Good fucking luck. If your self-built computers fail, it's your butt on the line. You may say "but $COMPONENT has a 3-year warranty!", but vendors are great at pointing fingers at other vendors unless you test enough to prove it's their component's fault. So there's some time wastage.
Then you have to learn to deal with support departments from n different vendors, rather than just the one OEM's.
But before you even get there, you have the enormous time outlay of building each computer by hand and (presumably) testing them to make sure they work, and possibly dealing with warranty replacements right away. Also? You have to buy retail Windows licenses to make them transferable, which is a few hundred dollars per copy.
It'd be a lot smarter to set up a site-license agreement with Microsoft. We can upgrade any computer to any version of Windows, provided it came from the factory with a Windows license. Don't know how much that costs - not my department - but it's really worth it to be able to say "OK, we've tested Windows 7 and it works well, so here you go". Also, that saves us $50 per new Dell Optiplex because I can get it from Dell with Windows Vista Home Basic, then install our Win7 Enterprise image. On top of/that/, you might find that if you set up a bulk order with your Dell sales rep they could cut you a better deal - that's happened to me before.
But you see, if you can say "everybody's a luser", then you don't feel so bad about supporting "your" fuckwits.
Happens to me all the time elsewhere when I bitch about the Republicans: one or two people will always come up and say how awful "both sides" are... never mind that there are more than the two sides, and that the person saying so is conservative, i.e. it's a polite form of "shut up".
What if Oracle throws lots of resources behind OO.o, overshadowing the efforts that LO makes?
Pfft. They're more likely to neglect it once Ellison moves onto his next acquisition. Same thing's happened with Oracle Calendar, formerly Steltor's Corporate Time, which we use.
They've barely done any work on either the server or client since the acquisition, the Outlook integration is (still) a disaster, and they haven't maintained the Palm or Windows Mobile sync clients in ages. They still haven't come up with any solutions for syncing with more modern PDAs or smart phones, other than "hey, you can buy this third-party app that (sometimes) works".
DOS well and truly *was* a crap gaming platform, chum. Since you've got your rose-colored glasses on, let's look back:
Segmented memory architecture (640K conventional RAM, 64K in the high-memory-area, and *five* different ways of accessing anything past 1MB:
* Direct, using INT15 in the BIOS
* Expanded memory, whose spec had two major versions
* Extended memory (XMS)
* DOS Protected Mode Interface
* Virtual Control Program Interface
In addition, there were *no* standards or standard drivers for accessing hardware. Game devs almost always had to write their own sound and video drivers, for example.
On top of that, you had to configure DOS so the damned thing could run your game. Some games needed 600K of conventional RAM and some expanded memory, other games needed 4MB to themselves and so nothing could load on boot, and you had to worry about loading utilities to configure the sound hardware. Sometimes you had to load another utility to make your video hardware be VESA BIOS compliant.
The old Macs had a ton of faults, but for gaming you can't seriously claim that DOS was anything but a disaster. We just didn't know any better at the time.
People don't generally respond to or read week-old posts because there's so many other stories posted here, and because unless you're a subscriber you can only see your most recent 25 posts, so if you post frequently you'd never see week-old responses.
This. It's just like Yahoo News, or my local paper's comment boards. For that matter, it's about like the paper's printed letters-to-the-editor: retirees or unemployed with too much time on their hands who get printed frequently, a fair amount of it whatever thoughts on any random thing they happened to have that day.
As Oatwom noted, you'll get people who vote according to their political viewpoint, and you'll even see this on "reputable" websites.
Well, no. The moon's actually moving/away/ from Earth, slowly. In the very distant future, it'll be flung out of orbit. However, this will be long after the Sun goes nova.
That is a terrible annoyance, isn't it? I've only run into one application I know of that saved its data there, so naturally I usually don't back that folder up when I switch users to new computers.
I'm astonished that we've never threatened complete (or at least substantial) withdrawal of foreign aid if they don't stop this crap with the settlements, given that we keep attempting to keep the peace process towards a two-state solution.
That would appear to me the best way to get their attention.
Yes. Even the TV shows can be damned annoying with the higher dynamic range. For example, I'll turn the volume up a little because I can't quite hear the spoken dialog, but moments later there's a loud sound effect, or background music, and I have to turn it back down because it's suddenly too loud.
Automatic dynamic-range compression at the TV level would be a good selling point for me.
It'd be Really Nice if one standard cellular protocol and frequency band(s) were agreed upon (I'd rather not legislate technical specifications), so that I could in fact take my old Sprint phone and use it on Verizon's network if I so chose, or vice versa.
Then there really wouldn't be a monopoly in wireless.
It's easier for Intel et al to go after people who are selling a product, especially a physical device. Much easier for a software author to be safely anonymous so the DMCA can't touch 'em.
Slashdot Mirror
Good fucking luck. If your self-built computers fail, it's your butt on the line. You may say "but $COMPONENT has a 3-year warranty!", but vendors are great at pointing fingers at other vendors unless you test enough to prove it's their component's fault. So there's some time wastage.
Then you have to learn to deal with support departments from n different vendors, rather than just the one OEM's.
But before you even get there, you have the enormous time outlay of building each computer by hand and (presumably) testing them to make sure they work, and possibly dealing with warranty replacements right away. Also? You have to buy retail Windows licenses to make them transferable, which is a few hundred dollars per copy.
