* Posts by Francis Begbie

11 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2008

Hands on with the new Apple MacBook Air

Francis Begbie

Glovely (sic) !

Very hot little bit of kit!

As a pro who spends upmty hours of work doing LAMP-ish stuff I appreciate what Macbooks are. I'm prepared to pay premium for lightweight, just-works, FOSS-ready (thank you, MacPorts!) kit that's a pleasure to use day in day out. Sweet when lugging it about on my motorcycle.

Games? i have my Xbox for that - Apple is nowhere on that horizon.

Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'

Francis Begbie
Badgers

Mmm old school flamewar...

Sitting here, Macbook 15" unibody, running a proper (tyvm MacPorts) development environment of Apache, PHP, MySQL/Postgres, ViM, SSHFS to the production boxes, git/subversion...the list goes on. Any laptop I got needed a full, real set of GNU-ishness on it to WIndows is immaterial.

Perfect.

And I can kick back and watch some downloaded BBC iPlayer shows at home, surf and email with a nice UI.

Again, perfect.

And it's super-light for my daily commute-via-motorcycle, which was a big, big factor in my decision.

Hefty physicist: Global warming is 'pseudoscientific fraud'

Francis Begbie
Headmaster

Yawn

When they start reporting any of the rather interesting research that actually supports or falsifies some of the many aspects of global warming, then Register contributors opinion pieces may have some relevance.

Until then, it's just that - opinion. Doesn't matter if it's reporting someone else's opinion, or if they're a "heavyweight" (which is sliding towards belief in the Argument from Authority).

Cold facts please, or it's not science.

Google scores major victory in copyright fight with Viacom

Francis Begbie
Grenade

Incoming...

The sooner current the copyright paradigm dies out the better. There'll be (and there is!) much wailing and gnashing at this prospect. Tough shit. You've squeezed too hard, and the pips just don't want to squeak any more.

It's fucking entertainment anyway, not medicine or food. if you wanna be a performer buy a case of makeup and go back to clown school.

Bloody George's Budget: How bad is it really?

Francis Begbie
Alert

Blame where it belongs

If blame is indeed to placed, I'd put it firmly on the shoulders of the so-called economic theorists. I don't believe we've had a truly ideologically-driven budget since the Blessed/Cursed Margaret (pick your preference).

Theorists are trying to come across all learned and knowing - trying to make it appear like a science. You know the scenario, the policy wonk states "A, B therefore C" and we all nod along knowingly.

It's never worked. Never. Yet we continue to pay respect (unearned at that) to these rarified and abstract views which exist only in the mind of the theorist and their XLS files.

So for a wonk to claim suppositions as fact, like this article, is a bit hard to swallow. Come back when there is a proven economic model with a real-world successful track record and try again.

Inevitable Mac OS X 10.6.4 update problems surface

Francis Begbie
Megaphone

Hrm

No issues here on Macbook 15" (5.4) with as much as possible built in Macports (Apache, Firefox, coreutiles, etc). Then again I always test it out using a Time Machine restored install on a dirt-cheap (£20 ffs!) USB drive. If you value your data at all, you'd *always* test shit this way.

'Completely useless' Windows 3.1 hits Google's Android

Francis Begbie
Black Helicopters

Perfect!

" but each banana throw takes spends about 15 minutes in the air and when it explodes DOS crashes."

So it's a 100% spot-on emulator then?

Cameron aims to bring LibDems into government

Francis Begbie
WTF?

We don't elect the PM...

AC - you sure manage to write a lot of drivel while starting off from a wrong assumption.

We do NOT elect the Prime Minister in Great Britain - that's the job of the *members* of each political party and is carried out in varying ways.

Sony sued for dropping Linux from PS3

Francis Begbie

Someone works for Sony...

Why on earth would you support a multi-billion dollar commercial company over even one single complainant in this case? Obviously a paid shill.

European court pulls plugs on terror stop and search

Francis Begbie

I agree with your post completely....

...except for one very, very common misconception.

Yes, Gordon Brown is an UNELECTED (your capitals) leader...but so are they all! We do *not* elect our leaders in Parliament, that's the job of the respective political party members.

Glastonbury new-agers protest WiFi

Francis Begbie
Paris Hilton

Reminds me of my old physics tutor...

"New Age? Rhymes with sewage."

Paris, 'cos she knows all about "lay" lines.