I think the bigger question is this....why is Intel continuing to beat the obviously VERY dead horse that is Itanic? Its a giant flop, YOU know this, I know this, and Oracle knows this as well, so why continue to waste R&D for a chip that barely has even a teeny tiny niche and is being phased out by almost everyone?
The problem with Itanium is that Intel bet they could not only get everyone to abandon literally billions of lines of already paid for X86 code, but that they could build a compiler able to keep it fed and do all the heavy lifting and in the end they just weren't able to deliver compared to X86-64. Like it or not for many jobs X86 will be here to stay for a long time and Itanium was never a real contender.
So why are they wasting their money? It isn't like they don't have a very valuable product line to replace it, where money is no object Xeon rules the roost in performance by a pretty big margin in servers, just as in the desktop for sheer power the i series owns the top end (for the rest of us Opteron and Phenom work just fine, thanks) so what is the point? it isn't like they are gonna magically get everyone to suddenly drop X86-64, POWER, and Sparc, all of which are beating the Itanic, and just the fact that I can say itanic and everyone knows what I mean just shows the chip has a bad rep. Let it die already Intel, throw HP a sweetheart deal to say you're sorry for the oopsie and just let the thing die already.
But the whole problem is you shouldn't want that level of loudness as it ruins the music! What makes music so wonderful, and one of the things I love about playing with guys who I'm able to read well, is the swells and falls is what makes the music "breathe" for want of a better term.
Let me give a little example: Brian my singer/guitarist knows my playing like the back of his hand and can read my mood just by feel, and I can do the same to him. What that allows us to do is on a completely improvised piece the music flows like a tideit is the silences in between that help to build a mood, and it is this that sadly gets lost in "musical compression".
But don't take this to mean I'm against an effect when it fits the piece on the contrary, I personally have a Zoom B1X just so I can be as nasty or as sweet as I want, and it'll probably take us until winter to get this first album out because not only do we have an abundance of songs to pick from but we want each song to have the right sonic "tone" and if it takes us all day in Audacity and Cubase just to get the right sound for a particular spot then so be it. Nice thing about being the bassist, with the exception of a few rare spots all I need is a nice clean dark tone with light compression to even out the volume across the strings. It is the guitar and vocals one sometimes have to really fuss with to get them in the right sound envelope if you know what I mean.
What I AM against, and what I hate about most commercial CDs, is this cookie cutter compressed through a tin can all midrange tone that is the signature of the loudness wars. It may give you the illusion of more volume but it is like I tell those that are thinking of doing it "You might find a Sparkomatic you can crank to 11, but would you really want to hear a Sparkomatic cranked to 11?". I don't care how sweet your rig is, how beautiful your guitar sings or your vocals soar, by the time they are run through that musical compression crap it is nothing but midrange in a can. The flip side is what I've been hearing on the newer hip hop albums of late, where they run everything off but the low end to make the subs thump, sounds like a frog farting.
So I guess what I'm saying is the difference between music and processed crapola is like the difference between a good cheese and cheese whiz, it is all in the moderation of the processing. One should not be afraid of lower volume parts of a song as those will simply make the loud parts have more impact and just because cheese whiz sells more than a nice premium cheese doesn't mean the world should have nothing but the canned crap.
Ya know the first thing I said when it was announced the "got Bin Laden" is to say "which one?" as looking at just the videos where the CIA said "yep, that's him, uh huh" there appears to be two, maybe three of him. unless of course they claim he had a really REALLY good makeup artist or plastic surgeon on tap, but I've never heard anything like that.
I still think it smells funny that we just so happen to dump him in the ocean after going "yep that's him, uh huh" with the excuse that "it'll become a shrine for terrorists". Uhhh...wouldn't that make them pretty damned easy to catch then? We'd know where they are, right by his grave.
As for TFA while I doubt the NSA, CIA, or any other three letter bunch is behind this (after all they've cost corps money, and if its one thing the US Gov does it is kiss the corp booty) but never underestimate the ability of the gov to use a situation to their advantage. I have a feeling a nice domestic spying wish list is being made up on PPT slides as we speak, and Anon/LulzSec will be the new "suspected pedo/terrorist" since so many got burned by crap like all the game site hacks that it'll be easy to make the public get out the pitchforks just by showing a Guy Fawkes mask or Trollface.
Never hear of the National Guard? They got a shitload of really nice big guns in nearly every little town in the south. How do you think all those survivalists get their hands on C4 and grenades? National Guard my friend, along with the biker gangs that will happily have anything you want smuggled from down south for the right price.
Hell i'll never forget a cop friend of mine LOLing about pulling over some members of the Folks street gang and they had an RPG which these braintrusts were planning on doing a driveby with LOL! I guess nobody told them about that whole "fire shoots out the back" thing.
But as someone who has been friends with quite a few military and national guard guys I can tell you not to worry, those guys take things like honor and the constitution VERY seriously and if the fed were to roll the tanks they'd be the first ones handing out RPGs and 50 cals. It wouldn't be pretty, but the civilians wouldn't be having to fight with just shotguns either. With all the pickups we'd have so many technicals we'd have our very own "Toyota war" like Libya VS Chad.
Honestly? You can build your own for less than $300, or if that is too much I see early duals all day long on Craigslist for $100, sometimes less. A 19 inch flat panel is likewise around $25 from CL, and while split screen is nice I'd argue it is such a teeny tiny niche it probably isn't worth the investment.
It is only recently that even the low end LCD TVs have PC inputs and on many PC games like FPS or RTS having your opponent see what you are doing just kinda ruins it. I mean how can I set up a nice LOL trap so I can pwn my buddy if he can see EXACTLY where I'm hiding?
So if you want to play with friends and don't want them to have to drag their own towers it really ain't that high, especially if you go refurb or CL. By the time you figure in the extra controllers and the higher cost of games I'd say it probably all evens out in the wash, especially when if you watch the sales you can get good midrange cards for less than $30, sometimes even just $10 after MIR. Hell my GF paid a whole $60 for this HD4850 I'm gaming on and those were $200+ cards when they came out and can still crank up the purty.
All told you can get a playable gaming PC for less than $200 for everything and when not in use can be your downloader box, renderbox, transcoder, hell you can always find a use for a spare PC IMHO. Oh and about letting us play with girls? Oh hell no! I'd say less than 2% (if you are lucky) of the females on this planet play games that are worth a shit, the rest? just like my GF and play games like Bejeweled and Farmville. See that is another advantage of having two PCs, as when my baby is over she can play her games....over there...so my sweet little quad isn't having to play such nasty shit!
Oh and finally thanks for the link, I actually LOLed at the "here is a God damned crowbar" bit, but if you haven't gotten it I'd suggest a Chromium browser like Comodo dragon and Readability extension, as it makes those 'spread the article across a million pages" into a nice single page that is stretched to screen, its a God Send thats what it is!
