I have to agree though I'm not surprised. Never in the history of the company have they managed to come out with two decent products in a row, and Windows 7 is awesome so we frankly shouldn't be surprised that MSFT is completely cocking up Windows 8. Hopefully it will bomb like Vista and then maybe they'll stop listening to the talking heads that are always pushing the new hotness (remember how they said that we'll all be using Netbooks?) and focus on the core OS business which MAKES THEM MONEY.
And I further re-propose that the MSFT logo be changed to reflect the current situation. Old Gates has been retired for years, the MSFT Borg is old and stale. For the new logo I propose Ballmer sticking his tongue out with an "I Heart Apple!" beanie on his head, since his current modus operandi seems to be trying to ape every single move they make, even when it makes NO sense for the company! I can just imagine him trying to pep up the troops..."We're gonna make a mobile phone OS and bring it to the desktop which will make us as cool as Apple! Yes it will! it really will! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!!!"
Just when I thought Bozo the used car salesman Ballmer might have actually earned keeping his job by bringing out Windows 7 nope, still a dumbass. Can someone fire him pretty please? Oh and to the Apple guys: A heartfelt apology is in order, we LMAO at you when the Pepsi guy was running the company you depended on into the ground, and now that the shoe is on the other foot it really isn't very funny. So sorry about all the lame Apple jokes, we learned our lesson...Can we have Gates back now? Please?
Your product is a complete and total failure, except in those areas a corporation can fuck you hard (and then you thank them for the surprise buttsex) thanks to the TiVo trick, ala damned near every router and other CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) and you are so far behind you actually reach 1% and cheer (and it only took 18 years! Wow!).
NEVER, not fucking ONCE, does it enter your tiny little mind to even ask the most basic of econ 101 questions, such as "What is my competitors doing right that I'm doing wrong?" Nope, because that would mean admitting your shit sandwich OF FREEDOM was a festering turd, which BTW? It is. Instead you scream shill or astroturfer, which is your version of nigger or spic, for anyone who doesn't suck down the kool aid and wash it down with a heaping dose of RMS cock slobber.
And the part you'll NEVER believe, because it would shatter your tiny little worldview, hiding in your mom's basement eating your Cheetos and thinking if it wasn't for that evil M$ army the world would embrace your precious shit sandwich like the force you love so much? Well guess what sparky, I'm not a shill NOR an astroturfer, I'm in fact a retailer. You know, that group that you constantly whine would carry your shit sandwiches on their shelves? yeah that bunch. And you know WHY we won't carry your rotting bag o' fail? It isn't a conspiracy BTW, it is because we tried your product and we know your lies are just that, LIES.
I tried for nearly FOUR YEARS to find ONE DSITRO, just one mind you, that wouldn't fall apart like a house of old cards when a fat guy farts, just one that would continue to run consistently after updating. Just one mind you? How many did I find? ZERO.Zilch nada squat bumpkiss. Your driver model is a drawing of a pile of shit with "do it yourself LOL!" written underneath, your idea of having software tied to the kernel is frankly laughable if it wasn't so pathetic, your package managers are just band aids on bullet wounds trying to cover up the dependency hell that hangs over everything you do like the Sword of Damocles, shall I go on? Your lack of a stable ABI, which BTW Apple, MSFT, BSD, Solaris, hell even OS fricking 2 has had for like a decade now, means that shopping for devices that will actually work is a game of "hardware roulette" that is more rigged against the consumer than anything in Vegas...
Hell I could do this all day, but why bother. It is like pushing a retard into traffic. Sure it is easy because they are so fucking stupid, but not much in the way of entertainment value, not when I have dozens of top notch AAA games I could be playing, or Netflix, or WMC, or hell washing my socks would be more entertaining than dealing with a FOSSie. BTW do us both a favor before you open your cake hole and check on Linux TM Repo before you chime in, as the horseshit you and the other FOSSies spew has been done so damned many times TM repo actually has all your bullet points down as TMs. Hell I bet whatever you come back with I can match one for one with TMs, such as WorksFo
Sounds like a perfect use for the F/OSS model! I'm sure he has patents and or copyrights on his design, yes? so offer them to the world under a license that is free for non commercial use and anybody that wants to build commercial gives him a nice RAND number, say 3% per sale.
I'm sure there are plenty of countries out there that doesn't suck the big oil cock like the USA companies do, the BRIC for instance. Sounds like a good chance to give the big companies the bird and make a nice little bit of dough for old gramps while you're at it.
To quote Mel Brooks bullshit bullshit aaaand bullshit. Why does nobody give a shit about broadcast? because it sucks ass, that's why. That's like saying "why is nobody stealing these shit sandwiches" well because they are SHIT sandwiches, duh! And I don't know what magic land you like in but I've yet to see a broadcast movie they didn't cut to fuck. If I hear one more "eggroll" for asshole I'll bitch slap the announcer! And they don't change DVD and BD because it would break all the hardware they sold at Walmart, duh! That's why you'll be seeing Netflix like avenues getting the flix FIRST and LONGER and then, when they've made their pile o' cash, only then will you get a piece of plastic. Bet it'll suck not having Netflix then huh?
And Roku? That thing that has hardware DRM aka DRM in a box, that thing? If Linux will agree to ONLY be allowed on DRMed hardware sure you can have it. You won't? Well too bad, you get nothing. Windows and OSX can run it without DRM hardware thanks to the bloody kernel driver you just poo pooed. So I guess it is good for something isn't it? Sure as hell just gives Linux one more reason why Joe normal won't be touching it. I mean when you have to A.-buy another OS, B.-Install a VM, and C.-run said VM, all just to watch your movies on Netflix? yeah that's a giant DO NOT WANT.
And nothing uses it? try just about every PPV, be it on the web or elsewhere. hell Janus DRM is the only real hit they got from all that pushing WMA and WMV, and frankly it works great. Like Steam it stays out of your way, lets you see what you paid for, without having that one douchebag throw everything onto P2P three seconds after it runs and ruin it for everyone. Oh but again you wouldn't know this, because "freedom" is the freedom to do as Linus says, kinda like how even OS fricking 2 has stable drivers thanks to an ABI but dear douchebag Linus won't allow it because it would mean he couldn't teabag the kernel whenever he felt like it. What a great guy.
And finally YOU know as well as I do why you'd have to have a proprietary DRM driver in the kernel, it is to keep the "information wants to be free! Fight the power man!" douchebag from ruining it for the rest of us. You know what would happen three days after they released the code? The "Razr1911 Netfux instant record driver" that's what and YOU KNOW THIS. We've seen it time and time again, from DeCSS to the AACS code printed into a fucking flag!
But hey you know what? You fight the power man, you keep watching your crappy broadcast TV and thinking you've got it good, and wondering why nobody, neither in retail nor in the consumer market, will give your OS the time of day. Meanwhile I'LL be setting up nice new triples and quads, all running Windows 7, so that my customers can watch Netflix at the push of a wireless keyboard or remote. Its been 20 damned years already, you're at a lousy 1%. Time to grow up and ask yourself a simple question "What are my competitors doing right that I'm doing wrong?" (hint: its not a conspiracy).
And then maybe you'll actually listen to the masses and actually get things they want, like Netflix and drivers that don't break like its Win98. But no, instead you'll say "eat this shit sandwich OF FREEDOM!" and then get pissy when everyone laughs and walks away. Oh and a final twist of the knife, to pop the delusions that you and so many FOSSies live under: You know why Roku and so many other pieces of hardware use Linux? It is because thanks to TiVo they can fuck you out of the code that's right! Thanks to code signing and eFuses your developers slaved away for the big nasty corps and all they got was a Goatse in the form of eFuses. Way to kill yourself for nothing developers! I'm sure the megacorps would thank you if they weren't too busy laughing at your naivete.
While I find it humorous that a guy with a UID of R Stallman is suggesting WMC, in this case he's right. it isn't like you have to do...well much of anything if you want to record with WMC. Any cheap USB cap card will do, I personally have the basic cable plugged into mine. Simply pick a show, choose "record series" and...well there is no step three, that's pretty much it. Hell my dad can record with WMC and it took him years to figure out where defrag was on WinXP.
So if we were talking one of those shows that aren't one pretty much 24/7 then I'd agree with you but ST is on basic cable pretty much every single day, and with WMC it is beyond simple to just have it watch for the things and save them all for you nice and neat.
And the way we've seen IP holders suddenly get their panties in a wad and take stuff back, such as the games they yanked off of GOG or the books they yanked off Amazon if I was into trek I'd just go ahead and get the episodes in a way I can keep them without worrying about take backs or streaming issues.
So I'd say this one is brain dead simple: There are no legal issues with regards to time shifting, the shows are on practically 24/7, and choosing a whole series is as simple as "record series" so I don't see how more simple anyone could make it, short of a single script that would magically download the whole series and burn them onto tasteful Lightscribe discs with the captains faces on them.
