lmao, you bastard. I've never clicked on a thread so quickly.

Quote from flymike91 :

OPEC can decide whatever price they want for gas. It is my considered opinion that they are "punishing" the world for the current state of affairs in the middle east much like during the 1973 oil embargo. Tomorrow OPEC could say that gas costs $500 a barrel and we would have to pay it.

It's called capitalism.

Nikon mount? Hell no! Sony took over the Minolta A-mount when KonicaMinolta bailed out of the camera business.

I've already used the Tamron 90 macro (which is available in all the lens mounts) with my old A100. Shot a couple of gigabytes of pictures at a fashion show a couple of weeks ago, which has led to my very first image sales to some rather gorgeous blondes.

And this weekend, before I got the new A700, I used the Tammy & A100 to shoot this little beauty...



Aint she a stunner?

Everyone seems really appalled when I tell them that spider was actually dead. I accidentally froze it to death by leaving it in the freezer too long. I only wanted to slow it down a bit...

Congrats Sam - if you have old lenses that you really like then getting a camera body that lets you get the most out of them makes sense.

I got a new toy today, too.

(I mean the body, not the lens).

Quote from garph :

It's all about profits

Yes and no.

Yes, the oil companies are profiteering from it and making some tidy amounts of money.

No, that's not the fundamental reason behind the increasing cost. It's supply and demand. Demand is through the roof, and is outstripping supply. OPEC, which produces the majority of th world's oil, isn't increasing output because 1) they can't, their infrastructure is at capacity, and 2) they enjoy the increased prices too. So they can either spend money on expanding their infrastructure and make less money as a result, or they can spend no money and make more money. Difficult decision.

Quote from garph :

the government will have to do something

Like what? Nuke China back to the stone age? Turn wine into oil?

Last edited by STROBE, Wed 14 May 2008, 10:34.

Filled mine up last week for £46, the highest it's ever been. Fortunately a tank of fuel lasts me three or four weeks as I only have a ten minute commute.

Nonetheless I can see how badly it affects those who have a long commute, and it's not going to get any better. What's going to happen is that as fuel costs escalate, it will gradually begin to affect our lifestyles.

We'll start living closer to where we work, and travelling less in general. Food produce should start to be produced locally for the supermarkets as the French do, rather than trucking it all to a central distribution centre, then trucking it back out again all over the country.

I once read that since the fifties, we've been having one big oil party - cheap, convenient energy that we're getting drunk on with large cars, driving longer distances, flying abroad for holidays, filling our homes with cheap consumer goods that consume cheap energy, building things from cheap plastics and transporting things from China where the labour is cheap and the shipping fuel oil is cheap... etc etc.

And it's all going to start to change, and it'll be like we're suffering the hangover the morning after. Not because the oil is running out (yet) but because the demand has shot up so much from places like India and China.

Nonetheless, 1 in 8 barrels of oil produced globally ends up in the fuel tank of an American motorist. Time to ditch the V8s, guys.

Couple of photos from last week:

(EDIT) on second thoughts, not entirely sure I have the models' permission to be posting these.

Last edited by STROBE, Tue 6 May 2008, 18:35. Reason : removed fashion show pictures

May I ask how much you're considering paying for the D1x? Just that unless you really need "pro-grade" features (i.e. good seals, integrated grip, etc) you may be better off getting a more recent, but "low" or "mid grade" Nikon body. The D1x is getting pretty old now. That doesn't make it any worse, but there might be a more recent mid-range body that provides better image quality for the same money.

Brilliant idea - I've recently wished there were something like this when pondering whether I can get to any circuits with my camera.

Bug report: selecting any race types in County Durham returns a result for Silverstone.

Quote from zeugnimod :

I don't believe you.

Maybe he already has a million dollars. Although that's only worth about £4.38 these days.

My five? Hmmm.

1. I'm hungry.
2. I'm 5'11"
3. My flat is a tip right now and I need to get it tidied this afternoon
4. I'm allergic to fish
5. I have a terrible, crippling weakness for blondes.

Is that in depth and meaningful enough?

Quote from Electrik Kar :

but you guys have taken over WHOLE COUNTRIES!

And while we were at it, we gave them the concepts of currency, a justice system, railways, machinery, sewerage, steam power... to be quite frank, the list is huge.

True, we also screwed up some countries, and created some more (*cough*Iraq*cough) that have been a little bothersome since.

You win some, you lose some. But the British Empire brought plenty good to the world, as well as some bad things.

Quote from TiJay :

So what I'm asking is if anyone has opinions

Like you, I've run a 1.25 Zetec-engined Fiesta (mine being of a 1996 vintage), and they're great cars.

The Puma is also a great car. It's also very much a girl's car. I honestly can't ever remember seeing a guy driving one.

