Yes... that's why I bought OEM and had 2100 hours of uptime. After my reboot I downloaded a binary blob from nvidia to update my graphics drivers, and rebooted again (because obviously there were loads of updates during that uptime). I can forsee another 2100 hours of uptime now.
My system isn't special. I abuse it all the time. It just works. I play games.
Quit being so defensive. That's part of the problem.
I live in a rural area now - the closest shop is about 10 miles away... that's not rural for the US, but it is for England. It's our prerogative to take the piss out of the box dwelling bourgeoisie talentless city drones just as much as it is theirs to take the piss out of mud trunching dimwitted uncultured dimwits.
Neither is necessarily accurate. Provincialism is natural, and fine IMO.
How does recreating something being creative and using your imagination?
Recreating a fake spaceship which was not all there from a movie on a lower budget is not creative? What the hell else is it?
I hope you're not implying that the only creative things that people can do are literally spontaneous, and not built upon thousands of years of culture and knowledge.
Get over your non-inspired creative ethos quickly, please - it doesn't help.
One thing that would help, but I have never seen, would be a way to cancel a button push (either the call button, or a floor button inside the elevator). Buttons are often pushed in error, resulting in wasted time.
And also you've got to take into account the fun kids could have cancelling everyone's requests, and sending them back to the ground floor:)
The trouble with this theory is that if everyone did leave the required stopping distance, you'd get 1/2 (at most) the number of cars on the road. Traffic congestion would become impossible.
I drive a truck in the UK - they're all limited to 56mph. So when you overtake another truck doing 1mph less than you, you don't leave the stopping distances. If you do leave the distances, you get loads of people undertaking you because you're miles behind the other truck. Also, good luck judging the truck you've overtaken's stopping distances when pulling back in, and if you don't do it quickly enough plenty of cars will undertake you.
Much safer not leaving stopping distances IMO - To be honest the notion is a little silly - how is the truck in front of me going to stop immediately? If they can't, why am I leaving a full distance to stop?
Definitely - I don't mind low quality video most of the time. Sorry, but people who require high definition are looking at the picture, and not the content.
Skipping, pausing, buffering, out of sync sound, and flakey sound are the things that bother me. They're nothing to do with video quality as most people understand it.
The last time I built my own and tried to install Windows I got this. It was a bug that didn't allow Vista 64 to install on my motherboard chipset with more than 2gb of RAM. You try to fault diagnose that - windows install bluescreens and reboots. You can't see the bluescreen message, because you can't get windows to halt on errors because it's not installed yet. It just reboots.
Fortunately, I had a win2k installation on the same machine, and I managed to find other people who had had the same problem, and then got to the hotfix. However, obviously you could not install the hotfix without running Vista, which would not install. Fortunately I had 2*2gb sticks (rather than any*4), so I took one out and it installed fine. Applied the hotfix, stuck the other stick back in, and it worked.
I very much doubt that Dell or HP offer systems that have top end graphics cards at prices you could build yourself, buying retail parts. That's not extremely specific, that's what a whole host of people use their PC's for, that's gaming. People buy these cards. Dell and HP don't put them in their machines, because they're expensive.
If someone wants to build or buy a gaming rig, you're either spending top dollar or building your own. There's no real in between.
Firstly, even now processor speed (I'm not talking just Ghz) matters way more than the number of cores in gaming - there are still basically no games that utilise more than 2 cores effectively. Many "gaming" rigs feature slower multicore processors.
Secondly, there are lots of cheap (or at least cheaper) motherboards out there which are as quick as the expensive ones. By the same manufacturers. Sold rigs always use high end ones you don't need.
Thirdly, expensive high speed RAM that a lot of "gaming" systems use actually has worse latency than cheap slower RAM. In many cases, the latency is more important than than the outright speed.
Fourthly, many of these gaming systems throw in old SSDs, or no SSD at all. Not all SSDs are the same, and these systems generally put crap ones in.. I've never used them, but the next system I buy they will be first. Currently I run 2 striped SATA drives, which are quick enough for me most of the time.
I've just installed Skyrim on my ancient (comparatively) system, and it thinks I should play on high graphical settings, 1920*1200, 8AA, 8AF, most things on. This is a relatively inexpensive about 5 year old system, the only upgrade being a new graphics card a year or two ago (460gtx*).
*This is, however, about the quickest graphics card you should put in my motherboard, which is only PCI-E 1. Quicker cards than this will be limited by the older interface. My next upgrade is going to be an entirely new system.
To be honest, it's not worth anyone's time putting together a budget PC for themselves, in purely financial terms - they'll end up with a budget PC, and not have saved much, if any money. Budget PCs are almost disposable now. 1 month of 20 a day cigarettes costs about as much as a budget PC where I live (UK).
