I am the proud owner of 3 Pentium II based systems. I still use all of them on a regular basis.
Gateway Solo 9100 (PII-266) running Fedora Core 3
Back in 1998, this was the ultimate laptop. My college roommate spent a small fortune on his. I got mine from e-bay in 2001. I was working on this laptop when I first heard about 9/11. It's taken a beating, the battery is toast, and the DVD-decoder and video-in features are useless in anything but Windows 98, but it's still chugging along. 320MB RAM helps.
Dell Inspiron 3200 (PII-266) running Win2k Pro.
Free from company surplus with a good battery! Unfortunately, it can only do 16 bit color on the 1024x768 display. It's still good for basic office uses and web browsing/e-mail, especially with a wireless card.
Also, the first generation PII-Mobile processors really cut down on our home heating bill:-)
Gateway G6-300 (PII-300 upgraded to PII-350) running Fedora Core 3
I bought this cheap from my roommate who said it "only ran Linux". (I much later found out that the processor was defective, which caused 3D video acceleration to be FOOBAR. Since the Riva 128 video card wasn't DRI supported, Linux worked great) The defective processor was replaced with a good PII-350 when a friend upgraded to a PIII. It is still a great fileserver.
With enough RAM and the right OS, PII systems can do most of what most people use a computer for. They are still great for the web and for office uses, but are lacking for more processor intensive application.
So to all you PII fans out there, keep on partying like it's 1999!
GIMP may not match Photoshop in features, but you can't beat the price! Professionals may consider PS worth it, but it has a rather steep pricetag for us amatures.
For that one reasons, GIMP will not die out anytime soon.
After fighting Win98SE for quite some time, she will be getting my old laptop with Fedora Core 3. I've got it set up nice and user friendly for her, so it shouldn't be any more difficult to dial-in, check e-mail, browse the internet and edit a word document (with OpenOffice) than it was under Windows.
These are conservative, rural, Southern Democrats.
Registering as a Democrat is probably the only way to vote in many of the local elections. They probably send plenty of Democrats to Tallahassee, but only Republicans to Washington.
This is seen in other Southern states, such as NC, where the Democratic Gov. was re-elected by a large margin, and the Democrats took the legislature, but the GOP took the U.S. Senate seat and Bush carried the state by a large margin.
The reason these people are splitting their ticket is the reason Kerry lost which is the same reason the national Democrats can't win the South. The national party is seen as so out of touch down South that they can't even win the local party member's votes.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to afford quality health care. Costs for health care and health care coverage are spiraling beyond the reach of many in this country. This is having an adverse effect on both the nations health as well as the nation's economy. (For example, the leading cause of personal bankruptcy is people not able to pay their doctor bills.)
If elected President, what would you do to make quality healthcare affordable to all Americans?
But aren't a large number of IT workers in the U.S. already Indian and Asian?
The only difference between now and then is that instead of American companies hiring Indian IT workers to work in the U.S., American companies are hiring Indian IT workers to work in India.
I completely agree. President bush for example is quite the thinker. And if you have been lucky to hear his speaches -- well they are nothing but irrefutable logic.
Try reading the content of his speeches instead of listening to them. He is not stupid, but he is a terrible public speaker and he comes across as such.
And you are right that conservatives use more logical arguments. To prove this I will sum up every single argument conservatives have used in the past four years:
"how dare you question the president, you must hate America"
As opposed to the classic liberal arguments of "Bush lied, people died!" and "No blood for oil!".
As for that, I haven't heard that argument from any conservatives. You must not know that many conservatives or you are just following the stereotype. That's not to say that there aren't feeling conservatives or thinking liberals. And of course, there are stupid people on all parts of the political spectrum.
I would say that temperment determines political affilitation more than anything.
In the old Kiersey temperment sorter, there are four traits that determine temperment, (Extrovert/Introvert, Sense/Intuition, Thinker/Feeler, Percieving/Judging). Our political parties divide mostly along the Thinker/Feeler line. conservatives are the "thinkers", liberals are the "feelers".
Don't believe me? The best evidence of this is the types of insults one side hurls at the other. Traditionally, conservatives have called liberals foolish, softies, bleeding-hearts, etc. while liberals have called conservatives mean, insensitive, cruel, etc.
