Google has announced plans to buy NASA from the United States government. In a press release sent out this morning by Nathan Tyler, Google indicated the need for better, more direct access to the data it manages.
In a brief interview this afternoon, Tyler had this to say:
"I mean, after Maps [maps.google.com] and Earth [Google Earth], it was pretty blatant where we were going. Everyone on campus was asking, 'When are we buying NASA?'. The NASA acquisition will offer us access to a variety of communications avenues that would have cost a fortune to contract. Also, it's imperative for our upcoming Google Earth Live... but I've said too much."
But you aren't taking the data with you, only an ID. Unlike the JumpDrive, a stolen ID can only help someone if they know how to access the medical databases.
I'd want something that is completely dormant until I chose who gets to read it.
And when you come in on the stretcher, unconscious, the technology does no good. That's the argument. I am, however, all for a shorter-range read (maybe 2-4"?).
The thing about being able to detach the id from you is that it becomes essentially useless for anything you don't choose to use it for. If everyone can get the tag (and, indeed, is issued two, free of charge (a bracelet or other tag as a child, and a card as a teenager/adult) it would be possible to assign the code to other uses (can you say Social Security Number?) However, this system would (hopefully) allow for the replacement of a stolen number... all it has to do is be a unique ID for a medical record.
If we allow the tags to be external to the body - though people could get implants - it makes it easier to change them, and to prevent tracking. Ultimately the tag doesn't contain the data, just the key. If we can prevent it from being used in other ways (like SSNs) it wouldn't really matter much as far as theft... all an individual could do was get a doctor/hospital to pull up your records. The government, however, could still track the hell out of you if they were sufficiently easy to read.
The benefits of the system are clear - direct, assured access to your medical records whenever it becomes important to have it. The potential abuses of the system should scare the hell out of anyone.
I see no reason that a chip like this couldn't be carried. Embed the chip into a card or an ID bracelet. Sure, then some people won't have their ID on them at all times, but you can save plenty of lives without tracking people.
Is it perhaps that in those businesses, 17% and 21% had people using Macs?
I'm a Mac user, and at my company we have about 10% Mac users.
I'm not saying it's impossible that TWENTY ONE PERCENT of the businesses out there exclusively use Macs... I think it's unlikely, and that the article is misrepresenting the data...
CafePress [bascially] lets anyone sell stuff through them for royalties (you design, they sell/make/ship it). So does Zazzle. Zazzle also allows you to let buyers add/change your designs.
Like the T-Shirt, but want the message on the pocket, instead? No problem. Want to tag your items with your name on the back? Done. Don't like the color of the font on that postcard? Change it. Want that poster to be a little shorter? Crop it.
Cafepress is more broad, without all the buyer customization options. You can changes anything on a customizable piece on Zazzle.
Despite the article's assurance, Zazzle has been around for 5 years, in one form or another. The Copyright on their web page confirms this. Digital Blasphemy used them for posters while they were still in beta back in 2000. While the product selection isn't as broad as CafePress, the customizability of the products is great... Most interesting (IMHO) is the ability to customize a greeting card and add your own text or pictures inside (or outside). There is a good selection of [fairly] reasonably priced options for the posters, too.
The stand seems uncomfortably high, though I suppose it's used with an external keyboard or mouse, or perhaps standing up. I wouldn't trust my PowerBook to the cardboard backing on a desk. A bit more wood could bracket it to the actual desk from behind without loss of the aesthetic.
My biggest issue is the appearance of the stand without the computer on it... it's three prongs looming over your desk space. If it could fold up, I would like it more. Of course, that would increase the cost, but I think it might be worth it.
First, the article says the average cost is $150,000, not up to $150k.
Second, it says an assumed $25/month benefit, not that it's not even $25/month. Also, Internet access costs me $40/month, so...
Third, it says the first five years, which includes all manner of infrastructure creation. Even a major network upgrade would likely cost less later on, because you don't have to find locations, put up towers, etc. I'd like to see the per year estimates, but I'm not subscribed to Jupiter's service.
