They doing basic surfing, FB and chat, that kind of stuff? They will LOVE this, it has accelerated Flash under Win 7, gives you mid 3s on the Win 7 exp index depending on the hard drive you use, and if you'll check most will take 8GB of DDR 3, there are a few limited to 4GB but even with 4GB its nice. I'd personally get the 8GB though as Win 7 is really good about using memory for caching so quickly ALL of their programs would be cached in memory so they just click and there it is.
I know of which I speak as I have the E350 in my netbook with 8GB, she loads all my programs into RAM so I click and there they are. I've dealt with Via chips in the past and they are just piss awful, compared to the Via this will fly and you can get the board and 4GB of RAM for around $100. Can't beat that for a new system.
Does yours have the PCI-E slot? If so you might want to look around for an add-on crypto card, I heard that if you look around you can get the cell based add-on card at a reasonable price and that would give it a serious kick in the pants when it comes to crypto.
I'd put them in the same range as the first gen Core2 at around 1.8GHz, which as another pointed out is right in the ballpark. You can't completely go by benches though as many are built using the Intel compiler which still rigs the tests. I can tell you that in day to day tasks i have been yanking late model HT enabled P4s and replacing them with Bobcats and the users love them, pages load fast, videos play smooth, even in HD, and the whole unit takes less power than the fans on the P4.
So if you are doing heavy number crunching, like DBs or other heavy lifting? This is not the chip for you, but then again you wouldn't be using a core duo for that either. If you are doing a home theater, or an office box or nettop? These chips work great for those tasks, low power with good performance. I like them enough I sold my 17 inch core duo laptop and bought an Asus EEE E350 netbook, its been 3 years and I don't regret the choice for a minute. After 3 years I still get nearly 4 hours on the battery, and that is playing videos or working on music tracks, just surfing I get about an another hour, and surfing and playing flash videos is nice and smooth, no complaints.
if you need just a basic workhorse and don't want to spend a lot of money? You can't go wrong. I'm getting ready to yank the Sempron board in my office box and replace it with a Bobcat, for the jobs I use that system for which is downloading drivers, looking up problems with customers PCs, and general goofing off? I'm looking forward to the performance boost while making a whisper quiet PC.
Then no offense but "Ur doing it wrong" because I have been able to upgrade every system i have built and extended its useful lifespan. For examples I stayed with LGA775 when it was obvious it was gonna have a long life, then I heard about Intel rigging the market so i switched to the AM sockets which turned out to have an even longer life than LGA775. The machine I'm typing on went from an Athlon dual to a Phenom II quad to now an AMD Hexacore, triple the power of the original chip, went from 2GB to 8GB of RAM, quadruple the memory, and from 400GB to 3TB in space, quintuple the space.
Its really not hard, simply look at a company's roadmap and choose wisely and you can extend their lives easily. But even barring that you are STILL able to take advantage of COTS, after all you are able to upgrade your memory from dozens of vendors which if Apple and Intel get their way will be a thing of the past as Intel is talking about soldering RAM to the board. Your PC came with 2GB and you need more? Tough shit, buy a new computer. We have ALREADY seen Intel pull this shit, the Intel Atom was a 32bit computer processor yet Intel made damned sure their chips couldn't take more than 2GB of RAM, why? To force you to buy more expensive chips silly! This is why I NEVER used Atom for low power office boxes or HTPCs, with AMD Bobcat I can put up to 8GB of RAM which with shared memory for video makes a hell of a buffer for HTPCs and makes videos smooth as butter.
Even if you don't build your own surely you can see the danger in black box computing, it will means millions of systems sent to the dump NOT because it can't cut it but because some corp no longer supports it so the software won't run and thanks to how nasty DMCA is you won't even be able to unlock it and reuse it yourself. For examples see how to this very day a site will get a DMCA if they dare host files that let you easily crack an Xbox-1, a system abandoned by MSFT half a decade ago.
This push to phones and tablets is NOT being done for YOUR benefit, if that were true they'd all had Mini-SD card slots and several would have mini slots for popping in more RAM, nope its all about the corps and pleasing Wall Street, if they can just abandon a system whenever they need higher profits (see WinPhone 7 not being able to run WinPhone 8 apps) it takes planned obsolescence to a whole new level as they won't even have to wait until the flimsy plastic breaks anymore, they can just pull the plug from corp HQ. And that is a truly scary thought.
Actually Adobe IS using the blessed three. Nowhere does the blessed three say you have to make money on every part of the chain and by selling support/services (more complex dev tools for writing content for the free readers) what Adobe is doing fits into the blessed three model just fine and has a history with the GPL. Take another company you mentioned MySQL, they sold a locked down version with feature requests for companies that didn't want to go GPL but wanted to use MySQL in their product, so they were selling that as a service, hence #1 of the blessed three.
Like any business rule the blessed three can cover a LOT of use cases, the only real hard and fast rule with the blessed three that is nearly impossible to avoid is the GPL software itself has almost not value, its the things that interact with the GPLed software that has value, the Android phone for instance, or the dev tools which are not GPLed, or the non GPL version you sell to companies. In all these cases its not the GPLed software that is bringing in the money, Adobe makes no money off the GPLed reader which is why I never understood why so many FOSSies hated Adobe, hell they even let Flash be forked into Gnash, think MPEG-0LA would let you fork H.264 into a free alternative? MySQL made their money off the non-GPL version, Sun sold services and tools.
In all these cases (and I would argue pretty much the entire ecosystem) the GPL software itself was NOT the value which is why a traditional company will flop because they see everything as assets and it just don't work that way. The reason why you pointed out, any attempts to monetize ends up with it being forked, the fork gains focus and the original becomes an ignored dead project, bringing its value back to $0. As I said there is NO REASON why you can't make money in GPL as long as you follow the blessed three, RH has become a billion dollar company by following the blessed three but even they know the value isn't the code itself, look at CentOS for proof of that.
Even though we rarely agree i have to give you credit is that is a GREAT example of what happens when a company that doesn't make their living using the GPL model tries to buy a GPL company, it ends up in a mess.
And I have taken shit over the years for pointing out that the GPL works best (and I would argue ONLY) with what I call the blessed three...what is wrong with that? Red Hat has made a billion dollar business out of the blessed three so it obviously works, it simply doesn't work with all kinds of software. for example I'd have a hard time seeing how you could make a profitable business out of desktops or video games using the blessed three model, which is probably why we have seen no serious competition from GPL software on those fronts. It simply doesn't fit into the methods of making money with GPLed software.
Personally i think in the long run this may turn out to be a good thing, companies that get bought for insane amounts of money usually end up getting turned into a mess by the buyer if they can't see a quick enough ROI and as companies like Red Hat have shown you have to be in it for the long haul with the GPL, you can't just flip companies for quick cash it just doesn't work that way. So maybe this will bring some sanity into the market and the only ones that will buy GPL companies will be those already making money using the GPL that will know how to treat the purchases right, not bring a mess of uncertainty like Oracle did with Sun.
Of course this is one more reason i don't like the "game console" way the industry is being pushed, with Intel talking about soldering boards to chips and companies pushing more "black box" computing because if it were not for bog standard yet powerful COTS parts things like Roadrunner would be either impossible or insanely expensive. Yet to hear the industry pundits tell it all we need is a tablet and an iPhone...sheesh. Give me a system I can upgrade any day of the week, the laptops and tablet are fine for service calls or as PMPs but they will always be more about style and battery life than performance.
But just to play Devil's Advocate here I'd say there is a downside in that no corp that doesn't expressly make their living using the GPL "Blessed Three" which is 1.-Selling Services/Support, 2.- Selling Hardware or 3.- The tin cup will touch a GPLed company with a 50 foot pole because this ruling as far as the corps will be concerned makes any and all code of that company public domain and thus worthless if you don't use the blessed three.
Now some may consider that a good thing, after all Red hat has been doing just fine for itself using the blessed three, but I think a lot of the asking price of companies like Sun was tied into the idea of taking a very popular but unprofitable company and finding a way to monetize it. Kinda similar to how many of the MMOs went from subscriptions to microtransactions and I think this ruling has made it quite clear that this approach simply won't work with a GPL company, like it or lump it you HAVE to use the blessed three with the GPL if you want to make any profits thanks to the redistribution clause.
