Rich › Comments

Victorians are to me, people who lived in the UK under Queen Victoria. Hence my surprise when reading this! - Rich

That confused me too. - Mark H

Well now you know that there are Victorians in Australia. :-) - Matt G

Do they also wear top hats, sport dashing moustaches, and engage in experimental pornographic photography? If not, then they're no Victorians in my eyes. - Mark H

All of that and more Mark. I live in Queensland another state of Australia, can you see the trend? We are all very well groomed and listen to dance music. - Matt G

Hang on a minute I just saw that you are both English, you should know about your colonies! - Matt G

And old school Victorians didnt have sex, cars or the internet! ;-) - Matt G

Well, they aren'y my own personal colonies - though that would be awesome! - Rich

*cough* Not too hard to give up what you don't get :) *interstate snark* - Mo Kargas

I'm not sure I've ever had any. However, I have a major sweet-tooth, so beer mostly isn't for me. Maybe I'll buy some the next time I'm at Liquor Barn. However, I had a run just last night, so it will probably be a while before I go back. - MiniMage

I enjoy a German beer, but like most things, American have taken beer to a different place with so many varieties based on old world recipes. There are so many ways you can go here, it's amazing. Comparatively speaking, German beer tends to hit single notes of flavor. - Eric - seven eleven

I'd agree with Eric, especially that last sentence. German beers have often been underwhelming to me as far as flavor is concerned. If I have the choice between a beer from small American house vs. any German beer, I'd take the American one, provided it isn't a pale ale. But, I think that anyone who describes American beers as "piss water" either has only had the "big 3" and clearly has no idea what they're talking about. - Anika

I think a big reason that we Europeans bash your beer so much, is because so many of us haven't been over there, to taste the smaller brews. All we get are the Budweiser style ilk which honestly isn't worth wasting premium dollar on, compared to our domestic products. So all in all, I think the "beer wars" are based in ignorance of the products brewed on the other side of the Atlantic (both ways). - Rasmus Lauridsen

This whole thing reminds me of the critique of American food. People who bash on American food don't realize how wonderfully simple and super tasty most American food is because all they see is Burgers Burgers Burgers. (McD style :-) Being married to an American (who doesn't cook) I am now realizing how wonderful your kitchen is, because it's pragmatic, as all shit and totally lacks the snobish traditions, found over on this side of the Atlantic. So beer war probably boils down to Snobs and traditionalists. - Rasmus Lauridsen

Impossible to say without having brands (and a beer type) to compare. If I must I´ll say that I in general tend to prefer German beer to US beers, but that´s only when comparing Pilsner/Lagers from both countries´ (approx) 10 biggest exporting beer companies. I know very few smaller local or microbreweries in any of the countries. (I´m in Norway and our beer is obviously closer to the German/Czech tradition). I´m sure you find fine beers on both sides of the pond. - ɯɥøq sɐɯoɥʇ

There are some excellent beers on both sides of the Atlantic. I do enjoy many of the German Pilsners. Belgium produces some excellent beers, particularly lambics, and England has many fine cask beers too. In the US, there are now more breweries than at any time in the last 100 years, and some excellent beers of all styles are emerging. In all these countries there is also the mass... more... - Ian May

I can't say I've ever heard anyone say that American beer is good. - Rich

Rasmus, I sometimes get called a snob because I search out decent beer, but I refuse to pay good money on bad rubbish for anything - beer (and food) included. That's why I don't drink Bud, Miller, Coors, in the US, or similar keg piss in the UK. I simply don't like it. It's tasteless, and devoid of character. Same reason, I don't go to McD, or BK, or other fast food establishments - I like a good burger, but not that kind of tasteless pap. - Ian May

Rich. I can show you any amount of good American beers, and I say that as former member of CAMRA. I can of course show you any amount of crap American beers, but I can do that in the UK too. - Ian May

Fair enough - I suppose that as with a lot of American products in the UK, we generally only see the most commercial mass produced ones. A brewery tour of the US could be a pretty good holiday! - Rich

Thomas: Look up Nogne O in Norway. They make great beer and I can personally vouch for their imperial stout. Tasty dessert during the winter! Rich, where do you live (you can give me state if you want) and I can easily recommend a new brewery to buy a 6-pack of... - beersage

beersage: I´ve had Nøgne Ø actually, because my wife is from about where their brewery is (Grimstad, Norway). They are more of a connoisseur brewery though, and mostly wasted on me unfortunately. But I did find them interesting as dessert drinks. My "home brewery" is Aass in Drammen, Norway, which makes the internationally awarded Aass Bock ("the red wine of beers") which is also pretty good. Generally I prefer a Pilsner type though. - ɯɥøq sɐɯoɥʇ

A related curiosity: I don´t know if it´s special for Drammen, Norway, but most pubs there will happily serve you "toppa bayer" (literally: topped off bavarian), which is dark Aass Bayer ("bavarian") beer in the bottom half of the glass with Aass Pilsner on top. (YES, yes, I know, it´s a hard brand to market internationally, heh, but it´s pronounced "Aus":)) - ɯɥøq sɐɯoɥʇ

