I believe it ships with 2000, it's certainly in XP. Updated versions of it are available through Windows Update, although most packages will work fine with older versions of msiexec.
I'm curious: Operating on the assumption that you've at least tried Linux, do you bitch about.deb/.rpm/.tgz (with install scripts) too? All of these serve essentially the same purposes as.msi:
Dependency checking ("You need to have.NET 3.5 before installing this, let me grab that for you"). Installation tracking and easy repair installations or un-installs. A built-in way to distribute a package or update across many machines. A standard way of packing multiple files (msi packages can in fact be extracted; the tool to do it is called msiexec - the same one used to install or un-install them, behind the scenes - and ships with all recent versions of Windows). The ability to execute commands necessary to finalize the install (like editing environment variables).
If you want to install it manually, that is possible... but far more likely to screw something up than just using the package the way its packager intended you do.
A method to upgrade to release without having to completely reinstall would be nice, but they've never done that in the past and I wouldn't expect to see it done this time, either.
At least some pre-releases of Vista (RC1, build 5600, for sure... I think RC2, 5744, as well, though I never tried) could be upgraded directly to RTM, in place, without reinstalling your software. I did a clean install anyhow (I always do) but it was possible.
Back when the RCs came out, MS made a substantial point of saying that you might need to reinstall completely... just like they are now. It remains to be seen whether or not they will permit in-place upgrade from RC, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least. It's logical, and it wouldn't be the first time. In the meanwhile, they're covering their asses by pointing out that there is no guarantee of an in-place upgrade option.
You speak as though "RC build" is some kind of code module they can remove. While that is true of the "time bomb" (which Microsoft has put in their pre-release software for years) the rest of the system is also in a pre-release state, with bugs that have since been fixed, default behaviors changed, UIs that were updated after usability tests showed an improvement, etc. Upgrading all of that, in place, is exactly like a service pack.
Of course, that hardly means it's impossible; quite the opposite, in fact. Vista's own public pre-release cycle (Beta2->RC1->RC2->RTM) were in-place upgradable every step. MS warned that RC2 might not be upgradable on release, but they actually included that warning on *every* pre-release; it's standard. Now, maybe MS has decided that for whatever reason they won't permit upgrading in place from RC to RTM, but I'll wait and see. As for the license, that's up to you; switching to a lower edition (if you don't want to buy Ultimate, but still want to in-place upgrade) would just turn off the features your new edition lacks back in the Vista days, and it seems reasonable they would keep this model.
Vista allows you to change CD Keys even after installing; it will unlock the edition features depending on the key (for example, if the original key was Business but you want Media Center too, you can acquire an Ultimate key and enter it using the computer properties window. After a reboot, you'll have all the Ultimate features, including Media Center, enabled.
However, that's not really what this is about. The reason the above works is that all editions of Vista (except things like Enterprise) are binary-identical. An RC is not identical to the release version. If you have a release key, you obviously have a release version; from Microsoft's perspective you really should use that release version rather than the RC.
What would surprise me is if they actually end up not letting you do an in-place upgrade from RC to RTM. Vista certainly permitted it during its own Beta-RC-RTM cycle, and it should be much easier than upgrading from one version to another (such as XP-Vista); it's really more like a service pack.
I'm sorry, but you've made some assumptions that just aren't true.
First and foremost (since you seem to think it matters for some reason) my username is actually a fairly standard short form of my real, legal birth name. Personally, I think it's an awesome name for the industry I'm in, but that's purely coincidence. The only time that it bothers me is when some idiot online thinks I'll teach him to crack bank websites (or, more often, Facebook profiles) or some such shit because my name has "Hacking" in it.
That your mom could jailbreak an iPhone is quite possible, but she would run the risk of an update bricking it, and I doubt she knows enough to determine the risks correctly and take appropriate steps.
On the other hand, my mostly technically illiterate mother does, in fact, use a 3G modem. With a computer, to do things like Skype me (she's overseas, and yes I know that the iPhone finally has Skype, but on a real computer you can actually use the computer while you talk, too) or upload photos (she used to be a professional photographer, and wouldn't be caught dead with the kind of camera the iPhone has) to our website, or to the people who occasionally purchase them. In short, even computer-illiterate people have use for a device which connects a real computer over a 3G modem.
