Thank You!.. plus you won't need to go through that whole photograph, fingerprint and awkward questions thing at the border when you come for a visit! Welcome to the EU!
Not too long ago, internet access here in Finland was granted a right to all citizens. That flies smack in the face of the three-strikes laws that some countries and governments have tried to enact as a result of treaties like ACTA.
I applaud the EP for standing up for our rights as citizens, and not bending over backwards for ACTA and those behind it. It's about time the extortionist tactics (ab)used by the media companies gets a serious challenge. Killing ACTA would go a long way towards leveling the playing field.
As an American living abroad, it makes me feel good to live in the EU. The mere idea that backroom, secret deals like ACTA can be passed without public knowledge just makes me sick. As far as I'm concerned, ACTA is corporate corruption of elected (and sometimes unelected) government officials, hidden behind the pretty face of "protecting copyright and IP".
The EU's backbone is growing... let's hope it continues. If you live in the EU, be sure to write your elected officials and tell them you support the war against ACTA. Keep it going.
So, blame the marketing people at Intel / AMD/ATI and NVIDIA. They are at fault for creating the ridiculous naming schemes we have today.
I never said the question wasn't valid, I simply meant it's something that belongs in a help forum somewhere, not on slashdot. Last time I checked, slashdot was a news site, not a help forum.
Go ahead, mod me down for this, but I find it funny that initially my post was modded +5 insightful, but after a couple negative posts it dropped down 2 points.
Actually, Intel has gone and done something even more stupid than that: They even disable the virtualization extensions within processors of the same model number! Within a model, there may be multiple sspec numbers. Some sspecs may support virtualization and some may not. I don't have a specific example at hand, but I have seen it when using the Intel sspec finder tool on their website.
So you not only need to understand which models "may" support virtualization, you also have to qualify it with looking up the model's sspec. Utter stupidity on the part of Intel for that.
2. Define the expected result. E.g. you want to run Oblivion at minimum 30fps with all details maxed out at 1920x1080.
3. Research what components will achieve the expected result.
If you don't want to do the research, then scratch all of the above and spend a ton of money to be sure it will be fast enough for your purposes.
This has not changed much in the 25+ years I've been working with computers. And it's not likely to change, computers are general purpose tools. You need to know what you will use it for and determine the performance required. Based on this you will know what components you need. This is not rocket science, but a little effort will let you save some money while getting the performance you need.
Or just go buy a console. Seriously, why is this posted on slashdot?
Technically, the devices mentioned are gateways, not routers. A router by strict definition does not contain a modem, nor does it provide NAT or port address mapping. A router simply routes or forwards packets from one subnet to another based on a set of rules.
I got the browser ballot app pushed out via Windows update installed on several of my machines recently, including XP, Vista and Win7. Funny thing is, I have never actually seen the ballot screen. It's never appeared. I haven't located an applet for it or any way to make it appear. Bit strange.
Could it be because IE is not a default browser on any of these machines? Probably.
Sounds to me like AMD is just taking pot shots at NVIDIA. They probably wish they had either invented it or bought up Ageia before NVIDIA. Are there any games out that use OpenCL for physics? Or DirectCompute?
Trust me, NVIDIA will flog the Physx horse as long as it can. Eventually something will replace it anyway, so who gives a shit. Apart from software-based CPU physics, I haven't seen too many Physx titles and nothing for OpenCL or DC yet. I do have a 9600GT dedicated for Physx in my gaming rig, for those few titles that support it.
If this actually takes off, goodbye to physical security, because now compromising a single device opens all the doors, literally. What a shockingly bad idea.
I should add that the privatization of many hospitals in the US is also a huge part of the problem. Private hospitals operate to generate a PROFIT. They have no real interest in the healthcare they provide, beyond the profit they generate for their shareholders.
