Re:Too recent & controversial for an encyclope
on
When Wikipedia Fails
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· Score: 1
On the other hand, if you want to know the engine capacity of a 1963 Austin Min i or the number of casualties in the RAF Faulds explosion or the exact nature o f the student prank involving the Bridge of Sighs in Cambridge or the size of a
litter of European Red Squirrels - things that I consult an encyclopedia for rather than a newspaper - then there is no other place (on the web or otherwise) to touch what Wikipedia has done.
That's exactly it: wikipedia certainly does struggle with immediate reporting of events that are controversial or not yet authoritatively reported by other sources, but it is still a great source for a huge amount of general knowledge. Even considering the wikipedia entry question, the site corrected itself in less than a week, no? I wouldn't suggest using it for news that happenned five minutes ago, but if you just need the main info on a lot of subjects, it is a great starting point.
Yeah, I'm totally perplexed by this. I looked at their "review" of the phone, which is really just a couple of sentences inexplicably listing its smallness as "con".
Yeah, I don't know of any positive reason for a phone to necessarily be big. Screen size might become a factor if it got ridiculously small, but some of us don't need fancy screens with Nvidia graphics and the latest games - we want a telephone that is easy to carry around. However, if the mentioned phone's battery life is in fact below average, I can not see myself even considering buying it. Sometimes I need all of the generous battery life my phone offers, though it is a bit older and clunkier than a couple of newer phones I've tried. I can not tolerate a need for more frequent charges, so super-tiny phones are not yet an option for people like me.
I'm not saying the article was particularly well-reasoned, just that there is currently the possibility that a phone could be to small to be usable.
Good Lord..."blue screen of death" could take on an entirely new meaning if MS systems will be controlling machines travelling at nearly 200mph. A sudden lack of power (or maybe a sudden burst?) could prove very dangerous when entering the tunnel at Monte Carlo, or with traffic behind you through the chicane at Suzuka. And what if your competitors decide to hack you? Viruses? What spyware?
I guess I have a reason to cancel my idea of starting an F1 team and go back to autocrossing my Honda. Oh well, I'm sure we would have dominated and been banned, anyway.
The reason most people don't do it is because they're honest and want to help out the human race instead of being a drain on society.
I think of myself as an honest person, but a desire to retain my freedom has also kept me from straying into a life of crime. And whether or not a need to be honest is universal I don't know, but I suspect the deterrent of prison is enough to keep most people straight. Lots of us have the skills and opportunities to commit some fairly lucrative crimes, though we choose not to, for whichever reason.
Finally a way to put Miicrosoft out of business!
1) Buy Windows
2) Install Windows
3) Connect computer to internet
4) Wait for computer to crash due to virus infestation
5) Get refund from M$ for defective software
6) Repeat and sell licenses for profit!
Nice try, but that is not the best solution; that allows MS to use your $100 or so for a few months without paying interest, and you'll be selling illegal licenses if you keep using WIndows. Better to skip Step 1 altogether, perhaps proceeding on to Step 2 anyway, or maybe installing another OS entirely and avoiding steps 1-6.
Remeber, he said he installed the version for his other computer while waiting for the new CD to come in the mail. I little point but neccesary because if he had waited, he wouldn't have been in that pickle.
But I think his point was that he paid for both and couldn't install them as he wanted to, even after calling for support. Even MS support couldn't simply get his two legally paid-for licenses installed on two machines, which should be a no-brainer. If you buy an XP upgrade, it should upgrade whatever previous install you wish to upgrade, no? Maybe the Dell (?) version specified that it could only upgrade particular OEM-branded installs, but I don't know what's up with all that jazz. MS must not have thought it should be limited, since they provided another license key upon request.
I understand the desire they have for limiting installs to licensed users, but the process is often cumbersome, has lots of problems, and asks a lot of legitimate users, who predominate in the US and Western Europe.
