I suspect that the tested R600 cards that have been reviewed are based on the 80nm fab process versions. There will be a 65nm version that will help in this regard to reduce the power demand. AMD is already working on 45nm, so once AMD is ready on that front, we should see BOTH CPU and GPUs using a 45nm process technology.
A big question is how much power the GPU takes, but also how much power it takes to drive 512 megs and 1 gig of memory on the video cards. Would it save power if we plugged the GPU into a motherboard socket(with it's own dedicated memory bank on the motherboard, not using main system memory)?
Fusion will be the FIRST generation of CPU and GPU on the same chip, due out in 2008 I believe. PC on a chip implies memory, sound, and the rest though, so I wouldn't expect a "True PC-on-a-chip" until 2010 at the earliest. One chip with one or two gigs of memory, video, and sound on it would get pretty hot, so cooling it would be a bit of a problem.
Since these are intended for laptops, availability may be limited in the channel. There are a number of GPUs on the way that may do the job for SFF PCs, and the new processors should also give a nice bump in performance over current generation processors.
Since we are talking about a financial institution here, the honesty of employees MUST be checked. Previous criminal activity of applicants would probably be a bad thing there. In addition to this, if there IS a crime, searching for fingerprints would probably be standard, so having the fingerprints of all employees on-file would probably make it easier to screen who may have done it.
Also, fingerprint recognition would be a way to verify that applicants are not using an alias/fake ID with a criminal record to get access to sensitive information.
As you have said, you have a criminal record, so would probably be passed over for employment by financial institutions, and government jobs where you might have access to sensitive information. I am not saying that ALL jobs are like this, but if honesty is critical to a job function, anyone who has a criminal record would probably get an automatic fail during job screening.
Back in the days of EQ, there was always a lot of talk about Brad's vision for the game. The reality was that the game was static with new paid expansions being required for any change. The idea that the world was alive was garbage due to the world never being updated except for the expansions and the VERY rare "free new zone". After several years, the idea that Brad had a vision worth implementing seemed foolish in light of the reality of the way the game was designed.
Now, you want vision, how about a world where the monster population would grow over time, and where the lives of the NPCs go on, with a script for changes in the lives of the NPCs that will happen if the players don't interfere? That's the sort of vision that would make for a better game. Oblivion has the problem where nothing changes or happens unless the player is there. I am more of a fan that life in any game, single player or MMO, TIME should update what is going on in the game world. NPCs who are in love will eventually get engaged, they may break up or they will get married. Children may or may not happen, but all of these things should go on without the need for the player to be there to get involved.
Now, there will obviously be changes caused by the player(players) in "My vision" of a good game world. The players can get involved in the events, and if they do, the outcome might change. So you have these little RP quests going on, where you can either help or hurt the people involved(depending on alignment). If you kill an NPC, that NPC stays gone, and the people that NPC knows will mourn their loss, and either hate you or look more favorably on you. The NPC reactions and day to day might also change as a result. What's more, by having scripts for "if this then that" and having many options for the NPCs, they really can have full lives. The key to this is that every game day at 3:30am or so, there is a "loading screen", which will update the AI for the towns based on the events. Mobs would also fall into this category where mobs would have a life cycle, and that life cycle would include being born, growing up, finding a mate, food, etc.
Now, all of this really wouldn't be THAT hard with modular NPC AI(where old "what if" scripting is pruned, and the devs put in new life events into the people. A default set for babies/children could also be auto-generated without being too complicated. But, I havn't heard of any developer looking at how to make an MMO that isn't based entirely on fighting/magic/crafting as a way to have fun. How about just going from small town to town as a bard, meeting people and having fun. No combat, but just "living the life"? Roleplaying, and how to add roleplaying to an MMO should be seen as the next true "next generation" MMO. The AI doesn't even need to be THAT advanced to make it fun, look at Baldur's Gate 2 and how you CAN have long-term interactions with party members. Now, expand that to an MMO setting and give the player more choices. It may be multiple choice roleplaying, but Planescape: Torment showed you can have a lot of different ways to play.
Eye candy is only one part of having "a vision", but if that vision doesn't include making the world feel alive, it will never be a true "next generation", because there will always be a "grind" just to have fun.
You are one of those people who don't seem to understand why we NEED lights on routers. Routers can be(and often are) kept away from the computers and devices. In those situations, checking the router to see if the Ethernet cable is plugged in on the other end, or if data is being sent on that port are more important. So, green for link, blinking for data being sent/received. It makes sense, and isn't useless.
Many devices go to sleep, so all you have is a LED to indicate that the device is on. You would NOT want a device that doesn't have a power LED since it's nice to know when the thing is on or not, even if it is in sleep mode.
Yes, some devices are annoying in having too many blinking lights, and I really dislike the extra lights that are on some computer cases these days. But, you have to admit that there are times when having those bright lights is a real advantage.
So, devices with blinking lights are fine, but excessive numbers of "cute" lights isn't. On a positive note, you can generally turn off or unplug the extra lights on computer cases if you don't like them. Standby blinking lights are annoying, but will show you that the machine isn't really off by blinking.
