If we assume that the costs would scale with land area. Of course, if you took South Korea, split it in half, and added an equal area of uninhabited desert between the two halves, you wouldn't double the cost; the assumption that the costs would scale with land area is ludicrous.
Most people in the US live neither in densely-populated cities nor in the middle of nowhere. They live in the suburbs.
Verizon has ALREADY spent $23 billion on FTTP deployments. Evidently that would be enough to cover all of South Korea.
Bitching is easy. But let's examine what's going on.
All of the roads around here are in drivable condition. I-25 North has seen better days, but it's in good enough shape to get where you need. Local streets are in excellent condition.
The police did an excellent job responding to the traffic accident I was in. They also arrested a bunch of morons who were dragging their passed-out drunk friend around (and called EMTs to take the friend to the hospital).
Food is by and large safe. You can buy pretty much any food at the supermarket and be more or less certain that it's safe. Out of 300 million people, how many have died in the last year due to tainted food?
Our water is clean and flows consistently.
Our trash is hauled away.
Our sewage is sanitary and functioning properly.
Everyone I know at my university went to public school.
Yeah, who cares how the OS works if it "feels" like a toy.
Please. If you have specific criticisms of the OS, list them. Otherwise, you're not adding anything to the discussion. We don't care how you think the OS "feels".
A substantial portion of game content in WoW is server-side. The scripts for raid encounters, NPC locations and dialogue, and other elements are arguably creative works, and they are stored on the server. The game client downloads these elements and renders them using local models and textures.
Warden prevents access to such game content by preventing users from authenticating with the WoW servers if detected cheat programs are loaded. Glider circumvents this measure by fooling Warden into allowing access to such content.
This sounds like a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA to me. Mind you, I think that those provisions are bullshit, but I'm not sure we can trash the judge for ruling the way he did.
To all the people who are going to point out how much better broadband is elsewhere.
How much do you pay for an 1100 sq ft (102 m^2) apartment? How much do you pay for energy? For gas? For food?
Do you REALLY want to get in to a cost of living comparison between, say, Tokyo and here? Because I will GLADLY accept my crappy 12Mbps Comcast internet in exchange for 3-4 times more living space.
And, by the way, "gigabit" Internet service often isn't. My university has "gigabit" Internet service (in that the computer labs are wired with GigE and 10G uplinks), but the entire campus shares 4Gbps of Internet bandwidth. For anything but other universities (Internet2) or Akamai (local mirror), it's not significantly faster than the 12Mbps Comcast I have at my apartment. Of course, the fact that everyone is torrenting probably has something to do with that.
To sum it up - SI is not right because it's "official". SI is WRONG for computer science. And if the universe is quantum, SI is technically wrong for everything. Calculus, too.
No one gives a shit whether your measurement system is 'correct', as long as it's consistent. SI is VERY consistent for a system that spans so many fields. That's why it's better than the US customary system.
This is why data storage is SUPPOSED to be described using 1024, while data transfer is described using 1000.
There's nothing inherent to today's storage technologies that requires power-of-two capacities. We're not even using a fraction of the address space we already have, so sticking to a power-of-two size doesn't have any real benefits.
SI is WRONG for computer science.
Oh, so Computer Science is so important that we get to invent our own units, and use the same names as established SI units? Please. If you want to use binary units because they are convenient, go ahead and do so. But DON'T call them "tera", "giga", or "mega"; these terms already have SPECIFIC meanings and you can't just hijack them.
First, you don't need credit to get a debit card in the US either. You can simply open a checking account at a bank or credit union and they will give you a debit card. My credit union can actually produce a card in about 2-3 minutes while you wait.
The debit card is accepted as a debit card (using your PIN) or as a credit card (mine is Visa, some are MasterCard). You can use it pretty much everywhere, including at fast food places, gas stations, or online. There are very, very few "cash only" places left anymore in my area.
Second, many major metro areas in the US have RFID-based cards. The SmarTrip card (Washington DC) is very similar to the Oyster card.
