Go to a better carrier. T-mobile will unlock phones. I've had them unlock phones for me in the past. You have to have been on contract for awhile, but then just call them and they'll send you the unlock code. Or, as the GP noted, buy an unlocked phone.
It seems like people DO have options, they just don't want to exercise them.
It is targeted at education and math teachers get all uppity if the calculator can do too much since they don't know how to effectively teach or test their students.
If you want CAS TI's color model is the nSpire CX CAS. More powerful overall and has a full CAS setup on it.
It is only a big deal for the people who have an ego in uptime. The issue in the real world is availability, not some uptime number and you get that through redundancy. I don't care if a Windows DC reboots. Why? Because I have like 5 more. You want to have multiple systems that are redundant so that when (not if, but when) you have a hardware failure service isn't interrupted.
Reboots are just not a big deal in the server world. If they are, then you've designed your service wrong and you need to re-think it. Unless you are buying mainframe hardware (and even then sometimes) you are going to have a system failure some day, you want other systems that smoothly handle the load while it is down. Reboots are just small, non-destructive tests of that.
As for desktops this has never been a real issue, but is even less with SSDs. It is real hard to care about a reboot for patches at all when it happens at 3am while you sleep (or alternatively on manual shutdown and boot up) but it is harder still to care when you system reboots in less than 10 seconds, as systems with SSDs are wont to do.
It is far and away the most popular game engine. However it is fully capable of 1080 rendering, or indeed far beyond that if the hardware can handle it. All those games go beyond 720 on the PC.
It is a tradeoff on the PS3. You can go to 1080 if you like, but that requires 2.25x the fillrate of 720. That corresponds to less complex shaders, less post processing, smaller textures (also because of less VRAM) and so on. Given that the Xbox 360 won't render at 1080, and that 720 is fairly "standard" for this gen of games, not to mention that it all looks better than the SD of last gen, most companies opt for a prettier picture with less pixels.
Same reason some games render even lower. Sleeping Dogs wanted more detail than they had fillrate for so it renders at a lower rez.
That's why it has the configuration it does (if some of the amounts it has look strange to you it is because there are units disabled) and why it costs so damn much. Combine a low number per wafer, with probable high failures (since TSMC's 28nm process has quite a few issues) and you get a high cost per working part, and thus a high cost to consumers.
The Call of Duty series are some of the best selling games out there, and they are violent as hell. If they lead to more violence, well then we should be seeing a lot of it given how many people play them, and that the number who do is increasing. But of course we don't. The best kept secret of the media, it would seem, is that violent crime has been on a steady decline, which is a wonderful thing.
Also it rather ignore nature. A big part of play in many critters is fighting. Their play mimics their combat in many ways, just non-harmful. Get a couple of kittens and watch what they do: They stalk and ambush each other, the wrestle, bite, kick with their back feet, etc. Well guess what? This is what cats do when they are hunting/fighting, only the claws are out and the moves are full-force. This is true even of cats who are 100% domesticated, and never have to hunt for food or defend themselves. They can tell the difference, they don't accidentally rip each other apart, play and combat may be related, but they aren't the same thing.
So why would we think humans would be so different? Why wouldn't our play be play fighting, and why wouldn't be be able to tell them apart?
Darksiders II: 1152x640 Dishonoured : 1280x720 Mass Effect 3: 1280x720 Need For Speed: Most Wanted: 1280x704 Soul Calibur V: 1280x720 Sleeping Dogs: 1152x640 X-Com Enemy Unknown: 1280x720
That's just a selection of games released last year, that aren't FPS's that use 1280x720, or lower, on the PS3.
Most PS3 games don't do 1920x1080. It doesn't have the fillrate, or the VRAM, to deal with that without some serious quality sacrifices so most developers choose less rez for more eye candy.
Remember that the resolution it is outputting at isn't the same as rendering. You can upsample any output you like, hence how a DVD player can output a 1080p signal though the DVD is 720x480 anamorphic.
