I have to call BS on you. It's only costing an extra couple dollars [as in literally $1-2.00] to add the v-chip to a TV, so I'm afraid that's not a valid argument.
I'll grant you, I don't think it should be federally mandated, as that's not really their place, but as a feature on a TV, it's nice to have. It's useful for those of us with kids, and it is totally, 100% non-intrusive for those who don't want or need to use it. Well, except for when the munchkin manages to keep hitting the v-chip button on the remote while you're watching something, and the 'enter password' prompt pops up unexpectedly, but that's hardly the v-chip's fault.:)
Do you, or anyone, know of an IMAP server that can pop mail down from an ISP?
Well I used to do something like this. I used Courier-IMAP for the IMAP server, since it uses Maildir by default. Then I used fetchmail to pull the mail from the ISP's pop server, and drop it into the Maildir folders [via procmail].
Obviously not a 1 program simple solution, but it got the job done spectacularly.
"You need to restart now" warnings raise to the front because they're *important*. They really do mean "you need to reboot _now_", not "one of these days, if you've got the time, we humbly suggest you reboot at your convenience".
If it is THAT important that the reboot happen immediately, then why don't they just go ahead and reboot without the user/admin's permission. The effect is the same.
Of course, they could be smart and make the warning a systray tool notification window that stays on top until you reboot. The message is delivered just as effectively, without the danger of the system being rebooted at a time that can cause data loss. Hell, even if they kept the same notification they have, simply requiring a second 'are you sure click', for those instances when the button was clicked accidentally would be sufficient.
It does, however, require a little more effort than just repeating "Microsoft sucks" over and over again while you stab at the mouse button.
MS has some decent products. There are things that their software can do that others can't, or can't do as easily. I admit that. It doesn't mean I have to like the million other stupid things they do. If I was *THAT* anti-microsoft, that server wouldn't be running Windows at all.
This is your fault. When you're applying a patch that requires a reboot, you shouldn't apply it until you are ready to reboot, and you should reboot immediately.
Too bad it doesn't tell you it's going to need a reboot before you install it. And unfortunately, in this particular job, I didn't really have to time to research each patch before it's installed. At least with the linux [debian] servers, I *KNOW* it isn't going to require a reboot unless it is a kernel or even more rarely, a core library update. It's tough to tell with Microsoft's patches since they rarely give more information beyond: "This update will patch a security vulnerability"
Of course, now I know that almost any patch from MS will require a reboot. But that doesn't change the fact that they do their notifications in a way that can cause unintended consequences. There are many ways to avoid that, but they don't care enough to bother doing things properly.
I can't count the number of times I've been typing only to have a dialog pop in mid sentence. It flashes briefly, and goes away because my typing activated one of it's shortcut keys. I'm left wondering just want the hell I told my computer to do, and hoping it was something harmless.
This is especially bad on a server. I can't figure out why they have to have a dialog pop up every 2 minutes asking if you want to reboot the server now or later, after an update has been run. I've already told it I'll reboot it later, now stop bugging me!
I was going to wait until everyone went home to reboot the server. But I was making another change on the server, so I was still logged in and working. That Reboot now or later dialog popped up JUST as I was about to click on something. Guess which button had popped up under the mouse cursor?!? So in the middle of the day, the server rebooted, giving no chance for people to close their files, and taking out our DNS server while it rebooted [It's a small office, so it's a mutli-function server].
Aside from being annoyed at the fact that I have to reboot the server for every little update each month, that kind of thing just infuriates me. The debian servers in the office only have to be rebooted if there's a kernel update, and *I* choose when that happens. Are you listening Microsoft?!?!?
100% just to play a Youtube video? Man, Intel procs must really suck!
Seriously though, I think this is just something that Intel marketing decided to spout out in the hopes that nobody would actually check.
I've got a laptop with a Turion ML-40 [2.2Ghz] (32bit WinXP), and I just tested this. Even with the CPU throttled down to 800Mhz, the youtube videos only used 50% CPU, not even enough to bump the processor up to the next speed step.
If Intel CPU's really pegged at 100% just to play a flash video that an 800Mhz-throttled AMD can handle, they'd be having serious problems right now.
I'm sure this isn't the case. But it shows how careful you have to be when dealing with anything Intel is saying about it's future products.