Also look at the ways each side tries to win over people. Conservatives tend to use logical arguments. (Note: An argument can be logical and still be utter nonsense. I am making no statement as to the validity of their arguments.) Liberals tend to use emotional appeals.
Third party voting sounds good, but the American electoral system is designed to be a two party system. The only way a third party can succeed is to replace one of the two parties. The last time this happened was when the Republicans replaced the Whigs in 1856.
Blame the electoral college, or the more likely suspect of lack of run-off voting in the general election, but it would be highly unlikely any third party effort could amount to anything unless it were big enough to knock off one of the big two.
I actually could see this happening, but not with any of the third parties out there now, as they are all either too ideological or extremist for the average voter. A coalition of conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans could deliver the coup de grace to one of our current parties, most likely the Democrats. However, no one wants to take this step, so it probably won't happen.
Basically the 'hackers' attacking the GOP seem to be of the opinion that the GOP sucks but Kerry doesn't stand a chance of winning based on his own merits versus those of GWB. Kinda sad when you have no faith in your own convictions.
That's the election in a nutshell.
Bush probably deserves to lose, primarily based on his foreign policy screw ups, but John Kerry sure as hell doesn't deserve to be elected to replace him.
You hit the nail on the head. Women (and many men) don't like C.S. more than likely because of the lack of human interaction.
At my college, the male/female ratio of freshmen C.S. students was fairly close to 50/50. The ratio of C.S. graduates was overwhelmingly male. Many women just didn't like it and decided to do something else and many of those who stayed moved towards I.T. as opposed to traditional C.S. Even after college in the real world, I've noticed that many of the female programmers at my company have continued their career tracks in a direction that does not include very much programming.
As for sexism, computers, of course, cannot be sexist. I'm sure there are true pigs out there, but they would have to be a minority. (In my experience, the professors who were thought of as "sexist" were just as hard on the male students as the female ones. The women, however, tended to take the criticism more personally.) Usually they were treated quite well because there simply weren't that many of them.
This crap has been going on in Florida since long before Bush and the Republicans held office.
Many of the things that caused the 2000 (and 2002) fiascos were reforms passed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles and the then Democratically controlled legislature in response to massive voter fraud in the 1997(?) mayoral election in Miami.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The only problem she had is that the numbing drops didn't quite work, and she was actually able to feel the laser. (ouch!)
Even so, she's glad she had it done. She was almost blind without her glasses and now she has better vision than I do.
My advise is to get the best doctor you can afford. These are YOUR EYES and this is no time to go cheap. Get someone who is well recommended and has a good track record of success.
As for myself, I am naturally 20/30 in my left eye and 20/40 in my right, which is not perfect, but still legal to drive in my state. Therefore, I will definitely NOT be getting this done.
In 1994, Janet Reno went after violence in Cop Shows.
Michael Moriarity told her what he thought about that in so many words, and was promptly fired from Law & Order.
Democrats won't protect your freedoms. If you think the Bush Adminstration is bad, do you really think Gore/Lieberman (two major advocates of censorship) would have been any better?
Microsoft is asking for trouble by trying to be the first to market with its next generation console. If it manages to beat the competition to market, odds are either it's going to be too sloppy or too expensive to get a large following. Even if it is good, the competition will probably be out to market with superior technology before a critical mass of the XBOX-2 units have sold.
Sega tried this. It worked ONCE with the Genesis, mainly because Nintendo rested on its laurels too long and the SNES (IIRC) didn't come out until a year or two later, and wasn't that much better. (Don't forget all the other companies that beat Nintendo to 16 bit system. All are gone.) The Sega CD, 32x, Saturn, and Dreamcast never captured the market share that the Genesis had.
This is a risky and highly dangerous gamble for Microsoft
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I am the proud owner of 3 Pentium II based systems. I still use all of them on a regular basis.
:-)
Gateway Solo 9100 (PII-266) running Fedora Core 3
Back in 1998, this was the ultimate laptop. My college roommate spent a small fortune on his. I got mine from e-bay in 2001. I was working on this laptop when I first heard about 9/11. It's taken a beating, the battery is toast, and the DVD-decoder and video-in features are useless in anything but Windows 98, but it's still chugging along. 320MB RAM helps.
