In theory yes, in practice no. I work in a position where I end up cleaning lots of this junk (in a computer store).
In practice if you spyware/virus clean the computer, and then the customer comes back in few weeks with the exact same issue, your reputation as a place who can 'fix' the computer goes to the crappers. It's highly probable that the customer WON'T come back at all, and instead goes to your competitor - including when he's buying new hardware etc.
So every spyware/virus clean comes with free installation of all missing windows updates, installation antispyware software and Firefox browser, plus explanation why, plus recommendation to consider also Thunderbird, but we generally don't install it unless person really wants, because we don't want to muck around with email settings etc unless explictly asked to.
Then we give recommendation to get antivirus software, and yes, there we recommend a commercial product instead of installing a free one - simply because there is no localized free antivirus software in our language. We do install 30day trial of F-Secure if the customer wants it - tho in way more than half of the cases there IS an antivirus software. It's just either not doing anything against spyware, or has been neutered by some virus. Antivirus software is no guarantee there is no viruses in the system - so many of them can disable all common antivirus applications to just report 'all OK' when there is a bug farm under the hood.
If someone comes back later with yet another spyware pile on the same computer, and unless it's a clear case of installing of applications with known spyware inside them (kazaa etc) - usually done by the owner's kids - I consider that I failed the first time, and usually the re-cleaning is discounted. The service includes both the cleanup AND the education to ensure it shouldn't happen again, and if it does, I'll just educate more.
Some people are hopeless (and in such cases we openly recommend Mac as an option), but it's extremely rare to see repeat visits over spyware. However, many people who have had their computers cleaned up, do return to buy other things - software, hardware etc. - and buy services such as installation of hardware/software. One well-done spyware/virus cleanup can easily bring in a ton of extra revenue as the customer is happy and prefers to visit the store 'that got his computer fixed quickly and cheaply, and did it well'.
The potential extra revenue from another cleanup operation is nothing compared to what can be gained if the customer buys his next computer from us, or recommends few of his friends to get their computers cleaned up at our store too. Any store who 'just cleans up', and leaves the computer to be re-infected, won't be raking in the money in the long run, as people learn (and tell all their friends to avoid the ripoff artists too).
Said services arrived YEARS after their US-centric versions.
Everything they develop is US-centric. Once it's proven to work they might expand it to UK, and after that maybe to other regions. Doesn't matter much for a search engine, but really really matters for a map service...
Google sucks because it's US-centric in all it does.
If Microsoft can put a similar service that spans the whole globe (well, at least the inhabited bits and their nearby areas - no need to put up two racks to serve images of tundra & trees), that would seriously leapfrog Google and their limited USA-centric service.
Removing original copyright + GPL license texts makes it illegal. Pretty cut'n'dry.
Fun fact: had they kept the copyright/GPL license information and just 'rebranded' it, with full source, it would be LEGAL. Including selling it, as long as the source code is freely available under GPL (which in this case might make selling it bit harder, but then again, I guess whoever they are selling it to now are not the brightest of the bunch anyway, so I don't see the problem)
That looked like actual gameplay to me. And while the art is spiffy, there is technically nothing that couldn't be done with today's top-of-the-line PC, when exploited to the maximum - sad bit is that most PC games underuse the hardware when developed to work with the lowest craptastic massmarket PC.
However, getting such shiny stuff out of a 300-400$ massmarket console is seriously impressive, as is the physics stuff in that clip - vehicles blowing to bits, with said bits flying around neatly.
Yup. The new contoller looks crappy. Trying to tweak perfection = bad idea.
I hope they either provide a way to connect old PS2 controllers (bluetooth device with controller ports?) or release a 'classic' controller identical to PS2 model as option.
You cannot tell a gem-quality manufactured diamond and a natural diamond apart.
They are both carbon. Yes, DeBeer has tried to market their expensive stuff as 'geniune' versus manufactured 'knockoffs', but in this case the items are quite identical.