Now I bet if one were to ask RMS about this he'd probably be in agreement and happy with this as its well known he is pretty anti-corporation but I think in the future when a company that is primarily GPL gets in trouble they are gonna find few bidders and the bids they do get VERY low for the size of the project. After all if there is no clear and obvious way to make a ROI why buy it in the first place?
If you have the Internet Hoss you are a good 90% of the way there. As I said there are plenty of old tech guys like me that are happy to steer folks in the right direction, hell advice is free. And you don't have to DIY, just grab a pre-built Systemmax and there ya go. And frankly the only reason i know the chip names is I like reading about chip tech, its just easier to say Bobcat than E300-E1300 or Thuban instead of 10xx T 6 core series.
But let us say for the sake of argument you were my customer and wanted an HTPC that would look snazzy and game. For a case I'd have you pick onefrom a couple of choices so you can choose something you thought looked purty. Now if you just wanted the casual stuff, more HT than game? Then here ya go, a dual core Bobcat (FYI Bobcat is similar to Atom but with slightly more powerful CPU and a MUCH more powerful GPU, perfect for media boxes and casual gaming) and it even comes with the cute case and the RAM. Of course if you were an actual customer I'd know the price instead of having to make rough guesses, but either oneof these would game nicely and I would tell you if you ONLY wanted to game the Athlon would probably make you VERY happy,my youngest is gaming on that chip as we speak, or if you want to be able to game AND transcode video or burn DVDs? Then the X6 naturally has more punch. With prices that low you can sell the case you don't need on Craigslist and save yourself even more money, I would usually give $20-$25 off the build if it came with a case they didn't want as I can always use nice cases.
And then it'd simply be a matter of picking a graphics card and slapping on the OS, neither one is hard. If you want cheap with good performance the HD4850 is dirt cheap and will do most games at med-high to high, if you don't mind spending a little more up front to save on your electric bill the HD7770 cards use 40% less power under load and the 77xx cards has the new "deep idle" where it will shut down the majority of the card when you are saying chatting or surfing which lowers the power to something like 16w, which for a gaming card is just crazy low.
But honestly any teenager that can read can build one of these, like I said they comes with pictures and a step by step how-to with the board and the case. Total build time if you aren't in a rush? About an hour and a half, two and a half if you've never done one and triple check everything. I've whipped off four in a day and i'm not speedy. Once you slap the parts in you just fire her up and stick in the OS disc, after that its all "clicky clicky" simple. Then install steam and get to gaming Hoss, if you got the parts at 4PM there is no reason why you couldn't be firing up a game before 8PM and again that is with you taking your time, you use something like Ninite to install the third party software and you can be gaming by 6:30 PM. And notice they not only have browser, AVs, and runtimes like Flash but the have Steam as well so you can just check the boxes to everything you want and it'll do all the work, couldn't be simpler.
Oh and one thing I forgot to address was your question on cheating? Punkbusters. Pretty much all the games that aren't cooked up in a garage uses it and it works quite well, if you try to cheat your ass will get the banhammer but quick. Honestly I haven't seen any obvious cheating in years, oh sure you'll get some that use behavior that many consider lame, just watch the Call Of Duty Circus to see some of the lame things like the "sniper spin" but that isn't actual cheating, that is just dumb game mechanics. I prefer to use masher revolvers in BL because while you can find guns with higher damage because of the way they designed critical hits if you are good at headshots the masher can be a monster.
Anyway as I said if you actually want one I'll be happy to point you in the right direction. Frankly if you are older than 12 and can follow picture directions YOU can build a Tiger kit, they literally come with pictures that hold your hand through every step of the way. If you want casual only? Bobcat. want more of the HT in the HTPC than gaming? The Liano and those of its kind with built in midrange GPUs can be useful for this while saving money, and if you want a monster, one that will last you for years with plenty of upgrade room down the line? get a hexacore, not only are the chips cheap but you can go up to an octocore later if you wish and most of the boards support 16GB-32GB of RAM, more than you will ever need for gaming.
To give you an idea how long you can go I've been gaming for 3+ years on the same $50 HD4850 card, I'll be changing it for an HD7770 when the 8 series comes out as they'll be around $70 then, my board can hold 16GB but since its DDR 2 I'll probably just stick with the 8GB its got now (not that I've found a game that can use its 8GB and need more yet) and maybe pick up an AM3+ board in a year or two to max out the OS at 16GB.
I'll admit I made a few boo boos when i built this one, I went with Win 7 Home because I was able to get it for $40, I should have spent the extra and got Pro but to be fair I didn't see any point in having more than 8GB of RAM and other than just to say you have it? Not really any point now, its just so cheap you might as well get the big sticks anyway. And I should have went with a DDR 3 board two years ago when i went from quad to hexa but again to be fair I was able to get a damn nice gamer board with Crossfire capability and lots of nifty extras for just $45 by sticking with DDR 2 and I already had the 8GB of RAM so I just didn't see a point in adding a good $100+ to the cost just to add more memory down the line. Hell I can still pick up 4GB DDR 2 sticks when I happen to trip over them and can put the max RAM the OS will take with the board I have now so its not really affecting me, its just something I would have done differently if I had to do it over because i could have gotten RAM even cheaper.
But frankly this Thuban just curbstomps any game I throw at it, in fact I'll often be playing a game WHILE burning a DVD or transcoding a video and since I keep the OS and the game files on separate drives it never slows down. Rather than go through all the bullshit of migration I'm just gonna add a cheap 32GB or 64GB SSD as a caching drive in a few months but even without it honestly I have more power than i know what to do with so I can easily see this PC still gaming in 2020 when Win 7 goes EOL. Considering that I paid less than $550 for a PC with 3TB of space, 8GB of RAM, dual burners including Lightscribe on the top one (I just love Lightscribe, it makes my DVDs and CDs just nicer to hand out), an HD4850, Win 7 Home and 10 USB ports? I really can't complain, everyone that sees it says "Man that is a VERY nice computer you have there" and it just runs like a champ, its just nice to have everything at my fingertips..ya know?
Exactly, thanks. I think too many geeks try to overthink anything with crypto, like you are dealing with a Bond villain when IRL we are talking about a beat cop. No offense but while I know several beat cops and while they could take me in hand to hand or target shooting breaking even simple crypto? Not so much.
So for what he is wanting to do, which was keep beat cops from just hitting the erase button so that they will actually have to destroy private property to get rid of it? You can get an E350 for just $69 shipped which gives you a dual core that idles at less than 5w and at load is only 16w, slap in a small case, 4Gb or 8GB of LDDR 3 RAM, and an SSD? You can have a system for less than $200 that will do everything he is wanting to do and can even be used later on for many other jobs. Hell I've been yanking P4 boards and replacing them with E350s in office boxes. works great and actually gives better performance for a lot less power.
Well the same could be said of the Soviets, there were times when internal politics of this or that Warsaw Pact country meant they wouldn't be at the head of the line when it came to passing out the good stuff.
But when you are trying to build something big out of a weapons system that wasn't built to do that? You do NOT use Monkey Models! If you haven't watched it check out failed tanks, the Asad Babil to see what happens when you try to build a first class system out of a substandard export. Most telling is what happened when Iraq was given the chance to rebuild not a single Asad Babil was spared from the scrap heap.
Find us? Really? There is at LEAST 1 PC shop i n every podunk town, usually 2 or 3 and I have YET to find one that won't do what we call a "Tiger build" aka throw together a Tiger kit. Just go to the website, pick the kit you want, and say "I want THAT kit with THIS card,how much" and there ya go. I charge $75 a build but I do ALL the work, I install all the patches and SPs, install all the programs, by the time I'm done its "flip switch and go". Some places charge more, some less, 10 minutes on the phone will find the one near you that will fit your bill. Also remember Tiger has their house brand Systemmax that is basically the same thing, they just sell pre-built Tiger kits.
