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ACPI Forced On & Option Disabled in WinXP-Certified Motherboards
stealth_zipper asks: "I just got off the phone with a rep from Soyo Computer Inc trying to get the ability to change IRQs for the onboard hardware. It turns out that because of a deal to get WindowsXP certification, the Dragon-series motherboard ended up having the ability of Enabling/Disabling ACPI in the BIOS disabled. Now FreeBSD has complications with multiple devices on the same IRQs (especially sound, video, and nic all off the same one). Is there a way to get around this for new hardware? Has anyone else encountered this?" Why in the world does XP need this feature disabled, and are there workarounds to get OSes like FreeBSD working properly with motherboards of this sort?
I'll vote Libertarian again, but thanks for the recommendation. The Repiblican and Democrats are just the two tits on the body republic, and most companies and other special interest groups are fat dumb and happy to suckle whichever is available at the moment.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Then again, I tend to block anything from DoubleClick, so perhaps it can stay there and rot.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Good for you. Let's hope that eventually, enough people become "enlightened" and vote Libertarian that the vote will actually make a difference!
As it was recently pointed out, although MS themselves donated a large percentage of their political contributions to the Republican party, their employees pretty much offset it by contributing mostly to the Democratic party. The 2 party system is pretty much a joke. People just cancel each other's votes out, bickering over the "issue du jour", while whichever party gains power will just follow the money anyway.
Why do you think that the concept of a 3rd. party such as the Libertarian party is bad because the "country isn't split 50/50"?
If more Republicans really voted than Democrats by a 2:1 margin, we would never have any Democrats in office. The fact is, you're making very broad, generalized statements that don't hold up.
I also find it amusing that people still feel the voting system let them down in the last election. Sure, there was a lot of attempted corruption, and some incredibly stupid suggestions for making things right. "Yes, I can tell by the thumbprint on the right-hand side of the ballot, he meant to punch out this circle here." Whatever....
Still, common sense prevailed and we got through another election year with a winner and a loser.
(Those who feel the wrong man was elected should consider pushing for an amendment to the Constitution next time it's up for discussion. The whole Electoral Congress thing has been debated before, after all....)
As for MS (more "on-topic" for this discussion thread), I don't think government really should do anything about them. At best, punish them for perjuring themselves during the trial, and be done with it. We've wasted I don't know how many tax dollars on this fiasco already, and in the end - the products people want to buy/use will win out.
I love Linux, but I also know it still has SERIOUS weaknesses as a mainstream desktop platform. If you disagree, I'd dare say you're looking at it through some dark-tinted glasses. Unix has always been a server OS, and it'll take a LOT to hammer and chisel it into a user-friendly desktop OS. Microsoft, on the other hand, started with a desktop OS and tried hammering and chiseling it into a large server OS. They're still struggling at that.
Most of the "competition" to MS hasn't been all that competitive, in hind-sight. Take OS/2, for example. IBM had a strong competitor going there - but they blew it by their own free will. (They were too greedy, and decided it was easier money to get in bed with MS and Windows NT than to compete.) BeOS, well - they never had the financial backing to do too much. If I want to go up against a BIG company, it takes some BIG dollars to do it properly. A superior product is the most important item, but you have to leverage that by peddling it to venture capitalists or other investors who see the potential and give you the funding to make it do big things. BeOS just didn't get there with it.
IMHO, it's pretty lame of people to cry out for govt. intervention when the real problem is that the vast majority *like* the MS products enough to keep buying them, over and over again.
Nuff sed
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