Credit/Debit cards (RFID or magstripe) are cheap, compact, and easy to replace if they're stolen. Maybe some sort of consolidated "digital wallet" could replace my real wallet, but considering that I have cards from many different systems (State Driver's License / ID, University ID, Credit/Debit Cards, Transit Card, Health Insurance Card) it would take a huge consolidation effort to come up with a single interconnected system. Not to mention cash.
So, basically, I need to keep my wallet anyway. Carrying a couple of thin plastic cards isn't the largest of my concerns.
Exactly. Netbooks are the most dangerous thing for Microsoft ever.
Microsoft calls netbooks "ULCPCs", or Ultra Low Cost Personal Computers.
Emphasis on "Ultra Low Cost". That usually means sub-$400, and often sub-$300. At that price, a $45 Windows license is too much. So netbook manufacturers went with Linux instead, which is free.
Now Microsoft did the only thing it could. It deeply discounted Windows XP. XP may be selling for as little as $10 on netbooks.
Microsoft managed to capture the bulk of the market, at least in the USA. Linux crisis averted. Except it wasn't. Linux may not be pushing out Windows in netbooks, but it's pushing down the PRICE of Windows. That means that Microsoft makes less profit.
So, will Linux push Windows out of the netbook market? Perhaps eventually. But even if Microsoft can hold the netbook market, they are killing their profit margins to do so. That's bad news for Microsoft.
FYI, I own an EEE 900HA running Ubuntu and Vista. It's a great little PC.
Apple isn't a convicted monopolist. What the HELL makes this so hard for people to grasp.
The fact that Apple ties their music store (iTMS) to their music player (iTunes) to their portable player (iPod), and the fact that the latter has near-monopoly status. The fact that they use technological measures to intentionally make their product (iPod) incompatible with third-party software. The fact that they use technological measures to ensure that only "made for iPod" accessories are compatible.
Basically, we're saying that we want the law to be equally applied. You're arguing that only Microsoft should get punished because they're a "convicted monopolist". We're arguing that fairness doesn't depend on whether you're convicted, it depends on what you've done. And right now it appears that Apple is doing a lot more to abuse their monopoly than Microsoft.
The iPod's market share is around 85%. That's arguably just as much a monopoly as Microsoft's share of the OS market, which just dropped below 90%.
The most fuel efficient vehicle sold in the UK, a diesel Fiesta with a 1.6 Duratorq TDCi engine, is rated at 3.2l/100km. That's 31.25 km/l, 19.41 mi/l, or 73.36 miles per US gallon.
That's on diesel, which has 30% more energy than gasoline per gallon. It also has higher CO2, NOx/SOx, and particulate emissions than gasoline, even with the newer more advanced diesel engines.
By the way, the same tests indicate that the Prius gets 60 miles per US gallon. The EPA ratings claim 45 miles per US gallon. That indicates that the UK ratings are significantly more optimistic than EPA ratings.
The smart fortwo (petrol, manual transmission)? 57 MPG (US gallon) according to the UK ratings. 41 MPG according to the EPA.
So, yeah, Europan cars get astonishing mileage. Except they don't, unless you inflate the figures by using larger gallons, overly-optimistic tests, or fuels (diesel) with more energy per gallon.
Note that you CAN'T simply look at the size of the Windows folder to determine the size of the install. There are a LOT of hard links in the Windows folder, and each one gets counted as full size by Explorer. That's why the winsxs folder looks huge but is actually pretty small.
Most of the size reduction in Windows 7 comes from stripping out the sample videos/photos/music, as well as some of the built-in Windows components (Windows Mail, Calendar, etc.).
You can in fact install Vista (vLite to be precise) on a 4GB SSD, and have about 2GB free after you turn of the hibernation and page files. Once you strip out printer drivers and Chinese fonts, plus the sample media files, it's not really any bigger than XP.
That said, 1.5GB is still absurd for an OS. Linux is definitely a lot better in that regard; yeah, a modern Linux distro like Ubuntu is 1.5GB installed, but that includes things like OpenOffice.org and GIMP.
