sounds like a great idea I would love to try it, but I don't think I could stop watching movies. And old 50s, 60s and 70s sci-fi shows like the twilight zone. They are creepy to watch in the future.
Theres two levels of usability that linux should strive for. 1)Being as usable as windows. 2) being more user friendly than windows so someone can sit down and have no problems.
Number one is a short term goal where number 2 is the ultimate goal of ubuntu. Some of the problems listed are things that windows does well and others are things that it and Ubuntu(and other desktop distros) should do well. I have seen users just as frustrated over windows XP but that doesn't make it right. We have to be better and more usable than windows if we want them to change over to a linux solution.
His girlfriend probably would benifit from using ubuntu to search youtube and msn but if she can't set it up on her own it's going to be hard for other average users to use it and that is the articals point. We need to stop saying well set it up for them and make it as easy as putting a disk in and following a few prompts to get it setup. A desktop OS should be as simple for the end user as possible and hes just saying where it falls short(and not by much I must say things have come far)
know whats nice about widescreen and coding(not on a laptop of course)? Rotating the screen 90 degrees. You get alot more space if you do that for coding. Hell you could have one rotated and one not. People you arn't limited on how you have your screen. Infact you see alot more when you do this.
I used to do this alot and it also works with avi but as of late when I do it alot of the hits I get are spam sites, with the odd hit. If someone doesn't know how to spot one of the spam site they could run into simular problems as they would if they ran limewire. Especially if their browser and OS aren't patched. Older IE clients running activex without prompting and such make this option no longer a good one for most users. That and I've been finding less and less through google, not sure of the reason.
That's exactly why I buy business laptops instead. They typically have all the features that I require and the matte screen is nicer if you ask me. The only problem I have is that in my old job I would take my laptop with me and it would have been nice to interface with some of the older switches that used a db9 port. Finding a newer laptop with a db 9 port and all the features that I wanted was hard.
I ended up going with the thinkpad T60 at the time but wish I had found one with a db 9 connector.
Cannibal! The Musical is one of my favorite movies, if you haven't done so get the DVD with the comentaries it's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. They get so drunk by the end it starts to not make much sense but it's classic.
I check out southparkstudios all the time I'm a huge fan. The site change a little while ago and I think the US was able to start watching the video soon after. But I live in Canada and all I have been getting is a terrance and phillip image saying sorry canada full episodes coming soon. So I think by beta they mean it will be rolling out completly soon(I hope) and that they may take down some episodes and such while they are working on it.
Either that or they have adapted googles beta testing technique.
Nothing has to be free. You could pay for everything you ever got for free. They gave it away for free, if you felt like it was worth some money to you, you paid. It was a free disc that you basically gave a donation for if you believed in it. Not everyone downloaded it for free but everyone had the option to. Thats freedom, free to choose what to pay if anything. If I liked something and their was no option to pay that would hinder my freedom. Radioheads album was truly free.
Yes Canada shouldn't follow what American lobbiest are saying thats seems asinine, but I believe your missing the actual point. In 1997 Canada signed the "World Intellectual Property Organization treat" that said it would come to standards of the treaty. This is what the DMCA did for the US and what a similar bill would do for us Canadians. The issue is that I have is that the U.S. is lobbying for Canada to mirror the DMCA which in past adaptations of the bill have excluded rights to the consumers. This is not a fair copyright law. Copyright does serve a fundamental role in developing content, it is suppose to protect the artists from having someone else profit from their art. This is not the case in the U.S. all it does is make sure that labels and studios make money from their artists while their artists could go in debt even though they sold over a million records, or their movie made 3 billion dollars(Lord of the Rings). Having copyright attack the consumer doesn't protect the artists I.P.(intellectual property), having a copyright extend 70 years after the death of an artist doesn't allow the original artist to keep profiting from their I.P. and this is where I think people have a problem. Set a time limit from the musics inception to 30-40 years so that the artist will profit from it for the majority of their life or if they die their family will still see profit from it for that period of time.
