Most places like tomshardware and other benchmarking sites mention that hard drive speed is almost neglibable between teh high end and low end drivers for real desktop apps.
I care about reliability (gone down hill since 2000) and noise. I sense in the rush to devalue pc's into $399 emachines that quality is looked upon last in an effort to cut costs. Isn't there anyone buying anything besides junk anymore? I am not talking about servers either since scsi drives and cards are outrageously expensive.
I stated earlier in a comment that I wonder if companies prefer gnome for legal reasons. Do the qt libraries for trolltech require the $$$ version because they are making money off their distros? It sounds like its a shift for liability to the user if that user decides to install it.
Also what if companyX uses kde and suse and developes software to sell with kdevelop and QT libraries. They are now in violation of the trolltech license but they never agreed to one remember? See the slippery slope? SuSE does not want to be sued by companyX developing the software with kdevelop for failure of disclosure of the license. I am not a laywer but I am curious about this argument.
I would be sympathetic to gnome too if I were novell or sun for that reason. However, as a user you are more than welcome to run and install kde and I guess all the tools for yast2 will still be there.
What dont understand is the power of unix makes it up to the user to decide what he or she wants. Thats the point.
I wonder if distro's prefer gnome for legal reasons? Maybe they are worried that they have to pay trolltech licenses if they sell the distro since its no longer free? Its a hunch that letting the user install it shifts potential liability.
But what you were saying with ubuntu, I am confused about kubuntu? A distro should install what the user wants and nothing else. I know debian had moral reasons to prefer gnome but if you agree to want non gpl software then why isn't kde included?
After I get my degree 2 years from now I am getting a hatchback version of the focus. My gf owns propert as a landlord and does some erins for her family owned business. A hatchback is perfect to haul things. I am not getting a truck and hate suv's. She only needs to haul light items so a hatchback sedan where I can load things in the back is perfect.
But your car is exactly what I plan to replace my dieing civic.
Which model? Hyundia's are getting better and are average with the Sonata above average in reliability.
The new Ford Focus is top rated according to consumer reports. If you do a google search and research msn you can see what they did.
Yes Ford has been replacing parts in teh focus with higher quality versions and the UAW wants to improve their quality so they can stay employed. Factory improvements is what is the biggest changes in Ford and Cheverolet. That is why they are top rated and yes the fords this year even have brand new engines and most of the new work is under the hood. They are reliable now and so is Cheverolet. Odd world we live in?
The German cars are the crappy ones and worst on the market according to consumer reports and so are some infinity models by Nissan.
I don't have money for a new car because I am a student.:-(
Otherwise I would buy Ford Focus over a civic. They are just as reliable and $10,000 cheaper and offer a great value. Mazda's are getting fairly better too and are top rated.
The moderators wont like what I am about to type, but its my honest opinion and I really do like BSD. I used to be a FBSD fanatic for years.
GOod things
- My USB keyboard works again! I had problems with this on and off witht he 4.x versions during sysinstall and it didn't work at all during the 5.x versions.
- Java is progressing nicely since the last time I looked. Even version 5.0 is in beta. I remember 1.3x being the working version during 4.11 not too long ago.
- It seems snappier and less buggy then the previous 5.x versions during the install
Cons
- Its quite buggy still. Sysinstall will hang when a package fails to load during an ftp install. A reboot or a kill -9 is needed to restart it. After the installation its fine if a package fails to load. But you do need to resetup your ftp connections for adding packages when they fail after your installlation during sysinstall. Strange
- My usb mouse that worked under previous versions no longer works. Usm0 is reported in/dev but I can not link to it and I can not make any devices like I could under previous versions. I get a device busy error
- kldload umass.ko and camcontrol say umass is loaded for usb mass storage. I plugged my sans disk in and it was detected fine. But umass is not under/dev ?? A bug? Usb mass storage was designed to be plugable plugnplay feature according to the specs by Intel. No automount like under Linux or any otehr modern os. devfs should have reported it but a df shows that devfs only is mounting my keyboard.
Because I couldn't get X going due to the mouse issue I have not played with FreeBSD that much. Its pretty obvious what I think here and which os I am going to use. Its a shame really but I am a student and have no time to track these things down and search newsgroups for fixes. Its not the same as earlier releases but better then 5.x. Personally I would like NetBSD but it too does not like my hardware.... back to Linux. Sigh
Thats what I was told when I purchased it with 124k. My radiator went too at 130k but I had the mechanic replace it before it ruptured.
