That's because Vista's DRM isn't turned on yet. Microsoft says they'll turn it on starting year 2010 (via an update of course), and then good luck trying to play all your burned CDs and DVDs that lack DRM.
Also:
I wouldn't be so sure that businesses will immediately jump to Windows 7. Being a contractor I get to see a lot of different companies installations, and Not One has upgraded to Vista. They still prefer XP even though it's almost three years since a new OS arrived.
The $500 PC discussed in the summary only has 512 megabytes of RAM. That won't work with Vista which runs like a snail through molasses, but is it enough to run "SUSE" Linux? Or will that be running slow too?
Slow??? In 1986 I wanted to buy a 20 megabyte drive (but being a teen, lacked funds). In 2006 I could have bought 750,000 megabytes. That's a growth rate of about 35 gig per year.
You say in 2008 we can get 1500 gigabytes, so that's a growth rate of 250 gig per year. From 35 gig average to 250 gig average. I call that a "speed up" not a slowdown.
>>>a 64GB and 128GB ssd is going for $136 and $328
I still wouldn't buy them. $136 would buy me a nice 500 gig disk drive, and $328 is about how much a 1000 gig disk drive costs.
When? About 1 minute prior to posting my message I did a search for costs. I'm glad to see there's now a $700 option, but that's still about ten times more expensive than the $90 disk drive I bought last year.
Nowadays I can buy a 1000 gigabyte disk drive for around $250. Can I buy a flash solid-state drive for the same cost? No.
ROM, Flash, Solid State..... it's all still integrated circuitry and more-complicated to build than pressing a disc. Complication drives up manufacturing cost which is why discs will always be cheaper than ICs.
>>>Game prices have already made their way back up to N64 costs.
No prices have dropped. A $60 DVD in 2008 dollars is only $45 in 1996 dollars, so real cost to the consumer has come down by about fifteen bucks. ----- PLUS I challenge you to build a cartridge ROM that is 8500 megabytes and still only charge sixty dollars for it. It can't be done.
Your post was labeled troll but I still think it's worth of replying to:
Please tell us, O Wise One, which features users want and which features users don't want. And remember, your choices must be universal across all users because one person's vital feature is another person's bloat.
(1) The OS could be customizable so if you want a feature like 128 million-color icons with fully animation, you could keep it, but if I just want a plain 16 color display that runs fast, I can disable it and not waste precious RAM loading it.
(2) The OS could fit into a 512 megabyte RAM like it was advertised to do, rather than have to do "swapfile thrashing" which makes my brother's PC run like it's on a floppy-based system.
>>>"My brother has a PC near-identical to mine, but while my XP-PC runs nice and fast, his Vista PC runs like it has a floppy drive instead of a hard drive."
Yeah man, and my third cousin twice removed has a PC identical to the one I had 10 years ago and while my Windows 3.1 ran blazingly fast his XP runs like it's on a tape drive! XP is so slow and bloated!
(3) My brother's PC was not ten years old you arrogant little pissant. My brother's PC was brand-new when he bought it. Microsoft never should have said Vista could run on that PC; Microsoft should have advised the vendors to continue using XP for the low-end PCs.
>>>Meaningless. Every one of those federal jobs represents some way for a Congresscritter to convince a donor to give him the big money for his next election.
So your entire argument is based upon the idea that politicians are too corrupt to do the right thing. I agree. However that was not my point; my point was that the debt COULD be paid off with a 50% cut in spending. All we need is some honest men in power who put principle ahead of re-election.
If I were president I'd simply hand Congress a budget with every line-item cut 50%, except social security (I wouldn't touch that with a ten lightyear pole). The Congresspersons would probably balk and whine and cry, but eventually a budget would pass with 25% cuts which is not what I wanted, but it's a step in the right direction.
"We have to raise taxes" is not the only solution. I prefer the alternate solution of cutting spending. Something American families are now forced to do, and I think the American government should follow down that same path.
>>>Actually extending medicare to everyone would actually reduce the per person cost for medical care.
Yeah sure, but it would increase the TOTAL cost to the government. Changing Medicare to a "for poor folks" program would lower the government's expenses and help pay off the debt.
