This is frankly disturbing. How much money must they have been making to do this:
…the counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to a network of more than 50 electronics factories in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The mind boggles.
How utterly depressing it would be if Graeme Dott beats Ronnie O’Sullivan. Its bad enough that Peter Ebdon is in the final. Neither Peter or Graeme have any real flare when it comes to playing snooker, they’re so incredibly boring to watch.
Peter especially, he is so slow. Its painful! I’m astounded that Ebdon is a previous world champion. I think he just bored Stephen Hendry to tears, who then let him win. Actually Hendry was shocking that year (2002) in the final. He missed so many easy shots.
Anyway, I can only hope Ronnie wakes out his slumber and makes some kind of comeback. Unfortunately I can’t see it. The score is 16-8, with Dott needing just one frame! Ronnie is in one of inconsistent moods, thinking more about god knows what, than snooker. His cue tip problems probably haven’t helped either. I saw a frankly bizarre clip earlier this afternoon where he just sat staring at one of the camera’s pulling faces instead of watching the table. He didn’t even notice it was his turn.
Its so damn frustrating watching him when he goes off the boil. When he’s on form, its stunning to watch. He makes the sport look so easy. Oh well, I don’t think we’ll be treated to that this evening though.
If (more likely when) Graeme gets to the final, I’d prefer him to win. I feel sorry for anyone thats bought tickets for the final, it looks set to be an utter yawn fest. I nearly did!
Edit: Buggeration, Dott got through, 17-11.
Which idiot thought of this? In the words of the fluff ball himself, You’re Fired!
From newsome.org.
Ok, I get:
Thus, any file that shares this UID is both owned and controlled by root and has root permissions.
From Red Hat Linux – Administrator’s Guide. A riveting read I’m sure you’ll agree. We use all the Linux books at work as monitor stands since they’re full of waffle, so a nice height, and thats about the only use we have for them.
Whoever reads this, its your turn now!
Oh really? If thats the case then why is it so damn hard to find any contact details? Yes, it probably is award winning since no one can phone or email them! I wouldn’t mind but all I want to do is confirm an order hasn’t gone through and therefore create a new one. I actually want to spend money with them.
Please put them in a more obvious place!
Edit: Just used one of their web forms tucked away in the help pages. Go to one of the help pages and look for a No I need further assistance link. Must admit I got a pretty quick reply!
Yay and stuff. Not everywhere is covered, but France, Germany, Italy etc are. Very cool.
Links:
I was at college this evening and our lecturer mentioned he was after buying a new monitor which he’d mainly use for gaming. I suggested he go with at least a 19″ TFT with a response time of less than 12ms (or I would have, if I could have got a word in edge-ways). Someone else in the class said that any type of CRT, preferably iiyama, was the way to go and that TFT’s were inferior. Full stop.
Now I have to say I’m biased. The majority of machines I use now have TFT’s. My home setup consists of 19″ Benq FP937s and an oldish 17″ Samsung CRT, which acts as a second display. At work I use a laptop connected to a 17″ Dell TFT. All our other workstations are laptops or have TFT’s attached.
The above person continued that they could easily tell the difference between a CRT and TFT when playing games. Now I suspect I play a lot more computer games than they do and I can’t tell the difference. Quake et al are excellent and World of Warcraft looks superb. In fact I think they look better on a TFT. If you use a DVI output on a TFT (which I do at home) the picture looks even better. They cited ghosting as a problem, but thats a thing of a past. You can get TFT’s now with single figure response times and any with a 12ms or less response time doesn’t suffer from it.
If you’re a graphic designer or someone who needs an incredibly detailed display then a CRT is still best, but for anything else I can’t see the logic in buying a CRT anymore. Thats about the only plus point a CRT has, a sharper picture and slightly better colours. The latter point of which is debatable!
TFT’s are a damn sight smaller, consume less power, don’t suffer from glare, have brighter pictures and cause less, if any, eye strain. I know several people who switched from CRT to TFT, who previously would get headaches after sitting in front of CRT’s for long periods, due to the way the screen refreshes, and now no longer have any problems.
With a TFT you also get more screen real estate. A 17″ TFT really is 17″ diagonally across, where as a 19″ CRT is approximately 17.7″. You actually lose space with a CRT! Oh and whilst I’m venting, its totally pointless mentioning viewing angles. Yes, a CRT is better than a TFT for this, but who the hell sits at an angle to their monitor anyway? I mean, really…</rant over>
I think what annoyed me most was the said persons stubbornness. In no shape or form did TFT’s have any better qualities than a CRT as far they were concerned. Oh well, someone people you just can’t talk to, I guess they enjoy replacing the valves in their steam powered computer.
