There is again a BIG difference you seem to be missing,either you simply don't see it or are trolling, can't be sure. you see if a proprietary software house ignores the users? Well then they lose money and sometimes a LOT of money, and that tends to put the fire under one's ass! Hell it even works on the big companies, look at MSFT. Vista sucked, users wouldn't have it, MSFT went back and gutted it and rebuilt it and voila! Windows 7 which is actually awesome.
And is there room in candyland for me too? is there ponies? I can pay someone to fix it? do you have ANY FUCKING IDEA what even a SINGLE coder worth a shit costs? Even a clue? who the fuck is gonna pay that? i'll tell ya nobody is gonna pay that so again we are right back where we started and you STILL haven't answered my question!
Last time, and I'll even highlight it: If FOSS fixes more bugs, why is this SAME bug been in FOUR versions now? You can't answer it because you know I'm right. The developer has moved on and nobody wants to fix the shitter so after FOUR versions it STILL hasn't been fixed! I'll even make a prediction, in the next 3 versions? this bug will STILL not be fixed!
How do I know this? It is again human nature. it is more fun to build than to fix, nobody likes to do dirty jobs, so if the only thing you get offered is a "gee thanks!" then they won't get done, period. Sorry to burst your bubble, that is just the way things are.
Now that ain't exactly fair Dave and you know it. I personally think the Windows 7 UI is the best damned thing since sliced bread, and when I have to work on an XP box it makes me feel like I'm dealing with Win95 again. the most wonderful thing IMHO is that it doesn't hamstring power users while still making it friendly for the clueless like my dad. Integrated search, jumplists, breadcrumbs, those all are great for everyone.
But for those of us that have used Office since 97 or earlier we already know where shit is thanks anyway Dave, and the ribbon just puts a big ass brake on muscle memory. In my office 2K I don't even have to think about where what I want is I already know to the point i can zip right to it. The ribbon takes that experience and pulls a Goatse with it, throwing it all into a deep nasty hole and leaving us as slow as the noob.
So why not be fair and simply give us choice? With Office 2K7 it is trivial to kill the ribbon and customize your own "mini bar" UI, which IMHO makes it actually BETTER than even my beloved Office 2K, simply because I can put what I need on the mini bar and you can put what you need on yours. So I'd say it isn't about not liking change, i love the new UI of Win 7, it is about not throwing away years of experience to start over from scratch. So as long as there is a way (and there is ALWAYS a way, either by MSFT themselves or a third party hack) to switch back to the Win 7 two pane I'll be a happy camper. I live in the two pane explorer and I NEEDS my breadcrumbs!
Don't make me hunt and peck when I already know what I want, is that too much to ask?
Are you on Linux? Are you using an Intel CPU? As I've found those two things DO matter when it comes to Moz. For one I think they are using the rigged Intel compiler which means any AMD FF will be crippled (whereas with Chromium based CPUs don't matter) and the Linux memory management model is vastly different than the Windows one. FF frankly sips memory on Linux and it sucks it down like a wino sucking on a bottle of Rosie on Windows.
But I bet you are running a multicore CPU with an assload of RAM. Nothing wrong with that, but that kind of power does mask some of the suckage. try this little experiment. Install a Chromium based (I like Dragon but you can use any one, even the portable versions if you like) and then load up a dozen tabs of the sites you normally go to in both. Use the built in memory checker in Chrome ( the tutorial is here) and see for yourself. Oh and be sure to load up a couple of flash videos in both, I'll explain why in a second.
In my own tests I've found that FF will spike the CPU a good 30% or more than Chromium, that it will NOT give memory back on tab closing nearly as well as Chromium, and that if the tab con tains flash you ain't getting jack back on memory. I have also found starting with the 3.5.x but getting REALLY bad with 4 and above if you leave several static pages open in FF, note the memory, then come back to it in a hour or two its memory usage will climb even when its not being used!
So if FF works for you I'm happy for you, really I am. But I have to support a wide range of users, from 2004 era Athlons and Semprons to late P4 Pentiums and Celerons, from netbooks with single cores all the way up to the latest multicores. So I need a browser that will work on ALL CPUs, ALL versions of Windows, and everything from 512Mb of RAM up to 8Gb+, and FF just doesn't fit that description anymore, especially since the version 5 release. Hell version 5 can take 20 seconds or more to load on first launch, and I have 8Gb of RAM and a quad! And the only plugins I have is ABP and NoScript so no troubles there, it is just FF is a piggy.
Why does everyone freak? it isn't like there aren't ways to turn the crap off ya know. hell there are plenty of third party hacks that will turn Windows 7 into the Win98 dull grey nasty look if that is what floats your boat. Hell if you want Win 7 to look like KDE, OSX, or shit grey Win95 just pay a whole $30 for Astonshell and call it a day. Have it running on my older XP boxes and it is great!
Personally i just turn off the ribbon in Office 2K7 and customize my own most used commands on the mini bar and there ya go, cuts out the BS and makes it work MY way. But as long as they have the default two pane like in Windows 7 (which from the screenshot it appears to have) along with breadcrumbs and jumplists what's the big?
I'd say the new Windows 7 UI is probably the best thing since Win95 when it comes to UI design. Its fast, its intuitive, it lets people like my dad get more out of the OS while amazingly enough not crippling power users such as myself. it is fricking brilliant!
Sadly if there is one thing we have learned about MSFT under Ballmer is anything they do that is good WILL get fucked up in the next version, its like a law or something. This is one thing windows has a hell of an advantage over Linux in, in that if you don't like Windows 8? fuck it, just skip the thing like many skipped Vista. The support cycles are long enough (Windows 7 is getting supported until 2020) and third party support great enough one can simply ignore the shitpile releases and wait on the next good one with no penalty. Hell it isn't like you can't go to newegg right this minute and get an OEM copy of XP if you don't like Vista or 7, and I'm sure the same will be said of 7 when 8 comes out. If you don't like it or want to customize it? Meh just skip the thing.
Personally I'll be waiting until at LEAST SP1 before I even consider Win 8, and that is if I get one of those $50 upgrade deal like with 7, otherwise i might not even bother then. I mean why bother? Win 7 X64 runs everything, works with everything, and I have more RAM and CPU than I know what to do with as it is. let Ballmer cock up Win 8 like he did Vista, won't phase me or my customers any. if it ain't broke don't fix it I say.
To whom? The crooked judges? The crooked cops? You wanna know what happened to the last snitch in my area? Think Fargo only with the guy being alive at the time!
Look up "the meth highway" and be prepared to shit thyself. Here we have cops living like Tony Montana, with wives driving navigators and cops living in homes with Italian marble. You think they can afford THAT on a $29k a year salary? get fucking real!
The game is COMPLETELY rigged, anybody that lives on the highway KNOWS this. They have seen scum pay their way out of nasty charges, they have seen decent people get royally fucked because they were poor. this is common knowledge, hell they don't even try to hide the bribery anymore. I could tell you where to go every Friday to watch the cops count their money in their squads cars, they are THAT reliable. Nobody says shit or does shit because who are you gonna say it to? The last one that got chipper shredder went to the Feds, the feds let it leak to state, state let it leak to local, local "took care of the problem" end of story.
Hi Baghdad Bob! Those aren't tanks BTW, they are just REALLY big cars! Do you HONESTLY think that guys like you that hate that kind of shit is the targeted audience for FB? Fuck no! It is those like my ex GF that LOOOVE that shit, have a bazillion apps on their FB, play Zynga games, and generally live on FB.
And sadly despite all the Baghdad Bobs we have here this is a classic page out of the Gates era MSFT playbook. you want to kill a competitor that you can't attack directly you kill their supply chain. in this case you kill the apps that the users enjoy thus pissing them off. Then you go "Hey come to G+! We got plenty of that kind of stuff. BTW have you tried Chrome yet?" and away we go. mark my words the next target for Google will be Zynga. They take out Zynga or make it a G+ exclusive and that will hamstring FB badly and cause them to bleed users like MySpace did.