/Really want a Core 2 Duo machine.:) //Still love AMD & hope they come out swinging.
By the way, I've always wondered..how the CA special emissions work. What if you have a car you've bought outside the state...and move to the state with it. Does it have to be modified to work within their 'rigid' conditions? What if you want to modify your car (chips, exhaust, other higher perfomance stuff)? Do they make you take it off when you move there, or stop you at the state border and make you walk in?
I'm not 100% sure that it's the same now, but when we moved to California [1994], they charged $300 to 'import' our car. This was in spite of the fact that it was a Honda Civic that EASILY passed all of the CA smog and emmissions tests.
If your car passses the emmissions tests every 2 years, then you don't really have to worry. If not, then once every two years, you'll have to un-chip/un-modify it so that it will pass.
I'm almost of the same opinion as yourself. I do wish they'd give better quality [lossless]. But I still have a minor issue with the DRM. For the most part, it is quite fair, but I'm not thrilled with the vendor lock-in that's involved. I rip all my music to Flac. Then I re-encode to various bitrates of mp3, depending on what I'd like to do with it. I can fit plenty of mp3's [or oggs for that matter] on my 1.5GB iRiver. Or I can encode them to an even lower bitrate, fit songs on my 512MB USB drive, and play them in my brother's car stereo [has a USB port, plays mp3s from it]. I can burn the mp3s to a CD [as data], and play them in my car stereo. I can stream my mp3s over my network to my Tivo, to play through the TV. I can play them in Linux.
None of this is possible without either breaking the law [US] and your agreement with Apple, or otherwise going through a second lossy compression [AAC->CD->MP3]. Until that is all possible, legal and simple, I won't be buying a large number of songs through iTunes.
In other words, it's time for Apple to open up licensing for FairPlay.
If iTunes would take the time to notice that previous authorizations are never heard from again after I authorize a new install, it should just allow me to go along my merry, non-infringing way and let me listen to the music that I paid for.
Apple is more than happy to do this. You can go into your account settings in iTunes, and tell it to deauthorize ALL of your prior computers. You then can authorize your current system and listen to all those songs again.
As for old systems, maybe you should consider deauthorizing them before you get rid of them or overwrite the OS. Then this wouldn't be an issue at all.
Of course the computer will identify them as being the same, its job is to work with discrete components in the form of bits, where the human ear can hear on a lower level than that. I'm no digital maven, so I can't say the EXACT reason why, but I've been selling, repairing and setting up high end audio systems for 17 years. It's my job to know what sounds the same and what sounds different. Perhaps the bits themselves are longer or shorter than before encryption, or perhaps they're a bit (pun intended) higher voltage where a computer will still read it as a "1" when it's in a bass waveform, therefore things like md5sum will claim it's the same file, but if you knew anything about signals over a wire you'd know things like a waveform that can be represented digitally can look (and sound) very different depending on the size of the peaks and troughs. That's why a modem connection can sometimes get 33kbps on one connection, then connect at 44kbps on another attempt, where they're both transmitting the exact same data.
As I said, my 17 years experience tells me there's an audio difference, and my business depends on being able to tell. I'm still in business.
God, I don't know whether to cry or laugh! This is like saying if you buy a jar of applesauce, and bring it into the house carrying it in your left hand, that it tastes different than if you were to bring that same jar into the house carrying it in your right hand. It's complete and utter nonsense. It's the exact same applesauce regardless of which hand you carry it in. Or in response to your modem comment, its the exact same applesauce regardless of how fast you walk as you carry it. [Unless of course you walk so slowly that it rots before you make it to the kitchen:) ]
Ok, end of that pathetic metaphor. The point is, no amount of *lossless* encryption, or conversion will change the way the audio is fed to the speakers, assuming ALL other aspects of the chain remain the same. All those changes [and re-constitution to the original format] occur BEFORE the audio is sent to the audio system/speakers. The speakers recieve the exact same signal either way.
Maybe I should feed the trolls though [or the terribly misinformed perhaps]. Then again, tell me the name of your audio business so I can make sure to avoid it.
I'm with you there. My TV has 3 component inputs, plus 4 sets of Svideo/composite connections, and two coax inputs.
[rant] No VGA, no DVI, no HDMI. And let me just say that I am going to be PISSED if these media companies decide that my TV is only worthy of displaying their movie in 540p, even though my [$1200 2.5 years ago] TV will display 1080i with no problems.
