I think you misunderstand "profit" and the sources from which it is derived.
Profit is not an innate quantity: it depends on a number of factors, the largest of which is cost of manufacture relative to demand.
Demand depends on the opportunity cost of an object being lower than other items in the market. If the opportunity cost is high (ie, it's more expensive, doesn't offer as good bang/buck, etc.) then demand will be low.
A low demand means your costs will go up per unit due to production tooling, engineering, etc. This drives up the price, further pushing an item into the "not as profitable" category, until it gets to "break even". At this point, there is no reason for a company to make a product.
If EVs were such a good idea, they would have come about quite a long time ago simply due to economic viability: someone, somewhere, would make one and market it (if not here, then somewhere else in the world where such things as your so-called government-owning automotive makers don't/didn't yet exist).
(Besides, haven't you been paying attention? The government owns GM now. I fail to see the incentive in continuing to hide these pink unicorn vehicles...)
Yet church and religion are in decline in the West, while "the appeal to science" seems more common every day (regardless of whether it actually relates to science).
It would seem that "science" has figured out this weakness quite well.
THe thing about 'science' is that many of the people who get considered scientists aren't.
They're Darwinists, Evolutionists, Biologists, Geologists, Egyptologists, Hydrologists, etc. (Then you have those in the medical field, who also think of themselves as 'scientific').
Yet each of these fields are so steeped in pre-determined assumptions that most of their reasoning and deduction is based on application of assumptions: they piece together the assumptions they've got to make most of the puzzle, and try to fit what they've got left (the original problem) in the hole. Sure, they're practicing the scientific method, but it's kind of useless if your initial assumption is wrong. (See: the 3,000-year-old Earth and assuming every year of existence was chronicled in the Bible.)
A classic (and simplified) example of this that I like to use is this:
* Premise: Mars has craters and valleys similar to craters and valleys on Earth. * Premise: Earth has water. Earth is hit by meteors. * Assumption: Water is largely responsible for these valleys and canyons on Earth. * Conclusion: Meteors are responsible for the majority of craters on Mars. * Conclusion: the valleys on Mars are formed by water. * Eureka! Let's send rovers to Mars to look for the water which must be there!
I'm not sure where "the valleys and craters on mars are more consistent with lightning strikes than water erosion" fits into the above picture, but a geologist looking into the mater probably wouldn't think about atmospheric behavior and interaction to come to that possible conclusion.
But you are exhibiting another element of cognitive dissonance, in that you attempt to reduce an empirical discipline like science down to the same level as an ideology.
Surely I am not the only one here who has read so-called scientific studies and abstracts which demonstrate an ideological assumption or three in an attempt to reach an (often) foregone conclusion? That may be analysis of a topic in a scientific fashion, but it's still an exertion of assumption to get there.
Sure, they don't call it ideology: they call it 'established theory' or some such thing. But what, if not an "established theory" is (say) protestantism or catholicism or islam? ("the logic of man" vs. "the texts of our ancestors" or whatever). The fact that someone prefers one foundational basis over the other is simply bias: scientific 'fact' gets disproven much more frequently than religious 'fact', after all - and the scientific communities of the world seem almost as reticsient in admitting a significant conceptual change as religious organizations.
Ironically, you're doing exactly what the article supposes do: you're demonstrating this 'scientific impotence'.
Did it occur to you that even scientists demonstrate this pre-cognitive bias? No, it doesn't make for good science, but it happens: creationists ignore or overlook evidence of evolution; evolutionists overlook the possibility of a creationary hand (or something which goes against theory 'established' to the point of dogma); egyptologists overlook what would be obvious to an engineer or geologist due to the pre-established timelines.
What it basically comes down to is: what is a person's first beliefs? Everyone comes into a situation with assumptions. Whether those assumptions are scientifically correct or not doesn't really matter, because they will inhibit the holder in one way or another: prevent creative problem solving, inhibit a technically correct result (though many people do arrive at correct answers through incorrect and/or emotional means with regularity), and so on.
Very, very few people actually analyze themselves to the degree necessary to get down to first belief determination, and even then it's utterly impossible to completely 'debug' yourself.
(Interestingly enough, did we not read recently that a study found that people's instinctive intellect (vs. reasoned intellect) often proved to be more accurate at a type of problem solving? Such instinctual intellect is, seemingly, exactly what is happening here: it just isn't as effective for 'complex' problems).
Most other states don't need the emissions laws that California has: most other states don't build massive and largely useless freeways where people commute many, many miles a day.
