Yeah, thanks for contributing to this discussion. Not.
SG-1 is amongst the better sci-fi productions being made right now. The show's not perfect by any means, but for the most part it's well-written, well-acted and great viewing. The storylines and the on-screen chemistry of the team are second to none at the moment: I'd rather watch SG-1 than the dirge that is Enterprise any day of the week.
If it's not to your taste then I don't really care. Plenty of people disagree with you.
Dude, this is Slashdot, nobody cares if it plays MP3s or not, they care whether or not it plays their Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files. If it doesn't support those two audio formats then it could fly faster-than-light and it still wouldn't be good enough for some of the people here.
China has the largest military in the world, BFD. Yet they're NOTHING compared to the U.S. military. Comparing U.S. and Chinese militaries, it's like a 1on1 basketball game of Michael Jordan and a midget. Even with their nukes, if they sent them across the ocean, the response is MUCH more devastating for them. And their nuclear arsenal is quite modest, not 'massive' as you put it. Please get more informed on this subject, it would help in these discussions.
You're talking about winning a nuclear war? And you think that it's me that needs to be "more informed on this subject"? Newsflash for you: once the nukes start flying, we've all lost, regardless of nationality or geography.
Someone once said "I know not with which weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV, will be fought with sticks and stones." He wasn't a man known for his stupidity. His name, in case you don't know, was Albert Einstein.
Ah, but "the occasional unavoidable mistake" isn't too occasional or too unavoidable.
For example, do you have any idea of how often US forces have been responsible for friendly fire incidents? (And are you aware of how often these things are covered up, so that they can't be properly investigated and so that the perpetrators avoid due procedure?)
A great deal of this stems from their poor training: US forces are trained to recognise US and Soviet equipment, but not friendly equipment. Hence incidents such as the one when an A-10 pilot shot up a British convoy during the Gulf War, assuming that they were the enemy, despite their location and Allied recognition markers. Similar incidents were all too common during that war and have been just as common during the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The standard US operating procedure of "shoot first and ask questions later" and mandating the use of "overwhelming force" doesn't help matters.
And lets not forget that not all battlefield munitions used by the US are "smart". The bomblets dropped by cluster bombs (hardly a smart weapon), which are often cited as being more damaging to civilians to military targets have been the cause of many lost Iraqi civilian lives and lost limbs. To pretend otherwise, as military spokesmen often do, is disgraceful.
Once again, I'll reiterate: a smart weapon is only as smart as its wielder.
Support for the war up until the eve of the invasion was minimal. After the war started, with British troops involved in some of the heaviest fighting, it rose as people who were opposed to the war but wanted to be supportive of British troops shifted a bit. After the combat phase of the war, those original opinions resurfaced, especially as the non-existant WMDs continued to be non-existant.
The last opinion poll that I saw about whether or not the US/UK were right to invade Iraq showed about 85 percent thought that the war was wrong. That's a pretty damning result for Tony Blair, especially when coupled with the backtracking about the 45 minute claims, etc.
So lets give the same amount of aid to the muslims/arabs so they can build bigger and better terrorist armies... yeah right
No, let's not give any military aid to anyone: people with no weapons find it hard to wage war effectively. The idea isn't to give people the means to blow each other to bits, the idea is to take those means away and hence force the parties concerned to address their mutual problems diplomatically rather than militarily.
But that embassy strike was on target dude. We already know exactly why it was bombed the wrong target was selected unfortunately, misrepresenting it as anything else is a lie.
Uh, I think you proved my point for me again. It doens't matter how accurate your weapons are if you fail to correctly aim them at their targets 100 percent of the time. Whether that failure is because of poor intelligence (as with the Chinese embassy) or because of misentered coordinates or whatever else is irrelevant.
As has been pointed out previously, a smart bomb is only as smart as the soldier who wields it.
If you think that the US is the great philanthropist and the rest of the World is just stretching out its collective begging bowl then you've seriously got it wrong. As a percentage of it's GDP, the US gives less in foreign aid than most other developed countries.
