I had similar problems with some retailers. From: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8138630.htm After being extremely diligent in filling out the paperwork and making sure that I adhered to all the requirements of the offer, my rebate was still denied by Maxtor (a digital storage manufacturer) because the paperwork ''wasn't received in time.'' If true, it would have meant that it took the postal service more than two weeks to move a letter about 20 miles from my home to the Miami rebate center. It was only after contacting the Better Business Bureau that was I able to get my request honored.
After doing an informal poll of some of my co-workers and associates, many of whom work with information technology, I was surprised to learn that almost all of them had had rebate requests denied. Unfortunately, many didn't send their requests via certified mail because the rebate amounts, often $5 to $25, didn't seem to warrant it.
After my experiences, I would suggest a few steps:
Read the rebate requests thoroughly. Many times, they require the actual register receipt and not a copy. Some will require that the rebate item is circled on the receipt even if it's the only item listed.
Keep physical and digital copies of your paperwork and receipts, including the envelope used to send the forms. This makes it easier to forward copies to the state consumer affairs department, Attorney General and the Better Business Bureau.
Submit the paperwork immediately. Retailers count on customers to lose receipts or forget to request the rebate.
Use certified mail to prevent the convenient excuse of ''late mail.''
If you're denied your rebate after complying with the offer, make sure to send your information to your state Attorney General's office. It can't take up your case directly, but it can help establish a pattern of activity.
An app like that is long overdue in rpm land but I'm afraid it's probably too late. If the tool isn't used by a large number of people then I wouldn't want any of my servers to depend on it. Nice thing about debian isn't just that the apt tool has been doing this for many years, it's that so many people depend on it on a daily basis that the bugs in the dependencies between packages are quickly worked out.
Then use apt with RPM as the back-end.
Now I've been using Debian for years. An single installation of Debian ran for years, updated regularly without a hitch, until the box finally gave out. The problem is that people are comparing apt with RPM when they should be comparing it against dpkg. Compare apt against yum, urpmi, yast2 or whichever front-end system you choose. And I'd argue that just as many people use yum, urpmi and yast2 as use apt based solely on the frequent distribution-of-choice polls.
RPM is the back-end package tool. All the modern RPM based distros use front-end tools such as yum, urpmi, yast2, and even the only standby of apt. So on a box without any X libraries installed I could install an X-based game with:
Any distro with sane, centrally-managed package management will be equally easy. By this, I mean apt or portage or even the *BSDs. I wouln't undertake this with an RPM distro, unless I had plenty of support.
Interesting. I've been using package managers for years on everything from SunOS to SCO to dozens of Linux flavors. RPM is actually a pretty good package management system, better in most cases than package managers for the big systems. It is somewhat lacking in roll-back ability, something that Solaris and AIX manage, but there's nothing in the RPM architecture preventing it from being added fully (and by fully, I mean complete the archival options that already exist). Last I checked none of the other systems were any easier. I'm curious as to what about RPM you find so difficult?
This is similar (and similarly flawed) to the following riddle:
Ford Prefect, the space alien, arrived on Earth one day. Intrigued by the blandness of Earth, he wanted to document the sum total of mankinds knowledge for the amusement of his friends back home. The only problem was that, though ridiculously tiny by galactic standards, humans had created enough bad fiction that the databanks on Ford Prefect's ship would be unable to carry it back. Ford thought for a moment, then found a solution: He would get a gold rod. The ratio of its length to width would generate a fractional number, in much the same way that 355/113 would give digits of Pi. When converted to decimal he could store all of mankind's knowledge.
So what's wrong with this idea?
Answer: Unless you had infinitely precise material, which is impossible, you'd never have the "resolution" to get the proper ratios.
I've wondered exactly the same thing. I don't know if it's possible to build an identical test satellite, but for a project of this duration, you'd think that some sort of full run-through testing would be done. Now it may be cost prohibitive to test the physical pieces (i.e., does a sensor deploy at 100mph when upside down, etc.), but the inputs to software can be simulated easily. Maybe this is why we pin our hopes on Spaceship One projects rather than NASA.
Reminds me of this story, probably apocryphal, that said that Daniel Webster of "Webster's Dictionary" once had his life's work destroyed by an angry wife. Immediately after she'd burned (??) his work in the fireplace, he took out a pen, walked to his desk, then started again from the beginning.
