Half hour? Not if you have data on the drive already. An Apple engineer told us it took more than a day for his computer (single processor G4) to finish all the indexing of his stuff. I'm not sure what he had but it sounded like he had 100+GB and it wasn't all video (video doesn't take too long because Spotlight only has to index the metadata, not the content).
We have "artists" like Gwen Stefani releasing cover after cover, first covering Talk Talk's It's My Life then covering If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof, and both covers are atrocious.
I like No Doubt and Gwen Stefani but I don't care for either cover. However "Rich Girl" is actually a cover of a minor Nineties dancehall hit of the same name by Louchie Lou and Michie One. I like the original "Rich Girl" quite a bit. Obviously it's derived from the song from Fiddler but I wouldn't call it a cover of it.
I personally bar any additional restrictions in the EULA.:) I agreed to buy a DVD, not a license. I'm not Blockbuster or Hollywood Video: I have no business contract with any vendor, and have no intention of honoring one slipped into the packaging.
I wasn't referring to DVDs, I was thinking of other copyrighted material, namely software.
I do what I will with my DVD. Fair use or no, I own every bit embedded on that piece of plastic substrate, the box, and the air trapped inside of the shrinkwrap. If I can crack the copy control they put on the disc, more power to me. I didn't ask for it.
Don't share it with others, don't hold a public performance of it, shouldn't be a problem.
Sorry for my ignorance, but has an American court actually decided that fair use rights extend to digital media? How about thwarting copy protection for purposes of fair use? Anyone?
No need to "extend" it, Fair Use doesn't say anything about media being analog or not. While most legal precedents are from an analog age, there's no legal distinction, when it comes to Fair Use, between my dubbing a DVD to VHS (or VHS to VHS) or copying a DVD to DVD-R or my hard drive. If there's CSS encryption on the DVD I'll violate the DMCA if I decrypt it with something other than a licensed decryptor but duplication doesn't necessarily require decryption.
Public demand? Public RIGHTS. We have the right to make backups of our owned discs and put them into a format that is portable.
I wholeheartedly agree. However, that does not mean the copyright holder must sell their work in a form that makes it easy, or even possible, for you to express that right.
If they decide that we should not be able to make a backup of our media that is an identical copy then I should be reimbursed when the disc is no longer usable. Even if that means 25+ years from now.
Who is "they?" It sounds like you mean the DVD distributors so I'm going to assume you're talking about a change in technical capacity rather than a change in the law. What you suggest is absurd. You're buying a disc of plastic, not a right to view the copyrighted work in perpetuity. The law says you can make a backup, it doesn't say it must be technically (or financially) feasible to make a backup. If your disc wears out, is broken or you can no longer find the equipment necessary to play it, that's too bad but there no reason for the film company to give you another copy.
I think attempting to prevent people from making backups sucks. I state so publicly and it will seriously affect how I spend my money. I think most people, if they are educated about the issue, would agree with me but that doesn't mean DVD (or other media) distributors have to do what's right or in their own best interests.
The whole Betamax thing applies to analog formats, not digital, and the concept of "fair-use" isn't a right, but an exception to a section of copyright code.
Analog, digital, it doesn't matter, space-shifting is space-shifting. The law is clear, I can (privately) do what I like with the copy of a copyrighted work I purchased barring any additional restrictions I agreed to when I purchased it (EULA).
Call it an "exception" if you like but Fair Use is still a principle written into the law and supported by many court precedents.
The advisory also says says Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 9.01.1000 is "non-vulnerable." This update was also required for XP SP2 so it should already be widely deployed. This is the version I have installed and there is no Dec2EXE.dll present.
While the link you provide works (would it have killed you to make it a link?), when I do a Google search, Google does *not* use redirecting links, the links are direct to the document.
Looking at the specs for current Dell UltraSharp LCDs (link may expire), viewing angle is the *only* thing Apple's LCDs have over the UltraSharps. I know earlier UltraSharp models were not as good as the current ones but were still better than Apple's. The brightness and contrast ratio of the UltraSharps are superior to Apple's LCDs and I think for most people those are more important values than viewing angle.