If the power grid is so overloaded by all the devices that are in standby mode, then building some nuclear power plants should be done. There are obviously some places that those plants should NOT be located, such as in places there are earthquakes or that might be hit by a tornado, but that doesn't mean new ones should not be built. Let's get some power generation in place that doesn't require oil, and we will be in better shape.
Hmmmm, Sunday night at 10pm is when Battlestar has been airing. People work for a living, and not everyone who wants to watch can watch. In addition to this, without being shown on broadcast channels, it won't get nearly as many viewers. It's a given that because the regular networks broadcast shows over the air, they will have a higher number of viewers than ANY cable channel.
I tend to get annoyed when shows air at 10pm because I have to work the next day.
It's not a function of votes, or individuals from other parties "having a say". The problem is that a Democrat could use logic(just because politicians don't use logic doesn't mean the party members don't) to influence Republicans to vote for the candidate least likely to win against the Democratic candidate(s).
The basic idea of primaries are that they are an election by the party members to see who will "represent the party" in the presidential election. There is a lot of politics that go into who gets nominated though, and the money a candidate needs to spend to inform the party members what they believe in is VERY high, and tends to be passed through the news media(which tends to be biased). Since the media is being used to distribute the information, those in control of the media have the ability to hush up negative things about the candidate they prefer.
That's the problem, Florida has too many voting problems to let Florida be overly influential in any election. I'm not saying your vote shouldn't count, but the state of Florida should NOT have such a big influence on a national election until the voting problems are fixed.
Manufacturing went to Mexico, yet the number of manufacturing jobs we had in the USA when NAFTA went into effect was already fairly low. Of course, the joke is that in another ten years, there will be more Mexicans in the USA than there are in Mexico(Mexico is being invaded from the south as well, we just don't pay as much attention because those invading Mexico also speak Spanish while the "invaders" here don't speak English.
What's even worse is that the laws being submitted are so poorly considered that the rights of many people are overlooked. That's why things end up as "Republican vs. Democrat", because the politicians on both sides don't know how to come up with good ideas that work for BOTH Republicans and Democrats. When laws are brought through the system that don't really make a lot of sense, voting on party lines is the way things work out. Really good ideas will be supported by both parties, and bad ones will get rejected even by the party that sponsors the proposed law.
It's a sad thing when you look at many of the reps in government, and you get the feeling that you are dealing with stupid people who can't understand basic concepts(like paying a consulting firm $120,000/year for employees who end up getting paid $45,000/year by that same firm being a waste of money).
This is a question that many people are still asking. In my opinion, the problem the Democratic candidates have had for a while is a lack of true leadership, and not understanding why so many states stay either Democrat or Republican, regardless of who the candidates are. You need to ask the question to come up with a solution, and it just doesn't seem to be asked.
The solution I've come up with(that those in power will probably never hear or take notice of), is to educate the people in ALL 50 states about what the issues really are. If a Democrat goes through farm country and starts talking about the standard issues(abortion, war, taxes, etc...), the majority of the people who tend to vote Republican will hear something they don't like and will stick with their party. If they instead hear about the rights of the people, and making sure that both the farmers and the people in cities, and all the different groups have the right to disagree, and because they have the right to disagree, that also means that laws about that subject should NOT be overly specific.
That sort of thing, that a president needs to represent not just certain groups, but to make sure that large groups that disagree are all allowed to feel the way they do and to have that disagreement NOT be settled by laws on one side or another. As a result of not understanding the need to educate those on the Republican side, Bush won twice.
It's also sad that there tends to be a lack of really good candidates from either party that don't divide the parties. Look at the Republican candidates, there are a ton of them, but none that really impress the majority. On the Democrat side, you have Clinton, who many people really really dislike, and you have Obama(who a lot of people don't know yet). If Clinton gets the party nomination, it will split the Democratic party in half because too many people just don't like her, and moderates might be willing to vote Republican as a result. That sort of "bad candidate" is how horrible presidents like George W. get elected not just once, but twice.
The real problem isn't what the parties stand for, it is what they claim to stand for that hasn't changed. The short version of each party:
Democrats tend to believe that the best way to help the economy is to help raise the standard of living for low to middle class people. Raise their standard of living, and you boost spending without having a requirement of using credit for that increased spending. This in turn helps the entire economy, from the bottom to the top.
Republicans tend to have a trickle down approach, where if you help the wealthy, and the large corporations, the boost to corporate health will help provide jobs. Of course, this doesn't work when these corporations send jobs to India and other countries, but that's a whole different subject.
Now, wrapped between the lines are what people see the different parties as representing, even though these tend to be well off the mark. Many people see Republicans as being anti-abortion, and pro-religion. They also seem to feel that Republicans support the moral beliefs of anti-abortion and "Christian" religious groups. These same people see Democrats as people who are into spending too much money on things that drain money from the government without supporting things that would put more money into the government(not counting higher taxes).
Then you have the whole situation in the Middle East, and this mistaken impression that Democrats don't believe in war and garbage like that. The problem is that Democrats don't believe in going to war under false pretenses, or over things like trying to steal the resources(oil) of other countries. There is a big difference between going to war over 9/11 and going to war to support military contractors and those who would profit from higher oil prices(caused by any instability in the Middle East).
Now, back on the current topic...