Supported iPhone tethering with 3.0 would be great. I'm not holding my breath, though; these things are out now. The modem my parents use (which doesn't work as a WiFi access point, which would be convenient since they have two laptops - I showed them how to share a connection, but it's less convenient) has been in use since the iPhone first existed. Good for Apple if they got AT&T to accept tethering, though.
My apologies if you were bothered enough by what I wrote that you had to resort to personal attacks and wild assumptions such as that I am an "Apple Hater" (I'm no fan of them, but they make some slick hardware and some great software - it's more a matter of philosophical difference). I was merely pointing out that BitZtream's post was missing the point; until the iPhone does tethering out of the box and in a supported fashion, it does not actually take the place of this little device for the general public of people ho want Internet access on a real computer without being limited to WiFi hotpots.
I'm actually in a similar position (about to graduate in CSE, deciding where to go next). I probably have a job lined up, thanks to an internship program that I've been in, but in this economy you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch. On the other hand, universities are also raising tuition and cutting back on incoming class sizes, so a good grad school isn't guaranteed either. Consider the pros and cons of each, though:
The advantages of working are substantial - you get an income, real work experience (different from classroom experience to be sure), networking for future jobs, and corporate seniority (useful for promotions, or for resume building for later jobs).
However, most people don't get to really experiment and push themselves the way they want to in the workplace - to do that, you either need to be in research (meaning you already have a graduate degree), highly placed within a successful company (you're not, I take it), or an entrepreneur with cash to burn (see above comment). Work is mostly doing stuff that other people want you to do. You may (hopefully do) enjoy the work, and you will probably learn from it, but you have fairly limited control over your own path within any given company.
Grad school allows you to explore the topics that interest you most. Take a few advanced courses, then do some research. Become an authority in a specific topic, or know enough to tackle anything in a given subfield. As for money, you won't earn much while in school that doesn't go into student expenses, but you can probably support living and tuition by working as a TA and/or getting a research stipend. After you graduate you can get a substantially better salary.
Don't forget internships, either. They carry many of the benefits of starting a career (CSE internships pay better than many full-time jobs, if you haven't learned that already), while still letting you carry on your studies and/or research the rest of the year. They can be hard to get in a down economy, but if you can, grad school plus internships give the best of both worlds. You'll have knowledge, experience, money, career options, high employability, and the chance to do whatever you really want.
Take a look at Nokia's devices. Some of them run a modified Debian OS, including apt (and graphical front-end, although xterm and sudo are also provided). You can cross-compile to ARM, download the.deb using the browser, and install. You could host a repository, set the package manager to use that repo, and install that way. Or you could install the build toolchain, download and unpack the tarball, and compile/install in place.
Not *every* package is available, but a good number are. Things from Pidgin to AdBlock Plus (for the included browser; you can install other browsers including full Firefox if you want).
Some of Nokia's devices use a modified Debian (compiled for ARM, with a window manager intended for small screens) that includes apt (with a graphical front-end) and can run the build toolchain. While the selection of pre-compiled apps is certainly not as good as desktop Linux, a surprising number of them are available, including some that I've seen on no other smartphone/PDA (try AdBlock Plus, full Adobe Flash with desktop-like-capabilities, Pidgin, etc.) For anything not yet ported, you can cross-compile (and put up your own.deb or even repository online) or simply install the build toolchain, extract the tarball, and compile in place (no jailbreaking required - it comes with xterm and the ability to gain root, although by default stuff runs as user like it should). There is no lack of good software for mobile devices; the iPhone just makes a big deal out of it (and restricts you in ridiculous ways, like forcing you to use WebKit).
I used to take my 17" laptop to class. My backpack has a carry slot large enough for it (and no, the backpack isn't giant - I just can't canny much else if I put the laptop in there) and while I would take the power brick, it was rarely needed so long as I charged at least once per day - on low-power mode I could get 3+ hours easily when the battery was new. It was large, but if there wasn't desk space I just put it on my lap; it was never too big. I wasn't the only person with a laptop that big, either. As for weight, it actually weighed less than the textbooks and notebooks I might have otherwise been carrying (which are usually not needed with the laptop and wifi).
