Worth mentioning again, in the latest Consumer Reports reliability survey, Dell Desktops ranker higher than eMachines, IBM, Compaq, HP, and Gateway. Being in third place behind Apple and Sony isn't exactly the worst reliability in the industry. Their laptops don't fare as well, but still better than Compaq and Gateway.
(Based on more than 85,000 desktop computers purchased new between 2001 and 2005, according to responses to our 2005 Annual Questionnaire. Data were standardized to eliminate differences linked to age and use.)
In terms of Service, a lot of people have complaints about Dell service. I don't, but I'm lucky enough to get to use Dell Premiere support which is much better than the general consumer support.
When CR ranked companies on their tech support (again based on surveys of consumers), Dell came in below Apple, IBM, and Toshiba, but above Gateway, HP, Sony, and Compaq for laptops. For desktops, it was Apple, Dell, Gateway, Sony, Compaq, HP. Those were based on responses in the 4-6,000 range though, between 2004 and mid-2005, so the sample size wasn't as high.
Regardless, for all Dell's apparent horrible reputation, they still seem to be better than several of their competitors.
Considering how unreliable it is to get pregnant in the first place, yes, given that said mythical woman could simply donate eggs and sperm to be fertilized in a lab to extract stem cells from, in this mythical situtation where she for some reason needed her own stem cells to save her own child. (Stem cells are very unlikely to have the immune reaction issues a normal tissue transplant would.)
And as an earlier poster said, as far as I know there is nobody working with stem cell lines extracted from aborted fetuses. Abortion procedures are not performed with the eye to proper preservation of stem cells for one.
Double-checking with my wife, who has worked in a genetics lab doing stem cell research, she's not aware of any stem cell lines in use from any sources other than lab-fertilized eggs, and possibly one line grown from umbilical cord blood (which would not have been from an abortion).
No, the argument that it "encourages" abortion is not strong at all, it's completely non-existent.
Does anyone out there really think that young women are sitting around thinking "Hey, if I get pregnant, I can go through annoying hormonal shifts, then have a painful and mildly risky invasive procedure, then they can use my aborted fetus to do medical resarch! Hooray!"?
People can reasonably have ethical objections to the concept of aborting a fetus for any reason, but it takes a special kind of brain damage to think stem cell research *encourages* women to have abortions.
Especially since one of the most commonly suggested sources of stem cells are excess fertilized eggs from fertility treatments that are going to be destroyed anyway.
I believe it's still possible to book passage on many trans-ocean ships. I swear I read once that even many cargo ships actually have space to take on a very few "passengers" for a very no-frills voyage. (We are not talking a Cruise line here.)
It's also possible to book one-way trips on most cruise ships, though that's certainly not going to be cheap.
There are few modern human traits more galling than this belief that "early man" was a primitive idiot who was lucky to not piss on his own feet.
It so often ends up underpinning stupid theories about aliens building pyramids or landing strips and whatnot. All because the idea that those "primitive savages" could have understood concepts like engineering or surveying (or in this case, sailing) is so unbelievable to them.
Because evolution still has discrete boundaries. Population A has been separate from population B long enough and changed enough genetically that they can no longer interbreed. Ping! New species.
But, almost certainly, this article completely overstates the findings and theories based on them. Scientists certainly don't think in terms of "find me the square foot of land on which the first homo sapien was born". But questions about where certain traits first developed, and where they migrated to, or perhaps even evolved independently and separately, are subjects of great inquiry.
I don't really get the original premise. Nobody needs to be root to run chmod, cp, mv, etc on their own files. The only command mentioned one might need root for is chown. Which would make me ask the question, why do you need to change file ownerships so often?
It would take a hard-core serious business case to convince me to grant someone root access, even sudo-limited root access to a production system. The fact that I might have a "log" of whatever broken thing they did to take a business critical machine down is fairly irrelevant to me. My job is to make sure that doesn't happen in the first place.
And yet, according to Consumer Report's latest reliability survey, Dell only ranks behind Apple and Sony for fewest "Repairs and Serious Problems" for Desktops, at around 15-16%
(Based on more than 85,000 desktop computers purchased new between 2001 and 2005, according to responses to our 2005 Annual Questionnaire. Data were standardized to eliminate differences linked to age and use. Differences of 4 or more points are meaningful.)
