Come on now, I know this laptop sucks, but "completely changing your workflow" is a bit of exaggeration. I'm a photographer(1) and lightroom and photoshop are my computer bread and butter. They are identical on a mac and pc, as for that matter, any adobe product. So is there a difference between my workflow on a mac or a pc (got plenty of both though, thanks for asking)? No, not even in the slightest.
People look (I did it too when I was a kid) at computers as a OS vs OS. It's just bollocks. If you are using aperture on a mac and lightroom on a pc, I can agree that there are some substantial differences in your "workflow" (god, I hate that buzzword), but if you are using the same adobe product (as 90% of other photographers do) for both of your platforms, the os doesn't make any difference. If you are using the same tools, is there a difference in your work?
And all that talk about how osx is "streamlined" and learning "how to copy a file all over again" is just rubbish.
Firstly, osx is a far cry from streamlined. For example tell me at least 2 free programs which you can use for quick viewing images in osx? Windows: faststone viewer, and irfanview. Sorry, but preview and quick look are both utter junk.
Secondly, copying a file is different in osx and windows? Come on now, I really thought this was a quality discussion.
I'll never forget a quick exchange I had with another mac-using photographer when he saw I had a mac too. He asked me if I'm using macs too (even though it was obvious that I had a mac with me). I answered pretending to be serious: "Sure am I. Only real photographers use macs". Then he gave me a smile and winked, giving that "we understand each other" look. I almost died from laughter. What a moron.
(1) Pretty much of all the people I know using macs are photographers, so I'll write this up from my point of view.
You are presuming that those in power really need internet. I don't think that is necessary the truth. Politics is all about (human) networking and trading inside information and internet doesn't really help them much. Sure, e-mail is nice to have, but phones are still much better in that concern. Let me put it this way: general population has much more to lose without internet than the elite.
Moreover, what is to stop the elite having their own version of the internet but completely closed-off to the rest of the population?
I know this is all hypothetical, but too many people take internet as as given, just like water or electricity.
F-lock key has inverse functionality that is should have. So every time I (re)boot my computer I have to press f-lock key just to have normal f1-f12 keys. Its bullshit to have reply/redo/whatever by default on f-keys. There was a registry key to fix this but it doesn't work anymore.
About your macbook keyboard problem; you can invert the f-keys to their default values in leopard: sys preferences->keyboard and mouse->Use all F1, F2... as standard function keys.
I completely agree that 104 keyboards are generally to wide to use comfortably. And I absolutely hate when they add some *additional* keys on the right side of the keyboard making it even wider.
I had many keyboards but in the last 10 years I had various $10 keyboard, MS natural multimedia, logitech DiNovo, razer tarantula (great feeling when typing, but the plastic film inside is of low quality giving you doubble lettterss when writting, and much too wide) and I even tried out logitech wave (has horrible feel) and some other keyboards. But I went back to MS natural multimedia. This keyboard has the best feeling when typing (even though it is very old now) but it was a bit too wide for my taste. So I just cut out the numeric keypad with a dremel tool. Works perfectly, and it is narrower and much more comfortable because you can have right hand nearer to the left when holding mouse.
As a side note, I don't understand why those "gaming" keyboards come with numeric keypads. Every serious gamer uses left hand on wasd or esdf and right hand on a mouse. And I'm pretty much sure they aren't accountants so they don't need numeric keypad that much.
Can you pass whatever you are smoking? I'm afraid it is obvious that you don't know what wow is.
Doing something for 4+hours a day and for 3+ years is hardly what you can call "discovering the internet" or "internet puberty". It is simply called addiction.
This isn't a hobby or just a diversion. This isn't experimenting with writing a back orifice clone or trying to install linux without losing your data after you remove it, or discovering chat rooms (as all of this is fun for the first few days). This is just doing completely repetitive tasks like an animal in a skinner's box. And the subject likes it. WoW lets you in very gradually so you don't even notice your addiction. Your school grades suffer, your family relationship suffers, you lose your friends, you get fat etc. All this (and much more) happens at an alarming rate and it is very hard to get out.
