They're EXTREMELY restrictive about their machines and as a result, I can vouch that these machines don't have any crapware on them.
Why are you buying retail machines? If you're buying real business-oriented machines you either have a Ghost image they get when you deploy them, or a sysprep'd ghost image already on the drive from the factory. Either way, there's no software on there that you didn't spec yourself.
Yeah, they're kinda nutty. I agree that China overreacts to them, but these aren't hippies wanting to sit around, smoke pot, and "be cool". Rather, I'm just waiting for Falun Gong's version of Tom Cruise to start jumping on Oprah's couch.
Lenovo has two "lines" they sell in the US. "Lenovo" and "Thinkpad". Both are Lenovo, but the Thinkpad has some brand value, so they keep the name. Both have been made by Lenovo for quite a while, and I don't think the T-/R-/X- series model names are gonna go anywhere anytime soon.
Not buying a laptop from a country doesn't hurt the people whose actions you object to, but rather the people who make the laptop (who, by and large, have a way better standard of living working in assembly plants than they did in rural, dirt-poor farms).
Often this is a reference to people taking out home equity loans, basically loans that are based on the difference between the amount one owes in principle on their mortgage and an assessment of their house's current value. As peoples' houses rapidly increased in value, they could take out more and more in loans. Now that the value is going back down (in most places), they end up owing more than their house is worth. A lot of people got in trouble here, too, as they used the home equity loans to pay off credit card debts (sometimes an ok idea, since they often were paying 15%+ on the cc debt, but probably much less on the home equity loans), but then proceeded to run the CC's up again afterwards. Now they're stuck with big credit card bills, and shrinking housing prices.
There's also people who have been refinancing their mortgage into ARMs, IOs, etc., since the lower monthly payment (for the first few years, at least) "puts more money in their pocket". So, they spend all that money they save, and then the ARM resets or the IO term expires, and they're at the least back where they started, or now potentially paying more in interest than they were with their previous fixed rate loan.
IANAE, but, essentially what was going on was banks/mortagage lenders decided that in order to make more money, they would use what were previously rather exotic lending methods to get people to buy houses. These lending methods included the ARMs. They also lowered the bar significantly for how credit-worthy a borrower had to be to get a loan, in addition to allowing a huge increase in "stated income" mortgage loans, along with somewhat unholy alliances between lenders, appraisers, and home builders. As a result, house values got to insane valuations, resulting in huge loans. A number (not insigificant in count) were ARMs, which began resetting July-August of this year, resulting in foreclosures. As the markets hit a point where people were no longer rapidly shuffling through houses year after year (a saturation point where prices were far too high and supply was still very large), coupled with the ARM resets, resulted in a huge slowdown of home purchases.
Now, the added bit here is where the loans were going. The banks/lenders would take those loans and repackage them as investment vehicles. Traditionally, banks used to service loans internally, but many now sold them to other organizations and the loans ended up in investment vehicles such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which as far as I can understand is a group of various asset-backed debts that are split up in a mystic fashion to allow people to gain investment profits from them.
So, what happens when people a) stop buying new houses, and/or b) stop paying their mortgages because they can't afford the payment after the ARM adjusts or the taxes on their now insanely overvalued (in a historical sense) house? The money current moving through to those investment vehicles begins to wane, and since people aren't buying new houses, the banks/lenders have no loans to sell to other organizations, and since they aren't servicing the loans themselves, they don't even get the money from the performing mortgages.
Since these CDOs (and other such investment vehicles) were bought in large numbers by huge numbers of investment houses and other such entities, its suddenly apparent that the true value of these investments is highly uncertain. As a result, their net worths and fund valuations are in doubt, and anything they base against that becomes iffy. This makes banks and markets nervous, which (in a way I admit I don't entirely understand) makes them reluctant to lend money to eachother, and mid-August we get some overnight bank lending interest rates going nutty, and the central banks of the EU, US, and Japan pushing money into the system to keep it from locking up (this is part of what they're talking about with the "credit crunch" or the "liquidity problem", the other part is down below about borrowers).
Now, since banks seem to overreact in cases like this, credit/lending for home purchases gets tight-sphinctered in a matter of days, alongside elimination of those exotic 2/28, 5/25/- whatever ARM products (a good thing by and large). Unfortunately, at least for a while, the credit score needed for traditional loans increases even more,andpeople with "good" credit histories have a harder time getting prime rate conventional (under ~415k$) home loans.
Valuations drop on houses (which eventually can lead to less tax revenue), resulting in people owing far more on their loans than their house perhaps will ever be worth again (or at the least it will take ~10 years to recover at historical rates), causing some owners who are significant upside down to seriously consider walking away (the current bailing-water trend seems to be a surge in home rentals).