If your town/city is going through the work and effort to build this manner of network, hopefully someone is going to notify your citizens and try to get them onboard. By Jupiter's reckoning, it takes an average 100 users per square mile to cover the costs. Now, if your city/town put any real effort into this project, you'd probably let people know that free Internet access is a $40 network card away. Get local computer stores to stock up on the cards and ask them to chip in on an ad campaign. They can offer a flat-rate installation service (with caveats for running into problems, etc)
I am 25, and were it not for random chance, I wouldn't know anything about DECnet. Until the the MicroVAX 3500 at work lost its boot drive in a power outage - 1.5 months ago - we actively used DECnet; The VAX primarily served software images to DECservers, which our old HP-UX server did most of the communication. I still have the hulking pair of RA81 behind me. We had several DECwriter III (LA120) paper-feed terminals that we used as wide-carriage impact printers for shipping documents and labels, and two large Line Matrix greenbar printers.
During the transition and move (all obtained from a previous company) several pieces stopped working. As I understand it, they'd been robbing pieces right and left to keep what was working still working. I poured through manuals as old as I am, and dug up default passwords. Thankfully, they weren't exactly security-conscious.
I think that's a fundamentally broken way of viewing design. One should never "add features" for the blind; one should create features that don't rely on sight. There are very few components of most major software that can't be represented in a convienient manner in audio or simple text output. Take your typical office applications:
Word: Primarily text (gee...) with some formatting data. Just as you "glaze over" much of the formatting in "Normal" view (which is mostly forgotten these days), and have all the layout in "Page Layout" view, you can allow the user to choose the level of format detail they read/hear as they view and edit the document. Menus and buttons can be accessed easily through a modal system where you stop editing and call up an interface control. Spell check and such are basically sequenced tools, anyway. The most complex item would likely be the selection control.
Excel: Data is mostly presented in columns or rows, and a reader could quickly establish intended height/width blocks. Less common - but likely very functional - would be the use of Named Ranges to specify work areas on a sheet. On-the-fly adjustable detail settings or commands would choose between reading the displayed or editable contents of cells. The formula helper is practically perfect for a sequenced interface.
PowerPoint: Perhaps you're thinking this is a lost cause, but PowerPoint has pre-made slides that give you click-and-type simplicity. Select a theme (better text descriptions of their design & contents might be helpful) and choose the type of slide you want. This one is probably quite easy.
Mail: Simple enough, really, A few panes of information and a fair number of menus and buttons that could be read. Embedded content poses the largest problem, here.
Browser: HTML is ripe for the plucking as this goes. Editing a browser to handle this would be far less work than most other programs, as you interpret much of the interface as you go.
There are some arenas, I will grant you, that cannot take this approach. Photoshop, for instance. But for a large number of common-use applications, there's little reason they aren't better accessible.
I knew a pair of blind gentlemen who worked MSN Tech Support, and we set up a computer for the two of them to learn MSN Explorer with JAWS piped to speakers so they could both listen together.
The experience left me both in awe of their ability to hear all sorts of detail and in disgust at the lack of accessibility. The the custom interface was made out of poorly named images. One particularly useless one (Image 14, IIRC) was the minimize, maximize, and close buttons, all together. This brought me to my thoughts on a vector-based UI. Imagine the convenience of smooth scalability across different resolution displays...
Anyway, concerns that I can think of are as follows:
1. API A series of abstracted interface methods should be made available. The categories are pretty simple... User Interface (menus, buttons, inputs), Text (static & editable text), Media (audio, video, pictures)... this is all off the top of my head, so feel free to improve on it. Each category simply defines a type of data, and then you can build ways to retrieve or interact with it.
2. Registration I don't care if everyone puts their close button in the same place with the same icon. Visual users can typically locate these things. What they should do is then register that component with the UI Manager. Components could fall into multiple categories, i.e. a graphic on a web page with URLs mapped on it is both a picture and a series of links. Add a "group" indicator or hierarchy to properly collect controls and data together, and I think you have the basic needs covered.
Using these two parts, we should be able to build simple command interfaces. The ability to define the set of controls, displays, and texts for a given interface means you can see them all at once, or hear or feel them in sequence. Your interface can choose to discard or delay extra media (no sudden advert noises on audio interfaces or no need to waste processing time on decoding the video portion of a media file) through a variety of user-adjustable settings.
For visually-impaired individuals, I think the vector-based interface could make huge strides. Right now, you can buy a 21-inch monitor and set it to 800x600, or use a projector, but new laptops are still 1024x768 or higher. I listened in on a Dell Customer Service call from an older gentleman who loved the laptop he purchased, but couldn't read the high-res screen. If a vector-based interface was available that allowed his to change the point size - similar to Mozilla's Ctrl-Scroll size changes - he would have been fine.
I think the key, and the hard part, is getting buy-in on this kind of pervasive detailing of interfaces. HTML/XHTML is a great start for this, because this kind of extension is very easy based on the nesting and pre-defined components on a page.
