All I can say is don't go shopping on Black Friday or Thanksgiving. If no one showed up, this whole nonsense would come to a screeching halt real quick. Sadly, I don't think that's going to happen.
I have that same drive, and mine still works flawlessly too. Always liked the hollow knocking sound they made when seeking.
My other cool drive story is earlier this year I found in a box an old Conner IDE drive in a bag with a small piece of paper with a bunch of mysterious numbers written on it. Curious as to what might be on it, I plugged it into a USB to IDE adapter. Drive spun up, but nothing else. I was kind of bummed, but then it dawned on my what that mysterious piece of paper was. Realizing that the USB to IDE adaptor wasn't going to work, I dragged an old P3 out of the closet, typed those numbers into the BIOS screen after the auto-detect failed, and I found the drive still worked perfectly fine. Time stamps on the files indicated that it was taken out of commission sometime in 1998.
Most people also don't run their home PCs 24/7, so their drives will last a lot longer. With that said, I've known a of the "ain't broke don't fix it" types who have lost data when their 10+ year old PC finally gives up. And this is after I told them they need to back up their stuff, and despite their computers at least being new enough to have USB and (usually) a CD burner so backups are cheap and easy they still won't do it.
Nowadays? All the time. For standard office work, a computer from 5 years ago is more than enough, and you can get by with a system that's 10 years old. A lot of places don't run around replacing stuff that still works. Just today I was using a computer, that according to the asset tag, was acquired in January 2005. Someone scraped together enough ram to bump it to 1.5GB at some point, but at 80GB drive is probably original. With that said though, one of the goals in the next few months is to move the remaining boxes off of XP which probably will push most of the boxes before 2008 or so into retirement.
Road sign - These are generally constructed of mild steel and aluminum, as the worst the post has to withstand is the weather on the sign. In an impact it's going to be forced down of course, but then the rest of the sign will act as a lifting/distributing force on the car.
Many new road signs are designed now to break off near the ground in case they get hit to prevent this thing from happening, usually with a special joint installed a few inches off the ground. This also has the side benefit of (usually) not damaging the actual post set that's set in concrete which makes replacement easier. Though I'm sure there are lots of older signs out there without this feature.
It's still stupid, because electric resistive heating is one of the most inefficient and costly ways to heat a house. You'd be much better off buying more efficient lighting and running the furnace more/burning more wood/running the heat pump more/etc to heat your home.
I still have one or two that had started the whole clicking thing, where I was able to get the data successfully off and tossed them on a shelf. Even pushed one back into service temporarily a couple of times for things like trying out oddball Linux distros. Presumably they still function. Actually, as bad as those drives were, I never lost any data from them as they always gave signs before they completely failed.
My other favorite Deskstar story was the one drive that lasted until 2010 in a computer that basically runs 24/7.
I assume we're talking liability insurance here. Show cars and antiques may be valuable, but it's unlikely that the people who own them are going to drive like a jackass.
Do you really want our food supply in the hands of a few (or possibly just one) mega-corp farms? The current situation with Monsanto is bad enough as it is.
Actually, you'll find working at that DPI to be easier on the eyes than the current ~100DPI on a standard screen, assuming the text, images, and UI elements are scaled up to be a reasonable size. The reason is text and such will be rendered with more pixels and will give a much smoother and clean appearance than the jagged appearance with current screens, even with tricks like subpixel rendering. There is a reason why 400DPI+ is the standard for printed text, which is pretty much unheard of when it comes to computer screens.
Obviously the software isn't there yet, which does make some interesting times for the early adapters, but until something changes we're not going to get out of the current rut that we seem to be stuck in since LCD went mainstream.
I've always found it amusing myself that you can still make Windows 7 (and Vista) look like Windows 2000, but that horrid default XP theme was not carried forward.
The tax revenues vanishing had a lot to do with Bush implementing tax cuts we couldn't afford. Spending like a drunken sailor didn't help things either. If Bush left the tax rates the way Clinton had them and kept spending under control we'd be a in a lot better situation (well, assuming that Obama didn't screw it all up anyway).
We're already at the point where if I need to go somewhere and I can drive there in 8-10 hours, I'm taking the car absolutely no question about it. If the car drove itself that would be even better.
