Maxtor's utilities still offer what they call "Low Level Formatting". As far as I can tell, all it does is write zeros to the drive,
Well then, it's trivially easy to accomplish with free software, so there's no reason to use the manufacturer's semi-legal program. That pretty much entirely negates the point of contention.
I have a charger for my cell phone, Nintendo DS Lite, my two digital cameras and an iPod.
I have a question for you... Has everyone in the world forgotten about universal AC adapters?
Seems like they were pretty common in the 80s, but somehow everyone has completely forgotten about them.
It's pretty simple, you buy the universal AC adapter, select the voltage and polarity, and plug-in the tip that fits your device (for some odd plugs, you may have to buy the appropriate tips seperately).
Sometimes I will have one for a portable HDD and laptop.
The laptop is going to be the only problem... Laptops use so much more power than other devices, that it is prohibitively expensive to get a universal adapter, or even replace your bundled adapter. If you lost or destroyed the original though, it might be better to go with a universal notebook AC adapter too, but the price is prohibitive.
Try using it some day and you'll see how much work it would take to setup a live bootable version of every tool.
I've already setup such a LiveCD on my own. It's not nearly as hard as you make it out to be.
Sometimes there aren't free equivalents, e.g. if you need to use your hard disk manufacturer's low-level custom format tool for some reason.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Low level formatting hasn't been needed since the demise of 40MB, MFM hard drives.
Modern ATA/SCSI drives can't use anything even remotely similar to low-level formatting, and I can't even guess what you are talking about, and I've never come across any problems which required the hard drive manufacturer's utilities.
Most of those are free utilities. As for the commercial ones, there are NUMEROUS free alternatives that will work just as well, if you'd just put a little effort into looking for them, rather than thumbing your nose at the law.
Perhaps the lesson for the author is: Stop buying cheap crap and maybe it will last longer?
Cheap crap like a Motorola Razr 3???
I haven't had many motherboards fail, but loads and loads of power supplies, CD/DVD ROMs/RWs, hard drives, etc.
What bothers me is the fact that you can't stick to a name brand, as most companies are just rebranding OEM crap, and you have no way of knowing if their new products are anything like the half-way decent products they were selling a couple years ago...
And the price is almost never a good indication of quality with electronics: Are Pentium 4s any more durable than Athlons? Is the expensive rebranded Lite-On drive from Sony any better than the cheap rebranded Lite-on drive from Philips?
Still... these are things I'm used-to, and can deal with pretty well at this point. While they piss me off to no end, that's not the part that pisses me off the most, these days.
What drives me up the wall is equipment that is practically defective by design. I've seen so many devices that run far too hot, with far too small heatsinks/fans, power supplies, et al., that they're SURE to self-destruct, and the manufacturer just hopes that most people will use it for a short enough period of time that it won't fail until after the warranty period, or that returns are enough of a hassle that most people won't bother. Even my last Socket A motherboard from Asus (A7V600) ships with a northbridge that draws about 40W, and yet has a tiny fanless heatsink, and operates very near 100C degrees even in cold weather... There's no way it can possibly last long, even in ideal conditions, and certainly not a month in warm weather, with less than perfect case airflow...
And with Asus, like everyone else, you have no way of knowing if the board you're looking at is one of the pieces of crap, or something that's going to last.
There are excellent examples of schools in the United States where huge investments in technology for schools showed no tangible gains in students' profieciencies
The USA is not Thailand. Yes, in the US, I'd say the huge spending on computers is utterly pointless... (I'd say the same thing about TVs and VCRs in every classroom, which sit idle 99% of the timee, and just gather dust.)
But in other countries, having so much less money to work with, means the benefits of digital distribution of books and other course materials could be huge.
In most 3rd world countries, you can't just walk a couple miles to a local library, and check-out a book on subjects that affect your life. In that situation, giving families and villages access to all the content on the internet will be a much more significant difference....of course, I've said the same things EVERY TIME this subject comes up, and ignorant comments like yours continue to be modded up...
If you're in a country where 10% of people can't read and write (1% in USA, Canada and European countries, 0.5% in Russia) - you'll be better off if you spend the money on teaching them how to read and write.
It could potentially be less expensive to distribute computers with a program which teaches reading, than to pay for enough teachers, for a long enough time, to teach the same number of people.