And of course when that happens we'll have a thousand Baghdad Bobs come on here to try to give a nice explanation of why this isn't being evil, just like you did. I hope whomever came up with that slogan is getting a hell of a bonus, because it is probably the greatest marketing gimmick of all time!
I have to agree. From the 1.x to the 3.x one could really see a solid progression of improvement, some big leaps, some small, but it was there. Then came 3.5.x.....OMFG. That is the only way I know to describe it...OMFG.
The amount of CPU spikes and memory suckage just went off the charts, testing FF with the wide variety of hardware I need to support (everything from first gen netbooks and 2004 era P4s to the latest multicores) I have found FF to be completely unsuitable for purpose on anything less than a 3GHz P4 with HT. Anything less than that and the CPU spikes will take control away from the users, sometimes for as long as two minutes if the new tab contains video, and you can just let FF sit without being used and it will continue to climb on memory usage until it hits swap for no damned reason other than major memory leaks.
Personally I blame this on Cargo Cult Usability as they have seen Chrome growing in popularity and have decided 'hey if we ape Chrome we'll be popular too!" while ignoring the simple fact that it is the underlying webkit engine that gives Chrome its speed and power and trying to bolt chrome style additions onto gecko is a recipe for disaster.
Personally when 3.5.x came out and I saw how simply worthless FF was on anything less than a 3GHz I started testing various alternatives, finally choosing and moving my users over to Comodo Dragon which gives the speed of Chrome, the ability to function well even on netbooks, no Google phone home crap, and some nice security features. The sad part is by trying to ape Chrome they are running off their users to Chrome because they are taking what once was a great browser and turning it into shit. It is a damned shame as I thought I would always use FF, but I don't need the hassle of supporting multiple browsers on multiple chips and now that they pull the plug on the previous the second they release "teh new hotness" I don't even get time for testing before they are borking shit all over again.
You know the browser is in bad shape when even my dad, who can't fricking STAND change, and will put up with half ass software rather than switch, is telling me "Son you gotta find me something else, this new Firefox is just too damned slow" and he is on an AMD quad with 4Gb of RAM! So long Moz, and thanks for all the fish.
Oh don't even get me started on douchebag programmers friend! That is why i can't just "nuke it from orbit" when a home user box is brought in, because not only does the crap that come with consumer devices shotgun files and reg keys all over the damned place, but you NEVER know where the fuck they are gonna put user files!
Since Win2K programs are SUPPOSED to put user files into a folder under my docs, but I've found them on the C: drive in some funky named folder, dropped on the desktop, again with a funky name, hell even a couple that stuck user files like pictures in fucking Win32!
That is why I'm glad I've just about got all my users switched over to Win 7. Not only does it have better security but for shitty programs it just lies its ass off with file and registry virtualization to enforce data sanity. But I have to agree that a hell of a lot of what went wrong with WinXP was MSFT bending over backwards accommodating badly written programs. Sadly even today I see programs acting like everyone should run as admin and it should have access to anything and everything. You'd think in nearly 5 years programmers could get their shit together?
Uhhh...how EXACTLY is buying a company that provided value to a competitor and shutting it down NOT considered evil? I just gotta admire the sheer batshit blind religious zealotry of the FOSSies here on/. because that level of denial takes real dedication!
If you replaced the name Google in TFA with Apple or MSFT they would be breaking out the torches and screaming for antitrust investigations, but because "It is teh Google and they love teh FOSSies, and teh ain't teh evils! They said so!" they could blow up competitor's buildings and the Baghdad Bobs would be out in force to explain how we just "don't get it".
Of course along with the denial in TFA they have to juggle denial for the whole "Android is free for OEMs" crack a few months ago, with its implied 'But not for you silly user!", along with the little matter of Google avoiding GPL V3 like it is kryptonite, or the fact that "do no evil" actually belongs right next to "Windows 7 was MY idea!" and "Think different" in the BS marketing hall of fame, but what they hey, as long as "they love teh FOSSies!" right?
Frankly I just do not get it. Its a company people, it doesn't "love you" or frankly give a flying fuck if you live or die. Its not for or against anything except itself. And if you think that it would even take a New York minute for them to choose between royally fucking the FOSSies or making another buttload o' cash? Well I have some really nice swampland in AR you might be interested in.
What is sad to me is here we see a clear admission that Mono is easier to port, has less overhead, but because of religious zealotry it will NEVER be accepted because those that treat OSes like religions will go "ZOMG! It is by teh M$ it is teh evil! Burn teh witch ZOMG!" and thus it doesn't have a prayer. Meanwhile those of us on Windows will just use.NET and think their religion like the other kooky beliefs is just freaky.
As for TFA? I don't think it will work worth a shit for anything more complex than farmville, and here is why: There are only two ways to go really when it comes to security of third party code being run from the big bad web. One there is the Apple "Wall the living fuck out of it!" model, where you either give one company COMPLETE control to lock it down tighter than a nun's thighs or you're fucked, and the MSFT "Meh, we'll take care of it with a GPO" model, where you basically leave it open and let the users and the corps lock it down themselves. See ActiveX as to why that isn't the smartest of ideas.
The simple fact is gaming is the ONLY real popular thing that tries to get as close to bare metal as it can anymore and that is because of the big performance gains. If all you are doing is rendering a 2D farmville style game nobody gives a shit if you wrap it in a dozen VMs, as the machine will have more than enough juice to waste the extra overhead. But drawing even a game from 2k4 like Far Cry requires a hell of a lot of polygons AND physics AND AI AND 5.1 surround sound...you get the picture. A bunch of security crap placed to keep some.ru website from Goatse'ing your PC with the "free cool game yo!" means it will royally suck ass.
Part of the appeal of this wild and wooly web of ours is how free it is, how ANYBODY can set up a site and offer their games, like those indie packs. But if you have the games running inside the browser, away from the AV and OS security permissions? You either choose the Apple or the MSFT model, and both have serious issues. Personally I'd rather just download my games, scan them, and then choose whether i want it to run or not than give Google total control or have another ActiveX, thanks anyway Google.
BTW if anybody thinks Google isn't trying to become the MSFT of the mobile world? I have some nice swampland in AR you might be interested in. They WILL end up just as locked down as Apple (notice how they don't allow GPL V3?) and just as big an asshole as the Gates era MSFT, they will just have a catchy slogan, like "Think Different" or "Windows 7 was my idea!". Frankly I hope the guy that wrote the "Do no evil" marketing bullshit got a hell of a bonus, because it is fricking brilliant. I bet Jobs wishes he'd have known something so simple could work so powerfully. Made his RDF look like a bad joke really.
Because our current engine tech sucks the big wet titty? look at how much we have learned and gained from the bots, we have had or are going to have orbiters around just about every interesting place in the solar system, learning more and more about how everything from gravity to solar winds work, all for about 1/20th the cost of our LEO crapola.
The simple fact is "Meatbags is SPAAAAACE!" simply isn't feasible ATM. We blew the endless cash on Apollo as a dick waving exercise against the Ruskies but frankly we could have gotten a hell of a lot more done with long term probes than by having astronauts hitting golf balls off the moon. We can experiment with new engine designs on the bots, no need for huge inquiries or shutting down the whole program if one blows the fuck up either.
We can simply get more done with less cost by leaving the meatbags on the ground. The bots don't need, food, water, man rating, shitters, air, extra protection for our fragile little bodies, its just stupid to waste limited resources on "Meatbags in SPAAACE!" right now, and this is from someone who loved Star trek and Buck Rogers as a kid. But I'm also a realist and our tech really isn't there yet to make meatbags a practicality.
Personally if it were me I'd stick with probes and look at reviving Gerald Bull's idea of a space cannon to cut down on the costs of moving material into LEO. From there parts could be assembled by robots to build larger and more powerful probes that could give us even more knowledge of the solar system so that when we DO stumble over the engine tech to get us out there everything will be all mapped out and ready for us. but now it is just a waste IMHO.
