I would like to use a SSD as my OS drive for a few of it's benefits. Overall noise level and speed are the two big things. Given that the drive itself is near silent is kinda obvious when dealing with noise levels but also the heat level and power consumption are lower. As such it's less cooling to deal with which then in turn can mean with a air cooling system less fan noise.
At this point the prices are low enough such that it would not be a big deal to get one and play around with it. However it would be nice to see them a bit bigger before I took the plunge.
I don't want my search engine to know anything about me! For a number of reasons:
1. I don't want it applying pre-conceived notions of what I might be looking for. In some cases I'm sure it might be helpful for it to think it knows what I might want but I can see just as many cases where it would be bad as well.
2. I don't want them reporting, anymore than they already are, more stuff back to marketeers and such.
3. And even if the search engine does operate slightly better when it knows who I am that would mean it would require me to log in to it every place I go.
I can see that there could be advantages. But honestly the advantages look like they are a lot more on their end than mine.
I can see the point the author is trying to make. When your not using your PC, or any electronic device, and it's on your wasting energy. And of course so many devices these days draw power even when they are 'off'. I get it. I have in place methods to really shut down everything when I go out of town for longer than a few days.
And to boot I will power down a PC if I know I'm not going to use it for anything. However I also try to think about what a PC could be doing while I'm away from it. Is it time to defrag the drive? Did I want to download that new Linux ISO while I go watch a movie? Did I want to move a DIVX to VCD format? Etc.
And of course on cold nights I'll look for any excuse to leave the PC in my room on for a bit of extra warmth.
I'm fine with some code being very easy to read even at the expense of performance. But you seem to imply that doing so should always be the case. Which is a huge mistake.
I don't believe FOSS is inherently limited in how it markets its products or how successful that marketing might be. I think the teacher's letter is just one piece of evidence that FOSS has failed to counter the notion that Linux is tainted software, or that it can't be any good because it's free.
I fully agree that FOSS is not limited in how it can market itself. Rather that by, for lack of a better word, design FOSS just does not lend itself to being marketed. And that most likely came out poorly so let me say it again in a different way. Marketing on a large scale works best with a relatively simple message. FOSS as a whole is not exactly simple. For that matter IS is not simple so when it gets marketed it's very on point. Market X product at Y target. And to that end like I said when Unbuntu markets it's product it can, and imo does, do well. But the idea of marketing the whole concept of FOSS is just way too much.
So ok, you say lets just market the idea of a FOSS desktop OS. Well...which one? Do we market all of them? Do we include BSD derivatives? Do we explain how it's really a combination of a kernel that then has a X windows system sitting on top of the CLI OS? I mean we have already gotten wayyyyy too complicated for even some 'power users', never mind the general population.
So I go back to the idea that if we market FOSS it has to be done at a very target able level. Unbuntu markets it's OS at users who want an alliterative OS. OO targets users who want an alternative office package. Those are manageable X to Y targets. But I just can't see how doing it for all of FOSS is viable.
Don't shudder. If you don't market, no one knows you exist.
I agree, but it's just the general direction that marketing wonks want to take things that brings the shudder. Were I to explain that I wanted to market FOSS and listed the complexity of it's nature they might respond with something along the lines of, "Well why doesn't Red Hat buy up Debian since they own Unbuntu and then we can market both those products." Which just would make me/facepalm.
Fair enough. I'd submit that at this point it's really more of a, shudder, marketing issue than anything else. Yeah FOSS on the desktop still has some technical issues but nothing stopping it really from large scale adoption.
I can sit someone down in front of an Unbuntu install and they often will say something to the effect of, "Oh is this a Mac?" They know it's different but the learning curve is so low it's no real barrier to use.
And so in so much if we follow with the idea that it's a marketing problem now FOSS does not really have the mechanics to employ the marketing it really needs to push past where it is now. The model of FOSS just does not lend itself to that. Instead we just have to rely on some of the 'parts' of FOSS like Red Hat, Unbuntu, and such to do that job. I would say that for what they are capable of doing they are doing it well. However I think, if I'm reading you right, what you really want is beyond what FOSS as a whole is capable of doing.