These days, that laptop rarely leaves my desk at home (I'm typing on it now) - partially because the battery doesn't last as long anymore, but mostly because I got a 12.1" tablet PC. While not technically a netbook, it's better by far for class - lighter weight, more battery life, and I can use the stylus to draw diagrams in my notes. Having the tablet, I don't need a netbook (although it would have cost a lot less). That said, if I had to, I could go back to using the 17" without a problem - they're big, but they're still portable.
The US makes up for* the fact that our land-lines are flat-rate unlimited** by charging you through the nose for mobile data. It's annoying***, but there it is.
* I have no idea if these are actually connected, but they could well be. ** Unlimited until you go over some secret limit and get cut off entirely... but up to that limit the cost never changes. *** The US Internet infrastructure is starting to look positively backward. We're behind other developed countries on wired bandwidth penetration, and the third world is kicking our ass on wireless connectivity.
Re:I already have one, its called an iPhone ...
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So, how well does your iPhone share out that connection to a real computer (you know, what the whole point of this little device is)? Oh wait, Apple doesn't allow tethering apps? Hmm, sorry, I think you don't quite get it. There are LOTS of Internet-capable handheld devices out there (some much more-so than the iPhone, thanks to having Flash and the option to install your own browser/mail client/whatever). The iPhone is a neat device, but until you can link it with a PC and share the wide-area connection (without jailbreaking, that is), it won't do what people buy these things for.
DOSBOX. Full CPU virtualization with hardware emulation. NTVDM (NT's Virtual DOS Machine, used to run 16-bit apps on 32-bit NT) is not an emulator; it can use 16-bit modes supported by the CPU when the CPU will permit those modes to be used, but it doesn't actually emulate a processor the way DOSBOX will. It does provide virtual hardware and DOS libraries, but that's it.
Warp time to Vulcan did come as a shock. Vulcan is obviously at least a few light years away, and the Federation of this time would presumably have been using TOS warp factor scales... meaning that it just doesn't add up.
Transporting to/between ships in warp is possible in the later series (post TOS, as the movie implis it would be) but range still seems to be limited to roughly a few light seconds (perhaps the distance to the moon from Earth) which would make it difficult to catch a ship warping out of a system.
Actually, they made fairly little of the time travel in this movie. Basically, once Spock provided some fairly reasonable evidence of his claim, it was accepted. Contrast with Enterprises's first time-travel episode, in this T'Pol says something like "The Vulcan Science Academy has determined that time travel is impossible" several times before even considering the possibility.
The amount of plumbing looks pretty much like that of (US) Navy ships I've toured, minus the turbine scene. Plumbing has to run all over, and it is not in a warship's best interest to have said plumbing hard to repair.
I don't recall the canyon being particularly "Grand" but maybe I just didn't actually read the sign.
One assumes Nero's ship simply knocked out any real defense. Anything that could take out that many StarFleet ships (or Klingon birds of prey) can probably knock out fixed defenses or warplanes, assuming the Vulcans even have the latter anymore.
I don't rmemeber the marksmanship being bad. In fact, it was amazing; they were using phasers to shoot down missiles. I seem to recall that Kirk's father's ship actually had what appeared to be be point-defense turrets (perhaps missiles were more commonly used back then? They moved a LOT slower than a photon torpedo). When actually attacking the enemy ship, most if not all the beams hit, although they did little enough damage (consider the shielding Nero's ship probably had, to go along with those weapons, and I bet you can guess why). The only evasive maneuvers that proved effective were by Spock's tiny, highly agile, and 13 decades more advanced shuttle. As for beaming somebody up, that's actually relatively simple by comparison - he's falling through a gravitational field; acceleration and terminal velocity (for a given body position) are known.
You have a point about Kirk's attitude, perhaps. I'm not military, so I won't touch that one.
The point of Kirk's father's sacrifice was to disable the enemy ship long enough for the shuttles to escape. Since it appears to be drifting without power immediately afterward, this was probably achieved. The shuttles probably weren't warp-capable, but somebody else in the vicinity would.
The time travel looked reasonable to me, as a plot device to introduce an alternate timeline. None of that was new to Trek. It wasn't used repeatedly either; it happens at the start of the movie, and establishes the setting.
I would love to see a David Weber SF movie, but there is more to good sci-fi than pleasing those voices who loudly proclaim "the military doesn't work like that!"
