Just wait until the stock bubble bursts which will make the great depression look like a flash crash (those that have crunched the numbers say it could take a half a century or more to recover) and then get back to us,mmmkay?
You have nearly HALF the population getting some form of government assistance, THIS is why you haven't seen an "Arab Spring" in the USA despite a dead economy and jobs being shipped overseas by the hundreds of thousands yearly, this "bread and circuses" keep the teeming masses of poor just enough above water to keep them quiet...what do you HONESTLY think is gonna happen when those checks no longer come? Every rich person with any brains will "get to teh choppa" and fly the fuck out of here, the rest? Won't be looking so good by the time the mess is over.
Look at the numbers in the video folks, starting around 3.30, you'll see when this stock bubble pops it'll make 1929 look like 2008. The ONLY reason the peasants have been passive so long is the so called "safety net" that keeps them in food, clothes, and a home,when that ends? remember there is nothing more dangerous than people with absolutely nothing to lose and the poor outnumber the top 5% by a good 100,000 to 1, not great odds.
No it is NOT, by your definition then your phone is now a PC, in fact EVERYTHING that can hook up to a TV and play games is a PC by that lousy definition!
For the record it is a CUSTOM CONSOLE OS that is designed to turn one of several approved hardware configs INTO A CONSOLE, no differently than how the Xbox N and PS4 are both AMD X86 APUs running a custom OS...are those PCs too to you?
A PC is a GENERAL PURPOSE computer and this is NOT a general purpose OS, you will NOT get office applications, video editing, or anything other than the ability to play games and a browser...that's it, that is all. Now unlike the DRM crippled consoles you WILL be able to install another OS and dual boot...where did I hear that before? Oh yeah, the first gen PS3 likewise could boot another OS.
But if we go by your definition then frankly there hasn't been a console since the PS2, since the X360 and PS3 and Wii used PC chips (PowerPC and Cell, both of which you can buy from IBM in a tower if you like) so they too are just "PCs that use a TV instead of a monitor to play games". The ONLY difference between the Xbox N,PS4, and Steambox is the Steambox will allow more than one hardware choice, that is it, that's all.
Nice straw man Billy, might want to watch out for matches...WHOOSH! Why are you not driving your car with bike handlebars? Bikes are the #1 vehicle, are YOU afraid of innovation? Because that is exactly how retarded you sound because a SHITTY UI IS A SHITTY UI and just for the record, time it took me to "embrace innovation" with Android? About 3 minutes. OSX? Less than 10, iOS? About 4 minutes...Win 8? THREE FUCKING HOURS LATER AND THE BITCH IS STILL FIGHT ME because "herpa de derp we think a fucking touchpad and a touchscreen are the same thing, they both say touch right? herpa derpa".
I have used everything from DOS to OS/2 to BeOS, how many OSes have YOU used Billy? I have ALWAYS been on the bleeding edge, when your ass was dragging behind on XP? I was running a beta of 2K3 stripped down into a desktop and the SECOND that XP X64 hit beta my ass was on it. I know innovation sir, I'm friends with innovation and Windows 8 is NOT innovation!
Well the way I understand it, and for the record its been half a decade or so since i worked with AD, is that with AD there really isn't a "local password" to speak of, so there really wouldn't be any "offline password" to use.
Now that said I would NOT call this a "vulnerability" as it is there FOR A REASON and that is to allow both home users as well as SMBs that don't use AD to recover a system that has been locked and the password lost without having to do a full system wipe. You'd be surprised how often this is a real problem in the field and without this all those folks would lose all their data. I had a case not too long ago where a little old lady volunteer at one of the local churches saw a broadcast about how "complex passwords protect systems" and promptly changed the password on the main system and forgot what she changed it to, since they had never come to me they had NO backups and a good 4 years worth of data, a real nightmare if I wouldn't had been able to reset the password thanks to chntpw.
The moral of the story IMHO would be don't use an OS not made for the cloud IN the cloud. Anyone who has followed my postings knows I'm a BIG believer in "right tool for the job" and in the case of the cloud Windows Server, BSD or Linux should be used, you shouldn't be using Windows Home and Pro as a cloud based OS in the first place. And if you use the cloud for backups? Encrypt the backup. I personally use and recommend the Paragon backup products, they support AES encryption as well as image splitting, which would probably be handy if you are doing cloud based backups.
Sorry, wrong. Steambox is the name of the new valve console and if the rumors are true its gonna be a game changer. Instead of being stuck with one company making one console with one set of hardware, imagine that YOU get to decide what hardware and form factor its in. You can DIY or buy from one of several vendors, want it in a laptop? As long as that laptop meets the minimum specs you can install SteamOS (based on Linux, hence why Valve came out with steam on Linux, to get the bugs out) and you're golden. Want it in a traditional console shape? Several vendors to choose from.
If this takes off I could see it totally changing the landscape, FINALLY giving console the ability to choose vendors and stores that we PC owners have always enjoyed. This is why my sales of HTPCs have gone up of late, as the increased competition (Steam,GOG,Origin,Desura,GMG,Humble Bundles,etc) makes PCs a MUCH lower cost gaming platform and with Steambox the average Joe will finally be able to just walk into any store and buy a prebuilt system that will open everything up!
Ironically this is happening at the same time that both major console OEMs are about to release their most bloated platforms yet thus losing one of the biggest selling points for consoles, how they run "bare metal" and thus dedicate every drop of CPU/GPU to gaming. Both the Xbox N and PS4 have been reported to use a full 4GB of the 8GB of memory for the OS, probably for all that TV crap that honestly many won't use nor need as most TVs have that "smart TV' crap built in, and as Jim Sterling noted with this last generation consoles have become just very crappy PCs and if Valve manages to pull this off it will be trivial to turn hundreds of millions of PCs into nice consoles.
How about YOU read what I posted, where I clearly said you can't trust benchmarks unless the companies that MADE the benchmark state clear which compiler they use. if you want to know why simply Google "Intel Cripple Compiler" to see how simply changing the CPUID of a Centaur CPU (the only CPU that allows you to change CPUID) from "Centaur Hauls" to "Genuine Intel" cause the benchmarks to magically improve by over 30% simply by changing CPUID and nothing else, amazing huh?
Its actually VERY simple, any and ALL programs compiled with the Intel Cripple Compiler WILL be rigged against ANY non Intel CPU, and moreover the way it does this is known and well documented, it also can NOT be turned off as researchers even tried using flags to change the behavior and NEVER got the ICC to put out functional optimized code for anything BUT an Intel CPU. It will ALWAYS throw the program into "X87 mode" math, a path that has been depreciated since 1997 BTW, if the CPUID doesn't say Genuine Intel. That means NO SSE,, no advanced math features at all, it will run no different than if the code was compiled with the Pentium I in mind.
