"Dell onsite techs, at least in my area, do not install software after replacing a hard drive. it simply isn't allowed.
so what gives?"
Time constraints.
There is simply no way in hell most Dell on-site techs could possibly handle the workload if OS installs were part of our job. Fully loading the HD to the shipping configuration will take a couple hours. When you have 12 calls that *need* to be completed today, and only have time to do 7 of them without destroying your car, two hours to load a hard drive is simply not an option.
Additionally, you also have to consider the sometimes exotic configurations some customers have. People do lots of things to their systems after purchase, and there is no way that every tech could understand all of these diverse setups well enough to load the hard drive to the clients satisfaction, especially given the time constraints mentioned above.
That said, its generally allowed, *if you have time*. I've had time all of twice in the past four months. Once I did it, the other time the client used Ghost anyways so an install would have been utterly pointless. I'd love to install windows to any of the hard drives I replace, but I just don't have the time. At most I'll be able to put the CD in and make sure it starts, and give a brief explanation of what to do when it starts asking questions.
TO his credit, it really would only take an hour to learn the types of parts you need and how to put them together.
Learning enough to select quality parts, however... That takes a lot longer of course. Sure, any idiot can buy a few parts and get a computer that starts up, but it takes some brains to get a fully optimized system that will have decent uptime.
Vitamin D is primarily produced by sunlight. Well, technically it isn't, but the chemical processes your body uses to produce it require sunlight(technically, UV light, of which the Sun is the most convenient source available to most people) to function. This is a much more efficient process than getting it in fully ready form through normal food.
As explained in the article, deficiency of Vitamin D is linked to several disorders. While the deficiency isn't known to directly cause death, several of the disorders that can be caused by a vitamin D deficiency can lead to death.
So yes, darkness can kill you. It may be unlikely to be the primary cause of death, but it is possible.
The internet is fairly redundant, and would probably take a ridiculously large attack to completely destroy.
But taking out things like root servers and some major routers, and its efficiency will go down the tubes. Do you recall what the internet was like after 9/11? A lot of major sites were fubared, I had trouble with some emails... it was a pain. A lot of intenet traffic goes throught NYC.
About a year and a half ago, a tanker truck exploded on a bridge in Bridgeport CT on the I-95.
The bridge was out of action completely for about a week. It didn't collapse, but the damage was severe enough to basically destroy it. The northbound lanes were out of action for another week after that. And this was with an extremely huge effort to get it running again, they expected even temporary repairs to take about a month. I don't think they've gotten it properly replaced even now.
The shit really hit the fan when this happened. That stretch of I-95 was(and still is) undergoing heavy construction as it was, so it was backed up already. Traffic got really screwed up, there were lots of detours onto the 15 and the local roads. Commercial traffic was even sent on the 15, that NEVER happens, it is normalyl outright banned.
This was a single, smallish tanker truck that got winged by a passenger car. Early morning too, so traffic was light. A deliberate attack using a larger truck during rush hour... I don't want to imagine. Dozens(for this bridge, potentially hundereds with the right bridge) would be killed and there would be serious economic disruption. That bridge is probably one of the most important in Fairfield County, especially the coastal region.
They did have some antiterrorist type people on scene... it was obviously an accident, but they went there to get a better idea of just what would happen if terrorists did go after a major bridge and how to best recover quickly. Good thing they got a demonstration like that without the death toll an actual attack would have caused.
To call the landline at home, the command is "ET Phone Home"
To call my mothers cell phone, its "Call mom"
On ET Phone Home, its misdialed to my moms cell phone once, and completely not understood me another time. I've used this feature maybe a dozen times. Not a terribly good success rate.
This is a system where you record samples of your voice giving these commands, and it compares the recorded sample to what you just said. Minor voice fluctuations or surprisingly minute background noise can completely throw the system off.
The days of practical systems that can recognize diverse vocal characteristics are well into the future. The only systems I've seen where that works are based on simple, common, monosyllabic words, such as a phone system that lets you say "yes" and "no" instead of pressing the keypad. Even then, its barely reliable enough to be worth the effort.
