That Uncle Sam returning that nice interest free loan you have given them by over witholding is "Giving you money back". Biggest fallacy in the book, have the standard tax tables overwithold - then make people think "Gee, the government is giving me money - they are so nice". If you are getting a large refund - look into talking to an accountant that can tell you how many deductions you REALLY need to be closer to break even. My goal is to hit somewhere between a 100 dollar refund to paying 500 dollars. I can afford 500 dollars, and I'd just assume be making the interest while the money sits in my bank account before giving it to the Man
While this is certainly true, a $500 refund amounts to about $60 in interest (if you invest it in the market and get a decently-good 10%). Compared to the amount of tax you're probably paying, it's not a huge amount of money.
Note that significantly underpaying tax can be considerably more expensive, because the penalties add up quickly. If you don't have an accountant, it's probably best to err on the side of caution, though you shouldn't be getting a $1000 refund.
Restart manager (new in Vista) should dramatically reduce the number or restarts required to install patches.
The new driver model rarely requires rebooting. You can even upgrade display drivers without shutting down the GUI.
Why can I get a weather report, stock ticker, dictionary lookup, etc from out of the box on a Linux machine
The new Vista sidebar allows you to add such gadgets easily. It comes with a weather report and a stock ticker out of the box. Add-ons (gadgets) can be coded in XHTML or.NET.
So, let's see - Microsoft fixed (or at least significantly improved) both of the issues you raised.
This is the problem with Vista most coverage. It focuses on the negative aspects of the OS (WGA, higher system requirements, DRM) without talking about any of the positive aspects other than the fancy new UI. Since I actually run Vista every day, I can tell you that it's much more than a graphical update. There are improvements in practically every aspect of the OS. Want examples? OK, here we go:
You can now easily add folders to the open/save dialog box's quick list. In XP, this required registry hacking.
The clock now has a calendar and (optionally) additional clocks in different timezones. No more opening the date/time properties just to find the date.
The Start menu has a search box, which, by default, finds programs in the Start menu. Want to launch a program you don't use very frequently? Just type the first few letters and press enter. It also indexes the shortcut's description field.
You can adjust volume on a per-application basis.
Windows Update no longer requires Internet Explorer or installing stupid ActiveX controls.
Windows file sharing (CIFS/Samba) transfers no longer fail if the network connection is interrupted.
You can disable AutoRun in the Control Panel.
Disk Defragmenter can run automatically, and runs at low priority, so you can run it in the background without slowing down the system.
Those are just a few examples of small things that are fixed in Vista. There's also a completely new display model, new audio model, new network stack (IPv6), kernel improvements, new GUI system (WPF), sync system, hundreds of security improvements, search, parental controls, power management (hybrid sleep), previous versions of files (rollback modified / deleted files), better color management, better speech recognition, fonts, Windows Installer, RDP (now with ClearType, WPF, widescreen support, and better encryption), SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, SideShow (aux displays), transactional NTFS, XPS, icons, reliability monitoring, better logging, installation system, HD photo, and quite a bit more.
most people don't want 1 gig just to run vista. they want the ram to be used for apps instead
Currently, of the 1.25GB of memory in my Vista-running notebook (which I'm posting from), 785MB is being used for disk cache. That means that Vista, plus my antivirus (AVG free), plus Firefox, plus Thunderbird, plus Spybot S&D (running a scan now) is using a total of 495MB of memory.
Subtract out the three running apps and AVG, and you get memory usage of 334MB for Vista.
My XP system (nothing open) is currently using 221MB of memory.
Vista requires about 100MB more memory than XP at idle. That's problematic if you have 256MB of memory, but not such a big deal with 1GB.
You know, there are plenty of legitimate ways to critisize Vista (UAC being annoying, Integrated WGA), but I am sick and tired of hearing the line that you need "hefty" hardware to run Vista. You don't. It runs fine on anything that's remotely modern. I ran Vista (RTM) - including Aero Glass - on a P4 Willamette (2GHz) system with 512M of memory and a GeForce 6200. Vista (RC1) also ran fine on the cheapshit $150 Celeron system I got in 2005 for Black Friday, albeit with a memory upgrade (to 512M using an old DIMM I had sitting around) and without Aero Glass.
Aero Glass requires DirectX 9 hardware. Any low or midrange standalone card released in the last couple of years will work. Hell, even GeForce FX 5200 cards work. Even most integrated video works, including Intel's GMA950, ATI's Radeon Xpress, and NVIDIA's GeForce 6100. My $50 Athlon 64 motherboard has integrated video that works. HP's $269 desktop has video that works.
Does Vista require more memory? Absolutely - you want 512M at a minimum, preferably 1GB. Does it require more CPU? A bit more.