If my parents were like those described in the article I would probably cut their internet wires and/or kick their addicted asses.
disclaimer: I don't care about superhumans who have top grades in schools, play wow "casually for couple of hours a day", have 10E3 friends and have sex thrice a day.
I have a feeling we are arguing semantics here because we are generally in agreement. I could argue your points by themselves but time is the most expensive resource unfortunately.
All I'm saying is if a great majority of population have a value title x, then value title x is worth absolutely nothing. So all those people are left behind (because there is nobody behind *them*). And they are all much behind the uni wielding diploma minority.
That is true that we always boast about how croatian population has great general education. That is somewhat true, I agree, but misleading. When you have that great mass of well rounded general population who doesn't have uni diploma you have another problem. Those people have no good qualifications even for prima facie simpler jobs. This can be very well observed with a saying: jack of all trades, master of none. I don't care in this sense much about brain drain, that is just a problem of economy, not education.
We could argue all the finer points of the argument about education here but I don't share the opinion this is the right place to do it.
You misunderstood GP. But first, let me answer you.
The country where way too many kids in primary school have a 5.0 average? It is a slight exaggeration but not too far from the truth. Only today did I read that Croatia has second highest grades in Europe. And what does that mean? All those grades are inflated. That is a bad thing.
The country where secondary education has been made obligatory, which means that even those who do not want to go to school have to? True that, everyone has to secondary school. But all of this doesn't mean they are not left behind.
We don't leave anyone behind. And very, very few actually get ahead. Well, the second part of the sentence is true, but the first just isn't. Tell me, do you remember the percentage of university graduated people in Croatia? Let me remind you, it is below 8% by the last count. Do you know what is the European average? Around 20%.
Let me explain more clearly now. A big majority of the Croatia's population just doesn't go to the university after receiving secondary education. And a large majority of even those who actually manage to enter a college just drop out in the first year or two. Even a lesser number of those actually get the diploma.
So what am I trying to say here? The best students have no problem finishing primary and secondary school and getting the university diploma. But all others who don't have university diploma (a great majority) just lose out having the same qualifications as 92% of population. And those qualifications suck because everyone has them and on the other side of the spectrum you have roughly 8% of people who have no problem getting a job, and a lot of them can even refuse good paying ones to get higher paying ones.
In fact, I do agree that Croatia's education sucks a lot. If you judge by the bell curve you have "bad" students pushed to the middle, middle going nowhere and it is thus mixed with the left part of the curve, and finally you have a very sharp edge at the right part of the curve which represent those "gifted" students who get the university diploma.
So what would I like though? I just hate when you have a large mass of average people mixed with "bad" people and those gifted who didn't manage to get to university and/or get the diploma. On the other hand you have minuscule minority actually getting the uni diploma and effectively having their life much more easier than the rest of population. The "average" population in Croatia is just too damn large.
This kind of discussion crops on/. fairly frequently. So I went last winter to Austria for skiing and did a quick analysis of the cars at the main ski lift parking lot.
I haven't seen more than five hard 4x4 (not even one SUV) with the local town's license plate. But still, more than half of "foreign" cars were SUVs which generally had *city* plates like Vienna, Udine etc.
I asked the owner of our apartment (local guy of course): "Why is that there are so few offroad and SUVs around?".
He answered with a half smile: "Why would anyone need a SUV here? Everywhere you need to go you have roads. Even when the snow falls it is cleaned promptly, and normal cars are much better than SUVs on snow anyway. And finally, normal cars are better for the environment as they spend less gas, and after all, I'm old now, what kind of state of the environment I'm going to leave to my children?".
The Apple Spotlight clone Sorry, but windows desktop search was released around the time google desktop search was released. Alongside with copernic, x1 etc. People here are talking about spotlight like its a second coming, but it is no better than windows desktop search. It is better integrated I admit, but I cannot configure what directories to index. And yes, I'm writing this from a mac.
