Sales were "way up" for a couple of days because of a Facebook campaign (which certain news outlets also gave wide publicity to) called "Chick-Fil-A appreciation day". It is no longer Chick-Fil-A appreciation day. We will have to wait to see what the long-term trend is.
I kinda laugh when I heard these new Droid commercials that ask "Does your phone get all day battery life?" because, as it is, my phone gets about 5 days of battery life... plugging it into the charger is a notable activity on the day of the week that it occurs!
And unlike the other betas, it sucks ass and it next to useless. (The "next to" being that it can be good for a laugh - other than the laughs it's totally useless.)
Why would YouTube be another matter? What is the difference between YouTube and Netflix, in the eyes of the Americans With Disabilities Act? Is it the subscription fees? Is it the source of the content? Where in the law are these answers? The answers are nowhere in the law. And that's exactly why this whole issue is important.
Right. That's essentially what XP had. I've tried looking for "virtual audio cable" type apps, but the only ones I found costed money. If you know of anything free that does this, I'd like to know also.
Replaygain isn't RMS. It uses RMS as a starting point for its calculations - but it also takes psychoacoustics into account. One thing it does is use sort of an equalization curve while measuring the loudness, that compensates for how humans perceive different frequencies. We perceive a tone measuring x dB at 1 kHz as being louder than a tone of x dB at 15 kHz. Just as 1 example. It also takes into account variations in loudness (aka dynamics) within a track - louder and quieter segments of music. I'm not sure of everything the algorithm takes into account, but it's way more intricate than a simple RMS measurement. Feel free to look up the spec for yourself if you want the specifics.
I also find that it's generally very good. I have a large collection of music (180 GB) that's all RG scanned. Everything from ambient music, to classic rock, to metal, to hip-hop, to Britney Spears. ReplayGain does an amazingly accurate calculation, so good that I can put my player on shuffle and not run into loudness problems.
I also frequently make "mixtape"-type playlists for people and like to put all tracks to the same volume. I use ReplayGain's data for this. Very rarely do I need to make any manual adjustments - never any more than 2 or 3 dB on a track. Without RG, you're talking about variations of up to 12 or 14 dB between tracks from different albums.
You're bringing transport costs into this? And comparing 3D IMAX movies instead of a "normal" movie? In any case, this is what I'd pay, in Houston, TX -
Ticket - $14.50 - $17.50 (depends on the film)
Popcorn+Soda - $8.50 (yes... its ridiculous)
Gasoline to drive to theater - $2 (no public transport available)
US Total: $25 to $28
Amsterdam total: $28.89 (=23 euro)
Funny thing - the ability to directly (digitally) record "Wav out" or "What U Hear" was actually removed after Windows XP. I'm guessing you haven't tried to do it in Vista or 7. These options would appear alongside "Line in" and "Mic" and your other inputs, in audio programs. I'm guessing it was due to some kind of lobbying on the RIAA's part.
Of course, this doesn't actually stop me from recording stuff. It just means i've got to plug in a cable running from my line-out to the line-in on the back of my case.
Well no, their business isn't solely ads. They also collect subscription fees, so some of the money actually does come from people paying for entertainment.
That being said... it'd be interesting to find out what proportion of their money comes from subscribers, and what comes from advertisers.
These synthetics are most definitely "reaching the market". I dont know the specifics of manufacturing, but I'm sure it's profitable - you only need a milligram or two per packet. So a single gram of pure cannabinoid is enough to dose several hundred baggies of fake weed, baggies that sell for $20 a pop. Do the math.
The Monitoring the Future studies that ask kids annually about drug use started asking about the synthetics recently - Synthetic cannabis replacement, "Fake weed", whatever you choose to call it... Anyway, it turns out that about 11% of twelfth graders have smoked it (compared to ~30% for cannabis). I know of two smoke shops, a liquor store, and a gas station in my area that either sell it or have sold it at one point. I know several people who've smoked it. In fact just this weekend I was at a party where someone smoked a bowl of it.
Its a bit of a shock - but yes, it's out there. In greater numbers than you'd think. But the regulatory status and the arms race with the DEA over these substances is changing month by month. So the situation could change at any time. This stuff wasn't widely available at all, just a few years ago. It may disappear just as quick.
