But the 360 kiosk in Wal-mart, Best Buy and the like is a tangible need today to buy a HDTV.
A tangible need for whom? 20-30 year old single males that play games? Sure, those are a market, but apart from that (relatively small) market, there is only one other big "gamer" market. That are the sub 18 years without an income. This means daddy and mommy will have to cough up the cash for those game systems. I don't think most parents are willing to spend 400+€ for a game system and then another 1000€ for a HDTV set. If they buy a console for their offspring, it will be hooked up to the spare SDTV set in the kids room. Sure, the thing *can* do HDTV, but that particular aspect will not be used as much as you think.
The real world is quite different from slashdot, you know....
Well, yes, and no... Older laptops may be "portable", but they don't give you all that much mobility. After all, a laptop in the category of mine has an autonomy of 30mins maximum. Many people consider a laptop that doesn't have good battery life "wothless" (usually, it's the same people that are always close to a power outlet... logical, isnt it?)
The fact you generally have to pay to get rid of a PC also keeps people from taking them
Is that so in the US? We pay for that upfront when we buy new stuff. Such costs are hidden from us. I never have been reticent to take old computers, because I know I can bring them to the recycling centre. Before we had that "eco-tax", some components required to be paid for at disposal.... Notably monitors, which is why I stopped taking old monitors, even good ones.
You also have to take into account that many people also consider anything under 1Ghz "slow", though these same people are amazed at how fast a midrange PIII system runs* when it isn't bogged down with crap.
That was actually what my whole post was about.;-) I was pretty much mocking people that think that sub 1GHz is slow.
You're completely right: it's all in the perception that people have of computers. The thing is: they are wrong... Well, I don't care... More nifty hardware for me.
Recently someone told me he needed a new computer because his old one was slow. I asked what it was (of course, I didn't execpt him to say "P-IV") and he replied "A Medion PC". Yeah, okay, so I ask him how old it is. His reply: "2 years". I pretty much started laughing by that moment. I told him: go ahead and buy a new computer. I'll give you 100€ for the old one, but I'm definately ripping you off with that offer. I guess I confused him a lot by that statement;-)
A two year old computer... Slow? He wasn't even a hardcore gamer or so.
Well, in theory you are right. In practice, your solution works if you're alone in the world. I'm married now and have multiple networks to administer. I won't take the small network of three computers that we have (my, my wife, the server). I'll take my "first network", the one at my parents that I still administer. It grew from one PC to a network with an OpenBSD server, three desktop machines (two AMD64, one Athlon XP) and a laptop (Two if I'm around...). I managed to educate my users quite well: they run Limited User on XP (and do not know the admin password), they know not to click on every dumb attachment, they also use Firefox all the time (If I catch anyone running Internet Explorer, I just blackhole them at firewall level - OpenBSD remember?)
The thing is: I'm not always around. According to your theory everything should work fine. I'm pretty sure it would. I still don't want to take the risk: perhaps my dad (he's getting old and is often absent-minded) accidentally runs a suspicious attachment, perhaps my brother comes home drunk and thinks a pr0n surfing session with Internet Explorer is a good idea.... Resident antivirus programs are the safeguards against such "accidents". Oh, and because I like my software standardized on all my machines, I run exactly the same stuff they do... Including an antivirus package, even though I have a clue.
I'm just prudent, that is all...
What I can't understand is why people will pay $500-$2500 for their computer, another $200-$1000 for software, but won't pay a measly $20-$40 per year for an antivirus.
Old Company Laptop (P-III 600MHz/256Meg RAM) - 100€
Cheap-ass Wireless PCMCIA card - 25€
256Meg extra RAM out of my defunct iBook - 0€
FreeBSD 6.1 - 0€
Realising that I only paid 125€ for a very nice computing experience - Priceless!
Apart from that: even with Windows it is perfectly possible to "live" with only Free Software (both senses). Get a WinXP OEM machine, uninstall all their crap, the install OpenOffice.org 2.0.2, AVG Antivirus, Spybot Search & Destroy, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, Apple iTunes, MPlayer Classic (K-Lite codec pack), The GIMP, Ghostscript (with RedMod), Firefox, Thunderbird, Acrobat Reader (if you really want...), CDBurnedXP Pro, GAIM, Filezilla, PuTTY, and probably some others I am just forgetting. I get a fully functional Windows PC where the total cost of the software is 0€ (excluding cost of the WinXP Home copy, since I paid that when buying the PC)
Oh, and doing the above does something extra for you: it prepares you for the "big step" ditching Windows completly. I know, I just did that step...