I for one would happily love to see all US foreign aid stop overnight because it would mean that the $3-4 billion per year in military aid given to Israel would cease and Israel would have to seriously consider non-violent solutions to its problems.
I know saying this will get me labelled anti-semitic* but as long as Israel feels that the US is 100 percent in its camp then the situation in the Middle East will never improve. It will take a serious commitment by Israel, and by the US, as well as by the other parties to achieve lasting peace in the region. That commitment will never be made as long as Israel and hardliners like Ariel Sharon are allowed to dominate the politics of the region with bombs, rockets and tank shells.**
So, please cut US foreign aid to zero. Even if nothing changes in the Middle East, it would be interesting to see how many oppressive right-wing puppet regimes fall as a result.
(*Laughable when you consider I went to a school that was 90 percent Jewish, that most of my best friends whilst growing up were Jewish, my first two girlfriends were Jewish and that I went to at least 40 Bar Mitzvahs and Bat Mitzvahs as a kid.)
(**Yes I am aware of the devastation wreaked by Palestinean suicide bombers. But this discussion is about the influence that US aid has on the region, and that influence is solely on Israel. The one thing I will say about the subject is I don't see how escalating levels of violence can bring about the peace that both Israelis and Palestineans deserve. Sometimes, you have to be the one willing to break the circle of bloodshed: an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, as Ghandi so eloquently put it.)
I'd like to think that the people in charge of the world's biggest nuclear arsenal weren't deliberately targetting a potential adversary that had its own massive nuclear arsenal, as well as the world's largest army and air force.
Because, if that were true, then "dumb" is a gross understatement: I'd rather that the fate of the world isn't left in the hand's of people that shortsighted. If it is true then I don't think it's me that should be being labelled "stupid" or "naive" here.
Is that why the US managed to hit a clearly located Red Cross compound in Afghanistan not once but twice? Or why it managed to hit a Chinese embassy building in the Balkans?
It's not just about your bombs landing where they are aimed. It's about making sure that they are aimed in the right place as well. Without the latter, the former is pointless.
There is a treaty but the Bush administration doesn't give a shit.
Just like it didn't give a shit about:
1. The Kyoto protocol, to which the Clinton administration had previously committed the US;
2. The International Criminal Court, (together with the Clinton administration) by demanding a complete US exemption from prosecution;
3. Free trade, by placing tarriffs on steel, lumber and other imports, in direct violation of NAFTA and other free trade agreements;
4. Invading Iraq, which was done without a proper UN mandate, hence the UN-bashing when the US didn't get close to getting what it wanted (no, the previous decade old resolutions were not sufficient, if they were the US wouldn't have been looking for a new resolution green-lighting the war in late 2002 and it wouldn't have got so shitty with France and the other countries in the Security Council that promised to veto any such resolution);
5. The other long-range missile treaties with Russia (originally signed in the 1970s, when it was part of the USSR), which it unilaterally scrapped almost as soon as it entered office.
And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.
Face facts, when it comes to international relations, there's a lot that the Bush administration doesn't give a shit about. Pretend all you want, but the current US government has set back US-World relationships more than any other in history. It took all the goodwill and support the World had to offer after September 11 and either pissed it away or threw it back into people's faces.
Anti-US sentiment is rife, even in those countries whose governments had backed the US invasion of Iraq: In Britain 85 percent were opposed to war, In Australia it was over 80 percent and in Spain it was over 90 percent, and most of those in opposition were highly critical of Bush's motives. It turns out that they (and the rest of the World) were right to be.
It's not hard to find "Bush bashing crap". The man's done a lot of crap that's worthy of bashing.
I spent years playing RPGs and LRPGs when I was at school, mainly AD&D. I had more fun during one four hour session of Paranoia than I did in all the time I spent playing other games put together.
Paranoia is perhaps the only RPG I've come across where having a good time came second to nothing else. In most other RPGs (AD&D, Middle Earth, etc) people are way too obsessed with developing uber characters and empire building to actually remember that they are supposed to be enjoying themselves.
