I've read your post. I completely believe you are entitled to your opinion and agree with you that ill-informed individuals shouldn't vote (generally speaking). Of course, in this day of information being so readily available I would advocate that people wishing to vote should get themselves informed first. People who don't want to vote absolutely shouldn't vote. I know you're only asking for acceptance of your beliefs and you got it at least from me. I don't know exactly why you have those beliefs but if you are interested in why I have mine (in gory detail) check out the Federalist Papers. And if you have some book that details the reasons you have your beliefs I'm willing to check it out.
Obviously I meant in the context that there are other forms of government coexisting with anarchism. The other forms of government came to prominence for a reason. Large populations need stronger forms of government in order to operate efficiently by establishing and enforcing rules agreed upon by the majority. It also makes it much easier for nations to get along with each other (since persons in each country are given the authority to make decisions that pertain to the entire country without requiring them to get direct approval of all of the citizens).
It's also debatable whether the people in prehistoric times lived in 'true' anarchy. This is because virtually all tribes had a chieftain or equivalent that either acted as the local dictator or, at best, the local prime minister.
I have met anarchists before (had a roommate that was an anarchist as well). Every one I ever met was not well informed on history, esp. on the history of forming governments and the history (usually rather brief) of areas where anarchism prevailed. To the best of my knowledge anarchism has ever only 'worked' with very small, isolated populations. Once there are external forces, defenses usually need to be made which require a central authority (otherwise they are quickly wiped out). Or once the population becomes a sufficient size the stronger individuals dictate orders to the less powerful with no recourse for the disadvantaged.
If you are truly open-minded I would highly recommend that you read a brief history of the writing of the US Constitution, esp. the Federalist papers (and even the anti-Federalist papers). They go into exquisite detail of why we need some amount of government and specific pros and cons for specific aspects of it. In addition, these papers were written by some of the top minds of their time; individuals that were very well educated and versed on history.
Kucinich is running for president (again). He still doesn't have a chance of winning but at least he makes the Democrat primary debates more interesting.
I don't think there's too much extra functionality in the Xbox 360. The hard drive is great for saving games and enabling backwards compatibility. It's also nice to be able to download game demos. The fact that it can also be used to download movies or TV shows is just a perk. I can't think of a single hardware feature in the 360 that games can't make use of. Most of the extra functionality is simply implemented in software (such as the ability to be a media center, etc.). I don't find anything wrong with adding software features so long as it doesn't interfere with gaming.
Much of the extra cost for the 360 vs. the Wii is just the amount of processing power built into it. If you want to play a game with the best possible graphics you've got to pay for it. If you don't, there's good alternatives out there (PS2 and Wii). I doubt the could have stripped much hardware out of the 360 without directly impacting game performance.
In regards to the PS3 I completely agree with you. They should not have included a blue-ray player in it and probably should have used more standard processors.
As I said in my post, Las Vegas isn't the only place in the US that you can gamble. Most cities have dog racing parks if you want to place bets there. You can get a lotto card in virtually any state (every state may have a lotto now, I haven't kept track). Las Vegas is only a 2-3 hour drive from Los Angeles which is one of the most heavily populated areas in the US. As for the East coast, there are Indian reservation casinos within a 2-3 hour drive from many large cities. Then there are the river boat casinos that are usually placed near downtown areas of the city that hosts them. And in the US virtually everyone has a car so it isn't that much trouble to go gamble. And, honestly, I don't mind that you have to go out of your way a bit to gamble. I've seen areas where gambling laws are much more relaxed. In Tokyo, there are Pachinko parlors on almost every block (at least it seamed that way to me). You can't win cash there (only token prizes like cigarettes) but you sure can lose cash there. Making gambling easily accessible seems to make it more common to be a daily, or at least frequent, activity which IMO is not healthy. At least with the places too inconvenient to go to during the work week people will tend to go there less frequently (and thus spend time doing other things and lose less money there).
I'll grant that this is less freedom but on the other hand you are more likely to have financial freedom since you aren't gambling all your money away:P. I'm sure you'll say most gamblers don't have a problem, but I've heard reports that a large percentage of gamblers that go to casinos frequently have gambling addiction and ruin their finances, marriages, etc. Cities that don't have readily accessible gambling paces have much lower rates of gambling addiction (duh).
