The real question is - why is it only in the US that these odd technology hacks are being used - the rest of the world is using DAB for digital broacast radio. It seems like the US is the only place that WON'T be using DAB.
Because the US needs an IBOC solution, which DAB isn't.
Besides, DAB isn't exactly taking the world by storm, as you imply. There are a lot of problems with the system (such as smaller stations having to depend on the largerones), which is making DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) on 30MHz+ look more enticing all the time.
I would call DAB the odd technology hack in this instance.
A far, far, far better situation to compare is DVB vs ATSC, and in that case, ATSC came first, and it seems that Europe, like usual, was the one that wanted to be contrary for political reasons. Just like the 110v@60Hz vs 220v@50Hz incompatibility from a century earlier.
Not exactly true. There are many very high-voltage DC lines.
But for short distances with most modern electronics, DC would win.
Yes, short distances... like the distance between the power supply and the motherboard... Much longer than that, and you've got some serious problems to address.
So if you have a number of machines all in the same room, why not do the conversion in one spot, and eliminate the redundancy in every machine.
Why not? Massive wiring, careful voltage regulation, and over-all being less effecient than the current situation. DC power is only even POSSIBLY more effecient when you throw a large "on line" UPS into the mix, and there are better ways to solve that problem, IMHO (ie. higher-voltage battery banks).
But for a major center with many machines in the same room, I can see quite a bit of benefit with going with DC.
Unfortunately, you fail to see the drawbacks. Either that, or you've vastly oversimplified things because you think you're talking to a Jr High science class...
This is just recognizing that instead of converting it individually in each of dozens or hundreds (or more) machines, that it is more efficient and reliable to have one (and perhaps a redundant standby) converter providing DC to the same machines.
No, this is not "recognizing" that, it is "suggesting" that.
It is still a disputed issue, and I really can't see it comming out in DC's favor. Companies like Seasonic are making more effecient power supplies (60%+ effeciency, with PowerFactor Correction), which are just slightly more expensive. DC lines need to be really massive (increasingly large as voltage drops). You need multiple wires to supply the different voltages. You need really precise equipment to maintain the proper voltages, etc.
The only big advantage I see is due to UPS systems. That could pretty well be eliminated by using multiple batteries, wired in serial, to give much higher voltages (ie. approx 120v). Then only needing much simplier circuitry for the conversion to AC (less losses).
it's only significant in that 1080 == 1.5x720. increased resolution offers non-linear returns.
Well first, I believe the parent was saying either 720 or 1080 offer significant improvements over 480i, not over each other.
However, you're still wrong... You're only comparing the height (1.5X) and completely ignoring the width. With both, it makes 1080 a 2.25X increase over 720.
i wear glasses, and as they don't make it with 0.0001 accuracy, they make it with 0.25 accuracy. therefor my picture is always a bit fuzzy. i can't see one damn thing wrong with any of the current dvd-s that i use, and i certainly wont see the extra pixels that bluray ads.
The blanket statement that you (specifically) can't see the extra resolution is nonsense.
If they squeeze all that resolution into a 20" screen, and set it 10 feet away from you, obviously you won't see it, but that's an artifical (and unrealistic) limitation.
Best Buy has had a 52" HDTV on their site for $1,099 for quite a while now, and you can find TVs cheaper in-store than online. Plus, the proper viewing distance for HDTVs is also now about 1/3rd what it was for standard TVs, making even a small screen apparently much bigger.
And DVD's are copy protected as well, it's just been broken, and was broken before most people could affordably make their own "backups."
That's not true. It took a couple years after DVDs were getting popular, before CSS was cracked. It was a running theme here on/. at the time. And, even at the very beginning, options for DVD-backup were perfectly affordable. Divx 1/2/3 was there from early-on, as were CD-burners.
As for HD content, I'm making perfect practical "backups" right now. So your metric is already proven wrong.
I only see one fundamental benefit between $NEW_DVD_FORMAT and DVD:
1) larger capacity - whether this mean more content or higher resolution.
Right... Next-gen DVDs don't have an infinitely more advanced menu system, or a scratch-resistant coating. They aren't going to have longer life-spans thanks to being based off of Sony's extremely advanced MO technology.
