Yeah, I was going by the prices of a Duron or Celeron of a faster speed, which is roughly comparable to a Pentium III. Anyways, most gamers would overclock a 750 MHz chip to over 1GHz.
I know that everyone is drooling over the X-Box, but even with the technical specs in front of me, I have a difficult time being impressed with it.
It's just another proprietary, integrated PC. Compaq, Packard Bell, and lots of other PC manufacturers churned out those pieces of crap for years. Look at where Compaq and there ilk are now... dead.
Integrated PCs never were stable in the past, and I don't think they'll start being stable any time in the future. If every Packard Bell or Compaq is built the same way as the 10,000 previous to it, how come they crash all the time?
I think $700 is a little steep. I agree it would cost more, but $700 would get you one sweet machine today. You could probably even throw in a 19" monitor for that much money.
Anyways, why would I want to play X-Box games, when the X-Box is just a PC with integrated hardware? I can play the very same games on my PC.
Can you explain to me why I'd want to use an emulator to play a game I already own?
Well, I don't think you can really duplicate this system exactly, since some parts of the system are custom jobs (ie, an Intel CPU with an nVidia chipset). However, if you wanted to make a comparable system:
Case: $30 (cheapo mATX) to $100 (Antec ATX)
Motherboard: $50 (cheap mATX) to $150 (Asus ATX)
750MHz CPU: $40 (OEM) to $65 (Retail)
128MB RAM: $10 (OEM) to $25 (Retail)
Good AGP card: $75 (Radeon LE) to $350 (GeForce3)
20GB hard drive: $60 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
DVD-ROM: $50 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
Sound Card: $35 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
Cables, floppy, keyboard, mouse, and other misc components would add another $50 if you didn't already have them.
Altogether, probably $400-500 with OEM parts. IMHO, this would kick the ass of the X-Box, but you'd have to spend more money for it.
You're talking like a PC and an X-Box are two different things. The X-Box is simply a custom PC motherboard with a custom PC chipset. Does this make it any less of a PC? I think not, but this is just my opinion.
Why not just put together your own "X-Box"? Get a standard MicroATX or FlexATX motherboard (1 to 3 PCI slots, 0 to 1 AGP slots, 1 to 3 DIMM slots), stick in a 2.5" laptop EIDE hard drive and 2.5" slimline DVD-ROM, and you're mostly set. You need to figure out how to get decent graphics out of a motherboard that probably has an integrated graphics chip (S3 Savage4, SiS 5xx or 6xx, ATI Mach64 or Mach128, or generic crapola)... but consider this: the most popular games right now are not first person shooters. The most popular games right now are Diablo II, The Sims, Civ III, etc. These games do NOT require anything better than a crappy ATI Mach64 chip (ie, Rage Pro).
Once you've got something running at 900 MHz (have you seen anything slower sold online lately?), a 20GB hard drive (again.. ever seen anything smaller sold online?), and an adequate graphics card (or even a next-gen graphics card like the GeForce3 or new Radeon All-In-Wonder), you can laugh at that silly X-Box.
Advantages of the Flex-ATX system
I'm using a standard chipset, probably from Intel, SiS, or AMD (no, not VIA, because VIA sucks). My chipset is well-supported and proven.
I'm using quality components and not skimping on the power supply, RAM, or CPU fan. Again, my Flex-ATX system is more stable.
I know the hardware and diagnose problems easily. I know everything about Asus motherboards by now, after using them for so long. Most importantly, I know their quirks.
Disadvantages of the Flex-ATX system
It does suffer from using "random", commodity PC hardware, rather than a uniform system (but, then again, I hate every Compaq I see because of their uniformity in suckitude).
It costs a little more to build
There's no billion dollar ad campaign behind the F-Box.
It's not exciting to hack.
I know, I know... I'm a spoilsport, too cynical, I "just don't get it", etc. I've heard all the flames before, but I haven't heard a good, rational argument that would change my mind.
Check eBay for a RISC-based laptop. You didn't think that any had been made? Well, there were a few, but they're insanely difficult to find now. I've seen SPARCbooks get dumped on eBay. I even thought about buying one, just to say that I owned one.
Anyways, it sounds like an ancient 486SX/25 laptop would work fine for this. Go buy one on eBay for $50. Then you'll need to get a battery, but I guess you could hack a modern day battery to work with on of those proprietary systems. You are a hardware hacker, aren't you? Any good solution to this problem is going to require a little soldering and hacking, if not weeks of searching eBay for cheap parts.
