Amen to that.

My father was a man of very few words, and it was difficult to have deep discussions with him.

There were two very deep things that I had seriously disagreed with him on for more than 30 years, but I didn't acquire the skills to fully communicate with him about these until very late in his life.

When I finally realized that he was right about one of them (while I was definitely right about the other), I didn't know how to explain my change to him, so I didn't.

That is my one regret. As for anything else, I simply didn't know any better.

Yes... I knew it.

I knew it, i knew it, i knew it. So dammed predictable.

The minute I saw this thread pop up i KNEW it would turn into a 'Apple/mac is great' thread.

Mac is a friggin' joke... along with their "i" this and "i" that. Apple couldn't even get on the bloody map until they made their machines a little more PC-ish and fixed so you could run PC programs. And the price tag on these things.... just like any other apple electronics.... you figure their has to be a hunk of gold floating around inside there somewhere. It's the only thing that would explain the ridiculous price tags found on this junk.

Please... do me a favor and start your own mac trash thread.... this is windows 7........ BETA. Don't belittle it by vomiting mac all over

@blink
along with their "i" this and "i" that.

Blink, this is just brilliant! LOL!

I tried Mac once ten years ago when mouse had only one button. And I told myself: "No s***t I am going to use Mac ever again".

And, btw, I am running dual boot on my main PC at home, Windows XP - Windows 7. All my hardware and printers work great in Windows 7, except scanner, which reached EOL seven years ago. There are some issues with software (well, W7 is in BETA status). And W7 runs faster than XP on my PC (can't comment on Vista because I never tried it).

Yep, my W7 is undeniably faster than XP, even 64-bit vs 64-bit. Recent benchmarks also indicate this surprising performance difference in almost all measured categories, even in spite of the massive functionality differences between the two operating systems. I actually think MS has a winner with W7.

Steve

It's interesting to note who came up with the architecture of W7.

The architect's decision to strip out all the junk out of the Vista code (W7 is basically Vista and Windows Server 2008 code stripped of all but the minimum core functionality).

This of course helped performance...

So who is the architect of this great new Windows (which should be very successful)?

(**** DRUM ROLL ****)

The architect is... the antitrust prosecutors at the EU who made Microsoft agree to stop bundling so much garbage with Windows so as to create a massive monopoly.

Microsoft has said that because of this consent decree, Windows customers worldwide who need e-mail, media players, photo editors, etc. have to download these separately after purchase.


We here in the U.S. are increasingly affected by EU regulations.

Just look at computers and electronics, it is getting difficult to find anything that isn't RoHS (EU's "Restrictions on Hazardous Substances"), even though the Bush administration never saw a neurotoxin they didn't like to see in the environment.

On the good side, the RoHS will save a lot of American lives, and over the long term may help us pay less than the current twice what others pay for healthcare (although a chunk of that is our 30% for paperwork compared to 2% in single-payer systems).

LOL, wow, I'm so glad that politics has been brought into this discussion. I was waiting for someone to mention Bush/Obama.

Anyway, yeah, it is interesting to follow the influence that such regulation has on operating systems. Personally, I couldn't be happier that all the bloat is gone... though really it only matters to a certain extent, as none of those items run in the background by default (with the exception of IE, I suppose, which is still included).

Steve

'Just look at computers and electronics, it is getting difficult to find anything that isn't RoHS (EU's "Restrictions on Hazardous Substances"), even though the Bush administration never saw a neurotoxin they didn't like to see in the environment."

Bad Form Sir.

RoHS has been around for a while. If you want to sell products in other places around the world, or sell parts to companies that market outside of the US then you need to be RoHS compliant. It means your electronic parts need to be lead free.

What do you mean by Bad Form?

I hope you didn't think that I was looking to specifically buy non-RoHS electronics.

I was very happy to see RoHS.

My point was that the EU made regulation when the U.S. wouldn't, and this affected also the U.S. markets for precisely the reason you stated.

RoHS is not just "lead regulation." It covers a lot of other substances like cadmium and other heavy metals, and lots lots more.

Inevitably, manufacturers scream loudly whenever change is suggested.

In the 1990s, when U.S. electronics manufacturers were told by regulators to stop using huge amounts of very nasty VOCs (solvents) for cleaning circuit boards after wave soldering, there was pandemonium. Then an engineer at Lockheed Skunkworks decided to try lemon juice. It was found to be more effective than the VOCs, and cheaper.

The average American household now contains 3,000 chemicals. Each is proven to be reasonably safe, in separation. Only very recently has there been a call for analyzing what happens when our bodies are loaded up with all of them at the same time, and to see if this could be the cause of the astronomic growth of many serious (and expensive!) illnesses over the period of the last few decades when chemical use increased exponentially.

The U.S. so far has had the stance that all chemicals are innocent until proven guilty (with a minimum of 10,000 deaths and/or 100,000 crippled before action can be taken?), while the EU adopted the Precautionary Principle, which states that especially consumer product manufacturers can only use dangerous chemicals as a last resort (oversimplified, but that's the essence of it).

I think we will witness over the next ten years the difference between these two approaches, and we will witness it in our wallets in a very substantial way. Researchers will put numbers on the cost of illness in healthcare expenses (whether paid through health insurance premiums or by tax payers), lost work productivity, etc., and then there will be a witch hunt here that could shadow tobacco.

(And the funny thing is that I haven't seen a scientific indication that tobacco causes cancer. Not even smoking it :O). The indications are that it's smoking the chemical additives to the tobacco that is the primary cause, well ahead of the tar, etc.)

From Coursedesign
"What do you mean by Bad Form?"

Sorry about the confusion, I was referring to the Bush comment when I used "bad form"