For the past several elections, there have been massive problems in Florida and Ohio when it comes to election results. Either equipment problems, improper voting practices, and mis-reporting of results for a number of reasons. As a result of this, the Democratic Party(meaning those in charge of the party, not the people in the party as a whole) feels a need to address this in Florida. This has nothing to do with the full-scale presidential election, this is about primary results only, and trying to limit the negative effects of Florida's screwed up voting system on the primaries. It doesn't help that Georgie's brother may in some way try to skew the results of a Democratic primary, in the hopes that it will weaken whoever gets the Democratic nomination when it comes time for the real presidential election. In any case, Florida has a lot of problems when it comes to the voting system. Can you blame ANYONE for trying to neutralize the probably skewed results from Florida?
As a part of the GPL, the software you have written also can not be SOLD for financial gain. That is the copyright section here. Most people who support Open Source do it because they want it to be free, as well as open so that improvements can be made by others. But pretty much every person I've talked to over the years has no desire to see a company like Microsoft adding your code to a commercial product and then charging due to code you have provided.
So, copyright. You, the copyright holder place RESTRICTIONS on the duplication and use of the code. Others are not allowed to sell the work YOU have done. Public domain on the other hand says you give the code away without any restrictions. As the copyright holder, you are entitled to set the terms of copying and use of the software, so just because you have chosen to use the GPL doesn't mean you "only want credit for your work", you don't want others to profit from your work without your permission. Without copyright, you KNOW there would be people selling $40 boxed versions of OpenOffice 2.2 and pretty much any other large/useful piece of code.
It's clear that you don't understand layers from this post. The idea that the kernel is the heart of the operating system and everything else sits on top of it really makes sense. The part of Linux that you don't like is the GNU layer that sits on top of it which provides most of the things YOU seem to think of as Linux.
So, look at the basic Linux design again. You have the hardware, and the kernel talks to the hardware(with drivers which handle the different hardware components). On top of the kernel you have applications, and on top of those you have plugins. Nice and simple, and if you break something above the kernel, the entire system won't die, just that one part that broke(and what sits on top of it). As time goes on, new things get added to the kernel for various features that people want.
Now, Linux may not be a huge commercial thing, but there are an increasing number of areas where Linux would do as well if not better than a Windows based machine. Linux allows the person who does the install to select what components to add and what not to add. This lets the machine run a LOT cleaner than any Microsoft OS because you don't NEED to install all the junk you have no interest in. Why automatically add CD/DVD burning support if the machine doesn't have a burner? Why install wireless support on a machine without a wireless network card(Wireless Zero Configuration turned on in Windows XP even when most computers didn't have wireless)? If what you are doing with the machine doesn't use a GUI, you really don't need to install one that drains processor power. The layers are there for a reason, you don't need to install what you don't need, and in business, this means workstations that don't break as often.
Linux may not do EVERYTHING that MS Windows does, but that doesn't make it a failure. In fact, more businesses SHOULD have certain areas of the business running Linux, since Linux is less prone to breaking if the employees are not inspired to mess with things.
Just to clarify(since I don't know), do you mean he asserts that western values are superior, or that he feels that if someone wants to move to France they should know/speak the language and know the culture? A requirement that those who move to a country should know/learn the language of the land and know the culture before they become permanent residents really should be seen as a positive thing. No country needs ghetto areas where the residents are poor and can't get good jobs because the people living in them don't know the language, and as a result can't get "good" work.
In general, Linux has generally had i386 as the base, though you do have some distributions that are Pentium or above, or AMD64(including Intel's clone with a new name). Windows XP really was never intended for anything below the level of a Pentium 3, and in general, running on anything less than a 1GHz Pentium 3(1.5GHz Pentium 4) wouldn't be a good idea.
The real key when it comes to requirements are that if your machine came with an older version of Windows, you shouldn't upgrade since you don't get much of an improvement on older hardware. Think about it, if an old machine came with Windows 98 on it, then going to ME or XP would be a bad idea. If your machine came with XP and you got it more than a year before Vista was released, then chances are you should NOT try to put Vista on it. With each generation of any GUI, the graphical demands will be higher. Intel graphics have always been substandard, so with the higher graphics requirements of the new UI in Vista, you just don't want to put Vista on a machine with Intel graphics.
For Linux, you have a LOT of choices when it comes to the UI, including not being forced to use a GUI at all. If you don't need graphics on the machine for what the machine is being used for, then you won't need as much CPU or GPU power(since the graphics DO require some CPU cycles).
In addition to this, as time goes on, the cost for higher performance goes down. So while the new operating systems may require more processing power to run well, the processing power available in your average computer will be there. The end result is that new machines with the latest operating systems run around the same as the older machines did with the latest OS available at that time. This does NOT take into account people with Intel based graphics, which really can't handle the "better graphics" required by newer operating systems. Even in the old days, if you had one machine with an Oak VGA card, it wouldn't perform as well as one with a Tseng Labs based card in it, but back then, people as a general rule didn't know that you could upgrade the video card to get better performance.
As a final note, Vista will run a bit better if you disable Aero Glass.