I've got another idea for you: get a DEC Multia (166 MHz 21066A CPU) off of eBay, buy a cheap LCD flat panel, and keep them both in your suitcase. I've thought about imbedding my Multia into my girlfriend's Chevy. It'd be the first 64 bit Chevy, I bet.
Dual Pentium III 450MHz, Inwin Q500 full tower case, 250W PS, three extra case fans, SCSI
External SCSI enclosure, 300W PS, four extra case fans, four U2W SCSI hard drives
AMD Duron 800MHz, Enlight 7237 tower case, 350W PS, two extra case fans, EIDE
AMD Duron 650MHz, Superpower midtower case, 300W PS, two extra case fans, EIDE
DEC Multia 166MHz, 80W PS, one fan, no hard drive
External SCSI enclosure with one Seagate Barracuda (holds 4 drives)
External SCSI hard drive, 5400 RPM, Conner
External NEC SCSI CDROM
Not to mention an APC SmartUPS XL, DSL modem, hub, 12 speakers altogether, and two powerful air conditioners (in the same room as the computers).
This is my living room... I don't think it's loud... I'm too busy drooling to listen to fans.
First of all, terrorism thrives on fear, panic, and extremist reactions (such as turning into a police state). The most effective action you can take is to return to normalcy... and resist the urge to take extremeist actions.
Second, this is totally inappropriate, because no EIDE hard drive has yet impressed me with it's ability to go faster than UltraDMA/33.
You're generalizing here. You can't say that all engineers are economically ignorant, and all VCs are mentally challenged.
My girlfriend's father is a very business-savvy man, and he's been an electrical engineer longer than I've been alive.
However, I do agree with you, to a point. People who have no idea how to spend money shouldn't be given large sums of money. But it's not just engineers... it's rock stars, actors, directors, and whoever else thinks they know more about economics than the guys who invested in them.
If you failed Micro Economics in college, then don't expect to make millions once you find a sugar daddy and a business plan.
I've started a small business, and I'm quite leery of selling anything to anyone. It's my company, and I'm not going to report to a boss after taking this long to become my own boss. That attitude may change in time.
One question I have is... is it truly ethical to use a non-profit organization as a front for your for-profit business venture?
One idea that I've had is to do this:
Recycle or refurbish old computers that have been donated from businesses and educational institutions
Give the recycled/refurbished computers to people who have no computer
Sell the same people low cost internet access and support
This would go along with my one-man jack-of-all-trades computer sales/web design/hosting/ISP/consulting/programming/but-wait -there's-much,-much-more
business. But, who knows. Maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew. (Nah...)
Well, the only reason that I load X is to use Netscape or Mozilla. And since I have 512MB RAM, I hardly think that I'm in a position to worry over saving a handful of megabytes.
Maybe this was a good idea back when Berlin was started, but nowadays... I dunno. 256MB of RAM is cheaper than a meal at a cheap restaurant.
Sometimes I think about switching to a free operating system that isn't so, well, damned immature.
I can't think of any other platform (except for the Amiga) where the zealots actually became so much of a problem, people actually went out of their way to keep from being associated with them. "I use Linux, but I'm not one of those loonies..."
Who am I talking about? The people who yell and scream, stomping on their soapbox, full of brimstone and hellfire. It's like being caught up in some sort of revival or something. I didn't know that Linux and/or GNU and/or opensource was a religion to some people.
"If you don't call it GNU/Linux, you are agents of Saaaytan! Oh yes; the Lord hath told me: the operating system verily doth have a name, and it is not Leeeeee-nux; no, it has a holy name! And that name, revealed to only me, by Jaaaaaaysus, is GNU/Leeeeeee-nux. Go now, spread the word, and do not let the agents of Saaaaaaytan corrupt the Name of the operating system. Ahhhhh-men."
If there's any one reason making me want to switch to BSD, Solaris, or Tru64 (even if I have to shell out the money for an better DEC Alpha), it's the Linux Loonies. For the sake of my sanity, the sake of all the people out there thinking of using Linux, and the sake of the Linux partition on my hard drive, stop driving the inane arguments into the ground. If you're going to get hot and bothered about something, choose a technical problem, like SMP deadlocks.
Any time you mix politics in with your ethics, it gets very ironic and (unintentially) funny.
My solution is to... tah dah... not mix ethics and politics!
If you really wanted to write free code, you'd release it without any copyright: ie, public domain. That's why I sort of like the BSD license over the GPL, though they are both sort of nifty.