Seriously man, this isn't a console-fan argument nor is that one you want to have in relation to PC hardware because you'll lose. The point is, most games these days are targeted at 1280x720, or lower, at 30fps. The problem is to target anything higher you trade something off. Want 60fps? Ok, less detail. Want 1080? Ok, less detail. There is just only so many pixels the hardware can push. Crank up the rez, you have to sacrifice things.
Computers can do more than that, but need more hardware to do it. The target on my system is 2560x1600 @ 60fps, with no detail loss. My 680 can't handle that all the time, that's the point.
Seriously, if you are worried, get an SSD that monitors itself. Samsung and Intel are good choices. They monitor how much actual writing has been done and give you a life estimate and so on. You will discover that no, you really don't do as much as you think most likely.
Also, Windows knows if you have an SSD in a slot and knows how to deal with it.
You just don't write that much data on a desktop. Yes, when you do a reinstall you write a lot but it really slows down after that. You can measure it and you find that really it is a somewhat rare day that you write a gig to your disk much less more.
Also all drives are over provisioned, there is space you don't see that they can use to swap in and out for wear leveling. This happens behind the scenes, beyond your control.
So the drive really will last quite a long time. If your use is desktop use, don't worry about it, buy a drive and enjoy it. Only for write intensive use do you need to do any calculations on it. If you want it as a backend for a database server, or you are using it to capture uncompressed video then yes, throw some math at it before you buy. However for a desktop? No, it won't be a problem.
Console rez means 1280x720, perhaps less. I know that in theory the PS3 can render at 1080, but in reality basically nothing does. All the games you see out these days are 1280x720, or sometimes even less. The consoles allow for internal resolutions of arbitrary amounts less and then upsample them, and a number of games do that.
Frame rate is also an issue. Most console games are 30fps titles, meaning that's all they target (and sometimes they slow down below that). On a PC, of course, you can aim for 60fps (or more, if you like).
When you combine those, you can want a lot of power. I just moved up to a 2560x1600 monitor, and my GTX 680 is now inadequate. Well ok, maybe that's not the right term, but it isn't overpowered anymore. For some games, like Rift and Skyrim, I can't crank everything up and still maintain a high framerate. I have to choose choppy display, less detail, or a lower rez. If I had the option, I'd rather not.
You need to stop blaming Windows and/or the GPU vendor and troubleshoot your system. My GPU has reset precisely zero times when playing BF3, over a total of about 107 hours. I have seen GPU resets on my system on rare occasion, generally with broken software, but never in BF3 and I have more than a bit of testing with it.
You have something wrong on your system, you should figure out what.
Notice that most sites that use it aren't using it as a currency, but as a money laundering tool. Someone sends them bitcoins, they immediately convert them to the real currency that they want. They aren't using it as a currency, they aren't holding money in it, they just use it because it launders the funds and separates them from their clients.
That is useful in terms of sending payments for illegal products, but not in terms of being a currency. Quite the opposite, in fact. If the big users of it don't wish to have it for longer than absolutely necessary, then it isn't functioning as a currency.
It also sets it up to be in a good position to get shut down. If bitcoin becomes used exclusively for buying illegal goods, government will have all the argument they need to shut it down. While shutting down the decentralized BTC network itself might be impossible, shutting down the exchanges is not. They close down any place converting bitcoins to money, seize the funds, and charge the operators with money laundering. Suddenly, bitcions aren't worth shit.
As you've pointed out, they are inherently deflationary and thus will never function as a currency. So if the exchanges get shut down, now it is just a bunch of people fiddling around with nothing to do.
I buy Crockett's Desert Honey since that's the local stuff here and man, so much tastier than generic clover honey. Whatever desert wildflowers the bees are snacking on, it gives it a very complex and tasty flavour. So worth the extra money.
I mean if you are using it in mass quantities, ok maybe the cost is a problem, but for normal household use a container of honey should last a reasonable amount of time (it is high calorie, you shouldn't slather it on stuff) so it really won't hit your budget that much.
You can usually find the smaller honey producers in good grocers. Crockett's is sold in Safeway in my region. Grocers often stock some local products. By the same token I can get really good local tortillas in Safeway here, since they are made here (in town in fact).
