No apparently you simply didn't understand the context I was applying, which was to the whole thread. Which I guess explains it. No, we don't taunt them. The situation varies depending on the customer. It usually boils down to a "We can't help you without charging you. We can fix it for less than the manufacturer will rape you for. We can get you prices for both." (again, and to clarify, a summary of how the conversation will go... the actual wording isn't so extreme). Then we get the manufacturer's price, our price, as well as replacement price and offer it to the customer.
In the event the customer bitches still, well then, on occassion, things may go the route above or a similar route. The wording though is usually a lot more subdued. "I'm sorry, I cant help you. We advised you that this type of damage would not be covered under the manufacturer warranty when you purchased the machine." (which implies the rest of my statement above without the need for saying it - unless the customer then asks "Well what about your warranty?" - at which time, in a less direct way, we explain they needed to purchase our warranty at the time of purchase - not after such damage - as was also explained to them at the time of purchase).
Are you seriously that much of an asshole to your customers?
"You are screwed. If you had bought our overpriced warranty then you would be saved, but you didn't, so now you lose! Ha ha!"
What a great way to lose a customer. The insanity where everybody tries to sell you stupid and overpriced extended warranties is already bad enough. But to literally taunt a customer with broken hardware because he failed to purchase the extended warranty is completely ridiculous. Do you really want these people to take their business elsewhere?
What reality do you live in? The MANUFACTURERS make their warranties. The STORES have no say in that. The stores often offer supplemental warranties that cover deficiencies in the manufacturer's warranties since we cannot force a manufacturer to honor something that they clearly state they do not cover.
Keep in mind, all of this gets explained at the time of sale. The re-explanation doesnt come until the customer keeps bitching that we should cover something we or the manufacturer's warranty (or both) clearly told them was not covered at the time of sale.
So... am I the asshole? Or are you for (I hope) pretending to be too stupid to understand what I said?
"Do you really want these people to take their business elsewhere?"
For what? For them getting obnoxious? Or did you just decide to skip the posts I was responding to? Go take a valium, come back and re-read these threads.
Not necessarily. We used to have customers come in for issues all the time that were not covered under manufacturer's warranty. Such as, (laptops being a case in point), "I cracked the screen"...
"Sorry, can't help you. It's not covered. Had you bought our extended warranty, 2 screen replacements would have been covered, but the manufacturer warranty does not cover it. Worse, currently you have NO manufacturer warranty (with about half the manufacturers) for anything else, until you pay to get the screen fixed."
That's another attribute that the customers choose to ignore when a sales rep is trying to sell them an extended warranty. Many manufacturers will not cover any warranty issue if a non-warranty physical issue is present until that issue is fixed (it's in their accidental/abuse/misuse clauses).
With printers, there are similar situations as the example I outline above for laptops.
True, but the sales rep is not at fault for a printer company making shitty products. And as upset as a customer may be, there becomes a point where it needs to stop or be redirected at those responsible for the shitty product (the printer manufacturer).... and if it doesn't, a good manager will redirect the person to the manufacturer as s/he is throwing the customer out of the store (I've done that, and would continue to... as a manager, I never subscribed to the "Customer is always right" nonsense when the customer is being abusive to my employees. I dont pay my employees to be abusive. The flip side is I did pay them to be truthful about the product (ie: "If you want something that will last for your business, don't get that _________")).
Being "always right" isn't carte blanche excuse for verbally abusing other human beings who are not responsible for the customer's problems.
What I think will be interesting is when the rest of Best Buy's "less paid but do more work" employees get fed up with the fact that there are staff on hand who make $5-12/hr more for simply being able to lie.
Think about it.... be a member of the "Geek Squad" and actually be the person stuck dealing with Vista and other issues, and actually be responsible for fixing problems, and you get paid less. Run around all day convincing people that Vista is great, do nothing to alleviate customer issues (other than point them to the less paid "Geek Squad" members) and get paid significantly more.
I think this is a wonderful way at raising employee moral. I wonder how much money Best Buy is getting handed from Microsoft to make this happen - or if they (Best Buy) are just too brain dead to realize it's going to piss off the rest of their less paid/do more (or real) work staff - or if this is a "requirement" that Microsoft stipulated for some future or continuing concession for carrying certain products.
Do you have any clue how many threads your OS is successfully managing right now?
MY OS? Yes I do... somewhere near 2,000 - but it isn't Windows. Your paltry "over 300" is nothing. But then again, OS/2 WSeB still has the best thread scheduler of any PC based OS. System overhead? Virtually none (and none noticeable performance wise)... unless you are talking about pre Pentium 90 computers with very little (under 40MB) RAM.
I'm at work, my 4 year old 1.6ghz Latitude w/ 1GB ram is running over 300. FireFox, with 3 tabs, opened for just 20 minutes or so, is responsible for 20 of those.
So, lets go back to the actual discussion in relationship to this statement... FF using 3 tabs has 20 threads in use... IE with 10 tabs has 171 threads in use... If the threads scale linearly based off number of tabs (which they don't), FF would be using 70 threads... 100 less than IE.
Why is IE using all those tabs? Good question...
And the point of this, as any software developer could tell you, is that all threads are not created equal.
Any software developer who knows anything about the Internet would tell you that 171 threads is excessive for a browser with 10 tabs open - it's not like you can request 15 things (assuming approx 20 for the core browser) at once on most sites... most limit concurrent requests to 2-4 at a time... what does that mean? Simple... 10+ threads in action (not idle) trying (and failing) to do something until the other threads finish. Why? Because when you exceed a web server's concurrent connection limit, it doesn't send a "hold on until the other connections are done" message - it instead holds the client resource open and then sends when the other requests are done - with no notification that it's waiting... thus the thread is never cycled to idle/sleep. Ooops! Of course, I guess a lot of them could be rendering... but that would be equally retarded since it would be a waste of resources as page rendering is dependent on each page element... meaning a lot of threads being put idle by each other or talking back and forth to modify what they were rendering based off layout changes forced by other page sections.
So, (in IE8) what is the purpose and benefit of so many threads again? And (in IE8) how can that many not poorly impact performance?
There is a little overhead in spawning a new thread, but very little to maintain it.
Yes... spawning or maintaining a thread may not take much overhead. Efficiently using those threads on the other hand does... this was a similar problem to the one Linux had in the pthreads days... that Windows is still horrendous at (in comparison to Linux - and definitely in comparison to OS/2). But then again, your definition of "lots of threads" is far different than mine. I've got no problems with having a couple thousand (or more) active threads (and wouldnt notice a performance difference between 100 or a thousand)... Windows would choke and die - no matter how well written the app spawning those threads was, simply because Windows does not handle or schedule them very well at that quantity.
You wrote an awful lot there, but you didn't say much of anything.
You wrote an awful lot that was mostly wrong or inapplicable.:-)
#2 All you would have to do is go online and do a few Google searches to confirm my version. You'll clearly see when his entire attitude changed towards the community, as well as him being snubbed by IBM at the same time. You'll clearly see that before, during and after that phase, he still had the support of the OS/2 community. You'll clearly see that the OS/2 community's attitude changed towards him after he started insinuating that they were fanatics (and worse). Especially check the newsgroups.
