I'll agree that far more accidents are caused by inattentive drivers, but while you do have a point that as well as tastes, sensations, etc. marijuana also increases one's awareness of how high they are I still can't see even where the idea that it doesn't impair you at least to an extent came from. When you're on a drug that's pretty much known for its ability to make people spacey and easily distracted it seems to me to be obvious there will be some impairment.
While I certainly don't have the tolerance levels of some of the hardcore stoners I know who have been smoking for ten years, there's no way I'd ever argue that marijuana doesn't reduce driving ability. I've driven high before a few times, I don't like doing it at all and don't do it regularly (only twice in four years of smoking). You don't speed or get reckless like you do when drunk, but your motor skills and reaction times are unquestionably impaired. The last time I did it was a fairly long 3 AM highway trip where I had my in-car camera running, so I have a perfect record of how I drove. Really the only positive thing I can say about my driving that night is I stayed between the lines (barely at times) and didn't really speed by much (70MPH in a 65, which is odd for me, sober I tend to run the Turnpike at 90+). Terrible idea.
Obviously this is just one anecdotal experience and yes I'll agree that it is far safer to drive on weed versus alcohol, but if you believe you drive fine on weed you're lying to yourself.
That said, I'm still all for legalization. They can't tell how much marijuana intoxication is affecting driving as-is, so it wouldn't change anyways. They can't tell how intoxicated you are off of any of the number of OTC or prescription drugs the average American is on either. All that would change is that the states with retarded "any detectable levels of metabolites" laws for marijuana OVIs would have to STFU and figure something else out. I could not smoke anything for a week, be unquestionably sober, and still get popped for an OVI based on a piss test in those states. Fuck 'em, that's not fair at all.
They don't even have to do that, IE8 has a list of incompatible sites which can have updates forced to it through AD. Corporate IT puts the entire intranet zone in that list, pushes it out, and magic, everyone can use IE8 and have it render their broken-ass webpages designed by retarded fucksticks (yes I do have major anger issues against anyone building with IE6 as a target). Individual apps can be checked out by IT and/or adventurous users one by one and moved off the list if it works in IE8 mode.
I'm a believer in standards compliance with graceful failure. Write it for proper browsers, then do the absolute bare minimum to make it usable in the shitholes of the internet. If you can, place a notification on those pages explaining their experience is not optimal due to them or their IT department not clicking the goddamn update button. They don't get the nifty stuff, but they get a working site and encouragement to solve the problem thus making the internet better for the rest of us.
Unfortunately it's not and it has to an extent gotten worse. Both AT&T and Verizon have this bad idea of building their bundled services such as video and phone to require their branded router, which is in both cases an utter shitbox which can handle very few connections (I think in the case of FiOS it was something absurdly low too)
It's not that I'm reading them all at the same time, it's that I can queue up things to read. For example, me on Slashdot back in 2004 when I still used IE:
1. Open Slashdot 2. See interesting headline 3. Click article (*gasp*) 4. Read article 5. Click back 6. If content was interesting and there might be a good discussion, click Comments link 7. Read, reply, repeat. 8. GOTO 1 unless I've gone back far enough to come across stuff I read/commented on yesterday.
Now with tabs I just run through the front pages of all my normal news sites until I hit old articles middle-clicking on everything that looks interesting, then I swing back to the beginning and read through every tab. I know it's technically the same experience as opening multiple windows, but tabs feel cleaner to me as a matter of personal opinion.
That's where the Qualcomm GoBi devices come in. They're able to be switched from CDMA 1xRTT+EvDO to GSM EDGE+HSUPA with a firmware change, and I think they technically support a dual mode firmware just it's never been seen in the wild.
Those new Sony netbooks have the GoBi cards configured in a Verizon-only mode in the US, but there are a number of threads in various phone forums discussing how to load a GSM/HSUPA firmware and use it on AT&T. tnkgrl has some info on her blog (too lazy to find link, google it if interested).
If I can buy my next Macbook Pro with a cross-provider 3G card (or 4G if there's a decent rollout by then) I will do it. I've dealt with too much shit getting Bluetooth tethering working on my current and past phones. I just never want to be tied to a provider (though ironically this effectively sticks me to AT&T, since no unlocked phones work on the CDMA carriers and T-Mobile's 3G and rural coverage are both dog shit).
There's no point creating a tiny network of zombies. A huge network is where the money is.
