Moonshine is great for cleaning carburetors, or getting old paint off paintbrushes, but you really wouldn't want to drink the stuff. Most of it is about as "nice" as PGA, but I bet it would run an old car fine (I know the moonshiners in my area used to use it as a boost fuel in the old hot rods they used to smuggle shine) but I don't know how well it would run on anything modern.
But if you were making something to actually consume as opposed for peeling paint or running a 70s Dart I'd suggest a little Muscadine Wine as it is a great way to enjoy a lazy afternoon and IMHO beats most grape wines hands down. You just have to be careful during the fermenting, as when one of those bottles blow you'll have a kitchen that smells like Muscadine for...oh about three years or so, as my grandma found out when grandpa put the lid on a little too tight on a batch.
Uhhh...because we have seen time and time again how just trying to "fix" the mess by passing ever more rules just piles on the clusterfuck? As for CFLs I can give you a little link to a thing called Yahoo Search which brings up 36,000 pages on CFLs and cancer. Feel free to choose whichever site you would consider a credible source, with 36,000 I'm sure you'll find a few.
Basically the gist of it is the plastics that make up the ring holding the CFL when heated release carcinogens which you then breathe. Surprise surprise, those unintended consequences bite you right in the rear again. Oh I'm sure they'll come out with yet more regulations, that will promptly be ignored by the third world countries we have making the things since they closed the light bulb factories here to make the new ones in China (there is those pesky unintended consequences again) and people will justify the increased risk of cancer on "being green". Of course if you get cancer and die your carbon footprint drops off the chart, so you are REALLY being green then!
too incompetent to make a decent functional website
FTFY
Seriously who told them sticking some big ass bar with NO close button was a good idea? because I'd like some of what they are smoking. No wonder their traffic was cut in half and is falling like a stone, 20 seconds on that site and I was "Run away! Run away!" from the horror. Funny that this happens on a discussion of GIFs, as I thought that kind of lame ass web design went out with Geocities and the Timecube guy.
As for TFA, while there are some artistic ones on that site IMHO they like playing with wind too much. The guy reading his paper in the middle of a busy park was cool though. BTW how long is GIF still under patent anyway? Surely it has to be getting close to PD by now? Let us just hope that once it is PD it doesn't become "popular" like it did during the days of Geocities. Between the fifty million bouncing GIFs and the blink tags it was like web design by a committee of color blind drunks.
Of course seeing some of the flash nightmares on the web I can say they have learned to slam a CPU with modern tech just as well as they did during Geocities with blinks, GIFs, and Comet Cursors. Give them credit folks, nobody could slam the living hell out of a CPU like the Geocities "artists" and their websites from hell. The GIF patent mess was one of the few times I was happy about patents . I was like "Go GIFs...and take the blink tag with you!". Maybe it was just me, but I found a web free of GIFs to be a nicer place to be.
Uh huh...to quote Mel Brooks bullshit bullshit aaaaand bullshit. maybe you'd care to explain how a full 2/3rds of corps paid NO taxes this decade or how GE, who paid paid NO taxes in 2010 and in fact got a REBATE and is now using those funds to fire Americans and build overseas with the head of GE actually having the brass balls to say "We've globalized around markets, not cheap labor. The era of globalization around cheap labor is over. Today we go to China, we go to India, because that's where the customers are."
BULLSHIT and EVERY single time of growth in the history of this country TAXES AT THE TOP HAVE BEEN OVER 70% full stop. We have had unprecedented tax breaks for the top 1% for THIRTY YEARS and NOTHING has gotten better. NOTHING. So peddle the rep fantasy somewhere else, we ain't buying it no more. America WILL BE COME NATIONALIST the only question is how violent the change over will be. China is about to drop their US dollars so the game is over friend, time to pay the check.
Hi MR AC! Allow me to explain how that can be bad, a little thing called 'unforeseen consequences'. For example CAFE...once upon a time there was a thing called a station wagon. Now this thing was just about perfect for your average soccer mom who needed to haul the kids to practice, but then along came CAFE which listed them as cars and put crazy MPG ratings on them.
" Why" said the auto manufacturers "We can keep making these and make underpowered POS station wagons that the public doesn't buy, or we can build them on a truck chassis and forget the CAFE crap!" and the SUV was born. The same thing happened to those great little car/trucks, like the El Camino and Ranchero, which were perfect for just hauling a little lumber or moving some furniture. Nope instead thanks to CAFE you got full sized trucks instead!
So you see MR AC it is those unforeseen consequences that bite you in the ass, like those studies coming out now that say the chemicals released by the new CFC bulbs are a cancer risk, as well as more dangerous thanks to the blue tint being more like sunlight and throwing everyone's biological clocks off more than the yellow incandescent bulbs. It is the "we have to do something now!" brigade that leaps before looking and yet again those pesky unforeseen consequences bite you in the ass. Personally I'd rather let the people decide whether they want car A or car B myself. Call me weird but I think having choice is a good thing.
You got me on that one, I LOLed. This would probably be a good time to point out the good things the man did, such as KILL THE DAMNED FLOPPY dead dead dead! When those first CD burners hit it was like manna from heaven, no more trying to store data on those damned POS floppies, where half the time you'd get a read error on disk 15 out of 26 and be SOL. Anyone remember what that last version of Windows that came on floppies weighed in as? i remember there was a fricking pile of the damned things.
To me the passing of the CD/DVD era will be a sad one, as I have yet to see anything as economical for passing out files or long term storage than the CD/DVD. Even now for my customers in the sticks as a courtesy I give them Windows Updates via DVD for three months free, and being able to hand out the latest freeware via a CD with custom menu is nice and makes it simple for even the most clueless user. Sure USB sticks are nice but I don't ever see them getting down to the 17c a piece I currently pay for CDs and DVDs, and for things you don't want back handing a CD is a hell of a lot easier than keeping up who you handed your thumbstick to.
So RIP Ohga, and thanks for killing the damned floppy and giving us a cheap and easy way to hand out software and backup files. I still have a couple of backup CDs from my first burner and damned if they still aren't readable after 15+ years. I don't see these new USB HDDs ever getting that kind of long term storage ability!
Hey this is/. and if you aren't here for a good argument and some abuse you should GTFO. I have been called everything but human here so a little smartass doesn't bother me none, no problem.
But seriously talk to your doc and get a pain management specialist. i tried to go it alone after the accident just like you, trying to treat it with over the counter aids, and by the end I nearly ended up suicidal. The pain got so bad I would even be in pain when I dreamed and I couldn't remember what it was like not to feel pain. Compare that to now where I just got done lugging a 120 pound plus server up to my loft to strip and have nothing but a little muscle pain. I spend summer vacation with my GF's family up in Branson getting drug all over hell's half acre, riding the rides and walking miles to see all the attractions, I carry monitors and drag boxes and above all....NO PAIN...none.
Don't get me wrong if I stub my toe it still hurts like hell, and if I really push it I'll have that sore aching muscles just like any other guy, but that deep down bone pain, you know, that kind that sets up in your back and shoulders and makes you want to cry its so intense? That is pretty much gone, the only twinges I get of it is if I sit on my FPS too long I'll get neck stiff, and this is from someone who had more than 70% of his joints affected by arthritis.
Between NSAID treatment to lower the inflammation along with opiate therapy (I'm on MS Contin if you want to know the name to ask your doc, it is a slow time release morphine) I can live like a normal person again. And because it is time released there is never a 'rush" or feeling drugged, in fact according to my specialist if you are in chronic pain you will not get high from opiate therapy in reasonable doses as it will simply block the pain receptors and not affect the pleasure centers, and as someone who loves my GF deeply and loves having sex this is definitely a BIG plus!
So don't worry about the snarky, go talk to your doc and get a pain specialist ASAP. And if the first one is afraid of the DEA? Find another one. I got lucky on my second try and found one that is literally writing the book on pain management as we speak, and as he said to me "in this day and age there is NO reason for a person to suffer chronic pain anymore. The new treatments won't drug or zombie them, just let them live the same life everyone else leads, pain free" and I'm living proof of that. I play bass with my band on the weekends, work in my shop during the week, and drive 300+ miles round trip to stay up with my GF's family twice a month, with NO drugged out zombie side effects. As I said you just need to watch your diet, stay away from having too much high fats, as your metabolism will slow down, that's it.
So I've been where you are, and I only wish I'd known about treatment sooner. Talk to your doc and the days of suffering will soon be over. Believe me it WILL change your life!
Except there is a little problem...WE ARE BROKE...The taxes on the top 1% have never been lower in our nation's history and they will NOT be going up anytime soon, or IMHO ever, thanks to the legalized bribery SCOTUS gave us by equating money with speech and making corps people (they're just like you...only better).
