Day: April 20, 2011

Posted on

Passing Shot at Windoze

OK, I use Windows. I have to for various reasons. But I still have some ‘nix boxes–mostly VMs–because I really like some of the Linux and BSD distros that are out, and I just like FOSS period.

I also like Windows 7, for the most part. Definitely THE best desktop OS from Microsoft since Win2K Pro, IMO.

But.

Showed Son&Heir just ONE of the advantages of a modern ‘nix OS. I had done some work on a Toshiba A205 that required putting a new OS on it (long story), so I installed Linux Mint 10–based on Ubuntu 10.04 but much slicker and with all the multimedia codecs necessary for an ordinary Windows user to be able to make the switch easily. So, booted the thing. About 30 seconds. Shut it down. About 6 seconds. Yep. To fully off.

Heck, it takes one of my Win7 boxes 45 seconds to resume from sleep mode! And shutting it off? Longer.

Advantage: Linux Mint.

BTW, while it’s a really cool distro to use in converting an average Windows user over to a ‘nix OS, PC-BSD 8.2 is just too cool for school.

Posted on

LIARS!

I really despise the cretinous liars who produced the Nissan Leaf commercial featuring zero after zero after zero to end up saying “zero pollutants for the environment”. Liars. Electric cars do NOT produce zero emissions, zero pollutants (heck, just in their production alone they contribute to massive amounts of toxic waste*). Oh, at the “tailpipe” they don’t have, sure: zero emissions. But unless they’re powered via solar, wind, hydro or nuclear, they’re not “zero emission” cars. Heck, the lowest cost electricity plants in the US (at least until The Zero gets his way) are coal-fired generators, and that’s a Good Thing (at least until The Zero gets his way), because those coal-fired generators producing cheap(er) electricity also produce about half our electricity (and the US has enough coal reserves to continue doing that for at least a couple hundred years–at least if The Zero doesn’t get his way).

The “zero pollutants for the environment” claim made by the recent Leaf commercial is a patent and obvious lie, easily seen as such by anyone with more active brain cells than a head of cabbage… which excludes all the target audience for the lying commercial: greenie-propagandized subliterate, hypermoronic, self-lobotomized metrosexual grups and their (similarly greenie-propagandized subliterate, hypermoronic, self-lobotomized) hyper-sexualized but distinctly unattractive harpy fems.

Yep. I bet the Leaf sells just fine to that demographic.

*Yeh, I know the article at the link is specifically about wind turbines and neodymium, but don’t think the same material isn’t used in the Leaf’s motor, because it is, and the Leaf’s batteries’ components have the same sort of problematic origins. Just saying.