Uhhh...and? hell the movies already hit BT before release so it isn't like pirates are going "Fuck me, if they'd only release as.avi I could spread this like the clap!".
No it is about PAYING CUSTOMERS and making the legal version BETTER than the pirated version. for an example I bought the entire Joss Whedon collection on DVD after BTing the first 3 episodes of BtVS. Now could I have downloaded it instead? of course I could. But they gave me a better value for my purchase by packing the hell out of the DVDs with director's commentaries, behind the scenes stuff, interviews, making of features, in short they made the legit version worth buying which just isn't the case anymore. Now all you get is a bunch of unskippable commercials unless you buy the "super mega exclusive high def BD director's cut" which will come out a year after the movie was released and cost full price.
Well movie companies you can fuck right off. We are tired of being gouged, tired of bullshit like unskippable commercials and 50 pirate warnings, tired of the content being released a dozen time so that you have to wait a year and a half just to get the complete content, and tired of not having an easy way to format shift. this is 2011, there is no damned reason why we shouldn't all have Nboxes loaded up with all our discs so everything is "clicky clicky" and the movie goes. the only thing holding us back is the greedy hogs that run the industry and they can DIAF for all I care about those pigs.
Bimbo Newton Crosby. And after all the guys here complaining that MSFT doesn't "get it" you'd think they'd be happy that it looks like someone there has started to grow a brain. the magic word is "integration" which lets be honest, MSFT hasn't been the greatest on that front in awhile. but if they can tie Skype, WinPhone, Windows, and the X360 all together so that like Apple's products it all "just works" simply and easily for the user? Then Skype will be money well spent.
Of course one thing we've all learned is never underestimate MSFT's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (killing of playsforsure for Zune Pass for example, PFS was growing like mad and MSFT killed it for a PMP nobody wanted) I'd say hold off final judgement until we can see how well MSFT can integrate Skype into their product lines. The bitch with MSFT is they have all the right pieces to use, such as Windows 7, Nokia making their cell phones, the X360, MS Office, WinServer and now Skype, the only question is do they have the ability to make the whole more than the sum of its parts.
Well the rootkit did it for me. I had several customers that ended up infected thanks to that douchebaggery, that damned thing punched a hole in security a mile wide and no AV at the time would detect it (since it was listed as copy protection and not malware) so malware writers could use that like the giant hole in security it was and come right on in. I swear for like a year and a half that damned thing would bite folks, because thousands of those rooted CDs ended up in grandma's collection or in a used CD rack somewhere. Real PITA.
So Sony can fuck right off. i'm happy with the phone I have and for dad's newest toy I'm waiting for those new Nokia WinPhones to come out so I can compare them to Android (anyone know of a good candybar phone that can be set to ONLY surf on WiFi? Data plans here really suck ass) and see which is easiest for someone who is clueless to work., One thing is for sure, and that is there will NEVER be another Sony product in my home! to steal a line from Mr Garrison "You go to hell Sony, you go to hell and you die!"
And you can just go to the corner store and pick up a loongson! Oh wait a tick, you can't because they don't have an x86 license therefor their little trick is about as legit as those "300 Nintendo games!" consoles you see sold off the back of trucks.
You see you can get away with ignoring patents and copyrights in China as long as they belong to foreigners because in China there is one law for outsiders and one law for insiders. that is why you can pick up fake DVDs of any software you want right there in the middle of town with no law hassling them, even thought its burnt discs.
So sorry to burst your bubble, but there are currently only 3 companies that can legally use x86 instructions, and that is Intel, AMD and until 2015 Via. Which means you will NEVER see the loongson in the west, or any country that signed the Berne convention for that matter.
But you just proved my point since you already know those commands it is simply repetition. there is no way in hell you just sat down at a CLI of an unfamiliar OS and said "Hmmm...how do I do this task I've never done before? I know its BEGIN{FS=":";Ct=0;getline;Ts=$3};{if ($3!=Ts){print $3;Ts=$3;Ct++}}'/var/lib/ldap/replica/slurpd.status!!"
In fact if you didn't sit down before you EVER did a single thing and spend hours pouring over man pages or programming books, so you understood not only the command itself, but how each of those commands actually work and tie into each other? Well I might as well give you an OS in Russian for all the good it would do you.
And while what you aid is true that the GUI only has what the developer thought of computers have been around for decades so ALL of the tasks that a good 90% will need? Should already have a GUI up and running. if not its a giant FAIL which sadly is where Linux is right now. Linux is still at its core a CLI OS that has a thin GUI shell, like Win9X was back in its day. And like Win9x often the ONLY way to get anything done is bypass the GUI completely because frankly it doesn't work. Is there a GUI to find and install drivers? How about a GUI for video errors similar to windows safe mode? Hell even with the wireless network GUI I found that often the damned thing wouldn't work or the settings wouldn't stick, guess what I got told when asking for help? "Oh you shouldn't use THAT thing, you should use " followed by 3 pages of CLI crapola. could I, with over 30 years of computer experience, do it? yes but why would I want to? Could my customers? Not a chance in hell.
And THIS is why Linux is stuck. You are right that for every programmer there is a 1000 users but they will NOT listen.Currently they already have all the "fight the power!" types, the only other ones that could pick up the needed CLI experience left would be the Windows power users and frankly they don't have any problems with Windows, so why should they switch? The vast majority of PC users are just like my dad. they know how to point and click, if you are lucky they know how to call up a help screen, that's it. Do you HONESTLY think those people would EVER have a prayer in Linux? Of course not, but those like the FOSSie that runs around here misquoting me will argue up and down those people are just dying to learn forum dances and CLI horseshit, when reality couldn't be farther from the truth.
I sell PCs for a living, so I deal with them 6 days a week. in its current form Linux is NOWHERE near ready for the masses. it is simply too CLI heavy, too little GUI. But sadly instead of having focus groups and user tests and seeing this is the case and working to make things easier for them, instead you get those like the one above you that insult if you are point out that you will NEVER get the world to go back to 70s terminals and reading man pages. this isn't 1975 and the average user isn't a programmer anymore. But instead they hang onto this delusion, like RMS does. Have you seen him at talks? He calls everyone "hackers" like it is 75 and he is at a computer club meeting. Sad really, but its that kind of delusional thinking that has guaranteed Linux a dead last position. And I think its just a damned shame, as there are plenty that could use its ability to run on older hardware and free upgrades.
Hell you want to talk about killing innovation look no further than the Nbox. if you haven't tried one they are great, a little box you plug a USB drive into and voila! your movies play. Great for someone like my dad. But the way the bullshit laws are there is no way to legally get content for it thanks to DMCA and DRM copyright bullshit.
There should be an.avi file on every DVD, in fact there should be two: One widescreen and the other 4x3 format, so folks like my dad could just pop in the disk and drag their new movie in.avi form straight to their Nbox. Real came up with a player that would have made things that simple, but even though it kept copyright protection (basically it just made a disk image) the courts shut them down, thanks to the lovely bribery result that is DMCA.
Just one more way they are holding everyone back and fucking themselves at the same time. my dad loves old war pictures and cop shows. if he could just pop onto Amazon and buy the movies and shows for an affordable price in.avi, so he could just click and drag onto his Nbox? He'd be buying movies and shows constantly. But because he has to call me, have me come pick up the disc, format shift it for him, and put it on his Nbox? he doesn't bother unless it is something he really really REALLY wants to watch. So there is another pile of sales just pissed away, all thanks to DRM horseshit.
Wouldn't work as there was no way in hell to get the thing to boot off of USB so you were stuck with WinCE. which frankly for just web surfing WinCE wasn't bad, it was just I already had an Athlon Mobile MSI wind at the time (just recently got the Brazos EEE, man that thing rocks HARD) and so I honestly didn't have a use for the thing. my wind already got nearly 5 hours and i could run the net on it PLUS my x86 software. Hell with both the Wind and the EEE I could even fire up Audacity and do rough mixes right off the multitrack in the practice space.
