It's weird the citizens don't want more observers, maybe it's the usual media spin - only report quotes of those who object. As for voter ID, I don't see the problem with it if it's done properly. It may be considered an evil, but if you're worried about rigging, you're going to need something like it.
If you have so much evidence can't you sue them or something? It's the USA after all. Or nobody really cares enough?
Only reason why I care is the USA has nukes, aircraft carriers and a habit of going around telling other countries what to do. A violent revolution in the USA that installs a dictatorship is unlikely to be good for the rest of us in the world.
but the Red Hat developer said (in the second part of his post on the subject) that the reason Linux is losing the desktop is because it's "not free enough"....
That's another reason why Linux is losing the desktop- top Linux developers are completely clueless about why Linux is losing the desktop.
Most desktop users do NOT care whether the OS is free enough. In a short space of time OS X gained way more market share than Desktop Linux ever had. The last I checked OS X ain't more free than Desktop Linux.
Maybe he's talking about losing the Desktop Linux cultists who care about how free and sinless their OS is. He can have that very tiny market if he wants, the saner OS vendors don't care about that market.
Yeah reply-all saves time. If they CCed my boss and their boss, I may need to CC them too. Why should I have to waste my time manually readding all the people they CCed?
Anyway, for us computer nerds it probably doesn't hurt us much. 1) we typically read faster than average 2) we can usually set up mail filters. Basically if X very unrelated people are explicitly specified recipients in an email, it's probably "one of those" emails that you can ignore, whereas if it's from Da Boss to "ALL", you can decide based on Da Boss's track record.
As for "ALL"/"Everyone" lists in a previous workplace we set up an "ALL" address that actually went to a moderator, after someone tried to do their "direct selling" (not corp related) using the old "ALL" (which actually went to everyone directly), and after some manager and an anonymous external yahoo address had a public flamefest. The Big Boss was not happy after the latter incident. I told the Big Boss that wasn't necessarily a problem, since it helped him figure out who the idiots are in the company (e.g. that manager;) ), but I guess the moderator approach allowed him to know who the idiots are without everyone else knowing or receiving their crap.
Oh Lord,you have GOT to be kidding me...you thinking VOTING is gonna do a God damned thing?
Were those votes in the recent elections from the actual voters or not? Did anyone hold a gun to their head and force them to vote that way?
The "peasants have a say", and they said their piece recently. You just don't like what they are saying.
So what do you propose be done? Ignore what "the peasants" say? You want to be the great Dictator because the silly peasants can't vote properly?
Those peasants may be silly. But you sure look as silly to me. So maybe I should be the great Dictator of the USA instead? Or maybe some other guy who thinks everyone else is silly but him?
I'm fine with lots of things done by the government at cost and not for profit. Heck it can even make a loss and still make sense overall- stuff like public transportation.
The escalators and elevators in a good shopping mall or office building aren't usually run as profit centres. Set decent targets for cleanliness, safety, availability and cost, and things are better than if everyone using the escalators/elevators were nickel and dimed just so that department can make a profit.
Private corps can go do the new innovative stuff and not bother trying to make money out of boring stuff that's done fine by government. Even so governments are sometimes better at doing R&D on things that corporations aren't willing to do.
Another alternative to consider are Cooperatives. Seems to me that _generally_ cooperatives are better behaved than corporations, and thus cost the country less (fewer bailouts, slash and burn CEOs). And the problem with cooperatives is it takes a certain sort of person to start a cooperative instead of a corporation - since that person tends to make more money doing the latter, for about the same amount of work, and so overall the latter is less of a risk/cost. Thus I think that countries should encourage the starting up of successful cooperatives more, maybe a smart economist can figure out a way of doing so without it being too exploitable.
Many US people don't seem to like the idea of more government.
I personally think quality matters way more than quantity, big government is fine if it's good government. And it is more answerable to the people- AFAIK stuff like FOIA don't work against corporations, and citizens have little say over who leads those corporations.
Did the people he ruled over have a significant part in voting for him? If they did then yes he is legitimate. e.g. they voted for him, or they voted for people who voted for him. Or voted for people who voted for people who voted for him even. And can most of the citizens run/stand for elections if they wanted to?
If no then he is not legitimate. As far as I know the people in USSR didn't have much choice at all. Whereas the people in the USA are actually voting for their congressmen/congresswomen. And there are independents/3rd party candidates running. But hardly anyone seems pissed off enough to vote for those.
