Ditto here. I'm giving up on the free shipping from now on, so long as I can pick my shipper. I don't want SmartPost (which is an oxymoron). In theory, it should work well (USPS already goes by every house every weekday... let them handle local delivery), but I have yet to see it work in practice. It's significantly slower every time, much more difficult to track, and I've had multiple packages get returned simply because they didn't actually drop it off when they were here (and I was home, and signed the card to leave the next day, and spoke to the postman the following day, etc)... by the time I knew it wouldn't be delivered, it was no longer at the post office and was already on its way back to newegg - and WHAM, more restocking fees.

Lately, I've noticed both newegg and amazon sometimes limit the shipping options or don't say what type of shipment they'll use. That sucks more than anything, because there's no obvious way to vote with my wallet, so to speak.

While I think that the LibreOffice folks had some valid complaints, there has been an awful lot more stink made about it than was necessary. They could have stated their needs/complaints, proposed their forking plans should certain criteria not be met, and just went on their way when that didn't happen. Many of the members did just that, and didn't raise a big stink.

However, it's not helping anything to say that "Oracle ... decided to be as uncooperative as possible". They just took over a very large and wide array of software and hardware. OOo didn't get the attention that some people wanted - fine. I'm not claiming Oracle did the best they could, but they weren't absolutely evil with it either.

"Oracle decided to dispense with it and carelessly tossed it aside to Apache"... don't be such a drama queen. IMO, the Apache Foundation is an amazing place, and is just about the ideal place for OOo to end up (assuming Oracle didn't want to manage it anymore). The could have carelessly tossed it aside to Microsoft or to Novel or Miguel de Icaza etc. The Apache Foundation seems like a pretty well thought out solution. The LibreOffice guys are the ones that forked... if they want to join back in, then can work out their licensing issues and do so (or just rewrite what's needed).

The good news for LibreOffice is that they can still pull in stuff from OOo (I think), so not all is lost.

...except that isn't the problem.

They are using an incremental number on the RHS (right hand side) of the "u" seperator, and that number may represent either a critial patch update or it might be a new minor version. The problem arrises when they attempt to associate FUTURE releases with stuff in bugtrackers and their ilk. They could have more CPU releases than normal releases, making the CPU minor release number much higher than the planned normal release, causing a bunch of confusion.

Their solution, IMO, blows. But it's not because of the format of the version string.

IMO, the easy solution would be to treat it as a 3 part number, and make the current minor version part MUCH larger. So, first increase the minor version:
        5u40 becomes 5u00040000

That can be interpretted as: 5.00040.000

Then it's easy. Middle part is the normal incremental releases. Last 3 digit are for CPU releases on that incremental. FWIW, this provides FAR more room for CPU releases than this scheme they just announced, and it's very clear and easy to read. Most languages aslo support some character to allow the user to format the number within the codebase (in Perl, it could be written as 5.00040_000 and perl will just ignore the _), so it would still be crystal clear when written as well.

Anyway... this is NOT the same as Y2K, nor as user agent strings, and doesn't have anything to do with programs expecting the version string to be a specific format, except for the fact that they can't change the current format. How they plan to work within that limitation and the issues they have encounted is the problem.

I guess you didn't actually read the reference pages you berating. From the Rotoscoping wikipedia page:

So, even though Rotoscoping was first a manual technique done in 1915 and patented in 1917 (tracing live action frames that are projected onto the back of a frosted glass panel), that process moved to using a computer, and then was automated within the Rotoshop software.

There's even a patent from 1994 mentioned: US Patent 6,061,462 http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6061462 for a digital rotoscoping process (that's a separate work from the Rotoshop software).

These may all be listed in Microsoft's patent - I haven't read it - but they certainly seem related, if not prior art.

Because best buy is freaking awful.

More to your point though, I'd be interested to see some stats on total number of laptop+nettop+ultrabook-apple units moved by the two (the grouping is because those categories blur the lines far too much, and apple sales don't matter in this case). There's a very good chance best buy outsells amazon on laptops, but I wouldn't be surprised if the figures are pretty close

A list of exactly what is being violated?
To put it in perspective, consider the SCO-Linux lawsuits. While this isn't exactly the same, it is the same sort of hurdle.

