Why not? Fixing a driver should be a trivial issue. The hardware still works perfectly fine. I see no reason to "upgrade".

My friend and I were just talking about this last night. He had just reinstalled XP because he couldn't get his Audigy to work in Win7. I also have not been able to get either of my perfectly working older Sound Blaster Live cards to work under Win7. It appears Creative isn't going to release any new drivers and would rather you go spend $100-$200 on a new card when yours already work perfectly fine.

I know the audio I'm getting from my mobo isn't as good as it could be. I also preferred the fine controls I had with my Soundblaster cards. But I will live with the onboard versus going to buy a new card when the ones I have are perfectly fine.

If America truly loves to complain about gas mileage then why the fuck are there still so many SUVs and big ass trucks on the road everywhere? I think America just loves to complain about obesity.

Generalizations are always false.

See what I did there?

You can't say "Americans do this" or "We do that" because you're speaking for 300 million people of various backgrounds and thoughts. Even if a large portion of Americans do anything in concert that doesn't mean that is what Americans do in that situation.

Sorry for the nitpicking but I absolutely detest broad generalizations. They only serve those ignorant enough to buy into them.

At least they wouldn't make turns at .025 mph and sit through 3 red-lights before paying attention...

For all of its many faults, the U.S. has generally outstanding freedom of speech. You can say all kinds of things here that would float anywhere else in the world. Just look at how Holocaust denial is treated in Europe. Or imagine how long someone like Alex Jones could operate in China, railing against the Chinese and thousands of real or imagines murderous conspiracies.

Yet that isn't the point here. The point is that thousands of blogs were taken down under the hush of silence. No one speaks about why and no one is allowed to. That is the issue here.

Ahhh the good old days of Echelon. If only we could go back to such simpler times. :)

If everything were optimized the technology business cycle would slow to a crawl and possibly die. If programs were crafted the way they were in the 80s when memory and speed were expensive and scarce we would have an endless supply of space and speed for everything right now and no need to continuously upgrade. I would like to see a little bit of a slowdown in the cycle myself because I've never been able to play the latest and greatest games, but I'm patient enough that I can wait 3 or 4 years to play them with a newly mediocre system.

Spending the money of others does not imply zero responsibility. It often implies the opposite. Perhaps you meant accountability which is something that has disappeared in the past few decades.

A book I just started reading about the need to demolish the CIA and rebuild it from the ground up is based on this premise. The fact that the US has the most capable technical intelligence isn't enough to foresee the myriads of new ways smaller and smaller groups can affront devastating attacks. Interesting stuff and quite scary if you believe it to be true.

This just smacks of a hit piece. If it is true, there is a reason why people were able to neglect their duties on the job. If it is false, the accused are most likely being held to the fire in some hidden aspect no one wants you to know about. This type of journalistic integrity is what I would expect from Fox but it wouldn't surprise me coming from any of the massive news conglomerates.

In light of this video this is scary.

I saw avatar in 2d and enjoyed it. Then on christmas my family wanted to go see the 3d version so I tagged along. That was the first 3d movie I've ever seen without the red/blue glasses and I was blown away. I actually caught myself trying to swipe away some flaming ash from my face at one point and the best part was I didn't get a headache from watching it!

If 3D tv is anything like that count me in!

My uncle did his masters thesis on the difference an operating system makes in doing calculations and how long batteries last on the same hardware (power consumption).

It does make a difference -- one larger than he had anticipated.