Ok, if GTA is a "cop killing training simulator", then what does that say about the compentency of our police force?
I remember a spot in GTA 3 where I could hide under an overpass and the cops would all jump off the top to their deaths...this would continue indefinately and I found it rather amusing. And now that I know that this is what would happen in real life, I'm going on a crime spree rampage during which I'll wipe out the town's entire police force by crouching near an overpass.
MS Office isn't slipping at all. Maybe a little bit here and a little bit there, but it's still the big dog by a long shot.
The reason they try to "make" you use it is not because it sucks (although that could be argued), it's because it costs over $400 a license and new, virtually featureless versions come out every two years or less. It's a major cash cow and they're going to milk it for all its worth.
Personally I don't feel that any "standard" software package should cost half of what you paid for your computer. Software just goes obsolete too quickly. I often wonder what would happen if some of the big application packages were priced so that individuals could easily buy them (e.g. sub $100). Certainly they would sell considerably more units at first, but would it make up the difference? This is why I'm not a businessman.
Agreed! This is where SO many great opensource applications totally miss the boat when it comes to gaining "average" Windows users. As soon as your instructions get past 2 or 3 steps you can see their eyes start to glaze over...it just stops registering. Then when you start introducing eight zillion files that might be zipped or gziped and completely lacking an installer, people just shut down.
If you have a great product like PDFCreator (which we use extensively in our organization), then it deserves an easy download page. It should not rely on sourceforge. (It might be nice too if they'd merge the dang 0.8 patch file already!) Just look at the file list for this simple application! I've personally downloaded and sent this application to people because they didn't understand what to download... PDFCreator-0_8_0_AFPLGhostscript.exe, PDFCreator_0_8_0_GNUGhostscript.exe, PDFCreator-Source_0_8_0.zip, Patch02-PDFCreator-0_8_0.exe, and that's just one revision - zero explanation to the user of what these files are. I've had people who are fairly compentent with a computer ask me what they need to download. Pity. It's a great project that has saved us thousands of dollars in Acrobat licenses (which we only needed for the stupid distiller).
I agree with you for the most part, but more from the corporate side of things. For personal use switching to Linux isn't all that hard, but when you've got some big expensive software packages in your company that are Windows-only, it makes the switch *very* difficult. It's a lot more than just word processing for most organizations. And even for simple tasks like word processing, Open Offices's MS Word import/export filters aren't perfect, making document exchange between companies difficult at times, because MS Office is just so prominent. I wish it wasn't like this really. I switched from Office to OO on my personal machines quite a while ago and am perfectly happy.
Anyhow, at home I have two Linux machines (Gentoo + Gnome & Gentoo + Flux), one Windows XP machine, and one Mac OSX machine. My Windows machine gets the most use because it's just what I'm most used to, and my experience over the past four years with Linux on the desktop hasn't given me enough reason to say that it's a *better* environment (forgetting about what's under the hood, that is), aside from not having to be as concerned about malware/viruses.
The only thing I really don't like about modern-day Windows these days is that it's from Microsoft. Especially after the BSA crap and their bogus "software assurance" licensing bullshit, I won't even accept calls from Microsoft salespeople or market researchers at work anymore.
I really have to disagree with you. You see, I've had to scrub my system after uninstalling programs because these correctly written installers couldn't clean up after themselves. I've also found any number of programs which require me to have a company name on my home machine. I'm sorry, but it's home. I don't have a business. But, without that having something in it, I can't finish installing the program.
Yeah, some uninstallers aren't very nice. But at least there WAS an installer. It's a fundamental difference in mindset between developers for Linux and Windows, probably due mostly to too much variance between distributions.
Sorry you had to type in a fake company name for some program.
Would you really like to compare the different packaging methods on Linux with the different packaging methods on Windows? MSI, Installshield (and about 4 different subtypes), NSIS, InnoSetup, Wise, a few other big ones, and let's not forget those who say that all of those are broken and so therefore roll their own. And with each succeeding version of Windows, the "official" procedure changes slightly. Why is it Joe Schmo's problem to deal with the ever changing Windows target?
It's Joe Schmo's problem because he is the developer!!!!! The choice of packaging is pretty much transparent to the user. The USER is the most important person, not the developer. And the fact that the developer has so many *free* tools for packaging his software for Windows he shouldn't be left with much to complain about either. BTW, the Windows target can change all it wants and the same old system variables will still point to it.