As a result, an already slow housing market gets slower, and real estate agents begin needing new jobs.
And home builders suddenly have a lot less to build, which leads to layoffs (an undetermined number of subcontractors, though in some areas likely there's a sigificant # of migrant workers, so they won't be reflected in unemployment increases) and held inventory, plus lawsuits if they decide to cut their losses and not build what will surely be money-losing new developments.
I probably missed some stuff and got some details wrong, but that's the general gist of it.
I imagine someone(s) much smarter than I could come up with a standardized method whereby the data transmitted could be rendered at the other end in a way chosen by the program used to view and interact with it.
No one is endorsing the idea of letting people go who are verifiably dangerous. Talk about a strawman arguement. The issue at hand is whether or not people who *aren't* the military (in this case, our court system which is supposedly the envy of the world, what with its freedoms and protections and what not), get to decide if someone is a threat to the US. And yes, I endorse civilian justices doing that, because the military is subservient to the civilian system of government, not the other way around.
Are there risks to "being the better man"? Of course. But it's worth it to promote a society and system of government wherein we treat even those suspected of working against our interests with civility until we can prove they are actually a verifiable threat or actual actor in some attempt/event (I recall famous saying about security vs. liberty, perhaps you should google it). If you can prove they're guilty of murder, or conspiracy to murder (and, I'd argue, that'd have to be something far beyond "I hate all you Americans"... I hate a lot of Americans, too, but I haven't done anything to kill them -- prosecuting someone for just thinking or talking about is is akin to Thought Crime), then string'em up, sure. But, like any good American should, I don't trust the military to do it properly while in secret and unsupervised.
Well, seeing how Apple is a religion, not a practical group of computing users, the followers of said religion seem to need an upgrade whenever The Jobs decrees it is so.
The argument often is (and rightfully so, I'd wager), is that even if they don't respect Geneva Conventions, we should strive to be the "better man" (country, people, society, whatever) and conform to them anyway. Otherwise the difference between "us and them" (something echoed many a time during the Cold War) is increasingly marginalized and significantly hurts our case (ala squandering the goodwill most of the world had for us post-cold-war and post-9/11).
You are right in that regard, there are not an equal amount of winners and losers in the stock market. I blame early morning slashdot posting without proper amounts of sleep last night.:)
I replied to the (rather nasty) addressing of my ESSP/ESOP in the other subthread. In summary, sure they were prevented from selling when it was obvious that the house of cards was falling, but there was plenty of opportunity to avoid the pain of having a single investment source long, long before then.
They could have sold long, long before Enron was visibly in trouble. They put all their eggs in one basket, relying on a single source of investment for their retirement. They were on cruise-control, as I said, assuming that because they company they were working for appeared to be doing well, that they were set for life.
My TV and my computer are insured because I know the possibility of them being stolen is real. That's the difference between myself and people who have all their investment funds in one pot.
Wait wait wait. So, you're saying that because these people (who, if they held stock, had plenty of time to sell it and put their gains elsewhere than the company they worked for) were sheep who trusted the company they worked for to provide for them, like the corporation was some sort of kind benefactor looking out for their best interests, we should feel bad for them?
Yeah, sure, the stock market is a zero sum game, but comeon, every ESPP has "sell" dates where people can ditch the stock. They weren't forced to keep it unless they foolishly had their entire 401k in their company's stock, which is a bad idea in the first place.
I know, hindsight is 20/20, but really, just because the rank and file were on auto-pilot for most of their lives, doesn't mean we should regard them all as blameless victims.
I was not saying that there's definitely one in development or near release. I was saying that if anyone was in a position to do one, it'd be MS, rather than Sony or Nintendo.
Not really what I meant. Nintendo hasn't been building out games with online content on them, whereas MS and Sony (to a lesser extent) are heavily utilizing online content and features in many games.
So, if anyone's gonna do a console MMO other than FFXI, odds are it'll be Microsoft.
And my point about Nintendo's unwillingness to make original content stands. Even if they did do an MMO, I'm not sure that Mario Party MMORPG is going to take the gaming community by storm (sure hold interest for this guy, the sequel to Legend of Zelda was enough reuse for me).
Slashdot Mirror
Why are you buying retail machines? If you're buying real business-oriented machines you either have a Ghost image they get when you deploy them, or a sysprep'd ghost image already on the drive from the factory. Either way, there's no software on there that you didn't spec yourself.
The D400's are decent, but not awesome. The D610's are larger and slightly more robust than the 400's, but not much.
However, the D620's are actually pretty nice machines, I gotta say. Much improved over the C/D400-610 lines.
