Indeed, it doesn't mean much and I said so in my post. I deliberately avoided the model because it turns out it runs a weird OS nobody knows, reviews online were mixed. You don't have that problem with the iPhone: the only differences are in storage and external colour, which for the non-tech user is the only thing that is interesting in the first place (the colour, not the storage) Comparing a 150€ phone with a 600€ phone is not fair. However, if you get a HTC at 500€ or 600€, then I really don't see why you wouldn't get the "real thing". You also mention that you changed the firmware of your wifes phone. How many people can do that? How many wives have geek husbands that can do it and realize they fuck up warranty by doing so and still risking that darling wife wouldn't like it.
The whole point is that non-geek people do not think like we do and for the matter HTC is HTC to the layman, whether it's a Desire or a Smart.
Verizon rep's job is to get a subscription, matching the customer with a device that most closely meets their needs
Which for 95% of all customers would be an iPhone. Don't mistake me for an Apple fanboi, we have 4 Apple products in our household of which only two were purchased within the last year and none of those are mine: an iMac 27" and a spanking brand new white iPhone. Both belong to my wife. (The other two products are a 1st gen iPod Shuffle, which is mine and a 2nd gen iPod Mini which belongs to my wife.... Neither of those get much use anymore).
I'm a nerd, I admit that and proud of it. My wife, however is at the other side of the spectrum. You pretty much can't get less tech inclined as her and for people her generation (born in the eighties) that is still very common. As a matter of fact, she used to have a Windows computer and it was always "jts, can you do this for me, jts can you do that for me, ad infinitum". It's not that I don't love my wife, but if you've been married for a while that really gets on your nerves. So we bought an iMac. Now there is the occasional question, but much less trouble. I set her up an iTunes account so she could buy music. She never did.
What does this all have to do with the iPhone? Simple. A few month ago her trusty old Samsung cellphone died. Being the cheapskate I am, I bought her a new touchscreen HTC. Not the highest end, because if I'd go high end I could just as well buy an iPhone, right? She agreed with me: don't spend too much money on a stupid phone. The thing is: She was completely unable to use the phone. Calls went off without her wanting it, writing SMSes was hard (We use at least 3 languages on a daily base, so the typical T9 needs to be disabled and the on-screen keyboard needs to work well, including accentuation and stuff like that) I didn't believe her, I thought it would just be a matter of her getting used to it. Not so... After a good month and a half she was still struggling.
Again, as married guys know, having a wife complaining about the same thing over and over gets fast quick. Just to get rid of the complaints, I decided to get her an iPhone... I set it up to use our wireless, connected it to her iTunes account and registered it with her iMac and imported her iTunes music (which I ripped from CD years ago when she was still using Windows).
I got basically no questions, she managed to type SMSes (in all languages) and to do her calls and it didn't call accidentally when she didn't want it to. Within a day she started to send emails with pictures to her friends (she'd never done that on a computer AFAIK) Within two days, she had found how to download apps (mostly books apps and to my utter stupefaction she had bought a few music albums. The third day, we sit in a pub with a friend of her. She asks me to take a picture of them. I do, give her back the phone and she sends is immediately to the email of said friend. Not even thinking twice that she was now using 3G instead of the Wifi at home.
That is what the iPhone does... It enables the non-tech user to use technology. It's utterly amazing. Actually, I expected this to happen when she switched computers to the iMac, but that was not where the big "enabling" happened. The iPhone did, and if you ask me... Instead of having bought that huge-ass iMac, I should have bought her an iPad. Would have been much cheaper.
I do realize that I am comparing a cheaper phone with an iPhone and that I'm sure that the touch screen is the major reason of her inability to use the HTC. I've taken the HTC into use now. It' ok... I got "used to it", but is that really what we want? The user to "get used to it"? If the iPhone weren't so friggin expensive, I'd consider one for myself but one 50€ plan per month in this family is enough.