The thing is is you don't try to force users to pay by screwing your legitimate users. Instead of getting more people to pay you may drive them away. That's what they're doing to me. I've been buying and using PCs with Windows for almost 10 years but the next computer I get will be a Mac. If MS includes Activation in a product I won't buy it if I can get away without having it.
I agree. I've used MS products for 15 years now, mainly because they were the de facto standard and I needed interoperability. I've dual-booted MS$ and Linux for years now (as well as dabbling in OS/2, BeOS and FreeBSD), and I can now just about drop Winblowz completely, though I think my next personal machine will be a Mac, finally. Installing Windowz and maintaining it on machines not connected to the internet (yes, they do exist) is an especially rabid, PMSing, man-hating bitch and a half. I'm definitely about through with their antics, since I've now migrated entirely to Open Office.
Thanks for the memories, I guess. All the BS associated with Windows has prompted me to learn alternate operating systems. Thanks again, MS! Your own products and policies are your worst enemy.
Maybe. Definitely sounds like something Spamtec would rap about. Any rappers who can work LexisNexis, Linux, HPAV, spamming, ROKSO and even SCO into their rhymes can't be all bad. This story made me think of them immediately, and I kind of hoped they weren't getting busted.
I'd argue that it is indeed trendy but not a fad. Lots more people are catching on to anonymous (relatively) posting methods, so clearly there is a trend. But if this were a fad it would fade quickly. Instead it has quietly been building steam since the early days ofthe internet. When I discovered the internet around 1993 (so what if there were people already there, I discovered it and claimed it for my people), I thought usenet and anonymous remailers were probably the best things since pie and sliced bread, respectively. And I was certainly not early to that party, so this sort of thing has been around for some time now.
The point here, and what most of us including the OP are questioning, is not how simple the Geek Squad's tasks are, but rather, how they are not doing even those seemingly simple tasks well. Repairing a laptop battery being a trivial task is one thing, doing that while what's really broken is the fan/heatsink is a whole different one.
I understand perfectly well that Geek Squad doesn't do much, AND doesn't do anything very well, even the simple stuff. But that doesn't mean they don't fix anything, and lots of people need a cheap repair service that they at least think they can count on.
And, as I said earlier, it is all to easy and not very interesting for real computer professionals to slam Geek Squad. I've known a couple of very talented, fairly successful chefs as well, and I don't remember them ever wasting time talking about how McDonald's cook don't really cook or provide quality food to their customers. McDonald's is crap, but it satisfies a lot of people who don't know better or just don't care, and it's convenient. That's what a thread like this was bound to turn into.
You hit the nail on the head. That's exactly the point of Geek Squad and similar repair/upgrade services. It's all too easy for slashdotters to pile on Geek Squad, since they don't do much that's very difficult (and I doubt they pay enough to to attract top-notch techs anyway, so they have to send things out a lot, duh). But the typical home or business computer user is NOT a geek.
Yes, there are lots of geeks of varying degrees, but not everyone wants to know how to par
tition a hard drive, install device drivers or diagnose problems that turn out to be merely software related. My mom wants Word and Photoshop to work, and that's it. She doesn't care about overclocking for 7% better performance in a game, maximizing her server's reliability or learning Linux inside and out. She still INSISTS of using Netscape, for Pete's sake. Looke at how many people who can afford broadband still use dialup. People like them are plenty willing to pay for someone else to worry about their problems, or else wait patiently for me to have a chance to check it out. Or they buy Macs.
I'm not sure why so many tech-savy folks can't understand that they are special (although they often like to point out that they are), or that not everyone wants to be a computer expert. I like driving my neat little car around town, but I'll be damned if I'm going to freeze my butt off if it needs brakes in the winter. Bodywork? Hah! Simple and labor-intensive, but not thanks. I'm not mechanically inept, but I have a job and like to have dirty work done for me sometimes. And how is this news or "stuff that matters?"
