1. It's not the drive that makes the worst noise in the latest gen PVRs, it's the fan. And if you're willing to void the warranty, you can swap that sucka out for something quieter.
2. 4200rpm 2.5" drives run both hotter (bad for PVRs - less tolerant to heat) and, well, slower, than desktop drives (both in terms of rotational speed and seeks). They're too slow and hot to handle the disk I/O.
Even a 7200rpm WD drive rated at around 45 decibels is quieter than the stock fan in a ReplayTV 5xxx series.
Re:Misunderstandings....
on
Complications
·
· Score: 2
As someone married to a doctor, and knowing many others, I agree with everything Aesculapius says. Simply:
1. I know of *no* doctor who is in medicine 'for the money', and I know quite a few doctors. If their intention was to join a profession for wealth, they'd have become lawyers (and even that is by no means guaranteed these days).
2. The average age you enter the workforce (your first year of Residency) is 28. You start at around $40,000 for three or more years (average residency is four years). The average debt burden for Residents is around $100,000. Residents in NY are so poor they qualify for food stamps. The average work-week is around 90 hours. Hospitals are resisting changes to reduce this to 80hrs/wk because it would cost them more money.
3. Once you're done with Residency, you can expect an average salary of around $150,000. Again, not a good situation to be in if you're 'in it for the money'. Which is why I have yet to meet a doctor who is.
4. Everyone is different. To compare doctors to mechanics is to demonstrate a lack of understanding of the field. Wacky shit happens *all the time* to people, for no discernable reason. Really. Sometimes it's good shit, sometimes it's bad shit, but the one constant of medicine is Urea Happens.
5. There are bad doctors. But there are also good doctors who make mistakes. If every doctor was ruined (financially, professionally) every time they made a mistake that hurt someone, there would be no doctors. I'm not over-stating. The good to society provided by one average doctor over the course of their career vastly outweighs the mistakes they commit - yet it only takes one mistake to remove that doctor from medicine. Is that fair?
Yes, the genuinely incompetent doctors should be removed from practice, but that's not what's happening at the moment - people sue over the slightest of things, any time they get an unfavorable outcome, regardless of fault, and often win. This hurts the good doctors and makes access to healthcare more expensive for all of us. OB/GYN is particularly vulnerable right now, with good doctors (industry-leading doctors) leaving the profession in droves just because they can't afford the malpractice insurance. That's not right.
Re:I know the author...
on
Complications
·
· Score: 2
You answered your own question - there are bad doctors, and there are good doctors who make mistakes through no fault of their own, and there are doctors who take risks to save lives. My point was that it's seldom a simple case of 'the doctor is to blame, punish the doctor!' In the case of wrongful amputation, the root cause is often over-work - would *you* let someone who hasn't slept for 24 hours fly a commercial airplane? The FAA won't, so why does the AMA let surgeons operate under such circumstances? They claim 'experience', but what the really mean is 'expedience'. Is the doctor to blame because his hospital forces him to work 36 hour shifts?
(by the way - industry best practices now call for the surgical attending to mark the limb to be removed prior to operation. It's sad that it took until the mid-90's for this practice to become widespread)
Malpractice suits and our litigous society make it really hard to seperate the unavoidable mistakes from incompetence or genuine wrongdoing. Juries are often swayed by 'professional' medical witnesses who make their living testifying in court against defendents.
Re:A surgical resident?
on
Complications
·
· Score: 2
I believe Atul is in his fifth year of his seven year surgical residency (I'll have to check on that, though - my memory is unclear). That's five years of floor surgery experience, cutting people open to fix things at one of the best hospitals in the nation.
Bear in mind that he works about 100 hour weeks (there's a big fuss going on now trying to get them down to 80 hours a week, averaged over four weeks). So really it's the equivilent of TEN years of 'regular' work experience. Plus he's surrounded by some of the best people in his chosen profession.
He is not an 'academic' by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly, I'm surprised he found the time to write for the New Yorker - I think he just doesn't sleep. But then, surgeons are weird.:-)
I know the author...
on
Complications
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
...he works at the same facility as my wife (who is also a doctor, but with a different specialty), and his book really does tell it like it is.
