but I'd like to see a successful larger-budget online show, to pave the way for a gradual move to more television being online.
The main problem is control. With a small-budget show, you have a group of friends who generally agree on most things. With a larger budget you have more roles, more people, with more people becomes more disagreement. With TV you have the network more or less as a moderator, approve the content and distribute it. But with online its different, -anyone- can host it and its usually distributed over many channels, so do you put the content up for free on YouTube? Do you have ads on it? Do you have another site with it on there? Do you sell it? Do you sell it over a channel with DRM? What about iTunes, what if you want different pricing? Etc. This can lead to disagreements and eventually fragmentation.
There are many ways to solve conflicts. Violence is one way. Its no surprise that when shown primarily one way of solving conflicts, they will chose that option. Plus, there are many levels of violence and age groups. While Halo might be a bit too much for a 6 year old, my guess is an 8 or 9 year old would be able to handle it fine. Similarly, other games that use violence as the primary means of conflict resolution but don't use it exclusively such as RPGs would be perfectly fine, even ones with slight blood and violent imagery when in fights.
But when it comes down to it, everyone is different. I mean, there are some kids who I think are more mature than some of my coworkers, and other kids who act like they are 3 when they are much older. There is no doubt that some 6 year olds can handle violent games fine, some don't. But I think the primary flaw is that they blame -everything- on video games, the same effects can happen with TV, Movies, Books, the news, etc. And it is simply tyranny to ban free speech, and without a doubt video games are free speech.
Editorials are biased. TFA is really, as the name implies, the article. TFS is an editorial.
And this is the most scary part
, Chavez promoted the use of traditional toys like the Yo-Yo and Trompo, and suggested that electronic toys like 'the Nintendo' be put aside because they promote 'egoism, individualism and violence.'
Because we all know how -terrible- individualism is. But really when you look at oppressive regimes you see the death of individualism as a key characteristic. This just proved what most people knew: Chavez is a power-hungry dictator.
However, businesses also look at how their brands are doing. Just look at the Edsel, while it was owned by Ford, it failed because consumers didn't like it. Similarly, if no one buys Sony CDs because of the rootkit scares, yet people buy, say Sony Cybershot cameras, eventually Sony will stop making CDs but keep making cameras. Sure, you still give money to Sony, but in the end it still will make them stop producing an offending product.
What are you talking about? There is perfect examples of technology here! The lack of a real title in TFA, (unless master_iaa is somehow a real title), the total lack of HTML other than to embed in an ugly-looking flash plugin, the off center-ness of the flash object, everything just screams state of the art!
You see, this is the fundamental flaw of a government that does more than protect against fraud and force. Theres no way to opt out. Theres no way to protest in a meaningful way, sure, march up to Congress with posters but in the end they still throw you in jail if you choose not to support them by paying taxes.
With a private company, they screw you and you can screw them in the bottom line. If the government screws you either have to bend down for more or risk going to jail where they screw you more.
To be perfectly honest, the fact that most of them are employed is stealing my tax dollars. It seems that government offices are quite fond of creating messes to create more jobs which just sap productivity and money. But such is the way if you don't ever need to make a profit and just keep leaching off of the masses....
I haven't seen that to be the case; I don't see more fat people in bars than I do on the street. In fact, there are a higher percentage of fat people where I work than in my favorite bar, although that's probably because most of the people at work sit at a desk, while my favorite bar's clientelle is mostly construction workers.
Just because they aren't going to the bar doesn't mean they don't drink. Usually bars are social, a place to get together with "the guys" and try to pick up women. Now if a few fat guys are going together, why go to the bar where in general drinks are more expensive, you can't control the TV and your not going to pick up women at 400 pounds, when you can go to the liquor store and buy some cheap booze and go over to a friends house and catch the game or whatever?
The ones with the crappiest jobs usually are doing physical labor, and as such are generally a lot more fit than the average slashdotter, whether he's a skinny nerd or a fat nerd.
Depends on your view of crappy, sure, being a trashman or cleaning sewers is pretty much universally crappy. However a "better" job of shuffling papers all day similarly would be crappy because you don't really -do- anything and it kills your soul.
OK, you got me there. Driving an SUV is an almost sure sign of a reduced intellect. They cost more to drive than any other class of vehicle, and more people die in them per passsenger mile than any other type of vehicle due to their poor handling and braking and high center of gravity and lack of crumple zones. SUV drivers drive badly not from lack of driving skill but because their vehicles suck. Plus, ask an SUV driver why they have it and they'll say "it carries so many passengers", but notice SUVs on the road and you'll see very few with more than the driver. If you carry passengers, get a minivan -- more passengers, better mileage, and they're the safest vehicles on the road.
