'It is true that I grew up in a Christian home, but I believe what I believe no matter what science says because of the personal impact it's had on my life.'
The things you have faith in are things you THINK are true. The things that science has shown are things everyone KNOWS to be true. You can have faith all day long but refusing to accept the findings of science is not ignorance, it is utter stupidity.
P.S. Science has not disproven Christianity, Science has disproven many of MAN'S interpretations of what is found in the Bible. That is the beauty (or curse) of the Bible, almost everything in it can be interpreted in so many ways that you can disprove interpretations until the end of time.
Personally I am agnostic, it is possible that a being created everything. I shy away from this possibility because as incredible and complex as everything around us is and as difficult as it is to believe that this aways was it is just that much more difficult to believe that a being that was so much more powerful, beautiful, and complex to have been able to create all this around us has always been. Having a creator may solve 'where did we come from and why are we here' but it only shifts those questions to become 'where did the creator come from and why is it here'.
As far as any religion on Earth being correct. Of course not, that is just silly. Some semi-literate desert dictator who wrote a book to enslave and manipulate didn't guess it right.
The AC did a fine job of responding but I will add.
'I never said that an expert won't give you a better result, in a computer or a car.'
You did say, what you said was quite straightforward and can't really be misinterpreted. You said the turnkey solutions are superior in assembly lines, automobiles, and computers. Let me refresh your memory.
'create turn-key implementations of said systems, which after ten years or so are better than what an expert could do themselves. It happened with assembly lines. It happened with automobiles. And it happened with computers,'
It's always puzzled me because I can't think of anything especially spectacular that outlook actually does. You might have trouble converting some power users because they are married to outlook specific behavior but 99% of outlook. I honestly haven't seen anything that should take more than 6 months or so to replicate in outlook. Most of the useful features are basic and obvious. Are some of them patented or something?
'the fact is the 'normal' people are nervous when using computer, thus believe it they are complicated'
That is only true of old people. Young people aren't afraid of the computer at all and they are more dangerous than the old people for preciously that reason. The old people think that just because the young people can figure out how to install a webcam and use a few applications they downloaded from the internet (along with all the spyware that came with those applications) that they are competent.
Not being afraid to use a computer is prerequisite to learning about the machine. Actually spending a few years to learn how computers function is prerequisite to administrating a machine.
Computers are as complex as anything man has designed. Nothing man has designed is really that complex, we actually don't design things to be difficult to understand we design them to be easy to understand. The material is a bit dry but the only thing standing between a reasonably bright individual and real understanding of a computer is the years it takes to learn and master the functioning of each layer of the hardware and operating system. You learn the physical operation of the hardware and then the logical operation of the hardware and so forth until you understand what is happening when you install an application.
For instance, many printer instructions will tell you to plug in the printer and then install the printer software. Unless your OS has a built-in driver AND succeeds in recognizing the hardware you plugged in then your normal self will NEVER get that printer to work without an expert.
Maybe 1 in 10 times you plug in a usb storage device in a winxp computer for the first time and instead of telling you after a moment that your hardware is ready to use it says installation failed. Subsequent plugging in also fails. Other thumb drives work. A normal person does not know how to fix this problem. Your tech savvy grandson doesn't either. Figuring out how to fix this problem the first time you encounter it will take seconds if you understand how the system works. Even someone who doesn't really understand but has been shown how to fix usb problems will figure it out. In this instance a normal person will be lucky because they'll think the thumb drive is bad and get a new one. The new one will probably work.
You install norton antivirus but the installation fails with a script error half way through. Crap, norton doesn't show up in add/remove programs. Norton won't let you install again, it says norton is already installed when you try. A real tech savvy teen might even discover the rnav.exe tool but alas it doesn't work. If they had called a technician to perform this task the tech could have first warned them off of norton and failing that could have utilized his deep understanding of the inner workings of the operating system to resolve this problem.