So it ain't broke enough to risk a violent revolution. Hence it is still better to work within the system. I actually think Obama initially tried to do something, but seems a bit hard... I personally think term limits are stupid and undemocratic. If the voters keep voting for the same people over and over again, then they certainly deserve to get that leader.
Plus since it's the USA, there's a 9% chance he'll get killed anyway.;)
Even if the government breaks its own laws, that does not make it any less legitimate as long as the people keep voting it in. Whether you like it or not. The people who could vote but didn't bother still helped to pick the government by default- they abdicated.
You still get crappy governments with Democracies, but on average the voters get the government they deserve.
This all assumes the elections are overly "Diebolded". Yes there is gerrymandering, but ask a random man in the USA and he was either for Obama or Romney. Only a very small percentage wanted someone else. So that's what you get.
If you don't like it, work to change the voters minds. Don't be like those idiots trying to suggest or propose violent overthrow of the Government. In violent anarchic revolutions, the group capable and willing of exerting the most violence tends to rise to the top. Once there they usually set up a Dictatorship - nobody else is powerful enough to stop them.
You may try to bring up the American Revolution as an exception, but in that "revolution" the people leading the revolution were mostly already at the top or near the top. The structure of things, mostly remained the same, the difference was they no longer gave money to the British, or obeyed their orders. It was more a war of independence than a revolution.
The French Revolution which had people literally losing their heads did end up with a Dictatorship, Same for the rest (China, Russia, Africa, etc) where the selection of leaders is by most violence instead of most votes.
Unfortunately that's not relevant for security given the way most browsers behave by default. All the attacker needs is ONE compromised/cooperative CA out of the dozens of CAs your browser recognizes or will recognize.
If you visit China and CNNIC decides to sign a *.yourbank.com certificate and MITM you, your browser wouldn't warn you. It'll show you the usual "secure" icons etc.
If you want a warning you can use firefox and certificate patrol. Or try Chrome's certificate pinning feature (not sure about the details). No idea about Opera's equivalent.
That's nice but the music as recorded might not be 100% hers to say its free or not. If it isn't she may be aiding and abetting copyright infringement.
If an Adobe Photoshop developer working for Adobe publicly pointed out where people could download Photoshop for free that does not automatically make everything OK.
Of course it would be even more bad PR to try to take Chisu down- the legit customers would be unhappy. In contrast only a minority of the photoshop customers would care if the adobe photoshop developer got in big trouble.
If they turned off the flame before lowering the bird in the overflowing/flying oil won't catch on fire either.
But the flying hot oil can still blind, permanently disfigure and maim people.
My guess is chunks of ice can end up creating bigger expanding bubbles of steam than water for the same amount of water, since the ice = more water stuck together. And bigger expanding bubbles = more flying oil. But either way too much water in oil is not a good idea.
I was not ignoring glycemic load. That's why I specifically said double the carbs.
If you are going to consume the same amount of carbs to meet your daily energy requirements, eating spaghetti+something more nutritious than apples (and less sugary) would be better than eating apples - since apples have fructose.
Eating lots of that nutritious "something" to meet your caloric requirements and desired carb:protein:oils ratios might be too expensive or even unhealthy.
It would have been more interesting if Google's financial arm used its data...
Think of the stock predictions you could make when you have access to so many people's emails and search data. Sure some data and predictions would be wrong, but if you have some safeguards I think they could make a lot of money.
Of course that would be bad PR if they were caught doing that:).
Starches break down to glucose. sugar (sucrose) breaks down to fructose and glucose. Glucose can be used by most of the cells in the body. Fructose is mainly processed by the liver (a few other things can use it). Again calories are not all the same.
If you don't have an active lifestyle consuming lots of starch is likely bad for you, but consuming lots of sugar or fructose is a lot worse.
For a similar serving, spaghetti has about the same glycemic index as apples, for double the carbs, and pasta is low fructose. So if it weren't for the other nutrients eating al-dente spaghetti (GI goes up if you over-boil;) ) would be healthier than apples- especially since you only need to eat half the amount for the same calories. And if you can get similar nutrients from other sources (berries) you can skip the apples. Apples aren't that nutritious a food. Even potatoes are more nutritious. If you want a lower glycemic index for your potato - consume them cold ( https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25731/1/Kinnear_Tara_S_201011_MAST_thesis.pdf ). Then you end up with more resistant starch (however that may make you fart more;) ). Or switch to yam/sweet potatoes.
