With 512 MB RAM, there's plenty of space for both my saved games, little videos (2 hours of video is about 300 MB or so
DVD's are over 4 gigabytes for 2 hours, and many people will only buy DVD dual layers that has the 9+ gigabytes of space. What kind of quality will you get at 150 megs an hour. That is like a 1 minute clip at 2 megs. I have seen porn like that, and it is awfully fuzzy.;)
I don't they ever will, since many people are too afraid that they will break them. I know some computer savvy people who are, even after having built several computers.
Yeah, but a computer is like leggos. It is hard to screw up. Now if you wanted to open your hard drive up... that would be impressive.
So is this going to be another case where the developer of PSPIRC and other hackers have laid their hands on a PSP-DK (which will likely turn out completely unauthorized, etc.) and Sony will come down like a ton of bricks upon people?
If people know this, then why do they hack it? It is like having a law against speeding. I like to speed. I do it from time to time. But I HATE getting a ticket, having my insurace jump up, and being harrassed by the police. The only difference is Sony writes much bigger tickets and fines. I am assuming Sony can make a persons life a living hell if they wanted to.
Yeah, but my back gets sore carrying around my TV everywhere I go.
Do you really need more television??
I know this will feel stressful, but try going out for a walk. Leave your cell phone at home, leave your blackberry at home, don't take anything electric. Just use your God given legs and walk. Breath. Wave at the neighbors. Breath. You can do it!
So is Sony going to release a programming SDK to the general public? And which programming languages are supported?
If Sony wants to make a deep impact against Nintendo, they should open up the PSP as wide as possible to "non-traditional" programmers. Especially considering how much the ding-dang-thing cost.
I am not 100% sure, but I think the way they make money is by granting licenses to people to program games for their machines. I know Nintendo did that, and only certain companies could make games. It is not something that a group of people could get together and say "we like this device, we want to make games for it".
I find it interesting that you believe it's better to have Chinese geniuses developing weapons in China than USA, ok I can agree on that USA isn't a well functioning democracy, but China?
People change culture from within their countries, not from the outside. And who is to say the USA is the best form of government for all cultures? It is like what we are doing in Iraq... does anyone think it will last? We gave them guidelines for a new society, we told them they must change things like electing a certain % of women to parliment, and then we provided the firepower to make it happen. These people have zero invested, and many there are activly fighting against us. Now if we would have let nature run its course, if their government was so distasteful to thier own people, there would have been an uprising. But what they don't tell you on the news is, while women have "less rights" than we do, they have to cover up while outside, they can't drive a car, the things they don't tell us is many women love thier lifestyles. They also don't have to work, they have free time to do whatever they want. I dunno about you, but if the price to have zero work was dressing up when I went out, it does not seem like a bad deal to me. Which brings me to my other point, who the hell am I to judge them anyways? Have people gotten so used to monday morning quarterbacking they are now doing it with how others live?
Now if the lifestyle was trully horrible, and they could not longer tolerate it, they would find ways to change it. Who is to say the guy who came to the USA to study and then live here would not have been an important part in changing his own country. Maybe rather than living here, he would have worked from within his own university to change peoples minds.
And yes, I would rather have an even distribution of power. I get sick everytime I see the USA with aircraft carriers half way around the world threatening other nations. I know it is not good for us, that soon we will be hated everywhere. I knew someone who went to Germany last year, and did not want to tell people "I'm American" because the hate ran so deep that resturants would not serve food.
To me the country you are born in should be just that, the country you are born in, not your identity, there's too much nationalism in the world!
There is not enough nationalism. Nationalism is what protects a country from corporations. Otherwise you will have Enron's running the show. If the Nationalism was stronger in the USA we would not allow factories to be exported to countries like Mexico. We would not allow IT to be exported to India.
since i don't feel like anwsering in depth, i am going to dummy down the anwser. you have something called genes. they are in every cell. they are responsible for making many different kinds of protiens needed to stay alive. often, while making protiens there are mistakes, but the human body has ways of checking and fixing these mistakes. as we get older, we lose the ability to fix these mistakes. the genes start to decay at the ends. that is why we get old and die from old age. the fix is to find ways to keep genes in the original format, without any decay. that is why many people are apeshit over anti-oxidants.
my bet is that the in the end the korean guys will be forgotten and only the americans will be remembered...
