That is just not true. It is sad that you see others this way.
Think about it for a bit and you should come to realize it is foolish to say you can't be bought.
If I am not willing to do something for $10,000, I am probably not going to do it for $100,000,000 or all the money in the world.
A man tells me that kind of thing . . . I'm the type of person that will find a way to get him to do it for free. So while you claim (later on in the thread) that threats to friends and family is outside the scope of this discussion, in reality it is not. For the sake if those you love, it's about time you set a price for everything.
I mean, really, I don't have "a system and method" for doing what is described, but the browser sure does. Hell, I'm not even sure what "remote user input" means. Sounds like they're trying to apply it to something as simple as loading a new page when you click a link (e.g., note the change in "pricing data" when I offer up: Select your system: PC or Mac). Thank goodness for their freedom to innovate, or they never could have patented the web!
Not quite; downloading is just as infringing as uploading is, as downloading constitutes a reproduction, which, like distribution, is an exclusive right of the copyright holder per 17 USC 106.
Wrong. You are completely disregarding fair use. I can download something I already have the (limited) right to copy. If, for example, I have a scratched CD, I am well within my rights to have a working copy. While the person offering it online is likely breaking the law, as a downloader I am not.
The reason that RIAA et al haven't bothered to go after downloaders isn't legal; it's tactical.
Nope; clearly the RIAA has retained better council than you. They will probably never go after downloaders because if they said "You stole The Police's Greatest Hits!" I could say "What the fuck are you talking about? I own that CD and here it is." They don't go after downloaders because they're not complete idiots. Of course, using P2P would be an idiot way to download things of that nature . . .
The iMac G5 is better for those users who wouldn't know how to build their own computer, just want something that works, and can afford it. A home-built AMD-chip system is better for geeks with little money.
Uh, you do realize you're making the guy's point for him, don't you? The question isn't what a geek can put together for $600, but what a company can sell for $600 (or $1200, or whatever). Unless you can point to (or sell yourself) a system that does all an iMac G5 does, you simply cannot pretend there is a price advantage for the homebuilt PC. It's two totally different markets.
Laws like the ones are talking about will eventually cause the population to do exactly that but it's not exactly as if the criminals weren't doing that already.
There's a really interesting paradox in that. By protecting the rights of the majority of citizens, it actually makes law enforcement easier than if you universally clamp down on freedom. It's just like illegal search; a cop might think their job is easier if they can search everyone at will, but in reality it makes it harder because it makes harmless people into criminals (i.e., they take steps to make such casual searches much harder) and diverts the cops attention from the real troublemakers. Likewise, if you want to be able to easily read email when it is legally justified, you don't strip users of any implied/understood privacy. Because, if you do, then you just turned your problem from one of getting a simple court order to grep some text to one of having to crack AES-128 encryption before you can even scan the stuff.
The point is, I don't want to buy any new hardware just to run some software.
'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where--' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'
That is to say, if you really don't buy hardware to run particular software, a Mac makes as much sense to purchase as a PC. A PC really only has two things going for it: idiots can buy it to run Windows like everyone else, and geeks can buy it in pieces and puzzle it together. So hug your A64 system all you like (I own AMD stock!:-), but if it really was a "walk long enough" purchase, it's kind of sad.
Linux users are likely to be either server admins who will set up decent multiplayer servers, improving the online game for the Windows gamers or programmers who are more likely to contribute to the mod scene.
I see zero evidence to back up that logic. A server is a server, and if they can put it out for the Linux variant of Unix, there is no reason they shouldn't be putting it out for the BSD variant of Unix that commercially ships more units than all other Unix boxes combined (read: Mac OS X). Also, to my knowledge, most mod developers use Windows as their primary platform. Feel free to correct me with some actual links to the contrary, if what you say is indeed true.
Oops. UT2004 is available for Linux too. Was available from Day 1. Obviously these guys are busy making a "big business misstep" too. Now where are you going to take your non-Linux dollars?
You're clearly not very bright, so I'm not sure why you're being moderated up. I don't have "non-Linux dollars". To put it in a manner your mind can grasp, I have Linux dollars for my Linux server and Mac dollars for my Mac desktop. When something is released with the commercially misguided target of a Linux desktop, it naturally will not be purchased by me. It does me no harm that UT came out for Linux, but it does me no benefit either, excepting maybe that I find it a bit cooler that it's a nice, portable game engine. Contrast the actual geek creds UT earns by doing that with how DOOM3 is hitting the market. So your pointing out that UT is being done right in no way invalidates my assertion that DOOM3 is being done wrong.