I'm comparing them to Apple Cinema Displays because I haven't found good information about the 'Book LCDs but I believe they're comparable. I think folks would have a cow if the screen on a new PowerBook was noticably superior to a new Cinema Display.
At my polling place, they ask me my name and look it up in a book with photocopies of voter registration cards. They cover the side of the book with the photocopy and have me sign my name. If what I sign and the photocopy match, I'm good to go. Thus I have demonstrated that I am eligible to vote and that I am who I say I am. There's no need to resort to additional requirements like a state ID so I can exercise my Constitutional right.
We use mechanical voting booths so even though they write down each voter's name in a little book, I'm pretty sure there's no way to tie a specific vote to a specific voter.
Could someone claim to be me and forge my name? Yes, and that would suck for me but that kind of fraud doesn't scale. I'd rather have a little ad hoc fraud than a additional burdens on people just trying to vote.
The worst thing about the method described above is it only works if I go to the correct polling place. For too many people, making it to the proper polling place is too much of a burden. But then, I think Election Day should be a national holiday.
I like iTunes a lot for maintaining and playing audio files on a local drive but I have problems with how it handles streaming audio.
Every time you play a new stream, iTunes permanently adds it to its library. While it's nice to keep streams you listen to regularly in the library, it's annoying to have to clean up the ones you don't want to listen to again or that broke.
This is particularly annoying when you're using a some kind of online jukebox, like Namp! With an online jukebox, iTunes will add a library entry for *each* track.
"All steel made since the detonation of the first atom bomb in 1945 has contained tiny amounts of radioactivity. This is because the atmosphere now contains trace amounts of radioactivity. The steelmaking process involves the use of large amounts of air, which transfers the radioactivity to the steel. Instruments and equipment used for measuring radioactivity must be free from extra background radiation, so post-1945 "new" steel cannot be used for these purposes."
I absolutely agree with your basic principle that there should be more transparency in government, particularly when it comes to how money is spent. However, I'm skeptical that it would cause that much outrage most of the time. TV programs do "the fleecing of America" segments and political candidates point out the pork barrel projects of their opponents but such attention often has little effect.
For example, people who live in Hurricane or Earthquake prone areas should be paying MORE property taxes that could go to FEMA... why should someone in Oklahoma subsidize emergency efforts for someone who has a house on the beach in Florida
Perhaps Oklahoma wasn't the best example, you might have heard of these things called "tornados." Another example would be farmers and others on flood plains, the government tells people not to use them because they'll get flooded but they do it anyway because they know the government will bail them out. Anyway, insurance already takes care of a lot of the cost of disasters and as you point out, that industry knows how to adjust costs accordingly. FEMA helps coordinate the immediate emergency response, has some "to get by on" money while people wait for insurance checks and directs federal money to state budgets that can't take the hit. Perhaps Florida could be doing a better job of taking care of itself but it is usually the case that helping one state in need is beneficial to the whole country.
My first reaction is to jump on you with both feet but you're probably a teenager because a lot of teens have thought of this. So I'll just ask some questions instead.
Re: Idea 1: what if people don't put enough money toward something important, like defense? What if they put way, way too much money toward something, like defense?
How does this make pork go away? This very example, peanut subsidies, has been cloaked in homeland security terms. Who desides which programs fall under which category? It would be decided by the same people who create or at least permit the nonsense that already happens.
Re: Idea 2: How does a "use" tax pay for defense? If invading Iraq has made me less safe, can I get a tax refund? Are you going to tax the air I breathe to pay for EPA monitoring to help keep the air clean? Are you going to tax every ATM transaction to pay for FDIC? Under your plan, will there be a transition from FEMA providing money to hurricane survivors to collecting taxes from survivors for the cleanup?
