Yeah, the older eMachines were made about as flimsy as a PC can be without collapsing under its own weight. The motherboards were reputedly Asus seconds (now they're Intels, same as in Gateways, but probably still seconds). Minimal everything, weird-assed tiny PSUs, no real drive bays, etc, etc.
They've improved somewhat, tho. I've got a post-GW-eMachine P4 that isn't bad for a cheapie (and fine for free, which is what it cost me), and its chassis is (are you sitting down?) evidently of Antec manufacture, or a real close copy. It's actually rather nice inside. I could hardly believe my eyes!
Conversely my neighbour has one from just before the GW acquisition, and it's definitely made a lot cheaper.. case is real flimsy.. worse, it's only a couple months older than mine, but its mobo has already failed -- at 2 years old.
If a CPU/mobo combo was going to cost you as much as a whole new OEM machine, you need to shop somewhere else. Normal price range for a combo is around 1/3rd the price of an equivalent OEM system.
But even if nominally identical, in my experience the clone part will always outlive the same component from an OEM system. This is notably so with motherboards -- the single component *most* likely to fail in an OEM machine, followed by the PSU. In well-made clones, mobo and PSU almost never fail except from outright abuse.
Several problems with OEMs: 1) they run hot relative to what's inside 'em, 2) they use minimal PSUs, which I suspect also stresses stuff (and probably explains the high mobo death rate), and 3) they use a lot of seconds. IMO they're *designed* to have no more than a 3 year lifespan... after all, if they lasted like an average clone, they'd only need replacing when they reached the end of their upgrade paths, and almost never because of system failure.
As to the ridiculous repair quotes -- I needed a CPU fan bracket for the aforementioned eMachine. That's a $4 part, but you can't buy it. However, Gateway said they'd be happy to "repair" the system -- for $178 plus r/t shipping (I shit you not, that was their price -- for a $4 part and 2 minutes labour). So I did a little surgery on a standard bracket and made it fit, and fuck Gateway indeed!!
Some eMachines plug on and on and on, others die young. In my observation the death rate by 3 years is about 30%. In the olden days the issue was almost always the PSU (easily replaced), but more recently it's usually the motherboard.
eMachines are made cheap, yeah (tho somewhat better now that they're owned by Gateway) but at least you get what little you pay for. You can pay 4x as much for a Dell that is no better quality and is often worse. (Dells may =look= better, but their consumer systems often use even *cheaper* components than the average eMachine.)
If I =had= to buy an OEM, it would probably be a Gateway as in my experience they are the least-awful of the OEMs... however, I find it's vastly better to build my own. I get a far better machine for less money, AND it's far more upgradeable.
I've noticed that license compliance software is one of the Latest Big Things in the VAR market. Goes to show what a threat auditing is, when it's become a cash cow for 3rd parties too.
GM or Ford may not "validate" your car, but insurance companies often require proof of how many miles you drive in a year, as that partially determines your rates. Mine just lets me fill in a form and send it in, but some actually inspect the odometer.
A common scam, particularly with computer components, is to knowingly sell broken stuff, and tack on enough shipping/handling to ensure a profit even after refunding the purchase price for the broken component.
Ebay now has a search limiter to "show only items listed with Paypal", among other things. Also, you can use "-term" to exclude "term", similar to a Google search.
I thought about using Lunarpages for hosting (having observed them as a stable host for several years) but at the time I got my hosting, they were still $14/mo. for 100mb, and 1&1 was offering 500mb for 3 yrs/free with an upgrade to 100GB for $4.50/mo. It's nice to see more pricing parity, tho, so they'll have to compete on service and reliability as well as cost per gig.
The disk space offers keep rising everywhere -- they're the new "Free AOL for NNNN Hours!" of the hosting world. I'd bet they all oversell their current disk space, but most people will never use but a small fraction of the NNN-gigs that even the most basic packages now offer. Only reason I got a 100GB package was so I can mirror some public FTP sites, as a justincasing should they vanish overnight, as happens occasionally.
I have my hosting with 1&1, and have started registering domains there too (tho my older ones are with GoDaddy). Lunarpages used to be quite a lot more expensive, but I see now they're about equivalent, and they'd probably be my next choice. I've heard good things about Dreamhost, too.
