If you're talking about busmastering, then most IDE controllers have done this for years now. Ever since the era of multithreaded/multitasking operating systems, the fact that SCSI offloads a little queue of disk commands is of very limited value as well (given that the CPU can queue them and feed them out with about 1% of 1% of 1% of its processor power).
Isn't this particular article about workstations though? Workstations seldom have more than 2 drives, if even that, and many new motherboards now offer the normal IDE controllers (2 drops each with 2 connections), and a RAID connector (2 drops each with 2 connectors), for instance the Asus A7V333.
LCDs have a fixed number of "pixels", and the only way to change resolution is for the pixel driver to interpolate or some other trick : It can do this perfectly for for direct divisors of its resolution (for instance a 1600x1200 display could do 800x600 perfectly, simply using 4 display pixels for every 1 incoming pixel).
Probably to discourage people social engineering (i.e. It's a well known fact that the people who people usually suspect as shoplifters are seldom the actual shoplifters, but instead upper middle class, often elderly, people are the prime thieves): i.e. wearing a suit to get waved past just in case. Now most retailers have an automatic search policy, and to avoid employees ignoring it out of embarrassment, some have a automatic direction system detailing the steps you must perform once the alarms gone off (i.e. A recorded voice saying "Please return to the till to have your merchandise checked").
There is a very, very small minority of the population that has any idea where to find pirate software, or who "release groups" are, and even if they did most people would cringe at the idea of dealing with software from unknown people that you know has been tampered with (why not stick a little trojan in there while circumventing the copy protection)?
Copy protection is, and has always been, for the common man with normal motivations, to ensure that convenience doesn't encourage him to criminal means. I use "the club" on my car even though I know that a "professional" car thief could circumvent it in seconds, but for Jimmy the 16 year old car jacker it works superbly. The same idea holds true for software protection.
Nope, but close : The Hudson's Bay Company. Those places are virtual wastelands during non-prime hours, and everytime I've gone to look for a tie or a dress shirt, I've had one of the "not wearing a coat in the middle of winter" kind of floor walker ghosting my every move. I fully appreciate and understand that they want to limit thefts, thereby decreasing costs for all of us, but using undertrained, underpaid, poorly managed people to harrass all employees is just plain wrong.
On a similar theme, I find it funny the way employees treat you when their anti-theft devices go off (I've seen them go off dozens of times, but have never seen a criminal caught by them) : They treat the customer like a thief, and even when they've confirmed that it's something that they errantly didn't demagnetize or whatever, there is no apology, but rather a treatment like "you're lucky". Again that's putting the shoe on the wrong foot: If your crappy anti-theft systems embarrass Joe Average, then you'd better KISS THEIR ASS.
I'd say that it isn't that you aren't treated like a thief, but you just aren't congnizant that you are: I guarantee you that you've had floor walkers follow you around, and security cameras zooming in on you.
My personal issue is with stores with an over abundance of staff with nothing to do. Here in Canada we have a national store with locations all over, and they're vast stores with about 5 people in the entire store at most times except for weekends. Virtually every time I've gone in there on a non-busy period, I've got a personal floor-walker following me around, lamely trying to pretend that they just happen to be interested in the same stuff that I am. Do I act like a thief? Nope. Have I ever shoplifted? Absolutely not. Do they have too many employees with nothing better to do than to discourage sales, paying attention to the odd customer while ignoring the employees stuff their pockets with merchandise? Absolutely.
Not sure how sarcastic you're being, but in retail the biggest cause of merchandise lost IS the employees (remember that the next time some employee is wrongfully acting like you're a thief : The more likely scenario is that they are).
My ass, if they had "no use or utility" they would'nt be being made. If *you* don't have a use for them, then don't buy them, but dont' tell me that I can't have a certain kind of vehicles because you don't think I need it, that's just commie as hell.
In you're rush to condemnation, you apparently missed the point where I defended people with vehicles that they actually NEEDED (such as the soccer mom with a minivan), however about 99% of the SUVs on the roads have ZERO utility or necessity, and for that one time a year that you go to the cabin you could just rent something. Oh yeah: And for the artificial illusion of safety, at least until everyone else as a vehicle just as big. A arms race on the highways, if you will.