The Windows version will likely turn a profit several orders of magnitude larger than a linux version.
I'm betting just about every other platform will be an order of magnitude larger than the Linux market. If I worked for them, Linux would not be even a second priority; it makes no sense. They should have done a Mac version first; target the only other major commercial platform that users can't boot into Windows to play the game. That code could then have been leveraged for a Linux version, but even a console version would make more business sense than Linux. It's not like id needs the geek creds, either. This is a big business misstep, and it only ensures I will be buying UT2004 and not DOOM3.
More than a third of the 493 PC users surveyed by the nonprofit National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) said they had a greater chance of winning the lottery or being struck by lightning than of being hit by malicious code.
Wow, who knew the Mac and Linux marketshares had grown that much? Seriously, far too many people seems to be taking the side of the corporate shill as though he stood on some higher ground than the other government shills. For all we know, he just wanted to attach government pork to benefit his buds back at Symantec and someone inside was smart enough and powerful enough to stop it. If they wanted to show they're serious about "cybersecurity", let me read the headline where they actually take action against the convicted monopolist that produces the systems that cause 99% of the problems. Until then, I'm not on this guy's side, or on the side of anyone who fills the same role. He was another in a string of ineffective bureaucrats, and the fewer of those we have the better.
Yeah, right. IM. Pa-leeze. IM requires that the person you seek to contact has their fat ass planted 4- square in front of their computer or leaves it on 24/7.
Does it? Is that really a requirement for a chat, or is that merely how most people use a chat application? To put it another way, what is the real difference between a chat client and a email client, beyond the interface of how messages are presented? The only difference seems to be expectation. You could just as easily have chat-to-email and email-to-chat gateways as you could have any single- or multiple-protocol chat-to-chat clients.
I point that out not just to refute you, but to refute the OP. Using chat to avoid spam is, at best, a temporary solution. Hell, there is already chat spam (cham? spim?), just not to the level of email spam. Unfortunately, the level of anti-spam software for chat is also nowhere near that of email.
These people just want their games to get recognized and you are going to fault them because it doesn't run on Solaris? That's damn selfish.
It would be, if that's what I actually said. My complaint is that the contest organizers actually prevent games from being "recognized" because I can't figure out what on the list of entrants is or isn't worth checking out. If, for example, you've never heard of Gish before, how would you have any clue that it runs on Mac OS X? I'm bitching because I have to endure a lot of clicking just to find that a game only runs on Solaris when I might be keen for Amiga (or whatever) games. I really don't care if a game is 6MB or 600MB when it doesn't even run on my platform! Being big is not a deal breaker, but being a binary sure is.
They are consistently the top philanthropists in the US. In 1999-2003 they pledged or gave away $23 Billion, or 54% of their wealth.
No, they're giving away my "wealth"; the ill-gotten gain of a convicted monopolist. If you don't understand that, please allow me to heroically, altruistically drag you into an alley so that I can roll you to give another $100 my charity of choice.
And I don't just mean that "Open" doesn't refer to open open. Seriously, who gives a crap if they're written in Java or Flash (or whatever it means to be Web/Downloadable) or not? I care if the damn thing runs on my particular OS. It's impossible to even tell from their list what is worth bothering to check out. It isn't even clear they give any points to developers that support more than one platform. So while it might give the winner a prize and a nifty badge to stick on their web site, it isn't help us gamers discover independent gaming at all.
It's just kind of ridiculous when a native English speaker can't make sense of the headline. Please, at least explain these things in the submission.
Submission? It's explained on the top of every page! What part of "News for Nerds" don't you understand? If every common geeky TLA leaves you DaC, you can KMA and go sit -/.
Paying people for participating has no effect on the results of the study.
If you actually think that, I hope you're not a psychologist. Having any a priori reward system will skew results by reducing the randomness of the sample set. It's the same problem as aiming for the wrong target in a focus group study. If you want to do a market survey of luxury car buyers, how many participants do you think you'd get for $10? You definitely will affect a study if you offer $10, $1000, a new computer, or free condoms for a year.
Obviously the content is current events, however, Google doesn't write any of the content. Where does their responsibility lie?
It's really simple; hell, it's even in the subject you're responding to. As a news aggregate, just as with a search engine, bias is a bad thing for Google. I run an aggregate of my own (plug, plug:-), and the very idea that I should favor one site over another (aside from the stated goal of who gives a more timely announcement) is completely bankrupt of any ethical responsibility my site has to it's users.