Chekov is 17, Kirk is 25. These are the *only* established ages in the movie. Uhura is close in age to Kirk, Scotty is older than Kirk, Bones is even older (middle-aged to Kirk's clear youth). Sulu is young, but of an age to be an Academy graduate - probably between Checkov and Kirk somewhere. Spock is clearly older - how much so is hard to say, not least because Vulcans don't appear to age like humans do - but he is a commander when (this universe's) Kirk is taking the Kobayashi Maru.
I suspect that the mission was largely supposed to be a training exercise / final exam (midshipman cruise). There were definitely experienced crew on board, but most of them don't last - Spock breaks down, Pike is taken captive, the doctor is killed by weapons fire, the engineer dies at Vulcan, communications doesn't speak Romulan, etc. Yes, there should be a lot of other experienced crew, but look at the people on board - there aren't a lot of rank insignia ANYWHERE. Unlikely though that is, it does explain how Kirk has a shot at ending up where he does.
64-bit Windows does not include the NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine) that 32-bit versions of NT (including Vista and Win7) use for 16-bit code. The technical reason has to do with the way that the processor switches modes; jumping straight from 64-bit to 16-bit isn't possible, at least not the way processor modes are used in Windows.
Note that 64-bit -> 32-bit -> 16-bit still works. Virtualized x86 editions of Windows still have the NTVDM and can use it, including all the standard utilities (command.com, edit.exe, debug.exe, and all the rest) even if the virtualization host is 64-bit. DOSBOX also works.
If you compile Wine for x64 Windows binaries, I don't believe you can run 16-bit applications. I remember seeing a changelog a while back that said something about explicitly disabling the 16-bit stuff in 64-bit because it didn't work. I may be wrong, or it may have been temporary anyhow, but that is my recollection.
Running the 32-bit version of Wine (32-bit clients, not the wine binary itself) on 64-bit does indeed permit running 16-bit apps, however.
Could you please point me at the HP or Apple laptop that comes with ATi RadeonHD 3870 x2 graphics (yes, 2 GPUs)? I'm not aware of any, certainly not for under 2 grand (you have to cut the rest of the specs kind of low, but you can get it for that price in an Alienware laptop, brand new).
Are there any decent 17" Lenovo laptops with *real* GPUs yet? The main selling point of Alienware isn't the look or the name, it's the graphics - you can get dual (SLI or CrossFireX) high-end cards, good processors, and even RAID-0 hard drives, in a 17" laptop, for about $2000. I don't know of any other vendor offering that - Toshiba tries but their machines are far more expensive.
No, I've never bought from them - I don't have $2k for a new laptop and a really top-of-the-line graphics solution isn't necessary - but their specs to price ratios are actually surprisingly good. I know nothing about their customer service quality, however.
Thanks for the history. After two years, I still didn't (and probably don't quite) know the full details of that event. I did hear that BoB captured a supply of blueprints from an enemy industrial, which had a total value well above what they got from T20, but that was just from shooting the breeze in corp chat.
As for the CSM's changes, I agree that attribute remap is pretty sweet - long ago I put entirely too much into Pereption (starting as a Brutor no less - already had the highest Per and lowest Cha at the time) and while it got me into some shiny ships early on, there's a lot of stuff I don't do very well because my attributes made the training take too long.
On the flip side, I actually do find the skill queue quite useful. Now that I have the main skills I use on a regular basis at max or close, it's nice to be able to train a 14-hour lev3 in something I'd like to try someday, then follow it in queue with a 3-week lev5. Normally I'd have ignored the lev3 because it would be too much hassle.
You realize that Linux is just as capable of writing to the MBR and modifying binaries, right? The difference is that historically speaking, a larce percentage of Windows users do everything as Administrator, while a small percentage of Linux users do everything as root. Use XP (or 2000, or NT 4 for all I care) under a standard user account, *or* install Vista or Win7 (and don't disable UAC, and actually read the prompts), and you will be just as protected as Linux users. The attack vectors used by Torpig are nothing Windows-specific from what I've heard, it's simply that Windows users don't have any concept of the principle of least privilieges. That's not really Microsoft's fault, expecially not since Vista.
If it's GPL, or probably even LGPL, they'd need to clean-room engineer it for compatibility with their licensing. They could do that, but it's a lot of man-hours.
