Ever drive by a gas station and notice the prices? That's the main issue right there, dude. Supersonic flight uses something like four times the fuel. Every single airline is competing on prices. Do the math.
I guess you are pretty fucking stupid. Microsoft is a big company. The people on the phone probably aren't even in the same country as the people that repair it. Not to mention, it's a repair service for a commodity loss-leader piece of shit that often breaks. Sounds like he did get his particular console back, which is what he requested.
If he had big orange stickers on it saying "DO NOT CLEAN", I could maybe imagine that it wouldn't get cleaned. But no, he included a 350-word letter. The first step in any RMA process is that the products get taken out of the box, the serial numbers get scanned, and everything else gets thrown away. Considering that it would take longer to read the letter than it would to process 20 consoles, I highly doubt that anyone looked at it.
Even then, if the repair procedure specified by Microsoft includes a step that involves cleaning the case, the repair contractor better damn well clean the case. Otherwise, they could have problems with their ISO certification, as well as be in violation of their contract with Microsoft.
Please, shut the fuck up if you don't know what you are talking about. It takes ZERO energy to have a static magnetic field, no matter how strong. There is nothing that says a permanent magnet should ever lose its magnetism -- in fact, Samarium Cobalt or NdFeB magnets don't really weaken over time. Anyone who thinks there is free energy to be extracted from a static magnetic field is an idiot.
The inventor in question is a moron who could not even finish an electronics technology program. I suppose someone who doesn't have any goddamn clue about the relevant theory probably thinks he has something. Considering that large numbers of much smarter people have been playing with motors and magnetic circuits for about 140 years now, I doubt there is anything new to be discovered in this field.
Good god you are an idiot. I can definitely see you purchase exclusively low-end Dell notebooks. You know, there is a reason people buy premium hardware. It's not built out of cheap black plastic covered with cheap silver paint, it might actually last longer than 6 months, and you don't have to wait on hold for hours just to speak to Indian tech support with no fucking clue what's going on. Not to mention, Apple laptops might actually be able to play an MP3 file without skipping every 5 seconds and connect to wireless networks reliably (unlike every recent Dell notebook I've used). It might have to do with, say, hiring American engineers who have a clue instead of letting the Chinese OEMs design stuff. Or maybe it's that whole thing about not cutting corners. Not sure.
Just so you know, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I just had enough of Dell's shittiness one day and sold my piece of shit Inspiron to some poor SOB on eBay. He probably thought he was getting a deal.
But you can't swap out batteries in the middle of a trip.
Pretty much all business-class seats on airplanes have power outlets. Besides, it has 5 hours of battery life -- enough for most trips. But I don't think its audience is either hardcore geeks or traveling businessman types.
If you go to a site and have to read something from a CD, you need to carry a USB optical drive with you.
That's really mainly relevant for sysadmin types. Besides, how many people don't own a USB stick?
No firewire ports if you happened to be using any of those.
Who uses firewire these days? And for what? I've used the firewire port on my macbook once, to grab some video off a DV camcorder. This obviously isn't something you would do with a subnotebook.
No ethernet port, so you'll need the USB adapter if you go somewhere without WiFi.
Never traveled anywhere where I could only get an ethernet connection. Usually, that's only the case in an office-type environment (where you would be fine with a desktop machine, or a full-size laptop, or a USB adapter). Besides, modern ethernet adapters are tiny.
One USB, so you can use wired ethernet or an optical drive or a thumb drive or an external mouse. But only one at a time.
Well, only if you don't know about USB hubs.
Seriously, some of you people sound like this is meant to replace a full-size desktop. It's not. It's a thin notebook that you can bring anywhere -- say out to lunch, or on a vacation. I doubt any corporate types will want to make it their primary machine.
You don't know what you are talking about. It's acceptable to use a picture of a Ford if you are using it in a nominative sense (to refer to that object). In this case, it's acceptable, since it's being used to identify a specific car that you are selling. What's not acceptable is, say, selling door mats with Ford logos, or Coca-Cola key fobs. I am not sure where the calendar situation fits in; however, the Mustang club people obviously decided they did not wish to challenge Ford in court, so this is pretty much a moot point.
Also, this is not estoppel at all. You are under no obligation to enforce your rights -- ever. You can never defend yourself from a legal claim by saying "well you should have sued that guy too." Estoppel is when you promise or clearly imply something, and then renege on it. This rarely, if ever, happens in trademark law. You can maybe get away with using the doctrine of laches if, say, the plaintiff waits for damages to accumulate before suing someone. However, even this is rarely successful (example: the GIF shitfest).