The real problem is the cost of college. If it cost a several hundred or so a semester to learn about Shakespeare or Latin or whatever like was a few years back, then no real harm done if someone wanted to spend a couple of years doing that just for the sake of it. But when it costs tens of thousands to go to college, now a degree it must immediately land you a high paying job or it's "worthless".
In a controlled landing, the plane will remain afloat for quite a while. Long enough to get the life rafts inflated and everyone on them, or otherwise rescued. Any controlled landing into water would happen close to an airport anyway as that's the only time they would not have enough altitude to glide to a better location (such as Flight 1549) so help will be close by. There would be no reason a plane would be ditched in the middle of Lake Superior or some remote water location. As for uncontrolled landings into water the life vests would probably not matter anyway.
Actually, the problem was that they caught up to the first Radeons. Those actually started in the 7000's, but I didn't see as many of those around as the later 8000's and 9000's. It would have been way too confusing to have different Radeon 9600's around, even if the old one was a decade-old AGP part, so they went to a new scheme.
Incidentally, after the old 9000 series they went to "X" for 10, such as the X600, then later the "X1" which I guess meant 11, like the X1400. Then they decided it was just silly and dropped the X for the 2000-series.
From what I've seen, a $100 bill will usually get some scrutiny, a $20 may get an occasional check, but I've never seen a cashier check a $5 bill in an ordinary smallish cash transaction. So unless it's a obvious fake, my guess is that someone could get away with counterfeiting $5 bills for a while before getting caught, so long as they didn't get greedy about it.
Of course, there's only so many ordinary smallish cash transactions that you'd be able to do in a day (spending stacks of $5's to do large purchases would definitely attract some attention) so whether it's worth it is kind of debatable. Like a lot of small-time criminals, you'd probably be better off getting a minimum wage job and earning your money legitimately than trying to get by with counterfeiting $5's.
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All I can say is don't go shopping on Black Friday or Thanksgiving. If no one showed up, this whole nonsense would come to a screeching halt real quick. Sadly, I don't think that's going to happen.
I have that same drive, and mine still works flawlessly too. Always liked the hollow knocking sound they made when seeking.
My other cool drive story is earlier this year I found in a box an old Conner IDE drive in a bag with a small piece of paper with a bunch of mysterious numbers written on it. Curious as to what might be on it, I plugged it into a USB to IDE adapter. Drive spun up, but nothing else. I was kind of bummed, but then it dawned on my what that mysterious piece of paper was. Realizing that the USB to IDE adaptor wasn't going to work, I dragged an old P3 out of the closet, typed those numbers into the BIOS screen after the auto-detect failed, and I found the drive still worked perfectly fine. Time stamps on the files indicated that it was taken out of commission sometime in 1998.
Most people also don't run their home PCs 24/7, so their drives will last a lot longer. With that said, I've known a of the "ain't broke don't fix it" types who have lost data when their 10+ year old PC finally gives up. And this is after I told them they need to back up their stuff, and despite their computers at least being new enough to have USB and (usually) a CD burner so backups are cheap and easy they still won't do it.
Nowadays? All the time. For standard office work, a computer from 5 years ago is more than enough, and you can get by with a system that's 10 years old. A lot of places don't run around replacing stuff that still works. Just today I was using a computer, that according to the asset tag, was acquired in January 2005. Someone scraped together enough ram to bump it to 1.5GB at some point, but at 80GB drive is probably original. With that said though, one of the goals in the next few months is to move the remaining boxes off of XP which probably will push most of the boxes before 2008 or so into retirement.
Many new road signs are designed now to break off near the ground in case they get hit to prevent this thing from happening, usually with a special joint installed a few inches off the ground. This also has the side benefit of (usually) not damaging the actual post set that's set in concrete which makes replacement easier. Though I'm sure there are lots of older signs out there without this feature.
It's still stupid, because electric resistive heating is one of the most inefficient and costly ways to heat a house. You'd be much better off buying more efficient lighting and running the furnace more/burning more wood/running the heat pump more/etc to heat your home.
What, as opposed to the Intel compiler?
