Aye-curumba!
Big Brother says sorry to Mexico | NEWS.com.au
Ditching muck at the Mexican flag was pretty bad, I can remember commenting on it while watching Friday Night Games last week. It’s not nearly as bad though as Andrew suggesting that the “Aussies” in the house should be saved from eviction in response to the all male eviction round, that was just down-right racist given the fact that every housemate is Australian despite their diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Great news for those in Perth: the resources sector has launched a free WiFi network in the Perth CBD. More details in my post at Perthnorg. I know where my hotel will be located next time I’m up 🙂
While working today a window popped up and reminded me that I have less than 2 weeks to validate my legally bought legitimate copy of Microsoft Vista. It’s not the first time this has occurred. I still haven’t gotten around to reinstalling Vista twice as recommended by Microsoft to get rid of this, but it is the tipping point that has finally driven me to lose faith in a company I’ve used for 20 years. From my first XT running Dos through many years of new computers, including building many of them myself, through Win 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, XP and now Vista I’ve remained a PC guy. I’ve literally spent tens of thousands of dollars, and yet Microsoft finds it necessary to punish me today, despite doing the right thing and running a legal copy of Windows on a system that came pre-installed with XP: the bloody product key is still stuck to the side of the box, not that it matters to them.
Today I ordered my first ever Mac.
I’d had advice to buy a Macbook Pro or similar, but I already have a laptop, one that will pretty soon probably be running Linux. Given my expenditure already on a wireless keyboard/ mouse, webcam and twin 22″ monitors the only logical choice is a Mac Pro. They’re not particularly cheap, but I shopped around and I didn’t buy directly from Apple. Went for the basic twin 2.66ghz dual core Intel Xeons, only ordered it with 1GB of Ram though, $480 for an extra 1GB is insane and I’ll pickup some generic Ram that will work in the system in the next couple of days. 500gb hard drive and bluetooth support just for good measure, you can never future proof a system enough.
I’m not sure whether to be sad, angry or just plain excited. Obviously a super fast new system is exciting, but it’s sad that it’s gotten to this point. The anger is directed at Microsoft. Here’s hoping that the new system meets expectations. I’ve got no idea when it might get here, it’s coming from Melbourne so I’d guess a week, and I’ll write some more when it finally arrives. I’ve got a lot of homework to do in the mean time, like tossing up buying Office for Mac or just ditching Office all together, replacement software, running Parallels etc… all things that need to be considered for a new system.
Update: it just occurred to me that read alone this sounds like I’m making the switch just because of one thing. I’m not, it’s the many things in Vista that don’t work, the error messages I get every morning about a MCE db error, the programs that wont run, the programs Vista wont allow to run, and the never ending “are you sure boxes”…whoever thought up that idea at Microsoft should be shot. Simply I probably wouldn’t be making the switch if I’d stuck with XP. Win XP was a great OS, I never had any issue at all across 3-4 boxes and XP editions including MCE (which I’ve still got on a dedicated box). XP was the pinnacle of Microsoft programming, Vista is like the last days of the Roman Empire.
I think I’ve mentioned this site before: tornadovideos.net. If you’re like me and you liked Twister and the whole concept of Tornado chasing, it’s a great site. The latest video below.
Touch wood in some respects, given I live in Australia’s “Tornado Alley”, I’m just hoping we don’t get one this year, last year a Tornado devastated Leschenault, literally less than 1km away from my house, and the year before was Bunbury. I was working in town (Bunbury) at that stage and I’ll never forget the devastation, my office at the time was outside of the destruction zone by no more than 2 houses or under 300 metres. I drove that morning to the Bunbury post office around fallen trees and buildings strewn across the road. I didn’t have a camera with me. Today my mobile has one and it will never leave my side.
