That true, but without enough effort he can really minimize his dead spots:
1. Get a 3G modem with the little connector for an external antenna. Buy the best antenna you can afford. See if you can mount it on top of the RV or at least out the window.
2. If he has enough money he should get a 3G modem from both AT&T and Sprint. Or whoever has the most difference in coverage. One may work somewhere the other doesnt. EVDO and 3G are on different frequencies too.
3. Get a wireless router, put dd.wrt and put it in gateway more. Get yourself a nice directional antenna and see if you can get on someone's wifi from far away.
4. Sat as a last resort.
5. Use those coverage maps to your advantage. Dont go to parks that no one covers.
I have a macbook pro also and really its not that impressive. My beater windows laptops have always had scroll and even zoom. I find being forced to use touch because of a lack of a right-click button to be a solution looking for a problem. Instead of giving me a standard right-click, I have to use the two fingered touch, which is silly.
>compared to it's unix bretheren, Windows still requires administrative privileges for a LOT of common things
Id say this is the one part of Windows MS has been improving. Running as limited user, runas, etc in Vista (especially SP2) and 7 is lightyears ahead of what it was in XP or 2000. Developers are pretty much being told to write software correctly or it just wont run in Vista/7. This is a sea change in how things are done in the Windows world and even today a lot of users without legacy cruft to support run without much hassle from the UAC. Eventually those old pieces of software causing these issues (lets write to c:\temp why not?) will be retired in favor of compliant newer versions.
Sure, but it looks like they are concerned over the ol' switcheroo and hardware keyloggers. You cant put that in every device, but if you can separate the exec from his phone or laptop for 15-25 mins then youre golden.
You took the words right out of my mouth. Its like CoH, but worse, and in the form of a mindless arcade masher thats kinda sorta like an MMO.
I really think the idea to have it both on the console and on the PC only ends up hurting the PC version. The graphics are worse than CoH, with a cheesy cell shader, and it plays like a mediocre xbox game. In the future I will not be buying games that exist on both the console and the PC. The PC version always suffers from the console limitations.
How about you read the article before you start yelling at your congressman? RFTA:
In the revised advisory, Microsoft explained why it won't patch Windows XP, the world's most popular operating system. "By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability," the company said. "Windows XP SP2 and later operating systems include a stateful host firewall that provides protection for computers against incoming traffic from the Internet or from neighboring network devices on a private network."
Actually they wont have to do anything if they are running SP2 or higher. They wont be patching VANILLA XP BUT SP2 AND LATER ARE FINE. RTFA:
"In the revised advisory, Microsoft explained why it won't patch Windows XP, the world's most popular operating system. "By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability," the company said. "Windows XP SP2 and later operating systems include a stateful host firewall that provides protection for computers against incoming traffic from the Internet or from neighboring network devices on a private network."
If you read the article you'll see systems with SP2 or SP3 are unaffected:
"By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability"
Dont let the sensionalist summaries fool you. Afterall this is slashdot. Everything is spun a certain way. Shame on you editors.
If you read the article you'll see systems with SP2 or SP3 are unaffected:
"By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability,
>I've often wondered how much more positive the world would be, if all of the things which have been repressed or destroyed because they were too innovative, too positive, or too endangering to a scarcity based economy
Id say youre suffering from confirmation bias along with having a very cynical attitude. I think the problem is, if youre a slashdot regular, then youve already incorporated a "everything sucks" attitude. Which is depressing. Afterall, its easier to complain than to do.
The problem is once something innovative becomes mainstream, it becomes boring. Then its old news and youre sick of it. Or the implementation wasnt as good as how your envisioned it would be. Lots of innovative things are in the world right now. Heck, for all its faults Linux is something of a modern marvel. Wikipedia constantly surprises me that its not a completely useless thing. Windows 7 is pretty damn sharp.
Now, things that arent mainstream always are stuck in your head as the idealized perfect thing you think they are. They never get put out in the real world. They never get tested or criticized. They never get a chance to disappoint you. There's no shortage of people who think Bucky Fullers 3-wheeled car would beat everything or that Tesla's wireless power would have brought utopia to mankind. Except steering a 3-wheeled car is like driving a boat and a city with wireless power is wasteful and you can kiss radio/tv/cell/wifi goodbye because of interference while youre at it.
