Whoops. missed t his in the proofread... "punisment" should be "punishment"
And yes, I completely see your point btw. I guess what I did not make perfectly clear is that I'm not the one bellyaching. At least not about that in particular...
I really don't have a problem with the FBI getting a warrant for my ip address. I do have a problem with government passing broad powers under excuses like Terrorism though. But that's completely off topic. And I do have a problem with companies expecting me to pay outrageous prices for goods, and expect my sympathy because people didn't buy it (by using the number of "thefts" as inflation to what they "could" have made despite those people not being able to afford it or already owning a copy etc.) - but that is way off topic.
Yes, this is Vigilante Justice. Yes, I am ok with it. No, I will not be ok with it if the "vigilante" goes beyond his moral bounds.
vigilante n.
1. One who takes or advocates the taking of law enforcement into one's own hands.
An example in this situation would be if he didn't delete the records about the innocent information, assuming he kept them at all (if he scripted it, he could have gone through the entire database and used an if serial# = this, then print timeofaccess and filename. Or if he gave that information out to other 3rd parties who stand to benefit from it in an undeserved manner.
As it stands, the only thing I have any resemblance of an issue with is the fact that he was able to gain access to these records in the first place. But hey - I am for vigilante justice because it has a tendancy of getting things done. And really, this guys punisment was fitting. Social embarassment because he got caught violating societys rules. Far worse things can happen through the legal route. They just asked for the stolen item back.
Yes, this person got tracked down, but he stole a phone from a charity raffle!
That is like saying the suspects in a murder investigation shouldn't be investigated because it invades their privacy. That kind of a statement makes it impossible to find out the killer beyond a shadow of a doubt. Last I checked, your invasion of privacy for being a suspect includes a lot more than the serial # of your phone and cross referencing the originating ip/for the stolen serial #/ to another form of contact !!
After reading the majority of these responses, and the responses to those, I have this to say...
We are treated differently, and that is all there is to it... "GET OVER IT"
But here's what I do not like.
Women whom I do not date expecting me to hold the door open for them, or let them sit first, or other chivalries, yet at the same time want to be treated like men in regards to equal pay, equal expectations, and equal opportunities.
I do think that women hold every bit as much potential as men. That's not really up for discussion...
It just seems that women want to wear a skimpy outfit when it suits them, and not be treated like a tramp when it doesn't.
It is also worth mentioning that this is a fault of society, not women themselves per say... We (society) encourage women to be sexually attractive. Men hold the doors open for women, Men treat women special (and not neccessarily good.) At the same time women want to be treated equally, they want to make as much money as men, they want to have every opportunity to succeed that men do. And you know what? They should... But it's also a flaw of not being perfect that we both take advantage of situations available to us.
Women manipulate men by wearing skimpy clothes and flirting and Men enjoy it, treating women like sexual objects or servants.
On the flipside, we guys have similar influences and situations. We are also treated differently, being expected to put food on the table, exclusively die for our country without enlisting (draft) and generally be the protector.
I propose that instead of kneejerk reactions and screaming "thats not fair!" lets just accept and understand that we are different, and deal with it.
I'm having a hard time comming up with a good way to close this so I'm going to say something rather personal instead, knowing full well I am opening up the doors for a personal attack.
I come from an abusive home where I was called stupid every day, and have very poor self confidence. I was also locked in my room for most of my life and am socially inept.
That's life. It happend, and I can't do anything about the past. I choose to address the situations that come up in the here and now.
I excercise because I've found my fitness influences how people treat me, I get rid of the "friends" who do not respect me, and I try to attend parties to expose myself to social interactions I would otherwise perfer to avoid. Doing all of this is not easy for me, but it is slowly changing my situation, and I'd like to think for the better.
I really can't see this approach being much different for other forms of social discrimination. It would probably be more useful to examine the underlying reasons why you get treated in a manner you do not appreciate, and try to address them.
Most of my friends use msn for one reason and one reason alone. It came bundled with Windows XP.
Granted, most of them also have logins through AIM or Y! Instant messenger...
But there's not a single person we can't talk to through at least one of those protocols and without that, there would be no reason to connect with Jabber.
Second largest at 20% huh... wow that's such a huge portion/sarcasm... And please, do tell. What is the percentage difference between the main source of power and nuclear power plants? and how small of a percentage do things like hydro, wind, and solar actually make up?