Completely wrong. There are two reasons why Vista failed. The first is that it's a crap product.
What a well-researched, well argued point.
Here's the problem: everyone telling me that Vista is crap can't seem to tell me why. Sure, they rumble up a few reasons like "performance", "stability", or "hardware support", but when you ask them for the hard and fast stats the numbers paint a very different picture.
Vista is a few percent slower than XP, except in some specific edge-case microbenchmarks. Vista works with everything I own, from my EEE PC to my T61 to my home-built desktop. It supports every app that I run. It doesn't crash.
So, I guess I actually like this "slow, bloated, crashy OS". Perhaps it's because Vista 64 is better supported than XP64 ever was. Perhaps it's because the audio system works better with my odd speaker setup (5.1 missing the rear speakers). Perhaps it's because it's saved my ass more than once by keeping shadow copies of things I've overwritten or deleted.
So, unless you have something better than "it's a crap product", please stop pissing on Vista. Vague, unspecified reasons aren't going to cut it.
Here in the US, the system is similar. If you don't pay, the company can use a collection agency to attempt to recover the money.
The important thing is that you should never give the collection agency a dime unless they agree not to report you to the credit agencies (or to remove their report if they have already done so). Your leverage against them is that they want the money and probably don't want to sue you for it (especially if it's under $1000 or so).
Bottom line, though, is that it's probably better that you don't get reported to a collection agency in the first place. That means that you don't deal with underhanded companies and that you pay your bill on time.
Your TCP RWIN is too small. XP has a low default, which is too small for high-latency, high-bandwidth networks. It wasn't really a problem when XP shipped for most people, but it's getting to be a problem now.
Vista tunes this automatically. So do newer Linux distributions.
And, point of order, why are we comparing a 2001 version (2004 if you count SP2) of Windows to a 2008 version of Ubuntu?
General public SHOULD be able to install unsigned drivers. It's not your right to tell them what NOT to do. Anyway, inability to install drivers is certainly a limitation compared to WXP.
If you disagree, then please explain how freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.
Orwellian reference notwithstanding, I disagree.
Most users will never need to load unsigned drivers, and there are significant security benefits (e.g. anti-rootkit) to requiring all kernel-mode code to be signed. If you want to run unsigned code in kernel mode, you can enable test mode and do what you want.
Basically, Vista x64 / 7 x64 gives you the choice. You can have the additional security of requiring that all drivers be signed. Or you can have the freedom to run what you want. You can select either option at boot-time.
Do you take issue with the 'tainted' bit in kernel modules too? Or with the many compile-time options in the kernel? Giving users the power to decide whether unsigned code is able to run in kernel mode sounds like a smart idea to me.
And this is why I have T-Mobile. Band IV (1700MHz/2100MHz) for UMTS, 1900MHz for GSM. AT&T's UMTS coverage is horrible because they don't have enough spectrum for both GSM and UMTS. T-Mobile's UMTS coverage is available in less places, but where it is available, it's considerably more reliable.
People who think that netbooks are some special kind of device don't get it. Netbooks succeed where devices like the N810 fail because they *are* real notebooks.
I have an EEE 900HA, which I upgraded to a 100GB 7200 RPM Hitachi HDD (taken from my ThinkPad after I upgraded it to 250GB Seagate) and 2GB of memory. I run Ubuntu 8.10 and Vista on it.
It's a full laptop. It's not a limited, special-purpose device.
I can load Eclipse on it. Or VS2008. Or Word. Or Firefox. Or iTunes.
People who say, "Why not just buy a small laptop" don't get it. I did buy a small laptop. It just happens to be a cheap, low-power, small laptop.
Interesting comment, but I find something odd: for someone who purports to be a PhD researcher, your style is decidedly crude. If you want to criticize the informality of a paper, using capitalization and punctuation correctly is always helpful.
Uh...yeah. They are. You can run Leopard just fine on a 6 year old Mac just fine...why don't you try doing the same with Vista and a 6 year old PC, and get back to us.
Apple fanboys piss me off because they make shit up.