I *can* attest that Real Humans With Clues answer 1&1 support queries, for what that's worth.
If a kid is spending 3 hours a night *being cyberbullied*, what happened to the concept of "if it hurts, stop doing it"?? No one tied you to the chair every night, or forced you to participate in an abusive forum. This isn't like school where you're REQUIRED to be present. You can LEAVE that online forum any time you want to. You can't stop malicious gossip, but being present and reacting just makes you even MORE of a target.
Second, where the hell are the parents? How can they not notice this?? Obviously they're ignoring the kid, who is left to defend themselves.
All true. My point was, don't FORGET what it was like to be a kid, and the many times when life seemed unfair and you were powerless to change it. Try to remember how you felt AT THAT AGE, instead of trying to shoehorn your adult perspective into a kid's limited experience.
Kids don't need everything to go their own way, but they DO need to feel that someone understands when they feel shorted by life.
Because if you as a parent don't do this -- the kid will find someone else who WILL, and you may not have the luxury of choosing who that is.
And trying to autonanny (with an electronic friend, a GPS, or whatever) will only make the kid feel a stronger need for someone who understands, because AS THE KID SEES IT, clearly their parents aren't going to.
It'd be nice if we could enforce a "parent license" which first required a year of dealing with a couple of Chuckie Dolls, so people would figure out that parenting is a fulltime job and there are a lot of downsides to go with the upsides. Now, after your year of Dolls From Hell, do you still =want= children? and no license if your dolls aren't still completely healthy!!
In my observation, and speaking from old enough to be a grandparent [g] you are right about the need for a large enough generation gap that one is distinctly the parent, and the other distinctly the child.
Firstoff, you need to be the kids' PARENT, not their friend (peer), because kids need a point of authority in their lives to feel secure, and you can't provide that if you're their peer. This is much easier when your own mindset is fully mature, with your own secure outlook on the world based on genuine realworld experience, not some much-vaunted but impractical idealism.
Second, I swear there is a Stupid Gene that is activated when people have kids, that makes the new parents forget how much it sucked to be a kid. I suspect that people who have more years experience with children who are NOT THEIR OWN are less likely to forget this with their own kids, when they finally do have them. I know I was about 40 when I recognised this "stupid gene activation" as a specific and almost universal problem.
Third, you are right about kids having to learn some things the hard way. This used to happen very early on -- usually as something like "No, don't touch, stove HOT!" and kid touches it anyway, goes "OW!" -- and *believes* the parent the next time. Kids would still experiment, but learned right from the gitgo to experiment without forgetting self-preservation.
Nowadays everything is so "child-proof" that kids cannot hurt themselves in the *useful* ways that teach them certain NO-NOs are to be BELIEVED. Yes, sometimes a kid got seriously hurt or even killed. But which is better -- the occasional tragedy, or a whole generation that grows up with a false belief that nothing can hurt them, leading to more and more nannying like the nominal topic?
Cheapest solution at present is to equip your old hardware with an IDE or SATA controller card, and let the *card* handle the HDs that the existing motherboard can't see. More cost-effective than replacing a whole rack, when all that's needed to upgrade it is more HD space.
Given their existing parts-swapping policies, and the level of hardware they're using, I'd guess Google doesn't buy much NEW hardware, but rather, probably buys motherboards etc. from the various e-waste recycling outfits -- which charge about 16 cents a pound for sorted motherboards, RAM, HDs, etc. if you buy it in bulk. It only takes one entry-level employee to test such stuff to the "does it power on and boot up? Good enough!" level that is all Google really needs, given their massively-redundant setup.
Evidence that entertainment (that is, a chance for the brain to uncompress) is not so much a luxury as a basic human need:
In times of economic distress (most notably during the Great Depression) the entertainment industry, in whatever form it takes at the time, always does better than at any other time.
It may well be that the worse the economy, the more people have a strong need for a clearly-defined escape mechanism, and entertainment fills that need.
And in terms of how much discretionary budget you have to shell out at once, entertainment is at the bottom end of the scale -- a cheaper "escape" than almost anything else. When people have less cash, they're more likely to spend it in relatively small increments, like movies ($8) rather than on a major toy or a travel vacation.
