I find it disappointing that ISPs don't meter usage. It would help cut down on spam and viruses for example if users suddenly realized that something was costing them a lot of money and wasting bandwidth. I mean all our other services are metered. As for myself there are months when I download huge amounts of anime and then there are other months where I download next to nothing yet I still pay the same amount. This fact alone means it's more beneficial for me to download like a nutcase and ruin it for everyone else. Granted the only catch is that ISPs would hopefully charge reasonable rates with a certain flat fee to maintain the line. To folks to believe otherwise, I suspect you're not willing to give up your free lunch to the expense of others. The Internet is a limited resource as some ISPs are learning the hard way. Given the choice between metered usage versus throttled / controlled / broken Internet, I'd pay for metered anyday.
I would say that a degree isn't absolutely necessary but highly recommended. Even more important than a degree is if it's something that you're naturally interested in. As in would you still pursue it even if you didn't make all that much money? Do you spend hours keeping yourself updated on what's new and tinker at home regardless if it's job relevant? If you do then I suspect you're am amazing tech. However, I would still say going to University is a good thing. It teaches you to handle stress and to learn quickly. More importantly, I had a chance to work with others. While a degree isn't always a sign of a good candidate, it's a sign they have the strength and will to at least accomplish a goal. Don't forget too that there's lots of IT candidates out there. Sometimes when it comes down to it a degree might be the only way to distinguish two candidates apart. I know it played a part in my current system admin job. Finally, don't expect to make a 6 figure income in IT. I certainly don't. I enjoy what I do and my pay is very reasonable. It's taken me a while to get where I am and I have to admit I didn't have the best luck in the world but it did work out in the end. The fact that you emphasize on money has me worried. As it's long been said, take a job because you like doing it. Even if it's a great paying job, it will cost you your health and life in the end if you don't like what you're doing.
Most Businesses won't upgrade to Vista because there are still far too many potential issues in doing so. You risk breaking a lot of software and systems currently in use. You need to retrain staff plus get all updated hardware because most of it is too slow or old to run Vista effectively. With the economic slowdown, it makes upgrade budgets even worse. And when you do upgrade the only real visible difference being a fancier interface!? I mean think about it folks you go to your CEO as an IT manager and explain to them you blew $1000 minimal (probably more) on something that just looks nicer with the risk of everything being screwed up!? This is why businesses are not upgrading to Vista. Even if Microsoft stops releasing patches for XP, it won't matter because very few businesses have their patches 100% updated anyhow. In fact, it's more important to have a good viral scanner and firewall. The other reason is that the last MAJOR upgrade was for year 2000. A lot of companies used that as an excuse to spend upgrading the entire IT infastructure. It's now 2008 and there's no compelling reason to do so yet. Until Vista or Windows 7 shows fantastic benefits or XP becomes incompatible with everything which probably won't happen for years, good luck switching.
Umm you do realize the kid's 2 right? Even if the kid is a prodigy, it probably isn't a good idea to give him a real laptop as most are not designed for that sort of abuse. Plus do you really want your kid to be a computer junkie at that age already!? I mean I'd prefer to give my kids electronic toys (FRS Radio for example), encourage them to play and explore with different things. By only giving them a computer you're effectively limiting their choices.
Hmm odd that seemed to have missed out on the leading enterprise SSDs. I think Tom's Hardware reviewed them a while back. Samsung SSDs from what I remember were as cost effective as they get but generally were slower than either Memoright or Mitron?
I think most folks are forgetting something far simpler. Most folks I know including myself weren't 100% sure of what they wanted to be growing up. Yes, I'm gifted at computers but I can also write, love arts and could probably be a nurse due to my patience. In fact a good block of my skills are more artsy than solid engineering and math. The thing is when you're not sure you tend to go with what is considered the norm for your society. For me since I seemed bright and gifted in math despite my other skills I was encouraged to take a career in computers. Looking back it seemed that going with the flow seemed to have eventually worked out well for me. So yes you don't always need to break the flow to be successful. It seems to me being sexist is refusing to let someone into a field. Give everyone a choice however understand that most folks will tend not to make a choice that is different from what culture dictates. It's life and a normal part of society.