The typical 6-year old Mac:
500-700MHz PowerPC G3 or G4 processor 256MB SDR Memory ATI Rage or Radeon 7500 graphics
Leopard WILL NOT INSTALL on a system with a G3 processor or a G4 clocked at less than 867MHz. That rules out Apple's ENTIRE 2002 lineup except for some Power Macintosh G4 models and the PowerBook G4 released in November.
So, no, Leopard won't even run install on most 6-year-old Macs (iMac, eMac, iBook, most PowerBook G4s) and many 5-year-old Macs. Let alone run 'well'.
Oh, and Snow Leopard? It won't even work with PowerPC Macs, which includes EVERY Mac made before 2006. Bought a Mac in November 2005? Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X you'll ever be able to run with your current hardware.
Oh, by the way. I typed this on an EEE PC 900HA. It has 1GB of DDR2 and a 1.6GHz Atom. And it runs Vista fine. Even Aero glass.
I ordered HDMI cables last Saturday from Seattle, and they arrived here (Colorado) yesterday (Monday). That's 2 days, and one of them was a Sunday.
Shipping cost? Under $4. UPS and FedEx want $5-7, and they wouldn't have delivered until Thursday at the earliest.
Letters get most anywhere in the US in 1 or 2 days, for under $0.50. You can't even buy a Coke for $0.50 anymore.
I have never, ever had anything lost by the USPS. Even letters that had the street name misspelled or were missing my apartment number were delivered (the latter with "missing apt. no" written on it).
Netflix isn't possible without the USPS. Nor are hundreds of other things. Our perfect paperless society hasn't arrived yet. I'm not sure it ever will. Regardless, I guess that I'm glad that the US has a postal system that is as reliable, cheap, and efficient as the one I've experienced.
This drives me up a wall too, although it's pretty hard to notice with 320k MP3s (one reason I buy from Amazon).
What's odd is that AAC is absolutely awful in this regard. It significantly outperforms MP3 at = 128kbps, but at higher bitrates AAC seems to still murder overtones whereas MP3 gets significantly better.
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Most people in the US live neither in densely-populated cities nor in the middle of nowhere. They live in the suburbs.
Verizon has ALREADY spent $23 billion on FTTP deployments. Evidently that would be enough to cover all of South Korea.
Bitching is easy. But let's examine what's going on.
All of the roads around here are in drivable condition. I-25 North has seen better days, but it's in good enough shape to get where you need. Local streets are in excellent condition.
The police did an excellent job responding to the traffic accident I was in. They also arrested a bunch of morons who were dragging their passed-out drunk friend around (and called EMTs to take the friend to the hospital).
Food is by and large safe. You can buy pretty much any food at the supermarket and be more or less certain that it's safe. Out of 300 million people, how many have died in the last year due to tainted food?
Our water is clean and flows consistently.
Our trash is hauled away.
Our sewage is sanitary and functioning properly.
Everyone I know at my university went to public school.
Yeah, who cares how the OS works if it "feels" like a toy.
Please. If you have specific criticisms of the OS, list them. Otherwise, you're not adding anything to the discussion. We don't care how you think the OS "feels".
Perhaps because it depends on video overlay or GDI to render video? That's why QuickTime broke.
But, hey, let's blame Protected Video Path with absolutely no evidence to do so.
A substantial portion of game content in WoW is server-side. The scripts for raid encounters, NPC locations and dialogue, and other elements are arguably creative works, and they are stored on the server. The game client downloads these elements and renders them using local models and textures.
Warden prevents access to such game content by preventing users from authenticating with the WoW servers if detected cheat programs are loaded. Glider circumvents this measure by fooling Warden into allowing access to such content.
This sounds like a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA to me. Mind you, I think that those provisions are bullshit, but I'm not sure we can trash the judge for ruling the way he did.
To all the people who are going to point out how much better broadband is elsewhere.
How much do you pay for an 1100 sq ft (102 m^2) apartment? How much do you pay for energy? For gas? For food?