However, curiously, for *laptops*, Dell ranks 6th, after Sony, IBM, Toshiba, Apple, and HP (in that order) at around 17-18%. (Sony is at around 16%.) It's interesting to me that Dells repair rate is pretty close to the same for laptops and desktops, but in the laptop category that's just not as good. When did laptops in general become more reliable than desktops? (That certainly hasn't been my anecdotal experience.)
It's also interesting that the reliability numbers for Apple laptops doesn't seem to measure up to their desktops. They appear to have the biggest reliability gap between desktops and laptops. (11% vs 16-17%)
(Based on more than 49,000 laptop computers purchased between 2001 and 2005, according to responses to our 2005 Annual Questionnaire. Data were standardized to eliminate differences linked to age and use. Differences of 3 or more points are meaningful.)
Just in case someone else hasn't already done this...
From Bill Maher:
New Rule: George Bush isn't Hitler.
In the contest sponsored by MoveOn.org, two entries compared Bush to Hitler, ignoring the first rule for being taken seriously by grown-ups, which is don't call everyone you don't like, Hitler.
Bush is not Hitler. For one thing, Hitler was a decorated frontline combat veteran. Also, in the election that brought him to power in 1933, Hitler got more votes than the other candidate. And Hitler had a mustache.
So let's all take a rest from playing the Hitler card. Unless we're talking about Saddam Hussein. Now, that guy was Hitler.
I don't write code at all. I'm a sysadmin, not a developer. That means that, unlike the developers who get to spew out code and smile and tell everyone how cross platform it is, I'm the one who actually has to deal with trying to make it work in the real world. Did you actually test it in every browser on every O/S? Oh, hey, is the version you developed on even *available* in every possible combination of platform? If you developed it on 1.4.2_10, did you also test it on 1.4.2_09? Or 1.4.2_11? Or 1.5? If it was so thoroughly cross-platform, would you even have to test it against all those things? If java is so cross-platform, why can't it be cross-platform with *itself*?
The ability of Java apps to break on even the most minor JRE update is frightening to me. And you're free to tell me that it's only because the code is crappy, but if that's all the code that ever gets handed to me, well, I don't really give a shit. All I see is Yet Another Java Problem that I have to deal with, and I'm far too tired of it to put up with pie in the sky ideals of how great it might have been. Blame the other "bad" Java programmers if you must, but 75 times bitten, 76 times shy.
When do we get cross-platform java again? I wish I could have all the time in my life back I've spent trying to get Java Program A working on Platform B. Java's the only thing that constantly nails me with "Ooops, sorry, this code will only run on 1.5.00134, but you've got 1.5.00135." "But wait, I also need to run Program C, and it won't run with anything else!" "Oh, well, then I guess you'll need to have duplicate JREs installed for each version that might currently work until the next update."
Hell, just a couple days ago I spent the better part of a day trying to get one of our own corporate apps working (our Concur expense reporting app). It turned out the only way I was able to get it to work correctly was to use Microsoft's JVM (which MS doesn't even distribute any more).
I'm sorry, but Java's cross-platform claims is just so much hot air to someone who has to actually deal with dozens of different platforms.
There's no question that OS/2 still had a sizable presence in some environments and businesses.
But that doesn't mean there is an OS/2 "Community", nor does it mean that even if there was, the terrible fear of "fragmenting" said community is anything anyone should care about.
Everyone I know has silverware. Does that mean there is a "Silverware Community"?
The hilarious thing about the *angry* fan response to killing of characters is it is almost exactly identical to what happened when he killed off characters in Buffy and Angel. You'd think people would have learned by now.
"One more thing to note: Once switching to Mac, we could drop having from 2 T1 connections back to a single T1 since a lot of our bandwidth would no longer be used by tuesday patches, virus updates, spyware updates, and spam."
How did switching to macs reduce the *spam* you had incoming?
If only that very concept had been mentioned on the first page of the article...