Riiight,and fascism is just another name for love and all white folks are in the Klan! I personally still got a nice scar on the back of my head thanks to a cop in MS, who said, and I quote "God damned niggers and fucking hippies, I don't know which I can't stand more". BTW that "God Damned nigger" I was riding with? He was a baptist minister, I was playing in his traveling tent revival on bass as a personal favor.
So allow me to say, from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourself your fascist cock sucking racist assclown.
Really needs to DIAF. I mean sure, if the drug company lies? Bust their asses, shut them down. but too many drugs, drugs that can save lives and make folks lives better, are being taken off the market not by lies but by douches that don't follow directions and that is total bullshit! If my doc explains the pros and cons of a drug and I agree to take it it should be between my doc and myself not some ambulance chasing scumbag!
I had this one personally bite me in the ass in the 80s. There was a drug called Tegison which was like a miracle cure for the form of psoriatic arthritis that left me crippled after a traumatic bike wreck triggered the recessive gene and caused my immune system to go haywire. No side effects, it was like heaven.
So what happened? Simple before they would even give you the drug you had to watch 30 minutes worth of films and sign a ton of agreements agreeing not to have children because it would cause flipper babies, so a couple of stupid whores watched the films, signed the papers and promptly got knocked up and then sued the company right out of existence by popping out a couple of mutants.
It didn't matter what they saw or signed, all it took was some scumbag lawyer showing pics of horribly fucked up kids (even though it was the bitch's fault and she should have been thrown in jail for doing that to a kid) and he got them an assload of money. Next thing you know OTHER women are showing up wanting a check (which means I have no doubt they purposely got preg on the drug to cash in) and the company simply quit making it rather than risk more suits. My pharmacist was nice enough to buy every single box he could possibly find when he heard, even going so far as to contact drug suppliers in South America, but eventually it dried up and it was nearly 6 years before they found anything else that would work.
That is 6 YEARS of pain I wouldn't have had to go through if those bitches and their leech wouldn't have been able to pull that shit (may they die of cancer) so it is time for some REAL reforms! I propose that there be an ironclad "no suing, do not pass go, GTFO" contract that any doctor be allowed to use with a drug, so bullshit lawsuits like the one that hurt me end for good. There were people willing to take the risk for what Vioxx did for them too, now they get to suffer thanks to a leech.
Whether a drug is worth the risk for the benefits should be up to the PATIENT, not some damned ambulance chaser!
No offense dude, but it sounds like a classic case of putting the lipstick on a pig. if you need all those accessories to use the thing? Then perhaps a tablet ain't the right tool for your particular job. And tablets as a "gaming platform"? if you call Angry Birds and Farmvillve games instead of time wasters then MAYBE.
I think this is just another case of everybody and their dog jumping on the new fad and thinking its the second coming. Remember when netbooks were the new hotness? Hell I saw "gaming netbooks" pushed then as well, anything to separate your offering from the pack. What happened to those? oh yeah people found out that cheap and little only got you so far and the bottom fell out, same as what will happen to tablets.
Do I think tablets are toast? Nope same as I doubt netbooks will ever truly go away, as both have their uses. For netbooks it is those like my dad who I picked up a nice AMD dual netbook for, it was only $430 and is small enough he can just throw it in his briefcase and if he needs to shoot out an invoice or check on a part on the job site he can just flip it on and BAM, its done. It also gives him an easy way to watch videos and check his mail while waiting on a contractor. But even my oldest who I thought being in college would appreciate the form factor ended up going with a full laptop (I found him a nice deal on a Turion cheap) because he found the form factor too small and limiting (it probably didn't help that he and his buddies frag fest to kill time between classes either).
Same thing with tablets, in that while the average Joe will probably quickly get bored and look for the next new hotness for the medical and warehouse trades the tablet is like a Godsend. All the doctor's offices and hospitals in my area are switching to tablets, which lets the doc have any and all data at his fingertips, lets the nurses update charts, etc, while in the warehouse business several of my customers are using tablets now for inventory management and just love the things to death.
So in the end I think the same thing that happened to netbooks will happen to tablets, we just haven't reached the saturation point yet. it is still too new and many are still in the new hotness stage, once it has been out for a little while and folks see that it isn't the second coming most will get dumped, just like how my Craigslist is plumb full of netbooks ATM. Gaming is simply better done with some buttons or a controller and the tablet FF? Not really made for that.
Hell I live on the "meth highway" which runs between Mexico and Kansas (don't know how much farther north it goes, if someone does chime in as I'm curious) and if the cops can't get paid in cash or dope they don't give a fuck if you beat or rob, as long as its a peasant! here's a couple of true stories from the meth highway.
..A neighbor called the cops because somebody beat his ass and stole his checks. I TOLD HIM that his best bet was to find out who did it and round up a couple of guys, but nope, he decided he should "trust in the law" so what happened? Well when someone started passing off the checks they came and arrested HIS ASS and when he pointed out that whomever had been passing the checks was A.-described as a tall brown hair, while he is a short blond, and B.- the cashier wrote the thieves DL number on the checks and it sure as fuck wasn't his they wrote "chance of solving case 0%" at the top and file 13'd it in front of him. Why? Too much work, no profit!
Story 2...My late sister lived across the street from a gal whose ex was savagely beating her. Restraining order didn't do shit, cops would show up MAYBE 4 hours after she called and my sis was afraid the gal was gonna get killed. I told her put that gal on the horn and told her "Say the D word" and when she asked what I was talking about I said simply "Cops ain't doing shit unless there is cash or dope in it for them, so tell them you think he is holding a large bag of dope. It don't matter if he is, they will come lightning fast and if they end up empty handed it will be HIS ASS that gets a beat down". Sure enough I get invited to her house the next week for a big home cooked chicken dinner. She said "God you're wonderful...IT WORKED LIKE A CHARM! They were here in under three minutes, tore his truck apart, and when they didn't find anything they threw the book at him, he is looking at something like 10 years!"
So yeah, unless this guy pissed off a cop I call bullshit. As long as its peasant on peasant at least here cops don't give a fuck, and traveling all over the south I have seen nothing to think it is ANY different anywhere else. The only exceptions I have seen is DWB and DWH, which is driving while black and driving while hippie, which depending on which area you are in can get you a beat down just for breathing. But as long as it is peasant on peasant they just file 13 it and call it a day. Hell I liked it better when the cops were just openly corrupt, at least in the 70s you didn't get DWB or DWH unless you were being a prick, now the only pricks are the guys with badges.
Oh its been that way for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was stationed overseas and used to love to bring home "Magnatox" radios and "RGA" electronic doo dads. Hell you should look up the guy in Bangkok that makes fake Ferraris and Lamborghini racers. Damned things can't be told apart until you pop the hood and see the Toyota Supra engine!
Why are they doing this now? One word: Egypt. The fact that with Internet organizing one of their old boys club could be run out on a rail? I'm sure that scares the shit out of them.
As for TFA? I'm sure we'll be seeing more of this in the coming months. Anything that can threaten power the way it did in Egypt will have to be monitored (for the children/terrists/etc) and sadly most folks won't know nor care that everything is being monitored as long as it isn't THEIR door that gets kicked in. If you're doing nothing wrong, right?
You know, I still don't get why everyone thinks the USA will go with a whimper instead of a bang, when we have the largest military BY FAR and every other country with a large military has gone empire building when the shit gets bad at home. Personally I think that Germany had the role of bad guy twice, now it'll be the USA's turn and the scary part? If we pull it off right we'll actually win.
How could the USA win against the world? Simple: deals baby deals. Tell the Chinese they can have Africa, and we'll not say shit about Taiwan if they play ball and boom! China is out. Tell Putin that if he wants to be president for life and have the old USSR back the USA won't say shit, help yourself Vlad! Boom! Russia is out. This will also take out most of the EU that will be pissing themselves looking at a new USSR with no NATO to back them up.
So what does the USA get? Simple, North and South America! Enough resources we could tell the rest of the world to STFU and live quite well on the spoils, not that we'd have to with our Russian and Chinese friends backing us up. Hell there are enough easy targets like Chavez a few false flags wouldn't be hard to do at all, especially if they come with a program of "bread and jobs". All that would leave is the UK and France and Italy, Germany too busy with the USSR breathing down their necks, and I doubt they do shit. oh they'd bitch, but that's it.
So I really wouldn't be counting on that whole "going out with a whimper" thing since never in history has a country with a huge powerful military went silently into that good night without stirring us some serious shit first. The only reason the USSR disappeared is the people turned against it without a cult of personality leader (like old Joe before and like Vlad now) but we Americans are easy to get riled up, just give us lots of jingoism and flag waving and most will jump right on board. Scary thought huh?
