Agreed. My current T42p has survived 3 cups of liquid, several drops, countless accidental power cord yankings, and a car accident that damaged its carrying case pretty thoroughly. Still works wonderfully.
And before that, my family has owned a long line of Thinkpads, all of which still worked up until the butterfly was accidentally stored in the attic one summer with the battery in several years ago. I used it for mobile note-taking and light word processing up through 2003 or 2004.
With the new magnesium roll-cages, they should be nearly invincible when the HD is locked (and the motion-sensing auto-lock seems to work quite well).
Destructive scan-and-DL (which is probably the only way, if it's possible at all) conveniently skirts some of these questions -- at no point are there two copies of any part of 'you', so it's really just a rather drastic change of form. A brain-replacement surgery, which if possible could reasonably be considered not too different from a heart transplant / artificial replacement. Critical organ, replaced with something else, and you keep on living afterward.
Of course, this presumes a definition of "it works" that includes continuing 'normal' 'brain' function as a digital organism, which is probably impossible to evaluate, so really the question is just being dodged . . . but that's an interesting angle on who you are that differs from the copy question - a philosophy that simply says you are the sum of your experiences makes copies different people but a digitized person continuous.
[To challenge that philosophy: What happens if you copy yourself digitally, have both copies live separately for a year, then unify the memories back into one digital being? Kind of like the implanted memories question, except you have two temporally concurrent sets of valid actual experiences, and during that time, the copies were diverging personality-wise. For that matter, would such a concept even work? Can one really internalize memories that are not one's own without altering them in some significant way? Given a digital description, could one reasonably merge two personalities, and if so is the result a wholly new person?]
Interestingly put . . . the easy, permanent, and repeatable format transfer issue probably is a real pain for them, but I don't think this has anything to do with the *decline* in CD sales. Still, it must be contributing to their thrashing and foaming at the mouth (see, for example, recent 'misspeaking': http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/05/2158242 ) . . .
*sigh* He's not pretending Blu-Ray doesn't or will not exist, he's simply trying to get across that even if it becomes the only option, he *will not buy Blu-Ray*, which means that he can either buy HD-DVD and risk being stuck with a relatively limited library that isn't expanding (if it does die completely as a format), or buy nothing at all. Given that he will not in any circumstances buy Blu-Ray, he isn't wasting money buying HD-DVD because it at least gives him access to that current library, which he wants. His reasons for disliking Blu-Ray are, in this case, irrelevant.
His objection (if I'm reading him correctly) is similar to that of people who refuse to download any content that is shackled with DRM, for any price. For those people (hypothetically, by way of explanation, this situation probably doesn't exist), if a song is offered in 96kpbs mp3 without DRM for $2 and 128kbps with DRM for $1, they aren't 'wasting their money' if they buy the lower-quality, more-expensive one because they object so much to the format of the latter that they refuse to buy it under any circumstances. They are left with the choice of the former or nothing.
I'm pretty darned sure that no IRB in the world would approve a study where you supplied cocaine to participants for non-medical reasons.
However, given the small sample size, they may have managed it with just a good monetary reward and the "there's a chance" language you used . . . after all, risk taking is a defining component of the hard-drug-user profile. So, fair point, I guess.
Working in tech support as a college student, I came to really hate Toshibas . . . it was hideously difficult to find drivers, etc for them. Of course, that's more relevant to user maintenance than to warranty support, but it is worth noting, especially here. Barring further education on this topic, I'd personally steer well clear of Toshiba (although not so much as the overpriced, user-service-proof Vaio line . . . *shudder*).
HP I also came to dislike, although mainly from their consumer printer line - not only have most consumer HPs I've worked with/on been dreadful ink hogs, but also they have a tendency to break for extremely stupid reasons, including small, easily broken levers and such in feed and output trays that appear to serve no function other than acting as kill-switches, which (fortunately) can usually be bypassed when they break by simply taping them into 'active' position without any loss of function. Grr.
The one argument I've heard in favor of Inspiron craptops is "Sure, it's likely to break and be unsupported, but I can just buy another one and still have spent about as much as the Thinkpad would have cost for the one." I don't like that argument myself, but I care more about my computer than most who make it. On the other hand, I have actually had no trouble getting warranty service for my old Dells . . . it's just that the last few times, I've had to send back multiple bad replacement parts before getting something that worked. I always try to buy 'pricing sweet spot' computers, not low end - and I'd go with something specifically designed as a high-quality low-power device (Eee / OLPC) over a cheapo Dell if I needed such a device.