If the task of the salesperson is to meet the users needs, then I'd bet money on it that the iPhone fits the needs of normal (non-geek) people best.
ah.. good ol days!:) [...] Linux (SUSE and then Ubuntu)
You made me feel old... When I was at University, the first version Ubuntu was another 10 years away and SuSE was still German. I'm only 35. *sigh* (Now some former Yggdrasil user should pop up in the thread or someone who downloaded Linux when it was still in 0.x versions)
They are pushing those here too. Except I refuse to get one for different reasons:
The token costs money every year (renewal) and my ebanking has been 100% free at both institutions I use. This would raise the cost for no good reason
The company providing those card readers (pretty much state mandated monopoly) supports only Windows with just recently Mac OS X support and only for 10.4 and 10.5 (which might be acceptable, I stopped using OS X at 10.3). As a Linux user, I'm left in the cold because the official support for Linux is RedHat 4.0 and Debian Etch. I guess they couldn't do even older distributions. Linky Sure, it might work on newer systems but why spend money to find out?
The underlying system uses a Java Applet... This adds another point of failure in the whole stack.
The whole thing is pushed hard by the government, but uptake is luckily low (probably due to the fact that it costs money for no good reason)
Of the two banks I use, one uses a software certificate to identify you coupled with a password and a 16-char codecard where random digits are asked. That's secure enough in my book as long as you keep your password secure and the codecard. The other bank uses a username/password with a similar 16-digit codecard. Both lock you out at three wrong logins. The bank with the certificate is pretty much not susceptible to phishing as an intruder would need your certificate, the other bank would be and you can calculate the probability of break in chances. Anyway, I haven't ever had any problems and I have never heard of anyones account getting hacked... Might just be covered up, but still.
where deleting an e-mail without reading it can get you into trouble
.... How to you find out it's not for you without reading it?:-)
Snarky comment aside, I am actually advocating deleting those emails (If you'd bother reading the full thread, you'd know that). It's just that if you start to look into the issue, you could be in trouble either way. The "deleting" option being the less risky one.
Bayesian filters learn. Mark too much legit looking email as spam and legit email will end up as spam. Consider that before marking anything as spam, you might be condemning your future legit mail to your spam folder. It's exactly for this reason that there is a "reset training data" button in Thunderbird. As these Bayesian spam filters are pretty much black boxes, it makes it really hard to find why exactly a legit email has been marked as spam. I use JunQuilla now, because it gives me a bit more insight.
It is junk, if it is unsolicited (I fscked my markup and somewhere the word "spam" got swallowed in the italicized part of the post). The thing is, that Bayesian filters learn and these emails are legit, just not for you. Assume you train your Bayesian filter to ignore these, you have the risk that it will start to ignore emails from your bank as Junk too as those will most likely be similar in content and scope. That's not something you want. That said, I don't think a bank should communicate with you by email on a regular base. It's fine when you have a particular problem and you emailed them and they reply, but apart from that your bank should never initiate communications by email.
Just to clarify: I don't recommend calling them because it costs you time and money. In this case, liability might go both ways. Inform them and you're liable because you have gotten information not for you, or -as I suggest- delete the stuff and be liable because you didn't inform them you were not the intended person. In the legal sense, I fear that both decisions can get you into trouble.
Yes? You were nice enough to contact the Sheriff and notify them of their error. That's nice, but in no way your obligation. You may have been on a three week vacation and read it when it was too late. Still, setting up manual filters for every occurrence as I described in my post covers this situation, as the Sheriffs mail would have ended up in your Inbox and you would have read it. The decision on what to do would still be left to you. This falls into the category of "reply-able" emails which is not the actual problem the "Ask Slashdot" person described. His problem was mainly with the non-reply-able addresses. My comment covered those. Anyone with a normal email address can still be informed by a quick note. That doesn't take much time and doesn't cost much money. However, as it is not your obligation, it is down to your own ethics.
Oh, come on... That' s pretty much next to impossible. He says he has a common name, let's assume "John Smith" who is subscribed to CableCo in State ST. That's it. If he really has a very common name/surname combo I can assure you there will be hundreds of "John Smith" in State ST. Finding them, with the limited information you have, is even more time consuming and expensive than calling CableCo.
If the address of said "John Smith" is in the bill, you have a better chance, but still, it will cost time and money. Don't do it. It's their problem.
Frankly... Filter them out. It is not your job to fix their problems, because in fact that's what you suggest doing. The companies got those email addresses from their client and if they didn't it is and it belongs in your junk folder. Getting on the phone with those companies costs you time and money, and that's where it ends.
I would not suggest filtering out all messages that contain "no-reply" or similar in their From field. I'd suggest that if you get such a misdirected message, you add a custom filter directly to trash (not Junk, that may screw the Bayesian filter). Try matching on the subject or so, for example, for the cable company it typically will have a subject "CableCo Bill of 06/2011", then filter on Subject: "CableCo Bill".
