Could it be your GPU/Video card sucks and you are still trying to run Aeroglass? People with sub-standard parts in their computer have a good reason not to upgrade to Vista, but that's a different issue from looking at the OS itself and trying to judge the merits.
As for the stupid thing that keeps second guessing the user whenever they try to run a program, that garbage can be turned off.
Your next argument will probably be that a number of applications don't run under Vista, but the same could be said about the transition from Windows 98/ME to XP. Some things just won't work due to the driver model being different. Time will fix that, and it can be argued if it's a problem with the design of the OS, or of the applications in question.
Vista isn't a BAD OS, it's just not an OS people should upgrade to on their existing computer that came with XP. At the same time, I wish that Microsoft would properly layer the OS so that you could run the machine without all the extra stuff running on top of it. There SHOULD be an advanced install option that asks what I want to do with the machine, and then properly enables and disables the different services. Make it so applications are forced to do a check and enable required services instead of having the OS turn on a lot of things "just in case" an application might need it.
Linux with a "typical" install you see from Redhat will also install a lot of extra junk that most people won't use. The real advantage that Linux(most dists) has over MS Windows(any version), is that Linux gives the advanced user the tools during and after installation to select what components they want and don't want.
The problem with this sort of argument is that the country has changed a LOT since 1968. Looking at the past may give perspective on the present and future, but it doesn't always apply.
For starters, what the political parties stand for TODAY has changed from what they used to stand for in the past, and most people don't seem to understand that. In both parties, there are conservative and liberal groups of people. In both parties you have those who are wealthy, and those who are poor. So, you need to look at the approach to issues that the parties TEND to use.
The Republican politicians of today tend to feel that if you help businesses, that will give those businesses a chance to hire people, which in theory will help the economy. This is the trickle-down approach. You see it in the current administration where huge corporations get more help from the government.
The Democratic politicians tend to lean toward policies to help the lower to middle class in terms of money. This includes welfare and other programs which drain money from the government, but at the same time includes policies that help the low to middle class worker improve their situation in life, which boosts sales of both products and services.
When either side gets too much power or control though, or bad candidates run from either party because there are a lack of GOOD candidates who are seen as electable, then things get bad when they end up in control. There will be "bad people" from both parties who get into positions of control, and the voters need to learn how to see those who who abuse their power for what they really are.
You have a LOT of people who blindly vote Democrat or Republican in each election, mostly because they are blinded by the OLD ways of looking at the political parties. Individuals need to be looked at across the board, for all elected positions, but most people only know about those running for president, congress, and the senate. Without doing a lot of research, most people don't really know about the 10-15 other people they vote for except which party they belong to.
So, don't complain too much about things that went on 30 or more years ago, because political parties and really the entire country has changed a lot. Things are NOT the same as they were in the 1960s, 70s, or 80s. It can be argued that things are still fairly similar to the 90s, though the tech boom is over, and there isn't a single industry in this country except drugs(the legal kind) and to a lesser extent, military supply contractors, that is prospering right now.
Intel tends to push the full "Intel processor+Intel chipset" which also favors using Intel graphics. Pretty much every AMD based machine uses either an AMD/ATI chipset, or a NVIDIA chipset with the appropriate graphics. For Vista, the "experience" favors having a decent GPU, so AMD is the better platform there on the low end.
Every advertisement out there is about the low end of the dual-core, with a few mentions of the higher end products. So, you are looking at Athlon 64 X2 machines, or Core 2 Duo machines. Benchmark a low end Core 2, and you include the Intel video. It is NOT a good demonstration of Vista with a low end Core 2 with Intel graphics based machine.
The thing about Linux distributions as a whole is that you have the option during OS install about what packages you want to install. This means that if security is a concern, you can go through the package selection during the OS install, and pick what you want to install in the first place. This means that for those who do this, if you don't need a mail transport agent on the machine, you have the option to leave it out in many cases. By limiting what packages you install on the machine, security can improve.
Debian as a good example of this breaks up the distribution into different categories, from base packages(the required stuff), to optional. If base has a security bug, there is a patch for it VERY VERY VERY quickly in most situations. If it is an obscure package, then it may take longer to be patched, but at the same time, because it isn't in "base", not everyone will have that package installed, so it's impact can be questioned.
If you go with a default package selection for what you want to use your machine for, then there WILL be a bunch of packages installed as a part of that set. Again though, that doesn't affect everyone with that distribution, just those who go with that type of install.
Microsoft doesn't provide the option during install to select what we want or don't want installed. If it is a desktop machine without a wireless card, Microsoft will not only install the Wireless Zero Configuration service, but will turn the thing on. If there is a security hole in it, even those who shouldn't have to care will need to be concerned.
So, if you run Linux, and you don't install a web browser, then you will be free of any "critical" bugs that may be announced for the web browser in question. So, even if you have Redhat and there is a critical bug announced, there is the potential that it won't apply to everyone who has a Redhat based system.
Every business is different, and as a result, the best way to run it will be based on what the business is, and if that will work for you.
Look as customer communication. How do your customers contact you, and if you go to a distributed environment, how will that affect your customers calling in? Do you have a receptionist who answers the phones?
Do most of your employees work in the office, or do they come in to work, but then go out to service their employees while spending only an hour or so in the office each day?
Do you and your employees live in the same area, or do you all spend 30-90 minutes each way driving in to work?
Do customers have the ability to talk directly to the employees? This may sound like a strange question, but not all companies want their employees to be contacted directly, and instead will have the people answering the main number take messages.
Being able to talk face to face with your employees on a regular basis is important here. You also won't be able to see if a new employee is doing things the right way or the wrong way if you let EVERYONE work from home. In some cases though, it makes sense to have SOME people who can work from home, but others who MUST show up at some sort of office.
Many people who read Slashdot tend to be focused on technology to the exclusion of other things, including real world relationships. So, looking at pictures, porn, or even a fantasy of meeting an attractive and intelligent woman tends to be the closest they will be to a relationship for years at a time(or in some cases, ever).
On the lighter side, the 85 percent rule states that 85 percent of the human species is genetically stupid, and nothing any of us do will give these people a clue. There is an additional 10 percent that have been corrupted by exposure to the 85 percent, so they too become stupid. This leaves us with only 5 percent of the species even worth knowing.
With that rule in mind, many people would prefer a fantasy that they will find someone of the opposite sex that are both intelligent and beautiful, so go figure that on Slashdot we find people who post about the appearance of a woman. They simply NEED a real social life, but can't figure out how to meet a woman(or man) in real life and get into a relationship.
From what I remember from my college days, the problem with diesel engines is that while the design is better in a number of ways, there are issues with starting the engine when it is cold outside(which is why you have heating mechanisms to get around this problem). In places like middle to southern California where it doesn't get that cold, diesel makes a lot more sense than the midwest and northeast.
Back in the mid to late 1970s, computers were these things you only heard about in movies or TV shows for those of us growing up back then. Sure there were some people who used computers, or who had access to them, but access to computers was something that only very large corporations had, or schools, or certain government jobs(but not all). The closest most people got to a computer was a terminal(a screen with keyboard that connected to a computer).
The result of this is that there was something mysterious about computers. When the first personal computers became available to the general public(many will remember the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 models 1,3, and 4 with the model 2 being more of a business model, and the Apple 2 series), these machines became the first ones available to those who didn't have enough information to build their own computers. They were fun, allowed for playing some games, and this inspired many to continue to learn how computers worked. There was also a good amount of encouragement given by teachers back in those days and into the 1980s.
So, between having an interest in computers and technology by some, and being encouraged by others to continue learning, Computer Science grew in popularity. As time went on, and computers became more and more common in the 1980s into the 1990s, there was continued support by those in education and in general for those who showed a true interest in computers.