FYI - Although several members of the JWH class of drugs have been banned, there are other synthetic cannabinoids that haven't. I recall after the first round of bannings in late 2010, the fake weed packets disappeared from the smoke shops - for a week or two. Then, the new blends that popped up read "Contains no JWH-018, HU-210,..." But they still obviously contained potent cannabinoids. As determined by, shall we say, a personal bioassay. It's actually kinda funny - the legal framework creates a situation where the packaging lists a bunch of things that aren't in it - and yet you have no idea of what the fuck is in it.
I think there's been another round of DEA bans since I've messed with the stuff. I haven't messed with it in about a year, but I know people who still do, and they're telling me the new stuff is every bit as potent as what they've banned. Basically the DEA is playing whack-a-mole. They ban 4 or 5 chemicals, then new blends show up using new, novel chemicals. Then the game starts over again with the DEA having to determine what's in the new stuff so that it too can be banned.
What I fear is going to happen, and real soon, is the DEA gets pissed and sweeping new legislation gets enacted that will make any drug that acts on a certain part of the brain (for example, cannabinoid receptors) illegal. Which is equivalent to saying, "We don't approve of these chemical pathways in your brain - and you're not allowed to use them." I mean, that's already what their de-facto attitude is... but now it'll be codified and on the books. It's a scary thing when we start outlawing certain receptors in the brain. Up there with patenting human genes.
Of course, the sane thing to do in the situation would be to just legalize the goddamned herb, and nobody would be messing with these horrible synthetics in the first place. But "sanity" has never been a factor in this country's drug policy...
The legal alcohol level limit for driving in the US actually isn't much more than a pint. The limit is defined as 0.08% blood alcohol concentration - take a look at this table which gives an approximation of BAC based on your demographics. http://www.brad21.org/bac_charts.html
Keep in mind that they define a "drink" as being 12 oz of beer - so after a pint, you're already between 1 and 2 "drinks" on the chart. So if you're a female under 140 lbs, you've already hit the limit after 1 pint. (Myself, it'd take somewhere around 2 pints.)
I don't think it'd be policy to lower the limit any further. (It was actually 0.10% in many states before federal strong-arming to get all states to standardize.) Having it too low could result in people who aren't actually intoxicated going to jail - which can already happen with the limit as it currently stands. Breathalyzers aren't exactly the most accurate devices - its measures alcohol vapor in a person's breath, not their actual blood alcohol level (which, furthermore, doesn't necessarily correspond to a given intoxication level across different individuals).
Besides, if you're driving while obviously intoxicated, you're likely to be charged anyway. The laws are written in such a way that a positive breathalyzer isn't necessary to be charged. Otherwise we'd never be able to arrest people driving on heroin for example - they're always going to test 0.00% BAC.
There's at least 1 site/community active now (which I will decline to name) that uses TOR and BitCoin to create a semi-anonymous network for international mail-order drug trade. Besides the technological sophistication, these places are a world apart from any "online pharmacy"-type web sites that may spam your inbox. (Those have all been credit-card-info honeypots for a decade or longer, besides.) They simply don't advertise, period - the TOR/BitCoin-based communities are way underground. Private torrent trackers don't have shit on these guys. They basically function like a marketplace - they provide an anonymized network for drug seekers to contact drug suppliers. And they use an anonymized payment scheme - BitCoin. You can find nearly anything on these networks - legal but exotic/hard-to-find drugs that aren't criminalized yet are a big part of it, since if the package gets intercepted in shipping it won't lead to an arrest. But my contact within one of these communities tells me that illegals (morphine, LSD, amphetamine...) are also available. Although obviously much more risky to import.
So where BitCoin fits into this is it provides totally untraceable payment for these networks. TOR provides the anonymous communication. There's a network, separate from the one previously described, called The Farmer's Market that was recently busted [ref 1]. While they used TOR for communication, my source told me they used something non-anonymous for payment. I don't remember exactly which service - probably not PayPal, but something similar. And that traceability made it easier to bust the ring.