And it is THAT, that right there, that dooms ARM to cell phones and tablets. Because everyone has some piece of software they consider "mission critical" and it is ALL x86. For me it was Audacity, for my dad it would be Quickbooks, for my mom the software that came with her camera, for my boys their games...you get the picture. As I said folks have been conditioned that their software won't work on a cell phone but a netbook? Well those are baby laptops and they damned well expect those to run like a big laptop only slower" because its a baby".
How do you think I got the thing? A customer brought it in wanting to have me 'force it" to run her camera software, which of course it wouldn't. When she found out there was no way it would ever run it she sold it to me for $25. I ended up giving it to a neighbor simply because I never used it, the netbook was more handy. And when you can buy an Atom netbook for $199 or a really nice AMD Brazos FOR $340 with 8Gb of RAM? why bother.
Wil Wheaton nailed it when he said "make it simple, make it cheap, and folks WILL buy it. Make it expensive and a pain to use? people will just BT". he gave a perfect example, he bought the Doctor Who episodes on iTunes and then when he crossed the Canadian border his videos wouldn't play so his first thought was 'If I would have just pirated it i'd be watching my shows now".
And THAT kind of bullshit is the problem. There are plenty of shows I'd buy online if they would give me them as.avi files to where i could just drop it on my thumbstick and play it on my netbook, or go to my dad's and stick it in his Nbox so we could watch together, but they won't so i just buy DVDs from the bargain bin and rip them to avi. This means there are plenty of shows I WOULD have bought but just decided it was too much of a PITA to deal.
The sooner they accept that piracy exists because they are offering an inferior product the better. That was something Jobs got when it came to media, make it simple, make it cheap, make it easy, and folks buy. Make it a stupid DRM infested royal PITA? Kiss those dollars goodbye.
But see that's my point. In Windows you can choose to use CLI if you'd like, in Linux it is strictly have to use CLI just to get the damned thing to work. Go to ANY forum and ask for a GUI fix to a common problem, like say you are having a driver issue. just try it, and watch how they curse you, insult you, and treat you like dogshit for daring to ask for a single answer that isn't "open up bash and type".
And until THAT attitude changes and they accept the fact that terminals for non admins are as dead as disco and bell bottoms then Linux will stay right where it is at dead last, and rightly so. Instead they will delude themselves into thinking users run everything by going start>run, that every Windows user uses CLI daily, that all Windows machine BSOD and are infected, honestly its kinda sad.
That is why I call them FOSSies to separate them from FOSS users because FOSSies are like Moonies in their total delusional state of mind. Any post that isn't "gee Biff, isn't Linux perfect? why it sure is Skip, and RMS' farts smell like flowers and cured the ozone hole!" will be automatically downmodded, any person who doesn't say the above, no matter how delusional in the face of facts, will be labeled the FOSSie equivalent of nigger, that is of course troll, and anyone that has a different opinion HAS to be a "M$ Ninja Spy!" intent on destroying their vital essence.
You know what the definition of insanity is? its doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Linux was dead last 20 years ago, it was dead last 10 years ago, wanna guess where it will be in 10 years if they refuse to change and instead insist the world go back to the days of punch cards and terminals? Hell even in servers the numbers are dropping, with the last I saw had Linux at 35% and falling, why? Because as a Linux admin friend told me "if you place a Linux and Windows admin side by side, and give them a task the Linux admin has done repeatedly? the Linux guy will win. if you give them a task that the Linux guy has never done? before he is done dealing with man pages and searching Google the Windows guy will already be at lunch, having finished AGES ago."
And THAT my friend is why terminals are NEVER coming back. GUIs reward exploration and learning of new tasks, CLI is strictly for repetition and copypasta. And the vast majority of consumers, those people that Linux desperately needs if it is EVER gonna get above dead last? They don't sit around reading man pages and doing copypasta and furthermore they NEVER will. When you point this out? suddenly it'll be "well...uh uh... We don't wanna win anyway Mr M$ Ninja Shill dirty man!" while of course ignoring every page on/. cheering when anybody actually uses Linux for anything. Just sad really, how delusional these fanbois get.
Riiiight. Might work in the east, where the masses have never had a computer in the first place, won't work in the west and here is why: Just last year one of the local vendors in my area sold "Windows netbooks for $100" with in tiny writing "Compact Edition" but hell, people don't know what that means. it looked like XP, that was all that they saw.
Within a few weeks the local CL was filled to the brim with folks practically GIVING the things away. Why was that? Was there something wrong with them? Nope I tried one for a few weeks before giving it away and it was just fine for basic net surfing but it wouldn't run Windows programs so everyone (including me) got rid of them.
The reason why MSFT rules the desktop is the same reason why MSFT has to royally bust their ass maintaining backwards compatibility and that is the millions of x86 apps written that folks use every day, from the software that came with their cameras and printers to the software they use at the office. it is ALL x86 and while Linux guys can scream "We got stuff just as good!" frankly that's bullshit. Where is the custom medical and shipping apps? software equal to Quicken/Quickbooks? it doesn't exist in Linux and it sure as hell doesn't exist in ARM Linux, which has even less apps than x86 Linux.
The reason Apple can get away with the numbers they do is because everyone considers their cell phones throw away items. folks use it until their contract is up and then get another one and they have been trained that their programs won't work because what worked with phone foo don't with phone bar. Hell everyone I know has drawers filled with the things as they don't know WTF to do with all their old phones. from what I've seen the masses treat the tablet as "a big cell phone" and therefor phone rules apply. but when you start talking netbooks and the like? those are "baby laptops" and they damned well WILL expect it to run everything their desktop runs, just slower because "its a baby". Believe me as a retailer I've seen it first hand.
Actually I would argue that Commodore brought the first true "PC for the masses" and by doing so inspired a hell of a lot of programmers and tech guys which later became the needed workforce to drive the innovation of the industry. How many guys here started on a Commodore? probably a hell of a lot. Their cutthroat pricing also forced the competition to lower their prices, thus making PCs a commodity for the first time. after all what were the first IBM clones but an attempt to leverage the IBM design and commodore pricing?
In the end though it doesn't matter, there are but a handful of guys that should be in that tiny circle of "guys who changed the world with technology" and no matter what you thought of the company Steve Jobs damned sure had a seat at that table. Before he came along the masses saw PCs as these complex text heavy things that you practically needed a degree to use. hell i got my start in PCs thanks to people buying them then not knowing what to do with them so I'd have to show them how to load from cassette (man I'm dating myself) and input their data into early spreadsheets like Visicalc.
but Jobs changed all that. He made the personal computer a device your mom could use. He made it sleek and simple, all clicky clicky easy. The man took us from the terminal age to the age of the GUI, and made all GUI all the time the de facto way of using a computer. Vaya Con Dios Mr Jobs, you truly changed the world.
I've never used Blender so I don't know. Does Blender have an icon bar that changes contextually based on the actions of the user? if so you may have a winner if it came out before MSFT filed on the ribbon which I believe was 2003 or 2004. Did Blender have a contextual icon based UI at that time? Again not a 3D designer so I have NO clue on that. But if it came out after 2006 it won't count as MSFT was passing out developer previews of 2K7 by then.
You want to know why i'm "anti Linux" as you call it? Lies, bullshit, and hypocrisy, that's why. Take the above retard that insists on quoting me out of context and can't even get the quote correct. he was arguing that windows users use start>run to launch programs and fire up CLI every. single. day and THAT meant that Linux being so damned term heavy you had to have the link on the fucking desktop meant Linux didn't have a CLI problem.
Now I ask you, be honest, have you ever heard such delusional bullshit in your life? do you know ANYBODY that uses start>run to launch programs? hell I bet even YOU don't use start>run to launch programs! And if you are using ipconfig (which I too use daily) then you sir ARE AN ADMIN and we were talking about USERS, the masses which Linux WILL require to gain critical mass.
