I've wondered for a quite a while if the 60 hz strobing (isn't it 60 frames per second on TV) does not have an addictive effect? And when you do not receive the stimulus, you do not feel well.
Imagine when you ride in a truck/bus that has lots of vibration. You eventually get used to it, and if you ride long enough, you feel kind of funny when you get off the bus and stand on "solid" non-vibrating ground.
Could the nervous system be picking up the strobing from the vertical refresh, to the point you "get used it" and you feel funny when it's not around.
I found it striking, that when I used to watch TV that the first thing I would do when I got up, or came home, was to turn on the TV. I didn't feel right if I didn't.
First I started school as an Electrical engineering student, but got bored and joined the army... learned to speak Arabic there. Got out, went back to school to study EE. Got bored again, changed to Middle East Studies. Meanwhile, I started working as a systems adminstrator at a local university. Finally finished the Mideast Studies degree and I am now persuing an MBA.
I'm not quite sure what I want to do, but I'll eventually figure it out when I get there. I won't be surprised if I end up teaching math in high school! Either way, it's been a very non-traditional route!
I would say, though, that every job in I've gotten , it wasn't about certifications, but how well I interfaced with the people during the interviews. It's not so much what degrees you have, but how you work with people, what you know that is specific to the job, and most importantly your ability and willingness to learn!
(of course, if you want to be a geneticist, I highly recommend taking some biology!)
The thing is, most people don't realize that the US is NOT the largest customer for Middle East oil. We (the US) get a 3rd from Mexico alone.
East Asia, and particularly Japan are the largest purchasers of oil. The problem is, oil is purchased with US dollars. So the real problem is a concentration of dollars in Middle Eastern oil producers.
If you know economics, if anyone has a large amount of your currency in reserve, they can affect the value of your currency - by either holding it and making it more scarce, or by dumping it and lowering the value. This is a bad thing. How do we fix it? Easy, by selling them weapons! Weapons systems are expensive, and require a lot of money for upkeep, maintenance and replentishing.
So... they have plenty of our money - that's part of the problem - from a foreign policy point of view. One could say that it's in our policy interests to keep the region a bit unstable and ready for war - it keeps dollars flowing back out of the region and also supports our defense contractors.
And as for Iraq? We didn't exactly befriend them in the 1980's. They were at war with Iran, who was our "enemy" too, so we gave them just enough to stay in the war and not lose. Rick Francona (www.rickfrancona.com) has an excellent book that covers this, "Ally to Adversary" - he was one of Gen. Shwartzkopf's (sp?) Arabic transators during the Gulf war. Iraq was only an ally as far as we wanted them to fight against Iran.
When I recently visited Kuwait, a major topic of discussion was how Kuwait can find ways to diversify their economy. The oil producing countries already know, barring some great discovery, that oil reserves will be depleated in 50 to 100 years. And Few of them are ready or willing to simply go back to hearding sheep, fishing, and perling to sustain their economies.
Finance may become an important source of revenue - I recently read an article about an attempt to unify the Stock Exchanges of the Arab countries. This will hopefully have the effect of making Arab stocks more attractive globally. This is in addition to efforts by the individual "burses" to make themselves more interesting to international investors.
Tourism will also be important - and will become even more so. If the Palestinians and Israelis can ever come to a solution, tourism there and in Jordan and Syria should boom! There's lots of neat stuff there! The gulf has fabulous diving and fishing, and of couse, is comfortably warm during European and American winters (and Asian, and Australian too). Even Saudi Arabia has seen the importance of tourism and has started to issue tourist visas!
But also consider, as another poster has mentioned, there is an entire petro-chemical industry. Oil is not just used to push our cars, planes and ships around the world. It's also used as a raw material to produce a vast array of products.
In the last 60 years, oil has helped bring properity and wealth to many parts of the Middle East. With careful planning and forsight, they will be able to build on this wealth and be ready when the oil "runs out", or is no longer needed as much as it is today.
I very much doubt that Coleman will destroy the Middle East!
They do state that in fact this is a region 2 DVD. I imagine if enough Americans wrote the BBC to complain, they would change this. That's a lot of revenue to give up!
What you point out is a common problem with investing in the United States. It is the focus on short-term returns and not the long term.