I used to tutor mathematics in S. Florida (algebra, calculus, statistics). Florida ranks near the bottom on many surveys so my experiences might not be too representative of the country. One point in the article that's particularly true is that students learn by rote.
For example, many of my calc students could do simple integrations and derivatives. They knew, by rote, how to differentiate sin(x)dx or x^2 but didn't know what exactly it meant. They knew that the first derivative of a position function could give a number, and they could solve some physics problems using this information, but couldn't explain what exactly was happening. These were calc students. Worse were the algebra students who could solve quadratic equations or plot but couldn't see how the function related to the graph. Even worse were the statistics students who just knew how to plug in numbers into a formula but had no clue what the statistics meant.
I don't know if there's an easy solution. Throw money at it? Maybe. If kids had laptops with MuPAD or Octave or Mathematica, maybe some would better visualize what's happening. Maybe they need to take away all the computers and have the students do calculations repeatedly until they see patterns and realize what's happening.
I'd recommend emphasis on methods like dimensional analysis. Forget about the numbers for a moment and try to determine what sort of units you should get back. Not saying forget about arithmetic, but stress the concepts more than the manipulations.
I've dreamed of standing on the moon, looking at the Earthrise. I've wished to stand inside a dome on the bottom of the ocean, watching sharks swim above. I've longed for a time machine so that I could watch dinosaurs; then finished with that, I'd journey as close to the Big Bang as I could. I want to chat with an Artificial Intelligence before I die. I want to stand in a world powered by the sun or the wind or clean fusion. In 2470, I want to walk within the ruins of a 20th century city, near the aforementioned solar powered, glittering metropolis, and tell the people around me about Times Square Stores and Broadway. I want a flying car, the sporty model, that I can fly along the New Miami skyline. Tired of that, I want a submarine to visit old Miami; zipping along South Ocean watching the sharks swim by.
Most gun ranges won't let you put them out as targets, unfortunately. But I've noticed most don't shatter all that much and when hit; the metal film between the clear plastic pulls away, but mostly you get a clean hole with some cracks. This is with a.223 at 150yds,.270 at 150yds, and.22s and various distances.
Lord, $50 per hour is a bargain. I'm in S.Florida and routinely charge $120-$180/hr for Linux consulting services. For security consulting I double this amount. Don't sell yourself too short. The market is not the greatest, but at $50 you're not doing yourself or anyone else in the industry a favor.
Heh, there's another obvious place to attach these devices... Just as sensitive, not needed for eating. Having the candy striper or nurse attach the device would be fun (or the doctor, if that's your thing). The only problem will be the loud gasps of excitement from the wearers when some visual stimulus appears (say a big red truck or a rainbow). You'll appear sensitive because you'll with excitement when a baby screams kick off the sensors...
You're right in that many of the tools in Solaris don't work quite as expected. I'm not sure if it's because Sun wanted to keep bug-for-bug compatibility with older versions, or just didn't see the need to update working utilitues, but it's aggravating (and potentially dangerous to data) if the tools don't work consistently across OSes.
I've been a longtime SunOS/Solaris user. Recently I've been breaking AIX machines. One thing I've noticed recently is that Sun, IBM, and HP are starting to put GNU tools on their distributions. It's now common practice for a Linux compatibility layer or just ports of the regular GNU tools (including window managers, package managers, shells, etc..). This means that you can get the benefits of your underlying OS *and* have a unified and consistent interface. Though Linux may not be an *official* Unix, it is fast becoming the reference Unix.
Wow, amazing that this got modded up. Since the took office, George Bush has opposed any mimimum wage increases across the board. Now whether a minimum wage increase is a good thing or not is not what I'm debating, but to imply that he's for increasing overtime pay is just outright false.
We have one in S. Florida called the MetroRail. It's very good for eliminating those pesky budget surpluses. Plus, many of the benches make convenient public urinals.
It is very interesting listening to children make language mistakes. "Me want food" and "On the TV" was common with my 2.5 year old daughter. You could argue that the daughter has it correct and adults are making the errors. Maybe there's no unified language, but the children seem to grasp many of the rules first and *then* build a list of exceptions.
