You clearly have not understood the reason for things being priced the way they are, but economics is something that is not understood well.
When you have a distribution channel that costs a lot, something COULD start at $1, and end up at $50 by the time it gets to the store.
First up, and if you have had to put gas in your car/truck you would know this, it costs money to transport goods. You also need to pay people to do the transportation.
Before moving on, you then need to look at how much it costs to pay people. If employees need to make at least $40,000/year in order for them to survive, then you need to pay those wages. The cost of living is much higher in the USA than it is in many of these countries, even for the same standard of living, so you have to understand that basic fact. Food costs more, housing costs more, and there are very few low-cost places to live in many places. When on the road, people can not sleep at home, so staying in a hotel/motel, even a cheap one will add to the cost. So, it costs money to survive, and companies MUST pay enough for employees to survive on, or those employees will continually be looking for another job or a second job.
On a slight tangent, this is why the government really does need to spend money to upgrade the infrastructure. A high-speed rail line that can travel at 200+ miles per hour would help reduce the costs of transportation of goods, and we don't have those in this country. People complain when anyone in government pushes for a high speed rail line to be built because it costs money to do it as well.
Ok, back on the subject at hand. So, transportation costs a lot. People don't live rent free, and in many places, the cost of living for the retail worker isn't much lower than that of people in a higher tier job. So, if rent costs $1000/month(Long Island, NY is an expensive place), people really need at least $2000/month just to survive since people do not live near where they work. You also need to have SOME markup just to cover the cost of running the business, rent, utilities, employee benefits, etc...
So, how many DVDs and CDs need to be sold each day to cover the costs of doing business? The business owner also needs to be able to survive, so even at a bare minimum, the cost of living is behind EVERYTHING when it comes down to it.
So, even if you ate only ramen, drank water, and such, how much would it cost you each month, including your car payment, gas, utilities, EVERYTHING. There are some places in the USA that are cheaper to live, but not everyone lives in a low-cost area. If you want to see retail stores that sell items like CDs and DVDs, the owners of those businesses need to live too, so how much do you think it costs for THEM?
DVD regions and such are there to help reduce illegal duplication.
Oh, and when it comes to going TO the movies, the movie theater owners need to pay the taxes or lease prices, employees, plus the costs for utilities and such. If they lease, the lease prices may be much higher than you may realize.
So, there is a reason for things being expensive. The manufacturing being outsourced is a reason for some of the unemployment problems, but the general cost of living, and the fact that the government keeps pumping money into the large corporations(which keep sending jobs to other countries anyway) rather than working to help reduce the cost of living is the long term problem.
If you want to see jobs brought back into the country, we need to start by promoting manufacturing being brought back to this country. The only way for that to happen is for a major shift in attitude toward manufacturing in this country and by offering almost a 0 percent tax on manufacturing facilities(since employees will be paying taxes, it would help in this economy). Businesses also need to be willing(if possible) to reduce how much they charge to others. Basically, it would be an across the board agreement to drop prices by 10 to 20 percent, and that would really help. If your own expenses were to go down by 10 percent, then if you were paid 10 percent less, you would be living the same way, but the prices overall would be lower, and the value of the dollar would go up.
Dell support sucks when you end up talking to India, and people would almost prefer to wait on hold for an hour for REAL tech support instead of some incomprehensible idiot reading a script that barely knows more than your average 80-year-old computer user. Honestly, does anyone see real value in the oursourced tech support that is nothing more than someone reading off a screen?
HP was better when you could talk to someone in either the USA or Canada that speaks English and actually knows the product well enough to work WITH the customer, supplementing the knowledge a skilled person knows with information only available to employees to get a problem resolved. These days, it is hard to even suggest buying ANY device, because if there is a problem, tech support is the last place people want to turn for help.
India....bah, give jobs to the unemployed auto workers in the USA. They may not be thrilled with not making $75/hour, but once they are off unemployment, any job is better than no job. How about all the other people in the USA who are out of work without finding companies who are looking to hire in this economic climate. Back in the days before the Internet and when it cost money to send tech support out of the country, technical support was considered an entry level job for people just getting started after college.
Technical support was about helping the customer get their problems solved, and not some glorified customer service job, and companies could find good people there when there were job openings. It is a shame what a bunch of MBA types with no understanding of what technical support is/was did to the technical support position, which was to make it a division of customer service, and treat it the same way by putting time limits on calls.
There are a number of reasons why many will pirate it now. For starters, the game is obviously done and is sitting at stores waiting for June 2nd. Due to differences between The Sims 2 and 3 in terms of gameplay, people will want to start experimenting with it early to see if they even want to pay the money for the game. You have those who paid early for the Feb launch, and have lost those deposits(the pre-order coupon they got with their pre-order expired in April).
The list goes on and on, but the primary reason is you have a rabid fan base who really wants to play the new game, and don't want to be forced to wait until release. Many/most of these will not cancel their pre-order and look forward to their legal copy, so from that perspective, these are people who want what they have paid for or will be paying for in the next week. If you don't care, then of course it is easy to say people should wait, but if you are going to pay for it anyway, why NOT get it a few days early?
For the younger players, what is better to do, homework?
If two creatures can produce offspring that can then also produce viable offspring, then both are considered to be of the same species. It is that simple.
Now, if an animal breeding program were conducted for several hundred generations trying to push for traits that do not mesh with the original breed, then you WILL probably see the evolution of a new species, or subspecies.
There are clearly some cases where different dog breeds just won't work due to size differences. A great dane is NOT going to reproduce with a "toy" dog because the mating process would kill the smaller dog. You might be able to use artificial means to make the breeding possible, but still, in any reproduction that could and would happen naturally, that just wouldn't be an issue.