The key to staying in shape is basically calories in vs. calories out. No matter what people's excuse, you cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics.
That oversimplification overlooks many things. 1) Not all consumed calories are converted with the same efficiency or even converted at all, or converted to the same things. A protein calorie is not the same as a fructose calorie nor an ethanol calorie. Look it up if you don't believe me. If you believe the idiotic fallacy that a calorie is a calorie consider pouring diesel into a gasoline car and vice versa. 2) A significant percentage of the calories are _excreted_. Lots of dieticians and even a few scientists seem to overlook that. Calories in, calories out, yes, but many overlook a significant out pathway - not many dieticians measure caloric value of the excreted feces. There's scientific research showing that gut flora can affect how much goes in and out, body fat percentage and maybe even susceptibility to diabetes at least for rodents. Rodents without gut flora have to eat 30% more just to maintain weight. Gut flora is affected by what you eat, and other factors so it does get a bit messy. 3) Metabolism differs.
So all these combined mean that someone might gain weight and someone might lose weight even though both consume the same amount of calories and initially weigh the same amount.
I say this as a skinny guy who eats more than some fat people. I try to avoid sugar (whether in food or drinks, including juices). There appears to be credible evidence that sugar can make you fatter than say protein or even starch - for the same caloric value. Sugar has its uses- if there is a famine you have a better chance of survival if you were plump than if you were skinny like me.
That said, standard portions getting bigger and bigger combined with childhood training/programming of finishing everything is probably to be blamed for much of the obesity problem.
BTW hard drive failures don't all cause BSODs. I've had them cause system slowdowns - the drive keeps trying to read the sector and _eventually_ succeeds.
So I suggest you also check the event viewer logs for disk errors.
Seems Windows makes system restore checkpoints every 24 hours (presumably so if something gets screwed up you can restore to the previous checkpoint). Try turning that off and see if it helps. There are valid reasons to have this feature, but I can see how in some cases it will cause a lot of disk activity.
As for the hate, I guess most people using windows haven't encountered your 10 minute disk churning problem (doesn't mean it exists). I'm fine with people preferring desktop linux. My suggestion does allow people to continue using Desktop Linux while playing games on Windows.
I personally prefer Windows XP/7 for desktop stuff and Linux for server stuff. KDE does have some promise - kioslaves etc, but Microsoft has to make Windows a lot worse for them to have a chance. I doubt they have made Windows 8 bad enough for a switch to happen.
So if you bother to think a bit more on why the OTHER farmers don't sell directly to the people who actually consume their products you will understand my argument better. Hint- it usually costs more. Rather than selling a huge amount at once you have to do many times the work by selling to each individual customer. But you get your data.
Those organic farmers do get their data. They might even be able to get useful feedback directly from their customers (changes in the quality etc).
Maybe Steam is checking for updates on all your games or similar. Another thing to check is the event viewer - perhaps some service is failing, or worse you are having drive errors. Nowadays lots of software check for updates.
I've had the same Windows XP install for many years and it hasn't got noticeably slower.
FWIW high disk activity AFTER login is usually less to do with Windows and more to do with the applications that are installed. If you had the same sort of apps doing the same sort of thing on Linux you would have slowdowns too. Perhaps the slowdown would be less since Linux might be more efficient with scheduling IO, but there's still going to be more IO than if the apps weren't doing whatever they're doing.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you provide links to the videos and stuff? I'm curious about which specific videos and other evidence you're talking about.
If the election rigging is not just an isolated case, the USA is practically a banana republic with nukes...
There were some international observers: http://www.cnbc.com/id/49655147/International_Election_Observers_Rile_Americans
So I'm not sure if the rigging is widespread enough. I'm sure in such a large diverse country you will have rigging during elections, it's a matter of how much.
It's weird the citizens don't want more observers, maybe it's the usual media spin - only report quotes of those who object. As for voter ID, I don't see the problem with it if it's done properly. It may be considered an evil, but if you're worried about rigging, you're going to need something like it.
If you have so much evidence can't you sue them or something? It's the USA after all. Or nobody really cares enough?