I've been using a Linux desktop as a primary (and secondary and tertiary) desktop for years. Recently I've had to (because of corporate policy) use a Windows XP desktop. Now I certainly have a bias against Windows -- years of grief with NT4 and earlier 2K revs have caused this -- but I wanted to approach XP with an open mind.
The first couple weeks were pretty horrible. Moving between Lotus Notes, Excel and IE would sometimes take two minutes as the apps swapped. Every once in a while the machine would become completely unresponsive as the hard drive light blinked. OK, no problem. I started removing all the junk put there by default in the corporate image. Zapped the client acces software, removed various alerts, set the virus scanner to a schedule rather than looking for idle time. Things got a little better.
Started customizing the machine: multiple desktop utility from the PowerTools kit, Firefox for tabbed browsing, Putty for SSH access, gvim set as the default editor, enabled the second monitor, added command line completion in cmd.exe, etc.. Added memory. Getting better still.
Then I started noticing the glitches. Excel and Citrix would act crazy with the multiple desktops. Interesting things like having dialog boxes pop up behind app windows so that you couldn't move the app (or even minimize it) to dismiss the dialog. Apps would pop up windows in seemingly random locations on either monitor or even different desktops. Putting the machine to sleep would randomly cause the keyboard to start acting crazy. Simple things like burning a CD while listening to an MP3 would fail. Then there were the crashes. Explorer dies once a day. The apps generally remain, but it's annoying as hell. Shutting down randomly results in a blue screen. Not *the* Blue Screen, but a completely blank blue screen that sits there until I force the machine to power down.
Now I know laptops aren't exactly what you'd want to keep a 5-nine application on, but it's ridiculous. The installation feels, I dunno, *fragile*. The closest thing I can remember was a problem with the Atari ST. Because of some weird glitch in the mouse driver routines, moving the mouse around during bootup could cause a hang and IIRC, a corrupted disk. I.e., experimenting with the machine is dangerous. And this is a bad thing.
Anyhoo, I've not given up and I certainly think that XP is getting to be very reliable. There are lots of nice features, not just eye candy gimmicry, but legitimate ease-of-use stuff that is lacking in several Linux desktops.
Man, I've been a computer geek all my life. Recently I've started playing around with cars (got a couple non-turbo 3000GTs and a VR-4 coming next week). It's a tremendous amount of fun... As with the computer groups, there are a bunch of newbie folks and those in it just for the image... but for every ten of those there seems to be one or two knowledgeable folks.
I'm the first to admit that I know very little about modern cars. Just as with computers, however, there are things that seem to make sense but can be bad for your cars. I'm still in the fix it stage -- trying to put a car back to complete stock condition. It's almost like restoring an old Atari ST or Amiga to full functionality. E.g., the other day it took me a couple hours to change the front fog lights. The bolts had frozen up and grime had covered one of the screw holes so it wasn't immediately obvious how to remove them. After lots of cleaning I got them off, changed the bulbs, and got the housings repainted. The second time around it was a fifteen minute job. So, like learning some weird bash shell construct or new awk script, it was satisfying.
I'm running the desktop feature on my Thinkpad T41 with the LCD and an external monitor. It works, mostly. Weird things are broken though:
If I switch desktops while Excel is open, it disables the Excel menus. I need to minimize excel, switch to another screen, switch back, then maximize Excel to get my menus back.
Citrix clients automatically fullscreen themselves when switching desktops. Seems to be just on my machine though.
Alerts pop up in seemingly random desktops. If you switch *just* as the alert is being popped up you can have really interesting things like having the app window hiding the alert so that you can't dismiss the alert to interact with the app window. In this case it's either try to switch real fast and press Enter as soon as the dialog is in focus and before the application window gets drawn or kill them with the task manager. This has happened a few times with Putty SSH client.
The multiple desktops also seem to impose a huge load on the machine. Switching windows can take 20-30 seconds sometimes. I've already disabled background images, eye candy, set Windows for application performance, etc.. But it's still much worse than running just a single desktop. Unfortunately, it's a feature that I can't be too effective without, so I need to keep the multiple desktops.