Do you REALLY want to get in to a cost of living comparison between, say, Tokyo and here? Because I will GLADLY accept my crappy 12Mbps Comcast internet in exchange for 3-4 times more living space.
And, by the way, "gigabit" Internet service often isn't. My university has "gigabit" Internet service (in that the computer labs are wired with GigE and 10G uplinks), but the entire campus shares 4Gbps of Internet bandwidth. For anything but other universities (Internet2) or Akamai (local mirror), it's not significantly faster than the 12Mbps Comcast I have at my apartment. Of course, the fact that everyone is torrenting probably has something to do with that.
No one gives a shit whether your measurement system is 'correct', as long as it's consistent. SI is VERY consistent for a system that spans so many fields. That's why it's better than the US customary system.
There's nothing inherent to today's storage technologies that requires power-of-two capacities. We're not even using a fraction of the address space we already have, so sticking to a power-of-two size doesn't have any real benefits.
Oh, so Computer Science is so important that we get to invent our own units, and use the same names as established SI units? Please. If you want to use binary units because they are convenient, go ahead and do so. But DON'T call them "tera", "giga", or "mega"; these terms already have SPECIFIC meanings and you can't just hijack them.
First, you don't need credit to get a debit card in the US either. You can simply open a checking account at a bank or credit union and they will give you a debit card. My credit union can actually produce a card in about 2-3 minutes while you wait.
The debit card is accepted as a debit card (using your PIN) or as a credit card (mine is Visa, some are MasterCard). You can use it pretty much everywhere, including at fast food places, gas stations, or online. There are very, very few "cash only" places left anymore in my area.
Second, many major metro areas in the US have RFID-based cards. The SmarTrip card (Washington DC) is very similar to the Oyster card.
Credit/Debit cards (RFID or magstripe) are cheap, compact, and easy to replace if they're stolen. Maybe some sort of consolidated "digital wallet" could replace my real wallet, but considering that I have cards from many different systems (State Driver's License / ID, University ID, Credit/Debit Cards, Transit Card, Health Insurance Card) it would take a huge consolidation effort to come up with a single interconnected system. Not to mention cash.
So, basically, I need to keep my wallet anyway. Carrying a couple of thin plastic cards isn't the largest of my concerns.
He's being impeached. In Illinois, you don't even have to commit a crime to be impeached. It's like being fired.
Exactly. Netbooks are the most dangerous thing for Microsoft ever.
Microsoft calls netbooks "ULCPCs", or Ultra Low Cost Personal Computers.
Emphasis on "Ultra Low Cost". That usually means sub-$400, and often sub-$300. At that price, a $45 Windows license is too much. So netbook manufacturers went with Linux instead, which is free.
Now Microsoft did the only thing it could. It deeply discounted Windows XP. XP may be selling for as little as $10 on netbooks.
Microsoft managed to capture the bulk of the market, at least in the USA. Linux crisis averted. Except it wasn't. Linux may not be pushing out Windows in netbooks, but it's pushing down the PRICE of Windows. That means that Microsoft makes less profit.
So, will Linux push Windows out of the netbook market? Perhaps eventually. But even if Microsoft can hold the netbook market, they are killing their profit margins to do so. That's bad news for Microsoft.
FYI, I own an EEE 900HA running Ubuntu and Vista. It's a great little PC.
The fact that Apple ties their music store (iTMS) to their music player (iTunes) to their portable player (iPod), and the fact that the latter has near-monopoly status. The fact that they use technological measures to intentionally make their product (iPod) incompatible with third-party software. The fact that they use technological measures to ensure that only "made for iPod" accessories are compatible.
Basically, we're saying that we want the law to be equally applied. You're arguing that only Microsoft should get punished because they're a "convicted monopolist". We're arguing that fairness doesn't depend on whether you're convicted, it depends on what you've done. And right now it appears that Apple is doing a lot more to abuse their monopoly than Microsoft.
The iPod's market share is around 85%. That's arguably just as much a monopoly as Microsoft's share of the OS market, which just dropped below 90%.
No, we have smaller gallons and fuel economy numbers that are realistic.