Now someone's going to have to convince people that DVDs suck. Yeah, right...
Yeah, that'll be difficult. They'll have to have a DVD playing on a TV, and a HighDef disc playing on a second HDTV, and just hope the person notices the 6X more resolution... I guess the fact that people don't notice the difference in resolution is the reason HDTVs have been so difficult to sell...
2) DRM - nobody wants to *PAY EXTRA* for less control.
Exactly, people paid extra for DVDs so they could have more control. NOTE: More control may mean being forced to watch FBI warning, trailers, long menu sequences, being unable to make fair-use backup copies, required to pay $30 for software to play it, and unable to play it on the operating system of your choice.
Nobody wants to make the wrong choice and be stuck with worthless electronics junk.
Yes, people are smart shoppers, that's why they buy the cheapest Made-in-China DVD players they can find, and go buy a new one every 1-2 years, after it fails.
4) lack of a problem - from a consumer standpoint, what exactly is wrong with DVDs?
Exactly... Sure, there were lots of problems with VHS, LaserDisc, VCD, etc., which forced people to upgrade, but DVD has no such flaws.
Seems like everyone loves them. What problem does BluRay solve? Oh, my freedom problem... yeah right
Yes, they're trying to trick you into upgrading from the wonderful unencrypted and DRM-free format, known as DVD.
5) the next dvd jon - it's just a matter of time until any protection in these new formats is broken.
Yeah, that's a real drawback for conumers there. They HATE to hear that someone cracked the encryption on the content they purchased. Like the huge public outcry after CSS was cracked...
Isn't there already talk about releasing a player that supports both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray? Doesn't that end the whole format war, much like the DVD+-RW drives ended the writeable DVD format war?
How about the combo players that supported LaserDisc/DVD? How about the combo players for SA-CD/DVD-Audio?
It's not going to be the same kind of format war as VHS vs Betamax, but it'll still be a format war.
CDVD (name may be incorrect; the Chinese next-gen DVD standard). And everyone will be using CDVD, because it'll be the only standard that actually lets you get things done.
The name is EVD, and it's dead at this point... There's been talk about it since shortly after DVDs came out, and nothing materialized, except a lawsuit by On2 for breach of contract (or something similar).
Lacking DRM would be nice, but for it to be useful, you have to be able to buy/rent content in that format... Same goes for SVCDs, which certainly could have challenged DVDs, if it was possible to buy SVCD movies anywhere.
EVD, if it were to develop, wouldn't be of any use, since DVD9s encoded with WMV9/H.264 are standard for HD-DVD/Blu-ray. If it were to materialize in 2000 or so, they'd have had a great chance to break into the market.
I don't get it. What "optical division" does Sony really have? They've just been re-branding OEM drives (Lite-on) for the last decade.
I suppose they've been making Blu-ray drives on their own, but I'm sure they'll just be re-branding OEM drives in a short while, when the price on next-gen drives drops to reasonable prices.
I get the feeling Sony is just finding a creative way of cutting their losses in the PC market.
Here in the UK I've never seen an HDTV CRT --- the push for HiDef came after the LCD/Plasma thing. I didn't realise there were such beasts as HiDef CRT TVs! ian
I see.
Yes, here, CRT-based HDTVs are far, far more popular than the alternatives. Plasmas were rather hyped, but people very quickly realized they were slow, low-res, susceptible to image burn-in, extremely expensive, and only last perhaps 3 years of heavy use. They've been completely removed from store shelves at major retailers, and replaced by LCDs (with the occasional DLP set).
Still, due to price, as well as image quality, CRTs are vastly out-pacing the alternatives. Both direct-view and projection sets.
27" CRT HDTVs are going for well under $500, and 50+" CRT-based projection HDTVs for under $1,000. Let's see... that's approx €420 and €840 respectively. And the alternatives, at similar sizes, costing at least twice as much. Plus, it's the only option if you want a set that can display both 720 and 1080 natively, without scaling, and probably the only option if you want to really see the 60fps refresh rate.
Big deal. Media costs are not where your money is going.
Completely wrong. Media costs ARE the biggest expenditure.
