I can think of another use... I had a friend whose mom worked in an understaffed nursing home. She caught some visitor doing something wrong and reported him to the police. He was arrested, but one of his friends came back to the nursing home and beat her to within an inch of her life, leaving her for dead. Luckily somebody else found her and called the medics. After a few surguries to repair the physical damage, she was still a clinically depressed, narcoleptic, single mother on a whole host of medications. I've lost touch with the friend in the intervening years, but the last time I talked to him, she was still on disability and couldn't hold a job for more than a few weeks. If only she'd had the mecha suit she could have defended herself and probably maintained her career.
One thing: Mac's have the advantage of having MS Office support. I'm not sure, but I would think that would go a long way towards making macs a little easier to accept in the workplace.
But Autoupdate will install WGA if you let it. I mistakenly let this happen on one of my machines and now It's showing a false positive as well. It still receives critical updates, however. It's a pain, but it's not like the computer isn't usable at all.
You say that your Linux PC cost less than half of a comparable Windows PC. This intrigues me. How much and where did you get it? I'm looking for a good cheap hardware solution to a current problem I'm working on.
How about Exchange and Outlook? I can tell you right now that the execs I work with would throw all kinds of fits if they couldn't access their old PST files. Last time I checked, there wasn't a FOSS email reader that could do this.
The other factor is the human factor. I'll swap somebody out to a newer computer and then have to spend two days listening to them bitch about their icons "moving" on their desktop between computers and how their address history isn't there anymore and how their home directory looks "different" and "did you delete this file becuase I had it 6 months ago, but now it's gone?". I for one would seriously not want to perform desktop support in an environment that has just switched from Windows to Linux. A large portion of these users have a hard enough time adjusting to Windows. You through them a curve ball like Linux and suddenly the whole office goes to shit as nobody can find the start button anymore, their "Word" and "Excel" documents don't "look the same" and various other nitpicky comments. The productivity in the office goes to shit, and the IT manager is left to answer for why revenue decreased by 5% last month becuse nobody could use their computers. IT manager gets sacked and company brings in a consultant to switch them back to Windows.
I'm not saying that it's impossible -- just that most companies are so vested in Windows and 95% of users are so computer illiterate that a switch to any other type of IT infrastructure would likely have a very noticable impact on productivity and an immediate negative impact on the company's bottom line. Sure, they would probably save money over time on Windows license fees, but this is modern corporate America where nobody looks to the future and management is only concerned about the bottom line right this very instant.
As if the average office manager in a small business even has a clue what Wine is, aside from something he drinks. I'll admit that I haven't really used Linux in a while, but is Wine even anywhere near as compatible as it needs to be in order to be able to replace Windows? The last time I played around with Wine was in 2001, and I seem to remember it being quite a pain to get software to effectively run under it.
I don't remember if they are shown in the movie or not (probably not), but IIRC the book mentions how they used a fleet of Crays for the genetic sequence guessing. I would say that if her loving, doting grandfather has a fleet of Crays and she herself is a computer nerd, then it is a fair guess that she was able to gain exposure to UNIX by the age of 10.
I was going to post a comment of my own, but you're actually an example of one of the points I wanted to make: Sony is going to drive away the casual/occasional gamer crowd with tactics like this. I would probably be considered an occasional gamer and would have considered shelling out the dough for a PS3 for no other reason than to get the latest and greatest in the Gran Turismo series. Not now. Not if GT:HD and GT5 are going to be released on this sort of business model.
I bought a PS2 specifically for two games: Gran Turismo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3. I would probably have eventually broken down and purchased a PS3, after it came down in price a bit, just to play the next installments of those two games. Now, GTA4 is also being released on the 360 and Sony is killing the Gran Turismo series for me. And that's just me, the occasional gamer, who would have eventually ended up building his PS3 game library to the same 25 - 30 game level as my PS2 library. The guy who buys accessories and who pays for XBox Live!, even though I maybe play one game a month over it.
