Sadly friends when it comes to gaming we're losing a hell of a lot more than just the MMOs and MUDs.
The big one that is gonna cause future game historians much grief is the incredible amount of Win9X games that will be gone. Tons and tons of games were released from 95-01 for that OS and sadly waaaay too many relied on "hacks" to boost the then weak performance of the systems. Thanks to Win9X being a 16/32bit hybrid with pracically nothing standing in the way of the coder getting "bare metal" you have games that used CPU clocks as times for events, used glitches in early OpenGL and DirectX implementations to boost graphics, its a fricking mess. Try to run games like i76 or Mechwarrior 3 or FFVII and you'll see what I'm talking about. And because so many of those companies were passed around from one publisher to another or died out the code is gone and the games themselves are often in a legal limbo where nobody knows who owns what, and of course the guts of Win9X were such a hodge podge and have so many copyrights and patents to deal with a DOSBox style solution for Win9X will most likely be impossible.
So I feel sad for those future gamers, the early MMOs and MUDs, the tons of small developer games and shareware titles, a huge chunk of the Win9X games, all will be lost and unplayable. Its just sad how much of that early history we are gonna see wiped out, its a damned shame and a real loss to our collective history.
Frankly I'm shocked you were modded up, so many of us have been saying that for years and called filthy names and told what idiots we are for not "seeing the genius" of constant breaking by the devs.
Lets be honest and cut the bullshit folks...why does Windows rule the desktop? its simply because there is software that covers every niche from inventory management to medical billing, electrical supply to salvage yards, there is SOMEBODY out there making software for it and it runs on Windows.
So what does that have to do with anything? Simple. When the core of the OS is constantly shifting like the sand to keep those applications running is gonna be costly as hell. For every big software house like Adobe you got 10,000 little shops run by a handful of guys filling one of those teeny tiny niches the big boys don't care about, and they simply don't have the money to constantly "pull an Nvidia" and pay a team of devs to constantly rewrite their stuff so it'll work.
And the saddest part? you have this HUGE network that would be happy to support you, little guys like me and the other smaller shops paying too much for MSFT licenses, tons of little software houses getting screwed just like we are when it comes to licensing fees, yet when we point out what we need to support you, which frankly isn't all that much, just some real stability and timetables we can work with, what do we get? Insults and told what idiots we are for not seeing how fricking brilliant breaking stuff is.
So if Linux goes nowhere on the desktop you really only have yourselves to blame, hell MSFT has been treating their customers like crap so long they might as well put a Goatse on the box yet we still buy it because we have no choice because everything is simply in too much flux with Linux. The one or two "solutions" trotted out when we point that out cost several times what Windows does, like RHEL, thus making MSFT the better deal.
People aren't on Windows because it gives them a fuzzy to see a WinFlag, its because nobody else will step up and give us a platform where we can have long term access to our applications without having to constantly futz and study and fix like its a dying 76 Dodge. Why do you think OSX adoption has been climbing, when they charge so much for older X86 hardware? because when you get fed up with MSFT's bullshit there isn't anywhere else to go, and that is a damned shame because it didn't have to be that way, the devs chose to make it so.
You mean Ellison? Page is at Google. Bit of a Freudian slip there friend.
But actually I don't think its either, I think its the fact that they've figured out how to make a business out of exploits with the black market and exploit toolkits so the really insecure stuff is gonna get beaten like a red headed stepchild by the malware writers as its easy money. In the past exploits were more of a small crime, your script kiddies and spammers, but those toolkits are making big money so it gives them incentive to find as many zero days as possible and Java was and is an easy target, along with the others I named.
Really? My 8 year old PC runs just fine on Win 7, as does my nearly 5 year old desktop and now 2 year old laptop. Whether you wish to accept it or not thing HAVE gotten better, more power efficiency , less waste heat, but you trot out some CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that wasn't supported by the actual manufacturer and think that proves...what? that Linux devs really looove their dumpster diving?
Since you won't listen to me, how about listening to an actual Linux developer at Red hat no less, who says the desktop is "suckage" and in its death throes? Here you go friend or how about a list of over 200 serious breakages in Linux, complete with links to every. single. one. will that be enough? Here it is help thyself.
But keep right on deluding yourself into believing that supporting some old rare POS hardware that nobody owns nor cares about (including the OEM who has long abandoned it) makes your platform worthwhile, manwhile your OS is STILL stuck at 0.97 after 20 damned years of being given away. 20 years of being 100% free and that's the BEST you can do? If that doesn't smack you with a cluebat that Linux is going down the wrong path then frankly nothing short of Jesus descending from a cloud to smite Linus Torvalds will.
No actually I fucking can't stand FOSSies, who are no damned different than Moonies or Scientologists for the level of batshit. You can rub their little noses in page after page of data showing their psychotic worldview is complete and utter horseshit and they will go "La la la, RMS is God and you are teh shill! La la la!" while sitting in their own filth and delusions.
So lets just make it clear...I hate people who think we didn't land on the moon, I hate people who think Elvis is alive, I hate people who think Xenu is a plausible history lesson, I hate people who think Adam rode a dino, and I hate FOSSies. What do all these groups have in common? Psychotic delusions and the inability to see reality if you fucking beat them to death with it. Line them against the wall and put a bullet in them, make the world a better place by removing them from the gene pool, because frankly we have enough drooling morons without letting the delusional breed, thanks ever so much.