So yes this law is suppose to mirror the U.S.'s law but that's only because they signed a trade agreement years ago saying they would. The U.S. followed that treaty by making the DMCA in 1998 I believe so at the time it wasn't the U.S. bullying people to do this it was a World Trade Agreement. Canada should follow it but they should not follow the U.S.'s broken DMCA.
What really bugs me about a case like this were there is no evidence is what if he is not convicted, there is no evidence. If they do find a body and evidence that points the finger straight at him hes already been let off, can they even have a new trial? I agree it seems pretty stupid to have a trial with no evidence for more reasons than I can think of.
I wouldn't have voted you troll I think you have a good point:)
Some people around here just vote down things they don't like instead of voting them correctly, when I have mod points I'll even vote up a comment I don't like if it has a point thats valid.
Anyways I do think it should be "the big 4" as people would probably buy it for the wii if they could. I hope Nintendo's next big system release will have graphics upgrades, because if they had the graphics this time they would have gotten a lot more titles like DNF and such that people would run to grab. I guess they would then have to jack the price of the system up 100-200 dollars more and they would loose all the sales for the people trying to get a cheaper system then a PS3 or 360. But a lot of the Nintendos big games still look good on the wii, like Zelda, Pokemon(seems to be a big seller anyways), and Mario series. So to have some good games they didn't really need to update it. Also developers are trying to develop for the wii now because so many units have been sold and are still selling.
I recall Metal Gear solid would have to sell to almost every PS3 owner in order to recoup their costs on development, it would be a lot easier to recoup on a system that has more owners. I think this year should be interesting as more developers are going to release for the Wii and the PS3 will have more games, 360 seems to have a consistant base at this time.
I own a wii and love it but I will be the first one to say that I don't expect this game to come out on it. The development team has been working on the most beautiful graphics we have ever seen(apparently) and most people will tell you that the wii is as good as a gamecube for graphics. Something that is going to be graphic intensive is not going to show up on the wii. Personally I think wii games look pretty good, but I'm sure the people at 3D Realms want to make it work on a platform that can push out HD with smooth textures and great physics. People are expecting perfection on this game, for a 12 year development cycle I'm sure it's been a huge monkey on their back. To make a game innovative, they have to have a super story line and amazing graphics. Hardcore gamers(the ones who will criticize the most) will scrutinize it the most and will probably play it on a PC, 360 or PS3.
Okay something is going on, I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but shit. How do 5 connections get cut? Someone in one of the other articles said it could have been under sea volcanic activity but does account for all 5? I would have to say something weird is going on if you ask me. If anything I'm not buying a lottery ticket today, the planets have aligned and its not in our favor.
meh, if the swiss aren't lying then the disease will be contained, if you can't transmit the disease then less people are likely to get it. This doesn't mean it will go away anytime soon as you have to be diagnosed before having contact with another partner, and there is always a slight possibility of transmission. But eventually hopefully with this advent its numbers could be lowered so it could be the beginning of the end of an epidemic.
Besides AIDS is funny now ever since Jarrod got aids to loose weight check your facts:P
Mario was a great inventor coming up with all sorts of ideas. As time went on Mario couldn't keep up with all of his ideas, he didn't know what to do. So he wrote down the process that he used to come up with those ideas so that he could hire others to think things for him so that he wouldn't loose his ideas. Weeks after this started employees quit working and started their own inventions using Mario's method of creating.
Mario was furious and went to court he won, he had prior art. So after that he filed for a patent on all of his ways of making ideas. Mario now owned any intelligent thought. He renamed it Mario's idea machine, people had to pay him an annual fee of 200 dollars to have 2 good ideas a year, anymore and they would have to purchase extra licenses at a greater cost. Mario no longer had to have ideas of his own, he had a workshop of idea people, and the whole world had to pay him to have ideas. But there was a problem, no one wanted to have ideas because they couldn't afford to have them. People became stupid as having good ideas was no longer an excepted thing to do. The people in Mario's shop never came up with new and exciting ideas anymore because they were too busy fighting lawsuits against people who had ideas such as the pirate brain. The world stopped, hunger set in, the population decreased. Finally when the patent was about to expire Mario's great great grandchild had a great idea, extend the patent another 10 years. The law passed, only because by this time it was only accepted to have stupid ideas, seeing as how all the good ideas cost money.
