Yet another collection of random links and rantings of a greying unix geek with a photography bent. Pass the Guinness and Grecian Formula.
Original Artwork by James Gosling
Sun sun = new Sun( 1982 );
sun.create( "SunSparc", "Solaris", "Java" );
while(sun.flounder(10,years))
{
sun.buy(Random(Companies));
sun.firestaff(Random(Staff));
}
oracle.buy( sun, 2010 );
oracle.getPatents( sun );
oracle.fireStaff( sun );
oracle.eat( sun );
sun = null;
System.gc();
I was a happy Dell customer from about 2000 through 2005, back before I converted over to Apple’s products. The next business day onsite repair service, for a notebook under such a contract, was quite impressive for the three or four times I needed it over the life of the notebook.
Time changes everything.
Robert Cringley is not happy with the product quality nor service experience he has received with a shiny new Dell netbook.
My son Fallon’s Vostro A90 netbook, which I wrote about right after Christmas, was finally repaired successfully by Dell but now the Vostro thinks it is an Inspiron 10V.
…I got a call from Dell support saying that had received the Vostro for a second motherboard replacement and I’d be getting an update from them just as soon as they heard from the repair depot, probably within minutes or hours.
…But I knew most obviously that work had been done when I booted the A90 and it told me as the BIOS loaded that it was now an Inspiron 10V.
…Maybe I should be glad that my $200 netbook now has the motherboard of a $350 netbook. … The last time I got a shuffle like this was when a Chevy 350 engine appeared inside my new 1976 Oldsmobile. GM paid customers millions to cover that executive decision.
…This is just slipshod support. Maybe they’ve already discontinued the A90 and are out of motherboards. … Dell is supposedly committed to supporting my machine and they didn’t do it. Worse still, when I reported this back to my “official contact, ” he quoted Customer Support as saying that they had sent me an e-mail that I never got.
If they are lying to him and lying to me, then they are lying to you, too. Worse still, if they’ll play this fast and loose with a tech blogger with 300,000 readers, then Dell simply doesn’t give a damn about any of us.
I suspect Dell has started it’s final decent into receivership . . .
New Blasphemy law takes effect in Ireland
From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational, and we begin our campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine. The new law defines blasphemy as publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted.
This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.
We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.
[ . . . ]
George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”
Best to throw the whole thing out and start over.
Transparency in data gathering and analysis should be near the top of the list of procedures this time around.
I have an opinion as to whether there is human driven climate change or not, and to what extent. So what, so does everyone else. Opinions and agendas are what they are, nothing more. Lets get the science working again before we go too far down the road of being chicken little.
We apparently have a bit of time to redo the science, as it appears there has been a cooling over the last decade…
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