TetsuoShima

Wow, you're making some very strange statements there. From what you say, I conclude that the length of time between operating system releases is directly proportional to the success of the OS. I'd strongly beg to differ on that one. As with a few other things you mentioned (take win 2k for example). XP was a better OS right from the start compared to 98SE, XP was better at everything except one thing: speed. Since XP was more complex (I'm talking the difference between a house and skyscraper here), it was a bit slower. What I would agree with, is if you had said, people kept knocking on XP compared to win 2k. At least then they'd have a reason to complain about, since XP is basically to win2k what Vista is to XP. For any pc enthousiast on windows, there never really was a 98SE -> XP crossover, since we all had switched to win2k by that time (at least all the ones I personally know ^^). As for Vista, it really isn't that much more complex than XP. (neither is XP that much more complex than win2k) In terms of "the old skool os'es", Vista is to XP, more like ME was to 98SE, but much more extensive and properly done. And in terms of housing, you could say: 98: small house 98SE: normal house ME: largish house with a leaking roof 2K: 300ft skyscraper XP: 350ft skyscraper XP SP2: 400ft skyscraper Vista: 450ft skyscraper with elevators that occasionally jam Vista SP1: 450ft skyscraper with working elevators ^^ I think MS has come to see that releasing SP's with major new features is bad for their business (less OS'es sold over time). So they'll probably reduce the amount of major new features in SP's from now on and focus on smaller features and integration of fixes. While at the same time getting 'new' OS'es out more quickly. A major step, like from 98 to 2k, is unlikely to happen again in the near future of MS.

Hmm, depending on the perfection of the cloning facility, each clone could (in optimal circumstances) have the exact same gene pattern/looks/etc... at the time of cloning, afterwards, I'd assume they diverge, since people aren't machines and are heavily affected by their surroundings. As far as actual thought processes/memories/etc... are concerned, it would again depend on the cloning process if they were replicated too. Suppose you take a currently very irrealistic process of cloning/duplicating a person (can such a duplication even be called clone, since they currently build 'clones' in a very different way) atom by atom at speeds approaching the speed of light, while you slow down the metabolism of the subject as much as possible. The resulting 'clone' would be identical in every single way to the original, including memories etc... if we suppose there are not made any even tiny mistakes during the process. You could repeat this process again and again, and each time you'd get a 'clone' that's identical to the previous one at the time the process started. There would each time be a tiny difference, since the previous clones would start to differentiate at the moment they are 'activated'. Now, mind you, that is a very exotic process, it's impossible at this time (who knows, it might be possible in 200-500 years?), but the theory behind it seems solid to me. I don't think we'd currently call it 'clones' though, since they are 'build' quite differently.

I think you sort of forgot to actually make a link to the place you're referring to there. ^^

At least we'll be able to tell stories to our children and grandchildren in 'x' years time. "Back in the old days, we actually got to download things that were not approved... " :o :cyclops:

LOL, relax Ulysses. :cyclops: Was it Eurovision last night? So that's why there was no Dr. Who then... Hadn't noticed, don't watch that sort of stuff. :) I believe btw, that 'the European superstate' (if you're referring to the EU) doesn't have much to do with the song contest, from what I remember from years ago, plenty of non-EU countries participate. One thing that might be interesting to discuss, would be if people from the same 'larger region' (ie. countries that border each other) might have a similar taste in songs? Mind you, I'm just saying something out of the top of my head, since I'm not sure if such a thing is what you were referring to with 'political voting'. :)

Well, it depends, if you're only running a few tabs, IE7 gets away pretty decently, when you're running a whole bunch of tabs, it gets worse than FF2 really fast. I hardly ever run more than 3 or 4 tabs myself though. FF3 is way superior to either one of those btw, I believe they're up to RC2 by now, so I'm guessing they'll be releasing a final within the next 2 months. I'm also guessing that Opera 9.5 final will be released in that same timeframe, they will probably have to, to remain competitive. Unfortunately, that would probably also mean that the full acid3 fixes won't be included in the 9.5 final build of opera (since I don't think they've been included in the last beta and weeklies either, I guess we'll have to wait for either 9.6 or 10 for those)

