Because most of us came to this realization: http://xkcd.com/538/ or the fact that 90% of it doesn't matter.
All of my Tax documents and other financial stuff is on a 256-bit encrypted disk image. But why the hell do I need to encrypt the message to my mom about my Easter plans?
Because if somebody's watching you send all those messages to your mom about Easter plans and then suddenly see encrypted traffic, they're going to know that the encrypted traffic must have been special and then come after you with the wrench?
Yes. Generations utterly ruined Data's character for the sake of an "Oh.... shit!" joke, destroyed the Enterprise-D for the sake of an action scene and killed off Picard's family for the sake of a cheap shock and never bothered to explore the ramifications of this.
Not to mention the bad-decision making:
Picard: "Guinan, can I leave the Nexus?" Guinan: "Where would you go?" Picard: "I don't understand." Guinan: "Time has no meaning here. So if you leave, you can go anywhere, at any time." Picard: "Alright, I know precisely where I want to go. Veridian III, just before Soran launches the missile. Because, even though I obviously don't care about changing the past and preserving the time-line as I once did, I don't feel tempted to go back a few more weeks to warn my brother about a fire and to inspect the Amargosa observatory for trilithium, arresting Soran before the Romulans even bother attacking. No, I want to give Soran a chance to succeed. Again. You want to come?" Guinan: "Can't. But there's somebody else who might help. Just don't mention the details of your stupid plan or it's going to depress the hell out of him that the Enterprise is in your hands."
First Contact was an enjoyable standalone film but utterly destroyed whatever continuity we had from TNG for the sake of creating a single villain for the audience to focus on. It also didn't really do justice to Troi or Crusher. Actually come to think of it, none of the movies did them justice.
They stripped away everything that was original about the Borg with the introduction of the Borg Queen. However, I think they did fine with Troi and Crusher. They're not meant to be major characters. The TNG episodes that focused on Troi or Crusher were always horrible, they're just not very strong characters. They're good on supporting roles, but when you try to give them a bigger piece of the pie just to be fair, you end up with the situation on Insurrection. Yes, let the psychologist and doctor have better aim with their phaser rifles than the Klingon who used to be the security chief. That makes sense.
And don't even get me started on Nemesis. This guy summarizes Nemesis way better than I could ever hope to.....
That summary of Nemesis is spot on, except for the little chat between Picard and Janeway. She wasn't promoted while they passed Picard on for promotion. They offered the admiralty to Picard on several occasions during the series. If anything, Picard would be snickering that she's behind a desk, while he gets to go to Romulus.
Do you want to explain to me why it's "obviously" temporary?
Sure.
The original ending blamed an enemy that, although dangerous, is possible to defeat. The enemy was found dead in New York, after killing all those people. Therefore, this will force the nations to pool their resources together in an attempt to prepare themselves for another attack. During this period of collaboration, it was hoped by Veidt that humans would simply learn the benefits of working together, and even without a second attack, the prosperity that comes as a result of the collaboration would be enough to convince everyone that continued collaboration is better for everyone
On the other hand, Dr. Manhattan is a god. He cannot be defeated. And if he's always watching, any attempt to group together to find his weaknesses might be met with further retaliation. So everybody agrees to not attack one another because they fear Manhattan, but they're not necessarily motivated to work together either. Eventually, after enough time passes without hearing any word of encouragement or warnings from Manhattan, people are just going to start guessing how much they can and can't get away with and they'll start testing their limits. Eventually, there'll be doubt that Manhattan is still watching, in much the same way people debate today what God does and does not let us get away with, and what He finds justifiable (thou shall not kill, but if it's in self-defense it's ok. If it's as a soldier, you're defending your country, so it's ok. If it's a first strike to prevent others from attacking you in the future, it's ok, etc.). It's a guessing game, people will argue, and it only takes a few to start a war.
Dr. Manhattan both cared about humanity at the end of the film, and agreed with the solution.
He did care about humanity, but he didn't agree with the solution. He agreed that telling people the truth after the fact would only make the effort futile. Instead of restarting the war 50 years from now, the war would go ahead the next day, or the next week.
What Manhattan did say was that he understood why Veidt executed his plan, "without condemning or condoning."
Who says he ever has to die, either?
He can keep an eye on humanity, and every now and then blow up a city, to keep us united in hating and fearing him.
Manhattan isn't keeping on eye on people. He was leaving for another galaxy to create new life. He understood that his own presence and interference is what led people to the brink of war, which was Moore's entire point. By 1985 in the real world, the cold war was almost over, but by 1985 in the world of Watchmen, because of all the technological advances Dr. Manhattan introduced, and because of the lack of a balance of power due to Manhattan being part of the U.S. arsenal, the threat just kept building, until it's ultimate culmination in the inevitable nuclear war. It was his fault, and Dr. Manhattan understood that, thus leaving us to our own affairs.
And as far as Veidt blowing up a city now and then, I'm pretty sure none of the other Watchmen would let him get away with that. Again, they didn't agree with what he did, they just agreed that they couldn't tell the truth without making the situation worse and all those deaths meaningless. They wanted to kill him for it, but Veidt pointed out that even his death would be enough to arouse suspicion.
Certain percentage of geeks simply matures and "doing cool stuff" is not enough.
That's not maturity. That's no longer being a geek. What separates us from the rest of the population isn't really that we're more intelligent that others, or that we work with technology. What separates us from the rest is that we're curious about things and we want to try them out, whether they work well or not.
Or maybe it is exposure to actual, non-academic, world of software development where cool ideas tend to work out as dumb waste of time.
In the industry of software development anything that doesn't make a profit or has a chance of making a profit is a "dumb waste of time." In the world of hobbies, wasting time is the goal, as long as you have fun while doing it.
If you have your pet project, it also has to be useful. It needs to be something worthy your time when not with family/working. It ideally should give you job-translatable skills (haha). And you definitely do not want to reinvent wheel or spend time making someone elses reinvented wheel working.
By definition, your "pet project" is worthy of your time as long as you enjoy working on it. And if what you're after is knowledge, then reinventing the wheel is the only way to get knowledge as to how to manufacture the damn wheel. Sure, you could buy one, but then you haven't intellectually gained anything. Obviously it's not what you want to do at work, because it's not profitable, but it's often what you want from your pet project.
Installing Linux on PS3 is easy. Installing emulators on Linux is easy. Its nothing to write home if you do both. Hell, its wasted time if you do it because you could be actually look for those hidden hardware gems instead making videos of you playing Mario.
It's time well wasted as long as it's something you want to do and you had fun doing it. Turn in your geek card and have fun with your MBA.
Re:I'm glad its a movie and not a cartoon...
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Watchmen Watched
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Its what Watchmen would've looked like if it was turned into a cheesy cartoon...
More than that, the comic book says Adrian Veidt has his own Saturday Morning cartoon, and his marketing department wants to include the other "costumed adventurers." That video is about what one would imagine Veidt's cartoon to be like.
Eh, you're entitled. Quit ducking, I'm not throwing anything.
Over the years I have heard all the hype about how important it is, Time 100 Top Novels, etc.
It is overly hyped, but then I've never seen anything that had any hype actually live up to it. In my opinion, Watchmen is pretty good. It's not "the greatest graphic novel ever written" or any such bullshit. What is? I don't know, the title is meaningless. There's plenty of other works that are at the same quality level, and some people will like some better than others.