RedHat's obligation to its shareholders is to stay in business and continue to generate profits as efficiently as possible. It is also beholden to the desires of the shareholders who are represented by the board of directors. It is through this body that a "moral" compass can be given to a corporation. If the shareholders expect RedHat to work within a certain set of ethics, or with a certain ideology, then this direction must come from the board.
It is my guess that many of the RedHat shareholders have invested because they see a potential return on investment. But I think they have also invested because they have an ideology that they feel RedHat represents.
Maximum profits, at any cost, is not RedHat's obligation.
Unfortuntately (very much so), Mozilla and Netscape lack support for Arabic language web pages. IE does this fairly well. That's important to me, and a lot of users in the Middle East.
I realize that - but the CIA tends to focus on things that are hidden and covert. Embassies are very "out in the open" - it's just not the CIA's specialty.
But then again, that's assuming that the Chinese Embassy was hit accidentally. Some have pointed out that this was very near the anniversary of the Tienman Square Massacre/Incident, and that hitting their embassy was a "gift" to take the world spotlight off of China during that time. But, those people are probably conspiracy theorists - which doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong!
But, just as I wouldn't go to a proctologist to have my teeth checked, I wouldn't go to the CIA to find obvious, in the open kinds of things like embassies.
Everyone knows the CIA doesn't do diplomacy, so of course they don't know where the embassies are! Ask them about missile silos, or anyone except for Osama, and they'll give you a 12 digit grid!
For embassies, though, we have the state department! And they say it's "Ukraine" too.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/bgn/index.cfm?docid=32 11
Though, I think the fact that two government agencies concur on the name for a country probably indicates the place doesn't even really exist!
You won't be fired for working with your co-workers. But, this is about ethical behavior.
Consider that you are a consultant and work for 2 different companies. If you take code from one company and use it for the other without permission, then you are acting unethically and will probably be fired if you are discovered.
If you can't even be ethical about writing "hello world", then how can you be trusted with someone's company?!
No... he's actually saying that there are other things that kill many more people. And that instead of spending an incredible amount of money on such a low risk event, we should be spending that money on higher-risk events, like falling in bathtubs. For example, in 1998, 98 Americans were killed by "bites and stings" (see the CDC: http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html)
Are you saying that the lives of these 98 are less important than the 5 that died of anthrax? Where's the campaign and massive expenditure to stop these senseless deaths?
Even better (worse, really), 3228 died in 1998 of "Medical care, Adverse Effects" What about them?
So, you see, it's not just a matter of 5 lives vs inconvenience. It's a matter of how much is spent to prevent a low-risk death compared to higher risk events. Anthrax is scary - a bee sting is not.
I recently visited my aunt who has digital cable (I have satellite, but that's only to watch Arabic channels - I don't get American).
I was incredibly annoyed by all the ads that were inserted into the text screens. If you wanted to see the TV guide, you had to read stupid ads before the guide would come up.
I'm sure it's only a matter of time before those scrolling lines on the bottom of news channels become advertisements in all the other programs. Or, they'll squeeze the actual content to one corner and put ads no only on the bottom but on the side too - all the 9/11 news coverage was just a test for this - and to train us for it!
Boy, I can't wait to pay $230 for THAT!
For even half of that, I want NO ads ANYWHERE, and I want the studip shop-at-home garbage to be blacked out (if they can do it for NBA and NFL, they can do it for the Ab-doer)!
It is a very difficult thing to do, but search your soul and ponder what you REALLY want to do. Don't just think about the next job, or 5 years from now, but try to imagine yourself THIRTY or fourty years from now! What do you think you would like to be doing then?
I have been working as a systems administrator for 5 years while getting a degree in Middle East Studies. I'm still working as a Sysadmin - pays the bills nicely. But now I'm working on an MBA, though I seriously considered backtracking and getting a Masters degree in Computer Engineering (I have already finished 2 years of engineering). The moral of the story is that I don't really want to be an engineer, and I don't want to be a systems administrator. I do want to work with companies that want to work in the Middle East. My tech skills won't be wasted - if I ever become a PHB, I'll at least understand the poor techies when they sigh at the other PHBs who demand that all internet services be served from Microsoft IIS and Exchange!
Read the book "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coehlo. It's all about finding your "personal legend" - that thing that you truly want, and then trying to get it. Find what you want to do - in the long term. Nothing you learn is wasted if you find a way to apply it and use it. Learn those things that help you be what you really want to be.
I would have to disagree that American version is not as good. They are both very good, and have different qualities that for each are quite nice.