I completely disagree. Storm was only in the 1-10 million machine range. There are many more Macs out there (published numbers average around 1.8 million new units per quarter since the Intel switch in '06, so there's around 20 million out there only counting Intel machines), and basically none of them have antivirus software. Even if the "market" is smaller than that of Windows PCs, there are still more than enough machines out there to make it interesting, and they're almost all only protected by the OS itself.
Basically what I'm getting at here is the market may be smaller, but it's easily large enough to be a worthwhile target and if you're correct it's wide open for the taking.
If you want to flip this one over, how about we look at web servers. Apache dominates the hell out of IIS in terms of market share, but where's the *nix equivalent of Code Red? They didn't attack the market leader, they attacked the easiest target.
I had a similar experience a few years later. I had known about the existence of Linux from doing some web development and seeing the Linux dedicated servers for my favorite online games, but had never actually used it. I had shitty dialup and not much motivation, so I wouldn't download it. At some point however I came across an issue of Maximum Linux magazine which included a Mandrake install CD.
I installed that, got it running in a dual boot environment, then discovered that it didn't support my 3D card, sound card, or modem, so I promptly rebooted to Windows. A few months later I bought a Sound Blaster card and had discovered linmodems.org (I think) so I could at least get online and hear sounds. An X update gave me 3D graphics, so now I was ready to try it out as a full time OS. That lasted about three days before the desire to play Counter-Strike pushed me back to Windows.
I didn't try to seriously use Linux again until 2004 when Ubuntu came out. At that time Fedora couldn't properly figure out my widescreen laptop, but Ubuntu got it out of the box. I had never used a Debian-based distro before, but I quickly fell in love with APT and since then have never looked back.
That's great, you've created an intranet and demonstrated it's pricing. Now, of course, try to get a peering agreement with a tier-1 ISP so that your bits can travel to and from the internet at large. Try one month at 10 Mbps and another at 1000 Mbps and see if your bill changes.
Bad example, since unlike when I get an internet connection from Time Warner Cable and their ilk, if I get a 10 megabit connection from a tier 1 it comes with the expectation that I can use it to rated capacity 100% of the time and if it is underperforming/down I will be able to get credits.
Time Warner Cable gives me none of these expectations. All quoted bandwidth numbers are best case, if it's down sucks to be me, and if they had their way I could not even max it out for a week.
The model I've encountered most when shopping for dedicated servers/colo hosting is what I think is the most fair. I get the choice of an unmetered pipe with a bandwidth limit or a fat pipe with a quota. Either way the total amount of data I can move in a given month is roughly equal and I get to choose what fits my needs better.
I'm rarely one to defend Microsoft, but a quick glance at my XP SP3 VM (after reverting to a snapshot from immediately after the install off a slipstreamed disc) shows the default power management to have the monitor set to turn off in 20 minutes. Every single default power scheme except "Presentation" has the monitor set to turn off in either 15 or 20 minutes.
In this case all the blame lies on the admins changing policies.
True. But if I don't lock my front door, that doesn't mean it's ok for you to take my stuff.
Correct of course, but if you don't lock your front door and put up an "Open House" sign don't be shocked when I walk in and look around.
One could make a reasonable argument for ignorance when this logic is applied to open WiFi (though I fall firmly on the side of open WiFi = free to use) but if you're setting up a wiki clearly you know a bit about what you're doing. If you leave open editing enabled, expect that people will post things you don't want there. Remove the content, block the IP, and move on to wait for the next one.
This is coming from someone who has open WiFi at his apartment (heavily restricted to protect my bandwidth) and at one point ran an open wiki (changed it to registration required as soon as I could tie it to my forums).
Though one could argue that T1 costs are absurd too, not to mention that T1s are absolutely shit in terms of bandwidth. 1.5mbit/sec is slower than my CELL PHONE. There is something wrong with paying $400-800 per month for service that is beaten by a $50/mo AT&T 3G plan on a $200 cell phone.
I have some ordinary CFLs bought for cheap at a Wal-Mart in Ohio (i.e. not exactly the place one would expect to find anything "special" in terms of green technology) and they clock in at PFs of 0.64 (single 12w) and 0.61 (three-way 12/20/30w) according to my Kill-A-Watt. The report mentions PFs as low as.45, so are they testing with really shitty bulbs? I can't imagine anything worse quality than what one would find on sale at Wal-Mart under an unknown brand...
