There's a substantial difference between unavoidable bias and wild accusations. You're free to believe that everything the press writes is utter horseshit, but unless you care to provide a reason for feeling that way, I'm inclined to believe you're the one who's full of shit.
Or do you really think you could be utterly unbiased and absolutely objective as a reporter?
The problem here is that people, for the most part, trust other people. Given the absence of first-hand information, we're likely to believe what other people tell us. How many times have you related as true something that you only heard indirectly from someone else? And how many times have you later turned out to be wrong?
Libel is a realization that when you get enough people together in a public forum, they will all reinforce the negative aspects of something. Slashdot is a pretty great example of this. It starts with a post that vaguely paints MS in a negative light. A bunch of people jump on the bandwagon about how terrible MS is. To further their cases, they produce a bunch of misleading, confusing, or simply false examples as "proof." Other readers see 50 people saying the same thing and are strongly inclined to believe it. The next time a vaguely anti-MS post comes up, those other readers themselves start posting the misleading information as truth.
Libel laws are a good thing, at least in principle, because they make sure that people in positions of authority (like the press) make at least an extremely basic information to back up their claims. The/. readership is, by and large, pretty smart, and if we get duped into believe horseshit just because a lot of people are saying it, what do you think would happen if reporters did the same thing all the time?
(Obviously, "libel" still happens, but think how bad it would be if you couldn't sue people over it.)
I didn't see it in the two articles, but... the merger was proposed, and voted down, once already. This new one has a provision which gives some cable company (Cablevision?) rights to use parts of the combined company's satellites. Cablevision, or whatever company it is, is not currently in the satellite TV game. Apparently the owner of the company is planning to sell some assets (like the channel AMC) to fund investment. The idea here is that Hughes et al. were offering a potential competitor even after the merger is done. This is described in detail in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. Apparently the FCC's concerns with the new proposal are that Cablevision might not have the financial backing to last in the satellite TV business. The WSJ cynically observes that they are trying to learn the lesson they got from the telco deregulation nightmare, where the Baby Bells just outspent their smaller challengers and snapped up the remains when they went bankrupt. But the FCC is also running the danger of preventing mergers of financially-insecure companies, with the possible result that they'll all go bust.
There are some other interesting tidbits in the piece, like that the potential satellite competitor is interested in offering some 40 HDTV channels. The WSJ is unabashedly free-market, so they support the revised merger, apparently with the opinion that neither company can combat cable companies independently.
I think that where there aren't unions, it's almost always because the workers don't want them. Part of that is because people feel they're making enough without a union, but I think a lot of it is that unions often have a really bad perception. This perception seems to be most common among the upper and upper-middle economic classes, which is where most IT types are. People like that tend to point to the dockworkers' strike (where the average salary was something ludicrous like $100k/yr) as an example of what unions are today.
That said, I tend to share that attitude. I think unions are a critical part of a modern post-industrialized society; but they all seem to think that they need to be doing things constantly. Frankly, right now in the IT market, a hypothetical union shouldn't be doing anything significant at all: pay is decent, benefits are decent, and so on. The reason it's not as good as it was two years ago is the economy, and you can't blame just one or two companies for that. And I just don't trust unions not to try to wring concessions out of an employer, and get half the union downsized out of jobs in the process to pay for the bennies of the half that got to stay on.
Remember, the goal isn't to keep the room cold, it's to keep the servers from overheating. It may be 61 on the thermostat, but go stick your hand behind one of the servers and it'll probably be 10-15 degrees warmer. And it's hotter still inside the case.
That's the real motivation, I suspect. If you want a semi-definitive answer, you could use the thermal monitoring software that probably came with the servers to see how hot they are. Then raise the temperature gradually, watching how the server temperatures change. If you have lots of money to throw at this, you could buy one of those, uh... heat sensors, whatever they're called. I know they use them on tires to look for defects, wear patterns, and so on. They probably have ones that will work on computer-type objects too.
Actually, most spam-filtering software uses the broken, hidden, or otherwise modified headers as a positive sign that the specified message is spam. If all these spam messages suddenly start providing valid From: and To: addresses, I know it'll break all my spam filters (not entirely, but I'm sure a lot would slip through).
That's my mistake. I of course meant to say "you can't do the things the license permits you to do." In the case of the GPL, you can't copy, distribute, or modify the software.
