I tend to agree that some overthinking is happening here with the original poster. It seems to me there those who often use a modern bit of technology, such as a VoiP app like Skype, which does more or less what he is asking regarding media control when a call comes in, and then expect all apps to do the same, whether they are of this century or not. Sometimes, ya just gotta pause the thing manually.
Maybe I am dating myself here, but I remember doing this all the time in the late 80s/early-90s, using my franken-puter and the software bundled with the stupidly expensive modem. Variations on the WinFax line up of software could accomplish this, despite having "fax" in the name, leading one to believe it was only for faxes.
As some of the whippersnappers on here may or may not recall, a "fax" was the way we used to "send pages" to other folks, magically transforming hard-copy on one end, into sounds transmitted over the line to become hard copy on the other end. It was truly a marvelous age!
You are incorrect for many, many reasons.
1. Earth is a finite place, with a finite number of resources.
2. The human population has a reproductive capacity approaching infinite ability, barring accident or self-destruction.
3. Technologies allowing us to leave the planet are progressing well, and new competition from burgeoning space-faring countries like China will drive research for other countries.
4. Humanity WILL have to expand off this planet at some point and space stations are far more complex operations than merely building a shelter on a semi-habitable planet.
5. There will be a manned landing on Mars within the next 20 years, as a result of some of the reasons listed above and others, such as the seemingly innate human drive to push outward from our birthplaces.
I recently went into a game trader's store near my home. They have put a lot of effort into acquiring damn near every type of game console ever made and even large selections of games for each. I walked the aisles and would grin in nostalgia, but even with the games marked down to just a buck or two, felt no real need to pick anything up. Instead, I wandered over to the new console areas and bought some stuff for XBox and XBox 360 and a few computer titles.
Believe it or not, there are whole areas of science NOT concerned with finding more land, killing off the inhabitants, and consuming all the local resources. Finding life on Mars, or the evidence of past life, would impact so many areas of human life, it's hard to really fathom them all. Every expert in religion to biology would weigh in, not to mention the psychologists as we assimilate this new though suspected information into our collective psyche. If it was past life, then what happened to it? What level of complexity did it reach? Was there ever anything close to what we are, as a species?
In fact, finding evidence of life from either the present or the past would be a prime factor in just how much we DO colonize the place. It's all well and good to think we would just bulldoze the area level and set about building, but what if the life is microbial and the wee beasties kill us off?
Sticking a shovel in the Martian surface is NOT the same as it is on Earth, where at least we have a fairly solid understanding of what we are likely to encounter. I, for one, would want to know all about whatever might be living there, past or present, before I build a shelter in which I will shower, use the toilet, etc.
I work support for a MAJOR cable news station. I can't really complain about my space at all. I have a corner area, about roughly the size of 4 typical cubes but completely open, and surrounded on two sides by windows. My personal area has an Apple cinema display for my Mac, with two side displays for my Ubuntu and XP boxes. I have a phone which no one except our call center can call into and complete admin rights on the network, even equal to the system admins. My security badge gets me into practically every area of the building and I regularly get to hang out and converse with not only the On Camera Talent, but various cool people who make it all happen. What can I say?
I work at a MAJOR cable television network, based in Atlanta, with branch offices all over the country and about to be global. Our in-house Mac inventory has only been steadily increasing over the last few years and is expected to go even higher in the next budget. Whole departments are switching to MacBook Pros, en masse, and not just the "creatives". Even the engineering department is switching over to Mac, as most of their applications have OS X versions or they BootCamp/VMWare Windows if need be. Even Blackberries are being supplanted by iPhones, since the recent patch allowing Exchange integration and the next version of the device being fully Exchange compatible (according to our Apple vendor).
From a support standpoint, the transition is a little rougher, as others here have noted, but the company is paying to have their support staff become Apple certified techs (myself included) in order to do the work in-house and keep our warranties intact.
The server side is also increasing, for the specific purpose of running the data ingest software used to manage clips for our HD transition.
Some of us have even messed around with the hacked OS X kernals floating around and I can report that it runs BEAUTIFULLY on a Dell GX520. If companies like Psystar are indeed a harbinger of things to come, I see Apple's market share in the corporate environment only continuing to rise.
My issue with your statement is less to do with your question and more to do with the signature line. Comparing Vista antipahty to Young Earth Creationists? Really????
It's not even a valid statement. YECs can be shown to have a flawed premise through multiple streams of data, from radiometric data to fossil and DNA evidence. No one who knows anything about the subject will take a YEC seriously simply because of the disparity in evinced education on the matter.
