Depends on the hardware manufacturer... I have first hand experience with Dell and IBM laptops in recent history... it's a world of difference!
IMHO The Dell crapware that comes on their PC's and notebooks is really absolutely worthless and annoying... I always reformat with a clean (non-dell), XP cd, and install all of the drivers manually.
On the other hand the stuff that comes with IBM thinkpads is pure gold. I just got an IBM off lease thinkpad with a blank HD. I installed Windows XP, and then voluntarily installed all of the thinkpad utilities... First off, if you install the system update utility, it will install all of the drivers and even upgrade all of the firmware on the machine automatically!! Just run it after the windows install finishes and walk away for a few minutes. The wireless tools/network profiles are absolutely brilliant, the presentation director is phenomenal, and the power management tools actually make sense. Color me impressed, but IBM took some of the most obtuse and obtrusive things in windows and smoothed them out perfectly!
I am one of these people that have traditionally eagerly installed the latest and greatest in microsoft software when I get a new machine. This has held true for everything from DOS 3 to Windows XP. I have never chosen an older product over a newer one. There was always either a compelling reason to upgrade, or at the very least, the upgrade didn't cost you anything.
I got a new off lease IBM thinkpad with a blank HD a week ago, and even though I have copies of both Office 2007 and Windows Vista on DVD, I STILL installed Windows XP and Office 2003. The reason is that after actually trying both, I KNOW that I am actually MUCH better off with XP and Office 2003!
Yet every time I see a new Google product, without fail, I see myself thinking "wow, this really interesting and useful." (case and point, one of my friends was using Google's online spreadsheets to collaborate with me on a quick calculation last week, and it worked much more seamlessly than I could have ever imagined from an online app. Despite its relative simplicity, it far exceeded the capabilities of Excel for our purposes! I was REALLY impressed)
IMHO, Microsoft is feeling (and acting) threatened. They know that their inertia will only let them coast for a little while before some younger and more innovative company takes them down a peg or two.
They are NOT doing exactly what the parent proposed... Nowhere near the same scale (they mount it on a 747 for a reason). So before you go mouthing off any more, I should point out that Boeing very actively recruits people from my PhD program to work on things like the ABL. A long range ground based laser anti ballistic missile defense system is still very much scifi.
The laser power requirements for his proposal are easily orders of magnitude beyond what we can currently do. On top of that in order to create and maintain a focused spot on a ballistic missile, you would require wavefront sensing that is well beyond our current capabilities and a multi conjugate adaptive optics system capable of operating at these powers (even more impossible with any current technology).
I'll bite back...
Now, ask yourself: how much math beyond algebra do most HS students need? Likewise for physics. Critical thinking skills are taught in history classes; effective communication in English. Foreign language courses are in themselves valuable. I totally disagree... To be successful in 99.9% of history classes you have to be good at two things. Memorizing and writing down what you've memorized. If you gave your average student a copy of their textbook and unlimited time to flip through the pages they would ace a typical history exam a 100% of the time.
On the other hand, physics, math, and all of the other hard sciences are ENTIRELY about critical thinking. Newton's equations of motion can be memorized by any history major, but are still completely worthless in the hands of a moron.
You can put a dollar value on all these things, and if you did, you'd probably find out that, per student hour in the classroom, "soft skills" make more of a difference than the hard sciences. What are you smoking? What exactly is the dollar value of a history major vs. someone with a background in aeronautical engineering, optics, biochemistry, etc. Preservation and analysis of history is invaluable to society, but Historians are fundamentally limited in utility and earning potential, as they are only good for teaching other history majors and filling libraries with books (to be read by future history majors).
Your case may be exceptional, but it's not reflective of the reality the rest of the world lives in. Most of my high school and college friends that ascribed to this "soft skill" mantra are now living in their parent's basements, working at blockbuster, and frequenting the unemployment office. The people getting PhD's from my "hard science" program are in such unbelievable demand that private companies are dropping millions in cash contributions to my university just for the opportunity to look at my resume before their competition.
RE:>I think there is a fundamental flaw in your reasoning. On the surface your argument sounds solid, but you have not taken into account the devastation the 99% of flawed mutations has taken on the remaining population...
NO NO NO NO!!!
If you go back to the authors original argument you will see that you STILL missed the natural selection part... In modern society, your mutation does not make you any MORE likely to reproduce than the general public, therefore you are not increasing entropy but rather in a steady state with respect to the un-mutated population.