Uhhh...we're broke dude, sorry. While the debt piles on we have Grover Norquist passing around a "Never in a million years will we tax the 1%ers EVAR!" and the teabaggers are happily lining up to sign. It is all part of Norquist's "Drown the baby in the bathtub" plan which fits nicely into the repubs magical "More monies for teh RICH nom nom nom" plan they've been pushing for damned near 40 years.
It don't help that Obama is the biggest pussy since Jimmy Carter but short of another Teddy Roosevelt to bust the trusts I don't think he really could have done much anyway. The top 1%ers, thanks to Reagan deregs, now own the entire MSM so the "give teh rich MORE MONIES! Nom nom nom" is gonna get front and center and anyone that expresses a different idea is gonna be ignored or labeled a nut. I don't care for Ron Paul's policies but when the guy can raise millions in a single day simply by grass roots popular support? And then he is completely ignored? It don't take Colombo to solve the mystery, it is the simple fact he isn't singing the corporate master's tune.
In the USA we've had trickle down, voodoo economics, the "hey lets make trade deals with countries with NO workers safety or rights!", the "Teh rich only have 85% of teh monies, that ain't right! We'll give 'em big tax breaks while running TWO wars to give our friends a way to make even MORE monies!" which BTW is the first time IN HISTORY that the country has been at war and NOT raised taxes, and finally "Bailout baby bailout!" and now they are completely ignoring and glossing over the record of Perry, his relationship to Ali Khan, or the fact that under his watch every reasonable metric in Texas has gone to dead last, worse than even MS in many.
But expecting the USA to do anything progressive or forward thinking any time soon is like wishing for purple ponies friend, it just ain't gonna happen. We actually have WORSE wealth disparity than during the days of the robber barons, and even that isn't enough. look at how many of the rich howled when buffet pointed out his secretary pays more in taxes than he does? Where once we were asked "what we could do for our country" now it is "More MONIES! nom nom nom!" with any response to pleas for help met by a picture of Goatse by the 1%ers and their slaves on the left and right.
Future space program? Give it up buddy. Hell before long the schools will be teaching that the world is only 6000 years old and everything bad is caused by Satan. We are going backwards folks, the poor had less wealth inequality during the age of the robber barons, which sadly is the goal. We are gonna back to the age of serfs and barons, anything for the good of science and the people be damned.
But everyone has to jump in on the latest fad, don't you know that? I remember the "it'll all be thin clients all the way down!" fad, the grid computing fad, and now the "all you need is a browser and the magical perfect cloud!" fad.
The fads they come, the fads they go, but there is a damned good reason why desktops have been virtually unchanged in the past twenty years design wise, and that is because they WORK. Having lots of processing power, memory, and storage, all at the user's fingertips? it is nice, it makes things faster and works even without the magic cloud. But everyone needs to jump on the fads or else they wouldn't be fads now would they?
But hey, if making an IDE run really REALLY slow by sticking it in a browser gives them a happy? More power to them I say. Some make models, some play guitar, if jamming an IDE in a browser is what they like to blow their weekends on different strokes.
That's not true! You can also be very very rich and get justice as well! Everyone else is royally fucked though. I used to live down the street from the county courthouse and used to sit in and watch the proceedings but frankly it got too depressing. the ones that finally broke this camel's back was when a rich guy walked in, it was his NINTH bust for under the influence of booze AND drugs, and his FIFTH hit and run! What did he get? they gave him a $10k fine and actually THANKED him for his fucking time! The next one was a poor guy for his second pot possession charge. they gave him 3 years.
Anyone who thinks the courts in the USA aren't as crooked as any third world really ought to set in on some trials for a couple of weeks. there they will quickly see a pattern, rich can do anything, poor go to prison for less than a tenth of what the rich guy does. it is like that old saying, steal $500 go to jail, steal 500 million become a senator. The thing is so tilted now in favor of the elite it isn't even a bad joke anymore, it is just pathetic and sad.
I'm shocked they don't have the two moron passwords I saw plenty in the wild, which are ASD123asd and p@ssw0rd. You'd be surprised how many times I saw total dumbshit passwords like that. I'd try to tell the admins but finally gave up because every time I saw truly dumbshit passwords like that it was because the admin was a BOFH and had set some insane password requirements without thinking of the users.
But the fact that yes its 2011 and those passwords work show a trend I've been saying for awhile now, that the corps in their ever fucking of IT and "cost cutting" by firing anyone with a brain and replacing them with the cheapest shit workers they can find once again bites them in the ass. The problem with corp IT is the simple fact that the PHB that causes the mess never gets the blame and in fact will often enjoy "upward failure" as they will have gotten bonuses for their "cost cutting" measure and then moved up or gotten a job somewhere else thanks to their "stellar" cost cutting record, leaving the shitstorm to some other PHB or usually some poor IT flunky who'll get the blame.
Just another example of why you deserve everything you get if you refuse to hire quality help, sigh. that is why I got out of corp IT, too many PHBs and not enough common fucking sense. It is like that old demotivational in corp right now "Common Sense: So damned rare it is practically a super power"
Oh lord spare us the bullshit!! You can fix it yourself? Right, did you perform your own brain surgery perhaps? because while, and I'm just SURE you'll find this like, you know, totally shocking, 99.9999995% of the planet are not fucking programmers. In fact i think from now on the arrogant "You can DIY" should be met with a hearty "Go fuck yourself" because it is arrogant, douchebag elitist horseshit to think the entire world knows how to code in C/C++. Finding bugs? Easy. Having the several years of college CS to give one the capability to debug and fix the code? Not part of the skillsets of even 70% of the guys here, and this is a programmer heavy site.
That doesn't change the fact that for your data to work it requires one little thing, that the developer hasn't moved on which unless he considers it his baby is more often than not the case. Look at what we are talking about here and YOU explain how "Open Source fixes more bugs" when we are talking about a serious show stopping graphics fuckup that has been in three previous releases already and is STILL there in a fourth.
How is this possible? i'll tell ya how, the developer who wrote the original code has moved on and nobody wants to clean the shitter so it don't get clean EXACTLY AS I SAID. You can create ALL the flaming hoops and studies of some subsection of software that you want, you can't change human nature. It is always more fun to create than clean and that is a simple fact. do you see little kids going "I wanna grow up to clean shitters!" of course not, yet they still need cleaning. Same thing here, you have code that the developer has walked away from that now doesn't run right yet nobody wants to fix it because like cleaning a shitter it is a long, slow, nasty, thankless job.
And those kinds of jobs, like writing the docs, fixing the bugs, regressions testing, etc simply don't get done in FOSS because THOSE JOBS SUCK and people aren't doing suck jobs for free. it is just human nature dude.
Oh I'll be the first one to point out apple sucks ass for power users, BTW notice how I got modded down for daring to ask a question that consists of anything other than "gee, isn't apple like the best thing ever Skip?" but in this case i was talking about the "dad" factor, as in they make a phone simple enough my dad can use it without having to keep the manual in one hand.
I tried getting my dad a Droid phone but frankly he just couldn't get the hang of it, it would scroll crazy fast or too slow and we never could get a comfortable medium with it. His brother who is likewise clueless has an iPhone and it works perfectly for him, everything he would want to do with a phone is built in and is easy to manage.
Personally i told dad to wait for the nokia WinPhones to come out before we make any final choices. Everything he has is on Windows anyway, so if MSFT can get the integration between the WinPhone and Windows down hopefully it'll be a better fit.
That STILL doesn't change the fact the current Mac makes no damned sense. As I said in the PPC days one could argue that the combo of exotic hardware+software made for better performance in certain apps, but today all a Mac is is a VERY expensive Wintel box, with hardware that is outdated before it even reaches the shelves. By the time the Mac refresh hits the shelves there is usually at least one new generation of Intel chips, not to mention Intel IGP still blows nasty chunks. The base model Mac is an i5 with 2Gb for $1000? Are you kidding me? for INTEL graphics?
