I don't know what versions of Windows you've been running, but all Windows "upgrades" are a full install too, they don't require anything from the old install for anything. The upgrade CD contains everything you need to run Windows. They copy over your old settings and program files if you want, but this is optional.
Of course, they do want to make sure you own Windows before upgrading. That's why it scans the disk when you try to install it. If it doesn't find Windows, it will then just ask you to insert the CD for the previous version of Windows to assure that you own Windows. Having to have the previous version installed to use the upgrade is simply false. It will then happily install to a blank harddrive, I believe it will even offer to wipe the harddrive for you if it isn't blank. I even know a "secret" CD key to turn a Windows 98SE upgrade disk into the full install disk (effectively disables the previous version check), but that's beside the point.
It does seem that Microsoft has you jump through all kinds of hoops that Apple does not make you do, and that is true. That's because Microsoft has to make sure you are qualified for the upgrade, and not installing a Windows upgrade on some PC that never has run Windows before. They have to do this because you can get a PC anywhere, and not all of them come with Windows. On the other hand, Apple has it easier, they know that if you are running a Mac you've already bought Mac OS/OSX so you're good to go. So I ask again, find me a piece of hardware to install OSX on that did not originally come with some version of Mac OS/OSX, and I won't consider it an upgrade.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I've watched the Superbowl, including ads a few times. There are a handful of honestly good ads in there (I'd say 5-6 for a really good Superbowl, the last one I saw maybe had 1), and the rest generally seem to be trying too hard to be clever, cute, or whatever and just fall flat on their face. The only real novelty of it is that the Superbowl is where everyone kicks off new ad campaigns, so generally all the ads you are seeing for the first time instead of the 10,000th time.
The thing that seems to annoy people especially is that the Democrats don't even appear to try. A lot of the Republicans are trying to distance themselves from Bush right now. Forcing them to vote on something that is popular but is against the party line could really put some of them in the hot seat.
The easiest way to improve efficiency would be to pump the waste heat into homes and businesses instead of simply dumping it in the environment. Not only is the waste heat being used for something useful, you also don't have to use the electricity generated from the plant to run things like hot water heaters.
Spam works, or people wouldn't do it, right? I think a lot of ad people are in denial about how ineffective ads really are. People are bombarded by them constantly, and overall people have learned to filter them out - online, on TV, on the radio, in the newspaper, etc. I kind of doubt that a lot of companies see a decent ROI on the money they spend on marketing. Especially with a lot of the "branding" ads out there. I already know what McDonalds and Chevy sells, do I really need to be constantly reminded?
Why wouldn't I believe it? If my calculation is correct, it only requires a 4.4 degree ramp.
The reason I still wouldn't believe it is because roads aren't designed that way. Say you're right, and the road had a 4.4 degree ramp. Now, imagine that construction had been completed, and the section missing was filled in the simpliest way possible (a flat section of road connecting the two ends*). Now take the bus accross the section of road again at 70MPH. The fact that there is now a road there won't even matter, cause the bus is going to go airborne anyway (the bus when it makes the jump will travel in an arc, and we laid a flat section of road). 70MPH is not an unreasonable speed to be traveling on a freeway, and roads generally aren't designed so that vehicles go airborne travelling at normal speeds.
*Actually, it doesn't matter that we laid a flat section of road. The shape won't matter - you're pretty much going airborne no matter what so long as you maintain 70MPH. Best case scenario is that you make a road in the shape of the arc, and you just barely maintain contact while the vehicle sails over it essentially weightless. Make it any lower and you come off the road. Make it higher in order to keep the car on the road, and just end up just making a bigger ramp to fly off of when you have to bring it back down to meet the other end of the gap.
I think people are confusing "investors" with "speculators". I don't mind investors, and it's perfectly ok by me for investors to invest in a high risk investment in an attempt to score a high return. Now those that sit in line to buy a PS3 to sell on eBay, or try to buy huge blocks of tickets to an event to sell for a profit on craigslist are speculators, and those are the worthless scum that contribute nothing to society and in general make people's lives tougher just so they can squeeze more money out of a market.
