Posts by Lars

Re: Er... NO!!!!

"I think we mean something that your granny can use without having to phone you every two minutes."

The interesting thing is that your "granny" gets along very well with a modern Linux distribution, the old PC gets a new life and speed and granny is not forced to compile kernels or learn Emacs, it just works.

I have friends who actively do this with their "grannies" just because they have found there are less phone calls then.

Re: The largest note is always 'too big', the 2nd largest is OK.

I ask for €80 until satisfied, and as they don't use the €10 in the ATMs I get all in €20 and no €50 notes. I suppose you would have to ask for €40.

@ Doctor Syntax

Please Doctor Syntax and the rest of you who commented on Orlowskis story about "Why? Apparently, “for every consumer to have a multitude of username and password combinations is not only inconvenient but becomes a security risk.”.

Should not a sentence like "the nation’s entire population of ten men and a donkey" reveal something to you.

Did you not understand that that whole shit, for gullible Brits, was all Orlowski and nothing else.

Shame on you.

@My-Handle

It annoys me always when I see professionals start a chainsaw with the first pull, but they keep them in shape. Also they don't seem to pull but sort of drop the the chainsaw down. Old petrol will loose its "octane". I am told. and will not work and that corresponds with my experience. People have the same problem with outboard engines in the spring.

As for the "octane", somebody more into it might find a more "scientific" explanation.

Re: Does this mean

I thought the Columbus Day was already thrown out the window in the USA because he was a nasty person.

For an Italian to honour, and with an IT angle, I would suggest Olivetti. (Although I had two Alfa Romeo Berlina cars (1750 and 2000)).

About Olivetti:

"The first commercial programmable "desktop computer", the Programma 101, was produced by Olivetti in 1964 and was a commercial success.". Remember Apple Computer was founded 1976 and Microsoft 1975. (with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s).

As overlooked (pushed under the rug) as Zuse in the Anglo-American "mindset".

Re: HOGWASH!

"it shows that our (collective) ancestors were a lot more mobile (and capable) that previous generations of historians thought/gave them credit for.". Yes I fully agree with that".

Valhalla, however, is where you go to enjoy afterlife, if a "believer". A one-way resort. I haven't made up my mind just yet. Valhalla sounds like more fun than heaven where there is only harp playing and the risk of having a dumb lawyer and ending down in hell. Virgins are short lasting. I suppose there are reasons I enjoyed reading Mark Twain's "Letters from the Earth".

"Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."

"Any news of clashes with 'the complex and diverse societies of indigenous people/s' during their 'occupation'?"

Yes there is one, a very short one, where some natives turned up on the beach and they went down to kill them. No additional thoughts or details in that short sentence. Perhaps not such a good solution for their own future. Still it's probably evident that they were just not able to get any number of people interested in moving there. Not that they didn't try, like by calling Greenland green and calling Newfoundland Vinland (vineland). Good marketing efforts though. Walking on thin ice here as too serious boffins might disagree furiously. Came to think about the date to day too.

Re: HOGWASH!

I have a feeling that the "red Indians" discovered North America first, but if you look at the chart from Norway to Iceland to Greenland then Newfoundland looks quite plausible and inevitable and apart from that there are the written "evidence". Not, though, the wholly sort like Noah but just sort of more believable. But I have strong opposition to the word "invade", lets just be a bit modest in that respect.

Re: Seriously

Please, I have nothing against your comment. But then again, do you really think groups of people around the world and Europe suddenly decided to invent a new language from scratch. People just popping out of the ground here and there. As a silly side remark, how would you invent a new language without a language. It's a long story, languages evolve and change. With no contact with each other they change radically, just look at how fairly short distances within England have crated different dialects. Arabic numerals, it's a long and interesting story.

The great classics, yes I do agree, but If in Chine they have decided they have their own great classics, then I have no problem with that either.

Human history is damned interesting if at times rather, should I say bloody interesting. So far so good, regardless.

As for the pillaging Vikings, I suppose they did as well as they could. Those who didn't go back home settled down, enriched their surrounding like in England, Normandy, Russia and a bit in Spain and Italy.

Not that many in numbers, I doubt their loot would fill even the lady's WC in the British Museum.

Calm down.

Re: Seriously

"And then tell me who the barbarians were.".

Barbar is, they claim, a onomatopoetic word, a modern version would be a blahblah perhaps. In short somebody who speaks a foreign language, a foreigner, all of us. Barbaric again is when religiosity is added. My priest and holy man is somebody else's infidel, witch doctor... . It has been like that and still is. Looking at human history I would claim it wound be impossible to find a clear winner in that respect.

We are never Barbars, they are, all those others.

Just for fun, jump into somebody else's "trousers". Meet Columbus and his men in the Caribbean as a native, try to meet the settlers as a "red Indian", Brits in India. Have fun, costs nothing.

PS. Why do you find English less educated than Latin. Then again there is this dual meaning of "most" in the English language, and as I cannot hear your voice perhaps I choose the wrong one.

Re: Seriously

@ Pompous Git

I still think you take, at least me, much too seriously, perhaps yourself too.