>>>Evidence shows that a universal health care system can be operated more efficiently
By that reasoning we should eliminate competition and move to one provides services because they are "more efficient". In other words simply allow Microsoft to make all software, Comcast provide all television/internet, and Ford build all cars. Now you'll probably argue those would be monopolies, and monopolies are bad. I agree. But a U.S. Congress monopoly is NO better and has the identical flaws (no external pressure to innovate, no external pressure to reduce prices as low as possible, no freedom of choice for the consumer, et cetera). I don't want ANY monopolies, private, government or otherwise.
Cops and other institutions are not going to copy their stored DVDs every year. They want something that they can "record once, throw in a box, and forget it". The analog tape fits that role perfectly because even though it might have some magnetic loss, it will still be watchable when Cold Case digs it out of the box in year 2030.;-)
This teacher is the "can dish it out but can't take it" type. She threatened to sue the Helios guy for distributing free Linux software, and the Helios guy published her post publicly, and then suddenly she starts crying. My dad is like that.
Last Thanksgiving he started yelling at my mom, telling her she was a "stupid bitch" who didn't know how to cook, but he forgot that I was in the next room. So then *I* stepped in and told him to stop it. He immediately started crying.
This Karen teacher reminds me of my dad. A person who like to attack others ("I'll sue you Helios") but can not handle it when the victim stands-up to defend themselves.
Riiiight. And the Playstation 4 and Nintendo Wii part 2 will abandon discs in favor of cartridges again. Just our of curiosity I looked-up how much it would cost to replace my standard disk drive:
300 GB disk drive - I spent $90.
256 GB solid state - $7,426 to $9,125 online
Ouch.
This is why Nintendo 64 and Nintendo DS cartridges never grew larger than 0.3 gigabytes, and why for the Cube and Wii they abandoned the solid state cartridge in favor of discs. Discs are simpler and therefore cheaper.
So it will cost $1 billion to provide the netbooks, and $10 billion to give everyone wireless internet to access the web-based software. Yeah great solution Microsoft.
The REAL answer is to build the laptops so they don't need internet to run software.
Super VHS looks just as "quality" as any DVD.... I will even go so far as to say "better quality" since S-VHS doesn't have annoying compression blur, blocking, or mosquitos.
I bought one of those fancy "digital" HDD cameras and almost immediately returned it, since the quality was actually worse than my old S-VHS camera.
I concur. Why not just use analog videotape? I have tapes that are 30 years old and although there's some deterioration you can still see/hear the original movie.
Self-erasing DVDs and CDs are just too unreliable for important storage of irreplaceable things (convict testimonies, family memories, wedding video). This is why I still use Super VHS-C for my captures - it's robust and captures an image better than DVD (no compression).
Yes I don't think the blogger was being too harsh (remember the teacher threatened to SUE him - an attack without merit), especially when you read what OTHER teachers have posted. Like this one:
I am a school teacher in the Austin Independent School District and while I don't know any "Karen", I am intimately familiar with the rhetoric and attitude. The author here is uncomfortably close to knowing what he's talking about when he speaks of the NEA. We are "encouraged strongly" to discourage the use of anything other than Microsoft products in the school district and between the Tech folks fearing for their jobs and the ignorance of all the "Karens" I deal with daily, it's a wonder the boy wasn't publicly flogged.
I have been trying to get our school district to use Linux for 3 years and I've been told that I am to desist with this quest if I want to keep my job.
Those who questioned the email's authenticity owe him(?) an apology. Of course as I peruse the comments of the sort, I note with a wry smile that you don't have the courage to sign your name to it.
Uh... actually my complaint is more about a single company charging me different rates simply because I crossed a state border. IMHO if they charge 25 cents a minute when I'm home, then that same company should charge 25 cents when I'm in Maryland. Charging me 75 is ridiculous.
For example when I cross the border, my bank doesn't charge me different rates for services. Why should the cellphone company?
Well those two episodes aren't the only things I'm downloading. When they're done the next task is to download about 100 Teaching Company lectures. My computer is always downloading something, and thus it makes no sense to turn it off.
Slashdot Mirror
Damnit. Did I leave my webcam turned again? How did you know?
That's because Vista's DRM isn't turned on yet. Microsoft says they'll turn it on starting year 2010 (via an update of course), and then good luck trying to play all your burned CDs and DVDs that lack DRM.
Also:
I wouldn't be so sure that businesses will immediately jump to Windows 7. Being a contractor I get to see a lot of different companies installations, and Not One has upgraded to Vista. They still prefer XP even though it's almost three years since a new OS arrived.
