Thanks subby for this article. I've got a Hitachi HTS721060G9AT00 in a Mac Mini running Gentoo, and has been for about a year (they make nice little servers), and sure enough this is what I found:
873510??!?!?! I run the command a couple times in the span of a few seconds and it seems to be incrementing every second. The drive is only rated for 600000 load/unload cycles!
I flatly refuse to believe all these 'secondary-smoke' alarmist advertisements, stories, and studies. They fly in the face of common sense, and I believe they are constructed as a reason to further regulate and legislate behaviors for the sake of politics power and money.
You find it hard to believe that people who inhale smoke become damaged and/or die? Really now?
No, that would be the best thing Comcast could do for everyone involved. Many ISPs do it. They inform their customers about the limits on their line and throttle, cut off or charge extra for going over them. They don't sell services as "unlimited" and then expect people to "not abuse" it and tell no one what they consider to be "abuse".
Comcast isn't the government and your analogy doesn't correlate. Comcast is a business selling a service. You need to tell people what they are buying otherwise it's called false advertising.
It is not reasonable to market a service as "unlimited", yet disconnect people after some unknown limit has been reached.
There is no "case by case basis", every Comcast residential customer is being sold the same service and paying the same monthly, everyone should get equal value. As an "economist" I'd expect you to understand that. Why don't you get this?
If portal was all about the gameplay and not the story then why is everyone talking about the story?
There is no depth to the discussion because it is not a discussion. Do you discuss things with your TV? A sculpture? A painting? No. It's a one way street. You discuss things with other people after experiencing them. This is what portal has done.
Subtle? There are no other humans in the entire game except your character, GLaDOS killed them all. The entire "non tutorial" part of the game has you running away from a mad AI with a God complex who killed off the entire company. How is this subtle?
Be always aware of the possible consequences to your actions. Not only is that the social commentary but it is also reinforced in the game play itself! It requires thinking ahead.
That said, there was no deep artistic commentary about anything beyond the game. Art transcends its medium and gives insight into aspects of life, humanity, etc. Portal did not do this - it just provides a helluva fun time.
One of the quotes from "Still Alive" is Aperture Science's motto: "We do what we must because we can."
Perhaps you missed the commentary about doing science for science's sake? Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
You see, the limits to what a salesperson may be empowered to do are always less than what a manager is able to do.
Not always, not even in most cases.
If I, as a consumer, have reached those limits and still do not feel that I'm getting a reasonable deal, then it certainly benefits both parties (myself and the merchant) to escalate the issue before abandoning the transaction.
What people seem to not realize is that if managers were there to take over and make sales for everyone who didn't feel like they were "getting a reasonable deal" then they wouldn't get any work done and there would be no reason to have salespeople. Just a bunch of managers.
Those people have no moral qualms about their position. Amoral is as bad as immoral, quite often. I'm talking about lying to the customer as far as amorality. And either way, does it really matter what they say about you?
I don't know if you read my comment or not, but it doesn't seem like you have. Please note that I keep stating "as long as they are up front with you". I'll simplify it for you: not lying. As for if it matters what they say about you or not, well I suppose that is a personal decision. If you don't really care about your reputation I suppose it wouldn't matter what other people think of you. I personally try to be nice and not make peoples lives harder than they already are. There is a big difference between haggling and making a complete idiot of yourself like a child in order to get what you want.
You don't know the first thing about how to haggle or negotiate, but tell ya what, I'll give you a free lesson: Ask for what you want, and be willing to walk away.
You don't know the first thing about me, but I'll tell you what, I'll give you some free advice: Only fools presume to know things they obviously can't.
No sir, that is not haggling. Haggling is negotiating with the salesperson, haggling is not asking for their superior and complaining about them when they didn't give you exactly what you wanted.
Your beliefs are not in alignment with reality, please read the following comment to better inform yourself:
You're implying that the process of negotiating is like this:
Customer: Hi, does this computer come with a recovery disk? Salesman: No, I'm afraid HP stopped including them. However, we can make one for $30. Customer: WTF! GIVE IT TO ME!!!! INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!!!
Yes I am, because I have experience that backs this tactic up. Increasingly when people do not seem to get what they want, they ask for a supervisor or a manager in an attempt to, as the grandparent put it, "raise hell" to not only get what they want, but to complain about the subordinate for not giving them what they wanted. What do you think "raise hell" means?