Sure, I can understand the fact that this TV will not display 1080p. THat's a techncial issue and I don't expect it do more than it was capable of when I bought it. But for these companies to even threaten to intentionally degrade the signal because they think I'm a criminal upsets me beyond words. Now, if they are willing to replace my TV with a fully functional replacement that supports what they want, fine; but I am NOT going to spend another $1000-5000 just to make them feel better about how their movie is being watched.
I will not buy a new TV for this. I will not buy any hardware [BlueRay, HDDVD, etc] that supports the degredation of a component signal, and I will not buy a single movie that enforces that degredation.
The media companies are scared. And in their frightened state, they are doing everything possible in the wrong way. The way that will most likely drive people away. I hope they realize their mistake soon.
Do you realize that works out to 9 hours of down time per year? Or 10 minutes of downtime per week? Or 2 minutes per business day? While 99.9% uptime sounds good, you have to ask yourself if that's acceptable or not. Granted, it probably won't really be out 2 minutes every day, but more likely will be out for a few hours at a whack a couple of times a year.
Sorry, but if you need more than 99.9% guaranteed uptime, you shouldn't be using a DSL line of any sort. 99.9% is more than sufficient for a DSL line. If you need more than that, it's time to fork over the money to either put your stuff in a datacenter [in the case of hosting services], or pay for multiple gig-e or SONET links. And you'd better have 48 hour UPS capacity, multiple power feeds and a diesel generator with underground tanks.
Getting better guaranteed uptime is NOT cheap. For most office needs, a 99.9% guarantee is quite good. My office is well served by Speakeasy's SDSL, and we couldn't be happier. [Well I could be happier, they laid me off on Monday!:( ]
so it looks like the Mac Pro still runs on ATI's cards, but Intel's processors...I wonder why Apple isn't moving to nvidia for its graphics cards, esply after AMD's purchase
Have you even looked at the Mac Pro site? The system defaults to using an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. From the website, it looks like you can still order a Mac Pro with an ATI card, but two of the three video card options involve nVidia cards.
...also, no Crossfire option for the Mac Pro?
First you complain because you think they are still using ATI, and now you want them to support ATI's version of SLI?
Dell is stating that they will be introducing AMD-based servers "by the end of the year" in their first-quarter financial statement. Should make for great stocking-stuffers for all those little corps this Xmas!
You know, the timing of that makes me wonder. I don't think that it is outside the realm of possibility that Dell and Intel have been talking about the future. It wouldn't suprise me if Intel went to Dell and said:
"Hey, we've got some server processors coming out at the end of 2006 [Core 2 Duo based Xeons] that will kick the crap out of the Opteron's. Why don't you announce support for AMD based servers around that same time. People will think you're finally going to do it, but once they see how fast our stuff is, nobody will actually buy an AMD server. It'll prop up the hopes of AMD and their fanboys, then Wham! AMD gets nothing, and you get to have another solid excuse for never again threatening to carry AMD products. You will of course get an extra discount on Intel products for going along with this..."
I'm sure it was a little more subtle than that, but the gist may have been the same.
Then again, what the heck do I know?:)
ender-
/Actually an AMD fanboy. //but those Core 2 Duo's sure do look tempting
I would worry more about the cost of the toner than the cost of the printer. Laser printer toner cartridges are much more expensive than ink-jet, at least the last time I checked.
That may be true but I don't think you're going to get 2-6000 pages on a single ink-jet cartridge either. I'd rather buy a $50 toner cartridge for 2 cents/page than a $30 inkjet catridge for 8 cents a page. Maybe it's just me.
Besides, who wants to wait for hundreds of pages to print from an inkjet?
No, I think for B/W printing, there is no reasonable choice other than getting a laser. You must take into account your needs when choosing a printer.
For instance, in our house we have three printers. 1. Brother HL-1440 Laser [$89]: For B/W printing [great little printer BTW]. [Toner: $60 for 6000 pages @5% = 1 cent/page] 2. Epson Stylus Photo 925 [$100]: For wife's occasional color printing. [Blank Ink: $24 for 540 pages of text = 4.5 cent/page] 3. Samsung SPP-2040 Dye-Sub [$45]: For printing 4x6 photo's for friends and family. [Ink+paper cartridge: $51 for 120 4x6 photos = 42.4 cents/page [including paper]]
Those ink/toner prices are for the brand-name new products, not 3rd party or refilled. Still, that's a pretty significant cost difference. And that's not even including the fact that we actualled paid more for the Inkjet printer than we did for the Laser.