This is the second lie, that if a server admin does it then users MUST do it as well. For example they will bring up Powershell while ignoring every single whitepaper on MSDN has in giant letters titles like "How to manage YOUR SERVER using Powershell". Not a single thing on there for home users. Why? Because home users don't use Powershell that's why!
That is why I'm the worst nightmare of the FOSSie, which unlike a FOSS user has a moonie like devotion to their OS religion, because after trying to sell Linux and seeing what a fucked up, broken down, fiddly, badly QA'ed little POS it is? I have seen through their lies. out of a half a dozen brand new machines I tried to load Linux on, how many survived the first 6 month deathmarch upgrade? Why that would be NOT A SINGLE ONE. that's right, not one. If I would have let that shit out of my shop I would have burned my customers or had to "repair" the things (which guess what? 2 of which took over TWO WEEKS before a "fix" that was a page and a half of CLI BS I had to tweak to make work, came out) for free for the rest of their lives.
So I'm sorry but Linux is shit, and until they accept they have serious problems they need to correct, such as CLI needs to go, the 6 month deathmarch needs to be replaced or a hardware ABI needs to be implemented so drivers don't shit themselves, and the endless forum dances and CLI fixes need to go the way of the 8 track, then I will continue to point out the truth to FOSSies like MR "can't even quote correctly" above and the truth is this: Linux is equal to, but no better than, windows 98 and that's a fact. like Win 98 one often had to go to CLI because the GUI was nothing but a shell over a CLI core and things often broke and needed tweaking.
But it ain't 1998 anymore, and Linux is against Windows 7 and OSX and frankly compared to those two it is a bad joke. it is too CLI heavy, too fiddly, too dependent on fixes by the community instead of QA, and too much politics and bullshit instead of progress. Until the community accepts this it will stay where it is, which is lower than JavaME, a shitastic cell phone OS, when it comes to users. Sorry but facts don't lie, and I could wallpaper this page with link after link after link backing up everything I've said. Can they?
There is also an easy way to solve it, that is the combo of Comodo Dragon and Avast Free. you simply use the Dragon's built in secure DNS, which is constantly updated and will block any site that has malware (you can of course choose to go to the site anyway but Comodo tells you what malware is on the site so if you continue its your own stupidity) and if there happens to be a site Comodo doesn't catch (haven't seen one yet, but possible) then Avast, which scans the page BEFORE it loads will catch it and put a screeching halt to the page load and throw up a warning, again listing the malware that was detected.
Using this combo my users, some of which would get more viruses than a Bangkok whore, went down to nothing. Zip, zero nada, squat. I even loaded it on an XP test box (because XP security sucks compared to Win 7, which is what most of my users are now on) and just started clicking every link in my spam folder, just to see if I could infect the thing. I got a bazillion stop loads by Comodo along with Avast saying I shouldn't go to that site, but as long as I didn't click ignore, which should be called the "yes I'm a moron please infect me' button, all was golden. I ran three different offline scanners, two boot CD scanners, and two online scanners, and nothing. Zip zero nada squat. Then add in Win 7 with ASLR and DEP and you have a box that I can hand to my worst users and not have to worry about it coming back except for hardware upgrades.
So you CAN lock Windows down nicely, it just takes a little thought, that's all. I tried the same experiment with MSE and 3 got through, AVG let 2 past, Adaware Free also caught everything though, so if you prefer it over Avast its good. I've simply found my customers like Avast, especially that nice little female voice that Avast uses. But with the above you too can let your worst users loose on the net and go have a beer, confidant you won't be dealing with a zombie when you get back.
If you don't mind DIY check out the AMD barebones on Tigerdirect. you can get some crazy cheap nice machines there and most can be easily upgraded to 6 core down the road. my own machine has gone from an Athlon dual to a Phenom II quad and after Xmas i'll be 6 core bound and all it'l cost is the chip. I picked up a sweet HD4850 for $50 and while they are definitely hot runners (I added a nice aftermarket cooler) the framerate is top notch. And of course if you run Linux AMD has opened up their drivers so they are getting better by the day.
Oh and you might enjoy this page at GOG of games that run great on Linux. Personally I prefer Win 7 myself but the nice thing about GOG is there is plenty to choose from and dirt cheap. Hell many of them will probably run on your netbook. I'm sure my AMD Brazos netbook would probably run everything there but who'd want to game on a 12 inch screen?
But definitely check out the sales at tiger. Now that the new F1 socket is out the AM3 machines are cheaper than ever and lets face it, games haven't been CPU bound in quite awhile. plus if you are into programming I hear OpenCL is gonna be big and being able to split the load between CPU and GPU has to be pretty cool from a programming perspective. And you just gotta love being about to get a fully loaded X6 for less than $400. just add a sweet GPU and you'd be blasting away!
Considering you're the dipshit that can't even quote correctly? Glass houses and all that. at least have the balls to use the correct quote which is "As far as the users are concerned there is no command line in Windows" and I fucking dare you to prove me wrong. Walk up to the next 100 people on the street and ask them dipshit, ask them "How do you get the command line in Windows?" and you know what they'll say? "what's command line?" because nobody uses that shit in windows dumbass, nobody.
Now you be sure to tell us how its all a conspiracy of Gates and the Illuminati, that anyone who isn't sucking the koolaid must be a "sekret M$ Ninja!" getting paid the big bux to keep your magical OS down, that if folks would just heed the great RMS the world would be flowers and ponies. it couldn't be that NOBODY WANTS TO GO BACK TO THE 70s! Nope, folks love punch cards and PDPs! CLI makes your neckbeard thick and gives you gonad powerz!
Kinda funny how the ONLY success Linux has seen is Android, which google took away from the community huh? and what IS Android? Why its all GUI, no CLI, all clicky clicky wonderful, that's what it is! So have the balls to quote me correctly or are you afraid I'm right?
What prior art? IIRC the ribbon changes with what you are doing and the only things I've seen labeled as prior art are simply static tabbed toolbars. if you can show one that changes its layout contextually based on function being done by the user i'll be the first one to agree with you, but just having a bunch of icons in a box does not a ribbon make.
I just hope they have good luck with the modular approach they have been talking about because right now? it really does kinda suck. I don't think its the Java because i don't install Java with LO but it is just....slow, bad slow. i think its just the fact that it is a big old pile of nasty code going back to the days of Star office and Sun really didn't treat the old gal well. they put resources into Writer but the other really got the hind tit, and even writer seemed to be more about adding features than improving performance.
so I wish nothing but luck to the LO guys, I haven't looked at the code since OO.o 2.0 but if it is anything like OO.o 2.0 was they have their work cut out for them. But if they go for a modular approach (and remove all the Java crap) I'm sure they can give it a nice performance boost. While I don't recommend LO for SOHOs/SMBs (still too many flaky conversions between LO and MS Office) for home users it is frankly more than they'll ever need. If they can just bring up the speed i think it'd be a real winner for home users. It is already better IMHO than OO.o ever was, which considering they have only been at it a year is impressive. good job LO guys, good job.
Uhhh...if its a "secret" that everybody knows about does it still count as a secret? The only difference is instead of the GPU being on the board its on the die itself, hence why they are testing. But hybrid has been around since the HD2xxx series cards so it isn't like everyone didn't already know about it.
Don't forget two other advantages, mainly OpenCL and the fact that AMD is in the process of switching from VLIW to vector on its GPUs and APUs. One of the things the AMD devs have been working on is having the APU take over for physics if you have a dedicated card and once they switch over to vector the APU will become even more powerful, but frankly for the mobile space i'd say the new E-350 is just about perfect, just the right mix of CPU and GPU for the stuff folks use a laptop for.
And IMHO the most important reason? So you don't reward douchebaggery and market manipulation. Intel has already admitted to rigging their compiler (which they still do BTW, despite the settlement), massive bribes to all the OEMs for more than 7 years costing ALL of us higher bills on electricity by foisting the stinking turd P4 upon us all, and if you reward asshattery it'll only get worse.