Brain fart for being too used to closed-source software, where usually not accepting the license does void your right to use the software.
I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that you're right: if a contract is illegal, it's voided. But remember that with all software (even free as in speech software), if you don't accept the license you can't use the software. So if a bank bought 20,000 licenses for Windows XP and it later turned out the bank cannot legally abide by the terms of those licenses, the bank would have to destroy all 20,000 copies (and MS would have to refund them their money).
This would obviously be a horrible disaster for MS, because not only would they not make any money but it'd also make the news. ("We're sorry, but we can't process your transaction today, as we had to erase Windows XP from all our computers thanks to a supplementary EULA from Microsoft. Please call back in two to three weeks when we have completed our rollout of Windows 3.1.")
Here, I've got a supercharger for a 1981 Porsche 924 NA that's been stroked to 2.4L. It cost me $1,500, but I'll let you have it for free. Quite a deal, huh? Well, you do need that exact model of car. It'll cost a lot of money to buy it. You'll have to get someone to install it, too, or you might damage the engine. And, when you're all done, it probably won't be any faster than the car you have now.
But what a deal! You'd be saving $1,500, once you spent $25,000 on the rest!
Honestly, don't bother trying to teach these people how to use OpenOffice or AbiWord or whatever. Just teach them MS Office. I suspect they will have a hard enough time with that (if they were computeter-literate, they wouldn't need the classes). Don't confuse them by teaching them how to use things they'll never use. And besides, since everyone tries to look and act like MS Office, even a computeter-illiterate person should at least be able to be functional with any other office suite.
I understand why you don't want to tie them to MS, but there's a time and a place. Maybe if you finish the course early, or if you seem to have a quick class, you can show them around the competing open source products near the end.
My '88 BMW has this feature, except you can't download it to anything. It monitors average speed and mileage. It also tells the time, date, range (how far you can go based on how much gas you have left and the current average MPG), and temperature You can also program it as a timer and with a maximum speed, so a chime sounds if you go above that speed. I believe all BMWs have had the OBC since at least 1985. I don't see any reason you couldn't hack up a serial interface or something. I think Siemens actually makes the unit.
Somewhat more on-topic, there are devices that let you read and program the engine management chips for cars with electronic fuel injections. The most common use is to dump out the engine data as part of making high-performance custom chips, but you could probably also hook in a fast laptop (over a really fast interface) and control it from inside the car. Actually, I think I read about someone doing that, but I can't remember where any more.
I didn't take a year off, but I knew many people who did. They, and I, recommend against it. There's nothing wrong with it; you won't die or get rejected from everywhere. I don't think you'll even be less likely to get into a school, provided you can provide a better reason for taking a year off than "I didn't feel like going to college." If you do internships or other meaningful work, your chances of getting into a good school may improve.
But the real problem is making yourself limit it to just one year. Trust me, I've known too many people who meant to take off a year and then never went to college. Some of them will still be in their mid-20s, so they may go yet, but... frankly, if you're 25 and haven't gone to college, the odds are very much against ever going. And if you do go, you're going to be older than most of the seniors. That may not affect your social life, if you're outgoing and make friends easily. But if you're a little shy already, being older than everyone else may serve to make you feel even more different.
My other problem with taking a year off is that people usually do it for really bad reasons. I can't tell you how many people I've known who wanted to take a year off because they didn't know what they wanted to do. Guess what? Nobody knows what he wants to do at 18. (Well, some people do, but they're definitely the minority.) Even at college, this is true. Most people end up at college because they don't know what they want to do. It's another four years for you to try to figure it out. At most schools, you don't need to declare your major until your sophomore or junior year, and at mine, you could change your major at any time (provided it would still be possible for you to get enough credits in 5 years total).
Really, the only people I know who've been happy about taking time off from - and generally not going to - college are those who already know what they want to do. People who are going to work in the family business, start their own, things like that. Everyone else, without exception, has spoken to me of regretting taking the time off. "Man, I wish I'd gone to college... now I'm stuck in this dead-end job that I hate, and I've got too many bills to pay to quit and go to college."
Of course, your mileage may vary, but you should think long and hard about why you are taking time off.
I suppose the benefits will ultimately outweigh the costs, but it's just so much easier to have statically-linked/bin and/sbin programs. Means that no matter how badly I screw up an install of libc (for example), I'll at least be able to boot the system and the most important programs. Besides, it's so much easier to set up chroot jails when you don't need to worry what libraries/bin/sh and/bin/sleep require.
