I hate to break the news to ya AC but the ONLY ones complaining are Linux users, which is less than 3% of the market and who frankly don't buy that many GPUs anyway. In the Windows world AMD has owned a pretty good chunk of the crucial under $200 market and their high end cards trade blows with Nvidia all the time while often being a good c-note or more cheaper.
In the end FOSS users have no right at all to complain because AMD did EXACTLY what you told them to. How many times did we hear from the devs and even on this very forum "Just open up the specs and we'll do the support"? Well guess what sparky, FOSS devs are finding out the hard way that writing good GPU drivers is INSANELY difficult. you asked for it, you got it. Either accept the fact you are not capable of the task and demand a hardware ABI so that the people that actually BUILD the hardware can support it without having to keep an entire dev team just to make drivers for old shit, or STFU and make the drivers already.
You are using TM #267, aka move the goal posts. "hey its NOT because we offer nothing to the end users but bullshit and hassles, its NOT that we have serious problems we refuse to address, its that we DON'T WANT TO WIN, yeah that's the ticket! In fact...we already won, just somewhere else! that is it!"...yeah my my dick is named Fred and is 15 feet long and plays jingle bells when you rub it.
See how long anybody gives a shit about your gains in servers when the entire consumer market is cut off to you. how many you think are even gonna LEARN Linux if they have no hardware to learn ON friend? that would be damned few, much fewer than you have now. meanwhile Windows admins are a dime a dozen and plentiful as dirt and if MSFT wants to cut you out of the server market all they have to do is offer the OEMs WinServer at $100 a pop with 100 CALs free and CALs after that at $3 a pop for all those that sign up for "Windows Assurance Secure Server" where its also got a locked bootloader.
The corps will go where they can get the best deals PERIOD, they have no more loyalty to your OS or your beliefs than they do to the guy that sells them staplers. In case you missed the memo the world is quickly becoming CONSUMERS in 500 foot flaming neon and you are gonna get cut out of that market, not because of some great evil conspiracy, but because attitudes such as yours handed the market over on a silver platter. Frankly with such a piss poor attitude towards your customers you deserve to lose.
Uhhh...all that is is the client connect code friend, have Google released the code they run on their own servers? last i checked that was a big NO so who the hell knows what is going on there. Frankly with as much data as Google gathers already and the changes in the privacy policy I'd be leery of sending that company, or any other for that matter, every single website i visit so they can "check it" for me. That is what i had an AV that scans before load and a sandboxed browser for anyway.
I do find it quite fascinating how there seems to be this kind of...disconnect for want of a better word, when it comes to Google. If oracle or MSFT or Apple or frankly any other company i can think of said 'yeah just send us every single link you ever click on and we'll check them for you, for your own protection of course" a good 90% of the comments would be geeks screaming and ranting like somebody set their kitty on fire, but Google? never even enters their mind, kinda like how Apple is treated as these anti-corporate hipsters because they have John Lennon posters in the Apple stores.
I just find it quite strange, this disconnect between reality and slogan. i frankly don't trust ANY corporation, not Google or Apple, not MSFT or Oracle, because i know EVERY SINGLE ONE if given the choice between having their profits go up 15% this quarter by throwing me in a cage with an enraged silverback with a club or not getting the paycheck would be "Batter up Bobo!", hell they'd probably find a way to market it, maybe T-shirts or hats or something. It just seems weird to me that so many seem to have this whole "corporate yay!" thing just because somebody in some corp said something or did something they like.
Know what is sad? i won't do it, since you seem to be trying to answer honestly but every. single. answer. you put is actually a TM on TMRepo. that means its the same lines that have been used so damned often they actually wrote them down with a cute title so you could just paste the numbers. yet linux is STILL less than 3%, the numbers say more than i ever could, as will this link that in turn has over 100 links pointing out exactly what i was just saying complete with makes and models.
So either you are magical, able to sprinkle fairy dust onto the machine, or your memory helpfully forgets bullshit. because frankly the ONLY machine I've EVER seen pass the hairyfeet challenge was a 733MHz Intel box which i promptly threw away because it was too damned old to even get a dollar for. Everything with hardware anybody would want? Or with a decent GPU? or sound? Crapped all over itself.
In the end "Linux is a replacement for Windows!" is a damned lie, its a replacement for a Hackentosh which is a MUCH MUCH smaller niche, and like a Hackentosh you damned well better be picky as fuck with the hardware and no damned well about each brand and be ready to do some hacking, something windows users haven't needed to do in over a decade. In fact if i were to compare Linux to Windows I'd say its right now barely at Win98 but of course that isn't what you want to hear, but think about it. What was Win98? it was a CLI OS with a bolted on GUI which was a second class citizen that wasn't even required, it was buggy and flaky and CLI was often needed to really get anything done or to fix problems. what is Linux? it is a CLI OS with a bolted on GUI which is a second class citizen that isn't even required, it is buggy and flaky and CLI is often needed to really get anything done or to fix problems.
Oh and I don't know what magical place you live at friend but most B&M stores don't like to take open merch, often charge a restocking fee, and have a set number of returns per year. So using your logic frankly it wouldn't take but 1 or 2 stuck with devices to make Linux equal MORE than the cost of Windows. that is why i personally won't have a Linux machine in my shop, a single broken driver will cost more of my time that a Windows 7 HP OEM. BTW Best Buy, Asus, Walmart, what do these 3 have in common? ALL USED to carry linux and NONE carry it now, why? Because just as i said the support costs ate any savings by not paying for Windows. I'm sure you haven't used Windows since XP but frankly since Vista the only bugs I've seen have been PEBKAC which Linux doesn't give you a degree in CompSci by running it friend. Oh and if you think Linux is immune from bugs? There was an infected Quake 3 in the repos for a year and a half with NOBODY catching it, KDELook handed out infected screensavers for ages with nobody catching on, these are just two off the top of my head. look at how simple it is to write a Linux bug. as we saw with Android if anybody gave a crap or if Linux had any real numbers there would be just as many Linux bugs as there would be Windows ones, sorry.
This would be an argument IF Nvidia and AMD were doing things even closely to the same way, but they are not and haven't been for several years now. Nvidia has always used the classical "Build a big ass bad ass chip, then cut it down for the mainstream and budget markets" while AMD is using the "Build a mainstream chip and then add more chips to ramp UP to the high end" which is a completely different approach and one knowing how the other did X or Y frankly i doubt would help much as their designs are just too different. hell just look at the specs of any two roughly equal Nvidia and AMD chips, Nvidia has fewer but much more powerful cores while AMD has hundreds of weaker cores working in concert.
so I really don't see how knowing how one does X or Y really is gonna do shit. After all they could always reverse engineer the hardware or write a custom kernel to look at what is going on if they were THAT curious and it certainly didn't seem to bother AMD to open up THEIR specs, most likely because as i said their designs and Nvidia's are just too radically different for one to be copying the other. I mean how long as AMD been using the X2s for the high end now? 5 years? 6? it wouldn't make any sense to suddenly change their designs just because Nvidia opened their specs, not to mention it would mean basically tossing their designs and roadmap, it just wouldn't make sense.