Do a bit of looking around, you probably can get local honey, you can probably get it at a convenient store, and it probably isn't too expensive.
Or go order Crockett's from their site. It really is my favourite honey I've ever had.
For some reason, geeks seem to think there is magic, perfect, computer security. "Just do THIS and your servers are secure, nobody can ever break in!" Those of us who've dealt with physical security understand there's NO SUCH THING. Good security is a layered approach. You never rely on one thing for security, you have layers so that when, not if, a layer fails you aren't automatically fucked, the other layers hopefully catch it.
While moving SSH to another port may not be a real big security improvement, security improvement don't have to be big to be useful, particularly if the cost is low, and in this case the cost is zero.
Also here's some news: It is 2013 and just now the bots seem to be adapting. That means that it was pretty effective. Seems to me SSH has been in use for, oh, getting close to 18 years now. That's not a bad amount of time for something to stop the bots.
The sooner geek admins start to understand that there is NO perfect security, ever, the sooner we'll start to have better computer security.
Windows support is my profession and working at a university I get to deal with old systems, and old OSes. It isn't a big deal. I've installed XP, a 12 year old OS, loaded drivers, and patched it to current all from the GUI, and without any real amount of trouble.
MS really does support their OSes quite well and it really isn't a big deal to get them working and up to date, so long as they are still under support (2000 is not patched anymore, for example).
Not really. The case/layout is some of the least of the technical parts of a computer. All the components inside are the higher tech bits and you find they come from all over. The big daddy, the CPU, is usually from the US. Most of Intel's fabs are in the US, and their design centres are in the US and Israel. Same deal with the motherboard chipset, though their Ireland fab does quite a few of those. Assembly largely depends on where you are, they have packaging facilities in the US, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Malaysia, and China.
The graphics card, if there's a separate one, was fabbed in Taiwan by TSMC, at least for now (both AMD and nVidia re displeased with them) but designed in either the US or Canada since that's where nVidia and AMD respectively have their design centers. All development is done there.
For memory it really runs the gamut. Depending on the company the chips can get fabbed in the US, EU, or Asia and final assembly of the sticks is often done elsewhere. Some places, like Micron, like their own modules, others buy from other companies (Kingston favours Hyynix these days).
Storage it varies. HDDs are all Asia all the time. Final assembly is pretty much Malaysia or China. Components come from various places, motors notably from just one firm in Thailand. For SSDs it again depends on the company. Samsung is all internal and does their own flash, CPU (though it is based on an ARM core) and construction. They do final assembly in Korea, the flash itself is sometimes fabbed in Korea though a lot of it is fabbed in Texas (Samsung has a big plant there). Intel buys their controllers from Sandforce, a US company, but they are fabless so Intel fabs the ones they use. Their flash they make themselves mostly in their Utah but also Singapore (the facilities are co-owned Intel and Micron).
For discrete components, like caps and so on, then Japan is usually the big supplier. It varies some, China is used as well, but Japan is still real, real big in the discrete components game.
Power supplies? That's all China all the time. There are only a couple companies that make them, and they do the design work too. They put out a PSU design, companies then alter the specs to their liking (upgrading components for better reliability or whatnot) and then they are built to order.
LCDs are mostly Korea in terms of panels, though China is in that market too, and nearly all China for final assembly.
Computers are really quite an international production. They use parts form all over, and designs from all over. Remember that the place that produces a part isn't necessarily the place that designed it. This is not only true for fabless companies like nVidia, but even for companies like Intel. They don't do design, fab, packaging, and all that in one facility, they are all over the place.
To say the market belongs to Asia is rather silly. It belongs to the world.
Oh and with regards to Dell? Have a look at the systems you get in the US. Mexico and Brazil are the usual sources for final assembly, not Asia.
One is fraud/insurance issues. Accidents happen and in Russia there are major corruption issues with the authorities and such. Having video evidence is fairly necessary in many cases.
The other? All the crazy shit that happens. When there's stuff like tanks driving across highways randomly and so on, might be a reason to record all of the goings on.
In this case, I'm way more inclined to trust Tesla. Why? Well they have data, the reporter doesn't. I figure both sides have a reason to make shit up.