Yeah, they're kinda nutty. I agree that China overreacts to them, but these aren't hippies wanting to sit around, smoke pot, and "be cool". Rather, I'm just waiting for Falun Gong's version of Tom Cruise to start jumping on Oprah's couch.
That, my anonymous friend, depends greatly on who you ask.
You can cite a blog APA style, so it can indeed be a source.
It might not be a GOOD source, but it can be a source.
Lenovo has two "lines" they sell in the US. "Lenovo" and "Thinkpad". Both are Lenovo, but the Thinkpad has some brand value, so they keep the name. Both have been made by Lenovo for quite a while, and I don't think the T-/R-/X- series model names are gonna go anywhere anytime soon.
Ever heard any Japanese rap? There's an atrocity, and I don't even really listen to rap.
They need those petrodollars to buy oil. Seems unlikely.
++ this
Not buying a laptop from a country doesn't hurt the people whose actions you object to, but rather the people who make the laptop (who, by and large, have a way better standard of living working in assembly plants than they did in rural, dirt-poor farms).
Hmmm. Is this in any way related to the "B" in German that represents "ss"?
Oh, about the "extra money" bit.
Often this is a reference to people taking out home equity loans, basically loans that are based on the difference between the amount one owes in principle on their mortgage and an assessment of their house's current value. As peoples' houses rapidly increased in value, they could take out more and more in loans. Now that the value is going back down (in most places), they end up owing more than their house is worth. A lot of people got in trouble here, too, as they used the home equity loans to pay off credit card debts (sometimes an ok idea, since they often were paying 15%+ on the cc debt, but probably much less on the home equity loans), but then proceeded to run the CC's up again afterwards. Now they're stuck with big credit card bills, and shrinking housing prices.
There's also people who have been refinancing their mortgage into ARMs, IOs, etc., since the lower monthly payment (for the first few years, at least) "puts more money in their pocket". So, they spend all that money they save, and then the ARM resets or the IO term expires, and they're at the least back where they started, or now potentially paying more in interest than they were with their previous fixed rate loan.
IANAE, but, essentially what was going on was banks/mortagage lenders decided that in order to make more money, they would use what were previously rather exotic lending methods to get people to buy houses. These lending methods included the ARMs. They also lowered the bar significantly for how credit-worthy a borrower had to be to get a loan, in addition to allowing a huge increase in "stated income" mortgage loans, along with somewhat unholy alliances between lenders, appraisers, and home builders. As a result, house values got to insane valuations, resulting in huge loans. A number (not insigificant in count) were ARMs, which began resetting July-August of this year, resulting in foreclosures. As the markets hit a point where people were no longer rapidly shuffling through houses year after year (a saturation point where prices were far too high and supply was still very large), coupled with the ARM resets, resulted in a huge slowdown of home purchases.
Now, the added bit here is where the loans were going. The banks/lenders would take those loans and repackage them as investment vehicles. Traditionally, banks used to service loans internally, but many now sold them to other organizations and the loans ended up in investment vehicles such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which as far as I can understand is a group of various asset-backed debts that are split up in a mystic fashion to allow people to gain investment profits from them.
So, what happens when people a) stop buying new houses, and/or b) stop paying their mortgages because they can't afford the payment after the ARM adjusts or the taxes on their now insanely overvalued (in a historical sense) house? The money current moving through to those investment vehicles begins to wane, and since people aren't buying new houses, the banks/lenders have no loans to sell to other organizations, and since they aren't servicing the loans themselves, they don't even get the money from the performing mortgages.
Since these CDOs (and other such investment vehicles) were bought in large numbers by huge numbers of investment houses and other such entities, its suddenly apparent that the true value of these investments is highly uncertain. As a result, their net worths and fund valuations are in doubt, and anything they base against that becomes iffy. This makes banks and markets nervous, which (in a way I admit I don't entirely understand) makes them reluctant to lend money to eachother, and mid-August we get some overnight bank lending interest rates going nutty, and the central banks of the EU, US, and Japan pushing money into the system to keep it from locking up (this is part of what they're talking about with the "credit crunch" or the "liquidity problem", the other part is down below about borrowers).
Now, since banks seem to overreact in cases like this, credit/lending for home purchases gets tight-sphinctered in a matter of days, alongside elimination of those exotic 2/28, 5/25/- whatever ARM products (a good thing by and large). Unfortunately, at least for a while, the credit score needed for traditional loans increases even more,andpeople with "good" credit histories have a harder time getting prime rate conventional (under ~415k$) home loans.
Valuations drop on houses (which eventually can lead to less tax revenue), resulting in people owing far more on their loans than their house perhaps will ever be worth again (or at the least it will take ~10 years to recover at historical rates), causing some owners who are significant upside down to seriously consider walking away (the current bailing-water trend seems to be a surge in home rentals).
