The funny part is, after reading the first half dozen posts in this article, I realized* that the song playing through my headphones is ABBA - Take a Chance on Me. I have four weeks of continuous music on shuffle so I never hear the same thing twice in a month, and I pulled that up today...
* I don't listen to the music most of the time; it just tunes out my neighbors. I couldn't tell you what the last five songs before this were.
The US military used their stealth helicopter technology (enhanced with alien technology) to airlift the meteor out in the middle of the night. Otherwise, someone would have eventually discovered the alien artifacts embedded deep within the meteor.
I can't believe such an obvious answer hasn't been expressed yet.
You mean like someone who would say "we need to raise taxes on, let's say, the wealthy (because they can afford it more readily) to fund infrastructure improvements across the country. Besides fixing all the aging infrastructure from the time when public works was still consider part of a great society, it will add hundreds of thousands of American jobs."
It's called a traditional Democrat. They exist. Find one and vote for them, if that's what you prefer.
The authorization doesn't have to be embedded in each and every charging device, only in computers. The iPod can remember the last computer it was plugged into (because, you know, it has flash or a hard disk), and will work with 3rd-party chargers provided the last computer was valid.
In other words, the thieves can listen to YOUR playlists all they want, recharging with a car or AC adapter. When they plug it into a computer, it will stop charging, and not start again with any charger until factory reset or plugged into the original computer.
Exactly. I see fearlessness and overconfidence as two separate, distinct brain responses. Fear is an emotional, instinctual response to perceived or learned dangers. Overconfidence is a lack of higher, rational thought process involving self limitations and risk.
I, for example, am not afraid of heights. I don't get vertigo; I don't scream; I don't panic. However, I know that I'm a klutz, and that I tend to have balance issues in general. I also recognize the consequences of falling from more than a certain height.
Thus, I choose to take care when working at heights. I can lean over railings to look into gorges or down from skyscrapers, but I'm careful of my center of balance. I can work on my roof or on a partially-framed house, but I'm careful to have a plan to ensure my center of gravity and how to break my fall if needed. In summary, I may be mostly fearless, but I'm certainly not overconfident.
Now, that said, it's possible that the two things are related in my brain chemically, and that this "cure" might affect both. If it does, it would indeed be foolish to use.
What exactly did Apple purchase? It was and is an open source project.
Yes, but the GPL is still based on copyright law, the code is still covered by copyright, and the copyright is still assigned to someone.
It sounds like Apple bought the copyright for all lines of text written by Michael Sweet, so they can no relicense those lines in any way they choose (provided, of course, that other lines owned by other people are rewritten by Apple). They could decide to close the source, for example, preventing the release of future versions outside of their OS. This doesn't sound likely, though, and regardless the older GPL versions would still be around and could be forked.
The first anti-Sony rants specifically concerning the PS3 that I saw on Slashdot were in March-April 2006, when Sony announced the price for the PS3, and SCEI president Ken Kutaragi made multiple brash statements to support its price. Posters mocked the hubris.
Before that time, most of the PS3 posts I remember regarded how cool the cell processor was supposed to be, and how great it would make PS3 games look and feel.
This of course ignores the rootkit fiasco, and the general hatred of Sony that resulted from it, as Sony stepped out from behind the cover of the RIAA to be in the spotlight as a big bad music label. And it ignores people upset about the Blu-Ray / HD-DVD war and how Sony's 30-year plan to own its own formats has screwed consumers time and time again. And how Sony's content divisions have taken control of the company, rendering products made by their (previously high-quality) hardware divisions crippled, like my otherwise very nice Sony plasma TV that can't play Sony Pictures' movies released on Sony Blu-Ray discs in a Sony Blu-Ray player without downscaling the graphics, because I "might try to copy them".
Of course, in the U.S., EVOO is defined by acidity, so you're not buying real EVOO at the stores, just regular refined oil with a low acid level.
If someone in the U.S. is buying Hi-Vee brand olive oil, they deserve what they get.
There are plenty of stores that sell European olive oil in the U.S., where the label not only says "Extra-virgin" but also says "from the finest first-press olives only" or somesuch.
First, the Democrats can always find someone else to be Speaker for the purpose of putting them in line to become President. It needn't be Pelosi. Second, it's hardly a coup; the Constitution is designed to permit for impeachment and removal.