IOW, I agree with you -- people *need* something on this order, whether it's a communal gruntfest around the campfire after a tough day hunting deer with rocks and clubs, or a cheap DVD after a long day slaving at the Cube Farm. And the need is probably *stronger* with modern urban jobs, since in more-primitive environments people often sing while they work -- so get some "escape" as an on-the-job perk.
Since there's no real overhead here, there's no reason EACH file can't be *further* individualized on the fly, at download time, such as varying the compression ratio a teeny bit, or adding random noise bits -- making two nominally-identical movie files sufficiently unlike that the "compare two, neutralize the diffs" method wouldn't work.
I note you said "discourage" casual piracy, not "prevent" it. I think this is an important distinction, especially for a business model: You don't want to *entirely* kill piracy, because there's a fairly active marketshare that does a lot of "free sampling" before they BUY. And these people are also active word-of-mouth advertisers. If you totally prevent casual piracy, you may well undercut your market penetration to people who otherwise would never notice your content.
I know this is sure how it works for me. Find something I like, sample it, and if I become enthusiastic about it, I buy it. And often as many of its kin as I can track down.
Back to the nominal topic -- I've been suggesting some sort of DRM-free, watermarked, reasonably-priced scheme for some time, with the whole idea being to make it THE primo place to find content -- being faster, easier, and more reliable than pirating. So I'm very pleased to see a company take the plunge, and I'll be checking 'em out for stuff I can't find on DVD.
(Well, if I can get past the flash-only website...)
"I posted as AC because I've already modded in this discussion."
[blink] When I tried that a while back, it unmodded all the mods I'd made!!
The AC continues,
"While I see your point in that you may be making more power than you can store, what about transmission losses over the power lines? Wouldn't it make more sense to maybe install more batteries (enough to store the maximum power generated) and use it at leisure rather than send it back to the power company, if some of that power will be lost in sending it to them?"
Good points, and I imagine the economics would be highly individualized -- one fellow might never need the surplus power, but lust after the cash; another may not need the cash but have rainy-day uses for the stored power (now we can *literally* save for a rainy day!!:) And in some situations, the cost of extra batteries may outweigh the storage benefits. In others, a power co-op might be just the ticket.
So.. the only sensible thing to do is run the numbers for your own power generation and storage capacity, ordinary usage, rainy-day needs, and cashflow, and decide which scheme works best for you.
I know that if it were me, I'd store as much as I could, but anything beyond my storage capacity** would be cheerfully sold back to SoCalEdison, as their just desserts for their extortionate rate schedules.
** Here the surplus would probably be a lot, since we have something like 330 days of hard sun per year, plus lots of wind, and even a "small" ($18,000, and *IF* they'll give you the permit) wind generator produces enough power for a large house to use it most profligately, and still have leftovers to sell back to Edison.
An AC says, "I don't get it. If you generated "excess" power, why would you want to sell it back to the power company? Why
wouldn't you rather, say, store it in batteries to be used at night when the active power source (the sun) isn't
available? Besides, all you'll get from the power company is the cost of power generated by fossil fuels, not the
actual cost of generating that power that comes with the initial purchase of solar panels."
Presumably to help recoup the considerable cost of setting up a green-energy system, which otherwise takes a good 10 years to pay for itself. If it's generating more than you can use (which presumably includes what you store for off-production times of the day) you might as well be making money on it... and reducing the fossil fuel consumption *by* the power company, if you want a good deed too.
Scalability:) Several people can put up more money than a single household, and with that larger fund get better/heavier-duty equipment with more output for the dollar -- which in turn is likely to have a lower *net* cost per user.
And those who can't afford to put money in up front can still buy from the co-op after it's established, at lower rates than from the major providers. Everybody wins.
(Yes, I'm from farm country, where co-ops were once a way of life.)
Good to know... except someone in a position to know (new construction) lately informed me that California utilities are no longer required to do buyback. And I see that Renu is operating here. Maybe they have an existing arrangement and are grandfathered? I suppose someone would have to ask Renu.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, the older eMachines were made about as flimsy as a PC can be without collapsing under its own weight. The motherboards were reputedly Asus seconds (now they're Intels, same as in Gateways, but probably still seconds). Minimal everything, weird-assed tiny PSUs, no real drive bays, etc, etc.