Because it's about prevention. I'm sure the number of DUI and DWI incidents that involve first-time offenders is higher than the number that involve repeat offenders. And I'm sure that previous DUI and DWI offenders don't always drive in the same vehicle: what about the times when someone steps into a car belonging to a friend or family member? Or when they buy another car, new or used?
Above and beyond stopping people who are clearly intoxicated above legally acceptable limits, such a measure would act as a mental deterrent to drink driving in general. If people were used to a quick sobriety test before they pulled away then public awareness of issues such as DUI and DWI would increase and people would be less likely to down a couple of beers and get into the car hoping that they would be safe according to the meter, or as they do now, down a couple of beers and get into the car hoping that they don't get pulled over. Even on drink can have a serious affect on your reaction times and make the difference between life and death: too many motorists forget that.
Remember, DUIs and DWIs cost everyone money. If you're not worried about the lives they wreck when they hurt or kill someone then worry about the cost of cleaning up their mess, the police, other emergency service and court time taken up by them, the higher insurance premiums you have to pay to cover their asses, etc.
It is standard practice is many industries (not just the hard drive business, or the PC business in general) to replace like with like when a product is being swapped out.
So, a six-month old product will not be replaced with a brand new one but one of a similar age, and the remaining warranty on the old product will be transferred to the new one, rather than a new 12-month/three-year/however long warranty being issued. These replacement products will invariably be reconditioned units that have been returned, repaired and certified as good to go by the manufacturer.
In the case of these IBM drives, it may be that faulty drives were replaced with other drives that had been returned with the same problem. However, because the problem seems to be heat-related, it could be that the reconditioned drives checked out OK at IBM but failed when put into a system that had the drives operating at higher temperatures. Under those circumstances, where a user's PC is prone to not providing the drive with sufficient cooling, then it's understandable why one drive after another might fail.
As I said before, these are industry-standard practices. If you want a new-for-old replacement policy on hard disk drives or any other product then be prepared to pay through the teeth for it. It costs money to make things, and new-for-old warranties mean ditching used working inventory in favour of new stock, which means additional cost to the manufacturer that has to be recouped somewhere and that somewhere is the customer.
Unfortunately, people tend to vote with their feet, and companies that offer more expensive but better supported products invariably find themselves at a commercial disadvantage from competitors that offer the same products but with less utopian support. That's capitalism in action for you.
Heck, who needs 32-bit computing? Why don't we just ditch our Pentiums and Athlons and go back to 286s? After all, 16-bit computing is enough for everyone, right?
Wake up bro. Smell the coffee. 64-bit processors are the future. And, one day, they'll be standard on new PCs and 128-bit processors will be the future. It's called progress.
Perhaps you preferred it when computing was all punch cards but some of us quite like these new-fangled PCs that are all-singing and all-dancing and that have visual displays. I know, I know, it's so "modern" of us, but we're living in the 21st century and proud of it.
While the EU might be able to ban Microsoft products (stress on the word "might"; I don't know if they actually could do this) it wouldn't do so. For one thing, Microsoft employs more than a handful of Europeans, in the UK and Ireland especially, and, for another thing, doing so would kick off an almighty trade war with the US.
Although it preaches free trade, the US rarely practices it (cf tarriffs on Canadian lumber, worldwide steel, etc). You can bet your bottom dollar that it would be more than happy to kick off a trade war with the EU if it were to ban Microsoft products, even if such a ban was legal under EU law. Any President who wasn't in the pocket of big business would still do it, in only to gain a few points in the polls: there's nothing a politician loves more than a "them vs. us", flag-waving contest.
Expect fines (big by our standards, pocket change by Microsoft's), and perhaps (if you're lucky) a shake-up in the way that Microsoft bundles apps such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player but don't hold your breath for anything more than that.
You're either a troll or an ignorant fool or both.
The cost of living is significantly cheaper in India, by at least an order of magnitude. Everything, from food, to housing, to transport, to you name it is cheaper there. Most white collar workers not only earn a comfortable living, but they can afford to employ other people (ie, servants) to do all the menial stuff, like cooking and cleaning.
If you think that you can achieve the same level of comfort (eg, a household where you do little more than eat, sleep and enjoy yourself) in the US in the equivalent job then you're deluding yourself.