It's also worth mentioning your last link is broken:
"How much electricity do we get from hydropower today? Quite a bit. Depending on whether the year has been wet or dry, hydro plants produce from eight to 10 percent of the electricity produced in this country (almost 8.5 percent in 1994), far more than any other renewable energy source." http://lsa.colorado.edu/essence/texts/hydropower.h tm
So, we have nuclear making 20% and hydro making 10%.. and being far more than any other renewable resource?
To give a fair estimate (ie: I havent looked this up) we can assume 10-15% (And really I think that percentage number is far too high...) makes up the rest of power types, like solar and wind.) that means 45% total in renewable resources, leaving 55% for things like coal and natural gas.
I'm just waiting for the government to tick off enough people that they start excercising the right to bare arms... It's unfortunate, but I'm afraid things will get a lot worse before they get better.
Seriously though, how much do they think the general public will tolerate? I understand that for the majority these things have no effect on their daily lives and are thus of no consequence, but perhaps there should be some sort of campaign by more educated people than myself about all the dirty underhanded dealings our government actually does... I imagine that even the stupid people will realise that this is a bad situation when you say "Hey you know such and such bill? It does this... and was voted against. So our nice government snuck it in this bill, which is about something else" You don't see these kinds of statements making it on the daily news...
Well honestly bittorrent just saved me the hassle of going to a crowded theater before a 10 hour work day with the rest of my friends. Or having one of those same "friends" ruin the movie for me.
I got to see it, and in the privacy of my own home. Yes, I do intend to see it in the theaters, I just want to wait a week or two.
The RIAA and MPAA just like counting their eggs before they hatch. "Well we see all those downloads, and surely they will never pay for such a movie now that they saw it for free!! but if we add those numbers to the numbers we have, look at the phenominal source of revenue!" Yah forget the fact that most of those people will probably pay for it as well, not to mention all the dvds, then the collectors set, then the 6 episode collection, and the rape me in the ass box specials after being (insert future THX like technology here) remade. Some people are just to greedy...
Well I agree with you to be honest, but remember, the brain does control critical body functions such as breathing and heartbeat, they are not totaly autonomous, and you can go braindead to the point where you need a machine to do the breathing/heartbeating for you...
Fantastic! So you've spent over a hundred dollars to learn something, and although you've succeeded, you've just destroyed your GPA uneccessarily.
No offense but getting an F on an insanely hard course does not reflect any better than an F on an easier one. Failing your course is utterly unfair if you did infact walk away with a good solid understanding of what this "teacher" was actually teaching you. In your situation I'd have definately approached him... They have various grading methods that would better suit the level of difficulty such as the Bell curve (as other's have pointed out.) Why? Also as other's have pointed out, If the teacher was unable to successfully teach his students to perform up to his expectations he is infact the one who has failed, and this results in a penalty on you.
Then again, maybe your failure was to allow someone like "DJB" to control your grades. Still challenging his judgement is a good thing. If you feel you deserve a higher grade then fight for it. If not then... You've already got your F. Besides, the best exploit is the human kind.
thats not actually true since the camero is a physical object and an mp3 is an intelectual object
There can only be one Camero, the one you stole...
mp3's can be duplicated. It's not like because you downloaded an mp3, someone else just lost an mp3.
And to argue that insurance will just pay for the loss. Bullcrap. Insurance companies in themselves are a ripoff *sigh* but anyways. they'll jack up the rates so there is a cost.
Definately. Another thing they could do (which i believe frys does) is not to refund the full amt if it's missing something like a UPC code
Those rebates do have a set value. Shouldnt be that hard to extend their system and retract the value of the rebate from the refund...
That accomplishes two things at once, really
1) People who try to take advantage of the rebate process will not be so easy to walk away with free cash. (they will probably make a big fuss about it though until the person in charge gives them that money back anyway, saying that they might not get that rebate back etc all)
2) those that dont take advantage of the system will have more incentive to keep the item, because they cant garauntee they will get that rebate back.
sounds like a win/win for the company...
but yes, rebates suck and should be done away with.
But the problem seems to be customers filling out the rebate information, and then returning the product. Its not that they are using it, it's that they are using it AND returning the product which is now missing a upc and will have to be sold at a discounted price to the next customer.
And the article has a point. Certain customers are there strictly because they want to be a problem. They expect you to go absolutely out of your way to help them with a petty problem. And I dont mean provide excelent customer service, i mean "lick my shoes bitch! i want them babies to shine!" kind of service... It's insulting and they know it.
Raid-5 actually requires an extra drive for every 8 drives in the system
so in a 15 disk configuration, you'll get 13*size space, and 2 parity drives.