If there was just a tiny bit of standardization amongst linux distributions, software installation could be pretty easy. As it is, I don't blame developers for not wanting to create packages for every flavor.
What the hell? You put an audio CD into XP and you're going to be presented with some pretty obvious choices, one of which is "copy music to computer." Pretty tough I admit. If all else fails you might have to run WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER which is the only player bundled with Windows and includes a big giant button labeled "Rip". And no matter how you do it, track names will be determined automatically without having to know the CDDB server's address, and all the files go into a really hard to find folder called "My Music".
My linux distribution/desktop doesn't have a Convert CD to MP3 button, BTW.
I agree, especially since Windows 2000. Can't remember the last time I had a BSOD on a Windows machine that wasn't related to actual hardware failure. I also can't remember the last time that one of my users called and said "I tried to reboot the machine and that didn't help", because rebooting workstations is such an oncommon fix compared to the old 9x days when it was the fix for everything.
I will say that it is more difficult to gauge just how long Win2k/2k3 Server could stay up compared to a linux server on the same hardware since patching the Windows machine means rebooting much more frequently. But I'm rarely in a situation where I'm cursing windows itself....perhaps on the rare occasion when a service goes out of control and I'm unable to forceably push the machine back into a stable state, which is MUCH more possible on Linux.
Hmmm, am I the only one who doesn't interpret Apple using an Intel *processor* as "now OSX will run on a Pentium machine" or "now Windows will run on my Mac"???
I suppose that is one possibility, but I have a hard time believing that the Macs of the future will just be PCs running a Mac OS. I would imagine that while the potential for compatibility will certainly increase, the new Intel design will not be directly x86 compatible, but highly customized specifically for Apple. That, or substantial crippling will be intentionally implemented.
I think his point is probably: why make a stripped down version of XP to run on old hardware when Windows 2000 is still a very usable operating system. It depends on what is meant by "old" hardware though, I suppose. The article did mention Windows 95 so these machines could be pretty ancient.
One thing that concerns me about this idea is that using a server for processing doesn't seem like it would be very cost effective considering the power requirements of modern software. I wonder what kinds of software this OS is intended to run?
I think that perhaps a better solution would be for MS to just offer support contracts for older operating systems. That way people could continue using these "ancient" systems that are apparently still working properly, and still get security updates, etc. But if this is just a case of "we want to take advantage of new software and peripherals but we don't want to buy new computers", then these organizations are screwing themselves. There's nothing worse than dumping more and more money into an aging system in hopes of saving money.
For me it's the shipping that keeps me from being impulsive online. I can't just buy something and have it in my hands instantly...I have to wait a few days to actually see it, and I know that during this time I'm pretty likely that the thrill could wear off, so I resist pretty easily. At the store it's completely different... being impulsive means instant gratification.
Price comparison and research is definately a factor as well, but it can also be a real pain. I know there have been many times where I've spent several hours searching around just to save a couple bucks. Or I'll waste hours reading contradicting reviews. Sometimes by the time I've found the right product I just don't give a rip anymore:)
Haha. The *only* hijacked machine I've ever had was a RH7 system that got rooted via an SSH bug. Yep, my firewall was weak. Yep, I wasn't keeping it up to date.
Point is that it's simply not smart to think that a non-windows system is safe just because it's non-windows. Plenty of distros still come with unnecessary services wide open to the world, so your average user will still get into all sorts of trouble.
WTF? What about sites that don't require login but use cookies to store preferences...like, say, GOOGLE.
If I had to turn "safe search" off every damn time I used google I'd be pretty irritated. What does this have to do with "lazy programming"?
I personally haven't given a crap about cookies since they were first misunderstood ten years ago. I just don't have the time or patience to try to hide from these garbage companies keeping track of which garbage affiliate sites I happen to visit.
As for "naugty" cookies from the, ahem, questionable sites I may visit from time to time - well, spybot and such programs sweep most of em out and I'm comfortable with that. I am aware though that browsing is a bit of a two way street, and I'm not terribly concerned about anonimity when I'm intentionally browsing public websites.
Browser flaws that lead to hijacking and things of such nature are completely beside the point. Security flaws pop up everywhere, even in such basic tasks as image rendering. They're annoying and need to be fixed promptly, but they don't negate the technology.
Re:without reading the article/review...
on
Firefox Hacks
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· Score: 1
I've been thinking about this somewhere in the back of my mind for a while now....