The old standard of "appearance of impropriety" holds at least as well for Google, too. Same is true for Slashdot article selection. If anyone is getting kickbacks or has some other unstated criteria for selection, that is irresponsible and should not be tolerated. If it's just a bug in their code, a fix will keep their reputation intact. If it's intended at any level, it just gets added to the scorecard that people have started due to questionable action as of late on Google's part.
The "feature" of scriptability of commands and consoles in games has been one of the biggest problems with games lately.
I totally disagree. The ability to win a game via scripting merely points to a bad game (or bad opponent). I think it's silly to force players of any game to go through repetitive actions ad nauseam. This is especially true of level-grind MMORPGs. There is nothing wrong with having the high level view of the game that is allowed by scripting. Why reward only the fast twitchers when a strategic player can effectively plan a victory in advance to be executed by a single keystroke?
How embarrassing would it be for the police to discover their own machines in the zombie network...
I know you got a funny mod out of that, but things like that do happen. For example, my web server got a hit for one formmail.cgi on Fri Jun 25 00:31:56 2004 from 64.8.149.52 as part of a distributed form exploit scan. That IP is squarely in space owned by the State of Minnesota; my home state. I sent them a harsh email telling them they better secure their bloody machines, but got no response. It hasn't happened again since, but it's a clear example that government run networks aren't particularly secure.
Claiming that the iPod can fit 5,000 songs is 20GB is equally misleading. The 20GB iPod can store rougly 20GB of data. Depending on how much compression you use, you can get much more, or much less than 5,000 files on an iPod.
True, but Apple's numbers are at least in line with the reality of what their store sells and how most people rip their own music. Any modern encoding has pretty good sound at 1MB/minute, meaning 5000 on-average 4 minute songs can be put on a 20GB iPod. That's realistically in-line with how people use a portable music player, unlike Sony's totally insane claim.
The new Sony's will feature magic Hand-Wavey Technology(TM) to suck information that wasn't in the orginal signal into your TV from outer space.
Must be from the same R&D lab that brought us their new Walkman that somehow stores 13,000 songs on a 20GB drive when an iPod can only fit 5,000 on the same. Seriously, Sony is working their way into a real credibility problem when it comes to marketing their technology.
It seems like I'm wasting the 2nd processor's power for most stuff and even CPU1 is not doing what I was expecting it to do.
It might be a waste. It all depends on how the system allocates resources. I'm more familiar with how Mac OS X handles things than Windows or Linux. A Mac is very multi-processor friendly, with time slices being allocated by thread vs. by process (i.e., one process with multiple busy threads gets more time than a single threaded process) and they are dynamically allocated to a free processor (i.e., it's not uncommon to see a busy process ping-pong between processors while it's running). If what you're running doesn't schedule very well, it's possible that one processor is more idle than it should be. The other real possibility is that there is a software/hardware difference between the systems that bogs one down. A slower HD, cheaper motherboard, different OS versions, spyware, or any number of factors that can make two seemingly similar machines not perform similarly.
Another thing I do have a question about is RAM usage. Is it true that the more RAM one has, the longer the wait between swap file activity? I assume all computers regardless of OS function this way.
Generally true, but don't assume it. It really depends on what the OS does. Even if applications aren't using all the RAM, it's possible that the OS is caching and/or buffering things in a way that best uses all available RAM. In that case, it might make sense to swap out an inactive application, even though the user's applications aren't directly using all the RAM.
If this is so, then isn't postponing swap activity just setting the user up for a longer delay when RAM has to write to disk? Maybe this is called latency, from what I've been able to glean, but constantly adding RAM would lead to even longer wait times when the 4GB runs out, no?
No. You seem to think swap is an all-or-none proposition. Swapping is actually done in "pages", and the exact size varies but last I checked 8K was considered big. A good swap system will be moving around those little blocks well enough so that hopefully you won't have to sit waiting for it to figure out that a big 1G block needs to be shoved to disk for the next application to open. Putting off all swapping until the last possible minute generally won't be the fastest thing to do because the HD is so much slower. It's usually better to throw some stuff out to swap during an inactive period, and then you can just reallocate that block of memory if you need it for something else.
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That is just not true. It is sad that you see others this way.
Think about it for a bit and you should come to realize it is foolish to say you can't be bought.
