I suppose it depends on what one considers part of the MS-Windows install and what one doesn't. Unless you suppose that your definition (whatever that might be) is the only correct one.
Personally, I count all the space that was not available to the user for storage to be part of the installation. And based on that, about half the drive was consumed and unavailable as it came to me.
Even if you were to blow away the recovery partition and even the hibernate one, that still leaves 27GB of "stuff"; about 700% the size of a Linux installation with similar functionality. I would call that a bloated beast.
As for the recovery partition- "that thing which has nothing at all to do with any decision on MS's part concerning their OS", as you put it- if you really don't think that has anything to do with MS's decisions then why do they not provide OEM's with physical discs? And why does MS, themselves, include MS tools to create recovery sets from the partition? And why do they provide integrated software in MS-Windows to recover from that partition to restore to previous states? And why don't they provide a download options?
Can you subtract 26 from 102? I can. It equals 76GB. That is free space on a 128GB "drive". The 128GB drive is actually a more like a 119GB drive, since they use 10^3 instead of powers of two. Like I said, almost half the drive was consumed.
Well, you might want to skip MS-Windows 8 too, then. I messed with it for a few hours on my new touchscreen ultrabook Lenovo Twist before blowing it away to install Fedora.
All I can say is that Win8 is absolutely hideous. It is pretty at first, until you have to actually try and DO something, then it quickly throws up dozens of barriers. I can't imagine being forced to have to use such a monster on a regular basis.
The Twist only comes with 128MB SDD and almost *HALF* of it was completely consumed by the Win8 *BEAST*. And that is with almost no crapware and very few useful things installed at all.
In contrast, Fedora 17 just *FLIES* on the machine, everything worked out of the box (even the touchscreen) except the card reader (which I had to compile a driver). After installing thousands of packages- KDE, LXDE, games, browsers, test editors, multi-media tools and editors, graphics manipulation, several productivity apps, full dev system, etc, it used 5GB.
I am curious to see if KDE can incorporate a tablet-like interface that can co-exist with a real desktop-like interface with auto-switching on the fly (kind of the whole point of the Twist). They have all the components and probably the best environment to make it happen....
$120 million really doesn't sound like enough money to me to solve a problem that has been the bane of thousands of electronics companies for many decades....
Still, this is a VERY worthy cause. Batteries have improved a lot over the years, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with what we need. Especially important as we move ever closer to electric cars (I would just LOVE to have one).
And it isn't just the capacity and price that is important- safety and component scarcity and disposal concerns should be addressed too.
"I have purchased several Humble Bundles over the years and also promoted it to others. I bought some where I never even played most of the games. Why? Because I believed in what you were doing. But I think you have betrayed your mission with this THQ stuff:
* It is not multi-platform, leaving Linux and Mac users out in the cold. * It is not direct download, eaving non-Steam users out in the cold. * It is not from indie developers. * It is not DRM-free.
I am very disappointed in what you did, and, to me, it severely taints your name and brand. I think you should be ashamed and hopefully you will get back on track."
I am quite pleased and proud that none of my vehicles share information with ANYONE in the "Cloud." Just because something CAN be done [that is "kewl"], doesn't necessarily make it a great idea.
I am not trying to excuse Toshiba, but if you have had to deal with the general, clueless "public" with computer support, you might have a better understanding of why they (and other companies) are doing that.
I would guess that even more than 90% of all calls to support have nothing to do with a hardware problem. They are typically:
* MS-Windows brokenness * MS-Windows virii and malware * Broken third-party software and drivers * Broken third-party hardware (chargers, cables, drives) * Users that don't understand how basic stuff works (connecting WiFi, booting, burning discs, copying files) * Users who have hosed their machines by doing stupid stuff
That, unfortunately, means a HUGE expense to computer manufacturers, and those costs were traditionally plowed right back into the sticker price of everything they sold. In a fiercely competitive industry, companies are looking for ways to cut their prices as much as possible. Support is the first target. (And the second seems to be machine quality).
The people like the Slashdot crowd are now forced to pay the price for the changed ecosystem- we have to put up with stupid front-line "support" levels that are not support, and pay stupid fees that to try and filter out the bad apples. The assumption is that every caller to a support center is an idiot.
There are times I wish that computer professionals could carry some type of "license" that would allow them to skip the normal channels and jump directly to support people that really are support.
Mr. Adams says: >"The government doesn't know your medical history. "
Sorry, but this is 100% wrong.
I have worked in the medical industry for 24 years, and I can tell you that if your payer is Medicare, Medicaid, or Tricare, every single diagnosis code of yours is being sent to the government, regardless of where you obtain care. These codes completely describe your exact conditions, what procedures were done, and are combined with lots of other demographic info: name, birth date, address, gender, social security number, etc.
