Posts by TeeCee

I'm afraid the housing bubble is fuelled by the massive buy-to-let market (British housing is about the best ROI out there). The result is a bidding war for every property that comes up for sale. This is something that Labour pledges to expand to satisfy their hatred of anything owned by anybody actually in the country except them. If you look at the continent, where housing prices are more stable, one of the more obvious differences is that buy-to-let is stomped on heavily (no letting unless 40% equity is held by the landlord, massive capital gains taxes on property transfers, large stamp duties, etc).

I'd remind you that Maggie only got her first tenure 'cos Callaghan made a pigs ear of the economy.

As for where we are now, Blair / Brown inherited an economy in surplus. Sweaty Gordon proceeded to spend the lot and borrow more, while borrowing even more off balance sheet and flogging off anything he could find, regardless of the current market for it. Economic mishandling of breathtaking incompetence, even by Labour's standards. Come the next recession, the country was skint and the credit lines already maxed out. Still, it could be worse, we could be in the same boat now as France under Hollande, so there's a bullet dodged and no mistake.

Still there is hope. Corbyn has managed to align his policies with the Scots twationalists[1]. Of course, one of the things the sweaty loons will require as part of a deal to prop up Stalin and co will be another referendum in the first term. Hopefully they'll win it (they ruddy well should unless they really are the greatest "down with evvrryfing" protest vote pre-Corbyn). Losing the Scots seats from parliament will render Labour unelectable in perpetuity. I reckon Corbyn is actually stupid enough to do this.

[1] If they decide to have a joint HQ, I'd suggest that an apt location would be Barking.

Except nobody chose Win95 over OS/2. Os/2 lost the battle, big time, in the Win 3 / 3.1 / 3.11 days.

The reason Windows one was simple:

1) OS/2 was expensive. I mean ludicrously expensive. Typical IBM charged a fortune for the CLI, another fortune for the GUI and yet another bloody fortune for the networking.

2) Windows let you run DOS applications in real DOS by booting into it. OS/2's DOS mode had severe compatibility issues. You have to remember that, back then, there had been no graphics, memory and such APIs, so everyone had their paws in the hardware.

By the time the '95 / Warp "contest" happened, OS/2 was already dead. It was just still twitching a bit......

Not just bias, the very fact that those who do this are mostly doing so voluntarily leads straight into what I refer to as the "socialist trap".

"I'm doing the right thing here for the good of all, motivated only by altruism and my love for humanity. Therefore anyone who disagrees with me is an evil fascist trying to undermine my good work.".

The source of that little issue is that the majority of those permissions that make you go "WTF does it need that for?" aren't actually required by the app at all.

There's an ever-growing list that are required by the Google crapware baked into 'em all, which is why you ain't going to see them disappearing or you being allowed to stuff them on any official devices.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Android could be damned good, if only it were taken away from Google and their cruft was forcibly excised from it.

Re: Ditto.

Miele's products make Dyson's look free with cornflakes. At that price I expect the fucking things to be gold-plated and convert dust into pellets of refined uranium. Oddly enough Rolls Royce cars tend to last longer than Fords. You get what you pay for.

Sebo are great if you either live in a bungalow or have an Olympic medal for weightlifting.

About the only problem with Dysons is that the cylonic bits can clog. Since the entire product can be completely dismantled using only a Torx No10 driver and the parts are easily cleaned, this is no big deal.

Re: Cheap phone buying advice needed

The Moto G suffers from poor storage (bugger all internally and no expansion).

From the days when Google thought you'd keep all your stuff in the cloud and forgot that if you could afford the data charges for continuous access you wouldn't be buying a Moto G in the first place.....

Re: versus?

Actually the A10 is more likely to survive over a battlefield than any other type.

It's built with horrendous levels of redundancy and designed to fly home having been shot to shit. The only single point of failure is the pilot and he sits in a heavily armoured tub.

AFAIK it's the only aircraft where more than one of them has returned safely[1] after taking a SAM hit. Small arms, RPGs and conventional flak aren't much of an issue.

Anyone toting something that can knock down A10s is going to see a load of F35s as a sort of upmarket coconut shy.

[1] For a given value of "safely" that includes being shy of an engine, a wheel, much of the control systems and most of a wing.

Re: Intriguing potential explanation for what a quasar really is

Slightly more bleedin' obvious is that Quasar formation is the province of young galaxies.

Once they get older, the central black hole has hoovered up the majority of the loose material in the middle and has ended the "feeding" stage of its lifecycle.