What's good for someone with too big of a sweet tooth to enjoy the very bitter stuff? I'm going to go shopping in a bit. - MiniMage

Well, I was actually planning to look for a German beer. I've had Belgian lambics. - MiniMage

Trying an Erdinger Weissbier Pikantus. Since I've found Amber Bock drinkable (I think), I decided a Weizen-Bock might be ok. I could drink this again, but I've had half of it, and I've already lost some of the cards from my deck. - MiniMage

@Chris - That's great that you live in Portland. A lot of great beer from the area. Deschutes, Hair of the Dog, mmm... - beersage

Julius Echter Hefe-Weiss Dunkel tonight. Not so drinkable for me. - MiniMage

No. Was I supposed to? - MiniMage

Maybe I SHOULD have gone to Marikka's last night. She's German and carries over 600 beers. That's where I had the lambics I didn't like, though. - MiniMage

Woohoo! I got 22.74 down and 17.54 up. I love my FiOS, too! :-D - Ordinarybug Heather

Wow - Manuel Mas

He says he gets PhD students that come to him all the time wanting to build Social Media projects - I'd love to see if we can inspire some of them to come up with better real-time protocols and streaming technologies. - Jesse Stay

BTW, Utah (not BYU in this case) was one of the first 4 nodes of the internet, if you remember. :-) - Jesse Stay

btw, PubSubHubbub is abbreviated to PuSH - which makes sense when you think about it. - Rich

Rich, I think that's debated. Some are starting to use PuSH, while a large group of others are using PSHB. PSHB is easier to find via search, while PuSH is catchy. - Jesse Stay

Also, PuSH doesn't always make sense as the protocol evolves. Check out the discussion here (towards the end) on it: http://friendfeed.com/jessest... - Jesse Stay

Heh. One thing GDGT doesn't do is what we're doing right now -- it needs a place for users to kibitz. - Dave Winer

embedded pictures are available through client handling of included links. there is a twitter stream api http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Streami... though it is still in early stages - Mike Chelen

True - between the various live sites and FF it's clear that real time is the only way. Can't wait to see the fruits of RSSCloud and PubSubHubbub. - Rich

Rich: one solution is XMPP which uses XML, the language underlying RSS. there are more news options that work well in various situations - Mike Chelen

Good work by the way on making the internet work! Seems you've had a hand in a fair few of the key technologies making things work… - Rich

Yeah, XMPP seems promising as well - though it doesn't seem easy to use as a developer - never really worked out how to set up a server etc. - Rich

Rich, check out AppEngine's XMPP support: http://code.google.com/appengi... I used it to write a PubSubHubbub to XMPP transport in less than an hour last night. - Matt M (inactive)

Ooh - that looks interesting... - Rich

I don't know Java, but perhaps the same API is exposed using Python... - Rich

http://code.google.com/appengi... - Rich

Ah - Rich

Predicable URLs are the best thing! - Rich

Yeah, AppEngine is good with Java/Python parity. If I were integrating XMPP into an application, I'd choose AppEngine to host the XMPP part of things. It's very stable and takes a huge management load off your shoulders. - Matt M (inactive)

I'll have a look at that - XMPP is on my list of things that I don't know enough about... - Rich

Rich: there are existing XMPP / Jabber servers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... and libraries available to use, some of the newer alternatives include pubsubhubbub http://code.google.com/p... and simple update protocol (SUP) http://code.google.com/p... and google wave - Mike Chelen

right on - mike "glemak" dunn

New stuff is always good though! - Rich

I love seeing the new newness! Even if I'm not going to buy it or use it, it is still interesting. - Mathew™ aka Youngblood from iPhone

I was wondering that... - Rich

This was playback on the "old one" , not new specs 640x480 30fps according to live.twit.tv - on the video of course - Ryan

Not yet. Started looking for it, it is really alpha, isn't it? - Ruud van Wijngaarden

works better than 3.5 for me - Zee.

How is it performace-wise compared to Chrome? - imabonehead

I didn't feel it being that much faster to be honest. - Rich

@imabonehead I'm on a Mac so not sure. Compared to the current Mac Chromium, better all round performance. Speed, maybe Chromium is a tad faster, hard to be sure. - Zee.

@Rich strange, for me, it's the most notable speed increase i've experienced yet and every other version of firefox has slowed down over time. This version has mantained its speed - Zee.

It also depends what plugins you have installed on your Firefox instance. Generally the more plugins installed, the slower Firefox will run. - imabonehead

yeah true, but i do have 14 installed and 24 tabs open - Zee.