I don't have anything against Pelosi. Whoever the Democrats put in that position would be equivalent for this debate. As I stated, this "coup" is perfectly legitimate under the Constitution, but I can guarantee 100% that it would be spun by the Republican party and picked up by the media (both domestic and international) as a "coup". It may be unfortunate that is true - it was designed into the Constitution after all as a check on power - but it's the reality of the political climate. I think it would hurt things more in the long run than help.
I didn't use "high-tech security system" as my example. I specifically used "barking dog". That implies they like dogs, not that they have stuff you want to steal. You're response doesn't address what you quoted.
Actually, the dog I envisioned wasn't even a dobie or a rottweiler or whatever you might consider a "guard dog". I was actually picturing a rat terrier - massive bark but can't do more than slobber you to death. Still very effective in keeping burglars out.
1) Know a freeze is in place, and that's why the credit check was declined. 2) After it fails, calmly back out of the situation to try to unlock the freeze. 3) Attempt to provide a made-up 4-digit number, one of 10,000 possible combinations. 4) ??? 5) Profit
It's not like the four digit number is the last four digits of your credit card or the last four digits of you social security number (I hope, unless you're stupid). Plus, making it short means virtually anyone can memorize it and not keep a paper copy sitting at home.
Sure, it's possible to commit identity theft despite the freeze. But why bother when you can just go to the next name/SS# on the list you bought and try someone else? It's like robbing a house with a barking dog - why bother when the neighbor doesn't have one?
Second, a VP nominee has to be approved by both houses, but neither house is required to do so. The Constitution doesn't require them to vote immediately or force them to approve. If they don't want to vote, no one can make them.
You missed the part when I said "the country needs a VP, because the Constitution requires it". Despite what you may think, Democrats would not leave the country short one of its executive positions for a year and a half just for politics. That's just not right. (Compare the ratios of senate confirmations of judges in Clinton's terms to judges in Bush's terms, and I think you'll see which party would be more likely to leave positions unfilled for political purposes.)
First, the removals could occur simultaneously.
And put Nancy Pelosi in power through what would be a - perfectly legitimate under the constitution - coup? I wouldn't vote for that; the precendent it would set would end up destroying the country as much or more than Bush already has.
should not be applied to instances of copyright infringement or unauthorized duplication
While the term "intellectual property" has little collective meaning, there are four types of government protection that is generally classified as "IP":
Copyright Patent Trademark Trade Secret
Slashdot seems unable to grasp the existence of the fourth one. When a copyright is infringed on, it is... copyright infringement. However, when a trade secret is stolen it is... theft. The two different types of protection have completely different laws. Copyright infringement would only apply if Oracle was distributing the code already (to people not covered by an NDA contract!), and SAP acquired its copy through participatory infringement. This is a clear-cut case of theft of trade secret.
Other recent examples of trade secret cases:
- The early release of the final episode of 24. (I would readily argue that unreleased creative works can be classified as trade secrets, since a publisher doesn't want his novel/unique ending recreated in a soap opera before his publication.)
- The Coca-Cola theft case. The secretary and others that stole the formulas and tried to sell them to Pepsi weren't convicted of copyright infringement; they were convicted of theft of trade secret, as the law applies.
(Yo! IANAL and probably used a few terms slightly wrong.)
the Democrats do not have the balls to impeach Cheney, let alone Bush, etc.
If either Cheney or Bush were impeached and removed from office, the other (either Bush or the new Cheney-as-prez) would nominate our new vice president - like, say, Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney. The Senate gets to confirm IIRC, but they can't just stall and ignore the nominee; the country needs a VP because the Constitution says so.
Either way, the republicans would have a sitting VP running for president next fall. One who the party can use in all its good PR events for the next year to build up name recognition and good associations.
Sorry, I've always voted against Bush - in 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2004 - but now the best thing is for him to sit in office until his clock runs out.
...because it couldn't when I last used it in March.