If I want to start up at init2 and log in as root, back the hell off, I know what I'm doing.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but these two examples are terrible. You want to start at init2? Fine, install the server version, or just edit/etc/inittab.
You want to log in as root? Fine, "sudo passwd root". Congratulations you can now log in as root.
Ubuntu is just doing what most Linux/OSS advocates have been pushing OS's to do for years. It installs with sane/safe defaults. You can change those defaults if you like, but now for people to start complaining about it is just sad.
While nobody loves their window's system, many people do love their dual SLI graphics cards, video games, printer/scanner/copier, accounting software, physics accelerator etc..
You're right. I love my scanner. Oops, it won't work in Vista [no driver from MS, and Canon will NOT create a driver for it]. I love my video games too. Oops, many of them won't run in Vista, such as the version of Quake 2 that came with my Quake 4 DVD. And the games I have that do run, run very very slowly. It's painful to watch really.
So I suspect I won't be upgrading to Vista any time soon.
I bought the Intellimouse Explorer, the first mass market optical mouse, when it came out, and I used it for years. It truly was and is a great mouse, but I'm not kidding anyone - it's an ugly little rodent.
I am still using mine! It's been what, six or seven years? Not bad if you ask me. I wouldn't call it 'pretty' [especially now that it has 6-7 years worth of dead skin embedded in the plastic], but it wasn't really ugly either.
And... Grub boots Vista OK? So this is a non-issue? My MSDN sub doesn't renew until probably September, so I haven't seen anything new from Microsoft in a while. Yes, grub just hands over to the Vista boot loader. It works fine.
Yes, vista does support dual boot at least to some degree. As I'm on Beta 2 I wanted to make sure my apps and games would work so I installed XP on one partition and proceeded to install Vista on the second, with no prompting it set up the boot loader and I can switch flawlessly between the two, not had a change to try with any flavor of linux at this time though.
I have tried this. I have XP on one HD, Linux on another, and installed Vista Beta 2 onto a third HD. Vista detected the XP install, and allows you to choose between the cryptically labeled "Windows" and "Previous Version", but it did not detect or present an option for booting to the linux HD.
I have not yet looked into the possibility of getting the Vista boot manager to boot to the linux HD, I just reinstalled Grub.
"Most users are lazy, and they don't want to learn how to use new interfaces."
As witnessed by the historic non-movement of users from DOS to Windows 3.1, or OS 9 to OSX
Except that in those instances, they were not given a choice. Those users, when they went to buy a new computer, no longer had the option of buying an Intel PC without Windows, or of buying a Mac without OSX.
Apparrently, only the complete elimination of Windows as an option will force people to switch to another OS.
Wouldn't that just be a riot, if we found out that all this time, Osama has actually been hiding out here on US soil? With as much luck as our government had finding witnesses for gitmo detainees when one of the witnesses was even IN Washington DC, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised.
Yes, you read that right: a bug in IE caused a Firefox link to disappear.
I wonder if MS didn't intentially put anti-Firefox code into IE7/Vista.
When I installed the Vista Beta, I had no trouble downloading executables using IE, including Acrobat, Creative Labs drivers, and an antivirus. But the instant I tried to download the Firefox installer, it popped up with a message telling me that it might not be safe to download.
That's interesting. I installed it on an Athlon 64 2800+, 1G RAM and a 256MB GeForce 6800GT, and I found it to be quite sluggish. It wasn't responsive at all. Even when I installed nVidia's own Vista drivers it was still slow.
It also gave me a performance rating of 3.
I have no idea what might be making it that sluggish with 1G ram and a decent gaming card. The 2800+ isn't *that* much slower than a 3500...
And I agree with the driver issues. When I installed Creative's Vista driver for my Audigy, the mouse stopped working until I ran Windows update three times and rebooted each time. Plus Canon doesn't have a Vista driver for my USB scanner and has stated that they do not intend to ever release one. Not good.
If I switch to Ubuntu and send my used flatbed scanner that has no SANE driver (Microtek Scanmaker 4850), do I get a discount off buying a Linux-compatible scanner?