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If your PDF reader can't do fast searches or bookmark specific sections, time to upgrade to one that doesn't utterly suck...
I believe it ships with 2000, it's certainly in XP. Updated versions of it are available through Windows Update, although most packages will work fine with older versions of msiexec.
I'm curious: Operating on the assumption that you've at least tried Linux, do you bitch about .deb/.rpm/.tgz (with install scripts) too? All of these serve essentially the same purposes as .msi:
Dependency checking ("You need to have .NET 3.5 before installing this, let me grab that for you").
Installation tracking and easy repair installations or un-installs.
A built-in way to distribute a package or update across many machines.
A standard way of packing multiple files (msi packages can in fact be extracted; the tool to do it is called msiexec - the same one used to install or un-install them, behind the scenes - and ships with all recent versions of Windows).
The ability to execute commands necessary to finalize the install (like editing environment variables).
If you want to install it manually, that is possible... but far more likely to screw something up than just using the package the way its packager intended you do.
You're exactly correct up to this line:
At least some pre-releases of Vista (RC1, build 5600, for sure... I think RC2, 5744, as well, though I never tried) could be upgraded directly to RTM, in place, without reinstalling your software. I did a clean install anyhow (I always do) but it was possible.
Back when the RCs came out, MS made a substantial point of saying that you might need to reinstall completely... just like they are now. It remains to be seen whether or not they will permit in-place upgrade from RC, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least. It's logical, and it wouldn't be the first time. In the meanwhile, they're covering their asses by pointing out that there is no guarantee of an in-place upgrade option.
You speak as though "RC build" is some kind of code module they can remove. While that is true of the "time bomb" (which Microsoft has put in their pre-release software for years) the rest of the system is also in a pre-release state, with bugs that have since been fixed, default behaviors changed, UIs that were updated after usability tests showed an improvement, etc. Upgrading all of that, in place, is exactly like a service pack.
Of course, that hardly means it's impossible; quite the opposite, in fact. Vista's own public pre-release cycle (Beta2->RC1->RC2->RTM) were in-place upgradable every step. MS warned that RC2 might not be upgradable on release, but they actually included that warning on *every* pre-release; it's standard. Now, maybe MS has decided that for whatever reason they won't permit upgrading in place from RC to RTM, but I'll wait and see. As for the license, that's up to you; switching to a lower edition (if you don't want to buy Ultimate, but still want to in-place upgrade) would just turn off the features your new edition lacks back in the Vista days, and it seems reasonable they would keep this model.
Vista allows you to change CD Keys even after installing; it will unlock the edition features depending on the key (for example, if the original key was Business but you want Media Center too, you can acquire an Ultimate key and enter it using the computer properties window. After a reboot, you'll have all the Ultimate features, including Media Center, enabled.
However, that's not really what this is about. The reason the above works is that all editions of Vista (except things like Enterprise) are binary-identical. An RC is not identical to the release version. If you have a release key, you obviously have a release version; from Microsoft's perspective you really should use that release version rather than the RC.
What would surprise me is if they actually end up not letting you do an in-place upgrade from RC to RTM. Vista certainly permitted it during its own Beta-RC-RTM cycle, and it should be much easier than upgrading from one version to another (such as XP-Vista); it's really more like a service pack.
I'm sorry, but you've made some assumptions that just aren't true.
First and foremost (since you seem to think it matters for some reason) my username is actually a fairly standard short form of my real, legal birth name. Personally, I think it's an awesome name for the industry I'm in, but that's purely coincidence. The only time that it bothers me is when some idiot online thinks I'll teach him to crack bank websites (or, more often, Facebook profiles) or some such shit because my name has "Hacking" in it.
That your mom could jailbreak an iPhone is quite possible, but she would run the risk of an update bricking it, and I doubt she knows enough to determine the risks correctly and take appropriate steps.
On the other hand, my mostly technically illiterate mother does, in fact, use a 3G modem. With a computer, to do things like Skype me (she's overseas, and yes I know that the iPhone finally has Skype, but on a real computer you can actually use the computer while you talk, too) or upload photos (she used to be a professional photographer, and wouldn't be caught dead with the kind of camera the iPhone has) to our website, or to the people who occasionally purchase them. In short, even computer-illiterate people have use for a device which connects a real computer over a 3G modem.
