Bullshit. It's just partisan hackery. Nobody cared until it wasn't "their" guy in power.
The EXACT same thing is happening(Who signed the TARP bill? Who bailed out AIG? Who gave funds to bank of America to help buy Lehman brothers?), but suddenly it's horrible, because they've got a D next to their name, whereas it was awesome when they had an R next to their name.
The exact same actions are eliciting a hugely different reaction. All of you can fuck off until you get a consistent ideology.
I think Cthulu is the strongest on immigration and national security. His solution to the immigration problem is to have huge signs filled with non-euclidean geometry, driving all would-be illegal immigrants completely mad. He'd have a similar policy on Iraq.
A modern netbook is more powerful than most notebooks were not long ago. They come with more memory than most vista laptops did not long ago. They come with more hard disk space than desktops came with not long ago.
Most people don't need another computer. If they're supplementing another computer, it's just because they already owned one. That's the case I'm in. My Aspire One is the only internet enabled computer I own, because I lent my network card to someone. That's how useless my main PC is now that I've got a perfectly functional netbook. Incidentally, my netbook has 5 times the HD space and the same amount of memory as my desktop. The CPU is less powerful, but who cares? Once you hit the power of a 1-gig machine, you've got more power than you need to do anything normal anyway.
I've long said the left/right dichotomy is dangerous, and here's why.
I've been called a liberal bastard, and I've been called a conservative bastard. At the end of the day, I'm a HUMAN bastard, and backing all the stupid inconsistent hypocrisy of the left/right dichotomy doesn't do a thing.
So why do deficits matter when Obama is running them up but they're awesome when Bush is doing it? Why are rebate cheques communist when Obama is sending them out but they're awesome when Bush is sending them out? Why am I strange when I'm against the idea no matter who is sending them out?
It's not perfect, but socialized medicine in other countries isn't killing people -- at least, no more than the half-baked semi-socialised, highly regulated medicine in the US.
You guys spend more on healthcare than any country in the world, and it's this waffling that is the cause. Either deregulate medicine, or regulate it entirely. Leaving it in limbo is just driving costs up and driving quality down.
Is 160GB really not enough storage? Is a gigabyte of ram really not enough memory? Is a 1.6GHz multithreading processor really not powerful enough for surfing the web, chatting on IM, and listening to MP3s?
What you get out of a netbook that you don't get out of your solution is the same thing you get for buying a Cavalier instead of a Ferrari: A functional device at a fraction of the cost. The fact that they're inexpensive is why they're taking off, and why they're going to be relatively recession-proof. Even better, they're cheap enough that even if it breaks or gets stolen, you can just go buy another one. Netbooks can be had for as little as $250 new. Good luck even getting a good cell phone for that much.
I can see it first-hand. Two of my three brothers own netbooks(The third bought a full-fledged desktop replacement because his PC died), my dad owns TWO(owned an eee, now owns an Aspire One), I own one too. We've all wanted laptops for quite some time, but they were too expensive to justify. At 200-300 dollars, they're not too expensive at all.
"Linux, equipped in 30 percent to 40 percent of Eee PCs sold, will probably sustain a market share of about 30 percent, said Samson Hu, a general manager at Asustek."
What 'real work' can't a netbook do that a regular laptop can?
Your point also seems to be fighting against reality: Netbooks are a massive hit. Therefore, arguing that netbooks won't sell is like saying that nobody will use that internet thing.
Yeah, and Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot by giving me moral justification for stealing Windows by taking away my bought and paid for copies like that.
Hey, steal from me, I'll steal from you. Don't like it? Me either.
Microsoft is the first one to say 96%. Everyone else seems to say 60%. I've been reading news stories to that effect from every manufacturer.
I know Microsoft is an exemplar who has never said anything the slightest bit untruthful, but could it be possible they're ignoring the manufacturers so they can lie about their netbook market share?
Actually replace 'As Torvald's once said I have not set out to destroy MSFT it is a completely unintentional side effect.' with 'SJ Zero is an extremely sexy man' and you're about as close as you can get.
I'd argue it is broken, but because they're changing things.
I don't know about you, but I get really high CPU utilization with the fancy new system. By contrast, the old system's only real flaw was that the page system was broken (you'd have to click on page 5 to get page 2), but straight HTML spit out by a server-side CGI script was about the fastest way you could possibly display the insane amount of information on a slashdot comments page quickly.
