They use antennas very similar to XM or Sirius radio. Work best if they can “see the sky”, however they can also be run under a fender panel and stuck on the inside (most are magnetic).
I’ve experimented with a few. The really nice ones are from Germany, are large (donut sized) and NEVER drop reception if roof mounted, but obviously they are not designed to be hidden. Around $250.00 for those.
Factoid: Did you know this stuff works primarily off email? The Lat / Lon data is fired to the provider which (in my case) is sent to my GPS server running the host. I then have 7 clients running on workstations plus two 55” big screens. None of this is horribly expensive. Say 5 grand for platform and web licenses, 350 per cellular Enfora, and 2 grand for the i50B’s, but those are 2011 tech and very sophisticated. Both are programmed via scripts, but the i50B has 3 ports, one for GPS, leaving 2 open. You can remotely disable ignition, hook up diagnostics, and much more.
I recently set up an entire GPS platform for our fleet at work. Security was an issue so I purchased the platform and run it in house on a server I built. Currently have 200 assets, but the platform will handle 5000.
They are probably using a device similar to an Enfora modem. These are cellular only, and fairly basic, although they can be configured to reports certain parameters such as ignition on, motion detection, geofencing, etc.
At the other end of the scale you can have a dual band device like the i50B which is Iridium satellite and cellular. The satellite kicks in depending on threshold setting for cellular signal strength. Of course there are MANY similar devices that run on different satellite networks (Global sat etc). Reporting can be from every 30 seconds to once per day.
The devices are hard wired and use very little juice. You would never notice them. Both the devices mentioned are slightly larger than a pack of smokes and need power and ground. For the best reception an antenna is required, but that is also very easy to hide. Installation would be less than 30 minutes. Interestingly, jammers are becoming a real problem. You can purchase them online, they only block the GPS frequency, and plug in to your cigarette lighter. Think Taxi cab drivers and truckers.
Sadly all very large planes are inherently unsafe. The simple reason why is that it is rare to have rescue and medical personnel in numbers large enough to deal with an incident. Imagine one of these huge planes sliding off a runway during a landing and the sheer numbers of injured people that need to be rescued is beyond local capacities. We had a commercial jet go down in the Everglades just west of Miami and getting wounded people out was at least a twelve hour affair. Many died due to our inability to get to them quickly enough. The worse scene would be more than one of the huge planes striking each other even on the runways. Anybody got 1,000 ambulances for a fast response?
See here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
Offtopic, but Dell screwed the pooch on this one. They had the thermal limit for the fans set too high, so by the time the cooling fans came on, it was too late. This was primarily with the SLI 8800GTX iirc. Then they started using 9800's (like mine) instead, without fixing the underlying issue.
Guess what...about a year ago Dell released an updated bios (11) that....you guessed it....revised the fan thermal limit tables.
I have a 2.5 year old XPS M1730. Maxed out, the invoice was $3800.00, so the price isnt totally out of line. SLI, Blu Ray, 8GB, 2x320HDD, etc etc, but of course the 1730 is quite thick.
The Dell however is really a full blown DTR at almost 12lbs. The Razer is much more svelt.
I'd seriously look at the Razer if I were in the market.
I knew the same guy. He was later found dead, still in his wetsuit, hundreds of miles from the sea, in the middle of an area of burnt out bushland. The FBI believe that a water bomber must scooped him out of a lake where he was working... Bizarrely, his wife found a series of missed calls on her phone from his cell number, but the timestamp was hours after he died!
Soldier of Fortune magazine used to include schematics on such things as home made grenades. There was a small disclaimer that stated the instructions were not to be followed as serious personal injury or death may result. After looking at the diagram for a few moments it became clear that there was no lock mechanisim for holding the plunger after the pin was pulled. It was designed so that when the pin was pulled, the grenade instantly exploded. Too bad we cant give them a few of those designs.
