This is important, and a reason that I'm likely to buy an AMD/ATI card for my next upgrade after being an nVidia loyalist for the better part of a decade.
He said "major players". VIA's IGPs are generations behind and only end up in 'budget' computers or embedded appliances. Matrox serves a niche market primarily focused on professional workstation rendering. Neither competes head to head with nVidia or AMD/ATI.
What kind of shitty places have you lived in that you had to pay to use public libraries? I've lived in several different counties of several different states, and I've never paid one cent just to have a library card and check out books.
Further, since your complaint about campus libraries is their lack of fiction, you really want to set up the interwebs as better for that? Are you one of those guys that gets off to furry Harry Potter/Pokemon crossover fan-fics? Because other than really piss poor erotic fan fiction, the internet really sucks for fiction.
The internet kicks ass, but real books have a very valid place in society and academia. This e-reader experiment proves that.
[...]there's just no reason for companies to be giving this stuff out.
...right after saying:
[...]it is convenient, profitable, and legal.
It's also nothing new. Do you think that never before the interwebs was data collected about demographics and metrics? That supply and demand occurred randomly? The internet makes it easier, but fundamental economic relationships have existed as long as economies themselves. Businesses have kept ledgers of their clients and transactions for as long as there has been writing. It was generally in the interests of these businesses to keep such ledgers private, and they did so out of those interests to build trust with their clients, but that was a practical thing, neither a moral nor a legal obligation.
Oh and vis a vis Target, hate to break it to you, but your credit card # is your 'user #' and they must know your name because presumably you carry ID against which they could verify that you are who you claim you are. Otherwise anybody could make purchases in your name not merely unchallenged but unchallengable. Granted most vendors assume people are who they say they are, which negates its value, but that is just one of many flaws of the system.
I'm not talking about just the university, I'm talking about the whole city. Wireless was pervasive throughout the entire metro-area. I know, I used to wardrive Seattle starting in 2002. Every neighborhood had access points.
Jesus you people must live in caves. In 2002 wireless was ubiquitous both at Seattle University where I was going and Seattle in general. You couldn't swing a cat without hitting a place that offered wireless access and many used it.
You're kidding right? You didn't even have 802.11b? That came out eleven years ago and was all over my university when I was there eight years ago (where I also used a laptop in class, and I know the law students were all required to have laptops). So do Europeans have fire? Or the wheel? I mean please.
I beta tested 98SE, and even at that stage it was so stable I couldn't tell it was beta. 98SE ran very stable on my systems for years, but this is probably as much due to a difference in hardware/drivers as anything.
Win2k when I installed it on release day refused to work with my MOUSE. That's pretty fundamental fail, even if it's anecdotal and specific only to me.
I realize of course that it was a successor to NT and not 98, but it was also intended for 'the home desktop' where as NT was not. Consequently that Win2k was compatible with hardware insofar as NT was compatible with hardware is not relevant to that transition. NT was meant to be stable on fairly limited hardware, not be the wild swiss army knife that 9x was, and that sort of functionality didn't really merge with the NT architecture until XP.
Really the Vista analogue is Win2k. I think that Win2k:XP and Vista:Win7 are very parallel. I don't think people remember how truly awful Win2k was on day one. I installed it the week it was released and it was incompatible with so much of my hardware I was offline for three weeks until I just went back to 98SE (which I used until XP came out).
I also think that XP was just about MS's best OS out of the gate. Yes, it was vulnerable like swiss cheese, but even before SP1 it was otherwise very stable and polished if you could keep the malware at bay.
Vista was utter crap on an unimagined scale. One update screwed my system so bad that every 24-48 hours it would stop handling HTTP, POP, and IMAP, but IRC would still work, as would ICMP. The computer was also being used as a gateway at that time and HTTP requests would work THROUGH it from other computers, but not FROM it. No amount of releasing/renewing the IP, updating drivers/firmware, or bouncing services around had any effect. It had to be restarted a minimum of every two days. This behavior persisted until SP1 came out. Like I said, utter crap.
I still haven't had a chance to try Win7, though from all the positive feedback I definitely will when I get around to my next system overhaul.
