If you read the parent poster we were talking about the "here today, gone tomorrow" poker players and NOT the "big names" that by their very nature end up in the top circle at least more than once or they wouldn't BE big names, now would they?
This is one of those "taboo" subjects nobody is supposed to talk about, when it has been proven pretty much beyond a reasonable doubt that gambling IS addictive. Now me personally I believe in the analogy the late great William F. Buckley used, which I paraphrase here "If I set a bottle on a table and say 'this is poison, it will destroy your health, your sanity, your family, and eventually kill you' and you push me out of the way and drink it? Well then STUPID YOU! Why should have have to spend billions to build walls around the bottle and cages to put you in just so you don't drink it?"
So I personally believe that drugs, gambling, and prostitution should ALL be 100% legal, and if you screw your life up with them too damned bad. But to pretend that it isn't a serious problem to quite a few people is just dishonest. I'd love to see a "Where are they now?" kind of study on the top 30 players from the WSOP for each of the last 10 years, because I'd bet my last dollar (no pun intended) that for the 10 or so that made a good living out of it you'd have a good 40 or more that lost everything simply because they couldn't stop. The one I was writing about said he literally had to have his wife give him an allowance like a child because he would lose the payments for the bills otherwise, he just couldn't stop himself from gambling. If that isn't an addict I don't know what is.
Hi MR AC! While I wish that were true, because even as a Windows guy I like having options, the problem with Android, and it is a BIG problem despite how many here go "ohh poo poo" when anybody brings it up, is this: Android is fragmented as hell which makes it a royal PITA for developers, and people buying Android don't spend money like iUsers do, which makes it more expensive AND less profitable.
Here, let me give an example: I was stuck going into the hell that is Walmart, because one of the relatives gave the boys some gift cards for Xmas. While there I did my usual "Come get me in electronics" spiel and did some looking around. Know what I saw? Just on the shelves of that local Wally World there was Android 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0, and this isn't even a really tech heavy place, just your average Supercenter. After dropping them off I stopped in the local Walgreen's because I forgot to get some sinus pills, and there was Android 1.5 and 1.8 on tablets. The big problem? They were all advertised as "Android" with the little green droid and all.
So I have a feeling Android is gonna implode, and implode pretty badly. The average Joe knows fuck all about "versions" or "hardware specs" all he is gonna know is "I got one of those Android things and it sucks ass!" meanwhile both Apple and MSFT have kept pretty strict controls on the hardware so it "just works" with WinPhone 7 and iOS. Expecting people to look at hardware specs is just ridiculous when all they look at when buying computers is big numbers equal better!
So I have a feeling Android is gonna be relegated to CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) while all those that got burnt on Droid will go running to WinPhone and iOS. The problem with Android is they are thinking too geeky, and the majority of the public don't know shit when it comes to geek crap. I should know, I sell to them 6 days a week. I have already had the first rumblings from customers that took cheap Droid smartphones with a new plan and are bitching that it don't work worth a crap compared to their friend's iPhone, so I smell a backlash coming, and it is gonna be nasty.
Maybe I'm wrong, like I said in the past I would have preferred it if the HTML bunch would have just set Theora as a minimum and been done with it, but I think flash and H.264 is here to stay, whether the geeks and Google like it or not.
Uhhhh...how EXACTLY is this "good for open source" anyway? Isn't this just "TiVoization" on a national scale? i mean it isn't like Putin and Ahmadinjerk have suddenly embraced freedom and caring and puppies and shit, they want open source because they can just take it for free and once they've made sure they can't find any obvious back doors in it lock the holy hell out of it!
So I honestly don't see how this is in any way a "victory" for open source, anymore than bragging the Chinese death van another poster linked to uses open source for the ignition system. Because it isn't like these guys are suddenly gonna start playing by the rules and start acting all share and share alike you know. After all what is RMS gonna do, march into Putin's or Ahmadinjerk's office and DEMAND they follow the GPL?
Oh this kind of stupidity goes back a looooong way, and isn't just an American SNAFU. For an interesting read on how horribly politics and science can be when mixed together read a little about Lysenkoism which could be argued caused countless deaths from famine and set back Soviet research on crop genetics by decades. All because the Soviet Politburo wanted to push an "all peasants are created equal policy, even though of course we know that isn't true (genes make some smarter, some faster, some better runners, etc)
But the real tragedy here is the space program is basically being destroyed so Senator Bumfukis can "bring home the bacon" to his district. Whereas before the main goal of NASA was to keep us at the top of the heap and ahead of the soviets now its main goal is to pad congressional districts, with anything else a distant second. The shutlle was a bad joke, anything built on shuttle parts will be a bad joke and expensive as hell, but congress doesn't care as long as Bumfukis can tell folks he is "bringing home the jobs!" in a classic broken window fallacy fashion. Is it any wonder the USA will in all likelihood end up a destitute also ran?
Exactly, we have turned childhood into a siege mentality. When I was a kid once school let out you would walk across the street to the little food mart, not having to worry about traffic because somebody's mom or grandma was crossing guard that week, grab a coke or a bag of chips and laugh and talk for awhile. Then those that were within walking distance did so while those of us that weren't got picked up in the parking lot by a relative after they inevitably went into the store for some little something they forgot.
Now at both the elementary and middle school they have had to add another lane in both directions at great expense because the lines of cars were literally going back for miles, you have armed police with cruisers at BOTH exits at BOTH schools acting as security and crossing guards, again at great expense I'm sure. And finally the kids can't even interact with each other because they have to be kept single file to speed up delivery in order to keep the traffic flowing, and of course the number of kids being fat is getting nuts because the parents would rather have them playing the X360 than going outside where the bogeyman might snatch them.
Now it is pretty obvious to anyone with eyes the paranoia is doing more harm than good. The kids don't get enough time to socially interact anymore which sure isn't good for them mentally or emotionally, they don't get enough exercise because the constantly "Look out! They are after you!" atmosphere created by things like Amber alerts keeps the parents edgy enough they'd rather just let the kid sit at home in front of the TV or console, which in turn makes for a whole lot of fat kids which at that age is horrible for your health. It is any wonder things like juvenile diabetes and obesity is through the roof? Kids aren't even allowed outside anymore!
Not to mention trying to jam a full heavy Linux DE (which according to some of the links followed through TFA is pretty crippled and unusable as a replacement shell, due to so many core features being broken) into a place it was never meant to be simply to use some KDE apps doesn't make much sense.
After all many of the apps on Linux are cross platform (which is one of the nice things about Linux, so many of the apps will run anywhere) and for the ones that aren't there are a myriad of other choices that don't involve dumping a ton of KDE dependencies into Windows, such as dual booting or one of the several free VMs such as VMWare Player which already has the Kubuntu LTS VM ready to go so all one needs to do is simply download and run this or one of several versions of KDE Linux as easy as downloading and running an app on Windows.
So it just doesn't make any sense to me this late in the game. If it were 2002 when you had so many screaming obscenities over the XP "Fisher Price" GUI I could see it, but the Windows 7 GUI is nice and for those staying on XP there is a really nice replacement shell that is stable as a rock and can make Windows look and behave anyway you desire, and TFA said the really popular apps like Amarok are getting Windows stand alone installers. So why would you want to dump nearly a GB of dependencies (that is how much it was when I ran it a couple of months back) for a few apps with so much of its core being unstable?
Maybe I'm missing something but other than saying "we must because we can" it makes about as much sense to me as trying to rip out the Windows 7 DE to run it in Ubuntu. Wouldn't it simply make more sense to run the DE in the environment it was designed for where it can have full functionality and a level of integration it will simply never be able to have on Windows? it isn't like you can't get KDE for absolutely free in Linux. And with so many show stoppers you certainly wouldn't want this to be a Windows users first experience with KDE.
Wow, notice how I got modded down for saying it won't work? it won't make 1+1=3, or change reality because you know what? It still won't work and furthermore allow me to expand on why it won't work and why I believe you are wrong as well. Here goes...
1.-WebM is solving a problem the majority doesn't have because the majority of sites are in flash, and the ones that aren't are H.264 which works fine in Windows, either native or with a simple codec download. 2.-MSFT wrote a plugin for FF on Win 7 and XP will be dying off pretty rapidly, so that leaves just Chrome without H.264 support(since I believe Opera can use OS codecs) and of course Safari will support H.264 but is doubtful on WebM. 3.- Between Windows and iDevices you are looking at around 97% of the web, Windows 7 has H.264, XP can have it with a simple codec download, Apple has H.264, of course the hot thing is the iDevices which support H.264 and NOT WebM. 4.-Finally while bleeding edge web developers may get a stiffie about HTML V5, most of the web is NOT designed by bleeding edge developers. And frankly my mom could design with flash. developers know flash, they use flash, dropping video into flash is second nature and having to add a video multiple times because different browsers support different codecs will mean those HTML V5 developers are gonna see their worst nightmare come true...everyone will just stick with flash, which already works. Oh they'll add H.264 so they can play on iPhone, but that's it.
So while it is a nice thought that the web would be free with regards to video, I predict WebM will be a giant bust. I doubt seriously MSFT and Apple are gonna jump on the WebM bandwagon, and Google can't afford to lose all IE and iDevice users, so if they refuse to support H.264 that means they'll have to have something to fall back to and that means flash on Windows and probably some low res H.264 on iDevices just to piss off Apple. If it was just Google VS MSFT I'd agree with you, but the elephant in the room is named Steve and he does NOT switch gears or just change his mind. Jobs has said "It will be H.264" and MSFT will go "Me Too!" because...well it has worked so far, hasn't it? And while Google likes to think Youtube is the end all of video the simple fact is there are a bazillion video sites out there and if all the iDevice users split others WILL follow. So I predict that unless Google changes its mind they will simply torpedo Chrome. Since there are plenty of Chromium based browsers out there (I'm using one of them to type this and its nice) the users will just migrate away from the problem. Sorry FOSS guys, but like Vorbis it is a little too little a little too late.