It takes thousands of years of segregated existence before even new breeds of the same species will even become recognizable as something different. The current dog crossbreeds are still seen as a cross between this breed of dog and another breed of dog. It will take a long long time of selective breeding before people will just accept one of the "new dog breeds" as just being its own, without looking at how the breed was forced into existence.
There is a difference between using stamina as a way to hinder movement and using it as a way to judge how long you can swing a sword without starting to lose your skills due to fatigue. This is the problem with the hit point concept as it is implemented in D&D and similar systems. Hit points should be about health. In D&D, as they stated in the rulebooks back in the days of AD&D and 2nd edition, hit points encompass both physical damage the character can take, as well as their ability to avoid taking damage. Basically, it kludges the concept of stamina into the hit point system to make it easier for a pen and paper game to deal with these elements. With computers, the need for this is gone.
If you add a very real danger to combat, combat itself becomes something that needs to be more about player tactics. Rushing in swinging a sword when you have no skill WILL get you killed. Using narrow hallways and stealth to limit how many things you need to fight at one time are the way most low level parties in pen and paper survive to reach higher levels, where the party could hope to survive rushing in.
So, this is the issue, keeping the low level characters alive for long enough to let them advance where they can survive. Starting the character at a higher level would be preferable to just bumping the starting hit points of player characters and then re-adjusting the hit points of everything the characters fight is how MUDflation got started in the first place.
Once game developers realize that, the sooner new systems can come out that don't need that. A roleplaying approach, where players can run new characters and have fun in the low level game as well as the high level game SHOULD be the goal. When the journey becomes more fun than just getting to the destination, then people will be able to have fun from just playing.
In almost every MMO out there today, it starts with the core concepts from Dungeons and Dragons. You have hit points, which go up with levels, and are boosted by equipment. You have various stats and skills that will help kill things as well. This is really all derived from Dungeons and Dragons.
Now, MUDflation is the term where new games MUST be bigger and better, so, more hit points are needed. The difficulty in killing things may be the same, but just because the numbers are bigger doesn't mean much, except to excite those who are obsessed by the numbers, because it "is so cool to have 1000 hit points at level 5 in the new game when I had to be level 50 in another game to have 1000 hit points". So, the numbers increase, but it still ends up being generally the same difficulty. We saw the same thing in pinball machines, where 100,000 used to be a big score, until 1,000,000 points, and then into the tens of millions of points crept in. It is all inflation, and goes to the idea of comparing the new game to previous games. Bigger is always better, right?
So, the future will be where these old game design models start to fall away, and we get into new ways to judge your progress, and compare yourself to other players and characters. My own preference would be to make it so hit points reflect how much physical damage the character can take, but skips things like stamina(which should come into play, but shouldn't be a part of hit points). Adventuring may make a character able to go longer, or have more stamina in combat, and in time, even take more physical punishment before being killed, but that would be a slower process than we see in current games.
Then you have systems that really are different, like the White Wolf set of rules(Werewolf, Vampire, Mage, etc...). That is a very different rule system from the D&D derived systems, which helps the focus be on playing the game without it being based entirely on combat stats and such. Only time will tell if it will lend itself well to an MMO.
So, from this, EverQuest was big, and had many games that copied the design. Dark Age of Camelot was the first as I recall that really was a direct clone of EQ in most ways. There were differences which drew in some fans, but it was still an EQ clone with differences. WoW is the most popular, but it still took a look at the success of EQ, and duplicated what worked, and improved on the overall design. It still is and was an EQ clone though.
DDO suffers from MUDflation, but at least isn't a clone of the other games, where you kill bats and rats for 5-10 levels before you can go on your first adventure. DDO dropped out of the spotlight for many people after the first month or two, but over three years have passed, and the game has more than doubled in size, so is worth a look if WoW has started to bore you. Just keep in mind that as a mature game, the number of low-levels isn't high(though there are still a bunch running their first characters).
I would expect it to happen eventually to normal home computers, the key is in how reliable the systems are, plus getting the public to be aware of adding new coolant to the system. Many people HATE how loud computers can be, so liquid would help solve that in the long term.
Before you can point out the problems with end-users and water cooling, keep in mind that as any technology gains in popularity, there will be increasing amounts of innovation that would improve on the designs.
These numbers are generated scientifically, not just by some "study". Liquid cooling works MUCH better than air cooling, but generally requires more maintenance in a single computer system. With a full building system where water is being pumped in from a larger system, there might not be as much maintenance needed, but the need to replace various components, like the tubes or fasteners for the tubes might require more maintenance than some people are familiar with.
You didn't mention that if the water is hot, it would be possible to recapture some of the energy in the form of an electric generator. The amount may not be terribly high initially, but if you are pumping water to help with cooling, the system could also supply some energy to help offset the water pump costs.
For those who are in a position to design their own building with this sort of thing in mind, then yes, there may be ways to just design the building to get a better cooling environment. That is not always possible or practical though. Using a liquid cooling solution may very well be the future, but the real key is to make sure the cooling systems require as little attention as possible, and the amount of maintenance for cooling is fairly low.
Think about it, if you run your systems off-site, the last thing you want would be to have to fly someone to the site just to maintain the cooling system if it is unusual. It really depends on the design, and how long the liquid cooling system within a computer can go without maintenance. Most air cooled systems can go for upwards of five years without a fan going bad.
Windows 2000 and XP were both faster than 98/ME once the driver quality had advanced. This is a big issue that far too many people forget about.
When the quality of the drivers is low, then no matter how good or bad the OS is, it will seem worse. System instability is often the result of these bad drivers. At launch, the biggest problem with Vista was the poor driver quality across the board. NVIDIA was the source of what, 30 or so percent of the blue screen problems that people experienced with Vista in 2007? For 64 bit, reduced performance is due to the drivers not being as good as for 32 bit in many cases. It all comes down to how much effort hardware vendors put into making good drivers.