The amount of viewers you can get with a legimate, legal torrent of a good TV show is still so small that the advertising revenue out of that wouldn't pay for the show.
And you can bet your farm that the broadcasters will fight this all the way to their grave - meaning once you have a broadcaster footing any bit of the bill for the program, you can be sure that the agreement denies any legal avenue of internet distribution. So even if they could put it both on the telly, and legally as torrent, the broadcaster will NEVER allow it, as if torrents take off and become more popular, the broadcaster becomes redundant.
I imagine it'll start off slowly... someone sponsoring a legal torrent of a 'geeky' subject material, paying for onscreen bug / 'sponsored by XXX' banners in the video, and then putting it out legally. Maybe something like, say, coverage of the E3 trade show or something else like that with small production costs (basically the cost of taping and editing). Then it'll go to cheap comedy stuff - animation, talk shows... and it's a long way until a drama show with $500K+ production costs per hour are funded by advertising for torrents.
Also there is the issue of regions - advertisers want to advertise to target audiences. Very few companies want to advertise worldwide. Torrents are, by definition, worldwide. So you'd need sponsors who see value in advertising to the whole planet at once.
Companies like Intel, AMD etc. might see some value in it, but considering that 90%+ of the advertisements I see in my telly are from very local companies, and would mean nothing to a large percentage of the torrent audience, it's problematic for the advertisers.
We'll get there.. 10 years.. 15 years.. but in the meantime people will try subscription models with DRMed streams, pay-to-download DRM-crippled files and all the other junk like that - all while torrents slowly own the world. Things will start to change only after major chunks of the viewers are consuming torrents. Today it's few percent, not enough. iTunes came only after MAJOR chunk of music was downloaded online, same applies here.
Nothing to see here... It's just a fork
on
Safari vs. KHTML
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Apple has followed the obligation of the license.
It's just a fork. Forks happen. Move along. If KDE guys think KHTML sucks compared to WebCore/Safari, they are free to fork THAT and start from there (backporting it to KDE). The source is open. Whine less, code more:)
Yes, but constant busts will increase the cost of spending spam.
Only way to get rid of it, is to make it unprofitably expensive due to constant downage of servers & evasion of lawsuits being bombarded at you.
Right now it's considered 'jaywalking', and therefore easy money. Once people start getting tossed into the can for it. For real. In numbers... THEN things may slowly start to change...
Which is why we need private enterprises taking the initiative.
Business, hiring qualified test pilots to do stuff they are supposed to be doing. Everyone doing it can compare their paycheck to their job description and choose if the want to ride the experimental thingy.
Yes, I can imagine congressional hearings and 'oversight' destroying the whole thing after a crew exits stage left in a fireball. That means US has a problem, and such business should relocate elsewhere...
Odd that nobody seems to raise holy hell over dead military test pilots who have over the years died while testing military hardware. Nobody ever hears of them. People also seem to shrug off accidents during pilot training and military exercises. How is this any different from space exploration? It isn't. Space = risky business, where people can die. Live with it.
I know I'd love to go up there like just about everyone else. I also know that today's hardware for doing so is somewhat unreliable and 'prototype' in many ways, so I'd currently choose not to take the ride. I could take a zero-g ride on a vomit comet (airplanes are petty mature), but betatesting a rocket is not my idea of a fun occupation. At the same time I'm quite sure you'd find immensely qualified takers for the job...
Actually, considering what Scaled Composites has done so far, and the budget they've used, I have some belief that this might be doable. Of course it would not include funds for running a huge NASA paperpusher army, so it probably won't include costs of extensive certifications and testings to get the failure rate down to minimal. Space is risky business, and spending megabucks for additional 1-2% success rate is just a bad idea. Every astronaut can themselves consider the risks and decide if they are happy with the launch vehicle.