I think the things that people get annoyed with is when the solution is also the cause of the problem. Lawyers are a great example of this. You pretty much need one to do anything in today's legal system as it's so complex. On the other hand, lawyers are precisely the reason the system is so complex in the first place.
Now house brokers are somewhat different. They don't seem to be directly to blame for the reason they are needed, but there does seem to be a significant number of people and businesses out there that depend on making buying (and selling) a house as complicated as possible. Once people figure this out, they tend to get greatly annoyed by it. Another example seems to be the tax preperation industry, a huge industry that makes over a billion a year whose livelyhood depends entirely on having the tax code be as complicated and hard to understand as possible.
You are right, and politics are full of this. The Republicans are really good at this, especially with their "talking points", but to be clear it's not like the Democrats don't do it too.
However, I was refering more to this statement:
I don't think that's really true, so it's a bit hypocritical for you to criticize Rove for doing well what Democrats would love to do.
The only way this statement makes any sense is if the poster your were responding to is a Democrat (who furthermore doesn't critize his own party for Rove-like activities). Otherwise, its not hypocritical (a lot of people here would critize the Democrats when they try the same crap). I never saw anyplace where the original poster claimed to be a Democrat, so it would appear to me that you simply assumed it.
XP will be on extended support for quite some time. Actually, they could use XP for the 2010, 2012, and 2014 Olympics if they wanted too (extended support ends in 2014).
We'd be seeing a Microsoft press release trumpeting the selection of Vista as the "official Operating System of the Olympic Games".
You'd only see that if Microsoft had handed over piles of cash to the Olympic Committee, even if they ended up chosing Vista. My guess is that Microsoft didn't hand over piles of cash, so that's why they picked whatever OS they felt would do the best job.
When you make a statement, you imply the inverse. When you say that Karl Rove, in his evil ways, wanted to create a permanent Republican majority, you're implying that there is no idea in liberal minds of creating a permanent Democrat majority.
So if I call AT&T a bunch of incompetent boobs, does that imply that Sprint and Cingular are models for cell phone service? Most people here wouldn't read that. It would seem that you are assuming something: That anyone who critizes the Republicans is automatically a Democrat. Now this is a dangerous assumption, especially around here where there isn't a lot of love for either political party. Sure, most of the criticism nowadays is flung at the Republicans, however, this is because they are the ones in power and thus are the ones doing stuff. You can bet that if a Democrat is elected in the next election, there will be plenty of criticism around here. However, you would have to be a fool to believe that slashdot suddenly turned into a Republican site.
That's funny, because I never, ever, got USB to work in Windows 95. I dicked around with it for some time, it just plain didn't work. Rumor has it that it only worked with a small number of Intel chipsets, which might be the case, I don't know.
I've had a few failures, only lost data one (a 800MB Conner). All others I either managed to get working atleast one more time to get the data off of it, or I got warning signs and copied the contents before it croaked. Oh, and two Maxtors that were DOA with bad sectors.
I think the key is to not let the harddrives get too hot, and to replace them before they fail (which is easy when you "obsolete" them for being too small before the warrenty is up). Though granted, my older 1GB to 160GB drives are still very reliable, though most of them see little use overall.
Don't worry about it, you'll be fine. I know of atleast one LGA775 board with an ISA slot if you absolutely must use that 20 year old expansion card with that new Core 2 system. While I haven't seen that particular board in use, I have seen it's slightly older Socket 478 cousin in the flesh running some specialized test equipment.
Your numbers are a bit off. FLAC is about 2:1 compression, and a CD holds 700MB. That means a FLAC album is going to be around 350MB if the album uses the whole CD (that's an 80 minute album, most aren't that long). Secondly, most of the time, people are using a higher quality setting anyway for lossy encoding. An 80 minute album at 192kbps is going to be around 112.5MB, or a bit less than 1/3 the space of the lossless compression. So unless your 80GB of music is of yours is stored at something like 64kbps, it should easily fit on a 500GB drive using FLAC. And even if it doesn't, harddrive space is CHEAP. Sure, 500GB drives don't grow on trees, but storage space has never been as cheap as it is now. A 500GB drive can store over 1000 albums, that's less than 10 cents per album.