So . . . he tested a high-killing vaccine on 10 users who intended to continue using it? That would require lying to the participants, or obtaining really effing compromised consent via them being stupid and possibly high.
"had no plans" here is a bit of semantic trickiness, I suspect: They had not made plans to stop, but when told that this vaccine could help them, they decided to do so - no other reason to take the vaccine.
Also, "reported . . . a 70% drop in dependence" . . . uh, what does that even mean? There is not a precise measurement happening here.
Observe the current quote at the bottom of the page:
"Real Men don't make backups. They upload it via ftp and let the world mirror it. -- Linus Torvalds"
Unfortunately, this doesn't work for generators, nor does it for reactors.
Er, that does *not* make it easier. Because you do get economies of scale, and in particular, the touchyness of high-precision machinery like this is going to mean the first few wafers through are likely to be useful primarily for fixing calibrations. Now, with some of the nice designs that were (to my knowledge) pioneered by TI around 1993, there are good systems for making small-batch chip facilities that can be switched to new designs rapidly . . . however, the initial setup of the equipment to enable this is still decidedly uncheap. Really, you want to be producing a stream of chips to justify your setup investment, not a small one-off batch.
Now, if you simply buy an old one, that's pretty cheap (relatively speaking) - Intel etc have more of these than they know what to do with, because they keep pushing the technology and obsoleting their relatively recent investments. However, this won't help you build any of these new designs, all of which are 65nm process.
Heh, not really. I don't expect quality from RedHat, but I figure they *might* be corporate enough to lean on this software company if it starts making their product look bad. Silver lining and all that.:-)
On providing assistance, that might have been a stretch . . . but it does sound like this hospital software vendor is several tiers below them, so it's *possible*?
It probably does have a great deal to do with demeanor . . . when I was visiting MIT as a high-schooler (coming to Boston for the first time from a medium-sized town in the south), a bus driver pulled over and asked me for directions. And while going to college, I seemed to get an abnormal number of requests for direction [at which I failed miserably for cars . . . Cambridge == solid one-way wrong-way streets. "So just turn here, oh nevermind . . . go down to the next . . . wait, that too . . . uh, go forward until you can turn left, then if you can turn left again at the next street, double back to one street up from here. If not, just keep spiraling inward?"].
Two possibilities: in the process of porting, they have to rewrite all of the bits that call grody Windows bits, such as IE, and therefore many problem bits get fixed . . . or they just write bad code all over again, Linux gets the blame, and hospitals revert at great cost.
RedHat may help though - they might insist on some level of quality / provide some assistance in the creation of software that does not suck quite so much. They have a reputation to maintain, as well as sufficient company-ness to explain to suits that when things go wrong, it is *not* their fault. So, I'll be optimistic about this.
See the sibling post below parent . . . this figure is way low for modern processors. There's a reason that there aren't many upstart processor manufacturers. The fabs are expensive and require significant expertise to work out all the fiddly problems that tend to crop up when dealing with a 65 nm process.
But he might have been providing some of the above-mentioned good customer service! If all the wandering geeks left, people would have to turn to employees for help!
Note that it was Best Buy's *lawyers*, but he then talked to Best Buy Corporate Public Relations Group, and they rapidly figured this one out - he got a quick retraction and apology.
Nope, because if you go a level deeper past the article, you find that Best Buy Apologized for their shoot-from-the-hip legal team. As that blogger stated, they did the right thing there - legal departments screw up, but a lot of damage control can be done by quickly and appropriately reigning them in, taking responsibility, and apologizing.
However, you don't need the shirt to pull that off . . . I get asked if I'm a manager (or people assume that and launch straight into asking a store question) at virtually every large store in which I shop. I have on several occasions now had *employees* assume I was a manager. It's kinda amusing when the aisle you're in turns into a helpdesk . . . (I do tell people "actually, no, I don't work here" but then do my best to answer their question, as I often can)
Re: first statement: yes, sorry, see response to original.