The example you gave with the kid was most likely on purpose done by the kid. I'm pretty sure a kid trying to activate an account would try with a phony email or something else, not realizing that in fact that won't bring them closer to activation. If it does, the activation of the website they applied for is broken. (Besides, really, a clever kid just makes his own "parent email account" and circumvents the system).
But it also needs to teach each student enough of a trade that the student can start paying for tuition.
Yes, I agree in a sense. However, in computer science they should teach one language per programming paradigm. Preferably not the popular ones. Then, in programming projects you give them the task to do in other programming languages. If the concepts are understood, one language is like the other and can easily be picked up.
It is uncanny how many time I get asked what "my programming language of choice is". I don't have any: know one programming language, know them all. Sure, they all have their pitfalls, but you should be able to pick the language up quickly.
That works as long as you only have to do with US-Layout keyboard. I have to cope with a multitude different keyboard layouts. The only I type this on (which is not the one I normally use) would render password like ")éeeà(r".
Oh, I can completely relate to how you feel. Thing is, if you're not in IT, you don't feel that way and sometimes they can't even comprehend that an email address wouldn't be from one of the free or ISP ones.
I have a couple of domains myself, and one is owned by my dad. That domain name is willekens.lu, because our family name is Willekens and we live in Luxembourg. It used to be a pretty expensive and exclusive TLD. Obviously, we all have our firstname@willekens.lu and you'd expect people to easily understand that. Well, most non-IT people simply don't get it. They think you're pulling their leg because that's an email address that "can't be".
A few years ago, I found out that the.com for a dear friends last name was still free. I bought it for him for Christmas and associated it with Google for Domains so he can easily control it himself. (He's gifted with computers, but wasn't in IT back then). He has exactly the same problem as we do with willekens.lu
Finally, there is the risk that the domain name you choose might be hard to spell (especially given the meager selection of these days). When I was young, I got myself my Internet nickname as.com,.net and.org. I thought it was clever. Guess what: it isn't. Sure, it's halfway novel, but try to spell it over the phone. Heck, I wouldn't even know how to pronounce my own Internet nickname even though I invented it. It's horror to spell over the phone, and I have reverted to using willekens.lu most of the time.
Compare that to gmail, hotmail, and yahoo users... They don't have to spell that part at all, only the username.
I agree that for a company, they should use a registered domain, only to look more professional. However, it really only looks more professional to us IT people. My father in law (business owner) has a domain name, but on his lorries and business cards it's still companyname@isp.lu. I told him it doesn't look professional, and he said he didn't care and they are used to how it is now. They won't change.
That's an over-generalization, and with the current state of consumer end routers, probably even bad advice. I've been using my Linksys WAP54G for years, and an identical model at my parents (I checked my slashdot journal: May 2005). They support up to WPA2-AES since the latest firmware I put on them (might be a better one by now.... It's been ages, but if it works don't touch it). Sure, it's a access point and not a router, because it was bought in a time where routers didn't have wireless by default.
The only, but really only issue I have with it is that it's range isn't great. I guess, better antennas could alleviate that problem, but as it reaches my wifes iMac (furthest away) with full signal it's fine. (My laptop, usally doesn't get full signal, I guess it's an internal antenna problem)
Modern routers? Oh, boy... From my experience the firmware is so crappy that something you need on it will not work, or not work correctly. For example, I had a nice 2003 ADSL modem (yes, modem, not router). I do my routing with a Soekris net5501-70 and OpenBSD. One day it stopped working. I tried it on my dad ADSL line and it worked there. Apparently the telco company had upgraded something in my area and that made my old venerable modem stop working. I had to buy a new router, and got the greatest and latest from my ISP (still, spending money for no reason in my humble opinion). You know what, this thing couldn't even operate in bridge mode! Impossible to use. The firmware had the option, but just did a complete factory reset if you selected it. I realize this is not wireless related, but frankly, if firmware craps on that, I have no confidence in it's quality.
My sister recently got her own ADSL line, and she got exactly that model. The guy coming to her place to install it told her it was the greatest model they had. I told her to expect problems.
I've been thinking that if I want to upgrade my wireless network (which at this moment is not high on my priority list), I'll go with professional Cisco gear. It may cost an arm and a leg, but there is no way I'll suffer with todays consume grade stuff.