Since most "use" taxes these days are sales taxes imposed by states, let's get to some more local questions. When a recovering junky steals my car stereo to pay the use tax on methadone, do I pay the police officer filling out the report immediately or should the police station send me a bill? When the fire dept. puts out my kitchen fire, am I the only one who pays the tax or do my neighbors pay as well since the dept. prevented the fire from spreading to their houses? Do the people living two doors down pay less than the people next door? If I buy a 30' yacht,will it be tax-free if I only sail in international waters?
OK, the point is, there's no way every tax payer can be well informed about how much money is needed for any given government activity and not only is there not a "use" to tie every government activity to, very often the people that are benefiting from that activity are the ones who cannot pay.
I just sent a test email from Gmail with a different address as the Reply-to:. Using the Reply button in MS Outlook 2000 (connected to an MS Exchange server), the reply was correctly addressed to the address on the Reply-To: line, not the From: line. I went through the Options and found nothing that would alter this behavior.
But maybe you're talking about out Outlook Express, something with which I have had no real experience. I find it annoying when people call "Outlook Express" "Outlook." The two programs are very different.
This reminds me of a recent article I saw about an ad campaign in foreign countries warning U.S. citizens (and others) that if they have sex with a child there, they may be prosecuted in their home country. So if the U.S. can prosecute citizens for having sex with children in other countries, why can't the U.S. prosecute citizens for other criminal acts, such as breaking privacy laws? While the former crime is a far more heinous act, the later has the potential to hurt the civil rights of a great many more people.
While I have a problem with this whole concept, if the government is committed to prosecuting U.S. crimes committed overseas, let's see it act in other areas of the law.
I thought the most interesting part of this exchange was the comment about Carlson's bow-tie. Stewart wasn't mocking him for his lack of fashion sense, he was justifying what he calls "theater." Why would a young man wear such an old fashioned article of clothing like that, if not for attention? If not for a "distinctive look." If not for "personality branding." etc. Carlson was denying his show is theater while in a costume. It was very poignant observation by Stewart and showed the absurdity of the entire spectacle.
Here's the thing, I went to the same Connecticut college as Tucker, I think he was a year ahead of me. I don't have any specific recollections about him but wearing a bow tie was not that rare. If there was an occasion that called for blazers, there would always be a number of guys wearing a bow tie. It's a New England elite thing, it's just part of their gear. Again, I don't specifically remember Tucker from school, I think it's most likely that while it is also a part of his TV persona, it is something that he comes by honestly.
I think I understand your idea but it seems like you're replacing one engineering challenge with another one. How do we "capture" an asteroid? If it's going to have enough mass to not be decelerated a great deal when yanking up the ship, it's going to require a lot of carefully applied force to move it into the desired orbit.
We had a big problem with drive failures in last year's crop of Small Form Factor Optiplexes. In July '03, we received a shipment of 43 SFF Optiplex GX270s with 2GHz Celerons, 512MB RAM, on-board video, and 40GB drives from Maxtor (DiamondMax Plus 8). Over the months we had more and more drives failing, in April we started trying to get Dell to own up to the problem and eventually convinced them to send us replacement drives for all the machines who's drive had not yet failed.
By late May, when we finally received the replacement drives, out of the 43 machines 14 had already failed and 4 more failed while we were in the process of cloning them. I believe all of the replacement drives were from Western Digital and we haven't had any failures of the replacement drives. Not that I think WD is better than Maxtor per se, I've had horrible luck with some 250GB SATA drives from WD this year.
We did not have these kinds of drive problems with the SFF GX50s we purchased in '02. This year we purchased 72 more GX270s (2.4GHz Celerons, otherwise pretty much like last year's model) and so far have only had 1 drive failure.
I thought the problem might be heat/ventilation and that the GX50s didn't have the problem because they just weren't generating as much heat. But none of the replacement drives have failed which you would think would happen if the case was at fault. I suppose its possible that the WD drives have a higher heat tolerance than the Maxtor drives but why haven't we had a rash of failures yet this year since these machines should be even hotter than last year's? I think Dell buying a bad batch of drives from Maxtor is the most likely explanation.
