KDE has always used X.9x... as development releases for the next major version, be they betas or rcs, since pre 2.0. (Usually.90 +) So he's saying exactly what you are.
(I seem to recall some 0.9 releases, but that's long enough ago, and it wasn't what I was using then, so I'm not sure.)
That's funny, where I am, you can see the headlines without buying anything, and in fact they go to trouble to let you do that. Only if you want to read more do you drop the quarters in the slot.
Seems like he should also not use any regular newspaper stands.
It works fine in 4. I have a 8GB flash disk split 4/4, and kubuntu (9.04) with most of what I want runs fine on there. The only thing I think I don't have is LaTeX + it's gobs of space for stuff, but frankly, it's not like I'm likely to write anything on the stick, as it's mostly a rescue disk for windows computers.
For using it regularly I'd have to highly suggest 8. The EEE 900 is a little cramped at 4GB with Kubuntu 9.04. (That particular setup one has some of the extras removed and LaTeX added, as the person who I built the kubuntu install for is a big LaTeX user.) It's got an 8GB SD for storage beyond the 4GB it has in there. Asus should probably have made 8GB the baseline, but you couldn't complain about the $160 price for it. Unfortunately, they've gone up since then.
The brand is ASUS. You may have heard of them. If you want to talk about major brands, in terms of laptop sales, they were #8 in laptops shipped with Apple being #7, in 2008, with the 2nd smallest gap (the smallest being between Asus and Sony(#9), Granted, all three were each only 4-5% of the market. Asus is also growing faster than Apple, but both were up a large amount 67 and 61% over 2007, a pretty good comparison by the numbers.)
And we are discussing laptops. Frankly good luck being able to buy the components to build your own for less than a laptop, if you can more power to you. ASUS is #5 in the world, and likely to be higher shortly.
You may be thinking of changing the CPUID on Via chips to GenuineIntel vs AuthenticAMD vs CentaurHauls.
There's one of the 'big' benchmark suites where the chip's score is roughly the same on AuthenticAMD and CentaurHauls, but gets a boost on GenuineIntel. Via's chips are the only ones with (user) changeable cpuid, so we don't know how differently IDed AMD or Intel do, but still interesting.
Post the site and product, or shut the hell up.
Seriously, Isn't what you are doing, deliberately obscuring the site, and hiding useful information, the same as what they are doing.
By presenting it the way you have, you've essentially attacked the reputation of all well-known online computer component shops. Could be newegg, NCIX, ZZF, amazon, tigerdirect, buy.com, bestbuy You've provided no specifics, and as such no valid evidence, even in your anecdote.
I'm all for tarring and feathering companies *if they deserve it*. Your post makes no particular case for your review being rejected because it was bad, and not for using profanity, or something similar.
Post the site, product and your review. Otherwise, if you aren't willing to name the site or product for the benefit of all, I hope that one of the others sues you for slandering their reputation.
In every case of Apple computers I have looked at, Laptop/Desktop/Server, looking at the hardware components, they have proven to be higher priced, compared to similar PC options. Where there were options that weren't equivalent, I chose it so the PC had the better option (more ram, faster/larger HD, etc) PCs have always come out on top. Laptops have been a bit more annoying to perfectly match, but if you exclude a few things, they match up pretty well.
Here's a comparison of my laptop and a mac book pro 13". While mine is 14.1" and there isn't a mac of that size, the 13" is closer in features/price to mine, thus I compare with it. (It's also base 500$ more)
Base price on a 13" MBP is 1199$, mine was $950 *a year ago* Comparing my nearly year old laptop to a current 13" MBP, mine is a 14.1". with a 2.2GHz T7500 Core Duo (2.26 in MBP, particular type not given), Wireless is equivalent (can't find what chips they use, mine is an Intel abgn + Bluetooth), RAM is 3GB in mine vs 2GB, Screen resolution is the same, Basic configuration of 160GB MBP drive is half mine (320GB 5400rpm) (+100$ MBP), Apple contains one display port connection, mine contains DVI, VGA, and S-video output. Graphics card in MBP is 9400M, mine is 8600M GT (advantage in doing things, mine, power the MBP as it's a generation later, for reference, the 9500 is essentially the 8600 repackaged) DVD drive is pretty much the same, though mine isn't slot loading. Gig LAN check on both, Firewire check (1 each), USB ports-2 MBP, 5 mine, SD reader-both check, webcam-check (1.3M mine, MBP-unknown) mine does not have a backlit keyboard or magsafe power port. Oh, yeah, extra battery capability. (I'm not including the actual second battery I have in the $950, or comparison)
What we have here, is a close to fair comparison, where the MBP is either equivalent for purposes of running software, or inferior (graphics) hardware costs $1300 compared to $950. $350 for slot loading, inferior graphics, potentially improved battery, less RAM isn't quite right.