#3Most (though yes, not all) OS/2 users are far from fanatics (in comparison to the users of other OS's), as both the newsgroups (which span almost 2 decades of posts) and the forums at places on OS/2World will prove, where numerous users, both past and present, run OS/2 along side Windows, or numerous users have stopped to help Windows users (who inappropriately posted their questions in an OS/2 group) have stopped to help them or at least point them in the correct direction.
You can believe what you will, Brad can tell his story the way he wants... but until the newsgroups and OS/2 forums get purged, the evidence of how fictional his portrayal is, still exists.
Think about it (that is, if you are unwilling to actually research something I was actively around as an OS/2 and Stardock user and in monthly contact with Serenity or IBM).... just think about (if he felt the way he claims and that is his reasoning) how odd it is that he made a bid to assume the role that Serenity now holds, how odd it is that all his words about the community and OS/2 were all so wonderful, how he planned an entire business strategy on forging ahead with a new OS/2 client which would have been released by him - and then did an entire 180 on those attitudes... the day IBM snubbed him in favor of Serenity Systems. Does that define a jerk? Maybe in your characterization. To me, it simply defines someone who was angry and upset - and took it out on the wrong party (the OS/2 community - who (1) had nothing to do with IBM turning his offer down, and (2) wholeheartedly supported Stardock taking over OS/2 development) - when it was either through some "fault" in his offer (not as good as Serenity's in IBM's eyes?), some other criteria IBM used, or their unwillingness to license to Stardock... or who knows what? Whatever the cause for him not getting the license, it surely wasn't the community - who even after Serenity got it, many of them were actively posting that they thought Stardock should have (due to their already considerable knowledge of OS/2 and Brad's - up to the point he started snubbing the community verbally - support and kind words for the OS/2 community that got him started. No one in the community wanted anything back from him... they all wanted the best for him - and instead, according to what you read, got belittled by him for things they did not do and had no part in.
The event can be confirmed by checking those online sites that track what a particular website is running on... the dates are someplace around Aug 20th or 22nd...
The only error in my earlier post was that the Linux machine is running quad 2.8GHz CPUs... not dual 2.4GHz. But that just makes the point more than twice as valid.
Of course, the ancient quad 550MHz Netfinity is running the equally ancient but venerable Lotus Domino Go WebServer, which in truth, was designed to thoroughly and fully utilize OS/2's multithreading capabilities, and as many CPUs as one could throw at it (well, up to 64 anyway)... and the server hardware (the Netfinity) was designed with OS/2's capabilities in mind (the Netfinity line of the time almost always outperformed the same speed hardware when running OS/2 because of it's bus design and OS/2's ability to use it)... but none of that comes close to explaining the results I've tracked in real world use.
And like Richard said or implied, some of us aren't happy with needing to throw new hardware at a problem to make it go away. I love the rock-solid stability of the Netfinity line, and I love the fact that for certain applications (like web serving, ftp serving, MySQL, etc), an ancient underpowered box that will not run Windows Server 2003, and will just barely decently run Linux actually flies as if it was doing nothing under Warp Server for e-Business.
One day I'd like to have an almost as ancient Netfinity/eSeries x430 with all 64 1.1GHz CPUs in it... OS/2 and LDGW would... well, I dunno... behave like they were doing less than the nothing they "think" they are doing now...
But then again, I still have an IBM x440 with quad 2.4GHz CPUs sitting here, never powered on (since I got it at least), that I refuse to waste the electricity on, because I have no need. The Quad 550MHz is so thoroughly overkill right now that as much as I want to fire it up, I cant justify it. I was hoping hosting the startreknewvoyages.com site for those days would prove a need to turn it on, but instead it proved that the 4x550 Netfinity is still just as bored with it's workload and still waaaaaay overkill for our needs, even with a site so heavily trafficked as it is.
Now for certain other things, I find Windows and Linux acceptable tools. You see, to me, each is just a tool. I pick the best one for the job. OS/2 is still hands down the best (in the PC world) for a server platform. Windows (and sometimes Linux) is the best for numerous GUI driven stuff (I use ffMPEG a lot for video transcoding... sometimes I get lazy and don't want to "hand code" all the parameters I need, so I jump to a Windows machine and fire up Avanti, click a few options, enter resolutions, and hit a button... one day I will write a little GUI app for OS/2 and no longer use Windows for that either. Much rather have 4 transcodes running on the Netfinity... it can (and has/does) finish 4 equal transcodes faster than WinXP Pro on an Opteron can even though the total CPU power on the Opteron is greater (because XP Pro makes crappy use of more than one core, even for separate processes).
The question should not be why wont we let OS/2 die, but instead should be, why wont people in certain other industries open their eyes and see it as a better solution (than getting even faster hardware to throw at another OS's bottlenecks)? Think about it... how wonderful would running Blender or whatever on OS/2 be when it can fully utilize 64 CPUs, and peg them all to just shy of 100% for doing a lot of rendering? Or how amazing would web serving be when OS/2 can treat each request as if it had it's own CPU - simply because it's thread scheduling and SMP handling is that much better?
Then again, one day I might see Blender on OS/2... it runs on Linux... no reason it cant be gotten to
Actually, Brad Wardell gave up on OS/2 when IBM refused to license it to him - and instead licensed it to Serenity Systems... suddenly everything he said about OS/2 and the OS/2 community was bitter and negative from THAT point forward.
The OS/2 community built his business and was always good to him (Heck, GalCiv became the best selling game at it's release - beating out Windows games released in the same time frame). Had he walked away from it on real grounds/reasons, no one would have begrudged him his choice. Problem is, we all knew of his bid/dealings with IBM to license OS/2, and we all knew that IBM chose Serenity over him, and all noticed the 180 degree change in his attitude from that moment forward.
It wasnt his choice that upset us... it was his lies masked as reasons to cover his anger and dissappointment over IBM snubbing him - that he in turn blamed on us and our attitudes.
OS/2 had 3 different VOIP packages that far predate DialPad (dunno about them predating SpeakFreely). At least one can still be found in the mirrors of the IBM EWS Repository.
IIRC, OS/2's VOIP solutions existed in the early 90's.
You're right, though, OS/2 is dead, and people should be looking to migrate their software to something a little more modern.
Sure... I'll migrate to something more "modern" as soon as someone writes something that makes such a wonderful server platform.
Everyone can kid themselves as much as they want here, but the fact is nothing PC based touches OS/2 as a server. The NT line (including it's most recent releases) takes over ten times the hardware to achieve the same stats - all with the issues of keeping the machine secure and un-infected. Linux still doesn't thread nearly as well - which is a requirement for a truly capable mid to high capacity server. And neither can do as much on as little hardware.
As a case in point, the www.StarTrekNewVoyages.com host suspended their account because of an infection on another site running on the same box (two sites running in total), so for 4 days I took over hosting the site on an ancient Netfinity server running Warp Server for e-Business. My ancient beast ran at an average of 4-5% CPU utilization (most registering in the fraction of a percent range for most of those 4 days) serving many requests per second - all with it's "amazingly fast" Quad 550MHz P3 Xeon CPUs (while hosting over a dozen other sites). The Linux box the site is normally on, with it's dual 2.8GHz CPUs is never below 40% CPU utilization (while hosting that site, and one other that has only a few hundred requests a day), and often gets suspended for hitting a much higher utilization. Of course, the WSeB Netfinity is also hosting a massive FTP repository that transfers (both ways) many gigs a day, mail, MySQL, domain file and print and more... the Linux box does none of those.