Good points, but I disagree on a couple areas. Marketing speak is almost never about explaining something to non-techies, but putting a new face on existing technology and making it sound groundbreaking. The problem is that many of the solutions we need to keep the business going today are the same solutions we needed yesterday. In many cases the old technology works just fine. If CEOs and CTOs realized this (and don't want to tread down the annual licensing trap) then it's clear that tech companies need to somehow repackage the old solutions. Instead of "protocol" we started using "message queue". When that became passe, it became "integration service". Sometimes similar problems get solved in similar ways. We'd have EDI then B2B. Yes, they're difference in implementation and philosophical ways (heh) but do largely the same thing.
On a side note, there are many errors made when newspapers, magazines, etc. estimate numbers. Sometimes they will round values before presenting the final number, causing a huge difference. Or they will give some value like $6,021.50 when some of the values have only two or three significant digits. Or they'll make some hideous stats error such as adding two means together and not weighting the scores appropriately. An excellent book that discusses this is John Allen Paulos' "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper."
Science fiction always gets a bad rap in a lot of literary criticism. Part of the reason is that some of the ideas are so bare, so obvious. But I think this is what makes it so powerful. Blade Runner (at least to me) has always been about the unfairness of life; specifically, it's too damn short. It's very clear that the replicants are lots more human than the real ones. They burn brighter, bleed more, feel pain more. They're the Ubermensch, the hero, the essential human. The "humans" are passionless and evil. There's this idea that their short lifespan is a consequence of their superiority. If this was the reason then it's maybe not too tragic. However, it isn't a consequence of nature that dooms them; rather, it's an arbitrary decision by their creators that their lifespans would be shorted. This idea kicks me.
The other reason I enjoy Blade Runner is that science is not the scapegoat. Almost every other movie I've seen has made scientists and intellectuals (not that I count myself as either) as "evil". Technology running rampant destroying the earth is a common theme (Terminator, various post-Apocalyptic movies, "mad scientist" blandness). Even movies that celebrate the triumph of the intellect eventually bow down to superstition (the scene of an Aborigine praying to unseen gods to help a lunar module land safely sticks in my mind).
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I had similar problems with some retailers.
From: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8138630.htm
After being extremely diligent in filling out the paperwork and making sure that I adhered to all the requirements of the offer, my rebate was still denied by Maxtor (a digital storage manufacturer) because the paperwork ''wasn't received in time.'' If true, it would have meant that it took the postal service more than two weeks to move a letter about 20 miles from my home to the Miami rebate center. It was only after contacting the Better Business Bureau that was I able to get my request honored.
After doing an informal poll of some of my co-workers and associates, many of whom work with information technology, I was surprised to learn that almost all of them had had rebate requests denied. Unfortunately, many didn't send their requests via certified mail because the rebate amounts, often $5 to $25, didn't seem to warrant it.
After my experiences, I would suggest a few steps:
Read the rebate requests thoroughly. Many times, they require the actual register receipt and not a copy. Some will require that the rebate item is circled on the receipt even if it's the only item listed.
Keep physical and digital copies of your paperwork and receipts, including the envelope used to send the forms. This makes it easier to forward copies to the state consumer affairs department, Attorney General and the Better Business Bureau.
Submit the paperwork immediately. Retailers count on customers to lose receipts or forget to request the rebate.
Use certified mail to prevent the convenient excuse of ''late mail.''
If you're denied your rebate after complying with the offer, make sure to send your information to your state Attorney General's office. It can't take up your case directly, but it can help establish a pattern of activity.
Man, it's worse than that. I went to a Linux User Group meeting once, and there were people just *HANDING OUT* copies of Linux.
An app like that is long overdue in rpm land but I'm afraid it's probably too late. If the tool isn't used by a large number of people then I wouldn't want any of my servers to depend on it. Nice thing about debian isn't just that the apt tool has been doing this for many years, it's that so many people depend on it on a daily basis that the bugs in the dependencies between packages are quickly worked out.
Then use apt with RPM as the back-end.
Now I've been using Debian for years. An single installation of Debian ran for years, updated regularly without a hitch, until the box finally gave out. The problem is that people are comparing apt with RPM when they should be comparing it against dpkg. Compare apt against yum, urpmi, yast2 or whichever front-end system you choose. And I'd argue that just as many people use yum, urpmi and yast2 as use apt based solely on the frequent distribution-of-choice polls.