And yet, we still have neglected labs. You know the type, the labs that look like what you find in most highschools---Pentium 1 systems running an unoptimized stock install of Win98, running slow. For some reason, our most neglected labs are those that get the most real usage.
Here's my guess; the problem is location, location, location. The labs with the new equipment are run by the centralized IT dept. and are found in a centralized location. "Centralized" often means "equally inconvenient for everybody" so individual departments with tiny budgets and no real IT support of their own somehow acquire some computers, dump them in a room and call it a lab. These rooms are where the students actually are, therefore they get used. The other possibility is these "satellite" labs are technically under the purview of that centralized IT dept. but, you know, out of sight, out of mind. Why waste time and money futilely trying to support some remote location when you could put your time and money into one big lab that can be "run right."
Maybe it doesn't sound like it but I'm mostly on the side of the centralized IT dept. I'm in a school's IT dept. and while the school is too small for the lab to be called "centralized," we've struggled with trying to support multiple locations. We can only afford to keep a warm body in one location most of the time (not even ALL the time) and no matter how good a job you do to automate and lock down lab machines, if you can't keep a warm body around a good deal of the time, the lab will go to hell.
While we're not yet to the point where children think of the phone as something you put in your pocket, the typical phone icons used are quite old fashioned. Some icons even feature a dial instead of keypad!
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Half hour? Not if you have data on the drive already. An Apple engineer told us it took more than a day for his computer (single processor G4) to finish all the indexing of his stuff. I'm not sure what he had but it sounded like he had 100+GB and it wasn't all video (video doesn't take too long because Spotlight only has to index the metadata, not the content).
We have "artists" like Gwen Stefani releasing cover after cover, first covering Talk Talk's It's My Life then covering If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof, and both covers are atrocious.
I like No Doubt and Gwen Stefani but I don't care for either cover. However "Rich Girl" is actually a cover of a minor Nineties dancehall hit of the same name by Louchie Lou and Michie One. I like the original "Rich Girl" quite a bit. Obviously it's derived from the song from Fiddler but I wouldn't call it a cover of it.
I personally bar any additional restrictions in the EULA. :) I agreed to buy a DVD, not a license. I'm not Blockbuster or Hollywood Video: I have no business contract with any vendor, and have no intention of honoring one slipped into the packaging.
I wasn't referring to DVDs, I was thinking of other copyrighted material, namely software.
I do what I will with my DVD. Fair use or no, I own every bit embedded on that piece of plastic substrate, the box, and the air trapped inside of the shrinkwrap. If I can crack the copy control they put on the disc, more power to me. I didn't ask for it.
Don't share it with others, don't hold a public performance of it, shouldn't be a problem.
Sorry for my ignorance, but has an American court actually decided that fair use rights extend to digital media? How about thwarting copy protection for purposes of fair use? Anyone?
No need to "extend" it, Fair Use doesn't say anything about media being analog or not. While most legal precedents are from an analog age, there's no legal distinction, when it comes to Fair Use, between my dubbing a DVD to VHS (or VHS to VHS) or copying a DVD to DVD-R or my hard drive. If there's CSS encryption on the DVD I'll violate the DMCA if I decrypt it with something other than a licensed decryptor but duplication doesn't necessarily require decryption.
Public demand? Public RIGHTS. We have the right to make backups of our owned discs and put them into a format that is portable.
I wholeheartedly agree. However, that does not mean the copyright holder must sell their work in a form that makes it easy, or even possible, for you to express that right.
If they decide that we should not be able to make a backup of our media that is an identical copy then I should be reimbursed when the disc is no longer usable. Even if that means 25+ years from now.