It'd be a lot smarter to set up a site-license agreement with Microsoft. We can upgrade any computer to any version of Windows, provided it came from the factory with a Windows license. Don't know how much that costs - not my department - but it's really worth it to be able to say "OK, we've tested Windows 7 and it works well, so here you go". Also, that saves us $50 per new Dell Optiplex because I can get it from Dell with Windows Vista Home Basic, then install our Win7 Enterprise image. On top of /that/, you might find that if you set up a bulk order with your Dell sales rep they could cut you a better deal - that's happened to me before.
We've got gunpowder already, so city walls are obsolete.
Fortify mech.inf. in the city instead.
wget -r should be a starting point.
But you see, if you can say "everybody's a luser", then you don't feel so bad about supporting "your" fuckwits.
Happens to me all the time elsewhere when I bitch about the Republicans: one or two people will always come up and say how awful "both sides" are... never mind that there are more than the two sides, and that the person saying so is conservative, i.e. it's a polite form of "shut up".
What if Oracle throws lots of resources behind OO.o, overshadowing the efforts that LO makes?
Pfft. They're more likely to neglect it once Ellison moves onto his next acquisition. Same thing's happened with Oracle Calendar, formerly Steltor's Corporate Time, which we use.
They've barely done any work on either the server or client since the acquisition, the Outlook integration is (still) a disaster, and they haven't maintained the Palm or Windows Mobile sync clients in ages. They still haven't come up with any solutions for syncing with more modern PDAs or smart phones, other than "hey, you can buy this third-party app that (sometimes) works".
The spec, as the article points out, is too loose.
Much like your mom.
Isn't Harper still in charge up there? Yeah.
I promise you they *did* have problems, but the money was good enough that they made do.
DOS well and truly *was* a crap gaming platform, chum. Since you've got your rose-colored glasses on, let's look back:
Segmented memory architecture (640K conventional RAM, 64K in the high-memory-area, and *five* different ways of accessing anything past 1MB:
* Direct, using INT15 in the BIOS
* Expanded memory, whose spec had two major versions
* Extended memory (XMS)
* DOS Protected Mode Interface
* Virtual Control Program Interface
In addition, there were *no* standards or standard drivers for accessing hardware. Game devs almost always had to write their own sound and video drivers, for example.
On top of that, you had to configure DOS so the damned thing could run your game. Some games needed 600K of conventional RAM and some expanded memory, other games needed 4MB to themselves and so nothing could load on boot, and you had to worry about loading utilities to configure the sound hardware. Sometimes you had to load another utility to make your video hardware be VESA BIOS compliant.
The old Macs had a ton of faults, but for gaming you can't seriously claim that DOS was anything but a disaster. We just didn't know any better at the time.
Should I be surprised that the usual suspects in DC aren't pitching a fit about selling our water to foreigners?
Mostly in Republican areas, though, when they're not busy howling about liberals and the government.
People don't generally respond to or read week-old posts because there's so many other stories posted here, and because unless you're a subscriber you can only see your most recent 25 posts, so if you post frequently you'd never see week-old responses.
This. It's just like Yahoo News, or my local paper's comment boards. For that matter, it's about like the paper's printed letters-to-the-editor: retirees or unemployed with too much time on their hands who get printed frequently, a fair amount of it whatever thoughts on any random thing they happened to have that day.
As Oatwom noted, you'll get people who vote according to their political viewpoint, and you'll even see this on "reputable" websites.
Because your average person is a fucking retarded mouth-breather.
Then you get away from Slashdot and into the general population...
174 grains at 2600 feet per second would let you deal with it at range before it can /touch/ you.
Well, no. The moon's actually moving /away/ from Earth, slowly. In the very distant future, it'll be flung out of orbit. However, this will be long after the Sun goes nova.
Hey, you can't talk that way about Saint Reagan!
The cleverer forum spammers I've seen will post empty nonsense to a long-dead thread, with a spam link in their signature.
That is a terrible annoyance, isn't it? I've only run into one application I know of that saved its data there, so naturally I usually don't back that folder up when I switch users to new computers.
That mistake cost a user several hours of work.
NIAGARA FALLS!
Slowly I turned. Step by step. Inch by inch...
To go off on a tangent:
I'm astonished that we've never threatened complete (or at least substantial) withdrawal of foreign aid if they don't stop this crap with the settlements, given that we keep attempting to keep the peace process towards a two-state solution.
That would appear to me the best way to get their attention.
Yes. Even the TV shows can be damned annoying with the higher dynamic range. For example, I'll turn the volume up a little because I can't quite hear the spoken dialog, but moments later there's a loud sound effect, or background music, and I have to turn it back down because it's suddenly too loud.
Automatic dynamic-range compression at the TV level would be a good selling point for me.
It'd be Really Nice if one standard cellular protocol and frequency band(s) were agreed upon (I'd rather not legislate technical specifications), so that I could in fact take my old Sprint phone and use it on Verizon's network if I so chose, or vice versa.
Then there really wouldn't be a monopoly in wireless.
It's an uphill battle - it'll be really hard to out-shout Faux News and company, and they've got the ear of conservatives /already/.
It's easier for Intel et al to go after people who are selling a product, especially a physical device. Much easier for a software author to be safely anonymous so the DMCA can't touch 'em.