1) The American (Mind's Eye Productions) does not omit the Bombadil sequence. The BBC version does. This is important to me because I really like Bombadil. The scenes with the Barrow Wights explain how they get their swords.
2) The BBC version has English accents, which probably sounds more authentic.
3) The BBC version "unravels" the story line to make it more linear. The American version relies more on "flashback" and story-telling, which follows the flow of the books.
4) The BBC version does have Strider telling the story of (oh, I forget her name) the elf that gave up her immortality to live and die with the mortal man she loves - giving a nice foreshadowing of Strider and Arwyn's situation.
5) Of course, the BBC version gives you another hour, which is cool.
They are both excellent, and after listening to both of them several times (I'm a LOTR AND Book-on -tape junkie - don't ask how many times I've listened to Harry Potter on tape). I cannot say that one is better than the other.
Even worse is the problem is that most Americans, including the people working in the government, have forgotten that the Constitution is a document that limits government by spelling out what it CAN do. Instead, they now believe that it only restricts what what the government CANNOT do - so by default, the government is free to do anything that is not specifically prohibited in the constitution.
This was one of the major arguments AGAINST the bill of rights. Many believed that it was at best unnecessary because the government was not explicitly given the ability to curtail the personal rights found in the Bill of Rights. For example, the Constitution did not give the government the right to curtail free speech, so therefore it should not have been necessary to make an ammendment prohibiting it from doing so. At worst, the Bill of Rights establishes the framework for the government to do anything it wishes, as long as it is not already prohibited elsewhere in the Constitution.
Sadly, the "worst" scenario is what we have now. The government should be permitted to do only what is spelled out in the Constitution. Instead, it does everything that is no prohibited in the Constitution. This is wrong.
It won't be as hard as you think. Do you want a federal student loan? Do you need welfare? How about getting a drivers license? These are all "voluntary" - but in order to get these voluntary government services, you will need to provide your chip-generated ID.
In a recent Rotary presentation, Paul's Computer Institute was discussed by its founder, Paul Mickelson.
After a tour in the Peace Corps in Camaroon, Paul cashed out his retirement and established an institute to teach IT to people in Camaroon.
He takes donated equipment from the US to Camaroon, teaches the students how to repair it, install software, etc, then helps place them in jobs in industry and government (in Camaroon).
I can't find a link to his institute, but I do have this link to a write-up about his project:
http://www.rotary.org/newsandinfo/presscenter/rele ases/92.html
In our facility, we have approximately 120 of the 30 and 40GB drives. We've had 4 failures so far, and we have been installing these for the last year or so.
This seems to be within what we normally expect when we build a run of computers. When we used Seagate Baracuda's, we had about the same number of "infant" failures (first 3 months).
Of the deaths we've had, 2 were right out of the box - they did not spin up, and did not detect to the BIOS - we think they were treated roughly before we got them. The other 2 worked for a few days, but were always noisy - lots of the reported clicks.
We currently have one in the fleet that is whining a lot - the sound you usually get from older drives when their bearings are wearing out.
But, within our sampling, I would say the failure rate is no higher or lower than other groups of drives we have purchased in the past.
Don't forget, there was once a day where everyone didn't have 1Ghz processors, 21" monitors, and graphical debuggers.
Yes C was written in one respect to save on key strokes, but that was when computers didn't have monitors - you punched keys (not so easy to press), and got your output on a teletype printer. God knows you wouldn't want to by typing Cobol programs this way.
My guess is that programmers probably took more time designing their program before they started keying it in. C, with short commands, and abbreviated syntax only made it easier to get your darn program into the computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I've wondered for a quite a while if the 60 hz strobing (isn't it 60 frames per second on TV) does not have an addictive effect? And when you do not receive the stimulus, you do not feel well.
Imagine when you ride in a truck/bus that has lots of vibration. You eventually get used to it, and if you ride long enough, you feel kind of funny when you get off the bus and stand on "solid" non-vibrating ground.
Could the nervous system be picking up the strobing from the vertical refresh, to the point you "get used it" and you feel funny when it's not around.
I found it striking, that when I used to watch TV that the first thing I would do when I got up, or came home, was to turn on the TV. I didn't feel right if I didn't.
First I started school as an Electrical engineering student, but got bored and joined the army... learned to speak Arabic there. Got out, went back to school to study EE. Got bored again, changed to Middle East Studies. Meanwhile, I started working as a systems adminstrator at a local university. Finally finished the Mideast Studies degree and I am now persuing an MBA.
