Got a reference handy? I may be reading this incorrectly, but Psychology Today published an article that appears to disagree with you.
Psychology Today is essentially the same as Redbook. It is very watered down, and almost pseudoscience. I would in no way put it in the same ballpark as Popular Mechanics or Popular Science, even though those are fairly watered down as well, they don't focus on relationships or gossip. The latter magazines also have a variety of topics in them.
An example of the BS that psychology today puts out is what you quoted. Two siblings that have different measured IQ at one time will average to be basically the same after time.
Duh!
IQ can vary as much as 10 points or more within an individual at any given time. 15 points is the standard deviation. These scores can particularly vary in younger subjects that take the test because of things like they don't have a very long attention span, they don't give a shit sometimes if ever, they are stoned at the time, they are lazy, or whatever reason.
Now, if Psychology Today said, "IQ is supposed to level out with age" and showed that all people over 60 years old had the same (I guess higher or lower) IQ, then this would be saying something. Maybe.
The average IQ of a middle class American is about 110 (middle class is actually not "middle"), and the average IQ of the population is about 100, again with a standard deviation of 15.
For the most part, kids have about the same sociological level as their parents, as well as many of the other traits due to genetics and 18+ years of training.
Except when Kitty gets run over, or sneaks onto a truck bound for Vladivostok, or urinates on the wrong car, or gets caught by animal control, or...
Yeah, I worry about that with my cats. But I found one, bought two; and being smashed by a car is not that bad for the cat. Its pretty much a thump, thump, and then instant death with no pain. I would suffer much more than my cat.
Quite apart from the lack of consideration towards your neighbours (people can be allergic, phobic or just plain don't want kittycrap in their yards), it's not good petkeeping to let it run free either.
I agree about the neighbors part. I worry about that sometimes too, but my cats have plenty of other cat friends and enemies, so its not just me that lets theirs out. I felt a little better about one neighbor because one of them came home and one or more of my cats was chilling on their porch and she said, "What's up sweetheart?", and petted him/her.
What I want instead of a cell phone for my cats, is a webcam with night vision!
I would kill to be able to know and see what they are up to when they go around kicking other cat's asses and getting theirs kicked. I have no idea how far they go from home, or where in the world they go when its raining or below freezing outside. I would pay big bucks for that.
Ok... this is one of those DIY projects that can be cool to do, but overall its not worth the effort unless you need a very custom looking projector. Quick cost breakdown: You have to buy all the parts - that can easily run over $300. Add $N if you need tools. We are already sitting at $300+N, not counting labor. This project does not appear to be something you can do in 30 minutes or less. And when you are done, you are without any kind of warrenty...
You must be new here. Please leave your geek badge at the door on your way out.
For those that don't know, its common for geeks in order to save money and have something "just the way they want it" for something that they can just buy in a store. It is not uncommon for them to spend near or more than the market price for the item, plus their time, and 99% of the time, the thing is a slapped together hack that may never work right.
Its kinda like all of the regular kids wanting to be a rock star.
Well, there is Linux and the Rolling Stones, so lets let them be.
1st, I am not a Microsoft fan by any stretch of the imagination. The only software product of theirs that I use is the Windows Media Player under OS X, and anybody who has done the same can share their opinion of that software (hint, it sucks).
But OS X ships with a damn good browser, its own horrible nagware almost media player (Quicktime player) and iTunes, and its own (decent from what I hear) chat program.
What is the big deal? There have been many alternate file managers for OS X and WIndows over the years. There have been addon disk utilities for DOS/Windows until Microsoft made their own. It looks like the spyware and virus stuff might be added to Windows (why someone would buy an OS that _needs_ additional software just for it to run is beyond me).
So what is the big deal?
On a side note, the link to the program in my sig seems to have stopped development. Its a shame, because it was/is? the best audio player for OS X and its not that great. Is there any other new work or would someone be interested in forking Cog to make a decent audio player with me? I know nothing about GUI programming on OS X, but I can learn.
If Microsoft just recalls all of the power adapters (which seem to be most of the issue), and replaces them with a different design that allows airflow underneath, they can basically stop this lawsuit and any others that are bound to come up.
You are going against the grain here.
Most of the other people that have replied seem to think the user should either:
1) RTFM 2) sell the thing to somebody else 3) return it
or
4) have the thing break and possibly burn down their house.
Remember, the cost of a recall must be less than the odds of a lawsuit happening and possible settlement value of that lawsuit. Recalls never come from having an unsafe or shoddy product.
If you don't read the manual and consequently use a device in a manner in which it is not intended, it's your own goddamn fault and not the fault of the manufacturer who tried to instruct you about the proper use of the console. Short of putting an ugly sticker on the console that says "Read the manual, dumbfuck!"
This thing is a toy for children up to about 30 years old.
If you expect your average dumbass to read every hardware and software manual from cover to cover (including yourself, regardless of being a dumbass or not) AND comprehend it, AND follow it to the letter, well then maybe you are a dumbass too.
Its not that tough to have a thermal sensor, and have the unit say "I'm too hot, I'm going to shut down now, please see owner's manual or call us at 1-800-sue-menow. Its not that tough to make the thing so that it does have proper venting to be able to put the thing on carpet. Most console games I've ever seen play just fine on the carpet. Carpets are fairly common in American and other countries living rooms.
Anyone can sue anyone else no matter how stupid it is, and there won't be any repurcussions except more money for the lawyers. What we really need is some system in place where the loser pays to further discourage stupid lawsuits.
Yes, but it costs time and some money to go through all of the red tape to get a trial started. The lawyer may do the work for free upfront with the only payment being a large chunk of the settlement. The lawyer is not going to waste his time with a "stupid" lawsuit. Its not worth their time or reputation.