This does not mean there are not caring doctors and staff at these hospitals, just that operating cost (and resulting profit) of the hospital drives most decisions made in patient care. Decisions are not made in the best interests of the patient, they are made in the best interest of preserving a level of profit for the hospital as a whole.
Hospitals should not be run as private businesses. They should not operate "for profit", like a normal business. They are there to provide a service to the population, who in turn have paid taxes to be able to benefit from such care. It's not wrong for a hospital to make a profit, but the expectations of a profit margin like a normal non-healthcare related business are absurd.
I speak from experience, as I saw the privatization of a formerly good, non-profit regional hospital. Patient care went out the window when it became privatized and practically all decisions related to patient care were based solely on a cost/profit basis. The level of care dropped severely and the hospital even started to turn away uninsured patients who needed immediate care. It was sickening to say the least.
The sad part is that his life was likely extended a bit, only by the fact that the family could AFFORD it. An unemployed or uninsured person would very likely have died much sooner from lack of treatment or medication due to the fact that they could not pay for their care. This is just wrong and healthcare in the US really needs a reboot. When insurance companies have near-total control over your treatment, what drugs they will pay for and for how long, etc., the system is TOTALLY BROKEN. Doctors and care providers should be the ones responsible for determining the best methods of care for their patients. The costs for healthcare in the US are at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to most other civilized countries, even those with universal or socialized systems. It's not the doctors or care providers getting rich off the sick American, it's the middlemen: insurance companies (and health care "plan" providers).
Fix the system, it's terribly broken. And get over the fact that some of your tax money will be spent HELPING OTHERS who cannot afford care. It's something you have to accept to fix the system. I live in a country with socialized healthcare and yes we pay taxes for it. But my healthcare is basically free or very low cost. I do not need to worry about getting sick, losing my job and consequently losing my right to healthcare. It's in the benefit of society as a whole to have a healthy population with adequate healthcare. A population with adequate healthcare at reasonable cost (much less than in the US currently) is much less expensive over time than the current healthcare system in the US.
I dunno, but this may backfire on them. Just one scenario: Picture a teenager with a limited budget, who plays games. Said teenager downloads one of these "demos" and plays it several times over a few days. The "demo" then starts to drop achievements or disable certain features before the teenager has the money to buy the full game. The demo becomes un-playable before the teenager's budget allows them to buy the full game.
Do you really think said teenager is going to be eager about buying the full game when his/her budget allows, if the demo has given them this kind of experience? I'm far, far from that scenario, but if I was in that situation and the demo essentially locked me out before I had the money to buy the full game, I'd be pretty pissed. And very unlikely to want to give the developer/publisher my money after that kind of experience.
After all, why do this at all? The demos are already "limited" in one or more ways, maybe a single level or a fixed amount of points or whatever. That is easy to understand and I have no problem with game demos where the limitations are known "up front". But a demo that changes the experience after a period of time or gradually disables features/achievements is a very different animal. Given a choice, I would probably not download these kinds of demos at all and stick to traditional demos. I only worry that if this becomes even somewhat successful, more developers will do it and the whole demo landscape will change for the worse. Or it will just drive more kids to download more illegal copies of the full game which don't have features removed.
The game publishers are just getting too greedy for money. I say publishers and not developers because this is mostly a publisher problem. It's closely related to DRM... they simply want to squeeze as much money from an many customers as possible. They will not be content until they can rent your games to you. And they will call this a "service". Oops, skipped your rent payment for a month?... sorry, you have to "buy" your games all over again. And remember what re-playability used to mean? Seriously, this is the direction the game industry seems to be headed in, driven by the big, greedy publishers.
Umm... not likely. A short circuit in the power circuit of the GPU would only affect the graphics card itself and probably the power supply. At the most it would probably trip the over-current protection in the power supply which would simply shut down. The only electrical connections between the CPU and GPU are data lanes and these are not sufficient to bring down a CPU. They are only signal circuits, not power. Even shorting a signal to ground is unlikely to do damage. Remember, a binary zero is 0V (or very close to 0V).
