They performed the test on VMware Server not VMware ESX Server which is what most enterprises will use. VMware ESX Server runs on "bare metal", so it does not have the overhead of the host operating system.
Doesn't VMWare ESX run on some modified Red Hat version?
Also, we run ESX in our production environment, when we stress tested a web application running on IIS and with ASP/VB, the ESX machine couldn't give us more than 10 transactions per second (there was one single VM running on ESX). ESX was crawling.
The same hardware running on Windows 2003 native gave us an easy 100+ without any problems. It seems that the overhead of ESX combined with huge number of context switches is what kills the performance of ESX. For non web applications like file servers, administrator consoles and whatnot, ESX is a beauty and great money saver.
For web applications, I would avoid ESX like the black plague.
Did you kill Ouro or C'htun? Did you kill bosses in Naxxramas? Did you clear Karazhan? Did you kill Magtheridon? Did you kill bosses in Serpentshire Caverns? Did you finish all dungeons in heroic difficulty?
There are many very challenging encounters in WoW, many who demand very tight coordination between team members.
The interesting thing about WoW is that it didn't refine it more than it dumbed it down.
I guess you didn't play any other MMOs then:). Blizzard didn't dumb down WoW at all, in fact it's much more complex than other games. Having played many other MMOs, scripted encounters in WoW are probably the most complex ones. It is light years ahead of Everquest I, II and Vanguard (the other similar titles).
In most other games, beating a "Boss" mob is simply having a tank getting beaten on by boss while your other players do lot of damage to it. It is not like this in WoW. You have to know a specific strategy to beat a hard NPC, you can't just tell your tanks to tank it and have your damage dealing classes beat it down. There is a wizard in Karazhan who casts a blizzard that moves in circle. Your raid has to be moving. Same time he semi intelligently casts big nukes on a player. Then he casts a fire ring around someone (this person MUST stop immediately). At 40% life he sheeps the raid, gets his mana back and continues with the beatdown. There are 3 different strategies to beat it, it's a very complex fight. Your healers must be on the ball with healing, your DPS must move and watch out for blizzard and other NPC abilities. And this is a regular 10 man encounter.
You also have more complex fights like pretty much all Naxxramas, Karazhan and beyond, and even the normal 5 man dungeon bosses. Compared to other games WoW is way ahead.
Part of me wants to respond in an incredibly cynical manner to this as most "intelligent teenagers" are smart enough to be aware of much of the bullshit associated with growing up and being aware of wider sociopolitical, environmental and other issues and they need a release for the anger. Other cynical parts of me want to say they are also smart enough to be able to recognize the top 40 drivel that is being disseminated by the recording industry.
I think the why some intelligent people are drawn to metal and punk is because those styles of music lyrically describe reality. There are metal bands who use fantasy in their lyrics, but there are quite a lot who don't. Metal has always expressed opposition to political corruption, senseless wars, the pitfall of religion, famine, pollution, gang violence, personal demons, death, personal introspection and whatnot. I think smart people find comfort in knowing that other people see the world in the same state of utter shit like they do and that's why they are attracted by metal and punk.
Most pop is fantasy, hell most top 40 music is fantasy. Most rap is fantasy. It's really a shame that no rap groups have taken the torch from Public Enemy and continued the social conscious rap movement. Nowadays it's all about image, image of a pimp with hot babes around him and big cars.
Consider that some heavy metal is very intellegent music. Sure, when most people hear "heavy metal" they think Slipknot, Korn, Marilyn Manson and the ilk, but I can get into some Iron Maiden (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is singularly the greatest metal song ever, and not only for it's music), Metallica (80's era) has some great political meaning, and Tool is fun to listen to and try to contemplate the possible meanings of the song. Or am I the only gifted nerd who thinks so?
The beauty of metal, especially after it's "death" in the early 90s is that it's been reborn and many new sub genres are born. Everything from Symphonic Metal to Melodic Death to Progressive to Doom to Gothic to whatever!
Some lesser known but very talented bands:
Therion - Sopranos, tenors, baritones, lot of classical instruments. Pure genius. Theli, Vovin, Secret of the Runes are great albums. Their live shows are also very interesting, they usually travel with about 5-6 opera singers.
