Friend of mine gave me a copy of the Will Smith I Am Legend movie and I finally watched it last night. I have to say reading this today was just frickin' creepy.
Wow. So... why not treat all criminals the same, if all crimes are unforgivable? Just kill anybody who commits a crime and get it over with. Very Draconian.
You take every point I make and exaggerate it well past what I intend, then argue the opposite point. Nice straw man arguments. Nice black-and-white thinking.
You managed to get a grade school "you're another" defense in with another bout of name-calling, though in this case you put the names in my mouth.
I asked you nicely not to abuse me, and you responded aggressively and abusively. Yes, you can treat me how you please. I can't stop you. But it shows that I don't want to discuss this further with you, or anything else.
Going by your replies, you are a man without compassion, very judgmental, and who lets his anger control him. I'm sorry, I think you'll be very unhappy when you grow up if you don't find a better path.
I never said that nobody who gets caught making a mistake should have to pay the consequences. You seem to have inferred that for reasons of your own.
The subject here is about youthful mistakes following you for your entire life, long after they would (and probably should) normally have been forgotten. And no, before you start another rant, I don't mean all mistakes. I specifically said that in my original post. I deliberately did not draw the line at anything specific because I didn't not want to start a flame war about what should and should not be acceptable mistakes; there are too many gray areas, and that's why they have courts and judges, to handle situations that are not cut-and-dried. (They don't always do that correctly but that's the intention.)
What you seem to be saying is that if somebody is caught doing something wrong, it should be permanently on his record, no matter how small or inconsequential, and that he should be branded with that mistake for his entire life.
So, your argument is that because Fred didn't get caught, Irving shouldn't had to deal with the consequences of getting caught?
No. But having paid for his crime, should he have to keep paying his entire life, even if he learns from it and never repeats it? You seem to think it's OK for every prospective employer to find the fact of his mistake online and decide he's a drunken loser, when in fact he immediately straightened up.
Really? You actually believe that?
No, I don't. You're putting words into my mouth.
Life is not fair and people who are caught breaking the law should suffer the consequences.
...And then should be persecuted for the rest of their lives, yes, I get it. No crime is too small, no age too young.
You say you were neither Fred nor Irving, so who was? Your son? Your brother? Your nephew? Who the fuck do you think should not have to pay the consequences of getting caught driving drunk?
You seem to be assuming that anybody with an opinion that differs from yours must therefore ipso facto have an axe to grind. There is nobody that I specifically know was or is in that position, and if there were, I would not be claiming they should be let off. Your premise is flawed.
Or, is it just that you are a fucking idiot who thinks that unless everyone gets caught and punished for every crime, no one who is caught should be punished?
Once again, your premise is flawed. What I'm saying is that, once having paid for an ordinary crime, the punishment should not go on forever. I personally consider murder, rape, etc. to be extraordinary crimes, but like I said, there's a justice system to work that out.
By keeping such information easily available and online, and refusing to redact it, the colleges and universities are in the position of punishing the students without having gone through any justice system and without recourse or let-up. And so any students caught in such a fashion are not allowed to learn from their mistakes.
You seem to have a lot of anger to work out. Would you not abuse me with it, please? And calling people names does not help support your position. Taking my words out of context does not actually change what I was saying.
Thanks for your input, Dave. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep it civil next time.
Perhaps. I don't know their reasons for moving to Vista in the first place. Maybe it's because they can't buy XP any more? Any new machines would come pre-loaded with Vista. And so on.
So given the premise that they feel, for whatever reason, that they need to move on, Vista is available now and W7 isn't, and W7 presumably won't be ready for prime time until SP1.
The whole idea of experience is that we make mistakes, and then learn from them.
But if the mistakes follow us for the rest of our days, damning us with every detail of our past, then we chance never being able to apply that hard-won knowledge.
It's easy to say "if you don't want your record hanging around your neck like an albatross, then never do anything stupid." But that's saying "don't make mistakes." Thus "don't learn from experience."