Google Desktop seemed to be working fine as a search tool, until one day I started Internet Explorer. All of a sudden my firewall started warning me of outgoing connections from GoogleDesktopDisplay.exe, and ads started popping up from my taskbar. Even after closing IE, this continued, and after searching the preferences and terms of service for Google Desktop and finding nothing about this "feature", I have now banished this Google spyware from my system.
I use Google for searches and for unimportant email, but I know the company is not my friend, as they would like me to believe. But I won't use other Google software that has to much access to my computer without necessarily telling me everything it is doing. And I won't run IE except in very rare circumstance when Firefox or Opera can't load a page I really ned to get to. I suspect Google will sell-out a lot of security or usability for ad revenue.
There was this documentary about how these doplhins would use a similiar tactic just instead of a net they would use the bank of the shore line and the dolphins would temporarly bank themselves to catch fish. Scientists were baffled by how this was started. Now its obvios, doplhins are just plain smart!
I remember seeing that because the sight of dolphins leaping up onto the muddy banks to grab stranded fish was really something! A localized group of dolphins innovating to maximize the resources available to them seems to indicate that they are pretty smart. I won't say that their intelligence rivals that of humans, since we clearly grasp abstract concepts pretty well and can create some pretty neat tools. But they have never started any major wars, nor have they developed weapons that can destroy most all life on Earth (to my knowledge anyway - they might be more clever and sneaky than we give them credit for), as we have. They also speak Dolphin much better than most Americans ever well. (Caveat: most Americans never speak nothin other than English, and few speak that language well. And I ain't never never met no dolphins that talk da English better than me, yo!)
(Note: I use "we" to denote myself and fellow humans. Please take this into account if you are a dolphin or of some other species that I do not think very highly of.) But yeah, dolphins got nothin on me!!!
The last time I moved, I inquires about naked DSL with SBC. They informed me that it was "impossible" for them to provide DSL service with standard phone service. When I asked them whther "impossible" really meant that it was not possible ot do with DSL technology, or that SBC chose not to offer it. They claimed it could not be done, even though I knew that was BS and it was offerred by other companies in other areas. I have zero use for a landline, and a contract-based service would not make sense for me anyway, so I am paying an arm and a leg for Adelphia's cable service. This stinks.
Most of the nicer chassis don't have razor sharp edges on the inside. Spend $35 on a case and PS, and you may need a Band-Aid or two - but most folks who are building even mid range gaming rigs will spend money on a case.
Skimping a little bit on things like the case is what allows some of us to build nice systems. If the budget is a concern in a build, the case is the most obvious thing to go cheap on. Afterall, it is basically just a box for your stuff. I wouldn't just use anything that is available, but there are some decent options for $50 or less. Instead of buying $150 cases with finely-crafted smooth edges I prefer to get a $50 case (and maybe some extra RAM or a quieter PS) and simply BE CAREFUL for the hour or two it takes to build it. I cut myself once, upgrading a computer a long time ago. ONCE.;)
{insert_name}
I agree with your statement only if taken out of context. In this case, the double standard is in favor of pharmacuticals. Ephedrine is not only more dangerous than Marijuana, but it is also used to create methamphetamine. I'm not saying I agree with the ID laws, just that you should reconsider which one is really the "bad stuff".
First of all, I agree with you that laws and prohibitions do not necessarily equate with right and wrong or good and bad. And as for Erowid, it contains a lot of information, some of which is useful and hard to find elsewhere. However, I'd be careful in citing Erowid as a source, since a lot of its info. is not cited and amounts to "trip reports", and users saying things like "I combined some wicked pot, 30mg of AMT, a bottle of DXM syrup , 5 mushroom caps, a trippy toad and some lotus flowers, and I tripped balls. Great visuals from this research."
I'd also like to point out that this thread was about prescription stimulants used for concentration, and some of the common ones are not that different, pharmacologically speaking, from the meth that everyone appears to think is so evil. I'm not trolling, just trying to add some perspective to the discussion. And, I'll stick to coffee, Vault Zero (my Diet Surge) and yerba mate, thanks.