Wow, the quote in the summary is so full of "buy our stock because we will make you tons of money" speak. Based on that one quote alone the company will never have to do real work ever again and the majority stockholders will all be multi-billionaires soon.
(not that they ever did any real work in the first place)
Yet another trampling of fair use rights in the US. How long does the entertainment industry continue to get away with this? Seems like nobody can (will?) stop them doing anything they want.
Wait a minute... just how is an overheating graphics card causing damage to a CPU? As an EE, I'd love to hear the basis for that. Even motherboard damage is extremely unlikely, unless the card bursts into flames and torches the PCIe slot. Or the graphics card gets hot enough to re-flow solder, which then drips onto the PCIe slot or motherboard components. Not to mention most cases are vertically oriented these days. Not a chance in hell, I'd say.
I'm not saying there isn't an issue, but it sounds like the issue is just a bit over-hyped... or someone has an agenda and just wants to bash NVIDIA.
Download managers had one real benefit some time ago, which has since expired as we moved on to broadband: resumable downloads, for those often times when your analog modem or ISP dropped the connection. This was handy when downloading large (for the day) files over unreliable connections that could drop if your cat sneezed.
I avoid DLM's as much as possible. Give me an http or ftp or torrent anyday over a DLM. In fact, I will avoid any software that requires use of a DLM to install or keep it updated.
They are generally (ab)used for nefarious things these days like installing crap you don't want/need. In a way, they are a perfect delivery system for stealthily installing rootkits and other malware.
Actually they are, at least this winter is. I'm typing this as it's -4 F / -20 C outside today in Helsinki.
However, taking a phone outside in a warm pocket and making a few minutes call in these temps is not an issue. Taking the above temp as an example, the phone internals are NOT at that temp immediately when you walk outside or take it out of your warm(er) pocket. My estimate it that it would take a minimum of 15-20 minutes of exposure to ambient temp for the phone internally to start approaching that temp. That means it's not in your warm(er) pocket and not in your warm(er) hands, but completely out in the open and not in contact with anything of a warmer temp that would slow it cooling down to ambient temperature.
Also keep in mind that the chemical reaction in the battery is unlikely to allow the device to cool to ambient temperatures as long at it's still providing power to the device (e.g. not empty). And during a call, the battery warms even more and sometimes the battery cover can become slightly warm to the touch after long calls due to increased power draw from the battery and heat dissipation from the radio chips.
Back to the OP, they are clearly operating the phone outside of design specifications (well below rated minimum operating temp). Of course they are going to trip the LCIs. No news here really.
Funny you mention G&T. My wife accidentally dropped her Nokia E90 in G&T last summer (slipped out of her shirt pocket when she leaned over to pick something up). It completely submerged for a couple seconds. After removing it from the liquid, I opened the battery cover and removed the battery immediately. Then I soaked up as much liquid as I could and gently but firmly tapped the phone on a semi-hard surface to try to remove the liquid that had gotten inside. I left it opened with the battery out and cover removed for several hours, at least until I could not detect any more liquid inside the device.
To my surprise, after reinstalling the battery, the phone worked. The small outer display was a bit funky for a couple months, showing a bit of rainbow and discoloration, but the large internal display was not affected at all. Eventually the outer display cleared itself and is now 95% normal. The phone is still perfectly usable, I had expected problems with the keypad due to the sugars in the liquid but so far no issues. The phone is still in normal use today.
This is actually one reason why I will never buy a phone with a non-removable battery, a la iPhone. Accidental liquid ingress inside the device will almost certainly ruin it since there is no way to quickly and effectively remove power from the device.
I mean come on, what is it with companies lately, especially tech companies, jumping into totally un-related "business opportunities". I guess the days of doing one or two things really well are gone, welcome to the days of doing many things in a mediocre or sub-standard fashion.
