Indeed, the Mazda 3s were what I was alluding to when I mentioned that they did show up early in some compact/sub-compacts. I think Mazda was actually the first to ship an aux-in on a car.
While manufacturers have really jumped on it this year, you can still roll the dice on whether or not it's optional or standard. To be fair, my 25% number is a bit misleading; it's probably a reasonable estimate of the number of vehicle models but not the number of actual cars sold. For example, the low-range Civic and Element lack it, and the S2000 and Accord lack it altogether, so taken as a number of models offered the 25% is accurate. However the number of Fits, upper-range Civics and Elements, and Honda Odyssey-based vehicles probably means that a fair amount more than 25% of 2008 Hondas rolling around have an Aux-in.
The GP mentioned his Cobalt sporting one; they were added to most Chevy cars in 2008, but the trucks (Chevy sells more Silverados than all their cars put together) still lack it.
Nevertheless, both "new" and "unusual" can occupy the same space. If the key part required for using an iPhone in this manner is only available on some models made in the past year, it's fairly unusual in the realm of cars.
No, they really aren't. Really. Your claim MIGHT work if we're talking 2008 and 2009 models, but 5 years ago? Get real. Go read my reply above; they did show up in some cars - mostly entry-level subcompacts because they're a cheap addition to the car and an easy way to target the younger buyer who is often looking at them. They have started to expand to upper range vehicles as model lines get refreshed, but it's still a bit of a crapshoot.
For example, the Honda Fit has had it as standard since its late 2007 intro as a 2008 model, while the Civic has it standard on all but the lowest-tier car; it wasn't added to the Civic until the 2007 or 2008 model. The Accord does not have it at all, despite being a brand new for 2008 model. The Honda S2000 lacks it (since it hasn't been functionally updated beyond an engine swap in almost a decade). The Element only has it available on the premium trim models, and the SUV/Minivan line has only had it since 2008. The Ridgeline truck still has it listed as optional.
Follow on over to Toyota and it's the same basic story: The Low range Yaris had it since mid/late-2006, but the Corolla only got it starting with 2008 models, ditto for the Matrix. Camry got it, IIRC, partway through 2007 but it may also have been a 2008 feature. It's still optional on the Prius. I won't delve into the myriad Toyota SUV line-up, but 2008 or "optional since 2008" appears to be the standard line.
Ford added it to the Focus for the 2008 model; ditto for basically all of their "Sync"-equipped cars, The Fusion picked it up in 2007 as an option, the Taurus picked it up in 2008 as did most of the rest of the Ford auto line. Outside of the entry-level trucks/SUVs and Fleet products, I think it's now present on all Fords, but again only on 2008 and in some cases not until 2009 models.
The basic statement remains true. If you want to seriously dig up "Most cars" made in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, or even 2007 with an Aux-in jack, please, prove me wrong. You can still walk into a dealership and buy a brand new car without one, and it's only been within the last year and a half that it's been anything more than a novelty used to push compacts and sub-compacts . Welcome to the future, indeed.
The Radeon 9250 is frequently available in that price range in passively-cooled versions. The 9250 is, IIRC, a rebrand or slight tweak of the 8500 and is a DX8-series card according to Wiki.
Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, or similar sites often have benchmark breakdowns for even older/budget models still available in their archives, and would probably be the best place to locate approximate comparisons across the range for 3D purposes. As far as video playback is concerned, your original thread said it all: anything with dedicated VRAM should do the trick.
It isn't difficult to grasp, not at all. My intention was to illustrate how asinine it is to refer to XM/Sirius hardware as "proprietary" when there are multiple companies who have produced hundreds of XM/Sirius-capable equipment.
Regarding disabling an app: there's a conclusion that most people have reached, but it's not conclusive whether or not it can really be disabled, and the most Apple can do is remove an app from easy installation for the majority of users, thereby allowing it to wither on the vine? Oh, well that's settled, then. I'm not ignorant enough to think that it would ever be an issue with something as non-controversial as an audio streaming app; again, I used it to illustrate the ridiculousness of the submitter's rants about proprietary satellite radio hardware while contrasting it with the iPhone.
No, they are still unusual. You do tend to find them more on low-rung economy cars because it's cheap to add and an easy way to appeal to younger drivers. In the car market as a whole, though, not even 25% of current models sport aux-in. That would qualify as unusual in my book.
XM/Sirius' stock is trading in the trash because they have over $1 billion in debt that needs to be refinanced next year and there are substantial fears that they won't be able to obtain such financing in the current market. If they are unable to obtain the financing they need, then the stock will be worthless. It's a pretty easy explanation.
The summary indicates that the submitter has no idea about satellite radio. I don't have one, nor have I ever had one, but even I can see through the faults in his explanation. Listening in a building does invoke the terrestrial rebroadcast, yes, but only a tiny fraction of satellite radios are portable. The overwhelming number of units are permanently installed in cars.
"Proprietary hardware?" Seriously? Satellite radio gear is manufactured by Alpine, Kenwood, Sony, Pioneer, and most of the smaller car audio names and is available as OEM equipment from nearly every car manufacturer. The iPhone is, near as I can tell, available from one vendor. If subby is perhaps using the words "proprietary hardware" to refer to the encrypted stream that is beamed from XM/Sirius, I might point out that the iPhone suffers from similar problems; please tell me how to use an iPhone with Verizon, or for that matter, how I keep Apple from remotely disabling FStream if they decide to do so.
What does XM/Sirius have to offer? For one, clean integration in your car. Car interface for an iPhone involves either a crappy little FM transmitter that will inevitably result in crackly, washed out audio on any channel or hardware-specific add-ons that work with some models of stereo but not others. If you're talking about an OEM XM/Sirius-capable radio in a recent model car, getting satellite radio is as trivial as calling a phone number. If you're talking about a car that lacks XM/Sirius hardware, then we're talking about installing new gear, which is essentially the same level of cost outlay and difficulty as adding iPhone playback. There are a few cars/aftermarket car stereos that have aux-in jacks, but those are pretty unusual. I would imagine that the ease of use in finding a radio station is probably lower on, you know, a radio than on some device that needs to be plugged into my car and have special software started up before I can browse for my preferred station.
I won't even get into the comparison between the $30 data plan on an iPhone (in addition to the standard voice plan) and the $6.99 a la carte pricing on XM/Sirius (for those who aren't interested in many of the stations).
Simply put, XM/Sirius isn't a "pay for bandwidth" service any more than Cable TV is. By the article's logic, the fact that I could go hook up my computer to my TV and use YouTube and Hulu and Netflix instant play means that the cable company is trying to sell me nothing more than bandwidth (over which similar shows tend to flow). It couldn't be further from the truth. XM/Sirius made some fundamentally, seriously bad business mistakes, starting with the fact that they didn't pool their resources and launch one company in the beginning. Launching (ultimately) redundant satellites, installing (ultimately) redundant terrestrial rebroadcasting towers, bidding against each other for radio "talent," etc. didn't come cheap, and much of it could have been avoided if one company launched in the beginning. On top of that, they forced potential subscribers to sit on the sideline until they figured out who was going to "win." Now, add in the fact that a huge amount of their debt is coming due at possibly one of the worst times to try to deal with it, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
But seriously, don't try to tell me that there's no good reason to use a $7/month radio service when a $30/month iPhone is just as good if you don't even grasp why someone might choose one over the other.