I just want it to last longer after all the money I put into it and I have seen civics with 250k miles on them. Its a honda so it should last.
Ford on the other hand... well the new ones such as the 2005 ford focus could probably make it to 200k because they are alot more reliable than they were and are better made.
Also I jsut replaced my gaskets in another round of $1600 repairs for various things. It sounds like you need a better mechanic who could spot problems before they happen. It can save you alot of money in the end. I switched mechanics and thank god. My timing belt chain was almost falling off and the civics use a crappy interference engine. An interference engine will slam the pistons into the cylinders if the chain belt breaks. Nice. $450 repair job.
I am in the unfortunate position of owning a 91 civic with 170k miles with lots and lots of problems. Well it does run... sort of.
Now the paint coming off, the bubbling tint, no a/c that doesn't keep breaking down, no stereo, strange noises when you tap on the brakes, several strut replacements in only 30k miles, windows work sometimes, transmission does weird things and you have to tap the accelerator to the max for to actually change gears... sigh
My gf is right sell that fucking thing and never buy a civic again.
I have been becoming more and more of a fan of netbsd's pkg's. DrangonFLY recently switched to it with Matt Dillion claiming the problems with the ports is that things change and break. Most DBSD users just used FBSD ports with some patch files. Shudder
I am looking into NetBSD after the fallout with FBSD 5.x but I am willing to try again with 6.x. Pkg's are also available for FreeBSD users from www.netbsd.org and you can compile them from source as well. It takes care of alot of dependancy problems.
Lets hope this reverses the trend and the name that FBSD was known for. That is stability and reliability. I do not like linux and think it too has gone down hill from the golden 2.0 days of months of uptimes for the kernel.
I tried out NetBSD but my netgear nic and my wireless keyboard are not compatible. Not to mention the lack of 3d support sucks too. NetBSD is everything FBSD once was as in stable and small and fast.
I am going to try FBSD 6.x and thanks to the FBSD developers for improving it! I didn't mean to insult your work its just been fustrating and lets hope the performance improvements and stability are worth it.
Go read my link again here. Hmmm whats listed in the first paragraph after 1960? Why your man Byrd running agaisnt Kennedy for a conservative racist candidate for the south.
Sorry it holds no water and Bryd is a democrat only by name aka dixiecrat as far as I am concerned. Ask what party most African Americans are today? Its the democrats as the racists have left towards the republican party.
Ie seems snappier on older systems because its loading when windows startsup.
I can see why people prefer and the ladder releases of firefox are HOGS! Why does my system use 245megs of ram just to browse the internet? Earlier versions of firefox were less memory intensive and on my athlonXP2400 with 512 megs of ram I still use firefox but its sluggier.
On my fathers pentiumIII with 256 megs of ram firefox is dog slow comparied to IE.
Also many websites just work and people are familiar with it. Many of these same people used netscape to death until 2000 before giving up.
Those are the dixiecrats and are conservatives. They joined the republican party by the 1950's and 1960's. Ronald Reagan and controversial Strom Thurmond who ran on teh states rights party were part of the conservative democratic movement. Jesse Helmes is another conservative dixiecrat turned republican.
President Johnson finished the split after the 1964 civil rights bill.
More information is available here. You right about one thing. In the past the democratic party was teh conservative one.
You can say whatever you want. The freedom of speech applies to you.
Lets say however you and I get into a nasty lawsuit? We go to court and I promise the judge $10,000 for being a nice guy towards his re-election campaign. Now the judge rules in favor of me.
This is bribing that is legal called campaign financing as far as I am concerned. The idea of the bill was to let those under the guise of web organizations to have special powers immune to the McCain campaign finance reform laws. Its trick made by some republican and lobbiest laywers.
Pat Robertson who supported bush in the republican primaries called bribing free speech as the anti abortition movement is one of the most powerfull lobbying groups in the country and that scared him. To this day opponents of the McCain-Feingold bill still call it free speech. Odd since he rallied agaisnt the teachers union slamming them as the most powerfull lobbying group in the country. Can you say hypocrite?
