Rest assured, worried investor, that these savings will be directly passed on to the stockholders of the exchange. You need not fret about dealing with lowered trade prices from your broker any time soon.
Less money in Microsoft's hands is always a good thing, regardless of who has to suffer in the short term.
This kind of attitude is why many of us roll our eyes at some in the FOSS community, and rightly so. If your precious ideology means so much to you AND you want it to spread, then be cognizant of the needs of those to whom you would have it spread. Customers of cable DVR software do not deserve to have bad software. They are caught in the crossfire and do not understand how to get out. They won't understand esoteric (to them) arguments about FOSS and how Microsoft is trying to crush the penguin.
To put it another way, next time you are caught between a rock and a hard place and someone says "Too bad, at least my ideology is being proven", be sure to take comfort in knowing that person is reacting just as you have.
Perhaps if you cared more about customers than promoting your anti-Microsoft agenda, you'd realize that the Comcast software is, without reservations, worse in every way that the Microsoft software. This is a bad thing for consumers all around. Comcast will now have one less input on how the system might be improved for consumers. You may consider the evil of Microsoft absolute, but Comcast is even more evil when it comes to "serving" their customers.
Well, everything works together. There are things you use your instruments for, and things you use the seat of your pants for. Like anything, you have to know when it's appropriate to use an instrument (mechanical or biological), and you have to understand the limitations of that instrument. GPS navigation for many people is still a new instrument, and so the limitations are not yet well understood for them. Fortunately like all technologies this will improve over time. But it's a transition period now. People should not blindly trust these devices just yet, and a prudent person would rarely cede navigational authority to them.
Oh, I haven't actually used the map services directions in years now. The only times they are useful is when you are looking at the map and trying to determine where their line is really going. Often as not though their written directions are confounded by suprise street name changes or minor course corrections which result in three or four lines of 0.0 mile maneuvers that just make the list aggrivating.
What I have personally found useful is to look at those maps, then WRITE the directions I see on the map myself. This serves two purposes: 1) You can refer to your written directions if you get lost and 2) by writing them down, you will increase the chance of retaining the directions in memory while driving. I've yet to get lost doing this.
I do have to say though that some GPS units are quite good. On a recent trip we were travelling out of state and we frequently used the standard nav system in our 2006 Corvette. I don't know who makes it, but it worked flawlessly maneuvering us around town to find gas stations and restruants.
The way I usually navigate to places I don't know well is to consult an online map first, which provides good overall context to the route, plan the trip myself, then use the GPS only as a reminder. The only time I would use the GPS by itself is if I don't have a way to get the full context of my route. If you go to Google maps, for instance, and make a plan, then try to do the same on the GPS, you'll see the difference immediately - with the GPS it is nearly impossible to have a good sense of the whole route, so you might not even be able to tell if it sends down some bizarre route.
As a pilot in training, I see warnings against relying on the instruments too much all the time. In spite of the fact that a lot of effort has gone into making everything accurate and useful, it is taught that it is critical you have as much awareness of what is going on around you at all times - and this means actually looking out of the airplane to confirm what your instruments are telling you. Relying on the GPS by itself to plan your route is equivalent to flying with your windows blacked out. If your instruments are wrong - and it does happen - you'll never know it, and who knows where you'll end up.
Don't forget:
Four: China could throw a bunch of Google's Chinese employees in jail on whatever charges they like, creating a PR nightmare for Google ("Yeah we tried not to do evil, but a lot of our people are in jail now, their lives permanently ruined.") For good measure, China could execute a few. That would bring any other company thinking of 'doing good' right into line.
This of course simplifies the politics associated with China doing business with American companies, but it is not outside the realm of their capability (nor I imagine willingness) to do if they thought it would help them keep control.
It's clearly not a question that has been resolved. I've said that before. The "it's obviously illegal crowd" is simply wrong. It isn't "obviously" illegal. It isn't "obviously" legal either.
There are arguments on both sides that seem to have legal merit.