Not quite as complete a comparison, but My sister's new laptop (1100$, a 16") compared to a MBP is equivalent to either the 15" (1700/2300) or 17" (2500), except for being a bit slower than the higher end (2200/2500), with I believe a 320 GB HD (-50$ off MB) and less resolution than the 17". On the other hand, she could get two of them for the price of the faster macs. Even assuming it's 100-200$ for the extras, that's still $1k of apple tax, on pretty much the same hardware, in terms of running anything.
Please make sure you are supported by the facts if you are going to argue a point.
If we want to use your silly food analogy, The pickles and buns at McDs, and BK may be slightly different, but they are essentially the same.
Re:The only devs that Macs are good for are Mac de
on
Best Developer's Laptop?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Apple contributes to open source generally because they've been beaten over the head with the fact that not everything is BSD licensed.
Safari, when it came out wasn't compliant with the license (LGPL), multiple notices that they weren't in compliance and eventually, I believe, threats to sue were required for them to release code, as well as what they released being one great big diff. So useful. To be fair, they have gotten better over that particular case (KHTML/Webkit) since then.
Saying that they are a good OSS citizen, would probably be pushing it. (Mostly they seem to follow the idea of doing the minimum required, unless it turns into a PR problem.)
Their products have a horrid reputation. I've heard it called "malware".
Fixed that for you.
Norton for Mac used to be good, before it was even called MacOS, just System. Since then, it and it's Windows version has become to be a stinking pile of crap that you are better off without.
Hell, when I was interested in seeing if a tablet was something that might be useful for me, I hooked up my zarus and used it as a tablet for a while before I got one. I've got pictures somewhere still.
The GPU in the Xbox 360 is roughly equivilent to maybe the HD 2900 from ATI. The system has 512MB Main RAM (a 10MB frame buffer for the GPU) and the memory is accessed through the GPU.
The Xbox, has roughly a 7800 in it. It was added quite late, after Cell wasn't panning out quite as well as they wanted, so they went to Nvidia and asked what they could do, so it's closer to a desktop version than the one in the Xbox.
Open platform... both are exceedingly closed. The person probably should have gone with a PC, but it's 'cool' to do things on consoles, even when they aren't all that efficient, or reliable. A new laptop with a decent graphics card would probably do about as well as an Xbox, were it able to run this person's code. A new desktop card should blow it away.
This really is an issue, and hardware support varies. Your notebook seems to include an ATI graphics card. That's probably your problem. Last I looked neither the open source, nor the ATI graphics drivers supported power savings on the ATI cards.
I have an Asus F8Sv, which actually gets longer battery life in Linux, about 10 minutes, even though when running Linux, I have an external hard drive connected. It's got an Nvidia Geforce 8600 graphics card, with Nvidia's drivers. (Mind you, this is with OpenGL composting enabled, under Kubuntu (both 9.04 and 9.10)
The other big one is Intel cards, which are supported for most of their power management features under the driver Intel helped write.
They shouldn't, but a lot of programmers have gotten used to tricks which work on x86.
Trust me, I've used (at various times) linux/alpha,sparc(64),arm,x86,x86-64,powerpc windows/alpha,x86,x86-64 solaris/x86,x86-64,sparc openvms/alpha.
The most consistent of those are the various Linux distributions, most mainline software has been whacked enough that it works. Though even there, sometimes people use those tricks, or they make assumptions about sizes, Netscape was a problem on alphas, on both Windows and Linux, because it assumed 32-bits on integers and a few other things, when they originally ported it... segfaults. Openoffice still may not compile on alphas, or other 64-bit systems (sparc64s as I recall used to run star/openoffice in 32-bit)
Currently, binaries I can think of are flash, nvidia, ati (Accelerated OpenGL was a pain in the past on many Linux systems), and that's mostly it that I've used for years, aside from some commercial games.
