To achieve this, the cable industry, which sells Internet access to most Americans,
No. Very few, and a goodly number of those who do not have the option of Cable Modem service are complaining dearly about upgrades to their local infostructure not occuring fast enough. ^_^
is pursuing multiple strategies to closely monitor and tightly control subscribers and their use of the net.
Many ISPs are blocking or throttling data across certian ports, I will give that.
One element can be seen in industry lobbying for new use-based pricing schemes,
Lobbying? Huh?
First off, it has been the USERS lobbying the ISPS for tiered pricing. Many Cable Modem users are *MORE* then willing to pay an extra $20 or even $30 a month for more throughput to play around with.
Related to this is the industry's new public relations campaign, which seeks to introduce a new "menace" into the pricing debate and boost their case, the so-called "bandwidth hog."
So called? As I recall, the Bandwidth Hog on Broadband Networks was an idea that everybody has been aware of since the very start of the rollout of broadband service, it is just that the network's subscriber base has reached that critical mass where by such bandwidth hogs are having a determental effect on service for everybody else, as well as seriously eating into the ISP's profit margin, sometimes to the extend of eliminating the profit margin all together. A situation that nobody wants.
But beyond political and press circles are another equally important development: new technologies being developed and embraced that can, in practice, transform today's open Internet into a new industry-regulated system that will prevent or discourage people from using the net for file-sharing, internet radio and video, and peer-to-peer communications.
*cough* pallandium *cough*
Or any sort of "secure computing" setup. When the user is limited as to what they can run on their OWN system, THEN there are troubles.
AT&T and Co have very little to do with this.
These are not merely the most popular cutting-edge applications used by young people; they also are the tools for fundamental new ways of conducting business and politics.
Heh.
First off I have not heard of anybody limiting the use of streaming technologies. Granting limiting all ports but Port 80 and 20/21 and the E-Mail ports WOULD have that effect, but it would also be a death toll for the ISP when people could no longer user AIM/ICQ/MSN Messanger, etc.
Hell MICROSOFT itself would start lobbying against any such efforts, they have worked hard to roll out a usable Internet audio/video streaming system with every copy of Windows XP. Not to mention all of their other services that rely on ports besides 80.
The bottom line is the industry want to kill the Internet as we know it.
What's new, who doesn't? I mean seriously, everybody wants to "Kill the Internet As We Know It"(KIAWKI). Hopefuly they just won't all go and join forces.:-D
"The IP Service Control System from Ellacoya Networks gives the Broadband Operator 'Total Service Control' to closely monitor and tightly control its subscribers, network and offerings."
Hehehehe. So they sell routers right?:P
Ellacoya is backed by Wall Street investment powerhouse, Goldman Sachs,
Oooh, and Goldman Sachs just neeever makes mistakes. Heh. They invest in what looks promising, hardly a conspiracy. If killing babies became a legal profitable business, Goldman Sachs would invest in it. Yeesh
, "Establishing Total Service control enables operators to better manage traffic on the network, [and] easily introduce a range of tiered and usage based service plans... Talkative applications, especially peer-to-peer programs like KaZaA and Morpheus, tend to fill all of the available bandwidth... The IP Service Control System allows operators to identify, limit and report on these aggressive applications."
God Forbid if the ISPs should control THEIR OWN BANDWIDTH.
Listen, bub. The ISP PAYS FOR that bandwidth and the ISP PAYS FOR the local infostructure that the data runs across. They can use it for WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT TO. It is THEIRS. THEY OWN IT. PRIVATE PROPERTY/RESOURCE. D-E-A-L.
Most people now pay a flat fee for online access. But the big media companies offering Internet service; Comcast, ATT, AOL -- would like to change that, and already have in a few test locations.
Should be better written as;
"Most people now pay a flat fee for online access, but a goodly number of them want to change that. Those who use less bandwidth would like to pay less, and the majority of those who desire more bandwidth would be more then willing to pay for it."
The broadband industry's plans to institute tiered pricing have been widely reported in its trade press.
And customers have been bitching for ever that they are taking too long to implement it.
The central feature of these proposals is much like telephone companies; there's a price plan for everyone.
Oh no!! The Hooorrrooorrrr, only pay for what I use!!!!
yeesh. I don't make long distance phone calls, I do not pay for a fancy shmancy long distance service. Why should people who do not download 10GB or so a month of data be paying equal to those who do? (heh. 10GB a month, heh. I have pulled that in a week easily. ^_^ )
To make the case to regulators that such pricing is fair and overdue, cable operators have begun a PR effort, spinning that a small percent of users account for a disproportionately large amount of bandwidth used on broadband networks.