Company A: Your stuff violates some of our stuff! Pay us or else!
Company B: What stuff?
Company A: A lot of stuff! 68 things enumerated over thousands of places to be precise. Now pay us or else!
Company B: Um, what stuff is it exactly?
Company A: Oh, you'll find out in court. Consider yourself served! ...
And for those that agree (settle out of court), it seems common for a "deal" to be offered, with one of the rules being that they don't divulge that information.

Maybe that's not the case here, but I'm betting that's at least part of it (the other part being bogus or weak patents). There may even be a couple valid ones, but as far as I know, that hasn't been fully identified.

A great many laptops have mini PCIe slots. I have a Dell Inspiron 1720 (core 2 duo from May 2008) that has THREE of these (two of which are open; one holds a wifi card which I recently upgraded). You could pop an mSATA in either of the other two. BIOS might not see it correctly (one of the slots in the 1720 is labeled to support mSATA, and docs say the others won't work, but I don't believe it... I had to put the new wifi in the mSATA slot because my card was half length and that's the only place I could get antanna's to stretch to - wifi catcher switch doesn't work now, but linux sees and uses the new card just fine).

For the desktop... I don't know what you're talking about. You can fit two 2.5" drives in a 3.5" drive slot (or in the external 3.5" spot), or more in a 5.25" slot, or use a PCIx card solution, etc.

More energy? Really? The SSHD's have a flash drive and spinning platters in them. Having those separate *might* use a little more power, but that just depends on what drives you buy. The difference will be negligible at best.

I don't trust any site whose product descriptions don't match the product specifications.

Ex: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2013-New-4rd-Generation-16GB-Black/891966448.html
"2013 New 4rd Generation- 16GB - Black"
Tablet Data Capacity: 32GB

Same thing for: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2013-New-Iconia-Tab-A210-10g16u-10-1-Inch-16GB-Tablet-Gray/891858062.html
2013 New Iconia Tab A210-10g16u 10.1-Inch 16GB Tablet (Gray)
Tablet Data Capacity: 32GB .... title says 16GB; iconia a210 normally ships with 16GB
Network Communiction: Built-in 3G,Bluetooth,Wifi,4G LTE,External 3G ... Highly doubt the 3G, 4G, external 3G
Processor Manufacture: Samsung ... iconia a210 ships with an NVIDIA Tegra 3
Memory Capacity: 2GB ... Maybe this is right, but the A210's I've found online have only 1GB

Unless someone real (not just an A/C, and someone with a normal comment history) can attest to this place, I'll be avoiding it completely, an recommending others to do the same. Looks way too shady.

AFAICT, this guy IS the junion developer. Three possible options:
1. quit
2. get him to change (unlikely), or get him fired (if he's senior and pumping out lots of stuff that looks iike it works, this is unlikely)
3. speak to him + management; see if he/they see benefit in a maintainable product; if so, propose that you be his bitch / code filter, and your job becomes quality control (you fix his stuff; improve/add automatic code checkers; clean up the source; etc etc). If they see the benefit in that over you smashing on the keyboard to make more of a mess and add a couple features, then great (assuming you want that job). Else, see #1 and #2.

If OP doesn't like that, then the best way to lead is by example. If you just spew out standards and stuff, or just clean up his mess, he's not going to change. On your parts of the project, where you add some new files (not a modification to existing files), do it the right way and add testing and make those tests be required to pass before a code commit is allowed. That way, if he borks something you added to badly, then he won't be able to check it in. It'll make for a bit of a war for a while, but someone will win or break eventually :-)

Should have just ranked them by speed. Slowest to fastest:
Nvidia with open source drivers
AMD with open source drivers
AMD with closed source drivers
Nvidia with closed source drivers ... I'd like to know where Intel's rank in that line up. I know they're slower than the closed source ones, but what about the open source ones (and what cards?)?