I'm the head of the Reliability Centred Maintenance program at the industrial plant I work at. In RCM, we look at the dominant failure modes, and prescribe a maintenance program to mitigate the risk, or reduce the frequency.
In this case, the "I want this computer to last for 15 years" implicitly means they don't want to do scheduled maintenance. They want it to sit there and run, like the previous machine. They don't want a PC in the way you or I think of a PC, they want an appliance that just works. That being the case, We NEED to look at reliability centred design, rather than maintenance.
So what are the dominant failure modes for a PC? Clogged fans, failed power supply, hard disk failure. If you don't experience these failures, odds are your computer will run indefinitely.
The first problem can be solved with a machine that doesn't have any fans. Design your machine so convection currents carry the heat out the top of the case. This will mean you'll never have a fan failure.
The second problem can be solved with two methods: First, redundant(fanless) power supplies. Second, an online UPS to prevent dirty power from damaging the machine. I might actually just use an industrial deep cycle 12V battery with a pair of inverters, and a 12V smart battery charger on the AC side. It's dirty, but it's functional. Your charger should last 15 years, your battery should last 20, your inverters should last indefinitely and are redundant. With these two solutions in place, I wouldn't expect a total system failure for 25 years. If the charger fails, you should have more than enough time running a 50W fanless PC and 50W lcd monitor to schedule replacement of the charger.
That leaves the hard drive as the only remaining failure mode. Hard drives aren't going to last 15 years. I had a hard drive from 1989 that lived to see the new millennium, but it's dead today. Along the way, many of its contemporaries decided to die. The only solution is to mitigate the consequences of failure with redundancy, so the drive can be replaced. A CompactFlash drive might be a good option, but the standard itself is only 15 years old today, so it's difficult to say whether such a solution would work. With this solution, you would probably need to replace a drive every 7 years, but it could be done during a scheduled outage, outside of office hours.
If you're serious about reliability, leaving it to luck is a good way to be negatively surprised. I've worked with too many failed PCs in the past few weeks to believe you can just build it and forget it.
Why use unproven Atom technology? Via has a good track record, and their EPIA tech has been fanless for a long time. Combine with a fanless PSU(Preferably mounted longitudinally so heat can rise out of it through the existing grill), a fanless case, and a compactflash with an adapter kit, and you'll have a PC that you can't hear, that should be insanely cool, that should run long past the end of the warranty periods (meaning it'll be long out of the infant mortality curve).
There are prosavage drivers for 9x, so you can even keep running the old operating system and software.
You can run multiple PSUs with some extra dremelling, but that's your business.
I do control engineering, and I know IT well. Neither field would consider a piece of medical control equipment an appropriate device to multi-purpose.
You're begging for trouble. It's not a safe way to cut costs. If I suggested cutting costs with such a multi-purpose system, I'd be putting my career and professional designation on the line, and if the medical profession has any sort of standards, so would any doctor who requested it against my advise.
Notice there have never been any PLC/internet appliance combos? There's a damn good reason.
Geez, my truck is 25 years old, and it's great. Not only is it incredibly reliable, but when something does break, parts are cheap as hell because it's all either mechanical or simple electronics.
I'm sort of shocked that nobody has stated the obvious:
You want your system to run for 15 years without problems, because it's a massive pain in the ass having to deal with your computer system being down, so having a reliable system will mean you minimize the chance that you'll have to deal with such a pain in the ass.
If I was running a business, and I had a device which run perfectly fine for 15 years while the rest of the world whined about their systems going down, I'd want to continue to not have to worry about my computer systems.
It's cheaper to buy a yugo until it breaks then replace it than to buy a reliable vehicle once. It doesn't mean the former isn't a massive pain in the ass.
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Bullshit. It's just partisan hackery. Nobody cared until it wasn't "their" guy in power.
The EXACT same thing is happening(Who signed the TARP bill? Who bailed out AIG? Who gave funds to bank of America to help buy Lehman brothers?), but suddenly it's horrible, because they've got a D next to their name, whereas it was awesome when they had an R next to their name.
The exact same actions are eliciting a hugely different reaction. All of you can fuck off until you get a consistent ideology.
I think Cthulu is the strongest on immigration and national security. His solution to the immigration problem is to have huge signs filled with non-euclidean geometry, driving all would-be illegal immigrants completely mad. He'd have a similar policy on Iraq.