Nobody was out there demanding stacks of paper and testing from the Wright brothers when they experimented. In retrospect their contraption was highly unstable and unsafe. Same should apply for launch system developments. Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die. People who understood the risks and knew exactly what they were doing. If they run out of people who are willing to hop onboard, they know they must spend time and money on the safety. Today, I doubt they'll have many issues as long as the (test)pilots are involved in the process and know how the tincan they are hopping into ticks.
No need to bog it all down with 100M$s of paperwork and extra safety tests and checks that really won't improve safety. The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sure the damn thing works, but beyond certain point extra testing and checking is not going to change the safety much - only the pricetag will go up, see NASA:)
Wrong. Today's antivirus/antispyware programs are mostly crap. They remove a lot of stuff, but hardly everything. For example, crappy F-Secure commonly FINDS lots of viruses, then says 'can't delete, renaming file', and then silently fails even that, so next scan the pest is still there. Also lots of current malware will even interfere with safe mode (you should see some of the trickery these software go into to keep running and/or prevent deletion of the files/registry keys).
Then again, if you don't work in PC repairs/support, you wouldn't know. Go try it someday. You'll be amazed how hosed systems people carry into paid 'remove the viruses please'-service. People simply won't move their butts until the system is at a state where nothing meaningful can be done.
Only way I have manually cleaned badly hosed systems is via deleting files of the malware using a WinPE live bootdisk, or by putting the drive as additional drive to another computer and manually getting rid of the actual files of the pests. Antivirus programs are fine in preventing infections of known junk, but once the system is Gone, its Gone. None of the big commercial antivirus software is today able to remove all of the viruses they detect.
I've seen stuff that just goes to immense lenghts to prevent deletion. From your average 'I'm sorry dave, I can't let you delete that one (permission denied)' via premissions (yeah, Take 0wnz0rship works, to a degree), to just plain locked files that cannot be touched - even in safe mode, and need removal using WinPE or some other method of booting from somwhere else than the messed up OS disk. Most funny situations is where the malware actually messes up with the permissions of the OS to a degree where an Administrator account suddenly doesn't have access to a lot of stuff. You could manually start restoring permissions, but really - it's just not feasible. It takes so immense amount of time, that it's not cost-effective compared to 'wipe disk, reinstall OS'.
(and I know of SFC/SCANNOW - except that in such cases it usually fails to start at all due to some service or file being hosed)
You guys don't seem to understand the amount of mischief these money-incentived malware writers can do on a 'rooted' windows box (since everyone runs at Administrator). If someone roots your linux box completely, it's POINTLESS to try clean it up. It's compromised, and no amount of antivirus snake oil at that point can restore your trust to the status of the system. Only full reinstall and recovery from a known good backup is any good. Yes, you can rescue data files (after suitable checks that they cannot be infected), but beyond that the only real cure is reinstall.
No can do. High percentage of hijacked machines are in a state that no security software can rescue them from.
Reinstall windows is the only thing that helps. After that the security software is a good thing. However, having seen dozens and dozens of computers where the user was clueful enough to buy a security software, only to find out the system was already in a state where no security software will even install, I'm quite confident that most of these 0wned setups are already way beyond what F-Secure, Norton or the likes can do while installing.
And sadly reinstall windows can usually just get them owned again (recovery disks having no service packs, so the thing will get first Sasser-derivate into the system 30 seconds after the recovery install is done)
What computer manufacturers would really need to do is to ship everyone a free replacement recovery disc to get the system up with all patches. Funded by MS because it's their holey software. However, this would actually cost money, so instead people are left on their own.
Well, considering that 64bit windows won't install on 32bit hardware, I'd say it's a safe bet they'll either run Opterons or some EM64T-enabled intel thingy.
Only stupid people with broken warez copies can't update. If you know what you are doing, you can still update using Windows Update, no problem.