The 3G networks dont have the combined bandwidth of all those DSL lines and AT&T and the rest know it. Heck, they cant even maintain basic service on the iphone, for example:
1. I tried downloading a game on 3G from the app store. The iphone told me "Cannot download more than 10 megs on 3G, switch to wifi."
2. Apple has banned the slingplayer client because it uses too much bandwidth.
You honestly think this will replace per household DSL/Cable/fiber? Guess what? It wont. Arbitrarily adding 5 years to your prediction is meaningless. Nothing happens in 5 years. 5 years ago the situation was the same except you can replace AT&T with Sprint and 3G with EVDO. Turns out the mobile networks cant support many real clients. This is no replacement for dedicated wired connection.
Skype traffic is already encrypted and law enforcement agencies around the world hate that. Not just the KGB (which doesnt exist anymore btw its FSB now).
Call records can be subpoenaed. This is how pranknet was broken up.
Re:Another software service with no way to make $$
on
Skype Kills Extras Program
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Are you kidding? Lots of people, me included, pay for skypeout minutes so we can call landlines and cell phones. Other pay for skypein numbers so they can get a number you can call in to from outside lines.
They probably make a heft amount of cash. Ebay recently sold them for quite a bit.
No, I'll bash these politicized christian groups regardless. They have almost single handedly destroyed the videogame and comic book industries with their censorship campaigns and political connections. What we need is less "think of the children" hysterics and more challenging and interesting art. Thie politically correct nonsense only hurts us all in the long run. Kids will eventually be exposed to naughty words and adult situations. We adults shouldnt be paying the price for the lack of parenting skills in the US.
EA gave them a little taste of their own medicine. Big deal.
More like EA's competitors write a check to the local pastor of the loudmouth fundie church, he preaches, tells them what to do, and suddenly you have the media bending over backwards for the opinions of these nuts.
Works with pastors giving political endorsements or are we still too naive to accept corruption in the church?
Who cares because THEY ACTUALLY PROTEST STUFF LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME. If anyting EA should be doing this more often because of all the abuse theyve put up from these bozos.
Who cares what they think. If it isnt "The War on Christmas" its "Creationism" or stuff like this. If there's any group whose opinion I couldnt care less about its this one.
This is all just political correctness gone mad. As much as I think these things are borderline distasteful, companies and people should still be able to do them. The overly religious and overly feminist opinions arent really affecting EAs bottom-line, its just making press and letting people who dislike EA have something they can also whine about.
Heaven forbid we allow adults to do such things or have games with some nudity. Funny that slashdot is in an uproar over the lawsuits over hot coffee, yet PC crap like this also makes the front page.
>Windows and Microsoft isn't about design; they are about marketing and mass consumption.
Oh please. Microsoft is like a marketplace while Apple is a communist state. I like my iphone but frankly its lock in hell if you dont jailbreak it. You can write any shitty app you want for windows mobile without the censors beating you down, not so much in the app store.
As much as I like Apple, I find their dictatorial business decisions are based on profit but defensed as "good design" or "the end users are too stupid to figure anything out." That's not good for anything. Dont let your MS hate turn you into the ally of a company that really doesnt have your interests in mind.
Thats right, the command goes right there and it runs as root. Thats a nightmare level security issue that CS101 students should be ashamed of, let alone from true hackers.
So imagine if linksys standardized on dd-wrt. Just clicking on http://192.168.1.1/cgi-bin/;rm-r would destroy your router. That link could be be put everywhere on the web and would result in mass chaos.
I think a lot of companies know the quality from even the most popular OSS projects can be highly uneven and hackers are just that: hackers. They hack things together. Good design and security testing is usually an afterthought.
>It is easy for us on Slashdot to see how stupid this is.
Look, there's a lot of stupidity on slashdot too, like how everyone wants to completely dismantle the government and heaven forbid you mention UFOs or 9/11, because the nutters will come out of the woodwork.
That said, its unfair to judge slashdot by a minority of vocal nuts and the moderators that support them, the same way its unfair to judge the majority of Americans by focusing on a minority of nuts. Every survey shows the US to be a science loving country, with about 15% who dont care for it. Ignoring hot button issues like global warming and evolution, we're not bad on a global scale, especially compared to homeopathy/traditional loving countries like Germany, China, and Russia. If people werent being brainwashed over evolution by conservative media outlets, their churches, etc it would be much better.