As for finding a mom&pop shop? Yellow pages,ask around, some of us don't advertise since we have more work now than we want (those are usually the best guys, but ask around and you can find 'em) or hell just drive down the street. Like I said 10 minutes on the phone will tell you all you need to know, there are a few shops that only sell their own builds, i'd avoid them as I found those guys tend to be what I call "craigslist pickers" that buy junked systems off of CL and refurb, if I'm selling a refurb you KNOW its a refurb and the price is lower because of it. Do I sell online? Nope, got burnt by eBay. Frankly going DIY with online PC sales would require me to raise prices because of the insurance and shipping and I try to keep prices low, but its not like I'm a rare bird here, there are a billion guys that do kit builds out there, we really aren't hard to find in any town.
As for "too much choice"? Once you pick a shop ASK US and we are HAPPY to help, there is NOTHING I love more than someone who says "What do you think?" because I have spent damned near 25 years doing this and can steer them away from rookie mistakes. My biggest question is "What do you want it to do?" and you answer me that and I can point you in the right direction. Hell I've done the same for a good 10 plus guys here so if you want just shoot me an email saying what you want it to do and a rough budget and I can point you in the right direction. Like I said been doing it for years so I know what they can and can't do, its really not hard.
And as far as Smash bros, not into casual but if you are just go to the casual in Steam or type "Game like Smash bros for PC" and I'm sure there are a dozen. Its like tower defense or FPS, most genres will have dozens of imitators, many of them quite good, and for every format out there. I know that if you want the "fake guitar" style games which ironically I've been playing bass since I was 14 yet I suuuuccckkk at those things? Frets Of Fire supports loading your own songs and USB controllers and from what I understand there is a simple adapter that lets you use Guitar Hero controllers. I know that for more console like games my youngest just bought an adapter that lets him use his PS2 and Gamecube controllers, cost like $8, really not a big deal.
As for whether you need a Bobcat or a Hexacore that is beyond simple...do you REALLY like casual phone style games? Then Bobcat. Do you REALLY like your big sprawling first and third person games? Thuban. Again not a hard choice, one is more like an oversized cellphone, the other is a monster. If you aren't playing the monster games and will spend more time watching movies or chatting or playing FB games? Bobcat. I used to have the Athlon in between but frankly the price on the Hexacores has dropped so much in many cases it just doesn't make sense, you are saving MAYBE $40 and getting half the performance with an Athlon triple...why bother? The hexa turns off 3 cores when they are not needed so you get the lower power of the triple when you aren't using the cores and the extra boost when you are, easy choice.
Frankly you could drop me in a town I had never been to and inside of 30 minutes I could find you a kit builder, all it takes is a phone and asking a couple of questions. Do you do kit builds, if so what do you charge? Can you help me choose the parts? I
Yeah but read TFA again the guy wants ALL his email, and when I read all I generally take all to mean...well all, as the ones coming NOW and the ones coming THEN which means churn which means bad idea.
Again no choice here is gonna be really elegant or "push button and done" because its a messy job but given the reqs of TFA I'd say IMAP fits the bill closest with the least risks. Remember he wants the WHOLE THING searchable, which means new AND old have to be in the same place, so MBox would not be the safest move here, IMAP is the better choice.
Its not gonna be used in either of those markets so the point is moot. its been widely reported MSFT has been getting worse and worse with OEM pricing (gotta make Wall Street happy ya know) so in markets where the price is a big factor everyone will use Android. Don't forget Ballmer is so hard up to be Apple it hurts, if anything he is gonna push windows to be a "premium" brand, look at his pushing for ultrabooks and touchscreen laptops which nobody is buying.
Of course what we are seeing now is MSFT's worse nightmare, they are causing their desktop and laptop customers to either look at alternatives or stick with a soon to be 2 version behind OS they won't be seeing another cent from (shades of XP all over again) while the sales figures show that WinPhone and WinTab are non starters. With the dumb moves they have done like tying WinPhone to DirectX which as one game dev said adds a $50k porting cost to supporting the platform I don't see it getting better, MSFT can keep throwing money, pay devs to port the most popular apps but that takes time and in mobile what is hot today is lame tomorrow so time is a BIG factor.
I just don't see how they are gonna get out of the corner they are painting themselves in, I really don't. Its obvious they are betting the farm on Win 8 to give them a foot in the door but the numbers suck and it doesn't appear they have a plan B so what now? if anything the sneak peeks at Windows Blue are being met with more groans that cheers as its just more of the same, everybody is talking about Chrome laptops thanks to the Win 8 bomb, where do they go from here?
Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if she had freecell on from the second she started the system, I've noticed a lot of the secretaries will often have a game of some sort running in the background. Maybe their work is start/stop enough to justify it, hell if I was gonna find out as I have NO desire to hang out in places like county clerks and the DMV, but I noticed most of the systems from there had high times on the card games.
Hell maybe clerks just really really REALLY like their freecell, hell if i know, i'm just the guy folks call when stuff breaks. It would be an interesting study, how many hours of freecell are played in government offices VS private business, with it further broken down by function and dept...I wonder if I can get a grant?
Got a better idea? The guy has them in Lord knows how many programs splattered all over the place, he wants it all in one place and searchable and IMAP is good at that. I mean sure we would all prefer a "push button and its done" kinda deal but AFAIK no such thing exists that will let him store it locally. You could run it all into Gmail but some folks have privacy concerns and of course its not like Google hasn't lost stuff in the past, so given a complex situation like TFA I'd say IMAP is probably gonna be the least painful of the bunch.
Hell he's already on Linux, not like adding an email server role in Linux is hard, millions of Linux boxes do that role everyday. But if you got a better call Hoss I'd like to hear it, given the requirements I'd say IMAP would fit the bill closest with the least amount of hassles. But lets face it when you are dealing with a decade plus worth of data in different formats? Its never gonna be clean and easy, it just don't work that way.
First of all YOU get to choose what case you want, if you want an ultra slim case? get a shuttle, its YOUR choice, not one size fits all. I chose that system because as someone who actually BUILDS HTPCs I've found that most folks? Honestly like the new black cases, they usually come with silver or red accents and look quite spiffy. You can of course turn it on your side if that is what melts your butter, or there are several companies that make HTPC cases that look like everything from a VCR to a Mac Mini, again YOUR choice so if you don't like my taste in cases? Cases start at around $22 at geeks, personally I like this one as it looks really nice sitting straight or on its side, kinda like an Xbox.
Second...driver updates? Seriously? does ANYBODY do that anymore? this is like Linux users saying "Windows has daily BSODs!" because they haven't actually used a Windows machine since Win98. I'll tell you the same thing I tell my customers, if it ain't broke? DON'T FIX IT. Unless you are using some weird exotic hardware its really pointless, i haven't seen a non GPU update that gave so much as a single FPS in performance and Steam will now tell you "Hi, you have a graphics card update, would you like me to apply it?" and that is that, hell it doesn't even need a reboot anymore so you can just surf for a minute or two while it installs, so that is a non argument.
as for those "other reasons" it all basically boils down to used games which guess what? MSFT and Sony are killing with the new consoles! Aren't they just doubleplus smart? I know I've built 3 HTPCs in the past 2 months for folks that heard about the killing of used games and said "Well screw that". As for price? Actually...yes they ARE that cheap, in fact I know of which I speak because both of my boys game so I usually buy games 3 at a time. In fact the only problem we've had, if you want to call it a problem, is that during the sales they have 4 packs discounted so heavily (probably for exactly the reason you bring up) that its cheaper for me to buy the 4 pack when we only need 3, but I just give the fourth to one of the boys and let them gift it to one of their online friends, no biggie. During the Xmas sale I spent MAYBE $150 and we ended up with so many AAA titles that I honestly haven't even played a third of what we bought yet, oh the curse of having so many cheap AAA titles...its soooo hard LOL. And the MP is beyond simple, its just "Hey you wanna play?" and there ya go. I'm taking the weekend off thanks to getting a dose of strep and I just got done handing out a pile of loot in Borderlands to the boys, took less than 3 minutes for all 3 of us to be in game. I seem to have a knack for finding rare loot and they suck at it so I've maxxed my bank out and just pass out the good stuff i don't need to the boys. If you haven't tried it? Its really fun. I'm hoping BL2 will be on a Steam sale soon so I can pick up 3 copies so we can jump into together like we did with BL1.