Ummmm.
They do.
duh.
Read/. for awhile, occasionaly a bragging war over "how much Bandwidth I used last week" pops up. Heck it occures on MANY internet message forums. There are programs that exist for the sole purpose of providing hard numbers of bandwidth use of with which to show off.
created and embraced the pejorative term, "bandwidth hog," to describe those -- such as music-obsessed college students -- who find robust uses for high-speed connections.
Many college students use their colleges networks. Wait, no, sorry, limits placed on college network resources is ooold news, no sense reporting that riiiight? Yeesh.
To deal with this "problem," the companies are considering a variety of approaches to ensure they remain in full control of their bandwidth
HEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHE HOHOHOHO OOOH my word.
Hehehehehe.
Let me repeat that one there for ya;
To deal with this "problem," the companies are considering a variety of approaches
to ensure they remain in full control of their bandwidth
Heh.
Once again, what a HORRIFIC though, a company actualy CONTROLING what it LEGALY owns.
Yeesh.
Bandwidth caps have already been implemented in Canada by major Internet service provider Sympatico, Inc., and observers have been quick to note that the limit -- 5 GB per month -- would effectively restrict regular use of emerging applications such as Internet radio, streaming media and video-on-demand.
Well seems to me that it is about time that media content providers start making deals with the ISPs then. Cable Modem networks already use a local proxying system, why not expand that? No charge for data taken off of the proxy, and hey look, for $5 a month you can gain access to the complete streaming library of {insert major content producer here}.
The users win, the ISPs win, and the content providers win.
Hell, it could even be touted legitimantly as being a feature. Imagine ISPs COMPETING to offer more and more features to users.
"Well sign up with us and get complete realtime streaming access to Show Time 1 2 and 3, all for a mere extra $6.95 a month!"
Well fuuuuck yah, sign me up. Hell, make it on demand. Why the hell not? On Demand Digital Cable TV services are going to be shipping out MPEG2 streams, no reason that that last few feet of cable can't be CAT5, shit, same damn data stream! LOL!
Or why not even more? What if I had a mini-blockbuster video sitting on the other end of my cable modem pipe? The line from the cable modem head end to the user is what, 40mbit a second, and I believe that the newest generation of cable modem technology even increases that. Sending data over the line from the cable modem head end to the user costs nearly nothing, but it COULD be being used to send over data that the users would be willing to pay for.
Oooh, lets see here now. Nearly ZERO opporational costs, steady revenue source. Oooh, step three, profit? Hell, splitting the profits straight up 50%/50% with the content producers would even be a viable option, and if the video streams sent to the user are just a tad bit below in quality what current Digital Cable MPEG2 streams are at, nobody will be using them as source streams for pirated material. As it is Digital Cable MPEG2 streams already such for doing rips from, drop the bandwidth down another 25% or so and it will be watchable as a real time encode but nobody would bother stealing it and recompressing it to MPEG4.
"Decent audio quality starts at 56 Kbps to 64 Kbps, and really gets acceptable only around 100 Kbps," he said. This alone, continued Mr. Petrilli, "will blow the cap, let alone any other form of surfing, such as looking at movie trailers or even reading Web-based news. Heaven forbid that someone listens to 90 minutes a day of quality Internet radio. That way we'd blow the cap in 20 days.
Prooxxxyyyy. No, seriously. Of those X hours of music, how many of them are going to be original new songs?
The solution here is to have smarter player applications. Have the stations playlist sent to the user from the get go, and cache the darn songs that are repeated.
But uh... I just don't see how a good encode can look better than the source material. If the info isn't in the origional stream, it won't be in the rip.
Noise removed, colors corrected, colors contrasted better, things like that.:)
but who is going to be able to use it, really? Most ISP's have some sort of bit quota in place, somwhere around 5-10 Gigs of downstream transfer per month...is it really worth using up half, or all of your transfers for one movie?
The day my ISP does that is the day I switch ISPs.
I'm running dual 1800+ MP's, and the whole encoding process to Divx pro 5 and 128 kbit MP3 goes faster than real time.
You're not a purist, not prefiltering the vid I take it?
