Where does she get off...
...calling our bloggers "journalists"?
301 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2011
"Next you'll be telling me that there's a good reason they use capacitors filled with cats urine instead of properly designed ones that can run twice as hot for twice as long."
Because the majority of consumers would rather pay $500 for a TV that lasts 3-5 years, instead of paying $750 for the same TV with better components lasting 8-10 years.
I could be wrong, but I believe, in the current American vernacular, plain "chocolate" is intended for baking, whereas Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate are meant for direct consumption. In this case, and depending on where you find it in your supermarket, Chocolate and Dark Chocolate bars are usually priced identically.
Re: days of DOS
I can't remember what the software was called, but back in the mid '90s a lot of games were based on software that basically booted it's own OS, so that it didn't matter what your particular OS was. I think DirectX was originally developed to combat this sort of thing and strengthen installed Windows base. I've often thought that if anybody (Apple, various Linux companies) wanted to weaken the Windows base, the best thing they could do was to develop a foundation like a DirectX operating system, that could allow a game produced from a single compile to run on different OSes. Because honestly, how many PC gamers would be quite happy to run Linux instead as long as their games worked? Money spent on an OS can go into extra hardware instead.
Speaking as somebody who's actually raised chickens in North Dakota... they're really not that big anymore. :-)
Seriously though, as others have mentioned already, chickens are not inoffensive or, more accurately, non-offensive. If one chicken somehow becomes bloodied, say through accident or laying an egg a bit too large for the exit, the others will go completely cannibalistic and absolutely rip that one apart. Small critters like mice and frogs do not live long amongst chickens either.
Chickens will go as bonkers as any shark to the smell of blood and the taste of raw meat.
"They're organised coherently into categories so that I can always find something no matter how obscure. However, this means that some of my most visited sites are buried 3 levels deep in the bookmarks menu."
Do you utilize the Bookmarks Toolbar on your browser page? I have folders created there by subject matter, then bookmarks within. For the sites I visit every day there is a separate folder, and with just two clicks I can open a tab for every site within. Otherwise it's an incredibly easy way to find individual bookmarks.
"Remember how when XP came out only serious gamers used even 128MB of memory? But with Service Pack 3 256MB will barely let you boot up?
128Mb? Come on, I was using more RAM than that with Windows 98."
When first released, Windows XP Professional had a minimum RAM requirement of 64MB, with 128MB recommended. And 64MB of RAM was a couple hundred dollars so 64MB was all most home computers had. Service Pack One basically doubled those requirements and by Service Pack 3 anything less than 256MB was basically unusable, and 256MB was not usable for much.
The reality of things is that if you have friends/family that are still running XP it's because the computer they have is running things perfectly fine.
The reality of things is that you probably have zero friends/family that have ever had a need to call up Microsoft for support on anything so they really don't see what the big deal about official support for XP ending in the first place, and they'll happily keep on going as long as they can find an anti-virus program that runs on XP. (But the secret reality of that is most of your friends/family are use a free anti-virus that is more than three years old already, and the truth is simply that they don't do anything so exciting as to even need bother with it.)
The reality of things is that even if that old XP machine isn't running so hot anymore, all you really need to do is reinstall XP, probably just a simple factory restore, and don't do the Service Pack upgrades unless their other software demands it. Without the newer service packs the hardware requirements for XP go way down. Remember how when XP came out only serious gamers used even 128MB of memory? But with Service Pack 3 256MB will barely let you boot up?
The final reality of things is that if your friends/family are still running XP the odds are really, really good that they would be much happier with any sort of tablet. As for me, two of my six gaming PCs still run XP and I'm quite happy with them; though I'm contemplating upgrading them to Windows 7 while it's still available.
"These bills are typical for the Democrats, that feel the need to control every thing. If they get their way, everyone will have slow internet and investment will dry up."
You're funny, and terribly wrong, seeing as how not having net neutrality gives ISPs free reign to throttle your connection into oblivion and zero incentive to invest in anything. By forcing ISPs to be neutral in who their customers are connecting to, incentives to improve service are still there in order to keep the customer-base happy.
The internet is basically three components: Consumers, ISPs, and Data. The purpose of the ISP is to connect the other two, indiscriminately.