That's not the teacher's fault. Those who want to evangelize Linux need to do much, much more work in the "real" world.
I'd only say that if the teacher is in any way involved in teaching tech/IS then they are at fault for not knowing better. I'm going to take the lazy/.er way out by not RTFA so I have no clue what the teacher 'should' know.
If they teach history then they are off the hook. But even say a math teacher would be getting close to someone who should know better.
Because keep in mind the context of what the teacher did. If your going to flaunt your ignorance that explicitly and claim to be a teacher...well...
I'm not familiar enough with EQ's economics or it's loot mechanics but were I playing the game I'd be seriously concerned with the impact this would have on it's mudflation. I'm guessing at this point SOE, they are still running it right?, does not really care enough. (And from what I've heard they have never really cared that much at all but...) And are going to thinly veil this as something that won't have any 'real' impact.
Any widespread filtering of the internet at large will result in a massive tech 'arms war' that will make the cold war look like a Sunday picnic. Splinter cryptoed internets on both the current and eventually new internets will occur. Won't be pretty.
If all you want to do is "the basics", then a fast PC from 1999-2000 (1Ghz+ CPU) will suffice for Vista, although it will probably require some minor upgrades from its original configuration, like more RAM (to 1Gb) and a better video card (maybe $30).
And, yes, I have tried Vista on a PC like this, just for the hell of it - an 800Mhz P3 with 768Mb RAM and a 64M GeForce 5600 (my old DOS games box). It was marginally slower than my 1Ghz G4 iBook with 768Mb.
I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say it but any machine in that power range will perform better, still, with XP over Vista. Not to mention have better overall compatibility with hardware and software. And the bolded part, come on. Apple meet orange. (Awful pun yes.)
Benchmarks say they're basically identical. It's true Vista requires (relatively) a lot more RAM, but IMHO it's worth it, given how cheap RAM is. My current workstation is a ~3-year-old 1.8Ghz dual-core Opteron with 4G RAM and it's fine. Plus, since it also has three 1920x1200 monitors attached and I typically have dozens of windows and tabs open, it's being driven much harder than the average Vista box would be.
Benchmarks have shown in the past that IIS outperformed Apache. I don't know why your pushing so hard to try and make Vista out to be so good, and for what it's worth I am not on any sort of mission to try and make Vista out to be bad. However I do know for a fact that:
1. For day to day usage XP tends to outperform Vista unless you have a really nice rig. 2. XP is easier to use for end users 'out of the box'. 3. Said end users back up my observations of #1 in that given the two OSs they notice that XP runs 'crisper' than Vista unless they are using a very fast computer.
When Vista was released, dual-core machines with 2G RAM started at about US$800, but within a matter of months they'd dropped to US$5-600. A fast (3Ghz+ or equivalent) single-core would also suffice, and they were around the same price, if not a bit cheaper.
And again those same computers would still run faster with XP. To 'get to even' you have to have a very powerful machine. You seem to be confusing the idea that because a system can run Vista means it should.
I have nothing against Vista. I have made my peace with Microsoft and the way it's done things a long time ago. As such I try to be as objective as I can when dealing with all the software tools. Vista is simply not that great of a tool. And I'm afraid your the one in the minority when thinking otherwise. Which kinda shines a light on your bias.
Not really. A fast Windows 95 experience could be had with a 100Mhz Pentium and 16M RAM. For Windows 98 you would probably want to triple, maybe quadruple, that (~3-400Mhz P2 and 48-64M RAM).
I honestly don't remember seeing that much of a variance between 95 and 98 in terms of computing power needed. However it's been a while and besides given the variations between 95 installs, you could install IE 4 on 95 iirc which had a big impact on it's overall performance, not really where I'm trying to base my comparison.
For similar performance in Windows XP you would need to multiple it by a factor of 8-10 (~700Mhz-1Ghz P3, 512M RAM).
First of all I'm just going to say that while your numbers seem ok as a ballpark they have a few flaws. But for arguments sake I'm not going to worry too much about them all. Just wanted to not give you a total pass on them.
