They aren't as common as they once were, I'll admit. However, at my old job there were something like 250 computer users, 143 of which claimed on a survey to have never used a computer before their current job and to not have a computer at home. Maybe it was a location thing, maybe it was a cultural thing (nearly all of the employees at my previous job were Native American). All I'm saying here is that it is a classification that at least still exists. If the adults don't have computers at home and the elementary schools in the are have Apple IIes if that, then I think that my point is still valid. Again, I could be wrong I suppose.
I think it goes further than that. Many schools I've either gone to or visited for one reason or another DO have a single platform. Apple. More than that, by far the most virii and worms are "available for" (pardon that) the Microsoft platform. I know there are bgillions of Linux zealots that are gonna say "but even fewer are for Linux than are for Apple." This is true. However, as much as I use (and enjoy using) Linux on both my desktops and my servers, there are some very real benefits to using the Apple platform. The obvious (and possibly hotly debated) one is ease-of-use. In the school of interface design and usability, Mac wins. They've pretty much always won. If you take a person who has never used a computer before and sit them in front of Gnome, KDE, or Microsoft's latest offering, they're going to choke. (I know it has been pounded into the ground, but who would honestly think "I should click 'start' in order to shut down my computer"?) I've seen it. Take that same person and stick them in front of a Mac, they'll be intimidated for a few moments perhaps, but when things act as they expect them to act, they'll be relieved and comforted. No right clicks, no middle clicks... (yes I know MacOS supports these functions, but it doesn't need them, especially for what a brand new user wants). Simple baby steps. Yes, I know there have been "studies" done comparing these interfaces. Unfortunately none of these that I have seen has been done by a person who has never used a computer before. I'd be interested to see one, but I imagine I know what the result would be. Another thing to think about when comparing OSX to XFree86: uniformity. I know that you like to customize your widgets and this and that so that they're just the way you want them under whatever your window manager of choice is. I know this because it's something that I often want too. It's just not so for Joe Blow-I've-never-used-a-computer-before or his cousin Jane Doe-I've-used-a-computer-twice-in-my-life. They generally just want one thing as far as interface design goes: Everything to look the same. Uniformity. They don't want to mess with the differences between things that use gtk or qt or any number of other similar things. They want it to look the same in their word processor as it does in their web browser as it does in their instant messaging client, etc. Another thing about MacOS: it tends to scale with the user. If the user's skill level advances over time, MacOS (X especially) tends to grow a bit with the user. They discover what it is that that "shell thingy" that their geek friends talk about can do, for example. The dos promptish thing under Windows XP just can't compare. Linux has a great many things under the hood for the curious user, but the competence level to just get your work done is a great deal higher than either of the other OSes mentioned. Yes, I know you can make X act almost however you want but the key here is that most people don't want to know how to do this because they don't care, they just want it to work Anyway, I hope I've made some sort of point anyway. Believe what you will. Hurray for {insert OS of your choice here}.
Hrm. I hate to waste this on an AC but you really are a bit behind the times and mal-informed on top of that.
First off, both the Duron and any even remotely modern Celeron have cache. The Duron always has had cache. The Celeron has had cache since the advent of the Celeron 300A several years ago. They do have less cache than their "big brothers" surely.
Secondly, even 1.02Mhz wasn't "slow crap" when it was introduced. Next to that, a 2Ghz Celeron is orders of magnitude faster, truly mind-bogglingly fast even if you think about it from today's standpoint. 2 billion cycles per second. That's 1,020,000 cycles per second compared to 2,000,000,000. "Screamin'" doesn't even come close to describing that difference really.
So as not to seem off topic, I more or less expect the same from computers in 10 years that I expected of today's computers 10 years ago. It'll be right (or at least approximately equivalent) someday. I also want flying cars dammit... and for people to have to actually be required to have a certain level of competence to be allowed to drive them. A level above zero this time.