And we don't always know what is a mistake until after we've made it. Predicting the future is chancy at best.
I think it's a mistake to keep this information and make it easily available. I'm not going to make a blanket statement and say no information should be kept, but I don't think that everything should be kept.
For one thing, a lack of mistakes on your record doesn't mean you didn't make any. It merely means that if you did, you didn't get caught. Fred got drunk at a frat party and drove home but managed to make it without incident. Irving got just as drunk at the same party but was unlucky enough to be stopped by police. Both decide to stop drinking in excess and keep their noses clean forevermore. Irving has trouble getting jobs because the campus newspaper ran the story and his employers keep finding it and assuming he's an alcoholic. Both made the same mistake, but one is punished for it for the rest of his life, while the other is not.
Can we have a bit of perspective about this, folks?
Just for the record, I'm about as boring and white-bread as you can get. There's nothing on my academic record. So I'm probably about as objective about this as somebody could get. And no, I have never been drunk. Ever. Never even touched the stuff until I was in my '50s. So I am neither Fred nor Irving in this story (nor the cop nor the campus newspaper). I'm the nerd who stayed up all night in the computer center drinking cola to stay awake.
"...we must adjust education again to create the next generation of workers once we figure out what they are."
Um. You're talking about predicting the future, you know that, right? Have you not noticed how badly that works?
Better to get a broad education in a number of skills and meet whatever the future brings with a full arsenal.
You do realize that the current glut of knowledge workers is due to people in the '90s assuming that the situation at the time would continue? That's people trying to predict the future.
I'm going to predict the future for you. I predict that our society is going to need a variety of skill sets and that focussing on one type of skill is foolish and short-sighted.
While I'm at it I'll predict that people will do their best and be happiest if they're working on what they enjoy and do best, rather than what some tunnel-vision guidance counselor (or parent or school administrator or teacher) thinks will make them the most money ten years from now.
I say make shop mandatory, along with home skills. Not necessarily as a major class, but give the students at least an introduction to each class. Let them find their own skills and interests, and encourage any they have.
He's not talking about programmers doing mechanical systems design, he's talking about skill-sets being transferable. It's a matter of perspective.
BTW, as an embedded systems programmer I get to use a LOT of varied skills. Including mechanical and electronic. I don't usually design the mechanics of the systems but I often have a say in the design and even when I don't, I need to understand how they work. And if they're not working I need to be able to diagnose the problem and offer solutions.
But the real point is that having a wide knowledge base and varied skill set gives me insight into design issues and problems I wouldn't have if all I knew was textbook programming.
"High-school shop-class programs were dismantled in the '90s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers' in a pure information economy. Was this a huge mistake?"
Machines need maintenance. Buildings need building and repair. Pipes need plumbing. Trucks need driving. Plants need growing. Packages need delivering. Photos need taking and film needs developing.
Hell, somebody needs to make a mug so I can put tea into it. Oh right, somebody needs to make the tea, too. And build and maintain the infrastructure that lets me get water out of a tap, start a fire under a pot (that I bought at a store that somebody built and somebody else stocks and inventories and keeps records for...), take the tea bag wrapper and put it into a landfill (assuming I bought tea bags this time)...
Sure, theoretically we can automate all that. But who is going to build the machines to supply the automation in the first place? Somebody has to sling a wrench.
What happens when 100% of our children are knowledge workers? Well, then we get 100% unemployment, because nobody is building the bloody computers for them to work on. Oh, they'll have to haul their own garbage, too...
You could say that I think this is short-sighted and ignorant. How about bloody stupid? No, but you're getting close.
See me? I'm an embedded software engineer. Firmware programmer, if you prefer. See, I like to work right down to the bare metal, and that means that I work with the hardware, too. I know how to solder and use multimeter and a 'scope. And wire-wrap, which is passe these days.