Finally as for BPM and needing devs...why? You want the easiest way to drive around without a controller? BAM! You're welcome. If you have a wife or GF they will love the hell out of you for getting it, the keyboard is instantly familiar to those that do a lot of cell texting so they can just fly on it. After getting one one of my customers is getting ready to have me build him ANOTHER HTPC for his den because his wife put her little hands on that controller and that was it, she is tweeting and FB updating and just flies on the thing, she loves the hell out of it. Notice the trackball under your thumb, that plus the left and right triggers under your first and second finger mans that this and a wireless controller and its just the same as a console only better. After al
And THIS is why ACs need to be banned or at least heavily downmodded by default, as pretty much all AC is used for is flamebait or trying to stir up shit.
But if you can show me a single place where I said this shouldn't be used? You can't because that is not what i said, you are trying to twist my words to serve YOUR agenda. All I said is that caution should be used and security should be job #1, something that was NOT done with JavaScript and look at where we are now, nearly a million infected Android phones, who knows how many millions of infected PCs, infected servers, both windows and Linux, and what is the common attack vector? JavaScript, why?
Because nobody seriously thought about JavaScript security until after it had already become widely adopted so any attempts to fix the problems had to take into account all that already deployed JavaScript...that's a bad way to go about security, easier to fix things BEFORE its widely deployed than after, its just common sense. But you go back to flaming AC, meanwhile those with common sense will see what I'm saying is simply logical, this needs to be extensively tested and battle hardened BEFORE being baked into tens of millions of browsers worldwide.
But considering we are talking about Mozilla, a company that has had SIX YEARS to incorporate low rights mode into their browser, a move which would benefit Linux users as well as Windows users because low rights mode would work just as well with SELinux as it does with Windows, yet they STILL haven't added it? I seriously doubt security is very high on their "to do" list.
Well that is true with planes (and Germans..well lets just say they have always had a thing for tanks and leave it at that) but last I checked pretty much every navy in NATO was using the Burke and/or the Perry class destroyers. also most of their missile systems are ours, again with a few exceptions here and there, so I think the argument that we gave NATO "monkey models" like the Soviets did with non Warsaw Pact countries is easily proven false.
That is not to say that before Reagan we didn't have "monkey models" as we did, the F-5 Freedom Fighter (which was actually a pretty nice plane if a little behind the curve, its now the basis for the new Iranian fighter) is one example I can think of, we also sold our previous gen systems to those we thought might be iffy, see how many countries we were willing to sell the Cobra to and compare that to the ones who were able to buy Apache gunships.
I would love to see a list sometime of militaries that use our old tech and what old tech they use as i bet it would be interesting, like how Brazil bought an old French carrier and stocked it with our A4s which had changed hands several times and ended up in Kuwait by the time they bought them, it just amazes me how many decades some of this stuff stays in service.
Bingo! I've been called in to fix and upgrade computers for the cops in my area and it always amazed me how much time they just waste doing dumb shit on the PC, but hell I've found that is true of pretty much any government org. There is one secretary at the county clerks office I honestly am hoping will break soon since she hasn't been in in a year and I'm curious to see what amount of time she has wasted in Freecell to date, last time I worked on her maybe 3 year old PC she had something like 10,000 hours in Freecell, just nuts.
But this isn't something new, cops like to say they "work online" as it sounds cooler and they don't have to leave the AC and the donuts. I ran a chat board for PC problems in the 90s when that whole "to catch a predator" shit became popular and I don't know how many times I had to threaten to file harassment charges because of cops talking dirty on the board. I finally asked a few of them "WTF makes you think a board with such stimulating topics like "No sound in Win95" and "Can't find a printer driver WinNT" is gonna be the place to pretend to be jailbait?" and they came right out and said pretty much all the social boards were already being trolled by cops, so they were just picking random places that weren't already being trolled.
So even back then you had cops doing shit that was completely fucking pointless, but they could tell their boss "hey we are working online" and get paid to sit on their asses. This is what happens when you have zero oversight as I'm sure the people of Boston would rather have safer streets and less muggings and rapes but then they'd have to get up, go to the car, actually drive around...that is like work folks, can't have that.
Actually I'd say it was the west that started the whole thing. Not on purpose mind you but the outcome was the same.
First the Treaty of Versailles was pretty much designed to humiliate Germany and the constant bleeding of its coffers in reparations made sure the country wouldn't become stable until they had a leader that would give the middle finger to the treaty, Second look at what happened in every European war before that...what happened? The two sides would drag on and on for awhile until the war got too costly for both and some sort of truce would be hammered out. Neither side would get all that they wanted but everybody would be allowed to at least keep a little dignity and not go home looking like a complete failure. the USA suddenly jumping in with fresh troops tipped the balance and made sure the western alliance would win, thus setting in motion the punishment that came with the Treaty of Versailles which again brings us right back to Hitler and the NSDAP.
Basically we screwed Germany so damned hard that we honestly should have expected something nasty, frankly it would have been better just to split the country up outright than to slowly bleed it for 20 years, all that did was insure chaos and instability.That is why I think that the USA also deserves credit for what they did after WWII, we learned from our mistakes and with the Marshall plan we let the people see they weren't gonna be punished for their leaders mistakes. Just compare Germany and their economy in the 60s to their economy in the 30s to see how smart a move that was, they went from being a smoking crater to a modern economy in record time and with a healthy economy and government came stability.
You are serious? You don't know about Chamberlain and "peace in our time", seriously?
Basically France and England rolled over and played dead for Germany, after the war some of Hitler's closest aids even said if so much as a single soldier would have opposed them in 38 that Hitler would have recalled the troops, it was France and England who practically waved a white flag in front of Hitler that got the bloody ball rolling.
You really only have to look at Hitler's forces in 38 to see he wasn't ready for a fight, most of his tanks were panzer 1s which were built as training units NOT a serious weapon, in fact the first models only had a machine gun for an offensive weapon and armor thin enough a 50cal would have shredded them, but nobody stood up, after WWI neither the British nor the French had much fight left in them until it was too late and bombs were falling.
Don't know where you get your info from but NATO got the good stuff just like the Warsaw Pact got the good Soviet gear. Hell the same destroyers we use as the backbone of the fleet are in service with most of NATO, as is the same planes, you could mix and match parts from a German F-Teen series and an American one, no difference.
They marked you funny but frankly its true, for those that didn't read about it we recovered their first stage from the ocean after their "sat" launch and found...its an uprated Scud missile. For those that I'm sure will say "So what?" you might want to look up "Stalin's Organs" which was the rocket artillery the Soviets used in WWII, the Scud was just a slightly more modern take on that. Imagine taking a Vietnam era Hellfire rocket and saying "We'll just build a really really REALLY big one of these and fly to the moon!"...yeah, not really made for that chief, gonna blow up in your face more often than not. This is why we have a hard time to this day saying how effective the Patriot battery was against the Scud because Saddam did the same trick and ended up with a rocket so fragile and explosion prone that they often ended up in pieces whether we shot anything at it or not, neither the fuel nor the engines were ever made to do any kind of range, it was just a cheaper weapon to make than the traditional artillery cannon which is why the Soviets favored them.
Finally remember that the Soviets weren't no dummies,unlike the USA in the 80s that would hand out its best tech to anybody that would say "we hate commies" the Soviets were smart enough to keep lower quality designs for export, designs its military derided as "monkey models" for the M placed at the end of the model, T72-M for example. So not only are they trying to build an ICBM out of something built for at best short range inaccurate barrages, but on top of that they are doing it with grossly inferior models to start with as the Soviets kept the best gear for the Warsaw Pact and everybody else got M models.
Sooo...yeah, maybe if they just drove the bomb over the giant leaking sieve of a border that nobody will fix because its a political hot potato? Then they might do something but with their "ICBM" tech I'd be more worried about the thing getting a couple hundred feet and turning into a fireball, possibly setting off the nuke (after all we have NO clue how safe their weapons are designed) and even if it doesn't spreading radiation all over Korea and possibly China. I have a feeling this is just some more bullshit posturing because their last aid packages have run out and they hope if they rattle the saber followed by the tin cup they'll get a little extra scratch. Personally I'm shocked China has put up with them for this long, maybe when the last of the old guard are dead they'll pull the plug and that will be that.