So, what happened to change this SHOULD be the question being asked, not just looking around and complaining about the current situation. As technology became more and more common, the number of jobs grew in the sector until the tech crash in 2001-2002 when the real down-turn in the industry really started to show up. With many jobs lost, there was an excessive number of computer science trained people around.
If you were in high school at that point and you were hearing about tech jobs being hard to get, switching focus might have seemed like a good idea. For parents and teachers, encouraging people to go into a field where the job market wasn't very good also wouldn't seem like a good idea. And so, here we are, in 2007, and the job market has gotten a bit better but still isn't booming. Entry-level positions are hard(or harder) to find because of outsourcing. Reports of how programmers are treated by companies(generally long long hours with little appreciation), and a lack of control in the development process as a junior level programmer scares people away.
The computer industry has also transitioned from being "we need programmers because there are no pre-made applications that do what we want" to having different specialized areas. Now you have networking, system administration, Information Technology, database administration, and other specialized areas. As a result, those with an interest in computers will select a major that fits the area they have an interest in. Why go Computer Science if a MIS degree will get you where you want to go?
So, the way to get students interested in Computer Science is to encourage them that it is an area that still needs people, and that it's not a major for those who are going to end up as a "code monkey". To be honest, the computer industry NEEDS true computer scientists since most applications seem to have been slapped together by people who may be able to write code, but can't figure out how to design an application(which is why multi-threaded applications are an exception in the MS Windows environment).
When you are looking at 1000 machines, it goes a bit beyond just using DHCP and DNS because of the routing that SHOULD be involved in that large of an environment. If you use a straight DHCP, you STILL need to set up a system to identify WHERE a given IP address might be as well, just in case something illegal or just against company policy is going on.
Dynamic is nice if you plan to be hands-off, but it CAN be a royal pain if you need to be responsible for the environment.
When it comes down to it, you have a number of things to look at:
Coverage area: Both Verizon and Cingular have a large coverage area, along with Spint/Nextel. There is no "best" because all three of these leading providers have gaps in their service, and where you will be at any time might make one or the other a better choice.
On the south fork of Long Island for example, Verizon has the most reliable service, but has more gaps than Cingular. So, if it's better to get 1 bar in 99 percent of the south fork than it is to get 3 bars in 80 percent, Cingular is the best choice. If you don't find yourself in the Verizon dead areas, then Verizon would be the better choice. The Nextel push-to-talk is a great feature, but out where I am, Nextel has a LOT(and I mean a LOT) of dead areas and is generally a bad choice. I am sure there are other places that have that situation reversed, but you get the idea. For those who will be sticking to the major cities or suburban areas, then pretty much any provider will provide decent coverage. I will note that T-mobile has a lot of AREAS where they just don't provide service, which is why they can't be considered one of the leaders in the industry.
Then you have services offered. Verizon is probably the best when it comes to multi-media services on your phone. To be honest, I've never felt that a cell phone is the best choice for music and such. Buy a dedicated MP3 player if you want to take your music or shows with you.
For more business type applications, Cingular seems to get the best deals from Blackberry and Palm for devices if you want/need to upgrade your phone, and the data services are pretty decent. I don't think that Verizon has as good an implementation on some of the data services for those who need them. Keep in mind that data speed is only one part of what makes a data service good or bad, it's also in the implementation of the service. As with coverage area, you need to look at where you are to decide which provider is the best. The key is that if you can't get a signal, it doesn't matter what services you may have or how good they are.
GPS is an area that more and more people look at as a feature on a phone. TelNav is a service that may sound like it competes, but it uses the data service to download the maps, which means it will be quite a bit slower than something like TomTom(which uses a SD card or can be transfered to your device if you have enough memory).
One thing people in Europe don't think about when they hear about gaps in service area is that some states in the USA are larger than most countries in Europe. In addition to this, Europe as a whole has a higher population density across the board, which makes it more cost effective to put coverage EVERYWHERE. There are towns in the USA that have a population of under 50, and if they are in a valley, there may not be cell phone coverage at all if there isn't a tower on a hill/mountain near the town.
So, look at what you want or use from your phone, because that will change which is the best or worst. We have three big providers, T-mobile is growing but still not a great choice for coverage areas, and then you have a bunch of smaller companies that only have coverage in major cities.
There was a time in the USA where calls made on "land lines" would cost by-the-minute. Back then, you would pay to be on the phone with someone down the road from you by the minute. As a result of this, people would spend less time talking on the phone. Eventually we got to the point where this was dropped, and only extended distance and long distance calls were charged by the minute. Even now, there may be areas where land lines have a by-the-minute cost structure, though I can't be sure if this really is something that is gone.
A large reason for this change is because the infrastructure is in place, and the need to expand the phone networks has dropped except in developing areas and leads into the whole "Voice Over IP" area. Since the local phone companies don't charge by the minute for local calls, we have seen companies like Vonage, and most companies that provide high speed access also are starting to provide phone service, including the local phone companies. THEY know that in the long run, the Internet is how phone calls will be placed, and even long distance by-the-minute is almost a thing of the past.
So, what makes VOIP work, since that is the direction ALL voice communication is going in is having bandwidth available. If a VOIP provider runs out of bandwidth in an area, the phone service breaks down, and customers will leave.
So, I will finally tie this to the purpose of this discussion. The land area in the USA is quite a bit larger than most people in Europe seem to feel(knowing the relative size of the USA in your head doesn't mean you really have a sense for just how big this country is). There are many rural areas that are undeveloped, which is something unusual since Europe has more towns per square kilometer than we have here in the USA. As a result, we don't have cell phone coverage in many areas, and there are many more areas where the coverage isn't very good. Cell phone companies have been expanding their networks to try to fill in the gaps in coverage, but it is a long and difficult process since many towns try to block the building of cell phone towers(the east end of Long Island, NY has this as a major issue).
Cell phones still have a limit on how long you can talk on them before the by-the-minute charges start to come into play, and the bandwidth the cell phone providers provide to the phones and on the network backbone is also significantly less than we see from land based phone and Internet access.
Skype wants to be able to just use the facilities that cell phone providers have spent a LOT of money to put into place without spending the money that goes into maintaining the cell phone infrastructure that is still very new. The US government, unlike most of the world, has not been pushing to get high speed Internet access into every home, and as a result, has less of a say about what cell phone providers should or should not do. If they have BILLIONS of dollars they want to spend to help improve the cell phone networks just so they can sell something that works anywhere, then they would probably get more support from people.
That's the key, too many people are out there who forget how expensive it is to maintain even a small IP network with enough bandwidth to allow for VOIP and data traffic to compete, let alone have enough cell phone towers to cover rural areas where hills can block the signal, so require more towers than the distance alone might imply would be needed.
One thing comes to mind on this issue, and it also is seen in companies that offer training and such. The idea of the company paying for treatment for a problem is that the company expects that the employee will return to be a productive employee after the treatment program has been completed. The question when an employee termination decision needs to be made is ALWAYS about the potential of said employee when it comes to work performance.
So, you have someone who is near the end of their employment with the company. It doesn't matter if it's a 2-week notice or a six month, if the treatment program is going to take longer than the employee will be working at the company, it doesn't make sense for the company to pay for treatment since there will be a negative return on the investment. This sort of logic seems to be lost on people who feel that their employer should pay for treatment.
Now, a deal that IBM could have cut would be that in exchange for the treatment, the employee would be required to work an additional two years AFTER the treatment has finished in order to get that pension, but again, that sort of offer would be based on the overall quality of work the employee normally provides.
