I'm in the same boat as you BouldRake. The last time I paid for an operating system was around the turn of the century. Been using Linux since my Windows PC died in early 2005. I was on unemployment benefits back then, needed a PC for job hunting, and the best option for my tiny budget was a half-decent used PC with no OS & a free Linux CD from a magazine (Mandrake back then, PCLinuxOS for the last 7 or so years).

I could not imagine paying a subscription fee for an operating system. It would be like owning a car, and having to pay the engine manufacturer a fee every month if you want to continue using the engine that came with it.

Wife texts her handy husband on a cold winter morning: "WINDOWS FROZEN ~ WON'T OPEN"


Husband texts back: "GENTLY POUR SOME LUKEWARM WATER OVER THE EDGES AND THEN TAP EDGES SHARPLY WITH HAMMER"


Wife texts back 5 minutes later: "LAPTOP REALLY STUFFED NOW"

If you have ever seen the 1971 science fiction movie Silent Running (starring Bruce Dern), you may have noticed the 3 drones (robots) named Huey, Dewey & Louie that maintained the gardens on the spaceship. Those drones actually had real people inside them - amputee actors. The drones were designed to fit each amputee, thus the different shapes.

If you removed all of the empty space in the atoms that make up our bodies, you could fit the entire human race inside a single sugar cube.

Water molecules (H2O) are so tiny that a standard cup of water (the size you use for cooking) contains around 8,360,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them. If you split that single cup of water between all of the people on Earth, each person would still receive approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules

The number googol (1 with a hundred zeros after it) is so big that there is not a googol of anything in the entire universe. Even if you counted every single atom in the universe, you would still be 21 zeroes short of a googol.

Finally, one for the hygiene-conscious. The average healthy adult human contains 30 trillion human cells and 39 trillion bacteria.

Though I also can't disagree with JeffEasyzy's view about working smart to change the lives of those who are suffering. You can get a genuine feeling of success and a great deal of satisfaction from helping others.

Success is an overrated ambition because, as valerie implied, it relies on the judgements of others as to whether your life is successful or not. I gave up the chase for success many years ago.

Instead, I now try to lead a life that is satisfying. I don't care if I make much money or not, because that is not a sign of success for me. But I feel real satisfaction when I smile at a grim-faced stranger I pass on the way to the shops, and they smile back. That smile from me has brightened both of our days.

Better to be poor but satisfied than wealthy and unsatisfied with one's life.

A song for those who have ever been without a home or a bed to sleep in:

Emma Donovan & The Putbacks - Down City Streets (feat. Archie Roach) - YouTube

Not a year-round cycling follower, but I do watch the grand tours on TV. Though I have missed this year's races as my TV died in February & I haven't bothered replacing it as I haven't missed it (until now). But I will be buying a TV this week just so I can see the race.

I think that it might be Chris Froome claiming his 3rd title. Contador's best days are behind him & he was going backwards rapidly several times on mountain stages last tour. Quintana is a climber, but I just feel he lacks the ability to accelerate & keep up a higher than normal pace on the toughest stages. I'm fairly sure that Froome rode away from him a couple of times last year. And Quintana's big problem is the time trials. Froome can just keep up the pace all day long. Though he will miss Porte covering his backside & dragging him up the mountains this year.

I'm really not up on the form of the others, but I think that a fit Froome is almost unbeatable. Even bad days don't seem to get him down - he just shrugs the bad day off & makes up the lost time over the next few stages. A very tough athlete physically & psychologically - that is his key. His opponents can never let their guard down for even a moment over the entire 3 weeks.

All-in-all, it should be a great race this year. One for the climbers - will make great viewing.

4 premium on level 1, making a total of 8 premium referrals on levels 1, 2 & 3.

Further to BouldRake's post, I have read on several tech-news & finance sites over the past couple of years that, unless you use a very energy efficient large-scale data center to mine Bitcoins, the cost of the energy (electricity) you use will exceed the value of the Bitcoin it produces.

That is why Bitcoin mining has become the domain of sys-admins based in countries which have the cheapest electricity (which is usually produced by dirty, environmentally unfriendly methods such as burning coal).

I would like to visit the moon, but not our boring old rocky moon (Luna). Instead, I would choose (ask?) to go to Jupiter's moon Europa. After reading Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 series of books (2001, 2010, 2061 & 3001) many years ago it would be great to see if there really are creatures swimming in the liquid ocean that lies beneath Europa's icy crust.