Things like this make me look at the human brain in absolute amazement. Electronic computers have outstripped it for raw number crunching, but anything even slightly abstract, nothing on the horizon even comes close.
Could it figure out how to climb said tree wihtout anyone telling it that such a thing is even possible, much less how to do it? Would it even get the idea to try without intervention by a handler?(ie human master saying "go there" and pointing to the top of the tree).
Humans, even when their mind is completely blanked*, don't see raw information. They see items. You might have no clue what the hell that sink in front of you is, but you still see it in terms of the complete sink, rather than patterns of shapes, colors, light and dark. The ability of the human mind to abstract things is staggering. There might be some behind the scenes analysis going on, but it takes deliberate effort to work on those levels.
Furthermore, humans can figure out how to do things without anyone telling them how or even that its possible. Humans can come up with the idea to do something on their own, they don't need to be told.
The inherent problem solving ability, and ability to come up with ideas and solutions, and abstract information automatically gives biological brains a huge advantage. Until AI computers can achieve similar feets, without brute forcing via a huge knowledgebase of situations and responses, we won't have true AI.
*- don't believe me? Drop 500-1000mg of MDA in one sitting. You'll know what I'm talking about. Just dont' forget to stay hydrated, or this experiment will probably kill you.
Law And Order has had a few episodes that touched on the subject of media connections to crime, and even where the game or whatever was shown to have influence, things came squarely down on the perpetrator being an asshat or mentally ill. Basically, violent media may influence what direction someones criminal career takes, but isn't likely to inspire it in the first place.
CSI has done a good episode involving furries. Ignore the paranoid ravings of 90% of the furries out there about it, the episode was rather good. The chick that saw it as completely fucked up was shown to be, well, an intolerant bitch, and the guy cop, who was shown to clearly be more intelligent and insightful, found it a bit strange(who wouldn't?) but not inherently bad, and even potentially good for these people. Given how they handled that topic, I've got hopes for them to handle this one somewhat intelligently.
Ok, I'll buy that taking longer is quite possible(65% seems a bit high, but I havn'et actually done side by side comparisons or any polling).
However, what is the end result? Obviously, the specifics of the situation will impact this, but many companies will not mind waiting a bit longer if they get something that is sufficiently superior.
Depending on how their apparent resistance worked, this might not necesarily mean their resistance isn't real, or useful for developing treatments.
A brick wall might resist one person trying to knock it over. But if that one person comes back every single day after fattening up and running practice(momentum = mass * velocity of course), then eventually they just might get through.
A similar concept could be behind the prostitutes eventual infection. After gettting nailed(no pun intended) with the virus enough times, or from a customer with a sufficiently large amount of the virus in his fluids, *bam* infection.
Samples, yes, you need huge file sizes for it to work well.
Wavetable synthesis, however, you don't.
The idea behind wavetable synthesis is to take short samples- one cycle of the waveform- for different stages of the sound. Loop and manipulate them appropriately.
This can get extremely close to the sound of a real instrument with an extremely small amount of data compared to sampling. This also has the benefit that it can cleanly adjust to different note lengths with the ADSR cycle intact. You aren't trying to convincingly loop a 16th note sample into a whole note- you are looping and combining individual wave cycles, adjusting levels as it goes through the ADSR cycle, perhaps even using different waves for each stage(its not just the volume that changes, but the timbre often does as it goes through). Adjusting to different pitches without making the sample sound horrible is also a lot easier on wavetable. Also, a wavetable synthesizer is generally capable of mixing and matching multiple different waveforms to create brand new sounds with no clear relation to traditional instruments- a feat that is very difficult on all but the most expensvie samplers.
This can get a sound that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing for a very small amount of money. Samplers capable of what a wavetable synthesizer can do are extremely expensive- you need full samples for all likely note lengths and values. Most people won't be able to tell the difference anyway. If they are told that one note is from a wavetable synthesizer, another from a sampler, most people will not be able to tell the difference.
Yes, full samples are potentially more accurate replications than wavetable synthesis. But most people wont' really be able to tell the difference between a sampler and a good wavetable synthesizer.
