Lets see your data, because if what you said was true then frankly you'd have the story of the decade, but of course it is more likely you are talking out of your tinfoil covered ass. Looking at my own Win 7 HP box, which has been running pretty much 24/7 since Oct 09, I have the browser, Steam running an update...and that is pretty much it. i have MSE checking every few hours for an update, but I'm not seeing a single thing that isn't from software i installed or authorized.
Now if you want to complain that MSFT won't take the right to install dumbshit then that's true, you can pile on the toolbars and fill your taskbar with a huge pile of shitware, but if you actually pay attention to what you install there will be VERY little traffic coming from your machine and all of it pretty obviously things you authorize, such as Windows time service calling NIST.
They aren't talking about using thermal paste on the actual heatsink friend, they are talking about using thermal paste between the actual chip itself and the INSIDE of the heatsink which you then personally use whatever compound you wish. You see this is why i don't believe TFA because all of those rumors have so far been based on engineering samples which are just that, some samples of an unfinished chip given to reviewers. i just can't see a company as successful as Intel hobbling their latest chips by using some dirt cheap thermal paste at the critical juncture between the actual die and the heatsink just to save a few pennies.
Not to mention how many actually DO OC their chips now? 2%? 3%? if it reached even 5% frankly I would be amazed. i too OCed back in the MHz wars but that was because both the hardware AND the software was leaping ahead so quickly that unless you were uberrich that machine you bought last week would have struggled to run the latest software sometimes not even a year later. My CPUs went from 300 to 733 to 1100 to 1700MHz and that was like a 4 year stretch max and I wasn't always able to be the latest and greatest which was jumping even faster, with some of those jumps happening so quickly you barely got the wrapping off the first machine before a machine 40% faster or more came out. So for many of us OCing was a way to keep that machine useful just a little longer instead of having to have a new machine every 6 months.
Now with the exception of those that just want ePeen bragging rights on some leaderboard (not that there is anything wrong with that, if that makes you happy enjoy) frankly even the low end chips are so insanely overpowered compared to the work most have for them it just isn't funny. there are a few niches, say folding at home or having to do constant video transcoding, where a speed boost might help but by far those would be the minority. Hell even though my motherboard comes with what has to be one of the easiest OCing tools I've ever seen (Asrock, great board BTW highly recommend) and I was able to get nearly a 1GHz OC with ease I'm running at stock speed...why? Because with 6 cores I can't keep fed with work as it is shortening the life of the CPU just so it can be idle longer is stupid. it is certainly nothing like the old days where as you pointed out an OC was the difference between whether a game was playable or not, now even the most hardcore games are lucky if they slam 3 CPUs, most are lucky to even fill a dual.
As for TFA the only way to answer the question is for someone to take apart the finished products like they have the engineering samples and see what kind of heat conductor they are using. Personally until someone has opened a couple and confirmed they are actually using cheap thermal compound in the new chips I just can't believe it, sure they did that with some of the engineering samples but they were just that, samples. I just can't picture Intel being stupid or cheap enough to hamstring their own CPUs like that, it just wouldn't make good sense from either a business or PR standpoint to hobble their chips like that.
Actually the whole problem with the idea of SETI is the "analog window" as you would only get a few decades if you were lucky before they advanced beyond just blasting signals that could leave their system. I mean look at us, while we blasted analog signals out there for awhile now nearly everything we do is digital and MUCH lower power so it simply isn't gonna go very far, so if other civilizations develop along a similar path then likewise we would expect them to only broadcast for a VERY short time. Considering how vast space is and how small the analog window would be the odds that we would have our sat pointed in the right direction at the right time to pick up something broadcast during that analog window must be such a small chance it would probably be damned near impossible to calculate.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try, simply that unless/until we have some way to listen in every direction constantly the odds of hitting upon a signal even if there were thousands of civilized worlds would have to be frankly pure blind luck more than anything.
Thanks but I just felt I was doing as granddad would have wanted, and spoke the truth. I have seen the same as you at protests, indeed there was already a mob spewing hate at the Nazis and that I thought was the most pointless thing I had seen, making BOTH sides look to me like barking dogs more than anything. I wish i could say it was some divine inspiration, some well thought out plan, but I simply couldn't see myself screaming out what my granddad had told me, not when he was a reserved and stoic man. So instead i simply made my little sign and stood behind it and found it worked more effectively than all those dirty names they screamed at each other.
As I said my granddad was big on the right to speak and assemble, but I think all these protests do nothing but let folks scream at each other, and what does that accomplish? Personally i'd be more impressed if those that wished to speak simply did as i did, make a simple sign stating their position and let those that want to learn more approach them so they can then speak one on one as human beings. Maybe the cynicism hasn't completely gotten me yet, but wouldn't it just be more...well civil that way?
If I saw a list of the camps i could maybe tell you but I can't recall the name off the top of my head, i just remember it wasn't one of the big named ones they always talk about in TV and movies. you have to remember those stories were told to me when I was a kid in the late 70s, so needless to say trying to recall something that far back isn't easy. I can tell you it was either in Poland proper or on the border, the soviets were being given Berlin so many of the troops were given other duties and as one of the communications guys his job was to go into these places and fix or lay down communication lines and to help out any way he could. And needless to say he didn't like to talk about such things, you could tell it would pain him to recall such horrible things and loving my granddad i naturally didn't want him to dwell on such things.
I have a neighbor downstairs that does genealogical searches for folks and one of these days I'll have to see how much she'll charge to do a background search on my granddad as i'm sure the USAF (when given the choice after the split of the army air core he chose USAF) would have plenty on him, he served in both WWII and Korea before retiring when Vietnam came around because as he said "I had pushed my luck twice, if I would have went again i probably wouldn't have come back". he was a hell of a guy, and the ironic part is after all that hell he saw in WWII you know what he said was the scariest part for him of the whole war? Coming home.
He had had a wall dropped on him by a Werwulf squad, which he said their propaganda tried to say was this big force but in reality was these small pockets of soldiers without any real leadership because everything was destroyed (he said Germany looked like those shots of the moon for all the craters) and he and some guys were in this bombed out building cooking some rations when one of those squads set off a charge and made the building fall. he ended up in a full body cast and said "All i could think of in that damned plane was what if this damned thing gets shot down or crashes? I can barely wiggle my fingers, i sure as hell ain't gonna swim in this damned thing, i'll sink like a rock!" so he said THAT was truly the scariest thing he had experienced. he said in actual battle you don't have time to be scared, too many things are happening for your mind to really deal, its only afterwards when everything is over that you find yourself shaking like a leaf from all the adrenaline and almost numb from all the gore around you. he said that it was almost like seeing doll pieces, that your mind can't really absorb, its kinda like being in shock until you've had a day or two to come down, which he said on the rush to Germany time was one thing you never had.