...I still (still!) have a bad taste in my mouth from that horrible trainwreck of a 4.0 release, and how Aaron Seigo and other KDE devs defended the release strategy. And still do to this day! I think that debacle really hurt the KDE project in the longterm. Big software projects like google-chrome still aren't flocking to QT and KDE.
I wholeheartedly agree. KDE, as release 4.0 came about, was very widely used - in its 3.5 incarnation. It was popular, with (IIRC) Kubuntu being the most popular sub-distribution and, indeed, almost as popular as Ubuntu.
And then KDE4 came out and all the KDE based distros switched immediately (despite the supposed warning that it was crap). Suddenly, most of what was possible under KDE 3.5 via various smaller utilities, applets, etc. (kioslaves were my favorite) didn't work the same way. Not only did they not work the same way, but so much of the UI was "Macified/Gnomified" in that actually finding the UI element you wanted (which had been largely similar since the 1.0 release) was somewhere else: different text, different icon, different placement, etc. To be fair, Windows 7 did the same thing - but it was worth it to get off Vista, and the changes weren't that significant from Vista anyway.
Oh, and KDE 4 was unstable and slow. That was very, very significant: its other shortcomings could've been overlooked by most people due to the bling, but stability and slowness is not acceptable. (I largely blame Kubuntu for this, for what it's worth: it was, again, probably the most popular KDE distro at the time, and it was also the worst implemented from what I could see. SuSE was much better.)
The really sad thing about KDE shooting itself in the foot with 4.0 is that QT4 is truly awesome in what it can allow: it's basically.NET in terms of portability, minus the CLR bullshit. QT Embedded (or whatever they're calling it now, I can't recall exactly) is doing some amazing things in the handheld market. If the maturity and volume of KDE/QT based applications was a little higher, there would be more fodder for porting to the up-and-coming smartphones based on Meebo; as it stands, the available applications are pretty negligible.
For what it's worth, I don't use a "Desktop Environment". I've been using Awesome for about a year and a half now, more or less in the stock/completely unconfigured fashion, as it comes on Debian and Ubuntu (I've bound Capslock to my Mod4 key so I can Caps-# to change between tags, and adjusted keyboard/mouse sensitivity, but that's it). If you're tired of dicking around with GUI elements just to get work done or wish your wm could use vi-like key bindings yet not lose any power/functionality, give it a try. I went from XFCE4 to Awesome and was comfortable in a couple hours.
I installed W7 (granted, when it was still in RC) on my Thinkpad X30 - a device quite at it's EOL at the time on account of not only innate hardware limitations and the cost of making it usable again (I was using an old, 10G IDE disk in it) but also due to the fact that I'd worn the keyboard out (literally - I'd worn through the plastic on several of the keys).
The hardware on this X30 was an i830 graphics controller, a 10GB 4200RPM (maybe?) disk that was older than the laptop by several generations, 512MB PC100 RAM, and a 1.2GHz P3M.
And guess what? It worked pretty well (when it wasn't hitting the -ancient- disk). Turning off the page file did wonders in this regard, making it just as fast and responsive as an up-to-date install of retail (as opposed to OEM-and-bloatware-laden) XP. Turns out that Microsoft didn't half-ass on their memory management this time around, and it runs pretty damn well. It was noticably faster than an 800MHz P3M with 512MB I had (with a 20GB disk) at the time, running XP.
There's a simple solution for this (your limited scope of use).
If I were Microsoft, this is what I'd do: I'd release a free-to-all version of XP for systems falling beneath the Windows 7 system requirements:
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
That would be easy enough to do with a couple hardware checks:
* Disable/remove WGA. * Remove all traces of "IE6" and its API code. Make running IE6 or IE7 on the machine impossible (with a "you can run IE8 on this version of XP" exception"). * Provide some minor, token (security) updates for a short period of time (though not likely even necessary with the other exceptions). * Lock the installed base down (in terms of enabled service defaults). * Prevent the system from booting with more than (say) 800MB of RAM. * Prevent the system from booting with more than 1 physical processor or core. * Allow this "Free XP" to be run in a virtual machine.
But that's besides the point: end users (like yourself) aren't the problem; they've all left IE6 long ago if they're sane and still using those old computers. The problem is corporate users: you're not going to get them off IE6 until you get vendors to replace their IE6 requirements or get the companies to replace the vendored apps with something else. That's an NP-hard task, whereas giving out a free XP with significant improvements is not.
Hell, given the cultural ingraining of XP, I'd say Microsoft is due to support it for at least a little longer than they are. They sold it for over 7 years: that's a LONG. DAMN. TIME. in the software world. While not everything runs it, at least several devices within a market segment do. That's a problem.