But what you and I are talking about are two different things. you are talking about level compressions which is pretty much a "have to" as its the only way to get instruments like drums (and 5 string bass, i nail that low B and can stomp the low end) to record accurately without slamming the needle in the red. that's fine, all well and good, SOP. What I am talking about is what is called "musical compression" where after the recording is done running the entire mix through compression which gives that tin can all midrange sound.
And maybe it is the fact they can't spike the volume right up to the edge with LPs like they can CDs, hell if I know I'm just the bass player, but I've found even modern LPs don't have that tin can compressed all to shit sound. And I'd argue that the reason people with iPods and the like listen to that is they don't know any better as those I've played a non musically compressed song for, even on my crappy $15 Behringer cans, has said "holy shit that sounds MUCH better!"
So I agree there needs to be a way to give people the choice instead of the current "shit sandwich or nothing". I'd argue that CDs are cheap enough they simply ought to package two discs, one with the original non compressed and a "road mix" that is compressed all to shit. I bet they'd find people ignoring the road mix disc and simply turning up on the softer songs than having everything sound like it is coming through a tin can.
That is the nice thing about indies though, most really care about the music and don't compress all to hell, at least not the ones around here.
Funny you should say that as I've found while Horton and McCrappee do suckth the big wet titty I've found a couple of free AVs that knock on plastic have actually been pretty damned good at keeping bugs out of my users PCs, and that is Comodo IS Free and Avast Free of all things. both use HIPS and default sandboxing to treat everything unknown as a possible infection, and use behavioral analysis as well as sigs.
Comodo is great for those that like to tweak settings and fiddle, as everything is customizable, while Avast is more "plug and play". I've got some customers that I swear could pick up more bugs than a Bangkok whore on a Saturday night but these two have kept them squeaky clean and work well enough I've switched my own family to Avast. Certainly nicer than having to deal with malware from my family as well as from customers 6 days a week.
As for TFA I don't see how sticking the word cyber on it makes it any different than the wholesale thievery every militaristic nation does to each other. We stole from the Russians , and the Russians did likewise from us, the Israelis stole from the French, I'm sure India and Pakistan has likewise stole from all of the above, and the Chinese steal every idea and tech that ain't nailed down, hell I heard they paid dirt farmers in Belgrade to dig up that crashed F-117 so they could steal stealth tech.
Frankly I'd argue anything less than airgapped is a waste of time anymore, just look at the Iran SCADA hack. So for home and most businesses a good AV will do most of the time but honestly the military should know better than allowing anything worth having to be on any net that connects to the WWW.
Uhhh...how EXACTLY is this ANY different than what we and everybody else has been doing since the beginning of time? Kinda funny how people forget that when a new Mig would come out we would offer a big fat pile of cash and asylum to any pilot who would give us one, just like how China paid farmers in Belgrade to dig up as many parts from that downed F-117 nighthawk as they could find so China could steal the stealth tech.
This is as old as time, and just sticking the word cyber in front of it don't make it any different. Probably will give McCrappee a nice defense contract though, which is usually what this "ZOMG we're doomed ZOMG!" BS usually boils down to anyway.
Actually I would argue that they consider that a "happy side effect" while their main goal (as I linked to) is to skim off the economies of the entire western world which is why Goldman Sachs and the other leeches are suddenly jumping on board.
Just imagine thanks to their carbon credit scam they will get paid for every single thing that happens without actually costing them a cent! need to build a factory? Carbon credits. Need to drive to work? Carbon credits. Heat or cool your home, that bus your kids take to school, hell your grandma's funeral? Carbon credits.
The fact that they will have de facto control (thanks to deciding who gets carbon credits and who don't) is just a nice bonus to these scum. no the goal is to become modern Kings by using the gullibility and guilt of the west against it. And did you notice that NOWHERE will you find Rev Gore and his pals saying we need to boycott china or India, even though they won't play the carbon reindeer games? That is because they are making money off the sweatshops, duh!
The fact that so many otherwise intelligent/.ers would fall for such blatant hypocrisy and self interest just hurts my heart. If even the so called intelligent fall for the dog and pony show, what chance do the rest have?
That is one of the reasons I try to listen to local indie artists instead of the mainstream crap, as the loudness war has pretty much destroyed quality audio and I'm by no means a snob, I'm just a humble geek and bass player.
To show my band why there will be NO compression allowed anywhere near the recording (the only compression being on my 5 string live to even out the tone) I took them by an old friend's house and had him play "Hey Bulldog" by the Beatles off an LP from the 70s, and then had them listen to the modern "digital" CD version. The first thing they said was "hey, that sounds like shit!" and I said exactly, as over compression sounds like shit yet that is what every damned CD you get nowadays has!
So frankly you can have a thousand bitrate for all I care, it is still just gonna be really accurate shitastic sound. Thankfully the nature of LPs means you can't over compress them as they won't play, so if you can get an LP version and rip THAT, all is well and good. But frankly since the late 80s the level of compression all the major studios have done to CDs have made them so much plastic Frisbees, certainly not any good for listening to.
I'd add "Thou shall NOT consider MP as a substitute for shittastic AI" and "Thou shall NOT build entire level out of nothing but chest high walls" as those two really bug the ever living crap out of me.
Have to agree on the list though, especially when it comes to modding. A game like Freelancer frankly was okay by itself but the mods have really gave that game life. on the flip side a game with really shitty weapons like RF: Guerrilla can be almost saved by a decent weapons mod (the explosive pistol mod in my case) as without it the entire game consisted of "run truck through building, truck go boom, steal another truck" lather rinse repeat.
Finally I'll agree with you carrying bindings over would be nice. I usually flip the vertical and having a simple button to push when friends or family come over that would flip it back to the way they are used to would be a really nice touch. But all in all I don't really think we have too much room to bitch. Thanks to GOG, Steam, and Amazon we have cheap quality games up the wazoo, thanks to the consoles being from the stone age a $200 PC with a $60 GPU plays most games at 1600x900 or higher at decent framerates, all in all it is a pretty nice time to be a PC gamer. Oh and sub $60 Tb drives means you can just leave everything installed, damned nice that.
Not to mention as with every other class currently taught it will quickly become "teach to the test" where kids will spill off the same rote answers and will be actually "learning" in the same way one "learns" by memorizing a list. Should make a nice chunk o' change to the ones pushing the software, $99 a license? Nice job if you can get it.
As someone who ended up homeschooling his kids because of "teach to the test" frankly schools would be better off if they taught a more rounded educational platform with actual electives kids that were INTERESTED could take. In my area anything not able to be taught to the test? Promptly dropped.
Frankly I'd say the DOE and trying to educate from Washington is a big part of the problem and teaching kids to memorize the problems on the test makes it so teaching them programming will be as worthless as the other "skills" taught in public schools. Hell I've had to deal with HS grads that can't even accurately count the change in their pockets, why? Teach to the test doesn't emphasize basic problem solving, it is all memorization.