You realize you are responding to a chatbot, yes? look at the facts: it starts with the SAME LINE about/. being stagnated, one you respond it throws back a standard retort, usually based on "your x is x" such as "your wife is (whatever you called the bot)" and then ends with the "you're completely pathetic" tag line. REAL trolls just don't do that! They get pissy, they get rude, but there is always some serious changes to their speech because they are people. Hell the thing just keeps generating the exact same account name with an incrementing number! REAL trolls make new nicks or use sock puppets.
So don't bother responding to a michael kristopeit post, it is just a bot, most likely cooked up to tweak the algo before entering it in one of the chatbot competitions. Hell it isn't even a good design ELIZA had more personality and phrase tweaks than this one. Frankly this bot has all the variety and flavor of a MickyD burger that has been left under the heat lamps all day.
As for TFA considering Palin said he should "Be hunted like a terrorist" once could easily argue his lawyer isn't even exaggerating on this. Hell look at how many of our MSM tripped over themselves to kiss the government booty and chime in on how bad it was that we be told anything. If he was brought over here you would have Nancy Grace and every other talking head to line up and call him everything but human. At the minimum he would probably spend 30 years or so in the pen. Sadly nothing our government does anymore surprises me and while I doubt they would just kill him, drop him in a hole somewhere and forget about where they left him? That I could see, and it makes me glad that my grandfather and great uncle who fought for our freedom in WWII aren't here anymore, because you could probably power the south with the number of revolutions they are turning in their graves.
I'd say you don't hear about them because many are addicts and like all addicts they eventually crash and burn. I remember reading an article in the 90s about one of the recent at the time WSOP winners and old man Binion said "Yeah that kid would be an all time champ...if you could get the guy to ONLY play poker". It went on to talk about how in between poker games he would bet on ANYTHING..football, baseball, golf, if he couldn't find any other "action" he would actually bet thousands on which side of a sugar cube a fly would land on.
So I'd say a lot of those "flash in the pan" poker players are simply too addicted to gambling to last long term. Even in poker one needs to keep a halfway decent stake if one is gonna consistently play for the real money and if they are addicts that money just won't stay in their possession long enough to keep them earning. In a way it reminds me of some of the day traders that I've met, literally bleary eyed from staring at a half a dozen screens and constantly moving from one trade to the next. It is like if they aren't moving SOMEWHERE they just can't be happy. Kinda sad really.
Not to mention this is gonna do exactly Jack and Squat. Frankly I have never seen a site that just uses H.264 as they all wrap it in flash so unless Google is gonna can flash support as well (which would be suicide and I'm sure make MSFT and Mozilla happy as usage of Chrome would nosedive) then I honestly don't see this little maneuver having much or well any effect on the web at large.
And does anybody know how possible it would be to just fork Chrome away from Google? I know webkit is also supported by Apple who sure as hell isn't gonna lose H.264 not with the way Steve talked it up, and there are many Chromium based out there already thanks to those that didn't like all the "phone home" features (I'm typing this in Comodo Dragon which is Chromium based quite nice BTW) so what are the odds that someone just takes Chromium and forks away from Google's changes? Because I'm betting it wouldn't be hard to base future versions of Chromium on the Apple webkit base instead of the Google base
And has anybody seen whether or not WebM violates any of MPEG-LA's patents? Last I checked MPEG-LA had so damned many patents there was disagreement on whether or not it would be possible to make ANY codec that didn't trip over a couple of dozen of them. In either case it sounds like we are gonna be seeing a repeat of the bad old days of Netscape VS IE, where every other website had code that one or the other browser wouldn't support. Anybody old enough to remember the evil "blink" tag?
Citation please? because otherwise you are simply shilling or as some of us locals like to call it "full of shit". So lets see some numbers, because as I said last numbers I saw was Linux at 1% and flat on desktops, 30% and down by 4% on servers. The ONLY place it had shown growth was in embedded which as I pointed out means nothing thanks to GPL V2 and the "TiVo loophole".
And the only idiot here is YOU Goober (how appropriate a UID there) because yet again you show NOTHING but anecdotes. I pointed out a very well known fact that thanks to HDMI Linux drivers have less functionality, which is why Linux is either stuck using behind the curve binary blobs or crippled free drivers, and all you do is throw insults when I point this out.
So don't blame me because your OS design doesn't allow NDAs. As I pointed out, which was even featured in TFA, the future is integrated CPU+GPU, with what I've read even with a discrete the GPU will still be used for other jobs like physics...except again in Linux thanks to the whole HDMI thing. Hell don't believe me, go look at the ATI developers site and read for yourself Goober. The reason they can't just hand over the code for the GPU is the fact that they can't hand out the code to protected path which is now built into EVERY single GPU out there. So the ONLY way for Linux to have full functionality on these new chips is to reverse engineer protected path, which even then I doubt they'll be allowed to release in the west thanks to DMCA. After all the whole point of protected path is copyright protection, which DMCA says is a no no to get around. Again don't blame me, I'm not the one that designed the thing I just pointed out it will fuck Linux because you can't have NDAs in Linux.
Now lets see those citations along with your explanation on how Linux is gonna magically get around all this embedded DRM and do so WITHOUT using binary blobs which by their very closed source design makes them inferior on Linux since the kernel guys can't do anything with them. These are not problems for Apple or MSFT since Apple chooses their own hardware and MSFT worked with the big three chip makers to design a new hardware subsystem that integrates with protected path. You can act pissy all you want, but it won't make 1+1=3 nor will it make it so Linux can use and support the hardware DRM being built into all the new chips.
Bah! You want to make Bill Gates money you need to develop some cute panties and G-Strings that kill chick farts at the source!
Any guy that has had to deal with a gassy GF or taken some hottie to a Mexican restaurant (BAD choice) knows that a dozen drunken frat guys eating Taco hell creates NOTHING on the sheer level of chemical warfare as a single cutie can let loose upon the environment!
I don't know what kind of demonic evil goes on in the female digestive tract but get trapped in the elevator with that little 90 pound babe with a case of gas and she'll make the fat judge at a chili cook off smell like roses!
Wow, yet another strawman, only this one taken out of contest, please ignore the gasoline...WHOOSH. Notice in the first sentence you quoted I said "(which even then would have been doubtful as the "cash and carry" would have still allowed England to use the USA for manufacturing) but would have still fallen ultimately to Stalin. And at least get the dates right, Stalingrad wasn't truly over and free from shelling or attack until mid may 1943, not 1941.
And it was YOU sir that claimed the war would have ended differently if the Americans hadn't rode in, and I quote " however, the next three and a half years, they made a major push in Europe that did change the outcome of the war." end quote. Now as I pointed out you were completely wrong, or as we call it locally full of shit. Now if you don't like being full of shit, read a book, watch one of the several very well made documentaries on the subject, hell the communiques of the generals on both the USSR and Nazi side have been translated and are free to view. The only one that doesn't seem to accept the war in the east was lost by Stalingrad was YOU, and since one can't win a war while losing your entire eastern flank, and by the end of 1943 (again without a single American boot on the ground) you had the USSR cranking out 4 tanks for every one lost it doesn't take Stephen Hawking to do the math. By mid 1943 it was pretty obvious Hitler would lose the east, the question was when.
I would suggest you watch the excellent 26 part BBC series on the subject "The World AT War" especially the episodes on Stalingrad and the war in the east. They use actual German footage showing not propaganda but what the troops were facing, and by mid 1943 you have Germans using oxcarts to retreat and burning Panzers litter the fields. And since Stalin would have never made peace with Hitler after being betrayed it was over, the fat lady was down the street having a sandwich. Again the only question was when, just as many will point out the decisive battle in the Pacific was NOT late in the war, but quite early. A little place known as Midway. Notice the first sentence says " widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II"? Which just drives home what I said, it is often not some great "final battle" that decides a war it is a single campaign with fatal mistakes that changes the outcome. For the Pacific it was Midway, for the European war it was Stalingrad. Just as we didn't need a single British or Russian to win Midway and change the war neither did the Russians need the USA to do the same. Oh we did help as I pointed out, and ultimately saved many Soviet lives. But as I said you were wrong on the Americans changing the outcome, accept your wrongness and learn from it.
Sorry I can't remember where I read it, but out of all the theories of Windows ARM I read exactly ONE that made sense:.NET. The poster wrote that Windows ARM will of course not be x86 Windows but based around.NET so that one can compile an app for Windows ARM and it'll run just fine on x86 Windows as well. This will allow developers to "write once, run twice" without having to rewrite. That made a hell of a lot more sense to me than trying to fit some sort of backwards compatibility for X86 onto ARM, or trying to get those millions of Windows apps ported.
As for TFA, I know the DOJ here in America is sucking corporate cock so hard it makes a Hoover vacuum look gentle, but why hasn't the EU or somebody done shit about Intel? I mean winning market fair and square? yippy skippy, I'm happy for you. But what Intel is doing is basically using every dirty trick in the book and then throwing some money at the competitor (without changing their ways ONE bit) when they get caught.
First they bribed the OEMs and rigged the compilers against AMD, which caused long term serious damage to AMD ( because one could easily argue that the OEMs wouldn't have taken the shitty pig netburst over the much better AMD chips if it weren't for bribes, thus making AMD's financial situation MUCH worse) and then when it looks like AMD is on the ropes but ready to drag them to court they throw some money at them AND get to continue using AMD patents, then they screw Nvidia out of being able to make chipsets for the new chips, thus killing their chipset business dead, and now they throw them some money to fuck off AND get access to their patents. See a pattern here?