How many years does it take for a teacher to teach XYZ many students to read? How much is that teacher's salary over that time period? How much do they need to spend on books for their students? etc.
you also fail to cite a reference for your statement.
I didn't make any hard-to-believe claim (that electronics fail more or less quickly with tin) only the parent did.
My statement that tin is stronger than lead is extremely straight forward. I certainly didn't ask for any sources to prove his statement that tin is more brittle.
You also won't find me citing sources to prove that the sky is blue, and the earth is round...
It comes with draconian DRM schemes. You need a special, expensive cable to hook it up.
ATSC broadcasts contain NO DRM of any kind. The only DRM HDTVs could be said to have is part of the HDMI standard, but: A) You can use HDMI without DRM (ie. DVI) B) You can use the completely DRM-free Component inputs instead.
You can't record HD tv shows and movies.
As a matter of fact I can. I have no idea why you think I can't.
You can't afford an HD set without talking to a banker or maxing out your credit card.
Where do you live, that a $500 HDTV will max out most credit cards, or require a loan?
I for one can't wait to have my TV filled up with HD MPEG2 artifacts instead of this clean SD crap!
That's HILARIOUS. After all, practically every TV network on the planet is using MPEG-2 encoded digital videos in the studio, and broadcasting those digital artifacts out in analog, where they're covered up by the incredible ammount of analog noise.
If such a difference did exist, the why do 50% of HDTV owners think their watching HD content, when they're not?
A) It's only 25% B) Because (as per the article) THEY HAVEN'T SEEN ANYTHING IN HD YET. They may well just ASSUME HD only looks slightly better than standard, when it actually looks far better...
Of course, it didn't really take off until prices came down and they had solid-state circuits that didn't drift and could fudge the colors a bit so that anything close to flesh was displayed as flesh...
The take-off was mainly hampered by networks (other than NBC) staying B&W for many years. Since they weren't getting a chunk of the TV sales (like NBC was) they didn't want to use color.
Technologies that are only impressive under good conditions usually fail. Right now, that's the state HDTV is in.
That's just pure and total nonsense. Your "average" equipment set up by an amature will recieve and display HDTV just fine.
When you have the wind, you raise the sails and turn the engines down. When you don't have the wind, you take the sails down. You have the same speed either way and are never off schedule.
Same speed, but with significant additional weight, reduction in cargo space, added material and maintenance cost, etc.
The winds have to be strong and almost always constant to make dual-propulsion a win.
The "SkySails" the NewScientist article mentions, is very different from a sail, and has the potential to reduce some of the problems that have prevented sails from being used on modern ships.
I think that as online TV becomes more popular, people will isolate themselves more and more from a shared experience. So people will end up having even more polarized views of things.
Terrible! Just think what will come next...
They'll have students, from grades 7 up, stop spending all day in a single class of 30 people. Gasp! People might actually be able to learn at a different rate in different subjects than their peers!
Then, the next step is surely people will stop taking mass transit, and insist on driving their cars where and when they want...
It won't be long until NOTHING is lowest-common-denominator anymore. What a hell-hole this world will become then...
I've seen the ads for cable telephone, and telephone TV, gotten the calls from aggressive telemarketers, etc. I've just got one question...
Why do they think people are going to switch from their existing service, to an equal-priced, equal featured service, provided by a different company?
If either wants customers, they're going to have to start competing on features (not the trivial crap they're touting now) or price. They seem to want to do neither, and hope they can just magically turn a profit.
My desire to put an AP on the top of a nearby mountain, and charge $20/mo for IPTV, VoIP, and high-speed internet access is overwhelming...
If it was Microsoft, the kids would be screaming and it would be on every blog. Google
And if it was Mark Foley asking for a beer, instead of Cameron Diaz...
People give Google the benefit of the doubt, while they give the opposite to Microsoft, because both companies have earned it, based on their past actions. There's nothing wrong with that, at all. In fact, completely IGNORING Microsoft's history would be wrong...
No lunch break? Wow! I not only had a 1 hour lunch break
Most school lunch periods are tyically a half hour, and there, you aren't allowed to go off campus to get food, the cafeteria lines are long enough that many people literally wait in line through that entire 30 minutes, not being able to get the (really crappy and yet expensive) food, let alone eat it. And of course there are no facilities for storing your own food, so you're seriously limited to thing which can't possibly spoil and are served room temp.