In this case, was it age discrimination, or simply that there was an employee that broke the rules multiple times? We don't know his job performance history as well. People who meet expectations on their job but never do more, and are not considered a positive influence on their co-workers always will be at risk of losing their job. We only have the word of the former employee here, but I suspect it's a case of someone who really was ready to retire, was fired for viewing adult content while at work, and now hopes to collect more money than his pension would have given him in the first case.
DDO is a very different game than the "EQ clones". Most of the things that force you to waste your time have been removed, and true adventures are available from the time you create your character. Now, it must be noted that DDO being a different sort of game means that many of the things that waste your time in other games are also "missing". There is no crafting system, and at the moment there are fairly few areas designed just for exploration, though this number is growing.
As with just about any MMO out there, a free trial is available for you to try. The game also has updates just about every month that really have expanded the game and unlike many games, the new content tends to be even higher in quality than the adventures that were released when the game first launched.
Since DDO launched, the level cap has been raised once(from 10 to 12), an in-game mail system added, the patron system was implemented(which is similar to a faction system but with rewards), over 40 new adventures, and more, all which came as a part of the regular subscription fee. No paid expansion was required for players to get these extras, and more is in the works.
On Feb 28th, an overhaul of the enhancement system is set to launch, with module 4 planned for mid March(exact details on what will come with module 4 have not been released yet, but there have been hints).
If you have played but quit due to a lack of content after only a few months, the game really has grown a LOT, so you may want to take a look at the changes.
If you never checked out the game because you dislike the design of the other games out there, you should check it out, because it really IS different. The gameplay is not the sort where you just turn on an attack button and walk away from the keyboard until what you are fighting is dead, it's more involved than that. Sitting in one "camp" while mobs respawn is NOT a part of DDO, which really helps.
If you look at what has been going on in Asia, the governments there are pro-technology, and have been pushing things like broadband to become as common as the telephone. In the USA, we had the.com crash in 2000(the stock market crash), followed a year later by the REAL tech crash that saw unemployment rates in the San Francisco Bay area rise to official numbers upwards of 9 percent, but with some estimates going as high as 20 percent.
What did the federal government(and state government for that matter) do to help prevent a loss of jobs, or to encourage a recovery in the tech sector? NOTHING! California extended unemployment benefits for those out of work, but there was nothing done to try to slow or stop the loss of all those jobs as company after company went out of business. Even after the worst of it, and recovery started, the government has done very little to encourage things like broadband in every home, or other initiatives we have seen/heard about in other countries.
The problem I have with performance/watt is that it distorts the true "value" to the system owner. You NEED to break it down, because while power usage is important, the real issue comes down to "is the higher performance WORTH the extra power the chip draws". I personally don't CARE about performance/watt, except when the power draw is excessive, and I believe that is how MOST people will look at it.
Most laptop processors have a higher performance/watt than desktop processors because they are designed with battery life in mind. What people want is a processor that goes faster, but doesn't suck a huge amount of power to get that performance increase. The Pentium 4 got a LOT of flack toward the end with Prescott because the power demand was so far above the benefits that extra power provided. If it were only ten percent more than an Athlon 64 at the time, then no one would have been bothered by it, unless you are talking about a data center where the price for electric power is a very important consideration.
The only reason the whole fab process improvements is even brought up is because Intel is afraid of AMD. Intel has amazing resources when it comes to money and the ability to pay a lot more into their R&D, but in spite of this, AMD was seen as the performance leader before the Core 2 Duo came out, and AMD has the potential to come back and beat Intel again once K8L is released. It goes to show that if you spend some time looking at how to improve the overall system design and how things fit together, performance will go up a LOT.
The other possible reason for this(aside from Microsoft being greedy), is that the possibility of bugs is higher when using virtualization software compared to running Windows Vista directly. Remember that by buying Windows Vista(or any other version) gives you a certain amount of paid support to resolve the problem. Trying to isolate a problem in an OS that is running under VMWare will be a LOT harder, and if the support is done on a per-case basis, the cost of supporting these users will be a LOT higher.
I can picture it now, customer picks up Vista Home Basic and tries to run it under VMWare and has a problem. If supported, customer calls Microsoft, and spends roughly 250 hours dealing with Microsoft support getting things to work. That is in comparison to the 1 hour or less it might take from just installing it on a machine directly. From a Microsoft perspective, that is an EXPENSIVE issue, and Microsoft of course would want to limit this sort of thing. They STILL don't want to support Vista at any time, but by limiting support to expensive versions, they cut the number of users who might even want to call support by such a huge amount that it's worth it.
The real problem that most people in the USA have with the government is the high cost of EVERYTHING the government does. If it would cost a company $1000 to do something, the government will pay $10,000 to do the same thing. Now, due to the problems this causes when it comes to money, it's no wonder NASA runs into funding issues for projects.
So, if by outsourcing all of these different things to the private sector is costing more money than it should, the proper solution then is to move many things in-house. If the private sector is NOT able to compete favorably with the cost of doing it in-house, then the jobs should be done in-house. Let the private sector compete with direct government employees when it comes to getting work done.
If it would cost $1,000,000,000 to design a new space craft and build the first and second attempts on that new design, then if the private sector can do it for $800,000,000, then THEY get the money. The real key is that the government could do it for $1,000,000,000, but pays the private sector $200,000,000,000 for it, thus going way over budget and nothing gets done.
Steel mills, auto plants, and so on that have been closed up for years could be taken over by the government(they are dead and not being used anyway), and people could be put to work making the goods the government/military needs. I'm all for democracy and letting the private sector do work for the government, but not when it ends up costing the government more money than it should.
I swear, the reason the government is always out of money is because not a single person in the US government seems to understand that contractors ALWAYS cost more money for the same labor as a direct employee. There are MANY people out there getting paid $45,000/year that do the same job as government employees that get paid $110,000/year. THAT is the problem, and this issue with NASA is just one symptom.
No mention of Diablo, Warcraft 2, or Neverwinter Nights? Starcraft was mentioned by several other people already. Sure, there are some huge first person shooters out there, but most of them don't really break new ground when it comes to multiplayer.
It also strikes me that it's all about the game consoles, which were NOT the first to allow multi-player(except for the classic arcade games like Gauntlet and X-men).
The real problem is that the "violent entertainment" is not what makes people violent, but something that is wrong with certain individuals. Some children are mentally defective, and enjoy hurting anything they can, including dogs, cats, pet rats, smaller children, bugs, you name it.
In the past, these sorts of children were generally punished, and it was accepted in society that a child that is "a bad seed" gets punished. In today's society though, even a spanking is considered wrong. Parents are AFRAID to punish their children for being "bad", and that's the real problem with the world today. I am NOT saying that abuse is wrong, but a proper fear of punishment is how most children grow up with a proper sense that certain things are NOT acceptable behaviors.
So, as a society, we need to make sure that those who have something wrong with them do NOT get access to "training materials". The key is to identify these individuals before they go too far and start killing real people. A normal teenager can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, so they can play violent video games and it won't be a problem. A dangerous teenager is one that will play a violent video game, or watch a movie, or read a book, and duplicate the violent actions they learn about.
In most cases, a "mentally defective" person may get better with proper behavior modification techniques, but due to the fear of lawsuits, these techniques are not allowed, even if they are the best hope for society. As a result, proper treatment is often lacking for these people, and we have idiots like JT involved in their cases.
If Intel had been paying money under the table, that money could be showing up anywhere in Dell's accounting. As a result, Dell sales could have gone negative for quite a while, but this "under the table" money could have been spent to make it LOOK like Dell sales were higher than they really were, or the money could have shown up anywhere to make the books look better.