Meanwhile the high tech jobs promised by our new tech economy are are finally here...they are all in India and the new tech corps like Google pay a pittance thanks to the double dutch and other loopholes, oh and in case you haven't heard China is getting ready to dump its dollars so you can ALL say hello to the great depression part II that many of us have been saying for years would come thanks to selling off of this country by offshoring, illegal immigration (currently 85% of illegals with anchor babies are on welfare) and H1-Bs making college pointless for many in the tech sector.
So you want to go back into space? the top tax rate MUST go back to 90% which despite all the rich hoarding and squawking NEVER in our history has more jobs been tied to lower taxes, in fact EVERY boom has had high taxes on the rich (because instead of hoarding they have incentive to invest) along with HIGH tariffs on those shipping our jobs to third world countries that allow pollution so thick you can detect it on the west coast AND a closing of ALL bases and walking away from the two pointless Jihad fests we have going on and instead using those troops to CLOSE THE LEAKING BORDER and repealing the law allowing anchor babies.
Instead what we are gonna have is a full on collapse, we will be NO different than the PIIGS in Europe, mark my words. After a few years in the collapse and Egyptian style riots we will have a new party rise, most likely militant nationalist, the only question now in my mind is whether we shall become xenophobic (preferred) or whether we will take Poland (aka South America) like the last heavily armed nationalist bunch. Shit is about to hit the fans folks, and these bozos are talking moon bases. No wonder our credit rating is becoming as bad as our citizens, which BTW student loan debt has surpassed CC debt and thanks to the rules against bankruptcy not clearing it student defaults have NEVER been higher. Kinda hard to pay for that degree for that job that got sent to Bangalore on a McJob you know?
They may not actually act on their impulses but I can tell you as a PC repairman you want to find the kinkiest porn you look on the PC of a bible thumper, which are usually hard right. I have to bite my tongue to keep from laughing at the total hypocrisy of these guys, like the deacon that sits there and cheers the pastor when he goes on about gays while he has probably THE largest collection of ladyboy porn in the south!
In case anyone is interested, here are my personal findings when it comes to right wing porn...lots of gangbangs, plenty of anal (I guess their wives/GFs won't give them no ass. Shame that), quite a smattering of BDSM and a whole lot of shemale stuff. I guess its okay as long as there are tits attached to the dick or something, I really don't get that one.
As for the liberals? lesbians. oh my Lord do they like the lesbians! lesbian gangbangs, lesbian abuse, lesbian orgies, its lesbian a go go. As far as fetishes goes a few chunky lovers, a few gangbangs, but frankly theirs are pretty vanilla. I guess all that repression breeds kinky thoughts or something, who knows. They don't pay me to analyze their choices in porn, just to back them up.
The problem with those things is they require serious prep work, and if you are a single mom or a working poor couple, where both have to work 8+ hours a day in some back breaking job? You spend the day on your feet sling burgers at the Wendy's? you are simply too damned tired to do anything that requires long term prep work. Hell I'd probably be eating like the poor simply because everyone has a "ZOMG! My PC is broked I've gots to has it NOW!" attitude, but lucky for me my GF is a great little cook and will just drag me away from the workbench when it is supper time.
But anyone who has had to work one of those shit jobs knows it can suck the life out of you, especially when there are kids, clothes that need washing, housework, etc that are ALL waiting on you to get home. Its no wonder more and more simply use the PC/console/TV as a babysitter, they simply don't have the energy!
As for opiate therapy? I've been on it since I was 19 and I'm 43 now with NO major side effects. As long as one eats right and exercises opiate therapy is one of the safest treatments for chronic pain bar none. I don't feel drugged (it actually doesn't feel like anything, except I am not in constant pain anymore) or lethargic, not had to raise my dose (in fact I was able to cut down once I had been on the meds for awhile) and still do everything I loved to do before the accident, even going to amusement parks and riding the crazy stuff. With opiate therapy I just get to wake up in the morning and not hurt, and be able to work all day without feeling like I was hit by a truck the next day. The only thing you have to watch out for is really fattening foods, as you do burn less calories thanks to the slower metabolism, but just knowing when to walk away from the pizza takes care of that.
So if you're suffering with pain every single day you should really talk to your doctor about a pain management specialist. There are tons of different ways to treat pain now, from opiate therapy to blocks to time released medications. I would also point out the increased stress from being in constant pain isn't good for your health either, as it lowers your immune system and weakens the body's defenses. As part of my treatment I get a full blood workup and the doc says I frankly have better bloodwork than him, whereas before the stress was really playing havoc with my immune system. So go talk to your doc, you don't have to be a drugged out zombie to be pain free anymore, I'm living proof of that.
Oh please! Who has all their programs on the Internet? Hell even Google doesn't have all their programs on the Internet, and the net is their bread and butter! Nope what you are talking about is the mythical "only uses the web" creature which I've found in practice to be about as plentiful as the yeti. Even those companies that THINK they are all "Web 2.0" quickly find out there are several back end apps, or apps they need to communicate with their suppliers/affiliates/customers, things they never even thought about that WILL bite them in the ass.
Does this mean it can't be done? of course not, same as they could switch the entire place to nothing but iPads if they have planned long and hard but it is THAT, that right there, that usually bites them in the ass. If you fail to plan you plan to fail, and I just wonder if this will go over like Munich where they didn't even think to check to see if items like printers had drivers before they started switching.
Changing OSes, from either one completely different such as Linux or OSX, or even from the old no permissions WinNT/2K/XP to the new Vista/7 user model WILL require serious planning, along with testing and finally a slow methodical rollout. If they aren't seriously dedicated to this and have long term plans in place this will blow up in their face when whatever admin got the bee in his butt to switch moves on and leaves the unfinished plans to the next guy. If they are serious and put in the work? Then sure it can be done.
The only problem I've seen with companies like this is funky third party custom apps that have NO equivalent in Linux that will have to be written from scratch. Like it or not there is a metric shitload of custom third party software for Windows, from medical transcription software to actuarial and risk management software that nobody has "gotten an itch" to write in Linux. If the cost of having that written from scratch is less? Then they could save some money,although IMHO the savings with Linux isn't really on the desktop but not having to worry about the BSAA or server CALs, but again its gonna take real dedication.
I personally hope they succeed, I really do. There is nothing I hate more than waste, but it is hard to find that kind of long term dedication in a company, at least in the USA. Maybe they will have better luck in Germany. I just hope they have long term plans and testing in place, as switching from XP to 7 can really bite you in the ass without a plan, switching OSes just adds to the pitfalls.
I'd say the "food abuse" as you call it can squarely be laid at the politicians doorstep. The average for disability or social security in my area is $700 a month, that's it. if they are lucky maybe $50 in food stamps. Go into your average Walmart and see what the poor are putting into their carts. it is the "tube of hamburger" and potatoes, along with white bread and sodas. They simply can't afford nutritious food thanks to the government taking food energy AND housing out of the cost of living adjustments. Then add in the kickback and payoffs (excuse me subsidies) to the corn growers making HFCS so damned cheap they practically give the stuff away, and what do you expect?
As for pain, sadly that is another one you can lay at the feet of government, in that case the FBI and DEA. I have seen people die in agony simply because the doctor was too afraid to write anything stronger than a Tylenol (which BTW docs call "instant killer, just add alcohol" for how dangerous it is) thanks to the red scare we have in this country over drugs.
I too have arthritis along with a back injury (you'd be amazed what face planting at 65MPH + off a bike will do to a human body) but I was lucky enough to get a pain management specialist who wasn't afraid of the DEA. I'm been on opiate therapy for over 20 years now with NO major side effects. I live in a second floor apt, love to take long walks through town (when we aren't getting pounded like now) help my neighbors with their groceries, and run my little shop, all thanks to a doctor not being afraid to care for his patients. I'll admit I'm probably 60 pounds over, but that is thanks to video games and a GF that makes excellent southern cooking.
So while I am a big proponent of personal responsibility I am also not blind to what goes on around me. While most poor folks don't want to eat slop, when your choices are that are starve you take what you can get. Hell even the cigarettes I wonder how much is the pure chemical slop they let them pour into the things. My grandfather smoked nearly 2 packs a day and died of old age, but he rolled his own from tobacco he got at a co-op that was just leaves chopped up.
I think the next thing that will bite us in the ass will be GMOs and diet garbage, as you are seeing more and more allergies in people that have never had any before, and the diet garbage was rammed through by Rumsfeld in the early 80s without hardly any oversight (it was banned under Carter, and Rumsfeld had a BIG stake in Nutrasweet) and when you add in the plastics that are even detectable in the blood of newborns now, it is no wonder so many are in ill health. Most of the poor can only afford the most horrible processed slop imaginable, and with the economy tanking it'll only get worse.
And the funny part Westlake? if my Supercenter is like the rest (and I haven't seen anything to tell me different) than less than 20% of the shelf space is now for Sony (and that is split between PS3,PS2,and PSP) with the rest split between the X360 and the Nintendo juggernauts of Wii and DS.