So I'm sorry I still don't get it. They have to be making 40%+ profits on old tech! It isn't like the old days where one needed an exotic CPU folks, these are Wintel laptops. If you want a non Windows OS so bad run Linux or build a Hackentosh and get better specs and a free Windows license.
More like "What good is the thing if i gotta program it, build a box to use it, and then buy the crap to hook it up?". Now if you were to build it into say a Sega Nomad style case with 2Gb of NAND onboard and a microSD slot along with a basic Linux with web browser pre installed? I bet you could get the BOM under $50 and so could sell it for $75 and make an absolute killing as a portable emulator/media player/ browser in a box.
Load in Genesis/MegaDrive, NES, SNES, Master System and just for fun Atari/ColecoVision emulators? i'd snatch one up for $75 without a second thought. Hell i'd probably pick up a couple and start selling them here at the shop. There are a bunch of guys like me that would like to play a little Mortal Kombat or general chaos while waiting in line at the bank.
I have a question, which I'm sure to get hate over but WTF it has always struck me as weird....why? I mean I could understand a Mac during the PPC days, there were some things that supposedly PPC ran better, no real worry about bugs because those were all written on X86, but now? now it is just a REALLY expensive Intel laptop. I haven't seen anything on one I couldn't get for cheaper with better specs.
The iPad, iPhone, and iPod? i don't have any of those but I GET IT, again non standard hardware with Apple UI equals win. The closest Android competitors frankly just haven't gotten the Apple smooth and seamless thing down. maybe by Android 6 they'll have it, but not yet. And while I love my sandisk frankly i'll be the first to admit that butt simple UI it ain't, nothing like an iPod. hell my mom could work one of those with no manual.
So I just don't GET it. Anybody who has the tech skills to read/. can follow a fucking google page and make a Hackentosh if they have a hard on for OSX that badly, and get better specs along with a free license for Windows for dual booting while they are at it. So why pay crazy Apple prices for less powerful hardware? i just don't see the appeal, unless you are one of those "keep up with the joneses" types that care more about flashing a label than anything. if that is the case fark is that way.-->
Uhhh...what EXACTLY does that have to do with bugs and how nobody likes fixing them? it isn't like the developer, whether volunteer or not, said 'I need X number of bugs per LOC" no what happens is the bugs are found later by which time the original developer has done moved on or is working on something new and don't really care.
So you are back to my analogy. you have code that may have worked perfectly on the developer's system that for whatever reason is sucking the big wet titty now. Maybe he only had a single core CPU, maybe he was on Intel and the bug only pops up on AMD, maybe he was running "hey lets all be admins!" XP and not an OS like 7 where there is data sanity, who the hell knows why.
I just don't see how your suggestion helps shit. he could have wrote code so clean and tidy it makes baby Jesus weep and that still don't change the fact that when bugs are found someone has to fix them just like you need someone to clean the shitter. By your analogy it may be a NICE shitter, with stainless steel faucets, but that don't make the job any less nasty or unwanted.
Oh and for the other poster that said "Commercial has as many bugs"? yeah but the difference is when bugs are found someone is paid to fix them whereas with the FOSS model if the developer has moved on or just don't give a shit tough luck buddy, hope you are a coder or you are SOL. look at the post that started this, the bug has been known for at least 3 releases now yet it is still there. that means the guy who made the original models isn't there anymore and nobody wants to clean the shitter, so it don't get cleaned JUST AS I SAID.
I really don't know why this surprises anyone, it is simply human nature. Nobody likes the lousy jobs, you don't see kids saying "I want to clean shitters when I grow up!" but the job still needs doing which is why we pay someone to do it and while RMS and wax on about communist ideals it don't change the fact that humans don't like crappy jobs. That is why in the USSR they had to order soldiers to work in the fields for so many months. they called it "potato duty". No money? no clean shitters. it really don't need Kojack to solve the case.
Well that is the thing about volunteer made software isn't it? While I have nothing against Open Source I've found when it is volunteers like the user generated models in something like Flight Gear you run into the age old "Nobody pays for the boring stuff so that don't get done" problem.
Lets be honest folks, bug fixing in software is like cleaning the shitter, it is a long boring nasty thankless job. Nobody volunteers to clean your shitters at the office right? Nope you have to pay someone to get that done or they will look like the shitters at a truck stop in Alabama pretty soon. That is the problem with the community model. It is simply more fun to make something new than it is to go over old code, especially someone else's old code, and fix the messes.
How do we fix it? Fucked if I know, the only way i know how is to either pay someone to clean the shitters or maybe take donations so you can offer a bug bounty, ala Google? because checking out software made by the community i've noticed that pattern is pretty consistent, someone reports bug, users confirm bug, bug gets ignored for years while new versions come out that add....well more bugs.If you don't pay someone to fix the bugs they just don't get fixed, it is more fun to create than to clean. it is just human nature.
Actually there are Win9X drivers that support up the the 7900 series on the Nvidia side and I believe the 2900 series on the ATI side so you can get a card leaps and bounds better for that theoretical machine. If it were my machine I'd go for something like an ATI 1650PRO as those offer excellent backwards compatibility with the older versions of DirectX as well as DX9 support.
As for TFA? As another person said fork it. That is what you are supposed to do right? There is still plenty of that hardware still running, hell check eBay under Voodoo and see how many of them are being sold. So fork it and keep an old version running. It is just a shame that Linus is a stubborn ass that won't allow Linux to have a stable hardware ABI like BSD, OSX, Windows, and OS/2 have, so that they could just "write once, use for years".
Look up "Mr Swirly" don't worry, it isn't a new Goatse, it is the name of a case. After the Mr Swirly case, where they caught a child rapist by unswirling his pic the CP scum switched to MUCH heavier video alteration methods. According to my friend it is pretty damned impossible to get their voice and image off the videos due to the amount of effects they use.
The only thing that works in the cops favor is the sick fucks like to see the kids face that is being raped so they never pixelate or alter that, the most they do is put a lone ranger or Mardi Gras style mask on them. that is how they caught another notorious one whose videos of him molesting this girl from the age of 8-12 were the CP scum's version of Jenna Jameson. I couldn't believe when he told me they actually "collect" videos by certain "stars" like a normal guy might collect Ginger Lynn.
But yeah, hearing his stories of what goes down really opened my eyes, as most cops would rather go after the ones making the crap and abusing the kids but because it would cost probably millions and take years worth of man hours and would most likely not end up in their jurisdiction they can't get the higher ups to go for it. that is why most of them are really bummed that America's Most Wanted is going off the air, they said that was a great way to track down the kids.
But as another poster wrote its a numbers game, and the higher ups would rather be able to say "We busted 60 CP pornographers" when they were just social retards passing the same old shit than announce they actually caught a real rapist that took 3 years and cost a couple of million. yet again for the higher ups it is better to do "something" even if that something is pointless and helps no one.
Oh don't worry comrade, soon our corporate overlords will simply bribe the right people and the next thing you know you'll have three strikes laws as far as the eye can see! The thing about OUR corps is they never ever keep their douchebaggery to themselves, no sir, they spread it all over the planet! Enjoy citizen!
Can you build a hurricane proof home? never dealt with hurricanes but in AR we get twisters all the time and if one of those bastards hits your place unless your ass is in an old Titan II missile silo your shit be pretty well fucked. The one that struck Vilonia even ripped up the entire street!
So I can see you building a place that can take 60MPH winds but at 100MPH+ I just don't see how one could do it without making the thing look like a bomb shelter, and from the pics I've seen of FLA those houses sure don't look like bomb shelters.
As for the people of NYC good luck, hope you manage to keep the looting to a minimum.It never fails to amaze me, the sheer stupidity of criminals who will risk everything for a widescreen, fucking idiots. We usually have to call out the guard after a twister because it doesn't matter that there are power lines snapping and trees and homes that could fall over if you look at them funny, stupid fucking criminals will be out there trying to snatch a widescreen.
