The parking rates will soon be $8/hour in downtown under the new deal. Do you have 64 quarters in your car (nearly two rolls) for each time you want to casually park ?
If only there was some sort of token people could use to activate the meters... But it would have to be something almost everyone carries. Hmmm...
The parking rate in certain areas of downtown Chicago is currently $4.00 / hour to go up to $8.00 / hour under the new deal (it used to be $2 before we all got screwed by Daley and our Aldermen). You can park for up to 2 hours. If the tokens you are referring to are quarters, I personally don't know anyone how carries $16.00 worth of quarters in their pockets.
I just use my credit card now since I can't be bothered to stop by the bank for 10 rolls of quarters a week for casual parking but walking the extra block (1/2 block to and from pay box) is a pain when it's raining and will be a big pain when it's really cold & windy too.
It doesn't matter when it's a sham account and they'll open another in a week. The counterfeiters also like to hack legitimate accounts with good feedback and then close them down when they're done with a short-term scam.
#1==no good. With a cashier's check, you have even less chance of recovering funds than with Paypal. Same with Postal Money Orders. They're both only slightly safer than sending cash.
#2 Craigslist does not have the hard-to-find items and it's a hassle to drive 20-30 miles to pick up a small item. If you don't have a car, you have to spend hours on the train to go get something. When Ebay works, it's point-click and you're done in 5 min. Plus as I stated, EBay has a much bigger "inventory".
FWIW, you can't do a chargeback to Paypal with the Paypal-branded credit card. They only accept Paypal dispute resolutions. This plan only works for other banks credit cards. Moral of the story -- don't use the Paypal-branded credit card.
So wait, you got screwed by PayPal, so at the first available opportunity, you gave them your credit card details so you could continue to use their service?
Unfortunately, Paypal has become a necessary evil if you want to use E-Bay. I try to avoid it if at all possible but many sellers (at least 30-40%) on E-Bay only take Paypal for electronic payments.
And yes, I'm trying to avoid E-Bay too but for hard-to-find or used items, you can't always find the stuff online or on Craigslist.
Sigh... basically, that's a problem of dealing with monopolies -- which is what Paypal and E-Bay are for all practical intents and purposes.
Did you pay for the item using your credit card through Paypal or using your checking account?
I did use a credit card. Unfortunately, I used the "Paypal"-branded credit card issued by GE Money Bank. They have in their fine print that any charge on the card through Paypal has to be resolved through paypal. They will just give you the run-around otherwise.
First thing I did after this was to tear up and cancel that card and then link my regular credit card to paypal which is a Citibank Card -- Citibank has always been *VERY* *GOOD* at dealing with any hint of fraud whether online or by phone / mail.
I'm out the $$$ but I've learned an important lesson which I can share with all of you. Don't use Paypal if you can't afford to be shafted -- and if you do use Paypal, whatever you do, don't get the Paypal Credit Card.
I have an exactly similar story. Just different dollar amount and different source country (Seller was supposed to be from Ohio but turned out to be in China). Got screwed just like you with both the price of the item and the price of return shipping:-(
It's only cheaper until you have you something go wrong with a transaction. I can tell you for a fact that it's much easier to contest a problem with a standard credit card that it is to contest a paypal charge. As a buyer, I got screwed on what turned out to be faked brand-name items from someone in China with an invalid return address -- BTW, I did not plan on buying the item from China... the E-Bay auction "address" was in the US. However, the Paypal account address that I paid was registered to China which is something you might not spot right away. Paypal made me send back the package to China to try to get a refund which costs me a bunch in shipping. Then because they seller gave me a bad address, it got shipped back to me in the US. Paypal never gave me a refund because my item was "never actually returned to seller" even though the seller was at fault for giving a bad address.
Overall, I was out $100. I try to avoid both Paypal and E-Bay since this incident and only use them after exhausting all other options.
Writing in a compiled language is easier, faster, and usually has a better set of pre-written functionality, but never, ever claim that it's going to be more optimized. Even with pipelining updates from the compilers that help the look-ahead caches on the CPU, there's very few times that hand-coded assembler isn't going to be faster.