On a related note, I remember a few years ago reading about some moron who had bags of fertalizer (the wrong type) a propane tank or two, and some non-connected wind up clocks in his car...perhaps it was even here in Toronto. Most of these people arent really the sharpest knife in the drawer.
This is a system I put together less than a year ago. Yup, its a generation or two behind, but does very well with recent games and will handle any game from a year or two ago on very high settings, with high framerates.
M/B: Asus P5N-D (SLI Board) CPU: E8500 clocked to 3.752MHz GPU: Galaxy GTS250 (x2 SLI) 8GB RAM (667) HD: 2x 500GB Raid 0 BLU-RAY Optical Drive 850watt Ultra (Tiger Direct in house brand) PS 24" Samsung CoolerMaster HAF922 case
Now this sytem could handle a second 24" monitor with no issues if I had the desk space, but I dont. Sure, its older tech, but the machine really is quite fast for the money spent. There is not much of an upgrade path of course (socket 775), but you could put in a quad and bump up the GPU's. Sure, SLI generates some excess heat and whatnot, but the case has enough fan locations that you can make it sound like a hair dyer if you wish.
I have nothing to add regarding the vaccination debate as I am not qualified, however our daughters case was also settled out of court, a few days prior to trial. It took almost 5 years. It was the largest settlement in Canadian history at the time. Let me explain a few things to people who may not understand.
Therapy is very, very expensive. Good therapists are close to $100.00 per hour and have a multitude of letters behind thier name on the business card. They deserve it. Now, I would venture a guess that there would be speech therapists, motor skills therapists, education therapists, PT, and probably Autism specialists in this case. Our expenses exceeded 250k one year, and have stabilized at around 100k.
A full time minder will be required. People who do this for a living are usually in great demand, and are expensive. The good ones anyway. Another 60k per year. Mom or Dad be the full time minder? Forget it. You couldnt handle it. Unless you have no other kids, no job, etc, even then you wouldnt have the qualifications.
Money....The money is not the parents money...it is HER money. Yes, the parents may disburse it, but if the child is a minor (as our daughter is), or unable to make rational decisions, then the goverment appoints an advocate to perform an annual review on expenditures, in Canada anyway. YMMV. We were advised to purchase an annuity tied to the cost of living index in our country, less 1 million for initial expenses such as a purpose designed house and lawyers fee's of 550k.
The parents will die. Who takes care of the child then? The money must be used to care for the child as long as she lives, which will be shorter than average by the way. Look up disabled people in the actuarial tables. We have made arrangements for this. We have no itention of fobbing the this off on her older brother. That would mean another life destroyed. Naturally he will oversee things though.
Lifestyle....If a speially designed Hummer is what they need, so what? A specially designed home? Again, so what? Its about the child, not the parents, but keep in mind that the parents lives are effectively over, or at least a "normal" lifestyle that is. Whats your one shot at life worth to you if I may ask?
I drive a 2005 Escape and live in a 1 bedroom condo after the divorce (80% of marriages dont survive shit like this). I work 60-70 hours a week. My portion of the award was less than 200k, as was my ex wifes. My other children received 50k each.
My ex lives in the custom house which was less than 500k. She works full time and drives a 2008 Santa Fe....pretty extravagant eh? yes, there is a special van. Quite expensive but she got it used.
Im sure I've left out quite a bit, but the point was dont just look at the big numbers and after all its only money. Sure, we need it it, but its just pieces of paper. Who gives a fuck about it. Awards like these are rarely given out except in catastrophic circumstances (Canada anyway) and I for one would give eveything I had, including my life, to be able to turn back time, but I cant. So you just soldier on.
Our goverment got in on the lawsuit as well. OHIP extrapoloated the extra costs that will be incurred over her expected lifetime (low 50's) such as tests, scans, etc, and sued for them. That came off the top as well, but was only a few hundred thousand.
At the age of 8 my daughter went for dental surgery. We decided to have the procedure performed in the hospital rather than the dental office for safety sake. What could go wrong? To make a long sad story short, she died for 6 to 9 minutes. Nobody is quite sure because....NONE OF THE MONITORS WERE TURNED ON. The only person in the OR was the dental surgeon and he noticed her fingernails turning blue. She was long dead by this point.