These are not high requirements. The cheapest system sold at Best Buy can run Vista with Aero Glass. Yes, that's right - the eMachines T3516, with its 3.2GHz Celeron D, Radeon Xpress 200 graphics, and 512M of memory will run Vista just fine.
You are comparing a software companies major NEW OS to a hardware companies revision of their OS.
Ever notice that when someone complains that $129 is a lot of money for a revision of OS X, Mac fanboys point out that it's a "major new OS"? Yet when someone talks about Vista, which also costs around $129 (OEM, Home Premium), suddenly Mac OS releases are just "revisions"?
Tiger costs as much as a Vista Home Premium upgrade (and as much as a new OEM copy of Vista). It's absolutely fair to compare the two.
Unlike XP, the basic sub $500 computer is not good enough to run most versions.
Perhaps you misestimate the sub-$500 computer. Today's $500 box has GeForce 6150 integrated graphics (fine for Vista and even Aero Glass), 1GB of DDR, and an Athlon 64 or Sempron processor.
I run Vista, including Aero Glass, on a P4 2.66GHz box with 768M of memory and a GeForce 6200. It's really not that much of a problem.
8MJ is 8MW for one second. My university has a 36MW power plant, on site. The D2G reactor, which was used on nuclear destroyers in the US Navy, has a power output in excess of 150MW.
Somehow, I don't see generating power as a huge problem. Even a 64MJ launcher operating at 1% efficiency would only require 42 seconds of power from the D2G.
For example, if Ford sold a car, then six months later said "bring your car in, and we'll turn on Anti-Lock Brakes for free!" that there's a problem.
This actually happens in many cases. The Toyota Prius, for example, is sold without an alarm system in lower-end packages, but it can be enabled using a scantool. Many dealers will do it for free if you're nice, usually as part of scheduled maintenance.
The Fairness Doctrine is bullshit, pure and simple. It's a way to keep the established party in power, nothing more. Fairness cannot be legislated.
Do I believe that the media in this country is horribly, horribly broken? Absolutely. Can the government fix it? In a perfect world, yes. In reality, no. Should the government fix it? Absolutely, positively not. Freedom of the press trumps concerns over fairness.
Frankly, 3 to 20 million daily listeners (depending on who you believe) wouldn't stick around one person that long just for the hijinks... Sure, we enjoy his hyperbole, and frankly it's refreshing to hear SOMEBODY tease the liberals mercilessly, but that's secondary to wanting to hear what we believe to be the truth.
No, they stick around because, as you said, they want to hear what they believe is the truth. Of course, that's the last thing you want if you want any actual political debate. I don't listen to Air America, because I'm not interested in hearing some liberal commentator talk about how great Democrats are. I want actual, real debate. There's nothing wrong with conservatives, so long as they aren't claiming that liberals are immoral or evil. There is something wrong with a show that endorses a single viewpoint - whether that viewpoint is liberal or conservative.
So get off your high horse about Rush. We conservatives (some of whom DO read/. despite appearances to the contrary on THIS thread) realize you think Rush is a flaming looney, and Fox News is a bunch of conservative nutjobs, and all creationists are idiots.
Apparently, you area an idiot - not because of your political viewpoint, but because you believe that everyone on the other side thinks that "Rush is a flaming looney". Hint: there are over 60 MILLION registered Democrats in the US - there is no single, unified opinion that they share about conservatives.
And before you go ranting about me and my friends being a bunch of hicks, let me point out that I live in a strongly blue state, with a middle to high income, flight test community of military pilots and scientists and engineers who uniformly have one or more college degrees, plus a fair mix of Walmart-shopping wage earners with high school diplomas. In short, it's not exactly average red state stuff.
Thanks for pointing out that you are in a "blue state". Of course, the entire designation is bullshit. Even the reddest states have significant numbers of registered Democrats, and even the bluest states have plenty of Republicans.
I shop at Wal-Mart. So does most of the country. It really has very little to do with your political viewpoint.
Of course, the fact that there is significant military employment in your area is certainly going to change the political landscape. It certainly does in Littleton or Colorado Springs.
Get over it and stop insulting each other. Find a way to discuss the issues, not the flames.
That's particularly ironic coming from someone defending Rush. Does the program have a valid viewpoint? Yes, absolutely. But Rush is also one of the angriest, nastiest pundits around. If you listen to his show regularly, you get the idea that liberals are immoral and are destroying America. So much for discussing the issues.
Rush, O'Rilley, Rhodes, or Schultz - it doesn't matter, they all suck. Listeners come away better informed, but more biased. You can't listen to those shows day in and day out without having your view shifted to a certain ideology.
I have nothing against WOW players, current or past. I have, in fact, played WOW more than any other video game, ever - more than 500 hours, which puts me in the "semi-serious" category.
But Burning Crusade doesn't really interest me at all.