RPM is the back-end package tool. All the modern RPM based distros use front-end tools such as yum, urpmi, yast2, and even the only standby of apt. So on a box without any X libraries installed I could install an X-based game with:
yum -y install kpat
Any distro with sane, centrally-managed package management will be equally easy. By this, I mean apt or portage or even the *BSDs. I wouln't undertake this with an RPM distro, unless I had plenty of support.
Interesting. I've been using package managers for years on everything from SunOS to SCO to dozens of Linux flavors. RPM is actually a pretty good package management system, better in most cases than package managers for the big systems. It is somewhat lacking in roll-back ability, something that Solaris and AIX manage, but there's nothing in the RPM architecture preventing it from being added fully (and by fully, I mean complete the archival options that already exist). Last I checked none of the other systems were any easier. I'm curious as to what about RPM you find so difficult?
This is similar (and similarly flawed) to the following riddle:
Ford Prefect, the space alien, arrived on Earth one day. Intrigued by the blandness of Earth, he wanted to document the sum total of mankinds knowledge for the amusement of his friends back home. The only problem was that, though ridiculously tiny by galactic standards, humans had created enough bad fiction that the databanks on Ford Prefect's ship would be unable to carry it back. Ford thought for a moment, then found a solution: He would get a gold rod. The ratio of its length to width would generate a fractional number, in much the same way that 355/113 would give digits of Pi. When converted to decimal he could store all of mankind's knowledge.
So what's wrong with this idea?
Answer: Unless you had infinitely precise material, which is impossible, you'd never have the "resolution" to get the proper ratios.
I've wondered exactly the same thing. I don't know if it's possible to build an identical test satellite, but for a project of this duration, you'd think that some sort of full run-through testing would be done. Now it may be cost prohibitive to test the physical pieces (i.e., does a sensor deploy at 100mph when upside down, etc.), but the inputs to software can be simulated easily. Maybe this is why we pin our hopes on Spaceship One projects rather than NASA.
Reminds me of this story, probably apocryphal, that said that Daniel Webster of "Webster's Dictionary" once had his life's work destroyed by an angry wife. Immediately after she'd burned (??) his work in the fireplace, he took out a pen, walked to his desk, then started again from the beginning.
I used to tutor mathematics in S. Florida (algebra, calculus, statistics). Florida ranks near the bottom on many surveys so my experiences might not be too representative of the country. One point in the article that's particularly true is that students learn by rote.
For example, many of my calc students could do simple integrations and derivatives. They knew, by rote, how to differentiate sin(x)dx or x^2 but didn't know what exactly it meant. They knew that the first derivative of a position function could give a number, and they could solve some physics problems using this information, but couldn't explain what exactly was happening. These were calc students. Worse were the algebra students who could solve quadratic equations or plot but couldn't see how the function related to the graph. Even worse were the statistics students who just knew how to plug in numbers into a formula but had no clue what the statistics meant.
I don't know if there's an easy solution. Throw money at it? Maybe. If kids had laptops with MuPAD or Octave or Mathematica, maybe some would better visualize what's happening. Maybe they need to take away all the computers and have the students do calculations repeatedly until they see patterns and realize what's happening.
I'd recommend emphasis on methods like dimensional analysis. Forget about the numbers for a moment and try to determine what sort of units you should get back. Not saying forget about arithmetic, but stress the concepts more than the manipulations.
Heh. I was one of about a dozen left when I missed out on 'saran'. South Florida Spelling Bee, 1982. What year were you?
I've dreamed of standing on the moon, looking at the Earthrise. I've wished to stand inside a dome on the bottom of the ocean, watching sharks swim above. I've longed for a time machine so that I could watch dinosaurs; then finished with that, I'd journey as close to the Big Bang as I could. I want to chat with an Artificial Intelligence before I die. I want to stand in a world powered by the sun or the wind or clean fusion. In 2470, I want to walk within the ruins of a 20th century city, near the aforementioned solar powered, glittering metropolis, and tell the people around me about Times Square Stores and Broadway. I want a flying car, the sporty model, that I can fly along the New Miami skyline. Tired of that, I want a submarine to visit old Miami; zipping along South Ocean watching the sharks swim by.