Seriously, I tried to organize my SXSW schedule using Sunbird. 1. I added all playings of all movies at SXSW Film that I wanted to see into the SXSW online calendar. 2. Then, I sync'd Sunbird to the online calendar. 3. So that I could make local edits, I exported/reimported the calendar data as a local calendar. 4. I looked at conflicts, etc., and determined which movies I could see on first showing versus catching reruns. 5. When I had it about half done, I saved it and closed Sunbird. 6. The next time I opened Sunbird, I discovered that various events had been shifted by 1 or 4 hours ahead or behind. I could find no way to set the time zone for these events to correspond to my local time zone, and I could not find a pattern between the events that had problems and those that didn't time shift. 7. I tried to manually fix the failures, manually deleting the entries and recreating them locally. It didn't help. 8. ??? 9. I gave up and used the crappy SXSW online tool, since I didn't want to sign up for a Google account and those were the only options.
(FYI all online stuff I could find about this related to the DST shift, and told me to install Microsoft patches. All of those patches were already in place before I installed Sunbird or found any of these problems.)
Absolutely nothing you posted solves the problems I was addressing, from my own GP post:
Because a person working an 8-to-5 job five days a week could never afford to campaign. Even if they earn enough to save up for a campaign, they couldn't afford to hold office for most entry-level positions. State representatives in Texas, for example, make about $25k. People who could live on that couldn't afford to take time off work to run for office.
Even if someone did save up enough money to run for office, and they managed to win, their professional career might be over. If I were elected, for example, no company would ever hire me as a hardware designer again. As an executive or PR person, sure if I have the charisma, but never as a grunt. My only hope would be to stay in office forever, or cash out and take a lobbying or PR job.
Of course, many people bemoan "rich folks in office" at the same time that they exclaim "no one should hold public office for the rest of their life". All that leaves (maybe) is mid-upper-class business owners who can leave their company in capable (meaning, their spouses) hands for a few years. And those people certainly don't represent me any better than my current reps do.
Jefferson didn't worry about this because, in Jefferson's time, only those rich folks could vote, much less hold office. His opinions on citizen-legislatures simply don't apply.
(ignoring the "RMA pool effect" which makes you more likely to get a bad unit back)
I know you were looking for theoretical numbers that excluded this, but keep in mind that this is likely a high source of failure for this guy. Of his 11 failed XBox 360s, he received new ones some of the time, but some of them (maybe half? from when I RTFA) were refurbished.
Reasons why refurbished products might have a lower MTBF: 1. Failure was just a symptom of a larger problem. Like, the solder paste used to build the PCB was a little dry, so the paste did not apply evenly or reflow correctly. The original return was for pins with clearly broken/poor solder joints, which were hand retouched. The person who receives the refurbished unit has to deal with all the other solder joints, which might be more susceptible to damage over time and with jolts and vibrations.
2. As another example of the failure being the symptom, perhaps a component in the power supply has an intermittent failure (like a damaged capacitor). When it fails, the voltage rail can temporarily spike. The original owner RMAd the unit for burnt ICs. I would hope Microsoft RMA would trace the root cause, but if they can't reproduce the intermittent failure they might not see it. The next owner could have the box fail in the same way.
3. Even if there was just one failure, and RMA fixed it, applying heat to a PCB always causes internal structural changes. Most PCBs go through two heat cycles (for top and bottom components). Each additional heat cycle wears on the board. After some number of cycles (assume 6 or 7 at best), the layers of the PCB will start to delaminate and there can be internal breaks on traces and vias. Microsoft RMA repaired the original bad chip, but the board was slightly overheated and the PCB separated. The second owner could find vias more susceptible to breaking with light shocks or vibration.
1) Accept that some people are going to be life-long politicians.
Just like you might want to be a software programmer (just a guess) for the rest of your career, some people might want to be in an elected position. Just as you might want to be promoted over time, so might they, moving up from state rep to state-wide office to house rep to governor to senator.
2) Publicly fund campaigns so that lower- and middle-class people can run for office.
Make all campaigns run on equal public funds, and a greater variety of people could afford to run for office. Someone those people will need to earn money during this time; I don't know how to avoid fraud. I don't think this is constitutional right now, but that could be changed if the problems were solved.
Why a majority of Americans (who, by definition, are average) continually elect people so unlike them to represent them is truly paradoxical, IMHO.
Because a person working an 8-to-5 job five days a week could never afford to campaign. Even if they earn enough to save up for a campaign, they couldn't afford to hold office for most entry-level positions. State representatives in Texas, for example, make about $25k. People who could live on that couldn't afford to take time off work to run for office.
