What we need is another jump in floppy disks. Like when it jumped from 720k to 1.44 megs. The #1 file type that I carry around are documents. And some PDF files, some powerpoint presentations can get to be big.
We had 2.88meg drives over 10 years ago. Sony 2.88meg drives were stock on 486 series PS/2s by IBM. They used the same media as standard floppy but held twice as much. But they didn't catch on. Why, no bugger would buy them. Hell even fewer bought 5.25inch 2.44meg drives, and in fact only have seen them used on odd IBM equipment.
MD (Sony MiniDisc) would have been good but they didn't want to license it for the PC.
I hate to say it, but CD-R(w) and DVD+/-R(w) are the floppy of this decade. Cheaper than floppy by a long shot, and everyone at least has a CD drive. New systems are hardly ever shipped with a floppy drive anymore, why would they it's not needed.
So once again, my ID card is used in my favour. You could say, the same could have been accomplished with a driver ID card or a SSN. To which I will, again, ask: then what is the difference?
A SSN / Tax IDmay be issued at birth, or may be issued at a later time and is not nor should it be used for identification. It's a tax id number issued by a federal agency. It's directly related to employment, income, education, and money (loans / rent). SSN for nationals, Tax ID for resident aliens. This is NOT an ID card.
There is also the Selective Service card that all males must get when they turn 18. This is used only if there is a draft, i.e. forsed military service which we haven't had since the Vietnam war I believe. This is NOT an ID card and the form is at the post office, a federal agency. To be honest I don't know who handles this information.
Passports are ID and are issued by the federal goverment. This IS an ID but seldom used except to travel.
A drivers license or non driver "ID card" is issued at the state level, not the federal level. There is no national driver's license. This IS an ID card.
If they Feds want you for any reason they have to go through your State's beurocrasy. While we do have a federal government, States have their own sovereign rights to an extent. A National ID is seen by many as an infringement of a state's rights to protect it's citizens from the federal government. They could allow the federal government to circumvent rights a state gives to it's residents which would normaly require a court order. If another state wants a citizen for any reason, they have to go though the beurocrasy of the state that you are in, or are a resident of. The federal government has NO reason to track it's citizens except in cases of foreign travel, forced conscription, and taxes all of these are separate agencies for good reason, it helps protect our privacy.
There is no compelling reason I can see to switch to a national system when the state system works perfectly well. Imagine 28x Belgium's population in an area about 315x the size. It makes an good sense from an organization standpoint to organize the population of 293 million people into 50 parts. Plus, a state can choose to leave the Union, a major issue addressed after the American Civil war. The last time I heard this being discussed was Hawaii back in 1996/1997.
But it will create a useful new power that the police can use to harass any group they take a dislike to: the power to stop them and ask for their identity card.
The problem with that logic is police already act as if an ID is required. I remember back in 2001 a group 14 students were stopped for 45min or so for jay-walking, the full treatment multi cars on the scene, id and record checks, the full 9yards which seems excessive and quite nuts given only one person got a ticket, the person who asked if they got stopped because they were Asian. While there were saftey issues here, and jay-walking tickets are not uncommon, this is a good example why we as a people want to limit police powers.
So, if every american has an SSN, and it's given out almost like candy. And since the the US govn knows this number. Then what is the difference with a national ID card? And why are Americans so opposed against such a card?
Your Social Security card is not identification except for bank, your employer, and the IRS. I should also say the phone company also asks for this, and other businesses preforming credit checks which would include rentals. It should be a method of tracking your earnings and paying federal or state taxes (if your state has an income tax). It has no picture, no address, and unless it's changed is a piece of paper that says specifically "do not laminate" unless you have an older one from before 1988 or so. Most places that would require it don't even look at the physical document, why would they it falls apart after a few years. A few employers require one in good physical condition but typically those are limited to places concerned with illegal aliens. Foreign nationals working in America are required to have a tax ID number, but as being non-nationals don't get social security benefits hence no social security card, but just put the tax id number in place of where it asks for social.