Not to mention pollsters dont understand alternative medicine, and I suspect many loudmouth US critics dont either. For instance, I take a multivitamin (I have a poor diet) and fish oil daily and occasional kava kava if I have insomnia. There are no shortage of studies to support these things, yet many polls would group me in with people who do homeopathy or visit a psychic.
I guess its easy to just complain about the US as being the worst thing ever and it sure gets you mod points here, but in reality you're the irrational one. Youre making unsupported generalizations about a very wide and general topic. Id like to see how a plurality of Americans pride themselves on science ignorance and dismiss the scientific method because such evidence doesnt exist. I guess you cant keep pointing to evolution or global warming, but those are still highly politicized and largly more media issues than anything else. A general dismissal of science? Not really.
>I don't have a kindle and doubt I would ever buy one.
This is like my grandpa saying he'll never use email or the horse and buggy guy sneering at the first car.
>The paper book is not at all threatened by the kindle. Not in the slightest.
When was the last time you wrote a letter? Or bought a CD? Or used an old fashioned card catalog? Digital books are damn convenient and once these readers start hitting 99 dollars its really over for the paper book. What a waste of resources they are: The growing and cutting of trees. The inks. The printing, etc. And all the room they take up!
Ironically, the only kindle owner I know is a 68 yo woman who has no love for technology. She got it as a gift and really loves it. If amazon is winning over technophobes like this then its really just a matter of time until they come around as they realize the convenience. Right near its early adopters only, but its getting there.
Exactly. Doctorow is a sci-fi author not an IT person. What's it cost to run all this stuff in-house right now? Cost of software, paid support, hardware, backups, off-site backups, in-house support staff, etc all add up. Its not just a flat fee. Its reoccurring fees too.
Cloud computing has its niche. Its not a conspiracy. Right now its the buzzword of the day, thus the Doctorow's of the world are out there doing their best to misunderstand it.
The point is that its just Intel trying to revive Turbo Memory or whatever their Vista-only cache scheme was called. Essentially, it would be windows only and the OS would recognize the braidwood chip. It would then copy all the windows system files and other stuff it thinks needs a boost. It would probably also copy the paging file too. So now all the things you need to boot with are on the fast SSD.
Well, what kind of boost are they expecting? Sure, you can get almost double the read times with SSD, but everytime it needs to hit the magnetic disk you'll suffer a penalty. Im sure these schemes can increase boot times and maybe help with everyday performance but I dont see how it could be a very noticeable boost. Especially one thats worth putting another drive in the machine that could fail.
Considering most machines are now shipping with 2-4gigs of RAM standard, we're probably not hitting the swap file as much as we used to. Braidwood would probably have been a nice idea 5-6 years ago when machines were shipping with 256 and 512megs of ram and hard drives came with less than one megabyte of cache. Today? Not so much. Its better to just wait until SSDs come down in price and go full SSD.
Depends. By the time I saw it, I was told its an Important Film and Important People made it and Important Things happen because its Important Art. As such, its interesting to watch and comment on all the little things that happen and more or less take it apart in your head and sit back and enjoy the swirling lights because they are Important Art. I think for the average filmgoer at the time of release it must have been somewhat unbearable. The critics at the time either loved it or hated it. I think this is typical of movies like this that have experimental elements and work more with broad themes like alienation and discovery and not concrete terms like "I need to win this prisonhouse arm wrestling match to win back my daughter!"
Lets just say its an acquired taste. Its obviously pretty heavily influenced by social conventions at the time. The entire landing sequence is more or less an homage to the drug-heavy counter-culture at the time. I feel like an older more mature Kubrick would have done a much better job than the late 30s Kubrick who was still something of a counter-culture type himself. Luckily, his immense talent allows us to overlook some of the weaker if not outright silly parts of the movie.
Slashdot Mirror
That true, but without enough effort he can really minimize his dead spots:
1. Get a 3G modem with the little connector for an external antenna. Buy the best antenna you can afford. See if you can mount it on top of the RV or at least out the window.