Lets see...no always online DRM, no being pushed into a real money market, oh and you can pre-order on Steam for $20 and get the original to play or give as a gift? Seems like a no-brainer, then again me and my two boys already did our pre-orders. Go Runic! Oh and the fishing thing is addictive as hell, I don't know how many hours I spent fishing for the best buffs for my pet.
Riiight, how's that koolaid made from RMS' Toe Sweat, is it cheeery cherry?
Because I'm sure Redmond is gonna cut a check for someone saying their CEO is probably in the top 5 worst CEOs in history, their new product they are gonna spend hundreds of millions marketing is an abortion that is gonna make Vista like like Win95, their entire mobile division is retarded, and they are shitting billions down the toilet with one bad acquisition after another.
But you go right on thinking that inside Suzy the checkout girl is a Bash programmer just waiting to get out, its that bad old mean M$ that is keeping people away from your dead end product. Yep that must be it, and your sock puppet o' love says that you are handsome AND smart, so you must be right!
And that took you what? 30 seconds in Google? And as i pointed out you also have classic shell and for a whole $30 you can make Win 8 act like anything from Win95 to OSX, even KDE 3 and Gnome 2 with Astonshell.
Meanwhile all your applications work, your drivers work no matter how many patches and services packs get released, and you get 10 years of support so that system is good until 2022.
I know I'll be buying the "Win 8 Pro for $40!" deal, I mean why not? even cheaper than they offered Win 7 and when i build another system start8 gives me the Win 7 GUI no problem and I'll still get all the software, drivers, and updates hassle free.
Linux kicks ass in certain areas, embedded, servers, HPCs, its just not a great desktop. Why not simply be happy that Linux has 3 major niches worth billions? Why try to stick it in someplace where it just don't fit?
Oh please! If it was a Win 8 article it would be "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!" followed by 40 posts saying "Just use Linux", one BSD user posting "I'm lonely and its cold here", 100 Apple guys bragging about posting from their iPad, and 50 windows guys arguing over whether they should go back to 7 or XP. Oh and a dozen Ballmer sweaty monkey "developer developers developers" jokes.
I know the feeling, my apt is from the late 20s so I had to have the super run me a separate line from the main box just to feed my babies LOL!
But you ought to look at some of the AMD forums about underclocking/volting, because you'd be surprised how long you can drop that X4 and still have it run well. depending on the chip you can drop them to as low as 60w and still have them perform decently.
Like I said though just keep an eye out on those two sites, with them its what they get in off the truck this week but if you can snatch one of the next load of low power triples and quads they get it'll be just perfect for what you are wanting to do. You undervolt one of those and you'll have a 1.5Ghz X4 that uses less than 30w under load, AM2+ boards are a dime a dozen and for specialized apps like grid (or BT or any other long term single function) you can slap in a dirt cheap 2Gb stick and be good to go.
I've found its a LOT better to use a low power system for long term programs and keep your bad boy gamer PC for gaming and other heavy tasks, saves a lot of power and heat with very little expense. I keep a low power Sempron in the shop for just that purpose, downloads, surfing, no point in using a high dollar chip sucking power when a smaller sub 40w will do the task and this frees up my Thuban for the heavy lifting like gaming, transcoding, what have you. Shop smart and you can build a decent low power box for less than $100, a KVM is like $10 for a 2 port, and my low power has been running for 8 years solid so the life you'll get out of a low power machine makes it easy to make your money back in cooling and power savings. And this way grid or anything else you want to run long term can go 24/7/365 without going nuts on your electric bill or raising your cooling costs.
But I've built several of those low power E series X4s for office units and they are just great little chips. You can power them with a bottom of the line 250w PSU no problem, no need for any fans other than the HSF, and 4 cores at 1.5-1.8GHz can still crank through a hell of a lot of work. For something like grid computing I bet it would be perfect, a silent system you can run all the time and just remote into once in awhile to see how things are progressing, easy peasy.
Wow look at how quickly I got modded down, must have been since I dared to say corps use.NET but since I don't have a horse in this race who cares.
But here is what I don't understand: Who DOESN'T KNOW Java is a security nightmare? I mean how many exploits have we seen in the past 5 years? Your four biggest security nightmares are Adobe Flash/Reader, Java, and IE. Time and time and time again we see attack after attack and its always those same four over and over and over.
So I have to agree with you 110%, if you need Java then it needs a good forking. Take it away from Oracle, have a group that makes Java security be the #1 priority, and support THAT instead. Because lets face it folks, Java was a security nightmare when Sun ran it and Oracle isn't doing any better of a job at fixing the mess than Sun did, no different than how Flash sucked for security when it was Macromedia and it sucks under Adobe.
So all these corps that have serious mission critical applications that need Java really need to form a consortium and work together to get a solid, secure, reliable Java replacement. Otherwise there is no point in complaining, Oracle is just following Sun's bad example.
So its just another 2 minutes of hate? Meh if you want that OSNews as an epic flamewar happening called what killed the Linux desktop that is at 165 and climbing by the second. The sad part is the things the guy is pointing out, distros not being compatible, constant futzing making it impossible for third party software to find a home, busted drivers, its the same stuff guys like me have been pointing out for years.