Building your own is more an ethos, rather than a saving money strategy. I've built my own for years, and saved a little money doing it. I've also, and more importantly IMO (getting back to the original point of the thread) avoided crapware. I hate it with a passion, and won't have it on my PC.
My system is not the best... but until yesterday (power cut) I had 2100 hours uptime. After that 2100 hours, and the obviously poor shutdown... I booted to workable desktop within 1 minute without a hitch. This is with Vista.
This is why I make my own PCs, and get the operating systems separately. The headaches, time, and irritation I avoid is worth more to me than the initial time it takes to build it.... That and the fact I like building a new PC, too.
[...] “terrorist activity” means any activity which is unlawful under the laws of the place where it is committed (or which, if it had been committed in the United States, would be unlawful under the laws of the United States or any State) and which involves any of the following: [...]
The use of any [...] explosive, firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device [...], with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.
Now, I'm not an expert, but that pretty much covers most uses of arms in the history of humanity. If in one place they're defining terrorism as deliberate politically motivated violence against civilians, and in another they're defining terrorist activity as the unlawful use of a weapon with intent to cause substantial damage to property, I think they've got to get their definitions straight.
Bear in mind, here, that the above definition of terrorist activity would include someone wrecking their ex's car with a baseball bat. I'm guessing it's a little broad.
I posted this comment to this discussion a while back. I haven't been arrested yet, which goes to show how stupid the law is, since the guy who originally posted it in the UK was.
What part of common sense is rounded corners in a design patent on a phone?
Which exact bit of the rounded corners design patent do you think is common sense?
Because me, being a little slow and all, thinks that that's the only fucking way to make a phone or tablet, and there shouldn't be a design patent on it.
Now, if there were another way to make a phone or tablet, Apple _might_ have a case. Not to mention it had been done before.
If someone is convinced to buy a truck with a hemy engine, they get what they deserve. You're kind of proof of the point - you don't know the engine in the truck that you were using as an analogy. There are no adverts for trucks with hemy engines.
There was Dirac, a long time ago, that they were planning to use.... but that died a death. Not sure how willing they would be to fund another project of the same kind.
I think you're confusing patent-unencumbered codecs with license deals. The private media don't care how content is delivered, as long as they can control it. The people who control it aren't all that big players, as long as it works.
Local government is notoriously backward and inefficient in the UK. It's one of these institutions which is stuck in the 70's in terms of product decisions in some places. They've updated some practices but not others.
National government has gone the other way. IT projects are almost uniformly outsourced, on a massive scale, and cost billions because of private sector profiteering and inefficiency. The NHS database has cost about 15 billion so far for something no one really wanted. That's a few hundred pound every man, woman, and child of the UK pays each, for that project. No, I'm not bitter.
ps. I'm also a massive fan of local government and the nhs, and am very glad they are there - I just hate the things they get so obviously wrong.
What? Seriously, the 6th biggest economy in the the world is advocating open standards, and you say expect lawsuits to shut them down......
The point about open standards is that they're... open. They don't infringe upon anyone. That's kind of the point. Open standards don't need companies to give up their proprietary information. Or did you miss that point.... ie. the whole idea behind open standards.
I don't think there are many Windows refugees currently. 2000 was ok, XP was a slight improvement. Vista was a disaster* because of being installed on systems not able to cope with it. 7 was basically a success, as far as I can see. We'll wait and see with 8.
I run Windows for games. If steam managed to switch it's catalogue to Linux now, I'd switch now. It's mostly a company problem now, and I hope Steam win, because It'll result in free operating systems in my opinion. Of course, that will be at the cost of DRM everywhere, but I've learnt to accept the less bad DRM as a part of life - I refuse to buy anything with crappy DRM.
That being said - my current uptime is 1826 hours with Vista.
I use my PC as my gaming device. Lots of people do, too. If you want to subsidise large corporations by using other devices as your gaming device, that's your prerogative. Don't try to talk about PC gaming while not actually talking about and playing playing PC games.
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Yes... that's why I bought OEM and had 2100 hours of uptime. After my reboot I downloaded a binary blob from nvidia to update my graphics drivers, and rebooted again (because obviously there were loads of updates during that uptime). I can forsee another 2100 hours of uptime now.
My system isn't special. I abuse it all the time. It just works. I play games.
I do, because I don't turn off my PC. I'm a home user.
The absolute definition of a dinosaur, when we now consider most of them to be birds, seems to be pointless - They used to be reptiles, or others.
What I'm guessing this find is an early reptile, it's happened before... I may be way off base though.
Quit being so defensive. That's part of the problem.
I live in a rural area now - the closest shop is about 10 miles away... that's not rural for the US, but it is for England. It's our prerogative to take the piss out of the box dwelling bourgeoisie talentless city drones just as much as it is theirs to take the piss out of mud trunching dimwitted uncultured dimwits.