Who is "they?" It sounds like you mean the DVD distributors so I'm going to assume you're talking about a change in technical capacity rather than a change in the law. What you suggest is absurd. You're buying a disc of plastic, not a right to view the copyrighted work in perpetuity. The law says you can make a backup, it doesn't say it must be technically (or financially) feasible to make a backup. If your disc wears out, is broken or you can no longer find the equipment necessary to play it, that's too bad but there no reason for the film company to give you another copy.
I think attempting to prevent people from making backups sucks. I state so publicly and it will seriously affect how I spend my money. I think most people, if they are educated about the issue, would agree with me but that doesn't mean DVD (or other media) distributors have to do what's right or in their own best interests.
The whole Betamax thing applies to analog formats, not digital, and the concept of "fair-use" isn't a right, but an exception to a section of copyright code.
Analog, digital, it doesn't matter, space-shifting is space-shifting. The law is clear, I can (privately) do what I like with the copy of a copyrighted work I purchased barring any additional restrictions I agreed to when I purchased it (EULA).
Call it an "exception" if you like but Fair Use is still a principle written into the law and supported by many court precedents.
The advisory also says says Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 9.01.1000 is "non-vulnerable." This update was also required for XP SP2 so it should already be widely deployed. This is the version I have installed and there is no Dec2EXE.dll present.
While the link you provide works (would it have killed you to make it a link?), when I do a Google search, Google does *not* use redirecting links, the links are direct to the document.
Looking at the specs for current Dell UltraSharp LCDs (link may expire), viewing angle is the *only* thing Apple's LCDs have over the UltraSharps. I know earlier UltraSharp models were not as good as the current ones but were still better than Apple's. The brightness and contrast ratio of the UltraSharps are superior to Apple's LCDs and I think for most people those are more important values than viewing angle.
I'm comparing them to Apple Cinema Displays because I haven't found good information about the 'Book LCDs but I believe they're comparable. I think folks would have a cow if the screen on a new PowerBook was noticably superior to a new Cinema Display.
Right from the specs page
333MHz is the RAM speed, 167MHz is the system bus speed.
At my polling place, they ask me my name and look it up in a book with photocopies of voter registration cards. They cover the side of the book with the photocopy and have me sign my name. If what I sign and the photocopy match, I'm good to go. Thus I have demonstrated that I am eligible to vote and that I am who I say I am. There's no need to resort to additional requirements like a state ID so I can exercise my Constitutional right.
We use mechanical voting booths so even though they write down each voter's name in a little book, I'm pretty sure there's no way to tie a specific vote to a specific voter.
Could someone claim to be me and forge my name? Yes, and that would suck for me but that kind of fraud doesn't scale. I'd rather have a little ad hoc fraud than a additional burdens on people just trying to vote.
The worst thing about the method described above is it only works if I go to the correct polling place. For too many people, making it to the proper polling place is too much of a burden. But then, I think Election Day should be a national holiday.
That said, there is a trend, at least in the Chicago metro area for companies to put offices in suburbs.
They're called edge cities and they're not exactly a new phenomenon.
I like iTunes a lot for maintaining and playing audio files on a local drive but I have problems with how it handles streaming audio.
Every time you play a new stream, iTunes permanently adds it to its library. While it's nice to keep streams you listen to regularly in the library, it's annoying to have to clean up the ones you don't want to listen to again or that broke.
This is particularly annoying when you're using a some kind of online jukebox, like Namp! With an online jukebox, iTunes will add a library entry for *each* track.
I think you're thinking of Radiocarbon dating (aka "carbon dating"). Atomic weapon testing has affected the calibration of the data.
You may also be thinking of the need for pre-1945 "clean steel." This is the first explanation I found in a quick search.
Section G.7: Salvage of German WWII U-Boats
"All steel made since the detonation of the first atom bomb in 1945 has contained tiny amounts of radioactivity. This is because the atmosphere now contains trace amounts of radioactivity. The steelmaking process involves the use of large amounts of air, which transfers the radioactivity to the steel. Instruments and equipment used for measuring radioactivity must be free from extra background radiation, so post-1945 "new" steel cannot be used for these purposes."