I've done PvP, I've done raid instances (cleared MC a bunch of times and some BWL and AQ20), and I've explored pretty much everything that there is in the game.
We got PvP, battlegrounds, and countless minor and major functionality changes in patches 1.1-2.0. Most of the high-end instances in the game (ZG, BWL, AQ20, AQ40) were added after release, too.
So, what makes BC worth $30? We get jewelcrafting, socketed items, and flying mounts (only in the outlands). Not bad for a content patch (or even two), but an expansion that's been in the works for 2 years and that we have to pay for? That's downright weak.
There's only so much WoW you can play before the game just gets boring. Adding new content doesn't fix that - you haven't really changed the game at all. It's like adding new tracks or courses to a racing game: nice, but, at the end of the day, I'm still going to go play something else.
Read most of the responses to this article here. Most of us would have underestimated the dangers, so why not the radio station people?
Clearly they did underestimate the dangers. That's the problem - when you host a contest like this, it's up to you to do the research and understand the dangers.
"We didn't know that it could cause death" doesn't cut it. That's why it's negligence!
No rentable content: in Canada (currently) both Blockbuster and Rogers Video have no plans to begin renting out HD movies (in any format) in the near future; the answer I have been able to get from them is that they "will start carying small quantities of certain titles in both formats sometime in 2007."
NetFlix already carries HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. Remember that Blockbuster didn't start renting DVDs until years after the format gained traction.
Expensive broadcast content: locally I have to spend $600 on a HD-Digital Cable box in order to be able to receive HD-TV and that only includes 6 basic channels; they sell HD-Channel packages so your cable bill will go up by $10-$20 per month for HD-TV.
Comcast charges $10/mo for the HD-DVR in my area. There is no such thing as a non-HD DVR with Comcast, at least not in my area (Boulder, CO).
Expensive equipment: $1000 to $2000 for a TV and $500 to $1000 for a HD-Player may not sound like a lot of money, but it is more than I can justify when I know I have a $1150 rent payment at the end of the month.
LCD TVs are already well under $1000. You can get a 32" LCD HDTV for around $600 if you shop around.
HD-DVD players are indeed expensive, but that won't last long. DVD players were $500 when they first started shipping, too.
No Content: Currently there are almost 100 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies, there are thousands of DVD movies, even if I could rent every HD-Movie there is not enough content at the moment to make any purchase reasonable.
There are way more than thousands of DVD movies. Remember, DVD started with less than 100 movies, too. I remember the commercials about "500 Movies on DVD". It's just a matter of time.
In 2009 we will be looking at a different situation... 30inch LCD HDTVs for $500)
Apparently, you are either pricing LCD TVs in Canadian dollars (which is interesting because your "HD player" quote implies US dollars), or you aren't very good at looking up LCD TV prices, but 32" LCD TVs already cost $500!
Of course, the more running on my Treo the more unstable it is and the more I hate my Treo when it locks up.
That's because the Treo runs Palm OS Garnet, a piece of shit outdated operating system with no memory protection.
Loading additional software on my Windows Mobile phone doesn't make it "lock up". In fact, in the past three months, my WM5 Dash has NEVER locked up - it has bogged down a few times when applications chew trough CPU, but I can always exit out of the application using the (OEM provided) task manager.
More consistency has kept their users from having to stare at driver errors and the BSOD.
Most people have no idea what a BSOD even is. If you buy from a major OEM, don't go screwing with drivers, and don't have bad hardware, it's unlikely that you'll ever see one. WHQL has changed a lot.
The matter of curriculum, testing, and so on, is left totally up to parents and who they contract to.
I love how the parents are always right, how they never make poor choices, and how they always know what's best for their children.
Is it OK for parents to teach their children that murder is OK? Most people would say no. But then we aren't leaving "the matter of curriculum" "totally up to parents", are we?
Most who have a trust in scientists can't really tell you what standard candles are, what kinds of radioactive dating there are and why we use different ones, what evolved from what, what the major epochs of our 13.7 billion year history are, and so on.
There are too many things in science for any one person to have substantial broad understanding. It's not like studying religion where there are few fundamental texts and many tertiary texts - it's more like literature in general.
Moreover, it is faulty to claim that scientifically-inclined people have trust in scientists. While it is true that many do, "trust" in science is about trusting the process rather than the individual scientists or theories involved. I don't trust that geologists "know what they are doing" with radiometric dating, I trust that they will be discovered and corrected if they are wrong. So far, that hasn't happened. Thus, the best conclusion at the present moment is that the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old. That could change, but you're going to need evidence that indicates otherwise to change it.
But the bible kids and the Mormons understand the fundamentals of their religion.
Many do, but many do not. Most understand the bare fundamentals and like to focus on a specific pet-issue (abortion, gay rights), selectively citing passages that support their conclusions.