I was never an Amiga zealot, but I loved my A1000. It's too bad that kids today don't realize how visionary the designers of the Amiga were. It's all but a footnote in the "history of computers" books.
Still, I'll give some credit to Apple for recognizing rising trends before any other PC company, especially any system integrator. It would be nice to see a more open company take such an interest in both hardware and software design.
You've got some good points. I have a slightly difficult time accepting that the iMac is truly an innovation, though. From a power-user's perspective, it's everything that I've always hated about Apple (and warned potential Apple customers about). If someone else considers it an innovative product, I can accept that, though.
As for Quicktime, I've never really understood what the whole hoopla was about that. Perhaps I'm exposing my ignorance about digital video editing.
Firewire is definitely a great innovation; however, I've always prefered SCSI. It's too bad that Apple stopped using SCSI peripherals. It's obvious, however, that Firewire is taking off much faster in the consumer world.
Maybe I'm bitter because I miss Commodore and DEC.
Come on. I think you're forgetting about the Commodore Amiga (not to mention several other revolutionary 8 and 16 bit platforms from the 80s). Apple and Commodore, together, established much of the early personal computing, multimedia, and gaming markets. About the same time that Commodore faultered and started to fail, Apple nearly disappeared, too.
Is it any coincidence that nearly all the non-IBM platforms disappeared by '90 or so? Not really, IMHO. They may have had very different reasons for their failures, but, thanks to their inept marketing, bad management, poor decisions, etc, the IBM clones were able to seal up the market and push the surviving companies into miniscule niche markets.
Most of the non-Intel PC and workstation companies are starting to disappear now, a decade later. DEC? Dead. SGI? Nearly dead. Sun? Losing marketshare quickly to Microsoft, of all people. Cray? Dead. (No pun intended. RIP Seymour Cray). Who's left, really? Hewlett-Packard, who's now working with Intel? Motorola, who is known mostly for cell phones and embedded chips? The future doesn't look so bright to me.
I was never much of a fan of Apple or their products, but I do mourn the slow death of competition in the PC and workstation markets. The most recent Apple products do give me hope that Apple can recreate the success they acheived in the 70s. Maybe competition and innovation aren't dead, but they sure are starting to smell funny.
Apple has never really been about innovation, IMHO. They've been about dumbing down computers so that "the rest of us" can use them. That's why I personally never liked Apple much. Going to the PowerPC chip architecture was a good move, and using the NeXT architecture as a next-gen Macintosh was also a great idea. However, neither of these are innovative... just good decisions.
Innovative? No. Not since the 70s or early 80s. Potential competition to the growing conglomerates? I hope so. Nobody else is rising to the challenge, except a bunch of poorly-run Linux companies that are dying off faster than they can make up business strategies.
I feel that I know the solution to the problems we're facing today (lack of innovation, giant monopolies, slouching market, bold companies driven to niche markets) -- return to the glory days of the 80s, the epitome of open computing, choice, and competing architectures. If that means pumping Federal money into Apple, so be it.
I'd rather not be labeled a kook or a troll, but I suppose either fits.
I suppose I'm going against the tide of public opinion here, but I'm not that fond of Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes). I can't say that I'm terribly impressed with Berke Breathed, either.
You guys should read some of the stuff that Watterson has written. IMHO, he's a hyprocrite, egomaniac, and blowhard. I used to like Calvin & Hobbes, but after finding out what a dork the artist is, it's become very difficult for me to like the art.
Berke Breathed isn't very highly regarded among his peers. I suggest doing a search for Gary Trudeau interviews and trying to find out why he dislikes Berke Breathed so much. According to Trudeau and some other artists, much of Bloom County was outright ripped off from their strips. I'm not sure how true that is, since I never really paid that much attention to the comics, but it did color my opinion of Berthed somewhat.
Peanuts, unfortunately, is perpetually misunderstood and misinterpreted. Much of Peanuts is actually textbook existentialism worked into the format of a comic strip.
Next time you read Peanuts, keep a philosophy textbook nearby. You'll be amazed at how deep it is, once you get past the "little red-headed girl" red herrings.
"You'd be a fool to buy CDs when you can get songs on the Internet for free," said 17-year-old Lee Yong-suk, bobbing his head and swinging his shoulders while listening to South Korea's No. 1 chart hit, "Already One Year" at an Internet cafe in Seoul.
Of course Lee found the love song, by a male duo called "Brown Eyes", using Soribada.