'If someone actually reads the dialog boxes that come up and pay attention to the warnings computers are very safe and easy to use'
Sure, they are safe and fairly easy to use. That doesn't mean they are safe and easy to administrate. I never said computers shouldn't be used by normal people. I said that normal people shouldn't select, install, configure, and maintain the hardware and software that will be used in them. Once they are setup for the normal people they should feel free to use them to their heart's content.
'And it happened with computers, more than ten years ago.'
Spoken like one of the laypeople or MCSE's I spoke to earlier. Next thing you know you'll be telling me how frontpage allows laypeople to design webpages. Just watch any real web coder cringe at that claim.
'which after ten years or so are better than what an expert could do themselves. It happened with assembly lines'
This must be in some strange alternate universe that you live in. Where I live custom built automobiles far exceed the cookie cutter vehicles you buy from a dealer. The same for anything produced on an assembly line (including aforementioned automobiles).
I'm not a mechanic but even I know that an expert can adjust his engine in even a cookie cutter vehicle to match the fuel he is using and get better performance and longer life than the rest of us. There is also a reason that every car in the Daytona 500 is built, tweaked, and customized by experts. Cookie cutter and assembly line production do NOT give better results, they simply increase quantity of a 'good enough' design in order to make it cheap and readily available.
I'm looking forward to base as well. Last time I tried it I found that it simply wasn't stable enough to use. The featureset was almost complete enough but the app crashed repeatedly on multiple computers.
'And outlook is tough to unseat, there aren't a lot of great alternatives, especially once you start looking for groupware features, calendering, and PDA sync support.'
Yes but I wonder why? Evolution was good but I've never seen an actual cross-platform open source attempt usurp outlook. If you had a cross-platform backend that provided groupware and email functionality then I could use your app tomorrow. The only thing that keeps exchange in most offices is the fact that you need it for groupware functionality.
All software requires a geek to install and support it. If a non-geek is attempting to install and support software they had better have a rigorous backup scheme and a recovery disk handy. Even then not all data is easy to backup and restore without restoring the problems they have caused over time.
This is one of Apple and Microsoft's worst crimes. They have spread the myth that laypeople can administer their own machines. Computers are extremely complex devices. Their complexity is probably as great as that of anything man has designed. Being able to click 'next' does not qualify you to install and maintain a piece of software. You need to understand how the operating system distribution and the hardware operates to be able to do this properly.
Most MCSEs fail to attain the appropriate level of understanding needed to properly install and support software. Forget home users. Both Microsoft software (and other easyware) and Open Source software require the same level of understanding and knowledge to properly install, configure, and maintain. Easyware just attempts to make the decisions for you and hide the complexity, Open source software typically reveals the complexity and in so doing the full potential of the application.
That said, Open Office is easier to operate than Microsoft Office. Either one is a slow bloated mess IMHO.
'VCs don't hire techies to CEO startups. You want to "make it big?" Be the tech brains behind a startup, and let the VCs pay you big bucks to make your great idea the Next Big Thing!'
Why do you keep talking about techies? Who said anything about techies?
'I'm from a middle class family. I worked hard and played by the rules. I paid my way through college with a part time job, loans and government grants.
Today I'm leading a team of Java developers for a Fortune 500 company. I'm making decent money, and I have time for my wife and kids because I don't travel for work, and I don't work crazy overtime, either. As far as I'm concerned, I'm successful, and while there is something to be said for knowing the right people, and for being in the right place at the right time, that's not all it takes to be a success.'
Then you are a typical corporate slave. My measure of success requires calling your own shots, not merely having people beneath you. Management level but still another corporate slave. How many slaves on the same level of management are there? How many hard working college grads in the country? There aren't even enough corporate slave positions to accommodate a 10th of the grads.
'while there is something to be said for knowing the right people, and for being in the right place at the right time, that's not all it takes to be a success.'
Of course not, but the rest is hard work and preparation. There are millions of bright people doing the hard work and preparation. If you think they all succeed you are deluding yourself. No matter how hard working or bright you are, there is someone else who is brighter and working harder. What is the difference between your success and their failure? You either knew people or got lucky.
'Fair enough, but everyone does that. I guess it seemed you were drawing more of a parallel with HP than you intended.'