If I am not willing to do something for $10,000, I am probably not going to do it for $100,000,000 or all the money in the world.
A man tells me that kind of thing . . . I'm the type of person that will find a way to get him to do it for free. So while you claim (later on in the thread) that threats to friends and family is outside the scope of this discussion, in reality it is not. For the sake if those you love, it's about time you set a price for everything.
I mean, really, I don't have "a system and method" for doing what is described, but the browser sure does. Hell, I'm not even sure what "remote user input" means. Sounds like they're trying to apply it to something as simple as loading a new page when you click a link (e.g., note the change in "pricing data" when I offer up: Select your system: PC or Mac ). Thank goodness for their freedom to innovate, or they never could have patented the web!
Not quite; downloading is just as infringing as uploading is, as downloading constitutes a reproduction, which, like distribution, is an exclusive right of the copyright holder per 17 USC 106.
Wrong. You are completely disregarding fair use. I can download something I already have the (limited) right to copy. If, for example, I have a scratched CD, I am well within my rights to have a working copy. While the person offering it online is likely breaking the law, as a downloader I am not.
The reason that RIAA et al haven't bothered to go after downloaders isn't legal; it's tactical.
Nope; clearly the RIAA has retained better council than you. They will probably never go after downloaders because if they said "You stole The Police's Greatest Hits!" I could say "What the fuck are you talking about? I own that CD and here it is." They don't go after downloaders because they're not complete idiots. Of course, using P2P would be an idiot way to download things of that nature . . .
The iMac G5 is better for those users who wouldn't know how to build their own computer, just want something that works, and can afford it. A home-built AMD-chip system is better for geeks with little money.
Uh, you do realize you're making the guy's point for him, don't you? The question isn't what a geek can put together for $600, but what a company can sell for $600 (or $1200, or whatever). Unless you can point to (or sell yourself) a system that does all an iMac G5 does, you simply cannot pretend there is a price advantage for the homebuilt PC. It's two totally different markets.
Laws like the ones are talking about will eventually cause the population to do exactly that but it's not exactly as if the criminals weren't doing that already.
There's a really interesting paradox in that. By protecting the rights of the majority of citizens, it actually makes law enforcement easier than if you universally clamp down on freedom. It's just like illegal search; a cop might think their job is easier if they can search everyone at will, but in reality it makes it harder because it makes harmless people into criminals (i.e., they take steps to make such casual searches much harder) and diverts the cops attention from the real troublemakers. Likewise, if you want to be able to easily read email when it is legally justified, you don't strip users of any implied/understood privacy. Because, if you do, then you just turned your problem from one of getting a simple court order to grep some text to one of having to crack AES-128 encryption before you can even scan the stuff.
The point is, I don't want to buy any new hardware just to run some software.
That is to say, if you really don't buy hardware to run particular software, a Mac makes as much sense to purchase as a PC. A PC really only has two things going for it: idiots can buy it to run Windows like everyone else, and geeks can buy it in pieces and puzzle it together. So hug your A64 system all you like (I own AMD stock! :-), but if it really was a "walk long enough" purchase, it's kind of sad.
Linux users are likely to be either server admins who will set up decent multiplayer servers, improving the online game for the Windows gamers or programmers who are more likely to contribute to the mod scene.
I see zero evidence to back up that logic. A server is a server, and if they can put it out for the Linux variant of Unix, there is no reason they shouldn't be putting it out for the BSD variant of Unix that commercially ships more units than all other Unix boxes combined (read: Mac OS X). Also, to my knowledge, most mod developers use Windows as their primary platform. Feel free to correct me with some actual links to the contrary, if what you say is indeed true.
Oops. UT2004 is available for Linux too. Was available from Day 1. Obviously these guys are busy making a "big business misstep" too. Now where are you going to take your non-Linux dollars?
You're clearly not very bright, so I'm not sure why you're being moderated up. I don't have "non-Linux dollars". To put it in a manner your mind can grasp, I have Linux dollars for my Linux server and Mac dollars for my Mac desktop. When something is released with the commercially misguided target of a Linux desktop, it naturally will not be purchased by me. It does me no harm that UT came out for Linux, but it does me no benefit either, excepting maybe that I find it a bit cooler that it's a nice, portable game engine. Contrast the actual geek creds UT earns by doing that with how DOOM3 is hitting the market. So your pointing out that UT is being done right in no way invalidates my assertion that DOOM3 is being done wrong.
The Windows version will likely turn a profit several orders of magnitude larger than a linux version.