No, they're probably paying more attention to the much more realistic threat of their kids getting KIA because the pussy little gas sipping car they'd be driving doesn't have enough steel reinforced structure to save them in an accident. Guess what: SUV's do a much better job of protecting their occupants.
Tragedy of the commons. The only reason assholes in SUVs survive is because they killed the guy in the other car. Every truck/SUV owner whose involved in an accident where the occupant of the other car died because of gross weight imbalance should be charged with murder for knowingly driving on the highways in a death machine. Oh, you got a problem with that Mr.SUV man? On, well sorry when my 50 tonne M1A1 that I'm driving on the highway "only to save the poor little children!" crushes your tinbox SUV with all your kids inside, but gosh darnit I sure am safe! BTW: In single vehicle accidents SUVs are no safer whatsoever than "pussy little gas sipping cars" [that usually are far better equipped at actually AVOIDING an accident in the first place] : See dozens of Explorer rollovers as great proof of this. The ONLY place where large vehicles are safer is when they collide with smaller vehicles, and that's the tragedy of the commons playing out.
It is irrelevant what they pay on electricity in total : It's still about $30 per year, and it's to do something that technology is catching up to quicker than the results are piling in (it's like the hypothetical of space travel : Would it make sense to send a manned mission to a distant star if you knew that 10 years into the 100 year mission that you'd have technology that flew twice as fast?), and if you're okay with that then fine, but it is fooling yourself to claim that it's "free" or using something that's "wasted". This is also the reason why large institutions have every right to get pissy when an employee uses all their PCs as unwanted space heaters running SETI all night.
Actually CPUs basically "sleep" during idle time (in any semi modern OS), which comprises about 99% of the time in normal web browsing/document creating use, dramatically decreasing power consumption and therefore heat dissipation. In essence: SETI@Home (and other similar projects), in aggregate, is resulting in incredible amounts of power being consumed and heat being generated (which may then require more power to cool).
i-VTEC is nice, but it's interesting how much Honda has marketing that, and now Toyota with VVTi : The Nissan Altima has infinitely variable valve timing, as do many other makes and models of cars, but there isn't a catchy badge on the trunk telling you this, nor do they go out of their way to market it. The funny things about engines is that the engine has just a couple of things we should ever care about : Weight, power curve, fuel efficiency, noise, and reliability. Whether it's quad overhead cams or 20 valves per cylinder, or it uses triple-quad-timing belts made of monkey butter, should be irrelevant to people, and that's what I mentioned about many Japanese companies brilliantly advertising their technological prowess to the point that people actually care about VVTi or other esoteric things that are just a small part of an engine's make-up, yet other companies have been just as advanced or moreso.
That's called barratry and it's actually illegal: If you threaten groundless legal action to blackmail or intimidate, you are abusing the legal system in an unsavoury way and I believe in most Western nations you can face criminal or civil punishment.
Scarcity alone does not make anything great, though this varies by person I suppose. I'm not the type of person that collects rare antiques or fawns over a particular species of animal just because they are rare (I find all animals and lifeforms absolutely sunningly fascinating).
Regarding the ooh ahhh factor of cars, I will agree that perhaps it's true, but it's not indicative of the quality or features of the car itself, but rather the preconditioning that you had before hand (the good old placebo effect): convince people that something is the greatest, and when they're in the presence of it they'll convince themselves that it's true.
I'm not a bigot when it comes to cars: My favourite car right now (regardless of prestige or price) is the Nissan Altima 3.5SE. I love that car. I also love the BMW 320i and am seriously considering one. I love that Honda has incredible fuel-economy (as a general feature across their whole line. That company should get accolades from governments for that, alongside their excellent environmental record), but I find that Honda as a brand is "oversold": I was in a Civic and it was one of the worst performing, noisy cars I'd ever been in: Oh, I should mention that it was sold as an "Acura" (here in Canada the Civic EX, I believe, is rebadged as an Acura EL, and Acura fans coo and caw over the remarkable Acura engineering in their Civic^H^H^H^H^HAcura 1.7 EL).