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They doing basic surfing, FB and chat, that kind of stuff? They will LOVE this, it has accelerated Flash under Win 7, gives you mid 3s on the Win 7 exp index depending on the hard drive you use, and if you'll check most will take 8GB of DDR 3, there are a few limited to 4GB but even with 4GB its nice. I'd personally get the 8GB though as Win 7 is really good about using memory for caching so quickly ALL of their programs would be cached in memory so they just click and there it is.
I know of which I speak as I have the E350 in my netbook with 8GB, she loads all my programs into RAM so I click and there they are. I've dealt with Via chips in the past and they are just piss awful, compared to the Via this will fly and you can get the board and 4GB of RAM for around $100. Can't beat that for a new system.
Does yours have the PCI-E slot? If so you might want to look around for an add-on crypto card, I heard that if you look around you can get the cell based add-on card at a reasonable price and that would give it a serious kick in the pants when it comes to crypto.
I'd put them in the same range as the first gen Core2 at around 1.8GHz, which as another pointed out is right in the ballpark. You can't completely go by benches though as many are built using the Intel compiler which still rigs the tests. I can tell you that in day to day tasks i have been yanking late model HT enabled P4s and replacing them with Bobcats and the users love them, pages load fast, videos play smooth, even in HD, and the whole unit takes less power than the fans on the P4.
So if you are doing heavy number crunching, like DBs or other heavy lifting? This is not the chip for you, but then again you wouldn't be using a core duo for that either. If you are doing a home theater, or an office box or nettop? These chips work great for those tasks, low power with good performance. I like them enough I sold my 17 inch core duo laptop and bought an Asus EEE E350 netbook, its been 3 years and I don't regret the choice for a minute. After 3 years I still get nearly 4 hours on the battery, and that is playing videos or working on music tracks, just surfing I get about an another hour, and surfing and playing flash videos is nice and smooth, no complaints.
if you need just a basic workhorse and don't want to spend a lot of money? You can't go wrong. I'm getting ready to yank the Sempron board in my office box and replace it with a Bobcat, for the jobs I use that system for which is downloading drivers, looking up problems with customers PCs, and general goofing off? I'm looking forward to the performance boost while making a whisper quiet PC.
Then no offense but "Ur doing it wrong" because I have been able to upgrade every system i have built and extended its useful lifespan. For examples I stayed with LGA775 when it was obvious it was gonna have a long life, then I heard about Intel rigging the market so i switched to the AM sockets which turned out to have an even longer life than LGA775. The machine I'm typing on went from an Athlon dual to a Phenom II quad to now an AMD Hexacore, triple the power of the original chip, went from 2GB to 8GB of RAM, quadruple the memory, and from 400GB to 3TB in space, quintuple the space.
Its really not hard, simply look at a company's roadmap and choose wisely and you can extend their lives easily. But even barring that you are STILL able to take advantage of COTS, after all you are able to upgrade your memory from dozens of vendors which if Apple and Intel get their way will be a thing of the past as Intel is talking about soldering RAM to the board. Your PC came with 2GB and you need more? Tough shit, buy a new computer. We have ALREADY seen Intel pull this shit, the Intel Atom was a 32bit computer processor yet Intel made damned sure their chips couldn't take more than 2GB of RAM, why? To force you to buy more expensive chips silly! This is why I NEVER used Atom for low power office boxes or HTPCs, with AMD Bobcat I can put up to 8GB of RAM which with shared memory for video makes a hell of a buffer for HTPCs and makes videos smooth as butter.
Even if you don't build your own surely you can see the danger in black box computing, it will means millions of systems sent to the dump NOT because it can't cut it but because some corp no longer supports it so the software won't run and thanks to how nasty DMCA is you won't even be able to unlock it and reuse it yourself. For examples see how to this very day a site will get a DMCA if they dare host files that let you easily crack an Xbox-1, a system abandoned by MSFT half a decade ago.
This push to phones and tablets is NOT being done for YOUR benefit, if that were true they'd all had Mini-SD card slots and several would have mini slots for popping in more RAM, nope its all about the corps and pleasing Wall Street, if they can just abandon a system whenever they need higher profits (see WinPhone 7 not being able to run WinPhone 8 apps) it takes planned obsolescence to a whole new level as they won't even have to wait until the flimsy plastic breaks anymore, they can just pull the plug from corp HQ. And that is a truly scary thought.
Actually Adobe IS using the blessed three. Nowhere does the blessed three say you have to make money on every part of the chain and by selling support/services (more complex dev tools for writing content for the free readers) what Adobe is doing fits into the blessed three model just fine and has a history with the GPL. Take another company you mentioned MySQL, they sold a locked down version with feature requests for companies that didn't want to go GPL but wanted to use MySQL in their product, so they were selling that as a service, hence #1 of the blessed three.
Like any business rule the blessed three can cover a LOT of use cases, the only real hard and fast rule with the blessed three that is nearly impossible to avoid is the GPL software itself has almost not value, its the things that interact with the GPLed software that has value, the Android phone for instance, or the dev tools which are not GPLed, or the non GPL version you sell to companies. In all these cases its not the GPLed software that is bringing in the money, Adobe makes no money off the GPLed reader which is why I never understood why so many FOSSies hated Adobe, hell they even let Flash be forked into Gnash, think MPEG-0LA would let you fork H.264 into a free alternative? MySQL made their money off the non-GPL version, Sun sold services and tools.
In all these cases (and I would argue pretty much the entire ecosystem) the GPL software itself was NOT the value which is why a traditional company will flop because they see everything as assets and it just don't work that way. The reason why you pointed out, any attempts to monetize ends up with it being forked, the fork gains focus and the original becomes an ignored dead project, bringing its value back to $0. As I said there is NO REASON why you can't make money in GPL as long as you follow the blessed three, RH has become a billion dollar company by following the blessed three but even they know the value isn't the code itself, look at CentOS for proof of that.
Even though we rarely agree i have to give you credit is that is a GREAT example of what happens when a company that doesn't make their living using the GPL model tries to buy a GPL company, it ends up in a mess.
And I have taken shit over the years for pointing out that the GPL works best (and I would argue ONLY) with what I call the blessed three...what is wrong with that? Red Hat has made a billion dollar business out of the blessed three so it obviously works, it simply doesn't work with all kinds of software. for example I'd have a hard time seeing how you could make a profitable business out of desktops or video games using the blessed three model, which is probably why we have seen no serious competition from GPL software on those fronts. It simply doesn't fit into the methods of making money with GPLed software.
Personally i think in the long run this may turn out to be a good thing, companies that get bought for insane amounts of money usually end up getting turned into a mess by the buyer if they can't see a quick enough ROI and as companies like Red Hat have shown you have to be in it for the long haul with the GPL, you can't just flip companies for quick cash it just doesn't work that way. So maybe this will bring some sanity into the market and the only ones that will buy GPL companies will be those already making money using the GPL that will know how to treat the purchases right, not bring a mess of uncertainty like Oracle did with Sun.
It used a combo of cell CPUs and AMD Opterons so if they want to recoup some of the cost i doubt selling those chips would be hard.
Of course this is one more reason i don't like the "game console" way the industry is being pushed, with Intel talking about soldering boards to chips and companies pushing more "black box" computing because if it were not for bog standard yet powerful COTS parts things like Roadrunner would be either impossible or insanely expensive. Yet to hear the industry pundits tell it all we need is a tablet and an iPhone...sheesh. Give me a system I can upgrade any day of the week, the laptops and tablet are fine for service calls or as PMPs but they will always be more about style and battery life than performance.
But just to play Devil's Advocate here I'd say there is a downside in that no corp that doesn't expressly make their living using the GPL "Blessed Three" which is 1.-Selling Services/Support, 2.- Selling Hardware or 3.- The tin cup will touch a GPLed company with a 50 foot pole because this ruling as far as the corps will be concerned makes any and all code of that company public domain and thus worthless if you don't use the blessed three.
Now some may consider that a good thing, after all Red hat has been doing just fine for itself using the blessed three, but I think a lot of the asking price of companies like Sun was tied into the idea of taking a very popular but unprofitable company and finding a way to monetize it. Kinda similar to how many of the MMOs went from subscriptions to microtransactions and I think this ruling has made it quite clear that this approach simply won't work with a GPL company, like it or lump it you HAVE to use the blessed three with the GPL if you want to make any profits thanks to the redistribution clause.