As it turns out, the anesthesiologist had mistakenly given her a triple dose of morphine which in turn stopped her heart. Too bad they were all having a coffee prior to turning on the monitors. It was "only" dental surgery after all.
To thier credit (?) they brought her back to life. Around 90% of her brain was dead by that time. She had some stem function but even that was spotty as her body could not control temperature, etc. Stage one coma for a year, vent, etc. So after a year of being told there was no hope we made the DNR decision and pulled the tube. We were taken to a nice atrium (death room) with doctors and clergy present. They pulled the vent, 45 seconds later she gasped for breath and everyone about fell over. They hustled us out so fast it would make your head spin. Many years and over a million dollars of therapy later, she can function. Had to relearn everthing and I mean EVERYTHING. She will always have a mental age of 12yrs (16 now) very bad motor skills (never drive) blind in left eye (optics fine, neural pathway not fine) and if you saw her on the street you would think she was "retarded". How I hate that fucking word.
So all the fancy procedures, fancy equipment, etc dont mean sweet fuck all if a HUMAN doesnt turn them on.
To finish, yes of course there was a settlement...thats going to give her life back right? Money means fuck all.
I have one of Dells XPS M1730 laptops. It was purchased in the final few weeks of production before Dell stopped competeing with itself (Alienware) and I ordered it as tricked out as possible. SLI, 8GB, BluRay, etc. Its the machine I take if going away for the weekend and is powerful enough for anyting I need, including modern games.
When at home, I have a 24" LCD, Razor mouse, and nice keyboard attached to it. I was getting tired of building a killer rig every year and it was getting damn expensive, especially when slot form factors would change, PCI, AGP, PCIe, etc.
I have 4 other desktops, 2 Dell notebooks, and 1 netbook in the house (3 teenagers). The desktops get the most use when the kids are home and they take the portables to school with them. None of these are high end, just run of the mill stuff, 2 years old or so.
I tried the netbook but hated it. For the rare occassion I really needed a mobile device, my Bold 9700 is "good enough" for directions, or what have you.
Lately I've been ordering fairly high end Dell workstations for the people at work because the lower priced stuff is, well, crap. We have about 30 workstations and only the senior management get laptops which they barely use anyway. Blackberrys are "enough" for most of them.
I think the upswing in laptop sales is mainly due to price. Its come down so far that $500.00 buys a 16" laptop that for the majority of users is more than adequate.
Glad I read/. today. I paid $10.00 and will head over to purchase the other 2 installments of Penumbra strictly based on what I've seen here.
I only have 2 desktops at home running Ubuntu 10.4, but sooner or later I'll get the rest off Windows. Might even be brave enough to try it on my laptop, but the SLI is worrying me.
By the way, to those people trying to justify a penny? Go away. Thats an insult no matter how you try and gussie it up, akin to leaving a waitress a penny for shitty service.
I bought a Lenovo laptop a few weeks ago with an i7, Nvidia 240M, 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive for $999. If that isn't high end, I'm not sure what would qualify.
My XPS M1730 purchased April 09. Optioned out.
25 minutes baby, thats all she wrote on the batt.
Nah,not wealthy or (entirely) stupid, in fact very few people know I own it.
Disclaimer: Yes, yes...apples and oranges here. I know.
I purchased an HP from BB as a gift this past Christmas because I couldn’t build the same thing cheaper (i5, 8gbDDR3, wireless, 1TB, Nvidia, and 23” monitor under 1k CAN).
They attempted to sell me the optimization service first, then a printer, then an HDMI cable, then at the counter, the extended service plan. I’ll bet I burned half an hour of my time telling them to fuck off in a nice way.
The baby geek dude I had to deal with (all of 17 maybe) was just going through the motions, we both knew the score but there was a floor boss or something hovering around, so he had to do it.