I remember everyone trumpeting CD-RW as the optical media that would outlast all the hard drives and be great for backing up.
Yes, well, you apparently listed to idiots.
Still, that's completely besides the point... If you drop your hard-drive from table-height, ALL your data will be destroyed. If you drop a Blu-ray disc from table-height, it MIGHT get scratched, and even if it is destroyed, it's only a small fraction of your media, not ALL of it, as in the hard drive senario.
How long does it take for them to transfer a movie? Well, my home connection can pull down a megabyte every two or three seconds. Dunno how large the stuff you're talking about is, but that's about a GB an hour.
Yes, well, Blu-ray is going to be 50GBs per disc... That not only means 2 days of constantly maxing-out your internet connection, it also means they will spend a lot more money on bandwidth than the 39 cents they now have to pay. Besides, anything you can download over the internet is going to be massively DRMed, and require some extremely crappy Windows-only media player.
There isn't actually anything stopping you from doing so.
Sure there is. You can't divide up your hard drive, and give them a tiny piece of it.
When was the last time you destroyed a hard drive from a magnet?
Never, because I don't carry them around with me, they stay inside my computer, where they aren't near any magnetic fields.
Where do people store their VHS tapes and DVDs? You guessed it, on top or next to their TVs... where it becomes a really serious problem.
And exactly the same thing affects optical media, plus it's easy to scratch.
Optical media are 100% impervious to magnetic fields, can handle extremely higher tempuratures before they are damaged, and Blu-ray discs are practically impossible to scratch.
We already have one, it's called an external harddrive. Not as convient and portable as a disk I'll conceed that point,
Plus about 2X more expensive per GB. Plus having a much higher chance of all your data being destroyed suddenly.
Each of the individual "incoveniences" you gloss over are show-stoppers on their own.
Netflix isn't going to ship you hard drives.
You can't loan/sell individual movies to friends
Trivially easy to destroy via heat, electricity, magnets, G-forces, etc.
it has no DRM, it's a generic product
Discs made by studios will have DRM on them, but there's no reason to believe Blu-ray/HD-DVD burners will have some embedded DRM. Home-made DVDs don't have CSS on them, do they?
Do some drive swapping with friends or mail it to your buddy in South Dakota now and enjoy a "upload" rate faster than anything you could afford.
Pray every day that he'll eventually return your entire movie collection... Discs are much less fragile, much more flexible, very high bandwidth, and much lower latency, in this case.
Plus, with discs, it's usually practical to make this a one-way transaction (no return).
I mean, unless you can afford a 90 inch plasma screen ultra-resolution television set that costs as much as your car, what's the big deal?
27" HDTVs that do 1080i are down below $500, if you look around. 50"+ projection HDTVs are down below $1,000.
Only idiots buy Plasma TVs. They have been COMPLETELY replaced by LCD TVs in every store.
Watching television won't be at the HD-DVD or Blu-ray quality (yet, anyway)
What? If you have an HDTV set, it will be HD quality RIGHT NOW. If you don't have an HDTV set, you will soon enough, and you'd be an idiot to want to buy a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player BEFORE getting an HDTV... that wouldn't make any sense, and nobody is suggesting that.
My point is, the entertainment industry is just peddling more crap hoping they can manufacture a need for it when in reality things have pretty much capped as far as necessary graphical quality (IMHO).
That's just stupid. There's no such thing as "necessary graphical quality". Every game is made within the confines of the system they will be played on, and designers will always find uses for it. I'd say the 16-bit consoles were as far as game quality needed to go, you might not.
Linux with X-Window, and similar features would be ridiculously slow on the same hardware.
Now you're pushing it...
Installing Fedora or similar would be insane on older hardware, but so too would be installing XP. Older versions of Slackware (~3.x), with X11 and an old version of GNOME ran just fine on my 486 notebook, in 8MBs of RAM, with about 100MBs of (SLOW!) HDD space.
And please, don't even try to bring up abductions, torture, and murder. Look who are the barbarians that go around beheading innocent people. Nobody's doing the same to these terrorists. You make it seem like as if these violent criminals are nothing but peace-loving victims.
Those murders are done by very few criminals that identify with islam. I'm willing to bet there are many more Christian murderers in the world killing more innocent people, than the highly publicized muslim executions.