Now I bet if one were to ask RMS about this he'd probably be in agreement and happy with this as its well known he is pretty anti-corporation but I think in the future when a company that is primarily GPL gets in trouble they are gonna find few bidders and the bids they do get VERY low for the size of the project. After all if there is no clear and obvious way to make a ROI why buy it in the first place?
If you have the Internet Hoss you are a good 90% of the way there. As I said there are plenty of old tech guys like me that are happy to steer folks in the right direction, hell advice is free. And you don't have to DIY, just grab a pre-built Systemmax and there ya go. And frankly the only reason i know the chip names is I like reading about chip tech, its just easier to say Bobcat than E300-E1300 or Thuban instead of 10xx T 6 core series.
But let us say for the sake of argument you were my customer and wanted an HTPC that would look snazzy and game. For a case I'd have you pick one from a couple of choices so you can choose something you thought looked purty. Now if you just wanted the casual stuff, more HT than game? Then here ya go, a dual core Bobcat (FYI Bobcat is similar to Atom but with slightly more powerful CPU and a MUCH more powerful GPU, perfect for media boxes and casual gaming) and it even comes with the cute case and the RAM. Of course if you were an actual customer I'd know the price instead of having to make rough guesses, but either one of these would game nicely and I would tell you if you ONLY wanted to game the Athlon would probably make you VERY happy,my youngest is gaming on that chip as we speak, or if you want to be able to game AND transcode video or burn DVDs? Then the X6 naturally has more punch. With prices that low you can sell the case you don't need on Craigslist and save yourself even more money, I would usually give $20-$25 off the build if it came with a case they didn't want as I can always use nice cases.
And then it'd simply be a matter of picking a graphics card and slapping on the OS, neither one is hard. If you want cheap with good performance the HD4850 is dirt cheap and will do most games at med-high to high, if you don't mind spending a little more up front to save on your electric bill the HD7770 cards use 40% less power under load and the 77xx cards has the new "deep idle" where it will shut down the majority of the card when you are saying chatting or surfing which lowers the power to something like 16w, which for a gaming card is just crazy low.
But honestly any teenager that can read can build one of these, like I said they comes with pictures and a step by step how-to with the board and the case. Total build time if you aren't in a rush? About an hour and a half, two and a half if you've never done one and triple check everything. I've whipped off four in a day and i'm not speedy. Once you slap the parts in you just fire her up and stick in the OS disc, after that its all "clicky clicky" simple. Then install steam and get to gaming Hoss, if you got the parts at 4PM there is no reason why you couldn't be firing up a game before 8PM and again that is with you taking your time, you use something like Ninite to install the third party software and you can be gaming by 6:30 PM. And notice they not only have browser, AVs, and runtimes like Flash but the have Steam as well so you can just check the boxes to everything you want and it'll do all the work, couldn't be simpler.
Oh and one thing I forgot to address was your question on cheating? Punkbusters. Pretty much all the games that aren't cooked up in a garage uses it and it works quite well, if you try to cheat your ass will get the banhammer but quick. Honestly I haven't seen any obvious cheating in years, oh sure you'll get some that use behavior that many consider lame, just watch the Call Of Duty Circus to see some of the lame things like the "sniper spin" but that isn't actual cheating, that is just dumb game mechanics. I prefer to use masher revolvers in BL because while you can find guns with higher damage because of the way they designed critical hits if you are good at headshots the masher can be a monster.
Anyway as I said if you actually want one I'll be happy to point you in the right direction. Frankly if you are older than 12 and can follow picture directions YOU can build a Tiger kit, they literally come with pictures that hold your hand through every step of the way. If you want casual only? Bobcat. want more of the HT in the HTPC than gaming? The Liano and those of its kind with built in midrange GPUs can be useful for this while saving money, and if you want a monster, one that will last you for years with plenty of upgrade room down the line? get a hexacore, not only are the chips cheap but you can go up to an octocore later if you wish and most of the boards support 16GB-32GB of RAM, more than you will ever need for gaming.
To give you an idea how long you can go I've been gaming for 3+ years on the same $50 HD4850 card, I'll be changing it for an HD7770 when the 8 series comes out as they'll be around $70 then, my board can hold 16GB but since its DDR 2 I'll probably just stick with the 8GB its got now (not that I've found a game that can use its 8GB and need more yet) and maybe pick up an AM3+ board in a year or two to max out the OS at 16GB.
I'll admit I made a few boo boos when i built this one, I went with Win 7 Home because I was able to get it for $40, I should have spent the extra and got Pro but to be fair I didn't see any point in having more than 8GB of RAM and other than just to say you have it? Not really any point now, its just so cheap you might as well get the big sticks anyway. And I should have went with a DDR 3 board two years ago when i went from quad to hexa but again to be fair I was able to get a damn nice gamer board with Crossfire capability and lots of nifty extras for just $45 by sticking with DDR 2 and I already had the 8GB of RAM so I just didn't see a point in adding a good $100+ to the cost just to add more memory down the line. Hell I can still pick up 4GB DDR 2 sticks when I happen to trip over them and can put the max RAM the OS will take with the board I have now so its not really affecting me, its just something I would have done differently if I had to do it over because i could have gotten RAM even cheaper.
But frankly this Thuban just curbstomps any game I throw at it, in fact I'll often be playing a game WHILE burning a DVD or transcoding a video and since I keep the OS and the game files on separate drives it never slows down. Rather than go through all the bullshit of migration I'm just gonna add a cheap 32GB or 64GB SSD as a caching drive in a few months but even without it honestly I have more power than i know what to do with so I can easily see this PC still gaming in 2020 when Win 7 goes EOL. Considering that I paid less than $550 for a PC with 3TB of space, 8GB of RAM, dual burners including Lightscribe on the top one (I just love Lightscribe, it makes my DVDs and CDs just nicer to hand out), an HD4850, Win 7 Home and 10 USB ports? I really can't complain, everyone that sees it says "Man that is a VERY nice computer you have there" and it just runs like a champ, its just nice to have everything at my fingertips..ya know?
Exactly, thanks. I think too many geeks try to overthink anything with crypto, like you are dealing with a Bond villain when IRL we are talking about a beat cop. No offense but while I know several beat cops and while they could take me in hand to hand or target shooting breaking even simple crypto? Not so much.
So for what he is wanting to do, which was keep beat cops from just hitting the erase button so that they will actually have to destroy private property to get rid of it? You can get an E350 for just $69 shipped which gives you a dual core that idles at less than 5w and at load is only 16w, slap in a small case, 4Gb or 8GB of LDDR 3 RAM, and an SSD? You can have a system for less than $200 that will do everything he is wanting to do and can even be used later on for many other jobs. Hell I've been yanking P4 boards and replacing them with E350s in office boxes. works great and actually gives better performance for a lot less power.
Well the same could be said of the Soviets, there were times when internal politics of this or that Warsaw Pact country meant they wouldn't be at the head of the line when it came to passing out the good stuff.
But when you are trying to build something big out of a weapons system that wasn't built to do that? You do NOT use Monkey Models! If you haven't watched it check out failed tanks, the Asad Babil to see what happens when you try to build a first class system out of a substandard export. Most telling is what happened when Iraq was given the chance to rebuild not a single Asad Babil was spared from the scrap heap.
Find us? Really? There is at LEAST 1 PC shop i n every podunk town, usually 2 or 3 and I have YET to find one that won't do what we call a "Tiger build" aka throw together a Tiger kit. Just go to the website, pick the kit you want, and say "I want THAT kit with THIS card,how much" and there ya go. I charge $75 a build but I do ALL the work, I install all the patches and SPs, install all the programs, by the time I'm done its "flip switch and go". Some places charge more, some less, 10 minutes on the phone will find the one near you that will fit your bill. Also remember Tiger has their house brand Systemmax that is basically the same thing, they just sell pre-built Tiger kits.