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There is again a BIG difference you seem to be missing,either you simply don't see it or are trolling, can't be sure. you see if a proprietary software house ignores the users? Well then they lose money and sometimes a LOT of money, and that tends to put the fire under one's ass! Hell it even works on the big companies, look at MSFT. Vista sucked, users wouldn't have it, MSFT went back and gutted it and rebuilt it and voila! Windows 7 which is actually awesome.
And is there room in candyland for me too? is there ponies? I can pay someone to fix it? do you have ANY FUCKING IDEA what even a SINGLE coder worth a shit costs? Even a clue? who the fuck is gonna pay that? i'll tell ya nobody is gonna pay that so again we are right back where we started and you STILL haven't answered my question!
Last time, and I'll even highlight it: If FOSS fixes more bugs, why is this SAME bug been in FOUR versions now? You can't answer it because you know I'm right. The developer has moved on and nobody wants to fix the shitter so after FOUR versions it STILL hasn't been fixed! I'll even make a prediction, in the next 3 versions? this bug will STILL not be fixed!
How do I know this? It is again human nature. it is more fun to build than to fix, nobody likes to do dirty jobs, so if the only thing you get offered is a "gee thanks!" then they won't get done, period. Sorry to burst your bubble, that is just the way things are.
Now that ain't exactly fair Dave and you know it. I personally think the Windows 7 UI is the best damned thing since sliced bread, and when I have to work on an XP box it makes me feel like I'm dealing with Win95 again. the most wonderful thing IMHO is that it doesn't hamstring power users while still making it friendly for the clueless like my dad. Integrated search, jumplists, breadcrumbs, those all are great for everyone.
But for those of us that have used Office since 97 or earlier we already know where shit is thanks anyway Dave, and the ribbon just puts a big ass brake on muscle memory. In my office 2K I don't even have to think about where what I want is I already know to the point i can zip right to it. The ribbon takes that experience and pulls a Goatse with it, throwing it all into a deep nasty hole and leaving us as slow as the noob.
So why not be fair and simply give us choice? With Office 2K7 it is trivial to kill the ribbon and customize your own "mini bar" UI, which IMHO makes it actually BETTER than even my beloved Office 2K, simply because I can put what I need on the mini bar and you can put what you need on yours. So I'd say it isn't about not liking change, i love the new UI of Win 7, it is about not throwing away years of experience to start over from scratch. So as long as there is a way (and there is ALWAYS a way, either by MSFT themselves or a third party hack) to switch back to the Win 7 two pane I'll be a happy camper. I live in the two pane explorer and I NEEDS my breadcrumbs!
Don't make me hunt and peck when I already know what I want, is that too much to ask?
Are you on Linux? Are you using an Intel CPU? As I've found those two things DO matter when it comes to Moz. For one I think they are using the rigged Intel compiler which means any AMD FF will be crippled (whereas with Chromium based CPUs don't matter) and the Linux memory management model is vastly different than the Windows one. FF frankly sips memory on Linux and it sucks it down like a wino sucking on a bottle of Rosie on Windows.
But I bet you are running a multicore CPU with an assload of RAM. Nothing wrong with that, but that kind of power does mask some of the suckage. try this little experiment. Install a Chromium based (I like Dragon but you can use any one, even the portable versions if you like) and then load up a dozen tabs of the sites you normally go to in both. Use the built in memory checker in Chrome ( the tutorial is here) and see for yourself. Oh and be sure to load up a couple of flash videos in both, I'll explain why in a second.
In my own tests I've found that FF will spike the CPU a good 30% or more than Chromium, that it will NOT give memory back on tab closing nearly as well as Chromium, and that if the tab con tains flash you ain't getting jack back on memory. I have also found starting with the 3.5.x but getting REALLY bad with 4 and above if you leave several static pages open in FF, note the memory, then come back to it in a hour or two its memory usage will climb even when its not being used!
So if FF works for you I'm happy for you, really I am. But I have to support a wide range of users, from 2004 era Athlons and Semprons to late P4 Pentiums and Celerons, from netbooks with single cores all the way up to the latest multicores. So I need a browser that will work on ALL CPUs, ALL versions of Windows, and everything from 512Mb of RAM up to 8Gb+, and FF just doesn't fit that description anymore, especially since the version 5 release. Hell version 5 can take 20 seconds or more to load on first launch, and I have 8Gb of RAM and a quad! And the only plugins I have is ABP and NoScript so no troubles there, it is just FF is a piggy.
Why does everyone freak? it isn't like there aren't ways to turn the crap off ya know. hell there are plenty of third party hacks that will turn Windows 7 into the Win98 dull grey nasty look if that is what floats your boat. Hell if you want Win 7 to look like KDE, OSX, or shit grey Win95 just pay a whole $30 for Astonshell and call it a day. Have it running on my older XP boxes and it is great!
Personally i just turn off the ribbon in Office 2K7 and customize my own most used commands on the mini bar and there ya go, cuts out the BS and makes it work MY way. But as long as they have the default two pane like in Windows 7 (which from the screenshot it appears to have) along with breadcrumbs and jumplists what's the big?
I'd say the new Windows 7 UI is probably the best thing since Win95 when it comes to UI design. Its fast, its intuitive, it lets people like my dad get more out of the OS while amazingly enough not crippling power users such as myself. it is fricking brilliant!
Sadly if there is one thing we have learned about MSFT under Ballmer is anything they do that is good WILL get fucked up in the next version, its like a law or something. This is one thing windows has a hell of an advantage over Linux in, in that if you don't like Windows 8? fuck it, just skip the thing like many skipped Vista. The support cycles are long enough (Windows 7 is getting supported until 2020) and third party support great enough one can simply ignore the shitpile releases and wait on the next good one with no penalty. Hell it isn't like you can't go to newegg right this minute and get an OEM copy of XP if you don't like Vista or 7, and I'm sure the same will be said of 7 when 8 comes out. If you don't like it or want to customize it? Meh just skip the thing.
Personally I'll be waiting until at LEAST SP1 before I even consider Win 8, and that is if I get one of those $50 upgrade deal like with 7, otherwise i might not even bother then. I mean why bother? Win 7 X64 runs everything, works with everything, and I have more RAM and CPU than I know what to do with as it is. let Ballmer cock up Win 8 like he did Vista, won't phase me or my customers any. if it ain't broke don't fix it I say.
To whom? The crooked judges? The crooked cops? You wanna know what happened to the last snitch in my area? Think Fargo only with the guy being alive at the time!
Look up "the meth highway" and be prepared to shit thyself. Here we have cops living like Tony Montana, with wives driving navigators and cops living in homes with Italian marble. You think they can afford THAT on a $29k a year salary? get fucking real!
The game is COMPLETELY rigged, anybody that lives on the highway KNOWS this. They have seen scum pay their way out of nasty charges, they have seen decent people get royally fucked because they were poor. this is common knowledge, hell they don't even try to hide the bribery anymore. I could tell you where to go every Friday to watch the cops count their money in their squads cars, they are THAT reliable. Nobody says shit or does shit because who are you gonna say it to? The last one that got chipper shredder went to the Feds, the feds let it leak to state, state let it leak to local, local "took care of the problem" end of story.
Hi Baghdad Bob! Those aren't tanks BTW, they are just REALLY big cars! Do you HONESTLY think that guys like you that hate that kind of shit is the targeted audience for FB? Fuck no! It is those like my ex GF that LOOOVE that shit, have a bazillion apps on their FB, play Zynga games, and generally live on FB.
And sadly despite all the Baghdad Bobs we have here this is a classic page out of the Gates era MSFT playbook. you want to kill a competitor that you can't attack directly you kill their supply chain. in this case you kill the apps that the users enjoy thus pissing them off. Then you go "Hey come to G+! We got plenty of that kind of stuff. BTW have you tried Chrome yet?" and away we go. mark my words the next target for Google will be Zynga. They take out Zynga or make it a G+ exclusive and that will hamstring FB badly and cause them to bleed users like MySpace did.