Most every review of the NSX, or "production super car showdowns", directly pits the NSX against the Corvette: Just because one has a higher price tag doesn't make it a better car (though it could indicate a naivety of its purchasers). The Corvette Z06 does 0-60 in about 4.0 seconds (faster than the NSX), and (apparently, though I've driven neither) has better handling. It also has technology throughout that rivals the best technology in any car in the world.
I guess my whole point in this is this (I'm not a Corvette lover by any measure of the imagination, and I don't think I'd ever buy a two seater for simple practicality reasons): Most people don't realize it, but they've been had -> Many auto companies did something very intelligent, and that's to sell their engineering as the brand (note that this is purely marketing, not reality): Pictures of CAD drawings of pistons, commercials full of talk about aluminum and VTEC systems, etc. At the same time most "American" companies were still just trying to sell the "end result" as a product : i.e. "Buy our fun new Dodge Neon!". The end result is a marketplace that has an unproven, unquantified belief that something like a Corvette is "low tech" or low performance while something like an NSX is high tech/high performance (as you mentioned comparing the SL500 to a Pinto...why? The Corvette spanks the NSX, from what I've seen, in almost every review), yet in actuality there is nothing superior in the NSX that I'm aware of, except for a fantastic marketing campaign.
That's like saying that the reading on the radar gun isn't indicative of the real speed of the car, but rather it's the engine, the suspension, the aerodynamics...
Lateral Gs are the result of a good design: If you have excellent suspension that keeps good weigth distribution, a wide, not top heavy design, large boots (I love hearing that term in F1 commentary:-)), and an excellent weight distribution, then you'll obtain the maximum lateral Gs before the rubber detaches from the ground and a spin is induced. Hence, lateral Gs are the absolute end result of the cornering ability of a car, just as measured speed is the result of the performance of a car.
He did mention that the Corvette was the first to hit a lateral 1.0G (and lateral Gs are the pure definition of corning: It's the rate of direction change that creates lateral Gs). The current Corvette, while rather ugly in my opinion (it looks like an NSX somewhat to me, and the NSX looks like something straight out of the late 80s), is apparently an incredible car. Anyone who simply discounts the Corvette based on some "American" attribute proves themselves to be nothing more than a pretentious bigot, as just about every sports car show down has been choosing the Corvette as the #1 for several years now.
Huh? Firstly, even "choke point" (such as used at most corporate configurations) firewalls are of little use: When Jimmy opens up port 80 incoming so that he can demonstrate a website to his friends, and his PC gets infected by code red, or any of dozens of other trojans, it then has unrestricted access to every other PC inside the firewall. Secondly, what do you mean by engaging in activity that is "THAT high risk"? Are you being serious? Being connected is high risk, and I see hundreds, or rather THOUSANDS of trojans and port scans hitting me daily. And additionally most people with ADSL or cable modems connect to their modem via a NIC, so I'm not sure what your point regarding the NIC means.
And in any case what makes this not a "real" firewall? I haven't even looked at the product, but if your simplistic idea of a firewall is that it has to have an impressive box, then you're woefully mistaken: The job of a firewall is a very simple one, and in most "hardware" solutions is just a couple of chips to fulfill the task.
I'll agree for sure that a lot of people can get a tremendous amount more done at home, however the common perception when it comes to telecommuting is an unfortunate "me too" syndrome where people start talking about how they'll get this or that done, etc: Their first priority is home life, and the second priority is the job. That is a very flawed method of entering into telecommuting, and many in management (who believe that the more "put out" you are somehow the more beneficial that is to them) see that sort of thought process and immediately discount telecommuting.
True telecommuting is doing exactly what you'd do in the office, but at home. As such, just as new parents can't bring the baby in and drop the crib beside their desk, most employers aren't keen on the idea of you doing that at home either, and when it's used as a reason for telecommuting, it's a primary factor why many organizations try to avoid the situation altogether by simply refusing to have any telecommuting whatsoever.