Even if someone did save up enough money to run for office, and they managed to win, their professional career might be over. If I were elected, for example, no company would ever hire me as a hardware designer again. As an executive or PR person, sure if I have the charisma, but never as a grunt. My only hope would be to stay in office forever, or cash out and take a lobbying or PR job.
Of course, many people bemoan "rich folks in office" at the same time that they exclaim "no one should hold public office for the rest of their life". All that leaves (maybe) is mid-upper-class business owners who can leave their company in capable (meaning, their spouses) hands for a few years. And those people certainly don't represent me any better than my current reps do.
Or perhaps there is a critical mass after which point it doesn't matter how much drama there is since there are so many people in the guild that you would just be shooting yourself in the foot by leaving for a potentially smaller guild.
No, that's when a guild fractures. With enough people, there are large chunks that are never able to group or raid (and hence bond) with the core group. Those people - the second or third raiding groups - can easily break away to form their own core. Alternatively, the core raiding group breaks away to lose the dead weight.
On Tunare in EQ it happened often. Krieger, the mutli-game dominant alliance thingy, had its EQ guild on our server. At one point the core of the guild broke off to form Vae Inimicus, and Krieger was never viable for end-game raiding again. (I think the guild was kicked out of the multi-game system.) Later, after growing again, the core of Vae left to form another guild (whose name I can't recall).
Incidentally, I've been in my guild since 2001 through EQ and WoW, through several raid alliances and absorptions of other smaller guilds. There are I think only six of us left right now that were in the guild in EQ, and we've never had a server first for anything, but it works well.
When exactly has SOE meddled with the design of a third party that they were publishing?
You mean like Verant?
This publishing deal makes it likely in my opinion, some days down the road, that SoE will have some level of control over the game. Possibly when the buy the independent publisher, possibly when they just buy the game. And that means I won't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Heck, knowing SoE is skimming some off the top of my subscription is enough to keep me away.
Sorry Flying Lab Software, you might have a good game, but I won't touch it now. Nothing personal with you; it's personal with SoE.
Slashdot Mirror
The funny part is, after reading the first half dozen posts in this article, I realized* that the song playing through my headphones is ABBA - Take a Chance on Me. I have four weeks of continuous music on shuffle so I never hear the same thing twice in a month, and I pulled that up today...
* I don't listen to the music most of the time; it just tunes out my neighbors. I couldn't tell you what the last five songs before this were.
The US military used their stealth helicopter technology (enhanced with alien technology) to airlift the meteor out in the middle of the night. Otherwise, someone would have eventually discovered the alien artifacts embedded deep within the meteor.
I can't believe such an obvious answer hasn't been expressed yet.
.
.
.
.
.
.
(This is funny, I promise.)
You mean like someone who would say "we need to raise taxes on, let's say, the wealthy (because they can afford it more readily) to fund infrastructure improvements across the country. Besides fixing all the aging infrastructure from the time when public works was still consider part of a great society, it will add hundreds of thousands of American jobs."
It's called a traditional Democrat. They exist. Find one and vote for them, if that's what you prefer.
The authorization doesn't have to be embedded in each and every charging device, only in computers. The iPod can remember the last computer it was plugged into (because, you know, it has flash or a hard disk), and will work with 3rd-party chargers provided the last computer was valid.
In other words, the thieves can listen to YOUR playlists all they want, recharging with a car or AC adapter. When they plug it into a computer, it will stop charging, and not start again with any charger until factory reset or plugged into the original computer.
At least, that is how I envision it working...
My company forces me to use Lotus Notes / cry
Put $90 from a prepaid card on the phone, and the minutes don't expire for a year. That's more than enough for me.
Exactly. I see fearlessness and overconfidence as two separate, distinct brain responses. Fear is an emotional, instinctual response to perceived or learned dangers. Overconfidence is a lack of higher, rational thought process involving self limitations and risk.
I, for example, am not afraid of heights. I don't get vertigo; I don't scream; I don't panic. However, I know that I'm a klutz, and that I tend to have balance issues in general. I also recognize the consequences of falling from more than a certain height.
Thus, I choose to take care when working at heights. I can lean over railings to look into gorges or down from skyscrapers, but I'm careful of my center of balance. I can work on my roof or on a partially-framed house, but I'm careful to have a plan to ensure my center of gravity and how to break my fall if needed. In summary, I may be mostly fearless, but I'm certainly not overconfident.