Most gun ranges won't let you put them out as targets, unfortunately. But I've noticed most don't shatter all that much and when hit; the metal film between the clear plastic pulls away, but mostly you get a clean hole with some cracks. This is with a .223 at 150yds, .270 at 150yds, and .22s and various distances.
Lord, $50 per hour is a bargain. I'm in S.Florida and routinely charge $120-$180/hr for Linux consulting services. For security consulting I double this amount. Don't sell yourself too short. The market is not the greatest, but at $50 you're not doing yourself or anyone else in the industry a favor.
Heh, there's another obvious place to attach these devices... Just as sensitive, not needed for eating. Having the candy striper or nurse attach the device would be fun (or the doctor, if that's your thing). The only problem will be the loud gasps of excitement from the wearers when some visual stimulus appears (say a big red truck or a rainbow). You'll appear sensitive because you'll with excitement when a baby screams kick off the sensors...
You're right in that many of the tools in Solaris don't work quite as expected. I'm not sure if it's because Sun wanted to keep bug-for-bug compatibility with older versions, or just didn't see the need to update working utilitues, but it's aggravating (and potentially dangerous to data) if the tools don't work consistently across OSes.
I've been a longtime SunOS/Solaris user. Recently I've been breaking AIX machines. One thing I've noticed recently is that Sun, IBM, and HP are starting to put GNU tools on their distributions. It's now common practice for a Linux compatibility layer or just ports of the regular GNU tools (including window managers, package managers, shells, etc..). This means that you can get the benefits of your underlying OS *and* have a unified and consistent interface. Though Linux may not be an *official* Unix, it is fast becoming the reference Unix.
Wow, amazing that this got modded up. Since the took office, George Bush has opposed any mimimum wage increases across the board. Now whether a minimum wage increase is a good thing or not is not what I'm debating, but to imply that he's for increasing overtime pay is just outright false.
We have one in S. Florida called the MetroRail. It's very good for eliminating those pesky budget surpluses. Plus, many of the benches make convenient public urinals.
It is very interesting listening to children make language mistakes. "Me want food" and "On the TV" was common with my 2.5 year old daughter. You could argue that the daughter has it correct and adults are making the errors. Maybe there's no unified language, but the children seem to grasp many of the rules first and *then* build a list of exceptions.
I've been using a Linux desktop as a primary (and secondary and tertiary) desktop for years. Recently I've had to (because of corporate policy) use a Windows XP desktop. Now I certainly have a bias against Windows -- years of grief with NT4 and earlier 2K revs have caused this -- but I wanted to approach XP with an open mind.
The first couple weeks were pretty horrible. Moving between Lotus Notes, Excel and IE would sometimes take two minutes as the apps swapped. Every once in a while the machine would become completely unresponsive as the hard drive light blinked. OK, no problem. I started removing all the junk put there by default in the corporate image. Zapped the client acces software, removed various alerts, set the virus scanner to a schedule rather than looking for idle time. Things got a little better.
Started customizing the machine: multiple desktop utility from the PowerTools kit, Firefox for tabbed browsing, Putty for SSH access, gvim set as the default editor, enabled the second monitor, added command line completion in cmd.exe, etc.. Added memory. Getting better still.
Then I started noticing the glitches. Excel and Citrix would act crazy with the multiple desktops. Interesting things like having dialog boxes pop up behind app windows so that you couldn't move the app (or even minimize it) to dismiss the dialog. Apps would pop up windows in seemingly random locations on either monitor or even different desktops. Putting the machine to sleep would randomly cause the keyboard to start acting crazy. Simple things like burning a CD while listening to an MP3 would fail. Then there were the crashes. Explorer dies once a day. The apps generally remain, but it's annoying as hell. Shutting down randomly results in a blue screen. Not *the* Blue Screen, but a completely blank blue screen that sits there until I force the machine to power down.
Now I know laptops aren't exactly what you'd want to keep a 5-nine application on, but it's ridiculous. The installation feels, I dunno, *fragile*. The closest thing I can remember was a problem with the Atari ST. Because of some weird glitch in the mouse driver routines, moving the mouse around during bootup could cause a hang and IIRC, a corrupted disk. I.e., experimenting with the machine is dangerous. And this is a bad thing.