And what did I just finish doing 15 minutes ago? I fixed the screen door so it would close properly so the dog couldn't just push it open and get out. Guess what body parts I used for that? No, go on, you'll never guess.
I think EVERYBODY should have some shop time. Elective, my ass, at least a minimum should be mandatory. And what we used to euphemistically call "home economics" should be as well, everybody should get at least the basics of cooking and sewing and so on.
I don't particularly enjoy sewing, but I can do it. By hand or by machine. And I'm no chef but I can make a few simple dishes and follow a recipe. Want my recipe for Bachelor Chow?
What are we going to do, give all the non-knowledge jobs to illegal immigrants?
Even if we do, I want to revisit my earlier remark about the unemployment rate. So for a few years there's a big surge in, hmm, let's say, yoga. "Yoga's the big thing, that's where all the money is! We can't see an end to it!" Advisors start directing everybody towards being a yoga instructor. A few years later we get a graduate class of nothing but yoga instructors, and guess what? THERE'S NOBODY TO INSTRUCT. Why? First, because the fad passed and everybody is doing Tai Chi. Second, because EVERYBODY IS A YOGA INSTRUCTOR AND DOESN'T NEED TO BE INSTRUCTED.
Sheesh. It's like our entire society is suffering from clinical depression or something. Think, people! We need all kinds of thinkers and workers, not just one kind of person. OK, today we need a few extra specialists, but things are constantly changing.
And not everybody can be good at the same thing. One problem you get when you turn everybody into a specialist at one thing is that you get a lot of really mediocre specialists. The ones with the native proclivity will take the best jobs and the rest will end up unsatisfied or unemployed.
Don't plan for a specific future. When it doesn't happen, you're going to be stuck high and dry. Find out where your skills are, hone them as best you can, and find a place to use them to their best advantage. Not just your top skill or your favorite, but all you can find. Narrow specialties can be very lucrative, but if there's no call for yours, it's good to have a fall-back. And most people prefer a life with some variety.
And I don't mean flipping burgers.
How can such smart people be so incredibly stupid? Open up the damned shops again. Get the kids working with their
I've heard again and again, from this crowd and others, that you should stay away from a new Microsoft operating system until at least SP1. So what's the point in comparing the Army rollout to the release date of W7? Compare it to the release of W7-SP1.
Perhaps Military Intelligence isn't entirely an oxymoron.
Thought he'd mentioned Newegg? You could try that.
Have you considered a 'web search? I get lots of hits from Google. Take you less time than waiting for an answer on/. and the results will have 70% less sarcasm.
---
You know... I remember in the '80s reminding people to search the 'web when they were trying to find stuff. It was pretty new back then, and we'd have to use our personal dial-up accounts, like as not, but I didn't feel surprised that I had to remind people. (Clever. But not surprised.)
But now? 20 years later? The 'net is ubiquitous, everybody I know has cable or DSL connections (except one guy in the boonies), the kids growing up have no clue what it was like not to have it, and sometimes I STILL have to remind people to do a 'web search.
Amazing.
Ah, well, you know what they say -- nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.
That's funny. I own a 1996 Taurus -- last time I bought wipers the guy insisted I show him the title first, registration, license, insurance card, then he called the police and checked to make sure it wasn't reported stolen.
Amazing, you'd think they wouldn't have time to do that with all the customers waiting in line... oh wait, THERE WEREN'T ANY. Gosh, now that I tell somebody else about it...
(I really do own a '96 Taurus. The rest of the above may not have a perfect one-to-one correspondence with reality.)
Of course they have no obligation. After the money is spent the only obligation they have is warrantee. After that they can tell everybody, direct customers included, to take a hike if they want to.
This isn't about legal obligation. This is about poor customer service and short-sighted policies.