And whose fault would that be? Time for a dose of cold hard truth boys and girls, if the community would have had a living shitfit at the half baked crap coming from the devs, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about, crap like companies having to release new drivers even for old stuff because Linus and the kernel fiddlers kept breaking shit, the DE wars, Pulseaudio, repos full of half baked software with zero QC or QA, well then maybe you'd have enough marketshare that MSFT wouldn't dare!
When Shuttleworth flushes millions down the toilet and Linux never breaks single digits and most places have it close to the same 2% its been in years, when you are offering your product for free with no strings attached and people would STILL rather steal the other guy's product, when forum hunts and CLI copypasta is treated as par for the course on update, when your forums are filled with "Ur a M$ Shill!" and "Works4me" because a vocal segment of your users treat your product as a cult instead of an OS? Well folks its time to suck it up and take a good long hard look in the mirror.
I would STRONGLY suggest you read thesetwo informative articles, the first by one of the RH devs, and then you will know why FLOSS is so easily blocked with so few giving a shit. The second one has over a hundred links pointing out serious long term problems that are either 1.-swept under the rug, 2.-Ignored, or 3.-Treated as hearasay if you even bring them up. I'm sure this post will be buried by those that treated FLOSS as a religion, aka the FOSSies as I've often called them, because their answer to everything that isn't "Gee Biff, isn't FLOSS Swell, it sure is Skip, RMS is a God among men and M$ burns babies!" is treated like crapping on the Baby Jesus, but in the end the numbers don't lie. if there hadn't been so much infighting, reinventing the wheel, NIH, ignoring of obvious issues, and using the fact that it was free as an excuse to settle for half ass? Well then frankly the numbers would be such that MSFT wouldn't dare block it. the fact that they can and most of the planet couldn't care less just shows a failing in FLOSS to give the people what they want and to offer a better product as far as I'm concerned.
OT as well but congrats, I didn't think anybody would get the reference. That is a great little movie with a ton of one liners, anybody who hasn't seen it in awhile ought to fire it up. The 3 Stooges bits, the one liners, its just a really cute little movie without all the cynicism the movies today seem to be required to have. And how can you not love a movie that has lines like "I don't know about you, but I am planning to scream and run" or "Ooh. Her pants are blazing for you, Newton Crosby" in it?
Pretty much all of them, youtube, vevo,mtv,, pretty much ANY site that has videos and is of any real size they end up having it on there. Like I said they have a trial version for free, give it a spin, you'll find its the easiest song downloader around. Hell I would have never heard of it either if it hadn't been on giveawayoftheday a month or two ago and decided to give it a spin, but DAMN, it finds just about anything you want in just about any bitrate, you can look by artist, song name, and damned if it won't find it. hell I even downloaded some bird sounds for the neighbor's parakeet with it, just click and go. The tagger is also nice, you can fill in the data in the style you use in your music folder so you don't have to screw with retagging.
Anyway give it a go, with a free trial it isn't like it'll cost anything but a couple of minutes to try it out. i love how it can even come up with live and alternate versions, really awesome to hear some of my fav songs live or unplugged or alternate versions i didn't even know existed.
Actually of all people i think Yahoo! has the right idea, live shows on the net paid for by advertising. so far they've only been doing it for comedy but I see no reason why it can't be done for music, and we could also use all these HD theaters we have set up now. I know i personally would rather see a live show where i don't have to spend 3 damned hours trying to find parking, fighting my way to the front, being crushed like a bug, etc.
And there are plenty of smaller clubs friend, i play in quite a few of them and they are damned nice. After the show i can sit there with a drink and actually get to talk to the audience, find out what they liked and what they didn't, its quite a learning experience.
In the end the ONLY ones making any real money off of this is the middlemen, think all those one hit wonders from the 60s-80s are getting shit? Hell i saw an interview with keith from the Stones and he said even THEY don't get shit on any of the stuff made before 73, which naturally covers most of their biggest hits, because the record execs fucked them like they do everyone else. In the end you can't make something scarce that is instantly and infinitely copy-able, you just can't. I'm sure there are corps that would like to charge you for every breath you take but luckily people can see what a stupid fucking idea that is, well so is trying to say a stream of ones and zeroes should be treated no different than a car, its ridiculous.
Even easier just don't be a cheap bastard and buy Speed MP3 downloader which i got off of giveawayoftheday but you can buy it for like $25, and it lets you set tags, choose bitrates, its really nice and beyond simple. hell your grandma could run it. Sure you can go through the steps of using a browser extension, downloading to desktop, converting to MP3 then, but why bother? With Speed you don't even have to fire up your browser, just pick what you want from it and hit the download button. they have a free trial so check it out, if for some reason i ever screw up and lose the GAOTD version i'll just buy it, being that hassle free is worth $25 IMHO.
Actually I've found you lose money on Linux because its a fucking support nightmare from hell. How do you tell if that new device will work with Linux? you can't, any hardware lists are horribly out of date, its a total crap shoot. Hell try the Hairyfeet challenge, take ANY distro, your choice, from just 4 years ago (less than half the Windows support cycle) and update it to current using JUST the GUI as any normal user would be expected to do. Know what you'll get? A broken mess, that's what. In just the last 4 years you went from ALSO to Pukeaudio, KDE 3 and GNOME 2 to KDE 4 and GNOME Shell, and that's just the top layer stuff, the guts are even worse off, with all kinds of incompatible bullshit down in the networking guts especially. Any Windows machine I sell will continue to function for the life of the Windows install barring hardware failure, possibly even longer as I have a few customers that only recently retired their Win2K machines. Linux? Can't do it, the whole system from the kernel up is in a state of flux and shit breaks constantly.
Finally if you'd taken just 10 minutes of your time before install you'd never have had that problem with drivers as there is this place called DriverPacks where you can simply download a pack with ALL the drivers for damned near every piece of hardware, all compressed with a nice little GUI that will do the work for you. Just pick the OS you are planning on install or do as i did and download the packs for every Windows OS and you are good to go. Once done you can simply slap them on a DVD, put them on a flash, whatever, and run it once you get to the desktop and go make a sammich, it does ALL the work. Finish up with Ninite while you have your dessert and tada! From a blank drive to a fully loaded and ready to go Windows in about an hour, an hour and a half if you use WSUS Offline to install the windows updates which you have had it download previously. I keep it on a shared drive but you can use DVD, flash, whatever floats your boat. Again hassle free and an hour and a half and maybe 4 clicks total, couldn't be simpler.
All hail the one true god! You DO realize that is what you sound like, yes? How can you agree that the half of the system you don't agree with is broken but the half you do agree with isn't? It isn't magic you know, you only have X number of guys qualified to do that job and X+Y100 times the amount of work. I'm sorry but the math just doesn't work, it can't be done. I could post link after link, hell page after page of drivers that work in foo that don't work in foo+1, but what is the point? There were over 100 links in that last one yet you chose to ignore it.