But that would be too obvious. The smarter solution if you insist on carrying your laptop is to pack the drive as you said, but replace it with one of those cheapo CF adapters with a bog standard clean image.
Then if the bulls want to fire up the thing all they'll find is a basic set of programs like FF (I'd go ahead and make a couple of links to boring sites like tech blogs just to make it look used) and when you get to your destination you can just pop it back in. Encrypt the original drive of course in case your luggage disappears.
Personally I'm starting to wonder if this isn't designed to just completely kill tourism. I bet someone will make a killing when all those hotels that aren't being used by tourists anymore go under, hell they'll probably get them for pennies on the dollar!
Frankly it wouldn't surprise me, nor does the fact that the US and the UK seem to be in a race to see who can become the living embodiment of Orwell's 1984 first. I'd say being on camera 24/7 would give a slight edge to the UK, but with this and the "all your email belongs to us" we saw on/. the other day I think we're currently tied.
You still writing those looong AC piled links to nowhere? Notice NOBODY responds to you anymore but me, and I ONLY do so to laugh at you? Why is that APK? Could it be like on Ars everyone is on to your bullshit and nobody gives a fuck what you think? Keep dancing for me monkey boy, while I don't bother reading anything you write it gives me a warm fuzzy inside to see you jump through my hoops and follow me like a little bitch who wants another taste, dance monkeyboy, dance! LOL! Here enjoy some copypasta, hell you aren't even interesting enough to bother responding to with anything else. Enjoy fail boy!
And this coming from poor wittle APK, also know as "Petey, the idiot HOPES file guy"? As in you HOPES that one of the 300,000+ constantly changing array of websites that are infected doesn't happen to be the one you visit today? Or that you HOPES that nobody notices after repeatedly being asked you have FAILED to show even the tiniest shred of mathematical proof that your magical woobie can scale? That you HOPES nobody notices your only "proof" is anecdotes, often by your own sock puppets like Kingsjester?
And I don't have to be exact, because I'm not the one making outrageous claims If someone claims they can stretch their dick into a giant slingshot and shoot themselves to Scotland it is not the readers job to prove them wrong but the posters job to back that up with real prof, not an anecdote that says "well my cousin Joey saw me do it last Halloween!".
I have also shown repeatedly that at the absolute reported minimum number of new pieces of malweare and infections, which you are free to pick whichever reputable website you like Securina, MSFT's malware reports, AVG, which ever, that at an absolute minimum we are talking about 1.2 million sites PER DAY with that number changing by 15,000+ PER HOUR which means even if you typed at 1 IP address PER SECOND, and never slept, and had a perfect list (which doesn't exist) you would be 14 days behind by the very first day with that number growing linearly every single day, making Petey farther and farther behind.
But if you weren't completely batshit insane Petey I wouldn't have to explain this, because this is why everyone makes fun of you. It is so obvious it is like someone arguing gravity is actually invisible pants gnomes trying to steal your underwear. It is the classic "default allow" which has NEVER EVER worked. Because if a piece of malware isn't in magical HOPES file Petey you are royally fucked, and yet again I have shown that it is simply a roll of the dice whether you get creamed or not, simply because you will always be behind.
So it is all on you Petey and your magical HOPES woobie now. You made the extravagant claims, back them up with the math. If you can't? Well then you are full of shit, case closed. Notice how ALL YOU CAN DO PETEY is throw insults and trollbomb? Why is that? I'll tell you why, because math doesn't lie and you just can't show the math You just can't, it would be like trying to mathematically prove you are not an idiot. It just can't be done.
So please, keep dancing to my tune like a little bitch APK, I do so enjoy pointingoutthe totaluber fail of your magical woobie so. I also personally consider it a public service to point people to solutionsthat actuallywork instead of relying on magical woobies and anecdotes. And of course bi
Question: If it looks like random data to the host OS, what is to keep the host OS from writing over it? Maybe they've figured out something I don't see, but it seems like it would be pretty trivial to find out if there is a Truecrypt volume by simply writing data to the "random space" and seeing if you can fill it up or not.
If the host OS knows its there and not to write over it then anyone looking at the laptop can find the same, unless I'm missing something?
Actually I'd say the smart thing would be to buy a cheapy netbook once you get here, send your data (encrypted of course) via broadband back home, and then hand out the netbook to some poor shlub near the airport. Kinda sad that we've become just another banana republic (with soon the third world economy to match) but until the American people are ready to pull our own Egypt it isn't like there is any choice, what with elections being broken and all.
Hi MR AC, got bit by the 503 bug? But you are seeing only a small part of what it is actually costing us. My mom recently retired from nursing and the last few years the lack of preventative care has caused a new terminology to pop up amongst the doctors and nurses...TPTL...do you know what that stands for?
It stands for "Too Poor To Live" and it is a shorthand that those in the medical field use for those they could have saved if they only had access to preventative care. We are talking people in their 30s and 40s that could have lived a long life as a useful member of our society, now gone thanks to something so basic.
Sadly the fact that they have a name for it should show you how widespread it is, and it doesn't even cover all the other hidden costs, like the woman my mother treated whose three kids ended up wards of the state after she died of a cancer that could have been treated, or all the illness that spreads through a family and then lays up half a town when if they could have afforded medical care they wouldn't have been spreading the crap around.
So in the end we need to be pushing for preventive care for the poor not only because it is the right thing to do, but I bet my rapidly devaluing last dollar that it would end up costing a hell of a lot less over both the short and long term. things caught early can be treated with less expensive non experimental drugs, use less drugs, and when adding in the lost wages and taxes that person would have paid in I bet it really adds up.
Of course this is if the truth isn't what some of my friends in the medical field believe, that the conservative groups want to go "back to the 50s" alright, but the 1850s not 1950s, where the poor simply died out from disease. Seeing as how those like Cheney can afford screenings that allow them to survive cancers and other diseases that cause the poor a long slow death frankly I wouldn't be surprised, especially after seeing "RyanCare" and what it'll do to the poor.
You know, despite all the "Oracle boo, Google yay" fanboyism we see here at/. I still haven't heard anybody give a reasonable answer as to why this isn't the exact same as the MS Java mess which everyone was cheering when Sun shut it down?
The point to having licensing with regards to Java at Sun was to keep third parties from fracturing Java and it sounds like this is what Davilk or however you spell it is doing. If MS renamed MS Java to MS Coffee would that have made it okay? After all it isn't Java, it just runs Java code! To me the whole thing smells like fanoyism and bullshit. But to me hypocrisy is hypocrisy, and if it was bad for MS to fracture Java then so too is it bad for Google.
And call me weird, but I still don't get why FOSS fans run to the defense of Google. They aren't letting you have the Android 3.0 source, they've historically kept the best bits like their file system (built on FOSS) to themselves to give them an advantage, and they've purposely gone out of their way to disallow any GPL V3 which means Android is most likely gonna end up TiVo'd, yet the FOSS fans run to their rescue? I just don't get it.
While it wasn't the standard when the Wii came out 720p and HDMI most definitely WERE standards and not having native high def nor HDMI was a bad move. Most under $1k sets have plenty of HDMI, one composite, so having native 1080p and HDMI will be a must.
As for the controller you missed the point friend. One of the problems with the Wii is how many do the "Wii Waggle" simply because they can't count on a regular controller so even if their game isn't really gonna work with motion controls they have to use it because that is the ONE controller they can be sure of. Now I'm sure you've played enough games to know there are plenty of titles where motion controls simply make NO sense, yes? By having BOTH motion and regular controls you can make sure that games only use the motion where it makes sense instead of trying to shoehorn it where it doesn't, thus making it easier and better both on the developers AND the gamers.
As for backwards compatibility? Everyone made fun of MSFT for it in Windows and look how well that turned out. With the price on console games it simply makes good sense to let your users keep their old games, and MSFT was stupid IMHO not to keep the X360 having 100% backwards compatibility. One of the things that made the Wii a no brainer for my family was the youngest having a ton of Gamecube games, which meant all the money we had sunk into GC could be used in the Wii. We had both the Xbox I and still have a PS2 like you, and lack of compatibility ended up spooking us off.
Finally as to hardcore gaming? The price for the PPC chips that are currently in the X360 are frankly dirt cheap, as is the current HD5xxx and HD6xxx GPUs by ATI (who made the current Wii chip) So if they are smart they'd go COTS and keep the old Hollywood GPU for backwards compatibility and I/O, and use the X360 triple core PPC and a new ATI chip for their next gen unit. This would make porting between the Wii and the X360 MUCH easier, while giving the Wii 2 the power needed to do high def easily. And since they'd be using COTS the economies of scale would be in their favor and help drive the console BOM down.