Because if I were to spend any amount needed to acquire a console instead of putting it towards a new camera lens or a new car, I expect to be able to watch BD movies on it too.

This thread needs locking.


Because it, and many others across the internet, are making me want to buy a PS3 which I cannot afford and have no other use for. Grrr. :mad:

Steam started out as a good idea.

But when you can order games from play.com and hmv.com for less than they cost on Steam, and physically buying the game involves manufacturing, shipping, then shipping again to deliver it to you, and a cut for everyone involved in this process, then you know someone at Valve is getting mighty greedy.

True, but console piracy is a tiny issue compared to the extent of it on the pc.

Quote from Jakg :

Say this is coming to the PC?

Unknown. Ever since GTA3, the PC version has followed the consoles, but that was before Hot Coffee.

Of course, if GTA stuck to it's roots, it would be out on PC first. The rampant piracy on the PC platform also makes them less liekly to bother converting it, imho.

Quote from Jakg :

EDIT - Not a degree IN hardware, just something that won't involve a "heres a business document". More of something like "this is a CPU, it does xxx...".

But... what CPUs do is maths. Lots of it. I may be wrong but I can't envisage any such degree as what you seem to be describing. Understanding exactly how microchips work almost at a switch/path/block level would only be relevant if you were learning how to design and create the things. That in turn would almost entirely be maths, and would surely also require an intimate knowledge of how software operates at the machine level.

The thing is, computer hardware is a hobby for you, which doesn't make it degree-worthy.

Then again I may be wrong, as you can get f*cking mickey mouse degrees in any old shit these days.

Quote from beefyman666 :

On my CV it doesn't state my actual results, it just says GCSE <subject>. I've not once been asked for my actual results as proof of that.

That's because if you don't mention any gradings, the prospective employer kind of knows that they're not worth mentioning.

Quote from Jakg :

Hopefully University will be easier as i'll finally be able to do a subject I enjoy (i.e. Computer HARDWARE not ICT

Eh? A degree in computer hardware? What's one of those then? Unless it's about designing transistors, chips and PCBs, which I'm pretty confident is maths, maths, maths, then some more maths, topped off with a sprinkling of maths. And not easy maths either.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

The upper mass did not HIT the lower mass all at once. It hit ONE FLOOR AT A TIME. Does my analogy make sense now?

No. Because the central column is, well... a column. Unless I'm severely misunderstanding the structure of WTC 1&2, the floors gave no strength to the column - rather, the column gave strength to the floors. I'm just not quite sure how a load-bearing column neatly collapsed on itself when faced with the uncoupled weight (with little initial momentum) of the above column which, being roughly 1/3rd of the building, would have 50% of the weight of the lower column.

In my mind, if you drop a 1kg weight on top of 20 100g weights from just a slight height so that the velocity of the 1kg weight is negligible, the 1kg weight wouldn't displace twice it's own mass.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

I was trying to make the point that it's something HEAVY falling on something LIGHT.

Falling on something light? I thought the debate was how the smaller, lighter top half of the building managed to flatten the lower, bigger, heavier part of the building, including the central column which is all of the same density. Therefore, the analogy of a bowling ball on top of styrofoam is completely irrelevant. Assuming the bowling ball is meant to represent the ~1/3rd of the WTC tower above the impact point, and the styrofoam represents the lower 2/3rds including the central column, it has no relevance. You can't hit an apple with a watermelon and then claim that an apple would do the same thing to an apple.

Does your NForce 4 have a built-in firewall on the LAN port? I believe that often caused problems. I'd guess it would be enabled/disabled in the BIOS.

Also are you running any security software? I had problems with LFS on my new computer a couple of months ago which I eventually traced to my security suite interfering with my web traffic and "stealing" packets.

I loved the exchange between James 'Stop The Cock!' Allen and martin Brundle, with Allen trying to be all politically correct.

I paraphrase slightly...

Allen: "Some say those Dumbo wings are ugly, but in the world of F1, if it gives you speed then it's beautiful."
Brundle: "Well they'd look a lot better if they fell off..."

Fair enough. Any 8800GT will do, basically. I'd suggest either get an expensive one from the likes of EVGA if you want excellent support and overclocking/modder-friendly warranty. Otherwise, just get a cheap 8800GT. There isn't much point in going for the "middle ground" of 8800GTs.

And I noticed your mobo uses the nForce chipset. Noooooo. Get a mobo with an Intel chipset instead. Modern nForces have quite a few problems, or so I've read, anyway.

Be careful with the XFX YDF4 8800GT - some models of it have the older PCB and apparently have the fan locked at 100%. I suffered the purchase of a different XFX 8800GT variant that had the fan locked at 100%, and had to immediately return it due to the rediculous noise it made.