have any of you ever owned a (cassette) walkman or a (cd) discman? How about a Viao laptop, or a portable minidisc player?
Yes (multiple), yes (multiple), No, and Yes (multiple).
Walkmans were good, but nearly every (all but one) Sony discman I've owned went defective in about 3 months of heavy use, and I'm talking about a dozen super-expensive ($200+) units (when $50 was normal). Similar situation for Minidisc players, I traded-in about 2 of each of 3 different models of $400 portable minidisc recorders (over the corse of my ~2-year warranty) before I gave-up.
Sony has ALWAYS made very durable and dependable portable equipment.
They used-to, but it's been a long time since that was the case. They've made nothing but complete CRAP for the past 15 years, and they still charge premium prices for it.
I can't think of any reason that God would make the universe where bad things could happen to anyone, unless (A) he made mistakes and didn't intend for the bad things, (B) he actually wants to screw with us/watch some of us fail, or (C) he's not the only one in control.
The simple answer is: He did make the Earth a paradise, and then Eve had to go and screw the whole thing up.
The more complex answer is found in The Book of Revelations, if memory serves. It says the reasons for God creating everything are so very complex that we could not possibly understand it in our current forms, but we will all find the answer after death.
I know that may sound like a non-answer to someone who has never read The Bible, but it is interesting to note that answers such as that are very, very uncommon. It doesn't, for instance, say we could never understand how we came to exist on Earth (ie. Evolution), figure out how to travel through space, destroy the whole planet, etc.
The only other place I recal anything similar is in reference to seeing God's face. So, no matter what you think of that answer, you should understand that it really isn't used anywhere else.
the discovery channel you can still catch some educational content most of the time, so you're exagerating it a bit.
Really, now? Lets see what's on Discovery Channel right now:
# 9:00am American Chopper TVPG, CC # 10:00am American Chopper TVPG, CC # 11:00am Navy SEALs Training: BUD/s Class 234 TVPG, CC # 12:00pm Navy SEALs Training: BUD/s Class 234 TVPG, CC # 1:00pm Navy SEALs Training: BUD/s Class 234 TVPG, CC # 2:00pm The New Detectives TVPG, CC # 3:00pm The FBI Files TVPG, CC # 4:00pm Against the Law TVPG, CC # 5:00pm It Takes a Thief TVPG, CC # 6:00pm Cash Cab TVG, CC # 6:30pm Cash Cab TVG, CC
Yeah, that's some really educational crap right there. Everyone knows how educational American Choppers is, so lets move one. Watching Navy SEALs going through boot camp is very educational. You'll learn all about... something, I guess. The FBI/Detectives/Law shows are less educational than "Law and Order" (though not as mind-destroying as CSI). It Takes a Thief is educational, if you didn't know windows can be broken quite easily. Cash Cab is a few steps down from "Candid Camera".
Sure, Discovery may still show something vaguely educational when nobody is watching, but even then, it's probably just a repeat of one of the shows they made 5 years ago.
Unfortunately, at the very least, that leaves their "one or the other" myths as complete wastes of time.
See: Car Air conditioner vs. Open Windows, Coke vs. Tarnish remover, Salsa vs. Acid on Prison Bars, etc.
Also, having no standards what-so-ever doesn't lend much credibility to their "plausible" results either. They could easily have screwed-up a basic condition.
The idea was (first of all) to try to prove or disprove what the hypothetical truckdriver was supposed to have done - which would not have entailed drilling a hole in the cement.
Why not? As far as I could tell, the myth was that you could get cemet out of a truck with a stick of dynamite.
Where's the definitive source of this myth, that says it can't involve drilling a small hole?
This explanation just reeks of the stupidity of the "hammer throw" (or whatever they called it) where they called it "busted" even through the hammer consistently reduced the surface tension. They just pulled a height out of their asses that was so high NOTHING could possibly have helped, so they pretty well pre-determined the outcome.
The clip in the video showed a snafu that occured with the first truck when they accidentally filled it up with cement rather than just having enough for a thin coat. It lead up to a spectacular event where they blew up the enture truck with 850 pounds of TNT.
The cement truck was the most disappointing one in a long time. Everyone who has ever even seen explosives in action knows that you drill a hole in the material (the cemet block in this case) and drop the TNT down the hole before detonating it. They just hung a stick of dynamite above the cemet, and gave up when it didn't do anything.