4 GB of memory supported on 32-bit Vista. Ok.
Backup to DVD-R or CD-R Already done in XP, and every dvd burner comes with a dvd writing software anyway.
MUCH better Wi-Fi control Its a one step forward, two steps back. Can you explain how to remove the high latency which occurs every 60 seconds? Good luck playing online game with that bullshit.
Restore Points can be set for user files, not just system files Ok.
New UI technique(...) Already done with Launchy and even Microsoft's own Windows Desktop Search. Launchy is just for launching applications, and wds can do that and quickly search for files. Vista's search is just redesigned wds.
And btw, why oh why did they remove the program icon in the top left corner of windows? Its great for multi monitor setup. On left monitor you close the window by double clicking the mentioned icon, and on the right windows you just click the X button. It was extremely useful because you just flick the mouse to the corner and double click.
I'm not a professional gamer, but I must admit I played, play, and will play games way too much.
I've changed more than 10 keyboards in my lifetime so I do think I have something to say about gaming keyboards.
Lets look at the "features" of this 7G keyboard.
It is made of metal. I'm not really sure why this is a positive thing, except for added weight. But as my experience tells me, the keyboard doesn't need to be heavy to be firmly planted on your desk. All you need are good rubber legs/plugs/or whatever they are called. I've seen extremely light keyboards which are extremely resistant to moving, so I do think that you need heavy keyboard to prevent it from dancing around your table. But anyway, I haven't seen any good gamer moving their hands on the keyboard in such a way to move the keyboard itself. True, amateurs and kids tend to thrash the keyboard when they lose, but that is more of an attitude problem than a keyboard problem.
The keyboard is fully mechanical. I don't have much experience with that kind of keyboards and I don't take that as a negative thing. But I don't consider rubber membrane keyboards bad by any account (not even by keyboard lifetime). Maybe I haven't experienced anything better though.
"Gold electronic". Even if it is made of platinum, that doesn't mean it is any better than a standard keyboard. True, this can be an indicator that the keyboard is better but sometimes it is exactly the opposite.
"capable of handling abuse". As I said before, only retards abuse their keyboards. I'm not a saint myself but I have never found a keyboard who can't handle energetic typing or some abuse. If someone is abusing his keyboard on daily basis, I would suggest professional counseling.
On a more general note, I do have a feeling that every "gaming" keyboard out there is just doing at least one thing wrong.
This is namely the inclusion of numeric keypad part of the keyboard. Why is this the problem? It is because you need to put your keyboard and your mouse wide apart which is uncomfortable, unergonomic, lowers your performance and completely pointless. These are gaming keyboards we are talking about so I don't think any gamer would miss numeric keypad so much. There are some keyboards who try to shorten the distance between the keypad and the rest of the keyboard but even if this is good, you still have a lot of useless keys sticking to the right of your main part of the keyboard.
Another thing which bothers me even more is inclusion of macro keys to the right of the numeric keypad so the keyboard is extremely wide this way. This is most uncomfortable. Even though macro keys are not necessary bad in itself I do have slight reservations about them. Those macro keys are usually far away from the main gaming keys (wasd/esdf) so they are difficult to find and press without looking. And on some keyboards (Razer Tarantula included) those macro keys are utterly useless. You can't press macro key+normal key at the same time (lets say moving forward-w + macro execution). And why can't I assign button "G" for some special macro when I'm running game X? Why do I need the extra macro-only buttons?
Keyboard illumination is just for show. If a gamer doesn't know where his keys are without looking he is:
1. not a gamer 2. a failure
I do recommend to be careful when buying keyboards, especially expensive ones. I had Razer Tarantula which I got as a gift but at first I thought it was defective (ddouble charaacters when writingg sometimes), replaced it, got the same thing. I searched on the web for other experiences, but that was somewhat hard because people who have these kind of keyboards usually don't type much outside the games so they wouldn't notice playing their favorite games.