Actually, I suppose it really is a good thing: the people who want this new behavior can have it, and the people who don't are likely to be the ones who'll make-world anyway. I ain't agin it, I'm fer it, and ignore all statements to the contrary!
There's nothing wrong with asking for help if you need it, so long as you don't become totally reliant upon others. My message here is that, wherever possible, you should do things yourself instead of making others do them for you. In the workplace, that may not always be the right solution (you can't do everything yourself). But Ask/. isn't your workplace. The people here volunteer their time because they want to, and frivolous or wasteful questions distract from those which are interesting, engaging, and thought-provoking. You're welcome to tell us to buzz off and don't answer if we don't want to, and that's exactly what we're doing when we irritably post "Use Google" or "RTFM."
Seriously. It makes me sound like a jerk, but it's true. With a little knowledge and good skills, you can troubleshoot and solve most problems in less time than it takes to explain them to someone else.
Effective troubleshooting is largely a process of elimination, and as such it works best if you are extremely orderly about it. For example, let's say a lamp "just stopped working," "for no reason." Well, first eliminate the bulb as the possible culprit: put in a new one, or test the old one in a lamp that's known to work. At the end, you should be able to say with certainty that the bulb works fine.
So now look at the lamp. Is the bulb socket corroded? Is the bulb making contact where it needs to? Is the lamp actually plugged in? Is the switch working? Again, at the end of the process, you should be able to say with certainty that the lmap is not the problem.
The you'd look at the wiring and whatever else might be involved. 99.9% of the time, you will find the problem well before you run out of places to look. It's exactly the same with computers. NIC isn't working? First swap in a NIC that's known to work. Then test cables that are known to work. Then you would probably do the same from the other end of the connection. Monitor isn't working? Try it on a different computer, or try a different monitor on your computer. Try a different video card. Different cable. And so on.
The other useful part here is that narrowing your questions like that greatly improves your chances of success with a search engine. Putting "my NIC doesn't work" into Google isn't going to help; but putting "my NIC transmits, but won't receive" probably is. Putting "permission denied" into Google is going to get you thousands of pages back, but putting "linux ifconfig permission denied" is probably going to put your answer at the very top. And so on. And, if you still are stumped and have to ask someone for help, at least you can provide a detailed explanation of what you have tried, which improves your odds of getting a qualified (and correct) answer back.
Because of this, I very seldom have to ask any questions. When I do, I usually ask either knowledgeable people I already know, or I post my question on USENET. This is primarily a question of competence, unfortunately; most web boards, IRC groups, and so on are full primarily of ignorant people who think they are really smart, and misleading or inaccurate replies can waste hours of my time if I don't correctly identify them as such. (Plus, they cause the knowledgeable people to get lost in the noise.)
I actually like this idea because it will add to the realism of the game. Of course, there are thousands of ways this could be done tastelessly. But if the article is right and they ARE taking their cues from Hollywood, it would probably be fine, or even positive.
It's also possible that this money could be used well. Of course it's not going to lower the price we pay for the games, but it may mean that EA will be slightly more willing to take a risk on a new game. But I suppose if Hollywood is the example, the reverse will be true.
"I understand they're considering that Keanu Reeves might play Superman in the new movies. But now instead of being vulnerable to kryptonite, Superman is going to be vulnerable to big words."
Remember that these new-fangled CPUs, especially Athlons, run ultra-hot. This is also the case with graphics cards, RAM, motherboard chipsets, hard drives, CD-RWs... power supplies are asked to do more than in the past, so they run hotter and harder too. Even monitors can get really hot (feel the top of yours, I warm my hands on mine in the winter). Lots of electronic components get sprayed with various crap as the final stage of the packaging process, and after leaving your machine on for a few hours that stuff will start to burn off.
I'm reluctant to say it's normal, but I can definitely say that it can be normal. My monitor smelled like burning plastic for a week after I bought it, and there's certainly nothing wrong with it. (It probably was small styrofoam chunks that broke off the packaging material and slipped through the grille on top.) My computer smelled like "new electronics" for a week, because someone at the factory got thermal grease on the inside of the case and the heat just magnified the smell. Gave me horrible, splitting headaches too.
I think it's pretty common to encounter strange smells during burn-ins.