Anyway sorry I can't recall more for you but as I said my grandfather and great uncles really didn't talk about such things too much, it was too gory. They weren't at the famous battles, no flag raising on Iwo or riding with Patton, they were just the grunts but they were heroes to me.
While I'm always happy to see a bit of history recovered frankly the only way i would have "squeed' about it as you put it is if they would have been German or Japanese planes, why? because so many of their planes were completely wiped off the face of the earth. With a few exceptions nearly all of the Allied planes survive, with models in museums and even some of them still flying, but so many of the Axis planes are completely gone, not even a single example preserved. I mean sure we have a few Zeroes and BF109s but try to find a Do217 or a Kate and they are all gone.
So while I'm glad they have these to restore personally I wish we had at least one example of every major and minor plane from BOTH sides so that we could preserve that history of aviation.
But who's fault is that? Publishers and marketing that's who. as games like minecraft has shown us a FUN GAME WILL SELL even if the graphics aren't jaw dropping. Personally the games from 2003-05 look damned good to me still and if you filled them with smart enemies, cool weapons, and large levels with lots of hidden stuff to make them worth exploring? I'd be happy to buy it. its the game industry pushing all the graphical glitz frankly because its easy to make a commercial with a few jaw dropping graphics scenes and call it a day.
That is why i think we are gonna see a golden age for indie devs, like the guys that did minecraft or the torchlight guys or the ones that did grimlock, because without having to deal with what the PHB publishers demand they can make games that while not graphical eyecandy will actually be FUN.
Oh and if there are any indie game devs out here? picture mixing say No One Lives Forever style gameplay with cool crazy weapons with 70s and 80s copshows. you'd have bad outfits and hair, narmy dialog, all the stuff to make a kick ass parody that would be fun as hell. Think about it, would be a blast.
I'll add another that wouldn't significantly increase cost...get rid of enemies that are retards. I am so sick of a group of bad guys coming into view, clearly able to see the huge pile of their dead comrades i have piled up, so what do they do? Do they stop and look around? maybe take cover and then spread out in an attempt to flush me out? Nope they follow THE EXACT SAME PATH that killed all their friends! Geez if real enemy soldiers would have been that tarded then WWII would have been over in a week, week and a half tops.
Of course the flip side of this is what I call "EA you cheating bastards" as i first noticed it with EA games, where if you ramp the difficulty all that happens is every grunt suddenly becomes the terminator, with x-ray vision and pistols that can hit a bullseye at a thousand yards and all cover comes with a sign that says "He is RIGHT HERE guys!".
Both of these are irritating as hell and at least for me pull me right out of the game. Its almost as irritating as those stupid games that have spawning so that some room with only one entrance that you just fricking cleared can suddenly have dudes come out of it. Its just sad that all these superpowered CPUs and GPUs are being wasted on eye candy while the actual gameplay isn't as good as the games we had in the 90s.
If you spot a game in the bargain bins called "Nosferatu" friend BUY IT if you want that feeling again. Sure the graphics isn't some Crysis tech demo but every. single. thing. is randomized each game, hell it'll even randomize between saves, which admittedly can make you have to reload a couple of time if you saved in an empty room and reload into a shitpile of demon dogs or vamps, but it will get that heart pumping.
Oh and one thing they got right that so many horror get wrong is that you are NOT superman, and in fact your weapons? Can be quite scarce and each has disadvantages, like if you walk in and you find 3 vamps asleep in their coffins as long as you can nail them with a stake without waking one up? you're cool, but you wake one of those suckers up and good damned luck getting that stake planted before they use that vamp strength to tear you a new asshole.
That is one thing so many of the new games get wrong, if I'm superman? Not at all exciting. I mean why should I care if I take 50 hits and can just hide behind a chest high wall until my health regens in a few seconds and I can take another 50 hits? I'm not saying you have to make the game insanely hard, just make it more than a cakewalk.
I like what old Yahtzee said at ZP about FPS games, they have all become fricking sightseeing tours! No exploration, no cool things to find, no unique weapons or cool mechanics, its just dragging the player by the nose from one fancy set piece to another in total linear fashion.
Frankly I'd be happy to buy a game with Far Cry I or even No One Lives Forever II level graphics if it were only...oh what's the word?...oh yeah FUN! Give me crazy weapons, give me cool things to do, give me a reason to give a shit about the place other than looking at your fancy 3D background crap, give me something to DO that is FUN! half of the FPSes i play i have completely forgotten about 30 minutes after playing and never go back to yet I'll still fire up say Redneck rampage just because there are tons of secret areas and crazy weapons like a buzzsaw shooter and titty gun, or fire up one of the No One Lives Forever games just to enjoy the funny dialog and to plant a kitty bomb!
C'mon devs, you know I am FAR from alone on this, just look at how much minecraft has sold and that thing looks like lego blocks. many of us would be happy to have a game that had far Cry I graphics if it were say $40 and had new and fresh ideas! I'm just so damned tired of straight corridors and scripted everything, hell i'll even fire up a cheap game like Nosferatu as at least that has random level creation that gives some seriously pant wetting moments! so please stop cranking out "Call of Honor: Killzone Halo edition" and give us something that is fresh! Is that sooo much to ask for?
I take it everyone has forgotten that Valve as an experiment dropped the price of L4D to $1.99 and saw their PROFITS for that game go up by some 1700%?
This problem is sooo damned easy to fix its not funny, its called...wait for it...DO NOT BE GREEDY BASTARDS! Wow, i just saved the whole games industry! I'd like my stature in bronze please, oh and make sure it has me with a big smile and Alyson Hannigan handing me an award, mmmkay?
Seriously you have a medium without almost no costs, hell you can use BT and you won't even have to pay hardly anything for bandwidth, you have customers you can then sell DLC and t-shirts and stupid hats and all kinds of extra crap to, yet all the game companies blow it because some MBA (Master Big Asshole) decides that "Hey what is the most assraping price we can charge? Yeah add 20% to that and send me some hookers and blow" and then they are shocked! shocked I tell you! When their sales take a nosedive.
Instead they should embrace the valve model with Steam, make it easy, convenient and cheap and then enjoy rolling in your money piles. instead they'll kill first sale by banning used games, watch their revenue go to shit, and then blame piracy. its not piracy publishers, its that you're a bunch of dumbasses.
hey if you buy it I'll be happy to buy dumb.shit off of you where I will then stick answers and software for all the REALLY stupid customers i have to deal with! Oh what a lovely day, no more ID10T errors or PEBKAC, you can just send them a link that says dumb.shit and call it a day.