Before Mythbusters, I've never wanted to reach through my TV and smack people for being so stupid. With Mythbusters, it's a regular occurance. It almost seems like they go out of their way to make their tests complete nonsense.
You're absolutely correct, Discovery Channel has gone vastly downhill. However, I wouldn't blame the 4 big shows. They could certainly support 4 hours of non-educational crap per week, and still fill the rest of the schedule with their previous (read: GOOD) content. It was a conscious decision they made, and they made it across all of their channels.
TLC was the absolutely worst. It went from showing things like surgery, engineering, and other mostly-good content, to being the 24-hour "Trading Spaces" channel. Nothing left but low-budget decorating shown for women (and gay men).
Animal Planet went to low-budget shows of animals doing tricks, following the ASPCA around, etc.
I've completely given up on any of them. The only good thing being, it seemed like The National Geographic Channel started getting much, much better at the same time Discovery was getting worse and worse. I don't think they are as good as Discovery was at it's best, but they're close enough.
The point here is that it's been a game of leapfrogging for most of the last few years.
I'm afraid you are mistaken. AMD hasn't gained so much market share by maintaining pairity, they did it by being consistently faster, as well as lower power and cheaper.
Mhz are always meaningless on their own.
Of course they are, but that doesn't change the fact that Intel was heavily marketing MHz, and designed the P4 just so that it could get a very high MHz rating, even without particularly good performance.
Certainly seems to me you're implying P4s are slower when clock speeds are kept constant
P4s are slower compared to AMD CPUs on the market at similar points in time.
Mobile chips don't magically use less power. That is innovation folks.
No, it's called undervolting. You build the chip to a somewhat higher standard, and they will run stably at much lower voltages, which drastically decreases power consuption and heat output.
In fact, AMD mobile chips have generally just been desktop chips that tested to a much higher tolerance.
AMD didn't have a mobile chip to compare to.
True, but that doesn't make the comparisons any more fair. Intel just beat them out of the gate this time. People weren't lambasting Dell for using P4 CPUs just because Intel didn't have a dual core chip available as soon as AMD did. I don't see how this particular twist is getting billed as Intel being better for notebooks, or being a reason Apple chose Intel over AMD.
I have no doubt, if Apple had chosen to use AMD processors instead, AMD would have gone out of their way to rush an effecient dual-core notebook chip to market as well.
Do tell, what do you think is the best chip available for this application right now and why?
Obviously a mobile Opteron. Very good performance, high clock-rates, low latency, low power, and 64-bit.
Dual cores is slightly nice, but not worth the increased power requirements, particularly since very few applications can take advantage of both cores.
My information is out of date? Well, that's also the data Apple was using when deciding what CPU to use in their newest offerings.
That's extremely unlikely. Apple is a big enough company that they very easily get the inside information from both AMD and Intel (which they did). It's extremely hard to believe they looked at the specs for current Intel/AMD processors (and about a year and a half before they made the announcement) and completely ignored inside information from both companies, press releases on up-and-comming processors, review sites, etc.
They can reexamine AMD at a later date, but they obviously feel that Intel can offer them a compelling processors for very light laptops, for at least 4 years.
No, that's not obvious, actually, unless you jump to the conclusion that there is no other justification. It's been very well covered that Dell is sticking with Intel at their own peril largely because of the deep, deep discounts Intel is offering. AMD has an anti-trust lawsuit in the works for this very reason. So while this may possibly be the case, it's certainly not a foregone conclusion, and doesn't even seem the most likely explanation.
For most of its life, the P4 wasn't "underperforming", it was as fast - if not faster - than the Athlon.
Not true, except on a very, very narrow range of applications.
Uh, you can't "over inflate" a clock speed. It is what it is.
No, you can very easily over inflate a clock-speed. Just increase the pipeline, then the MHz are meaningless, because you then need many more of them to get the same performance.
"PR" numbers, OTOH...
You're somewhat correct. PR numbers could EASILY have been over inflated. That's why it's so significant that AMD has never done so, despite having nothing to stop them.
It always amazes me the number of people who say "clock speed doesn't matter" then immediately turn around (often in the same sentence !) and say "$CPU is faster than the Pentium 4 at the same Mhz".
That's funny, because I never said anything even remotely close to that... Not even REMOTELY.
