The way MS acts, I have to think that they're more like Lawful Evil than Lawful Good. That means they can't make a Paladin. Or a Ranger, for that matter.
I'm done. I've had it. I've used Windows for years, and managed to do what I need w/o massive invasions of privacy. Straw to camel's back: You are broken. This box (Win2K) is going to serve me for as long as I need it. My second machine is getting Gentoo installed right now. I'll have some of my Linux pals help me get it set up and set up right. And help me figure out what I'm actually doing (in part). I've done enough to get around Linux, but I want to know more.
Hopefully, within a year (minding, I like my gaming!) I'll be able to toss Windows and break myself of the habit completely before Palladium comes out and destroys home computing.
That is not entirely accurate. All government developed software may wind up as public domain, but I would guess that most, if not all, of it will not be available for at least 20 years after it's written. If all the software (and especially source) was public, we'd have some major security holes and exploits possible. Just think about it.
We've got gov't programs running major systems (though NT on Aircraft Carriers, IIRC). A lot of gov't created systems are running gov't machines. Much of the software is so specialized that it's probably not much use to any of us, but there's a few pieces that if crackers got a hold of would be disastrous.
Just to illustrate this, one of the guys I worked with (he left, maybe a week after I started) had worked with the DoD before working here. Me, being the inquisitive student, asked about it. He told me that most of their programmers and engineers don't know what they're working on. The engineers get told, "build this part," not "build this part for this machine."
Programmers are treated more or less the same way. They're not told to write a program. They're told to write a class, or maybe just a function. They aren't told what they're working on, just to code. The higher ranking/clearance guys then put it together.
So, eventually, yeah, maybe we'll get to see the code. But there is a lot of classified stuff in the government. You don't get to hear about everything.
And, correct me if I wrong, we don't even get to see the code for the America's Army game, do we? Of course it wasn't developed by them, just for them. Thoughts?
What I'd like to see is something like the Cappucino get an LCD touchscreen and battery installed on it. This little subnotebook, as far as I can tell from the website, needs to be hooked up to a PC for software to be installed (unless you do it over Wireless). The Cappuccino, though larger and heavier could, with a screen and battery, be an actual fully functioning PC. If you hook a keyboard up. You know.
In the screenshot where they actually show the device running, you can see on the desktop that they've already installed DivX and Quake II. The real use come out! Gaming and movies on the road! Woo!
Of course, that's all laptops are used for anyway.
Re:Why two ethernet controllers?
on
nForce2 Preview
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· Score: 2
Internet connection sharing. I have a Dual Port NIC in my system for this exact purpose. Sure, the box is firewalled too, but it's main function is to distribute one connection in, to the other two systems in the house via a HUB.
I'm much too cheap to buy the extra IPs or a router. I had the hub and the NIC sitting around (salvage sales - woo!) and it was an easy way to avoid paying $20 / month or $100 for an actual router.
I'd like this board on this grounds that it saves me a PCI slot or two. My machine is all filled up right now anyway. I couldn't put a second NIC in anyway. I was glad to have the dual port card.
It will be an area of advertising akin to what was in Minority Report. For those who've seen it, you know what I'm tlaking about. For those who haven't, or have missed the dozen or so stories on/., the advertising in Minority Report was throughly invasive. Personalized advertisments in nearly every public place. "Hello John Anderton. Feel the freedom of the new Lexus!"
I recently saw a news blurb on CNN (no link, this was on CNN TV) that talked about using flipbook style pics to create "moving" picture advertisments on the walls of subways for when the trains go by.
They interviewed the riders, and do you know what most said? "I like the new ads," or "these new ads are great!" I say, what the hell is wrong with these people? I see a 6 ads on billboard on the way to work, I hear another 6 on the radio (this is a 10 minute drive!) and then when I get on the net at work I see many, many more. Then I go home. I see and hear more ads, and if I happen to turn on the TV, I get commercials.
I think that one reason companies that advertise on TV are getting less business is because people have learned to tune the ads out. I don't even need to mute the TV anymore. As soon as they cut to commercial breaks, I tune out. I will, likely, learn to tune out ads in corners very quickly. I still won't like it. But I get advertisments in many forms throughout the day, I tune every single one out. I'm personally getting sick of it, and I know it's affecting my personal perception. I know it just makes me ignore more and more things. *sigh*
Sorry for the long free flow rant. Just my thoughts on the issue. Later.