For those of you calling for doctors to be punished when they screw up : grow up, please. Life is never that simple. There are some bad doctors, but even the very best make mistakes, often for reasons beyond their control. If you read the book you'd understand a bit more about how seriously screwed up our medical system is.
Take the Residency system, for example. Simply, the Federal Government pays for a certain number of Residents (recently graduated MDs seeking speciality training in their chosen field) for each hospital. They are essentially 'free' labor for that hospital, so they are worked the hardest. The janitors earn more than they do, on an hourly basis (and even with the new hour restrictions coming in, $40K a year for an 80 hour week where you could kill people through tiredness isn't all that swell).
As the cheapest labor in the hospital, Residents spend a lot of time doing 'scut' work that should be done by porters or nurses, rather than doing what they're trained to do - you could do a lot of good if you spent that entire 80 hours a week being a doctor, but you'll be lucky if you spend half of that time actually using what you learned from med school. It's grossly inefficient, and since the alternative would cost hospitals money (they'd have to hire, and pay for, more porters or nurses) there's no incentive to change. That's just one of the many, many things that makes the delivery of medical services in this country so damn expensive and inefficient.
And that's not even mentioning the patients on State medical insurance who call out an *ambulance* in the middle of a *blizzard* because they have a freaking *sore throat*. My tax dollars at work. Gah.
In and out in three hours...did pretty good for a minor wounding over Xmas. Must have been quiet at the hospital.:)
Me, I spent Xmas by myself (well, the wife was upstairs sleeping off her nightshift at the hospital...), got a computer to set up RH8 on, a new ReplayTV to play with, and an all-day Thunderbirds marathon on TechTV. Not so bad.
I was one of the first years to do GCSE - we did trig at 12, too. But it got easier. I think the Business Studies GCSE was the first crack in the wall - that was like a free 'A' grade.
And now, well, let's just say ever since they found 'O' level questions on 'A' level papers, I refuse to believe that the record exam results are as a result of kids getting 'smarter' or working harder. Pre-degree qualifications in the UK are a joke now. But the US High School Diploma is funnier.
You're right in that there is not always a direct correlation between cost and performance.
However, in this instance the original poster is correct that currently available cheap / OSS / free-as-in-beer DB applications are not up to the task of running a big iron DB like this.
You pick the right tool for the right job. MySQL or PostGRE are great for many things, even large-size databases with simple structures. But for something like SWG they just don't cut it. You need to pay for a DB that gives you the right level of comfort, both in capabilities and support, and in this instance, MySQL et al aren't there yet.
For example (and this is just one small example of many possible), we run Oracle 9i on AIX for our line of business DB. This lets us scale up to the largest iron IBM sells without having to change anything. MySQL can't do that, so the fact that it is cheaper than Oracle and AIX is irrelevant.
The problem is that a person's natural reaction in a head-on crash (in the passenger seat) is to raise one or both arms to cover the face. The powerful airbag then goes off, resulting in greater injuries to the passenger in low-velocity accidents (where the airbag doesn't significantly ameliorate occupant throw-forward, because the seatbelt does all the work, and because in a low-velocity crash the passenger is more likely to have enough 'flinch' time to raise their arms).
It's not uncommon for front seat passengers who wear seatbelts to sustain serious (we're talking disabling) injuries to their arms or face in otherwise 'walk-away' accidents, purely because of the force of the US airbag. I personally know a local doctor who's wife lost the use of her left arm from just such an accident. It's not so bad in cars like the Subaru where the airbag fires 'up' first into the windshield (look for where the airbag is placed - if it's on the top of the dashboard rather than directly facing the passenger, it's an 'up' airbag).
In a high-velocity front impact, it's better to have an airbag, any airbag, to ameliorate throw-forward, even if there's an increased risk of head or arm trauma - the alternative is often worse. And, of course, it's even worse if you're not wearing a seatbelt.;-)
A friend of mine who's an EMT with 20 years experience says he's never cut a dead person out of a seatbelt. That's anecdotal, of course, and people can and do die in car crashes even with correct seatbelt use, but it's indicative of the huge difference wearing a seatbelt makes in crash survivability.