I'm betting just about every other platform will be an order of magnitude larger than the Linux market. If I worked for them, Linux would not be even a second priority; it makes no sense. They should have done a Mac version first; target the only other major commercial platform that users can't boot into Windows to play the game. That code could then have been leveraged for a Linux version, but even a console version would make more business sense than Linux. It's not like id needs the geek creds, either. This is a big business misstep, and it only ensures I will be buying UT2004 and not DOOM3.
All you need to know has long been at: Bonsai Kitten!
More than a third of the 493 PC users surveyed by the nonprofit National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) said they had a greater chance of winning the lottery or being struck by lightning than of being hit by malicious code.
Wow, who knew the Mac and Linux marketshares had grown that much? Seriously, far too many people seems to be taking the side of the corporate shill as though he stood on some higher ground than the other government shills. For all we know, he just wanted to attach government pork to benefit his buds back at Symantec and someone inside was smart enough and powerful enough to stop it. If they wanted to show they're serious about "cybersecurity", let me read the headline where they actually take action against the convicted monopolist that produces the systems that cause 99% of the problems. Until then, I'm not on this guy's side, or on the side of anyone who fills the same role. He was another in a string of ineffective bureaucrats, and the fewer of those we have the better.
There was no mention of sender pays postage as a solution.
Any reasonable look at "sender pays" solutions died the day spammers took over their first Windows box and turned it into a spam zombie.
Yeah, right. IM. Pa-leeze. IM requires that the person you seek to contact has their fat ass planted 4- square in front of their computer or leaves it on 24/7.
Does it? Is that really a requirement for a chat, or is that merely how most people use a chat application? To put it another way, what is the real difference between a chat client and a email client, beyond the interface of how messages are presented? The only difference seems to be expectation. You could just as easily have chat-to-email and email-to-chat gateways as you could have any single- or multiple-protocol chat-to-chat clients.
I point that out not just to refute you, but to refute the OP. Using chat to avoid spam is, at best, a temporary solution. Hell, there is already chat spam (cham? spim?), just not to the level of email spam. Unfortunately, the level of anti-spam software for chat is also nowhere near that of email.
Slashdotting the site: Priceless
If it is actually a slashvertisement as some would have you believe, it did cost them to turn their site into a smoldering pile of rubble . . .
These people just want their games to get recognized and you are going to fault them because it doesn't run on Solaris? That's damn selfish.
It would be, if that's what I actually said. My complaint is that the contest organizers actually prevent games from being "recognized" because I can't figure out what on the list of entrants is or isn't worth checking out. If, for example, you've never heard of Gish before, how would you have any clue that it runs on Mac OS X? I'm bitching because I have to endure a lot of clicking just to find that a game only runs on Solaris when I might be keen for Amiga (or whatever) games. I really don't care if a game is 6MB or 600MB when it doesn't even run on my platform! Being big is not a deal breaker, but being a binary sure is.
They are consistently the top philanthropists in the US. In 1999-2003 they pledged or gave away $23 Billion, or 54% of their wealth.
No, they're giving away my "wealth"; the ill-gotten gain of a convicted monopolist. If you don't understand that, please allow me to heroically, altruistically drag you into an alley so that I can roll you to give another $100 my charity of choice.
And I don't just mean that "Open" doesn't refer to open open. Seriously, who gives a crap if they're written in Java or Flash (or whatever it means to be Web/Downloadable) or not? I care if the damn thing runs on my particular OS. It's impossible to even tell from their list what is worth bothering to check out. It isn't even clear they give any points to developers that support more than one platform. So while it might give the winner a prize and a nifty badge to stick on their web site, it isn't help us gamers discover independent gaming at all.
It's just kind of ridiculous when a native English speaker can't make sense of the headline. Please, at least explain these things in the submission.
Submission? It's explained on the top of every page! What part of "News for Nerds" don't you understand? If every common geeky TLA leaves you DaC, you can KMA and go sit -/.
Paying people for participating has no effect on the results of the study.
If you actually think that, I hope you're not a psychologist. Having any a priori reward system will skew results by reducing the randomness of the sample set. It's the same problem as aiming for the wrong target in a focus group study. If you want to do a market survey of luxury car buyers, how many participants do you think you'd get for $10? You definitely will affect a study if you offer $10, $1000, a new computer, or free condoms for a year.
Obviously the content is current events, however, Google doesn't write any of the content. Where does their responsibility lie?
