Well considering theaters are looking at going to 4D, aka smell-o-vision and moving seat speakers because the 3D thing ain't selling well enough I'd say maybe, just maybe, the fad is dying out. And can i say "Thank the FSM" if it is? 3D movies and TV give me a headache, I'm sure that 3D gaming would probably do the same. my youngest intends to get the larger 3Dsi or whatever its called come XMas but only because some game series he's hooked on will only be for the 3D and I have a feeling once he's played it the 3Dwhatever will joining the PSP and the DS in the closet.
Its just a shame those things are nothing but portable DRM because the amount of power the handhelds have now if they were open I bet we'd be seeing all kinds of cool software for 'em but instead just like the consoles they all end up in the closet sooner or later. Shame that such powerful hardware ends up just rotting but that's the thing about nasty DRM, once the unit isn't used the way the OEM intended its just a worthless hunk of plastic.
Uhhh...missed the memo? Here you go friend, help thyself and try it, you'll hate it just as much as we do! BTW just FYI but they've been releasing public betas since Vista and IIRC its good until early next year so more than enough time if you want to use it to port apps.
But please, don't think those of us who dismiss Win 8 as crap are haters, just do as we did and try it yourself. I've got it set up on an Athlon X2 at the shop and after trying to use it for nearly a month I just gave up, it feels like the thing is fighting me every step of the way and if you aren't a tweeting twit or need FB updates every second it just feels...kinda pointless actually. Again don't take my word, please do try it yourself. There are instructions on how to use VBox or VMWare with Win 8, so it isn't like you have to have a spare box free to give it a go. try it, you'll see why so many of us do not like it.
But it won't work, and here is why: The X86 market is a low margin cutthroat business that is driven by numbers more than anything. Apple CAN do this because they control the whole process, so you either buy what Apple wants you to or you don't buy Apple period. With X86 people are gonna see desktop A with nicer specs and a bigger NON touchscreen monitor for X, or a worse specc'ed system with a smaller monitor for X+Y. The same will be seen with laptops, where if you'll look the biggest sellers are in the $400-$500 range. At those margins adding a high quality touchscreen would jump the price to $650+ which would drive away a good portion of their sales, so again you'll get a quad core loaded laptop with no touch for $400 or a dual core with touch for $650, no contest as to which the customer is gonna choose.
The sad part is I've never seen any corporation so blatantly ignore market reality as we are seeing now with MSFT. Its like Ballmer and Sinofsky have truly deluded themselves ito think Windows is a premium brand like Apple and that by just forcing the OEMs to bump the price suddenly people will treat MSFT like they do Apple. In reality the non touch screen systems will outnumber the touchscreens by probably 100 to 1 and when people see what a lousy experience Win 8 is without touch the sales will tank and it'll be Vista all over again. i have no doubt if they release by Oct before XMas we'll be seeing Win 8 machines sold "Preloaded with Win 7!" just as we did all those "Vista" machines that came with XP and a Vista disc nobody used.
Try it, its free to download, and then you'll find out as i did in the shop that this is typical of the user experience on Windows 8. I'm sorry, but whether you are a fan of MSFT or not its just not a good UI design. its NOT intuitive, NOT easily discoverable, hell it not only doesn't follow desktop conventions but it doesn't follow cell phone conventions either, and its lack of tooltips or any kind of prompting just leaves the user feeling lost and frustrated.
So please, don't take anyone's word for it, download the RP and see for yourself. I've had everyone from teens to little old ladies trying out the CP at the shop and I have yet to see anyone "just pick up" Windows 8 without seriously struggling with it, its just not a good design.
Sadly it is THIS, this right here, why after a great OS like Win 7 they are gonna take a big steaming dump all over everything. Anybody remember AOL? Remember how even when they'd have a GOOD product like WinAMP they'd royally fuck it up by trying to tie it into "the service" even if the user didn't want their shitty dialup? THAT is MSFT right now, with a shitload of PHBs trying to tie everything into Windows and Office and screwing over anything that doesn't promote Windows and Office.
Just look at what we've learned so far...WinRT will have Office, even though its designed for consumers and hasn't got GPO and AD support...WTF? Their trying to tie log in and everything else into their crappy services like live nobody uses, and now they put in a broken mail app because god fricking forbid somebody might use it over Outlook.
I've said it before, i'll say it again: The best thing that could have happened to MSFT was the DoJ breaking them up, because as they are now their mobile and entertainment divisions have two giant boat anchors tied to them called Windows and Office. It doesn't matter if using the Windows name makes no fucking sense in mobile, doesn't matter if having Office in a consumer designed tablet is stupid, doesn't matter if Metro is a retarded idea on a 27 inch widescreen desktop, its ALL gotta tie into the cash cows no matter what.
Dude...Its the Steam sale, mmkay? STEAM SALE! The editors are probably having to actually work and/or look for old dupes to throw up because everybody is too busy blasting the hell out of each other in their new games to be actually writing submissions.
Hell i'm shocked half the geek sites aren't just sitting there barren with nothing but the words STEAM SALE for how little seems to be going on anywhere. Now if you'll excuse me i got a pile of new games to play...Steam sale!