The confusion here rests with the fact that the Constitution itself does not actually spell out everything for which the Executive is responsible, nor the means by which is does its job. For example, the Constitution does not spell out that the Executive is supposed to enforce the laws passed by the Legislature. However, this is commonly held to be within the realm of duty of the Executive. Similarly, the concept of "national-security" powers are not granted by the Constitution, but the courts have interpreted the Executive to have some of these powers, historically associated with Executive branches of government, as being necessary for the operation of the State. Strict readings of the Constitution (usually taken out of context and which assume there was no prior foundation for any law or rules)unfortunately do not provide the insight necessary to understand how the branches of government actually behave because there is more to it than is written in that document.
That being said...
One side wants to protect America from terrorists; the other wants to protect terrorists from America. That's the basis on which I chose my side.
One is not a terrorist until one is proven to have committed the crimes associated with being a terrorist. Until that happens, they are an ALLEGED terrorist. The road the government must travel to get to CONVICTED terrorist cannot be sidestepped simply because of the nature of the accusation. If we allowed the government to choose to disregard or creatively interpret laws based soley on the type of accusation being levelled, then we have to admitthat we do not have the Rule of Law, upon which the foundation of this country's entire constitutional system is based. The side you have thus chosen is thus none of the above as you simply wish to destroy America itself, whether it contains terrorists or not.
Oftentimes we get comfortable in our routines, our hobbies, etc. We find those few things we like and stick with them. After years of doing this, we may get bored and find our field of things to do is limited because we've stopped really looking for things which are different. I don't know what your hobbies are or whether you've really looked around, but consider trying out things you might not normally try. Take pilot lessons, go drive your car at a local track day, do an ocean fishing trip or take a week to backpack in the wilderness. The point isn't that any of these things will necessarily lead you to think of a career change in and of themselves. But they might be sufficiently different from your normal routine to give your brain a chance to be creative while simultaneously reminding you that there are a whole lot of potential career paths out there you probably haven't even thought of in the past decade, if ever. It may be just the kick you need to either revitalize your current career, or to spark your sense of opportunity.
In other news, hand-optimized assembly using hardware accelerated vector processing for floating point operations is shown to be faster than using Bash scripts for the same purpose.
Seriously, if you are going to make an argument about performance, at least make one better than a strawman. Any developer worth his salt would simply write the perf-critical code in an appropriate language and call out to it, which is trivial to do in.NET. The reason to write code in.Net isn't for blazingly-fast specialized math routines, it's for general application development using a very rich set of libraries and a relatively consistent set of interfaces.
The purpose of the ex post facto clause in the US Constitution generally is applied to laws passed by Congress, stating essentially that you cannot make something illegal after the fact. Thus, if it was legal to sell cars a year ago, Congress cannot today pass a law saying that selling cars a year ago was illegal and then put you in jail for having broken a law which didn't exist at the time you committed the act. However, they could pass a law saying that selling cars NOW is illegal, and you'd have to stop immediately.
I don't know exactly how this applies to priviledges granted by Congress (vis-a-vis patent law.) Congress could, by law, invalidate all existing patents I imagine. Similarly, SCOTUS can invalidate laws which grant priviledges to persons and corporations, and this happens all the time. So it would seem to me, not being a lawyer, that if the patents are no longer valid because of this ruling, then it is as if they never existed in the first place. Remember, it's not that those patents are now being made illegal (which is where I'd think ex post facto would apply,) they are simply being made invalid and unenforceable. What will probably happen now is that a whole host of lawsuits seeking to overturn obvious patents will arise, and a bunch will get tossed under the new rules.
But I am not a lawyer:)
And besides, just because you died doesn't mean you get the benefit of a reprieve from your duly-deserved criticisms. After all, everyone dies eventually, it's not like it was something special you did that deserves sudden compassion. And it's not like we are all wishing ill of his family. But their grieving process is NOT our grieving process, and doesn't need to be. If, when you go out, you don't want people dancing on your grave, then don't do things during your life which will cause them to do so.
I want some of what you are smoking. On second thought, that would probably bring down the DEA.
Seriously, the end of MS, gnu/Linux taking over consumer PC sales?