The Gathering - One of the first gothic metal bands (now more gothic/atmospheric rock). Mandylion, if_then_else, How to measure a planet, are all very good. Due to some experimental guitar work, their style has been labeled sometimes "shoe gazing".
Tiamat - Pink Floyd meets Gothic Metal. Wildhoney is among the best gothic metal albums. Awesome albums are also Prey and A deeper kind of slumber. Another band that evolved from extreme metal to some weird psychedelic gothic style.
Agalloch - Atmospheric, lot of doom/dark ambiance. Every record from this band is worth it's weight in gold. I do have a soft spot for Ashes against the grain.
Nightwish - One of the bands who defines the Symphonic Metal sub genre. Lot of uplifting melodies, great shows. Once, Century Child and Oceanborn are really good.
Katatonia - Everything from doom metal to gothic rock. They started as some extreme metal band and evolved into some weird dark/doom rock/metal mix. Viva Emptiness and The Great Cold Distance are great.
Symphony X - Progressive Metal at it's best. Jazz and classical influences. Albums like The Diving Wings of Tragedy and V are their best.
Iced Earth - How Metallica should have evolved. The Gettysburg 1863 trilogy is a pure masterpiece of symphonic metal. The rest of their work is more classical thrash with Iron Maidenesque melodies and gallops. Something Wicked and Dark Saga are very strong albums.
Opeth - Progressive Death Metal, extreme on some albums and some dark haunting lullabies on some others. Orchid, Damnation and Deliverance are my favorites.
Ayreon - One composer, Arjen Lucassen, almost every album is a concept album. Invites various singers to sing for him. Style is mostly progressive rock/metal.
Tristania - Probably the most beautiful female voice in the metal world (hopefully the future Nightwish singer). Ashes and World of Glass are amazing gothic metal albums.
Disagreeing with somebody doesn't necessarily mean they're dumb.
Not dumb but, problem with Metallica is that during the 80s they advocated piracy pretty much by encouraging people of bootlegging their shows and trade tapes. It's pretty much the reason they got popular. Fast forward and they spit on their fans, and sue them indirectly via Napster.
They are hypocrites. Not dumb. Pretty good businessmen too, they jumped on every possible fad in the 90s and made zillions! From Bon Jovitallica, to Alternica, to Grungetallica to Nu-tallica.
Other than the pretty new theme, is there *any* new features that are relevant to anyone?
There are some interesting features of Vista, but none that can impress the computer illiterate folks other than: "Hey, it's pretty!". Tell computer illiterate people about UAC, SuperFetch, new IP stack, new driver model, display driver in User space, DX10 and whatnot and they'll stare at you as if you are talking some alien language. Of course once you mention they need to buy more memory (probably new PC so they see the "pretty") because their 256/512 MB laptop would crawl under Vista... they won't upgrade.
But it's pretty! Then again, my mom would probably be lost with the new UI especially IE7, even if it's "pretty".
Come on.. This really isn't news. Does anyone not believe Google is a wakeup call to Microsoft? And if Steve Balmer's Chair throwing is any indication, they were aware of it long before Ray Ozzie was promoted to CSA.
This is news because some highly placed honcho at MS is finally recognizing that their monopoly might be slowly eroding. Not saying MS is dead next year, but IMO MS will slowly die over the next 10 or so years, unless of course major changes occur within MS.
- Their competitors have brand names that are associated with "cool" or are simply dictionary words. MS has Zune squirting! - Google is taking on Office that works on multiple platforms. Yes it's nowhere near as good as Office, it's a start with a recognized brand name. - Google is dominating the search market. - There isn't much growth left in OS and Office markets, in fact MS is his own enemy.
You dont play many MMO's do you? Have you stopped to consider the suck that would come from teaming with someone who has never played a warrior before and all of sudden has all these abilities and powers and no idea how to use them effectively?
Bad. Idea.
You make the assumption that playing an MMO requires a PhD in quantum physics. Playing MMOs revolve around a few basic ideas. Healers, tanks and DPS classes and some crowd control thrown in. It's not rocket science. Everyone remotely competent can switch classes easy.
As long as Windows architecture exists, it will always be prone to ownership by malware.
You obviously have no clue about the "Windows architecture" and Windows security. Here is a starter.