As far as it goes XP did a very good job with it's optimizations in making it a real OS upgrade. You really had put it on a system it did not belong on to see it do poorly. Case in point I just finally retired a K6 system with 256M of RAM that ran XP SP2 well enough to do 'the basics'. Web, mail, basic office stuff. Hell I even had Starcraft, UT, and at one point ran Dungeon Siege on it. (DS really pushed it to it's max limit but it did run.)
Had I 98 on that box I might have seen a bit faster overall performance but nothing great. However the idea that Vista could run on a system in relative age to my example is laughable.
Now, from that XP "baseline", you only need a machine maybe 5-6x as powerful (~1.6Ghz dual core, 2-3G RAM) for Vista to be "as fast". A $30 video card gets you all the "Aero capable" GPU you need.
Maybe that is what MS likes to say but when I've seen real world systems, such as your example system above, have XP vs Vista the difference is huge. A ~1.6Ghz dual core with 2-3G of RAM will run noticeably faster with XP than with Vista.
Finally you should keep in mind that I'm referring to the cost of computers upon Vistas release. Looking back I am sure I did not make that clear enough but that is my point. Sure now it's easy to say that cost of what it takes to make a decent Vista machine is minimal but when the OS was released dual core PCs with more than 2G of RAM were not cheap.
That is in comparison to XP which, as I pointed out, could be installed on machines that were running 9x and do just fine.
But, if you think that the best way to EDIT configurations is in a text file which provides no context, no help, no choices, and the absolute ability to bollocks the application then I submit you are not in touch with my step-father.
Yes, because when you run regedit your step-father gets so much more in the way of context, help, choices, and of course the ability to utterly thrash you Windows install too.
...a PC capable of running it well would have probably been around US$1500 (or about US$2000 adjusted to 2007 dollars).
This is where I think we have a disconnect. I could put XP on the same system that you discribe and it would run faster than the Vista system.
The amount of computing power, let us not get into the Aero fiasco, needed for someone to 'get back to even' with Vista is much more than what it took from 9x -> XP.
Vista has a few problems but from where I sit it's major problem was it's hardware requirements. From the 9x series to XP users not only got a huge boost in stability and features but they did not have to take out another mortgage to finance a new computer to run it.
Vista on the other hand expected everyone to run out and drop some major cash on new computers to have it run in any way close to what XP already was offering. And the kicker is XP and everything that people were running on it was doing very well thank you.
MS and it's OS offerings are still the 500 lb gorilla in the room but times have changed as well. While normal users most likely are still in the dark most Windows power users have dabbled with other OSs and see that upgrades don't automatically mean: you must now buy $2000-3000 worth of new hardware to get to where you were with the old one.
Exactly and in the IT realm there often is a 'keeping up with the Jones' idea that being on the bleeding edge makes things oh so much better. The reality is far from that in my experience when you look at actual end use. However I don't discount the fact that there are those who will benefit from having the very latest. Just that it's not as much as the media of course wants to make us believe.
Case in point at one point I had to replace a desktop a little over a year go that was just used for the very basics. Web, nominal apps, and at most a bit of lite gaming. I found a local brick and mortar that actually had very competitive prices vs mail ordering a system so I went and checked them out. They seemed cool enough so I bought there. As I was checking off the components I told them the CPU I wanted, a Celeron D 3.06, and the sales guy said kinda of in passing, "Oh so your really going low end then."
I was a bit taken back as I had already politely withstood his grilling on what the system was to be used for when I already knew exactly what parts I wanted. So he knew that, at least I hoped, that such a CPU was going to be far and away enough power. Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but it did serve to tarnish my overall impression of the place.
Preference: Have killed Illidan (I retired after a few Illidan kills and SWP was not out yet.) with my Feral Druid, has a early T5ish Orc Warrior, and was working on a Tankadin (level 66) when I left the game. Unsure if I'm going to check out LK but I digress.
The whole thing about TBC was that they did a few things that impacted tanking. First and foremost was the idea that Warriors were not going to be the only real tanks anymore. This was a major shift from pre-TBC, aka WoW 1.x, where for all intents and purposes Warriors where the only tanks. While raiding Naxx pre-TBC we did actually have a Feral Druid at one point but I mean he still had to use the Warden Staff.