Ah, just for the record. My current wireless, has no problem using 802.11b alongside 802.11g. I have a PSP, and that's 802.11b only. Works find, with no significant impact on the other wireless devices.
Nice, but in my opinion, this should have been disabled by design. You don't reboot when users are logged in and have potential programs running whether the are AFK or not.
Okay, I find my wifes iMac to want to reboot quite often too. However on Windows XP, unless you turn off Windows Update, you can find your computer rebooted whenever it liked to, cheerfully announcing you with a systray notification that it did so because of a security update. It may now do that much less, but it did a lot a few years ago. I rarely to never boot into Windows, and if I do, I have so many updates that invariably I end up having to reboot anyway. The problem with XP is that it reboots without really asking you. Well, it asks you, but when you're not at your keyboard you're screwed.
but it falls down on many other art styles. Something like an old Sierra game (mid-series Kings Quest, Space Quest, etc...) are likely to be a hot mess.
I'm not so sure, especially not on the (remastered) VGA Sierra editions. Go look at page 7 of the PDF and you'll notice the "Axe Battler" which is reminiscent of the VGA Sierras. Worked just fine.
Now the original EGA sprites (or equivalent, back in the day, the PC wasn't the "Ruler" in the home computing world) probably would be a lot trickier.
You know why nobody (read: avg consumers) buys top end processors?
There is another reason... Given enough RAM, any x86 computer built in the last 7 years has enough oompha for those "average" users. Heck, if it didn't blew it's caps, I'd still be using my wifes P-IV 2.6GHz HT (originally 512MB RAM, but upgraded to 2GB). That's a 2003 computer.
Heck, my AMD Athlon 2400+ MP is gathering dust in the basement (also a 2003 computer), because I got an AMD Athlon 64 4300+ from someone who didn't need it anymore. It's my main computer and it's perfectly fine for daily use. I'd still like to find a use for my MP, but it's so loud, I can't keep it on 24/7 so a server is out.
Why not use the logical entities? It is a "u" with "umlaut", which translates to ü which renders as ü You can remember a lot of them just knowing what they are called.
The cheapest 27" iMac here starts at 1649€. The cheapest iMac (21") is 1149€. I'm not saying those are bad machines, I think they're great. However, you'll need to add in another 269€ for a Windows 7 Professional license (Can't use Systems Builder or a OEM license to be fully legal). For that kind of money you can get a lot of Dell or HP.
Granted, the resolutions the iMac offer are great... Absolutely non-standard in the PC world.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, it doesn't mean much and I said so in my post. I deliberately avoided the model because it turns out it runs a weird OS nobody knows, reviews online were mixed. You don't have that problem with the iPhone: the only differences are in storage and external colour, which for the non-tech user is the only thing that is interesting in the first place (the colour, not the storage) Comparing a 150€ phone with a 600€ phone is not fair. However, if you get a HTC at 500€ or 600€, then I really don't see why you wouldn't get the "real thing". You also mention that you changed the firmware of your wifes phone. How many people can do that? How many wives have geek husbands that can do it and realize they fuck up warranty by doing so and still risking that darling wife wouldn't like it.
The whole point is that non-geek people do not think like we do and for the matter HTC is HTC to the layman, whether it's a Desire or a Smart.
Which for 95% of all customers would be an iPhone. Don't mistake me for an Apple fanboi, we have 4 Apple products in our household of which only two were purchased within the last year and none of those are mine: an iMac 27" and a spanking brand new white iPhone. Both belong to my wife. (The other two products are a 1st gen iPod Shuffle, which is mine and a 2nd gen iPod Mini which belongs to my wife.... Neither of those get much use anymore).
I'm a nerd, I admit that and proud of it. My wife, however is at the other side of the spectrum. You pretty much can't get less tech inclined as her and for people her generation (born in the eighties) that is still very common. As a matter of fact, she used to have a Windows computer and it was always "jts, can you do this for me, jts can you do that for me, ad infinitum". It's not that I don't love my wife, but if you've been married for a while that really gets on your nerves. So we bought an iMac. Now there is the occasional question, but much less trouble. I set her up an iTunes account so she could buy music. She never did.