Those ads are probably coasting on a contract period. Their agreement may/probably contains established periods between when changes to contract can take effect. Otherwise they would have to return the invested funds by those companies and/or face a lawsuit for failing to meet the terms of the contract / failing to render services paid for etc. (IANAL)
What I find really amusing is that this will potentially impact WSU and all schools with sports teams called 'Cougars'. It's kind of like when AOL banned the word 'breast' and people in chat rooms had to talk about 'hooter cancer'!
Moralism is fucking stupid and society needs to get over it. Google is just contributing to the problem and acting like hypocrites to do it. China thinks they censor for 'morality' too, but that wasn't ok for Google, Google only wants to censor for morality on its own terms.
Actually, if he were in court on trial for any variation of "theft" (eg robbery, burglary, etc.) for simply violating a copyright, the case would be dismissed. These are not the same terms, they are not the same crimes, and they cannot be tried as such. Copyright infringement is not, has not been, and hopefully never will be considered in legal terms theft. People need to stop conflating these terms.
That's really an apples to oranges thing. I, for one, have always hated console multiplayer (split-screen is for idiots and makes playing any game like an FPS a moot point for ambushing and any real tactics) and console controllers. Secondly, though their rate of replacement may differ, a lot of people including 'non-techies' go through several generations of computers, so the only additional cost is the network hardware so long as they're smart enough not to dump the systems. So long as the games we're talking about here aren't Far Cry 2 or whatever, older systems aren't that big a problem. Indie games tend to be a little less hoggish. The one game that my wife likes to play with me now and then, Battleship Chess (from indie dev Apezone), will run on damn near anything, and the author (yes, it's entirely one person) is a really nice guy who would probably even give you another license if you asked.
How is that relevant? This isn't the 80s anymore. The TV doesn't have the same central family role that it used to have. Many households have multiple TVs and/or multiple computers. So what? There is no magical, central location for mindshare or household focus anymore.
Your counterargument defeats itself. That mindset would only let them fight hard enough to fulfill the role they thought they were playing. If they thought they were going to win for a representation of the Nazis and deflate that whole mythos, don't you think they would shy away, even subconsciously, from following all the way through?
Your perspective simply underscores that there is no way that the British could have the equivalent German drive to 'win for Germany'. It's simply impossible to account for the differences in motivation and mentality in such a unilateral exercise.
Also, did you see the article I linked to in this post?
The reason that the Allies 'bogged down' in Italy was simply that Allied commanders actually thought about their soldiers as valuable human beings and not fodder. I'm sure that if they took the Soviet approach of accepting three losses to every German killed the West would have been in Berlin by the end of 1943. However, because the Allies wanted the opposite, and achieved three dead Germans for every dead Allied soldier, it took more time, and clearly deserves more praise.
If you really think that millions of aerial missions 'didn't achieve much' then I don't think any reasonable argument will convince you otherwise. Germans are very resourceful and productive people, and you can be sure that without the bombings their production would have been triple what it was. Further, without the Allies distracting the Luftwaffe, air support on the Eastern front would have doubled.
You tell me to educate myself? The Finns didn't even offer token resistance to the Nazis, they served side by side with them voluntarily! I know a fair amount about the Winter War, my own family is part Finnish, and let me say I don't blame the Finns for 'making a pact with the devil' as it were to save their nation from the Soviets during the Continuation War. I don't blame them at all, but to then hold them up as an example of how Europeans offered more than token resistance to Germany is absurd. Literally nonsense.
France was not 'exhausted' any more than Germany was. Perhaps you forgot they were fighting the same war? And Germany lost that one too. The French problem was that their tactics hadn't changed in decades. They thought they were beyond prepared for future trench warfare, and while that was true, they didn't realize that trench warfare was not the future. It had nothing to do with 'exhaustion'. Hell, France and Britain had material superiority to the Germans, but they were just incompetent in using it and deployed it in tactically obsolete ways.
Slashdot Mirror
This is important, and a reason that I'm likely to buy an AMD/ATI card for my next upgrade after being an nVidia loyalist for the better part of a decade.
He said "major players". VIA's IGPs are generations behind and only end up in 'budget' computers or embedded appliances. Matrox serves a niche market primarily focused on professional workstation rendering. Neither competes head to head with nVidia or AMD/ATI.