And DON'T try to split hairs by pointing out it was bought second-hand and therefore the fellow isn't really a customer. As others have pointed out, refusing to deal with second-hand customers (even if they just cut out the ones without documentation) reduces the after-sale worth of the laptop, thus reduces the perceived worth of a new purchase. It also alienates potential new customers who may have bought a used one this year, but might decide to buy a new one next year -- unless they get treated like crap by the so-called customer service.
In fact, sales and marketing go on the assumption that ANYBODY is a potential customer. Apparently customer service assumes that if you've never bought one new, you never will. I sense a dichotomy in corporate policy, or some very stupid people.
But I guess most corporate policy is pretty short-sighted these days.
If it's two's complement the values would be 0 or -1.
If it's got a sign bit then it could be +0 or -0, like he said. But there are architectures that only allow the word to represent 0 if all bits in the word are 0 (e.g. floating point). If it's like the more common floating point mantissa designs I've seen, the leading 1 is implied. So in that case 0 would mean 0 (because all the bits in the word are 0), and 1 would be a value of 1 (implied) with a negative sign, thus -1.
Which of course gets us the same thing as two's complement, in this case, but via a more roundabout way.:)
So don't call him a moron until you've over-analyzed it as much as I have.
Mmm hmmm. 1-bit floating point number: one sign bit, zero mantissa bits (implied leading 1), zero exponent bits (thus 2^0 exponent). I like it.
What I've worried about is what happens when I put it in the mailbox to go back and some neighborhood kid comes and steals it? I live in a good neighborhood and have no reason to assume any of the kids around would do it, but having been a kid once not to long ago it would seem to me to be a great target for some free games once you realize someone is doing it.
So don't drop it into your mailbox. Take it to an official USPS collection box or drop it off in the slot right at the Post Orifice.
It's called "The Pirate Bay". That is a clear expression of an intent to index material related to piracy.
Since most of the torrents on TPB have nothing to do with buccaneers, they are clearly using the word in the "copyright infringement" sense.
Balderdash. It's an indexing service; TPB provides the service, and the clients decide how to use it. You cannot conclude TPB's intent from how its clients use it. Well, YOU obviously can, since you have, but it's a highly suspect conclusion.
It may be a correct one, but you should find another logic chain to support it, because that one is missing a few links. Like, all the links between the premise and the conclusion.
Likewise if you want to argue that bittorrent itself was intended for stealing software.
Have you a stake in Microsoft, then? Or just an application that requires Windows? I'll certainly agree that *nix isn't for everybody -- anybody who claims otherwise is just as bad as any Microsoft apologist. But you give the impression that you feel that Windows is better for everybody, without qualification.
They also argued that the relationship between CVN, Tenenbaum and Nesson "strongly suggested that the proposed broadcast was not for in furtherance of the public interest, but rather part of a larger strategy to advance defendant's and his counsel's interests in connection with this case."
So... the RIAA are in this for the public good, but Tenenbaum is a greedy grasping malicious dastard who would sell his own grandmother for fifteen cents (US) and a cherry lollipop.
Riiiiiight. And I've got this handy bridge, care to make a bid?
The RIAA are the good guys. You can tell because they say so.
One of the first things I do when setting up a new Windows system is set the optical drive to use "DMA if available". Windows seems to like to default those to PIO. Then when you try to burn a DVD it takes forever and requires using the buffer-underrun feature to keep from writing nothing but coasters. Reading is slow, too.
YMMV.
But I suspect that a SATA drive running in PIO mode would be slower than an IDE-33 drive running in DMA mode.
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Me, I like to catch 'em and tie 'em down.
The biggest problem with eating vegetables is getting them back into the wheelchair afterwards.
Friend of mine gave me a copy of the Will Smith I Am Legend movie and I finally watched it last night. I have to say reading this today was just frickin' creepy.
Indeed. Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.
*shrug* I see no point in answering you. You're just repeating yourself and throwing more personal insults.
You may be older than I, but you still need to grow up.
Wow. So... why not treat all criminals the same, if all crimes are unforgivable? Just kill anybody who commits a crime and get it over with. Very Draconian.