I didn't like the book. In reality, it's not a book but just 12 comics pasted together with a bit of fluff inserted that really didn't have anything to do with the plot.
Some of the "fluff" had a lot to do with the plot, and gave important background info and insight. Most of it was just filler.
And it's not really "12 comics pasted together." Just because they were originally released individually doesn't change how they fit together. Unless, of course, you describe a book as "a bunch of chapters pasted together."
The whole "Graphic Novel" thing just doesn't do it for me, I read comics as a kid, this is no different.
No, it isn't different and people who say
"graphic novels" are less childish than "comics" are just being elitist. What matters is the story. Some of it is childish, some of it is not, and it has nothing to do with the medium. Some movies are crap, some are not.
The characters are weakly written
I personally disagree with you on that one. There are chapters devoted to character development of specific characters.
because of the format there is very little real information on a page (I especially remember the one page with 4 or 5 panels with only the words "Ahhhhhhh" or similar...
That goes with graphic novels "not doing it for you." You have no idea how to read a comic book, do you? It's not a novel. The text isn't the only thing of importance in the panels. If you don't or can't appreciate the artwork you shouldn't bother with the medium, you're not going to enjoy it.
The plot itself wasn't bad but the ending in the 'novel' was totally weak, and from what I read in the script should be very much better in the movie.
Haven't seen the movie yet, but I read above what the "new ending" was, and I have to disagree with you royally on that one. If your enemy is omnipotent, you cower in fear, you don't unite to fight it. The movie ending doesn't make sense.
The whole pirate subtext was awful. I would have been much happier without reading it.
I'm torn on that one. On the one hand, the pirate comic inside the comic thing did perfectly describe the sentiments at hand. On the other hand, I think it would be stronger to let the readers grasp the emotions of the world on their own, without having to recourse to a narrative from a fictional character inside the fictional world telling you what you're supposed to be observing.
Oh, and the whole manic depressive omnipotent mass murderer in love with a human was just ridiculous.
Mass murderer? Manic Depressive? Dr. Manhattan fits neither of those descriptions.
So, yes, I will go see it, I'll probobly even like it, but I've given my copy of the book away.
Wait...you didn't like it, but you're going to see it anyway, and you expect to enjoy it?
I would really appreciate it if you replied to me after seeing the movie. I have a feeling you won't like it, and you can just say so if that's the case. If you do like it, I'd be really interested in hearing what was it about the movie that really made a difference for you.
"With the original ending, there is a little fear, but there's also a lot of hope!"
I don't think you read the same book I did. Jon even tells Veidt flat out in the end of the book that he didn't stop anything, all he did was postpone it. The point was that, despite the world being "united against aliens", after 20, 50, maybe 100 years of not having another alien contact, people would forget about it (it's human nature) and go back to how things were before.
Well, it's obvious at the end of the comic book that Veidt's was a temporary solution. However, blaming Manhattan is an obviously temporary solution, one that Veidt, the smartest man on the planet, would not possibly use.
The readers might not have been left with much hope, but Veidt most certainly was, despite Manhattan's last words
It's the only way to cram a bunch of facts in your head so you can start talking about how they all connect. Learning is not just rote memorization, but it is a necessary element to the next step: anything you have memorized you can recall instantly
You're not supposed to memorize facts before understanding how they connect. Think of it like the multiplication table. You don't memorize it before you know what it is. You learn what it means, you understand the concept. Then you use it. When you're learning it, you won't have instant recall, but for anything you don't remember, you'll be able to count to get the answer. After you do that enough times, you'll have it memorized, without having to sit there trying to memorize it.
There's no reason there should be a deadline on memorizing the multiplication table and having a night of rote memorization to get it is just stupid...you'll forget it immediately after you're tested on it. However, as long as you know how to find the proper values in the table by counting, eventually you'll have it all memorized because you've had to find it enough times. Since you keep using it, you won't forget it.
Many students just don't test well, so one reason homework is graded is to reduce the weight of the tests.
There's no such thing as "not testing well." There's knowing the material and not knowing the material. Take a 15 year-old who "doesn't test well" and is failing algebra. Now give him a test on the multiplication table. He's not going to fail the multiplication table one.
Mastery of a subject is what's important, not a quarterly sprint.
I agree. To solve that I advocate replacing a test grade with the grade from the equivalent section of the final exam, if the final is higher. If the final is lower, I recommend replacing the test grade with the average of the two. No curves. If somebody doesn't learn the material in time for the test, they can consider that a test run to figure out exactly what they failed to understand. However, their final grade should reflect their mastery of the material at the end of the course, and there is no way to evaluate that short of a test.
Other students are just poor at time management, so they need to have the task broken up into smaller more manageable tasks
No, they don't. They need to learn to manage their time. If you do it for them, they'll never learn to do it themselves. If they get burned for not managing their time right, then they'll learn.
but they need the encouragement of the feedback that graded homework gives them.
They can still get that encouragement from the corrected optional homework. That's why I mentioned that homework should still be given, and whatever is turned in should get corrected. For the feedback. However, they need to learn to seek it.
Also, depending on the grade level, I think it's a little unfair to set students up for the "your own damn fault for not wishing to work hard" trap. They're students. They're going to screw up. It's your job as a teacher to make sure they don't screw up so badly as to ruin their lives as adults.
Best way to do that is to let them screw up. If you protect them from that, they never learn their lesson. A bad grade in a class isn't going to "ruin their lives as adults," we're not talking giving them a criminal record. A bad grade in a class isn't even going to affect their college chances, unless they screw up royally in multiple high-school classes, never learning their lesson, in which case that's precisely the type of students many colleges are trying to filter out during the admission process. By the time they're in high school, they really need to own up to their responsibility, and any grade record before that isn't going to follow them.
As teachers, your job is to teach them that if they don't learn to manage their time, don't learn to seek feedback, don't learn to keep track of their grades, don't learn to recognize when they need help and ask for it, it's going to bite them in the ass. It's called responsibility and consequences.
Cheating is just an excuse to not work hard. If you can demonstrate serious effort and still have trouble, try finding a teacher/professor during office hours.
Although I agree with you that cheating is unacceptable (and deserving of a zero), it is a symptom of the system. You say it's an excuse to not work hard, and you want serious effort being demonstrated. Well, working hard and amount of effort should be completely irrelevant. Results are what matter. That's true in the "real world" and it should be true in the schools.
Some people will learn effortlessly. Others will require more work. Yet, some teachers (not necessarily you) insist on giving large amounts of busy work, just to make sure that the students have hours of work after school to accomplish, on the hopes that the ones who are having difficulty learning will eventually do so by repetition.
Problem #1: Even the ones who do eventually learn through the busy-work repetition are not actually "learning." They'll be able to follow the example to solve that types of problems given them, but they'll have no idea how to apply the concepts to solve problems they haven't seen before.
Problem #2: The ones who learn quickly end up wasting their time on tons of problems they already know how to work.