Time and again Intel is getting rewarded for rigging the market and making sure they have no real competition. this would be like allowing MSFT and Apple to bribe handset OEMs not to use anything Linux based and when they get caught they throw some money at the Linux foundation AND get a free pass to use any Linux patents. The free market simply doesn't work if we allow the 800 pound gorillas to simply bribe and rig the system in their favor, just look at the damage MSFT was able to do with IE thanks to their 90s dirty tricks. If someone doesn't do something about Intel we are gonna end up with a single supplier of CPUs and we can go back to the lovely days when a PC cost a minimum of a couple of grand. Is that REALLY what we want to see happen?
After the bribery and compiler rigging came out I quit buying, building, or selling Intel and those that care about the free market should do the same. Unless you are in one of the tiny niches where money is no object and every drop of speed is critical the AMD chips are both cheap and well performing, and their IGPs and discrete GPUs stomp the hell out of Intel. If the won't do a damned thing to stop it then I urge my fellow geeks to stand up. WE are the ones that make the buying choices for our families, coworkers, and places of business, and WE can say in a single voice "Rigging the market is NOT allowed!". Even in the workstation market one can buy an AMD server board with dual 8 core CPUs for less than the price of a single top of the line Intel chip. So make yourselves counted, push AMD where you can. This rigging and bullying the market simply can't be allowed to continue.
Hey nice straw man you built there, please ignore the match...WHOOSH! Where did I say they had NO impact? show me the quote please? Because frankly you are just looking to build straw men to knock down. I said that cash and carry DID help keep Britain afloat, and I would be happy to point out the Studebaker trucks we gave the USSR under lend lease freed up vital production while making an excellent platform for "Stalin's organs".
What I did say was No American need to have laid a single boot upon European soil and the war would have ended exactly the same because Hitler made one giant blunder after another which made war in the east unwinnable by Stalingrad. Now does that mean those boots on the ground had no effect? of course not, those boots on the ground saved countless Soviet lives and cut down the length of the war by probably 3 years.
But that does not change the fact that Hitler had lost the war by Stalingrad not in the least little bit. When you look at the losses and remaining troops after Stalingrad only a fool or a zealot would argue Hitler could have turned it around and won in the east. His northern flank was shattered, his southern flank suffered irreplaceable losses, and the elite Sixth Panzer that tore through France was nothing but a shell of its former self and would NEVER regain even half of its former strength.
So I'd say if ANYONE is doing a disservice it is YOU sir, by pretending those million plus Soviets would have died in vain if it wasn't for the Americans riding in on the white horse. As long as the USA kept the supplies of machines and raw materials going through the straight the USSR would have still won just as the weapons and supplies to Britain would have still kept it from falling even if not a single American boot touched that ground. It would have cost more lives yes, it would have probably gone on another two years at least. but don't delude yourself Hitler had NO chance of holding on to the east after Stalingrad. but don't take MY word for it, open up a history book or any site on WWII and look at the battles between Stalingrad and the USA landings for yourself. What you will see is Hitler falling back, falling back, losing more and more men and material he simply couldn't replace. The war was over, the only question was how long would it take.
Actually it is obvious you haven't used Windows in awhile, because thanks to unified driver arch they "just work" and have for quite awhile now, as long as you stay away from the bleeding edge beta stuff. And show me where exactly is Linux doing good in desktops? Can I pick up a Linux desktop in Walmart? Best Buy? Nope, hell they don't even sell Linux on netbooks anymore.
And if you think "growing by leaps and bounds" is a piddly 1% of the desktop, less than 30% of the servers and falling last I checked, and on smartphones that have been TiVo'd? Well then it doesn't matter what I say, because you are so far beyond drinking the koolaid you are actually mainlining the flavor crystals. the ONLY place Linux is getting any real "gains" is Android, which has about as much to do with a real Linux distro as my router does with Windows XP. One is a stripped down embedded device with major fragmentation, very little GPL compliance, and notice Android is STRICTLY based on GPL V2 code, aka "welcome to TiVo!", whereas the other is a full OS. Linux on the desktop? Practically DOA, the numbers have been pretty flat for quite awhile now. Linux on the server? As I said last numbers I saw had it falling and had it fourth behind Windows, various Unix, and IBM mainframe OS (sorry I can't remember the exact number name for that one) so I honestly don't see these "great leaps and bounds" but I'm sure you can provide citation for something other than Droid, yes?
And isn't it funny how if you say to a FOSSie anything other than "Gee, isn't Linux swell? It sure is Biff, and RMS smells like cotton candy!" they instantly start throwing words like troll and shill around? But I guess that is what I get for actually feeling sorry for someone whose philosophy is about to get them train fucked. Meanwhile I have this wonderful little driver tool I just update once a month or so on my flash and ALL hardware from pretty much the last ten years or so "just works" on every Windows for the past decade. Just put in the flash and hit run. And the graphic drivers in particular run just beautifully, time after time after time. So I really am sorry you're about to get fucked thanks to on chip protected path, but since MSFT signed the NDA we Windows users just don't have to worry about such things.
While I think Islam is a vile practice too sick to be called a religion, especially with their treatment of women and children, to be fair from what I've read that particular "tradition" is only among the Pashtun tribes and the others look down upon them for their sick shit. But the Pashtuns have been very powerful in their territory and as in all things with power comes the ability to do whatever the hell you want and get away with it.
And frankly with all the reports of Blackwater (or whatever bullshit name they call themselves this week) trying to recreate "Full Metal Jacket" all over the middle east while we pay them big bucks to do so honestly we've lost so much of the moral high ground we don't really have much room to talk on the subject of evil shit. A parable about pointing out splinters while there is a log in your eye comes to mind. But blaming the Muslims for what the Pashtuns do would be like blaming Christianity for what those Mormon polygamists do. If you read the article one of the above posters linked to you'll see they went to the local Mullah who said flat footed it is child abuse and that it is happening because there simply isn't ANY law there.
I'd say it is definitely Intel's fault if they load the chip with DRM BS that can only be used by signing NDAs and agreeing not to share your work, which from the looks of the Bridge chips really wouldn't surprise me. You know, I may not be a Linux guy but I actually do feel kinda sorry for them right now, as it looks like they are gonna get a butt raping that made the GMA 500 look Linux friendly.i mean it was bad enough when there are chunks of the video chip they can't get thanks to HDMI, thus giving them the choice of shitty binary blobs or crippled drivers, but now Intel is gonna pile the DRM into the CPU itself so basically their whole CPU will be crippled!
Frankly the future ain't looking good for Linux outside of embedded devices ATM. Both AMD with Bobcat/Bulldozer and Intel with Sandy/Ivy Bridge are moving more of the GPU into the CPU, and since I'm sure DX11 hooks into the HDMI support Linux guys will be looking at shitty locked down drivers or crippled drivers, their choice. All it will take is for Intel to add a couple of levels of "next gen" DRM and AMD to play along for the CPU to run like an old P3 unless you sign an NDA and agree to play ball, which by the very nature of Linux is impossible. You know as much as I hate to agree with RMS on...well pretty much anything at all, all this DRM into general purpose CPUs looks to me like one more step towards Stallman's right to read story becoming a reality.
Have you tried Mediaportal? It is free, has a ton of plug ins and skins to make it into anything you want, has a nice UI, really stable, for HTPCs I'd say Mediaportal is better than XBMC as far as experience IMHO.
As for TFA, it doesn't really matter whether they use the keys or not, the secret is out. From watching the videos from the hacker conference once they got the keys it was game over thanks to flaws in the core design of the PS3. As we have seen the "smart cow" analogy is all too true, once one figures out the trick it quickly will be picked up by others who will run with it.
Personally I don't get why the console makers trip over themselves trying to block other usage. I thought the PS3 original idea was the smart one, give them a way to play with the hardware but not get to the parts required to run games. Hell I'd have gone one further and allowed access to ALL the hardware via a sandbox except the crypto required to run games, so that anybody could add any media center style front end they wanted. It would have kept the hackers happy by giving them most of the hardware to play with AND could have sold more units by giving people media options, it may have even caused a cottage industry to pop up with VARs selling different front end enabled consoles to the masses.
I guess the industry will never learn. They continue to shoot themselves in the foot, all for the sake of DRM that just screws the customers while painting a "fuck with me!" sign on it for the hackers. Stupid is as stupid does I suppose.
Well to be fair the Linux guy would want to "spice up" your drink with all these 'free" ingredients that were made for a dozen different drinks that didn't go together, so what you ended up with smelled suspiciously like RMS's feet and tasted just as bad. The Windows guy would just pour you some stale shit from a can while swearing it is completely fresh and flavorful, while the Apple guy would offer you an "iSmoothy" that cost three times what it was worth and when you told him you didn't like Pineapple he would say "Liar! Everyone LOVES Pineapple! You just aren't cultured enough to appreciate the experience!"
So I guess the moral of the story is to pour your own drinks and OS guys typically have bad taste in booze.
I'm sorry, but I gotta call bullshit. You see if you would have studied your history you'd know that Hitler was ALREADY fucked long before a single American put boots on the ground. look up his "planning" around Operation Barbarossa and you'll see that by Stalingrad he was ALREADY fucked, and fucked HARD. He split his forces into THREE groups after having to stop several time for the supplies to catch up (fuckup #1) and sent the majority south after the oilfields with NO rest (fuckup #2) while at the same time sending a weakened Sixth Panzer after Stalingrad (fuckup 3 and you're out!).
If you look at the man's plans he was basically boned with no help from the Americans by Stalingrad. His having to stop several times telegraphed his EXACT plan, which allowed Stalin to move the vital tank and warplane factories (which I would argue the combination of the rugged T-34 which could be argued was the best all around tank of the war backed up by the Katyusha which was cheap to manufacture AND devastating and having the Germans unable to mount an armored offensive thanks to the IL-2 sealed Hitler's fate in the east) left Hitler with NO WAY to stop Stalin's war production, and the weakening of his forces by splitting left him unable to secure the oil fields while at the same time leaving his northern flank exposed.