My wife is an emergency physician. She says you should *always* wear a seatbelt. I don't care if you're one, six or nine months pregnant - the medical literature is unanimous that the benefits outweigh the risks.
Of course, you have to wear it properly (i.e. shoulder-adjusted to the correct height, seated the correct distance from the wheel, etc), which is a problem if you're a 5ft mother-to-be in a Truck or big SUV, where they deliberately put the pedals 2" or so further back (because they're designed for big men, not soccer mums).
In MA, the seatbelt usage rate is around 60%. One of the worst in the nation, apparently, but the recent 'click it or ticket' campaign, even though it has no legal standing, has driven usage up by six points. Which is good.
On a related point, my wife was talking to the head of the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) just yesterday about airbags. US airbags are a big pet peeve of his, because if you're a passenger using a seatbelt in a US airbag-equipped car, you're *MORE LIKELY* to be injured than your European seatbelted compatriot, because of the more powerful airbag. Congress deliberately set them more powerful to give (statistically-unproven) better protection to folks not wearing belts. While it *has* been statistically proven that belts plus low-velocity airbags reduces injury. I'm not making this up : this is what Dr. Runge said, and I assume he knows what he's talking about.
In fact, I know a doc in one of our local hospitals who is pissed because his wife is permanently disabled, directly because of the US high-powered airbags.
So, to conclude : US airbags are more powerful to provide an *unproven* amount of protection to non-seatbelted occupants, at the *direct* expense of seatbelted occupants. Gah.
Boring, I know, but cheap, *and* I could self-righteously claim to be supporting "Buy Nothing" day, completely by accident, thereby gaining kudos with my radical friends.
I've done a few biggies ($100K), and they've all been with a $1 buyout at the end. Treat a lease like a 'hire-to-buy' deal, and you can't go wrong. Depending on your bargaining chops (and how much kit you're buying) you should be able to get a deal where you essentially pay the same amount over 3 years with a $1 buyout lease that you would had you just paid cash up front, give or take a few points. It's pretty easy to set up an Excel spreadsheet to work out exactly how much the lease will cost you, per unit, over the term, and this will let you compare different leasor rates.
I'm assuming you don't need to worry about the tax implications of leasing - that's the job of your accounting folks. Leases are good for cashflow and tax reasons, even if they end up costing you a little extra over the term.
Re:Was he a Dell Small Business sales rep?
on
Nosy Vendors?
·
· Score: 2
That sucks. We had a user place their laptop (A Latitude CPt) on the trunk of their car and forget about it until they drove off and heard the *thunk* of it falling off. They replaced it. Of course that was 2 years ago, so maybe they've gotten tighter now. Those CPt's in general were crap, and must have cost Dell $$$ in callouts to fix the defective motherboards. Still, I love my Inspiron 8100...
Heh. You should never go for a 'fair market value' buyout option at the end of term. Because it's never FMV. We always go for a $1 buy-out so the lease is, effectively, a 3-year hire-purchase.
You can get insurance to cover lost/stolen/destroyed lease equipment - and it's probably worth it if the per-unit value is high.
For the love of God, go to Dell and get yourself a Small Business Department sales monkey. A $60K + purchase will win you many friends, and you can OFFLOAD YOUR SUPPORT TO DELL. This is key if you're the only IT person. Get next day onsite service and gold tech support phone coverage. You can also have them do you a standard customised image for these units.
You can lease from them at pretty reasonable rates if the company has been around for more than 3 years, too.
Was he a Dell Small Business sales rep?
on
Nosy Vendors?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
We have one (an *excellent* one; Hi, Chris!) for our 100 person company, and get great prices on hardware no matter what we're using it for.
Dell only supports Linux on certain specific hardware combos for a reason - they've tested it and written the support book for it. If you're getting software support from them, the sales guy was probably worried that you'd expect Linux support on a system that they don't have support docs on.