Just a heads up: the PCI 6200 has some known problems with video playback. They were all driver-related, but as far as I know, NVidia never fixed them because the 6200 was always a fairly low volume unit and has now been dropped altogether.
Google "GeForce 6200 video won't play" or something similar and you'll see the number of forum threads and posts where people complain about how this version of the drivers works but not this version and so on.
The solution that's usually thrown about: disable hardware acceleration.
Then you owe it to yourself to pick this up. The graphics are absolutely phenomenal; it's literally like playing an HD cartoon. All of the tweaks to update the game have resulted in a massively improved Street Fighter that still retains all of the fun of the old versions. Online play is phenomenally good; I see a tiny bit of stutter at the beginning of a match, and outside of that I might as well be placing my quarter next to the TV to signal that I've got next.
If you ever think you and your friends might want to sit down and play a few games of SF for old times' sake, then you should have this version. It's just that well done, and the price is very reasonable.
Just beware the online community: if you think you're good at Street Fighter, there are some people on there who will quickly set you right.
Measles has been "eliminated" in the US since 2002; that is, indigenous measles has been eliminated. Outbreaks have occurred since then due to imported strains and poor vaccination practices. People can and do routinely encounter these diseases overseas and bring them back. Unless we pull of a worldwide elimination a la smallpox or prevent people from traveling, the fact that measles doesn't exist in our part of the world doesn't mean we're safe from it.
Mumps can and does cause both sterility and hearing loss. Those results are rare, admittedly, but they do exist.
Both of the diseases are far, far more likely to cause bad outcomes for adults than children. This is one of the big reasons why we vaccinate - the herd effect helps protect adults whose natural or vaccine-provided immunity has faded.
Why not give them out one at a time? That seems obvious - get the patient in and take care of everything at once. Further, wouldn't a one-at-a-time solution eliminate the economy of scale discount and lend MORE credence to your "multi-billion dollar business" scheme?
It is completely legal in the US to draft a contract that requires each party to submit to binding arbitration.
There have been cases where such a term was found unconscionable because the expenses for the arbitration itself were substantially higher than the price of the product at issue (it was a Gateway PC in the case I remember). Still, a term about binding arbitration is generally considered pretty solid.
American courts, just the same as English, don't look kindly on companies enforcing illegal contractual clauses. Whether or not it's worth the money to take such a contract to court is another issue entirely. I certainly wouldn't fight AT&T over a $5 monthly difference in the bill when I'm going to need to lay out a few thousand to an attorney just to get the process started.
Are you referring to the Nintendo DS, which still supports WEP only (as far as I know)?
The Wii has supported WPA from the get-go. The Nintendo Wifi USB Connection (now discontinued), supported WEP for the DS because the DS supports WEP only. Many sites recommended it as a cheap and easy way to activate and deactivate a quick wifi network for your DS without stepping the whole network down to WEP (although I'm unable to tell if it uses WPA for Wii-only communications when using the default Nintendo application).
As it is, though, the Wii is plenty happy to connect to a WPA or WPA2 network.
As for better than a hard drive, I'd imagine that simply fixing the firmware to allow for "merging" the internal flash and a simple 4GB SD card would work just fine.
I downloaded the demo on XBox Live a few weeks back. It was okay, I guess, but judged purely on the demo I'd say the 5/10 score was fair. It was a fairly mediocre third-person shooter with Viking Space Marines and cinematics so melodramatic that I was embarrassed to have them play when someone else was in the room.
I heard so much buzz about this game in the months/years leading up to its publication. Can someone more knowledgeable about some of the history help me understand this? Was it simply based on Silicon Knights' good name? Did the game undergo a substantial change somewhere along the way that removed something everyone was excited about?
No I don't feel ridiculous saying that Toyota is greener because they don't sell as many SUVs. SUV development costs are spectacularly low when you're talking about the usual truck-and-close-up-the-bed design (a la the Sequoia, 4Runner, Tahoe, etc.). If Toyota feels its worthwhile to satisfy the big-n-ridiculous market niche while still cranking through 10x as many Corollas, Yarises, Camrys, and Priuses, then YES, they are greener. Your rationalization that Toyota is worse because they don't sell as many trucks is ridiculous.
The USA is not an urban land, no, but its people are. Per the 2000 census, 80% of America lives in urban areas, 20% in rural. It is not, I repeat, NOT, a land of people needing pickup trucks (I thought we were talking about SUVs?). If you want further proof, go take a look at the current sales figures for trucks and SUVs from any manufacturer. Put simply, Americans have a strong "bigger is better" mindset and we focused for a long time on our victory fleet of trucks and SUVs that primarily hauled air. As soon as the fuel price put the hurt on people, a large number backed off of their desire for big trucks and SUVs. If we truly needed trucks, we would be reordering our finances to afford them. As it is, trucks and SUVs are languishing on lots.
We are not an agrarian society; we have not been for decades. There are farmers, sure, but the vast majority of light-duty truck sales go to suburbanites and urban dwellers who do nothing that requires a truck or SUV. Put simply, improving the efficiency of SUVs is great, but putting people in a car better suited to their needs is much better. You're right that a hybrid Tahoe is superior to a Sequioa, but a minivan or sedan from either manufacturer is an even better choice. Going from 15 to 16 mpg is great, but it ignores the fact that huge swaths of America don't need the 15 or 16 mpg car, they just wanted a big car because it was big.
And that is where GM takes the huge hit on "green"-ness as compared to Toyota (and definitely as compared to Honda). Are the Sequoia or FJ Cruiser efficient vehicles? Hell no; they're every bit as ridiculous as the Escalade or Suburban. Far more ridiculous, though, are the number of people buying five-seat Tahoes or Trailblazers when a Camry or Malibu would suffice. And there is where GM gets nailed - they're the "truck" company. They're the one cranking through ten Tahoes for every Sequoia Toyota sells, while Toyota is balancing out their sales with proper cars that actually get decent mileage.
The Avalanche is a 4 door P/U much like a 4-door Tundra, only its bed can convert from a 4-door P/U to one with a full-size bed and no rear seating whereas the Tundra's cannot. Do you really consider it an SUV?
Chevrolet does. It's under the SUV section on their webpage, and their advertising campaign bills it as an "SUV that can turn into a truck." Especially given the diminutive size of the cargo box when the midgate isn't collapsed, I'd say it's a fair description. I'll also point out that in my desire to avoid simply racking up GM badge-swapped cars, I forgot the GMC Acadia and it's Buick/Saturn brothers and the Hummer H3, which is the only GM SUV based on the Colorado/Canyon platform.