The only reason I included China was I think, just as the Brits and then USA, its about to be China's turn to play empire and languages tend to spread with empire building. Look at China's military output, they are building subs like they had WWIII scheduled for next Tuesday, same thing with their fighters. I wouldn't be surprised if most of Africa gets controlled by China in the next 20 years, hell the people would probably welcome their Chinese overlords, couldn't be worse than what they have now.
But in the end Spanglish I think will most likely be the final winner, the "one language" simply because as you pointed out its easy to type. I could see a simplified Chinese taking hold in areas controlled by China but ultimately I think we'll see English and Spanish slowly merge until its one single language. If you look at history that is where we are headed, one language. with everything global having a single language makes sense and because its easy to type a Spanglish hybrid would most likely end up being the winner.
I agree with your list 100%. Don't ask me where I heard this but once I read it it FINALLY made sense to me what was wrong with TNG Star Trek series, even First contact just kinda grated on me until it was explained to me then it was like a giant light bulb...there are TWO Picards!
Watch TNG the series and pay attention to Picard, he was the chess player to Kirk's poker player. I mean this was a guy that when given a chance to completely wipe out the borg, after they had brutalized him, he refused because it would have meant genocide. Now compare THAT Picard to what you get in the movies, what you get in the films is "crazy action hero Picard" who is yelling and blasting and not even following common sense much less any logic or reason as was his character. Remember in First Contact, which is supposed to be "the good one" how he tells Worf NOT to shoot the deflector array, because it could be extremely dangerous? So what does he do? Why he shoots right beside it to blast a Borg! And notice how quick he is to blast is own people who get assimilated? The reason why the number theme doesn't work with TNG is they tried to get the main character to act like Bruce Willis instead of who he was in the series and it just didn't work.
As for TFA? I'm just glad Win 7 is good until 2020, don't want that social media mess of a smartphone OS on my desktop thank you VERY much. The closer it gets to release the more half assed and half baked it seems, I mean WinRT with no AD support? No functional mail app when corporate is the one that still uses mail apps? Ballmer i hate to be the one who has to break the news to ya but you are NOT Apple, consumers don't give a rat's ass about Windows and you are screwing up the features that would get your bread and butter business customers to take your new OS. How they can royally fuck up so badly after the rock solid Win 7? I guess that is what fear does to ya, it makes you sloppy.
Why did he get modded down? I honestly haven't seen a email client user in the shop in...ohhh...has to be at least 6 years now. Come to think of it I have exactly ONE email client user and that is my 74 year old ex landlady.
While I'm sure there are some here using it, hell I wouldn't be surprised if we have some gopher users here, the consumers just don't use email clients anymore and haven't in years. i know what you are gonna say, that corporate does, but have you SEEN Windows 8? Its a tweeting twitting FB shitting social mess of an OS! Corporate ain't gonna take that crap! besides most corp users are addicted to all the extras in outlook like planning meetings more than the actual email part.
Look we ALL know Win 8 is a half baked "Hail Mary" play by MSFT to grab a hold of some of the mobile sector, the odds of it working are practically nil, and the whole thing has the stench of desperation and failure about it, but that doesn't mean the guy doesn't have a point. Go talk to any 20 something around your local college, ask 'em what email client they use. You'll hear Google or Yahoo, the thought that you mean an actual program to access email won't even cross their minds. Email clients are as dead as Disco Stu's clothes, that is why Moz is walking away from TBird, people just don't use them hardly anymore.
Really? Because i thought the move to mobile was quickly making IE obsolete. After all we are seeing Chrome and iOS everywhere, and the market has been focused on consumers over corporate for a few years now so i figured the days of IE dictating squat were finally behind us, thank the FSM. Was i wrong?
Every time I hear of stuff like this i always think of the same thing...Kudzu. Before my grandmothers passed on we used to talk about what life was like during the depression and both told me how the scientists were just completely sure that kudzu was the answer, why it'd fix the dust bowls and save the farms! Oh it fixed it alright, if you call spreading like a cancer a 'fix'.
Let us just hope they are smart enough to keep this shit under lock and key and never ever let it out, because i seriously doubt that if it mutated the average creature would have any immunity to a 500 million year old bug.
I wish that were true but in actuality the ISPs will be happy to kick those people and here is why:
The ISPs have their ideal of a perfect customer and those that actually use what they pay for? NOT part of that ideal. What the want is soccer moms, those that check their webmail, maybe watch some LOLCats vids, and generally don't even use a tenth of what they pay for. Because you see those types of customers allow them to stuff more profits into their pockets by oversubscibing, whereas those that actually expect to use what they pay for might ZOMFG!, cause them to actually have to lay lines and upgrade their systems! not good for profits that.
So sadly the major ISPs will be all over this, it lets them cut anybody that uses more than your average housewife so they can keep on oversubscribing and gouging without worry of network slowdowns. they'll end up making deals with netflix to get a cut and put NF servers near the local customers so they don't have to spend shit on peering and then just kick back and enjoy the money.