I'm not quite sure what I want to do, but I'll eventually figure it out when I get there. I won't be surprised if I end up teaching math in high school! Either way, it's been a very non-traditional route!
I would say, though, that every job in I've gotten , it wasn't about certifications, but how well I interfaced with the people during the interviews. It's not so much what degrees you have, but how you work with people, what you know that is specific to the job, and most importantly your ability and willingness to learn!
(of course, if you want to be a geneticist, I highly recommend taking some biology!)
The thing is, most people don't realize that the US is NOT the largest customer for Middle East oil. We (the US) get a 3rd from Mexico alone.
East Asia, and particularly Japan are the largest purchasers of oil. The problem is, oil is purchased with US dollars. So the real problem is a concentration of dollars in Middle Eastern oil producers.
If you know economics, if anyone has a large amount of your currency in reserve, they can affect the value of your currency - by either holding it and making it more scarce, or by dumping it and lowering the value. This is a bad thing. How do we fix it? Easy, by selling them weapons! Weapons systems are expensive, and require a lot of money for upkeep, maintenance and replentishing.
So... they have plenty of our money - that's part of the problem - from a foreign policy point of view. One could say that it's in our policy interests to keep the region a bit unstable and ready for war - it keeps dollars flowing back out of the region and also supports our defense contractors.
And as for Iraq? We didn't exactly befriend them in the 1980's. They were at war with Iran, who was our "enemy" too, so we gave them just enough to stay in the war and not lose. Rick Francona (www.rickfrancona.com) has an excellent book that covers this, "Ally to Adversary" - he was one of Gen. Shwartzkopf's (sp?) Arabic transators during the Gulf war. Iraq was only an ally as far as we wanted them to fight against Iran.
When I recently visited Kuwait, a major topic of discussion was how Kuwait can find ways to diversify their economy. The oil producing countries already know, barring some great discovery, that oil reserves will be depleated in 50 to 100 years. And Few of them are ready or willing to simply go back to hearding sheep, fishing, and perling to sustain their economies.
Finance may become an important source of revenue - I recently read an article about an attempt to unify the Stock Exchanges of the Arab countries. This will hopefully have the effect of making Arab stocks more attractive globally. This is in addition to efforts by the individual "burses" to make themselves more interesting to international investors.
Tourism will also be important - and will become even more so. If the Palestinians and Israelis can ever come to a solution, tourism there and in Jordan and Syria should boom! There's lots of neat stuff there! The gulf has fabulous diving and fishing, and of couse, is comfortably warm during European and American winters (and Asian, and Australian too). Even Saudi Arabia has seen the importance of tourism and has started to issue tourist visas!
But also consider, as another poster has mentioned, there is an entire petro-chemical industry. Oil is not just used to push our cars, planes and ships around the world. It's also used as a raw material to produce a vast array of products.
In the last 60 years, oil has helped bring properity and wealth to many parts of the Middle East. With careful planning and forsight, they will be able to build on this wealth and be ready when the oil "runs out", or is no longer needed as much as it is today.
I very much doubt that Coleman will destroy the Middle East!
Americans - you will be able to get this for your players.
My guess is that it will become available under a different distributor in the US.
But, we're Americans, and we want it NOW! (That's what it means to be an American, non?)
It's available for purchase on ShopBBC:
p =b bc&dept_id=101
http://www.bbcshop.com/bbc_shop/default.asp?sho
They do state that in fact this is a region 2 DVD. I imagine if enough Americans wrote the BBC to complain, they would change this. That's a lot of revenue to give up!
What you point out is a common problem with investing in the United States. It is the focus on short-term returns and not the long term.
RedHat's obligation to its shareholders is to stay in business and continue to generate profits as efficiently as possible. It is also beholden to the desires of the shareholders who are represented by the board of directors. It is through this body that a "moral" compass can be given to a corporation. If the shareholders expect RedHat to work within a certain set of ethics, or with a certain ideology, then this direction must come from the board.
It is my guess that many of the RedHat shareholders have invested because they see a potential return on investment. But I think they have also invested because they have an ideology that they feel RedHat represents.
Maximum profits, at any cost, is not RedHat's obligation.