I, personally hope it (the ad) is sent on a different signal. Then it would be possible to block them out when I watch West Wing and the Simpsons (L & O lost it's appeal to me a few years back, though I still occasionally watch it on holidays on A & E). This does, however, bring up on more annyonce! Television companies could start charging for more expensive service packages, but you don't have to deal with ads.
OMG. Mod parent down as "Idiot." I don't care that I didn't remember that the V5 6K had 4 Processors (Which were not Vertex Pixel Shaders ala nVidias GPUs). That was my bad. I apoloigze. I wasn't the one running the damn card. When my buddy, who practically stole one, said "Come look at this!" I came, saw, and saw it kicked ass.
But you are just a moron. Granted, I should have specified what this was running on, but you're taking the V5 5500's benchmarks based on it's release! Yeah, the V5 6K won't do quite so well on a PII 400. It does a helluva lot better on an Athlon XP. Helllooo? It's not all in the graphics card. Chipset, processor, RAM. You know, I hear those are important components too!
PII 400MHz != 1.4GHz Athlon
And NO the 4600 can't stomp it in any benchmark. 8xFSAA. You moron. The 4600 can't even render in 8xFSAA. Even if the 4600 only got 15fps (it was running smooth, at least 30) 15 0? New math! Hooray for new math! It won't do you a bit of good to review math!
I've seen this thing RUN. You haven't. Once you have, you can tell me what you thought it looked like.
You know what the best card out there is? It might surprise you. At a low end price tag of ~$800 and up to nearly $6500 the Voodoo 5 6000 is one of the best cards out there. The price tag is that high because it is, unsurprisingly, a collectors item.
I've seen this card work. I runs fast and it looks gorgeous.
You know what the Parhelia tried to do? Fragmented AA? Voodoo could've torn that up years ago. The V5 6000 did 8x Full screen AA. Fast. At 1024. It's amazingly gorgeous.
Think about it. This card is 2-3 years old. The architecture is what matters. Not the amount of GPUs. The GeForce4 4600 can't even consider 8xAA. The V5 6K does, and it does it well. On 128M of SDRAM. I'd still maybe take the 4600 over the V5 6K. But it would be a hard decision. The 4600 with it's DDR memory and GPU can handle some things better. Some. Not all.
This card just proves that it really doesn't matter how much RAM or how many GPUs a card has. It's in the way the card is built. There aren't many cards I'd take over the V5 6K. If I could get one, for myself to keep, I'd pull me Geforce 3 out in a heartbeat. The GPU isn't a factor here. The RAM (DDR over SDR) isn't a factor. The V5 6K is just that well built, even 3 years later.
There. I've said my piece. After seeing the V5 in action, I don't care to get the least bit excited about the "latest greatest" graphics cards ever again.
there were some things to change, mostly in the the promotion (c'mon, seeing darth maul break out the second blade of the lightsabre would've been way cooler if you didn't know about it ahead of time. It might have been hard to keep from "knowing" about, but we didn't need to see it in the first trailer.)
Along that line, I really did not need to see, in the previews for AOTC, Yoda jumping around on crack, flailing his lightsaber about like a mad-muppet. I saw the preview after I saw the movie. Some of my friends didn't.
AOTC is really just a kind of blah movie that leads up to Jedi v. Battle Droids, Clone v. Battle Droids, and Yoda v. Everyone fights. There is no movie. I refuse to watch the first 3/4 of the movie (the filler) ever again. Once Mace walks into the Arena, I'd start watching.
E1: I haven't it seen since the first time in the theater. I don't care if I ever see it again.
I'll see E3 (Unfortunately not the gaming festival) when it comes out. Pray your Gods deliver us a good E3. Me, I'm an Atheist.
The moral thing to do, of course, is to actually buy the CDs and put money towards the artist, to reimburse them for providing you with nice music. But the vast majority of college students are just too selfish to realise that.
Excuse me? Did you really even go to college? Or did you go to a state school with a scholarship?
From your attitude, I doubt you had to pay anything for college. Maybe books?