If the USA stayed out of the war in Europe the only changes would most likely be that Hitler might have taken England (which even then would have been doubtful as the "cash and carry" would have still allowed England to use the USA for manufacturing) but would have still fallen ultimately to Stalin. The USSR simply had plenty of raw materials with which to work, much of which was out of Hitler's reach, and a VERY large populace with a fanatical hatred of Germans (and rightly so) with which to wage total war. Read some of the books out there on Stalingrad and Barbarossa or even watch the excellent BBC "The World at War: Stalingrad" to see that Hitler's "strategy" in the east was one critical blunder after another.
The USA could have never set a single boot on the grounds of Europe and simply kept selling to the allies and I doubt anything would have come out differently, and this is coming from an American that had multiple family members fight in WWII in Europe. The simple fact is reading his communiques and plans Hitler bet everything on Russia being another France and Stalin proved him DEAD wrong. Hell the man didn't even have adequate winter gear for his troops! He was SO fucked!
I just thought I'd let you know FYI if that socket 775 will support it you can get Pentium Ds for dirt cheap $28 and as you can see they have chips for just about ANY older PC you may have, and have some crazy deals on AM2 if you would like to upgrade to a triple. I mean how can you turn down a triple for $42?
I have bought plenty from these guys, the last a pair of Pentiums Ds to upgrade my nephews for Xmas, and they have top notch service. They even called me just to make sure I hadn't hit the order button twice because I bought two of the same chip. So if your board will take it you really can't beat a $28 CPU upgrade since as you pointed out most games don't even slam a duallie yet. BTW those Pentium Ds are CRAZY OCers, talking to guys online 3.6Ghz-3.8GHz is easily doable with good air cooling. all my nephews play are MMOs so frankly the dual by itself is overkill. But if I was you I'd snatch a cheap duallie to drop into that 775 if it will take it (I've found most will take the 805 D if nothing else) because at $28 the performance boost would be incredibly cheap. They also have X4s but the sweet spot from them on the AMD side has got to be the $42 8650. Anyway I just thought you might want to see some cheapie upgrade options, happy hunting!
That is because it is NOT the drive, it is the particular combo of DRM and OS. I wish I could have afforded to do experiments to find out which combos did what, but since all the ring 0 DRM is so much voodoo I've found you can have three machines with identical software and one trip it and the others don't. What I HAVE found and will be happy to inform you is it HAS TO BE A COMBO...it NEVER hits on JUST Starforce or JUST Safedisc, but always a mix.
The problem is when you get a gamer you will often have a large range of DRM bullshit clogging the PC, so finding which straw broke the back is damned near impossible. I have seen machines with over a half a dozen pieces of ring 0 DRM installed at once, and with more and more getting large HDDs I have a feeling it is gonna get worse. I have also sen several machines with multiple versions of the SAME DRM, like SecuROM 2&3 and Starforce 1&2 because they installed a newer game with an older and the older refuse to hand off to the newer "protection".
But if you work in the biz what you'll want to look for is what I call "battling DRM" which causes all kinds of fuckups including PIO cook off. You see the DRM of one will interfere with the DRM of another, which will default to "Fuck u ya filthy piratez!" and try to lock down the machine, which will set the first off, you get the picture. I have also found it to happen more often on those machines that have one DVD burner and a "combo" drive, ala DVD ROM/CDRW, like some of the Dell and eMachines mid ranges. The drives are a mix so it isn't that, and when I install a new drive without removing the offending DRM it starts to throw the NEW drive into PIO, so I lay the blame square at the DRM manufacturers.
But type "DRM causes crash" "DRM causes BSOD" and "DRM PIO MOde" into Google if you don't believe me, it is a problem that has been going on for a LONG time, and if you haven't run across it consider yourself lucky. Or maybe your gaming customers just use cracks for their older games.
A final warning in case you didn't know FYI X86 ring 0 DRM WILL NOT UNINSTALL on X64 OSes! and their "uninstallers" they host on their sites will not work on X64 especially with the older installers. So what you get is someone with a nice new Windows 7 X64, that installs their favorite older games, which BTW the X86 DRM won't say shit and will happily try to jam X86 ring 0 driver into an X64 kernel (which I'm sure you know is a BIG NO NO) followed by all kinds of freaky "quirks" starting from the classic "insert disc into drive" when it is all the way to random hard locks, jerks, and full out BSODs. The only way I've found to reliably remove that shite is to boot into an XP Live CD and strip the files from there. Otherwise it is damned near impossible to remove all the ring 0 BS.
The ONLY reason we aren't currently wiping our asses with money because it is worth less than TP is the Fed playing Three Card Monty with the money. See QE2 for a nice example. The fed prints the money, buys treasury bonds with the money they just printed, USA blows more money thus needing to sell more treasuries, lather rinse repeat. the problem is it is all a shell game, and when it comes tumbling down like any Ponzi scheme the shit WILL hit the fan. Think those bankers at the Fed is gonna lose money? Hell no, they'll have done converted their money into the Yuan or Gold and quietly slipped out the back when they realize the game is up.
That will leave the USA with NO real income (too much tied into "financial and services" which will be blown to hell and have nobody to sell to respectively) massive homelessness and unemployment, no way to pay the bills like unemployment, social security, medicare, etc. One thing we WILL have is a shitload of arms, lots of warm bodies, and plenty of factories shut down during offshoring that won't take that much to start back up.
If you want just a tiny taste of the REAL picture we are currently looking at I suggest you read this but don't read it just after eating as it WILL make you want to puke! Basically the government and the fed have been feeding the US people a giant line of bullshit, while the money is secretly moving out as fast as they can carry it. You have 4 dollars going out and never coming back for every ONE dollar you got coming in, over 22,000 factories closed in just a single decade with the jobs replacing them being "McJobs". It doesn't take Stephen Hawking to do the math. If it wasn't for the fed I truly believe we would already be in another great depression but robbing Peter to pay Paul just isn't sustainable, especially when you have no middle class left and huge masses of working poor and soon to be homeless.
Hell I can look out my window at the boarded up shops, the business districts in most of the south look like something from "Escape from New York" and the government has bet their asses on an "IP Economy" which is betting the farm on getting other countries to pay for something any kid with a burner can make infinite copies of. Sadly it don't take Nostradamus to see the future the USA is headed for, and it ain't pretty.
Don't worry little Canuck, we don't want your whole country, just the oil sands! Can't expect to run M-1s on ethanol you know. But if push comes to shove as long as you smile prettily and sell us cheap oil we'll leave ya alone. After all we American HATE the fucking snow! As for Taiwan? Never gonna happen, and here is why: my guess is we'll happily "trade" Taiwan to China in return for them STFUing about us taking Mexico, and probably South America while we are at it.
Lets be honest little Canadian friend, the next war will NOT be fought for land, ideology, or any of that bullshit, it will be fought for resources! Hell of a lot of oil and raw materials south of the border ya know. Look at the USA pre WWII, we had a piss poor little military and crappy little tanks. what we DID have was raw materials and plenty of bodies to work in the factories, kinda like...well now. So my guess is here is how it will go down: First we get the "America First!" isolationist (which will help when we fuck over the EU and Taiwan, as he will sell it as "Not worth losing American boys over!") followed by a HELL of a lot of flag waving nationalism and jingoism. Right about that time our great leader will quietly pull whoever is running Canada at the time and tell him/her "Look, you can smile, shake hands, and sell off the oil, or we can crush your ass like bug. Which is it friend?" which will be followed (since Canadians don't strike me as suicidal OR stupid) with a nice little ceremony showing support for the USA and some exclusive contracts.
Right about this time you will have Nancy Grace and all the little talking heads pushing what a "lawless country" Mexico is, complete with lots of rape and human trafficking stories. We will then roll the tanks and by the end of the month Mexico will be divided into a half a dozen new states. It will be at this point the deal with China will be made, we will tell them "You keep selling to us? Hell help yourself to Taiwan friend!" which will be followed by a MASSIVE ramp up in USA military capability. everyone will think it is over Taiwan but only the US brass and the Chinese will know better. Meanwhile we will have already sat down with our new friend Mr. Putin, and sold out the EU to the new USSR, which I'm sure he'll be elected President for Life of. Then will come the final move on the board...
Using our bases in the former Mexico as well as our carriers on both sides we will take south America, while China snatches up Africa. as I said earlier I think the EU will STFU, because they will have enough on their plate without the USA covering their flank with NATO. Sure they'll be some UN condemnation, like we care, a few threats of sanctions, which again with all those resources we won't care, and what you will end up with is this: The "new" United Continent of America, the "new" USSR, and the "new" Asian Prosperity Sphere. Canada will be left because frankly they'll continue to sell us what we want, and frankly with so much power you'd have to be insane to say boo to us anyway. the big difference between this and the cold war will be the three superpowers happily trading with each other, because each will have enough power and resources that it would be suicide to fuck with each other.
Scary? Hell yes, but as I said I bet those on the ground in Europe in 1932 never thought shit would end up like it did by 1943. And the USA simply has too many weapons, resources, and bodies to throw at the front to simply go out with a whimper. With Putin controlling the oil, gas, and making sure there is food on the shelves and the trains run on time I doubt seriously the old Soviet states will say shit, which leaves the old EU standing alone. As I said Britain will STFU if we agree to play nice and share the wealth a little, Germany will be more concerned with its own position, and frankly the French and Italians just aren't powerful enough to tip any scales one way or the other. Hell if the USA plays it right, maybe with a few false flag incidents? We might even come off looking l
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If you read the parent poster we were talking about the "here today, gone tomorrow" poker players and NOT the "big names" that by their very nature end up in the top circle at least more than once or they wouldn't BE big names, now would they?