In the end I don't think it needs to be about hardcore gaming so much as trying to keep third party developers. Thanks to the fact you practically have to write a completely new game because the Wii is so far behind what you end up with is shovelware from the third parties and Nintendo simply can't afford to go it alone. look at how few non Nintendo titles are worth owning and you'll see making it easier on developers needs to be job #1 at Nintendo, because frankly I don't see them keeping casual gamers as a core market and surviving. Casual gamers simply don't buy enough titles and it looks like the future will be PC and phone games for them anyway, things like Farmville and Angry Birds. IMHO they have to at least keep enough regular gamers to keep the sell through high enough to justify third party support which the Wii is seriously needing right about now.
As a person with two nurses and a doctor in the family do you want to know the REAL reason our system is completely broken? You do? The answer is simple: we save a penny and spend a pound it is as simple as that. Let me give an example of one my mom had to work on...
37 year old male, working poor, couldn't get a tooth extracted. Cost of the tooth? maybe $700 if he needs an oral surgeon. But to the working poor that may as well be $700,000 because both are out of reach, since they are living hand to mouth. Neither the state nor the fed will pay for preventive care like that. So what?
Well instead you got to pay for the new valves for his heart and a month in the hospital getting antibiotics because the infected tooth spread infection into his bloodstream and it attacked his heart. It is actually quite common, the actor Andy Hallet died from it. Cost? I'd say around $300,000 easy.
And THAT, that right there, is the problem. Instead of adopting a sane system where the poor could get preventive medicine we instead pay outrageous prices to take care of them when they are at death's door, when it costs CRAZY money to put them back on their feet. if either the state or the fed would have paid that $700 we wouldn't have had a $300,000 bill passed on to the government. Does the current system make ANY sense?
As for TFA, meet the new boss, yada yada. That is why we need multiple parties here, because what we have is an "El Presidente" banana republic going on, where it doesn't matter which you vote for they BOTH want more power for themselves and less rights for you, they BOTH want to stuff their pockets and pay off their cronies. The ONLY difference between the two is which asses get kissed the most and neither give a shit about the country or the people.
The Ds prefer the taste of big media and union ass, while the Rs prefer the corporate and MIC ass. That's it. Otherwise it is the same shit, different day. And if the Rs run anybody but Caribou Barbie they'll win by a landslide because so many are sick of Obama's bullshit.
Yep in 30 damned years they've launched a grand total of SEVEN, count them seven, patent/copyright lawsuits. And MSFT has historically offered RAND, as in reasonable and non discriminatory, licensing on their patents and copyrights for ages. Notice how NOBODY during the TomTom suit pointed out MSFT had offered them RAND on Fat32 and got the finger in return? How many suits and motions does the FSF file yearly? I bet its more than seven. If MSFT wanted to drop the patent bomb they would have done so back in the WinME days.
And yes latches would cover technology they expressly handed to the public through their agreement not to sue. Any court would laugh the thing out before it even got to pre-trial. And SCO? Again you are talking ancient history, hell Gates was still running the company when that thing started. Its old news.
What you SHOULD be watching, and what I'm gonna ROFLMAO when it bites you right in the ass, is Google. Google is getting ready to skullfuck the whole community but the fanbois are too busy kissing their ass to see it coming. Google has been VERY careful to avoid ANY and all GPL V3, why is that? I'll tell you why it is because GPL V2 might as well be PD and both Google and any other corp KNOWS this. The developers that wrote all those neat embedded programs are gonna get nothing for their trouble but the finger and code they can't run thanks to code signing and eFuses.
So please, keep sling the FUD and planning yesterday's war, while leaning up against the big bad wolf in sheep's clothing. Google has kept ALL of the decent stuff internal, simply so they won't have to share, and now with 3.0 they are starting to lock things up. Thanks to TiVo GPL V2 will be the new BSD, with any and all corps filling their boots while giving you...hell anything they want, it isn't like you'll be able to run the code to see if it works or not anyway. Meanwhile I'll LMAO at the naivete of the community who thought because Google used some of their code that they were friends. the ONLY friend Google has IS GOOGLE, period. You are about to be train banged and don't even see it coming, because you're too busy writing M$ and thinking like it is 1997. WAKE UP!
Actually I'd say thesetwo fit the situation better. That said Happy BDay, may you manage to keep the corps from TiVo tricking your code, and keep making it so any CPU in recorded history can have a Bash term and be hacked. Many happy returns and here's to another 20 years.
Yes but if you look at the sell through (the number of titles per console sold) you'll see it is pretty appalling, especially if you are a third party developer. From what I've seen locally most are doing with their Wii consoles what my family is currently doing with theirs, which is letting it sit in a corner and gather dust. Once you have played the first party titles there really isn't much left to do which is similar to the Gamecube at this point in the game.
The uniqueness of the controller and the cheap price got them so far, but now frankly everyone that wanted one has one and third party developers seem to be meh when compared to X360 and PS3. I'd say the one with the ability to hold out the longest will be the X360 simply because of XBL, the PS3 suffers from "the Saturn problem" in that while it is technically more powerful it is a royal bitch to program for from what I've read.
So Nintendo needs to be the first out the gate with a new machine, as others have put with a real controller to go with the WiiMote simply to give developers the ability to count on real controllers when the "Wii Waggle" simply won't fit the core gameplay of their game. I mean the X360 and PS3 both have motion control now, but you don't see every game trying to use it, do you? And hardware wise their machine is simply too far behind the curve, having the cheapest BOM is nice and all but not when the games look lousy on the current High Def sets.
So bottom line: 1080p support, real controller pack in, backwards compatibility with Wii and they have a winner. They really can't afford to let MSFT or Sony get out of the gate first, especially not MSFT thanks to XBL, and their console looks by far the worst sitting side by side with the other two in graphics. So I'd say if TFA isn't right it damned well needs to be as Nintendo can't afford to wait until the Wii has completely run out of gas before kicking out the new console. They simply don't have the support and can't keep an entire console afloat by themselves.
Dude its been eleven years already and NOTHING...zip nada squat zilcho...I think by this point it is safe to call FUD in the case of the FOSS advocates because any attempt by MSFT now would most likely get their asses kicked in court under latches.
So give it a rest already. What are you gonna say in the 7 or 8 years when the patents will have run out? "Oh but they may have figured out how to hide the longest submarine patent in history"? Bullshit is bullshit no matter WHO slings it and by claiming "its a trap!" this late in the game (although I will give you credit for not writing M$, but I bet you were tempted, weren't you?) it simply makes FOSS look like a bunch of tinfoil hatters. IS that REALLY how you want FOSS to be seen?
How about instead of FUD you simply tell developers to try the different languages and choose the best tool for the job they have. FOSS is all about choice, yes? or is it only about choices you agree with? But if the best argument you have against C# is magical hidden patents that have NEVER been seen or used? Well then you really have no argument at all.
Oh and this master plan to "kill Linux"? Get over yourself, you aren't that big a target anymore. The new hotness is iOS, which is why MSFT is sinking billions into acquiring Nokia. Google has pretty much locked Linux out of the game (How's that 3.0 source code?) by refusing to allow GPL V3 so that it can TiVo trick the code away from the users and developers, RIM is dead, that leaves HP, MSFT, and the big boy Apple. The HP option will probably again be TiVo tricked, so the only real targets are Google and Apple. Linux? I doubt its even on the radar anymore.
But if you really think MSFT is gonna sink hundreds of millions into a successor to VB, all in this insanely loooooong winded plot to kill Linux? You might want to check your tinfoil hat, it is probably on too tight. If MSFT wanted Linux dead buying the top 20 developers would cripple it in a heartbeat and leave it waaaaay behind. Hell Oracle is a bigger threat to Linux now than MSFT, you just aren't a big enough fish in the new market to be a target, sorry.
At $595 its not exactly what I'd call cheap (The $250 is for a bare bones with most of the parts missing) and for what you are wanting to do it sounds like you'd be better off with a Dell Zino with a wireless keyboard. Hell even the bottom of the line one has better specs and is only $299.
While I'd call it cute folks seem to forget there is a reason we don't build PCs into keyboards and that is because we learned from our mistake in the 80s. The PC in the keyboard was just one of many bad ideas we thankfully outgrew, because if anything happened to the keys you were boned.
While some here may be nostalgic for the old days (I started out on the VIC and I like things as they are now, thanks anyway) but working my butt off on the keyboard like I did with the VIC so I can use my PC? Uh Uh, I have a closet full of keyboards and if anything happens to this one? Takes maybe 3 minutes. Remember kids, it isn't just how careful YOU are, it is how careful is your wife/GF, kids, friends, kinfolks,pets, etc are around this thing.