Problem #3: There are people on both categories who will simply be frustrated with the amount of work, and just not do it. They'll either take the bad grade or cheat. Not saying that's a justification to the cheating, here. Personally, I just used to calculate exactly how much homework I could get away with not doing to get the grade I wanted in the class rather than cheat. I'm not a genius either, but homework really was given in extremely large amounts to compensate for the people who were really having trouble with the classes.
Ideally, this is what you do: you assign homework, but don't grade it. Assign lots of problems but let your students decide how much they need to work on. You can have them turn it in and correct the problems they did work on (without assigning a grade, so they don't have to turn in everything...this will keep your workload lighter too) so that they get confirmation that what they think they are doing correctly actually is correct.
You keep your classes discussion oriented. Make sure students are involved when you ask them about the concepts, not the problems.
You give them tests for the evaluation of their knowledge, which is the only thing that should matter. Part of the test is like the problems they've worked on for homework, but at least half the test are problems they've never seen before, but have the knowledge to figure out. This ensures you are testing their knowledge, not their ability to memorize a process to solve a particular type of problem.
There. Now if somebody fails the test because they didn't do any of the optional homework, it's their own damn fault for not wishing to work hard. However, you're no longer trying to punish people who don't wish to work harder then they have to.
Seriously, the very concept of wholesale-retail-consumer is obsolete for digital media. Music is not the same kind of product as groceries.
Well, the music isn't, but a lot of people like the physical cd with the nice cover art and insert product. I don't see that being obsolete. I understand lower sales because of all the people who only care about the music, but I don't see physical media completely going away.
What I would really be a fan of is the type of service mp3.com tried offering way back in the day. Buy the cd here, download the mp3s now, and wait for your physical copy in the mail.
If it was actually a media processor, the hardware would be perfectly suited. The Cell just isn't a good fit for the class of problems that games fall into.
I don't understand what you mean. Games fall into the category of media. They have all the same requirements as displaying a movie and a few additional requirements, which is why there's an nvidia gpu there.
The hardware in the PS3 isn't less suited for games than the processors in the xbox 360. They both have general purpose processors (in fact, they're both powerpc's, essentially), they both have gpu's. The Cell has some additional stuff around the powerpc core that helps with the other stuff, like audio, physics, etc. That stuff can certainly be done in a general purpose processor, but spu's are better suited for some of that work.
If you examine games in both platforms, they're roughly on par, in terms of graphics quality. There aren't any developers complaining that the PS3's hardware is unsuited for games. They're all just complaining that the development tools suck, and rightly so. Microsoft has invested pretty heavily into making developer's lives easier, which Sony is finding insane excuses to justify why their development tools blow.
The fundamental problem with the PS3 is that each Cell CPU only has 256K of local memory...This forces you to treat the Cell processors like DSPs, pumping a sequential stream of data in one end and out the other.
That's how they're meant to work, that's not a mistake, and it's most certainly not a problem. There's a powerpc as the core of the cell, which can be used for actual non-dsp work.
The fundamental problem with the PS3 is a lack of an easy to use SDK that abstracts the above complexity and makes it easy to program for. The hardware is completely fine, they're just not providing the developers with the tools they need.
If it gets too powerful, or too feature full, who's to say if MS doesn't retract their promise and claim that Mono is infringing on their patents, suing whatever company might have worked on said products?
The law. That would be called estoppel. If they sue you, and you can show that Microsoft has said something to give you an expectation that they would not sue, you win.
I'm not a lawyer, but that seems to be one of those laws that is pretty easy to interpret.
As far as I can see from reading the details, Blizzard told MDY to stop selling the bot and MDY took Blizzard to court to allow them to continue selling it; it was in reaction to this that Blizzard then sued with the fact that the bot was circumventing their protection method.
My point still applies. Blizzard can use whatever technological barriers they want to block something they don't like from their servers. They don't really have the right to tell someone not to make the bot. If they want to prevent said bots, it's their responsibility to make their servers secure, and the absolutely worst they should be legally allowed to do is ban anybody using the bots (including MDY employees).
Once Blizzard got involved and told MDY to stop, MDY would have no choice but to look into legal representation. Blizzard's case should have been thrown out, though.
I agree that a shared world should have certain rules a single-player game does not. However, your dress code analogy doesn't fit here. It's a farming bot, so the character isn't doing anything a player couldn't do manually, the player isn't breaking any rules (no god mode or actual cheats). In fact, I don't play mmorpg's, but the other posts mention "chinese gold farmers" so people actually happen to do the same thing manually.
Even if this actually was a real cheat by my standards, I would still object to court involvement. It's Blizzard's responsibility to figure out how to secure their environment, detect people violating their terms, and kick them out if Blizzard is so inclined. The only time a court should get involved is if somebody challenges the account ban. Then you have a contract dispute.
Throw endless money at it, pushing products out for less than a commercial competitor in only that market can afford (c.f. IE vs Netscape, and other similar events in other markets)
I don't get what the beef is with the IE vs Netscape thing. Microsoft has done some pretty underhanded things. Bundling a free browser with their OS wasn't it. Oh, they're releasing software that doesn't cost money already included with your OS so you don't have to download it! Nobody can compete! Somebody tell that to every Linux distribution. The OS is free, the browser that comes with it is free, the office suite that is bundled with it is free. I guess they're pushing Microsoft out of their market, huh?.
In the end, it was a boost to the consumer. We ended up with free browsers. Remember having to pay for navigator? You think those were good times?
Wait until said competitor is dead, then lock it in, and perhaps charge more for the product afterwards, or let it stagnate and put no further development in, killing the development of a whole market.
Once they let the product stagnate, some other product will become better than it. So now we have firefox. And it's also free. AND it's open source. Microsoft felt threatened, and suddenly we had IE 7. Now we're about to have IE 8 which is supposedly very standards-compliant. The browser market wasn't killed, it became stronger.
So, MS did their usual "throw money at it, and see what sticks", Apple did design work, and targetted their resources and worked out what people would want to see..
So what you're saying is that Microsoft's strategy doesn't work? Then why are we bitching about it? Let them waste their money.
Now that MS seem to actually have to worry about money (wonder how much they lost in the market crashes)
They didn't. They reported profits, not losses. The profits were not as high as they expected it to be, thus the layoffs. They still have plenty of money to throw at the problem.
Wars are won (or at least not completely lost) by not fighting on too many fronts, especially ones where you're getting solidly thrashed by overwhelming opposition. Sometimes a ceasefire, or strategic withdrawl can save the whole show, rather than throwing everything you have in every direction.
They're not "fighting on too many fronts" if they're still making a profit. As long as revenue is positive, you need to expand to as many fronts as possible. It's called diversifying. It means that when you fall on one front, at least it's not your last stand, and you have other battles which you're still winning.
I strongly suspect that making a game bot truly act like a human calls for heuristics that approach those in real humans, meaning something like "true" artificial intelligence.
You're giving this test more value than it deserves. The problem with any turing test is that it depends on the intelligence / experience of the person administering the test. Even irc talking bots have been known to have entire conversations with people who were oblivious to the fact that they were not talking to another person.
That's the whole point: getting pwnd without some smug human to rub it in. Much more fun to lose that way.
No, it's really not. Getting completely pwnd and never being close to winning all the time is frustrating whether it's a human opponent or computer controlled one. On the other hand, a close match is much more entertaining when there's someone rubbing it in. It's the motivation for another game.