Now, that said, it's possible that the two things are related in my brain chemically, and that this "cure" might affect both. If it does, it would indeed be foolish to use.
What exactly did Apple purchase? It was and is an open source project.
Yes, but the GPL is still based on copyright law, the code is still covered by copyright, and the copyright is still assigned to someone.
It sounds like Apple bought the copyright for all lines of text written by Michael Sweet, so they can no relicense those lines in any way they choose (provided, of course, that other lines owned by other people are rewritten by Apple). They could decide to close the source, for example, preventing the release of future versions outside of their OS. This doesn't sound likely, though, and regardless the older GPL versions would still be around and could be forked.
The first anti-Sony rants specifically concerning the PS3 that I saw on Slashdot were in March-April 2006, when Sony announced the price for the PS3, and SCEI president Ken Kutaragi made multiple brash statements to support its price. Posters mocked the hubris.
/ 1738239
/ 1745252
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/12
Articles like this followed:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/15
Before that time, most of the PS3 posts I remember regarded how cool the cell processor was supposed to be, and how great it would make PS3 games look and feel.
This of course ignores the rootkit fiasco, and the general hatred of Sony that resulted from it, as Sony stepped out from behind the cover of the RIAA to be in the spotlight as a big bad music label. And it ignores people upset about the Blu-Ray / HD-DVD war and how Sony's 30-year plan to own its own formats has screwed consumers time and time again. And how Sony's content divisions have taken control of the company, rendering products made by their (previously high-quality) hardware divisions crippled, like my otherwise very nice Sony plasma TV that can't play Sony Pictures' movies released on Sony Blu-Ray discs in a Sony Blu-Ray player without downscaling the graphics, because I "might try to copy them".
Of course, in the U.S., EVOO is defined by acidity, so you're not buying real EVOO at the stores, just regular refined oil with a low acid level.
If someone in the U.S. is buying Hi-Vee brand olive oil, they deserve what they get.
There are plenty of stores that sell European olive oil in the U.S., where the label not only says "Extra-virgin" but also says "from the finest first-press olives only" or somesuch.
First, the Democrats can always find someone else to be Speaker for the purpose of putting them in line to become President. It needn't be Pelosi. Second, it's hardly a coup; the Constitution is designed to permit for impeachment and removal.
I don't have anything against Pelosi. Whoever the Democrats put in that position would be equivalent for this debate. As I stated, this "coup" is perfectly legitimate under the Constitution, but I can guarantee 100% that it would be spun by the Republican party and picked up by the media (both domestic and international) as a "coup". It may be unfortunate that is true - it was designed into the Constitution after all as a check on power - but it's the reality of the political climate. I think it would hurt things more in the long run than help.
I didn't use "high-tech security system" as my example. I specifically used "barking dog". That implies they like dogs, not that they have stuff you want to steal. You're response doesn't address what you quoted.
Actually, the dog I envisioned wasn't even a dobie or a rottweiler or whatever you might consider a "guard dog". I was actually picturing a rat terrier - massive bark but can't do more than slobber you to death. Still very effective in keeping burglars out.
1) Know a freeze is in place, and that's why the credit check was declined.
2) After it fails, calmly back out of the situation to try to unlock the freeze.
3) Attempt to provide a made-up 4-digit number, one of 10,000 possible combinations.
4) ???
5) Profit
It's not like the four digit number is the last four digits of your credit card or the last four digits of you social security number (I hope, unless you're stupid). Plus, making it short means virtually anyone can memorize it and not keep a paper copy sitting at home.
Sure, it's possible to commit identity theft despite the freeze. But why bother when you can just go to the next name/SS# on the list you bought and try someone else? It's like robbing a house with a barking dog - why bother when the neighbor doesn't have one?
Second, a VP nominee has to be approved by both houses, but neither house is required to do so. The Constitution doesn't require them to vote immediately or force them to approve. If they don't want to vote, no one can make them.
You missed the part when I said "the country needs a VP, because the Constitution requires it". Despite what you may think, Democrats would not leave the country short one of its executive positions for a year and a half just for politics. That's just not right. (Compare the ratios of senate confirmations of judges in Clinton's terms to judges in Bush's terms, and I think you'll see which party would be more likely to leave positions unfilled for political purposes.)
First, the removals could occur simultaneously.