I'm going to a small mid-western Liberal arts school. I've got about half covered in scholarships. That leaves me $15,000 or so to cover with cash money, help from my parents, and loans. My parents are not rich, nor am I. I don't get everything free either. I'd love to have enough money to but the things I want. When I'm almost broken on books, my first thoughts aren't on "Gee, I like so-and-so artist. I'm going to go spend $20 stupid dollars on their album." They're more along the lines of "Gee, I hope I have enough money for books, food and (Fraternity) house bills."
So, yes, I suppose I am selfish in that sense. I'd rather, you know, eat than buy some damn CD that will show the artist %5 of what I paid. Most of my friends were the same way, except the ones who had things handed to them. They'd go out and buy CDs. They had plenty of money. I Downloaded copies of office, though not illegal (campus wide license), from HL. I wasn't about to pay for that either. Talk to me when everything hasn't been handed to you.
Mod me up, mod me down. I don't really care right now.
*The numbers in this rant were acquired from Sniffer Pro.*
Personally, I'm glad AG is down. At my university of choice AG was taking up, at any given time 50%-80% of the badnwidth. That is just ridiculous. It was the only (music) sharing software the campus hadn't blocked (aside from Good ol' Hotline, RIP). Of course, everyone knew how to use AG, 10 people used Hotline (myself included). Maybe.
It just got frustrating being taken down to 4K for legit downloads. My roommate started playing with Gentoo. That's a fun install if your bandwidth is castrated. When I was needing to do work, it was frustrating to know that I couldn't get decent connection rates because everyone else was getting their fix it Britney and N'Sync. Of course, I was also occasionally nabbing things from HL(got to test drive XP[thank you, but no]), but I didn't care what rates I got there. There was always a resume DL feature.
Though, honestly, it wouldn't have been as bad if they'd download and close the connection. I think 60-70% of the AG traffic was out-going.
If AG is truly dead, may they rest in peace. I, OTOH, enjoy my bandwidth.
if I want games I run a bare bones cut down version of Win95 (with latest directx) which runs like the clappers.
You mean you use a stripped down version of 98. Since 95 doesn't like DX8.1. That limits you a little. A few games won't run w/o DX8.1. The list will only increase as far as the number of games you won't be able to use. Once DX9 hits, and probably already, you won't be able to run most newer games.
I see no real need to go to XP. At work, we call it 2K for idiots.
is there anything really in there that would make Win2k people go "oooh oooh gotta upgrade now"?
Can XP run Rainbow 6? I know 2K couldn't, but I don't exactly care either. 2K suits me quite well. I have a Raid array on my home system, and from all reports, XP doesn't get much of a speed benefit from having one, whereas 2K actually takes more advantage of it.
Seriously. This doesn't mean they're forcing an upgrade upon you. It doesn't mean you even have to stick with XP for mass purchases. If you're an individual, you might actually be able to make requests to get a specific flavor installed.
I for one know that at my workplace, a hospital, we're just getting ready to switch to full on NT systems (that is, 2K). Sure, XP will work fine with that, but when we don't want to screw around with 2 different flavors of Windows, we won't have to. Besides that we don't exactly trust XP here. One of my team tried it on his laptop, for the hell of it. Ran great for about 4-5 months and then, very suddenly, screwed itself over. He put 2K back on.
Companies and corporations that will need larger numbers of machines, say 5+, the major manufacturers will accomodate to what OS you need. My local United Way was, a year or two ago, going to get 3 new systems from Gateway (IIRC) and they would've been forced to take ME. I called Gateway on their behalf and got them to put 98SE on the machines.
It's just a matter of knowing who to talk to.
A remember people, don't agree to your EULAs! Can someone post a link to the EULA avoider? That's the worst thing you can do to lose your 2K machine. I'm sure that, had I agreed to mine, I'd wake up one morning to be running XP. That would anger me.
IIRC, there was a scene in Jurassic Park where they discuss the idea that bringing back dinosaurs could "destroy the world." Ian Malcolm puts it well when he says that us leaving (being eaten) won't end the world. The world will keep going for a long time regardless of what species are on it.
Or maybe I hallucinated the whole thing. I really can't remember.
