I think it was IBM that broke the 1Ghz CPU barrier.

It's not really a huge feat to break the 1Ghz "barrier" for a GPU anyway. And since it's AMD product, it'll run hot as hell and require a massive heatsink. You'll be able to barbecue a steak on your CrossFire enabled rig with two of these installed. Since it's also ATi, the card itself will be really awesome but the drivers released will be buggy and unstable, turning the card into little more than a giant red paperweight.

Couldn't agree more with this assessment. Alienware is hideously overpriced and their systems aren't really that good. I have an Alienware D900T that a friend of mine owns sitting in my closet. The video card stopped working and it's going to cost $500 for the replacement for a wimpy GeForce 6800. He doesn't want to spend the money so I've disassembled it for the good parts and junked the rest. In disassembling the machine, it's obvious that Alienware doesn't back up their bloated prices with anything resembling quality, too.

Nobody in their right mind should be buying Alienware. There's nothing about their machines that you can't get from regular branded PCs and custom built PCs, except for a huge price hike on the Alienware.

Oh you didn't get the memo? The Obama Administration is all about changing names! If you change the name of "War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operations", it makes it sound SO much better! And those toxic mortgage assets the banks have on their books? Those are now "Legacy Assets". See, by changing the names from the old Bush-era ones to new, trendy Obama names they can just keep Bush policies like Warentless Wiretapping. Speaking of which, I wonder what new, confusing name the Obama Administration is going to come up with for "Warentless Wiretapping". Suggestions?

First off, AT&T is not a private company. It's a publicly traded company.

http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=ATT

Second, AT&T cannot do whatever they want, even if they were a private company. There are laws in place that govern everything from employment to the actual business of communications that prevent "private companies" from running afoul of the consumer's rights.

Consider Comcast and their throttling of BitTorrent traffic. If we consider your theory of private companies being able to do whatever they want under the guise of it being a "business decision" to be correct, Comcast should be able to get away with bandwidth throttling of BitTorrent, right? Wrong.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/fcc-rules-against-comcast-bit-torrent-blocking

Companies, whether they are privately owned or publicly traded, have laws and regulations that they are supposed to abide by. AT&T can't make a decision, no matter how good it is for the business, if it violates the law. While the system of laws and regulations doesn't always work, it does provide some measure of defense against companies trampling all over the consumer.

I think it would behoove you to check into tax laws, specifically those laws that govern what kind of tax breaks a company gets for charitable donations. Every decision in a company is made with money in mind. If Apple donates any money to a charitable cause, it's because the folks in Accounting determined they'd get a hefty tax break for doing it. No corporation, including Apple, is in the business of giving money away in exchange for nothing more than the warm, fuzzy feeling they get when donating to charities. It's always about the money and shareholders ALWAYS trump special interests.

I thought I'd throw a post up suggesting Untangle as an open source alternative for network traffic management. It has quite a few neat features that would otherwise cost you thousands of dollars for an enterprise level appliance from SonicWall, BlueCoat, Coyote Networks, etc. After installing it on a dedicated server in my rack here, I've noticed an almost 50% reduction in our spam intake at the gateway, as Untangle blocks incoming SMTP, POP, and IMAP connections from blacklisted sources. Web traffic on our T1 has improved as well, with Untangle preventing a vast majority of advertisements and other junk found on many websites from being passed back onto our internal network.

Or you could just buy the newest iteration of the game, Gears of War 2: Balls of War Edition, made specifically for the castrated husband who foolishly gave his wife his testicles mounted on a 24 karat gold wedding ring. Seriously, man. She's your wife. Not your boss or your mom. Grow a pair and tell her where to stick it if she doesn't like it. If she can't live with it, then it's time to trade her in for a different model.