Posts by Efros 1198 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Sep 2008
Macs and Apples were eschewed largely because we wanted hardware level access to busses and so on for digital I/O and ADC. Ironically the Apple IIe was extremely popular in labs because of its open architecture. When that stopped, IBM compatibles became the de facto standard. Macs may be used on the computing side of science, but generally when it meets hardware especially custom hardware it is PCs.
The parents are just as culpable as the students, they text and call their kids while they are in class knowing full well that the school policy is that these devices are supposed to be off and out of sight.
As to this guy, well I can understand his motivation but even a cursory examination of the law would have shown him that this was a big no-no, he's lucky Verizon or indeed the FCC aren't taking action.
Have you tried to buy a non moulded plug, you can but they are butt ugly affairs that really don't blend in a domestic environment. I agree that the sockets can be high quality but I was talking about the plugs which for everything I have bought here are moulded onto the cable. I think my major gripe is the lack of surface contact, which can and does lead to overheating of the socked due to arcing, and the sticking out the wall thing which is just annoying.
US plugs are a PITA, the quality of components is terrible, the pins bend easily and the plugs can and do actually fall out of the wall. You need at least 4" of clearance around any wall socket as the plugs come straight out of the socket, apparently 90 degree plugs are technology beyond USAians. Gimme a decent 13A plug anyday.
I've tested lots of these over the years and the bottom line is if they work on your home wiring then you're fine, if one has problems they all will, don't even try it on wiring that is of any vintage and be wary about crossing from one circuit to another, as you'll experience significant signal loss. I haven't found any model that works well in my environment and eventually put in a wired wireless bridge to plug a dead spot.
My dad used to make a similar dish without the cabbage but with onions and corned beef. Essentially potato, butter, corned beef, onions, cheese all mashed together and put in a casserole with a topping of grated cheese and stuck in the oven until bubbly and golden brown on top. Served a a dish in its own right as it really was a neckfiller.
I have 3 machines that are in daily use and through progressive upgrades over the years (9 years for one of them the other two are 8 and 6 years old), memory, RAM, CPU, HDD to SSD etc they have kept apace with what I do with them. My previous laptop was 6 years old when I disposed of it, it was snapped up by someone who knew they were getting a bargain due to the upgrades installed (RAM, SSD, USB 3, AC dual band wifi), I sold it for about the value of the upgrades second hand. PCs, of a decent spec, have for the last 10 years pretty much been ahead of the software in terms of performance. Not like 10-20 years ago when you had to buy a new machine when a new version of your essential software came out. Oh as to down times and crashes with the 3 desktops, 1 machine had a HDD fail and another had a PSU fail, buying quality components pays. Crashes only really occur when we have a mains fluctuation, 2 of these machines (the 9 and 8 year old ones) are on 24/7.
Meanwhile in the US, Hershey, the bastards, are currently engaged in a campaign to ban imports of Cadbury products from the UK because they produce them here in the US on license. I would quite happily buy Hershey's version of CDM or Fruit 'n' Nut if they were faithful to the Cadbury's originals, they're not, they taste like shit and Hershey should be ashamed of their actions.
Probably one of the few IT items where there is a consensus of "they're all pretty crap" just some less so than others. Over the years I've had probably 20 routers through my hands either as personal property or as review items, they have got better over time but to be perfectly honest they are, for the most part, still pretty awful. The ones that I've had better experiences with have been from lesser known manufacturers, Rosewill and Edimax. The big names have always given me significant problems the worst being a My Cloud device from WD, maybe because the big names try to do too much on pretty weak hardware and the lesser known ones do just what the hardware will bear. The only other piece of kit that springs to mind for lack of reliability, time wasted over awful configuration problems would be the old TV Cards.
Back in the day of British Rail I was stuck in Edinburgh Waverley one Sunday evening waiting for a very late train from Aberdeen to arrive. Being a somewhat poor student I consoled myself with a bag of Maltesers as I patiently waited for the damn train to get there. I dropped one of the Maltesers and it rolled off, a flock of the resident pigeons descended and they all took a turn at trying to grab it. Turns out the diameter of a Malteser is just too big for the average pigeons maw to cope with. The next hour and a half was spent replacing the eventually destroyed Maltesers with a new one as the increasingly deranged and belligerent pigeons attempted to grab these things, I was aching with laughing by the end of it.
back in the 70s I was at a campus Uni in the middle of nowhere in Scotland (Stirling), all the chippies closed at 9pm, nothing was open after 11pm. When we finally got back to campus after the 2 mile hike from the local pubs severe alcohol induced hunger was rampant. This was the days before burger bars, takeaway deliveries etc and with us spending most of our disposable income on booze post indulgence nosh had to be cheap. Pots of boiled potatoes served hot with mounds of melting butter became the accepted form of carb intake, and to be honest tatties have never tasted so good.
Pretty much a clone of this identical in all respects, this one has a USB to go socket. Had it now for over a month and extremely satisfied with it as it cost $116 online. Destroys similarly priced androids, just a paucity of apps to choose from but as I use it mostly for browsing and email not really a big deal.
Unfortunately the last Green candidate that stood in an election I had a vote in, quite some time ago, advocated a return to the barter system. Don't know if that's still the party line but I don't believe it's a vote winner, although not being Tory or Labour certainly is for some.
When I came to the US, about 14 years ago, the thing that struck me most with my dealings with the healthcare system is the arcane and convoluted billing system. You can and will receive bills for procedures/consultations anywhere up to a year after the event, you are also given no clues as to whether your insurance has paid this bill already or not. I also discovered that you can study for an associates degree in Medical Billing, now that fact there should tell us all something.
A quick poll of our research lab a couple of decades ago yielded the fact that of the 20 chemists working there, not a single one of us had a chemistry set when we were kids. All of the males had possessed Meccano, most with Mamod steam engines and everyone, male and female, had owned fairly extensive lego sets.
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