About 10 years ago I tried an experiment. I had bought a new CPU and GPU. The CPU could fit in my current motherboard. (Nothing was *old* just a few years out of date.)

My theory was that if I upgraded the GPU first, I would get most of my performance improvement and the CPU wouldn't matter. So I upgraded them one at a time to be a proper scientist. I had FutureMark ready to go.

The GPU, first, gave me the 2x improvement I figured it could, based on the improvement in the specs. I had expected a little less because of the old CPU, but seemed to get the full performance boost.

Then I upgraded the CPU and, surprisingly, I got another 2x just like the the CPU specs promised. I expected maybe 20% or so since the GPU should have been most of the bottleneck.

I was so intrigued that I found a memory upgrade that also fit the board. Again the 40% or so I expected, based on specs, happened.

I'm surprised to this day.

While it has been a long time, the best I can guess/remember was that it was an AMD 3000+ CPU (1.9Ghz). And an NVidia GPU, I think GT6600 or something? The memory went from whatever to DDR, if I recall.

I couldn't make sense of that article. Did you see the part about photoshop being a virtual economy?

Is it the article writer's skills or is Gabe Newell batshit crazy? The text itself seems psychotic.

Hmmm.

Haha. My wife does this! I didn't know it was a trend. I call it the "redrum" voice which is only a slight exaggeration.

She does it when she's trying to sound like her words are parenthetical to the conversation.

'This study is among the first to show animals incorporating a chemical defence as a response to the threat of predation'

But the ants themselves have an acid defense. Yay! An episode of Bear Grylls finally comes in handy!

What I've learned this year, about on-line backup is that I DO NOT WANT live syncing of my data with the backup. I tried SugarSync and ran away.

* I do not want the increased complexity of figuring out versions of my stuff. (I will version when I want.)
* I do not want it syncing mistakes that I made. In my case, a faulty software RAID driver (thanks AMD and Gigabyte) was corrupting sectors until my stuff was useless. Not the kind of thing I want to reverse engineer from "versioned" live backups.
* I do not want to discuss with my non-tech friends how a service like this is understandable for them, because it is not.
* I do not want it to create "briefcases."
* I do not want it to try to understand the Mac image folder versus the PC image library or any other "virtual" folder. Double bad points for trying to convert between the two OSs.

Please understand that I felt like I did want all this until I tried it. All of the above have gone wrong spectacularly in the first three months of use. For instance, I put my households shared pictures in the Win7 "Public" images library. Sugarsync made copies of these pictures and put them into my private user library. Now what? What happens on a live backup when I delete these copies? Will I confuse the backup software even more?

So what I want in on-line backup, simply, is a virtual metaphor of burning a DVD of my stuff. It should be easier and bigger. If it were easy, I'd do it once a week or month and be happy. I would also force my parents to use it for their business. Not until then.

Man, I thought the cyclists around here wore *their* clothes too tight! That's more crotch (male and female) than I had hoped to see. Art, I guess.

I considered Blockbuster and went to check their prices. When I reached their site, they had a big block teasing Netflix and inviting me to join. I spent 20 minutes trying to find how much it would cost to use Blockbuster. I couldn't do it.

So while I hope Blockbuster will turn a new leaf, I'm guessing that it wasn't an accident that prices were obscured. Come on Vice Presidents of Big Companies, the rules have changed!

I didn't RTFA, so how is this different from BlindType, a company who made a keyboard that rotated and scaled to account for the user being off. I remember they had patented it and Google bought them in Oct 2010.

"Let them drink Latte... My god! The stunning arrogance of the McMansion aristocracy."

Exactly what I picked up on. Also notice the wording of the email one receives about the cost increase:

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

I detected a little bit of "consumers are sheep" in there. I have a choice? This is good marketing copywrite? It gets my ire up when it needn't. Of course I have less choices now, because the one I had, I liked... and it is gone.

The email goes on to tell me everything except how my current bill is broken down. So I can't easily compare the new "option."

I used to get a bundle and now I don't have a choice. Streaming doesn't have the same options as DVD so both were part of their two-pronged strategy. I use to pay less and now I can't. I have to have both to get the same service.

Look, well played Netflix. You can increase the price. You are the best game in town. We are only talking low $20 for meeting almost all of my movie and tv interest. That's way lower than Comcast. And you know I don't have a very good option and you know you have limited my options so that I must buy two things now. Again, well played. Perfect chess. ... But to phrase it like I'm a child who will find it in my best interest has pissed me off enough that I'm willing to look for lesser services and work harder to work around Netflix. Do they not realize why America gave a big "f* you" to Blockbuster and seated Netflix as the new king? Well I'll tell them here. It isn't just because Blockbuster drained every nick and dime they could in nefarious ways. It's because they gloated about it and told us to drink less lattes. There's no reason Blockbusters shipping and new plans shouldn't have killed Netflix. Well, except that consumers aren't actually children after all.

I'll probably keep Netflix for the convenience of the service and the price, but now, unnecessarily, they are on watch with me! And this latte crap didn't help at all. As soon as I see any reasonable option, I'll be more than happy to read up and take a chance.

Why didn't they whine about their

My wife and I stopped by the Microsoft store in Bellevue (near Redmond) and checked out WP7. The Samsung phone was extremely light and the screen was bright. It was almost magical! I felt there was some trick, but apparently not. While I plan to get an Android next, my wife wants a Windows phone now. She likes the active tiles and the Samsung phone.

However, when we went to the AT&T in the same mall, the sales rep told us "Windows is no good" as soon as we looked at them. She was actively trying to talk us out of them. The phones were even in the front slot in the store! She was off-putting in her aggressive push to an HTC android near the middle of the store.

Just thought it was unusual.

P.S. Yes, I know I made up the word "anectdotally."

I'm all for new *light* features. But before Firefox copies every Chrome feature, please keep in mind that Chrome is supposed to be an OS and so it has some heavy stuff in there.

Maybe certain "signature add-ons" could be added with a check during installation. This could include the new Facebook and Twitter integration.

An add-on I'd love by the way, is popover blocking. I hate those things.

What? No reference to global warming research here? Is this thing on?

Whoa is the press and their loss of financial recompense. Still, the perfect storm here is that the internet is taking over at the same rate that professional news is getting useless.

I see the newspapers, and the media in general, as shallow. They parrot news at the same level of understanding as an immature, uninformed citizen. (And they get praise from immature, uninformed citizens for doing this.) I'd like to think they are pandering, but I bet, as a whole, they've done it so long that true immaturity fills their ranks. I get talking heads presenting undue fear or bravado at every turn. I never feel I get a balanced set of facts. And frankly, I feel at times that it is malicious.

If anybody is the keeper of language, shouldn't it be the press? I barely know what "recession" or "bail-out" (or "liberal") mean anymore.

I expect the press to make us feel a little bit bad for attacking the wrong source of a problem or for slinging mud at persons who are making the best decisions possible. Instead, they encourage and indulge in childish behavior.

The presidential campaign was a travesty. The economic crisis is well on its was as one. I'd like to see news outlets sued for breach of contract to inform, but they never actually had a contract! It was implied. And I think they take advantage of this.

When they go after companies for jets, I think about the pot calling the kettle black.

The problem with the auto industry is that no one trusts they will turn the corner because they lived with their heads in the sand for 20 years. (And BTW, how can such a long-standing, high revenue industry turn upside down in just one month?) I think the media has the same implied problem. I think they've been digging this hole for 20 years. It's not just the internet. And not everyone wants to see them survive as is. Its time for some gut-wrenching change in quality.

Well, I ramble. You get the idea...