Samplers certainly have a place. But they are not the only way to get realistic instrument sounds in the electronic world.
The reactor cores themselves don't(not in an atomic way at least, but I could imagine a bizzare failure where water got in, turned to steam fast, and exploded the core), but the overall plant is quite capable of exploding violently and spreading fallout over a very large area, essentially the worst case scenario for a nuclear power plant failure is that it becomes a very large "dirty bomb".
Why not tweak the existing fraud statutes to close any loopholes that phishers can use to cover their asses?
Why do they have to go through the effort of creating a whole new law when there are other laws covering this basic acticity?
Shit like this pisses me off. Rather than tweaking the existing laws a bit, politicians need to create whole new laws when a lot of time and effort can be saved, and probably end up with a more effective law, by tweaking a close fit we already have. But new laws get more press. Damn politicians.
There was some worry at one point that my mom was hitting me. She wasn't, but the chosen questions were bad.
"Does it hurt when mommy hits you with a stick?" "Yes"
My father didn't like that question. So he asked-
"Does it hurt when *person who was initially questioning me* hits you with a stick?" "Yes"
Basically, if you ask the right questions, you can get pretty much any answer you want. Especially when the party commisioning the survey has a clear interest in what the results are, it is important to know what was actually asked to judge the surveys credibility.
Slashdot Mirror
"Dell onsite techs, at least in my area, do not install software after replacing a hard drive. it simply isn't allowed.
so what gives?"
Time constraints.
There is simply no way in hell most Dell on-site techs could possibly handle the workload if OS installs were part of our job. Fully loading the HD to the shipping configuration will take a couple hours. When you have 12 calls that *need* to be completed today, and only have time to do 7 of them without destroying your car, two hours to load a hard drive is simply not an option.
Additionally, you also have to consider the sometimes exotic configurations some customers have. People do lots of things to their systems after purchase, and there is no way that every tech could understand all of these diverse setups well enough to load the hard drive to the clients satisfaction, especially given the time constraints mentioned above.
That said, its generally allowed, *if you have time*. I've had time all of twice in the past four months. Once I did it, the other time the client used Ghost anyways so an install would have been utterly pointless. I'd love to install windows to any of the hard drives I replace, but I just don't have the time. At most I'll be able to put the CD in and make sure it starts, and give a brief explanation of what to do when it starts asking questions.
TO his credit, it really would only take an hour to learn the types of parts you need and how to put them together.
Learning enough to select quality parts, however... That takes a lot longer of course. Sure, any idiot can buy a few parts and get a computer that starts up, but it takes some brains to get a fully optimized system that will have decent uptime.
I'd mod my fellow tech up if I had the points. someone else do it for me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D
Vitamin D is primarily produced by sunlight. Well, technically it isn't, but the chemical processes your body uses to produce it require sunlight(technically, UV light, of which the Sun is the most convenient source available to most people) to function. This is a much more efficient process than getting it in fully ready form through normal food.
As explained in the article, deficiency of Vitamin D is linked to several disorders. While the deficiency isn't known to directly cause death, several of the disorders that can be caused by a vitamin D deficiency can lead to death.
So yes, darkness can kill you. It may be unlikely to be the primary cause of death, but it is possible.
dave?
The internet is fairly redundant, and would probably take a ridiculously large attack to completely destroy.
But taking out things like root servers and some major routers, and its efficiency will go down the tubes. Do you recall what the internet was like after 9/11? A lot of major sites were fubared, I had trouble with some emails... it was a pain. A lot of intenet traffic goes throught NYC.
About a year and a half ago, a tanker truck exploded on a bridge in Bridgeport CT on the I-95.
The bridge was out of action completely for about a week. It didn't collapse, but the damage was severe enough to basically destroy it. The northbound lanes were out of action for another week after that. And this was with an extremely huge effort to get it running again, they expected even temporary repairs to take about a month. I don't think they've gotten it properly replaced even now.
The shit really hit the fan when this happened. That stretch of I-95 was(and still is) undergoing heavy construction as it was, so it was backed up already. Traffic got really screwed up, there were lots of detours onto the 15 and the local roads. Commercial traffic was even sent on the 15, that NEVER happens, it is normalyl outright banned.
