"...but I'd be surprised if they are even making drives in the same country now."
They're not. Frex, about the time Quantum got out of the HD business, W.D. moved from Singapore to... um, Malaysia? I'd have to look, but anyway W.D.'s drives suddenly looked suspiciously like they were being made by Quantum's old HD factory (case design, etc.) This gave me the shuddering heebie-jeebies, because the tail end of Quantum's HDs hadn't been very good, and I was afraid W.D. drives would go likewise.
But I expect (hope?) overall quality control has more to do with ongoing drive reliability than does which plant made what.
Unusual clicks at bootup are indeed a sign of drive about to go tits-up, BUT... it's usually an *old-age* thing, and I suspect has to do with the drive's power circuits being chronically stressed. Three times now, I've taken such a "failing" older drive and put it on another machine, and it stopped having the problem. (In one case, the HD's power port had been knocked loose, making the cause kinda obvious.)
Personally, I'd swap out the system's power supply and see if that helps. At the very least, check all the power leads with a voltmeter, and specifically watch for spikes or sags at power-up. From all you've said, the PSU is almost certainly the root cause. -- When you buy a new PSU, ignore reviews, brands, and hype, and pick one that feels relatively heavy and has lots of thick leads. That's the easiest way to get a good one.
I've had a few bad HDs (buy enough HDs and you'll invariably get some duds), but overall my experience with W.D. has been excellent. I've found that if a W.D. drive is going to die young, it does so within the first couple months. Otherwise, it can be counted on for a bit over 5 years of quality service; if it makes it to age 6, it will probably keep running indefinitely (hence the vast majority of old still-working HDs that I see are W.D.) And when they're sick, they give you plenty of warning. I've never seen one "just die".
Seagates seem to do about the same, but for the same class of HD are noticeably slower, and run relatively hot and noisy, so I don't buy 'em. They are somewhat more likely to die after age 5 than are W.D.
Maxtors are fast and usually quiet, but have a lot of sudden-death at 2 to 3 years, and they give absolutely no warning -- they just quit. But there again, if they make it past that threshold, they're likely to keep on running indefinitely. However, I see very few old still-working Maxtors.
These electrons have been brought to you by a 6YO W.D. HD and a 13YO PSU:)
Once upon a time my test rig lived in an unheated space. It had a whopping 20MB (not GB) HD, a very early IDE model. When it was very cold (under about 50 degrees), the HD would spin up but wouldn't read. After it ran for a few minutes and started to warm up, it would read files, but still wouldn't boot. And after another few minutes, it reached operating temperature and would finally boot up normally.
BTW I still have the drive (a W.D. dated 1991), and it's still 100% perfect.
APC's doodad monitors the PC's *own* power supply too?? tho now that I think of it, there's no reason it can't read voltages from the BIOS (if the BIOS allows it), much as utils like Everest do.
What symptoms do you get that indicate a HD failure?
Have you had any other components fail in that system? What is the base system, anyway? OEM or clone? Power supplies in OEMs tend to be minimal and often of marginal quality (in my experience, the single most-likely-to-fail component in OEM boxen).
Is there any question about the BIOS's support for large HDs? some BIOSs will go appear to see a HD (can ID it for size/type) that exceeds their capacity, but don't *actually* fully support it, leading to errors once the drive gets on toward full.
As to W.D., they've been my HD of choice for over a decade, because overall they have the best reliability and longevity. And when they do fail, I've yet to see one just up and die from one minute to the next (as is the case with some other brands). At worst they give you fairly obvious notice, usually in the form of strange noises.
I haven't heard of any batch failures in the model lines you mention. Last bad batches I know of were WD's first run of 8.4GB (drives made over a 3 week span were recalled because of it), and again with the first run of 40GB (tho I've come to believe *those* were 100% due to the FAT32 bug, and not the HDs at all).
I still find it highly doubtful that the HDs are the actual point of failure; as others mentioned, and in my experience, it's far more likely that they're failing (or appearing to fail) secondary to some other problem.
Back in the Olden Days, the IDE controller card was more often at fault than the HDs, but the boot error message was often just "HD failure" regardless. Rather deceptive!
I got to thinking about that very question when I noticed a distinct dichotomy in HD lifespan:
Long reliable life, usually 5+ years: HDs purchased new; *and* used HDs salvaged from random sources.
Short iffy life, typically 3 to 6 months: HDs *purchased from vendors of USED drives*.
Now, why is this? Speaking from what I've observed at computer swapmeets, it's because the used-HD vendors schlepp their merchandise around any which way, and it gets banged around like that every weekend until some sucker buys it. Whereas random salvage hasn't been smacked this way and that nearly as much -- probably just during initial shipping, and during its last trip to the dustbin.