A good encode can end up looking better then the original DVD source material. It is miraculas what a good encoder (as in the person setting up the filter chain, not neccisarily the program doing the work!) can do to a video stream to make it look as good as possible.
cool, on demand TV is finaly here? I remember TCI (heh) talkign about it back in 1991 or so, LOL! Giant tape libraries used to deliver customers the shows that they wanted. . ..
what exactly does this service entail? Can you watch any TV show at any time of the day that you want to without any sort of pre-work?
edit: Brain on crack, knock those version numbers down a notch, DivX3.x is the pain in the ass NanDub one, though Divx5.x is indeed the none-sucky commerical one. DivX4.x is history and nothing much else.
20hr encodes? Excuse me? good encodes can take a few days do to. Of course that is from a noisy sources and running it through numerious vdub filters. I have watched master encoders at their art, they would be happy if an encode took a 'mere' 20 hours.
As it is encode times have been dropping, but that is more due to the DivX5+ codec becoming something other then dog crud and not needing to fart around with the Divx4.x codec in Nandub as much as it used to had to be done.
Obviously with all of these computers around and more and more selling (even if the rate of sale is dropping) there is still going to be a need for Hardware and Software guys (and gals!) of some sort, but the question comes up, how should a person best go about their training?
Is a 2 year technicians program with a few good certs worth it, or a CS/CE degree? What about the more specialized four year degrees (database and such), how are they going along?
I guess another way to phrase the question would be, what is the most versatile degree or type of training that a person can have in the IT field that opens up the most number of job opportunities to them?
Huh? What does your weight have to do with if you can fit a monitor in the room. Either the room is too small or not, heh.
Actualy with those flat panel HDTV Plasma screens out now. . . . quite expensive, but hey, if you really are dedicated to bringing it all together into one box. . . .:)
However, I don't think sitting at a desk in front of a computer with a TV tuner card and a monitor will be able to replace the comfort and convenience of plopping down on the couch to watch TV.
Then do what I did, get a large monitor (or a good quality TV), hook it up to secondary output , and shove a couch in your computer room.
Start up netmeeting, there is an option for a remote desktop server thingy to be enabled in the background when you start up your computer. (be careful not to set it up running and not select "automatically give control when requested", heh) you can set a password and secure session and everything. The other user has to call you up or look you up in the domain and they can, after entering proper authentication information, work everything just like normal.
Terminal Services can also be used to have complete control over any desktop in a building, as it was I saw a setup on the Microsoft campus where there was a complete list of Windows 2000 machines in the domain listed with all of their icons, and the dude just selected one to login to, entered his information, and pop, had control.
the remote desktop stuff tht comes with 2k/messenger is NOT the same as that built into xp. the xp stuff uses domain authentication and doesn't require someone sitting at the server to allow you to connect - you can use a regular terminal services client to connect.
*sigh*
2K has that.
*sigh*
as for cleartype, for me the difference between it and regular antialiasing is night and day,
As I said, only good on LCDs.
and since my C drive is 210Gb, I'm not concerned with the space...
Yah nice idea there bub, support code bloat cuz hey, who needs to worry about space?
Its the principle of the thing.
Remember those huge cars that used to get only 6 or 7 miles to the gallon? Who gave a care, Gas was so cheap!!!
It ain't about the price of gas or how much space you have on your HD, it is sheer irritation that the system is put together so craptacularly.
See the rest of this thread, it is or is not present depending on how the computer is setup.
If pretty logon and fast user switching are enabled and the machine is not on a domain (which counts for the fair majority of home users who are in the know and are stuck with / like XP, or for a variety of different labs and such), then Lock Workstation does not appear.
Sure you can, as long as you're a member of a domain.
Which does what good for a stand alone computer?
Functionality was REMOVED. It used to be that by default ANY NT4 or 2K machine could EASILY be locked down. A very basic security practice that was mandatory in many locations. Now special steps have to be taken to enable this to be done to the machine, oh joy.
but even if you just join a domain
Yah, I'll just pull a domain controller right out of thin air. . ..
As I said, useless on a stand alone machine, such as, oh, say, the majority of computers out there in a non-business environment?
Quite convenient if there are youngsters in the house. Or just if personal information is being looked up, or if a person just wants to leave a clear "hands off" message.
On a secondary note, What in the HELL encouraged Microsoft to take a feature that once worked so easily and add more crud around it???
I mean seriously, if some things works, why DISABLE IT?? What the???
I have that on 2K, thank you so very much. Please stop believing MS fud, just because messenger tells you that you have to 'upgrade' to XP to use that feature does not mean that it is true.