You have freespeech all you want but purching advertising time is different. Its no different from only a selected few *rich* people talking on megaphones to the public while you can not.
Sure people demand housing so they can sell it at an even higher inflated price later. Its called a bubble.
The stock market is not doing well so people sold their.com fortunes and invested in housing.
Every house in California is bidded by dozens of people the first day on the market. That would indicate a lack of supply and high demand.
20 years ago we were looking at interest rates of %13-20 from the Carter administration and the early years of Reagan. High interest rates caused a lack of demand in the housing market.
History may repeat itself if interest rates keep rising. The arab oil embargo is what caused the low value for homes and high interest rates due to inflation.
I am thinking the lack of titles is perhaps the reason why MS wants to limit supply.
If Mike gets an xbox360 but no games, then his friends wont want one. If only the rich kids who are lucky enough to have one get one then more kids will want it. Also they wont hear negative things about it because no own is lucky enough to own one.
Meanwhile with the media buzz and more time you can expect more xbox360 games to hit the market. Finally when it becomes affordable several months later it will be a former luxury console and will have games. No negative feedback.
Just my theory and perhaps the lack of titles may give it a bad name. Minimalizing sales at first will bring up demand and keep the info about the lack of titles low until more people actually own one.
True but we are manipulated every day on the market. The gas companies do this all the time. The reason gas is going down now is everyone purchased fuel at a panic when the hurricanes arrived. Which created more demand at the pump the weeks after Katrina.
Anger doesn't matter because the people who want it the most pay for it. Thats economics. Its about making money and not people happy.
Also if MS is that stupid to set the price so high that they lose money then the market punishes them. PS2's will probably look more affordable if the average xbox360 is $600 this christmas. Retailers love artificial scarcity too as they can raise the price and consumers typically buy more than one thing when they enter the store. Even if they can't walk out with an xbox.
But MS does not have a monoply yet in teh console market. It does have a monopoly on the xbox name. So its fair game on whether this is fair or not. How is it deceptive? Maybe you assume it is to give an illusion its a best seller? Who cares?
The game makers know actual marketshare and as I pointed out in another comment, ms will lose money in the long run if it artificially limits xbox orders because of a loss in game revenues. That is Sony's gain and in the long run will keep consumers on the playstation.
But every business in the world limits production with long graphs and accountants deciding how to limit supply the most. In a competitive market someone will out do them and help you as the consumer if a company does this too much. Everyone wins. (unless your a monopoly or part of a ogliopoly)
TRue but ms does not have total leverage in the console market.
If xbox360 is $700 then sales of the PS2 will increase. Also if marketshare is down for ms because they want to make more money for the sales of the console then they lose money for games. After all if more people own ps2's then sony will make more money off its games than microsoft.
I learned supply and demand fromd day1 in both my micro and macro economics classes. Its the basis of how the whole market works and its not dishonesty at all.
The sole reason we have price tags is because we have limited resources.
The economy works by supply and demand and if too much supply hits a market which erases demand then competitors leave and it self corrects. Its Microsoft's job to maximize every penny of profit as possible to establish its price equilibrium. To do that it must limit its supply so it can make more money.
But its an industry wide practice and not dishonest. Suppliers all the time decide how much to produce something and use what consumers are willing to pay for to set the price.
Microsoft would love to make $900 per console for the first few months and rake in extra profits. Such high demand and price would make people want it more like a Porshe or Lexus. If Mike the popular rich kid has one, then as soon as the console goes down to $500, then more people would buy it. That would make even more money for Microsoft and establish a brand name image of being a luxury system that would hurt sony.
You can buy a ford focus with the option fuel cell option already. Rumor has it that ford is read to introduce a fuel cell Ford f150 truck sometime in a few years.
GMC is the only one who refuses to go along with fuel cells.
Also it should be mentioned that the oil industry owns stock in these American automobile companies so they have a financial incentive to create gas guzzlers.
Slashdot Mirror
Most places like tomshardware and other benchmarking sites mention that hard drive speed is almost neglibable between teh high end and low end drivers for real desktop apps.
I care about reliability (gone down hill since 2000) and noise. I sense in the rush to devalue pc's into $399 emachines that quality is looked upon last in an effort to cut costs. Isn't there anyone buying anything besides junk anymore? I am not talking about servers either since scsi drives and cards are outrageously expensive.