BTW, where can I find the google paper? I seem to have missed the link (going blind from peering at too many charts:)
When you get a bunch of the same component failing, it's usually not that component (in your case HDs), but rather something they're hooked to that's bad, or something being done wrong, such as:
-- Bad power supply in your machine (may affect RAM and motherboard, too) -- Lack of surge protection between your PC and the wall -- Bad RAID controller (suspect this immediately if the symptom is garbage written to the disk) -- FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB (can cause data loss that mimics a sick HD; it's due to a bug in FAT32)
Well, I can connect my own anecdots;) Once they're fully set up, my everyday machines are never powered down again (except to upgrade the hardware), nor do the HDs spin down. They are also on good quality power supply units, AND are protected by a good UPS, AND have good cooling. Those 3 points can make all the difference in the world to their longevity, regardless of use patterns.
Right now my everyday HDs number thus:
6.4GB W.D. -- new in 1998, has always run 24/7. No SMART but probably has upward of 70,000 hours uptime. (Its identical twin failed about a year ago, but it had always clanked louder while doing thermal recalibration. This one is still quiet.)
8.4GB W.D. -- new in 1998, used about 12hrs/day thru 2002, offline 2002-2006, running 24/7 for the past year. No SMART but probably has about 25,000 hours uptime.
45GB W.D. -- SMART data: 42093 hours uptime, 181 power cycles (mainly as hard resets).
40GB W.D. -- SMART data: 3919 hours uptime, 197 power cycles. (Dated 2002; found in trash in 2006)
60GB W.D. -- SMART data: 28056 hours uptime, 100 power cycles (mainly as hard resets)
Running 24/7 pretty much eliminates thermal stress and the "what do you mean you're not powering up today?!!" that happens sometimes with older HDs.
Other points of conventional wisdom about running fulltime: 1) "It causes more bearing wear." I wonder if that's so -- might the lubricant stay better distributed when it never chills down and never gets a chance to settle and congeal?? 2) "It's more likely to stiction if it does sit til it's cold." In my experience it's the opposite -- the HD with only intermittent use is far more likely to stiction, and sometimes can be cured permanently by letting 'em run for a few days solid.
One of the points in TFA was that over 40% of RMA'd HDs proved to have nothing wrong with them. This is in line with my own observations (in fact, closer to 100% in SOHO/home-user environments) -- many supposed HD failures are actually user or software errors, not the hardware at all.
I don't know that this is at all helpful:) But my recommendation to my clients is that if they don't want to run 24/7, they should not power the machine on and off more than once a day.
"Simple, many judges get to keep a portion of the funds collected through tickets. Thusly, if you want to complain, it must go to court whereby, the judge is very happy to correct you that HIS money is not yours to scorn."
Hmm. And tell me, why is this not an illegal kickback, or at the very least a conflict of interest??
This reminds me of a trick the North Dakota highway patrol used to do (and may yet for all I know) -- after dark, they'd tailgate you with their high-beams on. Most people will reflexively drive faster, trying to get away from the obnoxious bright lights in their rearview mirror. And this instantly leads to getting a speeding ticket.
I've personally witnessed this. Tell me, how is this not entrapment?
"I've been thinking recently that this ought to be a general rule of law - not only that no act ought to be prohibited unless it causes or at least directly threatens harm..."
Occasionally voiced as "An it harm none, do as ye will."
I'm in total agreement with you.
The problem is there are always corner cases, and they lead to the inglorious tangle the law has become.
The local library has a copy of the California State Code from about 1910 -- it's a single middling-hefty hardback. Contrast that to the shelves upon shelves of current law, and marvel that we're not ALL in jail just for breathing.
As to the GPL -- there's a certain level of hypocrisy in saying "If you don't share it the way WE tell you to, then you can't share it at all."
Don't confuse GROWTH of revenue with the AMOUNT of revenue. All those numbers mean is that their income wasn't GROWING at the same rate; it doesn't mean they had LESS income.
It's like if you grew 10 inches every day, then one day you only grew 9 inches -- that's a 10% drop in your GROWTH, but you didn't get any shorter; quite the contrary, you still got 9 inches taller that day.
64kbit mono -- free
good enough to hear the song; no pain if it proves to be something you don't like, or don't find worth buying; small enough to generate negligible bandwidth expenses, and that can be written off as advertising.
128kbit stereo -- 10 cents
cheap enough to be an impulse purchase, and good enough for most purposes.
320+kbit stereo -- 25 cents
better quality, and you get what you pay for.
original WAV straight from the CD -- $1.00
about the same price as on a CD, less the cost to burn it yourself.