Has anyone ever used Kazaa-type P2P networks for anything legal? Honestly now. I know I haven't (and yeah, I've done my share of downloading illegal MP3s). P2P networks of this type would be a really poor way to distribute anything that you wanted the public to have free access to. If I was looking for something that I knew was going to be 'free', I'd look on the web for it. Right? It's easier, usually faster, and safer.
Now torrents on the other hand make a lot of sense and are starting to be used more and more to distribute legal content....and it works great!
The problem is, can the suits in the goverment distinguish between the two? Any time there is talk about banning or taxing network software it really makes my skin crawl.
Distributing copyright content without permission is already illegal. That should be enough to go on. Passing anti-P2P legislation could either hinder technology or turn into a big joke, like bongs "for tobacco use only."
But then again...programs like Kazaa are making somebody money, and are used almost exclusively to distribute content illegally. Tough call.
Agreed. I've been through several packages and while there are benefits to them all, nothing even comes close to being as complete as Photoshop. The user community is amazing as well.
One gripe I have though is the weak integration with other programs in the suite, like Illustrator. I'd like to see the vector art power of illustrator added to Photoshop...or at the very least I'd like consistant results/benefits when importing/exporting between the two. Consistant results from the spot color palettes would be kinda nice too.
Actually, as a suite CS is very frustrating. Each individual program is nice, but they don't jive well enough together. And don't get me started on the disaster that is Version Cue....good idea, poor implementation.
So I guess the point is that if you're only using one Adobe program extensively, they're not so bad. I'd like to see a lot more work done towards a more unified suite of applications though. I believe this is more important than new versions of these programs which only add a few features for a whole lot of money.
As an aside, I've often wondered what would happen if Adobe just started selling Photoshop (the full version) for, say, $100. Considering that it's probably one of the most pirated pieces of software out there, I wonder if lowering the price would increase sales enough to make up for the loss? I can see a high price on a low-demand specialized piece of software, which is what Photoshop perhaps was at one time - but now it's almost a household standard. Just a thought. I use the CS suite at work and it's on the up & up....I'm not advocating piracy.
Mac has come down in price, but they're still much more expensive. At least $500 more for the bottom of the line G5. Their options are pretty poor too as you go up the G5 model line...a $2500 machine with a Geforce FX 5200 video card? Are there any games for mac yet?:)
I don't think that Macs are necessarily "overpriced" though. The quality of the product overall is certainly worlds above any big box PC.
At the very end the author does admit to just throwing a lot of this out for discussion, and that's fine.
But really, "Advanced Systems Building Guide?" Much of the advice boiled down to "you should build a good system" without going into any detail. Then there's too much focus on issues that are really difficult to quantify, the impact of heat on a system and the real-world benefit of a separate partition for the swap file. While we're all aware of these issues and they are indeed real issues, I find them to be considerably overrated for regular PC building.
I am glad that the author didn't go into a bunch of ill-advised optimization hacks. I frequently encounter people who screw up their machines by following some registry hacking guide for windows performance. Personally I won't do anything that doesn't result in a measureable impact in performance (in the right direction!). "Oh gee, you need to get into the registry and set SuckyPerformance to 0."
Anyhow, in regards to some previous comments...I too am a Maxtor user. However, I now use Seagate primarily. It seems that hard drive quality per brand really just depends on the year...except when it comes to WD which seem to fail consistantly.:) (sorry, I know that'll tweak some people)
Heh. In my experience, much of the complaining and whining is from "hard nosers" who complain and whine about other people complaining and whining.
Rarely is life ever as simple as your "this is how it should be and everybody should shut up" attitude.
Kids cannot make decisions the same way that adults can. Asking a kid if he wants to learn would be as pointless as asking him what he wants for dinner. Besides, do YOU want to learn? Even stuff you don't really feel like learning about? That's what school is for, man.
I don't think that particular issue would be part of any web standard. How the browser handles file downloads and interacts with the operating system is up to the browser.
I've actually had to work on the specific problem of making IE download files instead of open them, and found that it certainly is possible, just tricky. It's just as tricky to get other browsers to handle files the way IE does when you want them to, but it's also possible.
Regardless, blaming Microsoft because your application doesn't work in IE is just as lame as blaming Mozilla because I can't pay my cable or cell phone bill with Firefox.
Life is full of "how things should work vs. how things do work." Being successful requires that you make things work. Crying about how things should work to justify your widget that doesn't work isn't going to get you very far.