I can also tell you from personal experience, software raid 5 will work without 1 for every 8 drives
And another nifty thing with 15 disks is using some to immediately replace a failed disk. I'd be perfectly happy with 11 120 gig hd's, 2 backups, and two parity drives. But thats just me (oh wait, I have plans to do that...)
I'd use BitTorrent to download it instead of using kernel.org's bw, or a mirror. Besides, its not like you couldn't get it the old fashoned way...
Another good step would be to run a bt client on the mirrors themselves. They could always joint seed files that need it, Then the diff/full versions would be available all the time, and it is almost garaunteed to work, vs my experience with mirrors where you have to trial and error till you find one with a good speed (sorry slackware mirrors, you're all either full or slow)
Heh, they have a.torrent too btw. I dont think it's seeded by the mirrors though... (would be nice)
And yah normally BT's suck, too small and you spend most of your time waiting for connections, too large and you upload more than you download because no one seeds after they finish. But the BitTorrent's that rock are the ones where the actual file distributors also seed, so you wind up with 150K/s seeders to help speed things up.
Mozilla uses this on their 1.7b installer file, I got my file nice and fast... (over 300K/s)
And for the record, I may not have a T3 university line, but my upload is faster than average, 384kbps. So I can still seed at a respectable 47K/s (I just don't, keep it at 40 so my internet doesn't suck)
Too bad city traffic is a lot more complicated than "Simple math"
While I won't be so bold as to say that speeding won't get you there any faster, I recognise the hidden costs.
First off, I should begin by referencing howstuffworks.com
This article explains the concept of "the most efficient cruising speed" and even links to a chart dealing with gas mileage at a given speed. 50mph was more efficient than 60 or 40mph for every class of vehicle from sub compact to luxury vehicles.
Now to begin. There is a difference from the Ideal and the Real.
Ideally, for innercity traffic you have a stretch of roads with traffic lights all programed at a given speed. In my city its 40mph (even though sometimes the speed limit is lower or higher than this)
So lets say you've got two cars, CarF and CarS. CarF is traveling down Street Summperlane at a cruising 50mph while the other choses a more conservative speed of 40mph.
Again, Ideally, two things will happen. One: CarF will get to an intersection before the light turns green and will be required to stop. Two: CarS gets to the intersection just in time for a green light and can continue going at 40mph.
So now CarF must make up the ground lost while accelerating from 0mph to 50mph over carS, and this cycle will repeat for every intersection.
Analyzing the situation on a pure gas mileage basis, carS will get a better fuel economy even though he is not driving at his vehicles optimal mph, simply because he is not having to repeatedly accelerate from a stop.
And on a time basis, both cars are effectively throttled to 40mph by the traffic lights.
Now lets take a step back to reality. Posted speed limits in my city vary from 35 to 45, but the traffic light timings do not. You're basically encouraged to either speed or go below the speed limit, and psychologically going below the speed limit is unacceptable;)
Of course, in my particular city I tend to get better results doing 50mph than I do going 40 in terms of Green to Red light ratios.
so, to reply to the previous poster, speeding = stupid. it saves no time, it uses more gas and causes significantly more wear to the vehicle causing higher maintaince costs. Ideally.
It does save time because we dont live in an Ideal world, you just gotta find the sweet spot. The gas consumption and Wear/tear on a vehicle will follow.
Long road trips are another matter though. You're better off on a car finance standpoint to go 50 the entire way. But seriously Who In Their Right Mind wants to make a 350mile road trip in 7 hours?
Anything more and you take a hit on your fuel economy, but its worth the time unless you speed excessively. Then there's the occasional Pass. It's pretty likely that you'll run into someone going slower than you are, so you'll probably downshift and accelerate hard to minimise the time spent passing said person. Especially if you have a limited passing lane...
There are some exceptions to all of this though. The Hoover Dam is one of them. I've made the mistake of driving from Phoenix, Az to Las Vegas, NV during a week day. The Hoover Dam sucks! Any speed advantage you gained will be lost at this point because you're stuck going through the entire Hoover Dam in stop and go traffic and a maximum of 30mph. So what might have been an hour is now 5 minutes tops benefit. (and the only way around it is to go WAY around it -_-)
So be smart about your speeding if you're going to speed at all. And realise that with many other things in life, there's a sweet spot, going beyond that will only be a hinderance.