On the other hand though, in a corporate environment you'll find that there are a suprising number of users that are simply ineducable. They know how to use Word only in that if they click on the icon it opens and they can type stuff. If you try to teach them more (or have them sent to external training), you may very well have just wasted your time and money because the user thinks "I can do my job, I don't need the extra information" (though I do occassionally question that the thought is that coherent). A truly suprising number of users will actively reject any training that you throw at them for fear that their weaknesses might be exposed and/or they might be required to do "more" work (i.e. that work which is already in their job description). The problem is most obvious in environments where this level of skill (if it can be called that) and this type of attitude is considered adequate and acceptable. Say what you will about how such businesses simply shouldn't hire people like this. That's fine, I agree with you. However, this is not a factor that the IT department can often (ever?) control. We are simply instructed to "deal with it" then are burned for any feet (heads) we have to step on to get the job even started, much less done. It's extremely hard to counter attitudes and ignorance like that when you have neither the honey nor the stick to back your "suggestions." What to do about these users then? Once they figure out how to open up their email program they delight in running every "screen saver" and "cute picture" that they come across. The speed of the antivirus companies in releasing product updates can by no means match the universal "Speed of Stupid" (yes, I just used "stupid" as a noun, deal with it). You can't cut them off from their email or you'll catch the fires of Hell when their boss talks to your boss's boss about how you've been misbehaving for no reason. You can't even limit the attachments that they can receive or they'll scream bloody murder at a boss who is very probably more technologically inept than they themselves are. "Sally VirusWriter sent me a cute picture and I can't open it because the IT department is being an evil asshole! Waaaa!!" You're lucky if you even get to install an antivirus on their machine... "it slows the computer down! Waaaa!!" (ignoring the fact that they have a 2.8Ghz P4 w/512MB of ram....). Your next suggestion will be "get a different job," however you know as well as I do the state of the market for such things. So, realistically, what do you do? I've considered blocking the entire email when it contains a virus rather than just the attachment, that would keep Tech_dummy0 happy because they'd simply never see the email and wouldn't have the opportunity to bitch because they can't open the *.pif attachment.... grrrrrrr to people....
Around Paris there are bathrooms similar to this. You pop in a few cents and it lets you use the bathroom...it cleans itself too... not much of a place for the bums though as it pops the door open after 15 minutes and a bit after that seals the door and drowns the room in scalding bleach water (self-cleaning, remember?). Initially they had some problems with people not being able to read the warning signs I hear, so they made them bigger and put them all over the place inside in multiple languages. Can't say the signs would help the blind much though, which is suprising considering how well France generally does for the disabled (gotta have a little RF badge thing in your car to even get through the barriers surrounding the handicapped parking section at the mall, etc.)
It's not so much that titanium makes a great sword material... it's that aluminum doesn't.:-) Gimme pattern welded steel any day, but yeah, "cold steel" works too... (I know of a guy who made a titanium sword, but he had to do the tempering with a special furnance that's normally used for incinerating firearms... blade sold for upwards of 15,000 dollars too)... big problem with very hard things, they tend to be either very heavy or very brittle =) I've yet to break a pattern welded katana however
I do understand, but the mystique of it BEING titanium was lost:-) Saying "my laptop's made out of TITANIUM" is far more impressive than "my laptop's made out of ALUMINUM" which in my mind is about on par with "my laptop's made out of PLASTIC".... being into kenjutsu on the side gives me very very little respect for aluminum... and for stainless steel too. They both tend to break rather easily, even "aerospace grade" aluminum is pretty weak as a sword material... I guess I'm letting my two passions cross. Maybe I shouldn't, eh? Ah well, now I'm getting a 12.1" powerbook in addition to the inspiron so yeah. (I've never noticed any problems with the quality of construction with the dell either... maybe I got lucky?)
True, you don't know me, but I am a sysadmin for a division of the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs... I've got about 150 machines that I support with regularity (and another 150 or so that I support on an as-needed basis), a growing number of which are dells (rather than whiteboxes that were built by my predecessor's predecessor... none to well cared for either, dust contamination out the kazoo, but anyway). I have found Dell's support to scale directly with the amount of money that you spend on their systems. For low-end machines, you get crap, but if you spent 6500 dollars per box decking out one of their top of the line systems (inspiron 8200 when it VERY FIRST came out... 12 of them....eesh) or a couple of dozen Precision workstations, their tech support is on your doorstep within hours after you call them (even if you're like me and hate letting them touch the boxes... half the time I don't let them, I'm very particular about who I trust with them (one chance to prove yourself to me, if you screw it up and try coming back too bad for you) it's sad that I'm on a first name basis with half of the Dell support techs in the state) but yeah... it's still ENORMOUSLY better than compaq/hp and IBM put together (and I'll not even get into my problems with sony). Dunno where I'm going with this really, maybe trying to say that they're the best you can get from a big OEM? Probably that, yeah.