The reason things are going downhill is caused by government forcing health care providers to serve EVERYONE, even those who will never be able to pay the bill. This extends to those who are in the USA illegally. Since the government doesn't provide universal health coverage, having a requirement that hospitals serve those who are not in the USA legally only hurts the health care system since the INS doesn't do anything about these people.
Those here legally are expected to pay their health care bills, even if it's over time. It's too bad that state and federal governments don't do anything about those who will never pay their bill because they arn't supposed to be here in the first place yet get preferential treatment at hospitals.
It is the responsibility of the hardware vendors to provide OpenGL drivers, and if you have an NVIDIA or ATI video card, you should be able to download the drivers for Vista which will provide your OpenGL support.
The sound issue is related to OpenAL and sound cards not supporting the API in hardware at this point. It took a while for DirectX to get hardware acceleration support, and I expect that in a few years we will see OpenAL support being added to sound cards.
Dell and other companies tend to sell machines with less than the recommended amount of RAM for Windows Vista. If a computer has less than 1 gigabyte of RAM, you REALLY want to stick with Windows XP. If a computer has Intel video, you will want to avoid the new Aeroglass UI as well.
Those are some of the obvious reasons why a company would WANT to stick with Windows XP. Other reasons, like drivers not being mature at this point would also make some people want to stick with Windows XP.
Now, due to the extra overhead of Vista, if you have a single-core processor, going to Vista may also make your current machine seem sluggish, so that too would be a reason to NOT upgrade.
Over the next 8 months or so, the reasons for avoiding the move to Vista will slowly fade away, and people will make the move. It's fairly simple, and too many people look at the slow sales of Vista without trying to understand the reasons behind it. Vista itself isn't really all that bad, but if you try to run it on a computer that doesn't run Windows XP well, why would ANYONE think that Vista will help? Vista is for dual and quad-core processors, not for single-core processors and with a video card(or GPU) that can handle DirectX 9 in hardware. The upgrade process from XP to Vista also leaves a LOT to be desired for many people as well.
I believe that AMD is saying how Barcelona will perform compared to the chips available today, not the chips Intel will have down the road. This is their way of saying that if Intel suddenly is able to release much faster chips between now and Barcelona's release, this claim by AMD won't reflect THAT.
So, current Core processor machines are what AMD is making claims about, not the 45nm chips that Intel is currently working on but has not released yet.
The problem is that in the USA, many lawsuits are allowed to go forward, even when there is a clear case of prior art. So, even if you have evidence of prior art, the judges may not bother to read the evidence that should have the patent(owned by someone else) invalidated. You have a good system that SHOULD work, but things here in the USA are very broken.
The sad thing is that a good percentage of the people in the USA have little to no faith in the justice system here. I would say it is upwards of 25 percent at this point, possibly as high as 35 to 40 percent. The image of judges who are asleep while supposedly hearing evidence is planted firmly in our mind. Or "old men and women who have no clue about technology" judging a case that is all about technology. This may not be true all the time, but it is too common here.
There is an old saying, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it". Computers in general only became available to consumers in the late 1970s, and the chance that children would have access to them was very low. It really took until the early 1990s before violence in computer games was realistic enough for many people to become concerned. As a result, the issue needs to be looked at with that as a reference.
For those who got started with computers early, we saw the development of computer graphics, and in general, for us, it took until we were over the age of 18 before the graphics could be considered even semi-realistic. Many didn't think twice then about playing violent games, so many just never thought about how they might be a bad thing for a younger audience. As a result, many who have children in this age group didn't think there was anything to be concerned about because in those early days, violence was NOT realistic.
Many parents don't know(because they don't pay attention) just how violent and graphic video games have become. If they did, they would have a basic concept that if a movie with that level of violence were to be released, it would be rated R. That's the difference here, it's really ignorance on the part of the parents of today. Many parents never touched a computer or video game when they were younger, so not only don't they know what their children are seeing and playing now, they don't even know from personal experience what is going on.
So, why shouldn't children today be playing violent video games? It's because the games of today are more realistic, more violent, and make it seem that violent behavior is acceptable(because there are no negatives associated with it). The war games are not as bad as the "gang violence" type in that those in the military are generally accepted as not having control over what missions they go on. The war games also don't encourage things like rape, murder, and things generally unacceptable behavior in public.
So, play the games your children will play. If you wouldn't take your kids to see a movie with that subject matter, then you shouldn't let them play games with that subject matter. When it comes to gore and violence, would you take your kids to see "The Hills Have Eyes"?
Any telco really does lose customers and signs up new customers continually the same way ISPs do. The reason why for a VOIP provider is that your internet connection really is the largest part of how good the service will be. If your upload bandwidth is under 128kbps, then pretty much any VOIP service will seem like garbage when it comes to quality.
So, people with poor internet service will try Vonage and leave, others will try it and find it to be very good. You also have cases where people would leave because of frequent power outages and didn't understand that if their cable/DSL service goes down, so does their phone.
How many people leave from Cingular and switch to Verizon or Sprint/Nextel, or to Cingular from the other cell phone companies? Do you really think people switching is due to problems with these companies that the other companies don't as well? Cell phone service is generally the same when you are in their coverage area, but for any area in the country, there will be places that are better for one or the other. It doesn't mean any of them are particularly better or worse overall, it's all about how service is for your location and where you travel to.