I don't know. If I upgrade to Windows Vista, and send in my flatbed scanner that has no Vista drivers (Canon Lide 30), do I get a discount off buying a Vista-compatible scanner?
Slashdot Mirror
I have to call BS on you. It's only costing an extra couple dollars [as in literally $1-2.00] to add the v-chip to a TV, so I'm afraid that's not a valid argument.
:)
I'll grant you, I don't think it should be federally mandated, as that's not really their place, but as a feature on a TV, it's nice to have. It's useful for those of us with kids, and it is totally, 100% non-intrusive for those who don't want or need to use it. Well, except for when the munchkin manages to keep hitting the v-chip button on the remote while you're watching something, and the 'enter password' prompt pops up unexpectedly, but that's hardly the v-chip's fault.
Do you, or anyone, know of an IMAP server that can pop mail down from an ISP?
Well I used to do something like this. I used Courier-IMAP for the IMAP server, since it uses Maildir by default. Then I used fetchmail to pull the mail from the ISP's pop server, and drop it into the Maildir folders [via procmail].
Obviously not a 1 program simple solution, but it got the job done spectacularly.
"You need to restart now" warnings raise to the front because they're *important*. They really do mean "you need to reboot _now_", not "one of these days, if you've got the time, we humbly suggest you reboot at your convenience".
If it is THAT important that the reboot happen immediately, then why don't they just go ahead and reboot without the user/admin's permission. The effect is the same.
Of course, they could be smart and make the warning a systray tool notification window that stays on top until you reboot. The message is delivered just as effectively, without the danger of the system being rebooted at a time that can cause data loss. Hell, even if they kept the same notification they have, simply requiring a second 'are you sure click', for those instances when the button was clicked accidentally would be sufficient.
It does, however, require a little more effort than just repeating "Microsoft sucks" over and over again while you stab at the mouse button.
MS has some decent products. There are things that their software can do that others can't, or can't do as easily. I admit that. It doesn't mean I have to like the million other stupid things they do. If I was *THAT* anti-microsoft, that server wouldn't be running Windows at all.
This is your fault. When you're applying a patch that requires a reboot, you shouldn't apply it until you are ready to reboot, and you should reboot immediately.
Too bad it doesn't tell you it's going to need a reboot before you install it. And unfortunately, in this particular job, I didn't really have to time to research each patch before it's installed. At least with the linux [debian] servers, I *KNOW* it isn't going to require a reboot unless it is a kernel or even more rarely, a core library update. It's tough to tell with Microsoft's patches since they rarely give more information beyond: "This update will patch a security vulnerability"
Of course, now I know that almost any patch from MS will require a reboot. But that doesn't change the fact that they do their notifications in a way that can cause unintended consequences. There are many ways to avoid that, but they don't care enough to bother doing things properly.
I can't count the number of times I've been typing only to have a dialog pop in mid sentence. It flashes briefly, and goes away because my typing activated one of it's shortcut keys. I'm left wondering just want the hell I told my computer to do, and hoping it was something harmless.
This is especially bad on a server. I can't figure out why they have to have a dialog pop up every 2 minutes asking if you want to reboot the server now or later, after an update has been run. I've already told it I'll reboot it later, now stop bugging me!
I was going to wait until everyone went home to reboot the server. But I was making another change on the server, so I was still logged in and working. That Reboot now or later dialog popped up JUST as I was about to click on something. Guess which button had popped up under the mouse cursor?!? So in the middle of the day, the server rebooted, giving no chance for people to close their files, and taking out our DNS server while it rebooted [It's a small office, so it's a mutli-function server].
Aside from being annoyed at the fact that I have to reboot the server for every little update each month, that kind of thing just infuriates me. The debian servers in the office only have to be rebooted if there's a kernel update, and *I* choose when that happens. Are you listening Microsoft?!?!?
Seriously though, I think this is just something that Intel marketing decided to spout out in the hopes that nobody would actually check.
I've got a laptop with a Turion ML-40 [2.2Ghz] (32bit WinXP), and I just tested this. Even with the CPU throttled down to 800Mhz, the youtube videos only used 50% CPU, not even enough to bump the processor up to the next speed step.
If Intel CPU's really pegged at 100% just to play a flash video that an 800Mhz-throttled AMD can handle, they'd be having serious problems right now.
