Yeah, they tried to pull the "it's a software/OS issue" card on me, and that there were not any hardware issues. I had to point to their own damn site where there was an issue with this specific laptop before they'd even talk to me. Then it became, "we're working on an update to fix the issue", which I assumed to mean a BIOS update of some sort. The update was apparently just a patch so that Photoshop (which wasn't the app I was having issues with) wouldn't run into the issue, as a lot of people were using that particular model for photo-editing (17" screen etc).
So yeah, it took me pulling my records of when I first encountered the issue (within warranty) and then threatening legal action to get them to even support me without paying for the call. After that I was able to wrangle out a 1GB stick of RAM as an alternative to the dual 512MB's it had issues with. The laptop worked fine on a single - larger - stick of RAM.
Nearly all bugs are going to be found in the first couple of years
Or - like my old laptop - they just don't bother to fix them but instead tell you to buy a newer model/product. Back in the day, my former laptop had an issue where if you actually used both RAM slots, it would cause random freezes or spontaneous reboots. It was actually an issue with the Northbridge.
At first, HP said they were working on a fix and refused to properly RMA my laptop. Later, they said there was no fix, but - oops sorry - you're out of warranty now. After much bitching and threatening I got some extra RAM to use in a single slot, but I hate to think of all the people that were screwed by this issue.
Second issue: HP "tablet" laptops (reversible screen) were one of many types affected by nvidia chips which had heat issues. IIRC, the chips were soldered on the bottom of the board, and over time the heat would cause the solder to loosen until the chip started to come off the board. Many other manufacturers actually replaced bad models with good ones. HP would just replace the laptop with the same model until your warranty was done. In fact, HP later released laptops with the same design, but a less thermally inefficient video card. The laptops still overheated because the heat dissipation was still *terrible* - oft killing the NIC instead of the video card - but it took a bit longer to do so (usually long enough that you were out-of-warranty once it happened).
Indeed, a "gut" feeling could also be that a person of a certain race/colour was driving a fancy car (which is reality is just racial profiling). More than that should be needed for pulling a stop.
I have a Pebble and charging is probably the least convenient part of things (plug in USB adaptor, plug in charger cable, charge watch). The little magnetic charger clip isn't too bad, but is pretty easily detached if things get bumped.Being able to have a "base station" of some sort that does wireless charging - similar to newer phones can - would be very nice. They could have designer base-stations that look nice as well.
Make it look like, and then all you need to do is drop you watch on the little pad before bedtime. No messing around with cables etc, which reduces clutter.
The problem is then you end up with the a**holes being the towing companies. Plenty of issues around here where they've been caught ticketing people who actually still have time on the meter, aren't parked in the area the towing company is responsible for, etc.
I got nicked parking in a lot that had pay parking at certain hours, but also a sign saying free customer parking. It was fairly ambiguous as to whether it was always free for customers of the mall, pay after 8pm (most businesses were closed but the liquor store etc stay open later) for everyone, or if customers of non-mall businesses were allowed to pay+park after 8pm.
Excuse me sir, but I believe that based you accidentally overpaid for your timbits and coffee, can you report back to Tim Horton's. Oh, and this long cylindrical object with a fuse that was in your check-on, you can have this back now, thanks.
This is something I've always loved about OO/LO. Sure, you can install a PDF printer for use with MS Office but it's a lot more complicated and less intuitive. I tried setting that up for somebody and explaining "no, it's not a real printer, it's a fake printer that goes to PDF" was a lot harder than just saying "use this menu to save in PDF format"
Training can actually be easier, *ESPECIALLY* for those were used to the older office versions (pre-ribbon bar). That stupid thing actually pushed a number of people from the office side of the fence over to OO, as OO was often more like the older non-ribbon MS Office than the newer versions of MS Office were...
It's not as if this were a realtime fast-action combat, it's time-dilated which basically allows the server to handle things at a fair pace. 2200 connections to a given server isn't that huge of a number for something that's being processed in such a fashion.