So don't believe the benchmarks friend, after all the benchmarks say the slowest in order atom will beat the top of the line AMD Bobcat, even though its an OOO chip with a much more powerful GPU, yet you run the tests with a program compiled with GCC? The results are the opposite. BTW its already been proven the "Intel simply knows how to optimize for their own chips" is a lie as it also cripples the Pentium III CPU because when the P4 came out the P3 was curbstomping it in benchmarks, the cripple code was inserted into ICC 2002 and wadda ya know? Suddenly the benchmarks had P4 beating P3 by 30%. It just shows that the DoJ has no teeth anymore and a company can get by with anything nowadays.
..and this, class, is an example of "attacking the messenger" as instead of a debate of the subject one merely calls names and states "I must be right because I am right" by adding a nice "appeal to experts" on top to try to derail the debate.
For the record I am so left wing I am often called "/. resident hippie" by the libertarians here and nobody said a word about the science, if the science says an asteroid will kill us in 100 years and I sell you a magic rock that deflects asteroids for a trillion dollars, does that invalidate the science? No it simply means that I used the science to rob you and that is EXACTLY what has happened with AGW, instead of things that would actually work like...ohhh..creating a "people's car/truck" that runs on diesel (so that they can be easily converted to bio-diesel down the line) and gets 40MPG+ and then subsidizing it so the poor can trade in all those used gas guzzlers (current national MPG is 14 BTW, and studies have shown it is due to low income drivers having to stick with older gas hogs because of no money to buy a better vehicle) and follow that up with penalties for countries that continue polluting, investment into green tech with a stipulation it be built here, the painting of roofs and streets while to keep our megacities from being giant heat sinks, subsidizing the building of molten salt power generators,solar water heating for apts, etc...instead ALL YOU GET is calls for crap and trade, why do you think that is?
The answer why is simple and if you would like I can wallpaper this page with citations, its because Al Gore and Goldman Sachs are set to make a killing if they can get their carbon indulgences scam pushed through, that's why. You are falling for the classic "We have to DO something!" appeal to emotion without bothering to ask "Will that something WORK? Is it the best choice? What are the downsides? who will benefit and who will pay" which if you would bother to do some actual research instead of attacking the messenger you'd find that carbon indulgences wouldn't do shit, unless you think making Al and Pals Bill Gates levels of rich is gonna magically save the planet.
And the rate in the third world has been more than making up for it, with disease and inability to access advanced medical care not stopping the rising tide that is the third world population. Also while the median age in the civilized world has been getting older guess what has been happening in the third world? that's right its getting younger.
So unless you propose a "final solution" to the third world your little glib comment means exactly jack and squat. China and India are using more resources by the month, and as the population is drug out of the stone age in the poorest areas that will only increase. then you have Africa and the ME, both also growing and becoming more unstable by the day and if you want to see pollution numbers shoot up all you need is a nice conflict, remember the burning oil wells in desert storm?
All carbon indulgences will do is make a handful at the top obscenely rich, indulgences will be handed out to the biggest donors who wadda ya know? Also happen to be the biggest polluters, and the globalists will NEVER let you block trade with the third world, most of which have already said they will NOT play your indulgence game and for good reason, it ignores the industrial revolution of the west and expects the east to do without for OUR benefit. So right there before it is even implemented crap and trade is an obvious failure,anyone with a brain can see if I own a business and have to pay a 45% carbon indulgence in the USA and pay 0% indulgence in India AND I get no penalty for merely shipping my products to the west from India means I'll just move...yet they still push for crap and trade, why?
because it don't have a damned thing to do with the environment and everything to do with making Al Gore and pals insanely rich by using crap and trade to reverse robin hood YOUR wallet, YOUR quality of life...think Al Gore will miss even a single meal because of this? Fuck no, the man flies an entire Lear jet just for him and a few buddies and lives in a mcMansion with an indoor BBall court that goes through more power for AC than an entire poor neighborhood...oh but he's "carbon neutral" you see because he pays HIMSELF from his OWN COMPANY carbon credits! wake up dude, that would be like me writing myself a check and then getting the Nobel prize for helping the poor, its a total scam and won't cause pollution to drop a single ounce, if anything it will increase as the corps that now follow our regs will go to the third world where there is no regs at all!
Try thinking of this instead as this is pretty much the experience my customers report with Win 8, every time they start getting anything actually done on the OS something random will happen, like the guy in the video states about a "goblin farts in his face" that completely loses his workflow. Hell I gave Win 8 a totally fair test recently, my dad bought a new laptop with Win 8 so I handed it to him, didn't say a single bad word about Win 8 and in fact I'd hoped that the large icons might be good for him, the verdict? Less than an hour of him fighting the OS he said "Either make this thing work like Win 7 or throw that damned thing in the trash, I'm sick of it".
MSFT forgot the golden rule of OS design with win 8 and it is still broken with 8.1 and that is control. Ultimately YOU should feel in control of the device NEVER helpless and that is exactly how Win 8 makes you feel, helpless to make it behave. With Android, OSX, Windows 7, hell even with most Linux distros I feel in control, it does what I tell it to do and nothing more, that isn't so with Metro. I have been working with PCs since the days of DOS and this is the first OS that has EVER made me feel without control, even Vista and WinME made me feel in control, even if they were buggy as fuck. Win 8 would just do random shit with zero prompting from me, I could do the same action twice and once get what I wanted the next get some random "app" popping up or that fucking STD "Charms" shit, yeah about as charming as the clap, and that was with a vanilla Win 8, not the third party extras crap like you get with an OEM. ironically I'm seeing less and less crap put on Win 8 systems, I think even the third party OEM spammers don't want to be associated with that garbage.
Well then that CPU is effectively fucked, as I can tell ya that folks HATE Windows 8. Can't say as I blame 'em, I spent half the night having to hack the living shit out of Win 8 to make it into a system that was actually usable. For those that want to know how here are the steps and note that you can NOT "just add Start8 and be done", not by a long shot!
1.- Install and configure Start8, I turn off all the bling bling as it gives better performance on a laptop, how much or little you keep is up to you. 2.- type in "disable charms registry" to find the registry entires you will need to hack to kill the first half of that POS charms crap. ironic that they killed gadgets because "they were a security risk" when gadgets were actually useful, charms is just fucking irritating. 3.- Finally look up "synaptics generic touchpad driver" and pray to FSM that it supports your touchpad, otherwise seriously think about disabling your touchpad and going with a mouse, otherwise retarded Win 8 will read any halfway fast move on the touchpad as a "swipe" and cockblock you with the charms box!