I stated earlier in a comment that I wonder if companies prefer gnome for legal reasons. Do the qt libraries for trolltech require the $$$ version because they are making money off their distros? It sounds like its a shift for liability to the user if that user decides to install it.
Also what if companyX uses kde and suse and developes software to sell with kdevelop and QT libraries. They are now in violation of the trolltech license but they never agreed to one remember? See the slippery slope? SuSE does not want to be sued by companyX developing the software with kdevelop for failure of disclosure of the license. I am not a laywer but I am curious about this argument.
I would be sympathetic to gnome too if I were novell or sun for that reason. However, as a user you are more than welcome to run and install kde and I guess all the tools for yast2 will still be there.
UGh
Ignore my grammer errors before. I am multitasking here and did a poor job communicating.
I was referring to the fact that a distro should never force anything and the power of unix is customization to run whatever you choose.
Also I know Ubuntu includes kde if you request. Its just I wonder why kubuntu exists? Are we too lazy to use the synaptic?
What dont understand is the power of unix makes it up to the user to decide what he or she wants. Thats the point.
I wonder if distro's prefer gnome for legal reasons? Maybe they are worried that they have to pay trolltech licenses if they sell the distro since its no longer free? Its a hunch that letting the user install it shifts potential liability.
But what you were saying with ubuntu, I am confused about kubuntu? A distro should install what the user wants and nothing else. I know debian had moral reasons to prefer gnome but if you agree to want non gpl software then why isn't kde included?
After I get my degree 2 years from now I am getting a hatchback version of the focus. My gf owns propert as a landlord and does some erins for her family owned business. A hatchback is perfect to haul things. I am not getting a truck and hate suv's. She only needs to haul light items so a hatchback sedan where I can load things in the back is perfect.
But your car is exactly what I plan to replace my dieing civic.
Which model? Hyundia's are getting better and are average with the Sonata above average in reliability.
:-(
The new Ford Focus is top rated according to consumer reports. If you do a google search and research msn you can see what they did.
Yes Ford has been replacing parts in teh focus with higher quality versions and the UAW wants to improve their quality so they can stay employed. Factory improvements is what is the biggest changes in Ford and Cheverolet. That is why they are top rated and yes the fords this year even have brand new engines and most of the new work is under the hood. They are reliable now and so is Cheverolet. Odd world we live in?
The German cars are the crappy ones and worst on the market according to consumer reports and so are some infinity models by Nissan.
I don't have money for a new car because I am a student.
Otherwise I would buy Ford Focus over a civic. They are just as reliable and $10,000 cheaper and offer a great value. Mazda's are getting fairly better too and are top rated.
Just tried six. Sigh
Its no 4.x unfortunately.
The moderators wont like what I am about to type, but its my honest opinion and I really do like BSD. I used to be a FBSD fanatic for years.
/dev but I can not link to it and I can not make any devices like I could under previous versions. I get a device busy error
/dev ?? A bug? Usb mass storage was designed to be plugable plugnplay feature according to the specs by Intel. No automount like under Linux or any otehr modern os. devfs should have reported it but a df shows that devfs only is mounting my keyboard.
GOod things
- My USB keyboard works again! I had problems with this on and off witht he 4.x versions during sysinstall and it didn't work at all during the 5.x versions.
- Java is progressing nicely since the last time I looked. Even version 5.0 is in beta. I remember 1.3x being the working version during 4.11 not too long ago.
- It seems snappier and less buggy then the previous 5.x versions during the install
Cons
- Its quite buggy still. Sysinstall will hang when a package fails to load during an ftp install. A reboot or a kill -9 is needed to restart it. After the installation its fine if a package fails to load. But you do need to resetup your ftp connections for adding packages when they fail after your installlation during sysinstall. Strange
- My usb mouse that worked under previous versions no longer works. Usm0 is reported in
- kldload umass.ko and camcontrol say umass is loaded for usb mass storage. I plugged my sans disk in and it was detected fine. But umass is not under
Because I couldn't get X going due to the mouse issue I have not played with FreeBSD that much. Its pretty obvious what I think here and which os I am going to use. Its a shame really but I am a student and have no time to track these things down and search newsgroups for fixes. Its not the same as earlier releases but better then 5.x. Personally I would like NetBSD but it too does not like my hardware.... back to Linux. Sigh
Most cars and Honda's last to at least 200k.
