ubuntu but there is no need to reinstall ever with LMDE
http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/install_linux_your_mac
I wondered if pinging the URL would work. We used to do it to get to blocked websites ( including the Reg) when I was doing a Cisco course courtesy of the jobcentre. It was a Tutor that showed us how actually. The BOFH who ran the training centre used to block everything, she even thought the Telegraph was unsuitable. You would think the chinese would be a bit more sophisticated.
It may help with the nukes but GPS has changed the definition of close air support. When Stormin Norman was on stage showing the world how to do shock & awe it was with expensive bombs dropped by even more expensive aircraft. Now geriatric museum pieces (more reliable than the B1s & 2s) drop dumb iron bombs with satnav (JDAMS kit fitted) from 48000ft & 10Km away then land them within a couple of metres of the designated target. in the 1940s a mile was as good as a hit. the yanks are raiding aviation museums to keep the B52s flying. If we still had a few Vulcans the Us would be begging for the RAF to use them to take som of the pressure off their pensioners. After all they did once defeat Norad & pretend bomb the land of the free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Skyshield#Operations
Swap out the HDDs for Solid state drives. (1GB SD or similar cards fitted into IDE adapters) load the aforesaid cards with one of the CD type kiosk browser Linux editions. Use universal USB creator to make the bootable cards on any netbook/laptop. Hook them all up together with cat5 and an old switch in the company canteen/messroom or similar & all your employees can do facebook etc on their breaks. you can't download anything to them and they reboot every time you close the browser. Cheap Internet cafe for the proles.
I have a Mac Mini, I also have a Windows 7 Toshiba netbook dual booting Ubuntu complete with a card reader & Shotwell. Linux is worth having just for Shotwell alone. If you insert an SD card or connect a phone it will import only the shots not already in the library. All these pictures are kept in date order in a folder within your home folder called err, Pictures. This folder can easily be copied to a USB stick or hard drive etc plus you have a backup left on the memory card. When that fills up just buy a new one. Simples! iPhoto 11 is costly and not required by me thanks very much.
when I started reading e-books it was on a 2MB monochrome Palm (great in sunlight) & I tended to roll my own books by reflowing & converting the .TXT files from Project Gutenberg.This was great for the time but nowadays you can buy e-books or get loads of Public Domain stuff free gratis& for nowt.
All you need is to get is the open source Calibre from http://calibre-ebook.com & pretty much any flavour of e-book reader, even a DRM encumbered Kindle.
Because Calibre will do all the conversion for you so seamlessly, it will also get & format loads of stuff from the web for you to read later on your e-reader.
I have the Linux version of Calibre on a Ubuntu Netbook but you can also download a Windows version. You can then connect via to say a Kindle over USB & transfer your free books by the yard. As well as maybe occasionally buying the odd book. Amazon is truly not the only fruit for a kindle.
Unlike mobile phones Wifi works worldwide as it is an international standard. Does apple include a charger with the iPad (gasp) cos they don't with iPods & both use the same dock connector. So you just need a USB charger to juice it up. Apple usually charge extra for them but if they supply one you can usually take it apart & plug a UK figure of eight mains lead into the USB bit.
I have a 3 Mifi. these cost about 70 quid on prepay 40 quid on a £7.50/ 1GB pm contract. mine is unlocked so I use a Vodafone top up & go sim from a 3G dongle in it. But 3 mobile broadband sims with 3 GB preloaded valid for 3 months can be picked up for under a tenner if you google, or just top up for 10 quid per GB/month online or at the supermarket. The modem is a little gem that fits into a shirt pocket or the condom pocket on a pair of jeans. Then it happily connects me to my Mac Mini, an iPod Touch, Toshiba NB200,an Asus X59GL Laptop,or a T-Mobile Pulse Android phone where a five day internet pass on prepay would cost £2.50 otherwise. I dont plan on buying an iPad anytime soon but I would never buy a 3G model at that price premium over the Wifi model.
I am a Mac user on the desktop (Intel Mac mini) but I think Macbooks are fragile & overpriced. So I invested in a 120 gig hard drive for my Thinkpad X30. This is partitioned 90 gig Ubuntu 30 Gig XP. Using www.fs-driver.org Windows can read & write to Linux partitions, thus my Linux home folder is also my documents for Windows. Also Ubuntu does target disk mode over firewire from the Mac, & will print to the Mac's printer over Ethernet as Bonjour support is built in. All in all this is a very handy tool both for home & away use (3g USB modem & wifi both work fine in both OSes)
"Unbuntu is not yet suitable for domestic users."
My main computer is a Mac Mini but my laptop is a second hand Thinkpad X.30 running Ubuntu. It does everything I want, Wifi etc at about a tenth of the cost of a Macbook pro.or a quarter of the price of the white Macbook. No Windoze needed at all. I think it's bloody marvelous, & i'm not a major geek at all either. honest!