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I was just mooching around Jamendo looking for some really violent Thrash for a micro project I’m tinkering with. I happened across this little jem. I think they’re from Argentina. But the first track in particular I really enjoyed. A really nice thrashy grove.
  Sorry, but comments are closedI’m peeved. I saved up some money so that I could treat myself to something nice during the week I took a week off. I finally decided to get an Archos 5 ( http://www.archos.com/products/imt/archos_5it/hdmulti.html ) Expansive, but then I work for it! I placed an order with a company called PCBuyIT ( http://www.pcbuyit.co.uk ). They had a good price on it and had the exact model I was looking for. They seem to recommend Google Checkout. You can place payment by credit card directly with them. But for some reason I thought “why not place the order through Google?”. I think it was because I like the work Google do with supporting Open Source. Whatever, there was some brand loyalty. It turns out that using Google Checkout was a big mistake. Everything suggested on the website that If I placed my order, I’d get my goods today. WRONG! What neither Google Checkout nor PCBuyIT don’t tell you, is that for reasons they don’t mention, it can take up to 24 hours for them to clear your payment. And this happened to me. So, it’s now Friday, the last working day of my Holiday. I only found out about the delay this morning when I was basically expecting to receive my goods. I phoned PCBuyit this morning. Their attitude was pretty much that now they have my money, I can whistle for my stuff. When I suggested (politely I might add) that it would be really cool it they could do a Saturday delivery, I didn’t even get to finish my sentence before they stopped me and basically told me to stop kidding myself. So there you have it, City Link will try to deliver the goods I paid to have delivered today on Monday. I’ll be back at work on Monday so I won’t be in to receive them. So after paying for next day delivery, the First chance I’ll have to get my goods is Tuesday, from City Link’s depot in Bristol. Meaning that because I’m working in Bath on Tuesday, my drive home will be across three counties. Thanks PCBuyIT and Google Checkout. You’ve made what should have been a pleasureable experience, horrible. What would it have cost to get it delivered to me tomorrow and kept a new customer happy? A few quid. I hope the few quid you saved will be very happy together. Sorry, but comments are closedBecause I’m working in Bath not Bristol this morning, I can take the high speed train. There is no doubt about it, this is positively the only way to travel. Air Con, Power Sockets at the seats, seats that don’t require you to remove your knee-caps with a Katana to sit down, there’s a buffet car and the carriages are so quiet, you could hear a mouse fart from the other end of first class. In fact the noisyest thing in this carriage is me hammering away at my keyboard. Anyhow, I just wanted to say that an attractive standard of travel is possible on public transport. Even from the company I usually dub “Shit Trains” (First Great Western). There is only one downside to all this as far as I can see. If you want to fart on a quiet train, it’s a damn site harder to conceal the tell tale noises. Sorry, but comments are closedLast week, train cancelled then un cancelled. This week, let’s have a magical mystery tour of Temple Meads. Just…… Arrrggghh! The guard is just trotting out the apologies now. The muck up is due to yet another train failure. Shit Trains really is what First Great Western should be calling themselves. Sent from my BlackBerry Sorry, but comments are closedThere are a myriad of reasons for using Free Open Source Software. They range from the technical to the political with a bunch of ethical, moral, strategic and functional reasons mixed in along the way. But I think I’ve found a whole new type of reason for using FOSS/Linux. Medical. As many might know, I have Bi-Polar disorder which has dogged me for many years. Many of the symptoms occilate with mood. However, one persistant danger never seems to go away, financial ruin. It’s an horrifically simple problem. In high (or “hypo”) moods, Bi-polar people tend to suffer from a need to go on spending sprees. Fueled by a destructive narcissistic deulsion that they have much greater resources than they have, mixed with heightened desires, the sprees can easily become self destructive. When the mood collapses, and the bills and extent of the folly kick in, it can terribly trigger or aggravate depression and often plays a major role in the suicide of Bi-polar sufferers. One very well known sufferer of Bi-Polar, Stephen Fry, can attest to the power of this self-destructive complusion. Not to mention how often computuing and expensive gadgetry are one of the addictive causes of spending beyond means. Indeed, proprietry soft and hard ware anr almost ideally designed to take advantage of the downward spiral of the Bi-polar spending problem. You must have the latest shiny operating system. To run it, you need the latest shiny new hardware. While you’re in the shop, why not get the new games because they’ll run a treat on your new hardware. And so on until you’re too busy on Company of Heroes to answer the door to the bayliffs. Luckily for me, a cure for this tech spending madness has found me. Linux. The amount I’m now sending now that I exclusively use Linux, compared to my Windows days, has plummeted