And of course when that happens we'll have a thousand Baghdad Bobs come on here to try to give a nice explanation of why this isn't being evil, just like you did. I hope whomever came up with that slogan is getting a hell of a bonus, because it is probably the greatest marketing gimmick of all time!
I have to agree. From the 1.x to the 3.x one could really see a solid progression of improvement, some big leaps, some small, but it was there. Then came 3.5.x.....OMFG. That is the only way I know to describe it...OMFG.
The amount of CPU spikes and memory suckage just went off the charts, testing FF with the wide variety of hardware I need to support (everything from first gen netbooks and 2004 era P4s to the latest multicores) I have found FF to be completely unsuitable for purpose on anything less than a 3GHz P4 with HT. Anything less than that and the CPU spikes will take control away from the users, sometimes for as long as two minutes if the new tab contains video, and you can just let FF sit without being used and it will continue to climb on memory usage until it hits swap for no damned reason other than major memory leaks.
Personally I blame this on Cargo Cult Usability as they have seen Chrome growing in popularity and have decided 'hey if we ape Chrome we'll be popular too!" while ignoring the simple fact that it is the underlying webkit engine that gives Chrome its speed and power and trying to bolt chrome style additions onto gecko is a recipe for disaster.
Personally when 3.5.x came out and I saw how simply worthless FF was on anything less than a 3GHz I started testing various alternatives, finally choosing and moving my users over to Comodo Dragon which gives the speed of Chrome, the ability to function well even on netbooks, no Google phone home crap, and some nice security features. The sad part is by trying to ape Chrome they are running off their users to Chrome because they are taking what once was a great browser and turning it into shit. It is a damned shame as I thought I would always use FF, but I don't need the hassle of supporting multiple browsers on multiple chips and now that they pull the plug on the previous the second they release "teh new hotness" I don't even get time for testing before they are borking shit all over again.
You know the browser is in bad shape when even my dad, who can't fricking STAND change, and will put up with half ass software rather than switch, is telling me "Son you gotta find me something else, this new Firefox is just too damned slow" and he is on an AMD quad with 4Gb of RAM! So long Moz, and thanks for all the fish.
Oh don't even get me started on douchebag programmers friend! That is why i can't just "nuke it from orbit" when a home user box is brought in, because not only does the crap that come with consumer devices shotgun files and reg keys all over the damned place, but you NEVER know where the fuck they are gonna put user files!
Since Win2K programs are SUPPOSED to put user files into a folder under my docs, but I've found them on the C: drive in some funky named folder, dropped on the desktop, again with a funky name, hell even a couple that stuck user files like pictures in fucking Win32!
That is why I'm glad I've just about got all my users switched over to Win 7. Not only does it have better security but for shitty programs it just lies its ass off with file and registry virtualization to enforce data sanity. But I have to agree that a hell of a lot of what went wrong with WinXP was MSFT bending over backwards accommodating badly written programs. Sadly even today I see programs acting like everyone should run as admin and it should have access to anything and everything. You'd think in nearly 5 years programmers could get their shit together?
Uhhh...how EXACTLY is buying a company that provided value to a competitor and shutting it down NOT considered evil? I just gotta admire the sheer batshit blind religious zealotry of the FOSSies here on /. because that level of denial takes real dedication!
If you replaced the name Google in TFA with Apple or MSFT they would be breaking out the torches and screaming for antitrust investigations, but because "It is teh Google and they love teh FOSSies, and teh ain't teh evils! They said so!" they could blow up competitor's buildings and the Baghdad Bobs would be out in force to explain how we just "don't get it".
Of course along with the denial in TFA they have to juggle denial for the whole "Android is free for OEMs" crack a few months ago, with its implied 'But not for you silly user!", along with the little matter of Google avoiding GPL V3 like it is kryptonite, or the fact that "do no evil" actually belongs right next to "Windows 7 was MY idea!" and "Think different" in the BS marketing hall of fame, but what they hey, as long as "they love teh FOSSies!" right?
Frankly I just do not get it. Its a company people, it doesn't "love you" or frankly give a flying fuck if you live or die. Its not for or against anything except itself. And if you think that it would even take a New York minute for them to choose between royally fucking the FOSSies or making another buttload o' cash? Well I have some really nice swampland in AR you might be interested in.
What is sad to me is here we see a clear admission that Mono is easier to port, has less overhead, but because of religious zealotry it will NEVER be accepted because those that treat OSes like religions will go "ZOMG! It is by teh M$ it is teh evil! Burn teh witch ZOMG!" and thus it doesn't have a prayer. Meanwhile those of us on Windows will just use .NET and think their religion like the other kooky beliefs is just freaky.
As for TFA? I don't think it will work worth a shit for anything more complex than farmville, and here is why: There are only two ways to go really when it comes to security of third party code being run from the big bad web. One there is the Apple "Wall the living fuck out of it!" model, where you either give one company COMPLETE control to lock it down tighter than a nun's thighs or you're fucked, and the MSFT "Meh, we'll take care of it with a GPO" model, where you basically leave it open and let the users and the corps lock it down themselves. See ActiveX as to why that isn't the smartest of ideas.
The simple fact is gaming is the ONLY real popular thing that tries to get as close to bare metal as it can anymore and that is because of the big performance gains. If all you are doing is rendering a 2D farmville style game nobody gives a shit if you wrap it in a dozen VMs, as the machine will have more than enough juice to waste the extra overhead. But drawing even a game from 2k4 like Far Cry requires a hell of a lot of polygons AND physics AND AI AND 5.1 surround sound...you get the picture. A bunch of security crap placed to keep some .ru website from Goatse'ing your PC with the "free cool game yo!" means it will royally suck ass.
Part of the appeal of this wild and wooly web of ours is how free it is, how ANYBODY can set up a site and offer their games, like those indie packs. But if you have the games running inside the browser, away from the AV and OS security permissions? You either choose the Apple or the MSFT model, and both have serious issues. Personally I'd rather just download my games, scan them, and then choose whether i want it to run or not than give Google total control or have another ActiveX, thanks anyway Google.
BTW if anybody thinks Google isn't trying to become the MSFT of the mobile world? I have some nice swampland in AR you might be interested in. They WILL end up just as locked down as Apple (notice how they don't allow GPL V3?) and just as big an asshole as the Gates era MSFT, they will just have a catchy slogan, like "Think Different" or "Windows 7 was my idea!". Frankly I hope the guy that wrote the "Do no evil" marketing bullshit got a hell of a bonus, because it is fricking brilliant. I bet Jobs wishes he'd have known something so simple could work so powerfully. Made his RDF look like a bad joke really.
Because our current engine tech sucks the big wet titty? look at how much we have learned and gained from the bots, we have had or are going to have orbiters around just about every interesting place in the solar system, learning more and more about how everything from gravity to solar winds work, all for about 1/20th the cost of our LEO crapola.
The simple fact is "Meatbags is SPAAAAACE!" simply isn't feasible ATM. We blew the endless cash on Apollo as a dick waving exercise against the Ruskies but frankly we could have gotten a hell of a lot more done with long term probes than by having astronauts hitting golf balls off the moon. We can experiment with new engine designs on the bots, no need for huge inquiries or shutting down the whole program if one blows the fuck up either.
We can simply get more done with less cost by leaving the meatbags on the ground. The bots don't need, food, water, man rating, shitters, air, extra protection for our fragile little bodies, its just stupid to waste limited resources on "Meatbags in SPAAACE!" right now, and this is from someone who loved Star trek and Buck Rogers as a kid. But I'm also a realist and our tech really isn't there yet to make meatbags a practicality.
Personally if it were me I'd stick with probes and look at reviving Gerald Bull's idea of a space cannon to cut down on the costs of moving material into LEO. From there parts could be assembled by robots to build larger and more powerful probes that could give us even more knowledge of the solar system so that when we DO stumble over the engine tech to get us out there everything will be all mapped out and ready for us. but now it is just a waste IMHO.