Next time you have a user like that put 'em on Comodo Internet Security. Its free and by default has both sandboxing and scan before load on web pages. Now it isn't as good as something like Adaware pro when it comes to cleaning up an already infected system, but when you put it on a clean machine barring the user actively ignoring any warnings and telling it to allow malware to run that machines will STAY clean. I have several customers that have been running it for years as well as myself and my family and its a good tool. Oh and the license is free for personal AND business use, which is nice if you have any users that run small businesses.
But I know what you mean, I've seen machines brought into the shop that were used daily and i go to fire them up and am like "WTF? Dear Lord I just hope they never used their CC on this thing" because it would be just thrashing away under all the malware. Just be glad it wasn't filled with clickjacker and porn bugs, those are THE WORST when it comes to gross shit. My former boss Doug used to think it was funny as hell to sneak in this one customer's box first thing in the morning, she had a SERIOUS ass fetish so not only when i first fired up the machine would i be greeted with a practically 3D shot of her hairy porky BF's ass in a thong as the fricking desktop but she would always get these clickjacker bugs so the second the desktop was loaded there would be a dozen IE pages filled with oiled guy ass, right in my face. Doug would laugh his ass off as i'd jump back when the damned thing popped up, really funny, at least for him.
But a great way to deal with those that are thrashing and full of bugs is to download the excellent "Ultimate Boot CD" which if you download the cost common version out there it has an XP Live CD built in, its great because not only does it completely bypass the infected drive and have several scanners of its own, but that XP Live option will let you boot straight off the CD and then use scanners like Trendmicro Housecall without having to deal with an infected OS. Really cuts down the time when it comes to dealing with a nasty infected unit.
If you HONESTLY trust a multinational megacorp like Monsanto to give a rat's ass what anything does, or its long term effects, when it will affect short term profits? Then I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
I have NO problem with coming up with new ways to makes plants better, to feed more people, etc, but what I DO have a problem with is trusting the health of the people of this planet, not to mention the future of the food supply, to corps worried about their stock prices.
As we have sadly seen over and over AND OVER again, from the superfund sites that our grandkids will be paying to clean up, from the poisoning of China to Bhopal, that if given a choice of doing the right thing or increasing profit when it comes to a multinational profit will win every. single. time. and when we are talking about the food supply of the entire planet its simply too damned dangerous to have a handful of megacorps control the whole thing. Hell look at all that has come out lately about drugs having horrible side effects that the corps covered up or ignored so they could get the drugs on the market, you think they will be ANY better when the product can be sold to billions?
I don't know if that would help girlIT, it seems like the ISPs are just gonna keep getting nastier and nastier caps so frankly it won't matter if you have 6 strikes or 3, you won't be downloading shit unless its approved.
Now I have Cablelynx, been told by one person its Cox, another its Verizon, damned if i know, but what I DO know as I was told by one of the guys actually doing back end support that certain things COUNT, others DON'T. For example i used to like to play with new Linux distros, to see if I could get any to pass my support test of taking a couple of years old version and upgrading to current without breakage, I don't do that now. I don't do that now because Linux repos count against the cap, Windows? don't. Could be they have their own WSUS, could be they simply give MSFT a pass, but in either case i can sit here and download every patch and SP since XP RTM and not hit the cap but I did my little experiment with a couple of distros and got dinged for an extra $20 on overage charges. I have been told the cableco VoIP don't count but Vonage does, but the way they've got the bundles set up I'd be screwed to take Vonage over theirs anyway, and I've been told their VOD don't count, Netflix does. I don't know if the last one is true but I do know my Netflix heavy customers have been complaining of overage charges so i'm guessing its correct.
So you see GirlIT, the ISPs don't really need these strikes, they'll simply yank on the chain until you go where you want to go. I'm hitting the Steam sale heavy so I'll find out on next month's bill whether Steam counts or not, but all they have to do to "herd you" in the direction they desire is to make sure services they want you to use don't smack against the caps while the "naughty naughty consumer" ones slam right into it. Should that be illegal? Hell yes it should, talk about blatant anti-trust, but good luck getting anything done about it when our congress all have kneepads so they can be comfortable when they blow big business.
Nope, just one AV, one adblocker, and one printer but I do have over 7 things running in the taskbar, from my Asrock AES (auto switching of phases) to TuneUp Utilities (does all the cleaning, defragging, gets rid of old reg crap, etc) and 3 or 4 more things all running 24/7 and still have more cycles than i could possibly use.
I know you are joking but that is actually a perfect example of what i was talking about, when it was the MHz wars and everyone had single cores you'd need faster to deal with all the crap people would build up over time but now? Now with machines so powerful frankly folks can have a LOT of crap running before it slows down the system. In fact the last system that was brought in because "its too slow" was an Acer Core2Duo laptop that the customer had managed to end up with over 200 pieces of malware running at the same time, thanks to his "must have teh tittiez!" porn obsession.
Wasn't anywhere close to the record, the record is held by a Toshiba laptop brought in to the last shop I worked where the guy managed to get over 2800 pieces of malware all running at once! My boss refused to just wipe it until we had the count as he wanted to see if it beat the previous 1600 bugs and oh boy did it. I swear that thing took over an hour and a half just to get to the desktop! with that many bugs it made that original core duo feel like a 386 trying to run XP, talk about a slog! come to think of it I bet the malware guys just love these new machines, you could probably have 50 bugs running on a core i5 or AMD hexa and not even feel it.