This is one of those "taboo" subjects nobody is supposed to talk about, when it has been proven pretty much beyond a reasonable doubt that gambling IS addictive. Now me personally I believe in the analogy the late great William F. Buckley used, which I paraphrase here "If I set a bottle on a table and say 'this is poison, it will destroy your health, your sanity, your family, and eventually kill you' and you push me out of the way and drink it? Well then STUPID YOU! Why should have have to spend billions to build walls around the bottle and cages to put you in just so you don't drink it?"
So I personally believe that drugs, gambling, and prostitution should ALL be 100% legal, and if you screw your life up with them too damned bad. But to pretend that it isn't a serious problem to quite a few people is just dishonest. I'd love to see a "Where are they now?" kind of study on the top 30 players from the WSOP for each of the last 10 years, because I'd bet my last dollar (no pun intended) that for the 10 or so that made a good living out of it you'd have a good 40 or more that lost everything simply because they couldn't stop. The one I was writing about said he literally had to have his wife give him an allowance like a child because he would lose the payments for the bills otherwise, he just couldn't stop himself from gambling. If that isn't an addict I don't know what is.
Hi MR AC! While I wish that were true, because even as a Windows guy I like having options, the problem with Android, and it is a BIG problem despite how many here go "ohh poo poo" when anybody brings it up, is this: Android is fragmented as hell which makes it a royal PITA for developers, and people buying Android don't spend money like iUsers do, which makes it more expensive AND less profitable.
Here, let me give an example: I was stuck going into the hell that is Walmart, because one of the relatives gave the boys some gift cards for Xmas. While there I did my usual "Come get me in electronics" spiel and did some looking around. Know what I saw? Just on the shelves of that local Wally World there was Android 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0, and this isn't even a really tech heavy place, just your average Supercenter. After dropping them off I stopped in the local Walgreen's because I forgot to get some sinus pills, and there was Android 1.5 and 1.8 on tablets. The big problem? They were all advertised as "Android" with the little green droid and all.
So I have a feeling Android is gonna implode, and implode pretty badly. The average Joe knows fuck all about "versions" or "hardware specs" all he is gonna know is "I got one of those Android things and it sucks ass!" meanwhile both Apple and MSFT have kept pretty strict controls on the hardware so it "just works" with WinPhone 7 and iOS. Expecting people to look at hardware specs is just ridiculous when all they look at when buying computers is big numbers equal better!
So I have a feeling Android is gonna be relegated to CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) while all those that got burnt on Droid will go running to WinPhone and iOS. The problem with Android is they are thinking too geeky, and the majority of the public don't know shit when it comes to geek crap. I should know, I sell to them 6 days a week. I have already had the first rumblings from customers that took cheap Droid smartphones with a new plan and are bitching that it don't work worth a crap compared to their friend's iPhone, so I smell a backlash coming, and it is gonna be nasty.
Maybe I'm wrong, like I said in the past I would have preferred it if the HTML bunch would have just set Theora as a minimum and been done with it, but I think flash and H.264 is here to stay, whether the geeks and Google like it or not.
Uhhhh...how EXACTLY is this "good for open source" anyway? Isn't this just "TiVoization" on a national scale? i mean it isn't like Putin and Ahmadinjerk have suddenly embraced freedom and caring and puppies and shit, they want open source because they can just take it for free and once they've made sure they can't find any obvious back doors in it lock the holy hell out of it!
So I honestly don't see how this is in any way a "victory" for open source, anymore than bragging the Chinese death van another poster linked to uses open source for the ignition system. Because it isn't like these guys are suddenly gonna start playing by the rules and start acting all share and share alike you know. After all what is RMS gonna do, march into Putin's or Ahmadinjerk's office and DEMAND they follow the GPL?
Oh this kind of stupidity goes back a looooong way, and isn't just an American SNAFU. For an interesting read on how horribly politics and science can be when mixed together read a little about Lysenkoism which could be argued caused countless deaths from famine and set back Soviet research on crop genetics by decades. All because the Soviet Politburo wanted to push an "all peasants are created equal policy, even though of course we know that isn't true (genes make some smarter, some faster, some better runners, etc)
But the real tragedy here is the space program is basically being destroyed so Senator Bumfukis can "bring home the bacon" to his district. Whereas before the main goal of NASA was to keep us at the top of the heap and ahead of the soviets now its main goal is to pad congressional districts, with anything else a distant second. The shutlle was a bad joke, anything built on shuttle parts will be a bad joke and expensive as hell, but congress doesn't care as long as Bumfukis can tell folks he is "bringing home the jobs!" in a classic broken window fallacy fashion. Is it any wonder the USA will in all likelihood end up a destitute also ran?
Exactly, we have turned childhood into a siege mentality. When I was a kid once school let out you would walk across the street to the little food mart, not having to worry about traffic because somebody's mom or grandma was crossing guard that week, grab a coke or a bag of chips and laugh and talk for awhile. Then those that were within walking distance did so while those of us that weren't got picked up in the parking lot by a relative after they inevitably went into the store for some little something they forgot.
Now at both the elementary and middle school they have had to add another lane in both directions at great expense because the lines of cars were literally going back for miles, you have armed police with cruisers at BOTH exits at BOTH schools acting as security and crossing guards, again at great expense I'm sure. And finally the kids can't even interact with each other because they have to be kept single file to speed up delivery in order to keep the traffic flowing, and of course the number of kids being fat is getting nuts because the parents would rather have them playing the X360 than going outside where the bogeyman might snatch them.
Now it is pretty obvious to anyone with eyes the paranoia is doing more harm than good. The kids don't get enough time to socially interact anymore which sure isn't good for them mentally or emotionally, they don't get enough exercise because the constantly "Look out! They are after you!" atmosphere created by things like Amber alerts keeps the parents edgy enough they'd rather just let the kid sit at home in front of the TV or console, which in turn makes for a whole lot of fat kids which at that age is horrible for your health. It is any wonder things like juvenile diabetes and obesity is through the roof? Kids aren't even allowed outside anymore!
Not to mention trying to jam a full heavy Linux DE (which according to some of the links followed through TFA is pretty crippled and unusable as a replacement shell, due to so many core features being broken) into a place it was never meant to be simply to use some KDE apps doesn't make much sense.
After all many of the apps on Linux are cross platform (which is one of the nice things about Linux, so many of the apps will run anywhere) and for the ones that aren't there are a myriad of other choices that don't involve dumping a ton of KDE dependencies into Windows, such as dual booting or one of the several free VMs such as VMWare Player which already has the Kubuntu LTS VM ready to go so all one needs to do is simply download and run this or one of several versions of KDE Linux as easy as downloading and running an app on Windows.
So it just doesn't make any sense to me this late in the game. If it were 2002 when you had so many screaming obscenities over the XP "Fisher Price" GUI I could see it, but the Windows 7 GUI is nice and for those staying on XP there is a really nice replacement shell that is stable as a rock and can make Windows look and behave anyway you desire, and TFA said the really popular apps like Amarok are getting Windows stand alone installers. So why would you want to dump nearly a GB of dependencies (that is how much it was when I ran it a couple of months back) for a few apps with so much of its core being unstable?
Maybe I'm missing something but other than saying "we must because we can" it makes about as much sense to me as trying to rip out the Windows 7 DE to run it in Ubuntu. Wouldn't it simply make more sense to run the DE in the environment it was designed for where it can have full functionality and a level of integration it will simply never be able to have on Windows? it isn't like you can't get KDE for absolutely free in Linux. And with so many show stoppers you certainly wouldn't want this to be a Windows users first experience with KDE.
Wow, notice how I got modded down for saying it won't work? it won't make 1+1=3, or change reality because you know what? It still won't work and furthermore allow me to expand on why it won't work and why I believe you are wrong as well. Here goes...
1.-WebM is solving a problem the majority doesn't have because the majority of sites are in flash, and the ones that aren't are H.264 which works fine in Windows, either native or with a simple codec download. 2.-MSFT wrote a plugin for FF on Win 7 and XP will be dying off pretty rapidly, so that leaves just Chrome without H.264 support(since I believe Opera can use OS codecs) and of course Safari will support H.264 but is doubtful on WebM. 3.- Between Windows and iDevices you are looking at around 97% of the web, Windows 7 has H.264, XP can have it with a simple codec download, Apple has H.264, of course the hot thing is the iDevices which support H.264 and NOT WebM. 4.-Finally while bleeding edge web developers may get a stiffie about HTML V5, most of the web is NOT designed by bleeding edge developers. And frankly my mom could design with flash. developers know flash, they use flash, dropping video into flash is second nature and having to add a video multiple times because different browsers support different codecs will mean those HTML V5 developers are gonna see their worst nightmare come true...everyone will just stick with flash, which already works. Oh they'll add H.264 so they can play on iPhone, but that's it.
So while it is a nice thought that the web would be free with regards to video, I predict WebM will be a giant bust. I doubt seriously MSFT and Apple are gonna jump on the WebM bandwagon, and Google can't afford to lose all IE and iDevice users, so if they refuse to support H.264 that means they'll have to have something to fall back to and that means flash on Windows and probably some low res H.264 on iDevices just to piss off Apple. If it was just Google VS MSFT I'd agree with you, but the elephant in the room is named Steve and he does NOT switch gears or just change his mind. Jobs has said "It will be H.264" and MSFT will go "Me Too!" because...well it has worked so far, hasn't it? And while Google likes to think Youtube is the end all of video the simple fact is there are a bazillion video sites out there and if all the iDevice users split others WILL follow. So I predict that unless Google changes its mind they will simply torpedo Chrome. Since there are plenty of Chromium based browsers out there (I'm using one of them to type this and its nice) the users will just migrate away from the problem. Sorry FOSS guys, but like Vorbis it is a little too little a little too late.