The most useful tool is, as you've already discovered, the many-in-one screwdriver set. But there are also a few little items in mine that I can no longer live without.
First, there are two kinds of tweezers: one you squeeze to close, and one you squeeze to open. The latter are much easier to work with in small spaces, since you don't have to hold them.
Second, I use my "flat-head" screwdriver all the time for things like prying. Nothing serious, of course, mostly for things like working snug case covers loose. You can use the many-in-one screwdriver for that purpose, but it's not quite as good for it (and it's heavier and bulkier).
Third - and this one is priceless - one of those screw-grabbers. It's shaped like a syringe, and when you push in the top part, thin little "grabbers" stick out and can be used to grab all sorts of things (usually screws, but anything about that size will do). It's even handy for starting screws going, since you can't drop the screw out of it: you just stick the screw in the grabbers, let it tighten, then turn it into the hole. Once it gets going, you can swap out to a screwdriver. This is so valuable for places where there's not enough room to get your fingers, and where the screw can become lost forever if you drop it trying to get it in.
If you work with network stuff a lot, you'll want a crimping tool and a wire cutter/stripper. Mine is pretty fool-proof: you put it in the slot for the gauge of wire it is, squeeze hard, and it takes off the insulation without cutting the wire. A big timesaver there.
Oh, and mine also came with a plastic capped cylinder that initially held solder. But as I never use the soldering iron, I put a couple bags of computer-type screws in there. When I'm working on a system, I take the bags out (they ziplock closed) and store the screws I remove in the cylinder to keep from losing them.
The kit I have, for reference, is one of the Compaq-branded ones that used to be available at Radio Shack.
The problem is that there are, on any given day, thousands and thousands of people clamoring for the undivided attention of one congressman. Even worse, unless you work for a known lobby of some sort, most people assume you speak only for yourself and maybe a few of your friends.
To get past the various layers of aides and help, even to get your name mentioned to your congressman, you need to make them believe you represent a lot of their constituents... or, if not that, at least a lot of the constituents who VOTE. You also need to convince them that you are really serious about this, and that the issue matters to you a great deal. One way of doing this is with money. Donating $1000 to your Senator tells him "My problem is worth at least $1000, if you solve it for me." Getting 50 like-minded individuals together, forming a non-profit, and having them all donate money too... that will get you noticed. Maybe not by the congressman, but by someone who will bring your problems to his attention. I'm not a big advocate of the money-for-votes philosophy, but it doesn't HAVE to be the same thing as corruption.
I'm just not entirely sure what you have against lobbying groups. It's simply not possible to have a democracy with 150 million citizens. The closest we can get is the representative kind, which is what we have, and SIGs and their ilk HELP the little guy. (Environmentalists make up a pretty small percentage of the total population of the country, but because of big lobbying groups they often get their way.)
Somewhat to my surprise, nobody has mentioned this yet. But there may be a decent market in LAN parties and competitions. The only problem here is that it's pretty sporadic, so I'd echo the suggestion to rent out your space to classes and such most of the time. But say, every month have a party/competition that you advertise in local arcades and such. Charge a nominal fee. Set up schedules, ladders, make everyone feel like it's really professional; arrange for people to watch matches when they aren't in them, all sorts of things like that. Let people bring their own computers if they want (maybe you could charge a little less in that case). Sell drinks and food for a reasonable price. At the end of the day, give out $500 or so in prizes. Or maybe you can get local businesses to donate computer equipment in return for putting their posters on the wall or using their logos as background images.
I know of places that do things like this, and people show up more for the experience than the money. (OK, they show up for the money at first, but after that it's just an excuse to hang out with fellow nerds.) All those people who are saying LAN parties are basically like Internet games have no clue: being at a LAN party is TOTALLY different. Even games you normally hate become fun when you're in a room full of guys shouting and laughing and generally having a great time.
The catch is, as I already said, you won't be able to fill your place all the time. But on the plus side, if you have the floor space, you can recycle your "obsolete" computers into the classroom if you can't resell them. And if people watch matches using e.g. HLTV, you can let the spectators use those crummy old computers and stuff the keyboards in a drawer.