It's like smoking to me. Sure, make it legal but it shouldn't be too easy to purchase cigarettes. I still remember when there were cigarette vending machines all over the place here in the US so that it was ridiculously easy for underage kids to buy them and get addicted to smoking. Since they've been made illegal in all places except bars smoking has dramatically fallen in the US. That's not the only reason, but I'm sure it helped.
I'd place a bet on that, but I believe that gambling is immoral and therefore illegal in the USA.
Ever heard of Las Vegas? Also, most states have lotteries and any Indian reservation can have a casino. Most reservations near major population areas have already built casinos and many states allow certain cities to build casinos. There's also riverboat gambling at several major cities. There's also horse racing and dog racing.
There are many gambling restrictions in most of the US. However, there's plenty of ways of losing money through gambling IMO. I bet there's more money lost gambling in the US than any other nation in the world.
While it seems small, you need to consider the margins of the airline. Also, the whole point of creating a composite wing is to create a wing the has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than one made from aluminum. If you essentially put an aluminum wing within a composite one then you aren't saving any weight. And believe me it costs A LOT to make a huge wing from composites, significantly more than an aluminum one.
Weight would be the primary reason. I believe they often use the wing itself as a tank in commercial jets. Not the entire wing, of course, but a portion of it so that the only added components to the wing are some vertical plates of metal to separate the fuel from portions of the wing where they don't want to store fuel (such as where the servos are located or the wing tips). If I'm right (it's been a while since I took an aircraft design course) then they would need to add a significant amount of weight to the wing since now there would be both an internal tank and external shell. Another option is to coat the interior of the wing with some coating that is impermeable to jet fuel. This would weigh much less but, if applied incorrectly or if the coating doesn't last as long as they predict then it could lead to leaks in the future. Even internal aluminum tanks aren't a perfect solution since there can be leaks where the tank joins with supply lines. If a slow leak were to form then the fuel could collect at the lowest part of the wing and come into contact with the composite shell.
I agree. When Boeing broke the wing of a previous jet (I think it predated the 777) they nearly broke the crane used to bend the wing. It's not only expensive to perform tests like this but they also risk breaking very expensive equipment. As others have pointed out, the wing will lose lift as it bends back so there isn't a situation where the wing could break in flight (unless there's a collision of course). The additional risks of composites aren't their initial strength anyway. This is well understood and can be modeled accurately. The problem is testing for proper construction (checking whether the fibers are fully saturated with epoxy, etc.). There's also risks with storing fuel within a composite structure. Should the fuel come into contact with the structure the epoxy will dissolve over time, weakening until failure.
I'm not sure what you base that presumption on. I did a whois lookup on Hillary Clinton's, Obama's, Kucinich's, Edward's and Biden's websites and couldn't find any correlation. I did notice that Edward's domain was registered almost one year to the day after Biden's (7/16/98 vs. 7/17/97). I also noticed that Clinton's website domain was registered most recently out of the ones I looked at (4/21/05). All of their technical contact information doesn't match whatsoever, with each being located in different cities, except for Clinton and Obama (both contacts are in Chicago). You should check out the whois for Kucinich though. It looks like his site is a one-man show, with each entry filled in with his own name and address (registrant, administrative contact, billing contact, technical contact). They all seem to be using different ISPs for their websites based on the traceroutes I ran.
I'm not sure how much influence the candidate's party organization has on their choice of ISP and choice of webmaster. They may encourage the candidate to use OSS or not but I doubt it. It doesn't look like they offer centralized hosting for all of their candidates (or at least the Democrats don't). I also don't see what it has to do with cost since there's even more money on the Democrat side than the Republican yet the Dems are the ones almost exclusively using Apache as their server of choice.
Yes, it's true that a stock value only shows the current perception of a company's worth, not its long-term value. However, it is significant IMO that Nintendo is currently considered to be roughly worth the same as all of Sony which, by any measure, is a much larger company. Way to go Nintendo!
GIS (geographic information system) is all about collecting geographic-based data and making it accessible. Click here for a history of GIS. Even back in 1999 it was possible to buy CDs with various GIS data collected from the census bureau (such as income levels, age groups, etc. for each zip code). It was just a matter of time before the same data would be accessible via the web.
I don't think it's wise to disregard malware regardless of the OS they're using, even if it's Linux or OSX. Choice quote from this article:
Remember that virus writers are a creative and persistent bunch and will continue to come up with new ways to do the "impossible," so computer users should never assume that any particular file type or OS is immune to malicious code.
Vista supposedly has better ways of blocking malware than previous versions of Windows, but I'll believe it when I see it and won't count on it.