Hasn't Enron proven without a doubt that energy trading is nothing more than a huge sham to squeeze as much money as possible by interfering/obstructing and generally creating un-necessary shortages in the energy markets?
The ultimate question: Should we really be trading something which is necessary for modern life? Imho, no. It only opens it up for abuse by those who control it.
Just because you "can", does not mean that you "should".
I don't think I'd want to work for a company that issues netbooks for business purposes. Especially traveling employees. Netbooks are designed for *consumers*, not businesses. Most netbooks are shipped with the Home version of Windows these days, and that doesn't play well with an AD or Windows domain.
Not to mention, if a potential business partner showed up with only a netbook, his/her credibility is already in doubt. Kind of like having an AOL or hotmail account for your business. It's just not professional.
Exactly. I just don't understand all the whining... "I can't play HD videos on my netbook...". Your freaking SCREEN doesn't have the resolution for it, why even bother? Pal DVD's are already 576 lines, which is close enough to the majority of netbook screen's vertical resolution of 600 lines. Even if you could play back HD on a netbook, I doubt you can tell the difference on a small netbook screen, which was built to a price point to keep it cheap and lacks resolution.
A big FUCK YOU to Ubisoft. When I read about this a few weeks back, I could hardly believe it. This DRM goes WAY beyond reason and straight into absurdity. Is this how you should treat your customers today?
Ubisioft, you just GUARANTEED that I will NEVER buy one of your games again. As a long-time and frequent PC gamer going all the way back to DOS, I have never seen arrogance like this before. Boycott Ubisoft games and take the message straight to their bottom line. Of course they will blame everything on piracy as usual, so let them eat crow.
I have an HP Kayak dual-proc workstation at home with two 1GHz PIII's running Ubuntu with 640MB of RDRAM. Great machine. Unfortunately it's not cost-effective to upgrade the memory thanks to Rambus...
Slashdot Mirror
Thank You!.. plus you won't need to go through that whole photograph, fingerprint and awkward questions thing at the border when you come for a visit! Welcome to the EU!
Not too long ago, internet access here in Finland was granted a right to all citizens. That flies smack in the face of the three-strikes laws that some countries and governments have tried to enact as a result of treaties like ACTA.
I applaud the EP for standing up for our rights as citizens, and not bending over backwards for ACTA and those behind it. It's about time the extortionist tactics (ab)used by the media companies gets a serious challenge. Killing ACTA would go a long way towards leveling the playing field.
As an American living abroad, it makes me feel good to live in the EU. The mere idea that backroom, secret deals like ACTA can be passed without public knowledge just makes me sick. As far as I'm concerned, ACTA is corporate corruption of elected (and sometimes unelected) government officials, hidden behind the pretty face of "protecting copyright and IP".
The EU's backbone is growing... let's hope it continues. If you live in the EU, be sure to write your elected officials and tell them you support the war against ACTA. Keep it going.
So, blame the marketing people at Intel / AMD/ATI and NVIDIA. They are at fault for creating the ridiculous naming schemes we have today.
I never said the question wasn't valid, I simply meant it's something that belongs in a help forum somewhere, not on slashdot. Last time I checked, slashdot was a news site, not a help forum.
Go ahead, mod me down for this, but I find it funny that initially my post was modded +5 insightful, but after a couple negative posts it dropped down 2 points.
Actually, Intel has gone and done something even more stupid than that: They even disable the virtualization extensions within processors of the same model number! Within a model, there may be multiple sspec numbers. Some sspecs may support virtualization and some may not. I don't have a specific example at hand, but I have seen it when using the Intel sspec finder tool on their website.
So you not only need to understand which models "may" support virtualization, you also have to qualify it with looking up the model's sspec. Utter stupidity on the part of Intel for that.
1. Set a budget.
2. Define the expected result. E.g. you want to run Oblivion at minimum 30fps with all details maxed out at 1920x1080.
3. Research what components will achieve the expected result.
If you don't want to do the research, then scratch all of the above and spend a ton of money to be sure it will be fast enough for your purposes.