Reporters are not someone I truest with facts these days, it is stories. They like to have the big story, and that often means scandal, be it true or false. We have have, many, many times, seen the press neglect evidence in their haste to get a story, omit things that don't fit with their narrative, frame things (pictures in particular) to show what they want, and sometimes outright make shit up.
Now I also figure Tesla has a reason to lie since, after all, they want to sell cars and as such want their cars portrayed in the best possible light. Companies don't want to admit faults of their products if they don't have to.
So given that both sources can be suspect, who do we believe? Well the one with the more credible data. The reporter has nothing but "ummm, the tires were the wrong size" which is a very half-assed explanation. Tesla appears to have rather extensive data logging. Given the choice between data and assertion, I'm inclined to trust the data. Give me some proof it is wrong if you wish to convince me otherwise.
This guy has no credibility, particularly in light of his half-assed response. To me it sounds like he was trying to gin up a sensationalized story, got caught, and now is doing a poor job covering.
Turn it to "off" and the engine will lose power. The car will stop. Also, you can shift it in to neutral. Might not be the best for the engine at high RPMs, but it'll do the trick.
Seriously, I have trouble believing these "My car is stuck going fast and can't stop!" stories are anything other than failure to understand how to operate your vehicle.
Advertisers need to STFU as they are the reason all this happened. Most people really don't mind non-invasive ads that much. They'll let them happen and likely not even complain. However the advertisers seem to think that more obnoxious, more invasive, etc is the way to get attention. Eventually, it pushes people over the edge and they will block it.
Happened to me. I was fine with ads, I understand the need. However I really hated popups. No problem, popup blocker. Then game the fucking flash ads, ok fine so a flash blocker with click to pay for the stuff I want. Then, HTML 5 ads that take over a page. Ok, fuck you, all ads are blocked, I've had enough.
Happens with more people I know too. They'll ask me if there's a way to deal with it and I'll point them to Adblock.
Advertisers really need to understand that if you don't want your market to go away, you have to stop being dicks about it. Keep the ads low key and not fraudulent, and people will probably be ok with it by and large. Some won't, but most won't mind, at least not enough to do something. However the more invasive you are, the more people will block it out.
Well it would seem you have a system issue. Maybe hardware, maybe software but that is what you need to diagnose. The slowdown is something I cannot replicate on any of our Windows 8 systems. They all have been running for at least two weeks, and some as many as 28 days, and none are slow.
Word: I cannot replicate your issue. I have opened 10 documents so far at once, no issues.
Outlook: I cannot replicate your issue. I use it daily for mail and it works as I would expect. I click on something, it responds.
Powerpoint: Not having your slides I can't test it. I have not seen this issue, but perhaps there is something special about the slide decks you are using.
SciTE: Not a program we have so I can't test it.
Blaming the issues on Windows 8 seems a little disingenuous. It is pretty clear to me your system has issues. Spyware would be my first thought, but there are plenty of things that could cause issues like this. Whatever the case that is what needs to be diagnosed.
If your IT lead is a UNIX zealot that refuses to fix issues then he should be replaced with someone who will. There's nothing wrong with moving to a new platform, it if truly is a better solution, but that doesn't give license to just ignore problems with the existing system. We still have to deal with our Solaris shit, until we can stand it down (only 2 servers remaining).
At any rate if you don't wish to use Windows 8 because of a singular bad experience on a work system, fair enough. I don't think it is good reasoning but you do as you please. However if you then generalize that to say Windows 8 is bad, that's where I start calling out on it because that is faulty logic.
Ya so far I haven't heard any real IT outsourcing success stories. I mean small shops that don't have the resources/need for internal staff hire others to do IT work and that makes sense. But big shops that outsource it do not seem to have a good time. It ends up not being cheaper, service is worse, etc, etc.
Maybe thinks will change but I doubt it since the whole thing with any kind of service isn't so much technology but people.
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Go to a better carrier. T-mobile will unlock phones. I've had them unlock phones for me in the past. You have to have been on contract for awhile, but then just call them and they'll send you the unlock code. Or, as the GP noted, buy an unlocked phone.