Look its really simple folks, does Win 8 Metro suck big hairy balls? Yes, yes it does, which is why there have been so many articles pointing out what a disaster it is. Will that help Linux gain even 1/2 of 1% share? Not a chance in hell because it takes less than 3 minutes with Google to kill metro dead and its even free. You've got Classic Shell, You've got Start8, hell if you are really picky and don't even want the Win 7 UI pay a whole $30 and Astonshell will let you turn the Windows UI into any damned UI you like, even KDE 3 or Gnome 2.
Linux has its niches but those niches will NEVER be the desktop. Its good on servers where the insane cost of Windows CALs make it a better option, great for embedded and HPC because you're not dealing with drivers and can strip the living hell out of it to leave more cycles for your apps, but for desktops it HAS to be simple, easy, and work for years and years with little to no thought required. I'm sorry but that ain't Linux folks, never has been, never will be, and that is how the devs like it so that's that.
Have they removed the pop ups yet? The last time I installed LO it complained left and right because the system didn't have Java on it, one of the reasons I don't ever install LO the traditional way anymore, I just go to Ninite and use their fully automated install for LO along with any other must have software the user needs, no bitching about Java with Ninite and no Java install either, double good.
Meh if you just want to throw a few more cores to some project throw you together a cheapie with an AMD low power from Starmicro. I've been buying from them for years, great guys and if you keep an eye on their site you can get some crazy deals. I was buying AMD Phenom I low power quads for $40 a pop and now they have the X3 unlockables for $48, cheap prices. That way you can just throw the box in the corner and let it do its thing 24/7/365 and not slow down your main machine.
As far as GPUs? The place you want to keep an eye out on is Geeks as their refurb GPUs are often crazy cheap. Again been buying from them for years, no hassles. If you ever have a problem with either site just give them a call and they fix it quick, great guys. With 2 teen boys that also game I have to try to keep us close to parity which triple everything adds up pretty quick. The HD4850s they are selling are dirt cheap, just blow through all the games we throw at 'em and the drivers are solid and mature. We'll run 'em for another year and then I'll get the 6770s or 6850s and make my money back on the 4850s off of CL.
Did you use the packet writing software too? Me and everyone else I knew that jumped on the early burners used the packet writing stuff so we wouldn't have to "waste" a whole CD because they were so high!
Man was I pissed when I bought a 4x DVD burner for $200 and had the prices drop to $60 6 months later, the CD burners took something like a year or two to really come down so I figured having that much space would be worth the early adopter penalty. To this day I've got probably a couple dozen spindles of DVD backups around the apt, everything from funny videos to the first versions of Firefox, I backed up everything back then.
Does anybody still use it? Its been awhile since I worked enterprise is why I'm asking, but the home and SMBs dropped Java years ago and I had heard most of the bigger corps went.NET for their backends.
Lets face it, like Adobe products Java has NEVER been good about security. People used them because they had to, not because they were safe. Hopefully HTML V5 will get feature parity with Flash and.NET or something else can replace Java and we can let them both just go away.
Here is what I don't get about these ARM fanbois...why is it that one product has to "win" and the other "lose". Its like what Jobs told the reporters when they kept trying to turn it into Apple VS MSFT "MSFT doesn't have to lose for Apple to win" and he was right, he was going after a different market.
With ARM you are talking extremely low power, idles in the sub-mw range. That low a power draw has a cost and that's IPC. No way in hell the newest ARMs can put out even half the IPC of a 6 year old Phenom quad much less the new Intel cores. On the flipside X86 chips can't drop to the sub-mw idle usage unless you really strip down the core design like Brazos or Atom.
Its different markets folks, its a scalpel and a chainsaw. This VS crap is just bullshit, different use cases require different levels of IPC, some x86 fits better, some ARM. That simple.
Its called a chilling effect and is designed to make everyone too damned scared to say shit about those in power. If you don't think it can happen here I urge you to watch this video by author Naomi Wolf pointing out how many of the moves those in power have done in the past decade are right out of the playbooks of repressive countries. As she notes in the video she herself is now on the watchlist, her crime? Speaking out about the constitution and the rights we have.
Actually for my customers who are too poor for lasers or who tend to print in spurts (say vacation photos, holidays, that kind of thing) I've found the little Canon units to work pretty well. The ink carts are cheap enough online, the picture quality is decent, a new unit costs less than $40, and the drivers are pretty solid yet basic without a ton of extra crap (I'm looking at YOU HP!) and are even easy enough to share across your basic home network. Oh and they don't seem to scream if the cart is half full that its empty either.
But I agree that with B&W lasers in the $80 range and new color units for around $150 there are few customers where an inkjet makes any sense anymore. I picked up a little Samsung B&W for my oldest when he started college, the thing is still printing on the original cart 3 years in and they had a deal where it came with 2 extra carts on Amazon for like $105 with shipping. With deals like that there is just fewer and fewer cases where I can say "yeah an inkjet would work fine for you" anymore.
Hi! Funny thing is we made sure my two boys growing up were exposed to ALL religions and lack thereof, because we believed in letting a child have the facts of all the different faiths and non faiths so they could have critical thinking, know what the oldest chose? He's Catholic. No he doesn't believe in the crazy stories, has no problem with other faiths, he just likes the ceremony of it all, he finds Latin soothing and the local Catholic church is peaceful to him, like meditation to his younger brother who is agnostic.