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I suspect that the tested R600 cards that have been reviewed are based on the 80nm fab process versions. There will be a 65nm version that will help in this regard to reduce the power demand. AMD is already working on 45nm, so once AMD is ready on that front, we should see BOTH CPU and GPUs using a 45nm process technology.
A big question is how much power the GPU takes, but also how much power it takes to drive 512 megs and 1 gig of memory on the video cards. Would it save power if we plugged the GPU into a motherboard socket(with it's own dedicated memory bank on the motherboard, not using main system memory)?
Fusion will be the FIRST generation of CPU and GPU on the same chip, due out in 2008 I believe. PC on a chip implies memory, sound, and the rest though, so I wouldn't expect a "True PC-on-a-chip" until 2010 at the earliest. One chip with one or two gigs of memory, video, and sound on it would get pretty hot, so cooling it would be a bit of a problem.
Since these are intended for laptops, availability may be limited in the channel. There are a number of GPUs on the way that may do the job for SFF PCs, and the new processors should also give a nice bump in performance over current generation processors.
Since we are talking about a financial institution here, the honesty of employees MUST be checked. Previous criminal activity of applicants would probably be a bad thing there. In addition to this, if there IS a crime, searching for fingerprints would probably be standard, so having the fingerprints of all employees on-file would probably make it easier to screen who may have done it.
Also, fingerprint recognition would be a way to verify that applicants are not using an alias/fake ID with a criminal record to get access to sensitive information.
As you have said, you have a criminal record, so would probably be passed over for employment by financial institutions, and government jobs where you might have access to sensitive information. I am not saying that ALL jobs are like this, but if honesty is critical to a job function, anyone who has a criminal record would probably get an automatic fail during job screening.
Back in the days of EQ, there was always a lot of talk about Brad's vision for the game. The reality was that the game was static with new paid expansions being required for any change. The idea that the world was alive was garbage due to the world never being updated except for the expansions and the VERY rare "free new zone". After several years, the idea that Brad had a vision worth implementing seemed foolish in light of the reality of the way the game was designed.
Now, you want vision, how about a world where the monster population would grow over time, and where the lives of the NPCs go on, with a script for changes in the lives of the NPCs that will happen if the players don't interfere? That's the sort of vision that would make for a better game. Oblivion has the problem where nothing changes or happens unless the player is there. I am more of a fan that life in any game, single player or MMO, TIME should update what is going on in the game world. NPCs who are in love will eventually get engaged, they may break up or they will get married. Children may or may not happen, but all of these things should go on without the need for the player to be there to get involved.
Now, there will obviously be changes caused by the player(players) in "My vision" of a good game world. The players can get involved in the events, and if they do, the outcome might change. So you have these little RP quests going on, where you can either help or hurt the people involved(depending on alignment). If you kill an NPC, that NPC stays gone, and the people that NPC knows will mourn their loss, and either hate you or look more favorably on you. The NPC reactions and day to day might also change as a result. What's more, by having scripts for "if this then that" and having many options for the NPCs, they really can have full lives. The key to this is that every game day at 3:30am or so, there is a "loading screen", which will update the AI for the towns based on the events. Mobs would also fall into this category where mobs would have a life cycle, and that life cycle would include being born, growing up, finding a mate, food, etc.
Now, all of this really wouldn't be THAT hard with modular NPC AI(where old "what if" scripting is pruned, and the devs put in new life events into the people. A default set for babies/children could also be auto-generated without being too complicated. But, I havn't heard of any developer looking at how to make an MMO that isn't based entirely on fighting/magic/crafting as a way to have fun. How about just going from small town to town as a bard, meeting people and having fun. No combat, but just "living the life"? Roleplaying, and how to add roleplaying to an MMO should be seen as the next true "next generation" MMO. The AI doesn't even need to be THAT advanced to make it fun, look at Baldur's Gate 2 and how you CAN have long-term interactions with party members. Now, expand that to an MMO setting and give the player more choices. It may be multiple choice roleplaying, but Planescape: Torment showed you can have a lot of different ways to play.
Eye candy is only one part of having "a vision", but if that vision doesn't include making the world feel alive, it will never be a true "next generation", because there will always be a "grind" just to have fun.
You are one of those people who don't seem to understand why we NEED lights on routers. Routers can be(and often are) kept away from the computers and devices. In those situations, checking the router to see if the Ethernet cable is plugged in on the other end, or if data is being sent on that port are more important. So, green for link, blinking for data being sent/received. It makes sense, and isn't useless.
Many devices go to sleep, so all you have is a LED to indicate that the device is on. You would NOT want a device that doesn't have a power LED since it's nice to know when the thing is on or not, even if it is in sleep mode.
Yes, some devices are annoying in having too many blinking lights, and I really dislike the extra lights that are on some computer cases these days. But, you have to admit that there are times when having those bright lights is a real advantage.
So, devices with blinking lights are fine, but excessive numbers of "cute" lights isn't. On a positive note, you can generally turn off or unplug the extra lights on computer cases if you don't like them. Standby blinking lights are annoying, but will show you that the machine isn't really off by blinking.