Yes. However the quality of the machine and the quality of the support make up for this in my mind. Dell's much more willing to talk to me when I have questions about the machine than Sony was about my Vaio....
do you at least get a Windows XP CD?
Yes, you do. Dell's generally speaking been way better about this than most other manufacturers. More than that, if you have to format/reinstall when booting from that CD, you don't have to enter a product key (assuming you're installing on the same/a similar Dell) or even activate XP, it's pre-activated. Be warned this does not mean you can go to your friend Joe's house and randomly install a cd-key-less and pre-activated copy of XP on his whitebox PC. Doesn't work that way, it checks for a particular manufacturer's signature in the bios. Still, remarkably convenient for legit reinstalls.
The powerbooks (with the exception of the 15" model that specifically uses "titanium" in the product name) have an anodized aluminum alloy case rather than titanium. Rather irritating that... it's what kept me from buying one of the 12.1" ones. Disappointing as hell.
I guess I'll just have to live with my 2.2Ghz inspiron 8200;-) (the special features of the 8500 are pretty cool, but it doesn't have the option for a second drive which is one of the things I like best about my 8200)
I wonder how many previous owners these drives had? If so, I wonder if they're using some sort of low level disk analysis software like the FBI does that can effectively peel back layers of data that were on there in the past. Theoretically anything that has previously been on the drive should be recoverable through such methods.
I'm going to have to agree with you... the best looking thing in our server bank is (unfortunately) a Dell 6550 rackmount. The darkly shiny metal grill is complimented by the luminescent blue Dell logo in the center.It's a Quad Xeon 2.4Ghz deal with 16GB of main memory... one of our fastest machines... but also the smallest. I've been thinking I need to add at least a few random blue leds around the edges or something... not gonna happen though, my boss has a good friend who knows nothing about computers but thinks that even the one blue light looks terribly tacky.... and my boss listens to her of course....damn it...oh well, just venting I suppose
You know, I hear this complaint a lot... that FFVII for the PC doesn't run on win2k correctly or only runs in software mode or whatever... I've not had this experience...it runs on my win2k machine with a Geforce4 Ti card just splendidly..hardware mode and all (it also works under XP too on the same machine) . Wish I knew what I did to make it work, don't think that I did anything. hmmmm, dang
You're either misinformed or purposefully bending the truth. WordPerfect has been the standard for word processing under Windows in many areas of the "real world." Legal documents for example usually must be in WordPerfect format or on paper in order to even be looked at by most lawyers. The same is true of almost all financial documents and even little things like memos in the upper levels of management at many fortune 500 companies. Microsoft has put a lot of money into funding schools (especially smallish schools) under the condition that they'll offer classes primarily requiring MS Word for their document format. I used to be the Assistant I.T. Manager for one of those small schools and I was the one who constantly got harassed by MS salespeople making such offers. (It should be noted that the school folded under the pressure of MS's marketing less than three weeks after I left, and I really can't wholly blame them. They needed the funding badly.)
MS has been trying for years to make Word the de facto standard for Word processing, especially in younger people. That you say what you did the way they did means that they're slowly succeeding... damn it.
it's because the government leases the airwaves to the companies
Okay, so the question is now "How the hell does ANY government think it has the right to claim ownership of the airwaves?"... a naturally occurring phenomenon... Your first reaction might be "they apparently claim ownership of water too and I don't see you complaining about that". The thing about that is... they don't claim to own the water, they do however claim to own the pumps and pipes by which that water is brought to your house... In that case you're paying for a service. In the case of airwaves they don't own even the means by which airwaves are transported to you (except in certain special cases)... grr.
I've just realized something...
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Is Linux Dead?
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Taco, did you post this just to see if we could/. MSNBC? See now THAT would be freaking hilarious....
Did TunkeyMicket Actually READ the article?