What kind of shitty places have you lived in that you had to pay to use public libraries? I've lived in several different counties of several different states, and I've never paid one cent just to have a library card and check out books.
Further, since your complaint about campus libraries is their lack of fiction, you really want to set up the interwebs as better for that? Are you one of those guys that gets off to furry Harry Potter/Pokemon crossover fan-fics? Because other than really piss poor erotic fan fiction, the internet really sucks for fiction.
The internet kicks ass, but real books have a very valid place in society and academia. This e-reader experiment proves that.
[...]there's just no reason for companies to be giving this stuff out.
...right after saying:
[...]it is convenient, profitable, and legal.
It's also nothing new. Do you think that never before the interwebs was data collected about demographics and metrics? That supply and demand occurred randomly? The internet makes it easier, but fundamental economic relationships have existed as long as economies themselves. Businesses have kept ledgers of their clients and transactions for as long as there has been writing. It was generally in the interests of these businesses to keep such ledgers private, and they did so out of those interests to build trust with their clients, but that was a practical thing, neither a moral nor a legal obligation.
Oh and vis a vis Target, hate to break it to you, but your credit card # is your 'user #' and they must know your name because presumably you carry ID against which they could verify that you are who you claim you are. Otherwise anybody could make purchases in your name not merely unchallenged but unchallengable. Granted most vendors assume people are who they say they are, which negates its value, but that is just one of many flaws of the system.
Where can I sign up for Google Car Beta?
What'll you bet that Comcast tries to sabotage this clandestinely, gets caught, and shoves the whole net neutrality debate onto center stage?
I'm not talking about just the university, I'm talking about the whole city. Wireless was pervasive throughout the entire metro-area. I know, I used to wardrive Seattle starting in 2002. Every neighborhood had access points.
Jesus you people must live in caves. In 2002 wireless was ubiquitous both at Seattle University where I was going and Seattle in general. You couldn't swing a cat without hitting a place that offered wireless access and many used it.
You're kidding right? You didn't even have 802.11b? That came out eleven years ago and was all over my university when I was there eight years ago (where I also used a laptop in class, and I know the law students were all required to have laptops). So do Europeans have fire? Or the wheel? I mean please.
Mmmmmm... now that's good sarcasm!{/Jon Stewart}
So you think that ink on paper is more physical than the magnetic polarity on a HDD? Or the electrical polarity in SDRAM?
The whole idea is of course superstitious bullshit, but electric and magnetic forces are just as physical as solid matter.
Oh to be so burdened.
I beta tested 98SE, and even at that stage it was so stable I couldn't tell it was beta. 98SE ran very stable on my systems for years, but this is probably as much due to a difference in hardware/drivers as anything.
Win2k when I installed it on release day refused to work with my MOUSE. That's pretty fundamental fail, even if it's anecdotal and specific only to me.
I realize of course that it was a successor to NT and not 98, but it was also intended for 'the home desktop' where as NT was not. Consequently that Win2k was compatible with hardware insofar as NT was compatible with hardware is not relevant to that transition. NT was meant to be stable on fairly limited hardware, not be the wild swiss army knife that 9x was, and that sort of functionality didn't really merge with the NT architecture until XP.
Really the Vista analogue is Win2k. I think that Win2k:XP and Vista:Win7 are very parallel. I don't think people remember how truly awful Win2k was on day one. I installed it the week it was released and it was incompatible with so much of my hardware I was offline for three weeks until I just went back to 98SE (which I used until XP came out).
I also think that XP was just about MS's best OS out of the gate. Yes, it was vulnerable like swiss cheese, but even before SP1 it was otherwise very stable and polished if you could keep the malware at bay.
Vista was utter crap on an unimagined scale. One update screwed my system so bad that every 24-48 hours it would stop handling HTTP, POP, and IMAP, but IRC would still work, as would ICMP. The computer was also being used as a gateway at that time and HTTP requests would work THROUGH it from other computers, but not FROM it. No amount of releasing/renewing the IP, updating drivers/firmware, or bouncing services around had any effect. It had to be restarted a minimum of every two days. This behavior persisted until SP1 came out. Like I said, utter crap.