As a result, an already slow housing market gets slower, and real estate agents begin needing new jobs.
And home builders suddenly have a lot less to build, which leads to layoffs (an undetermined number of subcontractors, though in some areas likely there's a sigificant # of migrant workers, so they won't be reflected in unemployment increases) and held inventory, plus lawsuits if they decide to cut their losses and not build what will surely be money-losing new developments.
I probably missed some stuff and got some details wrong, but that's the general gist of it.
You have a UID of 1010737 and you're "hardly new here"? I guess it's possible.
Don't most major MMO's have "RP" servers where in-character names and dialog are enforced?
I imagine someone(s) much smarter than I could come up with a standardized method whereby the data transmitted could be rendered at the other end in a way chosen by the program used to view and interact with it.
Oh wait, that's XML, nevermind.
WoW is pretty much DAoC with better quest lines and poorer PVP.
What a silly reply.
No one is endorsing the idea of letting people go who are verifiably dangerous. Talk about a strawman arguement. The issue at hand is whether or not people who *aren't* the military (in this case, our court system which is supposedly the envy of the world, what with its freedoms and protections and what not), get to decide if someone is a threat to the US. And yes, I endorse civilian justices doing that, because the military is subservient to the civilian system of government, not the other way around.
Are there risks to "being the better man"? Of course. But it's worth it to promote a society and system of government wherein we treat even those suspected of working against our interests with civility until we can prove they are actually a verifiable threat or actual actor in some attempt/event (I recall famous saying about security vs. liberty, perhaps you should google it). If you can prove they're guilty of murder, or conspiracy to murder (and, I'd argue, that'd have to be something far beyond "I hate all you Americans"... I hate a lot of Americans, too, but I haven't done anything to kill them -- prosecuting someone for just thinking or talking about is is akin to Thought Crime), then string'em up, sure. But, like any good American should, I don't trust the military to do it properly while in secret and unsupervised.
Well, seeing how Apple is a religion, not a practical group of computing users, the followers of said religion seem to need an upgrade whenever The Jobs decrees it is so.
Amazingly, many people look at and even click on ads.
While the advanced user / geekset seem to abhor them, this doesn't seem to be a problem for a significant amount of surfing population.
The argument often is (and rightfully so, I'd wager), is that even if they don't respect Geneva Conventions, we should strive to be the "better man" (country, people, society, whatever) and conform to them anyway. Otherwise the difference between "us and them" (something echoed many a time during the Cold War) is increasingly marginalized and significantly hurts our case (ala squandering the goodwill most of the world had for us post-cold-war and post-9/11).
You are right in that regard, there are not an equal amount of winners and losers in the stock market. I blame early morning slashdot posting without proper amounts of sleep last night. :)
I replied to the (rather nasty) addressing of my ESSP/ESOP in the other subthread. In summary, sure they were prevented from selling when it was obvious that the house of cards was falling, but there was plenty of opportunity to avoid the pain of having a single investment source long, long before then.
They could have sold long, long before Enron was visibly in trouble. They put all their eggs in one basket, relying on a single source of investment for their retirement. They were on cruise-control, as I said, assuming that because they company they were working for appeared to be doing well, that they were set for life.
My TV and my computer are insured because I know the possibility of them being stolen is real. That's the difference between myself and people who have all their investment funds in one pot.
Wait wait wait. So, you're saying that because these people (who, if they held stock, had plenty of time to sell it and put their gains elsewhere than the company they worked for) were sheep who trusted the company they worked for to provide for them, like the corporation was some sort of kind benefactor looking out for their best interests, we should feel bad for them?
Yeah, sure, the stock market is a zero sum game, but comeon, every ESPP has "sell" dates where people can ditch the stock. They weren't forced to keep it unless they foolishly had their entire 401k in their company's stock, which is a bad idea in the first place.
I know, hindsight is 20/20, but really, just because the rank and file were on auto-pilot for most of their lives, doesn't mean we should regard them all as blameless victims.
I was not saying that there's definitely one in development or near release. I was saying that if anyone was in a position to do one, it'd be MS, rather than Sony or Nintendo.
Not really what I meant. Nintendo hasn't been building out games with online content on them, whereas MS and Sony (to a lesser extent) are heavily utilizing online content and features in many games.
So, if anyone's gonna do a console MMO other than FFXI, odds are it'll be Microsoft.
And my point about Nintendo's unwillingness to make original content stands. Even if they did do an MMO, I'm not sure that Mario Party MMORPG is going to take the gaming community by storm (sure hold interest for this guy, the sequel to Legend of Zelda was enough reuse for me).