As CPU's become more complex, this is less and less true. For example, even on the PS2, they created a tool called VCL that preprocessed assembler for you for maximum usage of registers, unrolling, and pipelining. It generated better optimized code than 99% of of coders out there could do on their own and at a fraction of the effort to seriously fully optimize pipelined assembler -- not to mention the asm code was much more maintainable since with handrolled manually pipelined code you may have to re-optimize everything if you change a single register or just a few instructions. Also, things like the auto-unroll and auto-register-assignment a were huge time saver (it could unroll a loop NX and allocate NX registers to interleave SIMD operations to hide latencies).
That's not to say that a really great ASM programmer wouldn't do better than VCL, but he would have to work much much harder. You'd have to track all the registers yourself, remember the pipelining rules and latencies for every single instruction, be willing to experiment with unrolling every loop and counting cycles between unrolled (with prologs/epilogs) and normal versions, know all the possible instruction swaps, synchronize the integer and vector pipelines manually, try nearly all possible instruction orders, etc. Certainly an average assembler programmer wouldn't do as well.
I am certain that whoever who told Neill Blomkamp he couldn't direct Halo must be kicking himself all the way to the poorhouse.
That would be Peter Jackson. He pulled the plug on Halo but saw promise in Blomkamp and gave him another chance. District 9 is the result of that second chance.
I actually just said that you couldn't validate the opionion of people who have dismissed the movie without ever having seen it.
YesIAmAScript responded "don't go telling someone else their opinion isn't valid because they haven't seen it."
All I can say is that is total irrational hostility on his part. I have yet to understand how the hollow ranting of someone who hasn't seen the movie should be a valid data point of whether the film is good or bad.
He watched it so he's entitled to his opinion even though I disagree with him but the folks who haven't yet watched it shouldn't pass judgement or make recommendations to others until they have seen it. Perhaps he could explain his convoluted illogic of why non-viewers' opinions matter as much as mine but I doubt it.
I think the apartheid metaphor actually made certain people of certain political persuasions fairly uncomfortable.
I think that's hitting the nail on the head. People were unconfortable with this movie: apartheid, "abortion", biological experimentation, slums and poverty, disgusting alien metamorphosis, the abuse and neglect of fellow beings, not to mention an anti-hero protagonist that most will dislike to the end of the movie. Take your pick... I personally was disturbed by most of the movie -- but that was how the director wanted us to feel. This isn't the typical dumbed-down eye-candy with a feel-good ending the masses expect in a summer blockbuster.
Their technology is all bioactive and interacts with them on a DNA level. The liquid that they call "fuel" might not be a power source in the sense of gasoline but more a control substance -- think of it as brake fluid or power steering fluid with the difference that is consumed as it is used. In this case, the "fuel" substance allows them to control their technology through the DNA-interation.
Their "power source" is separate from this "fuel" and apparently lasts a long time (the mothership is still floating / operational -- they just can't control it) so for them, the substance that needs a refill is the control fluid and the closest translation to that in English is the word "fuel".
The idea of DNA-interactive biotechnology is pretty alien sci-fi but if you accept that, then seems completely reasonable that such bioactive "control fluid" (i.e. "fuel") would interfere with an organism exposed to it in it's most concentrated form.
especially don't go telling someone else their opinion isn't valid because they haven't seen it. Seeing movies isn't free, so people have to make their buying decisions based upon things other than actually viewing the movie.
That was exactly my whole point. If you want to watch movies based on the opinions of people who haven't seen them, you're welcome too. You can also read books based on reviews by people who haven't read them, go to restaurants based on reviews by people who haven't eaten there etc. It does cost money to buy books and eat out as well so therefore you shouldn't listen to people who don't care enough to actually pay to try something when you can get untested opinions for free that are just as "worthy".
the CGI effects were astoundingly good. Best I've ever seen
The fact that they produced the best looking special effects you've EVER SEEN on a budget less than 1/10 that of a normal summer blockbuster didn't phase you as something groundbreaking or revolutionary ?
There were plenty more elements to the plot than apartheid. Personally, I felt the bigger parts of the plot were the interactions between the main character and his wife -- who is rarely shown but constantly mentioned throughout the movie. Despite everything that Wikus is undergoing, he is actually gaining humanity throughout the movie rather than losing it -- and his connection to his wife is the greatest force driving him... not some apartheid or megacorporation. Yes, those are shallow devices to setup the situation and they certainly have some flaws, but in the end, this is a uniquely personal and human journey of fear and loss that Wikus takes us through.