People who have issues with Windows Vista, however, have a genuine gripe, supported by numerous studies and metrics against even older Microsoft operating systems. In short, it's not a matter of people who dislike Vista ignoring the voluminous evidence supporting the claims of Vista. It's people USING the voluminous evidence of Vista problems to dislike it until a fix is rendered.
What appears to have been missed in all the comments here is that this wasn't just dogs recognizing other dogs. Dogs, as a whole, use far more of their senses than we do to gather information about themselves and other individuals. The dogs in question were being shown flat, 2D images of dogs. We have all probably seen dogs react to movement or sound on television, as if they understood the image they were seeing minus the smells of the thing. This was a static image, no sound, and no smell. How it is human-like is that they can fall back to just eyes alone, instead of the sense-rich environment they normally operate within. They don't even need movement to separate the image from the background and, further still, can repeatedly show aptitude in categorizing these images.
eBook readers=stripped down PDAs w/bigger screens
on
The Cult of Kindle
·
· Score: 1
I have only ever purchased one dedicated eBook reader in my life and was quite happy with it at the time. The REB1100 from RCA had a decent price tag and I only bought it after some enterprising folks made an altered firmware available which would allow the device to display almost any document format. The whole thing was a good idea, a little poorly implemented, and way ahead of its time.
Since that time, I have used a PDA (ah, my old Handspring) and my computer to read ebooks, though I would still like to curl up on the couch or in bed with a decent sized book any time.
The Kindle looks fine, but is pricey and the DRM thing is an obvious turn-off. For avid readers, the technology is getting there, but isn't quite mature enough to replace the good, old-fashioned tree-book.
According to my wife's business law class, a NCA is largely enforceable only under certain conditions. Market location, trade secrets, and client base are the major factors. For example, if I work for a small advertising shop in Florida, which only works within the Florida market, and I move to Washington (state), an NCA would be nonsense, even if I signed it. It would prevent a reasonable expectation to earn a living. Now, if I worked for Microsoft (as if) and left to work for Apple (yay!), an NCA would probably be enforceable.
One thing I have noticed is NCAs being employed in places you wouldn't expect them. My son went to work for a local paintball field as a game helper and referee. This is a small-time outfit operating out of some guy's house. He had to sign an NCA. He showed it to me and I just laughed.
but by any chance does this involve giving the retailer twice what it's worth for the system
What kind of "worth" are you referencing here? Economic value of constituent components when compared against what other retailers are able to put a machine together and charge? Or do you mean consumer confidence in the brand-name based upon historical reliability, aesthetics, and consistent integration between components and the operating system?
then using a screwdriver to prise off a mouse button or two? Where have you been for the last several years?
Let's face it, the majority of the consumer Windows market is just not about high-end gaming rigs, able to play the latest games with all graphic options maxed out. They like to browse web pages, chat with friends, send email, utilize office productivity apps, and mess around with their photo/home video collections. For these purposes, just about ANY operating system in current use is adequate. The differences comes down to security, stability, and usability.
For my part, I make a point of keeping an Ubuntu machine going in my house at all times. Friends who come over and want to use a computer to check something while we are waiting for the football game to come on or the pizza to arrive invariably comment on the OS, which leads to questions, which leads to me usually offering them a burned copy of a LiveCD to take home with them. I don't spew a lot of technical jargon at these folks, nor do I assume a fan-boy posture (given the other machines in my house are Apple). I simply "make the sale" to them and answer their questions clearly, responding to their complaints regarding Vista and even XP, at times.
This effort has resulted in about 30% of my friends moving to Ubuntu, with the remainder being split almost evenly between Apple computers and Windows-based rigs. Those who remain on the fence usually sit there because of the singular issue of gaming. Quite frankly, I can think of NO reason for an average consumer to even need to pay for an OS aside from being able to play games.
The timing of this article is interesting to me as I am embroiled in the James Michener novel "Space" while traveling through Canada. Michener was known for his expansive historical sagas and attention to historical detail. In this case, his telling of the flurry of activity within American government and the embryonic space program is quite fascinating, especially now that we know from TFA that the Soviets were just trying something out. Whether the Soviets were trying to show the strength of Communism or merely throwing stuff into the air and seeing if it worked or not, the fact remains they boosted the American efforts in space to the point we are now, regardless of how bogged down we have gotten with the Shuttle in the last 20 years.