I had many "normal" screens in last 20 years and I never liked wide screens until I actually used one. You must consider that many if not most applications have somewhat 'more horizontal' layout than vertical. Example: Photoshop. How Photoshop looks like on a normal ascpect screen? You put all the tools and mini windows on the side of the screen and suddenly you have very little space for your landscape photo which now actually would be better to be vertical. With wide aspect screen all the tools are in the 'wide part' of the screen and the photo still has enough space to be comfortably displayed in landscape.
As for your last question, I think it is just the opposite. It is much easier to do a vertical scroll than a horizontal scroll. When you are reading this wonderful site you just move a mouse wheel and you are reading it comfortably whatever vertical resolution you have. If you really are pressed to do a horizontal scroll wouldn't be better to have a wide screen? Ask yourself this: how many people do you see with 90deg pivoted lcds for surfing/whatever?
Maybe this discussion will be funny in 20 years time because we'll have projected or giant screens and wide/non-wide would be just a funny bit of computer history. Unless we would have more pressing matters in 20 years than computers.
"man, what I'd really like is to be able to implant electronics into the working class so I can watch their every move"
o you really think they give a shit about what time Joe Sixpack staggers home with some drunken bar skank? You are taking organizations too simply. Maybe a guy at the top of a company doesn't give a flying fuck about tracking employees. But big organizations have many layers of management and there is a possibility that you can have some people actually reading/managing that RFID data.
Management drone 1: Hey, I've seen that company X and company Y have mandatory implant policy. Management drone 2: Sure, we have to be on the competitive edge. I'll suggest that to my boss. Management metadrone1: Great idea, implement it! Company boss(es): (enjoying on some Adriatic island on their megayacht)
I don't think all this will ever happen in near or semi-near future (except for the megayacht part) but I just wanted to point out that you are taking corporations way to simply.
I understand that he was grilling others about use of torture in Abu Ghraib. I actually watched most of that session on live tv. But you can't really deny he is using twisted logic to remove rights granted by Geneva Convention from POWs by painting them as terrorists as if terrorists cannot be POWs. This is expedient flip-flopping at best.
So when my country invades some other country (heavens forbid!) one of the most modern things to do is to proclaim enemies as terrorists. No rights under geneva convention, torture as you wish, but keep it quiet. And never, ever torture all three official POWs.
And please, I know he was vietnam war veteran, and was tortured in prison. But frankly, I don't give a damn. My country was in war too, and there were plenty of people in prison camps. Those who made it alive are not all saints. Some of them were as bad as before going to the war prison camp (nobody deserves that). Some people are (unfortunately) even worse off. Telling that someone must be automatically right about X because he was involved with X is a big step to make.
My post wasn't about McCain as a president but truth be told, he would make a disastrous president. Why? He was a soldier, he is a warmonger, and everything he sees, sees it through war or conflict. If we want a better world we really should be do anything other but war. And you are trying to compare him and Bush jr? Talk about easy to compare with. If you really want to stretch it, you can say that McCain would be good offen^H^H^H^H^Hdefense secretary. Same thing was with Wesley Clark, one election previously. He was a professional soldier, but not a man who would certainly lead a country to a better future.
I got quite a nice bit of quote concerning his stance on torture.
MCCAIN:
General Miller -- first of all, we know that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are not subject to the Geneva Conventions because they're Al Qaida, at least those that are Al Qaida and, therefore, being terrorists, they are not subject to the Geneva Conventions for the treatment of prisoners of war. And I don't disagree with that assessment and I don't think you do either, do you?
Captured soldiers->Geneva convention->no torture->hard to extract information. But this is not good, lets do this kind of thinking: Captured soldiers->proclaim them terrorists->apply kangaroo logic->somehow Geneva convention doesn't apply->torture to extract information.