This has not changed much in the 25+ years I've been working with computers. And it's not likely to change, computers are general purpose tools. You need to know what you will use it for and determine the performance required. Based on this you will know what components you need. This is not rocket science, but a little effort will let you save some money while getting the performance you need.
Or just go buy a console. Seriously, why is this posted on slashdot?
Technically, the devices mentioned are gateways, not routers. A router by strict definition does not contain a modem, nor does it provide NAT or port address mapping. A router simply routes or forwards packets from one subnet to another based on a set of rules.
I'm feeling pedantic today.
I got the browser ballot app pushed out via Windows update installed on several of my machines recently, including XP, Vista and Win7. Funny thing is, I have never actually seen the ballot screen. It's never appeared. I haven't located an applet for it or any way to make it appear. Bit strange.
Could it be because IE is not a default browser on any of these machines? Probably.
Sounds to me like AMD is just taking pot shots at NVIDIA. They probably wish they had either invented it or bought up Ageia before NVIDIA. Are there any games out that use OpenCL for physics? Or DirectCompute?
Trust me, NVIDIA will flog the Physx horse as long as it can. Eventually something will replace it anyway, so who gives a shit. Apart from software-based CPU physics, I haven't seen too many Physx titles and nothing for OpenCL or DC yet. I do have a 9600GT dedicated for Physx in my gaming rig, for those few titles that support it.
Oh my-fucking-god, NO.
If this actually takes off, goodbye to physical security, because now compromising a single device opens all the doors, literally. What a shockingly bad idea.
Ditto. Couldn't have happened to a worse bunch of asshats.
I should add that the privatization of many hospitals in the US is also a huge part of the problem. Private hospitals operate to generate a PROFIT. They have no real interest in the healthcare they provide, beyond the profit they generate for their shareholders.
This does not mean there are not caring doctors and staff at these hospitals, just that operating cost (and resulting profit) of the hospital drives most decisions made in patient care. Decisions are not made in the best interests of the patient, they are made in the best interest of preserving a level of profit for the hospital as a whole.
Hospitals should not be run as private businesses. They should not operate "for profit", like a normal business. They are there to provide a service to the population, who in turn have paid taxes to be able to benefit from such care. It's not wrong for a hospital to make a profit, but the expectations of a profit margin like a normal non-healthcare related business are absurd.
I speak from experience, as I saw the privatization of a formerly good, non-profit regional hospital. Patient care went out the window when it became privatized and practically all decisions related to patient care were based solely on a cost/profit basis. The level of care dropped severely and the hospital even started to turn away uninsured patients who needed immediate care. It was sickening to say the least.
The sad part is that his life was likely extended a bit, only by the fact that the family could AFFORD it. An unemployed or uninsured person would very likely have died much sooner from lack of treatment or medication due to the fact that they could not pay for their care. This is just wrong and healthcare in the US really needs a reboot. When insurance companies have near-total control over your treatment, what drugs they will pay for and for how long, etc., the system is TOTALLY BROKEN. Doctors and care providers should be the ones responsible for determining the best methods of care for their patients. The costs for healthcare in the US are at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to most other civilized countries, even those with universal or socialized systems. It's not the doctors or care providers getting rich off the sick American, it's the middlemen: insurance companies (and health care "plan" providers).
Fix the system, it's terribly broken. And get over the fact that some of your tax money will be spent HELPING OTHERS who cannot afford care. It's something you have to accept to fix the system. I live in a country with socialized healthcare and yes we pay taxes for it. But my healthcare is basically free or very low cost. I do not need to worry about getting sick, losing my job and consequently losing my right to healthcare. It's in the benefit of society as a whole to have a healthy population with adequate healthcare. A population with adequate healthcare at reasonable cost (much less than in the US currently) is much less expensive over time than the current healthcare system in the US.