I'm sure this isn't the case. But it shows how careful you have to be when dealing with anything Intel is saying about it's future products.
By the way, I've always wondered..how the CA special emissions work. What if you have a car you've bought outside the state...and move to the state with it. Does it have to be modified to work within their 'rigid' conditions? What if you want to modify your car (chips, exhaust, other higher perfomance stuff)? Do they make you take it off when you move there, or stop you at the state border and make you walk in?
I'm not 100% sure that it's the same now, but when we moved to California [1994], they charged $300 to 'import' our car. This was in spite of the fact that it was a Honda Civic that EASILY passed all of the CA smog and emmissions tests.
If your car passses the emmissions tests every 2 years, then you don't really have to worry. If not, then once every two years, you'll have to un-chip/un-modify it so that it will pass.
I'm almost of the same opinion as yourself. I do wish they'd give better quality [lossless]. But I still have a minor issue with the DRM. For the most part, it is quite fair, but I'm not thrilled with the vendor lock-in that's involved. I rip all my music to Flac. Then I re-encode to various bitrates of mp3, depending on what I'd like to do with it. I can fit plenty of mp3's [or oggs for that matter] on my 1.5GB iRiver. Or I can encode them to an even lower bitrate, fit songs on my 512MB USB drive, and play them in my brother's car stereo [has a USB port, plays mp3s from it]. I can burn the mp3s to a CD [as data], and play them in my car stereo. I can stream my mp3s over my network to my Tivo, to play through the TV. I can play them in Linux.
None of this is possible without either breaking the law [US] and your agreement with Apple, or otherwise going through a second lossy compression [AAC->CD->MP3]. Until that is all possible, legal and simple, I won't be buying a large number of songs through iTunes.
In other words, it's time for Apple to open up licensing for FairPlay.
If iTunes would take the time to notice that previous authorizations are never heard from again after I authorize a new install, it should just allow me to go along my merry, non-infringing way and let me listen to the music that I paid for.
Apple is more than happy to do this. You can go into your account settings in iTunes, and tell it to deauthorize ALL of your prior computers. You then can authorize your current system and listen to all those songs again.
As for old systems, maybe you should consider deauthorizing them before you get rid of them or overwrite the OS. Then this wouldn't be an issue at all.
Of course the computer will identify them as being the same, its job is to work with discrete components in the form of bits, where the human ear can hear on a lower level than that. I'm no digital maven, so I can't say the EXACT reason why, but I've been selling, repairing and setting up high end audio systems for 17 years. It's my job to know what sounds the same and what sounds different. Perhaps the bits themselves are longer or shorter than before encryption, or perhaps they're a bit (pun intended) higher voltage where a computer will still read it as a "1" when it's in a bass waveform, therefore things like md5sum will claim it's the same file, but if you knew anything about signals over a wire you'd know things like a waveform that can be represented digitally can look (and sound) very different depending on the size of the peaks and troughs. That's why a modem connection can sometimes get 33kbps on one connection, then connect at 44kbps on another attempt, where they're both transmitting the exact same data.
:) ]
As I said, my 17 years experience tells me there's an audio difference, and my business depends on being able to tell. I'm still in business.
God, I don't know whether to cry or laugh! This is like saying if you buy a jar of applesauce, and bring it into the house carrying it in your left hand, that it tastes different than if you were to bring that same jar into the house carrying it in your right hand. It's complete and utter nonsense. It's the exact same applesauce regardless of which hand you carry it in. Or in response to your modem comment, its the exact same applesauce regardless of how fast you walk as you carry it. [Unless of course you walk so slowly that it rots before you make it to the kitchen
Ok, end of that pathetic metaphor. The point is, no amount of *lossless* encryption, or conversion will change the way the audio is fed to the speakers, assuming ALL other aspects of the chain remain the same. All those changes [and re-constitution to the original format] occur BEFORE the audio is sent to the audio system/speakers. The speakers recieve the exact same signal either way.
Maybe I should feed the trolls though [or the terribly misinformed perhaps]. Then again, tell me the name of your audio business so I can make sure to avoid it.
I got a few Component connections and thats it.
I'm with you there. My TV has 3 component inputs, plus 4 sets of Svideo/composite connections, and two coax inputs.