Based only on what my wife and I, both riders, saw in the video, it appears he was either thrown off or bailed off prior to the actual crash. He appeared to laying several feet behind the point of impact. Indeed, I would surmise that had he stayed on the bike until the crash, his injuries would have been very severe, with him either being tossed over the bars and flying through the air or, worse still, being slammed against the side of the minivan.
The fastest I have ever ridden was around 120mph on I-69, between Indianapolis and Anderson, Indiana. Even though I wasn't accelerating any longer and held that speed for about 10 minutes, the sheer force of wind was enough to make it difficult to hold the handgrips. This was on a Suzuki GSX-R 750cc. Even laying down on the tank didn't help, making it worse, in fact, because doing so makes the bike harder to handle, imo. Thus, I can't imagine him staying on this thing until the gruesome end. He's very lucky and I wish him the best, but highly recommend he leaves future demonstrations of the bike to his professional riders and testers. Better still, just leave the bike parked and let the eye candy he brought along be the photo-op.
I may sound cynical (though where the Congress is concerned, is that possible?), but how many here wonder whether or not a Congressman/woman or someone from his/her immediate family was recently jacked up on cell phone charges? Forgive me, but I am always somewhat suspicious when legislation is suddenly introduced to allegedly empower consumers given the amount of money it truly takes to lobby the Congress to get anything done these days.
My son was just issued an older iBook from his high school. Their IT department is top notch and tracks the students' activities thoroughly. They have screens in their office which flips through the screens of all students on the school network. At any time, they can remotely lock the computer and send a message to the kid to report to the principals office.
Even Apple's own Ive (a brilliant designer in his own right) will cop to the fact the Thinkpad provided a lot of inspiration for the "look and feel" of the iBook/Powerbook line. I have an older one running Ubuntu and can see many design similarities between it and my trusty old iBook.
Try moving to Alaska. My wife and I moved here under contract with our employer and because we both wanted to experience the state while we are young (something I recommend to EVERYONE). Broadband here consists of DSL lines capped at 7658K/500K, costing $140 per month. Satellite is also hard to receive due to being surrounded by mountains and line of sight issues from lower latitude orbits. Worse still, the remoteness of this location mean very few, if any, qualified personnel live locally to support the infrastructure. What you end up with is a crew of guys who got to where they are because they happen to know the most about computers and networking, which is to say, not much.
The lack of broadband has been one of the single limiting factors in deciding whether to build a house here or not (that and whether we can get running water).
This is an ironic article to read so shortly after receiving an email from the AFA seeking my signature on a petition to have Congress protect kids from online "obscenity". While I am both a parent and IT professional and, thus, a little more versed in the dangers which exist and the easily obtained remedies for them, I still blame modern parents for what their children gain access to on their home computers.
For example, my 8 year old daughter does have her computer in her room. It's an old machine I fixed up for her to play games, watch movies, and do a little web browsing. I have so many parental locks in place, however, that she is truly limited to just those things. As she grows older, those locks will come off, one by one, as I deem her mature enough to handle it.
Just like any other exposure children have to the outside world, it's up to the parents to take what steps are necessary to filter out what they don't want their children to see, as best they can.
We also have a couple of teenagers in the house who were getting into some real trouble, based on what they were pulling down from the Internet. This meant more locks went into place and keyloggers installed. We take our responsibilities as parents very seriously and when they are 18, they can move out and do whatever they want. In the meantime, they are using computers I bought, on a network I installed and maintain, and using bandwidth I pay for.
...between my wife and I regarding tech usually centers around how much hard drive space we each have. I use several external drives with my machine due to a large, backed-up movie and music collection. She has fewer external drives and thus less available space on her computer, even though her needs only occupy about 30% of what she has available. Still, it never fails for her to see me doing something with my arrangement of drives and then look at her own and whine about "why don't I have that many drives on my computer?". I finally broke down and got her a 150 gig external, even though I KNOW she will not only be able to locate it in a Finder window and further still, never store anything on it.
I was hesitant to sprinkle emoticons into informal emails and chats at the workplace until I determined acceptability by others. What was surprising to me, however, was not that they were acceptable but WHO was actually using them. Here I support dozens of painfully non-tech people everyday. Sometimes, they don't even know which device on their desktop is the actual computer when I ask them to reboot during a troubleshooting call. Yet, these same folk are tossing smiley faces, frowns, and even some pretty good multi-line ASCII art back at me all the time. Some of them are even twice my age!