And put Nancy Pelosi in power through what would be a - perfectly legitimate under the constitution - coup? I wouldn't vote for that; the precendent it would set would end up destroying the country as much or more than Bush already has.
should not be applied to instances of copyright infringement or unauthorized duplication
... copyright infringement. However, when a trade secret is stolen it is ... theft. The two different types of protection have completely different laws. Copyright infringement would only apply if Oracle was distributing the code already (to people not covered by an NDA contract!), and SAP acquired its copy through participatory infringement. This is a clear-cut case of theft of trade secret.
While the term "intellectual property" has little collective meaning, there are four types of government protection that is generally classified as "IP":
Copyright
Patent
Trademark
Trade Secret
Slashdot seems unable to grasp the existence of the fourth one. When a copyright is infringed on, it is
Other recent examples of trade secret cases:
- The early release of the final episode of 24. (I would readily argue that unreleased creative works can be classified as trade secrets, since a publisher doesn't want his novel/unique ending recreated in a soap opera before his publication.)
- The Coca-Cola theft case. The secretary and others that stole the formulas and tried to sell them to Pepsi weren't convicted of copyright infringement; they were convicted of theft of trade secret, as the law applies.
(Yo! IANAL and probably used a few terms slightly wrong.)
the Democrats do not have the balls to impeach Cheney, let alone Bush, etc.
If either Cheney or Bush were impeached and removed from office, the other (either Bush or the new Cheney-as-prez) would nominate our new vice president - like, say, Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney. The Senate gets to confirm IIRC, but they can't just stall and ignore the nominee; the country needs a VP because the Constitution says so.
Either way, the republicans would have a sitting VP running for president next fall. One who the party can use in all its good PR events for the next year to build up name recognition and good associations.
Sorry, I've always voted against Bush - in 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2004 - but now the best thing is for him to sit in office until his clock runs out.
That would assume there will still be ice in the Arctic in 1000 years...
...because it couldn't when I last used it in March.
Seriously, I tried to organize my SXSW schedule using Sunbird.
1. I added all playings of all movies at SXSW Film that I wanted to see into the SXSW online calendar.
2. Then, I sync'd Sunbird to the online calendar.
3. So that I could make local edits, I exported/reimported the calendar data as a local calendar.
4. I looked at conflicts, etc., and determined which movies I could see on first showing versus catching reruns.
5. When I had it about half done, I saved it and closed Sunbird.
6. The next time I opened Sunbird, I discovered that various events had been shifted by 1 or 4 hours ahead or behind. I could find no way to set the time zone for these events to correspond to my local time zone, and I could not find a pattern between the events that had problems and those that didn't time shift.
7. I tried to manually fix the failures, manually deleting the entries and recreating them locally. It didn't help.
8. ???
9. I gave up and used the crappy SXSW online tool, since I didn't want to sign up for a Google account and those were the only options.
(FYI all online stuff I could find about this related to the DST shift, and told me to install Microsoft patches. All of those patches were already in place before I installed Sunbird or found any of these problems.)
Bingo! Hence, the "fraud I don't know how to solve" bit in my post.
Absolutely nothing you posted solves the problems I was addressing, from my own GP post:
Because a person working an 8-to-5 job five days a week could never afford to campaign. Even if they earn enough to save up for a campaign, they couldn't afford to hold office for most entry-level positions. State representatives in Texas, for example, make about $25k. People who could live on that couldn't afford to take time off work to run for office.
Even if someone did save up enough money to run for office, and they managed to win, their professional career might be over. If I were elected, for example, no company would ever hire me as a hardware designer again. As an executive or PR person, sure if I have the charisma, but never as a grunt. My only hope would be to stay in office forever, or cash out and take a lobbying or PR job.
Of course, many people bemoan "rich folks in office" at the same time that they exclaim "no one should hold public office for the rest of their life". All that leaves (maybe) is mid-upper-class business owners who can leave their company in capable (meaning, their spouses) hands for a few years. And those people certainly don't represent me any better than my current reps do.
Jefferson didn't worry about this because, in Jefferson's time, only those rich folks could vote, much less hold office. His opinions on citizen-legislatures simply don't apply.
(ignoring the "RMA pool effect" which makes you more likely to get a bad unit back)
I know you were looking for theoretical numbers that excluded this, but keep in mind that this is likely a high source of failure for this guy. Of his 11 failed XBox 360s, he received new ones some of the time, but some of them (maybe half? from when I RTFA) were refurbished.