As for your problems? * Run skype in vbox/vmware on Linux with USB passthrough. * ATI radeon hdtv wonder card has worked swimmingly in Linux for quite some time. * you run the same system(s) at work for robotic handling as you do skype at home? I'd be interested in seeing your routing tables. * When a shovel wears out, do you buy a new shovel? Maybe it's time to consider getting a different/better development environment - or get a later version from your vendors.
IE6's position as the default browser in Windows XP means many companies still cling to the browser.
If that's the approach they take, they're going to be faced with little (to no) results. Why? They'll be looking at a demographic approaching "0".
Unless people (as in, individuals) XP machines they bought almost 4 or more years ago and have never been updated via Windows Update, they're not going to have IE6. They're going to have IE7, on account of it being a "mandatory" update.
And if they've not updated since then, well... chances are they're not even on the Internet anymore: the computer is off, in the back of their closet, collecting dust - on account of being infected with malware to the point of uselessness.
The one (and ONLY) reason IE6 exists anymore is because:
1) Microsoft pushed (hard!) the development specifics for IE6 "web apps" to development shops. 2) Companies built to those specs within the EMR, ERP, etc. markets. Other companies bought said products. 3) Microsoft abandoned said specs with IE7. 4) Companies went out of business and/or changed their platforms so drastically that an upgrade path would not be practical/financially possible. (Ironically, we've got the same problem potentially on the horizon with Sharepoint/Silverlight systems - we will see).
Hell, even some organizations which didn't want to upgrade from IE6 (due to these legacy issues) did: IE7 got pushed by WSUS, and due to the immense problem of rolling back non-standardized machines, they thought it was better to just fork out to get their crap systems changed (on account of man hours + etc. involved with rolling all the XP machines back).
In short, it's corporations, banks, and hospitals which are still using IE6. Considering the giant security hole that IE6 represents, that's damn scary; as a Windows administrator, it should (IMO) be of the utmost importance to get rid of it; if getting rid of it isn't possible, then at least make sure there's a loooong document trail showing your efforts to do so. Your ass (and your job) is on the line.
However, it is potentially surprising that the orbits of other planets within the solar system could impact the ecosystems of each other in a significantly appreciable fashion.
Ironically, there is a school of thought that says the orbits of the planets in our solar system has only recently stabilized - ie, within recorded human history. It's not well supported and I have no idea about the scientific backing, but there is argument that the legends of old - of the gods fighting in the skies - is actually referring to chaotic planetary orbits. "Mars", the god of war (and by other names in different cultures) was the most chaotic; I forget the specifics of the others, but...
The argument goes that the craters and canyons on the rocky planets and planetoids (mars, the moon, earth) were not caused by erosion, but electrostatic discharge - between closely passing planets exchanging ionosphere polarity - resulting in the large arcs of scarring. Supposedly, these planetary exchanges are what the ancients saw, resulting in their impressions of powerful, angry gods. It wasn't until later, when the planetary orbits stabilized, that more "benevolent" gods started to pop up in folklore. This somewhat coincides with the whole "heavenly gods" or that the gods were stars.
Seems like a possibility, at any rate: it would certainly explain why our ancestors made that (to us) absurd assumption of the stars (ie planets) being terrible gods which war in the sky (as opposed to just shiny lights in the night sky).
I found a link on the topic. I recall reading an additional one which delves more into the mythological/cultural reasoning, but can't find it right now.
I've had the most ridiculous dreams before, dreams which scare the bejesus out of me and seem absolutely real, both during and after waking.
The freaky thing about a couple of these dreams is that I've "read" books in a nonsense script, knowing precisely what they said - only to later find out that such books do, in fact, exist, and were the same as the books in the dream (The Red Badge of Courage was one such book).
No, no drugs were involved.
I've also got friends who claim to have dreamed an entire day's events prior to said dream: they went through the days in complete states of deja vu. I've had similar short-sequence deja vu before: such as the dream I had where my brother got hit by a red sports car, only to later see the events playing out and have the pretense of mind to warn him to get out of the way.
The dream state is certainly interesting. Scientists have yet to even scratch the surface in attempting to explain it.
Yes, it's that exactly. Our penis size has everything to do with our self-evaluation. That's why we build tall buildings. It's why we're constantly shopping for new clothes, high-end gadgets, and the like. (Oh wait, we don't, typically: that's you.)
In fact, that'd explain why all our children are small and stunted , our men are spinely and feminine (oh wait, that's you), and we tend to have something called a Work Ethic out here.
Believe it or not, most of the 'big trucks' out here really do get used for work as trucks. A Ford Ranger? More often than not that's "too small" because a common day's work will twist the frame.