With TBC came the idea that Warriors were not going to be the only tanks anymore. However this was not to be an easy transition. First of all many Warriors thought they should always be the only tanks. Never mind that in WoW 1.x they were the only real hybrids (Tanking/DPS) in the game but that's a whole other can of worms. So they put up quite a fuss when the Feral Druids hit the scene and started, "Taking der jerbs!" So TBC started with Feral Druids hit with one of the biggest nerfs in the game ever. Such a hard nerf that Blizzard had to go back and hotfix them so that they could generate enough threat to continue tanking at all.
Now I'll say that early on Feral Druids were a bit OP to start with but the problem then became one of scale. Feral Druids ended up scaling poorly at T6+ levels and blah blah blah. Bottom line is that it was not exactly a seamless transition. And we've not even gotten to the Tankadins or the impact that Arena PvP had on the the Warrior population yet!
The Tankadins, while having a lot of gear now to choose from, were still kinda squishy. All the more so given there preferred method of tanking. (CC == Constant Consecration) So they needed a few buffs to bring them up to speed. And they got them eventually which was a good thing. But still when it came to raiding they were still often viewed as the trash tank who then put on some shaman gear to heal with when it was time to fight the boss. (Or booted from the raid for the more hardcore even.)
In short there were a number of balance issues that the tanks had to deal with due to a poorly implemented move to making Warriors no longer the only tank. Add to this the fact, which was pretty apparent but never really said until the LK beta forums, that the whole design of TBC was based around the idea of the Warrior still being the 'primary' tank with Druids/Paladins being more support tanks.
Enter LK. As I said before the idea of a 'primary' tank is supposedly gone. GK has said a number of times that they want all 4 of the tanking classes to be able to be the MT if they, and their guild, so choose. Time will tell as to how this all will play out but they sure have said it enough such that I tend to think that they are at least trying. This is, and they have said this as well, a shift in design philosophy that is even different from what happened in TBC.
So while gear was an issue it's not the whole part of the issue when it came to tanking in TBC. There was an underlying design philosophy that caused what happened. Along with a number of, if you want to be kind, honest mistakes as they were making the transition from Warriors being the only tanks to other classes being viable in that role.
While this may seem very partisan I think it's timely and as such I'm going to risk getting modded down by right wing zealots.
The GOP has increasingly become a huge fan of this 'dumb is good' type of culture. For a number of reasons. It's not that they don't want any smart people. Rather they just don't want everyone to be smart. If your smart you can see though a lot of things that they would rather you not. Now the same is true to an extent of people on the left. And even some in the center. However no party has embraced this idea of keeping the populace as a whole dumbed down as the right wing/GOP.
Sounds like a classic case of FUD to mask the real issue. Along with making sure that people stay scared about using electronic devices in plains.
I hate to break it to the aviation industry but we are pushing along in the 21st century these days. They are going to have to design and fly planes with people using electronic devices. There is no reason why a modern aircraft should not be able to accommodate that within reasonable limits.
Well it's been clear for a while but I might as well get the pants that come up to my armpits and move further south here in Fla. Because I must be so old that I don't understand this issue at all.
Is not participating in this Facebook thing the equivalent of being a social pariah? GMail? Huh? I've got a half dozen email accounts at least and depending on what I'm doing I use various ones for various things. Things that I don't care about go to the equivalent of a GMail account, I have been using Yahoo Mail myself forever. Other things go to more secure accounts and so on.
I take some basic 'I know a fair amount about computers and the inet' type precautions but that's about it. Because in the end it's the big guys like Equifax that are truly keeping tabs on us. Being paranoid over something like Facebook sounds pretty tin foil hat to me.
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I would like to use a SSD as my OS drive for a few of it's benefits. Overall noise level and speed are the two big things. Given that the drive itself is near silent is kinda obvious when dealing with noise levels but also the heat level and power consumption are lower. As such it's less cooling to deal with which then in turn can mean with a air cooling system less fan noise.
At this point the prices are low enough such that it would not be a big deal to get one and play around with it. However it would be nice to see them a bit bigger before I took the plunge.
I don't want my search engine to know anything about me! For a number of reasons:
1. I don't want it applying pre-conceived notions of what I might be looking for. In some cases I'm sure it might be helpful for it to think it knows what I might want but I can see just as many cases where it would be bad as well.