[Personally I don't like how VBR sounds; VBR'd MP3s often have muddy areas that annoy my ears.]
If American law makes it impossible to make a profit at the price point that the world has demonstrated is acceptable (ie. allofmp3) then maybe the law needs to be changed.
Making it a fixed percentage of the gross would probably work. And a penny each from multiple billions of 10-cent sales is a helluva lot more money than 7 cents each from a million downloads.
I don't think the *concept* of required national service is necessarily bad; certainly the younger generation would get a better picture of the Real World if they were forced to go forth and help construct it. (Frex, this could be a way to get kids back into the many entry-level, farm labour, and general labour jobs that kids used to do, but are now the province of illegal aliens.) It'd also be a good way for them to earn a nest egg for higher education.
However, in the current political climate, I foresee it being used not only to provide cannon fodder for useless wars, but far more likely, to create a huge corps of civilian "police aides" in the name of keeping the rest of us Under Better Police Control.
That may well be the best thing that could possibly happen. A few spectacular media circuses involving Public Figures' Internet Habits, and suddenly privacy may again be all the rage in D.C.
I've pointed this out to people who cry out for "socialized medicine in the U.S." -- We already have it, we just call it an "HMO" and it is privately run, rather than being called "social welfare" and being run by the gov't. Either way, there is plenty of incentive to take your monthly payments and not give anything back in return that they don't absolutely have to.
And if you're an unprofitable or expensive case, you can expect to be sent to the back of the queue, where they hope you'll die before you cost them anything.
Several replies make good points about how such data could be misinterpreted, but remember, many companies that evaluate such data have DECADES of experience at this, and are not so easily fooled.
Frex, if a particular user skips ALL commercials, their data will not be considered at all.
Likewise, ad agencies are not complete fools. If everyone who watches one particular show skips a certain ad, that produces the valuable information that this show's demographics aren't what they thought. Maybe they change the advertising associated with the show; maybe they change the show.
...isn't exactly a cheap no name brand, it's an HP Pavillion. In the first year I had to have the hdd and motherboard replaced. Since then I've had to replace the ram twice.
And here I'm sitting in front of a clone that started life 13 years ago... has had two major upgrades, but the only component that ever failed was the original 2x CDROM (door belt broke at 6 yrs old), and the original mobo got killed by a keyboard short. I've got a dozen more clones with like longevity and reliability... and most were built from salvaged parts, at little or no cost.
Multiple component failures like you describe are usually not that component, but rather, secondary to a bad power supply. Over time, marginal voltage or microspikes will damage chips and fill a HD full of bad spots. -- In my experience, in an OEM machine the single component most likely to fail is the PSU, followed by the motherboard. IMO the *real* reason OEM mobos fail so often is a direct result of the fact that OEMs invariably use the most minimal PSU they can get away with. (Conversely, clone mobos very seldom fail.)
I've heard nothing good about Gateway laptops, but LIS laptops are not my area of expertise. My remarks were all about desktop systems.
I started using LiteOn optical drives about 6 years ago; tried one because several clone dealers that I trust told me they never had to do warranty replacements on them. Now I've got about a dozen assorted LiteOn drives, none have failed, and both readers and writers have done multiple marathon sessions. -- My Plextor CDRW is just as reliable, but cost 3x as much.
In my experience LiteOns put way less drag on the system (burning is CPU-intensive, and normally you need at least a P2-300 to avoid burning coasters -- but a LiteOn CDRW works fine on my old P233), they run relatively quiet and cool (unlike my Plextor which runs hot, and I've had 3 Yamahas literally cook themselves to death), and I've yet to see one burn a coaster that was the drive's fault (I get maybe one bad burn per 100 disks, invariably because Nero just came to a halt for no reason). And they do pretty well at extracting data from damaged disks.
I know there have been a lot of drive failures in the LiteOn 5005 PVR units, but I'm suspicious that those are built with outsourced drives, or ship with bad firmware, or something like that. Some people have replaced the original burner with off-the-shelf LiteOn DVD-RWs, and their problems went away.
Qaba was built entirely from other folks' trash; the case and mobo are all that's left of the original eMachine. Tinker (the Dell) was given to me cuz original owner couldn't get it to stop crashing; I downgraded the CPU, and the problem went away. Seems Dell used a mobo that was two years older tech than the CPU, and they didn't like each other much. Xorro (the Compaq) was a castoff; it's reliable enough, but the design is hideous and the hardware is hell to work on. The Mac fell on my head; it runs okay, but feels unloved (and WTF is with the sub-normal capacity DVD-RAM drive?!) Dink, Gremlin, and Argo are my everyday machines that run 24/7/365.
