h a l f b a k e r yGuitar Hero: 4'33"
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This is just a front, to try to convince us you're not a
seasoned one-handed typist, right? |
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I was under the impression via the idea header that you wished to set fire to kittens.(At first.) |
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Wrong user, skinny. I like the idea. I saw a viral video
of a cat playing with an iPad. So it could be done.
But what would make this different than just getting
your kitty a regular Kindle, and calling it theirs?
Meow? |
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Welcome to the HB, [Phront]! |
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There is a documentary about snow leopards that gets
played on public television every so often; the last two
times it aired, one of our cats sat at perfect attention and
gazed at the screen with what I can only describe as
awestruck admiration--for the entire hour! Nothing drew
her eyes from the leopards. Even when no cats were on the
screen, she was glued to the set, awaiting their return.
Never have I seen an animal more entranced by a
television screen. Similar programs about other big cats
entirely disinterest her. |
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Make of this what you will. |
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The iPad is not scratchproof, but you can buy nifty-keen
replacable screen protectors that are totally invisible. |
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$17.50 for a 2-pack at b3$t bu¥. My current one has lasted
seven months or so and is barely scratched. If that's what
you consider expensive, I'd hate to live on your budget. |
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What is your real problem with Apple, anyway? Are you
opposed to things that work properly and are easy to use,
or are you just one of those PC die-hards who're offended
by the idea of an OS you can't frig around with? |
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My inquiry was based purely on curiousity, BTW. I use both
Windows and Mac products and find that they meet my
needs quite well, though my life is not particularly
computer-oriented. I pretty much only use MS Word on my
PC and use my iPad for internet purposes, except when e-
submitting work to publishers. I do that about once a
month, transferring my work via flash drive to a different
PC (I've intentionally disabled the wireless hardware on the
computer I use for writing, and never hook it up to the
Internet); if I was doing that everyday, I'd probably feel the
way you do about the limitations of Mac computers. |
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Informative answer, thank you. |
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I would comment that what you find // restrictive and
dictatorial // about Mac OSs is rather more comforting to
people like my mother, who uses her Air all day, every day
whilst running a regional hospital ER. Unlike you and I, she
did not grow up with computers and does not have the
strangely innate general understanding of them that
many of our generation seem to posess, so a rigid,
immutable, and above all simple process that she can't get
lost in is perfect for her. You and I can (and need to) tailor
our machines to suit our individual porpoises, whereas she
needs one that won't let her inadvertently make the same
kinds of changes, which she then cannot reverse. So there
is a definite role for things like Macs. |
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So far, none of my family's four iPads or two MacBooks
have ever had anything go wrong, so we haven't run afoul
of the customer service shenanigans. I'll remember what
you've told me about that. |
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More on topic: Jenny got one of our (her) cats playing
some iPad game, probably Angry Birds. It was hilarious for
about two minutes. So, yes, paws work quite well on iStuff
touchscreens. |
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Sound logic, but I can't answer; I wasn't involved in the
purchase. She's very happy with it and has yet to fuck
anything up, so all's well, I suppose. My Mom has always
seemed to be incurably confounded by Windows, but the
Mac OS is a breeze for her.* Maybe that's why. |
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*I know, they're practically the same; it doesn't make sense
to me, either. |
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//I'm offended by the idea of being told whose music I can and cannot listen to// |
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Huh? You can listen to any music you like on either OS X or Windows. I don't get
what your beef is here. |
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//and I'm offended by the idea of not being able to 'frig' around with something I paid
so much money for.// |
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I don't know where you get your information, but OS X is far more hackable than
Windows, due in no small part to its Unix underpinnings. On a bone stock OS X install,
I can sit down and start writing a Bash, Ruby, or Python script to automate nearly any
task on the system, and run web, SSH, and VNC servers—without installing a single
piece of additional software. And by installing the free dev tools, you can compile
and run practically any Unix software out there. Windows, not so much. It's about as
hackable (and functional) as a Fisher-Price toy. |
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//And 'easy to use' is an awfully subjective term. Windows is 'easy to use' if you know
wtf you're doing, and MacOS is no different.// |
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OS X makes it easy to do things that are very difficult or impossible on Windows. It
also requires less maintenance, and is far easier to fix when it breaks. I speak as
someone who has done tech support in a mixed Mac/Windows environment
(specifically, a university). The Macs had far fewer problems, and when they did it
was usually a simple matter to troubleshoot them over the phone. God help you if you
got a call for a Windows machine, though. Odds are you'd spend at least half a day
trying to fix it. Thankfully, there were relatively few of them. If the school had
been all Windows, we would have needed a tech support team at least triple the size
that we had. |
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//IOS is even more restrictive and dictatorial than MacOS.// |
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iOS is annoyingly restrictive and dictatorial, to the point where it actually does
offend me. That's why I've jailbroken every iPhone I've owned. |
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//Why would someone pay MORE to get LESS functionality?// |
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They're not. As I said, Mac OS X is way more functional than Windows. Don't confuse
easy to use with less functional. |
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//For half the price of the Mac Book Air, she could've gotten a Windows laptop with
more memory and processing power// |
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What, exactly, would she do more RAM and processing power? Do you suppose that
grandma is out there crunching DES keys, or perhaps doing a bit of 3D rendering?