Re: your last statement: I doubt it. It would be a good idea, yes . . . but consumers are easy prey for credit debt precisely because they like the illusion of free money and the ability to spend what they don't have. As you said, "The only reason these companies thrive is because people suck at finances." - A debit-based system would require them to be able to pay immediately for everything, which would in the long run save them tons of money, but they simply don't get that. They'd still want the credit card, and if necessary the credit card companies would throw out a few more carrots to convince users to continue to demand credit card acceptance, passing alon any costs to the merchants if possible.
Personally, I like my credit card 'cause it gives me a global discount and up to a month's float on an interest-free loan, because I pay it off in full consistently. (So they offer me fun incentives like "0% interest for a month!!" to help me build bad habits. Nice try.) Of course, they'll probably eventually figure out a way to trip me up if I don't do it myself.
Sorry, I mis-spoke. Clearly, as you say, it's not a credit card co. I'm just used to my debit and credit cards being handled by closely related companies (if I've read the fine print correctly), and so I lump them mentally and occasionally interchange them when it's really inappropriate. What I was intending by using the term "credit companies" was to include not just banks but any other (debit, but that got lost in the mental shuffle) card issuing financial services, and that's just what came out without further thinking. I did, in fact, RTFA.
However, once corrected for the [blatantly wrong, yes] terminology, I believe that my point stands - $100 mil is certainly a drop in the bucket for banks, etc. (As evidenced by the fact that this *did* go on for 2 years, as so many have pointed out that it would not have for credit.)
Well, it is kinda tiny in credit-company terms . . . $100 mil in a year is a drop in the bucket. Size probably kept it off the priority list, even if the rate did blip their radar. Now with a two year record, it's a really solid case to bring, creating a nice precedent-hammer to expedite further such cases and scare similar operators out of the business.
In general, I think the answer is that you don't . . . but the banks and the Feds do, and you can bet they keep records and track trends. Nearly 35% unauthorized charges implies that perhaps this processor is specifically courting fraudulent businesses, and is at the least not doing whatever vetting and verifying it's supposed to be.
Slashdot Mirror
Um . . . look again. It's subtle on purpose. . . . And even though I love the joke, it does make me twitch whenever I see it.
If you're running Linux, you shouldn't have to run a VM just to tell a piece of software the MAC addy it wants to hear . . .
Agreed. My current T42p has survived 3 cups of liquid, several drops, countless accidental power cord yankings, and a car accident that damaged its carrying case pretty thoroughly. Still works wonderfully.
And before that, my family has owned a long line of Thinkpads, all of which still worked up until the butterfly was accidentally stored in the attic one summer with the battery in several years ago. I used it for mobile note-taking and light word processing up through 2003 or 2004.
With the new magnesium roll-cages, they should be nearly invincible when the HD is locked (and the motion-sensing auto-lock seems to work quite well).
Destructive scan-and-DL (which is probably the only way, if it's possible at all) conveniently skirts some of these questions -- at no point are there two copies of any part of 'you', so it's really just a rather drastic change of form. A brain-replacement surgery, which if possible could reasonably be considered not too different from a heart transplant / artificial replacement. Critical organ, replaced with something else, and you keep on living afterward.
Of course, this presumes a definition of "it works" that includes continuing 'normal' 'brain' function as a digital organism, which is probably impossible to evaluate, so really the question is just being dodged . . . but that's an interesting angle on who you are that differs from the copy question - a philosophy that simply says you are the sum of your experiences makes copies different people but a digitized person continuous.
[To challenge that philosophy: What happens if you copy yourself digitally, have both copies live separately for a year, then unify the memories back into one digital being? Kind of like the implanted memories question, except you have two temporally concurrent sets of valid actual experiences, and during that time, the copies were diverging personality-wise. For that matter, would such a concept even work? Can one really internalize memories that are not one's own without altering them in some significant way? Given a digital description, could one reasonably merge two personalities, and if so is the result a wholly new person?]
Interestingly put . . . the easy, permanent, and repeatable format transfer issue probably is a real pain for them, but I don't think this has anything to do with the *decline* in CD sales. Still, it must be contributing to their thrashing and foaming at the mouth (see, for example, recent 'misspeaking': http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/05/2158242 ) . . .