I still have one or two that had started the whole clicking thing, where I was able to get the data successfully off and tossed them on a shelf. Even pushed one back into service temporarily a couple of times for things like trying out oddball Linux distros. Presumably they still function. Actually, as bad as those drives were, I never lost any data from them as they always gave signs before they completely failed.
My other favorite Deskstar story was the one drive that lasted until 2010 in a computer that basically runs 24/7.
I assume we're talking liability insurance here. Show cars and antiques may be valuable, but it's unlikely that the people who own them are going to drive like a jackass.
Do you really want our food supply in the hands of a few (or possibly just one) mega-corp farms? The current situation with Monsanto is bad enough as it is.
Actually, you'll find working at that DPI to be easier on the eyes than the current ~100DPI on a standard screen, assuming the text, images, and UI elements are scaled up to be a reasonable size. The reason is text and such will be rendered with more pixels and will give a much smoother and clean appearance than the jagged appearance with current screens, even with tricks like subpixel rendering. There is a reason why 400DPI+ is the standard for printed text, which is pretty much unheard of when it comes to computer screens.
Obviously the software isn't there yet, which does make some interesting times for the early adapters, but until something changes we're not going to get out of the current rut that we seem to be stuck in since LCD went mainstream.
And as such, XP Mode will also stop getting updates after April 2014. So your virtual XP can get pwn3d just the same as if it was on a physical box.
I've always found it amusing myself that you can still make Windows 7 (and Vista) look like Windows 2000, but that horrid default XP theme was not carried forward.
I heard that Sony had some pretty decent success with the 3.5" floppy disk.
The tax revenues vanishing had a lot to do with Bush implementing tax cuts we couldn't afford. Spending like a drunken sailor didn't help things either. If Bush left the tax rates the way Clinton had them and kept spending under control we'd be a in a lot better situation (well, assuming that Obama didn't screw it all up anyway).
Actually, it is a marketing trick. 4K in cinema is 4096x2160, not 3840x2160.
Well, if they don't think that electric car owners pay their fair share, the first step would be to stop subsidizing electric cars with tax credits.
We're already at the point where if I need to go somewhere and I can drive there in 8-10 hours, I'm taking the car absolutely no question about it. If the car drove itself that would be even better.
The real problem is the cost of college. If it cost a several hundred or so a semester to learn about Shakespeare or Latin or whatever like was a few years back, then no real harm done if someone wanted to spend a couple of years doing that just for the sake of it. But when it costs tens of thousands to go to college, now a degree it must immediately land you a high paying job or it's "worthless".
In a controlled landing, the plane will remain afloat for quite a while. Long enough to get the life rafts inflated and everyone on them, or otherwise rescued. Any controlled landing into water would happen close to an airport anyway as that's the only time they would not have enough altitude to glide to a better location (such as Flight 1549) so help will be close by. There would be no reason a plane would be ditched in the middle of Lake Superior or some remote water location. As for uncontrolled landings into water the life vests would probably not matter anyway.
Car probably ended up in a shipping container with some overseas destination where not a lot of questions would be asked.
Hey now... they could have sent him UPS.
Actually, the problem was that they caught up to the first Radeons. Those actually started in the 7000's, but I didn't see as many of those around as the later 8000's and 9000's. It would have been way too confusing to have different Radeon 9600's around, even if the old one was a decade-old AGP part, so they went to a new scheme.
Incidentally, after the old 9000 series they went to "X" for 10, such as the X600, then later the "X1" which I guess meant 11, like the X1400. Then they decided it was just silly and dropped the X for the 2000-series.
Instead, we put dead presidents on our money. I say bring back Lady Liberty!
From what I've seen, a $100 bill will usually get some scrutiny, a $20 may get an occasional check, but I've never seen a cashier check a $5 bill in an ordinary smallish cash transaction. So unless it's a obvious fake, my guess is that someone could get away with counterfeiting $5 bills for a while before getting caught, so long as they didn't get greedy about it.
Of course, there's only so many ordinary smallish cash transactions that you'd be able to do in a day (spending stacks of $5's to do large purchases would definitely attract some attention) so whether it's worth it is kind of debatable. Like a lot of small-time criminals, you'd probably be better off getting a minimum wage job and earning your money legitimately than trying to get by with counterfeiting $5's.