Slashdot Mirror
I tend to agree that some overthinking is happening here with the original poster. It seems to me there those who often use a modern bit of technology, such as a VoiP app like Skype, which does more or less what he is asking regarding media control when a call comes in, and then expect all apps to do the same, whether they are of this century or not. Sometimes, ya just gotta pause the thing manually.
Maybe I am dating myself here, but I remember doing this all the time in the late 80s/early-90s, using my franken-puter and the software bundled with the stupidly expensive modem. Variations on the WinFax line up of software could accomplish this, despite having "fax" in the name, leading one to believe it was only for faxes.
As some of the whippersnappers on here may or may not recall, a "fax" was the way we used to "send pages" to other folks, magically transforming hard-copy on one end, into sounds transmitted over the line to become hard copy on the other end. It was truly a marvelous age!
Now git offa my lawn!
You are incorrect for many, many reasons. 1. Earth is a finite place, with a finite number of resources. 2. The human population has a reproductive capacity approaching infinite ability, barring accident or self-destruction. 3. Technologies allowing us to leave the planet are progressing well, and new competition from burgeoning space-faring countries like China will drive research for other countries. 4. Humanity WILL have to expand off this planet at some point and space stations are far more complex operations than merely building a shelter on a semi-habitable planet. 5. There will be a manned landing on Mars within the next 20 years, as a result of some of the reasons listed above and others, such as the seemingly innate human drive to push outward from our birthplaces.
I recently went into a game trader's store near my home. They have put a lot of effort into acquiring damn near every type of game console ever made and even large selections of games for each. I walked the aisles and would grin in nostalgia, but even with the games marked down to just a buck or two, felt no real need to pick anything up. Instead, I wandered over to the new console areas and bought some stuff for XBox and XBox 360 and a few computer titles.
Believe it or not, there are whole areas of science NOT concerned with finding more land, killing off the inhabitants, and consuming all the local resources. Finding life on Mars, or the evidence of past life, would impact so many areas of human life, it's hard to really fathom them all. Every expert in religion to biology would weigh in, not to mention the psychologists as we assimilate this new though suspected information into our collective psyche. If it was past life, then what happened to it? What level of complexity did it reach? Was there ever anything close to what we are, as a species?
In fact, finding evidence of life from either the present or the past would be a prime factor in just how much we DO colonize the place. It's all well and good to think we would just bulldoze the area level and set about building, but what if the life is microbial and the wee beasties kill us off?
Sticking a shovel in the Martian surface is NOT the same as it is on Earth, where at least we have a fairly solid understanding of what we are likely to encounter. I, for one, would want to know all about whatever might be living there, past or present, before I build a shelter in which I will shower, use the toilet, etc.
I work support for a MAJOR cable news station. I can't really complain about my space at all. I have a corner area, about roughly the size of 4 typical cubes but completely open, and surrounded on two sides by windows. My personal area has an Apple cinema display for my Mac, with two side displays for my Ubuntu and XP boxes. I have a phone which no one except our call center can call into and complete admin rights on the network, even equal to the system admins. My security badge gets me into practically every area of the building and I regularly get to hang out and converse with not only the On Camera Talent, but various cool people who make it all happen. What can I say?
I work at a MAJOR cable television network, based in Atlanta, with branch offices all over the country and about to be global. Our in-house Mac inventory has only been steadily increasing over the last few years and is expected to go even higher in the next budget. Whole departments are switching to MacBook Pros, en masse, and not just the "creatives". Even the engineering department is switching over to Mac, as most of their applications have OS X versions or they BootCamp/VMWare Windows if need be. Even Blackberries are being supplanted by iPhones, since the recent patch allowing Exchange integration and the next version of the device being fully Exchange compatible (according to our Apple vendor).
From a support standpoint, the transition is a little rougher, as others here have noted, but the company is paying to have their support staff become Apple certified techs (myself included) in order to do the work in-house and keep our warranties intact.
The server side is also increasing, for the specific purpose of running the data ingest software used to manage clips for our HD transition.
Some of us have even messed around with the hacked OS X kernals floating around and I can report that it runs BEAUTIFULLY on a Dell GX520. If companies like Psystar are indeed a harbinger of things to come, I see Apple's market share in the corporate environment only continuing to rise.
My issue with your statement is less to do with your question and more to do with the signature line. Comparing Vista antipahty to Young Earth Creationists? Really???? It's not even a valid statement. YECs can be shown to have a flawed premise through multiple streams of data, from radiometric data to fossil and DNA evidence. No one who knows anything about the subject will take a YEC seriously simply because of the disparity in evinced education on the matter. People who have issues with Windows Vista, however, have a genuine gripe, supported by numerous studies and metrics against even older Microsoft operating systems. In short, it's not a matter of people who dislike Vista ignoring the voluminous evidence supporting the claims of Vista. It's people USING the voluminous evidence of Vista problems to dislike it until a fix is rendered.