After you do ALL of that, along with striping out the ad laden crap and Metro garbage "apps"...fuck I hate that damned word now, the second anyone uses that word now I automatically think "hipster douche" thanks to its buzzword overuse...anyway once you do ALL of that, around 4-5 hours depending on how much extra third party crap is left? You will actually have a functional laptop/desktop, without? If you aren't on a cellphone it will drive you up the damned wall as Win 8 is so obviously built around touch that it hurts and without touch it feels like it is actively fighting the user every step of the way.
But I wouldn't wish Win 8 on my worst enemy, yes its THAT bad. Anybody who doubts it should watch this video followed by this video showing what a REAL normal user goes through with Windows 8. Count how many times he says "no" "stop" and "I don't want that" in the video, he is unable to even do basic tasks as Win 8 is fighting him every step thanks to making poorly done half ass touch sensing the "centerpiece" of the shit sandwich.
But how does it compare to the AMD Bobcats and Jaguars? To me THAT is the question. I have built many a system around the Bobcat and its pretty damned nice, more than powerful enough to replace the aging P4s in office environments while taking less power under load for the entire system than your average P4 idles at, great for netbooks, even low power servers, and the Jaguars are powerful enough that they are the chip of the Xbox N and PS4 while supposedly using little more than the Bobcats.
Every system with an Atom chip that has came into the shop...sigh...the words "mediocre" and "weak" instantly come to mind. AMD was able to boost their Bobcat by pairing it with a powerful GCN GPU and splitting the load, but lets face it Intel has never been great at GPU design so you ended up with a weak sauce CPU tied to a weak sauce GPU and that equals just painful to use.
So while I'll be happy to give 'em a spin if any ever walk through my door unless someone can show me some real world tests, NOT benchmarks because as we have seen the "Intel Cripple Compiler" makes any benchmark that doesn't announce which compiler they use suspect at best, I'll have to tell my customers to avoid Atoms, if they want Intel the i3s are ULV and at least have good performance.
So you agree that MariaDB is a lost cause, as Monty makes you sign over ALL rights to him?
If you trust me in good faith and I rip you off? Then I'm an asshole. If I rip you off and then say "no really,I promise that this time I won't screw you...BTW sign over all your rights to me" and you fall for it AGAIN? Then YOU are the idiot and you deserve what you get.
Actually there was NEVER a reason to use Win RT, it wouldn't run Windows X86 programs (the only reason to prefer Windows) and thanks to Apple starting the whole "thin is in" trend with iSliver batteries and more and more powerful SoCs frankly most of the ARM devices haven't been getting great battery life either. I have seen several of the new tablets that can't even get the 5 and a half hours my AMD Bobcat netbook gets, and its running a HDD instead of SSD.
I'd say the biggest problem facing MSFT is NOT WinRT, its the fact that the PHBs have placed metro on notebooks and desktops where it makes about as much sense as having handlebars on a pickup truck. At least Google and Apple know that different forms require different UIs, ChromeOS for Google and OSX for Apple. If they don't change course the numbers clearly show win Metro is a DO NOT WANT, in fact I've been making more wiping 8 for 7 than I did wiping Vista for XP, its THAT hated.
Or maybe, just maybe, nobody trusts old "three card Monty" not to sell their work out from under them again? last I checked old Monty still made you sign rights over to him, how much you wanna bet if some corp comes flashing a big check that you'll be saying the same bullshit about mariadb?
Fool you once, shame on me. Fool you twice? You are a moron and deserve what you get.
Incorrect as SQLlite isn't a stand alone which was clearly a qualifier. A word of advice, best not to correct other's for spelling as you will often make a mistake as bad or worse.
Actually I'd call it more retro than techno. After all my grandfather would reach into his pocket to check the time on his pocketwatch, and now we reach into our pocket and get the time, temp, reminders, and so much more. Plate it with brass and it'd be almost steampunk.
Then you obviously don't buy any bundles. EA Humble Bundle? Clocked in at nearly 45GB. Deep Silver bundle? 40GB. Croteam was the smallest I saw of late and it clocked in at 30Gb. 1C company? 34GB. Steam Crysis set? 28Gb.
Those came out right close to a 30 day period, total? 177Gb and that is if I didn't watch a single video, play a single online game, or do anything else at all.
The ability to spot a scam is VERY easy, here is how: If a bunch of really REALLY rich people are banging the drum of support, ask yourself THIS question....what is in it for them? From Gates "donations" of software and support for USA style copyrights in the third world to Al Gore and his crap and trade bankster buddies you can be damned sure there IS something in it for them, the rich rarely do anything that doesn't give them at least some ROI, that is why they are obscenely rich after all.
In the case of crap and trade what is in it for them is trivial to spot, the "rules" are being written by Goldman Sachs, right up there with Halliburton and Monsanto on the "rich evil muthafuckers" scale, so you KNOW its gonna have loopholes up the ass and wadda ya know? They ALSO own offshore crap and trade businesses to sell credits, isn't that amazing? Who would have thought? Oh and watch the video, you'll see that many corps will get grandfathered in, so your biggest donors...err...polluters? they'll get a pass, its YOU, the poor dumbass that can't buy a lobbyist, that will have his wallet raped.
If I told you I could sell you a magic rock that for a billion dollars from every country on the planet would stop AGW, would you believe me? So why are you willing to believe Rev Al Gore when he has NOT ONCE, not a single fucking time, said a God damned thing about closing trade to countries that have already said they won't let Al and pals rape THEIR economies, like ohhh...China and India? Oh right, Al and pals make crazy money off the Chinese and Indians, how silly of me.
DO NOT BE SCAMMED FOLKS the scammers are using a combination of appeals to emotion and "we have to DO something!" but their "something" merely empties YOUR wallets into THEIR pockets and does about as much as my magic rock, IE nothing. All crap and trade will do is kill any chance of businesses building shit here, since they can build in Asia crap and trade free with ZERO penalty, Al and pals will make money both on the cheap Indian and Chinese labor AND on taking what little is left in your wallet, and all you'll get is told "Oh well this isn't doing enough to "save the planet" so we need to raise prices by 30% for carbon indulgences....err credits, yeah that will save the Earth!". Bullshit, the only thing it will "save" is a seat for Al and pals in the billionaires club, you will get a magic rock and a big bill.
Unless you are within french kissing range you ain't breathing shit, its absorbed by the breather and all they put out a good 90% of the time is air. if you drag on one really REALLY hard you might get enough to put a tiny puff of vapor in the air, much less than you'd get from striking a match.
For a smoker like me that is trying to quit, and who has had zero luck with both the gum and patch e-cigs at least give me personally a better than average chance of quitting as it solves what was one of my biggest problems, the "WTF do I do with my hands?" problem. You don't realize how strong a force of habit is until you've sat with a cig between your first and second fingers for 25+ years but with the e-cigs not only do I get the nicotine but more importantly I have the same feeling of having a cig between my fingers which i find relaxing.