That requires a complete integrated system of a level which still doesn't exist in the Linux world. With all due respect to KDE and Gnome, it's not just the GUI we are talking about here. Taking Windows or Mac OS X as an example, they've integrated virtually everything about operating system control into the GUI. The command line doesn't even have to exist to operate either of these systems, ever. Application development for these systems is very well thought out and very integrated. User experiences are highly consistent and easy to make consistent. The drivers do exist, and on Windows, it will even go out and find the latest ones for you (presuming the vendor told Microsoft about them. For the record I am running on Vista 64-bit with modern graphics hardware and can play games just fine.) Installation is a no-brainer, auto-configuration isn't even something that is mentioned any more - it's a given, it HAS to be.
It's fine to be a FOSS fanboy, but you have to give credit where credit is due, otherwise you discredit yourself. Whether Microsoft stole, embraced and extended or invented their current experience, the fact is it's been executed very well, and it's not just something slapped on the face - it goes all the way to the core. You may disagree with certain choices, but if you do, remember that there are a dozen FOSS guys who probably disagree with your choice too and the only reason you aren't railing against them is that they aren't popular enough yet.
To get back to the original topic, FOSS is actually good for MS because it's an open experimentation area. In addition to their own innovation (yes, believe it or not there are people there who are actually as competent) they can build on ideas which are fleshed out in the community. Everyone wins, even the people who are locked into the monoculture because, as you by now may have realized, monoculture as it applies to commercial software developers does NOT mean stagnation, it means integration, and that includes ideas which were not developed in=house.
IANAL, but I would think the judge would then cite the corporation for contempt, which probably gives the judge a fair bit of latitude to make things happen. Corporations could also have their business licenses revoked, income could probably be taken by the government, etc. Remember even though corporations are considered legal persons, they still exist because the government and legal system lets them.
Would be interesting to know what the full process is though.
IANAL, but no. Patents may be selectively enforced by the patent holder. Trademarks are what you are thinking of which must be enforced or you risk losing them.
Somehow I doubt this is about massive consumer backlast to DRM. Frankly, pretty much all of the media you played on XP works in Vista too. It certainly does for me. Are you guys just drinking each other's koolaid or have you actually bothered to see what the experience is like?
How safe will you feel when an armed madman walks into the room and you only have to wait four minutes for the police to arrive? Since you can't ensure madmen won't get guns, what do you do, if anything?
I type this way as well, and one thing I have noticed is that it does not produce wrist strain. I'll trade the WPM for lack of carpal tunnel syndrome. Besides, WPM has essentially no practical effect on the speed with which code is written. Yay for never learning how to 'properly' type.
If everyone waits, it will never prove itself. Cake? Eat?
Seriously though, Slashdot is basically the place you go when you want people to microanalyze every flaw in an MS or Evil-Of-The-Month product, conclude that it is a conspiracy or massive design flaw which THEY would never have made because it's so OBVIOUS and any COMPETENT test organization could not possibly have failed to catch it, and spout the benefits of free software as the solution to everything. Those who are slightly more well-adjusted to reality understand that large products hide myriad small flaws, business requirements affect quality, and things are rarely as bad as they are made out to be on here.
Without trying to be a Microsoft apologist or Vista fanboy, I can say that as new operating systems from MS go, this one is pretty good. I have had remarkably good compatibility experiences for the applications I use (I took a big risk and installed 64-bit Vista) and the performance is quite good. The smack talk around here about all the glitz slowing down the machine is just that - smack talk. Much ado is made about this or that small application redrawing 8000 pixels every 10 seconds, and claiming that that is somehow tanking the system. Let me tell you, running Aero right now, there are exactly two items redrawing themselves - the clock once every second, and the Dreamscape thingy once every 10 seconds.
Furthermore, at no time does the system reach 100% CPU utilization - meaning that the system IS NOT TANKED, period. Did you buy a computer system with the objective of obtaining 0% CPU utilization at "idle"? Does that make the system performant? Do you even know what idle is? I could see a legitimate cause for concern if the system idled at 10% while apparently doing nothing. But it doesn't. My hard drive isn't running in the background either. Yes, the RAM is consumed, but it's supposed to be since Vista pre-emptively loads libraries and applications you are likely to use. Dealloacting that ram takes next to no time, so no perf hit there.