Only reason why I care is the USA has nukes, aircraft carriers and a habit of going around telling other countries what to do. A violent revolution in the USA that installs a dictatorship is unlikely to be good for the rest of us in the world.
but the Red Hat developer said (in the second part of his post on the subject) that the reason Linux is losing the desktop is because it's "not free enough"....
That's another reason why Linux is losing the desktop- top Linux developers are completely clueless about why Linux is losing the desktop.
Most desktop users do NOT care whether the OS is free enough. In a short space of time OS X gained way more market share than Desktop Linux ever had. The last I checked OS X ain't more free than Desktop Linux.
Maybe he's talking about losing the Desktop Linux cultists who care about how free and sinless their OS is. He can have that very tiny market if he wants, the saner OS vendors don't care about that market.
Yeah reply-all saves time. If they CCed my boss and their boss, I may need to CC them too. Why should I have to waste my time manually readding all the people they CCed?
;) ), but I guess the moderator approach allowed him to know who the idiots are without everyone else knowing or receiving their crap.
Anyway, for us computer nerds it probably doesn't hurt us much.
1) we typically read faster than average
2) we can usually set up mail filters. Basically if X very unrelated people are explicitly specified recipients in an email, it's probably "one of those" emails that you can ignore, whereas if it's from Da Boss to "ALL", you can decide based on Da Boss's track record.
As for "ALL"/"Everyone" lists in a previous workplace we set up an "ALL" address that actually went to a moderator, after someone tried to do their "direct selling" (not corp related) using the old "ALL" (which actually went to everyone directly), and after some manager and an anonymous external yahoo address had a public flamefest. The Big Boss was not happy after the latter incident. I told the Big Boss that wasn't necessarily a problem, since it helped him figure out who the idiots are in the company (e.g. that manager
Of course there will be failures. As for regulation, the credit unions needed to be better regulated: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40755408/ns/business-local_business/t/credit-unions-paying-risky-behavior-few/
Oh Lord,you have GOT to be kidding me...you thinking VOTING is gonna do a God damned thing?
Were those votes in the recent elections from the actual voters or not? Did anyone hold a gun to their head and force them to vote that way?
The "peasants have a say", and they said their piece recently. You just don't like what they are saying.
So what do you propose be done? Ignore what "the peasants" say? You want to be the great Dictator because the silly peasants can't vote properly?
Those peasants may be silly. But you sure look as silly to me. So maybe I should be the great Dictator of the USA instead? Or maybe some other guy who thinks everyone else is silly but him?
I'm fine with lots of things done by the government at cost and not for profit. Heck it can even make a loss and still make sense overall- stuff like public transportation.
The escalators and elevators in a good shopping mall or office building aren't usually run as profit centres. Set decent targets for cleanliness, safety, availability and cost, and things are better than if everyone using the escalators/elevators were nickel and dimed just so that department can make a profit.
Private corps can go do the new innovative stuff and not bother trying to make money out of boring stuff that's done fine by government. Even so governments are sometimes better at doing R&D on things that corporations aren't willing to do.
Another alternative to consider are Cooperatives. Seems to me that _generally_ cooperatives are better behaved than corporations, and thus cost the country less (fewer bailouts, slash and burn CEOs). And the problem with cooperatives is it takes a certain sort of person to start a cooperative instead of a corporation - since that person tends to make more money doing the latter, for about the same amount of work, and so overall the latter is less of a risk/cost. Thus I think that countries should encourage the starting up of successful cooperatives more, maybe a smart economist can figure out a way of doing so without it being too exploitable.
Wow those were the days where mice were made in Japan... Instead of China.
Does the mouse still work?
Many US people don't seem to like the idea of more government.
I personally think quality matters way more than quantity, big government is fine if it's good government. And it is more answerable to the people- AFAIK stuff like FOIA don't work against corporations, and citizens have little say over who leads those corporations.
Did the people he ruled over have a significant part in voting for him? If they did then yes he is legitimate. e.g. they voted for him, or they voted for people who voted for him. Or voted for people who voted for people who voted for him even. And can most of the citizens run/stand for elections if they wanted to?
;)
If no then he is not legitimate. As far as I know the people in USSR didn't have much choice at all. Whereas the people in the USA are actually voting for their congressmen/congresswomen. And there are independents/3rd party candidates running. But hardly anyone seems pissed off enough to vote for those.
So it ain't broke enough to risk a violent revolution. Hence it is still better to work within the system. I actually think Obama initially tried to do something, but seems a bit hard... I personally think term limits are stupid and undemocratic. If the voters keep voting for the same people over and over again, then they certainly deserve to get that leader.