Uhhh...we're broke dude, sorry. While the debt piles on we have Grover Norquist passing around a "Never in a million years will we tax the 1%ers EVAR!" and the teabaggers are happily lining up to sign. It is all part of Norquist's "Drown the baby in the bathtub" plan which fits nicely into the repubs magical "More monies for teh RICH nom nom nom" plan they've been pushing for damned near 40 years.
It don't help that Obama is the biggest pussy since Jimmy Carter but short of another Teddy Roosevelt to bust the trusts I don't think he really could have done much anyway. The top 1%ers, thanks to Reagan deregs, now own the entire MSM so the "give teh rich MORE MONIES! Nom nom nom" is gonna get front and center and anyone that expresses a different idea is gonna be ignored or labeled a nut. I don't care for Ron Paul's policies but when the guy can raise millions in a single day simply by grass roots popular support? And then he is completely ignored? It don't take Colombo to solve the mystery, it is the simple fact he isn't singing the corporate master's tune.
In the USA we've had trickle down, voodoo economics, the "hey lets make trade deals with countries with NO workers safety or rights!", the "Teh rich only have 85% of teh monies, that ain't right! We'll give 'em big tax breaks while running TWO wars to give our friends a way to make even MORE monies!" which BTW is the first time IN HISTORY that the country has been at war and NOT raised taxes, and finally "Bailout baby bailout!" and now they are completely ignoring and glossing over the record of Perry, his relationship to Ali Khan, or the fact that under his watch every reasonable metric in Texas has gone to dead last, worse than even MS in many.
But expecting the USA to do anything progressive or forward thinking any time soon is like wishing for purple ponies friend, it just ain't gonna happen. We actually have WORSE wealth disparity than during the days of the robber barons, and even that isn't enough. look at how many of the rich howled when buffet pointed out his secretary pays more in taxes than he does? Where once we were asked "what we could do for our country" now it is "More MONIES! nom nom nom!" with any response to pleas for help met by a picture of Goatse by the 1%ers and their slaves on the left and right.
Future space program? Give it up buddy. Hell before long the schools will be teaching that the world is only 6000 years old and everything bad is caused by Satan. We are going backwards folks, the poor had less wealth inequality during the age of the robber barons, which sadly is the goal. We are gonna back to the age of serfs and barons, anything for the good of science and the people be damned.
But everyone has to jump in on the latest fad, don't you know that? I remember the "it'll all be thin clients all the way down!" fad, the grid computing fad, and now the "all you need is a browser and the magical perfect cloud!" fad.
The fads they come, the fads they go, but there is a damned good reason why desktops have been virtually unchanged in the past twenty years design wise, and that is because they WORK. Having lots of processing power, memory, and storage, all at the user's fingertips? it is nice, it makes things faster and works even without the magic cloud. But everyone needs to jump on the fads or else they wouldn't be fads now would they?
But hey, if making an IDE run really REALLY slow by sticking it in a browser gives them a happy? More power to them I say. Some make models, some play guitar, if jamming an IDE in a browser is what they like to blow their weekends on different strokes.
That's not true! You can also be very very rich and get justice as well! Everyone else is royally fucked though. I used to live down the street from the county courthouse and used to sit in and watch the proceedings but frankly it got too depressing. the ones that finally broke this camel's back was when a rich guy walked in, it was his NINTH bust for under the influence of booze AND drugs, and his FIFTH hit and run! What did he get? they gave him a $10k fine and actually THANKED him for his fucking time! The next one was a poor guy for his second pot possession charge. they gave him 3 years.
Anyone who thinks the courts in the USA aren't as crooked as any third world really ought to set in on some trials for a couple of weeks. there they will quickly see a pattern, rich can do anything, poor go to prison for less than a tenth of what the rich guy does. it is like that old saying, steal $500 go to jail, steal 500 million become a senator. The thing is so tilted now in favor of the elite it isn't even a bad joke anymore, it is just pathetic and sad.
I'm shocked they don't have the two moron passwords I saw plenty in the wild, which are ASD123asd and p@ssw0rd. You'd be surprised how many times I saw total dumbshit passwords like that. I'd try to tell the admins but finally gave up because every time I saw truly dumbshit passwords like that it was because the admin was a BOFH and had set some insane password requirements without thinking of the users.
But the fact that yes its 2011 and those passwords work show a trend I've been saying for awhile now, that the corps in their ever fucking of IT and "cost cutting" by firing anyone with a brain and replacing them with the cheapest shit workers they can find once again bites them in the ass. The problem with corp IT is the simple fact that the PHB that causes the mess never gets the blame and in fact will often enjoy "upward failure" as they will have gotten bonuses for their "cost cutting" measure and then moved up or gotten a job somewhere else thanks to their "stellar" cost cutting record, leaving the shitstorm to some other PHB or usually some poor IT flunky who'll get the blame.
Just another example of why you deserve everything you get if you refuse to hire quality help, sigh. that is why I got out of corp IT, too many PHBs and not enough common fucking sense. It is like that old demotivational in corp right now "Common Sense: So damned rare it is practically a super power"
Oh lord spare us the bullshit!! You can fix it yourself? Right, did you perform your own brain surgery perhaps? because while, and I'm just SURE you'll find this like, you know, totally shocking, 99.9999995% of the planet are not fucking programmers. In fact i think from now on the arrogant "You can DIY" should be met with a hearty "Go fuck yourself" because it is arrogant, douchebag elitist horseshit to think the entire world knows how to code in C/C++. Finding bugs? Easy. Having the several years of college CS to give one the capability to debug and fix the code? Not part of the skillsets of even 70% of the guys here, and this is a programmer heavy site.
That doesn't change the fact that for your data to work it requires one little thing, that the developer hasn't moved on which unless he considers it his baby is more often than not the case. Look at what we are talking about here and YOU explain how "Open Source fixes more bugs" when we are talking about a serious show stopping graphics fuckup that has been in three previous releases already and is STILL there in a fourth.
How is this possible? i'll tell ya how, the developer who wrote the original code has moved on and nobody wants to clean the shitter so it don't get clean EXACTLY AS I SAID. You can create ALL the flaming hoops and studies of some subsection of software that you want, you can't change human nature. It is always more fun to create than clean and that is a simple fact. do you see little kids going "I wanna grow up to clean shitters!" of course not, yet they still need cleaning. Same thing here, you have code that the developer has walked away from that now doesn't run right yet nobody wants to fix it because like cleaning a shitter it is a long, slow, nasty, thankless job.
And those kinds of jobs, like writing the docs, fixing the bugs, regressions testing, etc simply don't get done in FOSS because THOSE JOBS SUCK and people aren't doing suck jobs for free. it is just human nature dude.
Oh I'll be the first one to point out apple sucks ass for power users, BTW notice how I got modded down for daring to ask a question that consists of anything other than "gee, isn't apple like the best thing ever Skip?" but in this case i was talking about the "dad" factor, as in they make a phone simple enough my dad can use it without having to keep the manual in one hand.
I tried getting my dad a Droid phone but frankly he just couldn't get the hang of it, it would scroll crazy fast or too slow and we never could get a comfortable medium with it. His brother who is likewise clueless has an iPhone and it works perfectly for him, everything he would want to do with a phone is built in and is easy to manage.
Personally i told dad to wait for the nokia WinPhones to come out before we make any final choices. Everything he has is on Windows anyway, so if MSFT can get the integration between the WinPhone and Windows down hopefully it'll be a better fit.
That STILL doesn't change the fact the current Mac makes no damned sense. As I said in the PPC days one could argue that the combo of exotic hardware+software made for better performance in certain apps, but today all a Mac is is a VERY expensive Wintel box, with hardware that is outdated before it even reaches the shelves. By the time the Mac refresh hits the shelves there is usually at least one new generation of Intel chips, not to mention Intel IGP still blows nasty chunks. The base model Mac is an i5 with 2Gb for $1000? Are you kidding me? for INTEL graphics?