But many music executives, watching revenue sag as home compact-disc copying has soared, feel that they have little choice if they are to save their business. World-wide music sales dropped 5% last year, while global sales of compact-disc albums declined for the first time since CDs were launched in 1983. So far this year, U.S. music sales are down steeply from a sluggish 2001.
Or could it be because people are getting fed up with the latest crap from Britnay Spears and N'sync? I have bought 5 albums in as many years. They were all albums that I knew I would enjoy, start to finish (w/ maybe 1 or 2 songs as exceptions). I didn't buy the same album over, and over, and over again.
Hell, I download a few songs that I want to hear, but there's no way I'm paying for an album for one song. I know that argument has long been shouted loudly and proudly from our ranks here on/., but I have to say it again. If they would just realize that people WANT digital music that they can download and throw onto a custom CD/MP3 player/etc, then they could give this up now! Yes, there'd still be copying of CDs, and all that, but it would drop. If they have lost revenue because of filesharing, not their own lack of quality, then setting up a system where we can buy ONE song would do wonders for their revenues. They are, bluntly, idiots.
On a side note, RE: the article, I don't see how they can get someone beyond reasonable doubt. It's a simple matter to give the HD a complete wipe (7 times over, 1s and 0s) and users can just claim that they downloaded a song from Kazaa to hear it before they bought an album. The only way they could truly "get" someone is if the user had perpetually downloaded copies of the same song.
Of course, you'll need to be a big fish with lots of illegal music to get their attention."
That's good news for all of us humans out here, but what about our aquatic File-swapping friends? Unite with our fishy friends and protect their rights to music!
I've been playing the Beta since Spring. It's wonderful. I've got the Special Edition on order from EB. I've got it ordered for one day delivery. I've got.... I've got no life do I?
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The way MS acts, I have to think that they're more like Lawful Evil than Lawful Good. That means they can't make a Paladin. Or a Ranger, for that matter.
I'm done. I've had it. I've used Windows for years, and managed to do what I need w/o massive invasions of privacy. Straw to camel's back: You are broken. This box (Win2K) is going to serve me for as long as I need it. My second machine is getting Gentoo installed right now. I'll have some of my Linux pals help me get it set up and set up right. And help me figure out what I'm actually doing (in part). I've done enough to get around Linux, but I want to know more.
Hopefully, within a year (minding, I like my gaming!) I'll be able to toss Windows and break myself of the habit completely before Palladium comes out and destroys home computing.
That is not entirely accurate. All government developed software may wind up as public domain, but I would guess that most, if not all, of it will not be available for at least 20 years after it's written. If all the software (and especially source) was public, we'd have some major security holes and exploits possible. Just think about it.
We've got gov't programs running major systems (though NT on Aircraft Carriers, IIRC). A lot of gov't created systems are running gov't machines. Much of the software is so specialized that it's probably not much use to any of us, but there's a few pieces that if crackers got a hold of would be disastrous.
Just to illustrate this, one of the guys I worked with (he left, maybe a week after I started) had worked with the DoD before working here. Me, being the inquisitive student, asked about it. He told me that most of their programmers and engineers don't know what they're working on. The engineers get told, "build this part," not "build this part for this machine."
Programmers are treated more or less the same way. They're not told to write a program. They're told to write a class, or maybe just a function. They aren't told what they're working on, just to code. The higher ranking/clearance guys then put it together.
So, eventually, yeah, maybe we'll get to see the code. But there is a lot of classified stuff in the government. You don't get to hear about everything.
And, correct me if I wrong, we don't even get to see the code for the America's Army game, do we? Of course it wasn't developed by them, just for them. Thoughts?
What I'd like to see is something like the Cappucino get an LCD touchscreen and battery installed on it. This little subnotebook, as far as I can tell from the website, needs to be hooked up to a PC for software to be installed (unless you do it over Wireless). The Cappuccino, though larger and heavier could, with a screen and battery, be an actual fully functioning PC. If you hook a keyboard up. You know.
In the screenshot where they actually show the device running, you can see on the desktop that they've already installed DivX and Quake II. The real use come out! Gaming and movies on the road! Woo!
Of course, that's all laptops are used for anyway.
Internet connection sharing. I have a Dual Port NIC in my system for this exact purpose. Sure, the box is firewalled too, but it's main function is to distribute one connection in, to the other two systems in the house via a HUB.