What about the casual gamers? Many times these are the same people that don't have broadband at home. Some of them probably don't even have computers as they have no need for them. They just like to play the occasional video game as a way to unwind. I know several characters like this (mostly amateur racers and semi-pro racers) who bought a PS2 and don't play anything other than GT3 and/or GT4. I used to go to one friend's house and we would end up playing GT3 for hours on end. I guarantee you that friend isn't going to be buying a PS3 and GT:HD.
Anyway, enough ranting. I think it's safe to assume that everybody on/. thinks this is a bad idea. What really remains to be seen is whether or not Sony can pull this PS3 debacle off or not. They've clearly lost their minds.
Think of the jets like a seatbelt. How many accidents have you had where the seatbelt has served its purpose? Hopefully none. But I can guarantee you that, should you ever have a bad accident, you will be suddenly greatful for that seatbelt's existence.
That's not a great example, however. Undoubtably, just having the F-14 was enough to deter some engagements with enemy interests. As a sibling poster points out, the Iraqi air force refused to engage the F-14 at all. (Some theorize that this is due to Iran kicking Iraqs ass with their own F-14s during the Iran-Iraq war.) In any event, our military superiority, in general, allows us to avoid some wars simply because our superiority is enough of a deterrance to potential enemies. That also means we don't lose any of those lives that we would have lost had we gone to war. That's not a bad deal, in my opinion.
Because in the real world people like choices and like to be able to use their older hardware. Some of us don't like to spend money on the latest and greatest just becuase it's there. I still use a LaserJet 2100 at home that requires parallel. I see no reason to buy something else. The 2100 has served me well over the years and will continue to serve me for a while to come. Additionally, I have a serial port IR receiver that has mad the jump through three generations of PC upgrades for me. Yeah, I'm sure that I could find a generic USB receiver, but that means that I'd have to completely reconfigure the software to accept the inputs from the new receiver. So... why should I bother upgrading when I already have one that works?
Floppies are... aw, who am I kidding. With thumb drives and CD's as cheap as they are, I'll be glad to see the floppy drive go. But this leads to my next point that the cost of upgrading some of my so-called legacy equipment isn't worth the price of entry. A new printer would set me back a few hundred (and if the 42xx series of printers we have at work are any indication, a new printer could set me back even more in wasted time trying to fix the damn thing), and I have no clue where to even look for a USB IR drive, nor do I have the desire to reconfigure my remote software.
As for serial ports, they make it oh-so-much easier to program most networking switches I've worked with. (I've yet to see one with USB connectivity, although I'm sure they're out there.) Not to mention a whole host of other programmable devices out there. (I have one friend who has programmed a basic stamp to use in a fish tank project and I have another friend who's aftermarket car ECU is reprogrammable via the serial port.)
The point is, all of this stuff still exists in the PC world due to the fact that it's still useful and many people generally don't like to spend money to replace the stuff they have that already works.
3DO tried something similiar back in the early 90's. As well as their console, you could purchase a 3DO Blaster for your PC which would allow you to play 3DO games on your PC. It failed miserably. http://assembler.roarvgm.com/3do_blaster/3do_blast er.html
Really, the difference between 16bit color and 32bit color probably isn't all that much such that you will really notice the difference while in the middle of a heated game. I actually use a Voodoo3 3000 PCI as a secondary video card. When looking at the two monitors side by side in Windows, I can barely notice a difference at all. Granted, I do most of my photo editing on the primary display with full 32bit color, but there's really nothing wrong with the display on my Voodoo card. Why should I go out and spend cash on a new PCI card for a secondary display when I already have a perfectly functioning display card lying around? Kudos to this guy for developing the drivers.
I'm with you on this one. I see no real tangible benefit to upgrade from a Live! sound card. Most of the latest advances in sound card technology concern new technologies that, in the grand scheme of things, don't matter for s**t if you don't play games. And even if you do, an SB Live! is still good enough unless you want/have more than 4 speakers. I don't really care about these 3d sound effects, but maybe I don't yet know what I'm missing out on.
For the record, I also still have a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI that I use for a secondary display on my P4 rig. Again, I guess I could go out and buy a newer PCI card to use for a second display, but if my old one works, why should I? It's nice to know that should I ever upgrade to an x64 rig, I can still take my dual monitor goodness with me.
