If it makes you feel any better, the Chinese feel the same way about air travel. They only want to spend as little as possible. This known fact is backed up by a little known domestic airline inside China called SSS. It's the largest and fastest growing. I've taken several flights. You get a single bottle of water and all meals are bought on the plane. Halfway through the flight, the flight attendants will walk down the isle with a cart advertising all sorts of crap to sell. As an American, I find that to be some funny shit going on. It's like they're owned and operated by the Ferengi.
The glory of Sony died with the MiniDisk Walman. This company is just an empty shell of what was once a positive household name for many geeks and nerds alike. As they say. Nothing lasts forever. Not even a reputation.
But logical. Fact is, I bet they earned more money from her death in these past few days than perhaps all last year alone. From a business perspective, you would be stupid not to raise the price. Bad PR yada yada yada. Give it a week and the bitching will stop and sales will increase. Money talks.
Material science, tighter clearances through improved machining (5w-20 oil usage), and the invention of computer controlled fuel injection are the three core innovations that have lead to engines with an improved milage life.
And yes, carbs that run rich at cold temps tend to wash away the oil from the cylinder wall. Not much, but enough to increase wear levels over time.
I always though the prevailing view was life starting near the ocean vents. Energy was derived via chemosynthesis. Some of those lifeforms worked their way to the surface eventually evolving photosynthesis and thus became more independent. From there, life spread to all corners of the Earth from a substance that covers 3/4ths of its surface.
A "product" used to hold a kind of connotation that it's the last and final solution you will ever buy. So from that angle, there were hardy materials used and life-time warranties issued in some cases. And they really were robust. Take my 1960's Sunbeam toaster my mother handed down to me. These days it's a whole other ball game. Technology is such a fast moving target that the "product" in question is already obsolete the second the design is finalized and well before production starts. This pace of progress is being pushed by the producers as equally as it's being pulled by the consumer. No one corporation is to blame for this. It's a force of nature unto its own created and nurtured by modern society.
All that said. Who cares if my computer is 100% recyclable. It know my current MacBook will be replaced in a year or so, and the next one replaced some four years later after. My modern material possessions are no longer for keeps.
Sucks for sure. But many prefer this line of work to that of working out in the fields. It simply pays a hell of a lot more, that's all. Some even carry over their education and experience to higher paying positions. Slowly but surely, they're climbing the ladder of progress. The population is huge though. Assuming governmental reforms will allow for more employment mobility within the country, it will take quite some time before the cheap labor pool has become sequestered. Some say it's already happened and that the next pool of cheap labor will be tapped in India and Africa.
Capitalism lifts people out of poverty, but not before people are exploited first. That's the trade-off. If you're striving for fairness like we all are, dealing with rampant exploitation needs to take place on two fronts. First, Western nations need to hold the parent companies residing there to be held accountable for what's basically human slave labor. Second, nations that allow this to happen within their own border also need to be involved in ensuring OSHA like standards are in place.
Seriously. I got your point. I'm only messing with you because you were not being very civil to me. Doesn't matter though who's the real bad guy in all this. Both have already insulted my intelligence. As such, they both don't get any more of my attention. Not Santorum or those that keep propagating a foul misrepresentation of his name. It's not as though have to pick sides, because I don't have to. I won't in fact. I simply do not care. And that Chris, is MY choice.
And they're worth $0.99 because they require less effort to build and most gamers are of the casual type with a severe case of ADHD. Knowing that this is a competitive market and every industry is fighting for a slice of someone's personal time, the fact that there's still money to be tapped in this market speaks volumes.
Personally, I prefer older games like FF2 and FF3. But I also know that I'm in the minority.
Not true. Windows 7 will run on any computer that Vista does, and better (assuming specialized laptop drivers are available). I've seen ten year old Dell OptiPlex units run Windows 7 just fine so long as you upgrade the RAM to 2GB or more.