Personally I believe in supporting a free market enough that when i found out about the BS at Intel I switched to AMD exclusively for me and my customers. honestly ever since we went dual core PCs have been "good enough" for the masses by a pretty large margin, and my customers just love being able to get more cores, more memory, more HDD space, more GPU, just all around a hell of a lot more bang for the buck by going AMD. And I can be happy knowing i'm doing my own small part in trying to ensure that we have competition instead of a monopoly. because i'm old enough to remember when Intel was the only game in town and it sucked hard. high prices, crappy performance, the only thing that has kept intel on its toes is AMD. or has everyone forgotten how truly horrible Intel GPUs were before AMD bought ATI? i815? 945G? Power hogging lousy performing POS chips all around.
I quit using that bloated piggie of a browser when it reached FF 4, thanks ever so. I'd suggest you try Comodo Dragon instead bill. It is based on chromium so nice and fast, you can opt in to using their secure DNS (which doesn't affect the OS settings, just the browser) which I've found pretty much kills malware dead before it can even reach the system, all the good Chrome plugins like ABP, readability, and ForecastFox work on it, and most importantly it is NOT a bloated POS.
That said that EEE supports 8gb of RAM, which is currently going for $37 on Amazon so its dirt cheap to max that puppy out and let FF leak away. So while I can't tell you how FF runs on it, I CAN tell you editing 4 tracks while bouncing down to two in audacity worked great, the only slowdown was when i was experimenting with some heavy effects (which will slow down even my quad desktop) but other than that was sweet, editing docs in Word 2K7 while listening to playback? Nice. Tron Legacy in MPC? smooth as silk, I bet it would play some of my older games like Titan Quest well too, but who would want to game on a 12 inch screen?
all in all the best $340 I've ever spent on PC gear. That Brazos APU gets really great battery life and expressgate is just wonderful! and where else you gonna get a machine with HDMI, 320Gb HDD, USB 3, bluetooth AND 8Gb of RAM, all for less than $350 shipped? I love the hell out of the thing, its just too damned handy.
I think YOU missed the point friend, which is a hearty WHO GIVES A FUCK how it fails? do you sit there scratching your head on why that 89c Bic pen died? fuck no! its a $20 cheapo Chinese POS, why would anyone give a wet fart about WHY it failed? they use cheap parts, cheap parts die, period. As I said I got 7 years out of my 4x $189 DVD burner, but who would want to pay nearly ten times the current cost for reliable optical systems? Nobody that's who.
So if you really want to sit around and have a 4 hour discussion on why something that costs less than a pizza and a 6 pack died? Knock yourself out buddy. Seems stupid as fuck to waste your time. Hell in the time it took to type this I made more money than the fricking burner cost!
Actually I LOVE my job, after doing corp it is like paradise. in corp some PHB is always fucking you over, cutting the budget, just one dumb shit thing after another, but working with SMBs, SOHOs, and home users? they KNOW they don't know shit and therefor actually listen to what you have to say. i just find the whole "lets dump everything on the desktop!" bit irritating. But its nice to help a lady keep in touch with her grandkids, or help a business to get their work done faster, and unlike corp I don't see my work trashed by some PHB with an MBA that think he knows IT but is really an ID10T.
But its nice when I don't even have to have business cards anymore because I get so much from word of mouth that I'm always swamped. hell i even have my landlady slipping notes under my door saying "If you have time would you call my friend? she needs some work done" and I usually have 3 or 4 messages waiting for me at the shop when i get back from a service call.
I still say win 8 is gonna bomb though. I have everything from electricians to graphic artists to housewives to print shops as customers and not a single one I've shown the screengrabs of win 8 has had a nice thing to say, not one. with Win 7 I got "that's nice looking, but how hard is it to work?" followed by questions about various tasks so it was obvious they were at least curious, and I haven't had a single customer come back and say "I wanna go back to XP" after upgrading.
But win 8? downright hostile. NOBODY wants it, nobody wants to know anything about it, in fact the question I got the most was "But YOU'LL be able to get me another Windows 7 machine if i need it, right?" which considering i build the desktops and research the netbooks/notebooks before purchasing? Not a problem, but it is pretty obvious at least for my customers Win 8 is gonna be another Vista. at least I won't have to kill myself looking for win 7 drivers like I did for Vista to XP.
My problem is running my own little PC shop its feast or famine and lately between the shop and the band I've barely had time to eat and sleep, much less do anything else. I probably shouldn't complain as there are plenty of folks out there doing without, but why does it ALWAYS seem like everyone wants everything done at the same damned time? lately I've been picking up older laptops off of eBay and CL and refurbing them and even the ones with dead batteries just go like hotcakes, I swear I don't know what it is about laptops, but just today I got a circa 2003 1GHz Gateway with a Geforce 2MX and before i could even get it unboxed a guy gave me $90 for it on the spot. Folks just go nuts for laptops.
As for SR2 you playing on the PS3 explains it, I heard that one had nice controls. If you try it on the PC it just screams "port!" as the controls are sloppy as hell. Nothing I hate more than dying not because I screwed up, but because I was fighting the controls instead of the bad guys. for shits and giggles i picked up Kane & Lynch II (I got it for 45c brand new!) and what did that game in were sloppy controls. I swear you can be 10 feet from a guy, unload an Uzi, and not hit him once! total slop.
Does AC still have that "always online phone home" crap? Because that is where I draw the line. I have Bioshock II still in the shrink wrap because I ended up playing the cracked version just so I wouldn't have to deal with GFWL hoop jumping. A disc check, or one time call to check the key? I have NO problem with that, I'll just download the crack so i can put up the disc and call it a day. But I'm not dealing with the constant phone home crap, to me its just not worth it.
BTW if you haven't signed up for the Good Old Games newsletter you really should. they have truly insane sales on the weekend and none of their games have any DRM. I'm probably up to around 40 games from them so far, oh and if you want to LYAO try Redneck Rampage. runs great on win 7 X64 and you fight aliens with titty guns and dynamite on crossbow bolts while drinking beer and eating pork rinds for health, I swear. oh and they give you the sound track with it and it kicks butt, Mojo Nixon, Beat farmers, the who's who of Psychobilly.
Well I better go, my youngest bought me a copy of Titan Quest and I better get a little time in before he starts laughing at the quality of my loot again. if you like diablo II style games i heartily recommend it, its really fun with lots and lots of loot. I thought I was gonna die when my youngest brought his new box by last month and said "Have you tried this game? Its great!" and it was Diablo II. at least the boy is developing some taste, LOL!
I'd add the new Brazos netbooks like this EEE I picked up SERIOUSLY rock hard. Frankly after messing first with atom netbooks (too damned slow) followed by an MSI wind with an Athlon dual (nice but a little power hungry) i wasn't sure what to think when I got the Brazos but it really is a sweet chip. I get about 6 hours on a battery in windows 7 HP or around 8 hours in Expressgate, even after running 5 hours solid it was cool to the touch, the Radeon 6310 GPU makes for some smooth HD video, oh and it'll hold 8Gb of RAM which I can't wait to get here!
all in all I really can't think of a bad word to say about Brazos. I've done multitrack editing in audacity, a little light video editing, and so far no matter how much I threw at it it still felt nice and responsive, more like an Intel CULV than an atom netbook. and who can't love a netbook with bluetooth, 320Gb HDD, USB 3, HDMI, and a nice bright 12.1 inch screen that gets 6 hours on a 6 cell and with the 8Gb RAM upgrade cost less than $340 shipped? I'd say AMD has a real winner on its hands with those APUs, they truly are nice chips.
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Uhhh...and? hell the movies already hit BT before release so it isn't like pirates are going "Fuck me, if they'd only release as .avi I could spread this like the clap!".