Many of the UAVs currently used are intended for a long-endurance surveillance role. They typically have engines just powerful enough to do that, and lots of wing area to reduce how much fuel it needs to burn.
They are designed to be up for long periods, so if it takes extra time to get there, it's not that big of a deal. The Predator (RQ-1) uses a 115 hp motor. The Reaper (larger Predator) has a 950 hp. For comparison, a Cessna 172 has in the neighborhood of a 160 hp engine, with roughly the same weight and general bounding box, minus the wings being 3/4 (36 vs 48 ft) as wide. The Reaper is about 6 ft longer, and scaled up, but also has a max takeoff weight of about twice the other two. In terms of power/weight, one is worse, the other better than the most produced small manned aircraft, however, I have no knowledge of what else the air frame can handle. I'm thinking that you won't be able to get many Gs out of either one. Typically, you only see those on higher performance, and unstable military fighters. Even there, I think the limit is usually not the pilot, but the structure of the plane.
Oh, and in terms of loss rate on Predators & Reapers: "All told, 55 have been lost because of equipment failure, operator errors or weather. Four were shot down in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq; 11 were lost in combat situations, like running out of fuel while protecting troops under fire." (nytimes) Assuming all delivered aircraft are operational or crashed, 195(p)+28(r)+70(l), or 70/293 for a design completed in the mid 90s, not something I'd want to fly on, even removing the 15 shot down/lost in combat situations (weather, equipment failure are typically bad designs, and operator error can be, 17 actions to fire a missile, apparently including drop down menus?).
A little over a year ago, I was sent (completely unsolicited) a year of some gaming magazine. (Wasn't PC Gamer, but it was at the time on the shelves at Barnes & Noble). I read them some when I was bored. The thing was horrible. It wasn't journalism, it was a paid advertisement. There was little that wasn't given a good review, and those that weren't did not appear to be providing ads, and appeared to be atrocious games, via other sources. Looking at most of the magazines, of the time, the one I got wasn't that far off.
I'm unfamiliar with OXM, but if they were of average quality, then that's not saying much at all, and usually online sources were superior at that time.
(Of course, they kept sending these which were unsolicited for a year, then sent a bill. After being told they'd sent it to us unsolicited mail sent to us through the US Postal Service and to shove off, they did, suggesting that they employed that tactic on others. So they were probably higher on the slimey scale than most.)
I use a 14.1" laptop right now. It was the best fit for the following: Graphics Card (Nvidia), Size, and Price.
Since I use it at home mostly on a higher-resolution display, I do think that the display doesn't matter as much (It matters, just not hugely, compared to the portability I want when I'm not at my desk. It's got a single fan and doesn't get too hot with the 2.2GHz Core 2 duo, and the 8600GT (unless you block the intake, then it can get hot, before shutting down.) The only drawback on my model was a 1280x800 resolution, which is low for my taste, but not enough to be worth 33% more money for a higher resolution one. (At the time) The prices on a similarly speced laptop have dropped about 25% since then (assuming sales).
Ideally, I'd like to see something like a 10" with a higher resolution, say 1280x800 or 1440x900, a good graphics card, and decent CPU, where I can use it on a higher resolution monitor at home, but have it as portable as a netbook. However, I don't expect to see anything closer than the Ion for a while, and I have yet to see that in a netbook.
Notebooks were originally big because they had to be, the netbook phenomenon is just manufacturers realizing that people want smaller things that can be made cheaply. I still have a Toshiba Libretto 50CT, which is thicker than an EEE (900), but smaller in other dimensions. It's screen has close to the same size as the first gen EEEs, when you account for widescreen (In other words, vertically it's about the same). It served until a few years ago, and was a damn useful machine. The main difference with netbooks is that netbooks are cheap. Librettos, even for their time, were expensive. The mouse on the Libretto seemed more useful than the touchpad of the EEE, as it seemed to be a design thought of for that size, rather than just scaling down a notebook as EEEs seem to more or less be.
Anything measures in rewrites over hours or larger time spans is not (or shouldn't be) that much of a problem for modern flash. Someone calculated that you'd have to be reflashing a particular device every 15 minutes for 5 years to reach the flash's rewrite limit. That was several years ago. (It may have been 5 minutes as opposed to 15, but I'll give the less reliable number. This number appears to be from 2000 or 2001, as the device was the Agenda VR3 dating from about then.)