But I know how you feel, I had friends that were forcibly programmed into the religion their parents supported and not only did they hate every second but the rebeled whenever possible. Heck I once had sex with a preacher's daughter in the upper loft of the church because, and I quote "I hate this fucking place so damned much I want you to give me something nice and loving to think about when i'm stuck in this damned place".
Which is why I say critical thinking and the ability to choose should be placed above all. Nobody in my family was ever Catholic, we never advocated for any religion or belief, we simply allowed the boys to explore anything they were interested in and since my mom was a Baptist that did 3 years of Catholic prep school (In OK I believe LOL) she was able to answer his questions about the symbolism of the various rituals.
In the end ALL religion should be about CHOICE and a child simply doesn't have that ability, which is why I'm against programming kids in any religion. If they grow up and choose to follow one thing or another because they like it? Fine and dandy, all for following your heart and doing what you think is best for you, but I'm with the science guy, you drum that stuff into their heads at an early age and you just can't get it out, no choice there. They either grow up hating it like you or mindlessly believe without question like I've sadly seen in too many, but there just isn't any real choice going on there.
Oh really? How about a link and I'll even be nice enough to bold it for you In the low latency niche, which is just that, a small niche, then it MIGHT have a shot if it isn't buried by the trolls There you go, I said it might have a shot if the trolls don't bury them. In case you haven't noticed patent trolls are a BIG problem with codecs, with it getting bad enough the DoJ is investigating MPEG-LA for setting up a troll group for WebM.
Stick your fingers in your ears and go "la la la" all you want, because H.264 was treated as just another codec, one of many codecs and containers, until Steve Jobs walked out on stage and said "No Flash, H.264!" and the crowds cheered and everyone and their dog and their dog's squeaky toy jumped right on the bandwagon. And WTF did you expect them to do? Apple makes MSFT in the 90s look like Bob's Distro, they are the largest corp on the PLANET. If you want to run on the biggest corp in the world's devices you gotta play by their rules, and that means H.264.
Uhhh...dude? Did you miss MSFT stuffing the standards committee to get OfficeXML declared a "standard" not too long ago? And like it or not (I don't) a certain company in Cupertino is calling the shots when it comes to browsers, why? Because if it don't work on iPad you are SOL.
Look I wish things hadn't worked out this way, I really really do. The one place where i think proprietary has NO business is the web, it should all be open and standard so that anybody on anything can use this incredible resource we have here.
But I'm also not blind, and I can see which way the wind is blowing. When Apple became the largest company on the planet all the web devs saw how much crazy iMoney Apple was making and said "Damn I want some of that!" that was the end of that when it came to open standards. Look how many even here jumped on HTML V5, even though its not finished, will most likely end up with H.264 for video which is a patent nightmare, doesn't cover even half the use cases we had flash for, and sucks resources like drunks suck down free hooch, so why did everyone jump on board without a second thought? Because Apple said so, that's why.
Look its the classic "is ought" problem that has been discussed for centuries. Those that support open codecs talk about how the world OUGHT to be, when in reality the world IS controlled by two major corps, Apple and MSFT. Google found out with WebM they didn't have nearly the amount of pull they thought they had, because like it or not in the end of the day people are using a Windows box or an iPad and if they don't get on board you are boned.
Could Opus maybe find a niche in the low latency market? Sure it could, there are plenty of niches the big two aren't going after and that leaves some wiggle room. But the original poster was talking about PMPs and other portables embracing Opus over MP3 and AAC, and I'm sorry but that is delusional bullshit. The reason we have H.264 and AAC now instead of DivX and MP3? Apple. If Apple says its so then its so, if they say no then its no, simple as that. And unlike old Billy's OS Apple has their systems so locked down that if they say no then you are SOL, most won't root so you are completely out. Do I like it? Fuck no, but its reality and until something unseats the iDevices we are stuck with it.
Dude, let go of the crack pipe. Would you like to see the data for yourself? By cutting out XP,Vista, and 7 you are losing 83.24% of the market and the rest of the market? Apple products which don't use AMD chips. Might want to look at where Linux is on that chart friend, its at....0.97%.
Now if you think a global chip company can survive by giving the finger to 83% of the market and catering to 0.97% of the market I have some magic beans you might be interested in, blessed by RMS himself I swear!
Man, I just gotta ask....WTF are you doing on your desktop that 6 cores won't cut the mustard? Because i'm sitting here with a 1035T, which was strictly the MOR Thuban chip, and it just chews through anything I throw at it with plenty of cycles left over. No problem with some of the latest games like Saints Row 3 or Deus Ex:HR, just tears through video transcodes like nobody's business, I'm even running multitrack audio editing with effects and not a skip nor a hang one.
This is why me and mine are gonna sit it out for a couple of years, with me and the oldest having 6 cores and the youngest my 925 Phenom II frankly we all have cycles to spare, 8Gb of RAM a piece, All we'll have to do is change out the HD4850s for 6770s or 6850s in a year or so and we'll be good to go, Not to mention with any halfway decent board the clocks you can get are just nuts, my Asrock runs just a little over stock naturally and I get nearly 3.1Ghz on TC and between 2.7Ghz-2.8GHz running 6.
So what are you running that even a 6 core won't do the job?