Wishing you better luck henceforth with all your computers, of any species!
Apple calls it a new point version. M$ calls it a service pack to an existing OS. But whatever you call it, it's about the same level of incremental upgrade, released on about the same schedule.
The main diff is that Apple charges for these incremental updates, and M$ doesn't.
Speaking of ballast... I use a lot of CFLs here (mainly because CA electric rates are so @!#$% high), and twice now I've seen them fail not by simply quitting, but by dimming down a little and heating up a LOT. If I hadn't noticed the problem (and the smell of something scorching), it probably would have started a fire. Yes, the base of the CFL was THAT hot.
Mind you this wasn't an enclosed fixture, it was in an open table lamp.
Not such a good idea when working with ANY sharp edge, since they soften/blur what you see just enough that they can be a hazard. Frex, kitchens and bathrooms are really not good places for fluorescent-only fixtures. This is especially so for people with any sort of visual deficit.
A workaround for this is to use one regular and one fluorescent in each fixture. That gives you enough hard-edged light to see properly by.
Problem is, if you buy a $250 system, you're getting a $40 motherboard at best (that's what the lowest-end mobos usually cost), and a $19 power supply, so the foundation is already weak. It's probably good enough if you only expect about 3 years worth of service from it and don't plan to upgrade... but as you already found, you had to pay more to upgrade it to a reasonable level than it would have cost to start with a better system, which in turn would have better longevity and a longer upgrade path.
WorstBuy and similar national megastore chains are hideously expensive for components. As a typical example, our local BestBuy has the LiteOn DL DVD burner for about $140. Half a mile away, PC Club (a clone dealer that grew into a chain) has the identical unit for $45 (and I got my last two for about $30 each, on weekend specials).
If you're comfy with mail-order, here are the outfits I use:
pcclub.com -- major components. I've known 'em since they were a single tiny local store. newegg.com -- major components. Originated as the old Egghead B&M chain. geeks.com -- good for last year's models, and reliable, but be sure you know your prices and specs before you buy. cablenbits.com -- all the small/odd stuff at good prices. Good people, local; I've been using 'em since 1995. rogerssystems.com -- cable and networking stuff, a little pricier on some stuff but always have it all. Local outfit, known 'em since they were tiny.
My recommendation when BIY'ing is to start with the best motherboard you can afford (and NO ONBOARD VIDEO!), last year's CPU for that board (saves a lot of money and loses very little in performance), a good solid PSU and roomy case, then if you must skimp, do so on components that are easily added/upgraded later, like video card. That way you have a solid foundation that will give you years of trouble-free service, and can be substantially upgraded in the future, at relatively little cost. For the sake of reliability, I stick to Western Digital HDs, LiteOn opticals, and I prefer Matrox video cards for their dead-solid stability, but if you're a gamer you'd probably want NVidia. I don't like ATI's drivers. I haven't found that memory brand makes any real difference -- I use a lot of salvaged memory of unknown provenance, with zero problems. I only buy Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets, because of their vastly better stability (for both CPU and the matching mobos -- some of the VIA chipsets for AMD really stink).
Back to OEMs...
I'm the hardware guru for the local user group, and part of my job is vetting and renovating donated machines. So I see a lot of random middle-aged OEM systems. Gateways are the most standard, most upgradeable, and least likely to be sick or dead, tho sometimes have odd quirks. HPs are usually okay as they are, and are seldom dead, but are tough to upgrade or fix. eMachines are easy to upgrade and fix, tho more likely to be outright dead. I've yet to see a Dell, Compaq, IBM, or Micron that didn't have serious to fatal issues. The only CompUSA-branded PC I've had my hands in was a rebadged bottom-end Dell, and ran at about half the speed you'd expect from an equivalent clone. As a group, OEM systems' performance sucks compared to clones.
I don't like Mac hardware either... have found that under the hood, a Mac is equivalent to a cheap OEM PC, even tho it looks prettier on the outside. Laptops are another matter, I think Apple does better there than most, tho laptops aren't really my area of expertise so here I'm speaking more from impressions than from getting my hands dirty.
I'm not really a linux person... is there not yet ANY support for DL DVD writers, or just a limited selection? -- As noted I use LiteOn optical drives, I have about a dozen in service and no problems with any of 'em. Several have cranked out disks up to 4 hours at a crack, with zero coasters. When I've messed with linux it has recognised these drives, tho I've not tried to write any disks with it.
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"...but I'd be surprised if they are even making drives in the same country now."