I'm surprised there's so many negative comments on SecondLife in particular although in some ways I agree. Myself I've long been a user of MUDs, actually I'm still a part of one today. (Free Text-based Virtual Systems). I never did like SecondLife due to it's commercial content but I can understand it's attractiveness for many. I think businesses don't understand the reality of VR systems. For most people, it's about one's self in many ways. Think of it as a spiritual journey for many. Put it this way, I think VR Systems are an expression of someone's hopes and dreams. If your hopes and dreams only consist of commercial products... Well I'd say that's why your life feels empty.
No offense or anything but I've never been really impressed with Apple's design regardless of price. It looks far too plain for my tastes and being common, not as unique as it once had been. For design, I actually admire some of Asus's high end models although their use of leather may be overkill. Still even with style it's very functional, I still own a 3 year old Asus Z33aE ultralight model and the thing is still solid as a rock with some insane battery life compared to modern Core Duos. Sadly if you like MacOSX, you're basically stuck with one design. Innovative but limiting. I guess that's why a lot of PC fans don't always admire Macs so much.
I suppose this makes sense. I mean think about it if you panic you are more likely to respond in force. It is probably a good instinct from when we were caveman as a last resort to save us from some wild animal trying to kill us. The bad news is of course we are in modern society now (I think) where those sort of things are less likely to happen and thinking it over before doing is a better course of action.
To be honest, I'm a university graduate myself with a degree in comp sci but I have seen high school drop-outs that can work better in IT than folks with University level degrees. The reality for IT is that if you don't enjoy computers and experiment in your own spare time then you'll never be honestly that great at it. All the certifications in the world won't save you then.
I can understand why employers test people. People after all lie badly on their resumes. I've in cases honestly filled out my resume only to find I didn't even get an interview because they only bothered to interview folks with more impressive looking resumes. Then during interviews, I've surprised employers because I seem surprisingly skilled and should've padded my resume more.
I think testing is a good idea provided it's done correctly.
I have to wonder how many folks realistically have met bad cops. I'm a visible minority where I live and I've never had any problems with cops. I've been stopped once at a drunk driving checkpoint in my life but that's it. Yes I was sober, and they were polite. Maybe it's the one bad apple symptom where it takes only one or two bad cops to give everyone a bad name. I still believe that in general most cops are good and do their job. Otherwise why in the world would we continue to support them financially. I also suspect the comments are somewhat exaggerated, people get nervous around cops (even for no good reason), it's probably more natural to say nasty things about them than good.
This article is a bit thin on details on what went wrong. Personally I believe that if the picture is taken from a public place then it's fair game. If you really want your privacy go home and pull up all your curtains. I mean think about famous people, they're often hounded by the press in public. If we think that's okay why shouldn't it apply to ourselves? Also if you have a private road, you might want to consider putting a gate on it since that would be harder to miss. I mean in all honestly do you drive around all paranoid looking for "Private Road" signs where you don't expect them? Sheesh, makes you wonder how our world works at all with folks being so paranoid nowadays.
Hmm,
I'm surprised folks are missing one important point about this car. Let's say you're rich and you want to buy a supercar. Most gas powered supercars use huge amounts of gas. After all they're not designed to save fuel. They're designed to go fast. This thing is an electric and generally very efficient so right away you've helped the environment there by not burning huge amounts of gas. At $100,000 the price is cheaper than most high end sports cars and being rare that will look good too. Sure it doesn't have much range but how often do you take your car on cross-country trips. Hell if you're rich, how often would you seriously want to spend hours driving across country versus taking a plane? It's range is great for most normal commutes in the city. It's also very likely highly reliable too being that it has very few parts. So yes, this isn't your common man's car but for the rich or enthusiast this seems like a good idea.