Unfortuntately (very much so), Mozilla and Netscape lack support for Arabic language web pages. IE does this fairly well. That's important to me, and a lot of users in the Middle East.
Looking at both the State Dept and the CIA, they show a short name "North Korea", and the official name "The People's Democratic Republic of Korea".
But looking at the ISO page you reference, it shows "Ukraine" and not "The Ukraine" (and only Korea, since this page has only official short names).
Thank you for the reference to the ISO standard on country names. I've never seen it, but I'm sure I will use it in the future.
I realize that - but the CIA tends to focus on things that are hidden and covert. Embassies are very "out in the open" - it's just not the CIA's specialty.
But then again, that's assuming that the Chinese Embassy was hit accidentally. Some have pointed out that this was very near the anniversary of the Tienman Square Massacre/Incident, and that hitting their embassy was a "gift" to take the world spotlight off of China during that time. But, those people are probably conspiracy theorists - which doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong!
But, just as I wouldn't go to a proctologist to have my teeth checked, I wouldn't go to the CIA to find obvious, in the open kinds of things like embassies.
Everyone knows the CIA doesn't do diplomacy, so of course they don't know where the embassies are! Ask them about missile silos, or anyone except for Osama, and they'll give you a 12 digit grid!
2 11
For embassies, though, we have the state department! And they say it's "Ukraine" too.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/bgn/index.cfm?docid=3
Though, I think the fact that two government agencies concur on the name for a country probably indicates the place doesn't even really exist!
Check the CIA World Fact Book - they call it "Ukraine".
d ex .html
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/in
Sudan is also Sudan.. but just to make sure they don't get rid of all "The"'s, they have "The Bahamas" and The Gambia.
I know the CIA is not perfect, but I trust them on little things like country names.
I've often made this mistake and didn't know better until a friend from Ukraine recently corrected me.
Ukraine does not get a "The" in front of it - it's just like we usually don't say "The France" or "The England".
I know it sounds weird.
You won't be fired for working with your co-workers. But, this is about ethical behavior.
Consider that you are a consultant and work for 2 different companies. If you take code from one company and use it for the other without permission, then you are acting unethically and will probably be fired if you are discovered.
If you can't even be ethical about writing "hello world", then how can you be trusted with someone's company?!
No... he's actually saying that there are other things that kill many more people. And that instead of spending an incredible amount of money on such a low risk event, we should be spending that money on higher-risk events, like falling in bathtubs. For example, in 1998, 98 Americans were killed by "bites and stings" (see the CDC: http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html)
Are you saying that the lives of these 98 are less important than the 5 that died of anthrax? Where's the campaign and massive expenditure to stop these senseless deaths?
Even better (worse, really), 3228 died in 1998 of "Medical care, Adverse Effects" What about them?
So, you see, it's not just a matter of 5 lives vs inconvenience. It's a matter of how much is spent to prevent a low-risk death compared to higher risk events. Anthrax is scary - a bee sting is not.
I recently visited my aunt who has digital cable (I have satellite, but that's only to watch Arabic channels - I don't get American).
I was incredibly annoyed by all the ads that were inserted into the text screens. If you wanted to see the TV guide, you had to read stupid ads before the guide would come up.
I'm sure it's only a matter of time before those scrolling lines on the bottom of news channels become advertisements in all the other programs. Or, they'll squeeze the actual content to one corner and put ads no only on the bottom but on the side too - all the 9/11 news coverage was just a test for this - and to train us for it!
Boy, I can't wait to pay $230 for THAT!
For even half of that, I want NO ads ANYWHERE, and I want the studip shop-at-home garbage to be blacked out (if they can do it for NBA and NFL, they can do it for the Ab-doer)!
It is a very difficult thing to do, but search your soul and ponder what you REALLY want to do. Don't just think about the next job, or 5 years from now, but try to imagine yourself THIRTY or fourty years from now! What do you think you would like to be doing then?
I have been working as a systems administrator for 5 years while getting a degree in Middle East Studies. I'm still working as a Sysadmin - pays the bills nicely. But now I'm working on an MBA, though I seriously considered backtracking and getting a Masters degree in Computer Engineering (I have already finished 2 years of engineering). The moral of the story is that I don't really want to be an engineer, and I don't want to be a systems administrator. I do want to work with companies that want to work in the Middle East. My tech skills won't be wasted - if I ever become a PHB, I'll at least understand the poor techies when they sigh at the other PHBs who demand that all internet services be served from Microsoft IIS and Exchange!