... well the new ones such as the 2005 ford focus could probably make it to 200k because they are alot more reliable than they were and are better made.
Thats what I was told when I purchased it with 124k. My radiator went too at 130k but I had the mechanic replace it before it ruptured.
I just want it to last longer after all the money I put into it and I have seen civics with 250k miles on them. Its a honda so it should last.
Ford on the other hand
Also I jsut replaced my gaskets in another round of $1600 repairs for various things. It sounds like you need a better mechanic who could spot problems before they happen. It can save you alot of money in the end. I switched mechanics and thank god. My timing belt chain was almost falling off and the civics use a crappy interference engine. An interference engine will slam the pistons into the cylinders if the chain belt breaks. Nice. $450 repair job.
Civic lame?? Thats an understatement.
I am in the unfortunate position of owning a 91 civic with 170k miles with lots and lots of problems. Well it does run... sort of.
Now the paint coming off, the bubbling tint, no a/c that doesn't keep breaking down, no stereo, strange noises when you tap on the brakes, several strut replacements in only 30k miles, windows work sometimes, transmission does weird things and you have to tap the accelerator to the max for to actually change gears... sigh
My gf is right sell that fucking thing and never buy a civic again.
I have been becoming more and more of a fan of netbsd's pkg's. DrangonFLY recently switched to it with Matt Dillion claiming the problems with the ports is that things change and break. Most DBSD users just used FBSD ports with some patch files. Shudder
I am looking into NetBSD after the fallout with FBSD 5.x but I am willing to try again with 6.x. Pkg's are also available for FreeBSD users from www.netbsd.org and you can compile them from source as well. It takes care of alot of dependancy problems.
I used to be a FBSD fanatic until 5.x came out.
Lets hope this reverses the trend and the name that FBSD was known for. That is stability and reliability. I do not like linux and think it too has gone down hill from the golden 2.0 days of months of uptimes for the kernel.
I tried out NetBSD but my netgear nic and my wireless keyboard are not compatible. Not to mention the lack of 3d support sucks too. NetBSD is everything FBSD once was as in stable and small and fast.
I am going to try FBSD 6.x and thanks to the FBSD developers for improving it! I didn't mean to insult your work its just been fustrating and lets hope the performance improvements and stability are worth it.
Nice try being ac.
Go read my link again here. Hmmm whats listed in the first paragraph after 1960? Why your man Byrd running agaisnt Kennedy for a conservative racist candidate for the south.
Sorry it holds no water and Bryd is a democrat only by name aka dixiecrat as far as I am concerned. Ask what party most African Americans are today? Its the democrats as the racists have left towards the republican party.
I hope my usb keyboard and my netgear nic are supported.
I may have to wait for netbsd 3.0. Its fustrating and my nic worked with linux 2.0.
Ie seems snappier on older systems because its loading when windows startsup.
I can see why people prefer and the ladder releases of firefox are HOGS! Why does my system use 245megs of ram just to browse the internet? Earlier versions of firefox were less memory intensive and on my athlonXP2400 with 512 megs of ram I still use firefox but its sluggier.
On my fathers pentiumIII with 256 megs of ram firefox is dog slow comparied to IE.
Also many websites just work and people are familiar with it. Many of these same people used netscape to death until 2000 before giving up.
Those are the dixiecrats and are conservatives. They joined the republican party by the 1950's and 1960's. Ronald Reagan and controversial Strom Thurmond who ran on teh states rights party were part of the conservative democratic movement. Jesse Helmes is another conservative dixiecrat turned republican.
President Johnson finished the split after the 1964 civil rights bill.
More information is available here. You right about one thing. In the past the democratic party was teh conservative one.
ITs not regulated.
You can say whatever you want. The freedom of speech applies to you.
Lets say however you and I get into a nasty lawsuit? We go to court and I promise the judge $10,000 for being a nice guy towards his re-election campaign. Now the judge rules in favor of me.
This is bribing that is legal called campaign financing as far as I am concerned. The idea of the bill was to let those under the guise of web organizations to have special powers immune to the McCain campaign finance reform laws. Its trick made by some republican and lobbiest laywers.