No it is about PAYING CUSTOMERS and making the legal version BETTER than the pirated version. for an example I bought the entire Joss Whedon collection on DVD after BTing the first 3 episodes of BtVS. Now could I have downloaded it instead? of course I could. But they gave me a better value for my purchase by packing the hell out of the DVDs with director's commentaries, behind the scenes stuff, interviews, making of features, in short they made the legit version worth buying which just isn't the case anymore. Now all you get is a bunch of unskippable commercials unless you buy the "super mega exclusive high def BD director's cut" which will come out a year after the movie was released and cost full price.
Well movie companies you can fuck right off. We are tired of being gouged, tired of bullshit like unskippable commercials and 50 pirate warnings, tired of the content being released a dozen time so that you have to wait a year and a half just to get the complete content, and tired of not having an easy way to format shift. this is 2011, there is no damned reason why we shouldn't all have Nboxes loaded up with all our discs so everything is "clicky clicky" and the movie goes. the only thing holding us back is the greedy hogs that run the industry and they can DIAF for all I care about those pigs.
Bimbo Newton Crosby. And after all the guys here complaining that MSFT doesn't "get it" you'd think they'd be happy that it looks like someone there has started to grow a brain. the magic word is "integration" which lets be honest, MSFT hasn't been the greatest on that front in awhile. but if they can tie Skype, WinPhone, Windows, and the X360 all together so that like Apple's products it all "just works" simply and easily for the user? Then Skype will be money well spent.
Of course one thing we've all learned is never underestimate MSFT's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (killing of playsforsure for Zune Pass for example, PFS was growing like mad and MSFT killed it for a PMP nobody wanted) I'd say hold off final judgement until we can see how well MSFT can integrate Skype into their product lines. The bitch with MSFT is they have all the right pieces to use, such as Windows 7, Nokia making their cell phones, the X360, MS Office, WinServer and now Skype, the only question is do they have the ability to make the whole more than the sum of its parts.
Well the rootkit did it for me. I had several customers that ended up infected thanks to that douchebaggery, that damned thing punched a hole in security a mile wide and no AV at the time would detect it (since it was listed as copy protection and not malware) so malware writers could use that like the giant hole in security it was and come right on in. I swear for like a year and a half that damned thing would bite folks, because thousands of those rooted CDs ended up in grandma's collection or in a used CD rack somewhere. Real PITA.
So Sony can fuck right off. i'm happy with the phone I have and for dad's newest toy I'm waiting for those new Nokia WinPhones to come out so I can compare them to Android (anyone know of a good candybar phone that can be set to ONLY surf on WiFi? Data plans here really suck ass) and see which is easiest for someone who is clueless to work., One thing is for sure, and that is there will NEVER be another Sony product in my home! to steal a line from Mr Garrison "You go to hell Sony, you go to hell and you die!"
And you can just go to the corner store and pick up a loongson! Oh wait a tick, you can't because they don't have an x86 license therefor their little trick is about as legit as those "300 Nintendo games!" consoles you see sold off the back of trucks.
You see you can get away with ignoring patents and copyrights in China as long as they belong to foreigners because in China there is one law for outsiders and one law for insiders. that is why you can pick up fake DVDs of any software you want right there in the middle of town with no law hassling them, even thought its burnt discs.
So sorry to burst your bubble, but there are currently only 3 companies that can legally use x86 instructions, and that is Intel, AMD and until 2015 Via. Which means you will NEVER see the loongson in the west, or any country that signed the Berne convention for that matter.
But you just proved my point since you already know those commands it is simply repetition. there is no way in hell you just sat down at a CLI of an unfamiliar OS and said "Hmmm...how do I do this task I've never done before? I know its BEGIN{FS=":";Ct=0;getline;Ts=$3};{if ($3!=Ts){print $3;Ts=$3;Ct++}}' /var/lib/ldap/replica/slurpd.status!!"
In fact if you didn't sit down before you EVER did a single thing and spend hours pouring over man pages or programming books, so you understood not only the command itself, but how each of those commands actually work and tie into each other? Well I might as well give you an OS in Russian for all the good it would do you.
And while what you aid is true that the GUI only has what the developer thought of computers have been around for decades so ALL of the tasks that a good 90% will need? Should already have a GUI up and running. if not its a giant FAIL which sadly is where Linux is right now. Linux is still at its core a CLI OS that has a thin GUI shell, like Win9X was back in its day. And like Win9x often the ONLY way to get anything done is bypass the GUI completely because frankly it doesn't work. Is there a GUI to find and install drivers? How about a GUI for video errors similar to windows safe mode? Hell even with the wireless network GUI I found that often the damned thing wouldn't work or the settings wouldn't stick, guess what I got told when asking for help? "Oh you shouldn't use THAT thing, you should use " followed by 3 pages of CLI crapola. could I, with over 30 years of computer experience, do it? yes but why would I want to? Could my customers? Not a chance in hell.
And THIS is why Linux is stuck. You are right that for every programmer there is a 1000 users but they will NOT listen.Currently they already have all the "fight the power!" types, the only other ones that could pick up the needed CLI experience left would be the Windows power users and frankly they don't have any problems with Windows, so why should they switch? The vast majority of PC users are just like my dad. they know how to point and click, if you are lucky they know how to call up a help screen, that's it. Do you HONESTLY think those people would EVER have a prayer in Linux? Of course not, but those like the FOSSie that runs around here misquoting me will argue up and down those people are just dying to learn forum dances and CLI horseshit, when reality couldn't be farther from the truth.
I sell PCs for a living, so I deal with them 6 days a week. in its current form Linux is NOWHERE near ready for the masses. it is simply too CLI heavy, too little GUI. But sadly instead of having focus groups and user tests and seeing this is the case and working to make things easier for them, instead you get those like the one above you that insult if you are point out that you will NEVER get the world to go back to 70s terminals and reading man pages. this isn't 1975 and the average user isn't a programmer anymore. But instead they hang onto this delusion, like RMS does. Have you seen him at talks? He calls everyone "hackers" like it is 75 and he is at a computer club meeting. Sad really, but its that kind of delusional thinking that has guaranteed Linux a dead last position. And I think its just a damned shame, as there are plenty that could use its ability to run on older hardware and free upgrades.
Hell you want to talk about killing innovation look no further than the Nbox. if you haven't tried one they are great, a little box you plug a USB drive into and voila! your movies play. Great for someone like my dad. But the way the bullshit laws are there is no way to legally get content for it thanks to DMCA and DRM copyright bullshit.
There should be an .avi file on every DVD, in fact there should be two: One widescreen and the other 4x3 format, so folks like my dad could just pop in the disk and drag their new movie in .avi form straight to their Nbox. Real came up with a player that would have made things that simple, but even though it kept copyright protection (basically it just made a disk image) the courts shut them down, thanks to the lovely bribery result that is DMCA.
Just one more way they are holding everyone back and fucking themselves at the same time. my dad loves old war pictures and cop shows. if he could just pop onto Amazon and buy the movies and shows for an affordable price in .avi, so he could just click and drag onto his Nbox? He'd be buying movies and shows constantly. But because he has to call me, have me come pick up the disc, format shift it for him, and put it on his Nbox? he doesn't bother unless it is something he really really REALLY wants to watch. So there is another pile of sales just pissed away, all thanks to DRM horseshit.
Wouldn't work as there was no way in hell to get the thing to boot off of USB so you were stuck with WinCE. which frankly for just web surfing WinCE wasn't bad, it was just I already had an Athlon Mobile MSI wind at the time (just recently got the Brazos EEE, man that thing rocks HARD) and so I honestly didn't have a use for the thing. my wind already got nearly 5 hours and i could run the net on it PLUS my x86 software. Hell with both the Wind and the EEE I could even fire up Audacity and do rough mixes right off the multitrack in the practice space.
And it is THAT, that right there, that dooms ARM to cell phones and tablets. Because everyone has some piece of software they consider "mission critical" and it is ALL x86. For me it was Audacity, for my dad it would be Quickbooks, for my mom the software that came with her camera, for my boys their games...you get the picture. As I said folks have been conditioned that their software won't work on a cell phone but a netbook? Well those are baby laptops and they damned well expect those to run like a big laptop only slower" because its a baby".