You could find just as serious or worse flaws in Star Wars or the Matrix. I mean really, the Aliens in Star Wars just acted like humans in latex and makeup.... basically hokey actors in rubber suits. That doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't a great movie and certainly doesn't detract from the fact that it was ground-breaking.
I was criticizing the parent because he was dimissing the movie WITHOUT EVEN HAVING SEEN IT!
As AintItCool.com says All I can really say is this, "Have you seen DISTRICT 9?" Because if you haven't. You can't even enter the conversation yet
As far as groundbreaking, I said nothing about the plot. I basically said the camera editing and the alien integration into the movie as a special effect alone are enough to be considered a huge jump forward. When you consider what they did on a $30 Million budget -- then yes, this movie is revolutionary -- it looks better than other movies from earlier this year produced on budgets 10 times greater.
Are you saying that this movie is as good/groundbreaking as Star Wars orThe Matrix? I am somewhat dubious.
Yes. It. Is.
No one has done anything like this before. The style of seamless blending of handheld, real documentary, fake news, CCTV (security cam) and live action fluid is tight. There is even first-person/third-person shooter cams. It's a distinctly unique style of "omniscient" camera person which can which from any source / any angle, yet while blending and cutting between all of them, it still feels cohesive and non-jarring.
The integration of the aliens into the movie is especially groundbreaking and unique. There are aliens in literally 80-90% of the scenes and they look real. Not like Jar-Jar Binks or people in outfits. The look dirty and solid. Their textures reflect the environment. They move and interact with the environment like real creatures. You can actually *BELIEVE* they are there. Trust me, the special effects on this movie are unlike ANYTHING you've even seen before and that doesn't even count the action scenes.
.
Looks interesting, I'll definitely Netflix it.
To be honest, if I could only have see one film in the actual Theatres this year out of all the ones I've already seen, I would chose District 9 - that includes comparing it to Star Trek, Harry Potter, Transformers, etc. It's definitely a "Big Screen"-worthy experience.
This movie really is groundbreaking in many facets and there is no way you can simply dismiss it regardless of how many other movies are coming out this year. Your whole, "hum drum oh maybe I'll watch it on Netflix" attitude shows you're not even seriously interested in District 9. I didn't know much about it but it blew me away completely Besides, you're in now way qualified to pass any judgements on this movie until YOU'VE ACTUALLY SEEN IT.
The main reason that performance won out is that the 751 was slow enough to be occasionally unusable... especially in the default configuration where anti-virus and pre-installed bloatware and cruft were causing continuous and severe random stalls on the machine.
The netbook manufacturers are on thin margins and get paid to install all this cruft but if they just gave us a slimmed down OS install as well as a slimmed down machine, the netbooks would feel a lot more powerful.
The first question is really, why RAID a SSD? It's already more reliable than a mechanical disk, so that argument goes out the window. You might get some increased performance, but that's often not a big factor.
The second question is, with processors coming with 8 cores, why have some separate specialized controller that handles RAID and not just do it in software?
Now that the new faster 34nm Intel SSD's can be preordered for under $250, it's reasonable for an enthusiast to buy 3-4 of them and thrown them in a RAID0 array. Also, software (or built-in MB RAID) is fine -- a lot of the sites have shown that 3 SSD drives is the sweet point for price/performance using standard MB RAID controllers. If you want 4 or more, to see performance, you need a more $$$ separate controller card.
FTA Since a disk sector is 512 bytes, requests would translate to 26.9 MB/sec if 55,000 IOPS were done with this size. On the other end of testing for small block random is 8192 byte I/O requests, which are likely the largest request sizes that are considered small block I/O, which translates into 429.7 MB/sec with 55,000 requests
I'm not going to believe an article that assumes that because you can do 55K IOPS for 512Byte reads, you can do the same number of IOPS for 8K reads which are 16X larger and then just extrapolate from there. Especially since most SSD's (at least SATA ones) right now top out around 200MB/s and the SATA interface tops out at 300MB/s. Besides there are already real world articles out there where guys with simple RAID0 SSD's are getting 500-600 MB with 3-4 drives using Motherboard RAID much less dedicated harware RAID.