Re:Not my Honda... :-(
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42-Volt Autos
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Not that you'll EVER read this (hell, i just barely did) but The Idle speed was the result of over-cooling. The thermostat was rusted OPEN (as in, most of the thermostat wasnt there) So the car compensated for low engine temperatures by generating more heat. My grandfather is a mechanic but he refused to actually CHECK the thermostat until I just said "Fine, I'll have someone else do it" which sometimes makes me question his wisdom... (he did however keep that car running pretty well for a pretty long time)
They also put it in backwards and put silicon all over it to keep it from leaking.
I'm so glad I got rid of it and replaced it with a well maintained 88 Prelude, that car is FANTASTIC...
(the guy I sold the Accord to (for 250, not running) got to fix a clip that held the axle in the transmission only to have the tranny go bad on him. *evil laugh* there was a reason I only charged 250... (that and my Prelude was free... thank you christmas $$)
Personally I think the Transmission died because he had the bright idea to get the car painted... purple. I was tempted to suggest green neon lights at the bottom for a more gay dinosaur look.
Too bad they dont give a damn. A good example of this is when I was driving to work a few weeks ago during heavy rain.
Now, normally I'm supposed to go 10 under the speedlimit (40) during such conditions but frankly *I WAS SCARED TO* and reduced my speed during flooded spots for obvious reasons, and stayed in the far left lane where the road was the highest.
Here's the kicker. I drive a car, an 88 prelude to be exact. But just about every goddamn SUV and Truck found it perfectly acceptable to pass me in the right lane (which was flooded) and make it impossible for me to see for the duration of the pass. Thats right, a waterfall over my (already rain-x applied) windshield with wipers at their maximum setting. Talk about dangerous.. I was getting pretty pissed about this, admittedly.
*sadistic thought* I wonder if I could swerve right, cause that SUV with a car chassy to spin out and hit a curb (therefore inflicting serious damage upon the vehicle and totaling it, and get away with it because "my car hit a puddle of water and I was unable to see to correct the steering due to the SUV flooding my windshield." *end sadistic thought*
For all you Phoenix, AZ SUV asshole drivers, you dont own the road. SLOW DOWN! (specifically, in the rain) I dont care what your vehicle is made of, if you think I couldn't total it with a coupe you're just plain arrogant.
There's also the fact that I feel very uncomfortable with vehicles bigger than mine riding my ass with a few feet to spare. They couldn't stop as fast as I could ideally, would have no time to react even if they could, are far more likely to panic and lock their tires up therefore degrading stopping distance even further, and doing so in the rain is plain stupid.
For the record, I speed during safe weather conditions, but mostly because even though the speedlimit is 40-45 (and the traffic signs are supposed to be set at 40 no matter what, so say signs) I wind up stopping at every light... But that isn't the case if I go 50 or so.
I'd be much more happy if the lights were properly timmed than having the lights go red when a speeder aproaches, seriously...
Perhaps if statistics were not so widely used to convey a desire idea or thought, we might blame the statistician, not the statistics.
This however is not the case.
Just as long as you know the major threat in saftey isnt just criminal speeding, it's stupid stuff like sudden stops, tailgating, unsafe lane changes etc. The stuff the black boxes dont monitor (ok, maybe they monitor sudden stops, but they dont monitor WHY)
All of those things can most definately happen at legal speeds, and frequently do... I wind up avoiding an accident due to this type of stuff at least once a week, its rediculous.
Re:Not my Honda... :-(
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42-Volt Autos
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Feh, my 88 accord runs "ok" considering every once in a while it would idle eratically and/or high, and by high i mean 2k high...
the suspension is crap, but i dont know what it's really supposed to feel like, only that i dont like it =) the clutch is worn out but livable, and the transmission is in good shape
so i guess for 174.5k miles, it runs pretty damn good, but i'd rather rebuild the engine anyways.
btw, i only get 30mpg, bastard =p
as for rust, not an issue in the desert.
disclaimer: i'm sure others of you have had much better experiences, but this car was a piece of shit when i bought it, and is 90% better now. the electrical system was ghettofied, the fuel system was all f'd up, and the clutch was almost on/off...
Slashdot Mirror
Whoops. missed t his in the proofread ... "punisment" should be "punishment"
...
And yes, I completely see your point btw. I guess what I did not make perfectly clear is that I'm not the one bellyaching. At least not about that in particular
I really don't have a problem with the FBI getting a warrant for my ip address. I do have a problem with government passing broad powers under excuses like Terrorism though. But that's completely off topic. And I do have a problem with companies expecting me to pay outrageous prices for goods, and expect my sympathy because people didn't buy it (by using the number of "thefts" as inflation to what they "could" have made despite those people not being able to afford it or already owning a copy etc.) - but that is way off topic.