Computers today are pretty much all "fast enough" for most purposes. Besides, it
would be a much bulkier, lower quality computer. I've seen a lot of laptops from
other manufacturers, and they're simply not up to snuff in terms of quality
(particularly at the price point you're suggesting). The keyboard is usually a hateful,
plasticky mess that's painful to type on, the trackpad is poorly designed, and they're
just ugly, clunky pieces of garbage. |
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I've considered at various times buying a cheaper laptop to install OS X on (yes, you
can do this—the machine I'm typing on right now is a "Hackintosh") and every time I've
gone and looked at them I haven't been able to justify the cost savings over an Apple
branded machine. Perhaps when you get up into the higher end from major
manufacturers, but at that point Apple is actually pretty price competitive, and you
save a lot of headache that way. |
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//and paid a Geek Squad guy at Best Buy// |
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Yeesh. You'd have to be crazy to let those idiots touch your computer. |
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//to lock it down for her (maybe set her up with a guest user account for limited
access) so she can't get lost in the menus.// |
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And then she'd just have to have a virus scanner installed and set to run and update
regularly. And have all of the applications she'll ever need pre-installed. And make
sure to keep up with critical security updates—don't forget about Patch Tuesday! |
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I'm not even an Apple fan in particular. The company itself actually annoys the hell
out of me, for a lot of reasons. But I recognize a good product when I see one, and
more importantly, I recognize a crap product like Windows when I see one as well.
I've only been using Macs regularly since maybe '98 or '99, a bit before OS X came out.
I used Windows regularly since 3.0 (so what, 1990?) and all the way through XP, when
I finally dumped it for good. Along the way I've used, to various extents, a wide
variety of different operating systems: FreeBSD (still run it on a server), OpenBSD,
Linux (great for laptops), BeOS (the "cool" factor was high, but no software support),
OS/2 (my main desktop OS for a couple of years, until they killed it off after Merlin),
and probably a few others I can't think of right now. So I'd say I've got a pretty
decent perspective when it comes to operating systems. And it really, honestly
amazes me that people continue to torture themselves into using Windows. |
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The truth is, I'm tired of Windows, even though I don't have
any problems with it. I'm a Mac Fan. The next computer I
buy, and every computer I will subsequently ever buy, will
be a Mac. |
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But while I have big brass balls that clank when I walk, I
definitely do not have the level of computer knowledge to
take this to the mat with [21Quest]. But, I knew that if I
primed the pump enough, somebody would come tag me
out. |
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So thank you, [ytk]. Those were precisely the words I
would have said, had I the education to say them. |
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I used to hang out in the M$ Millenium help forum. |
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There was a guy there who kept championing the idea of a "98 Gold Edition" ie: fix Windows 98 and sell it. I can see the attraction. |
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//Would've been nice if Apple thought to include a
virus scanner, actually. They've always had this idea
in their
heads that their products are virus proof and that
bubble burst a few weeks ago. Don't you read the
news?// |
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Nobody said they're virus-proof. But, no, you don't
really need a virus scanner on a Mac. There simply
aren't
that many viruses out there, and the ones that exist
are addressed relatively quickly through simple
software
updates. Literally hundreds of new threats appear
for Windows every week. This is largely due to the
joke that
Windows calls "security". |
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//Regarding what programs the 'grandma' is using and
what her processing requirements are, I don't know
what
programs it takes to run a hospital ER (which is what
it was said that she using it for) but you can store a
lot more
in terms of database information on a modern
Windows laptop than you can with only 120 MB, and
that's the
higher end for the MacBook Air.// |
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120GB, not MB. And the internal drive size doesn't
matter a bit. Databases are generally stored on a
server, and
that would absolutely be the case for a hospital. You
should know that, if you really know your stuff. I
think you
don't. |
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//That's the 1100.00 version. The 900.00 one has 64
MB, and the lack of a CD drive is simply
inexcusable.// |
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That's what they said about floppy drives back in the
day. The lack of a built-in optical drive is far from
"inexcusable". Quite the opposite—it's perfectly
reasonable. Making the laptop unnecessarily bulky
because you
might occasionally need to read a CD (although I can't
recall the last time I used the optical drive on my
laptop)
would be ridiculous. Just get the external drive if
you really need it, and throw it in your laptop bag.