That said, what's your budget? I've gotten decent servers with Linux support from Dell for $2K...it's often worth the little extra to get a unit you *know* Dell will stand behind for 3 years with a next business day repair contract.
As an aside, Dell has great laptops - they're not the sexiest out there, but the 3 year, onsite, next business day complete-care warranty rocks. You can break the LCD screen and they'll still replace it. Even if you run over the laptop with your car...(it's happened to us. Just make sure it's an accident.)
No, I don't work for Dell, or live in Texas. I just like their kit for corporate use. I roll my own at home.;-)
I should also add that while automated 'war dialing' is illegal under the 1992 TCPA (that's when you have a system that steps through every possible number from 000-0001 to 999-9999 or a subset thereof), the use of a 'predictive dialer' that gets specific numbers from a database is perfectly legal. But as I said above, you can't use a predictive dialer to deliver a recorded message.
That law refers to an automated dialer that delivers a recorded message on pickup. A dialer that connects the call to a live sales person is perfectly legal.
The WA law is just a codification of the FCC's own guidelines and the 1992 TCPA, which prohibit the use of automated dialers to deliver recorded messages, unless they're an emergency service, charity or non-profit.
That said, here in MA, I still get a few messages left on my answering machine from telemarketers...so this is one Federal law that gets flouted in the name of commerce. Firms take the occasional $500 fine as a cost of business.
Thank god. I thought that meant if I had children while at University, the college would own my offspring and could sell them into White Slavery....but at least it would save me on alimony. So it wouldn't be all bad.
Hell, they have one database running their website (windows2000.nsf). They then post this document to their website database. Is it any wonder that it gets indexed and is visible by default to everyone? They screwed up.
If they didn't want it public, they should have an access-controlled website for employees, and posted the document there until they were ready to release it to the world. Either their Domino/Web guy doesn't know what he's doing, or was over-ruled by a clueless manager.
Slashdot Mirror
Two points:
1. It's not the drive that makes the worst noise in the latest gen PVRs, it's the fan. And if you're willing to void the warranty, you can swap that sucka out for something quieter.
2. 4200rpm 2.5" drives run both hotter (bad for PVRs - less tolerant to heat) and, well, slower, than desktop drives (both in terms of rotational speed and seeks). They're too slow and hot to handle the disk I/O.
Even a 7200rpm WD drive rated at around 45 decibels is quieter than the stock fan in a ReplayTV 5xxx series.
As someone married to a doctor, and knowing many others, I agree with everything Aesculapius says. Simply:
1. I know of *no* doctor who is in medicine 'for the money', and I know quite a few doctors. If their intention was to join a profession for wealth, they'd have become lawyers (and even that is by no means guaranteed these days).
2. The average age you enter the workforce (your first year of Residency) is 28. You start at around $40,000 for three or more years (average residency is four years). The average debt burden for Residents is around $100,000. Residents in NY are so poor they qualify for food stamps. The average work-week is around 90 hours. Hospitals are resisting changes to reduce this to 80hrs/wk because it would cost them more money.
3. Once you're done with Residency, you can expect an average salary of around $150,000. Again, not a good situation to be in if you're 'in it for the money'. Which is why I have yet to meet a doctor who is.
4. Everyone is different. To compare doctors to mechanics is to demonstrate a lack of understanding of the field. Wacky shit happens *all the time* to people, for no discernable reason. Really. Sometimes it's good shit, sometimes it's bad shit, but the one constant of medicine is Urea Happens.
5. There are bad doctors. But there are also good doctors who make mistakes. If every doctor was ruined (financially, professionally) every time they made a mistake that hurt someone, there would be no doctors. I'm not over-stating. The good to society provided by one average doctor over the course of their career vastly outweighs the mistakes they commit - yet it only takes one mistake to remove that doctor from medicine. Is that fair?
Yes, the genuinely incompetent doctors should be removed from practice, but that's not what's happening at the moment - people sue over the slightest of things, any time they get an unfavorable outcome, regardless of fault, and often win. This hurts the good doctors and makes access to healthcare more expensive for all of us. OB/GYN is particularly vulnerable right now, with good doctors (industry-leading doctors) leaving the profession in droves just because they can't afford the malpractice insurance. That's not right.