Dell Inspiron 3200 (PII-266) running Win2k Pro.
Free from company surplus with a good battery! Unfortunately, it can only do 16 bit color on the 1024x768 display. It's still good for basic office uses and web browsing/e-mail, especially with a wireless card.
Also, the first generation PII-Mobile processors really cut down on our home heating bill
Gateway G6-300 (PII-300 upgraded to PII-350) running Fedora Core 3
I bought this cheap from my roommate who said it "only ran Linux". (I much later found out that the processor was defective, which caused 3D video acceleration to be FOOBAR. Since the Riva 128 video card wasn't DRI supported, Linux worked great) The defective processor was replaced with a good PII-350 when a friend upgraded to a PIII. It is still a great fileserver.
With enough RAM and the right OS, PII systems can do most of what most people use a computer for. They are still great for the web and for office uses, but are lacking for more processor intensive application.
So to all you PII fans out there, keep on partying like it's 1999!
But if the application needs something slow and hot, what better choice than the Pentium II?
GIMP may not match Photoshop in features, but you can't beat the price! Professionals may consider PS worth it, but it has a rather steep pricetag for us amatures.
For that one reasons, GIMP will not die out anytime soon.
My mother uses a computer for 3 things:
E-mail
Internet
Word Processing
After fighting Win98SE for quite some time, she will be getting my old laptop with Fedora Core 3. I've got it set up nice and user friendly for her, so it shouldn't be any more difficult to dial-in, check e-mail, browse the internet and edit a word document (with OpenOffice) than it was under Windows.
We'll see how it goes...
Of course man did not descend from apes.
Man descended from lemmings. Or perhaps sheep.
Rumor has it they also found a bumper sticker that said "Re-elect Strom"
It's good to know the best Government money can buy.
I'm also glad they are protecting me from those dangerous Canadian prescription drugs.
These are conservative, rural, Southern Democrats.
Registering as a Democrat is probably the only way to vote in many of the local elections. They probably send plenty of Democrats to Tallahassee, but only Republicans to Washington.
This is seen in other Southern states, such as NC, where the Democratic Gov. was re-elected by a large margin, and the Democrats took the legislature, but the GOP took the U.S. Senate seat and Bush carried the state by a large margin.
The reason these people are splitting their ticket is the reason Kerry lost which is the same reason the national Democrats can't win the South. The national party is seen as so out of touch down South that they can't even win the local party member's votes.
I just spend the better part of the weekend installing FC2 on my laptop.
AT&T prefering Unix to Windows? Seems appropriate to me.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to afford quality health care. Costs for health care and health care coverage are spiraling beyond the reach of many in this country. This is having an adverse effect on both the nations health as well as the nation's economy. (For example, the leading cause of personal bankruptcy is people not able to pay their doctor bills.)
If elected President, what would you do to make quality healthcare affordable to all Americans?
He's toast come Nov. 2.
But aren't a large number of IT workers in the U.S. already Indian and Asian?
The only difference between now and then is that instead of American companies hiring Indian IT workers to work in the U.S., American companies are hiring Indian IT workers to work in India.
It's got the simplicity of C++.
The freedom from corporate interference of Visual Basic.
The speed of an interpreted language.
And you wouldn't believe how efficiently it uses RAM and CPU power.
I don't see why everyone doesn't use Java!
Try reading the content of his speeches instead of listening to them. He is not stupid, but he is a terrible public speaker and he comes across as such.
And you are right that conservatives use more logical arguments. To prove this I will sum up every single argument conservatives have used in the past four years: "how dare you question the president, you must hate America"
As opposed to the classic liberal arguments of "Bush lied, people died!" and "No blood for oil!".
As for that, I haven't heard that argument from any conservatives. You must not know that many conservatives or you are just following the stereotype. That's not to say that there aren't feeling conservatives or thinking liberals. And of course, there are stupid people on all parts of the political spectrum.
I would say that temperment determines political affilitation more than anything.