You realize you are responding to a chatbot, yes? look at the facts: it starts with the SAME LINE about /. being stagnated, one you respond it throws back a standard retort, usually based on "your x is x" such as "your wife is (whatever you called the bot)" and then ends with the "you're completely pathetic" tag line. REAL trolls just don't do that! They get pissy, they get rude, but there is always some serious changes to their speech because they are people. Hell the thing just keeps generating the exact same account name with an incrementing number! REAL trolls make new nicks or use sock puppets.
So don't bother responding to a michael kristopeit post, it is just a bot, most likely cooked up to tweak the algo before entering it in one of the chatbot competitions. Hell it isn't even a good design ELIZA had more personality and phrase tweaks than this one. Frankly this bot has all the variety and flavor of a MickyD burger that has been left under the heat lamps all day.
As for TFA considering Palin said he should "Be hunted like a terrorist" once could easily argue his lawyer isn't even exaggerating on this. Hell look at how many of our MSM tripped over themselves to kiss the government booty and chime in on how bad it was that we be told anything. If he was brought over here you would have Nancy Grace and every other talking head to line up and call him everything but human. At the minimum he would probably spend 30 years or so in the pen. Sadly nothing our government does anymore surprises me and while I doubt they would just kill him, drop him in a hole somewhere and forget about where they left him? That I could see, and it makes me glad that my grandfather and great uncle who fought for our freedom in WWII aren't here anymore, because you could probably power the south with the number of revolutions they are turning in their graves.
I'd say you don't hear about them because many are addicts and like all addicts they eventually crash and burn. I remember reading an article in the 90s about one of the recent at the time WSOP winners and old man Binion said "Yeah that kid would be an all time champ...if you could get the guy to ONLY play poker". It went on to talk about how in between poker games he would bet on ANYTHING..football, baseball, golf, if he couldn't find any other "action" he would actually bet thousands on which side of a sugar cube a fly would land on.
So I'd say a lot of those "flash in the pan" poker players are simply too addicted to gambling to last long term. Even in poker one needs to keep a halfway decent stake if one is gonna consistently play for the real money and if they are addicts that money just won't stay in their possession long enough to keep them earning. In a way it reminds me of some of the day traders that I've met, literally bleary eyed from staring at a half a dozen screens and constantly moving from one trade to the next. It is like if they aren't moving SOMEWHERE they just can't be happy. Kinda sad really.
Not to mention this is gonna do exactly Jack and Squat. Frankly I have never seen a site that just uses H.264 as they all wrap it in flash so unless Google is gonna can flash support as well (which would be suicide and I'm sure make MSFT and Mozilla happy as usage of Chrome would nosedive) then I honestly don't see this little maneuver having much or well any effect on the web at large.
And does anybody know how possible it would be to just fork Chrome away from Google? I know webkit is also supported by Apple who sure as hell isn't gonna lose H.264 not with the way Steve talked it up, and there are many Chromium based out there already thanks to those that didn't like all the "phone home" features (I'm typing this in Comodo Dragon which is Chromium based quite nice BTW) so what are the odds that someone just takes Chromium and forks away from Google's changes? Because I'm betting it wouldn't be hard to base future versions of Chromium on the Apple webkit base instead of the Google base
And has anybody seen whether or not WebM violates any of MPEG-LA's patents? Last I checked MPEG-LA had so damned many patents there was disagreement on whether or not it would be possible to make ANY codec that didn't trip over a couple of dozen of them. In either case it sounds like we are gonna be seeing a repeat of the bad old days of Netscape VS IE, where every other website had code that one or the other browser wouldn't support. Anybody old enough to remember the evil "blink" tag?
Citation please? because otherwise you are simply shilling or as some of us locals like to call it "full of shit". So lets see some numbers, because as I said last numbers I saw was Linux at 1% and flat on desktops, 30% and down by 4% on servers. The ONLY place it had shown growth was in embedded which as I pointed out means nothing thanks to GPL V2 and the "TiVo loophole".
And the only idiot here is YOU Goober (how appropriate a UID there) because yet again you show NOTHING but anecdotes. I pointed out a very well known fact that thanks to HDMI Linux drivers have less functionality, which is why Linux is either stuck using behind the curve binary blobs or crippled free drivers, and all you do is throw insults when I point this out.
So don't blame me because your OS design doesn't allow NDAs. As I pointed out, which was even featured in TFA, the future is integrated CPU+GPU, with what I've read even with a discrete the GPU will still be used for other jobs like physics...except again in Linux thanks to the whole HDMI thing. Hell don't believe me, go look at the ATI developers site and read for yourself Goober. The reason they can't just hand over the code for the GPU is the fact that they can't hand out the code to protected path which is now built into EVERY single GPU out there. So the ONLY way for Linux to have full functionality on these new chips is to reverse engineer protected path, which even then I doubt they'll be allowed to release in the west thanks to DMCA. After all the whole point of protected path is copyright protection, which DMCA says is a no no to get around. Again don't blame me, I'm not the one that designed the thing I just pointed out it will fuck Linux because you can't have NDAs in Linux.
Now lets see those citations along with your explanation on how Linux is gonna magically get around all this embedded DRM and do so WITHOUT using binary blobs which by their very closed source design makes them inferior on Linux since the kernel guys can't do anything with them. These are not problems for Apple or MSFT since Apple chooses their own hardware and MSFT worked with the big three chip makers to design a new hardware subsystem that integrates with protected path. You can act pissy all you want, but it won't make 1+1=3 nor will it make it so Linux can use and support the hardware DRM being built into all the new chips.
Bah! You want to make Bill Gates money you need to develop some cute panties and G-Strings that kill chick farts at the source!
Any guy that has had to deal with a gassy GF or taken some hottie to a Mexican restaurant (BAD choice) knows that a dozen drunken frat guys eating Taco hell creates NOTHING on the sheer level of chemical warfare as a single cutie can let loose upon the environment!
I don't know what kind of demonic evil goes on in the female digestive tract but get trapped in the elevator with that little 90 pound babe with a case of gas and she'll make the fat judge at a chili cook off smell like roses!
Wow, yet another strawman, only this one taken out of contest, please ignore the gasoline...WHOOSH. Notice in the first sentence you quoted I said "(which even then would have been doubtful as the "cash and carry" would have still allowed England to use the USA for manufacturing) but would have still fallen ultimately to Stalin. And at least get the dates right, Stalingrad wasn't truly over and free from shelling or attack until mid may 1943, not 1941.
And it was YOU sir that claimed the war would have ended differently if the Americans hadn't rode in, and I quote " however, the next three and a half years, they made a major push in Europe that did change the outcome of the war." end quote. Now as I pointed out you were completely wrong, or as we call it locally full of shit. Now if you don't like being full of shit, read a book, watch one of the several very well made documentaries on the subject, hell the communiques of the generals on both the USSR and Nazi side have been translated and are free to view. The only one that doesn't seem to accept the war in the east was lost by Stalingrad was YOU, and since one can't win a war while losing your entire eastern flank, and by the end of 1943 (again without a single American boot on the ground) you had the USSR cranking out 4 tanks for every one lost it doesn't take Stephen Hawking to do the math. By mid 1943 it was pretty obvious Hitler would lose the east, the question was when.
I would suggest you watch the excellent 26 part BBC series on the subject "The World AT War" especially the episodes on Stalingrad and the war in the east. They use actual German footage showing not propaganda but what the troops were facing, and by mid 1943 you have Germans using oxcarts to retreat and burning Panzers litter the fields. And since Stalin would have never made peace with Hitler after being betrayed it was over, the fat lady was down the street having a sandwich. Again the only question was when, just as many will point out the decisive battle in the Pacific was NOT late in the war, but quite early. A little place known as Midway. Notice the first sentence says " widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II"? Which just drives home what I said, it is often not some great "final battle" that decides a war it is a single campaign with fatal mistakes that changes the outcome. For the Pacific it was Midway, for the European war it was Stalingrad. Just as we didn't need a single British or Russian to win Midway and change the war neither did the Russians need the USA to do the same. Oh we did help as I pointed out, and ultimately saved many Soviet lives. But as I said you were wrong on the Americans changing the outcome, accept your wrongness and learn from it.
Sorry I can't remember where I read it, but out of all the theories of Windows ARM I read exactly ONE that made sense: .NET. The poster wrote that Windows ARM will of course not be x86 Windows but based around .NET so that one can compile an app for Windows ARM and it'll run just fine on x86 Windows as well. This will allow developers to "write once, run twice" without having to rewrite. That made a hell of a lot more sense to me than trying to fit some sort of backwards compatibility for X86 onto ARM, or trying to get those millions of Windows apps ported.
As for TFA, I know the DOJ here in America is sucking corporate cock so hard it makes a Hoover vacuum look gentle, but why hasn't the EU or somebody done shit about Intel? I mean winning market fair and square? yippy skippy, I'm happy for you. But what Intel is doing is basically using every dirty trick in the book and then throwing some money at the competitor (without changing their ways ONE bit) when they get caught.
First they bribed the OEMs and rigged the compilers against AMD, which caused long term serious damage to AMD ( because one could easily argue that the OEMs wouldn't have taken the shitty pig netburst over the much better AMD chips if it weren't for bribes, thus making AMD's financial situation MUCH worse) and then when it looks like AMD is on the ropes but ready to drag them to court they throw some money at them AND get to continue using AMD patents, then they screw Nvidia out of being able to make chipsets for the new chips, thus killing their chipset business dead, and now they throw them some money to fuck off AND get access to their patents. See a pattern here?