Plus since it's the USA, there's a 9% chance he'll get killed anyway.
Even if the government breaks its own laws, that does not make it any less legitimate as long as the people keep voting it in. Whether you like it or not. The people who could vote but didn't bother still helped to pick the government by default- they abdicated.
You still get crappy governments with Democracies, but on average the voters get the government they deserve.
This all assumes the elections are overly "Diebolded". Yes there is gerrymandering, but ask a random man in the USA and he was either for Obama or Romney. Only a very small percentage wanted someone else. So that's what you get.
If you don't like it, work to change the voters minds. Don't be like those idiots trying to suggest or propose violent overthrow of the Government. In violent anarchic revolutions, the group capable and willing of exerting the most violence tends to rise to the top. Once there they usually set up a Dictatorship - nobody else is powerful enough to stop them.
You may try to bring up the American Revolution as an exception, but in that "revolution" the people leading the revolution were mostly already at the top or near the top. The structure of things, mostly remained the same, the difference was they no longer gave money to the British, or obeyed their orders. It was more a war of independence than a revolution.
The French Revolution which had people literally losing their heads did end up with a Dictatorship, Same for the rest (China, Russia, Africa, etc) where the selection of leaders is by most violence instead of most votes.
If there are too many defendants for the number of courtrooms and judges it might not be possible to have a speedy trial for all of them.
Unfortunately that's not relevant for security given the way most browsers behave by default. All the attacker needs is ONE compromised/cooperative CA out of the dozens of CAs your browser recognizes or will recognize.
If you visit China and CNNIC decides to sign a *.yourbank.com certificate and MITM you, your browser wouldn't warn you. It'll show you the usual "secure" icons etc.
If you want a warning you can use firefox and certificate patrol. Or try Chrome's certificate pinning feature (not sure about the details). No idea about Opera's equivalent.
I end up clicking links other than the one I intended to click.
On some sites that might be considered a feature to them.
The last one I saw was this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14829
and: http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-how-to-make-anything-disappear
That's nice but the music as recorded might not be 100% hers to say its free or not. If it isn't she may be aiding and abetting copyright infringement.
If an Adobe Photoshop developer working for Adobe publicly pointed out where people could download Photoshop for free that does not automatically make everything OK.
Of course it would be even more bad PR to try to take Chisu down- the legit customers would be unhappy. In contrast only a minority of the photoshop customers would care if the adobe photoshop developer got in big trouble.
If they turned off the flame before lowering the bird in the overflowing/flying oil won't catch on fire either.
But the flying hot oil can still blind, permanently disfigure and maim people.
My guess is chunks of ice can end up creating bigger expanding bubbles of steam than water for the same amount of water, since the ice = more water stuck together. And bigger expanding bubbles = more flying oil. But either way too much water in oil is not a good idea.
I was not ignoring glycemic load. That's why I specifically said double the carbs.
If you are going to consume the same amount of carbs to meet your daily energy requirements, eating spaghetti+something more nutritious than apples (and less sugary) would be better than eating apples - since apples have fructose.
Eating lots of that nutritious "something" to meet your caloric requirements and desired carb:protein:oils ratios might be too expensive or even unhealthy.
It would have been more interesting if Google's financial arm used its data...
:).
Think of the stock predictions you could make when you have access to so many people's emails and search data. Sure some data and predictions would be wrong, but if you have some safeguards I think they could make a lot of money.
Of course that would be bad PR if they were caught doing that
Starches break down to glucose. sugar (sucrose) breaks down to fructose and glucose. Glucose can be used by most of the cells in the body. Fructose is mainly processed by the liver (a few other things can use it). Again calories are not all the same.
It is easier to get a fatty liver from consuming sucrose or fructose (or alcohol for that matter), than from consuming starch (which is still harmful in excess). http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Heart_Letter/2011/September/abundance-of-fructose-not-good-for-the-liver-heart
You are more likely to get gout too: http://www.bmj.com/content/336/7639/309
If you don't have an active lifestyle consuming lots of starch is likely bad for you, but consuming lots of sugar or fructose is a lot worse.