I'm not denying the legitimacy of complaints about swapping frequencies, but I personally don't care. I've been carrying a 3G phone since 2006 and welcome the greater range for the future at the cost of the past.
As for Verizon screwing over customers, one could argue their crippled phones screw customers daily, rather than just in network transitions as AT&T has done in the past and seems to be doing again. Verizon also did kinda screw over hundreds of thousands of OnStar customers when they turned off analog service.
I can't wait for LTE to start showing up. As long as Verizon doesn't fuck it up too badly, they'll finally be compatible with a real mobile phone system, and thus those of us who want phones that haven't been crippled can see some real competition. I hate AT&T, but I hate a company telling me my phone isn't allowed to do something it's fully capable of doing just because it allows me to not pay them for the privilege even more.
How's it any easier than other phones? On a WinMo phone you run the internet sharing app. On my SE K850i it's a simple matter of pairing over Bluetooth and saying "connect to network" or plugging in the USB cable and choosing "phone mode" on the phone. In either case, a virtual ethernet port appears on my computer and gets an IP address via DHCP.
All smartphones have unlimited data (or "unlimited" as the case may be) anymore, no matter the provider (in the US at least, your providers in Canada seem to enjoy causing pain to their customers), since that's what users expect. It's not specific to the iPhone nor a result of any Apple bullying.
If you want official full tethering support, you need what AT&T calls "LaptopConnect" for which I pay $50 (note I do not have a smartphone, just a nice 3G phone with tethering support, so the smartphone LaptopConnect might be cheaper)
The assumption is that one can use more bandwidth on a laptop versus a smartphone, so typical usage patterns would see "unlimited" users moving a lot more data if they're allowed to tether.
The lack of tethering support on the iPhone has always been very confusing since they'll gladly sell me any other phone with a tethering plan.
FYI, the three tiers I've typically seen while phone shopping are as follows:
Dumbphone Data - Typically a "walled garden" with minimal full internet access, proxy usage often required, basically built for streaming applications on phones and minimal web access/email with a WAP browser
Smartphone Data - No more walled garden, but officially limited by policy.
Tethering Data - Same as above, but no policy limits on use. Often bandwidth capped around 5GB.
The latter two are provisioned identically on the network side, any differences are in billing. They may also monitor for usage that isn't likely to have come from a phone on the smartphone plan (bittorrent, downloading gigabytes upon gigabytes, etc.).
I'm with you right up to the part about being locked in when you bring your own phone. I've been on AT&T for four years now without ever being under contract, and no I am not on a "GoPhone" prepaid, it's a normal postpaid account even loaded up with features like laptop tethering.
It's easy, I've been through four phones in that time and never once bought one subsidized, so if another GSM provider ever sprung up (or T-Mobile got a network that was worth a shit outside of cities) I could jump in a heartbeat. Technically I could go to a CDMA provider, but they all have horrible phones, so no.
The Mac Mini takes notebook hard drives. They only go up to 500GB right now. Getting 1TB requires removing the optical drive, which now with this generation is SATA so it's actually compatible with decent-sized hard drives.
Most of the world uses the >2 SMP hostile Windows XP and does not plan on switching soon.
FYI, Windows licensing is based on the number of sockets, not cores, so even XP Home Edition will happily run on a quad core system and XP Pro will run on a dual-socket 8 way system. Throw a Nehalem chip in there and the OS will see either of those as 8 or 16 cores, respectively, due to HyperThreading but it'll still use them just as well. The chip hasn't shipped yet, but when it does I'll bet someone will try installing XP on one of the octal-core "Beckton" chips and it will do its thing just fine. I'd love to see a screenshot of Windows XP Pro showing 32 threads as it would on a dual socket system running that processor.
Ever seen an American Police car or Taxi from about the last 10 years? That's almost certainly a Ford Crown Victoria. The Mercury Grand Marquis is basically a Crown Vic with a bit more leather and chrome attached and sells almost exclusively to those aged 60 and up.
+1 on that, I can't go 15 minutes on 71 or 271 without hitting a rolling roadblock of retards all driving exactly the same speed side by side.
Here's a hint fucktards, if you're going to travel the same speed just get in line. Not only will you not be blocking those of us who want to travel faster, but you'll gain some aerodynamic advantages and get a bit better mileage.
