Thanks for your reply. You are assuming that I don't understand the American
woman culture, but I do.
I learned by asking my women friends a lot of questions. I never found any American men
who had much insight into women. However, women have insight into women, and I
put a lot of effort into learning from them.
I got started when my woman friend at the time, with whom I was living, told
me that there was a man in one of her college classes that was extremely
popular with women. I asked her, and she said that he was not especially
good-looking. I asked her how he did it. I spent a lot of time thinking about
the answers.
I never used my knowledge for negative purposes. I always thought I would like
to get married, and I was looking for a wife. Obviously, to find a wife it is
useful to be popular with women. However, there have been at least 100 women
who wanted to go to bed with me for every woman who was serious about wanting
a life partner. It is a compliment the first 30 or 50 times a woman wants sex
with no relationship, but then it gets annoying. It was either Chuck Berry or
Jimi Hendrix who began to try to discourage women by saying, "I can't make
your body feel as good as my music makes your mind feel." I'm not a musician,
but I sympathize with the problem.
Along the way I learned a lot about things in which I really never had any
intention to know. I learned about the inside of the modeling business from
two women friends who were models. I learned about the beauty queen business
from a woman friend who was a Miss Texas contestant. (She didn't win the Miss
Texas title.) I learned how to cure yeast infections. Once a woman friend
called me and told me that she had gotten pregnant by a man who was not her
husband. (Not me.) She asked me if I knew of an abortion clinic. You know that
you are being accepted by women when they treat you as a sister or as another
woman friend.
After many years of looking for a wife in the United States, I began to think
it was impossible. There were many women available to marry, but none who had
the necessary skills or commitment. I spent time with Thai women, but most of
them were too silly. I spent time with Iranian women, but they weren't nice
enough to men. I found an interesting French woman who was not serious enough.
Finally I found and married a Brazilian woman. She's sleeping a few feet from
where I'm sitting. (I slept too much yesterday and woke up early, and decided
to check Slashdot.) I am very happy with her. Like most Brazilians, she likes
to joke, but she can be serious when it is necessary. Unlike many Brazilians,
she is careful with money, and good with details. She is, in some ways, better
than me at repairing computers, because she has more patience. She's studying
C++. She's good at web design, but doesn't have much time to do it.
It is interesting to note that my comment
(#8380610, grandparent to this one) was modded up to +5 during the time
Europeans and Asians were reading Slashdot, and is now at +4 now that American
men are awake. People from other countries generally recognize that all is not
right in U.S. society.
If you are a scientifically-minded person, you will realize that, if you
reject my hypotheses, you must then try to make your own:
If everything is okay in the U.S., why is the U.S. the most obese
nation in the history of the world? Eating when not hungry is an indication of unhappiness.
Why can't the U.S. government find a way of living in the world that
does not involve violence?
Why does the U.S. government spend more money on weapons than any nation in the
entire history of the world?
Why does the U.S. government spend more money on spying than any nation in the
entire history of the world?
Why does the U.S. government have a higher percentage of its citizens in prison
than any nation in the entire history of the world?
Suggestion: Your cat is trying to say he or she is not happy. Get another cat so that he will have something to do while you are at work. They will chase each other around and make noises like a herd of cattle, but they won't chew cables.
If the heads are stuck to the platters, it works exactly as the parent comment says. Just jerk the drive case sharply so that the case rotates around the platter axis. This should break the platters free. After that, you may not have much time. Be quick about copying the data. This has worked for me on several occasions (but that was a long time ago, now Western Digital drives are much more reliable).
Here are some ideas and suggestions for those who want to hack the U.S. woman culture. The first thing you should know is that hacking your own culture can be scary. It's definitely an E-Ticket ride, for those who want to tackle something seriously complex.
Bitching is part of the American woman culture. It cannot be disabled. For a
better experience, try a different nationality. In the U.S., the word "bitch" means both "complain" and "woman". Did you know
that there are no other English-speaking countries in which this is so?