Likewise, my reciever has inputs for them, and my DVD player has outputs for them (never hooked them up, the optical link was easier, but they're present).
don't think this is the case. After all, they had to survey the surface to decide where to sample the soil from for the soil and life tests. They had the sampler arm turn over a small rock to get soil from underneath it. They had computers in them, just not very powerful ones.
That is the case. As a matter of fact, what finally did Viking 1 in was a bad command issued to the lander's computers that caused it to point its antenna away from Earth.
In a world without copyright, what would keep software vendors from grabbing the code, modifying it or whatever, then distributing it? The software vendors aren't going to distribute source, so all the authors would get back is some binary blob that has some of their code in it. Not too useful because they could not implement those changes in their version. You need something like the GPL to force them to give back to the community in the form of source code for their modifications.
Furthermore, the software vendors wouldn't have copyright to use as a tool to keep people from redistributing their binaries, but I would assume that they would attempt to stop people in other ways. For example, making someone sign a contract similar to a NDA before giving them the software that would forbid someone from redistributing it. The GPL stops this from happening too, as under the GPL license you cannot stop someone from redistributing software once you've given it to them.
The free software movement is not about the maximum amount of freedoms, which is achieved by placing something in public domain (for which everything would effectively be in a world of no copyright). It's about keeping things open and giving back to the community. Sure, in a copyright free world you'd still get people who'd play along, but you really need the power of the GPL and copyright law to force those to comply that otherwise wouldn't.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what versions of Windows you've been running, but all Windows "upgrades" are a full install too, they don't require anything from the old install for anything. The upgrade CD contains everything you need to run Windows. They copy over your old settings and program files if you want, but this is optional.
Of course, they do want to make sure you own Windows before upgrading. That's why it scans the disk when you try to install it. If it doesn't find Windows, it will then just ask you to insert the CD for the previous version of Windows to assure that you own Windows. Having to have the previous version installed to use the upgrade is simply false. It will then happily install to a blank harddrive, I believe it will even offer to wipe the harddrive for you if it isn't blank. I even know a "secret" CD key to turn a Windows 98SE upgrade disk into the full install disk (effectively disables the previous version check), but that's beside the point.
It does seem that Microsoft has you jump through all kinds of hoops that Apple does not make you do, and that is true. That's because Microsoft has to make sure you are qualified for the upgrade, and not installing a Windows upgrade on some PC that never has run Windows before. They have to do this because you can get a PC anywhere, and not all of them come with Windows. On the other hand, Apple has it easier, they know that if you are running a Mac you've already bought Mac OS/OSX so you're good to go. So I ask again, find me a piece of hardware to install OSX on that did not originally come with some version of Mac OS/OSX, and I won't consider it an upgrade.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I've watched the Superbowl, including ads a few times. There are a handful of honestly good ads in there (I'd say 5-6 for a really good Superbowl, the last one I saw maybe had 1), and the rest generally seem to be trying too hard to be clever, cute, or whatever and just fall flat on their face. The only real novelty of it is that the Superbowl is where everyone kicks off new ad campaigns, so generally all the ads you are seeing for the first time instead of the 10,000th time.
The thing that seems to annoy people especially is that the Democrats don't even appear to try. A lot of the Republicans are trying to distance themselves from Bush right now. Forcing them to vote on something that is popular but is against the party line could really put some of them in the hot seat.
It is an upgrade. If you don't think so, go find me a system where you can install it on that did not originally come with some version of Mac OS/OSX.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Actually, it does. The fallacy is to assume causation because of the correlation.
The easiest way to improve efficiency would be to pump the waste heat into homes and businesses instead of simply dumping it in the environment. Not only is the waste heat being used for something useful, you also don't have to use the electricity generated from the plant to run things like hot water heaters.
