If it takes you a year to tweak an OS, your doing it wrong.

Took me a few hours to get it up to what I was used to, and for the record I completely replace the Windows UI with bblean (A Fluxbox like shell for Windows). Install cygwin and setup scripts so I can do things like fire up rxvt and ssh into my server. Install things like Office 2007, gedit (for windows now :)), Development tools (geany, vim) and so on. I also went from a 32bit install to a 64bit one. Install iTunes (Since my music is on a DAAP server)

Basically I spent a few hours making it usable (more like Linux).

Granted there will be the occasional thing I forgot to install, or a tweak I missed but they get done as I need them.

Besides Windows7 is almost exactly the same as Vista, just without being so horrible. Your not going to run into any major differences with it. The final release of Ubuntu is in a few days from now, that should be enough time for people to have gotten comfortable.

Well the exponential growth has been going on since the very first computer systems where made way back before Moore's law even existed, when they where still using vacuum tubes.

Arguably it goes back even further if you consider it to be systems for information processing rather than strictly computer systems. Things like writing, transcribing books, the printing press, mathematics and so on.

The growth will probably stop eventually but it's unlikely to occur before any kind of singularity happens, even if it does the world will be drastically different. The planned 2012 IBM supercomputer should have about enough processing power to emulate a human brain (its not doing that but they have the blue brain project underway), By 2025 a $1000 computer should have that power (consider what the super computers of that time will have). Unless you think Moore's law is going to kick us all in the nuts in the next 15 years we should be well on our way. Traditional Moore's law (as it applies to transistors on silicon) should continue till some time around 2030 (although some earlier limits are as low as 2020 and it might slow down things leading up to the point). This doesn't take into account the dozens of other non-traditional technologies under research that aren't Moore's law relates: memsistors, photonic computing, DNA/quantum computing (only useful for some specific computation but AI might apply), 3D-ICs, carbon nanotubes, graphite, spintronics.

After some kind of singularity (assuming we survive) we have no idea what the limits are, can we make new sub universes where the laws are better optimized for computing? or change the laws in some specific area? Can we use the theory of relativity to speed computation up (ie I leave a computer on the planet and travel at close to the speed of light in a circle until it finishes number crunching, or hopefully some similar system on a chip)? Can we find some ultimate universal loophole for infinite energy/computation? A cpu that works in an infinite number of parallel universes? Maybe we will hit the universal wall, but by that point it won't matter so much.

I had a LED light blow within 6 months. This was a cheapo one though and the powers not so clean here but it's somthing to watch for befoure forking over money to redo your whole house.

They can probably still sue in countries where the product it sold. Specifically in Texas with that corrupt IP friendly courthouse. They might not stop you making the product, but if you can't sell to America you have lost a majority of sales.

The alternative solution is to opensource everything, compile or download the patented bits at run time with some giant disclaimer that no one will bother to read and make a business model around that. Like Ubuntu for example.

We really need a libPatentInfringment where we can just dump everything and categorize it, then look for a way to buy the patents or work around them. Things like FAT that doesn't bother to write the old DOS style filenames to avoid the patent on storing stuff with both long and short file names, but if you want it to, just install that lib (although since its in the kernel an external library probably won't work, but you get the idea).

Most newer OSes seem to support UDF writing, so hopfully it will work in future: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format#Native_OS_support

One worrying thing is the new exFat filesystem in use in newer version of Windows. You can be sure after the patent lawsuites suit's on normal Fat that there is patented stuff in exFat. Unfortunately a a new FS is going to be required soon as flash drives start to hit the larger sizes. With every desktop running Windows and most of the population not even knowing what a filesystem is, everyone will end up using it. It's also the standard for SDXC.

This will of course leave Linux users screwed and every one ever who wants to make a windows compatible device like an mp3 player will need too pay a MS tax.

It's unfortunate that we couldn't switch to some open system. I believe UDF is fairly open and is the BluRay standard so should work on many systems. Anyone know if UDF support writing under Windows Vista/7? Can it even be read off flash media?

About the only thing I can say about the filesystem is that it won't be long befoure USB drives go the way of floppy drives as everything moves online.

Looks like Windows 7/Vista do support writing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format#Native_OS_support so it might be the best FS to choose from in future for compatibility when you don't need to use older XP era systems as latest Linux and OSX both seem to have write support. The only thing is I can't find any information about patents or license fees so I don't know if its an open standard or not. Still won't help with every digital camera manufacturer, SDXC and mp3 player switching to the MS system.

It's not the "Not Invented Here", its more Apple trying to keep vendor lockin, and everyone getting videos from iTunes rather thn YouTube. MS trying to gain a monopoly over the internet with a priopratart wmv format and SilverLight. And everyone else trying to stop MS from gaining the monopoly while they have %75 browser penetration and %95 OS share. Haven't heard much from Adobe other then there attempts to keep flash in the game by opening up to phone vendors (which Apple ignored of course). Also the fact that Theora isn't a great codec compared to the commercial ones, just the open one Fortunately Google own YouTube.

No one seems to mention Dirac or SNOW although they are newer and might require more cpu usage (problematic for phones and such).

I use one of those magnets to hold up an entire case of screw drivers.

As an added bonus they magnetize the screwdrivers so the screws stay on the end rather than fall into the dark, sharp and spiky depth of the case (its not strong enough to be a danger to magnetic harddrives).

They are a massive pain to remove though, and when you do there is often still a metal bracket attached.

Except its not like a safe at all...

The quote only really makes sense when your talking about a world where the only force is money, but thats not the case here, people break DRM for their own ethical, moral reasons, to prevent locking, or probably more often just for fun or because its convenient. (There could be money in it too if your breaking a competitors DRM, Maybe Amazon broke Adobes DRM to drive more authors to Kindel). In the end people aren't trying to break DRM so they can sell bootlegged copies of the content.

Once the DRM is broken, it might as well not exist since if the DRM ever actually becomes a problem for someone, they can just grab the tool.

You only need 1 person on the planet to break it and spread the information of how its done then that DRM is dead for good and everything ever encrypted with it is now accessible.

And only 99c a song isn't really enough, the price might not matter but convince is a big issue. Its easier for me to grab an album of PirateBay, I don't have to enter any credit card information and it's more continent after since. I'm not locked into Apple.

Perhapses on the individual scale (say giving a copy to a friend), removing the DRM isn't worth the effort, but the alternative involves the friend downloading another copy of the content either legitimately or illegally, its just as easy either way. Or just not getting the content at all.

Too bad shes only smiling to turn the volume up :(

I also wounder if its because Nexuiz is OpenGL. So the difference between OpenGL Linux vs OpenGL Windows and also Direct3D should be considered.

You know Google probably have a vast amount of information about secret government facilities.

Countries, just tell this large American corporation all the things you don't want anyone to know about.

Not to mention all the webbased email accounts hosting in America, does anyone think that the FBI doesn't have a direct thunk to the Googleplex?

The human brain isn't actually that complex to implement since a lot of it is self generated, IBMs Blue Brain project have already simulated a mouses neo cortex (the part of the brain that makes conscious thought). They have been claiming to scale it up to a human one by 2010 for a while now...

Personally I think its some kind of secret AI SkyNet style research project. The current petaflop computers are fairly close to having the same computing capacity as the human brain based on best estimates but thats not the same as having the computing power to simulate one. This system is 20x more powerful though...