My wish would be for the goodwill & kindness towards others that most people seem to reserve just for special religious occasions apply to everyone across the world all year round.

I took heed of valerie's stern advice a couple of weeks ago & decided not to make any comments in topics which raise my ire. Got better things to do with my life than argue politics or religion in a public forum.

Lighthearted topics such as the recent ones about what our favorite berries are, what we wear etc are much better for a place like this, which has visitors of all ilks from all around the world. They allow everyone to participate & get to know each other better without getting into petty arguments.

I'm a Summer person - most comfortable wearing a cotton T-shirt (or singlet if really hot), shorts & thongs (the ones Aussies wear on their feet).

In winter - tracky dacks to replace the shorts, a sloppy-joe over the T-shirt (maybe a flannelette shirt too), slippers around the house or joggers when outside.

I guess I'm a man of simple tastes. Probably have 4 favourite drinks:

Water: straight out of the tap. Sydney's tap water is excellent quality.

Coffee: my local cafe makes a very good flat-white, and at home I like a quality-brand rich/dark instant coffee (such as Espresso or Mocha Kenya). Has to be steaming hot.

Tea: Always loved a cup of black leaf tea with a dash of milk & a biscuit after dinner, but I am also partial to an Earl Gray (which I can drink without adding sugar). Again, has to be hot.

Alcohol: a bitter lager beer. Not big on ales which taste too watery. Has to be ice cold.

ProAdCo wrote: @ seaeagle

There you go again, getting personal with DB, now your telling davidbugs how he should think.

You really got something going on upstairs in that attic.

FYI: DB posted a news article

At least I have something in my attic.

Please learn to read (although the sentence above may explain why you have difficulty with that activity).

davidbugs posted a sarcastic comment under the article link And he did post a topic for discussion - this place is a forum (where things are discussed), not an RSS newsfeed. If you want to post headlines without any discussion or comments, then I suggest you set up your own news site. There are plenty of free PHP scripts out there that can get your headlines site or RSS feed up & running in a few minutes.

Stop trawling the forums for imaginary insults so you can vent you poisoned spleen at some poor soul who thought the discussion forum was actually for discussion. I have spent a lot of time in forums over the years, including being a moderator & very active participant at Lockergnome's Political Geeks forum for half a decade back in its heyday (2003-2008). In all of that time I don't think I ever encountered such a useless & unintelligent poster as you. If you turned up there, the right-leaning & the left-leaning members would have been flooding my inbox with reports asking for you to be banned due to your complete inability to have an intelligent conversation. You wouldn't have won kudos from either side of the political spectrum, because you are a conversation-killer.

You never say anything of interest (maybe once every 50 or 100 posts you might fluke something, but then again, even a stopped clock is correct twice a day). You never say anything intelligent. You seem to have few original thoughts at all. You are really just a squawking parrot who does nothing more than copy & paste irrelevant news headlines & conspiracy theories. Tinfoil hat stuff. Mr Chicken Little. And then you impose a ban on all discussion of the discussion topic you just started. And you impose bans in discussions your friends started. A healthy yet robust discussion can be killed by you with just one post. In all of my years on the Internet (and life in general) you would have to be one of the most boring yet distasteful people without any personality, style or substance that I have ever encountered.

You are Eric Olthwaite of ClixSense. Except, instead of talking about precipitation, shovels & black puddings, all you can talk about is how everything is a conspiracy by any one or combination of the following: the CIA, Hillary, Bernie, Barack, the UN, the EU, France, communists, socialists, the left wing, environmentalists, human rights lawyers, the mainstream media (have I left any of your list of the usual suspects out?).

For goodness sake, you even posted the other day that you think the Brits have communist spies in the Capitol & you are waiting for a new revolutionary war to start. And the scariest thing is that, because of all your other strange rants, I think you actually do believe that. That you weren't posting as a joke. Because all the other stuff you say gives the impression that you really do believe all of that nonsense. ProAdCo aka the General Jack D. Ripper of the forums. I'm just waiting for your post about flouridation of water being a UN conspiracy to pollute the precious bodily fluids of Americans in order to impose one world government! Or have you already posted about that?

I honestly do feel sorry for you. I have worked with people who are delusional & paranoid, and I know that they find life very difficult to cope with.

A sad loss of a very good man

He made the world a better place, because (apart from being an amazing fighter) he made us think about what is right & what is wrong, and was even prepared to lose his career & go to jail rather than do something he believed to be morally wrong.