And you praise him for actually turning a blind eye on torture. Disgusting.
we are affirming what we have individually chosen to believe I would bet that large majority of religious people didn't chose religion by themselves. They were raised in religion. Do you think that children aged 0-7 have any notion of freedom, or individual choice, or a strong mind of they own? Do you think parents reason with children about being religious or not? And when you are raised in something you have difficult and painful time living without it. Or do you think that children are agnostic and then at, say, 18years chose to be religious or not? Of course they don't. Sure, you can always say; well, at 18 you can choose to "opt-out" of religion. But as I said before, that one is actually hard because religion is part of you. It is not much different from a saying: you can take a black man from the bush, but you can never take the bush out of him" (no racial slur intended, I was told this by a fellow african friend). When your whole family is religious, and one day you have enough of this religous shit and Church (I'm repeating myself), as the best case your parents will just shrug it off and look at you like you are on crack. But for the worst case I leave to your imagination. Just try to recall in what kind of world we are living.
I personally thing that chanting psalms in community is awesome. Yeah, group hypnosis and brainwashing can help some people. But you have to be mindful of what is the purpose of it.
If you want to watch some truly distressing stories of abuse watch "Sex Crimes and the Vatican" documentary by BBC. It tells not only of abuse but of cover-ups by Vatican (Ratzinger/pope included). And those cover-ups actually hurt the most.
I know that GP is talking about US but take a look at German T-mobile pages and if you use euro to dollar conversion you'll end up with 73/100/130usd per month. That is quite a lot.
Slashdot Mirror
As there are no valid links in any of the pages linked in the story, I managed to find one manually:
http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa3-setup.exe
Come on now, I know this laptop sucks, but "completely changing your workflow" is a bit of exaggeration. I'm a photographer(1) and lightroom and photoshop are my computer bread and butter. They are identical on a mac and pc, as for that matter, any adobe product.
So is there a difference between my workflow on a mac or a pc (got plenty of both though, thanks for asking)? No, not even in the slightest.
People look (I did it too when I was a kid) at computers as a OS vs OS. It's just bollocks. If you are using aperture on a mac and lightroom on a pc, I can agree that there are some substantial differences in your "workflow" (god, I hate that buzzword), but if you are using the same adobe product (as 90% of other photographers do) for both of your platforms, the os doesn't make any difference. If you are using the same tools, is there a difference in your work?
And all that talk about how osx is "streamlined" and learning "how to copy a file all over again" is just rubbish.
Firstly, osx is a far cry from streamlined. For example tell me at least 2 free programs which you can use for quick viewing images in osx? Windows: faststone viewer, and irfanview. Sorry, but preview and quick look are both utter junk.
Secondly, copying a file is different in osx and windows? Come on now, I really thought this was a quality discussion.
I'll never forget a quick exchange I had with another mac-using photographer when he saw I had a mac too. He asked me if I'm using macs too (even though it was obvious that I had a mac with me). I answered pretending to be serious: "Sure am I. Only real photographers use macs". Then he gave me a smile and winked, giving that "we understand each other" look. I almost died from laughter. What a moron.
(1) Pretty much of all the people I know using macs are photographers, so I'll write this up from my point of view.
First post!!1
I' so pumped up about these super pony fast 3g networks and the wireless coverage is spotle
Sent from my iPhone.
You are presuming that those in power really need internet. I don't think that is necessary the truth. Politics is all about (human) networking and trading inside information and internet doesn't really help them much. Sure, e-mail is nice to have, but phones are still much better in that concern. Let me put it this way: general population has much more to lose without internet than the elite.
Moreover, what is to stop the elite having their own version of the internet but completely closed-off to the rest of the population?
I know this is all hypothetical, but too many people take internet as as given, just like water or electricity.
F-lock key has inverse functionality that is should have. So every time I (re)boot my computer I have to press f-lock key just to have normal f1-f12 keys. Its bullshit to have reply/redo/whatever by default on f-keys. There was a registry key to fix this but it doesn't work anymore.
About your macbook keyboard problem; you can invert the f-keys to their default values in leopard: sys preferences->keyboard and mouse->Use all F1, F2... as standard function keys.
I completely agree that 104 keyboards are generally to wide to use comfortably. And I absolutely hate when they add some *additional* keys on the right side of the keyboard making it even wider.