You bring up some of the very points that I want to bring up. I don't see how lecture attendance necessarily is an important part of the process. Unless it's to somehow stroke the professor's ego, but if that's the case he can fuck off. As a matter of fact, I had more than one prof. in college who made it plainly evident that he despised teaching and would rather be concentrating on his research than lecturing to us. (And one of those would get pissed if you didn't come -- sort of an "If I have to come, so do you" attitude.)
My thoughts are thus: I'm the one paying for the service, so why shouldn't I be allowed to use it in the manner that I see fit? Scientists love to point out that different people learn in different manners, so why should those who learn better on their own be punished and still forced to attend lecture?
I can recall two classes where my truancy rate was ~50%, but in which I still mad acceptable grades. In one class the professor always came to class so poorly prepared that he would often stop and restart examples on the board several times; constantly ammending the problem and basically trying to puzzle through it himself in front of the class. The joke was that you had to take notes in pencil since you would have to erase half of them as you went. There were actually two occasions where the professor was so confused that he stopped and said that he'd have to work the example on his own again and show us next week. Now what benefit did I get from going to that lecture? If I'm going to have to invest the time to completely learn the material on my own, then I'm certainly not going to come to lecture.
In the other class, the professor basically read the book to us with very little to no further exposition on what the text might mean. When I did go to class, myself and a friend would basically place bets on to which paragraph the professor was going to recite next. When I spend my time in class developing rules and a scoring system for betting on a lecture, that means it's time to stop going. In the end, I only went once a week to turn in the assignments and even then I only went out of guilt. I could have easily given my homework to somebody else to turn in.
To the question submitter. Stop trying to force people to attend class -- especially if they can demonstrate a grasp of the material on the exams. Universitey should not be about you trying to force the students to learn in the "approved" manner. Those kids will get enough of that rank and file bullshit when they join the corporate world. Anyway, those who don't attend will always find away around whatever protection methods you could institute. Students are good at that. They have more free time than you. Instead, university should be about the students learning the material. If that student feels that he learns better by listening to the podcasts while sitting around in his underwear and watching pr0n at the same time, then so be it. That's his perogative. At least he's learning.
Actually, I was parly in jest with my comment, although that was informative. I actually heard a sales drone in a Best Buy one time recommend a 9700 over an X850 becuase the 9700 had a higher number. I've always wondered how many other people have made this same mistake.
I had (still have, actually) this old Compaq Presario computer with a Pentium 200 MMX processor. The thing was never the most stable computer out there and was a pain in the but to work on, having non-standard screws and proprietay memory, as most Compaqs of that era did. One day I realized that I had a bunch of old hard drives lying around, so I decide to make this Compaq into a makeshift file server by adding the two larger drives in to the machine and brought it to school with my at the start of my Senior year. The machine's sole purpose was to act as a file server AND as a second internet/instant messaging terminal that I could use when my primary desktop was otherwise engaged. The machine didn't do this well as it seemed to suffer a 25% random reboot rate while using it. (Windows 98, couldn't even get Linux to come close to running on it.) This wasn't really any different from the sort of behavior it had shown since the day we purchased it, shortly after the MMX processors were released, so I just put up with it until...
One day I'm playing Serious Sam over the LAN with some friends. There's a brief lull in the action and so I reach over for the 1 gallon bottle of apple juice I was drinking from. Well, instead of picking up the apple juice, I tip it over and the entire contents spill out ON TOP OF the Compaq. I of course, immediately jump in to disaster recovery mode and race to the kitchen to grab the paper towels. I start cleaning up the mess, expecting the wrost for the Compaq in the process. I could see where there was apple juice in all of the little crevices and I'm darn sure some of it actually got into the computer. Some had spilled on to some school papers lying next to the machine and I wanted to make sure I didn't lose any notes so I took plenty of time to salvage those papers.