2. I don't want them reporting, anymore than they already are, more stuff back to marketeers and such.
3. And even if the search engine does operate slightly better when it knows who I am that would mean it would require me to log in to it every place I go.
I can see that there could be advantages. But honestly the advantages look like they are a lot more on their end than mine.
Were I a server there I'd go quickly mad at the number of geeks who would come in and say:
When in a large group: The swarm is eager to feed!
When wanting more of an all you can eat item: More! I want more!
Etc...
I can see the point the author is trying to make. When your not using your PC, or any electronic device, and it's on your wasting energy. And of course so many devices these days draw power even when they are 'off'. I get it. I have in place methods to really shut down everything when I go out of town for longer than a few days.
And to boot I will power down a PC if I know I'm not going to use it for anything. However I also try to think about what a PC could be doing while I'm away from it. Is it time to defrag the drive? Did I want to download that new Linux ISO while I go watch a movie? Did I want to move a DIVX to VCD format? Etc.
And of course on cold nights I'll look for any excuse to leave the PC in my room on for a bit of extra warmth.
I'm fine with some code being very easy to read even at the expense of performance. But you seem to imply that doing so should always be the case. Which is a huge mistake.
I don't believe FOSS is inherently limited in how it markets its products or how successful that marketing might be. I think the teacher's letter is just one piece of evidence that FOSS has failed to counter the notion that Linux is tainted software, or that it can't be any good because it's free.
I fully agree that FOSS is not limited in how it can market itself. Rather that by, for lack of a better word, design FOSS just does not lend itself to being marketed. And that most likely came out poorly so let me say it again in a different way. Marketing on a large scale works best with a relatively simple message. FOSS as a whole is not exactly simple. For that matter IS is not simple so when it gets marketed it's very on point. Market X product at Y target. And to that end like I said when Unbuntu markets it's product it can, and imo does, do well. But the idea of marketing the whole concept of FOSS is just way too much.
So ok, you say lets just market the idea of a FOSS desktop OS. Well...which one? Do we market all of them? Do we include BSD derivatives? Do we explain how it's really a combination of a kernel that then has a X windows system sitting on top of the CLI OS? I mean we have already gotten wayyyyy too complicated for even some 'power users', never mind the general population.
So I go back to the idea that if we market FOSS it has to be done at a very target able level. Unbuntu markets it's OS at users who want an alliterative OS. OO targets users who want an alternative office package. Those are manageable X to Y targets. But I just can't see how doing it for all of FOSS is viable.
Don't shudder. If you don't market, no one knows you exist.
I agree, but it's just the general direction that marketing wonks want to take things that brings the shudder. Were I to explain that I wanted to market FOSS and listed the complexity of it's nature they might respond with something along the lines of, "Well why doesn't Red Hat buy up Debian since they own Unbuntu and then we can market both those products." Which just would make me /facepalm.
Fair enough. I'd submit that at this point it's really more of a, shudder, marketing issue than anything else. Yeah FOSS on the desktop still has some technical issues but nothing stopping it really from large scale adoption.
I can sit someone down in front of an Unbuntu install and they often will say something to the effect of, "Oh is this a Mac?" They know it's different but the learning curve is so low it's no real barrier to use.
And so in so much if we follow with the idea that it's a marketing problem now FOSS does not really have the mechanics to employ the marketing it really needs to push past where it is now. The model of FOSS just does not lend itself to that. Instead we just have to rely on some of the 'parts' of FOSS like Red Hat, Unbuntu, and such to do that job. I would say that for what they are capable of doing they are doing it well. However I think, if I'm reading you right, what you really want is beyond what FOSS as a whole is capable of doing.
That's not the teacher's fault. Those who want to evangelize Linux need to do much, much more work in the "real" world.
I'd only say that if the teacher is in any way involved in teaching tech/IS then they are at fault for not knowing better. I'm going to take the lazy /.er way out by not RTFA so I have no clue what the teacher 'should' know.
If they teach history then they are off the hook. But even say a math teacher would be getting close to someone who should know better.
