Posted 09/04/2008 at 02:53:11pm

"...the successor to Blu-ray will be OLED displays."  

This makes perfect sense if you accept that laser mice were the successor of the floppy drive.  

I think that the marketing department needs someone from the IT side of Samsung on the team.

Posted 09/04/2008 at 12:44:04pm

The inquirer.net has the msrp at £30, which is roughly $53.  Even assuming that they would drop that price to $49.99, or even $39.99 that is a rediculus price for a 2gb usb key.  And no I'm not forgetting that they added a DRM laden 20 yr old movie.  The DVD is available for under $20, and a 2 gb usb key can be found in most cereal boxes.  Who thinks of this crap?

Posted 08/28/2008 at 01:27:21pm

So if the user has a pirated copy of XP, the background is black.  I'm not sure I see the deterence factor here.  If you leave the background black, does it still refresh it once an hour?  Unless it minimizes all windows when it does this I think I could live with a black background. 

 That being said, my copy of Ubuntu is running great.

Posted 08/26/2008 at 03:52:39pm

Until Blu-Ray offers something better than the upconverting DVD/players for a similar price, no amount of gimicks will make me want to change.

Posted 08/22/2008 at 01:24:15pm

I'll be interested is how this goes.  LED street lamps seem like a great idea, except where the winters include snow, wind, and temps south of 0.  I seem to remember a couple of small towns (in MN maybe?) that found that the lenses freeze over in snow storms.  The LEDs don't produce heat to melt the ice and snow, as the traditional lamps did. 

Posted 08/20/2008 at 08:21:58am

So you've figured out a way to fix the performance hit with Vista?  Good for you.  I'll continue to try to find a work around it.

Posted 08/17/2008 at 10:37:43pm

As is the corp that I work for.  We are scheduled to get new laptops in a month, all of my team were dreading minimum spec'd machines with vista.  Luckily a few in the IT dept feel the same way I do about Vista, and they will not support it.  So it's min specs, but with XP :).

 They also said that they will make the jump from XP when Win 7 materializes.

Posted 08/13/2008 at 09:04:52am

I like smooth roads, and emergency services that show up when I dial IX-I-I, so I don't mind paying taxes, whether it's payroll, or sales tax.  But my problem with this comes from who's getting the taxes.  I'm guessing that they are figuring the state that gets the tax by the billing address of the person downloading the software.  But if my billing address is Colorado, and I'm in any other state when downloading the software, CO gets to collect sales tax on something purchased, and delivered outside of CO.  That's one problem.

The other problem is that sales taxes are meant to fund the government, and infrastructure that is supporting the sale.   The local and state government have nothing to do with the network, and electricity supply that make the sale possible.  There are no trucks delivering the software on the roads, and it's pretty unlikely that the seller will have to call the cops due to a hold up.  

Plus, as a consumer I am already obligated to pay sales tax to the state that I reside in, on anything that I order through the mail (that didn't already have the sales tax paid), so wouldn't this apply to downloaded orders also?

 The real problem is that we have people, that have a very limited understanding of computers, writing and pushing laws that legislate the publics use of said computers.  The blind leading the blindfolded.

Posted 07/30/2008 at 04:45:07pm

For the live disc Unbuntu reqs are below

 "System Requirements

Ubuntu is available for PC, 64-Bit PC and Intel based Mac architectures. At least 256 MB of RAM is required to run the alternate install CD (384MB of RAM is required to use the live CD based installer). Install requires at least 4 GB of disk space."

 and with 256 MB of ram, you're out of luck for the Live cd.

You might try Kubuntu, you may have more luck , although probably not with the live cd.

It's system reqs are:

"Kubuntu is available for PC, 64-Bit and Mac architectures.

CDs require 700MB media. Desktop install requires at least 256MB of RAM and 3GB of available hard drive space."

It's has a smaller footprint, and uses KDE unstead of GNOME.  I haven't tried it on hardware as old as yours, but, for what it's worth, I have heard second hand that it is more compatible.

Posted 07/29/2008 at 04:44:29pm

For the record, if we have to trade two (three??) weeks of the Podcast, for a few pix of hot geek babes at the comic con, and one disturbing pick of licking a prop.  I'm going to vote to keep Max PC out of the Comic-Con.

 Seriously, not having the podcast sucks.   But, not having any info sucks worse.