After I finished cleaning up the mess, I check the computer. Mouse and keyboard input seem OK. I start up Winamp and it seems to work OK. I run scandisk on all of the drives and they all report being OK. I can't find a single thing wrong with this computer. And I'll be damned if that computer didn't have a single random reboot after I spilled apple juice on it. It became the object of admiration and jokes amongst my friends, and one friend even managed to find one of those fruity, rainbow colored Apple Computer stickers that he wanted me to put on the case. I never even bothered to open up the computer to asses the damages (partly becuase I was lazy and didn't have a torx screw driver at school). Truth be told, I was afraid to even move the comptuer or otherwise disturb it since it seemed to be working OK.
A quick addendum to this story... right before graduation I purchased another hard drive for my primary desktop machine that was about 4 times the total capacity of the drives in the apple computer. I copied all of my data off the apple computer on to this drive and pretty much relegated the apple solely to web surfing detail. About a year and a half later, I need another hard drive for a client machine and so I decide to finally open the apple computer to raid one of the hard drives in it. I was even more amazed then that the computer still worked. There was brown, sticky apple juice residue on everything in the computer. There was even a puddle of this gooey gel that had pooled at the bottom of the case. It was all over the cables, the drives, everything. I was even more surprised and even a little bit proud that the computer still worked after that ordeal.
I guess that just goes to show: if you want a stable computer, get an Apple.;)
I had the same CD problem that you describe happening in one of my machines. I think I determined that drive motor was just going bad and couldn't spin the disc unless the computer was close to perfectly level.
Re:Walk into the room
on
Computer Voodoo?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I actually had just the opposite happen with one of my friends. He had given me the CDs for the Mankrake 10.0 Community distribution. I start the install, get it to the copy files stage, and then go to work. On the way home from work, I stopped by his place to say hi and we eventually end up going back to my place so I can finish installing Mandrake. After the install, everything was working except for the sound card. At first I just chalked it up to plain bad luck as I always seem to have issues with installing sound cards or finding proper drivers for the crappy onboard sound cards. The only difference this time is that this is a Sound Blaster Live! card -- probably one of the most ubiquitous cards produced and installed in the late 90's, early 00's.
Long story short: we spend all night troubleshooting the PC and even rebooting back in to Windows to verify that the card itself is still working there. The card was working perfectly in Windows and it had worked perfectly under the SuSE distro that was overwritten when I installed Mandrake. After working on it for a while we decide to call it a night, and I turn the machine off and he goes home. About 5 minutes after he's gone, I decide to boot the computer again. Lo and behold! Sound works! I call him this and tell him this. He comes over again the next day, and of course the sound card won't work when I try to show it to him.
I don't know if we ever figured out what was wrong. I think Tim and I just decided that he must have had some kind of unusual biorhythm or something.:)
I agree that Dish should have to pay for their actions. But I think the judge should have leveled a greater fine rather than issue this injunction. The big problem that I see is that this now sets a precedent for other lawsuits regarding Tivo's patent. Tivo may now be able to leverage this decision against other competitors with whom they have not had direct business dealings.
It's a shame that millions of Echostar customers will now have non-functional DVR boxes, which they paid for?
Let's see if we can draw a similar, hypothetical example to the Linux world. Say, Microsoft sues KDE(or whatever your favorite window manager may be) and wins an injunction against KDE because KDE is infringing on their patent for, say, displaying multiple windows on the screen at the same time. In 30 days, KDE has to disable every version of KDE installed via their patch updating system. How pissed would you be? Now think about how pissed you would be if you had paid for KDE. How is this at all fair to KDE since there are dozens of other similar systems with the exact same funtionality on the market and how is KDE to compete without the ability to do the same?
After looking a little further into the case I don't disagree that Echostar should pay for some of their dirty tacts. Pay monetarily, that is. But to issue an injunction against what is an obvious process that has been implemented on dozens of other competitor devices is tantamount to a death sentence for Echostar.
To champion a piece of technology or a particular company you like, is one thing. To support such an obviously absurd judicial decision just because you like a company is another thing. Like Tivo or not, this decision is just another case of a ridiculous patent that should never have been granted now being used for litigation purposes.