I totally agree with Backups vs RAID. Also, the poster should backup his boot drive since he writes:
I want the system up and running in no time
It takes a at least a couple hours to install Windows, Apps, AV, etc. Especially when you count all the updates to install and all the reboots while installing updates.
Actually, my main reason for posting was to correct an error in the parents post (which I quoted). He mentioned that 3D support was in VMWare for several weeks and I corrected the fact that it has been indeed years.
Yes VMWare Workstation costs $$$. It's $199 or $99 for upgrades. What's wrong with paying for software if it does what you need it to do? It's still cheaper and certainly more convenient than adding another PC most of the time.
VMWare has lots of features that VBox either didn't have or has only recently acquired. As I noted in my post, VMWare has had graphics support for several years and it officially only came (experimentally) to VBOX a day ago.
VMWare had better networking support until about 6 months ago -- the networking support in VBOX was a total joke at first (requiring you to manually bridge networks). They appear to be nearly on par now.
VMWare has much much better SnapShot TREE support -- the VBOX SnapShot linear support is counterintuitive and there are dozens of posts out there on the net of people losing data when they first try to revert back one SnapShot and end up reverting back TWO SnapShots (because for some reason the snapshot API makes it easier to revert back TWO SnapShots than to the last one).
I have both VMWare and VBox installed on my computer. I use VMWare by default because it just works better for me but I keep trying the new versions of VBOX. The main thing keeping VBOX from being "good enough" for me at this point is the SnapShot support. Once they have good SnapShot Tree (branching snapshots) with easy cloning and migrating support, I suppose I probably won't feel the need to pay for VMWare anymore.
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Your car has pockets too.
The parking rates will soon be $8/hour in downtown under the new deal. Do you have 64 quarters in your car (nearly two rolls) for each time you want to casually park ?
If only there was some sort of token people could use to activate the meters... But it would have to be something almost everyone carries. Hmmm...
The parking rate in certain areas of downtown Chicago is currently $4.00 / hour to go up to $8.00 / hour under the new deal (it used to be $2 before we all got screwed by Daley and our Aldermen). You can park for up to 2 hours. If the tokens you are referring to are quarters, I personally don't know anyone how carries $16.00 worth of quarters in their pockets.
I just use my credit card now since I can't be bothered to stop by the bank for 10 rolls of quarters a week for casual parking but walking the extra block (1/2 block to and from pay box) is a pain when it's raining and will be a big pain when it's really cold & windy too.
It doesn't matter when it's a sham account and they'll open another in a week. The counterfeiters also like to hack legitimate accounts with good feedback and then close them down when they're done with a short-term scam.
#1==no good. With a cashier's check, you have even less chance of recovering funds than with Paypal. Same with Postal Money Orders. They're both only slightly safer than sending cash.
#2 Craigslist does not have the hard-to-find items and it's a hassle to drive 20-30 miles to pick up a small item. If you don't have a car, you have to spend hours on the train to go get something. When Ebay works, it's point-click and you're done in 5 min. Plus as I stated, EBay has a much bigger "inventory".
FWIW, you can't do a chargeback to Paypal with the Paypal-branded credit card. They only accept Paypal dispute resolutions. This plan only works for other banks credit cards. Moral of the story -- don't use the Paypal-branded credit card.
So wait, you got screwed by PayPal, so at the first available opportunity, you gave them your credit card details so you could continue to use their service?
Unfortunately, Paypal has become a necessary evil if you want to use E-Bay. I try to avoid it if at all possible but many sellers (at least 30-40%) on E-Bay only take Paypal for electronic payments.
And yes, I'm trying to avoid E-Bay too but for hard-to-find or used items, you can't always find the stuff online or on Craigslist.
Sigh... basically, that's a problem of dealing with monopolies -- which is what Paypal and E-Bay are for all practical intents and purposes.
Did you pay for the item using your credit card through Paypal or using your checking account?