When Windows 7 comes out, since it uses the same driver model, the driver quality will start off higher than we saw with Vista, which means it WILL be a better choice for most people. I just wouldn't expect good drivers to show up from Creative Labs though, since they intentionally cripple the performance of their older products under new operating systems, just to push consumers into buying their latest products.
I think you may be confusing DOSbox with the built-in command prompt in Vista. With Vista, the native method to run DOS applications no longer supports full screen mode(for no obvious reason). DOSbox, which is a third party application not owned or supported by Microsoft does such a better job at emulating a DOS environment that even ancient DOS based applications will run properly on Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7, among others.
So, if you dislike NOT being able to run your DOS applications in full-screen mode, download DOSbox and that should resolve your problems.
The design of Vista was NOT the problem, the lack of stable drivers from NVIDIA, plus not having hardware companies providing proper support at launch was the problem.
Now that the Vista driver issues are resolved, Microsoft could have just released exactly the same product under a new name, and customers would have had no second thoughts about running Vista. Corporations with custom software may run into problems, but we saw that with EVERY new OS that used a new driver model.
Just because negative publicity from 2007 is still causing sales issues does not mean that the OS is bad.
When Vista was first released, much of the performance problems were related to immature drivers and testing on systems with limited resources(under 2GB of RAM). As a result, Vista seemed notably slower than XP.
Since Vista first showed up in November of 2006(retail in 2007), the driver quality has caught up, and now you need to compare how Vista compares to Windows XP before you can say that it was Vista, and not drivers/limited resource that were limiting Vista performance.
There are different perspectives on God, or gods. Some believe that God is all knowing and all powerful, but others have believed that gods are simply super-beings with an existence that is so far beyond our own that they should be worshiped. I point to the whole Roman and Norse mythologies as examples of this.
Some would say that if we COULD create a universe with life in it that we would be defined as gods to those we have created. Our knowledge would be far beyond that of what we have created, at least initially, and our existence would be so far beyond that of our creations that we WOULD seem godlike.
Then again, if we could go back in time to when prehistoric humans were around, our scientific abilities would seem godlike, being able to summon fire at will, or with a plane, the ability to fly(even if we could not fly without machines). Divinity is in the eye and mind of the observer.
I keep pointing out that scientists used to think breaking the sound barrier was impossible for all sorts of reasons. The key to what is possible and impossible is really the limits of our understanding of the universe, and even what may be outside of the universe.
The Big Bang is one of those events that started this universe, but if there are limits to how large the universe is, doesn't that also mean that there must be something beyond the edges of the universe that may eventually be discovered? If you could go beyond the edge of the universe, wouldn't it be possible that the physical laws that all current theories are based on may be worked around with the proper knowledge?
I am not saying that scientists on either side are wrong, just that people who claim that something is impossible just lack the knowledge to make these things work. We are also limited by our own senses, so just because we may not be aware of some things does not mean they are not there.
How do they really test this, other than have some people with a death wish stand around and wait for the test driver to run them down? Test dummies will never do the job properly, so what do they use for the test, sex offenders?
There are uses for instant messages and there are uses for e-mail. It isn't only about devices that do not have proper e-mail support, it is about two very different ways to communicate.
For example, if you ever run into the problem of too many messages being in your voicemail box, have people send their number as a text message. E-mail tends to include a lot of junk mail/spam, and the signal to noise ratio is very low for many people. So, sending a text message makes sense.
Now, there are also reasons for using an IM vs. e-mail even on a computer. If you just want to see if someone is available, a quick, "Hey, are you busy?" message makes a LOT more sense than calling, making them pick up the phone, answer, and then answering your question. In the same way instant messaging isn't the right tool for an extended conversation, e-mail isn't the right tool for a lot of communication that goes on.
There is a reason the old Nextel system was and is used by many people. It is because it is basically a voice version of instant messaging. When all you need is a quick answer to a quick question, why bother with a full voice message or e-mail if waiting for the response will make any answer obsolete?
If you have 10 customers in one neighborhood subscribing to this new service, you can bet Cablevision will boost service to that neighborhood to make sure they are not oversubscribed. The amount that they make will be worth it in the long run.
That is the mindset of FiOS as well, they KNOW that it will be worth it in the long run to provide extra bandwidth to an area that is using the service enough to warrant it, just because there is marketing value in happy PREMIUM customers. Anyone willing to pay $100/month just on their net connection is clearly a premium customer who will end up selling the service to friends just by word of mouth.
One thing that this does is push the game developers to make games with better graphics faster/sooner than they would in the past.
Developers need to look at the low end, the high end, and the average for CPU and graphics power for their target audience. In the past, we would see a ton of Intel garbage graphics in systems, and that was the baseline that developers had to code for. As time has moved on, more and more systems, even with integrated graphics have shown up with NVIDIA graphics on the Intel side, and AMD systems have always had either AMD or NVIDIA graphics, which raises the bar by quite a bit.
With the level of GPU power in a $99 card, it shouldn't take too long for integrated graphics to show a significant improvement over the Radeon 3300 graphics on the AMD 790GX chipset. The question remains how long it will take, and how good or bad the integrated version ends up being.
Now, that raises the bar. While resolutions may not increase, the detail and quality we can run at will go up. Yes, a $100 card may run fine with medium graphics settings, but can you really expect a $100 card to run every game at 1024x768 at max settings and AA? That is the key to why people will buy higher end cards, so they can see games in their full glory.
I live in Cablevision territory, and will explain just how good the service is. Now, I am out on the east end of Long Island, NY in a fairly normal residential neighborhood. What I see here is around 12 megabit down, 384k up. This is with the theoretical maximum of 15 megabit down on the normal Optimum Online service.