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I can think of another use... I had a friend whose mom worked in an understaffed nursing home. She caught some visitor doing something wrong and reported him to the police. He was arrested, but one of his friends came back to the nursing home and beat her to within an inch of her life, leaving her for dead. Luckily somebody else found her and called the medics. After a few surguries to repair the physical damage, she was still a clinically depressed, narcoleptic, single mother on a whole host of medications. I've lost touch with the friend in the intervening years, but the last time I talked to him, she was still on disability and couldn't hold a job for more than a few weeks. If only she'd had the mecha suit she could have defended herself and probably maintained her career.
One thing: Mac's have the advantage of having MS Office support. I'm not sure, but I would think that would go a long way towards making macs a little easier to accept in the workplace.
But Autoupdate will install WGA if you let it. I mistakenly let this happen on one of my machines and now It's showing a false positive as well. It still receives critical updates, however. It's a pain, but it's not like the computer isn't usable at all.
You say that your Linux PC cost less than half of a comparable Windows PC. This intrigues me. How much and where did you get it? I'm looking for a good cheap hardware solution to a current problem I'm working on.
How about Exchange and Outlook? I can tell you right now that the execs I work with would throw all kinds of fits if they couldn't access their old PST files. Last time I checked, there wasn't a FOSS email reader that could do this.
The other factor is the human factor. I'll swap somebody out to a newer computer and then have to spend two days listening to them bitch about their icons "moving" on their desktop between computers and how their address history isn't there anymore and how their home directory looks "different" and "did you delete this file becuase I had it 6 months ago, but now it's gone?". I for one would seriously not want to perform desktop support in an environment that has just switched from Windows to Linux. A large portion of these users have a hard enough time adjusting to Windows. You through them a curve ball like Linux and suddenly the whole office goes to shit as nobody can find the start button anymore, their "Word" and "Excel" documents don't "look the same" and various other nitpicky comments. The productivity in the office goes to shit, and the IT manager is left to answer for why revenue decreased by 5% last month becuse nobody could use their computers. IT manager gets sacked and company brings in a consultant to switch them back to Windows.
I'm not saying that it's impossible -- just that most companies are so vested in Windows and 95% of users are so computer illiterate that a switch to any other type of IT infrastructure would likely have a very noticable impact on productivity and an immediate negative impact on the company's bottom line. Sure, they would probably save money over time on Windows license fees, but this is modern corporate America where nobody looks to the future and management is only concerned about the bottom line right this very instant.
As if the average office manager in a small business even has a clue what Wine is, aside from something he drinks. I'll admit that I haven't really used Linux in a while, but is Wine even anywhere near as compatible as it needs to be in order to be able to replace Windows? The last time I played around with Wine was in 2001, and I seem to remember it being quite a pain to get software to effectively run under it.
I don't remember if they are shown in the movie or not (probably not), but IIRC the book mentions how they used a fleet of Crays for the genetic sequence guessing. I would say that if her loving, doting grandfather has a fleet of Crays and she herself is a computer nerd, then it is a fair guess that she was able to gain exposure to UNIX by the age of 10.
I was going to post a comment of my own, but you're actually an example of one of the points I wanted to make: Sony is going to drive away the casual/occasional gamer crowd with tactics like this. I would probably be considered an occasional gamer and would have considered shelling out the dough for a PS3 for no other reason than to get the latest and greatest in the Gran Turismo series. Not now. Not if GT:HD and GT5 are going to be released on this sort of business model.
/. thinks this is a bad idea. What really remains to be seen is whether or not Sony can pull this PS3 debacle off or not. They've clearly lost their minds.
I bought a PS2 specifically for two games: Gran Turismo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3. I would probably have eventually broken down and purchased a PS3, after it came down in price a bit, just to play the next installments of those two games. Now, GTA4 is also being released on the 360 and Sony is killing the Gran Turismo series for me. And that's just me, the occasional gamer, who would have eventually ended up building his PS3 game library to the same 25 - 30 game level as my PS2 library. The guy who buys accessories and who pays for XBox Live!, even though I maybe play one game a month over it.