I've bet you've never even left the US let alone been to India. I have, and I can tell you that most white collar Indians live relatively stress-free lives compared to those of us in the West. You were saying something about quality of life?
It irks me too that the combination Ms. Pac Man/Galaga machines now charge.50 per play - why is it double the price to play an old game??
That arcade machine hasn't shrunk. It still takes up the same amount of floor space. On the other hand, the arcade operator's costs have grown considerably. Everything from rent, to electricity, to maintenance, to wages, to whatever else you can think of has risen in price. It's called inflation.
Higher costs, plus more idle time (How many people are queuing to play Ms. Pac Man or Galaga nowadays?) means higher cost per play. Simple economics.
Don't get me wrong, I too can remember the day when you could play Space Invaders for 2 pence and I too shake my head when I see the cost of some of today's games (and, heck, I can remember the furore caused at school when the first moving cabinet games like Afterburner came out charging one pound per play) but I'm pragmatic about such things and I realise that that golden era of arcade gaming has gone and that being an arcade operator isn't the licence to print money that it was once.
I find it interesting that, not knowing me at all beyond my posts on Slashdot, you're able to infer that I'm a moronic apologist but yet are unable to spell the simple word "trees": how you thought it was spelt with an "a" in it is beyond me.
Nice intelligent post, by the way. Reducing a protecting the environment argument to one of protecting spammers and destroying email as a means of communication is a work of pure literary genius. People, I think we've found our generation's Mark Twain. If only he could spell though...
Well, dumbass, I'm aware of how flight works, but if you translate, say, 30 percent of your thrust from horizontal flight to vertical flight then you're not going to drop out of the sky like a stone, are you? All you need is to VIFF successfully is lose some of your horizontal speed and translate that into vertical speed for a split second.
In that split second, your aircraft will "hop" out of the sights of your pursuer and will most probably cause him to overshoot your location. And, once he's done that and you've resumed 100 percent horizontal thrust, you're in prime position to kill him, not vice versa.
Perhaps you missed the point of my last post: did you not notice the emphasis I placed on the words "some" and "momentarily"?
I would gladly provide you with evidence of Harrier pilots talking about their relevant Falklands War experiences if you can just join me in hopping into a time machine: I don't have recordings of the various TV programmes I've seen on the subject and neither did I camcorder any of the after-dinner speeches that I've attended with vets of that war. There's ample evidence in your local library, assuming they've got any books on that war.
Did I mention that I personally know a Falklands Harrier pilot through my time with my university's air squadron? Is there any reason for him to have lied about his own flight experience?
Besides, you've hardly provided any evidence to the contrary, have you? At least one reference to the book that you mentioned quotes the author as talking about his own thrust vectoring experiences, which directly contradicts what you've said.
Besides, the whole point of VIFFing is to divert thrust away from 100 percent horizontal flight and to translate some of that speed momentarily to vertical flight. The aim of VIFFing is to have a pursuing aircraft overshoot its target so that the hunter can become the hunted.
VIFFing is hardly a "desperation" tactic. If that was the case it wouldn't be being taught to Britiah and American Harrier pilots, would it?
The use of thrust vectoring (later called VIFFing - vectoring in forward flight - by the Americans) was indeed used by RAF Harrier and RN Sea Harrier pilots during the Falklands.
They might not have called it VIFFing at the time, but several interviews I've read and seen with pilots concerned clearly state that it was used to outmanouvre the otherwise superior aircraft fielded by the Argentine military.
Even if Sharkey Ward didn't use it at all (which I doubt) thrust vectoring was used by most of the Harrier pilots in air-to-air combat. Ward wasn't the only pilot in action, and he didn't fly in every single sortie, so don't assume that what he said is true of every single air-to-air encounter of the entire war.
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I can't stand Charlton Heston nowadays. The guy's become a gun-nut apologist. I say damn him. Damn him to hell.
Yeah, thanks for contributing to this discussion. Not.