The bitch at the checkout was relentless on the other hand. One of those obnoxious people that drank the company Kool Aid and spouted off every tag line she could remember. It was depressing.
Surprisingly I only had to clean off Symantec crap (shudder) and a few HP game demos and that’s it. It was really quite painless.
Shame I had to do it twicethe machine would BSOD every 5 minutes. It was instantly obvious that it was a memory issue so I ran the bios integrated mem test and boom, it found the problem..sort of.turns out it wasn’t the stick of ram because I swapped em around, it was a bad memory slot on the board.
I'll give you a quick example of how our two major players operate. I'm speaking of Bell and Rogers. Recently our Feds decided to sell off some spectrum. Since they had a small clue of what was about to happen, they reserved 25% of it and the rest was open to bid.
What did Rogers and Bell do? Well, it was like you or I sitting at the poker table with a $100.00 bankroll, against a high roller with 2 million.
Bell & Rogers just kept raising, like an auto bot on the bay...well, I'll bid 20...raise....OK, 25...raise.....OK 30...raise...ad-nauseum.
The goverment expected a few hundred million and were a bit surprised to rake in 8 BILLION dollars....Rogers and Bell?....meh....pocket change.
Oh, and now they are litigating over the reserved spectrum they were locked out of.
I apoligize for muddying the argument here (cell vs pipes) but it's the same idea. I do not have a citation handy but I believe Canada is ranked 4th or 5th in the developed world for price vs performance, re: internet and cell.
Space exploration is a must. Try to think a few centuries ahead hmm? This chunk of rock will most likely be out of water, grossly overpopulated, and a good place to leave. The goal is to colonize other planets. Domes? Underground? Who knows.....but it must be done.
Slashdot Mirror
They use antennas very similar to XM or Sirius radio. Work best if they can “see the sky”, however they can also be run under a fender panel and stuck on the inside (most are magnetic).
I’ve experimented with a few. The really nice ones are from Germany, are large (donut sized) and NEVER drop reception if roof mounted, but obviously they are not designed to be hidden. Around $250.00 for those.
Factoid: Did you know this stuff works primarily off email? The Lat / Lon data is fired to the provider which (in my case) is sent to my GPS server running the host. I then have 7 clients running on workstations plus two 55” big screens.
None of this is horribly expensive. Say 5 grand for platform and web licenses, 350 per cellular Enfora, and 2 grand for the i50B’s, but those are 2011 tech and very sophisticated. Both are programmed via scripts, but the i50B has 3 ports, one for GPS, leaving 2 open. You can remotely disable ignition, hook up diagnostics, and much more.
I recently set up an entire GPS platform for our fleet at work. Security was an issue so I purchased the platform and run it in house on a server I built. Currently have 200 assets, but the platform will handle 5000.
They are probably using a device similar to an Enfora modem. These are cellular only, and fairly basic, although they can be configured to reports certain parameters such as ignition on, motion detection, geofencing, etc.
At the other end of the scale you can have a dual band device like the i50B which is Iridium satellite and cellular. The satellite kicks in depending on threshold setting for cellular signal strength. Of course there are MANY similar devices that run on different satellite networks (Global sat etc).
Reporting can be from every 30 seconds to once per day.
The devices are hard wired and use very little juice. You would never notice them. Both the devices mentioned are slightly larger than a pack of smokes and need power and ground. For the best reception an antenna is required, but that is also very easy to hide. Installation would be less than 30 minutes.
Interestingly, jammers are becoming a real problem. You can purchase them online, they only block the GPS frequency, and plug in to your cigarette lighter. Think Taxi cab drivers and truckers.
Fuck Off will you?
Sadly all very large planes are inherently unsafe. The simple reason why is that it is rare to have rescue and medical personnel in numbers large enough to deal with an incident. Imagine one of these huge planes sliding off a runway during a landing and the sheer numbers of injured people that need to be rescued is beyond local capacities. We had a commercial jet go down in the Everglades just west of Miami and getting wounded people out was at least a twelve hour affair. Many died due to our inability to get to them quickly enough. The worse scene would be more than one of the huge planes striking each other even on the runways. Anybody got 1,000 ambulances for a fast response?