Interfaces for the disabled or impaired could come in handy for everyone. These same advances are where the "technologies of the future" come from. Until we push the mouse away, we're stuck to the desktop metaphor.
exactly. I suspect Apple's hardware will still be quite specialized. Details on the $999 devkit should be interesting.
Tou might even be able to run Windows on a Mac, but a Mac on generic PC hardware is less likely, though not impossible. I suspect that a number of additions to Darwin will become available that may help that situation out.
When my equipment was broken, Apple fixed it. As I stated, when my PowerBook 190 had a damaged power connector because of poor design, for which they eventually offered a replacement system at a reduced price, and were required to repair it free for some years - probably by a much more reasonable lawsuit - they repaired it. When it came back the second time with a shattered screen, they replaced the screen.
When the door covering the ports broke on a teacher's - weak hinge design - they sent a bag of 144, free of charge. When the power brick on my 1400cs overheated to the point it discolored the plastic, they replaced it.
All of the times I have had problems with Apple's hardware that were not a) my fault or b) typical wear, I have had a good experiences.
I am not saying that no one recieved defective units. I am not saying that people who did should not have an avenue for recompense. My problem is the implementation of this lawsuit. -- My first generation iPod is old, now. It has been dropped several times. The Lucite facing is chipped. The chrome back is scratched. The battery doesn't last as long as it used to. Part of that - I'm sure - is it being in heat and cold when it spent time in my parked car. That's my fault.
Apple didn't lie. The iPod I received lived up to the battery specs, or reasonable approximations under non-ideal usage. Over time, the battery degraded. For people who didn't get the promised battery life (or anything reasonable), there should be compensation. For people who are complaining that old batteries don't hold a charge as well, I have no sympathy. I'm one of them.
Did that happen to everyone? No. Did some people get bad batteries? Most likely. Will many people who have misused their equipment be elligible for compensation? Yes.
I believe that class action lawsuits were conceived to provide protection to consumers who would otherwise be unaware that they have received poor quality or damaged goods and are entitled to compensation. I think that this lawsuit - while having some merit - overreaches what is reasonable and provides no safeguards against abuse. "Sure, my ipod battery is bad. Gimmegimmegimme!" Now I get $25.
If your first-gen iPod, which could be almost four years old is now experiencing battery problems, you're elligible. How many charge cycles have some of these iPods been through? How long ago did they experience loss? It's too broad.
Also, you'll find it is often the opposite with MS products. Most people simply expect a certain level of failure from Microsoft Software. With my PC hardware, I accept certain failure - when cheap RAM or an inexpensive motherboard fails, it's cheap. When I received a dead processor though, I got a replacement. When equipment fails unreasonably, I look into it. When the old laptop battery doesn't hold a charge, that's the cost of business.
Gah! I have a first generation iPod. No, it's batteries don't last as long as they once did.
THAT'S FUCKING LIFE
Equipment wears out. Shit breaks. The only problem I have is that Apple didn't initially provide a way to replace the batteries. I think the current price point to do so is unfortunate, but I don't think we're being robbed. Eventually, I may have the batteries replaced. Or, I might just buy a spiffy new iPod. Or both.
When I've had bad hardware from Apple, they fix it. My PB 190 suffered three broken power connectors, and then they offered a trade-in program on them, which got me a PowerBook G3 (Pismo). When my power block died (because the connector pulled free of the cord) I assumed I was too damned hard on it and bought a new one. This week I got a letter about a class-action suit over it. I'm not going for my compensation because I still believe it was my fault.
How many of these suits are valid, and how many are simply pissy users and overzealous lawyers?
For all of you who can't see it, there's a picture of a heatsink - with six or eight heatpipes up to a 6-inch fan surrounded by copper fins - with a pack of cigarettes for comparison. It would make the heatsink over 1 foot tall. The text refers to 25 cubic meters per second of airflow, and a 1400 watt power requirement.
Slashdot Mirror
Google has announced plans to buy NASA from the United States government. In a press release sent out this morning by Nathan Tyler, Google indicated the need for better, more direct access to the data it manages.
In a brief interview this afternoon, Tyler had this to say:
"I mean, after Maps [maps.google.com] and Earth [Google Earth], it was pretty blatant where we were going. Everyone on campus was asking, 'When are we buying NASA?'. The NASA acquisition will offer us access to a variety of communications avenues that would have cost a fortune to contract. Also, it's imperative for our upcoming Google Earth Live... but I've said too much."