In the interest of effeciency, I skimmed out the parts of the original post you don't really need to read. Now you don't even need to RTFA (though I'm sure you would have otherwise).
This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer"
Neither would this have happened if the maintenance tech had followed procedure and just switched the damned thing off. I don't see how this is any different from a normal industrial accident with something like a sheet metal press.
I knew Ken Urada. Ken Urada was a friend of mine. That robot was no Ken Urada. So not only do all robots need to be designed to be safer around humans, many other industrial devices and machines need to be safer as well. For instance, i've heard of people being killed by automobiles, cranes, hammers, cliffs, water and even food (both due to allergies and asphyxiation).
Asimov's three laws of robotics should be extended to cover everything that a human might come in contact with while going about his daily business. Why should we have to be careful and use basic precautions, as if these things are all very predictable or something? I propose a universal law that makes it illegal for ANY inanimate object or device to harm a human.
Why the US has to be different once again I haven't figured out.
Well, for starters, the US is a different place than Europe (I've seen a globe, and they are definitely different), the people are very different in some ways, and we have the FCC, which is a monument to American bureaucracy. RTFA and you'll see that the DAB spectrum is not available in the US, though I don't know whether that's because it is already in use for something else or because the FCC is saving it for something useless.
Just for kicks, I think maybe instead of the US following European standards or vice versa, we should all try to agree on a universal standard. Maybe decide before implementing the technology, unlike VHS v. Betamax, Blueray v. HD-DVD, driving on the right side v. driving on the wrong side... Then everyone would get to play and have have fun rather than having someone dominate.
Whatever. I'm not a fanboy, so I assumed that all the manufacturers who were advertizing the FX-62 chips were actually selling them, but those systems aren't shipping for a couple of weeks yet. That, coupled with all the benchmarks I've seen (lots of tests) made me think they were already available. Oh well. I'm not pimping AMD, and I really don't care. My next CPU will be the one that offers the best overall performance for my budget - which has meant 3 AMDs and 2 Intels in the last few years.
--You are "snorreh", a well-known AMD fanboy who posts on www.aceshardware.com forums. You've openly admitted that anything Intel releases won't be good enough for you. I highly suggest any readers of your posts be "sceptical".
These statements may indeed be true (I really have no idea, so I'll assume they are), but the FX-62 is tried and true, and well known to perform very well in most real-world arenas, whereas the Conroe chips are new and not well tested yet. So the Intel fanboys at least need to wait a bit before proclaiming victory, and the AMD fanboys should not be so smug yet. Let's let logic and independent tests dictate this time - wait until the Conroe chips are available in a variety of systems. Duh.
I hate this same debate EVERY time a new family of processors comes out. My AMD 486DX-40 kicked some Intel ass, $ for $, back in 1993, but so what? Intel had some nice chips then, too. I'm sure any new CPU from AMD or Intel will be good, since neither of them can afford to push true crap right now. Jeeeeeez...
How 'bout a robot that can pour draught beer into a pint glass, and do so without pouring 4 ounces of beer and 12 ounces of foam? THAT would be impressive. I've seen my share of "professional" (professional in the sense that they apparently get paid refularly to do it) bar tenders who can't seem to master a tap.
Now, if a commercial version of these robots could somehow brew beer on its own, I'd be first in line to buy!
Slashdot Mirror
i or the number of casualties in the RAF Faulds explosion or the exact nature o
f the student prank involving the Bridge of Sighs in Cambridge or the size of a
litter of European Red Squirrels - things that I consult an encyclopedia for rather than a newspaper - then there is no other place (on the web or otherwise) to touch what Wikipedia has done.
That's exactly it: wikipedia certainly does struggle with immediate reporting of events that are controversial or not yet authoritatively reported by other sources, but it is still a great source for a huge amount of general knowledge. Even considering the wikipedia entry question, the site corrected itself in less than a week, no? I wouldn't suggest using it for news that happenned five minutes ago, but if you just need the main info on a lot of subjects, it is a great starting point.