I drive an SUV and consider it to be a pretty good choice. The car itself was cheap ($5000) for being pretty much a fully loaded 97 Expedition (leather seats, power windows, power locks, all in very good condition). A few years later and no major repairs save for a belt that was slightly warn and was replaced as more of a preventive measure more than anything else. Sure, the gas mileage sucks, but honestly I don't drive it that much (walk to classes and really only use it to go about 15 miles to work part-time and to visit people). The handling isn't a huge deal as I'm usually almost always driving it on the interstate or well-known roads. Sure, I don't carry many people but its pretty nice all the crap that it can hold.
What would be a nice app to have (and would probably be simple to build) would be an app that would measure taxes vs benefits and compare it to current and projected birthrates and project into the future along with certain "disasters" that you could add. So you could find out if a certain bill would be sustainable. For example, you could put in data for, say, state run healthcare, birthrates, tax dollars, etc. and figure out if it would end up paying for itself. We don't need the public to be scammed into another version of social security that is not sustainable without unreasonable conditions such as an increasing birthrate (globally birth rates are down for most people, yes, the population keeps growing but the birthrate decreases leaving with more "useless" people than working people) and find out if it would require even more tax dollars.
Heh, have you ever tried to -use- a Blackberry browser? Not just the Bold, Storm and newer BlackBerries which came out after the iPhone but the ones before, were terrible the iPhone to be honest was the only mobile device with a truly decent browser. Yes, Opera Mini is nice and adequate for some reading, but Mobile Safari really took it to a next level.
BlackBerries are just fine for e-mail, but for web browsing on any one but the newer ones? Its a disaster.
The problem is existing software. Its easy to design a new system, but it won't be functional unless it either A) contains a copy of the OS needed to emulate (easy if you are Microsoft, nearly impossible for anyone else unless they want to pay $XX per copy in licensing fees plus other fees and restrictions) B) Has a functional emulator, while WINE works great for some programs, its by no means complete and it has been worked on since 1993!
Unless you have a small user base, a very devoted userbase (such as Mac users), or have lots of commercial developers, it will go nowhere. I've had users with Windows 98 bogged down with viruses, slowdowns, etc. reject an upgrade to a light Linux distro that is faster and has more default software and newer software because it doesn't have -insert some niche app or MS Office here- that is what keeps us in the "dark ages". Heck, look at Vista, even though it was Windows many programs just flat out didn't run unless you ran it as admin, no rhyme or reason for it, they just weren't programmed for a secure model, and for a lot of people those programs are -very- mission critical.
Lets see here, I don't need to buy a Mac and can continue to use my 2 year old computer for development, I also don't need to pay $99 to be able to publish my own apps, I don't need to wade through an "approval" process, basically there is no financial hindrance for people. I'd like to develop for the iPhone sometimes but I don't want to spend $700 minimum for a bit of small income, on the other hand, I can continue using existing materials and develop for Android. But the biggest reason why Android is going to thrive is no approval process, if Apple had a decent, sane process it wouldn't be as big of a deal, but with the headaches of the app store I can see the lack of that being the killer feature for Android developers.
But do you think Verizon would even -allow- a phone with Android to run? I mean, I've compared the same dumb phone (I think it was the Razr) across AT&T Sprint and Verizon, the AT&T and Sprint phones were pretty good but the Verizon phone was pretty much neutered to the point where they can't do anything beyond changing the background, changing it from ring to vibrate and using the camera. Verizon is -terrible- when it comes to phones, they might have the "network" but when all the phones are total crap, the network is useless. I think it even went as far as Verizon rejecting any phone with wi-fi.
The difference is the iPhone had -everything- usable, polished and was honestly the best around phone without question. On the other hand Android while not terrible still doesn't have as good as web browser as Mobile Safari, the commonly available Android handsets lack a headphone jack, lack of apps, etc.
And at the time? Compare every available American handset to the iPhone and the iPhone was the only one that got everything right (minus the apps/3G, but they eventually corrected those). So its no surprise someone wanted to pay $500 on the one phone that actually worked decently.