Seriously, go home to your own country and publish there. I am not saying this to be rude, and I know it sounds very politically incorrect.
Here is the deal. The USA has a ton of money. They try and steal as much talent from foriegn countries as they can. Two things happen because of this. First, the USA benifits from the brains it gets. It is just like 100 years ago with natural resources from third world countries. Now it is with human talent. A good example would be baseball, and how we are "farming" the dominican republic and other latin american countries. The players come here because the most money is here. But imagine, just for one second, if those players said to hell with the money, we want national pride, our own leagues, our own system. The talent in the USA would go down, and the games in the forigen countries would get much more interesting. But I digress. This is about science. Imagine if, for example, all the brainy chinese people who have come to the USA for graduate studies in the sciences stayed in their own country. I think it is reasonable to assume some of these people will be good enough to add something to the progress of, say, wepons systems. Now the USA has one more means of power, of forcing other nations to do what they otherwise would not want to do, or to not do what they would be inclined to do. For example, China has been waiting for the right moment to take back Tiwan. They have not because of the USA.
So my adivice to all the foriegners is GO HOME. The USA is not the great place you have been lead to believe. You can make just as good a life at home as here, probably better. But if you measure sucess by money, sure you will probably make some here. But if you measure sucess by happiness, then go home. The only bad thing about staying home is, sooner or later, the USA will find a reason to bomb your country. I think in the past decade we have bombed countries in over 4 continents, including europe. And it does not matter how much the rest of the world hates us, we keep doing it anyways.
I can safely say this is a gross exaggeration or simply you haven't been comparing prices recently. I would say at worst case Apple's are 25% more expensive than some brand of PCs.
It has been a few years since I price matched, but every time I did, it seemed like the pattern of macs being twice as much held true. I'll do a couple price matches, new and used.
Since you mentioned Dell, I will start with their PC's. Just clicking on desktops, I see a sale, Celron 2.4 Ghz machine with 256 megs, 40 gig hard drive, and 17" monitor is $299. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd. Looking at laptops, they have a 14" Celron M 1.3ghz laptop with 256megs and a 30 gig hard drive with what appears to be a free printer, for $549. Those are their deals, sales.
I don't want to be unfair. You mentioned quality, so I figured I would pricematch a brand many consider to be high end. Looking at the Sony Vaio Desktop P4 2.8ghz with HyperThreading (guessing that is like the velocity engine, although I don't know what either term means, probably slick marketing). The Sony comes with 512 megs, 160 gig hard drive, dvd+-rw, for $756 on sale from $999. http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Sony-VAIO-Desktop-P C-PCV-RS610-/sem/rpsm/oid/94849/rpem/ccd/productDe tail.do
Looking at used computers, I went to ebay and I see G4 desktops selling used for around $350. These are G4 400 mhz machines with 128 megs and a standard dvd player. I did not even look for PC's because I know a 500+ mhz PIII can be had for under $100. So, what am I getting for the extra money?
I want to try a Mac, I really would. I saw on ebay G3's around 300 mhz for $150, but I don't know how good a 300 mhz machine would be. Even for just testing. Is a G3 still usable? Or does all the new software require G4's?
So to compare, cheapest new Dell $299, cheapest mac mini $599. Mid-range Sony Vaio $749, midrange Mac G5 $1499. Dell laptop 1.3ghz $549, Mac laptop 1.0 ghz G4 $899. And in every instance, the PC had a faster processor.
It's not too late to switch now. Yes, even old dogs can learn new tricks. Assuming you are employed, the extra you pay for a Mac is worth it. You get quality hardware. Funny how people pay for quality in cars, sound systems and what not but when it comes to computers, they always want to pay rock-bottom as if it was the only acceptable way. You get what you pay for most of the time.
I thought about switching. But I am cheap. Not so cheap I won't spend money on quality, but more of a frugal cheap. I want to know exactly where the extra $$ is going, what I am getting for it. I don't blow cash on good advertising, or on hype. I'd rather save it.