This is a bit extreme, but a good exaggeration
might be that if you have only known women of the U.S. culture, you have never
really known a woman at all. Women in the U.S. commonly: 1) are infantile, 2)
live in a fantasy world in which the rules of life don't apply to them, 3) are
self-destructive, 4) want control, 5) believe that men are reponsible for all
of their problems, 5) are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and 6) use anger
and hostility to try to intimidate and get their way.
Want examples? Read the women's magazines on any newstand in the United States. Watch some of the episodes of the Oprah Winfrey show, in which men are seen as the objects of fantasy, or as inherently evil enemies.
If there are any readers who want to give an instant negative reaction to this, please think carefully first. I've traveled to 33 countries and talked with hundreds of women extensively from other countries about their lives. I'm serious about understanding the problems. Ask yourself, are you? Do you really care about what happens in your country?
When I lived in England, it was common to see English and European movies in
which there would be a comedy episode in which an American woman did
something selfish and out of touch.
That said, the American woman culture can be successfully hacked. It's a
limited kind of success, like living in a cesspool and saying that you like
the brown things that float past better than the black ones.
First, don't take American women seriously. That gives them responsibility and
they don't like that.
Second, don't depend on them. They may want sex with you today for no
good reason, and not want to talk to you tomorrow, also for no good reason. A
Russian woman said, "It may take me only one minute to fall in love, but I
have to be in love to want sex. American women sleep with anyone." I've heard
that from people of several nationalities.
Third, don't blame everything that happens in your relationships with U.S.
women on yourself. If you did something bad, accept that. But recognize that a
common way for a U.S. woman to get control is to try to get you believe that
you are an inferior kind of being.
Fourth, spend considerable time understanding the U.S. woman culture. It is,
in many ways, not what it pretends to be. For example, women in the U.S. often
project confidence, when they don't feel confident at all.
Fifth, stay with what is logical. Logic has little importance for many U.S.
women, even those who are successful in the U.S. computer industry. If you
stray away from what is logical, you may soon be as confused as her.
Sixth, treat women right even if they treat you badly. Everyone needs more
experience in learning how to be good to themselves and others. I'm not
religious, but it happens that Jesus Christ was right: Don't answer violence
with more violence; don't answer bad behavior with more bad behavior. Like it
said in the movie, "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", "Be excellent to each
other." Being excellent to women does NOT mean spending money on them. You should each contribute equally to your relationship. If she doesn't want to do that, she doesn't want a real relationship.
The U.S. is suffering a social breakdown. The breakdown is caused in part by
the largely hidden breakdown of the U.S. woman culture. When a man cannot find
a suitable woman friend, when a man and a woman cannot make a stable
relationship, wh
This is just one small symptom of many. Intel is having extremely serious management problems now. Intel hasn't been very humanistic in the past 15 years, and now the company is failing in many hidden and not-so-hidden ways.
AT & T Universal Card: Companies are not only using Indians to do
jobs that were done by Americans. Companies are using Indians to further abuse
their customers. I talked with one Indian woman at AT & T Universal Credit
Card customer support who told me that she had no way to contact anyone but
her Indian manager, and that the Indian manager had no way to contact anyone
at AT & T. So, there is no way to resolve any legitimate problem. The logic
seems to be, "Why should we hire Americans to abuse our customers? We should
get Indians to do all the ugly jobs."
ECS (Elitegroup) Motherboards: One of the answers is to call the technical
support for a product before you ever buy the product. I wish I had done that
before buying and testing 8 L7VTA V1 motherboards from ECS. I found that the
ECS technical support line is a recording that says something like, "All of
our customer support personnel are busy helping other customers. Please call
back at a later time." There is no opportunity to leave a message. If you
don't believe me, try it yourself: 510-226-7333 option 4 for technical
support. Only one of the 8 motherboards works as advertised, and ECS will do
nothing about it; they don't answer email either.
Support Ed Foster: Maybe the only person who is doing anything about
this is Ed
Foster. Here are the companies in the GripeLog Hall of
Shame: 1: Dell, 2: Microsoft 3: VeriSign 4: Intuit 5: Symantec 6: Network
Associates 7: HP 8: Cisco.