*sigh* He's not pretending Blu-Ray doesn't or will not exist, he's simply trying to get across that even if it becomes the only option, he *will not buy Blu-Ray*, which means that he can either buy HD-DVD and risk being stuck with a relatively limited library that isn't expanding (if it does die completely as a format), or buy nothing at all. Given that he will not in any circumstances buy Blu-Ray, he isn't wasting money buying HD-DVD because it at least gives him access to that current library, which he wants. His reasons for disliking Blu-Ray are, in this case, irrelevant.
His objection (if I'm reading him correctly) is similar to that of people who refuse to download any content that is shackled with DRM, for any price. For those people (hypothetically, by way of explanation, this situation probably doesn't exist), if a song is offered in 96kpbs mp3 without DRM for $2 and 128kbps with DRM for $1, they aren't 'wasting their money' if they buy the lower-quality, more-expensive one because they object so much to the format of the latter that they refuse to buy it under any circumstances. They are left with the choice of the former or nothing.
I'm pretty darned sure that no IRB in the world would approve a study where you supplied cocaine to participants for non-medical reasons.
However, given the small sample size, they may have managed it with just a good monetary reward and the "there's a chance" language you used . . . after all, risk taking is a defining component of the hard-drug-user profile. So, fair point, I guess.
Working in tech support as a college student, I came to really hate Toshibas . . . it was hideously difficult to find drivers, etc for them. Of course, that's more relevant to user maintenance than to warranty support, but it is worth noting, especially here. Barring further education on this topic, I'd personally steer well clear of Toshiba (although not so much as the overpriced, user-service-proof Vaio line . . . *shudder*).
HP I also came to dislike, although mainly from their consumer printer line - not only have most consumer HPs I've worked with/on been dreadful ink hogs, but also they have a tendency to break for extremely stupid reasons, including small, easily broken levers and such in feed and output trays that appear to serve no function other than acting as kill-switches, which (fortunately) can usually be bypassed when they break by simply taping them into 'active' position without any loss of function. Grr.
The one argument I've heard in favor of Inspiron craptops is "Sure, it's likely to break and be unsupported, but I can just buy another one and still have spent about as much as the Thinkpad would have cost for the one." I don't like that argument myself, but I care more about my computer than most who make it. On the other hand, I have actually had no trouble getting warranty service for my old Dells . . . it's just that the last few times, I've had to send back multiple bad replacement parts before getting something that worked. I always try to buy 'pricing sweet spot' computers, not low end - and I'd go with something specifically designed as a high-quality low-power device (Eee / OLPC) over a cheapo Dell if I needed such a device.
So . . . he tested a high-killing vaccine on 10 users who intended to continue using it? That would require lying to the participants, or obtaining really effing compromised consent via them being stupid and possibly high.
"had no plans" here is a bit of semantic trickiness, I suspect: They had not made plans to stop, but when told that this vaccine could help them, they decided to do so - no other reason to take the vaccine.
Also, "reported . . . a 70% drop in dependence" . . . uh, what does that even mean? There is not a precise measurement happening here.
I am fairly certain that no children would result, so we should be safe on that angle at least.
Observe the current quote at the bottom of the page:
"Real Men don't make backups. They upload it via ftp and let the world mirror it. -- Linus Torvalds"
Unfortunately, this doesn't work for generators, nor does it for reactors.
Er, that does *not* make it easier. Because you do get economies of scale, and in particular, the touchyness of high-precision machinery like this is going to mean the first few wafers through are likely to be useful primarily for fixing calibrations. Now, with some of the nice designs that were (to my knowledge) pioneered by TI around 1993, there are good systems for making small-batch chip facilities that can be switched to new designs rapidly . . . however, the initial setup of the equipment to enable this is still decidedly uncheap. Really, you want to be producing a stream of chips to justify your setup investment, not a small one-off batch.
Now, if you simply buy an old one, that's pretty cheap (relatively speaking) - Intel etc have more of these than they know what to do with, because they keep pushing the technology and obsoleting their relatively recent investments. However, this won't help you build any of these new designs, all of which are 65nm process.
Heh, not really. I don't expect quality from RedHat, but I figure they *might* be corporate enough to lean on this software company if it starts making their product look bad. Silver lining and all that. :-)
On providing assistance, that might have been a stretch . . . but it does sound like this hospital software vendor is several tiers below them, so it's *possible*?