Except for the fact that most people don't buy third party phones (well, other than this one family who is the phone-murderer and keeps buying used phones off of E-Bay to replace the phones they killed...) and so if they don't have it in AT&T, Sprint, Verizon or T-Mobile's stores, no one will buy it unless there is -huge- hype about it like the iPhone, but other than that everyone pretty much just buys their phones from their cell phone company. And similarly, no one wants an expensive phone, $200 for a smartphone that seems to do -everything- seems to be the most anyone will pay, $300 unlocked will not sell well, people want cheap phones even if they are tied to an unholy contract or the phone isn't that great.
Even though there are a lot of Android handsets out they are all for... T-Mobile. Now, while T-Mobile is great for talking and texting and they have decent coverage and are GSM they have a fatal flaw, a lack of a 3G network. Ok, in larger cities you can get 3G just fine, but in a medium sized town? No 3G, AT&T has 3G there on the other hand. Similarly, they could have made the phones unlocked so you could use it on a different network, however they didn't. While AT&T is no saint when it comes to cell networks, they do have pretty good 3G coverage, T-Mobile, while improving just isn't there yet. Can't say anything about Sprint or Verizon as I haven't used either (Verizon seems to neuter -all- their phones to the point of being unusable and Sprint seems to be expensive).
Also, there needs to be a common third-party to buy their cell phones from, perhaps a Google store?
Police officers have 0 accountability. Their accountability is... other police officers. Since they are not elected they don't have to worry about us citizens wanting them gone. All they have to do is say "oh he looked suspicious to me" and most other police officers will shrug.
If it's a priority that you have a decent connection, you'll get a decent connection.
I know a full-time programmer, at home the most he can get is dial-up (or more recently cell phone internet which requires him to be in a specific location in his house just to get signal, costs a ton and can't download much). He doesn't really live in the "middle of nowhere" but he doesn't live in the city. He has called every major ISP and gotten the "we're expanding in your area in the next 6 months!" for about 5 years now. Theres no way he can get beyond dial-up, even crappy DSL is a no-go.
And honestly, most of the examples you quote are out of the range for most people.
One of his clients has a ranch in Colorado, and he wanted to be able to access all of his data while on the ranch. Due to the fact that the ranch house was several miles away from the nearest paved road, he had no cable or DSL service. I suppose satellite was probably an option, but when you're trying to set up a VPN to another state it probably helps to have lower latency than what satellite can provide.
If they have an isolated ranch in Colorado yet run such a business that they -must- access their data, chances are they make lots of money. Chances are they are doing this for a large business a lot of it could be written off of taxes however the initial funding is very high. Your solutions are akin to saying that we should buy and install our own cables. Most of us today don't happen to have $50K burning in our pocket to spend.
The thing is though, a -lot- of Apple update "problems" are things that I don't think I would notice. Things like noisy HDDs, worse wireless, strange fans, etc. I suppose Mac users notice their computer more than most other people (I mean, if I paid $1500 for a laptop I would be more attentive than on my $300 laptop) but most, if not all problems are trivial for 97% of the people affected with the problem and are really only noticed because of a forum post.
Exactly, there are a -lot- of places in the USA where there are avid gamers who are stuck with sub-par connections. And using WoW is a terrible example, its like saying because there are a lot of people who play on Xbox Live don't have a single player, local multiplayer or system link option.
In a game, it makes no sense to leave out options that are obvious, LAN play is pretty obvious, even if 95% of the people buying your game won't use it, if it isn't difficult to code and maintain you have nothing to lose.
It was on an older PC that took about 2 minutes to boot (ancient HDDs, but I kept it as a machine for guests to use in the guest room) that got decreased by that long when I upgraded to Xubuntu 9.04 (specs are Pentium 4 era Celeron, 512 MB of RAM, 20 gig ancient HDD). Yes, yes, I know the machine is crap but I got it at a garage sale a few years back for $20 and a monitor to go with it for $7.
Did it cost nothing to move from Windows ME to Windows 7? Thats about the time frame we are talking about here. For one thats impossible due to early Mac OS X systems running only on PowerPC and Snow Leopard only running on x86 CPUs. There is honestly no difference between Windows and OS X in their release cycles except for different terminology. Once you buy Windows you can download all of its service packs for free, similar with OS X, just because service pack 1 for Leopard would be numbered 10.5.1 doesn't mean its much different. However Windows doesn't follow that in the least and considers what would be an update for OS X as a different system in and of itself for example NT 5 (Windows 2000) and NT 5.1 (Windows XP)
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but I'd like to see a successful larger-budget online show, to pave the way for a gradual move to more television being online.