Understanding the fundamentals of a religion really isn't that hard. Now, if you want to debate about the particulars of a religion, that's an entirely different matter. The fundamentals aren't the hard part - everything else is.
This is the number one reason that I no longer use the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick). It's one of the best designed, easiest to use smartphones out there.
I could type 40 WPM on the Hiptop. Try that on a Treo. The only thing that comes close is the (full-size) BlackBerry, which is larger than the Hiptop.
The Hiptop had full "push" for EVERYTHING. All preferences, contacts, tasks, bookmarks, email, SMS history, notes, and practically anything else on the device gets synchronized to the backend (and the web interface) in real-time.
It also multitasks well (better than Windows Mobile and lightyears ahead of Palm), has a great UI (no touchscreen, just a scroll wheel and function buttons), a notification system that blows Windows Mobile or Palm OS away, and a (decently) low pricetag.
The problems with the Hiptop? It's a closed platform, and the hardware is a bit low-end.
You can't load third-party applications on the Hiptop without a developer key. Getting one requires writing an application for the device simulator and submitting it to Danger. I have such a device key, but it doesn't help - there is relatively little software for the device.
No one wants to write freeware for a device when only a fraction of its users can use your software. And few want to go through the pains of getting an application approved and signed, either. The result? You get some commercial development, but not much. The Hiptop has - maybe - 100 applications. 80+ of those are games.
and it is in fact SLOW AS A DOG compared to XP....
I call BS. I'm running Vista (RTM) on a P4 2.66GHz (Northwood) system with a GeForce 6200 (AGP, 128M) and 768MB of memory. It's not what I'd call fast, but it's not "SLOW AS A DOG" either.
Keep in mind that the NVIDIA drivers included with Vista are old and slow. Upgrading to the latest build (now officially available and WHQL certified) improved performance substantially.
Vista needs AT LEAST 512M of memory to run decently, preferably 1GB. Memory, not CPU time, is where Vista is a pig.
On the plus side, Vista's disk defragmenter uses the new I/O priority hooks in the kernel (which actually now work), so you can defrag while you use the system without noticing any slowdown (Vista defrags every Wednesday night by default).
Here's the thing: everyone complained about the performance of XP at its release. I remember running XP on a Celeron 300A system with 192MB of memory - it was usable, but not fun. But hardware evolved and drivers got better. Today, most people see XP as downright fast - even the crappy Celeron system I'm typing this on is more than fast enough (and it was a $150 Black Friday special).
Should you upgrade to Vista? The answer is probably no. It's not worth the money or the hastle when XP works well enough anyway. But is Vista a decent replacement for XP? Absolutely.
Come on - this device DOES NOT run OS X in the traditional sense of the word, whether Apple claims it does or not. It doesn't have the same UI as OS X, it has vastly less CPU power, a lot less memory, and it almost certainly doesn't have application compatibility.
It may "run" OS X in the same way that Motorola's newer phones "run" Linux or Windows Mobile devices "run" Windows, but that doesn't mean you're going to be loading it up with desktop applications.
I see a few problems with the iPhone:
- Price. $500/$600 with a contract? My Dash was $100, and it appears that the Dash is 85% as capable. Push IMAP? Already have it. Media playback? Check. Web browsing? Check. Maps? Check.
- Buttons. The damned thing doesn't have any buttons. Touchscreens don't count. Do you ever wonder why nearly EVERY mobile data device today has a keyboard? It's because typing on a touchscreen sucks. No tactile feel = slow typing speed.
- Screen. It's big, beautiful, and it will look like crap once it's scratched up and covered with fingerprints. Touchscreens are bad enough when you're supposed to use a stylus.
They are not true hybrids. They are multi-drive source. There is a huge difference, but I might need to sit you down with a pile of drawings/models to make it clear.
There are "huge" differences that you don't care to enumerate? I suppose we should just trust you.
So I'm afraid I'm just going to state it as fact and abandon.
Good for you. Of course, those of us who live in the real world understand that there is more than one type of hybrid.
You are thinking of a series hybrid vehicle - engine drives generator, wheels are powered by electrical power.
There is also such a thing as a series-parallel hybrid. This is what the Prius and other HSD vehicles are.
The Prius can operate in series mode (and, in fact, for reverse, it can only operate in series mode) with the ICE running MG1 and MG2 turning the wheels. It can also operate in parallel mode, with the ICE contributing some power directly to the wheels and some power to MG1 to produce electricity to operate MG2 and other accessories.
Perhaps you have failed to realize that the definition of "hybrid" may have changed since the 19th century with advances in technology.
Series hybrids aren't common in passenger vehicles because they aren't very efficient. It's much better to take power from the ICE directly to the wheels at cruising speeds, where the ICE is operating at maximum efficency already and electrical operation will only waste energy. It's also better to use electric power for acceleration because the engine operates inefficiently at low speeds.