I've personally been abused by Microsoft, Symantec, Cisco, and Intuit.
I have no desire to repeat that ugly experience. So, I try to stay away from
anything they do. In my experience, they are not companies that sell computer
software and hardware, and are sometimes abusive. They are abuse companies
that also sell software and hardware. The world of computing would have been
a far better place if Bill Gates had had a caring childhood. The world of
computing would be a far worse place if we didn't have good leaders like Linus
Torvalds.
Yes, but you will have to admint that it is the very BEST of the worst kind of
junk science!
Basically, it has not been proven that small magnetic fields can influence
chemical reactions. The energy of heat at room temperature is far, far more
than the energy of a small magnetic field.
Magnetic fields have an effect on electrons. They have an effect on the
nucleus. But the electrons are moving energetically already, due to room
temperature heat, and no low-energy influence on the nucleus affects chemical
activity.
Check out these conclusions: "The outcome of oxidative damage induced by
magnetic fields will, thus, depend on various factors, including the oxidative
status of the cell, capability of endogenous antioxidation enzymes and
processes to counteract free radical build up, availability of exogenous
antioxidants, iron homeostasis (a balance of iron influx, storage, and usage),
the parameters of exposure (e.g., intensity and duration of exposure and
possibly the waveform of the magnetic field), and whether the oxidative damage
is cumulative."
There are many statements like this that are not supported by the experiment
that was done.
Here is some already formatted HTML you can copy into your email client (preferably Mozilla). Remember to remove the blank spaces Slashdot puts in URLs.
U.S. government corruption: Two Stories
Killing and destroying property N.Y. Times editorial: "... Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week and a precious human cost." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/opinion/15DOWD.h tml?ex=1077956111&ei=1&en=a6370df01dc83363
Lying about scientific facts "The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals..." N.Y. Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/science/18CND-RE SE.html?ex=1077771600&en=fe9176d8d470477b&ei=5062& partner=GOOGLE The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,115118 7,00.html Wired News:
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62339,00. html Union of Concerned Scientists:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/rsire lease.html
Example: The GUI implementations for Java are poor. That gives Java programs requiring user input a non-native look at the best, and makes them quirky or non-functional sometimes.
Sun's mismanagement of Java is worth about $500 million in bad publicity for Sun, I'm guessing. Failing to pursue excellence with Java makes the entire of Sun seem mediocre. Whoever in Sun is failing to support Java cannot possibly be making a decision for Sun that makes economic sense.
Interesting. I wonder why. This may be the reason for the difference in our experience: Our WD hard drives are all in aluminum removeable trays that have their own fans. The drives stay cool.
Also, we are VERY careful with the drives, never moving them while in operation, or subjecting them to shock while off.
It constantly amazes me how bad technological companies are at
relationships. Having sold bad drives damages IBM's reputation enormously.
Many managers of tech companies seem to believe that business is 98%
technology and 2% relationships. Probably it is more like 50-50.
Relationships with employees are part of the relationships of business.
Perhaps 10 years ago, Intel forced employees to take a pay cut just before
business became extremely profitable for Intel. In my opinion, Intel has a
history of pushing its employees too hard. Look at the result. Look where
Intel is now: AMD is ahead in 64-bit processors.
Of course, Intel managers undoubtedly have rationalizations for this, but in
extensive conversations with Intel employees, I have developed the idea that
there is a connection between Intel's lack of interest in good relationships
and Intel's recent poor performance.
Western Digital drives have been extremely reliable for us: No failures. I haven't needed drive technical support for a long time, but a while ago WD had the best technical support. 3 year warranty on Retail boxed drives.
Good point. But... One of the grade school kids will download a hacked version of Photoshop and install it on a compromised school computer. Several of them will make 30 or 40 copies of a one-dollar bill and hand them out to other kids. So, it does make it harder, but maybe it will just encourage them to be more efficient.