Because keep in mind the context of what the teacher did. If your going to flaunt your ignorance that explicitly and claim to be a teacher...well...
I'm not familiar enough with EQ's economics or it's loot mechanics but were I playing the game I'd be seriously concerned with the impact this would have on it's mudflation. I'm guessing at this point SOE, they are still running it right?, does not really care enough. (And from what I've heard they have never really cared that much at all but...) And are going to thinly veil this as something that won't have any 'real' impact.
Any widespread filtering of the internet at large will result in a massive tech 'arms war' that will make the cold war look like a Sunday picnic. Splinter cryptoed internets on both the current and eventually new internets will occur. Won't be pretty.
If all you want to do is "the basics", then a fast PC from 1999-2000 (1Ghz+ CPU) will suffice for Vista, although it will probably require some minor upgrades from its original configuration, like more RAM (to 1Gb) and a better video card (maybe $30).
And, yes, I have tried Vista on a PC like this, just for the hell of it - an 800Mhz P3 with 768Mb RAM and a 64M GeForce 5600 (my old DOS games box). It was marginally slower than my 1Ghz G4 iBook with 768Mb.
I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say it but any machine in that power range will perform better, still, with XP over Vista. Not to mention have better overall compatibility with hardware and software. And the bolded part, come on. Apple meet orange. (Awful pun yes.)
Benchmarks say they're basically identical. It's true Vista requires (relatively) a lot more RAM, but IMHO it's worth it, given how cheap RAM is. My current workstation is a ~3-year-old 1.8Ghz dual-core Opteron with 4G RAM and it's fine. Plus, since it also has three 1920x1200 monitors attached and I typically have dozens of windows and tabs open, it's being driven much harder than the average Vista box would be.
Benchmarks have shown in the past that IIS outperformed Apache. I don't know why your pushing so hard to try and make Vista out to be so good, and for what it's worth I am not on any sort of mission to try and make Vista out to be bad. However I do know for a fact that:
1. For day to day usage XP tends to outperform Vista unless you have a really nice rig.
2. XP is easier to use for end users 'out of the box'.
3. Said end users back up my observations of #1 in that given the two OSs they notice that XP runs 'crisper' than Vista unless they are using a very fast computer.
When Vista was released, dual-core machines with 2G RAM started at about US$800, but within a matter of months they'd dropped to US$5-600. A fast (3Ghz+ or equivalent) single-core would also suffice, and they were around the same price, if not a bit cheaper.
And again those same computers would still run faster with XP. To 'get to even' you have to have a very powerful machine. You seem to be confusing the idea that because a system can run Vista means it should.
I have nothing against Vista. I have made my peace with Microsoft and the way it's done things a long time ago. As such I try to be as objective as I can when dealing with all the software tools. Vista is simply not that great of a tool. And I'm afraid your the one in the minority when thinking otherwise. Which kinda shines a light on your bias.
who the hell said anything about regedit?
Who the hell would use anything but regedit when trying to edit the configure files for Windows?
Not really. A fast Windows 95 experience could be had with a 100Mhz Pentium and 16M RAM. For Windows 98 you would probably want to triple, maybe quadruple, that (~3-400Mhz P2 and 48-64M RAM).
I honestly don't remember seeing that much of a variance between 95 and 98 in terms of computing power needed. However it's been a while and besides given the variations between 95 installs, you could install IE 4 on 95 iirc which had a big impact on it's overall performance, not really where I'm trying to base my comparison.
For similar performance in Windows XP you would need to multiple it by a factor of 8-10 (~700Mhz-1Ghz P3, 512M RAM).
First of all I'm just going to say that while your numbers seem ok as a ballpark they have a few flaws. But for arguments sake I'm not going to worry too much about them all. Just wanted to not give you a total pass on them.
As far as it goes XP did a very good job with it's optimizations in making it a real OS upgrade. You really had put it on a system it did not belong on to see it do poorly. Case in point I just finally retired a K6 system with 256M of RAM that ran XP SP2 well enough to do 'the basics'. Web, mail, basic office stuff. Hell I even had Starcraft, UT, and at one point ran Dungeon Siege on it. (DS really pushed it to it's max limit but it did run.)