I had many keyboards but in the last 10 years I had various $10 keyboard, MS natural multimedia, logitech DiNovo, razer tarantula (great feeling when typing, but the plastic film inside is of low quality giving you doubble lettterss when writting, and much too wide) and I even tried out logitech wave (has horrible feel) and some other keyboards. But I went back to MS natural multimedia. This keyboard has the best feeling when typing (even though it is very old now) but it was a bit too wide for my taste. So I just cut out the numeric keypad with a dremel tool. Works perfectly, and it is narrower and much more comfortable because you can have right hand nearer to the left when holding mouse.
As a side note, I don't understand why those "gaming" keyboards come with numeric keypads. Every serious gamer uses left hand on wasd or esdf and right hand on a mouse. And I'm pretty much sure they aren't accountants so they don't need numeric keypad that much.
Can you pass whatever you are smoking? I'm afraid it is obvious that you don't know what wow is.
Doing something for 4+hours a day and for 3+ years is hardly what you can call "discovering the internet" or "internet puberty". It is simply called addiction.
This isn't a hobby or just a diversion. This isn't experimenting with writing a back orifice clone or trying to install linux without losing your data after you remove it, or discovering chat rooms (as all of this is fun for the first few days). This is just doing completely repetitive tasks like an animal in a skinner's box. And the subject likes it. WoW lets you in very gradually so you don't even notice your addiction. Your school grades suffer, your family relationship suffers, you lose your friends, you get fat etc. All this (and much more) happens at an alarming rate and it is very hard to get out.
If my parents were like those described in the article I would probably cut their internet wires and/or kick their addicted asses.
disclaimer: I don't care about superhumans who have top grades in schools, play wow "casually for couple of hours a day", have 10E3 friends and have sex thrice a day.
I have a feeling we are arguing semantics here because we are generally in agreement. I could argue your points by themselves but time is the most expensive resource unfortunately.
All I'm saying is if a great majority of population have a value title x, then value title x is worth absolutely nothing. So all those people are left behind (because there is nobody behind *them*). And they are all much behind the uni wielding diploma minority.
That is true that we always boast about how croatian population has great general education. That is somewhat true, I agree, but misleading. When you have that great mass of well rounded general population who doesn't have uni diploma you have another problem. Those people have no good qualifications even for prima facie simpler jobs. This can be very well observed with a saying: jack of all trades, master of none. I don't care in this sense much about brain drain, that is just a problem of economy, not education.
We could argue all the finer points of the argument about education here but I don't share the opinion this is the right place to do it.
Let me explain more clearly now. A big majority of the Croatia's population just doesn't go to the university after receiving secondary education. And a large majority of even those who actually manage to enter a college just drop out in the first year or two. Even a lesser number of those actually get the diploma.
So what am I trying to say here? The best students have no problem finishing primary and secondary school and getting the university diploma. But all others who don't have university diploma (a great majority) just lose out having the same qualifications as 92% of population. And those qualifications suck because everyone has them and on the other side of the spectrum you have roughly 8% of people who have no problem getting a job, and a lot of them can even refuse good paying ones to get higher paying ones.
In fact, I do agree that Croatia's education sucks a lot. If you judge by the bell curve you have "bad" students pushed to the middle, middle going nowhere and it is thus mixed with the left part of the curve, and finally you have a very sharp edge at the right part of the curve which represent those "gifted" students who get the university diploma.
So what would I like though? I just hate when you have a large mass of average people mixed with "bad" people and those gifted who didn't manage to get to university and/or get the diploma. On the other hand you have minuscule minority actually getting the uni diploma and effectively having their life much more easier than the rest of population. The "average" population in Croatia is just too damn large.
Or Croatia.
I cannot agree more.
I sad it in previous discussion, but my neighbor with his two sons built another three floor house with nothing but a normal european sedan.
The keyword is "delivery". Every material or house appliance, or whatever was delivered to the spot generally without charge or very low one.
This kind of discussion crops on /. fairly frequently. So I went last winter to Austria for skiing and did a quick analysis of the cars at the main ski lift parking lot.
I haven't seen more than five hard 4x4 (not even one SUV) with the local town's license plate. But still, more than half of "foreign" cars were SUVs which generally had *city* plates like Vienna, Udine etc.