You answered your own question - there are bad doctors, and there are good doctors who make mistakes through no fault of their own, and there are doctors who take risks to save lives. My point was that it's seldom a simple case of 'the doctor is to blame, punish the doctor!' In the case of wrongful amputation, the root cause is often over-work - would *you* let someone who hasn't slept for 24 hours fly a commercial airplane? The FAA won't, so why does the AMA let surgeons operate under such circumstances? They claim 'experience', but what the really mean is 'expedience'. Is the doctor to blame because his hospital forces him to work 36 hour shifts?
(by the way - industry best practices now call for the surgical attending to mark the limb to be removed prior to operation. It's sad that it took until the mid-90's for this practice to become widespread)
Malpractice suits and our litigous society make it really hard to seperate the unavoidable mistakes from incompetence or genuine wrongdoing. Juries are often swayed by 'professional' medical witnesses who make their living testifying in court against defendents.
I believe Atul is in his fifth year of his seven year surgical residency (I'll have to check on that, though - my memory is unclear). That's five years of floor surgery experience, cutting people open to fix things at one of the best hospitals in the nation.
:-)
Bear in mind that he works about 100 hour weeks (there's a big fuss going on now trying to get them down to 80 hours a week, averaged over four weeks). So really it's the equivilent of TEN years of 'regular' work experience. Plus he's surrounded by some of the best people in his chosen profession.
He is not an 'academic' by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly, I'm surprised he found the time to write for the New Yorker - I think he just doesn't sleep. But then, surgeons are weird.
rnicey is spot on the money.
...he works at the same facility as my wife (who is also a doctor, but with a different specialty), and his book really does tell it like it is.
For those of you calling for doctors to be punished when they screw up : grow up, please. Life is never that simple. There are some bad doctors, but even the very best make mistakes, often for reasons beyond their control. If you read the book you'd understand a bit more about how seriously screwed up our medical system is.
Take the Residency system, for example. Simply, the Federal Government pays for a certain number of Residents (recently graduated MDs seeking speciality training in their chosen field) for each hospital. They are essentially 'free' labor for that hospital, so they are worked the hardest. The janitors earn more than they do, on an hourly basis (and even with the new hour restrictions coming in, $40K a year for an 80 hour week where you could kill people through tiredness isn't all that swell).
As the cheapest labor in the hospital, Residents spend a lot of time doing 'scut' work that should be done by porters or nurses, rather than doing what they're trained to do - you could do a lot of good if you spent that entire 80 hours a week being a doctor, but you'll be lucky if you spend half of that time actually using what you learned from med school. It's grossly inefficient, and since the alternative would cost hospitals money (they'd have to hire, and pay for, more porters or nurses) there's no incentive to change. That's just one of the many, many things that makes the delivery of medical services in this country so damn expensive and inefficient.
And that's not even mentioning the patients on State medical insurance who call out an *ambulance* in the middle of a *blizzard* because they have a freaking *sore throat*. My tax dollars at work. Gah.
OK, that's a tale you *have* to share! :-)
:)
In and out in three hours...did pretty good for a minor wounding over Xmas. Must have been quiet at the hospital.
Me, I spent Xmas by myself (well, the wife was upstairs sleeping off her nightshift at the hospital...), got a computer to set up RH8 on, a new ReplayTV to play with, and an all-day Thunderbirds marathon on TechTV. Not so bad.
Damn straight.
I was one of the first years to do GCSE - we did trig at 12, too. But it got easier. I think the Business Studies GCSE was the first crack in the wall - that was like a free 'A' grade.
And now, well, let's just say ever since they found 'O' level questions on 'A' level papers, I refuse to believe that the record exam results are as a result of kids getting 'smarter' or working harder. Pre-degree qualifications in the UK are a joke now. But the US High School Diploma is funnier.
You're right in that there is not always a direct correlation between cost and performance.