A modern netbook is more powerful than most notebooks were not long ago. They come with more memory than most vista laptops did not long ago. They come with more hard disk space than desktops came with not long ago.
Most people don't need another computer. If they're supplementing another computer, it's just because they already owned one. That's the case I'm in. My Aspire One is the only internet enabled computer I own, because I lent my network card to someone. That's how useless my main PC is now that I've got a perfectly functional netbook. Incidentally, my netbook has 5 times the HD space and the same amount of memory as my desktop. The CPU is less powerful, but who cares? Once you hit the power of a 1-gig machine, you've got more power than you need to do anything normal anyway.
Speak for yourself. I needed to see a doctor because I had strep throat, and I was out of there with a prescription in less than an hour.
And I pay similar taxes to an American making the same money I do.
I've long said the left/right dichotomy is dangerous, and here's why.
I've been called a liberal bastard, and I've been called a conservative bastard. At the end of the day, I'm a HUMAN bastard, and backing all the stupid inconsistent hypocrisy of the left/right dichotomy doesn't do a thing.
So why do deficits matter when Obama is running them up but they're awesome when Bush is doing it? Why are rebate cheques communist when Obama is sending them out but they're awesome when Bush is sending them out? Why am I strange when I'm against the idea no matter who is sending them out?
Get back to me when Obama starts talking about how awesome torture is.
For a supposedly Christian nation, we sure don't seem to mind selling our souls for a little comfort and safety on earth.
It's not perfect, but socialized medicine in other countries isn't killing people -- at least, no more than the half-baked semi-socialised, highly regulated medicine in the US.
You guys spend more on healthcare than any country in the world, and it's this waffling that is the cause. Either deregulate medicine, or regulate it entirely. Leaving it in limbo is just driving costs up and driving quality down.
Is 160GB really not enough storage? Is a gigabyte of ram really not enough memory? Is a 1.6GHz multithreading processor really not powerful enough for surfing the web, chatting on IM, and listening to MP3s?
I think you're wrong, and I'm not alone. According to IDC, netbooks made up 20% of total portable computer sales in Europe in 2008. Further, Taiwan-based Market Intelligence Centre said that shipments will more than double to 18.3 million in 2009, an annual growth rate of 128 per cent.
What you get out of a netbook that you don't get out of your solution is the same thing you get for buying a Cavalier instead of a Ferrari: A functional device at a fraction of the cost. The fact that they're inexpensive is why they're taking off, and why they're going to be relatively recession-proof. Even better, they're cheap enough that even if it breaks or gets stolen, you can just go buy another one. Netbooks can be had for as little as $250 new. Good luck even getting a good cell phone for that much.
I can see it first-hand. Two of my three brothers own netbooks(The third bought a full-fledged desktop replacement because his PC died), my dad owns TWO(owned an eee, now owns an Aspire One), I own one too. We've all wanted laptops for quite some time, but they were too expensive to justify. At 200-300 dollars, they're not too expensive at all.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a3VyE_ofSwwE&refer=news
"Linux, equipped in 30 percent to 40 percent of Eee PCs sold, will probably sustain a market share of about 30 percent, said Samson Hu, a general manager at Asustek."
What 'real work' can't a netbook do that a regular laptop can?
Your point also seems to be fighting against reality: Netbooks are a massive hit. Therefore, arguing that netbooks won't sell is like saying that nobody will use that internet thing.
So what kind of netbook does ubuntu manufacture?
Ubuntu 8.10 runs with very little work. You need to hook up the wired connection so you can download and install a single package.
I ran it for 2-3 months without any issues. I liked how it would show you the CPU speed it was running at.
Yeah, and Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot by giving me moral justification for stealing Windows by taking away my bought and paid for copies like that.
Hey, steal from me, I'll steal from you. Don't like it? Me either.
Microsoft is the first one to say 96%. Everyone else seems to say 60%. I've been reading news stories to that effect from every manufacturer.
I know Microsoft is an exemplar who has never said anything the slightest bit untruthful, but could it be possible they're ignoring the manufacturers so they can lie about their netbook market share?
That was 6 months ago, and she is really happy with it and hasn't had to come back for help
This is called 'winning the battle but losing the war'.
Actually replace 'As Torvald's once said I have not set out to destroy MSFT it is a completely unintentional side effect.' with 'SJ Zero is an extremely sexy man' and you're about as close as you can get.