It's not that severe of an issue, but it's still trying to take away the right to have a copy of what you paid for (and no, most sellers won't tell you that you can make a copy yourself, nor should you have to. The software was part of the purchase price).
It is not a "right", and the copy that you purchased is on the hard drive. The copy that you purchased also has built in capabilities to duplicate itself for backup purposes. If you bothered to RTFA you'll notice that most sellers DID inform the buyers that they can make the backup themselves.
Again, if you don't like the terms of sale, don't buy it. You do not have some magical "right" to a recovery disc.
Okay, let me get this straight. You think that not providing someone with a copy of the software that was licensed to them when they bought the computer, and in fact, trying to get them to pay for it *again* is not as bad or worse than someone raising hell to get the CD that they should have been given in the first place?
There are a few things you must understand: you can create the recovery discs yourself, and the cost of the recovery media is not included in the price of the PC.
On top of that, things change. What you believe "should be given in the first place" is not fact. Simply because you believe that to be so, does not mean others have to abide by it.
That being said, your statement "that they should have been given in the first place" denotes that they accepted the terms of sale already, in which case, as long as the sellers were up front about what was being sold, and did not use any form of deceit, then yes, I believe it is not as bad as someone "raising hell" to get recovery discs for free.
They can make their own discs, discs were not part of the sale agreement nor included in the price, and "raising hell" to get what you want for free is something a child does, not something an adult does.
It isn't, and it concerns me that you think it is. Certainly deceiving people is wrong, pretty much everyone agrees on that. However, providing you with less for less money isn't. The big thing that everyone seems to forget is you do not have to buy it if you don't like the terms of the sale. The only way your argument could ever hold up would be if you were forced into purchasing something, and that is not the case.
Acting like a fool in order to get what you want is something a 5 year old does, not something an adult does. The trend and mindset we have here in our culture is to manufacture middle aged children. This concerns me greatly. Why does it not concern you?
And if you stick to your guns, you'll either have free recovery discs, or be certain they didn't rip you off (and get a computer elsewhere, along with spreading bad word-of-mouth about their practices).
I would love to discuss the mindset trend in North America where people think it is OK to "get free stuff" by creating complete asses of themselves. The very notion that if one were to act childishly and annoying enough that people will just throw stuff at them to make them go away seems completely crazy to me. Why and how do you think this trend started? More importantly do you think this trend can be reversed before our populace is filled with hyper selfish middle agers with an inflated sense of entitlement who refuse to work? This could very well be our empires lead poisoning.
They're just following orders from higher-up, and if they don't have any moral qualms with it, they're assholes, so who cares what they say amongst themselves?
How about the moral qualm of working for a living? Feeding your family? Supporting yourself? The way I see it is this: they are offering goods and services for a price. You do not have to buy it. What is immoral about that? As long as they are up front with you, tell you "yes, you can make the discs yourself" then there is no problem. I am always wary of someone who invokes "morals" but insists that anyone who doesn't agree with him is wrong. Because you belive it to be "immoral" you are willing to make an asshole of yourself in an attempt to get items you did not pay for? Remember, the cost of those recovery CDs are not included with the price of the computer. Who is the asshole now?
1. That the manager will give them to you for free. 2. That just because you complain, a salesman who is following company policy will get reprimanded or fired?
While I agree that you should get OS installation media at no charge with your computer (and refuse to buy one that doesn't come with any) why do you think you are entitled to demand it? You are not. Your recourses are: buy it, haggle or don't buy it.
You may end up getting the media for free, however more than likely the salesman and his manager will talk later on that day about that "whacko customer" they had earlier.
Bluray is actually superior, at least where it matters: disc capacity.
WRT54G (Arguably the most prolific consumer grade router in existence) does support static IP assignments via DHCP.
At one point trying to uninstall Final Fantasy XI Online would remove hal32.dll.
Thanks subby for this article. I've got a Hitachi HTS721060G9AT00 in a Mac Mini running Gentoo, and has been for about a year (they make nice little servers), and sure enough this is what I found:
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 013 013 000 Old_age Always - 873510
873510??!?!?! I run the command a couple times in the span of a few seconds and it seems to be incrementing every second. The drive is only rated for 600000 load/unload cycles!
hdparm -D 255 did the trick.