HSD can operate in multiple modes, including electric only, ICE -> electric -> drive (reverse), battery -> electric -> drive ("stealth" mode), ICE -> electric -> drive + ICE -> drive (normal operation), ICE -> electric -> battery (battery charging), and drive -> electric -> battery (regen). It can also operate in combinations of these modes - such as charging the HV battery while powering MG2 for additional torque.
The point is, HSD always uses the electric motors to drive the wheels, unlike, say, Chevy's Silverado "hybrid". The ICE can fire all it wants, but without MG1 or MG2 the vehicle is going nowhere.
You're being pedantic and arrogant, and you're wrong.
If something fails, then I want to know WHY (at least give me the option of more detailed error messages).
No you don't. Application "failures" are almost always memory protection errors. There is no useful error message to provide unless you compiled the app with debugging symbols - and then, you're probably going to be working with the corefile anyway. Looking at an out-of-bounds memory address isn't going to do you any good.
It's funny that that's the reason why I detest Gnome - for some reason they got the idea that removing all the options that only 5% of users use is a good idea.
Those options aren't gone, they are just exposed in GConf. People who complain about a lack of configurability in GNOME haven't figured out how to use gconf-editor.
Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users. I like it this way, it gives everyone a desktop that they are comfortable with. As a techie, I want KDE to stay the way it is, please don't try to change it to something it is not.
GNOME is for system administrators, general users, and anyone who doens't want hundreds of preference screens. KDE is a support nightmare because there are so many ways to screw with it (GNOME unfortunately isn't great in this regard either). Everyone has their damned KDE desktop configured differently - it's always fun when I have to adjust to someone's desktop because they changed the focus behavior or the positions of the window controls.
GNOME releases regularly and gets new features out into general use quickly.
Don't generalize about GNOME, capitalize it correctly, and learn how to use GConf. KDE is a fine desktop in many regards. But don't assume that GNOME is as "dumbed down" as you think.
K8L is going to bring IPC improvements to Opteron, along with L3 cache and native (single die) quad-core.
AMD is all about the platform now. That's why they purchased ATI. It's about bringing CPU, GPU, and other specailized processors together using a fast, flexible bus (HyperTransport).
AMD is also about low-cost. Remember that current Athlon 64 CPUs have about half as many transistors as their Core 2 Duo counterparts. CPU + GPU + Northbridge in a single CPU (AMD Fusion) will have huge impact in the low-end market.
The fact is, 90% of the time, CPU performance doesn't matter anymore. Most applicaitons are either disk or user input bound now. The exceptions are media encoding/decoding (at the high end), scientific/technical computing (CAD/CAM, simulation, etc.), and gaming.
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While this is certainly true, a $500 refund amounts to about $60 in interest (if you invest it in the market and get a decently-good 10%). Compared to the amount of tax you're probably paying, it's not a huge amount of money.
Note that significantly underpaying tax can be considerably more expensive, because the penalties add up quickly. If you don't have an accountant, it's probably best to err on the side of caution, though you shouldn't be getting a $1000 refund.
Restart manager (new in Vista) should dramatically reduce the number or restarts required to install patches.
The new driver model rarely requires rebooting. You can even upgrade display drivers without shutting down the GUI.
The new Vista sidebar allows you to add such gadgets easily. It comes with a weather report and a stock ticker out of the box. Add-ons (gadgets) can be coded in XHTML or
So, let's see - Microsoft fixed (or at least significantly improved) both of the issues you raised.
This is the problem with Vista most coverage. It focuses on the negative aspects of the OS (WGA, higher system requirements, DRM) without talking about any of the positive aspects other than the fancy new UI. Since I actually run Vista every day, I can tell you that it's much more than a graphical update. There are improvements in practically every aspect of the OS. Want examples? OK, here we go:
You can now easily add folders to the open/save dialog box's quick list. In XP, this required registry hacking.
The clock now has a calendar and (optionally) additional clocks in different timezones. No more opening the date/time properties just to find the date.
The Start menu has a search box, which, by default, finds programs in the Start menu. Want to launch a program you don't use very frequently? Just type the first few letters and press enter. It also indexes the shortcut's description field.
You can adjust volume on a per-application basis.
Windows Update no longer requires Internet Explorer or installing stupid ActiveX controls.
Windows file sharing (CIFS/Samba) transfers no longer fail if the network connection is interrupted.
You can disable AutoRun in the Control Panel.
Disk Defragmenter can run automatically, and runs at low priority, so you can run it in the background without slowing down the system.
Those are just a few examples of small things that are fixed in Vista. There's also a completely new display model, new audio model, new network stack (IPv6), kernel improvements, new GUI system (WPF), sync system, hundreds of security improvements, search, parental controls, power management (hybrid sleep), previous versions of files (rollback modified / deleted files), better color management, better speech recognition, fonts, Windows Installer, RDP (now with ClearType, WPF, widescreen support, and better encryption), SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, SideShow (aux displays), transactional NTFS, XPS, icons, reliability monitoring, better logging, installation system, HD photo, and quite a bit more.