The funny thing is, my last 2 computers I purchased were both off ebay. A PII266 that I got 2 and a half years ago which was pretty nice for the time. The only reason I upgraded was it took a long time to compile Java programs (back when I was studying programming). The next one I got was a PIII550 dual CPU, which I figure when I upgrade again, I will use the dual cpu as my home server. I got both computers for under $120. I looked for used macs, but even the G3 processors that were slower than the PIII's were selling for hundreds more. And I have zero Mac software, so finding it would be a pain.
I would love to get a chance to try out a Mac. What would be a good one that is kinda cheap but works??
Many of the most interesting Mac programs are shareware, freeware or open source - which also holds true for Windows, and certainly for Linux/BSD
But when you buy a computer, if you want games or certain software, you normally buy it at the store. Most people who use computers don't want to have to download the software, even if it is free. Plus, it might require having to get a faster internet connection, because 56k modem is too slow, or go somewhere and burn a cd. Most people don't want that hassel. In the store, Windows looks like the best choice because everything you want is right there, and it looks like less of a hassel.
With some service packs, after the instal, the update is turned on automatically; where joe blow won't know how to turn it off. In some ways, it is worse than Real Player.
And that gets to the heart of my critisism of Microsoft. They sell a product the end user has less and less control over. That is not how it used to be back in the glory days of computers.
I don't know how things have changed with Mac's the past few years, but the MAIN reason I would not switch from windows to a mac is because of the lack of software. The last time I was at the computer store I walked into the Mac section to look around. Their selection of software was 1/4th that of the PC's, and mostly graphical software.
Apple screwed up. When I was in school, all we had were Apple IIgs's and Macs. If Apple would have been smart everyone would have been buying Macs. But Apple cost two or three times as much as a PC, and had much less software. I will say this much, the people working in the Mac departments tend to know their product better than people in the PC department.
Microsoft has published a list of known software that will not work with Service Pack 2
How much longer would it take, if Microsoft wanted to hold of a release of Windows, to make it right so that service packs are not needed? Is it a matter of months, or is the computer operating system a beast that can't be predicted until it is used by a large number of people?
And just to rant, because it is Microsoft, I hate service packs because they can force a different EULA on the user. I had one copy of Windows I paid for, and installed it the way I wanted it to work. I then had to download the security patches and updates, and I had to click a new EULA and had some settings changed (such as having automatic update turned on). I now firewall my system like a son of a bitch because I don't trust those fuckers in Richmond.
How about if you sell me something, and you promise it works, when you find out that it does not work, you don't offer me the fix and then change the rules?????
I would love to see an OS made for specific hardware that is bullet proof. That would be a cool thing.
Because the assholes who planebombed NYC and DC all had passports, were known terrorists, and were connected on the record with the assholes who bombed the WTC in 1993. Mohammed Atta's passport was somehow found fluttering atop the burning steel slag of the WTC - even tougher than the 2 planes' 4 blackbox recorders, which have never been reported found. I feel safer already.
And it all could have been prevented by steel cockpit doors. Something so simple, that any retard airline should have fixed right away. Instead they come out will all sorts of scare tactics. I can honestly say I am not scared of terrorists. If they come on an airplane, I am tearing the motherfucker a new asshole. No boxcutter is going to scare me. I am more worried about pilots who fly 12 hours in a row, with no sleep. I hate to say it, but maybe if those flights had a couple of people with balls, none of 9/11 would have happened. But Osama was right, he hit us where we are soft, in our decadent self-absorbed, gluttonous, sit_on_our_ass selves. The avarage American knows nothing about our foriegn policy, who we are helping, who we are bombing and killing, who we are supplying guns to. And the avarage American does not give a fuck. So fuck us for being so dumb and self absorbed. At least we have the red necks, whom government can call on in the thousands to go fight.
I think it should be very easy to travel, to have a good time. I would like to see passports done away with, people free to go anywhere they want. If we did not have a fucked up foriegn policy, the Arabs in the middle east would be loving us and wanting to be more like us. But it is hard to admire a wealthy country when they bomb your homeland. We never should have gotten involved in the middle east. The first universities in the world were all in the Middle East. The people who lived in that area welcomed Americans with open arms, wanting nothing but to enjoy our company and share a cup of tea. They did not want to change our culture, or for us to change theirs, but to enjoy our differences.