Since Intel could not legally give Dell the money(due to the anti-trust legal issues AMD has brought up) to keep AMD out of the picture, they needed to keep this whole thing quiet.
What looks better, buying something for half price and selling something at normal prices, or buying something at normal prices and selling for normal prices? It's not an acceptable accounting practice to take in money that SHOULD be under the cost of goods purchased and then apply that money in other places. Dell could have been losing money for a long time in different areas, but was able to cover it up due to the "under the table" deal.
AMD has yet to release a quad-core CPU. The whole QuadFX(aka 4x4) is a dual-processor system that is designed to be a consumer level platform that supports two processors. The reason for QuadFX to be worth looking at as a platform is that you will be able to swap out the two dual-core processors for two quad-core processors starting around the middle of 2007.
AMD is really starting to hype their true next generation core design, not just quad-core. This is something that many people seem to be closing their eyes to about this particular issue. The current AMD processors are based on the AMD K8 design(regardless of fab process, amounts of cache, or tweaks to the design). The new stuff being released this summer is based on what is called the K8L design. Yes, it's still the same basic design as the current K8, but you could say that Intel's Core designs are based on the Pentium-M, which was based on the Pentium 3, which was based on the Pentium 2, which was based on the Pentium Pro. Obviously there will be similarities here to previous processors, but the progress between the last implementation from either company should not be ignored.
The Pentium-M was a great laptop processor, but if you tried to make it compete without a LOT of changes with the desktop processors from AMD or Intel at the time, it would NOT have done well on the desktop except in the low power usage area. So, how many changes did Intel make to turn it into the Core line of processors?
The Athlon 64 is a great processor, but AMD knows that it doesn't compete well against the Core line of chips. So, they are doing to it what Intel did to the Pentium-M, do a HUGE overhaul of the design. Intel hyped their Core chips well before release, even while the Pentium 4 was being beaten left and right by the Athlon 64, so now the shoe is on the other foot. If the new K8L design is as good as the hype indicates, then not only will the AMD quad-core beat Intel's quad-core by a good amount, but dual-core processors based on the same design should also compete very well, though probably not quite as well as the quad-core.
The reason why quad-core might compete better is based on the connections between the CPU and memory. Remember that Intel is still using the CPU-chipset-memory design while AMD connects the CPU to the memory directly. As a result, when you go from dual-core to quad-core on a native design, Intel processors will still need to go through the chipset to get to the memory. Unless the bus speed is really increased to provide that extra bandwidth, the Intel processors will end up starved for memory. In fact, that's a part of why you see so much cache on Intel processors currently, to compensate for the old design that Intel is still married to.
Intel still hasn't released a native quad-core implementation btw, they need to go through the system bus to connect each pair of cores on their "quad-core" processors.
If you look at how quickly movies were released on DVD, it was actually a fast process, and as a result, people started to buy DVD players. Now, the price wasn't $800 or $1000 for the cheapest player, it was closer to being $400 initially, and moving down to the $200 range within two years. As a result, the move to DVD was very smooth due to a reasonable price, even for the early adopters.
Now, look at stand-alone players for the new formats. Can you find one for $400 right now? Of course not, unless you go out and buy a game console. That's where the flaw is here, the group they are trying to sell the new formats to. While there are SOME gamers who will watch movies on their console, the vast majority of people out there have no desire to buy a console just so they can watch a HD movie, regardless of the format. The whole HDCP issue, downgraded quality if your screen doesn't support it, price of movies on the new standard, and the price of a HDTV itself is a good reason why people have stayed away.
So, if they want to release a player for $200, or even $400, they will get people to start buying, but until then, don't expect many people to care enough where they will pay an additional $1000 for a player, plus however much it would cost to buy movies on the new format. In many cases, the quality of DVD was enough for many movies.
It strikes me as sad when all of these studies are done without a basic understanding of the human condition which can easily explain why this may happen. I'll go into the basics of my own view on the subject, and let you decide if I am as off-base as the other people out there.
People tend to react to stress in one of two ways, it either pushes people to find active ways to release the stress(running, or doing other activities), or it pushes people into doing less active things to try to recover the energy lost due to stress alone. It's generally one or the other, and it is a rare person that ends up doing both.
Now, in the case of urban sprawl, you tend to have two things that happen. Property values go up, and the availability of middle to upper tier jobs goes up.
The higher property values mean the cost of living in the area is higher as a whole, which makes it harder to afford to live. This raises the stress level quite a bit, where most people are worried about money in some way. The standard of living is also higher, and it is human nature to want to keep up with the neighbors in terms of luxury items. You don't have a 10-year-old Ford car when all your neighbors have BMWs for example. So, people tend to live closer to the edge of their available resources.
The jobs in the middle and upper tiers tend to be less active as well when it comes to "white collar" jobs. So, the jobs are less active, and the stress level tends to be higher as well. When people in this type of job work a full day, you get back to the original comment about how people respond to stress when it comes to recreational activities. Some run or get active, but many will just get home, and want to do NOTHING, or go out drinking and socializing with friends.
If the friends are the type for socializing after work to release that stress, that isn't an active way to deal with it for the most part, and as people get into their 30s, they tend to start putting on weight as a result(with some exceptions).
The solution to this would be a more Japanese approach, where companies encourage employees to work out, either before work begins, or after work. In the case of communities in "urban sprawl" areas though, many or most businesses tend to be small, in the 1-25 employee range without the resources to pay for gym memberships, and the office space available doesn't have enough "extra" space for a weight room or other recreational room in addition to the normal "break room".
So, why do these communities tend to have people get "soft"? It's because the economy is out of control, with prices going up and up and up, with employee salaries not going up as quickly as the cost of living. Outdoor activities also tend to be in controlled environments, which can also feel like work, and drive people away.
I use the term, "Ignorance is always forgivable, stupidity is not". When someone doesn't know something, that's fine. When you need to show them the same thing five different times in a one week period, and it's fairly simple stuff, then it's clear where the problem is.
I've been working in the industry since the early 1990s, and have seen a LOT of people on both sides, both the people who need help, and the people who are there to help. In many cases, the problem STARTS with the people who need help really have no desire to learn even the basics, and over time, the IT staff grow to learn to really dislike the people who really just won't learn some very simple and basic things.
For example, when it comes to a Microsoft operating system(no matter which one), rebooting your computer is a very basic thing to do to see if that will resolve a problem. Let's face it, after three days without being rebooted, a computer that sees a lot of use NEEDS to be rebooted to avoid problems. Yes, it depends on the applications used, hardware drivers, and so on, but generally, three days is around the longest a Microsoft based machine should be running without being rebooted.
If those who constantly look to IT people can't be bothered to learn that basic solution, the IT people KNOW that the person looking for help will be more work than most people they need to help as a part of their job. Repeating the same questions to the exact same people when trying to help them, and having the solution be exactly the same gets old. If the person who needs help is an...unpleasant individual, then it is VERY understandable that the IT staff will be a bit unpleasant when dealing with that clueless person.
Programmers are in a different category than IT workers because it is a different specialty. Programmers tend to get treated poorly by many companies, have long hours, with pay that may or may not compensate for the hours put in. The project leads may not encourage communication between employees as well, so you end up with skilled workers in a bad environment who are kept away from non-programmers. The end result is that many programmers are encouraged not to interact with others, and so their professional communication abilities may degrade over time. Possible resentment for bad environments can make the problem worse. This disconnect isn't good for anyone, yet some companies push to keep things that way.
Many people LOVE to point fingers at the IT workers when it comes to finding fault, but in many cases, it really isn't their fault. When an IT user uses the term PEBKAC, it really does apply in many cases, and it takes a tough individual to keep a positive attitude, and in no way should be looked at as a male/female thing.