SG-1 is amongst the better sci-fi productions being made right now. The show's not perfect by any means, but for the most part it's well-written, well-acted and great viewing. The storylines and the on-screen chemistry of the team are second to none at the moment: I'd rather watch SG-1 than the dirge that is Enterprise any day of the week.
If it's not to your taste then I don't really care. Plenty of people disagree with you.
Dude, this is Slashdot, nobody cares if it plays MP3s or not, they care whether or not it plays their Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files. If it doesn't support those two audio formats then it could fly faster-than-light and it still wouldn't be good enough for some of the people here.
China has the largest military in the world, BFD. Yet they're NOTHING compared to the U.S. military. Comparing U.S. and Chinese militaries, it's like a 1on1 basketball game of Michael Jordan and a midget. Even with their nukes, if they sent them across the ocean, the response is MUCH more devastating for them. And their nuclear arsenal is quite modest, not 'massive' as you put it. Please get more informed on this subject, it would help in these discussions.
You're talking about winning a nuclear war? And you think that it's me that needs to be "more informed on this subject"? Newsflash for you: once the nukes start flying, we've all lost, regardless of nationality or geography.
Someone once said "I know not with which weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV, will be fought with sticks and stones." He wasn't a man known for his stupidity. His name, in case you don't know, was Albert Einstein.
Ah, but "the occasional unavoidable mistake" isn't too occasional or too unavoidable.
For example, do you have any idea of how often US forces have been responsible for friendly fire incidents? (And are you aware of how often these things are covered up, so that they can't be properly investigated and so that the perpetrators avoid due procedure?)
A great deal of this stems from their poor training: US forces are trained to recognise US and Soviet equipment, but not friendly equipment. Hence incidents such as the one when an A-10 pilot shot up a British convoy during the Gulf War, assuming that they were the enemy, despite their location and Allied recognition markers. Similar incidents were all too common during that war and have been just as common during the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The standard US operating procedure of "shoot first and ask questions later" and mandating the use of "overwhelming force" doesn't help matters.
And lets not forget that not all battlefield munitions used by the US are "smart". The bomblets dropped by cluster bombs (hardly a smart weapon), which are often cited as being more damaging to civilians to military targets have been the cause of many lost Iraqi civilian lives and lost limbs. To pretend otherwise, as military spokesmen often do, is disgraceful.
Once again, I'll reiterate: a smart weapon is only as smart as its wielder.
Support for the war up until the eve of the invasion was minimal. After the war started, with British troops involved in some of the heaviest fighting, it rose as people who were opposed to the war but wanted to be supportive of British troops shifted a bit. After the combat phase of the war, those original opinions resurfaced, especially as the non-existant WMDs continued to be non-existant.
The last opinion poll that I saw about whether or not the US/UK were right to invade Iraq showed about 85 percent thought that the war was wrong. That's a pretty damning result for Tony Blair, especially when coupled with the backtracking about the 45 minute claims, etc.
So lets give the same amount of aid to the muslims/arabs so they can build bigger and better terrorist armies... yeah right
No, let's not give any military aid to anyone: people with no weapons find it hard to wage war effectively. The idea isn't to give people the means to blow each other to bits, the idea is to take those means away and hence force the parties concerned to address their mutual problems diplomatically rather than militarily.
Is that really so hard for an AC to understand?
But that embassy strike was on target dude. We already know exactly why it was bombed the wrong target was selected unfortunately, misrepresenting it as anything else is a lie.
Uh, I think you proved my point for me again. It doens't matter how accurate your weapons are if you fail to correctly aim them at their targets 100 percent of the time. Whether that failure is because of poor intelligence (as with the Chinese embassy) or because of misentered coordinates or whatever else is irrelevant.
As has been pointed out previously, a smart bomb is only as smart as the soldier who wields it.
Here, here.
If you think that the US is the great philanthropist and the rest of the World is just stretching out its collective begging bowl then you've seriously got it wrong. As a percentage of it's GDP, the US gives less in foreign aid than most other developed countries.
I for one would happily love to see all US foreign aid stop overnight because it would mean that the $3-4 billion per year in military aid given to Israel would cease and Israel would have to seriously consider non-violent solutions to its problems.