From what I have gathered by talking to Cablevision techs, the "Boost" package basically doubles the speeds, so you get a 30 megabit down with no caps, not sure on the upload speed. They also run the Boost service on a different frequency, so if you have a lot of people in the neighborhood with the regular service and they are sucking up the bandwidth, Boost customers will not get slowed down. Cablevision, at least out here, has plenty of bandwidth to handle providing the bandwidth. In addition to this, Cablevision has also been offering fiber optic connections up closer to New York City called Lightpath. While it is a business class offering, the fact that they have the bandwidth to offer it shows they can handle the data demand.
A big part of a new offering like this is the number of customers in an area that they expect will be using the service, but also if they are doing equipment upgrades. Fiber cables are fiber cables(for the most part), but the equipment used to push the data through those fiber cables is the limiting factor. If they upgrade that equipment, they could in theory have a jump in the bandwidth for a fairly low amount of labor.
Things in different areas COULD be different, but for the entire eastern half of Suffolk County, I have NEVER seen customers getting less than 8 megabit down with their Optimum Online service, except when there is a wiring issue in the house or neighborhood(which repair service can often fix in a few days).
The problem with this approach is that it assumes that the majority of software written for Windows XP will fail to work under Windows 7(or Vista for that matter). The vast majority of programs out there for Windows XP work under Vista and probably Windows 7 without a problem. There are SOME programs out there that do not work though, and it has caused some people and businesses to stick to Windows XP.
Basically, if applications were written "properly" for Windows XP and are not device driver based, they will generally work under Vista and Windows 7. Even the majority of programs written for Windows 95 and 98 will work depending on how they are written. Some code may break due to changes in the networking and audio layers though, with the networking code problems being a key problem for business customers. This is where the Windows XP in a VM will come in handy, so the code will work properly because XP was more...relaxed about what an application should be doing.
Think about it like security guards. If there was a lazy guard that allowed a lot of improper behavior, and that guard was on the job for a long time, people would get used to that, even if they knew that what they were doing was wrong. Suddenly the guard is replaced, and suddenly people wonder why they are getting into trouble.
Now, there will be the people willing to follow where the old guard went, just because they know they could continue their poor behavior with the old guard being around, which is why many people still run Windows XP, just for that compatibility with poor behavior. Others can handle doing things the right way, so Vista/7 is fine for THEM. What Microsoft is doing is allowing both guards to be around at the same time, so those breaking the rules can still continue to function while those who don't break the rules can stick around.
If you have ever looked at the programs that do not work under Vista, there are clear cases where the code is clearly horrible, but it DOES work under XP. Microsoft is trying to give people the best of both worlds, but still, the vast majority of programs will work under Windows 7 "native" mode, without the need for the XP virtual machine. I just hope that Microsoft will go back to letting DOS applications run full screen, instead of artificially limiting them to windowed mode.
The Windows XP mode COMES with Windows 7 Professional and above, and will not require a special OS install or anything like that. This also is NOT for those who "just want to run Windows XP or Windows 7". It gives you the option when you enable the compatibility mode to run it in TRUE Windows XP mode, meaning that there should be no problem with the compatibility.
Windows 7 is Windows 7, but if an older program does not work due to changes between Windows XP and Vista/7, this will let you make those older programs work.
This is also only ONE feature in Windows 7, and is not the only difference between Vista and 7. As a result, your complaint makes no sense. If you bought Windows XP Professional, you bought it for the extra features, and for connecting to a Windows Domain. If you bought Vista Ultimate, you bought it because you wanted the extra features provided. If you buy Windows 7 professional, you will buy it because the extra features compared to the Home editions.
Now, Windows 95 was a bit of a step up from Windows 3.1, but I don't think there were multiple versions, with extra features not available in a "basic" edition. So, running Windows 3.1 programs really wasn't an issue. If an older program would not work under 95, oh well, stick to 3.1. The same happened with 95 to 98, to 98SE, to ME(which by itself was broken).
Until fairly recently, home computers did not have the CPU and memory capacity to really run a virtual machine anyway, so your argument has a few holes in it.
When there are compatibility problems, you either need to buy a new version of the program, or you had the option to switch programs or stick with an old OS to run the program. Supporting virtualization was something Microsoft started to add, but INCLUDING virtualization, and even the old OS in a new OS is new. This goes beyond plain compatibility mode.
Now, has the Professional edition cost more in the past? Will it cost more in the future? You get this when you pay for a higher end version, and it will probably be worth it to many people. Complaining about a feature you don't want or don't get with your home edition will solve nothing, and if you use a pirated version, then you have ZERO right to complain about a product you did not purchase.
There is a difference between Windows 7 supporting most 32 and 64 bit software, and supporting ALL of that legacy software. Many applications just could not run under Vista due to changes in the OS compared to Windows XP.
For businesses, a HUGE reason for not switching to Vista was compatibility problems with their old custom applications. Think about it, if you ran a business and the software you paid tens of thousands of dollars for(if not more) would not work, you would stick to the old OS. So, how does Microsoft encourage business customers to move up from Windows XP? You make it so they can run their old XP software, even if that software would not normally run on the new OS.
Now, Microsoft has experience with moving to a new OS design. Remember Windows NT? They also have seen that people did not move to Vista was not about "Waiting for SP1", it was because of software compatibility issues. So, they have a solution with virtualization.
You can also keep in mind that if you know you NEED compatibility with older software, you now have an alternative to running Windows XP until the end of time.
Microsoft does not NEED to include the virtual machine, they are supplying it for those cases where Windows XP software just won't work under Windows 7. If you don't feel the need for the compatibility layer, then go with a less expensive version of the OS.