Ironically, the environmental impact of our rusted out 20-year-old diesel pickups is negligible compared to the metrosexual's penile fascination vehicle of choice, the Prius. Why? It's here already; they don't need to manufacture another one.
It's a bit surprising, I know - but an article in a US publication, by a US scientist, from a US university might just very well be geocentric. Particularly on account of the fact that the globe is round, and any such non-exacting reference is going to be largely cultural.
But no, that's fine: keep up the good work! Your cultural indignation and hatred for the US is evidently getting you far in life.
Saying such problems are "normal" is a bit of a cop-out excuse.
Grammatical/typing errors aside, there are quite a few states without "imploding economy", "poor leadership", and "overbearing laws". California (and the NE corridor) are largely exceptional in that trifecta. Add to that an overly burdensome social welfare system, lackluster law enforcement (and the common acceptance of crime), and a lack of civil responsibility and California is looking pretty bad.
Even most of the other states west of the Missouri have better saner laws and leadership than California. What's California's excuse? Hell, even Louisiana has good leadership now!
I use Chromium: that "ads are just hidden" lack-of-feature is somewhat agitating, but then I think of the alternative: I'd have to go back to the slow and unresponsive Firefox, otherwise.
Yet, I'm browsing slashdot right now using Chrome 5, and it doesn't feel like they're progressing the versioning faster than they are the product.
Chrome 3 was already roughly on par with Firefox and IE, if not better in many ways. I gave it a try then, and it didn't really do anything for me. I switched sometime after 4 was released (in Linux) and I haven't looked back: they improved it enough that not only was I able to do what I had previously done in Firefox, but it worked better. Chrome 5, to me, feels much more like a "polish" release than "shape".
I just fired up the latest 3.6 Firefox. The damn thing feels bloated, slow, and looks a bit dated. From the looks of things (the relative stasis included), Firefox is in the "superglue" release cycle.
Oh yeah, and that's just starting up: actually trying to use it is like trying to use Netscape 4 after Firefox 1 was released: OMG SUCK. Sure, it has multithreading, but even on a single core CPU, Chrome is faster and more responsive.
And IE? Well, let's just say their engine has improved significantly - but it's still the same kludge of a UI, with many of the same technical problems present in 6 remaining.
There are many, many shooters who can shoot multiple times in a second, from a holstered gun. Hell, there's something called "cowboy action shooting" which almost specializes in such feats. I've seen videos of people emptying a revolver in under 2 seconds - accurately and on target.
Likewise, there are people who can accurately hit, at 100 yards, a moving target or a small fist-sized target. Some have even learned to do this while moving (usually under their own power).
Those Western movies weren't all that far off the mark in what was possible. It happened a couple times in the Old West, probably. And similar feats are regularly accomplished against targets which don't shoot back.
Hell, I remember as a kid walking in the woods with my grandfather. He had his Colt Woodsman on his hip. I was walking behind him and slightly to the side. Mid-step he drew the pistol and shot a rattlesnake directly in his path - twice. One of the shots hit in the head, the other through the body directly below it. Such shooting ability might be uncommon, but it is by no means unheard of.
I suspect so - if not as a living, then as a hobby. I've got a friend that picked up a chip for a Samsung color laser printer, allowing him to use refilled toner cartridges. The color prints (on stock paper) are quite nice (though not quite 'photo' quality). They're certainly "publishing" quality.
All told he's got about $80 invested in this printer (and he got multiple color drums with it). He's printed several thousand pages by this point; it's a damn good investment.
There's really no incentive for an "inkjet". If you need/want to print photos, you get a photo printer. If you need/want to print documents, you get a document printer. There is no such thing as a "general purpose" printer, so don't pretend there is by buying an inkjet.
Maybe those willing to accept some personal injury as a consequence of keeping their pride and independance are viewed as being mature. Part of maturity is accepting that shit happens, but you have to soldier on anyhow. Immature adults, ie spineless dweebs, are always searching for someone else to accept the pain on their behalf.
Code Pink and (indeed) almost the entire population of San Francisco would like to have a couple heated words with you.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you misunderstand "profit" and the sources from which it is derived.
Profit is not an innate quantity: it depends on a number of factors, the largest of which is cost of manufacture relative to demand.
Demand depends on the opportunity cost of an object being lower than other items in the market. If the opportunity cost is high (ie, it's more expensive, doesn't offer as good bang/buck, etc.) then demand will be low.
A low demand means your costs will go up per unit due to production tooling, engineering, etc. This drives up the price, further pushing an item into the "not as profitable" category, until it gets to "break even". At this point, there is no reason for a company to make a product.