Windows architecture is secure, in many places like file security it even surpasses Linux. Yes, secure. Just because some clueless users run everything as administrator doesn't make Windows less secure. The problem with Windows security is not Windows, it's the people who use it. Run (insert random OS here) as root/Administrator and it's like putting a big "hack me" sign on your back.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Micro$oft as the next guy here, but let's cut back on the bullshit that Windows is not secure. It's false. For the record, I've been running on a Windows box since Windows 2000 without ever using an anti malware program. Never caught anything. Router, Windows with non root user and common sense = free from malware.
On the other hand, Windows works with my KVM switch, while Ubuntu seems to go into epileptic seizure mode upon being switched back to.
I use a simple Trendnet USB KVM. Works like magic with Ubuntu. However with Windows... it takes ages for the mouse/keyboard to get "active" again. As soon as I switch to Ubuntu, keyboard and mouse are operational. Also, every time I switch back to Windows, I get 2-3 second freezes when Windows activates the mouse/keyboard. Something that does not happen in Ubuntu.
But seriously, why would anyone use anything M$ when there are non-stop bugs and security holes. Open Office / Google Writely anyone?
(Insert random application name here) with vulnerability running as root is the problem. MS Word hole only amplifies it because it's widely used. But the problem is that everyone and their dog is running Windows as administrator.
Theories are just that: Theories. While the US variant of creationisim (creation started smack x years ago, 'Gods' days are the same length as humand days, etc.) is bogus, presuming that humans and dinos coexisted is not to far fetched. We do not no enough to say for sure that all dinos and humans are bazillion years apart. Given that entire theories found upon single scrap findings I wouldn't dismiss this one as totally bogus.
In science, the word "theory" is much more than a hunch. So I don't think the word "theory" means what you think it means. In science, theory, is supported by empirical evidence. Outside science, theory, is just that, something we have no proof of it, just an idea, a hunch.
Microsoft is embracing open-source, working on filters to save in OpenDocumentFormat, etc.
Anti-trust in EU has nothing to do with right? Or how about governments getting sick and tired of paying the MS tax on office software? It's naive to believe that MS is doing all this open source collaboration just out of the kindness of their own hearts. This is a company that associated OSS to cancer, communism and terrorism. Don't forget the MS business strategy, especially the two steps that follow "embrace". Extend. Extinguish.
To be honest, his strategy for initially winning the war was really damn good. He is honestly a man I would want leading out troops in a traditional war. (minus the body armor stupidity...)
It requires damn good strategy for a Ferrari to beat a good ole' Lada in a car race. Was it really great strategy or simply pure brute force? Didn't we see in 1991 how shitty Iraq's army was vs the coalition? I wouldn't say his strategy was really good when it relied on far superior armaments.
Does anyone actually leave windows firewall on anyways? Its one of the first things to go when I have to use windblows xp.
For friends and family (until recently) had no choice to leave it on but turned off. Computer browser stopped or simply wouldn't work and when Joe Clueless tries to access his pr0n^H^H^H^H^Hwedding pictures on other PC the Computer Browser service wouldn't access the other PC. For some reason firewall had to run (even if turned off) for Computer Browser to function properly. I think this "feature" has been fixed as an SP2 post fix.
Also, my sister doesn't have a router, she uses a dialup for her net so I left firewall on. It's primitive but it does the job.
Whenever someone brags they have never gotten a virus, especially just after blithely disabling some security feature, it raises a big red flag. The question is: what is it that makes you think you've never had a virus/been compromised?
I use a few precautions on my Windoze machine.
- Have a virtual machine that runs a naked copy of XP for testing "suspicious" attchements. - I use a virtual machine as my SSH server, if it's compromised, erase VM, rebuild from backup, patch or secure. - I never use my PC under an administrator account, the only exception is patching or new hardware installed. - I keep my systems patched. - Router/Firewall protects my home network. - I treat every mail attachment as virus. - Use an alternative browser, right now it's Firefox. - I deactivate useless Windows services, my laptop keeps running with about 9 windows services. - Know what each process running does, it's easy to know once you deactivate the 124523452 useless Windows Services. - Avoid IE, Outlook Express like the black plague.
All this paranoia saves me the pain of running a software firewall, antivirus and antispyware/adware. No I haven't installed an antivirus or any scanning tool (in the last 12 or so years), but I never seen anything suspicious running.