Indeed, even for whole systems it's very hard to find comparative reviews these days (i.e. a Dell XYZ versus a Gateway ZYX), and I would gather that the reason is that there are so many options out there, and the models change so frequently (or are badged in a country specific way, which we see a lot in Canada), that it's impossible to stay current (not to mentioning very difficult to get them all together: Pretty much limited to the very large publishers like ZDNet). Instead, the review sites target whatever new singular piece of hardware is out: A nice granular little review for a timely piece of hardware such as the new Athlon XP 2.2 or the WD 8MB cache harddrive -> It's easy to review something so contextual as you know what the readers are looking for.
Well the Kyro2 with its zbuffer culling is optimal for those dense urban environments, however it's features like ejecting brass that I have to disable, and the framerate takes a hit when 7 guys are all in the same room spamming each other with MP5s. There are additionally some areas of some maps where the framerate is only limited by my com_maxfps, but on others in certain areas I see my frame rate counter drop to low teens (i.e. certain areas of Rommel or specific areas of Swim). In other words I can go to a certain area of certain maps and puff my chest about a high FPS, but in real gameplay I do wish for more power freqently (and this is playing at what really is a poor 1024x768 : The same resolution games have been played at for about 4 years. Start cranking that up and even the best cards start begging for mercy).
Honestly, my good old TNT2 can handle anything currently out on the market. The difference in prettiness when upgrading from that to a card with onboard this and build-in that is very, very, very negligible.
Then why are you bothering reading the article or offering your wisdom on this? You are clearly not the target marget, despite your apparently sadness at being excluded.
"So I won't get to pretend I'm a cool little uber gamer. I don't care," but instead you're a ("I'd rather take the money I save and buy some Guinness.") uber alcoholic?
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If you're talking about busmastering, then most IDE controllers have done this for years now. Ever since the era of multithreaded/multitasking operating systems, the fact that SCSI offloads a little queue of disk commands is of very limited value as well (given that the CPU can queue them and feed them out with about 1% of 1% of 1% of its processor power).
Isn't this particular article about workstations though? Workstations seldom have more than 2 drives, if even that, and many new motherboards now offer the normal IDE controllers (2 drops each with 2 connections), and a RAID connector (2 drops each with 2 connectors), for instance the Asus A7V333.
LCDs have a fixed number of "pixels", and the only way to change resolution is for the pixel driver to interpolate or some other trick : It can do this perfectly for for direct divisors of its resolution (for instance a 1600x1200 display could do 800x600 perfectly, simply using 4 display pixels for every 1 incoming pixel).
Probably to discourage people social engineering (i.e. It's a well known fact that the people who people usually suspect as shoplifters are seldom the actual shoplifters, but instead upper middle class, often elderly, people are the prime thieves): i.e. wearing a suit to get waved past just in case. Now most retailers have an automatic search policy, and to avoid employees ignoring it out of embarrassment, some have a automatic direction system detailing the steps you must perform once the alarms gone off (i.e. A recorded voice saying "Please return to the till to have your merchandise checked").
Doh! Just wanted to clarify that I don't drive around with the club on to discourage car jackings. :-) "You can only turn left! Go take the next car!"
There is a very, very small minority of the population that has any idea where to find pirate software, or who "release groups" are, and even if they did most people would cringe at the idea of dealing with software from unknown people that you know has been tampered with (why not stick a little trojan in there while circumventing the copy protection)?
Copy protection is, and has always been, for the common man with normal motivations, to ensure that convenience doesn't encourage him to criminal means. I use "the club" on my car even though I know that a "professional" car thief could circumvent it in seconds, but for Jimmy the 16 year old car jacker it works superbly. The same idea holds true for software protection.