The PR rating is a number that relates to the original Athlon, not the P4.
Of course that's all they can officially say... It's just an amazing, almost magical coincidence that they coincide so PERFECTLY with the P4's MHz ratings, and were introduced at just about the exact time that Pentium 4s came out... I hope someone told AMD about this...
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white _papers_and_tech_docs/25426C_WP_FINAL.pdf With the advent of the AMD AthlonTM processor and the Intel Pentium® 4 processor, the design architectures of these two companies fundamentally diverged. This design divergence has resulted in a difference in work done per clock cycle. Thus, microprocessors operating at identical frequencies may offer dramatically different levels of performance. Consequently, frequency is no longer the most meaningful metric for judging relative microprocessor performance. Today's end users need a better approach for comparing relative processor performance.
Not according to my source, which I trust to provide accurate numbers. Considering that Intel uses a different power rating standard than AMD, it's not fair to compare AMD's spec sheet with Intel's spec sheet. Intel was the one to switch to "Thermal Design Power" when AMD was still listing "Max Power Output", and now that AMD has switched to "Thermal Design Power" Intel changes once again, seemingly trying to make sure direct comparisons are never fair.
and didn't include the Celeron M
What the hell do you think "mCel-2.5G 35W" means?
You also neglected to include the low power versions of the Intel CPUs.
That's because the "low power versions" are so vastly slower that it would be completely unfair to throw them in this comparison... Obviously, being incredibly unfair doesn't phase you.
Celeron M LV 383 (1.00GHz) 5.5W
* Celeron M 360 (1.4GHz) 21W
* Celeron M 390 (1.7GHz) 27W
* Pentium M LV 778 (1.6GHz) 10W
All of which are so much slower than the 2+GHz AMD CPUs that it is terribly unfair to compare them.
As I have to keep saying: Bullshit factor too high!
Here's a link to a review and a pertinent quote, "In fact, a 2.0GHz Yonah under 100% load consumes less power than an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at idle."
Completely out of context quote. First of all, you are comparing a DESKTOP AMD chip with a MOBILE Intel chip. Secondly, those are power consumption figures for the WHOLE SYSTEM, not just the CPU, as you very clearly implied in your last post.
These are comparisons of Intel's latest versus AMDs current offerings, that compare similarly for performance.
You're glossing over it, but that's an important point. Not only are thes comparisons incredibly unfair, but they're also vastly unfair due to the timing. You're comparing Intel's nice new chip that was just recently available, to AMD's older chip, that has been on the market for a very (relatively) long time now.
As I have to keep saying on this Intel-loving thread: Bullshit factor too high!
Such an ironic statement. Considering that you're the one with your facts wrong, I have to ask you the same thing.
AMD has nothing useful for laptops right now. their top chip uses 15-60% more power and is slightly slower than the Intel Duo. It uses more power idle than the Intel does at 100%.
I have a hard time imagining you could be so far wrong by accident.
Feel free to point me to any of your sources showing an Intel chip using less power at 100% than the lowest-power AMD chips. (Note: Idiots on other web forums, and talking dogs don't count.)
AMD competes very well in the desktop processor arena, and pretty well in the desktop-replacement notebook segment. However, they don't have a great answer in the thin-n'-light laptop segment.
I'm afraid that your information is several years out-of-date...
AMD's mobile CPUs are now commonly lower power than even the best of the Pentium-Ms to-date. That's in-addition to being cheaper, and higher performance at the same time.
I'd remind you that it was AMD who used started the MHz war by consistently clocking their CPUs higher than Intel's.
You've got to be joking...
You're saying that AMD, having a superior product, started the MHz war (just a few years ago) forcing Intel to introduce the underperforming mess that is the P4?
First of all, The MHz numbers for AMD CPUs have never been over-inflated as far as I can remember, as Intel did with the P4. Athlons had a higher MHz rating because they were legitimately faster (although at the expense of being hotter).
But besides all of that, the MHz wars didn't start when AMD finally started to compete... They've been going back through the introduction of 500MHz Alphas (when Pentiums were at 100MHz), at least since the start of Cyrix, and probably even pre-dating that.
AMD responded with their "speed rating system" which is intended to trick consumers into believing that they are getting a faster clock rate than they are actually getting.
No, actually it's intended to provide a reasonable comparison to Pentium 4s, despite the disparity in MHz that Intel caused. What Intel did seems to be the attempt to cause confusion.