Reasons why refurbished products might have a lower MTBF:
1. Failure was just a symptom of a larger problem. Like, the solder paste used to build the PCB was a little dry, so the paste did not apply evenly or reflow correctly. The original return was for pins with clearly broken/poor solder joints, which were hand retouched. The person who receives the refurbished unit has to deal with all the other solder joints, which might be more susceptible to damage over time and with jolts and vibrations.
2. As another example of the failure being the symptom, perhaps a component in the power supply has an intermittent failure (like a damaged capacitor). When it fails, the voltage rail can temporarily spike. The original owner RMAd the unit for burnt ICs. I would hope Microsoft RMA would trace the root cause, but if they can't reproduce the intermittent failure they might not see it. The next owner could have the box fail in the same way.
3. Even if there was just one failure, and RMA fixed it, applying heat to a PCB always causes internal structural changes. Most PCBs go through two heat cycles (for top and bottom components). Each additional heat cycle wears on the board. After some number of cycles (assume 6 or 7 at best), the layers of the PCB will start to delaminate and there can be internal breaks on traces and vias. Microsoft RMA repaired the original bad chip, but the board was slightly overheated and the PCB separated. The second owner could find vias more susceptible to breaking with light shocks or vibration.
Since I posted problems, here are some solutions:
1) Accept that some people are going to be life-long politicians.
Just like you might want to be a software programmer (just a guess) for the rest of your career, some people might want to be in an elected position. Just as you might want to be promoted over time, so might they, moving up from state rep to state-wide office to house rep to governor to senator.
2) Publicly fund campaigns so that lower- and middle-class people can run for office.
Make all campaigns run on equal public funds, and a greater variety of people could afford to run for office. Someone those people will need to earn money during this time; I don't know how to avoid fraud. I don't think this is constitutional right now, but that could be changed if the problems were solved.
Why a majority of Americans (who, by definition, are average) continually elect people so unlike them to represent them is truly paradoxical, IMHO.
Because a person working an 8-to-5 job five days a week could never afford to campaign. Even if they earn enough to save up for a campaign, they couldn't afford to hold office for most entry-level positions. State representatives in Texas, for example, make about $25k. People who could live on that couldn't afford to take time off work to run for office.
Even if someone did save up enough money to run for office, and they managed to win, their professional career might be over. If I were elected, for example, no company would ever hire me as a hardware designer again. As an executive or PR person, sure if I have the charisma, but never as a grunt. My only hope would be to stay in office forever, or cash out and take a lobbying or PR job.
Of course, many people bemoan "rich folks in office" at the same time that they exclaim "no one should hold public office for the rest of their life". All that leaves (maybe) is mid-upper-class business owners who can leave their company in capable (meaning, their spouses) hands for a few years. And those people certainly don't represent me any better than my current reps do.
Or perhaps there is a critical mass after which point it doesn't matter how much drama there is since there are so many people in the guild that you would just be shooting yourself in the foot by leaving for a potentially smaller guild.
No, that's when a guild fractures. With enough people, there are large chunks that are never able to group or raid (and hence bond) with the core group. Those people - the second or third raiding groups - can easily break away to form their own core. Alternatively, the core raiding group breaks away to lose the dead weight.
On Tunare in EQ it happened often. Krieger, the mutli-game dominant alliance thingy, had its EQ guild on our server. At one point the core of the guild broke off to form Vae Inimicus, and Krieger was never viable for end-game raiding again. (I think the guild was kicked out of the multi-game system.) Later, after growing again, the core of Vae left to form another guild (whose name I can't recall).
Incidentally, I've been in my guild since 2001 through EQ and WoW, through several raid alliances and absorptions of other smaller guilds. There are I think only six of us left right now that were in the guild in EQ, and we've never had a server first for anything, but it works well.
When exactly has SOE meddled with the design of a third party that they were publishing?
You mean like Verant?
This publishing deal makes it likely in my opinion, some days down the road, that SoE will have some level of control over the game. Possibly when the buy the independent publisher, possibly when they just buy the game. And that means I won't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Heck, knowing SoE is skimming some off the top of my subscription is enough to keep me away.
Sorry Flying Lab Software, you might have a good game, but I won't touch it now. Nothing personal with you; it's personal with SoE.