If EVs were such a good idea, they would have come about quite a long time ago simply due to economic viability: someone, somewhere, would make one and market it (if not here, then somewhere else in the world where such things as your so-called government-owning automotive makers don't/didn't yet exist).
(Besides, haven't you been paying attention? The government owns GM now. I fail to see the incentive in continuing to hide these pink unicorn vehicles...)
Yet church and religion are in decline in the West, while "the appeal to science" seems more common every day (regardless of whether it actually relates to science).
It would seem that "science" has figured out this weakness quite well.
THe thing about 'science' is that many of the people who get considered scientists aren't.
They're Darwinists, Evolutionists, Biologists, Geologists, Egyptologists, Hydrologists, etc. (Then you have those in the medical field, who also think of themselves as 'scientific').
Yet each of these fields are so steeped in pre-determined assumptions that most of their reasoning and deduction is based on application of assumptions: they piece together the assumptions they've got to make most of the puzzle, and try to fit what they've got left (the original problem) in the hole. Sure, they're practicing the scientific method, but it's kind of useless if your initial assumption is wrong. (See: the 3,000-year-old Earth and assuming every year of existence was chronicled in the Bible.)
A classic (and simplified) example of this that I like to use is this:
* Premise: Mars has craters and valleys similar to craters and valleys on Earth.
* Premise: Earth has water. Earth is hit by meteors.
* Assumption: Water is largely responsible for these valleys and canyons on Earth.
* Conclusion: Meteors are responsible for the majority of craters on Mars.
* Conclusion: the valleys on Mars are formed by water.
* Eureka! Let's send rovers to Mars to look for the water which must be there!
I'm not sure where "the valleys and craters on mars are more consistent with lightning strikes than water erosion" fits into the above picture, but a geologist looking into the mater probably wouldn't think about atmospheric behavior and interaction to come to that possible conclusion.
But you are exhibiting another element of cognitive dissonance, in that you attempt to reduce an empirical discipline like science down to the same level as an ideology.
Surely I am not the only one here who has read so-called scientific studies and abstracts which demonstrate an ideological assumption or three in an attempt to reach an (often) foregone conclusion? That may be analysis of a topic in a scientific fashion, but it's still an exertion of assumption to get there.
Sure, they don't call it ideology: they call it 'established theory' or some such thing. But what, if not an "established theory" is (say) protestantism or catholicism or islam? ("the logic of man" vs. "the texts of our ancestors" or whatever). The fact that someone prefers one foundational basis over the other is simply bias: scientific 'fact' gets disproven much more frequently than religious 'fact', after all - and the scientific communities of the world seem almost as reticsient in admitting a significant conceptual change as religious organizations.
We all look at the world through colored lenses.
Ironically, you're doing exactly what the article supposes do: you're demonstrating this 'scientific impotence'.
Did it occur to you that even scientists demonstrate this pre-cognitive bias? No, it doesn't make for good science, but it happens: creationists ignore or overlook evidence of evolution; evolutionists overlook the possibility of a creationary hand (or something which goes against theory 'established' to the point of dogma); egyptologists overlook what would be obvious to an engineer or geologist due to the pre-established timelines.
What it basically comes down to is: what is a person's first beliefs? Everyone comes into a situation with assumptions. Whether those assumptions are scientifically correct or not doesn't really matter, because they will inhibit the holder in one way or another: prevent creative problem solving, inhibit a technically correct result (though many people do arrive at correct answers through incorrect and/or emotional means with regularity), and so on.
Very, very few people actually analyze themselves to the degree necessary to get down to first belief determination, and even then it's utterly impossible to completely 'debug' yourself.
(Interestingly enough, did we not read recently that a study found that people's instinctive intellect (vs. reasoned intellect) often proved to be more accurate at a type of problem solving? Such instinctual intellect is, seemingly, exactly what is happening here: it just isn't as effective for 'complex' problems).
Most other states don't need the emissions laws that California has: most other states don't build massive and largely useless freeways where people commute many, many miles a day.
...I still (still!) have a bad taste in my mouth from that horrible trainwreck of a 4.0 release, and how Aaron Seigo and other KDE devs defended the release strategy. And still do to this day! I think that debacle really hurt the KDE project in the longterm. Big software projects like google-chrome still aren't flocking to QT and KDE.
I wholeheartedly agree. KDE, as release 4.0 came about, was very widely used - in its 3.5 incarnation. It was popular, with (IIRC) Kubuntu being the most popular sub-distribution and, indeed, almost as popular as Ubuntu.