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Could it be your GPU/Video card sucks and you are still trying to run Aeroglass? People with sub-standard parts in their computer have a good reason not to upgrade to Vista, but that's a different issue from looking at the OS itself and trying to judge the merits.
As for the stupid thing that keeps second guessing the user whenever they try to run a program, that garbage can be turned off.
Your next argument will probably be that a number of applications don't run under Vista, but the same could be said about the transition from Windows 98/ME to XP. Some things just won't work due to the driver model being different. Time will fix that, and it can be argued if it's a problem with the design of the OS, or of the applications in question.
Vista isn't a BAD OS, it's just not an OS people should upgrade to on their existing computer that came with XP. At the same time, I wish that Microsoft would properly layer the OS so that you could run the machine without all the extra stuff running on top of it. There SHOULD be an advanced install option that asks what I want to do with the machine, and then properly enables and disables the different services. Make it so applications are forced to do a check and enable required services instead of having the OS turn on a lot of things "just in case" an application might need it.
Linux with a "typical" install you see from Redhat will also install a lot of extra junk that most people won't use. The real advantage that Linux(most dists) has over MS Windows(any version), is that Linux gives the advanced user the tools during and after installation to select what components they want and don't want.
The problem with this sort of argument is that the country has changed a LOT since 1968. Looking at the past may give perspective on the present and future, but it doesn't always apply.
For starters, what the political parties stand for TODAY has changed from what they used to stand for in the past, and most people don't seem to understand that. In both parties, there are conservative and liberal groups of people. In both parties you have those who are wealthy, and those who are poor. So, you need to look at the approach to issues that the parties TEND to use.
The Republican politicians of today tend to feel that if you help businesses, that will give those businesses a chance to hire people, which in theory will help the economy. This is the trickle-down approach. You see it in the current administration where huge corporations get more help from the government.
The Democratic politicians tend to lean toward policies to help the lower to middle class in terms of money. This includes welfare and other programs which drain money from the government, but at the same time includes policies that help the low to middle class worker improve their situation in life, which boosts sales of both products and services.
When either side gets too much power or control though, or bad candidates run from either party because there are a lack of GOOD candidates who are seen as electable, then things get bad when they end up in control. There will be "bad people" from both parties who get into positions of control, and the voters need to learn how to see those who who abuse their power for what they really are.
You have a LOT of people who blindly vote Democrat or Republican in each election, mostly because they are blinded by the OLD ways of looking at the political parties. Individuals need to be looked at across the board, for all elected positions, but most people only know about those running for president, congress, and the senate. Without doing a lot of research, most people don't really know about the 10-15 other people they vote for except which party they belong to.
So, don't complain too much about things that went on 30 or more years ago, because political parties and really the entire country has changed a lot. Things are NOT the same as they were in the 1960s, 70s, or 80s. It can be argued that things are still fairly similar to the 90s, though the tech boom is over, and there isn't a single industry in this country except drugs(the legal kind) and to a lesser extent, military supply contractors, that is prospering right now.
Intel tends to push the full "Intel processor+Intel chipset" which also favors using Intel graphics. Pretty much every AMD based machine uses either an AMD/ATI chipset, or a NVIDIA chipset with the appropriate graphics. For Vista, the "experience" favors having a decent GPU, so AMD is the better platform there on the low end.
Every advertisement out there is about the low end of the dual-core, with a few mentions of the higher end products. So, you are looking at Athlon 64 X2 machines, or Core 2 Duo machines. Benchmark a low end Core 2, and you include the Intel video. It is NOT a good demonstration of Vista with a low end Core 2 with Intel graphics based machine.
The thing about Linux distributions as a whole is that you have the option during OS install about what packages you want to install. This means that if security is a concern, you can go through the package selection during the OS install, and pick what you want to install in the first place. This means that for those who do this, if you don't need a mail transport agent on the machine, you have the option to leave it out in many cases. By limiting what packages you install on the machine, security can improve.
Debian as a good example of this breaks up the distribution into different categories, from base packages(the required stuff), to optional. If base has a security bug, there is a patch for it VERY VERY VERY quickly in most situations. If it is an obscure package, then it may take longer to be patched, but at the same time, because it isn't in "base", not everyone will have that package installed, so it's impact can be questioned.
If you go with a default package selection for what you want to use your machine for, then there WILL be a bunch of packages installed as a part of that set. Again though, that doesn't affect everyone with that distribution, just those who go with that type of install.
Microsoft doesn't provide the option during install to select what we want or don't want installed. If it is a desktop machine without a wireless card, Microsoft will not only install the Wireless Zero Configuration service, but will turn the thing on. If there is a security hole in it, even those who shouldn't have to care will need to be concerned.
So, if you run Linux, and you don't install a web browser, then you will be free of any "critical" bugs that may be announced for the web browser in question. So, even if you have Redhat and there is a critical bug announced, there is the potential that it won't apply to everyone who has a Redhat based system.
Every business is different, and as a result, the best way to run it will be based on what the business is, and if that will work for you.
Look as customer communication. How do your customers contact you, and if you go to a distributed environment, how will that affect your customers calling in? Do you have a receptionist who answers the phones?
Do most of your employees work in the office, or do they come in to work, but then go out to service their employees while spending only an hour or so in the office each day?
Do you and your employees live in the same area, or do you all spend 30-90 minutes each way driving in to work?
Do customers have the ability to talk directly to the employees? This may sound like a strange question, but not all companies want their employees to be contacted directly, and instead will have the people answering the main number take messages.
Being able to talk face to face with your employees on a regular basis is important here. You also won't be able to see if a new employee is doing things the right way or the wrong way if you let EVERYONE work from home. In some cases though, it makes sense to have SOME people who can work from home, but others who MUST show up at some sort of office.
Many people who read Slashdot tend to be focused on technology to the exclusion of other things, including real world relationships. So, looking at pictures, porn, or even a fantasy of meeting an attractive and intelligent woman tends to be the closest they will be to a relationship for years at a time(or in some cases, ever).
On the lighter side, the 85 percent rule states that 85 percent of the human species is genetically stupid, and nothing any of us do will give these people a clue. There is an additional 10 percent that have been corrupted by exposure to the 85 percent, so they too become stupid. This leaves us with only 5 percent of the species even worth knowing.
With that rule in mind, many people would prefer a fantasy that they will find someone of the opposite sex that are both intelligent and beautiful, so go figure that on Slashdot we find people who post about the appearance of a woman. They simply NEED a real social life, but can't figure out how to meet a woman(or man) in real life and get into a relationship.
From what I remember from my college days, the problem with diesel engines is that while the design is better in a number of ways, there are issues with starting the engine when it is cold outside(which is why you have heating mechanisms to get around this problem). In places like middle to southern California where it doesn't get that cold, diesel makes a lot more sense than the midwest and northeast.
Back in the mid to late 1970s, computers were these things you only heard about in movies or TV shows for those of us growing up back then. Sure there were some people who used computers, or who had access to them, but access to computers was something that only very large corporations had, or schools, or certain government jobs(but not all). The closest most people got to a computer was a terminal(a screen with keyboard that connected to a computer).
The result of this is that there was something mysterious about computers. When the first personal computers became available to the general public(many will remember the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 models 1,3, and 4 with the model 2 being more of a business model, and the Apple 2 series), these machines became the first ones available to those who didn't have enough information to build their own computers. They were fun, allowed for playing some games, and this inspired many to continue to learn how computers worked. There was also a good amount of encouragement given by teachers back in those days and into the 1980s.
So, between having an interest in computers and technology by some, and being encouraged by others to continue learning, Computer Science grew in popularity. As time went on, and computers became more and more common in the 1980s into the 1990s, there was continued support by those in education and in general for those who showed a true interest in computers.