Good point... personally, I'd like to purchase discrete intel video cards. I don't need core i7 performance, don't want the power consumption, and definitely don't want the price. AMD FX is fine by me. However, Intel's recent video performance is good enough, and completely open and well supported on Linux. I'd enjoy that combo. Currently, I've got a AMD FX box with nvidia card, and an AMD A-series box using the their integrated graphics. The Nvidia is much easier to work with (using proprietary drivers), and I've had a bunch of silly issues with the AMD graphics (tried both drivers).

I'm not sure why Intel doesn't release a discrete card, except maybe that they want to keep Nvidia alive and let them fight that battle.

Doesn't matter... that was WAY before Flash worked "on a cell phone".

How is it theft to take what the machine is handing you**, but it's not theft when the machine gladly takes your money?

I realize there's the whole "intent" thing, and knowing it's more than you're supposed to get, but you're dealing with a machine that, conversely, lacks that ability to understand in the other direction. If I accidentally push the $10 button instead of the $1 button, it'll gladly take my $10 and there's not shit that can be done about it. If it accidentally gives me 10x's the money it's supposed to.... turn about is fair play as far as I'm concerned.

What, am I supposed to believe that all those bells and chimes and lights and scantly clad waitresses and free drinks are there to help me make better decisions? They're there to entice people into forking over more money than they intended to part with. Two guys found a way to get one model of machines to fork over more than they wanted to, and it really wasn't *that* much (no where near what the casinos take in). So what.

** the payouts were so big, that people actually handed him the money. They could have stopped right there.

Every time I've ever played those damn machines, they take all my money. I've managed a win here or there, but never came out on top, and whatever budget I set for myself was exhausted in short order. We're told that's how they're supposed to work; that the odds are in the houses favor; that walking away with more money than you start with is supposed to be a rare thing. These two guys pull that off, and they walk away with around $500k or so (each?), and they're the ones getting arrested? WTF?!? The casino's openly say they're just going to keep fleecing everyone, and we're all fine with that, but two guys get a couple bucks (by just pushing the buttons on the front that they're allowed to push) and they're evil?

The casinos should just fix the bug, or enable the work around, and move on. The first guy has played $12 MILLION in video poker prior to this. The house has made plenty to cover this relatively minor payout. Let these two guys be happy and tell all their friends how much they won, and put them on banners and billboards saying "look at these big winners!!!", and they'll get plenty more people flocking to the machines and losing it all.

I don't think they broken any of the mentioned laws, and the CFAA should be neutered, but none of that even matters. The casinos are already ahead of the game cash-wise; they've ID'd the bug; it's simple to disable the bug-causing feature; there's probably an update that fixes it; they're legally allowed to bar these guys from ever coming back (but why would they!?!!? he spent $12million on video poker alone before ever even discovering this bug); and last but not least, SHOULDN'T THEY BE SUING IGN (maker of the game)!?!?!

Not only this, but the article is simply flamebait:

I would hardly call 5 hours of continuous use "absolutely awful". Personally, I'd put that in the "could be better" category. If I'm sitting at my computer, I'm probably going to take them off; If I'm playing frisbee or basketball etc, I'm taking them off; if I'm just sitting around the house, I'm taking them off; etc etc. I think 5 hours a day is more than I'd use them anyway... but all those times when you take them off, they could also be charging.

The article gets much worse though:

That wasn't a test. That was what he thought would happen, and he didn't try it. I doubt that claim is accurate. The screen and communications channels are running the whole time anyway, and that's probably sucking the majority of the power. Recording while doing so probably won't make much of a difference... but I'm just postulating too. Maybe he should have actually tested it, since he has one!
And then they follow it up with a statement, as if that was actually fact. That's rotten.

I've looked at battery powered pico projectors over the years (never got one though), and most claimed around 2 hours life. That's *nearly* enough, but I want to be sure I'll be able to finish a movie on one. This, IMO, is similar. If it gets 2.5 hours or more, I think that's pretty good for constant recording or playing (besides, where are you storing 2.5+ hours of HD video?), and this isn't meant to replace video cameras. I don't know what they're thinking.

A complaint about batterly life from someone that probably wouldn't wear this in public for more than 10 minutes... yeah, I don't care what he has to say. (I'm not saying I'd wear it all that much either... but I'm not going to berate the battery life of something I wouldn't use anyway)