... um, Malaysia? I'd have to look, but anyway W.D.'s drives suddenly looked suspiciously like they were being made by Quantum's old HD factory (case design, etc.) This gave me the shuddering heebie-jeebies, because the tail end of Quantum's HDs hadn't been very good, and I was afraid W.D. drives would go likewise.
They're not. Frex, about the time Quantum got out of the HD business, W.D. moved from Singapore to
But I expect (hope?) overall quality control has more to do with ongoing drive reliability than does which plant made what.
Unusual clicks at bootup are indeed a sign of drive about to go tits-up, BUT... it's usually an *old-age* thing, and I suspect has to do with the drive's power circuits being chronically stressed. Three times now, I've taken such a "failing" older drive and put it on another machine, and it stopped having the problem. (In one case, the HD's power port had been knocked loose, making the cause kinda obvious.)
:)
Personally, I'd swap out the system's power supply and see if that helps. At the very least, check all the power leads with a voltmeter, and specifically watch for spikes or sags at power-up. From all you've said, the PSU is almost certainly the root cause. -- When you buy a new PSU, ignore reviews, brands, and hype, and pick one that feels relatively heavy and has lots of thick leads. That's the easiest way to get a good one.
I've had a few bad HDs (buy enough HDs and you'll invariably get some duds), but overall my experience with W.D. has been excellent. I've found that if a W.D. drive is going to die young, it does so within the first couple months. Otherwise, it can be counted on for a bit over 5 years of quality service; if it makes it to age 6, it will probably keep running indefinitely (hence the vast majority of old still-working HDs that I see are W.D.) And when they're sick, they give you plenty of warning. I've never seen one "just die".
Seagates seem to do about the same, but for the same class of HD are noticeably slower, and run relatively hot and noisy, so I don't buy 'em. They are somewhat more likely to die after age 5 than are W.D.
Maxtors are fast and usually quiet, but have a lot of sudden-death at 2 to 3 years, and they give absolutely no warning -- they just quit. But there again, if they make it past that threshold, they're likely to keep on running indefinitely. However, I see very few old still-working Maxtors.
These electrons have been brought to you by a 6YO W.D. HD and a 13YO PSU
Once upon a time my test rig lived in an unheated space. It had a whopping 20MB (not GB) HD, a very early IDE model. When it was very cold (under about 50 degrees), the HD would spin up but wouldn't read. After it ran for a few minutes and started to warm up, it would read files, but still wouldn't boot. And after another few minutes, it reached operating temperature and would finally boot up normally.
BTW I still have the drive (a W.D. dated 1991), and it's still 100% perfect.
Thank you! I found the PDF after I'd posted that, but totally missed the discussion here. A number of interesting posts yearn to be read. :)
APC's doodad monitors the PC's *own* power supply too?? tho now that I think of it, there's no reason it can't read voltages from the BIOS (if the BIOS allows it), much as utils like Everest do.
What symptoms do you get that indicate a HD failure?
Have you had any other components fail in that system? What is the base system, anyway? OEM or clone? Power supplies in OEMs tend to be minimal and often of marginal quality (in my experience, the single most-likely-to-fail component in OEM boxen).
Is there any question about the BIOS's support for large HDs? some BIOSs will go appear to see a HD (can ID it for size/type) that exceeds their capacity, but don't *actually* fully support it, leading to errors once the drive gets on toward full.
As to W.D., they've been my HD of choice for over a decade, because overall they have the best reliability and longevity. And when they do fail, I've yet to see one just up and die from one minute to the next (as is the case with some other brands). At worst they give you fairly obvious notice, usually in the form of strange noises.
I haven't heard of any batch failures in the model lines you mention. Last bad batches I know of were WD's first run of 8.4GB (drives made over a 3 week span were recalled because of it), and again with the first run of 40GB (tho I've come to believe *those* were 100% due to the FAT32 bug, and not the HDs at all).
I still find it highly doubtful that the HDs are the actual point of failure; as others mentioned, and in my experience, it's far more likely that they're failing (or appearing to fail) secondary to some other problem.
Back in the Olden Days, the IDE controller card was more often at fault than the HDs, but the boot error message was often just "HD failure" regardless. Rather deceptive!
I got to thinking about that very question when I noticed a distinct dichotomy in HD lifespan:
:)
Long reliable life, usually 5+ years: HDs purchased new; *and* used HDs salvaged from random sources.
Short iffy life, typically 3 to 6 months: HDs *purchased from vendors of USED drives*.
Now, why is this? Speaking from what I've observed at computer swapmeets, it's because the used-HD vendors schlepp their merchandise around any which way, and it gets banged around like that every weekend until some sucker buys it. Whereas random salvage hasn't been smacked this way and that nearly as much -- probably just during initial shipping, and during its last trip to the dustbin.