I actually like WinXP SP2 despite having the knowledge to hack Linux onto a Linksys NSLU2 and compiling some of the packages myself on it. As much as folks complain that WinXP crashes, I've haven't seen that nasty blue screen in years. It comes from knowing how to set XP up and making sure your hardware isn't messed up. I haven't met many folks who actually go through the number of steps I do on a new WinXP setup which might explain why it works so well for me. When you use Opensource software such as SeaMonkey or Media Player Classic and FDDShow with WinXP it actually becomes very useful. I remember back in university when XP came out we were impressed. And these are CompSci students working on Sun Enterprise systems. Where Linux still shines the most however is as a stable server and of course it has a front-end interface (compiz) light-years ahead of Vista. XP's strengths are in games, video playback and pirating. To a geek like myself that's why I've stayed with XP. Everything works with near perfect stability and I have a blend of opensource and closed-source / pirated tools to fit my needs. For a regular person who doesn't care however and just wants to surf the web, Linux would probably work fine.
Actually I believe this is entirely possible. I think folks are forgetting that the culture in China is quite different from the culture in the US. I should know, both my parents immigrated to Canada. At times I find it challenging to get along with them due to cultural difference and I myself feel like I'm wedged between both worlds at times. You only need to look at the history to understand it a little better. Most Chinese are use to a socially stable monarchy that's lasted for centuries if you look at China's history while in North America we're mostly all immigrants who gambled everything on freedom to survive. Most Chinese at least traditionally prefer a stable secure lifestyle even if it means giving up a few personal freedoms while I would think that in North America most of us would like to prefer the opposite. Both lifestyles come with their benefits and disadvantages. I've read the recent National Geographic articles that some parts of China are rapidly modernizing or westernizing however you may see it. It's sadly creating huge rifts between the generations because along with it comes cultural changes.
While the idea of having free wireless Internet is nice, I think folks are forgetting that in reality this probably wouldn't work. After all how many places do you know of where folks have wired up their say water utility and am sharing water for free? How long do you think a system like this would work before a bunch of folks abuse the network and start torrenting all the bandwidth out of it?
That's the problem with "free" resources. It only takes a few idiots to misuse it and that's the end of the system.
It's no surprise that Intel is being bashed over their idea of real-time CPU ray-tracing. As anyone who has ever ray-traced will realize it's extremely slow. At times you're talking about HOURS PER FRAME while realistically you want at least 30 frames per second and even that isn't considered great by many gamers. It's going to take a HUGE and I mean HUGE increase in computation power before that happens. Rasterization techniques are tremendously faster and they look nearly as good as Ray-tracing for the most part. Considering that we're yet to reach a point in Rasterization where we don't need more processing power (Crysis in high resolution.) I don't see us moving away from it yet. The day when we declare that we have graphics cards more powerful than we need for Rasterization is when we start moving towards ray-tracing. That day isn't anytime soon unfortunately.
I would have thought the Blu-Ray group would have liked faster adoption after the demise of HD-DVD but it seems by keeping prices high they might end up slowing themselves down. What would be even more ironic is if the Blu-Ray group collapses themselves in a few years due to lack of demand. That would be a good laugh.
I own a 19 inch professional / optically flat / CPD-G420 Sony Trinitron monitor and paid about $700 new for it in it's time. Sure it's heavy and sucks up some desk space but the image quality is amazing for a monitor. Runs at an insane 1440x1080 @ 90 Hz. I've had people comment that it seems like an LCD if you don't notice the size of it. I use it heavily for photography work. I think sadly most folks believe a CRT is terrible because they've never owned a high end series CRT. Nowadays to get an equivalent LCD I'd probably need to sink my money into a +$1000 NEC professional LCD panel which is still weak on the response speed. (With LCDs usually fast panels mean poor colour and vice versa). I still haven't made the switch yet because I'm not too thrilled about paying more for less in some senses. And while an LCD may use less energy, I'm not so certain that the actual switch is good for the environment either. I remember reading a few years back that if you don't need to upgrade then don't because the environmental damage to build the new equipment is pretty extensive. (Not to mention disposal). As a side note my dad got a 32 inch FlatTube Wega Trinitron TV for $350 on sale a month ago. For that price you can't even get an equivalent Plasma or LCD. It weighted a tonne to get it home but wow, is the image quality unbelievable. I'm personally sad to see this technology go. I still think LCDs or Plasmas are a compromise. Until OLEDs or even the patent burdened SED if ever becomes mainstream, I think we'll loose out on image quality.