Nope, English has pretty much become the lingua franca of business, so many that don't speak it natively speak English for trade purposes, Spanish is one of the fastest growing languages and between it and Chinese those 3 languages covers a pretty damned large portion of the planet.
Now if you wanted to argue what will it be like 1000 years from now I'd say that Spanish and English will probably become one language, American English already has a lot of Spanish in it and as more Latinos come north that mixing will just be more prevalent, and with China quickly becoming a true superpower i wouldn't be surprised to see simplified Chinese also become a lot more prevalent.
But as we have seen we have gone from over 5000 distinct languages and dialects 500 years ago to less than 100 commonly spoken languages (at least last i checked, it may be even lower) so by looking at history barring some planetwide apocalypse the trend is the languages will continue to get smaller as we move forward. Its a global market after all and having fewer languages makes business easier so frankly i wouldn't be surprised if we end up with those 3 as the major languages planetwide within the next 100 years.
Frankly they should be, just look up what the conviction rate for "public pretenders' are in your state, last i looked in mine it was something like 94%, hell you'd be better off doing it yourself because then at least there would be ONE person on your side.
Sadly I have sat in the courtroom down the street just to observe and it sickens me, you'll see some rich guy on his ninth DUI and fourth hit and run given a slap on the wrist while some poor guy gets caught with a $30 bag of weed or a couple of DUIs of his own and he'll be doing a year in jail. While I'm glad I have a former state prosecutor as a friend of the family it is so disheartening to sit in a courtroom and see what someone without money or an insider gets, its like a bad joke.
Do I actually care whether you read them or not? that would be a giant NO. What I DO care about is how quickly one "ZOMFG shill!" post can completely fucking derail the conversation, better than any actual shill ever could.
so if you don't care? please do go fuck off, you are wasting both my time and yours with your pointless "I don't care" post. Why don't you post about the weather, or what you had for lunch while you are at it?
If it were me? I'd say Spanish, English, and Chinese, simply because those three languages would not only cover the most people but if history is an indicator then those 3 will be the most likely to survive, or at least some offshoot in any case.
Nooo...its scary because no matter how hard we worked in centuries past we couldn't cross corn with a starfish, or fruit with squid and THAT is why GMO is scary, because frankly some of the shit they are coming up with can't even be truly classified as plant anymore.
As long as AMD exists you'll be able to get affordable chips, as that is their whole selling point, the "bang for the buck" which is why you walk into any B&M you'll see AMD logos everywhere. Now that Intel can't bribe the OEMs AMD has been cranking out the chips (last I read they were having trouble keeping some like the Bobcat in stock because the OEMs were using so many) and unless you are pushing the living hell out of the system there is nothing you can't do just as well on an AMD hexa or octo PC. As an added bonus they are opening up all their specs and going with Coreboot over UEFI so if you are one that loves to hack or supports FOSS you should be buying AMD anyway.
So don't worry friend, while the numbers won't hit the figures they did during the heady days of the MHz wars enough people kill their desktops and laptops each day to ensure that there will be plenty of sellers. I figure there will simply be some consolidation, you'll end up with 2 or 3 sellers instead of 8 or 9 but you'll still have plenty of selection.
The problem with your logic is thus: that is the same argument used right before the dotbomb with the "we're all going to the net!" thinclient stuff and then as it is now the "dedicated boxes" cost MORE than simply buying your average Dell. Look at the price of the Chromebooks and prepare to choke, these things are Celeron duals with a tiny SSD and they want MORE than an i3 or AMD quad laptop for the things.
In the end even with people only replacing when they die the economies of scale when you are talking about millions of toast PCs a year means those dedicated devices will simply cost more to do less and most will say "Why would I want that instead of a laptop or desktop?" and just pass them by.
As far as your wondering about gamers, my boys and i love playing games and our HD4850s play games like Saints Row the third and Deus Ex HR just fine and look good on our native 16:9. We'll probably upgrade next year when the HD58XXs or HD68XXs drop in price but right now anything that is a real upgrade to what we have now is frankly more than 3 times what we paid so just isn't worth it.
So I have to agree that we just aren't seeing any reason other than "Hey its new!" to buy new PCs and with the economy in a slump most of us need a better reason that that when our stuff is working just fine.
You can also use Kmeleon on win95 or Win98 and have a full graphical browser. mind you it does take awhile to render, i tried it myself with an old 400MHz win95 box i found at the bottom of a pile of donations and fired up for shits and giggles but it did actually load the Google News page.
But for something a little less painful I have a circa 2004 Sempron 1.8Ghz XP box at the shop i use for a nettop and with Comodo Dragon it surfs just fine, i can even watch SD video. I figure I'll keep it until XP is EOLed, hell i might even go ahead and upgrade it to Win 7 as i tried the trial version and with 2gb of RAM it ran fine except for Aero which i don't care about anyway. Hmmm...I wonder if there is a Win 7 driver for this 7600 GS or X1650 i have sitting in the spare cards box?