To some degree, I do believe that the loser should pay for the expenses. But that too is built into the system. You don't sue people for money that don't have any money. Thats dumb. Large corporations that get sued can and have to pay to protect their reputation and their pocket book. They cannot just get eaten a piece of a time and just give people money every time they ask for it.
Also, judges can throw out cases. I'm not sure about how the lawsuit disappeared with the fat people suing McDonald's, but that went away. I've never really heard of too many frivolous lawsuits. Yes, there are stupid examples like the robber suing the house owner for getting hurt while robbing their house, or the guy suing a ladder company for falling from a ladder that was in frozen shit that melted or whatever. I'm not even sure if these are true or urban legends. But I don't believe that this is a frivolous lawsuit. Worse case scenario is that MS will win, but be extra careful before releasing an untested product.
Jeez, you would think that you could just unload the piece of junk on ebay.
Although, the guy who buys the thing on eBay is probably not too bright (and possibly the original guy as well), the person bought the Xbox with the expectation that this was a tested and a viable product from an established company.
The latter half of the statement is not true. This was not a tested product, and overheating can cause things like fires or at least the components not to work.
Dumping it on eBay is fine my Microsoft, they still get paid for pushing their products on people willing to pay for their product testing.
However, I'm sick and tired of paying to evaluate broken hardware. Keep in mind that the suit is also seeking a recall of _all_ of the Xboxes to have them replaced with the second revision of the product. Dumping this on eBay does not benefit anybody except Microsoft, and I guess the person might make back money that is compensation for his time and frustration. He could get below his retail value (I don't know or care about the details here).
Also, this is why I never buy crap off of eBay is because of people's attitude like the parent poster. I can't return or sue somebody for a used broken Xbox. I can do it with a new one.
Regardless of the settlement amount (even with the infamous coffee suit), these kinds of lawsuits typically benefit people as a whole. It keeps the market fairly clean of fraudulent companies.
If your OK with every electronics company dumping crap on people like the Xbox and so many other electronic products and "fixing" the problem by everybody reselling the same broken crap over and over again on eBay, then thats simply weird in my book (and just as bad as being Microsoft in this case). Holding a multi-billion dollar corporation to a minimal degree of accountability for their products seems more rational to me.
Even if the judgment is for $10 million dollars, and the lawyers get $5 mil and this guy gets $5 mil and everybody else gets new, working Xboxes. I say its a pretty good deal for everybody concerned. MS is not going to go broke over it. The lawyer can now go on a nice vacation or something and so can the guy doing the suing. And everybody else is OK too.
"Speeding" is not driving above the posted number on the signs on the side of the road.
Speeding is consciously driving too fast for the place you are in such as where there are pedestrians or businesses. Its also driving too fast for the speed of traffic such as on the highway. Or you could just be hauling ass like 120 or 130, and that is just unsafe on public roads.
Hell, they change the speed limit all the time. It used to be 70 on the highways, then 55, and now its creeping back to 70.
What is strange is I have driven a vehicle that had a speed governor in it. It was a rental truck for moving and at something like 70 the gas pedal went soft and didn't go any faster.
But this brings up the eternal question. When do things like this loose copyright and/or trademark?
We have checkers, chess, card games like poker, hearts, spades, bunches of solitaire games. In fact, Hasbro sells checkers as well.
How long do we have to pay "da man" to play games? I can't find too much history about RISK right now, but it appears to have been a French game that had its rules slightly modified and was being sold by Hasbro since 1959. That will be 50 years in a couple. Again, I don't know the details, but Monopoly was originally made by some "regular guy" (or gal) and then bought and licensed by Hasbro ever since.
So, how long do we have to pay somebody for the right to have old inferior versions?
Yes, for example, the sales of alcohol and bibles are highly correlated. And, of course, eveybody knows that the global temperature and the number of pirates are highly correlated as well. Proof: http://www.venganza.org/piratesarecool4.jpg
He mentioned that no human spoken language is more advanced or superior to another.
Well den, im gonna bust a cap in dat jokers ass!
Language is integral with human existence. I guess one could argue that no human being is more advanced or superior to another, but that does not agree with popular opinion. Regardless of what job it is, I find that learning the language of that job is critical to doing that job. Basically, mastery of a language and having agreement from others that you are worthwhile is all there is to do in human life. In my opinion, if you can't do either of these things well, you are less advanced and inferior to those that can.
While the pharmaceuticals had most of the initial influence regarding which drugs are criminalized, in today's world, I've become convinced that the drug lords themselves are the primary motivators behind the 'war on drugs' -- after all, so long as drugs that are in high demand are also illegal, this keeps their street prices artificially high, and profits maximized.
I've heard that drug lords do have lobby groups to keep drugs illegal.
However, I do not believe that drugs are that expensive and I doubt they would change significantly in price if they were to become legal. The only thing that I think might go down in price is high quality marijuana. To put it in comparison to legal drugs like alcohol, illegal ones are about the same price. Now, habitual use of any drug, including alcohol, is going to hurt you in the pocket book, but so will an addiction to pocket books or shoes.
This is about power. The record companies want to dictate how you use their product. They cannot get over the idea that once you purchase something it no longer belongs to them.
If this is true, then they just don't get music (as if they ever did or cared to).
Music is like language, it is a part of _our_ culture, not the record execs power trip. Sure, a record company can produce a random artist that looks good and can produce a couple of bubble gum hits, but everybody over 15 knows that is not music, and it will only be a forgoten thing except for later releases like "Greatest hits of the '90s" and a memory on the billboard list. If you don't believe me, go and look back at the "hits" from the 60s and see how many of them are songs that you know or if many of those songs are what you think of as 60s era music.