So yes, BitCoin is being used for drug trade. It doesn't surprise me most Slashdotters would be unaware of this; it's underground as fuck. Welcome to the new millennium: buying drugs has become social-networked and peer-to-peer. (Turns out people will choose not to deal with street pushers and cartels if they don't need to. Now if we'd just legalize a select few substances, we'd really hit the cartels in the balls...)
Although it's possible their nuclear centrifuges weren't physically airgapped from the internet, Stuxnet was also designed to spread via removable media. There was an article in the Weekly Standard a couple years ago that presented a theory I find more likely, which is that infected USB flash sticks were planted in/around Iran, and one of those (or a drive that had subsequently become infected) made its way to the nuclear facility and was plugged into a machine there.
This is really the only way to do it, for apps that aren't coded in such a way that they're DPI-scaleable. If I may be allowed to wildly speculate, bitmap-based scaling might be a "killer feature" of Windows 8 SP2 -- Or maybe Windows 9 if they give it the Vista treatment and release the next version in quick succession.
Really it just depends on how the market for screens goes. If it stays like it does now (stagnant DPIs) there'll be less of a demand for the scaling feature. If people start using higher DPI screens, it'll be more of a priority for MS. If (a BIG if) MS is successful in creating a single tablet/phone/desktop OS with the Metro UI, tablet screens DPI will become relevant, and we could see scaling in the near future.
Ah, I remember playing AA2 and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on Linux, and being pleasantly surprised at MUCH better framerates in Linux, to the tune of 20% better.... it was incredible, I couldn't believe it. nVidia's *nix drivers are definitely top-notch. (I was on a 64 MB Geforce 4 MX, and a Pentium 4, back then...)
The Army has now discontinued AA2 entirely in favor of AA3, which is basically like a demo. The game has like 4 maps total, 2 of which are old (Bridge and Pipeline). Hardly any populated servers to play on. Extremely limited weapon selection - M4 with grenade launcher, M16 (with or without scope), or SAW. Not even a pistol for the snipers. Oh and it runs choppily on a 275 GTX, no anti-aliasing, bare minimum settings... it's fucking sad. Oh, and no more Linux client.
I'm guessing your problems are more due to MSI and/or Asus than nVidia. I've been using a GeForce 275 GTX from XFX since 2009 and it hasn't given me any problems at all. Oh, and I live in Houston so ambient temp in my room is 80 - 81 degrees for all but a few weeks of the year.
Things like soldering and heatsinks are done by the card assemblers (in my case, XFX) rather than nVidia. So is the selection of the VRAM that goes on the card. Graphical corruption is almost certainly due to bad VRAM, unless you're overclocking the GPU or something. I'm guessing that MSI is skimping on one or several of these things in their boards.
"Avoiding Vista" is worlds away from "Actively seeking out Linux." The mantra last time around was "Stick with XP", this time around it'll just be "Stick with 7". (Or, in 10-15%, still stick with XP...) You say Linux has been progressing, and I'd like to know how you're measuring that progress. (No, I don't want to hear about Android. People don't know it's Linux-derived, plus we're talking about x86 desktops, not ARM smartphones.)
I, even being a techie, have actually moved farther away from Linux. There was a point around 2005-2006 where I actually used Gentoo as my primary desktop OS - Then Elder Scrolls 4 came out and I didn't want to reboot and switch operating systems all the time. These days, with Win 7, the experience of using Windows has improved to a point where I don't even think about Linux anymore unless I'm doing server stuff. The stability, ease of use, vastly improved GUI (both functionally and aesthetically) - are all so much better than they were at the low point of the XP/early-Vista days.
As far as the games go.. OK, we're getting L4D2 and the Steam client on Linux, that's great. Way to go, Valve. But will I be able to play Max Payne 3? No. Skyrim? No. Dragon Age 3? No. Grand Theft Auto? No. Civilization 5? No. Linux still isn't going to cut it for gamers. Windows is the gamer's OS because of it's huge library. One, two, or even a dozen games isn't going to change that.
Really, we've got a hard time getting developers to even do proper Windows ports these days... Seems like the games that do end up on Windows still tell you to move the left analog stick while holding the B-button...
The important point you're missing is that "decriminalization" means decriminalization of POSSESSION - not decriminalization of SALE.