Besides, the HUGE difference, which you can't ignore if you wanted to, is that the murders are just done by individual criminals, while being condemed by most leaders in the muslim world. Whereas the tortures, incidental bombings and asassinations are actually supported by the highest authorities in the western world, from Bush and the USA to Sharon and Israel.
I had entertained the possibility you were just possibly mistaken, but it's exceedingly clear you're just another trying to spread hate and racism.
Canadian athletes used to have to go overseas to train for a lot of winter events.
You've got to be kidding...
This is Canada we're talking about here, right... not some African country? Canada, right up at the artic circle, where most of the country is below freezing for 9 months out of the year?
I'm at a complete loss as to why Canada didn't have any appropriate venues before 88. Hosing down the floor of any old wherehouse will give you an ice rink for free. Canada, where hockey reigns supreme, couldn't find a single ice rink, appropriate for speed-skaters to practice on, in the entire country?
Re:What about older versions of Windows?
on
Linux On Older Hardware
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Windows 98, I've always felt, was a drastically underrated version of Windows. It was only a 200MB install, in comparison to the 500MB of Windows ME and gigabyte plus of Windows XP.
No. People were saying, non-stop, how great Win98 was when ME came around. I'd say, at it's peak, it was VASTLY over-rated. Although much smaller and somewhat faster, it isn't a fraction as stable as 2000 or XP.
The most underrated Microsoft operating system is NT4... Smaller and faster than 98, and every bit as stable as 2000 or XP.
NT4 got lots of bad publicity for being a version behind 95/98 in DirectX versions, and sadly only got up to DirectX 6.0 before being E.O.L.ed. It also got a bad wrap for lacking USB support, even though several companies released NT4 drivers for their USB devices, USB input devices like keyboards and mice don't need OS support, and a third-party company is still selling the USB stack/drivers for NT4 for $30. These were features Microsoft was holding back on, to force an upgrade to 2000.
NT4 was great, in it's stability and simplicity. It was frustrating to see a blue-screen when you swapped a videocard, but it only took a little bit of knowledge to solve the problem, and be back to 100% in no time. Repeatability is amazing, unlike 95/98/2000/XP which may install the drivers for a device once, then won't the second time, NT4 was, at the very least, completely consistent.
For example, Windows 98 had the option to completely turn off the usage of the swap file until memory is filled. Doing so made the entire system run from memory, vastly speeding up the system. As far as I know this is impossible in Windows XP.
I can't comment on XP, but I do remember that Windows 2003 (the server version of XP) had the option of completely disabling the pagefile, which made it just noticably faster, in only a few very specific cases.
When I use Windows 98, it almost seems to me as if XP was designed to slow down your computer.
Why almost? Each successive version of Windows IS designed to slow down your computer. My favorite example is the "Open With..." dialog. It hasn't changed the slightest bit since Windows 95, but it gets SIGNIFICANTLY slower with each release. As in, outpacing hardware improvements... I can only imagine it's because they're making the registry slower and vastly more bloated with each release (perhaps they throw a few sleep() calls in there to make Dell/HP happy).
Also, there is one huge reason I would suggest M.E. over 98... UMASS support. People REALLY don't want to go to the web and have to download a driver for every single USB device they use. Without UMASS support, you can't just plug-in a USB hard drive, flash dongle, iPod, etc. and have it work. With ME and 2000 being the first versions of Windows with UMASS support, is it any wonder most knowledgable people (myself included) recomend 2000 over all other versions of Windows?
The thought of engineered obsolesence still makes me gag. I'd much rather have Linux/BSD, where things like USB and UMASS support aren't intentionally held back, and you can always backport any newer features you want.
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Because the US needs an IBOC solution, which DAB isn't.
Besides, DAB isn't exactly taking the world by storm, as you imply. There are a lot of problems with the system (such as smaller stations having to depend on the largerones), which is making DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) on 30MHz+ look more enticing all the time.
I would call DAB the odd technology hack in this instance.
A far, far, far better situation to compare is DVB vs ATSC, and in that case, ATSC came first, and it seems that Europe, like usual, was the one that wanted to be contrary for political reasons. Just like the 110v@60Hz vs 220v@50Hz incompatibility from a century earlier.