Had I 98 on that box I might have seen a bit faster overall performance but nothing great. However the idea that Vista could run on a system in relative age to my example is laughable.
Now, from that XP "baseline", you only need a machine maybe 5-6x as powerful (~1.6Ghz dual core, 2-3G RAM) for Vista to be "as fast". A $30 video card gets you all the "Aero capable" GPU you need.
Maybe that is what MS likes to say but when I've seen real world systems, such as your example system above, have XP vs Vista the difference is huge. A ~1.6Ghz dual core with 2-3G of RAM will run noticeably faster with XP than with Vista.
Finally you should keep in mind that I'm referring to the cost of computers upon Vistas release. Looking back I am sure I did not make that clear enough but that is my point. Sure now it's easy to say that cost of what it takes to make a decent Vista machine is minimal but when the OS was released dual core PCs with more than 2G of RAM were not cheap.
That is in comparison to XP which, as I pointed out, could be installed on machines that were running 9x and do just fine.
But, if you think that the best way to EDIT configurations is in a text file which provides no context, no help, no choices, and the absolute ability to bollocks the application then I submit you are not in touch with my step-father.
Yes, because when you run regedit your step-father gets so much more in the way of context, help, choices, and of course the ability to utterly thrash you Windows install too.
Are you for real?
...a PC capable of running it well would have probably been around US$1500 (or about US$2000 adjusted to 2007 dollars).
This is where I think we have a disconnect. I could put XP on the same system that you discribe and it would run faster than the Vista system.
The amount of computing power, let us not get into the Aero fiasco, needed for someone to 'get back to even' with Vista is much more than what it took from 9x -> XP.
Vista has a few problems but from where I sit it's major problem was it's hardware requirements. From the 9x series to XP users not only got a huge boost in stability and features but they did not have to take out another mortgage to finance a new computer to run it.
Vista on the other hand expected everyone to run out and drop some major cash on new computers to have it run in any way close to what XP already was offering. And the kicker is XP and everything that people were running on it was doing very well thank you.
MS and it's OS offerings are still the 500 lb gorilla in the room but times have changed as well. While normal users most likely are still in the dark most Windows power users have dabbled with other OSs and see that upgrades don't automatically mean: you must now buy $2000-3000 worth of new hardware to get to where you were with the old one.
Both have a Vista-capable logo - which one is the unenlightened customer gonna buy?
I would however submit that Vista is not exactly a huge concern for even unenlightened customers. Given how many 'downgrade' to XP given a chance.
Exactly and in the IT realm there often is a 'keeping up with the Jones' idea that being on the bleeding edge makes things oh so much better. The reality is far from that in my experience when you look at actual end use. However I don't discount the fact that there are those who will benefit from having the very latest. Just that it's not as much as the media of course wants to make us believe.
Case in point at one point I had to replace a desktop a little over a year go that was just used for the very basics. Web, nominal apps, and at most a bit of lite gaming. I found a local brick and mortar that actually had very competitive prices vs mail ordering a system so I went and checked them out. They seemed cool enough so I bought there. As I was checking off the components I told them the CPU I wanted, a Celeron D 3.06, and the sales guy said kinda of in passing, "Oh so your really going low end then."
I was a bit taken back as I had already politely withstood his grilling on what the system was to be used for when I already knew exactly what parts I wanted. So he knew that, at least I hoped, that such a CPU was going to be far and away enough power. Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but it did serve to tarnish my overall impression of the place.
Sarah Palin, who has more executive experience than anyone on the ticket...
Right there is where I stopped reading.
Preference: Have killed Illidan (I retired after a few Illidan kills and SWP was not out yet.) with my Feral Druid, has a early T5ish Orc Warrior, and was working on a Tankadin (level 66) when I left the game. Unsure if I'm going to check out LK but I digress.
The whole thing about TBC was that they did a few things that impacted tanking. First and foremost was the idea that Warriors were not going to be the only real tanks anymore. This was a major shift from pre-TBC, aka WoW 1.x, where for all intents and purposes Warriors where the only tanks. While raiding Naxx pre-TBC we did actually have a Feral Druid at one point but I mean he still had to use the Warden Staff.