Before the first war, gas was $0.95 a gallon. Today, gas is over $2.30 a gallon. Tell me again why we are over there, because it ain't security! We need to get rid of the Isrealie lobbyists from our country, they are more of a problem than Mexicans who come here to work 6 or 7 months and go home. But once again, we got them rednecks patroling the boarder keeping us safe. And at the same time making another group of people hate us.
I just can't believe the Canadian Immigration guy stamped my Passport and *then* told me the consequences of him doing that.
It is one reason they don't stamp USA passports, because of all the fucked up laws. So you can make it there from Mexico or another country, and visit Cuba, and come back and nobody will ever know.
Shouldn't be too long before interstate travel in the US requires a passport. That'll finally put an end to criminals moving to another state to hide from the law.
It will NEVER EVER HAPPEN. That is the day I am getting my gun and going ape shit.
Plus, there are 100's of other reasons why passports for interstate travel will never happen
We tried it, it was called the Articles of Confederation
We can't even patrol the Mexican border, how will we patrol every freakin road
The citizens will NEVER EVER ALLOW IT
It will interfear with interstate commerce, so there will be court issues
How the hell will I get my Powerball Lottery tickets? And the Cheaper smokes across the state line?
Leasing effectively moves the value of the leased item out of the Fixed Assets of the balance sheet, reducing the overall fixed assets. This has the result of improving the ratio of asset turnover, a prime measure of business performance. It also has an effect on the operating statement, as it becomes a straight cost.
I don't fully understand it, but it sounds crooked. I think after all the lawyers are thrown to the bottom of the ocean, maybe accountants should be next to go.;)
BTW, how does it improve buisness performance? As what? Something an investor looks at on a sheet of paper? Or as something the company sells and produces better?
I know of companies that lease, and they spend alot of $$. One guy worked for a company that purchased new computers every 18-24 months. They auctioned off their old systems to help pay for the newer ones. Thier thinking is they would never be stuck paying 100% of the cost of a new computer network, they were always upgrading.
I see that as waste, just like leasing. So what if you get a $1000 computer for $50 a month, at the end of the month you paid for half the system. I know it sounds good that at the end of the year you could get new computers, but you are still paying! You are always paying.
I worked at a company that had nothing but PII 400's. They worked perfectly fast for all buisness functions. I could use the database, word, excel, internet. I could have 10 windows open and it worked.
I think computers are being sold like snake's oil elixer, as a cure to everything. Have problems, upgrade!
When you get a large group together, you can get services for pennies on the dollar.
This is no different to me than a university buying a HUGE satelite dish and buying cable programming directly from vendors. When I was in student government, we voted on what channels we wanted to buy. I remember cnn was something like $0.02 per person, sci-fi was a dime, we even got HBO for a dollar a person. All the others, TBS and MTV and USAnetwork were all under a dime each, some under a nickle. The whole budget of 25 channels came out to under $2 per person. My home cable bill is 50 times as much. Plus, at school we had free internet. This was all done by student fee's, which was much less than what anyone could buy from a company.
The ONLY complaint I had was the damn Pepsi vending machines. It was impossible to get a Diet Coke on campus. And a can cost a dollar.
It all depends on how good the oversight is. If the local town has sharp people governing, and they cut all the crap out and just provide the basic service at the lowest cost, everyone wins. If they start thinking "since cost is so low... we'll add in $0.50 per person and use it for some unrelated expense" then we are all fucked.
After that experiance, I lived in a condominium building. I tried to get the board to pass a resolution where we would all buy cable collectively and negotiate a price with the provider. I knew other apartment buildings worked out deals where the per unit cost was less than half the bill of someone buying directly. Unfortunatly, the old geezers on the board did not want cable, they were happy with CBS, NBC, and ABC over the airways.
Ultimately it was ruled that the citizens should be able to vote for wether their tax dollers got used for it. Of course everyone there wants this new store to open.
I've never voted on handing over public tax money to corporations. Nobody ever asked me if I want to give money to a store to open in my neighborhood. I wish they would, I'd like the oppertunity to vote.