If the power grid is so overloaded by all the devices that are in standby mode, then building some nuclear power plants should be done. There are obviously some places that those plants should NOT be located, such as in places there are earthquakes or that might be hit by a tornado, but that doesn't mean new ones should not be built. Let's get some power generation in place that doesn't require oil, and we will be in better shape.
Hmmmm, Sunday night at 10pm is when Battlestar has been airing. People work for a living, and not everyone who wants to watch can watch. In addition to this, without being shown on broadcast channels, it won't get nearly as many viewers. It's a given that because the regular networks broadcast shows over the air, they will have a higher number of viewers than ANY cable channel.
I tend to get annoyed when shows air at 10pm because I have to work the next day.
It's not a function of votes, or individuals from other parties "having a say". The problem is that a Democrat could use logic(just because politicians don't use logic doesn't mean the party members don't) to influence Republicans to vote for the candidate least likely to win against the Democratic candidate(s).
The basic idea of primaries are that they are an election by the party members to see who will "represent the party" in the presidential election. There is a lot of politics that go into who gets nominated though, and the money a candidate needs to spend to inform the party members what they believe in is VERY high, and tends to be passed through the news media(which tends to be biased). Since the media is being used to distribute the information, those in control of the media have the ability to hush up negative things about the candidate they prefer.
That's the problem, Florida has too many voting problems to let Florida be overly influential in any election. I'm not saying your vote shouldn't count, but the state of Florida should NOT have such a big influence on a national election until the voting problems are fixed.
Manufacturing went to Mexico, yet the number of manufacturing jobs we had in the USA when NAFTA went into effect was already fairly low. Of course, the joke is that in another ten years, there will be more Mexicans in the USA than there are in Mexico(Mexico is being invaded from the south as well, we just don't pay as much attention because those invading Mexico also speak Spanish while the "invaders" here don't speak English.
What's even worse is that the laws being submitted are so poorly considered that the rights of many people are overlooked. That's why things end up as "Republican vs. Democrat", because the politicians on both sides don't know how to come up with good ideas that work for BOTH Republicans and Democrats. When laws are brought through the system that don't really make a lot of sense, voting on party lines is the way things work out. Really good ideas will be supported by both parties, and bad ones will get rejected even by the party that sponsors the proposed law.
It's a sad thing when you look at many of the reps in government, and you get the feeling that you are dealing with stupid people who can't understand basic concepts(like paying a consulting firm $120,000/year for employees who end up getting paid $45,000/year by that same firm being a waste of money).
This is a question that many people are still asking. In my opinion, the problem the Democratic candidates have had for a while is a lack of true leadership, and not understanding why so many states stay either Democrat or Republican, regardless of who the candidates are. You need to ask the question to come up with a solution, and it just doesn't seem to be asked.
The solution I've come up with(that those in power will probably never hear or take notice of), is to educate the people in ALL 50 states about what the issues really are. If a Democrat goes through farm country and starts talking about the standard issues(abortion, war, taxes, etc...), the majority of the people who tend to vote Republican will hear something they don't like and will stick with their party. If they instead hear about the rights of the people, and making sure that both the farmers and the people in cities, and all the different groups have the right to disagree, and because they have the right to disagree, that also means that laws about that subject should NOT be overly specific.
That sort of thing, that a president needs to represent not just certain groups, but to make sure that large groups that disagree are all allowed to feel the way they do and to have that disagreement NOT be settled by laws on one side or another. As a result of not understanding the need to educate those on the Republican side, Bush won twice.
It's also sad that there tends to be a lack of really good candidates from either party that don't divide the parties. Look at the Republican candidates, there are a ton of them, but none that really impress the majority. On the Democrat side, you have Clinton, who many people really really dislike, and you have Obama(who a lot of people don't know yet). If Clinton gets the party nomination, it will split the Democratic party in half because too many people just don't like her, and moderates might be willing to vote Republican as a result. That sort of "bad candidate" is how horrible presidents like George W. get elected not just once, but twice.
Well said.
The real problem isn't what the parties stand for, it is what they claim to stand for that hasn't changed. The short version of each party:
Democrats tend to believe that the best way to help the economy is to help raise the standard of living for low to middle class people. Raise their standard of living, and you boost spending without having a requirement of using credit for that increased spending. This in turn helps the entire economy, from the bottom to the top.
Republicans tend to have a trickle down approach, where if you help the wealthy, and the large corporations, the boost to corporate health will help provide jobs. Of course, this doesn't work when these corporations send jobs to India and other countries, but that's a whole different subject.
Now, wrapped between the lines are what people see the different parties as representing, even though these tend to be well off the mark. Many people see Republicans as being anti-abortion, and pro-religion. They also seem to feel that Republicans support the moral beliefs of anti-abortion and "Christian" religious groups. These same people see Democrats as people who are into spending too much money on things that drain money from the government without supporting things that would put more money into the government(not counting higher taxes).
Then you have the whole situation in the Middle East, and this mistaken impression that Democrats don't believe in war and garbage like that. The problem is that Democrats don't believe in going to war under false pretenses, or over things like trying to steal the resources(oil) of other countries. There is a big difference between going to war over 9/11 and going to war to support military contractors and those who would profit from higher oil prices(caused by any instability in the Middle East).
Now, back on the current topic...