Supported iPhone tethering with 3.0 would be great. I'm not holding my breath, though; these things are out now. The modem my parents use (which doesn't work as a WiFi access point, which would be convenient since they have two laptops - I showed them how to share a connection, but it's less convenient) has been in use since the iPhone first existed. Good for Apple if they got AT&T to accept tethering, though.
My apologies if you were bothered enough by what I wrote that you had to resort to personal attacks and wild assumptions such as that I am an "Apple Hater" (I'm no fan of them, but they make some slick hardware and some great software - it's more a matter of philosophical difference). I was merely pointing out that BitZtream's post was missing the point; until the iPhone does tethering out of the box and in a supported fashion, it does not actually take the place of this little device for the general public of people ho want Internet access on a real computer without being limited to WiFi hotpots.
I'm actually in a similar position (about to graduate in CSE, deciding where to go next). I probably have a job lined up, thanks to an internship program that I've been in, but in this economy you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch. On the other hand, universities are also raising tuition and cutting back on incoming class sizes, so a good grad school isn't guaranteed either. Consider the pros and cons of each, though:
The advantages of working are substantial - you get an income, real work experience (different from classroom experience to be sure), networking for future jobs, and corporate seniority (useful for promotions, or for resume building for later jobs).
However, most people don't get to really experiment and push themselves the way they want to in the workplace - to do that, you either need to be in research (meaning you already have a graduate degree), highly placed within a successful company (you're not, I take it), or an entrepreneur with cash to burn (see above comment). Work is mostly doing stuff that other people want you to do. You may (hopefully do) enjoy the work, and you will probably learn from it, but you have fairly limited control over your own path within any given company.
Grad school allows you to explore the topics that interest you most. Take a few advanced courses, then do some research. Become an authority in a specific topic, or know enough to tackle anything in a given subfield. As for money, you won't earn much while in school that doesn't go into student expenses, but you can probably support living and tuition by working as a TA and/or getting a research stipend. After you graduate you can get a substantially better salary.
Don't forget internships, either. They carry many of the benefits of starting a career (CSE internships pay better than many full-time jobs, if you haven't learned that already), while still letting you carry on your studies and/or research the rest of the year. They can be hard to get in a down economy, but if you can, grad school plus internships give the best of both worlds. You'll have knowledge, experience, money, career options, high employability, and the chance to do whatever you really want.
Take a look at Nokia's devices. Some of them run a modified Debian OS, including apt (and graphical front-end, although xterm and sudo are also provided). You can cross-compile to ARM, download the .deb using the browser, and install. You could host a repository, set the package manager to use that repo, and install that way. Or you could install the build toolchain, download and unpack the tarball, and compile/install in place.
Not *every* package is available, but a good number are. Things from Pidgin to AdBlock Plus (for the included browser; you can install other browsers including full Firefox if you want).
Some of Nokia's devices use a modified Debian (compiled for ARM, with a window manager intended for small screens) that includes apt (with a graphical front-end) and can run the build toolchain. While the selection of pre-compiled apps is certainly not as good as desktop Linux, a surprising number of them are available, including some that I've seen on no other smartphone/PDA (try AdBlock Plus, full Adobe Flash with desktop-like-capabilities, Pidgin, etc.) For anything not yet ported, you can cross-compile (and put up your own .deb or even repository online) or simply install the build toolchain, extract the tarball, and compile in place (no jailbreaking required - it comes with xterm and the ability to gain root, although by default stuff runs as user like it should). There is no lack of good software for mobile devices; the iPhone just makes a big deal out of it (and restricts you in ridiculous ways, like forcing you to use WebKit).
I used to take my 17" laptop to class. My backpack has a carry slot large enough for it (and no, the backpack isn't giant - I just can't canny much else if I put the laptop in there) and while I would take the power brick, it was rarely needed so long as I charged at least once per day - on low-power mode I could get 3+ hours easily when the battery was new. It was large, but if there wasn't desk space I just put it on my lap; it was never too big. I wasn't the only person with a laptop that big, either. As for weight, it actually weighed less than the textbooks and notebooks I might have otherwise been carrying (which are usually not needed with the laptop and wifi).