Well here are a couplemore using video games but if you type "30 VS 60 FPS video comparison" there are dozens of different videos to choose from. Bottom lne is while 30FPS works it isn't nearly as smooth, especially during large action scenes than 60FPS. i can see why Cameron and Roger Ebert both say 60FPS is the future of moviemaking.
Well I can tell you a little more, i just didn't think it was relevant for the story. He said the stench was like...well it was like nothing you could imagine and that it had looked like they had been trying to burn some of the bodies outside the place but as the Russians approached they had abandoned that and just piled them up. That was an image he said he'd never forget, to see human skeletons piled up like cordwood. He said disease was rampant, hundreds of sick and dying, and that the children looked almost like aliens with these huge heads and sunk in eyes on these walking skeletal bodies.
Sorry i can't give you more but you can imagine this period was something he wasn't the most fond of telling, the only way i got it out of him was when the Nazis wanted to march in Chicago and I asked about what real Nazis were like. If you want to write an interesting story that hasn't been told those that were in communications like he was would be a VERY interesting story to tell, just imagine having to go out and repair lines of communication between the front and HQ with snipers and booby traps and all kinds of hell.
BTW if you want one more story i know of one my great uncle told, he was just a grunt in a different division in the race towards Germany when they were stopped on the side of the road and in mid sentence his CO and buddy got half his face blown off right onto my great uncle from a sniper. After getting to a position he and a couple of men managed to drop the sniper...only to find a pregnant woman was the sniper who they had to finish off because she reached for the rifle. I asked if that had bothered him and he said it didn't, by that time he had lost so many guys that he had served with they all just wanted to make it home alive and were frankly pissed that by this time it was obvious they had NO chance of winning...yet they just wouldn't stop. My other great uncle in the pacific also talked about the insanity of it, how the Japanese would Banzai charge when they were dug in with M1s and BARs, he said it was just slaughter yet they just kept doing it over and over AND OVER.
anyway good luck with your story, I'm sure if you look around you can find others like me that tried their best to remember the stories that were passed down and if anybody deserves to be called heroes those guys were it. Frankly after hearing some of their stories i'm shocked they didn't all go nuts, i know i couldn't handle that much horror and death.
In the states its old men in hats and blue haired ladies that can't get their head above the steering wheel, you'll just see the 'do and a pair of white hands..funny that you should bring that up as just the other day the local tobacco shop had the front of their building covered in fiberboard, like someone had driven through the front of the shop. I walked in an said "Blue haired lady or old guy in a hat?" and he said "guy in a hat, how did you know that?" because it is ALWAYS a blue haired lady or an old guy in a hat, always. Say what you want about teen drivers but I have yet to see them drive into a building, yet that had happened no less than 4 times in the past 5 years here and ALL of the incidents were blue haired of old guy hat wearers.
Sorry that I can't find it ATM (They are doing construction at my apt building so net has been spotty at best) but if you Google "difference between 30 FPs, and 60 FPS"...hang on...I think I found one, not the same one that I had previously seen but here is one but I'm sure if you Google what I posted above you can find others.
Well all I can tell you is what I remember from his stories since sadly he passed away in the late 70s, but from what he told me he and his squad (He was a Sargent at the time and ended up a Chief Master Sargent at the end of the war) was tasked with helping with the liberation of one of the smaller polish camps and for setting up lines of communication between their forward lines and the HQ.
According to what the medic told him they have been starved for some damned long their hearts were severely weakened and that dumping the very rich GI field rations into their systems would cause too much strain on their frail bodies and it could kill them so they made thin broths from field ration stew to give to them as they tended to them. he and some of his men actually had to check bodies for life because some were so weak the Nazis just threw them on the piles without even bothering to check if they were dead. he said despite all the horrors he had seen, such as a guy he was talking to a few minutes earlier get hit dead bang by a PAK-88 (which he said left nothing but a red mist and the guys lower legs) that seeing the horrors of the camp was the closest he came to actually just executing unarmed men.
But according to a prisoner that spoke English the real guards stuck raw recruits, some as young as 15 or 16, in charge of the camp a few days before and had ran for the west during the night a few nights before. Once they saw they had no superiors they shared what little they had and basically opened the camp, not that the prisoners had enough strength to leave. According to the prisoner they were just kids with almost no training that were frankly clueless as to what to do and simply sat down with them and waited on the war to end.
But I was always proud of what my grandfather and his brothers did in WWII, they truly went through hell in both the EU and the Pacific, yet even when my great uncles were dying of cancer they got from going in with the troops to help after Japan surrendered they never had any regrets. To them it wasn't personal and once the battle was over they did what they could to help, to me they will always be true heroes.
Reallly....(looks at corpse where someone slammed a rocket up my ass for the 30th time)..."hey dead HL dude get up! There is nobody there to shoot you!" I guess the zombies must have taken over or something as I got HL1 DM as part of a HL bundle on the big Xmas Steam sale and I never have a problem finding multiple people more than willing to blast a rocket up my ass. Now my Bioshock II MP? It can take 4 or 5 minutes before enough straggle in to have a match but to be fair they really broke MP on that one (need to reach level 40 before the good weapons and plasmids open up, before that you are cannon fodder) but with HL 1 DM I can fire that up and be ass deep in asplosions and mayhem in seconds.
Uhhh..there is a REASON we don't care, and to use a/. car analogy its the same reason we don't drive muscle cars anymore (well most of us) even though they were VERY fun, and that's because they are pigs and the same can be said of CRT. The LCD in my apt is a 22 inch 1600x900 and replaced a 19 inch CRT. Did the CRT have a little better color depth? probably but to my 44 year old eyes I can't really tell but what I CAN very much tell is how much less AC I need to keep the place cool, not to mention the CRT was 135w and the LCD is 35w. So just by switching I shaved 100w off and cut down on my AC use.
Now as for 30 VS 60 FPS? Personally I prefer the FPS to be as high as possible, if for no other reason so that when a whole lot of stuff is happening on the screen my frame rate doesn't drop past 30 but again to these 44 year old eyes as long as everything stays above 30 FPS its all good,so while I'm sure it would probably look a little better on the old CRT I certainly wouldn't want to deal with the heat and power suckage again just to gain that little bit of difference. often we have to make little sacrifices in the name of increased efficiency, to use the analogy again a car that gets 45MPH most likely won't handle like my 71 Le Mans Sport did, but it also won't blow through a gas tank every few hours either.