But there's nothing new in Vista, is there?
Currently, of the 1.25GB of memory in my Vista-running notebook (which I'm posting from), 785MB is being used for disk cache. That means that Vista, plus my antivirus (AVG free), plus Firefox, plus Thunderbird, plus Spybot S&D (running a scan now) is using a total of 495MB of memory.
Subtract out the three running apps and AVG, and you get memory usage of 334MB for Vista.
My XP system (nothing open) is currently using 221MB of memory.
Vista requires about 100MB more memory than XP at idle. That's problematic if you have 256MB of memory, but not such a big deal with 1GB.
You know, there are plenty of legitimate ways to critisize Vista (UAC being annoying, Integrated WGA), but I am sick and tired of hearing the line that you need "hefty" hardware to run Vista. You don't. It runs fine on anything that's remotely modern. I ran Vista (RTM) - including Aero Glass - on a P4 Willamette (2GHz) system with 512M of memory and a GeForce 6200. Vista (RC1) also ran fine on the cheapshit $150 Celeron system I got in 2005 for Black Friday, albeit with a memory upgrade (to 512M using an old DIMM I had sitting around) and without Aero Glass.
Aero Glass requires DirectX 9 hardware. Any low or midrange standalone card released in the last couple of years will work. Hell, even GeForce FX 5200 cards work. Even most integrated video works, including Intel's GMA950, ATI's Radeon Xpress, and NVIDIA's GeForce 6100. My $50 Athlon 64 motherboard has integrated video that works. HP's $269 desktop has video that works.
Does Vista require more memory? Absolutely - you want 512M at a minimum, preferably 1GB. Does it require more CPU? A bit more.
These are not high requirements. The cheapest system sold at Best Buy can run Vista with Aero Glass. Yes, that's right - the eMachines T3516, with its 3.2GHz Celeron D, Radeon Xpress 200 graphics, and 512M of memory will run Vista just fine.
So much for "hefty" hardware.
Ever notice that when someone complains that $129 is a lot of money for a revision of OS X, Mac fanboys point out that it's a "major new OS"? Yet when someone talks about Vista, which also costs around $129 (OEM, Home Premium), suddenly Mac OS releases are just "revisions"?
Tiger costs as much as a Vista Home Premium upgrade (and as much as a new OEM copy of Vista). It's absolutely fair to compare the two.
Perhaps you misestimate the sub-$500 computer. Today's $500 box has GeForce 6150 integrated graphics (fine for Vista and even Aero Glass), 1GB of DDR, and an Athlon 64 or Sempron processor.
I run Vista, including Aero Glass, on a P4 2.66GHz box with 768M of memory and a GeForce 6200. It's really not that much of a problem.
8MJ is 8MW for one second. My university has a 36MW power plant, on site. The D2G reactor, which was used on nuclear destroyers in the US Navy, has a power output in excess of 150MW.
Somehow, I don't see generating power as a huge problem. Even a 64MJ launcher operating at 1% efficiency would only require 42 seconds of power from the D2G.
This actually happens in many cases. The Toyota Prius, for example, is sold without an alarm system in lower-end packages, but it can be enabled using a scantool. Many dealers will do it for free if you're nice, usually as part of scheduled maintenance.
The Fairness Doctrine is bullshit, pure and simple. It's a way to keep the established party in power, nothing more. Fairness cannot be legislated.
Do I believe that the media in this country is horribly, horribly broken? Absolutely.
Can the government fix it? In a perfect world, yes. In reality, no.
Should the government fix it? Absolutely, positively not. Freedom of the press trumps concerns over fairness.
No, they stick around because, as you said, they want to hear what they believe is the truth. Of course, that's the last thing you want if you want any actual political debate. I don't listen to Air America, because I'm not interested in hearing some liberal commentator talk about how great Democrats are. I want actual, real debate. There's nothing wrong with conservatives, so long as they aren't claiming that liberals are immoral or evil. There is something wrong with a show that endorses a single viewpoint - whether that viewpoint is liberal or conservative.
Apparently, you area an idiot - not because of your political viewpoint, but because you believe that everyone on the other side thinks that "Rush is a flaming looney". Hint: there are over 60 MILLION registered Democrats in the US - there is no single, unified opinion that they share about conservatives.
Thanks for pointing out that you are in a "blue state". Of course, the entire designation is bullshit. Even the reddest states have significant numbers of registered Democrats, and even the bluest states have plenty of Republicans.
I shop at Wal-Mart. So does most of the country. It really has very little to do with your political viewpoint.