Case in point, I remember playing x-wing alliance time trials against my college roommate. Playing that on your own gets boring quick. Beating the other person's record by a few milliseconds would cause trash talk for as long as the record stood. I would go into the room after class, see that damn grin on his face, and he'd say his new record. I would immediately start up x-wing in response. Sometimes we beat the new record on the first try and that gave us huge bragging rights. Fun stuff.
Once I been up and about for just over 70 hours and that is _not_ healthy. Slept for 17 hours after that. Never going to that again, it was living hell.
Been there, senior year, final semester of college. Trying to make a deadline for a project, while simultaneously working and taking way too many classes for a final semester...76 hours here, followed by a 3 hour nap which I took when I noticed how bad things had gotten. Then a shower, another 5 hours of work, and THEN 16 hours of sleep.
It was indeed living hell and I never want to go through it again, but it was still interesting as hell after the fact. When I decided I needed a nap was because by that point I was literally going catatonic for some periods of time. I looked at the computer clock when I was typing a sentence, finished typing the sentence, looked down at the clock again and notice 20 minutes had passed. I had no recollection of pausing at any point during the typing. Later I was told that my roommate had gone by the computer lab, seen me there and dropped by to say hi. He claimed I was staring at the monitor, not typing, and didn't answer anything back. I don't remember that either, but I most certainly believe him.
I walked back to my dorm (wisely decided not to drive) and set my alarm to wake me up in three hours because I had a meeting with my project group. It "woke me up" kind-of. At the time my router was sitting next to my bed, and when I woke up, I had decided that it was the project I was working on. I came back to my senses in the middle of shaking the router and trying to pull the ethernet cable out of it in an attempt to make the lights blink in the proper sequence. No, blinking lights had absolutely nothing to do with my project, but in that state, I thought it did. I had a "wtf moment", took a shower, went back to work, somehow finished what I was working on (the nap surprisingly helped a lot) and then did the marathon sleeping thing.
Right, they want it. They want a job so they can make money so they won't starve.
I'm not talking about the people recovering the stuff. I'm talking about the company that dumped it there. The company that is probably paying those people to recover metals from the trash.
Do they understand the risks and threats associated with that job? Based on how they perform the job, it would seem that they do not have a full understanding of what they have agreed to do.
Whether they have an understanding or not wouldn't matter if they can't find other jobs. But the point is, would a company in the west be able to dump the trash somewhere and then pay its citizens to do it? There are regulations that prevent them from doing so, there are government agencies that ensure that the work environment is safe, etc. If China doesn't have those, it is not our fault. It is not our responsibility to ensure that other governments treat their citizens as we would like to be treated.
You might say, Âwe can not do business with any country that treats its citizens like that." It worked well for Cuba when the U.S. went that route because we don't approve of dictatorships, right? It worked well for Iraq with the whole oil for food stuff, huh? The only other option to effect a change would be to force the change militarily. Iraq is again a good example of how that doesn't work. Imagine trying it with China.
Because, rather than deal with it responsibly ourselves, we've outsourced the problem to people apparently incapable or unwilling to deal with it responsibly.
It's not like we're forcing them to take it with the might of our military (not that we could). They want it. There's a transaction where we give them money and they take care of the trash. Once we give them the money, our responsibility is complete and it's their responsibility to deal with the trash.
If they decide this deal isn't in their best interests, they can simply stop being in this business (which would force us to deal with it responsibly or find someone else willing to be in the business). Or they can raise the price to an amount that would make dealing with it responsibly profitable (which might force us to deal with it ourselves if the cost is higher than what it would be for us to take care of it). Either way, it's entirely their responsibility.
I agree, we're not on separate sides here. It's not like any of us are saying legislation should be passed to prevent apple from doing this. We're explaining what we don't like about it. If somebody asks me, "should I buy a product from apple" I'll explain the things I like and the things I don't like about them and let them make their own decision.
Well, you certainly had the option of buying any number of other laptops where this wouldn't have been the case. But you chose to but a Mac laptop, and, well, that's what you got. Deal with it and quit whining.
I'm supposed to only buy perfect products, or to be happy with every single aspect of every single product I own? When I bought my laptop I examined the pros and the cons. Uneasy access to harddrive was in the con column. On the other hand, I know my way around computers, so I figured I could (and did) manage, so that con didn't have enough weight to offset the pros.
The Apple rep stating you violated your warranty by replacing the HD is a separate issue. He's a moron, but that has nothing to do with Apple's design choices.
I'm just saying this never would have been an issue if the hard drive was officially a user-replaceable part (like RAM in my model is).
I don't know why you consider a legitimate complaint whining. I'm happy with the laptop in general, I'm unhappy with this aspect of it. The reason given for the design choice I'm unhappy about is that they're saving space, which is untrue. They're purposefully trying to make certain replacements harder so that their customers are more likely to buy parts from them / have them perform routine replacements. These things add up, and the next time I make a laptop purchase the cons just might overwhelm the pros, and I'll go for something else, just as you've suggested.
You are complaining about adding RAM to a device that Apple sold with a warning that the RAM was not designed to be user-serviceable.
No, he's complaining that apple sells a computer where RAM is not designed to be user-serviceable.
Here's an example of the B.S. that he's talking about. My macbook pro (2007) had its motherboard fried, so I took it to an apple store. Now, I have work-related data on that laptop that I needed access to and that I couldn't afford to lose (I make incremental backups, but I had accomplished a lot of work the weekend before...the thing actually broke during a business trip). I know my way around computers, so it wasn't exactly a big deal for me to buy another drive and replace it before sending it in but I had to take the whole case apart to do it. Because you have to do that on this particular model, it's not a user serviceable part, and the apple "genius" said I had voided my applecare warranty and that they were going to charge me $2,000 for repairs. I told him to send it anyway and that I'd deal with that when the time came (because I know my rights, and I know they can't void the warranty for part replacement unless the damage is to the replaced part or done as part of the replacement, regardless of what they call user serviceable).
The kicker? Before they send it back, they tell you to sign a work order. The order states, "you are responsible for making backups of any data contained within this computer and for removing any confidential data before sending the laptop in. We'll make an effort to save your data, but we reserve the right to erase the contents of all storage devices as part of the repair process." I'm signing a contract that says I'm responsible for safeguarding my data while their damn employees tell me I can't safeguard my data. There's no way to get at it with the motherboard fried without opening it up.
Now you say that a smaller footprint of a laptop or a computer the size of a mini excuses it being hard to upgrade. I'll agree with you that in some cases that might be true, but that doesn't excuse intentionally making it hard. That hard drive you need to open the case of the macbook to get to? It's on the bottom left of the case, not on top of the motherboard or any other component. It would have cost them absolutely no extra space whatsoever to make a hole with a screw on the case right beneath it. There's no technical reason why they didn't do it, and if you don't believe me do a google search for the 2007 macbook pro internal layout and see for yourself. Similar thing with the mac mini...it's not a problem if it's difficult to get to the ram inside the computer because all the other components are in the way, but there's no excuse for making it difficult to open the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Because most of us came to this realization: http://xkcd.com/538/ or the fact that 90% of it doesn't matter.
All of my Tax documents and other financial stuff is on a 256-bit encrypted disk image. But why the hell do I need to encrypt the message to my mom about my Easter plans?