How do you think I got the thing? A customer brought it in wanting to have me 'force it" to run her camera software, which of course it wouldn't. When she found out there was no way it would ever run it she sold it to me for $25. I ended up giving it to a neighbor simply because I never used it, the netbook was more handy. And when you can buy an Atom netbook for $199 or a really nice AMD Brazos FOR $340 with 8Gb of RAM? why bother.
Wil Wheaton nailed it when he said "make it simple, make it cheap, and folks WILL buy it. Make it expensive and a pain to use? people will just BT". he gave a perfect example, he bought the Doctor Who episodes on iTunes and then when he crossed the Canadian border his videos wouldn't play so his first thought was 'If I would have just pirated it i'd be watching my shows now".
And THAT kind of bullshit is the problem. There are plenty of shows I'd buy online if they would give me them as .avi files to where i could just drop it on my thumbstick and play it on my netbook, or go to my dad's and stick it in his Nbox so we could watch together, but they won't so i just buy DVDs from the bargain bin and rip them to avi. This means there are plenty of shows I WOULD have bought but just decided it was too much of a PITA to deal.
The sooner they accept that piracy exists because they are offering an inferior product the better. That was something Jobs got when it came to media, make it simple, make it cheap, make it easy, and folks buy. Make it a stupid DRM infested royal PITA? Kiss those dollars goodbye.
But see that's my point. In Windows you can choose to use CLI if you'd like, in Linux it is strictly have to use CLI just to get the damned thing to work. Go to ANY forum and ask for a GUI fix to a common problem, like say you are having a driver issue. just try it, and watch how they curse you, insult you, and treat you like dogshit for daring to ask for a single answer that isn't "open up bash and type".
And until THAT attitude changes and they accept the fact that terminals for non admins are as dead as disco and bell bottoms then Linux will stay right where it is at dead last, and rightly so. Instead they will delude themselves into thinking users run everything by going start>run, that every Windows user uses CLI daily, that all Windows machine BSOD and are infected, honestly its kinda sad.
That is why I call them FOSSies to separate them from FOSS users because FOSSies are like Moonies in their total delusional state of mind. Any post that isn't "gee Biff, isn't Linux perfect? why it sure is Skip, and RMS' farts smell like flowers and cured the ozone hole!" will be automatically downmodded, any person who doesn't say the above, no matter how delusional in the face of facts, will be labeled the FOSSie equivalent of nigger, that is of course troll, and anyone that has a different opinion HAS to be a "M$ Ninja Spy!" intent on destroying their vital essence.
You know what the definition of insanity is? its doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Linux was dead last 20 years ago, it was dead last 10 years ago, wanna guess where it will be in 10 years if they refuse to change and instead insist the world go back to the days of punch cards and terminals? Hell even in servers the numbers are dropping, with the last I saw had Linux at 35% and falling, why? Because as a Linux admin friend told me "if you place a Linux and Windows admin side by side, and give them a task the Linux admin has done repeatedly? the Linux guy will win. if you give them a task that the Linux guy has never done? before he is done dealing with man pages and searching Google the Windows guy will already be at lunch, having finished AGES ago."
And THAT my friend is why terminals are NEVER coming back. GUIs reward exploration and learning of new tasks, CLI is strictly for repetition and copypasta. And the vast majority of consumers, those people that Linux desperately needs if it is EVER gonna get above dead last? They don't sit around reading man pages and doing copypasta and furthermore they NEVER will. When you point this out? suddenly it'll be "well...uh uh... We don't wanna win anyway Mr M$ Ninja Shill dirty man!" while of course ignoring every page on /. cheering when anybody actually uses Linux for anything. Just sad really, how delusional these fanbois get.
Riiiight. Might work in the east, where the masses have never had a computer in the first place, won't work in the west and here is why: Just last year one of the local vendors in my area sold "Windows netbooks for $100" with in tiny writing "Compact Edition" but hell, people don't know what that means. it looked like XP, that was all that they saw.
Within a few weeks the local CL was filled to the brim with folks practically GIVING the things away. Why was that? Was there something wrong with them? Nope I tried one for a few weeks before giving it away and it was just fine for basic net surfing but it wouldn't run Windows programs so everyone (including me) got rid of them.
The reason why MSFT rules the desktop is the same reason why MSFT has to royally bust their ass maintaining backwards compatibility and that is the millions of x86 apps written that folks use every day, from the software that came with their cameras and printers to the software they use at the office. it is ALL x86 and while Linux guys can scream "We got stuff just as good!" frankly that's bullshit. Where is the custom medical and shipping apps? software equal to Quicken/Quickbooks? it doesn't exist in Linux and it sure as hell doesn't exist in ARM Linux, which has even less apps than x86 Linux.
The reason Apple can get away with the numbers they do is because everyone considers their cell phones throw away items. folks use it until their contract is up and then get another one and they have been trained that their programs won't work because what worked with phone foo don't with phone bar. Hell everyone I know has drawers filled with the things as they don't know WTF to do with all their old phones. from what I've seen the masses treat the tablet as "a big cell phone" and therefor phone rules apply. but when you start talking netbooks and the like? those are "baby laptops" and they damned well WILL expect it to run everything their desktop runs, just slower because "its a baby". Believe me as a retailer I've seen it first hand.
Actually I would argue that Commodore brought the first true "PC for the masses" and by doing so inspired a hell of a lot of programmers and tech guys which later became the needed workforce to drive the innovation of the industry. How many guys here started on a Commodore? probably a hell of a lot. Their cutthroat pricing also forced the competition to lower their prices, thus making PCs a commodity for the first time. after all what were the first IBM clones but an attempt to leverage the IBM design and commodore pricing?
In the end though it doesn't matter, there are but a handful of guys that should be in that tiny circle of "guys who changed the world with technology" and no matter what you thought of the company Steve Jobs damned sure had a seat at that table. Before he came along the masses saw PCs as these complex text heavy things that you practically needed a degree to use. hell i got my start in PCs thanks to people buying them then not knowing what to do with them so I'd have to show them how to load from cassette (man I'm dating myself) and input their data into early spreadsheets like Visicalc.
but Jobs changed all that. He made the personal computer a device your mom could use. He made it sleek and simple, all clicky clicky easy. The man took us from the terminal age to the age of the GUI, and made all GUI all the time the de facto way of using a computer. Vaya Con Dios Mr Jobs, you truly changed the world.
I've never used Blender so I don't know. Does Blender have an icon bar that changes contextually based on the actions of the user? if so you may have a winner if it came out before MSFT filed on the ribbon which I believe was 2003 or 2004. Did Blender have a contextual icon based UI at that time? Again not a 3D designer so I have NO clue on that. But if it came out after 2006 it won't count as MSFT was passing out developer previews of 2K7 by then.
You want to know why i'm "anti Linux" as you call it? Lies, bullshit, and hypocrisy, that's why. Take the above retard that insists on quoting me out of context and can't even get the quote correct. he was arguing that windows users use start>run to launch programs and fire up CLI every. single. day and THAT meant that Linux being so damned term heavy you had to have the link on the fucking desktop meant Linux didn't have a CLI problem.
Now I ask you, be honest, have you ever heard such delusional bullshit in your life? do you know ANYBODY that uses start>run to launch programs? hell I bet even YOU don't use start>run to launch programs! And if you are using ipconfig (which I too use daily) then you sir ARE AN ADMIN and we were talking about USERS, the masses which Linux WILL require to gain critical mass.
This is the second lie, that if a server admin does it then users MUST do it as well. For example they will bring up Powershell while ignoring every single whitepaper on MSDN has in giant letters titles like "How to manage YOUR SERVER using Powershell". Not a single thing on there for home users. Why? Because home users don't use Powershell that's why!