As a PC user and gamer it doesn't affect me (my youngest has a Wii and DS he never plays, both would rather play MMOs now) but those that still think PS3 has a snowball's chance in hell really needs to wake up and smell the fail. Their price today is STILL too high (the local Supercenter sells an X360 at $150, or the big one for like $200 with two games) and sticking on the BD to try to force the switch was a BAD idea, hell the few people I know with PS3s use them as glorified BD players and spend all their time on XBL, and from everything I've read the Cell royally sucks major ass to program for, whereas MSFT embraced their "developers developers developers" mantra and made porting between the X360 and PC pretty easy.
I think the stink over OtherOS was just one more mistake in a huge line of mistakes, one that will ultimately leave Sony in the same position Sega was in after the Saturn. The big question is will they be able to come up with the massive R&D budget for PS4, especially given that MSFT will blow crazy money on the X720 (which they can afford since the stated goal since the first Xbox was NOT to make money, but to get MSFT into the living room so they can tie in Windows and probably the WinPhone now as well) and will they be able to do so at a competitive price?
The bottom line is the next gen should be the deciding one as far as Sony. With the Wii2 and the x720 most likely having backwards compatibility that means that if the PS4 is to have it for better or worse they are stuck with cell, and if they can't get more third party titles and more sell through then I think they could be seriously hurt. Pissing off everyone and getting the regulators involved with OtherOS was just one more stupid move that will end up costing them $$$ in the long run, the big question is will they be able to continue to bleed out like they have been.
Oh I remember those too! Remember MP3PRO? Oh how I looked upon MP3PRO with wonder! Hey, now we can actually have a WHOLE ALBUM at 64k and it will mostly be playable! Skipping will be at a minimum! Of course at that time I was "smoking Mr Badass" thanks to a Pentium 100MHz OC'd to nearly 175, a Voodoo and soundblaster letting me seriously ROCK at DOOM, and a serial flightstick (F15 copy IIRC) that was the bomb on Mechwarrior 2.
Now I have something like 60Gb of albums on MP3 thanks to encoding every album I found worth listening to at the pawn shop across the street from the last shop I worked (good thing too, as I have NO IDEA what happened to all my CDs after 3 moves in 3 years. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if one of the movers or storage companies helped themselves) and I think my smallest game install is something like 2Gb.
I still find it amazing that I went from a 600Mb HDD (which I thought while running Win3.x "I'll never fill this up!") to dual 500Gb (and needing to upgrade to Tb drives as I'm running out of space) and my HD4850 that I got give to me by my GF cost less than $100 yet has more power than my first four PCs COMBINED, or that my PC would probably be considered just middle of the road for a gamer PC yet has FOUR 2.8Ghz CPUs, 8Gb of RAM (more than my first 6 HDDs put together) and a 1600x900 LCD compared to my first "PC" which was a VIC 20 at...what was it, something like 260x180? And the whole thing costs less than $800? Hell you couldn't even buy a HDD for the VIC for that!
We really need a "appreciate all the killer tech" day, because frankly most kids have NO idea how far we've come in so fast! Hell my oldest waxes nostalgic about his first PC, which was a 600MHz P3 with Win98SE and a Geforce 4! Hell my boys "hand me down" PCs are Pentium Duals, and even my mother has a 3Ghz Celeron just for playing match 3 games. Hell the amount of power we take for granted today is truly staggering, with companies all the time handing me late model P4s that they simply don't want anymore because they think they are "too slow".
COPD. I have a friend that worked the security at one of the Supercenters and asked him that very same question. He said because he has had to call out medical help for them in the past he has found many to be COPD, and the massive amounts of steroids they give them causing them to retain weight and fluids like mad.
If you look at a shot of Jerry Lewis from a few years ago when he was being pumped full of steroids? Same look. I have seen relatives with COPD and it really is a shitty disease. A lot of construction and factory workers end up with it after they retire, I wonder if it is all the plastic they breathe in.
As for TFA, while I hate walking into Wally World as much as the next guy (and I usually end up in the local Supercenter at least twice a week, between picking up items for my mom or giving a ride to an elderly customer who uses them for his prescriptions and shopping, a nice old guy who no longer owns a vehicle) I just don't see how it would work. I mean sure for canned goods one is as good as another, but who would want to get their produce, fruit, vegetables, and meats picked by somebody else who most likely is being paid shit and thus really doesn't care? gross.
I'd say nope, and I'll probably get flamed but here goes: Sony had to kill OtherOS because they were bleeding to death, full stop. Hell there was a site set up showing how to make clusters out of PS3s and every single day a new cluster was highlighted 24/7/365. Now up until recently Sony sold the PS3 at a loss, and I'd wager now the margin is so razor thin they probably are lucky to get $1 after covering the BOM and shipping. The BR drive was stupid and kept their prices higher since they never really took off, and with the X360 being so aggressive they couldn't keep the price high enough to make decent profit on the hardware like Nintendo.
No my friends, once OtherOS and the tutorials showed how damned easy it was to cluster the things every geek and their dog were buying two three four, hell a dozen of the things, and not a single disc or peripheral to go with it. Without the much vaunted sell through Sony was suffering a death by a thousand cuts at a time they could LEAST afford it. While I'm sure you heard of that 24k USAF node what you probably didn't hear of was damned near every college was looking at PS3s and making mini superclusters of their own. Hell right before the killing of OtherOS even the little college down the street was pricing a 12 node setup to give the science dept.
Should they have just killed OtherOS dead? No, IMHO they should have came up with a $1000 "PS3 Supercluster edition" with a GB Ethernet onboard, maybe added a "megacluster edition" with FC connects. Instead they watched in horror as their sell through rate fell off the planet while the X360 was getting something like 8 games per system numbers (last I checked Sony had 3, worse than BOTH the X360 and the Wii) and panicked. They had to come up with a BS excuse because "We can't afford to keep having PS3s end up in clusters, they are killin us" would have been jumped on by MSFT who would have had a field day with the PR.
No they could have handled it better but they had a very good reason for killing OtherOS, they simply couldn't afford to keep it going with their position at last place. I bet even with the hacks that came after their sell through rate went up simply because there weren't so many units going straight from the factory to some lab, and without decent return per unit they won't be able to afford the massive R&D to make PS4. My prediction is that unless they go seriously into debt they may not have the money anyway, especially if MSFT goes big bucks on the X720 or whatever they call it. But the OtherOS wasn't helping them, only hurting.
Isn't it kinda sad that I can answer EVERY SINGLE THING you and the other FOSS zealots here say with TMs? Doesn't it bother you, even just a little? You know why I can do that so easily? It is because you have been spouting the same bullshit so long there are TMs for it and have been for some time. You are like birthers, same shit, different day.
So I suppose those THOUSANDS asking for help on ANY forum, you pick, are ALL trolls? Maybe you want to list them as paid shills? And you STILL haven't posted an answer to Torvalds and his "We don't need no steenkin plans" which is OUT OF HIS OWN MOUTH.
Look if you want to dumpster dive, or use old hardware, then Linux works fine on a desktop. On a laptop, which is practically proprietary in a box? You'll spend more time fiddling with bullshit than you will using the thing. Tell me AC, when was the last time you had to go CLI? This week? Today? And I bet you had to go CLI when the last 6 month upgrade death march came out didn't you?
But no, stick your head in the sand, label everyone that points out problems a shill, instead of asking yourself this fundamental econ 101 question: What am I doing wrong, that my competitors are doing right? Because NO B&M stores will touch you, from little shops like mine to big shops like Walmart. Do you think we like paying for Windows? It gives us a warm fuzzy?
Nope the answer is your DRIVER MODEL IS ASS, your kernel is run by a douchebag, with every update TWO things break for every ONE fixed, your DEs seem to be run by Bizzaro "Quick, things am getting stable! Must break things by starting over, will cause much am joy for users!" and stability wise you are MAYBE at Win98. How many program lockups have you had? Freezes? Hangs? After I got away from Linux those things just faded away, like a fart in the wind...
Oh Lord yes, sadly the little childrens here now probably don't remember those days...sigh. Remember when most webpages were just text, with maybe a JPG or GIF?
Before the days of Geocities with purple pages with snot green text, or the wonderful dose of the clap that was Comet Cursors, which would make a Bart Simpson start jabbering where your mouse was or the REALLY evil fucker, the dreaded "Pocketwatch from hell" that would slam the living shit out of your nice OC'd Celeron 300A and make the entire machine drag like a 386 running Win95, thanks to its wonderful "snotball physics" that would cause the damned thing to swing and sway like a damned ball and cup game when you tried to move?
Ah those were the days, no tweeting twating facebook farting narcissistic bullshit, just text and email, and that was it. No 24/7/365 mobile twiddle twaddle, no smart this or pad that, you just walked away from your desktop and you were actually away from everything!
Life was so simple back then, no fb updating, no MMOs, no craziness like paying real money for virtual crap, just simple and easy. Sure we would have killed for something better than out shotgunned modems, and you sure as hell didn't download anything better than a 64k MP3, hell you didn't even have space for it if you did! But life was simpler then, just text and BBS, your handy notebook with IP addresses, and no endless piles of noobs running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Now get off my lawn!