If there's no one in front of you and the person behind you is coming up fast, move the hell over.
How I wish "Drive Right" was the law in the US like it is in Germany. I'd love to see left lane blockers get some hefty tickets. Then again it would probably go just as unenforced as minimum speed laws. Going after me doing 75 MPH is just so much easier politically than ticketing grandma for piloting her Grand Marquis at 43 MPH in the fast lane.
Is EFI planned to replace BIOS in the non-mac world?
If you ask Intel, yes. If you ask the rest of the world, meh. I don't think anyone would argue that BIOS should stay, it's a crusty old POS that's been hacked on top of hacks over the years to keep supporting new things, but what should replace it is very debatable.
Can Linux bootloaders and whatnot play nicely with EFI?
The former is a Linux-focused bootloader for all EFI platforms, rEFIt is a generic loader built with Intel Macs in mind. I have no idea if it can run on other EFI platforms.
Heck, can Windows?
Yes and no. Windows has had an EFI loader for a few years now, as it's required for Itanium. That was finally brought to normal processors with Server 2008 and Vista SP1, x64 only. So if you're 32 bit or running anything but the latest versions of Windows, you're stuck with the BIOS.
If so, can one even BUY a motherboard that uses EFI? As I'm planning to build a system on which I can (hopefully) run both windows and linux, I'd like to try to avoid the whole MBR shenanigans.
It seems MSI is shipping a MB they call "EFINITY" and a few OEMs supposedly have started using EFI on their custom boards, but in the non-Mac x86 world it's still pretty rare.
As runexe said, most endpoints will put in some faint static instead of true silence when they receive a silence signal. This is the default as far as I've seen on all the brands I mentioned before. The only time I've not heard the fake static is on a Polycom phone using the G.722 "HD Voice" codec where there is so little static on the actual call audio that fake static would be strange. I have yet to experience a Cisco HD Voice phone, so I don't know if they do the same, but since the technology is licensed from Polycom to my knowledge I'd imagine it's implemented the same way.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll agree that far more accidents are caused by inattentive drivers, but while you do have a point that as well as tastes, sensations, etc. marijuana also increases one's awareness of how high they are I still can't see even where the idea that it doesn't impair you at least to an extent came from. When you're on a drug that's pretty much known for its ability to make people spacey and easily distracted it seems to me to be obvious there will be some impairment.
While I certainly don't have the tolerance levels of some of the hardcore stoners I know who have been smoking for ten years, there's no way I'd ever argue that marijuana doesn't reduce driving ability. I've driven high before a few times, I don't like doing it at all and don't do it regularly (only twice in four years of smoking). You don't speed or get reckless like you do when drunk, but your motor skills and reaction times are unquestionably impaired. The last time I did it was a fairly long 3 AM highway trip where I had my in-car camera running, so I have a perfect record of how I drove. Really the only positive thing I can say about my driving that night is I stayed between the lines (barely at times) and didn't really speed by much (70MPH in a 65, which is odd for me, sober I tend to run the Turnpike at 90+). Terrible idea.
Obviously this is just one anecdotal experience and yes I'll agree that it is far safer to drive on weed versus alcohol, but if you believe you drive fine on weed you're lying to yourself.
That said, I'm still all for legalization. They can't tell how much marijuana intoxication is affecting driving as-is, so it wouldn't change anyways. They can't tell how intoxicated you are off of any of the number of OTC or prescription drugs the average American is on either. All that would change is that the states with retarded "any detectable levels of metabolites" laws for marijuana OVIs would have to STFU and figure something else out. I could not smoke anything for a week, be unquestionably sober, and still get popped for an OVI based on a piss test in those states. Fuck 'em, that's not fair at all.
They don't even have to do that, IE8 has a list of incompatible sites which can have updates forced to it through AD. Corporate IT puts the entire intranet zone in that list, pushes it out, and magic, everyone can use IE8 and have it render their broken-ass webpages designed by retarded fucksticks (yes I do have major anger issues against anyone building with IE6 as a target). Individual apps can be checked out by IT and/or adventurous users one by one and moved off the list if it works in IE8 mode.
I'm a believer in standards compliance with graceful failure. Write it for proper browsers, then do the absolute bare minimum to make it usable in the shitholes of the internet. If you can, place a notification on those pages explaining their experience is not optimal due to them or their IT department not clicking the goddamn update button. They don't get the nifty stuff, but they get a working site and encouragement to solve the problem thus making the internet better for the rest of us.