It seems like people DO have options, they just don't want to exercise them.
It is targeted at education and math teachers get all uppity if the calculator can do too much since they don't know how to effectively teach or test their students.
If you want CAS TI's color model is the nSpire CX CAS. More powerful overall and has a full CAS setup on it.
It is only a big deal for the people who have an ego in uptime. The issue in the real world is availability, not some uptime number and you get that through redundancy. I don't care if a Windows DC reboots. Why? Because I have like 5 more. You want to have multiple systems that are redundant so that when (not if, but when) you have a hardware failure service isn't interrupted.
Reboots are just not a big deal in the server world. If they are, then you've designed your service wrong and you need to re-think it. Unless you are buying mainframe hardware (and even then sometimes) you are going to have a system failure some day, you want other systems that smoothly handle the load while it is down. Reboots are just small, non-destructive tests of that.
As for desktops this has never been a real issue, but is even less with SSDs. It is real hard to care about a reboot for patches at all when it happens at 3am while you sleep (or alternatively on manual shutdown and boot up) but it is harder still to care when you system reboots in less than 10 seconds, as systems with SSDs are wont to do.
It is far and away the most popular game engine. However it is fully capable of 1080 rendering, or indeed far beyond that if the hardware can handle it. All those games go beyond 720 on the PC.
It is a tradeoff on the PS3. You can go to 1080 if you like, but that requires 2.25x the fillrate of 720. That corresponds to less complex shaders, less post processing, smaller textures (also because of less VRAM) and so on. Given that the Xbox 360 won't render at 1080, and that 720 is fairly "standard" for this gen of games, not to mention that it all looks better than the SD of last gen, most companies opt for a prettier picture with less pixels.
Same reason some games render even lower. Sleeping Dogs wanted more detail than they had fillrate for so it renders at a lower rez.
That's why it has the configuration it does (if some of the amounts it has look strange to you it is because there are units disabled) and why it costs so damn much. Combine a low number per wafer, with probable high failures (since TSMC's 28nm process has quite a few issues) and you get a high cost per working part, and thus a high cost to consumers.
The Call of Duty series are some of the best selling games out there, and they are violent as hell. If they lead to more violence, well then we should be seeing a lot of it given how many people play them, and that the number who do is increasing. But of course we don't. The best kept secret of the media, it would seem, is that violent crime has been on a steady decline, which is a wonderful thing.
Also it rather ignore nature. A big part of play in many critters is fighting. Their play mimics their combat in many ways, just non-harmful. Get a couple of kittens and watch what they do: They stalk and ambush each other, the wrestle, bite, kick with their back feet, etc. Well guess what? This is what cats do when they are hunting/fighting, only the claws are out and the moves are full-force. This is true even of cats who are 100% domesticated, and never have to hunt for food or defend themselves. They can tell the difference, they don't accidentally rip each other apart, play and combat may be related, but they aren't the same thing.
So why would we think humans would be so different? Why wouldn't our play be play fighting, and why wouldn't be be able to tell them apart?
Let's have a look at some recent non-FPS games:
Darksiders II: 1152x640
Dishonoured : 1280x720
Mass Effect 3: 1280x720
Need For Speed: Most Wanted: 1280x704
Soul Calibur V: 1280x720
Sleeping Dogs: 1152x640
X-Com Enemy Unknown: 1280x720
That's just a selection of games released last year, that aren't FPS's that use 1280x720, or lower, on the PS3.
Most PS3 games don't do 1920x1080. It doesn't have the fillrate, or the VRAM, to deal with that without some serious quality sacrifices so most developers choose less rez for more eye candy.
Remember that the resolution it is outputting at isn't the same as rendering. You can upsample any output you like, hence how a DVD player can output a 1080p signal though the DVD is 720x480 anamorphic.
Seriously man, this isn't a console-fan argument nor is that one you want to have in relation to PC hardware because you'll lose. The point is, most games these days are targeted at 1280x720, or lower, at 30fps. The problem is to target anything higher you trade something off. Want 60fps? Ok, less detail. Want 1080? Ok, less detail. There is just only so many pixels the hardware can push. Crank up the rez, you have to sacrifice things.