Uh, let's see... Bloggers don't care if they get kicked out, which is why they tend to behave like children. For a professional journalist, this kind of behavior would heavily damage their career.
Not to mention, just because there is a difference between machine and hand-counted districts does not mean there is fraud. I doubt the machines were randomly distributed throughout the state. In fact, I would guess that most precincts with a lot of tax revenue would have machines, while rural and/or less affluent regions would be hand counting ballots. In that case, you would expect there to be differences between the two.
Jesus, where do you guys go? ITT Tech? If so, what do you expect? I have a hard time believing that any real university would offer an actual class in web design (except maybe as part of a graphics design program or something). Sounds like a really bad vo-tech college, though.
Um, the students almost always know more than the teacher does, at least when it comes to technology. It just sounds like this was a non-technology related class. If the teacher knows his/her subject area (such as English), then it's not a problem.
I'd say you can do significantly cheaper, at least for small die sizes. I have seen prices as low as $20k for 100+ chips (on a multiproject wafer). Of course, this pretty much depends on the process and on how long you can wait. And the chip layout/synthesis/verification software costs several hundred thousand bucks per year per seat.
Profiteering? More like competition gone out of control. Imagine how much it would cost if wireline communications had like 20 different companies running wires to the same building, and fighting with each other for the privilege. That is what's happening in the US. Getting spectrum and locating towers is kind of a bitch, in case you didn't know. And of course you need 5 times as many towers and spectrum, since Sprint can't exactly use Verizon or AT&T cell towers/frequencies.
In any case, the US probably has the cheapest landline phone service of any industrialized country. In Europe, landlines were always billed at assrape prices, which explains the popularity of cellphones over there (despite the fact that they are about the same price as prepaid phones in the US).
Yeah. Fucking. Right. A good bit of Europe's economy are state-controlled enterprises (ever hear of Airbus?). It's a system that works very well, and Russia is moving in that direction. The only people missing out are American investors who were hoping to get something for nothing, like they did in the Yeltsin years.
I don't really see the need to put ANY DRM on the PC. You could easily use a public-key encryption scheme, where the publisher simply encrypts a book for your particular device, and gives you the encrypted file. In that case, you could make the device look like a USB hard drive and manage it with any file manager. Books could be purchased using the device's serial number.
I REALLY doubt the satellites running the phones have enough intelligence for P2P-type operation. Most communication satellites are fairly dumb transponders. They don't do much other than receive a signal on one frequency and rebroadcast it on another. This gives them a lot of flexibility over their lifetime. This also means that if the ground operations center goes down, those satellite phones will do precisely jack shit. Satellites are also susceptible to jamming and other denial of service attacks. Ham radio is more difficult to jam, and requires absolutely no infrastructure.
The OLPC can survive a drop in the mud, where an equivalent drop may make part of a book unreadable
Yeah, but I bet it can't survive a drop on the floor from a desk while it's open. It has an LCD display, and those tend to be pretty fragile.
I'm pretty sure you just dated yourself here, which actually explains a lot of your other comments.
I'm in college, dude. I don't really even know anyone who prefers collaborating online. Normal people tend to prefer to interact face to face. The best medium there is a notebook or a whiteboard.
Again, I don't think you've either played with the OLPC device or grew up in the "digital age" or you'd realize this is very plausible.
I grew up in the digital age, and I realize it's not very plausible. I remember learning how to program, and I really only progressed beyond 20-line programs around 10th grade. I eventually got pretty good at it, but nothing I did in 5th grade was even close to real programming, and the educational value I got out of it is pretty much zero.
The fact is, with few exceptions, humans don't have abstract reasoning skills at the elementary school level. That's why algebra is typically only taught around 7th grade. Trying to teach programming in elementary school is fairly pointless. Hell, trying to teach programming at any grade level is fairly pointless. Schools need to be focused on developing basic skills, like reading, math, science, and related disciplines. Programming falls into about the same category as wood/metal shop and welding classes.
$180 may print a few textbooks, not dozens - but the OLPC could hold hundreds.
$180 will print hundreds of books, assuming you don't print them in 4 colors on nice glossy paper and don't have to pay absurd licensing fees. Just because you are used to paying ridiculous prices for books doesn't mean they actually cost a lot to print.
Textbooks are vulnerable to water, fire, tearing, etc.