Oh if THAT is what you want, why didn't you say so? I can answer that quite simply: As someone who lives on the "meth highway" and can literally watch the cop park and count his weekly bribe from my back window I can tell you equivocally that prohibition equals corruption as Mr Dope Dealer will ALWAYS be able to pay more than you Mr Citizen, and it makes the cop's job easier and safer to boot!
This of course doesn't even bring up the fact that thanks to prohibition your average 13 year old can score meth or weed quicker than he can a beer, as Mr Dealer don't give a fuck as long as the money is green, nor does it bring up the fact that if you try to do anything about it suddenly you have to worry about BOTH the dealer AND the police, who aren't gonna be too happy at your risking the money train, not with bills to pay and all (it is common knowledge here the last "snitch" was handed on a silver platter by the cops to the meth lab owner who then "pulled a Fargo" and fed him while alive through a chipper shredder) nor does it figure in how having this sudden influx of money into the most untrustworthy types leads to more violence, as if they are already dealing dope hassle free, why not guns or anything else? ( from what I've been told by an ex cop for $15k I can have a nice fresh faced 15 year old Mexican virgin delivered to my door, they knock off 10k if you'll go pick her up at the border BTW).
So if you want to know why pot should be legal tada! There you go. Considering how many smoke weed it would go a LONG way from not only cutting the funds to some really bad guys but also help to stop creating a huge underclass in this country because a single drug bust makes it so you can't get any job above sweeping out the toilets at your local 7/11.
But in this case it WOULD be the Walmart effect since it is designed to save/earn the company money, in this case bandwidth which ain't cheap for a company the size of Netflix. As I said the CDNs only host the popular stuff, which means anything else is coming from Netflix and costs them directly.
If this new interface cuts down people from looking at the offbeat offerings and causes them to stick to what they KNOW they'll want to see, which will most likely be the same popular stuff everyone else has heard about, then netflix saves money by having the content come from the CDN close to your home instead of the Netflix servers.
Again I hate to think it is anything but bad taste, but after seeing the Walmart effect first hand I have to wonder if some bean counter didn't come up with this and is happily calculating the daily numbers of offbeat VS Hollywood blockbuster and putting them into an Excel sheet as we speak.
Wow, are all believers THIS fucking stupid? Really? Because if so no wonder you're getting led around by the nose! I got three insults and one smartass (you) and not a single denial or even a single one smart enough to actually read what I was saying! Fucking amazing!
So here it is, in little letters and written in black ink, just so you can keep up, since apparently AGWers need everything spelt out, ready? Here goes : your "movement", just like race relations in America, has been co-opted by those whose ONLY goal is their own self enrichment now do you understand? I thought by making the comparison to Sharpton and pointing out the blatant hypocrisy I would have to spell it out but I guess guys here don't read headlines unless they involve an iSomething. So please go right ahead and follow Saint Al, who is being given awards for attempting to become the first carbon billionaire and while you are at it maybe you should just go ahead and cut a check to old Rev Sharpton while you are at it. After all can't blame the man for not being able to hustle the white folks as well as the other Al can we?
And you sir should learn how to design and build automobiles, otherwise those nasty engineers get to decide what kind of car you should drive! Oh and with all the low level "code jockey" jobs being offshored this is about as smart as teaching them to be factory workers don't ya think?
As someone that knows BASIC (and later VB) because that was the only way to interact with a computer at the time let me say that particular "skill" has been about as useful over the years as being able to whistle through my eyelids, that is to say not really useful at all.
Want to teach kids something useful? How about deductive reasoning 101? How about basic computer security, like what to look for to spot a phishing attempt, or how they will NOT win an iPad by punching the monkey in a flash game and then giving all their info to the nice pop up? Or why clicking on everything and anything sent by email is a bad idea?
This was cooked up by someone who has fond memories of the late 70s/early 80s and the DIYer scene then I guarantee it, but you know what? The world has changed since then. Guys don't go around hacking their own amps from parts at the Shack anymore, Chinese amps are too cheap to bother, we don't go around hacking the computers at school anymore to have them tell the teacher they suck (although I admit that WAS fun) because you are libel to get labeled a cyberterrorist and have the cops tearing your place apart looking for a Guy Fawkes mask. Likewise teaching programming to EVERYBODY, including those that aren't going to be programmers? More than just dumb, it is a waste of the kid's time and limited resources because very few low level code monkey jobs if any will be left onshore by the time they graduate.
Hell teach them how to change out basic parts on their cars, like shocks and fanbelts, it'll be more useful to them than teaching them how to animate a giant penis which is just about all a good 99% of them would do with this particular "skill" today, sorry but its true.
But what was their game sell through rates on those consoles, and what is their sell through rate now? As Sega found out and I'd argue Sony is finding out having first party titles is all well and good but it is third party titles that give a system legs.
From what I've seen third party Wii titles are pretty much shovelware crap and most of my friends as well as my family bought the Wii as a "second system" and other than a handful of titles (all by Nintendo) the things are gathering dust. I don't think my kids has even turned their Wii on in months.
So having all the hardware sales go into their pocket may be good short term but it really doesn't help long term. You can only milk the Mario and Zelda titles for so long before people just go "meh" and while the WiiMote was a new idea it has ended up for the majority of games a "waggle stick" that doesn't really bring anything to the table gameplay wise.
Last I checked the X360 was enjoying something like 8 game sell through rates with nearly all of those titles third party, so the next great games will most likely go to MSFT if Nintendo can't bring its sell through rates up. As we saw with Guitar Hero you can only put out funky controllers for so long before people get tired of the BS and backlash and casual gamers can be a fickle bunch that can just walk away for the next Farmville or whatever.
So I hope Nintendo has more up their sleeves than just another round of new weird controllers as I'd hate for the new system to end up like the Wii with 50 tons of shovelware along with Mario and Zelda. I know after seeing how little use my kids got out of the Wii they'd have to have some serious third party titles for me to consider chunking down more $$$ for what could easily end up a doorstop like the Wii is in our home, and I doubt I'm the only one thinking this way.
Oh please don't forget the hypocrisy! Al Gore farts around in his personal LEAR JET while having the giant brass balls to tell us to take the bus and claim said jet is "carbon neutral" because he pays himself carbon credits from his own company while being driven in limos and going home to a McMansion so big you could put 14 families in the thing and they'd STILL be comfortable, yet we are supposed to 'suffer for the planet" so Al and his friends can become carbon billionaires. Yeah go fuck yourself Al. He reminds me of another Al, Al Sharpton. Like Sharpton his ass is only in front of the camera when he thinks he can push his personal agenda, which also ends up being "put money in Al's pockets".