2. If he has enough money he should get a 3G modem from both AT&T and Sprint. Or whoever has the most difference in coverage. One may work somewhere the other doesnt. EVDO and 3G are on different frequencies too.
3. Get a wireless router, put dd.wrt and put it in gateway more. Get yourself a nice directional antenna and see if you can get on someone's wifi from far away.
4. Sat as a last resort.
5. Use those coverage maps to your advantage. Dont go to parks that no one covers.
Could be doable.
I have a macbook pro also and really its not that impressive. My beater windows laptops have always had scroll and even zoom. I find being forced to use touch because of a lack of a right-click button to be a solution looking for a problem. Instead of giving me a standard right-click, I have to use the two fingered touch, which is silly.
>compared to it's unix bretheren, Windows still requires administrative privileges for a LOT of common things
Id say this is the one part of Windows MS has been improving. Running as limited user, runas, etc in Vista (especially SP2) and 7 is lightyears ahead of what it was in XP or 2000. Developers are pretty much being told to write software correctly or it just wont run in Vista/7. This is a sea change in how things are done in the Windows world and even today a lot of users without legacy cruft to support run without much hassle from the UAC. Eventually those old pieces of software causing these issues (lets write to c:\temp why not?) will be retired in favor of compliant newer versions.
Sure, but it looks like they are concerned over the ol' switcheroo and hardware keyloggers. You cant put that in every device, but if you can separate the exec from his phone or laptop for 15-25 mins then youre golden.
You took the words right out of my mouth. Its like CoH, but worse, and in the form of a mindless arcade masher thats kinda sorta like an MMO.
I really think the idea to have it both on the console and on the PC only ends up hurting the PC version. The graphics are worse than CoH, with a cheesy cell shader, and it plays like a mediocre xbox game. In the future I will not be buying games that exist on both the console and the PC. The PC version always suffers from the console limitations.
How about you read the article before you start yelling at your congressman? RFTA:
In the revised advisory, Microsoft explained why it won't patch Windows XP, the world's most popular operating system. "By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability," the company said. "Windows XP SP2 and later operating systems include a stateful host firewall that provides protection for computers against incoming traffic from the Internet or from neighboring network devices on a private network."
Actually they wont have to do anything if they are running SP2 or higher. They wont be patching VANILLA XP BUT SP2 AND LATER ARE FINE. RTFA:
"In the revised advisory, Microsoft explained why it won't patch Windows XP, the world's most popular operating system. "By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability," the company said. "Windows XP SP2 and later operating systems include a stateful host firewall that provides protection for computers against incoming traffic from the Internet or from neighboring network devices on a private network."
If you read the article you'll see systems with SP2 or SP3 are unaffected:
"By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability"
Dont let the sensionalist summaries fool you. Afterall this is slashdot. Everything is spun a certain way. Shame on you editors.
If you read the article you'll see systems with SP2 or SP3 are unaffected:
"By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability,
>I've often wondered how much more positive the world would be, if all of the things which have been repressed or destroyed because they were too innovative, too positive, or too endangering to a scarcity based economy
Id say youre suffering from confirmation bias along with having a very cynical attitude. I think the problem is, if youre a slashdot regular, then youve already incorporated a "everything sucks" attitude. Which is depressing. Afterall, its easier to complain than to do.
The problem is once something innovative becomes mainstream, it becomes boring. Then its old news and youre sick of it. Or the implementation wasnt as good as how your envisioned it would be. Lots of innovative things are in the world right now. Heck, for all its faults Linux is something of a modern marvel. Wikipedia constantly surprises me that its not a completely useless thing. Windows 7 is pretty damn sharp.
Now, things that arent mainstream always are stuck in your head as the idealized perfect thing you think they are. They never get put out in the real world. They never get tested or criticized. They never get a chance to disappoint you. There's no shortage of people who think Bucky Fullers 3-wheeled car would beat everything or that Tesla's wireless power would have brought utopia to mankind. Except steering a 3-wheeled car is like driving a boat and a city with wireless power is wasteful and you can kiss radio/tv/cell/wifi goodbye because of interference while youre at it.
>Its being killed by 3G and the iPhone.