Anyhoo, I've not given up and I certainly think that XP is getting to be very reliable. There are lots of nice features, not just eye candy gimmicry, but legitimate ease-of-use stuff that is lacking in several Linux desktops.
Man, I've been a computer geek all my life. Recently I've started playing around with cars (got a couple non-turbo 3000GTs and a VR-4 coming next week). It's a tremendous amount of fun... As with the computer groups, there are a bunch of newbie folks and those in it just for the image... but for every ten of those there seems to be one or two knowledgeable folks.
I'm the first to admit that I know very little about modern cars. Just as with computers, however, there are things that seem to make sense but can be bad for your cars. I'm still in the fix it stage -- trying to put a car back to complete stock condition. It's almost like restoring an old Atari ST or Amiga to full functionality. E.g., the other day it took me a couple hours to change the front fog lights. The bolts had frozen up and grime had covered one of the screw holes so it wasn't immediately obvious how to remove them. After lots of cleaning I got them off, changed the bulbs, and got the housings repainted. The second time around it was a fifteen minute job. So, like learning some weird bash shell construct or new awk script, it was satisfying.
I'm running the desktop feature on my Thinkpad T41 with the LCD and an external monitor. It works, mostly. Weird things are broken though:
If I switch desktops while Excel is open, it disables the Excel menus. I need to minimize excel, switch to another screen, switch back, then maximize Excel to get my menus back.
Citrix clients automatically fullscreen themselves when switching desktops. Seems to be just on my machine though.
Alerts pop up in seemingly random desktops. If you switch *just* as the alert is being popped up you can have really interesting things like having the app window hiding the alert so that you can't dismiss the alert to interact with the app window. In this case it's either try to switch real fast and press Enter as soon as the dialog is in focus and before the application window gets drawn or kill them with the task manager. This has happened a few times with Putty SSH client.
The multiple desktops also seem to impose a huge load on the machine. Switching windows can take 20-30 seconds sometimes. I've already disabled background images, eye candy, set Windows for application performance, etc.. But it's still much worse than running just a single desktop. Unfortunately, it's a feature that I can't be too effective without, so I need to keep the multiple desktops.
Good points, but I disagree on a couple areas. Marketing speak is almost never about explaining something to non-techies, but putting a new face on existing technology and making it sound groundbreaking. The problem is that many of the solutions we need to keep the business going today are the same solutions we needed yesterday. In many cases the old technology works just fine. If CEOs and CTOs realized this (and don't want to tread down the annual licensing trap) then it's clear that tech companies need to somehow repackage the old solutions. Instead of "protocol" we started using "message queue". When that became passe, it became "integration service". Sometimes similar problems get solved in similar ways. We'd have EDI then B2B. Yes, they're difference in implementation and philosophical ways (heh) but do largely the same thing.
On a side note, there are many errors made when newspapers, magazines, etc. estimate numbers. Sometimes they will round values before presenting the final number, causing a huge difference. Or they will give some value like $6,021.50 when some of the values have only two or three significant digits. Or they'll make some hideous stats error such as adding two means together and not weighting the scores appropriately. An excellent book that discusses this is John Allen Paulos' "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper."
Science fiction always gets a bad rap in a lot of literary criticism. Part of the reason is that some of the ideas are so bare, so obvious. But I think this is what makes it so powerful. Blade Runner (at least to me) has always been about the unfairness of life; specifically, it's too damn short. It's very clear that the replicants are lots more human than the real ones. They burn brighter, bleed more, feel pain more. They're the Ubermensch, the hero, the essential human. The "humans" are passionless and evil. There's this idea that their short lifespan is a consequence of their superiority. If this was the reason then it's maybe not too tragic. However, it isn't a consequence of nature that dooms them; rather, it's an arbitrary decision by their creators that their lifespans would be shorted. This idea kicks me.
The other reason I enjoy Blade Runner is that science is not the scapegoat. Almost every other movie I've seen has made scientists and intellectuals (not that I count myself as either) as "evil". Technology running rampant destroying the earth is a common theme (Terminator, various post-Apocalyptic movies, "mad scientist" blandness). Even movies that celebrate the triumph of the intellect eventually bow down to superstition (the scene of an Aborigine praying to unseen gods to help a lunar module land safely sticks in my mind).
So yeah, I'm glad that Blade Runner is up there.