Well, it's not just the airline's baggage fees that are the problem. As the TSA luggage screeners can basically steal from your checked luggage with impunity, everyone is forced to carry anything that they care about or remotely valuable onto the plane as a carry-on.
Or more to the point, given that taxes are collected under the threat of violence, there better be a darn good reason to tax people to pay for someone else's education.
Have you considered that we already tax people to pay for someone else's education?
In my mind 7 years is kind of pushing it. After about 5 years it gets the point where I wouldn't trust the hard drives for anything important just due to old age. Sure, you can replace them but given the time investment it hardly seems worth it. Plus other components like power supplies and fans will start failing and have to be dealt with. Of course, it depends on how you use them too - if each machine just has a standard image on the drive you can easily swap out the entire machine when it fails it's a whole lot easier. Just keep around the ones that have been retired for parts, and you can keep the remaining pool going for a long time.
A Pentium can run Windows 7 just fine. I've used Windows 7, along with Vista and the Windows 8 preview on several P4 systems, the former two on pre-Hyperthreading chips. While the Atom may compare with the old P4 in raw processing power, if the P4 is a typical desktop machine with a 7200 RPM hard drive and your typical 128-256 MB discrete graphics card it will absolutely run circles around the Atom-powered netbook for most tasks.
Windows 3.11 was fairly predictable. Which isn't to say that it didn't crash, but once you learned what crashed it and avoided doing that, it worked pretty well. Once you established a work flow, you'd could always do the same over and over again and get the same results. You didn't have a bunch of processes running in the background, or the mysterious registry to deal with. Now, in Windows 95 was, you had a bunch of stuff going on in the background doing stuff, and it was much less predictable. You'd have an established work flow and sometimes for no apparent reason it would just randomly crash or just stop working. Usually rebooting would fix it, but other times the registry would randomly crap itself (this is pretty much inevitable in Windows 95 given a long enough time) and leave the OS in a hopelessly broken state.
Fine then, go buy a Dell or an HP workstation. I guarantee that you'll get something that's well built and the level of support that you're will to pay for. Which, by the way is worlds better than having to pack it up yourself and dealing with the "geniuses" at the Apple Store and potentially not having your computer or data while they repair it. And it will still be cheaper. And that's assuming you're not comfortable running to Microcenter or Fry's for a bog-standard component and fixing it yourself quickly and easily in the case of the custom system. Which is also cheaper than the Mac, even if you don't bother to RMA the broken parts. Also, who tries to sell a $2500 computer with only 3GB of ram in 2012? Oh right, Apple.
That's because Windows 2000 wasn't a replacement for 98. It was a replacement for NT4 (on both servers and workstations). Windows ME was the replacement for 98, which had its own completely different set of problems but more or less would run on anything that 98 would run on.
I don't know anyone who works 9-5. You're now expected to work 8 full hours, so with the unpaid 1 hour lunch added in everyone works 8-5 or 9-6 or some variation of that.
Yeah, but how would you know that? It must be really hard to use some of Microsoft's newer interfaces if you weren't used the older versions and memorized all the keyboard shortcuts (which luckily still for the most part work).
That's assuming Microsoft doesn't push the deadline back, like they have done for previous releases. I'm sure in 2001 Microsoft had no plans of still supporting XP in 2012, let alone 2014.
You can fix pretty much any "bricked" electronic device if you know what you're doing, and/or have access to things like JTAGs and serial programmers. Bricked means that it's unfeasible for the average person to repair it. Your average person probably isn't going to replace their car's ECU either.
I'm not sure what this would accomplish. I mean, what are you going to tell them? If you tell them that you don't have a Facebook account they could call you out on it if they had searched for and found the profile beforehand. If you tell them you don't know your password they won't believe you. If you tell them you don't know your password off the top of your head because you use a password manager or something they'll just tell you to bring it in later (if they are truly interested in hiring you) and then what? If you are just going to refuse then what's the point of playing games with your account? At best you could tell them that you had recently decided to leave Facebook and deleted your account. They might believe that, but if you reactivate the account shortly thereafter they could call you out on it.
Interesting idea, but it would probably end up like Truecrypt's hidden volumes where the next thing they'll say after you give them the password is "Okay, now what's the real password?".
I don't even know why Intel bothers with the integrated graphics on the Core i7. It makes perfect sense on the Core i3 and the Pentiums, and maybe the i5. But how many people are going to buy a $250+ processor and not use a discrete GPU?