And if you
don't need it all that often, and don't want to spend
the extra money for the drive, you can share an
optical
drive from another Mac over the network. Piece of
cake. |
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//That's almost (but not quite) less forgivable than
refusing to allow expandable memory on IOS
devices.// |
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*Shrug* I've never cared that much about having
expandable memory. 64GB is more than enough for
me.
Everything is moving to the cloud anyway. You may
have heard about that. |
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//Regarding hackability, you've gotta be joking.// |
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//There is simply no way in hell Mac OS X is easier to
hack than Windows and that's all I have to say about
that.// |
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So you concede the point then? Or else tell me how
to do any of the stuff I just said you could do on the
Mac on
Windows, without installing any third party software
whatsoever. To recap:
- Run Bash or an equivalently powerful shell with full
scripting support (if you can't write Tetris in it, it
doesn't
count) with full access to the standard Unix toolset
or equivalent (this includes things like grep, sed, cat,
find,
less, tail, sort, ps, and even vi and Emacs).
- Write and execute Ruby, Python, and Perl scripts
(not the "functional equivalent", the actual
languages)
- Interface programmatically with nearly any
application on the system, and even those that may
be installed in
the future. On the Mac you can do this through
AppleScript, UI scripting, or a combination of both.
- Run a full featured web server, like Apache
- Run a SSH server, or allow remote command line
logins in some way
- Run a complete remote access server, including a
true VNC server
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I don't know whether you have the depth of technical
knowledge to appreciate the significance of these
features, but I assure you, any system that supports
those things out of the box is extremely hackable,
and any
system that supports none of them is pretty much a
joke in terms of hackability. Remember, this on a
bone
stock, out of the box, freshly installed Mac. You
can't really do a lot of that stuff on Windows even
with
additional software, let alone out of the box. And in
terms of configuration, don't even get me started on
what
a clusterfuck the Windows Registry is... |
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//In my (albeit limited) experience with Macs, it can
be a real pain in the ass if you have a problem.// |
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Funny, because anyone who has an in depth
understanding of computers should be able to figure
out how to fix
a Mac without much trouble. Remember, I did tech
support professionally for both systems, and I never
had to
spend nearly as long on the Macs as on the Windows
computers. |
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//Oh sure you can take it into an Apple store, if you
can find one. Good luck with that. Until about 2
years ago,
the nearest Apple store to me was in Seattle, over
300 miles away.// |
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Or call Apple and they'll talk you through it over the
phone. If it's a hardware problem, and there's not an
authorized service center nearby, they will ship you
a prepaid box that you place your computer in and
send it
back to them, where they fix it and send it back to
you at no cost if you're covered under the warranty.
I've
done that a couple of times with laptops over the
years, and the turnaround time is usually three to
five days.
Couldn't be easier. |
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//Conversely, you can't swing a cat by its tail without
hitting an authorized Windows repair center.// |
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There's no such thing. Computer repairs are handled
by the hardware manufacturer, not Microsoft.
Availability
of such repair centers is highly dependent on the
brand of computer you buy. |
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//I've never dealt with Mac support over the phone,
but Apple's iPhone support team is a joke. See my
earlier
anno about their shady business practices.// |
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Yeah, that wasn't exactly true. Yes, they were fined
(not ordered to pay restitution as you stated) based
on
their warranty sales practices, but it's not that they
were selling unnecessary warranties that duplicated
existing
coverage. The warranty requirement in the EU
states that if a defect is discovered within two years
of the
consumer receiving that product, AND that defect
existed when the product was manufactured, the
manufacturer is required to fix or replace it. So
defects that arise after the product is shipped aren't
covered.
A part that breaks due to normal wear and tear
wouldn't be covered under the EU requirement. The
EU
requirement mostly pertains to widespread product
defects, such as when many people have the same
problem
with their laptop due to a specific component that
was defective. And historically, Apple has been very
good
about fixing these problems when they occur, often
extending coverage for such issues to four years or
more,
regardless of whether you purchased the extended
warranty. |
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The "deceptive practice" in question wasn't selling
the extended warranty, but not adequately informing
consumers of the nature of the EU mandated
coverage, which is actually pretty narrow. The fine
was roughly
$1.2 million all told—basically, a slap on the wrist for
a relatively minor offense. Referring to this as
"shady
business practices" is disingenuous. If you really want
to go down that road, shall we get into Microsoft's
anti-
trust issues, hmmm? |
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//Windows support, OTOH, is a breeze. I've only had
a problem with my PC that I couldn't fix myself once,
and
that was over 4 years ago. I called HP, who not only
walked me through fixing the problem in less than 5
minutes
but waived the out of warranty service fee (it was
over a year old), as well.// |
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You admit that you've never dealt with Apple's tech
support, and then claim that HP's must be better?