I was trying to remember what model my Netgear ADSL magic router thingy was since its playing up and so decided to search my site. Yeah, yeah, I could have just gone downstairs to read it off the box… but I’m tired and its late.
Anyhoo, my site search appears to broken, sigh! So I went to google and searched for “pauked netgear“. The first entry gave me what I was after, but the second link listed a site called urlfan.com, which appears to mirror the content of sites!
I’m not that bothered that the content of my site has been copied wholesale (since its mainly waffle) but it does annoy me that it links directly images on my site. I put a stop to their shenanigans by going into the site admin and turning Hotlink Protection on, which:
…prevents other websites from directly linking to files on your website. Other sites will still be able to link to any file type that you don’t specify below (ie. html files). An example of hotlinking would be using a <img> tag to display an image from your site from somewhere else on the net. The end result is that the other site is stealing your bandwidth.
Neato! Getting back to urlfan.com. Interesting site which apparently does the following (as quoted from the How It Works page):
://URLFAN is an evolving experiment designed to discover what websites the blogosphere is discussing all in real time. It does this by cultivating the content of thousands of RSS feeds and parsing billions of pieces of information.
Now every website owner can see who’s talking about their site in real time and how they compare to every other site on the Internet. There are many sites designed to rank the “traffic” of a website, such as Alexa, however ://URLFAN is different. We rank sites according to their popularity in the fast moving and growing world of RSS feeds.
Ok, fine, so the concept is pretty cool, but why do they have to mirror the content of my site and many others? Isn’t it meant to rate site popularity? Very odd I thought and I’m not sure what to make of it.
Below are some example searches. Click on the Analysis links to get the full page views:
I wasn’t surprised that Schumacher won. San Marino has always been a strong Ferrari circuit. As to whether this marks a Ferrari comeback, I somehow doubt it. Its Schumacher’s strong record here (now 7 times winner) and the combination of Bridgestone tyres and car setup that made it a foregone conclusion here. I can’t see their form continuing through the rest of the season.
However Schumacher’s terrible pace in the middle section of the race did give some hope that Alonso was in with a slight chance of coming through. Unfortunately the odd decision to pit him early scuppered his chances! It’s hard to say that if he had stayed out longer he would have got past Schumacher, but since it looks like Alonso had more fuel… well I guess we’ll never know since Renault has refused to comment.
I think Alonso did the best he could given the circuit and conditions. If he continues like this, as he did last season, I can see him winning another championship.
Button’s run of bad luck continued when he tried to wipe out half his pit crew with a disastrous second pit stop. The lollypop was lifted too early before the fuel pump was disengaged and Button took off. The mechanism was still connected to his car and the piping knocked everyone for six and then tore off.
To the lollypop mans credit he did realise his error and put the lollypop back down, but for some reason Button ignored it. Button was sat stranded in the pit lane whilst the crew woke up from their concussion and went to his aid to remove the broken fuel nozzle. A very unusual incident.
Without that mishap, he’d have probably finished 3rd, instead Montoya yawned himself in there instead. The McLaren’s were woefully slow this weekend and their strategy of heavy fuelling means they’re missing for half of the race until their fuel loads equal out. Why? Its clear they have fast cars.
Fisichella had a terrible qualifying session which, even with qualifying 11th (which gives the advantage of allowing whatever strategy / fuel they want), meant he was never going to fight for a podium. Plus the fact San Marino has isn’t a good circuit for overtaking. He is pretty much showing what I’ve said previously, that he is just an inconsistent driver.
I can’t say I was that impressed with the change to Variante Alta chicane at the top of the course. It was great in previous years watching cars fly across it. As Mark Brundell commented, it’s been sanitised. Another victory for safety but a loss for entertainment.
Worth nothing was the excellent engine reliability. We’re 4 races into the session with all new V8 engine designs and, if I remember correctly, there wasn’t a single blow up! Thats impressive.
I had to chuckle at the back markers, Yuji Ide made the Red Bull of Christijan Albers slightly more interesting by nerfed it into a barrel roll and off the track on the first lap.
Next up is the Nurburgring in two weeks, which I have to agree with James Allen, is one of my least favourites (along with Monaco). Hopefully there’ll be a bit more overtaking.
Links / previous coverage:
More weird and wonderful Google Video links that made me laugh:
Edit: Dr. Tran’s Magic Talking Card! and Official Site.
Paul