What about the casual gamers? Many times these are the same people that don't have broadband at home. Some of them probably don't even have computers as they have no need for them. They just like to play the occasional video game as a way to unwind. I know several characters like this (mostly amateur racers and semi-pro racers) who bought a PS2 and don't play anything other than GT3 and/or GT4. I used to go to one friend's house and we would end up playing GT3 for hours on end. I guarantee you that friend isn't going to be buying a PS3 and GT:HD.
Anyway, enough ranting. I think it's safe to assume that everybody on
Think of the jets like a seatbelt. How many accidents have you had where the seatbelt has served its purpose? Hopefully none. But I can guarantee you that, should you ever have a bad accident, you will be suddenly greatful for that seatbelt's existence.
That's not a great example, however. Undoubtably, just having the F-14 was enough to deter some engagements with enemy interests. As a sibling poster points out, the Iraqi air force refused to engage the F-14 at all. (Some theorize that this is due to Iran kicking Iraqs ass with their own F-14s during the Iran-Iraq war.) In any event, our military superiority, in general, allows us to avoid some wars simply because our superiority is enough of a deterrance to potential enemies. That also means we don't lose any of those lives that we would have lost had we gone to war. That's not a bad deal, in my opinion.
Because in the real world people like choices and like to be able to use their older hardware. Some of us don't like to spend money on the latest and greatest just becuase it's there. I still use a LaserJet 2100 at home that requires parallel. I see no reason to buy something else. The 2100 has served me well over the years and will continue to serve me for a while to come. Additionally, I have a serial port IR receiver that has mad the jump through three generations of PC upgrades for me. Yeah, I'm sure that I could find a generic USB receiver, but that means that I'd have to completely reconfigure the software to accept the inputs from the new receiver. So... why should I bother upgrading when I already have one that works?
Floppies are... aw, who am I kidding. With thumb drives and CD's as cheap as they are, I'll be glad to see the floppy drive go. But this leads to my next point that the cost of upgrading some of my so-called legacy equipment isn't worth the price of entry. A new printer would set me back a few hundred (and if the 42xx series of printers we have at work are any indication, a new printer could set me back even more in wasted time trying to fix the damn thing), and I have no clue where to even look for a USB IR drive, nor do I have the desire to reconfigure my remote software.
As for serial ports, they make it oh-so-much easier to program most networking switches I've worked with. (I've yet to see one with USB connectivity, although I'm sure they're out there.) Not to mention a whole host of other programmable devices out there. (I have one friend who has programmed a basic stamp to use in a fish tank project and I have another friend who's aftermarket car ECU is reprogrammable via the serial port.)
The point is, all of this stuff still exists in the PC world due to the fact that it's still useful and many people generally don't like to spend money to replace the stuff they have that already works.
3DO tried something similiar back in the early 90's. As well as their console, you could purchase a 3DO Blaster for your PC which would allow you to play 3DO games on your PC. It failed miserably. http://assembler.roarvgm.com/3do_blaster/3do_blast er.html
Really, the difference between 16bit color and 32bit color probably isn't all that much such that you will really notice the difference while in the middle of a heated game. I actually use a Voodoo3 3000 PCI as a secondary video card. When looking at the two monitors side by side in Windows, I can barely notice a difference at all. Granted, I do most of my photo editing on the primary display with full 32bit color, but there's really nothing wrong with the display on my Voodoo card. Why should I go out and spend cash on a new PCI card for a secondary display when I already have a perfectly functioning display card lying around? Kudos to this guy for developing the drivers.
I'm with you on this one. I see no real tangible benefit to upgrade from a Live! sound card. Most of the latest advances in sound card technology concern new technologies that, in the grand scheme of things, don't matter for s**t if you don't play games. And even if you do, an SB Live! is still good enough unless you want/have more than 4 speakers. I don't really care about these 3d sound effects, but maybe I don't yet know what I'm missing out on.
For the record, I also still have a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI that I use for a secondary display on my P4 rig. Again, I guess I could go out and buy a newer PCI card to use for a second display, but if my old one works, why should I? It's nice to know that should I ever upgrade to an x64 rig, I can still take my dual monitor goodness with me.
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
I propose that the GP is either:
:-P
a) not a true nerd, or
b) not a guy.
Because every guy and every nerd knows that bigger/more is better.