... is not the banning of e-vote. Believing itself above the system, Quebec completely misses the notion of democracy, as much as aristocrats continue to cling to dwindling legacies in the 21st century.
Please explain how banning a voting system that so far has demonstrated countless flaws is bad for democracy? I am very happy my government took this stance. Last elections there were quite a few close races between representatives, some as close as about 50 votes. If this buggy electronic vote would tip the balance of power from a party to another, it is unfair and bad for democracy. Bug today is an exploit/abuse tommorow. Voting has to be transparent, accurate and there needs to be a paper trail.
Oh and, Quebec is one of the very rare provinces/states/territories in North America that is running serious studies about having a proportional representation modeled election and parliament. Something that could eliminate the "cartel" of a 2-3 party system we see throughout North America. Something good for every individual instead of a few partisans of selected parties. But yes, Quebec misses the notion of democracy!
I don't think the word "democracy" means what you think it means.
Indeed. I really dont get the point. AM2 is simply a platform change; basically just a couple of lines drawn differently on the motherboard. And a new memory standard that's just not that big a deal (and, iirc, the reason it was a big deal at the Socket A introduction was that ordinary SDRAM performance really sucked and nobody wanted to touch RDRAM with a ten foot pole even if they could afford it, creating a huge up market demand for that specific change).
I am not sure if the memory standard isn't a big deal. It probably helped Dell adopt AMD, since they need same memory (DDR2) for Intel boxes, so Dell won't have to have 2 suppliers for memory.
This new memory might help also with quad cores and beyond. Right now the single/dual core AM2 is not bandwith starved (tests give DDR2 an edge of 3-5%), but that might change with quad cores and beyond where HT and faster memory could supply the cores where Intel CPUs might starve with a shared bandwith of 1033 or 1333 MHZ.
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They performed the test on VMware Server not VMware ESX Server which is what most enterprises will use. VMware ESX Server runs on "bare metal", so it does not have the overhead of the host operating system.
Doesn't VMWare ESX run on some modified Red Hat version?
Also, we run ESX in our production environment, when we stress tested a web application running on IIS and with ASP/VB, the ESX machine couldn't give us more than 10 transactions per second (there was one single VM running on ESX). ESX was crawling.
The same hardware running on Windows 2003 native gave us an easy 100+ without any problems. It seems that the overhead of ESX combined with huge number of context switches is what kills the performance of ESX. For non web applications like file servers, administrator consoles and whatnot, ESX is a beauty and great money saver.
For web applications, I would avoid ESX like the black plague.
I like to be challenged
Did you kill Ouro or C'htun?
Did you kill bosses in Naxxramas?
Did you clear Karazhan?
Did you kill Magtheridon?
Did you kill bosses in Serpentshire Caverns?
Did you finish all dungeons in heroic difficulty?
There are many very challenging encounters in WoW, many who demand very tight coordination between team members.
The interesting thing about WoW is that it didn't refine it more than it dumbed it down.
:). Blizzard didn't dumb down WoW at all, in fact it's much more complex than other games. Having played many other MMOs, scripted encounters in WoW are probably the most complex ones. It is light years ahead of Everquest I, II and Vanguard (the other similar titles).
I guess you didn't play any other MMOs then
In most other games, beating a "Boss" mob is simply having a tank getting beaten on by boss while your other players do lot of damage to it. It is not like this in WoW. You have to know a specific strategy to beat a hard NPC, you can't just tell your tanks to tank it and have your damage dealing classes beat it down. There is a wizard in Karazhan who casts a blizzard that moves in circle. Your raid has to be moving. Same time he semi intelligently casts big nukes on a player. Then he casts a fire ring around someone (this person MUST stop immediately). At 40% life he sheeps the raid, gets his mana back and continues with the beatdown. There are 3 different strategies to beat it, it's a very complex fight. Your healers must be on the ball with healing, your DPS must move and watch out for blizzard and other NPC abilities. And this is a regular 10 man encounter.
You also have more complex fights like pretty much all Naxxramas, Karazhan and beyond, and even the normal 5 man dungeon bosses. Compared to other games WoW is way ahead.
Part of me wants to respond in an incredibly cynical manner to this as most "intelligent teenagers" are smart enough to be aware of much of the bullshit associated with growing up and being aware of wider sociopolitical, environmental and other issues and they need a release for the anger. Other cynical parts of me want to say they are also smart enough to be able to recognize the top 40 drivel that is being disseminated by the recording industry.