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Well considering theaters are looking at going to 4D, aka smell-o-vision and moving seat speakers because the 3D thing ain't selling well enough I'd say maybe, just maybe, the fad is dying out. And can i say "Thank the FSM" if it is? 3D movies and TV give me a headache, I'm sure that 3D gaming would probably do the same. my youngest intends to get the larger 3Dsi or whatever its called come XMas but only because some game series he's hooked on will only be for the 3D and I have a feeling once he's played it the 3Dwhatever will joining the PSP and the DS in the closet.
Its just a shame those things are nothing but portable DRM because the amount of power the handhelds have now if they were open I bet we'd be seeing all kinds of cool software for 'em but instead just like the consoles they all end up in the closet sooner or later. Shame that such powerful hardware ends up just rotting but that's the thing about nasty DRM, once the unit isn't used the way the OEM intended its just a worthless hunk of plastic.
Uhhh...missed the memo? Here you go friend, help thyself and try it, you'll hate it just as much as we do! BTW just FYI but they've been releasing public betas since Vista and IIRC its good until early next year so more than enough time if you want to use it to port apps.
But please, don't think those of us who dismiss Win 8 as crap are haters, just do as we did and try it yourself. I've got it set up on an Athlon X2 at the shop and after trying to use it for nearly a month I just gave up, it feels like the thing is fighting me every step of the way and if you aren't a tweeting twit or need FB updates every second it just feels...kinda pointless actually. Again don't take my word, please do try it yourself. There are instructions on how to use VBox or VMWare with Win 8, so it isn't like you have to have a spare box free to give it a go. try it, you'll see why so many of us do not like it.
But it won't work, and here is why: The X86 market is a low margin cutthroat business that is driven by numbers more than anything. Apple CAN do this because they control the whole process, so you either buy what Apple wants you to or you don't buy Apple period. With X86 people are gonna see desktop A with nicer specs and a bigger NON touchscreen monitor for X, or a worse specc'ed system with a smaller monitor for X+Y. The same will be seen with laptops, where if you'll look the biggest sellers are in the $400-$500 range. At those margins adding a high quality touchscreen would jump the price to $650+ which would drive away a good portion of their sales, so again you'll get a quad core loaded laptop with no touch for $400 or a dual core with touch for $650, no contest as to which the customer is gonna choose.
The sad part is I've never seen any corporation so blatantly ignore market reality as we are seeing now with MSFT. Its like Ballmer and Sinofsky have truly deluded themselves ito think Windows is a premium brand like Apple and that by just forcing the OEMs to bump the price suddenly people will treat MSFT like they do Apple. In reality the non touch screen systems will outnumber the touchscreens by probably 100 to 1 and when people see what a lousy experience Win 8 is without touch the sales will tank and it'll be Vista all over again. i have no doubt if they release by Oct before XMas we'll be seeing Win 8 machines sold "Preloaded with Win 7!" just as we did all those "Vista" machines that came with XP and a Vista disc nobody used.
Try it, its free to download, and then you'll find out as i did in the shop that this is typical of the user experience on Windows 8. I'm sorry, but whether you are a fan of MSFT or not its just not a good UI design. its NOT intuitive, NOT easily discoverable, hell it not only doesn't follow desktop conventions but it doesn't follow cell phone conventions either, and its lack of tooltips or any kind of prompting just leaves the user feeling lost and frustrated.
So please, don't take anyone's word for it, download the RP and see for yourself. I've had everyone from teens to little old ladies trying out the CP at the shop and I have yet to see anyone "just pick up" Windows 8 without seriously struggling with it, its just not a good design.
Sadly it is THIS, this right here, why after a great OS like Win 7 they are gonna take a big steaming dump all over everything. Anybody remember AOL? Remember how even when they'd have a GOOD product like WinAMP they'd royally fuck it up by trying to tie it into "the service" even if the user didn't want their shitty dialup? THAT is MSFT right now, with a shitload of PHBs trying to tie everything into Windows and Office and screwing over anything that doesn't promote Windows and Office.
Just look at what we've learned so far...WinRT will have Office, even though its designed for consumers and hasn't got GPO and AD support...WTF? Their trying to tie log in and everything else into their crappy services like live nobody uses, and now they put in a broken mail app because god fricking forbid somebody might use it over Outlook.
I've said it before, i'll say it again: The best thing that could have happened to MSFT was the DoJ breaking them up, because as they are now their mobile and entertainment divisions have two giant boat anchors tied to them called Windows and Office. It doesn't matter if using the Windows name makes no fucking sense in mobile, doesn't matter if having Office in a consumer designed tablet is stupid, doesn't matter if Metro is a retarded idea on a 27 inch widescreen desktop, its ALL gotta tie into the cash cows no matter what.
Dude...Its the Steam sale, mmkay? STEAM SALE! The editors are probably having to actually work and/or look for old dupes to throw up because everybody is too busy blasting the hell out of each other in their new games to be actually writing submissions.
Hell i'm shocked half the geek sites aren't just sitting there barren with nothing but the words STEAM SALE for how little seems to be going on anywhere. Now if you'll excuse me i got a pile of new games to play...Steam sale!