Because that good education could also serve to provide applicable knowledge to one's adversaries, especially in the science and engineering fields
Unnnnh, so instead the "bad guys" just spend a little cash to send people to a school where they're taught these things. I believe some of those involved in 9-11 were actually fairly well educated in this regard.
Trading a few hundred thousand or more better-educated members of the general populace for a few potential fanatics isn't such a bad deal.
Seems to me he started with the internal stuff, and then - when pretty much all the allied countries turned against him - he started revealing other stuff as well. So now he has allies in the international scene, as well as putting the gov't on notice that there's plenty more (and possibly worse) that could be let out if they just decide to solve the problem by "removing" him.
And this, my friend, is a ******* art and it is difficult as hell.
Thank you for this, sir (or perhaps madam). It's not sure just that one must be knowledgeable in a topic, but also that a teacher should be able to convey knowledge of said topic in a way that's digestible by the potential audience (varying by the age/etc of the audience).
I've had teachers that were exceptionally smart in their field, but were not good at passing along information to students. My best teachers were those that were probably were enthusiastic and skilled at passing on knowledge, even if they were at "rocket scientist" level for knowledge in their field.
why is the Teacher's Union demonized here but the prison guards or border guards' union is not
Visibility? What percentage of people have kids in school and/or are affected by teachers VS prison guard/border guards? Also, a general mentality that those in prison should to some extent suffer as punishment VS kids being in school to improve themselves.
The teachers will argue that this is largely, and in my view accurately, out of their control.
I've not worked in U.S. school districts. I've heard the pay there can be a lot worse, but I'd assume some other things are common. I have worked in several Canadian school districts (tech, not teaching), and I'd have to say that while there are definitely some teachers who can end up with a class composition that hinders education, there are still a notable number of teachers who are, frankly, not fit to teach. Most were older, and seemed to adopt the mantra of "countdown to retirement", enjoying the protection of seniority without providing any benefit from their "experience" to their classes.
Many of these staff members had the attitude of being there to teach but being completely unwilling to learn. This included teachers with incredibly poor core english skills (spelling/grammar/etc), as well as terrible technical and social skills. There were teachers who taught things that were out-of-date (as in, no longer correct), or just straight out wrong (never correct). These teachers generally refused to be corrected and punished those who pointed out their mistakes. Plenty of teachers also were catching cat-naps during class time. Their favorite response to a question was essentially RTFM as opposed to providing guidance.
Meanwhile, there are many other teachers (usually younger and female) who were pouring not only their professional time but also personal time and money into supporting classes. Unfortunately "Billy got a bad grade" isn't an adequate measure of a teacher, as the number of Billies may be simply a case of class composition, but teachers who go years with terrible feedback should be subject to some form of review process and/or have corrective measures enforced.
Really? Because I'm fairly sure that - from this perspective - it works the same with a doctor-assisted donor or adoption, and in those situations the state has no case against the donor.
Regarding the 1GB RAM thing, one of the biggest issues I found with early Vista - other than drivers on some machines - was machines that came with inadequate RAM and swapped out from the beginning.
Really, 2-4GB was necessary for any sort of decent performance, but you had systems with even 1GB loaded with Vista and Norton Systemworks starting in swap right after boot.
Vista was bad, but Vista with the preinstalled crapware and AV suites with a nightmare
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, they tried to pull the "it's a software/OS issue" card on me, and that there were not any hardware issues. I had to point to their own damn site where there was an issue with this specific laptop before they'd even talk to me.
Then it became, "we're working on an update to fix the issue", which I assumed to mean a BIOS update of some sort.
The update was apparently just a patch so that Photoshop (which wasn't the app I was having issues with) wouldn't run into the issue, as a lot of people were using that particular model for photo-editing (17" screen etc).