Finally the patent expired, all that were left looked like mindless cavemen. They lived in shells of homes, with little to know food. All that was spoken were grunts, people had been afraid litigation for so long they were afraid to say something smart. Forest and animals have overgrown most of the cities, people had been living off of canned spam for years.
Moral of the story is stupid patents ruin society, stop it.
You could also consider health experts that have done research in what is a good amount of physical exercise in a day. I don't think I would listen to either the gaming industry or the pro family groups, they are setting precedents on morality for my kids. I would rather give my children the same morality as I got growing up. That might be hard but I don't think you can judge every kid the same.
I don't get why you think this shouldn't be posted on slashdot. Cmdrtaco did not want to remove the previous comment, it was a comment. They were asked to take down the comment because it hosted copy writed material. It would have been illegal for them to keep hosting it and they would have lost the court case. This isn't slashdot's fault it's the current laws that make it this way. So of course they will have to sensor out copywrited material, even the pirate bay wouldn't be allowed to host copywrited material on their site. So yes nothing has changed in the years since they were asked to remove the content.
So why on earth would there be no point to not posting this story on slashdot. They have more invested in this story than most, they have been victims of this absurd litigation. They need to post more stories to bring awareness of it. So thats the point, nothing has changed but maybe more coverage of things like this will start a movement and institute change. Increase freedom of speech. So when you say there is no point there is. Stories have been removed from many sites, and it should be noted. If slashdot doesn't even attempt to speak out, if no one attempts to speak out because they have been a victim of a useless law, and an insane cult, who will?
So while there may be no point in posting the OCIII on the site(what good would it serve anyways) posting comments and stories saying there are people who don't agree and maybe you shouldn't either are good.
I think it will come down to personal preference, besides the people I play with online that I already know I don't much care to know anyone else. My trip is about coming online relaxing a few hours. If all my friends were online I would probably never go outside besides to work. I want my character to be just a character not an extension of me, that just sounds depressing.
Also if one device fails it kind of sucks. The TV fails, the PVR/VCR is useless. If the PVR/VCR fails then you still have to buy a stand alone one and explain to people coming over why you have features on your tv that you can't use. PVR might be harder to hide but a DVD-R/VCR leaves a hole on your TV that nothing can fill:(
I agree even if you were able to get two that did the job great I would not go for it, looks stupid when you upgrade or one fails.
Okay I feel I should put my two sense in. I used to work at Dell doing outbound calling(meaning I did the freaking call backs). The people doing the callbacks in my department were usually the best agents in that department. From what I seen of calls coming into the outbound team in my department was that a lot of agents booking callbacks and recording logs made a lot of mistakes. They were not always formally trained in computers, and some of them you would wonder how they managed to get fired from Burger King, walk across the street and put their name on the application.
More often then not the worst ones worked on the night shift, had been fired or quit(couldn't handle someone getting pissed off because the customer knew more about computers), so you couldn't ask them what the hell they were thinking. Sometimes people didn't log things at all. So on more than one occasion when I went to make a callback I was in a similar boat the newest log was 10 years old and it was booked for a follow up. Well you figured that some jerk didn't log his case in the system and you make that call. Never had it happen that it was really a 10 year old case.