But you aren't taking the data with you, only an ID. Unlike the JumpDrive, a stolen ID can only help someone if they know how to access the medical databases.
I'd want something that is completely dormant until I chose who gets to read it.
And when you come in on the stretcher, unconscious, the technology does no good. That's the argument. I am, however, all for a shorter-range read (maybe 2-4"?).
The thing about being able to detach the id from you is that it becomes essentially useless for anything you don't choose to use it for. If everyone can get the tag (and, indeed, is issued two, free of charge (a bracelet or other tag as a child, and a card as a teenager/adult) it would be possible to assign the code to other uses (can you say Social Security Number?) However, this system would (hopefully) allow for the replacement of a stolen number... all it has to do is be a unique ID for a medical record.
If we allow the tags to be external to the body - though people could get implants - it makes it easier to change them, and to prevent tracking. Ultimately the tag doesn't contain the data, just the key. If we can prevent it from being used in other ways (like SSNs) it wouldn't really matter much as far as theft... all an individual could do was get a doctor/hospital to pull up your records. The government, however, could still track the hell out of you if they were sufficiently easy to read.
The benefits of the system are clear - direct, assured access to your medical records whenever it becomes important to have it. The potential abuses of the system should scare the hell out of anyone.
I see no reason that a chip like this couldn't be carried. Embed the chip into a card or an ID bracelet. Sure, then some people won't have their ID on them at all times, but you can save plenty of lives without tracking people.
Is it perhaps that in those businesses, 17% and 21% had people using Macs?
I'm a Mac user, and at my company we have about 10% Mac users.
I'm not saying it's impossible that TWENTY ONE PERCENT of the businesses out there exclusively use Macs... I think it's unlikely, and that the article is misrepresenting the data...
But then, I haven't read the Jupiter report.
Make a folder of the sounds you want.
Copy one of them and name it "sound.wav" or somesuch.
Make a Scheduled Task that runs every minute.
When "sound.wav"'s Last Accessed time is within the minute, have it randomly select a new sound and overwrite "sound.wav".
About as dark as the shirts get is a "gray heather". No white printing at this point.
CafePress [bascially] lets anyone sell stuff through them for royalties (you design, they sell/make/ship it). So does Zazzle. Zazzle also allows you to let buyers add/change your designs.
Like the T-Shirt, but want the message on the pocket, instead? No problem. Want to tag your items with your name on the back? Done. Don't like the color of the font on that postcard? Change it. Want that poster to be a little shorter? Crop it.
Cafepress is more broad, without all the buyer customization options. You can changes anything on a customizable piece on Zazzle.
Despite the article's assurance, Zazzle has been around for 5 years, in one form or another. The Copyright on their web page confirms this. Digital Blasphemy used them for posters while they were still in beta back in 2000. While the product selection isn't as broad as CafePress, the customizability of the products is great... Most interesting (IMHO) is the ability to customize a greeting card and add your own text or pictures inside (or outside). There is a good selection of [fairly] reasonably priced options for the posters, too.
Shameless Promotion
Look for support in iTunes 5.1! :)
http://www.snailblog.com.nyud.net:8090/
;)
Apparently, "Coral Link" was not well understood.
http://www.snailblog.com.nyud.net:8090/
The stand seems uncomfortably high, though I suppose it's used with an external keyboard or mouse, or perhaps standing up. I wouldn't trust my PowerBook to the cardboard backing on a desk. A bit more wood could bracket it to the actual desk from behind without loss of the aesthetic.
My biggest issue is the appearance of the stand without the computer on it... it's three prongs looming over your desk space. If it could fold up, I would like it more. Of course, that would increase the cost, but I think it might be worth it.
Coral link.
First, the article says the average cost is $150,000, not up to $150k.
Second, it says an assumed $25/month benefit, not that it's not even $25/month. Also, Internet access costs me $40/month, so...
Third, it says the first five years, which includes all manner of infrastructure creation. Even a major network upgrade would likely cost less later on, because you don't have to find locations, put up towers, etc. I'd like to see the per year estimates, but I'm not subscribed to Jupiter's service.