Unfortunately it's not and it has to an extent gotten worse. Both AT&T and Verizon have this bad idea of building their bundled services such as video and phone to require their branded router, which is in both cases an utter shitbox which can handle very few connections (I think in the case of FiOS it was something absurdly low too)
It's not that I'm reading them all at the same time, it's that I can queue up things to read. For example, me on Slashdot back in 2004 when I still used IE:
1. Open Slashdot
2. See interesting headline
3. Click article (*gasp*)
4. Read article
5. Click back
6. If content was interesting and there might be a good discussion, click Comments link
7. Read, reply, repeat.
8. GOTO 1 unless I've gone back far enough to come across stuff I read/commented on yesterday.
Now with tabs I just run through the front pages of all my normal news sites until I hit old articles middle-clicking on everything that looks interesting, then I swing back to the beginning and read through every tab. I know it's technically the same experience as opening multiple windows, but tabs feel cleaner to me as a matter of personal opinion.
That's where the Qualcomm GoBi devices come in. They're able to be switched from CDMA 1xRTT+EvDO to GSM EDGE+HSUPA with a firmware change, and I think they technically support a dual mode firmware just it's never been seen in the wild.
Those new Sony netbooks have the GoBi cards configured in a Verizon-only mode in the US, but there are a number of threads in various phone forums discussing how to load a GSM/HSUPA firmware and use it on AT&T. tnkgrl has some info on her blog (too lazy to find link, google it if interested).
If I can buy my next Macbook Pro with a cross-provider 3G card (or 4G if there's a decent rollout by then) I will do it. I've dealt with too much shit getting Bluetooth tethering working on my current and past phones. I just never want to be tied to a provider (though ironically this effectively sticks me to AT&T, since no unlocked phones work on the CDMA carriers and T-Mobile's 3G and rural coverage are both dog shit).
There's no point creating a tiny network of zombies. A huge network is where the money is.
I completely disagree. Storm was only in the 1-10 million machine range. There are many more Macs out there (published numbers average around 1.8 million new units per quarter since the Intel switch in '06, so there's around 20 million out there only counting Intel machines), and basically none of them have antivirus software. Even if the "market" is smaller than that of Windows PCs, there are still more than enough machines out there to make it interesting, and they're almost all only protected by the OS itself.
Basically what I'm getting at here is the market may be smaller, but it's easily large enough to be a worthwhile target and if you're correct it's wide open for the taking.
If you want to flip this one over, how about we look at web servers. Apache dominates the hell out of IIS in terms of market share, but where's the *nix equivalent of Code Red? They didn't attack the market leader, they attacked the easiest target.
I had a similar experience a few years later. I had known about the existence of Linux from doing some web development and seeing the Linux dedicated servers for my favorite online games, but had never actually used it. I had shitty dialup and not much motivation, so I wouldn't download it. At some point however I came across an issue of Maximum Linux magazine which included a Mandrake install CD.
I installed that, got it running in a dual boot environment, then discovered that it didn't support my 3D card, sound card, or modem, so I promptly rebooted to Windows. A few months later I bought a Sound Blaster card and had discovered linmodems.org (I think) so I could at least get online and hear sounds. An X update gave me 3D graphics, so now I was ready to try it out as a full time OS. That lasted about three days before the desire to play Counter-Strike pushed me back to Windows.
I didn't try to seriously use Linux again until 2004 when Ubuntu came out. At that time Fedora couldn't properly figure out my widescreen laptop, but Ubuntu got it out of the box. I had never used a Debian-based distro before, but I quickly fell in love with APT and since then have never looked back.
That's great, you've created an intranet and demonstrated it's pricing. Now, of course, try to get a peering agreement with a tier-1 ISP so that your bits can travel to and from the internet at large. Try one month at 10 Mbps and another at 1000 Mbps and see if your bill changes.
Bad example, since unlike when I get an internet connection from Time Warner Cable and their ilk, if I get a 10 megabit connection from a tier 1 it comes with the expectation that I can use it to rated capacity 100% of the time and if it is underperforming/down I will be able to get credits.
Time Warner Cable gives me none of these expectations. All quoted bandwidth numbers are best case, if it's down sucks to be me, and if they had their way I could not even max it out for a week.