Without question. I do think it is possible that this is HP's policy as well and the person screaming to the heavens that running Linux voids your warranty just got a rep on the phone who is too stupid to think of telling them to 'run the recovery cd'. Granted I didn't read the article but I didn't see anything in the summary to indicate an official HP spokesman said you irrevocably void your warranty by running Linux.
'Does Sony make it possible to get the machine back to factory configuration so you can do this?'
Yes, they provide restore discs. At least they used to, my time there convinced me never to buy a Sony.;)
'Compaq that shipped without a restore CD, just a restore partition'
It seems like all the HP's and Compaqs are this way now. But there is a that lets you burn a recovery disc set on DVD or CD. If HP is anything like Sony (and I suspect it is) not all the tech support reps will even know that. Any of them could have found out in 10 minutes if they actually saw a box but all they really see are a couple systems when they are first hired and after that they are just expected to be able to support the new products they have never seen.
Tech workers are grunts, we are talking about succeeding in life. That's great for a tech job where X skill is required to fill holes of Y type. But tech does not cover most of the world and definately not most of the jobs. There are only so many tech jobs to be had. How about in business, counciling, law, psychiatry, medicine?
Say you are a VC looking for a new startup CEO. What do you think the odds are of you hiring a guy with a masters from the University of Pheonix? The only way it would happen is if he was a self-made billionaire.
There can only be so many CEO's and so many avenues to success. It's okay that not everyone can succeed. What isn't okay is that the avenue that leads to success requires a either a golden ticket and a little luck or nothing but luck. Some of us actually want it to take hard work, forethought, and a little luck.
'Remember, the message here wasn't "you have to install Windows to get warranty support", it was "you installed Linux, you voided your warranty".'
This is where our messages are getting crossed. 'you installed Linux, you voided your warranty' was the original story. My Sony example explained that while Sony had no such actual policy, Sony would only replace hardware after their techs confirm the problem and Sony won't provide that support unless you are running the default software configuration. In other words, you have to install windows to get warranty support and warranty support is a condition of utilizing your hardware warranty.
'Grade inflation in American universities is insane. Any cause to grade more strictly would only help even it out.'
That isn't my experience at all. My experience is that my grades on papers had little relation to the quality of the paper and a great deal of relation to whether or not what I wrote was what the professor wanted to hear. There were professors who had an unspoken list of criteria for a paper and you could have the most well-thought, insightful, creative, and firmly cited paper and it wouldn't matter. Only the criteria.
In other cases I have seen brilliant papers thrashed for minor spelling and grammar errors. I am talking about papers submitted in Science and Philosophy courses not English and Literature related courses.
My favorite are the Republican and Christian professors who give poor grades on papers that challenge their Christian teachings, the importance of Christian philosophy, etc.
I am a very stubborn and uncompromising individual. When I encountered professors who exhibited these behaviors I'd just drop the class (warning, that isn't cheap especially if you don't catch on to the problem early) and take the same course under a different professor. Miraculously dodging these bunk academics left me with a 4.0 on a 4.0 scale.
c) There are millions of people doing all the right things to better themselves and a couple 10's of thousands of jobs for them to fill.
Lets not forget the fact that most places expect a degree now, what they are interested in is how prestigious the school was. All the prestigious schools are expensive enough to exclude all but a couple charity cases.
'that's another problem, yes, but it's unrelated to the original assertion that you needed the OEM version of Windows still installed to get that far'
With a standard known good software configuration you can go much further than 'that far' when 'that far' is defined as the diagnostic effectiveness of burn-in diagnostic utilities. You (or whoever that was, I am too lazy to go back and look) asserted that shipping non-os dependent diagnostics was a suitable replacement. It isn't. The lack of effectiveness of those utilites compared to having a real benchmark working environment is the only thing relevent to the discussion.