And THIS is why I call them FOSSies, because it ALL appeals to emotion, ignoring of facts, it is like trying to have a discussion on evolution with someone who believes Adam rode a dinosaur, its simply not possible. In just the consumer desktop space you are looking at a good 200,000 drivers, now HOW MANY are working on the dev mailing list? 20 guys? 40? You simply can't do what you think can be done, there is simply not enough hours in the day for guys that ALREADY are in charge of maintaining the kernel to provide ANY QA OR QC for that amount of drivers. Anyone that can count can see what you are suggesting is impossible, it would be like claiming you could bounce hard enough on a trampoline to break orbit, it can NOT be done.
In the end you don't have the manpower to do what you are suggesting and frankly never will. As i pointed out the ONLY reason it can work in the spaces where Linux has gained traction is because hardware can be strictly controlled and changes aren't allowed until they have been run on test beds and vetted for bugs. this is the complete opposite of the consumer space which is why Linux is a massive failure there, because consumers won't put up with having to have test beds and do their own QA and QC to ensure that the system will function. For an enterprise paying 2 devs $80k+ a year to do that job is cheaper than paying for MSFT CALs for a 2000+ seat corp so it makes sense. Your design? Doesn't work except in niches that are willing to use it DESPITE the massive failings in design. Accept it and be happy with what you have, or work to change it, your choice.
That was IF you were 1.-In that small area of SoCal because they had no national sales (unlike the KIM-1) and 2.-Could round up all the un-included parts to finish the thing. Also by 1977 both the PET and the TRS-80 went on sale, again nationally, so I'd say that while the Apple II could be argued to be a milestone the Apple I most certainly was not. Nobody rushed to copy the Apple I, or to support it, it never even made a blip on the radar. I would argue its ONLY place in history is for those that are followers of Apple whereas the Apple II did indeed change things across the landscape.
Actually you might want to read former POTUS Hoover's book, because he was right there with FDR at the start and while you can argue the ends justified the means he makes it quite clear that FDR KNEW what he was doing was gonna start a war the American people DID NOT WANT and did it anyway. In fact he might as well have dropped his trousers and waved his dick in the face of the emperor of Japan, doing things he KNEW would insult the living shit out of them, such as making their ambassador wait in the lobby every day for 3 weeks before he would even talk to him.
So read Hoover's book, its free online in several places, its a real eye opener. In a LOT of ways WWII the pre stages were like the Iraq mess or Vietnam, with a POTUS being told very clearly the American people don't want war and completely ignoring them. Personally I'd argue that FDR was one of the worst presidents in American history, with his openly threatening the SCOTUS until they caved (the stitch in time that saved nine), twisting the laws to fit giving him power the POTUS never had (the twisting of the commerce clause) and by blatantly starting a war that not only the American people didn't want but even his own advisers said would lead to Stalin ruling half of Europe.
so I really wouldn't use WWII as an example friend, because if you read the actual history and not the propaganda it was a president causing the deaths of countless Americans for his own selfish ends. FDR didn't give a shit about Hitler or Japan, he wanted America to be the new British empire.
Bimbo Newton Crosby. Know how much Cheap Trick gets from iTunes for their back catalog? That would be ZERO, the middlemen take every cent. Or how about the fact that Meatloaf had to file for bankruptcy TWICE because using Hollywood Accounting the record company claimed that Bat Out Of Hell I, which has the record for longest time on the top 200 BTW, and this before the age of piracy, made NO MONEY and therefor he didn't deserve shit for one of the biggest selling albums in history.
As someone who makes music and hopes to actually make a living from it I have to say FUCK THE MAFIAA as the current system is so damned rigged for the middlemen it is about like trying to win 3 card monty, its a total scam. living a hop, skip, and a jump from two major music centers I've held the actual contracts in my hand, got to see what actually happens. i've seen artists that sell more than half a million copies of an album they 1.-recorded on their own time with their own money and 2.-promoted themselves with no help from the record co get handed a BILL for $50,000 for the "privilege" of giving them a half a million in sales! I've seen bands have to break up and never work together because the "standard deals" for new artists are so damned skewed that unless they sell Britney numbers right out the gate they LOSE MONEY and they LOSE THEIR SONGS whether they sell Britney numbers or not!
So Cracker, who last i heard was working as a producer and thus being a middleman himself, can frankly kiss my ass. The system DOES NOT WORK for anybody but the leeches, PERIOD. As a final note, know what Metallica gets for all their MAFIAA ass kissing? 89c an album. That's it. they practically blew the record execs and the greedy fucks won't even give them a whole dollar. Fuck the MAFIAA and the quicker they DIAF the better, it'll be a better world without them
Maybe you should read this article where one of the RH devs points out having the kernel devs take care of drivers is a FAILURE and why linux on the desktop is in "its death throes" because a single team can't control 20,000 packages and a couple of hundred thousand drivers and end up with anything other than what we have now, a broken mess.
Its no coincidence that the ONLY places that Linux has gained ANY traction is places where the hardware is extremely limited and controlled, servers (many servers still using Rage II for graphics, parts rarely change) embedded (parts carefully controlled and never change) and cell phones (ditto) because frankly that is the ONLY way to have a Linux system functional for any length of time and logically you should obviously be able to see it. A handful of guys simply cannot control and deliver QA and QC to the amount of code you are talking about, dozens if not hundreds of millions of LOC, which is why you have a buggy mess that doesn't upgrade worth a shit. here is another article with over 100 links of examples but I have a feeling from your tone you'll ignore it, as I have a feeling I'm talking to a FOSSie, aka one who treats Linux as a religion and not an OS since you blame everything on those that will not beg for the devs to bless their code. BTW AMD GAVE YOU THE SPECS, how's that working out?. Since the vast majority of the planet couldn't give less of a crap about the 4 freedoms as evidenced by the lines around the block camping when the latest iDevice is gonna come online, you really have to have something more than dogma, aka a fully functional modern OS that doesn't require forum hunts and bullshit just to keep running. Sadly your OS is pretty damned far from that goal and if anything getting farther away by the day.
Damn, I wish I had about 10 grand to cover startup costs as it sounds like a great business opportunity, I could sell at cost plus 20% and the Aussies would be getting a great deal and I'd be making a nice profit for myself. I'm right next to two of the major distribution hubs so I get nearly anything in 2-3 days max, usually next day. I'd just have to figure a way around getting screwed by fake CC numbers, bitcoin maybe? Because at the prices you guys are getting charged the USA might as well be Mexico, Other than the new releases most games are less than $20 here but from what i've been told a game has to be pretty ancient before the prices go down there, damned shame the way you guys are getting hosed.