There were several articles about a year ago about Intel limiting shipment of CPUs to retailers who dared to sell AMD products. This was back when Athlon64 was king of the hill and P4's were terrible. Sadly, I'm not sure if much came out of that. It may be for this reason that the newer AMD chips are not as great. AMD may have never gotten the extra profit it was entitled to make the next better generation of chips. Seeing how slow most governments are to respond this may be a response to that initial complaint. On the other hand, I seem to recall Germany loaning a huge amount of money to AMD to build a chip fab there. Maybe this is a way of ensuring their investment was sound? Personally I think Intel should get fined anyhow. AMD needs a little help to make sure they survive. If AMD bites the dust we all loose in a big way.
No wireless WAN will never completely replace wired LAN systems anytime soon. I think someone's forgetting that wireless networks basically have this problem that all signals are shared in the same airspace while if you use a wire, it's isolated in the wire. So wires will always carry more data / speed than wireless ever will. Need more speed? Toss in another wire, whereas in wireless you soak up more of the spectrum which is limited.
Interesting. I'm no biologist but I suspect that the reason why these pairs don't exist naturally is that there's probably some sort of issue in the design that causes the living system to die. Evolution tends to favour things that work well and tends to eliminate things that don't
Interesting that this article should come up. I heard an interesting program on CBC-Radio about people who translate in real-time. Basically they listen to one language and speak the translated terms in another for a public speaker. It is apparently a huge mental exercise that only a few people can pull off. Even when they pull this off smoothly most need to take a break after 30 minutes of continuous translation.
Personally I consider SeaMonkey to be the modern relative of Netscape. FireFox is sort of the light-weight relative. Being a big fan of Netscape, I use SeaMonkey today.:) I remember seeing Netscape turn into a mess after version 3.0 and basically die from the market sadly. Fortunately Netscape communications was generous enough to give away their source which makes it possible for it to have survived today as opensource.
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I find it disappointing that ISPs don't meter usage. It would help cut down on spam and viruses for example if users suddenly realized that something was costing them a lot of money and wasting bandwidth. I mean all our other services are metered. As for myself there are months when I download huge amounts of anime and then there are other months where I download next to nothing yet I still pay the same amount. This fact alone means it's more beneficial for me to download like a nutcase and ruin it for everyone else. Granted the only catch is that ISPs would hopefully charge reasonable rates with a certain flat fee to maintain the line. To folks to believe otherwise, I suspect you're not willing to give up your free lunch to the expense of others. The Internet is a limited resource as some ISPs are learning the hard way. Given the choice between metered usage versus throttled / controlled / broken Internet, I'd pay for metered anyday.
I would say that a degree isn't absolutely necessary but highly recommended. Even more important than a degree is if it's something that you're naturally interested in. As in would you still pursue it even if you didn't make all that much money? Do you spend hours keeping yourself updated on what's new and tinker at home regardless if it's job relevant? If you do then I suspect you're am amazing tech. However, I would still say going to University is a good thing. It teaches you to handle stress and to learn quickly. More importantly, I had a chance to work with others. While a degree isn't always a sign of a good candidate, it's a sign they have the strength and will to at least accomplish a goal. Don't forget too that there's lots of IT candidates out there. Sometimes when it comes down to it a degree might be the only way to distinguish two candidates apart. I know it played a part in my current system admin job. Finally, don't expect to make a 6 figure income in IT. I certainly don't. I enjoy what I do and my pay is very reasonable. It's taken me a while to get where I am and I have to admit I didn't have the best luck in the world but it did work out in the end. The fact that you emphasize on money has me worried. As it's long been said, take a job because you like doing it. Even if it's a great paying job, it will cost you your health and life in the end if you don't like what you're doing.
