You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine, and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?
Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.

Wednesday, December 23

Rant

What The Hell, Dell?

I was looking at server pricing to see what it would cost to buy some sizeable web/database servers outright. Answer is: Not that much. A Dell dual quad-core Nehalem server with 72GB of RAM runs about $5600. But the drive prices!
1TB 7.2K RPM SATA 3.5" Hot Plug Hard Drive [$579]
That's some markup you've got there, Mr Dell. A 1TB Seagate desktop drive costs $90; the server version (which is  the same hardware, but different firmware) costs $160. Dell's storage prices are pretty much a deal breaker. But at some point I ended up on Dell's Australian site, where the exact same server gives me this option:
1TB 7.2K RPM SATA 3.5 " Hot Plug Hard Drive [$311.30]
Wait, what? I know that the Aussie dollar has strengthened against the US dollar of late, but not that much.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 139 words, total size 1 kb.

Tuesday, December 22

Rant

Voltaire May Be Dead...

But as far as I know, the First Amendment* has not been repealed.

One of the most** enjoyable parts of my hobby (and would-be business) is waking up in the morning and checking my mail (e- or snail-) to find that someone wants to sue me for something one of my bloggers has said or done.

Citing "hate speech" laws* of some city***, as though the internet were a local newspaper, just adds to the piquancy.

* Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It's not complicated, people.

** As in, least
.

*** The Fourteenth Amendment reads in part:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:41 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 221 words, total size 2 kb.

Monday, December 21

Rant

We Hates Them

Aargh.  Computers.  We hates them.  We hates them.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:05 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

Thursday, December 03

Rant

Stop Changing Stuff!!

Sony are discontinuing Cinescore - the program I used to mix my three recent albums.  They say they're working on something new, but no word as to what or when; Cinescore and its content packs will cease to be as of 1 January 2010.

If you're interested in a high-level musical paint program, I can recommend it, particularly since it's 60% off until it expires.  The download version comes with 20 themes and costs $45.98.  (I paid $110 or so; it originally sold for around $400, I think.)

Meanwhile, the video player I licensed for integration with Minx has a new version - with a new license, which has no "unrestricted" level; it's all per-site.  Shades of Movable Type and the 3.0 debacle.

I can still integrate the old version, which works perfectly well.  The new version ratchets up the fees dramatically, to the point where the cost/benefit just doesn't make sense...  Just like MT 3.  And we all know how that turned out.

Anyway, just randomly ranting because one of the work servers suffered a RAID explosion yet agan and turned a simple half-hour task into four hours of scrambling.  I hate Adaptec.

Update: The video player people are being reasonable.  They do want more for the upgrade than it cost me for the original license, but it's still cheap for an unrestricted license for this sort of application.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 233 words, total size 2 kb.

<< Page 1 of 1 >>
46kb generated in CPU 0.02, elapsed 0.5745 seconds.
52 queries taking 0.5637 seconds, 217 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
Using https / https://ai.mee.nu / 215