I dunno, but this may backfire on them. Just one scenario: Picture a teenager with a limited budget, who plays games. Said teenager downloads one of these "demos" and plays it several times over a few days. The "demo" then starts to drop achievements or disable certain features before the teenager has the money to buy the full game. The demo becomes un-playable before the teenager's budget allows them to buy the full game.
Do you really think said teenager is going to be eager about buying the full game when his/her budget allows, if the demo has given them this kind of experience? I'm far, far from that scenario, but if I was in that situation and the demo essentially locked me out before I had the money to buy the full game, I'd be pretty pissed. And very unlikely to want to give the developer/publisher my money after that kind of experience.
After all, why do this at all? The demos are already "limited" in one or more ways, maybe a single level or a fixed amount of points or whatever. That is easy to understand and I have no problem with game demos where the limitations are known "up front". But a demo that changes the experience after a period of time or gradually disables features/achievements is a very different animal. Given a choice, I would probably not download these kinds of demos at all and stick to traditional demos. I only worry that if this becomes even somewhat successful, more developers will do it and the whole demo landscape will change for the worse. Or it will just drive more kids to download more illegal copies of the full game which don't have features removed.
The game publishers are just getting too greedy for money. I say publishers and not developers because this is mostly a publisher problem. It's closely related to DRM... they simply want to squeeze as much money from an many customers as possible. They will not be content until they can rent your games to you. And they will call this a "service". Oops, skipped your rent payment for a month?... sorry, you have to "buy" your games all over again. And remember what re-playability used to mean? Seriously, this is the direction the game industry seems to be headed in, driven by the big, greedy publishers.
Just my .02...
Umm... not likely. A short circuit in the power circuit of the GPU would only affect the graphics card itself and probably the power supply. At the most it would probably trip the over-current protection in the power supply which would simply shut down. The only electrical connections between the CPU and GPU are data lanes and these are not sufficient to bring down a CPU. They are only signal circuits, not power. Even shorting a signal to ground is unlikely to do damage. Remember, a binary zero is 0V (or very close to 0V).
Wow, the quote in the summary is so full of "buy our stock because we will make you tons of money" speak. Based on that one quote alone the company will never have to do real work ever again and the majority stockholders will all be multi-billionaires soon.
(not that they ever did any real work in the first place)
Yet another trampling of fair use rights in the US. How long does the entertainment industry continue to get away with this? Seems like nobody can (will?) stop them doing anything they want.
Wait a minute... just how is an overheating graphics card causing damage to a CPU? As an EE, I'd love to hear the basis for that. Even motherboard damage is extremely unlikely, unless the card bursts into flames and torches the PCIe slot. Or the graphics card gets hot enough to re-flow solder, which then drips onto the PCIe slot or motherboard components. Not to mention most cases are vertically oriented these days. Not a chance in hell, I'd say.
I'm not saying there isn't an issue, but it sounds like the issue is just a bit over-hyped... or someone has an agenda and just wants to bash NVIDIA.
Download managers had one real benefit some time ago, which has since expired as we moved on to broadband: resumable downloads, for those often times when your analog modem or ISP dropped the connection. This was handy when downloading large (for the day) files over unreliable connections that could drop if your cat sneezed.
I avoid DLM's as much as possible. Give me an http or ftp or torrent anyday over a DLM. In fact, I will avoid any software that requires use of a DLM to install or keep it updated.
They are generally (ab)used for nefarious things these days like installing crap you don't want/need. In a way, they are a perfect delivery system for stealthily installing rootkits and other malware.
Actually they are, at least this winter is. I'm typing this as it's -4 F / -20 C outside today in Helsinki.