I flatly refuse to believe all these 'secondary-smoke' alarmist advertisements, stories, and studies. They fly in the face of common sense, and I believe they are constructed as a reason to further regulate and legislate behaviors for the sake of politics power and money.
You find it hard to believe that people who inhale smoke become damaged and/or die? Really now?
No, that would be the best thing Comcast could do for everyone involved. Many ISPs do it. They inform their customers about the limits on their line and throttle, cut off or charge extra for going over them. They don't sell services as "unlimited" and then expect people to "not abuse" it and tell no one what they consider to be "abuse".
Comcast isn't the government and your analogy doesn't correlate. Comcast is a business selling a service. You need to tell people what they are buying otherwise it's called false advertising.
It is not reasonable to market a service as "unlimited", yet disconnect people after some unknown limit has been reached.
There is no "case by case basis", every Comcast residential customer is being sold the same service and paying the same monthly, everyone should get equal value. As an "economist" I'd expect you to understand that. Why don't you get this?
Define excessive because Comcast hasn't.
There is no such thing as excessive when the service is sold as unlimited.
You cannot exceed infinity.
If portal was all about the gameplay and not the story then why is everyone talking about the story?
There is no depth to the discussion because it is not a discussion. Do you discuss things with your TV? A sculpture? A painting? No. It's a one way street. You discuss things with other people after experiencing them. This is what portal has done.
Your discussion with me proves it.
***** SPOILER ALERT *****
Subtle? There are no other humans in the entire game except your character, GLaDOS killed them all. The entire "non tutorial" part of the game has you running away from a mad AI with a God complex who killed off the entire company. How is this subtle?
Be always aware of the possible consequences to your actions. Not only is that the social commentary but it is also reinforced in the game play itself! It requires thinking ahead.
That said, there was no deep artistic commentary about anything beyond the game. Art transcends its medium and gives insight into aspects of life, humanity, etc. Portal did not do this - it just provides a helluva fun time.
One of the quotes from "Still Alive" is Aperture Science's motto: "We do what we must because we can."
Perhaps you missed the commentary about doing science for science's sake? Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
What, indeed.
You see, the limits to what a salesperson may be empowered to do are always less than what a manager is able to do.
Not always, not even in most cases.
If I, as a consumer, have reached those limits and still do not feel that I'm getting a reasonable deal, then it certainly benefits both parties (myself and the merchant) to escalate the issue before abandoning the transaction.
What people seem to not realize is that if managers were there to take over and make sales for everyone who didn't feel like they were "getting a reasonable deal" then they wouldn't get any work done and there would be no reason to have salespeople. Just a bunch of managers.
Those people have no moral qualms about their position. Amoral is as bad as immoral, quite often. I'm talking about lying to the customer as far as amorality. And either way, does it really matter what they say about you?
I don't know if you read my comment or not, but it doesn't seem like you have. Please note that I keep stating "as long as they are up front with you". I'll simplify it for you: not lying. As for if it matters what they say about you or not, well I suppose that is a personal decision. If you don't really care about your reputation I suppose it wouldn't matter what other people think of you. I personally try to be nice and not make peoples lives harder than they already are. There is a big difference between haggling and making a complete idiot of yourself like a child in order to get what you want.
You don't know the first thing about how to haggle or negotiate, but tell ya what, I'll give you a free lesson: Ask for what you want, and be willing to walk away.
You don't know the first thing about me, but I'll tell you what, I'll give you some free advice: Only fools presume to know things they obviously can't.
No sir, that is not haggling. Haggling is negotiating with the salesperson, haggling is not asking for their superior and complaining about them when they didn't give you exactly what you wanted.
4 18209
Your beliefs are not in alignment with reality, please read the following comment to better inform yourself:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=284371&cid=20
You're implying that the process of negotiating is like this:
Customer: Hi, does this computer come with a recovery disk?
Salesman: No, I'm afraid HP stopped including them. However, we can make one for $30.
Customer: WTF! GIVE IT TO ME!!!! INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!!!
Yes I am, because I have experience that backs this tactic up. Increasingly when people do not seem to get what they want, they ask for a supervisor or a manager in an attempt to, as the grandparent put it, "raise hell" to not only get what they want, but to complain about the subordinate for not giving them what they wanted. What do you think "raise hell" means?