So I'm sorry I still don't get it. They have to be making 40%+ profits on old tech! It isn't like the old days where one needed an exotic CPU folks, these are Wintel laptops. If you want a non Windows OS so bad run Linux or build a Hackentosh and get better specs and a free Windows license.
More like "What good is the thing if i gotta program it, build a box to use it, and then buy the crap to hook it up?". Now if you were to build it into say a Sega Nomad style case with 2Gb of NAND onboard and a microSD slot along with a basic Linux with web browser pre installed? I bet you could get the BOM under $50 and so could sell it for $75 and make an absolute killing as a portable emulator/media player/ browser in a box.
Load in Genesis/MegaDrive, NES, SNES, Master System and just for fun Atari/ColecoVision emulators? i'd snatch one up for $75 without a second thought. Hell i'd probably pick up a couple and start selling them here at the shop. There are a bunch of guys like me that would like to play a little Mortal Kombat or general chaos while waiting in line at the bank.
I have a question, which I'm sure to get hate over but WTF it has always struck me as weird....why? I mean I could understand a Mac during the PPC days, there were some things that supposedly PPC ran better, no real worry about bugs because those were all written on X86, but now? now it is just a REALLY expensive Intel laptop. I haven't seen anything on one I couldn't get for cheaper with better specs.
The iPad, iPhone, and iPod? i don't have any of those but I GET IT, again non standard hardware with Apple UI equals win. The closest Android competitors frankly just haven't gotten the Apple smooth and seamless thing down. maybe by Android 6 they'll have it, but not yet. And while I love my sandisk frankly i'll be the first to admit that butt simple UI it ain't, nothing like an iPod. hell my mom could work one of those with no manual.
So I just don't GET it. Anybody who has the tech skills to read /. can follow a fucking google page and make a Hackentosh if they have a hard on for OSX that badly, and get better specs along with a free license for Windows for dual booting while they are at it. So why pay crazy Apple prices for less powerful hardware? i just don't see the appeal, unless you are one of those "keep up with the joneses" types that care more about flashing a label than anything. if that is the case fark is that way.-->
Uhhh...what EXACTLY does that have to do with bugs and how nobody likes fixing them? it isn't like the developer, whether volunteer or not, said 'I need X number of bugs per LOC" no what happens is the bugs are found later by which time the original developer has done moved on or is working on something new and don't really care.
So you are back to my analogy. you have code that may have worked perfectly on the developer's system that for whatever reason is sucking the big wet titty now. Maybe he only had a single core CPU, maybe he was on Intel and the bug only pops up on AMD, maybe he was running "hey lets all be admins!" XP and not an OS like 7 where there is data sanity, who the hell knows why.
I just don't see how your suggestion helps shit. he could have wrote code so clean and tidy it makes baby Jesus weep and that still don't change the fact that when bugs are found someone has to fix them just like you need someone to clean the shitter. By your analogy it may be a NICE shitter, with stainless steel faucets, but that don't make the job any less nasty or unwanted.
Oh and for the other poster that said "Commercial has as many bugs"? yeah but the difference is when bugs are found someone is paid to fix them whereas with the FOSS model if the developer has moved on or just don't give a shit tough luck buddy, hope you are a coder or you are SOL. look at the post that started this, the bug has been known for at least 3 releases now yet it is still there. that means the guy who made the original models isn't there anymore and nobody wants to clean the shitter, so it don't get cleaned JUST AS I SAID.
I really don't know why this surprises anyone, it is simply human nature. Nobody likes the lousy jobs, you don't see kids saying "I want to clean shitters when I grow up!" but the job still needs doing which is why we pay someone to do it and while RMS and wax on about communist ideals it don't change the fact that humans don't like crappy jobs. That is why in the USSR they had to order soldiers to work in the fields for so many months. they called it "potato duty". No money? no clean shitters. it really don't need Kojack to solve the case.
Well that is the thing about volunteer made software isn't it? While I have nothing against Open Source I've found when it is volunteers like the user generated models in something like Flight Gear you run into the age old "Nobody pays for the boring stuff so that don't get done" problem.
Lets be honest folks, bug fixing in software is like cleaning the shitter, it is a long boring nasty thankless job. Nobody volunteers to clean your shitters at the office right? Nope you have to pay someone to get that done or they will look like the shitters at a truck stop in Alabama pretty soon. That is the problem with the community model. It is simply more fun to make something new than it is to go over old code, especially someone else's old code, and fix the messes.
How do we fix it? Fucked if I know, the only way i know how is to either pay someone to clean the shitters or maybe take donations so you can offer a bug bounty, ala Google? because checking out software made by the community i've noticed that pattern is pretty consistent, someone reports bug, users confirm bug, bug gets ignored for years while new versions come out that add....well more bugs.If you don't pay someone to fix the bugs they just don't get fixed, it is more fun to create than to clean. it is just human nature.
Actually there are Win9X drivers that support up the the 7900 series on the Nvidia side and I believe the 2900 series on the ATI side so you can get a card leaps and bounds better for that theoretical machine. If it were my machine I'd go for something like an ATI 1650PRO as those offer excellent backwards compatibility with the older versions of DirectX as well as DX9 support.
As for TFA? As another person said fork it. That is what you are supposed to do right? There is still plenty of that hardware still running, hell check eBay under Voodoo and see how many of them are being sold. So fork it and keep an old version running. It is just a shame that Linus is a stubborn ass that won't allow Linux to have a stable hardware ABI like BSD, OSX, Windows, and OS/2 have, so that they could just "write once, use for years".
Look up "Mr Swirly" don't worry, it isn't a new Goatse, it is the name of a case. After the Mr Swirly case, where they caught a child rapist by unswirling his pic the CP scum switched to MUCH heavier video alteration methods. According to my friend it is pretty damned impossible to get their voice and image off the videos due to the amount of effects they use.
The only thing that works in the cops favor is the sick fucks like to see the kids face that is being raped so they never pixelate or alter that, the most they do is put a lone ranger or Mardi Gras style mask on them. that is how they caught another notorious one whose videos of him molesting this girl from the age of 8-12 were the CP scum's version of Jenna Jameson. I couldn't believe when he told me they actually "collect" videos by certain "stars" like a normal guy might collect Ginger Lynn.
But yeah, hearing his stories of what goes down really opened my eyes, as most cops would rather go after the ones making the crap and abusing the kids but because it would cost probably millions and take years worth of man hours and would most likely not end up in their jurisdiction they can't get the higher ups to go for it. that is why most of them are really bummed that America's Most Wanted is going off the air, they said that was a great way to track down the kids.
But as another poster wrote its a numbers game, and the higher ups would rather be able to say "We busted 60 CP pornographers" when they were just social retards passing the same old shit than announce they actually caught a real rapist that took 3 years and cost a couple of million. yet again for the higher ups it is better to do "something" even if that something is pointless and helps no one.
Oh don't worry comrade, soon our corporate overlords will simply bribe the right people and the next thing you know you'll have three strikes laws as far as the eye can see! The thing about OUR corps is they never ever keep their douchebaggery to themselves, no sir, they spread it all over the planet! Enjoy citizen!
Can you build a hurricane proof home? never dealt with hurricanes but in AR we get twisters all the time and if one of those bastards hits your place unless your ass is in an old Titan II missile silo your shit be pretty well fucked. The one that struck Vilonia even ripped up the entire street!
So I can see you building a place that can take 60MPH winds but at 100MPH+ I just don't see how one could do it without making the thing look like a bomb shelter, and from the pics I've seen of FLA those houses sure don't look like bomb shelters.
As for the people of NYC good luck, hope you manage to keep the looting to a minimum.It never fails to amaze me, the sheer stupidity of criminals who will risk everything for a widescreen, fucking idiots. We usually have to call out the guard after a twister because it doesn't matter that there are power lines snapping and trees and homes that could fall over if you look at them funny, stupid fucking criminals will be out there trying to snatch a widescreen.