Gosh I've used so many OSes over the years, free and otherwise, and they all, without exception, have faults, flaws and idiosyncrasies which irritate or aggravate me. No one's shit don't stink on here.
(this is not aimed at the direct parent specifically, but at the general tone of arguments against luxury spending)
Most of these arguments revolve around "this is inefficient" or "that is wasteful." This is all dependent on your point of view. Most of the things you (yes you, the reader) currently own are luxuries in many parts of the world and are not strictly necessary to your life. You don't see them that way but someone else does. The fact that you view this laptop that way simply is an extension of your perception based on your (relatively) meager wealth combined with your predictably human hypocrisy when viewing someone else's perceived excess.
The second class of argument which comes out of these is when something is not considered contributing to 'productivity.' Television, sports cars, etc are oft raised examples of this useless excess. However, the simple fact is that we work to enjoy ourselves, and what each of us enjoys differs. We don't work to be the most productive person we can be, so that between the time we are born and the time we die not a minute goes wasted that couldn't have been spent on more productive ventures. Heck, that you are reading this now is almost certainly an example of lost productivity, and another hyporcisy. We spend money on nice things because nice things make our lives enjoyable in some small way. It's human.
As soon as you go around starting to draw lines around what YOU think is excessive and what is not with regards to what people do with their legitimately acquired wealth, you presume too much.
I'm sorry, did you just suggest that government protect a particular business model for you? Why not just encourage people to buy from them? If they won't, perhaps the business isn't actually serving the needs (desires) of the people. In which case, logically, it should close.
Perhaps I am confused... but if you are 'willing to do it yourselves' then why are you having Dell build you a computer in the first place? Order the parts off Newegg and be done with it. Most of the people who are complaining about Dell here appear to be sufficiently Linux-savvy to know exactly which hardware will work so they could trivially build a machine to spec themselves, saving them from any random headaches they might have to deal with from Dell.
Slashdot Mirror
Rest assured, worried investor, that these savings will be directly passed on to the stockholders of the exchange. You need not fret about dealing with lowered trade prices from your broker any time soon.
This kind of attitude is why many of us roll our eyes at some in the FOSS community, and rightly so. If your precious ideology means so much to you AND you want it to spread, then be cognizant of the needs of those to whom you would have it spread. Customers of cable DVR software do not deserve to have bad software. They are caught in the crossfire and do not understand how to get out. They won't understand esoteric (to them) arguments about FOSS and how Microsoft is trying to crush the penguin.
To put it another way, next time you are caught between a rock and a hard place and someone says "Too bad, at least my ideology is being proven", be sure to take comfort in knowing that person is reacting just as you have.
Perhaps if you cared more about customers than promoting your anti-Microsoft agenda, you'd realize that the Comcast software is, without reservations, worse in every way that the Microsoft software. This is a bad thing for consumers all around. Comcast will now have one less input on how the system might be improved for consumers. You may consider the evil of Microsoft absolute, but Comcast is even more evil when it comes to "serving" their customers.
Well, everything works together. There are things you use your instruments for, and things you use the seat of your pants for. Like anything, you have to know when it's appropriate to use an instrument (mechanical or biological), and you have to understand the limitations of that instrument. GPS navigation for many people is still a new instrument, and so the limitations are not yet well understood for them. Fortunately like all technologies this will improve over time. But it's a transition period now. People should not blindly trust these devices just yet, and a prudent person would rarely cede navigational authority to them.
Oh, I haven't actually used the map services directions in years now. The only times they are useful is when you are looking at the map and trying to determine where their line is really going. Often as not though their written directions are confounded by suprise street name changes or minor course corrections which result in three or four lines of 0.0 mile maneuvers that just make the list aggrivating.
What I have personally found useful is to look at those maps, then WRITE the directions I see on the map myself. This serves two purposes: 1) You can refer to your written directions if you get lost and 2) by writing them down, you will increase the chance of retaining the directions in memory while driving. I've yet to get lost doing this.