Regardless of payor, if you have a stay in a long term hospital or nursing home, a comprehensive and ongoing list of your conditions and diagnoses are being sent to the government regularly (many times) during your entire stay. And there are many other pieces of health information being sent to the government through various branches, including the CDC.
My point was exactly what I said. The summary of the article is sexist because it implies that it is only a mother's love that could be the cause. That is, in fact, sexist. Any reasonably intelligent person could infer that really it is the love of SOMEONE that causes the result, not necessarily the mother.
It doesn't matter if it is *usually* the mother, or that it might be the mother in this one particular case, there was no reason it should be worded the way it was. A proper/better wording would be:
"[...]reveals new evidence of the remarkable impact a care giver's love has on a child's brain development"
The primary reason the Evo OG (4G) could not be updated is that it simply didn't have enough internal storage space. HTC couldn't fit ICS + Sense onto it.
4) It is odd that they stated they were going to release less models, which sounded great, and then didn't quite follow that rule. 5) They support their high-end devices very well. No vendor does well with mid/low end phones, period. 6) Beats is a total waste of time, agreed. 7) HTC phones are not locked down more than any other non-Nexus phones. 8) The battery *is* removable, it takes 5 min on the Evo LTE to swap the battery. Sorry again, the Evo LTE has an SD card. But the new Nexus phone won't.... 9) Battery life on the One X and Evo LTE is fantastic.
* The original Evo *was* nice for it's time. And the OneX and Evo LTE are nice for this time. Both are properly supported with updates- have no idea why you are hung up on that.
1) They did not get their flagship devices out fast enough. 2) Their high-end devices are not on enough USA carriers. 3) They didn't advertise enough.
They make really good phones both in the past and present. Samsung is just railroading them by getting their high end model on almost all the carriers and then absolutely blanketing the market with effective advertising.
That was one of my original, main points. That is why we are effectively only a ONE PARTY SYSTEM. Call it Repulicrats or Democians.
Both "parties" seem to want to do nothing but raise taxes, spend money beyond our means, take away personal liberty, pass zillions of more laws, interfere with other countries' affairs, give more and more power to business, strip citizens of due process, and make the governments bigger and bigger- especially on the federal level.
>"The properties of IRV seem to be less preferable to a Condorcet voting system or even a system like range voting or approval voting. What makes IRV better than these methods in your opinion?"
Generally, most people (myself included) throw all "alternative" voting systems into the IRV category. Just about ANY type of voting system is better than the simple majority system in use by 99+% of the governments of the USA (and most countries).
That said, I have spent many hours reading about many of the various preferential voting systems out there. I don't know which one is "best" overall. I am not a statistician (having only about 6 credits of university stats) nor a subject matter expert, so I am not going to pretend I am qualified to compare them. But any intelligent person will quickly realize just how incredibly poor our current system is; I would jump at the chance to use even the *WORST* "IRV" solution over what we currently use.
It is so incredibly sad that we don't have some type of IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). If we wanted real change, this is the only way to get it because it is the only way to have a real possibility of electing someone other than a Republicrat (or a Demolican).
Imagine a system where your vote actually counted, no matter who you vote for... I guess I can dream.
No, I actually was that boring and "good". Not perfect, but not annoying or bad. I kinda skipped that part of my life. In some ways it is probably sad.
>You must be part of the 1%. Must be nice to be so entitled!
No, I am part of the 99%. I would estimate that less than 1% of the cars that pass me, ever, have blasting music.
It might SEEM like it is a much higher percentage and never ending and everywhere, because with so many cars, all it takes is that 1% to ruin it for everyone and create wide-spread disturbances.
And yes, although not in the 1%, I *AM* entitled to peace and quiet. That is the natural state of the world. Morally (and hopefully legally also) when someone's "right" to blast music that disturbs others is verses someone's "right" to have quiet, the quiet SHOULD win.
Sorry, I *NEVER* played music so loud it could be heard out of my car, nor at home. So forgive me for not forgiving people that annoy the crap out of me with such noise.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose it depends on what one considers part of the MS-Windows install and what one doesn't. Unless you suppose that your definition (whatever that might be) is the only correct one.
Personally, I count all the space that was not available to the user for storage to be part of the installation. And based on that, about half the drive was consumed and unavailable as it came to me.
Even if you were to blow away the recovery partition and even the hibernate one, that still leaves 27GB of "stuff"; about 700% the size of a Linux installation with similar functionality. I would call that a bloated beast.
As for the recovery partition- "that thing which has nothing at all to do with any decision on MS's part concerning their OS", as you put it- if you really don't think that has anything to do with MS's decisions then why do they not provide OEM's with physical discs? And why does MS, themselves, include MS tools to create recovery sets from the partition? And why do they provide integrated software in MS-Windows to recover from that partition to restore to previous states? And why don't they provide a download options?