Music that lasts, lasts for a reason. Look at http://www.archive.org/audio/ for tons of music that is freely available. Look at some of the music trading sites on the net like http://www.dimeadozen.org/. We love music, and it has been a part of the human experience since the first guy beat 2 sticks together.
Like the South Park episode that shows the poor starving record exec and his mansion and private plane or whatever they showed. That is not music. That is business. Both will survive, regarless of there being a "record business".
I have an 1814 and would not recommend it. It works, but is not the best. I bought it for all of those features that were mentioned, but overall I wish I bought something cheaper. It has gone down 100$ since I bought it though.
The device does not have a software reset, and it took me about a month to figure out that it needs to be power cycled if you want to change the sample rate. The directions read like a voodoo manual. It talks about doing things like putting your computer to sleep and waking it up to make it work if it doesn't. It says other stupid things that all sound like superstitious behavior to me. The driver might be better now, I just got a new one, but the old one would flake out from time to time or freeze my computer. It comes with crippleware or demoware or something. I wasn't really interested. I bought Pro Tools to interface with it, and had to spend another $1,000 to get some basic plugins for that, so that was another $1,300 just to get a basic working setup.
For about the same money you can get a Presonius box or a Digidesign 002 rack or for more cash get the 002 with the sliders. There are other mixer based firewire products out there that are pretty cool as well (Tascam).
I also don't recommend plugins over hardware inserts. First, they don't sound that good. The reverbs sound tinny and fake. The compressors are OK and gates, but why screw around with those when a hardware box can be used and it won't use any CPU power or add any latency. Pro Tools is very touchy and feels so 1995. I'm looking into getting Apple's Logic which can interface with this device since I'm fairly stuck with it and it does use my existing plugins. I mostly understand why Pro Tools requires realtime bouncing to disk because you might have hardware inserts. But if you don't, like I don't at this point in time, its a pain in the ass to make a quick and dirty two track wav file to dump on a CD to see what it sounds like on other systems.
I'm fairly new to this computer audio adventure, but I'll say that computers are not ready to do this yet. Some of the plugins don't work past 48 kHz sample rates, and higher sample rates kill your CPU as well (and disk space), especially with a reverb. I now do all 24bit depths and 48 kHz sample rates, which seem OK.
Just thought I would share my experience, because I thought the exact same thing when I saw the features of the 1814 box.
so how would you propose reusing the bulk of the code with subtle differences?
Depends.
The code I was talking about was actually something like 3 separate programs. So a library with a structure or class element to flag which program we are in is suffice. It could just be compiled into the main executable with #ifdef's to wrap around the subtle differences.
The programmer I was talking about was just not that good.
I was trying to debug his code that had a bug in it where he thought it was cool to change between ascii representation of an integer in hex or decimal representation and he interchanged those back and forth. It worked so long as we were dealing with numbers under 10. A sane programmer would store the data always as a native integer, and convert the integer as needed to ascii hex or decimal with member functions like asciiDecimal() and asciiHex() (I prefer underscores vs case, but this was Windows land and the opposite is preferred there).
Actually, this was not a bug, it was an implementation error. I'm not even a good programmer, but I would have never done the stupid mistakes that he did. I guess I won't mention the name of the company by name, but they are a major software outfit that specializes in antivirus and security programs primarily for Windows. I've heard that their stuff isn't that good, but I don't know or care.
Not sure, but nerves have been reconnected in plenty of other procedures over the years.
Wouldn't it feel like having a thick layer of dead skin on your face all the time, I mean I'd want to pull it off continually.
People get sensitized to constant stimulation. Ever forgot that you had a hat on and had to use your hand to figure it out? Ever want to pull your hair off your head because there is a bunch of dead protein laying there?
I'm not saying it might be weird or possibly creepy, but having no face has got to be worse.
No seriously, what exactly are the "ethical considerations" of a face transplant?
Ever seen the faces on the post office wall? Or on the side of a milk carton? Or mug shots or headshots used in a pictorial line up or even a real line up?
There is little ethical consideration for getting your bobbies bigger. But doctors would be up against a pretty big wall if they had to choose whether or not to completely change somebody's face.
It's not the government tracking this information, so I fail to see how it costs the government any money aside from the time spent developing the standards. They're asking the airlines to maintain a database of information -- most of which they already maintain , probably in multiple, diverse, insecure, incompatible formats -- in order to allow the CDC to find out who's been exposed to some sort of transmissible health issue as rapidly as possible.
The CDC would be stupid not to interview these people anyway. If a nasty new disease comes out, and it was caused by people fucking a pig, looking for airline information would be a waste of time and money. Also, the CDC does want the tracking of this information according to the article.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials have proposed new federal regulations to electronically track more than 600 million U.S. airline passengers a year traveling on more than 7 million flights through 67 hub airports.... would require airlines, travel agents and global reservations systems to collect personal information that exceeds the quantity of information currently collected
If I get my lawnmower fixed, they collect things like my name and phone number, but that is not shared with other lawnmower fixers or the government (AFAIK).
In the case of a massive outbreak of flu, or SARS, or ebola, or some other nasty virus, how much time & money would it cost for the CDC to track this data after the fact?
How much time does it take to cure something like SARS, AIDS or flu? These things have not yet been cured in a matter of days, weeks, years, or decades to date. Diseases come from many different places. Fleas, mosquitos, sex, airborne, food. What makes airlines so special? So, if its OK for the CDC to track airline information, what about my sexual partners? What about the insects I've been exposed to? What about my diet?