Most Businesses won't upgrade to Vista because there are still far too many potential issues in doing so. You risk breaking a lot of software and systems currently in use. You need to retrain staff plus get all updated hardware because most of it is too slow or old to run Vista effectively. With the economic slowdown, it makes upgrade budgets even worse. And when you do upgrade the only real visible difference being a fancier interface!? I mean think about it folks you go to your CEO as an IT manager and explain to them you blew $1000 minimal (probably more) on something that just looks nicer with the risk of everything being screwed up!? This is why businesses are not upgrading to Vista. Even if Microsoft stops releasing patches for XP, it won't matter because very few businesses have their patches 100% updated anyhow. In fact, it's more important to have a good viral scanner and firewall. The other reason is that the last MAJOR upgrade was for year 2000. A lot of companies used that as an excuse to spend upgrading the entire IT infastructure. It's now 2008 and there's no compelling reason to do so yet. Until Vista or Windows 7 shows fantastic benefits or XP becomes incompatible with everything which probably won't happen for years, good luck switching.
Umm you do realize the kid's 2 right? Even if the kid is a prodigy, it probably isn't a good idea to give him a real laptop as most are not designed for that sort of abuse. Plus do you really want your kid to be a computer junkie at that age already!? I mean I'd prefer to give my kids electronic toys (FRS Radio for example), encourage them to play and explore with different things. By only giving them a computer you're effectively limiting their choices.
Hmm odd that seemed to have missed out on the leading enterprise SSDs. I think Tom's Hardware reviewed them a while back. Samsung SSDs from what I remember were as cost effective as they get but generally were slower than either Memoright or Mitron?
I think most folks are forgetting something far simpler. Most folks I know including myself weren't 100% sure of what they wanted to be growing up. Yes, I'm gifted at computers but I can also write, love arts and could probably be a nurse due to my patience. In fact a good block of my skills are more artsy than solid engineering and math. The thing is when you're not sure you tend to go with what is considered the norm for your society. For me since I seemed bright and gifted in math despite my other skills I was encouraged to take a career in computers. Looking back it seemed that going with the flow seemed to have eventually worked out well for me. So yes you don't always need to break the flow to be successful. It seems to me being sexist is refusing to let someone into a field. Give everyone a choice however understand that most folks will tend not to make a choice that is different from what culture dictates. It's life and a normal part of society.
I'm surprised there's so many negative comments on SecondLife in particular although in some ways I agree. Myself I've long been a user of MUDs, actually I'm still a part of one today. (Free Text-based Virtual Systems). I never did like SecondLife due to it's commercial content but I can understand it's attractiveness for many. I think businesses don't understand the reality of VR systems. For most people, it's about one's self in many ways. Think of it as a spiritual journey for many. Put it this way, I think VR Systems are an expression of someone's hopes and dreams. If your hopes and dreams only consist of commercial products... Well I'd say that's why your life feels empty.
No offense or anything but I've never been really impressed with Apple's design regardless of price. It looks far too plain for my tastes and being common, not as unique as it once had been. For design, I actually admire some of Asus's high end models although their use of leather may be overkill. Still even with style it's very functional, I still own a 3 year old Asus Z33aE ultralight model and the thing is still solid as a rock with some insane battery life compared to modern Core Duos. Sadly if you like MacOSX, you're basically stuck with one design. Innovative but limiting. I guess that's why a lot of PC fans don't always admire Macs so much.
I suppose this makes sense. I mean think about it if you panic you are more likely to respond in force. It is probably a good instinct from when we were caveman as a last resort to save us from some wild animal trying to kill us. The bad news is of course we are in modern society now (I think) where those sort of things are less likely to happen and thinking it over before doing is a better course of action.
To be honest, I'm a university graduate myself with a degree in comp sci but I have seen high school drop-outs that can work better in IT than folks with University level degrees. The reality for IT is that if you don't enjoy computers and experiment in your own spare time then you'll never be honestly that great at it. All the certifications in the world won't save you then. I can understand why employers test people. People after all lie badly on their resumes. I've in cases honestly filled out my resume only to find I didn't even get an interview because they only bothered to interview folks with more impressive looking resumes. Then during interviews, I've surprised employers because I seem surprisingly skilled and should've padded my resume more. I think testing is a good idea provided it's done correctly.