I don't like IE either. I wish it would die. I've switched dozens of people to Firefox. When I develop I test on Firefox first, but the second browser I try is IE. Not testing on multiple browsers is a practice that should have died off in the early nineties.
There are thousands of documented cases a year where a firearm saves lives and prevents crime.
Thousands? Where can one find such documents?
I ask this because any time a child gets ahold of a gun it is is a parenting failure.
I don't know if you have kids or not, but every parent fails at something just about every day. That's because we're still human beings, believe it or not.
I'd like to know where you got this screwed up notion that police are here to defend us?
The police motto: "To Protect and Serve"
Protect - 1. To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard. See Synonyms at defend.
I only mentioned being upset with AMD to counter the excessive amount of anti-Intel rhetoric and this pro-AMD fanaticism. Point being that there is bullshit on both sides of the fence, and both companies exist for the only reason that any for-profit corporation exists: to get you to give them your money.
Call me a fanboy if you want, but my main machine is an XP2800 on an Asus nForce2 board. If I were to upgrade right now, I'd go Athlon 64. Six months from now? Who knows.
Prices ala Pricewatch:
P4 2.6Ghz/400: $128
Athlon XP 2600: $95
Difference: $33
P4 2.8Ghz/400: $128
Athlon XP 2800: $106
Difference: $22
P4 3.0Ghz/800: $165
Athlon 64 3000: $135
Difference $30
P4 3.4Ghz/800: $248
Athlon 64 3400: $192
Difference: $56
P4 3.6Ghz: $368
Athlon 64 3700: $319
Difference: $49
Celeron 2.8Ghz: $89
Sempron 2800: $86
Difference: $3
Celeron: 2.6Ghz: $76
Sempron 2600: $74
Difference: $2
So perhaps things just suck in New Zealand.
And yes, despite the fact that I am not rich, I do find that 10% of the CPU price is a minimal difference when building a machine. If I spend $600 building a totally new system, then the 20-60 dollar difference in various CPU prices is simply "a" factor, not "the" factor.
Well done, self-righteous fanboy-caller.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, if GTA is a "cop killing training simulator", then what does that say about the compentency of our police force?
I remember a spot in GTA 3 where I could hide under an overpass and the cops would all jump off the top to their deaths...this would continue indefinately and I found it rather amusing. And now that I know that this is what would happen in real life, I'm going on a crime spree rampage during which I'll wipe out the town's entire police force by crouching near an overpass.
MS Office isn't slipping at all. Maybe a little bit here and a little bit there, but it's still the big dog by a long shot.
The reason they try to "make" you use it is not because it sucks (although that could be argued), it's because it costs over $400 a license and new, virtually featureless versions come out every two years or less. It's a major cash cow and they're going to milk it for all its worth.
Personally I don't feel that any "standard" software package should cost half of what you paid for your computer. Software just goes obsolete too quickly. I often wonder what would happen if some of the big application packages were priced so that individuals could easily buy them (e.g. sub $100). Certainly they would sell considerably more units at first, but would it make up the difference? This is why I'm not a businessman.
Agreed! This is where SO many great opensource applications totally miss the boat when it comes to gaining "average" Windows users. As soon as your instructions get past 2 or 3 steps you can see their eyes start to glaze over...it just stops registering. Then when you start introducing eight zillion files that might be zipped or gziped and completely lacking an installer, people just shut down.
If you have a great product like PDFCreator (which we use extensively in our organization), then it deserves an easy download page. It should not rely on sourceforge. (It might be nice too if they'd merge the dang 0.8 patch file already!) Just look at the file list for this simple application! I've personally downloaded and sent this application to people because they didn't understand what to download... PDFCreator-0_8_0_AFPLGhostscript.exe, PDFCreator_0_8_0_GNUGhostscript.exe, PDFCreator-Source_0_8_0.zip, Patch02-PDFCreator-0_8_0.exe, and that's just one revision - zero explanation to the user of what these files are. I've had people who are fairly compentent with a computer ask me what they need to download. Pity. It's a great project that has saved us thousands of dollars in Acrobat licenses (which we only needed for the stupid distiller).
I agree with you for the most part, but more from the corporate side of things. For personal use switching to Linux isn't all that hard, but when you've got some big expensive software packages in your company that are Windows-only, it makes the switch *very* difficult. It's a lot more than just word processing for most organizations. And even for simple tasks like word processing, Open Offices's MS Word import/export filters aren't perfect, making document exchange between companies difficult at times, because MS Office is just so prominent. I wish it wasn't like this really. I switched from Office to OO on my personal machines quite a while ago and am perfectly happy.