@imabonehead: i've found that the more add-ons you have the higher your chances of instability are - slowness seems to come from having large sqlite tables for white/black lists - Chris Heath

or other profile bugs like things with cookies and such - Chris Heath

Ah, I was using 3.7 - perhaps it's not as finely tuned. - Rich

still on 3.6 - tamper data & web developer always lag the new versions, so I usually wait. :) - felix

You can disable compatibility checking for extensions - I have both those install on 3.7 and they seem fine. - Rich

See http://stackoverflow.com/questio... :-) - John Mueller

OIC :) - Sebastian

I must be a geek as I recognised this as an answer to that question before you said it! - Rich

wow!!!! - vijay

Sugoï!!! - directeur

Dubya gave us peace and prosperity? Which week in his eight years was that? I missed it. - Ian May

Wow ... *really* accurate. - dkb

This was from when he first came into power btw. - Rich from iPod

Be sure to take your commission - Jesse Stay

Definitely interrupt. You're much nicer than I am. I would have been dead on the floor from laughter and telling the customer to R-U-N! - Anika

What a dolt. Seriously. Both parties are too clueless to really help. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

I would totally intercede if only for the opportunity to make that salesman look like an idiot. I'm sorry, I have zero tolerance for someone that stupid being in a position of making money off another person's ignorance. - Hookuh Tinypants

I'd say yes, but tactfully (though that you're thinking twice about it shows some consideration). - Kevin L

OK, so... I waited till they were done and stopped the guy on the way out the door. Had a quick convo and I answered the "Why would anybody buy a netbook?" question. I got back to my car just as the meter maid was driving away after writing me a ticket for an expired meter. You can't win. - Ken Sheppardson

Some don't have hard drives. They have solid state drives. I assume that's where the confusion comes from. - Rich

Holy cow. Murphy's Law was just waiting for you today. - Hookuh Tinypants

The only reason I was at Office Depot in the first place was to kill a little time. I'd stopped at USPS to pick up a package. USPS online said they'd attempted delivery yesterday but there was no pink slip. First time I stopped in, they hadn't sorted the mail yet. Told me to come back later. When I went back they couldn't find it. Turns out they'd attempted delivery again while I was there trying to pick it up. - Ken Sheppardson

BTW, the salesman also told him he really needed 3-4GB of memory. Said 2GB really isn't enough. Apparently that extra memory also speeds up the internet by 2x or so, although that may have been some other feature I missed. - Ken Sheppardson

Ah, yes, that's true, with an extra 1-2 GB, you can precache the entire Internet. Smart salesperson, that's good advice. - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

I volunteer you, Matt! - imabonehead

In a related story, Procter and Gamble wants you to throw a launch party for their new and improved Ivory Soap. - Ray Cromwell

Who does Microsoft's marketing? These people are morons. Absolute f**king morons. - Chris Nixon

I read this "warns people" not "wants people" lol - anna sauce

Actually this has convinced me to cancel my order for Windows 7. I want no part of this. - Chris Nixon

Photoshop a Wookie? How about that pesky squirrel that pops up everywhere! ;) - Dennis Jernberg

Everyone I would invite to a party for the launch of Win 7 is already running it in the enterprise, so it will not exactly be a big 'hurrah'. ;) Seriously I am not even thinking of having a party. - travispuk

Oh I'm not throwing a party you can be sure of that...it's just that their piss poor marketing is degrading what was looking like a good product. - Chris Nixon

Hahah! http://houseparty.com: "The site you have attempted to access has been blocked due to its content: "Entertainment;Suspicious"" (my company uses BlueCoat filtering, "Suspicious" gets blocked). - Otto

I like the way only one person brought their laptop... Surely you'd all install it... - Rich

Oh yeah, sent out my party invites already. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes

That's pretty sad. - ronin

I never knew installing OS could be so fun. - Micah

Looks good doesn't it... now all I need is something to make! - Rich

RIch ...yes, that's the big question now. - .LAG liked that

Left - Shevonne

Bottom. - Rich

Hmm; lots of the screenshots I've seen of late are "lefties"... I might throw caution to the wind and try it myself...! - Andrew Terry

Bottom. - Brome

left and hidden. - vijay

On the bottom, at the side makes me want to turn my head sideways :) - Charley M

Left - Victor Ganata

@Charlotte - me too!! - Andrew Terry

(I suspect this qualifies for this evening's "Pointless Thread Award", but hey, I was just wondering...) - Andrew Terry

Bottom. - Akiva

Mine is on the bottom set to auto hide. Keeping it on the sides makes the stacks take up too much space when they are expanded. Yes, you can put it on the right hand side as well, which is actually more efficient for right handed mouse users. - pitlord

I got used to putting it on the left because I don't like hiding it and it would take up too much space on the 1024x768 screen of my iBook G4. But maybe I'll give it a try on the bottom on my MacBook. - Victor Ganata

That is a great quote LOL - comix aka martha

I hope the bears weren't hurt. Serious risk of Darwinian indigestion there... ; ) - Fossil Huntress

Is this for real or photo shpped? - Kevin J Hatton

cos she is....stupid maybe? - Rob Sellen :o)

She looks like she shops at Wal-Mart - Outsanity

been here long enough to know that aint true.... - Rob Sellen :o)

Yup - you got it! Or post in Bitchfest. There's always someone who agrees with you there. - Amy℠

My god are you ever going to STFU? Do you want everybody to block you? - Brian Sullivan

This is the plain truth.... - Rob Sellen :o)

Used here: http://www.weddedblissbridalst... Looks nice doesn't it! - Rich

yup! Did you make that site, Rich? - Lindsay