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I have to agree though I'm not surprised. Never in the history of the company have they managed to come out with two decent products in a row, and Windows 7 is awesome so we frankly shouldn't be surprised that MSFT is completely cocking up Windows 8. Hopefully it will bomb like Vista and then maybe they'll stop listening to the talking heads that are always pushing the new hotness (remember how they said that we'll all be using Netbooks?) and focus on the core OS business which MAKES THEM MONEY.
And I further re-propose that the MSFT logo be changed to reflect the current situation. Old Gates has been retired for years, the MSFT Borg is old and stale. For the new logo I propose Ballmer sticking his tongue out with an "I Heart Apple!" beanie on his head, since his current modus operandi seems to be trying to ape every single move they make, even when it makes NO sense for the company! I can just imagine him trying to pep up the troops..."We're gonna make a mobile phone OS and bring it to the desktop which will make us as cool as Apple! Yes it will! it really will! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!!!"
Just when I thought Bozo the used car salesman Ballmer might have actually earned keeping his job by bringing out Windows 7 nope, still a dumbass. Can someone fire him pretty please? Oh and to the Apple guys: A heartfelt apology is in order, we LMAO at you when the Pepsi guy was running the company you depended on into the ground, and now that the shoe is on the other foot it really isn't very funny. So sorry about all the lame Apple jokes, we learned our lesson...Can we have Gates back now? Please?
Your product is a complete and total failure, except in those areas a corporation can fuck you hard (and then you thank them for the surprise buttsex) thanks to the TiVo trick, ala damned near every router and other CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) and you are so far behind you actually reach 1% and cheer (and it only took 18 years! Wow!).
Meanwhile consumers run away from your product as fast as they can, and tell you in giant letters DO NOT WANT even on products designed around your strengths, and retailers look at you like the black death thanks to all the returns and broken drivers, oh and your great leader says the kernel isn't designed, it grows like a virus LOL! (Yeah Linus, it would be called an STD) and you know what is amazing and sad?
NEVER, not fucking ONCE, does it enter your tiny little mind to even ask the most basic of econ 101 questions, such as "What is my competitors doing right that I'm doing wrong?" Nope, because that would mean admitting your shit sandwich OF FREEDOM was a festering turd, which BTW? It is. Instead you scream shill or astroturfer, which is your version of nigger or spic, for anyone who doesn't suck down the kool aid and wash it down with a heaping dose of RMS cock slobber.
And the part you'll NEVER believe, because it would shatter your tiny little worldview, hiding in your mom's basement eating your Cheetos and thinking if it wasn't for that evil M$ army the world would embrace your precious shit sandwich like the force you love so much? Well guess what sparky, I'm not a shill NOR an astroturfer, I'm in fact a retailer. You know, that group that you constantly whine would carry your shit sandwiches on their shelves? yeah that bunch. And you know WHY we won't carry your rotting bag o' fail? It isn't a conspiracy BTW, it is because we tried your product and we know your lies are just that, LIES.
I tried for nearly FOUR YEARS to find ONE DSITRO, just one mind you, that wouldn't fall apart like a house of old cards when a fat guy farts, just one that would continue to run consistently after updating. Just one mind you? How many did I find? ZERO.Zilch nada squat bumpkiss. Your driver model is a drawing of a pile of shit with "do it yourself LOL!" written underneath, your idea of having software tied to the kernel is frankly laughable if it wasn't so pathetic, your package managers are just band aids on bullet wounds trying to cover up the dependency hell that hangs over everything you do like the Sword of Damocles, shall I go on? Your lack of a stable ABI, which BTW Apple, MSFT, BSD, Solaris, hell even OS fricking 2 has had for like a decade now, means that shopping for devices that will actually work is a game of "hardware roulette" that is more rigged against the consumer than anything in Vegas...
Hell I could do this all day, but why bother. It is like pushing a retard into traffic. Sure it is easy because they are so fucking stupid, but not much in the way of entertainment value, not when I have dozens of top notch AAA games I could be playing, or Netflix, or WMC, or hell washing my socks would be more entertaining than dealing with a FOSSie. BTW do us both a favor before you open your cake hole and check on Linux TM Repo before you chime in, as the horseshit you and the other FOSSies spew has been done so damned many times TM repo actually has all your bullet points down as TMs. Hell I bet whatever you come back with I can match one for one with TMs, such as WorksFo
Sounds like a perfect use for the F/OSS model! I'm sure he has patents and or copyrights on his design, yes? so offer them to the world under a license that is free for non commercial use and anybody that wants to build commercial gives him a nice RAND number, say 3% per sale.
I'm sure there are plenty of countries out there that doesn't suck the big oil cock like the USA companies do, the BRIC for instance. Sounds like a good chance to give the big companies the bird and make a nice little bit of dough for old gramps while you're at it.
To quote Mel Brooks bullshit bullshit aaaand bullshit. Why does nobody give a shit about broadcast? because it sucks ass, that's why. That's like saying "why is nobody stealing these shit sandwiches" well because they are SHIT sandwiches, duh! And I don't know what magic land you like in but I've yet to see a broadcast movie they didn't cut to fuck. If I hear one more "eggroll" for asshole I'll bitch slap the announcer! And they don't change DVD and BD because it would break all the hardware they sold at Walmart, duh! That's why you'll be seeing Netflix like avenues getting the flix FIRST and LONGER and then, when they've made their pile o' cash, only then will you get a piece of plastic. Bet it'll suck not having Netflix then huh?
And Roku? That thing that has hardware DRM aka DRM in a box, that thing? If Linux will agree to ONLY be allowed on DRMed hardware sure you can have it. You won't? Well too bad, you get nothing. Windows and OSX can run it without DRM hardware thanks to the bloody kernel driver you just poo pooed. So I guess it is good for something isn't it? Sure as hell just gives Linux one more reason why Joe normal won't be touching it. I mean when you have to A.-buy another OS, B.-Install a VM, and C.-run said VM, all just to watch your movies on Netflix? yeah that's a giant DO NOT WANT.
And nothing uses it? try just about every PPV, be it on the web or elsewhere. hell Janus DRM is the only real hit they got from all that pushing WMA and WMV, and frankly it works great. Like Steam it stays out of your way, lets you see what you paid for, without having that one douchebag throw everything onto P2P three seconds after it runs and ruin it for everyone. Oh but again you wouldn't know this, because "freedom" is the freedom to do as Linus says, kinda like how even OS fricking 2 has stable drivers thanks to an ABI but dear douchebag Linus won't allow it because it would mean he couldn't teabag the kernel whenever he felt like it. What a great guy.
And finally YOU know as well as I do why you'd have to have a proprietary DRM driver in the kernel, it is to keep the "information wants to be free! Fight the power man!" douchebag from ruining it for the rest of us. You know what would happen three days after they released the code? The "Razr1911 Netfux instant record driver" that's what and YOU KNOW THIS. We've seen it time and time again, from DeCSS to the AACS code printed into a fucking flag!
But hey you know what? You fight the power man, you keep watching your crappy broadcast TV and thinking you've got it good, and wondering why nobody, neither in retail nor in the consumer market, will give your OS the time of day. Meanwhile I'LL be setting up nice new triples and quads, all running Windows 7, so that my customers can watch Netflix at the push of a wireless keyboard or remote. Its been 20 damned years already, you're at a lousy 1%. Time to grow up and ask yourself a simple question "What are my competitors doing right that I'm doing wrong?" (hint: its not a conspiracy).
And then maybe you'll actually listen to the masses and actually get things they want, like Netflix and drivers that don't break like its Win98. But no, instead you'll say "eat this shit sandwich OF FREEDOM!" and then get pissy when everyone laughs and walks away. Oh and a final twist of the knife, to pop the delusions that you and so many FOSSies live under: You know why Roku and so many other pieces of hardware use Linux? It is because thanks to TiVo they can fuck you out of the code that's right! Thanks to code signing and eFuses your developers slaved away for the big nasty corps and all they got was a Goatse in the form of eFuses. Way to kill yourself for nothing developers! I'm sure the megacorps would thank you if they weren't too busy laughing at your naivete.
While I find it humorous that a guy with a UID of R Stallman is suggesting WMC, in this case he's right. it isn't like you have to do...well much of anything if you want to record with WMC. Any cheap USB cap card will do, I personally have the basic cable plugged into mine. Simply pick a show, choose "record series" and...well there is no step three, that's pretty much it. Hell my dad can record with WMC and it took him years to figure out where defrag was on WinXP.
So if we were talking one of those shows that aren't one pretty much 24/7 then I'd agree with you but ST is on basic cable pretty much every single day, and with WMC it is beyond simple to just have it watch for the things and save them all for you nice and neat.
And the way we've seen IP holders suddenly get their panties in a wad and take stuff back, such as the games they yanked off of GOG or the books they yanked off Amazon if I was into trek I'd just go ahead and get the episodes in a way I can keep them without worrying about take backs or streaming issues.