Mark1: used to be - meaning: not any longer, hence, I fail to see the point of that particular bit of the reply, besides the fact that somebody might have thought that the software business is static... :p Mark2: nagging for proof of things - if you have a legitimate version there really isn't any(/or depending how sensitive you are, not much) nagging going on. You authenticate once, via 1 simple click on a button, no information is asked. They just ask, would you please click this button, so I can do everything for you. That really can't be too much work for anybody. If you don't have internet, you'll have to call a free number, yes, that's more work, but at least you'd never be asked to click a button for an update, since no internet = no updates (unless you really don't mind extra work and have MS ship a cd with your updates to you, yes, they do that :o (it's not free btw :p )). Seriously, in terms of authentication, MS is pretty laid back, I've never had any trouble at all with it, and given the amount of 'unlicenced' windows verions that circulate, it certainly is understandable that they have to find at least some way to improve the experience of the people that did pay for their equal OS, compared to the free riders. Now, mind you, I'm no fan of closed software at all, and MS is certainly not one of my favourite companies, but if you look at it objectively, surely you can see that a lot of complaints about MS are simply freeby fanboy-isms. Linux (no matter which version, some are better at it than others) still is harder to learn than windows, even more so for people who've been using windows for most of their lives. The thing is, Linux tries to walk a fine line between enthousiasts and beginners, but once you become a beginner with some extra needs, Linux gets 'hard' fast. Too hard for most people. They don't want to tinker with their pc for 2 hours before they get something to work properly, they want it to work right from the start or at least not take more effort than some simple button clicks. That's what Joe average wants from his pc. Linux is simply not suitable for these people, especially, since they can get a full windows version for $90 and then they'll need to tinker a lot less. And between you and me $90 simply isn't much money nowadays. How do I justify that? Look for example at the sheer number of of Eee pc's that are sold. Now that is a one-piece-of-garbage laptop, the pricing is rediculously high compared to what you get in return, compared to 'normal' laptops, yet they fly of the counter as if they were free. Which to me means, people have plenty of cash to spend on gimmics. Anyway, I'm not at all anti-Linux, however, for the average person, the $90 they save, is not worth the extra hassle to properly set up and maintain and use a Linux desktop as their main system. For the computer enthousiast, the whole story changes of course, but we don't live on a planet filled with computer enthousiasts (good for me :D ). Some extra thoughts on the $90, if you buy your pc from an OEM, like DELL, HP, Lenovo, etc... The OS won't even cost you that much. More like $40 or $50. How did I arrive at that figure. Some of those OEM's allow you to buy a PC with either Windows or Linux, the rest of the configuration remains the same. It's not $90 cheaper... Why? If they install Linux, they have to provide support for it, which costs money... Personally, if I'd buy a pc from an OEM (which I've never done btw, besides laptops), I would always choose the windows version, since it simply is better real-life value... You can always install Linux yourself afterwards if you're an enthousiast, and if you aren't chances are you won't like 'the Linux way' and be forced to buy (or pirate) windows afterwards anyway... Now, if you are a fanboy or you sit on your cash like a rock (for whatever reason) and you really want the cheapest and you don't mind doing some extra work for it, then I can understand you find saving $40 for an OS you might or might not need a good deal, most 'westerners' would buy it anyway though. Wow, I seem to have gone on an extensive off-topic parade. :D Anway, in short what I wanted to say, no matter what is a popular rethoric on the net today, windows simply is more user friendly than linux (try doing anything 'serious' in linux without using the command line and then I'm not even speaking of all the different Linux 'distros', it's not really comparable (in a way it's worse, in another way, it's better, it simply depends on your pov), but people complain about there being too many windows versions, well as far as that statement and 'user friendlyness' is concerned, I laugh at Linux). Of course, in my entire long and boring text above, I'm completely ignoring Mac OS. Why? Because, when we talk about user lock-in and authentification, Mac OS is at least 10 times worse than windows. Now that's the only comment I make on mac os, since I haven't used it since the 90's and I'm sure a lot has changed, so whatever I'd say would probably be incorrect and irrelevant (I can say that most people I've spoken to who've made a serious effort to try and work with it, have been converted into mac 'fanboys' and that considering the pricing and hardware lock-in, it would cost you a fair penny more to be able to enjoy it). Weren't you on Mac? Anyway, I've got IE7 installed on all my windows pc's and don't have any trouble with any one of them, nor does it consume much more memory than IE6. Compared to FF3 and opera9.x however, that's another matter. (let's forget about ff2, since that's the greatest memory eating browser made, EVER)