We all know that Windows Server (any version) cant compete with Linux for web serving on the same hardware (need faster hardware for same results)... so, from real world usage, on a highly trafficked site, I confirmed what I already knew... even though Linux is better in such usage than Windows, OS/2 still crushes them both...
So again, why would I want to migrate? I'm happy with my ancient Netfinity box... and I am happy with knowing that, under OS/2, that's all I need to beat the pants off any other PC based OS out there for web (or other) serving.
Heck, I have an x440 Quad 2.4GHz server sitting here and never turned on, because, running WSeB on my servers, I have no clue what the heck I would do with that much power. At peaks of near half a million requests a day on just the web side of it's duties when we temporarily took over hosting StarTrekNewVoyages.com, the machine/OS thought it was doing nothing... I'd run out of bandwidth long before the older box ran out of CPU power... (actually, during stress testing of the box, with fully dynamically built web page requests, all server side script driven, all requiring MySQL database access (2 reads, 2 writes, 3 tables in use, "tiny" caching used), the machine, during testing from local clients where I had enough bandwidth, has handled (for multi day long tests), around 9 million requests in a day (yeah, over 100 a second).
Nah... for the foreseeable future, I dont need the x440 for anything other than looking pretty.
I'm ready to migrate... as soon as an OS is ready to handle that type of load on hardware of that speed - still waiting.
As much as I think the comparison fun (between FF3 beta and IE8 beta), the possibility remains that their debugging method is far different. That alone would mean this comparison may still be a moot point when IE8 goes GA.
Or, like you said, this may simply be "by design" - but without knowing how the debug code works in each, how much is running, and what else it does that may or may not be out of the ordinary, it is very hard to compare FF3 beta to IE8 beta in a conclusive way - other than to say that the FF3 beta is faster. When it comes to beta software, especially by two totally different companies that use different programming methods, rendering methods (how many rendering modes does IE8 now have to support?), etc, I just don't see the point.
Or, I'm just not in the mood today to bash Microsoft's slow beta... I'm not sure which.
While what you say is true to an extent, I still don't understand the use of 171 threads - especially on an operating system that has "spotty" lotsa thread handling performance at best (when compared to... well, anything else).
Optimizing the code will probably increase performance and decrease memory usage a bit too, but unless all those threads are being used for debugging purposes, then various performance and resource issues will still exist when IE8 is out of beta.
Threads are a great thing. Even a lot of threads are a great thing... but those have prerequisites, such as thread workload that is independent of each other to a decent extent, not overrunning the operating system's ability to efficiently manage and schedule threads, not overrunning the various subsystems that each thread (or a lot of them) may be calling (for instance, in this case, the hard drive, TCP/IP stack and/or rendering engine), and a design that scales down to resource availability of the computer hardware (you dont want to try to use that many resources or threads on a slow computer... CPU, bus, RAM, HDD, etc).
Thus, the real remaining questions are (since you probably/hopefully correctly covered the memory footprint issue in pointing out it is a beta and probably has a lot of debug code loaded/running) are:
- Is IE8's threading model designed to be usable on low end hardware?
- Can the XP or Vista thread scheduler efficiently handle that many threads?
- When they designed this implementation, did they take into account hardware capabilities?
- And of course, how much of the bloat is actually due to the debug code, and how much (like in recent MS products) is "bloat by design"?
Until then, I've got no real opinion on how IE8 will perform, since there is a lack of too much necessary information to make an intelligent determination on a product that has yet to be released as GA.
And after then, honestly, I (personally) really dont care. I only fire up IE to test web pages - or for the relatively rare (nowadays) IE only site.
As for the rest of the world, they will either find it's speed acceptable, or not. If they don't, they will either find Firefox - or not.
Either way, the bigger issue (at least on any web programmer's mind) is standards compatibility... not speaking for anyone but myself, unless the performance is so horrendous that I now have to be coding "lite" sites so IE8 doesnt take forever to render them, then I really dont care if it's bloated or not. Me ranting about the bloat would be just that... ranting. Doesn't affect me unless the performance noticeaby impacts how quickly my sites load.
Though it is fun to rant any time ________ screws something up (fill in the blank with whatever company or product currently fits the "Mod this post up" criteria... I stopped keeping track of who we are supposed to rant about weeks ago).;-)
Been to Vegas, but didnt know this existed till recently... I've been too busy with my own Star Trek Experience helping make this...
Star Trek New Voyages
But, as for longest running franchise, I guess you aren't including Paramount? Dunno... I wonder if some of the original Trek based franchises from the early days are still around? And possibly Pocket Books' Trek franchise predates it.
5-10 gigs per heavy person, per day. I say this based on the following:
Tawnos, I dont know what my weight has to do with it...;-)
But my guess is it's more like.1-5gigs a day as I guess it depends on the person's type of usage. If my mother hits 1GB a week, I would be surprised (check email, log into the work "intranet" and sometimes research medical stuff... none of which uses much bandwidth).
But I know others who are constantly watching or downloading music or videos or on sites all day that require high bandwidth usage over the total course of their visiting.
The question is couldn't really be answered without knowing what portion of the Internet population fits in the category my mother does, and which fits the other extreme, and how many are inbetween. So far, I have yet to find a statistic I trust on such things... too many of them are **AA biased reports trying to show just how much file sharing is going on... while the others all seem to be from ISPs who are trying to be able to meter or charge for bandwidth usage - neither category I consider unbiased.
As inaccurate as it would be, a better determination than their studies would be to find some sort of Internet demographics for the US... (such as 1 million users in the 60+ range, 20 million in the 50-59 range, etc - with age range 1 uses the Internet 74% of the time at work, age range 2 uses it 47% at work) and then equate the high figures with the younger crowd, low figures with the older crowd and/or for the portion of time it is used at work, etc. Highly inaccurate, (especially as it makes numerous assumptions), but it would probably be more accurate than an ISP or **AA study.
As I do 90% of all my Internet stuff from my office, I have no idea how much I use personally... most of my bandwidth usage is for work related stuff (and that often exceeds 25GB a day).
Though, I do watch a bunch of "Fan Films" online, and occassionally even TV shows (AOLTV (Star Trek - when I am too lazy to pop in a DVD), etc) online.
Not just is b96miata correct, but in certain cases, you will find out just how easily the states can force you to pay such taxes (named use tax, and a variety of other things depending on the state).
Go buy a car in some other state with no or lower tax, and bring it to NY... try to register it without paying tax in NY.
Now, (Rocketship Underpant) tell me that the courts or local or federal governments are going to even care about a suit over paltry amounts for much smaller (worth-wise) goods, when they have let that go on for years and years?
Sadly, you may be right in theory... or even in legal terms... but it's still irrelevant and unlikely to change.
If a big enough stink was raised, the only thing I see happening are the laws being changed (or what the tax is or is called being changed) to get around what you cite. It happens all the time.