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And they have a cost of living that is so low that they have expenses 1/10th what we do over here, so their profit margin is higher yet.
You clearly have not understood the reason for things being priced the way they are, but economics is something that is not understood well.
When you have a distribution channel that costs a lot, something COULD start at $1, and end up at $50 by the time it gets to the store.
First up, and if you have had to put gas in your car/truck you would know this, it costs money to transport goods. You also need to pay people to do the transportation.
Before moving on, you then need to look at how much it costs to pay people. If employees need to make at least $40,000/year in order for them to survive, then you need to pay those wages. The cost of living is much higher in the USA than it is in many of these countries, even for the same standard of living, so you have to understand that basic fact. Food costs more, housing costs more, and there are very few low-cost places to live in many places. When on the road, people can not sleep at home, so staying in a hotel/motel, even a cheap one will add to the cost. So, it costs money to survive, and companies MUST pay enough for employees to survive on, or those employees will continually be looking for another job or a second job.
On a slight tangent, this is why the government really does need to spend money to upgrade the infrastructure. A high-speed rail line that can travel at 200+ miles per hour would help reduce the costs of transportation of goods, and we don't have those in this country. People complain when anyone in government pushes for a high speed rail line to be built because it costs money to do it as well.
Ok, back on the subject at hand. So, transportation costs a lot. People don't live rent free, and in many places, the cost of living for the retail worker isn't much lower than that of people in a higher tier job. So, if rent costs $1000/month(Long Island, NY is an expensive place), people really need at least $2000/month just to survive since people do not live near where they work. You also need to have SOME markup just to cover the cost of running the business, rent, utilities, employee benefits, etc...
So, how many DVDs and CDs need to be sold each day to cover the costs of doing business? The business owner also needs to be able to survive, so even at a bare minimum, the cost of living is behind EVERYTHING when it comes down to it.
So, even if you ate only ramen, drank water, and such, how much would it cost you each month, including your car payment, gas, utilities, EVERYTHING. There are some places in the USA that are cheaper to live, but not everyone lives in a low-cost area. If you want to see retail stores that sell items like CDs and DVDs, the owners of those businesses need to live too, so how much do you think it costs for THEM?
DVD regions and such are there to help reduce illegal duplication.
Oh, and when it comes to going TO the movies, the movie theater owners need to pay the taxes or lease prices, employees, plus the costs for utilities and such. If they lease, the lease prices may be much higher than you may realize.
So, there is a reason for things being expensive. The manufacturing being outsourced is a reason for some of the unemployment problems, but the general cost of living, and the fact that the government keeps pumping money into the large corporations(which keep sending jobs to other countries anyway) rather than working to help reduce the cost of living is the long term problem.
If you want to see jobs brought back into the country, we need to start by promoting manufacturing being brought back to this country. The only way for that to happen is for a major shift in attitude toward manufacturing in this country and by offering almost a 0 percent tax on manufacturing facilities(since employees will be paying taxes, it would help in this economy). Businesses also need to be willing(if possible) to reduce how much they charge to others. Basically, it would be an across the board agreement to drop prices by 10 to 20 percent, and that would really help. If your own expenses were to go down by 10 percent, then if you were paid 10 percent less, you would be living the same way, but the prices overall would be lower, and the value of the dollar would go up.
Dell support sucks when you end up talking to India, and people would almost prefer to wait on hold for an hour for REAL tech support instead of some incomprehensible idiot reading a script that barely knows more than your average 80-year-old computer user. Honestly, does anyone see real value in the oursourced tech support that is nothing more than someone reading off a screen?
HP was better when you could talk to someone in either the USA or Canada that speaks English and actually knows the product well enough to work WITH the customer, supplementing the knowledge a skilled person knows with information only available to employees to get a problem resolved. These days, it is hard to even suggest buying ANY device, because if there is a problem, tech support is the last place people want to turn for help.
India....bah, give jobs to the unemployed auto workers in the USA. They may not be thrilled with not making $75/hour, but once they are off unemployment, any job is better than no job. How about all the other people in the USA who are out of work without finding companies who are looking to hire in this economic climate. Back in the days before the Internet and when it cost money to send tech support out of the country, technical support was considered an entry level job for people just getting started after college.
Technical support was about helping the customer get their problems solved, and not some glorified customer service job, and companies could find good people there when there were job openings. It is a shame what a bunch of MBA types with no understanding of what technical support is/was did to the technical support position, which was to make it a division of customer service, and treat it the same way by putting time limits on calls.
There are a number of reasons why many will pirate it now. For starters, the game is obviously done and is sitting at stores waiting for June 2nd. Due to differences between The Sims 2 and 3 in terms of gameplay, people will want to start experimenting with it early to see if they even want to pay the money for the game. You have those who paid early for the Feb launch, and have lost those deposits(the pre-order coupon they got with their pre-order expired in April).
The list goes on and on, but the primary reason is you have a rabid fan base who really wants to play the new game, and don't want to be forced to wait until release. Many/most of these will not cancel their pre-order and look forward to their legal copy, so from that perspective, these are people who want what they have paid for or will be paying for in the next week. If you don't care, then of course it is easy to say people should wait, but if you are going to pay for it anyway, why NOT get it a few days early?
For the younger players, what is better to do, homework?
If two creatures can produce offspring that can then also produce viable offspring, then both are considered to be of the same species. It is that simple.
Now, if an animal breeding program were conducted for several hundred generations trying to push for traits that do not mesh with the original breed, then you WILL probably see the evolution of a new species, or subspecies.
There are clearly some cases where different dog breeds just won't work due to size differences. A great dane is NOT going to reproduce with a "toy" dog because the mating process would kill the smaller dog. You might be able to use artificial means to make the breeding possible, but still, in any reproduction that could and would happen naturally, that just wouldn't be an issue.