I was reading Wallmart has over $1 billion dollars in tax dollars from all of us. That is money we pay to government that is handed over to them. Some places offer free land to large buisnesses to lure them to build factories.
I love the idea of the local city providing wi-fi access. If only they would offer phone and cable service. These are services people use as much as garbage collection or roads. Plus, government can use economies of scale to provide much lower costs than any buisness could. Buisnesses never cut costs. Never. With our luck, the best we could get is a mail-in rebate.
If those of us who dig on the slashdot can't stomach a few wayward URLs, and in fact do not defend the right of computer users to do or say as they wish in cyberspace, this happy little arena will come tumbling down as fast as you can say partisan agenda.
I remember the good old days, when the internet was new, there was no google, just webcrawler and excite. I remember when gopher was useful. And back then, there was no porn on the web, not like today. Back then if I wanted to search for breast cancer, I could type it in and get useful websites. The content on the web was mostly created by university students and professors, or really bright people who wanted to share information. It was not for profit, it was because people wanted to share information.
Fast forward 10-15 years. Now everyone wants to use the interenet to make a dollar. It does not matter if the company has any service to offer. I would bet more websites exsist with links to porn than places that sell porn. Those links pay a penny each, so people think of ways to trick people into clicking.
I would like to see the web cleared of porn and for-profit companies. Make it a place where people can get information. Maybe have a new "web" that is just univeristies and ".org" type websites. And then index them correctly, unlike what google is starting to do, and push people to the top who pay, and where people use tricks to get higher search results. Maybe have a index where someone at the company goes to the website and reviews it.
Slashdot Mirror
DVD's are over 4 gigabytes for 2 hours, and many people will only buy DVD dual layers that has the 9+ gigabytes of space. What kind of quality will you get at 150 megs an hour. That is like a 1 minute clip at 2 megs. I have seen porn like that, and it is awfully fuzzy. ;)
Yeah, but a computer is like leggos. It is hard to screw up. Now if you wanted to open your hard drive up... that would be impressive.
If people know this, then why do they hack it? It is like having a law against speeding. I like to speed. I do it from time to time. But I HATE getting a ticket, having my insurace jump up, and being harrassed by the police. The only difference is Sony writes much bigger tickets and fines. I am assuming Sony can make a persons life a living hell if they wanted to.
Do you really need more television??
I know this will feel stressful, but try going out for a walk. Leave your cell phone at home, leave your blackberry at home, don't take anything electric. Just use your God given legs and walk. Breath. Wave at the neighbors. Breath. You can do it!
I am not 100% sure, but I think the way they make money is by granting licenses to people to program games for their machines. I know Nintendo did that, and only certain companies could make games. It is not something that a group of people could get together and say "we like this device, we want to make games for it".
People change culture from within their countries, not from the outside. And who is to say the USA is the best form of government for all cultures? It is like what we are doing in Iraq... does anyone think it will last? We gave them guidelines for a new society, we told them they must change things like electing a certain % of women to parliment, and then we provided the firepower to make it happen. These people have zero invested, and many there are activly fighting against us. Now if we would have let nature run its course, if their government was so distasteful to thier own people, there would have been an uprising. But what they don't tell you on the news is, while women have "less rights" than we do, they have to cover up while outside, they can't drive a car, the things they don't tell us is many women love thier lifestyles. They also don't have to work, they have free time to do whatever they want. I dunno about you, but if the price to have zero work was dressing up when I went out, it does not seem like a bad deal to me. Which brings me to my other point, who the hell am I to judge them anyways? Have people gotten so used to monday morning quarterbacking they are now doing it with how others live?
Now if the lifestyle was trully horrible, and they could not longer tolerate it, they would find ways to change it. Who is to say the guy who came to the USA to study and then live here would not have been an important part in changing his own country. Maybe rather than living here, he would have worked from within his own university to change peoples minds.
And yes, I would rather have an even distribution of power. I get sick everytime I see the USA with aircraft carriers half way around the world threatening other nations. I know it is not good for us, that soon we will be hated everywhere. I knew someone who went to Germany last year, and did not want to tell people "I'm American" because the hate ran so deep that resturants would not serve food.
To me the country you are born in should be just that, the country you are born in, not your identity, there's too much nationalism in the world!