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And in fact did any of you bother reading the whole thing or did you immediately begin attacking as soon as you saw the statement "Is Linux Dead?". Just so you'll know, I run Linux on all of my desktop and server machines. I consider myself an opponent of Microsoft. But you guys really really need to bother going to read the article before you jump to conclusions. In fact it never once says anything bad about Linux directly. The whole article seems to be saying "ha ha we own the desktop so there!" in a very childish tone. They don't really bash Linux at all... On the other hand they do use phraseology like "the so-called 'open-source' movement" and statements about removing the burden of paying for software that would lead the unwitting to believe that they were... Anyway, read before you bitch please? (especially whoever decided this story needed to be on the front page....)
I had a friend who worked for Microsoft. (I say friend, but he was really an aquaintence who I didn't get along with at all) Anyway, in one of the only sane, agreeable conversations we ever had he discussed his exit interview at MS in which he was shown a copy of his original contract which required him to sign a contract in the exit interview which disallowed any passing along of any knowledge or programming experience gained while employed at MS. It didn't say "forget this or we'll beat it out of your head," but it said that anything he'd learned or learned to use at his MS job... well, it said he'd be prosecuted for IP violations if he were caught using it elsewhere... true story. Sucks to be him too now because although he has 6 years of experience at MS no one will hire him.
"Your current (Unknown) operating system is not supported by Intertainer. Intertainer currently supports Windows 98, 2000, Me, and XP. Please return to Intertainer using one of those operating systems."
.....the hell?!? Even windows media files can be played under Linux/BSD/OSX/etc... In fact I don't know of any movie format that can't (although some of them suck ass to set up). I wonder which manager made this decision and how much money he's getting from the MPAA who's in turn getting money from MS who's in turn getting money from the MPAA, etc. (...windows and DRM....hurray for the future)... I think I'm gonna become a hermit.
I still wonder why people think that Intellectual Property is what drives people to innovate when that simply isn't the case. People driven by the need to make money (greed) don't want to innovate. Innovating is expensive. They want to produce the cheapest things that already exist at as poor of a quality level as the market will bear and they want to sell it at the highest possible price. "Why?" you may ask. It's simple, you make more money that way with the least amount of work. That's what it all comes down to.
The real innovators out there are the ones who create just because they see that something is needed or wanted or even just have a drive to create things. Take Linus Torvalds's work on the Linux operating system. He was not driven by the need to make money (or if he was he failed miserably and doesn't wanna tell anyone about it -- sorry Linus;-) ), and yet Linux has grown past the 10 year mark. This is true of the music industry too of course. The real artists out there didn't get into music for the money for the most part. Those who do often shortly fall by the wayside... in fact I'd challenge any of you to find one band that started more than 8 years ago completely for the money involved that still exists today.
Ah well, now I suppose I will be labeled a communist for my stern disapproval of the corrupt and greed-driven practices of many modern capitalists. Damn.
Dunno if you've tried this or not, but it could help. I have a similar laptop, and if you compile the kernel with the correct options set (and use the right software for controlling the power management whatnot) you can get all of those things working. ACPI (to a point of course),IEEE-1394 (firewire), IrDA, and even your video problem if you use the right options in the XF86Config file
PLEASE NOTE!!! I have just recieved a reply from Computer Associates and this is not, I repeat NOT the same as Win32/Klez.H (klez.h@mm). I have been informed that CA will look into my findings. (I'm mailing them a bios chip wiped by the thing tomorrow afternoon)
I am the network administrator for the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, recently we were assaulted by no less than 5 variants of the klez worm. Klez.C,E,F,G, and H... WATCH OUT FOR Klez.H!!! It is stinking creepy smart! Not only does it play the normal irritating klez crack games with your email system, it also knows how to delete your antivirus software (I've observed it doing this to Norton, McAfee, and InoculateIT), but worst of all, given time it actually knows how to write into motherboard and video card bios space on reboot with win9x! (it does this even if the stupid "boot virus protection" is enabled in the bios and bios flashability is TURNED OFF! This is NOT a joke or a prank, this thing is freaking dangerous. I've already sent emails to Computer Associates, Norton, and McAfee... be careful people, be bloody careful
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They aren't as common as they once were, I'll admit. However, at my old job there were something like 250 computer users, 143 of which claimed on a survey to have never used a computer before their current job and to not have a computer at home. Maybe it was a location thing, maybe it was a cultural thing (nearly all of the employees at my previous job were Native American).
