Posts by TheAnt

Re: effectively compete with Wintel machines.

> I think it was more that the performance of Wintel machines caught up with SGI's offerings and they couldn't compete on price.

The great advantage that SGI and HP Unix workstations had was a large flat virtual memory space, same was true for DEC and Sun, but they didn't invest in highend graphics subsystems. When the Alpha team joined AMD and produced the AMD64 (x86_64) architecture the advantage of the Unix boys vanished overnight and pulled the plug out of SGI's business.

Re: The Lolberal Democrats and the Greens are quite strong on privacy.

> As for the Greens, yes, maybe strong on privacy, for now, but

So were the Tories when they were in opposition.

If the Greens got into power how long would it be before the names of everyone who drives a diesel were posted out publicly in a name and shame exercise? Oh and everyone with a car with a more than 1.6L engine. Then anyone who ....

Re: Faraday cage effect

A few years back the Mrs and I were playing with similar device over dinner, after a quick burst of "action" it must have slipped a little further inside and so it became impossible to switch it off again. A quick trip back to our room became necessary between courses.

A couple of other stories of the perils of otherwise of such toys. Before they switched to using bluetooth they didn't seem to have even the basic security of pairing, so any control would work any toy. A couple I used to chat with on certain forum used to like to go out to a pickup joint occasionally and the woman would then enjoy flirting and dancing with guys she fancied. One time they'd just bought her a remote vibe and thought it would add to the fun if the husband could play with his wife while she was being chatted up. They ended up at the bar next to another couple who looked like they might be there to play the scene too, The two women started chatting and then both suddenly jumped. Both their toys had gone off at the same time and both husbands denied it was them. Someone else at the venue also had a controller.

This was a well known problem at the time. One of the better known upmarket vendors of such things held a launch event for some bloggers who review things like vibrators. At that evening's do it soon became obvious to everyone that everyone was on the same channel. Hunt around the review sites and you'll find the stories.

Re: soft sciences.

What your local night club doesn't have a "grab a granny night?"

Maybe things have changed since I was in my 20s but it was a regular occurrence everywhere I lived, nights when what I think Yanks now call Cougars or Mumsnet calls Yummy Mummies would go looking for their sport. Plenty of chances for hard research.

Re: Great that's Apple F*&^ed then

My son eats them too. The cheap Chinese knock offs last longer than the real Apple ones in my experience. Talking to other parent they all report the same thing, they'd last long if they were made of cheese strings. The same son manages to keep micro USB cables working fine, even where the buying policy tends to be see how many more than 5 cables you can buy for less than a fiver.

The normally very helpful Apple store people aren't so helpful when it comes to cables claiming the little darling must have done something to them.

Re: Screw OneDrive, when are they gonna fix WINDOWS????

OS Market share?

Do you mean desktops? might be 1%

Servers? Has to be rather higher? Wikipedia quote a finger of 36% for web servers, for what its worth.

Total sales? Linux probably outsold Windows last year thanks to all those phones, set top boxes, printers, routers, NAS boxes and the trillion and one other sorts of things that run Linux that don't look like a PC. Android sales are about 250M/y while PC sales managed 75M/y.

So it looks like Linux is used by more than 1% of us.

Most people run Windows on their PCs because they have no real choice. When people are given a choice very few people chose Windows, I mean look at the phone market place, what did Windows manage here? Did they manage 2.5% market share? and that's despite tons of TV advertising and trying to buy market share.

Re: Dump the Windoze

And he gets down voted for that?

All three people in the world who want Windows8 must be online this afternoon.

Re: What's starting to worry me...

Interesting take.

iPhones/iPads are essentially fashion accessories and as such will be here today gone tomorrow must haves. While they appeal to the cool kids today they'll go the same way as shoulder pads and flairs when the winds of fashion change.