Oh I'm not saying you can't do it, it just seems like a hell of a lot of work for very little gain. Personally I wouldn't wish Windows Vista on my worst enemy (although win 7 is quite nice, as is XP without the crapware) but the problem is unless you are an uber geek laptops are a mess and frankly the odds they'll even get 40% of them running stable is a big question mark.
Plus this is probably THE absolute WORST time in history to be working on the things, as we are talking a HUGE fundamental shift in the way they are designed is going on right NOW this very second. Within less than a year CPU+GPU will be replaced by APU which means that unless you are running old crap its back to the drawing board. Oh and it'll be even MORE of a PITA, thanks to the APUs containing proprietary code for HDMI so that will all have to be reverse engineered.
I'm just saying unless someone can bitch slap Linus "Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!" Torvalds so he'll stop going Goatse on the kernel things will be hard enough without trying to hit a moving target with a live bumblebee, which is what laptops are in the current state. A wise engineer took one look at the guts of one and said "designed for the dump" and he is right, inside the things are a mess. and as I said you can't even buy by model number and be sure it will work, thanks to them playing chipset roulette with anything and everything.
I just don't see how some guy in his basement, I don't care if he is frickin Einstein, is supposed to keep up with Torvalds AND all the new chipsets AND all the proprietary firmware AND the hardware roulette AND the constant breakage every time the distro gets a bug up their ass to change something fundamental. If you just wanted to say "if you run it on this it is strictly for hobbyist fun" I'd agree with you, but with so many FOSS evangelists saying "Linux is ready to go!" using it on laptops will just turn more people off.
So if you can make it go more power to you, but I tried it on four bog standard laptops that came through the shop and frankly i spent more time trying to get the damned hardware to work than I did using the damned things. In the end it was simply easier to reinstall Windows than deal with the BS, and I have a feeling until things settle down on the laptop front like they have on desktop most folks are gonna have the same experience. At least with Windows you have drivers for all the hardware, and no spending hours on forums looking for CLI fixes.
Oh and FYI you don't actually have to track down drivers anymore, Windows Update takes care of that for you. I've even had it find the funky USB TV Tuner drivers which frankly I never thought I'd see the day. I'm still waiting for Linux to have a "find me a damned driver!" button, like has been in windows for ages. Is it really so much to ask for?
I'd agree and add if you wanted "Chrome only better" I'd go with Comodo Dragon which actually does offer better features IMHO, like better domain validation, the option to use the Comodo secure DNS if you wish, and no phoning home like Chrome.
I'm currently typing this on a 1.8Ghz Sempron I use as a nettop and it is fast, pages load quick, easy to use, its pretty nice actually. ABP and Forecastfox for Chrome work fine on it, current build is Chromium 10, so it isn't out of date nor is it bleeding edge beta.
Besides isn't Flock "Chrome only full of social crap" already? do we really need two Chrome full of social crap builds?
I'll probably get flamed for daring to say this, but what the hell: why in the world would you want to run Linux on a laptop? Now on a desktop, sure I can see that. There are many flavors of Linux that use less resources, and most importantly the parts are getting pretty bog standard now on desktops. I mean it is all Realtek or Intel or ATI or Nvidia chips, and that is pretty much it.
But laptops are where desktops were 20+ years ago, a big mess of proprietary suckage, where you can't even tell by looking at the model number, because you can get three identical model numbered Dell laptops and find three complete different chipsets, sometimes even completely different vendors! Hell it is a bug fucking mess, and the only reason Windows will run on the damned things is the fact the OEMs go out of their way to write drivers for it. With Linux unless you are buying enterprise gear all you are gonna get from them is the finger most times, or if you are lucky a single driver tied to a VERY specific kernel that if you are lucky and the moon is right will work kinda sorta but not quite.
So I don't see why Linux devs kill themselves to write and try to work on such a fucked up platform, especially if the OEMs are gonna make such a big mess of things with all the proprietary chipsets and funky firmware. Better to tell them to piss up a rope if they won't hand out the specs and code and just stick with ARM, where it looks like the future is gonna be anyway. So why do it? You are wasting very limited resources chasing a design that is here today, replaced by something completely different later today. Just seems like such a waste when the good money will be in embedded and clusters anyway.
But that is why day traders and quick turnover is so bad for this country! hell the day traders wouldn't give a shit if you burned the company down for the insurance as long as it bumped up the stock price. You do ANYTHING smart like invest in infrastructure? watch the price fall. Just keep the money and let shit fall apart? Stock rises. What we need to do is tax the living shit out of the short termers so if you buy stock you would have to be INVESTING, not treating Wall Street as Vegas with nicer clothes.
As for TFA any of us that has had to deal with AT&T knows their infrastructure sucks ass, full stop. In my area everyone gets reamed by the cableco because even one week on AT&T DSL will make sure you NEVER want to deal with them again. Every time I start to bitch about the cableco prices all I have to do is get called out to a customer that can ONLY get AT&T DSL to go "Wow, thank God cable is in my area!". We are talking a TOP speed of 756k, most of the time sub 200k, and when having to deal with them for a customer got basically told "tough luck we have NO intention to upgrade now or anytime in the future". Monopolies must be nice.
As for their wireless the shit is so bad I had to wire my dad up his own mini cell tower just so his damned phone would work without him having to go stand outside and point at the tower, and this is in the middle of town? Frankly if it wasn't for the fact they were the only game in town I'm sure they wouldn't have ANY customers at all! Piss poor signal, piss poor speeds, piss poor service. Hell they might as well change the logo to Goatse with a new tag line of "AT&T: we own this area so bend over bitch"
So PJ is your sacred cow, is she? Even if she is wrong she is right? We have a description of that, it is called fanaticism and I would argue it is one of the fundamental failings of the Linux community, in that Linus himself can basically Goatse you and admits in his own words there is NO plan for the kernel (which is why your drivers break constantly, and if YOU tried that shit on a million dollar project you would be FIRED) and yet the community just bends over and says "please sir, may I have another?"
But if you are a thinking individual and not a slobbering fanatic, see for yourself. type in "groklaw Psystar" and see for your self. And isn't it funny how guys like you can ONLY attack the messenger and NOT the message? While I give PJ credit for SCO I'm also not so blinded by fanboyism that I think she walks on water or can't be full of shit now. Go on read it, then you come back here and tell me with a straight face you believe Psystar was secretly "being bankrolled by the evil M$ to kill the GPL". Because THAT is what PJ was trying to sell, and if you believe that I have some tasty koolaid for you.
As for what I've done? I'm a thinking individual that can read and doesn't stick my fingers in my ears and go "la la la" when someone points out a sacred cow has gone from just reporting facts to pure paranoia, which is sadly more than I can say for YOU. And if you TRULY believe that MSFT would waste time with some rinky dinky Hackentosh outfit so that OSX could be made CHEAPER for the masses, thus helping kill Windows on the low end? Well then all I have to say is, to quote an old joke, here's your sign.
Bingo! I bet if you figure up how much gas is wasted running back and forth compared to online shopping the amount of Co2 generated MORE than makes up for any 'dirty power" as they put it.
I know in my own case it was an almost daily running to town as well as at LEAST two trips to the state capital a week to keep the shop supplied (state capital is 120 miles round trip) so if we figure in 20 miles times say three if I was able to plan ahead along with 2 120 mile trips that is 300 miles a week in gas that isn't being blown anymore, and when my Ranger gets around 19 miles to the gallon that is a whole lot of gas!
But of course with our lovely politicians blowing cash like drunken sailors while giving free money and tax breaks to those who are sending jobs overseas (read what the head of GE says, he says "We are sending the high paying jobs to India because that's where the customers are now" really? Maybe if you wouldn't have sent all the jobs overseas Americans might have money to buy your stuff now. huh.) I wouldn't doubt if Internet sales end up taxed MORE than just going to Wally World, so we can flush any energy savings right down the toilet. Never seen a good idea a politician can't fuck up, doubt Internet commerce will be ANY different.
You want a perfect description of what is wrong with the modern COD just watch Yahtzee's take on Black ops. Yes I know he is a smartass Brit, but sometimes a smartass Brit is what you need. I have to agree that "hooked to an IV of pop rocks" is a good description. You have to build tension, and having shit blowing up every 2.6 seconds doesn't really do that, at least for me.
But then again I'm probably not in the marketing demographic, as I have NO desire to run around like a loonie in MP knifing people.
Slashdot Mirror
Moonshine is great for cleaning carburetors, or getting old paint off paintbrushes, but you really wouldn't want to drink the stuff. Most of it is about as "nice" as PGA, but I bet it would run an old car fine (I know the moonshiners in my area used to use it as a boost fuel in the old hot rods they used to smuggle shine) but I don't know how well it would run on anything modern.