The Escalade ESV is an Escalade, of course, just with an extra row of seating, not a different SUV. Same with the Suburban -- it's a Tahoe with different name and additional row of seats but 99% same parts.
The Tahoe with a third row of seats is not a Suburban. It's called the Tahoe with the optional third row of seats. The Suburban is a full 18 inches longer (220 vs. 202 in.) than the Tahoe, weighs anywhere from 350 to 1000 pounds more (it's available in a 3/4 ton capacity version), and is built on it's own platform. Of course many parts are shared; GM would be stupid not to reuse similar engine, transmission, and suspension parts as well as interior knobs and the like. The ESV and Escalade, though, are functionally different SUVs on different platforms; it is not merely an extra row of seats.
I did leave out the FJ Cruiser. Forgot that little guy, ridiculous and wasteful as it is.
All but two of the 9 Toyota SUVs listed above were introduced afterwards, nearly every new model being the new largest in line-up.
Not even close. I'm assuming the two you're referring to are the old familiar Toyota SUVs, the Landcruiser and 4Runner. The Rav4 was introduced for the '96 model year in the US (I don't know about the Japanese model). The Lexus LX450 was also introduced in 1996. Since we're going to play games based on the Japanese launch of the Prius in '97 and not the US/World launch in 2001, I'll include Japanese models as well. The Lexus RX300 was first sold as a 1999 model in March of '98, but it was sold in 1997 as the Toyota Harrier in Japan. So that's actually five out of nine, according to your standards.
The Highlander shares the RX's Camry-based platform, but it's functionally different enough that I'd agree it's a different SUV; it didn't exist until 2001. Ditto for the Sequoia, which was introduced as a US-only model in 2000. The GX is based on the 4Runner platform, but is again unique enough to differentiate it and was introduced in 2002 as an '03 model. The FJ Cruiser, if we want to get technical, is decades old in that it was the reincarnation of the old Jeep-like Landcruiser FJ40, but I'd fully concede that it was reintroduced and is thus a new model.
I'm not sure what you mean by "largest in line-up." The Landcruiser/LX was the biggest SUV Toyota makes and was there before any of the others (in Landcruiser form). Most of the new models slotted in below it. The Sequoia is physically larger than the Landccruiser, but it's the only one of the 9 models that has that designation.
If you're going to try to claim that they're the largest in their market class, you're going to have to be more specific; manufacturers essentially "invent" those classes in the light-duty truck category. The Highlander is smaller than the Explorer, as is the 4Runner. The Rav4 is shorter than an Escape in its Short Wheel base form, slightly longer in long wheels base; even the long wheel base model is shorter than an Equinox.
In contrast, almost every one of the GM SUVs (or models of different name but similar size they replaced) above has existed for 2-5 decades -- they were low-volume work trucks for special purposes such as towing boats and operating in areas with poor roads that somehow got taken up by soccer
I'll assume you're referring to the American line-up. Toyota has five SUVs and Lexus has three (Rav4, Highlander, 4Runner, Sequoia, and Landcruiser for Toyota, Lexus has the RX, GX, and LX models). So we're grouping luxo-divisions in, no?
Chevrolet has the Avalanche, Equinox, Suburban, Tahoe, and Trailblazer. Grouped with Cadillac, who has three SUVs (SRX, Escalade, and Escalade ESV which is based on the suburban rather than Tahoe). I won't make it unfair by including GM's other lines...
BUT! Chevrolet sells larger quantities of trucks/SUVs with cars as an afterthought. Toyota is very much the opposite. Camry is consistently the best-selling sedan, the Corolla gets nearly Prius-level economy, the Prius is the best-selling hybrid, period. The hybrid Camry, unlike the barely-hybrid Malibu, actually gets a decent fuel economy boost.
The Tundra has mileage that's roughly comparable to the competition. F-150 (5.4L) 13/17. Silverado (5.3L) 15/20 Ram (5.7L) 13/19 Tundra (5.7L) 14/18
Toyota isn't all roses, but we'd be doing a lot better if every manufacturer sold their mix of product.
As I said before, you're more than welcome to crucify VIA for providing terrible drivers. I've said nothing, one way or the other about that.
Except for the part in the paragraph before where you said "'software' may be the drivers provided by the hardware manufacturer, but that's a separate topic entirely, and Microsoft i largely to blame for that, as well."
I'm not really sure HOW you blame Microsoft for Via's early KT133 and KT266 drivers. In that era, the concept of "Microsoft tested" on Via drivers was essentially non-existent, so there wasn't even that to point at. Via pushed out a new version every month to try and fix the problems from before, and they were never certified, tested, what-have-you. You may argue that it merely demonstrates the dangers of closed-source drivers (and you'd have a reasonable argument there), but drivers for a chipset are as much a "part" of the hardware as the ICs; without Via's software, the chipset didn't work, and Via's software was utter trash.
1,000 PC PSUs by now, and I've never yet seen one that would signal POWER GOOD, yet provide voltages substantially out-of-spec.
I've seen a PSU delivering apparently normal power inputs all of a sudden load so much into the system that CD-ROM trays opened up and shot sparks. Granted, it's just as anecdotal - probably more so - than your example, but it's every bit as true. I have replaced PSUs in the past and seen stability increase tenfold on a system. It's hard to imagine anything other than wild power fluctuations being responsible there.
PSUs have voltage regulators in them, and control circuitry to ensure that the power levels are good, and to signal that information to the motherboard.
They're also assembled at absolute cut-rate prices of often shoddy equipment. See above.
Look, clearly nothing will convince you that instability on PCs is caused by anything other than Windows (or perhaps drivers written by third parties for Windows). That belief flies in the face of many people's experience with decent hardware under Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. If you let me run a KT266 Via system on Windows today, I probably wouldn't worry too much - the drivers are at their stable point by now and most of the bugs have been fixed. I suspect that's what you're seeing when you reference similar stability under Linux; two years after the release, a lot of the common bugs have been fixed and workarounds are present. As mentioned earlier, if you're running ancient kernels on modern or semi-modern hardware you probably aren't using any particularly advanced features anyway, so it's unlikely you'll run into the issues.
But that's fine. I'll agree to disagree, because neither of us is going to change the other's mind. To Via's credit (SiS gets no credit for anything), they were instrumental in the rise of the Athlon and the drop in processor prices that we see today. There was a point where the only chipsets worth a damn for AMD chips were Via products, and they were often the first ones to market with some features in the socketed Athlon/AthlonXP era. They were bad, yes, but better than paying 2.5x as much for comparable Intel kit, so we put up with it. But they burned a whole lot of people with lousy software (and a few hardware issues that were worked around in software) before they finally sorted out all of their problems, and their OEMs burned plenty more with cheap construction and design flaws that probably got associated with Via's chipsets along the way.
If you want to point to Windows and assert "all problems start there," I'm not going to stop you. I will point out, though, that all over the internet there are people running NForce or Intel chipset-equipped boards who see the same "Reboot when the power goes out" (or the next "Security update" hits) stability with Windows 2000 or XP. Of those people, many will answer the word "Via" or "SiS" with a string of curses and outright disdain.