Not exactly true. There are many very high-voltage DC lines.
Yes, short distances... like the distance between the power supply and the motherboard... Much longer than that, and you've got some serious problems to address.
Why not? Massive wiring, careful voltage regulation, and over-all being less effecient than the current situation. DC power is only even POSSIBLY more effecient when you throw a large "on line" UPS into the mix, and there are better ways to solve that problem, IMHO (ie. higher-voltage battery banks).
Unfortunately, you fail to see the drawbacks. Either that, or you've vastly oversimplified things because you think you're talking to a Jr High science class...
Sorry, that should have been 80%+ effeciency, NOT 60.
Not to self, use preview button more often.
No, this is not "recognizing" that, it is "suggesting" that.
It is still a disputed issue, and I really can't see it comming out in DC's favor. Companies like Seasonic are making more effecient power supplies (60%+ effeciency, with PowerFactor Correction), which are just slightly more expensive. DC lines need to be really massive (increasingly large as voltage drops). You need multiple wires to supply the different voltages. You need really precise equipment to maintain the proper voltages, etc.
The only big advantage I see is due to UPS systems. That could pretty well be eliminated by using multiple batteries, wired in serial, to give much higher voltages (ie. approx 120v). Then only needing much simplier circuitry for the conversion to AC (less losses).
You're downloading lots of copyrighted material by visiting slashdot.org
You better turn yourself in to the police, and maybe they'll go easy on you.
Yes, I know. That was part of my point.
Same reason as everything else... Compatibility between one format and the next. Like combo VHS/DVD decks.
Pioneer made them early on, and they were found in most stores.
Well first, I believe the parent was saying either 720 or 1080 offer significant improvements over 480i, not over each other.
However, you're still wrong... You're only comparing the height (1.5X) and completely ignoring the width. With both, it makes 1080 a 2.25X increase over 720.
The blanket statement that you (specifically) can't see the extra resolution is nonsense.
If they squeeze all that resolution into a 20" screen, and set it 10 feet away from you, obviously you won't see it, but that's an artifical (and unrealistic) limitation.
Best Buy has had a 52" HDTV on their site for $1,099 for quite a while now, and you can find TVs cheaper in-store than online. Plus, the proper viewing distance for HDTVs is also now about 1/3rd what it was for standard TVs, making even a small screen apparently much bigger.
You really think the PS3 will be released just as the first Blu-ray players are? I am highly dubious of your claim.
That's not true. It took a couple years after DVDs were getting popular, before CSS was cracked. It was a running theme here on
As for HD content, I'm making perfect practical "backups" right now. So your metric is already proven wrong.
Right... Next-gen DVDs don't have an infinitely more advanced menu system, or a scratch-resistant coating. They aren't going to have longer life-spans thanks to being based off of Sony's extremely advanced MO technology.
Yeah, that'll be difficult. They'll have to have a DVD playing on a TV, and a HighDef disc playing on a second HDTV, and just hope the person notices the 6X more resolution... I guess the fact that people don't notice the difference in resolution is the reason HDTVs have been so difficult to sell...
Exactly, people paid extra for DVDs so they could have more control. NOTE: More control may mean being forced to watch FBI warning, trailers, long menu sequences, being unable to make fair-use backup copies, required to pay $30 for software to play it, and unable to play it on the operating system of your choice.
Yes, people are smart shoppers, that's why they buy the cheapest Made-in-China DVD players they can find, and go buy a new one every 1-2 years, after it fails.
Exactly... Sure, there were lots of problems with VHS, LaserDisc, VCD, etc., which forced people to upgrade, but DVD has no such flaws.
Yes, they're trying to trick you into upgrading from the wonderful unencrypted and DRM-free format, known as DVD.
Yeah, that's a real drawback for conumers there. They HATE to hear that someone cracked the encryption on the content they purchased. Like the huge public outcry after CSS was cracked...
How about the combo players that supported LaserDisc/DVD? How about the combo players for SA-CD/DVD-Audio?
It's not going to be the same kind of format war as VHS vs Betamax, but it'll still be a format war.