AMD could have been dishonest with their ratings, and used numbers much larger than the MHz of comparable Intel CPUs, but they didn't do that... They've actually kept their ratings quite honest.
How am I, as a consumer, supposed to sort all this nonsense out?
What is there to sort-out? It's pretty straight-forward. If they just listed the MHz rating of their CPUs, then you'd really have to work to figure out a comparison between AMD and Intel CPUs.
Whenever I see Comic Sans it's pretty much worthless on academic information.
Who the hell cares what font a webpage has been written in? It's not a Word document, you just check "Always Use My Fonts" in Firefox, and you never see it again. That's the first thing I do with any browser.
Now I am not the greatest fan of either the US government or the oil companies, but the problem with gasoline is because there IS NO OIL LEFT, nothing to do with back room dealings, as much as they may take place.
No. Even though the price should be going up because of OPEC and China, oil companies are ALL massively overcharging, which is why they are making record profits that are several times what they normally make.
They have also all conspired to NEVER build another refinery, to artificially keep gasoline prices far, far higher than they would naturally be.
Here in California, gasoline was about $2.75 or so for quite a long time, going up and down only a cent here and there. Then, a day or so after the oil companies testified before congress, the prices everywhere instantly dropped 50 cents. Try to explain that one away.
This is, most likely, not the case. Healthcare, like gasoline, fresh water, and electricity is less an elective service, and more of a utility.
That's strange, those all sound ideally suited for the market.
Water, for instance, doesn't involve the utilities so much anymore. People drive to a store and pick-up a forklift-load of bottled water, or they have 5 gallon bottles delivered. People get to decide how much they are willing to pay, and what level of quality they require. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the near future, the utilities at least in Southern California will only be providing "grey" water, since they have so seriously screwed up what was previously drinking water.
Gasoline is bought and sold as a commodity. The problems with gasoline right now are the oil companies acting like a oligopoly, and the US government not doing their job to stop it.
With deregulation, customers can buy their electricity from any company they chose. They have to pay a base fee for the utility to maintain the lines, but it's largely capable of being market-driven.
For healthcare, you've only listed the most critical situation, as if it's typical. The large majority of health care costs are not from your surgery in the emergency room. When you have any disease that won't kill you in the next 24 hours, you have every opportunity to shop-around for a less expensive but fully qualified doctor/hospital/etc. I know most people do this for things like dentists, as that's less commonly covered under company health-care.
I have to agree with the OP that it's the socialized aspect of US healthcare that has caused medical prices to skyrocket. Doctors will ask you if you have insurance before they want to know anything else about you... If you have insurance, then they'll insist on running a large number of unnecessary tests to inflate the bill. They give uninsured people a break, but by virtue of being able to scam more money out of insured patients, it drives up the cost to the uninsured as well.
Please remember, there have been several times in human history where the totally free market concept has been in full effect and found severely wanting.
Please list a few. There are always the extrordinary situations, but it works pretty well.
No, they'll just have a different set of songs repeated 15 times every day....
Where exactly are you? I listen to dozens of radio stations in the area, and even if a song is terribly popular, you won't hear it more than maybe 3 times all day. Most stations are not on a standard playlist at all, and it's not the same 300 songs repeated day after day.
Wherever you are, I'll make sure never to move there...
There are very few broadcasters testing out digital radio in the US, and those that are have many complaints. The IBOC system causes interference, and broadcasters are deathly afraid of interfering with their current listener base. Either interference or forcing people to upgrade to a digital reciever could cut down on their already limited audiences, which practically none are willing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes (multiple), yes (multiple), No, and Yes (multiple).
Walkmans were good, but nearly every (all but one) Sony discman I've owned went defective in about 3 months of heavy use, and I'm talking about a dozen super-expensive ($200+) units (when $50 was normal). Similar situation for Minidisc players, I traded-in about 2 of each of 3 different models of $400 portable minidisc recorders (over the corse of my ~2-year warranty) before I gave-up.
They used-to, but it's been a long time since that was the case. They've made nothing but complete CRAP for the past 15 years, and they still charge premium prices for it.
If nothing else, E-Ink should be much lower power, assuming you don't "flip pages" constantly.
Seems like even an "etch-a-sketch" would be an even better basis for a similar product.