What appears to have been missed in all the comments here is that this wasn't just dogs recognizing other dogs. Dogs, as a whole, use far more of their senses than we do to gather information about themselves and other individuals. The dogs in question were being shown flat, 2D images of dogs. We have all probably seen dogs react to movement or sound on television, as if they understood the image they were seeing minus the smells of the thing. This was a static image, no sound, and no smell. How it is human-like is that they can fall back to just eyes alone, instead of the sense-rich environment they normally operate within. They don't even need movement to separate the image from the background and, further still, can repeatedly show aptitude in categorizing these images.
I have only ever purchased one dedicated eBook reader in my life and was quite happy with it at the time. The REB1100 from RCA had a decent price tag and I only bought it after some enterprising folks made an altered firmware available which would allow the device to display almost any document format. The whole thing was a good idea, a little poorly implemented, and way ahead of its time.
Since that time, I have used a PDA (ah, my old Handspring) and my computer to read ebooks, though I would still like to curl up on the couch or in bed with a decent sized book any time.
The Kindle looks fine, but is pricey and the DRM thing is an obvious turn-off. For avid readers, the technology is getting there, but isn't quite mature enough to replace the good, old-fashioned tree-book.
You aren't alone. I am a non-programmer and saw the headline as having something to do with The Onion satire site.
According to my wife's business law class, a NCA is largely enforceable only under certain conditions. Market location, trade secrets, and client base are the major factors. For example, if I work for a small advertising shop in Florida, which only works within the Florida market, and I move to Washington (state), an NCA would be nonsense, even if I signed it. It would prevent a reasonable expectation to earn a living. Now, if I worked for Microsoft (as if) and left to work for Apple (yay!), an NCA would probably be enforceable.
One thing I have noticed is NCAs being employed in places you wouldn't expect them. My son went to work for a local paintball field as a game helper and referee. This is a small-time outfit operating out of some guy's house. He had to sign an NCA. He showed it to me and I just laughed.
but by any chance does this involve giving the retailer twice what it's worth for the system
What kind of "worth" are you referencing here? Economic value of constituent components when compared against what other retailers are able to put a machine together and charge? Or do you mean consumer confidence in the brand-name based upon historical reliability, aesthetics, and consistent integration between components and the operating system?
then using a screwdriver to prise off a mouse button or two?
Where have you been for the last several years?
Let's face it, the majority of the consumer Windows market is just not about high-end gaming rigs, able to play the latest games with all graphic options maxed out. They like to browse web pages, chat with friends, send email, utilize office productivity apps, and mess around with their photo/home video collections. For these purposes, just about ANY operating system in current use is adequate. The differences comes down to security, stability, and usability.
For my part, I make a point of keeping an Ubuntu machine going in my house at all times. Friends who come over and want to use a computer to check something while we are waiting for the football game to come on or the pizza to arrive invariably comment on the OS, which leads to questions, which leads to me usually offering them a burned copy of a LiveCD to take home with them. I don't spew a lot of technical jargon at these folks, nor do I assume a fan-boy posture (given the other machines in my house are Apple). I simply "make the sale" to them and answer their questions clearly, responding to their complaints regarding Vista and even XP, at times.
This effort has resulted in about 30% of my friends moving to Ubuntu, with the remainder being split almost evenly between Apple computers and Windows-based rigs. Those who remain on the fence usually sit there because of the singular issue of gaming. Quite frankly, I can think of NO reason for an average consumer to even need to pay for an OS aside from being able to play games.
The timing of this article is interesting to me as I am embroiled in the James Michener novel "Space" while traveling through Canada. Michener was known for his expansive historical sagas and attention to historical detail. In this case, his telling of the flurry of activity within American government and the embryonic space program is quite fascinating, especially now that we know from TFA that the Soviets were just trying something out. Whether the Soviets were trying to show the strength of Communism or merely throwing stuff into the air and seeing if it worked or not, the fact remains they boosted the American efforts in space to the point we are now, regardless of how bogged down we have gotten with the Shuttle in the last 20 years.