I agree with this in that the notion of "in loco parentis" is less of a right and more of a responsibility. Parental rights are much broader.
Yeah, I don't know of any positive reason for a phone to necessarily be big. Screen size might become a factor if it got ridiculously small, but some of us don't need fancy screens with Nvidia graphics and the latest games - we want a telephone that is easy to carry around. However, if the mentioned phone's battery life is in fact below average, I can not see myself even considering buying it. Sometimes I need all of the generous battery life my phone offers, though it is a bit older and clunkier than a couple of newer phones I've tried. I can not tolerate a need for more frequent charges, so super-tiny phones are not yet an option for people like me.
I'm not saying the article was particularly well-reasoned, just that there is currently the possibility that a phone could be to small to be usable.
Good Lord..."blue screen of death" could take on an entirely new meaning if MS systems will be controlling machines travelling at nearly 200mph. A sudden lack of power (or maybe a sudden burst?) could prove very dangerous when entering the tunnel at Monte Carlo, or with traffic behind you through the chicane at Suzuka. And what if your competitors decide to hack you? Viruses? What spyware?
I guess I have a reason to cancel my idea of starting an F1 team and go back to autocrossing my Honda. Oh well, I'm sure we would have dominated and been banned, anyway.
I think of myself as an honest person, but a desire to retain my freedom has also kept me from straying into a life of crime. And whether or not a need to be honest is universal I don't know, but I suspect the deterrent of prison is enough to keep most people straight. Lots of us have the skills and opportunities to commit some fairly lucrative crimes, though we choose not to, for whichever reason.
Nice try, but that is not the best solution; that allows MS to use your $100 or so for a few months without paying interest, and you'll be selling illegal licenses if you keep using WIndows. Better to skip Step 1 altogether, perhaps proceeding on to Step 2 anyway, or maybe installing another OS entirely and avoiding steps 1-6.
But I think his point was that he paid for both and couldn't install them as he wanted to, even after calling for support. Even MS support couldn't simply get his two legally paid-for licenses installed on two machines, which should be a no-brainer. If you buy an XP upgrade, it should upgrade whatever previous install you wish to upgrade, no? Maybe the Dell (?) version specified that it could only upgrade particular OEM-branded installs, but I don't know what's up with all that jazz. MS must not have thought it should be limited, since they provided another license key upon request.
I understand the desire they have for limiting installs to licensed users, but the process is often cumbersome, has lots of problems, and asks a lot of legitimate users, who predominate in the US and Western Europe.
I agree. I've used MS products for 15 years now, mainly because they were the de facto standard and I needed interoperability. I've dual-booted MS$ and Linux for years now (as well as dabbling in OS/2, BeOS and FreeBSD), and I can now just about drop Winblowz completely, though I think my next personal machine will be a Mac, finally. Installing Windowz and maintaining it on machines not connected to the internet (yes, they do exist) is an especially rabid, PMSing, man-hating bitch and a half. I'm definitely about through with their antics, since I've now migrated entirely to Open Office.
Thanks for the memories, I guess. All the BS associated with Windows has prompted me to learn alternate operating systems. Thanks again, MS! Your own products and policies are your worst enemy.
Maybe. Definitely sounds like something Spamtec would rap about. Any rappers who can work LexisNexis, Linux, HPAV, spamming, ROKSO and even SCO into their rhymes can't be all bad. This story made me think of them immediately, and I kind of hoped they weren't getting busted.
I'd argue that it is indeed trendy but not a fad. Lots more people are catching on to anonymous (relatively) posting methods, so clearly there is a trend. But if this were a fad it would fade quickly. Instead it has quietly been building steam since the early days ofthe internet. When I discovered the internet around 1993 (so what if there were people already there, I discovered it and claimed it for my people), I thought usenet and anonymous remailers were probably the best things since pie and sliced bread, respectively. And I was certainly not early to that party, so this sort of thing has been around for some time now.