Now as for your 1. thing about tracking open closed cases. There would sometimes be 3+ open cases for one issue(depending on how many times the person called in), typically you would close the last one you were working on if you seen this. But remember like I said sometimes people suck and don't close the case. Managers weren't suppose to close those for you so they would stay open but the manager would know it was suppose to be closed(Managers were suppose to reprimand agents for doing that but that hurt their stats having to fix a problem). Our system then would auto close the case after being opened untouched for 2 months. But I assume this was an old system(10 years old) that might have been upgraded that could have had a bug not to close old open cases. Or they could have two separate systems where you don't close open calls before they are made(we had something simular to that, a call was booked and never closed until it was called made sure it wasn't accidentally closed, I sometimes had callbacks booked over 2 months after the initial case was opened because someone was going on holidays)
Either way it seems that this story is completely plausible. But I would rather have them make a mistake call me 10 years down the road then not call me back because it looked like someone fubbed up.
But because the blogger is anonymous I doubt it has much merit.
When you said in three to five years I thought you were going to say "you should replace that it anyways" I just about dropped until I finished reading your thought. I agree this notebook is not going to be for everyone, when I first seen it my first thought was "damn that things sexy" then my second was "I can't use that". It doesn't have two things i require, wired network(I heard rumors last night that it wouldn't have any and i haven't seen any pictures that show one. I need wired because we don't have wireless at work for reasonable issues), it doesn't have a CD-Rom drive(I do need it on the road sometimes I could get by with having to plug in the external drive but carrying around an external drive for a highly portable notebook seems counter productive), and if I can I would like a VGA/S-Video out for presentations and if possible(I admit my current notebook doesn't have one) a com port to link up to some of the hardware I maintain like cisco routers dell switches and other hardware that might need to be configured.
Does that mean I think it sucks. Hell no, it's a sexy beast and I think the target isn't people like me but the kind that want to have something portable to browse the net and hookup their ipod, and do a little word processing/spread sheet work. I rarely put a dvd into my notebook, I have tons of dvds ripped to a file server in my house anyways.
This might be the first apple I consider buying for reasons other than trying OSX.
Slashdot Mirror
sounds like a great idea I would love to try it, but I don't think I could stop watching movies. And old 50s, 60s and 70s sci-fi shows like the twilight zone. They are creepy to watch in the future.
the model is unique in that the majority of companies trying to make a profit don't use it. There are companies that do like Red Hat and such.
What the parent was trying to say is that by using a model where you can make money doesn't mean that you have sold out.
Theres two levels of usability that linux should strive for. 1)Being as usable as windows. 2) being more user friendly than windows so someone can sit down and have no problems.
Number one is a short term goal where number 2 is the ultimate goal of ubuntu. Some of the problems listed are things that windows does well and others are things that it and Ubuntu(and other desktop distros) should do well. I have seen users just as frustrated over windows XP but that doesn't make it right. We have to be better and more usable than windows if we want them to change over to a linux solution.
His girlfriend probably would benifit from using ubuntu to search youtube and msn but if she can't set it up on her own it's going to be hard for other average users to use it and that is the articals point. We need to stop saying well set it up for them and make it as easy as putting a disk in and following a few prompts to get it setup. A desktop OS should be as simple for the end user as possible and hes just saying where it falls short(and not by much I must say things have come far)
know whats nice about widescreen and coding(not on a laptop of course)? Rotating the screen 90 degrees. You get alot more space if you do that for coding. Hell you could have one rotated and one not. People you arn't limited on how you have your screen. Infact you see alot more when you do this.
I used to do this alot and it also works with avi but as of late when I do it alot of the hits I get are spam sites, with the odd hit. If someone doesn't know how to spot one of the spam site they could run into simular problems as they would if they ran limewire. Especially if their browser and OS aren't patched. Older IE clients running activex without prompting and such make this option no longer a good one for most users. That and I've been finding less and less through google, not sure of the reason.
That's exactly why I buy business laptops instead. They typically have all the features that I require and the matte screen is nicer if you ask me. The only problem I have is that in my old job I would take my laptop with me and it would have been nice to interface with some of the older switches that used a db9 port. Finding a newer laptop with a db 9 port and all the features that I wanted was hard.
I ended up going with the thinkpad T60 at the time but wish I had found one with a db 9 connector.
Cannibal! The Musical is one of my favorite movies, if you haven't done so get the DVD with the comentaries it's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. They get so drunk by the end it starts to not make much sense but it's classic.