Anyhow, at home I have two Linux machines (Gentoo + Gnome & Gentoo + Flux), one Windows XP machine, and one Mac OSX machine. My Windows machine gets the most use because it's just what I'm most used to, and my experience over the past four years with Linux on the desktop hasn't given me enough reason to say that it's a *better* environment (forgetting about what's under the hood, that is), aside from not having to be as concerned about malware/viruses.
The only thing I really don't like about modern-day Windows these days is that it's from Microsoft. Especially after the BSA crap and their bogus "software assurance" licensing bullshit, I won't even accept calls from Microsoft salespeople or market researchers at work anymore.
I really have to disagree with you. You see, I've had to scrub my system after uninstalling programs because these correctly written installers couldn't clean up after themselves. I've also found any number of programs which require me to have a company name on my home machine. I'm sorry, but it's home. I don't have a business. But, without that having something in it, I can't finish installing the program.
Yeah, some uninstallers aren't very nice. But at least there WAS an installer. It's a fundamental difference in mindset between developers for Linux and Windows, probably due mostly to too much variance between distributions.
Sorry you had to type in a fake company name for some program.
Would you really like to compare the different packaging methods on Linux with the different packaging methods on Windows? MSI, Installshield (and about 4 different subtypes), NSIS, InnoSetup, Wise, a few other big ones, and let's not forget those who say that all of those are broken and so therefore roll their own. And with each succeeding version of Windows, the "official" procedure changes slightly. Why is it Joe Schmo's problem to deal with the ever changing Windows target?
It's Joe Schmo's problem because he is the developer!!!!! The choice of packaging is pretty much transparent to the user. The USER is the most important person, not the developer. And the fact that the developer has so many *free* tools for packaging his software for Windows he shouldn't be left with much to complain about either. BTW, the Windows target can change all it wants and the same old system variables will still point to it.
If there was just a tiny bit of standardization amongst linux distributions, software installation could be pretty easy. As it is, I don't blame developers for not wanting to create packages for every flavor.
What the hell? You put an audio CD into XP and you're going to be presented with some pretty obvious choices, one of which is "copy music to computer." Pretty tough I admit. If all else fails you might have to run WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER which is the only player bundled with Windows and includes a big giant button labeled "Rip". And no matter how you do it, track names will be determined automatically without having to know the CDDB server's address, and all the files go into a really hard to find folder called "My Music".
My linux distribution/desktop doesn't have a Convert CD to MP3 button, BTW.
I agree, especially since Windows 2000. Can't remember the last time I had a BSOD on a Windows machine that wasn't related to actual hardware failure. I also can't remember the last time that one of my users called and said "I tried to reboot the machine and that didn't help", because rebooting workstations is such an oncommon fix compared to the old 9x days when it was the fix for everything.
I will say that it is more difficult to gauge just how long Win2k/2k3 Server could stay up compared to a linux server on the same hardware since patching the Windows machine means rebooting much more frequently. But I'm rarely in a situation where I'm cursing windows itself....perhaps on the rare occasion when a service goes out of control and I'm unable to forceably push the machine back into a stable state, which is MUCH more possible on Linux.
Hmmm, am I the only one who doesn't interpret Apple using an Intel *processor* as "now OSX will run on a Pentium machine" or "now Windows will run on my Mac"???
I suppose that is one possibility, but I have a hard time believing that the Macs of the future will just be PCs running a Mac OS. I would imagine that while the potential for compatibility will certainly increase, the new Intel design will not be directly x86 compatible, but highly customized specifically for Apple. That, or substantial crippling will be intentionally implemented.
I think his point is probably: why make a stripped down version of XP to run on old hardware when Windows 2000 is still a very usable operating system. It depends on what is meant by "old" hardware though, I suppose. The article did mention Windows 95 so these machines could be pretty ancient.
One thing that concerns me about this idea is that using a server for processing doesn't seem like it would be very cost effective considering the power requirements of modern software. I wonder what kinds of software this OS is intended to run?
I think that perhaps a better solution would be for MS to just offer support contracts for older operating systems. That way people could continue using these "ancient" systems that are apparently still working properly, and still get security updates, etc. But if this is just a case of "we want to take advantage of new software and peripherals but we don't want to buy new computers", then these organizations are screwing themselves. There's nothing worse than dumping more and more money into an aging system in hopes of saving money.