Because if somebody's watching you send all those messages to your mom about Easter plans and then suddenly see encrypted traffic, they're going to know that the encrypted traffic must have been special and then come after you with the wrench?
Yes. Generations utterly ruined Data's character for the sake of an "Oh.... shit!" joke, destroyed the Enterprise-D for the sake of an action scene and killed off Picard's family for the sake of a cheap shock and never bothered to explore the ramifications of this.
Not to mention the bad-decision making:
Picard: "Guinan, can I leave the Nexus?"
Guinan: "Where would you go?"
Picard: "I don't understand."
Guinan: "Time has no meaning here. So if you leave, you can go anywhere, at any time."
Picard: "Alright, I know precisely where I want to go. Veridian III, just before Soran launches the missile. Because, even though I obviously don't care about changing the past and preserving the time-line as I once did, I don't feel tempted to go back a few more weeks to warn my brother about a fire and to inspect the Amargosa observatory for trilithium, arresting Soran before the Romulans even bother attacking. No, I want to give Soran a chance to succeed. Again. You want to come?"
Guinan: "Can't. But there's somebody else who might help. Just don't mention the details of your stupid plan or it's going to depress the hell out of him that the Enterprise is in your hands."
First Contact was an enjoyable standalone film but utterly destroyed whatever continuity we had from TNG for the sake of creating a single villain for the audience to focus on. It also didn't really do justice to Troi or Crusher. Actually come to think of it, none of the movies did them justice.
They stripped away everything that was original about the Borg with the introduction of the Borg Queen. However, I think they did fine with Troi and Crusher. They're not meant to be major characters. The TNG episodes that focused on Troi or Crusher were always horrible, they're just not very strong characters. They're good on supporting roles, but when you try to give them a bigger piece of the pie just to be fair, you end up with the situation on Insurrection. Yes, let the psychologist and doctor have better aim with their phaser rifles than the Klingon who used to be the security chief. That makes sense.
And don't even get me started on Nemesis. This guy summarizes Nemesis way better than I could ever hope to.....
That summary of Nemesis is spot on, except for the little chat between Picard and Janeway. She wasn't promoted while they passed Picard on for promotion. They offered the admiralty to Picard on several occasions during the series. If anything, Picard would be snickering that she's behind a desk, while he gets to go to Romulus.
Do you want to explain to me why it's "obviously" temporary?
Sure.
The original ending blamed an enemy that, although dangerous, is possible to defeat. The enemy was found dead in New York, after killing all those people. Therefore, this will force the nations to pool their resources together in an attempt to prepare themselves for another attack. During this period of collaboration, it was hoped by Veidt that humans would simply learn the benefits of working together, and even without a second attack, the prosperity that comes as a result of the collaboration would be enough to convince everyone that continued collaboration is better for everyone
On the other hand, Dr. Manhattan is a god. He cannot be defeated. And if he's always watching, any attempt to group together to find his weaknesses might be met with further retaliation. So everybody agrees to not attack one another because they fear Manhattan, but they're not necessarily motivated to work together either. Eventually, after enough time passes without hearing any word of encouragement or warnings from Manhattan, people are just going to start guessing how much they can and can't get away with and they'll start testing their limits. Eventually, there'll be doubt that Manhattan is still watching, in much the same way people debate today what God does and does not let us get away with, and what He finds justifiable (thou shall not kill, but if it's in self-defense it's ok. If it's as a soldier, you're defending your country, so it's ok. If it's a first strike to prevent others from attacking you in the future, it's ok, etc.). It's a guessing game, people will argue, and it only takes a few to start a war.
Dr. Manhattan both cared about humanity at the end of the film, and agreed with the solution.
He did care about humanity, but he didn't agree with the solution. He agreed that telling people the truth after the fact would only make the effort futile. Instead of restarting the war 50 years from now, the war would go ahead the next day, or the next week.
What Manhattan did say was that he understood why Veidt executed his plan, "without condemning or condoning."
Who says he ever has to die, either?
He can keep an eye on humanity, and every now and then blow up a city, to keep us united in hating and fearing him.
Manhattan isn't keeping on eye on people. He was leaving for another galaxy to create new life. He understood that his own presence and interference is what led people to the brink of war, which was Moore's entire point. By 1985 in the real world, the cold war was almost over, but by 1985 in the world of Watchmen, because of all the technological advances Dr. Manhattan introduced, and because of the lack of a balance of power due to Manhattan being part of the U.S. arsenal, the threat just kept building, until it's ultimate culmination in the inevitable nuclear war. It was his fault, and Dr. Manhattan understood that, thus leaving us to our own affairs.
And as far as Veidt blowing up a city now and then, I'm pretty sure none of the other Watchmen would let him get away with that. Again, they didn't agree with what he did, they just agreed that they couldn't tell the truth without making the situation worse and all those deaths meaningless. They wanted to kill him for it, but Veidt pointed out that even his death would be enough to arouse suspicion.
Certain percentage of geeks simply matures and "doing cool stuff" is not enough.
That's not maturity. That's no longer being a geek. What separates us from the rest of the population isn't really that we're more intelligent that others, or that we work with technology. What separates us from the rest is that we're curious about things and we want to try them out, whether they work well or not.
Or maybe it is exposure to actual, non-academic, world of software development where cool ideas tend to work out as dumb waste of time.
In the industry of software development anything that doesn't make a profit or has a chance of making a profit is a "dumb waste of time." In the world of hobbies, wasting time is the goal, as long as you have fun while doing it.
If you have your pet project, it also has to be useful. It needs to be something worthy your time when not with family/working. It ideally should give you job-translatable skills (haha). And you definitely do not want to reinvent wheel or spend time making someone elses reinvented wheel working.
By definition, your "pet project" is worthy of your time as long as you enjoy working on it. And if what you're after is knowledge, then reinventing the wheel is the only way to get knowledge as to how to manufacture the damn wheel. Sure, you could buy one, but then you haven't intellectually gained anything. Obviously it's not what you want to do at work, because it's not profitable, but it's often what you want from your pet project.
Installing Linux on PS3 is easy. Installing emulators on Linux is easy. Its nothing to write home if you do both. Hell, its wasted time if you do it because you could be actually look for those hidden hardware gems instead making videos of you playing Mario.
It's time well wasted as long as it's something you want to do and you had fun doing it. Turn in your geek card and have fun with your MBA.
Found this at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6zyRr3tmlU
Its what Watchmen would've looked like if it was turned into a cheesy cartoon...
More than that, the comic book says Adrian Veidt has his own Saturday Morning cartoon, and his marketing department wants to include the other "costumed adventurers." That video is about what one would imagine Veidt's cartoon to be like.
I am a non-fan (ducks)
Eh, you're entitled. Quit ducking, I'm not throwing anything.
Over the years I have heard all the hype about how important it is, Time 100 Top Novels, etc.
It is overly hyped, but then I've never seen anything that had any hype actually live up to it. In my opinion, Watchmen is pretty good. It's not "the greatest graphic novel ever written" or any such bullshit. What is? I don't know, the title is meaningless. There's plenty of other works that are at the same quality level, and some people will like some better than others.