Well if you have ever seen that demo where they show 24, 30, and 60 FPS then you know that frankly 60FPS is the way to go but I can imagine even 48FPS must be MUCH better (can't tell ATM since the site is/.ed) but the problem you are gonna have is people have gotten used to the shitty 24FPS (which was the slowest they could use and not have it jerky) that it will simply take time for people to adjust.
In the end the theaters will get the crappy 24FPS and the ones like me that prefer to watch at home will get the superior 48FPS just giving you one more reason not to care about going to the theater.
Exactly, one of the thing I have always liked about Dr. Tyson is he makes it quite clear that he doesn't expect you to "believe" anything, In his amazing meeting he even talks about how blind belief can hold back an entire culture, as with how a single cleric who released an edict that said basically "All non natural numbers are evil" and killed science in Islam to this very day. But one CAN look at the data we have, of how common the elements that make up life are in the universe and how huge the number of planets are and figure the odds. Sure it is always possible that somehow in defiance of the odds we are the only creatures in the entire universe, but the odds are so badly against that being true I don't see how it could be the case.
of course that does NOT mean little green men are landing in AL looking for some BBQ and to fuck with the cornfields for shits and giggles. it simply means that the odds are there is life of some sort out there. Personally after what we have seen of Ganymede and Europa I hope that we will take a closer look at both as it may turn out we aren't the only life in this solar system, much less the galaxy. What amazes me is how many hear the word "life" and think little green men. On Ganymede it would probably be bacteria and with Europa being a big ocean it would most likely take the form of some tubeworm style life. while we of course wouldn't be having conversation with either that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek out such life, if for no other reason than it could answer so many questions about how life began here.
I'll get hate for saying this but WTF,lets be honest, if you wanna go by sheer numbers Hitler hated Ruskies even more than Jews but if you look at the man's record pretty much anyone not Aryan that didn't think EXACTLY like him got put on his shit list. Lets see...Poles, Jews, Russian, Gypsy, gay, communists...did I leave anybody out? lets face it the guy really wasn't THAT picky when it came to killing and if you look at those throughout history that racked up huge body counts that's something they all had in common. While its true he didn't like Jews once WWII started not liking someone wasn't really a prerequisite, he slaughtered for pretty much any old reason.
Personally I'm for printing it,not because I thought the man had any great insight, far from it and one could argue that WWII was pretty much a war with all the planning of throwing darts at a dartboard without any real thought involved on Germany's part (attacking Russia without ANY winter gear? batshit much?) but because i'm a strong believer on freedom of thought, be it the little red book or Mein Kampf or the supposed "pro pedo" book. To be frightened of words on a page is to be frightened of thought and I personally find that even more scary. If you truly fear words on a page because you think they are gonna suddenly affect large numbers of your populace? then maybe, just throwing this out there, you should teach your people to think for themselves and instead of trying to hide the words make a decent counterargument instead?
My grandfather fought in WWII and actually liberated one of the camps in Poland, not one of the big names but it was horrifying none the less, and one of the last things he taught me was not to fear words and ideas as he actually supported the Illinois Nazis right to march, even though he had suffered so much in the war and ended it with a wall dropped on him by a Werwulf squad. He said "that's what made us different, we let people speak, even if we don't agree" and I always took those and his memories he shared of that time to heart. so when i saw some neo Nazis on a street corner in Dallas in the late 80s I didn't join the protesters shouting dirty names at them, I simply bought a large piece of posterboard and made up a sign that said "My grandfather liberated one of the camps, ask me about it" and told his story, of seeing children piled like cordwood, of seeing people so starved one couldn't tell male from female, of being told NOT to feed them because they had been starved so long rich GI rations would throw their frail bodies into shock and of watching in horror because one of the other men did exactly that because he felt pity and the person went into convulsions and died. He said that was the closest he ever got to committing war crimes as he and his men were ready to execute those Nazis on the spot until one of the prisoners told them these were just some flunky recruits brought in while the monsters snuck away and they had actually been treated well by the recruits.
Well needless to say all those nasty names didn't phase those Nazis but what DID phase them was me. They even went so far as to actually complain to a cop standing there who snickered and said "you have the right to speak and so does he" and when they saw I wouldn't go away they packed up and left. It is ALWAYS better not to sweep such things under the rug but to fight it with the truth. By keeping it hidden and banned since the Americans left Germany has simply allowed those groups to grow when a much better solution would have been to simply fight them with the reality of the past IMHO.
Dang shill, ya ALMOST had me but then ya had to go and completely blow it with marketing speak. BTW someone needs to save this guy's post and when someone screams "Shill!" because they disagree with a position? Then you can just trot out this guy's post to show them what an ACTUAL shill is.
Anyway i'm sure that someone will point at the dig at Google as a giveaway? Nope, maybe he just don't like the company, maybe his account got burned, that can be explained away. No what can NOT be explained away is these two lines " wide array of other services and software like Azure" and " strong brand name and are also a division of innovation".
Seriously who the fuck talks like THAT, anyone? it reads like something you'd be forced to sit through in some middle management PPT, usually followed by a few buzzwords like synergy and six sigma.
So I'm sorry but all those guys upmodding this guy's post might want to read the language in it a liiiitle more carefully, as the language is just a little too buzzworthy, unless of course this guy wants to admit he works in a marketing firm in which case carry on.
Oh and for the record i'm actually using Bing Search this month just to check it out and to see if that whole "Bing Rewards" thing is worth messing with, since yahoo royally fucked up their search design with the last update. Its alright, can't really tell any change in search quality either way, and I'll be the first to admit their wallpapers are pretty and I actually like their image search a little better but all in all not really a huge change and I guess more of a taste thing really. as for TFA most likely any deal would have given them access to all that yummy FB data, which is of course why Google tried to get into social with Google+ as FB is getting insanely huge amounts of data on folks, and they give it for free because they don't think and all their friends are there! I bet Google and MSFT both slapped their foreheads and said 'Why didn't I think of that?"
Any attempt to stop them using legal means will fail, why? because all you have is the classic "lesser of two evils" and since the megacorps need only cut a check to the winner and BOTH sides have a raging hard on for more power. Whether we like it or not the net WILL become a shopping network with cameras everywhere, no different than going to the mall.
So the only way to win is not by legal means, but technical. What we need is to wrap everything in encryption and/or to overload the system with crap so that any data they gather will be buried in shit. Sadly projects like freenet and tor, originally designed to help those under dictatorships, will be needed by those in the USA, so lets support them in every way we can because they won't stop until the net is nothing but cable, just shopping and propaganda.