I think you missed: I believe any others are only on-demand scanners
ClamAV is an on-demand scanner. Do not despair: with WinPooch, you can make it a resident scanner. Alas, I only read about it here on slashdot and didn't try it myself. Anyone here knows how good it is?
I personally use AVG Free Edition and it works just fine. It's non-intrusive and does its work well. That's the reason why I didn't uninstall it to try out WinPooch.
I have enough trouble *giving* away old PCs (sub 1 Ghz),
Wow, and have you an explanation why this is? My primary laptop is a P-III 600MHz/512Meg RAM and it dual-boots WinXP Pro and FreeBSD 6.1. Both run perfectly fine for normal PC usage (email/browsing/openoffice/gimp/gaim/...) Hey, I even run Eclipse on it and it's okay if you're a bit patient.
Old sub-1GHz PC are just fine, especially when one ensures that they have enough RAM.
I understand that, but it's still tracking. They have no business knowing if I go to slashdot.org twenty times a day, or if I visit thehuns every day. It's none of their business, even if it's only for statistics, and such things should be opt-in. If you agree to be tracked, so be it, but such things have nothing to do in a default installation of an operating system.
Neilsons' Rating are completely voluntary and therein lies the difference.
They are not tracking you. They are tracking where you go.
Can you explain me the difference? If they are tracking where I go, they still are tracking me, isn't it? If you pay someone to track where I go in real life, you hire a detective. Sure, in the report that he gives you will be like "9h00 shopping center, 10h26 Going home,..." The guy didn't note down who I met or what I did because you didn't ask him to, but in reality he still had to follow me.
You can't make a human immune to a disease (yet) without drugs.
I think you should read up a bit on immunity. There are absolutely no drugs required to become immune to a disease. The only thing that is required is that you are exposed to the disease and that your body starts to build antibodies to it. (Note that you don't have to become ill to do this!) Sometimes those antibodies are "stored" for the rest of your life. You might know these diseases as "childhood diseases". You usually never get Measels twice for example. Of course, you cannot acquire immunity to all diseases and that is why we require drugs. Perhaps you thought of "vaccination", which essentially is the equivalent of being exposed artificially to a disease in order to build up an immunity.
No, I don't care about them either... BUT there is a good reason to keep the files separated in album folders. The reason is duplicate files. I know this will sound odd, but I'm a Pink Floyd fan and I virtually have bought all their CDs. On some of these CD's I have variations of the same song. So, is "Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)" the version on "The Wall" album, or perhaps the one on "A collection of great dance songs", no wait, it could be the version on "Pulse", nah, perhaps it's the one on "Echoes". I can easily repeat this for a number of other songs... not even all by Pink Floyd.
Now, I agree that most people will not have this problem, but in my case the folders are pretty much mandatory (otherwhise I'd need to put the Album in the name)
Well, Hymn is nice and fine... except it doesn't work with iTunes 6. Alas, I don't have a iTunes 5 installer anymore. I'm not complaining: all music I actually purchased in the iTMS, was while I still had iTunes 5 installed and those songs were all stripped from DRM by Hymn. For now, no ITMS shopping for me... It doesn't matter: I'm getting old, I have all the music that I like;-)
Also national TLDs should be emphasised more for non-international companies
Look, I completely agree with that. There is but one problem: depending on the country you are in, the prices for these might be horrendous. I live in.lu and frankly, a domain costs 40€ per year. (It used to be a lot more, back when my dad registered our family name, it was about 100€ initialisation fee and, IIRC 45€ per year) Compare that to 12€ for a.com at Gandi. For businesses that might be acceptable, but me standalone-geek, I have to look at least a bit at my (frivolous) depenses.
So, often national TLDs are simply not competitive with the generic and most people prefer the generic anyway. (It was called the dot-com boom for something, and not the dot-US boom.)
Have you *ever* argued with a *woman* on buying a laptop/PC/TV/car/"anythingtechnical"? Color and Design are pretty much the *only* thing they care about.
Of course, I am aware that most slashdotters never get into that situation;-)
Curious, I picked up the white one (which I presume had been on all day) and felt around. It was slightly warm in one corner, but not at all what I'd consider hot. Go figure.
Have you considered that the laptop may have been on all day, but wasn't doing squat. Thus triggering the powersaving (and heat-reducing) functions of the CPU. It's rather let it run some computing intensive tasks and then feel that hot corner.
My G3 600Mhz iBook just got "warm" when doing computing intensive stuff (I ran Seti@Home on it for a while), but never to any uncomfortable levels. Of course that laptop is dead now: the classic logic board failure and I wasn't able to get then to replace it. Damn Apple!:-( Still got 230€ for it on eBay tough...