I didn't like the book. In reality, it's not a book but just 12 comics pasted together with a bit of fluff inserted that really didn't have anything to do with the plot.
Some of the "fluff" had a lot to do with the plot, and gave important background info and insight. Most of it was just filler.
And it's not really "12 comics pasted together." Just because they were originally released individually doesn't change how they fit together. Unless, of course, you describe a book as "a bunch of chapters pasted together."
The whole "Graphic Novel" thing just doesn't do it for me, I read comics as a kid, this is no different.
No, it isn't different and people who say "graphic novels" are less childish than "comics" are just being elitist. What matters is the story. Some of it is childish, some of it is not, and it has nothing to do with the medium. Some movies are crap, some are not.
The characters are weakly written
I personally disagree with you on that one. There are chapters devoted to character development of specific characters.
because of the format there is very little real information on a page (I especially remember the one page with 4 or 5 panels with only the words "Ahhhhhhh" or similar...
That goes with graphic novels "not doing it for you." You have no idea how to read a comic book, do you? It's not a novel. The text isn't the only thing of importance in the panels. If you don't or can't appreciate the artwork you shouldn't bother with the medium, you're not going to enjoy it.
The plot itself wasn't bad but the ending in the 'novel' was totally weak, and from what I read in the script should be very much better in the movie.
Haven't seen the movie yet, but I read above what the "new ending" was, and I have to disagree with you royally on that one. If your enemy is omnipotent, you cower in fear, you don't unite to fight it. The movie ending doesn't make sense.
The whole pirate subtext was awful. I would have been much happier without reading it.
I'm torn on that one. On the one hand, the pirate comic inside the comic thing did perfectly describe the sentiments at hand. On the other hand, I think it would be stronger to let the readers grasp the emotions of the world on their own, without having to recourse to a narrative from a fictional character inside the fictional world telling you what you're supposed to be observing.
Oh, and the whole manic depressive omnipotent mass murderer in love with a human was just ridiculous.
Mass murderer? Manic Depressive? Dr. Manhattan fits neither of those descriptions.
So, yes, I will go see it, I'll probobly even like it, but I've given my copy of the book away.
Wait...you didn't like it, but you're going to see it anyway, and you expect to enjoy it?
I would really appreciate it if you replied to me after seeing the movie. I have a feeling you won't like it, and you can just say so if that's the case. If you do like it, I'd be really interested in hearing what was it about the movie that really made a difference for you.
"With the original ending, there is a little fear, but there's also a lot of hope!"
I don't think you read the same book I did. Jon even tells Veidt flat out in the end of the book that he didn't stop anything, all he did was postpone it. The point was that, despite the world being "united against aliens", after 20, 50, maybe 100 years of not having another alien contact, people would forget about it (it's human nature) and go back to how things were before.
Well, it's obvious at the end of the comic book that Veidt's was a temporary solution. However, blaming Manhattan is an obviously temporary solution, one that Veidt, the smartest man on the planet, would not possibly use.
The readers might not have been left with much hope, but Veidt most certainly was, despite Manhattan's last words
It's the only way to cram a bunch of facts in your head so you can start talking about how they all connect. Learning is not just rote memorization, but it is a necessary element to the next step: anything you have memorized you can recall instantly
You're not supposed to memorize facts before understanding how they connect. Think of it like the multiplication table. You don't memorize it before you know what it is. You learn what it means, you understand the concept. Then you use it. When you're learning it, you won't have instant recall, but for anything you don't remember, you'll be able to count to get the answer. After you do that enough times, you'll have it memorized, without having to sit there trying to memorize it.
There's no reason there should be a deadline on memorizing the multiplication table and having a night of rote memorization to get it is just stupid...you'll forget it immediately after you're tested on it. However, as long as you know how to find the proper values in the table by counting, eventually you'll have it all memorized because you've had to find it enough times. Since you keep using it, you won't forget it.
Many students just don't test well, so one reason homework is graded is to reduce the weight of the tests.
There's no such thing as "not testing well." There's knowing the material and not knowing the material. Take a 15 year-old who "doesn't test well" and is failing algebra. Now give him a test on the multiplication table. He's not going to fail the multiplication table one.
Mastery of a subject is what's important, not a quarterly sprint.
I agree. To solve that I advocate replacing a test grade with the grade from the equivalent section of the final exam, if the final is higher. If the final is lower, I recommend replacing the test grade with the average of the two. No curves. If somebody doesn't learn the material in time for the test, they can consider that a test run to figure out exactly what they failed to understand. However, their final grade should reflect their mastery of the material at the end of the course, and there is no way to evaluate that short of a test.
Other students are just poor at time management, so they need to have the task broken up into smaller more manageable tasks
No, they don't. They need to learn to manage their time. If you do it for them, they'll never learn to do it themselves. If they get burned for not managing their time right, then they'll learn.
but they need the encouragement of the feedback that graded homework gives them.
They can still get that encouragement from the corrected optional homework. That's why I mentioned that homework should still be given, and whatever is turned in should get corrected. For the feedback. However, they need to learn to seek it.
Also, depending on the grade level, I think it's a little unfair to set students up for the "your own damn fault for not wishing to work hard" trap. They're students. They're going to screw up. It's your job as a teacher to make sure they don't screw up so badly as to ruin their lives as adults.
Best way to do that is to let them screw up. If you protect them from that, they never learn their lesson. A bad grade in a class isn't going to "ruin their lives as adults," we're not talking giving them a criminal record. A bad grade in a class isn't even going to affect their college chances, unless they screw up royally in multiple high-school classes, never learning their lesson, in which case that's precisely the type of students many colleges are trying to filter out during the admission process. By the time they're in high school, they really need to own up to their responsibility, and any grade record before that isn't going to follow them.
As teachers, your job is to teach them that if they don't learn to manage their time, don't learn to seek feedback, don't learn to keep track of their grades, don't learn to recognize when they need help and ask for it, it's going to bite them in the ass. It's called responsibility and consequences.
Cheating is just an excuse to not work hard. If you can demonstrate serious effort and still have trouble, try finding a teacher/professor during office hours.
Although I agree with you that cheating is unacceptable (and deserving of a zero), it is a symptom of the system. You say it's an excuse to not work hard, and you want serious effort being demonstrated. Well, working hard and amount of effort should be completely irrelevant. Results are what matter. That's true in the "real world" and it should be true in the schools.
Some people will learn effortlessly. Others will require more work. Yet, some teachers (not necessarily you) insist on giving large amounts of busy work, just to make sure that the students have hours of work after school to accomplish, on the hopes that the ones who are having difficulty learning will eventually do so by repetition.
Problem #1: Even the ones who do eventually learn through the busy-work repetition are not actually "learning." They'll be able to follow the example to solve that types of problems given them, but they'll have no idea how to apply the concepts to solve problems they haven't seen before.
Problem #2: The ones who learn quickly end up wasting their time on tons of problems they already know how to work.
Problem #3: There are people on both categories who will simply be frustrated with the amount of work, and just not do it. They'll either take the bad grade or cheat. Not saying that's a justification to the cheating, here. Personally, I just used to calculate exactly how much homework I could get away with not doing to get the grade I wanted in the class rather than cheat. I'm not a genius either, but homework really was given in extremely large amounts to compensate for the people who were really having trouble with the classes.