But if you were making something to actually consume as opposed for peeling paint or running a 70s Dart I'd suggest a little Muscadine Wine as it is a great way to enjoy a lazy afternoon and IMHO beats most grape wines hands down. You just have to be careful during the fermenting, as when one of those bottles blow you'll have a kitchen that smells like Muscadine for...oh about three years or so, as my grandma found out when grandpa put the lid on a little too tight on a batch.
Uhhh...because we have seen time and time again how just trying to "fix" the mess by passing ever more rules just piles on the clusterfuck? As for CFLs I can give you a little link to a thing called Yahoo Search which brings up 36,000 pages on CFLs and cancer. Feel free to choose whichever site you would consider a credible source, with 36,000 I'm sure you'll find a few.
Basically the gist of it is the plastics that make up the ring holding the CFL when heated release carcinogens which you then breathe. Surprise surprise, those unintended consequences bite you right in the rear again. Oh I'm sure they'll come out with yet more regulations, that will promptly be ignored by the third world countries we have making the things since they closed the light bulb factories here to make the new ones in China (there is those pesky unintended consequences again) and people will justify the increased risk of cancer on "being green". Of course if you get cancer and die your carbon footprint drops off the chart, so you are REALLY being green then!
too incompetent to make a decent functional website
FTFY
Seriously who told them sticking some big ass bar with NO close button was a good idea? because I'd like some of what they are smoking. No wonder their traffic was cut in half and is falling like a stone, 20 seconds on that site and I was "Run away! Run away!" from the horror. Funny that this happens on a discussion of GIFs, as I thought that kind of lame ass web design went out with Geocities and the Timecube guy.
As for TFA, while there are some artistic ones on that site IMHO they like playing with wind too much. The guy reading his paper in the middle of a busy park was cool though. BTW how long is GIF still under patent anyway? Surely it has to be getting close to PD by now? Let us just hope that once it is PD it doesn't become "popular" like it did during the days of Geocities. Between the fifty million bouncing GIFs and the blink tags it was like web design by a committee of color blind drunks.
Of course seeing some of the flash nightmares on the web I can say they have learned to slam a CPU with modern tech just as well as they did during Geocities with blinks, GIFs, and Comet Cursors. Give them credit folks, nobody could slam the living hell out of a CPU like the Geocities "artists" and their websites from hell. The GIF patent mess was one of the few times I was happy about patents . I was like "Go GIFs...and take the blink tag with you!". Maybe it was just me, but I found a web free of GIFs to be a nicer place to be.
Uh huh...to quote Mel Brooks bullshit bullshit aaaaand bullshit. maybe you'd care to explain how a full 2/3rds of corps paid NO taxes this decade or how GE, who paid paid NO taxes in 2010 and in fact got a REBATE and is now using those funds to fire Americans and build overseas with the head of GE actually having the brass balls to say "We've globalized around markets, not cheap labor. The era of globalization around cheap labor is over. Today we go to China, we go to India, because that's where the customers are."
BULLSHIT and EVERY single time of growth in the history of this country TAXES AT THE TOP HAVE BEEN OVER 70% full stop. We have had unprecedented tax breaks for the top 1% for THIRTY YEARS and NOTHING has gotten better. NOTHING. So peddle the rep fantasy somewhere else, we ain't buying it no more. America WILL BE COME NATIONALIST the only question is how violent the change over will be. China is about to drop their US dollars so the game is over friend, time to pay the check.
Hi MR AC! Allow me to explain how that can be bad, a little thing called 'unforeseen consequences'. For example CAFE...once upon a time there was a thing called a station wagon. Now this thing was just about perfect for your average soccer mom who needed to haul the kids to practice, but then along came CAFE which listed them as cars and put crazy MPG ratings on them.
" Why" said the auto manufacturers "We can keep making these and make underpowered POS station wagons that the public doesn't buy, or we can build them on a truck chassis and forget the CAFE crap!" and the SUV was born. The same thing happened to those great little car/trucks, like the El Camino and Ranchero, which were perfect for just hauling a little lumber or moving some furniture. Nope instead thanks to CAFE you got full sized trucks instead!
So you see MR AC it is those unforeseen consequences that bite you in the ass, like those studies coming out now that say the chemicals released by the new CFC bulbs are a cancer risk, as well as more dangerous thanks to the blue tint being more like sunlight and throwing everyone's biological clocks off more than the yellow incandescent bulbs. It is the "we have to do something now!" brigade that leaps before looking and yet again those pesky unforeseen consequences bite you in the ass. Personally I'd rather let the people decide whether they want car A or car B myself. Call me weird but I think having choice is a good thing.
You got me on that one, I LOLed. This would probably be a good time to point out the good things the man did, such as KILL THE DAMNED FLOPPY dead dead dead! When those first CD burners hit it was like manna from heaven, no more trying to store data on those damned POS floppies, where half the time you'd get a read error on disk 15 out of 26 and be SOL. Anyone remember what that last version of Windows that came on floppies weighed in as? i remember there was a fricking pile of the damned things.
To me the passing of the CD/DVD era will be a sad one, as I have yet to see anything as economical for passing out files or long term storage than the CD/DVD. Even now for my customers in the sticks as a courtesy I give them Windows Updates via DVD for three months free, and being able to hand out the latest freeware via a CD with custom menu is nice and makes it simple for even the most clueless user. Sure USB sticks are nice but I don't ever see them getting down to the 17c a piece I currently pay for CDs and DVDs, and for things you don't want back handing a CD is a hell of a lot easier than keeping up who you handed your thumbstick to.
So RIP Ohga, and thanks for killing the damned floppy and giving us a cheap and easy way to hand out software and backup files. I still have a couple of backup CDs from my first burner and damned if they still aren't readable after 15+ years. I don't see these new USB HDDs ever getting that kind of long term storage ability!
Hey this is /. and if you aren't here for a good argument and some abuse you should GTFO. I have been called everything but human here so a little smartass doesn't bother me none, no problem.
But seriously talk to your doc and get a pain management specialist. i tried to go it alone after the accident just like you, trying to treat it with over the counter aids, and by the end I nearly ended up suicidal. The pain got so bad I would even be in pain when I dreamed and I couldn't remember what it was like not to feel pain. Compare that to now where I just got done lugging a 120 pound plus server up to my loft to strip and have nothing but a little muscle pain. I spend summer vacation with my GF's family up in Branson getting drug all over hell's half acre, riding the rides and walking miles to see all the attractions, I carry monitors and drag boxes and above all....NO PAIN...none.
Don't get me wrong if I stub my toe it still hurts like hell, and if I really push it I'll have that sore aching muscles just like any other guy, but that deep down bone pain, you know, that kind that sets up in your back and shoulders and makes you want to cry its so intense? That is pretty much gone, the only twinges I get of it is if I sit on my FPS too long I'll get neck stiff, and this is from someone who had more than 70% of his joints affected by arthritis.
Between NSAID treatment to lower the inflammation along with opiate therapy (I'm on MS Contin if you want to know the name to ask your doc, it is a slow time release morphine) I can live like a normal person again. And because it is time released there is never a 'rush" or feeling drugged, in fact according to my specialist if you are in chronic pain you will not get high from opiate therapy in reasonable doses as it will simply block the pain receptors and not affect the pleasure centers, and as someone who loves my GF deeply and loves having sex this is definitely a BIG plus!
So don't worry about the snarky, go talk to your doc and get a pain specialist ASAP. And if the first one is afraid of the DEA? Find another one. I got lucky on my second try and found one that is literally writing the book on pain management as we speak, and as he said to me "in this day and age there is NO reason for a person to suffer chronic pain anymore. The new treatments won't drug or zombie them, just let them live the same life everyone else leads, pain free" and I'm living proof of that. I play bass with my band on the weekends, work in my shop during the week, and drive 300+ miles round trip to stay up with my GF's family twice a month, with NO drugged out zombie side effects. As I said you just need to watch your diet, stay away from having too much high fats, as your metabolism will slow down, that's it.
So I've been where you are, and I only wish I'd known about treatment sooner. Talk to your doc and the days of suffering will soon be over. Believe me it WILL change your life!
Except there is a little problem...WE ARE BROKE...The taxes on the top 1% have never been lower in our nation's history and they will NOT be going up anytime soon, or IMHO ever, thanks to the legalized bribery SCOTUS gave us by equating money with speech and making corps people (they're just like you...only better).
Meanwhile the high tech jobs promised by our new tech economy are are finally here...they are all in India and the new tech corps like Google pay a pittance thanks to the double dutch and other loopholes, oh and in case you haven't heard China is getting ready to dump its dollars so you can ALL say hello to the great depression part II that many of us have been saying for years would come thanks to selling off of this country by offshoring, illegal immigration (currently 85% of illegals with anchor babies are on welfare) and H1-Bs making college pointless for many in the tech sector.