Mindless tasks? What, like learning one's native language, learning how to manipulate numbers,
No. Mindless tasks like the hordes of "history cross-word searches", "watch the video, take notes, and hand them in", and more of the same. That is the majority of high School course work, and why someone who knows and has learned NOTHING can graduate on busywork alone.
Did you go to "High School" or "Boarding School"?!?
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Well then, it's trivially easy to accomplish with free software, so there's no reason to use the manufacturer's semi-legal program. That pretty much entirely negates the point of contention.
Did you fall asleep in the 80s, and just wake up? It's been 120V in the US for many years now.
I have a question for you... Has everyone in the world forgotten about universal AC adapters?
Seems like they were pretty common in the 80s, but somehow everyone has completely forgotten about them.
It's pretty simple, you buy the universal AC adapter, select the voltage and polarity, and plug-in the tip that fits your device (for some odd plugs, you may have to buy the appropriate tips seperately).
The laptop is going to be the only problem... Laptops use so much more power than other devices, that it is prohibitively expensive to get a universal adapter, or even replace your bundled adapter. If you lost or destroyed the original though, it might be better to go with a universal notebook AC adapter too, but the price is prohibitive.
I've already setup such a LiveCD on my own. It's not nearly as hard as you make it out to be.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Low level formatting hasn't been needed since the demise of 40MB, MFM hard drives.
Modern ATA/SCSI drives can't use anything even remotely similar to low-level formatting, and I can't even guess what you are talking about, and I've never come across any problems which required the hard drive manufacturer's utilities.
Most of those are free utilities. As for the commercial ones, there are NUMEROUS free alternatives that will work just as well, if you'd just put a little effort into looking for them, rather than thumbing your nose at the law.
That's a wonderful riddle... Kinda' like a crossword puzzle that intentionally has obscure clues that can't possibly fit together...
Cheap crap like a Motorola Razr 3???
I haven't had many motherboards fail, but loads and loads of power supplies, CD/DVD ROMs/RWs, hard drives, etc.
What bothers me is the fact that you can't stick to a name brand, as most companies are just rebranding OEM crap, and you have no way of knowing if their new products are anything like the half-way decent products they were selling a couple years ago...
And the price is almost never a good indication of quality with electronics:
Are Pentium 4s any more durable than Athlons?
Is the expensive rebranded Lite-On drive from Sony any better than the cheap rebranded Lite-on drive from Philips?
Still... these are things I'm used-to, and can deal with pretty well at this point. While they piss me off to no end, that's not the part that pisses me off the most, these days.
What drives me up the wall is equipment that is practically defective by design. I've seen so many devices that run far too hot, with far too small heatsinks/fans, power supplies, et al., that they're SURE to self-destruct, and the manufacturer just hopes that most people will use it for a short enough period of time that it won't fail until after the warranty period, or that returns are enough of a hassle that most people won't bother. Even my last Socket A motherboard from Asus (A7V600) ships with a northbridge that draws about 40W, and yet has a tiny fanless heatsink, and operates very near 100C degrees even in cold weather... There's no way it can possibly last long, even in ideal conditions, and certainly not a month in warm weather, with less than perfect case airflow...
And with Asus, like everyone else, you have no way of knowing if the board you're looking at is one of the pieces of crap, or something that's going to last.
The USA is not Thailand. Yes, in the US, I'd say the huge spending on computers is utterly pointless... (I'd say the same thing about TVs and VCRs in every classroom, which sit idle 99% of the timee, and just gather dust.)
But in other countries, having so much less money to work with, means the benefits of digital distribution of books and other course materials could be huge.
In most 3rd world countries, you can't just walk a couple miles to a local library, and check-out a book on subjects that affect your life. In that situation, giving families and villages access to all the content on the internet will be a much more significant difference.
It could potentially be less expensive to distribute computers with a program which teaches reading, than to pay for enough teachers, for a long enough time, to teach the same number of people.
How many years does it take for a teacher to teach XYZ many students to read? How much is that teacher's salary over that time period? How much do they need to spend on books for their students? etc.