I have personal experience with iMacs and Minis at my office in addition to using Linux and various flavors of Windows. Given the low costs of PCs I really don't see why people are willing to pay a premium for a Mini. If one cares about space, buy a laptop. They can now be purchased for as much as or even less than a Mini with equivalent specs.
Just because I'm stating 'I really have a hard time seeing why someone would want to buy a Mac Mini' doesn't mean I think they're wrong for buying it. It's just that I have a hard time imagining under what circumstances a person would want to purchase it. As I stated above, if they want a tiny computer get a laptop which obviously have the advantage of being portable in addition to taking little space. If they want performance buy a PC (or if they want OSX get an iMac). If they don't want performance, why are they spending so much on a computer just to browse the web or check e-mail when they could get a bargain-basement PC for much less? If you are worried about security put your computer behind a router or some other kind of firewall, install anti-virus software and use good habits when browsing the web (disabling ActiveX, javascript, etc.). This is good practice regardless of your OS (although the anti-virus S/W isn't needed for Linux of course).
Off-topic: interesting link in your signature. I knew about the Buran project but haven't read about it in a while. Your site seems to be down though.
I know it's a significant difference, which is why I listed the components individually. Obviously a lot of money could be saved by just buying a cheaper graphics card. If I bought an equivalent video card to the Mini (say a Radeon 7000 at $26) I would save $264, bringing the total to $998. I could buy only one hard drive, saving another $80, and still have twice the storage of the largest drive for a Mini. Now we are looking at only an extra $120 (at most, the online Mac store is down right now so I can't compare exact prices). For that extra money you get a computer with a processor that is 3-4 times faster, four times as much RAM as the standard Mini, a faster and larger hard drive, and a much better motherboard (twice as many USB ports, Firewire ports, two gigabit ethernet ports, built-in wireless with external antenna, faster front-side bus, etc.).
I understand that there's a market for the Mini, especially for the space savings. But the main thing that irks me isn't the price. It's the fact that I can't upgrade it without paying Apple to do it for me (unless I want to go ahead and rip the case off, voiding the warranty). We have a Mini at my office and it is dog slow, even for only browsing the web using Firefox (it's a model that was sold when they first came out to be fair). And if you have to do any development on it using Eclipse you are in for a world of hurt. The built-in visual editor tends to crash the program (happens on other Macs I've noticed, not sure if it is Eclipse's fault or the Mac implementation of the JRE) and causes the program to run even more slowly. We would have upgraded the RAM on it by now if it wasn't such a PITA. Instead, we replaced it with a new iMac with a 24" screen for about $2500. The new system runs well but would still get trounced by almost any benchmark vs. the system I built. With a new 24" LCD monitor costing about $530 my system would cost $1792, over $600 cheaper! Even if I bought one of the most expensive 24" LCD monitors at newegg ($810) my system would still be $400 cheaper at $2072. I selected this monitor because it has an equivalent or superior rating for each spec vs. the 24" display of the iMac (1000:1 contrast vs. 700:1, 500 cd/m vs. 400 cd/m brightness, same resolution, same viewing angle, 6ms response time vs. 14ms, better warranty--3yr free vs. 90-day or 3yr for extra money). And just so you know these numbers aren't coming out of my ass, here are myreferences.
Granted, I did have to use a weekend to setup my system (and I have experience building my own systems, which helps), but it is much more future-proof than a Mini or iMac since it is so much more upgradeable. While the build time should be a factor to be considered, so should the ability to individually replace components over time.
I guess it was my turn too since the timing was almost perfect (since I still had the invoice laying around and had just bought the system).
There's no tax so that more than offsets the shipping cost (which was $27). I could have bought a full version of XP professional for the same price but decided to try Vista since I already have XP and wanted to try DirectX 10. Also, I didn't run around, I just browsed a couple of tech review sights, read the reviews on Newegg and then ordered the products. I built the system over the weekend (built components and installed OS on Saturday, installed other programs and tested the programs on Sunday).
My boss just bought a top of the line Mac laptop a month ago from a local Apple store. It now won't turn on. Even though he bought the extended service warranty on it it will take a full week to replace the laptop. They also wanted to charge $50 plus tax to backup his hard drive (which he is unable to do himself since the drive is inaccessible and the computer won't turn on). At least with a computer I build myself I can at least repair individual components myself and not have to pay $50 to backup my software. Even if the computer was a Mini or an iMac I couldn't easily backup the drive if the computer wouldn't turn on (because you need a special tool to take the case off and ruin the warranty if you try).