I still haven't had a chance to try Win7, though from all the positive feedback I definitely will when I get around to my next system overhaul.
Whooooosh!
My electrodes explode with delight!
Those ads are probably coasting on a contract period. Their agreement may/probably contains established periods between when changes to contract can take effect. Otherwise they would have to return the invested funds by those companies and/or face a lawsuit for failing to meet the terms of the contract / failing to render services paid for etc. (IANAL)
What I find really amusing is that this will potentially impact WSU and all schools with sports teams called 'Cougars'. It's kind of like when AOL banned the word 'breast' and people in chat rooms had to talk about 'hooter cancer'!
Moralism is fucking stupid and society needs to get over it. Google is just contributing to the problem and acting like hypocrites to do it. China thinks they censor for 'morality' too, but that wasn't ok for Google, Google only wants to censor for morality on its own terms.
Actually, if he were in court on trial for any variation of "theft" (eg robbery, burglary, etc.) for simply violating a copyright, the case would be dismissed. These are not the same terms, they are not the same crimes, and they cannot be tried as such. Copyright infringement is not, has not been, and hopefully never will be considered in legal terms theft. People need to stop conflating these terms.
That's really an apples to oranges thing. I, for one, have always hated console multiplayer (split-screen is for idiots and makes playing any game like an FPS a moot point for ambushing and any real tactics) and console controllers. Secondly, though their rate of replacement may differ, a lot of people including 'non-techies' go through several generations of computers, so the only additional cost is the network hardware so long as they're smart enough not to dump the systems. So long as the games we're talking about here aren't Far Cry 2 or whatever, older systems aren't that big a problem. Indie games tend to be a little less hoggish. The one game that my wife likes to play with me now and then, Battleship Chess (from indie dev Apezone), will run on damn near anything, and the author (yes, it's entirely one person) is a really nice guy who would probably even give you another license if you asked.
All that aside, life isn't fair.
How is that relevant? This isn't the 80s anymore. The TV doesn't have the same central family role that it used to have. Many households have multiple TVs and/or multiple computers. So what? There is no magical, central location for mindshare or household focus anymore.
Your counterargument defeats itself. That mindset would only let them fight hard enough to fulfill the role they thought they were playing. If they thought they were going to win for a representation of the Nazis and deflate that whole mythos, don't you think they would shy away, even subconsciously, from following all the way through?
Your perspective simply underscores that there is no way that the British could have the equivalent German drive to 'win for Germany'. It's simply impossible to account for the differences in motivation and mentality in such a unilateral exercise.
Also, did you see the article I linked to in this post?
The reason that the Allies 'bogged down' in Italy was simply that Allied commanders actually thought about their soldiers as valuable human beings and not fodder. I'm sure that if they took the Soviet approach of accepting three losses to every German killed the West would have been in Berlin by the end of 1943. However, because the Allies wanted the opposite, and achieved three dead Germans for every dead Allied soldier, it took more time, and clearly deserves more praise.
If you really think that millions of aerial missions 'didn't achieve much' then I don't think any reasonable argument will convince you otherwise. Germans are very resourceful and productive people, and you can be sure that without the bombings their production would have been triple what it was. Further, without the Allies distracting the Luftwaffe, air support on the Eastern front would have doubled.
You tell me to educate myself? The Finns didn't even offer token resistance to the Nazis, they served side by side with them voluntarily! I know a fair amount about the Winter War, my own family is part Finnish, and let me say I don't blame the Finns for 'making a pact with the devil' as it were to save their nation from the Soviets during the Continuation War. I don't blame them at all, but to then hold them up as an example of how Europeans offered more than token resistance to Germany is absurd. Literally nonsense.
France was not 'exhausted' any more than Germany was. Perhaps you forgot they were fighting the same war? And Germany lost that one too. The French problem was that their tactics hadn't changed in decades. They thought they were beyond prepared for future trench warfare, and while that was true, they didn't realize that trench warfare was not the future. It had nothing to do with 'exhaustion'. Hell, France and Britain had material superiority to the Germans, but they were just incompetent in using it and deployed it in tactically obsolete ways.
Flamebait? Really? What drugs are the mods on today?