Okay, so PC Hardware is never broken? Cheap-ass power supplies that don't actually deliver 12V, caps with bad fluid, or shoddy connectors don't happen? I mean, at a basic point, you're essentially asserting that PC hardware doesn't break. Clearly, because Linux, FreeBSD, etc. are capable of running on "any system," even one where voltage levels are below the required specs or PCI buses don't actually work according to spec.
There are three levels to flawed hardware. One is the "fundamental flaws," and you're right, they're not as common as some would have you believe. I can only think of a few off the top of my head: Via had an issue with PCI buses on their systems that basically dropped data when under heavy load. ALi had a problem with early AGP implementations where the voltage was actually well below the maximum required by the AGP spec, thereby causing crashes with some video cards. I've seen mainboards where USB sound "cards" were drawing power on the same bus that was supposed to be connected to front USB ports - if more than two bus-powered devices were connected, the sound card didn't work correctly. That strikes me as a fundamental flaw, although admittedly one caused by the mainboard manufacturer and not the chipset manufacturer. I'm surprised that given the number of design flaws in any field you believe that the PC mainboard industry is exempt from this issue.
The second level to flawed hardware is the driver problems. You've got new systems running older versions of Linux. Congrats. I'd first wonder if you were trying to use anything more advanced than network support on those systems, but I'll leave that for another discussion. Can I recompile the kernel with whatever slap-dash, shoddy binary blob driver I want and expect your systems to run correctly? That's the problem Via continually plagued the world with on its chipsets - I don't doubt that most of them, hardware-wise, were as decent as any other randomly selected chipset. Their drivers were simply awful, though. If you caught them a year and a half after release, yeah, they were probably okay. When you first got a KTxxx, you could end up with something that worked fine or you could end up cursing the day you were born. You don't need OS-level workaround to fix a problem, just a halfway decent driver. On-board sound drivers: garbage. Conflicts with sound cards: guaranteed. Issues when PCI slots four or five were filled: common. None of them were likely hardware-level problems, but they were just as bad. At a certain level, they were fundamental flaws in that chipset drivers are as much a part of the system as the chipset itself. I wouldn't buy Via stuff at all after NVidia filled the hole in the AMD market (and Intel always had pretty solid stuff), but it doesn't mean I didn't have to troubleshoot it for others. If you've got older versions of Slack that aren't attempting to use ATA-133 (or hell, ATA-33 at that age), sound at any level other than SB emulation, or USB anything, I'm not surprised you aren't seeing problems (note: I'm assuming here that you're using whatever version of the kernel shipped with Slack 3.3). Those of us who bought or worked on Via boards and tried to use such features, though, were greeted with the Sisyphean task of hoping that Via's latest 4in1 driver would fix whatever bizarre problem they'd introduced last month.
The final level to flawed hardware is the cheap components used by manufacturers who sourced Via or Sis or ALi chipsets. It did no good to save a couple of bucks on the chipset if you didn't slash costs elsewhere to compensate. You ended up with sub-par equipment all around. Perhaps Via products would have a better rep if they weren't constantly relegated to the $60 mainboard (although the early days of the Athlon and the boards from quality manufacturers say otherwise). As it was, though, cheap chipsets went hand-in-hand with lousy mainboard build quality and quality control. Not Via's fault, necessarily, but it wasn't making me any happier with their product.
I'd close by asking what Windows update is for if Microsoft refuses to acknowledge Windows has any bugs, ever.
Wow, way to miss the point. I've worked with plenty of Intel-based systems and in the post-Windows 2000 world, they're generally every bit as stable. Say what you will about security and usability (there's plenty to complain about there), but I don't hear a lot of people complaining about stability much anymore. That simply wasn't the case with Via's 4in1 trash or SiS's, well, anything they built.
You're right in that Linux sometimes survived on the same box; after garbage chipsets had been on the market long enough, the kernel developers had figured out which features would and wouldn't cause problems. Kudos to the developers for having the time and drive to write proper drivers when Via never could be bothered to do so in the first place. Windows did, at points, have patches to fix issues with Cyrix processors (for example), but it's a little ridiculous to expect Microsoft to go write workarounds for sub-par gear. Likewise, it was a little unfair to blame them for what was really the fault of uber-trash drivers and physically faulty hardware.
My guess is occupying the same sub-par penny-pinching section of the market they always did. Save $10, and in exchange you got to deal with chipsets that often had fundamental flaws, known bugs, and drivers that fixed some problems while causing others.
But don't worry, because said chipsets were often located on "high quality" boards that could always be counted on to be constructed in the cheapest manner possible. Bad caps? That's too easy; I want heatsinks that fall off the chipset, voltage problems on PCI slots, and physical layout that looks as though it was designed by a blind man using NASA's English-to-Metric conversion tools.
To this day I am convinced that a large amount of the "Windows Sucks and always crashes" reputation in the post-9x era is due largely to VIA, SIS, and (God help us) Acer Labs (ALi) coupled with the sub-par manufacturers that leaned heavily on these chipsets.
Aerial Wireless was a smaller regional carrier that operated in the Southern US in the mid-to-late 90's. Their whole business plan was based around per second billing and their advertisements were based around various clever "real life" analogies to cell phone companies rounding to the minute. I believe they actually rounded to the 6 second mark, but I figure the effect was pretty much the same.
They were bought out by Voicestream in 2001 or 2002; Voicestream subsequently changed its name to T-Mobile. I don't think it was a case of financial problems that led to the buyout - Voicestream was just one of the rapidly-growing cell companies at the time that went around making big offers on small, local providers as part of their expansion plan.
It's been done, or at least proposed in several places. The CCDs in video cameras pick up IR light and display it. (That's a security camera, but video cameras work on the same principle; imagine a ring of those surrounding the screen.)
Of course, a simple filter over the lens would fix that problem instantly, which is probably why no one has bothered with IR lights in theaters as far as I know.
This is a worthwhile question. Currently, movie and videogame ratings are undertaken voluntarily; the ESRB rates games and the MPAA rates movies. You are not required to submit your game or movie for rating. Game stores and movie theaters are free not to carry an unrated game or movie, but that's a business choice.
This law (and others like it) FORCE you to submit for rating, no matter what. It is compelled speech. Think of it as the Free speech analogy to "Freedom from religion."
If you're further curious, read the NYCLU letter to NY Governor Patterson. They do an excellent job of explaining not only lay arguments for why this is a bad idea (major works of literature are equally violent) but point to several court cases that support their argument.
How is this not like the VChip? The FCC gets far broader powers because they're regulating the public airwaves. These are, in theory at least, airwaves that you and I own, so restrictions on vulgarity, obscenity, etc. can be far stricter there than in other circles. A game console is not utilizing the public RF spectrum, so obscenity claims get much tougher to make.
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How many people - as a percentage of total cars on the road - have swapped aftermarket head units from the last couple of years into their cars?