The simple answer is: He did make the Earth a paradise, and then Eve had to go and screw the whole thing up.
The more complex answer is found in The Book of Revelations, if memory serves. It says the reasons for God creating everything are so very complex that we could not possibly understand it in our current forms, but we will all find the answer after death.
I know that may sound like a non-answer to someone who has never read The Bible, but it is interesting to note that answers such as that are very, very uncommon. It doesn't, for instance, say we could never understand how we came to exist on Earth (ie. Evolution), figure out how to travel through space, destroy the whole planet, etc.
The only other place I recal anything similar is in reference to seeing God's face. So, no matter what you think of that answer, you should understand that it really isn't used anywhere else.
That one is very simple. It's incredibly easy to ascertain the birthday, and much, much more difficult to ascertain the conception-day.
Really, now? Lets see what's on Discovery Channel right now:
# 9:00am American Chopper TVPG, CC
# 10:00am American Chopper TVPG, CC
# 11:00am Navy SEALs Training: BUD/s Class 234 TVPG, CC
# 12:00pm Navy SEALs Training: BUD/s Class 234 TVPG, CC
# 1:00pm Navy SEALs Training: BUD/s Class 234 TVPG, CC
# 2:00pm The New Detectives TVPG, CC
# 3:00pm The FBI Files TVPG, CC
# 4:00pm Against the Law TVPG, CC
# 5:00pm It Takes a Thief TVPG, CC
# 6:00pm Cash Cab TVG, CC
# 6:30pm Cash Cab TVG, CC
Yeah, that's some really educational crap right there. Everyone knows how educational American Choppers is, so lets move one. Watching Navy SEALs going through boot camp is very educational. You'll learn all about... something, I guess. The FBI/Detectives/Law shows are less educational than "Law and Order" (though not as mind-destroying as CSI). It Takes a Thief is educational, if you didn't know windows can be broken quite easily. Cash Cab is a few steps down from "Candid Camera".
Sure, Discovery may still show something vaguely educational when nobody is watching, but even then, it's probably just a repeat of one of the shows they made 5 years ago.
Unfortunately, at the very least, that leaves their "one or the other" myths as complete wastes of time.
See: Car Air conditioner vs. Open Windows, Coke vs. Tarnish remover, Salsa vs. Acid on Prison Bars, etc.
Also, having no standards what-so-ever doesn't lend much credibility to their "plausible" results either. They could easily have screwed-up a basic condition.
Why not? As far as I could tell, the myth was that you could get cemet out of a truck with a stick of dynamite.
Where's the definitive source of this myth, that says it can't involve drilling a small hole?
This explanation just reeks of the stupidity of the "hammer throw" (or whatever they called it) where they called it "busted" even through the hammer consistently reduced the surface tension. They just pulled a height out of their asses that was so high NOTHING could possibly have helped, so they pretty well pre-determined the outcome.
The cement truck was the most disappointing one in a long time. Everyone who has ever even seen explosives in action knows that you drill a hole in the material (the cemet block in this case) and drop the TNT down the hole before detonating it. They just hung a stick of dynamite above the cemet, and gave up when it didn't do anything.
Before Mythbusters, I've never wanted to reach through my TV and smack people for being so stupid. With Mythbusters, it's a regular occurance. It almost seems like they go out of their way to make their tests complete nonsense.
You're absolutely correct, Discovery Channel has gone vastly downhill. However, I wouldn't blame the 4 big shows. They could certainly support 4 hours of non-educational crap per week, and still fill the rest of the schedule with their previous (read: GOOD) content. It was a conscious decision they made, and they made it across all of their channels.
TLC was the absolutely worst. It went from showing things like surgery, engineering, and other mostly-good content, to being the 24-hour "Trading Spaces" channel. Nothing left but low-budget decorating shown for women (and gay men).
Animal Planet went to low-budget shows of animals doing tricks, following the ASPCA around, etc.
I've completely given up on any of them. The only good thing being, it seemed like The National Geographic Channel started getting much, much better at the same time Discovery was getting worse and worse. I don't think they are as good as Discovery was at it's best, but they're close enough.
I'm afraid you are mistaken. AMD hasn't gained so much market share by maintaining pairity, they did it by being consistently faster, as well as lower power and cheaper.
Of course they are, but that doesn't change the fact that Intel was heavily marketing MHz, and designed the P4 just so that it could get a very high MHz rating, even without particularly good performance.