Ideally, this is what you do: you assign homework, but don't grade it. Assign lots of problems but let your students decide how much they need to work on. You can have them turn it in and correct the problems they did work on (without assigning a grade, so they don't have to turn in everything...this will keep your workload lighter too) so that they get confirmation that what they think they are doing correctly actually is correct.
You keep your classes discussion oriented. Make sure students are involved when you ask them about the concepts, not the problems.
You give them tests for the evaluation of their knowledge, which is the only thing that should matter. Part of the test is like the problems they've worked on for homework, but at least half the test are problems they've never seen before, but have the knowledge to figure out. This ensures you are testing their knowledge, not their ability to memorize a process to solve a particular type of problem.
There. Now if somebody fails the test because they didn't do any of the optional homework, it's their own damn fault for not wishing to work hard. However, you're no longer trying to punish people who don't wish to work harder then they have to.
Seriously, the very concept of wholesale-retail-consumer is obsolete for digital media. Music is not the same kind of product as groceries.
Well, the music isn't, but a lot of people like the physical cd with the nice cover art and insert product. I don't see that being obsolete. I understand lower sales because of all the people who only care about the music, but I don't see physical media completely going away.
What I would really be a fan of is the type of service mp3.com tried offering way back in the day. Buy the cd here, download the mp3s now, and wait for your physical copy in the mail.
If it was actually a media processor, the hardware would be perfectly suited. The Cell just isn't a good fit for the class of problems that games fall into.
I don't understand what you mean. Games fall into the category of media. They have all the same requirements as displaying a movie and a few additional requirements, which is why there's an nvidia gpu there.
The hardware in the PS3 isn't less suited for games than the processors in the xbox 360. They both have general purpose processors (in fact, they're both powerpc's, essentially), they both have gpu's. The Cell has some additional stuff around the powerpc core that helps with the other stuff, like audio, physics, etc. That stuff can certainly be done in a general purpose processor, but spu's are better suited for some of that work.
If you examine games in both platforms, they're roughly on par, in terms of graphics quality. There aren't any developers complaining that the PS3's hardware is unsuited for games. They're all just complaining that the development tools suck, and rightly so. Microsoft has invested pretty heavily into making developer's lives easier, which Sony is finding insane excuses to justify why their development tools blow.
The fundamental problem with the PS3 is that each Cell CPU only has 256K of local memory...This forces you to treat the Cell processors like DSPs, pumping a sequential stream of data in one end and out the other.
That's how they're meant to work, that's not a mistake, and it's most certainly not a problem. There's a powerpc as the core of the cell, which can be used for actual non-dsp work.
The fundamental problem with the PS3 is a lack of an easy to use SDK that abstracts the above complexity and makes it easy to program for. The hardware is completely fine, they're just not providing the developers with the tools they need.
If it gets too powerful, or too feature full, who's to say if MS doesn't retract their promise and claim that Mono is infringing on their patents, suing whatever company might have worked on said products?
The law. That would be called estoppel. If they sue you, and you can show that Microsoft has said something to give you an expectation that they would not sue, you win.
I'm not a lawyer, but that seems to be one of those laws that is pretty easy to interpret.
As far as I can see from reading the details, Blizzard told MDY to stop selling the bot and MDY took Blizzard to court to allow them to continue selling it; it was in reaction to this that Blizzard then sued with the fact that the bot was circumventing their protection method.
My point still applies. Blizzard can use whatever technological barriers they want to block something they don't like from their servers. They don't really have the right to tell someone not to make the bot. If they want to prevent said bots, it's their responsibility to make their servers secure, and the absolutely worst they should be legally allowed to do is ban anybody using the bots (including MDY employees).
Once Blizzard got involved and told MDY to stop, MDY would have no choice but to look into legal representation. Blizzard's case should have been thrown out, though.
Not as long as you share a game world.
I agree that a shared world should have certain rules a single-player game does not. However, your dress code analogy doesn't fit here. It's a farming bot, so the character isn't doing anything a player couldn't do manually, the player isn't breaking any rules (no god mode or actual cheats). In fact, I don't play mmorpg's, but the other posts mention "chinese gold farmers" so people actually happen to do the same thing manually.
Even if this actually was a real cheat by my standards, I would still object to court involvement. It's Blizzard's responsibility to figure out how to secure their environment, detect people violating their terms, and kick them out if Blizzard is so inclined. The only time a court should get involved is if somebody challenges the account ban. Then you have a contract dispute.
Throw endless money at it, pushing products out for less than a commercial competitor in only that market can afford (c.f. IE vs Netscape, and other similar events in other markets)
I don't get what the beef is with the IE vs Netscape thing. Microsoft has done some pretty underhanded things. Bundling a free browser with their OS wasn't it. Oh, they're releasing software that doesn't cost money already included with your OS so you don't have to download it! Nobody can compete! Somebody tell that to every Linux distribution. The OS is free, the browser that comes with it is free, the office suite that is bundled with it is free. I guess they're pushing Microsoft out of their market, huh?.
In the end, it was a boost to the consumer. We ended up with free browsers. Remember having to pay for navigator? You think those were good times?
Wait until said competitor is dead, then lock it in, and perhaps charge more for the product afterwards, or let it stagnate and put no further development in, killing the development of a whole market.
Once they let the product stagnate, some other product will become better than it. So now we have firefox. And it's also free. AND it's open source. Microsoft felt threatened, and suddenly we had IE 7. Now we're about to have IE 8 which is supposedly very standards-compliant. The browser market wasn't killed, it became stronger.
So, MS did their usual "throw money at it, and see what sticks", Apple did design work, and targetted their resources and worked out what people would want to see..
So what you're saying is that Microsoft's strategy doesn't work? Then why are we bitching about it? Let them waste their money.
Now that MS seem to actually have to worry about money (wonder how much they lost in the market crashes)
They didn't. They reported profits, not losses. The profits were not as high as they expected it to be, thus the layoffs. They still have plenty of money to throw at the problem.
Wars are won (or at least not completely lost) by not fighting on too many fronts, especially ones where you're getting solidly thrashed by overwhelming opposition. Sometimes a ceasefire, or strategic withdrawl can save the whole show, rather than throwing everything you have in every direction.
They're not "fighting on too many fronts" if they're still making a profit. As long as revenue is positive, you need to expand to as many fronts as possible. It's called diversifying. It means that when you fall on one front, at least it's not your last stand, and you have other battles which you're still winning.
I strongly suspect that making a game bot truly act like a human calls for heuristics that approach those in real humans, meaning something like "true" artificial intelligence.
You're giving this test more value than it deserves. The problem with any turing test is that it depends on the intelligence / experience of the person administering the test. Even irc talking bots have been known to have entire conversations with people who were oblivious to the fact that they were not talking to another person.
That's the whole point: getting pwnd without some smug human to rub it in. Much more fun to lose that way.
No, it's really not. Getting completely pwnd and never being close to winning all the time is frustrating whether it's a human opponent or computer controlled one. On the other hand, a close match is much more entertaining when there's someone rubbing it in. It's the motivation for another game.
