actually, 90% of malware these days relies no non-OS / browser specific exploits. Its all flash, Java, PDF.

Of course, 98.27% of stats online are plucked from the ether.

Now admittedly, I'm a bit bitter about a problem that's not really Creative's fault. I bought an Audigy 2 ZS for my laptop using PC Card...and then the next wave of laptops only came with an Expresscard slot. So, I ponied up again for an X-Fi card that fit the Expresscard slot...and then laptops stopped coming with those. Now I fully admit that Creative isn't to blame for that, but it is sad just the same. However, I digress.

I use my onboard audio for nearly all of my listening needs. My internal speakers are utter crap (I think one is blown, actually), and thus, even if Creative added all the super-duper offboard processing in the world, it wouldn't sound any better than what those speakers can pump. Adding a nice set of Sennheiser or Denon headphones, I can start to hear some of the MP3 sizzle in the 128kbps MP3s, and a handful of 192's, depending on the song and the encoder and settings used. Even playing video games, the difference between 'Good Enough' and 'X-Fi Good' never comes into play, because it's the nuts-and-bolts of the big picture that will make or break it in either direction - if the sound effects and musical score is good, the miniscule difference an audio chipset will make has nothing to do with it. If they're crap, a ZxR processor isn't going to change anything.

That being said, I still use offboard audio hardware on a regular basis. I use my Rane SL3 to DJ with Serato. Even if it wasn't a de facto hardware dongle to unlock the Serato software, there's no motherboard chipset that supports 2ms latency from end-to-end of the audio path. In other words, my SL3 can reliably take an audio signal from my turntable, translate it into speed and directional data, and send MP3 audio back out, in 2ms. Creative doesn't make hardware like that. The story is pretty similar for my Audio6 (which I use for Traktor) and my Connectiv (which I used to use for Torq and Deckadance, though it required closer to 5ms latency to be stable). I have a MobilePre USB that I use occasionally for XLR and 1/4" recording. These are niche products for niche purposes, but the fact that your local Guitar Center sells a range of these kinds of interfaces demonstrates that there's indeed a market for discrete audio hardware. Creative just doesn't make it.

"Microkernels are still better, you little punk!" With an engraving of a shaking fist.

Dude. I don't wanna see what happens when one of those guys gets steamrolled by 300 pound refrigerator in a jetpack. Because that's what it's going to be like.

Ok, I lied; I do want to see what happens.

Powershell is object-oriented, and unlike bash scripting, its command names have some semblance of order and discoverability. No, man is not comparable to "get-help"

Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. No seriously, I'm with you on the 3mbps/sec DSL situation and am wondering what software/hardware you use for this. I see this as being quite handy on Patch Tuesday and similar. I have half-ideas as to how to make it work, but I'm interested to hear about your tried-and-true setup.

Not really, no. It remains neither an actual poll nor a random sample, and the selection biases are completely unknown.

My complaint is that the 97% draws an invalid link between abstracts written and opinion. 99.999% of scientists have an opinion on AGW; that doesnt mean they have written a paper on that. The way you determine that is to do a random sample poll, not to use a selection-biased sample and draw faulty conclusions on it.

That 97% number IS bull, and its right there in the link you provided, under abstract:

We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
So of the abstracts which discuss global warming, 97% support AGW. Except, you would not call that an unbiased sample, nor would that be an acceptable selection criteria in any other poll, ever.

I generally nope out of any AGW conversation because theyre cesspools of illogic, ad hominems, and general idiocy, but come on. That 97% claim is like saying "97%*** of CoD players hate the game (***- 97% of players posting negative posts on the message boards)".

Any idiot off the street with a copy of Windows has access to Powershell and 90% of the .Net stuff behind it.

It IS accessible. Every copy of Windows since 2006 has included Powershell, which is one of the easiest to learn things you will ever come across, and it can handle 99% of the tasks your average non-programmer user will ever want to do, from simple GUI's with scripted events, to excel automation, to bulk administrative work. Theres even an IDE for it built right into windows.

Im not an OSX guy but I understand things are pretty similar over there, with whatever OSX uses (Applescript?), and Im pretty sure most Linux distros come with Perl or Python (if not theyre a 1-liner away).

If you're not finding those scripting languages accessible enough, you dont care enough about the project you want to do. Alternatively, maybe some people just dont naturally have a gift for the type of thought process required by programming-- and I dont think that needs to be a "problem".

We are using OSI. Forget about UDP, and layer 2 protocols other than ethernet?

Most people can ignore most of OSI, but its still there. Signal recieved by interface, layer 1 signalling is removed, layer 2 headers are removed, layer 2 headers are re-written, layer 1 signalling is reapplied, signal sent out.

"et" IS a word in latin. The "C" is the abbreviation. Et c.

...And wiped out in the great depression, and rebuilt in World War 2. That IS capitalism.

For the record, the North had quite the booming economy even without slave labor, even before slavery was abolished.