P4s are slower compared to AMD CPUs on the market at similar points in time.
No, it's called undervolting. You build the chip to a somewhat higher standard, and they will run stably at much lower voltages, which drastically decreases power consuption and heat output.
In fact, AMD mobile chips have generally just been desktop chips that tested to a much higher tolerance.
True, but that doesn't make the comparisons any more fair. Intel just beat them out of the gate this time. People weren't lambasting Dell for using P4 CPUs just because Intel didn't have a dual core chip available as soon as AMD did. I don't see how this particular twist is getting billed as Intel being better for notebooks, or being a reason Apple chose Intel over AMD.
I have no doubt, if Apple had chosen to use AMD processors instead, AMD would have gone out of their way to rush an effecient dual-core notebook chip to market as well.
Obviously a mobile Opteron. Very good performance, high clock-rates, low latency, low power, and 64-bit.
Dual cores is slightly nice, but not worth the increased power requirements, particularly since very few applications can take advantage of both cores.
That's extremely unlikely. Apple is a big enough company that they very easily get the inside information from both AMD and Intel (which they did). It's extremely hard to believe they looked at the specs for current Intel/AMD processors (and about a year and a half before they made the announcement) and completely ignored inside information from both companies, press releases on up-and-comming processors, review sites, etc.
No, that's not obvious, actually, unless you jump to the conclusion that there is no other justification. It's been very well covered that Dell is sticking with Intel at their own peril largely because of the deep, deep discounts Intel is offering. AMD has an anti-trust lawsuit in the works for this very reason. So while this may possibly be the case, it's certainly not a foregone conclusion, and doesn't even seem the most likely explanation.
Not true, except on a very, very narrow range of applications.
No, you can very easily over inflate a clock-speed. Just increase the pipeline, then the MHz are meaningless, because you then need many more of them to get the same performance.
You're somewhat correct. PR numbers could EASILY have been over inflated. That's why it's so significant that AMD has never done so, despite having nothing to stop them.
That's funny, because I never said anything even remotely close to that... Not even REMOTELY.
Of course that's all they can officially say... It's just an amazing, almost magical coincidence that they coincide so PERFECTLY with the P4's MHz ratings, and were introduced at just about the exact time that Pentium 4s came out... I hope someone told AMD about this...
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/whit
With the advent of the AMD AthlonTM processor and the Intel Pentium® 4 processor, the design architectures of these two companies fundamentally diverged. This design divergence has resulted in a difference in work done per clock cycle. Thus, microprocessors operating at identical frequencies may offer dramatically different levels of performance. Consequently, frequency is no longer the most meaningful metric for judging relative microprocessor performance. Today's end users need a better approach for comparing relative processor performance.
Bullshit, bullshit, and bullshit.
A minor oversight: http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm
Not according to my source, which I trust to provide accurate numbers. Considering that Intel uses a different power rating standard than AMD, it's not fair to compare AMD's spec sheet with Intel's spec sheet. Intel was the one to switch to "Thermal Design Power" when AMD was still listing "Max Power Output", and now that AMD has switched to "Thermal Design Power" Intel changes once again, seemingly trying to make sure direct comparisons are never fair.
Completely out of context quote. First of all, you are comparing a DESKTOP AMD chip with a MOBILE Intel chip. Secondly, those are power consumption figures for the WHOLE SYSTEM, not just the CPU, as you very clearly implied in your last post.
You're glossing over it, but that's an important point. Not only are thes comparisons incredibly unfair, but they're also vastly unfair due to the timing. You're comparing Intel's nice new chip that was just recently available, to AMD's older chip, that has been on the market for a very (relatively) long time now.
As I have to keep saying on this Intel-loving thread: Bullshit factor too high!
Of course if you compare a desktop chip to a mobile chip you'll see a huge disparity, but that doesn't make it a fair comparison.
In other words: Bullshit factor too high!
Such an ironic statement. Considering that you're the one with your facts wrong, I have to ask you the same thing.
I have a hard time imagining you could be so far wrong by accident.
Since I don't want to duplicate my last post, here's a link: http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174203&
Feel free to point me to any of your sources showing an Intel chip using less power at 100% than the lowest-power AMD chips. (Note: Idiots on other web forums, and talking dogs don't count.)
I'm afraid that your information is several years out-of-date...