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Sadly friends when it comes to gaming we're losing a hell of a lot more than just the MMOs and MUDs.
The big one that is gonna cause future game historians much grief is the incredible amount of Win9X games that will be gone. Tons and tons of games were released from 95-01 for that OS and sadly waaaay too many relied on "hacks" to boost the then weak performance of the systems. Thanks to Win9X being a 16/32bit hybrid with pracically nothing standing in the way of the coder getting "bare metal" you have games that used CPU clocks as times for events, used glitches in early OpenGL and DirectX implementations to boost graphics, its a fricking mess. Try to run games like i76 or Mechwarrior 3 or FFVII and you'll see what I'm talking about. And because so many of those companies were passed around from one publisher to another or died out the code is gone and the games themselves are often in a legal limbo where nobody knows who owns what, and of course the guts of Win9X were such a hodge podge and have so many copyrights and patents to deal with a DOSBox style solution for Win9X will most likely be impossible.
So I feel sad for those future gamers, the early MMOs and MUDs, the tons of small developer games and shareware titles, a huge chunk of the Win9X games, all will be lost and unplayable. Its just sad how much of that early history we are gonna see wiped out, its a damned shame and a real loss to our collective history.
Frankly I'm shocked you were modded up, so many of us have been saying that for years and called filthy names and told what idiots we are for not "seeing the genius" of constant breaking by the devs.
Lets be honest and cut the bullshit folks...why does Windows rule the desktop? its simply because there is software that covers every niche from inventory management to medical billing, electrical supply to salvage yards, there is SOMEBODY out there making software for it and it runs on Windows.
So what does that have to do with anything? Simple. When the core of the OS is constantly shifting like the sand to keep those applications running is gonna be costly as hell. For every big software house like Adobe you got 10,000 little shops run by a handful of guys filling one of those teeny tiny niches the big boys don't care about, and they simply don't have the money to constantly "pull an Nvidia" and pay a team of devs to constantly rewrite their stuff so it'll work.
And the saddest part? you have this HUGE network that would be happy to support you, little guys like me and the other smaller shops paying too much for MSFT licenses, tons of little software houses getting screwed just like we are when it comes to licensing fees, yet when we point out what we need to support you, which frankly isn't all that much, just some real stability and timetables we can work with, what do we get? Insults and told what idiots we are for not seeing how fricking brilliant breaking stuff is.
So if Linux goes nowhere on the desktop you really only have yourselves to blame, hell MSFT has been treating their customers like crap so long they might as well put a Goatse on the box yet we still buy it because we have no choice because everything is simply in too much flux with Linux. The one or two "solutions" trotted out when we point that out cost several times what Windows does, like RHEL, thus making MSFT the better deal.
People aren't on Windows because it gives them a fuzzy to see a WinFlag, its because nobody else will step up and give us a platform where we can have long term access to our applications without having to constantly futz and study and fix like its a dying 76 Dodge. Why do you think OSX adoption has been climbing, when they charge so much for older X86 hardware? because when you get fed up with MSFT's bullshit there isn't anywhere else to go, and that is a damned shame because it didn't have to be that way, the devs chose to make it so.
You mean Ellison? Page is at Google. Bit of a Freudian slip there friend.
But actually I don't think its either, I think its the fact that they've figured out how to make a business out of exploits with the black market and exploit toolkits so the really insecure stuff is gonna get beaten like a red headed stepchild by the malware writers as its easy money. In the past exploits were more of a small crime, your script kiddies and spammers, but those toolkits are making big money so it gives them incentive to find as many zero days as possible and Java was and is an easy target, along with the others I named.
Really? My 8 year old PC runs just fine on Win 7, as does my nearly 5 year old desktop and now 2 year old laptop. Whether you wish to accept it or not thing HAVE gotten better, more power efficiency , less waste heat, but you trot out some CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that wasn't supported by the actual manufacturer and think that proves...what? that Linux devs really looove their dumpster diving?
Since you won't listen to me, how about listening to an actual Linux developer at Red hat no less, who says the desktop is "suckage" and in its death throes? Here you go friend or how about a list of over 200 serious breakages in Linux, complete with links to every. single. one. will that be enough? Here it is help thyself.
But keep right on deluding yourself into believing that supporting some old rare POS hardware that nobody owns nor cares about (including the OEM who has long abandoned it) makes your platform worthwhile, manwhile your OS is STILL stuck at 0.97 after 20 damned years of being given away. 20 years of being 100% free and that's the BEST you can do? If that doesn't smack you with a cluebat that Linux is going down the wrong path then frankly nothing short of Jesus descending from a cloud to smite Linus Torvalds will.
No actually I fucking can't stand FOSSies, who are no damned different than Moonies or Scientologists for the level of batshit. You can rub their little noses in page after page of data showing their psychotic worldview is complete and utter horseshit and they will go "La la la, RMS is God and you are teh shill! La la la!" while sitting in their own filth and delusions.
So lets just make it clear...I hate people who think we didn't land on the moon, I hate people who think Elvis is alive, I hate people who think Xenu is a plausible history lesson, I hate people who think Adam rode a dino, and I hate FOSSies. What do all these groups have in common? Psychotic delusions and the inability to see reality if you fucking beat them to death with it. Line them against the wall and put a bullet in them, make the world a better place by removing them from the gene pool, because frankly we have enough drooling morons without letting the delusional breed, thanks ever so much.