The model I've encountered most when shopping for dedicated servers/colo hosting is what I think is the most fair. I get the choice of an unmetered pipe with a bandwidth limit or a fat pipe with a quota. Either way the total amount of data I can move in a given month is roughly equal and I get to choose what fits my needs better.
I'm rarely one to defend Microsoft, but a quick glance at my XP SP3 VM (after reverting to a snapshot from immediately after the install off a slipstreamed disc) shows the default power management to have the monitor set to turn off in 20 minutes. Every single default power scheme except "Presentation" has the monitor set to turn off in either 15 or 20 minutes.
In this case all the blame lies on the admins changing policies.
True. But if I don't lock my front door, that doesn't mean it's ok for you to take my stuff.
Correct of course, but if you don't lock your front door and put up an "Open House" sign don't be shocked when I walk in and look around.
One could make a reasonable argument for ignorance when this logic is applied to open WiFi (though I fall firmly on the side of open WiFi = free to use) but if you're setting up a wiki clearly you know a bit about what you're doing. If you leave open editing enabled, expect that people will post things you don't want there. Remove the content, block the IP, and move on to wait for the next one.
This is coming from someone who has open WiFi at his apartment (heavily restricted to protect my bandwidth) and at one point ran an open wiki (changed it to registration required as soon as I could tie it to my forums).
Though one could argue that T1 costs are absurd too, not to mention that T1s are absolutely shit in terms of bandwidth. 1.5mbit/sec is slower than my CELL PHONE. There is something wrong with paying $400-800 per month for service that is beaten by a $50/mo AT&T 3G plan on a $200 cell phone.
I have some ordinary CFLs bought for cheap at a Wal-Mart in Ohio (i.e. not exactly the place one would expect to find anything "special" in terms of green technology) and they clock in at PFs of 0.64 (single 12w) and 0.61 (three-way 12/20/30w) according to my Kill-A-Watt. The report mentions PFs as low as .45, so are they testing with really shitty bulbs? I can't imagine anything worse quality than what one would find on sale at Wal-Mart under an unknown brand...
self.getacheivement()
I'm not denying the legitimacy of complaints about swapping frequencies, but I personally don't care. I've been carrying a 3G phone since 2006 and welcome the greater range for the future at the cost of the past.
As for Verizon screwing over customers, one could argue their crippled phones screw customers daily, rather than just in network transitions as AT&T has done in the past and seems to be doing again. Verizon also did kinda screw over hundreds of thousands of OnStar customers when they turned off analog service.
I can't wait for LTE to start showing up. As long as Verizon doesn't fuck it up too badly, they'll finally be compatible with a real mobile phone system, and thus those of us who want phones that haven't been crippled can see some real competition. I hate AT&T, but I hate a company telling me my phone isn't allowed to do something it's fully capable of doing just because it allows me to not pay them for the privilege even more.
How's it any easier than other phones? On a WinMo phone you run the internet sharing app. On my SE K850i it's a simple matter of pairing over Bluetooth and saying "connect to network" or plugging in the USB cable and choosing "phone mode" on the phone. In either case, a virtual ethernet port appears on my computer and gets an IP address via DHCP.
Partially wrong.
All smartphones have unlimited data (or "unlimited" as the case may be) anymore, no matter the provider (in the US at least, your providers in Canada seem to enjoy causing pain to their customers), since that's what users expect. It's not specific to the iPhone nor a result of any Apple bullying.
If you want official full tethering support, you need what AT&T calls "LaptopConnect" for which I pay $50 (note I do not have a smartphone, just a nice 3G phone with tethering support, so the smartphone LaptopConnect might be cheaper)
The assumption is that one can use more bandwidth on a laptop versus a smartphone, so typical usage patterns would see "unlimited" users moving a lot more data if they're allowed to tether.
The lack of tethering support on the iPhone has always been very confusing since they'll gladly sell me any other phone with a tethering plan.
FYI, the three tiers I've typically seen while phone shopping are as follows:
Dumbphone Data - Typically a "walled garden" with minimal full internet access, proxy usage often required, basically built for streaming applications on phones and minimal web access/email with a WAP browser
Smartphone Data - No more walled garden, but officially limited by policy.
Tethering Data - Same as above, but no policy limits on use. Often bandwidth capped around 5GB.