You don't need Windows aero to make the OS a functional experience. Which is precisely why some features of aero are only enabled depending on the graphic card's capability.
1. There are thing that are known. 2. There are things were we knew we don't know. 3. There are things that we know that we didn't knew we know. and 4. There are things that we simply aren't aware of.
I could see that going either way. Perhaps his phone was bugged. But think of this scenario. Imagine him never making a phone call mentioning anything about his hotel. Would it have been out of line for that same person to apologize about his room not being properly made? Perhaps one of the maids ratted out her fellow co-worker in order to earn brownie points (backstabbing is notorious in China I've been told). It could also have been SOP at a major star hotel too. As an American, one thing I've learned about China is that they are extremely kind and courteous to westerners. It's a cultural thing if theirs to treat their guests with the upmost respect. Right up until you violate their laws.
Word of advice for those traveling abroad. Keep your nose clean and you should be fine. Don't bitch or start a fight. You are a foreigner in a foreign land. Remember that!
Totally crosses the line. As a long time member of Slashdot, you have no idea much hope some of you people show for humanity. The ability to call bullshit on both those defending CP, and the politicians who hide behind the "think of the children" mantra in order to pass legislation unimpeded. Those two groups are nothing but cowards! It's about time people start calling it out like it is. By all means, keep spreading the message.
Yup. Just ask the folks living under the USSR, China, and Cuba post revolution. Sure enough, the vast majority of the rich got shellacked, but so did th average citizen too.
Well, you know what they say. Misery loves company. Sad but true.
That's what happens when hardware gets so mass produced the point of being a cheap commodity. Eventually time costs more to fix or refurbish a computer than it is to outright replace it with something newer and better. It's also one of the many reasons cloud computing based web services are so popular. It can be accessed regardless of the platform or device you're on.
The real money in IT can be found in innovation and replacement. Maintenance and support of aging technologies is for the crows. It's the one American export that's quickly losing the upper hand in competitiveness.
Why even get involved at all? There will always be trolling on any public forum. So why not let the community deal with as we've always have in the past through moderation? Honestly, I think you are giving yourselves too much of an unneeded burden by policing slashdot.
If I sound bitter about it, it's because I am. Some places east and south-east have shitty cell reception where the refineries are at. Quite a few inspectors will use aircards near the area. VPN links constantly go down and you never know when Verizon will fuck up passing of GRE traffic. Dropped calls is quite common. Maybe there's just too much metal in the area obstructing the signal. Having a cell booster (repeater) in the area would be nice if at all possible.
Yes. Dell does run a full hardware diagnostic for all computers being resold.
It's been over 7 year since I've lasted worked for Dell. Back when I lived in Austin, they had a warehouse like facility where trucks could load and unload at the trucking dock. Anyways, my contracted job was to refurbish laptops and desktops. It was a simple matter of taking the unit in question and PXE boot them into hardware diagnostics. When a fault is found, we simply order a replacement part from a list available to us at our console. Within a few minutes, a parts running would search and deliver the part to me in person. Once installed, tests are re-ran. If the test passed, we could save the new hardware configuration to be updated with the service tag. That final configuration determined the new cost of the machine to be sold at. The last step was to PXE boot them again for re-imaging of the OS with drivers. How exactly did the right OS get chosen with the proper drivers slip streamed into them? Not sure, but Dell had the system down to a science. It worked.
I only mentioned ESD because people tend to be careless when handling bare electronics. Of course I have no way of knowing how a particular item got damaged in the first place, but the fact ESD precaution is often ignored doesn't exactly improve the situation either.
With regards to hot-plugging, I agree. The card wasn't designed to have a cache DIMM installed or removed with auxiliary power engaged. But of all the items to replace in a server, I can understand how this component gets mishandled among all the rest. Again, I'm not saying it's justifiable, just understandable.