You take every point I make and exaggerate it well past what I intend, then argue the opposite point. Nice straw man arguments. Nice black-and-white thinking.
You managed to get a grade school "you're another" defense in with another bout of name-calling, though in this case you put the names in my mouth.
I asked you nicely not to abuse me, and you responded aggressively and abusively. Yes, you can treat me how you please. I can't stop you. But it shows that I don't want to discuss this further with you, or anything else.
Going by your replies, you are a man without compassion, very judgmental, and who lets his anger control him. I'm sorry, I think you'll be very unhappy when you grow up if you don't find a better path.
Is that what I said?
I never said that nobody who gets caught making a mistake should have to pay the consequences. You seem to have inferred that for reasons of your own.
The subject here is about youthful mistakes following you for your entire life, long after they would (and probably should) normally have been forgotten. And no, before you start another rant, I don't mean all mistakes. I specifically said that in my original post. I deliberately did not draw the line at anything specific because I didn't not want to start a flame war about what should and should not be acceptable mistakes; there are too many gray areas, and that's why they have courts and judges, to handle situations that are not cut-and-dried. (They don't always do that correctly but that's the intention.)
What you seem to be saying is that if somebody is caught doing something wrong, it should be permanently on his record, no matter how small or inconsequential, and that he should be branded with that mistake for his entire life.
So, your argument is that because Fred didn't get caught, Irving shouldn't had to deal with the consequences of getting caught?
No. But having paid for his crime, should he have to keep paying his entire life, even if he learns from it and never repeats it? You seem to think it's OK for every prospective employer to find the fact of his mistake online and decide he's a drunken loser, when in fact he immediately straightened up.
Really? You actually believe that?
No, I don't. You're putting words into my mouth.
Life is not fair and people who are caught breaking the law should suffer the consequences.
...And then should be persecuted for the rest of their lives, yes, I get it. No crime is too small, no age too young.
You say you were neither Fred nor Irving, so who was? Your son? Your brother? Your nephew? Who the fuck do you think should not have to pay the consequences of getting caught driving drunk?
You seem to be assuming that anybody with an opinion that differs from yours must therefore ipso facto have an axe to grind. There is nobody that I specifically know was or is in that position, and if there were, I would not be claiming they should be let off. Your premise is flawed.
Or, is it just that you are a fucking idiot who thinks that unless everyone gets caught and punished for every crime, no one who is caught should be punished?
Once again, your premise is flawed. What I'm saying is that, once having paid for an ordinary crime, the punishment should not go on forever. I personally consider murder, rape, etc. to be extraordinary crimes, but like I said, there's a justice system to work that out.
By keeping such information easily available and online, and refusing to redact it, the colleges and universities are in the position of punishing the students without having gone through any justice system and without recourse or let-up. And so any students caught in such a fashion are not allowed to learn from their mistakes.
You seem to have a lot of anger to work out. Would you not abuse me with it, please? And calling people names does not help support your position. Taking my words out of context does not actually change what I was saying.
Thanks for your input, Dave. I'd appreciate it if you'd keep it civil next time.
Perhaps. I don't know their reasons for moving to Vista in the first place. Maybe it's because they can't buy XP any more? Any new machines would come pre-loaded with Vista. And so on.
So given the premise that they feel, for whatever reason, that they need to move on, Vista is available now and W7 isn't, and W7 presumably won't be ready for prime time until SP1.
Just a guess.
I'm the nerd who stayed up all night in the computer center drinking cola to stay awake.
... And then I walked home.
The whole idea of experience is that we make mistakes, and then learn from them.
But if the mistakes follow us for the rest of our days, damning us with every detail of our past, then we chance never being able to apply that hard-won knowledge.
It's easy to say "if you don't want your record hanging around your neck like an albatross, then never do anything stupid." But that's saying "don't make mistakes." Thus "don't learn from experience."