But see that is the weird thing. if it were caused by need for corrective lenses THAT I could get, but its not. My GF and parents need glasses, myself and my youngest have perfectly normal vision according to our last checkup, yet we get the same headaches THEY do, just like someone walked up and punched us right in the temple.
I don't know what it is but talking to other folks as they come into my shop I've found its a pretty common occurrence, which is why I think you are seeing more revenue toward 3D movies than you are 3D TVs as those that don't get the headaches can go to the 3D version and those that do can see the 2D or wait for the video. But whatever causes it frankly its not worth a skull thumper just to get a 3D effect.
And one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter which is the problem in a nutshell. With something as nebulous and ill defined as "terrorism" frankly ANYBODY can be labeled a terrorist. Considering how some of the PMC like Blackwater and corps like Halliburton have behaved in those countries i would certainly have a hard time labeling anyone fighting to get the USA out of those places to be terrorists but I'm sure that is what they'd be labeled, just as those that fought against the carpet bombing and slaughter of entire villages in Vietnam would have been labeled terrorists then even though we know now that it was a shitty and unjust war.
But in the end wars on ideas simply give the government a blank check, you can fit damned near anything you want under a 'war on terrorism" banner, as we have seen with warrantless wiretapping, rendition rides, waterboarding,anything you want can be excused because it all fits under the umbrella.
Because it was a case of Star Trek technobabble bullshit friend, and in this case frankly technobabble bullshit wasn't required because we are talking about tech that exists and 4 minutes in google would have given whomever wrote the scene the appropriate words but instead they went buzzword bingo which is what made it funny. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if some writer just stuck their head into the IT dept and the guys there decided to pull an "ID10T" on 'em for shits and giggles. I know my former boss would love to go ID10T and PEBKAC Sequence Error Z0-MG on those that didn't know their asses from a 7/11 yet insisted on having everything explained to them like they knew WTF you were saying.
Which is something I've been wondering about, why do Aussies put up with such assraping prices? It isn't like they are hiring translators to throw some reject from a Foster's beer commercial because the folks down under can't understand American English, as far as i know you're not using some strange formats like some weird offshoot of PAL that isn't compatible with anyone else, but I've noticed when talking to Aussie gamers they are getting totally bent over not only on the hardware but the software as well, why do you put up with that shit? Hell the gaming companies might as well put a 3D Goatse on the box for the way they are ripping you guys off and if we were getting charged double just for being American damned straight we'd be throwing some giant shitfits, why aren't you?
The problem with 3D is there is a TON of people where you might as well punch them in the head when you hand them the 3D glasses as watching that shit is just painful. Most of my family is this way, my oldest boy can watch it just fine, while the youngest, me and my GF, and my parents can't watch the shit more than 20-30 minutes before we all have massive headaches.
So while i'm all for more FPS (if you have seen any of the demos showing the difference between the various framerates you'll know why that while 30FPS works frankly 60FPS looks nicer) I personally will be glad when all the 3D shit dies just as it has the half a dozen times they have pushed it on us in the past. Frankly its even worse with 3D TVs, last numbers i saw had the sales of 3D TVs at pretty pathetic numbers and the few I've had to set up for customers when i talked to them during my customary 1 month follow up they had ended up using it as a plain old TV. After all the whole point of TV is to allow friends and family to experience the show together and when 1 or more members get a headache from it that kinda ruins the experience.
I don't know what it is about the new shit, but i could watch the cheesy old colored lens 3D no problem, but more than a half hour of this new stuff and i get a massive migraine.
Well if honestly you HAD a dot matrix printer? Most likely it would work OOTB friend, you wouldn't even NEED a driver. in fact here at the shop i have ran into exactly TWO, count 'em TWO, items that had to be completely tossed for lack of any drivers. 1 was a no name CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) analog capture card which only had a 32 bit driver that frankly only ever ran stable on XP SP2 so naturally trying to find a driver for a technology no longer used like analog broadcast was pretty much a lost cause, The other was a scanner from 1997 which again the device had gotten so old and the DPI so low that while I probably COULD have found a driver as i pointed out it was cheaper simply to replace it with an all in one.
That doesn't change the fact that Linux drivers are deep fried ass on a stick because its a damned miracle to god if even 80% of the drivers are fully functional after a SINGLE update. With Windows the device will in all honestly be most likely dead before the version of Windows it was originally written for is EOLed, after all XP has two more years, Vista is good until 2017, and Windows 7 until 2020. Frankly VERY LITTLE hardware is gonna be functioning past those dates in the average home or office. Ever try surfing on one of the PCs that came with XP RTM? I have for shits and giggles, its a 733MHz Compaq with a now whopping for the time 384Mb of RAM and just loading a modern web page is quite painful on something THAT old.
So your argument? kinda pointless. I can take any desktop or laptop in the shop and slap Win 7 for it and I seriously doubt I'd even have to hunt for a driver, the included drivers already work. Can you say the same for Linux? will the EXACT SAME DRIVERS you are using now even be functional in a year if the machine is fully updated? How about a graphics driver from just 4 years ago, will it work? Most likely the answer is HELL NO! And until THAT is fixed my friend linux will stay a geeker toy, because retailers like me as well as the big boys like Best Buy and Walmart will avoid it like the black death mentioned in the earlier article. Your product? it be broke, and that ain't no joke.
As someone who had a customer have his office burn to the ground I can't stress offsite backups enough, as i was able to get his makeshift office up and running and the important data restored while he was on the phone with the insurance company.
BTW a disaster like that shows, at least to me, that having a little human decency does bring karmic rewards. he was having hell there for a little while getting the mess with the insurance company straightened out so i just pulled some P4s and Pentium Ds out of my shop along with the accessories he'd need and told him basically "just use these until the mess is straightened out, then we'll build you some more decent machines" honestly not expecting anything more than a thanks when the job was over and not only did i get $400 above the cost of the job, and a nice new monitor which I'm using for my home system, but he spread the word about how I had done him right and ended up with several thousand more in business simply from him giving me good word of mouth to many of his customers.
So always remember in a bad situation like that ultimately its the people and not the hardware that matters. gear can always be replaced but never forget the human cost, the lives disrupted and chaos in those lives, and be sure to be a little extra understanding in what will surely be a rough time for all. A little human decency and compassion can go a long way in hard times.
The Apple I couldn't even be truly considered a kit as it didn't come with all the parts needed to make a functional system, not to mention there were only a few hundred made and sold in a very limited geographic area.I wouldn't exactly call that any kind of major milestone in the history of computing and if you are gonna count that you would need to also count the KIM 1 released in the same year but I can't find the exact day so who knows if it was earlier or later.
Regardless MOS Tech were already working on the KIM before they could have possibly heard of Jobs so one could argue that even if Jobs had never built squat you'd have still had the birth of the home computer, as its only logical to slap something like the KIM in a box with a keyboard and a monitor hookup which is exactly what Commodore did when they bought out MOS and had the same guys build the PET. Of course once the PET hit the scene with the TRS-80 right behind it that was it, the race was on.