"In terms of Web typography, this has some pretty sobering consequences. We can spend hours choosing the perfect combination of typefaces to complement our design or meet corporate requirements, but if the user has stipulated that she wants all text to be displayed in 18px Comic Sans, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
The key is to think of this not as a limitation of the Web, but as a strength. Which other medium gives so much freedom to the end user? As designers, we merely suggest a design or layout; the final say is in the hands of the individual, and their requirements and choices trump ours every time. Don't inhibit this freedom by assuming users' requirements or by attempting to force too many of your own preferences onto users."
Thank you! I'm glad someone else remembers Pascal. It was my first real language training as well, as the community college I went to required it as the Introduction to Programming course.
The fact that you pretty much *have* to move on to other languages afterwards is a great point. It makes it practically impossible to get the kind of people who think whatever language they learned first is the proper solution to every problem. (When all you have is a hammer, etc.)
I think a better suggestion to all hopeful contestants would be to read the contest guidelines, one of which is:
Use a medieval fantasy setting.
It's also worth clarifying that Bioware isn't necessarily hiring the winners of the contest. The top 8 submissions will be "reviewed" by Bioware staff for consideration.
Curiously, while this is being billed as a "contest", it appears to be the standard method for applying for a writer's job at Bioware (by submitting a writing sample via a NWN module), according to http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/jobs/positions /writer.html .
Yes, thank you. It's curious how the news article neglects to mention that Greg Hoglund is the primary developer of Wowsharp, a *subscription-based* Wow cheating tool. How curious that he seems so strenuously opposed to anti-cheating tools.
Also, he details a great bit about what the Warden client *reads*, but he doesn't appear to document what it *sends*?
I'm admittedly not a programmer, isn't it normal when certain MS DLLs are loaded for those DLLs to scan various system resources, such as web pages, MSN status, etc?
Slashdot Mirror
Worth mentioning again, in the latest Consumer Reports reliability survey, Dell Desktops ranker higher than eMachines, IBM, Compaq, HP, and Gateway. Being in third place behind Apple and Sony isn't exactly the worst reliability in the industry. Their laptops don't fare as well, but still better than Compaq and Gateway.
(Based on more than 85,000 desktop computers purchased new between 2001 and 2005, according to responses to our 2005 Annual Questionnaire. Data were standardized to eliminate differences linked to age and use.)
In terms of Service, a lot of people have complaints about Dell service. I don't, but I'm lucky enough to get to use Dell Premiere support which is much better than the general consumer support.
When CR ranked companies on their tech support (again based on surveys of consumers), Dell came in below Apple, IBM, and Toshiba, but above Gateway, HP, Sony, and Compaq for laptops. For desktops, it was Apple, Dell, Gateway, Sony, Compaq, HP. Those were based on responses in the 4-6,000 range though, between 2004 and mid-2005, so the sample size wasn't as high.
Regardless, for all Dell's apparent horrible reputation, they still seem to be better than several of their competitors.
Considering how unreliable it is to get pregnant in the first place, yes, given that said mythical woman could simply donate eggs and sperm to be fertilized in a lab to extract stem cells from, in this mythical situtation where she for some reason needed her own stem cells to save her own child. (Stem cells are very unlikely to have the immune reaction issues a normal tissue transplant would.)
And as an earlier poster said, as far as I know there is nobody working with stem cell lines extracted from aborted fetuses. Abortion procedures are not performed with the eye to proper preservation of stem cells for one.
Double-checking with my wife, who has worked in a genetics lab doing stem cell research, she's not aware of any stem cell lines in use from any sources other than lab-fertilized eggs, and possibly one line grown from umbilical cord blood (which would not have been from an abortion).
No, the argument that it "encourages" abortion is not strong at all, it's completely non-existent.
Does anyone out there really think that young women are sitting around thinking "Hey, if I get pregnant, I can go through annoying hormonal shifts, then have a painful and mildly risky invasive procedure, then they can use my aborted fetus to do medical resarch! Hooray!"?
People can reasonably have ethical objections to the concept of aborting a fetus for any reason, but it takes a special kind of brain damage to think stem cell research *encourages* women to have abortions.