Sales of a prescription-only drug would still be illegal - pharmacies or any legal entity would still be barred from selling you morphine unless you have a prescription. However, simply having the drug in your possession, would be legal - so long as you don't try selling it to someone else.
What this effectively does is to decriminalize users of a drug, and anyone else who could momentarily or accidentally come into 'possession' of a drug (like the aforementioned son with grandma's pill bottle). Dealers of a drug would still be performing an illegal act - the selling of the drugs. This legislative approach puts the law enforcement pressure on dealers instead of users, which is how it should have been handled to start with.
This is what's generally referred to as "decriminalization". What you are suggesting, where drugs would be totally legal to sell to anyone, is called "legalization".
The distinction between possession and sale of a prescription drug is easily overlooked, but very important.
They actually have opened a new, smaller Best Buy about 20 minutes from the main one in this area. It's hardly larger than a store in the mall. The entire place is CD/DVDs, save for two tables of laptops and a few shelves of computer accessories (cables, headphones, etc.). They seem to be competing more with record stores than like Fry's or what Circuit City was.
Even in the "primary" Best Buy, I have noticed the shifting focus of their floorspace. The 70% figure you gave seems pretty accurate. I remember they used to have an aisle full of keyboards (musical keyboards - synthesizers) that's gone now. Replaced with rows and rows of DVDs. Their computer parts selection is very, very poor. There's a lot of laptops and desktops pre-assembled for you to choose from, but if you need parts, there's almost nothing. They had TWO PC cases in the entire store, maybe four models of video card... I don't recall seeing any CPUs or motherboards at all... it seemed like they weren't even fully using the shelf space that had been allocated to computer parts. The videogame and music sections were packed end-to-end with discs.
Slashdot Mirror
Sales were "way up" for a couple of days because of a Facebook campaign (which certain news outlets also gave wide publicity to) called "Chick-Fil-A appreciation day". It is no longer Chick-Fil-A appreciation day. We will have to wait to see what the long-term trend is.
I believe it wasn't the gun, but rather the extended magazines that were illegal.
Or vagina.
I kinda laugh when I heard these new Droid commercials that ask "Does your phone get all day battery life?" because, as it is, my phone gets about 5 days of battery life... plugging it into the charger is a notable activity on the day of the week that it occurs!
If everybody worked at or above the median salary ... it wouldn't be the median salary anymore, would it?
And unlike the other betas, it sucks ass and it next to useless. (The "next to" being that it can be good for a laugh - other than the laughs it's totally useless.)
Why would YouTube be another matter? What is the difference between YouTube and Netflix, in the eyes of the Americans With Disabilities Act? Is it the subscription fees? Is it the source of the content? Where in the law are these answers? The answers are nowhere in the law. And that's exactly why this whole issue is important.
Right. That's essentially what XP had. I've tried looking for "virtual audio cable" type apps, but the only ones I found costed money. If you know of anything free that does this, I'd like to know also.
Replaygain isn't RMS. It uses RMS as a starting point for its calculations - but it also takes psychoacoustics into account. One thing it does is use sort of an equalization curve while measuring the loudness, that compensates for how humans perceive different frequencies. We perceive a tone measuring x dB at 1 kHz as being louder than a tone of x dB at 15 kHz. Just as 1 example. It also takes into account variations in loudness (aka dynamics) within a track - louder and quieter segments of music. I'm not sure of everything the algorithm takes into account, but it's way more intricate than a simple RMS measurement. Feel free to look up the spec for yourself if you want the specifics.
I also find that it's generally very good. I have a large collection of music (180 GB) that's all RG scanned. Everything from ambient music, to classic rock, to metal, to hip-hop, to Britney Spears. ReplayGain does an amazingly accurate calculation, so good that I can put my player on shuffle and not run into loudness problems.
I also frequently make "mixtape"-type playlists for people and like to put all tracks to the same volume. I use ReplayGain's data for this. Very rarely do I need to make any manual adjustments - never any more than 2 or 3 dB on a track. Without RG, you're talking about variations of up to 12 or 14 dB between tracks from different albums.