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I hate to break the news to ya AC but the ONLY ones complaining are Linux users, which is less than 3% of the market and who frankly don't buy that many GPUs anyway. In the Windows world AMD has owned a pretty good chunk of the crucial under $200 market and their high end cards trade blows with Nvidia all the time while often being a good c-note or more cheaper.
In the end FOSS users have no right at all to complain because AMD did EXACTLY what you told them to. How many times did we hear from the devs and even on this very forum "Just open up the specs and we'll do the support"? Well guess what sparky, FOSS devs are finding out the hard way that writing good GPU drivers is INSANELY difficult. you asked for it, you got it. Either accept the fact you are not capable of the task and demand a hardware ABI so that the people that actually BUILD the hardware can support it without having to keep an entire dev team just to make drivers for old shit, or STFU and make the drivers already.
You are using TM #267, aka move the goal posts. "hey its NOT because we offer nothing to the end users but bullshit and hassles, its NOT that we have serious problems we refuse to address, its that we DON'T WANT TO WIN, yeah that's the ticket! In fact...we already won, just somewhere else! that is it!"...yeah my my dick is named Fred and is 15 feet long and plays jingle bells when you rub it.
See how long anybody gives a shit about your gains in servers when the entire consumer market is cut off to you. how many you think are even gonna LEARN Linux if they have no hardware to learn ON friend? that would be damned few, much fewer than you have now. meanwhile Windows admins are a dime a dozen and plentiful as dirt and if MSFT wants to cut you out of the server market all they have to do is offer the OEMs WinServer at $100 a pop with 100 CALs free and CALs after that at $3 a pop for all those that sign up for "Windows Assurance Secure Server" where its also got a locked bootloader.
The corps will go where they can get the best deals PERIOD, they have no more loyalty to your OS or your beliefs than they do to the guy that sells them staplers. In case you missed the memo the world is quickly becoming CONSUMERS in 500 foot flaming neon and you are gonna get cut out of that market, not because of some great evil conspiracy, but because attitudes such as yours handed the market over on a silver platter. Frankly with such a piss poor attitude towards your customers you deserve to lose.
Uhhh...all that is is the client connect code friend, have Google released the code they run on their own servers? last i checked that was a big NO so who the hell knows what is going on there. Frankly with as much data as Google gathers already and the changes in the privacy policy I'd be leery of sending that company, or any other for that matter, every single website i visit so they can "check it" for me. That is what i had an AV that scans before load and a sandboxed browser for anyway.
I do find it quite fascinating how there seems to be this kind of...disconnect for want of a better word, when it comes to Google. If oracle or MSFT or Apple or frankly any other company i can think of said 'yeah just send us every single link you ever click on and we'll check them for you, for your own protection of course" a good 90% of the comments would be geeks screaming and ranting like somebody set their kitty on fire, but Google? never even enters their mind, kinda like how Apple is treated as these anti-corporate hipsters because they have John Lennon posters in the Apple stores.
I just find it quite strange, this disconnect between reality and slogan. i frankly don't trust ANY corporation, not Google or Apple, not MSFT or Oracle, because i know EVERY SINGLE ONE if given the choice between having their profits go up 15% this quarter by throwing me in a cage with an enraged silverback with a club or not getting the paycheck would be "Batter up Bobo!", hell they'd probably find a way to market it, maybe T-shirts or hats or something. It just seems weird to me that so many seem to have this whole "corporate yay!" thing just because somebody in some corp said something or did something they like.
Know what is sad? i won't do it, since you seem to be trying to answer honestly but every. single. answer. you put is actually a TM on TMRepo. that means its the same lines that have been used so damned often they actually wrote them down with a cute title so you could just paste the numbers. yet linux is STILL less than 3%, the numbers say more than i ever could, as will this link that in turn has over 100 links pointing out exactly what i was just saying complete with makes and models.
So either you are magical, able to sprinkle fairy dust onto the machine, or your memory helpfully forgets bullshit. because frankly the ONLY machine I've EVER seen pass the hairyfeet challenge was a 733MHz Intel box which i promptly threw away because it was too damned old to even get a dollar for. Everything with hardware anybody would want? Or with a decent GPU? or sound? Crapped all over itself.
In the end "Linux is a replacement for Windows!" is a damned lie, its a replacement for a Hackentosh which is a MUCH MUCH smaller niche, and like a Hackentosh you damned well better be picky as fuck with the hardware and no damned well about each brand and be ready to do some hacking, something windows users haven't needed to do in over a decade. In fact if i were to compare Linux to Windows I'd say its right now barely at Win98 but of course that isn't what you want to hear, but think about it. What was Win98? it was a CLI OS with a bolted on GUI which was a second class citizen that wasn't even required, it was buggy and flaky and CLI was often needed to really get anything done or to fix problems. what is Linux? it is a CLI OS with a bolted on GUI which is a second class citizen that isn't even required, it is buggy and flaky and CLI is often needed to really get anything done or to fix problems.
Oh and I don't know what magical place you live at friend but most B&M stores don't like to take open merch, often charge a restocking fee, and have a set number of returns per year. So using your logic frankly it wouldn't take but 1 or 2 stuck with devices to make Linux equal MORE than the cost of Windows. that is why i personally won't have a Linux machine in my shop, a single broken driver will cost more of my time that a Windows 7 HP OEM. BTW Best Buy, Asus, Walmart, what do these 3 have in common? ALL USED to carry linux and NONE carry it now, why? Because just as i said the support costs ate any savings by not paying for Windows. I'm sure you haven't used Windows since XP but frankly since Vista the only bugs I've seen have been PEBKAC which Linux doesn't give you a degree in CompSci by running it friend. Oh and if you think Linux is immune from bugs? There was an infected Quake 3 in the repos for a year and a half with NOBODY catching it, KDELook handed out infected screensavers for ages with nobody catching on, these are just two off the top of my head. look at how simple it is to write a Linux bug. as we saw with Android if anybody gave a crap or if Linux had any real numbers there would be just as many Linux bugs as there would be Windows ones, sorry.
This would be an argument IF Nvidia and AMD were doing things even closely to the same way, but they are not and haven't been for several years now. Nvidia has always used the classical "Build a big ass bad ass chip, then cut it down for the mainstream and budget markets" while AMD is using the "Build a mainstream chip and then add more chips to ramp UP to the high end" which is a completely different approach and one knowing how the other did X or Y frankly i doubt would help much as their designs are just too different. hell just look at the specs of any two roughly equal Nvidia and AMD chips, Nvidia has fewer but much more powerful cores while AMD has hundreds of weaker cores working in concert.
so I really don't see how knowing how one does X or Y really is gonna do shit. After all they could always reverse engineer the hardware or write a custom kernel to look at what is going on if they were THAT curious and it certainly didn't seem to bother AMD to open up THEIR specs, most likely because as i said their designs and Nvidia's are just too radically different for one to be copying the other. I mean how long as AMD been using the X2s for the high end now? 5 years? 6? it wouldn't make any sense to suddenly change their designs just because Nvidia opened their specs, not to mention it would mean basically tossing their designs and roadmap, it just wouldn't make sense.