Assuming it's as good as the flash from that example, rewriting every hour results in 20 years. I don't know about you, but I don't have many hard drives from 20 years ago.
Now, if it's rewriting all the time, that could go down drastically, and quality might be different, but every 20 days shouldn't be a problem unless you've got really really crappy flash, by the standards of 9 years ago.
Starcraft's spawn allowed one to play on battle.net, but ONLY with the original (non-spawn) keyholder.
The expansion screwed this up, obviously, and I doubt if they are taking LAN play out completely, they will even bother, but they might try something like that.
While I agree, there is no monopoly, there appears to be what one might call a Oligopoly. There are 4 National carriers. (Yes, there are a few smaller ones.) AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile. I count two others with over a million subscribers on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers) which is currently not being acquired by one of those 4 (Either listed there, or known by myself).
Their plans are almost lockstep. Comparing some plans last year, they were almost exactly the same, which could be due to one of two things: Collusion, or Cost of Services. One might be tempted to say cost of services, but prior to the absorption of so much, the cost of Sprint was significantly cheaper, and didn't have these crazy 2-year long contracts (it was month to month, which after they introduced the it changed to a $15 per month fee, which is bollocks.)
The only group I think benefits from this oligopoly are the companies. When there was competition on a large scale, prices were cheaper. I recall in my city, when we originally chose to break from Sprint, we got GSM phones on Cingular's network, on the idea that should service prove unsatisfactory, we could go with one of the other 5 providers in the area. Approx one and a half years later, we decide to go looking at other providers noting a rise in fees, and decreasing service, only to find that all but one (t-mobile) is gone/absorbed. Anecdote, true. However, I've heard a lot of very similar anecdotes, both IRL, and on the Internet.
While, no, it's not a monopoly, an oligopoly acts in many ways like one. Anyone remember WiMax and it's potential to be wireless data outside cell phone carriers? Anyone heard anything about it recently, at all?
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You are incorrect. OpenGL works fine on Nvidia + Vista.
KDE has always used X.9x... as development releases for the next major version, be they betas or rcs, since pre 2.0. (Usually .90 +) So he's saying exactly what you are.
(I seem to recall some 0.9 releases, but that's long enough ago, and it wasn't what I was using then, so I'm not sure.)
That's funny, where I am, you can see the headlines without buying anything, and in fact they go to trouble to let you do that. Only if you want to read more do you drop the quarters in the slot.
Seems like he should also not use any regular newspaper stands.
Lies! ...Though 15k should be. If only because of the noise and heat! ;)
You seem to be implying that Apple's team has designed several. If so, please specify which they have...
It works fine in 4. I have a 8GB flash disk split 4/4, and kubuntu (9.04) with most of what I want runs fine on there. The only thing I think I don't have is LaTeX + it's gobs of space for stuff, but frankly, it's not like I'm likely to write anything on the stick, as it's mostly a rescue disk for windows computers.
For using it regularly I'd have to highly suggest 8. The EEE 900 is a little cramped at 4GB with Kubuntu 9.04. (That particular setup one has some of the extras removed and LaTeX added, as the person who I built the kubuntu install for is a big LaTeX user.) It's got an 8GB SD for storage beyond the 4GB it has in there. Asus should probably have made 8GB the baseline, but you couldn't complain about the $160 price for it. Unfortunately, they've gone up since then.
The brand is ASUS. You may have heard of them. If you want to talk about major brands, in terms of laptop sales, they were #8 in laptops shipped with Apple being #7, in 2008, with the 2nd smallest gap (the smallest being between Asus and Sony(#9), Granted, all three were each only 4-5% of the market. Asus is also growing faster than Apple, but both were up a large amount 67 and 61% over 2007, a pretty good comparison by the numbers.)
And we are discussing laptops. Frankly good luck being able to buy the components to build your own for less than a laptop, if you can more power to you. ASUS is #5 in the world, and likely to be higher shortly.
You may be thinking of changing the CPUID on Via chips to GenuineIntel vs AuthenticAMD vs CentaurHauls.