Neither is necessarily accurate. Provincialism is natural, and fine IMO.
How does recreating something being creative and using your imagination?
Recreating a fake spaceship which was not all there from a movie on a lower budget is not creative? What the hell else is it?
I hope you're not implying that the only creative things that people can do are literally spontaneous, and not built upon thousands of years of culture and knowledge.
Get over your non-inspired creative ethos quickly, please - it doesn't help.
One thing that would help, but I have never seen, would be a way to cancel a button push (either the call button, or a floor button inside the elevator). Buttons are often pushed in error, resulting in wasted time.
And also you've got to take into account the fun kids could have cancelling everyone's requests, and sending them back to the ground floor :)
The trouble with this theory is that if everyone did leave the required stopping distance, you'd get 1/2 (at most) the number of cars on the road. Traffic congestion would become impossible.
I drive a truck in the UK - they're all limited to 56mph. So when you overtake another truck doing 1mph less than you, you don't leave the stopping distances. If you do leave the distances, you get loads of people undertaking you because you're miles behind the other truck. Also, good luck judging the truck you've overtaken's stopping distances when pulling back in, and if you don't do it quickly enough plenty of cars will undertake you.
Much safer not leaving stopping distances IMO - To be honest the notion is a little silly - how is the truck in front of me going to stop immediately? If they can't, why am I leaving a full distance to stop?
Definitely - I don't mind low quality video most of the time. Sorry, but people who require high definition are looking at the picture, and not the content.
Skipping, pausing, buffering, out of sync sound, and flakey sound are the things that bother me. They're nothing to do with video quality as most people understand it.
The last time I built my own and tried to install Windows I got this. It was a bug that didn't allow Vista 64 to install on my motherboard chipset with more than 2gb of RAM. You try to fault diagnose that - windows install bluescreens and reboots. You can't see the bluescreen message, because you can't get windows to halt on errors because it's not installed yet. It just reboots.
Fortunately, I had a win2k installation on the same machine, and I managed to find other people who had had the same problem, and then got to the hotfix. However, obviously you could not install the hotfix without running Vista, which would not install. Fortunately I had 2*2gb sticks (rather than any*4), so I took one out and it installed fine. Applied the hotfix, stuck the other stick back in, and it worked.
When did you last install Windows?
Do price it out...
I very much doubt that Dell or HP offer systems that have top end graphics cards at prices you could build yourself, buying retail parts. That's not extremely specific, that's what a whole host of people use their PC's for, that's gaming. People buy these cards. Dell and HP don't put them in their machines, because they're expensive.
If someone wants to build or buy a gaming rig, you're either spending top dollar or building your own. There's no real in between.
Firstly, even now processor speed (I'm not talking just Ghz) matters way more than the number of cores in gaming - there are still basically no games that utilise more than 2 cores effectively. Many "gaming" rigs feature slower multicore processors.
Secondly, there are lots of cheap (or at least cheaper) motherboards out there which are as quick as the expensive ones. By the same manufacturers. Sold rigs always use high end ones you don't need.
Thirdly, expensive high speed RAM that a lot of "gaming" systems use actually has worse latency than cheap slower RAM. In many cases, the latency is more important than than the outright speed.
Fourthly, many of these gaming systems throw in old SSDs, or no SSD at all. Not all SSDs are the same, and these systems generally put crap ones in.. I've never used them, but the next system I buy they will be first. Currently I run 2 striped SATA drives, which are quick enough for me most of the time.
I've just installed Skyrim on my ancient (comparatively) system, and it thinks I should play on high graphical settings, 1920*1200, 8AA, 8AF, most things on. This is a relatively inexpensive about 5 year old system, the only upgrade being a new graphics card a year or two ago (460gtx*).
*This is, however, about the quickest graphics card you should put in my motherboard, which is only PCI-E 1. Quicker cards than this will be limited by the older interface. My next upgrade is going to be an entirely new system.
To be honest, it's not worth anyone's time putting together a budget PC for themselves, in purely financial terms - they'll end up with a budget PC, and not have saved much, if any money. Budget PCs are almost disposable now. 1 month of 20 a day cigarettes costs about as much as a budget PC where I live (UK).
Building your own is more an ethos, rather than a saving money strategy. I've built my own for years, and saved a little money doing it. I've also, and more importantly IMO (getting back to the original point of the thread) avoided crapware. I hate it with a passion, and won't have it on my PC.
My system is not the best... but until yesterday (power cut) I had 2100 hours uptime. After that 2100 hours, and the obviously poor shutdown... I booted to workable desktop within 1 minute without a hitch. This is with Vista.