With that, you're going to have some kind of external box with the graphics "card" in it, plus likely an associated power supply for it. And then I don't see how you can use that with the built-in laptop display, you'll have to furnish yourself an external monitor. At which point you'd probably want a keyboard and a mouse too as using the built-in ones with the monitor off to the side is annoying at best. At that point you might as well just get a mini-ITX desktop or whatever is small enough but can still fit a graphics card into. I can see some specialized uses, like if you need your fancy graphics on a projector, but I don't see Thunderbolt graphics adapters exactly taking off.
Well, he did say "that the plane would not have reached its destination", not that they would have brought the airliner down. So all you need to do is start a small fire, watch the flight crew freak out and divert to the nearest airport, and BAM - the plane would not have reached its destination. Done.
I had several of those. They all failed. Never lost any data to them though, as they all gave signs of failure before they actually went out, giving me enough time to secure a replacement and copy everything to the new drive. Now, the WD drives from around the same era were absolute garbage. One day they would appear to work fine, the next day they were completely dead and everything on them was lost. This happened over and over again. I don't think I saw a WD 40GB to 120GB drive last more than a year of service. After that I swore off WD, except once when I needed a large PATA drive (this was after SATA had pretty much taken over) and WD was the only option I could find for a new drive. Too a gamble and the damn thing arrived DOA. After RMA'ing the thing the replacement was okay and continues to run to this day.
Toshiba only makes 2.5" drives (and maybe some smaller sizes too). They seem to be decent enough drives, though I don't have as much experience with them. I can only hope that if the deal goes through that Toshiba will start producing 3.5" drives from the equipment they obtain from WD.
Without knowing more, I'd like postulate that it sounds more like "cheap ass power supply" than "cheap ass bearings."
Very common failure mode for drives that run for a long time then powered down. Basically the motor is strong enough to keep the drive spinning, but too weak to spin it back up again after being stopped. Everything is okay so long as the computer is left running, but power it down and that drive will never come up again. This can be because of the motor failing, or the bearings going out making the motor have to work harder (usually if it's the bearings the drive will start to have a noticeable whine while it's running). Of course, it's still possible that a crappy power supply took it out too.
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Interesting law, if this is true. What if the camera uses film?
Well, it's not just the airline's baggage fees that are the problem. As the TSA luggage screeners can basically steal from your checked luggage with impunity, everyone is forced to carry anything that they care about or remotely valuable onto the plane as a carry-on.
Have you considered that we already tax people to pay for someone else's education?
Doesn't the Xbox have a DVD drive? Can't you just, like, put the DVD in the drive and watch it?
In my mind 7 years is kind of pushing it. After about 5 years it gets the point where I wouldn't trust the hard drives for anything important just due to old age. Sure, you can replace them but given the time investment it hardly seems worth it. Plus other components like power supplies and fans will start failing and have to be dealt with. Of course, it depends on how you use them too - if each machine just has a standard image on the drive you can easily swap out the entire machine when it fails it's a whole lot easier. Just keep around the ones that have been retired for parts, and you can keep the remaining pool going for a long time.
A Pentium can run Windows 7 just fine. I've used Windows 7, along with Vista and the Windows 8 preview on several P4 systems, the former two on pre-Hyperthreading chips. While the Atom may compare with the old P4 in raw processing power, if the P4 is a typical desktop machine with a 7200 RPM hard drive and your typical 128-256 MB discrete graphics card it will absolutely run circles around the Atom-powered netbook for most tasks.
It's an okay weapon for when you're just starting out, but I'm more of a fan of the neutron pellet gun myself.
Well, compared to what I was running at home at the time (budget Cyrix 6x86 and AMD K6 systems on VIA chipsets) they were rock solid.
Windows 3.11 was fairly predictable. Which isn't to say that it didn't crash, but once you learned what crashed it and avoided doing that, it worked pretty well. Once you established a work flow, you'd could always do the same over and over again and get the same results. You didn't have a bunch of processes running in the background, or the mysterious registry to deal with. Now, in Windows 95 was, you had a bunch of stuff going on in the background doing stuff, and it was much less predictable. You'd have an established work flow and sometimes for no apparent reason it would just randomly crash or just stop working. Usually rebooting would fix it, but other times the registry would randomly crap itself (this is pretty much inevitable in Windows 95 given a long enough time) and leave the OS in a hopelessly broken state.