Case in point, I remember playing x-wing alliance time trials against my college roommate. Playing that on your own gets boring quick. Beating the other person's record by a few milliseconds would cause trash talk for as long as the record stood. I would go into the room after class, see that damn grin on his face, and he'd say his new record. I would immediately start up x-wing in response. Sometimes we beat the new record on the first try and that gave us huge bragging rights. Fun stuff.
Once I been up and about for just over 70 hours and that is _not_ healthy. Slept for 17 hours after that. Never going to that again, it was living hell.
Been there, senior year, final semester of college. Trying to make a deadline for a project, while simultaneously working and taking way too many classes for a final semester...76 hours here, followed by a 3 hour nap which I took when I noticed how bad things had gotten. Then a shower, another 5 hours of work, and THEN 16 hours of sleep.
It was indeed living hell and I never want to go through it again, but it was still interesting as hell after the fact. When I decided I needed a nap was because by that point I was literally going catatonic for some periods of time. I looked at the computer clock when I was typing a sentence, finished typing the sentence, looked down at the clock again and notice 20 minutes had passed. I had no recollection of pausing at any point during the typing. Later I was told that my roommate had gone by the computer lab, seen me there and dropped by to say hi. He claimed I was staring at the monitor, not typing, and didn't answer anything back. I don't remember that either, but I most certainly believe him.
I walked back to my dorm (wisely decided not to drive) and set my alarm to wake me up in three hours because I had a meeting with my project group. It "woke me up" kind-of. At the time my router was sitting next to my bed, and when I woke up, I had decided that it was the project I was working on. I came back to my senses in the middle of shaking the router and trying to pull the ethernet cable out of it in an attempt to make the lights blink in the proper sequence. No, blinking lights had absolutely nothing to do with my project, but in that state, I thought it did. I had a "wtf moment", took a shower, went back to work, somehow finished what I was working on (the nap surprisingly helped a lot) and then did the marathon sleeping thing.
Not getting any sleep can really fuck you up.
Right, they want it. They want a job so they can make money so they won't starve.
I'm not talking about the people recovering the stuff. I'm talking about the company that dumped it there. The company that is probably paying those people to recover metals from the trash.
Do they understand the risks and threats associated with that job? Based on how they perform the job, it would seem that they do not have a full understanding of what they have agreed to do.
Whether they have an understanding or not wouldn't matter if they can't find other jobs. But the point is, would a company in the west be able to dump the trash somewhere and then pay its citizens to do it? There are regulations that prevent them from doing so, there are government agencies that ensure that the work environment is safe, etc. If China doesn't have those, it is not our fault. It is not our responsibility to ensure that other governments treat their citizens as we would like to be treated.
You might say, Âwe can not do business with any country that treats its citizens like that." It worked well for Cuba when the U.S. went that route because we don't approve of dictatorships, right? It worked well for Iraq with the whole oil for food stuff, huh? The only other option to effect a change would be to force the change militarily. Iraq is again a good example of how that doesn't work. Imagine trying it with China.
Because, rather than deal with it responsibly ourselves, we've outsourced the problem to people apparently incapable or unwilling to deal with it responsibly.
It's not like we're forcing them to take it with the might of our military (not that we could). They want it. There's a transaction where we give them money and they take care of the trash. Once we give them the money, our responsibility is complete and it's their responsibility to deal with the trash.
If they decide this deal isn't in their best interests, they can simply stop being in this business (which would force us to deal with it responsibly or find someone else willing to be in the business). Or they can raise the price to an amount that would make dealing with it responsibly profitable (which might force us to deal with it ourselves if the cost is higher than what it would be for us to take care of it). Either way, it's entirely their responsibility.
Why? If you don't like it, don't buy it.
I agree, we're not on separate sides here. It's not like any of us are saying legislation should be passed to prevent apple from doing this. We're explaining what we don't like about it. If somebody asks me, "should I buy a product from apple" I'll explain the things I like and the things I don't like about them and let them make their own decision.
Well, you certainly had the option of buying any number of other laptops where this wouldn't have been the case. But you chose to but a Mac laptop, and, well, that's what you got. Deal with it and quit whining.
I'm supposed to only buy perfect products, or to be happy with every single aspect of every single product I own? When I bought my laptop I examined the pros and the cons. Uneasy access to harddrive was in the con column. On the other hand, I know my way around computers, so I figured I could (and did) manage, so that con didn't have enough weight to offset the pros.
The Apple rep stating you violated your warranty by replacing the HD is a separate issue. He's a moron, but that has nothing to do with Apple's design choices.
I'm just saying this never would have been an issue if the hard drive was officially a user-replaceable part (like RAM in my model is).
I don't know why you consider a legitimate complaint whining. I'm happy with the laptop in general, I'm unhappy with this aspect of it. The reason given for the design choice I'm unhappy about is that they're saving space, which is untrue. They're purposefully trying to make certain replacements harder so that their customers are more likely to buy parts from them / have them perform routine replacements. These things add up, and the next time I make a laptop purchase the cons just might overwhelm the pros, and I'll go for something else, just as you've suggested.
You are complaining about adding RAM to a device that Apple sold with a warning that the RAM was not designed to be user-serviceable.
No, he's complaining that apple sells a computer where RAM is not designed to be user-serviceable.
Here's an example of the B.S. that he's talking about. My macbook pro (2007) had its motherboard fried, so I took it to an apple store. Now, I have work-related data on that laptop that I needed access to and that I couldn't afford to lose (I make incremental backups, but I had accomplished a lot of work the weekend before...the thing actually broke during a business trip). I know my way around computers, so it wasn't exactly a big deal for me to buy another drive and replace it before sending it in but I had to take the whole case apart to do it. Because you have to do that on this particular model, it's not a user serviceable part, and the apple "genius" said I had voided my applecare warranty and that they were going to charge me $2,000 for repairs. I told him to send it anyway and that I'd deal with that when the time came (because I know my rights, and I know they can't void the warranty for part replacement unless the damage is to the replaced part or done as part of the replacement, regardless of what they call user serviceable).
The kicker? Before they send it back, they tell you to sign a work order. The order states, "you are responsible for making backups of any data contained within this computer and for removing any confidential data before sending the laptop in. We'll make an effort to save your data, but we reserve the right to erase the contents of all storage devices as part of the repair process." I'm signing a contract that says I'm responsible for safeguarding my data while their damn employees tell me I can't safeguard my data. There's no way to get at it with the motherboard fried without opening it up.
Now you say that a smaller footprint of a laptop or a computer the size of a mini excuses it being hard to upgrade. I'll agree with you that in some cases that might be true, but that doesn't excuse intentionally making it hard. That hard drive you need to open the case of the macbook to get to? It's on the bottom left of the case, not on top of the motherboard or any other component. It would have cost them absolutely no extra space whatsoever to make a hole with a screw on the case right beneath it. There's no technical reason why they didn't do it, and if you don't believe me do a google search for the 2007 macbook pro internal layout and see for yourself. Similar thing with the mac mini...it's not a problem if it's difficult to get to the ram inside the computer because all the other components are in the way, but there's no excuse for making it difficult to open the case.
Ninjdromeda's gonna kick our ass...physics be damned!
Dude, we can see them coming 2-3 billion years in advance. I don't think they're ninjas.
MS-DOS defines the epoch as Jan 1, 1980.
That explains it. Thanks.