I'm not aware of any laptop CPUs capable of running at 80MHz.
Stay away from that -1%. They're not your friends.
I'd argue it is broken, but because they're changing things.
I don't know about you, but I get really high CPU utilization with the fancy new system. By contrast, the old system's only real flaw was that the page system was broken (you'd have to click on page 5 to get page 2), but straight HTML spit out by a server-side CGI script was about the fastest way you could possibly display the insane amount of information on a slashdot comments page quickly.
I'm the head of the Reliability Centred Maintenance program at the industrial plant I work at. In RCM, we look at the dominant failure modes, and prescribe a maintenance program to mitigate the risk, or reduce the frequency.
In this case, the "I want this computer to last for 15 years" implicitly means they don't want to do scheduled maintenance. They want it to sit there and run, like the previous machine. They don't want a PC in the way you or I think of a PC, they want an appliance that just works. That being the case, We NEED to look at reliability centred design, rather than maintenance.
So what are the dominant failure modes for a PC? Clogged fans, failed power supply, hard disk failure. If you don't experience these failures, odds are your computer will run indefinitely.
The first problem can be solved with a machine that doesn't have any fans. Design your machine so convection currents carry the heat out the top of the case. This will mean you'll never have a fan failure.
The second problem can be solved with two methods: First, redundant(fanless) power supplies. Second, an online UPS to prevent dirty power from damaging the machine. I might actually just use an industrial deep cycle 12V battery with a pair of inverters, and a 12V smart battery charger on the AC side. It's dirty, but it's functional. Your charger should last 15 years, your battery should last 20, your inverters should last indefinitely and are redundant. With these two solutions in place, I wouldn't expect a total system failure for 25 years. If the charger fails, you should have more than enough time running a 50W fanless PC and 50W lcd monitor to schedule replacement of the charger.
That leaves the hard drive as the only remaining failure mode. Hard drives aren't going to last 15 years. I had a hard drive from 1989 that lived to see the new millennium, but it's dead today. Along the way, many of its contemporaries decided to die. The only solution is to mitigate the consequences of failure with redundancy, so the drive can be replaced. A CompactFlash drive might be a good option, but the standard itself is only 15 years old today, so it's difficult to say whether such a solution would work. With this solution, you would probably need to replace a drive every 7 years, but it could be done during a scheduled outage, outside of office hours.
If you're serious about reliability, leaving it to luck is a good way to be negatively surprised. I've worked with too many failed PCs in the past few weeks to believe you can just build it and forget it.
Why use unproven Atom technology? Via has a good track record, and their EPIA tech has been fanless for a long time. Combine with a fanless PSU(Preferably mounted longitudinally so heat can rise out of it through the existing grill), a fanless case, and a compactflash with an adapter kit, and you'll have a PC that you can't hear, that should be insanely cool, that should run long past the end of the warranty periods (meaning it'll be long out of the infant mortality curve).
There are prosavage drivers for 9x, so you can even keep running the old operating system and software.
You can run multiple PSUs with some extra dremelling, but that's your business.
I do control engineering, and I know IT well. Neither field would consider a piece of medical control equipment an appropriate device to multi-purpose.
You're begging for trouble. It's not a safe way to cut costs. If I suggested cutting costs with such a multi-purpose system, I'd be putting my career and professional designation on the line, and if the medical profession has any sort of standards, so would any doctor who requested it against my advise.
Notice there have never been any PLC/internet appliance combos? There's a damn good reason.
Geez, my truck is 25 years old, and it's great. Not only is it incredibly reliable, but when something does break, parts are cheap as hell because it's all either mechanical or simple electronics.
I'm sort of shocked that nobody has stated the obvious:
You want your system to run for 15 years without problems, because it's a massive pain in the ass having to deal with your computer system being down, so having a reliable system will mean you minimize the chance that you'll have to deal with such a pain in the ass.
If I was running a business, and I had a device which run perfectly fine for 15 years while the rest of the world whined about their systems going down, I'd want to continue to not have to worry about my computer systems.
It's cheaper to buy a yugo until it breaks then replace it than to buy a reliable vehicle once. It doesn't mean the former isn't a massive pain in the ass.
If you got the secretary's PC running the latest whiz-bang medical laser, then I hope your malpractice insurance is paid for.