dramatically. It’s a weird, but nonetheless welcome phenomenon. The OS itself costs nothing. If I get bored with one flavor, I just download a whole new one. That in itself is an epoch. A whole new bunch of shiny for no money. All the supporting software is free. You can buy expensive books for Linux, but it’s pointless because all the knowledge needed to do virtually anything (and I do mean pretty much anything) is also free online. Then there’s hardware. Since getting Linux on all my machines, I have stepped off the upgrade treadmill. I do buy the occasional treat. But it’s much less frequent, and it doesn’t have to be the latest and greatest because an inbuilt trait of Linux is it’s frugality with resources. I’ve started getting 2nd hand stuff off ebay and re-using it rather new stuff. I find it difficult to express how much escaping from that spending trap means to me. The next time I have a mood crash, it could even be the difference between life and death. If you contribute to FLOSS/Linux in any way, you have my sincere gratitude and thanks for this. 2 people had their say - chime in! - (Sorry, but comments are closed)
I have to admit, i’m mostly ignorant about how these bid and takeover deals work. What I do know is that Novell is listed on the US stock exchange, and that means they are legally bound to look after the financial interests of the shareholders. Even if that is at the cost of the company, it’s values, employees or products. I’ve read about the valuations of the Elliott offer being in the Billions of dollars. An offer of that magnitude is definitely going to be a catalyst. The company is “in play” as the Americans might put it. The thing is, with one offer on the table, Novell’s management are obligated to consider rival offers. Which naturally leads you to consider the simple question, who? HP have interests in Open Source and Infrastructure, and they could bid. Oracle are still digesting Sun, so are not in such a strong position, but IBM might try. I have wondered about Google, but somehow I can’t see it. There is one possibility that gives me the shivers though. Microsoft. It would be a lot of hassle for them to get a deal past the US Anti Trust Laws. It would cost them a lot of money in an area of business that would be a nightmare to intergrate into their own. So much so that I wonder if they would bother. The answer that’s forming in my mind is they wouldn’t. SO where’s the logic? Well, despite what Boycott Novell might say, Novell push a lot of usefull stuff into Linux. I’m sure that if they weren’t contributing, the overall pace of Linux development would be slowed significantly. So, is that what we might be looking at? Would MS spend a Billion Dollars to trip Linux up and slow it down? I think they just might. One person was brave enough - (Sorry, but comments are closed)http://identi.ca/conversation/20122521#notice-20122521 The word “cunt”, is a fabulous word. With timing and judgement, it’s like dropping a nuclear powered stink bomb into a converstation. The problem isn’t the word, the problem I have is when the joy of using the word is eroded because it’s special status within language hasn’t been respected. Let us put aside the discussions about it’s neo sexist connotation for a moment, the staffers and hacks can cover that territory ad infinitum. It’s pejorative meaning in the second and third person is just as problematic. If no-one were to challenge the validity of it’s use in spurious cases (such as an only slightly questionable decision by Ubuntu to change the default search engine), doesn’t that devalue the word the next time you need to express it’s meaning? For instance, if a guy opens fire with a machine in a packed shopping mall for no reason, he would be a murdering bastard. If they were to go one worse and open fire in a kindergarten school yard, you’ve got no cathartic language left. What are you going to call them? “That guy who shot my kid is a mudering [person who would change the default seach engine setting]“. I’m annoyed at the lazyness of it. I realise that the Microblog format can be limiting. But isn’t that a challenge to be even more creative? Trotting out words like cunt thoughtlessly in instances like the one I’ve linked to above, reduces the speaker to barking like a dog. Without vocabulary and creative composition, then the only way to express anger is volume and aggressive, monosyllabic shock. In terms of the point of the communication, it’s also highly likely that poorly judged use is also going to be counterproductive. You may have a smattering of support from those who are similarly angered. But many who may previously have been receptive to pursuasion to your view, will recoil or even entrench themselves in the opposite opinion solely due to their perception of your agression. You are of course free to hold and express any opinion you choose. The thing is, I feel the way this person has done it reflects badly on the community as a whole, of which I am part. So next time, please, be more imaginative. Thank you! Sorry, but comments are closedI could almost see why there was some uptightness about not putting Gimp in the default Ubuntu disk image. I’ll concede thateven though I’m bored of the issue, I’m still not fully sure that Mono based apps are a good idea. Despite trying to be open minded about it, I must have missed the point in a huge way about the most recent issue on the Ubuntu community agenda. Let’s be clear here… The situation in Haiti, matters. |
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