Computers can do more than that, but need more hardware to do it. The target on my system is 2560x1600 @ 60fps, with no detail loss. My 680 can't handle that all the time, that's the point.
Seriously, if you are worried, get an SSD that monitors itself. Samsung and Intel are good choices. They monitor how much actual writing has been done and give you a life estimate and so on. You will discover that no, you really don't do as much as you think most likely.
Also, Windows knows if you have an SSD in a slot and knows how to deal with it.
You just don't write that much data on a desktop. Yes, when you do a reinstall you write a lot but it really slows down after that. You can measure it and you find that really it is a somewhat rare day that you write a gig to your disk much less more.
Also all drives are over provisioned, there is space you don't see that they can use to swap in and out for wear leveling. This happens behind the scenes, beyond your control.
So the drive really will last quite a long time. If your use is desktop use, don't worry about it, buy a drive and enjoy it. Only for write intensive use do you need to do any calculations on it. If you want it as a backend for a database server, or you are using it to capture uncompressed video then yes, throw some math at it before you buy. However for a desktop? No, it won't be a problem.
Console rez means 1280x720, perhaps less. I know that in theory the PS3 can render at 1080, but in reality basically nothing does. All the games you see out these days are 1280x720, or sometimes even less. The consoles allow for internal resolutions of arbitrary amounts less and then upsample them, and a number of games do that.
Frame rate is also an issue. Most console games are 30fps titles, meaning that's all they target (and sometimes they slow down below that). On a PC, of course, you can aim for 60fps (or more, if you like).
When you combine those, you can want a lot of power. I just moved up to a 2560x1600 monitor, and my GTX 680 is now inadequate. Well ok, maybe that's not the right term, but it isn't overpowered anymore. For some games, like Rift and Skyrim, I can't crank everything up and still maintain a high framerate. I have to choose choppy display, less detail, or a lower rez. If I had the option, I'd rather not.
You need to stop blaming Windows and/or the GPU vendor and troubleshoot your system. My GPU has reset precisely zero times when playing BF3, over a total of about 107 hours. I have seen GPU resets on my system on rare occasion, generally with broken software, but never in BF3 and I have more than a bit of testing with it.
You have something wrong on your system, you should figure out what.
Notice that most sites that use it aren't using it as a currency, but as a money laundering tool. Someone sends them bitcoins, they immediately convert them to the real currency that they want. They aren't using it as a currency, they aren't holding money in it, they just use it because it launders the funds and separates them from their clients.
That is useful in terms of sending payments for illegal products, but not in terms of being a currency. Quite the opposite, in fact. If the big users of it don't wish to have it for longer than absolutely necessary, then it isn't functioning as a currency.
It also sets it up to be in a good position to get shut down. If bitcoin becomes used exclusively for buying illegal goods, government will have all the argument they need to shut it down. While shutting down the decentralized BTC network itself might be impossible, shutting down the exchanges is not. They close down any place converting bitcoins to money, seize the funds, and charge the operators with money laundering. Suddenly, bitcions aren't worth shit.
As you've pointed out, they are inherently deflationary and thus will never function as a currency. So if the exchanges get shut down, now it is just a bunch of people fiddling around with nothing to do.
I buy Crockett's Desert Honey since that's the local stuff here and man, so much tastier than generic clover honey. Whatever desert wildflowers the bees are snacking on, it gives it a very complex and tasty flavour. So worth the extra money.
I mean if you are using it in mass quantities, ok maybe the cost is a problem, but for normal household use a container of honey should last a reasonable amount of time (it is high calorie, you shouldn't slather it on stuff) so it really won't hit your budget that much.
You can usually find the smaller honey producers in good grocers. Crockett's is sold in Safeway in my region. Grocers often stock some local products. By the same token I can get really good local tortillas in Safeway here, since they are made here (in town in fact).
Do a bit of looking around, you probably can get local honey, you can probably get it at a convenient store, and it probably isn't too expensive.