It takes thousands of years of segregated existence before even new breeds of the same species will even become recognizable as something different. The current dog crossbreeds are still seen as a cross between this breed of dog and another breed of dog. It will take a long long time of selective breeding before people will just accept one of the "new dog breeds" as just being its own, without looking at how the breed was forced into existence.
There is a difference between using stamina as a way to hinder movement and using it as a way to judge how long you can swing a sword without starting to lose your skills due to fatigue. This is the problem with the hit point concept as it is implemented in D&D and similar systems. Hit points should be about health. In D&D, as they stated in the rulebooks back in the days of AD&D and 2nd edition, hit points encompass both physical damage the character can take, as well as their ability to avoid taking damage. Basically, it kludges the concept of stamina into the hit point system to make it easier for a pen and paper game to deal with these elements. With computers, the need for this is gone.
If you add a very real danger to combat, combat itself becomes something that needs to be more about player tactics. Rushing in swinging a sword when you have no skill WILL get you killed. Using narrow hallways and stealth to limit how many things you need to fight at one time are the way most low level parties in pen and paper survive to reach higher levels, where the party could hope to survive rushing in.
So, this is the issue, keeping the low level characters alive for long enough to let them advance where they can survive. Starting the character at a higher level would be preferable to just bumping the starting hit points of player characters and then re-adjusting the hit points of everything the characters fight is how MUDflation got started in the first place.
Once game developers realize that, the sooner new systems can come out that don't need that. A roleplaying approach, where players can run new characters and have fun in the low level game as well as the high level game SHOULD be the goal. When the journey becomes more fun than just getting to the destination, then people will be able to have fun from just playing.
In almost every MMO out there today, it starts with the core concepts from Dungeons and Dragons. You have hit points, which go up with levels, and are boosted by equipment. You have various stats and skills that will help kill things as well. This is really all derived from Dungeons and Dragons.
Now, MUDflation is the term where new games MUST be bigger and better, so, more hit points are needed. The difficulty in killing things may be the same, but just because the numbers are bigger doesn't mean much, except to excite those who are obsessed by the numbers, because it "is so cool to have 1000 hit points at level 5 in the new game when I had to be level 50 in another game to have 1000 hit points". So, the numbers increase, but it still ends up being generally the same difficulty. We saw the same thing in pinball machines, where 100,000 used to be a big score, until 1,000,000 points, and then into the tens of millions of points crept in. It is all inflation, and goes to the idea of comparing the new game to previous games. Bigger is always better, right?
So, the future will be where these old game design models start to fall away, and we get into new ways to judge your progress, and compare yourself to other players and characters. My own preference would be to make it so hit points reflect how much physical damage the character can take, but skips things like stamina(which should come into play, but shouldn't be a part of hit points). Adventuring may make a character able to go longer, or have more stamina in combat, and in time, even take more physical punishment before being killed, but that would be a slower process than we see in current games.
Then you have systems that really are different, like the White Wolf set of rules(Werewolf, Vampire, Mage, etc...). That is a very different rule system from the D&D derived systems, which helps the focus be on playing the game without it being based entirely on combat stats and such. Only time will tell if it will lend itself well to an MMO.
So, from this, EverQuest was big, and had many games that copied the design. Dark Age of Camelot was the first as I recall that really was a direct clone of EQ in most ways. There were differences which drew in some fans, but it was still an EQ clone with differences. WoW is the most popular, but it still took a look at the success of EQ, and duplicated what worked, and improved on the overall design. It still is and was an EQ clone though.
DDO suffers from MUDflation, but at least isn't a clone of the other games, where you kill bats and rats for 5-10 levels before you can go on your first adventure. DDO dropped out of the spotlight for many people after the first month or two, but over three years have passed, and the game has more than doubled in size, so is worth a look if WoW has started to bore you. Just keep in mind that as a mature game, the number of low-levels isn't high(though there are still a bunch running their first characters).
I would expect it to happen eventually to normal home computers, the key is in how reliable the systems are, plus getting the public to be aware of adding new coolant to the system. Many people HATE how loud computers can be, so liquid would help solve that in the long term.
Before you can point out the problems with end-users and water cooling, keep in mind that as any technology gains in popularity, there will be increasing amounts of innovation that would improve on the designs.
These numbers are generated scientifically, not just by some "study". Liquid cooling works MUCH better than air cooling, but generally requires more maintenance in a single computer system. With a full building system where water is being pumped in from a larger system, there might not be as much maintenance needed, but the need to replace various components, like the tubes or fasteners for the tubes might require more maintenance than some people are familiar with.
You didn't mention that if the water is hot, it would be possible to recapture some of the energy in the form of an electric generator. The amount may not be terribly high initially, but if you are pumping water to help with cooling, the system could also supply some energy to help offset the water pump costs.
For those who are in a position to design their own building with this sort of thing in mind, then yes, there may be ways to just design the building to get a better cooling environment. That is not always possible or practical though. Using a liquid cooling solution may very well be the future, but the real key is to make sure the cooling systems require as little attention as possible, and the amount of maintenance for cooling is fairly low.
Think about it, if you run your systems off-site, the last thing you want would be to have to fly someone to the site just to maintain the cooling system if it is unusual. It really depends on the design, and how long the liquid cooling system within a computer can go without maintenance. Most air cooled systems can go for upwards of five years without a fan going bad.
Windows 2000 and XP were both faster than 98/ME once the driver quality had advanced. This is a big issue that far too many people forget about.
When the quality of the drivers is low, then no matter how good or bad the OS is, it will seem worse. System instability is often the result of these bad drivers. At launch, the biggest problem with Vista was the poor driver quality across the board. NVIDIA was the source of what, 30 or so percent of the blue screen problems that people experienced with Vista in 2007? For 64 bit, reduced performance is due to the drivers not being as good as for 32 bit in many cases. It all comes down to how much effort hardware vendors put into making good drivers.