So I'd say this one is brain dead simple: There are no legal issues with regards to time shifting, the shows are on practically 24/7, and choosing a whole series is as simple as "record series" so I don't see how more simple anyone could make it, short of a single script that would magically download the whole series and burn them onto tasteful Lightscribe discs with the captains faces on them.
Riiight,and fascism is just another name for love and all white folks are in the Klan! I personally still got a nice scar on the back of my head thanks to a cop in MS, who said, and I quote "God damned niggers and fucking hippies, I don't know which I can't stand more". BTW that "God Damned nigger" I was riding with? He was a baptist minister, I was playing in his traveling tent revival on bass as a personal favor.
So allow me to say, from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourself your fascist cock sucking racist assclown.
Really needs to DIAF. I mean sure, if the drug company lies? Bust their asses, shut them down. but too many drugs, drugs that can save lives and make folks lives better, are being taken off the market not by lies but by douches that don't follow directions and that is total bullshit! If my doc explains the pros and cons of a drug and I agree to take it it should be between my doc and myself not some ambulance chasing scumbag!
I had this one personally bite me in the ass in the 80s. There was a drug called Tegison which was like a miracle cure for the form of psoriatic arthritis that left me crippled after a traumatic bike wreck triggered the recessive gene and caused my immune system to go haywire. No side effects, it was like heaven.
So what happened? Simple before they would even give you the drug you had to watch 30 minutes worth of films and sign a ton of agreements agreeing not to have children because it would cause flipper babies, so a couple of stupid whores watched the films, signed the papers and promptly got knocked up and then sued the company right out of existence by popping out a couple of mutants.
It didn't matter what they saw or signed, all it took was some scumbag lawyer showing pics of horribly fucked up kids (even though it was the bitch's fault and she should have been thrown in jail for doing that to a kid) and he got them an assload of money. Next thing you know OTHER women are showing up wanting a check (which means I have no doubt they purposely got preg on the drug to cash in) and the company simply quit making it rather than risk more suits. My pharmacist was nice enough to buy every single box he could possibly find when he heard, even going so far as to contact drug suppliers in South America, but eventually it dried up and it was nearly 6 years before they found anything else that would work.
That is 6 YEARS of pain I wouldn't have had to go through if those bitches and their leech wouldn't have been able to pull that shit (may they die of cancer) so it is time for some REAL reforms! I propose that there be an ironclad "no suing, do not pass go, GTFO" contract that any doctor be allowed to use with a drug, so bullshit lawsuits like the one that hurt me end for good. There were people willing to take the risk for what Vioxx did for them too, now they get to suffer thanks to a leech.
Whether a drug is worth the risk for the benefits should be up to the PATIENT, not some damned ambulance chaser!
No offense dude, but it sounds like a classic case of putting the lipstick on a pig. if you need all those accessories to use the thing? Then perhaps a tablet ain't the right tool for your particular job. And tablets as a "gaming platform"? if you call Angry Birds and Farmvillve games instead of time wasters then MAYBE.
I think this is just another case of everybody and their dog jumping on the new fad and thinking its the second coming. Remember when netbooks were the new hotness? Hell I saw "gaming netbooks" pushed then as well, anything to separate your offering from the pack. What happened to those? oh yeah people found out that cheap and little only got you so far and the bottom fell out, same as what will happen to tablets.
Do I think tablets are toast? Nope same as I doubt netbooks will ever truly go away, as both have their uses. For netbooks it is those like my dad who I picked up a nice AMD dual netbook for, it was only $430 and is small enough he can just throw it in his briefcase and if he needs to shoot out an invoice or check on a part on the job site he can just flip it on and BAM, its done. It also gives him an easy way to watch videos and check his mail while waiting on a contractor. But even my oldest who I thought being in college would appreciate the form factor ended up going with a full laptop (I found him a nice deal on a Turion cheap) because he found the form factor too small and limiting (it probably didn't help that he and his buddies frag fest to kill time between classes either).
Same thing with tablets, in that while the average Joe will probably quickly get bored and look for the next new hotness for the medical and warehouse trades the tablet is like a Godsend. All the doctor's offices and hospitals in my area are switching to tablets, which lets the doc have any and all data at his fingertips, lets the nurses update charts, etc, while in the warehouse business several of my customers are using tablets now for inventory management and just love the things to death.
So in the end I think the same thing that happened to netbooks will happen to tablets, we just haven't reached the saturation point yet. it is still too new and many are still in the new hotness stage, once it has been out for a little while and folks see that it isn't the second coming most will get dumped, just like how my Craigslist is plumb full of netbooks ATM. Gaming is simply better done with some buttons or a controller and the tablet FF? Not really made for that.
Hell I live on the "meth highway" which runs between Mexico and Kansas (don't know how much farther north it goes, if someone does chime in as I'm curious) and if the cops can't get paid in cash or dope they don't give a fuck if you beat or rob, as long as its a peasant! here's a couple of true stories from the meth highway.
..A neighbor called the cops because somebody beat his ass and stole his checks. I TOLD HIM that his best bet was to find out who did it and round up a couple of guys, but nope, he decided he should "trust in the law" so what happened? Well when someone started passing off the checks they came and arrested HIS ASS and when he pointed out that whomever had been passing the checks was A.-described as a tall brown hair, while he is a short blond, and B.- the cashier wrote the thieves DL number on the checks and it sure as fuck wasn't his they wrote "chance of solving case 0%" at the top and file 13'd it in front of him. Why? Too much work, no profit!
Story 2...My late sister lived across the street from a gal whose ex was savagely beating her. Restraining order didn't do shit, cops would show up MAYBE 4 hours after she called and my sis was afraid the gal was gonna get killed. I told her put that gal on the horn and told her "Say the D word" and when she asked what I was talking about I said simply "Cops ain't doing shit unless there is cash or dope in it for them, so tell them you think he is holding a large bag of dope. It don't matter if he is, they will come lightning fast and if they end up empty handed it will be HIS ASS that gets a beat down". Sure enough I get invited to her house the next week for a big home cooked chicken dinner. She said "God you're wonderful...IT WORKED LIKE A CHARM! They were here in under three minutes, tore his truck apart, and when they didn't find anything they threw the book at him, he is looking at something like 10 years!"
So yeah, unless this guy pissed off a cop I call bullshit. As long as its peasant on peasant at least here cops don't give a fuck, and traveling all over the south I have seen nothing to think it is ANY different anywhere else. The only exceptions I have seen is DWB and DWH, which is driving while black and driving while hippie, which depending on which area you are in can get you a beat down just for breathing. But as long as it is peasant on peasant they just file 13 it and call it a day. Hell I liked it better when the cops were just openly corrupt, at least in the 70s you didn't get DWB or DWH unless you were being a prick, now the only pricks are the guys with badges.
Oh its been that way for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was stationed overseas and used to love to bring home "Magnatox" radios and "RGA" electronic doo dads. Hell you should look up the guy in Bangkok that makes fake Ferraris and Lamborghini racers. Damned things can't be told apart until you pop the hood and see the Toyota Supra engine!
Why are they doing this now? One word: Egypt. The fact that with Internet organizing one of their old boys club could be run out on a rail? I'm sure that scares the shit out of them.
As for TFA? I'm sure we'll be seeing more of this in the coming months. Anything that can threaten power the way it did in Egypt will have to be monitored (for the children/terrists/etc) and sadly most folks won't know nor care that everything is being monitored as long as it isn't THEIR door that gets kicked in. If you're doing nothing wrong, right?
You know, I still don't get why everyone thinks the USA will go with a whimper instead of a bang, when we have the largest military BY FAR and every other country with a large military has gone empire building when the shit gets bad at home. Personally I think that Germany had the role of bad guy twice, now it'll be the USA's turn and the scary part? If we pull it off right we'll actually win.
How could the USA win against the world? Simple: deals baby deals. Tell the Chinese they can have Africa, and we'll not say shit about Taiwan if they play ball and boom! China is out. Tell Putin that if he wants to be president for life and have the old USSR back the USA won't say shit, help yourself Vlad! Boom! Russia is out. This will also take out most of the EU that will be pissing themselves looking at a new USSR with no NATO to back them up.
So what does the USA get? Simple, North and South America! Enough resources we could tell the rest of the world to STFU and live quite well on the spoils, not that we'd have to with our Russian and Chinese friends backing us up. Hell there are enough easy targets like Chavez a few false flags wouldn't be hard to do at all, especially if they come with a program of "bread and jobs". All that would leave is the UK and France and Italy, Germany too busy with the USSR breathing down their necks, and I doubt they do shit. oh they'd bitch, but that's it.