For identification purposes, most places use the driver's license which is a state not national agency. Some people don't drive, or can't drive, so those places issue ID cards as well. You are not required by law to carry one, but if you want to buy booze, go into bars, or cigs, or have a checking account it's very helpful. Passport is an option, but some places don't accept passports as forms of ID, even though they are required to by law.
There are many reasons to object to a national ID card.
1. ID cards are already provided by the State, no need for federal involvement. Classic State vs Federal rights argument. 2. There already exists a national ID, it's a passport. 3. We presently are not required to have ID on our person.
So how's about you focus your energy on fixing the system instead of promoting breaking it more.
I don't promote breaking it more. I do however have empathy for law enforcement who take measures to make ends meet. I do promote awareness of the issue and support pay increases. Problem is people don't want their taxes raised and have the same attitude as your self, "Why don't you fix it".
If this is the case, then there is something wrong with the system. I thought that was what a salary was for.
There is something wrong with the system when cops for example feel it necessary to accept tips or moonlight as security with their uniform in order to make ends meet. I'm very offended by the practice but i'm not going to get angry with the cop because of it.
Can I pay a guy to be busy with minor offenses so that my major offense will be ignored?
Indeed you can... doesn't make it right but i'm sure you could. Look at speeding ticket quotas. A system punishes police for not writing a specified amount of infractions esp in times where a city needs extra money. Talk to police along major interstates and see what they have to say about the subject.
When I worked in the state of Virginia as a waiter I earned roughly half of minimum wage
That would explain why when I visit the east coast that everyone expects exactly 15%. I got chewed out many times for just rounding to the nearest dollar in cases where I was out of small change and dollar bills and only tipped 14.25% to 14.75%. I had NO idea the employers could be so cheep and not pay their staff at least minimum wage. I guess I could be more forgiving about underpaid waitstaff demanding an extra quarter, or just not eat out in states that don't pay waitstaff at least minimum wage.
To put it in perspective I would rather write someone for J-walking...
You must be from Seattle. It's among one of the few cities I know of where cops actually take the time to write J-walking tickets. But at least you can argue that J-walking can affect public saftey, after all someone jumping out into the middle of the street might get hit.
I don't know who's worse: people paying cops to enforce the law, or cops that won't enforce it unless you pay them extra.
Why people paying cops to enforce the law of course. Cops are not very well paid to begin with, so they have my empathy for accepting tips enforcing the law. To be honest this sounds very sloppy for the MPAA standards, but I can't argue that tipping police with just enough money to help pay that credit card bill but not quite enough to make you feel obligated to your new employers would be an effective means to get them to enforce laws they would otherwise ignore.
Is it just me, or does using tape storage seem horribly unreliable. I have some bad memories of backing up my 486SX's gargantuan 540 MB hard drive onto 100MB tapes. The process often took 2-3 days, because about 50% of the time, writing to tape would fail, necessitating starting the whole tape over again
The problem I had on 486 vintage tape drives wasn't so much the drive or media. Software and hardware left much to be desired. What you bought typically came with software that was non too interoperable with other drives or controllers. You were almost always dependent on what the drive came with, and any bug fixes you had to fetch your self... via dialup modem to their private BBS which may or may not be listed anywhere you can find. Worse yet, IRQ 5... manuals consistently recommended that you set everything IRQ for anything non standard which included SCSI controllers, tape drive controllers(i.e. ISA qic-02 / qic-36), and sound cards. Not a big issue on dos machines that typically only accessed one device at a given time, but it was jerry-rigged nonsense that would defiantly fail if you were running win3.1 (ding starting backup, ding can't find controller). You could have avoided all this and went with a floppy controller on your tape drive, but this wasn't without problems either.
I don't understand why people use microwaves rather than a cheap air popper.
Why buy an extra thing if what you have already does the job. Why waste the countertop space? I have to admit those air poppers are cheaper than your typical microwave oven on the new front, but a microwave oven is much more useful. An air popper is pretty much limited to popcorn, or perhaps coffee. It spends more time in storage unless you really really love popcorn.