The 3G networks dont have the combined bandwidth of all those DSL lines and AT&T and the rest know it. Heck, they cant even maintain basic service on the iphone, for example:
1. I tried downloading a game on 3G from the app store. The iphone told me "Cannot download more than 10 megs on 3G, switch to wifi."
2. Apple has banned the slingplayer client because it uses too much bandwidth.
You honestly think this will replace per household DSL/Cable/fiber? Guess what? It wont. Arbitrarily adding 5 years to your prediction is meaningless. Nothing happens in 5 years. 5 years ago the situation was the same except you can replace AT&T with Sprint and 3G with EVDO. Turns out the mobile networks cant support many real clients. This is no replacement for dedicated wired connection.
Skype traffic is already encrypted and law enforcement agencies around the world hate that. Not just the KGB (which doesnt exist anymore btw its FSB now).
Call records can be subpoenaed. This is how pranknet was broken up.
Are you kidding? Lots of people, me included, pay for skypeout minutes so we can call landlines and cell phones. Other pay for skypein numbers so they can get a number you can call in to from outside lines.
They probably make a heft amount of cash. Ebay recently sold them for quite a bit.
No, I'll bash these politicized christian groups regardless. They have almost single handedly destroyed the videogame and comic book industries with their censorship campaigns and political connections. What we need is less "think of the children" hysterics and more challenging and interesting art. Thie politically correct nonsense only hurts us all in the long run. Kids will eventually be exposed to naughty words and adult situations. We adults shouldnt be paying the price for the lack of parenting skills in the US.
EA gave them a little taste of their own medicine. Big deal.
More like EA's competitors write a check to the local pastor of the loudmouth fundie church, he preaches, tells them what to do, and suddenly you have the media bending over backwards for the opinions of these nuts.
Works with pastors giving political endorsements or are we still too naive to accept corruption in the church?
Who cares because THEY ACTUALLY PROTEST STUFF LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME. If anyting EA should be doing this more often because of all the abuse theyve put up from these bozos.
Actually its a really good example of Poe's law.
Who cares what they think. If it isnt "The War on Christmas" its "Creationism" or stuff like this. If there's any group whose opinion I couldnt care less about its this one.
This is all just political correctness gone mad. As much as I think these things are borderline distasteful, companies and people should still be able to do them. The overly religious and overly feminist opinions arent really affecting EAs bottom-line, its just making press and letting people who dislike EA have something they can also whine about.
Heaven forbid we allow adults to do such things or have games with some nudity. Funny that slashdot is in an uproar over the lawsuits over hot coffee, yet PC crap like this also makes the front page.
>It's a nice demo of pigeon power, but did they think about pigeon packet loss ?
There was an initial loss caused by a hungry malicious hacker with a 12 gauge shotgun.
Later, an RST packet was sent by a local hawk.
>Windows and Microsoft isn't about design; they are about marketing and mass consumption.
Oh please. Microsoft is like a marketplace while Apple is a communist state. I like my iphone but frankly its lock in hell if you dont jailbreak it. You can write any shitty app you want for windows mobile without the censors beating you down, not so much in the app store.
As much as I like Apple, I find their dictatorial business decisions are based on profit but defensed as "good design" or "the end users are too stupid to figure anything out." That's not good for anything. Dont let your MS hate turn you into the ally of a company that really doesnt have your interests in mind.
First off, a lot of these embedded OSs are real time OSs. Linux vanilla isnt.
So lets say your company standardized on dd-wrt, which is popular and a solid product, but look at the recent security issue:
http://routerip/cgi-bin/;command_to_execute
Thats right, the command goes right there and it runs as root. Thats a nightmare level security issue that CS101 students should be ashamed of, let alone from true hackers.
So imagine if linksys standardized on dd-wrt. Just clicking on http://192.168.1.1/cgi-bin/;rm-r would destroy your router. That link could be be put everywhere on the web and would result in mass chaos.
I think a lot of companies know the quality from even the most popular OSS projects can be highly uneven and hackers are just that: hackers. They hack things together. Good design and security testing is usually an afterthought.
>It is easy for us on Slashdot to see how stupid this is.
Look, there's a lot of stupidity on slashdot too, like how everyone wants to completely dismantle the government and heaven forbid you mention UFOs or 9/11, because the nutters will come out of the woodwork.