There's one of the 'big' benchmark suites where the chip's score is roughly the same on AuthenticAMD and CentaurHauls, but gets a boost on GenuineIntel. Via's chips are the only ones with (user) changeable cpuid, so we don't know how differently IDed AMD or Intel do, but still interesting.
(First google'd link talking about it.)
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/pcmark_memory_benchmark_favors_genuineintel_over_authenticamd
Post the site and product, or shut the hell up. Seriously, Isn't what you are doing, deliberately obscuring the site, and hiding useful information, the same as what they are doing. By presenting it the way you have, you've essentially attacked the reputation of all well-known online computer component shops. Could be newegg, NCIX, ZZF, amazon, tigerdirect, buy.com, bestbuy You've provided no specifics, and as such no valid evidence, even in your anecdote. I'm all for tarring and feathering companies *if they deserve it*. Your post makes no particular case for your review being rejected because it was bad, and not for using profanity, or something similar. Post the site, product and your review. Otherwise, if you aren't willing to name the site or product for the benefit of all, I hope that one of the others sues you for slandering their reputation.
In every case of Apple computers I have looked at, Laptop/Desktop/Server, looking at the hardware components, they have proven to be higher priced, compared to similar PC options. Where there were options that weren't equivalent, I chose it so the PC had the better option (more ram, faster/larger HD, etc) PCs have always come out on top. Laptops have been a bit more annoying to perfectly match, but if you exclude a few things, they match up pretty well.
Here's a comparison of my laptop and a mac book pro 13". While mine is 14.1" and there isn't a mac of that size, the 13" is closer in features/price to mine, thus I compare with it. (It's also base 500$ more)
Base price on a 13" MBP is 1199$, mine was $950 *a year ago*
Comparing my nearly year old laptop to a current 13" MBP, mine is a 14.1". with a 2.2GHz T7500 Core Duo (2.26 in MBP, particular type not given), Wireless is equivalent (can't find what chips they use, mine is an Intel abgn + Bluetooth), RAM is 3GB in mine vs 2GB, Screen resolution is the same, Basic configuration of 160GB MBP drive is half mine (320GB 5400rpm) (+100$ MBP), Apple contains one display port connection, mine contains DVI, VGA, and S-video output. Graphics card in MBP is 9400M, mine is 8600M GT (advantage in doing things, mine, power the MBP as it's a generation later, for reference, the 9500 is essentially the 8600 repackaged) DVD drive is pretty much the same, though mine isn't slot loading. Gig LAN check on both, Firewire check (1 each), USB ports-2 MBP, 5 mine, SD reader-both check, webcam-check (1.3M mine, MBP-unknown) mine does not have a backlit keyboard or magsafe power port. Oh, yeah, extra battery capability. (I'm not including the actual second battery I have in the $950, or comparison)
What we have here, is a close to fair comparison, where the MBP is either equivalent for purposes of running software, or inferior (graphics) hardware costs $1300 compared to $950. $350 for slot loading, inferior graphics, potentially improved battery, less RAM isn't quite right.
Not quite as complete a comparison, but My sister's new laptop (1100$, a 16") compared to a MBP is equivalent to either the 15" (1700/2300) or 17" (2500), except for being a bit slower than the higher end (2200/2500), with I believe a 320 GB HD (-50$ off MB) and less resolution than the 17". On the other hand, she could get two of them for the price of the faster macs. Even assuming it's 100-200$ for the extras, that's still $1k of apple tax, on pretty much the same hardware, in terms of running anything.
Please make sure you are supported by the facts if you are going to argue a point.
If we want to use your silly food analogy, The pickles and buns at McDs, and BK may be slightly different, but they are essentially the same.
Apple contributes to open source generally because they've been beaten over the head with the fact that not everything is BSD licensed.
Safari, when it came out wasn't compliant with the license (LGPL), multiple notices that they weren't in compliance and eventually, I believe, threats to sue were required for them to release code, as well as what they released being one great big diff. So useful. To be fair, they have gotten better over that particular case (KHTML/Webkit) since then.
Saying that they are a good OSS citizen, would probably be pushing it. (Mostly they seem to follow the idea of doing the minimum required, unless it turns into a PR problem.)
I'm afraid Unix has been denying people their "rights" for some time now with those pesky rwxrwxrwx and execute bits.
They aren't denying you anything with rwxrwxrwx!