The best part is the cost. The microwave popcorn with 6 3.5oz bags in it costs the same as a 4lb bag of plain kernels.
Actually you can use raw popcorn in the microwave as well. You can either use your own paper bag, buy a specality microwaveable popcorn container, or hell get creative and find your own solution. Popcorn pops very well on it's own without oil in the microwave. A conical shape works very well and tends to leave unpopped kernels in the bottom. If you've cleaned your microwave recently you might even enjoy just putting the popcorn in a bowl and watch it fly around. Now that's something the entire family would gather around and enjoy.
But for the most part, the average joe doesn't eat popcorn enough to justify the expense, even a cheap sub $20 solution.
And unless you happen to be a ordinary non-technical computer user who happens to be stumbling around on/. to read your comment, just how are they supposed to *know* that?
In all fairness to the parent, it's apt-get is somewhat well documented when you install Debian, so long as you actually take notes when it says "you can always run this again by using this command". It is nice, useful, and is a huge step forward in linux package management. Suse's Yast is also pretty spiffy.
It doesn't change the fact that installing one package can break several others.
Before the microwave there was much in the way of technology for poping popcorn. Sure you could use any old pot/pan, and end up with a ruined pan. Jiffypop was a godsend to many who enjoyed popcorn but didn't want to ruin a pan. But even jiffypop required much in the way of manual labor. Dedicated oil and air poppers were a major leap and made making large amounts of popcorn a brease.
But before all these inventions, people still ate popcorn. It was among more more difficult things to cook.
If the article is correct, Intel could build in a coffee pot for those long nights of full load modeling.
Ah, this would explain why Asus released a barebones solution called S-presso. Just add a couple of dual cores, water cooling, a fine italian pump, and poof the next generation in computers the e-s-presso. As the water travels over one each dual core chip it's super heated quickly and the italian pump takes over. Through the grounds to your demitasse mugs.
Warning, not drinking enough espresso may result in premature burn out.
I spent a $100 premium on shipping and on the esoteric faster over what guys in Japan would have to pay, now that I have it because I bought it....
1. Get a region free player. Many start under $50 in the US, other countries you can hardly buy a player that supports region restrictions. 2. Copy that disc. ANYdvd springs to mind. 3. Move to the region of your disc, or to a region that doesn't sell crippled players.
Region Codes serve no purpose but to restrict free trade. Many claim it's in violation of the WTO and I for one would love to see this verified. It results in market for region free players and pirated discs esp in countries that made the sale of non region free players illegal like NZ.
Maybe parents could go the low tech way and just monitor their children and use the word "no" once in a while? No, god forbid they have to spend time with the little bastards.
I guess when you were a kid you never woke up before your parents to watch something. Gawd I did... mostly cartoons that got moved to that odd hour but I can see how parents with a large library of porno would want their players to restrict access to it.
I can understand the FBI warning, but I don't pay $20 for a DVD to watch ads for movies that are crappy/have no interest in
I could live with previews once. I like previews for the most part esp thoughtful ones that might be similar to or catch the interest of someone who bought a given DVD. But if I rewatch a DVD I bought I don't want to wait no 5min to play the bloody flick.
Hmm... I think it is because it is in a digital format that potentially can be distributed to millions of people.
A tape cassette doesn't inherently share that property.
Back in the late 80s I noticed many university book stores offered tape copy kiosks that would allow you to bring in a cassette and high speed dub to either one or several copies. In fact, this is what many a garage band used to get their material copied, as well other spoken word media. The quality left much to be desired as they were hardly ever maintained, except by those using it to promote their bands, and even then the bookstore usually didn't let you align the heads.
The invisible hand will "correct" for this. If places like Frys, BestBuy, etc. buy this untested RAM and get a lot of returns, that costs them money and you can bet that next time around they won't buy from these manufacturers. When that happens enough times, these guys will either start testing RAM or go out of business.
