Amen to that - no contract on either my T-Mobile to go phone or my Dish Network. After doing this for a couple years, friends and family have taken note and are now doing the same.
MS-DOS beat PC-DOS
NT3.5 beat OS/2
Heck, you can argue that MS SQL Server is beating DB2
If I were choosing a side in this fight, I'd stick with Microsoft...
The problem with multimedia is the reason I went back to Windows Vista as well. HDMI video and sound out was effortless and flawless in Windows. With Linux, it was hours of mucking around to get it "kind of working".
The original $2.6B was not the full purchase price. There was still a later portion to be paid out based on performance, which ended up being about $500M I believe, putting the total price around $3.1B.
I think intel's Core 2 architecture jump, coupled with the plummeting memory prices, have really changed the upgrade cycle. I got the upgrade bug since my machine is 2 years old, but the component I ended up upgrading was to an IPS monitor. Next might be an SSD drive - my Core2Quad Q6600 is still handling all my needs otherwise. Even games don't force you to upgrade anymore because of two reasons:
Valve, Blizzard, and EA (with the Sims franchise) showed there is a lot more money to be made if you cater to the low end of midrange computers.
The Xbox 360 is so old that cross platform games can generally be ported over to mainstream class PCs with decent developers.
No, it shouldn't. I'm a techie who spent lots of time getting a Gentoo install running great on my Inspiron 1525, specifically built with all Intel hardware (wifi and video) knowing that their drivers were the best. Made a wiki for it and everything (it eventually got nuked when gentoo-wiki was lost, but that's another story). Then, one day after fidgeting with xrandr and various related tools to get HDMI output to my TV working properly, I gave up. I backed everything up because I was afraid of permanently giving up, then I went to Vista.
And you know what? Everything worked. Things that I didn't know that didn't work in Linux worked just fine in Vista. Examples:
- My sound outputs properly and didn't detect my two laptop speakers as the "surround sound" speakers. This would also change on different kernel releases due to new drivers in ALSA.
- Both of my headphone jacks worked. I always assumed one was just busted since it was a refurb, but nope, they both work fine in Vista.
- My wifi activity light doesn't blink off and on ever 3 seconds. I had to hunt down that kernel parameter to fix that in Linux.
- My second output correctly detected my TV resolutions - no more stretching 4:3, I had actual 16:9 output at 720p resolutions finally.
Don't get me wrong, there are some things I miss about Linux and I understand almost all of the above problems are driver problems, but they are still real problems that aren't fixed and won't be for a while. It still remains that *in my opinion* Windows is a better choice than Linux on a laptop for just about anyone except those who can't run Microsoft programs for religious reasons.
For the record, my battery life is roughly the same between Vista and Linux, although I do feel that I got slightly longer life out of my Linux install.
PayPal is now so ingrained in the eBay experience that you are probably costing yourself more in auction than you are saving in PayPal fees. I know a lot of buyers do not bid on auctions that don't accept PayPal - they are so few and far between that they almost look like a scam now.
Supporting your cause:
Top selling games by platform, comparing PC vs XBOX360
The Sims (PC) - 16 million
The Sims 2 (PC) - 13 million
World of Warcraft (PC) - 12 million
Starcraft (PC) - 11 million
Half Life (PC) - 9 million
Halo 3 (360) - 8 million
Half Life 2 (PC) - 6.5 million (does not include sales on Steam, which Valve doesn't release)
Guild Wars (PC) - 6 million
Myst (PC) - 6 million
The Sims 2: Pets (PC, expansion pack) - 5.6 million
Gears of War (360) - 5 million
PC Gaming looks pretty dead - selling too many copies to stay alive! The Cake is a Lie!
They don't do well I'm sure.
That being said, I'm surprised they don't have samples from Cisco, Checkpoint, or Juniper - the three market leaders. Even if the companies don't provide freebies, they should have bought a few and tested them.
Agreed, Fallout 3 disappointed me greatly. I accidently skipped a lot of story by randomly wandering around and meeting people before I was "supposed" to. The Fallout universe is great, the Fallout 3 writing (heck, the whole game in general) doesn't compare to the original two.