(I use licensed legal copies myself, but at work I get to repair all kinds of crap, including PCs with warezed OSes. Many of them are quite updateable - depends greatly on which key and which install media was used)
Just turn off any hardware-assisted things on the NF4 LAN options. The culprit is 'Checksum Offload' - offloading some packet checksum calculation from CPU/drivers to the hardware. Turn that off and the LDs stop.
'Paid reviewers skip the unflattering parts' - SHOCKING!!!!
The first review bunch of every hardware item is PAID ADVERTISING. Well, at least close to it. To get the product for such review requires signing of NDA and cooperation of the manufacturer. Trashing a product in such launch review ensures that you won't get the next shiny thing to review. Yes, some hardware reviewers are corrupt. Shocking.
The 'active armor' firewall has never worked right on the AMD64 NF4 either. Also on AMD64 NForce4 the gigabit ethernet has it's own problems - for example, many MMOs simply disconnect you (you go linkdead) if you have the Hardware Checksum Offload feature of the LAN chip in use.
And unsurprisingly when you compare ANY other chipset to the rock solid Intel chipsets, they look unstable. NF4 isn't the worst of the bunch, but it can't be helped. Last STABLE (rock stable) chipset on AMD platforms was AMD760. Yes, it was lacking features, but it WORKED. After that it's VIA this, nVidia that, SIS this - all suck more or less. Thankfully the suckiness has gone down over the years, and today I can say that KT800 VIA on AMD64 is usable. Still not perfect, but works. NForce 4 has bunch of quirks and unfinished drivers, but it's probably the best PCIe-based chipset so far.
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In theory yes, in practice no. I work in a position where I end up cleaning lots of this junk (in a computer store).
In practice if you spyware/virus clean the computer, and then the customer comes back in few weeks with the exact same issue, your reputation as a place who can 'fix' the computer goes to the crappers. It's highly probable that the customer WON'T come back at all, and instead goes to your competitor - including when he's buying new hardware etc.
So every spyware/virus clean comes with free installation of all missing windows updates, installation antispyware software and Firefox browser, plus explanation why, plus recommendation to consider also Thunderbird, but we generally don't install it unless person really wants, because we don't want to muck around with email settings etc unless explictly asked to.
Then we give recommendation to get antivirus software, and yes, there we recommend a commercial product instead of installing a free one - simply because there is no localized free antivirus software in our language. We do install 30day trial of F-Secure if the customer wants it - tho in way more than half of the cases there IS an antivirus software. It's just either not doing anything against spyware, or has been neutered by some virus. Antivirus software is no guarantee there is no viruses in the system - so many of them can disable all common antivirus applications to just report 'all OK' when there is a bug farm under the hood.
If someone comes back later with yet another spyware pile on the same computer, and unless it's a clear case of installing of applications with known spyware inside them (kazaa etc) - usually done by the owner's kids - I consider that I failed the first time, and usually the re-cleaning is discounted. The service includes both the cleanup AND the education to ensure it shouldn't happen again, and if it does, I'll just educate more.
Some people are hopeless (and in such cases we openly recommend Mac as an option), but it's extremely rare to see repeat visits over spyware. However, many people who have had their computers cleaned up, do return to buy other things - software, hardware etc. - and buy services such as installation of hardware/software. One well-done spyware/virus cleanup can easily bring in a ton of extra revenue as the customer is happy and prefers to visit the store 'that got his computer fixed quickly and cheaply, and did it well'.
The potential extra revenue from another cleanup operation is nothing compared to what can be gained if the customer buys his next computer from us, or recommends few of his friends to get their computers cleaned up at our store too. Any store who 'just cleans up', and leaves the computer to be re-infected, won't be raking in the money in the long run, as people learn (and tell all their friends to avoid the ripoff artists too).
Movies were on plain DVD because nobody was buying the crippled DivX versions that required specific (expensive) players (that nobody were buying).
DivX was killed by cheap chinese DVD players. Period.
Said services arrived YEARS after their US-centric versions.