"... we could use a little more human cordiality,..."
This makes me laugh. Only a Brazilian who has spent most of his time in Brazil would say this. SP is amazingly friendly, far more friendly than any other big city I've seen.
Bangkok is nice, but not as friendly.
The 29,000,000 is the entire populated area around SP, which is many, many kilometers wide and deep.
To prove to yourself that it really is fixed, use a memory tester, the hard disk manufacturer's disk diagnostics, and either a program that reboots an OS 20 seconds after it is loaded (on Windows XP, Wizmo from GRC.com and Sleep.exe from the resource kit) or, even better, some Linux or BSD build process that takes several hours.
The biggest cause of failure in an old PC: Bad contacts. Just move every card and connector 2 millimeters out and in again. The rubbing of metal to metal creates fresh contact surfaces. Renewing the contacts should be the first step in fixing any PC.
The biggest cause of real failure in a new PC: Infant failure. Components are more than 100 times more likely to fail in the first week than they are in the 100 weeks after that.
If legal copies of Photoshop don't work, criminals will only have pirated
copies. Wow, big cultural shift there. Think of the awesome deterrent power of
that law. Think of all those would-be counterfeiters who will say, "I'll steal
from people I don't know, but I would never steal from Adobe."
I often think that only skilled programmers should be allowed to make laws.
Those who are making laws now are so illogical that they would never have
run-time bugs because they would never get anything to compile.
If you spend several years writing complex programs and debugging them, you
develop respect for your own imperfect logic, and for the need to check your
work, 90 or 900 times if needed. You develop respect for logic itself, and for
the operation of your brain.
Many people become lawmakers because they are somewhat popular, and got
elected, only that. For some of them, if clicking on File/Save causes the
program to exit, that's okay. It's better not to spend too much time thinking.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a GREAT idea, but you didn't provide a link. Googling found BBB Informal Dispute Settlement (IDS) and BBB OnLine Complaint System .
I know very little about this; please post other information about interacting with the BBB if you have it.
Google management: Please read this, and don't change your page designs.
Thanks for your reply. You are assuming that I don't understand the American woman culture, but I do.
I learned by asking my women friends a lot of questions. I never found any American men who had much insight into women. However, women have insight into women, and I put a lot of effort into learning from them.
I got started when my woman friend at the time, with whom I was living, told me that there was a man in one of her college classes that was extremely popular with women. I asked her, and she said that he was not especially good-looking. I asked her how he did it. I spent a lot of time thinking about the answers.
I never used my knowledge for negative purposes. I always thought I would like to get married, and I was looking for a wife. Obviously, to find a wife it is useful to be popular with women. However, there have been at least 100 women who wanted to go to bed with me for every woman who was serious about wanting a life partner. It is a compliment the first 30 or 50 times a woman wants sex with no relationship, but then it gets annoying. It was either Chuck Berry or Jimi Hendrix who began to try to discourage women by saying, "I can't make your body feel as good as my music makes your mind feel." I'm not a musician, but I sympathize with the problem.
Along the way I learned a lot about things in which I really never had any intention to know. I learned about the inside of the modeling business from two women friends who were models. I learned about the beauty queen business from a woman friend who was a Miss Texas contestant. (She didn't win the Miss Texas title.) I learned how to cure yeast infections. Once a woman friend called me and told me that she had gotten pregnant by a man who was not her husband. (Not me.) She asked me if I knew of an abortion clinic. You know that you are being accepted by women when they treat you as a sister or as another woman friend.
After many years of looking for a wife in the United States, I began to think it was impossible. There were many women available to marry, but none who had the necessary skills or commitment. I spent time with Thai women, but most of them were too silly. I spent time with Iranian women, but they weren't nice enough to men. I found an interesting French woman who was not serious enough.