I'll grant you that a pretty icon was shoved in front of it, but hey, a pretty icon is not a feature.
ClearType.
Forgot about that one, with font antialiasing and smoothing on 2K and all, that and me not owning an LCD.
I have seen demos of ClearType on 2K though that took up under 100 Kilobytes, hardly a 500MB feature.
What the HELL do you mean that you can't lock a workstation?
Under the Aqua skin with User Switching enabled;
you cannot.
Hit Cntrl-Alt-Delete, notice the lack of the option. Goto start "turn off computer", still not there.
Killing explorer is hard?
Do it, start explorer.exe up again and watch in wonderment as XP takes a good 3-5 minutes to figure out what the fuck just happened. There is about a 25% chance that it will die on the spot and an even greater chance that it will not be the same after explorer.exe is restarted any ways.
The only way it can bring down a workstation is if you have some garbageware or bad video driver installed.
Video driver was XP's bundled GeForce2MX one (hey, I wasn't in charge of setting the damn machine up, heh), so hey guess what, it is MS's problem.
Slashdot Mirror
I never said Debian in my post, in fact I avoided mentioning any particular group so as not to get a -1 flamebait or -1 troll mod. ;)
Err
*looks over towards MacOSX*
Does somebody somewheres not know the definition of plug and play?
See, there is this USB port thing, and you, err, plug stuff into it, and, uh, well, heh, it is supposed to kind of, err, work.
If USB mice require configuring then there are more serious problems here then just the lack of a graphical installer. . .
No. Very few, and a goodly number of those who do not have the option of Cable Modem service are complaining dearly about upgrades to their local infostructure not occuring fast enough. ^_^
is pursuing multiple strategies to closely monitor and tightly control subscribers and their use of the net.
Many ISPs are blocking or throttling data across certian ports, I will give that.
One element can be seen in industry lobbying for new use-based pricing schemes,
Lobbying? Huh?
First off, it has been the USERS lobbying the ISPS for tiered pricing. Many Cable Modem users are *MORE* then willing to pay an extra $20 or even $30 a month for more throughput to play around with.
Related to this is the industry's new public relations campaign, which seeks to introduce a new "menace" into the pricing debate and boost their case, the so-called "bandwidth hog."
So called? As I recall, the Bandwidth Hog on Broadband Networks was an idea that everybody has been aware of since the very start of the rollout of broadband service, it is just that the network's subscriber base has reached that critical mass where by such bandwidth hogs are having a determental effect on service for everybody else, as well as seriously eating into the ISP's profit margin, sometimes to the extend of eliminating the profit margin all together. A situation that nobody wants.
*cough* pallandium *cough*
Or any sort of "secure computing" setup. When the user is limited as to what they can run on their OWN system, THEN there are troubles.
AT&T and Co have very little to do with this.
Heh.
First off I have not heard of anybody limiting the use of streaming technologies. Granting limiting all ports but Port 80 and 20/21 and the E-Mail ports WOULD have that effect, but it would also be a death toll for the ISP when people could no longer user AIM/ICQ/MSN Messanger, etc.
Hell MICROSOFT itself would start lobbying against any such efforts, they have worked hard to roll out a usable Internet audio/video streaming system with every copy of Windows XP. Not to mention all of their other services that rely on ports besides 80.
What's new, who doesn't? I mean seriously, everybody wants to "Kill the Internet As We Know It"(KIAWKI). Hopefuly they just won't all go and join forces.
Hehehehe. So they sell routers right?
Oooh, and Goldman Sachs just neeever makes mistakes. Heh. They invest in what looks promising, hardly a conspiracy. If killing babies became a legal profitable business, Goldman Sachs would invest in it. Yeesh
God Forbid if the ISPs should control THEIR OWN BANDWIDTH.
Listen, bub. The ISP PAYS FOR that bandwidth and the ISP PAYS FOR the local infostructure that the data runs across. They can use it for WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT TO. It is THEIRS. THEY OWN IT. PRIVATE PROPERTY/RESOURCE. D-E-A-L.
Should be better written as;
"Most people now pay a flat fee for online access, but a goodly number of them want to change that. Those who use less bandwidth would like to pay less, and the majority of those who desire more bandwidth would be more then willing to pay for it."
And customers have been bitching for ever that they are taking too long to implement it.
Oh no!! The Hooorrrooorrrr, only pay for what I use!!!!
yeesh. I don't make long distance phone calls, I do not pay for a fancy shmancy long distance service. Why should people who do not download 10GB or so a month of data be paying equal to those who do? (heh. 10GB a month, heh. I have pulled that in a week easily. ^_^ )
Ummmm.