Of course this is all ignoring the rotting elephant in the room, the fact that the states have been blowing the cig tax money like a drunken sailor at Vegas and are scared shitless that the gravy train is gonna end. Mark my words you will see a BIG jump in calls for "fat taxes" and "soda taxes" and anything else they can think of to replace all that smoker money if the feds and big tobacco don't get these things banned. E-cigs are the first thing in ages that shows real promise of ending smoking, you watch the government cock it all up so they can bleed your wallet dry. And don't give me that "healthcare" bullshit as you look at what the states are blowing the money on and its NOT to pay for smokers, who just FYI die sooner and actually SAVE the state and fed money (by not getting the benefits they paid in on, just as both my grandparents died before reaching age 70 after paying in from the age of 14) but instead have been blowing it on pretty much whatever the congress critters feel like.
Remember folks government ALWAYS gets bigger,NEVER smaller.
Or it could be that the whole AGW platform has been hijacked by those pushing "cap and trade" who will make a mint thanks to the scam being written by the ones who came up with credit default swaps, you know, the ones that nearly wiped out the economy when their make believe numbers turned out to be bullshit?
I'm sorry but I don't give a shit WHICH side you are on, if crap and trade didn't cause a giant bullshit sign to appear over your head you frankly haven't been paying attention. Crap and trade is a classic reverse Robin Hood where all the poor and middle class will pay more while those like the Rev Al Gore farts around in his private Lear jet, rides in a fleet of SUVs, goes to his McMansion with indoor ACed basketball court, yet has the brass balls to say he is "carbon neutral" because he pays himself credits from his own company which would be like me moving money from my right to left pocket, calling it "wealth redistribution" and demanding and GETTING a tax break for it!
You wanna cut down on AGW? Fine by me, there are plenty of common sense ways to get started like putting out a "people's car/truck" that gets over 40MPG and is cheap enough the poor can afford to replace all those used gas guzzlers on the road, paint roofs and roads white to stop the heatsink effect, plenty of things we can start doing tomorrow to get the ball rolling...but you will never hear about any of those, why? Because it don't let a handful of rich douchebags like fatass Al Gore help themselves to your wallet and the government teat, THAT'S why.
A gesture that would go a looong way to getting the skeptics onboard would be to tell that fat hypocrite Gore to jam his Lear Jet up his ass, if you want a spokesman? Got the perfect guy, Ed Begely Jr. That man actually walks the walk, lives in a modest 3 bedroom, drives a small electric with a bike rack so he can bike short errands, he does everything in his power to cut down on waste and pollution. You look at Al Gore and pals and what you see is the classic "do as I say not as i do" bullshit of the rich and spoiled, and until Gore and his ideas get pushed off an iceberg a lot of us will simply call it what it is, a scam, and vote against anybody who supports him and his bankster buddies.
Or he can buy one of those AMD quad laptops and be able to do a million more things a bazillion times better than a so called "smart watch".
I do find it ironic how the tech corps are pushing "smart watches are the wave of the future!" when more and more people are treating watches like 8-tracks and not wearing a watch, preferring to check their smartphone. Hell even my elderly parents have quit wearing watches, they find the big screen of their Android phones easier to read and includes the weather. Folks are always messing with their phones anyway so why not?
I can back this up, I'm just one guy who doesn't do any BTing and I often have to pay as much for bandwidth over my cap during the big Steam sales than I do for the games themselves. Obviously some of the folks here haven't downloaded any recent games, Borderlands I? 37Gb for the game and DLC, Borderlands II? 42GB for the same. Heck even a game with very little DLC, as the Burnout Paradise i got with the recent Humble Bundle? Over 4Gb, now figure in the other 8 games that came with the bundle and you are easily looking at 25Gb+ right there and that is just for a single bundle!
Trust me friend that 150Gb might seem like a not but its not and just be glad you are getting even that, the local ISPs here have plans that are 36Gb,60Gb and the top is 76Gb! These ISPs act like its still 1998 and all folks are doing is checking their email, when IRL everything has gotten bigger EXCEPT their caps.
I'll just add that a friend of mine actually tried to do just that and was killed by the duopoly!
Where his business was located there was something like 5 blocks to the nearest junction and neither the cable nor DSL would run to him so he bought a T3 and leased bandwidth to the neighbors who likewise had been screwed, even had set up a server to take some of the load off by hosting Windows Updates as well as FOSS software like Open Office, so what happened? The DSL company also sold dialup and when their sales went down they came up with an excuse to jack his T3 prices a couple hundred percent. they even told him "Yeah just try and sue us". he went to a lawyer who said "Oh sure you'll win, no doubt, after 10 years and a couple million in lawyer fees because they'll drag it out for the better part of a decade." Needless to say he couldn't afford that and closed up shop and moved away.
So you can't even attempt such a thing unless you are at least city government sized to be able to afford the several years their lawsuits will end up dragging through the courts. The duopoly have control, they know it, and they know you can't afford to spend a decade in court, meanwhile they have a law team on payroll. You will have zero chance of success unless your last name is Dell or Gates.
That's nice for you, here in central AR, in the middle of a college town no less, you can get the cable home line for $35 a month or get business for...$150 a month! That is nearly 5 times the price for just a doubling of the cap! Want more? Its $1.50 a GB as there are no more tiers after business!
The simple fact is the prices are so high because we were robbed of over 200 billion because that is what we gave the teleco/cableco duopolies in return for nationwide broadband and what did we get? A low rez Goatse while the board stuffed their pockets. We should give them 90 days to pay up WITH INTEREST and if they don't? WE the people control the last mile. They want a monopoly? Any place they run FTTH that isn't already being served with fiber they can have a 15 year monopoly, 25 year if they run it to places that haven't had any service.
But even the libertarians should support such a plan, because we have seen time and time again that monopolies and regulatory capture are cancers on the free market, ONLY by having actual competition will things get better. Until then get used to nastier and nastier caps as they wring max profit from the existing lines.
And what EXACTLY would they have run it on? Did you look at the specs of the N900? With the MSFT money came requirements to buy better chips thanks to the minimum of WP7/8, without those limits placed upon them the N900 shows the bean counters would have crippled any android offering with weak hardware. We have seen a similar trend with Sony, once upon a time Sony meant quality but now they are just trading on their former glory.
Nokia has been treading water for most of the decade friend, think Android would take a company barely above water and put them on a jetski? When all but Samsung using android are likewise treading water or flailing about? I'm sorry but that is just delusion, having a free OS doesn't magically undo 6 solid years of bad choices,it just don't work like that.
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Just wait until the stock bubble bursts which will make the great depression look like a flash crash (those that have crunched the numbers say it could take a half a century or more to recover) and then get back to us,mmmkay?