You're bringing transport costs into this? And comparing 3D IMAX movies instead of a "normal" movie? In any case, this is what I'd pay, in Houston, TX -
... its ridiculous)
Ticket - $14.50 - $17.50 (depends on the film)
Popcorn+Soda - $8.50 (yes
Gasoline to drive to theater - $2 (no public transport available)
US Total: $25 to $28
Amsterdam total: $28.89 (=23 euro)
So, about the same actually.
"What are you gonna do?" ... nothing? It's not like the Austrian town isn't still there in its entirety.
How about
Somewhat related - There's a golf course near where I live that re-created portions of famous golf courses from around the world, and got sued by several of them for this. And it was fucking ridiculous.
Ref. http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1995_1309260/lawyers-make-final-arguments-in-tour-18-lawsuit.html
Funny thing - the ability to directly (digitally) record "Wav out" or "What U Hear" was actually removed after Windows XP. I'm guessing you haven't tried to do it in Vista or 7. These options would appear alongside "Line in" and "Mic" and your other inputs, in audio programs. I'm guessing it was due to some kind of lobbying on the RIAA's part.
Of course, this doesn't actually stop me from recording stuff. It just means i've got to plug in a cable running from my line-out to the line-in on the back of my case.
Well no, their business isn't solely ads. They also collect subscription fees, so some of the money actually does come from people paying for entertainment. ... it'd be interesting to find out what proportion of their money comes from subscribers, and what comes from advertisers.
That being said
These synthetics are most definitely "reaching the market". I dont know the specifics of manufacturing, but I'm sure it's profitable - you only need a milligram or two per packet. So a single gram of pure cannabinoid is enough to dose several hundred baggies of fake weed, baggies that sell for $20 a pop. Do the math.
... Anyway, it turns out that about 11% of twelfth graders have smoked it (compared to ~30% for cannabis). I know of two smoke shops, a liquor store, and a gas station in my area that either sell it or have sold it at one point. I know several people who've smoked it. In fact just this weekend I was at a party where someone smoked a bowl of it.
The Monitoring the Future studies that ask kids annually about drug use started asking about the synthetics recently - Synthetic cannabis replacement, "Fake weed", whatever you choose to call it
Its a bit of a shock - but yes, it's out there. In greater numbers than you'd think. But the regulatory status and the arms race with the DEA over these substances is changing month by month. So the situation could change at any time. This stuff wasn't widely available at all, just a few years ago. It may disappear just as quick.
FYI - Although several members of the JWH class of drugs have been banned, there are other synthetic cannabinoids that haven't. I recall after the first round of bannings in late 2010, the fake weed packets disappeared from the smoke shops - for a week or two. Then, the new blends that popped up read "Contains no JWH-018, HU-210, ..." But they still obviously contained potent cannabinoids. As determined by, shall we say, a personal bioassay. It's actually kinda funny - the legal framework creates a situation where the packaging lists a bunch of things that aren't in it - and yet you have no idea of what the fuck is in it.
I think there's been another round of DEA bans since I've messed with the stuff. I haven't messed with it in about a year, but I know people who still do, and they're telling me the new stuff is every bit as potent as what they've banned. Basically the DEA is playing whack-a-mole. They ban 4 or 5 chemicals, then new blends show up using new, novel chemicals. Then the game starts over again with the DEA having to determine what's in the new stuff so that it too can be banned.
What I fear is going to happen, and real soon, is the DEA gets pissed and sweeping new legislation gets enacted that will make any drug that acts on a certain part of the brain (for example, cannabinoid receptors) illegal. Which is equivalent to saying, "We don't approve of these chemical pathways in your brain - and you're not allowed to use them." I mean, that's already what their de-facto attitude is... but now it'll be codified and on the books. It's a scary thing when we start outlawing certain receptors in the brain. Up there with patenting human genes.
Of course, the sane thing to do in the situation would be to just legalize the goddamned herb, and nobody would be messing with these horrible synthetics in the first place. But "sanity" has never been a factor in this country's drug policy...
The legal alcohol level limit for driving in the US actually isn't much more than a pint. The limit is defined as 0.08% blood alcohol concentration - take a look at this table which gives an approximation of BAC based on your demographics.
http://www.brad21.org/bac_charts.html
Keep in mind that they define a "drink" as being 12 oz of beer - so after a pint, you're already between 1 and 2 "drinks" on the chart. So if you're a female under 140 lbs, you've already hit the limit after 1 pint. (Myself, it'd take somewhere around 2 pints.)