The main problem is control. With a small-budget show, you have a group of friends who generally agree on most things. With a larger budget you have more roles, more people, with more people becomes more disagreement. With TV you have the network more or less as a moderator, approve the content and distribute it. But with online its different, -anyone- can host it and its usually distributed over many channels, so do you put the content up for free on YouTube? Do you have ads on it? Do you have another site with it on there? Do you sell it? Do you sell it over a channel with DRM? What about iTunes, what if you want different pricing? Etc. This can lead to disagreements and eventually fragmentation.
You mean that its easy to stay successful when you make your media convenient to your users? Perhaps the RIAA/MPAA can learn something from this....
There are many ways to solve conflicts. Violence is one way. Its no surprise that when shown primarily one way of solving conflicts, they will chose that option. Plus, there are many levels of violence and age groups. While Halo might be a bit too much for a 6 year old, my guess is an 8 or 9 year old would be able to handle it fine. Similarly, other games that use violence as the primary means of conflict resolution but don't use it exclusively such as RPGs would be perfectly fine, even ones with slight blood and violent imagery when in fights.
But when it comes down to it, everyone is different. I mean, there are some kids who I think are more mature than some of my coworkers, and other kids who act like they are 3 when they are much older. There is no doubt that some 6 year olds can handle violent games fine, some don't. But I think the primary flaw is that they blame -everything- on video games, the same effects can happen with TV, Movies, Books, the news, etc. And it is simply tyranny to ban free speech, and without a doubt video games are free speech.
And this is the most scary part
, Chavez promoted the use of traditional toys like the Yo-Yo and Trompo, and suggested that electronic toys like 'the Nintendo' be put aside because they promote 'egoism, individualism and violence.'
Because we all know how -terrible- individualism is. But really when you look at oppressive regimes you see the death of individualism as a key characteristic. This just proved what most people knew: Chavez is a power-hungry dictator.
However, businesses also look at how their brands are doing. Just look at the Edsel, while it was owned by Ford, it failed because consumers didn't like it. Similarly, if no one buys Sony CDs because of the rootkit scares, yet people buy, say Sony Cybershot cameras, eventually Sony will stop making CDs but keep making cameras. Sure, you still give money to Sony, but in the end it still will make them stop producing an offending product.
What are you talking about? There is perfect examples of technology here! The lack of a real title in TFA, (unless master_iaa is somehow a real title), the total lack of HTML other than to embed in an ugly-looking flash plugin, the off center-ness of the flash object, everything just screams state of the art!
You see, this is the fundamental flaw of a government that does more than protect against fraud and force. Theres no way to opt out. Theres no way to protest in a meaningful way, sure, march up to Congress with posters but in the end they still throw you in jail if you choose not to support them by paying taxes.
With a private company, they screw you and you can screw them in the bottom line. If the government screws you either have to bend down for more or risk going to jail where they screw you more.
To be perfectly honest, the fact that most of them are employed is stealing my tax dollars. It seems that government offices are quite fond of creating messes to create more jobs which just sap productivity and money. But such is the way if you don't ever need to make a profit and just keep leaching off of the masses....
I haven't seen that to be the case; I don't see more fat people in bars than I do on the street. In fact, there are a higher percentage of fat people where I work than in my favorite bar, although that's probably because most of the people at work sit at a desk, while my favorite bar's clientelle is mostly construction workers.
Just because they aren't going to the bar doesn't mean they don't drink. Usually bars are social, a place to get together with "the guys" and try to pick up women. Now if a few fat guys are going together, why go to the bar where in general drinks are more expensive, you can't control the TV and your not going to pick up women at 400 pounds, when you can go to the liquor store and buy some cheap booze and go over to a friends house and catch the game or whatever?
The ones with the crappiest jobs usually are doing physical labor, and as such are generally a lot more fit than the average slashdotter, whether he's a skinny nerd or a fat nerd.
Depends on your view of crappy, sure, being a trashman or cleaning sewers is pretty much universally crappy. However a "better" job of shuffling papers all day similarly would be crappy because you don't really -do- anything and it kills your soul.
OK, you got me there. Driving an SUV is an almost sure sign of a reduced intellect. They cost more to drive than any other class of vehicle, and more people die in them per passsenger mile than any other type of vehicle due to their poor handling and braking and high center of gravity and lack of crumple zones. SUV drivers drive badly not from lack of driving skill but because their vehicles suck. Plus, ask an SUV driver why they have it and they'll say "it carries so many passengers", but notice SUVs on the road and you'll see very few with more than the driver. If you carry passengers, get a minivan -- more passengers, better mileage, and they're the safest vehicles on the road.