Yes, this is Vigilante Justice. Yes, I am ok with it. No, I will not be ok with it if the "vigilante" goes beyond his moral bounds.
vigilante n.
1. One who takes or advocates the taking of law enforcement into one's own hands.
An example in this situation would be if he didn't delete the records about the innocent information, assuming he kept them at all (if he scripted it, he could have gone through the entire database and used an if serial# = this, then print timeofaccess and filename. Or if he gave that information out to other 3rd parties who stand to benefit from it in an undeserved manner.
As it stands, the only thing I have any resemblance of an issue with is the fact that he was able to gain access to these records in the first place. But hey - I am for vigilante justice because it has a tendancy of getting things done.
And really, this guys punisment was fitting. Social embarassment because he got caught violating societys rules. Far worse things can happen through the legal route. They just asked for the stolen item back.
I'll bite.
This is society, albeit an online one. You don't get to violate rules of trust and expect society to ensure your freedom.
Think about it, isn't it a completely stupid idea to think that a family could be sued if a buglar were to hurt himself while inside your house?
That is a somewhat silly argument.
/for the stolen serial #/ to another form of contact !!
Yes, this person got tracked down, but he stole a phone from a charity raffle!
That is like saying the suspects in a murder investigation shouldn't be investigated because it invades their privacy. That kind of a statement makes it impossible to find out the killer beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Last I checked, your invasion of privacy for being a suspect includes a lot more than the serial # of your phone and cross referencing the originating ip
After reading the majority of these responses, and the responses to those, I have this to say...
...
... But it's also a flaw of not being perfect that we both take advantage of situations available to us.
We are treated differently, and that is all there is to it... "GET OVER IT"
But here's what I do not like.
Women whom I do not date expecting me to hold the door open for them, or let them sit first, or other chivalries, yet at the same time want to be treated like men in regards to equal pay, equal expectations, and equal opportunities.
I do think that women hold every bit as much potential as men. That's not really up for discussion
It just seems that women want to wear a skimpy outfit when it suits them, and not be treated like a tramp when it doesn't.
It is also worth mentioning that this is a fault of society, not women themselves per say... We (society) encourage women to be sexually attractive. Men hold the doors open for women, Men treat women special (and not neccessarily good.) At the same time women want to be treated equally, they want to make as much money as men, they want to have every opportunity to succeed that men do. And you know what? They should
Women manipulate men by wearing skimpy clothes and flirting and Men enjoy it, treating women like sexual objects or servants.
On the flipside, we guys have similar influences and situations. We are also treated differently, being expected to put food on the table, exclusively die for our country without enlisting (draft) and generally be the protector.
I propose that instead of kneejerk reactions and screaming "thats not fair!" lets just accept and understand that we are different, and deal with it.
I'm having a hard time comming up with a good way to close this so I'm going to say something rather personal instead, knowing full well I am opening up the doors for a personal attack.
I come from an abusive home where I was called stupid every day, and have very poor self confidence. I was also locked in my room for most of my life and am socially inept.
That's life. It happend, and I can't do anything about the past. I choose to address the situations that come up in the here and now.
I excercise because I've found my fitness influences how people treat me, I get rid of the "friends" who do not respect me, and I try to attend parties to expose myself to social interactions I would otherwise perfer to avoid. Doing all of this is not easy for me, but it is slowly changing my situation, and I'd like to think for the better.
I really can't see this approach being much different for other forms of social discrimination. It would probably be more useful to examine the underlying reasons why you get treated in a manner you do not appreciate, and try to address them.
and why would anyone use MSN?
...
Most of my friends use msn for one reason and one reason alone. It came bundled with Windows XP.
Granted, most of them also have logins through AIM or Y! Instant messenger
But there's not a single person we can't talk to through at least one of those protocols and without that, there would be no reason to connect with Jabber.
Second largest at 20% huh ... wow that's such a huge portion /sarcasm... And please, do tell. What is the percentage difference between the main source of power and nuclear power plants? and how small of a percentage do things like hydro, wind, and solar actually make up?
h tm
.. and being far more than any other renewable resource?
...) makes up the rest of power types, like solar and wind.) that means 45% total in renewable resources, leaving 55% for things like coal and natural gas.