That's not a problem at all really. You can just download it from microsoft. In fact most updates are freely available from microsoft itself, without any sort of authentication. Only some select updates/programs require you to authenticate your OS prior to download, IE7 is not one of those. Of course, if you want to grab the updates from MS, you do need to know which ones you want, or else it's not much use. :cyclops: (unless you use windowsupdate of course, but given all the alternative sites that's been circling on this page, I have to assume your windows isn't "genuine", so windowsupdate won't work for you. Gotta love legal software :cyclops:) Anyway, get IE7 from MS and be done with that bit at least. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx

In French there is a much stronger separation between the male and female sides of a word. So copine could mean both girlfriend and friend in the English sense of the word, but it always refers to a girl. I'm not sure if I'm bringing my point accross, if not, you'll just have to guess. :D

My apologies if my comment was a bit harsh, but we have very bad experiences with 'the copyright police' on this forum, so most things in that direction are not a good thing on the forum. As for you Q: you usually have very little control about download speed, once you're certain your own connection speed isn't limiting the download. Everything else depends solely on the person/company/server uploading the files. Where I'm from, it's usually the server that limits the download speed. If you can find a good usenet server, you can get very fast downloads, but availability isn't always good and it will cost you. Torrent download speed is completely in the hands of your fellow torrent users. DCC speed depends again on the speed of the server. etc.. I personally can't send you to a place where you can find the files you need for sure at a high speed. It's probably more an ongoing search if you're interested in speed, since not all servers are around for a long time. Your best/easiest bet is probably usenet on multiple connection to the server. You may be able to reach speeds of 10Mbps+ if you find a good server.

ow I was just doing a word game out loud, animie, amie, copin, etc... :)

ma copine? ^_o

About the inhalation, what I was thinking of, the infection dissapears after one month if no longer exposed, but what if the usage of nanoparticles became so widespread that it would become hard to find an indoor place where there are none. Constant infection? I'm confident they won't let it come to that of course, but that's why usage should be clearly monitored and regulated. After all, it's hard to filter these smal particles cheaply and indoor ventilation will probably not be enough to get rid of the particles if their usage becomes widespread enough. There are countless usefull applications for nanomaterials, but because of these restrictions that are bound to appear sooner or later (and rightfully so) their usage will probably become much more restricted or at least the things they are used in will become more expensive because they need to make sure they don't 'lose parts'. In the end, the places where they manufacture these things will of course be most at risk. I do think that it's nothing good regulations and practices can't handle. Of course, I'm talking like it's already been 'proven' on humans too, but I'm confident that humans will be 'irritated' by these particles just as much as mice are. I obviously don't have any evidence, but it seems only logical to me. In the end it's probably going to come down to concentration, how much can be allowed in the air before it becomes a menace.

It's very simple really. Whether you want to download something legally or illegally, you'll always need bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth you'll need is directly proportional to your quality needs. If the cost of bandwidth is prohibitive, neither usenet or rapidshare or iTunes or DCC or torrents or any other way to get files via the internet will be a viable option. If you still want to use any one of those, but can't afford to spend a lot of bandwidth, select small low quality files. I suggest you either settle for whatever little you can get or find a good DVD store and wait for the shows you want to watch to become available on DVD. If your connection is bad/expensive, then there is nothing anybody can do about that, except yourself and if you can't improve it, we certainly can't. It seems to me you came here looking for support on torrents or how to download things. Well you came looking in the wrong place. This is a scifi forum with some small non-scifi discussions (download how-to's are no part of it).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7408705.stm It was to be expected of course, that things would go wrong, if you'd use the technology carelessly. Small particles behave differently than what we're used to in the 'normal sized' world and have the potential to penetrate the body much 'deeper'. I always suspected these sort of problems would crop up sooner or later, obviously I was not the only one who was suspicious of widespread nanotech usage. I'm guessing very strict regulation will be necessary to make sure the usage of this technology is as safe as possible, given the great potential for disaster once its usage becomes more widespread.