So yeah, it took me pulling my records of when I first encountered the issue (within warranty) and then threatening legal action to get them to even support me without paying for the call. After that I was able to wrangle out a 1GB stick of RAM as an alternative to the dual 512MB's it had issues with. The laptop worked fine on a single - larger - stick of RAM.
Nearly all bugs are going to be found in the first couple of years
Or - like my old laptop - they just don't bother to fix them but instead tell you to buy a newer model/product. Back in the day, my former laptop had an issue where if you actually used both RAM slots, it would cause random freezes or spontaneous reboots. It was actually an issue with the Northbridge.
At first, HP said they were working on a fix and refused to properly RMA my laptop. Later, they said there was no fix, but - oops sorry - you're out of warranty now. After much bitching and threatening I got some extra RAM to use in a single slot, but I hate to think of all the people that were screwed by this issue.
Second issue: HP "tablet" laptops (reversible screen) were one of many types affected by nvidia chips which had heat issues. IIRC, the chips were soldered on the bottom of the board, and over time the heat would cause the solder to loosen until the chip started to come off the board. Many other manufacturers actually replaced bad models with good ones. HP would just replace the laptop with the same model until your warranty was done.
In fact, HP later released laptops with the same design, but a less thermally inefficient video card. The laptops still overheated because the heat dissipation was still *terrible* - oft killing the NIC instead of the video card - but it took a bit longer to do so (usually long enough that you were out-of-warranty once it happened).
Indeed, a "gut" feeling could also be that a person of a certain race/colour was driving a fancy car (which is reality is just racial profiling). More than that should be needed for pulling a stop.
I have a Pebble and charging is probably the least convenient part of things (plug in USB adaptor, plug in charger cable, charge watch).
The little magnetic charger clip isn't too bad, but is pretty easily detached if things get bumped.Being able to have a "base station" of some sort that does wireless charging - similar to newer phones can - would be very nice. They could have designer base-stations that look nice as well.
Make it look like, and then all you need to do is drop you watch on the little pad before bedtime. No messing around with cables etc, which reduces clutter.
The problem is then you end up with the a**holes being the towing companies. Plenty of issues around here where they've been caught ticketing people who actually still have time on the meter, aren't parked in the area the towing company is responsible for, etc.
I got nicked parking in a lot that had pay parking at certain hours, but also a sign saying free customer parking. It was fairly ambiguous as to whether it was always free for customers of the mall, pay after 8pm (most businesses were closed but the liquor store etc stay open later) for everyone, or if customers of non-mall businesses were allowed to pay+park after 8pm.
Excuse me sir, but I believe that based you accidentally overpaid for your timbits and coffee, can you report back to Tim Horton's.
Oh, and this long cylindrical object with a fuse that was in your check-on, you can have this back now, thanks.
File -> Export to PDF
Right in the menu
This is something I've always loved about OO/LO. Sure, you can install a PDF printer for use with MS Office but it's a lot more complicated and less intuitive. I tried setting that up for somebody and explaining "no, it's not a real printer, it's a fake printer that goes to PDF" was a lot harder than just saying "use this menu to save in PDF format"
Training can actually be easier, *ESPECIALLY* for those were used to the older office versions (pre-ribbon bar).
That stupid thing actually pushed a number of people from the office side of the fence over to OO, as OO was often more like the older non-ribbon MS Office than the newer versions of MS Office were...
It's not as if this were a realtime fast-action combat, it's time-dilated which basically allows the server to handle things at a fair pace.
2200 connections to a given server isn't that huge of a number for something that's being processed in such a fashion.
And made renewals and all sorts of other things a bit pain in the backside...
Facebook can be used to help people organize to overthrow the regime the U.S. government does not want
So can education....
Because that good education could also serve to provide applicable knowledge to one's adversaries, especially in the science and engineering fields
Unnnnh, so instead the "bad guys" just spend a little cash to send people to a school where they're taught these things. I believe some of those involved in 9-11 were actually fairly well educated in this regard.