What one can find on the Wikipedia below, and If you have a link pinpointing Syria then share it with us, I have no problem with that.

On agriculture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture

"Agriculture involves the domestication of plants. Data from molecular and archaeological research generated over the past 15 years now makes it clear that agriculture began independently over a much larger area of the globe than was once thought, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 11 regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, encompassing geographically isolated regions on most continents, but several more have been suggested.[8] The earliest development was around 11,500 years ago separately in both the Fertile crescent and at Chogha Golan in modern-day Iran"

And on the "Fertile Crescent", with a nice map too.

"The Fertile Crescent (also known as the Cradle of Civilization) is a crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia, the Nile Valley and Nile Delta. Having originated in the study of ancient history, the concept soon developed and today retains meanings in international geopolitics and diplomatic relations.

In current usage, all definitions of the Fertile Crescent include Mesopotamia, the land in and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; and the Levant, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea. The modern-day countries with significant territory within the Fertile Crescent are Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, beside the southeastern fringe of Turkey and the western fringes of Iran"

Having studied in England but also worked for some time in Germany, a friend once asked me which country I prefer. My attempt for a "diplomatic" answer was that I would take the German infrastructure but the British sense of humour.

Keep it that way. I have no need to offend and I try as hard as I can in not becoming a pompous twat, or git, if you prefer.

As for your sentence "Rather odd that you despise the monks for their lack of bloodlust. Presumably you admire religious fanatics who slaughter infidels. Each to his own."

I am sure we give it the same amount of value, nil.

Re: Seriously

@Pompous Git

Why so serious. The Nordic countries like England were populated during the Stone Age, that is since the Ice Age ended some 10.000 years ago, depending on the latitude. We have walked and fucked around Europe for quite some time, ongoing.

Tacitus wrote about tribes in the north in his "Germania" but did not have that much information as the Roman Empire was never able to extended that far.

I never implied that the Vikings introduced farming to Britain, where did you get that from. Why do you mention Syria particularly. Why not rather Iran or Irak if you want to mention some particular country, better just to refer to the region, the rivers perhaps.

This article was, however, about naming a British ship and I did find some of the comments rather humourless. My ability for being serious is rather rubbish, but regarding "too nationalistic" trends I think we should all be pissed off, there is just too much of it again right now in Europe.

The Viking era relates to the time they "went Viking" expanding their territory and trade, nation building and introducing democracy to the world as it is so nicely expressed.

The Brits "went Viking" a bit later, some Viking genes too in there one could guess.

To their credit they didn't seem to try too furiously with the religious forcing. There is, of course, words like Thursday and Friday introduced to the English language but most words were practical. Some very Germanic, for obvious reasons, and some very Nordic like "by" in names like Rugby and similar, as By is village/town in the Scandinavian languages.

Now let me explain why the hell I introduced Vikings in my comment.

Some time ago there was this "Bloody happy Danes". So where did this that "bloody" come from. More about it a bit later.

Before that there was "where to invade next" by Michael Moore at Google. Have a look, it's worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxKooNIPo4

And yes I like the guy.

Anyway at some poinit he speaks about the way prisoners in Norway are treated in a rather "humane" manner. But then he goes on with something like "look at how those "bloody" Vikings have been able to change in 1000 years. I have no problems with that, but then again look at the facts.

The first democratic society in Europe was Nordic.

"The Alþingi (anglicised as Althing or Althingi) is the national parliament (literally: "[the] all-thing", or general assembly) of Iceland. It is one of the oldest extant parliamentary institutions in the world together with the Jamtamot, today Jämtlands läns landsting, of Jämtland County, Sweden. The Althing was founded in 930 at Þingvellir, the "assembly fields" or "Parliament Plains", situated approximately 45 km east of what later became the country's capital, Reykjavík.

Apart from that, slavery was abandoned like also capital punishment in Scandinavia very early. Not to mention women's right to vote. The word "law" is Nordic and so forth.

I would claim that the Nordic society was more decent and democratic in the year 800 than it was among those who came up with the word "bloody".

Now I could be bloody wrong but I am bloody sure it would be bloody difficult to prove me wrong as facts tell an other story, like to day.

We write our history from our own point of view, we always do. Intruders are always the bloody bastards.

So let me try on my Viking trousers when we met with the barbaric monks in Britain (look it up on YouTube). That was appalling. only men, dressed like women, what the fuck, speaking barbar on their knees, unwilling to fight and what is that. A mutilated corps on a stick. My Thor, that's barbaric, I have never seen anything like that. Now honestly, in front of Vikings (of course), that icon must be the most barbaric icon ever invented in human history. Wow did we clean our weapons, did we take the silver and did we wove to end barbarism in this world. Not much has changed since then, not my fault, give me a break.

Regards Lars

Re: Embrace....

"How prejudiced must you be to attack someone for bringing up recorded history?". I think there is a feeling that it's just too late for the FUD to work any more and that MS has got it too and has decided to not drop out of the picture. Time will tell.

"Does it say that in the GPL somewhere?". Yes you have to tell where the source can be found, Like in the media you deliver with your software or on the web, for instance. If it's about a vanilla Linux kernel I suppose you just have to tell which version.

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