Time and again Intel is getting rewarded for rigging the market and making sure they have no real competition. this would be like allowing MSFT and Apple to bribe handset OEMs not to use anything Linux based and when they get caught they throw some money at the Linux foundation AND get a free pass to use any Linux patents. The free market simply doesn't work if we allow the 800 pound gorillas to simply bribe and rig the system in their favor, just look at the damage MSFT was able to do with IE thanks to their 90s dirty tricks. If someone doesn't do something about Intel we are gonna end up with a single supplier of CPUs and we can go back to the lovely days when a PC cost a minimum of a couple of grand. Is that REALLY what we want to see happen?
After the bribery and compiler rigging came out I quit buying, building, or selling Intel and those that care about the free market should do the same. Unless you are in one of the tiny niches where money is no object and every drop of speed is critical the AMD chips are both cheap and well performing, and their IGPs and discrete GPUs stomp the hell out of Intel. If the won't do a damned thing to stop it then I urge my fellow geeks to stand up. WE are the ones that make the buying choices for our families, coworkers, and places of business, and WE can say in a single voice "Rigging the market is NOT allowed!". Even in the workstation market one can buy an AMD server board with dual 8 core CPUs for less than the price of a single top of the line Intel chip. So make yourselves counted, push AMD where you can. This rigging and bullying the market simply can't be allowed to continue.
Hey nice straw man you built there, please ignore the match ...WHOOSH! Where did I say they had NO impact? show me the quote please? Because frankly you are just looking to build straw men to knock down. I said that cash and carry DID help keep Britain afloat, and I would be happy to point out the Studebaker trucks we gave the USSR under lend lease freed up vital production while making an excellent platform for "Stalin's organs".
What I did say was No American need to have laid a single boot upon European soil and the war would have ended exactly the same because Hitler made one giant blunder after another which made war in the east unwinnable by Stalingrad. Now does that mean those boots on the ground had no effect? of course not, those boots on the ground saved countless Soviet lives and cut down the length of the war by probably 3 years.
But that does not change the fact that Hitler had lost the war by Stalingrad not in the least little bit. When you look at the losses and remaining troops after Stalingrad only a fool or a zealot would argue Hitler could have turned it around and won in the east. His northern flank was shattered, his southern flank suffered irreplaceable losses, and the elite Sixth Panzer that tore through France was nothing but a shell of its former self and would NEVER regain even half of its former strength.
So I'd say if ANYONE is doing a disservice it is YOU sir, by pretending those million plus Soviets would have died in vain if it wasn't for the Americans riding in on the white horse. As long as the USA kept the supplies of machines and raw materials going through the straight the USSR would have still won just as the weapons and supplies to Britain would have still kept it from falling even if not a single American boot touched that ground. It would have cost more lives yes, it would have probably gone on another two years at least. but don't delude yourself Hitler had NO chance of holding on to the east after Stalingrad. but don't take MY word for it, open up a history book or any site on WWII and look at the battles between Stalingrad and the USA landings for yourself. What you will see is Hitler falling back, falling back, losing more and more men and material he simply couldn't replace. The war was over, the only question was how long would it take.
Actually it is obvious you haven't used Windows in awhile, because thanks to unified driver arch they "just work" and have for quite awhile now, as long as you stay away from the bleeding edge beta stuff. And show me where exactly is Linux doing good in desktops? Can I pick up a Linux desktop in Walmart? Best Buy? Nope, hell they don't even sell Linux on netbooks anymore.
And if you think "growing by leaps and bounds" is a piddly 1% of the desktop, less than 30% of the servers and falling last I checked, and on smartphones that have been TiVo'd? Well then it doesn't matter what I say, because you are so far beyond drinking the koolaid you are actually mainlining the flavor crystals. the ONLY place Linux is getting any real "gains" is Android, which has about as much to do with a real Linux distro as my router does with Windows XP. One is a stripped down embedded device with major fragmentation, very little GPL compliance, and notice Android is STRICTLY based on GPL V2 code, aka "welcome to TiVo!", whereas the other is a full OS. Linux on the desktop? Practically DOA, the numbers have been pretty flat for quite awhile now. Linux on the server? As I said last numbers I saw had it falling and had it fourth behind Windows, various Unix, and IBM mainframe OS (sorry I can't remember the exact number name for that one) so I honestly don't see these "great leaps and bounds" but I'm sure you can provide citation for something other than Droid, yes?
And isn't it funny how if you say to a FOSSie anything other than "Gee, isn't Linux swell? It sure is Biff, and RMS smells like cotton candy!" they instantly start throwing words like troll and shill around? But I guess that is what I get for actually feeling sorry for someone whose philosophy is about to get them train fucked. Meanwhile I have this wonderful little driver tool I just update once a month or so on my flash and ALL hardware from pretty much the last ten years or so "just works" on every Windows for the past decade. Just put in the flash and hit run. And the graphic drivers in particular run just beautifully, time after time after time. So I really am sorry you're about to get fucked thanks to on chip protected path, but since MSFT signed the NDA we Windows users just don't have to worry about such things.
While I think Islam is a vile practice too sick to be called a religion, especially with their treatment of women and children, to be fair from what I've read that particular "tradition" is only among the Pashtun tribes and the others look down upon them for their sick shit. But the Pashtuns have been very powerful in their territory and as in all things with power comes the ability to do whatever the hell you want and get away with it.
And frankly with all the reports of Blackwater (or whatever bullshit name they call themselves this week) trying to recreate "Full Metal Jacket" all over the middle east while we pay them big bucks to do so honestly we've lost so much of the moral high ground we don't really have much room to talk on the subject of evil shit. A parable about pointing out splinters while there is a log in your eye comes to mind. But blaming the Muslims for what the Pashtuns do would be like blaming Christianity for what those Mormon polygamists do. If you read the article one of the above posters linked to you'll see they went to the local Mullah who said flat footed it is child abuse and that it is happening because there simply isn't ANY law there.
I'd say it is definitely Intel's fault if they load the chip with DRM BS that can only be used by signing NDAs and agreeing not to share your work, which from the looks of the Bridge chips really wouldn't surprise me. You know, I may not be a Linux guy but I actually do feel kinda sorry for them right now, as it looks like they are gonna get a butt raping that made the GMA 500 look Linux friendly.i mean it was bad enough when there are chunks of the video chip they can't get thanks to HDMI, thus giving them the choice of shitty binary blobs or crippled drivers, but now Intel is gonna pile the DRM into the CPU itself so basically their whole CPU will be crippled!
Frankly the future ain't looking good for Linux outside of embedded devices ATM. Both AMD with Bobcat/Bulldozer and Intel with Sandy/Ivy Bridge are moving more of the GPU into the CPU, and since I'm sure DX11 hooks into the HDMI support Linux guys will be looking at shitty locked down drivers or crippled drivers, their choice. All it will take is for Intel to add a couple of levels of "next gen" DRM and AMD to play along for the CPU to run like an old P3 unless you sign an NDA and agree to play ball, which by the very nature of Linux is impossible. You know as much as I hate to agree with RMS on...well pretty much anything at all, all this DRM into general purpose CPUs looks to me like one more step towards Stallman's right to read story becoming a reality.
Have you tried Mediaportal? It is free, has a ton of plug ins and skins to make it into anything you want, has a nice UI, really stable, for HTPCs I'd say Mediaportal is better than XBMC as far as experience IMHO.
As for TFA, it doesn't really matter whether they use the keys or not, the secret is out. From watching the videos from the hacker conference once they got the keys it was game over thanks to flaws in the core design of the PS3. As we have seen the "smart cow" analogy is all too true, once one figures out the trick it quickly will be picked up by others who will run with it.
Personally I don't get why the console makers trip over themselves trying to block other usage. I thought the PS3 original idea was the smart one, give them a way to play with the hardware but not get to the parts required to run games. Hell I'd have gone one further and allowed access to ALL the hardware via a sandbox except the crypto required to run games, so that anybody could add any media center style front end they wanted. It would have kept the hackers happy by giving them most of the hardware to play with AND could have sold more units by giving people media options, it may have even caused a cottage industry to pop up with VARs selling different front end enabled consoles to the masses.
I guess the industry will never learn. They continue to shoot themselves in the foot, all for the sake of DRM that just screws the customers while painting a "fuck with me!" sign on it for the hackers. Stupid is as stupid does I suppose.
Well to be fair the Linux guy would want to "spice up" your drink with all these 'free" ingredients that were made for a dozen different drinks that didn't go together, so what you ended up with smelled suspiciously like RMS's feet and tasted just as bad. The Windows guy would just pour you some stale shit from a can while swearing it is completely fresh and flavorful, while the Apple guy would offer you an "iSmoothy" that cost three times what it was worth and when you told him you didn't like Pineapple he would say "Liar! Everyone LOVES Pineapple! You just aren't cultured enough to appreciate the experience!"
So I guess the moral of the story is to pour your own drinks and OS guys typically have bad taste in booze.
I'm sorry, but I gotta call bullshit. You see if you would have studied your history you'd know that Hitler was ALREADY fucked long before a single American put boots on the ground. look up his "planning" around Operation Barbarossa and you'll see that by Stalingrad he was ALREADY fucked, and fucked HARD. He split his forces into THREE groups after having to stop several time for the supplies to catch up (fuckup #1) and sent the majority south after the oilfields with NO rest (fuckup #2) while at the same time sending a weakened Sixth Panzer after Stalingrad (fuckup 3 and you're out!) .
If you look at the man's plans he was basically boned with no help from the Americans by Stalingrad. His having to stop several times telegraphed his EXACT plan, which allowed Stalin to move the vital tank and warplane factories (which I would argue the combination of the rugged T-34 which could be argued was the best all around tank of the war backed up by the Katyusha which was cheap to manufacture AND devastating and having the Germans unable to mount an armored offensive thanks to the IL-2 sealed Hitler's fate in the east) left Hitler with NO WAY to stop Stalin's war production, and the weakening of his forces by splitting left him unable to secure the oil fields while at the same time leaving his northern flank exposed.