My Prius gets 60 miles per US gallon on the highway, according to http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/.
According to the EPA, it gets 42 miles per US gallon on the highway.
Guess what? I get around 48 miles per US gallon in reality.
I call BS.
The most fuel efficient vehicle sold in the UK, a diesel Fiesta with a 1.6 Duratorq TDCi engine, is rated at 3.2l/100km. That's 31.25 km/l, 19.41 mi/l, or 73.36 miles per US gallon.
That's on diesel, which has 30% more energy than gasoline per gallon. It also has higher CO2, NOx/SOx, and particulate emissions than gasoline, even with the newer more advanced diesel engines.
By the way, the same tests indicate that the Prius gets 60 miles per US gallon. The EPA ratings claim 45 miles per US gallon. That indicates that the UK ratings are significantly more optimistic than EPA ratings.
The smart fortwo (petrol, manual transmission)? 57 MPG (US gallon) according to the UK ratings. 41 MPG according to the EPA.
So, yeah, Europan cars get astonishing mileage. Except they don't, unless you inflate the figures by using larger gallons, overly-optimistic tests, or fuels (diesel) with more energy per gallon.
Vista installs are actually only about 2.5GB once you strip out/ignore the following:
- Page file (~2GB)
- Hibernation file (~2GB)
- Sample videos (~500MB)
- Sample photos (~150MB)
- Sample music (~150MB)
Note that you CAN'T simply look at the size of the Windows folder to determine the size of the install. There are a LOT of hard links in the Windows folder, and each one gets counted as full size by Explorer. That's why the winsxs folder looks huge but is actually pretty small.
Most of the size reduction in Windows 7 comes from stripping out the sample videos/photos/music, as well as some of the built-in Windows components (Windows Mail, Calendar, etc.).
You can in fact install Vista (vLite to be precise) on a 4GB SSD, and have about 2GB free after you turn of the hibernation and page files. Once you strip out printer drivers and Chinese fonts, plus the sample media files, it's not really any bigger than XP.
That said, 1.5GB is still absurd for an OS. Linux is definitely a lot better in that regard; yeah, a modern Linux distro like Ubuntu is 1.5GB installed, but that includes things like OpenOffice.org and GIMP.
My Red Hat 5.1 (5.2 actually) machine was a Pentium 75 box with 16MB of memory. And, yeah, you could run X on it.
Do you really want to run GNOME or KDE on that?
What a well-researched, well argued point.
Here's the problem: everyone telling me that Vista is crap can't seem to tell me why. Sure, they rumble up a few reasons like "performance", "stability", or "hardware support", but when you ask them for the hard and fast stats the numbers paint a very different picture.
Vista is a few percent slower than XP, except in some specific edge-case microbenchmarks. Vista works with everything I own, from my EEE PC to my T61 to my home-built desktop. It supports every app that I run. It doesn't crash.
So, I guess I actually like this "slow, bloated, crashy OS". Perhaps it's because Vista 64 is better supported than XP64 ever was. Perhaps it's because the audio system works better with my odd speaker setup (5.1 missing the rear speakers). Perhaps it's because it's saved my ass more than once by keeping shadow copies of things I've overwritten or deleted.
So, unless you have something better than "it's a crap product", please stop pissing on Vista. Vague, unspecified reasons aren't going to cut it.
Here in the US, the system is similar. If you don't pay, the company can use a collection agency to attempt to recover the money.
The important thing is that you should never give the collection agency a dime unless they agree not to report you to the credit agencies (or to remove their report if they have already done so). Your leverage against them is that they want the money and probably don't want to sue you for it (especially if it's under $1000 or so).
Bottom line, though, is that it's probably better that you don't get reported to a collection agency in the first place. That means that you don't deal with underhanded companies and that you pay your bill on time.
Your TCP RWIN is too small. XP has a low default, which is too small for high-latency, high-bandwidth networks. It wasn't really a problem when XP shipped for most people, but it's getting to be a problem now.
Vista tunes this automatically. So do newer Linux distributions.