You value privacy, but you relish posting other people's information? Doesn't that make you a bit of a... hypocrit? Why, yes, I think it does.
Shrug. I don't care if you post my phone number. I think it's in extremely poor taste to go around posting other people's phone numbers on web sites that don't ever delete messages, though.
It's nice knowing that the sort of people I'm arguing with are a lot less moral than I am, though.
Slashdot Mirror
You've got a point. I wouldn't mind an iBook.
Time to go dumpster diving in back of the university again...
I think I'd rather buy a 64 bit DEC Alpha motherboard and CPU than spend $1000+ on an Apple system. Oh well.
Yeah, so where do I buy a PPC motherboard and CPU?
Yeah, I was going by the prices of a Duron or Celeron of a faster speed, which is roughly comparable to a Pentium III. Anyways, most gamers would overclock a 750 MHz chip to over 1GHz.
I know that everyone is drooling over the X-Box, but even with the technical specs in front of me, I have a difficult time being impressed with it.
It's just another proprietary, integrated PC. Compaq, Packard Bell, and lots of other PC manufacturers churned out those pieces of crap for years. Look at where Compaq and there ilk are now... dead.
Integrated PCs never were stable in the past, and I don't think they'll start being stable any time in the future. If every Packard Bell or Compaq is built the same way as the 10,000 previous to it, how come they crash all the time?
Well, I have a Playstation and Sega Genesis. I owned a Commodore 64 before you were born.
I think $700 is a little steep. I agree it would cost more, but $700 would get you one sweet machine today. You could probably even throw in a 19" monitor for that much money.
Anyways, why would I want to play X-Box games, when the X-Box is just a PC with integrated hardware? I can play the very same games on my PC.
Can you explain to me why I'd want to use an emulator to play a game I already own?
Well, I don't think you can really duplicate this system exactly, since some parts of the system are custom jobs (ie, an Intel CPU with an nVidia chipset). However, if you wanted to make a comparable system:
Case: $30 (cheapo mATX) to $100 (Antec ATX)
Motherboard: $50 (cheap mATX) to $150 (Asus ATX)
750MHz CPU: $40 (OEM) to $65 (Retail)
128MB RAM: $10 (OEM) to $25 (Retail)
Good AGP card: $75 (Radeon LE) to $350 (GeForce3)
20GB hard drive: $60 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
DVD-ROM: $50 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
Sound Card: $35 (OEM) to $100 (Retail)
Cables, floppy, keyboard, mouse, and other misc components would add another $50 if you didn't already have them.
Altogether, probably $400-500 with OEM parts. IMHO, this would kick the ass of the X-Box, but you'd have to spend more money for it.
Why not just put together your own "X-Box"? Get a standard MicroATX or FlexATX motherboard (1 to 3 PCI slots, 0 to 1 AGP slots, 1 to 3 DIMM slots), stick in a 2.5" laptop EIDE hard drive and 2.5" slimline DVD-ROM, and you're mostly set. You need to figure out how to get decent graphics out of a motherboard that probably has an integrated graphics chip (S3 Savage4, SiS 5xx or 6xx, ATI Mach64 or Mach128, or generic crapola)... but consider this: the most popular games right now are not first person shooters. The most popular games right now are Diablo II, The Sims, Civ III, etc. These games do NOT require anything better than a crappy ATI Mach64 chip (ie, Rage Pro).
Once you've got something running at 900 MHz (have you seen anything slower sold online lately?), a 20GB hard drive (again.. ever seen anything smaller sold online?), and an adequate graphics card (or even a next-gen graphics card like the GeForce3 or new Radeon All-In-Wonder), you can laugh at that silly X-Box.
Advantages of the Flex-ATX system
Disadvantages of the Flex-ATX system
I know, I know... I'm a spoilsport, too cynical, I "just don't get it", etc. I've heard all the flames before, but I haven't heard a good, rational argument that would change my mind.
Check eBay for a RISC-based laptop. You didn't think that any had been made? Well, there were a few, but they're insanely difficult to find now. I've seen SPARCbooks get dumped on eBay. I even thought about buying one, just to say that I owned one.
Anyways, it sounds like an ancient 486SX/25 laptop would work fine for this. Go buy one on eBay for $50. Then you'll need to get a battery, but I guess you could hack a modern day battery to work with on of those proprietary systems. You are a hardware hacker, aren't you? Any good solution to this problem is going to require a little soldering and hacking, if not weeks of searching eBay for cheap parts.