For a similar serving, spaghetti has about the same glycemic index as apples, for double the carbs, and pasta is low fructose. So if it weren't for the other nutrients eating al-dente spaghetti (GI goes up if you over-boil ;) ) would be healthier than apples- especially since you only need to eat half the amount for the same calories. And if you can get similar nutrients from other sources (berries) you can skip the apples. Apples aren't that nutritious a food. Even potatoes are more nutritious. If you want a lower glycemic index for your potato - consume them cold ( https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25731/1/Kinnear_Tara_S_201011_MAST_thesis.pdf ). Then you end up with more resistant starch (however that may make you fart more ;) ). Or switch to yam/sweet potatoes.
For reference: http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm
The key to staying in shape is basically calories in vs. calories out. No matter what people's excuse, you cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics.
That oversimplification overlooks many things.
1) Not all consumed calories are converted with the same efficiency or even converted at all, or converted to the same things. A protein calorie is not the same as a fructose calorie nor an ethanol calorie. Look it up if you don't believe me. If you believe the idiotic fallacy that a calorie is a calorie consider pouring diesel into a gasoline car and vice versa.
2) A significant percentage of the calories are _excreted_. Lots of dieticians and even a few scientists seem to overlook that. Calories in, calories out, yes, but many overlook a significant out pathway - not many dieticians measure caloric value of the excreted feces. There's scientific research showing that gut flora can affect how much goes in and out, body fat percentage and maybe even susceptibility to diabetes at least for rodents. Rodents without gut flora have to eat 30% more just to maintain weight. Gut flora is affected by what you eat, and other factors so it does get a bit messy.
3) Metabolism differs.
So all these combined mean that someone might gain weight and someone might lose weight even though both consume the same amount of calories and initially weigh the same amount.
I say this as a skinny guy who eats more than some fat people. I try to avoid sugar (whether in food or drinks, including juices). There appears to be credible evidence that sugar can make you fatter than say protein or even starch - for the same caloric value. Sugar has its uses- if there is a famine you have a better chance of survival if you were plump than if you were skinny like me.
That said, standard portions getting bigger and bigger combined with childhood training/programming of finishing everything is probably to be blamed for much of the obesity problem.
BTW hard drive failures don't all cause BSODs. I've had them cause system slowdowns - the drive keeps trying to read the sector and _eventually_ succeeds.
So I suggest you also check the event viewer logs for disk errors.
That's weird then. Maybe it's the System Restore thing: http://www.ehow.com/how_6944447_make-system-restore-automatic-checkpoints.html
Seems Windows makes system restore checkpoints every 24 hours (presumably so if something gets screwed up you can restore to the previous checkpoint). Try turning that off and see if it helps. There are valid reasons to have this feature, but I can see how in some cases it will cause a lot of disk activity.
As for the hate, I guess most people using windows haven't encountered your 10 minute disk churning problem (doesn't mean it exists). I'm fine with people preferring desktop linux. My suggestion does allow people to continue using Desktop Linux while playing games on Windows.
I personally prefer Windows XP/7 for desktop stuff and Linux for server stuff. KDE does have some promise - kioslaves etc, but Microsoft has to make Windows a lot worse for them to have a chance. I doubt they have made Windows 8 bad enough for a switch to happen.
The farmer has no need to market directly to the consumer because the consumer will never go directly to the farmer for anything.
Never? There are many farmers and people who buy directly from them. http://www.localharvest.org/
So if you bother to think a bit more on why the OTHER farmers don't sell directly to the people who actually consume their products you will understand my argument better. Hint- it usually costs more. Rather than selling a huge amount at once you have to do many times the work by selling to each individual customer. But you get your data.
Those organic farmers do get their data. They might even be able to get useful feedback directly from their customers (changes in the quality etc).
If the disk activity is still high after login maybe you can start Windows 7's resource monitor to see what is accessing the disk.
See: http://www.pcworld.com/article/241677/how_to_use_resource_monitor.html
Maybe Steam is checking for updates on all your games or similar. Another thing to check is the event viewer - perhaps some service is failing, or worse you are having drive errors. Nowadays lots of software check for updates.
I've had the same Windows XP install for many years and it hasn't got noticeably slower.
FWIW high disk activity AFTER login is usually less to do with Windows and more to do with the applications that are installed. If you had the same sort of apps doing the same sort of thing on Linux you would have slowdowns too. Perhaps the slowdown would be less since Linux might be more efficient with scheduling IO, but there's still going to be more IO than if the apps weren't doing whatever they're doing.