That said, its unfair to judge slashdot by a minority of vocal nuts and the moderators that support them, the same way its unfair to judge the majority of Americans by focusing on a minority of nuts. Every survey shows the US to be a science loving country, with about 15% who dont care for it. Ignoring hot button issues like global warming and evolution, we're not bad on a global scale, especially compared to homeopathy/traditional loving countries like Germany, China, and Russia. If people werent being brainwashed over evolution by conservative media outlets, their churches, etc it would be much better.
Not to mention pollsters dont understand alternative medicine, and I suspect many loudmouth US critics dont either. For instance, I take a multivitamin (I have a poor diet) and fish oil daily and occasional kava kava if I have insomnia. There are no shortage of studies to support these things, yet many polls would group me in with people who do homeopathy or visit a psychic.
I guess its easy to just complain about the US as being the worst thing ever and it sure gets you mod points here, but in reality you're the irrational one. Youre making unsupported generalizations about a very wide and general topic. Id like to see how a plurality of Americans pride themselves on science ignorance and dismiss the scientific method because such evidence doesnt exist. I guess you cant keep pointing to evolution or global warming, but those are still highly politicized and largly more media issues than anything else. A general dismissal of science? Not really.
>I don't have a kindle and doubt I would ever buy one.
This is like my grandpa saying he'll never use email or the horse and buggy guy sneering at the first car.
>The paper book is not at all threatened by the kindle. Not in the slightest.
When was the last time you wrote a letter? Or bought a CD? Or used an old fashioned card catalog? Digital books are damn convenient and once these readers start hitting 99 dollars its really over for the paper book. What a waste of resources they are: The growing and cutting of trees. The inks. The printing, etc. And all the room they take up!
Ironically, the only kindle owner I know is a 68 yo woman who has no love for technology. She got it as a gift and really loves it. If amazon is winning over technophobes like this then its really just a matter of time until they come around as they realize the convenience. Right near its early adopters only, but its getting there.
Exactly. Doctorow is a sci-fi author not an IT person. What's it cost to run all this stuff in-house right now? Cost of software, paid support, hardware, backups, off-site backups, in-house support staff, etc all add up. Its not just a flat fee. Its reoccurring fees too.
Cloud computing has its niche. Its not a conspiracy. Right now its the buzzword of the day, thus the Doctorow's of the world are out there doing their best to misunderstand it.
The point is that its just Intel trying to revive Turbo Memory or whatever their Vista-only cache scheme was called. Essentially, it would be windows only and the OS would recognize the braidwood chip. It would then copy all the windows system files and other stuff it thinks needs a boost. It would probably also copy the paging file too. So now all the things you need to boot with are on the fast SSD.
Well, what kind of boost are they expecting? Sure, you can get almost double the read times with SSD, but everytime it needs to hit the magnetic disk you'll suffer a penalty. Im sure these schemes can increase boot times and maybe help with everyday performance but I dont see how it could be a very noticeable boost. Especially one thats worth putting another drive in the machine that could fail.
Considering most machines are now shipping with 2-4gigs of RAM standard, we're probably not hitting the swap file as much as we used to. Braidwood would probably have been a nice idea 5-6 years ago when machines were shipping with 256 and 512megs of ram and hard drives came with less than one megabyte of cache. Today? Not so much. Its better to just wait until SSDs come down in price and go full SSD.
Depends. By the time I saw it, I was told its an Important Film and Important People made it and Important Things happen because its Important Art. As such, its interesting to watch and comment on all the little things that happen and more or less take it apart in your head and sit back and enjoy the swirling lights because they are Important Art. I think for the average filmgoer at the time of release it must have been somewhat unbearable. The critics at the time either loved it or hated it. I think this is typical of movies like this that have experimental elements and work more with broad themes like alienation and discovery and not concrete terms like "I need to win this prisonhouse arm wrestling match to win back my daughter!"
Lets just say its an acquired taste. Its obviously pretty heavily influenced by social conventions at the time. The entire landing sequence is more or less an homage to the drug-heavy counter-culture at the time. I feel like an older more mature Kubrick would have done a much better job than the late 30s Kubrick who was still something of a counter-culture type himself. Luckily, his immense talent allows us to overlook some of the weaker if not outright silly parts of the movie.