So until the whole global warming group gets together and says "Go fuck yourself Al, you are about as useful to the cause as Sharpton is to race relations" I'll be happily supporting anyone AGAINST them. I've found hypocrisy is the surest sign of corruption, and as someone who has driven by Al's house (you really ought to see that fucker, the thing is HUGE!) I'd say that he is the biggest hypocrite that ever drew a breath. If they would have chosen Begly JR that is one thing, he actually walks the walk. But anything Al is involved in will ALWAYS have the same conclusion...money out of YOUR pocket and into AL's. Anyone who after the Lear jet looks at Al as anything but a white Sharpton frankly has drank too much of the AGW koolaid.
That was so lame let me give you one of these so you will have the appropriate expression in the future. BTW we in the Windows repair business wear that face sadly all too often, usually as a result of the sheer mind numbing level of dumbass that the average infected PC user is capable of.
As for Mr Pratchett while I wish him luck I do hope he has a "plan b" as trying to change an entire government in what little time he has may simply be impossible. I personally would have some nice high quality drugs purchased from one of the ever friendly street vendors put back just in case I started to feel myself slipping. A handful of oxycontin or mscontin and you'd just nicely fade away. That is how the doc "snowed" my late sis who had a terminal nerve disorder and frankly it was a nice and peaceful way to go. She just slowly drifted away and if I found I had a terminal illness like that then that is the way I'd want to go.
Yes but they have a point, in that half the fun of D3D was the exploration and finding all the hidden stuff and things you could activate. remember the walls you could blow with pipe bombs? Or finding various switches for things like the projector? It wasn't all "follow this line, blast shit" it was figuring out where the "good stuff" was hidden and that was FUN.
And only two weapons? WTF? This ain't Halo! Part of the fun of Duke was carrying an assload of weapons and figuring out what was best for an area and not blowing all the ammo. Personally I'd love to meet the idiot that came up with the two gun rule and kick him in the nuts. It is a fricking game and the hero always looks like a gorilla, you telling me his ass can only carry two guns?
Just playing the demo was enough for me, I'll be waiting on Serious Sam 3. Now they damned well better keep the headless suicide bombers or I'm gonna be pissed!
Yes if anyone should be pitied it is Gearbox, being handed a big shambling mess that was...what? 14 years old now? that had gone through something like FOUR, count 'em four, engines, and was written for the Quake II generation and have to get that out ASAP to keep from losing any more money on the turkey. If you read the interview with Gearbox connected in TFA you'll see they left the game pretty much as 3D Realms had intended, spending all their time on cleaning up the messy code and trying to bring the graphics up to 2011 standards which I'm guessing was no easy feat in and of itself.
Frankly Broussard should be ashamed of himself for blowing that much time and money, but then again if you saw the timeline of Prey (originally announced in 97 and going through 2 engines) you'd realize the guy just doesn't have a fricking clue on how to finish a project.
How did he manage to crank out all those games like Duke3D and Shadow Warrior? Did he just wake up one day and decide he was an artist who could afford to blow infinite cash to get his "vision" on the screen, or did he just quit giving a shit?
Then it sounds to me like what you want is a gTablet as it supports flash, has a dual core 1GHz Cortex-A9 with Nvidia GPU so its plenty snappy, has plenty of room and can take MicroSD cards, and if later on your mom would like a keyboard there are plenty of bluetooth keyboards that go great with one of these.
As for TFA I just don't see having to reboot only to have just Safari as all that useful. I have a couple of Mac friends and they live by the dock, I just can't picture them happy with just Safari, especially since I don't think either orf them actually uses Safari (one uses Chrome the other FF). But hey extra features are extra features, hell I don't use half the features in Win 7 HP either but its nice to have them there just in case.
Sadly there is no "insightful AND funny" mod, because you deserve it. How many perfectly working machines end up in the landfill simply because web bloat has made them unusable? Thank goodness for Chromium based because if it weren't for Comodo dragon I'd be having to toss this 1.8GHz Sempron which makes a wonderfully low power and quiet nettop, simply because FF would make it unusable for the web otherwise, and even then if I didn't have ABP it wouldn't be usable.
I'm sitting here looking at 4 AMD Athlon machines with 512Mb of RAM at 1.4GHz and frankly I'm amazed I found a guy to even give me $20 a piece for them, as nobody seems to want anything that can't run FB and YouTube fast. Most of the laptops that go through here end up in the garbage in less than 5 years, why? Web bloat makes them feel like turtles.
Maybe its just me, maybe I'm getting old, but I find it kinda sad that so much working gear ends up in the dump simply because web bloat kills cycles dead, and if it can't do the net folks don't want it. I don't want to even know what all that HTML V5 is gonna do to those 10s of millions of late model P4s that are still running. I'm already starting to get a drawer full of P4s simply because the combo of web+IM means that anything less than a Pentium dual feels like a slug but luckily I found a place with $34 Pentium duals so at least the whole machine won't have to be canned.
I just think its sad the whole "web 3.0 bling bling edition" causes so much hardware to end up shitcanned, especially when desktop apps like OO.o and VLC run just fine.
Dude look up "Bill Hicks" on YouTube. The man was funny, smart, and sadly right most of the time. you ever see Dennis Leary? More than half of his act was a bad ripoff of Bill Hicks who was WAAAY funnier. Sadly he died of pancreatic cancer way before his time, so he isn't as famous as George or Sam, but frankly he deserves to be.
And if you are an Xtian you might want to look up Bill Hicks "Its just a ride" to see his views on belief . He wasn't against belief he was anti-religion, there is a BIG difference. So open you eyes, lighten your heart and stretch you mind, watch a little Hicks and remember "its just a ride".
Oh please! I live on what is called the "meth highway" and the ONLY thing you can count on is that whomever gets locally elected will become just as corrupt as the guy before him. here they make jokes like "Why does the sheriff bust so many meth labs? Answer: Because he don't like the competition LOL!"
When it costs close to 100 MILLION just to become a congress critter even in the flyover states your "voting" whether informed or not is worth about as much as a bucket of warm spit. In my state we voted for what was supposed to be progressive democrats for over a decade, what did we get? A giant corporate suckup that screwed the people. So we voted republican, what did we get? We got a giant corporate suckup that screws the people.
So you tell me EXACTLY how is "voting" supposed to change anything when in the local level a single dope dealer can offer more in a month than they can make honestly in a year, tax free, and on the state and national level anyone with less than Gates money will be bought long before you even get to the primaries. In my state the primaries are the same four or five guys over and over AND over again. Hell it is like musical chairs since we enacted term limits. A perfect example is the lotto we recently got. We had voted for a lotto no less than FIVE separate times, each time the politicos and their friends in the court found a way to ignore us. So why do we have a lotto now? Because some out of state money brought in some big fat checks so they could get the printing job and voila! Now we have a lotto.