Lets see...no always online DRM, no being pushed into a real money market, oh and you can pre-order on Steam for $20 and get the original to play or give as a gift? Seems like a no-brainer, then again me and my two boys already did our pre-orders. Go Runic! Oh and the fishing thing is addictive as hell, I don't know how many hours I spent fishing for the best buffs for my pet.
Riiight, how's that koolaid made from RMS' Toe Sweat, is it cheeery cherry?
Because I'm sure Redmond is gonna cut a check for someone saying their CEO is probably in the top 5 worst CEOs in history, their new product they are gonna spend hundreds of millions marketing is an abortion that is gonna make Vista like like Win95, their entire mobile division is retarded, and they are shitting billions down the toilet with one bad acquisition after another.
But you go right on thinking that inside Suzy the checkout girl is a Bash programmer just waiting to get out, its that bad old mean M$ that is keeping people away from your dead end product. Yep that must be it, and your sock puppet o' love says that you are handsome AND smart, so you must be right!
Well most of us aren't dumpster diving, but hey, whatever melts your butter.
And that took you what? 30 seconds in Google? And as i pointed out you also have classic shell and for a whole $30 you can make Win 8 act like anything from Win95 to OSX, even KDE 3 and Gnome 2 with Astonshell.
Meanwhile all your applications work, your drivers work no matter how many patches and services packs get released, and you get 10 years of support so that system is good until 2022.
I know I'll be buying the "Win 8 Pro for $40!" deal, I mean why not? even cheaper than they offered Win 7 and when i build another system start8 gives me the Win 7 GUI no problem and I'll still get all the software, drivers, and updates hassle free.
Linux kicks ass in certain areas, embedded, servers, HPCs, its just not a great desktop. Why not simply be happy that Linux has 3 major niches worth billions? Why try to stick it in someplace where it just don't fit?
Oh please! If it was a Win 8 article it would be "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!" followed by 40 posts saying "Just use Linux", one BSD user posting "I'm lonely and its cold here", 100 Apple guys bragging about posting from their iPad, and 50 windows guys arguing over whether they should go back to 7 or XP. Oh and a dozen Ballmer sweaty monkey "developer developers developers" jokes.
I know the feeling, my apt is from the late 20s so I had to have the super run me a separate line from the main box just to feed my babies LOL!
But you ought to look at some of the AMD forums about underclocking/volting, because you'd be surprised how long you can drop that X4 and still have it run well. depending on the chip you can drop them to as low as 60w and still have them perform decently.
Like I said though just keep an eye out on those two sites, with them its what they get in off the truck this week but if you can snatch one of the next load of low power triples and quads they get it'll be just perfect for what you are wanting to do. You undervolt one of those and you'll have a 1.5Ghz X4 that uses less than 30w under load, AM2+ boards are a dime a dozen and for specialized apps like grid (or BT or any other long term single function) you can slap in a dirt cheap 2Gb stick and be good to go.
I've found its a LOT better to use a low power system for long term programs and keep your bad boy gamer PC for gaming and other heavy tasks, saves a lot of power and heat with very little expense. I keep a low power Sempron in the shop for just that purpose, downloads, surfing, no point in using a high dollar chip sucking power when a smaller sub 40w will do the task and this frees up my Thuban for the heavy lifting like gaming, transcoding, what have you. Shop smart and you can build a decent low power box for less than $100, a KVM is like $10 for a 2 port, and my low power has been running for 8 years solid so the life you'll get out of a low power machine makes it easy to make your money back in cooling and power savings. And this way grid or anything else you want to run long term can go 24/7/365 without going nuts on your electric bill or raising your cooling costs.
But I've built several of those low power E series X4s for office units and they are just great little chips. You can power them with a bottom of the line 250w PSU no problem, no need for any fans other than the HSF, and 4 cores at 1.5-1.8GHz can still crank through a hell of a lot of work. For something like grid computing I bet it would be perfect, a silent system you can run all the time and just remote into once in awhile to see how things are progressing, easy peasy.
Wow look at how quickly I got modded down, must have been since I dared to say corps use .NET but since I don't have a horse in this race who cares.
But here is what I don't understand: Who DOESN'T KNOW Java is a security nightmare? I mean how many exploits have we seen in the past 5 years? Your four biggest security nightmares are Adobe Flash/Reader, Java, and IE. Time and time and time again we see attack after attack and its always those same four over and over and over.
So I have to agree with you 110%, if you need Java then it needs a good forking. Take it away from Oracle, have a group that makes Java security be the #1 priority, and support THAT instead. Because lets face it folks, Java was a security nightmare when Sun ran it and Oracle isn't doing any better of a job at fixing the mess than Sun did, no different than how Flash sucked for security when it was Macromedia and it sucks under Adobe.
So all these corps that have serious mission critical applications that need Java really need to form a consortium and work together to get a solid, secure, reliable Java replacement. Otherwise there is no point in complaining, Oracle is just following Sun's bad example.
So its just another 2 minutes of hate? Meh if you want that OSNews as an epic flamewar happening called what killed the Linux desktop that is at 165 and climbing by the second. The sad part is the things the guy is pointing out, distros not being compatible, constant futzing making it impossible for third party software to find a home, busted drivers, its the same stuff guys like me have been pointing out for years.