I did use a credit card. Unfortunately, I used the "Paypal"-branded credit card issued by GE Money Bank. They have in their fine print that any charge on the card through Paypal has to be resolved through paypal. They will just give you the run-around otherwise.
First thing I did after this was to tear up and cancel that card and then link my regular credit card to paypal which is a Citibank Card -- Citibank has always been *VERY* *GOOD* at dealing with any hint of fraud whether online or by phone / mail.
I'm out the $$$ but I've learned an important lesson which I can share with all of you. Don't use Paypal if you can't afford to be shafted -- and if you do use Paypal, whatever you do, don't get the Paypal Credit Card.
I have an exactly similar story. Just different dollar amount and different source country (Seller was supposed to be from Ohio but turned out to be in China). Got screwed just like you with both the price of the item and the price of return shipping :-(
Paypal sucks.
It's only cheaper until you have you something go wrong with a transaction. I can tell you for a fact that it's much easier to contest a problem with a standard credit card that it is to contest a paypal charge. As a buyer, I got screwed on what turned out to be faked brand-name items from someone in China with an invalid return address -- BTW, I did not plan on buying the item from China... the E-Bay auction "address" was in the US. However, the Paypal account address that I paid was registered to China which is something you might not spot right away. Paypal made me send back the package to China to try to get a refund which costs me a bunch in shipping. Then because they seller gave me a bad address, it got shipped back to me in the US. Paypal never gave me a refund because my item was "never actually returned to seller" even though the seller was at fault for giving a bad address.
Overall, I was out $100. I try to avoid both Paypal and E-Bay since this incident and only use them after exhausting all other options.
I've noticed that my grammar is also affected; maybe this is because I spent too much time on IRC
imho 2b honest... i dont think typin' is the prob...
*shrug*
Writing in a compiled language is easier, faster, and usually has a better set of pre-written functionality, but never, ever claim that it's going to be more optimized. Even with pipelining updates from the compilers that help the look-ahead caches on the CPU, there's very few times that hand-coded assembler isn't going to be faster.
As CPU's become more complex, this is less and less true. For example, even on the PS2, they created a tool called VCL that preprocessed assembler for you for maximum usage of registers, unrolling, and pipelining. It generated better optimized code than 99% of of coders out there could do on their own and at a fraction of the effort to seriously fully optimize pipelined assembler -- not to mention the asm code was much more maintainable since with handrolled manually pipelined code you may have to re-optimize everything if you change a single register or just a few instructions. Also, things like the auto-unroll and auto-register-assignment a were huge time saver (it could unroll a loop NX and allocate NX registers to interleave SIMD operations to hide latencies).
That's not to say that a really great ASM programmer wouldn't do better than VCL, but he would have to work much much harder. You'd have to track all the registers yourself, remember the pipelining rules and latencies for every single instruction, be willing to experiment with unrolling every loop and counting cycles between unrolled (with prologs/epilogs) and normal versions, know all the possible instruction swaps, synchronize the integer and vector pipelines manually, try nearly all possible instruction orders, etc. Certainly an average assembler programmer wouldn't do as well.
I am certain that whoever who told Neill Blomkamp he couldn't direct Halo must be kicking himself all the way to the poorhouse.
That would be Peter Jackson. He pulled the plug on Halo but saw promise in Blomkamp and gave him another chance. District 9 is the result of that second chance.
YesIAmAScript responded "don't go telling someone else their opinion isn't valid because they haven't seen it."
All I can say is that is total irrational hostility on his part. I have yet to understand how the hollow ranting of someone who hasn't seen the movie should be a valid data point of whether the film is good or bad.
He watched it so he's entitled to his opinion even though I disagree with him but the folks who haven't yet watched it shouldn't pass judgement or make recommendations to others until they have seen it. Perhaps he could explain his convoluted illogic of why non-viewers' opinions matter as much as mine but I doubt it.
I think the apartheid metaphor actually made certain people of certain political persuasions fairly uncomfortable.
I think that's hitting the nail on the head. People were unconfortable with this movie: apartheid, "abortion", biological experimentation, slums and poverty, disgusting alien metamorphosis, the abuse and neglect of fellow beings, not to mention an anti-hero protagonist that most will dislike to the end of the movie. Take your pick... I personally was disturbed by most of the movie -- but that was how the director wanted us to feel. This isn't the typical dumbed-down eye-candy with a feel-good ending the masses expect in a summer blockbuster.