I drive an SUV and consider it to be a pretty good choice. The car itself was cheap ($5000) for being pretty much a fully loaded 97 Expedition (leather seats, power windows, power locks, all in very good condition). A few years later and no major repairs save for a belt that was slightly warn and was replaced as more of a preventive measure more than anything else. Sure, the gas mileage sucks, but honestly I don't drive it that much (walk to classes and really only use it to go about 15 miles to work part-time and to visit people). The handling isn't a huge deal as I'm usually almost always driving it on the interstate or well-known roads. Sure, I don't carry many people but its pretty nice all the crap that it can hold.
http://healthyamericans.org/reports/obesity2009/
The most obese states are located in the south. Look at the childhood obesity too and you will find even a higher concentration in the south.
What would be a nice app to have (and would probably be simple to build) would be an app that would measure taxes vs benefits and compare it to current and projected birthrates and project into the future along with certain "disasters" that you could add. So you could find out if a certain bill would be sustainable. For example, you could put in data for, say, state run healthcare, birthrates, tax dollars, etc. and figure out if it would end up paying for itself. We don't need the public to be scammed into another version of social security that is not sustainable without unreasonable conditions such as an increasing birthrate (globally birth rates are down for most people, yes, the population keeps growing but the birthrate decreases leaving with more "useless" people than working people) and find out if it would require even more tax dollars.
Heh, have you ever tried to -use- a Blackberry browser? Not just the Bold, Storm and newer BlackBerries which came out after the iPhone but the ones before, were terrible the iPhone to be honest was the only mobile device with a truly decent browser. Yes, Opera Mini is nice and adequate for some reading, but Mobile Safari really took it to a next level.
BlackBerries are just fine for e-mail, but for web browsing on any one but the newer ones? Its a disaster.
The problem is existing software. Its easy to design a new system, but it won't be functional unless it either A) contains a copy of the OS needed to emulate (easy if you are Microsoft, nearly impossible for anyone else unless they want to pay $XX per copy in licensing fees plus other fees and restrictions) B) Has a functional emulator, while WINE works great for some programs, its by no means complete and it has been worked on since 1993!
Unless you have a small user base, a very devoted userbase (such as Mac users), or have lots of commercial developers, it will go nowhere. I've had users with Windows 98 bogged down with viruses, slowdowns, etc. reject an upgrade to a light Linux distro that is faster and has more default software and newer software because it doesn't have -insert some niche app or MS Office here- that is what keeps us in the "dark ages". Heck, look at Vista, even though it was Windows many programs just flat out didn't run unless you ran it as admin, no rhyme or reason for it, they just weren't programmed for a secure model, and for a lot of people those programs are -very- mission critical.
Lets see here, I don't need to buy a Mac and can continue to use my 2 year old computer for development, I also don't need to pay $99 to be able to publish my own apps, I don't need to wade through an "approval" process, basically there is no financial hindrance for people. I'd like to develop for the iPhone sometimes but I don't want to spend $700 minimum for a bit of small income, on the other hand, I can continue using existing materials and develop for Android. But the biggest reason why Android is going to thrive is no approval process, if Apple had a decent, sane process it wouldn't be as big of a deal, but with the headaches of the app store I can see the lack of that being the killer feature for Android developers.
But do you think Verizon would even -allow- a phone with Android to run? I mean, I've compared the same dumb phone (I think it was the Razr) across AT&T Sprint and Verizon, the AT&T and Sprint phones were pretty good but the Verizon phone was pretty much neutered to the point where they can't do anything beyond changing the background, changing it from ring to vibrate and using the camera. Verizon is -terrible- when it comes to phones, they might have the "network" but when all the phones are total crap, the network is useless. I think it even went as far as Verizon rejecting any phone with wi-fi.
The difference is the iPhone had -everything- usable, polished and was honestly the best around phone without question. On the other hand Android while not terrible still doesn't have as good as web browser as Mobile Safari, the commonly available Android handsets lack a headphone jack, lack of apps, etc.
And at the time? Compare every available American handset to the iPhone and the iPhone was the only one that got everything right (minus the apps/3G, but they eventually corrected those). So its no surprise someone wanted to pay $500 on the one phone that actually worked decently.