Thanks, but I'll stick with building my own systems. Also, I'm not aware of any iMac that has the same performance as the system I built. If I were to build a similar system I could buy a cheaper graphics card, processor, buy only one drive, cheaper RAM, etc. As for the monitor I was only comparing to the Mini which doesn't come with one. If I want to compare to an iMac (which is almost completely impossible to upgrade, except for RAM) then I could buy a 20" LCD for $180 after rebate (ViewSonic Optiquest Series Q20WB Black 20").
Frankly, I really have a hard time seeing why someone would want to buy a Mac Mini. If you pay just a little more you can build yourself a very good system.
For example, I built the following system at the following costs a month ago (from newegg.com):
2x Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB @ $80 each ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless AM2 socket motherboard @ $180 MSI 8800 GTS GeForce @ $290 AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ @ $186 Artic Silver 5 @ $6 ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus @ $30 Vista Home Premium upgrade @ $150 Cooler Master Mystique aluminum case @ $110 Corsair XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) @ $160 500 watt power supply @ $100
Less $20 instant and another $90 in rebates for a total of $1262. That's quite a lot more power than the $800 Mini. The only component missing is the DVD drive (which I already had) but could be purchased for less than $50 if desired. Granted it takes more space but it is surprisingly quite and can run any game out there very well (including Supreme Commander).
Say what you will but the people I've met in Kentucky have been extraordinarily friendly. It's not like they're trying to proselytize to everyone. I've driven across much of the country and have never had such friendly encounters with the locals. And believe me, I've been to some of the more 'forward-thinking' areas such as New York City, where I happened to have some of my worst encounters. People there seem to not give a shit about others (at least not ones from out of town) unless you are paying them for a service (restaurants, tours, etc). To be fair it probably had something to do with the urban environment, but it's hard to find a 'forward-thinking' population in a rural area.
Although I don't agree with the Creationists and conservative views of most of the people in Kentucky I think it would be a lot more pleasant living there than, say, NYC. Even if I had kids it's not that big of a deal living in a conservative area. I grew up in the country in Texas where everyone was a conservative Republican and it seemed I was the only Democratic liberal. If anything it gave me greater patience and tolerance for other people's point of views regardless of how contrary they are to mine.
As I understand it Vista preloads the apps in the background without significantly slowing the system down. The problem with automatically launching apps at startup is that this happens in the foreground and does effect system speed until all of the apps have loaded. It's also a matter of CPU utilization and user resources. I would need to check the details but I bet preloaded apps aren't using any GDI resources until the user actually launches it. Also, the app isn't running when it is preloaded, thus saving some CPU resources (vs. automatically launching the app at startup).
It looks like the Mac doesn't preload apps. I was thinking of the way the Mac caches data on the disk during normal I/O (see this for details).
It's similar to what Mac OS X does. I don't see the downside of this since it doesn't slow the boot time and it doesn't take any time to free memory used by these 'preloaded' apps when other active apps need it.
Leaving the program open all the time would either require me to leave my computer on all the time, or in standby or in hibernation. Given the problems I've had with hibernation in the past I'm holding off on that and the other two options would be a waste of power. It only takes a couple of minutes to turn my computer on and get back to whatever I was working on last.
I agree, launch time for an app is important. I'm glad that Vista now loads apps you use often into memory when the OS loads. So now when I load the apps I use every day it happens nearly instantaneously (except for modern games, they still tend to take a while to load it seems).
I don't think it's out of line but I do think it isn't really possible for game developers to do much to decrease gaming addiction (other than writing less addictive games). Even if they limit the amount of time you could spend playing a particular MMORPG per day/week the person could just own a couple of MMORPGs and switch from one to the other when the limit is reached. They could encourage people to take breaks from time to time like the Wii but I doubt it would be very effective.
I once had a roommate who had a terrible gaming addiction which led to him dropping out of college. He would play games on the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast for over 12 hours every day. For cases like this I can't really imagine what a game developer can do to help the guy out.
I guess you haven't heard of Tom Tancredo. Believe me, we can vote for worse than Giuliani. However, if we elect any Republican other than Ron Paul (or someone similar who isn't running yet) you've got my permission to beat the crap out of us whenever you feel like it.
I basically agree with everything you said. However, I wish they made the new 360 controllers in two sizes like they did with the original Xbox controllers. I have large hands and it really is much more comfortable to use the larger controller rather than the S one.