Fine then, go buy a Dell or an HP workstation. I guarantee that you'll get something that's well built and the level of support that you're will to pay for. Which, by the way is worlds better than having to pack it up yourself and dealing with the "geniuses" at the Apple Store and potentially not having your computer or data while they repair it. And it will still be cheaper. And that's assuming you're not comfortable running to Microcenter or Fry's for a bog-standard component and fixing it yourself quickly and easily in the case of the custom system. Which is also cheaper than the Mac, even if you don't bother to RMA the broken parts. Also, who tries to sell a $2500 computer with only 3GB of ram in 2012? Oh right, Apple.
That's because Windows 2000 wasn't a replacement for 98. It was a replacement for NT4 (on both servers and workstations). Windows ME was the replacement for 98, which had its own completely different set of problems but more or less would run on anything that 98 would run on.
I don't know anyone who works 9-5. You're now expected to work 8 full hours, so with the unpaid 1 hour lunch added in everyone works 8-5 or 9-6 or some variation of that.
Yeah, but how would you know that? It must be really hard to use some of Microsoft's newer interfaces if you weren't used the older versions and memorized all the keyboard shortcuts (which luckily still for the most part work).
That's assuming Microsoft doesn't push the deadline back, like they have done for previous releases. I'm sure in 2001 Microsoft had no plans of still supporting XP in 2012, let alone 2014.
You can fix pretty much any "bricked" electronic device if you know what you're doing, and/or have access to things like JTAGs and serial programmers. Bricked means that it's unfeasible for the average person to repair it. Your average person probably isn't going to replace their car's ECU either.
I'm not sure what this would accomplish. I mean, what are you going to tell them? If you tell them that you don't have a Facebook account they could call you out on it if they had searched for and found the profile beforehand. If you tell them you don't know your password they won't believe you. If you tell them you don't know your password off the top of your head because you use a password manager or something they'll just tell you to bring it in later (if they are truly interested in hiring you) and then what? If you are just going to refuse then what's the point of playing games with your account? At best you could tell them that you had recently decided to leave Facebook and deleted your account. They might believe that, but if you reactivate the account shortly thereafter they could call you out on it.
Interesting idea, but it would probably end up like Truecrypt's hidden volumes where the next thing they'll say after you give them the password is "Okay, now what's the real password?".
Facebook pretty clearly states that "You will not create more than one personal profile" right in their terms of use.
I don't even know why Intel bothers with the integrated graphics on the Core i7. It makes perfect sense on the Core i3 and the Pentiums, and maybe the i5. But how many people are going to buy a $250+ processor and not use a discrete GPU?
Or for that matter, Minecraft.
With that, you're going to have some kind of external box with the graphics "card" in it, plus likely an associated power supply for it. And then I don't see how you can use that with the built-in laptop display, you'll have to furnish yourself an external monitor. At which point you'd probably want a keyboard and a mouse too as using the built-in ones with the monitor off to the side is annoying at best. At that point you might as well just get a mini-ITX desktop or whatever is small enough but can still fit a graphics card into. I can see some specialized uses, like if you need your fancy graphics on a projector, but I don't see Thunderbolt graphics adapters exactly taking off.
Well, he did say "that the plane would not have reached its destination", not that they would have brought the airliner down. So all you need to do is start a small fire, watch the flight crew freak out and divert to the nearest airport, and BAM - the plane would not have reached its destination. Done.
I had several of those. They all failed. Never lost any data to them though, as they all gave signs of failure before they actually went out, giving me enough time to secure a replacement and copy everything to the new drive. Now, the WD drives from around the same era were absolute garbage. One day they would appear to work fine, the next day they were completely dead and everything on them was lost. This happened over and over again. I don't think I saw a WD 40GB to 120GB drive last more than a year of service. After that I swore off WD, except once when I needed a large PATA drive (this was after SATA had pretty much taken over) and WD was the only option I could find for a new drive. Too a gamble and the damn thing arrived DOA. After RMA'ing the thing the replacement was okay and continues to run to this day.
Toshiba only makes 2.5" drives (and maybe some smaller sizes too). They seem to be decent enough drives, though I don't have as much experience with them. I can only hope that if the deal goes through that Toshiba will start producing 3.5" drives from the equipment they obtain from WD.
Very common failure mode for drives that run for a long time then powered down. Basically the motor is strong enough to keep the drive spinning, but too weak to spin it back up again after being stopped. Everything is okay so long as the computer is left running, but power it down and that drive will never come up again. This can be because of the motor failing, or the bearings going out making the motor have to work harder (usually if it's the bearings the drive will start to have a noticeable whine while it's running). Of course, it's still possible that a crappy power supply took it out too.