BTW, where can I find the google paper? I seem to have missed the link (going blind from peering at too many charts
When you get a bunch of the same component failing, it's usually not that component (in your case HDs), but rather something they're hooked to that's bad, or something being done wrong, such as:
-- Bad power supply in your machine (may affect RAM and motherboard, too)
-- Lack of surge protection between your PC and the wall
-- Bad RAID controller (suspect this immediately if the symptom is garbage written to the disk)
-- FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB (can cause data loss that mimics a sick HD; it's due to a bug in FAT32)
Well, I can connect my own anecdots ;) Once they're fully set up, my everyday machines are never powered down again (except to upgrade the hardware), nor do the HDs spin down. They are also on good quality power supply units, AND are protected by a good UPS, AND have good cooling. Those 3 points can make all the difference in the world to their longevity, regardless of use patterns.
:) But my recommendation to my clients is that if they don't want to run 24/7, they should not power the machine on and off more than once a day.
Right now my everyday HDs number thus:
6.4GB W.D. -- new in 1998, has always run 24/7. No SMART but probably has upward of 70,000 hours uptime. (Its identical twin failed about a year ago, but it had always clanked louder while doing thermal recalibration. This one is still quiet.)
8.4GB W.D. -- new in 1998, used about 12hrs/day thru 2002, offline 2002-2006, running 24/7 for the past year. No SMART but probably has about 25,000 hours uptime.
45GB W.D. -- SMART data: 42093 hours uptime, 181 power cycles (mainly as hard resets).
40GB W.D. -- SMART data: 3919 hours uptime, 197 power cycles. (Dated 2002; found in trash in 2006)
60GB W.D. -- SMART data: 28056 hours uptime, 100 power cycles (mainly as hard resets)
Running 24/7 pretty much eliminates thermal stress and the "what do you mean you're not powering up today?!!" that happens sometimes with older HDs.
Other points of conventional wisdom about running fulltime:
1) "It causes more bearing wear." I wonder if that's so -- might the lubricant stay better distributed when it never chills down and never gets a chance to settle and congeal??
2) "It's more likely to stiction if it does sit til it's cold." In my experience it's the opposite -- the HD with only intermittent use is far more likely to stiction, and sometimes can be cured permanently by letting 'em run for a few days solid.
One of the points in TFA was that over 40% of RMA'd HDs proved to have nothing wrong with them. This is in line with my own observations (in fact, closer to 100% in SOHO/home-user environments) -- many supposed HD failures are actually user or software errors, not the hardware at all.
I don't know that this is at all helpful
An AC replies,
"Simple, many judges get to keep a portion of the funds collected through tickets. Thusly, if you want to complain, it must go to court whereby, the judge is very happy to correct you that HIS money is not yours to scorn."
Hmm. And tell me, why is this not an illegal kickback, or at the very least a conflict of interest??
This reminds me of a trick the North Dakota highway patrol used to do (and may yet for all I know) -- after dark, they'd tailgate you with their high-beams on. Most people will reflexively drive faster, trying to get away from the obnoxious bright lights in their rearview mirror. And this instantly leads to getting a speeding ticket.
I've personally witnessed this. Tell me, how is this not entrapment?
"I've been thinking recently that this ought to be a general rule of law - not only that no act ought to be prohibited unless it causes or at least directly threatens harm..."
Occasionally voiced as "An it harm none, do as ye will."
I'm in total agreement with you.
The problem is there are always corner cases, and they lead to the inglorious tangle the law has become.
The local library has a copy of the California State Code from about 1910 -- it's a single middling-hefty hardback. Contrast that to the shelves upon shelves of current law, and marvel that we're not ALL in jail just for breathing.
As to the GPL -- there's a certain level of hypocrisy in saying "If you don't share it the way WE tell you to, then you can't share it at all."
Don't confuse GROWTH of revenue with the AMOUNT of revenue. All those numbers mean is that their income wasn't GROWING at the same rate; it doesn't mean they had LESS income.
It's like if you grew 10 inches every day, then one day you only grew 9 inches -- that's a 10% drop in your GROWTH, but you didn't get any shorter; quite the contrary, you still got 9 inches taller that day.
64kbit mono -- free
good enough to hear the song; no pain if it proves to be something you don't like, or don't find worth buying; small enough to generate negligible bandwidth expenses, and that can be written off as advertising.
128kbit stereo -- 10 cents
cheap enough to be an impulse purchase, and good enough for most purposes.
320+kbit stereo -- 25 cents
better quality, and you get what you pay for.
original WAV straight from the CD -- $1.00
about the same price as on a CD, less the cost to burn it yourself.