If you stopped to listen to just about any retail store you'll notice they employ the "you get what you pay for technique".
Customer: "This ram causes my system to crash" Clerk: "Were're happy to replace it under warrenty or you can spend more money on this product here that has a lifetime warrenty."
So, I decide to see just how good the "lifetime warentee" is. Amazingly enough, they send me an RMA label right away and within days I have a brand new memory module and the system is back up and working perfectly
My experience with Kingston had been the same. I had a nice pair of 64meg simms go bad, pulls from some Pentium pro server. For whatever reason they were bad. They were totally hip to replacing it with exactly the same thing, where I was hoping that they'd replace it with simms and they said, "No, we will make sure you get an exact replacement".
Take a look at the various fan films being made on the web
Wow, you mean I can actually get access to fan based trek stories without having to put up with the annoying self righteous people in the fan clubs? This is the best news i've heard all day.
I like star trek. I even would look at a technical manual and blueprints. But I've met some pretty awful people in the fan clubs who adopted Federation ideals as their own, and rank their friends in a pseudo military hierarchy based on how long they known each other, even those who never made a commitment to the cause.
And I know exactly what you mean about the cdrs. I've had lots of problems with cd burners or crap cdrs not being read correctly, so only portions get corrupted on the disc... but they get read perfectly from the burner that actually wrote the disk.
What I found odd, 100% odd was I could do a checksum after I installed Redhat, or Suse, or Debian for that matter, and nothing was wrong. Only during the install stage was there ever an issue. Fortunately you can install via FTP so it's not an issue.
Slashdot Mirror
What we need is another jump in floppy disks. Like when it jumped from 720k to 1.44 megs. The #1 file type that I carry around are documents. And some PDF files, some powerpoint presentations can get to be big.
We had 2.88meg drives over 10 years ago. Sony 2.88meg drives were stock on 486 series PS/2s by IBM. They used the same media as standard floppy but held twice as much. But they didn't catch on. Why, no bugger would buy them. Hell even fewer bought 5.25inch 2.44meg drives, and in fact only have seen them used on odd IBM equipment.
MD (Sony MiniDisc) would have been good but they didn't want to license it for the PC.
I hate to say it, but CD-R(w) and DVD+/-R(w) are the floppy of this decade. Cheaper than floppy by a long shot, and everyone at least has a CD drive. New systems are hardly ever shipped with a floppy drive anymore, why would they it's not needed.
So once again, my ID card is used in my favour. You could say, the same could have been accomplished with a driver ID card or a SSN. To which I will, again, ask: then what is the difference?
A SSN / Tax IDmay be issued at birth, or may be issued at a later time and is not nor should it be used for identification. It's a tax id number issued by a federal agency. It's directly related to employment, income, education, and money (loans / rent). SSN for nationals, Tax ID for resident aliens. This is NOT an ID card.
There is also the Selective Service card that all males must get when they turn 18. This is used only if there is a draft, i.e. forsed military service which we haven't had since the Vietnam war I believe. This is NOT an ID card and the form is at the post office, a federal agency. To be honest I don't know who handles this information.
Passports are ID and are issued by the federal goverment. This IS an ID but seldom used except to travel.
A drivers license or non driver "ID card" is issued at the state level, not the federal level. There is no national driver's license. This IS an ID card.
If they Feds want you for any reason they have to go through your State's beurocrasy. While we do have a federal government, States have their own sovereign rights to an extent. A National ID is seen by many as an infringement of a state's rights to protect it's citizens from the federal government. They could allow the federal government to circumvent rights a state gives to it's residents which would normaly require a court order. If another state wants a citizen for any reason, they have to go though the beurocrasy of the state that you are in, or are a resident of. The federal government has NO reason to track it's citizens except in cases of foreign travel, forced conscription, and taxes all of these are separate agencies for good reason, it helps protect our privacy.