So, what happened to change this SHOULD be the question being asked, not just looking around and complaining about the current situation. As technology became more and more common, the number of jobs grew in the sector until the tech crash in 2001-2002 when the real down-turn in the industry really started to show up. With many jobs lost, there was an excessive number of computer science trained people around.
If you were in high school at that point and you were hearing about tech jobs being hard to get, switching focus might have seemed like a good idea. For parents and teachers, encouraging people to go into a field where the job market wasn't very good also wouldn't seem like a good idea. And so, here we are, in 2007, and the job market has gotten a bit better but still isn't booming. Entry-level positions are hard(or harder) to find because of outsourcing. Reports of how programmers are treated by companies(generally long long hours with little appreciation), and a lack of control in the development process as a junior level programmer scares people away.
The computer industry has also transitioned from being "we need programmers because there are no pre-made applications that do what we want" to having different specialized areas. Now you have networking, system administration, Information Technology, database administration, and other specialized areas. As a result, those with an interest in computers will select a major that fits the area they have an interest in. Why go Computer Science if a MIS degree will get you where you want to go?
So, the way to get students interested in Computer Science is to encourage them that it is an area that still needs people, and that it's not a major for those who are going to end up as a "code monkey". To be honest, the computer industry NEEDS true computer scientists since most applications seem to have been slapped together by people who may be able to write code, but can't figure out how to design an application(which is why multi-threaded applications are an exception in the MS Windows environment).
When you are looking at 1000 machines, it goes a bit beyond just using DHCP and DNS because of the routing that SHOULD be involved in that large of an environment. If you use a straight DHCP, you STILL need to set up a system to identify WHERE a given IP address might be as well, just in case something illegal or just against company policy is going on.
Dynamic is nice if you plan to be hands-off, but it CAN be a royal pain if you need to be responsible for the environment.
When it comes down to it, you have a number of things to look at:
Coverage area: Both Verizon and Cingular have a large coverage area, along with Spint/Nextel. There is no "best" because all three of these leading providers have gaps in their service, and where you will be at any time might make one or the other a better choice.
On the south fork of Long Island for example, Verizon has the most reliable service, but has more gaps than Cingular. So, if it's better to get 1 bar in 99 percent of the south fork than it is to get 3 bars in 80 percent, Cingular is the best choice. If you don't find yourself in the Verizon dead areas, then Verizon would be the better choice. The Nextel push-to-talk is a great feature, but out where I am, Nextel has a LOT(and I mean a LOT) of dead areas and is generally a bad choice. I am sure there are other places that have that situation reversed, but you get the idea. For those who will be sticking to the major cities or suburban areas, then pretty much any provider will provide decent coverage. I will note that T-mobile has a lot of AREAS where they just don't provide service, which is why they can't be considered one of the leaders in the industry.
Then you have services offered. Verizon is probably the best when it comes to multi-media services on your phone. To be honest, I've never felt that a cell phone is the best choice for music and such. Buy a dedicated MP3 player if you want to take your music or shows with you.
For more business type applications, Cingular seems to get the best deals from Blackberry and Palm for devices if you want/need to upgrade your phone, and the data services are pretty decent. I don't think that Verizon has as good an implementation on some of the data services for those who need them. Keep in mind that data speed is only one part of what makes a data service good or bad, it's also in the implementation of the service. As with coverage area, you need to look at where you are to decide which provider is the best. The key is that if you can't get a signal, it doesn't matter what services you may have or how good they are.
GPS is an area that more and more people look at as a feature on a phone. TelNav is a service that may sound like it competes, but it uses the data service to download the maps, which means it will be quite a bit slower than something like TomTom(which uses a SD card or can be transfered to your device if you have enough memory).
One thing people in Europe don't think about when they hear about gaps in service area is that some states in the USA are larger than most countries in Europe. In addition to this, Europe as a whole has a higher population density across the board, which makes it more cost effective to put coverage EVERYWHERE. There are towns in the USA that have a population of under 50, and if they are in a valley, there may not be cell phone coverage at all if there isn't a tower on a hill/mountain near the town.
So, look at what you want or use from your phone, because that will change which is the best or worst. We have three big providers, T-mobile is growing but still not a great choice for coverage areas, and then you have a bunch of smaller companies that only have coverage in major cities.
There was a time in the USA where calls made on "land lines" would cost by-the-minute. Back then, you would pay to be on the phone with someone down the road from you by the minute. As a result of this, people would spend less time talking on the phone. Eventually we got to the point where this was dropped, and only extended distance and long distance calls were charged by the minute. Even now, there may be areas where land lines have a by-the-minute cost structure, though I can't be sure if this really is something that is gone.
A large reason for this change is because the infrastructure is in place, and the need to expand the phone networks has dropped except in developing areas and leads into the whole "Voice Over IP" area. Since the local phone companies don't charge by the minute for local calls, we have seen companies like Vonage, and most companies that provide high speed access also are starting to provide phone service, including the local phone companies. THEY know that in the long run, the Internet is how phone calls will be placed, and even long distance by-the-minute is almost a thing of the past.
So, what makes VOIP work, since that is the direction ALL voice communication is going in is having bandwidth available. If a VOIP provider runs out of bandwidth in an area, the phone service breaks down, and customers will leave.
So, I will finally tie this to the purpose of this discussion. The land area in the USA is quite a bit larger than most people in Europe seem to feel(knowing the relative size of the USA in your head doesn't mean you really have a sense for just how big this country is). There are many rural areas that are undeveloped, which is something unusual since Europe has more towns per square kilometer than we have here in the USA. As a result, we don't have cell phone coverage in many areas, and there are many more areas where the coverage isn't very good. Cell phone companies have been expanding their networks to try to fill in the gaps in coverage, but it is a long and difficult process since many towns try to block the building of cell phone towers(the east end of Long Island, NY has this as a major issue).
Cell phones still have a limit on how long you can talk on them before the by-the-minute charges start to come into play, and the bandwidth the cell phone providers provide to the phones and on the network backbone is also significantly less than we see from land based phone and Internet access.
Skype wants to be able to just use the facilities that cell phone providers have spent a LOT of money to put into place without spending the money that goes into maintaining the cell phone infrastructure that is still very new. The US government, unlike most of the world, has not been pushing to get high speed Internet access into every home, and as a result, has less of a say about what cell phone providers should or should not do. If they have BILLIONS of dollars they want to spend to help improve the cell phone networks just so they can sell something that works anywhere, then they would probably get more support from people.
That's the key, too many people are out there who forget how expensive it is to maintain even a small IP network with enough bandwidth to allow for VOIP and data traffic to compete, let alone have enough cell phone towers to cover rural areas where hills can block the signal, so require more towers than the distance alone might imply would be needed.
One thing comes to mind on this issue, and it also is seen in companies that offer training and such. The idea of the company paying for treatment for a problem is that the company expects that the employee will return to be a productive employee after the treatment program has been completed. The question when an employee termination decision needs to be made is ALWAYS about the potential of said employee when it comes to work performance.
So, you have someone who is near the end of their employment with the company. It doesn't matter if it's a 2-week notice or a six month, if the treatment program is going to take longer than the employee will be working at the company, it doesn't make sense for the company to pay for treatment since there will be a negative return on the investment. This sort of logic seems to be lost on people who feel that their employer should pay for treatment.
Now, a deal that IBM could have cut would be that in exchange for the treatment, the employee would be required to work an additional two years AFTER the treatment has finished in order to get that pension, but again, that sort of offer would be based on the overall quality of work the employee normally provides.