The only reason I included China was I think, just as the Brits and then USA, its about to be China's turn to play empire and languages tend to spread with empire building. Look at China's military output, they are building subs like they had WWIII scheduled for next Tuesday, same thing with their fighters. I wouldn't be surprised if most of Africa gets controlled by China in the next 20 years, hell the people would probably welcome their Chinese overlords, couldn't be worse than what they have now.
But in the end Spanglish I think will most likely be the final winner, the "one language" simply because as you pointed out its easy to type. I could see a simplified Chinese taking hold in areas controlled by China but ultimately I think we'll see English and Spanish slowly merge until its one single language. If you look at history that is where we are headed, one language. with everything global having a single language makes sense and because its easy to type a Spanglish hybrid would most likely end up being the winner.
I agree with your list 100%. Don't ask me where I heard this but once I read it it FINALLY made sense to me what was wrong with TNG Star Trek series, even First contact just kinda grated on me until it was explained to me then it was like a giant light bulb...there are TWO Picards!
Watch TNG the series and pay attention to Picard, he was the chess player to Kirk's poker player. I mean this was a guy that when given a chance to completely wipe out the borg, after they had brutalized him, he refused because it would have meant genocide. Now compare THAT Picard to what you get in the movies, what you get in the films is "crazy action hero Picard" who is yelling and blasting and not even following common sense much less any logic or reason as was his character. Remember in First Contact, which is supposed to be "the good one" how he tells Worf NOT to shoot the deflector array, because it could be extremely dangerous? So what does he do? Why he shoots right beside it to blast a Borg! And notice how quick he is to blast is own people who get assimilated? The reason why the number theme doesn't work with TNG is they tried to get the main character to act like Bruce Willis instead of who he was in the series and it just didn't work.
As for TFA? I'm just glad Win 7 is good until 2020, don't want that social media mess of a smartphone OS on my desktop thank you VERY much. The closer it gets to release the more half assed and half baked it seems, I mean WinRT with no AD support? No functional mail app when corporate is the one that still uses mail apps? Ballmer i hate to be the one who has to break the news to ya but you are NOT Apple, consumers don't give a rat's ass about Windows and you are screwing up the features that would get your bread and butter business customers to take your new OS. How they can royally fuck up so badly after the rock solid Win 7? I guess that is what fear does to ya, it makes you sloppy.
Why did he get modded down? I honestly haven't seen a email client user in the shop in...ohhh...has to be at least 6 years now. Come to think of it I have exactly ONE email client user and that is my 74 year old ex landlady.
While I'm sure there are some here using it, hell I wouldn't be surprised if we have some gopher users here, the consumers just don't use email clients anymore and haven't in years. i know what you are gonna say, that corporate does, but have you SEEN Windows 8? Its a tweeting twitting FB shitting social mess of an OS! Corporate ain't gonna take that crap! besides most corp users are addicted to all the extras in outlook like planning meetings more than the actual email part.
Look we ALL know Win 8 is a half baked "Hail Mary" play by MSFT to grab a hold of some of the mobile sector, the odds of it working are practically nil, and the whole thing has the stench of desperation and failure about it, but that doesn't mean the guy doesn't have a point. Go talk to any 20 something around your local college, ask 'em what email client they use. You'll hear Google or Yahoo, the thought that you mean an actual program to access email won't even cross their minds. Email clients are as dead as Disco Stu's clothes, that is why Moz is walking away from TBird, people just don't use them hardly anymore.
Really? Because i thought the move to mobile was quickly making IE obsolete. After all we are seeing Chrome and iOS everywhere, and the market has been focused on consumers over corporate for a few years now so i figured the days of IE dictating squat were finally behind us, thank the FSM. Was i wrong?
Every time I hear of stuff like this i always think of the same thing...Kudzu. Before my grandmothers passed on we used to talk about what life was like during the depression and both told me how the scientists were just completely sure that kudzu was the answer, why it'd fix the dust bowls and save the farms! Oh it fixed it alright, if you call spreading like a cancer a 'fix'.
Let us just hope they are smart enough to keep this shit under lock and key and never ever let it out, because i seriously doubt that if it mutated the average creature would have any immunity to a 500 million year old bug.
I wish that were true but in actuality the ISPs will be happy to kick those people and here is why:
The ISPs have their ideal of a perfect customer and those that actually use what they pay for? NOT part of that ideal. What the want is soccer moms, those that check their webmail, maybe watch some LOLCats vids, and generally don't even use a tenth of what they pay for. Because you see those types of customers allow them to stuff more profits into their pockets by oversubscibing, whereas those that actually expect to use what they pay for might ZOMFG!, cause them to actually have to lay lines and upgrade their systems! not good for profits that .
So sadly the major ISPs will be all over this, it lets them cut anybody that uses more than your average housewife so they can keep on oversubscribing and gouging without worry of network slowdowns. they'll end up making deals with netflix to get a cut and put NF servers near the local customers so they don't have to spend shit on peering and then just kick back and enjoy the money.