I check out southparkstudios all the time I'm a huge fan. The site change a little while ago and I think the US was able to start watching the video soon after. But I live in Canada and all I have been getting is a terrance and phillip image saying sorry canada full episodes coming soon. So I think by beta they mean it will be rolling out completly soon(I hope) and that they may take down some episodes and such while they are working on it.
Either that or they have adapted googles beta testing technique.
Nothing has to be free. You could pay for everything you ever got for free. They gave it away for free, if you felt like it was worth some money to you, you paid. It was a free disc that you basically gave a donation for if you believed in it. Not everyone downloaded it for free but everyone had the option to. Thats freedom, free to choose what to pay if anything. If I liked something and their was no option to pay that would hinder my freedom. Radioheads album was truly free.
I don't think I would like a chick with a lightsaber...
Then again it reminds me a certain clerks reference.
Just because the U.S. decides to be pricks on a daily basis and ignore world trade agreements doesn't mean that we necessarily should.
And yes the U.S.'s DMCA is a bloody bad idea.
Yes Canada shouldn't follow what American lobbiest are saying thats seems asinine, but I believe your missing the actual point. In 1997 Canada signed the "World Intellectual Property Organization treat" that said it would come to standards of the treaty. This is what the DMCA did for the US and what a similar bill would do for us Canadians. The issue is that I have is that the U.S. is lobbying for Canada to mirror the DMCA which in past adaptations of the bill have excluded rights to the consumers. This is not a fair copyright law. Copyright does serve a fundamental role in developing content, it is suppose to protect the artists from having someone else profit from their art. This is not the case in the U.S. all it does is make sure that labels and studios make money from their artists while their artists could go in debt even though they sold over a million records, or their movie made 3 billion dollars(Lord of the Rings). Having copyright attack the consumer doesn't protect the artists I.P.(intellectual property), having a copyright extend 70 years after the death of an artist doesn't allow the original artist to keep profiting from their I.P. and this is where I think people have a problem. Set a time limit from the musics inception to 30-40 years so that the artist will profit from it for the majority of their life or if they die their family will still see profit from it for that period of time.
So yes this law is suppose to mirror the U.S.'s law but that's only because they signed a trade agreement years ago saying they would. The U.S. followed that treaty by making the DMCA in 1998 I believe so at the time it wasn't the U.S. bullying people to do this it was a World Trade Agreement. Canada should follow it but they should not follow the U.S.'s broken DMCA.
Thats what I thought, thanks for clarifying, I'm not from the states.
What really bugs me about a case like this were there is no evidence is what if he is not convicted, there is no evidence. If they do find a body and evidence that points the finger straight at him hes already been let off, can they even have a new trial? I agree it seems pretty stupid to have a trial with no evidence for more reasons than I can think of.
I wouldn't have voted you troll I think you have a good point :)
Some people around here just vote down things they don't like instead of voting them correctly, when I have mod points I'll even vote up a comment I don't like if it has a point thats valid.
Anyways I do think it should be "the big 4" as people would probably buy it for the wii if they could. I hope Nintendo's next big system release will have graphics upgrades, because if they had the graphics this time they would have gotten a lot more titles like DNF and such that people would run to grab. I guess they would then have to jack the price of the system up 100-200 dollars more and they would loose all the sales for the people trying to get a cheaper system then a PS3 or 360. But a lot of the Nintendos big games still look good on the wii, like Zelda, Pokemon(seems to be a big seller anyways), and Mario series. So to have some good games they didn't really need to update it. Also developers are trying to develop for the wii now because so many units have been sold and are still selling.
I recall Metal Gear solid would have to sell to almost every PS3 owner in order to recoup their costs on development, it would be a lot easier to recoup on a system that has more owners. I think this year should be interesting as more developers are going to release for the Wii and the PS3 will have more games, 360 seems to have a consistant base at this time.