It's also worth mentioning your last link is broken:
"How much electricity do we get from hydropower today? Quite a bit. Depending on whether the year has been wet or dry, hydro plants produce from eight to 10 percent of the electricity produced in this country (almost 8.5 percent in 1994), far more than any other renewable energy source."
http://lsa.colorado.edu/essence/texts/hydropower.
So, we have nuclear making 20% and hydro making 10%
To give a fair estimate (ie: I havent looked this up) we can assume 10-15% (And really I think that percentage number is far too high
Star ocean Ex is on 2 dvd's ...
Well, I do dsl tech support. And i'm here to inform you that your dsl has a percentage of your line that's being used to maintain that sync.
.5MBps to use. Then you factor the overhead ...
...
And most likely, your ISP doesn't give a damn if its 50% or even 80%.
What does that mean to you? Well, if you have 1.5MBps and a 66% relcap (to make things easy) you get
Its very common to see 20-50% and that's a significant hit on your bandwidth
Yes yes, I mispelled bear ... it seemed wrong at the time, what can I say?
I'm just waiting for the government to tick off enough people that they start excercising the right to bare arms ... It's unfortunate, but I'm afraid things will get a lot worse before they get better.
Seriously though, how much do they think the general public will tolerate? I understand that for the majority these things have no effect on their daily lives and are thus of no consequence, but perhaps there should be some sort of campaign by more educated people than myself about all the dirty underhanded dealings our government actually does... I imagine that even the stupid people will realise that this is a bad situation when you say "Hey you know such and such bill? It does this ... and was voted against. So our nice government snuck it in this bill, which is about something else" You don't see these kinds of statements making it on the daily news...
Well honestly bittorrent just saved me the hassle of going to a crowded theater before a 10 hour work day with the rest of my friends. Or having one of those same "friends" ruin the movie for me.
I got to see it, and in the privacy of my own home. Yes, I do intend to see it in the theaters, I just want to wait a week or two.
The RIAA and MPAA just like counting their eggs before they hatch. "Well we see all those downloads, and surely they will never pay for such a movie now that they saw it for free!! but if we add those numbers to the numbers we have, look at the phenominal source of revenue!" Yah forget the fact that most of those people will probably pay for it as well, not to mention all the dvds, then the collectors set, then the 6 episode collection, and the rape me in the ass box specials after being (insert future THX like technology here) remade. Some people are just to greedy...
Well I agree with you to be honest, but remember, the brain does control critical body functions such as breathing and heartbeat, they are not totaly autonomous, and you can go braindead to the point where you need a machine to do the breathing/heartbeating for you ...
Fantastic! So you've spent over a hundred dollars to learn something, and although you've succeeded, you've just destroyed your GPA uneccessarily.
... They have various grading methods that would better suit the level of difficulty such as the Bell curve (as other's have pointed out.) Why? Also as other's have pointed out, If the teacher was unable to successfully teach his students to perform up to his expectations he is infact the one who has failed, and this results in a penalty on you.
... You've already got your F. Besides, the best exploit is the human kind.
No offense but getting an F on an insanely hard course does not reflect any better than an F on an easier one. Failing your course is utterly unfair if you did infact walk away with a good solid understanding of what this "teacher" was actually teaching you. In your situation I'd have definately approached him
Then again, maybe your failure was to allow someone like "DJB" to control your grades. Still challenging his judgement is a good thing. If you feel you deserve a higher grade then fight for it. If not then
thats not actually true since the camero is a physical object and an mp3 is an intelectual object There can only be one Camero, the one you stole ...
mp3's can be duplicated. It's not like because you downloaded an mp3, someone else just lost an mp3.
And to argue that insurance will just pay for the loss. Bullcrap. Insurance companies in themselves are a ripoff *sigh* but anyways. they'll jack up the rates so there is a cost.
Definately. Another thing they could do (which i believe frys does) is not to refund the full amt if it's missing something like a UPC code Those rebates do have a set value. Shouldnt be that hard to extend their system and retract the value of the rebate from the refund ...
That accomplishes two things at once, really
1) People who try to take advantage of the rebate process will not be so easy to walk away with free cash. (they will probably make a big fuss about it though until the person in charge gives them that money back anyway, saying that they might not get that rebate back etc all)
2) those that dont take advantage of the system will have more incentive to keep the item, because they cant garauntee they will get that rebate back.
sounds like a win/win for the company ...
but yes, rebates suck and should be done away with.