I'm much too cheap to buy the extra IPs or a router. I had the hub and the NIC sitting around (salvage sales - woo!) and it was an easy way to avoid paying $20 / month or $100 for an actual router.
I'd like this board on this grounds that it saves me a PCI slot or two. My machine is all filled up right now anyway. I couldn't put a second NIC in anyway. I was glad to have the dual port card.
It will be an area of advertising akin to what was in Minority Report. For those who've seen it, you know what I'm tlaking about. For those who haven't, or have missed the dozen or so stories on /., the advertising in Minority Report was throughly invasive. Personalized advertisments in nearly every public place. "Hello John Anderton. Feel the freedom of the new Lexus!"
I recently saw a news blurb on CNN (no link, this was on CNN TV) that talked about using flipbook style pics to create "moving" picture advertisments on the walls of subways for when the trains go by.
They interviewed the riders, and do you know what most said? "I like the new ads," or "these new ads are great!" I say, what the hell is wrong with these people? I see a 6 ads on billboard on the way to work, I hear another 6 on the radio (this is a 10 minute drive!) and then when I get on the net at work I see many, many more. Then I go home. I see and hear more ads, and if I happen to turn on the TV, I get commercials.
I think that one reason companies that advertise on TV are getting less business is because people have learned to tune the ads out. I don't even need to mute the TV anymore. As soon as they cut to commercial breaks, I tune out. I will, likely, learn to tune out ads in corners very quickly. I still won't like it. But I get advertisments in many forms throughout the day, I tune every single one out. I'm personally getting sick of it, and I know it's affecting my personal perception. I know it just makes me ignore more and more things. *sigh*
Sorry for the long free flow rant. Just my thoughts on the issue. Later.
I, personally hope it (the ad) is sent on a different signal. Then it would be possible to block them out when I watch West Wing and the Simpsons (L & O lost it's appeal to me a few years back, though I still occasionally watch it on holidays on A & E). This does, however, bring up on more annyonce! Television companies could start charging for more expensive service packages, but you don't have to deal with ads.
Any thoughts?
No offense man, but grow some cajones. If they fire you, they fire you. You obviously don't care for this job too much.
Excuse, that should read "15 is less than 0?"
Apologies, and farewell.
OMG. Mod parent down as "Idiot." I don't care that I didn't remember that the V5 6K had 4 Processors (Which were not Vertex Pixel Shaders ala nVidias GPUs). That was my bad. I apoloigze. I wasn't the one running the damn card. When my buddy, who practically stole one, said "Come look at this!" I came, saw, and saw it kicked ass.
But you are just a moron. Granted, I should have specified what this was running on, but you're taking the V5 5500's benchmarks based on it's release! Yeah, the V5 6K won't do quite so well on a PII 400. It does a helluva lot better on an Athlon XP. Helllooo? It's not all in the graphics card. Chipset, processor, RAM. You know, I hear those are important components too!
PII 400MHz != 1.4GHz Athlon
And NO the 4600 can't stomp it in any benchmark. 8xFSAA. You moron. The 4600 can't even render in 8xFSAA. Even if the 4600 only got 15fps (it was running smooth, at least 30) 15 0? New math! Hooray for new math! It won't do you a bit of good to review math!
I've seen this thing RUN. You haven't. Once you have, you can tell me what you thought it looked like.
Do what you will. I've got Karma to burn.
You know what the best card out there is? It might surprise you. At a low end price tag of ~$800 and up to nearly $6500 the Voodoo 5 6000 is one of the best cards out there. The price tag is that high because it is, unsurprisingly, a collectors item.
I've seen this card work. I runs fast and it looks gorgeous.
You know what the Parhelia tried to do? Fragmented AA? Voodoo could've torn that up years ago. The V5 6000 did 8x Full screen AA. Fast. At 1024. It's amazingly gorgeous.
Think about it. This card is 2-3 years old. The architecture is what matters. Not the amount of GPUs. The GeForce4 4600 can't even consider 8xAA. The V5 6K does, and it does it well. On 128M of SDRAM. I'd still maybe take the 4600 over the V5 6K. But it would be a hard decision. The 4600 with it's DDR memory and GPU can handle some things better. Some. Not all.