And whose fault would that be? Time for a dose of cold hard truth boys and girls, if the community would have had a living shitfit at the half baked crap coming from the devs, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about, crap like companies having to release new drivers even for old stuff because Linus and the kernel fiddlers kept breaking shit, the DE wars, Pulseaudio, repos full of half baked software with zero QC or QA, well then maybe you'd have enough marketshare that MSFT wouldn't dare!
When Shuttleworth flushes millions down the toilet and Linux never breaks single digits and most places have it close to the same 2% its been in years, when you are offering your product for free with no strings attached and people would STILL rather steal the other guy's product, when forum hunts and CLI copypasta is treated as par for the course on update, when your forums are filled with "Ur a M$ Shill!" and "Works4me" because a vocal segment of your users treat your product as a cult instead of an OS? Well folks its time to suck it up and take a good long hard look in the mirror.
I would STRONGLY suggest you read these two informative articles, the first by one of the RH devs, and then you will know why FLOSS is so easily blocked with so few giving a shit. The second one has over a hundred links pointing out serious long term problems that are either 1.-swept under the rug, 2.-Ignored, or 3.-Treated as hearasay if you even bring them up. I'm sure this post will be buried by those that treated FLOSS as a religion, aka the FOSSies as I've often called them, because their answer to everything that isn't "Gee Biff, isn't FLOSS Swell, it sure is Skip, RMS is a God among men and M$ burns babies!" is treated like crapping on the Baby Jesus, but in the end the numbers don't lie. if there hadn't been so much infighting, reinventing the wheel, NIH, ignoring of obvious issues, and using the fact that it was free as an excuse to settle for half ass? Well then frankly the numbers would be such that MSFT wouldn't dare block it. the fact that they can and most of the planet couldn't care less just shows a failing in FLOSS to give the people what they want and to offer a better product as far as I'm concerned.
OT as well but congrats, I didn't think anybody would get the reference. That is a great little movie with a ton of one liners, anybody who hasn't seen it in awhile ought to fire it up. The 3 Stooges bits, the one liners, its just a really cute little movie without all the cynicism the movies today seem to be required to have. And how can you not love a movie that has lines like "I don't know about you, but I am planning to scream and run" or "Ooh. Her pants are blazing for you, Newton Crosby" in it?
Pretty much all of them, youtube, vevo,mtv,, pretty much ANY site that has videos and is of any real size they end up having it on there. Like I said they have a trial version for free, give it a spin, you'll find its the easiest song downloader around. Hell I would have never heard of it either if it hadn't been on giveawayoftheday a month or two ago and decided to give it a spin, but DAMN, it finds just about anything you want in just about any bitrate, you can look by artist, song name, and damned if it won't find it. hell I even downloaded some bird sounds for the neighbor's parakeet with it, just click and go. The tagger is also nice, you can fill in the data in the style you use in your music folder so you don't have to screw with retagging.
Anyway give it a go, with a free trial it isn't like it'll cost anything but a couple of minutes to try it out. i love how it can even come up with live and alternate versions, really awesome to hear some of my fav songs live or unplugged or alternate versions i didn't even know existed.
Actually of all people i think Yahoo! has the right idea, live shows on the net paid for by advertising. so far they've only been doing it for comedy but I see no reason why it can't be done for music, and we could also use all these HD theaters we have set up now. I know i personally would rather see a live show where i don't have to spend 3 damned hours trying to find parking, fighting my way to the front, being crushed like a bug, etc.
And there are plenty of smaller clubs friend, i play in quite a few of them and they are damned nice. After the show i can sit there with a drink and actually get to talk to the audience, find out what they liked and what they didn't, its quite a learning experience.
In the end the ONLY ones making any real money off of this is the middlemen, think all those one hit wonders from the 60s-80s are getting shit? Hell i saw an interview with keith from the Stones and he said even THEY don't get shit on any of the stuff made before 73, which naturally covers most of their biggest hits, because the record execs fucked them like they do everyone else. In the end you can't make something scarce that is instantly and infinitely copy-able, you just can't. I'm sure there are corps that would like to charge you for every breath you take but luckily people can see what a stupid fucking idea that is, well so is trying to say a stream of ones and zeroes should be treated no different than a car, its ridiculous.
Even easier just don't be a cheap bastard and buy Speed MP3 downloader which i got off of giveawayoftheday but you can buy it for like $25, and it lets you set tags, choose bitrates, its really nice and beyond simple. hell your grandma could run it. Sure you can go through the steps of using a browser extension, downloading to desktop, converting to MP3 then, but why bother? With Speed you don't even have to fire up your browser, just pick what you want from it and hit the download button. they have a free trial so check it out, if for some reason i ever screw up and lose the GAOTD version i'll just buy it, being that hassle free is worth $25 IMHO.
Actually I've found you lose money on Linux because its a fucking support nightmare from hell. How do you tell if that new device will work with Linux? you can't, any hardware lists are horribly out of date, its a total crap shoot. Hell try the Hairyfeet challenge, take ANY distro, your choice, from just 4 years ago (less than half the Windows support cycle) and update it to current using JUST the GUI as any normal user would be expected to do. Know what you'll get? A broken mess, that's what. In just the last 4 years you went from ALSO to Pukeaudio, KDE 3 and GNOME 2 to KDE 4 and GNOME Shell, and that's just the top layer stuff, the guts are even worse off, with all kinds of incompatible bullshit down in the networking guts especially. Any Windows machine I sell will continue to function for the life of the Windows install barring hardware failure, possibly even longer as I have a few customers that only recently retired their Win2K machines. Linux? Can't do it, the whole system from the kernel up is in a state of flux and shit breaks constantly.
Finally if you'd taken just 10 minutes of your time before install you'd never have had that problem with drivers as there is this place called DriverPacks where you can simply download a pack with ALL the drivers for damned near every piece of hardware, all compressed with a nice little GUI that will do the work for you. Just pick the OS you are planning on install or do as i did and download the packs for every Windows OS and you are good to go. Once done you can simply slap them on a DVD, put them on a flash, whatever, and run it once you get to the desktop and go make a sammich, it does ALL the work. Finish up with Ninite while you have your dessert and tada! From a blank drive to a fully loaded and ready to go Windows in about an hour, an hour and a half if you use WSUS Offline to install the windows updates which you have had it download previously. I keep it on a shared drive but you can use DVD, flash, whatever floats your boat. Again hassle free and an hour and a half and maybe 4 clicks total, couldn't be simpler.
All hail the one true god! You DO realize that is what you sound like, yes? How can you agree that the half of the system you don't agree with is broken but the half you do agree with isn't? It isn't magic you know, you only have X number of guys qualified to do that job and X+Y100 times the amount of work. I'm sorry but the math just doesn't work, it can't be done. I could post link after link, hell page after page of drivers that work in foo that don't work in foo+1, but what is the point? There were over 100 links in that last one yet you chose to ignore it.