When Windows 7 comes out, since it uses the same driver model, the driver quality will start off higher than we saw with Vista, which means it WILL be a better choice for most people. I just wouldn't expect good drivers to show up from Creative Labs though, since they intentionally cripple the performance of their older products under new operating systems, just to push consumers into buying their latest products.
I think you may be confusing DOSbox with the built-in command prompt in Vista. With Vista, the native method to run DOS applications no longer supports full screen mode(for no obvious reason). DOSbox, which is a third party application not owned or supported by Microsoft does such a better job at emulating a DOS environment that even ancient DOS based applications will run properly on Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7, among others.
So, if you dislike NOT being able to run your DOS applications in full-screen mode, download DOSbox and that should resolve your problems.
The design of Vista was NOT the problem, the lack of stable drivers from NVIDIA, plus not having hardware companies providing proper support at launch was the problem.
Now that the Vista driver issues are resolved, Microsoft could have just released exactly the same product under a new name, and customers would have had no second thoughts about running Vista. Corporations with custom software may run into problems, but we saw that with EVERY new OS that used a new driver model.
Just because negative publicity from 2007 is still causing sales issues does not mean that the OS is bad.
When Vista was first released, much of the performance problems were related to immature drivers and testing on systems with limited resources(under 2GB of RAM). As a result, Vista seemed notably slower than XP.
Since Vista first showed up in November of 2006(retail in 2007), the driver quality has caught up, and now you need to compare how Vista compares to Windows XP before you can say that it was Vista, and not drivers/limited resource that were limiting Vista performance.
There are different perspectives on God, or gods. Some believe that God is all knowing and all powerful, but others have believed that gods are simply super-beings with an existence that is so far beyond our own that they should be worshiped. I point to the whole Roman and Norse mythologies as examples of this.
Some would say that if we COULD create a universe with life in it that we would be defined as gods to those we have created. Our knowledge would be far beyond that of what we have created, at least initially, and our existence would be so far beyond that of our creations that we WOULD seem godlike.
Then again, if we could go back in time to when prehistoric humans were around, our scientific abilities would seem godlike, being able to summon fire at will, or with a plane, the ability to fly(even if we could not fly without machines). Divinity is in the eye and mind of the observer.
I keep pointing out that scientists used to think breaking the sound barrier was impossible for all sorts of reasons. The key to what is possible and impossible is really the limits of our understanding of the universe, and even what may be outside of the universe.
The Big Bang is one of those events that started this universe, but if there are limits to how large the universe is, doesn't that also mean that there must be something beyond the edges of the universe that may eventually be discovered? If you could go beyond the edge of the universe, wouldn't it be possible that the physical laws that all current theories are based on may be worked around with the proper knowledge?
I am not saying that scientists on either side are wrong, just that people who claim that something is impossible just lack the knowledge to make these things work. We are also limited by our own senses, so just because we may not be aware of some things does not mean they are not there.
How do they really test this, other than have some people with a death wish stand around and wait for the test driver to run them down? Test dummies will never do the job properly, so what do they use for the test, sex offenders?
There are uses for instant messages and there are uses for e-mail. It isn't only about devices that do not have proper e-mail support, it is about two very different ways to communicate.
For example, if you ever run into the problem of too many messages being in your voicemail box, have people send their number as a text message. E-mail tends to include a lot of junk mail/spam, and the signal to noise ratio is very low for many people. So, sending a text message makes sense.
Now, there are also reasons for using an IM vs. e-mail even on a computer. If you just want to see if someone is available, a quick, "Hey, are you busy?" message makes a LOT more sense than calling, making them pick up the phone, answer, and then answering your question. In the same way instant messaging isn't the right tool for an extended conversation, e-mail isn't the right tool for a lot of communication that goes on.
There is a reason the old Nextel system was and is used by many people. It is because it is basically a voice version of instant messaging. When all you need is a quick answer to a quick question, why bother with a full voice message or e-mail if waiting for the response will make any answer obsolete?
If you have 10 customers in one neighborhood subscribing to this new service, you can bet Cablevision will boost service to that neighborhood to make sure they are not oversubscribed. The amount that they make will be worth it in the long run.
That is the mindset of FiOS as well, they KNOW that it will be worth it in the long run to provide extra bandwidth to an area that is using the service enough to warrant it, just because there is marketing value in happy PREMIUM customers. Anyone willing to pay $100/month just on their net connection is clearly a premium customer who will end up selling the service to friends just by word of mouth.
One thing that this does is push the game developers to make games with better graphics faster/sooner than they would in the past.
Developers need to look at the low end, the high end, and the average for CPU and graphics power for their target audience. In the past, we would see a ton of Intel garbage graphics in systems, and that was the baseline that developers had to code for. As time has moved on, more and more systems, even with integrated graphics have shown up with NVIDIA graphics on the Intel side, and AMD systems have always had either AMD or NVIDIA graphics, which raises the bar by quite a bit.
With the level of GPU power in a $99 card, it shouldn't take too long for integrated graphics to show a significant improvement over the Radeon 3300 graphics on the AMD 790GX chipset. The question remains how long it will take, and how good or bad the integrated version ends up being.
Now, that raises the bar. While resolutions may not increase, the detail and quality we can run at will go up. Yes, a $100 card may run fine with medium graphics settings, but can you really expect a $100 card to run every game at 1024x768 at max settings and AA? That is the key to why people will buy higher end cards, so they can see games in their full glory.
I live in Cablevision territory, and will explain just how good the service is. Now, I am out on the east end of Long Island, NY in a fairly normal residential neighborhood. What I see here is around 12 megabit down, 384k up. This is with the theoretical maximum of 15 megabit down on the normal Optimum Online service.