The name is EVD, and it's dead at this point... There's been talk about it since shortly after DVDs came out, and nothing materialized, except a lawsuit by On2 for breach of contract (or something similar).
Lacking DRM would be nice, but for it to be useful, you have to be able to buy/rent content in that format... Same goes for SVCDs, which certainly could have challenged DVDs, if it was possible to buy SVCD movies anywhere.
EVD, if it were to develop, wouldn't be of any use, since DVD9s encoded with WMV9/H.264 are standard for HD-DVD/Blu-ray. If it were to materialize in 2000 or so, they'd have had a great chance to break into the market.
I don't get it. What "optical division" does Sony really have? They've just been re-branding OEM drives (Lite-on) for the last decade.
I suppose they've been making Blu-ray drives on their own, but I'm sure they'll just be re-branding OEM drives in a short while, when the price on next-gen drives drops to reasonable prices.
I get the feeling Sony is just finding a creative way of cutting their losses in the PC market.
I see.
Yes, here, CRT-based HDTVs are far, far more popular than the alternatives. Plasmas were rather hyped, but people very quickly realized they were slow, low-res, susceptible to image burn-in, extremely expensive, and only last perhaps 3 years of heavy use. They've been completely removed from store shelves at major retailers, and replaced by LCDs (with the occasional DLP set).
Still, due to price, as well as image quality, CRTs are vastly out-pacing the alternatives. Both direct-view and projection sets.
27" CRT HDTVs are going for well under $500, and 50+" CRT-based projection HDTVs for under $1,000. Let's see... that's approx €420 and €840 respectively. And the alternatives, at similar sizes, costing at least twice as much. Plus, it's the only option if you want a set that can display both 720 and 1080 natively, without scaling, and probably the only option if you want to really see the 60fps refresh rate.
If you want to see for yourself, you can visit http://bestbuy.com/ , http//circuitcity.com , http://sears.com/ , http://kmart.com/ , http://target.com/ , http://walmart.com/ , etc, etc. Their online stores reflect their physical stores pretty closely.
Well that's just nonsense. HDTV CRTs are very popular, despite the fact that you don't happen to have one.
Completely wrong. Media costs ARE the biggest expenditure.
Yes, well, you apparently listed to idiots.
Still, that's completely besides the point... If you drop your hard-drive from table-height, ALL your data will be destroyed. If you drop a Blu-ray disc from table-height, it MIGHT get scratched, and even if it is destroyed, it's only a small fraction of your media, not ALL of it, as in the hard drive senario.
Yes, well, Blu-ray is going to be 50GBs per disc... That not only means 2 days of constantly maxing-out your internet connection, it also means they will spend a lot more money on bandwidth than the 39 cents they now have to pay. Besides, anything you can download over the internet is going to be massively DRMed, and require some extremely crappy Windows-only media player.
Sure there is. You can't divide up your hard drive, and give them a tiny piece of it.
Never, because I don't carry them around with me, they stay inside my computer, where they aren't near any magnetic fields.
Where do people store their VHS tapes and DVDs? You guessed it, on top or next to their TVs... where it becomes a really serious problem.
Optical media are 100% impervious to magnetic fields, can handle extremely higher tempuratures before they are damaged, and Blu-ray discs are practically impossible to scratch.
Absolutely not true.
I was refering to "latency" in terms of this mailing-media idea.
Windows 95 OSR2 has USB support.
Plus about 2X more expensive per GB. Plus having a much higher chance of all your data being destroyed suddenly.
Each of the individual "incoveniences" you gloss over are show-stoppers on their own.
Netflix isn't going to ship you hard drives.
You can't loan/sell individual movies to friends
Trivially easy to destroy via heat, electricity, magnets, G-forces, etc.
Discs made by studios will have DRM on them, but there's no reason to believe Blu-ray/HD-DVD burners will have some embedded DRM. Home-made DVDs don't have CSS on them, do they?
Pray every day that he'll eventually return your entire movie collection... Discs are much less fragile, much more flexible, very high bandwidth, and much lower latency, in this case.
Plus, with discs, it's usually practical to make this a one-way transaction (no return).