Here's a perfect real world example.... Companies are forbidden to charge more for stuff when someone pays with a credit card. And of course none do. You see, what they do is charge less for purchases paid for with cash. Ooops... that's the same thing!!! No, it's not - well, semantically it's not. Just a sneaky way of getting around the law and credit card company agreements. And of course, the end result is exactly the same.:-)
Here's what's equally unfair about that. Let's say I live in East BumFuck, NY which has a lower sales tax than Long Island. I move to LI for 12 months (15 months... whatever) for work (various people have short-medium term assignment based jobs), rent an apartment and bring my stuff with me. I'm now liable for the tax difference. So... I pay it. I move back once my assignemnt is over. I'm working locally for a little while (oops, no money back this tax period)... get another assignment in let's say NYC for 14 months.... oops, higher tax rate than either of the two... gotta pay again... then I move back and secure a local long term position for a while (or indefinitely). Not going to see that money back either, am I?
Yeah, scenarios like that happen... construction workers, film crew, management trainers who do long term analsys/training, college students.
Of course, I doubt they all go through the hassle - but, technically they are supposed to. In 30 (or is it 45? too lazy to pull out my license and check) days, you are supposed to notify DMV of your change of address and declare a new residence... yeah, most people do that too.
I dont think tax laws need to make sense (or maybe I should say, I dont think they are supposed to make sense). Oh well...
Chuck all the stupid crap toys you have that use proprietary connectors.
I have made a decision: In the small electronics area, I will ONLY buy devices that use the mini-USB style connectors.
Here's something interesting. I bought an MP3 player from SansDisk. I specifically bought it because (besides some pretty much Windows only access tool) the player can simply be accessed as an MSD - and either way it connects via USB through a supplied cable (mini-USB to USB).
The odd thing is, though I thought the cable nothing more than a regular cable with a toriod on it, the thing only seems to work with that cable.... maybe the other cables were defective, or it was more than just a toriod inside the little shell around part of the cable.
Anyway, as it isn't always possible to get something that charges via USB, there are alternatives. One, which isnt the best, is at least better than the original scenario...
- Get a "smart charger" with a tip for each device (I then attach the tips to the device using a short piece of rope or thick hair tie cut in half (so it's a rope than a circle), and use some cloth tape (hockey/sports tape) to tape one end to the tip, the other to the charger's cable near it's tip receptacle. That allows one charger for everything, and all tips on hand and out of the way.
- Look for USB to (XXXXXXX) adapters for the chargers for your device. Many many devices can be charged via USB with a usually inexpensive adapter. This method at least allows charging more than one device at a time (similar to d3ac0n's suggestion to using all USB ones)... but means, at the very least, again, a bunch of tips.
- Get a power strip and/or outlet extender, and a cable management system and then simply label the ends of each cord to make them easy to determine at a glance which is which. By "cable management system" I mean get something similar to those retractable phone cords they sell in the "dollar store" - failing being able to find one of those, get one of those retractable phone cords from the dollar store, open it up, remove the phone line, and insert the charger's cable. This will at the very least minimize the clutter. In my office, we mount the power strip, place a few hooks right above it, and hang the things right from there so, even retracted, they are organized (and then we label each with a label machine... a piece of tape and a permanent marker does the job just as well - or color coding each).
.
Yeah, none of these are as elegant as finding devices that call can be charged via USB, but, as I said above, oft times, it's not possible to get what one wants by choosing that scenario... so, these suggestions are for those who cant... and for those who can, d3ac0n's suggestion is a great one.
As for me, I hate having a bunch of cables (at least till I organize them), but they do come in handy as I dont always have something with USB to charge them from. My preference are the chargers that will use either DC or AC (without the need for a separate charger),so I can charge them at home or on the road.
I think it is all a matter of personal preference then. A glance at the IE screenshot and it looks nicer... but to me, it's harder to read.
Now, to be honest, that could be part personal preference, and part because I have astigmatisms (so the "blurrier" look of IE is harder for me to read).
Another aspect of the "personal preference" part could be because it kinda just "looks right" to me - it isn't butt ugly non-antialiased, but it's also not "oversmoothed" IE, which to me is about the look of text in the early days of computers and CRTs. Still, to this day, my program editor is set to use a bitmap monospaced font (instead of something like Courier), which produces (to me) much clearer results.
So, I guess this is a matter of "to each their own"
As for FF2, I do know that font rendering was handled differently in eComStation (either the default font renderer, which was usually FreeType/2, or Innotek's font renderer... which produced results someplace inbetween your two screen shots).
Here's a site with differing opinions on the issue as well (so, it's not just you and I). The article writer agrees with you, the commenters seem somewhat mixed in their opinions (and discuss more than just Flock and FF... such as IE, ClearType, Safari, etc).
I'm not sure (hence I am asking), but what does Firefox use for font rendering on:
-Windows
-Linux
-MacOSX
Just asking because FF3 uses Cairo on eComStation for rendering... and while the rendering isn't quite as pretty as FF2 using Innotek Font Engine under eComStation, it's still better than IE renders on Windows.
Also, I think there are settings someplace that can control how it aa's the text... but again, that may not apply to versions on other operating systems.
One thing I have noticed is that Cairo's font rendering isn't as "overall pretty" as FF2 with IFE... but it is more readable. IFE, on all but the lowest settings blurred the fonts too much, as Windows on most of it's settings do. That especially (or mostly) applies to small text... but that is mostly what I use.
Maybe that's what you see as "sucks"? I prefer the text a little less anti-aliased to make the smaller fonts more readable - it especially helps where sites select font sizes using CSS, and the browser's minimum font size is set really low (which I do, to allow a site to render how it wants).
And Upper Westchester, which started with higher value houses, isnt a good comparison to the type of housing in Suffolk County. I know... I lived there too when I went to Iona 22 years ago...
And keep in mind, though I agree with you on the cost of building part, it's more than just what it costs to build a house (though that is part of it). I know. I used to work in construction when I decided (or thought I did) that I had had enough with computers. Years in construction... business and residential.
Here's the part I dont understand. I simply said house values have went up at a far greater rate than wages - and were not a "what the economy can support" thing. and you agreed - yet you want me to cite sources for a very obvious, self-evident statement - that you agree with?
The value of a house is not set by "what tyhe market will bear" but by "what it costs to build a similar house in labor and materials in a similar location."
I dont understand. All I did was refute the earlier poster's claim that house prices are set by what the market can bear, and gave examples to point out he was wrong - I didnt give a reason why house prices were so high - just said his reason was wrong. You agree and provide a reason, but want me to cite facts... of what?
I kinda think you are glomming my post together with someone else's and responding to the wrong one since we are in agreement...
Slashdot Mirror
No apparently you simply didn't understand the context I was applying, which was to the whole thread. Which I guess explains it. No, we don't taunt them. The situation varies depending on the customer. It usually boils down to a "We can't help you without charging you. We can fix it for less than the manufacturer will rape you for. We can get you prices for both." (again, and to clarify, a summary of how the conversation will go... the actual wording isn't so extreme). Then we get the manufacturer's price, our price, as well as replacement price and offer it to the customer.