As my late grandmother who voted in every single local election on up from the early 20s until the mid 90s when she stopped said 'There just isn't a point anymore, no matter who you choose they just ignore us". Sadly no truer words have been spoken.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the bigger question is this....why is Intel continuing to beat the obviously VERY dead horse that is Itanic? Its a giant flop, YOU know this, I know this, and Oracle knows this as well, so why continue to waste R&D for a chip that barely has even a teeny tiny niche and is being phased out by almost everyone?
The problem with Itanium is that Intel bet they could not only get everyone to abandon literally billions of lines of already paid for X86 code, but that they could build a compiler able to keep it fed and do all the heavy lifting and in the end they just weren't able to deliver compared to X86-64. Like it or not for many jobs X86 will be here to stay for a long time and Itanium was never a real contender.
So why are they wasting their money? It isn't like they don't have a very valuable product line to replace it, where money is no object Xeon rules the roost in performance by a pretty big margin in servers, just as in the desktop for sheer power the i series owns the top end (for the rest of us Opteron and Phenom work just fine, thanks) so what is the point? it isn't like they are gonna magically get everyone to suddenly drop X86-64, POWER, and Sparc, all of which are beating the Itanic, and just the fact that I can say itanic and everyone knows what I mean just shows the chip has a bad rep. Let it die already Intel, throw HP a sweetheart deal to say you're sorry for the oopsie and just let the thing die already.
But the whole problem is you shouldn't want that level of loudness as it ruins the music! What makes music so wonderful, and one of the things I love about playing with guys who I'm able to read well, is the swells and falls is what makes the music "breathe" for want of a better term.
Let me give a little example: Brian my singer/guitarist knows my playing like the back of his hand and can read my mood just by feel, and I can do the same to him. What that allows us to do is on a completely improvised piece the music flows like a tideit is the silences in between that help to build a mood, and it is this that sadly gets lost in "musical compression".
But don't take this to mean I'm against an effect when it fits the piece on the contrary, I personally have a Zoom B1X just so I can be as nasty or as sweet as I want, and it'll probably take us until winter to get this first album out because not only do we have an abundance of songs to pick from but we want each song to have the right sonic "tone" and if it takes us all day in Audacity and Cubase just to get the right sound for a particular spot then so be it. Nice thing about being the bassist, with the exception of a few rare spots all I need is a nice clean dark tone with light compression to even out the volume across the strings. It is the guitar and vocals one sometimes have to really fuss with to get them in the right sound envelope if you know what I mean.
What I AM against, and what I hate about most commercial CDs, is this cookie cutter compressed through a tin can all midrange tone that is the signature of the loudness wars. It may give you the illusion of more volume but it is like I tell those that are thinking of doing it "You might find a Sparkomatic you can crank to 11, but would you really want to hear a Sparkomatic cranked to 11?". I don't care how sweet your rig is, how beautiful your guitar sings or your vocals soar, by the time they are run through that musical compression crap it is nothing but midrange in a can. The flip side is what I've been hearing on the newer hip hop albums of late, where they run everything off but the low end to make the subs thump, sounds like a frog farting.
So I guess what I'm saying is the difference between music and processed crapola is like the difference between a good cheese and cheese whiz, it is all in the moderation of the processing. One should not be afraid of lower volume parts of a song as those will simply make the loud parts have more impact and just because cheese whiz sells more than a nice premium cheese doesn't mean the world should have nothing but the canned crap.
Ya know the first thing I said when it was announced the "got Bin Laden" is to say "which one?" as looking at just the videos where the CIA said "yep, that's him, uh huh" there appears to be two, maybe three of him. unless of course they claim he had a really REALLY good makeup artist or plastic surgeon on tap, but I've never heard anything like that.
I still think it smells funny that we just so happen to dump him in the ocean after going "yep that's him, uh huh" with the excuse that "it'll become a shrine for terrorists". Uhhh...wouldn't that make them pretty damned easy to catch then? We'd know where they are, right by his grave.
As for TFA while I doubt the NSA, CIA, or any other three letter bunch is behind this (after all they've cost corps money, and if its one thing the US Gov does it is kiss the corp booty) but never underestimate the ability of the gov to use a situation to their advantage. I have a feeling a nice domestic spying wish list is being made up on PPT slides as we speak, and Anon/LulzSec will be the new "suspected pedo/terrorist" since so many got burned by crap like all the game site hacks that it'll be easy to make the public get out the pitchforks just by showing a Guy Fawkes mask or Trollface.
Never hear of the National Guard? They got a shitload of really nice big guns in nearly every little town in the south. How do you think all those survivalists get their hands on C4 and grenades? National Guard my friend, along with the biker gangs that will happily have anything you want smuggled from down south for the right price.
Hell i'll never forget a cop friend of mine LOLing about pulling over some members of the Folks street gang and they had an RPG which these braintrusts were planning on doing a driveby with LOL! I guess nobody told them about that whole "fire shoots out the back" thing.
But as someone who has been friends with quite a few military and national guard guys I can tell you not to worry, those guys take things like honor and the constitution VERY seriously and if the fed were to roll the tanks they'd be the first ones handing out RPGs and 50 cals. It wouldn't be pretty, but the civilians wouldn't be having to fight with just shotguns either. With all the pickups we'd have so many technicals we'd have our very own "Toyota war" like Libya VS Chad.
Honestly? You can build your own for less than $300, or if that is too much I see early duals all day long on Craigslist for $100, sometimes less. A 19 inch flat panel is likewise around $25 from CL, and while split screen is nice I'd argue it is such a teeny tiny niche it probably isn't worth the investment.
It is only recently that even the low end LCD TVs have PC inputs and on many PC games like FPS or RTS having your opponent see what you are doing just kinda ruins it. I mean how can I set up a nice LOL trap so I can pwn my buddy if he can see EXACTLY where I'm hiding?
So if you want to play with friends and don't want them to have to drag their own towers it really ain't that high, especially if you go refurb or CL. By the time you figure in the extra controllers and the higher cost of games I'd say it probably all evens out in the wash, especially when if you watch the sales you can get good midrange cards for less than $30, sometimes even just $10 after MIR. Hell my GF paid a whole $60 for this HD4850 I'm gaming on and those were $200+ cards when they came out and can still crank up the purty.
All told you can get a playable gaming PC for less than $200 for everything and when not in use can be your downloader box, renderbox, transcoder, hell you can always find a use for a spare PC IMHO. Oh and about letting us play with girls? Oh hell no! I'd say less than 2% (if you are lucky) of the females on this planet play games that are worth a shit, the rest? just like my GF and play games like Bejeweled and Farmville. See that is another advantage of having two PCs, as when my baby is over she can play her games....over there...so my sweet little quad isn't having to play such nasty shit!
Oh and finally thanks for the link, I actually LOLed at the "here is a God damned crowbar" bit, but if you haven't gotten it I'd suggest a Chromium browser like Comodo dragon and Readability extension, as it makes those 'spread the article across a million pages" into a nice single page that is stretched to screen, its a God Send thats what it is!