I think the why some intelligent people are drawn to metal and punk is because those styles of music lyrically describe reality. There are metal bands who use fantasy in their lyrics, but there are quite a lot who don't. Metal has always expressed opposition to political corruption, senseless wars, the pitfall of religion, famine, pollution, gang violence, personal demons, death, personal introspection and whatnot. I think smart people find comfort in knowing that other people see the world in the same state of utter shit like they do and that's why they are attracted by metal and punk.
Most pop is fantasy, hell most top 40 music is fantasy. Most rap is fantasy. It's really a shame that no rap groups have taken the torch from Public Enemy and continued the social conscious rap movement. Nowadays it's all about image, image of a pimp with hot babes around him and big cars.
Consider that some heavy metal is very intellegent music. Sure, when most people hear "heavy metal" they think Slipknot, Korn, Marilyn Manson and the ilk, but I can get into some Iron Maiden (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is singularly the greatest metal song ever, and not only for it's music), Metallica (80's era) has some great political meaning, and Tool is fun to listen to and try to contemplate the possible meanings of the song. Or am I the only gifted nerd who thinks so?
The beauty of metal, especially after it's "death" in the early 90s is that it's been reborn and many new sub genres are born. Everything from Symphonic Metal to Melodic Death to Progressive to Doom to Gothic to whatever!
Some lesser known but very talented bands:
Therion - Sopranos, tenors, baritones, lot of classical instruments. Pure genius. Theli, Vovin, Secret of the Runes are great albums. Their live shows are also very interesting, they usually travel with about 5-6 opera singers.
The Gathering - One of the first gothic metal bands (now more gothic/atmospheric rock). Mandylion, if_then_else, How to measure a planet, are all very good. Due to some experimental guitar work, their style has been labeled sometimes "shoe gazing".
Tiamat - Pink Floyd meets Gothic Metal. Wildhoney is among the best gothic metal albums. Awesome albums are also Prey and A deeper kind of slumber. Another band that evolved from extreme metal to some weird psychedelic gothic style.
Agalloch - Atmospheric, lot of doom/dark ambiance. Every record from this band is worth it's weight in gold. I do have a soft spot for Ashes against the grain.
Nightwish - One of the bands who defines the Symphonic Metal sub genre. Lot of uplifting melodies, great shows. Once, Century Child and Oceanborn are really good.
Katatonia - Everything from doom metal to gothic rock. They started as some extreme metal band and evolved into some weird dark/doom rock/metal mix. Viva Emptiness and The Great Cold Distance are great.
Symphony X - Progressive Metal at it's best. Jazz and classical influences. Albums like The Diving Wings of Tragedy and V are their best.
Iced Earth - How Metallica should have evolved. The Gettysburg 1863 trilogy is a pure masterpiece of symphonic metal. The rest of their work is more classical thrash with Iron Maidenesque melodies and gallops. Something Wicked and Dark Saga are very strong albums.
Opeth - Progressive Death Metal, extreme on some albums and some dark haunting lullabies on some others. Orchid, Damnation and Deliverance are my favorites.
Ayreon - One composer, Arjen Lucassen, almost every album is a concept album. Invites various singers to sing for him. Style is mostly progressive rock/metal.
Tristania - Probably the most beautiful female voice in the metal world (hopefully the future Nightwish singer). Ashes and World of Glass are amazing gothic metal albums.
Disagreeing with somebody doesn't necessarily mean they're dumb.
Not dumb but, problem with Metallica is that during the 80s they advocated piracy pretty much by encouraging people of bootlegging their shows and trade tapes. It's pretty much the reason they got popular. Fast forward and they spit on their fans, and sue them indirectly via Napster.
They are hypocrites. Not dumb. Pretty good businessmen too, they jumped on every possible fad in the 90s and made zillions! From Bon Jovitallica, to Alternica, to Grungetallica to Nu-tallica.
Other than the pretty new theme, is there *any* new features that are relevant to anyone?
... they won't upgrade.