For me it's the shipping that keeps me from being impulsive online. I can't just buy something and have it in my hands instantly...I have to wait a few days to actually see it, and I know that during this time I'm pretty likely that the thrill could wear off, so I resist pretty easily. At the store it's completely different... being impulsive means instant gratification.
:)
Price comparison and research is definately a factor as well, but it can also be a real pain. I know there have been many times where I've spent several hours searching around just to save a couple bucks. Or I'll waste hours reading contradicting reviews. Sometimes by the time I've found the right product I just don't give a rip anymore
Haha. The *only* hijacked machine I've ever had was a RH7 system that got rooted via an SSH bug. Yep, my firewall was weak. Yep, I wasn't keeping it up to date.
Point is that it's simply not smart to think that a non-windows system is safe just because it's non-windows. Plenty of distros still come with unnecessary services wide open to the world, so your average user will still get into all sorts of trouble.
It's a cookie.
WTF? What about sites that don't require login but use cookies to store preferences...like, say, GOOGLE.
If I had to turn "safe search" off every damn time I used google I'd be pretty irritated. What does this have to do with "lazy programming"?
I personally haven't given a crap about cookies since they were first misunderstood ten years ago. I just don't have the time or patience to try to hide from these garbage companies keeping track of which garbage affiliate sites I happen to visit.
As for "naugty" cookies from the, ahem, questionable sites I may visit from time to time - well, spybot and such programs sweep most of em out and I'm comfortable with that. I am aware though that browsing is a bit of a two way street, and I'm not terribly concerned about anonimity when I'm intentionally browsing public websites.
Browser flaws that lead to hijacking and things of such nature are completely beside the point. Security flaws pop up everywhere, even in such basic tasks as image rendering. They're annoying and need to be fixed promptly, but they don't negate the technology.
No, this is:
5 813#1285813
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=128
I've been thinking about this somewhere in the back of my mind for a while now....
Has anyone ever used Kazaa-type P2P networks for anything legal? Honestly now. I know I haven't (and yeah, I've done my share of downloading illegal MP3s). P2P networks of this type would be a really poor way to distribute anything that you wanted the public to have free access to. If I was looking for something that I knew was going to be 'free', I'd look on the web for it. Right? It's easier, usually faster, and safer.
Now torrents on the other hand make a lot of sense and are starting to be used more and more to distribute legal content....and it works great!
The problem is, can the suits in the goverment distinguish between the two? Any time there is talk about banning or taxing network software it really makes my skin crawl.
Distributing copyright content without permission is already illegal. That should be enough to go on. Passing anti-P2P legislation could either hinder technology or turn into a big joke, like bongs "for tobacco use only."
But then again...programs like Kazaa are making somebody money, and are used almost exclusively to distribute content illegally. Tough call.
Instead of another variation on the theme, how about just a show called "Star Trek." I'd watch that all day long.
Agreed. I've been through several packages and while there are benefits to them all, nothing even comes close to being as complete as Photoshop. The user community is amazing as well.
One gripe I have though is the weak integration with other programs in the suite, like Illustrator. I'd like to see the vector art power of illustrator added to Photoshop...or at the very least I'd like consistant results/benefits when importing/exporting between the two. Consistant results from the spot color palettes would be kinda nice too.
Actually, as a suite CS is very frustrating. Each individual program is nice, but they don't jive well enough together. And don't get me started on the disaster that is Version Cue....good idea, poor implementation.
So I guess the point is that if you're only using one Adobe program extensively, they're not so bad. I'd like to see a lot more work done towards a more unified suite of applications though. I believe this is more important than new versions of these programs which only add a few features for a whole lot of money.
As an aside, I've often wondered what would happen if Adobe just started selling Photoshop (the full version) for, say, $100. Considering that it's probably one of the most pirated pieces of software out there, I wonder if lowering the price would increase sales enough to make up for the loss? I can see a high price on a low-demand specialized piece of software, which is what Photoshop perhaps was at one time - but now it's almost a household standard. Just a thought. I use the CS suite at work and it's on the up & up....I'm not advocating piracy.
Mac has come down in price, but they're still much more expensive. At least $500 more for the bottom of the line G5. Their options are pretty poor too as you go up the G5 model line...a $2500 machine with a Geforce FX 5200 video card? Are there any games for mac yet? :)
I don't think that Macs are necessarily "overpriced" though. The quality of the product overall is certainly worlds above any big box PC.