Oh, and my day to day laptop actually can be used on the lap. It's simply a very old laptop: P-III 600MHz Mobile version with 512Meg RAM. Doesn't ever get hot, but it's of course not in the same league as a Core Duo chip;-)
I think he means that some OEMs bundles spyware in the default install. I vaguely remember Compaq doing that, but I'm not sure, so don't take my word for it. (Of course, lets be fair, that isn't Microsofts fault... )
Uh... When was the last time you actually used a modem? I surely cannot remember. Everywhere I go, there is either wireless or wired ethernet. Apart from that, you're right of course: softmodems are teh suck.
performance does seem much worse when AVG is running
My laptop is a P-III 600MHz / 512Meg RAM running WinXP Pro and frankly, AVG doesn't seem to have any impact on performance at all. If I do nothing, Task Manager reports 0% usage, so I don't think that AVG gets much in the way.
What AVG does do is a dayly check and if you're working while it does that, you might "feel" it. Normally it's at 8am for me, but I don't know if its a rule (or if I configured it that way) At 8am, I'm so sleepy that I usually don't do much on my computer anyway;-))
(It doesn't deal with spyware)
It does detect stuff like Diallers tough, but those are technically trojans. Spyware is not an issue if you have secured your machine and avoid Internet Explorer like the pest. I run SpyBot and Ad-aware on semi regular intervals and none of them ever reports anything. Reason: my network is appropriately firewalled, my Windows is patched, and I only use Firefox....
Some enterprising accountant will one day force the question of why does every worker bee need an individualized mid range computer, when all we really run is 2 applications that can be served over the network, email, and a browser, all of which can be run on a much cheaper machine and *nix.
This assumes that there are accountants that know that such an infrastructure is possible... I'm not saying that they don't exist, but most people now have their own PC and can't think out of the (that) box anymore.
Now I'm confused... Isn't this stuff taught in your civics classes in highschool and mandatory study material when you want to acquire the US nationality?
I said that in my post, so I was fully aware of it.
They dont even spend money on their own defense and are almost entirely dependent on the US military presence (and NATO) to protect them.
Except that the US doesn't want us to increase our military. Talk about double standards. Source 1Source 2Source 3.
America has to step in because europe is not willing to and not capable of fixing its own problems.
And when you're done whupping ass, we come in and clean the mess up. It's called peace keeping missions. Keeping a disturbed region peaceful is much harder than bombing it flat, but you're just learning that in Iraq. Go and take a look who is actually keeping peace in Afghanistan...
Eveyone knows it is a war with Islamic fascism,
Now, I know you're trolling. There are plenty of moderate muslims. This is the same as saying that all American are Bible-Thumping-Christians, when we damned well know that it isn't true.
So fighting in Iraq is fighting for the freedom of Americans? Huh? Can you elaborate? I frankly see no connection.
I also want to point out that mandatory conscription has been abolished in many European countries, so the people that enroll into the military also enroll whilst knowing that they can and will die for their country.
Also, (at the risk of invoking Godwins law), do you really think all Europeans sat still when they were invaded by Nazi Germany? I don't think so .
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had modpoints. Bravo!
I know you mean this as a funny, but I have read slashdot on my mobile phone when I'm bored somewhere. Just go to http://slashdot.org/palm
A tangible need for whom? 20-30 year old single males that play games? Sure, those are a market, but apart from that (relatively small) market, there is only one other big "gamer" market. That are the sub 18 years without an income. This means daddy and mommy will have to cough up the cash for those game systems. I don't think most parents are willing to spend 400+€ for a game system and then another 1000€ for a HDTV set. If they buy a console for their offspring, it will be hooked up to the spare SDTV set in the kids room. Sure, the thing *can* do HDTV, but that particular aspect will not be used as much as you think.
The real world is quite different from slashdot, you know....
Well, yes, and no... Older laptops may be "portable", but they don't give you all that much mobility. After all, a laptop in the category of mine has an autonomy of 30mins maximum. Many people consider a laptop that doesn't have good battery life "wothless" (usually, it's the same people that are always close to a power outlet... logical, isnt it?)
The fact you generally have to pay to get rid of a PC also keeps people from taking them
Is that so in the US? We pay for that upfront when we buy new stuff. Such costs are hidden from us. I never have been reticent to take old computers, because I know I can bring them to the recycling centre. Before we had that "eco-tax", some components required to be paid for at disposal.... Notably monitors, which is why I stopped taking old monitors, even good ones.