I didn't make any hard-to-believe claim (that electronics fail more or less quickly with tin) only the parent did.
My statement that tin is stronger than lead is extremely straight forward. I certainly didn't ask for any sources to prove his statement that tin is more brittle.
You also won't find me citing sources to prove that the sky is blue, and the earth is round...
I know that extremely well, and certainly didn't say anything to suggest otherwise.
Even if true (which I won't assume) that says NOTHING AT ALL about "electronics using lead-free solder [failing] more frequently and earlier".
Try again.
ATSC broadcasts contain NO DRM of any kind. The only DRM HDTVs could be said to have is part of the HDMI standard, but:
A) You can use HDMI without DRM (ie. DVI)
B) You can use the completely DRM-free Component inputs instead.
As a matter of fact I can. I have no idea why you think I can't.
Where do you live, that a $500 HDTV will max out most credit cards, or require a loan?
I think I speak for everyone when I say: We have NO IDEA what you're talking about...
Is "Monster Cable" selling HDMI cables now?
I bought my 10 foot (max length) HDMI cable for $15 (including tax).
That's HILARIOUS. After all, practically every TV network on the planet is using MPEG-2 encoded digital videos in the studio, and broadcasting those digital artifacts out in analog, where they're covered up by the incredible ammount of analog noise.
A) It's only 25%
B) Because (as per the article) THEY HAVEN'T SEEN ANYTHING IN HD YET. They may well just ASSUME HD only looks slightly better than standard, when it actually looks far better...
The take-off was mainly hampered by networks (other than NBC) staying B&W for many years. Since they weren't getting a chunk of the TV sales (like NBC was) they didn't want to use color.
That's just pure and total nonsense. Your "average" equipment set up by an amature will recieve and display HDTV just fine.
You got any sources to back-up your blanket assertions that tin is inferior?
Tin may be more brittle, but it's also STRONGER than lead, which may well be an advantage in many situations.
Whether the advantages or the disadvantages comes out ahead, I can't say, and I doubt you can either.
Better yet, make the hull out of teflon-coated golf balls...
Same speed, but with significant additional weight, reduction in cargo space, added material and maintenance cost, etc.
The winds have to be strong and almost always constant to make dual-propulsion a win.
The "SkySails" the NewScientist article mentions, is very different from a sail, and has the potential to reduce some of the problems that have prevented sails from being used on modern ships.
Terrible! Just think what will come next...
They'll have students, from grades 7 up, stop spending all day in a single class of 30 people. Gasp! People might actually be able to learn at a different rate in different subjects than their peers!
Then, the next step is surely people will stop taking mass transit, and insist on driving their cars where and when they want...
It won't be long until NOTHING is lowest-common-denominator anymore. What a hell-hole this world will become then...
I've seen the ads for cable telephone, and telephone TV, gotten the calls from aggressive telemarketers, etc. I've just got one question...
Why do they think people are going to switch from their existing service, to an equal-priced, equal featured service, provided by a different company?
If either wants customers, they're going to have to start competing on features (not the trivial crap they're touting now) or price. They seem to want to do neither, and hope they can just magically turn a profit.
My desire to put an AP on the top of a nearby mountain, and charge $20/mo for IPTV, VoIP, and high-speed internet access is overwhelming...
And if it was Mark Foley asking for a beer, instead of Cameron Diaz...
People give Google the benefit of the doubt, while they give the opposite to Microsoft, because both companies have earned it, based on their past actions. There's nothing wrong with that, at all. In fact, completely IGNORING Microsoft's history would be wrong...
"English Units" is in fact a common notiation.
However, that really is not necessary. As England is the originator of the Imperial system, it's safe to call British units Imperial units.
Most school lunch periods are tyically a half hour, and there, you aren't allowed to go off campus to get food, the cafeteria lines are long enough that many people literally wait in line through that entire 30 minutes, not being able to get the (really crappy and yet expensive) food, let alone eat it. And of course there are no facilities for storing your own food, so you're seriously limited to thing which can't possibly spoil and are served room temp.
No. Mindless tasks like the hordes of "history cross-word searches", "watch the video, take notes, and hand them in", and more of the same. That is the majority of high School course work, and why someone who knows and has learned NOTHING can graduate on busywork alone.
Several High Schools in Southern California.