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I've read your post. I completely believe you are entitled to your opinion and agree with you that ill-informed individuals shouldn't vote (generally speaking). Of course, in this day of information being so readily available I would advocate that people wishing to vote should get themselves informed first. People who don't want to vote absolutely shouldn't vote. I know you're only asking for acceptance of your beliefs and you got it at least from me. I don't know exactly why you have those beliefs but if you are interested in why I have mine (in gory detail) check out the Federalist Papers. And if you have some book that details the reasons you have your beliefs I'm willing to check it out.
Obviously I meant in the context that there are other forms of government coexisting with anarchism. The other forms of government came to prominence for a reason. Large populations need stronger forms of government in order to operate efficiently by establishing and enforcing rules agreed upon by the majority. It also makes it much easier for nations to get along with each other (since persons in each country are given the authority to make decisions that pertain to the entire country without requiring them to get direct approval of all of the citizens).
It's also debatable whether the people in prehistoric times lived in 'true' anarchy. This is because virtually all tribes had a chieftain or equivalent that either acted as the local dictator or, at best, the local prime minister.
I have met anarchists before (had a roommate that was an anarchist as well). Every one I ever met was not well informed on history, esp. on the history of forming governments and the history (usually rather brief) of areas where anarchism prevailed. To the best of my knowledge anarchism has ever only 'worked' with very small, isolated populations. Once there are external forces, defenses usually need to be made which require a central authority (otherwise they are quickly wiped out). Or once the population becomes a sufficient size the stronger individuals dictate orders to the less powerful with no recourse for the disadvantaged.
If you are truly open-minded I would highly recommend that you read a brief history of the writing of the US Constitution, esp. the Federalist papers (and even the anti-Federalist papers). They go into exquisite detail of why we need some amount of government and specific pros and cons for specific aspects of it. In addition, these papers were written by some of the top minds of their time; individuals that were very well educated and versed on history.
Kucinich is running for president (again). He still doesn't have a chance of winning but at least he makes the Democrat primary debates more interesting.
You could, you know, encrypt your data using something like PGP. There's also an older free version of PGP here.
I don't think there's too much extra functionality in the Xbox 360. The hard drive is great for saving games and enabling backwards compatibility. It's also nice to be able to download game demos. The fact that it can also be used to download movies or TV shows is just a perk. I can't think of a single hardware feature in the 360 that games can't make use of. Most of the extra functionality is simply implemented in software (such as the ability to be a media center, etc.). I don't find anything wrong with adding software features so long as it doesn't interfere with gaming.
Much of the extra cost for the 360 vs. the Wii is just the amount of processing power built into it. If you want to play a game with the best possible graphics you've got to pay for it. If you don't, there's good alternatives out there (PS2 and Wii). I doubt the could have stripped much hardware out of the 360 without directly impacting game performance.
In regards to the PS3 I completely agree with you. They should not have included a blue-ray player in it and probably should have used more standard processors.
As I said in my post, Las Vegas isn't the only place in the US that you can gamble. Most cities have dog racing parks if you want to place bets there. You can get a lotto card in virtually any state (every state may have a lotto now, I haven't kept track). Las Vegas is only a 2-3 hour drive from Los Angeles which is one of the most heavily populated areas in the US. As for the East coast, there are Indian reservation casinos within a 2-3 hour drive from many large cities. Then there are the river boat casinos that are usually placed near downtown areas of the city that hosts them. And in the US virtually everyone has a car so it isn't that much trouble to go gamble. And, honestly, I don't mind that you have to go out of your way a bit to gamble. I've seen areas where gambling laws are much more relaxed. In Tokyo, there are Pachinko parlors on almost every block (at least it seamed that way to me). You can't win cash there (only token prizes like cigarettes) but you sure can lose cash there. Making gambling easily accessible seems to make it more common to be a daily, or at least frequent, activity which IMO is not healthy. At least with the places too inconvenient to go to during the work week people will tend to go there less frequently (and thus spend time doing other things and lose less money there).
I'll grant that this is less freedom but on the other hand you are more likely to have financial freedom since you aren't gambling all your money away :P. I'm sure you'll say most gamblers don't have a problem, but I've heard reports that a large percentage of gamblers that go to casinos frequently have gambling addiction and ruin their finances, marriages, etc. Cities that don't have readily accessible gambling paces have much lower rates of gambling addiction (duh).