The thing here is that you are confusing two different problems: how intuitive a UI is (its "learning curve"), and how usable a UI is (how difficult it is to accomplish tasks if you know how to do them). Both are important, to varying degrees depending on the task. In a powerful programmer's editor, for example, usability is far more important than anything else. That's because you can expect the people using the editor to take the time to learn how to use it properly and most effectively. In short, you can expect them to read the manual if they have to. But in a computer game, also for example, you can't have the same expectations. People should be able to intuit enough of the interface to move around and such, without having to go through any tutorials or read any manuals.
I think the above misunderstanding is the root of many UI design problems. The worst part is that most people seem to think they only need to worry about how intuitive a UI is. If you want proof that an intuitive UI can be hideously complex and difficult to use, check out the FreeS/WAN documentation on configuring Windows 2000 to do IPsec with a Linux machine. It doesn't matter if you know what IPsec even is, the screenshots illustrate the problem well enough. (About six layers of notebooks, with six tabs each; controls all over every page; buttons everywhere; it's practically a treatise on when you should just give up and skip the GUI.) It takes about fifteen minutes to do what would take five minutes (probably much less) on Linux.
You know, I see a lot of people in this thread talking about how they wouldn't mind a sci-fi tax. Even the people who don't think it would work seem to support the general idea. So why don't we just bypass the government entirely and give NASA our money directly? (Yes, I realize NASA is part of the government, but you know what I mean.)
NASA probably has rules on how it can or can't accept money, so that would require investigation. But I don't see why you couldn't just "tax yourself" and send off money when you rent Robinson Crusoe on Mars. No need for the government to be involved. Hell, you could probably set up a jar at your local Blockbuster and get some money. Or we could set up a NASA Charity derived from the/. membership. Or whatever.
I realize that most of the time people say "I'd be willing to pay for that!" they are being a little optimistic, but for those of you who aren't... I much prefer voluntary donations to mandatory ones, i.e., the many forms of government handouts.
Who needs a new filesystem? XFS and JFS both already support metadata in the form of extended attributes (EAs). I'm pretty sure e2fs (and e3fs) both have the stubs in the filesystem for similar functionality.
Again, let me emphasize: XFS and JFS already can do this. XFS did it first, and the JFS people were primarily waiting for de facto standardization of the API (they will be using the same one as XFS uses). All we need now is for programs to start taking advantage of the existing functionality. In this case, we need programs that provide ID3-like functionality and an mp3/ogg browser that does the same.
I will concede, however, that we need more people to use EA-capable filesystems for this really to take hold. Changing the "default" filesystem on the major distros would sure do that. But implementing the EA stubs (which may already have been done in 2.5 kernels) for e[23]fs would also do the trick, and pretty much leave Reiser as the only modern Linux FS that (last I checked) doesn't support EAs.
ATI has a long and noble history of releasing the worst, lowest-quality, most unusable drivers ever. It wasn't enough that they wrote horrible drivers: they refused to make any efforts to improve the situation. They refused to admit there was a problem; they refused to fix the bugs; they invariably claimed it was a motherboard problem when I complained. I swear, if ATI would hire some people who had the slightest clue how to write decent drivers, nobody would ever have heard of NVIDIA.
They've made so many good products crippled by unusable drivers. It's kind of a shame. I know I'll never buy an ATI product after my one experience with them. I've already talked several friends out of purchases. Even if it should ever come to pass that ATI has the best cards (and drivers), the company's attitude has convinced me never to buy any ATI product, no matter what.
I wonder how many other people feel this way about ATI. I know of at least a few.
Slashdot Mirror
Or do you really think you could be utterly unbiased and absolutely objective as a reporter?
Libel is a realization that when you get enough people together in a public forum, they will all reinforce the negative aspects of something. Slashdot is a pretty great example of this. It starts with a post that vaguely paints MS in a negative light. A bunch of people jump on the bandwagon about how terrible MS is. To further their cases, they produce a bunch of misleading, confusing, or simply false examples as "proof." Other readers see 50 people saying the same thing and are strongly inclined to believe it. The next time a vaguely anti-MS post comes up, those other readers themselves start posting the misleading information as truth.
Libel laws are a good thing, at least in principle, because they make sure that people in positions of authority (like the press) make at least an extremely basic information to back up their claims. The /. readership is, by and large, pretty smart, and if we get duped into believe horseshit just because a lot of people are saying it, what do you think would happen if reporters did the same thing all the time?
(Obviously, "libel" still happens, but think how bad it would be if you couldn't sue people over it.)