Indeed, the Mazda 3s were what I was alluding to when I mentioned that they did show up early in some compact/sub-compacts. I think Mazda was actually the first to ship an aux-in on a car.
My comment where I sample some of the current line-up.
While manufacturers have really jumped on it this year, you can still roll the dice on whether or not it's optional or standard. To be fair, my 25% number is a bit misleading; it's probably a reasonable estimate of the number of vehicle models but not the number of actual cars sold. For example, the low-range Civic and Element lack it, and the S2000 and Accord lack it altogether, so taken as a number of models offered the 25% is accurate. However the number of Fits, upper-range Civics and Elements, and Honda Odyssey-based vehicles probably means that a fair amount more than 25% of 2008 Hondas rolling around have an Aux-in.
The GP mentioned his Cobalt sporting one; they were added to most Chevy cars in 2008, but the trucks (Chevy sells more Silverados than all their cars put together) still lack it.
Nevertheless, both "new" and "unusual" can occupy the same space. If the key part required for using an iPhone in this manner is only available on some models made in the past year, it's fairly unusual in the realm of cars.
No, they really aren't. Really. Your claim MIGHT work if we're talking 2008 and 2009 models, but 5 years ago? Get real. Go read my reply above; they did show up in some cars - mostly entry-level subcompacts because they're a cheap addition to the car and an easy way to target the younger buyer who is often looking at them. They have started to expand to upper range vehicles as model lines get refreshed, but it's still a bit of a crapshoot.
For example, the Honda Fit has had it as standard since its late 2007 intro as a 2008 model, while the Civic has it standard on all but the lowest-tier car; it wasn't added to the Civic until the 2007 or 2008 model. The Accord does not have it at all, despite being a brand new for 2008 model. The Honda S2000 lacks it (since it hasn't been functionally updated beyond an engine swap in almost a decade). The Element only has it available on the premium trim models, and the SUV/Minivan line has only had it since 2008. The Ridgeline truck still has it listed as optional.
Follow on over to Toyota and it's the same basic story: The Low range Yaris had it since mid/late-2006, but the Corolla only got it starting with 2008 models, ditto for the Matrix. Camry got it, IIRC, partway through 2007 but it may also have been a 2008 feature. It's still optional on the Prius. I won't delve into the myriad Toyota SUV line-up, but 2008 or "optional since 2008" appears to be the standard line.
Ford added it to the Focus for the 2008 model; ditto for basically all of their "Sync"-equipped cars, The Fusion picked it up in 2007 as an option, the Taurus picked it up in 2008 as did most of the rest of the Ford auto line. Outside of the entry-level trucks/SUVs and Fleet products, I think it's now present on all Fords, but again only on 2008 and in some cases not until 2009 models.
The basic statement remains true. If you want to seriously dig up "Most cars" made in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, or even 2007 with an Aux-in jack, please, prove me wrong. You can still walk into a dealership and buy a brand new car without one, and it's only been within the last year and a half that it's been anything more than a novelty used to push compacts and sub-compacts . Welcome to the future, indeed.
The Radeon 9250 is frequently available in that price range in passively-cooled versions. The 9250 is, IIRC, a rebrand or slight tweak of the 8500 and is a DX8-series card according to Wiki.
Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, or similar sites often have benchmark breakdowns for even older/budget models still available in their archives, and would probably be the best place to locate approximate comparisons across the range for 3D purposes. As far as video playback is concerned, your original thread said it all: anything with dedicated VRAM should do the trick.
It isn't difficult to grasp, not at all. My intention was to illustrate how asinine it is to refer to XM/Sirius hardware as "proprietary" when there are multiple companies who have produced hundreds of XM/Sirius-capable equipment.
Regarding disabling an app: there's a conclusion that most people have reached, but it's not conclusive whether or not it can really be disabled, and the most Apple can do is remove an app from easy installation for the majority of users, thereby allowing it to wither on the vine? Oh, well that's settled, then. I'm not ignorant enough to think that it would ever be an issue with something as non-controversial as an audio streaming app; again, I used it to illustrate the ridiculousness of the submitter's rants about proprietary satellite radio hardware while contrasting it with the iPhone.
No, they are still unusual. You do tend to find them more on low-rung economy cars because it's cheap to add and an easy way to appeal to younger drivers. In the car market as a whole, though, not even 25% of current models sport aux-in. That would qualify as unusual in my book.
XM/Sirius' stock is trading in the trash because they have over $1 billion in debt that needs to be refinanced next year and there are substantial fears that they won't be able to obtain such financing in the current market. If they are unable to obtain the financing they need, then the stock will be worthless. It's a pretty easy explanation.
The summary indicates that the submitter has no idea about satellite radio. I don't have one, nor have I ever had one, but even I can see through the faults in his explanation. Listening in a building does invoke the terrestrial rebroadcast, yes, but only a tiny fraction of satellite radios are portable. The overwhelming number of units are permanently installed in cars.
"Proprietary hardware?" Seriously? Satellite radio gear is manufactured by Alpine, Kenwood, Sony, Pioneer, and most of the smaller car audio names and is available as OEM equipment from nearly every car manufacturer. The iPhone is, near as I can tell, available from one vendor. If subby is perhaps using the words "proprietary hardware" to refer to the encrypted stream that is beamed from XM/Sirius, I might point out that the iPhone suffers from similar problems; please tell me how to use an iPhone with Verizon, or for that matter, how I keep Apple from remotely disabling FStream if they decide to do so.
What does XM/Sirius have to offer? For one, clean integration in your car. Car interface for an iPhone involves either a crappy little FM transmitter that will inevitably result in crackly, washed out audio on any channel or hardware-specific add-ons that work with some models of stereo but not others. If you're talking about an OEM XM/Sirius-capable radio in a recent model car, getting satellite radio is as trivial as calling a phone number. If you're talking about a car that lacks XM/Sirius hardware, then we're talking about installing new gear, which is essentially the same level of cost outlay and difficulty as adding iPhone playback. There are a few cars/aftermarket car stereos that have aux-in jacks, but those are pretty unusual. I would imagine that the ease of use in finding a radio station is probably lower on, you know, a radio than on some device that needs to be plugged into my car and have special software started up before I can browse for my preferred station.
I won't even get into the comparison between the $30 data plan on an iPhone (in addition to the standard voice plan) and the $6.99 a la carte pricing on XM/Sirius (for those who aren't interested in many of the stations).
Simply put, XM/Sirius isn't a "pay for bandwidth" service any more than Cable TV is. By the article's logic, the fact that I could go hook up my computer to my TV and use YouTube and Hulu and Netflix instant play means that the cable company is trying to sell me nothing more than bandwidth (over which similar shows tend to flow). It couldn't be further from the truth. XM/Sirius made some fundamentally, seriously bad business mistakes, starting with the fact that they didn't pool their resources and launch one company in the beginning. Launching (ultimately) redundant satellites, installing (ultimately) redundant terrestrial rebroadcasting towers, bidding against each other for radio "talent," etc. didn't come cheap, and much of it could have been avoided if one company launched in the beginning. On top of that, they forced potential subscribers to sit on the sideline until they figured out who was going to "win." Now, add in the fact that a huge amount of their debt is coming due at possibly one of the worst times to try to deal with it, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
But seriously, don't try to tell me that there's no good reason to use a $7/month radio service when a $30/month iPhone is just as good if you don't even grasp why someone might choose one over the other.