It's keyed so that's not the issue. Typically a PERC (RAID) card is assembled in three parts. The card itself, cache memory, and battery. The entire PERC card assembly can be removed and installed into the motherboard just fine as it's acceptable to do so. The problem is that when Dell ships an RMAed PERC card, it's just the card by itself. It's up to the customer or on-site tech to migrate the cache memory and battery over to it. This is where the problem begins. According to the service documentation, when removing the card you must first disconnect the cache battery before removing the cache. Reverse the steps when installing cache. If you leave the battery connected while adding or removing the cache, most certainly you will fry the module and potentially damage the PERC processor too.
I suppose the argument could be made both ways. On one hand, this card could have been designed better from an electrical engineering standpoint to be more robust and serviceable by adding additional checks and balances in place within the circuitry. On the other, if people would just RTFM and protect against ESD, this wouldn't have been a problem in the first place.
That's exactly what Dell does and I suspect others as well. Although it's not official. When a part is returned for RMA replacement, it will get trashed if the fault is obvious (bad fan, blown PSU, or clicking HDD). If its status is questionable, further soft diagnostics are ran. If they pass, the gremlin infested part with an intermittent hard failure goes back into circulation for the next poor sob.
I want to know if they track the serial number of the parts as they're cycled in and out of Dell. How many time must it come back and forth before they capture it for good and smash it with a sledge hammer?!
Honest to God. I once had a faulty RAID card get replaced three times in a PowerEdge 2950 in attempt to resolve a faulty PERC processor failure according to diags. Dell support thought the system board was killing them. Eventually everything except the chassis got replaced! Soon after a regional Dell rep for the Houston area decided to pull the whole damn server and replace it with a brand new one fully upgraded. Eventually word got out that other customers and techs were shorting out their RMAed RAID cards by not installing its cache memory battery in the proper (but critical) order.
Slashdot Mirror
If it makes you feel any better, the Chinese feel the same way about air travel. They only want to spend as little as possible. This known fact is backed up by a little known domestic airline inside China called SSS. It's the largest and fastest growing. I've taken several flights. You get a single bottle of water and all meals are bought on the plane. Halfway through the flight, the flight attendants will walk down the isle with a cart advertising all sorts of crap to sell. As an American, I find that to be some funny shit going on. It's like they're owned and operated by the Ferengi.
I want this post printed and framed. Simply awesome!
The glory of Sony died with the MiniDisk Walman. This company is just an empty shell of what was once a positive household name for many geeks and nerds alike. As they say. Nothing lasts forever. Not even a reputation.
But logical. Fact is, I bet they earned more money from her death in these past few days than perhaps all last year alone. From a business perspective, you would be stupid not to raise the price. Bad PR yada yada yada. Give it a week and the bitching will stop and sales will increase. Money talks.
Oh look. Shiny!
Material science, tighter clearances through improved machining (5w-20 oil usage), and the invention of computer controlled fuel injection are the three core innovations that have lead to engines with an improved milage life.
And yes, carbs that run rich at cold temps tend to wash away the oil from the cylinder wall. Not much, but enough to increase wear levels over time.
I always though the prevailing view was life starting near the ocean vents. Energy was derived via chemosynthesis. Some of those lifeforms worked their way to the surface eventually evolving photosynthesis and thus became more independent. From there, life spread to all corners of the Earth from a substance that covers 3/4ths of its surface.
A "product" used to hold a kind of connotation that it's the last and final solution you will ever buy. So from that angle, there were hardy materials used and life-time warranties issued in some cases. And they really were robust. Take my 1960's Sunbeam toaster my mother handed down to me. These days it's a whole other ball game. Technology is such a fast moving target that the "product" in question is already obsolete the second the design is finalized and well before production starts. This pace of progress is being pushed by the producers as equally as it's being pulled by the consumer. No one corporation is to blame for this. It's a force of nature unto its own created and nurtured by modern society.
All that said. Who cares if my computer is 100% recyclable. It know my current MacBook will be replaced in a year or so, and the next one replaced some four years later after. My modern material possessions are no longer for keeps.