If instead you had a genetic disorder that made you : - Allergic to latex - resistant to contemporary birth control drugs - Die at a very early age - Mentally handicapped etc. etc.
You would on average create more/less offspring than your counterparts. Even if this is only a minor effect, it is absurdly amplified over the course of several hundreds of generations.
ONLY genetic factors that make you MORE/LESS likely to reproduce or survive to reproduce have a net effect.
To the parent, there's a reason for Verizon's numbers looking so good...
I hate the crippled nature of verizon phones as much as the next guy, but simply can't look past the fact that my phone is fundamentally there to place and receive calls reliably. No other network I have tried (and I HAVE personally tried all of the other ones) even comes close to Verizon's coverage in the Northeast. And it's not just average joe blow... Easily 95%+ of PhD's and PhD students I know have verizon service...
Have you ever tried an ATI card in linux? I have... took me several hours to get the damn thing installed and running properly, and then a full weekend with a 9800 pro before i came to the conclusion that hardware overlays on the s-video output were impossible with their drivers.
For comparison, the nvidia card that replaced it was up and running within 5 minutes with full hardware acceleration.
I am shocked! The zune was such an ipod killer. I had the features, the form factor, functional wireless, sex appeal, unobtrusive DRM, and flawless interoperability...
Actally, yeah... I've set up a mythbox a few times. In fact, I have one running in my living room right now.
Are you kidding, it is NOT a HUGE undertaking for ADVANCED linux users, especially with a package management system. It may be a little challenging for joe blow windows user, but anyone who has spent more than a few weeks in linux should be comfortable installing myth in less than an hour!
Myth itself took all of 2 minutes to install, as described above.
MySQL is another yum install
As long as you use standard hardware (i.e. hauppauge PVR150/250, soundblaster, nvidia video, etc.), the hardware is all pretty much automatically detected (at least in fedora). I used an ATI TV wonder framegrabber before, and it worked equally well (had to tweak channel frequencies in the MySQL database to offset the tuner's bias and colors lined up correctly).
Mythtvsetup is GUI based. (Even with this distro, you have to run it at some point!)
Zap2it listing setup is WEB BASED (Even with this distro, you have to run it at some point!)
The issues that took the most time to sort out were - hardware overlay on TVout using ATI's drivers (after spending a weekend on it, I finally decided it was impossible, and got an Nvidia card. Had that working fully with hardware 3d and overalys in 5 minutes) - Lirc, but only because I was using a PVR150 with a universal remote. Took a few tries and some trial and error to get the remote configuration file correct. After that, I spent another half hour or so futzing with button aliases to make the control work seamlessly in myth and VLC.
Save for the Lirc and ATI card overlays, (which took 99.9999% of the time of the install), myth itself took 15 minutes to install and configure.
Do you have to know linux basics? Yes Does knowing how MySQL, alsa, ivtv, lirc, x11, etc. work help? Yes Do you NEED to know MySQL, alsa, ivtv, lirc, x11, etc.? Probably not Do you have to read the documentation? Yes, at least a little Are you going to run into some kind of problem along the way? Probably Will it work flawlessly using this new Fedora/Myth distribution? Probably not
In fact, my personal experience with "appliance" CD distributions (such as KnoppMyth) is that if something does not work right out of the box, it is a TOTAL pain in the ass to fix. Rarely do you have a compiler, kernel sources, etc. Rarely are theses distros using the latest packages out there, so you often run into dependency problems when trying to fix something.
I still have the copper box hanging outside of the house with all of the cables attached. In fact, the verizon Fios installer was very helpful in suggesting ways to remount the old POTS box.
I agree... I intend on staying away from Vista as long as I possibly can. I've tried the release candidates. I was EXTREMELY underwhelmed. I had a shopping list of reasons why 2000-> XP was an ok move. However, there is not a single thing that Vista does that I cannot currently do faster/better on XP.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the hardware manufacturer... I have first hand experience with Dell and IBM laptops in recent history... it's a world of difference!
IMHO The Dell crapware that comes on their PC's and notebooks is really absolutely worthless and annoying... I always reformat with a clean (non-dell), XP cd, and install all of the drivers manually.