Next time you have a user like that put 'em on Comodo Internet Security. Its free and by default has both sandboxing and scan before load on web pages. Now it isn't as good as something like Adaware pro when it comes to cleaning up an already infected system, but when you put it on a clean machine barring the user actively ignoring any warnings and telling it to allow malware to run that machines will STAY clean. I have several customers that have been running it for years as well as myself and my family and its a good tool. Oh and the license is free for personal AND business use, which is nice if you have any users that run small businesses.
But I know what you mean, I've seen machines brought into the shop that were used daily and i go to fire them up and am like "WTF? Dear Lord I just hope they never used their CC on this thing" because it would be just thrashing away under all the malware. Just be glad it wasn't filled with clickjacker and porn bugs, those are THE WORST when it comes to gross shit. My former boss Doug used to think it was funny as hell to sneak in this one customer's box first thing in the morning, she had a SERIOUS ass fetish so not only when i first fired up the machine would i be greeted with a practically 3D shot of her hairy porky BF's ass in a thong as the fricking desktop but she would always get these clickjacker bugs so the second the desktop was loaded there would be a dozen IE pages filled with oiled guy ass, right in my face. Doug would laugh his ass off as i'd jump back when the damned thing popped up, really funny, at least for him.
But a great way to deal with those that are thrashing and full of bugs is to download the excellent "Ultimate Boot CD" which if you download the cost common version out there it has an XP Live CD built in, its great because not only does it completely bypass the infected drive and have several scanners of its own, but that XP Live option will let you boot straight off the CD and then use scanners like Trendmicro Housecall without having to deal with an infected OS. Really cuts down the time when it comes to dealing with a nasty infected unit.
If you HONESTLY trust a multinational megacorp like Monsanto to give a rat's ass what anything does, or its long term effects, when it will affect short term profits? Then I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
I have NO problem with coming up with new ways to makes plants better, to feed more people, etc, but what I DO have a problem with is trusting the health of the people of this planet, not to mention the future of the food supply, to corps worried about their stock prices.
As we have sadly seen over and over AND OVER again, from the superfund sites that our grandkids will be paying to clean up, from the poisoning of China to Bhopal, that if given a choice of doing the right thing or increasing profit when it comes to a multinational profit will win every. single. time. and when we are talking about the food supply of the entire planet its simply too damned dangerous to have a handful of megacorps control the whole thing. Hell look at all that has come out lately about drugs having horrible side effects that the corps covered up or ignored so they could get the drugs on the market, you think they will be ANY better when the product can be sold to billions?
I don't know if that would help girlIT, it seems like the ISPs are just gonna keep getting nastier and nastier caps so frankly it won't matter if you have 6 strikes or 3, you won't be downloading shit unless its approved.
Now I have Cablelynx, been told by one person its Cox, another its Verizon, damned if i know, but what I DO know as I was told by one of the guys actually doing back end support that certain things COUNT, others DON'T. For example i used to like to play with new Linux distros, to see if I could get any to pass my support test of taking a couple of years old version and upgrading to current without breakage, I don't do that now. I don't do that now because Linux repos count against the cap, Windows? don't. Could be they have their own WSUS, could be they simply give MSFT a pass, but in either case i can sit here and download every patch and SP since XP RTM and not hit the cap but I did my little experiment with a couple of distros and got dinged for an extra $20 on overage charges. I have been told the cableco VoIP don't count but Vonage does, but the way they've got the bundles set up I'd be screwed to take Vonage over theirs anyway, and I've been told their VOD don't count, Netflix does. I don't know if the last one is true but I do know my Netflix heavy customers have been complaining of overage charges so i'm guessing its correct.
So you see GirlIT, the ISPs don't really need these strikes, they'll simply yank on the chain until you go where you want to go. I'm hitting the Steam sale heavy so I'll find out on next month's bill whether Steam counts or not, but all they have to do to "herd you" in the direction they desire is to make sure services they want you to use don't smack against the caps while the "naughty naughty consumer" ones slam right into it. Should that be illegal? Hell yes it should, talk about blatant anti-trust, but good luck getting anything done about it when our congress all have kneepads so they can be comfortable when they blow big business.
Nope, just one AV, one adblocker, and one printer but I do have over 7 things running in the taskbar, from my Asrock AES (auto switching of phases) to TuneUp Utilities (does all the cleaning, defragging, gets rid of old reg crap, etc) and 3 or 4 more things all running 24/7 and still have more cycles than i could possibly use.
I know you are joking but that is actually a perfect example of what i was talking about, when it was the MHz wars and everyone had single cores you'd need faster to deal with all the crap people would build up over time but now? Now with machines so powerful frankly folks can have a LOT of crap running before it slows down the system. In fact the last system that was brought in because "its too slow" was an Acer Core2Duo laptop that the customer had managed to end up with over 200 pieces of malware running at the same time, thanks to his "must have teh tittiez!" porn obsession.
Wasn't anywhere close to the record, the record is held by a Toshiba laptop brought in to the last shop I worked where the guy managed to get over 2800 pieces of malware all running at once! My boss refused to just wipe it until we had the count as he wanted to see if it beat the previous 1600 bugs and oh boy did it. I swear that thing took over an hour and a half just to get to the desktop! with that many bugs it made that original core duo feel like a 386 trying to run XP, talk about a slog! come to think of it I bet the malware guys just love these new machines, you could probably have 50 bugs running on a core i5 or AMD hexa and not even feel it.