They've improved somewhat, tho. I've got a post-GW-eMachine P4 that isn't bad for a cheapie (and fine for free, which is what it cost me), and its chassis is (are you sitting down?) evidently of Antec manufacture, or a real close copy. It's actually rather nice inside. I could hardly believe my eyes!
Conversely my neighbour has one from just before the GW acquisition, and it's definitely made a lot cheaper.. case is real flimsy.. worse, it's only a couple months older than mine, but its mobo has already failed -- at 2 years old.
If a CPU/mobo combo was going to cost you as much as a whole new OEM machine, you need to shop somewhere else. Normal price range for a combo is around 1/3rd the price of an equivalent OEM system.
But even if nominally identical, in my experience the clone part will always outlive the same component from an OEM system. This is notably so with motherboards -- the single component *most* likely to fail in an OEM machine, followed by the PSU. In well-made clones, mobo and PSU almost never fail except from outright abuse.
Several problems with OEMs: 1) they run hot relative to what's inside 'em, 2) they use minimal PSUs, which I suspect also stresses stuff (and probably explains the high mobo death rate), and 3) they use a lot of seconds. IMO they're *designed* to have no more than a 3 year lifespan... after all, if they lasted like an average clone, they'd only need replacing when they reached the end of their upgrade paths, and almost never because of system failure.
As to the ridiculous repair quotes -- I needed a CPU fan bracket for the aforementioned eMachine. That's a $4 part, but you can't buy it. However, Gateway said they'd be happy to "repair" the system -- for $178 plus r/t shipping (I shit you not, that was their price -- for a $4 part and 2 minutes labour). So I did a little surgery on a standard bracket and made it fit, and fuck Gateway indeed!!
Some eMachines plug on and on and on, others die young. In my observation the death rate by 3 years is about 30%. In the olden days the issue was almost always the PSU (easily replaced), but more recently it's usually the motherboard.
eMachines are made cheap, yeah (tho somewhat better now that they're owned by Gateway) but at least you get what little you pay for. You can pay 4x as much for a Dell that is no better quality and is often worse. (Dells may =look= better, but their consumer systems often use even *cheaper* components than the average eMachine.)
If I =had= to buy an OEM, it would probably be a Gateway as in my experience they are the least-awful of the OEMs... however, I find it's vastly better to build my own. I get a far better machine for less money, AND it's far more upgradeable.
I've noticed that license compliance software is one of the Latest Big Things in the VAR market. Goes to show what a threat auditing is, when it's become a cash cow for 3rd parties too.
GM or Ford may not "validate" your car, but insurance companies often require proof of how many miles you drive in a year, as that partially determines your rates. Mine just lets me fill in a form and send it in, but some actually inspect the odometer.
A common scam, particularly with computer components, is to knowingly sell broken stuff, and tack on enough shipping/handling to ensure a profit even after refunding the purchase price for the broken component.
Ebay now has a search limiter to "show only items listed with Paypal", among other things. Also, you can use "-term" to exclude "term", similar to a Google search.
Interesting concept. Perhaps someone will write a beneficial rootkit, to let users get around kernel-level DRM....
Yeah, lunarpages does have some that are mighty lightweight ... my personal fave is http://www.lunarpages.com/mini_whois.php :)
I thought about using Lunarpages for hosting (having observed them as a stable host for several years) but at the time I got my hosting, they were still $14/mo. for 100mb, and 1&1 was offering 500mb for 3 yrs/free with an upgrade to 100GB for $4.50/mo. It's nice to see more pricing parity, tho, so they'll have to compete on service and reliability as well as cost per gig.
The disk space offers keep rising everywhere -- they're the new "Free AOL for NNNN Hours!" of the hosting world. I'd bet they all oversell their current disk space, but most people will never use but a small fraction of the NNN-gigs that even the most basic packages now offer. Only reason I got a 100GB package was so I can mirror some public FTP sites, as a justincasing should they vanish overnight, as happens occasionally.
I thought Lunarpages could also register domains?
I have my hosting with 1&1, and have started registering domains there too (tho my older ones are with GoDaddy). Lunarpages used to be quite a lot more expensive, but I see now they're about equivalent, and they'd probably be my next choice. I've heard good things about Dreamhost, too.
I *can* attest that Real Humans With Clues answer 1&1 support queries, for what that's worth.