Based only on what my wife and I, both riders, saw in the video, it appears he was either thrown off or bailed off prior to the actual crash. He appeared to laying several feet behind the point of impact. Indeed, I would surmise that had he stayed on the bike until the crash, his injuries would have been very severe, with him either being tossed over the bars and flying through the air or, worse still, being slammed against the side of the minivan.
The fastest I have ever ridden was around 120mph on I-69, between Indianapolis and Anderson, Indiana. Even though I wasn't accelerating any longer and held that speed for about 10 minutes, the sheer force of wind was enough to make it difficult to hold the handgrips. This was on a Suzuki GSX-R 750cc. Even laying down on the tank didn't help, making it worse, in fact, because doing so makes the bike harder to handle, imo. Thus, I can't imagine him staying on this thing until the gruesome end. He's very lucky and I wish him the best, but highly recommend he leaves future demonstrations of the bike to his professional riders and testers. Better still, just leave the bike parked and let the eye candy he brought along be the photo-op.
I may sound cynical (though where the Congress is concerned, is that possible?), but how many here wonder whether or not a Congressman/woman or someone from his/her immediate family was recently jacked up on cell phone charges? Forgive me, but I am always somewhat suspicious when legislation is suddenly introduced to allegedly empower consumers given the amount of money it truly takes to lobby the Congress to get anything done these days.
My son was just issued an older iBook from his high school. Their IT department is top notch and tracks the students' activities thoroughly. They have screens in their office which flips through the screens of all students on the school network. At any time, they can remotely lock the computer and send a message to the kid to report to the principals office.
Even Apple's own Ive (a brilliant designer in his own right) will cop to the fact the Thinkpad provided a lot of inspiration for the "look and feel" of the iBook/Powerbook line. I have an older one running Ubuntu and can see many design similarities between it and my trusty old iBook.
Try moving to Alaska. My wife and I moved here under contract with our employer and because we both wanted to experience the state while we are young (something I recommend to EVERYONE). Broadband here consists of DSL lines capped at 7658K/500K, costing $140 per month. Satellite is also hard to receive due to being surrounded by mountains and line of sight issues from lower latitude orbits. Worse still, the remoteness of this location mean very few, if any, qualified personnel live locally to support the infrastructure. What you end up with is a crew of guys who got to where they are because they happen to know the most about computers and networking, which is to say, not much.
The lack of broadband has been one of the single limiting factors in deciding whether to build a house here or not (that and whether we can get running water).
..."begging the question"?
This begs the question: Since when did demos need copy protection?"
No, it raises the question. Begging the question is something else.
This is an ironic article to read so shortly after receiving an email from the AFA seeking my signature on a petition to have Congress protect kids from online "obscenity". While I am both a parent and IT professional and, thus, a little more versed in the dangers which exist and the easily obtained remedies for them, I still blame modern parents for what their children gain access to on their home computers.
For example, my 8 year old daughter does have her computer in her room. It's an old machine I fixed up for her to play games, watch movies, and do a little web browsing. I have so many parental locks in place, however, that she is truly limited to just those things. As she grows older, those locks will come off, one by one, as I deem her mature enough to handle it.
Just like any other exposure children have to the outside world, it's up to the parents to take what steps are necessary to filter out what they don't want their children to see, as best they can.
We also have a couple of teenagers in the house who were getting into some real trouble, based on what they were pulling down from the Internet. This meant more locks went into place and keyloggers installed. We take our responsibilities as parents very seriously and when they are 18, they can move out and do whatever they want. In the meantime, they are using computers I bought, on a network I installed and maintain, and using bandwidth I pay for.
...between my wife and I regarding tech usually centers around how much hard drive space we each have. I use several external drives with my machine due to a large, backed-up movie and music collection. She has fewer external drives and thus less available space on her computer, even though her needs only occupy about 30% of what she has available. Still, it never fails for her to see me doing something with my arrangement of drives and then look at her own and whine about "why don't I have that many drives on my computer?". I finally broke down and got her a 150 gig external, even though I KNOW she will not only be able to locate it in a Finder window and further still, never store anything on it.
I was hesitant to sprinkle emoticons into informal emails and chats at the workplace until I determined acceptability by others. What was surprising to me, however, was not that they were acceptable but WHO was actually using them. Here I support dozens of painfully non-tech people everyday. Sometimes, they don't even know which device on their desktop is the actual computer when I ask them to reboot during a troubleshooting call. Yet, these same folk are tossing smiley faces, frowns, and even some pretty good multi-line ASCII art back at me all the time. Some of them are even twice my age!
Let me guess. Having Vista problems and feeling a bit touchy?