That is why I'm the worst nightmare of the FOSSie, which unlike a FOSS user has a moonie like devotion to their OS religion, because after trying to sell Linux and seeing what a fucked up, broken down, fiddly, badly QA'ed little POS it is? I have seen through their lies. out of a half a dozen brand new machines I tried to load Linux on, how many survived the first 6 month deathmarch upgrade? Why that would be NOT A SINGLE ONE. that's right, not one. If I would have let that shit out of my shop I would have burned my customers or had to "repair" the things (which guess what? 2 of which took over TWO WEEKS before a "fix" that was a page and a half of CLI BS I had to tweak to make work, came out) for free for the rest of their lives.
So I'm sorry but Linux is shit, and until they accept they have serious problems they need to correct, such as CLI needs to go, the 6 month deathmarch needs to be replaced or a hardware ABI needs to be implemented so drivers don't shit themselves, and the endless forum dances and CLI fixes need to go the way of the 8 track, then I will continue to point out the truth to FOSSies like MR "can't even quote correctly" above and the truth is this: Linux is equal to, but no better than, windows 98 and that's a fact. like Win 98 one often had to go to CLI because the GUI was nothing but a shell over a CLI core and things often broke and needed tweaking.
But it ain't 1998 anymore, and Linux is against Windows 7 and OSX and frankly compared to those two it is a bad joke. it is too CLI heavy, too fiddly, too dependent on fixes by the community instead of QA, and too much politics and bullshit instead of progress. Until the community accepts this it will stay where it is, which is lower than JavaME, a shitastic cell phone OS, when it comes to users. Sorry but facts don't lie, and I could wallpaper this page with link after link after link backing up everything I've said. Can they?
There is also an easy way to solve it, that is the combo of Comodo Dragon and Avast Free. you simply use the Dragon's built in secure DNS, which is constantly updated and will block any site that has malware (you can of course choose to go to the site anyway but Comodo tells you what malware is on the site so if you continue its your own stupidity) and if there happens to be a site Comodo doesn't catch (haven't seen one yet, but possible) then Avast, which scans the page BEFORE it loads will catch it and put a screeching halt to the page load and throw up a warning, again listing the malware that was detected.
Using this combo my users, some of which would get more viruses than a Bangkok whore, went down to nothing. Zip, zero nada, squat. I even loaded it on an XP test box (because XP security sucks compared to Win 7, which is what most of my users are now on) and just started clicking every link in my spam folder, just to see if I could infect the thing. I got a bazillion stop loads by Comodo along with Avast saying I shouldn't go to that site, but as long as I didn't click ignore, which should be called the "yes I'm a moron please infect me' button, all was golden. I ran three different offline scanners, two boot CD scanners, and two online scanners, and nothing. Zip zero nada squat. Then add in Win 7 with ASLR and DEP and you have a box that I can hand to my worst users and not have to worry about it coming back except for hardware upgrades.
So you CAN lock Windows down nicely, it just takes a little thought, that's all. I tried the same experiment with MSE and 3 got through, AVG let 2 past, Adaware Free also caught everything though, so if you prefer it over Avast its good. I've simply found my customers like Avast, especially that nice little female voice that Avast uses. But with the above you too can let your worst users loose on the net and go have a beer, confidant you won't be dealing with a zombie when you get back.
If you don't mind DIY check out the AMD barebones on Tigerdirect. you can get some crazy cheap nice machines there and most can be easily upgraded to 6 core down the road. my own machine has gone from an Athlon dual to a Phenom II quad and after Xmas i'll be 6 core bound and all it'l cost is the chip. I picked up a sweet HD4850 for $50 and while they are definitely hot runners (I added a nice aftermarket cooler) the framerate is top notch. And of course if you run Linux AMD has opened up their drivers so they are getting better by the day.
Oh and you might enjoy this page at GOG of games that run great on Linux. Personally I prefer Win 7 myself but the nice thing about GOG is there is plenty to choose from and dirt cheap. Hell many of them will probably run on your netbook. I'm sure my AMD Brazos netbook would probably run everything there but who'd want to game on a 12 inch screen?
But definitely check out the sales at tiger. Now that the new F1 socket is out the AM3 machines are cheaper than ever and lets face it, games haven't been CPU bound in quite awhile. plus if you are into programming I hear OpenCL is gonna be big and being able to split the load between CPU and GPU has to be pretty cool from a programming perspective. And you just gotta love being about to get a fully loaded X6 for less than $400. just add a sweet GPU and you'd be blasting away!
Considering you're the dipshit that can't even quote correctly? Glass houses and all that. at least have the balls to use the correct quote which is "As far as the users are concerned there is no command line in Windows" and I fucking dare you to prove me wrong. Walk up to the next 100 people on the street and ask them dipshit, ask them "How do you get the command line in Windows?" and you know what they'll say? "what's command line?" because nobody uses that shit in windows dumbass, nobody.
But hey, if you want to be IN DENIAL that your OS doesn't fucking work without a 70s era term, that companies like Dell have to run their own repos even though they only offer Linux on a teeny tiny subset of hardware because Linux shits itself and dies if you use the default repos (quality OS you got there friend), that your brand new OS got its ass beat by a decade old OS on netbooks, that major retailers like Walmart are running away from Linux as fast as it can and that even the company that started netbooks with Linux have given up on your CLI heavy bullshit, or that there is even a site dedicated To your bullshit and excuses? Who am I to deny you your illusion?
Now you be sure to tell us how its all a conspiracy of Gates and the Illuminati, that anyone who isn't sucking the koolaid must be a "sekret M$ Ninja!" getting paid the big bux to keep your magical OS down, that if folks would just heed the great RMS the world would be flowers and ponies. it couldn't be that NOBODY WANTS TO GO BACK TO THE 70s! Nope, folks love punch cards and PDPs! CLI makes your neckbeard thick and gives you gonad powerz!
Kinda funny how the ONLY success Linux has seen is Android, which google took away from the community huh? and what IS Android? Why its all GUI, no CLI, all clicky clicky wonderful, that's what it is! So have the balls to quote me correctly or are you afraid I'm right?
What prior art? IIRC the ribbon changes with what you are doing and the only things I've seen labeled as prior art are simply static tabbed toolbars. if you can show one that changes its layout contextually based on function being done by the user i'll be the first one to agree with you, but just having a bunch of icons in a box does not a ribbon make.
I just hope they have good luck with the modular approach they have been talking about because right now? it really does kinda suck. I don't think its the Java because i don't install Java with LO but it is just....slow, bad slow. i think its just the fact that it is a big old pile of nasty code going back to the days of Star office and Sun really didn't treat the old gal well. they put resources into Writer but the other really got the hind tit, and even writer seemed to be more about adding features than improving performance.
so I wish nothing but luck to the LO guys, I haven't looked at the code since OO.o 2.0 but if it is anything like OO.o 2.0 was they have their work cut out for them. But if they go for a modular approach (and remove all the Java crap) I'm sure they can give it a nice performance boost. While I don't recommend LO for SOHOs/SMBs (still too many flaky conversions between LO and MS Office) for home users it is frankly more than they'll ever need. If they can just bring up the speed i think it'd be a real winner for home users. It is already better IMHO than OO.o ever was, which considering they have only been at it a year is impressive. good job LO guys, good job.
Uhhh...if its a "secret" that everybody knows about does it still count as a secret? The only difference is instead of the GPU being on the board its on the die itself, hence why they are testing. But hybrid has been around since the HD2xxx series cards so it isn't like everyone didn't already know about it.
Don't forget two other advantages, mainly OpenCL and the fact that AMD is in the process of switching from VLIW to vector on its GPUs and APUs. One of the things the AMD devs have been working on is having the APU take over for physics if you have a dedicated card and once they switch over to vector the APU will become even more powerful, but frankly for the mobile space i'd say the new E-350 is just about perfect, just the right mix of CPU and GPU for the stuff folks use a laptop for.