And then KDE4 came out and all the KDE based distros switched immediately (despite the supposed warning that it was crap). Suddenly, most of what was possible under KDE 3.5 via various smaller utilities, applets, etc. (kioslaves were my favorite) didn't work the same way. Not only did they not work the same way, but so much of the UI was "Macified/Gnomified" in that actually finding the UI element you wanted (which had been largely similar since the 1.0 release) was somewhere else: different text, different icon, different placement, etc. To be fair, Windows 7 did the same thing - but it was worth it to get off Vista, and the changes weren't that significant from Vista anyway.
Oh, and KDE 4 was unstable and slow. That was very, very significant: its other shortcomings could've been overlooked by most people due to the bling, but stability and slowness is not acceptable. (I largely blame Kubuntu for this, for what it's worth: it was, again, probably the most popular KDE distro at the time, and it was also the worst implemented from what I could see. SuSE was much better.)
The really sad thing about KDE shooting itself in the foot with 4.0 is that QT4 is truly awesome in what it can allow: it's basically .NET in terms of portability, minus the CLR bullshit. QT Embedded (or whatever they're calling it now, I can't recall exactly) is doing some amazing things in the handheld market. If the maturity and volume of KDE/QT based applications was a little higher, there would be more fodder for porting to the up-and-coming smartphones based on Meebo; as it stands, the available applications are pretty negligible.
For what it's worth, I don't use a "Desktop Environment". I've been using Awesome for about a year and a half now, more or less in the stock/completely unconfigured fashion, as it comes on Debian and Ubuntu (I've bound Capslock to my Mod4 key so I can Caps-# to change between tags, and adjusted keyboard/mouse sensitivity, but that's it). If you're tired of dicking around with GUI elements just to get work done or wish your wm could use vi-like key bindings yet not lose any power/functionality, give it a try. I went from XFCE4 to Awesome and was comfortable in a couple hours.
The answer is "yes".
I installed W7 (granted, when it was still in RC) on my Thinkpad X30 - a device quite at it's EOL at the time on account of not only innate hardware limitations and the cost of making it usable again (I was using an old, 10G IDE disk in it) but also due to the fact that I'd worn the keyboard out (literally - I'd worn through the plastic on several of the keys).
The hardware on this X30 was an i830 graphics controller, a 10GB 4200RPM (maybe?) disk that was older than the laptop by several generations, 512MB PC100 RAM, and a 1.2GHz P3M.
And guess what? It worked pretty well (when it wasn't hitting the -ancient- disk). Turning off the page file did wonders in this regard, making it just as fast and responsive as an up-to-date install of retail (as opposed to OEM-and-bloatware-laden) XP. Turns out that Microsoft didn't half-ass on their memory management this time around, and it runs pretty damn well. It was noticably faster than an 800MHz P3M with 512MB I had (with a 20GB disk) at the time, running XP.
There's a simple solution for this (your limited scope of use).
If I were Microsoft, this is what I'd do: I'd release a free-to-all version of XP for systems falling beneath the Windows 7 system requirements:
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
That would be easy enough to do with a couple hardware checks:
* Disable/remove WGA.
* Remove all traces of "IE6" and its API code. Make running IE6 or IE7 on the machine impossible (with a "you can run IE8 on this version of XP" exception").
* Provide some minor, token (security) updates for a short period of time (though not likely even necessary with the other exceptions).
* Lock the installed base down (in terms of enabled service defaults).
* Prevent the system from booting with more than (say) 800MB of RAM.
* Prevent the system from booting with more than 1 physical processor or core.
* Allow this "Free XP" to be run in a virtual machine.
But that's besides the point: end users (like yourself) aren't the problem; they've all left IE6 long ago if they're sane and still using those old computers. The problem is corporate users: you're not going to get them off IE6 until you get vendors to replace their IE6 requirements or get the companies to replace the vendored apps with something else. That's an NP-hard task, whereas giving out a free XP with significant improvements is not.
Hell, given the cultural ingraining of XP, I'd say Microsoft is due to support it for at least a little longer than they are. They sold it for over 7 years: that's a LONG. DAMN. TIME. in the software world. While not everything runs it, at least several devices within a market segment do. That's a problem.
As for your problems?
* Run skype in vbox/vmware on Linux with USB passthrough.
* ATI radeon hdtv wonder card has worked swimmingly in Linux for quite some time.
* you run the same system(s) at work for robotic handling as you do skype at home? I'd be interested in seeing your routing tables.
* When a shovel wears out, do you buy a new shovel? Maybe it's time to consider getting a different/better development environment - or get a later version from your vendors.