On the other hand the stuff that comes with IBM thinkpads is pure gold. I just got an IBM off lease thinkpad with a blank HD. I installed Windows XP, and then voluntarily installed all of the thinkpad utilities... First off, if you install the system update utility, it will install all of the drivers and even upgrade all of the firmware on the machine automatically!! Just run it after the windows install finishes and walk away for a few minutes. The wireless tools/network profiles are absolutely brilliant, the presentation director is phenomenal, and the power management tools actually make sense. Color me impressed, but IBM took some of the most obtuse and obtrusive things in windows and smoothed them out perfectly!
-Tom
I am one of these people that have traditionally eagerly installed the latest and greatest in microsoft software when I get a new machine. This has held true for everything from DOS 3 to Windows XP. I have never chosen an older product over a newer one. There was always either a compelling reason to upgrade, or at the very least, the upgrade didn't cost you anything.
I got a new off lease IBM thinkpad with a blank HD a week ago, and even though I have copies of both Office 2007 and Windows Vista on DVD, I STILL installed Windows XP and Office 2003. The reason is that after actually trying both, I KNOW that I am actually MUCH better off with XP and Office 2003!
Yet every time I see a new Google product, without fail, I see myself thinking "wow, this really interesting and useful." (case and point, one of my friends was using Google's online spreadsheets to collaborate with me on a quick calculation last week, and it worked much more seamlessly than I could have ever imagined from an online app. Despite its relative simplicity, it far exceeded the capabilities of Excel for our purposes! I was REALLY impressed)
IMHO, Microsoft is feeling (and acting) threatened. They know that their inertia will only let them coast for a little while before some younger and more innovative company takes them down a peg or two.
They are NOT doing exactly what the parent proposed... Nowhere near the same scale (they mount it on a 747 for a reason). So before you go mouthing off any more, I should point out that Boeing very actively recruits people from my PhD program to work on things like the ABL. A long range ground based laser anti ballistic missile defense system is still very much scifi.
-Tom
The laser power requirements for his proposal are easily orders of magnitude beyond what we can currently do. On top of that in order to create and maintain a focused spot on a ballistic missile, you would require wavefront sensing that is well beyond our current capabilities and a multi conjugate adaptive optics system capable of operating at these powers (even more impossible with any current technology).
You apparently know very little about lasers... what you are proposing is completely absurd and physically impossible.
-Tom
On the other hand, physics, math, and all of the other hard sciences are ENTIRELY about critical thinking. Newton's equations of motion can be memorized by any history major, but are still completely worthless in the hands of a moron. You can put a dollar value on all these things, and if you did, you'd probably find out that, per student hour in the classroom, "soft skills" make more of a difference than the hard sciences. What are you smoking? What exactly is the dollar value of a history major vs. someone with a background in aeronautical engineering, optics, biochemistry, etc. Preservation and analysis of history is invaluable to society, but Historians are fundamentally limited in utility and earning potential, as they are only good for teaching other history majors and filling libraries with books (to be read by future history majors).
Your case may be exceptional, but it's not reflective of the reality the rest of the world lives in. Most of my high school and college friends that ascribed to this "soft skill" mantra are now living in their parent's basements, working at blockbuster, and frequenting the unemployment office. The people getting PhD's from my "hard science" program are in such unbelievable demand that private companies are dropping millions in cash contributions to my university just for the opportunity to look at my resume before their competition.
Hope everyone remembers this next time the stupid "US controls the DNS root" non-issue comes up again.
Homework? Worthless!? You have obviously never been to graduate school...
RE:>I think there is a fundamental flaw in your reasoning. On the surface your argument sounds solid, but you have not taken into account the devastation the 99% of flawed mutations has taken on the remaining population...
NO NO NO NO!!!
If you go back to the authors original argument you will see that you STILL missed the natural selection part... In modern society, your mutation does not make you any MORE likely to reproduce than the general public, therefore you are not increasing entropy but rather in a steady state with respect to the un-mutated population.
If instead you had a genetic disorder that made you :
- Allergic to latex
- resistant to contemporary birth control drugs
- Die at a very early age
- Mentally handicapped
etc. etc.
You would on average create more/less offspring than your counterparts. Even if this is only a minor effect, it is absurdly amplified over the course of several hundreds of generations.
ONLY genetic factors that make you MORE/LESS likely to reproduce or survive to reproduce have a net effect.