In the event the customer bitches still, well then, on occassion, things may go the route above or a similar route. The wording though is usually a lot more subdued. "I'm sorry, I cant help you. We advised you that this type of damage would not be covered under the manufacturer warranty when you purchased the machine." (which implies the rest of my statement above without the need for saying it - unless the customer then asks "Well what about your warranty?" - at which time, in a less direct way, we explain they needed to purchase our warranty at the time of purchase - not after such damage - as was also explained to them at the time of purchase).
Hopefully that clarifies things.
Are you seriously that much of an asshole to your customers?
"You are screwed. If you had bought our overpriced warranty then you would be saved, but you didn't, so now you lose! Ha ha!"
What a great way to lose a customer. The insanity where everybody tries to sell you stupid and overpriced extended warranties is already bad enough. But to literally taunt a customer with broken hardware because he failed to purchase the extended warranty is completely ridiculous. Do you really want these people to take their business elsewhere?
What reality do you live in? The MANUFACTURERS make their warranties. The STORES have no say in that. The stores often offer supplemental warranties that cover deficiencies in the manufacturer's warranties since we cannot force a manufacturer to honor something that they clearly state they do not cover.
Keep in mind, all of this gets explained at the time of sale. The re-explanation doesnt come until the customer keeps bitching that we should cover something we or the manufacturer's warranty (or both) clearly told them was not covered at the time of sale.
So... am I the asshole? Or are you for (I hope) pretending to be too stupid to understand what I said?
"Do you really want these people to take their business elsewhere?"
For what? For them getting obnoxious? Or did you just decide to skip the posts I was responding to? Go take a valium, come back and re-read these threads.
Besides the stores that sell Apple computers, keep in mind, this is also to push customers towards Vista as opposed to XP.
Not necessarily. We used to have customers come in for issues all the time that were not covered under manufacturer's warranty. Such as, (laptops being a case in point), "I cracked the screen"...
"Sorry, can't help you. It's not covered. Had you bought our extended warranty, 2 screen replacements would have been covered, but the manufacturer warranty does not cover it. Worse, currently you have NO manufacturer warranty (with about half the manufacturers) for anything else, until you pay to get the screen fixed."
That's another attribute that the customers choose to ignore when a sales rep is trying to sell them an extended warranty. Many manufacturers will not cover any warranty issue if a non-warranty physical issue is present until that issue is fixed (it's in their accidental/abuse/misuse clauses).
With printers, there are similar situations as the example I outline above for laptops.
True, but the sales rep is not at fault for a printer company making shitty products. And as upset as a customer may be, there becomes a point where it needs to stop or be redirected at those responsible for the shitty product (the printer manufacturer).... and if it doesn't, a good manager will redirect the person to the manufacturer as s/he is throwing the customer out of the store (I've done that, and would continue to... as a manager, I never subscribed to the "Customer is always right" nonsense when the customer is being abusive to my employees. I dont pay my employees to be abusive. The flip side is I did pay them to be truthful about the product (ie: "If you want something that will last for your business, don't get that _________")).
Being "always right" isn't carte blanche excuse for verbally abusing other human beings who are not responsible for the customer's problems.
"Guru" is low entry skill?
Depends on the definition of "Guru" being used, as someone else clarified earlier.
A "Guru" in this sense, is simply someone who can tell you... I mean lie... I mean tell you... how much greater Vista is than everything else...
If you can stand in front of a display PC and say "Look! Shiny..." and that is all you pretty much have to do, then $20/hr is pretty nice indeed. ;-)
What I think will be interesting is when the rest of Best Buy's "less paid but do more work" employees get fed up with the fact that there are staff on hand who make $5-12/hr more for simply being able to lie.
Think about it.... be a member of the "Geek Squad" and actually be the person stuck dealing with Vista and other issues, and actually be responsible for fixing problems, and you get paid less. Run around all day convincing people that Vista is great, do nothing to alleviate customer issues (other than point them to the less paid "Geek Squad" members) and get paid significantly more.
I think this is a wonderful way at raising employee moral. I wonder how much money Best Buy is getting handed from Microsoft to make this happen - or if they (Best Buy) are just too brain dead to realize it's going to piss off the rest of their less paid/do more (or real) work staff - or if this is a "requirement" that Microsoft stipulated for some future or continuing concession for carrying certain products.
Do you have any clue how many threads your OS is successfully managing right now?
MY OS? Yes I do... somewhere near 2,000 - but it isn't Windows. Your paltry "over 300" is nothing. But then again, OS/2 WSeB still has the best thread scheduler of any PC based OS. System overhead? Virtually none (and none noticeable performance wise)... unless you are talking about pre Pentium 90 computers with very little (under 40MB) RAM.
I'm at work, my 4 year old 1.6ghz Latitude w/ 1GB ram is running over 300. FireFox, with 3 tabs, opened for just 20 minutes or so, is responsible for 20 of those.
So, lets go back to the actual discussion in relationship to this statement... FF using 3 tabs has 20 threads in use... IE with 10 tabs has 171 threads in use... If the threads scale linearly based off number of tabs (which they don't), FF would be using 70 threads... 100 less than IE.
Why is IE using all those tabs? Good question...
And the point of this, as any software developer could tell you, is that all threads are not created equal.
Any software developer who knows anything about the Internet would tell you that 171 threads is excessive for a browser with 10 tabs open - it's not like you can request 15 things (assuming approx 20 for the core browser) at once on most sites... most limit concurrent requests to 2-4 at a time... what does that mean? Simple... 10+ threads in action (not idle) trying (and failing) to do something until the other threads finish. Why? Because when you exceed a web server's concurrent connection limit, it doesn't send a "hold on until the other connections are done" message - it instead holds the client resource open and then sends when the other requests are done - with no notification that it's waiting... thus the thread is never cycled to idle/sleep. Ooops! Of course, I guess a lot of them could be rendering... but that would be equally retarded since it would be a waste of resources as page rendering is dependent on each page element... meaning a lot of threads being put idle by each other or talking back and forth to modify what they were rendering based off layout changes forced by other page sections.
So, (in IE8) what is the purpose and benefit of so many threads again? And (in IE8) how can that many not poorly impact performance?
There is a little overhead in spawning a new thread, but very little to maintain it.
Yes... spawning or maintaining a thread may not take much overhead. Efficiently using those threads on the other hand does... this was a similar problem to the one Linux had in the pthreads days... that Windows is still horrendous at (in comparison to Linux - and definitely in comparison to OS/2). But then again, your definition of "lots of threads" is far different than mine. I've got no problems with having a couple thousand (or more) active threads (and wouldnt notice a performance difference between 100 or a thousand)... Windows would choke and die - no matter how well written the app spawning those threads was, simply because Windows does not handle or schedule them very well at that quantity.
You wrote an awful lot there, but you didn't say much of anything.
You wrote an awful lot that was mostly wrong or inapplicable. :-)
No...
#1 my version is not that Brad is a jerk.
#2 All you would have to do is go online and do a few Google searches to confirm my version. You'll clearly see when his entire attitude changed towards the community, as well as him being snubbed by IBM at the same time. You'll clearly see that before, during and after that phase, he still had the support of the OS/2 community. You'll clearly see that the OS/2 community's attitude changed towards him after he started insinuating that they were fanatics (and worse). Especially check the newsgroups.