And IMHO the most important reason? So you don't reward douchebaggery and market manipulation. Intel has already admitted to rigging their compiler (which they still do BTW, despite the settlement), massive bribes to all the OEMs for more than 7 years costing ALL of us higher bills on electricity by foisting the stinking turd P4 upon us all, and if you reward asshattery it'll only get worse.
Personally I believe in supporting a free market enough that when i found out about the BS at Intel I switched to AMD exclusively for me and my customers. honestly ever since we went dual core PCs have been "good enough" for the masses by a pretty large margin, and my customers just love being able to get more cores, more memory, more HDD space, more GPU, just all around a hell of a lot more bang for the buck by going AMD. And I can be happy knowing i'm doing my own small part in trying to ensure that we have competition instead of a monopoly. because i'm old enough to remember when Intel was the only game in town and it sucked hard. high prices, crappy performance, the only thing that has kept intel on its toes is AMD. or has everyone forgotten how truly horrible Intel GPUs were before AMD bought ATI? i815? 945G? Power hogging lousy performing POS chips all around.
I quit using that bloated piggie of a browser when it reached FF 4, thanks ever so. I'd suggest you try Comodo Dragon instead bill. It is based on chromium so nice and fast, you can opt in to using their secure DNS (which doesn't affect the OS settings, just the browser) which I've found pretty much kills malware dead before it can even reach the system, all the good Chrome plugins like ABP, readability, and ForecastFox work on it, and most importantly it is NOT a bloated POS.
That said that EEE supports 8gb of RAM, which is currently going for $37 on Amazon so its dirt cheap to max that puppy out and let FF leak away. So while I can't tell you how FF runs on it, I CAN tell you editing 4 tracks while bouncing down to two in audacity worked great, the only slowdown was when i was experimenting with some heavy effects (which will slow down even my quad desktop) but other than that was sweet, editing docs in Word 2K7 while listening to playback? Nice. Tron Legacy in MPC? smooth as silk, I bet it would play some of my older games like Titan Quest well too, but who would want to game on a 12 inch screen?
all in all the best $340 I've ever spent on PC gear. That Brazos APU gets really great battery life and expressgate is just wonderful! and where else you gonna get a machine with HDMI, 320Gb HDD, USB 3, bluetooth AND 8Gb of RAM, all for less than $350 shipped? I love the hell out of the thing, its just too damned handy.
I think YOU missed the point friend, which is a hearty WHO GIVES A FUCK how it fails? do you sit there scratching your head on why that 89c Bic pen died? fuck no! its a $20 cheapo Chinese POS, why would anyone give a wet fart about WHY it failed? they use cheap parts, cheap parts die, period. As I said I got 7 years out of my 4x $189 DVD burner, but who would want to pay nearly ten times the current cost for reliable optical systems? Nobody that's who.
So if you really want to sit around and have a 4 hour discussion on why something that costs less than a pizza and a 6 pack died? Knock yourself out buddy. Seems stupid as fuck to waste your time. Hell in the time it took to type this I made more money than the fricking burner cost!
Actually I LOVE my job, after doing corp it is like paradise. in corp some PHB is always fucking you over, cutting the budget, just one dumb shit thing after another, but working with SMBs, SOHOs, and home users? they KNOW they don't know shit and therefor actually listen to what you have to say. i just find the whole "lets dump everything on the desktop!" bit irritating. But its nice to help a lady keep in touch with her grandkids, or help a business to get their work done faster, and unlike corp I don't see my work trashed by some PHB with an MBA that think he knows IT but is really an ID10T.
But its nice when I don't even have to have business cards anymore because I get so much from word of mouth that I'm always swamped. hell i even have my landlady slipping notes under my door saying "If you have time would you call my friend? she needs some work done" and I usually have 3 or 4 messages waiting for me at the shop when i get back from a service call.
I still say win 8 is gonna bomb though. I have everything from electricians to graphic artists to housewives to print shops as customers and not a single one I've shown the screengrabs of win 8 has had a nice thing to say, not one. with Win 7 I got "that's nice looking, but how hard is it to work?" followed by questions about various tasks so it was obvious they were at least curious, and I haven't had a single customer come back and say "I wanna go back to XP" after upgrading.
But win 8? downright hostile. NOBODY wants it, nobody wants to know anything about it, in fact the question I got the most was "But YOU'LL be able to get me another Windows 7 machine if i need it, right?" which considering i build the desktops and research the netbooks/notebooks before purchasing? Not a problem, but it is pretty obvious at least for my customers Win 8 is gonna be another Vista. at least I won't have to kill myself looking for win 7 drivers like I did for Vista to XP.
My problem is running my own little PC shop its feast or famine and lately between the shop and the band I've barely had time to eat and sleep, much less do anything else. I probably shouldn't complain as there are plenty of folks out there doing without, but why does it ALWAYS seem like everyone wants everything done at the same damned time? lately I've been picking up older laptops off of eBay and CL and refurbing them and even the ones with dead batteries just go like hotcakes, I swear I don't know what it is about laptops, but just today I got a circa 2003 1GHz Gateway with a Geforce 2MX and before i could even get it unboxed a guy gave me $90 for it on the spot. Folks just go nuts for laptops.
As for SR2 you playing on the PS3 explains it, I heard that one had nice controls. If you try it on the PC it just screams "port!" as the controls are sloppy as hell. Nothing I hate more than dying not because I screwed up, but because I was fighting the controls instead of the bad guys. for shits and giggles i picked up Kane & Lynch II (I got it for 45c brand new!) and what did that game in were sloppy controls. I swear you can be 10 feet from a guy, unload an Uzi, and not hit him once! total slop.
Does AC still have that "always online phone home" crap? Because that is where I draw the line. I have Bioshock II still in the shrink wrap because I ended up playing the cracked version just so I wouldn't have to deal with GFWL hoop jumping. A disc check, or one time call to check the key? I have NO problem with that, I'll just download the crack so i can put up the disc and call it a day. But I'm not dealing with the constant phone home crap, to me its just not worth it.
BTW if you haven't signed up for the Good Old Games newsletter you really should. they have truly insane sales on the weekend and none of their games have any DRM. I'm probably up to around 40 games from them so far, oh and if you want to LYAO try Redneck Rampage. runs great on win 7 X64 and you fight aliens with titty guns and dynamite on crossbow bolts while drinking beer and eating pork rinds for health, I swear. oh and they give you the sound track with it and it kicks butt, Mojo Nixon, Beat farmers, the who's who of Psychobilly.
Well I better go, my youngest bought me a copy of Titan Quest and I better get a little time in before he starts laughing at the quality of my loot again. if you like diablo II style games i heartily recommend it, its really fun with lots and lots of loot. I thought I was gonna die when my youngest brought his new box by last month and said "Have you tried this game? Its great!" and it was Diablo II. at least the boy is developing some taste, LOL!
I'd add the new Brazos netbooks like this EEE I picked up SERIOUSLY rock hard. Frankly after messing first with atom netbooks (too damned slow) followed by an MSI wind with an Athlon dual (nice but a little power hungry) i wasn't sure what to think when I got the Brazos but it really is a sweet chip. I get about 6 hours on a battery in windows 7 HP or around 8 hours in Expressgate, even after running 5 hours solid it was cool to the touch, the Radeon 6310 GPU makes for some smooth HD video, oh and it'll hold 8Gb of RAM which I can't wait to get here!
all in all I really can't think of a bad word to say about Brazos. I've done multitrack editing in audacity, a little light video editing, and so far no matter how much I threw at it it still felt nice and responsive, more like an Intel CULV than an atom netbook. and who can't love a netbook with bluetooth, 320Gb HDD, USB 3, HDMI, and a nice bright 12.1 inch screen that gets 6 hours on a 6 cell and with the 8Gb RAM upgrade cost less than $340 shipped? I'd say AMD has a real winner on its hands with those APUs, they truly are nice chips.