This card just proves that it really doesn't matter how much RAM or how many GPUs a card has. It's in the way the card is built. There aren't many cards I'd take over the V5 6K. If I could get one, for myself to keep, I'd pull me Geforce 3 out in a heartbeat. The GPU isn't a factor here. The RAM (DDR over SDR) isn't a factor. The V5 6K is just that well built, even 3 years later.
There. I've said my piece. After seeing the V5 in action, I don't care to get the least bit excited about the "latest greatest" graphics cards ever again.
Hey! He did just fine on part 1! Now I just need to wait for good versions of parts 2 and 3.
Wait? Was this thread about Star Wars?
there were some things to change, mostly in the the promotion (c'mon, seeing darth maul break out the second blade of the lightsabre would've been way cooler if you didn't know about it ahead of time. It might have been hard to keep from "knowing" about, but we didn't need to see it in the first trailer.)
Along that line, I really did not need to see, in the previews for AOTC, Yoda jumping around on crack, flailing his lightsaber about like a mad-muppet. I saw the preview after I saw the movie. Some of my friends didn't.
AOTC is really just a kind of blah movie that leads up to Jedi v. Battle Droids, Clone v. Battle Droids, and Yoda v. Everyone fights. There is no movie. I refuse to watch the first 3/4 of the movie (the filler) ever again. Once Mace walks into the Arena, I'd start watching.
E1: I haven't it seen since the first time in the theater. I don't care if I ever see it again.
I'll see E3 (Unfortunately not the gaming festival) when it comes out. Pray your Gods deliver us a good E3. Me, I'm an Atheist.
Bring in the K's and all will be well. The Starwars TripleK Petition.
Huh? Triple K? You're not actually suggesting that Lucas hire the KKK, are you?
"Welcome to the Krusty Komedy Klassic! (Krusty chuckles) KKK!?!?! Oh, that can't be good."
The moral thing to do, of course, is to actually buy the CDs and put money towards the artist, to reimburse them for providing you with nice music. But the vast majority of college students are just too selfish to realise that.
Excuse me? Did you really even go to college? Or did you go to a state school with a scholarship?
From your attitude, I doubt you had to pay anything for college. Maybe books?
I'm going to a small mid-western Liberal arts school. I've got about half covered in scholarships. That leaves me $15,000 or so to cover with cash money, help from my parents, and loans. My parents are not rich, nor am I. I don't get everything free either. I'd love to have enough money to but the things I want. When I'm almost broken on books, my first thoughts aren't on "Gee, I like so-and-so artist. I'm going to go spend $20 stupid dollars on their album." They're more along the lines of "Gee, I hope I have enough money for books, food and (Fraternity) house bills."
So, yes, I suppose I am selfish in that sense. I'd rather, you know, eat than buy some damn CD that will show the artist %5 of what I paid. Most of my friends were the same way, except the ones who had things handed to them. They'd go out and buy CDs. They had plenty of money. I Downloaded copies of office, though not illegal (campus wide license), from HL. I wasn't about to pay for that either. Talk to me when everything hasn't been handed to you.
Mod me up, mod me down. I don't really care right now.
*The numbers in this rant were acquired from Sniffer Pro.*
Personally, I'm glad AG is down. At my university of choice AG was taking up, at any given time 50%-80% of the badnwidth. That is just ridiculous. It was the only (music) sharing software the campus hadn't blocked (aside from Good ol' Hotline, RIP). Of course, everyone knew how to use AG, 10 people used Hotline (myself included). Maybe.
It just got frustrating being taken down to 4K for legit downloads. My roommate started playing with Gentoo. That's a fun install if your bandwidth is castrated. When I was needing to do work, it was frustrating to know that I couldn't get decent connection rates because everyone else was getting their fix it Britney and N'Sync. Of course, I was also occasionally nabbing things from HL(got to test drive XP[thank you, but no]), but I didn't care what rates I got there. There was always a resume DL feature.
Though, honestly, it wouldn't have been as bad if they'd download and close the connection. I think 60-70% of the AG traffic was out-going.
If AG is truly dead, may they rest in peace. I, OTOH, enjoy my bandwidth.
if I want games I run a bare bones cut down version of Win95 (with latest directx) which runs like the clappers.