Windows is just as secure if you don't run as Administrator, at least since Windows XP. Unfortunately, due to convenience or bone headed applications (usually both), people run as Administrator waaaaay too often.
This is less of an issue with Vista since Microsoft fakes out the apps and writes to a users VirtualStore, but still users run as Administrators because that's the default from Dell & HP.
Except it's not $100 cheaper. For the Dell's and HP's of the world, it ends up being more expensive. Assuming a Windows license costs them $30-$50, there would be significant overhead in having to support a second set of software, drivers, and technical support. I would venture to guess it would cost a lot more than $50, esepcially for a box that would probably not sell very well at all.
Windows 2003 servers become bastion servers occasionally, where it can be one install supporting 20 users. 1.7% probably overstates it's desktop market share due to this phenomenon.
Why has boot speeds all of a sudden become a "thing"? Both my home Vista (desktop) and Gentoo (laptop) boxes almost never get shut down - when I'm not using them, I put them in standby/sleep mode. They draw almost no power in that mode and return to full usuability in about 3 seconds for Vista and about 15 for Gentoo (waiting for wireless to resume).
Agreed, an educated user is relatively secure on both Linux and a fully patched Vista x64 box. Keep your permissions in order and run as a non-priveleged user, and you should be pretty safe. I personally don't even run anti-virus on either platform - just a waste of performance.
Can't comment on Mac OSX since I haven't used it.
The Tax cuts, if any, should be limited to people within 15% of the poverty line.
I'm not sure that's even possible. I don't think people that close to the poverty actually pay any taxes.
Being within 15% of poverty indicates an income of about $12,000 max. Backing out a personal exemption leaves about $8500 taxable income, putting you in the 10% tax bracket - or roughly $850 of income tax. If they have children or are married, they pay basically nothing.
Where do the tax cuts come from then? Social Security and Medicare? Those systems can't afford any cuts. If there were an easy answer, someone would have implemented it by now.
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Ever see those people that drown in icy water, only to be revived after hours without oxygen, somewhat intact?
No sir, I have never watched a person drown in icy water and then revived hours later. Is this a common thing to see?
I think Kijiji is more popular outside the US than inside in general.
Amen to that - no contract on either my T-Mobile to go phone or my Dish Network. After doing this for a couple years, friends and family have taken note and are now doing the same.
I love how their review of Fennec makes brief mention that they had no problems crashing it, yet they still give it a favorable review in the summary.
eBay doesn't own the protocol, so you'll have to go to Joltid if you want that portion open sourced.
MS-DOS beat PC-DOS NT3.5 beat OS/2 Heck, you can argue that MS SQL Server is beating DB2 If I were choosing a side in this fight, I'd stick with Microsoft...
AMD's high end graphics (the 5870) far surpass the offerings from nVidia.
Mine is: 12345
The problem with multimedia is the reason I went back to Windows Vista as well. HDMI video and sound out was effortless and flawless in Windows. With Linux, it was hours of mucking around to get it "kind of working".
The original $2.6B was not the full purchase price. There was still a later portion to be paid out based on performance, which ended up being about $500M I believe, putting the total price around $3.1B.
I think intel's Core 2 architecture jump, coupled with the plummeting memory prices, have really changed the upgrade cycle. I got the upgrade bug since my machine is 2 years old, but the component I ended up upgrading was to an IPS monitor. Next might be an SSD drive - my Core2Quad Q6600 is still handling all my needs otherwise. Even games don't force you to upgrade anymore because of two reasons:
No, it shouldn't. I'm a techie who spent lots of time getting a Gentoo install running great on my Inspiron 1525, specifically built with all Intel hardware (wifi and video) knowing that their drivers were the best. Made a wiki for it and everything (it eventually got nuked when gentoo-wiki was lost, but that's another story). Then, one day after fidgeting with xrandr and various related tools to get HDMI output to my TV working properly, I gave up. I backed everything up because I was afraid of permanently giving up, then I went to Vista. And you know what? Everything worked. Things that I didn't know that didn't work in Linux worked just fine in Vista. Examples: - My sound outputs properly and didn't detect my two laptop speakers as the "surround sound" speakers. This would also change on different kernel releases due to new drivers in ALSA. - Both of my headphone jacks worked. I always assumed one was just busted since it was a refurb, but nope, they both work fine in Vista. - My wifi activity light doesn't blink off and on ever 3 seconds. I had to hunt down that kernel parameter to fix that in Linux. - My second output correctly detected my TV resolutions - no more stretching 4:3, I had actual 16:9 output at 720p resolutions finally. Don't get me wrong, there are some things I miss about Linux and I understand almost all of the above problems are driver problems, but they are still real problems that aren't fixed and won't be for a while. It still remains that *in my opinion* Windows is a better choice than Linux on a laptop for just about anyone except those who can't run Microsoft programs for religious reasons. For the record, my battery life is roughly the same between Vista and Linux, although I do feel that I got slightly longer life out of my Linux install.
