> twice the performance

This comparison misses the point about SSDs. Yes, SSDs may have somewhat better bandwidth, and may improve startup times slightly, but that is not their advantage. They have awesomely better seek times, which makes some operations hundreds of times faster. Putting Visual Studio's .sdf files on an SSD avoids lots of VS 2010 hangs.

This blog post I wrote discusses the random I/Os to the Windows Live Photo Gallery SQL database at startup. On my photo collection I see 5,000 random disk I/Os, which are painful on a laptop HDD but would be a non-issue on an SSD:

http://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/fixing-another-photo-gallery-performance-bug/

In situations like this an SSD is probably a *hundred* times faster than an HDD. Database accesses seem to be a common scenario where an SSD is worth its weight in gold.

In short, if an SSD is only twice as fast then it's not worthwhile. If it's ten to a hundred times faster, then hell ya.

Yep. It's actually a trivial problem to avoid in this case. You just need to locate the transformer downstream of the switch instead of upstream. That's it. That's all it takes to go to perfect efficiency (when turned off). This implementation is equivalent to manually unplugging the light when it isn't in use, putting it on a switched socket, etc. However the consumer shouldn't have to do these hacks -- the lamp should turn off fully. It's easy. Whether it's likely depends on whether we demand it.

Dumping pollution into the environment is often cheaper, at least in the short term, than trying to avoid creating waste, or trying to dump the waste responsibly. Burning coal is cheaper because of this. If you factor in the costs -- acid rain, altering the chemistry of the air, acidification of the oceans -- coal is more expensive.

And, by reducing their fossil fuel imports Portugal has now insulated themselves from the vagaries of the energy market. The next time oil prices spike the US will be force to send crates of money to unfriendly regimes because the US is addicted to their oil. Portugal will thrive while the US stumbles.

Portugal is planning ahead. The US is hoping that it can continue to be profligate forever.

Money isn't necessarily a proxy for emissions. Often it is a proxy for human labor.

I'm sorry to hear that you can't find a Windows version of Windows Live Photo Gallery. Such a shock. Luckily the OP asked to solve a problem on Windows 7, so your concerns are not relevant.

Now if you'd wanted to post some alternate suggestions that work on linux then that would have been productive. Merely mentioning that a free Microsoft program doesn't work on linux, when the OP asked about Windows, is just trolling

It stores the information in the images, as it should, and it maintains a database for fast access. And it's free.

What documentation are you planning to carry to prove you are legal? Drivers license? Proves nothing. Birth certificate? Better, but not something I really want to carry around. Ditto with passport. As others have said this risks being a hassle for citizens. It will also make many people less likely to trust the police and thus less likely to report crimes. There is a reason that the police don't generally enforce immigration laws.

Reality does not insist that Windows programs require root access. I have one piece of software that requires administrative privileges (Starry Night Enthusiast -- I've complained to them). Every one of the dozens of other software packages I have installed (Python, Office 2007, Perforce, Visual Studio, Family Tree Maker, Streets and Trips, Cam Studio, Fractal eXtreme, SyncToy, Total Annihilation, Xbox 360 SDK, Image Magick, WinDirStat, Airfoil, Garmin Training Center, etc.) works fine as restricted user.

The two PCs that my other family members use are both locked down -- they don't have the admin account passwords -- and they are totally fine.

Your complaint is outdated. And you haven't provided any examples of these many programs that (inappropriately) required administrative privileges. Put up (so we can evaluate the importance of these 'many' programs that require root) or shut up.

You need to update your criticisms, and give more details. Very little software on Windows requires administrative privileges -- Vista forced those necessary fixes years ago. The remaining needs for administrative privileges are, by and large, for administration and software installation. You know, the sort of thing that allows locking a machine down securely.

As for proprietary networking, my Windows box uses TCP/IP. What does yours use?

And I didn't really understand #1, #2, or #3. You need to give more details to justify your claims, and preferably to show how they are any different from Linux/OpenSource bugs.

This question got modded as insightful? I think the poster should have to read the article before having comments modded as insightful. From the article: > The researchers determined the age of the lakes by counting crater impacts They don't go into a lot more detail than that -- it's not a scientific paper -- but that at least answers your first question. Asking for more details is reasonable but asking those questions actually requires some effort. Questioning scientists intelligently is more than just speculating about their possible failures without reading what they've said.

Base 2 makes sense for RAM sizes and cache sizes. For HD sizes it makes no sense. The operating systems should get a clue and display HD sizes and file sizes in decimal MB/GB/TB.

> Sorry, that's just not true. Your average retailer looks at less than 2% shrinkage, per year, check the stats.

You forgot to post a link to some stats. I'll help you out. How about this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkage_(accounting)

It says that "per day" and "per year" are both incorrect. Shrinkage figures are given as a percentage of sales. That makes sense because giving shrinkage numbers as a percentage of inventory wouldn't be meaningful without understanding how quickly the inventory was turned over, and even then it's not very useful because it doesn't directly indicate the economic cost of the shrinkage.

What the Wikipedia link says is that shrinkage is about 1.7% of retail sales in the US in 2001. Not per year. Not per day. Also not 2% to 5%.