Trading a few hundred thousand or more better-educated members of the general populace for a few potential fanatics isn't such a bad deal.
EA is a pretty huge culprit for this too.
Why does it need internet and access to my contacts
"Oh, that's um... to enable social game functionality"
In reality, internet access="needs-to-be-online DRM", and who knows what they're doing with your contacts
It worked OK on my old blackberry. If it's such an issue for some users, make it an optional control.
Obama won't be up for election next term.
Seems to me he started with the internal stuff, and then - when pretty much all the allied countries turned against him - he started revealing other stuff as well. So now he has allies in the international scene, as well as putting the gov't on notice that there's plenty more (and possibly worse) that could be let out if they just decide to solve the problem by "removing" him.
You can do a lot more with the PC, however (that said, you can also get infected with a virus and suffer a good deal more frustration).
Still, I can play multiplayer without paying for a subscription, and have plenty of affordable games via Steam/GoG.
And this, my friend, is a ******* art and it is difficult as hell.
Thank you for this, sir (or perhaps madam). It's not sure just that one must be knowledgeable in a topic, but also that a teacher should be able to convey knowledge of said topic in a way that's digestible by the potential audience (varying by the age/etc of the audience).
I've had teachers that were exceptionally smart in their field, but were not good at passing along information to students. My best teachers were those that were probably were enthusiastic and skilled at passing on knowledge, even if they were at "rocket scientist" level for knowledge in their field.
why is the Teacher's Union demonized here but the prison guards or border guards' union is not
Visibility? What percentage of people have kids in school and/or are affected by teachers VS prison guard/border guards? Also, a general mentality that those in prison should to some extent suffer as punishment VS kids being in school to improve themselves.
The teachers will argue that this is largely, and in my view accurately, out of their control.
I've not worked in U.S. school districts. I've heard the pay there can be a lot worse, but I'd assume some other things are common. I have worked in several Canadian school districts (tech, not teaching), and I'd have to say that while there are definitely some teachers who can end up with a class composition that hinders education, there are still a notable number of teachers who are, frankly, not fit to teach. Most were older, and seemed to adopt the mantra of "countdown to retirement", enjoying the protection of seniority without providing any benefit from their "experience" to their classes.
Many of these staff members had the attitude of being there to teach but being completely unwilling to learn. This included teachers with incredibly poor core english skills (spelling/grammar/etc), as well as terrible technical and social skills. There were teachers who taught things that were out-of-date (as in, no longer correct), or just straight out wrong (never correct). These teachers generally refused to be corrected and punished those who pointed out their mistakes. Plenty of teachers also were catching cat-naps during class time. Their favorite response to a question was essentially RTFM as opposed to providing guidance.
Meanwhile, there are many other teachers (usually younger and female) who were pouring not only their professional time but also personal time and money into supporting classes. Unfortunately "Billy got a bad grade" isn't an adequate measure of a teacher, as the number of Billies may be simply a case of class composition, but teachers who go years with terrible feedback should be subject to some form of review process and/or have corrective measures enforced.
Really? Because I'm fairly sure that - from this perspective - it works the same with a doctor-assisted donor or adoption, and in those situations the state has no case against the donor.
Regarding the 1GB RAM thing, one of the biggest issues I found with early Vista - other than drivers on some machines - was machines that came with inadequate RAM and swapped out from the beginning.
Really, 2-4GB was necessary for any sort of decent performance, but you had systems with even 1GB loaded with Vista and Norton Systemworks starting in swap right after boot.
Vista was bad, but Vista with the preinstalled crapware and AV suites with a nightmare
I've often wondered if it would be useful to have RAM in socketed chips (similar to a CPU) rather than on a stick.
Smartphones also have crappy cameras comparative to - say - a DSLR or even just a dedicated point-and-shoot.
However, sometimes the best camera is the one you have with you. Same logic applies to portable game platforms...
Isn't this the default on many newer Ubuntu/Debian variants?