This was a single, smallish tanker truck that got winged by a passenger car. Early morning too, so traffic was light. A deliberate attack using a larger truck during rush hour... I don't want to imagine. Dozens(for this bridge, potentially hundereds with the right bridge) would be killed and there would be serious economic disruption. That bridge is probably one of the most important in Fairfield County, especially the coastal region.
They did have some antiterrorist type people on scene... it was obviously an accident, but they went there to get a better idea of just what would happen if terrorists did go after a major bridge and how to best recover quickly. Good thing they got a demonstration like that without the death toll an actual attack would have caused.
+50 balls of steel.
It won't prevent it, but it will make it easier to hold people accountable when they do it.
This might work with modern color printers and a scanner.
hahaha voice recognition.
My phone is voice activated.
To call the landline at home, the command is "ET Phone Home"
To call my mothers cell phone, its "Call mom"
On ET Phone Home, its misdialed to my moms cell phone once, and completely not understood me another time. I've used this feature maybe a dozen times. Not a terribly good success rate.
This is a system where you record samples of your voice giving these commands, and it compares the recorded sample to what you just said. Minor voice fluctuations or surprisingly minute background noise can completely throw the system off.
The days of practical systems that can recognize diverse vocal characteristics are well into the future. The only systems I've seen where that works are based on simple, common, monosyllabic words, such as a phone system that lets you say "yes" and "no" instead of pressing the keypad. Even then, its barely reliable enough to be worth the effort.
Things like this make me look at the human brain in absolute amazement. Electronic computers have outstripped it for raw number crunching, but anything even slightly abstract, nothing on the horizon even comes close.
What does it see when it looks at a tree?
Could it figure out how to climb said tree wihtout anyone telling it that such a thing is even possible, much less how to do it? Would it even get the idea to try without intervention by a handler?(ie human master saying "go there" and pointing to the top of the tree).
Humans, even when their mind is completely blanked*, don't see raw information. They see items. You might have no clue what the hell that sink in front of you is, but you still see it in terms of the complete sink, rather than patterns of shapes, colors, light and dark. The ability of the human mind to abstract things is staggering. There might be some behind the scenes analysis going on, but it takes deliberate effort to work on those levels.
Furthermore, humans can figure out how to do things without anyone telling them how or even that its possible. Humans can come up with the idea to do something on their own, they don't need to be told.
The inherent problem solving ability, and ability to come up with ideas and solutions, and abstract information automatically gives biological brains a huge advantage. Until AI computers can achieve similar feets, without brute forcing via a huge knowledgebase of situations and responses, we won't have true AI.
*- don't believe me? Drop 500-1000mg of MDA in one sitting. You'll know what I'm talking about. Just dont' forget to stay hydrated, or this experiment will probably kill you.
I'd be interested to see how they handle it.
Law And Order has had a few episodes that touched on the subject of media connections to crime, and even where the game or whatever was shown to have influence, things came squarely down on the perpetrator being an asshat or mentally ill. Basically, violent media may influence what direction someones criminal career takes, but isn't likely to inspire it in the first place.
CSI has done a good episode involving furries. Ignore the paranoid ravings of 90% of the furries out there about it, the episode was rather good. The chick that saw it as completely fucked up was shown to be, well, an intolerant bitch, and the guy cop, who was shown to clearly be more intelligent and insightful, found it a bit strange(who wouldn't?) but not inherently bad, and even potentially good for these people. Given how they handled that topic, I've got hopes for them to handle this one somewhat intelligently.
I've actually got a story in my head about the Borg collective coming from parts unknown to open a can of whupass on the rebellious Queens.
I may actually get started on it soon, I've recently worked out a title and a few major plot points.
Ok, I'll buy that taking longer is quite possible(65% seems a bit high, but I havn'et actually done side by side comparisons or any polling).
However, what is the end result? Obviously, the specifics of the situation will impact this, but many companies will not mind waiting a bit longer if they get something that is sufficiently superior.