It won't be so good for Mr. Terrorist, who is about to be beaten to a bloody pulp by 150+ very pissed off passengers.
Spam works, or people wouldn't do it, right? I think a lot of ad people are in denial about how ineffective ads really are. People are bombarded by them constantly, and overall people have learned to filter them out - online, on TV, on the radio, in the newspaper, etc. I kind of doubt that a lot of companies see a decent ROI on the money they spend on marketing. Especially with a lot of the "branding" ads out there. I already know what McDonalds and Chevy sells, do I really need to be constantly reminded?
Why wouldn't I believe it? If my calculation is correct, it only requires a 4.4 degree ramp.
The reason I still wouldn't believe it is because roads aren't designed that way. Say you're right, and the road had a 4.4 degree ramp. Now, imagine that construction had been completed, and the section missing was filled in the simpliest way possible (a flat section of road connecting the two ends*). Now take the bus accross the section of road again at 70MPH. The fact that there is now a road there won't even matter, cause the bus is going to go airborne anyway (the bus when it makes the jump will travel in an arc, and we laid a flat section of road). 70MPH is not an unreasonable speed to be traveling on a freeway, and roads generally aren't designed so that vehicles go airborne travelling at normal speeds.
*Actually, it doesn't matter that we laid a flat section of road. The shape won't matter - you're pretty much going airborne no matter what so long as you maintain 70MPH. Best case scenario is that you make a road in the shape of the arc, and you just barely maintain contact while the vehicle sails over it essentially weightless. Make it any lower and you come off the road. Make it higher in order to keep the car on the road, and just end up just making a bigger ramp to fly off of when you have to bring it back down to meet the other end of the gap.
I think people are confusing "investors" with "speculators". I don't mind investors, and it's perfectly ok by me for investors to invest in a high risk investment in an attempt to score a high return. Now those that sit in line to buy a PS3 to sell on eBay, or try to buy huge blocks of tickets to an event to sell for a profit on craigslist are speculators, and those are the worthless scum that contribute nothing to society and in general make people's lives tougher just so they can squeeze more money out of a market.
I think the things that people get annoyed with is when the solution is also the cause of the problem. Lawyers are a great example of this. You pretty much need one to do anything in today's legal system as it's so complex. On the other hand, lawyers are precisely the reason the system is so complex in the first place.
Now house brokers are somewhat different. They don't seem to be directly to blame for the reason they are needed, but there does seem to be a significant number of people and businesses out there that depend on making buying (and selling) a house as complicated as possible. Once people figure this out, they tend to get greatly annoyed by it. Another example seems to be the tax preperation industry, a huge industry that makes over a billion a year whose livelyhood depends entirely on having the tax code be as complicated and hard to understand as possible.
You are right, and politics are full of this. The Republicans are really good at this, especially with their "talking points", but to be clear it's not like the Democrats don't do it too.
However, I was refering more to this statement:
I don't think that's really true, so it's a bit hypocritical for you to criticize Rove for doing well what Democrats would love to do.
The only way this statement makes any sense is if the poster your were responding to is a Democrat (who furthermore doesn't critize his own party for Rove-like activities). Otherwise, its not hypocritical (a lot of people here would critize the Democrats when they try the same crap). I never saw anyplace where the original poster claimed to be a Democrat, so it would appear to me that you simply assumed it.
XP will be on extended support for quite some time. Actually, they could use XP for the 2010, 2012, and 2014 Olympics if they wanted too (extended support ends in 2014).
We'd be seeing a Microsoft press release trumpeting the selection of Vista as the "official Operating System of the Olympic Games".
You'd only see that if Microsoft had handed over piles of cash to the Olympic Committee, even if they ended up chosing Vista. My guess is that Microsoft didn't hand over piles of cash, so that's why they picked whatever OS they felt would do the best job.
When you make a statement, you imply the inverse. When you say that Karl Rove, in his evil ways, wanted to create a permanent Republican majority, you're implying that there is no idea in liberal minds of creating a permanent Democrat majority.