Finally I found and married a Brazilian woman. She's sleeping a few feet from where I'm sitting. (I slept too much yesterday and woke up early, and decided to check Slashdot.) I am very happy with her. Like most Brazilians, she likes to joke, but she can be serious when it is necessary. Unlike many Brazilians, she is careful with money, and good with details. She is, in some ways, better than me at repairing computers, because she has more patience. She's studying C++. She's good at web design, but doesn't have much time to do it.
It is interesting to note that my comment (#8380610, grandparent to this one) was modded up to +5 during the time Europeans and Asians were reading Slashdot, and is now at +4 now that American men are awake. People from other countries generally recognize that all is not right in U.S. society.
If you are a scientifically-minded person, you will realize that, if you reject my hypotheses, you must then try to make your own:
If everything is okay in the U.S., why is the U.S. the most obese nation in the history of the world? Eating when not hungry is an indication of unhappiness.
Why can't the U.S. government find a way of living in the world that does not involve violence?
Why does the U.S. government spend more money on weapons than any nation in the entire history of the world?
Why does the U.S. government spend more money on spying than any nation in the entire history of the world?
Why does the U.S. government have a higher percentage of its citizens in prison than any nation in the entire history of the world?
Somet
Suggestion: Your cat is trying to say he or she is not happy. Get another cat so that he will have something to do while you are at work. They will chase each other around and make noises like a herd of cattle, but they won't chew cables.
Good point. Don't jerk that sharply. Try the drive in baggie in freezer first.
If the heads are stuck to the platters, it works exactly as the parent comment says. Just jerk the drive case sharply so that the case rotates around the platter axis. This should break the platters free. After that, you may not have much time. Be quick about copying the data. This has worked for me on several occasions (but that was a long time ago, now Western Digital drives are much more reliable).
Here are some ideas and suggestions for those who want to hack the U.S. woman culture. The first thing you should know is that hacking your own culture can be scary. It's definitely an E-Ticket ride, for those who want to tackle something seriously complex.
Bitching is part of the American woman culture. It cannot be disabled. For a better experience, try a different nationality. In the U.S., the word "bitch" means both "complain" and "woman". Did you know that there are no other English-speaking countries in which this is so?
This is a bit extreme, but a good exaggeration might be that if you have only known women of the U.S. culture, you have never really known a woman at all. Women in the U.S. commonly: 1) are infantile, 2) live in a fantasy world in which the rules of life don't apply to them, 3) are self-destructive, 4) want control, 5) believe that men are reponsible for all of their problems, 5) are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and 6) use anger and hostility to try to intimidate and get their way.
Want examples? Read the women's magazines on any newstand in the United States. Watch some of the episodes of the Oprah Winfrey show, in which men are seen as the objects of fantasy, or as inherently evil enemies.
If there are any readers who want to give an instant negative reaction to this, please think carefully first. I've traveled to 33 countries and talked with hundreds of women extensively from other countries about their lives. I'm serious about understanding the problems. Ask yourself, are you? Do you really care about what happens in your country?
When I lived in England, it was common to see English and European movies in which there would be a comedy episode in which an American woman did something selfish and out of touch.
That said, the American woman culture can be successfully hacked. It's a limited kind of success, like living in a cesspool and saying that you like the brown things that float past better than the black ones.
First, don't take American women seriously. That gives them responsibility and they don't like that.
Second, don't depend on them. They may want sex with you today for no good reason, and not want to talk to you tomorrow, also for no good reason. A Russian woman said, "It may take me only one minute to fall in love, but I have to be in love to want sex. American women sleep with anyone." I've heard that from people of several nationalities.
Third, don't blame everything that happens in your relationships with U.S. women on yourself. If you did something bad, accept that. But recognize that a common way for a U.S. woman to get control is to try to get you believe that you are an inferior kind of being.
Fourth, spend considerable time understanding the U.S. woman culture. It is, in many ways, not what it pretends to be. For example, women in the U.S. often project confidence, when they don't feel confident at all.
Fifth, stay with what is logical. Logic has little importance for many U.S. women, even those who are successful in the U.S. computer industry. If you stray away from what is logical, you may soon be as confused as her.