Everything they develop is US-centric. Once it's proven to work they might expand it to UK, and after that maybe to other regions. Doesn't matter much for a search engine, but really really matters for a map service...
So which is it?
Google sucks because it's US-centric in all it does.
If Microsoft can put a similar service that spans the whole globe (well, at least the inhabited bits and their nearby areas - no need to put up two racks to serve images of tundra & trees), that would seriously leapfrog Google and their limited USA-centric service.
Removing original copyright + GPL license texts makes it illegal. Pretty cut'n'dry.
Fun fact: had they kept the copyright/GPL license information and just 'rebranded' it, with full source, it would be LEGAL. Including selling it, as long as the source code is freely available under GPL (which in this case might make selling it bit harder, but then again, I guess whoever they are selling it to now are not the brightest of the bunch anyway, so I don't see the problem)
Some people just don't get GPL...
As long as you abide by the license of the code, you can do that. Open source and all that...
Acronym overload... can anyone translate? :)
That looked like actual gameplay to me. And while the art is spiffy, there is technically nothing that couldn't be done with today's top-of-the-line PC, when exploited to the maximum - sad bit is that most PC games underuse the hardware when developed to work with the lowest craptastic massmarket PC.
:)
However, getting such shiny stuff out of a 300-400$ massmarket console is seriously impressive, as is the physics stuff in that clip - vehicles blowing to bits, with said bits flying around neatly.
Me wants one
Yup. The new contoller looks crappy. Trying to tweak perfection = bad idea.
I hope they either provide a way to connect old PS2 controllers (bluetooth device with controller ports?) or release a 'classic' controller identical to PS2 model as option.
DeBeers plant?
You cannot tell a gem-quality manufactured diamond and a natural diamond apart.
They are both carbon. Yes, DeBeer has tried to market their expensive stuff as 'geniune' versus manufactured 'knockoffs', but in this case the items are quite identical.
The amount of viewers you can get with a legimate, legal torrent of a good TV show is still so small that the advertising revenue out of that wouldn't pay for the show.
And you can bet your farm that the broadcasters will fight this all the way to their grave - meaning once you have a broadcaster footing any bit of the bill for the program, you can be sure that the agreement denies any legal avenue of internet distribution. So even if they could put it both on the telly, and legally as torrent, the broadcaster will NEVER allow it, as if torrents take off and become more popular, the broadcaster becomes redundant.
I imagine it'll start off slowly... someone sponsoring a legal torrent of a 'geeky' subject material, paying for onscreen bug / 'sponsored by XXX' banners in the video, and then putting it out legally. Maybe something like, say, coverage of the E3 trade show or something else like that with small production costs (basically the cost of taping and editing). Then it'll go to cheap comedy stuff - animation, talk shows... and it's a long way until a drama show with $500K+ production costs per hour are funded by advertising for torrents.
Also there is the issue of regions - advertisers want to advertise to target audiences. Very few companies want to advertise worldwide. Torrents are, by definition, worldwide. So you'd need sponsors who see value in advertising to the whole planet at once.
Companies like Intel, AMD etc. might see some value in it, but considering that 90%+ of the advertisements I see in my telly are from very local companies, and would mean nothing to a large percentage of the torrent audience, it's problematic for the advertisers.
We'll get there.. 10 years.. 15 years.. but in the meantime people will try subscription models with DRMed streams, pay-to-download DRM-crippled files and all the other junk like that - all while torrents slowly own the world. Things will start to change only after major chunks of the viewers are consuming torrents. Today it's few percent, not enough. iTunes came only after MAJOR chunk of music was downloaded online, same applies here.
Apple has followed the obligation of the license.
:)
It's just a fork. Forks happen. Move along. If KDE guys think KHTML sucks compared to WebCore/Safari, they are free to fork THAT and start from there (backporting it to KDE). The source is open. Whine less, code more
/curses for stupid typo..
:p )
SENDING spam...