Their technology is all bioactive and interacts with them on a DNA level. The liquid that they call "fuel" might not be a power source in the sense of gasoline but more a control substance -- think of it as brake fluid or power steering fluid with the difference that is consumed as it is used. In this case, the "fuel" substance allows them to control their technology through the DNA-interation.
Their "power source" is separate from this "fuel" and apparently lasts a long time (the mothership is still floating / operational -- they just can't control it) so for them, the substance that needs a refill is the control fluid and the closest translation to that in English is the word "fuel".
The idea of DNA-interactive biotechnology is pretty alien sci-fi but if you accept that, then seems completely reasonable that such bioactive "control fluid" (i.e. "fuel") would interfere with an organism exposed to it in it's most concentrated form.
especially don't go telling someone else their opinion isn't valid because they haven't seen it. Seeing movies isn't free, so people have to make their buying decisions based upon things other than actually viewing the movie.
That was exactly my whole point. If you want to watch movies based on the opinions of people who haven't seen them, you're welcome too. You can also read books based on reviews by people who haven't read them, go to restaurants based on reviews by people who haven't eaten there etc. It does cost money to buy books and eat out as well so therefore you shouldn't listen to people who don't care enough to actually pay to try something when you can get untested opinions for free that are just as "worthy".
the CGI effects were astoundingly good. Best I've ever seen
The fact that they produced the best looking special effects you've EVER SEEN on a budget less than 1/10 that of a normal summer blockbuster didn't phase you as something groundbreaking or revolutionary ?
There were plenty more elements to the plot than apartheid. Personally, I felt the bigger parts of the plot were the interactions between the main character and his wife -- who is rarely shown but constantly mentioned throughout the movie. Despite everything that Wikus is undergoing, he is actually gaining humanity throughout the movie rather than losing it -- and his connection to his wife is the greatest force driving him... not some apartheid or megacorporation. Yes, those are shallow devices to setup the situation and they certainly have some flaws, but in the end, this is a uniquely personal and human journey of fear and loss that Wikus takes us through.
You could find just as serious or worse flaws in Star Wars or the Matrix. I mean really, the Aliens in Star Wars just acted like humans in latex and makeup.... basically hokey actors in rubber suits. That doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't a great movie and certainly doesn't detract from the fact that it was ground-breaking.
I was criticizing the parent because he was dimissing the movie WITHOUT EVEN HAVING SEEN IT!
As AintItCool.com says All I can really say is this, "Have you seen DISTRICT 9?" Because if you haven't. You can't even enter the conversation yet As far as groundbreaking, I said nothing about the plot. I basically said the camera editing and the alien integration into the movie as a special effect alone are enough to be considered a huge jump forward. When you consider what they did on a $30 Million budget -- then yes, this movie is revolutionary -- it looks better than other movies from earlier this year produced on budgets 10 times greater.
Furthermore, despite some flaws, I found the plot is unique and compelling. So did nearly 90% of the "professional" reviewers out there.
You saw it. You didn't like it. You're entitled to your opinion. But this guy didn't even see the film and he's trashing it.
Are you saying that this movie is as good/groundbreaking as Star Wars orThe Matrix? I am somewhat dubious.
Yes. It. Is.
No one has done anything like this before. The style of seamless blending of handheld, real documentary, fake news, CCTV (security cam) and live action fluid is tight. There is even first-person/third-person shooter cams. It's a distinctly unique style of "omniscient" camera person which can which from any source / any angle, yet while blending and cutting between all of them, it still feels cohesive and non-jarring.
The integration of the aliens into the movie is especially groundbreaking and unique. There are aliens in literally 80-90% of the scenes and they look real. Not like Jar-Jar Binks or people in outfits. The look dirty and solid. Their textures reflect the environment. They move and interact with the environment like real creatures. You can actually *BELIEVE* they are there. Trust me, the special effects on this movie are unlike ANYTHING you've even seen before and that doesn't even count the action scenes.
.
Looks interesting, I'll definitely Netflix it.