For the past several elections, there have been massive problems in Florida and Ohio when it comes to election results. Either equipment problems, improper voting practices, and mis-reporting of results for a number of reasons. As a result of this, the Democratic Party(meaning those in charge of the party, not the people in the party as a whole) feels a need to address this in Florida. This has nothing to do with the full-scale presidential election, this is about primary results only, and trying to limit the negative effects of Florida's screwed up voting system on the primaries. It doesn't help that Georgie's brother may in some way try to skew the results of a Democratic primary, in the hopes that it will weaken whoever gets the Democratic nomination when it comes time for the real presidential election. In any case, Florida has a lot of problems when it comes to the voting system. Can you blame ANYONE for trying to neutralize the probably skewed results from Florida?
As a part of the GPL, the software you have written also can not be SOLD for financial gain. That is the copyright section here. Most people who support Open Source do it because they want it to be free, as well as open so that improvements can be made by others. But pretty much every person I've talked to over the years has no desire to see a company like Microsoft adding your code to a commercial product and then charging due to code you have provided.
So, copyright. You, the copyright holder place RESTRICTIONS on the duplication and use of the code. Others are not allowed to sell the work YOU have done. Public domain on the other hand says you give the code away without any restrictions. As the copyright holder, you are entitled to set the terms of copying and use of the software, so just because you have chosen to use the GPL doesn't mean you "only want credit for your work", you don't want others to profit from your work without your permission. Without copyright, you KNOW there would be people selling $40 boxed versions of OpenOffice 2.2 and pretty much any other large/useful piece of code.
It's clear that you don't understand layers from this post. The idea that the kernel is the heart of the operating system and everything else sits on top of it really makes sense. The part of Linux that you don't like is the GNU layer that sits on top of it which provides most of the things YOU seem to think of as Linux.
So, look at the basic Linux design again. You have the hardware, and the kernel talks to the hardware(with drivers which handle the different hardware components). On top of the kernel you have applications, and on top of those you have plugins. Nice and simple, and if you break something above the kernel, the entire system won't die, just that one part that broke(and what sits on top of it). As time goes on, new things get added to the kernel for various features that people want.
Now, Linux may not be a huge commercial thing, but there are an increasing number of areas where Linux would do as well if not better than a Windows based machine. Linux allows the person who does the install to select what components to add and what not to add. This lets the machine run a LOT cleaner than any Microsoft OS because you don't NEED to install all the junk you have no interest in. Why automatically add CD/DVD burning support if the machine doesn't have a burner? Why install wireless support on a machine without a wireless network card(Wireless Zero Configuration turned on in Windows XP even when most computers didn't have wireless)? If what you are doing with the machine doesn't use a GUI, you really don't need to install one that drains processor power. The layers are there for a reason, you don't need to install what you don't need, and in business, this means workstations that don't break as often.
Linux may not do EVERYTHING that MS Windows does, but that doesn't make it a failure. In fact, more businesses SHOULD have certain areas of the business running Linux, since Linux is less prone to breaking if the employees are not inspired to mess with things.
Just to clarify(since I don't know), do you mean he asserts that western values are superior, or that he feels that if someone wants to move to France they should know/speak the language and know the culture? A requirement that those who move to a country should know/learn the language of the land and know the culture before they become permanent residents really should be seen as a positive thing. No country needs ghetto areas where the residents are poor and can't get good jobs because the people living in them don't know the language, and as a result can't get "good" work.
In general, Linux has generally had i386 as the base, though you do have some distributions that are Pentium or above, or AMD64(including Intel's clone with a new name). Windows XP really was never intended for anything below the level of a Pentium 3, and in general, running on anything less than a 1GHz Pentium 3(1.5GHz Pentium 4) wouldn't be a good idea.
The real key when it comes to requirements are that if your machine came with an older version of Windows, you shouldn't upgrade since you don't get much of an improvement on older hardware. Think about it, if an old machine came with Windows 98 on it, then going to ME or XP would be a bad idea. If your machine came with XP and you got it more than a year before Vista was released, then chances are you should NOT try to put Vista on it. With each generation of any GUI, the graphical demands will be higher. Intel graphics have always been substandard, so with the higher graphics requirements of the new UI in Vista, you just don't want to put Vista on a machine with Intel graphics.
For Linux, you have a LOT of choices when it comes to the UI, including not being forced to use a GUI at all. If you don't need graphics on the machine for what the machine is being used for, then you won't need as much CPU or GPU power(since the graphics DO require some CPU cycles).
In addition to this, as time goes on, the cost for higher performance goes down. So while the new operating systems may require more processing power to run well, the processing power available in your average computer will be there. The end result is that new machines with the latest operating systems run around the same as the older machines did with the latest OS available at that time. This does NOT take into account people with Intel based graphics, which really can't handle the "better graphics" required by newer operating systems. Even in the old days, if you had one machine with an Oak VGA card, it wouldn't perform as well as one with a Tseng Labs based card in it, but back then, people as a general rule didn't know that you could upgrade the video card to get better performance.
As a final note, Vista will run a bit better if you disable Aero Glass.