I wasn't proposing that the tech support team boot windows and run a memory diagnostic. That would be less effective than running one from a bootdisk as you propose. When your memory diagnostic fails to see a problem but you still get strange errors on the system. There are 'support by numbers' solutions to find out if the memory is the culprit but both the tech rep and you are complete fscking idiots and the support by numbers steps need to match the software you have because you are incapable of adapting them to what you do have. If you are running a different version of windows then what appears to be hardware failure could be the use a driver that the OEM never had the opportunity to test.
'Solution: ship a bootable CD to run the hardware diagnostics with the computer.'
That really isn't a solution either. As a service technician I can tell that maybe 20% of bad hardware will fail a hardware diagnostic. A general rule of thumb is that if a hardware diag flags a piece of hardware it will confirm your diagnosis, if it doesn't then it didn't tell you anything.
I remember working in a shop where after confirming a Western Digital HD was bad you got a WD Diag code because WD usually rejects RMA's that pass WD Diag. The solution was to slam the drive onto the floor (flat so that it didn't leave a mark) repeatedly until the mechanics were damaged enough to guarantee a failure.
Having worked in a call center I would disagree. You either use the same support staff and just train them on both systems or you farm it out based on volume. Farming it out doesn't even have to be to India, there are companies that would love to take on the burden of training staff to handle support calls for Dell. Bellsouth does this, if you are calling about your internet connection you are probably actually talking to a company called CallTech.
You give support staff maybe as much as a week of training. Then sit in front of computers with a big database with a search engine interface. Most of that staff knows nothing about the systems or the software they just relay on their database with step by step instructions. You have a higher level of support that knows a thing or two and they submit updates when the answer isn't in the database. A third small team reviews those updates and rewrites them in step-by-step instructions before actually merging them into the database.
This process scales with volume. The more calls you handle the more staff/lines and overhead you have. If they have substantial volume they will probably farm it out for $x/call if they have low volume they will pick a subset of their current staff and give them a one week course on Linux. Linux calls will then be routed to one of those reps.
'My point is that whilst the market may not be huge, Dell doing this could gain themselves a much larger part of that market by making these offerings, so it may well be successful for them.'
Not to mention that the market is growing. Dell is in a perfect position for early adoption. Dell knows they need to capture this market BEFORE the demand is entirely there. That way as the demand grows they maintain their market dominance.
There are other factors too. Dell is the largest PC vendor. Manufacturers might not cave to kernel volunteers wanting specification but they will cave to Dell. A customer the size of Dell is enough to justify linux support for your device even without any other demand. The is probably true of software in many cases. Increased hardware and software availability will mean increased adoption and a growing market.
I want to see this too but it might not be feasible. Hardware devices that are low on hardware and high on software emulated hardware are commonly found in dirt cheap systems. These devices typically won't work under linux.
Technically you are correct. But this week Dell is making a statement implying they are in a hurry to get this out there and satisfy demand. Last week they said 'we might consider doing this, maybe, we've got to talk to vendors'.
'True, basic Linux source code is free. But full hardware+software support/upgrade guarantee and proprietary software on top of the OS are not necessarily so.'
Given. But there is no particular reason they should cost more than the same for a windows system.
If you mean licensing kickbacks then it a non-issue since the licensing cost for Linux is $0.00. If you are referring to the crap Dell preloads on the machines then that shouldn't be a concern either. You can already choose to get the machine without the preinstalled crap when you buy a Dell. Since they don't increase the price when you select that option on a windows based system then there is no reason they should increase the price for a Linux based system that doesn't come with the crap.
'In the case of a region like NYC, I'm sure it has very high broadband *availability*. (Meaning that if you live in NYC you could get broadband if you decided to, and you probably even have a choice who you get it from.) But I concede that even in places like New York, the subscription rate falls short of other countries.'
I wonder if those high subscription rates take into account pricing schemes that are based on bandwidth usage. For instance, I transfer anywhere from 2gb - 50gb a month depending on what I am doing. Here in the US I pay about $50 for an 8mbit/768k connection. My understanding is that with most European providers you pay by the MB and my connection would cost a fortune.
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'It is true that I grew up in a Christian home, but I believe what I believe no matter what science says because of the personal impact it's had on my life.'