There is no compelling reason I can see to switch to a national system when the state system works perfectly well. Imagine 28x Belgium's population in an area about 315x the size. It makes an good sense from an organization standpoint to organize the population of 293 million people into 50 parts. Plus, a state can choose to leave the Union, a major issue addressed after the American Civil war. The last time I heard this being discussed was Hawaii back in 1996/1997.
But it will create a useful new power that the police can use to harass any group they take a dislike to: the power to stop them and ask for their identity card.
The problem with that logic is police already act as if an ID is required. I remember back in 2001 a group 14 students were stopped for 45min or so for jay-walking, the full treatment multi cars on the scene, id and record checks, the full 9yards which seems excessive and quite nuts given only one person got a ticket, the person who asked if they got stopped because they were Asian. While there were saftey issues here, and jay-walking tickets are not uncommon, this is a good example why we as a people want to limit police powers.
So, if every american has an SSN, and it's given out almost like candy. And since the the US govn knows this number. Then what is the difference with a national ID card? And why are Americans so opposed against such a card?
Your Social Security card is not identification except for bank, your employer, and the IRS. I should also say the phone company also asks for this, and other businesses preforming credit checks which would include rentals. It should be a method of tracking your earnings and paying federal or state taxes (if your state has an income tax). It has no picture, no address, and unless it's changed is a piece of paper that says specifically "do not laminate" unless you have an older one from before 1988 or so. Most places that would require it don't even look at the physical document, why would they it falls apart after a few years. A few employers require one in good physical condition but typically those are limited to places concerned with illegal aliens. Foreign nationals working in America are required to have a tax ID number, but as being non-nationals don't get social security benefits hence no social security card, but just put the tax id number in place of where it asks for social.
For identification purposes, most places use the driver's license which is a state not national agency. Some people don't drive, or can't drive, so those places issue ID cards as well. You are not required by law to carry one, but if you want to buy booze, go into bars, or cigs, or have a checking account it's very helpful. Passport is an option, but some places don't accept passports as forms of ID, even though they are required to by law.
There are many reasons to object to a national ID card.
1. ID cards are already provided by the State, no need for federal involvement. Classic State vs Federal rights argument.
2. There already exists a national ID, it's a passport.
3. We presently are not required to have ID on our person.
It already sounds like a bloody helicopter and now you want me to spend 10cents making it even louder !
Trust me, if you have a normal 4000rpm cpu fan you're not going to notice a dinky little 2000rpm 80mm fan esp if you have a GPU fan.
So how's about you focus your energy on fixing the system instead of promoting breaking it more.
I don't promote breaking it more. I do however have empathy for law enforcement who take measures to make ends meet. I do promote awareness of the issue and support pay increases. Problem is people don't want their taxes raised and have the same attitude as your self, "Why don't you fix it".
... but would it not make more sense to either
1. mount a 90mm fan on the front of your 3.5 inch bays.
2. mount a 120mm fan on the front of your 5.25 inch bays.
This way you actually get airflow for 2 to 3 drives rather than blocking airflow with another damn drive.
If this is the case, then there is something wrong with the system. I thought that was what a salary was for.
There is something wrong with the system when cops for example feel it necessary to accept tips or moonlight as security with their uniform in order to make ends meet. I'm very offended by the practice but i'm not going to get angry with the cop because of it.
Can I pay a guy to be busy with minor offenses so that my major offense will be ignored?
Indeed you can... doesn't make it right but i'm sure you could. Look at speeding ticket quotas. A system punishes police for not writing a specified amount of infractions esp in times where a city needs extra money. Talk to police along major interstates and see what they have to say about the subject.
When I worked in the state of Virginia as a waiter I earned roughly half of minimum wage
That would explain why when I visit the east coast that everyone expects exactly 15%. I got chewed out many times for just rounding to the nearest dollar in cases where I was out of small change and dollar bills and only tipped 14.25% to 14.75%. I had NO idea the employers could be so cheep and not pay their staff at least minimum wage. I guess I could be more forgiving about underpaid waitstaff demanding an extra quarter, or just not eat out in states that don't pay waitstaff at least minimum wage.