I do have to say though that some GPS units are quite good. On a recent trip we were travelling out of state and we frequently used the standard nav system in our 2006 Corvette. I don't know who makes it, but it worked flawlessly maneuvering us around town to find gas stations and restruants.
The way I usually navigate to places I don't know well is to consult an online map first, which provides good overall context to the route, plan the trip myself, then use the GPS only as a reminder. The only time I would use the GPS by itself is if I don't have a way to get the full context of my route. If you go to Google maps, for instance, and make a plan, then try to do the same on the GPS, you'll see the difference immediately - with the GPS it is nearly impossible to have a good sense of the whole route, so you might not even be able to tell if it sends down some bizarre route. As a pilot in training, I see warnings against relying on the instruments too much all the time. In spite of the fact that a lot of effort has gone into making everything accurate and useful, it is taught that it is critical you have as much awareness of what is going on around you at all times - and this means actually looking out of the airplane to confirm what your instruments are telling you. Relying on the GPS by itself to plan your route is equivalent to flying with your windows blacked out. If your instruments are wrong - and it does happen - you'll never know it, and who knows where you'll end up.
Don't forget: Four: China could throw a bunch of Google's Chinese employees in jail on whatever charges they like, creating a PR nightmare for Google ("Yeah we tried not to do evil, but a lot of our people are in jail now, their lives permanently ruined.") For good measure, China could execute a few. That would bring any other company thinking of 'doing good' right into line. This of course simplifies the politics associated with China doing business with American companies, but it is not outside the realm of their capability (nor I imagine willingness) to do if they thought it would help them keep control.
The confusion here rests with the fact that the Constitution itself does not actually spell out everything for which the Executive is responsible, nor the means by which is does its job. For example, the Constitution does not spell out that the Executive is supposed to enforce the laws passed by the Legislature. However, this is commonly held to be within the realm of duty of the Executive. Similarly, the concept of "national-security" powers are not granted by the Constitution, but the courts have interpreted the Executive to have some of these powers, historically associated with Executive branches of government, as being necessary for the operation of the State. Strict readings of the Constitution (usually taken out of context and which assume there was no prior foundation for any law or rules)unfortunately do not provide the insight necessary to understand how the branches of government actually behave because there is more to it than is written in that document.
That being said...
One side wants to protect America from terrorists; the other wants to protect terrorists from America. That's the basis on which I chose my side.One is not a terrorist until one is proven to have committed the crimes associated with being a terrorist. Until that happens, they are an ALLEGED terrorist. The road the government must travel to get to CONVICTED terrorist cannot be sidestepped simply because of the nature of the accusation. If we allowed the government to choose to disregard or creatively interpret laws based soley on the type of accusation being levelled, then we have to admitthat we do not have the Rule of Law, upon which the foundation of this country's entire constitutional system is based. The side you have thus chosen is thus none of the above as you simply wish to destroy America itself, whether it contains terrorists or not.
Oftentimes we get comfortable in our routines, our hobbies, etc. We find those few things we like and stick with them. After years of doing this, we may get bored and find our field of things to do is limited because we've stopped really looking for things which are different. I don't know what your hobbies are or whether you've really looked around, but consider trying out things you might not normally try. Take pilot lessons, go drive your car at a local track day, do an ocean fishing trip or take a week to backpack in the wilderness. The point isn't that any of these things will necessarily lead you to think of a career change in and of themselves. But they might be sufficiently different from your normal routine to give your brain a chance to be creative while simultaneously reminding you that there are a whole lot of potential career paths out there you probably haven't even thought of in the past decade, if ever. It may be just the kick you need to either revitalize your current career, or to spark your sense of opportunity.
In other news, hand-optimized assembly using hardware accelerated vector processing for floating point operations is shown to be faster than using Bash scripts for the same purpose. Seriously, if you are going to make an argument about performance, at least make one better than a strawman. Any developer worth his salt would simply write the perf-critical code in an appropriate language and call out to it, which is trivial to do in .NET. The reason to write code in .Net isn't for blazingly-fast specialized math routines, it's for general application development using a very rich set of libraries and a relatively consistent set of interfaces.