[rant]
No VGA, no DVI, no HDMI. And let me just say that I am going to be PISSED if these media companies decide that my TV is only worthy of displaying their movie in 540p, even though my [$1200 2.5 years ago] TV will display 1080i with no problems.
Sure, I can understand the fact that this TV will not display 1080p. THat's a techncial issue and I don't expect it do more than it was capable of when I bought it. But for these companies to even threaten to intentionally degrade the signal because they think I'm a criminal upsets me beyond words. Now, if they are willing to replace my TV with a fully functional replacement that supports what they want, fine; but I am NOT going to spend another $1000-5000 just to make them feel better about how their movie is being watched.
I will not buy a new TV for this. I will not buy any hardware [BlueRay, HDDVD, etc] that supports the degredation of a component signal, and I will not buy a single movie that enforces that degredation.
The media companies are scared. And in their frightened state, they are doing everything possible in the wrong way. The way that will most likely drive people away. I hope they realize their mistake soon.
[/rant]
99.9% uptime SLA guarantee
:( ]
Do you realize that works out to 9 hours of down time per year? Or 10 minutes of downtime per week? Or 2 minutes per business day? While 99.9% uptime sounds good, you have to ask yourself if that's acceptable or not. Granted, it probably won't really be out 2 minutes every day, but more likely will be out for a few hours at a whack a couple of times a year.
Sorry, but if you need more than 99.9% guaranteed uptime, you shouldn't be using a DSL line of any sort. 99.9% is more than sufficient for a DSL line. If you need more than that, it's time to fork over the money to either put your stuff in a datacenter [in the case of hosting services], or pay for multiple gig-e or SONET links. And you'd better have 48 hour UPS capacity, multiple power feeds and a diesel generator with underground tanks.
Getting better guaranteed uptime is NOT cheap. For most office needs, a 99.9% guarantee is quite good. My office is well served by Speakeasy's SDSL, and we couldn't be happier. [Well I could be happier, they laid me off on Monday!
Have you even looked at the Mac Pro site? The system defaults to using an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. From the website, it looks like you can still order a Mac Pro with an ATI card, but two of the three video card options involve nVidia cards.
First you complain because you think they are still using ATI, and now you want them to support ATI's version of SLI?
You know, the timing of that makes me wonder. I don't think that it is outside the realm of possibility that Dell and Intel have been talking about the future. It wouldn't suprise me if Intel went to Dell and said:
"Hey, we've got some server processors coming out at the end of 2006 [Core 2 Duo based Xeons] that will kick the crap out of the Opteron's. Why don't you announce support for AMD based servers around that same time. People will think you're finally going to do it, but once they see how fast our stuff is, nobody will actually buy an AMD server. It'll prop up the hopes of AMD and their fanboys, then Wham! AMD gets nothing, and you get to have another solid excuse for never again threatening to carry AMD products. You will of course get an extra discount on Intel products for going along with this..."
I'm sure it was a little more subtle than that, but the gist may have been the same.
Then again, what the heck do I know?
ender-
I would worry more about the cost of the toner than the cost of the printer. Laser printer toner cartridges are much more expensive than ink-jet, at least the last time I checked.
That may be true but I don't think you're going to get 2-6000 pages on a single ink-jet cartridge either. I'd rather buy a $50 toner cartridge for 2 cents/page than a $30 inkjet catridge for 8 cents a page. Maybe it's just me.
Besides, who wants to wait for hundreds of pages to print from an inkjet?
No, I think for B/W printing, there is no reasonable choice other than getting a laser.
You must take into account your needs when choosing a printer.
For instance, in our house we have three printers.
1. Brother HL-1440 Laser [$89]: For B/W printing [great little printer BTW]. [Toner: $60 for 6000 pages @5% = 1 cent/page]
2. Epson Stylus Photo 925 [$100]: For wife's occasional color printing. [Blank Ink: $24 for 540 pages of text = 4.5 cent/page]
3. Samsung SPP-2040 Dye-Sub [$45]: For printing 4x6 photo's for friends and family. [Ink+paper cartridge: $51 for 120 4x6 photos = 42.4 cents/page [including paper]]
Those ink/toner prices are for the brand-name new products, not 3rd party or refilled. Still, that's a pretty significant cost difference. And that's not even including the fact that we actualled paid more for the Inkjet printer than we did for the Laser.
If I want to start up at init2 and log in as root, back the hell off, I know what I'm doing.