What does this all have to do with the iPhone? Simple. A few month ago her trusty old Samsung cellphone died. Being the cheapskate I am, I bought her a new touchscreen HTC. Not the highest end, because if I'd go high end I could just as well buy an iPhone, right? She agreed with me: don't spend too much money on a stupid phone. The thing is: She was completely unable to use the phone. Calls went off without her wanting it, writing SMSes was hard (We use at least 3 languages on a daily base, so the typical T9 needs to be disabled and the on-screen keyboard needs to work well, including accentuation and stuff like that) I didn't believe her, I thought it would just be a matter of her getting used to it. Not so... After a good month and a half she was still struggling.
Again, as married guys know, having a wife complaining about the same thing over and over gets fast quick. Just to get rid of the complaints, I decided to get her an iPhone... I set it up to use our wireless, connected it to her iTunes account and registered it with her iMac and imported her iTunes music (which I ripped from CD years ago when she was still using Windows).
I got basically no questions, she managed to type SMSes (in all languages) and to do her calls and it didn't call accidentally when she didn't want it to. Within a day she started to send emails with pictures to her friends (she'd never done that on a computer AFAIK) Within two days, she had found how to download apps (mostly books apps and to my utter stupefaction she had bought a few music albums. The third day, we sit in a pub with a friend of her. She asks me to take a picture of them. I do, give her back the phone and she sends is immediately to the email of said friend. Not even thinking twice that she was now using 3G instead of the Wifi at home.
That is what the iPhone does... It enables the non-tech user to use technology. It's utterly amazing. Actually, I expected this to happen when she switched computers to the iMac, but that was not where the big "enabling" happened. The iPhone did, and if you ask me... Instead of having bought that huge-ass iMac, I should have bought her an iPad. Would have been much cheaper.
I do realize that I am comparing a cheaper phone with an iPhone and that I'm sure that the touch screen is the major reason of her inability to use the HTC. I've taken the HTC into use now. It' ok... I got "used to it", but is that really what we want? The user to "get used to it"? If the iPhone weren't so friggin expensive, I'd consider one for myself but one 50€ plan per month in this family is enough.
If the task of the salesperson is to meet the users needs, then I'd bet money on it that the iPhone fits the needs of normal (non-geek) people best.
You made me feel old... When I was at University, the first version Ubuntu was another 10 years away and SuSE was still German. I'm only 35. *sigh* (Now some former Yggdrasil user should pop up in the thread or someone who downloaded Linux when it was still in 0.x versions)
Beats me... Ask them.
They are pushing those here too. Except I refuse to get one for different reasons:
The whole thing is pushed hard by the government, but uptake is luckily low (probably due to the fact that it costs money for no good reason)
Of the two banks I use, one uses a software certificate to identify you coupled with a password and a 16-char codecard where random digits are asked. That's secure enough in my book as long as you keep your password secure and the codecard. The other bank uses a username/password with a similar 16-digit codecard. Both lock you out at three wrong logins. The bank with the certificate is pretty much not susceptible to phishing as an intruder would need your certificate, the other bank would be and you can calculate the probability of break in chances. Anyway, I haven't ever had any problems and I have never heard of anyones account getting hacked... Might just be covered up, but still.
.... How to you find out it's not for you without reading it? :-)
Snarky comment aside, I am actually advocating deleting those emails (If you'd bother reading the full thread, you'd know that). It's just that if you start to look into the issue, you could be in trouble either way. The "deleting" option being the less risky one.
Bayesian filters learn. Mark too much legit looking email as spam and legit email will end up as spam. Consider that before marking anything as spam, you might be condemning your future legit mail to your spam folder. It's exactly for this reason that there is a "reset training data" button in Thunderbird. As these Bayesian spam filters are pretty much black boxes, it makes it really hard to find why exactly a legit email has been marked as spam. I use JunQuilla now, because it gives me a bit more insight.
It is junk, if it is unsolicited (I fscked my markup and somewhere the word "spam" got swallowed in the italicized part of the post). The thing is, that Bayesian filters learn and these emails are legit, just not for you. Assume you train your Bayesian filter to ignore these, you have the risk that it will start to ignore emails from your bank as Junk too as those will most likely be similar in content and scope. That's not something you want. That said, I don't think a bank should communicate with you by email on a regular base. It's fine when you have a particular problem and you emailed them and they reply, but apart from that your bank should never initiate communications by email.