27" HDTVs that do 1080i are down below $500, if you look around. 50"+ projection HDTVs are down below $1,000.
Only idiots buy Plasma TVs. They have been COMPLETELY replaced by LCD TVs in every store.
What? If you have an HDTV set, it will be HD quality RIGHT NOW. If you don't have an HDTV set, you will soon enough, and you'd be an idiot to want to buy a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player BEFORE getting an HDTV... that wouldn't make any sense, and nobody is suggesting that.
That's just stupid. There's no such thing as "necessary graphical quality". Every game is made within the confines of the system they will be played on, and designers will always find uses for it. I'd say the 16-bit consoles were as far as game quality needed to go, you might not.
Now you're pushing it...
Installing Fedora or similar would be insane on older hardware, but so too would be installing XP. Older versions of Slackware (~3.x), with X11 and an old version of GNOME ran just fine on my 486 notebook, in 8MBs of RAM, with about 100MBs of (SLOW!) HDD space.
Those murders are done by very few criminals that identify with islam. I'm willing to bet there are many more Christian murderers in the world killing more innocent people, than the highly publicized muslim executions.
Besides, the HUGE difference, which you can't ignore if you wanted to, is that the murders are just done by individual criminals, while being condemed by most leaders in the muslim world. Whereas the tortures, incidental bombings and asassinations are actually supported by the highest authorities in the western world, from Bush and the USA to Sharon and Israel.
I had entertained the possibility you were just possibly mistaken, but it's exceedingly clear you're just another trying to spread hate and racism.
You've got to be kidding...
This is Canada we're talking about here, right... not some African country? Canada, right up at the artic circle, where most of the country is below freezing for 9 months out of the year?
I'm at a complete loss as to why Canada didn't have any appropriate venues before 88. Hosing down the floor of any old wherehouse will give you an ice rink for free. Canada, where hockey reigns supreme, couldn't find a single ice rink, appropriate for speed-skaters to practice on, in the entire country?
No. People were saying, non-stop, how great Win98 was when ME came around. I'd say, at it's peak, it was VASTLY over-rated. Although much smaller and somewhat faster, it isn't a fraction as stable as 2000 or XP.
The most underrated Microsoft operating system is NT4... Smaller and faster than 98, and every bit as stable as 2000 or XP.
NT4 got lots of bad publicity for being a version behind 95/98 in DirectX versions, and sadly only got up to DirectX 6.0 before being E.O.L.ed. It also got a bad wrap for lacking USB support, even though several companies released NT4 drivers for their USB devices, USB input devices like keyboards and mice don't need OS support, and a third-party company is still selling the USB stack/drivers for NT4 for $30. These were features Microsoft was holding back on, to force an upgrade to 2000.
NT4 was great, in it's stability and simplicity. It was frustrating to see a blue-screen when you swapped a videocard, but it only took a little bit of knowledge to solve the problem, and be back to 100% in no time. Repeatability is amazing, unlike 95/98/2000/XP which may install the drivers for a device once, then won't the second time, NT4 was, at the very least, completely consistent.
I can't comment on XP, but I do remember that Windows 2003 (the server version of XP) had the option of completely disabling the pagefile, which made it just noticably faster, in only a few very specific cases.
Why almost? Each successive version of Windows IS designed to slow down your computer. My favorite example is the "Open With..." dialog. It hasn't changed the slightest bit since Windows 95, but it gets SIGNIFICANTLY slower with each release. As in, outpacing hardware improvements... I can only imagine it's because they're making the registry slower and vastly more bloated with each release (perhaps they throw a few sleep() calls in there to make Dell/HP happy).
Also, there is one huge reason I would suggest M.E. over 98... UMASS support. People REALLY don't want to go to the web and have to download a driver for every single USB device they use. Without UMASS support, you can't just plug-in a USB hard drive, flash dongle, iPod, etc. and have it work. With ME and 2000 being the first versions of Windows with UMASS support, is it any wonder most knowledgable people (myself included) recomend 2000 over all other versions of Windows?
The thought of engineered obsolesence still makes me gag. I'd much rather have Linux/BSD, where things like USB and UMASS support aren't intentionally held back, and you can always backport any newer features you want.