I asked the owner of our apartment (local guy of course): "Why is that there are so few offroad and SUVs around?".
He answered with a half smile: "Why would anyone need a SUV here? Everywhere you need to go you have roads. Even when the snow falls it is cleaned promptly, and normal cars are much better than SUVs on snow anyway. And finally, normal cars are better for the environment as they spend less gas, and after all, I'm old now, what kind of state of the environment I'm going to leave to my children?".
Maybe I'm mistaken, but you can create a filter to automatically delete every mail you get (or still have) by its subject.
As you get spam by the same subject that should be no problem at all.
People here are talking about spotlight like its a second coming, but it is no better than windows desktop search. It is better integrated I admit, but I cannot configure what directories to index. And yes, I'm writing this from a mac.
And btw, why oh why did they remove the program icon in the top left corner of windows? Its great for multi monitor setup. On left monitor you close the window by double clicking the mentioned icon, and on the right windows you just click the X button. It was extremely useful because you just flick the mouse to the corner and double click.
I'm not a professional gamer, but I must admit I played, play, and will play games way too much.
I've changed more than 10 keyboards in my lifetime so I do think I have something to say about gaming keyboards.
Lets look at the "features" of this 7G keyboard.
It is made of metal. I'm not really sure why this is a positive thing, except for added weight. But as my experience tells me, the keyboard doesn't need to be heavy to be firmly planted on your desk. All you need are good rubber legs/plugs/or whatever they are called. I've seen extremely light keyboards which are extremely resistant to moving, so I do think that you need heavy keyboard to prevent it from dancing around your table. But anyway, I haven't seen any good gamer moving their hands on the keyboard in such a way to move the keyboard itself. True, amateurs and kids tend to thrash the keyboard when they lose, but that is more of an attitude problem than a keyboard problem.
The keyboard is fully mechanical. I don't have much experience with that kind of keyboards and I don't take that as a negative thing. But I don't consider rubber membrane keyboards bad by any account (not even by keyboard lifetime). Maybe I haven't experienced anything better though.
"Gold electronic". Even if it is made of platinum, that doesn't mean it is any better than a standard keyboard. True, this can be an indicator that the keyboard is better but sometimes it is exactly the opposite.
"capable of handling abuse". As I said before, only retards abuse their keyboards. I'm not a saint myself but I have never found a keyboard who can't handle energetic typing or some abuse. If someone is abusing his keyboard on daily basis, I would suggest professional counseling.
On a more general note, I do have a feeling that every "gaming" keyboard out there is just doing at least one thing wrong.
This is namely the inclusion of numeric keypad part of the keyboard. Why is this the problem? It is because you need to put your keyboard and your mouse wide apart which is uncomfortable, unergonomic, lowers your performance and completely pointless. These are gaming keyboards we are talking about so I don't think any gamer would miss numeric keypad so much. There are some keyboards who try to shorten the distance between the keypad and the rest of the keyboard but even if this is good, you still have a lot of useless keys sticking to the right of your main part of the keyboard.
Another thing which bothers me even more is inclusion of macro keys to the right of the numeric keypad so the keyboard is extremely wide this way. This is most uncomfortable. Even though macro keys are not necessary bad in itself I do have slight reservations about them. Those macro keys are usually far away from the main gaming keys (wasd/esdf) so they are difficult to find and press without looking. And on some keyboards (Razer Tarantula included) those macro keys are utterly useless. You can't press macro key+normal key at the same time (lets say moving forward-w + macro execution). And why can't I assign button "G" for some special macro when I'm running game X? Why do I need the extra macro-only buttons?
Keyboard illumination is just for show. If a gamer doesn't know where his keys are without looking he is:
1. not a gamer
2. a failure
I do recommend to be careful when buying keyboards, especially expensive ones. I had Razer Tarantula which I got as a gift but at first I thought it was defective (ddouble charaacters when writingg sometimes), replaced it, got the same thing. I searched on the web for other experiences, but that was somewhat hard because people who have these kind of keyboards usually don't type much outside the games so they wouldn't notice playing their favorite games.