I've got another idea for you: get a DEC Multia (166 MHz 21066A CPU) off of eBay, buy a cheap LCD flat panel, and keep them both in your suitcase. I've thought about imbedding my Multia into my girlfriend's Chevy. It'd be the first 64 bit Chevy, I bet.
Why do you want Corsair?
Buy Crucial RAM direct from the manufacturer.
What do you think goes in all those expensive RAM modules? Micron parts. So buy your RAM from Crucial, a wholly owned subsidiary of Micron.
How about all these computers in one room?
Dual Pentium III 450MHz, Inwin Q500 full tower case, 250W PS, three extra case fans, SCSI
External SCSI enclosure, 300W PS, four extra case fans, four U2W SCSI hard drives
AMD Duron 800MHz, Enlight 7237 tower case, 350W PS, two extra case fans, EIDE
AMD Duron 650MHz, Superpower midtower case, 300W PS, two extra case fans, EIDE
DEC Multia 166MHz, 80W PS, one fan, no hard drive
External SCSI enclosure with one Seagate Barracuda (holds 4 drives)
External SCSI hard drive, 5400 RPM, Conner
External NEC SCSI CDROM
Not to mention an APC SmartUPS XL, DSL modem, hub, 12 speakers altogether, and two powerful air conditioners (in the same room as the computers).
This is my living room... I don't think it's loud... I'm too busy drooling to listen to fans.
First of all, terrorism thrives on fear, panic, and extremist reactions (such as turning into a police state). The most effective action you can take is to return to normalcy... and resist the urge to take extremeist actions.
Second, this is totally inappropriate, because no EIDE hard drive has yet impressed me with it's ability to go faster than UltraDMA/33.
You're generalizing here. You can't say that all engineers are economically ignorant, and all VCs are mentally challenged.
My girlfriend's father is a very business-savvy man, and he's been an electrical engineer longer than I've been alive.
However, I do agree with you, to a point. People who have no idea how to spend money shouldn't be given large sums of money. But it's not just engineers... it's rock stars, actors, directors, and whoever else thinks they know more about economics than the guys who invested in them.
If you failed Micro Economics in college, then don't expect to make millions once you find a sugar daddy and a business plan.
One question I have is... is it truly ethical to use a non-profit organization as a front for your for-profit business venture?
One idea that I've had is to do this:
This would go along with my one-man jack-of-all-trades computer sales/web design/hosting/ISP/consulting/programming/but-wai
business. But, who knows. Maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew. (Nah...)
Shouldn't it be called "less spam", rather than "no spam"?
Well, the only reason that I load X is to use Netscape or Mozilla. And since I have 512MB RAM, I hardly think that I'm in a position to worry over saving a handful of megabytes.
Maybe this was a good idea back when Berlin was started, but nowadays... I dunno. 256MB of RAM is cheaper than a meal at a cheap restaurant.
Sometimes I think about switching to a free operating system that isn't so, well, damned immature.
I can't think of any other platform (except for the Amiga) where the zealots actually became so much of a problem, people actually went out of their way to keep from being associated with them. "I use Linux, but I'm not one of those loonies..."
Who am I talking about? The people who yell and scream, stomping on their soapbox, full of brimstone and hellfire. It's like being caught up in some sort of revival or something. I didn't know that Linux and/or GNU and/or opensource was a religion to some people.
"If you don't call it GNU/Linux, you are agents of Saaaytan! Oh yes; the Lord hath told me: the operating system verily doth have a name, and it is not Leeeeee-nux; no, it has a holy name! And that name, revealed to only me, by Jaaaaaaysus, is GNU/Leeeeeee-nux. Go now, spread the word, and do not let the agents of Saaaaaaytan corrupt the Name of the operating system. Ahhhhh-men."
If there's any one reason making me want to switch to BSD, Solaris, or Tru64 (even if I have to shell out the money for an better DEC Alpha), it's the Linux Loonies. For the sake of my sanity, the sake of all the people out there thinking of using Linux, and the sake of the Linux partition on my hard drive, stop driving the inane arguments into the ground. If you're going to get hot and bothered about something, choose a technical problem, like SMP deadlocks.
Any time you mix politics in with your ethics, it gets very ironic and (unintentially) funny.
My solution is to... tah dah... not mix ethics and politics!
If you really wanted to write free code, you'd release it without any copyright: ie, public domain. That's why I sort of like the BSD license over the GPL, though they are both sort of nifty.