In the old Kiersey temperment sorter, there are four traits that determine temperment, (Extrovert/Introvert, Sense/Intuition, Thinker/Feeler, Percieving/Judging). Our political parties divide mostly along the Thinker/Feeler line. conservatives are the "thinkers", liberals are the "feelers".
Don't believe me? The best evidence of this is the types of insults one side hurls at the other. Traditionally, conservatives have called liberals foolish, softies, bleeding-hearts, etc. while liberals have called conservatives mean, insensitive, cruel, etc.
Also look at the ways each side tries to win over people. Conservatives tend to use logical arguments. (Note: An argument can be logical and still be utter nonsense. I am making no statement as to the validity of their arguments.) Liberals tend to use emotional appeals.
Third party voting sounds good, but the American electoral system is designed to be a two party system. The only way a third party can succeed is to replace one of the two parties. The last time this happened was when the Republicans replaced the Whigs in 1856.
Blame the electoral college, or the more likely suspect of lack of run-off voting in the general election, but it would be highly unlikely any third party effort could amount to anything unless it were big enough to knock off one of the big two.
I actually could see this happening, but not with any of the third parties out there now, as they are all either too ideological or extremist for the average voter. A coalition of conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans could deliver the coup de grace to one of our current parties, most likely the Democrats. However, no one wants to take this step, so it probably won't happen.
That's the election in a nutshell.
Bush probably deserves to lose, primarily based on his foreign policy screw ups, but John Kerry sure as hell doesn't deserve to be elected to replace him.
Bad vs. Worse, take your pick.
You hit the nail on the head. Women (and many men) don't like C.S. more than likely because of the lack of human interaction.
At my college, the male/female ratio of freshmen C.S. students was fairly close to 50/50. The ratio of C.S. graduates was overwhelmingly male. Many women just didn't like it and decided to do something else and many of those who stayed moved towards I.T. as opposed to traditional C.S. Even after college in the real world, I've noticed that many of the female programmers at my company have continued their career tracks in a direction that does not include very much programming.
As for sexism, computers, of course, cannot be sexist. I'm sure there are true pigs out there, but they would have to be a minority. (In my experience, the professors who were thought of as "sexist" were just as hard on the male students as the female ones. The women, however, tended to take the criticism more personally.) Usually they were treated quite well because there simply weren't that many of them.
This crap has been going on in Florida since long before Bush and the Republicans held office.
Many of the things that caused the 2000 (and 2002) fiascos were reforms passed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles and the then Democratically controlled legislature in response to massive voter fraud in the 1997(?) mayoral election in Miami.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The only problem she had is that the numbing drops didn't quite work, and she was actually able to feel the laser. (ouch!)
Even so, she's glad she had it done. She was almost blind without her glasses and now she has better vision than I do.
My advise is to get the best doctor you can afford. These are YOUR EYES and this is no time to go cheap. Get someone who is well recommended and has a good track record of success.
As for myself, I am naturally 20/30 in my left eye and 20/40 in my right, which is not perfect, but still legal to drive in my state. Therefore, I will definitely NOT be getting this done.
In 1994, Janet Reno went after violence in Cop Shows.
Michael Moriarity told her what he thought about that in so many words, and was promptly fired from Law & Order.
Democrats won't protect your freedoms. If you think the Bush Adminstration is bad, do you really think Gore/Lieberman (two major advocates of censorship) would have been any better?
Your mileage may vary.
The early bird may get the worm....
but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Microsoft is asking for trouble by trying to be the first to market with its next generation console. If it manages to beat the competition to market, odds are either it's going to be too sloppy or too expensive to get a large following. Even if it is good, the competition will probably be out to market with superior technology before a critical mass of the XBOX-2 units have sold.
Sega tried this. It worked ONCE with the Genesis, mainly because Nintendo rested on its laurels too long and the SNES (IIRC) didn't come out until a year or two later, and wasn't that much better. (Don't forget all the other companies that beat Nintendo to 16 bit system. All are gone.) The Sega CD, 32x, Saturn, and Dreamcast never captured the market share that the Genesis had.
This is a risky and highly dangerous gamble for Microsoft
At which point they will be outsourced even faster.