The things you have faith in are things you THINK are true. The things that science has shown are things everyone KNOWS to be true. You can have faith all day long but refusing to accept the findings of science is not ignorance, it is utter stupidity.
P.S. Science has not disproven Christianity, Science has disproven many of MAN'S interpretations of what is found in the Bible. That is the beauty (or curse) of the Bible, almost everything in it can be interpreted in so many ways that you can disprove interpretations until the end of time.
Personally I am agnostic, it is possible that a being created everything. I shy away from this possibility because as incredible and complex as everything around us is and as difficult as it is to believe that this aways was it is just that much more difficult to believe that a being that was so much more powerful, beautiful, and complex to have been able to create all this around us has always been. Having a creator may solve 'where did we come from and why are we here' but it only shifts those questions to become 'where did the creator come from and why is it here'.
As far as any religion on Earth being correct. Of course not, that is just silly. Some semi-literate desert dictator who wrote a book to enslave and manipulate didn't guess it right.
The AC did a fine job of responding but I will add.
'I never said that an expert won't give you a better result, in a computer or a car.'
You did say, what you said was quite straightforward and can't really be misinterpreted. You said the turnkey solutions are superior in assembly lines, automobiles, and computers. Let me refresh your memory.
'create turn-key implementations of said systems, which after ten years or so are better than what an expert could do themselves. It happened with assembly lines. It happened with automobiles. And it happened with computers,'
Sorry to hear about the change to windows, that must be depressing. By the way, awesome lego structures!
It's always puzzled me because I can't think of anything especially spectacular that outlook actually does. You might have trouble converting some power users because they are married to outlook specific behavior but 99% of outlook. I honestly haven't seen anything that should take more than 6 months or so to replicate in outlook. Most of the useful features are basic and obvious. Are some of them patented or something?
'the fact is the 'normal' people are nervous when using computer, thus believe it they are complicated'
That is only true of old people. Young people aren't afraid of the computer at all and they are more dangerous than the old people for preciously that reason. The old people think that just because the young people can figure out how to install a webcam and use a few applications they downloaded from the internet (along with all the spyware that came with those applications) that they are competent.
Not being afraid to use a computer is prerequisite to learning about the machine. Actually spending a few years to learn how computers function is prerequisite to administrating a machine.
Computers are as complex as anything man has designed. Nothing man has designed is really that complex, we actually don't design things to be difficult to understand we design them to be easy to understand. The material is a bit dry but the only thing standing between a reasonably bright individual and real understanding of a computer is the years it takes to learn and master the functioning of each layer of the hardware and operating system. You learn the physical operation of the hardware and then the logical operation of the hardware and so forth until you understand what is happening when you install an application.
For instance, many printer instructions will tell you to plug in the printer and then install the printer software. Unless your OS has a built-in driver AND succeeds in recognizing the hardware you plugged in then your normal self will NEVER get that printer to work without an expert.
Maybe 1 in 10 times you plug in a usb storage device in a winxp computer for the first time and instead of telling you after a moment that your hardware is ready to use it says installation failed. Subsequent plugging in also fails. Other thumb drives work. A normal person does not know how to fix this problem. Your tech savvy grandson doesn't either. Figuring out how to fix this problem the first time you encounter it will take seconds if you understand how the system works. Even someone who doesn't really understand but has been shown how to fix usb problems will figure it out. In this instance a normal person will be lucky because they'll think the thumb drive is bad and get a new one. The new one will probably work.
You install norton antivirus but the installation fails with a script error half way through. Crap, norton doesn't show up in add/remove programs. Norton won't let you install again, it says norton is already installed when you try. A real tech savvy teen might even discover the rnav.exe tool but alas it doesn't work. If they had called a technician to perform this task the tech could have first warned them off of norton and failing that could have utilized his deep understanding of the inner workings of the operating system to resolve this problem.