The game you describe is already made. Please don't tell you never heard about Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven?
Kids these days...
The trick would be not to tell them that food is radioactive.
You can always add some more lawyers and politicians to make things more interesting.
Just drop them off with parachutes, give them one and only instruction ("Survive"), sit back and enjoy the mayh^Hshow;)
I had many "normal" screens in last 20 years and I never liked wide screens until I actually used one. You must consider that many if not most applications have somewhat 'more horizontal' layout than vertical. Example: Photoshop. How Photoshop looks like on a normal ascpect screen? You put all the tools and mini windows on the side of the screen and suddenly you have very little space for your landscape photo which now actually would be better to be vertical. With wide aspect screen all the tools are in the 'wide part' of the screen and the photo still has enough space to be comfortably displayed in landscape.
As for your last question, I think it is just the opposite. It is much easier to do a vertical scroll than a horizontal scroll. When you are reading this wonderful site you just move a mouse wheel and you are reading it comfortably whatever vertical resolution you have. If you really are pressed to do a horizontal scroll wouldn't be better to have a wide screen? Ask yourself this: how many people do you see with 90deg pivoted lcds for surfing/whatever?
Maybe this discussion will be funny in 20 years time because we'll have projected or giant screens and wide/non-wide would be just a funny bit of computer history. Unless we would have more pressing matters in 20 years than computers.
Management drone 1: Hey, I've seen that company X and company Y have mandatory implant policy.
Management drone 2: Sure, we have to be on the competitive edge. I'll suggest that to my boss.
Management metadrone1: Great idea, implement it!
Company boss(es): (enjoying on some Adriatic island on their megayacht)
I don't think all this will ever happen in near or semi-near future (except for the megayacht part) but I just wanted to point out that you are taking corporations way to simply.
I understand that he was grilling others about use of torture in Abu Ghraib. I actually watched most of that session on live tv. But you can't really deny he is using twisted logic to remove rights granted by Geneva Convention from POWs by painting them as terrorists as if terrorists cannot be POWs. This is expedient flip-flopping at best.
So when my country invades some other country (heavens forbid!) one of the most modern things to do is to proclaim enemies as terrorists. No rights under geneva convention, torture as you wish, but keep it quiet. And never, ever torture all three official POWs.
And please, I know he was vietnam war veteran, and was tortured in prison. But frankly, I don't give a damn. My country was in war too, and there were plenty of people in prison camps. Those who made it alive are not all saints. Some of them were as bad as before going to the war prison camp (nobody deserves that). Some people are (unfortunately) even worse off. Telling that someone must be automatically right about X because he was involved with X is a big step to make.
My post wasn't about McCain as a president but truth be told, he would make a disastrous president. Why? He was a soldier, he is a warmonger, and everything he sees, sees it through war or conflict. If we want a better world we really should be do anything other but war. And you are trying to compare him and Bush jr? Talk about easy to compare with. If you really want to stretch it, you can say that McCain would be good offen^H^H^H^H^Hdefense secretary. Same thing was with Wesley Clark, one election previously. He was a professional soldier, but not a man who would certainly lead a country to a better future.
Captured soldiers->Geneva convention->no torture->hard to extract information. But this is not good, lets do this kind of thinking:
Captured soldiers->proclaim them terrorists->apply kangaroo logic->somehow Geneva convention doesn't apply->torture to extract information.
And you praise him for actually turning a blind eye on torture. Disgusting.
If you want to watch some truly distressing stories of abuse watch "Sex Crimes and the Vatican" documentary by BBC. It tells not only of abuse but of cover-ups by Vatican (Ratzinger/pope included). And those cover-ups actually hurt the most.
You can even see wikipedia entry.
There is another documentary called "Deliver Us From Evil", but I haven't watched it yet.
I know that GP is talking about US but take a look at German T-mobile pages and if you use euro to dollar conversion you'll end up with 73/100/130usd per month. That is quite a lot.