Just a heads up: the PCI 6200 has some known problems with video playback. They were all driver-related, but as far as I know, NVidia never fixed them because the 6200 was always a fairly low volume unit and has now been dropped altogether.
Google "GeForce 6200 video won't play" or something similar and you'll see the number of forum threads and posts where people complain about how this version of the drivers works but not this version and so on.
The solution that's usually thrown about: disable hardware acceleration.
Then you owe it to yourself to pick this up. The graphics are absolutely phenomenal; it's literally like playing an HD cartoon. All of the tweaks to update the game have resulted in a massively improved Street Fighter that still retains all of the fun of the old versions. Online play is phenomenally good; I see a tiny bit of stutter at the beginning of a match, and outside of that I might as well be placing my quarter next to the TV to signal that I've got next.
If you ever think you and your friends might want to sit down and play a few games of SF for old times' sake, then you should have this version. It's just that well done, and the price is very reasonable.
Just beware the online community: if you think you're good at Street Fighter, there are some people on there who will quickly set you right.
To nitpick:
Measles has been "eliminated" in the US since 2002; that is, indigenous measles has been eliminated. Outbreaks have occurred since then due to imported strains and poor vaccination practices. People can and do routinely encounter these diseases overseas and bring them back. Unless we pull of a worldwide elimination a la smallpox or prevent people from traveling, the fact that measles doesn't exist in our part of the world doesn't mean we're safe from it.
Mumps can and does cause both sterility and hearing loss. Those results are rare, admittedly, but they do exist.
Both of the diseases are far, far more likely to cause bad outcomes for adults than children. This is one of the big reasons why we vaccinate - the herd effect helps protect adults whose natural or vaccine-provided immunity has faded.
Why not give them out one at a time? That seems obvious - get the patient in and take care of everything at once. Further, wouldn't a one-at-a-time solution eliminate the economy of scale discount and lend MORE credence to your "multi-billion dollar business" scheme?
It is completely legal in the US to draft a contract that requires each party to submit to binding arbitration.
There have been cases where such a term was found unconscionable because the expenses for the arbitration itself were substantially higher than the price of the product at issue (it was a Gateway PC in the case I remember). Still, a term about binding arbitration is generally considered pretty solid.
American courts, just the same as English, don't look kindly on companies enforcing illegal contractual clauses. Whether or not it's worth the money to take such a contract to court is another issue entirely. I certainly wouldn't fight AT&T over a $5 monthly difference in the bill when I'm going to need to lay out a few thousand to an attorney just to get the process started.
Are you referring to the Nintendo DS, which still supports WEP only (as far as I know)?
The Wii has supported WPA from the get-go. The Nintendo Wifi USB Connection (now discontinued), supported WEP for the DS because the DS supports WEP only. Many sites recommended it as a cheap and easy way to activate and deactivate a quick wifi network for your DS without stepping the whole network down to WEP (although I'm unable to tell if it uses WPA for Wii-only communications when using the default Nintendo application).
As it is, though, the Wii is plenty happy to connect to a WPA or WPA2 network.
As for better than a hard drive, I'd imagine that simply fixing the firmware to allow for "merging" the internal flash and a simple 4GB SD card would work just fine.
I downloaded the demo on XBox Live a few weeks back. It was okay, I guess, but judged purely on the demo I'd say the 5/10 score was fair. It was a fairly mediocre third-person shooter with Viking Space Marines and cinematics so melodramatic that I was embarrassed to have them play when someone else was in the room.
I heard so much buzz about this game in the months/years leading up to its publication. Can someone more knowledgeable about some of the history help me understand this? Was it simply based on Silicon Knights' good name? Did the game undergo a substantial change somewhere along the way that removed something everyone was excited about?
No I don't feel ridiculous saying that Toyota is greener because they don't sell as many SUVs. SUV development costs are spectacularly low when you're talking about the usual truck-and-close-up-the-bed design (a la the Sequoia, 4Runner, Tahoe, etc.). If Toyota feels its worthwhile to satisfy the big-n-ridiculous market niche while still cranking through 10x as many Corollas, Yarises, Camrys, and Priuses, then YES, they are greener. Your rationalization that Toyota is worse because they don't sell as many trucks is ridiculous.
The USA is not an urban land, no, but its people are. Per the 2000 census, 80% of America lives in urban areas, 20% in rural. It is not, I repeat, NOT, a land of people needing pickup trucks (I thought we were talking about SUVs?). If you want further proof, go take a look at the current sales figures for trucks and SUVs from any manufacturer. Put simply, Americans have a strong "bigger is better" mindset and we focused for a long time on our victory fleet of trucks and SUVs that primarily hauled air. As soon as the fuel price put the hurt on people, a large number backed off of their desire for big trucks and SUVs. If we truly needed trucks, we would be reordering our finances to afford them. As it is, trucks and SUVs are languishing on lots.
We are not an agrarian society; we have not been for decades. There are farmers, sure, but the vast majority of light-duty truck sales go to suburbanites and urban dwellers who do nothing that requires a truck or SUV. Put simply, improving the efficiency of SUVs is great, but putting people in a car better suited to their needs is much better. You're right that a hybrid Tahoe is superior to a Sequioa, but a minivan or sedan from either manufacturer is an even better choice. Going from 15 to 16 mpg is great, but it ignores the fact that huge swaths of America don't need the 15 or 16 mpg car, they just wanted a big car because it was big.
And that is where GM takes the huge hit on "green"-ness as compared to Toyota (and definitely as compared to Honda). Are the Sequoia or FJ Cruiser efficient vehicles? Hell no; they're every bit as ridiculous as the Escalade or Suburban. Far more ridiculous, though, are the number of people buying five-seat Tahoes or Trailblazers when a Camry or Malibu would suffice. And there is where GM gets nailed - they're the "truck" company. They're the one cranking through ten Tahoes for every Sequoia Toyota sells, while Toyota is balancing out their sales with proper cars that actually get decent mileage.
The Avalanche is a 4 door P/U much like a 4-door Tundra, only its bed can convert from a 4-door P/U to one with a full-size bed and no rear seating whereas the Tundra's cannot. Do you really consider it an SUV?
Chevrolet does. It's under the SUV section on their webpage, and their advertising campaign bills it as an "SUV that can turn into a truck." Especially given the diminutive size of the cargo box when the midgate isn't collapsed, I'd say it's a fair description. I'll also point out that in my desire to avoid simply racking up GM badge-swapped cars, I forgot the GMC Acadia and it's Buick/Saturn brothers and the Hummer H3, which is the only GM SUV based on the Colorado/Canyon platform.