AMD's mobile CPUs are now commonly lower power than even the best of the Pentium-Ms to-date. That's in-addition to being cheaper, and higher performance at the same time.
For example:
mSempron 2800+ (1.6GHz) 25W
mTurion MT-34 (1.8GHz) 25W
mTurion ML-37 (2.0GHz) 35W
mAthlon 64-3000+ (2.0GHz) 35W
vs.
mCel-2.5G 35W
Solo-T1300 (1.66GHz) 37W
Pentium M-780 (2.26GHz) 27W
And that's as fair of a comparison as possible.
Since we've debunked the notebook justification, what alternatives are there?
You've got to be joking...
You're saying that AMD, having a superior product, started the MHz war (just a few years ago) forcing Intel to introduce the underperforming mess that is the P4?
First of all, The MHz numbers for AMD CPUs have never been over-inflated as far as I can remember, as Intel did with the P4. Athlons had a higher MHz rating because they were legitimately faster (although at the expense of being hotter).
But besides all of that, the MHz wars didn't start when AMD finally started to compete... They've been going back through the introduction of 500MHz Alphas (when Pentiums were at 100MHz), at least since the start of Cyrix, and probably even pre-dating that.
No, actually it's intended to provide a reasonable comparison to Pentium 4s, despite the disparity in MHz that Intel caused. What Intel did seems to be the attempt to cause confusion.
AMD could have been dishonest with their ratings, and used numbers much larger than the MHz of comparable Intel CPUs, but they didn't do that... They've actually kept their ratings quite honest.
What is there to sort-out? It's pretty straight-forward. If they just listed the MHz rating of their CPUs, then you'd really have to work to figure out a comparison between AMD and Intel CPUs.
Who the hell cares what font a webpage has been written in? It's not a Word document, you just check "Always Use My Fonts" in Firefox, and you never see it again. That's the first thing I do with any browser.
No. Even though the price should be going up because of OPEC and China, oil companies are ALL massively overcharging, which is why they are making record profits that are several times what they normally make.
They have also all conspired to NEVER build another refinery, to artificially keep gasoline prices far, far higher than they would naturally be.
Here in California, gasoline was about $2.75 or so for quite a long time, going up and down only a cent here and there. Then, a day or so after the oil companies testified before congress, the prices everywhere instantly dropped 50 cents. Try to explain that one away.
That's strange, those all sound ideally suited for the market.
Water, for instance, doesn't involve the utilities so much anymore. People drive to a store and pick-up a forklift-load of bottled water, or they have 5 gallon bottles delivered. People get to decide how much they are willing to pay, and what level of quality they require. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the near future, the utilities at least in Southern California will only be providing "grey" water, since they have so seriously screwed up what was previously drinking water.
Gasoline is bought and sold as a commodity. The problems with gasoline right now are the oil companies acting like a oligopoly, and the US government not doing their job to stop it.
With deregulation, customers can buy their electricity from any company they chose. They have to pay a base fee for the utility to maintain the lines, but it's largely capable of being market-driven.
For healthcare, you've only listed the most critical situation, as if it's typical. The large majority of health care costs are not from your surgery in the emergency room. When you have any disease that won't kill you in the next 24 hours, you have every opportunity to shop-around for a less expensive but fully qualified doctor/hospital/etc. I know most people do this for things like dentists, as that's less commonly covered under company health-care.
I have to agree with the OP that it's the socialized aspect of US healthcare that has caused medical prices to skyrocket. Doctors will ask you if you have insurance before they want to know anything else about you... If you have insurance, then they'll insist on running a large number of unnecessary tests to inflate the bill. They give uninsured people a break, but by virtue of being able to scam more money out of insured patients, it drives up the cost to the uninsured as well.
Please list a few. There are always the extrordinary situations, but it works pretty well.
Where exactly are you? I listen to dozens of radio stations in the area, and even if a song is terribly popular, you won't hear it more than maybe 3 times all day. Most stations are not on a standard playlist at all, and it's not the same 300 songs repeated day after day.
Wherever you are, I'll make sure never to move there...
There are very few broadcasters testing out digital radio in the US, and those that are have many complaints. The IBOC system causes interference, and broadcasters are deathly afraid of interfering with their current listener base. Either interference or forcing people to upgrade to a digital reciever could cut down on their already limited audiences, which practically none are willing to do.