#3Most (though yes, not all) OS/2 users are far from fanatics (in comparison to the users of other OS's), as both the newsgroups (which span almost 2 decades of posts) and the forums at places on OS/2World will prove, where numerous users, both past and present, run OS/2 along side Windows, or numerous users have stopped to help Windows users (who inappropriately posted their questions in an OS/2 group) have stopped to help them or at least point them in the correct direction.
You can believe what you will, Brad can tell his story the way he wants... but until the newsgroups and OS/2 forums get purged, the evidence of how fictional his portrayal is, still exists.
Think about it (that is, if you are unwilling to actually research something I was actively around as an OS/2 and Stardock user and in monthly contact with Serenity or IBM).... just think about (if he felt the way he claims and that is his reasoning) how odd it is that he made a bid to assume the role that Serenity now holds, how odd it is that all his words about the community and OS/2 were all so wonderful, how he planned an entire business strategy on forging ahead with a new OS/2 client which would have been released by him - and then did an entire 180 on those attitudes... the day IBM snubbed him in favor of Serenity Systems. Does that define a jerk? Maybe in your characterization. To me, it simply defines someone who was angry and upset - and took it out on the wrong party (the OS/2 community - who (1) had nothing to do with IBM turning his offer down, and (2) wholeheartedly supported Stardock taking over OS/2 development) - when it was either through some "fault" in his offer (not as good as Serenity's in IBM's eyes?), some other criteria IBM used, or their unwillingness to license to Stardock... or who knows what? Whatever the cause for him not getting the license, it surely wasn't the community - who even after Serenity got it, many of them were actively posting that they thought Stardock should have (due to their already considerable knowledge of OS/2 and Brad's - up to the point he started snubbing the community verbally - support and kind words for the OS/2 community that got him started. No one in the community wanted anything back from him... they all wanted the best for him - and instead, according to what you read, got belittled by him for things they did not do and had no part in.
Richard is more than correct on this, and barely scratching the surface. I posted a real world example yesterday here:
Real World Example
The event can be confirmed by checking those online sites that track what a particular website is running on... the dates are someplace around Aug 20th or 22nd...
The only error in my earlier post was that the Linux machine is running quad 2.8GHz CPUs... not dual 2.4GHz. But that just makes the point more than twice as valid.
Of course, the ancient quad 550MHz Netfinity is running the equally ancient but venerable Lotus Domino Go WebServer, which in truth, was designed to thoroughly and fully utilize OS/2's multithreading capabilities, and as many CPUs as one could throw at it (well, up to 64 anyway)... and the server hardware (the Netfinity) was designed with OS/2's capabilities in mind (the Netfinity line of the time almost always outperformed the same speed hardware when running OS/2 because of it's bus design and OS/2's ability to use it)... but none of that comes close to explaining the results I've tracked in real world use.
And like Richard said or implied, some of us aren't happy with needing to throw new hardware at a problem to make it go away. I love the rock-solid stability of the Netfinity line, and I love the fact that for certain applications (like web serving, ftp serving, MySQL, etc), an ancient underpowered box that will not run Windows Server 2003, and will just barely decently run Linux actually flies as if it was doing nothing under Warp Server for e-Business.
One day I'd like to have an almost as ancient Netfinity/eSeries x430 with all 64 1.1GHz CPUs in it... OS/2 and LDGW would... well, I dunno... behave like they were doing less than the nothing they "think" they are doing now...
But then again, I still have an IBM x440 with quad 2.4GHz CPUs sitting here, never powered on (since I got it at least), that I refuse to waste the electricity on, because I have no need. The Quad 550MHz is so thoroughly overkill right now that as much as I want to fire it up, I cant justify it. I was hoping hosting the startreknewvoyages.com site for those days would prove a need to turn it on, but instead it proved that the 4x550 Netfinity is still just as bored with it's workload and still waaaaaay overkill for our needs, even with a site so heavily trafficked as it is.
Now for certain other things, I find Windows and Linux acceptable tools. You see, to me, each is just a tool. I pick the best one for the job. OS/2 is still hands down the best (in the PC world) for a server platform. Windows (and sometimes Linux) is the best for numerous GUI driven stuff (I use ffMPEG a lot for video transcoding... sometimes I get lazy and don't want to "hand code" all the parameters I need, so I jump to a Windows machine and fire up Avanti, click a few options, enter resolutions, and hit a button... one day I will write a little GUI app for OS/2 and no longer use Windows for that either. Much rather have 4 transcodes running on the Netfinity... it can (and has/does) finish 4 equal transcodes faster than WinXP Pro on an Opteron can even though the total CPU power on the Opteron is greater (because XP Pro makes crappy use of more than one core, even for separate processes).
The question should not be why wont we let OS/2 die, but instead should be, why wont people in certain other industries open their eyes and see it as a better solution (than getting even faster hardware to throw at another OS's bottlenecks)? Think about it... how wonderful would running Blender or whatever on OS/2 be when it can fully utilize 64 CPUs, and peg them all to just shy of 100% for doing a lot of rendering? Or how amazing would web serving be when OS/2 can treat each request as if it had it's own CPU - simply because it's thread scheduling and SMP handling is that much better?
Then again, one day I might see Blender on OS/2... it runs on Linux... no reason it cant be gotten to
Actually, Brad Wardell gave up on OS/2 when IBM refused to license it to him - and instead licensed it to Serenity Systems... suddenly everything he said about OS/2 and the OS/2 community was bitter and negative from THAT point forward.
The OS/2 community built his business and was always good to him (Heck, GalCiv became the best selling game at it's release - beating out Windows games released in the same time frame). Had he walked away from it on real grounds/reasons, no one would have begrudged him his choice. Problem is, we all knew of his bid/dealings with IBM to license OS/2, and we all knew that IBM chose Serenity over him, and all noticed the 180 degree change in his attitude from that moment forward.
It wasnt his choice that upset us... it was his lies masked as reasons to cover his anger and dissappointment over IBM snubbing him - that he in turn blamed on us and our attitudes.
OS/2 had 3 different VOIP packages that far predate DialPad (dunno about them predating SpeakFreely). At least one can still be found in the mirrors of the IBM EWS Repository.
IIRC, OS/2's VOIP solutions existed in the early 90's.
You're right, though, OS/2 is dead, and people should be looking to migrate their software to something a little more modern.
Sure... I'll migrate to something more "modern" as soon as someone writes something that makes such a wonderful server platform.
Everyone can kid themselves as much as they want here, but the fact is nothing PC based touches OS/2 as a server. The NT line (including it's most recent releases) takes over ten times the hardware to achieve the same stats - all with the issues of keeping the machine secure and un-infected. Linux still doesn't thread nearly as well - which is a requirement for a truly capable mid to high capacity server. And neither can do as much on as little hardware.