You also have to take into account that many people also consider anything under 1Ghz "slow", though these same people are amazed at how fast a midrange PIII system runs* when it isn't bogged down with crap.
That was actually what my whole post was about. ;-) I was pretty much mocking people that think that sub 1GHz is slow.
You're completely right: it's all in the perception that people have of computers. The thing is: they are wrong... Well, I don't care... More nifty hardware for me.
Recently someone told me he needed a new computer because his old one was slow. I asked what it was (of course, I didn't execpt him to say "P-IV") and he replied "A Medion PC". Yeah, okay, so I ask him how old it is. His reply: "2 years". I pretty much started laughing by that moment. I told him: go ahead and buy a new computer. I'll give you 100€ for the old one, but I'm definately ripping you off with that offer. I guess I confused him a lot by that statement ;-)
A two year old computer... Slow? He wasn't even a hardcore gamer or so.
I managed to educate my users quite well: they run Limited User on XP (and do not know the admin password), they know not to click on every dumb attachment, they also use Firefox all the time (If I catch anyone running Internet Explorer, I just blackhole them at firewall level - OpenBSD remember?)
The thing is: I'm not always around. According to your theory everything should work fine. I'm pretty sure it would. I still don't want to take the risk: perhaps my dad (he's getting old and is often absent-minded) accidentally runs a suspicious attachment, perhaps my brother comes home drunk and thinks a pr0n surfing session with Internet Explorer is a good idea.... Resident antivirus programs are the safeguards against such "accidents". Oh, and because I like my software standardized on all my machines, I run exactly the same stuff they do... Including an antivirus package, even though I have a clue.
I'm just prudent, that is all...
Old Company Laptop (P-III 600MHz/256Meg RAM) - 100€
Cheap-ass Wireless PCMCIA card - 25€
256Meg extra RAM out of my defunct iBook - 0€
FreeBSD 6.1 - 0€
Realising that I only paid 125€ for a very nice computing experience - Priceless!
Apart from that: even with Windows it is perfectly possible to "live" with only Free Software (both senses). Get a WinXP OEM machine, uninstall all their crap, the install OpenOffice.org 2.0.2, AVG Antivirus, Spybot Search & Destroy, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, Apple iTunes, MPlayer Classic (K-Lite codec pack), The GIMP, Ghostscript (with RedMod), Firefox, Thunderbird, Acrobat Reader (if you really want...), CDBurnedXP Pro, GAIM, Filezilla, PuTTY, and probably some others I am just forgetting. I get a fully functional Windows PC where the total cost of the software is 0€ (excluding cost of the WinXP Home copy, since I paid that when buying the PC)
Oh, and doing the above does something extra for you: it prepares you for the "big step" ditching Windows completly. I know, I just did that step...
I think that I'm going to take that as a huge compliment :-D
ClamAV is an on-demand scanner. Do not despair: with WinPooch, you can make it a resident scanner. Alas, I only read about it here on slashdot and didn't try it myself. Anyone here knows how good it is?
I personally use AVG Free Edition and it works just fine. It's non-intrusive and does its work well. That's the reason why I didn't uninstall it to try out WinPooch.
Wow, and have you an explanation why this is? My primary laptop is a P-III 600MHz/512Meg RAM and it dual-boots WinXP Pro and FreeBSD 6.1. Both run perfectly fine for normal PC usage (email/browsing/openoffice/gimp/gaim/...) Hey, I even run Eclipse on it and it's okay if you're a bit patient.
Old sub-1GHz PC are just fine, especially when one ensures that they have enough RAM.
Neilsons' Rating are completely voluntary and therein lies the difference.
Can you explain me the difference? If they are tracking where I go, they still are tracking me, isn't it? If you pay someone to track where I go in real life, you hire a detective. Sure, in the report that he gives you will be like "9h00 shopping center, 10h26 Going home, ..." The guy didn't note down who I met or what I did because you didn't ask him to, but in reality he still had to follow me.
I think you should read up a bit on immunity. There are absolutely no drugs required to become immune to a disease. The only thing that is required is that you are exposed to the disease and that your body starts to build antibodies to it. (Note that you don't have to become ill to do this!) Sometimes those antibodies are "stored" for the rest of your life. You might know these diseases as "childhood diseases". You usually never get Measels twice for example.
Of course, you cannot acquire immunity to all diseases and that is why we require drugs. Perhaps you thought of "vaccination", which essentially is the equivalent of being exposed artificially to a disease in order to build up an immunity.