I absolutely agree with your basic principle that there should be more transparency in government, particularly when it comes to how money is spent. However, I'm skeptical that it would cause that much outrage most of the time. TV programs do "the fleecing of America" segments and political candidates point out the pork barrel projects of their opponents but such attention often has little effect.
For example, people who live in Hurricane or Earthquake prone areas should be paying MORE property taxes that could go to FEMA... why should someone in Oklahoma subsidize emergency efforts for someone who has a house on the beach in Florida
Perhaps Oklahoma wasn't the best example, you might have heard of these things called "tornados." Another example would be farmers and others on flood plains, the government tells people not to use them because they'll get flooded but they do it anyway because they know the government will bail them out. Anyway, insurance already takes care of a lot of the cost of disasters and as you point out, that industry knows how to adjust costs accordingly. FEMA helps coordinate the immediate emergency response, has some "to get by on" money while people wait for insurance checks and directs federal money to state budgets that can't take the hit. Perhaps Florida could be doing a better job of taking care of itself but it is usually the case that helping one state in need is beneficial to the whole country.
My first reaction is to jump on you with both feet but you're probably a teenager because a lot of teens have thought of this. So I'll just ask some questions instead.
Re: Idea 1: what if people don't put enough money toward something important, like defense? What if they put way, way too much money toward something, like defense?
How does this make pork go away? This very example, peanut subsidies, has been cloaked in homeland security terms. Who desides which programs fall under which category? It would be decided by the same people who create or at least permit the nonsense that already happens.
Re: Idea 2: How does a "use" tax pay for defense? If invading Iraq has made me less safe, can I get a tax refund? Are you going to tax the air I breathe to pay for EPA monitoring to help keep the air clean? Are you going to tax every ATM transaction to pay for FDIC? Under your plan, will there be a transition from FEMA providing money to hurricane survivors to collecting taxes from survivors for the cleanup?
Since most "use" taxes these days are sales taxes imposed by states, let's get to some more local questions. When a recovering junky steals my car stereo to pay the use tax on methadone, do I pay the police officer filling out the report immediately or should the police station send me a bill? When the fire dept. puts out my kitchen fire, am I the only one who pays the tax or do my neighbors pay as well since the dept. prevented the fire from spreading to their houses? Do the people living two doors down pay less than the people next door? If I buy a 30' yacht,will it be tax-free if I only sail in international waters?
OK, the point is, there's no way every tax payer can be well informed about how much money is needed for any given government activity and not only is there not a "use" to tie every government activity to, very often the people that are benefiting from that activity are the ones who cannot pay.
I just sent a test email from Gmail with a different address as the Reply-to:. Using the Reply button in MS Outlook 2000 (connected to an MS Exchange server), the reply was correctly addressed to the address on the Reply-To: line, not the From: line. I went through the Options and found nothing that would alter this behavior.
But maybe you're talking about out Outlook Express, something with which I have had no real experience. I find it annoying when people call "Outlook Express" "Outlook." The two programs are very different.
This reminds me of a recent article I saw about an ad campaign in foreign countries warning U.S. citizens (and others) that if they have sex with a child there, they may be prosecuted in their home country. So if the U.S. can prosecute citizens for having sex with children in other countries, why can't the U.S. prosecute citizens for other criminal acts, such as breaking privacy laws? While the former crime is a far more heinous act, the later has the potential to hurt the civil rights of a great many more people.
While I have a problem with this whole concept, if the government is committed to prosecuting U.S. crimes committed overseas, let's see it act in other areas of the law.
I thought the most interesting part of this exchange was the comment about Carlson's bow-tie. Stewart wasn't mocking him for his lack of fashion sense, he was justifying what he calls "theater." Why would a young man wear such an old fashioned article of clothing like that, if not for attention? If not for a "distinctive look." If not for "personality branding." etc. Carlson was denying his show is theater while in a costume. It was very poignant observation by Stewart and showed the absurdity of the entire spectacle.