There is not enough nationalism. Nationalism is what protects a country from corporations. Otherwise you will have Enron's running the show. If the Nationalism was stronger in the USA we would not allow factories to be exported to countries like Mexico. We would not allow IT to be exported to India.
To impress who? Nobody is getting laid by showing a chick their slashdot id number.
Seriously, go home to your own country and publish there. I am not saying this to be rude, and I know it sounds very politically incorrect.
Here is the deal. The USA has a ton of money. They try and steal as much talent from foriegn countries as they can. Two things happen because of this. First, the USA benifits from the brains it gets. It is just like 100 years ago with natural resources from third world countries. Now it is with human talent. A good example would be baseball, and how we are "farming" the dominican republic and other latin american countries. The players come here because the most money is here. But imagine, just for one second, if those players said to hell with the money, we want national pride, our own leagues, our own system. The talent in the USA would go down, and the games in the forigen countries would get much more interesting. But I digress. This is about science. Imagine if, for example, all the brainy chinese people who have come to the USA for graduate studies in the sciences stayed in their own country. I think it is reasonable to assume some of these people will be good enough to add something to the progress of, say, wepons systems. Now the USA has one more means of power, of forcing other nations to do what they otherwise would not want to do, or to not do what they would be inclined to do. For example, China has been waiting for the right moment to take back Tiwan. They have not because of the USA.
So my adivice to all the foriegners is GO HOME. The USA is not the great place you have been lead to believe. You can make just as good a life at home as here, probably better. But if you measure sucess by money, sure you will probably make some here. But if you measure sucess by happiness, then go home. The only bad thing about staying home is, sooner or later, the USA will find a reason to bomb your country. I think in the past decade we have bombed countries in over 4 continents, including europe. And it does not matter how much the rest of the world hates us, we keep doing it anyways.
Why the hell would anyone want to buy a low number user ID?
It has been a few years since I price matched, but every time I did, it seemed like the pattern of macs being twice as much held true. I'll do a couple price matches, new and used.
Since you mentioned Dell, I will start with their PC's. Just clicking on desktops, I see a sale, Celron 2.4 Ghz machine with 256 megs, 40 gig hard drive, and 17" monitor is $299. http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd. Looking at laptops, they have a 14" Celron M 1.3ghz laptop with 256megs and a 30 gig hard drive with what appears to be a free printer, for $549. Those are their deals, sales.
Looking at new macs, I find the following are their lowest priced options. The cheapest mac mini is $599 (G4 1.4ghz, 256megs, 80 gig hard drive, cd-rw), the cheapest emac is $799 (G4 1.25 with Velocity Engine, 40 gig hard drive, what appears to be an integrated 17" monitor). http://microcenter.com/search_results_e.phtml?coor dinate_group=F1AX&page=1&search_id=5f3a71072149b6e 75a39f1f05873a7d7&per_page=&sort_price_direction=A SC&sort_by=product.retail The cheapest "traditional" destop is a Power Mac G5 1.8 ghz with 256 megs, 80 gig drive and dvd-rw for $1499.00. http://microcenter.com/search_results_e.phtml?coor dinate_group=F1BX&page=1&search_id=d10aa8d0b3c7536 e2100bbe953281f70&per_page=&sort_price_direction=A SC&sort_by=product.retail
I don't want to be unfair. You mentioned quality, so I figured I would pricematch a brand many consider to be high end. Looking at the Sony Vaio Desktop P4 2.8ghz with HyperThreading (guessing that is like the velocity engine, although I don't know what either term means, probably slick marketing). The Sony comes with 512 megs, 160 gig hard drive, dvd+-rw, for $756 on sale from $999. http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Sony-VAIO-Desktop-P C-PCV-RS610-/sem/rpsm/oid/94849/rpem/ccd/productDe tail.do
Looking at used computers, I went to ebay and I see G4 desktops selling used for around $350. These are G4 400 mhz machines with 128 megs and a standard dvd player. I did not even look for PC's because I know a 500+ mhz PIII can be had for under $100. So, what am I getting for the extra money?
I want to try a Mac, I really would. I saw on ebay G3's around 300 mhz for $150, but I don't know how good a 300 mhz machine would be. Even for just testing. Is a G3 still usable? Or does all the new software require G4's?