In this case, was it age discrimination, or simply that there was an employee that broke the rules multiple times? We don't know his job performance history as well. People who meet expectations on their job but never do more, and are not considered a positive influence on their co-workers always will be at risk of losing their job. We only have the word of the former employee here, but I suspect it's a case of someone who really was ready to retire, was fired for viewing adult content while at work, and now hopes to collect more money than his pension would have given him in the first case.
DDO is a very different game than the "EQ clones". Most of the things that force you to waste your time have been removed, and true adventures are available from the time you create your character. Now, it must be noted that DDO being a different sort of game means that many of the things that waste your time in other games are also "missing". There is no crafting system, and at the moment there are fairly few areas designed just for exploration, though this number is growing.
As with just about any MMO out there, a free trial is available for you to try. The game also has updates just about every month that really have expanded the game and unlike many games, the new content tends to be even higher in quality than the adventures that were released when the game first launched.
Since DDO launched, the level cap has been raised once(from 10 to 12), an in-game mail system added, the patron system was implemented(which is similar to a faction system but with rewards), over 40 new adventures, and more, all which came as a part of the regular subscription fee. No paid expansion was required for players to get these extras, and more is in the works.
On Feb 28th, an overhaul of the enhancement system is set to launch, with module 4 planned for mid March(exact details on what will come with module 4 have not been released yet, but there have been hints).
If you have played but quit due to a lack of content after only a few months, the game really has grown a LOT, so you may want to take a look at the changes.
If you never checked out the game because you dislike the design of the other games out there, you should check it out, because it really IS different. The gameplay is not the sort where you just turn on an attack button and walk away from the keyboard until what you are fighting is dead, it's more involved than that. Sitting in one "camp" while mobs respawn is NOT a part of DDO, which really helps.
If you look at what has been going on in Asia, the governments there are pro-technology, and have been pushing things like broadband to become as common as the telephone. In the USA, we had the .com crash in 2000(the stock market crash), followed a year later by the REAL tech crash that saw unemployment rates in the San Francisco Bay area rise to official numbers upwards of 9 percent, but with some estimates going as high as 20 percent.
What did the federal government(and state government for that matter) do to help prevent a loss of jobs, or to encourage a recovery in the tech sector? NOTHING! California extended unemployment benefits for those out of work, but there was nothing done to try to slow or stop the loss of all those jobs as company after company went out of business. Even after the worst of it, and recovery started, the government has done very little to encourage things like broadband in every home, or other initiatives we have seen/heard about in other countries.
The problem I have with performance/watt is that it distorts the true "value" to the system owner. You NEED to break it down, because while power usage is important, the real issue comes down to "is the higher performance WORTH the extra power the chip draws". I personally don't CARE about performance/watt, except when the power draw is excessive, and I believe that is how MOST people will look at it.
Most laptop processors have a higher performance/watt than desktop processors because they are designed with battery life in mind. What people want is a processor that goes faster, but doesn't suck a huge amount of power to get that performance increase. The Pentium 4 got a LOT of flack toward the end with Prescott because the power demand was so far above the benefits that extra power provided. If it were only ten percent more than an Athlon 64 at the time, then no one would have been bothered by it, unless you are talking about a data center where the price for electric power is a very important consideration.
The only reason the whole fab process improvements is even brought up is because Intel is afraid of AMD. Intel has amazing resources when it comes to money and the ability to pay a lot more into their R&D, but in spite of this, AMD was seen as the performance leader before the Core 2 Duo came out, and AMD has the potential to come back and beat Intel again once K8L is released. It goes to show that if you spend some time looking at how to improve the overall system design and how things fit together, performance will go up a LOT.
The other possible reason for this(aside from Microsoft being greedy), is that the possibility of bugs is higher when using virtualization software compared to running Windows Vista directly. Remember that by buying Windows Vista(or any other version) gives you a certain amount of paid support to resolve the problem. Trying to isolate a problem in an OS that is running under VMWare will be a LOT harder, and if the support is done on a per-case basis, the cost of supporting these users will be a LOT higher.
I can picture it now, customer picks up Vista Home Basic and tries to run it under VMWare and has a problem. If supported, customer calls Microsoft, and spends roughly 250 hours dealing with Microsoft support getting things to work. That is in comparison to the 1 hour or less it might take from just installing it on a machine directly. From a Microsoft perspective, that is an EXPENSIVE issue, and Microsoft of course would want to limit this sort of thing. They STILL don't want to support Vista at any time, but by limiting support to expensive versions, they cut the number of users who might even want to call support by such a huge amount that it's worth it.
The real problem that most people in the USA have with the government is the high cost of EVERYTHING the government does. If it would cost a company $1000 to do something, the government will pay $10,000 to do the same thing. Now, due to the problems this causes when it comes to money, it's no wonder NASA runs into funding issues for projects.
So, if by outsourcing all of these different things to the private sector is costing more money than it should, the proper solution then is to move many things in-house. If the private sector is NOT able to compete favorably with the cost of doing it in-house, then the jobs should be done in-house. Let the private sector compete with direct government employees when it comes to getting work done.
If it would cost $1,000,000,000 to design a new space craft and build the first and second attempts on that new design, then if the private sector can do it for $800,000,000, then THEY get the money. The real key is that the government could do it for $1,000,000,000, but pays the private sector $200,000,000,000 for it, thus going way over budget and nothing gets done.
Steel mills, auto plants, and so on that have been closed up for years could be taken over by the government(they are dead and not being used anyway), and people could be put to work making the goods the government/military needs. I'm all for democracy and letting the private sector do work for the government, but not when it ends up costing the government more money than it should.
I swear, the reason the government is always out of money is because not a single person in the US government seems to understand that contractors ALWAYS cost more money for the same labor as a direct employee. There are MANY people out there getting paid $45,000/year that do the same job as government employees that get paid $110,000/year. THAT is the problem, and this issue with NASA is just one symptom.
No mention of Diablo, Warcraft 2, or Neverwinter Nights? Starcraft was mentioned by several other people already. Sure, there are some huge first person shooters out there, but most of them don't really break new ground when it comes to multiplayer.
It also strikes me that it's all about the game consoles, which were NOT the first to allow multi-player(except for the classic arcade games like Gauntlet and X-men).
The real problem is that the "violent entertainment" is not what makes people violent, but something that is wrong with certain individuals. Some children are mentally defective, and enjoy hurting anything they can, including dogs, cats, pet rats, smaller children, bugs, you name it.
In the past, these sorts of children were generally punished, and it was accepted in society that a child that is "a bad seed" gets punished. In today's society though, even a spanking is considered wrong. Parents are AFRAID to punish their children for being "bad", and that's the real problem with the world today. I am NOT saying that abuse is wrong, but a proper fear of punishment is how most children grow up with a proper sense that certain things are NOT acceptable behaviors.
So, as a society, we need to make sure that those who have something wrong with them do NOT get access to "training materials". The key is to identify these individuals before they go too far and start killing real people. A normal teenager can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, so they can play violent video games and it won't be a problem. A dangerous teenager is one that will play a violent video game, or watch a movie, or read a book, and duplicate the violent actions they learn about.
In most cases, a "mentally defective" person may get better with proper behavior modification techniques, but due to the fear of lawsuits, these techniques are not allowed, even if they are the best hope for society. As a result, proper treatment is often lacking for these people, and we have idiots like JT involved in their cases.
If Intel had been paying money under the table, that money could be showing up anywhere in Dell's accounting. As a result, Dell sales could have gone negative for quite a while, but this "under the table" money could have been spent to make it LOOK like Dell sales were higher than they really were, or the money could have shown up anywhere to make the books look better.