You have nearly HALF the population getting some form of government assistance, THIS is why you haven't seen an "Arab Spring" in the USA despite a dead economy and jobs being shipped overseas by the hundreds of thousands yearly, this "bread and circuses" keep the teeming masses of poor just enough above water to keep them quiet...what do you HONESTLY think is gonna happen when those checks no longer come? Every rich person with any brains will "get to teh choppa" and fly the fuck out of here, the rest? Won't be looking so good by the time the mess is over.
Look at the numbers in the video folks, starting around 3.30, you'll see when this stock bubble pops it'll make 1929 look like 2008. The ONLY reason the peasants have been passive so long is the so called "safety net" that keeps them in food, clothes, and a home,when that ends? remember there is nothing more dangerous than people with absolutely nothing to lose and the poor outnumber the top 5% by a good 100,000 to 1, not great odds.
No it is NOT, by your definition then your phone is now a PC, in fact EVERYTHING that can hook up to a TV and play games is a PC by that lousy definition!
For the record it is a CUSTOM CONSOLE OS that is designed to turn one of several approved hardware configs INTO A CONSOLE, no differently than how the Xbox N and PS4 are both AMD X86 APUs running a custom OS...are those PCs too to you?
A PC is a GENERAL PURPOSE computer and this is NOT a general purpose OS, you will NOT get office applications, video editing, or anything other than the ability to play games and a browser...that's it, that is all. Now unlike the DRM crippled consoles you WILL be able to install another OS and dual boot...where did I hear that before? Oh yeah, the first gen PS3 likewise could boot another OS.
But if we go by your definition then frankly there hasn't been a console since the PS2, since the X360 and PS3 and Wii used PC chips (PowerPC and Cell, both of which you can buy from IBM in a tower if you like) so they too are just "PCs that use a TV instead of a monitor to play games". The ONLY difference between the Xbox N,PS4, and Steambox is the Steambox will allow more than one hardware choice, that is it, that's all.
Nice straw man Billy, might want to watch out for matches...WHOOSH! Why are you not driving your car with bike handlebars? Bikes are the #1 vehicle, are YOU afraid of innovation? Because that is exactly how retarded you sound because a SHITTY UI IS A SHITTY UI and just for the record, time it took me to "embrace innovation" with Android? About 3 minutes. OSX? Less than 10, iOS? About 4 minutes...Win 8? THREE FUCKING HOURS LATER AND THE BITCH IS STILL FIGHT ME because "herpa de derp we think a fucking touchpad and a touchscreen are the same thing, they both say touch right? herpa derpa".
I have used everything from DOS to OS/2 to BeOS, how many OSes have YOU used Billy? I have ALWAYS been on the bleeding edge, when your ass was dragging behind on XP? I was running a beta of 2K3 stripped down into a desktop and the SECOND that XP X64 hit beta my ass was on it. I know innovation sir, I'm friends with innovation and Windows 8 is NOT innovation!
But don't take MY word for it, how about some citations? here is a good one and this shows how they cocked up even the shutdown process and reviewers agree with me its THAT bad and the OEMs also know its a turkey., Face it win 8 is a joke and you can say having Ballmer take a steaming dump on your PC is "innovative" all you want Billy, its still a big pile of feces lying there.
Well the way I understand it, and for the record its been half a decade or so since i worked with AD, is that with AD there really isn't a "local password" to speak of, so there really wouldn't be any "offline password" to use.
Now that said I would NOT call this a "vulnerability" as it is there FOR A REASON and that is to allow both home users as well as SMBs that don't use AD to recover a system that has been locked and the password lost without having to do a full system wipe. You'd be surprised how often this is a real problem in the field and without this all those folks would lose all their data. I had a case not too long ago where a little old lady volunteer at one of the local churches saw a broadcast about how "complex passwords protect systems" and promptly changed the password on the main system and forgot what she changed it to, since they had never come to me they had NO backups and a good 4 years worth of data, a real nightmare if I wouldn't had been able to reset the password thanks to chntpw.
The moral of the story IMHO would be don't use an OS not made for the cloud IN the cloud. Anyone who has followed my postings knows I'm a BIG believer in "right tool for the job" and in the case of the cloud Windows Server, BSD or Linux should be used, you shouldn't be using Windows Home and Pro as a cloud based OS in the first place. And if you use the cloud for backups? Encrypt the backup. I personally use and recommend the Paragon backup products, they support AES encryption as well as image splitting, which would probably be handy if you are doing cloud based backups.
Sorry, wrong. Steambox is the name of the new valve console and if the rumors are true its gonna be a game changer. Instead of being stuck with one company making one console with one set of hardware, imagine that YOU get to decide what hardware and form factor its in. You can DIY or buy from one of several vendors, want it in a laptop? As long as that laptop meets the minimum specs you can install SteamOS (based on Linux, hence why Valve came out with steam on Linux, to get the bugs out) and you're golden. Want it in a traditional console shape? Several vendors to choose from.
If this takes off I could see it totally changing the landscape, FINALLY giving console the ability to choose vendors and stores that we PC owners have always enjoyed. This is why my sales of HTPCs have gone up of late, as the increased competition (Steam,GOG,Origin,Desura,GMG,Humble Bundles,etc) makes PCs a MUCH lower cost gaming platform and with Steambox the average Joe will finally be able to just walk into any store and buy a prebuilt system that will open everything up!
Ironically this is happening at the same time that both major console OEMs are about to release their most bloated platforms yet thus losing one of the biggest selling points for consoles, how they run "bare metal" and thus dedicate every drop of CPU/GPU to gaming. Both the Xbox N and PS4 have been reported to use a full 4GB of the 8GB of memory for the OS, probably for all that TV crap that honestly many won't use nor need as most TVs have that "smart TV' crap built in, and as Jim Sterling noted with this last generation consoles have become just very crappy PCs and if Valve manages to pull this off it will be trivial to turn hundreds of millions of PCs into nice consoles.
How about YOU read what I posted, where I clearly said you can't trust benchmarks unless the companies that MADE the benchmark state clear which compiler they use. if you want to know why simply Google "Intel Cripple Compiler" to see how simply changing the CPUID of a Centaur CPU (the only CPU that allows you to change CPUID) from "Centaur Hauls" to "Genuine Intel" cause the benchmarks to magically improve by over 30% simply by changing CPUID and nothing else, amazing huh?
Its actually VERY simple, any and ALL programs compiled with the Intel Cripple Compiler WILL be rigged against ANY non Intel CPU, and moreover the way it does this is known and well documented, it also can NOT be turned off as researchers even tried using flags to change the behavior and NEVER got the ICC to put out functional optimized code for anything BUT an Intel CPU. It will ALWAYS throw the program into "X87 mode" math, a path that has been depreciated since 1997 BTW, if the CPUID doesn't say Genuine Intel. That means NO SSE,, no advanced math features at all, it will run no different than if the code was compiled with the Pentium I in mind.