All I'm saying here is that it is a classification that at least still exists. If the adults don't have computers at home and the elementary schools in the are have Apple IIes if that, then I think that my point is still valid. Again, I could be wrong I suppose.
I think it goes further than that. Many schools I've either gone to or visited for one reason or another DO have a single platform. Apple.
More than that, by far the most virii and worms are "available for" (pardon that) the Microsoft platform. I know there are bgillions of Linux zealots that are gonna say "but even fewer are for Linux than are for Apple." This is true. However, as much as I use (and enjoy using) Linux on both my desktops and my servers, there are some very real benefits to using the Apple platform. The obvious (and possibly hotly debated) one is ease-of-use. In the school of interface design and usability, Mac wins. They've pretty much always won. If you take a person who has never used a computer before and sit them in front of Gnome, KDE, or Microsoft's latest offering, they're going to choke. (I know it has been pounded into the ground, but who would honestly think "I should click 'start' in order to shut down my computer"?) I've seen it. Take that same person and stick them in front of a Mac, they'll be intimidated for a few moments perhaps, but when things act as they expect them to act, they'll be relieved and comforted. No right clicks, no middle clicks... (yes I know MacOS supports these functions, but it doesn't need them, especially for what a brand new user wants). Simple baby steps.
Yes, I know there have been "studies" done comparing these interfaces. Unfortunately none of these that I have seen has been done by a person who has never used a computer before. I'd be interested to see one, but I imagine I know what the result would be.
Another thing to think about when comparing OSX to XFree86: uniformity. I know that you like to customize your widgets and this and that so that they're just the way you want them under whatever your window manager of choice is. I know this because it's something that I often want too. It's just not so for Joe Blow-I've-never-used-a-computer-before or his cousin Jane Doe-I've-used-a-computer-twice-in-my-life. They generally just want one thing as far as interface design goes: Everything to look the same. Uniformity. They don't want to mess with the differences between things that use gtk or qt or any number of other similar things. They want it to look the same in their word processor as it does in their web browser as it does in their instant messaging client, etc.
Another thing about MacOS: it tends to scale with the user. If the user's skill level advances over time, MacOS (X especially) tends to grow a bit with the user. They discover what it is that that "shell thingy" that their geek friends talk about can do, for example. The dos promptish thing under Windows XP just can't compare. Linux has a great many things under the hood for the curious user, but the competence level to just get your work done is a great deal higher than either of the other OSes mentioned. Yes, I know you can make X act almost however you want but the key here is that most people don't want to know how to do this because they don't care, they just want it to work
Anyway, I hope I've made some sort of point anyway. Believe what you will. Hurray for {insert OS of your choice here}.
Hrm. I hate to waste this on an AC but you really are a bit behind the times and mal-informed on top of that.
First off, both the Duron and any even remotely modern Celeron have cache. The Duron always has had cache. The Celeron has had cache since the advent of the Celeron 300A several years ago. They do have less cache than their "big brothers" surely.
Secondly, even 1.02Mhz wasn't "slow crap" when it was introduced. Next to that, a 2Ghz Celeron is orders of magnitude faster, truly mind-bogglingly fast even if you think about it from today's standpoint. 2 billion cycles per second. That's 1,020,000 cycles per second compared to 2,000,000,000. "Screamin'" doesn't even come close to describing that difference really.
So as not to seem off topic, I more or less expect the same from computers in 10 years that I expected of today's computers 10 years ago. It'll be right (or at least approximately equivalent) someday. I also want flying cars dammit... and for people to have to actually be required to have a certain level of competence to be allowed to drive them. A level above zero this time.
On the other hand though, in a corporate environment you'll find that there are a suprising number of users that are simply ineducable. They know how to use Word only in that if they click on the icon it opens and they can type stuff. If you try to teach them more (or have them sent to external training), you may very well have just wasted your time and money because the user thinks "I can do my job, I don't need the extra information" (though I do occassionally question that the thought is that coherent). A truly suprising number of users will actively reject any training that you throw at them for fear that their weaknesses might be exposed and/or they might be required to do "more" work (i.e. that work which is already in their job description). The problem is most obvious in environments where this level of skill (if it can be called that) and this type of attitude is considered adequate and acceptable.