IE6's position as the default browser in Windows XP means many companies still cling to the browser.
If that's the approach they take, they're going to be faced with little (to no) results. Why? They'll be looking at a demographic approaching "0".
Unless people (as in, individuals) XP machines they bought almost 4 or more years ago and have never been updated via Windows Update, they're not going to have IE6. They're going to have IE7, on account of it being a "mandatory" update.
And if they've not updated since then, well... chances are they're not even on the Internet anymore: the computer is off, in the back of their closet, collecting dust - on account of being infected with malware to the point of uselessness.
The one (and ONLY) reason IE6 exists anymore is because:
1) Microsoft pushed (hard!) the development specifics for IE6 "web apps" to development shops.
2) Companies built to those specs within the EMR, ERP, etc. markets. Other companies bought said products.
3) Microsoft abandoned said specs with IE7.
4) Companies went out of business and/or changed their platforms so drastically that an upgrade path would not be practical/financially possible. (Ironically, we've got the same problem potentially on the horizon with Sharepoint/Silverlight systems - we will see).
Hell, even some organizations which didn't want to upgrade from IE6 (due to these legacy issues) did: IE7 got pushed by WSUS, and due to the immense problem of rolling back non-standardized machines, they thought it was better to just fork out to get their crap systems changed (on account of man hours + etc. involved with rolling all the XP machines back).
In short, it's corporations, banks, and hospitals which are still using IE6. Considering the giant security hole that IE6 represents, that's damn scary; as a Windows administrator, it should (IMO) be of the utmost importance to get rid of it; if getting rid of it isn't possible, then at least make sure there's a loooong document trail showing your efforts to do so. Your ass (and your job) is on the line.
Uh, link:
http://www.holoscience.com/views/view_mars.htm
Not really.
However, it is potentially surprising that the orbits of other planets within the solar system could impact the ecosystems of each other in a significantly appreciable fashion.
Ironically, there is a school of thought that says the orbits of the planets in our solar system has only recently stabilized - ie, within recorded human history. It's not well supported and I have no idea about the scientific backing, but there is argument that the legends of old - of the gods fighting in the skies - is actually referring to chaotic planetary orbits. "Mars", the god of war (and by other names in different cultures) was the most chaotic; I forget the specifics of the others, but...
The argument goes that the craters and canyons on the rocky planets and planetoids (mars, the moon, earth) were not caused by erosion, but electrostatic discharge - between closely passing planets exchanging ionosphere polarity - resulting in the large arcs of scarring. Supposedly, these planetary exchanges are what the ancients saw, resulting in their impressions of powerful, angry gods. It wasn't until later, when the planetary orbits stabilized, that more "benevolent" gods started to pop up in folklore. This somewhat coincides with the whole "heavenly gods" or that the gods were stars.
Seems like a possibility, at any rate: it would certainly explain why our ancestors made that (to us) absurd assumption of the stars (ie planets) being terrible gods which war in the sky (as opposed to just shiny lights in the night sky).
I found a link on the topic. I recall reading an additional one which delves more into the mythological/cultural reasoning, but can't find it right now.
I've had the most ridiculous dreams before, dreams which scare the bejesus out of me and seem absolutely real, both during and after waking.
The freaky thing about a couple of these dreams is that I've "read" books in a nonsense script, knowing precisely what they said - only to later find out that such books do, in fact, exist, and were the same as the books in the dream (The Red Badge of Courage was one such book).
No, no drugs were involved.
I've also got friends who claim to have dreamed an entire day's events prior to said dream: they went through the days in complete states of deja vu. I've had similar short-sequence deja vu before: such as the dream I had where my brother got hit by a red sports car, only to later see the events playing out and have the pretense of mind to warn him to get out of the way.
The dream state is certainly interesting. Scientists have yet to even scratch the surface in attempting to explain it.
Yes, it's that exactly. Our penis size has everything to do with our self-evaluation. That's why we build tall buildings. It's why we're constantly shopping for new clothes, high-end gadgets, and the like. (Oh wait, we don't, typically: that's you.)
In fact, that'd explain why all our children are small and stunted , our men are spinely and feminine (oh wait, that's you), and we tend to have something called a Work Ethic out here.
Believe it or not, most of the 'big trucks' out here really do get used for work as trucks. A Ford Ranger? More often than not that's "too small" because a common day's work will twist the frame.
Ironically, the environmental impact of our rusted out 20-year-old diesel pickups is negligible compared to the metrosexual's penile fascination vehicle of choice, the Prius. Why? It's here already; they don't need to manufacture another one.
