But you wouldn't.

Couldn't be arsed.

Just because of that silly armada.

And the second one.

Or was there only one?

One Spanish

Oh.

Spanish Armada or Great Armada, an unsuccessful attempted invasion of England by Spain in 1588
English Armada or Counter Armada, an unsuccessful English naval campaign in 1589 aimed at capturing Lisbon and other coastal towns from Spain
Armada of 1779 or Other Armada, an unsuccessful attempted invasion of England by France and Spain in 1779

Wow.

You tried to capture Lisbon?? Respect.

We were bored

And I don't remember that armada of 1779 at all.

Me either

Must've wiped them out

But Spain had lost much of its power by then.

Our Navy was badass

And France was past the peak of her power too.

And you were at your peak.

Oh I don't know

I do.

Think our peak came a bit later than that

Trafalgar etc

It started around that time and went on until, say, 1870 or 1900.

The Empire you mean?

The rise of Germany was your doom.

Everything.

Relative world power.

It's stupid that you let those silly western colonies slip, though.

Ach, more trouble than they're worth

If only you had properly exploited them...

But, yeah, those religious zealots, good riddance.

Here's an incredible fact - at the main battle of the Spanish Armada, 50-100 British sailors died in action. 6000-8000 died of disease

But you should have let us keep Nieuw Amsterdam. We could have made into a decent place.

what disease was that?!

Heh.

How long were they at sea?

Measles? Pox?

Cholera?

The plague?

Could have been anything.

typhus and dysentery apparently

See?

Nice, survive a sea battle only to shit yourself to death

Great.

You have to wonder at people that take the time and effort to make a complete profile with picture and bio to ask one question on an SE site

Christ, I've been around here for nearly two years and I have no profile info whatsoever

Heh.

A picture would be nice.

Just a few clicks.

wouldn't it just

I hate 'social media'

I even hate this unspeakable phrase.

Network sites is what they are.

The medium is the Internet.

I have no desire for any stranger to know anything meaningful about me in any way, shape or form

How about old class mates?

and I certainly have no desire to allow someone to sell my personal information as a commodity

People you met at a party but who don't have your name?

my old class mates can fuck off

Well.

I hated school and everyone in it

And prospective dates?

My wife would disapprove

People you met at university?

Couldn't care less

If I wanted to keep in contact I would've kept in contact

I like being able to check someone out occasionally. And I like being reachable for people who don't have my number. The rest I don't care about.

If someone doesn't have my number or e-mail address, I don't want them to contact me

And of course I post what I have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.

@ElendilTheTall Why not?

@Cerberus Why?

If they don't have those details, they don't know me, or need to know me

If they need them, I will give them

You know, there's also getting to know people...

Fuck that, people are idiots

How will you give them your number if they have no way of contacting you?

Okay.

Present company excepted of course

:D

I'm not people.

I'm a dog.

@Cerberus Who are we talking about here?

You should rather except yourself.

Suppose you had an interesting conversation with your friend's cousin at a party about...a book. Suppose he wanted to let you know there was a better version of this book.

Then I'd give him my e-mail address

But he isn't there.

You're at home now.

You can't give it to him.

Then he'd contact my cousin who would contact me and I'd tell him to give him my e-mail address

I should mention that I also hate parties, naturally

@ElendilTheTall And what are the chances that he would do this? It would be a hassle.

Potentially awkward.

And just too much trouble.

Then somehow I would survive without reading the book

So anyway, this is part of the useful aspect of Facebook for me.

Another aspect is checking out dates before the date.

why would I want someone who is essentially a stranger to be able to access my Facebook just so he can recommend a book?

He could be a psychopath

Well, what would that matter?

What could he do with your Facebook page?

Of course you wouldn't put any sensitive info on there.

Just your name is enough.

What do you define as sensitive?

Your address. Your main e-mail. Your phone number. Naked pictures.

Of course the latter may or may not be sensitive for you.

Not with my profession of nude male model

In any case, I'd rather not bother

Then by all means put your naked pictures on there!

Mark Zuckerberg can take a hike

@ElendilTheTall That is a valid standpoint.

I hate Facebook.

I just use it occasionally in ways that are useful to me.

And useful to them

And laugh at all the idiots who spend lots of time on that website.

They can use me as a metric.

So, do you still have an abysmal serifed font and 954 shortcut tabs on your browser?

Yes.

Since computers are never going to be beautiful anyway, it matters little.

The tabs are a sin, I confess.

They just...happen.

How can you possibly need that many open?

I have 3 or 4, tops

I don't.

and that's when I'm doing something like comparing hardware specs

It's just that I often open tabs that I intend to read later.

How do you deal with that?

I don't

But if I did, I would use something like Instapaper

Then I could read them on other devices, categorise them etc

Too much trouble.

This way, I don't have to do anything.

They're just there.

Taking up computer resources, impossible to read their titles

cluttering your mind

Is your desk a mess too?

They don't take up any resources. They are not loaded in memory.