There are some interesting features of Vista, but none that can impress the computer illiterate folks other than: "Hey, it's pretty!". Tell computer illiterate people about UAC, SuperFetch, new IP stack, new driver model, display driver in User space, DX10 and whatnot and they'll stare at you as if you are talking some alien language. Of course once you mention they need to buy more memory (probably new PC so they see the "pretty") because their 256/512 MB laptop would crawl under Vista
But it's pretty! Then again, my mom would probably be lost with the new UI especially IE7, even if it's "pretty".
Come on.. This really isn't news. Does anyone not believe Google is a wakeup call to Microsoft? And if Steve Balmer's Chair throwing is any indication, they were aware of it long before Ray Ozzie was promoted to CSA.
This is news because some highly placed honcho at MS is finally recognizing that their monopoly might be slowly eroding. Not saying MS is dead next year, but IMO MS will slowly die over the next 10 or so years, unless of course major changes occur within MS.
- Their competitors have brand names that are associated with "cool" or are simply dictionary words. MS has Zune squirting!
- Google is taking on Office that works on multiple platforms. Yes it's nowhere near as good as Office, it's a start with a recognized brand name.
- Google is dominating the search market.
- There isn't much growth left in OS and Office markets, in fact MS is his own enemy.
You dont play many MMO's do you? Have you stopped to consider the suck that would come from teaming with someone who has never played a warrior before and all of sudden has all these abilities and powers and no idea how to use them effectively?
Bad. Idea.
You make the assumption that playing an MMO requires a PhD in quantum physics. Playing MMOs revolve around a few basic ideas. Healers, tanks and DPS classes and some crowd control thrown in. It's not rocket science. Everyone remotely competent can switch classes easy.
I've been using their new layout, no adverts whatsoever. AdBlock with a good regex filter is awesome.
You mean they got plutoed? ;)
As long as Windows architecture exists, it will always be prone to ownership by malware.
You obviously have no clue about the "Windows architecture" and Windows security. Here is a starter.
Windows architecture is secure, in many places like file security it even surpasses Linux. Yes, secure. Just because some clueless users run everything as administrator doesn't make Windows less secure. The problem with Windows security is not Windows, it's the people who use it. Run (insert random OS here) as root/Administrator and it's like putting a big "hack me" sign on your back.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Micro$oft as the next guy here, but let's cut back on the bullshit that Windows is not secure. It's false. For the record, I've been running on a Windows box since Windows 2000 without ever using an anti malware program. Never caught anything. Router, Windows with non root user and common sense = free from malware.
On the other hand, Windows works with my KVM switch, while Ubuntu seems to go into epileptic seizure mode upon being switched back to.
... it takes ages for the mouse/keyboard to get "active" again. As soon as I switch to Ubuntu, keyboard and mouse are operational. Also, every time I switch back to Windows, I get 2-3 second freezes when Windows activates the mouse/keyboard. Something that does not happen in Ubuntu.
I use a simple Trendnet USB KVM. Works like magic with Ubuntu. However with Windows
But seriously, why would anyone use anything M$ when there are non-stop bugs and security holes. Open Office / Google Writely anyone?
(Insert random application name here) with vulnerability running as root is the problem. MS Word hole only amplifies it because it's widely used. But the problem is that everyone and their dog is running Windows as administrator.
he's telling us to love everyone no matter who they are or what they do.
Do you, and other Christians, love(d) Stalin? Genghis Khan? Hitler? Pol Pot? Mladic? Karadic?
and tested them for myself and found it to be factual
How did you test the stuff you read in the bible?
Most companies are expecting to deploy WinXP this spring.
What crackpot moderator tagged this funny? I work for a medium size bank and we are deploying XP right now. It should be finished by early March.
Theories are just that: Theories. While the US variant of creationisim (creation started smack x years ago, 'Gods' days are the same length as humand days, etc.) is bogus, presuming that humans and dinos coexisted is not to far fetched. We do not no enough to say for sure that all dinos and humans are bazillion years apart. Given that entire theories found upon single scrap findings I wouldn't dismiss this one as totally bogus.
In science, the word "theory" is much more than a hunch. So I don't think the word "theory" means what you think it means. In science, theory, is supported by empirical evidence. Outside science, theory, is just that, something we have no proof of it, just an idea, a hunch.
Why can't evolution be the intelligent design?
It's brilliant - I'd expect God to be able to pull it off.
Who designed the designer?