The Escalade ESV is an Escalade, of course, just with an extra row of seating, not a different SUV. Same with the Suburban -- it's a Tahoe with different name and additional row of seats but 99% same parts.
The Tahoe with a third row of seats is not a Suburban. It's called the Tahoe with the optional third row of seats. The Suburban is a full 18 inches longer (220 vs. 202 in.) than the Tahoe, weighs anywhere from 350 to 1000 pounds more (it's available in a 3/4 ton capacity version), and is built on it's own platform. Of course many parts are shared; GM would be stupid not to reuse similar engine, transmission, and suspension parts as well as interior knobs and the like. The ESV and Escalade, though, are functionally different SUVs on different platforms; it is not merely an extra row of seats.
I did leave out the FJ Cruiser. Forgot that little guy, ridiculous and wasteful as it is.
All but two of the 9 Toyota SUVs listed above were introduced afterwards, nearly every new model being the new largest in line-up.
Not even close. I'm assuming the two you're referring to are the old familiar Toyota SUVs, the Landcruiser and 4Runner. The Rav4 was introduced for the '96 model year in the US (I don't know about the Japanese model). The Lexus LX450 was also introduced in 1996. Since we're going to play games based on the Japanese launch of the Prius in '97 and not the US/World launch in 2001, I'll include Japanese models as well. The Lexus RX300 was first sold as a 1999 model in March of '98, but it was sold in 1997 as the Toyota Harrier in Japan. So that's actually five out of nine, according to your standards.
The Highlander shares the RX's Camry-based platform, but it's functionally different enough that I'd agree it's a different SUV; it didn't exist until 2001. Ditto for the Sequoia, which was introduced as a US-only model in 2000. The GX is based on the 4Runner platform, but is again unique enough to differentiate it and was introduced in 2002 as an '03 model. The FJ Cruiser, if we want to get technical, is decades old in that it was the reincarnation of the old Jeep-like Landcruiser FJ40, but I'd fully concede that it was reintroduced and is thus a new model.
I'm not sure what you mean by "largest in line-up." The Landcruiser/LX was the biggest SUV Toyota makes and was there before any of the others (in Landcruiser form). Most of the new models slotted in below it. The Sequoia is physically larger than the Landccruiser, but it's the only one of the 9 models that has that designation.
If you're going to try to claim that they're the largest in their market class, you're going to have to be more specific; manufacturers essentially "invent" those classes in the light-duty truck category. The Highlander is smaller than the Explorer, as is the 4Runner. The Rav4 is shorter than an Escape in its Short Wheel base form, slightly longer in long wheels base; even the long wheel base model is shorter than an Equinox.
In contrast, almost every one of the GM SUVs (or models of different name but similar size they replaced) above has existed for 2-5 decades -- they were low-volume work trucks for special purposes such as towing boats and operating in areas with poor roads that somehow got taken up by soccer
I'll assume you're referring to the American line-up. Toyota has five SUVs and Lexus has three (Rav4, Highlander, 4Runner, Sequoia, and Landcruiser for Toyota, Lexus has the RX, GX, and LX models). So we're grouping luxo-divisions in, no?
Chevrolet has the Avalanche, Equinox, Suburban, Tahoe, and Trailblazer. Grouped with Cadillac, who has three SUVs (SRX, Escalade, and Escalade ESV which is based on the suburban rather than Tahoe). I won't make it unfair by including GM's other lines...
BUT!
Chevrolet sells larger quantities of trucks/SUVs with cars as an afterthought. Toyota is very much the opposite. Camry is consistently the best-selling sedan, the Corolla gets nearly Prius-level economy, the Prius is the best-selling hybrid, period. The hybrid Camry, unlike the barely-hybrid Malibu, actually gets a decent fuel economy boost.
The Tundra has mileage that's roughly comparable to the competition.
F-150 (5.4L) 13/17.
Silverado (5.3L) 15/20
Ram (5.7L) 13/19
Tundra (5.7L) 14/18
Toyota isn't all roses, but we'd be doing a lot better if every manufacturer sold their mix of product.
As I said before, you're more than welcome to crucify VIA for providing terrible drivers. I've said nothing, one way or the other about that.
Except for the part in the paragraph before where you said "'software' may be the drivers provided by the hardware manufacturer, but that's a separate topic entirely, and Microsoft i largely to blame for that, as well."
I'm not really sure HOW you blame Microsoft for Via's early KT133 and KT266 drivers. In that era, the concept of "Microsoft tested" on Via drivers was essentially non-existent, so there wasn't even that to point at. Via pushed out a new version every month to try and fix the problems from before, and they were never certified, tested, what-have-you. You may argue that it merely demonstrates the dangers of closed-source drivers (and you'd have a reasonable argument there), but drivers for a chipset are as much a "part" of the hardware as the ICs; without Via's software, the chipset didn't work, and Via's software was utter trash.
1,000 PC PSUs by now, and I've never yet seen one that would signal POWER GOOD, yet provide voltages substantially out-of-spec.
I've seen a PSU delivering apparently normal power inputs all of a sudden load so much into the system that CD-ROM trays opened up and shot sparks. Granted, it's just as anecdotal - probably more so - than your example, but it's every bit as true. I have replaced PSUs in the past and seen stability increase tenfold on a system. It's hard to imagine anything other than wild power fluctuations being responsible there.
PSUs have voltage regulators in them, and control circuitry to ensure that the power levels are good, and to signal that information to the motherboard.
They're also assembled at absolute cut-rate prices of often shoddy equipment. See above.
Look, clearly nothing will convince you that instability on PCs is caused by anything other than Windows (or perhaps drivers written by third parties for Windows). That belief flies in the face of many people's experience with decent hardware under Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. If you let me run a KT266 Via system on Windows today, I probably wouldn't worry too much - the drivers are at their stable point by now and most of the bugs have been fixed. I suspect that's what you're seeing when you reference similar stability under Linux; two years after the release, a lot of the common bugs have been fixed and workarounds are present. As mentioned earlier, if you're running ancient kernels on modern or semi-modern hardware you probably aren't using any particularly advanced features anyway, so it's unlikely you'll run into the issues.
But that's fine. I'll agree to disagree, because neither of us is going to change the other's mind. To Via's credit (SiS gets no credit for anything), they were instrumental in the rise of the Athlon and the drop in processor prices that we see today. There was a point where the only chipsets worth a damn for AMD chips were Via products, and they were often the first ones to market with some features in the socketed Athlon/AthlonXP era. They were bad, yes, but better than paying 2.5x as much for comparable Intel kit, so we put up with it. But they burned a whole lot of people with lousy software (and a few hardware issues that were worked around in software) before they finally sorted out all of their problems, and their OEMs burned plenty more with cheap construction and design flaws that probably got associated with Via's chipsets along the way.
If you want to point to Windows and assert "all problems start there," I'm not going to stop you. I will point out, though, that all over the internet there are people running NForce or Intel chipset-equipped boards who see the same "Reboot when the power goes out" (or the next "Security update" hits) stability with Windows 2000 or XP. Of those people, many will answer the word "Via" or "SiS" with a string of curses and outright disdain.