Nope, but close : The Hudson's Bay Company. Those places are virtual wastelands during non-prime hours, and everytime I've gone to look for a tie or a dress shirt, I've had one of the "not wearing a coat in the middle of winter" kind of floor walker ghosting my every move. I fully appreciate and understand that they want to limit thefts, thereby decreasing costs for all of us, but using undertrained, underpaid, poorly managed people to harrass all employees is just plain wrong.
On a similar theme, I find it funny the way employees treat you when their anti-theft devices go off (I've seen them go off dozens of times, but have never seen a criminal caught by them) : They treat the customer like a thief, and even when they've confirmed that it's something that they errantly didn't demagnetize or whatever, there is no apology, but rather a treatment like "you're lucky". Again that's putting the shoe on the wrong foot: If your crappy anti-theft systems embarrass Joe Average, then you'd better KISS THEIR ASS.
I'd say that it isn't that you aren't treated like a thief, but you just aren't congnizant that you are: I guarantee you that you've had floor walkers follow you around, and security cameras zooming in on you.
My personal issue is with stores with an over abundance of staff with nothing to do. Here in Canada we have a national store with locations all over, and they're vast stores with about 5 people in the entire store at most times except for weekends. Virtually every time I've gone in there on a non-busy period, I've got a personal floor-walker following me around, lamely trying to pretend that they just happen to be interested in the same stuff that I am. Do I act like a thief? Nope. Have I ever shoplifted? Absolutely not. Do they have too many employees with nothing better to do than to discourage sales, paying attention to the odd customer while ignoring the employees stuff their pockets with merchandise? Absolutely.
Not sure how sarcastic you're being, but in retail the biggest cause of merchandise lost IS the employees (remember that the next time some employee is wrongfully acting like you're a thief : The more likely scenario is that they are).
My ass, if they had "no use or utility" they would'nt be being made. If *you* don't have a use for them, then don't buy them, but dont' tell me that I can't have a certain kind of vehicles because you don't think I need it, that's just commie as hell.
In you're rush to condemnation, you apparently missed the point where I defended people with vehicles that they actually NEEDED (such as the soccer mom with a minivan), however about 99% of the SUVs on the roads have ZERO utility or necessity, and for that one time a year that you go to the cabin you could just rent something. Oh yeah: And for the artificial illusion of safety, at least until everyone else as a vehicle just as big. A arms race on the highways, if you will.
No, they're probably paying more attention to the much more realistic threat of their kids getting KIA because the pussy little gas sipping car they'd be driving doesn't have enough steel reinforced structure to save them in an accident. Guess what: SUV's do a much better job of protecting their occupants.
Tragedy of the commons. The only reason assholes in SUVs survive is because they killed the guy in the other car. Every truck/SUV owner whose involved in an accident where the occupant of the other car died because of gross weight imbalance should be charged with murder for knowingly driving on the highways in a death machine. Oh, you got a problem with that Mr.SUV man? On, well sorry when my 50 tonne M1A1 that I'm driving on the highway "only to save the poor little children!" crushes your tinbox SUV with all your kids inside, but gosh darnit I sure am safe! BTW: In single vehicle accidents SUVs are no safer whatsoever than "pussy little gas sipping cars" [that usually are far better equipped at actually AVOIDING an accident in the first place] : See dozens of Explorer rollovers as great proof of this. The ONLY place where large vehicles are safer is when they collide with smaller vehicles, and that's the tragedy of the commons playing out.
It is irrelevant what they pay on electricity in total : It's still about $30 per year, and it's to do something that technology is catching up to quicker than the results are piling in (it's like the hypothetical of space travel : Would it make sense to send a manned mission to a distant star if you knew that 10 years into the 100 year mission that you'd have technology that flew twice as fast?), and if you're okay with that then fine, but it is fooling yourself to claim that it's "free" or using something that's "wasted". This is also the reason why large institutions have every right to get pissy when an employee uses all their PCs as unwanted space heaters running SETI all night.