It's really simple; hell, it's even in the subject you're responding to. As a news aggregate, just as with a search engine, bias is a bad thing for Google. I run an aggregate of my own (plug, plug :-), and the very idea that I should favor one site over another (aside from the stated goal of who gives a more timely announcement) is completely bankrupt of any ethical responsibility my site has to it's users.
The old standard of "appearance of impropriety" holds at least as well for Google, too. Same is true for Slashdot article selection. If anyone is getting kickbacks or has some other unstated criteria for selection, that is irresponsible and should not be tolerated. If it's just a bug in their code, a fix will keep their reputation intact. If it's intended at any level, it just gets added to the scorecard that people have started due to questionable action as of late on Google's part.
The "feature" of scriptability of commands and consoles in games has been one of the biggest problems with games lately.
I totally disagree. The ability to win a game via scripting merely points to a bad game (or bad opponent). I think it's silly to force players of any game to go through repetitive actions ad nauseam. This is especially true of level-grind MMORPGs. There is nothing wrong with having the high level view of the game that is allowed by scripting. Why reward only the fast twitchers when a strategic player can effectively plan a victory in advance to be executed by a single keystroke?
How embarrassing would it be for the police to discover their own machines in the zombie network ...
I know you got a funny mod out of that, but things like that do happen. For example, my web server got a hit for one formmail.cgi on Fri Jun 25 00:31:56 2004 from 64.8.149.52 as part of a distributed form exploit scan. That IP is squarely in space owned by the State of Minnesota; my home state. I sent them a harsh email telling them they better secure their bloody machines, but got no response. It hasn't happened again since, but it's a clear example that government run networks aren't particularly secure.
Claiming that the iPod can fit 5,000 songs is 20GB is equally misleading. The 20GB iPod can store rougly 20GB of data. Depending on how much compression you use, you can get much more, or much less than 5,000 files on an iPod.
True, but Apple's numbers are at least in line with the reality of what their store sells and how most people rip their own music. Any modern encoding has pretty good sound at 1MB/minute, meaning 5000 on-average 4 minute songs can be put on a 20GB iPod. That's realistically in-line with how people use a portable music player, unlike Sony's totally insane claim.
The new Sony's will feature magic Hand-Wavey Technology(TM) to suck information that wasn't in the orginal signal into your TV from outer space.
Must be from the same R&D lab that brought us their new Walkman that somehow stores 13,000 songs on a 20GB drive when an iPod can only fit 5,000 on the same. Seriously, Sony is working their way into a real credibility problem when it comes to marketing their technology.
It seems like I'm wasting the 2nd processor's power for most stuff and even CPU1 is not doing what I was expecting it to do.
It might be a waste. It all depends on how the system allocates resources. I'm more familiar with how Mac OS X handles things than Windows or Linux. A Mac is very multi-processor friendly, with time slices being allocated by thread vs. by process (i.e., one process with multiple busy threads gets more time than a single threaded process) and they are dynamically allocated to a free processor (i.e., it's not uncommon to see a busy process ping-pong between processors while it's running). If what you're running doesn't schedule very well, it's possible that one processor is more idle than it should be. The other real possibility is that there is a software/hardware difference between the systems that bogs one down. A slower HD, cheaper motherboard, different OS versions, spyware, or any number of factors that can make two seemingly similar machines not perform similarly.
Another thing I do have a question about is RAM usage. Is it true that the more RAM one has, the longer the wait between swap file activity? I assume all computers regardless of OS function this way.
Generally true, but don't assume it. It really depends on what the OS does. Even if applications aren't using all the RAM, it's possible that the OS is caching and/or buffering things in a way that best uses all available RAM. In that case, it might make sense to swap out an inactive application, even though the user's applications aren't directly using all the RAM.
If this is so, then isn't postponing swap activity just setting the user up for a longer delay when RAM has to write to disk? Maybe this is called latency, from what I've been able to glean, but constantly adding RAM would lead to even longer wait times when the 4GB runs out, no?
No. You seem to think swap is an all-or-none proposition. Swapping is actually done in "pages", and the exact size varies but last I checked 8K was considered big. A good swap system will be moving around those little blocks well enough so that hopefully you won't have to sit waiting for it to figure out that a big 1G block needs to be shoved to disk for the next application to open. Putting off all swapping until the last possible minute generally won't be the fastest thing to do because the HD is so much slower. It's usually better to throw some stuff out to swap during an inactive period, and then you can just reallocate that block of memory if you need it for something else.