Well,
huh. I could tell you all about the nightmare I had
trying to get IBM to fix a recurring problem with my
girlfriend's computer, or the time that all of the
Windows computers in the house got a virus that
literally
destroyed the BIOS, requiring the motherboards to
be replaced—which wasn't covered under warranty,
of
course. |
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You don't have to believe me, though. Check
Consumer Reports. Apple is consistently rated
among the best—if
not THE best—among computer manufacturers in
terms of tech support. |
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While the above discussion is informative,
rational, and in the right place entirely
laudable, we feel obliged to point out that it
is more than a little "off-topic", and we are
more interested in the original idea,
particulalrly when we get to put kittens on
small piles of dry, highly flammable material
and apply an ignition source… |
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Being cool is always recognised, but hard to describe. Apple = cool. Windows = what do you think? |
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//Ytk, say what you want but there's a reason most hackers choose Windows or
Linux over Mac.// |
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You say that like you actually believe it! Dead wrong. Hackers overwhelmingly
choose Mac or Linux over Windows. No geek worth his salt would be caught /dead/
running Windows by choice. It's really just not a good hacker OS. As ESR (you
know who that is, right?) put it in his well-known text on how to become a hacker
(you've read it, right?), "Trying to learn to hack on a Microsoft Windows machine or
under any other closed-source system is like trying to learn to dance while wearing
a body cast." |
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(I assume you mean real hackers as opposed to crackers/skript kiddies. They DO
choose Windows generally, and that's fine—let 'em have it. That's where all the
viruses come from.) |
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//Can you dual boot a Linux distro from a CD on a Mac?// |
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Um. Wow. Yes, yes, you can. And Windows. And any other operating system that
can run on x86_64. |
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But [8th] is right. This is getting too far off topic. And it's become increasingly
clear that honestly don't have the technical (or cultural) chops to defend your
position, [21Q], and I find your continued insistence that you have the slightest
clue what you're talking about when it comes to "hackers" a bit culturally offensive.
Putting this debate to bed. |
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Yes, but remember above all this debate, the only two things cats want to watch are the Animal Channel and porn. |
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Okay, and maybe Formula One racing. |
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//the only two things cats want to watch are the
Animal Channel and porn// |
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I think for cats, those are pretty much the same. |
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21 - too much anger over computer platforms. [see
Britemac A.M.C. idea for your salvation] :-) |
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// Okay, and maybe Formula One racing. // |
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Another of our cats (not the one who loves the snow
leopard show) has been enamoured with televised open-
wheel racing since kittenhood, earning herself the name
Danica. When we still had a television feed, we'd find a
race and put it on for her with the sound muted, and she'd
watch it for one- to two-minute periods all day.
Conclusion: cats love to watch stuff move. Individuals have
their preferences, of course, but I think the world already
has enough options for them to choose from. |
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What was the idea again? Ah! Burning kittens. As you were..... |
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**Some kittens were singed in the preceding flames** |
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"The cat that burns twice as bright, burns half as long .... " |
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As always, for [8th]'s tedious anti-cat rant. |
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Acta est fabula, plaudite. |
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//#include <ESOSSACR.H>// |
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Would that be “Everybody Should Own Several Sweet
Adorable Cats, Really!” |
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Or maybe we just need to reboot the Borg again... I'm
starting to think it may be actually getting to be time
for a "nuke and pave". Well, I guess that's what we get
for running Windows on the Borg... |
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(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore ? |
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Current drive is no longer valid> |
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I'm pretty sure [8th] is a Unix model. |
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//I'm pretty sure [8th] is a Unix model.// |
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Is that like a bikini model? 'Cause I could definitely do
without that image, thanks. |
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Unix / Eunuchs... There's a difference? |
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Yes, one can do a wide variety of useful tasks but has no
balls whatsoever... and the other one is a great big fat guy
who was castrated in early puberty. |
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<high-tails it for the bunker> |
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//Yes, one can do a wide variety of useful tasks but has
no balls whatsoever// |
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Correct. Unix systems, like sports cars, should
/always/ get a
girl's name. |
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Having reluctantly been using windows for about two months, I can see why I've avoided it for three years. |
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One feature that does works 100% is when it realises I'm checking me email before going to bed, and it does the "do not turn off or unplug, updating" routine and have to hang as it does the "...53% updated..." |
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Windows is crap, and you have to pay for it. Ubuntu is differently crap and it's free. Not a very tricky decision there. |
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I'm guessing it's no coincidence that this Phrontister gave us such a fitting term of venery. |
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