So don't believe the benchmarks friend, after all the benchmarks say the slowest in order atom will beat the top of the line AMD Bobcat, even though its an OOO chip with a much more powerful GPU, yet you run the tests with a program compiled with GCC? The results are the opposite. BTW its already been proven the "Intel simply knows how to optimize for their own chips" is a lie as it also cripples the Pentium III CPU because when the P4 came out the P3 was curbstomping it in benchmarks, the cripple code was inserted into ICC 2002 and wadda ya know? Suddenly the benchmarks had P4 beating P3 by 30%. It just shows that the DoJ has no teeth anymore and a company can get by with anything nowadays.
..and this, class, is an example of "attacking the messenger" as instead of a debate of the subject one merely calls names and states "I must be right because I am right" by adding a nice "appeal to experts" on top to try to derail the debate.
For the record I am so left wing I am often called "/. resident hippie" by the libertarians here and nobody said a word about the science, if the science says an asteroid will kill us in 100 years and I sell you a magic rock that deflects asteroids for a trillion dollars, does that invalidate the science? No it simply means that I used the science to rob you and that is EXACTLY what has happened with AGW, instead of things that would actually work like...ohhh..creating a "people's car/truck" that runs on diesel (so that they can be easily converted to bio-diesel down the line) and gets 40MPG+ and then subsidizing it so the poor can trade in all those used gas guzzlers (current national MPG is 14 BTW, and studies have shown it is due to low income drivers having to stick with older gas hogs because of no money to buy a better vehicle) and follow that up with penalties for countries that continue polluting, investment into green tech with a stipulation it be built here, the painting of roofs and streets while to keep our megacities from being giant heat sinks, subsidizing the building of molten salt power generators,solar water heating for apts, etc...instead ALL YOU GET is calls for crap and trade, why do you think that is?
The answer why is simple and if you would like I can wallpaper this page with citations, its because Al Gore and Goldman Sachs are set to make a killing if they can get their carbon indulgences scam pushed through, that's why. You are falling for the classic "We have to DO something!" appeal to emotion without bothering to ask "Will that something WORK? Is it the best choice? What are the downsides? who will benefit and who will pay" which if you would bother to do some actual research instead of attacking the messenger you'd find that carbon indulgences wouldn't do shit, unless you think making Al and Pals Bill Gates levels of rich is gonna magically save the planet.
And the rate in the third world has been more than making up for it, with disease and inability to access advanced medical care not stopping the rising tide that is the third world population. Also while the median age in the civilized world has been getting older guess what has been happening in the third world? that's right its getting younger.
So unless you propose a "final solution" to the third world your little glib comment means exactly jack and squat. China and India are using more resources by the month, and as the population is drug out of the stone age in the poorest areas that will only increase. then you have Africa and the ME, both also growing and becoming more unstable by the day and if you want to see pollution numbers shoot up all you need is a nice conflict, remember the burning oil wells in desert storm?
All carbon indulgences will do is make a handful at the top obscenely rich, indulgences will be handed out to the biggest donors who wadda ya know? Also happen to be the biggest polluters, and the globalists will NEVER let you block trade with the third world, most of which have already said they will NOT play your indulgence game and for good reason, it ignores the industrial revolution of the west and expects the east to do without for OUR benefit. So right there before it is even implemented crap and trade is an obvious failure,anyone with a brain can see if I own a business and have to pay a 45% carbon indulgence in the USA and pay 0% indulgence in India AND I get no penalty for merely shipping my products to the west from India means I'll just move...yet they still push for crap and trade, why?
because it don't have a damned thing to do with the environment and everything to do with making Al Gore and pals insanely rich by using crap and trade to reverse robin hood YOUR wallet, YOUR quality of life...think Al Gore will miss even a single meal because of this? Fuck no, the man flies an entire Lear jet just for him and a few buddies and lives in a mcMansion with an indoor BBall court that goes through more power for AC than an entire poor neighborhood...oh but he's "carbon neutral" you see because he pays HIMSELF from his OWN COMPANY carbon credits! wake up dude, that would be like me writing myself a check and then getting the Nobel prize for helping the poor, its a total scam and won't cause pollution to drop a single ounce, if anything it will increase as the corps that now follow our regs will go to the third world where there is no regs at all!
Try thinking of this instead as this is pretty much the experience my customers report with Win 8, every time they start getting anything actually done on the OS something random will happen, like the guy in the video states about a "goblin farts in his face" that completely loses his workflow. Hell I gave Win 8 a totally fair test recently, my dad bought a new laptop with Win 8 so I handed it to him, didn't say a single bad word about Win 8 and in fact I'd hoped that the large icons might be good for him, the verdict? Less than an hour of him fighting the OS he said "Either make this thing work like Win 7 or throw that damned thing in the trash, I'm sick of it".
MSFT forgot the golden rule of OS design with win 8 and it is still broken with 8.1 and that is control. Ultimately YOU should feel in control of the device NEVER helpless and that is exactly how Win 8 makes you feel, helpless to make it behave. With Android, OSX, Windows 7, hell even with most Linux distros I feel in control, it does what I tell it to do and nothing more, that isn't so with Metro. I have been working with PCs since the days of DOS and this is the first OS that has EVER made me feel without control, even Vista and WinME made me feel in control, even if they were buggy as fuck. Win 8 would just do random shit with zero prompting from me, I could do the same action twice and once get what I wanted the next get some random "app" popping up or that fucking STD "Charms" shit, yeah about as charming as the clap, and that was with a vanilla Win 8, not the third party extras crap like you get with an OEM. ironically I'm seeing less and less crap put on Win 8 systems, I think even the third party OEM spammers don't want to be associated with that garbage.
Well then that CPU is effectively fucked, as I can tell ya that folks HATE Windows 8. Can't say as I blame 'em, I spent half the night having to hack the living shit out of Win 8 to make it into a system that was actually usable. For those that want to know how here are the steps and note that you can NOT "just add Start8 and be done", not by a long shot!
1.- Install and configure Start8, I turn off all the bling bling as it gives better performance on a laptop, how much or little you keep is up to you. 2.- type in "disable charms registry" to find the registry entires you will need to hack to kill the first half of that POS charms crap. ironic that they killed gadgets because "they were a security risk" when gadgets were actually useful, charms is just fucking irritating. 3.- Finally look up "synaptics generic touchpad driver" and pray to FSM that it supports your touchpad, otherwise seriously think about disabling your touchpad and going with a mouse, otherwise retarded Win 8 will read any halfway fast move on the touchpad as a "swipe" and cockblock you with the charms box!