Just to clarify: I don't recommend calling them because it costs you time and money. In this case, liability might go both ways. Inform them and you're liable because you have gotten information not for you, or -as I suggest- delete the stuff and be liable because you didn't inform them you were not the intended person. In the legal sense, I fear that both decisions can get you into trouble.
Yes? You were nice enough to contact the Sheriff and notify them of their error. That's nice, but in no way your obligation. You may have been on a three week vacation and read it when it was too late. Still, setting up manual filters for every occurrence as I described in my post covers this situation, as the Sheriffs mail would have ended up in your Inbox and you would have read it. The decision on what to do would still be left to you. This falls into the category of "reply-able" emails which is not the actual problem the "Ask Slashdot" person described. His problem was mainly with the non-reply-able addresses. My comment covered those. Anyone with a normal email address can still be informed by a quick note. That doesn't take much time and doesn't cost much money. However, as it is not your obligation, it is down to your own ethics.
Oh, come on... That' s pretty much next to impossible. He says he has a common name, let's assume "John Smith" who is subscribed to CableCo in State ST. That's it. If he really has a very common name/surname combo I can assure you there will be hundreds of "John Smith" in State ST. Finding them, with the limited information you have, is even more time consuming and expensive than calling CableCo.
If the address of said "John Smith" is in the bill, you have a better chance, but still, it will cost time and money. Don't do it. It's their problem.
Frankly... Filter them out. It is not your job to fix their problems, because in fact that's what you suggest doing. The companies got those email addresses from their client and if they didn't it is and it belongs in your junk folder. Getting on the phone with those companies costs you time and money, and that's where it ends.
I would not suggest filtering out all messages that contain "no-reply" or similar in their From field. I'd suggest that if you get such a misdirected message, you add a custom filter directly to trash (not Junk, that may screw the Bayesian filter). Try matching on the subject or so, for example, for the cable company it typically will have a subject "CableCo Bill of 06/2011", then filter on Subject: "CableCo Bill".
The example you gave with the kid was most likely on purpose done by the kid. I'm pretty sure a kid trying to activate an account would try with a phony email or something else, not realizing that in fact that won't bring them closer to activation. If it does, the activation of the website they applied for is broken. (Besides, really, a clever kid just makes his own "parent email account" and circumvents the system).
Yes, I agree in a sense. However, in computer science they should teach one language per programming paradigm. Preferably not the popular ones. Then, in programming projects you give them the task to do in other programming languages. If the concepts are understood, one language is like the other and can easily be picked up.
It is uncanny how many time I get asked what "my programming language of choice is". I don't have any: know one programming language, know them all. Sure, they all have their pitfalls, but you should be able to pick the language up quickly.
That works as long as you only have to do with US-Layout keyboard. I have to cope with a multitude different keyboard layouts. The only I type this on (which is not the one I normally use) would render password like ")éeeà(r".
That's okay... It confirms what I've been thinking a long time. Thanks for that.
Oh, I can completely relate to how you feel. Thing is, if you're not in IT, you don't feel that way and sometimes they can't even comprehend that an email address wouldn't be from one of the free or ISP ones.
I have a couple of domains myself, and one is owned by my dad. That domain name is willekens.lu, because our family name is Willekens and we live in Luxembourg. It used to be a pretty expensive and exclusive TLD. Obviously, we all have our firstname@willekens.lu and you'd expect people to easily understand that. Well, most non-IT people simply don't get it. They think you're pulling their leg because that's an email address that "can't be".
A few years ago, I found out that the .com for a dear friends last name was still free. I bought it for him for Christmas and associated it with Google for Domains so he can easily control it himself. (He's gifted with computers, but wasn't in IT back then). He has exactly the same problem as we do with willekens.lu
Finally, there is the risk that the domain name you choose might be hard to spell (especially given the meager selection of these days). When I was young, I got myself my Internet nickname as .com, .net and .org. I thought it was clever. Guess what: it isn't. Sure, it's halfway novel, but try to spell it over the phone. Heck, I wouldn't even know how to pronounce my own Internet nickname even though I invented it. It's horror to spell over the phone, and I have reverted to using willekens.lu most of the time.
Compare that to gmail, hotmail, and yahoo users... They don't have to spell that part at all, only the username.
I agree that for a company, they should use a registered domain, only to look more professional. However, it really only looks more professional to us IT people. My father in law (business owner) has a domain name, but on his lorries and business cards it's still companyname@isp.lu. I told him it doesn't look professional, and he said he didn't care and they are used to how it is now. They won't change.