Sixth, treat women right even if they treat you badly. Everyone needs more experience in learning how to be good to themselves and others. I'm not religious, but it happens that Jesus Christ was right: Don't answer violence with more violence; don't answer bad behavior with more bad behavior. Like it said in the movie, "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", "Be excellent to each other." Being excellent to women does NOT mean spending money on them. You should each contribute equally to your relationship. If she doesn't want to do that, she doesn't want a real relationship.
The U.S. is suffering a social breakdown. The breakdown is caused in part by the largely hidden breakdown of the U.S. woman culture. When a man cannot find a suitable woman friend, when a man and a woman cannot make a stable relationship, wh
This is just one small symptom of many. Intel is having extremely serious management problems now. Intel hasn't been very humanistic in the past 15 years, and now the company is failing in many hidden and not-so-hidden ways.
AT & T Universal Card: Companies are not only using Indians to do jobs that were done by Americans. Companies are using Indians to further abuse their customers. I talked with one Indian woman at AT & T Universal Credit Card customer support who told me that she had no way to contact anyone but her Indian manager, and that the Indian manager had no way to contact anyone at AT & T. So, there is no way to resolve any legitimate problem. The logic seems to be, "Why should we hire Americans to abuse our customers? We should get Indians to do all the ugly jobs."
ECS (Elitegroup) Motherboards: One of the answers is to call the technical support for a product before you ever buy the product. I wish I had done that before buying and testing 8 L7VTA V1 motherboards from ECS. I found that the ECS technical support line is a recording that says something like, "All of our customer support personnel are busy helping other customers. Please call back at a later time." There is no opportunity to leave a message. If you don't believe me, try it yourself: 510-226-7333 option 4 for technical support. Only one of the 8 motherboards works as advertised, and ECS will do nothing about it; they don't answer email either.
Support Ed Foster: Maybe the only person who is doing anything about this is Ed Foster. Here are the companies in the GripeLog Hall of Shame: 1: Dell, 2: Microsoft 3: VeriSign 4: Intuit 5: Symantec 6: Network Associates 7: HP 8: Cisco.
I've personally been abused by Microsoft, Symantec, Cisco, and Intuit. I have no desire to repeat that ugly experience. So, I try to stay away from anything they do. In my experience, they are not companies that sell computer software and hardware, and are sometimes abusive. They are abuse companies that also sell software and hardware. The world of computing would have been a far better place if Bill Gates had had a caring childhood. The world of computing would be a far worse place if we didn't have good leaders like Linus Torvalds.
Visit the Kodak web site to see 14 megapixel digital images. The detail is amazing. You can see tiny white hairs on the faces of the models.
Presumably, in 5 years or so, cameras with this resolution will be inexpensive.
Froogle, for those who like to be careful with money.
Yes, but you will have to admint that it is the very BEST of the worst kind of junk science!
Basically, it has not been proven that small magnetic fields can influence chemical reactions. The energy of heat at room temperature is far, far more than the energy of a small magnetic field.
Magnetic fields have an effect on electrons. They have an effect on the nucleus. But the electrons are moving energetically already, due to room temperature heat, and no low-energy influence on the nucleus affects chemical activity.
Check out these conclusions: "The outcome of oxidative damage induced by magnetic fields will, thus, depend on various factors, including the oxidative status of the cell, capability of endogenous antioxidation enzymes and processes to counteract free radical build up, availability of exogenous antioxidants, iron homeostasis (a balance of iron influx, storage, and usage), the parameters of exposure (e.g., intensity and duration of exposure and possibly the waveform of the magnetic field), and whether the oxidative damage is cumulative."
There are many statements like this that are not supported by the experiment that was done.
Here is some already formatted HTML you can copy into your email client (preferably Mozilla). Remember to remove the blank spaces Slashdot puts in URLs.
U.S. government corruption: Two Stories
Killing and destroying property
N.Y. Times editorial:
"... Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week and a precious human cost."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/opinion/15DOWD.
Lying about scientific facts
"The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals..."