So you want to go back into space? the top tax rate MUST go back to 90% which despite all the rich hoarding and squawking NEVER in our history has more jobs been tied to lower taxes, in fact EVERY boom has had high taxes on the rich (because instead of hoarding they have incentive to invest) along with HIGH tariffs on those shipping our jobs to third world countries that allow pollution so thick you can detect it on the west coast AND a closing of ALL bases and walking away from the two pointless Jihad fests we have going on and instead using those troops to CLOSE THE LEAKING BORDER and repealing the law allowing anchor babies.
Instead what we are gonna have is a full on collapse, we will be NO different than the PIIGS in Europe, mark my words. After a few years in the collapse and Egyptian style riots we will have a new party rise, most likely militant nationalist, the only question now in my mind is whether we shall become xenophobic (preferred) or whether we will take Poland (aka South America) like the last heavily armed nationalist bunch. Shit is about to hit the fans folks, and these bozos are talking moon bases. No wonder our credit rating is becoming as bad as our citizens, which BTW student loan debt has surpassed CC debt and thanks to the rules against bankruptcy not clearing it student defaults have NEVER been higher. Kinda hard to pay for that degree for that job that got sent to Bangalore on a McJob you know?
They may not actually act on their impulses but I can tell you as a PC repairman you want to find the kinkiest porn you look on the PC of a bible thumper, which are usually hard right. I have to bite my tongue to keep from laughing at the total hypocrisy of these guys, like the deacon that sits there and cheers the pastor when he goes on about gays while he has probably THE largest collection of ladyboy porn in the south!
In case anyone is interested, here are my personal findings when it comes to right wing porn...lots of gangbangs, plenty of anal (I guess their wives/GFs won't give them no ass. Shame that), quite a smattering of BDSM and a whole lot of shemale stuff. I guess its okay as long as there are tits attached to the dick or something, I really don't get that one.
As for the liberals? lesbians. oh my Lord do they like the lesbians! lesbian gangbangs, lesbian abuse, lesbian orgies, its lesbian a go go. As far as fetishes goes a few chunky lovers, a few gangbangs, but frankly theirs are pretty vanilla. I guess all that repression breeds kinky thoughts or something, who knows. They don't pay me to analyze their choices in porn, just to back them up.
The problem with those things is they require serious prep work, and if you are a single mom or a working poor couple, where both have to work 8+ hours a day in some back breaking job? You spend the day on your feet sling burgers at the Wendy's? you are simply too damned tired to do anything that requires long term prep work. Hell I'd probably be eating like the poor simply because everyone has a "ZOMG! My PC is broked I've gots to has it NOW!" attitude, but lucky for me my GF is a great little cook and will just drag me away from the workbench when it is supper time.
But anyone who has had to work one of those shit jobs knows it can suck the life out of you, especially when there are kids, clothes that need washing, housework, etc that are ALL waiting on you to get home. Its no wonder more and more simply use the PC/console/TV as a babysitter, they simply don't have the energy!
As for opiate therapy? I've been on it since I was 19 and I'm 43 now with NO major side effects. As long as one eats right and exercises opiate therapy is one of the safest treatments for chronic pain bar none. I don't feel drugged (it actually doesn't feel like anything, except I am not in constant pain anymore) or lethargic, not had to raise my dose (in fact I was able to cut down once I had been on the meds for awhile) and still do everything I loved to do before the accident, even going to amusement parks and riding the crazy stuff. With opiate therapy I just get to wake up in the morning and not hurt, and be able to work all day without feeling like I was hit by a truck the next day. The only thing you have to watch out for is really fattening foods, as you do burn less calories thanks to the slower metabolism, but just knowing when to walk away from the pizza takes care of that.
So if you're suffering with pain every single day you should really talk to your doctor about a pain management specialist. There are tons of different ways to treat pain now, from opiate therapy to blocks to time released medications. I would also point out the increased stress from being in constant pain isn't good for your health either, as it lowers your immune system and weakens the body's defenses. As part of my treatment I get a full blood workup and the doc says I frankly have better bloodwork than him, whereas before the stress was really playing havoc with my immune system. So go talk to your doc, you don't have to be a drugged out zombie to be pain free anymore, I'm living proof of that.
Oh please! Who has all their programs on the Internet? Hell even Google doesn't have all their programs on the Internet, and the net is their bread and butter! Nope what you are talking about is the mythical "only uses the web" creature which I've found in practice to be about as plentiful as the yeti. Even those companies that THINK they are all "Web 2.0" quickly find out there are several back end apps, or apps they need to communicate with their suppliers/affiliates/customers, things they never even thought about that WILL bite them in the ass.
Does this mean it can't be done? of course not, same as they could switch the entire place to nothing but iPads if they have planned long and hard but it is THAT, that right there, that usually bites them in the ass. If you fail to plan you plan to fail, and I just wonder if this will go over like Munich where they didn't even think to check to see if items like printers had drivers before they started switching.
Changing OSes, from either one completely different such as Linux or OSX, or even from the old no permissions WinNT/2K/XP to the new Vista/7 user model WILL require serious planning, along with testing and finally a slow methodical rollout. If they aren't seriously dedicated to this and have long term plans in place this will blow up in their face when whatever admin got the bee in his butt to switch moves on and leaves the unfinished plans to the next guy. If they are serious and put in the work? Then sure it can be done.
The only problem I've seen with companies like this is funky third party custom apps that have NO equivalent in Linux that will have to be written from scratch. Like it or not there is a metric shitload of custom third party software for Windows, from medical transcription software to actuarial and risk management software that nobody has "gotten an itch" to write in Linux. If the cost of having that written from scratch is less? Then they could save some money,although IMHO the savings with Linux isn't really on the desktop but not having to worry about the BSAA or server CALs, but again its gonna take real dedication.
I personally hope they succeed, I really do. There is nothing I hate more than waste, but it is hard to find that kind of long term dedication in a company, at least in the USA. Maybe they will have better luck in Germany. I just hope they have long term plans and testing in place, as switching from XP to 7 can really bite you in the ass without a plan, switching OSes just adds to the pitfalls.
I'd say the "food abuse" as you call it can squarely be laid at the politicians doorstep. The average for disability or social security in my area is $700 a month, that's it. if they are lucky maybe $50 in food stamps. Go into your average Walmart and see what the poor are putting into their carts. it is the "tube of hamburger" and potatoes, along with white bread and sodas. They simply can't afford nutritious food thanks to the government taking food energy AND housing out of the cost of living adjustments. Then add in the kickback and payoffs (excuse me subsidies) to the corn growers making HFCS so damned cheap they practically give the stuff away, and what do you expect?
As for pain, sadly that is another one you can lay at the feet of government, in that case the FBI and DEA. I have seen people die in agony simply because the doctor was too afraid to write anything stronger than a Tylenol (which BTW docs call "instant killer, just add alcohol" for how dangerous it is) thanks to the red scare we have in this country over drugs.
I too have arthritis along with a back injury (you'd be amazed what face planting at 65MPH + off a bike will do to a human body) but I was lucky enough to get a pain management specialist who wasn't afraid of the DEA. I'm been on opiate therapy for over 20 years now with NO major side effects. I live in a second floor apt, love to take long walks through town (when we aren't getting pounded like now) help my neighbors with their groceries, and run my little shop, all thanks to a doctor not being afraid to care for his patients. I'll admit I'm probably 60 pounds over, but that is thanks to video games and a GF that makes excellent southern cooking.
So while I am a big proponent of personal responsibility I am also not blind to what goes on around me. While most poor folks don't want to eat slop, when your choices are that are starve you take what you can get. Hell even the cigarettes I wonder how much is the pure chemical slop they let them pour into the things. My grandfather smoked nearly 2 packs a day and died of old age, but he rolled his own from tobacco he got at a co-op that was just leaves chopped up.
I think the next thing that will bite us in the ass will be GMOs and diet garbage, as you are seeing more and more allergies in people that have never had any before, and the diet garbage was rammed through by Rumsfeld in the early 80s without hardly any oversight (it was banned under Carter, and Rumsfeld had a BIG stake in Nutrasweet) and when you add in the plastics that are even detectable in the blood of newborns now, it is no wonder so many are in ill health. Most of the poor can only afford the most horrible processed slop imaginable, and with the economy tanking it'll only get worse.
And the funny part Westlake? if my Supercenter is like the rest (and I haven't seen anything to tell me different) than less than 20% of the shelf space is now for Sony (and that is split between PS3,PS2,and PSP) with the rest split between the X360 and the Nintendo juggernauts of Wii and DS.
As a PC user and gamer it doesn't affect me (my youngest has a Wii and DS he never plays, both would rather play MMOs now) but those that still think PS3 has a snowball's chance in hell really needs to wake up and smell the fail. Their price today is STILL too high (the local Supercenter sells an X360 at $150, or the big one for like $200 with two games) and sticking on the BD to try to force the switch was a BAD idea, hell the few people I know with PS3s use them as glorified BD players and spend all their time on XBL, and from everything I've read the Cell royally sucks major ass to program for, whereas MSFT embraced their "developers developers developers" mantra and made porting between the X360 and PC pretty easy.