And, point of order, why are we comparing a 2001 version (2004 if you count SP2) of Windows to a 2008 version of Ubuntu?
Orwellian reference notwithstanding, I disagree.
Most users will never need to load unsigned drivers, and there are significant security benefits (e.g. anti-rootkit) to requiring all kernel-mode code to be signed. If you want to run unsigned code in kernel mode, you can enable test mode and do what you want.
Basically, Vista x64 / 7 x64 gives you the choice. You can have the additional security of requiring that all drivers be signed. Or you can have the freedom to run what you want. You can select either option at boot-time.
Do you take issue with the 'tainted' bit in kernel modules too? Or with the many compile-time options in the kernel? Giving users the power to decide whether unsigned code is able to run in kernel mode sounds like a smart idea to me.
And this is why I have T-Mobile. Band IV (1700MHz/2100MHz) for UMTS, 1900MHz for GSM. AT&T's UMTS coverage is horrible because they don't have enough spectrum for both GSM and UMTS. T-Mobile's UMTS coverage is available in less places, but where it is available, it's considerably more reliable.
People who think that netbooks are some special kind of device don't get it. Netbooks succeed where devices like the N810 fail because they *are* real notebooks.
I have an EEE 900HA, which I upgraded to a 100GB 7200 RPM Hitachi HDD (taken from my ThinkPad after I upgraded it to 250GB Seagate) and 2GB of memory. I run Ubuntu 8.10 and Vista on it.
It's a full laptop. It's not a limited, special-purpose device.
I can load Eclipse on it. Or VS2008. Or Word. Or Firefox. Or iTunes.
People who say, "Why not just buy a small laptop" don't get it. I did buy a small laptop. It just happens to be a cheap, low-power, small laptop.
Interesting comment, but I find something odd: for someone who purports to be a PhD researcher, your style is decidedly crude. If you want to criticize the informality of a paper, using capitalization and punctuation correctly is always helpful.
Apple fanboys piss me off because they make shit up.
The typical 6-year old Mac:
500-700MHz PowerPC G3 or G4 processor
256MB SDR Memory
ATI Rage or Radeon 7500 graphics
Leopard WILL NOT INSTALL on a system with a G3 processor or a G4 clocked at less than 867MHz. That rules out Apple's ENTIRE 2002 lineup except for some Power Macintosh G4 models and the PowerBook G4 released in November.
So, no, Leopard won't even run install on most 6-year-old Macs (iMac, eMac, iBook, most PowerBook G4s) and many 5-year-old Macs. Let alone run 'well'.
Oh, and Snow Leopard? It won't even work with PowerPC Macs, which includes EVERY Mac made before 2006. Bought a Mac in November 2005? Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X you'll ever be able to run with your current hardware.
Oh, by the way. I typed this on an EEE PC 900HA. It has 1GB of DDR2 and a 1.6GHz Atom. And it runs Vista fine. Even Aero glass.
What the hell is with ragging on the USPS?
I ordered HDMI cables last Saturday from Seattle, and they arrived here (Colorado) yesterday (Monday). That's 2 days, and one of them was a Sunday.
Shipping cost? Under $4. UPS and FedEx want $5-7, and they wouldn't have delivered until Thursday at the earliest.
Letters get most anywhere in the US in 1 or 2 days, for under $0.50. You can't even buy a Coke for $0.50 anymore.
I have never, ever had anything lost by the USPS. Even letters that had the street name misspelled or were missing my apartment number were delivered (the latter with "missing apt. no" written on it).
Netflix isn't possible without the USPS. Nor are hundreds of other things. Our perfect paperless society hasn't arrived yet. I'm not sure it ever will. Regardless, I guess that I'm glad that the US has a postal system that is as reliable, cheap, and efficient as the one I've experienced.
This drives me up a wall too, although it's pretty hard to notice with 320k MP3s (one reason I buy from Amazon).
What's odd is that AAC is absolutely awful in this regard. It significantly outperforms MP3 at = 128kbps, but at higher bitrates AAC seems to still murder overtones whereas MP3 gets significantly better.