Pat Robertson who supported bush in the republican primaries called bribing free speech as the anti abortition movement is one of the most powerfull lobbying groups in the country and that scared him. To this day opponents of the McCain-Feingold bill still call it free speech. Odd since he rallied agaisnt the teachers union slamming them as the most powerfull lobbying group in the country. Can you say hypocrite?
You have freespeech all you want but purching advertising time is different. Its no different from only a selected few *rich* people talking on megaphones to the public while you can not.
Sure people demand housing so they can sell it at an even higher inflated price later. Its called a bubble.
.com fortunes and invested in housing.
The stock market is not doing well so people sold their
Every house in California is bidded by dozens of people the first day on the market. That would indicate a lack of supply and high demand.
20 years ago we were looking at interest rates of %13-20 from the Carter administration and the early years of Reagan. High interest rates caused a lack of demand in the housing market.
History may repeat itself if interest rates keep rising. The arab oil embargo is what caused the low value for homes and high interest rates due to inflation.
I am thinking the lack of titles is perhaps the reason why MS wants to limit supply.
If Mike gets an xbox360 but no games, then his friends wont want one. If only the rich kids who are lucky enough to have one get one then more kids will want it. Also they wont hear negative things about it because no own is lucky enough to own one.
Meanwhile with the media buzz and more time you can expect more xbox360 games to hit the market. Finally when it becomes affordable several months later it will be a former luxury console and will have games. No negative feedback.
Just my theory and perhaps the lack of titles may give it a bad name. Minimalizing sales at first will bring up demand and keep the info about the lack of titles low until more people actually own one.
True but we are manipulated every day on the market. The gas companies do this all the time. The reason gas is going down now is everyone purchased fuel at a panic when the hurricanes arrived. Which created more demand at the pump the weeks after Katrina.
Anger doesn't matter because the people who want it the most pay for it. Thats economics. Its about making money and not people happy.
Also if MS is that stupid to set the price so high that they lose money then the market punishes them. PS2's will probably look more affordable if the average xbox360 is $600 this christmas. Retailers love artificial scarcity too as they can raise the price and consumers typically buy more than one thing when they enter the store. Even if they can't walk out with an xbox.
But MS does not have a monoply yet in teh console market. It does have a monopoly on the xbox name. So its fair game on whether this is fair or not. How is it deceptive? Maybe you assume it is to give an illusion its a best seller? Who cares?
The game makers know actual marketshare and as I pointed out in another comment, ms will lose money in the long run if it artificially limits xbox orders because of a loss in game revenues. That is Sony's gain and in the long run will keep consumers on the playstation.
But every business in the world limits production with long graphs and accountants deciding how to limit supply the most. In a competitive market someone will out do them and help you as the consumer if a company does this too much. Everyone wins. (unless your a monopoly or part of a ogliopoly)
TRue but ms does not have total leverage in the console market.
If xbox360 is $700 then sales of the PS2 will increase. Also if marketshare is down for ms because they want to make more money for the sales of the console then they lose money for games. After all if more people own ps2's then sony will make more money off its games than microsoft.
I learned supply and demand fromd day1 in both my micro and macro economics classes. Its the basis of how the whole market works and its not dishonesty at all.
The sole reason we have price tags is because we have limited resources.
The economy works by supply and demand and if too much supply hits a market which erases demand then competitors leave and it self corrects. Its Microsoft's job to maximize every penny of profit as possible to establish its price equilibrium. To do that it must limit its supply so it can make more money.
But its an industry wide practice and not dishonest. Suppliers all the time decide how much to produce something and use what consumers are willing to pay for to set the price.
Holy shit I better run out to the store and bidder on it right away.
They want to make more money
If you cut supply in half then the price doubles.
Microsoft would love to make $900 per console for the first few months and rake in extra profits. Such high demand and price would make people want it more like a Porshe or Lexus. If Mike the popular rich kid has one, then as soon as the console goes down to $500, then more people would buy it. That would make even more money for Microsoft and establish a brand name image of being a luxury system that would hurt sony.
You can buy a ford focus with the option fuel cell option already. Rumor has it that ford is read to introduce a fuel cell Ford f150 truck sometime in a few years.
GMC is the only one who refuses to go along with fuel cells.
Also it should be mentioned that the oil industry owns stock in these American automobile companies so they have a financial incentive to create gas guzzlers.