Nope, English has pretty much become the lingua franca of business, so many that don't speak it natively speak English for trade purposes, Spanish is one of the fastest growing languages and between it and Chinese those 3 languages covers a pretty damned large portion of the planet.
Now if you wanted to argue what will it be like 1000 years from now I'd say that Spanish and English will probably become one language, American English already has a lot of Spanish in it and as more Latinos come north that mixing will just be more prevalent, and with China quickly becoming a true superpower i wouldn't be surprised to see simplified Chinese also become a lot more prevalent.
But as we have seen we have gone from over 5000 distinct languages and dialects 500 years ago to less than 100 commonly spoken languages (at least last i checked, it may be even lower) so by looking at history barring some planetwide apocalypse the trend is the languages will continue to get smaller as we move forward. Its a global market after all and having fewer languages makes business easier so frankly i wouldn't be surprised if we end up with those 3 as the major languages planetwide within the next 100 years.
Frankly they should be, just look up what the conviction rate for "public pretenders' are in your state, last i looked in mine it was something like 94%, hell you'd be better off doing it yourself because then at least there would be ONE person on your side.
Sadly I have sat in the courtroom down the street just to observe and it sickens me, you'll see some rich guy on his ninth DUI and fourth hit and run given a slap on the wrist while some poor guy gets caught with a $30 bag of weed or a couple of DUIs of his own and he'll be doing a year in jail. While I'm glad I have a former state prosecutor as a friend of the family it is so disheartening to sit in a courtroom and see what someone without money or an insider gets, its like a bad joke.
Do I actually care whether you read them or not? that would be a giant NO. What I DO care about is how quickly one "ZOMFG shill!" post can completely fucking derail the conversation, better than any actual shill ever could.
so if you don't care? please do go fuck off, you are wasting both my time and yours with your pointless "I don't care" post. Why don't you post about the weather, or what you had for lunch while you are at it?
If it were me? I'd say Spanish, English, and Chinese, simply because those three languages would not only cover the most people but if history is an indicator then those 3 will be the most likely to survive, or at least some offshoot in any case.
Nooo...its scary because no matter how hard we worked in centuries past we couldn't cross corn with a starfish, or fruit with squid and THAT is why GMO is scary, because frankly some of the shit they are coming up with can't even be truly classified as plant anymore.
As long as AMD exists you'll be able to get affordable chips, as that is their whole selling point, the "bang for the buck" which is why you walk into any B&M you'll see AMD logos everywhere. Now that Intel can't bribe the OEMs AMD has been cranking out the chips (last I read they were having trouble keeping some like the Bobcat in stock because the OEMs were using so many) and unless you are pushing the living hell out of the system there is nothing you can't do just as well on an AMD hexa or octo PC. As an added bonus they are opening up all their specs and going with Coreboot over UEFI so if you are one that loves to hack or supports FOSS you should be buying AMD anyway.
So don't worry friend, while the numbers won't hit the figures they did during the heady days of the MHz wars enough people kill their desktops and laptops each day to ensure that there will be plenty of sellers. I figure there will simply be some consolidation, you'll end up with 2 or 3 sellers instead of 8 or 9 but you'll still have plenty of selection.
The problem with your logic is thus: that is the same argument used right before the dotbomb with the "we're all going to the net!" thinclient stuff and then as it is now the "dedicated boxes" cost MORE than simply buying your average Dell. Look at the price of the Chromebooks and prepare to choke, these things are Celeron duals with a tiny SSD and they want MORE than an i3 or AMD quad laptop for the things.
In the end even with people only replacing when they die the economies of scale when you are talking about millions of toast PCs a year means those dedicated devices will simply cost more to do less and most will say "Why would I want that instead of a laptop or desktop?" and just pass them by.
As far as your wondering about gamers, my boys and i love playing games and our HD4850s play games like Saints Row the third and Deus Ex HR just fine and look good on our native 16:9. We'll probably upgrade next year when the HD58XXs or HD68XXs drop in price but right now anything that is a real upgrade to what we have now is frankly more than 3 times what we paid so just isn't worth it.
So I have to agree that we just aren't seeing any reason other than "Hey its new!" to buy new PCs and with the economy in a slump most of us need a better reason that that when our stuff is working just fine.
You can also use Kmeleon on win95 or Win98 and have a full graphical browser. mind you it does take awhile to render, i tried it myself with an old 400MHz win95 box i found at the bottom of a pile of donations and fired up for shits and giggles but it did actually load the Google News page.
But for something a little less painful I have a circa 2004 Sempron 1.8Ghz XP box at the shop i use for a nettop and with Comodo Dragon it surfs just fine, i can even watch SD video. I figure I'll keep it until XP is EOLed, hell i might even go ahead and upgrade it to Win 7 as i tried the trial version and with 2gb of RAM it ran fine except for Aero which i don't care about anyway. Hmmm...I wonder if there is a Win 7 driver for this 7600 GS or X1650 i have sitting in the spare cards box?