However, taking a phone outside in a warm pocket and making a few minutes call in these temps is not an issue. Taking the above temp as an example, the phone internals are NOT at that temp immediately when you walk outside or take it out of your warm(er) pocket. My estimate it that it would take a minimum of 15-20 minutes of exposure to ambient temp for the phone internally to start approaching that temp. That means it's not in your warm(er) pocket and not in your warm(er) hands, but completely out in the open and not in contact with anything of a warmer temp that would slow it cooling down to ambient temperature.
Also keep in mind that the chemical reaction in the battery is unlikely to allow the device to cool to ambient temperatures as long at it's still providing power to the device (e.g. not empty). And during a call, the battery warms even more and sometimes the battery cover can become slightly warm to the touch after long calls due to increased power draw from the battery and heat dissipation from the radio chips.
Back to the OP, they are clearly operating the phone outside of design specifications (well below rated minimum operating temp). Of course they are going to trip the LCIs. No news here really.
Funny you mention G&T. My wife accidentally dropped her Nokia E90 in G&T last summer (slipped out of her shirt pocket when she leaned over to pick something up). It completely submerged for a couple seconds. After removing it from the liquid, I opened the battery cover and removed the battery immediately. Then I soaked up as much liquid as I could and gently but firmly tapped the phone on a semi-hard surface to try to remove the liquid that had gotten inside. I left it opened with the battery out and cover removed for several hours, at least until I could not detect any more liquid inside the device.
To my surprise, after reinstalling the battery, the phone worked. The small outer display was a bit funky for a couple months, showing a bit of rainbow and discoloration, but the large internal display was not affected at all. Eventually the outer display cleared itself and is now 95% normal. The phone is still perfectly usable, I had expected problems with the keypad due to the sugars in the liquid but so far no issues. The phone is still in normal use today.
This is actually one reason why I will never buy a phone with a non-removable battery, a la iPhone. Accidental liquid ingress inside the device will almost certainly ruin it since there is no way to quickly and effectively remove power from the device.
Do we really need Enron 2.0?
I mean come on, what is it with companies lately, especially tech companies, jumping into totally un-related "business opportunities". I guess the days of doing one or two things really well are gone, welcome to the days of doing many things in a mediocre or sub-standard fashion.
Hasn't Enron proven without a doubt that energy trading is nothing more than a huge sham to squeeze as much money as possible by interfering/obstructing and generally creating un-necessary shortages in the energy markets?
The ultimate question: Should we really be trading something which is necessary for modern life? Imho, no. It only opens it up for abuse by those who control it.
Just because you "can", does not mean that you "should".
I don't think I'd want to work for a company that issues netbooks for business purposes. Especially traveling employees. Netbooks are designed for *consumers*, not businesses. Most netbooks are shipped with the Home version of Windows these days, and that doesn't play well with an AD or Windows domain.
Not to mention, if a potential business partner showed up with only a netbook, his/her credibility is already in doubt. Kind of like having an AOL or hotmail account for your business. It's just not professional.
Use the right tool for the job.
Exactly. I just don't understand all the whining... "I can't play HD videos on my netbook...". Your freaking SCREEN doesn't have the resolution for it, why even bother? Pal DVD's are already 576 lines, which is close enough to the majority of netbook screen's vertical resolution of 600 lines. Even if you could play back HD on a netbook, I doubt you can tell the difference on a small netbook screen, which was built to a price point to keep it cheap and lacks resolution.
A big FUCK YOU to Ubisoft. When I read about this a few weeks back, I could hardly believe it. This DRM goes WAY beyond reason and straight into absurdity. Is this how you should treat your customers today?
Ubisioft, you just GUARANTEED that I will NEVER buy one of your games again. As a long-time and frequent PC gamer going all the way back to DOS, I have never seen arrogance like this before. Boycott Ubisoft games and take the message straight to their bottom line. Of course they will blame everything on piracy as usual, so let them eat crow.
I have an HP Kayak dual-proc workstation at home with two 1GHz PIII's running Ubuntu with 640MB of RDRAM. Great machine. Unfortunately it's not cost-effective to upgrade the memory thanks to Rambus...