'If someone actually reads the dialog boxes that come up and pay attention to the warnings computers are very safe and easy to use'
Sure, they are safe and fairly easy to use. That doesn't mean they are safe and easy to administrate. I never said computers shouldn't be used by normal people. I said that normal people shouldn't select, install, configure, and maintain the hardware and software that will be used in them. Once they are setup for the normal people they should feel free to use them to their heart's content.
'And it happened with computers, more than ten years ago.'
Spoken like one of the laypeople or MCSE's I spoke to earlier. Next thing you know you'll be telling me how frontpage allows laypeople to design webpages. Just watch any real web coder cringe at that claim.
'which after ten years or so are better than what an expert could do themselves. It happened with assembly lines'
This must be in some strange alternate universe that you live in. Where I live custom built automobiles far exceed the cookie cutter vehicles you buy from a dealer. The same for anything produced on an assembly line (including aforementioned automobiles).
I'm not a mechanic but even I know that an expert can adjust his engine in even a cookie cutter vehicle to match the fuel he is using and get better performance and longer life than the rest of us. There is also a reason that every car in the Daytona 500 is built, tweaked, and customized by experts. Cookie cutter and assembly line production do NOT give better results, they simply increase quantity of a 'good enough' design in order to make it cheap and readily available.
I'm looking forward to base as well. Last time I tried it I found that it simply wasn't stable enough to use. The featureset was almost complete enough but the app crashed repeatedly on multiple computers.
'And outlook is tough to unseat, there aren't a lot of great alternatives, especially once you start looking for groupware features, calendering, and PDA sync support.'
Yes but I wonder why? Evolution was good but I've never seen an actual cross-platform open source attempt usurp outlook. If you had a cross-platform backend that provided groupware and email functionality then I could use your app tomorrow. The only thing that keeps exchange in most offices is the fact that you need it for groupware functionality.
All software requires a geek to install and support it. If a non-geek is attempting to install and support software they had better have a rigorous backup scheme and a recovery disk handy. Even then not all data is easy to backup and restore without restoring the problems they have caused over time.
This is one of Apple and Microsoft's worst crimes. They have spread the myth that laypeople can administer their own machines. Computers are extremely complex devices. Their complexity is probably as great as that of anything man has designed. Being able to click 'next' does not qualify you to install and maintain a piece of software. You need to understand how the operating system distribution and the hardware operates to be able to do this properly.
Most MCSEs fail to attain the appropriate level of understanding needed to properly install and support software. Forget home users. Both Microsoft software (and other easyware) and Open Source software require the same level of understanding and knowledge to properly install, configure, and maintain. Easyware just attempts to make the decisions for you and hide the complexity, Open source software typically reveals the complexity and in so doing the full potential of the application.
That said, Open Office is easier to operate than Microsoft Office. Either one is a slow bloated mess IMHO.
'That's even worse than Windows Vista...'
Yeah if you ignore the 2gigs of swap vista uses on boot.
'VCs don't hire techies to CEO startups. You want to "make it big?" Be the tech brains behind a startup, and let the VCs pay you big bucks to make your great idea the Next Big Thing!'
Why do you keep talking about techies? Who said anything about techies?
'I'm from a middle class family. I worked hard and played by the rules. I paid my way through college with a part time job, loans and government grants.
Today I'm leading a team of Java developers for a Fortune 500 company. I'm making decent money, and I have time for my wife and kids because I don't travel for work, and I don't work crazy overtime, either. As far as I'm concerned, I'm successful, and while there is something to be said for knowing the right people, and for being in the right place at the right time, that's not all it takes to be a success.'
Then you are a typical corporate slave. My measure of success requires calling your own shots, not merely having people beneath you. Management level but still another corporate slave. How many slaves on the same level of management are there? How many hard working college grads in the country? There aren't even enough corporate slave positions to accommodate a 10th of the grads.
'while there is something to be said for knowing the right people, and for being in the right place at the right time, that's not all it takes to be a success.'
Of course not, but the rest is hard work and preparation. There are millions of bright people doing the hard work and preparation. If you think they all succeed you are deluding yourself. No matter how hard working or bright you are, there is someone else who is brighter and working harder. What is the difference between your success and their failure? You either knew people or got lucky.