(yeah yeah.. preview button.. bah.. humbug
Yes, but constant busts will increase the cost of spending spam.
Only way to get rid of it, is to make it unprofitably expensive due to constant downage of servers & evasion of lawsuits being bombarded at you.
Right now it's considered 'jaywalking', and therefore easy money. Once people start getting tossed into the can for it. For real. In numbers... THEN things may slowly start to change...
Which is why we need private enterprises taking the initiative.
Business, hiring qualified test pilots to do stuff they are supposed to be doing. Everyone doing it can compare their paycheck to their job description and choose if the want to ride the experimental thingy.
Yes, I can imagine congressional hearings and 'oversight' destroying the whole thing after a crew exits stage left in a fireball. That means US has a problem, and such business should relocate elsewhere...
Odd that nobody seems to raise holy hell over dead military test pilots who have over the years died while testing military hardware. Nobody ever hears of them. People also seem to shrug off accidents during pilot training and military exercises. How is this any different from space exploration? It isn't. Space = risky business, where people can die. Live with it.
I know I'd love to go up there like just about everyone else. I also know that today's hardware for doing so is somewhat unreliable and 'prototype' in many ways, so I'd currently choose not to take the ride. I could take a zero-g ride on a vomit comet (airplanes are petty mature), but betatesting a rocket is not my idea of a fun occupation. At the same time I'm quite sure you'd find immensely qualified takers for the job...
Actually, considering what Scaled Composites has done so far, and the budget they've used, I have some belief that this might be doable. Of course it would not include funds for running a huge NASA paperpusher army, so it probably won't include costs of extensive certifications and testings to get the failure rate down to minimal. Space is risky business, and spending megabucks for additional 1-2% success rate is just a bad idea. Every astronaut can themselves consider the risks and decide if they are happy with the launch vehicle.
:)
Nobody was out there demanding stacks of paper and testing from the Wright brothers when they experimented. In retrospect their contraption was highly unstable and unsafe. Same should apply for launch system developments. Sure, stuff will blow up, and people will die. People who understood the risks and knew exactly what they were doing. If they run out of people who are willing to hop onboard, they know they must spend time and money on the safety. Today, I doubt they'll have many issues as long as the (test)pilots are involved in the process and know how the tincan they are hopping into ticks.
No need to bog it all down with 100M$s of paperwork and extra safety tests and checks that really won't improve safety. The law of diminishing returns applies - sure, you want to test and make sure the damn thing works, but beyond certain point extra testing and checking is not going to change the safety much - only the pricetag will go up, see NASA
F-Secure's Internet Security 2005 does that.
However, 3-6 months old AV signature files do exactly Jack and Squat against new threats. Yeah, again you can remove some bits, but not everything.
Wrong. Today's antivirus/antispyware programs are mostly crap. They remove a lot of stuff, but hardly everything. For example, crappy F-Secure commonly FINDS lots of viruses, then says 'can't delete, renaming file', and then silently fails even that, so next scan the pest is still there. Also lots of current malware will even interfere with safe mode (you should see some of the trickery these software go into to keep running and/or prevent deletion of the files/registry keys).
/SCANNOW - except that in such cases it usually fails to start at all due to some service or file being hosed)
Then again, if you don't work in PC repairs/support, you wouldn't know. Go try it someday. You'll be amazed how hosed systems people carry into paid 'remove the viruses please'-service. People simply won't move their butts until the system is at a state where nothing meaningful can be done.
Only way I have manually cleaned badly hosed systems is via deleting files of the malware using a WinPE live bootdisk, or by putting the drive as additional drive to another computer and manually getting rid of the actual files of the pests. Antivirus programs are fine in preventing infections of known junk, but once the system is Gone, its Gone. None of the big commercial antivirus software is today able to remove all of the viruses they detect.