And THIS is why I call them FOSSies, because it ALL appeals to emotion, ignoring of facts, it is like trying to have a discussion on evolution with someone who believes Adam rode a dinosaur, its simply not possible. In just the consumer desktop space you are looking at a good 200,000 drivers, now HOW MANY are working on the dev mailing list? 20 guys? 40? You simply can't do what you think can be done, there is simply not enough hours in the day for guys that ALREADY are in charge of maintaining the kernel to provide ANY QA OR QC for that amount of drivers. Anyone that can count can see what you are suggesting is impossible, it would be like claiming you could bounce hard enough on a trampoline to break orbit, it can NOT be done.
In the end you don't have the manpower to do what you are suggesting and frankly never will. As i pointed out the ONLY reason it can work in the spaces where Linux has gained traction is because hardware can be strictly controlled and changes aren't allowed until they have been run on test beds and vetted for bugs. this is the complete opposite of the consumer space which is why Linux is a massive failure there, because consumers won't put up with having to have test beds and do their own QA and QC to ensure that the system will function. For an enterprise paying 2 devs $80k+ a year to do that job is cheaper than paying for MSFT CALs for a 2000+ seat corp so it makes sense. Your design? Doesn't work except in niches that are willing to use it DESPITE the massive failings in design. Accept it and be happy with what you have, or work to change it, your choice.
That was IF you were 1.-In that small area of SoCal because they had no national sales (unlike the KIM-1) and 2.-Could round up all the un-included parts to finish the thing. Also by 1977 both the PET and the TRS-80 went on sale, again nationally, so I'd say that while the Apple II could be argued to be a milestone the Apple I most certainly was not. Nobody rushed to copy the Apple I, or to support it, it never even made a blip on the radar. I would argue its ONLY place in history is for those that are followers of Apple whereas the Apple II did indeed change things across the landscape.
Actually you might want to read former POTUS Hoover's book, because he was right there with FDR at the start and while you can argue the ends justified the means he makes it quite clear that FDR KNEW what he was doing was gonna start a war the American people DID NOT WANT and did it anyway. In fact he might as well have dropped his trousers and waved his dick in the face of the emperor of Japan, doing things he KNEW would insult the living shit out of them, such as making their ambassador wait in the lobby every day for 3 weeks before he would even talk to him.
So read Hoover's book, its free online in several places, its a real eye opener. In a LOT of ways WWII the pre stages were like the Iraq mess or Vietnam, with a POTUS being told very clearly the American people don't want war and completely ignoring them. Personally I'd argue that FDR was one of the worst presidents in American history, with his openly threatening the SCOTUS until they caved (the stitch in time that saved nine), twisting the laws to fit giving him power the POTUS never had (the twisting of the commerce clause) and by blatantly starting a war that not only the American people didn't want but even his own advisers said would lead to Stalin ruling half of Europe.
so I really wouldn't use WWII as an example friend, because if you read the actual history and not the propaganda it was a president causing the deaths of countless Americans for his own selfish ends. FDR didn't give a shit about Hitler or Japan, he wanted America to be the new British empire.
Bimbo Newton Crosby. Know how much Cheap Trick gets from iTunes for their back catalog? That would be ZERO, the middlemen take every cent. Or how about the fact that Meatloaf had to file for bankruptcy TWICE because using Hollywood Accounting the record company claimed that Bat Out Of Hell I, which has the record for longest time on the top 200 BTW, and this before the age of piracy, made NO MONEY and therefor he didn't deserve shit for one of the biggest selling albums in history.
As someone who makes music and hopes to actually make a living from it I have to say FUCK THE MAFIAA as the current system is so damned rigged for the middlemen it is about like trying to win 3 card monty, its a total scam. living a hop, skip, and a jump from two major music centers I've held the actual contracts in my hand, got to see what actually happens. i've seen artists that sell more than half a million copies of an album they 1.-recorded on their own time with their own money and 2.-promoted themselves with no help from the record co get handed a BILL for $50,000 for the "privilege" of giving them a half a million in sales! I've seen bands have to break up and never work together because the "standard deals" for new artists are so damned skewed that unless they sell Britney numbers right out the gate they LOSE MONEY and they LOSE THEIR SONGS whether they sell Britney numbers or not!
So Cracker, who last i heard was working as a producer and thus being a middleman himself, can frankly kiss my ass. The system DOES NOT WORK for anybody but the leeches, PERIOD. As a final note, know what Metallica gets for all their MAFIAA ass kissing? 89c an album. That's it. they practically blew the record execs and the greedy fucks won't even give them a whole dollar. Fuck the MAFIAA and the quicker they DIAF the better, it'll be a better world without them
Maybe you should read this article where one of the RH devs points out having the kernel devs take care of drivers is a FAILURE and why linux on the desktop is in "its death throes" because a single team can't control 20,000 packages and a couple of hundred thousand drivers and end up with anything other than what we have now, a broken mess.
Its no coincidence that the ONLY places that Linux has gained ANY traction is places where the hardware is extremely limited and controlled, servers (many servers still using Rage II for graphics, parts rarely change) embedded (parts carefully controlled and never change) and cell phones (ditto) because frankly that is the ONLY way to have a Linux system functional for any length of time and logically you should obviously be able to see it. A handful of guys simply cannot control and deliver QA and QC to the amount of code you are talking about, dozens if not hundreds of millions of LOC, which is why you have a buggy mess that doesn't upgrade worth a shit. here is another article with over 100 links of examples but I have a feeling from your tone you'll ignore it, as I have a feeling I'm talking to a FOSSie, aka one who treats Linux as a religion and not an OS since you blame everything on those that will not beg for the devs to bless their code. BTW AMD GAVE YOU THE SPECS, how's that working out?. Since the vast majority of the planet couldn't give less of a crap about the 4 freedoms as evidenced by the lines around the block camping when the latest iDevice is gonna come online, you really have to have something more than dogma, aka a fully functional modern OS that doesn't require forum hunts and bullshit just to keep running. Sadly your OS is pretty damned far from that goal and if anything getting farther away by the day.
Damn, I wish I had about 10 grand to cover startup costs as it sounds like a great business opportunity, I could sell at cost plus 20% and the Aussies would be getting a great deal and I'd be making a nice profit for myself. I'm right next to two of the major distribution hubs so I get nearly anything in 2-3 days max, usually next day. I'd just have to figure a way around getting screwed by fake CC numbers, bitcoin maybe? Because at the prices you guys are getting charged the USA might as well be Mexico, Other than the new releases most games are less than $20 here but from what i've been told a game has to be pretty ancient before the prices go down there, damned shame the way you guys are getting hosed.