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Lets see your data, because if what you said was true then frankly you'd have the story of the decade, but of course it is more likely you are talking out of your tinfoil covered ass. Looking at my own Win 7 HP box, which has been running pretty much 24/7 since Oct 09, I have the browser, Steam running an update...and that is pretty much it. i have MSE checking every few hours for an update, but I'm not seeing a single thing that isn't from software i installed or authorized.
Now if you want to complain that MSFT won't take the right to install dumbshit then that's true, you can pile on the toolbars and fill your taskbar with a huge pile of shitware, but if you actually pay attention to what you install there will be VERY little traffic coming from your machine and all of it pretty obviously things you authorize, such as Windows time service calling NIST.
They aren't talking about using thermal paste on the actual heatsink friend, they are talking about using thermal paste between the actual chip itself and the INSIDE of the heatsink which you then personally use whatever compound you wish. You see this is why i don't believe TFA because all of those rumors have so far been based on engineering samples which are just that, some samples of an unfinished chip given to reviewers. i just can't see a company as successful as Intel hobbling their latest chips by using some dirt cheap thermal paste at the critical juncture between the actual die and the heatsink just to save a few pennies.
Not to mention how many actually DO OC their chips now? 2%? 3%? if it reached even 5% frankly I would be amazed. i too OCed back in the MHz wars but that was because both the hardware AND the software was leaping ahead so quickly that unless you were uberrich that machine you bought last week would have struggled to run the latest software sometimes not even a year later. My CPUs went from 300 to 733 to 1100 to 1700MHz and that was like a 4 year stretch max and I wasn't always able to be the latest and greatest which was jumping even faster, with some of those jumps happening so quickly you barely got the wrapping off the first machine before a machine 40% faster or more came out. So for many of us OCing was a way to keep that machine useful just a little longer instead of having to have a new machine every 6 months.
Now with the exception of those that just want ePeen bragging rights on some leaderboard (not that there is anything wrong with that, if that makes you happy enjoy) frankly even the low end chips are so insanely overpowered compared to the work most have for them it just isn't funny. there are a few niches, say folding at home or having to do constant video transcoding, where a speed boost might help but by far those would be the minority. Hell even though my motherboard comes with what has to be one of the easiest OCing tools I've ever seen (Asrock, great board BTW highly recommend) and I was able to get nearly a 1GHz OC with ease I'm running at stock speed...why? Because with 6 cores I can't keep fed with work as it is shortening the life of the CPU just so it can be idle longer is stupid. it is certainly nothing like the old days where as you pointed out an OC was the difference between whether a game was playable or not, now even the most hardcore games are lucky if they slam 3 CPUs, most are lucky to even fill a dual.
As for TFA the only way to answer the question is for someone to take apart the finished products like they have the engineering samples and see what kind of heat conductor they are using. Personally until someone has opened a couple and confirmed they are actually using cheap thermal compound in the new chips I just can't believe it, sure they did that with some of the engineering samples but they were just that, samples. I just can't picture Intel being stupid or cheap enough to hamstring their own CPUs like that, it just wouldn't make good sense from either a business or PR standpoint to hobble their chips like that.
Actually the whole problem with the idea of SETI is the "analog window" as you would only get a few decades if you were lucky before they advanced beyond just blasting signals that could leave their system. I mean look at us, while we blasted analog signals out there for awhile now nearly everything we do is digital and MUCH lower power so it simply isn't gonna go very far, so if other civilizations develop along a similar path then likewise we would expect them to only broadcast for a VERY short time. Considering how vast space is and how small the analog window would be the odds that we would have our sat pointed in the right direction at the right time to pick up something broadcast during that analog window must be such a small chance it would probably be damned near impossible to calculate.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try, simply that unless/until we have some way to listen in every direction constantly the odds of hitting upon a signal even if there were thousands of civilized worlds would have to be frankly pure blind luck more than anything.
Thanks but I just felt I was doing as granddad would have wanted, and spoke the truth. I have seen the same as you at protests, indeed there was already a mob spewing hate at the Nazis and that I thought was the most pointless thing I had seen, making BOTH sides look to me like barking dogs more than anything. I wish i could say it was some divine inspiration, some well thought out plan, but I simply couldn't see myself screaming out what my granddad had told me, not when he was a reserved and stoic man. So instead i simply made my little sign and stood behind it and found it worked more effectively than all those dirty names they screamed at each other.
As I said my granddad was big on the right to speak and assemble, but I think all these protests do nothing but let folks scream at each other, and what does that accomplish? Personally i'd be more impressed if those that wished to speak simply did as i did, make a simple sign stating their position and let those that want to learn more approach them so they can then speak one on one as human beings. Maybe the cynicism hasn't completely gotten me yet, but wouldn't it just be more...well civil that way?
If I saw a list of the camps i could maybe tell you but I can't recall the name off the top of my head, i just remember it wasn't one of the big named ones they always talk about in TV and movies. you have to remember those stories were told to me when I was a kid in the late 70s, so needless to say trying to recall something that far back isn't easy. I can tell you it was either in Poland proper or on the border, the soviets were being given Berlin so many of the troops were given other duties and as one of the communications guys his job was to go into these places and fix or lay down communication lines and to help out any way he could. And needless to say he didn't like to talk about such things, you could tell it would pain him to recall such horrible things and loving my granddad i naturally didn't want him to dwell on such things.
I have a neighbor downstairs that does genealogical searches for folks and one of these days I'll have to see how much she'll charge to do a background search on my granddad as i'm sure the USAF (when given the choice after the split of the army air core he chose USAF) would have plenty on him, he served in both WWII and Korea before retiring when Vietnam came around because as he said "I had pushed my luck twice, if I would have went again i probably wouldn't have come back". he was a hell of a guy, and the ironic part is after all that hell he saw in WWII you know what he said was the scariest part for him of the whole war? Coming home.
He had had a wall dropped on him by a Werwulf squad, which he said their propaganda tried to say was this big force but in reality was these small pockets of soldiers without any real leadership because everything was destroyed (he said Germany looked like those shots of the moon for all the craters) and he and some guys were in this bombed out building cooking some rations when one of those squads set off a charge and made the building fall. he ended up in a full body cast and said "All i could think of in that damned plane was what if this damned thing gets shot down or crashes? I can barely wiggle my fingers, i sure as hell ain't gonna swim in this damned thing, i'll sink like a rock!" so he said THAT was truly the scariest thing he had experienced. he said in actual battle you don't have time to be scared, too many things are happening for your mind to really deal, its only afterwards when everything is over that you find yourself shaking like a leaf from all the adrenaline and almost numb from all the gore around you. he said that it was almost like seeing doll pieces, that your mind can't really absorb, its kinda like being in shock until you've had a day or two to come down, which he said on the rush to Germany time was one thing you never had.