And a $180 plastic laptop is fireproof? Actually, I bet it wouldn't even survive a good drop. Not to mention, a book with a torn page is still useful. A laptop with a busted screen is junk.
Again I'm not sure where you draw this conclusion, and again you must not be familiar with the OLPC device. It encourages collaboration and sharing much more than a pencil and paper.
I am very familiar with the OLPC device. I also am familiar with "collaboration". Let's just say that when I need to collaborate, I use paper or a whiteboard, not a computer.
Also almost all program code is transparent to the user - people can make changes to code or write their own basic code (this is done very well with samples, etc.).
Yeah. Fucking. Right. If you think little third-world kids will just start hacking their software, you are smoking something. Many of those people cannot even READ. To program, you need a good grasp of mathematics, abstract reasoning, English, and the ability to read technical documentation. If you have kids that can do that, you might as well just give them the diploma and tell them to go work on their PhD.
I am still trying to understand what purpose this laptop serves for "education". The classmate/Microsoft solution at least gets people familiar with Microsoft's office tools (which are necessary skills for many jobs, even in the developing world). The OLPC project appears to be a completely useless social experiment.
I fail to see how the laptops will help anyone become more educated, especially since $180 can be used to print dozens of textbooks (which are infinitely more useful for education). Textbooks don't break, don't require maintenance, and can be used for many years. In the developing world, $180 could pay a teacher's salary for at least a month. Kids can "express themselves" much better with pencil and paper than with a laptop.
You do realize that if you or your son (or anybody else) is "dying in the gutter" from anything, you can wander into the nearest Emergency Room in the US and get health care that isn't based on your ability to pay.
Maybe you should try that before you suggest others do it. That law doesn't exactly get enforced, and you probably won't get treated if you are, say, dying from cancer or have something that won't kill you tomorrow.
Perhaps if they (and everyone else) got guaranteed six figure incomes, things would be different. I'll vote to try that out if you can figure out how to pay for it.
Maybe if the US government didn't waste billions of dollars "freeing" Iraq and building bridges to nowhere in Alaska, it would actually have money to spend on social programs.
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Ever drive by a gas station and notice the prices? That's the main issue right there, dude. Supersonic flight uses something like four times the fuel. Every single airline is competing on prices. Do the math.
I guess you are pretty fucking stupid. Microsoft is a big company. The people on the phone probably aren't even in the same country as the people that repair it. Not to mention, it's a repair service for a commodity loss-leader piece of shit that often breaks. Sounds like he did get his particular console back, which is what he requested.
If he had big orange stickers on it saying "DO NOT CLEAN", I could maybe imagine that it wouldn't get cleaned. But no, he included a 350-word letter. The first step in any RMA process is that the products get taken out of the box, the serial numbers get scanned, and everything else gets thrown away. Considering that it would take longer to read the letter than it would to process 20 consoles, I highly doubt that anyone looked at it.
Even then, if the repair procedure specified by Microsoft includes a step that involves cleaning the case, the repair contractor better damn well clean the case. Otherwise, they could have problems with their ISO certification, as well as be in violation of their contract with Microsoft.
Please, shut the fuck up if you don't know what you are talking about. It takes ZERO energy to have a static magnetic field, no matter how strong. There is nothing that says a permanent magnet should ever lose its magnetism -- in fact, Samarium Cobalt or NdFeB magnets don't really weaken over time. Anyone who thinks there is free energy to be extracted from a static magnetic field is an idiot.
The inventor in question is a moron who could not even finish an electronics technology program. I suppose someone who doesn't have any goddamn clue about the relevant theory probably thinks he has something. Considering that large numbers of much smarter people have been playing with motors and magnetic circuits for about 140 years now, I doubt there is anything new to be discovered in this field.
Good god you are an idiot. I can definitely see you purchase exclusively low-end Dell notebooks. You know, there is a reason people buy premium hardware. It's not built out of cheap black plastic covered with cheap silver paint, it might actually last longer than 6 months, and you don't have to wait on hold for hours just to speak to Indian tech support with no fucking clue what's going on. Not to mention, Apple laptops might actually be able to play an MP3 file without skipping every 5 seconds and connect to wireless networks reliably (unlike every recent Dell notebook I've used). It might have to do with, say, hiring American engineers who have a clue instead of letting the Chinese OEMs design stuff. Or maybe it's that whole thing about not cutting corners. Not sure.
Just so you know, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I just had enough of Dell's shittiness one day and sold my piece of shit Inspiron to some poor SOB on eBay. He probably thought he was getting a deal.