It's like smoking to me. Sure, make it legal but it shouldn't be too easy to purchase cigarettes. I still remember when there were cigarette vending machines all over the place here in the US so that it was ridiculously easy for underage kids to buy them and get addicted to smoking. Since they've been made illegal in all places except bars smoking has dramatically fallen in the US. That's not the only reason, but I'm sure it helped.
Ever heard of Las Vegas? Also, most states have lotteries and any Indian reservation can have a casino. Most reservations near major population areas have already built casinos and many states allow certain cities to build casinos. There's also riverboat gambling at several major cities. There's also horse racing and dog racing.
There are many gambling restrictions in most of the US. However, there's plenty of ways of losing money through gambling IMO. I bet there's more money lost gambling in the US than any other nation in the world.
While it seems small, you need to consider the margins of the airline. Also, the whole point of creating a composite wing is to create a wing the has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than one made from aluminum. If you essentially put an aluminum wing within a composite one then you aren't saving any weight. And believe me it costs A LOT to make a huge wing from composites, significantly more than an aluminum one.
Weight would be the primary reason. I believe they often use the wing itself as a tank in commercial jets. Not the entire wing, of course, but a portion of it so that the only added components to the wing are some vertical plates of metal to separate the fuel from portions of the wing where they don't want to store fuel (such as where the servos are located or the wing tips). If I'm right (it's been a while since I took an aircraft design course) then they would need to add a significant amount of weight to the wing since now there would be both an internal tank and external shell. Another option is to coat the interior of the wing with some coating that is impermeable to jet fuel. This would weigh much less but, if applied incorrectly or if the coating doesn't last as long as they predict then it could lead to leaks in the future. Even internal aluminum tanks aren't a perfect solution since there can be leaks where the tank joins with supply lines. If a slow leak were to form then the fuel could collect at the lowest part of the wing and come into contact with the composite shell.
I agree. When Boeing broke the wing of a previous jet (I think it predated the 777) they nearly broke the crane used to bend the wing. It's not only expensive to perform tests like this but they also risk breaking very expensive equipment. As others have pointed out, the wing will lose lift as it bends back so there isn't a situation where the wing could break in flight (unless there's a collision of course). The additional risks of composites aren't their initial strength anyway. This is well understood and can be modeled accurately. The problem is testing for proper construction (checking whether the fibers are fully saturated with epoxy, etc.). There's also risks with storing fuel within a composite structure. Should the fuel come into contact with the structure the epoxy will dissolve over time, weakening until failure.
I'm not sure what you base that presumption on. I did a whois lookup on Hillary Clinton's, Obama's, Kucinich's, Edward's and Biden's websites and couldn't find any correlation. I did notice that Edward's domain was registered almost one year to the day after Biden's (7/16/98 vs. 7/17/97). I also noticed that Clinton's website domain was registered most recently out of the ones I looked at (4/21/05). All of their technical contact information doesn't match whatsoever, with each being located in different cities, except for Clinton and Obama (both contacts are in Chicago). You should check out the whois for Kucinich though. It looks like his site is a one-man show, with each entry filled in with his own name and address (registrant, administrative contact, billing contact, technical contact). They all seem to be using different ISPs for their websites based on the traceroutes I ran.
I'm not sure how much influence the candidate's party organization has on their choice of ISP and choice of webmaster. They may encourage the candidate to use OSS or not but I doubt it. It doesn't look like they offer centralized hosting for all of their candidates (or at least the Democrats don't). I also don't see what it has to do with cost since there's even more money on the Democrat side than the Republican yet the Dems are the ones almost exclusively using Apache as their server of choice.
Yes, it's true that a stock value only shows the current perception of a company's worth, not its long-term value. However, it is significant IMO that Nintendo is currently considered to be roughly worth the same as all of Sony which, by any measure, is a much larger company. Way to go Nintendo!
GIS (geographic information system) is all about collecting geographic-based data and making it accessible. Click here for a history of GIS. Even back in 1999 it was possible to buy CDs with various GIS data collected from the census bureau (such as income levels, age groups, etc. for each zip code). It was just a matter of time before the same data would be accessible via the web.
I don't think it's wise to disregard malware regardless of the OS they're using, even if it's Linux or OSX. Choice quote from this article:
Vista supposedly has better ways of blocking malware than previous versions of Windows, but I'll believe it when I see it and won't count on it.