With TBC came the idea that Warriors were not going to be the only tanks anymore. However this was not to be an easy transition. First of all many Warriors thought they should always be the only tanks. Never mind that in WoW 1.x they were the only real hybrids (Tanking/DPS) in the game but that's a whole other can of worms. So they put up quite a fuss when the Feral Druids hit the scene and started, "Taking der jerbs!" So TBC started with Feral Druids hit with one of the biggest nerfs in the game ever. Such a hard nerf that Blizzard had to go back and hotfix them so that they could generate enough threat to continue tanking at all.
Now I'll say that early on Feral Druids were a bit OP to start with but the problem then became one of scale. Feral Druids ended up scaling poorly at T6+ levels and blah blah blah. Bottom line is that it was not exactly a seamless transition. And we've not even gotten to the Tankadins or the impact that Arena PvP had on the the Warrior population yet!
The Tankadins, while having a lot of gear now to choose from, were still kinda squishy. All the more so given there preferred method of tanking. (CC == Constant Consecration) So they needed a few buffs to bring them up to speed. And they got them eventually which was a good thing. But still when it came to raiding they were still often viewed as the trash tank who then put on some shaman gear to heal with when it was time to fight the boss. (Or booted from the raid for the more hardcore even.)
In short there were a number of balance issues that the tanks had to deal with due to a poorly implemented move to making Warriors no longer the only tank. Add to this the fact, which was pretty apparent but never really said until the LK beta forums, that the whole design of TBC was based around the idea of the Warrior still being the 'primary' tank with Druids/Paladins being more support tanks.
Enter LK. As I said before the idea of a 'primary' tank is supposedly gone. GK has said a number of times that they want all 4 of the tanking classes to be able to be the MT if they, and their guild, so choose. Time will tell as to how this all will play out but they sure have said it enough such that I tend to think that they are at least trying. This is, and they have said this as well, a shift in design philosophy that is even different from what happened in TBC.
So while gear was an issue it's not the whole part of the issue when it came to tanking in TBC. There was an underlying design philosophy that caused what happened. Along with a number of, if you want to be kind, honest mistakes as they were making the transition from Warriors being the only tanks to other classes being viable in that role.
yoshi_mon (172895) DoofusOfDeath (636671)
And that you think that there are not right wing zealots on /. heh. It's clear who's new here.
Where exactly in my post did I say anything about Bush Jr?
Of course you'll probably just call me crazy without looking at the documents. All I ask is you look at it yourself, then call me crazy ;)
I'm afraid I'll just have to settle for calling you crazy for not reading my post well. You might want to look at yourself and what your posting.
While this may seem very partisan I think it's timely and as such I'm going to risk getting modded down by right wing zealots.
The GOP has increasingly become a huge fan of this 'dumb is good' type of culture. For a number of reasons. It's not that they don't want any smart people. Rather they just don't want everyone to be smart. If your smart you can see though a lot of things that they would rather you not. Now the same is true to an extent of people on the left. And even some in the center. However no party has embraced this idea of keeping the populace as a whole dumbed down as the right wing/GOP.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html?hp
David Brooks does a great idea in showing how this mindset has been honed over the years.
Sounds like a classic case of FUD to mask the real issue. Along with making sure that people stay scared about using electronic devices in plains.
I hate to break it to the aviation industry but we are pushing along in the 21st century these days. They are going to have to design and fly planes with people using electronic devices. There is no reason why a modern aircraft should not be able to accommodate that within reasonable limits.
Well it's been clear for a while but I might as well get the pants that come up to my armpits and move further south here in Fla. Because I must be so old that I don't understand this issue at all.
Is not participating in this Facebook thing the equivalent of being a social pariah? GMail? Huh? I've got a half dozen email accounts at least and depending on what I'm doing I use various ones for various things. Things that I don't care about go to the equivalent of a GMail account, I have been using Yahoo Mail myself forever. Other things go to more secure accounts and so on.
I take some basic 'I know a fair amount about computers and the inet' type precautions but that's about it. Because in the end it's the big guys like Equifax that are truly keeping tabs on us. Being paranoid over something like Facebook sounds pretty tin foil hat to me.