Or go order Crockett's from their site. It really is my favourite honey I've ever had.
For some reason, geeks seem to think there is magic, perfect, computer security. "Just do THIS and your servers are secure, nobody can ever break in!" Those of us who've dealt with physical security understand there's NO SUCH THING. Good security is a layered approach. You never rely on one thing for security, you have layers so that when, not if, a layer fails you aren't automatically fucked, the other layers hopefully catch it.
While moving SSH to another port may not be a real big security improvement, security improvement don't have to be big to be useful, particularly if the cost is low, and in this case the cost is zero.
Also here's some news: It is 2013 and just now the bots seem to be adapting. That means that it was pretty effective. Seems to me SSH has been in use for, oh, getting close to 18 years now. That's not a bad amount of time for something to stop the bots.
The sooner geek admins start to understand that there is NO perfect security, ever, the sooner we'll start to have better computer security.
Windows support is my profession and working at a university I get to deal with old systems, and old OSes. It isn't a big deal. I've installed XP, a 12 year old OS, loaded drivers, and patched it to current all from the GUI, and without any real amount of trouble.
MS really does support their OSes quite well and it really isn't a big deal to get them working and up to date, so long as they are still under support (2000 is not patched anymore, for example).
Not really. The case/layout is some of the least of the technical parts of a computer. All the components inside are the higher tech bits and you find they come from all over. The big daddy, the CPU, is usually from the US. Most of Intel's fabs are in the US, and their design centres are in the US and Israel. Same deal with the motherboard chipset, though their Ireland fab does quite a few of those. Assembly largely depends on where you are, they have packaging facilities in the US, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Malaysia, and China.
The graphics card, if there's a separate one, was fabbed in Taiwan by TSMC, at least for now (both AMD and nVidia re displeased with them) but designed in either the US or Canada since that's where nVidia and AMD respectively have their design centers. All development is done there.
For memory it really runs the gamut. Depending on the company the chips can get fabbed in the US, EU, or Asia and final assembly of the sticks is often done elsewhere. Some places, like Micron, like their own modules, others buy from other companies (Kingston favours Hyynix these days).
Storage it varies. HDDs are all Asia all the time. Final assembly is pretty much Malaysia or China. Components come from various places, motors notably from just one firm in Thailand. For SSDs it again depends on the company. Samsung is all internal and does their own flash, CPU (though it is based on an ARM core) and construction. They do final assembly in Korea, the flash itself is sometimes fabbed in Korea though a lot of it is fabbed in Texas (Samsung has a big plant there). Intel buys their controllers from Sandforce, a US company, but they are fabless so Intel fabs the ones they use. Their flash they make themselves mostly in their Utah but also Singapore (the facilities are co-owned Intel and Micron).
For discrete components, like caps and so on, then Japan is usually the big supplier. It varies some, China is used as well, but Japan is still real, real big in the discrete components game.
Power supplies? That's all China all the time. There are only a couple companies that make them, and they do the design work too. They put out a PSU design, companies then alter the specs to their liking (upgrading components for better reliability or whatnot) and then they are built to order.
LCDs are mostly Korea in terms of panels, though China is in that market too, and nearly all China for final assembly.
Computers are really quite an international production. They use parts form all over, and designs from all over. Remember that the place that produces a part isn't necessarily the place that designed it. This is not only true for fabless companies like nVidia, but even for companies like Intel. They don't do design, fab, packaging, and all that in one facility, they are all over the place.
To say the market belongs to Asia is rather silly. It belongs to the world.
Oh and with regards to Dell? Have a look at the systems you get in the US. Mexico and Brazil are the usual sources for final assembly, not Asia.
One is fraud/insurance issues. Accidents happen and in Russia there are major corruption issues with the authorities and such. Having video evidence is fairly necessary in many cases.
The other? All the crazy shit that happens. When there's stuff like tanks driving across highways randomly and so on, might be a reason to record all of the goings on.
In this case, I'm way more inclined to trust Tesla. Why? Well they have data, the reporter doesn't. I figure both sides have a reason to make shit up.