As for finding a mom&pop shop? Yellow pages,ask around, some of us don't advertise since we have more work now than we want (those are usually the best guys, but ask around and you can find 'em) or hell just drive down the street. Like I said 10 minutes on the phone will tell you all you need to know, there are a few shops that only sell their own builds, i'd avoid them as I found those guys tend to be what I call "craigslist pickers" that buy junked systems off of CL and refurb, if I'm selling a refurb you KNOW its a refurb and the price is lower because of it. Do I sell online? Nope, got burnt by eBay. Frankly going DIY with online PC sales would require me to raise prices because of the insurance and shipping and I try to keep prices low, but its not like I'm a rare bird here, there are a billion guys that do kit builds out there, we really aren't hard to find in any town.
As for "too much choice"? Once you pick a shop ASK US and we are HAPPY to help, there is NOTHING I love more than someone who says "What do you think?" because I have spent damned near 25 years doing this and can steer them away from rookie mistakes. My biggest question is "What do you want it to do?" and you answer me that and I can point you in the right direction. Hell I've done the same for a good 10 plus guys here so if you want just shoot me an email saying what you want it to do and a rough budget and I can point you in the right direction. Like I said been doing it for years so I know what they can and can't do, its really not hard.
And as far as Smash bros, not into casual but if you are just go to the casual in Steam or type "Game like Smash bros for PC" and I'm sure there are a dozen. Its like tower defense or FPS, most genres will have dozens of imitators, many of them quite good, and for every format out there. I know that if you want the "fake guitar" style games which ironically I've been playing bass since I was 14 yet I suuuuccckkk at those things? Frets Of Fire supports loading your own songs and USB controllers and from what I understand there is a simple adapter that lets you use Guitar Hero controllers. I know that for more console like games my youngest just bought an adapter that lets him use his PS2 and Gamecube controllers, cost like $8, really not a big deal.
As for whether you need a Bobcat or a Hexacore that is beyond simple...do you REALLY like casual phone style games? Then Bobcat. Do you REALLY like your big sprawling first and third person games? Thuban. Again not a hard choice, one is more like an oversized cellphone, the other is a monster. If you aren't playing the monster games and will spend more time watching movies or chatting or playing FB games? Bobcat. I used to have the Athlon in between but frankly the price on the Hexacores has dropped so much in many cases it just doesn't make sense, you are saving MAYBE $40 and getting half the performance with an Athlon triple...why bother? The hexa turns off 3 cores when they are not needed so you get the lower power of the triple when you aren't using the cores and the extra boost when you are, easy choice.
Frankly you could drop me in a town I had never been to and inside of 30 minutes I could find you a kit builder, all it takes is a phone and asking a couple of questions. Do you do kit builds, if so what do you charge? Can you help me choose the parts? I
Yeah but read TFA again the guy wants ALL his email, and when I read all I generally take all to mean...well all, as the ones coming NOW and the ones coming THEN which means churn which means bad idea.
Again no choice here is gonna be really elegant or "push button and done" because its a messy job but given the reqs of TFA I'd say IMAP fits the bill closest with the least risks. Remember he wants the WHOLE THING searchable, which means new AND old have to be in the same place, so MBox would not be the safest move here, IMAP is the better choice.
Its not gonna be used in either of those markets so the point is moot. its been widely reported MSFT has been getting worse and worse with OEM pricing (gotta make Wall Street happy ya know) so in markets where the price is a big factor everyone will use Android. Don't forget Ballmer is so hard up to be Apple it hurts, if anything he is gonna push windows to be a "premium" brand, look at his pushing for ultrabooks and touchscreen laptops which nobody is buying.
Of course what we are seeing now is MSFT's worse nightmare, they are causing their desktop and laptop customers to either look at alternatives or stick with a soon to be 2 version behind OS they won't be seeing another cent from (shades of XP all over again) while the sales figures show that WinPhone and WinTab are non starters. With the dumb moves they have done like tying WinPhone to DirectX which as one game dev said adds a $50k porting cost to supporting the platform I don't see it getting better, MSFT can keep throwing money, pay devs to port the most popular apps but that takes time and in mobile what is hot today is lame tomorrow so time is a BIG factor.
I just don't see how they are gonna get out of the corner they are painting themselves in, I really don't. Its obvious they are betting the farm on Win 8 to give them a foot in the door but the numbers suck and it doesn't appear they have a plan B so what now? if anything the sneak peeks at Windows Blue are being met with more groans that cheers as its just more of the same, everybody is talking about Chrome laptops thanks to the Win 8 bomb, where do they go from here?
Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if she had freecell on from the second she started the system, I've noticed a lot of the secretaries will often have a game of some sort running in the background. Maybe their work is start/stop enough to justify it, hell if I was gonna find out as I have NO desire to hang out in places like county clerks and the DMV, but I noticed most of the systems from there had high times on the card games.
Hell maybe clerks just really really REALLY like their freecell, hell if i know, i'm just the guy folks call when stuff breaks. It would be an interesting study, how many hours of freecell are played in government offices VS private business, with it further broken down by function and dept...I wonder if I can get a grant?
Got a better idea? The guy has them in Lord knows how many programs splattered all over the place, he wants it all in one place and searchable and IMAP is good at that. I mean sure we would all prefer a "push button and its done" kinda deal but AFAIK no such thing exists that will let him store it locally. You could run it all into Gmail but some folks have privacy concerns and of course its not like Google hasn't lost stuff in the past, so given a complex situation like TFA I'd say IMAP is probably gonna be the least painful of the bunch.
Hell he's already on Linux, not like adding an email server role in Linux is hard, millions of Linux boxes do that role everyday. But if you got a better call Hoss I'd like to hear it, given the requirements I'd say IMAP would fit the bill closest with the least amount of hassles. But lets face it when you are dealing with a decade plus worth of data in different formats? Its never gonna be clean and easy, it just don't work that way.
First of all YOU get to choose what case you want, if you want an ultra slim case? get a shuttle, its YOUR choice, not one size fits all. I chose that system because as someone who actually BUILDS HTPCs I've found that most folks? Honestly like the new black cases, they usually come with silver or red accents and look quite spiffy. You can of course turn it on your side if that is what melts your butter, or there are several companies that make HTPC cases that look like everything from a VCR to a Mac Mini, again YOUR choice so if you don't like my taste in cases? Cases start at around $22 at geeks, personally I like this one as it looks really nice sitting straight or on its side, kinda like an Xbox.
Second...driver updates? Seriously? does ANYBODY do that anymore? this is like Linux users saying "Windows has daily BSODs!" because they haven't actually used a Windows machine since Win98. I'll tell you the same thing I tell my customers, if it ain't broke? DON'T FIX IT. Unless you are using some weird exotic hardware its really pointless, i haven't seen a non GPU update that gave so much as a single FPS in performance and Steam will now tell you "Hi, you have a graphics card update, would you like me to apply it?" and that is that, hell it doesn't even need a reboot anymore so you can just surf for a minute or two while it installs, so that is a non argument.
as for those "other reasons" it all basically boils down to used games which guess what? MSFT and Sony are killing with the new consoles! Aren't they just doubleplus smart? I know I've built 3 HTPCs in the past 2 months for folks that heard about the killing of used games and said "Well screw that". As for price? Actually...yes they ARE that cheap, in fact I know of which I speak because both of my boys game so I usually buy games 3 at a time. In fact the only problem we've had, if you want to call it a problem, is that during the sales they have 4 packs discounted so heavily (probably for exactly the reason you bring up) that its cheaper for me to buy the 4 pack when we only need 3, but I just give the fourth to one of the boys and let them gift it to one of their online friends, no biggie. During the Xmas sale I spent MAYBE $150 and we ended up with so many AAA titles that I honestly haven't even played a third of what we bought yet, oh the curse of having so many cheap AAA titles...its soooo hard LOL. And the MP is beyond simple, its just "Hey you wanna play?" and there ya go. I'm taking the weekend off thanks to getting a dose of strep and I just got done handing out a pile of loot in Borderlands to the boys, took less than 3 minutes for all 3 of us to be in game. I seem to have a knack for finding rare loot and they suck at it so I've maxxed my bank out and just pass out the good stuff i don't need to the boys. If you haven't tried it? Its really fun. I'm hoping BL2 will be on a Steam sale soon so I can pick up 3 copies so we can jump into together like we did with BL1.