I know saying this will get me labelled anti-semitic* but as long as Israel feels that the US is 100 percent in its camp then the situation in the Middle East will never improve. It will take a serious commitment by Israel, and by the US, as well as by the other parties to achieve lasting peace in the region. That commitment will never be made as long as Israel and hardliners like Ariel Sharon are allowed to dominate the politics of the region with bombs, rockets and tank shells.**
So, please cut US foreign aid to zero. Even if nothing changes in the Middle East, it would be interesting to see how many oppressive right-wing puppet regimes fall as a result.
(*Laughable when you consider I went to a school that was 90 percent Jewish, that most of my best friends whilst growing up were Jewish, my first two girlfriends were Jewish and that I went to at least 40 Bar Mitzvahs and Bat Mitzvahs as a kid.)
(**Yes I am aware of the devastation wreaked by Palestinean suicide bombers. But this discussion is about the influence that US aid has on the region, and that influence is solely on Israel. The one thing I will say about the subject is I don't see how escalating levels of violence can bring about the peace that both Israelis and Palestineans deserve. Sometimes, you have to be the one willing to break the circle of bloodshed: an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, as Ghandi so eloquently put it.)
Man, I seriously hope it wasn't intentional.
I'd like to think that the people in charge of the world's biggest nuclear arsenal weren't deliberately targetting a potential adversary that had its own massive nuclear arsenal, as well as the world's largest army and air force.
Because, if that were true, then "dumb" is a gross understatement: I'd rather that the fate of the world isn't left in the hand's of people that shortsighted. If it is true then I don't think it's me that should be being labelled "stupid" or "naive" here.
Is that why the US managed to hit a clearly located Red Cross compound in Afghanistan not once but twice? Or why it managed to hit a Chinese embassy building in the Balkans?
It's not just about your bombs landing where they are aimed. It's about making sure that they are aimed in the right place as well. Without the latter, the former is pointless.
There is a treaty but the Bush administration doesn't give a shit.
Just like it didn't give a shit about:
1. The Kyoto protocol, to which the Clinton administration had previously committed the US;
2. The International Criminal Court, (together with the Clinton administration) by demanding a complete US exemption from prosecution;
3. Free trade, by placing tarriffs on steel, lumber and other imports, in direct violation of NAFTA and other free trade agreements;
4. Invading Iraq, which was done without a proper UN mandate, hence the UN-bashing when the US didn't get close to getting what it wanted (no, the previous decade old resolutions were not sufficient, if they were the US wouldn't have been looking for a new resolution green-lighting the war in late 2002 and it wouldn't have got so shitty with France and the other countries in the Security Council that promised to veto any such resolution);
5. The other long-range missile treaties with Russia (originally signed in the 1970s, when it was part of the USSR), which it unilaterally scrapped almost as soon as it entered office.
And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.
Face facts, when it comes to international relations, there's a lot that the Bush administration doesn't give a shit about. Pretend all you want, but the current US government has set back US-World relationships more than any other in history. It took all the goodwill and support the World had to offer after September 11 and either pissed it away or threw it back into people's faces.
Anti-US sentiment is rife, even in those countries whose governments had backed the US invasion of Iraq: In Britain 85 percent were opposed to war, In Australia it was over 80 percent and in Spain it was over 90 percent, and most of those in opposition were highly critical of Bush's motives. It turns out that they (and the rest of the World) were right to be.
It's not hard to find "Bush bashing crap". The man's done a lot of crap that's worthy of bashing.
I spent years playing RPGs and LRPGs when I was at school, mainly AD&D. I had more fun during one four hour session of Paranoia than I did in all the time I spent playing other games put together.
Paranoia is perhaps the only RPG I've come across where having a good time came second to nothing else. In most other RPGs (AD&D, Middle Earth, etc) people are way too obsessed with developing uber characters and empire building to actually remember that they are supposed to be enjoying themselves.
Because it's about prevention. I'm sure the number of DUI and DWI incidents that involve first-time offenders is higher than the number that involve repeat offenders. And I'm sure that previous DUI and DWI offenders don't always drive in the same vehicle: what about the times when someone steps into a car belonging to a friend or family member? Or when they buy another car, new or used?