These days, that laptop rarely leaves my desk at home (I'm typing on it now) - partially because the battery doesn't last as long anymore, but mostly because I got a 12.1" tablet PC. While not technically a netbook, it's better by far for class - lighter weight, more battery life, and I can use the stylus to draw diagrams in my notes. Having the tablet, I don't need a netbook (although it would have cost a lot less). That said, if I had to, I could go back to using the 17" without a problem - they're big, but they're still portable.
The US makes up for* the fact that our land-lines are flat-rate unlimited** by charging you through the nose for mobile data. It's annoying***, but there it is.
* I have no idea if these are actually connected, but they could well be.
** Unlimited until you go over some secret limit and get cut off entirely... but up to that limit the cost never changes.
*** The US Internet infrastructure is starting to look positively backward. We're behind other developed countries on wired bandwidth penetration, and the third world is kicking our ass on wireless connectivity.
So, how well does your iPhone share out that connection to a real computer (you know, what the whole point of this little device is)? Oh wait, Apple doesn't allow tethering apps? Hmm, sorry, I think you don't quite get it. There are LOTS of Internet-capable handheld devices out there (some much more-so than the iPhone, thanks to having Flash and the option to install your own browser/mail client/whatever). The iPhone is a neat device, but until you can link it with a PC and share the wide-area connection (without jailbreaking, that is), it won't do what people buy these things for.
DOSBOX. Full CPU virtualization with hardware emulation. NTVDM (NT's Virtual DOS Machine, used to run 16-bit apps on 32-bit NT) is not an emulator; it can use 16-bit modes supported by the CPU when the CPU will permit those modes to be used, but it doesn't actually emulate a processor the way DOSBOX will. It does provide virtual hardware and DOS libraries, but that's it.
Warp time to Vulcan did come as a shock. Vulcan is obviously at least a few light years away, and the Federation of this time would presumably have been using TOS warp factor scales... meaning that it just doesn't add up.
Transporting to/between ships in warp is possible in the later series (post TOS, as the movie implis it would be) but range still seems to be limited to roughly a few light seconds (perhaps the distance to the moon from Earth) which would make it difficult to catch a ship warping out of a system.
Actually, they made fairly little of the time travel in this movie. Basically, once Spock provided some fairly reasonable evidence of his claim, it was accepted. Contrast with Enterprises's first time-travel episode, in this T'Pol says something like "The Vulcan Science Academy has determined that time travel is impossible" several times before even considering the possibility.
The amount of plumbing looks pretty much like that of (US) Navy ships I've toured, minus the turbine scene. Plumbing has to run all over, and it is not in a warship's best interest to have said plumbing hard to repair.
I don't recall the canyon being particularly "Grand" but maybe I just didn't actually read the sign.
One assumes Nero's ship simply knocked out any real defense. Anything that could take out that many StarFleet ships (or Klingon birds of prey) can probably knock out fixed defenses or warplanes, assuming the Vulcans even have the latter anymore.
I don't rmemeber the marksmanship being bad. In fact, it was amazing; they were using phasers to shoot down missiles. I seem to recall that Kirk's father's ship actually had what appeared to be be point-defense turrets (perhaps missiles were more commonly used back then? They moved a LOT slower than a photon torpedo). When actually attacking the enemy ship, most if not all the beams hit, although they did little enough damage (consider the shielding Nero's ship probably had, to go along with those weapons, and I bet you can guess why). The only evasive maneuvers that proved effective were by Spock's tiny, highly agile, and 13 decades more advanced shuttle. As for beaming somebody up, that's actually relatively simple by comparison - he's falling through a gravitational field; acceleration and terminal velocity (for a given body position) are known.
You have a point about Kirk's attitude, perhaps. I'm not military, so I won't touch that one.
The point of Kirk's father's sacrifice was to disable the enemy ship long enough for the shuttles to escape. Since it appears to be drifting without power immediately afterward, this was probably achieved. The shuttles probably weren't warp-capable, but somebody else in the vicinity would.
The time travel looked reasonable to me, as a plot device to introduce an alternate timeline. None of that was new to Trek. It wasn't used repeatedly either; it happens at the start of the movie, and establishes the setting.
I would love to see a David Weber SF movie, but there is more to good sci-fi than pleasing those voices who loudly proclaim "the military doesn't work like that!"