Now, I agree that most people will not have this problem, but in my case the folders are pretty much mandatory (otherwhise I'd need to put the Album in the name)
Well, Hymn is nice and fine... except it doesn't work with iTunes 6. Alas, I don't have a iTunes 5 installer anymore. I'm not complaining: all music I actually purchased in the iTMS, was while I still had iTunes 5 installed and those songs were all stripped from DRM by Hymn. For now, no ITMS shopping for me... It doesn't matter: I'm getting old, I have all the music that I like ;-)
Look, I completely agree with that. There is but one problem: depending on the country you are in, the prices for these might be horrendous. I live in .lu and frankly, a domain costs 40€ per year. (It used to be a lot more, back when my dad registered our family name, it was about 100€ initialisation fee and, IIRC 45€ per year) Compare that to 12€ for a .com at Gandi. For businesses that might be acceptable, but me standalone-geek, I have to look at least a bit at my (frivolous) depenses.
So, often national TLDs are simply not competitive with the generic and most people prefer the generic anyway. (It was called the dot-com boom for something, and not the dot-US boom.)
Have you *ever* argued with a *woman* on buying a laptop/PC/TV/car/"anythingtechnical"? Color and Design are pretty much the *only* thing they care about. ;-)
Of course, I am aware that most slashdotters never get into that situation
Have you considered that the laptop may have been on all day, but wasn't doing squat. Thus triggering the powersaving (and heat-reducing) functions of the CPU. It's rather let it run some computing intensive tasks and then feel that hot corner.
My G3 600Mhz iBook just got "warm" when doing computing intensive stuff (I ran Seti@Home on it for a while), but never to any uncomfortable levels. Of course that laptop is dead now: the classic logic board failure and I wasn't able to get then to replace it. Damn Apple! :-( Still got 230€ for it on eBay tough...
Oh, and my day to day laptop actually can be used on the lap. It's simply a very old laptop: P-III 600MHz Mobile version with 512Meg RAM. Doesn't ever get hot, but it's of course not in the same league as a Core Duo chip ;-)
I think he means that some OEMs bundles spyware in the default install. I vaguely remember Compaq doing that, but I'm not sure, so don't take my word for it. (Of course, lets be fair, that isn't Microsofts fault... )
Uh... When was the last time you actually used a modem? I surely cannot remember. Everywhere I go, there is either wireless or wired ethernet. Apart from that, you're right of course: softmodems are teh suck.
Where did she buy it? I'm interested... I was not aware that one could even buy a laptop without operating system (Windows or Mac OS X)
My laptop is a P-III 600MHz / 512Meg RAM running WinXP Pro and frankly, AVG doesn't seem to have any impact on performance at all. If I do nothing, Task Manager reports 0% usage, so I don't think that AVG gets much in the way. ;-))
What AVG does do is a dayly check and if you're working while it does that, you might "feel" it. Normally it's at 8am for me, but I don't know if its a rule (or if I configured it that way) At 8am, I'm so sleepy that I usually don't do much on my computer anyway
(It doesn't deal with spyware)
It does detect stuff like Diallers tough, but those are technically trojans. Spyware is not an issue if you have secured your machine and avoid Internet Explorer like the pest. I run SpyBot and Ad-aware on semi regular intervals and none of them ever reports anything. Reason: my network is appropriately firewalled, my Windows is patched, and I only use Firefox....
This assumes that there are accountants that know that such an infrastructure is possible... I'm not saying that they don't exist, but most people now have their own PC and can't think out of the (that) box anymore.
Now I'm confused... Isn't this stuff taught in your civics classes in highschool and mandatory study material when you want to acquire the US nationality?
I said that in my post, so I was fully aware of it.
They dont even spend money on their own defense and are almost entirely dependent on the US military presence (and NATO) to protect them.
Except that the US doesn't want us to increase our military. Talk about double standards. Source 1 Source 2 Source 3.
America has to step in because europe is not willing to and not capable of fixing its own problems.
And when you're done whupping ass, we come in and clean the mess up. It's called peace keeping missions. Keeping a disturbed region peaceful is much harder than bombing it flat, but you're just learning that in Iraq. Go and take a look who is actually keeping peace in Afghanistan ...
Eveyone knows it is a war with Islamic fascism,
Now, I know you're trolling. There are plenty of moderate muslims. This is the same as saying that all American are Bible-Thumping-Christians, when we damned well know that it isn't true.
I also want to point out that mandatory conscription has been abolished in many European countries, so the people that enroll into the military also enroll whilst knowing that they can and will die for their country.
Also, (at the risk of invoking Godwins law), do you really think all Europeans sat still when they were invaded by Nazi Germany? I don't think so .