If your town/city is going through the work and effort to build this manner of network, hopefully someone is going to notify your citizens and try to get them onboard. By Jupiter's reckoning, it takes an average 100 users per square mile to cover the costs. Now, if your city/town put any real effort into this project, you'd probably let people know that free Internet access is a $40 network card away. Get local computer stores to stock up on the cards and ask them to chip in on an ad campaign. They can offer a flat-rate installation service (with caveats for running into problems, etc)
I am 25, and were it not for random chance, I wouldn't know anything about DECnet. Until the the MicroVAX 3500 at work lost its boot drive in a power outage - 1.5 months ago - we actively used DECnet; The VAX primarily served software images to DECservers, which our old HP-UX server did most of the communication. I still have the hulking pair of RA81 behind me. We had several DECwriter III (LA120) paper-feed terminals that we used as wide-carriage impact printers for shipping documents and labels, and two large Line Matrix greenbar printers.
:)
During the transition and move (all obtained from a previous company) several pieces stopped working. As I understand it, they'd been robbing pieces right and left to keep what was working still working. I poured through manuals as old as I am, and dug up default passwords. Thankfully, they weren't exactly security-conscious.
Anyone want a MicroVAX? You pay shipping.
I think that's a fundamentally broken way of viewing design. One should never "add features" for the blind; one should create features that don't rely on sight. There are very few components of most major software that can't be represented in a convienient manner in audio or simple text output. Take your typical office applications:
Word: Primarily text (gee...) with some formatting data. Just as you "glaze over" much of the formatting in "Normal" view (which is mostly forgotten these days), and have all the layout in "Page Layout" view, you can allow the user to choose the level of format detail they read/hear as they view and edit the document. Menus and buttons can be accessed easily through a modal system where you stop editing and call up an interface control. Spell check and such are basically sequenced tools, anyway. The most complex item would likely be the selection control.
Excel: Data is mostly presented in columns or rows, and a reader could quickly establish intended height/width blocks. Less common - but likely very functional - would be the use of Named Ranges to specify work areas on a sheet. On-the-fly adjustable detail settings or commands would choose between reading the displayed or editable contents of cells. The formula helper is practically perfect for a sequenced interface.
PowerPoint: Perhaps you're thinking this is a lost cause, but PowerPoint has pre-made slides that give you click-and-type simplicity. Select a theme (better text descriptions of their design & contents might be helpful) and choose the type of slide you want. This one is probably quite easy.
Mail: Simple enough, really, A few panes of information and a fair number of menus and buttons that could be read. Embedded content poses the largest problem, here.
Browser: HTML is ripe for the plucking as this goes. Editing a browser to handle this would be far less work than most other programs, as you interpret much of the interface as you go.
There are some arenas, I will grant you, that cannot take this approach. Photoshop, for instance. But for a large number of common-use applications, there's little reason they aren't better accessible.
I knew a pair of blind gentlemen who worked MSN Tech Support, and we set up a computer for the two of them to learn MSN Explorer with JAWS piped to speakers so they could both listen together.
The experience left me both in awe of their ability to hear all sorts of detail and in disgust at the lack of accessibility. The the custom interface was made out of poorly named images. One particularly useless one (Image 14, IIRC) was the minimize, maximize, and close buttons, all together. This brought me to my thoughts on a vector-based UI. Imagine the convenience of smooth scalability across different resolution displays...
Anyway, concerns that I can think of are as follows:
1. API
A series of abstracted interface methods should be made available. The categories are pretty simple... User Interface (menus, buttons, inputs), Text (static & editable text), Media (audio, video, pictures)... this is all off the top of my head, so feel free to improve on it. Each category simply defines a type of data, and then you can build ways to retrieve or interact with it.
2. Registration
I don't care if everyone puts their close button in the same place with the same icon. Visual users can typically locate these things. What they should do is then register that component with the UI Manager. Components could fall into multiple categories, i.e. a graphic on a web page with URLs mapped on it is both a picture and a series of links. Add a "group" indicator or hierarchy to properly collect controls and data together, and I think you have the basic needs covered.
Using these two parts, we should be able to build simple command interfaces. The ability to define the set of controls, displays, and texts for a given interface means you can see them all at once, or hear or feel them in sequence. Your interface can choose to discard or delay extra media (no sudden advert noises on audio interfaces or no need to waste processing time on decoding the video portion of a media file) through a variety of user-adjustable settings.
For visually-impaired individuals, I think the vector-based interface could make huge strides. Right now, you can buy a 21-inch monitor and set it to 800x600, or use a projector, but new laptops are still 1024x768 or higher. I listened in on a Dell Customer Service call from an older gentleman who loved the laptop he purchased, but couldn't read the high-res screen. If a vector-based interface was available that allowed his to change the point size - similar to Mozilla's Ctrl-Scroll size changes - he would have been fine.