I was never an Amiga zealot, but I loved my A1000. It's too bad that kids today don't realize how visionary the designers of the Amiga were. It's all but a footnote in the "history of computers" books.
Still, I'll give some credit to Apple for recognizing rising trends before any other PC company, especially any system integrator. It would be nice to see a more open company take such an interest in both hardware and software design.
You've got some good points. I have a slightly difficult time accepting that the iMac is truly an innovation, though. From a power-user's perspective, it's everything that I've always hated about Apple (and warned potential Apple customers about). If someone else considers it an innovative product, I can accept that, though.
As for Quicktime, I've never really understood what the whole hoopla was about that. Perhaps I'm exposing my ignorance about digital video editing.
Firewire is definitely a great innovation; however, I've always prefered SCSI. It's too bad that Apple stopped using SCSI peripherals. It's obvious, however, that Firewire is taking off much faster in the consumer world.
Maybe I'm bitter because I miss Commodore and DEC.
Come on. I think you're forgetting about the Commodore Amiga (not to mention several other revolutionary 8 and 16 bit platforms from the 80s). Apple and Commodore, together, established much of the early personal computing, multimedia, and gaming markets. About the same time that Commodore faultered and started to fail, Apple nearly disappeared, too.
Is it any coincidence that nearly all the non-IBM platforms disappeared by '90 or so? Not really, IMHO. They may have had very different reasons for their failures, but, thanks to their inept marketing, bad management, poor decisions, etc, the IBM clones were able to seal up the market and push the surviving companies into miniscule niche markets.
Most of the non-Intel PC and workstation companies are starting to disappear now, a decade later. DEC? Dead. SGI? Nearly dead. Sun? Losing marketshare quickly to Microsoft, of all people. Cray? Dead. (No pun intended. RIP Seymour Cray). Who's left, really? Hewlett-Packard, who's now working with Intel? Motorola, who is known mostly for cell phones and embedded chips? The future doesn't look so bright to me.
I was never much of a fan of Apple or their products, but I do mourn the slow death of competition in the PC and workstation markets. The most recent Apple products do give me hope that Apple can recreate the success they acheived in the 70s. Maybe competition and innovation aren't dead, but they sure are starting to smell funny.
Apple has never really been about innovation, IMHO. They've been about dumbing down computers so that "the rest of us" can use them. That's why I personally never liked Apple much. Going to the PowerPC chip architecture was a good move, and using the NeXT architecture as a next-gen Macintosh was also a great idea. However, neither of these are innovative... just good decisions.
Innovative? No. Not since the 70s or early 80s. Potential competition to the growing conglomerates? I hope so. Nobody else is rising to the challenge, except a bunch of poorly-run Linux companies that are dying off faster than they can make up business strategies.
I feel that I know the solution to the problems we're facing today (lack of innovation, giant monopolies, slouching market, bold companies driven to niche markets) -- return to the glory days of the 80s, the epitome of open computing, choice, and competing architectures. If that means pumping Federal money into Apple, so be it.
I'd rather not be labeled a kook or a troll, but I suppose either fits.
I suppose I'm going against the tide of public opinion here, but I'm not that fond of Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes). I can't say that I'm terribly impressed with Berke Breathed, either.
You guys should read some of the stuff that Watterson has written. IMHO, he's a hyprocrite, egomaniac, and blowhard. I used to like Calvin & Hobbes, but after finding out what a dork the artist is, it's become very difficult for me to like the art.
Berke Breathed isn't very highly regarded among his peers. I suggest doing a search for Gary Trudeau interviews and trying to find out why he dislikes Berke Breathed so much. According to Trudeau and some other artists, much of Bloom County was outright ripped off from their strips. I'm not sure how true that is, since I never really paid that much attention to the comics, but it did color my opinion of Berthed somewhat.
Peanuts, unfortunately, is perpetually misunderstood and misinterpreted. Much of Peanuts is actually textbook existentialism worked into the format of a comic strip.
Next time you read Peanuts, keep a philosophy textbook nearby. You'll be amazed at how deep it is, once you get past the "little red-headed girl" red herrings.
I'd rather hear some of his solo stuff since he left Faith No More.
You value privacy, but you relish posting other people's information? Doesn't that make you a bit of a... hypocrit? Why, yes, I think it does.
Shrug. I don't care if you post my phone number. I think it's in extremely poor taste to go around posting other people's phone numbers on web sites that don't ever delete messages, though.
It's nice knowing that the sort of people I'm arguing with are a lot less moral than I am, though.