Analogy(mentioned elsewhere)
Man runs into a brick wall. Brick wall stays put.
Man runs into brick wall. Brick wall stays put.
Man runs into brick wall. Brick wall stays put.
Man runs into brick wall. Brick wall stays put.
(repeat many times)
Man runs into brick wall. Brick wall falls over.
Depending on how their apparent resistance worked, this might not necesarily mean their resistance isn't real, or useful for developing treatments.
A brick wall might resist one person trying to knock it over. But if that one person comes back every single day after fattening up and running practice(momentum = mass * velocity of course), then eventually they just might get through.
A similar concept could be behind the prostitutes eventual infection. After gettting nailed(no pun intended) with the virus enough times, or from a customer with a sufficiently large amount of the virus in his fluids, *bam* infection.
Samples, yes, you need huge file sizes for it to work well.
Wavetable synthesis, however, you don't.
The idea behind wavetable synthesis is to take short samples- one cycle of the waveform- for different stages of the sound. Loop and manipulate them appropriately.
This can get extremely close to the sound of a real instrument with an extremely small amount of data compared to sampling. This also has the benefit that it can cleanly adjust to different note lengths with the ADSR cycle intact. You aren't trying to convincingly loop a 16th note sample into a whole note- you are looping and combining individual wave cycles, adjusting levels as it goes through the ADSR cycle, perhaps even using different waves for each stage(its not just the volume that changes, but the timbre often does as it goes through). Adjusting to different pitches without making the sample sound horrible is also a lot easier on wavetable. Also, a wavetable synthesizer is generally capable of mixing and matching multiple different waveforms to create brand new sounds with no clear relation to traditional instruments- a feat that is very difficult on all but the most expensvie samplers.
This can get a sound that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing for a very small amount of money. Samplers capable of what a wavetable synthesizer can do are extremely expensive- you need full samples for all likely note lengths and values. Most people won't be able to tell the difference anyway. If they are told that one note is from a wavetable synthesizer, another from a sampler, most people will not be able to tell the difference.
Yes, full samples are potentially more accurate replications than wavetable synthesis. But most people wont' really be able to tell the difference between a sampler and a good wavetable synthesizer.
Samplers certainly have a place. But they are not the only way to get realistic instrument sounds in the electronic world.
PDAs are viewed as electronic versions of a traditional paper organizer.
Sure, they can do a hell of a lot more than that, but those extra things aren't what people think of when they hear "PDA"
In comes MySpace. One of its few actual uses- it is quite good for self promotion.
They need to clean up the interface a bit, and get it stable, but the potential for MySpace to become a big player in promotion of music is huge.
No problem. My new SledgeHammer anti-DRM tools will totally prevent Los Angeles from being destroyed in a nuclear explosion.
Nuke plants do explode.
The reactor cores themselves don't(not in an atomic way at least, but I could imagine a bizzare failure where water got in, turned to steam fast, and exploded the core), but the overall plant is quite capable of exploding violently and spreading fallout over a very large area, essentially the worst case scenario for a nuclear power plant failure is that it becomes a very large "dirty bomb".
Why not tweak the existing fraud statutes to close any loopholes that phishers can use to cover their asses?
Why do they have to go through the effort of creating a whole new law when there are other laws covering this basic acticity?
Shit like this pisses me off. Rather than tweaking the existing laws a bit, politicians need to create whole new laws when a lot of time and effort can be saved, and probably end up with a more effective law, by tweaking a close fit we already have. But new laws get more press. Damn politicians.
What were the exact questions?
There was some worry at one point that my mom was hitting me. She wasn't, but the chosen questions were bad.
"Does it hurt when mommy hits you with a stick?" "Yes"
My father didn't like that question. So he asked-
"Does it hurt when *person who was initially questioning me* hits you with a stick?" "Yes"
Basically, if you ask the right questions, you can get pretty much any answer you want. Especially when the party commisioning the survey has a clear interest in what the results are, it is important to know what was actually asked to judge the surveys credibility.
We might use 100% of the physical mass, but that doesn't mean we use 100% of the capacity.