Re:Comment every conditional branch or loop
on
How to Write Comments
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Avoid 'magic numbers' too, You've heard of constants?
Seriously, this is not good code: if (u & 0xFF1234) - what the hell is u?
Exactly. I was thinking the same thing.
Clearly labeled abstraction is self documenting and is just better.
Instead of if (u & 0xFF1234), why not have a macro like #define VALID_HEADER(a) ((a) & 0xFF1234) and use if (VALID_HEADER(u)). u might be an OK variable, maybe not.
One thing I do with perl code is instead of making a complex regexp that is expanded with inline comments and whatnot, I just throw a commented line or more of what is trying to be matched. Like if I was parsing a log file for something like:
Nov 30 10:15:01 localhost anacron[5454]: Job `cron.daily' started
I would throw that as a comment, and then throw a regexp on it that may look like hieroglyphics but say something like $mon $day $time $machine $command $pid $msg. If it works, nobody cares. If it doesn't (format changed or whatever) no comment in the world is going to make it easier to debug any differently than having a sample of the expected input.
NEVER do dumb shit like:
int i;/* loop counter */
Its also good to document the basic ins and outs of functions, and the by products of it. If the function destroys the input. Let me know. If the function returns something special in the case of an error. Let me know. If the function takes arguments, let me know what those are. If the function returns malloc()ed data that I need to free, let me know. If I need to provide enough malloc()ed info going into the function, let me know.
Feel free to substitute "me" with "you the programmer" in case you ever look back at your own code.
Another thing to avoid. Don't make code reusable with copy and paste. That kills me, and I had to come behind some "senior" programmer's code before where that was done 3 or more times on huge modules where each one was subtly modified. I would fire someone on the spot for that if they were a "senior" programmer.
Oh, and how about this. Reading the documentation first and/or knowing the language/API/specification before you start writing code. Another different "senior" programmer I worked with though he was clever to rewrite the CGI specification and do his own parsing of URL arguments instead of using & and = signs.
Thank the FSM that I don't work for those companies anymore.
I never thought that programming was that terribly difficult. Working with other programmers definitely is.
people don't seem to mind their kids seeing violence as much as sex because they don't actually think their kids will do any of the violent things they see, but they might actually do the sexual things.
I know of nobody over the age of 18-20 that has not done sexual things that are under 50 years old. That is a guestimate, but I would guess that is very close to being 99% accurate and I will be corrected if I am wrong.
I know of no tax paying US citizen that has not at least financially supported the killing of thousands of people on an annual basis for quite some time.
Sex is bad because it is freedom, and many people have waved their right to sex with a contract with the government in the form of a marriage license, so why should other people have what they have voluntarily given up?
Killing and the presentation of killing is good for many reasons. It keeps people in check out of fear. It is very profitable. The aforementioned fear provides a perceived need for protection and power. Most killings are done off of our soil against brown people that don't even have McDonald's yet. Domestic killings are usually among the uneducated and under achieved in terms of income and they kill each other. That part of the population is already expendable and they breed more than the "upper crust", and they don't spend much money anyway so who cares?
Oh, and BTW (I'll get down modded again, but I don't care) killing is natural for people just like sex. Boys start pretending to kill each other at a very young age. They kill each other once they get older. We put it on TV and in books. One of the landmarks that we use for all of recent history is wars (pre-civil war, post WWII era, post 9/11 of whatever year era). It is documented in every piece of written literature from the beginning of written literature. It seems like its something that is as a part of human nature as taking a shit or fucking. We may rationally think that it is a bad thing, but that is an exercise of cognitive dissidence. We behave collectively the opposite. I know smoking is bad for me and I cognitively would never do anything that is bad for me, but I behaviorally do things totally opposite.
As a taxpayer, do you want every government agency tracking your every move just from a financial point of view?
The CDC wants to track travelers in the event of a nasty disease. What can that do beyond simply asking the people with common and severe symptoms questions (if they want) about where they have been and whatnot? Isn't that just as effective and cheaper?
As someone else pointed out, the airlines started compulsory checking and requiring IDs for travel in 1996. To get commercial airline training requires IDs and other loopholes. But its still completely possible for 3 airlines to get hijacked by foreigners who showed their IDs and everything and have fun with them.
What about "gun control"? That takes and ID. Convicted felons have lost the right to have firearms of any kind. I guess that will start to eliminate murder by guns any day now, right? (BTW, in the USA guess what is the 3rd most common murder weapon after guns and knives? Glass -- usually in the form of a broken bottle!)
Personally, I believe that privacy is the fundamental thing in question here. But lets put our tin foiled hats aside, and focus on dollars and cents. Is this privacy bashing effective in terms of doing what it is supposed to do in terms of its intent or in terms of cost? I don't believe so. Its only very recently during the "war on terror" that the government is even playing lip service to doing things like guarding our borders, but they are incarcerating people without being charged with crimes for years, they are trying to collect our reading at libraries, they are trying to give us a full strip and body cavity search to ride on an airplane. The thing here is not that some people are gaining from the government's actions, but rather that most people are loosing because of them.
So, I say that instead of focusing on our privacy which most people seem very willing to give up, let them focus on their pocket book. Its quite clear that the government sucks at collecting and keeping their information private (eg, the recent CIA leak).
If a private company has tight requirements for their liability or whatever reason. That is fine, we have the choice of another company or just do without. Its very difficult and a long process to overthrow a government. So lets just keep them doing whatever they do so long as it keeps out of our business and pocket books.
Slashdot Mirror
Got a reference handy? I may be reading this incorrectly, but Psychology Today published an article that appears to disagree with you.