However, in this instance the original poster is correct that currently available cheap / OSS / free-as-in-beer DB applications are not up to the task of running a big iron DB like this.
You pick the right tool for the right job. MySQL or PostGRE are great for many things, even large-size databases with simple structures. But for something like SWG they just don't cut it. You need to pay for a DB that gives you the right level of comfort, both in capabilities and support, and in this instance, MySQL et al aren't there yet.
For example (and this is just one small example of many possible), we run Oracle 9i on AIX for our line of business DB. This lets us scale up to the largest iron IBM sells without having to change anything. MySQL can't do that, so the fact that it is cheaper than Oracle and AIX is irrelevant.
Depends on the crash circumstances, really.
;-)
The problem is that a person's natural reaction in a head-on crash (in the passenger seat) is to raise one or both arms to cover the face. The powerful airbag then goes off, resulting in greater injuries to the passenger in low-velocity accidents (where the airbag doesn't significantly ameliorate occupant throw-forward, because the seatbelt does all the work, and because in a low-velocity crash the passenger is more likely to have enough 'flinch' time to raise their arms).
It's not uncommon for front seat passengers who wear seatbelts to sustain serious (we're talking disabling) injuries to their arms or face in otherwise 'walk-away' accidents, purely because of the force of the US airbag. I personally know a local doctor who's wife lost the use of her left arm from just such an accident. It's not so bad in cars like the Subaru where the airbag fires 'up' first into the windshield (look for where the airbag is placed - if it's on the top of the dashboard rather than directly facing the passenger, it's an 'up' airbag).
In a high-velocity front impact, it's better to have an airbag, any airbag, to ameliorate throw-forward, even if there's an increased risk of head or arm trauma - the alternative is often worse. And, of course, it's even worse if you're not wearing a seatbelt.
A friend of mine who's an EMT with 20 years experience says he's never cut a dead person out of a seatbelt. That's anecdotal, of course, and people can and do die in car crashes even with correct seatbelt use, but it's indicative of the huge difference wearing a seatbelt makes in crash survivability.
My wife is an emergency physician. She says you should *always* wear a seatbelt. I don't care if you're one, six or nine months pregnant - the medical literature is unanimous that the benefits outweigh the risks.
Of course, you have to wear it properly (i.e. shoulder-adjusted to the correct height, seated the correct distance from the wheel, etc), which is a problem if you're a 5ft mother-to-be in a Truck or big SUV, where they deliberately put the pedals 2" or so further back (because they're designed for big men, not soccer mums).
But always wear your seatbelt.
In MA, the seatbelt usage rate is around 60%. One of the worst in the nation, apparently, but the recent 'click it or ticket' campaign, even though it has no legal standing, has driven usage up by six points. Which is good.
On a related point, my wife was talking to the head of the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) just yesterday about airbags. US airbags are a big pet peeve of his, because if you're a passenger using a seatbelt in a US airbag-equipped car, you're *MORE LIKELY* to be injured than your European seatbelted compatriot, because of the more powerful airbag. Congress deliberately set them more powerful to give (statistically-unproven) better protection to folks not wearing belts. While it *has* been statistically proven that belts plus low-velocity airbags reduces injury. I'm not making this up : this is what Dr. Runge said, and I assume he knows what he's talking about.
In fact, I know a doc in one of our local hospitals who is pissed because his wife is permanently disabled, directly because of the US high-powered airbags.
So, to conclude : US airbags are more powerful to provide an *unproven* amount of protection to non-seatbelted occupants, at the *direct* expense of seatbelted occupants. Gah.
Boring, I know, but cheap, *and* I could self-righteously claim to be supporting "Buy Nothing" day, completely by accident, thereby gaining kudos with my radical friends.
;-)
Yay for me.
I knew this series wasn't for me when it described one of the Harkonnens as having "Rippling pectorals".
;-)
I'm sorry, but the writing style and imagery of the Dune universe does not lend itself to graphic descriptions of ripped heroes.