But the problem seems to be customers filling out the rebate information, and then returning the product. Its not that they are using it, it's that they are using it AND returning the product which is now missing a upc and will have to be sold at a discounted price to the next customer. And the article has a point. Certain customers are there strictly because they want to be a problem. They expect you to go absolutely out of your way to help them with a petty problem. And I dont mean provide excelent customer service, i mean "lick my shoes bitch! i want them babies to shine!" kind of service ... It's insulting and they know it.
Raid-5 actually requires an extra drive for every 8 drives in the system
...)
so in a 15 disk configuration, you'll get 13*size space, and 2 parity drives.
I can also tell you from personal experience, software raid 5 will work without 1 for every 8 drives
And another nifty thing with 15 disks is using some to immediately replace a failed disk. I'd be perfectly happy with 11 120 gig hd's, 2 backups, and two parity drives. But thats just me (oh wait, I have plans to do that
I'd use BitTorrent to download it instead of using kernel.org's bw, or a mirror. Besides, its not like you couldn't get it the old fashoned way ...
Another good step would be to run a bt client on the mirrors themselves. They could always joint seed files that need it, Then the diff/full versions would be available all the time, and it is almost garaunteed to work, vs my experience with mirrors where you have to trial and error till you find one with a good speed (sorry slackware mirrors, you're all either full or slow)
Heh, they have a .torrent too btw. I dont think it's seeded by the mirrors though ... (would be nice)
And yah normally BT's suck, too small and you spend most of your time waiting for connections, too large and you upload more than you download because no one seeds after they finish. But the BitTorrent's that rock are the ones where the actual file distributors also seed, so you wind up with 150K/s seeders to help speed things up.
Mozilla uses this on their 1.7b installer file, I got my file nice and fast ... (over 300K/s)
And for the record, I may not have a T3 university line, but my upload is faster than average, 384kbps. So I can still seed at a respectable 47K/s (I just don't, keep it at 40 so my internet doesn't suck)
Too bad city traffic is a lot more complicated than "Simple math"
;)
...
While I won't be so bold as to say that speeding won't get you there any faster, I recognise the hidden costs.
First off, I should begin by referencing howstuffworks.com This article explains the concept of "the most efficient cruising speed" and even links to a chart dealing with gas mileage at a given speed. 50mph was more efficient than 60 or 40mph for every class of vehicle from sub compact to luxury vehicles.
Now to begin. There is a difference from the Ideal and the Real.
Ideally, for innercity traffic you have a stretch of roads with traffic lights all programed at a given speed. In my city its 40mph (even though sometimes the speed limit is lower or higher than this)
So lets say you've got two cars, CarF and CarS. CarF is traveling down Street Summperlane at a cruising 50mph while the other choses a more conservative speed of 40mph.
Again, Ideally, two things will happen. One: CarF will get to an intersection before the light turns green and will be required to stop. Two: CarS gets to the intersection just in time for a green light and can continue going at 40mph.
So now CarF must make up the ground lost while accelerating from 0mph to 50mph over carS, and this cycle will repeat for every intersection.
Analyzing the situation on a pure gas mileage basis, carS will get a better fuel economy even though he is not driving at his vehicles optimal mph, simply because he is not having to repeatedly accelerate from a stop.
And on a time basis, both cars are effectively throttled to 40mph by the traffic lights.
Now lets take a step back to reality. Posted speed limits in my city vary from 35 to 45, but the traffic light timings do not. You're basically encouraged to either speed or go below the speed limit, and psychologically going below the speed limit is unacceptable
Of course, in my particular city I tend to get better results doing 50mph than I do going 40 in terms of Green to Red light ratios.
so, to reply to the previous poster, speeding = stupid. it saves no time, it uses more gas and causes significantly more wear to the vehicle causing higher maintaince costs. Ideally.
It does save time because we dont live in an Ideal world, you just gotta find the sweet spot. The gas consumption and Wear/tear on a vehicle will follow.
Long road trips are another matter though. You're better off on a car finance standpoint to go 50 the entire way. But seriously Who In Their Right Mind wants to make a 350mile road trip in 7 hours?