I don't think it'd be policy to lower the limit any further. (It was actually 0.10% in many states before federal strong-arming to get all states to standardize.) Having it too low could result in people who aren't actually intoxicated going to jail - which can already happen with the limit as it currently stands. Breathalyzers aren't exactly the most accurate devices - its measures alcohol vapor in a person's breath, not their actual blood alcohol level (which, furthermore, doesn't necessarily correspond to a given intoxication level across different individuals).
Besides, if you're driving while obviously intoxicated, you're likely to be charged anyway. The laws are written in such a way that a positive breathalyzer isn't necessary to be charged. Otherwise we'd never be able to arrest people driving on heroin for example - they're always going to test 0.00% BAC.
There's at least 1 site/community active now (which I will decline to name) that uses TOR and BitCoin to create a semi-anonymous network for international mail-order drug trade. Besides the technological sophistication, these places are a world apart from any "online pharmacy"-type web sites that may spam your inbox. (Those have all been credit-card-info honeypots for a decade or longer, besides.) They simply don't advertise, period - the TOR/BitCoin-based communities are way underground. Private torrent trackers don't have shit on these guys. They basically function like a marketplace - they provide an anonymized network for drug seekers to contact drug suppliers. And they use an anonymized payment scheme - BitCoin. You can find nearly anything on these networks - legal but exotic/hard-to-find drugs that aren't criminalized yet are a big part of it, since if the package gets intercepted in shipping it won't lead to an arrest. But my contact within one of these communities tells me that illegals (morphine, LSD, amphetamine...) are also available. Although obviously much more risky to import.
So where BitCoin fits into this is it provides totally untraceable payment for these networks. TOR provides the anonymous communication. There's a network, separate from the one previously described, called The Farmer's Market that was recently busted [ref 1]. While they used TOR for communication, my source told me they used something non-anonymous for payment. I don't remember exactly which service - probably not PayPal, but something similar. And that traceability made it easier to bust the ring.
So yes, BitCoin is being used for drug trade. It doesn't surprise me most Slashdotters would be unaware of this; it's underground as fuck. Welcome to the new millennium: buying drugs has become social-networked and peer-to-peer. (Turns out people will choose not to deal with street pushers and cartels if they don't need to. Now if we'd just legalize a select few substances, we'd really hit the cartels in the balls...)
[1] http://www.erowid.org/general/announce/monthly_2012-04.shtml
Although it's possible their nuclear centrifuges weren't physically airgapped from the internet, Stuxnet was also designed to spread via removable media. There was an article in the Weekly Standard a couple years ago that presented a theory I find more likely, which is that infected USB flash sticks were planted in/around Iran, and one of those (or a drive that had subsequently become infected) made its way to the nuclear facility and was plugged into a machine there.
This is really the only way to do it, for apps that aren't coded in such a way that they're DPI-scaleable. If I may be allowed to wildly speculate, bitmap-based scaling might be a "killer feature" of Windows 8 SP2 -- Or maybe Windows 9 if they give it the Vista treatment and release the next version in quick succession.
Really it just depends on how the market for screens goes. If it stays like it does now (stagnant DPIs) there'll be less of a demand for the scaling feature. If people start using higher DPI screens, it'll be more of a priority for MS. If (a BIG if) MS is successful in creating a single tablet/phone/desktop OS with the Metro UI, tablet screens DPI will become relevant, and we could see scaling in the near future.
Ah, I remember playing AA2 and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on Linux, and being pleasantly surprised at MUCH better framerates in Linux, to the tune of 20% better .... it was incredible, I couldn't believe it. nVidia's *nix drivers are definitely top-notch. (I was on a 64 MB Geforce 4 MX, and a Pentium 4, back then...)
The Army has now discontinued AA2 entirely in favor of AA3, which is basically like a demo. The game has like 4 maps total, 2 of which are old (Bridge and Pipeline). Hardly any populated servers to play on. Extremely limited weapon selection - M4 with grenade launcher, M16 (with or without scope), or SAW. Not even a pistol for the snipers. Oh and it runs choppily on a 275 GTX, no anti-aliasing, bare minimum settings... it's fucking sad. Oh, and no more Linux client.