This is why I make my own PCs, and get the operating systems separately. The headaches, time, and irritation I avoid is worth more to me than the initial time it takes to build it.... That and the fact I like building a new PC, too.
The above law has this :
[...] “terrorist activity” means any activity which is unlawful under the laws of the place where it is committed (or which, if it had been committed in the United States, would be unlawful under the laws of the United States or any State) and which involves any of the following: [...]
The use of any [...] explosive, firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device [...], with intent to endanger, directly or indirectly, the safety of one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property.
Now, I'm not an expert, but that pretty much covers most uses of arms in the history of humanity. If in one place they're defining terrorism as deliberate politically motivated violence against civilians, and in another they're defining terrorist activity as the unlawful use of a weapon with intent to cause substantial damage to property, I think they've got to get their definitions straight.
Bear in mind, here, that the above definition of terrorist activity would include someone wrecking their ex's car with a baseball bat. I'm guessing it's a little broad.
Retina support is more than just higher resolution images. It's about the text rendering, too.
Ok... I may be missing something here. What exactly is the advantage of having very high resolution text?
I'm serious... I don't understand why anyone could consider that a feature they'd use, apart from in some specialised jobs.
I'm all for big resolution displays for a multitude of reasons, but reading text has never been one of them for me.
I posted this comment to this discussion a while back. I haven't been arrested yet, which goes to show how stupid the law is, since the guy who originally posted it in the UK was.
Common sense? Seriously?
What part of common sense is rounded corners in a design patent on a phone?
Which exact bit of the rounded corners design patent do you think is common sense?
Because me, being a little slow and all, thinks that that's the only fucking way to make a phone or tablet, and there shouldn't be a design patent on it.
Now, if there were another way to make a phone or tablet, Apple _might_ have a case. Not to mention it had been done before.
Gah....
Really? I thought they'd got rid of those a while back.
Note that lots of things have changed recently - Easyjet carried more UK passengers than BA last year, for example.
Most old diesels can run submerged fine, all you need is an air intake. Lots of old land rovers have things like these.
Yeah, those good old hemy engines. Wait...
If someone is convinced to buy a truck with a hemy engine, they get what they deserve. You're kind of proof of the point - you don't know the engine in the truck that you were using as an analogy. There are no adverts for trucks with hemy engines.
There was Dirac, a long time ago, that they were planning to use.... but that died a death. Not sure how willing they would be to fund another project of the same kind.
I think you're confusing patent-unencumbered codecs with license deals. The private media don't care how content is delivered, as long as they can control it. The people who control it aren't all that big players, as long as it works.
Local government is notoriously backward and inefficient in the UK. It's one of these institutions which is stuck in the 70's in terms of product decisions in some places. They've updated some practices but not others.
National government has gone the other way. IT projects are almost uniformly outsourced, on a massive scale, and cost billions because of private sector profiteering and inefficiency. The NHS database has cost about 15 billion so far for something no one really wanted. That's a few hundred pound every man, woman, and child of the UK pays each, for that project. No, I'm not bitter.
ps. I'm also a massive fan of local government and the nhs, and am very glad they are there - I just hate the things they get so obviously wrong.
What? Seriously, the 6th biggest economy in the the world is advocating open standards, and you say expect lawsuits to shut them down......
The point about open standards is that they're... open. They don't infringe upon anyone. That's kind of the point. Open standards don't need companies to give up their proprietary information. Or did you miss that point.... ie. the whole idea behind open standards.
Good luck with the lawsuits...
It's an official IUCN category, so it seems you've lost the fight.
Anyway, people have been referring to things being extinct in certain areas for ages. This is a list of animals extinct from the UK.
Are you seriously that stupid?
I know you're probably a shill... but I'll reply anyway.
We're not talking about thinkpads looking the same. We're talking about the design patent for a rectangle with rounded corners being absurd.
That's obnoxious, horrible, litigation from apple.
That is all.
I don't think there are many Windows refugees currently. 2000 was ok, XP was a slight improvement. Vista was a disaster* because of being installed on systems not able to cope with it. 7 was basically a success, as far as I can see. We'll wait and see with 8.
I run Windows for games. If steam managed to switch it's catalogue to Linux now, I'd switch now. It's mostly a company problem now, and I hope Steam win, because It'll result in free operating systems in my opinion. Of course, that will be at the cost of DRM everywhere, but I've learnt to accept the less bad DRM as a part of life - I refuse to buy anything with crappy DRM.
That being said - my current uptime is 1826 hours with Vista.
I don't expect my gaming machine to be open,
I use my PC as my gaming device. Lots of people do, too. If you want to subsidise large corporations by using other devices as your gaming device, that's your prerogative. Don't try to talk about PC gaming while not actually talking about and playing playing PC games.