I have personal experience with iMacs and Minis at my office in addition to using Linux and various flavors of Windows. Given the low costs of PCs I really don't see why people are willing to pay a premium for a Mini. If one cares about space, buy a laptop. They can now be purchased for as much as or even less than a Mini with equivalent specs.
Just because I'm stating 'I really have a hard time seeing why someone would want to buy a Mac Mini' doesn't mean I think they're wrong for buying it. It's just that I have a hard time imagining under what circumstances a person would want to purchase it. As I stated above, if they want a tiny computer get a laptop which obviously have the advantage of being portable in addition to taking little space. If they want performance buy a PC (or if they want OSX get an iMac). If they don't want performance, why are they spending so much on a computer just to browse the web or check e-mail when they could get a bargain-basement PC for much less? If you are worried about security put your computer behind a router or some other kind of firewall, install anti-virus software and use good habits when browsing the web (disabling ActiveX, javascript, etc.). This is good practice regardless of your OS (although the anti-virus S/W isn't needed for Linux of course).
Off-topic: interesting link in your signature. I knew about the Buran project but haven't read about it in a while. Your site seems to be down though.
I know it's a significant difference, which is why I listed the components individually. Obviously a lot of money could be saved by just buying a cheaper graphics card. If I bought an equivalent video card to the Mini (say a Radeon 7000 at $26) I would save $264, bringing the total to $998. I could buy only one hard drive, saving another $80, and still have twice the storage of the largest drive for a Mini. Now we are looking at only an extra $120 (at most, the online Mac store is down right now so I can't compare exact prices). For that extra money you get a computer with a processor that is 3-4 times faster, four times as much RAM as the standard Mini, a faster and larger hard drive, and a much better motherboard (twice as many USB ports, Firewire ports, two gigabit ethernet ports, built-in wireless with external antenna, faster front-side bus, etc.).
I understand that there's a market for the Mini, especially for the space savings. But the main thing that irks me isn't the price. It's the fact that I can't upgrade it without paying Apple to do it for me (unless I want to go ahead and rip the case off, voiding the warranty). We have a Mini at my office and it is dog slow, even for only browsing the web using Firefox (it's a model that was sold when they first came out to be fair). And if you have to do any development on it using Eclipse you are in for a world of hurt. The built-in visual editor tends to crash the program (happens on other Macs I've noticed, not sure if it is Eclipse's fault or the Mac implementation of the JRE) and causes the program to run even more slowly. We would have upgraded the RAM on it by now if it wasn't such a PITA. Instead, we replaced it with a new iMac with a 24" screen for about $2500. The new system runs well but would still get trounced by almost any benchmark vs. the system I built. With a new 24" LCD monitor costing about $530 my system would cost $1792, over $600 cheaper! Even if I bought one of the most expensive 24" LCD monitors at newegg ($810) my system would still be $400 cheaper at $2072. I selected this monitor because it has an equivalent or superior rating for each spec vs. the 24" display of the iMac (1000:1 contrast vs. 700:1, 500 cd/m vs. 400 cd/m brightness, same resolution, same viewing angle, 6ms response time vs. 14ms, better warranty--3yr free vs. 90-day or 3yr for extra money). And just so you know these numbers aren't coming out of my ass, here are my references.
Granted, I did have to use a weekend to setup my system (and I have experience building my own systems, which helps), but it is much more future-proof than a Mini or iMac since it is so much more upgradeable. While the build time should be a factor to be considered, so should the ability to individually replace components over time.
It was just my turn, I guess.
I guess it was my turn too since the timing was almost perfect (since I still had the invoice laying around and had just bought the system).
There's no tax so that more than offsets the shipping cost (which was $27). I could have bought a full version of XP professional for the same price but decided to try Vista since I already have XP and wanted to try DirectX 10. Also, I didn't run around, I just browsed a couple of tech review sights, read the reviews on Newegg and then ordered the products. I built the system over the weekend (built components and installed OS on Saturday, installed other programs and tested the programs on Sunday).
My boss just bought a top of the line Mac laptop a month ago from a local Apple store. It now won't turn on. Even though he bought the extended service warranty on it it will take a full week to replace the laptop. They also wanted to charge $50 plus tax to backup his hard drive (which he is unable to do himself since the drive is inaccessible and the computer won't turn on). At least with a computer I build myself I can at least repair individual components myself and not have to pay $50 to backup my software. Even if the computer was a Mini or an iMac I couldn't easily backup the drive if the computer wouldn't turn on (because you need a special tool to take the case off and ruin the warranty if you try).