Psychology Today is essentially the same as Redbook. It is very watered down, and almost pseudoscience. I would in no way put it in the same ballpark as Popular Mechanics or Popular Science, even though those are fairly watered down as well, they don't focus on relationships or gossip. The latter magazines also have a variety of topics in them.
An example of the BS that psychology today puts out is what you quoted. Two siblings that have different measured IQ at one time will average to be basically the same after time.
Duh!
IQ can vary as much as 10 points or more within an individual at any given time. 15 points is the standard deviation. These scores can particularly vary in younger subjects that take the test because of things like they don't have a very long attention span, they don't give a shit sometimes if ever, they are stoned at the time, they are lazy, or whatever reason.
Now, if Psychology Today said, "IQ is supposed to level out with age" and showed that all people over 60 years old had the same (I guess higher or lower) IQ, then this would be saying something. Maybe.
The average IQ of a middle class American is about 110 (middle class is actually not "middle"), and the average IQ of the population is about 100, again with a standard deviation of 15.
For the most part, kids have about the same sociological level as their parents, as well as many of the other traits due to genetics and 18+ years of training.
Smarter dogs understand it and would obey.
Maybe the dogs running away are being smart by running away and not obeying?
Hmm.
Except when Kitty gets run over, or sneaks onto a truck bound for Vladivostok, or urinates on the wrong car, or gets caught by animal control, or...
Yeah, I worry about that with my cats. But I found one, bought two; and being smashed by a car is not that bad for the cat. Its pretty much a thump, thump, and then instant death with no pain. I would suffer much more than my cat.
Quite apart from the lack of consideration towards your neighbours (people can be allergic, phobic or just plain don't want kittycrap in their yards), it's not good petkeeping to let it run free either.
I agree about the neighbors part. I worry about that sometimes too, but my cats have plenty of other cat friends and enemies, so its not just me that lets theirs out. I felt a little better about one neighbor because one of them came home and one or more of my cats was chilling on their porch and she said, "What's up sweetheart?", and petted him/her.
What I want instead of a cell phone for my cats, is a webcam with night vision!
I would kill to be able to know and see what they are up to when they go around kicking other cat's asses and getting theirs kicked. I have no idea how far they go from home, or where in the world they go when its raining or below freezing outside. I would pay big bucks for that.
Ok... this is one of those DIY projects that can be cool to do, but overall its not worth the effort unless you need a very custom looking projector. Quick cost breakdown: You have to buy all the parts - that can easily run over $300. Add $N if you need tools. We are already sitting at $300+N, not counting labor. This project does not appear to be something you can do in 30 minutes or less. And when you are done, you are without any kind of warrenty...
You must be new here. Please leave your geek badge at the door on your way out.
For those that don't know, its common for geeks in order to save money and have something "just the way they want it" for something that they can just buy in a store. It is not uncommon for them to spend near or more than the market price for the item, plus their time, and 99% of the time, the thing is a slapped together hack that may never work right.
Its kinda like all of the regular kids wanting to be a rock star.
Well, there is Linux and the Rolling Stones, so lets let them be.
1st, I am not a Microsoft fan by any stretch of the imagination. The only software product of theirs that I use is the Windows Media Player under OS X, and anybody who has done the same can share their opinion of that software (hint, it sucks).
But OS X ships with a damn good browser, its own horrible nagware almost media player (Quicktime player) and iTunes, and its own (decent from what I hear) chat program.
What is the big deal? There have been many alternate file managers for OS X and WIndows over the years. There have been addon disk utilities for DOS/Windows until Microsoft made their own. It looks like the spyware and virus stuff might be added to Windows (why someone would buy an OS that _needs_ additional software just for it to run is beyond me).
So what is the big deal?
On a side note, the link to the program in my sig seems to have stopped development. Its a shame, because it was/is? the best audio player for OS X and its not that great. Is there any other new work or would someone be interested in forking Cog to make a decent audio player with me? I know nothing about GUI programming on OS X, but I can learn.
If Microsoft just recalls all of the power adapters (which seem to be most of the issue), and replaces them with a different design that allows airflow underneath, they can basically stop this lawsuit and any others that are bound to come up.
You are going against the grain here.
Most of the other people that have replied seem to think the user should either:
1) RTFM
2) sell the thing to somebody else
3) return it
or
4) have the thing break and possibly burn down their house.
Remember, the cost of a recall must be less than the odds of a lawsuit happening and possible settlement value of that lawsuit. Recalls never come from having an unsafe or shoddy product.
If you don't read the manual and consequently use a device in a manner in which it is not intended, it's your own goddamn fault and not the fault of the manufacturer who tried to instruct you about the proper use of the console. Short of putting an ugly sticker on the console that says "Read the manual, dumbfuck!"
This thing is a toy for children up to about 30 years old.
If you expect your average dumbass to read every hardware and software manual from cover to cover (including yourself, regardless of being a dumbass or not) AND comprehend it, AND follow it to the letter, well then maybe you are a dumbass too.
Its not that tough to have a thermal sensor, and have the unit say "I'm too hot, I'm going to shut down now, please see owner's manual or call us at 1-800-sue-menow. Its not that tough to make the thing so that it does have proper venting to be able to put the thing on carpet. Most console games I've ever seen play just fine on the carpet. Carpets are fairly common in American and other countries living rooms.
I'm guessing he didn't RTFM. It tells you where not to put your Xbox (carpets, enclosed spaces, etc.)
Yeah, pretty soon instead of saying "Batteries not included", they will say cryogenic modules not included.
Why should any console come with commodity cryogenic modules that we all have plenty lying around?