A related thought I had whilst RTFSummary:
If a kid is spending 3 hours a night *being cyberbullied*, what happened to the concept of "if it hurts, stop doing it"?? No one tied you to the chair every night, or forced you to participate in an abusive forum. This isn't like school where you're REQUIRED to be present. You can LEAVE that online forum any time you want to. You can't stop malicious gossip, but being present and reacting just makes you even MORE of a target.
Second, where the hell are the parents? How can they not notice this?? Obviously they're ignoring the kid, who is left to defend themselves.
All true. My point was, don't FORGET what it was like to be a kid, and the many times when life seemed unfair and you were powerless to change it. Try to remember how you felt AT THAT AGE, instead of trying to shoehorn your adult perspective into a kid's limited experience.
Kids don't need everything to go their own way, but they DO need to feel that someone understands when they feel shorted by life.
Because if you as a parent don't do this -- the kid will find someone else who WILL, and you may not have the luxury of choosing who that is.
And trying to autonanny (with an electronic friend, a GPS, or whatever) will only make the kid feel a stronger need for someone who understands, because AS THE KID SEES IT, clearly their parents aren't going to.
What happens when your imaginary friend gets a virus, and maybe even dies?
Interesting concept, tho... kindof like the house AIs in McDevitt's books.
[reads rest of thread, nods head vigorously]
It'd be nice if we could enforce a "parent license" which first required a year of dealing with a couple of Chuckie Dolls, so people would figure out that parenting is a fulltime job and there are a lot of downsides to go with the upsides. Now, after your year of Dolls From Hell, do you still =want= children? and no license if your dolls aren't still completely healthy!!
In my observation, and speaking from old enough to be a grandparent [g] you are right about the need for a large enough generation gap that one is distinctly the parent, and the other distinctly the child.
Firstoff, you need to be the kids' PARENT, not their friend (peer), because kids need a point of authority in their lives to feel secure, and you can't provide that if you're their peer. This is much easier when your own mindset is fully mature, with your own secure outlook on the world based on genuine realworld experience, not some much-vaunted but impractical idealism.
Second, I swear there is a Stupid Gene that is activated when people have kids, that makes the new parents forget how much it sucked to be a kid. I suspect that people who have more years experience with children who are NOT THEIR OWN are less likely to forget this with their own kids, when they finally do have them. I know I was about 40 when I recognised this "stupid gene activation" as a specific and almost universal problem.
Third, you are right about kids having to learn some things the hard way. This used to happen very early on -- usually as something like "No, don't touch, stove HOT!" and kid touches it anyway, goes "OW!" -- and *believes* the parent the next time. Kids would still experiment, but learned right from the gitgo to experiment without forgetting self-preservation.
Nowadays everything is so "child-proof" that kids cannot hurt themselves in the *useful* ways that teach them certain NO-NOs are to be BELIEVED. Yes, sometimes a kid got seriously hurt or even killed. But which is better -- the occasional tragedy, or a whole generation that grows up with a false belief that nothing can hurt them, leading to more and more nannying like the nominal topic?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Dmalas.... ;)
Cheapest solution at present is to equip your old hardware with an IDE or SATA controller card, and let the *card* handle the HDs that the existing motherboard can't see. More cost-effective than replacing a whole rack, when all that's needed to upgrade it is more HD space.
Given their existing parts-swapping policies, and the level of hardware they're using, I'd guess Google doesn't buy much NEW hardware, but rather, probably buys motherboards etc. from the various e-waste recycling outfits -- which charge about 16 cents a pound for sorted motherboards, RAM, HDs, etc. if you buy it in bulk. It only takes one entry-level employee to test such stuff to the "does it power on and boot up? Good enough!" level that is all Google really needs, given their massively-redundant setup.
Ah, probably so. I'm so used to being logged in here all the time, that I probably didn't even think about it.
;)
(Besides, what proper geek ever logs out of slashdot?
Evidence that entertainment (that is, a chance for the brain to uncompress) is not so much a luxury as a basic human need:
In times of economic distress (most notably during the Great Depression) the entertainment industry, in whatever form it takes at the time, always does better than at any other time.
It may well be that the worse the economy, the more people have a strong need for a clearly-defined escape mechanism, and entertainment fills that need.