# Type Label Size Used Flags
0 unallocated -- 1MB
1 ntfs WINRE_DRV 1000MB 474MB hidden
2 fat32 SYSTEM_DRV 260MB 55MB boot
3 unknown -- 128MB -- msftres
4 ntfs Windows8_OS 102.11GB 26GB --
5 ntfs Lenovo_Recovery 8.78GB 8.53GB hidden
6 unknown -- 7GB -- hidden
Can you subtract 26 from 102? I can. It equals 76GB. That is free space on a 128GB "drive". The 128GB drive is actually a more like a 119GB drive, since they use 10^3 instead of powers of two. Like I said, almost half the drive was consumed.
Get lost, anonymous coward.
Well, you might want to skip MS-Windows 8 too, then. I messed with it for a few hours on my new touchscreen ultrabook Lenovo Twist before blowing it away to install Fedora.
All I can say is that Win8 is absolutely hideous. It is pretty at first, until you have to actually try and DO something, then it quickly throws up dozens of barriers. I can't imagine being forced to have to use such a monster on a regular basis.
The Twist only comes with 128MB SDD and almost *HALF* of it was completely consumed by the Win8 *BEAST*. And that is with almost no crapware and very few useful things installed at all.
In contrast, Fedora 17 just *FLIES* on the machine, everything worked out of the box (even the touchscreen) except the card reader (which I had to compile a driver). After installing thousands of packages- KDE, LXDE, games, browsers, test editors, multi-media tools and editors, graphics manipulation, several productivity apps, full dev system, etc, it used 5GB.
I am curious to see if KDE can incorporate a tablet-like interface that can co-exist with a real desktop-like interface with auto-switching on the fly (kind of the whole point of the Twist). They have all the components and probably the best environment to make it happen....
$120 million really doesn't sound like enough money to me to solve a problem that has been the bane of thousands of electronics companies for many decades....
Still, this is a VERY worthy cause. Batteries have improved a lot over the years, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with what we need. Especially important as we move ever closer to electric cars (I would just LOVE to have one).
And it isn't just the capacity and price that is important- safety and component scarcity and disposal concerns should be addressed too.
Reply to self....
Rather than complain here. I sent them an Email:
"I have purchased several Humble Bundles over the years and also promoted it to others. I bought some where I never even
played most of the games. Why? Because I believed in what you were doing. But I think you have betrayed your mission with this THQ stuff:
* It is not multi-platform, leaving Linux and Mac users out in the cold.
* It is not direct download, eaving non-Steam users out in the cold.
* It is not from indie developers.
* It is not DRM-free.
I am very disappointed in what you did, and, to me, it severely taints your name and brand. I think you should be ashamed and hopefully you will get back on track."
How exactly does this fit with "Humble Bundle?". DRM, non-indie, and single platform? There is plenty of that main-stream. This is not a good sign.
EXACTLY.
I am quite pleased and proud that none of my vehicles share information with ANYONE in the "Cloud." Just because something CAN be done [that is "kewl"], doesn't necessarily make it a great idea.
>"What Video Games Keep You From Using Linux?"
Nothing. I don't play games at all on my computer. Play some on my Android phone and tablet, occasionally, though.
You need to take a chill pill
But they are probably filling the loophole by making the fees "refundable" if it really is a warranty related issue. It is sleazy, indeed.
I am not trying to excuse Toshiba, but if you have had to deal with the general, clueless "public" with computer support, you might have a better understanding of why they (and other companies) are doing that.
I would guess that even more than 90% of all calls to support have nothing to do with a hardware problem. They are typically:
* MS-Windows brokenness
* MS-Windows virii and malware
* Broken third-party software and drivers
* Broken third-party hardware (chargers, cables, drives)
* Users that don't understand how basic stuff works (connecting WiFi, booting, burning discs, copying files)
* Users who have hosed their machines by doing stupid stuff
That, unfortunately, means a HUGE expense to computer manufacturers, and those costs were traditionally plowed right back into the sticker price of everything they sold. In a fiercely competitive industry, companies are looking for ways to cut their prices as much as possible. Support is the first target. (And the second seems to be machine quality).
The people like the Slashdot crowd are now forced to pay the price for the changed ecosystem- we have to put up with stupid front-line "support" levels that are not support, and pay stupid fees that to try and filter out the bad apples. The assumption is that every caller to a support center is an idiot.
There are times I wish that computer professionals could carry some type of "license" that would allow them to skip the normal channels and jump directly to support people that really are support.
Mr. Adams says:
>"The government doesn't know your medical history. "
Sorry, but this is 100% wrong.