Since Intel could not legally give Dell the money(due to the anti-trust legal issues AMD has brought up) to keep AMD out of the picture, they needed to keep this whole thing quiet.
What looks better, buying something for half price and selling something at normal prices, or buying something at normal prices and selling for normal prices? It's not an acceptable accounting practice to take in money that SHOULD be under the cost of goods purchased and then apply that money in other places. Dell could have been losing money for a long time in different areas, but was able to cover it up due to the "under the table" deal.
AMD has yet to release a quad-core CPU. The whole QuadFX(aka 4x4) is a dual-processor system that is designed to be a consumer level platform that supports two processors. The reason for QuadFX to be worth looking at as a platform is that you will be able to swap out the two dual-core processors for two quad-core processors starting around the middle of 2007.
AMD is really starting to hype their true next generation core design, not just quad-core. This is something that many people seem to be closing their eyes to about this particular issue. The current AMD processors are based on the AMD K8 design(regardless of fab process, amounts of cache, or tweaks to the design). The new stuff being released this summer is based on what is called the K8L design. Yes, it's still the same basic design as the current K8, but you could say that Intel's Core designs are based on the Pentium-M, which was based on the Pentium 3, which was based on the Pentium 2, which was based on the Pentium Pro. Obviously there will be similarities here to previous processors, but the progress between the last implementation from either company should not be ignored.
The Pentium-M was a great laptop processor, but if you tried to make it compete without a LOT of changes with the desktop processors from AMD or Intel at the time, it would NOT have done well on the desktop except in the low power usage area. So, how many changes did Intel make to turn it into the Core line of processors?
The Athlon 64 is a great processor, but AMD knows that it doesn't compete well against the Core line of chips. So, they are doing to it what Intel did to the Pentium-M, do a HUGE overhaul of the design. Intel hyped their Core chips well before release, even while the Pentium 4 was being beaten left and right by the Athlon 64, so now the shoe is on the other foot. If the new K8L design is as good as the hype indicates, then not only will the AMD quad-core beat Intel's quad-core by a good amount, but dual-core processors based on the same design should also compete very well, though probably not quite as well as the quad-core.
The reason why quad-core might compete better is based on the connections between the CPU and memory. Remember that Intel is still using the CPU-chipset-memory design while AMD connects the CPU to the memory directly. As a result, when you go from dual-core to quad-core on a native design, Intel processors will still need to go through the chipset to get to the memory. Unless the bus speed is really increased to provide that extra bandwidth, the Intel processors will end up starved for memory. In fact, that's a part of why you see so much cache on Intel processors currently, to compensate for the old design that Intel is still married to.
Intel still hasn't released a native quad-core implementation btw, they need to go through the system bus to connect each pair of cores on their "quad-core" processors.
If you look at how quickly movies were released on DVD, it was actually a fast process, and as a result, people started to buy DVD players. Now, the price wasn't $800 or $1000 for the cheapest player, it was closer to being $400 initially, and moving down to the $200 range within two years. As a result, the move to DVD was very smooth due to a reasonable price, even for the early adopters.
Now, look at stand-alone players for the new formats. Can you find one for $400 right now? Of course not, unless you go out and buy a game console. That's where the flaw is here, the group they are trying to sell the new formats to. While there are SOME gamers who will watch movies on their console, the vast majority of people out there have no desire to buy a console just so they can watch a HD movie, regardless of the format. The whole HDCP issue, downgraded quality if your screen doesn't support it, price of movies on the new standard, and the price of a HDTV itself is a good reason why people have stayed away.
So, if they want to release a player for $200, or even $400, they will get people to start buying, but until then, don't expect many people to care enough where they will pay an additional $1000 for a player, plus however much it would cost to buy movies on the new format. In many cases, the quality of DVD was enough for many movies.
It strikes me as sad when all of these studies are done without a basic understanding of the human condition which can easily explain why this may happen. I'll go into the basics of my own view on the subject, and let you decide if I am as off-base as the other people out there.
People tend to react to stress in one of two ways, it either pushes people to find active ways to release the stress(running, or doing other activities), or it pushes people into doing less active things to try to recover the energy lost due to stress alone. It's generally one or the other, and it is a rare person that ends up doing both.
Now, in the case of urban sprawl, you tend to have two things that happen. Property values go up, and the availability of middle to upper tier jobs goes up.
The higher property values mean the cost of living in the area is higher as a whole, which makes it harder to afford to live. This raises the stress level quite a bit, where most people are worried about money in some way. The standard of living is also higher, and it is human nature to want to keep up with the neighbors in terms of luxury items. You don't have a 10-year-old Ford car when all your neighbors have BMWs for example. So, people tend to live closer to the edge of their available resources.
The jobs in the middle and upper tiers tend to be less active as well when it comes to "white collar" jobs. So, the jobs are less active, and the stress level tends to be higher as well. When people in this type of job work a full day, you get back to the original comment about how people respond to stress when it comes to recreational activities. Some run or get active, but many will just get home, and want to do NOTHING, or go out drinking and socializing with friends.
If the friends are the type for socializing after work to release that stress, that isn't an active way to deal with it for the most part, and as people get into their 30s, they tend to start putting on weight as a result(with some exceptions).
The solution to this would be a more Japanese approach, where companies encourage employees to work out, either before work begins, or after work. In the case of communities in "urban sprawl" areas though, many or most businesses tend to be small, in the 1-25 employee range without the resources to pay for gym memberships, and the office space available doesn't have enough "extra" space for a weight room or other recreational room in addition to the normal "break room".
So, why do these communities tend to have people get "soft"? It's because the economy is out of control, with prices going up and up and up, with employee salaries not going up as quickly as the cost of living. Outdoor activities also tend to be in controlled environments, which can also feel like work, and drive people away.
I use the term, "Ignorance is always forgivable, stupidity is not". When someone doesn't know something, that's fine. When you need to show them the same thing five different times in a one week period, and it's fairly simple stuff, then it's clear where the problem is.
I've been working in the industry since the early 1990s, and have seen a LOT of people on both sides, both the people who need help, and the people who are there to help. In many cases, the problem STARTS with the people who need help really have no desire to learn even the basics, and over time, the IT staff grow to learn to really dislike the people who really just won't learn some very simple and basic things.
For example, when it comes to a Microsoft operating system(no matter which one), rebooting your computer is a very basic thing to do to see if that will resolve a problem. Let's face it, after three days without being rebooted, a computer that sees a lot of use NEEDS to be rebooted to avoid problems. Yes, it depends on the applications used, hardware drivers, and so on, but generally, three days is around the longest a Microsoft based machine should be running without being rebooted.
If those who constantly look to IT people can't be bothered to learn that basic solution, the IT people KNOW that the person looking for help will be more work than most people they need to help as a part of their job. Repeating the same questions to the exact same people when trying to help them, and having the solution be exactly the same gets old. If the person who needs help is an...unpleasant individual, then it is VERY understandable that the IT staff will be a bit unpleasant when dealing with that clueless person.
Programmers are in a different category than IT workers because it is a different specialty. Programmers tend to get treated poorly by many companies, have long hours, with pay that may or may not compensate for the hours put in. The project leads may not encourage communication between employees as well, so you end up with skilled workers in a bad environment who are kept away from non-programmers. The end result is that many programmers are encouraged not to interact with others, and so their professional communication abilities may degrade over time. Possible resentment for bad environments can make the problem worse. This disconnect isn't good for anyone, yet some companies push to keep things that way.
Many people LOVE to point fingers at the IT workers when it comes to finding fault, but in many cases, it really isn't their fault. When an IT user uses the term PEBKAC, it really does apply in many cases, and it takes a tough individual to keep a positive attitude, and in no way should be looked at as a male/female thing.