You mean you use a stripped down version of 98. Since 95 doesn't like DX8.1. That limits you a little. A few games won't run w/o DX8.1. The list will only increase as far as the number of games you won't be able to use. Once DX9 hits, and probably already, you won't be able to run most newer games.
I see no real need to go to XP.
At work, we call it 2K for idiots.
is there anything really in there that would make Win2k people go "oooh oooh gotta upgrade now"?
Can XP run Rainbow 6? I know 2K couldn't, but I don't exactly care either. 2K suits me quite well. I have a Raid array on my home system, and from all reports, XP doesn't get much of a speed benefit from having one, whereas 2K actually takes more advantage of it.
I'm out.
Seriously. This doesn't mean they're forcing an upgrade upon you. It doesn't mean you even have to stick with XP for mass purchases. If you're an individual, you might actually be able to make requests to get a specific flavor installed.
I for one know that at my workplace, a hospital, we're just getting ready to switch to full on NT systems (that is, 2K). Sure, XP will work fine with that, but when we don't want to screw around with 2 different flavors of Windows, we won't have to. Besides that we don't exactly trust XP here. One of my team tried it on his laptop, for the hell of it. Ran great for about 4-5 months and then, very suddenly, screwed itself over. He put 2K back on.
Companies and corporations that will need larger numbers of machines, say 5+, the major manufacturers will accomodate to what OS you need. My local United Way was, a year or two ago, going to get 3 new systems from Gateway (IIRC) and they would've been forced to take ME. I called Gateway on their behalf and got them to put 98SE on the machines.
It's just a matter of knowing who to talk to.
A remember people, don't agree to your EULAs! Can someone post a link to the EULA avoider? That's the worst thing you can do to lose your 2K machine. I'm sure that, had I agreed to mine, I'd wake up one morning to be running XP. That would anger me.
IIRC, there was a scene in Jurassic Park where they discuss the idea that bringing back dinosaurs could "destroy the world." Ian Malcolm puts it well when he says that us leaving (being eaten) won't end the world. The world will keep going for a long time regardless of what species are on it.
Or maybe I hallucinated the whole thing. I really can't remember.
I actually SAW CAT6 on sale at Best Buy yesterday. $25 for 25ft.
It's already commercially available and overpriced!
But many music executives, watching revenue sag as home compact-disc copying has soared, feel that they have little choice if they are to save their business. World-wide music sales dropped 5% last year, while global sales of compact-disc albums declined for the first time since CDs were launched in 1983. So far this year, U.S. music sales are down steeply from a sluggish 2001.
/., but I have to say it again. If they would just realize that people WANT digital music that they can download and throw onto a custom CD/MP3 player/etc, then they could give this up now! Yes, there'd still be copying of CDs, and all that, but it would drop. If they have lost revenue because of filesharing, not their own lack of quality, then setting up a system where we can buy ONE song would do wonders for their revenues. They are, bluntly, idiots.
Or could it be because people are getting fed up with the latest crap from Britnay Spears and N'sync? I have bought 5 albums in as many years. They were all albums that I knew I would enjoy, start to finish (w/ maybe 1 or 2 songs as exceptions). I didn't buy the same album over, and over, and over again.
Hell, I download a few songs that I want to hear, but there's no way I'm paying for an album for one song. I know that argument has long been shouted loudly and proudly from our ranks here on
On a side note, RE: the article, I don't see how they can get someone beyond reasonable doubt. It's a simple matter to give the HD a complete wipe (7 times over, 1s and 0s) and users can just claim that they downloaded a song from Kazaa to hear it before they bought an album. The only way they could truly "get" someone is if the user had perpetually downloaded copies of the same song.
Anyway, that's my $.02
Later.
Of course, you'll need to be a big fish with lots of illegal music to get their attention."
That's good news for all of us humans out here, but what about our aquatic File-swapping friends? Unite with our fishy friends and protect their rights to music!
"How are people going to justify stealing a movie by saying it isn't any good after the movie's already a $100-million hit?"
Lots_of_money_made != good_movie
Heck, by Urie's logic Phantom Menace was good. *shudder* ugh. Jar-Jar. */shudder*
I've been playing the Beta since Spring. It's wonderful. I've got the Special Edition on order from EB. I've got it ordered for one day delivery. I've got.... I've got no life do I?