Their products have a horrid reputation. I've heard it called "malware".
Fixed that for you. Norton for Mac used to be good, before it was even called MacOS, just System. Since then, it and it's Windows version has become to be a stinking pile of crap that you are better off without.
Hell, when I was interested in seeing if a tablet was something that might be useful for me, I hooked up my zarus and used it as a tablet for a while before I got one. I've got pictures somewhere still.
The GPU in the Xbox 360 is roughly equivilent to maybe the HD 2900 from ATI. The system has 512MB Main RAM (a 10MB frame buffer for the GPU) and the memory is accessed through the GPU. The Xbox, has roughly a 7800 in it. It was added quite late, after Cell wasn't panning out quite as well as they wanted, so they went to Nvidia and asked what they could do, so it's closer to a desktop version than the one in the Xbox. Open platform... both are exceedingly closed. The person probably should have gone with a PC, but it's 'cool' to do things on consoles, even when they aren't all that efficient, or reliable. A new laptop with a decent graphics card would probably do about as well as an Xbox, were it able to run this person's code. A new desktop card should blow it away.
I challenge you to show me a consumer available wireless that actually runs at 1 gigabit.
This really is an issue, and hardware support varies. Your notebook seems to include an ATI graphics card. That's probably your problem. Last I looked neither the open source, nor the ATI graphics drivers supported power savings on the ATI cards. I have an Asus F8Sv, which actually gets longer battery life in Linux, about 10 minutes, even though when running Linux, I have an external hard drive connected. It's got an Nvidia Geforce 8600 graphics card, with Nvidia's drivers. (Mind you, this is with OpenGL composting enabled, under Kubuntu (both 9.04 and 9.10) The other big one is Intel cards, which are supported for most of their power management features under the driver Intel helped write.
They shouldn't, but a lot of programmers have gotten used to tricks which work on x86.
Trust me, I've used (at various times) linux/alpha,sparc(64),arm,x86,x86-64,powerpc windows/alpha,x86,x86-64 solaris/x86,x86-64,sparc openvms/alpha.
The most consistent of those are the various Linux distributions, most mainline software has been whacked enough that it works. Though even there, sometimes people use those tricks, or they make assumptions about sizes, Netscape was a problem on alphas, on both Windows and Linux, because it assumed 32-bits on integers and a few other things, when they originally ported it... segfaults. Openoffice still may not compile on alphas, or other 64-bit systems (sparc64s as I recall used to run star/openoffice in 32-bit)
Currently, binaries I can think of are flash, nvidia, ati (Accelerated OpenGL was a pain in the past on many Linux systems), and that's mostly it that I've used for years, aside from some commercial games.
Many of the UAVs currently used are intended for a long-endurance surveillance role. They typically have engines just powerful enough to do that, and lots of wing area to reduce how much fuel it needs to burn.
They are designed to be up for long periods, so if it takes extra time to get there, it's not that big of a deal. The Predator (RQ-1) uses a 115 hp motor. The Reaper (larger Predator) has a 950 hp. For comparison, a Cessna 172 has in the neighborhood of a 160 hp engine, with roughly the same weight and general bounding box, minus the wings being 3/4 (36 vs 48 ft) as wide. The Reaper is about 6 ft longer, and scaled up, but also has a max takeoff weight of about twice the other two. In terms of power/weight, one is worse, the other better than the most produced small manned aircraft, however, I have no knowledge of what else the air frame can handle. I'm thinking that you won't be able to get many Gs out of either one. Typically, you only see those on higher performance, and unstable military fighters. Even there, I think the limit is usually not the pilot, but the structure of the plane.
Oh, and in terms of loss rate on Predators & Reapers: "All told, 55 have been lost because of equipment failure, operator errors or weather. Four were shot down in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq; 11 were lost in combat situations, like running out of fuel while protecting troops under fire." (nytimes) Assuming all delivered aircraft are operational or crashed, 195(p)+28(r)+70(l), or 70/293 for a design completed in the mid 90s, not something I'd want to fly on, even removing the 15 shot down/lost in combat situations (weather, equipment failure are typically bad designs, and operator error can be, 17 actions to fire a missile, apparently including drop down menus?).
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/business/17uav.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp
I'm unfamiliar with OXM, but if they were of average quality, then that's not saying much at all, and usually online sources were superior at that time.