It's a bit surprising, I know - but an article in a US publication, by a US scientist, from a US university might just very well be geocentric. Particularly on account of the fact that the globe is round, and any such non-exacting reference is going to be largely cultural.
But no, that's fine: keep up the good work! Your cultural indignation and hatred for the US is evidently getting you far in life.
Saying such problems are "normal" is a bit of a cop-out excuse.
Grammatical/typing errors aside, there are quite a few states without "imploding economy", "poor leadership", and "overbearing laws". California (and the NE corridor) are largely exceptional in that trifecta. Add to that an overly burdensome social welfare system, lackluster law enforcement (and the common acceptance of crime), and a lack of civil responsibility and California is looking pretty bad.
Even most of the other states west of the Missouri have better saner laws and leadership than California. What's California's excuse? Hell, even Louisiana has good leadership now!
blizzards, snow storms, ice storms, tornadoes, wildfires
Yeah, so the "natural disaster" part? That's just normal weather.
You Coasters sure get bent out of shape about a little nothing. (This is why we like our big trucks.)
I use Chromium: that "ads are just hidden" lack-of-feature is somewhat agitating, but then I think of the alternative: I'd have to go back to the slow and unresponsive Firefox, otherwise.
Yet, I'm browsing slashdot right now using Chrome 5, and it doesn't feel like they're progressing the versioning faster than they are the product.
Chrome 3 was already roughly on par with Firefox and IE, if not better in many ways. I gave it a try then, and it didn't really do anything for me. I switched sometime after 4 was released (in Linux) and I haven't looked back: they improved it enough that not only was I able to do what I had previously done in Firefox, but it worked better. Chrome 5, to me, feels much more like a "polish" release than "shape".
I just fired up the latest 3.6 Firefox. The damn thing feels bloated, slow, and looks a bit dated. From the looks of things (the relative stasis included), Firefox is in the "superglue" release cycle.
Oh yeah, and that's just starting up: actually trying to use it is like trying to use Netscape 4 after Firefox 1 was released: OMG SUCK. Sure, it has multithreading, but even on a single core CPU, Chrome is faster and more responsive.
And IE? Well, let's just say their engine has improved significantly - but it's still the same kludge of a UI, with many of the same technical problems present in 6 remaining.
There are many, many shooters who can shoot multiple times in a second, from a holstered gun. Hell, there's something called "cowboy action shooting" which almost specializes in such feats. I've seen videos of people emptying a revolver in under 2 seconds - accurately and on target.
Likewise, there are people who can accurately hit, at 100 yards, a moving target or a small fist-sized target. Some have even learned to do this while moving (usually under their own power).
Those Western movies weren't all that far off the mark in what was possible. It happened a couple times in the Old West, probably. And similar feats are regularly accomplished against targets which don't shoot back.
Hell, I remember as a kid walking in the woods with my grandfather. He had his Colt Woodsman on his hip. I was walking behind him and slightly to the side. Mid-step he drew the pistol and shot a rattlesnake directly in his path - twice. One of the shots hit in the head, the other through the body directly below it. Such shooting ability might be uncommon, but it is by no means unheard of.
With the GTA games and now this under their belt, it looks to me like they could go for something space-based.
Like, oh, the Firefly/Serenity franchise. That would be awesome.
I suspect so - if not as a living, then as a hobby. I've got a friend that picked up a chip for a Samsung color laser printer, allowing him to use refilled toner cartridges. The color prints (on stock paper) are quite nice (though not quite 'photo' quality). They're certainly "publishing" quality.
All told he's got about $80 invested in this printer (and he got multiple color drums with it). He's printed several thousand pages by this point; it's a damn good investment.
There's really no incentive for an "inkjet". If you need/want to print photos, you get a photo printer. If you need/want to print documents, you get a document printer. There is no such thing as a "general purpose" printer, so don't pretend there is by buying an inkjet.
Maybe those willing to accept some personal injury as a consequence of keeping their pride and independance are viewed as being mature. Part of maturity is accepting that shit happens, but you have to soldier on anyhow. Immature adults, ie spineless dweebs, are always searching for someone else to accept the pain on their behalf.
Code Pink and (indeed) almost the entire population of San Francisco would like to have a couple heated words with you.
They didn't announce a new CPU. They announced a new SoC, based on a new CPU. Slight difference.
Am I? Are you going based on experience?
Because if you are, you're wrong. I'm not talking about current-generation Atoms; I'm talking about this: New Intel Atom smashes ARM - Moorestown SoC unvieled.
"Paying attention" is important; it helps you participate in the conversation at hand, not one entirely different.