Anyone can sue anyone else no matter how stupid it is, and there won't be any repurcussions except more money for the lawyers. What we really need is some system in place where the loser pays to further discourage stupid lawsuits.
Yes, but it costs time and some money to go through all of the red tape to get a trial started. The lawyer may do the work for free upfront with the only payment being a large chunk of the settlement. The lawyer is not going to waste his time with a "stupid" lawsuit. Its not worth their time or reputation.
To some degree, I do believe that the loser should pay for the expenses. But that too is built into the system. You don't sue people for money that don't have any money. Thats dumb. Large corporations that get sued can and have to pay to protect their reputation and their pocket book. They cannot just get eaten a piece of a time and just give people money every time they ask for it.
Also, judges can throw out cases. I'm not sure about how the lawsuit disappeared with the fat people suing McDonald's, but that went away. I've never really heard of too many frivolous lawsuits. Yes, there are stupid examples like the robber suing the house owner for getting hurt while robbing their house, or the guy suing a ladder company for falling from a ladder that was in frozen shit that melted or whatever. I'm not even sure if these are true or urban legends. But I don't believe that this is a frivolous lawsuit. Worse case scenario is that MS will win, but be extra careful before releasing an untested product.
Find a lawyer!
Jeez, you would think that you could just unload the piece of junk on ebay.
Although, the guy who buys the thing on eBay is probably not too bright (and possibly the original guy as well), the person bought the Xbox with the expectation that this was a tested and a viable product from an established company.
The latter half of the statement is not true. This was not a tested product, and overheating can cause things like fires or at least the components not to work.
Dumping it on eBay is fine my Microsoft, they still get paid for pushing their products on people willing to pay for their product testing.
However, I'm sick and tired of paying to evaluate broken hardware. Keep in mind that the suit is also seeking a recall of _all_ of the Xboxes to have them replaced with the second revision of the product. Dumping this on eBay does not benefit anybody except Microsoft, and I guess the person might make back money that is compensation for his time and frustration. He could get below his retail value (I don't know or care about the details here).
Also, this is why I never buy crap off of eBay is because of people's attitude like the parent poster. I can't return or sue somebody for a used broken Xbox. I can do it with a new one.
Regardless of the settlement amount (even with the infamous coffee suit), these kinds of lawsuits typically benefit people as a whole. It keeps the market fairly clean of fraudulent companies.
If your OK with every electronics company dumping crap on people like the Xbox and so many other electronic products and "fixing" the problem by everybody reselling the same broken crap over and over again on eBay, then thats simply weird in my book (and just as bad as being Microsoft in this case). Holding a multi-billion dollar corporation to a minimal degree of accountability for their products seems more rational to me.
Even if the judgment is for $10 million dollars, and the lawyers get $5 mil and this guy gets $5 mil and everybody else gets new, working Xboxes. I say its a pretty good deal for everybody concerned. MS is not going to go broke over it. The lawyer can now go on a nice vacation or something and so can the guy doing the suing. And everybody else is OK too.
"Speeding" is not driving above the posted number on the signs on the side of the road.
Speeding is consciously driving too fast for the place you are in such as where there are pedestrians or businesses. Its also driving too fast for the speed of traffic such as on the highway. Or you could just be hauling ass like 120 or 130, and that is just unsafe on public roads.
Hell, they change the speed limit all the time. It used to be 70 on the highways, then 55, and now its creeping back to 70.
What is strange is I have driven a vehicle that had a speed governor in it. It was a rental truck for moving and at something like 70 the gas pedal went soft and didn't go any faster.
BTW, yes, Hasbro owns Monopoly as well.
But this brings up the eternal question. When do things like this loose copyright and/or trademark?
We have checkers, chess, card games like poker, hearts, spades, bunches of solitaire games. In fact, Hasbro sells checkers as well.
How long do we have to pay "da man" to play games? I can't find too much history about RISK right now, but it appears to have been a French game that had its rules slightly modified and was being sold by Hasbro since 1959. That will be 50 years in a couple. Again, I don't know the details, but Monopoly was originally made by some "regular guy" (or gal) and then bought and licensed by Hasbro ever since.
So, how long do we have to pay somebody for the right to have old inferior versions?
Correlation does not imply causation.
But it almost always warrants looking into.
Yes, for example, the sales of alcohol and bibles are highly correlated. And, of course, eveybody knows that the global temperature and the number of pirates are highly correlated as well. Proof: http://www.venganza.org/piratesarecool4.jpg
He mentioned that no human spoken language is more advanced or superior to another.
Well den, im gonna bust a cap in dat jokers ass!
Language is integral with human existence. I guess one could argue that no human being is more advanced or superior to another, but that does not agree with popular opinion. Regardless of what job it is, I find that learning the language of that job is critical to doing that job. Basically, mastery of a language and having agreement from others that you are worthwhile is all there is to do in human life. In my opinion, if you can't do either of these things well, you are less advanced and inferior to those that can.
http://www.forbes.com/2002/08/12/0812deadintro.htm l
Its impressive to make that much money, not only in retirement, but when you've been dead for years.
While the pharmaceuticals had most of the initial influence regarding which drugs are criminalized, in today's world, I've become convinced that the drug lords themselves are the primary motivators behind the 'war on drugs' -- after all, so long as drugs that are in high demand are also illegal, this keeps their street prices artificially high, and profits maximized.
I've heard that drug lords do have lobby groups to keep drugs illegal.