Say what you will about how such businesses simply shouldn't hire people like this. That's fine, I agree with you. However, this is not a factor that the IT department can often (ever?) control. We are simply instructed to "deal with it" then are burned for any feet (heads) we have to step on to get the job even started, much less done. It's extremely hard to counter attitudes and ignorance like that when you have neither the honey nor the stick to back your "suggestions."
What to do about these users then? Once they figure out how to open up their email program they delight in running every "screen saver" and "cute picture" that they come across. The speed of the antivirus companies in releasing product updates can by no means match the universal "Speed of Stupid" (yes, I just used "stupid" as a noun, deal with it). You can't cut them off from their email or you'll catch the fires of Hell when their boss talks to your boss's boss about how you've been misbehaving for no reason. You can't even limit the attachments that they can receive or they'll scream bloody murder at a boss who is very probably more technologically inept than they themselves are. "Sally VirusWriter sent me a cute picture and I can't open it because the IT department is being an evil asshole! Waaaa!!" You're lucky if you even get to install an antivirus on their machine... "it slows the computer down! Waaaa!!" (ignoring the fact that they have a 2.8Ghz P4 w/512MB of ram....).
Your next suggestion will be "get a different job," however you know as well as I do the state of the market for such things.
So, realistically, what do you do? I've considered blocking the entire email when it contains a virus rather than just the attachment, that would keep Tech_dummy0 happy because they'd simply never see the email and wouldn't have the opportunity to bitch because they can't open the *.pif attachment.... grrrrrrr to people....
Okay, I'm done now.
Around Paris there are bathrooms similar to this. You pop in a few cents and it lets you use the bathroom...it cleans itself too... not much of a place for the bums though as it pops the door open after 15 minutes and a bit after that seals the door and drowns the room in scalding bleach water (self-cleaning, remember?). Initially they had some problems with people not being able to read the warning signs I hear, so they made them bigger and put them all over the place inside in multiple languages. Can't say the signs would help the blind much though, which is suprising considering how well France generally does for the disabled (gotta have a little RF badge thing in your car to even get through the barriers surrounding the handicapped parking section at the mall, etc.)
It's not so much that titanium makes a great sword material... it's that aluminum doesn't. :-) Gimme pattern welded steel any day, but yeah, "cold steel" works too... (I know of a guy who made a titanium sword, but he had to do the tempering with a special furnance that's normally used for incinerating firearms... blade sold for upwards of 15,000 dollars too)... big problem with very hard things, they tend to be either very heavy or very brittle =) I've yet to break a pattern welded katana however
I do understand, but the mystique of it BEING titanium was lost :-) Saying "my laptop's made out of TITANIUM" is far more impressive than "my laptop's made out of ALUMINUM" which in my mind is about on par with "my laptop's made out of PLASTIC".... being into kenjutsu on the side gives me very very little respect for aluminum... and for stainless steel too. They both tend to break rather easily, even "aerospace grade" aluminum is pretty weak as a sword material... I guess I'm letting my two passions cross. Maybe I shouldn't, eh? Ah well, now I'm getting a 12.1" powerbook in addition to the inspiron so yeah. (I've never noticed any problems with the quality of construction with the dell either... maybe I got lucky?)
True, you don't know me, but I am a sysadmin for a division of the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs... I've got about 150 machines that I support with regularity (and another 150 or so that I support on an as-needed basis), a growing number of which are dells (rather than whiteboxes that were built by my predecessor's predecessor... none to well cared for either, dust contamination out the kazoo, but anyway). I have found Dell's support to scale directly with the amount of money that you spend on their systems. For low-end machines, you get crap, but if you spent 6500 dollars per box decking out one of their top of the line systems (inspiron 8200 when it VERY FIRST came out... 12 of them....eesh) or a couple of dozen Precision workstations, their tech support is on your doorstep within hours after you call them (even if you're like me and hate letting them touch the boxes... half the time I don't let them, I'm very particular about who I trust with them (one chance to prove yourself to me, if you screw it up and try coming back too bad for you) it's sad that I'm on a first name basis with half of the Dell support techs in the state) but yeah... it's still ENORMOUSLY better than compaq/hp and IBM put together (and I'll not even get into my problems with sony). Dunno where I'm going with this really, maybe trying to say that they're the best you can get from a big OEM? Probably that, yeah.