N.Y. Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/science/18CND-R
The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,11511
Wired News:
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62339,00
Union of Concerned Scientists:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/rsir
Whether you like Java or not depends a lot on whether you try to use a GUI with Java, and whether you mind Decompilation.
Example: The GUI implementations for Java are poor. That gives Java programs requiring user input a non-native look at the best, and makes them quirky or non-functional sometimes.
Sun's mismanagement of Java is worth about $500 million in bad publicity for Sun, I'm guessing. Failing to pursue excellence with Java makes the entire of Sun seem mediocre. Whoever in Sun is failing to support Java cannot possibly be making a decision for Sun that makes economic sense.
Interesting. I wonder why. This may be the reason for the difference in our experience: Our WD hard drives are all in aluminum removeable trays that have their own fans. The drives stay cool.
Also, we are VERY careful with the drives, never moving them while in operation, or subjecting them to shock while off.
It constantly amazes me how bad technological companies are at relationships. Having sold bad drives damages IBM's reputation enormously. Many managers of tech companies seem to believe that business is 98% technology and 2% relationships. Probably it is more like 50-50.
Relationships with employees are part of the relationships of business. Perhaps 10 years ago, Intel forced employees to take a pay cut just before business became extremely profitable for Intel. In my opinion, Intel has a history of pushing its employees too hard. Look at the result. Look where Intel is now: AMD is ahead in 64-bit processors.
Of course, Intel managers undoubtedly have rationalizations for this, but in extensive conversations with Intel employees, I have developed the idea that there is a connection between Intel's lack of interest in good relationships and Intel's recent poor performance.
Western Digital drives have been extremely reliable for us: No failures. I haven't needed drive technical support for a long time, but a while ago WD had the best technical support. 3 year warranty on Retail boxed drives.
Good point. But... One of the grade school kids will download a hacked version of Photoshop and install it on a compromised school computer. Several of them will make 30 or 40 copies of a one-dollar bill and hand them out to other kids. So, it does make it harder, but maybe it will just encourage them to be more efficient.
"... we could use a little more human cordiality,
This makes me laugh. Only a Brazilian who has spent most of his time in Brazil would say this. SP is amazingly friendly, far more friendly than any other big city I've seen.
Bangkok is nice, but not as friendly.
The 29,000,000 is the entire populated area around SP, which is many, many kilometers wide and deep.
And, it should be said, the metropolitan area is 29,000,000 people, maybe the biggest in the world. If you ask me, it's a nice city, too.
Agreed: Try known good parts.
To prove to yourself that it really is fixed, use a memory tester, the hard disk manufacturer's disk diagnostics, and either a program that reboots an OS 20 seconds after it is loaded (on Windows XP, Wizmo from GRC.com and Sleep.exe from the resource kit) or, even better, some Linux or BSD build process that takes several hours.
The biggest cause of failure in an old PC: Bad contacts. Just move every card and connector 2 millimeters out and in again. The rubbing of metal to metal creates fresh contact surfaces. Renewing the contacts should be the first step in fixing any PC.
The biggest cause of real failure in a new PC: Infant failure. Components are more than 100 times more likely to fail in the first week than they are in the 100 weeks after that.
If legal copies of Photoshop don't work, criminals will only have pirated copies. Wow, big cultural shift there. Think of the awesome deterrent power of that law. Think of all those would-be counterfeiters who will say, "I'll steal from people I don't know, but I would never steal from Adobe."
I often think that only skilled programmers should be allowed to make laws. Those who are making laws now are so illogical that they would never have run-time bugs because they would never get anything to compile.
If you spend several years writing complex programs and debugging them, you develop respect for your own imperfect logic, and for the need to check your work, 90 or 900 times if needed. You develop respect for logic itself, and for the operation of your brain.
Many people become lawmakers because they are somewhat popular, and got elected, only that. For some of them, if clicking on File/Save causes the program to exit, that's okay. It's better not to spend too much time thinking.
Obviously, Mozilla. Don't turn off HTML, because there are no known exploits for Mozilla.