I own a wii and love it but I will be the first one to say that I don't expect this game to come out on it. The development team has been working on the most beautiful graphics we have ever seen(apparently) and most people will tell you that the wii is as good as a gamecube for graphics. Something that is going to be graphic intensive is not going to show up on the wii. Personally I think wii games look pretty good, but I'm sure the people at 3D Realms want to make it work on a platform that can push out HD with smooth textures and great physics. People are expecting perfection on this game, for a 12 year development cycle I'm sure it's been a huge monkey on their back. To make a game innovative, they have to have a super story line and amazing graphics. Hardcore gamers(the ones who will criticize the most) will scrutinize it the most and will probably play it on a PC, 360 or PS3.
Okay something is going on, I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but shit. How do 5 connections get cut? Someone in one of the other articles said it could have been under sea volcanic activity but does account for all 5? I would have to say something weird is going on if you ask me. If anything I'm not buying a lottery ticket today, the planets have aligned and its not in our favor.
meh, if the swiss aren't lying then the disease will be contained, if you can't transmit the disease then less people are likely to get it. This doesn't mean it will go away anytime soon as you have to be diagnosed before having contact with another partner, and there is always a slight possibility of transmission. But eventually hopefully with this advent its numbers could be lowered so it could be the beginning of the end of an epidemic.
:P
Besides AIDS is funny now ever since Jarrod got aids to loose weight check your facts
Mario was a great inventor coming up with all sorts of ideas. As time went on Mario couldn't keep up with all of his ideas, he didn't know what to do. So he wrote down the process that he used to come up with those ideas so that he could hire others to think things for him so that he wouldn't loose his ideas. Weeks after this started employees quit working and started their own inventions using Mario's method of creating.
Mario was furious and went to court he won, he had prior art. So after that he filed for a patent on all of his ways of making ideas. Mario now owned any intelligent thought. He renamed it Mario's idea machine, people had to pay him an annual fee of 200 dollars to have 2 good ideas a year, anymore and they would have to purchase extra licenses at a greater cost. Mario no longer had to have ideas of his own, he had a workshop of idea people, and the whole world had to pay him to have ideas. But there was a problem, no one wanted to have ideas because they couldn't afford to have them. People became stupid as having good ideas was no longer an excepted thing to do. The people in Mario's shop never came up with new and exciting ideas anymore because they were too busy fighting lawsuits against people who had ideas such as the pirate brain. The world stopped, hunger set in, the population decreased. Finally when the patent was about to expire Mario's great great grandchild had a great idea, extend the patent another 10 years. The law passed, only because by this time it was only accepted to have stupid ideas, seeing as how all the good ideas cost money.
Finally the patent expired, all that were left looked like mindless cavemen. They lived in shells of homes, with little to know food. All that was spoken were grunts, people had been afraid litigation for so long they were afraid to say something smart. Forest and animals have overgrown most of the cities, people had been living off of canned spam for years.
Moral of the story is stupid patents ruin society, stop it.
You could also consider health experts that have done research in what is a good amount of physical exercise in a day. I don't think I would listen to either the gaming industry or the pro family groups, they are setting precedents on morality for my kids. I would rather give my children the same morality as I got growing up. That might be hard but I don't think you can judge every kid the same.
Anyways well put.
I don't get why you think this shouldn't be posted on slashdot. Cmdrtaco did not want to remove the previous comment, it was a comment. They were asked to take down the comment because it hosted copy writed material. It would have been illegal for them to keep hosting it and they would have lost the court case. This isn't slashdot's fault it's the current laws that make it this way. So of course they will have to sensor out copywrited material, even the pirate bay wouldn't be allowed to host copywrited material on their site. So yes nothing has changed in the years since they were asked to remove the content.
So why on earth would there be no point to not posting this story on slashdot. They have more invested in this story than most, they have been victims of this absurd litigation. They need to post more stories to bring awareness of it. So thats the point, nothing has changed but maybe more coverage of things like this will start a movement and institute change. Increase freedom of speech. So when you say there is no point there is. Stories have been removed from many sites, and it should be noted. If slashdot doesn't even attempt to speak out, if no one attempts to speak out because they have been a victim of a useless law, and an insane cult, who will?