'Fair enough, but everyone does that. I guess it seemed you were drawing more of a parallel with HP than you intended.'
;)
Without question. I do think it is possible that this is HP's policy as well and the person screaming to the heavens that running Linux voids your warranty just got a rep on the phone who is too stupid to think of telling them to 'run the recovery cd'. Granted I didn't read the article but I didn't see anything in the summary to indicate an official HP spokesman said you irrevocably void your warranty by running Linux.
'Does Sony make it possible to get the machine back to factory configuration so you can do this?'
Yes, they provide restore discs. At least they used to, my time there convinced me never to buy a Sony.
'Compaq that shipped without a restore CD, just a restore partition'
It seems like all the HP's and Compaqs are this way now. But there is a that lets you burn a recovery disc set on DVD or CD. If HP is anything like Sony (and I suspect it is) not all the tech support reps will even know that. Any of them could have found out in 10 minutes if they actually saw a box but all they really see are a couple systems when they are first hired and after that they are just expected to be able to support the new products they have never seen.
Tech workers are grunts, we are talking about succeeding in life. That's great for a tech job where X skill is required to fill holes of Y type. But tech does not cover most of the world and definately not most of the jobs. There are only so many tech jobs to be had. How about in business, counciling, law, psychiatry, medicine?
Say you are a VC looking for a new startup CEO. What do you think the odds are of you hiring a guy with a masters from the University of Pheonix? The only way it would happen is if he was a self-made billionaire.
There can only be so many CEO's and so many avenues to success. It's okay that not everyone can succeed. What isn't okay is that the avenue that leads to success requires a either a golden ticket and a little luck or nothing but luck. Some of us actually want it to take hard work, forethought, and a little luck.
'Remember, the message here wasn't "you have to install Windows to get warranty support", it was "you installed Linux, you voided your warranty".'
This is where our messages are getting crossed. 'you installed Linux, you voided your warranty' was the original story. My Sony example explained that while Sony had no such actual policy, Sony would only replace hardware after their techs confirm the problem and Sony won't provide that support unless you are running the default software configuration. In other words, you have to install windows to get warranty support and warranty support is a condition of utilizing your hardware warranty.
'Grade inflation in American universities is insane. Any cause to grade more strictly would only help even it out.'
That isn't my experience at all. My experience is that my grades on papers had little relation to the quality of the paper and a great deal of relation to whether or not what I wrote was what the professor wanted to hear. There were professors who had an unspoken list of criteria for a paper and you could have the most well-thought, insightful, creative, and firmly cited paper and it wouldn't matter. Only the criteria.
In other cases I have seen brilliant papers thrashed for minor spelling and grammar errors. I am talking about papers submitted in Science and Philosophy courses not English and Literature related courses.
My favorite are the Republican and Christian professors who give poor grades on papers that challenge their Christian teachings, the importance of Christian philosophy, etc.
I am a very stubborn and uncompromising individual. When I encountered professors who exhibited these behaviors I'd just drop the class (warning, that isn't cheap especially if you don't catch on to the problem early) and take the same course under a different professor. Miraculously dodging these bunk academics left me with a 4.0 on a 4.0 scale.
c) There are millions of people doing all the right things to better themselves and a couple 10's of thousands of jobs for them to fill.
Lets not forget the fact that most places expect a degree now, what they are interested in is how prestigious the school was. All the prestigious schools are expensive enough to exclude all but a couple charity cases.
'that's another problem, yes, but it's unrelated to the original assertion that you needed the OEM version of Windows still installed to get that far'
With a standard known good software configuration you can go much further than 'that far' when 'that far' is defined as the diagnostic effectiveness of burn-in diagnostic utilities. You (or whoever that was, I am too lazy to go back and look) asserted that shipping non-os dependent diagnostics was a suitable replacement. It isn't. The lack of effectiveness of those utilites compared to having a real benchmark working environment is the only thing relevent to the discussion.