Above and beyond stopping people who are clearly intoxicated above legally acceptable limits, such a measure would act as a mental deterrent to drink driving in general. If people were used to a quick sobriety test before they pulled away then public awareness of issues such as DUI and DWI would increase and people would be less likely to down a couple of beers and get into the car hoping that they would be safe according to the meter, or as they do now, down a couple of beers and get into the car hoping that they don't get pulled over. Even on drink can have a serious affect on your reaction times and make the difference between life and death: too many motorists forget that.
Remember, DUIs and DWIs cost everyone money. If you're not worried about the lives they wreck when they hurt or kill someone then worry about the cost of cleaning up their mess, the police, other emergency service and court time taken up by them, the higher insurance premiums you have to pay to cover their asses, etc.
It is standard practice is many industries (not just the hard drive business, or the PC business in general) to replace like with like when a product is being swapped out.
So, a six-month old product will not be replaced with a brand new one but one of a similar age, and the remaining warranty on the old product will be transferred to the new one, rather than a new 12-month/three-year/however long warranty being issued. These replacement products will invariably be reconditioned units that have been returned, repaired and certified as good to go by the manufacturer.
In the case of these IBM drives, it may be that faulty drives were replaced with other drives that had been returned with the same problem. However, because the problem seems to be heat-related, it could be that the reconditioned drives checked out OK at IBM but failed when put into a system that had the drives operating at higher temperatures. Under those circumstances, where a user's PC is prone to not providing the drive with sufficient cooling, then it's understandable why one drive after another might fail.
As I said before, these are industry-standard practices. If you want a new-for-old replacement policy on hard disk drives or any other product then be prepared to pay through the teeth for it. It costs money to make things, and new-for-old warranties mean ditching used working inventory in favour of new stock, which means additional cost to the manufacturer that has to be recouped somewhere and that somewhere is the customer.
Unfortunately, people tend to vote with their feet, and companies that offer more expensive but better supported products invariably find themselves at a commercial disadvantage from competitors that offer the same products but with less utopian support. That's capitalism in action for you.
Heck, who needs 32-bit computing? Why don't we just ditch our Pentiums and Athlons and go back to 286s? After all, 16-bit computing is enough for everyone, right?
Wake up bro. Smell the coffee. 64-bit processors are the future. And, one day, they'll be standard on new PCs and 128-bit processors will be the future. It's called progress.
Perhaps you preferred it when computing was all punch cards but some of us quite like these new-fangled PCs that are all-singing and all-dancing and that have visual displays. I know, I know, it's so "modern" of us, but we're living in the 21st century and proud of it.
While the EU might be able to ban Microsoft products (stress on the word "might"; I don't know if they actually could do this) it wouldn't do so. For one thing, Microsoft employs more than a handful of Europeans, in the UK and Ireland especially, and, for another thing, doing so would kick off an almighty trade war with the US.
Although it preaches free trade, the US rarely practices it (cf tarriffs on Canadian lumber, worldwide steel, etc). You can bet your bottom dollar that it would be more than happy to kick off a trade war with the EU if it were to ban Microsoft products, even if such a ban was legal under EU law. Any President who wasn't in the pocket of big business would still do it, in only to gain a few points in the polls: there's nothing a politician loves more than a "them vs. us", flag-waving contest.
Expect fines (big by our standards, pocket change by Microsoft's), and perhaps (if you're lucky) a shake-up in the way that Microsoft bundles apps such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player but don't hold your breath for anything more than that.
You're either a troll or an ignorant fool or both.
The cost of living is significantly cheaper in India, by at least an order of magnitude. Everything, from food, to housing, to transport, to you name it is cheaper there. Most white collar workers not only earn a comfortable living, but they can afford to employ other people (ie, servants) to do all the menial stuff, like cooking and cleaning.
If you think that you can achieve the same level of comfort (eg, a household where you do little more than eat, sleep and enjoy yourself) in the US in the equivalent job then you're deluding yourself.