Especially since one of the most commonly suggested sources of stem cells are excess fertilized eggs from fertility treatments that are going to be destroyed anyway.
I believe it's still possible to book passage on many trans-ocean ships. I swear I read once that even many cargo ships actually have space to take on a very few "passengers" for a very no-frills voyage. (We are not talking a Cruise line here.)
It's also possible to book one-way trips on most cruise ships, though that's certainly not going to be cheap.
There are few modern human traits more galling than this belief that "early man" was a primitive idiot who was lucky to not piss on his own feet.
It so often ends up underpinning stupid theories about aliens building pyramids or landing strips and whatnot. All because the idea that those "primitive savages" could have understood concepts like engineering or surveying (or in this case, sailing) is so unbelievable to them.
Because evolution still has discrete boundaries. Population A has been separate from population B long enough and changed enough genetically that they can no longer interbreed. Ping! New species.
But, almost certainly, this article completely overstates the findings and theories based on them. Scientists certainly don't think in terms of "find me the square foot of land on which the first homo sapien was born". But questions about where certain traits first developed, and where they migrated to, or perhaps even evolved independently and separately, are subjects of great inquiry.
Poor Australia, nobody ever remembers you.
I don't really get the original premise. Nobody needs to be root to run chmod, cp, mv, etc on their own files. The only command mentioned one might need root for is chown. Which would make me ask the question, why do you need to change file ownerships so often?
It would take a hard-core serious business case to convince me to grant someone root access, even sudo-limited root access to a production system. The fact that I might have a "log" of whatever broken thing they did to take a business critical machine down is fairly irrelevant to me. My job is to make sure that doesn't happen in the first place.
And yet, according to Consumer Report's latest reliability survey, Dell only ranks behind Apple and Sony for fewest "Repairs and Serious Problems" for Desktops, at around 15-16%
(Based on more than 85,000 desktop computers purchased new between 2001 and 2005, according to responses to our 2005 Annual Questionnaire. Data were standardized to eliminate differences linked to age and use. Differences of 4 or more points are meaningful.)
However, curiously, for *laptops*, Dell ranks 6th, after Sony, IBM, Toshiba, Apple, and HP (in that order) at around 17-18%. (Sony is at around 16%.) It's interesting to me that Dells repair rate is pretty close to the same for laptops and desktops, but in the laptop category that's just not as good. When did laptops in general become more reliable than desktops? (That certainly hasn't been my anecdotal experience.)
It's also interesting that the reliability numbers for Apple laptops doesn't seem to measure up to their desktops. They appear to have the biggest reliability gap between desktops and laptops. (11% vs 16-17%)
(Based on more than 49,000 laptop computers purchased between 2001 and 2005, according to responses to our 2005 Annual Questionnaire. Data were standardized to eliminate differences linked to age and use. Differences of 3 or more points are meaningful.)
Just in case someone else hasn't already done this...
From Bill Maher:
New Rule: George Bush isn't Hitler.
In the contest sponsored by MoveOn.org, two entries compared Bush to Hitler, ignoring the first rule for being taken seriously by grown-ups, which is don't call everyone you don't like, Hitler.
Bush is not Hitler. For one thing, Hitler was a decorated frontline combat veteran. Also, in the election that brought him to power in 1933, Hitler got more votes than the other candidate. And Hitler had a mustache.
So let's all take a rest from playing the Hitler card. Unless we're talking about Saddam Hussein. Now, that guy was Hitler.
I don't write code at all. I'm a sysadmin, not a developer. That means that, unlike the developers who get to spew out code and smile and tell everyone how cross platform it is, I'm the one who actually has to deal with trying to make it work in the real world. Did you actually test it in every browser on every O/S? Oh, hey, is the version you developed on even *available* in every possible combination of platform? If you developed it on 1.4.2_10, did you also test it on 1.4.2_09? Or 1.4.2_11? Or 1.5? If it was so thoroughly cross-platform, would you even have to test it against all those things? If java is so cross-platform, why can't it be cross-platform with *itself*?