As a case in point, the www.StarTrekNewVoyages.com host suspended their account because of an infection on another site running on the same box (two sites running in total), so for 4 days I took over hosting the site on an ancient Netfinity server running Warp Server for e-Business. My ancient beast ran at an average of 4-5% CPU utilization (most registering in the fraction of a percent range for most of those 4 days) serving many requests per second - all with it's "amazingly fast" Quad 550MHz P3 Xeon CPUs (while hosting over a dozen other sites). The Linux box the site is normally on, with it's dual 2.8GHz CPUs is never below 40% CPU utilization (while hosting that site, and one other that has only a few hundred requests a day), and often gets suspended for hitting a much higher utilization. Of course, the WSeB Netfinity is also hosting a massive FTP repository that transfers (both ways) many gigs a day, mail, MySQL, domain file and print and more... the Linux box does none of those.
We all know that Windows Server (any version) cant compete with Linux for web serving on the same hardware (need faster hardware for same results)... so, from real world usage, on a highly trafficked site, I confirmed what I already knew... even though Linux is better in such usage than Windows, OS/2 still crushes them both...
So again, why would I want to migrate? I'm happy with my ancient Netfinity box... and I am happy with knowing that, under OS/2, that's all I need to beat the pants off any other PC based OS out there for web (or other) serving.
Heck, I have an x440 Quad 2.4GHz server sitting here and never turned on, because, running WSeB on my servers, I have no clue what the heck I would do with that much power. At peaks of near half a million requests a day on just the web side of it's duties when we temporarily took over hosting StarTrekNewVoyages.com, the machine/OS thought it was doing nothing... I'd run out of bandwidth long before the older box ran out of CPU power... (actually, during stress testing of the box, with fully dynamically built web page requests, all server side script driven, all requiring MySQL database access (2 reads, 2 writes, 3 tables in use, "tiny" caching used), the machine, during testing from local clients where I had enough bandwidth, has handled (for multi day long tests), around 9 million requests in a day (yeah, over 100 a second).
Nah... for the foreseeable future, I dont need the x440 for anything other than looking pretty.
I'm ready to migrate... as soon as an OS is ready to handle that type of load on hardware of that speed - still waiting.
Hmmmm... that accounts for 10 threads. Only 161 to go... :-)
As much as I think the comparison fun (between FF3 beta and IE8 beta), the possibility remains that their debugging method is far different. That alone would mean this comparison may still be a moot point when IE8 goes GA.
Or, like you said, this may simply be "by design" - but without knowing how the debug code works in each, how much is running, and what else it does that may or may not be out of the ordinary, it is very hard to compare FF3 beta to IE8 beta in a conclusive way - other than to say that the FF3 beta is faster. When it comes to beta software, especially by two totally different companies that use different programming methods, rendering methods (how many rendering modes does IE8 now have to support?), etc, I just don't see the point.
Or, I'm just not in the mood today to bash Microsoft's slow beta... I'm not sure which.
While what you say is true to an extent, I still don't understand the use of 171 threads - especially on an operating system that has "spotty" lotsa thread handling performance at best (when compared to... well, anything else).
Optimizing the code will probably increase performance and decrease memory usage a bit too, but unless all those threads are being used for debugging purposes, then various performance and resource issues will still exist when IE8 is out of beta.
Threads are a great thing. Even a lot of threads are a great thing... but those have prerequisites, such as thread workload that is independent of each other to a decent extent, not overrunning the operating system's ability to efficiently manage and schedule threads, not overrunning the various subsystems that each thread (or a lot of them) may be calling (for instance, in this case, the hard drive, TCP/IP stack and/or rendering engine), and a design that scales down to resource availability of the computer hardware (you dont want to try to use that many resources or threads on a slow computer... CPU, bus, RAM, HDD, etc).
Thus, the real remaining questions are (since you probably/hopefully correctly covered the memory footprint issue in pointing out it is a beta and probably has a lot of debug code loaded/running) are:
- Is IE8's threading model designed to be usable on low end hardware?
- Can the XP or Vista thread scheduler efficiently handle that many threads?
- When they designed this implementation, did they take into account hardware capabilities?
- And of course, how much of the bloat is actually due to the debug code, and how much (like in recent MS products) is "bloat by design"?
Until then, I've got no real opinion on how IE8 will perform, since there is a lack of too much necessary information to make an intelligent determination on a product that has yet to be released as GA.
And after then, honestly, I (personally) really dont care. I only fire up IE to test web pages - or for the relatively rare (nowadays) IE only site.
As for the rest of the world, they will either find it's speed acceptable, or not. If they don't, they will either find Firefox - or not.
Either way, the bigger issue (at least on any web programmer's mind) is standards compatibility... not speaking for anyone but myself, unless the performance is so horrendous that I now have to be coding "lite" sites so IE8 doesnt take forever to render them, then I really dont care if it's bloated or not. Me ranting about the bloat would be just that... ranting. Doesn't affect me unless the performance noticeaby impacts how quickly my sites load.
Though it is fun to rant any time ________ screws something up (fill in the blank with whatever company or product currently fits the "Mod this post up" criteria... I stopped keeping track of who we are supposed to rant about weeks ago). ;-)
Been to Vegas, but didnt know this existed till recently... I've been too busy with my own Star Trek Experience helping make this... Star Trek New Voyages
But, as for longest running franchise, I guess you aren't including Paramount? Dunno... I wonder if some of the original Trek based franchises from the early days are still around? And possibly Pocket Books' Trek franchise predates it.
5-10 gigs per heavy person, per day. I say this based on the following:
Tawnos, I dont know what my weight has to do with it... ;-)
But my guess is it's more like .1-5gigs a day as I guess it depends on the person's type of usage. If my mother hits 1GB a week, I would be surprised (check email, log into the work "intranet" and sometimes research medical stuff... none of which uses much bandwidth).
But I know others who are constantly watching or downloading music or videos or on sites all day that require high bandwidth usage over the total course of their visiting.
The question is couldn't really be answered without knowing what portion of the Internet population fits in the category my mother does, and which fits the other extreme, and how many are inbetween. So far, I have yet to find a statistic I trust on such things... too many of them are **AA biased reports trying to show just how much file sharing is going on... while the others all seem to be from ISPs who are trying to be able to meter or charge for bandwidth usage - neither category I consider unbiased.
As inaccurate as it would be, a better determination than their studies would be to find some sort of Internet demographics for the US... (such as 1 million users in the 60+ range, 20 million in the 50-59 range, etc - with age range 1 uses the Internet 74% of the time at work, age range 2 uses it 47% at work) and then equate the high figures with the younger crowd, low figures with the older crowd and/or for the portion of time it is used at work, etc. Highly inaccurate, (especially as it makes numerous assumptions), but it would probably be more accurate than an ISP or **AA study.
As I do 90% of all my Internet stuff from my office, I have no idea how much I use personally... most of my bandwidth usage is for work related stuff (and that often exceeds 25GB a day).
Though, I do watch a bunch of "Fan Films" online, and occassionally even TV shows (AOLTV (Star Trek - when I am too lazy to pop in a DVD), etc) online.
Hmmm... I wish someone would tell Motor Vehicle that... they sure as heck dont seem to know about that section (or simply just dont care about it).
Rocketship Underpant:
Not just is b96miata correct, but in certain cases, you will find out just how easily the states can force you to pay such taxes (named use tax, and a variety of other things depending on the state).
Go buy a car in some other state with no or lower tax, and bring it to NY... try to register it without paying tax in NY.
