Sad, isnt it? You should just be thankful you only see the really best of the ideas our glorious leaders of business and politics come up with.

It's as if pure marketing has taken over the country. Everyone is on a desperate mission to do something that is "first", "best" or some other superlative to get their 15 minutes of fame. Whether it actually makes any sense, is logically feasible, or benefits Australians is irrelevant.

ws

Now we can give Obama the Nobel prize for Chemistry and Physics as well!

ws

My friend, you should be happy your parents are so young and have all their faculties.

I can tell my dad something now, tell him to write it down, and in 10 minutes, he's forgotten where he put the note that he wrote down.

There's a slight difference between being selfish and protecting yourself from going insane(r).

I kid you not, I went through a stage explaining to my Mum why her spreadsheets were not on her computer anymore because she had actually changed computers. Just she didn't remember that one small detail; same keyboard and screen; she had just replaced the box (of course with a different hdd in it).
It's worse when you get accused of deleting the files :-(

Alzheimer city is not a pleasant place. I'm pretty sure I'll be there shortly...

ws

I think I have been through most of the poll options above over time.

I started with "Yes, gladly", but have found that my best case nowadays is "Yes, but at great cost to my eternal soul". It does depend to some extent which member of family/friends I'm dealing with. My best friends and favorite family members DON'T ask for or get any tech help. Try that simple check for yourself. Doesn't mean I don't do anything for them, just not that dirty techy stuff ;-)

In most cases nowadays, it is actually "No" in one form or another. Let's not be dishonest with each other, "I feign ignorance" is a reflection that you can't say that word "No". In other words, you prefer to lie rather than offend friends or a family member.

I must say I was staggered by the huge vote for "Yes, but at great cost to me". Clearly, you want to say No, but can't or won't do it. I hope that the friends/family understand that it's a big favour you're doing for them; it's not something that is necessarily easy, nor that you want to do!

Anyways, as I get older...err, I mean more mature, I move further down the "No" tree. Goddam kids better stay off my lawn too!

ws

Fo shizzle, ma laxative.

You keep on dribblin' tha' ish.
ws

yeah, I love archaelogical stuff.

I just buried a dvd in my backyard. It was blank.

That oughta mess those fuckers from the future up.

ws

With some of the products on the market now that make use of various Si compounds, and some that claim nano-tech, I would love to see this type of self-arranging -dare I say smart?- nano-tech to form the barrier between my car's paint and the environment. The problem with all sealants and waxes is that they degrade, meaning you (or someone you pay) has to do it at regular intervals. Typically between 1 month and 6 months. I love my car, but hate the polish/seal/wax scenarios :-/

Bonus points if it can be made to enhance depth, and look shiny!

ws

This is an absolute farce.

MS is now in such a dominant position that it is now artificially limiting features to introduce competition and introduce artificial price points. It's aimed at the hardware vendors, and at the price of other operating systems to drive them out of the market.

It's still anti-competitive. It's still MS.

ws

As pointed out above, if the data is encrypted, the service can't search on it.

So:
- you get a VM or a hosted machine that you have complete control over.
- You set up all your encryption as necessary, eg encrypting the file system. SSL to the machine, etc
- You set up a search system, eg lucene, or maybe database as SQL queries are needed or whatever.
- Profit(?)

Of course, you could do all the same in-house as well, without the need for encryption etc.

ws

If it works, why upgrade at all?

Ubuntu 8.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release. It will have any security patches until the next LTS release, which is typically every 18 months. So, why not just wait for 9.10?

ws

Just thought I'd add to this.

The issue I see with the 'Cycle of Reincarnation' of CPUs/GPUs is that the barriers to entry are getting higher with each reincarnation.

- Just how easy would it be to build something from scratch - something that outperforms the latest ATI or NVIDIA or Intel or AMD offerings?
- Add to that the mountains of patents covering those areas

So, do you want to join that startup?

ws

You're missing the point. It's not about whether you need a graphics card *today*. But what will it look like - or should/need to look like - in the future.

With increasing CPU and 'onboard' graphics performance, do you think that you'll always need a dedicated graphics card? If not, for how long?

ws

Sun somehow managed to butcher so many of its acquisitions, that it would be interesting to see what would be the outcome of IBM buying Sun. OpenOffice vs Symphony, DB2 vs MySQL, WebSphere vs Sun's offerings, Solaris vs AIX, and not to mention the hardware side.

If it goes ahead, of course....

ws

Whatever happened to VRML? I remember seeing some examples of this years ago.
...*googles*... wikipedia....enlightenment!

VRML has turned into X3D. Of course! It had to be XML'ified.

Why not accelerate this?

Actually, I'm not even sure that I want accel 3D in my browser. I have enough issues with graphics drivers OUTSIDE of the browser without making the browser crash too...

ws

...but goddam it, it wouldn't run under Ubuntu. I'm not sure if it's an nVidia driver problem or a an acpi issue on my laptop.

BTW if anyone can help me to get norton to run on x86-64 that would be great too.

ws