They do.
duh.
Read
Many college students use their colleges networks. Wait, no, sorry, limits placed on college network resources is ooold news, no sense reporting that riiiight? Yeesh.
HEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHE HOHOHOHO OOOH my word.
Hehehehehe.
Let me repeat that one there for ya;
Heh.
Once again, what a HORRIFIC though, a company actualy CONTROLING what it LEGALY owns.
Yeesh.
Well seems to me that it is about time that media content providers start making deals with the ISPs then. Cable Modem networks already use a local proxying system, why not expand that? No charge for data taken off of the proxy, and hey look, for $5 a month you can gain access to the complete streaming library of {insert major content producer here}.
The users win, the ISPs win, and the content providers win.
Hell, it could even be touted legitimantly as being a feature. Imagine ISPs COMPETING to offer more and more features to users.
"Well sign up with us and get complete realtime streaming access to Show Time 1 2 and 3, all for a mere extra $6.95 a month!"
Well fuuuuck yah, sign me up. Hell, make it on demand. Why the hell not? On Demand Digital Cable TV services are going to be shipping out MPEG2 streams, no reason that that last few feet of cable can't be CAT5, shit, same damn data stream! LOL!
Or why not even more? What if I had a mini-blockbuster video sitting on the other end of my cable modem pipe? The line from the cable modem head end to the user is what, 40mbit a second, and I believe that the newest generation of cable modem technology even increases that. Sending data over the line from the cable modem head end to the user costs nearly nothing, but it COULD be being used to send over data that the users would be willing to pay for.
Oooh, lets see here now. Nearly ZERO opporational costs, steady revenue source. Oooh, step three, profit? Hell, splitting the profits straight up 50%/50% with the content producers would even be a viable option, and if the video streams sent to the user are just a tad bit below in quality what current Digital Cable MPEG2 streams are at, nobody will be using them as source streams for pirated material. As it is Digital Cable MPEG2 streams already such for doing rips from, drop the bandwidth down another 25% or so and it will be watchable as a real time encode but nobody would bother stealing it and recompressing it to MPEG4.
Prooxxxyyyy. No, seriously. Of those X hours of music, how many of them are going to be original new songs?
The solution here is to have smarter player applications. Have the stations playlist sent to the user from the get go, and cache the darn songs that are repeated.
Bingo, it is exactly what Serial ATA does not have over firewire that makes it so desirable.
Namely the $50 or so price premium. . . .
Once when installing Windows98 I got a "Generic Error Message";
That is about it for oddities. . . .
Noise removed, colors corrected, colors contrasted better, things like that.
The day my ISP does that is the day I switch ISPs.
Oh yah, and 650 megs != (1/2) of 5-10gigs.
You're not a purist, not prefiltering the vid I take it?
A good encode can end up looking better then the original DVD source material. It is miraculas what a good encoder (as in the person setting up the filter chain, not neccisarily the program doing the work!) can do to a video stream to make it look as good as possible.
cool, on demand TV is finaly here? I remember TCI (heh) talkign about it back in 1991 or so, LOL! Giant tape libraries used to deliver customers the shows that they wanted. . . .
what exactly does this service entail? Can you watch any TV show at any time of the day that you want to without any sort of pre-work?
edit: Brain on crack, knock those version numbers down a notch, DivX3.x is the pain in the ass NanDub one, though Divx5.x is indeed the none-sucky commerical one. DivX4.x is history and nothing much else.
20hr encodes? Excuse me? good encodes can take a few days do to. Of course that is from a noisy sources and running it through numerious vdub filters. I have watched master encoders at their art, they would be happy if an encode took a 'mere' 20 hours.
As it is encode times have been dropping, but that is more due to the DivX5+ codec becoming something other then dog crud and not needing to fart around with the Divx4.x codec in Nandub as much as it used to had to be done.
Think BlueTooth 2.0
Why have a jack at all?
900mhz (analog I guess, did not realize they where making household cordless phones digital);
about, err, 6 or 7 years old, maybe a bit older.
No clue what battery type it has in it.
Never had to change. Just hang it up on the charger when done talking.
Obviously with all of these computers around and more and more selling (even if the rate of sale is dropping) there is still going to be a need for Hardware and Software guys (and gals!) of some sort, but the question comes up, how should a person best go about their training?