Of course, the fact that there is significant military employment in your area is certainly going to change the political landscape. It certainly does in Littleton or Colorado Springs.
That's particularly ironic coming from someone defending Rush. Does the program have a valid viewpoint? Yes, absolutely. But Rush is also one of the angriest, nastiest pundits around. If you listen to his show regularly, you get the idea that liberals are immoral and are destroying America. So much for discussing the issues.
Rush, O'Rilley, Rhodes, or Schultz - it doesn't matter, they all suck. Listeners come away better informed, but more biased. You can't listen to those shows day in and day out without having your view shifted to a certain ideology.
I have nothing against WOW players, current or past. I have, in fact, played WOW more than any other video game, ever - more than 500 hours, which puts me in the "semi-serious" category.
But Burning Crusade doesn't really interest me at all.
I've done PvP, I've done raid instances (cleared MC a bunch of times and some BWL and AQ20), and I've explored pretty much everything that there is in the game.
We got PvP, battlegrounds, and countless minor and major functionality changes in patches 1.1-2.0. Most of the high-end instances in the game (ZG, BWL, AQ20, AQ40) were added after release, too.
So, what makes BC worth $30? We get jewelcrafting, socketed items, and flying mounts (only in the outlands). Not bad for a content patch (or even two), but an expansion that's been in the works for 2 years and that we have to pay for? That's downright weak.
There's only so much WoW you can play before the game just gets boring. Adding new content doesn't fix that - you haven't really changed the game at all. It's like adding new tracks or courses to a racing game: nice, but, at the end of the day, I'm still going to go play something else.
No, you need an Infinium Labs Phantom to do that. It's a launch title.
Clearly they did underestimate the dangers. That's the problem - when you host a contest like this, it's up to you to do the research and understand the dangers.
"We didn't know that it could cause death" doesn't cut it. That's why it's negligence!
NetFlix already carries HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. Remember that Blockbuster didn't start renting DVDs until years after the format gained traction.
Comcast charges $10/mo for the HD-DVR in my area. There is no such thing as a non-HD DVR with Comcast, at least not in my area (Boulder, CO).
LCD TVs are already well under $1000. You can get a 32" LCD HDTV for around $600 if you shop around.
HD-DVD players are indeed expensive, but that won't last long. DVD players were $500 when they first started shipping, too.
There are way more than thousands of DVD movies. Remember, DVD started with less than 100 movies, too. I remember the commercials about "500 Movies on DVD". It's just a matter of time.
Apparently, you are either pricing LCD TVs in Canadian dollars (which is interesting because your "HD player" quote implies US dollars), or you aren't very good at looking up LCD TV prices, but 32" LCD TVs already cost $500!
That's because the Treo runs Palm OS Garnet, a piece of shit outdated operating system with no memory protection.
Loading additional software on my Windows Mobile phone doesn't make it "lock up". In fact, in the past three months, my WM5 Dash has NEVER locked up - it has bogged down a few times when applications chew trough CPU, but I can always exit out of the application using the (OEM provided) task manager.
Most people have no idea what a BSOD even is. If you buy from a major OEM, don't go screwing with drivers, and don't have bad hardware, it's unlikely that you'll ever see one. WHQL has changed a lot.
I love how the parents are always right, how they never make poor choices, and how they always know what's best for their children.
Is it OK for parents to teach their children that murder is OK? Most people would say no. But then we aren't leaving "the matter of curriculum" "totally up to parents", are we?
There are too many things in science for any one person to have substantial broad understanding. It's not like studying religion where there are few fundamental texts and many tertiary texts - it's more like literature in general.
Moreover, it is faulty to claim that scientifically-inclined people have trust in scientists. While it is true that many do, "trust" in science is about trusting the process rather than the individual scientists or theories involved. I don't trust that geologists "know what they are doing" with radiometric dating, I trust that they will be discovered and corrected if they are wrong. So far, that hasn't happened. Thus, the best conclusion at the present moment is that the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old. That could change, but you're going to need evidence that indicates otherwise to change it.
Many do, but many do not. Most understand the bare fundamentals and like to focus on a specific pet-issue (abortion, gay rights), selectively citing passages that support their conclusions.
Understanding the fundamentals of a religion really isn't that hard. Now, if you want to debate about the particulars of a religion, that's an entirely different matter. The fundamentals aren't the hard part - everything else is.
This is the number one reason that I no longer use the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick). It's one of the best designed, easiest to use smartphones out there.
I could type 40 WPM on the Hiptop. Try that on a Treo. The only thing that comes close is the (full-size) BlackBerry, which is larger than the Hiptop.
The Hiptop had full "push" for EVERYTHING. All preferences, contacts, tasks, bookmarks, email, SMS history, notes, and practically anything else on the device gets synchronized to the backend (and the web interface) in real-time.