I think the key, and the hard part, is getting buy-in on this kind of pervasive detailing of interfaces. HTML/XHTML is a great start for this, because this kind of extension is very easy based on the nesting and pre-defined components on a page.
Interfaces for the disabled or impaired could come in handy for everyone. These same advances are where the "technologies of the future" come from. Until we push the mouse away, we're stuck to the desktop metaphor.
exactly. I suspect Apple's hardware will still be quite specialized. Details on the $999 devkit should be interesting.
Tou might even be able to run Windows on a Mac, but a Mac on generic PC hardware is less likely, though not impossible. I suspect that a number of additions to Darwin will become available that may help that situation out.
When my equipment was broken, Apple fixed it. As I stated, when my PowerBook 190 had a damaged power connector because of poor design, for which they eventually offered a replacement system at a reduced price, and were required to repair it free for some years - probably by a much more reasonable lawsuit - they repaired it. When it came back the second time with a shattered screen, they replaced the screen.
When the door covering the ports broke on a teacher's - weak hinge design - they sent a bag of 144, free of charge. When the power brick on my 1400cs overheated to the point it discolored the plastic, they replaced it.
All of the times I have had problems with Apple's hardware that were not a) my fault or b) typical wear, I have had a good experiences.
I am not saying that no one recieved defective units. I am not saying that people who did should not have an avenue for recompense. My problem is the implementation of this lawsuit.
--
My first generation iPod is old, now. It has been dropped several times. The Lucite facing is chipped. The chrome back is scratched. The battery doesn't last as long as it used to. Part of that - I'm sure - is it being in heat and cold when it spent time in my parked car. That's my fault.
Apple didn't lie. The iPod I received lived up to the battery specs, or reasonable approximations under non-ideal usage. Over time, the battery degraded. For people who didn't get the promised battery life (or anything reasonable), there should be compensation. For people who are complaining that old batteries don't hold a charge as well, I have no sympathy. I'm one of them.
Did that happen to everyone? No.
Did some people get bad batteries? Most likely.
Will many people who have misused their equipment be elligible for compensation? Yes.
I believe that class action lawsuits were conceived to provide protection to consumers who would otherwise be unaware that they have received poor quality or damaged goods and are entitled to compensation. I think that this lawsuit - while having some merit - overreaches what is reasonable and provides no safeguards against abuse. "Sure, my ipod battery is bad. Gimmegimmegimme!" Now I get $25.
If your first-gen iPod, which could be almost four years old is now experiencing battery problems, you're elligible. How many charge cycles have some of these iPods been through? How long ago did they experience loss? It's too broad.
Also, you'll find it is often the opposite with MS products. Most people simply expect a certain level of failure from Microsoft Software. With my PC hardware, I accept certain failure - when cheap RAM or an inexpensive motherboard fails, it's cheap. When I received a dead processor though, I got a replacement. When equipment fails unreasonably, I look into it. When the old laptop battery doesn't hold a charge, that's the cost of business.
Next up, we sue Energizer for making NiCad and NiMH batteries. "THEY DIE?!"
Gah! I have a first generation iPod. No, it's batteries don't last as long as they once did.
THAT'S FUCKING LIFE
Equipment wears out. Shit breaks. The only problem I have is that Apple didn't initially provide a way to replace the batteries. I think the current price point to do so is unfortunate, but I don't think we're being robbed. Eventually, I may have the batteries replaced. Or, I might just buy a spiffy new iPod. Or both.
When I've had bad hardware from Apple, they fix it. My PB 190 suffered three broken power connectors, and then they offered a trade-in program on them, which got me a PowerBook G3 (Pismo). When my power block died (because the connector pulled free of the cord) I assumed I was too damned hard on it and bought a new one. This week I got a letter about a class-action suit over it. I'm not going for my compensation because I still believe it was my fault.
How many of these suits are valid, and how many are simply pissy users and overzealous lawyers?
More links are usually better, but the mine was tossed on geocities so I could make a Coral link, which is what I posted.
Took me a bit to dig through the cache, but here's a pic: Zalman Big Cooler
For all of you who can't see it, there's a picture of a heatsink - with six or eight heatpipes up to a 6-inch fan surrounded by copper fins - with a pack of cigarettes for comparison. It would make the heatsink over 1 foot tall. The text refers to 25 cubic meters per second of airflow, and a 1400 watt power requirement.
It wasn't too bad until they mentioned daisy-chaining five power supples together.