To put it in perspective I would rather write someone for J-walking...
You must be from Seattle. It's among one of the few cities I know of where cops actually take the time to write J-walking tickets. But at least you can argue that J-walking can affect public saftey, after all someone jumping out into the middle of the street might get hit.
I don't know who's worse: people paying cops to enforce the law, or cops that won't enforce it unless you pay them extra.
Why people paying cops to enforce the law of course. Cops are not very well paid to begin with, so they have my empathy for accepting tips enforcing the law. To be honest this sounds very sloppy for the MPAA standards, but I can't argue that tipping police with just enough money to help pay that credit card bill but not quite enough to make you feel obligated to your new employers would be an effective means to get them to enforce laws they would otherwise ignore.
Is it just me, or does using tape storage seem horribly unreliable. I have some bad memories of backing up my 486SX's gargantuan 540 MB hard drive onto 100MB tapes. The process often took 2-3 days, because about 50% of the time, writing to tape would fail, necessitating starting the whole tape over again
The problem I had on 486 vintage tape drives wasn't so much the drive or media. Software and hardware left much to be desired. What you bought typically came with software that was non too interoperable with other drives or controllers. You were almost always dependent on what the drive came with, and any bug fixes you had to fetch your self... via dialup modem to their private BBS which may or may not be listed anywhere you can find. Worse yet, IRQ 5... manuals consistently recommended that you set everything IRQ for anything non standard which included SCSI controllers, tape drive controllers(i.e. ISA qic-02 / qic-36), and sound cards. Not a big issue on dos machines that typically only accessed one device at a given time, but it was jerry-rigged nonsense that would defiantly fail if you were running win3.1 (ding starting backup, ding can't find controller). You could have avoided all this and went with a floppy controller on your tape drive, but this wasn't without problems either.
I don't understand why people use microwaves rather than a cheap air popper.
Why buy an extra thing if what you have already does the job. Why waste the countertop space? I have to admit those air poppers are cheaper than your typical microwave oven on the new front, but a microwave oven is much more useful. An air popper is pretty much limited to popcorn, or perhaps coffee. It spends more time in storage unless you really really love popcorn.
The best part is the cost. The microwave popcorn with 6 3.5oz bags in it costs the same as a 4lb bag of plain kernels.
Actually you can use raw popcorn in the microwave as well. You can either use your own paper bag, buy a specality microwaveable popcorn container, or hell get creative and find your own solution. Popcorn pops very well on it's own without oil in the microwave. A conical shape works very well and tends to leave unpopped kernels in the bottom. If you've cleaned your microwave recently you might even enjoy just putting the popcorn in a bowl and watch it fly around. Now that's something the entire family would gather around and enjoy.
But for the most part, the average joe doesn't eat popcorn enough to justify the expense, even a cheap sub $20 solution.
And unless you happen to be a ordinary non-technical computer user who happens to be stumbling around on /. to read your comment, just how are they supposed to *know* that?
In all fairness to the parent, it's apt-get is somewhat well documented when you install Debian, so long as you actually take notes when it says "you can always run this again by using this command". It is nice, useful, and is a huge step forward in linux package management. Suse's Yast is also pretty spiffy.
It doesn't change the fact that installing one package can break several others.
If I wanted to cook, would I be eating popcorn?
Before the microwave there was much in the way of technology for poping popcorn. Sure you could use any old pot/pan, and end up with a ruined pan. Jiffypop was a godsend to many who enjoyed popcorn but didn't want to ruin a pan. But even jiffypop required much in the way of manual labor. Dedicated oil and air poppers were a major leap and made making large amounts of popcorn a brease.
But before all these inventions, people still ate popcorn. It was among more more difficult things to cook.
one click installer packaging system that doesn't require the end user to hunt down dependency after dependency, thereby scaring away the non-geek.
Not only the non-geeks.
x requires y
y requires z
z conflicts with a,b,c,d, and q
Can't we all just get along?