Actually CPUs basically "sleep" during idle time (in any semi modern OS), which comprises about 99% of the time in normal web browsing/document creating use, dramatically decreasing power consumption and therefore heat dissipation. In essence: SETI@Home (and other similar projects), in aggregate, is resulting in incredible amounts of power being consumed and heat being generated (which may then require more power to cool).
i-VTEC is nice, but it's interesting how much Honda has marketing that, and now Toyota with VVTi : The Nissan Altima has infinitely variable valve timing, as do many other makes and models of cars, but there isn't a catchy badge on the trunk telling you this, nor do they go out of their way to market it. The funny things about engines is that the engine has just a couple of things we should ever care about : Weight, power curve, fuel efficiency, noise, and reliability. Whether it's quad overhead cams or 20 valves per cylinder, or it uses triple-quad-timing belts made of monkey butter, should be irrelevant to people, and that's what I mentioned about many Japanese companies brilliantly advertising their technological prowess to the point that people actually care about VVTi or other esoteric things that are just a small part of an engine's make-up, yet other companies have been just as advanced or moreso.
That's called barratry and it's actually illegal: If you threaten groundless legal action to blackmail or intimidate, you are abusing the legal system in an unsavoury way and I believe in most Western nations you can face criminal or civil punishment.
Scarcity alone does not make anything great, though this varies by person I suppose. I'm not the type of person that collects rare antiques or fawns over a particular species of animal just because they are rare (I find all animals and lifeforms absolutely sunningly fascinating).
Regarding the ooh ahhh factor of cars, I will agree that perhaps it's true, but it's not indicative of the quality or features of the car itself, but rather the preconditioning that you had before hand (the good old placebo effect): convince people that something is the greatest, and when they're in the presence of it they'll convince themselves that it's true.
I'm not a bigot when it comes to cars: My favourite car right now (regardless of prestige or price) is the Nissan Altima 3.5SE. I love that car. I also love the BMW 320i and am seriously considering one. I love that Honda has incredible fuel-economy (as a general feature across their whole line. That company should get accolades from governments for that, alongside their excellent environmental record), but I find that Honda as a brand is "oversold": I was in a Civic and it was one of the worst performing, noisy cars I'd ever been in: Oh, I should mention that it was sold as an "Acura" (here in Canada the Civic EX, I believe, is rebadged as an Acura EL, and Acura fans coo and caw over the remarkable Acura engineering in their Civic^H^H^H^H^HAcura 1.7 EL).
Most every review of the NSX, or "production super car showdowns", directly pits the NSX against the Corvette: Just because one has a higher price tag doesn't make it a better car (though it could indicate a naivety of its purchasers). The Corvette Z06 does 0-60 in about 4.0 seconds (faster than the NSX), and (apparently, though I've driven neither) has better handling. It also has technology throughout that rivals the best technology in any car in the world.
I guess my whole point in this is this (I'm not a Corvette lover by any measure of the imagination, and I don't think I'd ever buy a two seater for simple practicality reasons): Most people don't realize it, but they've been had -> Many auto companies did something very intelligent, and that's to sell their engineering as the brand (note that this is purely marketing, not reality): Pictures of CAD drawings of pistons, commercials full of talk about aluminum and VTEC systems, etc. At the same time most "American" companies were still just trying to sell the "end result" as a product : i.e. "Buy our fun new Dodge Neon!". The end result is a marketplace that has an unproven, unquantified belief that something like a Corvette is "low tech" or low performance while something like an NSX is high tech/high performance (as you mentioned comparing the SL500 to a Pinto...why? The Corvette spanks the NSX, from what I've seen, in almost every review), yet in actuality there is nothing superior in the NSX that I'm aware of, except for a fantastic marketing campaign.
That's like saying that the reading on the radar gun isn't indicative of the real speed of the car, but rather it's the engine, the suspension, the aerodynamics...
:-)), and an excellent weight distribution, then you'll obtain the maximum lateral Gs before the rubber detaches from the ground and a spin is induced. Hence, lateral Gs are the absolute end result of the cornering ability of a car, just as measured speed is the result of the performance of a car.