(Of course, they kept sending these which were unsolicited for a year, then sent a bill. After being told they'd sent it to us unsolicited mail sent to us through the US Postal Service and to shove off, they did, suggesting that they employed that tactic on others. So they were probably higher on the slimey scale than most.)
Be interesting to see what a Wolf would be like as they tend to have a larger brain to body mass ratio.
I use a 14.1" laptop right now. It was the best fit for the following: Graphics Card (Nvidia), Size, and Price.
Since I use it at home mostly on a higher-resolution display, I do think that the display doesn't matter as much (It matters, just not hugely, compared to the portability I want when I'm not at my desk. It's got a single fan and doesn't get too hot with the 2.2GHz Core 2 duo, and the 8600GT (unless you block the intake, then it can get hot, before shutting down.) The only drawback on my model was a 1280x800 resolution, which is low for my taste, but not enough to be worth 33% more money for a higher resolution one. (At the time) The prices on a similarly speced laptop have dropped about 25% since then (assuming sales).
Ideally, I'd like to see something like a 10" with a higher resolution, say 1280x800 or 1440x900, a good graphics card, and decent CPU, where I can use it on a higher resolution monitor at home, but have it as portable as a netbook. However, I don't expect to see anything closer than the Ion for a while, and I have yet to see that in a netbook.
Notebooks were originally big because they had to be, the netbook phenomenon is just manufacturers realizing that people want smaller things that can be made cheaply. I still have a Toshiba Libretto 50CT, which is thicker than an EEE (900), but smaller in other dimensions. It's screen has close to the same size as the first gen EEEs, when you account for widescreen (In other words, vertically it's about the same). It served until a few years ago, and was a damn useful machine. The main difference with netbooks is that netbooks are cheap. Librettos, even for their time, were expensive. The mouse on the Libretto seemed more useful than the touchpad of the EEE, as it seemed to be a design thought of for that size, rather than just scaling down a notebook as EEEs seem to more or less be.
Anything measures in rewrites over hours or larger time spans is not (or shouldn't be) that much of a problem for modern flash. Someone calculated that you'd have to be reflashing a particular device every 15 minutes for 5 years to reach the flash's rewrite limit. That was several years ago. (It may have been 5 minutes as opposed to 15, but I'll give the less reliable number. This number appears to be from 2000 or 2001, as the device was the Agenda VR3 dating from about then.)
Assuming it's as good as the flash from that example, rewriting every hour results in 20 years. I don't know about you, but I don't have many hard drives from 20 years ago.
Now, if it's rewriting all the time, that could go down drastically, and quality might be different, but every 20 days shouldn't be a problem unless you've got really really crappy flash, by the standards of 9 years ago.
Starcraft's spawn allowed one to play on battle.net, but ONLY with the original (non-spawn) keyholder. The expansion screwed this up, obviously, and I doubt if they are taking LAN play out completely, they will even bother, but they might try something like that.
While I agree, there is no monopoly, there appears to be what one might call a Oligopoly. There are 4 National carriers. (Yes, there are a few smaller ones.) AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile. I count two others with over a million subscribers on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_communications_service_providers) which is currently not being acquired by one of those 4 (Either listed there, or known by myself).
Their plans are almost lockstep. Comparing some plans last year, they were almost exactly the same, which could be due to one of two things: Collusion, or Cost of Services. One might be tempted to say cost of services, but prior to the absorption of so much, the cost of Sprint was significantly cheaper, and didn't have these crazy 2-year long contracts (it was month to month, which after they introduced the it changed to a $15 per month fee, which is bollocks.)
The only group I think benefits from this oligopoly are the companies. When there was competition on a large scale, prices were cheaper. I recall in my city, when we originally chose to break from Sprint, we got GSM phones on Cingular's network, on the idea that should service prove unsatisfactory, we could go with one of the other 5 providers in the area. Approx one and a half years later, we decide to go looking at other providers noting a rise in fees, and decreasing service, only to find that all but one (t-mobile) is gone/absorbed. Anecdote, true. However, I've heard a lot of very similar anecdotes, both IRL, and on the Internet.
While, no, it's not a monopoly, an oligopoly acts in many ways like one. Anyone remember WiMax and it's potential to be wireless data outside cell phone carriers? Anyone heard anything about it recently, at all?