There are some other interesting tidbits in the piece, like that the potential satellite competitor is interested in offering some 40 HDTV channels. The WSJ is unabashedly free-market, so they support the revised merger, apparently with the opinion that neither company can combat cable companies independently.
That said, I tend to share that attitude. I think unions are a critical part of a modern post-industrialized society; but they all seem to think that they need to be doing things constantly. Frankly, right now in the IT market, a hypothetical union shouldn't be doing anything significant at all: pay is decent, benefits are decent, and so on. The reason it's not as good as it was two years ago is the economy, and you can't blame just one or two companies for that. And I just don't trust unions not to try to wring concessions out of an employer, and get half the union downsized out of jobs in the process to pay for the bennies of the half that got to stay on.
That's the real motivation, I suspect. If you want a semi-definitive answer, you could use the thermal monitoring software that probably came with the servers to see how hot they are. Then raise the temperature gradually, watching how the server temperatures change. If you have lots of money to throw at this, you could buy one of those, uh... heat sensors, whatever they're called. I know they use them on tires to look for defects, wear patterns, and so on. They probably have ones that will work on computer-type objects too.
Actually, most spam-filtering software uses the broken, hidden, or otherwise modified headers as a positive sign that the specified message is spam. If all these spam messages suddenly start providing valid From: and To: addresses, I know it'll break all my spam filters (not entirely, but I'm sure a lot would slip through).
Brain fart for being too used to closed-source software, where usually not accepting the license does void your right to use the software.
This would obviously be a horrible disaster for MS, because not only would they not make any money but it'd also make the news. ("We're sorry, but we can't process your transaction today, as we had to erase Windows XP from all our computers thanks to a supplementary EULA from Microsoft. Please call back in two to three weeks when we have completed our rollout of Windows 3.1.")
But what a deal! You'd be saving $1,500, once you spent $25,000 on the rest!
I understand why you don't want to tie them to MS, but there's a time and a place. Maybe if you finish the course early, or if you seem to have a quick class, you can show them around the competing open source products near the end.
Somewhat more on-topic, there are devices that let you read and program the engine management chips for cars with electronic fuel injections. The most common use is to dump out the engine data as part of making high-performance custom chips, but you could probably also hook in a fast laptop (over a really fast interface) and control it from inside the car. Actually, I think I read about someone doing that, but I can't remember where any more.
But the real problem is making yourself limit it to just one year. Trust me, I've known too many people who meant to take off a year and then never went to college. Some of them will still be in their mid-20s, so they may go yet, but... frankly, if you're 25 and haven't gone to college, the odds are very much against ever going. And if you do go, you're going to be older than most of the seniors. That may not affect your social life, if you're outgoing and make friends easily. But if you're a little shy already, being older than everyone else may serve to make you feel even more different.
My other problem with taking a year off is that people usually do it for really bad reasons. I can't tell you how many people I've known who wanted to take a year off because they didn't know what they wanted to do. Guess what? Nobody knows what he wants to do at 18. (Well, some people do, but they're definitely the minority.) Even at college, this is true. Most people end up at college because they don't know what they want to do. It's another four years for you to try to figure it out. At most schools, you don't need to declare your major until your sophomore or junior year, and at mine, you could change your major at any time (provided it would still be possible for you to get enough credits in 5 years total).
Really, the only people I know who've been happy about taking time off from - and generally not going to - college are those who already know what they want to do. People who are going to work in the family business, start their own, things like that. Everyone else, without exception, has spoken to me of regretting taking the time off. "Man, I wish I'd gone to college... now I'm stuck in this dead-end job that I hate, and I've got too many bills to pay to quit and go to college."
Of course, your mileage may vary, but you should think long and hard about why you are taking time off.
Actually, I suppose it really is a good thing: the people who want this new behavior can have it, and the people who don't are likely to be the ones who'll make-world anyway. I ain't agin it, I'm fer it, and ignore all statements to the contrary!
There's nothing wrong with asking for help if you need it, so long as you don't become totally reliant upon others. My message here is that, wherever possible, you should do things yourself instead of making others do them for you. In the workplace, that may not always be the right solution (you can't do everything yourself). But Ask /. isn't your workplace. The people here volunteer their time because they want to, and frivolous or wasteful questions distract from those which are interesting, engaging, and thought-provoking. You're welcome to tell us to buzz off and don't answer if we don't want to, and that's exactly what we're doing when we irritably post "Use Google" or "RTFM."