But what you and I are talking about are two different things. you are talking about level compressions which is pretty much a "have to" as its the only way to get instruments like drums (and 5 string bass, i nail that low B and can stomp the low end) to record accurately without slamming the needle in the red. that's fine, all well and good, SOP. What I am talking about is what is called "musical compression" where after the recording is done running the entire mix through compression which gives that tin can all midrange sound.
And maybe it is the fact they can't spike the volume right up to the edge with LPs like they can CDs, hell if I know I'm just the bass player, but I've found even modern LPs don't have that tin can compressed all to shit sound. And I'd argue that the reason people with iPods and the like listen to that is they don't know any better as those I've played a non musically compressed song for, even on my crappy $15 Behringer cans, has said "holy shit that sounds MUCH better!"
So I agree there needs to be a way to give people the choice instead of the current "shit sandwich or nothing". I'd argue that CDs are cheap enough they simply ought to package two discs, one with the original non compressed and a "road mix" that is compressed all to shit. I bet they'd find people ignoring the road mix disc and simply turning up on the softer songs than having everything sound like it is coming through a tin can.
That is the nice thing about indies though, most really care about the music and don't compress all to hell, at least not the ones around here.
Funny you should say that as I've found while Horton and McCrappee do suckth the big wet titty I've found a couple of free AVs that knock on plastic have actually been pretty damned good at keeping bugs out of my users PCs, and that is Comodo IS Free and Avast Free of all things. both use HIPS and default sandboxing to treat everything unknown as a possible infection, and use behavioral analysis as well as sigs.
Comodo is great for those that like to tweak settings and fiddle, as everything is customizable, while Avast is more "plug and play". I've got some customers that I swear could pick up more bugs than a Bangkok whore on a Saturday night but these two have kept them squeaky clean and work well enough I've switched my own family to Avast. Certainly nicer than having to deal with malware from my family as well as from customers 6 days a week.
As for TFA I don't see how sticking the word cyber on it makes it any different than the wholesale thievery every militaristic nation does to each other. We stole from the Russians , and the Russians did likewise from us, the Israelis stole from the French, I'm sure India and Pakistan has likewise stole from all of the above, and the Chinese steal every idea and tech that ain't nailed down, hell I heard they paid dirt farmers in Belgrade to dig up that crashed F-117 so they could steal stealth tech.
Frankly I'd argue anything less than airgapped is a waste of time anymore, just look at the Iran SCADA hack. So for home and most businesses a good AV will do most of the time but honestly the military should know better than allowing anything worth having to be on any net that connects to the WWW.
Uhhh...how EXACTLY is this ANY different than what we and everybody else has been doing since the beginning of time? Kinda funny how people forget that when a new Mig would come out we would offer a big fat pile of cash and asylum to any pilot who would give us one, just like how China paid farmers in Belgrade to dig up as many parts from that downed F-117 nighthawk as they could find so China could steal the stealth tech.
This is as old as time, and just sticking the word cyber in front of it don't make it any different. Probably will give McCrappee a nice defense contract though, which is usually what this "ZOMG we're doomed ZOMG!" BS usually boils down to anyway.
Actually I would argue that they consider that a "happy side effect" while their main goal (as I linked to) is to skim off the economies of the entire western world which is why Goldman Sachs and the other leeches are suddenly jumping on board.
Just imagine thanks to their carbon credit scam they will get paid for every single thing that happens without actually costing them a cent! need to build a factory? Carbon credits. Need to drive to work? Carbon credits. Heat or cool your home, that bus your kids take to school, hell your grandma's funeral? Carbon credits.
The fact that they will have de facto control (thanks to deciding who gets carbon credits and who don't) is just a nice bonus to these scum. no the goal is to become modern Kings by using the gullibility and guilt of the west against it. And did you notice that NOWHERE will you find Rev Gore and his pals saying we need to boycott china or India, even though they won't play the carbon reindeer games? That is because they are making money off the sweatshops, duh!
The fact that so many otherwise intelligent /.ers would fall for such blatant hypocrisy and self interest just hurts my heart. If even the so called intelligent fall for the dog and pony show, what chance do the rest have?
That is one of the reasons I try to listen to local indie artists instead of the mainstream crap, as the loudness war has pretty much destroyed quality audio and I'm by no means a snob, I'm just a humble geek and bass player.
To show my band why there will be NO compression allowed anywhere near the recording (the only compression being on my 5 string live to even out the tone) I took them by an old friend's house and had him play "Hey Bulldog" by the Beatles off an LP from the 70s, and then had them listen to the modern "digital" CD version. The first thing they said was "hey, that sounds like shit!" and I said exactly, as over compression sounds like shit yet that is what every damned CD you get nowadays has!
So frankly you can have a thousand bitrate for all I care, it is still just gonna be really accurate shitastic sound. Thankfully the nature of LPs means you can't over compress them as they won't play, so if you can get an LP version and rip THAT, all is well and good. But frankly since the late 80s the level of compression all the major studios have done to CDs have made them so much plastic Frisbees, certainly not any good for listening to.
I'd add "Thou shall NOT consider MP as a substitute for shittastic AI" and "Thou shall NOT build entire level out of nothing but chest high walls" as those two really bug the ever living crap out of me.
Have to agree on the list though, especially when it comes to modding. A game like Freelancer frankly was okay by itself but the mods have really gave that game life. on the flip side a game with really shitty weapons like RF: Guerrilla can be almost saved by a decent weapons mod (the explosive pistol mod in my case) as without it the entire game consisted of "run truck through building, truck go boom, steal another truck" lather rinse repeat.
Finally I'll agree with you carrying bindings over would be nice. I usually flip the vertical and having a simple button to push when friends or family come over that would flip it back to the way they are used to would be a really nice touch. But all in all I don't really think we have too much room to bitch. Thanks to GOG, Steam, and Amazon we have cheap quality games up the wazoo, thanks to the consoles being from the stone age a $200 PC with a $60 GPU plays most games at 1600x900 or higher at decent framerates, all in all it is a pretty nice time to be a PC gamer. Oh and sub $60 Tb drives means you can just leave everything installed, damned nice that.
Not to mention as with every other class currently taught it will quickly become "teach to the test" where kids will spill off the same rote answers and will be actually "learning" in the same way one "learns" by memorizing a list. Should make a nice chunk o' change to the ones pushing the software, $99 a license? Nice job if you can get it.
As someone who ended up homeschooling his kids because of "teach to the test" frankly schools would be better off if they taught a more rounded educational platform with actual electives kids that were INTERESTED could take. In my area anything not able to be taught to the test? Promptly dropped.
Frankly I'd say the DOE and trying to educate from Washington is a big part of the problem and teaching kids to memorize the problems on the test makes it so teaching them programming will be as worthless as the other "skills" taught in public schools. Hell I've had to deal with HS grads that can't even accurately count the change in their pockets, why? Teach to the test doesn't emphasize basic problem solving, it is all memorization.