So to compare, cheapest new Dell $299, cheapest mac mini $599. Mid-range Sony Vaio $749, midrange Mac G5 $1499. Dell laptop 1.3ghz $549, Mac laptop 1.0 ghz G4 $899. And in every instance, the PC had a faster processor.
I thought about switching. But I am cheap. Not so cheap I won't spend money on quality, but more of a frugal cheap. I want to know exactly where the extra $$ is going, what I am getting for it. I don't blow cash on good advertising, or on hype. I'd rather save it.
The funny thing is, my last 2 computers I purchased were both off ebay. A PII266 that I got 2 and a half years ago which was pretty nice for the time. The only reason I upgraded was it took a long time to compile Java programs (back when I was studying programming). The next one I got was a PIII550 dual CPU, which I figure when I upgrade again, I will use the dual cpu as my home server. I got both computers for under $120. I looked for used macs, but even the G3 processors that were slower than the PIII's were selling for hundreds more. And I have zero Mac software, so finding it would be a pain.
I would love to get a chance to try out a Mac. What would be a good one that is kinda cheap but works??
But when you buy a computer, if you want games or certain software, you normally buy it at the store. Most people who use computers don't want to have to download the software, even if it is free. Plus, it might require having to get a faster internet connection, because 56k modem is too slow, or go somewhere and burn a cd. Most people don't want that hassel. In the store, Windows looks like the best choice because everything you want is right there, and it looks like less of a hassel.
With some service packs, after the instal, the update is turned on automatically; where joe blow won't know how to turn it off. In some ways, it is worse than Real Player.
And that gets to the heart of my critisism of Microsoft. They sell a product the end user has less and less control over. That is not how it used to be back in the glory days of computers.
Apple screwed up. When I was in school, all we had were Apple IIgs's and Macs. If Apple would have been smart everyone would have been buying Macs. But Apple cost two or three times as much as a PC, and had much less software. I will say this much, the people working in the Mac departments tend to know their product better than people in the PC department.
How much longer would it take, if Microsoft wanted to hold of a release of Windows, to make it right so that service packs are not needed? Is it a matter of months, or is the computer operating system a beast that can't be predicted until it is used by a large number of people?
And just to rant, because it is Microsoft, I hate service packs because they can force a different EULA on the user. I had one copy of Windows I paid for, and installed it the way I wanted it to work. I then had to download the security patches and updates, and I had to click a new EULA and had some settings changed (such as having automatic update turned on). I now firewall my system like a son of a bitch because I don't trust those fuckers in Richmond.
How about if you sell me something, and you promise it works, when you find out that it does not work, you don't offer me the fix and then change the rules?????
I would love to see an OS made for specific hardware that is bullet proof. That would be a cool thing.
And it all could have been prevented by steel cockpit doors. Something so simple, that any retard airline should have fixed right away. Instead they come out will all sorts of scare tactics. I can honestly say I am not scared of terrorists. If they come on an airplane, I am tearing the motherfucker a new asshole. No boxcutter is going to scare me. I am more worried about pilots who fly 12 hours in a row, with no sleep. I hate to say it, but maybe if those flights had a couple of people with balls, none of 9/11 would have happened. But Osama was right, he hit us where we are soft, in our decadent self-absorbed, gluttonous, sit_on_our_ass selves. The avarage American knows nothing about our foriegn policy, who we are helping, who we are bombing and killing, who we are supplying guns to. And the avarage American does not give a fuck. So fuck us for being so dumb and self absorbed. At least we have the red necks, whom government can call on in the thousands to go fight.
I think it should be very easy to travel, to have a good time. I would like to see passports done away with, people free to go anywhere they want. If we did not have a fucked up foriegn policy, the Arabs in the middle east would be loving us and wanting to be more like us. But it is hard to admire a wealthy country when they bomb your homeland. We never should have gotten involved in the middle east. The first universities in the world were all in the Middle East. The people who lived in that area welcomed Americans with open arms, wanting nothing but to enjoy our company and share a cup of tea. They did not want to change our culture, or for us to change theirs, but to enjoy our differences.