The reason things are going downhill is caused by government forcing health care providers to serve EVERYONE, even those who will never be able to pay the bill. This extends to those who are in the USA illegally. Since the government doesn't provide universal health coverage, having a requirement that hospitals serve those who are not in the USA legally only hurts the health care system since the INS doesn't do anything about these people.
Those here legally are expected to pay their health care bills, even if it's over time. It's too bad that state and federal governments don't do anything about those who will never pay their bill because they arn't supposed to be here in the first place yet get preferential treatment at hospitals.
It is the responsibility of the hardware vendors to provide OpenGL drivers, and if you have an NVIDIA or ATI video card, you should be able to download the drivers for Vista which will provide your OpenGL support.
The sound issue is related to OpenAL and sound cards not supporting the API in hardware at this point. It took a while for DirectX to get hardware acceleration support, and I expect that in a few years we will see OpenAL support being added to sound cards.
Dell and other companies tend to sell machines with less than the recommended amount of RAM for Windows Vista. If a computer has less than 1 gigabyte of RAM, you REALLY want to stick with Windows XP. If a computer has Intel video, you will want to avoid the new Aeroglass UI as well.
Those are some of the obvious reasons why a company would WANT to stick with Windows XP. Other reasons, like drivers not being mature at this point would also make some people want to stick with Windows XP.
Now, due to the extra overhead of Vista, if you have a single-core processor, going to Vista may also make your current machine seem sluggish, so that too would be a reason to NOT upgrade.
Over the next 8 months or so, the reasons for avoiding the move to Vista will slowly fade away, and people will make the move. It's fairly simple, and too many people look at the slow sales of Vista without trying to understand the reasons behind it. Vista itself isn't really all that bad, but if you try to run it on a computer that doesn't run Windows XP well, why would ANYONE think that Vista will help? Vista is for dual and quad-core processors, not for single-core processors and with a video card(or GPU) that can handle DirectX 9 in hardware. The upgrade process from XP to Vista also leaves a LOT to be desired for many people as well.
I believe that AMD is saying how Barcelona will perform compared to the chips available today, not the chips Intel will have down the road. This is their way of saying that if Intel suddenly is able to release much faster chips between now and Barcelona's release, this claim by AMD won't reflect THAT.
So, current Core processor machines are what AMD is making claims about, not the 45nm chips that Intel is currently working on but has not released yet.
The problem is that in the USA, many lawsuits are allowed to go forward, even when there is a clear case of prior art. So, even if you have evidence of prior art, the judges may not bother to read the evidence that should have the patent(owned by someone else) invalidated. You have a good system that SHOULD work, but things here in the USA are very broken.
The sad thing is that a good percentage of the people in the USA have little to no faith in the justice system here. I would say it is upwards of 25 percent at this point, possibly as high as 35 to 40 percent. The image of judges who are asleep while supposedly hearing evidence is planted firmly in our mind. Or "old men and women who have no clue about technology" judging a case that is all about technology. This may not be true all the time, but it is too common here.
There is an old saying, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it". Computers in general only became available to consumers in the late 1970s, and the chance that children would have access to them was very low. It really took until the early 1990s before violence in computer games was realistic enough for many people to become concerned. As a result, the issue needs to be looked at with that as a reference.
For those who got started with computers early, we saw the development of computer graphics, and in general, for us, it took until we were over the age of 18 before the graphics could be considered even semi-realistic. Many didn't think twice then about playing violent games, so many just never thought about how they might be a bad thing for a younger audience. As a result, many who have children in this age group didn't think there was anything to be concerned about because in those early days, violence was NOT realistic.
Many parents don't know(because they don't pay attention) just how violent and graphic video games have become. If they did, they would have a basic concept that if a movie with that level of violence were to be released, it would be rated R. That's the difference here, it's really ignorance on the part of the parents of today. Many parents never touched a computer or video game when they were younger, so not only don't they know what their children are seeing and playing now, they don't even know from personal experience what is going on.
So, why shouldn't children today be playing violent video games? It's because the games of today are more realistic, more violent, and make it seem that violent behavior is acceptable(because there are no negatives associated with it). The war games are not as bad as the "gang violence" type in that those in the military are generally accepted as not having control over what missions they go on. The war games also don't encourage things like rape, murder, and things generally unacceptable behavior in public.
So, play the games your children will play. If you wouldn't take your kids to see a movie with that subject matter, then you shouldn't let them play games with that subject matter. When it comes to gore and violence, would you take your kids to see "The Hills Have Eyes"?
Any telco really does lose customers and signs up new customers continually the same way ISPs do. The reason why for a VOIP provider is that your internet connection really is the largest part of how good the service will be. If your upload bandwidth is under 128kbps, then pretty much any VOIP service will seem like garbage when it comes to quality.
So, people with poor internet service will try Vonage and leave, others will try it and find it to be very good. You also have cases where people would leave because of frequent power outages and didn't understand that if their cable/DSL service goes down, so does their phone.
How many people leave from Cingular and switch to Verizon or Sprint/Nextel, or to Cingular from the other cell phone companies? Do you really think people switching is due to problems with these companies that the other companies don't as well? Cell phone service is generally the same when you are in their coverage area, but for any area in the country, there will be places that are better for one or the other. It doesn't mean any of them are particularly better or worse overall, it's all about how service is for your location and where you travel to.