It also multitasks well (better than Windows Mobile and lightyears ahead of Palm), has a great UI (no touchscreen, just a scroll wheel and function buttons), a notification system that blows Windows Mobile or Palm OS away, and a (decently) low pricetag.
The problems with the Hiptop? It's a closed platform, and the hardware is a bit low-end.
You can't load third-party applications on the Hiptop without a developer key. Getting one requires writing an application for the device simulator and submitting it to Danger. I have such a device key, but it doesn't help - there is relatively little software for the device.
No one wants to write freeware for a device when only a fraction of its users can use your software. And few want to go through the pains of getting an application approved and signed, either. The result? You get some commercial development, but not much. The Hiptop has - maybe - 100 applications. 80+ of those are games.
At least the Hiptop had a keyboard.
I call BS. I'm running Vista (RTM) on a P4 2.66GHz (Northwood) system with a GeForce 6200 (AGP, 128M) and 768MB of memory. It's not what I'd call fast, but it's not "SLOW AS A DOG" either.
Keep in mind that the NVIDIA drivers included with Vista are old and slow. Upgrading to the latest build (now officially available and WHQL certified) improved performance substantially.
Vista needs AT LEAST 512M of memory to run decently, preferably 1GB. Memory, not CPU time, is where Vista is a pig.
On the plus side, Vista's disk defragmenter uses the new I/O priority hooks in the kernel (which actually now work), so you can defrag while you use the system without noticing any slowdown (Vista defrags every Wednesday night by default).
Here's the thing: everyone complained about the performance of XP at its release. I remember running XP on a Celeron 300A system with 192MB of memory - it was usable, but not fun. But hardware evolved and drivers got better. Today, most people see XP as downright fast - even the crappy Celeron system I'm typing this on is more than fast enough (and it was a $150 Black Friday special).
Should you upgrade to Vista? The answer is probably no. It's not worth the money or the hastle when XP works well enough anyway. But is Vista a decent replacement for XP? Absolutely.
Come on - this device DOES NOT run OS X in the traditional sense of the word, whether Apple claims it does or not. It doesn't have the same UI as OS X, it has vastly less CPU power, a lot less memory, and it almost certainly doesn't have application compatibility.
It may "run" OS X in the same way that Motorola's newer phones "run" Linux or Windows Mobile devices "run" Windows, but that doesn't mean you're going to be loading it up with desktop applications.
I see a few problems with the iPhone:
- Price. $500/$600 with a contract? My Dash was $100, and it appears that the Dash is 85% as capable. Push IMAP? Already have it. Media playback? Check. Web browsing? Check. Maps? Check.
- Buttons. The damned thing doesn't have any buttons. Touchscreens don't count. Do you ever wonder why nearly EVERY mobile data device today has a keyboard? It's because typing on a touchscreen sucks. No tactile feel = slow typing speed.
- Screen. It's big, beautiful, and it will look like crap once it's scratched up and covered with fingerprints. Touchscreens are bad enough when you're supposed to use a stylus.
Otherwise, it looks liike a very slick device.
Yes, you can. It's called Cygwin.
No you don't. Application "failures" are almost always memory protection errors. There is no useful error message to provide unless you compiled the app with debugging symbols - and then, you're probably going to be working with the corefile anyway. Looking at an out-of-bounds memory address isn't going to do you any good.
Those options aren't gone, they are just exposed in GConf. People who complain about a lack of configurability in GNOME haven't figured out how to use gconf-editor.
GNOME is for system administrators, general users, and anyone who doens't want hundreds of preference screens. KDE is a support nightmare because there are so many ways to screw with it (GNOME unfortunately isn't great in this regard either). Everyone has their damned KDE desktop configured differently - it's always fun when I have to adjust to someone's desktop because they changed the focus behavior or the positions of the window controls.
GNOME releases regularly and gets new features out into general use quickly.
Don't generalize about GNOME, capitalize it correctly, and learn how to use GConf. KDE is a fine desktop in many regards. But don't assume that GNOME is as "dumbed down" as you think.
Yes, it does. SI prefixes don't change just because you're using a different unit.
K8L is going to bring IPC improvements to Opteron, along with L3 cache and native (single die) quad-core.
AMD is all about the platform now. That's why they purchased ATI. It's about bringing CPU, GPU, and other specailized processors together using a fast, flexible bus (HyperTransport).
AMD is also about low-cost. Remember that current Athlon 64 CPUs have about half as many transistors as their Core 2 Duo counterparts. CPU + GPU + Northbridge in a single CPU (AMD Fusion) will have huge impact in the low-end market.
The fact is, 90% of the time, CPU performance doesn't matter anymore. Most applicaitons are either disk or user input bound now. The exceptions are media encoding/decoding (at the high end), scientific/technical computing (CAD/CAM, simulation, etc.), and gaming.