The latter two are provisioned identically on the network side, any differences are in billing. They may also monitor for usage that isn't likely to have come from a phone on the smartphone plan (bittorrent, downloading gigabytes upon gigabytes, etc.).
I'm with you right up to the part about being locked in when you bring your own phone. I've been on AT&T for four years now without ever being under contract, and no I am not on a "GoPhone" prepaid, it's a normal postpaid account even loaded up with features like laptop tethering.
It's easy, I've been through four phones in that time and never once bought one subsidized, so if another GSM provider ever sprung up (or T-Mobile got a network that was worth a shit outside of cities) I could jump in a heartbeat. Technically I could go to a CDMA provider, but they all have horrible phones, so no.
The Mac Mini takes notebook hard drives. They only go up to 500GB right now. Getting 1TB requires removing the optical drive, which now with this generation is SATA so it's actually compatible with decent-sized hard drives.
The summary says the actual content is on iFixit, but the link goes to some useless blog which then links to iFixit.
Link directly to the content, include a via link if you want to reference where you got the link from.
For the record, the proper article URL where the actual content is follows:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Mac-mini-A1283-Terabyte-Drive/660/1
Most of the world uses the >2 SMP hostile Windows XP and does not plan on switching soon.
FYI, Windows licensing is based on the number of sockets, not cores, so even XP Home Edition will happily run on a quad core system and XP Pro will run on a dual-socket 8 way system. Throw a Nehalem chip in there and the OS will see either of those as 8 or 16 cores, respectively, due to HyperThreading but it'll still use them just as well. The chip hasn't shipped yet, but when it does I'll bet someone will try installing XP on one of the octal-core "Beckton" chips and it will do its thing just fine. I'd love to see a screenshot of Windows XP Pro showing 32 threads as it would on a dual socket system running that processor.
Ever seen an American Police car or Taxi from about the last 10 years? That's almost certainly a Ford Crown Victoria. The Mercury Grand Marquis is basically a Crown Vic with a bit more leather and chrome attached and sells almost exclusively to those aged 60 and up.
+1 on that, I can't go 15 minutes on 71 or 271 without hitting a rolling roadblock of retards all driving exactly the same speed side by side.
Here's a hint fucktards, if you're going to travel the same speed just get in line. Not only will you not be blocking those of us who want to travel faster, but you'll gain some aerodynamic advantages and get a bit better mileage.
If there's no one in front of you and the person behind you is coming up fast, move the hell over.
How I wish "Drive Right" was the law in the US like it is in Germany. I'd love to see left lane blockers get some hefty tickets. Then again it would probably go just as unenforced as minimum speed laws. Going after me doing 75 MPH is just so much easier politically than ticketing grandma for piloting her Grand Marquis at 43 MPH in the fast lane.
Is EFI planned to replace BIOS in the non-mac world?
If you ask Intel, yes. If you ask the rest of the world, meh. I don't think anyone would argue that BIOS should stay, it's a crusty old POS that's been hacked on top of hacks over the years to keep supporting new things, but what should replace it is very debatable.
Can Linux bootloaders and whatnot play nicely with EFI?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/elilo/
http://refit.sourceforge.net/
The former is a Linux-focused bootloader for all EFI platforms, rEFIt is a generic loader built with Intel Macs in mind. I have no idea if it can run on other EFI platforms.
Heck, can Windows?
Yes and no. Windows has had an EFI loader for a few years now, as it's required for Itanium. That was finally brought to normal processors with Server 2008 and Vista SP1, x64 only. So if you're 32 bit or running anything but the latest versions of Windows, you're stuck with the BIOS.
If so, can one even BUY a motherboard that uses EFI? As I'm planning to build a system on which I can (hopefully) run both windows and linux, I'd like to try to avoid the whole MBR shenanigans.
It seems MSI is shipping a MB they call "EFINITY" and a few OEMs supposedly have started using EFI on their custom boards, but in the non-Mac x86 world it's still pretty rare.
As runexe said, most endpoints will put in some faint static instead of true silence when they receive a silence signal. This is the default as far as I've seen on all the brands I mentioned before. The only time I've not heard the fake static is on a Polycom phone using the G.722 "HD Voice" codec where there is so little static on the actual call audio that fake static would be strange. I have yet to experience a Cisco HD Voice phone, so I don't know if they do the same, but since the technology is licensed from Polycom to my knowledge I'd imagine it's implemented the same way.