See here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
If it turns physco, maybe we can make it a CEO.
Offtopic, but Dell screwed the pooch on this one. They had the thermal limit for the fans set too high, so by the time the cooling fans came on, it was too late. This was primarily with the SLI 8800GTX iirc. Then they started using 9800's (like mine) instead, without fixing the underlying issue.
Guess what...about a year ago Dell released an updated bios (11) that....you guessed it....revised the fan thermal limit tables.
I have a 2.5 year old XPS M1730. Maxed out, the invoice was $3800.00, so the price isnt totally out of line. SLI, Blu Ray, 8GB, 2x320HDD, etc etc, but of course the 1730 is quite thick.
The Dell however is really a full blown DTR at almost 12lbs. The Razer is much more svelt.
I'd seriously look at the Razer if I were in the market.
I knew the same guy. He was later found dead, still in his wetsuit, hundreds of miles from the sea, in the middle of an area of burnt out bushland. The FBI believe that a water bomber must scooped him out of a lake where he was working... Bizarrely, his wife found a series of missed calls on her phone from his cell number, but the timestamp was hours after he died!
That was just a News of the World reporter......
John McAllister
Soldier of Fortune magazine used to include schematics on such things as home made grenades. There was a small disclaimer that stated the instructions were not to be followed as serious personal injury or death may result. After looking at the diagram for a few moments it became clear that there was no lock mechanisim for holding the plunger after the pin was pulled. It was designed so that when the pin was pulled, the grenade instantly exploded. Too bad we cant give them a few of those designs.
On a related note, I remember a few years ago reading about some moron who had bags of fertalizer (the wrong type) a propane tank or two, and some non-connected wind up clocks in his car...perhaps it was even here in Toronto. Most of these people arent really the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Hmmm...maybe they could talk to Samsung and dispense with the suggestion box....just do it in the background.
Anyone else read this as "lone attack on commode"? Gives it a whole new meaning.....
This is a system I put together less than a year ago. Yup, its a generation or two behind, but does very well with recent games and will handle any game from a year or two ago on very high settings, with high framerates.
M/B: Asus P5N-D (SLI Board)
CPU: E8500 clocked to 3.752MHz
GPU: Galaxy GTS250 (x2 SLI)
8GB RAM (667)
HD: 2x 500GB Raid 0
BLU-RAY Optical Drive
850watt Ultra (Tiger Direct in house brand) PS
24" Samsung
CoolerMaster HAF922 case
Now this sytem could handle a second 24" monitor with no issues if I had the desk space, but I dont. Sure, its older tech, but the machine really is quite fast for the money spent.
There is not much of an upgrade path of course (socket 775), but you could put in a quad and bump up the GPU's.
Sure, SLI generates some excess heat and whatnot, but the case has enough fan locations that you can make it sound like a hair dyer if you wish.
Someone had to say it.
Epic fail
I have nothing to add regarding the vaccination debate as I am not qualified, however our daughters case was also settled out of court, a few days prior to trial. It took almost 5 years. It was the largest settlement in Canadian history at the time. Let me explain a few things to people who may not understand.
Therapy is very, very expensive. Good therapists are close to $100.00 per hour and have a multitude of letters behind thier name on the business card. They deserve it. Now, I would venture a guess that there would be speech therapists, motor skills therapists, education therapists, PT, and probably Autism specialists in this case. Our expenses exceeded 250k one year, and have stabilized at around 100k.
A full time minder will be required. People who do this for a living are usually in great demand, and are expensive. The good ones anyway. Another 60k per year. Mom or Dad be the full time minder? Forget it. You couldnt handle it. Unless you have no other kids, no job, etc, even then you wouldnt have the qualifications.