Oh if THAT is what you want, why didn't you say so? I can answer that quite simply: As someone who lives on the "meth highway" and can literally watch the cop park and count his weekly bribe from my back window I can tell you equivocally that prohibition equals corruption as Mr Dope Dealer will ALWAYS be able to pay more than you Mr Citizen, and it makes the cop's job easier and safer to boot!
This of course doesn't even bring up the fact that thanks to prohibition your average 13 year old can score meth or weed quicker than he can a beer, as Mr Dealer don't give a fuck as long as the money is green, nor does it bring up the fact that if you try to do anything about it suddenly you have to worry about BOTH the dealer AND the police, who aren't gonna be too happy at your risking the money train, not with bills to pay and all (it is common knowledge here the last "snitch" was handed on a silver platter by the cops to the meth lab owner who then "pulled a Fargo" and fed him while alive through a chipper shredder) nor does it figure in how having this sudden influx of money into the most untrustworthy types leads to more violence, as if they are already dealing dope hassle free, why not guns or anything else? ( from what I've been told by an ex cop for $15k I can have a nice fresh faced 15 year old Mexican virgin delivered to my door, they knock off 10k if you'll go pick her up at the border BTW).
So if you want to know why pot should be legal tada! There you go. Considering how many smoke weed it would go a LONG way from not only cutting the funds to some really bad guys but also help to stop creating a huge underclass in this country because a single drug bust makes it so you can't get any job above sweeping out the toilets at your local 7/11.
But in this case it WOULD be the Walmart effect since it is designed to save/earn the company money, in this case bandwidth which ain't cheap for a company the size of Netflix. As I said the CDNs only host the popular stuff, which means anything else is coming from Netflix and costs them directly.
If this new interface cuts down people from looking at the offbeat offerings and causes them to stick to what they KNOW they'll want to see, which will most likely be the same popular stuff everyone else has heard about, then netflix saves money by having the content come from the CDN close to your home instead of the Netflix servers.
Again I hate to think it is anything but bad taste, but after seeing the Walmart effect first hand I have to wonder if some bean counter didn't come up with this and is happily calculating the daily numbers of offbeat VS Hollywood blockbuster and putting them into an Excel sheet as we speak.
Wow, are all believers THIS fucking stupid? Really? Because if so no wonder you're getting led around by the nose! I got three insults and one smartass (you) and not a single denial or even a single one smart enough to actually read what I was saying! Fucking amazing!
So here it is, in little letters and written in black ink, just so you can keep up, since apparently AGWers need everything spelt out, ready? Here goes : your "movement", just like race relations in America, has been co-opted by those whose ONLY goal is their own self enrichment now do you understand? I thought by making the comparison to Sharpton and pointing out the blatant hypocrisy I would have to spell it out but I guess guys here don't read headlines unless they involve an iSomething. So please go right ahead and follow Saint Al, who is being given awards for attempting to become the first carbon billionaire and while you are at it maybe you should just go ahead and cut a check to old Rev Sharpton while you are at it. After all can't blame the man for not being able to hustle the white folks as well as the other Al can we?
And you sir should learn how to design and build automobiles, otherwise those nasty engineers get to decide what kind of car you should drive! Oh and with all the low level "code jockey" jobs being offshored this is about as smart as teaching them to be factory workers don't ya think?
As someone that knows BASIC (and later VB) because that was the only way to interact with a computer at the time let me say that particular "skill" has been about as useful over the years as being able to whistle through my eyelids, that is to say not really useful at all.
Want to teach kids something useful? How about deductive reasoning 101? How about basic computer security, like what to look for to spot a phishing attempt, or how they will NOT win an iPad by punching the monkey in a flash game and then giving all their info to the nice pop up? Or why clicking on everything and anything sent by email is a bad idea?
This was cooked up by someone who has fond memories of the late 70s/early 80s and the DIYer scene then I guarantee it, but you know what? The world has changed since then. Guys don't go around hacking their own amps from parts at the Shack anymore, Chinese amps are too cheap to bother, we don't go around hacking the computers at school anymore to have them tell the teacher they suck (although I admit that WAS fun) because you are libel to get labeled a cyberterrorist and have the cops tearing your place apart looking for a Guy Fawkes mask. Likewise teaching programming to EVERYBODY, including those that aren't going to be programmers? More than just dumb, it is a waste of the kid's time and limited resources because very few low level code monkey jobs if any will be left onshore by the time they graduate.
Hell teach them how to change out basic parts on their cars, like shocks and fanbelts, it'll be more useful to them than teaching them how to animate a giant penis which is just about all a good 99% of them would do with this particular "skill" today, sorry but its true.
But what was their game sell through rates on those consoles, and what is their sell through rate now? As Sega found out and I'd argue Sony is finding out having first party titles is all well and good but it is third party titles that give a system legs.
From what I've seen third party Wii titles are pretty much shovelware crap and most of my friends as well as my family bought the Wii as a "second system" and other than a handful of titles (all by Nintendo) the things are gathering dust. I don't think my kids has even turned their Wii on in months.
So having all the hardware sales go into their pocket may be good short term but it really doesn't help long term. You can only milk the Mario and Zelda titles for so long before people just go "meh" and while the WiiMote was a new idea it has ended up for the majority of games a "waggle stick" that doesn't really bring anything to the table gameplay wise.
Last I checked the X360 was enjoying something like 8 game sell through rates with nearly all of those titles third party, so the next great games will most likely go to MSFT if Nintendo can't bring its sell through rates up. As we saw with Guitar Hero you can only put out funky controllers for so long before people get tired of the BS and backlash and casual gamers can be a fickle bunch that can just walk away for the next Farmville or whatever.
So I hope Nintendo has more up their sleeves than just another round of new weird controllers as I'd hate for the new system to end up like the Wii with 50 tons of shovelware along with Mario and Zelda. I know after seeing how little use my kids got out of the Wii they'd have to have some serious third party titles for me to consider chunking down more $$$ for what could easily end up a doorstop like the Wii is in our home, and I doubt I'm the only one thinking this way.
Oh please don't forget the hypocrisy! Al Gore farts around in his personal LEAR JET while having the giant brass balls to tell us to take the bus and claim said jet is "carbon neutral" because he pays himself carbon credits from his own company while being driven in limos and going home to a McMansion so big you could put 14 families in the thing and they'd STILL be comfortable, yet we are supposed to 'suffer for the planet" so Al and his friends can become carbon billionaires. Yeah go fuck yourself Al. He reminds me of another Al, Al Sharpton. Like Sharpton his ass is only in front of the camera when he thinks he can push his personal agenda, which also ends up being "put money in Al's pockets".