To be honest, if I could only have see one film in the actual Theatres this year out of all the ones I've already seen, I would chose District 9 - that includes comparing it to Star Trek, Harry Potter, Transformers, etc. It's definitely a "Big Screen"-worthy experience.
This movie really is groundbreaking in many facets and there is no way you can simply dismiss it regardless of how many other movies are coming out this year. Your whole, "hum drum oh maybe I'll watch it on Netflix" attitude shows you're not even seriously interested in District 9. I didn't know much about it but it blew me away completely Besides, you're in now way qualified to pass any judgements on this movie until YOU'VE ACTUALLY SEEN IT.
The main reason that performance won out is that the 751 was slow enough to be occasionally unusable... especially in the default configuration where anti-virus and pre-installed bloatware and cruft were causing continuous and severe random stalls on the machine.
The netbook manufacturers are on thin margins and get paid to install all this cruft but if they just gave us a slimmed down OS install as well as a slimmed down machine, the netbooks would feel a lot more powerful.
The first question is really, why RAID a SSD? It's already more reliable than a mechanical disk, so that argument goes out the window. You might get some increased performance, but that's often not a big factor.
The second question is, with processors coming with 8 cores, why have some separate specialized controller that handles RAID and not just do it in software?
RAID0 for Speed. SSD's in RAID0 can perform 2.5-3X faster than a single drive. A RAID SSD array can challenge the speed of a FusionIO card that is several thousand dollars.
Now that the new faster 34nm Intel SSD's can be preordered for under $250, it's reasonable for an enthusiast to buy 3-4 of them and thrown them in a RAID0 array. Also, software (or built-in MB RAID) is fine -- a lot of the sites have shown that 3 SSD drives is the sweet point for price/performance using standard MB RAID controllers. If you want 4 or more, to see performance, you need a more $$$ separate controller card.
FTA Since a disk sector is 512 bytes, requests would translate to 26.9 MB/sec if 55,000 IOPS were done with this size. On the other end of testing for small block random is 8192 byte I/O requests, which are likely the largest request sizes that are considered small block I/O, which translates into 429.7 MB/sec with 55,000 requests
I'm not going to believe an article that assumes that because you can do 55K IOPS for 512Byte reads, you can do the same number of IOPS for 8K reads which are 16X larger and then just extrapolate from there. Especially since most SSD's (at least SATA ones) right now top out around 200MB/s and the SATA interface tops out at 300MB/s. Besides there are already real world articles out there where guys with simple RAID0 SSD's are getting 500-600 MB with 3-4 drives using Motherboard RAID much less dedicated harware RAID.
If you want really tiny pixels... get a lightly used IBM T221. It's 22" but it has very very high DPI and a resolution of 3840 x 2400.
I want the system up and running in no time
It takes a at least a couple hours to install Windows, Apps, AV, etc. Especially when you count all the updates to install and all the reboots while installing updates.
Actually, my main reason for posting was to correct an error in the parents post (which I quoted). He mentioned that 3D support was in VMWare for several weeks and I corrected the fact that it has been indeed years.
Yes VMWare Workstation costs $$$. It's $199 or $99 for upgrades. What's wrong with paying for software if it does what you need it to do? It's still cheaper and certainly more convenient than adding another PC most of the time.
VMWare has lots of features that VBox either didn't have or has only recently acquired. As I noted in my post, VMWare has had graphics support for several years and it officially only came (experimentally) to VBOX a day ago.
VMWare had better networking support until about 6 months ago -- the networking support in VBOX was a total joke at first (requiring you to manually bridge networks). They appear to be nearly on par now.
VMWare has much much better SnapShot TREE support -- the VBOX SnapShot linear support is counterintuitive and there are dozens of posts out there on the net of people losing data when they first try to revert back one SnapShot and end up reverting back TWO SnapShots (because for some reason the snapshot API makes it easier to revert back TWO SnapShots than to the last one).
I have both VMWare and VBox installed on my computer. I use VMWare by default because it just works better for me but I keep trying the new versions of VBOX. The main thing keeping VBOX from being "good enough" for me at this point is the SnapShot support. Once they have good SnapShot Tree (branching snapshots) with easy cloning and migrating support, I suppose I probably won't feel the need to pay for VMWare anymore.