I wasn't proposing that the tech support team boot windows and run a memory diagnostic. That would be less effective than running one from a bootdisk as you propose. When your memory diagnostic fails to see a problem but you still get strange errors on the system. There are 'support by numbers' solutions to find out if the memory is the culprit but both the tech rep and you are complete fscking idiots and the support by numbers steps need to match the software you have because you are incapable of adapting them to what you do have. If you are running a different version of windows then what appears to be hardware failure could be the use a driver that the OEM never had the opportunity to test.
'Solution: ship a bootable CD to run the hardware diagnostics with the computer.'
That really isn't a solution either. As a service technician I can tell that maybe 20% of bad hardware will fail a hardware diagnostic. A general rule of thumb is that if a hardware diag flags a piece of hardware it will confirm your diagnosis, if it doesn't then it didn't tell you anything.
I remember working in a shop where after confirming a Western Digital HD was bad you got a WD Diag code because WD usually rejects RMA's that pass WD Diag. The solution was to slam the drive onto the floor (flat so that it didn't leave a mark) repeatedly until the mechanics were damaged enough to guarantee a failure.
Having worked in a call center I would disagree. You either use the same support staff and just train them on both systems or you farm it out based on volume. Farming it out doesn't even have to be to India, there are companies that would love to take on the burden of training staff to handle support calls for Dell. Bellsouth does this, if you are calling about your internet connection you are probably actually talking to a company called CallTech.
You give support staff maybe as much as a week of training. Then sit in front of computers with a big database with a search engine interface. Most of that staff knows nothing about the systems or the software they just relay on their database with step by step instructions. You have a higher level of support that knows a thing or two and they submit updates when the answer isn't in the database. A third small team reviews those updates and rewrites them in step-by-step instructions before actually merging them into the database.
This process scales with volume. The more calls you handle the more staff/lines and overhead you have. If they have substantial volume they will probably farm it out for $x/call if they have low volume they will pick a subset of their current staff and give them a one week course on Linux. Linux calls will then be routed to one of those reps.
'My point is that whilst the market may not be huge, Dell doing this could gain themselves a much larger part of that market by making these offerings, so it may well be successful for them.'
Not to mention that the market is growing. Dell is in a perfect position for early adoption. Dell knows they need to capture this market BEFORE the demand is entirely there. That way as the demand grows they maintain their market dominance.
There are other factors too. Dell is the largest PC vendor. Manufacturers might not cave to kernel volunteers wanting specification but they will cave to Dell. A customer the size of Dell is enough to justify linux support for your device even without any other demand. The is probably true of software in many cases. Increased hardware and software availability will mean increased adoption and a growing market.
I want to see this too but it might not be feasible. Hardware devices that are low on hardware and high on software emulated hardware are commonly found in dirt cheap systems. These devices typically won't work under linux.
Technically you are correct. But this week Dell is making a statement implying they are in a hurry to get this out there and satisfy demand. Last week they said 'we might consider doing this, maybe, we've got to talk to vendors'.
'True, basic Linux source code is free. But full hardware+software support/upgrade guarantee and proprietary software on top of the OS are not necessarily so.'
Given. But there is no particular reason they should cost more than the same for a windows system.
If you mean licensing kickbacks then it a non-issue since the licensing cost for Linux is $0.00. If you are referring to the crap Dell preloads on the machines then that shouldn't be a concern either. You can already choose to get the machine without the preinstalled crap when you buy a Dell. Since they don't increase the price when you select that option on a windows based system then there is no reason they should increase the price for a Linux based system that doesn't come with the crap.
'In the case of a region like NYC, I'm sure it has very high broadband *availability*. (Meaning that if you live in NYC you could get broadband if you decided to, and you probably even have a choice who you get it from.) But I concede that even in places like New York, the subscription rate falls short of other countries.'
I wonder if those high subscription rates take into account pricing schemes that are based on bandwidth usage. For instance, I transfer anywhere from 2gb - 50gb a month depending on what I am doing. Here in the US I pay about $50 for an 8mbit/768k connection. My understanding is that with most European providers you pay by the MB and my connection would cost a fortune.