Lateral Gs are the result of a good design: If you have excellent suspension that keeps good weigth distribution, a wide, not top heavy design, large boots (I love hearing that term in F1 commentary
He did mention that the Corvette was the first to hit a lateral 1.0G (and lateral Gs are the pure definition of corning: It's the rate of direction change that creates lateral Gs). The current Corvette, while rather ugly in my opinion (it looks like an NSX somewhat to me, and the NSX looks like something straight out of the late 80s), is apparently an incredible car. Anyone who simply discounts the Corvette based on some "American" attribute proves themselves to be nothing more than a pretentious bigot, as just about every sports car show down has been choosing the Corvette as the #1 for several years now.
It isn't aimed at home users at all (though every home user should be protected by a firewall).
To quote the article "The product is aimed at enterprises, to provide centralised control over security."
Huh? Firstly, even "choke point" (such as used at most corporate configurations) firewalls are of little use: When Jimmy opens up port 80 incoming so that he can demonstrate a website to his friends, and his PC gets infected by code red, or any of dozens of other trojans, it then has unrestricted access to every other PC inside the firewall. Secondly, what do you mean by engaging in activity that is "THAT high risk"? Are you being serious? Being connected is high risk, and I see hundreds, or rather THOUSANDS of trojans and port scans hitting me daily. And additionally most people with ADSL or cable modems connect to their modem via a NIC, so I'm not sure what your point regarding the NIC means.
And in any case what makes this not a "real" firewall? I haven't even looked at the product, but if your simplistic idea of a firewall is that it has to have an impressive box, then you're woefully mistaken: The job of a firewall is a very simple one, and in most "hardware" solutions is just a couple of chips to fulfill the task.
I'll agree for sure that a lot of people can get a tremendous amount more done at home, however the common perception when it comes to telecommuting is an unfortunate "me too" syndrome where people start talking about how they'll get this or that done, etc: Their first priority is home life, and the second priority is the job. That is a very flawed method of entering into telecommuting, and many in management (who believe that the more "put out" you are somehow the more beneficial that is to them) see that sort of thought process and immediately discount telecommuting.
True telecommuting is doing exactly what you'd do in the office, but at home. As such, just as new parents can't bring the baby in and drop the crib beside their desk, most employers aren't keen on the idea of you doing that at home either, and when it's used as a reason for telecommuting, it's a primary factor why many organizations try to avoid the situation altogether by simply refusing to have any telecommuting whatsoever.
Indeed, even for whole systems it's very hard to find comparative reviews these days (i.e. a Dell XYZ versus a Gateway ZYX), and I would gather that the reason is that there are so many options out there, and the models change so frequently (or are badged in a country specific way, which we see a lot in Canada), that it's impossible to stay current (not to mentioning very difficult to get them all together: Pretty much limited to the very large publishers like ZDNet). Instead, the review sites target whatever new singular piece of hardware is out: A nice granular little review for a timely piece of hardware such as the new Athlon XP 2.2 or the WD 8MB cache harddrive -> It's easy to review something so contextual as you know what the readers are looking for.
Well the Kyro2 with its zbuffer culling is optimal for those dense urban environments, however it's features like ejecting brass that I have to disable, and the framerate takes a hit when 7 guys are all in the same room spamming each other with MP5s. There are additionally some areas of some maps where the framerate is only limited by my com_maxfps, but on others in certain areas I see my frame rate counter drop to low teens (i.e. certain areas of Rommel or specific areas of Swim). In other words I can go to a certain area of certain maps and puff my chest about a high FPS, but in real gameplay I do wish for more power freqently (and this is playing at what really is a poor 1024x768 : The same resolution games have been played at for about 4 years. Start cranking that up and even the best cards start begging for mercy).
Honestly, my good old TNT2 can handle anything currently out on the market. The difference in prettiness when upgrading from that to a card with onboard this and build-in that is very, very, very negligible.
Then why are you bothering reading the article or offering your wisdom on this? You are clearly not the target marget, despite your apparently sadness at being excluded.
"So I won't get to pretend I'm a cool little uber gamer. I don't care," but instead you're a ("I'd rather take the money I save and buy some Guinness.") uber alcoholic?