I understand perfectly well that Geek Squad doesn't do much, AND doesn't do anything very well, even the simple stuff. But that doesn't mean they don't fix anything, and lots of people need a cheap repair service that they at least think they can count on.
And, as I said earlier, it is all to easy and not very interesting for real computer professionals to slam Geek Squad. I've known a couple of very talented, fairly successful chefs as well, and I don't remember them ever wasting time talking about how McDonald's cook don't really cook or provide quality food to their customers. McDonald's is crap, but it satisfies a lot of people who don't know better or just don't care, and it's convenient. That's what a thread like this was bound to turn into.
You hit the nail on the head. That's exactly the point of Geek Squad and similar repair/upgrade services. It's all too easy for slashdotters to pile on Geek Squad, since they don't do much that's very difficult (and I doubt they pay enough to to attract top-notch techs anyway, so they have to send things out a lot, duh). But the typical home or business computer user is NOT a geek.
Yes, there are lots of geeks of varying degrees, but not everyone wants to know how to par tition a hard drive, install device drivers or diagnose problems that turn out to be merely software related. My mom wants Word and Photoshop to work, and that's it. She doesn't care about overclocking for 7% better performance in a game, maximizing her server's reliability or learning Linux inside and out. She still INSISTS of using Netscape, for Pete's sake. Looke at how many people who can afford broadband still use dialup. People like them are plenty willing to pay for someone else to worry about their problems, or else wait patiently for me to have a chance to check it out. Or they buy Macs.
I'm not sure why so many tech-savy folks can't understand that they are special (although they often like to point out that they are), or that not everyone wants to be a computer expert. I like driving my neat little car around town, but I'll be damned if I'm going to freeze my butt off if it needs brakes in the winter. Bodywork? Hah! Simple and labor-intensive, but not thanks. I'm not mechanically inept, but I have a job and like to have dirty work done for me sometimes. And how is this news or "stuff that matters?"
I use Google for searches and for unimportant email, but I know the company is not my friend, as they would like me to believe. But I won't use other Google software that has to much access to my computer without necessarily telling me everything it is doing. And I won't run IE except in very rare circumstance when Firefox or Opera can't load a page I really ned to get to. I suspect Google will sell-out a lot of security or usability for ad revenue.
I remember seeing that because the sight of dolphins leaping up onto the muddy banks to grab stranded fish was really something! A localized group of dolphins innovating to maximize the resources available to them seems to indicate that they are pretty smart. I won't say that their intelligence rivals that of humans, since we clearly grasp abstract concepts pretty well and can create some pretty neat tools. But they have never started any major wars, nor have they developed weapons that can destroy most all life on Earth (to my knowledge anyway - they might be more clever and sneaky than we give them credit for), as we have. They also speak Dolphin much better than most Americans ever well. (Caveat: most Americans never speak nothin other than English, and few speak that language well. And I ain't never never met no dolphins that talk da English better than me, yo!)
(Note: I use "we" to denote myself and fellow humans. Please take this into account if you are a dolphin or of some other species that I do not think very highly of.) But yeah, dolphins got nothin on me!!!
Old farts who judge me: "In my day, we didn't act like you, and we didn't blah blah blah."
Me: "STFU, you old fart."
The last time I moved, I inquires about naked DSL with SBC. They informed me that it was "impossible" for them to provide DSL service with standard phone service. When I asked them whther "impossible" really meant that it was not possible ot do with DSL technology, or that SBC chose not to offer it. They claimed it could not be done, even though I knew that was BS and it was offerred by other companies in other areas. I have zero use for a landline, and a contract-based service would not make sense for me anyway, so I am paying an arm and a leg for Adelphia's cable service. This stinks.