After you do ALL of that, along with striping out the ad laden crap and Metro garbage "apps"...fuck I hate that damned word now, the second anyone uses that word now I automatically think "hipster douche" thanks to its buzzword overuse...anyway once you do ALL of that, around 4-5 hours depending on how much extra third party crap is left? You will actually have a functional laptop/desktop, without? If you aren't on a cellphone it will drive you up the damned wall as Win 8 is so obviously built around touch that it hurts and without touch it feels like it is actively fighting the user every step of the way.
But I wouldn't wish Win 8 on my worst enemy, yes its THAT bad. Anybody who doubts it should watch this video followed by this video showing what a REAL normal user goes through with Windows 8. Count how many times he says "no" "stop" and "I don't want that" in the video, he is unable to even do basic tasks as Win 8 is fighting him every step thanks to making poorly done half ass touch sensing the "centerpiece" of the shit sandwich.
But how does it compare to the AMD Bobcats and Jaguars? To me THAT is the question. I have built many a system around the Bobcat and its pretty damned nice, more than powerful enough to replace the aging P4s in office environments while taking less power under load for the entire system than your average P4 idles at, great for netbooks, even low power servers, and the Jaguars are powerful enough that they are the chip of the Xbox N and PS4 while supposedly using little more than the Bobcats.
Every system with an Atom chip that has came into the shop...sigh...the words "mediocre" and "weak" instantly come to mind. AMD was able to boost their Bobcat by pairing it with a powerful GCN GPU and splitting the load, but lets face it Intel has never been great at GPU design so you ended up with a weak sauce CPU tied to a weak sauce GPU and that equals just painful to use.
So while I'll be happy to give 'em a spin if any ever walk through my door unless someone can show me some real world tests, NOT benchmarks because as we have seen the "Intel Cripple Compiler" makes any benchmark that doesn't announce which compiler they use suspect at best, I'll have to tell my customers to avoid Atoms, if they want Intel the i3s are ULV and at least have good performance.
So you agree that MariaDB is a lost cause, as Monty makes you sign over ALL rights to him?
If you trust me in good faith and I rip you off? Then I'm an asshole. If I rip you off and then say "no really,I promise that this time I won't screw you...BTW sign over all your rights to me" and you fall for it AGAIN? Then YOU are the idiot and you deserve what you get.
Actually there was NEVER a reason to use Win RT, it wouldn't run Windows X86 programs (the only reason to prefer Windows) and thanks to Apple starting the whole "thin is in" trend with iSliver batteries and more and more powerful SoCs frankly most of the ARM devices haven't been getting great battery life either. I have seen several of the new tablets that can't even get the 5 and a half hours my AMD Bobcat netbook gets, and its running a HDD instead of SSD.
I'd say the biggest problem facing MSFT is NOT WinRT, its the fact that the PHBs have placed metro on notebooks and desktops where it makes about as much sense as having handlebars on a pickup truck. At least Google and Apple know that different forms require different UIs, ChromeOS for Google and OSX for Apple. If they don't change course the numbers clearly show win Metro is a DO NOT WANT, in fact I've been making more wiping 8 for 7 than I did wiping Vista for XP, its THAT hated.
Or maybe, just maybe, nobody trusts old "three card Monty" not to sell their work out from under them again? last I checked old Monty still made you sign rights over to him, how much you wanna bet if some corp comes flashing a big check that you'll be saying the same bullshit about mariadb?
Fool you once, shame on me. Fool you twice? You are a moron and deserve what you get.
Incorrect as SQLlite isn't a stand alone which was clearly a qualifier. A word of advice, best not to correct other's for spelling as you will often make a mistake as bad or worse.
Actually I'd call it more retro than techno. After all my grandfather would reach into his pocket to check the time on his pocketwatch, and now we reach into our pocket and get the time, temp, reminders, and so much more. Plate it with brass and it'd be almost steampunk.
Then you obviously don't buy any bundles. EA Humble Bundle? Clocked in at nearly 45GB. Deep Silver bundle? 40GB. Croteam was the smallest I saw of late and it clocked in at 30Gb. 1C company? 34GB. Steam Crysis set? 28Gb.
Those came out right close to a 30 day period, total? 177Gb and that is if I didn't watch a single video, play a single online game, or do anything else at all.
The ability to spot a scam is VERY easy, here is how: If a bunch of really REALLY rich people are banging the drum of support, ask yourself THIS question....what is in it for them? From Gates "donations" of software and support for USA style copyrights in the third world to Al Gore and his crap and trade bankster buddies you can be damned sure there IS something in it for them, the rich rarely do anything that doesn't give them at least some ROI, that is why they are obscenely rich after all.
In the case of crap and trade what is in it for them is trivial to spot, the "rules" are being written by Goldman Sachs, right up there with Halliburton and Monsanto on the "rich evil muthafuckers" scale, so you KNOW its gonna have loopholes up the ass and wadda ya know? They ALSO own offshore crap and trade businesses to sell credits, isn't that amazing? Who would have thought? Oh and watch the video, you'll see that many corps will get grandfathered in, so your biggest donors...err...polluters? they'll get a pass, its YOU, the poor dumbass that can't buy a lobbyist, that will have his wallet raped.
If I told you I could sell you a magic rock that for a billion dollars from every country on the planet would stop AGW, would you believe me? So why are you willing to believe Rev Al Gore when he has NOT ONCE, not a single fucking time, said a God damned thing about closing trade to countries that have already said they won't let Al and pals rape THEIR economies, like ohhh...China and India? Oh right, Al and pals make crazy money off the Chinese and Indians, how silly of me.
DO NOT BE SCAMMED FOLKS the scammers are using a combination of appeals to emotion and "we have to DO something!" but their "something" merely empties YOUR wallets into THEIR pockets and does about as much as my magic rock, IE nothing. All crap and trade will do is kill any chance of businesses building shit here, since they can build in Asia crap and trade free with ZERO penalty, Al and pals will make money both on the cheap Indian and Chinese labor AND on taking what little is left in your wallet, and all you'll get is told "Oh well this isn't doing enough to "save the planet" so we need to raise prices by 30% for carbon indulgences....err credits, yeah that will save the Earth!". Bullshit, the only thing it will "save" is a seat for Al and pals in the billionaires club, you will get a magic rock and a big bill.
Unless you are within french kissing range you ain't breathing shit, its absorbed by the breather and all they put out a good 90% of the time is air. if you drag on one really REALLY hard you might get enough to put a tiny puff of vapor in the air, much less than you'd get from striking a match.
For a smoker like me that is trying to quit, and who has had zero luck with both the gum and patch e-cigs at least give me personally a better than average chance of quitting as it solves what was one of my biggest problems, the "WTF do I do with my hands?" problem. You don't realize how strong a force of habit is until you've sat with a cig between your first and second fingers for 25+ years but with the e-cigs not only do I get the nicotine but more importantly I have the same feeling of having a cig between my fingers which i find relaxing.