Here's the thing, I went to the same Connecticut college as Tucker, I think he was a year ahead of me. I don't have any specific recollections about him but wearing a bow tie was not that rare. If there was an occasion that called for blazers, there would always be a number of guys wearing a bow tie. It's a New England elite thing, it's just part of their gear. Again, I don't specifically remember Tucker from school, I think it's most likely that while it is also a part of his TV persona, it is something that he comes by honestly.
Good post, BTW.
Put a captured asteroid into an elliptical orbit.
I think I understand your idea but it seems like you're replacing one engineering challenge with another one. How do we "capture" an asteroid? If it's going to have enough mass to not be decelerated a great deal when yanking up the ship, it's going to require a lot of carefully applied force to move it into the desired orbit.
Dude, do you even read what you link to? Your 2nd link is to a page that state the Ninth Circuit is NOT the most overturned court.
Also, as others have pointed out, being the most overturned is not necessarily a bad thing.
We had a big problem with drive failures in last year's crop of Small Form Factor Optiplexes. In July '03, we received a shipment of 43 SFF Optiplex GX270s with 2GHz Celerons, 512MB RAM, on-board video, and 40GB drives from Maxtor (DiamondMax Plus 8). Over the months we had more and more drives failing, in April we started trying to get Dell to own up to the problem and eventually convinced them to send us replacement drives for all the machines who's drive had not yet failed.
By late May, when we finally received the replacement drives, out of the 43 machines 14 had already failed and 4 more failed while we were in the process of cloning them. I believe all of the replacement drives were from Western Digital and we haven't had any failures of the replacement drives. Not that I think WD is better than Maxtor per se, I've had horrible luck with some 250GB SATA drives from WD this year.
We did not have these kinds of drive problems with the SFF GX50s we purchased in '02. This year we purchased 72 more GX270s (2.4GHz Celerons, otherwise pretty much like last year's model) and so far have only had 1 drive failure.
I thought the problem might be heat/ventilation and that the GX50s didn't have the problem because they just weren't generating as much heat. But none of the replacement drives have failed which you would think would happen if the case was at fault. I suppose its possible that the WD drives have a higher heat tolerance than the Maxtor drives but why haven't we had a rash of failures yet this year since these machines should be even hotter than last year's? I think Dell buying a bad batch of drives from Maxtor is the most likely explanation.
And yet, we still have neglected labs. You know the type, the labs that look like what you find in most highschools---Pentium 1 systems running an unoptimized stock install of Win98, running slow. For some reason, our most neglected labs are those that get the most real usage.
Here's my guess; the problem is location, location, location. The labs with the new equipment are run by the centralized IT dept. and are found in a centralized location. "Centralized" often means "equally inconvenient for everybody" so individual departments with tiny budgets and no real IT support of their own somehow acquire some computers, dump them in a room and call it a lab. These rooms are where the students actually are, therefore they get used. The other possibility is these "satellite" labs are technically under the purview of that centralized IT dept. but, you know, out of sight, out of mind. Why waste time and money futilely trying to support some remote location when you could put your time and money into one big lab that can be "run right."
Maybe it doesn't sound like it but I'm mostly on the side of the centralized IT dept. I'm in a school's IT dept. and while the school is too small for the lab to be called "centralized," we've struggled with trying to support multiple locations. We can only afford to keep a warm body in one location most of the time (not even ALL the time) and no matter how good a job you do to automate and lock down lab machines, if you can't keep a warm body around a good deal of the time, the lab will go to hell.
D'oh! I missed a better Ma Bell phone image, rotary dial even, right here on Slashdot!
p.s. I hope those 3 moderators all happened to mod this up at the same time 'cause it's *not* a +5 post.
While we're not yet to the point where children think of the phone as something you put in your pocket, the typical phone icons used are quite old fashioned. Some icons even feature a dial instead of keypad!