But you can't swap out batteries in the middle of a trip.
Pretty much all business-class seats on airplanes have power outlets. Besides, it has 5 hours of battery life -- enough for most trips. But I don't think its audience is either hardcore geeks or traveling businessman types.
If you go to a site and have to read something from a CD, you need to carry a USB optical drive with you.
That's really mainly relevant for sysadmin types. Besides, how many people don't own a USB stick?
No firewire ports if you happened to be using any of those.
Who uses firewire these days? And for what? I've used the firewire port on my macbook once, to grab some video off a DV camcorder. This obviously isn't something you would do with a subnotebook.
No ethernet port, so you'll need the USB adapter if you go somewhere without WiFi.
Never traveled anywhere where I could only get an ethernet connection. Usually, that's only the case in an office-type environment (where you would be fine with a desktop machine, or a full-size laptop, or a USB adapter). Besides, modern ethernet adapters are tiny.
One USB, so you can use wired ethernet or an optical drive or a thumb drive or an external mouse. But only one at a time.
Well, only if you don't know about USB hubs.
Seriously, some of you people sound like this is meant to replace a full-size desktop. It's not. It's a thin notebook that you can bring anywhere -- say out to lunch, or on a vacation. I doubt any corporate types will want to make it their primary machine.
The existing models have an easily-removable battery.
You don't know what you are talking about. It's acceptable to use a picture of a Ford if you are using it in a nominative sense (to refer to that object). In this case, it's acceptable, since it's being used to identify a specific car that you are selling. What's not acceptable is, say, selling door mats with Ford logos, or Coca-Cola key fobs. I am not sure where the calendar situation fits in; however, the Mustang club people obviously decided they did not wish to challenge Ford in court, so this is pretty much a moot point.
Also, this is not estoppel at all. You are under no obligation to enforce your rights -- ever. You can never defend yourself from a legal claim by saying "well you should have sued that guy too." Estoppel is when you promise or clearly imply something, and then renege on it. This rarely, if ever, happens in trademark law. You can maybe get away with using the doctrine of laches if, say, the plaintiff waits for damages to accumulate before suing someone. However, even this is rarely successful (example: the GIF shitfest).
Uh, let's see... Bloggers don't care if they get kicked out, which is why they tend to behave like children. For a professional journalist, this kind of behavior would heavily damage their career.
Not to mention, just because there is a difference between machine and hand-counted districts does not mean there is fraud. I doubt the machines were randomly distributed throughout the state. In fact, I would guess that most precincts with a lot of tax revenue would have machines, while rural and/or less affluent regions would be hand counting ballots. In that case, you would expect there to be differences between the two.
Jesus, where do you guys go? ITT Tech? If so, what do you expect? I have a hard time believing that any real university would offer an actual class in web design (except maybe as part of a graphics design program or something). Sounds like a really bad vo-tech college, though.
Um, the students almost always know more than the teacher does, at least when it comes to technology. It just sounds like this was a non-technology related class. If the teacher knows his/her subject area (such as English), then it's not a problem.
I'd say you can do significantly cheaper, at least for small die sizes. I have seen prices as low as $20k for 100+ chips (on a multiproject wafer). Of course, this pretty much depends on the process and on how long you can wait. And the chip layout/synthesis/verification software costs several hundred thousand bucks per year per seat.
Profiteering? More like competition gone out of control. Imagine how much it would cost if wireline communications had like 20 different companies running wires to the same building, and fighting with each other for the privilege. That is what's happening in the US. Getting spectrum and locating towers is kind of a bitch, in case you didn't know. And of course you need 5 times as many towers and spectrum, since Sprint can't exactly use Verizon or AT&T cell towers/frequencies.
In any case, the US probably has the cheapest landline phone service of any industrialized country. In Europe, landlines were always billed at assrape prices, which explains the popularity of cellphones over there (despite the fact that they are about the same price as prepaid phones in the US).
Um... is there any reason why you can't put the exhaust and intake snorkels 6 feet above the roof of the generator room?
Let me guess. You are a fucktard. You think Ron Paul should be president.
Yeah. Fucking. Right. A good bit of Europe's economy are state-controlled enterprises (ever hear of Airbus?). It's a system that works very well, and Russia is moving in that direction. The only people missing out are American investors who were hoping to get something for nothing, like they did in the Yeltsin years.
I don't really see the need to put ANY DRM on the PC. You could easily use a public-key encryption scheme, where the publisher simply encrypts a book for your particular device, and gives you the encrypted file. In that case, you could make the device look like a USB hard drive and manage it with any file manager. Books could be purchased using the device's serial number.