Microsoft is embracing open-source, working on filters to save in OpenDocumentFormat, etc.
Anti-trust in EU has nothing to do with right? Or how about governments getting sick and tired of paying the MS tax on office software? It's naive to believe that MS is doing all this open source collaboration just out of the kindness of their own hearts. This is a company that associated OSS to cancer, communism and terrorism. Don't forget the MS business strategy, especially the two steps that follow "embrace". Extend. Extinguish.
To be honest, his strategy for initially winning the war was really damn good. He is honestly a man I would want leading out troops in a traditional war. (minus the body armor stupidity...)
It requires damn good strategy for a Ferrari to beat a good ole' Lada in a car race. Was it really great strategy or simply pure brute force? Didn't we see in 1991 how shitty Iraq's army was vs the coalition? I wouldn't say his strategy was really good when it relied on far superior armaments.
Does anyone actually leave windows firewall on anyways? Its one of the first things to go when I have to use windblows xp.
For friends and family (until recently) had no choice to leave it on but turned off. Computer browser stopped or simply wouldn't work and when Joe Clueless tries to access his pr0n^H^H^H^H^Hwedding pictures on other PC the Computer Browser service wouldn't access the other PC. For some reason firewall had to run (even if turned off) for Computer Browser to function properly. I think this "feature" has been fixed as an SP2 post fix.
Also, my sister doesn't have a router, she uses a dialup for her net so I left firewall on. It's primitive but it does the job.
Whenever someone brags they have never gotten a virus, especially just after blithely disabling some security feature, it raises a big red flag. The question is: what is it that makes you think you've never had a virus/been compromised?
I use a few precautions on my Windoze machine.
- Have a virtual machine that runs a naked copy of XP for testing "suspicious" attchements.
- I use a virtual machine as my SSH server, if it's compromised, erase VM, rebuild from backup, patch or secure.
- I never use my PC under an administrator account, the only exception is patching or new hardware installed.
- I keep my systems patched.
- Router/Firewall protects my home network.
- I treat every mail attachment as virus.
- Use an alternative browser, right now it's Firefox.
- I deactivate useless Windows services, my laptop keeps running with about 9 windows services.
- Know what each process running does, it's easy to know once you deactivate the 124523452 useless Windows Services.
- Avoid IE, Outlook Express like the black plague.
All this paranoia saves me the pain of running a software firewall, antivirus and antispyware/adware. No I haven't installed an antivirus or any scanning tool (in the last 12 or so years), but I never seen anything suspicious running.
... is not the banning of e-vote. Believing itself above the system, Quebec completely misses the notion of democracy, as much as aristocrats continue to cling to dwindling legacies in the 21st century.
Please explain how banning a voting system that so far has demonstrated countless flaws is bad for democracy? I am very happy my government took this stance. Last elections there were quite a few close races between representatives, some as close as about 50 votes. If this buggy electronic vote would tip the balance of power from a party to another, it is unfair and bad for democracy. Bug today is an exploit/abuse tommorow. Voting has to be transparent, accurate and there needs to be a paper trail.
Oh and, Quebec is one of the very rare provinces/states/territories in North America that is running serious studies about having a proportional representation modeled election and parliament. Something that could eliminate the "cartel" of a 2-3 party system we see throughout North America. Something good for every individual instead of a few partisans of selected parties. But yes, Quebec misses the notion of democracy!
I don't think the word "democracy" means what you think it means.
Indeed. I really dont get the point. AM2 is simply a platform change; basically just a couple of lines drawn differently on the motherboard. And a new memory standard that's just not that big a deal (and, iirc, the reason it was a big deal at the Socket A introduction was that ordinary SDRAM performance really sucked and nobody wanted to touch RDRAM with a ten foot pole even if they could afford it, creating a huge up market demand for that specific change).
I am not sure if the memory standard isn't a big deal. It probably helped Dell adopt AMD, since they need same memory (DDR2) for Intel boxes, so Dell won't have to have 2 suppliers for memory.
This new memory might help also with quad cores and beyond. Right now the single/dual core AM2 is not bandwith starved (tests give DDR2 an edge of 3-5%), but that might change with quad cores and beyond where HT and faster memory could supply the cores where Intel CPUs might starve with a shared bandwith of 1033 or 1333 MHZ.