I've bet you've never even left the US let alone been to India. I have, and I can tell you that most white collar Indians live relatively stress-free lives compared to those of us in the West. You were saying something about quality of life?
It irks me too that the combination Ms. Pac Man/Galaga machines now charge .50 per play - why is it double the price to play an old game??
That arcade machine hasn't shrunk. It still takes up the same amount of floor space. On the other hand, the arcade operator's costs have grown considerably. Everything from rent, to electricity, to maintenance, to wages, to whatever else you can think of has risen in price. It's called inflation.
Higher costs, plus more idle time (How many people are queuing to play Ms. Pac Man or Galaga nowadays?) means higher cost per play. Simple economics.
Don't get me wrong, I too can remember the day when you could play Space Invaders for 2 pence and I too shake my head when I see the cost of some of today's games (and, heck, I can remember the furore caused at school when the first moving cabinet games like Afterburner came out charging one pound per play) but I'm pragmatic about such things and I realise that that golden era of arcade gaming has gone and that being an arcade operator isn't the licence to print money that it was once.
I find it interesting that, not knowing me at all beyond my posts on Slashdot, you're able to infer that I'm a moronic apologist but yet are unable to spell the simple word "trees": how you thought it was spelt with an "a" in it is beyond me.
Nice intelligent post, by the way. Reducing a protecting the environment argument to one of protecting spammers and destroying email as a means of communication is a work of pure literary genius. People, I think we've found our generation's Mark Twain. If only he could spell though...
Well, dumbass, I'm aware of how flight works, but if you translate, say, 30 percent of your thrust from horizontal flight to vertical flight then you're not going to drop out of the sky like a stone, are you? All you need is to VIFF successfully is lose some of your horizontal speed and translate that into vertical speed for a split second.
In that split second, your aircraft will "hop" out of the sights of your pursuer and will most probably cause him to overshoot your location. And, once he's done that and you've resumed 100 percent horizontal thrust, you're in prime position to kill him, not vice versa.
Perhaps you missed the point of my last post: did you not notice the emphasis I placed on the words "some" and "momentarily"?
I would gladly provide you with evidence of Harrier pilots talking about their relevant Falklands War experiences if you can just join me in hopping into a time machine: I don't have recordings of the various TV programmes I've seen on the subject and neither did I camcorder any of the after-dinner speeches that I've attended with vets of that war. There's ample evidence in your local library, assuming they've got any books on that war.
Did I mention that I personally know a Falklands Harrier pilot through my time with my university's air squadron? Is there any reason for him to have lied about his own flight experience?
Besides, you've hardly provided any evidence to the contrary, have you? At least one reference to the book that you mentioned quotes the author as talking about his own thrust vectoring experiences, which directly contradicts what you've said.
Flunk physics, did we? Ever heard of momentum?
Besides, the whole point of VIFFing is to divert thrust away from 100 percent horizontal flight and to translate some of that speed momentarily to vertical flight. The aim of VIFFing is to have a pursuing aircraft overshoot its target so that the hunter can become the hunted.
VIFFing is hardly a "desperation" tactic. If that was the case it wouldn't be being taught to Britiah and American Harrier pilots, would it?
The use of thrust vectoring (later called VIFFing - vectoring in forward flight - by the Americans) was indeed used by RAF Harrier and RN Sea Harrier pilots during the Falklands.
They might not have called it VIFFing at the time, but several interviews I've read and seen with pilots concerned clearly state that it was used to outmanouvre the otherwise superior aircraft fielded by the Argentine military.
Even if Sharkey Ward didn't use it at all (which I doubt) thrust vectoring was used by most of the Harrier pilots in air-to-air combat. Ward wasn't the only pilot in action, and he didn't fly in every single sortie, so don't assume that what he said is true of every single air-to-air encounter of the entire war.
Which would you prefer:
1. Junk mail, which has a realworld cost (printing paper means felling trees); or
2. An email, which has negligible cost and is easily disposed of by deletion?
You forgot the demos showing people how the park and ride facility is twice as fast as the identical service at the rival theme park down the road.