Read the book "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coehlo. It's all about finding your "personal legend" - that thing that you truly want, and then trying to get it. Find what you want to do - in the long term. Nothing you learn is wasted if you find a way to apply it and use it. Learn those things that help you be what you really want to be.
It's not about the degree... it's about you.
hmmm... I just looked out my window...
No bums or junkies. Just a couple of kids waiting for the bus.
I think you watch too much TV.
I would have to disagree that American version is not as good. They are both very good, and have different qualities that for each are quite nice.
1) The American (Mind's Eye Productions) does not omit the Bombadil sequence. The BBC version does. This is important to me because I really like Bombadil. The scenes with the Barrow Wights explain how they get their swords.
2) The BBC version has English accents, which probably sounds more authentic.
3) The BBC version "unravels" the story line to make it more linear. The American version relies more on "flashback" and story-telling, which follows the flow of the books.
4) The BBC version does have Strider telling the story of (oh, I forget her name) the elf that gave up her immortality to live and die with the mortal man she loves - giving a nice foreshadowing of Strider and Arwyn's situation.
5) Of course, the BBC version gives you another hour, which is cool.
They are both excellent, and after listening to both of them several times (I'm a LOTR AND Book-on -tape junkie - don't ask how many times I've listened to Harry Potter on tape). I cannot say that one is better than the other.
Even worse is the problem is that most Americans, including the people working in the government, have forgotten that the Constitution is a document that limits government by spelling out what it CAN do. Instead, they now believe that it only restricts what what the government CANNOT do - so by default, the government is free to do anything that is not specifically prohibited in the constitution.
This was one of the major arguments AGAINST the bill of rights. Many believed that it was at best unnecessary because the government was not explicitly given the ability to curtail the personal rights found in the Bill of Rights. For example, the Constitution did not give the government the right to curtail free speech, so therefore it should not have been necessary to make an ammendment prohibiting it from doing so. At worst, the Bill of Rights establishes the framework for the government to do anything it wishes, as long as it is not already prohibited elsewhere in the Constitution.
Sadly, the "worst" scenario is what we have now. The government should be permitted to do only what is spelled out in the Constitution. Instead, it does everything that is no prohibited in the Constitution. This is wrong.
I guess that makes me a libertarian.
It won't be as hard as you think. Do you want a federal student loan? Do you need welfare? How about getting a drivers license? These are all "voluntary" - but in order to get these voluntary government services, you will need to provide your chip-generated ID.
In a recent Rotary presentation, Paul's Computer Institute was discussed by its founder, Paul Mickelson. After a tour in the Peace Corps in Camaroon, Paul cashed out his retirement and established an institute to teach IT to people in Camaroon. He takes donated equipment from the US to Camaroon, teaches the students how to repair it, install software, etc, then helps place them in jobs in industry and government (in Camaroon). I can't find a link to his institute, but I do have this link to a write-up about his project: http://www.rotary.org/newsandinfo/presscenter/rele ases/92.html
Right at the beginning of The Hitchhiker's Guide, Adams pretty nearly describes a Palm Pilot.
Of course, today's Palm does not quite have the information found in the Guide, but I'm sure that will be the next add-on.
In our facility, we have approximately 120 of the 30 and 40GB drives. We've had 4 failures so far, and we have been installing these for the last year or so.
This seems to be within what we normally expect when we build a run of computers. When we used Seagate Baracuda's, we had about the same number of "infant" failures (first 3 months).
Of the deaths we've had, 2 were right out of the box - they did not spin up, and did not detect to the BIOS - we think they were treated roughly before we got them. The other 2 worked for a few days, but were always noisy - lots of the reported clicks.
We currently have one in the fleet that is whining a lot - the sound you usually get from older drives when their bearings are wearing out.
But, within our sampling, I would say the failure rate is no higher or lower than other groups of drives we have purchased in the past.
Don't forget, there was once a day where everyone didn't have 1Ghz processors, 21" monitors, and graphical debuggers.
Yes C was written in one respect to save on key strokes, but that was when computers didn't have monitors - you punched keys (not so easy to press), and got your output on a teletype printer. God knows you wouldn't want to by typing Cobol programs this way.
My guess is that programmers probably took more time designing their program before they started keying it in. C, with short commands, and abbreviated syntax only made it easier to get your darn program into the computer.