And we don't always know what is a mistake until after we've made it. Predicting the future is chancy at best.
I think it's a mistake to keep this information and make it easily available. I'm not going to make a blanket statement and say no information should be kept, but I don't think that everything should be kept.
For one thing, a lack of mistakes on your record doesn't mean you didn't make any. It merely means that if you did, you didn't get caught. Fred got drunk at a frat party and drove home but managed to make it without incident. Irving got just as drunk at the same party but was unlucky enough to be stopped by police. Both decide to stop drinking in excess and keep their noses clean forevermore. Irving has trouble getting jobs because the campus newspaper ran the story and his employers keep finding it and assuming he's an alcoholic. Both made the same mistake, but one is punished for it for the rest of his life, while the other is not.
Can we have a bit of perspective about this, folks?
Just for the record, I'm about as boring and white-bread as you can get. There's nothing on my academic record. So I'm probably about as objective about this as somebody could get. And no, I have never been drunk. Ever. Never even touched the stuff until I was in my '50s. So I am neither Fred nor Irving in this story (nor the cop nor the campus newspaper). I'm the nerd who stayed up all night in the computer center drinking cola to stay awake.
"...we must adjust education again to create the next generation of workers once we figure out what they are."
Um. You're talking about predicting the future, you know that, right? Have you not noticed how badly that works?
Better to get a broad education in a number of skills and meet whatever the future brings with a full arsenal.
You do realize that the current glut of knowledge workers is due to people in the '90s assuming that the situation at the time would continue? That's people trying to predict the future.
I'm going to predict the future for you. I predict that our society is going to need a variety of skill sets and that focussing on one type of skill is foolish and short-sighted.
While I'm at it I'll predict that people will do their best and be happiest if they're working on what they enjoy and do best, rather than what some tunnel-vision guidance counselor (or parent or school administrator or teacher) thinks will make them the most money ten years from now.
I say make shop mandatory, along with home skills. Not necessarily as a major class, but give the students at least an introduction to each class. Let them find their own skills and interests, and encourage any they have.
And stop trying to be freakin' Nostradamus.
He's not talking about programmers doing mechanical systems design, he's talking about skill-sets being transferable. It's a matter of perspective.
BTW, as an embedded systems programmer I get to use a LOT of varied skills. Including mechanical and electronic. I don't usually design the mechanics of the systems but I often have a say in the design and even when I don't, I need to understand how they work. And if they're not working I need to be able to diagnose the problem and offer solutions.
But the real point is that having a wide knowledge base and varied skill set gives me insight into design issues and problems I wouldn't have if all I knew was textbook programming.
"High-school shop-class programs were dismantled in the '90s as educators prepared students to become 'knowledge workers' in a pure information economy. Was this a huge mistake?"
Machines need maintenance. Buildings need building and repair. Pipes need plumbing. Trucks need driving. Plants need growing. Packages need delivering. Photos need taking and film needs developing.
Hell, somebody needs to make a mug so I can put tea into it. Oh right, somebody needs to make the tea, too. And build and maintain the infrastructure that lets me get water out of a tap, start a fire under a pot (that I bought at a store that somebody built and somebody else stocks and inventories and keeps records for...), take the tea bag wrapper and put it into a landfill (assuming I bought tea bags this time)...
Sure, theoretically we can automate all that. But who is going to build the machines to supply the automation in the first place? Somebody has to sling a wrench.
What happens when 100% of our children are knowledge workers? Well, then we get 100% unemployment, because nobody is building the bloody computers for them to work on. Oh, they'll have to haul their own garbage, too...
You could say that I think this is short-sighted and ignorant. How about bloody stupid? No, but you're getting close.
See me? I'm an embedded software engineer. Firmware programmer, if you prefer. See, I like to work right down to the bare metal, and that means that I work with the hardware, too. I know how to solder and use multimeter and a 'scope. And wire-wrap, which is passe these days.