I've done a few biggies ($100K), and they've all been with a $1 buyout at the end. Treat a lease like a 'hire-to-buy' deal, and you can't go wrong. Depending on your bargaining chops (and how much kit you're buying) you should be able to get a deal where you essentially pay the same amount over 3 years with a $1 buyout lease that you would had you just paid cash up front, give or take a few points. It's pretty easy to set up an Excel spreadsheet to work out exactly how much the lease will cost you, per unit, over the term, and this will let you compare different leasor rates.
I'm assuming you don't need to worry about the tax implications of leasing - that's the job of your accounting folks. Leases are good for cashflow and tax reasons, even if they end up costing you a little extra over the term.
That sucks. We had a user place their laptop (A Latitude CPt) on the trunk of their car and forget about it until they drove off and heard the *thunk* of it falling off. They replaced it. Of course that was 2 years ago, so maybe they've gotten tighter now. Those CPt's in general were crap, and must have cost Dell $$$ in callouts to fix the defective motherboards. Still, I love my Inspiron 8100...
You can get insurance to cover lost/stolen/destroyed lease equipment - and it's probably worth it if the per-unit value is high.
For the love of God, go to Dell and get yourself a Small Business Department sales monkey. A $60K + purchase will win you many friends, and you can OFFLOAD YOUR SUPPORT TO DELL. This is key if you're the only IT person. Get next day onsite service and gold tech support phone coverage. You can also have them do you a standard customised image for these units.
You can lease from them at pretty reasonable rates if the company has been around for more than 3 years, too.
We have one (an *excellent* one; Hi, Chris!) for our 100 person company, and get great prices on hardware no matter what we're using it for.
Dell only supports Linux on certain specific hardware combos for a reason - they've tested it and written the support book for it. If you're getting software support from them, the sales guy was probably worried that you'd expect Linux support on a system that they don't have support docs on.
That said, what's your budget? I've gotten decent servers with Linux support from Dell for $2K...it's often worth the little extra to get a unit you *know* Dell will stand behind for 3 years with a next business day repair contract.
As an aside, Dell has great laptops - they're not the sexiest out there, but the 3 year, onsite, next business day complete-care warranty rocks. You can break the LCD screen and they'll still replace it. Even if you run over the laptop with your car...(it's happened to us. Just make sure it's an accident.)
No, I don't work for Dell, or live in Texas. I just like their kit for corporate use. I roll my own at home. ;-)
Damn slashdotters notice everything...;-)
Like, err, that you posted the same quote twice? We're good like that. ;-)
A former housemate of mine used to answer telemarking calls like this:
"I'm sorry, I don't have a telephone."
The conversation usually went downhill from there. Except once, when the caller said "Oh. Sorry to have bothered you, then." and hung up.
I should also add that while automated 'war dialing' is illegal under the 1992 TCPA (that's when you have a system that steps through every possible number from 000-0001 to 999-9999 or a subset thereof), the use of a 'predictive dialer' that gets specific numbers from a database is perfectly legal. But as I said above, you can't use a predictive dialer to deliver a recorded message.
Confused yet? ;-)
That law refers to an automated dialer that delivers a recorded message on pickup. A dialer that connects the call to a live sales person is perfectly legal.
The WA law is just a codification of the FCC's own guidelines and the 1992 TCPA, which prohibit the use of automated dialers to deliver recorded messages, unless they're an emergency service, charity or non-profit.
That said, here in MA, I still get a few messages left on my answering machine from telemarketers...so this is one Federal law that gets flouted in the name of commerce. Firms take the occasional $500 fine as a cost of business.
Thank god. I thought that meant if I had children while at University, the college would own my offspring and could sell them into White Slavery. ...but at least it would save me on alimony. So it wouldn't be all bad.
Indeed. That's what I figured, too.
Hell, they have one database running their website (windows2000.nsf). They then post this document to their website database. Is it any wonder that it gets indexed and is visible by default to everyone? They screwed up.
If they didn't want it public, they should have an access-controlled website for employees, and posted the document there until they were ready to release it to the world. Either their Domino/Web guy doesn't know what he's doing, or was over-ruled by a clueless manager.