Is a 2 year technicians program with a few good certs worth it, or a CS/CE degree? What about the more specialized four year degrees (database and such), how are they going along?
I guess another way to phrase the question would be, what is the most versatile degree or type of training that a person can have in the IT field that opens up the most number of job opportunities to them?
Huh? What does your weight have to do with if you can fit a monitor in the room. Either the room is too small or not, heh.
:)
Actualy with those flat panel HDTV Plasma screens out now. . . . quite expensive, but hey, if you really are dedicated to bringing it all together into one box. . . .
However, I don't think sitting at a desk in front of a computer with a TV tuner card and a monitor will be able to replace the comfort and convenience of plopping down on the couch to watch TV.
Then do what I did, get a large monitor (or a good quality TV), hook it up to secondary output , and shove a couch in your computer room.
~3.75 and ~4.75
:)
No idea what the fuck that shit is, but I'm 20/200 or so in one eye and something or another in the other.
Start up netmeeting, there is an option for a remote desktop server thingy to be enabled in the background when you start up your computer. (be careful not to set it up running and not select "automatically give control when requested", heh) you can set a password and secure session and everything. The other user has to call you up or look you up in the domain and they can, after entering proper authentication information, work everything just like normal.
Terminal Services can also be used to have complete control over any desktop in a building, as it was I saw a setup on the Microsoft campus where there was a complete list of Windows 2000 machines in the domain listed with all of their icons, and the dude just selected one to login to, entered his information, and pop, had control.
the remote desktop stuff tht comes with 2k/messenger is NOT the same as that built into xp. the xp stuff uses domain authentication and doesn't require someone sitting at the server to allow you to connect - you can use a regular terminal services client to connect.
*sigh*
2K has that.
*sigh*
As I said, only good on LCDs.
Yah nice idea there bub, support code bloat cuz hey, who needs to worry about space?
Its the principle of the thing.
Remember those huge cars that used to get only 6 or 7 miles to the gallon? Who gave a care, Gas was so cheap!!!
It ain't about the price of gas or how much space you have on your HD, it is sheer irritation that the system is put together so craptacularly.
See the rest of this thread, it is or is not present depending on how the computer is setup.
If pretty logon and fast user switching are enabled and the machine is not on a domain (which counts for the fair majority of home users who are in the know and are stuck with / like XP, or for a variety of different labs and such), then Lock Workstation does not appear.
Sure you can, as long as you're a member of a domain.
.
Which does what good for a stand alone computer?
Functionality was REMOVED. It used to be that by default ANY NT4 or 2K machine could EASILY be locked down. A very basic security practice that was mandatory in many locations. Now special steps have to be taken to enable this to be done to the machine, oh joy.
but even if you just join a domain
Yah, I'll just pull a domain controller right out of thin air. . .
As I said, useless on a stand alone machine, such as, oh, say, the majority of computers out there in a non-business environment?
Quite convenient if there are youngsters in the house. Or just if personal information is being looked up, or if a person just wants to leave a clear "hands off" message.
On a secondary note, What in the HELL encouraged Microsoft to take a feature that once worked so easily and add more crud around it???
I mean seriously, if some things works, why DISABLE IT?? What the???
I know a guy who just got a patent on air filters for computer fans. . . .
freaky.
Remote Desktop.
Bull
Fucking
SHIT
I have that on 2K, thank you so very much. Please stop believing MS fud, just because messenger tells you that you have to 'upgrade' to XP to use that feature does not mean that it is true.
I'll grant you that a pretty icon was shoved in front of it, but hey, a pretty icon is not a feature.
ClearType.
Forgot about that one, with font antialiasing and smoothing on 2K and all, that and me not owning an LCD.
I have seen demos of ClearType on 2K though that took up under 100 Kilobytes, hardly a 500MB feature.
What the HELL do you mean that you can't lock a workstation?
Under the Aqua skin with User Switching enabled;
you cannot.
Hit Cntrl-Alt-Delete, notice the lack of the option. Goto start "turn off computer", still not there.
Killing explorer is hard?
Do it, start explorer.exe up again and watch in wonderment as XP takes a good 3-5 minutes to figure out what the fuck just happened. There is about a 25% chance that it will die on the spot and an even greater chance that it will not be the same after explorer.exe is restarted any ways.
The only way it can bring down a workstation is if you have some garbageware or bad video driver installed.
Video driver was XP's bundled GeForce2MX one (hey, I wasn't in charge of setting the damn machine up, heh), so hey guess what, it is MS's problem.