I have to wonder how many folks realistically have met bad cops. I'm a visible minority where I live and I've never had any problems with cops. I've been stopped once at a drunk driving checkpoint in my life but that's it. Yes I was sober, and they were polite. Maybe it's the one bad apple symptom where it takes only one or two bad cops to give everyone a bad name. I still believe that in general most cops are good and do their job. Otherwise why in the world would we continue to support them financially. I also suspect the comments are somewhat exaggerated, people get nervous around cops (even for no good reason), it's probably more natural to say nasty things about them than good.
This article is a bit thin on details on what went wrong. Personally I believe that if the picture is taken from a public place then it's fair game. If you really want your privacy go home and pull up all your curtains. I mean think about famous people, they're often hounded by the press in public. If we think that's okay why shouldn't it apply to ourselves? Also if you have a private road, you might want to consider putting a gate on it since that would be harder to miss. I mean in all honestly do you drive around all paranoid looking for "Private Road" signs where you don't expect them? Sheesh, makes you wonder how our world works at all with folks being so paranoid nowadays.
Hmm,
I'm surprised folks are missing one important point about this car. Let's say you're rich and you want to buy a supercar. Most gas powered supercars use huge amounts of gas. After all they're not designed to save fuel. They're designed to go fast. This thing is an electric and generally very efficient so right away you've helped the environment there by not burning huge amounts of gas. At $100,000 the price is cheaper than most high end sports cars and being rare that will look good too. Sure it doesn't have much range but how often do you take your car on cross-country trips. Hell if you're rich, how often would you seriously want to spend hours driving across country versus taking a plane? It's range is great for most normal commutes in the city. It's also very likely highly reliable too being that it has very few parts. So yes, this isn't your common man's car but for the rich or enthusiast this seems like a good idea.
I actually like WinXP SP2 despite having the knowledge to hack Linux onto a Linksys NSLU2 and compiling some of the packages myself on it. As much as folks complain that WinXP crashes, I've haven't seen that nasty blue screen in years. It comes from knowing how to set XP up and making sure your hardware isn't messed up. I haven't met many folks who actually go through the number of steps I do on a new WinXP setup which might explain why it works so well for me. When you use Opensource software such as SeaMonkey or Media Player Classic and FDDShow with WinXP it actually becomes very useful. I remember back in university when XP came out we were impressed. And these are CompSci students working on Sun Enterprise systems. Where Linux still shines the most however is as a stable server and of course it has a front-end interface (compiz) light-years ahead of Vista. XP's strengths are in games, video playback and pirating. To a geek like myself that's why I've stayed with XP. Everything works with near perfect stability and I have a blend of opensource and closed-source / pirated tools to fit my needs. For a regular person who doesn't care however and just wants to surf the web, Linux would probably work fine.
Actually I believe this is entirely possible. I think folks are forgetting that the culture in China is quite different from the culture in the US. I should know, both my parents immigrated to Canada. At times I find it challenging to get along with them due to cultural difference and I myself feel like I'm wedged between both worlds at times. You only need to look at the history to understand it a little better. Most Chinese are use to a socially stable monarchy that's lasted for centuries if you look at China's history while in North America we're mostly all immigrants who gambled everything on freedom to survive. Most Chinese at least traditionally prefer a stable secure lifestyle even if it means giving up a few personal freedoms while I would think that in North America most of us would like to prefer the opposite. Both lifestyles come with their benefits and disadvantages. I've read the recent National Geographic articles that some parts of China are rapidly modernizing or westernizing however you may see it. It's sadly creating huge rifts between the generations because along with it comes cultural changes.
While the idea of having free wireless Internet is nice, I think folks are forgetting that in reality this probably wouldn't work. After all how many places do you know of where folks have wired up their say water utility and am sharing water for free? How long do you think a system like this would work before a bunch of folks abuse the network and start torrenting all the bandwidth out of it? That's the problem with "free" resources. It only takes a few idiots to misuse it and that's the end of the system.