And what did I just finish doing 15 minutes ago? I fixed the screen door so it would close properly so the dog couldn't just push it open and get out. Guess what body parts I used for that? No, go on, you'll never guess.
I think EVERYBODY should have some shop time. Elective, my ass, at least a minimum should be mandatory. And what we used to euphemistically call "home economics" should be as well, everybody should get at least the basics of cooking and sewing and so on.
I don't particularly enjoy sewing, but I can do it. By hand or by machine. And I'm no chef but I can make a few simple dishes and follow a recipe. Want my recipe for Bachelor Chow?
What are we going to do, give all the non-knowledge jobs to illegal immigrants?
Even if we do, I want to revisit my earlier remark about the unemployment rate. So for a few years there's a big surge in, hmm, let's say, yoga. "Yoga's the big thing, that's where all the money is! We can't see an end to it!" Advisors start directing everybody towards being a yoga instructor. A few years later we get a graduate class of nothing but yoga instructors, and guess what? THERE'S NOBODY TO INSTRUCT. Why? First, because the fad passed and everybody is doing Tai Chi. Second, because EVERYBODY IS A YOGA INSTRUCTOR AND DOESN'T NEED TO BE INSTRUCTED.
Sheesh. It's like our entire society is suffering from clinical depression or something. Think, people! We need all kinds of thinkers and workers, not just one kind of person. OK, today we need a few extra specialists, but things are constantly changing.
And not everybody can be good at the same thing. One problem you get when you turn everybody into a specialist at one thing is that you get a lot of really mediocre specialists. The ones with the native proclivity will take the best jobs and the rest will end up unsatisfied or unemployed.
Don't plan for a specific future. When it doesn't happen, you're going to be stuck high and dry. Find out where your skills are, hone them as best you can, and find a place to use them to their best advantage. Not just your top skill or your favorite, but all you can find. Narrow specialties can be very lucrative, but if there's no call for yours, it's good to have a fall-back. And most people prefer a life with some variety.
And I don't mean flipping burgers.
How can such smart people be so incredibly stupid? Open up the damned shops again. Get the kids working with their
I was able to negotiate for a reduced bill, but it shows as a bad spot on my credit.
You do know you're allowed to dispute credit dings, don't you? If you haven't tried to have it removed, don't whine about having it there.
I've heard again and again, from this crowd and others, that you should stay away from a new Microsoft operating system until at least SP1. So what's the point in comparing the Army rollout to the release date of W7? Compare it to the release of W7-SP1.
Perhaps Military Intelligence isn't entirely an oxymoron.
Thought he'd mentioned Newegg? You could try that.
Have you considered a 'web search? I get lots of hits from Google. Take you less time than waiting for an answer on /. and the results will have 70% less sarcasm.
---
You know... I remember in the '80s reminding people to search the 'web when they were trying to find stuff. It was pretty new back then, and we'd have to use our personal dial-up accounts, like as not, but I didn't feel surprised that I had to remind people. (Clever. But not surprised.)
But now? 20 years later? The 'net is ubiquitous, everybody I know has cable or DSL connections (except one guy in the boonies), the kids growing up have no clue what it was like not to have it, and sometimes I STILL have to remind people to do a 'web search.
Amazing.
Ah, well, you know what they say -- nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.
That's funny. I own a 1996 Taurus -- last time I bought wipers the guy insisted I show him the title first, registration, license, insurance card, then he called the police and checked to make sure it wasn't reported stolen.
Amazing, you'd think they wouldn't have time to do that with all the customers waiting in line... oh wait, THERE WEREN'T ANY. Gosh, now that I tell somebody else about it...
(I really do own a '96 Taurus. The rest of the above may not have a perfect one-to-one correspondence with reality.)
Of course they have no obligation. After the money is spent the only obligation they have is warrantee. After that they can tell everybody, direct customers included, to take a hike if they want to.
This isn't about legal obligation. This is about poor customer service and short-sighted policies.