Except for the fact that most people don't buy third party phones (well, other than this one family who is the phone-murderer and keeps buying used phones off of E-Bay to replace the phones they killed...) and so if they don't have it in AT&T, Sprint, Verizon or T-Mobile's stores, no one will buy it unless there is -huge- hype about it like the iPhone, but other than that everyone pretty much just buys their phones from their cell phone company. And similarly, no one wants an expensive phone, $200 for a smartphone that seems to do -everything- seems to be the most anyone will pay, $300 unlocked will not sell well, people want cheap phones even if they are tied to an unholy contract or the phone isn't that great.
Even though there are a lot of Android handsets out they are all for... T-Mobile. Now, while T-Mobile is great for talking and texting and they have decent coverage and are GSM they have a fatal flaw, a lack of a 3G network. Ok, in larger cities you can get 3G just fine, but in a medium sized town? No 3G, AT&T has 3G there on the other hand. Similarly, they could have made the phones unlocked so you could use it on a different network, however they didn't. While AT&T is no saint when it comes to cell networks, they do have pretty good 3G coverage, T-Mobile, while improving just isn't there yet. Can't say anything about Sprint or Verizon as I haven't used either (Verizon seems to neuter -all- their phones to the point of being unusable and Sprint seems to be expensive).
Also, there needs to be a common third-party to buy their cell phones from, perhaps a Google store?
Police officers have 0 accountability. Their accountability is... other police officers. Since they are not elected they don't have to worry about us citizens wanting them gone. All they have to do is say "oh he looked suspicious to me" and most other police officers will shrug.
If it's a priority that you have a decent connection, you'll get a decent connection.
I know a full-time programmer, at home the most he can get is dial-up (or more recently cell phone internet which requires him to be in a specific location in his house just to get signal, costs a ton and can't download much). He doesn't really live in the "middle of nowhere" but he doesn't live in the city. He has called every major ISP and gotten the "we're expanding in your area in the next 6 months!" for about 5 years now. Theres no way he can get beyond dial-up, even crappy DSL is a no-go.
And honestly, most of the examples you quote are out of the range for most people.
One of his clients has a ranch in Colorado, and he wanted to be able to access all of his data while on the ranch. Due to the fact that the ranch house was several miles away from the nearest paved road, he had no cable or DSL service. I suppose satellite was probably an option, but when you're trying to set up a VPN to another state it probably helps to have lower latency than what satellite can provide.
If they have an isolated ranch in Colorado yet run such a business that they -must- access their data, chances are they make lots of money. Chances are they are doing this for a large business a lot of it could be written off of taxes however the initial funding is very high. Your solutions are akin to saying that we should buy and install our own cables. Most of us today don't happen to have $50K burning in our pocket to spend.
Which isn't the full version, only the upgrade version from Leopard.
The thing is though, a -lot- of Apple update "problems" are things that I don't think I would notice. Things like noisy HDDs, worse wireless, strange fans, etc. I suppose Mac users notice their computer more than most other people (I mean, if I paid $1500 for a laptop I would be more attentive than on my $300 laptop) but most, if not all problems are trivial for 97% of the people affected with the problem and are really only noticed because of a forum post.
Exactly, there are a -lot- of places in the USA where there are avid gamers who are stuck with sub-par connections. And using WoW is a terrible example, its like saying because there are a lot of people who play on Xbox Live don't have a single player, local multiplayer or system link option.
In a game, it makes no sense to leave out options that are obvious, LAN play is pretty obvious, even if 95% of the people buying your game won't use it, if it isn't difficult to code and maintain you have nothing to lose.
It was on an older PC that took about 2 minutes to boot (ancient HDDs, but I kept it as a machine for guests to use in the guest room) that got decreased by that long when I upgraded to Xubuntu 9.04 (specs are Pentium 4 era Celeron, 512 MB of RAM, 20 gig ancient HDD). Yes, yes, I know the machine is crap but I got it at a garage sale a few years back for $20 and a monitor to go with it for $7.
Did it cost nothing to move from Windows ME to Windows 7? Thats about the time frame we are talking about here. For one thats impossible due to early Mac OS X systems running only on PowerPC and Snow Leopard only running on x86 CPUs. There is honestly no difference between Windows and OS X in their release cycles except for different terminology. Once you buy Windows you can download all of its service packs for free, similar with OS X, just because service pack 1 for Leopard would be numbered 10.5.1 doesn't mean its much different. However Windows doesn't follow that in the least and considers what would be an update for OS X as a different system in and of itself for example NT 5 (Windows 2000) and NT 5.1 (Windows XP)