What in the hell are you talking about? This place is so anti-microsoft that I'm almost embarassed to read it on windows.
Stop making things up.
Hmmm.
$why_you_are_wrong="this ?> is why";
works just fine here. PHP 4.3.10.
At the very end the author does admit to just throwing a lot of this out for discussion, and that's fine.
:) (sorry, I know that'll tweak some people)
But really, "Advanced Systems Building Guide?" Much of the advice boiled down to "you should build a good system" without going into any detail. Then there's too much focus on issues that are really difficult to quantify, the impact of heat on a system and the real-world benefit of a separate partition for the swap file. While we're all aware of these issues and they are indeed real issues, I find them to be considerably overrated for regular PC building.
I am glad that the author didn't go into a bunch of ill-advised optimization hacks. I frequently encounter people who screw up their machines by following some registry hacking guide for windows performance. Personally I won't do anything that doesn't result in a measureable impact in performance (in the right direction!). "Oh gee, you need to get into the registry and set SuckyPerformance to 0."
Anyhow, in regards to some previous comments...I too am a Maxtor user. However, I now use Seagate primarily. It seems that hard drive quality per brand really just depends on the year...except when it comes to WD which seem to fail consistantly.
Heh. In my experience, much of the complaining and whining is from "hard nosers" who complain and whine about other people complaining and whining.
Rarely is life ever as simple as your "this is how it should be and everybody should shut up" attitude.
Kids cannot make decisions the same way that adults can. Asking a kid if he wants to learn would be as pointless as asking him what he wants for dinner. Besides, do YOU want to learn? Even stuff you don't really feel like learning about? That's what school is for, man.
I don't think that particular issue would be part of any web standard. How the browser handles file downloads and interacts with the operating system is up to the browser.
I've actually had to work on the specific problem of making IE download files instead of open them, and found that it certainly is possible, just tricky. It's just as tricky to get other browsers to handle files the way IE does when you want them to, but it's also possible.
Regardless, blaming Microsoft because your application doesn't work in IE is just as lame as blaming Mozilla because I can't pay my cable or cell phone bill with Firefox.
Life is full of "how things should work vs. how things do work." Being successful requires that you make things work. Crying about how things should work to justify your widget that doesn't work isn't going to get you very far.
I don't like IE either. I wish it would die. I've switched dozens of people to Firefox. When I develop I test on Firefox first, but the second browser I try is IE. Not testing on multiple browsers is a practice that should have died off in the early nineties.
There are thousands of documented cases a year where a firearm saves lives and prevents crime.
Thousands? Where can one find such documents?
I ask this because any time a child gets ahold of a gun it is is a parenting failure.
I don't know if you have kids or not, but every parent fails at something just about every day. That's because we're still human beings, believe it or not.
I'd like to know where you got this screwed up notion that police are here to defend us?
The police motto: "To Protect and Serve"
Protect - 1. To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard. See Synonyms at defend.
I only mentioned being upset with AMD to counter the excessive amount of anti-Intel rhetoric and this pro-AMD fanaticism. Point being that there is bullshit on both sides of the fence, and both companies exist for the only reason that any for-profit corporation exists: to get you to give them your money. Call me a fanboy if you want, but my main machine is an XP2800 on an Asus nForce2 board. If I were to upgrade right now, I'd go Athlon 64. Six months from now? Who knows. Prices ala Pricewatch: P4 2.6Ghz/400: $128 Athlon XP 2600: $95 Difference: $33 P4 2.8Ghz/400: $128 Athlon XP 2800: $106 Difference: $22 P4 3.0Ghz/800: $165 Athlon 64 3000: $135 Difference $30 P4 3.4Ghz/800: $248 Athlon 64 3400: $192 Difference: $56 P4 3.6Ghz: $368 Athlon 64 3700: $319 Difference: $49 Celeron 2.8Ghz: $89 Sempron 2800: $86 Difference: $3 Celeron: 2.6Ghz: $76 Sempron 2600: $74 Difference: $2 So perhaps things just suck in New Zealand. And yes, despite the fact that I am not rich, I do find that 10% of the CPU price is a minimal difference when building a machine. If I spend $600 building a totally new system, then the 20-60 dollar difference in various CPU prices is simply "a" factor, not "the" factor. Well done, self-righteous fanboy-caller.