I think the stink over OtherOS was just one more mistake in a huge line of mistakes, one that will ultimately leave Sony in the same position Sega was in after the Saturn. The big question is will they be able to come up with the massive R&D budget for PS4, especially given that MSFT will blow crazy money on the X720 (which they can afford since the stated goal since the first Xbox was NOT to make money, but to get MSFT into the living room so they can tie in Windows and probably the WinPhone now as well) and will they be able to do so at a competitive price?
The bottom line is the next gen should be the deciding one as far as Sony. With the Wii2 and the x720 most likely having backwards compatibility that means that if the PS4 is to have it for better or worse they are stuck with cell, and if they can't get more third party titles and more sell through then I think they could be seriously hurt. Pissing off everyone and getting the regulators involved with OtherOS was just one more stupid move that will end up costing them $$$ in the long run, the big question is will they be able to continue to bleed out like they have been.
Oh I remember those too! Remember MP3PRO? Oh how I looked upon MP3PRO with wonder! Hey, now we can actually have a WHOLE ALBUM at 64k and it will mostly be playable! Skipping will be at a minimum! Of course at that time I was "smoking Mr Badass" thanks to a Pentium 100MHz OC'd to nearly 175, a Voodoo and soundblaster letting me seriously ROCK at DOOM, and a serial flightstick (F15 copy IIRC) that was the bomb on Mechwarrior 2.
Now I have something like 60Gb of albums on MP3 thanks to encoding every album I found worth listening to at the pawn shop across the street from the last shop I worked (good thing too, as I have NO IDEA what happened to all my CDs after 3 moves in 3 years. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if one of the movers or storage companies helped themselves) and I think my smallest game install is something like 2Gb.
I still find it amazing that I went from a 600Mb HDD (which I thought while running Win3.x "I'll never fill this up!") to dual 500Gb (and needing to upgrade to Tb drives as I'm running out of space) and my HD4850 that I got give to me by my GF cost less than $100 yet has more power than my first four PCs COMBINED, or that my PC would probably be considered just middle of the road for a gamer PC yet has FOUR 2.8Ghz CPUs, 8Gb of RAM (more than my first 6 HDDs put together) and a 1600x900 LCD compared to my first "PC" which was a VIC 20 at...what was it, something like 260x180? And the whole thing costs less than $800? Hell you couldn't even buy a HDD for the VIC for that!
We really need a "appreciate all the killer tech" day, because frankly most kids have NO idea how far we've come in so fast! Hell my oldest waxes nostalgic about his first PC, which was a 600MHz P3 with Win98SE and a Geforce 4! Hell my boys "hand me down" PCs are Pentium Duals, and even my mother has a 3Ghz Celeron just for playing match 3 games. Hell the amount of power we take for granted today is truly staggering, with companies all the time handing me late model P4s that they simply don't want anymore because they think they are "too slow".
COPD. I have a friend that worked the security at one of the Supercenters and asked him that very same question. He said because he has had to call out medical help for them in the past he has found many to be COPD, and the massive amounts of steroids they give them causing them to retain weight and fluids like mad.
If you look at a shot of Jerry Lewis from a few years ago when he was being pumped full of steroids? Same look. I have seen relatives with COPD and it really is a shitty disease. A lot of construction and factory workers end up with it after they retire, I wonder if it is all the plastic they breathe in.
As for TFA, while I hate walking into Wally World as much as the next guy (and I usually end up in the local Supercenter at least twice a week, between picking up items for my mom or giving a ride to an elderly customer who uses them for his prescriptions and shopping, a nice old guy who no longer owns a vehicle) I just don't see how it would work. I mean sure for canned goods one is as good as another, but who would want to get their produce, fruit, vegetables, and meats picked by somebody else who most likely is being paid shit and thus really doesn't care? gross.
I'd say nope, and I'll probably get flamed but here goes: Sony had to kill OtherOS because they were bleeding to death, full stop. Hell there was a site set up showing how to make clusters out of PS3s and every single day a new cluster was highlighted 24/7/365. Now up until recently Sony sold the PS3 at a loss, and I'd wager now the margin is so razor thin they probably are lucky to get $1 after covering the BOM and shipping. The BR drive was stupid and kept their prices higher since they never really took off, and with the X360 being so aggressive they couldn't keep the price high enough to make decent profit on the hardware like Nintendo.
No my friends, once OtherOS and the tutorials showed how damned easy it was to cluster the things every geek and their dog were buying two three four, hell a dozen of the things, and not a single disc or peripheral to go with it. Without the much vaunted sell through Sony was suffering a death by a thousand cuts at a time they could LEAST afford it. While I'm sure you heard of that 24k USAF node what you probably didn't hear of was damned near every college was looking at PS3s and making mini superclusters of their own. Hell right before the killing of OtherOS even the little college down the street was pricing a 12 node setup to give the science dept.
Should they have just killed OtherOS dead? No, IMHO they should have came up with a $1000 "PS3 Supercluster edition" with a GB Ethernet onboard, maybe added a "megacluster edition" with FC connects. Instead they watched in horror as their sell through rate fell off the planet while the X360 was getting something like 8 games per system numbers (last I checked Sony had 3, worse than BOTH the X360 and the Wii) and panicked. They had to come up with a BS excuse because "We can't afford to keep having PS3s end up in clusters, they are killin us" would have been jumped on by MSFT who would have had a field day with the PR.
No they could have handled it better but they had a very good reason for killing OtherOS, they simply couldn't afford to keep it going with their position at last place. I bet even with the hacks that came after their sell through rate went up simply because there weren't so many units going straight from the factory to some lab, and without decent return per unit they won't be able to afford the massive R&D to make PS4. My prediction is that unless they go seriously into debt they may not have the money anyway, especially if MSFT goes big bucks on the X720 or whatever they call it. But the OtherOS wasn't helping them, only hurting.
So your answers are, in no particular order, YouDisagreeWithMeThereforeYou AreATroll along with WorksForMeAtHomeItDoesReally and ImaginaryProblemsKillWindows with a bit of LinuxSupportsMoreHardwareThan Windows when in reality you get ThisIsAKnownProblemNowGetLost and YouAreUsingTheWrongHardware
Isn't it kinda sad that I can answer EVERY SINGLE THING you and the other FOSS zealots here say with TMs? Doesn't it bother you, even just a little? You know why I can do that so easily? It is because you have been spouting the same bullshit so long there are TMs for it and have been for some time. You are like birthers, same shit, different day.
So I suppose those THOUSANDS asking for help on ANY forum, you pick, are ALL trolls? Maybe you want to list them as paid shills? And you STILL haven't posted an answer to Torvalds and his "We don't need no steenkin plans" which is OUT OF HIS OWN MOUTH.
Look if you want to dumpster dive, or use old hardware, then Linux works fine on a desktop. On a laptop, which is practically proprietary in a box? You'll spend more time fiddling with bullshit than you will using the thing. Tell me AC, when was the last time you had to go CLI? This week? Today? And I bet you had to go CLI when the last 6 month upgrade death march came out didn't you?
But no, stick your head in the sand, label everyone that points out problems a shill, instead of asking yourself this fundamental econ 101 question: What am I doing wrong, that my competitors are doing right? Because NO B&M stores will touch you, from little shops like mine to big shops like Walmart. Do you think we like paying for Windows? It gives us a warm fuzzy?
Nope the answer is your DRIVER MODEL IS ASS, your kernel is run by a douchebag, with every update TWO things break for every ONE fixed, your DEs seem to be run by Bizzaro "Quick, things am getting stable! Must break things by starting over, will cause much am joy for users!" and stability wise you are MAYBE at Win98. How many program lockups have you had? Freezes? Hangs? After I got away from Linux those things just faded away, like a fart in the wind...
So believe what you want, nobody will be able to refute you, even with evidence that the users don't want you, or that given a choice users run in droves AWAY from you or that OEMs now look at you like the clap or that you have less marketshare than JavaME. Nope, instead just cheer that Linux reached 1% while doing what you do best: Ignoring users, ignoring problems, letting Torvalds Goatse the kernel, and generally acting like asses. Hey, maybe in another 20 years you'll be at 2%!
Oh Lord yes, sadly the little childrens here now probably don't remember those days...sigh. Remember when most webpages were just text, with maybe a JPG or GIF?
Before the days of Geocities with purple pages with snot green text, or the wonderful dose of the clap that was Comet Cursors, which would make a Bart Simpson start jabbering where your mouse was or the REALLY evil fucker, the dreaded "Pocketwatch from hell" that would slam the living shit out of your nice OC'd Celeron 300A and make the entire machine drag like a 386 running Win95, thanks to its wonderful "snotball physics" that would cause the damned thing to swing and sway like a damned ball and cup game when you tried to move?