You bring up some of the very points that I want to bring up. I don't see how lecture attendance necessarily is an important part of the process. Unless it's to somehow stroke the professor's ego, but if that's the case he can fuck off. As a matter of fact, I had more than one prof. in college who made it plainly evident that he despised teaching and would rather be concentrating on his research than lecturing to us. (And one of those would get pissed if you didn't come -- sort of an "If I have to come, so do you" attitude.)
My thoughts are thus: I'm the one paying for the service, so why shouldn't I be allowed to use it in the manner that I see fit? Scientists love to point out that different people learn in different manners, so why should those who learn better on their own be punished and still forced to attend lecture?
I can recall two classes where my truancy rate was ~50%, but in which I still mad acceptable grades. In one class the professor always came to class so poorly prepared that he would often stop and restart examples on the board several times; constantly ammending the problem and basically trying to puzzle through it himself in front of the class. The joke was that you had to take notes in pencil since you would have to erase half of them as you went. There were actually two occasions where the professor was so confused that he stopped and said that he'd have to work the example on his own again and show us next week. Now what benefit did I get from going to that lecture? If I'm going to have to invest the time to completely learn the material on my own, then I'm certainly not going to come to lecture.
In the other class, the professor basically read the book to us with very little to no further exposition on what the text might mean. When I did go to class, myself and a friend would basically place bets on to which paragraph the professor was going to recite next. When I spend my time in class developing rules and a scoring system for betting on a lecture, that means it's time to stop going. In the end, I only went once a week to turn in the assignments and even then I only went out of guilt. I could have easily given my homework to somebody else to turn in.
To the question submitter. Stop trying to force people to attend class -- especially if they can demonstrate a grasp of the material on the exams. Universitey should not be about you trying to force the students to learn in the "approved" manner. Those kids will get enough of that rank and file bullshit when they join the corporate world. Anyway, those who don't attend will always find away around whatever protection methods you could institute. Students are good at that. They have more free time than you. Instead, university should be about the students learning the material. If that student feels that he learns better by listening to the podcasts while sitting around in his underwear and watching pr0n at the same time, then so be it. That's his perogative. At least he's learning .
Actually, I was parly in jest with my comment, although that was informative. I actually heard a sales drone in a Best Buy one time recommend a 9700 over an X850 becuase the 9700 had a higher number. I've always wondered how many other people have made this same mistake.
And where's my Radeon 9800 fit in to this equation? ;)
I had (still have, actually) this old Compaq Presario computer with a Pentium 200 MMX processor. The thing was never the most stable computer out there and was a pain in the but to work on, having non-standard screws and proprietay memory, as most Compaqs of that era did. One day I realized that I had a bunch of old hard drives lying around, so I decide to make this Compaq into a makeshift file server by adding the two larger drives in to the machine and brought it to school with my at the start of my Senior year. The machine's sole purpose was to act as a file server AND as a second internet/instant messaging terminal that I could use when my primary desktop was otherwise engaged. The machine didn't do this well as it seemed to suffer a 25% random reboot rate while using it. (Windows 98, couldn't even get Linux to come close to running on it.) This wasn't really any different from the sort of behavior it had shown since the day we purchased it, shortly after the MMX processors were released, so I just put up with it until...
;)
One day I'm playing Serious Sam over the LAN with some friends. There's a brief lull in the action and so I reach over for the 1 gallon bottle of apple juice I was drinking from. Well, instead of picking up the apple juice, I tip it over and the entire contents spill out ON TOP OF the Compaq. I of course, immediately jump in to disaster recovery mode and race to the kitchen to grab the paper towels. I start cleaning up the mess, expecting the wrost for the Compaq in the process. I could see where there was apple juice in all of the little crevices and I'm darn sure some of it actually got into the computer. Some had spilled on to some school papers lying next to the machine and I wanted to make sure I didn't lose any notes so I took plenty of time to salvage those papers.