[Personally I don't like how VBR sounds; VBR'd MP3s often have muddy areas that annoy my ears.]
If American law makes it impossible to make a profit at the price point that the world has demonstrated is acceptable (ie. allofmp3) then maybe the law needs to be changed.
Making it a fixed percentage of the gross would probably work. And a penny each from multiple billions of 10-cent sales is a helluva lot more money than 7 cents each from a million downloads.
I don't think the *concept* of required national service is necessarily bad; certainly the younger generation would get a better picture of the Real World if they were forced to go forth and help construct it. (Frex, this could be a way to get kids back into the many entry-level, farm labour, and general labour jobs that kids used to do, but are now the province of illegal aliens.) It'd also be a good way for them to earn a nest egg for higher education.
However, in the current political climate, I foresee it being used not only to provide cannon fodder for useless wars, but far more likely, to create a huge corps of civilian "police aides" in the name of keeping the rest of us Under Better Police Control.
That may well be the best thing that could possibly happen. A few spectacular media circuses involving Public Figures' Internet Habits, and suddenly privacy may again be all the rage in D.C.
As a police act, it is generally similar to wiretapping. It lets them follow your movements (conversations) without your knowledge or consent.
As such, I believe the GPS should require the same sort of warrant as does wiretapping.
I've pointed this out to people who cry out for "socialized medicine in the U.S." -- We already have it, we just call it an "HMO" and it is privately run, rather than being called "social welfare" and being run by the gov't. Either way, there is plenty of incentive to take your monthly payments and not give anything back in return that they don't absolutely have to.
And if you're an unprofitable or expensive case, you can expect to be sent to the back of the queue, where they hope you'll die before you cost them anything.
Several replies make good points about how such data could be misinterpreted, but remember, many companies that evaluate such data have DECADES of experience at this, and are not so easily fooled.
Frex, if a particular user skips ALL commercials, their data will not be considered at all.
Likewise, ad agencies are not complete fools. If everyone who watches one particular show skips a certain ad, that produces the valuable information that this show's demographics aren't what they thought. Maybe they change the advertising associated with the show; maybe they change the show.
And here I'm sitting in front of a clone that started life 13 years ago... has had two major upgrades, but the only component that ever failed was the original 2x CDROM (door belt broke at 6 yrs old), and the original mobo got killed by a keyboard short. I've got a dozen more clones with like longevity and reliability... and most were built from salvaged parts, at little or no cost.
Multiple component failures like you describe are usually not that component, but rather, secondary to a bad power supply. Over time, marginal voltage or microspikes will damage chips and fill a HD full of bad spots. -- In my experience, in an OEM machine the single component most likely to fail is the PSU, followed by the motherboard. IMO the *real* reason OEM mobos fail so often is a direct result of the fact that OEMs invariably use the most minimal PSU they can get away with. (Conversely, clone mobos very seldom fail.)
I've heard nothing good about Gateway laptops, but LIS laptops are not my area of expertise. My remarks were all about desktop systems.
I started using LiteOn optical drives about 6 years ago; tried one because several clone dealers that I trust told me they never had to do warranty replacements on them. Now I've got about a dozen assorted LiteOn drives, none have failed, and both readers and writers have done multiple marathon sessions. -- My Plextor CDRW is just as reliable, but cost 3x as much.
In my experience LiteOns put way less drag on the system (burning is CPU-intensive, and normally you need at least a P2-300 to avoid burning coasters -- but a LiteOn CDRW works fine on my old P233), they run relatively quiet and cool (unlike my Plextor which runs hot, and I've had 3 Yamahas literally cook themselves to death), and I've yet to see one burn a coaster that was the drive's fault (I get maybe one bad burn per 100 disks, invariably because Nero just came to a halt for no reason). And they do pretty well at extracting data from damaged disks.
I know there have been a lot of drive failures in the LiteOn 5005 PVR units, but I'm suspicious that those are built with outsourced drives, or ship with bad firmware, or something like that. Some people have replaced the original burner with off-the-shelf LiteOn DVD-RWs, and their problems went away.
BTW if you're curious about my wild assortment of computers, most of 'em are listed here: http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/pc/the_borg.htm
Qaba was built entirely from other folks' trash; the case and mobo are all that's left of the original eMachine. Tinker (the Dell) was given to me cuz original owner couldn't get it to stop crashing; I downgraded the CPU, and the problem went away. Seems Dell used a mobo that was two years older tech than the CPU, and they didn't like each other much. Xorro (the Compaq) was a castoff; it's reliable enough, but the design is hideous and the hardware is hell to work on. The Mac fell on my head; it runs okay, but feels unloved (and WTF is with the sub-normal capacity DVD-RAM drive?!) Dink, Gremlin, and Argo are my everyday machines that run 24/7/365.