Anyway sorry I can't recall more for you but as I said my grandfather and great uncles really didn't talk about such things too much, it was too gory. They weren't at the famous battles, no flag raising on Iwo or riding with Patton, they were just the grunts but they were heroes to me.
While I'm always happy to see a bit of history recovered frankly the only way i would have "squeed' about it as you put it is if they would have been German or Japanese planes, why? because so many of their planes were completely wiped off the face of the earth. With a few exceptions nearly all of the Allied planes survive, with models in museums and even some of them still flying, but so many of the Axis planes are completely gone, not even a single example preserved. I mean sure we have a few Zeroes and BF109s but try to find a Do217 or a Kate and they are all gone.
So while I'm glad they have these to restore personally I wish we had at least one example of every major and minor plane from BOTH sides so that we could preserve that history of aviation.
But who's fault is that? Publishers and marketing that's who. as games like minecraft has shown us a FUN GAME WILL SELL even if the graphics aren't jaw dropping. Personally the games from 2003-05 look damned good to me still and if you filled them with smart enemies, cool weapons, and large levels with lots of hidden stuff to make them worth exploring? I'd be happy to buy it. its the game industry pushing all the graphical glitz frankly because its easy to make a commercial with a few jaw dropping graphics scenes and call it a day.
That is why i think we are gonna see a golden age for indie devs, like the guys that did minecraft or the torchlight guys or the ones that did grimlock, because without having to deal with what the PHB publishers demand they can make games that while not graphical eyecandy will actually be FUN.
Oh and if there are any indie game devs out here? picture mixing say No One Lives Forever style gameplay with cool crazy weapons with 70s and 80s copshows. you'd have bad outfits and hair, narmy dialog, all the stuff to make a kick ass parody that would be fun as hell. Think about it, would be a blast.
I'll add another that wouldn't significantly increase cost...get rid of enemies that are retards. I am so sick of a group of bad guys coming into view, clearly able to see the huge pile of their dead comrades i have piled up, so what do they do? Do they stop and look around? maybe take cover and then spread out in an attempt to flush me out? Nope they follow THE EXACT SAME PATH that killed all their friends! Geez if real enemy soldiers would have been that tarded then WWII would have been over in a week, week and a half tops.
Of course the flip side of this is what I call "EA you cheating bastards" as i first noticed it with EA games, where if you ramp the difficulty all that happens is every grunt suddenly becomes the terminator, with x-ray vision and pistols that can hit a bullseye at a thousand yards and all cover comes with a sign that says "He is RIGHT HERE guys!".
Both of these are irritating as hell and at least for me pull me right out of the game. Its almost as irritating as those stupid games that have spawning so that some room with only one entrance that you just fricking cleared can suddenly have dudes come out of it. Its just sad that all these superpowered CPUs and GPUs are being wasted on eye candy while the actual gameplay isn't as good as the games we had in the 90s.
If you spot a game in the bargain bins called "Nosferatu" friend BUY IT if you want that feeling again. Sure the graphics isn't some Crysis tech demo but every. single. thing. is randomized each game, hell it'll even randomize between saves, which admittedly can make you have to reload a couple of time if you saved in an empty room and reload into a shitpile of demon dogs or vamps, but it will get that heart pumping.
Oh and one thing they got right that so many horror get wrong is that you are NOT superman, and in fact your weapons? Can be quite scarce and each has disadvantages, like if you walk in and you find 3 vamps asleep in their coffins as long as you can nail them with a stake without waking one up? you're cool, but you wake one of those suckers up and good damned luck getting that stake planted before they use that vamp strength to tear you a new asshole.
That is one thing so many of the new games get wrong, if I'm superman? Not at all exciting. I mean why should I care if I take 50 hits and can just hide behind a chest high wall until my health regens in a few seconds and I can take another 50 hits? I'm not saying you have to make the game insanely hard, just make it more than a cakewalk.
I like what old Yahtzee said at ZP about FPS games, they have all become fricking sightseeing tours! No exploration, no cool things to find, no unique weapons or cool mechanics, its just dragging the player by the nose from one fancy set piece to another in total linear fashion.
Frankly I'd be happy to buy a game with Far Cry I or even No One Lives Forever II level graphics if it were only...oh what's the word?...oh yeah FUN! Give me crazy weapons, give me cool things to do, give me a reason to give a shit about the place other than looking at your fancy 3D background crap, give me something to DO that is FUN! half of the FPSes i play i have completely forgotten about 30 minutes after playing and never go back to yet I'll still fire up say Redneck rampage just because there are tons of secret areas and crazy weapons like a buzzsaw shooter and titty gun, or fire up one of the No One Lives Forever games just to enjoy the funny dialog and to plant a kitty bomb!
C'mon devs, you know I am FAR from alone on this, just look at how much minecraft has sold and that thing looks like lego blocks. many of us would be happy to have a game that had far Cry I graphics if it were say $40 and had new and fresh ideas! I'm just so damned tired of straight corridors and scripted everything, hell i'll even fire up a cheap game like Nosferatu as at least that has random level creation that gives some seriously pant wetting moments! so please stop cranking out "Call of Honor: Killzone Halo edition" and give us something that is fresh! Is that sooo much to ask for?
I take it everyone has forgotten that Valve as an experiment dropped the price of L4D to $1.99 and saw their PROFITS for that game go up by some 1700%?
This problem is sooo damned easy to fix its not funny, its called...wait for it...DO NOT BE GREEDY BASTARDS! Wow, i just saved the whole games industry! I'd like my stature in bronze please, oh and make sure it has me with a big smile and Alyson Hannigan handing me an award, mmmkay?
Seriously you have a medium without almost no costs, hell you can use BT and you won't even have to pay hardly anything for bandwidth, you have customers you can then sell DLC and t-shirts and stupid hats and all kinds of extra crap to, yet all the game companies blow it because some MBA (Master Big Asshole) decides that "Hey what is the most assraping price we can charge? Yeah add 20% to that and send me some hookers and blow" and then they are shocked! shocked I tell you! When their sales take a nosedive.
Instead they should embrace the valve model with Steam, make it easy, convenient and cheap and then enjoy rolling in your money piles. instead they'll kill first sale by banning used games, watch their revenue go to shit, and then blame piracy. its not piracy publishers, its that you're a bunch of dumbasses.
hey if you buy it I'll be happy to buy dumb.shit off of you where I will then stick answers and software for all the REALLY stupid customers i have to deal with! Oh what a lovely day, no more ID10T errors or PEBKAC, you can just send them a link that says dumb.shit and call it a day.
