h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Anyone else think that idea of Microsoft having to put their product in schools as part of the anti-trust settlement is a bit like Brer Rabbit saying "Please don't throw me in that there briar patch Brer Bear"?

And where did you encounter Joel Chandler Harris?
I lived in Austin for 15yrs. I live in Temple now.
I am always reading things backwards.

I am typing this on a Windrows machine. I hate Windrows.

I miss the Wheatsville Co-op. It had a very good selection of world beers, ales, stouts, and some of that watery stuff they make around Austin..

Well, Gosho, I'm glad you asked! Have a seat, I'm gonna rant a while!

First of all, they aren't donating anything. They're on loan! After 5 years, any school system dumb enough to sign up for this program, will be required to pay Microsoft to renew the licenses on the "free" software. And their educational licenses are expensive: $200 per seat for a workstation with Office and Windows on it, and it has to be renewed annually.

Maybe it'll help the schools in the short run, but these will be financially strapped schools, and I doubt they'll have the money to maintain Windows machines. And in 5 years, when the school gets a nice letter from Microsoft that says: you have five hundred copies of our product and you owe us licensing fees for it, so send us $15,000 ... they'll be really be up the creek.

So it hurts the schools, it hurts other computer companies, it flies in the face of justice, and it doesn't hurt Microsoft much at all ... I'd say yes!

I didn't even know all that stuff Shea, it makes more ridiculous than I originally thought. That Bill Gates, he's even slicker than Slick Willie when it comes to getting away with stuff If either of you have the wherewithal to get a channel called TechTV (we can get it in Austin on Time Warner digital), I'd recommend doing so - they have a show called The Screensavers, which is simply a 90 minute show for s, and me and 'Er Indoors watch it every night . Whilst a lot of the stuff on the show is aimed at helping people with their Microsoft machines and software, the hosts are rather cynical about Mr Gates and his plans for world domination. TechTV has a website (you know how to get there don't you - I don't want to offend the house rules ), and there's a section for The Screensavers.

Funny you should mention Wheatsville tonsil - I was in there just the other day ordering some I don't get to shop at Wheatsville as much as I did before we moved to South Austin, but I still keep up my membership. Co-ops is definately the way forward as far as I'm concerned. I probably encountered the Uncle Remus stories at school, and wasn't there a Disney film based on them? The one with Zipp-a-Dee-Doo-Dah in? What was it called.... Song of The South?

AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!! Nooooooo!
I've managed to avoid mentioning or hearing about either Bobbie Driscoll or Burl Ives for three whole months and in one breath....!
You fiend! You polluter of the Net!
Now I'll have to go back to my Twelve-step Disney Anonymous meetings!
I'll have to call my sponsor and tell her I've fallen off the wagon...again. She's spent two and a half years getting me to this point, keeping me out of the package video stores, begging me to turn off my cable, buying me earplugs to wear while my child watched Aladdin on strict rotation with Lion King in the next room...and now, and now....I'll have to start all over again...
Sob.
How I miss Mary Poppins....sigh...those children looking up her skirt...the speculations about the relationship with Bert....nuh,nuh, nuh, nuh.....

Well, yes, but there is a Whole Earth Provision Company in South Austin , isn't there?

There is?
Love, and kisses on the bottom
Gosho
PS Sorry about the Disney thing.

You couldn't know, dear.

they don't have the Omnipresent Mouse in GB?

He lives in Austin, that's right. It's a long time between days.
Anyway, we moved to Georgetown when the prices and the driving became hazardous. The changes between 1985 and 1995 were immense. It was like living in a metropolis.
You know that thing about Les, the guy in front of One American Center? That wouldn't have meant anything fifteen years ago.
I had a Circle K manager that was a transexual. His name was Les, too.
Not the same guy.

One American Centre... is that downtown? I know almost nothing about downtown Austin. Yeah, of course we have D***** in the UK to - they hijacked one of our icons (Winie the Pooh) and turned it into, well, they just did bad things. To the extent that I once heard a member of some crappy boy band from America once say in an interview on British radio "Yeah, he's kinda like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. Do you guys have Winnie the Pooh here?"

For me, moving to Austin from London is probably like you moving from Austin to Georgetown. Austin is probably going to get even bigger and busier, but it's never going to get as bad as London, and right now, several (mostly downtown) business and residential developments are being put on ice because of the slowdown.

yes, I'm quite well aware of Disney's depredations on literature, but I am also aware that several of the creators or their families were pleased as punch that Ol'Walt had a big check to thrust into their hands.
As Larry McMurtry said about the movies of his books versus his books, "Well, I took the check. I'm gonna get another couple of checks from the profits. If they ask me to write that script, so be it. If they don't, less bother for me. If the movie isn't anything like the book, so be it, it's a different form of entertainment."
The real problem is that Americans don't read as much as they could.

Also, several of the Milne books were just a little icky-poo.
'Bambi' started out as a realistic adult novel.
James Barrie probably couldn't have cared less about what happened to 'Peter Pan' since he milked it for everything he could.
'Snow White' has been suffering being watered down since the second edition of the Grimm Brother's book back in, what was it, 1815?
'Mary Poppins' was a particularly British series of books and the only way to do them justice probably would have been not to film them at all.
Now 'The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh' was pretty interesting, but I don't believe it was shown on the Olde Sodd.
And I thought 'Bednobs and Broomsticks' s***ed.
'Chitty-chitty-bang-bang' doesn't stack up well now-a-days next to such artistry as 'Willy Wonka', but you have to remember the source:Ian (Pride? Not a lick!) Fleming.

By the way, one of the kid and me's favorite movies, outside of that silly Hitchhiker's tv show which the kid watched over and over and over again when she was about four, is the animated version of Roald Dahl's 'BFG'. Now way anything like that would ever have been made in the states. We've also got one of the Asterix movies.
One of my favorite shows of all time was 'Waiting for God'.

No, I hated
Austin, I hated Georgetown, I hate Temple, anything that has I35 running through it has my everlasting loathing. Reason? I hate driving. If I could, I'd spend the rest of my life in a leaky trailer on a hundred and fifty acres of land, reading and writing and playing my guitar and stepping out side sans trousers every once in a while to target shoot with my old Mauser.
I don't like cities. Too much mental energy zipping around. I'm a minor sensitive. Someplaces the energy is just too much.
Like this posting.
No it would probably take Austin a thousand years to approach london. And London's been around since Ceasar was a babe...

Ah yes, Waiting For God - one of my favourites too. A show all about a soft-headed old geezer and a hard-headed old curmudgeon, and their constant attempts to thwart the money making schemes of the Thatcherite s*** who runs the home where they live. Thoroughly well written.

So, could you ever see yourself living in a place like Bagdad Cafe? That would be my dream. Unfortunately the wife would hate it - she needs concrete and bricks around her.

Um. The dust.
Nah. A place where it snows.
No trucks zipping around.
Maybe and old barn or two.
A small hill or two to climb. A pecan orchard gone wild.
Something like that.