The purpose of the ex post facto clause in the US Constitution generally is applied to laws passed by Congress, stating essentially that you cannot make something illegal after the fact. Thus, if it was legal to sell cars a year ago, Congress cannot today pass a law saying that selling cars a year ago was illegal and then put you in jail for having broken a law which didn't exist at the time you committed the act. However, they could pass a law saying that selling cars NOW is illegal, and you'd have to stop immediately. I don't know exactly how this applies to priviledges granted by Congress (vis-a-vis patent law.) Congress could, by law, invalidate all existing patents I imagine. Similarly, SCOTUS can invalidate laws which grant priviledges to persons and corporations, and this happens all the time. So it would seem to me, not being a lawyer, that if the patents are no longer valid because of this ruling, then it is as if they never existed in the first place. Remember, it's not that those patents are now being made illegal (which is where I'd think ex post facto would apply,) they are simply being made invalid and unenforceable. What will probably happen now is that a whole host of lawsuits seeking to overturn obvious patents will arise, and a bunch will get tossed under the new rules. But I am not a lawyer :)
And besides, just because you died doesn't mean you get the benefit of a reprieve from your duly-deserved criticisms. After all, everyone dies eventually, it's not like it was something special you did that deserves sudden compassion. And it's not like we are all wishing ill of his family. But their grieving process is NOT our grieving process, and doesn't need to be. If, when you go out, you don't want people dancing on your grave, then don't do things during your life which will cause them to do so.
I want some of what you are smoking. On second thought, that would probably bring down the DEA.
Seriously, the end of MS, gnu/Linux taking over consumer PC sales?
That requires a complete integrated system of a level which still doesn't exist in the Linux world. With all due respect to KDE and Gnome, it's not just the GUI we are talking about here. Taking Windows or Mac OS X as an example, they've integrated virtually everything about operating system control into the GUI. The command line doesn't even have to exist to operate either of these systems, ever. Application development for these systems is very well thought out and very integrated. User experiences are highly consistent and easy to make consistent. The drivers do exist, and on Windows, it will even go out and find the latest ones for you (presuming the vendor told Microsoft about them. For the record I am running on Vista 64-bit with modern graphics hardware and can play games just fine.) Installation is a no-brainer, auto-configuration isn't even something that is mentioned any more - it's a given, it HAS to be.
It's fine to be a FOSS fanboy, but you have to give credit where credit is due, otherwise you discredit yourself. Whether Microsoft stole, embraced and extended or invented their current experience, the fact is it's been executed very well, and it's not just something slapped on the face - it goes all the way to the core. You may disagree with certain choices, but if you do, remember that there are a dozen FOSS guys who probably disagree with your choice too and the only reason you aren't railing against them is that they aren't popular enough yet.
To get back to the original topic, FOSS is actually good for MS because it's an open experimentation area. In addition to their own innovation (yes, believe it or not there are people there who are actually as competent) they can build on ideas which are fleshed out in the community. Everyone wins, even the people who are locked into the monoculture because, as you by now may have realized, monoculture as it applies to commercial software developers does NOT mean stagnation, it means integration, and that includes ideas which were not developed in=house.
IANAL, but I would think the judge would then cite the corporation for contempt, which probably gives the judge a fair bit of latitude to make things happen. Corporations could also have their business licenses revoked, income could probably be taken by the government, etc. Remember even though corporations are considered legal persons, they still exist because the government and legal system lets them.
Would be interesting to know what the full process is though.
IANAL, but no. Patents may be selectively enforced by the patent holder. Trademarks are what you are thinking of which must be enforced or you risk losing them.
Somehow I doubt this is about massive consumer backlast to DRM. Frankly, pretty much all of the media you played on XP works in Vista too. It certainly does for me. Are you guys just drinking each other's koolaid or have you actually bothered to see what the experience is like?
This is not news, just someone at the Inquirer writing another opinion piece. Nothing to see here.