Ah those were the days, no tweeting twating facebook farting narcissistic bullshit, just text and email, and that was it. No 24/7/365 mobile twiddle twaddle, no smart this or pad that, you just walked away from your desktop and you were actually away from everything!
Life was so simple back then, no fb updating, no MMOs, no craziness like paying real money for virtual crap, just simple and easy. Sure we would have killed for something better than out shotgunned modems, and you sure as hell didn't download anything better than a 64k MP3, hell you didn't even have space for it if you did! But life was simpler then, just text and BBS, your handy notebook with IP addresses, and no endless piles of noobs running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Now get off my lawn!
Oh I'm not saying you can't do it, it just seems like a hell of a lot of work for very little gain. Personally I wouldn't wish Windows Vista on my worst enemy (although win 7 is quite nice, as is XP without the crapware) but the problem is unless you are an uber geek laptops are a mess and frankly the odds they'll even get 40% of them running stable is a big question mark.
Plus this is probably THE absolute WORST time in history to be working on the things, as we are talking a HUGE fundamental shift in the way they are designed is going on right NOW this very second. Within less than a year CPU+GPU will be replaced by APU which means that unless you are running old crap its back to the drawing board. Oh and it'll be even MORE of a PITA, thanks to the APUs containing proprietary code for HDMI so that will all have to be reverse engineered.
I'm just saying unless someone can bitch slap Linus "Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!" Torvalds so he'll stop going Goatse on the kernel things will be hard enough without trying to hit a moving target with a live bumblebee, which is what laptops are in the current state. A wise engineer took one look at the guts of one and said "designed for the dump" and he is right, inside the things are a mess. and as I said you can't even buy by model number and be sure it will work, thanks to them playing chipset roulette with anything and everything.
I just don't see how some guy in his basement, I don't care if he is frickin Einstein, is supposed to keep up with Torvalds AND all the new chipsets AND all the proprietary firmware AND the hardware roulette AND the constant breakage every time the distro gets a bug up their ass to change something fundamental. If you just wanted to say "if you run it on this it is strictly for hobbyist fun" I'd agree with you, but with so many FOSS evangelists saying "Linux is ready to go!" using it on laptops will just turn more people off.
So if you can make it go more power to you, but I tried it on four bog standard laptops that came through the shop and frankly i spent more time trying to get the damned hardware to work than I did using the damned things. In the end it was simply easier to reinstall Windows than deal with the BS, and I have a feeling until things settle down on the laptop front like they have on desktop most folks are gonna have the same experience. At least with Windows you have drivers for all the hardware, and no spending hours on forums looking for CLI fixes.
Oh and FYI you don't actually have to track down drivers anymore, Windows Update takes care of that for you. I've even had it find the funky USB TV Tuner drivers which frankly I never thought I'd see the day. I'm still waiting for Linux to have a "find me a damned driver!" button, like has been in windows for ages. Is it really so much to ask for?
I'd agree and add if you wanted "Chrome only better" I'd go with Comodo Dragon which actually does offer better features IMHO, like better domain validation, the option to use the Comodo secure DNS if you wish, and no phoning home like Chrome.
I'm currently typing this on a 1.8Ghz Sempron I use as a nettop and it is fast, pages load quick, easy to use, its pretty nice actually. ABP and Forecastfox for Chrome work fine on it, current build is Chromium 10, so it isn't out of date nor is it bleeding edge beta.
Besides isn't Flock "Chrome only full of social crap" already? do we really need two Chrome full of social crap builds?
I'll probably get flamed for daring to say this, but what the hell: why in the world would you want to run Linux on a laptop? Now on a desktop, sure I can see that. There are many flavors of Linux that use less resources, and most importantly the parts are getting pretty bog standard now on desktops. I mean it is all Realtek or Intel or ATI or Nvidia chips, and that is pretty much it.
But laptops are where desktops were 20+ years ago, a big mess of proprietary suckage, where you can't even tell by looking at the model number, because you can get three identical model numbered Dell laptops and find three complete different chipsets, sometimes even completely different vendors! Hell it is a bug fucking mess, and the only reason Windows will run on the damned things is the fact the OEMs go out of their way to write drivers for it. With Linux unless you are buying enterprise gear all you are gonna get from them is the finger most times, or if you are lucky a single driver tied to a VERY specific kernel that if you are lucky and the moon is right will work kinda sorta but not quite.
So I don't see why Linux devs kill themselves to write and try to work on such a fucked up platform, especially if the OEMs are gonna make such a big mess of things with all the proprietary chipsets and funky firmware. Better to tell them to piss up a rope if they won't hand out the specs and code and just stick with ARM, where it looks like the future is gonna be anyway. So why do it? You are wasting very limited resources chasing a design that is here today, replaced by something completely different later today. Just seems like such a waste when the good money will be in embedded and clusters anyway.
But that is why day traders and quick turnover is so bad for this country! hell the day traders wouldn't give a shit if you burned the company down for the insurance as long as it bumped up the stock price. You do ANYTHING smart like invest in infrastructure? watch the price fall. Just keep the money and let shit fall apart? Stock rises. What we need to do is tax the living shit out of the short termers so if you buy stock you would have to be INVESTING, not treating Wall Street as Vegas with nicer clothes.
As for TFA any of us that has had to deal with AT&T knows their infrastructure sucks ass, full stop. In my area everyone gets reamed by the cableco because even one week on AT&T DSL will make sure you NEVER want to deal with them again. Every time I start to bitch about the cableco prices all I have to do is get called out to a customer that can ONLY get AT&T DSL to go "Wow, thank God cable is in my area!". We are talking a TOP speed of 756k, most of the time sub 200k, and when having to deal with them for a customer got basically told "tough luck we have NO intention to upgrade now or anytime in the future". Monopolies must be nice.
As for their wireless the shit is so bad I had to wire my dad up his own mini cell tower just so his damned phone would work without him having to go stand outside and point at the tower, and this is in the middle of town? Frankly if it wasn't for the fact they were the only game in town I'm sure they wouldn't have ANY customers at all! Piss poor signal, piss poor speeds, piss poor service. Hell they might as well change the logo to Goatse with a new tag line of "AT&T: we own this area so bend over bitch"
So PJ is your sacred cow, is she? Even if she is wrong she is right? We have a description of that, it is called fanaticism and I would argue it is one of the fundamental failings of the Linux community, in that Linus himself can basically Goatse you and admits in his own words there is NO plan for the kernel (which is why your drivers break constantly, and if YOU tried that shit on a million dollar project you would be FIRED) and yet the community just bends over and says "please sir, may I have another?"
But if you are a thinking individual and not a slobbering fanatic, see for yourself. type in "groklaw Psystar" and see for your self. And isn't it funny how guys like you can ONLY attack the messenger and NOT the message? While I give PJ credit for SCO I'm also not so blinded by fanboyism that I think she walks on water or can't be full of shit now. Go on read it, then you come back here and tell me with a straight face you believe Psystar was secretly "being bankrolled by the evil M$ to kill the GPL". Because THAT is what PJ was trying to sell, and if you believe that I have some tasty koolaid for you.
As for what I've done? I'm a thinking individual that can read and doesn't stick my fingers in my ears and go "la la la" when someone points out a sacred cow has gone from just reporting facts to pure paranoia, which is sadly more than I can say for YOU. And if you TRULY believe that MSFT would waste time with some rinky dinky Hackentosh outfit so that OSX could be made CHEAPER for the masses, thus helping kill Windows on the low end? Well then all I have to say is, to quote an old joke, here's your sign.
Bingo! I bet if you figure up how much gas is wasted running back and forth compared to online shopping the amount of Co2 generated MORE than makes up for any 'dirty power" as they put it.
I know in my own case it was an almost daily running to town as well as at LEAST two trips to the state capital a week to keep the shop supplied (state capital is 120 miles round trip) so if we figure in 20 miles times say three if I was able to plan ahead along with 2 120 mile trips that is 300 miles a week in gas that isn't being blown anymore, and when my Ranger gets around 19 miles to the gallon that is a whole lot of gas!
But of course with our lovely politicians blowing cash like drunken sailors while giving free money and tax breaks to those who are sending jobs overseas (read what the head of GE says, he says "We are sending the high paying jobs to India because that's where the customers are now" really? Maybe if you wouldn't have sent all the jobs overseas Americans might have money to buy your stuff now. huh.) I wouldn't doubt if Internet sales end up taxed MORE than just going to Wally World, so we can flush any energy savings right down the toilet. Never seen a good idea a politician can't fuck up, doubt Internet commerce will be ANY different.
You want a perfect description of what is wrong with the modern COD just watch Yahtzee's take on Black ops. Yes I know he is a smartass Brit, but sometimes a smartass Brit is what you need. I have to agree that "hooked to an IV of pop rocks" is a good description. You have to build tension, and having shit blowing up every 2.6 seconds doesn't really do that, at least for me.
But then again I'm probably not in the marketing demographic, as I have NO desire to run around like a loonie in MP knifing people.