Definite potential for people traveling alone, but it will be interesting to see how it's adapted to handle groups and families. One potential issue I see is with fraud. Way too easy to change identification information on the device, and check in using stolen/unauthorized credit cards.
I work in the hotel industry, so I am very interested to see how this works out.
Actually, with mechanical keys, hotels never switched out locks, and it was simply not possible to track "lost" keys. My first job out of high school was as a bellman for a 250 rm. Holiday Inn. One of my misc. duties during slow periods was to go cut new keys for rooms that our inventory was low on. The ultimate goal was to have six keys for every room at the front desk, and another ten down in the key room. Each month hundreds of keys would never be returned by customers and the only time a lock was replaced was if it physically stopped working.
Getting a swipe key (mag. strip) is not too difficult, people leave them laying around hotels all the time, especially pool areas and vending machines. If you have the capability to read and write them, most need nothing more than to update the time stamp in the data to access the original room the key was made for. The keys mostly function using nothing more than a room number and time stamp. The door lock holds the most recent time stamp used in memory and no key with an older stamp is allowed entry.
>>> "the one that doesn't do YouTube", and hence very unattractive indeed. With 89 per cent of Americans having a choice of two broadband suppliers <<<
That second supplier in the equation is almost always aDSL, which can't hold near the bandwidth required to stream HD, though it is slowly improving. For example, in my urban area, the majority of aDSL is still limited to a mere 1.5 Mb connection, and a small number of subscribers are starting to see upgrades to 7.5 Mb. That'll work, unless you have other people in the house also trying to stream, or playing online games.
>>> Are you that far removed from computer technology? They do not put GPUs on motherboard chipsets anymore. Duh... <<<
At this moment, NewEgg offers 39 motherboards with motherboard-based GPUs. Granted a bunch of those are models that are more than a year old, but it's far from a dead market.
" If you are using a laptop for games then theres something wring with you."
Must be something wrong with millions of students who use their laptops for games, instead of trying to cram a couple more desktops into their dorm rooms. Not to mention limited budgets. Or people that have to travel a lot, and not being quite willing to haul their desktop along with them on flights.
How about the cost of power, straight juice or air-conditioning? My latest home build PC uses an AMD APU that allows me to play games quite happily at higher graphics settings and decent frame rates, but only requires a 250 watt power supply. It runs nice and cool, rather than heating up the room.
"Unconstitutional is not the same as illegal."
When pertaining to government actions, unconstitutional is the ultimate illegal.
The real follow-up to this though, if it stands after appeal upon appeal, needs to be the booting from office of all of those who made statements to the effect of "it's okay to violate the constitution if it's for our protection".
@Psyx
I totally agree, but only 20 years ago (i.e., pre-internet) these "guys who are already short of cash" had pretty much zero alternatives to local performances. Now they can still do their local performing while supplementing their income via outlets like Spotify. An new revenue source PLUS the ability to reach a worldwide audience for potential sales and performance opportunities. HOW is this a bad thing?
If Amazon would set up their Affiliate program to instead treat themselves as a distributor, and their "affiliates" as simple customers to them, then the affiliates would be the end-seller and therefore responsible for collecting all sales taxes.
That doesn't resolve Amazon's concern that the customer sees sales tax as part of the end cost, which makes it more difficult to compete with local stores, but it does eliminate the costs related to collecting and distributing sales tax monies on State-County-City levels.
@JEDIDIAH
>> What distribution offers 10+ years of support at a price lower than Windows?
>You only need that support because you would be like a bound and gagged gimp left alone in the bad part of town otherwise.
I don't know anybody that's actually called Microsoft for support, with the exception of having to phone in for Activation/Licensing issues. Now, since support was the only thing you disputed, out of several reasons given why Linux is rather pointless in this discussion, under what circumstances will the average user ever consider Linux over Windows? The reality of life is that for 99%+ of users, the only debate in desktop operating systems is still Mac vs PC, and even there Mac is still a (growing) niche market.
"That's exactly the point, it isn't regardless of age. If they had all been adults, it wouldn't have been a crime. Shitty thing to do, but not criminal."
Except that in more and more areas this sort of thing IS being made a crime when only adults are involved. It's acknowledging the wrongness of distributing naked images of somebody, without their permission, regardless of how they were obtained. Key word there: distribution. It's not (necessarily) about simple possession.