Before the first war, gas was $0.95 a gallon. Today, gas is over $2.30 a gallon. Tell me again why we are over there, because it ain't security! We need to get rid of the Isrealie lobbyists from our country, they are more of a problem than Mexicans who come here to work 6 or 7 months and go home. But once again, we got them rednecks patroling the boarder keeping us safe. And at the same time making another group of people hate us.
It is one reason they don't stamp USA passports, because of all the fucked up laws. So you can make it there from Mexico or another country, and visit Cuba, and come back and nobody will ever know.
It will NEVER EVER HAPPEN. That is the day I am getting my gun and going ape shit.
Plus, there are 100's of other reasons why passports for interstate travel will never happen
Now for the good:
I don't fully understand it, but it sounds crooked. I think after all the lawyers are thrown to the bottom of the ocean, maybe accountants should be next to go. ;)
BTW, how does it improve buisness performance? As what? Something an investor looks at on a sheet of paper? Or as something the company sells and produces better?
I see that as waste, just like leasing. So what if you get a $1000 computer for $50 a month, at the end of the month you paid for half the system. I know it sounds good that at the end of the year you could get new computers, but you are still paying! You are always paying.
I worked at a company that had nothing but PII 400's. They worked perfectly fast for all buisness functions. I could use the database, word, excel, internet. I could have 10 windows open and it worked.
I think computers are being sold like snake's oil elixer, as a cure to everything. Have problems, upgrade!
This is no different to me than a university buying a HUGE satelite dish and buying cable programming directly from vendors. When I was in student government, we voted on what channels we wanted to buy. I remember cnn was something like $0.02 per person, sci-fi was a dime, we even got HBO for a dollar a person. All the others, TBS and MTV and USAnetwork were all under a dime each, some under a nickle. The whole budget of 25 channels came out to under $2 per person. My home cable bill is 50 times as much. Plus, at school we had free internet. This was all done by student fee's, which was much less than what anyone could buy from a company.
The ONLY complaint I had was the damn Pepsi vending machines. It was impossible to get a Diet Coke on campus. And a can cost a dollar.
It all depends on how good the oversight is. If the local town has sharp people governing, and they cut all the crap out and just provide the basic service at the lowest cost, everyone wins. If they start thinking "since cost is so low... we'll add in $0.50 per person and use it for some unrelated expense" then we are all fucked.
After that experiance, I lived in a condominium building. I tried to get the board to pass a resolution where we would all buy cable collectively and negotiate a price with the provider. I knew other apartment buildings worked out deals where the per unit cost was less than half the bill of someone buying directly. Unfortunatly, the old geezers on the board did not want cable, they were happy with CBS, NBC, and ABC over the airways.
I've never voted on handing over public tax money to corporations. Nobody ever asked me if I want to give money to a store to open in my neighborhood. I wish they would, I'd like the oppertunity to vote.
I was reading Wallmart has over $1 billion dollars in tax dollars from all of us. That is money we pay to government that is handed over to them. Some places offer free land to large buisnesses to lure them to build factories.
I love the idea of the local city providing wi-fi access. If only they would offer phone and cable service. These are services people use as much as garbage collection or roads. Plus, government can use economies of scale to provide much lower costs than any buisness could. Buisnesses never cut costs. Never. With our luck, the best we could get is a mail-in rebate.
I remember the good old days, when the internet was new, there was no google, just webcrawler and excite. I remember when gopher was useful. And back then, there was no porn on the web, not like today. Back then if I wanted to search for breast cancer, I could type it in and get useful websites. The content on the web was mostly created by university students and professors, or really bright people who wanted to share information. It was not for profit, it was because people wanted to share information.
Fast forward 10-15 years. Now everyone wants to use the interenet to make a dollar. It does not matter if the company has any service to offer. I would bet more websites exsist with links to porn than places that sell porn. Those links pay a penny each, so people think of ways to trick people into clicking.
I would like to see the web cleared of porn and for-profit companies. Make it a place where people can get information. Maybe have a new "web" that is just univeristies and ".org" type websites. And then index them correctly, unlike what google is starting to do, and push people to the top who pay, and where people use tricks to get higher search results. Maybe have a index where someone at the company goes to the website and reviews it.