After I finished cleaning up the mess, I check the computer. Mouse and keyboard input seem OK. I start up Winamp and it seems to work OK. I run scandisk on all of the drives and they all report being OK. I can't find a single thing wrong with this computer. And I'll be damned if that computer didn't have a single random reboot after I spilled apple juice on it. It became the object of admiration and jokes amongst my friends, and one friend even managed to find one of those fruity, rainbow colored Apple Computer stickers that he wanted me to put on the case. I never even bothered to open up the computer to asses the damages (partly becuase I was lazy and didn't have a torx screw driver at school). Truth be told, I was afraid to even move the comptuer or otherwise disturb it since it seemed to be working OK.
A quick addendum to this story... right before graduation I purchased another hard drive for my primary desktop machine that was about 4 times the total capacity of the drives in the apple computer. I copied all of my data off the apple computer on to this drive and pretty much relegated the apple solely to web surfing detail. About a year and a half later, I need another hard drive for a client machine and so I decide to finally open the apple computer to raid one of the hard drives in it. I was even more amazed then that the computer still worked. There was brown, sticky apple juice residue on everything in the computer. There was even a puddle of this gooey gel that had pooled at the bottom of the case. It was all over the cables, the drives, everything. I was even more surprised and even a little bit proud that the computer still worked after that ordeal.
I guess that just goes to show: if you want a stable computer, get an Apple.
I had the same CD problem that you describe happening in one of my machines. I think I determined that drive motor was just going bad and couldn't spin the disc unless the computer was close to perfectly level.
I actually had just the opposite happen with one of my friends. He had given me the CDs for the Mankrake 10.0 Community distribution. I start the install, get it to the copy files stage, and then go to work. On the way home from work, I stopped by his place to say hi and we eventually end up going back to my place so I can finish installing Mandrake. After the install, everything was working except for the sound card. At first I just chalked it up to plain bad luck as I always seem to have issues with installing sound cards or finding proper drivers for the crappy onboard sound cards. The only difference this time is that this is a Sound Blaster Live! card -- probably one of the most ubiquitous cards produced and installed in the late 90's, early 00's.
:)
Long story short: we spend all night troubleshooting the PC and even rebooting back in to Windows to verify that the card itself is still working there. The card was working perfectly in Windows and it had worked perfectly under the SuSE distro that was overwritten when I installed Mandrake. After working on it for a while we decide to call it a night, and I turn the machine off and he goes home. About 5 minutes after he's gone, I decide to boot the computer again. Lo and behold! Sound works! I call him this and tell him this. He comes over again the next day, and of course the sound card won't work when I try to show it to him.
I don't know if we ever figured out what was wrong. I think Tim and I just decided that he must have had some kind of unusual biorhythm or something.
/. really needs a +1 Sad But True mod. :)
I agree that Dish should have to pay for their actions. But I think the judge should have leveled a greater fine rather than issue this injunction. The big problem that I see is that this now sets a precedent for other lawsuits regarding Tivo's patent. Tivo may now be able to leverage this decision against other competitors with whom they have not had direct business dealings.
It's a shame that millions of Echostar customers will now have non-functional DVR boxes, which they paid for?
Let's see if we can draw a similar, hypothetical example to the Linux world. Say, Microsoft sues KDE(or whatever your favorite window manager may be) and wins an injunction against KDE because KDE is infringing on their patent for, say, displaying multiple windows on the screen at the same time. In 30 days, KDE has to disable every version of KDE installed via their patch updating system. How pissed would you be? Now think about how pissed you would be if you had paid for KDE. How is this at all fair to KDE since there are dozens of other similar systems with the exact same funtionality on the market and how is KDE to compete without the ability to do the same?
After looking a little further into the case I don't disagree that Echostar should pay for some of their dirty tacts. Pay monetarily, that is. But to issue an injunction against what is an obvious process that has been implemented on dozens of other competitor devices is tantamount to a death sentence for Echostar.
To champion a piece of technology or a particular company you like, is one thing. To support such an obviously absurd judicial decision just because you like a company is another thing. Like Tivo or not, this decision is just another case of a ridiculous patent that should never have been granted now being used for litigation purposes.
Actually, I lived there for 6 years. Katrina was the first hurricane to hit us in that time. The city isn't as prone as, say, Miami.