Both cards actually support 2048x1536. Dell just didn't have a screen that did this on a laptop before now. It's a new product, give them time. =)
Or have Dells always been this porky?
Yes. However the quality of the machine and the quality of the support make up for this in my mind. Dell's much more willing to talk to me when I have questions about the machine than Sony was about my Vaio....
do you at least get a Windows XP CD?
Yes, you do. Dell's generally speaking been way better about this than most other manufacturers. More than that, if you have to format/reinstall when booting from that CD, you don't have to enter a product key (assuming you're installing on the same/a similar Dell) or even activate XP, it's pre-activated. Be warned this does not mean you can go to your friend Joe's house and randomly install a cd-key-less and pre-activated copy of XP on his whitebox PC. Doesn't work that way, it checks for a particular manufacturer's signature in the bios. Still, remarkably convenient for legit reinstalls.
The powerbooks (with the exception of the 15" model that specifically uses "titanium" in the product name) have an anodized aluminum alloy case rather than titanium. Rather irritating that... it's what kept me from buying one of the 12.1" ones. Disappointing as hell.
;-) (the special features of the 8500 are pretty cool, but it doesn't have the option for a second drive which is one of the things I like best about my 8200)
I guess I'll just have to live with my 2.2Ghz inspiron 8200
I wonder how many previous owners these drives had? If so, I wonder if they're using some sort of low level disk analysis software like the FBI does that can effectively peel back layers of data that were on there in the past. Theoretically anything that has previously been on the drive should be recoverable through such methods.
I'm going to have to agree with you... the best looking thing in our server bank is (unfortunately) a Dell 6550 rackmount. The darkly shiny metal grill is complimented by the luminescent blue Dell logo in the center.It's a Quad Xeon 2.4Ghz deal with 16GB of main memory... one of our fastest machines... but also the smallest. I've been thinking I need to add at least a few random blue leds around the edges or something... not gonna happen though, my boss has a good friend who knows nothing about computers but thinks that even the one blue light looks terribly tacky.... and my boss listens to her of course....damn it...oh well, just venting I suppose
You know, I hear this complaint a lot... that FFVII for the PC doesn't run on win2k correctly or only runs in software mode or whatever... I've not had this experience...it runs on my win2k machine with a Geforce4 Ti card just splendidly..hardware mode and all (it also works under XP too on the same machine) . Wish I knew what I did to make it work, don't think that I did anything. hmmmm, dang
You're either misinformed or purposefully bending the truth. WordPerfect has been the standard for word processing under Windows in many areas of the "real world." Legal documents for example usually must be in WordPerfect format or on paper in order to even be looked at by most lawyers. The same is true of almost all financial documents and even little things like memos in the upper levels of management at many fortune 500 companies.
Microsoft has put a lot of money into funding schools (especially smallish schools) under the condition that they'll offer classes primarily requiring MS Word for their document format. I used to be the Assistant I.T. Manager for one of those small schools and I was the one who constantly got harassed by MS salespeople making such offers. (It should be noted that the school folded under the pressure of MS's marketing less than three weeks after I left, and I really can't wholly blame them. They needed the funding badly.)
MS has been trying for years to make Word the de facto standard for Word processing, especially in younger people. That you say what you did the way they did means that they're slowly succeeding... damn it.
it's because the government leases the airwaves to the companies
... a naturally occurring phenomenon...
Okay, so the question is now "How the hell does ANY government think it has the right to claim ownership of the airwaves?"
Your first reaction might be "they apparently claim ownership of water too and I don't see you complaining about that". The thing about that is... they don't claim to own the water, they do however claim to own the pumps and pipes by which that water is brought to your house... In that case you're paying for a service. In the case of airwaves they don't own even the means by which airwaves are transported to you (except in certain special cases)... grr.
and we'll replace it with.....bash! bwahahahaha
Taco, did you post this just to see if we could /. MSNBC? See now THAT would be freaking hilarious....