Wishing you better luck henceforth with all your computers, of any species!
I vaguely recall that some adware already does this, and has used it against adware-removal software.
Apple calls it a new point version. M$ calls it a service pack to an existing OS. But whatever you call it, it's about the same level of incremental upgrade, released on about the same schedule.
The main diff is that Apple charges for these incremental updates, and M$ doesn't.
Ironic, isn't it....
Speaking of ballast... I use a lot of CFLs here (mainly because CA electric rates are so @!#$% high), and twice now I've seen them fail not by simply quitting, but by dimming down a little and heating up a LOT. If I hadn't noticed the problem (and the smell of something scorching), it probably would have started a fire. Yes, the base of the CFL was THAT hot.
Mind you this wasn't an enclosed fixture, it was in an open table lamp.
Not such a good idea when working with ANY sharp edge, since they soften/blur what you see just enough that they can be a hazard. Frex, kitchens and bathrooms are really not good places for fluorescent-only fixtures. This is especially so for people with any sort of visual deficit.
A workaround for this is to use one regular and one fluorescent in each fixture. That gives you enough hard-edged light to see properly by.
Problem is, if you buy a $250 system, you're getting a $40 motherboard at best (that's what the lowest-end mobos usually cost), and a $19 power supply, so the foundation is already weak. It's probably good enough if you only expect about 3 years worth of service from it and don't plan to upgrade... but as you already found, you had to pay more to upgrade it to a reasonable level than it would have cost to start with a better system, which in turn would have better longevity and a longer upgrade path.
WorstBuy and similar national megastore chains are hideously expensive for components. As a typical example, our local BestBuy has the LiteOn DL DVD burner for about $140. Half a mile away, PC Club (a clone dealer that grew into a chain) has the identical unit for $45 (and I got my last two for about $30 each, on weekend specials).
If you're comfy with mail-order, here are the outfits I use:
pcclub.com -- major components. I've known 'em since they were a single tiny local store.
newegg.com -- major components. Originated as the old Egghead B&M chain.
geeks.com -- good for last year's models, and reliable, but be sure you know your prices and specs before you buy.
cablenbits.com -- all the small/odd stuff at good prices. Good people, local; I've been using 'em since 1995.
rogerssystems.com -- cable and networking stuff, a little pricier on some stuff but always have it all. Local outfit, known 'em since they were tiny.
My recommendation when BIY'ing is to start with the best motherboard you can afford (and NO ONBOARD VIDEO!), last year's CPU for that board (saves a lot of money and loses very little in performance), a good solid PSU and roomy case, then if you must skimp, do so on components that are easily added/upgraded later, like video card. That way you have a solid foundation that will give you years of trouble-free service, and can be substantially upgraded in the future, at relatively little cost. For the sake of reliability, I stick to Western Digital HDs, LiteOn opticals, and I prefer Matrox video cards for their dead-solid stability, but if you're a gamer you'd probably want NVidia. I don't like ATI's drivers. I haven't found that memory brand makes any real difference -- I use a lot of salvaged memory of unknown provenance, with zero problems. I only buy Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets, because of their vastly better stability (for both CPU and the matching mobos -- some of the VIA chipsets for AMD really stink).
Back to OEMs...
I'm the hardware guru for the local user group, and part of my job is vetting and renovating donated machines. So I see a lot of random middle-aged OEM systems. Gateways are the most standard, most upgradeable, and least likely to be sick or dead, tho sometimes have odd quirks. HPs are usually okay as they are, and are seldom dead, but are tough to upgrade or fix. eMachines are easy to upgrade and fix, tho more likely to be outright dead. I've yet to see a Dell, Compaq, IBM, or Micron that didn't have serious to fatal issues. The only CompUSA-branded PC I've had my hands in was a rebadged bottom-end Dell, and ran at about half the speed you'd expect from an equivalent clone. As a group, OEM systems' performance sucks compared to clones.
I don't like Mac hardware either... have found that under the hood, a Mac is equivalent to a cheap OEM PC, even tho it looks prettier on the outside. Laptops are another matter, I think Apple does better there than most, tho laptops aren't really my area of expertise so here I'm speaking more from impressions than from getting my hands dirty.
I'm not really a linux person... is there not yet ANY support for DL DVD writers, or just a limited selection? -- As noted I use LiteOn optical drives, I have about a dozen in service and no problems with any of 'em. Several have cranked out disks up to 4 hours at a crack, with zero coasters. When I've messed with linux it has recognised these drives, tho I've not tried to write any disks with it.