So if I call AT&T a bunch of incompetent boobs, does that imply that Sprint and Cingular are models for cell phone service? Most people here wouldn't read that. It would seem that you are assuming something: That anyone who critizes the Republicans is automatically a Democrat. Now this is a dangerous assumption, especially around here where there isn't a lot of love for either political party. Sure, most of the criticism nowadays is flung at the Republicans, however, this is because they are the ones in power and thus are the ones doing stuff. You can bet that if a Democrat is elected in the next election, there will be plenty of criticism around here. However, you would have to be a fool to believe that slashdot suddenly turned into a Republican site.
That's funny, because I never, ever, got USB to work in Windows 95. I dicked around with it for some time, it just plain didn't work. Rumor has it that it only worked with a small number of Intel chipsets, which might be the case, I don't know.
I've had a few failures, only lost data one (a 800MB Conner). All others I either managed to get working atleast one more time to get the data off of it, or I got warning signs and copied the contents before it croaked. Oh, and two Maxtors that were DOA with bad sectors.
I think the key is to not let the harddrives get too hot, and to replace them before they fail (which is easy when you "obsolete" them for being too small before the warrenty is up). Though granted, my older 1GB to 160GB drives are still very reliable, though most of them see little use overall.
Don't worry about it, you'll be fine. I know of atleast one LGA775 board with an ISA slot if you absolutely must use that 20 year old expansion card with that new Core 2 system. While I haven't seen that particular board in use, I have seen it's slightly older Socket 478 cousin in the flesh running some specialized test equipment.
If he wants to use Windows software, why would he buy a Mac?
Your numbers are a bit off. FLAC is about 2:1 compression, and a CD holds 700MB. That means a FLAC album is going to be around 350MB if the album uses the whole CD (that's an 80 minute album, most aren't that long). Secondly, most of the time, people are using a higher quality setting anyway for lossy encoding. An 80 minute album at 192kbps is going to be around 112.5MB, or a bit less than 1/3 the space of the lossless compression. So unless your 80GB of music is of yours is stored at something like 64kbps, it should easily fit on a 500GB drive using FLAC. And even if it doesn't, harddrive space is CHEAP. Sure, 500GB drives don't grow on trees, but storage space has never been as cheap as it is now. A 500GB drive can store over 1000 albums, that's less than 10 cents per album.
Likewise, my reciever has inputs for them, and my DVD player has outputs for them (never hooked them up, the optical link was easier, but they're present).
don't think this is the case. After all, they had to survey the surface to decide where to sample the soil from for the soil and life tests. They had the sampler arm turn over a small rock to get soil from underneath it. They had computers in them, just not very powerful ones.
That is the case. As a matter of fact, what finally did Viking 1 in was a bad command issued to the lander's computers that caused it to point its antenna away from Earth.
On the contrary - the hardware may eventually perish, but the Spirit will live on forever.
In a world without copyright, what would keep software vendors from grabbing the code, modifying it or whatever, then distributing it? The software vendors aren't going to distribute source, so all the authors would get back is some binary blob that has some of their code in it. Not too useful because they could not implement those changes in their version. You need something like the GPL to force them to give back to the community in the form of source code for their modifications.
Furthermore, the software vendors wouldn't have copyright to use as a tool to keep people from redistributing their binaries, but I would assume that they would attempt to stop people in other ways. For example, making someone sign a contract similar to a NDA before giving them the software that would forbid someone from redistributing it. The GPL stops this from happening too, as under the GPL license you cannot stop someone from redistributing software once you've given it to them.
The free software movement is not about the maximum amount of freedoms, which is achieved by placing something in public domain (for which everything would effectively be in a world of no copyright). It's about keeping things open and giving back to the community. Sure, in a copyright free world you'd still get people who'd play along, but you really need the power of the GPL and copyright law to force those to comply that otherwise wouldn't.
I'm in the top 1% and pay no taxes, you insensitive clod!