Now here’s a pleasant change, free WiFi in Western Australia! WiFi is now free in the Qantas Domestic terminal at Perth Airpoirt…least I’ve connected to it for free. Download speed is around 500kps, not super fast but usable. The start of a bigger trend perhaps? We can only hope. I’m looking forward to getting online tonight at the Windsor in Melbourne and seeing how much a 5 star hotel gouges my wallet for internet access; free WiFi at hotels is still a foreign, or as the case may be American concept for the Australian hotel industry. Back to dreaming now….looking at hundreds of people queue for the flight and preparing myself for over 4 hours offline 🙂
Apples Safari browser is now available on Windows.
I’m under whelmed so far.
Yes it’s quick, but it doesn’t support Aero in Vista. And then there is the font rendering. WTF? Chris Pirillo tells me on Flickr that it’s something to do with settings so I’ll have to play with it some more but the first impression Windows users are going to get is terrible: fuzzy, hard to read fonts.
The real question is what is Apple trying to achieve with this? Steve Jobs did announce that Safari was the key to 3rd party support on the Jesus Phone so maybe that’s why, but if it’s a tool for people to see what running a Mac is like…well, suffice to say it may well be a hindrance than a help.
On the Mac front I’m about 50/50 moving towards 60% for on switching. Price is still my sticking point, but with tax time coming up at the end of the month the company might need to spend so money and given my monitors and other bits and pieces will work with a Mac it’s just a question of making the dive and buying a box. Time will tell I guess, it’s a lot of money and she who must be obeyed isn’t in favour if, and that’s the biggest hurdle of them all 🙂
Czech President Vaclav Klaus:
The environmentalist paradigm of thinking is absolutely static. They neglect the fact that both nature and human society are in a process of permanent change, that there is and has been no ideal state of the world as regards natural conditions, climate, distribution of species on earth, etc.
They neglect the fact that the climate has been changing fundamentally throughout the existence of our planet and that there are proofs of substantial climate fluctuations even in known and documented history.
Their reasoning is based on historically short and incomplete observations and data series which cannot justify the catastrophic conclusions they draw.
They neglect the complexity of factors that determine the evolution of the climate and blame contemporary mankind and the whole industrial civilization for being the decisive factors responsible for climate change and other environmental risks.
Why can’t Howard come out and say something like this? It’s right on so many levels.
For every person I’ve argued this with, not one has been able to explain global warming prior to now, best represented to me by the Romans growing grapes and producing wine in Britain 2000 years ago. That things are getting warmer I think isn’t in doubt, what is in serious doubt is the cause and result.
via Tim Blair
This YouTube clip has over 1million views, I’ll let it speak for itself 🙂
Picked up a copy of APC Magazine on the weekend. I very rarely buy computer magazines, after all why would anyone want to pay to read news that is 2 months old?… but I am rather impartial to the DVD’s.
I met a few of the folks from APC Magazine at a conference last year. Short form, lots of attitude and they basically turned there noses down at me as nothing more than a worthless blogger and basically wouldn’t even speak to me. Of course ironically I’m currently writing for an audience elsewhere that is a thousands of times bigger than their little magazine, but this isn’t the point of this post 🙂
So I’m playing with the DVD and they’ve included Yahoo To Go, Yahoo’s PVR software. Immediate thought: great, it’s finally available for Australians, when Yahoo had originally released it about 18 months ago it was US only, and painfully you only found this out by installing it then trying to run it (it geo-blocks based on IP). So I install Yahoo To Go and what do you know, it is still limited to the US only. Basically the folks a APC didn’t even try testing the software they are advertising on their DVD. And these folks turn their noses down at me? Tell you what, a blogger would be a far lot more thorough than these guys any day.
The more I use Facebook, the more I’m convinced that in 12-18 months Facebook will slay MySpace.
Anyhow, I’ve now switched to bookmarking via Facebook. I love Bluedot but having accounts all over the place seems a bit daft, and the whole Facebook as a Platform thing is going to make this even more so.
For those who want to connect on facebook, username is: duncanriley.
Now I’ve just got to work out the best way off pulling Facebook data into Google Reader.