Hmm, I've recently started having to do this and didn't realize it was a known problem. Thanks for the heads up.
PayPal is now so ingrained in the eBay experience that you are probably costing yourself more in auction than you are saving in PayPal fees. I know a lot of buyers do not bid on auctions that don't accept PayPal - they are so few and far between that they almost look like a scam now.
Supporting your cause: Top selling games by platform, comparing PC vs XBOX360 The Sims (PC) - 16 million The Sims 2 (PC) - 13 million World of Warcraft (PC) - 12 million Starcraft (PC) - 11 million Half Life (PC) - 9 million Halo 3 (360) - 8 million Half Life 2 (PC) - 6.5 million (does not include sales on Steam, which Valve doesn't release) Guild Wars (PC) - 6 million Myst (PC) - 6 million The Sims 2: Pets (PC, expansion pack) - 5.6 million Gears of War (360) - 5 million PC Gaming looks pretty dead - selling too many copies to stay alive! The Cake is a Lie!
They don't do well I'm sure. That being said, I'm surprised they don't have samples from Cisco, Checkpoint, or Juniper - the three market leaders. Even if the companies don't provide freebies, they should have bought a few and tested them.
Agreed, Fallout 3 disappointed me greatly. I accidently skipped a lot of story by randomly wandering around and meeting people before I was "supposed" to. The Fallout universe is great, the Fallout 3 writing (heck, the whole game in general) doesn't compare to the original two.
Windows is just as secure if you don't run as Administrator, at least since Windows XP. Unfortunately, due to convenience or bone headed applications (usually both), people run as Administrator waaaaay too often. This is less of an issue with Vista since Microsoft fakes out the apps and writes to a users VirtualStore, but still users run as Administrators because that's the default from Dell & HP.
XP is 8 years old now. USB was fairly new, SATA didn't even exist yet.
Except it's not $100 cheaper. For the Dell's and HP's of the world, it ends up being more expensive. Assuming a Windows license costs them $30-$50, there would be significant overhead in having to support a second set of software, drivers, and technical support. I would venture to guess it would cost a lot more than $50, esepcially for a box that would probably not sell very well at all.
Windows 2003 servers become bastion servers occasionally, where it can be one install supporting 20 users. 1.7% probably overstates it's desktop market share due to this phenomenon.
Why has boot speeds all of a sudden become a "thing"? Both my home Vista (desktop) and Gentoo (laptop) boxes almost never get shut down - when I'm not using them, I put them in standby/sleep mode. They draw almost no power in that mode and return to full usuability in about 3 seconds for Vista and about 15 for Gentoo (waiting for wireless to resume).
Agreed, an educated user is relatively secure on both Linux and a fully patched Vista x64 box. Keep your permissions in order and run as a non-priveleged user, and you should be pretty safe. I personally don't even run anti-virus on either platform - just a waste of performance. Can't comment on Mac OSX since I haven't used it.
Apple does it all the time.
The Tax cuts, if any, should be limited to people within 15% of the poverty line.
I'm not sure that's even possible. I don't think people that close to the poverty actually pay any taxes.
Being within 15% of poverty indicates an income of about $12,000 max. Backing out a personal exemption leaves about $8500 taxable income, putting you in the 10% tax bracket - or roughly $850 of income tax. If they have children or are married, they pay basically nothing.
Where do the tax cuts come from then? Social Security and Medicare? Those systems can't afford any cuts. If there were an easy answer, someone would have implemented it by now.