Well here are a couple more using video games but if you type "30 VS 60 FPS video comparison" there are dozens of different videos to choose from. Bottom lne is while 30FPS works it isn't nearly as smooth, especially during large action scenes than 60FPS. i can see why Cameron and Roger Ebert both say 60FPS is the future of moviemaking.
Well I can tell you a little more, i just didn't think it was relevant for the story. He said the stench was like...well it was like nothing you could imagine and that it had looked like they had been trying to burn some of the bodies outside the place but as the Russians approached they had abandoned that and just piled them up. That was an image he said he'd never forget, to see human skeletons piled up like cordwood. He said disease was rampant, hundreds of sick and dying, and that the children looked almost like aliens with these huge heads and sunk in eyes on these walking skeletal bodies.
Sorry i can't give you more but you can imagine this period was something he wasn't the most fond of telling, the only way i got it out of him was when the Nazis wanted to march in Chicago and I asked about what real Nazis were like. If you want to write an interesting story that hasn't been told those that were in communications like he was would be a VERY interesting story to tell, just imagine having to go out and repair lines of communication between the front and HQ with snipers and booby traps and all kinds of hell.
BTW if you want one more story i know of one my great uncle told, he was just a grunt in a different division in the race towards Germany when they were stopped on the side of the road and in mid sentence his CO and buddy got half his face blown off right onto my great uncle from a sniper. After getting to a position he and a couple of men managed to drop the sniper...only to find a pregnant woman was the sniper who they had to finish off because she reached for the rifle. I asked if that had bothered him and he said it didn't, by that time he had lost so many guys that he had served with they all just wanted to make it home alive and were frankly pissed that by this time it was obvious they had NO chance of winning...yet they just wouldn't stop. My other great uncle in the pacific also talked about the insanity of it, how the Japanese would Banzai charge when they were dug in with M1s and BARs, he said it was just slaughter yet they just kept doing it over and over AND OVER.
anyway good luck with your story, I'm sure if you look around you can find others like me that tried their best to remember the stories that were passed down and if anybody deserves to be called heroes those guys were it. Frankly after hearing some of their stories i'm shocked they didn't all go nuts, i know i couldn't handle that much horror and death.
In the states its old men in hats and blue haired ladies that can't get their head above the steering wheel, you'll just see the 'do and a pair of white hands..funny that you should bring that up as just the other day the local tobacco shop had the front of their building covered in fiberboard, like someone had driven through the front of the shop. I walked in an said "Blue haired lady or old guy in a hat?" and he said "guy in a hat, how did you know that?" because it is ALWAYS a blue haired lady or an old guy in a hat, always. Say what you want about teen drivers but I have yet to see them drive into a building, yet that had happened no less than 4 times in the past 5 years here and ALL of the incidents were blue haired of old guy hat wearers.
Sorry that I can't find it ATM (They are doing construction at my apt building so net has been spotty at best) but if you Google "difference between 30 FPs, and 60 FPS"...hang on...I think I found one, not the same one that I had previously seen but here is one but I'm sure if you Google what I posted above you can find others.
Well all I can tell you is what I remember from his stories since sadly he passed away in the late 70s, but from what he told me he and his squad (He was a Sargent at the time and ended up a Chief Master Sargent at the end of the war) was tasked with helping with the liberation of one of the smaller polish camps and for setting up lines of communication between their forward lines and the HQ.
According to what the medic told him they have been starved for some damned long their hearts were severely weakened and that dumping the very rich GI field rations into their systems would cause too much strain on their frail bodies and it could kill them so they made thin broths from field ration stew to give to them as they tended to them. he and some of his men actually had to check bodies for life because some were so weak the Nazis just threw them on the piles without even bothering to check if they were dead. he said despite all the horrors he had seen, such as a guy he was talking to a few minutes earlier get hit dead bang by a PAK-88 (which he said left nothing but a red mist and the guys lower legs) that seeing the horrors of the camp was the closest he came to actually just executing unarmed men.
But according to a prisoner that spoke English the real guards stuck raw recruits, some as young as 15 or 16, in charge of the camp a few days before and had ran for the west during the night a few nights before. Once they saw they had no superiors they shared what little they had and basically opened the camp, not that the prisoners had enough strength to leave. According to the prisoner they were just kids with almost no training that were frankly clueless as to what to do and simply sat down with them and waited on the war to end.
But I was always proud of what my grandfather and his brothers did in WWII, they truly went through hell in both the EU and the Pacific, yet even when my great uncles were dying of cancer they got from going in with the troops to help after Japan surrendered they never had any regrets. To them it wasn't personal and once the battle was over they did what they could to help, to me they will always be true heroes.
Reallly....(looks at corpse where someone slammed a rocket up my ass for the 30th time)..."hey dead HL dude get up! There is nobody there to shoot you!" I guess the zombies must have taken over or something as I got HL1 DM as part of a HL bundle on the big Xmas Steam sale and I never have a problem finding multiple people more than willing to blast a rocket up my ass. Now my Bioshock II MP? It can take 4 or 5 minutes before enough straggle in to have a match but to be fair they really broke MP on that one (need to reach level 40 before the good weapons and plasmids open up, before that you are cannon fodder) but with HL 1 DM I can fire that up and be ass deep in asplosions and mayhem in seconds.
Uhhh..there is a REASON we don't care, and to use a /. car analogy its the same reason we don't drive muscle cars anymore (well most of us) even though they were VERY fun, and that's because they are pigs and the same can be said of CRT. The LCD in my apt is a 22 inch 1600x900 and replaced a 19 inch CRT. Did the CRT have a little better color depth? probably but to my 44 year old eyes I can't really tell but what I CAN very much tell is how much less AC I need to keep the place cool, not to mention the CRT was 135w and the LCD is 35w. So just by switching I shaved 100w off and cut down on my AC use.
Now as for 30 VS 60 FPS? Personally I prefer the FPS to be as high as possible, if for no other reason so that when a whole lot of stuff is happening on the screen my frame rate doesn't drop past 30 but again to these 44 year old eyes as long as everything stays above 30 FPS its all good,so while I'm sure it would probably look a little better on the old CRT I certainly wouldn't want to deal with the heat and power suckage again just to gain that little bit of difference. often we have to make little sacrifices in the name of increased efficiency, to use the analogy again a car that gets 45MPH most likely won't handle like my 71 Le Mans Sport did, but it also won't blow through a gas tank every few hours either.
