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We can post anonymously? This makes trolling so much easier!!! Microsoft rules!

Note to readers: I sacrificed any potential gain in fame and fortune to make this witty response work.

Workstation cards have been multi-gigabyte for ages! the ATI FireGL V8650 which was released a while ago is 2GB.

i dont like fpses. but then again, that kind of graphics, makes some fpses worth playing.

And that right there sums up the problem with the gaming industry. Game producers don't even need to worry about whether their game is any good simply because some people will play it just because it's shiny (unity100, I'm looking right at you).

You hear that kind of excuse a lot, just like when a politician does something particularly egregious (e.g. Obama's FISA vote) you hear people explaining, "Oh, that's just a compromise to get more votes. He can't do anything if he isn't elected."

The problem with the stock explanation is that it's very often just wrong. Ebay's current emphasis on big sellers at the expense of individuals is losing them money, just like Obama's FISA sellout is losing him votes. Piss off your core market to chase some other potential market, and odds are you won't do well with either. By all means, businesses should try to expand their customer base and politicians should try to appeal to more voters. But when you abandon the people who got you where you are in the first place, you're almost guaranteed to suffer overall.

Businesses that do well are those which build a steady, loyal customer base that keeps coming back for more. This is particularly true in the online world, where changing to a competitor is very, very easy; the few success stories to come out of the dot-com mania of a decade ago show how to do it right. Amazon, for all its evil, still does a damned good job of selling books. Google, no matter what else it does, remains far and away the best general-purpose search engine. Until a couple of years ago, I'd have counted Ebay among those success stories, but now it looks as though they were just as flaky as any HowFastCanWeBurnVentureCapital.com site; they just took longer to show it.

Suits and their sycophants love to talk tough about how they serve the bottom line ... but in the real world, the suits are wrong more often than not, and here's a sterling example.

Thank goodness. Gun control laws only keep the honest person honest and defenseless.
Law abiding citizens will obey the law and revoke ownership of guns. Criminals on the other hand already have a mind to break the law, and having a law against guns won't stop them for a second.

An anonymous reader writes "Did you plunk down a few hundred dollars for a new set to tap into all those HD Radio channels only to find you can barely tap into any HD content at all? That's what happened to MP3 Newswire when it tested three popular models — in signal-rich central New Jersey. Not only did these radios do a poor job at picking up digital content, their analog reception was so bad they were all outclassed by a cheap shower radio that was lying around. Then the reviewer threw an old 1940's tube radio into the mix for laughs and sure enough that 65 year-old piece of technology performed better (video clip included in article). Hey, if you're going to charge top dollar for these things at least throw some better parts in."

harmonk writes "Wikipedia has a new foe: evangelical Christians. A website founded by US religious activists aims to counter what they claim is "liberal bias" on Wikipedia, the open encyclopedia which has become one of the most popular sites on the web. The founders of Conservapedia.com say their site offers a "much-needed alternative" to Wikipedia, which they say is "increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American". This was in the Guardian...."

Oneamp asks: "I'm interested in a '500-in-one' type electronics kit. Amazon lists a few, but I've seen some user reviews that maybe they are not all they're cracked up to be. Most of the complaints seem to be of the 'Manual sucks' variety. Nevertheless, I'm sold on the idea. Can any of you, who have had actual experience with any of these kits, recommend a good one?"

Qubert writes "Was D-Wave's quantum computer demo last week the real thing? Ars Technica takes a look inside the cold, black box and concludes that whatever was in there, it probably wasn't a 'pure' quantum computer: 'Jumping off the fence, we will say that we think D-Wave demonstrated a real device; however, we think their device is going to set off a debate in the physics community over where the boundary between classical and quantum computation is. At present, quantum computers are "globally phase coherent," which means that every qubit's state is entangled (and therefore correlated) with every other qubit... The D-wave system, however, is certainly not globally phase coherent, which raises the question of whether it is a quantum computer.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Details of Windows Vista's UK prices can be found here http://www.techworld.com/applications/news/index.c fm?newsid=7668 According to techworld Vista Prices are significantly marked up in the UK compared to the US, as much as 80% for some versions. Ironically in the UK apart from buying abroad, and hoping customs doesnt add VAT to your order... the cheapest way to get a legal copy of Vista in the UK is to first get WGA to flag your copy of XP as illegal. Then UK users can purchase legitimate copies of XP for about £53 for the XP Home version and £92 for the XP Pro version. http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/2154729/micros oft-increases-checks From Here they can download the form for an upgrade for only £10 http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/D/1/AD102 E9D-2DCF-4552-ADE3-68C02F0938E8/unitedkingdom.pdf That means the total for Vista Home Basic = £63 Vista Bussiness = £102 Still expensive by US standards but cheaper than buying from a UK retailer."

reub2000 writes "Journalist Ken Krayeske was arrested for taking a photograph of Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell during a parade. Krayeske a pacifist, was on a list of "potential troublemakers" and his photo had been sent to cops on the parade route."

A live video stream is chronicling the trial of 29 men accused of the 2004 terrorist bombing in Madrid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/business/worldbusiness/19media.html?ex=1329541200&en=e348b7ebcbd3315e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Online coupons have always been a bargain-hunter’s diversion, which may be precisely why the market has grown so slowly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/technology/19ecom.html?ex=1329541200&en=ca1423515883f838&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Content-recognition software could address a major entertainment industry concern— songs and videos being posted on the Web without permission.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/technology/19video.html?ex=1329541200&en=976b19728e9c9b61&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Socguy wrote with a link to a CBC article about the rapidly disappearing Peruvian glacier known as the Quelccaya ice cap. The world's largest tropical glacier was a hot topic this past Thursday at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, and a team of Ohio state scientists, produced the stunning news that Quelccaya and similar formations are melting at a rate of some 60 metres per year. While polar ice caps have commanded attention in the discussion of global warming to date, these tropical caps are crucial to the well-being of ecosystems relying on an influx of mountain stream fresh water.