So I really wouldn't be counting on that whole "going out with a whimper" thing since never in history has a country with a huge powerful military went silently into that good night without stirring us some serious shit first. The only reason the USSR disappeared is the people turned against it without a cult of personality leader (like old Joe before and like Vlad now) but we Americans are easy to get riled up, just give us lots of jingoism and flag waving and most will jump right on board. Scary thought huh?
But that would be too obvious. The smarter solution if you insist on carrying your laptop is to pack the drive as you said, but replace it with one of those cheapo CF adapters with a bog standard clean image.
Then if the bulls want to fire up the thing all they'll find is a basic set of programs like FF (I'd go ahead and make a couple of links to boring sites like tech blogs just to make it look used) and when you get to your destination you can just pop it back in. Encrypt the original drive of course in case your luggage disappears.
Personally I'm starting to wonder if this isn't designed to just completely kill tourism. I bet someone will make a killing when all those hotels that aren't being used by tourists anymore go under, hell they'll probably get them for pennies on the dollar!
Frankly it wouldn't surprise me, nor does the fact that the US and the UK seem to be in a race to see who can become the living embodiment of Orwell's 1984 first. I'd say being on camera 24/7 would give a slight edge to the UK, but with this and the "all your email belongs to us" we saw on /. the other day I think we're currently tied.
You still writing those looong AC piled links to nowhere? Notice NOBODY responds to you anymore but me, and I ONLY do so to laugh at you? Why is that APK? Could it be like on Ars everyone is on to your bullshit and nobody gives a fuck what you think? Keep dancing for me monkey boy, while I don't bother reading anything you write it gives me a warm fuzzy inside to see you jump through my hoops and follow me like a little bitch who wants another taste, dance monkeyboy, dance! LOL! Here enjoy some copypasta, hell you aren't even interesting enough to bother responding to with anything else. Enjoy fail boy!
And this coming from poor wittle APK, also know as "Petey, the idiot HOPES file guy"? As in you HOPES that one of the 300,000+ constantly changing array of websites that are infected doesn't happen to be the one you visit today? Or that you HOPES that nobody notices after repeatedly being asked you have FAILED to show even the tiniest shred of mathematical proof that your magical woobie can scale? That you HOPES nobody notices your only "proof" is anecdotes, often by your own sock puppets like Kingsjester?
And I don't have to be exact, because I'm not the one making outrageous claims If someone claims they can stretch their dick into a giant slingshot and shoot themselves to Scotland it is not the readers job to prove them wrong but the posters job to back that up with real prof, not an anecdote that says "well my cousin Joey saw me do it last Halloween!".
I have also shown repeatedly that at the absolute reported minimum number of new pieces of malweare and infections, which you are free to pick whichever reputable website you like Securina, MSFT's malware reports, AVG, which ever, that at an absolute minimum we are talking about 1.2 million sites PER DAY with that number changing by 15,000+ PER HOUR which means even if you typed at 1 IP address PER SECOND, and never slept, and had a perfect list (which doesn't exist) you would be 14 days behind by the very first day with that number growing linearly every single day, making Petey farther and farther behind.
But if you weren't completely batshit insane Petey I wouldn't have to explain this, because this is why everyone makes fun of you. It is so obvious it is like someone arguing gravity is actually invisible pants gnomes trying to steal your underwear. It is the classic "default allow" which has NEVER EVER worked. Because if a piece of malware isn't in magical HOPES file Petey you are royally fucked, and yet again I have shown that it is simply a roll of the dice whether you get creamed or not, simply because you will always be behind.
So it is all on you Petey and your magical HOPES woobie now. You made the extravagant claims, back them up with the math. If you can't? Well then you are full of shit, case closed. Notice how ALL YOU CAN DO PETEY is throw insults and trollbomb? Why is that? I'll tell you why, because math doesn't lie and you just can't show the math You just can't, it would be like trying to mathematically prove you are not an idiot. It just can't be done.
So please, keep dancing to my tune like a little bitch APK, I do so enjoy pointing out the total uber fail of your magical woobie so. I also personally consider it a public service to point people to solutions that actually work instead of relying on magical woobies and anecdotes. And of course bi
Question: If it looks like random data to the host OS, what is to keep the host OS from writing over it? Maybe they've figured out something I don't see, but it seems like it would be pretty trivial to find out if there is a Truecrypt volume by simply writing data to the "random space" and seeing if you can fill it up or not.
If the host OS knows its there and not to write over it then anyone looking at the laptop can find the same, unless I'm missing something?
Actually I'd say the smart thing would be to buy a cheapy netbook once you get here, send your data (encrypted of course) via broadband back home, and then hand out the netbook to some poor shlub near the airport. Kinda sad that we've become just another banana republic (with soon the third world economy to match) but until the American people are ready to pull our own Egypt it isn't like there is any choice, what with elections being broken and all.
Hi MR AC, got bit by the 503 bug? But you are seeing only a small part of what it is actually costing us. My mom recently retired from nursing and the last few years the lack of preventative care has caused a new terminology to pop up amongst the doctors and nurses...TPTL...do you know what that stands for?
It stands for "Too Poor To Live" and it is a shorthand that those in the medical field use for those they could have saved if they only had access to preventative care. We are talking people in their 30s and 40s that could have lived a long life as a useful member of our society, now gone thanks to something so basic.
Sadly the fact that they have a name for it should show you how widespread it is, and it doesn't even cover all the other hidden costs, like the woman my mother treated whose three kids ended up wards of the state after she died of a cancer that could have been treated, or all the illness that spreads through a family and then lays up half a town when if they could have afforded medical care they wouldn't have been spreading the crap around.
So in the end we need to be pushing for preventive care for the poor not only because it is the right thing to do, but I bet my rapidly devaluing last dollar that it would end up costing a hell of a lot less over both the short and long term. things caught early can be treated with less expensive non experimental drugs, use less drugs, and when adding in the lost wages and taxes that person would have paid in I bet it really adds up.
Of course this is if the truth isn't what some of my friends in the medical field believe, that the conservative groups want to go "back to the 50s" alright, but the 1850s not 1950s, where the poor simply died out from disease. Seeing as how those like Cheney can afford screenings that allow them to survive cancers and other diseases that cause the poor a long slow death frankly I wouldn't be surprised, especially after seeing "RyanCare" and what it'll do to the poor.
You know, despite all the "Oracle boo, Google yay" fanboyism we see here at /. I still haven't heard anybody give a reasonable answer as to why this isn't the exact same as the MS Java mess which everyone was cheering when Sun shut it down?
The point to having licensing with regards to Java at Sun was to keep third parties from fracturing Java and it sounds like this is what Davilk or however you spell it is doing. If MS renamed MS Java to MS Coffee would that have made it okay? After all it isn't Java, it just runs Java code! To me the whole thing smells like fanoyism and bullshit. But to me hypocrisy is hypocrisy, and if it was bad for MS to fracture Java then so too is it bad for Google.
And call me weird, but I still don't get why FOSS fans run to the defense of Google. They aren't letting you have the Android 3.0 source, they've historically kept the best bits like their file system (built on FOSS) to themselves to give them an advantage, and they've purposely gone out of their way to disallow any GPL V3 which means Android is most likely gonna end up TiVo'd, yet the FOSS fans run to their rescue? I just don't get it.
While it wasn't the standard when the Wii came out 720p and HDMI most definitely WERE standards and not having native high def nor HDMI was a bad move. Most under $1k sets have plenty of HDMI, one composite, so having native 1080p and HDMI will be a must.
As for the controller you missed the point friend. One of the problems with the Wii is how many do the "Wii Waggle" simply because they can't count on a regular controller so even if their game isn't really gonna work with motion controls they have to use it because that is the ONE controller they can be sure of. Now I'm sure you've played enough games to know there are plenty of titles where motion controls simply make NO sense, yes? By having BOTH motion and regular controls you can make sure that games only use the motion where it makes sense instead of trying to shoehorn it where it doesn't, thus making it easier and better both on the developers AND the gamers.
As for backwards compatibility? Everyone made fun of MSFT for it in Windows and look how well that turned out. With the price on console games it simply makes good sense to let your users keep their old games, and MSFT was stupid IMHO not to keep the X360 having 100% backwards compatibility. One of the things that made the Wii a no brainer for my family was the youngest having a ton of Gamecube games, which meant all the money we had sunk into GC could be used in the Wii. We had both the Xbox I and still have a PS2 like you, and lack of compatibility ended up spooking us off.
Finally as to hardcore gaming? The price for the PPC chips that are currently in the X360 are frankly dirt cheap, as is the current HD5xxx and HD6xxx GPUs by ATI (who made the current Wii chip) So if they are smart they'd go COTS and keep the old Hollywood GPU for backwards compatibility and I/O, and use the X360 triple core PPC and a new ATI chip for their next gen unit. This would make porting between the Wii and the X360 MUCH easier, while giving the Wii 2 the power needed to do high def easily. And since they'd be using COTS the economies of scale would be in their favor and help drive the console BOM down.