I'm guessing your problems are more due to MSI and/or Asus than nVidia. I've been using a GeForce 275 GTX from XFX since 2009 and it hasn't given me any problems at all. Oh, and I live in Houston so ambient temp in my room is 80 - 81 degrees for all but a few weeks of the year.
Things like soldering and heatsinks are done by the card assemblers (in my case, XFX) rather than nVidia. So is the selection of the VRAM that goes on the card. Graphical corruption is almost certainly due to bad VRAM, unless you're overclocking the GPU or something. I'm guessing that MSI is skimping on one or several of these things in their boards.
"Avoiding Vista" is worlds away from "Actively seeking out Linux." The mantra last time around was "Stick with XP", this time around it'll just be "Stick with 7". (Or, in 10-15%, still stick with XP...) You say Linux has been progressing, and I'd like to know how you're measuring that progress. (No, I don't want to hear about Android. People don't know it's Linux-derived, plus we're talking about x86 desktops, not ARM smartphones.)
I, even being a techie, have actually moved farther away from Linux. There was a point around 2005-2006 where I actually used Gentoo as my primary desktop OS - Then Elder Scrolls 4 came out and I didn't want to reboot and switch operating systems all the time. These days, with Win 7, the experience of using Windows has improved to a point where I don't even think about Linux anymore unless I'm doing server stuff. The stability, ease of use, vastly improved GUI (both functionally and aesthetically) - are all so much better than they were at the low point of the XP/early-Vista days.
As far as the games go.. OK, we're getting L4D2 and the Steam client on Linux, that's great. Way to go, Valve. But will I be able to play Max Payne 3? No. Skyrim? No. Dragon Age 3? No. Grand Theft Auto? No. Civilization 5? No. Linux still isn't going to cut it for gamers. Windows is the gamer's OS because of it's huge library. One, two, or even a dozen games isn't going to change that.
Really, we've got a hard time getting developers to even do proper Windows ports these days... Seems like the games that do end up on Windows still tell you to move the left analog stick while holding the B-button...
The important point you're missing is that "decriminalization" means decriminalization of POSSESSION - not decriminalization of SALE.
Sales of a prescription-only drug would still be illegal - pharmacies or any legal entity would still be barred from selling you morphine unless you have a prescription. However, simply having the drug in your possession, would be legal - so long as you don't try selling it to someone else.
What this effectively does is to decriminalize users of a drug, and anyone else who could momentarily or accidentally come into 'possession' of a drug (like the aforementioned son with grandma's pill bottle). Dealers of a drug would still be performing an illegal act - the selling of the drugs. This legislative approach puts the law enforcement pressure on dealers instead of users, which is how it should have been handled to start with.
This is what's generally referred to as "decriminalization". What you are suggesting, where drugs would be totally legal to sell to anyone, is called "legalization".
The distinction between possession and sale of a prescription drug is easily overlooked, but very important.
They actually have opened a new, smaller Best Buy about 20 minutes from the main one in this area. It's hardly larger than a store in the mall. The entire place is CD/DVDs, save for two tables of laptops and a few shelves of computer accessories (cables, headphones, etc.). They seem to be competing more with record stores than like Fry's or what Circuit City was. ... I don't recall seeing any CPUs or motherboards at all... it seemed like they weren't even fully using the shelf space that had been allocated to computer parts. The videogame and music sections were packed end-to-end with discs.
Even in the "primary" Best Buy, I have noticed the shifting focus of their floorspace. The 70% figure you gave seems pretty accurate. I remember they used to have an aisle full of keyboards (musical keyboards - synthesizers) that's gone now. Replaced with rows and rows of DVDs. Their computer parts selection is very, very poor. There's a lot of laptops and desktops pre-assembled for you to choose from, but if you need parts, there's almost nothing. They had TWO PC cases in the entire store, maybe four models of video card
Get stoned, remember terrible music from the 90s, yell or type words onto the nearest keyboard. Sounds like something I'd do.