So until the whole global warming group gets together and says "Go fuck yourself Al, you are about as useful to the cause as Sharpton is to race relations" I'll be happily supporting anyone AGAINST them. I've found hypocrisy is the surest sign of corruption, and as someone who has driven by Al's house (you really ought to see that fucker, the thing is HUGE!) I'd say that he is the biggest hypocrite that ever drew a breath. If they would have chosen Begly JR that is one thing, he actually walks the walk. But anything Al is involved in will ALWAYS have the same conclusion...money out of YOUR pocket and into AL's. Anyone who after the Lear jet looks at Al as anything but a white Sharpton frankly has drank too much of the AGW koolaid.
That was so lame let me give you one of these so you will have the appropriate expression in the future. BTW we in the Windows repair business wear that face sadly all too often, usually as a result of the sheer mind numbing level of dumbass that the average infected PC user is capable of.
As for Mr Pratchett while I wish him luck I do hope he has a "plan b" as trying to change an entire government in what little time he has may simply be impossible. I personally would have some nice high quality drugs purchased from one of the ever friendly street vendors put back just in case I started to feel myself slipping. A handful of oxycontin or mscontin and you'd just nicely fade away. That is how the doc "snowed" my late sis who had a terminal nerve disorder and frankly it was a nice and peaceful way to go. She just slowly drifted away and if I found I had a terminal illness like that then that is the way I'd want to go.
Yes but they have a point, in that half the fun of D3D was the exploration and finding all the hidden stuff and things you could activate. remember the walls you could blow with pipe bombs? Or finding various switches for things like the projector? It wasn't all "follow this line, blast shit" it was figuring out where the "good stuff" was hidden and that was FUN.
And only two weapons? WTF? This ain't Halo! Part of the fun of Duke was carrying an assload of weapons and figuring out what was best for an area and not blowing all the ammo. Personally I'd love to meet the idiot that came up with the two gun rule and kick him in the nuts. It is a fricking game and the hero always looks like a gorilla, you telling me his ass can only carry two guns?
Just playing the demo was enough for me, I'll be waiting on Serious Sam 3. Now they damned well better keep the headless suicide bombers or I'm gonna be pissed!
Yes if anyone should be pitied it is Gearbox, being handed a big shambling mess that was...what? 14 years old now? that had gone through something like FOUR, count 'em four, engines, and was written for the Quake II generation and have to get that out ASAP to keep from losing any more money on the turkey. If you read the interview with Gearbox connected in TFA you'll see they left the game pretty much as 3D Realms had intended, spending all their time on cleaning up the messy code and trying to bring the graphics up to 2011 standards which I'm guessing was no easy feat in and of itself.
Frankly Broussard should be ashamed of himself for blowing that much time and money, but then again if you saw the timeline of Prey (originally announced in 97 and going through 2 engines) you'd realize the guy just doesn't have a fricking clue on how to finish a project.
How did he manage to crank out all those games like Duke3D and Shadow Warrior? Did he just wake up one day and decide he was an artist who could afford to blow infinite cash to get his "vision" on the screen, or did he just quit giving a shit?
Then it sounds to me like what you want is a gTablet as it supports flash, has a dual core 1GHz Cortex-A9 with Nvidia GPU so its plenty snappy, has plenty of room and can take MicroSD cards, and if later on your mom would like a keyboard there are plenty of bluetooth keyboards that go great with one of these.
As for TFA I just don't see having to reboot only to have just Safari as all that useful. I have a couple of Mac friends and they live by the dock, I just can't picture them happy with just Safari, especially since I don't think either orf them actually uses Safari (one uses Chrome the other FF). But hey extra features are extra features, hell I don't use half the features in Win 7 HP either but its nice to have them there just in case.
Sadly there is no "insightful AND funny" mod, because you deserve it. How many perfectly working machines end up in the landfill simply because web bloat has made them unusable? Thank goodness for Chromium based because if it weren't for Comodo dragon I'd be having to toss this 1.8GHz Sempron which makes a wonderfully low power and quiet nettop, simply because FF would make it unusable for the web otherwise, and even then if I didn't have ABP it wouldn't be usable.
I'm sitting here looking at 4 AMD Athlon machines with 512Mb of RAM at 1.4GHz and frankly I'm amazed I found a guy to even give me $20 a piece for them, as nobody seems to want anything that can't run FB and YouTube fast. Most of the laptops that go through here end up in the garbage in less than 5 years, why? Web bloat makes them feel like turtles.
Maybe its just me, maybe I'm getting old, but I find it kinda sad that so much working gear ends up in the dump simply because web bloat kills cycles dead, and if it can't do the net folks don't want it. I don't want to even know what all that HTML V5 is gonna do to those 10s of millions of late model P4s that are still running. I'm already starting to get a drawer full of P4s simply because the combo of web+IM means that anything less than a Pentium dual feels like a slug but luckily I found a place with $34 Pentium duals so at least the whole machine won't have to be canned.
I just think its sad the whole "web 3.0 bling bling edition" causes so much hardware to end up shitcanned, especially when desktop apps like OO.o and VLC run just fine.
Dude look up "Bill Hicks" on YouTube. The man was funny, smart, and sadly right most of the time. you ever see Dennis Leary? More than half of his act was a bad ripoff of Bill Hicks who was WAAAY funnier. Sadly he died of pancreatic cancer way before his time, so he isn't as famous as George or Sam, but frankly he deserves to be.
And if you are an Xtian you might want to look up Bill Hicks "Its just a ride" to see his views on belief . He wasn't against belief he was anti-religion, there is a BIG difference. So open you eyes, lighten your heart and stretch you mind, watch a little Hicks and remember "its just a ride".
Oh please! I live on what is called the "meth highway" and the ONLY thing you can count on is that whomever gets locally elected will become just as corrupt as the guy before him. here they make jokes like "Why does the sheriff bust so many meth labs? Answer: Because he don't like the competition LOL!"
When it costs close to 100 MILLION just to become a congress critter even in the flyover states your "voting" whether informed or not is worth about as much as a bucket of warm spit. In my state we voted for what was supposed to be progressive democrats for over a decade, what did we get? A giant corporate suckup that screwed the people. So we voted republican, what did we get? We got a giant corporate suckup that screws the people.
So you tell me EXACTLY how is "voting" supposed to change anything when in the local level a single dope dealer can offer more in a month than they can make honestly in a year, tax free, and on the state and national level anyone with less than Gates money will be bought long before you even get to the primaries. In my state the primaries are the same four or five guys over and over AND over again. Hell it is like musical chairs since we enacted term limits. A perfect example is the lotto we recently got. We had voted for a lotto no less than FIVE separate times, each time the politicos and their friends in the court found a way to ignore us. So why do we have a lotto now? Because some out of state money brought in some big fat checks so they could get the printing job and voila! Now we have a lotto.
As my late grandmother who voted in every single local election on up from the early 20s until the mid 90s when she stopped said 'There just isn't a point anymore, no matter who you choose they just ignore us". Sadly no truer words have been spoken.