However, I do not believe that drugs are that expensive and I doubt they would change significantly in price if they were to become legal. The only thing that I think might go down in price is high quality marijuana. To put it in comparison to legal drugs like alcohol, illegal ones are about the same price. Now, habitual use of any drug, including alcohol, is going to hurt you in the pocket book, but so will an addiction to pocket books or shoes.
This is about power. The record companies want to dictate how you use their product. They cannot get over the idea that once you purchase something it no longer belongs to them.
If this is true, then they just don't get music (as if they ever did or cared to).
Music is like language, it is a part of _our_ culture, not the record execs power trip. Sure, a record company can produce a random artist that looks good and can produce a couple of bubble gum hits, but everybody over 15 knows that is not music, and it will only be a forgoten thing except for later releases like "Greatest hits of the '90s" and a memory on the billboard list. If you don't believe me, go and look back at the "hits" from the 60s and see how many of them are songs that you know or if many of those songs are what you think of as 60s era music.
Music that lasts, lasts for a reason. Look at http://www.archive.org/audio/ for tons of music that is freely available. Look at some of the music trading sites on the net like http://www.dimeadozen.org/. We love music, and it has been a part of the human experience since the first guy beat 2 sticks together.
Like the South Park episode that shows the poor starving record exec and his mansion and private plane or whatever they showed. That is not music. That is business. Both will survive, regarless of there being a "record business".
I have an 1814 and would not recommend it. It works, but is not the best. I bought it for all of those features that were mentioned, but overall I wish I bought something cheaper. It has gone down 100$ since I bought it though.
The device does not have a software reset, and it took me about a month to figure out that it needs to be power cycled if you want to change the sample rate. The directions read like a voodoo manual. It talks about doing things like putting your computer to sleep and waking it up to make it work if it doesn't. It says other stupid things that all sound like superstitious behavior to me. The driver might be better now, I just got a new one, but the old one would flake out from time to time or freeze my computer. It comes with crippleware or demoware or something. I wasn't really interested. I bought Pro Tools to interface with it, and had to spend another $1,000 to get some basic plugins for that, so that was another $1,300 just to get a basic working setup.
For about the same money you can get a Presonius box or a Digidesign 002 rack or for more cash get the 002 with the sliders. There are other mixer based firewire products out there that are pretty cool as well (Tascam).
I also don't recommend plugins over hardware inserts. First, they don't sound that good. The reverbs sound tinny and fake. The compressors are OK and gates, but why screw around with those when a hardware box can be used and it won't use any CPU power or add any latency. Pro Tools is very touchy and feels so 1995. I'm looking into getting Apple's Logic which can interface with this device since I'm fairly stuck with it and it does use my existing plugins. I mostly understand why Pro Tools requires realtime bouncing to disk because you might have hardware inserts. But if you don't, like I don't at this point in time, its a pain in the ass to make a quick and dirty two track wav file to dump on a CD to see what it sounds like on other systems.
I'm fairly new to this computer audio adventure, but I'll say that computers are not ready to do this yet. Some of the plugins don't work past 48 kHz sample rates, and higher sample rates kill your CPU as well (and disk space), especially with a reverb. I now do all 24bit depths and 48 kHz sample rates, which seem OK.
Just thought I would share my experience, because I thought the exact same thing when I saw the features of the 1814 box.
so how would you propose reusing the bulk of the code with subtle differences?
Depends.
The code I was talking about was actually something like 3 separate programs. So a library with a structure or class element to flag which program we are in is suffice. It could just be compiled into the main executable with #ifdef's to wrap around the subtle differences.
The programmer I was talking about was just not that good.
I was trying to debug his code that had a bug in it where he thought it was cool to change between ascii representation of an integer in hex or decimal representation and he interchanged those back and forth. It worked so long as we were dealing with numbers under 10. A sane programmer would store the data always as a native integer, and convert the integer as needed to ascii hex or decimal with member functions like asciiDecimal() and asciiHex() (I prefer underscores vs case, but this was Windows land and the opposite is preferred there).
Actually, this was not a bug, it was an implementation error. I'm not even a good programmer, but I would have never done the stupid mistakes that he did. I guess I won't mention the name of the company by name, but they are a major software outfit that specializes in antivirus and security programs primarily for Windows. I've heard that their stuff isn't that good, but I don't know or care.
they can't reconnect the nerves can they?
Not sure, but nerves have been reconnected in plenty of other procedures over the years.
Wouldn't it feel like having a thick layer of dead skin on your face all the time, I mean I'd want to pull it off continually.
People get sensitized to constant stimulation. Ever forgot that you had a hat on and had to use your hand to figure it out? Ever want to pull your hair off your head because there is a bunch of dead protein laying there?
I'm not saying it might be weird or possibly creepy, but having no face has got to be worse.
No seriously, what exactly are the "ethical considerations" of a face transplant?
Ever seen the faces on the post office wall? Or on the side of a milk carton? Or mug shots or headshots used in a pictorial line up or even a real line up?
There is little ethical consideration for getting your bobbies bigger. But doctors would be up against a pretty big wall if they had to choose whether or not to completely change somebody's face.
The CDC would be stupid not to interview these people anyway. If a nasty new disease comes out, and it was caused by people fucking a pig, looking for airline information would be a waste of time and money. Also, the CDC does want the tracking of this information according to the article. If I get my lawnmower fixed, they collect things like my name and phone number, but that is not shared with other lawnmower fixers or the government (AFAIK).
In the case of a massive outbreak of flu, or SARS, or ebola, or some other nasty virus, how much time & money would it cost for the CDC to track this data after the fact?
How much time does it take to cure something like SARS, AIDS or flu? These things have not yet been cured in a matter of days, weeks, years, or decades to date. Diseases come from many different places. Fleas, mosquitos, sex, airborne, food. What makes airlines so special? So, if its OK for the CDC to track airline information, what about my sexual partners? What about the insects I've been exposed to? What about my diet?