And DON'T try to split hairs by pointing out it was bought second-hand and therefore the fellow isn't really a customer. As others have pointed out, refusing to deal with second-hand customers (even if they just cut out the ones without documentation) reduces the after-sale worth of the laptop, thus reduces the perceived worth of a new purchase. It also alienates potential new customers who may have bought a used one this year, but might decide to buy a new one next year -- unless they get treated like crap by the so-called customer service.
In fact, sales and marketing go on the assumption that ANYBODY is a potential customer. Apparently customer service assumes that if you've never bought one new, you never will. I sense a dichotomy in corporate policy, or some very stupid people.
But I guess most corporate policy is pretty short-sighted these days.
Goverment's not much better.
If it's two's complement the values would be 0 or -1.
If it's got a sign bit then it could be +0 or -0, like he said. But there are architectures that only allow the word to represent 0 if all bits in the word are 0 (e.g. floating point). If it's like the more common floating point mantissa designs I've seen, the leading 1 is implied. So in that case 0 would mean 0 (because all the bits in the word are 0), and 1 would be a value of 1 (implied) with a negative sign, thus -1.
Which of course gets us the same thing as two's complement, in this case, but via a more roundabout way. :)
So don't call him a moron until you've over-analyzed it as much as I have.
Mmm hmmm. 1-bit floating point number: one sign bit, zero mantissa bits (implied leading 1), zero exponent bits (thus 2^0 exponent). I like it.
What I've worried about is what happens when I put it in the mailbox to go back and some neighborhood kid comes and steals it? I live in a good neighborhood and have no reason to assume any of the kids around would do it, but having been a kid once not to long ago it would seem to me to be a great target for some free games once you realize someone is doing it.
So don't drop it into your mailbox. Take it to an official USPS collection box or drop it off in the slot right at the Post Orifice.
Do you want your phone bill to go up $4 every month because it costs them that much to send it to you?
They'd have a rough time justifying that, as I receive (and pay) that particular bill electronically. :)
Not going to try to refute your actual argument, mind you, as I tend to agree with you.
It's called "The Pirate Bay". That is a clear expression of an intent to index material related to piracy.
Since most of the torrents on TPB have nothing to do with buccaneers, they are clearly using the word in the "copyright infringement" sense.
Balderdash. It's an indexing service; TPB provides the service, and the clients decide how to use it. You cannot conclude TPB's intent from how its clients use it. Well, YOU obviously can, since you have, but it's a highly suspect conclusion.
It may be a correct one, but you should find another logic chain to support it, because that one is missing a few links. Like, all the links between the premise and the conclusion.
Likewise if you want to argue that bittorrent itself was intended for stealing software.
Get the facts, people.
... For certain values of "fact".
http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit033.html
Have you a stake in Microsoft, then? Or just an application that requires Windows? I'll certainly agree that *nix isn't for everybody -- anybody who claims otherwise is just as bad as any Microsoft apologist. But you give the impression that you feel that Windows is better for everybody, without qualification.
They also argued that the relationship between CVN, Tenenbaum and Nesson "strongly suggested that the proposed broadcast was not for in furtherance of the public interest, but rather part of a larger strategy to advance defendant's and his counsel's interests in connection with this case."
So... the RIAA are in this for the public good, but Tenenbaum is a greedy grasping malicious dastard who would sell his own grandmother for fifteen cents (US) and a cherry lollipop.
Riiiiiight. And I've got this handy bridge, care to make a bid?
The RIAA are the good guys. You can tell because they say so.
If it weren't, it would be slow as molasses.
One of the first things I do when setting up a new Windows system is set the optical drive to use "DMA if available". Windows seems to like to default those to PIO. Then when you try to burn a DVD it takes forever and requires using the buffer-underrun feature to keep from writing nothing but coasters. Reading is slow, too.
YMMV.
But I suspect that a SATA drive running in PIO mode would be slower than an IDE-33 drive running in DMA mode.