If the USA stayed out of the war in Europe the only changes would most likely be that Hitler might have taken England (which even then would have been doubtful as the "cash and carry" would have still allowed England to use the USA for manufacturing) but would have still fallen ultimately to Stalin. The USSR simply had plenty of raw materials with which to work, much of which was out of Hitler's reach, and a VERY large populace with a fanatical hatred of Germans (and rightly so) with which to wage total war. Read some of the books out there on Stalingrad and Barbarossa or even watch the excellent BBC "The World at War: Stalingrad" to see that Hitler's "strategy" in the east was one critical blunder after another.
The USA could have never set a single boot on the grounds of Europe and simply kept selling to the allies and I doubt anything would have come out differently, and this is coming from an American that had multiple family members fight in WWII in Europe. The simple fact is reading his communiques and plans Hitler bet everything on Russia being another France and Stalin proved him DEAD wrong. Hell the man didn't even have adequate winter gear for his troops! He was SO fucked!
I just thought I'd let you know FYI if that socket 775 will support it you can get Pentium Ds for dirt cheap $28 and as you can see they have chips for just about ANY older PC you may have, and have some crazy deals on AM2 if you would like to upgrade to a triple. I mean how can you turn down a triple for $42?
I have bought plenty from these guys, the last a pair of Pentiums Ds to upgrade my nephews for Xmas, and they have top notch service. They even called me just to make sure I hadn't hit the order button twice because I bought two of the same chip. So if your board will take it you really can't beat a $28 CPU upgrade since as you pointed out most games don't even slam a duallie yet. BTW those Pentium Ds are CRAZY OCers, talking to guys online 3.6Ghz-3.8GHz is easily doable with good air cooling. all my nephews play are MMOs so frankly the dual by itself is overkill. But if I was you I'd snatch a cheap duallie to drop into that 775 if it will take it (I've found most will take the 805 D if nothing else) because at $28 the performance boost would be incredibly cheap. They also have X4s but the sweet spot from them on the AMD side has got to be the $42 8650. Anyway I just thought you might want to see some cheapie upgrade options, happy hunting!
That is because it is NOT the drive, it is the particular combo of DRM and OS. I wish I could have afforded to do experiments to find out which combos did what, but since all the ring 0 DRM is so much voodoo I've found you can have three machines with identical software and one trip it and the others don't. What I HAVE found and will be happy to inform you is it HAS TO BE A COMBO...it NEVER hits on JUST Starforce or JUST Safedisc, but always a mix.
The problem is when you get a gamer you will often have a large range of DRM bullshit clogging the PC, so finding which straw broke the back is damned near impossible. I have seen machines with over a half a dozen pieces of ring 0 DRM installed at once, and with more and more getting large HDDs I have a feeling it is gonna get worse. I have also sen several machines with multiple versions of the SAME DRM, like SecuROM 2&3 and Starforce 1&2 because they installed a newer game with an older and the older refuse to hand off to the newer "protection".
But if you work in the biz what you'll want to look for is what I call "battling DRM" which causes all kinds of fuckups including PIO cook off. You see the DRM of one will interfere with the DRM of another, which will default to "Fuck u ya filthy piratez!" and try to lock down the machine, which will set the first off, you get the picture. I have also found it to happen more often on those machines that have one DVD burner and a "combo" drive, ala DVD ROM/CDRW, like some of the Dell and eMachines mid ranges. The drives are a mix so it isn't that, and when I install a new drive without removing the offending DRM it starts to throw the NEW drive into PIO, so I lay the blame square at the DRM manufacturers.
But type "DRM causes crash" "DRM causes BSOD" and "DRM PIO MOde" into Google if you don't believe me, it is a problem that has been going on for a LONG time, and if you haven't run across it consider yourself lucky. Or maybe your gaming customers just use cracks for their older games.
A final warning in case you didn't know FYI X86 ring 0 DRM WILL NOT UNINSTALL on X64 OSes! and their "uninstallers" they host on their sites will not work on X64 especially with the older installers. So what you get is someone with a nice new Windows 7 X64, that installs their favorite older games, which BTW the X86 DRM won't say shit and will happily try to jam X86 ring 0 driver into an X64 kernel (which I'm sure you know is a BIG NO NO) followed by all kinds of freaky "quirks" starting from the classic "insert disc into drive" when it is all the way to random hard locks, jerks, and full out BSODs. The only way I've found to reliably remove that shite is to boot into an XP Live CD and strip the files from there. Otherwise it is damned near impossible to remove all the ring 0 BS.
The ONLY reason we aren't currently wiping our asses with money because it is worth less than TP is the Fed playing Three Card Monty with the money. See QE2 for a nice example. The fed prints the money, buys treasury bonds with the money they just printed, USA blows more money thus needing to sell more treasuries, lather rinse repeat. the problem is it is all a shell game, and when it comes tumbling down like any Ponzi scheme the shit WILL hit the fan. Think those bankers at the Fed is gonna lose money? Hell no, they'll have done converted their money into the Yuan or Gold and quietly slipped out the back when they realize the game is up.
That will leave the USA with NO real income (too much tied into "financial and services" which will be blown to hell and have nobody to sell to respectively) massive homelessness and unemployment, no way to pay the bills like unemployment, social security, medicare, etc. One thing we WILL have is a shitload of arms, lots of warm bodies, and plenty of factories shut down during offshoring that won't take that much to start back up.
If you want just a tiny taste of the REAL picture we are currently looking at I suggest you read this but don't read it just after eating as it WILL make you want to puke! Basically the government and the fed have been feeding the US people a giant line of bullshit, while the money is secretly moving out as fast as they can carry it. You have 4 dollars going out and never coming back for every ONE dollar you got coming in, over 22,000 factories closed in just a single decade with the jobs replacing them being "McJobs". It doesn't take Stephen Hawking to do the math. If it wasn't for the fed I truly believe we would already be in another great depression but robbing Peter to pay Paul just isn't sustainable, especially when you have no middle class left and huge masses of working poor and soon to be homeless.
Hell I can look out my window at the boarded up shops, the business districts in most of the south look like something from "Escape from New York" and the government has bet their asses on an "IP Economy" which is betting the farm on getting other countries to pay for something any kid with a burner can make infinite copies of. Sadly it don't take Nostradamus to see the future the USA is headed for, and it ain't pretty.
Don't worry little Canuck, we don't want your whole country, just the oil sands! Can't expect to run M-1s on ethanol you know. But if push comes to shove as long as you smile prettily and sell us cheap oil we'll leave ya alone. After all we American HATE the fucking snow! As for Taiwan? Never gonna happen, and here is why: my guess is we'll happily "trade" Taiwan to China in return for them STFUing about us taking Mexico, and probably South America while we are at it.
Lets be honest little Canadian friend, the next war will NOT be fought for land, ideology, or any of that bullshit, it will be fought for resources! Hell of a lot of oil and raw materials south of the border ya know. Look at the USA pre WWII, we had a piss poor little military and crappy little tanks. what we DID have was raw materials and plenty of bodies to work in the factories, kinda like...well now. So my guess is here is how it will go down: First we get the "America First!" isolationist (which will help when we fuck over the EU and Taiwan, as he will sell it as "Not worth losing American boys over!") followed by a HELL of a lot of flag waving nationalism and jingoism. Right about that time our great leader will quietly pull whoever is running Canada at the time and tell him/her "Look, you can smile, shake hands, and sell off the oil, or we can crush your ass like bug. Which is it friend?" which will be followed (since Canadians don't strike me as suicidal OR stupid) with a nice little ceremony showing support for the USA and some exclusive contracts.
Right about this time you will have Nancy Grace and all the little talking heads pushing what a "lawless country" Mexico is, complete with lots of rape and human trafficking stories. We will then roll the tanks and by the end of the month Mexico will be divided into a half a dozen new states. It will be at this point the deal with China will be made, we will tell them "You keep selling to us? Hell help yourself to Taiwan friend!" which will be followed by a MASSIVE ramp up in USA military capability. everyone will think it is over Taiwan but only the US brass and the Chinese will know better. Meanwhile we will have already sat down with our new friend Mr. Putin, and sold out the EU to the new USSR, which I'm sure he'll be elected President for Life of. Then will come the final move on the board...
Using our bases in the former Mexico as well as our carriers on both sides we will take south America, while China snatches up Africa. as I said earlier I think the EU will STFU, because they will have enough on their plate without the USA covering their flank with NATO. Sure they'll be some UN condemnation, like we care, a few threats of sanctions, which again with all those resources we won't care, and what you will end up with is this: The "new" United Continent of America, the "new" USSR, and the "new" Asian Prosperity Sphere. Canada will be left because frankly they'll continue to sell us what we want, and frankly with so much power you'd have to be insane to say boo to us anyway. the big difference between this and the cold war will be the three superpowers happily trading with each other, because each will have enough power and resources that it would be suicide to fuck with each other.
Scary? Hell yes, but as I said I bet those on the ground in Europe in 1932 never thought shit would end up like it did by 1943. And the USA simply has too many weapons, resources, and bodies to throw at the front to simply go out with a whimper. With Putin controlling the oil, gas, and making sure there is food on the shelves and the trains run on time I doubt seriously the old Soviet states will say shit, which leaves the old EU standing alone. As I said Britain will STFU if we agree to play nice and share the wealth a little, Germany will be more concerned with its own position, and frankly the French and Italians just aren't powerful enough to tip any scales one way or the other. Hell if the USA plays it right, maybe with a few false flag incidents? We might even come off looking l