Avoid 'magic numbers' too,
/* loop counter */
You've heard of constants?
Seriously, this is not good code: if (u & 0xFF1234) - what the hell is u?
Exactly. I was thinking the same thing.
Clearly labeled abstraction is self documenting and is just better.
Instead of if (u & 0xFF1234), why not have a macro like #define VALID_HEADER(a) ((a) & 0xFF1234) and use if (VALID_HEADER(u)). u might be an OK variable, maybe not.
One thing I do with perl code is instead of making a complex regexp that is expanded with inline comments and whatnot, I just throw a commented line or more of what is trying to be matched. Like if I was parsing a log file for something like:
Nov 30 10:15:01 localhost anacron[5454]: Job `cron.daily' started
I would throw that as a comment, and then throw a regexp on it that may look like hieroglyphics but say something like $mon $day $time $machine $command $pid $msg. If it works, nobody cares. If it doesn't (format changed or whatever) no comment in the world is going to make it easier to debug any differently than having a sample of the expected input.
NEVER do dumb shit like:
int i;
Its also good to document the basic ins and outs of functions, and the by products of it. If the function destroys the input. Let me know. If the function returns something special in the case of an error. Let me know. If the function takes arguments, let me know what those are. If the function returns malloc()ed data that I need to free, let me know. If I need to provide enough malloc()ed info going into the function, let me know.
Feel free to substitute "me" with "you the programmer" in case you ever look back at your own code.
Another thing to avoid. Don't make code reusable with copy and paste. That kills me, and I had to come behind some "senior" programmer's code before where that was done 3 or more times on huge modules where each one was subtly modified. I would fire someone on the spot for that if they were a "senior" programmer.
Oh, and how about this. Reading the documentation first and/or knowing the language/API/specification before you start writing code. Another different "senior" programmer I worked with though he was clever to rewrite the CGI specification and do his own parsing of URL arguments instead of using & and = signs.
Thank the FSM that I don't work for those companies anymore.
I never thought that programming was that terribly difficult. Working with other programmers definitely is.
people don't seem to mind their kids seeing violence as much as sex because they don't actually think their kids will do any of the violent things they see, but they might actually do the sexual things.
I know of nobody over the age of 18-20 that has not done sexual things that are under 50 years old. That is a guestimate, but I would guess that is very close to being 99% accurate and I will be corrected if I am wrong.
I know of no tax paying US citizen that has not at least financially supported the killing of thousands of people on an annual basis for quite some time.
Sex is bad because it is freedom, and many people have waved their right to sex with a contract with the government in the form of a marriage license, so why should other people have what they have voluntarily given up?
Killing and the presentation of killing is good for many reasons. It keeps people in check out of fear. It is very profitable. The aforementioned fear provides a perceived need for protection and power. Most killings are done off of our soil against brown people that don't even have McDonald's yet. Domestic killings are usually among the uneducated and under achieved in terms of income and they kill each other. That part of the population is already expendable and they breed more than the "upper crust", and they don't spend much money anyway so who cares?
Oh, and BTW (I'll get down modded again, but I don't care) killing is natural for people just like sex. Boys start pretending to kill each other at a very young age. They kill each other once they get older. We put it on TV and in books. One of the landmarks that we use for all of recent history is wars (pre-civil war, post WWII era, post 9/11 of whatever year era). It is documented in every piece of written literature from the beginning of written literature. It seems like its something that is as a part of human nature as taking a shit or fucking. We may rationally think that it is a bad thing, but that is an exercise of cognitive dissidence. We behave collectively the opposite. I know smoking is bad for me and I cognitively would never do anything that is bad for me, but I behaviorally do things totally opposite.
Next...
OK. Lets put the privacy issue aside.
As a taxpayer, do you want every government agency tracking your every move just from a financial point of view?
The CDC wants to track travelers in the event of a nasty disease. What can that do beyond simply asking the people with common and severe symptoms questions (if they want) about where they have been and whatnot? Isn't that just as effective and cheaper?
As someone else pointed out, the airlines started compulsory checking and requiring IDs for travel in 1996. To get commercial airline training requires IDs and other loopholes. But its still completely possible for 3 airlines to get hijacked by foreigners who showed their IDs and everything and have fun with them.
What about "gun control"? That takes and ID. Convicted felons have lost the right to have firearms of any kind. I guess that will start to eliminate murder by guns any day now, right? (BTW, in the USA guess what is the 3rd most common murder weapon after guns and knives? Glass -- usually in the form of a broken bottle!)
Personally, I believe that privacy is the fundamental thing in question here. But lets put our tin foiled hats aside, and focus on dollars and cents. Is this privacy bashing effective in terms of doing what it is supposed to do in terms of its intent or in terms of cost? I don't believe so. Its only very recently during the "war on terror" that the government is even playing lip service to doing things like guarding our borders, but they are incarcerating people without being charged with crimes for years, they are trying to collect our reading at libraries, they are trying to give us a full strip and body cavity search to ride on an airplane. The thing here is not that some people are gaining from the government's actions, but rather that most people are loosing because of them.
So, I say that instead of focusing on our privacy which most people seem very willing to give up, let them focus on their pocket book. Its quite clear that the government sucks at collecting and keeping their information private (eg, the recent CIA leak).
If a private company has tight requirements for their liability or whatever reason. That is fine, we have the choice of another company or just do without. Its very difficult and a long process to overthrow a government. So lets just keep them doing whatever they do so long as it keeps out of our business and pocket books.