tin_the_fatty weblog

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In Macau last Sunday, w/ a new sidearm.

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Face the facts.
We are supposed to be one country, but it feels like they are from a totally different country.
Change is inevitable, and it’s got to start from somewhere. Noone exists in a vacuum. Fourth of December. Let’s go trekking thru town. See you in Victoria Park at 1500 hours.

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The Lady informed me yesterday evening that the laser printer stopped working with an “out of memory” error (?!). Turned out that marilyn, the file/printer server died. MOST. USELESS. ERROR. MESSAGE. EVER.
The machine would come on for about 30 seconds, and go down during POST check. Vacuuming the CPU heat sink didn’t help. The fan [...]

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we might get our Mr Fusion.

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is no longer precious. Pub hours relaxed in the U.K.

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One file system to rule them all.
No more p*ssing about with kludgy soft RAID software, or kludgy hardware RAID solutions.

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Just got the phone bill for my trip to Macau. 4.7 minutes to Hong Kong cost HK$29.93 at HK$6.37/min. 5.6 minutes local calls cost HK$25.90 at HK$4.63/min. Both CSL/123 and CTM are making a killing here.
The total cost was only HK$55.83, so it wasn’t worth the trouble in getting a pre-paid SIM card, widely available [...]

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best before 14-6-2004 tasted absolutely foul. No idea why it was in the office fridge.
Also found a can of Coke Light best before 05-06-2005 in there.

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From last Thursday’s Economic Journal:-
迫上梁山
2003年9月，一位南韓農夫因為澳洲肉類傾銷到南韓，令他的農場破產，他在舉行世貿會議的酒店用刀把自己刺死，死前說：「世貿殺死農夫」。今年，這班農夫將來到香港，在世貿部長級會議進行期間申訴農業協會的不公平。他們的行動比較激烈，香港人看不慣，會認為他們「搞事」。但事實是歐美國家欺人太甚，把發展中國家的農夫迫上梁山。

發展中國家的農民估全球農民總數98%，但他們的農產品只佔全球農業貿易的三分一，其餘三分二被發達國家大力補貼的農產品估據著。
美國每年的稻米生產成本是十八億美元，而美國政府補貼十二億美元，因此稻米價格低於成本34%，令已開放稻米市場的國家如加納、海地，以種稻米為生的農夫即時破產。假如印度及中國開放稻米市場，兩地的農夫亦會不堪一擊。
每一隻乳牛在歐盟國家得到每天二美元的資助；同一時間，世界上有一半人口每天生活水平低於二美元；看來做一頭歐洲的牛，好過在非洲做人。亦因為有政府資助，歐洲的牛奶可以傾銷到其他國家，出現「入口牛奶殺死本地農民」事件。
雖然任何國家都有權自由補貼農業，看似公平，但發達國家的農業只佔生產總值10%，所以這些國家有能力補貼；相反，發展中國家的農業佔生產值五至七成，要補貼，談何容易。

一條吉百利巧克力中，主要原料是加納的可可豆，只佔零售價1-2%，而一般非農業產品的原料價佔零售價8-10%，可見農業產品的價格被嚴重壓低。
中國加入世貿，本應於今年取消服裝配額。歐美國家見國內工廠反對，立即制裁中國，重返配額制度。這些有錢國家持雙重標準，輸打贏要。香港沒有農業，我們大可置身事外，但如果你看不過這些偽君子行為，亦可選擇在12月13至18日到灣仔抗議區「埋位」。
November December is going to be a busy month.

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Liverpool L-UN7 Universal Home Theater System.
”遠離煩音處處只想仙樂飄飄，身躺百呎房間卻如萬里平原。” the advert says.
No sh*t. Makes me want to check it out.
Optional iPod cradle, plays music and show photo files (on the TV I presume), charges the iPod, and remote control.

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to World Domination.
I for one welcome our Google overlord.

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Lazy students with poor time-management complained about too much work. So the uber-nice TA is postponing the deadline for term paper by two weeks. As a result, the TA will be spending her X’mas and New Year holidays marking over 100 term papers.
I’ll be speaking to Santa.

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I’ll take 7, one for every member of the immediate family (including the maid, but excluding Lily the dog who has no use for it), thank you very much.

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I have had the new laser printer for nearly two weeks, and we are very pleased with it so far.
The auto duplexing is really worth it. The Lady and I both need to print a fair amount of stuff out for reading, and duplex printing saves paper and bulk.
Postscript support is really good for getting [...]

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is going to be a fine day for trekking thru town. Do it for Sir Donald. Or for yourself.

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Hong Kong and Macau Archaeology course field trip last Sunday. Destination I.
Visiting the actual site is of great help in understanding how pre-historic inhabitants there used to live, and have put most of the topics we talked about in the last few weeks into context.
It was a great trip. James seems to have enjoyed it.
I [...]

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at Fernando, Hac Sa on Saturday night.

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New toy tool. Neat driver software. Pity booklet printing is not supported on Mac OS X.
Postscript emulation. Neat.
Now all I need is to hook it up to my file server for printer sharing.
HK$2K delivered, from the local Broadway.
Update (7/11 0100 hours): Once I figured out how to setup CUPS on my OpenBSD file server, printing [...]

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The government’s assertion that the proposal is the mainstream opinion is of course, argumentum ad nauseam, a Logical Fallacy.
To the CE’s announcement that the HKSAR Govt would be willing to explain the proposal further, well sad to break it to you Sir Donald, something broken is still broken no matter how much explanation you do.

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