My desk is not so bad, in fact, because I have to receive guests in this room.

But, yes, the unreadable titles are a definite disadvantage.

Guests?

You hold court?

Hehe.

Wow, Windows ME!

Hoho.

Yes, I am sitting on my throne in a relaxed position typing on my laptop now.

@RegDwighт You wish.

@skullpatrol Yoyo.

@Cerberus no, actually I do not!

Soso.

But are you also awed?

Microsoft showed me a huge list of "critical" updates it wanted me to install. Blah.

@RegDwighт Yes! Let's bomb the hell out of some country.

"Critical update" certainly sounds like something you shouldn't be installing.

I know.

Tell that to @mrshiny.

It also wanted me to install IE 8, which I already have installed.

Microsoft know nothing.

I may already have those "critical" updates installed too.

@Cerberus you should send them more reports, then.

Ah, good old XP

Ugh.

I think I disabled error reports.

What's it like still having to worry about WIN32 viruses?

Critically speaking, you guys are critics of "critical" :D

I worry not.

@Cerberus see! It all makes sense now.

@skullpatrol Exactly!

@ElendilTheTall I very, very rarely have viruses. Last time was maybe five years ago, and I am now a bit more responsible.

@ElendilTheTall WIN64 still has to worry about WIN32 viruses, but not the other way round.

vice versa?

@skullpatrol do I hear criticism?

Vice versa, no.

@skullpatrol Miami vice versa.

lol

Con-versa

I will install Windows 7 by the time I get an SSD, which will be by the time I upgrade my entire computer. But it still feels very fast, so why should I?

I may skip Windows 7 and 8.

We'll see.

How long does it take to boot

Not very long, I don't know.

With all those system tray things?

@Cerberus By the time you get Windows 7 it will be called Windows 17 and not available on the market since five years.

@ElendilTheTall Yeah, those take some time.

Have you ever used a Windows 7 computer @cerberus?

Although most are very small.

Windows 9000

@ElendilTheTall Yes. It is much the same as XP.

Windows OVER 9000.

29!!!

@RegDwighт Heh. We'll see.

29 system tray icons!!!

@Cerberus Play by the numbers, or not at all. Your eyes can tell you nothing.

@ElendilTheTall What about it?

Jesus H Christ

@ElendilTheTall Yes, according to Windows, 29 is over 9000.

that is ridiculous

@ElendilTheTall I used to have more. I have created at least 5 of them myself.

turn them off and feel the wind rushing through your keyboard!

29 systray icons offends me on a cellular level

I already feel it rushing there and elsewhere. My computer is very fast.

compared to an arthritic snail perhaps

Each icon stands for a program that serves a purpose.

I could tell you what each icon does, but I can't think of anything more boring.

@Cerberus I have 1000s of programs that serve purposes. It is nutzoid to require a picture for each of those.

what is that red R?

@ElendilTheTall Snails don't have bones?

@tchrist It is convenient this way: now I know which ones are running at a glance.

@ElendilTheTall A program I created to search the Internet, the OED, and various other things, from anywhere on my computer/browser/anything.

@skullpatrol it's a metaphor, calm down

@Cerberus In my father’s mansion there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you so.

This is the red R.

How about the green tick?

I select a word, do a mouse gesture, and this little window pops up.

Green tick is spelling autocorrect.

Oh ffs, you don't need that

I modified that one based on someone else's script.

Sure I do.

Any program you type in these days has one built in!

Otherwise I'd be typing "dosen;t" all the time.

You have what look like 4 system resource monitors

What's the point of them?

My browser doesn't have a proper autocorrect. And mine works much better than that of MS Word.

@Cerberus the 1989s called!

@ElendilTheTall Memory, CPU, hard drive activity, and commit charge.

Not in that order.

@RegDwighт Hmm what?

Why do you need to know those at a glance?

@Cerberus Your screenshot. It's 25 years behind the times.

They are convenient to have there at a glance. Sometimes, when a program is not responding or something, I can immediately tell whether it is CPU, or whatever. Etc.

@RegDwighт And yet I can do anything you can on your computer, and more.

@ElendilTheTall Mr. Shiny and New! I thought you'd given up trying to convince Cerberus of his need to change his computer habits.

@Cerberus what difference does it make what's causing it?

you still either have to wait it out or kill the process

@Cerberus haha, you lost me at the "and more" part.

Your computer just adds zeroes and oneses, just like mine.

Mine can divide by zero

wanna see?

christ, I've just noticed that you've got fuckloads of Firefox plugins as well

Aaaargh, my brain hurts

@ElendilTheTall Then at least I can tell whether or not killing a process would make sense. Consider this. When program x is being weird or hanging, and I see a CPU spike, I hover over it, and it tells me which program is the culprit. If I don't see a CPU spike, but I see memory is nearly full, then I know perhaps I should restart Firefox. If neither, I know it is just program x being a biatch.

I'd like to see a video capture of you opening firefox to see how many cups of tea I could make while it's opening