Chekov is 17, Kirk is 25. These are the *only* established ages in the movie. Uhura is close in age to Kirk, Scotty is older than Kirk, Bones is even older (middle-aged to Kirk's clear youth). Sulu is young, but of an age to be an Academy graduate - probably between Checkov and Kirk somewhere. Spock is clearly older - how much so is hard to say, not least because Vulcans don't appear to age like humans do - but he is a commander when (this universe's) Kirk is taking the Kobayashi Maru.
I suspect that the mission was largely supposed to be a training exercise / final exam (midshipman cruise). There were definitely experienced crew on board, but most of them don't last - Spock breaks down, Pike is taken captive, the doctor is killed by weapons fire, the engineer dies at Vulcan, communications doesn't speak Romulan, etc. Yes, there should be a lot of other experienced crew, but look at the people on board - there aren't a lot of rank insignia ANYWHERE. Unlikely though that is, it does explain how Kirk has a shot at ending up where he does.
64-bit Windows does not include the NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine) that 32-bit versions of NT (including Vista and Win7) use for 16-bit code. The technical reason has to do with the way that the processor switches modes; jumping straight from 64-bit to 16-bit isn't possible, at least not the way processor modes are used in Windows.
Note that 64-bit -> 32-bit -> 16-bit still works. Virtualized x86 editions of Windows still have the NTVDM and can use it, including all the standard utilities (command.com, edit.exe, debug.exe, and all the rest) even if the virtualization host is 64-bit. DOSBOX also works.
If you compile Wine for x64 Windows binaries, I don't believe you can run 16-bit applications. I remember seeing a changelog a while back that said something about explicitly disabling the 16-bit stuff in 64-bit because it didn't work. I may be wrong, or it may have been temporary anyhow, but that is my recollection.
Running the 32-bit version of Wine (32-bit clients, not the wine binary itself) on 64-bit does indeed permit running 16-bit apps, however.
Could you please point me at the HP or Apple laptop that comes with ATi RadeonHD 3870 x2 graphics (yes, 2 GPUs)? I'm not aware of any, certainly not for under 2 grand (you have to cut the rest of the specs kind of low, but you can get it for that price in an Alienware laptop, brand new).
Are there any decent 17" Lenovo laptops with *real* GPUs yet? The main selling point of Alienware isn't the look or the name, it's the graphics - you can get dual (SLI or CrossFireX) high-end cards, good processors, and even RAID-0 hard drives, in a 17" laptop, for about $2000. I don't know of any other vendor offering that - Toshiba tries but their machines are far more expensive.
No, I've never bought from them - I don't have $2k for a new laptop and a really top-of-the-line graphics solution isn't necessary - but their specs to price ratios are actually surprisingly good. I know nothing about their customer service quality, however.
Thanks for the history. After two years, I still didn't (and probably don't quite) know the full details of that event. I did hear that BoB captured a supply of blueprints from an enemy industrial, which had a total value well above what they got from T20, but that was just from shooting the breeze in corp chat.
As for the CSM's changes, I agree that attribute remap is pretty sweet - long ago I put entirely too much into Pereption (starting as a Brutor no less - already had the highest Per and lowest Cha at the time) and while it got me into some shiny ships early on, there's a lot of stuff I don't do very well because my attributes made the training take too long.
On the flip side, I actually do find the skill queue quite useful. Now that I have the main skills I use on a regular basis at max or close, it's nice to be able to train a 14-hour lev3 in something I'd like to try someday, then follow it in queue with a 3-week lev5. Normally I'd have ignored the lev3 because it would be too much hassle.
You realize that Linux is just as capable of writing to the MBR and modifying binaries, right? The difference is that historically speaking, a larce percentage of Windows users do everything as Administrator, while a small percentage of Linux users do everything as root. Use XP (or 2000, or NT 4 for all I care) under a standard user account, *or* install Vista or Win7 (and don't disable UAC, and actually read the prompts), and you will be just as protected as Linux users. The attack vectors used by Torpig are nothing Windows-specific from what I've heard, it's simply that Windows users don't have any concept of the principle of least privilieges. That's not really Microsoft's fault, expecially not since Vista.
If it's GPL, or probably even LGPL, they'd need to clean-room engineer it for compatibility with their licensing. They could do that, but it's a lot of man-hours.