So while there may be no point in posting the OCIII on the site(what good would it serve anyways) posting comments and stories saying there are people who don't agree and maybe you shouldn't either are good.
I think it will come down to personal preference, besides the people I play with online that I already know I don't much care to know anyone else. My trip is about coming online relaxing a few hours. If all my friends were online I would probably never go outside besides to work. I want my character to be just a character not an extension of me, that just sounds depressing.
But like I said that's just me.
Also if one device fails it kind of sucks. The TV fails, the PVR/VCR is useless. If the PVR/VCR fails then you still have to buy a stand alone one and explain to people coming over why you have features on your tv that you can't use. PVR might be harder to hide but a DVD-R/VCR leaves a hole on your TV that nothing can fill :(
I agree even if you were able to get two that did the job great I would not go for it, looks stupid when you upgrade or one fails.
Okay I feel I should put my two sense in. I used to work at Dell doing outbound calling(meaning I did the freaking call backs). The people doing the callbacks in my department were usually the best agents in that department. From what I seen of calls coming into the outbound team in my department was that a lot of agents booking callbacks and recording logs made a lot of mistakes. They were not always formally trained in computers, and some of them you would wonder how they managed to get fired from Burger King, walk across the street and put their name on the application.
More often then not the worst ones worked on the night shift, had been fired or quit(couldn't handle someone getting pissed off because the customer knew more about computers), so you couldn't ask them what the hell they were thinking. Sometimes people didn't log things at all. So on more than one occasion when I went to make a callback I was in a similar boat the newest log was 10 years old and it was booked for a follow up. Well you figured that some jerk didn't log his case in the system and you make that call. Never had it happen that it was really a 10 year old case.
Now as for your 1. thing about tracking open closed cases. There would sometimes be 3+ open cases for one issue(depending on how many times the person called in), typically you would close the last one you were working on if you seen this. But remember like I said sometimes people suck and don't close the case. Managers weren't suppose to close those for you so they would stay open but the manager would know it was suppose to be closed(Managers were suppose to reprimand agents for doing that but that hurt their stats having to fix a problem). Our system then would auto close the case after being opened untouched for 2 months. But I assume this was an old system(10 years old) that might have been upgraded that could have had a bug not to close old open cases. Or they could have two separate systems where you don't close open calls before they are made(we had something simular to that, a call was booked and never closed until it was called made sure it wasn't accidentally closed, I sometimes had callbacks booked over 2 months after the initial case was opened because someone was going on holidays)
Either way it seems that this story is completely plausible. But I would rather have them make a mistake call me 10 years down the road then not call me back because it looked like someone fubbed up.
But because the blogger is anonymous I doubt it has much merit.
When you said in three to five years I thought you were going to say "you should replace that it anyways" I just about dropped until I finished reading your thought. I agree this notebook is not going to be for everyone, when I first seen it my first thought was "damn that things sexy" then my second was "I can't use that". It doesn't have two things i require, wired network(I heard rumors last night that it wouldn't have any and i haven't seen any pictures that show one. I need wired because we don't have wireless at work for reasonable issues), it doesn't have a CD-Rom drive(I do need it on the road sometimes I could get by with having to plug in the external drive but carrying around an external drive for a highly portable notebook seems counter productive), and if I can I would like a VGA/S-Video out for presentations and if possible(I admit my current notebook doesn't have one) a com port to link up to some of the hardware I maintain like cisco routers dell switches and other hardware that might need to be configured.
Does that mean I think it sucks. Hell no, it's a sexy beast and I think the target isn't people like me but the kind that want to have something portable to browse the net and hookup their ipod, and do a little word processing/spread sheet work. I rarely put a dvd into my notebook, I have tons of dvds ripped to a file server in my house anyways.
This might be the first apple I consider buying for reasons other than trying OSX.