Effective troubleshooting is largely a process of elimination, and as such it works best if you are extremely orderly about it. For example, let's say a lamp "just stopped working," "for no reason." Well, first eliminate the bulb as the possible culprit: put in a new one, or test the old one in a lamp that's known to work. At the end, you should be able to say with certainty that the bulb works fine.
So now look at the lamp. Is the bulb socket corroded? Is the bulb making contact where it needs to? Is the lamp actually plugged in? Is the switch working? Again, at the end of the process, you should be able to say with certainty that the lmap is not the problem.
The you'd look at the wiring and whatever else might be involved. 99.9% of the time, you will find the problem well before you run out of places to look. It's exactly the same with computers. NIC isn't working? First swap in a NIC that's known to work. Then test cables that are known to work. Then you would probably do the same from the other end of the connection. Monitor isn't working? Try it on a different computer, or try a different monitor on your computer. Try a different video card. Different cable. And so on.
The other useful part here is that narrowing your questions like that greatly improves your chances of success with a search engine. Putting "my NIC doesn't work" into Google isn't going to help; but putting "my NIC transmits, but won't receive" probably is. Putting "permission denied" into Google is going to get you thousands of pages back, but putting "linux ifconfig permission denied" is probably going to put your answer at the very top. And so on. And, if you still are stumped and have to ask someone for help, at least you can provide a detailed explanation of what you have tried, which improves your odds of getting a qualified (and correct) answer back.
Because of this, I very seldom have to ask any questions. When I do, I usually ask either knowledgeable people I already know, or I post my question on USENET. This is primarily a question of competence, unfortunately; most web boards, IRC groups, and so on are full primarily of ignorant people who think they are really smart, and misleading or inaccurate replies can waste hours of my time if I don't correctly identify them as such. (Plus, they cause the knowledgeable people to get lost in the noise.)
Also, this was really long.
It's also possible that this money could be used well. Of course it's not going to lower the price we pay for the games, but it may mean that EA will be slightly more willing to take a risk on a new game. But I suppose if Hollywood is the example, the reverse will be true.
I'm reluctant to say it's normal, but I can definitely say that it can be normal. My monitor smelled like burning plastic for a week after I bought it, and there's certainly nothing wrong with it. (It probably was small styrofoam chunks that broke off the packaging material and slipped through the grille on top.) My computer smelled like "new electronics" for a week, because someone at the factory got thermal grease on the inside of the case and the heat just magnified the smell. Gave me horrible, splitting headaches too.
I think it's pretty common to encounter strange smells during burn-ins.
First, there are two kinds of tweezers: one you squeeze to close, and one you squeeze to open. The latter are much easier to work with in small spaces, since you don't have to hold them.
Second, I use my "flat-head" screwdriver all the time for things like prying. Nothing serious, of course, mostly for things like working snug case covers loose. You can use the many-in-one screwdriver for that purpose, but it's not quite as good for it (and it's heavier and bulkier).
Third - and this one is priceless - one of those screw-grabbers. It's shaped like a syringe, and when you push in the top part, thin little "grabbers" stick out and can be used to grab all sorts of things (usually screws, but anything about that size will do). It's even handy for starting screws going, since you can't drop the screw out of it: you just stick the screw in the grabbers, let it tighten, then turn it into the hole. Once it gets going, you can swap out to a screwdriver. This is so valuable for places where there's not enough room to get your fingers, and where the screw can become lost forever if you drop it trying to get it in.
If you work with network stuff a lot, you'll want a crimping tool and a wire cutter/stripper. Mine is pretty fool-proof: you put it in the slot for the gauge of wire it is, squeeze hard, and it takes off the insulation without cutting the wire. A big timesaver there.
Oh, and mine also came with a plastic capped cylinder that initially held solder. But as I never use the soldering iron, I put a couple bags of computer-type screws in there. When I'm working on a system, I take the bags out (they ziplock closed) and store the screws I remove in the cylinder to keep from losing them.
The kit I have, for reference, is one of the Compaq-branded ones that used to be available at Radio Shack.
The problem is that there are, on any given day, thousands and thousands of people clamoring for the undivided attention of one congressman. Even worse, unless you work for a known lobby of some sort, most people assume you speak only for yourself and maybe a few of your friends.
