Re: Lip Smacking eh?
Generally they've been smacking mine. Alright, slapping.
1116 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2011
Love the iMac G4. We have two that are still ticking along quite happily, and still allow us to play Baldur's Gate (I and II) and the first Neverwinter Nights. When I got mine, I showed it to my then-boss, and he was stunned that the whole computer was in the gumdrop base.
Some people deride its looks, but it actually has a personality, with the swivel arm and adjustable screen. Plus it's quiet, since the fan rarely runs thanks to the the design to allow natural convection. Reliable as hell, too.
I'm a software developer and I'm using Mint and Windows 7 at work and own OS X machines at home. Mint is nice, but I just went through an upgrade where the NVidia drivers were absolutely horked and it took 10-12 hours of my time and about 5 of the sysadmin's to get it straightened out. Good luck getting my kids or in-laws to figure something like that out.
As I recall, XP was a stopgap. Win2K came out and was, for its time, a decent desktop OS. In 2000, MS looked like they'd won and the war was over. However, Apple started to ship OS X, and by the end of 2001, 2K was already looking like it needed updating. Add to that that MS was deep into Longhorn, which would become such a running joke that it quit being funny, and MS had to release SOMETHING if only for marketing purposes. They put out XP, which I remember being called "cheesy", "bloated", and the interface possibly being made by Fisher-Price. Plus, the system requirements for the time were pretty darn serious, so that put a lot of people off as well.
Over time XP became more accepted, because the stopgap (XP) turned out to be better than what replaced it (Windows 7). This is not unique to Microsoft, but it was a pretty glaring example.
It's odd, looking back, just how quickly MS went from dominating the desktop to scrambling to keep up with Apple in the early '00s. (I can't bring myself to call them the aughts.)
No, Mr McMahon, you have to pay taxes to support a pathetic, useless, wasteful, unfireable bureaucracy filled with people who are worth less than the price of their constituent atoms ...
... said the guy who owes the federal government enough to pay for a two week European vacation come April 15.
Sir Humphrey put it best: the government figures out how much they can get then decides how to spend it. And to be honest, I think it's even worse than that.
... the obvious culprit has, to my knowledge, never been publicaly stated: the Fed kept interest rates artificially low, so money was cheap and plentiful, and when a commodity gets cheap and pletiful, people waste it, until it becomes scarce then they scramble to get it all back.
Seems obvious, fits the empirical data, and can be explained by basic economics. No wonder the politicians and journalists haven't mentioned it.
Not in an observed supernova, because the chemicals are already here. However, everything in your body outside of hydrogen, (any trace of) helium, and lithium are cooked in stars, and IIRC anything from neon up comes from a star that went supernova (certainly iron and beyond).
Problem: iPhones are often handed down to poorer relations (such as children or those with an liberal arts degree) or resold, and charging more for "wiping" will make the iPhone even MORE expensive. Besides, that's treating the symptom, not the disease. They used to hang horse thieves, and I say it's high time we extend this to all thievery. Not that the politicans would do it, they'd essentially convict themselves ...
Because Apple makes products and services that people want to buy, the poor Wall Street Wanker obviously deserves the money more.
Kissinger was right: it's only the bad lawyers who give the other 5% a bad reputation. Seriously, if we killed half the lawyers in the US, would the country be worse off or better off? To even ask that question is to answer it.
What gets me is how europe looks down on all the born-agains in America (and quite right, too, I do as well), but they all got here because Europe dumped them on us. Heck, even the wankers at Plymouth Rock were kicked out of Holland because the Dutch couldn't stand them (the Dutch, mind you!) and were dumped at the cod fishing grounds to the north because the people at Jamestown, Virginia, didn't want them around.
Not that you'll read that in an official public school history book.
"Who do you think is pulling Eric Schmidt's strings and provide his lines and scripts and scrip?"
People as wealthy as Schmidt pull the government's strings, not vice versa. Although the way the government keeps gaining power and stripping rights, you may be right.
... Apple's one-stop-shop has its detractors but it has one advantage for developers: piracy. Or rather, prevention thereof. It's much more difficult, though not impossible, to get pirated copies of iOS apps than Android apps, so the developers get paid and keep writing for iOS.
Market share is important, but profit is more important.
Beats 99.9% of what's out there.
In truth, Top Gear isn't about cars, it's about cars and how ridiculous car people can be. Each presenter represents one stereotype of gearhead: Clarkson is the power-obsessed yob, Hamster is the eight-year-old-turned-adult, May is the "no, I don't think so, actually" prissy snob (more or less). So they shouldn't offend you, they should make you laugh at people you know who are like that.
In my opinion.
Besides, the Prius is a sh*t car and should be called the Prompous, based on the four Prius owners I know.
Mine's the one with the Duesenburg keys in the pocket.
Considering he used the phrase b___ j__ on his second professional broadcast to describe a team blowing a lead(*), Bob Costas should never be taken seriously. Plus he's a pompous little twerpy windbag.
(*) - _Loose Balls_, Terry Pluto, in the chapter about the Spirits of St. Louis (in a section called "Bob Costas Blows In")
Government bureaucracies are like lawns, cancers, and fetuses: they grow because they are designed to do nothing else, and any challenge to that growth is resisted vigorously.
I was 'fortunate" enough to work for a US government contractor in the winter of 95-96 when the US government shut down. My project was sufficiently funded and important enough to keep going, and in one month, we got eight months of work done because without bureaucrats to slow things down and avoid decisions, we just got things done.
A lot of things never got out to the real world (ie outside of the beltway) about that time. For one thing, 99% of HUD (Housing and Urban Development) was declared "not necessary for day-to-day operations" during the shutdown. Now, I know that not every job in a company, even the leanest and meanest company, is necessary for day-to-day operations. But 99%?!?!
It was the "most stolen palindromic car", certainly.
Mainly because the Civic can be easily and most lucratively stripped for parts. Honda is the company that uses the most parts interchangeable between models, and since the Civic is the cheapest and least likely to be alarmed/guarded/etc, it's higher reward for lower risk.
@Mahatma Coat - I still have my version 1 Air four+ years later and, in spite of being beaten to death by others in the house, it still runs fine. People might scoff at the engineering, but it's been dropped onto concrete/tile more than once while open and running, but other than the sound card occaisionally getting twitchy, it's fine. I'll definitely replace it with another one, and this time keep others from using it ...