But see that is the weird thing. if it were caused by need for corrective lenses THAT I could get, but its not. My GF and parents need glasses, myself and my youngest have perfectly normal vision according to our last checkup, yet we get the same headaches THEY do, just like someone walked up and punched us right in the temple.
I don't know what it is but talking to other folks as they come into my shop I've found its a pretty common occurrence, which is why I think you are seeing more revenue toward 3D movies than you are 3D TVs as those that don't get the headaches can go to the 3D version and those that do can see the 2D or wait for the video. But whatever causes it frankly its not worth a skull thumper just to get a 3D effect.
And one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter which is the problem in a nutshell. With something as nebulous and ill defined as "terrorism" frankly ANYBODY can be labeled a terrorist. Considering how some of the PMC like Blackwater and corps like Halliburton have behaved in those countries i would certainly have a hard time labeling anyone fighting to get the USA out of those places to be terrorists but I'm sure that is what they'd be labeled, just as those that fought against the carpet bombing and slaughter of entire villages in Vietnam would have been labeled terrorists then even though we know now that it was a shitty and unjust war.
But in the end wars on ideas simply give the government a blank check, you can fit damned near anything you want under a 'war on terrorism" banner, as we have seen with warrantless wiretapping, rendition rides, waterboarding,anything you want can be excused because it all fits under the umbrella.
Because it was a case of Star Trek technobabble bullshit friend, and in this case frankly technobabble bullshit wasn't required because we are talking about tech that exists and 4 minutes in google would have given whomever wrote the scene the appropriate words but instead they went buzzword bingo which is what made it funny. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if some writer just stuck their head into the IT dept and the guys there decided to pull an "ID10T" on 'em for shits and giggles. I know my former boss would love to go ID10T and PEBKAC Sequence Error Z0-MG on those that didn't know their asses from a 7/11 yet insisted on having everything explained to them like they knew WTF you were saying.
Which is something I've been wondering about, why do Aussies put up with such assraping prices? It isn't like they are hiring translators to throw some reject from a Foster's beer commercial because the folks down under can't understand American English, as far as i know you're not using some strange formats like some weird offshoot of PAL that isn't compatible with anyone else, but I've noticed when talking to Aussie gamers they are getting totally bent over not only on the hardware but the software as well, why do you put up with that shit? Hell the gaming companies might as well put a 3D Goatse on the box for the way they are ripping you guys off and if we were getting charged double just for being American damned straight we'd be throwing some giant shitfits, why aren't you?
The problem with 3D is there is a TON of people where you might as well punch them in the head when you hand them the 3D glasses as watching that shit is just painful. Most of my family is this way, my oldest boy can watch it just fine, while the youngest, me and my GF, and my parents can't watch the shit more than 20-30 minutes before we all have massive headaches.
So while i'm all for more FPS (if you have seen any of the demos showing the difference between the various framerates you'll know why that while 30FPS works frankly 60FPS looks nicer) I personally will be glad when all the 3D shit dies just as it has the half a dozen times they have pushed it on us in the past. Frankly its even worse with 3D TVs, last numbers i saw had the sales of 3D TVs at pretty pathetic numbers and the few I've had to set up for customers when i talked to them during my customary 1 month follow up they had ended up using it as a plain old TV. After all the whole point of TV is to allow friends and family to experience the show together and when 1 or more members get a headache from it that kinda ruins the experience.
I don't know what it is about the new shit, but i could watch the cheesy old colored lens 3D no problem, but more than a half hour of this new stuff and i get a massive migraine.
Well if honestly you HAD a dot matrix printer? Most likely it would work OOTB friend, you wouldn't even NEED a driver. in fact here at the shop i have ran into exactly TWO, count 'em TWO, items that had to be completely tossed for lack of any drivers. 1 was a no name CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) analog capture card which only had a 32 bit driver that frankly only ever ran stable on XP SP2 so naturally trying to find a driver for a technology no longer used like analog broadcast was pretty much a lost cause, The other was a scanner from 1997 which again the device had gotten so old and the DPI so low that while I probably COULD have found a driver as i pointed out it was cheaper simply to replace it with an all in one.
That doesn't change the fact that Linux drivers are deep fried ass on a stick because its a damned miracle to god if even 80% of the drivers are fully functional after a SINGLE update. With Windows the device will in all honestly be most likely dead before the version of Windows it was originally written for is EOLed, after all XP has two more years, Vista is good until 2017, and Windows 7 until 2020. Frankly VERY LITTLE hardware is gonna be functioning past those dates in the average home or office. Ever try surfing on one of the PCs that came with XP RTM? I have for shits and giggles, its a 733MHz Compaq with a now whopping for the time 384Mb of RAM and just loading a modern web page is quite painful on something THAT old.
So your argument? kinda pointless. I can take any desktop or laptop in the shop and slap Win 7 for it and I seriously doubt I'd even have to hunt for a driver, the included drivers already work. Can you say the same for Linux? will the EXACT SAME DRIVERS you are using now even be functional in a year if the machine is fully updated? How about a graphics driver from just 4 years ago, will it work? Most likely the answer is HELL NO! And until THAT is fixed my friend linux will stay a geeker toy, because retailers like me as well as the big boys like Best Buy and Walmart will avoid it like the black death mentioned in the earlier article. Your product? it be broke, and that ain't no joke.
As someone who had a customer have his office burn to the ground I can't stress offsite backups enough, as i was able to get his makeshift office up and running and the important data restored while he was on the phone with the insurance company.
BTW a disaster like that shows, at least to me, that having a little human decency does bring karmic rewards. he was having hell there for a little while getting the mess with the insurance company straightened out so i just pulled some P4s and Pentium Ds out of my shop along with the accessories he'd need and told him basically "just use these until the mess is straightened out, then we'll build you some more decent machines" honestly not expecting anything more than a thanks when the job was over and not only did i get $400 above the cost of the job, and a nice new monitor which I'm using for my home system, but he spread the word about how I had done him right and ended up with several thousand more in business simply from him giving me good word of mouth to many of his customers.
So always remember in a bad situation like that ultimately its the people and not the hardware that matters. gear can always be replaced but never forget the human cost, the lives disrupted and chaos in those lives, and be sure to be a little extra understanding in what will surely be a rough time for all. A little human decency and compassion can go a long way in hard times.
The Apple I couldn't even be truly considered a kit as it didn't come with all the parts needed to make a functional system, not to mention there were only a few hundred made and sold in a very limited geographic area.I wouldn't exactly call that any kind of major milestone in the history of computing and if you are gonna count that you would need to also count the KIM 1 released in the same year but I can't find the exact day so who knows if it was earlier or later.
Regardless MOS Tech were already working on the KIM before they could have possibly heard of Jobs so one could argue that even if Jobs had never built squat you'd have still had the birth of the home computer, as its only logical to slap something like the KIM in a box with a keyboard and a monitor hookup which is exactly what Commodore did when they bought out MOS and had the same guys build the PET. Of course once the PET hit the scene with the TRS-80 right behind it that was it, the race was on.