Look its really simple folks, does Win 8 Metro suck big hairy balls? Yes, yes it does, which is why there have been so many articles pointing out what a disaster it is. Will that help Linux gain even 1/2 of 1% share? Not a chance in hell because it takes less than 3 minutes with Google to kill metro dead and its even free. You've got Classic Shell, You've got Start8, hell if you are really picky and don't even want the Win 7 UI pay a whole $30 and Astonshell will let you turn the Windows UI into any damned UI you like, even KDE 3 or Gnome 2.
Linux has its niches but those niches will NEVER be the desktop. Its good on servers where the insane cost of Windows CALs make it a better option, great for embedded and HPC because you're not dealing with drivers and can strip the living hell out of it to leave more cycles for your apps, but for desktops it HAS to be simple, easy, and work for years and years with little to no thought required. I'm sorry but that ain't Linux folks, never has been, never will be, and that is how the devs like it so that's that.
Have they removed the pop ups yet? The last time I installed LO it complained left and right because the system didn't have Java on it, one of the reasons I don't ever install LO the traditional way anymore, I just go to Ninite and use their fully automated install for LO along with any other must have software the user needs, no bitching about Java with Ninite and no Java install either, double good.
Meh if you just want to throw a few more cores to some project throw you together a cheapie with an AMD low power from Starmicro. I've been buying from them for years, great guys and if you keep an eye on their site you can get some crazy deals. I was buying AMD Phenom I low power quads for $40 a pop and now they have the X3 unlockables for $48, cheap prices. That way you can just throw the box in the corner and let it do its thing 24/7/365 and not slow down your main machine.
As far as GPUs? The place you want to keep an eye out on is Geeks as their refurb GPUs are often crazy cheap. Again been buying from them for years, no hassles. If you ever have a problem with either site just give them a call and they fix it quick, great guys. With 2 teen boys that also game I have to try to keep us close to parity which triple everything adds up pretty quick. The HD4850s they are selling are dirt cheap, just blow through all the games we throw at 'em and the drivers are solid and mature. We'll run 'em for another year and then I'll get the 6770s or 6850s and make my money back on the 4850s off of CL.
Did you use the packet writing software too? Me and everyone else I knew that jumped on the early burners used the packet writing stuff so we wouldn't have to "waste" a whole CD because they were so high!
Man was I pissed when I bought a 4x DVD burner for $200 and had the prices drop to $60 6 months later, the CD burners took something like a year or two to really come down so I figured having that much space would be worth the early adopter penalty. To this day I've got probably a couple dozen spindles of DVD backups around the apt, everything from funny videos to the first versions of Firefox, I backed up everything back then.
Does anybody still use it? Its been awhile since I worked enterprise is why I'm asking, but the home and SMBs dropped Java years ago and I had heard most of the bigger corps went .NET for their backends.
Lets face it, like Adobe products Java has NEVER been good about security. People used them because they had to, not because they were safe. Hopefully HTML V5 will get feature parity with Flash and .NET or something else can replace Java and we can let them both just go away.
Here is what I don't get about these ARM fanbois...why is it that one product has to "win" and the other "lose". Its like what Jobs told the reporters when they kept trying to turn it into Apple VS MSFT "MSFT doesn't have to lose for Apple to win" and he was right, he was going after a different market.
With ARM you are talking extremely low power, idles in the sub-mw range. That low a power draw has a cost and that's IPC. No way in hell the newest ARMs can put out even half the IPC of a 6 year old Phenom quad much less the new Intel cores. On the flipside X86 chips can't drop to the sub-mw idle usage unless you really strip down the core design like Brazos or Atom.
Its different markets folks, its a scalpel and a chainsaw. This VS crap is just bullshit, different use cases require different levels of IPC, some x86 fits better, some ARM. That simple.
Its called a chilling effect and is designed to make everyone too damned scared to say shit about those in power. If you don't think it can happen here I urge you to watch this video by author Naomi Wolf pointing out how many of the moves those in power have done in the past decade are right out of the playbooks of repressive countries. As she notes in the video she herself is now on the watchlist, her crime? Speaking out about the constitution and the rights we have.
Actually for my customers who are too poor for lasers or who tend to print in spurts (say vacation photos, holidays, that kind of thing) I've found the little Canon units to work pretty well. The ink carts are cheap enough online, the picture quality is decent, a new unit costs less than $40, and the drivers are pretty solid yet basic without a ton of extra crap (I'm looking at YOU HP!) and are even easy enough to share across your basic home network. Oh and they don't seem to scream if the cart is half full that its empty either.
But I agree that with B&W lasers in the $80 range and new color units for around $150 there are few customers where an inkjet makes any sense anymore. I picked up a little Samsung B&W for my oldest when he started college, the thing is still printing on the original cart 3 years in and they had a deal where it came with 2 extra carts on Amazon for like $105 with shipping. With deals like that there is just fewer and fewer cases where I can say "yeah an inkjet would work fine for you" anymore.
Hi! Funny thing is we made sure my two boys growing up were exposed to ALL religions and lack thereof, because we believed in letting a child have the facts of all the different faiths and non faiths so they could have critical thinking, know what the oldest chose? He's Catholic. No he doesn't believe in the crazy stories, has no problem with other faiths, he just likes the ceremony of it all, he finds Latin soothing and the local Catholic church is peaceful to him, like meditation to his younger brother who is agnostic.