Oscars??? the fault is entirely with your premise that you were watching rational, intelligent people...
IIRC, there are a few drawbacks to flashing with a non verizon firmware... one of which is the inability to ever update your PRL OTA.
-Tom
To the parent, there's a reason for Verizon's numbers looking so good...
I hate the crippled nature of verizon phones as much as the next guy, but simply can't look past the fact that my phone is fundamentally there to place and receive calls reliably. No other network I have tried (and I HAVE personally tried all of the other ones) even comes close to Verizon's coverage in the Northeast. And it's not just average joe blow... Easily 95%+ of PhD's and PhD students I know have verizon service...
I want to buy him a beer!
Have you ever tried an ATI card in linux? I have... took me several hours to get the damn thing installed and running properly, and then a full weekend with a 9800 pro before i came to the conclusion that hardware overlays on the s-video output were impossible with their drivers.
For comparison, the nvidia card that replaced it was up and running within 5 minutes with full hardware acceleration.
-Tom
I am shocked! The zune was such an ipod killer. I had the features, the form factor, functional wireless, sex appeal, unobtrusive DRM, and flawless interoperability...
oh wait...
Actally, yeah... I've set up a mythbox a few times. In fact, I have one running in my living room right now.
Are you kidding, it is NOT a HUGE undertaking for ADVANCED linux users, especially with a package management system. It may be a little challenging for joe blow windows user, but anyone who has spent more than a few weeks in linux should be comfortable installing myth in less than an hour!
Myth itself took all of 2 minutes to install, as described above.
MySQL is another yum install
As long as you use standard hardware (i.e. hauppauge PVR150/250, soundblaster, nvidia video, etc.), the hardware is all pretty much automatically detected (at least in fedora). I used an ATI TV wonder framegrabber before, and it worked equally well (had to tweak channel frequencies in the MySQL database to offset the tuner's bias and colors lined up correctly).
Mythtvsetup is GUI based. (Even with this distro, you have to run it at some point!)
Zap2it listing setup is WEB BASED (Even with this distro, you have to run it at some point!)
The issues that took the most time to sort out were
- hardware overlay on TVout using ATI's drivers (after spending a weekend on it, I finally decided it was impossible, and got an Nvidia card. Had that working fully with hardware 3d and overalys in 5 minutes)
- Lirc, but only because I was using a PVR150 with a universal remote. Took a few tries and some trial and error to get the remote configuration file correct. After that, I spent another half hour or so futzing with button aliases to make the control work seamlessly in myth and VLC.
Save for the Lirc and ATI card overlays, (which took 99.9999% of the time of the install), myth itself took 15 minutes to install and configure.
Do you have to know linux basics? Yes
Does knowing how MySQL, alsa, ivtv, lirc, x11, etc. work help? Yes
Do you NEED to know MySQL, alsa, ivtv, lirc, x11, etc.? Probably not
Do you have to read the documentation? Yes, at least a little
Are you going to run into some kind of problem along the way? Probably
Will it work flawlessly using this new Fedora/Myth distribution? Probably not
In fact, my personal experience with "appliance" CD distributions (such as KnoppMyth) is that if something does not work right out of the box, it is a TOTAL pain in the ass to fix. Rarely do you have a compiler, kernel sources, etc. Rarely are theses distros using the latest packages out there, so you often run into dependency problems when trying to fix something.
ummm?
Install Fedora
su
yum install mythtv
done!
That is just not true in NJ.
I still have the copper box hanging outside of the house with all of the cables attached. In fact, the verizon Fios installer was very helpful in suggesting ways to remount the old POTS box.
I'm sold! Imagine how much better we will all be able to sleep once these bad boys are deployed along the Canadian border!
>I'm sure it would have some adverse effects on the water.
and I'm sure that you don't know much...
Aim at foot...
Pull trigger...
Ass... Let's forget being PC here for a second and look at the facts.
How many catholic school children died in suicide bombings this past century? How many radical muslims?
That is all, you may go now...
It's been done before (see TMDA), and there are a TON of cons to this approach. -Tom
I agree... I intend on staying away from Vista as long as I possibly can. I've tried the release candidates. I was EXTREMELY underwhelmed. I had a shopping list of reasons why 2000-> XP was an ok move. However, there is not a single thing that Vista does that I cannot currently do faster/better on XP.
-Tom