It's not that severe of an issue, but it's still trying to take away the right to have a copy of what you paid for (and no, most sellers won't tell you that you can make a copy yourself, nor should you have to. The software was part of the purchase price).
It is not a "right", and the copy that you purchased is on the hard drive. The copy that you purchased also has built in capabilities to duplicate itself for backup purposes. If you bothered to RTFA you'll notice that most sellers DID inform the buyers that they can make the backup themselves.
Again, if you don't like the terms of sale, don't buy it. You do not have some magical "right" to a recovery disc.
Personal responsibility, where art thou?
That is not a legend, that is a thief.
Okay, let me get this straight. You think that not providing someone with a copy of the software that was licensed to them when they bought the computer, and in fact, trying to get them to pay for it *again* is not as bad or worse than someone raising hell to get the CD that they should have been given in the first place?
There are a few things you must understand: you can create the recovery discs yourself, and the cost of the recovery media is not included in the price of the PC.
On top of that, things change. What you believe "should be given in the first place" is not fact. Simply because you believe that to be so, does not mean others have to abide by it.
That being said, your statement "that they should have been given in the first place" denotes that they accepted the terms of sale already, in which case, as long as the sellers were up front about what was being sold, and did not use any form of deceit, then yes, I believe it is not as bad as someone "raising hell" to get recovery discs for free.
They can make their own discs, discs were not part of the sale agreement nor included in the price, and "raising hell" to get what you want for free is something a child does, not something an adult does.
How is asking for recovery CDs to be included as part of the computer purchase making an ass of oneself?
It isn't, however haggling isn't the topic I am referring to. Please note and read the grandparent:
If the salesman refuses, raise hell with his manager. Purchaser gets the disks for free, salesman gets reprimanded (or fired).
It isn't, and it concerns me that you think it is. Certainly deceiving people is wrong, pretty much everyone agrees on that. However, providing you with less for less money isn't. The big thing that everyone seems to forget is you do not have to buy it if you don't like the terms of the sale. The only way your argument could ever hold up would be if you were forced into purchasing something, and that is not the case.
Acting like a fool in order to get what you want is something a 5 year old does, not something an adult does. The trend and mindset we have here in our culture is to manufacture middle aged children. This concerns me greatly. Why does it not concern you?
Not only are the two scenarios dissimilar, but I also think that they had every right to not refund you for the opened software.
You were not right, you won because they gave up and didn't want to listen to you anymore.
And if you stick to your guns, you'll either have free recovery discs, or be certain they didn't rip you off (and get a computer elsewhere, along with spreading bad word-of-mouth about their practices).
I would love to discuss the mindset trend in North America where people think it is OK to "get free stuff" by creating complete asses of themselves. The very notion that if one were to act childishly and annoying enough that people will just throw stuff at them to make them go away seems completely crazy to me. Why and how do you think this trend started? More importantly do you think this trend can be reversed before our populace is filled with hyper selfish middle agers with an inflated sense of entitlement who refuse to work? This could very well be our empires lead poisoning.
They're just following orders from higher-up, and if they don't have any moral qualms with it, they're assholes, so who cares what they say amongst themselves?
How about the moral qualm of working for a living? Feeding your family? Supporting yourself? The way I see it is this: they are offering goods and services for a price. You do not have to buy it. What is immoral about that? As long as they are up front with you, tell you "yes, you can make the discs yourself" then there is no problem. I am always wary of someone who invokes "morals" but insists that anyone who doesn't agree with him is wrong. Because you belive it to be "immoral" you are willing to make an asshole of yourself in an attempt to get items you did not pay for? Remember, the cost of those recovery CDs are not included with the price of the computer. Who is the asshole now?
The problem is you are not entitled to have it if it is not an agreed upon part of the sale.
You assume too much:
1. That the manager will give them to you for free.
2. That just because you complain, a salesman who is following company policy will get reprimanded or fired?
While I agree that you should get OS installation media at no charge with your computer (and refuse to buy one that doesn't come with any) why do you think you are entitled to demand it? You are not. Your recourses are: buy it, haggle or don't buy it.
You may end up getting the media for free, however more than likely the salesman and his manager will talk later on that day about that "whacko customer" they had earlier.
Golden Rule ... The ppl with all the money make the rules, or in this case break them.
Man, how do you screw up the golden rule? "He who has the gold, makes the rules."