But I know how you feel, I had friends that were forcibly programmed into the religion their parents supported and not only did they hate every second but the rebeled whenever possible. Heck I once had sex with a preacher's daughter in the upper loft of the church because, and I quote "I hate this fucking place so damned much I want you to give me something nice and loving to think about when i'm stuck in this damned place".
Which is why I say critical thinking and the ability to choose should be placed above all. Nobody in my family was ever Catholic, we never advocated for any religion or belief, we simply allowed the boys to explore anything they were interested in and since my mom was a Baptist that did 3 years of Catholic prep school (In OK I believe LOL) she was able to answer his questions about the symbolism of the various rituals.
In the end ALL religion should be about CHOICE and a child simply doesn't have that ability, which is why I'm against programming kids in any religion. If they grow up and choose to follow one thing or another because they like it? Fine and dandy, all for following your heart and doing what you think is best for you, but I'm with the science guy, you drum that stuff into their heads at an early age and you just can't get it out, no choice there. They either grow up hating it like you or mindlessly believe without question like I've sadly seen in too many, but there just isn't any real choice going on there.
Oh really? How about a link and I'll even be nice enough to bold it for you In the low latency niche, which is just that, a small niche, then it MIGHT have a shot if it isn't buried by the trolls There you go, I said it might have a shot if the trolls don't bury them. In case you haven't noticed patent trolls are a BIG problem with codecs, with it getting bad enough the DoJ is investigating MPEG-LA for setting up a troll group for WebM.
Stick your fingers in your ears and go "la la la" all you want, because H.264 was treated as just another codec, one of many codecs and containers, until Steve Jobs walked out on stage and said "No Flash, H.264!" and the crowds cheered and everyone and their dog and their dog's squeaky toy jumped right on the bandwagon. And WTF did you expect them to do? Apple makes MSFT in the 90s look like Bob's Distro, they are the largest corp on the PLANET. If you want to run on the biggest corp in the world's devices you gotta play by their rules, and that means H.264.
Uhhh...dude? Did you miss MSFT stuffing the standards committee to get OfficeXML declared a "standard" not too long ago? And like it or not (I don't) a certain company in Cupertino is calling the shots when it comes to browsers, why? Because if it don't work on iPad you are SOL.
Look I wish things hadn't worked out this way, I really really do. The one place where i think proprietary has NO business is the web, it should all be open and standard so that anybody on anything can use this incredible resource we have here.
But I'm also not blind, and I can see which way the wind is blowing. When Apple became the largest company on the planet all the web devs saw how much crazy iMoney Apple was making and said "Damn I want some of that!" that was the end of that when it came to open standards. Look how many even here jumped on HTML V5, even though its not finished, will most likely end up with H.264 for video which is a patent nightmare, doesn't cover even half the use cases we had flash for, and sucks resources like drunks suck down free hooch, so why did everyone jump on board without a second thought? Because Apple said so, that's why.
Look its the classic "is ought" problem that has been discussed for centuries. Those that support open codecs talk about how the world OUGHT to be, when in reality the world IS controlled by two major corps, Apple and MSFT. Google found out with WebM they didn't have nearly the amount of pull they thought they had, because like it or not in the end of the day people are using a Windows box or an iPad and if they don't get on board you are boned.
Could Opus maybe find a niche in the low latency market? Sure it could, there are plenty of niches the big two aren't going after and that leaves some wiggle room. But the original poster was talking about PMPs and other portables embracing Opus over MP3 and AAC, and I'm sorry but that is delusional bullshit. The reason we have H.264 and AAC now instead of DivX and MP3? Apple. If Apple says its so then its so, if they say no then its no, simple as that. And unlike old Billy's OS Apple has their systems so locked down that if they say no then you are SOL, most won't root so you are completely out. Do I like it? Fuck no, but its reality and until something unseats the iDevices we are stuck with it.
Dude, let go of the crack pipe. Would you like to see the data for yourself? By cutting out XP,Vista, and 7 you are losing 83.24% of the market and the rest of the market? Apple products which don't use AMD chips. Might want to look at where Linux is on that chart friend, its at....0.97%.
Now if you think a global chip company can survive by giving the finger to 83% of the market and catering to 0.97% of the market I have some magic beans you might be interested in, blessed by RMS himself I swear!
Man, I just gotta ask....WTF are you doing on your desktop that 6 cores won't cut the mustard? Because i'm sitting here with a 1035T, which was strictly the MOR Thuban chip, and it just chews through anything I throw at it with plenty of cycles left over. No problem with some of the latest games like Saints Row 3 or Deus Ex:HR, just tears through video transcodes like nobody's business, I'm even running multitrack audio editing with effects and not a skip nor a hang one.
This is why me and mine are gonna sit it out for a couple of years, with me and the oldest having 6 cores and the youngest my 925 Phenom II frankly we all have cycles to spare, 8Gb of RAM a piece, All we'll have to do is change out the HD4850s for 6770s or 6850s in a year or so and we'll be good to go, Not to mention with any halfway decent board the clocks you can get are just nuts, my Asrock runs just a little over stock naturally and I get nearly 3.1Ghz on TC and between 2.7Ghz-2.8GHz running 6.
So what are you running that even a 6 core won't do the job?