How safe will you feel when an armed madman walks into the room and you only have to wait four minutes for the police to arrive? Since you can't ensure madmen won't get guns, what do you do, if anything?
Computerless paperless office? What exactly do you to, and would anyone notice if you stopped doing it?
I type this way as well, and one thing I have noticed is that it does not produce wrist strain. I'll trade the WPM for lack of carpal tunnel syndrome. Besides, WPM has essentially no practical effect on the speed with which code is written. Yay for never learning how to 'properly' type.
Is this where I am supposed to make a Hitler reference?
If everyone waits, it will never prove itself. Cake? Eat?
Seriously though, Slashdot is basically the place you go when you want people to microanalyze every flaw in an MS or Evil-Of-The-Month product, conclude that it is a conspiracy or massive design flaw which THEY would never have made because it's so OBVIOUS and any COMPETENT test organization could not possibly have failed to catch it, and spout the benefits of free software as the solution to everything. Those who are slightly more well-adjusted to reality understand that large products hide myriad small flaws, business requirements affect quality, and things are rarely as bad as they are made out to be on here.
Without trying to be a Microsoft apologist or Vista fanboy, I can say that as new operating systems from MS go, this one is pretty good. I have had remarkably good compatibility experiences for the applications I use (I took a big risk and installed 64-bit Vista) and the performance is quite good. The smack talk around here about all the glitz slowing down the machine is just that - smack talk. Much ado is made about this or that small application redrawing 8000 pixels every 10 seconds, and claiming that that is somehow tanking the system. Let me tell you, running Aero right now, there are exactly two items redrawing themselves - the clock once every second, and the Dreamscape thingy once every 10 seconds.
Furthermore, at no time does the system reach 100% CPU utilization - meaning that the system IS NOT TANKED, period. Did you buy a computer system with the objective of obtaining 0% CPU utilization at "idle"? Does that make the system performant? Do you even know what idle is? I could see a legitimate cause for concern if the system idled at 10% while apparently doing nothing. But it doesn't. My hard drive isn't running in the background either. Yes, the RAM is consumed, but it's supposed to be since Vista pre-emptively loads libraries and applications you are likely to use. Dealloacting that ram takes next to no time, so no perf hit there.
Gosh I've used so many OSes over the years, free and otherwise, and they all, without exception, have faults, flaws and idiosyncrasies which irritate or aggravate me. No one's shit don't stink on here.
(this is not aimed at the direct parent specifically, but at the general tone of arguments against luxury spending)
Most of these arguments revolve around "this is inefficient" or "that is wasteful." This is all dependent on your point of view. Most of the things you (yes you, the reader) currently own are luxuries in many parts of the world and are not strictly necessary to your life. You don't see them that way but someone else does. The fact that you view this laptop that way simply is an extension of your perception based on your (relatively) meager wealth combined with your predictably human hypocrisy when viewing someone else's perceived excess.
The second class of argument which comes out of these is when something is not considered contributing to 'productivity.' Television, sports cars, etc are oft raised examples of this useless excess. However, the simple fact is that we work to enjoy ourselves, and what each of us enjoys differs. We don't work to be the most productive person we can be, so that between the time we are born and the time we die not a minute goes wasted that couldn't have been spent on more productive ventures. Heck, that you are reading this now is almost certainly an example of lost productivity, and another hyporcisy. We spend money on nice things because nice things make our lives enjoyable in some small way. It's human.
As soon as you go around starting to draw lines around what YOU think is excessive and what is not with regards to what people do with their legitimately acquired wealth, you presume too much.
I'm sorry, did you just suggest that government protect a particular business model for you? Why not just encourage people to buy from them? If they won't, perhaps the business isn't actually serving the needs (desires) of the people. In which case, logically, it should close.
Perhaps I am confused... but if you are 'willing to do it yourselves' then why are you having Dell build you a computer in the first place? Order the parts off Newegg and be done with it. Most of the people who are complaining about Dell here appear to be sufficiently Linux-savvy to know exactly which hardware will work so they could trivially build a machine to spec themselves, saving them from any random headaches they might have to deal with from Dell.