I have worked in the medical industry for 24 years, and I can tell you that if your payer is Medicare, Medicaid, or Tricare, every single diagnosis code of yours is being sent to the government, regardless of where you obtain care. These codes completely describe your exact conditions, what procedures were done, and are combined with lots of other demographic info: name, birth date, address, gender, social security number, etc.
Regardless of payor, if you have a stay in a long term hospital or nursing home, a comprehensive and ongoing list of your conditions and diagnoses are being sent to the government regularly (many times) during your entire stay. And there are many other pieces of health information being sent to the government through various branches, including the CDC.
Several among many:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Uniform_Billing_Committee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_Data_Set
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD9#ICD-9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnosis-related_group
My point was exactly what I said. The summary of the article is sexist because it implies that it is only a mother's love that could be the cause. That is, in fact, sexist. Any reasonably intelligent person could infer that really it is the love of SOMEONE that causes the result, not necessarily the mother.
It doesn't matter if it is *usually* the mother, or that it might be the mother in this one particular case, there was no reason it should be worded the way it was. A proper/better wording would be:
"[...]reveals new evidence of the remarkable impact a care giver's love has on a child's brain development"
>"of the remarkable impact a mother's love has on a child's brain development."
Oh, so only a MOTHER'S love could cause that, not a father's or anyone else...
The primary reason the Evo OG (4G) could not be updated is that it simply didn't have enough internal storage space. HTC couldn't fit ICS + Sense onto it.
OK, you are right about the Desire HD. But they did great by the Evo OG, Evo 3D, (and several others) and so far the Evo LTE and One X.
Response to your numbers
4) It is odd that they stated they were going to release less models, which sounded great, and then didn't quite follow that rule.
5) They support their high-end devices very well. No vendor does well with mid/low end phones, period.
6) Beats is a total waste of time, agreed.
7) HTC phones are not locked down more than any other non-Nexus phones.
8) The battery *is* removable, it takes 5 min on the Evo LTE to swap the battery. Sorry again, the Evo LTE has an SD card. But the new Nexus phone won't....
9) Battery life on the One X and Evo LTE is fantastic.
* The original Evo *was* nice for it's time. And the OneX and Evo LTE are nice for this time. Both are properly supported with updates- have no idea why you are hung up on that.
What is killing HTC is that:
1) They did not get their flagship devices out fast enough.
2) Their high-end devices are not on enough USA carriers.
3) They didn't advertise enough.
They make really good phones both in the past and present. Samsung is just railroading them by getting their high end model on almost all the carriers and then absolutely blanketing the market with effective advertising.
+1000
That was one of my original, main points. That is why we are effectively only a ONE PARTY SYSTEM. Call it Repulicrats or Democians.
Both "parties" seem to want to do nothing but raise taxes, spend money beyond our means, take away personal liberty, pass zillions of more laws, interfere with other countries' affairs, give more and more power to business, strip citizens of due process, and make the governments bigger and bigger- especially on the federal level.
>"The properties of IRV seem to be less preferable to a Condorcet voting system or even a system like range voting or approval voting. What makes IRV better than these methods in your opinion?"
Generally, most people (myself included) throw all "alternative" voting systems into the IRV category. Just about ANY type of voting system is better than the simple majority system in use by 99+% of the governments of the USA (and most countries).
That said, I have spent many hours reading about many of the various preferential voting systems out there. I don't know which one is "best" overall. I am not a statistician (having only about 6 credits of university stats) nor a subject matter expert, so I am not going to pretend I am qualified to compare them. But any intelligent person will quickly realize just how incredibly poor our current system is; I would jump at the chance to use even the *WORST* "IRV" solution over what we currently use.
It is so incredibly sad that we don't have some type of IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). If we wanted real change, this is the only way to get it because it is the only way to have a real possibility of electing someone other than a Republicrat (or a Demolican).
Imagine a system where your vote actually counted, no matter who you vote for... I guess I can dream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting
http://www.instantrunoff.com/
I have no problem with Mozilla doing this as long as the user (or admin) can disable it through about:config.
No, I actually was that boring and "good". Not perfect, but not annoying or bad. I kinda skipped that part of my life. In some ways it is probably sad.
>You must be part of the 1%. Must be nice to be so entitled!
No, I am part of the 99%. I would estimate that less than 1% of the cars that pass me, ever, have blasting music.
It might SEEM like it is a much higher percentage and never ending and everywhere, because with so many cars, all it takes is that 1% to ruin it for everyone and create wide-spread disturbances.
And yes, although not in the 1%, I *AM* entitled to peace and quiet. That is the natural state of the world. Morally (and hopefully legally also) when someone's "right" to blast music that disturbs others is verses someone's "right" to have quiet, the quiet SHOULD win.
Sorry, I *NEVER* played music so loud it could be heard out of my car, nor at home. So forgive me for not forgiving people that annoy the crap out of me with such noise.