That means that console makers are taking 50% of the cost into their pocket, even though they didn't do anything in the development of the game at all.

Yeah, they didn't custom build the hardware, write the API, create the SDK, or write the standard for titles on the system. I definitely agree with you: the console makers had nothing to do with the development of the games.

3) why isn't Reiser 4 in the damn kernel already?

I'm ready to scream bloody murder over it not being included yet.

Yes, it has cost you $0 to get SP1, 2 and 3, but there is no way you can compare the changes found between Mac OS X 10.1 (released September 2001) and OS X 10.5 (released October 2007) with the changes found between Windows XP SP0 (released October 2001) and Windows XP SP3 (released May 2008).

Service Packs are collections of hotfixes with some new features added. New revisions of OS X include entire application suite upgrades, in addition to hundreds of new features at each rev.

For those who are interested, a TechNet Plus subscription costs $349, and includes Windows XP (all versions), Windows Vista (all versions), Windows 7 (all versions), Office 2007 (all applications), Windows Server 2008 (all versions), and the license permits installation on multiple computers.

Compare this to the retail cost of Windows 7 Ultimate ($319) and Office 2007 Professional ($499) and it's quite a deal, especially since retail Windows 7 won't be available until October 22nd, whereas TechNet Plus subscribers get it August 6th.

Why would ANYONE pay retail for Windows or Office when TechNet is available?

My phone has a camera. It has Internet access. It has ringtones. It has GPS. It runs programs.

My phone makes phone calls, and I wish to death it would stop.

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I'm not running NoScript. I checked AdBlock Plus to make sure it wasn't blocking anything (and I don't need it to--Slashdot likes me enough to give me the "opt-out of ads for free" option). I'll try those other tips.

Can anyone explain what the FUCK happened to slashdot to make comments unreadable, and how to fix it? There are unremovable grey horizontal and vertical bars and pill icons everywhere. OMGPONIES was supposed to be a joke, and now they've made it reality.

Viz: http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9974/wtfiswrongwithslashdot.png

No research == fail. The colonies were not England.

Most of the 1787 delegates were natives of the Thirteen Colonies. Only 9 were born elsewhere: four (Butler, Fitzsimons, McHenry, and Paterson) in Ireland, two (Davie and Robert Morris) in England, two (Wilson and Witherspoon) in Scotland, and one (Hamilton) in the West Indies.

Sourced

The vast majority of this comment could be complete jibberish (Bigelow/COTS-D/Sundancer/Obama/Falcon 9/BA-330? Come again?). It sounds like the poster knows what s/he's talking about, but the fact is the people who modded this insightful did so without any fucking insight into what was posted.

The same people who mod insightful on Slashdot also cite Wikipedia in school work.

This release will come eight years almost to the day after the release of Windows XP. I'm using the beta of 7 at home, just like I used all the betas and RCs of XP at home. Looking at Windows then and Windows now, I see a huge missed opportunity. I am pleased with Windows 7, and I think Microsoft has made a lot of smart decisions in their design, production, and marketing of the OS, but it still feels like more of a mea culpa than a solid, polished OS.

If Microsoft's management had been on top of their shit, this product would have released four years ago and what we're seeing today could be so much more. Unfortunately, their back-to-the-drawing-board idea with Longhorn, though a good thing in the end, lost so many years of work and code that it seriously stunted Microsoft's growth of the OS.

Hence Windows Vista. Hence Windows 7. What I'm going to be most interested in is, once 7 is out and people lower the volume of their trash-talking, what is Microsoft going to do next? What major technologies are they working on? What is their vision for the desktop? Windows 7 is just Windows Vista with two more years of polish. Though a terrific upgrade from Vista, I want to hear more about Microsoft's research projects and what real, major features they're working on for future OSes. I'm tired of hearing about multitouch, because that is quickly becoming genericized among OS makers and will remain out of reach for most users for some time, being hardware-dependent.

Ask anyone what they'd change about Windows and you'll get a litany of complaints. Ask Microsoft and they'll tell you Windows is perfect, you just don't understand it.

Not at all. HIPAA is all about what security measures can be deemed reasonably sufficient. In this case, the systems may have been provided by a vendor and are certified only to run at a certain patch level. Makers of medical devices can't be expected to fuzz the software every time Microsoft releases a patch to make sure it doesn't kill someone when used; they instead sell a single device certified to work a certain way.

Given that, reasonable security measures would have been to physically isolate the network these devices were on. This often doesn't happen thanks to VLANs and sloppy network administration.

That's not a judgement on the ethics of the situation, I'm just trying to lay out the facts as I see them.

They aren't facts if they're open to interpretation.

Lots of replies and none are the right one. The reason why you won't see the same kinds of breaches you do with credit cards is because of the magical law known as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). For more information check here.

How it breaks down is this:

• The government DOES care about your privacy
• But ONLY if it is your medical history
• It includes strict rules regarding the handling of PHI (protected/patient health information)
• It includes steep fines for failure to properly handle PHI or improperly accessing PHI
• There's a fine for the institution, and there's a fine for the individual(s) who caused the leak
• The fine for individuals ranges from $25,000 to $250,000 and one year in prison to ten years in prison
• You can be fined for contributing to lax security procedures that allowed it (watch out, IT admins!)
• HIPAA compliance programs are required at all hospitals, including training for all staff, with a HIPAA control point to monitor and enforce compliance
• The control point works with JCAHO to test and certify compliance

HIPAA is very specific about how data is to be handled and audited from end-to-end, and includes specifics on how data can be properly de-identified. As a systems and network administrator at a major trauma center, HIPAA has been a nightmare to implement and a security officer's dream come true. That said, the focus on personal accountability and the high level of monitoring and enforcement leads to an environment much different than a credit card processor or company.

Isn't it strange that people are still surprised that their computers are fast? Computers have gotten ridiculously fast compared during the last 20 years, and still they seem slow to many of us. Is that just the result of crappy programming, or is there more to it?

It's the hard drive, stupid. Consider the Core i7 processor, which has 64 gigabytes per second of memory bandwidth. Now consider your hard drive, which has 100 megabytes per second bandwidth. Yes, I am VERY surprised when my computer is fast because I'm using the technological equivalent of an Intel 8088 (née 1979) for my 5.25" HDD (née 1980).

I am considerably less surprised these days since my purchase of a solid state drive, but I'm still forced to use three spinning platter drives for archival storage.