And in terms of how much discretionary budget you have to shell out at once, entertainment is at the bottom end of the scale -- a cheaper "escape" than almost anything else. When people have less cash, they're more likely to spend it in relatively small increments, like movies ($8) rather than on a major toy or a travel vacation.
IOW, I agree with you -- people *need* something on this order, whether it's a communal gruntfest around the campfire after a tough day hunting deer with rocks and clubs, or a cheap DVD after a long day slaving at the Cube Farm. And the need is probably *stronger* with modern urban jobs, since in more-primitive environments people often sing while they work -- so get some "escape" as an on-the-job perk.
Since there's no real overhead here, there's no reason EACH file can't be *further* individualized on the fly, at download time, such as varying the compression ratio a teeny bit, or adding random noise bits -- making two nominally-identical movie files sufficiently unlike that the "compare two, neutralize the diffs" method wouldn't work.
I note you said "discourage" casual piracy, not "prevent" it. I think this is an important distinction, especially for a business model: You don't want to *entirely* kill piracy, because there's a fairly active marketshare that does a lot of "free sampling" before they BUY. And these people are also active word-of-mouth advertisers. If you totally prevent casual piracy, you may well undercut your market penetration to people who otherwise would never notice your content.
I know this is sure how it works for me. Find something I like, sample it, and if I become enthusiastic about it, I buy it. And often as many of its kin as I can track down.
Back to the nominal topic -- I've been suggesting some sort of DRM-free, watermarked, reasonably-priced scheme for some time, with the whole idea being to make it THE primo place to find content -- being faster, easier, and more reliable than pirating. So I'm very pleased to see a company take the plunge, and I'll be checking 'em out for stuff I can't find on DVD.
(Well, if I can get past the flash-only website...)
A repeat-customer AC writes,
:) And in some situations, the cost of extra batteries may outweigh the storage benefits. In others, a power co-op might be just the ticket.
"I posted as AC because I've already modded in this discussion."
[blink] When I tried that a while back, it unmodded all the mods I'd made!!
The AC continues,
"While I see your point in that you may be making more power than you can store, what about transmission losses over the power lines? Wouldn't it make more sense to maybe install more batteries (enough to store the maximum power generated) and use it at leisure rather than send it back to the power company, if some of that power will be lost in sending it to them?"
Good points, and I imagine the economics would be highly individualized -- one fellow might never need the surplus power, but lust after the cash; another may not need the cash but have rainy-day uses for the stored power (now we can *literally* save for a rainy day!!
So.. the only sensible thing to do is run the numbers for your own power generation and storage capacity, ordinary usage, rainy-day needs, and cashflow, and decide which scheme works best for you.
I know that if it were me, I'd store as much as I could, but anything beyond my storage capacity** would be cheerfully sold back to SoCalEdison, as their just desserts for their extortionate rate schedules.
** Here the surplus would probably be a lot, since we have something like 330 days of hard sun per year, plus lots of wind, and even a "small" ($18,000, and *IF* they'll give you the permit) wind generator produces enough power for a large house to use it most profligately, and still have leftovers to sell back to Edison.
An AC says, "I don't get it. If you generated "excess" power, why would you want to sell it back to the power company? Why
wouldn't you rather, say, store it in batteries to be used at night when the active power source (the sun) isn't
available? Besides, all you'll get from the power company is the cost of power generated by fossil fuels, not the
actual cost of generating that power that comes with the initial purchase of solar panels."
Presumably to help recoup the considerable cost of setting up a green-energy system, which otherwise takes a good 10 years to pay for itself. If it's generating more than you can use (which presumably includes what you store for off-production times of the day) you might as well be making money on it... and reducing the fossil fuel consumption *by* the power company, if you want a good deed too.
Scalability :) Several people can put up more money than a single household, and with that larger fund get better/heavier-duty equipment with more output for the dollar -- which in turn is likely to have a lower *net* cost per user.
And those who can't afford to put money in up front can still buy from the co-op after it's established, at lower rates than from the major providers. Everybody wins.
(Yes, I'm from farm country, where co-ops were once a way of life.)
Good to know... except someone in a position to know (new construction) lately informed me that California utilities are no longer required to do buyback. And I see that Renu is operating here. Maybe they have an existing arrangement and are grandfathered? I suppose someone would have to ask Renu.