In the end I don't think it needs to be about hardcore gaming so much as trying to keep third party developers. Thanks to the fact you practically have to write a completely new game because the Wii is so far behind what you end up with is shovelware from the third parties and Nintendo simply can't afford to go it alone. look at how few non Nintendo titles are worth owning and you'll see making it easier on developers needs to be job #1 at Nintendo, because frankly I don't see them keeping casual gamers as a core market and surviving. Casual gamers simply don't buy enough titles and it looks like the future will be PC and phone games for them anyway, things like Farmville and Angry Birds. IMHO they have to at least keep enough regular gamers to keep the sell through high enough to justify third party support which the Wii is seriously needing right about now.
As a person with two nurses and a doctor in the family do you want to know the REAL reason our system is completely broken? You do? The answer is simple: we save a penny and spend a pound it is as simple as that. Let me give an example of one my mom had to work on...
37 year old male, working poor, couldn't get a tooth extracted. Cost of the tooth? maybe $700 if he needs an oral surgeon. But to the working poor that may as well be $700,000 because both are out of reach, since they are living hand to mouth. Neither the state nor the fed will pay for preventive care like that. So what?
Well instead you got to pay for the new valves for his heart and a month in the hospital getting antibiotics because the infected tooth spread infection into his bloodstream and it attacked his heart. It is actually quite common, the actor Andy Hallet died from it. Cost? I'd say around $300,000 easy.
And THAT, that right there, is the problem. Instead of adopting a sane system where the poor could get preventive medicine we instead pay outrageous prices to take care of them when they are at death's door, when it costs CRAZY money to put them back on their feet. if either the state or the fed would have paid that $700 we wouldn't have had a $300,000 bill passed on to the government. Does the current system make ANY sense?
As for TFA, meet the new boss, yada yada. That is why we need multiple parties here, because what we have is an "El Presidente" banana republic going on, where it doesn't matter which you vote for they BOTH want more power for themselves and less rights for you, they BOTH want to stuff their pockets and pay off their cronies. The ONLY difference between the two is which asses get kissed the most and neither give a shit about the country or the people.
The Ds prefer the taste of big media and union ass, while the Rs prefer the corporate and MIC ass. That's it. Otherwise it is the same shit, different day. And if the Rs run anybody but Caribou Barbie they'll win by a landslide because so many are sick of Obama's bullshit.
Yep in 30 damned years they've launched a grand total of SEVEN, count them seven, patent/copyright lawsuits. And MSFT has historically offered RAND, as in reasonable and non discriminatory, licensing on their patents and copyrights for ages. Notice how NOBODY during the TomTom suit pointed out MSFT had offered them RAND on Fat32 and got the finger in return? How many suits and motions does the FSF file yearly? I bet its more than seven. If MSFT wanted to drop the patent bomb they would have done so back in the WinME days.
And yes latches would cover technology they expressly handed to the public through their agreement not to sue. Any court would laugh the thing out before it even got to pre-trial. And SCO? Again you are talking ancient history, hell Gates was still running the company when that thing started. Its old news.
What you SHOULD be watching, and what I'm gonna ROFLMAO when it bites you right in the ass, is Google. Google is getting ready to skullfuck the whole community but the fanbois are too busy kissing their ass to see it coming. Google has been VERY careful to avoid ANY and all GPL V3, why is that? I'll tell you why it is because GPL V2 might as well be PD and both Google and any other corp KNOWS this. The developers that wrote all those neat embedded programs are gonna get nothing for their trouble but the finger and code they can't run thanks to code signing and eFuses.
So please, keep sling the FUD and planning yesterday's war, while leaning up against the big bad wolf in sheep's clothing. Google has kept ALL of the decent stuff internal, simply so they won't have to share, and now with 3.0 they are starting to lock things up. Thanks to TiVo GPL V2 will be the new BSD, with any and all corps filling their boots while giving you...hell anything they want, it isn't like you'll be able to run the code to see if it works or not anyway. Meanwhile I'll LMAO at the naivete of the community who thought because Google used some of their code that they were friends. the ONLY friend Google has IS GOOGLE, period. You are about to be train banged and don't even see it coming, because you're too busy writing M$ and thinking like it is 1997. WAKE UP!
Actually I'd say these two fit the situation better. That said Happy BDay, may you manage to keep the corps from TiVo tricking your code, and keep making it so any CPU in recorded history can have a Bash term and be hacked. Many happy returns and here's to another 20 years.
Yes but if you look at the sell through (the number of titles per console sold) you'll see it is pretty appalling, especially if you are a third party developer. From what I've seen locally most are doing with their Wii consoles what my family is currently doing with theirs, which is letting it sit in a corner and gather dust. Once you have played the first party titles there really isn't much left to do which is similar to the Gamecube at this point in the game.
The uniqueness of the controller and the cheap price got them so far, but now frankly everyone that wanted one has one and third party developers seem to be meh when compared to X360 and PS3. I'd say the one with the ability to hold out the longest will be the X360 simply because of XBL, the PS3 suffers from "the Saturn problem" in that while it is technically more powerful it is a royal bitch to program for from what I've read.
So Nintendo needs to be the first out the gate with a new machine, as others have put with a real controller to go with the WiiMote simply to give developers the ability to count on real controllers when the "Wii Waggle" simply won't fit the core gameplay of their game. I mean the X360 and PS3 both have motion control now, but you don't see every game trying to use it, do you? And hardware wise their machine is simply too far behind the curve, having the cheapest BOM is nice and all but not when the games look lousy on the current High Def sets.
So bottom line: 1080p support, real controller pack in, backwards compatibility with Wii and they have a winner. They really can't afford to let MSFT or Sony get out of the gate first, especially not MSFT thanks to XBL, and their console looks by far the worst sitting side by side with the other two in graphics. So I'd say if TFA isn't right it damned well needs to be as Nintendo can't afford to wait until the Wii has completely run out of gas before kicking out the new console. They simply don't have the support and can't keep an entire console afloat by themselves.
Dude its been eleven years already and NOTHING...zip nada squat zilcho...I think by this point it is safe to call FUD in the case of the FOSS advocates because any attempt by MSFT now would most likely get their asses kicked in court under latches.
So give it a rest already. What are you gonna say in the 7 or 8 years when the patents will have run out? "Oh but they may have figured out how to hide the longest submarine patent in history"? Bullshit is bullshit no matter WHO slings it and by claiming "its a trap!" this late in the game (although I will give you credit for not writing M$, but I bet you were tempted, weren't you?) it simply makes FOSS look like a bunch of tinfoil hatters. IS that REALLY how you want FOSS to be seen?
How about instead of FUD you simply tell developers to try the different languages and choose the best tool for the job they have. FOSS is all about choice, yes? or is it only about choices you agree with? But if the best argument you have against C# is magical hidden patents that have NEVER been seen or used? Well then you really have no argument at all.
Oh and this master plan to "kill Linux"? Get over yourself, you aren't that big a target anymore. The new hotness is iOS, which is why MSFT is sinking billions into acquiring Nokia. Google has pretty much locked Linux out of the game (How's that 3.0 source code?) by refusing to allow GPL V3 so that it can TiVo trick the code away from the users and developers, RIM is dead, that leaves HP, MSFT, and the big boy Apple. The HP option will probably again be TiVo tricked, so the only real targets are Google and Apple. Linux? I doubt its even on the radar anymore.
But if you really think MSFT is gonna sink hundreds of millions into a successor to VB, all in this insanely loooooong winded plot to kill Linux? You might want to check your tinfoil hat, it is probably on too tight. If MSFT wanted Linux dead buying the top 20 developers would cripple it in a heartbeat and leave it waaaaay behind. Hell Oracle is a bigger threat to Linux now than MSFT, you just aren't a big enough fish in the new market to be a target, sorry.
At $595 its not exactly what I'd call cheap (The $250 is for a bare bones with most of the parts missing) and for what you are wanting to do it sounds like you'd be better off with a Dell Zino with a wireless keyboard. Hell even the bottom of the line one has better specs and is only $299.
While I'd call it cute folks seem to forget there is a reason we don't build PCs into keyboards and that is because we learned from our mistake in the 80s. The PC in the keyboard was just one of many bad ideas we thankfully outgrew, because if anything happened to the keys you were boned.
While some here may be nostalgic for the old days (I started out on the VIC and I like things as they are now, thanks anyway) but working my butt off on the keyboard like I did with the VIC so I can use my PC? Uh Uh, I have a closet full of keyboards and if anything happens to this one? Takes maybe 3 minutes. Remember kids, it isn't just how careful YOU are, it is how careful is your wife/GF, kids, friends, kinfolks,pets, etc are around this thing.