And in fact did any of you bother reading the whole thing or did you immediately begin attacking as soon as you saw the statement "Is Linux Dead?".
Just so you'll know, I run Linux on all of my desktop and server machines. I consider myself an opponent of Microsoft. But you guys really really need to bother going to read the article before you jump to conclusions. In fact it never once says anything bad about Linux directly. The whole article seems to be saying "ha ha we own the desktop so there!" in a very childish tone. They don't really bash Linux at all... On the other hand they do use phraseology like "the so-called 'open-source' movement" and statements about removing the burden of paying for software that would lead the unwitting to believe that they were...
Anyway, read before you bitch please? (especially whoever decided this story needed to be on the front page....)
I had a friend who worked for Microsoft. (I say friend, but he was really an aquaintence who I didn't get along with at all) Anyway, in one of the only sane, agreeable conversations we ever had he discussed his exit interview at MS in which he was shown a copy of his original contract which required him to sign a contract in the exit interview which disallowed any passing along of any knowledge or programming experience gained while employed at MS. It didn't say "forget this or we'll beat it out of your head," but it said that anything he'd learned or learned to use at his MS job... well, it said he'd be prosecuted for IP violations if he were caught using it elsewhere... true story. Sucks to be him too now because although he has 6 years of experience at MS no one will hire him.
"Your current (Unknown) operating system is not supported by Intertainer. Intertainer currently supports Windows 98, 2000, Me, and XP. Please return to Intertainer using one of those operating systems."
.....the hell?!? Even windows media files can be played under Linux/BSD/OSX/etc... In fact I don't know of any movie format that can't (although some of them suck ass to set up). I wonder which manager made this decision and how much money he's getting from the MPAA who's in turn getting money from MS who's in turn getting money from the MPAA, etc. (...windows and DRM....hurray for the future)... I think I'm gonna become a hermit.
I still wonder why people think that Intellectual Property is what drives people to innovate when that simply isn't the case. People driven by the need to make money (greed) don't want to innovate. Innovating is expensive. They want to produce the cheapest things that already exist at as poor of a quality level as the market will bear and they want to sell it at the highest possible price. "Why?" you may ask. It's simple, you make more money that way with the least amount of work. That's what it all comes down to.
;-) ), and yet Linux has grown past the 10 year mark. This is true of the music industry too of course. The real artists out there didn't get into music for the money for the most part. Those who do often shortly fall by the wayside... in fact I'd challenge any of you to find one band that started more than 8 years ago completely for the money involved that still exists today.
The real innovators out there are the ones who create just because they see that something is needed or wanted or even just have a drive to create things. Take Linus Torvalds's work on the Linux operating system. He was not driven by the need to make money (or if he was he failed miserably and doesn't wanna tell anyone about it -- sorry Linus
Ah well, now I suppose I will be labeled a communist for my stern disapproval of the corrupt and greed-driven practices of many modern capitalists. Damn.
Dunno if you've tried this or not, but it could help. I have a similar laptop, and if you compile the kernel with the correct options set (and use the right software for controlling the power management whatnot) you can get all of those things working. ACPI (to a point of course),IEEE-1394 (firewire), IrDA, and even your video problem if you use the right options in the XF86Config file
PLEASE NOTE!!!
I have just recieved a reply from Computer Associates and this is not, I repeat NOT the same as Win32/Klez.H (klez.h@mm). I have been informed that CA will look into my findings. (I'm mailing them a bios chip wiped by the thing tomorrow afternoon)
I am the network administrator for the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, recently we were assaulted by no less than 5 variants of the klez worm. Klez.C,E,F,G, and H... WATCH OUT FOR Klez.H!!! It is stinking creepy smart! Not only does it play the normal irritating klez crack games with your email system, it also knows how to delete your antivirus software (I've observed it doing this to Norton, McAfee, and InoculateIT), but worst of all, given time it actually knows how to write into motherboard and video card bios space on reboot with win9x! (it does this even if the stupid "boot virus protection" is enabled in the bios and bios flashability is TURNED OFF! This is NOT a joke or a prank, this thing is freaking dangerous. I've already sent emails to Computer Associates, Norton, and McAfee... be careful people, be bloody careful