From what I have gathered by talking to Cablevision techs, the "Boost" package basically doubles the speeds, so you get a 30 megabit down with no caps, not sure on the upload speed. They also run the Boost service on a different frequency, so if you have a lot of people in the neighborhood with the regular service and they are sucking up the bandwidth, Boost customers will not get slowed down. Cablevision, at least out here, has plenty of bandwidth to handle providing the bandwidth. In addition to this, Cablevision has also been offering fiber optic connections up closer to New York City called Lightpath. While it is a business class offering, the fact that they have the bandwidth to offer it shows they can handle the data demand.
A big part of a new offering like this is the number of customers in an area that they expect will be using the service, but also if they are doing equipment upgrades. Fiber cables are fiber cables(for the most part), but the equipment used to push the data through those fiber cables is the limiting factor. If they upgrade that equipment, they could in theory have a jump in the bandwidth for a fairly low amount of labor.
Things in different areas COULD be different, but for the entire eastern half of Suffolk County, I have NEVER seen customers getting less than 8 megabit down with their Optimum Online service, except when there is a wiring issue in the house or neighborhood(which repair service can often fix in a few days).
The problem with this approach is that it assumes that the majority of software written for Windows XP will fail to work under Windows 7(or Vista for that matter). The vast majority of programs out there for Windows XP work under Vista and probably Windows 7 without a problem. There are SOME programs out there that do not work though, and it has caused some people and businesses to stick to Windows XP.
Basically, if applications were written "properly" for Windows XP and are not device driver based, they will generally work under Vista and Windows 7. Even the majority of programs written for Windows 95 and 98 will work depending on how they are written. Some code may break due to changes in the networking and audio layers though, with the networking code problems being a key problem for business customers. This is where the Windows XP in a VM will come in handy, so the code will work properly because XP was more...relaxed about what an application should be doing.
Think about it like security guards. If there was a lazy guard that allowed a lot of improper behavior, and that guard was on the job for a long time, people would get used to that, even if they knew that what they were doing was wrong. Suddenly the guard is replaced, and suddenly people wonder why they are getting into trouble.
Now, there will be the people willing to follow where the old guard went, just because they know they could continue their poor behavior with the old guard being around, which is why many people still run Windows XP, just for that compatibility with poor behavior. Others can handle doing things the right way, so Vista/7 is fine for THEM. What Microsoft is doing is allowing both guards to be around at the same time, so those breaking the rules can still continue to function while those who don't break the rules can stick around.
If you have ever looked at the programs that do not work under Vista, there are clear cases where the code is clearly horrible, but it DOES work under XP. Microsoft is trying to give people the best of both worlds, but still, the vast majority of programs will work under Windows 7 "native" mode, without the need for the XP virtual machine. I just hope that Microsoft will go back to letting DOS applications run full screen, instead of artificially limiting them to windowed mode.
The Windows XP mode COMES with Windows 7 Professional and above, and will not require a special OS install or anything like that. This also is NOT for those who "just want to run Windows XP or Windows 7". It gives you the option when you enable the compatibility mode to run it in TRUE Windows XP mode, meaning that there should be no problem with the compatibility.
Windows 7 is Windows 7, but if an older program does not work due to changes between Windows XP and Vista/7, this will let you make those older programs work.
This is also only ONE feature in Windows 7, and is not the only difference between Vista and 7. As a result, your complaint makes no sense. If you bought Windows XP Professional, you bought it for the extra features, and for connecting to a Windows Domain. If you bought Vista Ultimate, you bought it because you wanted the extra features provided. If you buy Windows 7 professional, you will buy it because the extra features compared to the Home editions.
Now, Windows 95 was a bit of a step up from Windows 3.1, but I don't think there were multiple versions, with extra features not available in a "basic" edition. So, running Windows 3.1 programs really wasn't an issue. If an older program would not work under 95, oh well, stick to 3.1. The same happened with 95 to 98, to 98SE, to ME(which by itself was broken).
Until fairly recently, home computers did not have the CPU and memory capacity to really run a virtual machine anyway, so your argument has a few holes in it.
When there are compatibility problems, you either need to buy a new version of the program, or you had the option to switch programs or stick with an old OS to run the program. Supporting virtualization was something Microsoft started to add, but INCLUDING virtualization, and even the old OS in a new OS is new. This goes beyond plain compatibility mode.
Now, has the Professional edition cost more in the past? Will it cost more in the future? You get this when you pay for a higher end version, and it will probably be worth it to many people. Complaining about a feature you don't want or don't get with your home edition will solve nothing, and if you use a pirated version, then you have ZERO right to complain about a product you did not purchase.
There is a difference between Windows 7 supporting most 32 and 64 bit software, and supporting ALL of that legacy software. Many applications just could not run under Vista due to changes in the OS compared to Windows XP.
For businesses, a HUGE reason for not switching to Vista was compatibility problems with their old custom applications. Think about it, if you ran a business and the software you paid tens of thousands of dollars for(if not more) would not work, you would stick to the old OS. So, how does Microsoft encourage business customers to move up from Windows XP? You make it so they can run their old XP software, even if that software would not normally run on the new OS.
Now, Microsoft has experience with moving to a new OS design. Remember Windows NT? They also have seen that people did not move to Vista was not about "Waiting for SP1", it was because of software compatibility issues. So, they have a solution with virtualization.
You can also keep in mind that if you know you NEED compatibility with older software, you now have an alternative to running Windows XP until the end of time.
Microsoft does not NEED to include the virtual machine, they are supplying it for those cases where Windows XP software just won't work under Windows 7. If you don't feel the need for the compatibility layer, then go with a less expensive version of the OS.