Uh... then you'll have to add $200 to the cost of the PC. Better to leave the Windows off and push Linux as a "lower cost alternative".
I took a quick look at what HP is offering.
The $500 PC discussed in the summary only has 512 megabytes of RAM. That won't work with Vista which runs like a snail through molasses, but is it enough to run "SUSE" Linux? Or will that be running slow too?
Slow??? In 1986 I wanted to buy a 20 megabyte drive (but being a teen, lacked funds). In 2006 I could have bought 750,000 megabytes. That's a growth rate of about 35 gig per year.
You say in 2008 we can get 1500 gigabytes, so that's a growth rate of 250 gig per year. From 35 gig average to 250 gig average. I call that a "speed up" not a slowdown.
>>>a 64GB and 128GB ssd is going for $136 and $328
I still wouldn't buy them. $136 would buy me a nice 500 gig disk drive, and $328 is about how much a 1000 gig disk drive costs.
When? About 1 minute prior to posting my message I did a search for costs. I'm glad to see there's now a $700 option, but that's still about ten times more expensive than the $90 disk drive I bought last year.
Nowadays I can buy a 1000 gigabyte disk drive for around $250. Can I buy a flash solid-state drive for the same cost? No.
ROM, Flash, Solid State..... it's all still integrated circuitry and more-complicated to build than pressing a disc. Complication drives up manufacturing cost which is why discs will always be cheaper than ICs.
(Yes I stand behind that statement.)
>>>Game prices have already made their way back up to N64 costs.
No prices have dropped. A $60 DVD in 2008 dollars is only $45 in 1996 dollars, so real cost to the consumer has come down by about fifteen bucks. ----- PLUS I challenge you to build a cartridge ROM that is 8500 megabytes and still only charge sixty dollars for it. It can't be done.
Your post was labeled troll but I still think it's worth of replying to:
Please tell us, O Wise One, which features users want and which features users don't want. And remember, your choices must be universal across all users because one person's vital feature is another person's bloat.
(1) The OS could be customizable so if you want a feature like 128 million-color icons with fully animation, you could keep it, but if I just want a plain 16 color display that runs fast, I can disable it and not waste precious RAM loading it.
(2) The OS could fit into a 512 megabyte RAM like it was advertised to do, rather than have to do "swapfile thrashing" which makes my brother's PC run like it's on a floppy-based system.
>>>"My brother has a PC near-identical to mine, but while my XP-PC runs nice and fast, his Vista PC runs like it has a floppy drive instead of a hard drive."
Yeah man, and my third cousin twice removed has a PC identical to the one I had 10 years ago and while my Windows 3.1 ran blazingly fast his XP runs like it's on a tape drive! XP is so slow and bloated!
(3) My brother's PC was not ten years old you arrogant little pissant. My brother's PC was brand-new when he bought it. Microsoft never should have said Vista could run on that PC; Microsoft should have advised the vendors to continue using XP for the low-end PCs.
>>>Meaningless. Every one of those federal jobs represents some way for a Congresscritter to convince a donor to give him the big money for his next election.
So your entire argument is based upon the idea that politicians are too corrupt to do the right thing. I agree. However that was not my point; my point was that the debt COULD be paid off with a 50% cut in spending. All we need is some honest men in power who put principle ahead of re-election.
If I were president I'd simply hand Congress a budget with every line-item cut 50%, except social security (I wouldn't touch that with a ten lightyear pole). The Congresspersons would probably balk and whine and cry, but eventually a budget would pass with 25% cuts which is not what I wanted, but it's a step in the right direction.
"We have to raise taxes" is not the only solution. I prefer the alternate solution of cutting spending. Something American families are now forced to do, and I think the American government should follow down that same path.
>>>Actually extending medicare to everyone would actually reduce the per person cost for medical care.
Yeah sure, but it would increase the TOTAL cost to the government. Changing Medicare to a "for poor folks" program would lower the government's expenses and help pay off the debt.
>>>Evidence shows that a universal health care system can be operated more efficiently
By that reasoning we should eliminate competition and move to one provides services because they are "more efficient". In other words simply allow Microsoft to make all software, Comcast provide all television/internet, and Ford build all cars. Now you'll probably argue those would be monopolies, and monopolies are bad. I agree. But a U.S. Congress monopoly is NO better and has the identical flaws (no external pressure to innovate, no external pressure to reduce prices as low as possible, no freedom of choice for the consumer, et cetera). I don't want ANY monopolies, private, government or otherwise.