Money....The money is not the parents money...it is HER money. Yes, the parents may disburse it, but if the child is a minor (as our daughter is), or unable to make rational decisions, then the goverment appoints an advocate to perform an annual review on expenditures, in Canada anyway. YMMV. We were advised to purchase an annuity tied to the cost of living index in our country, less 1 million for initial expenses such as a purpose designed house and lawyers fee's of 550k.
The parents will die. Who takes care of the child then? The money must be used to care for the child as long as she lives, which will be shorter than average by the way. Look up disabled people in the actuarial tables. We have made arrangements for this. We have no itention of fobbing the this off on her older brother. That would mean another life destroyed. Naturally he will oversee things though.
Lifestyle....If a speially designed Hummer is what they need, so what? A specially designed home? Again, so what? Its about the child, not the parents, but keep in mind that the parents lives are effectively over, or at least a "normal" lifestyle that is. Whats your one shot at life worth to you if I may ask?
I drive a 2005 Escape and live in a 1 bedroom condo after the divorce (80% of marriages dont survive shit like this). I work 60-70 hours a week. My portion of the award was less than 200k, as was my ex wifes. My other children received 50k each.
My ex lives in the custom house which was less than 500k. She works full time and drives a 2008 Santa Fe....pretty extravagant eh? yes, there is a special van. Quite expensive but she got it used.
Im sure I've left out quite a bit, but the point was dont just look at the big numbers and after all its only money. Sure, we need it it, but its just pieces of paper. Who gives a fuck about it. Awards like these are rarely given out except in catastrophic circumstances (Canada anyway) and I for one would give eveything I had, including my life, to be able to turn back time, but I cant. So you just soldier on.
Our goverment got in on the lawsuit as well. OHIP extrapoloated the extra costs that will be incurred over her expected lifetime (low 50's) such as tests, scans, etc, and sued for them. That came off the top as well, but was only a few hundred thousand.
At the age of 8 my daughter went for dental surgery. We decided to have the procedure performed in the hospital rather than the dental office for safety sake. What could go wrong? To make a long sad story short, she died for 6 to 9 minutes. Nobody is quite sure because....NONE OF THE MONITORS WERE TURNED ON. The only person in the OR was the dental surgeon and he noticed her fingernails turning blue. She was long dead by this point.
As it turns out, the anesthesiologist had mistakenly given her a triple dose of morphine which in turn stopped her heart. Too bad they were all having a coffee prior to turning on the monitors. It was "only" dental surgery after all.
To thier credit (?) they brought her back to life. Around 90% of her brain was dead by that time. She had some stem function but even that was spotty as her body could not control temperature, etc. Stage one coma for a year, vent, etc. So after a year of being told there was no hope we made the DNR decision and pulled the tube. We were taken to a nice atrium (death room) with doctors and clergy present. They pulled the vent, 45 seconds later she gasped for breath and everyone about fell over. They hustled us out so fast it would make your head spin.
Many years and over a million dollars of therapy later, she can function. Had to relearn everthing and I mean EVERYTHING. She will always have a mental age of 12yrs (16 now) very bad motor skills (never drive) blind in left eye (optics fine, neural pathway not fine) and if you saw her on the street you would think she was "retarded". How I hate that fucking word.
So all the fancy procedures, fancy equipment, etc dont mean sweet fuck all if a HUMAN doesnt turn them on.
To finish, yes of course there was a settlement...thats going to give her life back right? Money means fuck all.
I have one of Dells XPS M1730 laptops. It was purchased in the final few weeks of production before Dell stopped competeing with itself (Alienware) and I ordered it as tricked out as possible. SLI, 8GB, BluRay, etc. Its the machine I take if going away for the weekend and is powerful enough for anyting I need, including modern games.
When at home, I have a 24" LCD, Razor mouse, and nice keyboard attached to it. I was getting tired of building a killer rig every year and it was getting damn expensive, especially when slot form factors would change, PCI, AGP, PCIe, etc.