Skimping a little bit on things like the case is what allows some of us to build nice systems. If the budget is a concern in a build, the case is the most obvious thing to go cheap on. Afterall, it is basically just a box for your stuff. I wouldn't just use anything that is available, but there are some decent options for $50 or less. Instead of buying $150 cases with finely-crafted smooth edges I prefer to get a $50 case (and maybe some extra RAM or a quieter PS) and simply BE CAREFUL for the hour or two it takes to build it. I cut myself once, upgrading a computer a long time ago. ONCE. ;)
{insert_name}
First of all, I agree with you that laws and prohibitions do not necessarily equate with right and wrong or good and bad. And as for Erowid, it contains a lot of information, some of which is useful and hard to find elsewhere. However, I'd be careful in citing Erowid as a source, since a lot of its info. is not cited and amounts to "trip reports", and users saying things like "I combined some wicked pot, 30mg of AMT, a bottle of DXM syrup , 5 mushroom caps, a trippy toad and some lotus flowers, and I tripped balls. Great visuals from this research."
I'd also like to point out that this thread was about prescription stimulants used for concentration, and some of the common ones are not that different, pharmacologically speaking, from the meth that everyone appears to think is so evil. I'm not trolling, just trying to add some perspective to the discussion. And, I'll stick to coffee, Vault Zero (my Diet Surge) and yerba mate, thanks.
In the interest of effeciency, I skimmed out the parts of the original post you don't really need to read. Now you don't even need to RTFA (though I'm sure you would have otherwise).
I knew Ken Urada. Ken Urada was a friend of mine. That robot was no Ken Urada. So not only do all robots need to be designed to be safer around humans, many other industrial devices and machines need to be safer as well. For instance, i've heard of people being killed by automobiles, cranes, hammers, cliffs, water and even food (both due to allergies and asphyxiation).
Asimov's three laws of robotics should be extended to cover everything that a human might come in contact with while going about his daily business. Why should we have to be careful and use basic precautions, as if these things are all very predictable or something? I propose a universal law that makes it illegal for ANY inanimate object or device to harm a human.
Well, for starters, the US is a different place than Europe (I've seen a globe, and they are definitely different), the people are very different in some ways, and we have the FCC, which is a monument to American bureaucracy. RTFA and you'll see that the DAB spectrum is not available in the US, though I don't know whether that's because it is already in use for something else or because the FCC is saving it for something useless.
Just for kicks, I think maybe instead of the US following European standards or vice versa, we should all try to agree on a universal standard. Maybe decide before implementing the technology, unlike VHS v. Betamax, Blueray v. HD-DVD, driving on the right side v. driving on the wrong side... Then everyone would get to play and have have fun rather than having someone dominate.
Whatever. I'm not a fanboy, so I assumed that all the manufacturers who were advertizing the FX-62 chips were actually selling them, but those systems aren't shipping for a couple of weeks yet. That, coupled with all the benchmarks I've seen (lots of tests) made me think they were already available. Oh well. I'm not pimping AMD, and I really don't care. My next CPU will be the one that offers the best overall performance for my budget - which has meant 3 AMDs and 2 Intels in the last few years.
These statements may indeed be true (I really have no idea, so I'll assume they are), but the FX-62 is tried and true, and well known to perform very well in most real-world arenas, whereas the Conroe chips are new and not well tested yet. So the Intel fanboys at least need to wait a bit before proclaiming victory, and the AMD fanboys should not be so smug yet. Let's let logic and independent tests dictate this time - wait until the Conroe chips are available in a variety of systems. Duh. I hate this same debate EVERY time a new family of processors comes out. My AMD 486DX-40 kicked some Intel ass, $ for $, back in 1993, but so what? Intel had some nice chips then, too. I'm sure any new CPU from AMD or Intel will be good, since neither of them can afford to push true crap right now. Jeeeeeez...
...but do the Diet Coke + Mentos fountains run linux (yet)? I'm guessing at least one of the guys in the video does (or, at least they both use Macs).
Now, if a commercial version of these robots could somehow brew beer on its own, I'd be first in line to buy!