Reporters are not someone I truest with facts these days, it is stories. They like to have the big story, and that often means scandal, be it true or false. We have have, many, many times, seen the press neglect evidence in their haste to get a story, omit things that don't fit with their narrative, frame things (pictures in particular) to show what they want, and sometimes outright make shit up.
Now I also figure Tesla has a reason to lie since, after all, they want to sell cars and as such want their cars portrayed in the best possible light. Companies don't want to admit faults of their products if they don't have to.
So given that both sources can be suspect, who do we believe? Well the one with the more credible data. The reporter has nothing but "ummm, the tires were the wrong size" which is a very half-assed explanation. Tesla appears to have rather extensive data logging. Given the choice between data and assertion, I'm inclined to trust the data. Give me some proof it is wrong if you wish to convince me otherwise.
This guy has no credibility, particularly in light of his half-assed response. To me it sounds like he was trying to gin up a sensationalized story, got caught, and now is doing a poor job covering.
All of them have an "N" setting that I've seen. It disengages the engine from the wheels. You'd need it for towing and so on.
Turn it to "off" and the engine will lose power. The car will stop. Also, you can shift it in to neutral. Might not be the best for the engine at high RPMs, but it'll do the trick.
Seriously, I have trouble believing these "My car is stuck going fast and can't stop!" stories are anything other than failure to understand how to operate your vehicle.
Advertisers need to STFU as they are the reason all this happened. Most people really don't mind non-invasive ads that much. They'll let them happen and likely not even complain. However the advertisers seem to think that more obnoxious, more invasive, etc is the way to get attention. Eventually, it pushes people over the edge and they will block it.
Happened to me. I was fine with ads, I understand the need. However I really hated popups. No problem, popup blocker. Then game the fucking flash ads, ok fine so a flash blocker with click to pay for the stuff I want. Then, HTML 5 ads that take over a page. Ok, fuck you, all ads are blocked, I've had enough.
Happens with more people I know too. They'll ask me if there's a way to deal with it and I'll point them to Adblock.
Advertisers really need to understand that if you don't want your market to go away, you have to stop being dicks about it. Keep the ads low key and not fraudulent, and people will probably be ok with it by and large. Some won't, but most won't mind, at least not enough to do something. However the more invasive you are, the more people will block it out.
Well it would seem you have a system issue. Maybe hardware, maybe software but that is what you need to diagnose. The slowdown is something I cannot replicate on any of our Windows 8 systems. They all have been running for at least two weeks, and some as many as 28 days, and none are slow.
Word: I cannot replicate your issue. I have opened 10 documents so far at once, no issues.
Outlook: I cannot replicate your issue. I use it daily for mail and it works as I would expect. I click on something, it responds.
Powerpoint: Not having your slides I can't test it. I have not seen this issue, but perhaps there is something special about the slide decks you are using.
SciTE: Not a program we have so I can't test it.
Blaming the issues on Windows 8 seems a little disingenuous. It is pretty clear to me your system has issues. Spyware would be my first thought, but there are plenty of things that could cause issues like this. Whatever the case that is what needs to be diagnosed.
If your IT lead is a UNIX zealot that refuses to fix issues then he should be replaced with someone who will. There's nothing wrong with moving to a new platform, it if truly is a better solution, but that doesn't give license to just ignore problems with the existing system. We still have to deal with our Solaris shit, until we can stand it down (only 2 servers remaining).
At any rate if you don't wish to use Windows 8 because of a singular bad experience on a work system, fair enough. I don't think it is good reasoning but you do as you please. However if you then generalize that to say Windows 8 is bad, that's where I start calling out on it because that is faulty logic.
You could try reading my post: "Memory I suppose we can keep base 2, since it is aligned on those boundaries, but then let's use the base-2 prefix."
Ya so far I haven't heard any real IT outsourcing success stories. I mean small shops that don't have the resources/need for internal staff hire others to do IT work and that makes sense. But big shops that outsource it do not seem to have a good time. It ends up not being cheaper, service is worse, etc, etc.
Maybe thinks will change but I doubt it since the whole thing with any kind of service isn't so much technology but people.