/etc/inittab.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but these two examples are terrible.
You want to start at init2? Fine, install the server version, or just edit
You want to log in as root? Fine, "sudo passwd root". Congratulations you can now log in as root.
Ubuntu is just doing what most Linux/OSS advocates have been pushing OS's to do for years. It installs with sane/safe defaults. You can change those defaults if you like, but now for people to start complaining about it is just sad.
While nobody loves their window's system, many people do love their dual SLI graphics cards, video games, printer/scanner/copier, accounting software, physics accelerator etc..
You're right. I love my scanner. Oops, it won't work in Vista [no driver from MS, and Canon will NOT create a driver for it]. I love my video games too. Oops, many of them won't run in Vista, such as the version of Quake 2 that came with my Quake 4 DVD. And the games I have that do run, run very very slowly. It's painful to watch really.
So I suspect I won't be upgrading to Vista any time soon.
I bought the Intellimouse Explorer, the first mass market optical mouse, when it came out, and I used it for years. It truly was and is a great mouse, but I'm not kidding anyone - it's an ugly little rodent.
I am still using mine! It's been what, six or seven years? Not bad if you ask me. I wouldn't call it 'pretty' [especially now that it has 6-7 years worth of dead skin embedded in the plastic], but it wasn't really ugly either.
And... Grub boots Vista OK? So this is a non-issue? My MSDN sub doesn't renew until probably September, so I haven't seen anything new from Microsoft in a while.
Yes, grub just hands over to the Vista boot loader. It works fine.
Yes, vista does support dual boot at least to some degree. As I'm on Beta 2 I wanted to make sure my apps and games would work so I installed XP on one partition and proceeded to install Vista on the second, with no prompting it set up the boot loader and I can switch flawlessly between the two, not had a change to try with any flavor of linux at this time though.
I have tried this. I have XP on one HD, Linux on another, and installed Vista Beta 2 onto a third HD. Vista detected the XP install, and allows you to choose between the cryptically labeled "Windows" and "Previous Version", but it did not detect or present an option for booting to the linux HD.
I have not yet looked into the possibility of getting the Vista boot manager to boot to the linux HD, I just reinstalled Grub.
"Most users are lazy, and they don't want to learn how to use new interfaces."
As witnessed by the historic non-movement of users from DOS to Windows 3.1, or OS 9 to OSX
Except that in those instances, they were not given a choice. Those users, when they went to buy a new computer, no longer had the option of buying an Intel PC without Windows, or of buying a Mac without OSX.
Apparrently, only the complete elimination of Windows as an option will force people to switch to another OS.
Did you say Senator Osama? Egad, call the NSF!
Wouldn't that just be a riot, if we found out that all this time, Osama has actually been hiding out here on US soil? With as much luck as our government had finding witnesses for gitmo detainees when one of the witnesses was even IN Washington DC, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised.
Yes, you read that right: a bug in IE caused a Firefox link to disappear.
I wonder if MS didn't intentially put anti-Firefox code into IE7/Vista.
When I installed the Vista Beta, I had no trouble downloading executables using IE, including Acrobat, Creative Labs drivers, and an antivirus. But the instant I tried to download the Firefox installer, it popped up with a message telling me that it might not be safe to download.
I found that rather suspicious.
That's interesting. I installed it on an Athlon 64 2800+, 1G RAM and a 256MB GeForce 6800GT, and I found it to be quite sluggish. It wasn't responsive at all. Even when I installed nVidia's own Vista drivers it was still slow.
It also gave me a performance rating of 3.
I have no idea what might be making it that sluggish with 1G ram and a decent gaming card. The 2800+ isn't *that* much slower than a 3500...
And I agree with the driver issues. When I installed Creative's Vista driver for my Audigy, the mouse stopped working until I ran Windows update three times and rebooted each time.
Plus Canon doesn't have a Vista driver for my USB scanner and has stated that they do not intend to ever release one. Not good.
If I switch to Ubuntu and send my used flatbed scanner that has no SANE driver (Microtek Scanmaker 4850), do I get a discount off buying a Linux-compatible scanner?
I don't know. If I upgrade to Windows Vista, and send in my flatbed scanner that has no Vista drivers (Canon Lide 30), do I get a discount off buying a Vista-compatible scanner?
No? Didn't think so.