Sucks for sure. But many prefer this line of work to that of working out in the fields. It simply pays a hell of a lot more, that's all. Some even carry over their education and experience to higher paying positions. Slowly but surely, they're climbing the ladder of progress. The population is huge though. Assuming governmental reforms will allow for more employment mobility within the country, it will take quite some time before the cheap labor pool has become sequestered. Some say it's already happened and that the next pool of cheap labor will be tapped in India and Africa.
Capitalism lifts people out of poverty, but not before people are exploited first. That's the trade-off. If you're striving for fairness like we all are, dealing with rampant exploitation needs to take place on two fronts. First, Western nations need to hold the parent companies residing there to be held accountable for what's basically human slave labor. Second, nations that allow this to happen within their own border also need to be involved in ensuring OSHA like standards are in place.
Ya man, Like... ohh look! DOUBLE RAINBOW!! *huff*
Seriously. I got your point. I'm only messing with you because you were not being very civil to me. Doesn't matter though who's the real bad guy in all this. Both have already insulted my intelligence. As such, they both don't get any more of my attention. Not Santorum or those that keep propagating a foul misrepresentation of his name. It's not as though have to pick sides, because I don't have to. I won't in fact. I simply do not care. And that Chris, is MY choice.
And they're worth $0.99 because they require less effort to build and most gamers are of the casual type with a severe case of ADHD. Knowing that this is a competitive market and every industry is fighting for a slice of someone's personal time, the fact that there's still money to be tapped in this market speaks volumes.
Personally, I prefer older games like FF2 and FF3. But I also know that I'm in the minority.
*rolls eyes*
So you're going to vote for the guy or not?
The man was a poet. Cheers.
Not true. Windows 7 will run on any computer that Vista does, and better (assuming specialized laptop drivers are available). I've seen ten year old Dell OptiPlex units run Windows 7 just fine so long as you upgrade the RAM to 2GB or more.
You don't need Windows aero to make the OS a functional experience. Which is precisely why some features of aero are only enabled depending on the graphic card's capability.
1. There are thing that are known.
2. There are things were we knew we don't know.
3. There are things that we know that we didn't knew we know.
and
4. There are things that we simply aren't aware of.
True.
Now I think less of the person and people who keep perpetuating this on the internet.
I'm not taking sides. Both sides can go to hell!
I could see that going either way. Perhaps his phone was bugged. But think of this scenario. Imagine him never making a phone call mentioning anything about his hotel. Would it have been out of line for that same person to apologize about his room not being properly made? Perhaps one of the maids ratted out her fellow co-worker in order to earn brownie points (backstabbing is notorious in China I've been told). It could also have been SOP at a major star hotel too. As an American, one thing I've learned about China is that they are extremely kind and courteous to westerners. It's a cultural thing if theirs to treat their guests with the upmost respect. Right up until you violate their laws.
Word of advice for those traveling abroad. Keep your nose clean and you should be fine. Don't bitch or start a fight. You are a foreigner in a foreign land. Remember that!
Totally crosses the line. As a long time member of Slashdot, you have no idea much hope some of you people show for humanity. The ability to call bullshit on both those defending CP, and the politicians who hide behind the "think of the children" mantra in order to pass legislation unimpeded. Those two groups are nothing but cowards! It's about time people start calling it out like it is. By all means, keep spreading the message.
Yup. Just ask the folks living under the USSR, China, and Cuba post revolution. Sure enough, the vast majority of the rich got shellacked, but so did th average citizen too.
Well, you know what they say. Misery loves company. Sad but true.
That's what happens when hardware gets so mass produced the point of being a cheap commodity. Eventually time costs more to fix or refurbish a computer than it is to outright replace it with something newer and better. It's also one of the many reasons cloud computing based web services are so popular. It can be accessed regardless of the platform or device you're on.