I REALLY doubt the satellites running the phones have enough intelligence for P2P-type operation. Most communication satellites are fairly dumb transponders. They don't do much other than receive a signal on one frequency and rebroadcast it on another. This gives them a lot of flexibility over their lifetime. This also means that if the ground operations center goes down, those satellite phones will do precisely jack shit. Satellites are also susceptible to jamming and other denial of service attacks. Ham radio is more difficult to jam, and requires absolutely no infrastructure.
It's been changed a couple of years ago. Now you can go all the way up to an Extra-class license with no code requirement.
The OLPC can survive a drop in the mud, where an equivalent drop may make part of a book unreadable
Yeah, but I bet it can't survive a drop on the floor from a desk while it's open. It has an LCD display, and those tend to be pretty fragile.
I'm pretty sure you just dated yourself here, which actually explains a lot of your other comments.
I'm in college, dude. I don't really even know anyone who prefers collaborating online. Normal people tend to prefer to interact face to face. The best medium there is a notebook or a whiteboard.
Again, I don't think you've either played with the OLPC device or grew up in the "digital age" or you'd realize this is very plausible.
I grew up in the digital age, and I realize it's not very plausible. I remember learning how to program, and I really only progressed beyond 20-line programs around 10th grade. I eventually got pretty good at it, but nothing I did in 5th grade was even close to real programming, and the educational value I got out of it is pretty much zero.
The fact is, with few exceptions, humans don't have abstract reasoning skills at the elementary school level. That's why algebra is typically only taught around 7th grade. Trying to teach programming in elementary school is fairly pointless. Hell, trying to teach programming at any grade level is fairly pointless. Schools need to be focused on developing basic skills, like reading, math, science, and related disciplines. Programming falls into about the same category as wood/metal shop and welding classes.
$180 may print a few textbooks, not dozens - but the OLPC could hold hundreds.
$180 will print hundreds of books, assuming you don't print them in 4 colors on nice glossy paper and don't have to pay absurd licensing fees. Just because you are used to paying ridiculous prices for books doesn't mean they actually cost a lot to print.
Textbooks are vulnerable to water, fire, tearing, etc.
And a $180 plastic laptop is fireproof? Actually, I bet it wouldn't even survive a good drop. Not to mention, a book with a torn page is still useful. A laptop with a busted screen is junk.
Again I'm not sure where you draw this conclusion, and again you must not be familiar with the OLPC device. It encourages collaboration and sharing much more than a pencil and paper.
I am very familiar with the OLPC device. I also am familiar with "collaboration". Let's just say that when I need to collaborate, I use paper or a whiteboard, not a computer.
Also almost all program code is transparent to the user - people can make changes to code or write their own basic code (this is done very well with samples, etc.).
Yeah. Fucking. Right. If you think little third-world kids will just start hacking their software, you are smoking something. Many of those people cannot even READ. To program, you need a good grasp of mathematics, abstract reasoning, English, and the ability to read technical documentation. If you have kids that can do that, you might as well just give them the diploma and tell them to go work on their PhD.
I am still trying to understand what purpose this laptop serves for "education". The classmate/Microsoft solution at least gets people familiar with Microsoft's office tools (which are necessary skills for many jobs, even in the developing world). The OLPC project appears to be a completely useless social experiment.
I fail to see how the laptops will help anyone become more educated, especially since $180 can be used to print dozens of textbooks (which are infinitely more useful for education). Textbooks don't break, don't require maintenance, and can be used for many years. In the developing world, $180 could pay a teacher's salary for at least a month. Kids can "express themselves" much better with pencil and paper than with a laptop.
Now the remaining question: who wants this and why?
Uh, you are a retard. When it shows a zero, it's off. When it shows a 1, it's on.
You do realize that if you or your son (or anybody else) is "dying in the gutter" from anything, you can wander into the nearest Emergency Room in the US and get health care that isn't based on your ability to pay.
Maybe you should try that before you suggest others do it. That law doesn't exactly get enforced, and you probably won't get treated if you are, say, dying from cancer or have something that won't kill you tomorrow.
Perhaps if they (and everyone else) got guaranteed six figure incomes, things would be different. I'll vote to try that out if you can figure out how to pay for it.
Maybe if the US government didn't waste billions of dollars "freeing" Iraq and building bridges to nowhere in Alaska, it would actually have money to spend on social programs.