To get past the various layers of aides and help, even to get your name mentioned to your congressman, you need to make them believe you represent a lot of their constituents... or, if not that, at least a lot of the constituents who VOTE. You also need to convince them that you are really serious about this, and that the issue matters to you a great deal. One way of doing this is with money. Donating $1000 to your Senator tells him "My problem is worth at least $1000, if you solve it for me." Getting 50 like-minded individuals together, forming a non-profit, and having them all donate money too... that will get you noticed. Maybe not by the congressman, but by someone who will bring your problems to his attention. I'm not a big advocate of the money-for-votes philosophy, but it doesn't HAVE to be the same thing as corruption.
I'm just not entirely sure what you have against lobbying groups. It's simply not possible to have a democracy with 150 million citizens. The closest we can get is the representative kind, which is what we have, and SIGs and their ilk HELP the little guy. (Environmentalists make up a pretty small percentage of the total population of the country, but because of big lobbying groups they often get their way.)
Somewhat to my surprise, nobody has mentioned this yet. But there may be a decent market in LAN parties and competitions. The only problem here is that it's pretty sporadic, so I'd echo the suggestion to rent out your space to classes and such most of the time. But say, every month have a party/competition that you advertise in local arcades and such. Charge a nominal fee. Set up schedules, ladders, make everyone feel like it's really professional; arrange for people to watch matches when they aren't in them, all sorts of things like that. Let people bring their own computers if they want (maybe you could charge a little less in that case). Sell drinks and food for a reasonable price. At the end of the day, give out $500 or so in prizes. Or maybe you can get local businesses to donate computer equipment in return for putting their posters on the wall or using their logos as background images.
I know of places that do things like this, and people show up more for the experience than the money. (OK, they show up for the money at first, but after that it's just an excuse to hang out with fellow nerds.) All those people who are saying LAN parties are basically like Internet games have no clue: being at a LAN party is TOTALLY different. Even games you normally hate become fun when you're in a room full of guys shouting and laughing and generally having a great time.
The catch is, as I already said, you won't be able to fill your place all the time. But on the plus side, if you have the floor space, you can recycle your "obsolete" computers into the classroom if you can't resell them. And if people watch matches using e.g. HLTV, you can let the spectators use those crummy old computers and stuff the keyboards in a drawer.
I think the above misunderstanding is the root of many UI design problems. The worst part is that most people seem to think they only need to worry about how intuitive a UI is. If you want proof that an intuitive UI can be hideously complex and difficult to use, check out the FreeS/WAN documentation on configuring Windows 2000 to do IPsec with a Linux machine. It doesn't matter if you know what IPsec even is, the screenshots illustrate the problem well enough. (About six layers of notebooks, with six tabs each; controls all over every page; buttons everywhere; it's practically a treatise on when you should just give up and skip the GUI.) It takes about fifteen minutes to do what would take five minutes (probably much less) on Linux.
NASA probably has rules on how it can or can't accept money, so that would require investigation. But I don't see why you couldn't just "tax yourself" and send off money when you rent Robinson Crusoe on Mars. No need for the government to be involved. Hell, you could probably set up a jar at your local Blockbuster and get some money. Or we could set up a NASA Charity derived from the /. membership. Or whatever.
I realize that most of the time people say "I'd be willing to pay for that!" they are being a little optimistic, but for those of you who aren't... I much prefer voluntary donations to mandatory ones, i.e., the many forms of government handouts.
Again, let me emphasize: XFS and JFS already can do this. XFS did it first, and the JFS people were primarily waiting for de facto standardization of the API (they will be using the same one as XFS uses). All we need now is for programs to start taking advantage of the existing functionality. In this case, we need programs that provide ID3-like functionality and an mp3/ogg browser that does the same.
I will concede, however, that we need more people to use EA-capable filesystems for this really to take hold. Changing the "default" filesystem on the major distros would sure do that. But implementing the EA stubs (which may already have been done in 2.5 kernels) for e[23]fs would also do the trick, and pretty much leave Reiser as the only modern Linux FS that (last I checked) doesn't support EAs.
They've made so many good products crippled by unusable drivers. It's kind of a shame. I know I'll never buy an ATI product after my one experience with them. I've already talked several friends out of purchases. Even if it should ever come to pass that ATI has the best cards (and drivers), the company's attitude has convinced me never to buy any ATI product, no matter what.
I wonder how many other people feel this way about ATI. I know of at least a few.