Finally as for BPM and needing devs...why? You want the easiest way to drive around without a controller? BAM! You're welcome. If you have a wife or GF they will love the hell out of you for getting it, the keyboard is instantly familiar to those that do a lot of cell texting so they can just fly on it. After getting one one of my customers is getting ready to have me build him ANOTHER HTPC for his den because his wife put her little hands on that controller and that was it, she is tweeting and FB updating and just flies on the thing, she loves the hell out of it. Notice the trackball under your thumb, that plus the left and right triggers under your first and second finger mans that this and a wireless controller and its just the same as a console only better. After al
And THIS is why ACs need to be banned or at least heavily downmodded by default, as pretty much all AC is used for is flamebait or trying to stir up shit.
But if you can show me a single place where I said this shouldn't be used? You can't because that is not what i said, you are trying to twist my words to serve YOUR agenda. All I said is that caution should be used and security should be job #1, something that was NOT done with JavaScript and look at where we are now, nearly a million infected Android phones, who knows how many millions of infected PCs, infected servers, both windows and Linux, and what is the common attack vector? JavaScript, why?
Because nobody seriously thought about JavaScript security until after it had already become widely adopted so any attempts to fix the problems had to take into account all that already deployed JavaScript...that's a bad way to go about security, easier to fix things BEFORE its widely deployed than after, its just common sense. But you go back to flaming AC, meanwhile those with common sense will see what I'm saying is simply logical, this needs to be extensively tested and battle hardened BEFORE being baked into tens of millions of browsers worldwide.
But considering we are talking about Mozilla, a company that has had SIX YEARS to incorporate low rights mode into their browser, a move which would benefit Linux users as well as Windows users because low rights mode would work just as well with SELinux as it does with Windows, yet they STILL haven't added it? I seriously doubt security is very high on their "to do" list.
Well that is true with planes (and Germans..well lets just say they have always had a thing for tanks and leave it at that) but last I checked pretty much every navy in NATO was using the Burke and/or the Perry class destroyers. also most of their missile systems are ours, again with a few exceptions here and there, so I think the argument that we gave NATO "monkey models" like the Soviets did with non Warsaw Pact countries is easily proven false.
That is not to say that before Reagan we didn't have "monkey models" as we did, the F-5 Freedom Fighter (which was actually a pretty nice plane if a little behind the curve, its now the basis for the new Iranian fighter) is one example I can think of, we also sold our previous gen systems to those we thought might be iffy, see how many countries we were willing to sell the Cobra to and compare that to the ones who were able to buy Apache gunships.
I would love to see a list sometime of militaries that use our old tech and what old tech they use as i bet it would be interesting, like how Brazil bought an old French carrier and stocked it with our A4s which had changed hands several times and ended up in Kuwait by the time they bought them, it just amazes me how many decades some of this stuff stays in service.
Bingo! I've been called in to fix and upgrade computers for the cops in my area and it always amazed me how much time they just waste doing dumb shit on the PC, but hell I've found that is true of pretty much any government org. There is one secretary at the county clerks office I honestly am hoping will break soon since she hasn't been in in a year and I'm curious to see what amount of time she has wasted in Freecell to date, last time I worked on her maybe 3 year old PC she had something like 10,000 hours in Freecell, just nuts.
But this isn't something new, cops like to say they "work online" as it sounds cooler and they don't have to leave the AC and the donuts. I ran a chat board for PC problems in the 90s when that whole "to catch a predator" shit became popular and I don't know how many times I had to threaten to file harassment charges because of cops talking dirty on the board. I finally asked a few of them "WTF makes you think a board with such stimulating topics like "No sound in Win95" and "Can't find a printer driver WinNT" is gonna be the place to pretend to be jailbait?" and they came right out and said pretty much all the social boards were already being trolled by cops, so they were just picking random places that weren't already being trolled.
So even back then you had cops doing shit that was completely fucking pointless, but they could tell their boss "hey we are working online" and get paid to sit on their asses. This is what happens when you have zero oversight as I'm sure the people of Boston would rather have safer streets and less muggings and rapes but then they'd have to get up, go to the car, actually drive around...that is like work folks, can't have that.
Actually I'd say it was the west that started the whole thing. Not on purpose mind you but the outcome was the same.
First the Treaty of Versailles was pretty much designed to humiliate Germany and the constant bleeding of its coffers in reparations made sure the country wouldn't become stable until they had a leader that would give the middle finger to the treaty, Second look at what happened in every European war before that...what happened? The two sides would drag on and on for awhile until the war got too costly for both and some sort of truce would be hammered out. Neither side would get all that they wanted but everybody would be allowed to at least keep a little dignity and not go home looking like a complete failure. the USA suddenly jumping in with fresh troops tipped the balance and made sure the western alliance would win, thus setting in motion the punishment that came with the Treaty of Versailles which again brings us right back to Hitler and the NSDAP.
Basically we screwed Germany so damned hard that we honestly should have expected something nasty, frankly it would have been better just to split the country up outright than to slowly bleed it for 20 years, all that did was insure chaos and instability.That is why I think that the USA also deserves credit for what they did after WWII, we learned from our mistakes and with the Marshall plan we let the people see they weren't gonna be punished for their leaders mistakes. Just compare Germany and their economy in the 60s to their economy in the 30s to see how smart a move that was, they went from being a smoking crater to a modern economy in record time and with a healthy economy and government came stability.
You are serious? You don't know about Chamberlain and "peace in our time", seriously?
Basically France and England rolled over and played dead for Germany, after the war some of Hitler's closest aids even said if so much as a single soldier would have opposed them in 38 that Hitler would have recalled the troops, it was France and England who practically waved a white flag in front of Hitler that got the bloody ball rolling.
You really only have to look at Hitler's forces in 38 to see he wasn't ready for a fight, most of his tanks were panzer 1s which were built as training units NOT a serious weapon, in fact the first models only had a machine gun for an offensive weapon and armor thin enough a 50cal would have shredded them, but nobody stood up, after WWI neither the British nor the French had much fight left in them until it was too late and bombs were falling.
Don't know where you get your info from but NATO got the good stuff just like the Warsaw Pact got the good Soviet gear. Hell the same destroyers we use as the backbone of the fleet are in service with most of NATO, as is the same planes, you could mix and match parts from a German F-Teen series and an American one, no difference.
They marked you funny but frankly its true, for those that didn't read about it we recovered their first stage from the ocean after their "sat" launch and found...its an uprated Scud missile. For those that I'm sure will say "So what?" you might want to look up "Stalin's Organs" which was the rocket artillery the Soviets used in WWII, the Scud was just a slightly more modern take on that. Imagine taking a Vietnam era Hellfire rocket and saying "We'll just build a really really REALLY big one of these and fly to the moon!"...yeah, not really made for that chief, gonna blow up in your face more often than not. This is why we have a hard time to this day saying how effective the Patriot battery was against the Scud because Saddam did the same trick and ended up with a rocket so fragile and explosion prone that they often ended up in pieces whether we shot anything at it or not, neither the fuel nor the engines were ever made to do any kind of range, it was just a cheaper weapon to make than the traditional artillery cannon which is why the Soviets favored them.
Finally remember that the Soviets weren't no dummies,unlike the USA in the 80s that would hand out its best tech to anybody that would say "we hate commies" the Soviets were smart enough to keep lower quality designs for export, designs its military derided as "monkey models" for the M placed at the end of the model, T72-M for example. So not only are they trying to build an ICBM out of something built for at best short range inaccurate barrages, but on top of that they are doing it with grossly inferior models to start with as the Soviets kept the best gear for the Warsaw Pact and everybody else got M models.
Sooo...yeah, maybe if they just drove the bomb over the giant leaking sieve of a border that nobody will fix because its a political hot potato? Then they might do something but with their "ICBM" tech I'd be more worried about the thing getting a couple hundred feet and turning into a fireball, possibly setting off the nuke (after all we have NO clue how safe their weapons are designed) and even if it doesn't spreading radiation all over Korea and possibly China. I have a feeling this is just some more bullshit posturing because their last aid packages have run out and they hope if they rattle the saber followed by the tin cup they'll get a little extra scratch. Personally I'm shocked China has put up with them for this long, maybe when the last of the old guard are dead they'll pull the plug and that will be that.