It's no surprise that Intel is being bashed over their idea of real-time CPU ray-tracing. As anyone who has ever ray-traced will realize it's extremely slow. At times you're talking about HOURS PER FRAME while realistically you want at least 30 frames per second and even that isn't considered great by many gamers. It's going to take a HUGE and I mean HUGE increase in computation power before that happens. Rasterization techniques are tremendously faster and they look nearly as good as Ray-tracing for the most part. Considering that we're yet to reach a point in Rasterization where we don't need more processing power (Crysis in high resolution.) I don't see us moving away from it yet. The day when we declare that we have graphics cards more powerful than we need for Rasterization is when we start moving towards ray-tracing. That day isn't anytime soon unfortunately.
I would have thought the Blu-Ray group would have liked faster adoption after the demise of HD-DVD but it seems by keeping prices high they might end up slowing themselves down. What would be even more ironic is if the Blu-Ray group collapses themselves in a few years due to lack of demand. That would be a good laugh.
I own a 19 inch professional / optically flat / CPD-G420 Sony Trinitron monitor and paid about $700 new for it in it's time. Sure it's heavy and sucks up some desk space but the image quality is amazing for a monitor. Runs at an insane 1440x1080 @ 90 Hz. I've had people comment that it seems like an LCD if you don't notice the size of it. I use it heavily for photography work. I think sadly most folks believe a CRT is terrible because they've never owned a high end series CRT.
Nowadays to get an equivalent LCD I'd probably need to sink my money into a +$1000 NEC professional LCD panel which is still weak on the response speed. (With LCDs usually fast panels mean poor colour and vice versa). I still haven't made the switch yet because I'm not too thrilled about paying more for less in some senses. And while an LCD may use less energy, I'm not so certain that the actual switch is good for the environment either. I remember reading a few years back that if you don't need to upgrade then don't because the environmental damage to build the new equipment is pretty extensive. (Not to mention disposal).
As a side note my dad got a 32 inch FlatTube Wega Trinitron TV for $350 on sale a month ago. For that price you can't even get an equivalent Plasma or LCD. It weighted a tonne to get it home but wow, is the image quality unbelievable. I'm personally sad to see this technology go. I still think LCDs or Plasmas are a compromise. Until OLEDs or even the patent burdened SED if ever becomes mainstream, I think we'll loose out on image quality.
There were several articles about a year ago about Intel limiting shipment of CPUs to retailers who dared to sell AMD products. This was back when Athlon64 was king of the hill and P4's were terrible. Sadly, I'm not sure if much came out of that. It may be for this reason that the newer AMD chips are not as great. AMD may have never gotten the extra profit it was entitled to make the next better generation of chips. Seeing how slow most governments are to respond this may be a response to that initial complaint. On the other hand, I seem to recall Germany loaning a huge amount of money to AMD to build a chip fab there. Maybe this is a way of ensuring their investment was sound? Personally I think Intel should get fined anyhow. AMD needs a little help to make sure they survive. If AMD bites the dust we all loose in a big way.
True, but seeing the slow adoption of Vista that might not happen until SP3. :)
No wireless WAN will never completely replace wired LAN systems anytime soon. I think someone's forgetting that wireless networks basically have this problem that all signals are shared in the same airspace while if you use a wire, it's isolated in the wire. So wires will always carry more data / speed than wireless ever will. Need more speed? Toss in another wire, whereas in wireless you soak up more of the spectrum which is limited.
Interesting. I'm no biologist but I suspect that the reason why these pairs don't exist naturally is that there's probably some sort of issue in the design that causes the living system to die. Evolution tends to favour things that work well and tends to eliminate things that don't
Interesting that this article should come up. I heard an interesting program on CBC-Radio about people who translate in real-time. Basically they listen to one language and speak the translated terms in another for a public speaker. It is apparently a huge mental exercise that only a few people can pull off. Even when they pull this off smoothly most need to take a break after 30 minutes of continuous translation.
Personally I consider SeaMonkey to be the modern relative of Netscape. FireFox is sort of the light-weight relative. Being a big fan of Netscape, I use SeaMonkey today. :) I remember seeing Netscape turn into a mess after version 3.0 and basically die from the market sadly. Fortunately Netscape communications was generous enough to give away their source which makes it possible for it to have survived today as opensource.