Cops and other institutions are not going to copy their stored DVDs every year. They want something that they can "record once, throw in a box, and forget it". The analog tape fits that role perfectly because even though it might have some magnetic loss, it will still be watchable when Cold Case digs it out of the box in year 2030. ;-)
This teacher is the "can dish it out but can't take it" type. She threatened to sue the Helios guy for distributing free Linux software, and the Helios guy published her post publicly, and then suddenly she starts crying. My dad is like that.
Last Thanksgiving he started yelling at my mom, telling her she was a "stupid bitch" who didn't know how to cook, but he forgot that I was in the next room. So then *I* stepped in and told him to stop it. He immediately started crying.
This Karen teacher reminds me of my dad.
A person who like to attack others ("I'll sue you Helios")
but can not handle it when the victim stands-up to defend themselves.
Riiiight. And the Playstation 4 and Nintendo Wii part 2 will abandon discs in favor of cartridges again. Just our of curiosity I looked-up how much it would cost to replace my standard disk drive:
300 GB disk drive - I spent $90.
256 GB solid state - $7,426 to $9,125 online
Ouch.
This is why Nintendo 64 and Nintendo DS cartridges never grew larger than 0.3 gigabytes, and why for the Cube and Wii they abandoned the solid state cartridge in favor of discs. Discs are simpler and therefore cheaper.
This is why we need Hybrids that can operate on gasoline or diesel when the battery is low.
So it will cost $1 billion to provide the netbooks, and $10 billion to give everyone wireless internet to access the web-based software. Yeah great solution Microsoft.
The REAL answer is to build the laptops so they don't need internet to run software.
Or just clone your data across two drives (your c: drive and an external USB drive). If one fails you still have the second for backup.
Super VHS looks just as "quality" as any DVD.... I will even go so far as to say "better quality" since S-VHS doesn't have annoying compression blur, blocking, or mosquitos.
I bought one of those fancy "digital" HDD cameras and almost immediately returned it, since the quality was actually worse than my old S-VHS camera.
I concur. Why not just use analog videotape? I have tapes that are 30 years old and although there's some deterioration you can still see/hear the original movie.
Self-erasing DVDs and CDs are just too unreliable for important storage of irreplaceable things (convict testimonies, family memories, wedding video). This is why I still use Super VHS-C for my captures - it's robust and captures an image better than DVD (no compression).
"It was a joke" is not clear from the original post. Too bad smileys are now trademarked, else you could have used one to indicate it was just humor.
Yes I don't think the blogger was being too harsh (remember the teacher threatened to SUE him - an attack without merit), especially when you read what OTHER teachers have posted. Like this one:
I am a school teacher in the Austin Independent School District and while I don't know any "Karen", I am intimately familiar with the rhetoric and attitude. The author here is uncomfortably close to knowing what he's talking about when he speaks of the NEA. We are "encouraged strongly" to discourage the use of anything other than Microsoft products in the school district and between the Tech folks fearing for their jobs and the ignorance of all the "Karens" I deal with daily, it's a wonder the boy wasn't publicly flogged.
I have been trying to get our school district to use Linux for 3 years and I've been told that I am to desist with this quest if I want to keep my job.
Those who questioned the email's authenticity owe him(?) an apology. Of course as I peruse the comments of the sort, I note with a wry smile that you don't have the courage to sign your name to it.
Cowardice is easy. I wish this author well.
Tim Daily
>>>So doesn't GM and Ford.
???. European Ford diesels run on biodiesel.
Uh... actually my complaint is more about a single company charging me different rates simply because I crossed a state border. IMHO if they charge 25 cents a minute when I'm home, then that same company should charge 25 cents when I'm in Maryland. Charging me 75 is ridiculous.
For example when I cross the border, my bank doesn't charge me different rates for services. Why should the cellphone company?
>>>Looks like the article isn't the only one with unit trouble...... You're only off by a few orders of magnitude.
What's your point? I DO make $50 an hour. I didn't make an error with my units nor my math.
Well those two episodes aren't the only things I'm downloading. When they're done the next task is to download about 100 Teaching Company lectures. My computer is always downloading something, and thus it makes no sense to turn it off.