I have 4 other desktops, 2 Dell notebooks, and 1 netbook in the house (3 teenagers). The desktops get the most use when the kids are home and they take the portables to school with them. None of these are high end, just run of the mill stuff, 2 years old or so.
I tried the netbook but hated it. For the rare occassion I really needed a mobile device, my Bold 9700 is "good enough" for directions, or what have you.
Lately I've been ordering fairly high end Dell workstations for the people at work because the lower priced stuff is, well, crap. We have about 30 workstations and only the senior management get laptops which they barely use anyway. Blackberrys are "enough" for most of them.
I think the upswing in laptop sales is mainly due to price. Its come down so far that $500.00 buys a 16" laptop that for the majority of users is more than adequate.
Glad I read /. today. I paid $10.00 and will head over to purchase the other 2 installments of Penumbra strictly based on what I've seen here.
I only have 2 desktops at home running Ubuntu 10.4, but sooner or later I'll get the rest off Windows. Might even be brave enough to try it on my laptop, but the SLI is worrying me.
By the way, to those people trying to justify a penny? Go away. Thats an insult no matter how you try and gussie it up, akin to leaving a waitress a penny for shitty service.
I bought a Lenovo laptop a few weeks ago with an i7, Nvidia 240M, 4 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive for $999. If that isn't high end, I'm not sure what would qualify.
My XPS M1730 purchased April 09. Optioned out.
25 minutes baby, thats all she wrote on the batt.
Nah,not wealthy or (entirely) stupid, in fact very few people know I own it.
Disclaimer: Yes, yes...apples and oranges here. I know.
I purchased an HP from BB as a gift this past Christmas because I couldn’t build the same thing cheaper (i5, 8gbDDR3, wireless, 1TB, Nvidia, and 23” monitor under 1k CAN).
They attempted to sell me the optimization service first, then a printer, then an HDMI cable, then at the counter, the extended service plan. I’ll bet I burned half an hour of my time telling them to fuck off in a nice way.
The baby geek dude I had to deal with (all of 17 maybe) was just going through the motions, we both knew the score but there was a floor boss or something hovering around, so he had to do it.
The bitch at the checkout was relentless on the other hand. One of those obnoxious people that drank the company Kool Aid and spouted off every tag line she could remember. It was depressing.
Surprisingly I only had to clean off Symantec crap (shudder) and a few HP game demos and that’s it. It was really quite painless.
Shame I had to do it twicethe machine would BSOD every 5 minutes. It was instantly obvious that it was a memory issue so I ran the bios integrated mem test and boom, it found the problem..sort of.turns out it wasn’t the stick of ram because I swapped em around, it was a bad memory slot on the board.
Pete
I'll give you a quick example of how our two major players operate. I'm speaking of Bell and Rogers.
Recently our Feds decided to sell off some spectrum. Since they had a small clue of what was about to happen, they reserved 25% of it and the rest was open to bid.
What did Rogers and Bell do? Well, it was like you or I sitting at the poker table with a $100.00 bankroll, against a high roller with 2 million.
Bell & Rogers just kept raising, like an auto bot on the bay...well, I'll bid 20...raise....OK, 25...raise.....OK 30...raise...ad-nauseum.
The goverment expected a few hundred million and were a bit surprised to rake in 8 BILLION dollars....Rogers and Bell?....meh....pocket change.
Oh, and now they are litigating over the reserved spectrum they were locked out of.
I apoligize for muddying the argument here (cell vs pipes) but it's the same idea. I do not have a citation handy but I believe Canada is ranked 4th or 5th in the developed world for price vs performance, re: internet and cell.
Pete
How did the .exe get through hmmm? Secondly, the machines should be locked down just a tad tighter one would think.
Lots of blame to go round on this one.
How long have the /. Moderators been awake? . . .
Space exploration is a must. Try to think a few centuries ahead hmm? This chunk of rock will most likely be out of water, grossly overpopulated, and a good place to leave. The goal is to colonize other planets. Domes? Underground? Who knows.....but it must be done.