Ah, hadn't thought of that. Maybe bbbb is a werewolf after all. :o

The "hour" has come and gone, "tomorrow afternoon" was a long time ago, "tomorrow's eating" was finished a while back, "36 hours" have passed .... And still no new episode. Could it be that one werewolf was voted out and the other ate himself? Or is it possible that TFMF is even more of a slacker than me? :cyclops:

I recently watched Children of Dune (miniseries). Though I found the ending to be rather peculiar. It left me with many questions. I've also seen Dune (miniseries and 80's movie) before btw. I heard there were books on this series, so I was wondering how much more info/story/explanations there are in the books. Besides the fact that everyone keeps mentioning how good they are, is there any reason for me to get the books? Do they expand significantly on the storyline in the video versions? Do they offer more/better info, etc?

I think you misunderstand me, what I'm trying to say, is that when you create a 'realistic' hero, in the sense that he doesn't have any superhuman strength or anything, you shouldn't try to make use of it anyway. I don't have a problem with this technological power at all really. In fact, that's the part I find most appealing. I haven't read any Ironman (or any other marvel) comics. They're simply not my style and they can't excite me. Maybe that's why these kinds of movies don't do it for me either. I'm not a big batman fan either btw. Nor of any other 'superhero'. Hence my conclusion: if you're not a fan, skip it. :)

I found it to be a bit boring. It didn't really give me that 'whodunit' feeling either.

I take it you haven't heard of the GTA IV problems on the PS3? :p

I didn't like it all that much. I have to admit I rarely ever like 'American Hero' movies. This one wasn't so bad in that aspect, though the thing that bothered me about it was the fact that they tried to make it realistic, they didn't make a superhero with 'biological' powers (aside from his super intelligence), but one with technological powers. However, when the average human falls from 1 mile(?) high down to Earth while strapped in an iron suit, they usually suffer fatal bodily damage. It was things like that, that I truely hated about it, that and the incredibly lame jokes, which would only make a 10 year old laugh. There was also a fair bit of 'convenient' stuff going on. But hey, that seems to be the sign of the time (of all times maybe, once you've seen enough content?). So, mostly the first hour or so of the movie was like a 1/10 score, while the latter part, with the real action would be a 8/10, combined total positively rounded would be a mere 5/10. So, not really worth paying $10 for unless you're a fan.

Seriously, no! 1. The presented figures are a gross misrepresentation of reality. (kinda lost the article where they show the figures, but they were showing a steady decline in spending) 2. Microsoft is doing its part in killing pc gaming. (Less than 10% of gamers have a dx10 capable platform. Blame MS! Tell you what, I don't have one either, in fact, I've never gamed less than since MS started selling Vista (coincidence?)) 3. CASUAL pc gaming is bigger than ever. I'm talking huge here, like a few hundred times bigger than 'real gaming'. It's not just on pc either, consoles are the same, though the difference between 'casual' and 'real' is way smaller, since even most casual games cost money on consoles. (Guess which gaming platform MS thinks doesn't matter... :cyclops: Only the one that sells like 2 times better than XBOX360 and PS3 combined.) 4. Most people who pirate games wouldn't buy them if they weren't 'freely' available. Why? They simply can't afford to buy as many as they pirate and don't care enough about them to buy 'em. :D And then I'm not even talking about useless DRM which only annoys the 'honest buyers', since the pirates simply strip the drm out of the executable and are done with it, in fact, I know from personal experience that many people simply buy a game for real, only to replace the exe with a cracked version simply to get rid of all the useless drm. There have been games (the latest well known release was less than a year ago) with no copy protection at all, that became a huge hit and sold many more copies than all those drm filled games. Conclusion, piracy isn't killing pc gaming, The pc gaming market is larger than ever and the 'high end' pc gaming industry is killing itself, by imposing standards people don't want/need and ignoring the largest part of the games market, thus shrinking their own market share all by themselves. http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14743 http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html (there are plenty more articles detailing this position, but there are the latest 2 I ran into) ed. fixed horrible their spelling O_O

Okay, so now you're thinking wth has this next article to do with the subject... Well, I got a bit liberal in my interpretation. :cyclops: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080515-us-isps-biggest-bittorrent-blockers-in-the-world.html In the mean while Comcast keeps on denying the whole thing: "We don't block, we simply manage and delay..." Riiiiiight. :cyclops:

Oops, I totally forgot to vote. Luckily I'm home early. I'm going for Bones, since someone whom at first I didn't trust but turned out to be trustworthy after all had a sneaky suspicion on him. Though I'm not certain yet about the whole thing.