Of course this is all ignoring the rotting elephant in the room, the fact that the states have been blowing the cig tax money like a drunken sailor at Vegas and are scared shitless that the gravy train is gonna end. Mark my words you will see a BIG jump in calls for "fat taxes" and "soda taxes" and anything else they can think of to replace all that smoker money if the feds and big tobacco don't get these things banned. E-cigs are the first thing in ages that shows real promise of ending smoking, you watch the government cock it all up so they can bleed your wallet dry. And don't give me that "healthcare" bullshit as you look at what the states are blowing the money on and its NOT to pay for smokers, who just FYI die sooner and actually SAVE the state and fed money (by not getting the benefits they paid in on, just as both my grandparents died before reaching age 70 after paying in from the age of 14) but instead have been blowing it on pretty much whatever the congress critters feel like.
Remember folks government ALWAYS gets bigger,NEVER smaller.
Or it could be that the whole AGW platform has been hijacked by those pushing "cap and trade" who will make a mint thanks to the scam being written by the ones who came up with credit default swaps, you know, the ones that nearly wiped out the economy when their make believe numbers turned out to be bullshit?
I'm sorry but I don't give a shit WHICH side you are on, if crap and trade didn't cause a giant bullshit sign to appear over your head you frankly haven't been paying attention. Crap and trade is a classic reverse Robin Hood where all the poor and middle class will pay more while those like the Rev Al Gore farts around in his private Lear jet, rides in a fleet of SUVs, goes to his McMansion with indoor ACed basketball court, yet has the brass balls to say he is "carbon neutral" because he pays himself credits from his own company which would be like me moving money from my right to left pocket, calling it "wealth redistribution" and demanding and GETTING a tax break for it!
You wanna cut down on AGW? Fine by me, there are plenty of common sense ways to get started like putting out a "people's car/truck" that gets over 40MPG and is cheap enough the poor can afford to replace all those used gas guzzlers on the road, paint roofs and roads white to stop the heatsink effect, plenty of things we can start doing tomorrow to get the ball rolling...but you will never hear about any of those, why? Because it don't let a handful of rich douchebags like fatass Al Gore help themselves to your wallet and the government teat, THAT'S why.
A gesture that would go a looong way to getting the skeptics onboard would be to tell that fat hypocrite Gore to jam his Lear Jet up his ass, if you want a spokesman? Got the perfect guy, Ed Begely Jr. That man actually walks the walk, lives in a modest 3 bedroom, drives a small electric with a bike rack so he can bike short errands, he does everything in his power to cut down on waste and pollution. You look at Al Gore and pals and what you see is the classic "do as I say not as i do" bullshit of the rich and spoiled, and until Gore and his ideas get pushed off an iceberg a lot of us will simply call it what it is, a scam, and vote against anybody who supports him and his bankster buddies.
Or he can buy one of those AMD quad laptops and be able to do a million more things a bazillion times better than a so called "smart watch".
I do find it ironic how the tech corps are pushing "smart watches are the wave of the future!" when more and more people are treating watches like 8-tracks and not wearing a watch, preferring to check their smartphone. Hell even my elderly parents have quit wearing watches, they find the big screen of their Android phones easier to read and includes the weather. Folks are always messing with their phones anyway so why not?
I can back this up, I'm just one guy who doesn't do any BTing and I often have to pay as much for bandwidth over my cap during the big Steam sales than I do for the games themselves. Obviously some of the folks here haven't downloaded any recent games, Borderlands I? 37Gb for the game and DLC, Borderlands II? 42GB for the same. Heck even a game with very little DLC, as the Burnout Paradise i got with the recent Humble Bundle? Over 4Gb, now figure in the other 8 games that came with the bundle and you are easily looking at 25Gb+ right there and that is just for a single bundle!
Trust me friend that 150Gb might seem like a not but its not and just be glad you are getting even that, the local ISPs here have plans that are 36Gb,60Gb and the top is 76Gb! These ISPs act like its still 1998 and all folks are doing is checking their email, when IRL everything has gotten bigger EXCEPT their caps.
I'll just add that a friend of mine actually tried to do just that and was killed by the duopoly!
Where his business was located there was something like 5 blocks to the nearest junction and neither the cable nor DSL would run to him so he bought a T3 and leased bandwidth to the neighbors who likewise had been screwed, even had set up a server to take some of the load off by hosting Windows Updates as well as FOSS software like Open Office, so what happened? The DSL company also sold dialup and when their sales went down they came up with an excuse to jack his T3 prices a couple hundred percent. they even told him "Yeah just try and sue us". he went to a lawyer who said "Oh sure you'll win, no doubt, after 10 years and a couple million in lawyer fees because they'll drag it out for the better part of a decade." Needless to say he couldn't afford that and closed up shop and moved away.
So you can't even attempt such a thing unless you are at least city government sized to be able to afford the several years their lawsuits will end up dragging through the courts. The duopoly have control, they know it, and they know you can't afford to spend a decade in court, meanwhile they have a law team on payroll. You will have zero chance of success unless your last name is Dell or Gates.
That's nice for you, here in central AR, in the middle of a college town no less, you can get the cable home line for $35 a month or get business for...$150 a month! That is nearly 5 times the price for just a doubling of the cap! Want more? Its $1.50 a GB as there are no more tiers after business!
The simple fact is the prices are so high because we were robbed of over 200 billion because that is what we gave the teleco/cableco duopolies in return for nationwide broadband and what did we get? A low rez Goatse while the board stuffed their pockets. We should give them 90 days to pay up WITH INTEREST and if they don't? WE the people control the last mile. They want a monopoly? Any place they run FTTH that isn't already being served with fiber they can have a 15 year monopoly, 25 year if they run it to places that haven't had any service.
But even the libertarians should support such a plan, because we have seen time and time again that monopolies and regulatory capture are cancers on the free market, ONLY by having actual competition will things get better. Until then get used to nastier and nastier caps as they wring max profit from the existing lines.
And what EXACTLY would they have run it on? Did you look at the specs of the N900? With the MSFT money came requirements to buy better chips thanks to the minimum of WP7/8, without those limits placed upon them the N900 shows the bean counters would have crippled any android offering with weak hardware. We have seen a similar trend with Sony, once upon a time Sony meant quality but now they are just trading on their former glory.
Nokia has been treading water for most of the decade friend, think Android would take a company barely above water and put them on a jetski? When all but Samsung using android are likewise treading water or flailing about? I'm sorry but that is just delusion, having a free OS doesn't magically undo 6 solid years of bad choices,it just don't work like that.