KERNEL PANIC
Guess not.
If the article is correct, Intel could build in a coffee pot for those long nights of full load modeling.
Ah, this would explain why Asus released a barebones solution called S-presso. Just add a couple of dual cores, water cooling, a fine italian pump, and poof the next generation in computers the e-s-presso. As the water travels over one each dual core chip it's super heated quickly and the italian pump takes over. Through the grounds to your demitasse mugs.
Warning, not drinking enough espresso may result in premature burn out.
I spent a $100 premium on shipping and on the esoteric faster over what guys in Japan would have to pay, now that I have it because I bought it....
1. Get a region free player. Many start under $50 in the US, other countries you can hardly buy a player that supports region restrictions.
2. Copy that disc. ANYdvd springs to mind.
3. Move to the region of your disc, or to a region that doesn't sell crippled players.
Region Codes serve no purpose but to restrict free trade. Many claim it's in violation of the WTO and I for one would love to see this verified.
It results in market for region free players and pirated discs esp in countries that made the sale of non region free players illegal like NZ.
Maybe parents could go the low tech way and just monitor their children and use the word "no" once in a while? No, god forbid they have to spend time with the little bastards.
I guess when you were a kid you never woke up before your parents to watch something. Gawd I did... mostly cartoons that got moved to that odd hour but I can see how parents with a large library of porno would want their players to restrict access to it.
I can understand the FBI warning, but I don't pay $20 for a DVD to watch ads for movies that are crappy/have no interest in
I could live with previews once. I like previews for the most part esp thoughtful ones that might be similar to or catch the interest of someone who bought a given DVD. But if I rewatch a DVD I bought I don't want to wait no 5min to play the bloody flick.
Hmm... I think it is because it is in a digital format that potentially can be distributed to millions of people.
A tape cassette doesn't inherently share that property.
Back in the late 80s I noticed many university book stores offered tape copy kiosks that would allow you to bring in a cassette and high speed dub to either one or several copies. In fact, this is what many a garage band used to get their material copied, as well other spoken word media. The quality left much to be desired as they were hardly ever maintained, except by those using it to promote their bands, and even then the bookstore usually didn't let you align the heads.
The invisible hand will "correct" for this. If places like Frys, BestBuy, etc. buy this untested RAM and get a lot of returns, that costs them money and you can bet that next time around they won't buy from these manufacturers. When that happens enough times, these guys will either start testing RAM or go out of business.
If you stopped to listen to just about any retail store you'll notice they employ the "you get what you pay for technique".
Customer: "This ram causes my system to crash"
Clerk: "Were're happy to replace it under warrenty or you can spend more money on this product here that has a lifetime warrenty."
So, I decide to see just how good the "lifetime warentee" is. Amazingly enough, they send me an RMA label right away and within days I have a brand new memory module and the system is back up and working perfectly
My experience with Kingston had been the same. I had a nice pair of 64meg simms go bad, pulls from some Pentium pro server. For whatever reason they were bad. They were totally hip to replacing it with exactly the same thing, where I was hoping that they'd replace it with simms and they said, "No, we will make sure you get an exact replacement".
Take a look at the various fan films being made on the web
Wow, you mean I can actually get access to fan based trek stories without having to put up with the annoying self righteous people in the fan clubs? This is the best news i've heard all day.
I like star trek. I even would look at a technical manual and blueprints. But I've met some pretty awful people in the fan clubs who adopted Federation ideals as their own, and rank their friends in a pseudo military hierarchy based on how long they known each other, even those who never made a commitment to the cause.
And I know exactly what you mean about the cdrs. I've had lots of problems with cd burners or crap cdrs not being read correctly, so only portions get corrupted on the disc... but they get read perfectly from the burner that actually wrote the disk.
What I found odd, 100% odd was I could do a checksum after I installed Redhat, or Suse, or Debian for that matter, and nothing was wrong. Only during the install stage was there ever an issue. Fortunately you can install via FTP so it's not an issue.