It probably does have a great deal to do with demeanor . . . when I was visiting MIT as a high-schooler (coming to Boston for the first time from a medium-sized town in the south), a bus driver pulled over and asked me for directions. And while going to college, I seemed to get an abnormal number of requests for direction [at which I failed miserably for cars . . . Cambridge == solid one-way wrong-way streets. "So just turn here, oh nevermind . . . go down to the next . . . wait, that too . . . uh, go forward until you can turn left, then if you can turn left again at the next street, double back to one street up from here. If not, just keep spiraling inward?"].
Two possibilities: in the process of porting, they have to rewrite all of the bits that call grody Windows bits, such as IE, and therefore many problem bits get fixed . . . or they just write bad code all over again, Linux gets the blame, and hospitals revert at great cost.
RedHat may help though - they might insist on some level of quality / provide some assistance in the creation of software that does not suck quite so much. They have a reputation to maintain, as well as sufficient company-ness to explain to suits that when things go wrong, it is *not* their fault. So, I'll be optimistic about this.
Is it just me or is anyone else having difficulty putting those three clothing items into a coherent picture?
See the sibling post below parent . . . this figure is way low for modern processors. There's a reason that there aren't many upstart processor manufacturers. The fabs are expensive and require significant expertise to work out all the fiddly problems that tend to crop up when dealing with a 65 nm process.
Take, for example, the recent $2.5 Billion Intel plant in China.
But he might have been providing some of the above-mentioned good customer service! If all the wandering geeks left, people would have to turn to employees for help!
Note that it was Best Buy's *lawyers*, but he then talked to Best Buy Corporate Public Relations Group, and they rapidly figured this one out - he got a quick retraction and apology.
Nope, because if you go a level deeper past the article, you find that Best Buy Apologized for their shoot-from-the-hip legal team. As that blogger stated, they did the right thing there - legal departments screw up, but a lot of damage control can be done by quickly and appropriately reigning them in, taking responsibility, and apologizing.
Heh. So true.
However, you don't need the shirt to pull that off . . . I get asked if I'm a manager (or people assume that and launch straight into asking a store question) at virtually every large store in which I shop. I have on several occasions now had *employees* assume I was a manager. It's kinda amusing when the aisle you're in turns into a helpdesk . . . (I do tell people "actually, no, I don't work here" but then do my best to answer their question, as I often can)
Re: first statement: yes, sorry, see response to original.
Re: your last statement: I doubt it. It would be a good idea, yes . . . but consumers are easy prey for credit debt precisely because they like the illusion of free money and the ability to spend what they don't have. As you said, "The only reason these companies thrive is because people suck at finances." - A debit-based system would require them to be able to pay immediately for everything, which would in the long run save them tons of money, but they simply don't get that. They'd still want the credit card, and if necessary the credit card companies would throw out a few more carrots to convince users to continue to demand credit card acceptance, passing alon any costs to the merchants if possible.
Personally, I like my credit card 'cause it gives me a global discount and up to a month's float on an interest-free loan, because I pay it off in full consistently. (So they offer me fun incentives like "0% interest for a month!!" to help me build bad habits. Nice try.) Of course, they'll probably eventually figure out a way to trip me up if I don't do it myself.
Sorry, I mis-spoke. Clearly, as you say, it's not a credit card co. I'm just used to my debit and credit cards being handled by closely related companies (if I've read the fine print correctly), and so I lump them mentally and occasionally interchange them when it's really inappropriate. What I was intending by using the term "credit companies" was to include not just banks but any other (debit, but that got lost in the mental shuffle) card issuing financial services, and that's just what came out without further thinking. I did, in fact, RTFA.
However, once corrected for the [blatantly wrong, yes] terminology, I believe that my point stands - $100 mil is certainly a drop in the bucket for banks, etc. (As evidenced by the fact that this *did* go on for 2 years, as so many have pointed out that it would not have for credit.)
Well, it is kinda tiny in credit-company terms . . . $100 mil in a year is a drop in the bucket. Size probably kept it off the priority list, even if the rate did blip their radar. Now with a two year record, it's a really solid case to bring, creating a nice precedent-hammer to expedite further such cases and scare similar operators out of the business.
In general, I think the answer is that you don't . . . but the banks and the Feds do, and you can bet they keep records and track trends. Nearly 35% unauthorized charges implies that perhaps this processor is specifically courting fraudulent businesses, and is at the least not doing whatever vetting and verifying it's supposed to be.