Thanks, but I'll stick with building my own systems. Also, I'm not aware of any iMac that has the same performance as the system I built. If I were to build a similar system I could buy a cheaper graphics card, processor, buy only one drive, cheaper RAM, etc. As for the monitor I was only comparing to the Mini which doesn't come with one. If I want to compare to an iMac (which is almost completely impossible to upgrade, except for RAM) then I could buy a 20" LCD for $180 after rebate (ViewSonic Optiquest Series Q20WB Black 20").
Frankly, I really have a hard time seeing why someone would want to buy a Mac Mini. If you pay just a little more you can build yourself a very good system.
For example, I built the following system at the following costs a month ago (from newegg.com):
2x Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB @ $80 each
ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless AM2 socket motherboard @ $180
MSI 8800 GTS GeForce @ $290
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ @ $186
Artic Silver 5 @ $6
ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus @ $30
Vista Home Premium upgrade @ $150
Cooler Master Mystique aluminum case @ $110
Corsair XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) @ $160
500 watt power supply @ $100
Less $20 instant and another $90 in rebates for a total of $1262. That's quite a lot more power than the $800 Mini. The only component missing is the DVD drive (which I already had) but could be purchased for less than $50 if desired. Granted it takes more space but it is surprisingly quite and can run any game out there very well (including Supreme Commander).
Say what you will but the people I've met in Kentucky have been extraordinarily friendly. It's not like they're trying to proselytize to everyone. I've driven across much of the country and have never had such friendly encounters with the locals. And believe me, I've been to some of the more 'forward-thinking' areas such as New York City, where I happened to have some of my worst encounters. People there seem to not give a shit about others (at least not ones from out of town) unless you are paying them for a service (restaurants, tours, etc). To be fair it probably had something to do with the urban environment, but it's hard to find a 'forward-thinking' population in a rural area.
Although I don't agree with the Creationists and conservative views of most of the people in Kentucky I think it would be a lot more pleasant living there than, say, NYC. Even if I had kids it's not that big of a deal living in a conservative area. I grew up in the country in Texas where everyone was a conservative Republican and it seemed I was the only Democratic liberal. If anything it gave me greater patience and tolerance for other people's point of views regardless of how contrary they are to mine.
As I understand it Vista preloads the apps in the background without significantly slowing the system down. The problem with automatically launching apps at startup is that this happens in the foreground and does effect system speed until all of the apps have loaded. It's also a matter of CPU utilization and user resources. I would need to check the details but I bet preloaded apps aren't using any GDI resources until the user actually launches it. Also, the app isn't running when it is preloaded, thus saving some CPU resources (vs. automatically launching the app at startup).
It looks like the Mac doesn't preload apps. I was thinking of the way the Mac caches data on the disk during normal I/O (see this for details).
It's similar to what Mac OS X does. I don't see the downside of this since it doesn't slow the boot time and it doesn't take any time to free memory used by these 'preloaded' apps when other active apps need it.
Leaving the program open all the time would either require me to leave my computer on all the time, or in standby or in hibernation. Given the problems I've had with hibernation in the past I'm holding off on that and the other two options would be a waste of power. It only takes a couple of minutes to turn my computer on and get back to whatever I was working on last.
I agree, launch time for an app is important. I'm glad that Vista now loads apps you use often into memory when the OS loads. So now when I load the apps I use every day it happens nearly instantaneously (except for modern games, they still tend to take a while to load it seems).
I don't think it's out of line but I do think it isn't really possible for game developers to do much to decrease gaming addiction (other than writing less addictive games). Even if they limit the amount of time you could spend playing a particular MMORPG per day/week the person could just own a couple of MMORPGs and switch from one to the other when the limit is reached. They could encourage people to take breaks from time to time like the Wii but I doubt it would be very effective.
I once had a roommate who had a terrible gaming addiction which led to him dropping out of college. He would play games on the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast for over 12 hours every day. For cases like this I can't really imagine what a game developer can do to help the guy out.
I guess you haven't heard of Tom Tancredo. Believe me, we can vote for worse than Giuliani. However, if we elect any Republican other than Ron Paul (or someone similar who isn't running yet) you've got my permission to beat the crap out of us whenever you feel like it.
I basically agree with everything you said. However, I wish they made the new 360 controllers in two sizes like they did with the original Xbox controllers. I have large hands and it really is much more comfortable to use the larger controller rather than the S one.