Well if you have ever seen that demo where they show 24, 30, and 60 FPS then you know that frankly 60FPS is the way to go but I can imagine even 48FPS must be MUCH better (can't tell ATM since the site is /.ed) but the problem you are gonna have is people have gotten used to the shitty 24FPS (which was the slowest they could use and not have it jerky) that it will simply take time for people to adjust.
In the end the theaters will get the crappy 24FPS and the ones like me that prefer to watch at home will get the superior 48FPS just giving you one more reason not to care about going to the theater.
Exactly, one of the thing I have always liked about Dr. Tyson is he makes it quite clear that he doesn't expect you to "believe" anything, In his amazing meeting he even talks about how blind belief can hold back an entire culture, as with how a single cleric who released an edict that said basically "All non natural numbers are evil" and killed science in Islam to this very day. But one CAN look at the data we have, of how common the elements that make up life are in the universe and how huge the number of planets are and figure the odds. Sure it is always possible that somehow in defiance of the odds we are the only creatures in the entire universe, but the odds are so badly against that being true I don't see how it could be the case.
of course that does NOT mean little green men are landing in AL looking for some BBQ and to fuck with the cornfields for shits and giggles. it simply means that the odds are there is life of some sort out there. Personally after what we have seen of Ganymede and Europa I hope that we will take a closer look at both as it may turn out we aren't the only life in this solar system, much less the galaxy. What amazes me is how many hear the word "life" and think little green men. On Ganymede it would probably be bacteria and with Europa being a big ocean it would most likely take the form of some tubeworm style life. while we of course wouldn't be having conversation with either that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek out such life, if for no other reason than it could answer so many questions about how life began here.
I'll get hate for saying this but WTF,lets be honest, if you wanna go by sheer numbers Hitler hated Ruskies even more than Jews but if you look at the man's record pretty much anyone not Aryan that didn't think EXACTLY like him got put on his shit list. Lets see...Poles, Jews, Russian, Gypsy, gay, communists...did I leave anybody out? lets face it the guy really wasn't THAT picky when it came to killing and if you look at those throughout history that racked up huge body counts that's something they all had in common. While its true he didn't like Jews once WWII started not liking someone wasn't really a prerequisite, he slaughtered for pretty much any old reason.
Personally I'm for printing it,not because I thought the man had any great insight, far from it and one could argue that WWII was pretty much a war with all the planning of throwing darts at a dartboard without any real thought involved on Germany's part (attacking Russia without ANY winter gear? batshit much?) but because i'm a strong believer on freedom of thought, be it the little red book or Mein Kampf or the supposed "pro pedo" book. To be frightened of words on a page is to be frightened of thought and I personally find that even more scary. If you truly fear words on a page because you think they are gonna suddenly affect large numbers of your populace? then maybe, just throwing this out there, you should teach your people to think for themselves and instead of trying to hide the words make a decent counterargument instead?
My grandfather fought in WWII and actually liberated one of the camps in Poland, not one of the big names but it was horrifying none the less, and one of the last things he taught me was not to fear words and ideas as he actually supported the Illinois Nazis right to march, even though he had suffered so much in the war and ended it with a wall dropped on him by a Werwulf squad. He said "that's what made us different, we let people speak, even if we don't agree" and I always took those and his memories he shared of that time to heart. so when i saw some neo Nazis on a street corner in Dallas in the late 80s I didn't join the protesters shouting dirty names at them, I simply bought a large piece of posterboard and made up a sign that said "My grandfather liberated one of the camps, ask me about it" and told his story, of seeing children piled like cordwood, of seeing people so starved one couldn't tell male from female, of being told NOT to feed them because they had been starved so long rich GI rations would throw their frail bodies into shock and of watching in horror because one of the other men did exactly that because he felt pity and the person went into convulsions and died. He said that was the closest he ever got to committing war crimes as he and his men were ready to execute those Nazis on the spot until one of the prisoners told them these were just some flunky recruits brought in while the monsters snuck away and they had actually been treated well by the recruits.
Well needless to say all those nasty names didn't phase those Nazis but what DID phase them was me. They even went so far as to actually complain to a cop standing there who snickered and said "you have the right to speak and so does he" and when they saw I wouldn't go away they packed up and left. It is ALWAYS better not to sweep such things under the rug but to fight it with the truth. By keeping it hidden and banned since the Americans left Germany has simply allowed those groups to grow when a much better solution would have been to simply fight them with the reality of the past IMHO.
Dang shill, ya ALMOST had me but then ya had to go and completely blow it with marketing speak. BTW someone needs to save this guy's post and when someone screams "Shill!" because they disagree with a position? Then you can just trot out this guy's post to show them what an ACTUAL shill is.
Anyway i'm sure that someone will point at the dig at Google as a giveaway? Nope, maybe he just don't like the company, maybe his account got burned, that can be explained away. No what can NOT be explained away is these two lines " wide array of other services and software like Azure" and " strong brand name and are also a division of innovation".
Seriously who the fuck talks like THAT, anyone? it reads like something you'd be forced to sit through in some middle management PPT, usually followed by a few buzzwords like synergy and six sigma.
So I'm sorry but all those guys upmodding this guy's post might want to read the language in it a liiiitle more carefully, as the language is just a little too buzzworthy, unless of course this guy wants to admit he works in a marketing firm in which case carry on.
Oh and for the record i'm actually using Bing Search this month just to check it out and to see if that whole "Bing Rewards" thing is worth messing with, since yahoo royally fucked up their search design with the last update. Its alright, can't really tell any change in search quality either way, and I'll be the first to admit their wallpapers are pretty and I actually like their image search a little better but all in all not really a huge change and I guess more of a taste thing really. as for TFA most likely any deal would have given them access to all that yummy FB data, which is of course why Google tried to get into social with Google+ as FB is getting insanely huge amounts of data on folks, and they give it for free because they don't think and all their friends are there! I bet Google and MSFT both slapped their foreheads and said 'Why didn't I think of that?"
Any attempt to stop them using legal means will fail, why? because all you have is the classic "lesser of two evils" and since the megacorps need only cut a check to the winner and BOTH sides have a raging hard on for more power. Whether we like it or not the net WILL become a shopping network with cameras everywhere, no different than going to the mall.
So the only way to win is not by legal means, but technical. What we need is to wrap everything in encryption and/or to overload the system with crap so that any data they gather will be buried in shit. Sadly projects like freenet and tor, originally designed to help those under dictatorships, will be needed by those in the USA, so lets support them in every way we can because they won't stop until the net is nothing but cable, just shopping and propaganda.