That's an over-generalization, and with the current state of consumer end routers, probably even bad advice. I've been using my Linksys WAP54G for years, and an identical model at my parents (I checked my slashdot journal: May 2005). They support up to WPA2-AES since the latest firmware I put on them (might be a better one by now.... It's been ages, but if it works don't touch it). Sure, it's a access point and not a router, because it was bought in a time where routers didn't have wireless by default.
The only, but really only issue I have with it is that it's range isn't great. I guess, better antennas could alleviate that problem, but as it reaches my wifes iMac (furthest away) with full signal it's fine. (My laptop, usally doesn't get full signal, I guess it's an internal antenna problem)
Modern routers? Oh, boy... From my experience the firmware is so crappy that something you need on it will not work, or not work correctly. For example, I had a nice 2003 ADSL modem (yes, modem, not router). I do my routing with a Soekris net5501-70 and OpenBSD. One day it stopped working. I tried it on my dad ADSL line and it worked there. Apparently the telco company had upgraded something in my area and that made my old venerable modem stop working. I had to buy a new router, and got the greatest and latest from my ISP (still, spending money for no reason in my humble opinion). You know what, this thing couldn't even operate in bridge mode! Impossible to use. The firmware had the option, but just did a complete factory reset if you selected it. I realize this is not wireless related, but frankly, if firmware craps on that, I have no confidence in it's quality.
My sister recently got her own ADSL line, and she got exactly that model. The guy coming to her place to install it told her it was the greatest model they had. I told her to expect problems.
I've been thinking that if I want to upgrade my wireless network (which at this moment is not high on my priority list), I'll go with professional Cisco gear. It may cost an arm and a leg, but there is no way I'll suffer with todays consume grade stuff.
Ah, just for the record. My current wireless, has no problem using 802.11b alongside 802.11g. I have a PSP, and that's 802.11b only. Works find, with no significant impact on the other wireless devices.
Nice, but in my opinion, this should have been disabled by design. You don't reboot when users are logged in and have potential programs running whether the are AFK or not.
And the group policy editor is available for Windows XP Home out of the box, right? I'm not even sure it's included with XP Pro.
Okay, I find my wifes iMac to want to reboot quite often too. However on Windows XP, unless you turn off Windows Update, you can find your computer rebooted whenever it liked to, cheerfully announcing you with a systray notification that it did so because of a security update. It may now do that much less, but it did a lot a few years ago. I rarely to never boot into Windows, and if I do, I have so many updates that invariably I end up having to reboot anyway. The problem with XP is that it reboots without really asking you. Well, it asks you, but when you're not at your keyboard you're screwed.
I'm not so sure, especially not on the (remastered) VGA Sierra editions. Go look at page 7 of the PDF and you'll notice the "Axe Battler" which is reminiscent of the VGA Sierras. Worked just fine.
Now the original EGA sprites (or equivalent, back in the day, the PC wasn't the "Ruler" in the home computing world) probably would be a lot trickier.
Just someone mixing up their tax havens ;-) If only it was also a tax haven for citizens. *sigh*
There is another reason... Given enough RAM, any x86 computer built in the last 7 years has enough oompha for those "average" users. Heck, if it didn't blew it's caps, I'd still be using my wifes P-IV 2.6GHz HT (originally 512MB RAM, but upgraded to 2GB). That's a 2003 computer.
Heck, my AMD Athlon 2400+ MP is gathering dust in the basement (also a 2003 computer), because I got an AMD Athlon 64 4300+ from someone who didn't need it anymore. It's my main computer and it's perfectly fine for daily use. I'd still like to find a use for my MP, but it's so loud, I can't keep it on 24/7 so a server is out.
Why not use the logical entities? It is a "u" with "umlaut", which translates to ü which renders as ü You can remember a lot of them just knowing what they are called.
The cheapest 27" iMac here starts at 1649€. The cheapest iMac (21") is 1149€. I'm not saying those are bad machines, I think they're great. However, you'll need to add in another 269€ for a Windows 7 Professional license (Can't use Systems Builder or a OEM license to be fully legal). For that kind of money you can get a lot of Dell or HP.
Granted, the resolutions the iMac offer are great... Absolutely non-standard in the PC world.