I've seen stuff that just goes to immense lenghts to prevent deletion. From your average 'I'm sorry dave, I can't let you delete that one (permission denied)' via premissions (yeah, Take 0wnz0rship works, to a degree), to just plain locked files that cannot be touched - even in safe mode, and need removal using WinPE or some other method of booting from somwhere else than the messed up OS disk. Most funny situations is where the malware actually messes up with the permissions of the OS to a degree where an Administrator account suddenly doesn't have access to a lot of stuff. You could manually start restoring permissions, but really - it's just not feasible. It takes so immense amount of time, that it's not cost-effective compared to 'wipe disk, reinstall OS'.
(and I know of SFC
You guys don't seem to understand the amount of mischief these money-incentived malware writers can do on a 'rooted' windows box (since everyone runs at Administrator). If someone roots your linux box completely, it's POINTLESS to try clean it up. It's compromised, and no amount of antivirus snake oil at that point can restore your trust to the status of the system. Only full reinstall and recovery from a known good backup is any good. Yes, you can rescue data files (after suitable checks that they cannot be infected), but beyond that the only real cure is reinstall.
No can do. High percentage of hijacked machines are in a state that no security software can rescue them from.
Reinstall windows is the only thing that helps. After that the security software is a good thing.
However, having seen dozens and dozens of computers where the user was clueful enough to buy a security software, only to find out the system was already in a state where no security software will even install, I'm quite confident that most of these 0wned setups are already way beyond what F-Secure, Norton or the likes can do while installing.
And sadly reinstall windows can usually just get them owned again (recovery disks having no service packs, so the thing will get first Sasser-derivate into the system 30 seconds after the recovery install is done)
What computer manufacturers would really need to do is to ship everyone a free replacement recovery disc to get the system up with all patches. Funded by MS because it's their holey software. However, this would actually cost money, so instead people are left on their own.
Well, considering that 64bit windows won't install on 32bit hardware, I'd say it's a safe bet they'll either run Opterons or some EM64T-enabled intel thingy.
Only stupid people with broken warez copies can't update. If you know what you are doing, you can still update using Windows Update, no problem.
(I use licensed legal copies myself, but at work I get to repair all kinds of crap, including PCs with warezed OSes. Many of them are quite updateable - depends greatly on which key and which install media was used)
But yeah, MS is tightening the noose...
Just turn off any hardware-assisted things on the NF4 LAN options. The culprit is 'Checksum Offload' - offloading some packet checksum calculation from CPU/drivers to the hardware. Turn that off and the LDs stop.
'Paid reviewers skip the unflattering parts' - SHOCKING!!!!
The first review bunch of every hardware item is PAID ADVERTISING. Well, at least close to it. To get the product for such review requires signing of NDA and cooperation of the manufacturer. Trashing a product in such launch review ensures that you won't get the next shiny thing to review. Yes, some hardware reviewers are corrupt. Shocking.
The 'active armor' firewall has never worked right on the AMD64 NF4 either. Also on AMD64 NForce4 the gigabit ethernet has it's own problems - for example, many MMOs simply disconnect you (you go linkdead) if you have the Hardware Checksum Offload feature of the LAN chip in use.
And unsurprisingly when you compare ANY other chipset to the rock solid Intel chipsets, they look unstable. NF4 isn't the worst of the bunch, but it can't be helped. Last STABLE (rock stable) chipset on AMD platforms was AMD760. Yes, it was lacking features, but it WORKED. After that it's VIA this, nVidia that, SIS this - all suck more or less. Thankfully the suckiness has gone down over the years, and today I can say that KT800 VIA on AMD64 is usable. Still not perfect, but works. NForce 4 has bunch of quirks and unfinished drivers, but it's probably the best PCIe-based chipset so far.
Which is the reason why most of these are laptops or TFT Screens.
Much more painful to pick up CRT and take a picture. I know I don't want to move my 19" monster anywhere...
you are missing the 'in an airplane' -qualifier.
Space capsules don't count.