Okay, so PC Hardware is never broken? Cheap-ass power supplies that don't actually deliver 12V, caps with bad fluid, or shoddy connectors don't happen? I mean, at a basic point, you're essentially asserting that PC hardware doesn't break. Clearly, because Linux, FreeBSD, etc. are capable of running on "any system," even one where voltage levels are below the required specs or PCI buses don't actually work according to spec.
There are three levels to flawed hardware. One is the "fundamental flaws," and you're right, they're not as common as some would have you believe. I can only think of a few off the top of my head: Via had an issue with PCI buses on their systems that basically dropped data when under heavy load. ALi had a problem with early AGP implementations where the voltage was actually well below the maximum required by the AGP spec, thereby causing crashes with some video cards. I've seen mainboards where USB sound "cards" were drawing power on the same bus that was supposed to be connected to front USB ports - if more than two bus-powered devices were connected, the sound card didn't work correctly. That strikes me as a fundamental flaw, although admittedly one caused by the mainboard manufacturer and not the chipset manufacturer. I'm surprised that given the number of design flaws in any field you believe that the PC mainboard industry is exempt from this issue.
The second level to flawed hardware is the driver problems. You've got new systems running older versions of Linux. Congrats. I'd first wonder if you were trying to use anything more advanced than network support on those systems, but I'll leave that for another discussion. Can I recompile the kernel with whatever slap-dash, shoddy binary blob driver I want and expect your systems to run correctly? That's the problem Via continually plagued the world with on its chipsets - I don't doubt that most of them, hardware-wise, were as decent as any other randomly selected chipset. Their drivers were simply awful, though. If you caught them a year and a half after release, yeah, they were probably okay. When you first got a KTxxx, you could end up with something that worked fine or you could end up cursing the day you were born. You don't need OS-level workaround to fix a problem, just a halfway decent driver. On-board sound drivers: garbage. Conflicts with sound cards: guaranteed. Issues when PCI slots four or five were filled: common. None of them were likely hardware-level problems, but they were just as bad. At a certain level, they were fundamental flaws in that chipset drivers are as much a part of the system as the chipset itself. I wouldn't buy Via stuff at all after NVidia filled the hole in the AMD market (and Intel always had pretty solid stuff), but it doesn't mean I didn't have to troubleshoot it for others. If you've got older versions of Slack that aren't attempting to use ATA-133 (or hell, ATA-33 at that age), sound at any level other than SB emulation, or USB anything, I'm not surprised you aren't seeing problems (note: I'm assuming here that you're using whatever version of the kernel shipped with Slack 3.3). Those of us who bought or worked on Via boards and tried to use such features, though, were greeted with the Sisyphean task of hoping that Via's latest 4in1 driver would fix whatever bizarre problem they'd introduced last month.
The final level to flawed hardware is the cheap components used by manufacturers who sourced Via or Sis or ALi chipsets. It did no good to save a couple of bucks on the chipset if you didn't slash costs elsewhere to compensate. You ended up with sub-par equipment all around. Perhaps Via products would have a better rep if they weren't constantly relegated to the $60 mainboard (although the early days of the Athlon and the boards from quality manufacturers say otherwise). As it was, though, cheap chipsets went hand-in-hand with lousy mainboard build quality and quality control. Not Via's fault, necessarily, but it wasn't making me any happier with their product.
I'd close by asking what Windows update is for if Microsoft refuses to acknowledge Windows has any bugs, ever.
Acer Labs (ALi) hasn't made PC chipsets in years. Your Acer laptop has nothing to do with ALi stuff.
Wow, way to miss the point. I've worked with plenty of Intel-based systems and in the post-Windows 2000 world, they're generally every bit as stable. Say what you will about security and usability (there's plenty to complain about there), but I don't hear a lot of people complaining about stability much anymore. That simply wasn't the case with Via's 4in1 trash or SiS's, well, anything they built.
You're right in that Linux sometimes survived on the same box; after garbage chipsets had been on the market long enough, the kernel developers had figured out which features would and wouldn't cause problems. Kudos to the developers for having the time and drive to write proper drivers when Via never could be bothered to do so in the first place. Windows did, at points, have patches to fix issues with Cyrix processors (for example), but it's a little ridiculous to expect Microsoft to go write workarounds for sub-par gear. Likewise, it was a little unfair to blame them for what was really the fault of uber-trash drivers and physically faulty hardware.
My guess is occupying the same sub-par penny-pinching section of the market they always did. Save $10, and in exchange you got to deal with chipsets that often had fundamental flaws, known bugs, and drivers that fixed some problems while causing others.
But don't worry, because said chipsets were often located on "high quality" boards that could always be counted on to be constructed in the cheapest manner possible. Bad caps? That's too easy; I want heatsinks that fall off the chipset, voltage problems on PCI slots, and physical layout that looks as though it was designed by a blind man using NASA's English-to-Metric conversion tools.
To this day I am convinced that a large amount of the "Windows Sucks and always crashes" reputation in the post-9x era is due largely to VIA, SIS, and (God help us) Acer Labs (ALi) coupled with the sub-par manufacturers that leaned heavily on these chipsets.
Aerial Wireless was a smaller regional carrier that operated in the Southern US in the mid-to-late 90's. Their whole business plan was based around per second billing and their advertisements were based around various clever "real life" analogies to cell phone companies rounding to the minute. I believe they actually rounded to the 6 second mark, but I figure the effect was pretty much the same.
They were bought out by Voicestream in 2001 or 2002; Voicestream subsequently changed its name to T-Mobile. I don't think it was a case of financial problems that led to the buyout - Voicestream was just one of the rapidly-growing cell companies at the time that went around making big offers on small, local providers as part of their expansion plan.
So, yeah, it can and has been done.
It's been done, or at least proposed in several places. The CCDs in video cameras pick up IR light and display it. (That's a security camera, but video cameras work on the same principle; imagine a ring of those surrounding the screen.)
Of course, a simple filter over the lens would fix that problem instantly, which is probably why no one has bothered with IR lights in theaters as far as I know.
This is a worthwhile question. Currently, movie and videogame ratings are undertaken voluntarily; the ESRB rates games and the MPAA rates movies. You are not required to submit your game or movie for rating. Game stores and movie theaters are free not to carry an unrated game or movie, but that's a business choice.
This law (and others like it) FORCE you to submit for rating, no matter what. It is compelled speech. Think of it as the Free speech analogy to "Freedom from religion."
If you're further curious, read the NYCLU letter to NY Governor Patterson. They do an excellent job of explaining not only lay arguments for why this is a bad idea (major works of literature are equally violent) but point to several court cases that support their argument.
How is this not like the VChip? The FCC gets far broader powers because they're regulating the public airwaves. These are, in theory at least, airwaves that you and I own, so restrictions on vulgarity, obscenity, etc. can be far stricter there than in other circles. A game console is not utilizing the public RF spectrum, so obscenity claims get much tougher to make.