Now, (Rocketship Underpant) tell me that the courts or local or federal governments are going to even care about a suit over paltry amounts for much smaller (worth-wise) goods, when they have let that go on for years and years?
Sadly, you may be right in theory... or even in legal terms... but it's still irrelevant and unlikely to change.
If a big enough stink was raised, the only thing I see happening are the laws being changed (or what the tax is or is called being changed) to get around what you cite. It happens all the time.
Here's a perfect real world example.... Companies are forbidden to charge more for stuff when someone pays with a credit card. And of course none do. You see, what they do is charge less for purchases paid for with cash. Ooops... that's the same thing!!! No, it's not - well, semantically it's not. Just a sneaky way of getting around the law and credit card company agreements. And of course, the end result is exactly the same. :-)
Here's what's equally unfair about that. Let's say I live in East BumFuck, NY which has a lower sales tax than Long Island. I move to LI for 12 months (15 months... whatever) for work (various people have short-medium term assignment based jobs), rent an apartment and bring my stuff with me. I'm now liable for the tax difference. So... I pay it. I move back once my assignemnt is over. I'm working locally for a little while (oops, no money back this tax period)... get another assignment in let's say NYC for 14 months.... oops, higher tax rate than either of the two... gotta pay again... then I move back and secure a local long term position for a while (or indefinitely). Not going to see that money back either, am I?
Yeah, scenarios like that happen... construction workers, film crew, management trainers who do long term analsys/training, college students.
Of course, I doubt they all go through the hassle - but, technically they are supposed to. In 30 (or is it 45? too lazy to pull out my license and check) days, you are supposed to notify DMV of your change of address and declare a new residence... yeah, most people do that too.
I dont think tax laws need to make sense (or maybe I should say, I dont think they are supposed to make sense). Oh well...
Simple.
Chuck all the stupid crap toys you have that use proprietary connectors.
I have made a decision: In the small electronics area, I will ONLY buy devices that use the mini-USB style connectors.
Here's something interesting. I bought an MP3 player from SansDisk. I specifically bought it because (besides some pretty much Windows only access tool) the player can simply be accessed as an MSD - and either way it connects via USB through a supplied cable (mini-USB to USB).
The odd thing is, though I thought the cable nothing more than a regular cable with a toriod on it, the thing only seems to work with that cable.... maybe the other cables were defective, or it was more than just a toriod inside the little shell around part of the cable.
Anyway, as it isn't always possible to get something that charges via USB, there are alternatives. One, which isnt the best, is at least better than the original scenario...
- Get a "smart charger" with a tip for each device (I then attach the tips to the device using a short piece of rope or thick hair tie cut in half (so it's a rope than a circle), and use some cloth tape (hockey/sports tape) to tape one end to the tip, the other to the charger's cable near it's tip receptacle. That allows one charger for everything, and all tips on hand and out of the way.
- Look for USB to (XXXXXXX) adapters for the chargers for your device. Many many devices can be charged via USB with a usually inexpensive adapter. This method at least allows charging more than one device at a time (similar to d3ac0n's suggestion to using all USB ones)... but means, at the very least, again, a bunch of tips.
- Get a power strip and/or outlet extender, and a cable management system and then simply label the ends of each cord to make them easy to determine at a glance which is which. By "cable management system" I mean get something similar to those retractable phone cords they sell in the "dollar store" - failing being able to find one of those, get one of those retractable phone cords from the dollar store, open it up, remove the phone line, and insert the charger's cable. This will at the very least minimize the clutter. In my office, we mount the power strip, place a few hooks right above it, and hang the things right from there so, even retracted, they are organized (and then we label each with a label machine... a piece of tape and a permanent marker does the job just as well - or color coding each).
.
Yeah, none of these are as elegant as finding devices that call can be charged via USB, but, as I said above, oft times, it's not possible to get what one wants by choosing that scenario... so, these suggestions are for those who cant... and for those who can, d3ac0n's suggestion is a great one.
As for me, I hate having a bunch of cables (at least till I organize them), but they do come in handy as I dont always have something with USB to charge them from. My preference are the chargers that will use either DC or AC (without the need for a separate charger),so I can charge them at home or on the road.
I think it is all a matter of personal preference then. A glance at the IE screenshot and it looks nicer... but to me, it's harder to read.
Now, to be honest, that could be part personal preference, and part because I have astigmatisms (so the "blurrier" look of IE is harder for me to read).
Another aspect of the "personal preference" part could be because it kinda just "looks right" to me - it isn't butt ugly non-antialiased, but it's also not "oversmoothed" IE, which to me is about the look of text in the early days of computers and CRTs. Still, to this day, my program editor is set to use a bitmap monospaced font (instead of something like Courier), which produces (to me) much clearer results.
So, I guess this is a matter of "to each their own"
As for FF2, I do know that font rendering was handled differently in eComStation (either the default font renderer, which was usually FreeType/2, or Innotek's font renderer... which produced results someplace inbetween your two screen shots).
Here's a site with differing opinions on the issue as well (so, it's not just you and I). The article writer agrees with you, the commenters seem somewhat mixed in their opinions (and discuss more than just Flock and FF... such as IE, ClearType, Safari, etc).
Why is Firefox 3 Font Rendering Just Sucky Compared to Flock?
I'm not sure (hence I am asking), but what does Firefox use for font rendering on:
-Windows
-Linux
-MacOSX
Just asking because FF3 uses Cairo on eComStation for rendering... and while the rendering isn't quite as pretty as FF2 using Innotek Font Engine under eComStation, it's still better than IE renders on Windows.
Also, I think there are settings someplace that can control how it aa's the text... but again, that may not apply to versions on other operating systems.
One thing I have noticed is that Cairo's font rendering isn't as "overall pretty" as FF2 with IFE... but it is more readable. IFE, on all but the lowest settings blurred the fonts too much, as Windows on most of it's settings do. That especially (or mostly) applies to small text... but that is mostly what I use.
Maybe that's what you see as "sucks"? I prefer the text a little less anti-aliased to make the smaller fonts more readable - it especially helps where sites select font sizes using CSS, and the browser's minimum font size is set really low (which I do, to allow a site to render how it wants).
Suffolk county. It's all public record.
And Upper Westchester, which started with higher value houses, isnt a good comparison to the type of housing in Suffolk County. I know... I lived there too when I went to Iona 22 years ago...
And keep in mind, though I agree with you on the cost of building part, it's more than just what it costs to build a house (though that is part of it). I know. I used to work in construction when I decided (or thought I did) that I had had enough with computers. Years in construction... business and residential.
Here's the part I dont understand. I simply said house values have went up at a far greater rate than wages - and were not a "what the economy can support" thing. and you agreed - yet you want me to cite sources for a very obvious, self-evident statement - that you agree with?
The value of a house is not set by "what tyhe market will bear" but by "what it costs to build a similar house in labor and materials in a similar location."
I dont understand. All I did was refute the earlier poster's claim that house prices are set by what the market can bear, and gave examples to point out he was wrong - I didnt give a reason why house prices were so high - just said his reason was wrong. You agree and provide a reason, but want me to cite facts... of what?
I kinda think you are glomming my post together with someone else's and responding to the wrong one since we are in agreement...