The ability of Java apps to break on even the most minor JRE update is frightening to me. And you're free to tell me that it's only because the code is crappy, but if that's all the code that ever gets handed to me, well, I don't really give a shit. All I see is Yet Another Java Problem that I have to deal with, and I'm far too tired of it to put up with pie in the sky ideals of how great it might have been. Blame the other "bad" Java programmers if you must, but 75 times bitten, 76 times shy.
It's true. Dvorak is the Criswell of Cyberspace.
When do we get cross-platform java again? I wish I could have all the time in my life back I've spent trying to get Java Program A working on Platform B. Java's the only thing that constantly nails me with "Ooops, sorry, this code will only run on 1.5.00134, but you've got 1.5.00135." "But wait, I also need to run Program C, and it won't run with anything else!" "Oh, well, then I guess you'll need to have duplicate JREs installed for each version that might currently work until the next update."
Hell, just a couple days ago I spent the better part of a day trying to get one of our own corporate apps working (our Concur expense reporting app). It turned out the only way I was able to get it to work correctly was to use Microsoft's JVM (which MS doesn't even distribute any more).
I'm sorry, but Java's cross-platform claims is just so much hot air to someone who has to actually deal with dozens of different platforms.
There's no question that OS/2 still had a sizable presence in some environments and businesses.
But that doesn't mean there is an OS/2 "Community", nor does it mean that even if there was, the terrible fear of "fragmenting" said community is anything anyone should care about.
Everyone I know has silverware. Does that mean there is a "Silverware Community"?
The hilarious thing about the *angry* fan response to killing of characters is it is almost exactly identical to what happened when he killed off characters in Buffy and Angel. You'd think people would have learned by now.
Why hasn't that worked for Africa, then?
So evil that they single-handedly destroyed Usenet!
"One more thing to note: Once switching to Mac, we could drop having from 2 T1 connections back to a single T1 since a lot of our bandwidth would no longer be used by tuesday patches, virus updates, spyware updates, and spam."
How did switching to macs reduce the *spam* you had incoming?
If only that very concept had been mentioned on the first page of the article...
"In terms of Web typography, this has some pretty sobering consequences. We can spend hours choosing the perfect combination of typefaces to complement our design or meet corporate requirements, but if the user has stipulated that she wants all text to be displayed in 18px Comic Sans, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
The key is to think of this not as a limitation of the Web, but as a strength. Which other medium gives so much freedom to the end user? As designers, we merely suggest a design or layout; the final say is in the hands of the individual, and their requirements and choices trump ours every time. Don't inhibit this freedom by assuming users' requirements or by attempting to force too many of your own preferences onto users."
Thank you! I'm glad someone else remembers Pascal. It was my first real language training as well, as the community college I went to required it as the Introduction to Programming course.
The fact that you pretty much *have* to move on to other languages afterwards is a great point. It makes it practically impossible to get the kind of people who think whatever language they learned first is the proper solution to every problem. (When all you have is a hammer, etc.)
iTunes "Smart Playlists" are the best feature I've found in any music management system yet, personally.
I think a better suggestion to all hopeful contestants would be to read the contest guidelines, one of which is:
s /writer.html .
Use a medieval fantasy setting.
It's also worth clarifying that Bioware isn't necessarily hiring the winners of the contest. The top 8 submissions will be "reviewed" by Bioware staff for consideration.
Curiously, while this is being billed as a "contest", it appears to be the standard method for applying for a writer's job at Bioware (by submitting a writing sample via a NWN module), according to http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/jobs/position
No, because once the pasture is overgrazed it dies off and the ecology of the area changes, thus ending it's usability for anyone.
Much of the Middle East was once some of the most fertile land on the planet. It's very likely that overfarming is what turned much of it to desert.
Probably people like me who believe that William Gibson is one of the most overrated hacks in the genre.
Yes, thank you. It's curious how the news article neglects to mention that Greg Hoglund is the primary developer of Wowsharp, a *subscription-based* Wow cheating tool. How curious that he seems so strenuously opposed to anti-cheating tools.
Also, he details a great bit about what the Warden client *reads*, but he doesn't appear to document what it *sends*?
I'm admittedly not a programmer, isn't it normal when certain MS DLLs are loaded for those DLLs to scan various system resources, such as web pages, MSN status, etc?