Anything more and you take a hit on your fuel economy, but its worth the time unless you speed excessively. Then there's the occasional Pass. It's pretty likely that you'll run into someone going slower than you are, so you'll probably downshift and accelerate hard to minimise the time spent passing said person. Especially if you have a limited passing lane
There are some exceptions to all of this though. The Hoover Dam is one of them. I've made the mistake of driving from Phoenix, Az to Las Vegas, NV during a week day. The Hoover Dam sucks! Any speed advantage you gained will be lost at this point because you're stuck going through the entire Hoover Dam in stop and go traffic and a maximum of 30mph. So what might have been an hour is now 5 minutes tops benefit. (and the only way around it is to go WAY around it -_-) So be smart about your speeding if you're going to speed at all. And realise that with many other things in life, there's a sweet spot, going beyond that will only be a hinderance.
Not that you'll EVER read this (hell, i just barely did) but The Idle speed was the result of over-cooling. The thermostat was rusted OPEN (as in, most of the thermostat wasnt there) So the car compensated for low engine temperatures by generating more heat. My grandfather is a mechanic but he refused to actually CHECK the thermostat until I just said "Fine, I'll have someone else do it" which sometimes makes me question his wisdom ... (he did however keep that car running pretty well for a pretty long time)
They also put it in backwards and put silicon all over it to keep it from leaking.
I'm so glad I got rid of it and replaced it with a well maintained 88 Prelude, that car is FANTASTIC ...
(the guy I sold the Accord to (for 250, not running) got to fix a clip that held the axle in the transmission only to have the tranny go bad on him. *evil laugh* there was a reason I only charged 250 ... (that and my Prelude was free ... thank you christmas $$)
Personally I think the Transmission died because he had the bright idea to get the car painted ... purple. I was tempted to suggest green neon lights at the bottom for a more gay dinosaur look.
Too bad they dont give a damn. A good example of this is when I was driving to work a few weeks ago during heavy rain.
... But that isn't the case if I go 50 or so.
...
Now, normally I'm supposed to go 10 under the speedlimit (40) during such conditions but frankly *I WAS SCARED TO* and reduced my speed during flooded spots for obvious reasons, and stayed in the far left lane where the road was the highest.
Here's the kicker. I drive a car, an 88 prelude to be exact. But just about every goddamn SUV and Truck found it perfectly acceptable to pass me in the right lane (which was flooded) and make it impossible for me to see for the duration of the pass. Thats right, a waterfall over my (already rain-x applied) windshield with wipers at their maximum setting. Talk about dangerous.. I was getting pretty pissed about this, admittedly.
*sadistic thought*
I wonder if I could swerve right, cause that SUV with a car chassy to spin out and hit a curb (therefore inflicting serious damage upon the vehicle and totaling it, and get away with it because "my car hit a puddle of water and I was unable to see to correct the steering due to the SUV flooding my windshield."
*end sadistic thought*
For all you Phoenix, AZ SUV asshole drivers, you dont own the road. SLOW DOWN! (specifically, in the rain) I dont care what your vehicle is made of, if you think I couldn't total it with a coupe you're just plain arrogant.
There's also the fact that I feel very uncomfortable with vehicles bigger than mine riding my ass with a few feet to spare. They couldn't stop as fast as I could ideally, would have no time to react even if they could, are far more likely to panic and lock their tires up therefore degrading stopping distance even further, and doing so in the rain is plain stupid.
For the record, I speed during safe weather conditions, but mostly because even though the speedlimit is 40-45 (and the traffic signs are supposed to be set at 40 no matter what, so say signs) I wind up stopping at every light
I'd be much more happy if the lights were properly timmed than having the lights go red when a speeder aproaches, seriously
Perhaps if statistics were not so widely used to convey a desire idea or thought, we might blame the statistician, not the statistics. This however is not the case.
Just as long as you know the major threat in saftey isnt just criminal speeding, it's stupid stuff like sudden stops, tailgating, unsafe lane changes etc. The stuff the black boxes dont monitor (ok, maybe they monitor sudden stops, but they dont monitor WHY) All of those things can most definately happen at legal speeds, and frequently do ... I wind up avoiding an accident due to this type of stuff at least once a week, its rediculous.
Feh, my 88 accord runs "ok" considering every once in a while it would idle eratically and/or high, and by high i mean 2k high ...
the suspension is crap, but i dont know what it's really supposed to feel like, only that i dont like it =) the clutch is worn out but livable, and the transmission is in good shape
so i guess for 174.5k miles, it runs pretty damn good, but i'd rather rebuild the engine anyways.
btw, i only get 30mpg, bastard =p
as for rust, not an issue in the desert.
disclaimer: i'm sure others of you have had much better experiences, but this car was a piece of shit when i bought it, and is 90% better now. the electrical system was ghettofied, the fuel system was all f'd up, and the clutch was almost on/off ...