The real money in IT can be found in innovation and replacement. Maintenance and support of aging technologies is for the crows. It's the one American export that's quickly losing the upper hand in competitiveness.
Live by the sword, die by the sword I always say.
Why even get involved at all? There will always be trolling on any public forum. So why not let the community deal with as we've always have in the past through moderation? Honestly, I think you are giving yourselves too much of an unneeded burden by policing slashdot.
Thanks. The resolution still sucks though.
If I sound bitter about it, it's because I am. Some places east and south-east have shitty cell reception where the refineries are at. Quite a few inspectors will use aircards near the area. VPN links constantly go down and you never know when Verizon will fuck up passing of GRE traffic. Dropped calls is quite common. Maybe there's just too much metal in the area obstructing the signal. Having a cell booster (repeater) in the area would be nice if at all possible.
Yes. Dell does run a full hardware diagnostic for all computers being resold.
It's been over 7 year since I've lasted worked for Dell. Back when I lived in Austin, they had a warehouse like facility where trucks could load and unload at the trucking dock. Anyways, my contracted job was to refurbish laptops and desktops. It was a simple matter of taking the unit in question and PXE boot them into hardware diagnostics. When a fault is found, we simply order a replacement part from a list available to us at our console. Within a few minutes, a parts running would search and deliver the part to me in person. Once installed, tests are re-ran. If the test passed, we could save the new hardware configuration to be updated with the service tag. That final configuration determined the new cost of the machine to be sold at. The last step was to PXE boot them again for re-imaging of the OS with drivers. How exactly did the right OS get chosen with the proper drivers slip streamed into them? Not sure, but Dell had the system down to a science. It worked.
I only mentioned ESD because people tend to be careless when handling bare electronics. Of course I have no way of knowing how a particular item got damaged in the first place, but the fact ESD precaution is often ignored doesn't exactly improve the situation either.
With regards to hot-plugging, I agree. The card wasn't designed to have a cache DIMM installed or removed with auxiliary power engaged. But of all the items to replace in a server, I can understand how this component gets mishandled among all the rest. Again, I'm not saying it's justifiable, just understandable.
It's keyed so that's not the issue. Typically a PERC (RAID) card is assembled in three parts. The card itself, cache memory, and battery. The entire PERC card assembly can be removed and installed into the motherboard just fine as it's acceptable to do so. The problem is that when Dell ships an RMAed PERC card, it's just the card by itself. It's up to the customer or on-site tech to migrate the cache memory and battery over to it. This is where the problem begins. According to the service documentation, when removing the card you must first disconnect the cache battery before removing the cache. Reverse the steps when installing cache. If you leave the battery connected while adding or removing the cache, most certainly you will fry the module and potentially damage the PERC processor too.
I suppose the argument could be made both ways. On one hand, this card could have been designed better from an electrical engineering standpoint to be more robust and serviceable by adding additional checks and balances in place within the circuitry. On the other, if people would just RTFM and protect against ESD, this wouldn't have been a problem in the first place.
That's exactly what Dell does and I suspect others as well. Although it's not official. When a part is returned for RMA replacement, it will get trashed if the fault is obvious (bad fan, blown PSU, or clicking HDD). If its status is questionable, further soft diagnostics are ran. If they pass, the gremlin infested part with an intermittent hard failure goes back into circulation for the next poor sob.
I want to know if they track the serial number of the parts as they're cycled in and out of Dell. How many time must it come back and forth before they capture it for good and smash it with a sledge hammer?!
Honest to God. I once had a faulty RAID card get replaced three times in a PowerEdge 2950 in attempt to resolve a faulty PERC processor failure according to diags. Dell support thought the system board was killing them. Eventually everything except the chassis got replaced! Soon after a regional Dell rep for the Houston area decided to pull the whole damn server and replace it with a brand new one fully upgraded. Eventually word got out that other customers and techs were shorting out their RMAed RAID cards by not installing its cache memory battery in the proper (but critical) order.