Have things really gotten to the point when everytime we don't like a product we sue the manufacturer? What happened to the days when if a product wasn't what we expected it to be we simply told our friends not to buy one and didn't buy from that manufacturer again? Are companies required to produce products that every single person in the world likes otherwise be victims of a lawsuit? Are standard defects valid causes for suits? We (well Slashdot population) all know that no process is 100% defect free, even a 6 sigma process still has 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Are we that litigious? How long before someone sues a restaurant because their steak was medium instead of medium rare?
This means that in meetings people will pay attention to me instead of their Blackberries. There's nothing I hate more than making some point and having to repeat it because half of the people in the room are checking their Blackberries.
I agree with what you're saying. I was really careful with my 3G iPod for about a week after I got it, and then I slid it across a not so clean table and scratched up the back a bit. After that I stopped caring. I fell on it while horsing around and crushed the white part into the alumninum part causing the sides slightly buldge out. Still works and that's all that matters to me. I'm still impressed with how tough it is.
I may be weird, but I really like my CRT. I spend all day working on LCD screens and coming home to my trusty Dell P780 is so nice. I haven't found an LCD that I really like that's affordable enough to replace my CRT.
My girlfriend used to use Linux before she got an iBook for school, and the only thing she misses from Linux is virtual desktops. It was one of those things she just got used to using over the course of her Linux experiment.
Many of my non-technical friends still refer to their tower as "the hard disk." I've tried to educate them in the basics of computing for years and I get hit with the classic "I don't care about that stuff, it's too complicated." They're the same ones who try to do computer repairs themselves and end up calling me when they break things. The best was my friend who wanted me to install a new HD in her computer and upgrade her from 2000 to XP. Presented me with an XP CD that was non-bootable with no serial number. Computing is such an important part of our lives these days people should have a basic knowledge of computing terms and concepts.
Dammit, now that I'm moving out of Albany tomorrow I find out about that site....
I've been frequenting the Panera over at Crossgates Commons since I got my PowerBook. I've also been to the Latham one a few times, but I'm much closer to 'Gates.
a method by which a remote host can specify which of 100+ wireless access points it should connect to
I've got an Intel 2200BG in my work notebook. I can set up profiles for different wireless access points and then select the "Connect to profiles only" option in my configuration. This forces my wireless card to associate with only the connections I specify.
I can also do this on my Netgear USB adapter I have at home, hell I can even do it in Linux to connect to my AP that I don't broadcast. If the problem is that people cannot connect to the "official" wireless network because their wireless card seeks out the strongest signal, it's really a trivial matter to set your card to connect to the SSIDs you choose.
I learned all I needed to know about Perl and MySQL from the Perl Cookbook. I wrote a whole DB interface in CGI. It wasn't that hard. Once I learned the few commands necessary, it was really easy.
I agree though, PHP is even easier.
Re:Obvously the server got hit with one of these..
on
HDD Assault Cannon
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Funny, I'm in a networking class, and the professor just got finished discussing the slashdot effect.
I think Fedora is fine for the home desktop. I've got my relatively computer illiterate girlfriend using Fedora on an ancient Celeron. It's been up almost three months, and she uses it for everything, word processing, web browsing, email, etc.
I use Fedora with Gnome on my laptop for a variety of tasks. Once I tweaked it a little bit, it does everything I need it for. I'm actively looking forward to Fedora 2 to be released (not as a test release, test 1 didn't play nicely on my laptop) this summer.
I installed apt-get and Synaptic on my laptop running Fedora 1. I absolutely love them, everytime I fire up my machine and the RHN applet tells me I need to upgrade, I use Synaptic to do it. Easy, painless, and fast.
Where I worked this summer, I had an iPaq with a few software packages installed on it to do GIS tasks. One of the packages was ArcPad from ESRI and the other was StreetMap for ArcPad also from ESRI. When connected to a GPS unit, you could tell ArcPad a destination, and it could either use your current position or one that you entered to calculate driving directions. The accuracy of the maps was amazing, we went out and road tested them (read: drove around with the GPS unit on the truck and compared our path to the roads on the maps) and there was little or no discrepancy between our actual path and the street layer on the PDA. This seems much better than taking a picture of a building that looks like thousands of other buildings in the world. Interesting idea, just not very practial.
In the networking class I'm taking this semester, we've been doing exercises using Ethereal to study different protocols and layers of the TCP/IP stack. My professor is working on a book that uses Ethereal to study networks, but provides all the relevant captures and such to keep students from running traces on active networks. It's been a useful learning aid, for me at least. It's makes more sense to think about packets and such when you can actually see them and the data they contain.
I worked as a GIS tech one summer, and ESRI software running on MS Pocket PC on a HP iPaq and on a Panasonic Toughbook. We hooked up it to a small Trimble unit, worked as well as our big Trimble units. (PRO XRS, PRO XR) Our equipment got beat up pretty badly in daily use, so we were looking something that could take a beating. I'd use this on a daily basis if I was still doing that kind of work.
My laptop is so loud that if the fan(s) isn't/aren't running my roommate asks me if I turned it off. This thing generally has two fans running at times, and when it's really working hard, a third kicks in. My four year old desktop machine is much quieter than this thing.
Stupid HP. Had to go sticking a desktop chip in a laptop. Oh well, it still runs circles around my roommate's silent Centrino-based machine.
I'd be interested to know how many companies got the warning letter from SCO and tossed it in the circular file instead of replying to it.
If I'm not mistaken, SCO filed suit against DC because they never received a response to their letter. I wonder how many more they'll file based on lack of replies.
When I took the AP Calculus exam in 2000, there were large chunks of the exam where you couldn't use a caclulator. In the places that you could, you still had to show all work leading up to your solution.
Slashdot Mirror
Have things really gotten to the point when everytime we don't like a product we sue the manufacturer? What happened to the days when if a product wasn't what we expected it to be we simply told our friends not to buy one and didn't buy from that manufacturer again? Are companies required to produce products that every single person in the world likes otherwise be victims of a lawsuit? Are standard defects valid causes for suits? We (well Slashdot population) all know that no process is 100% defect free, even a 6 sigma process still has 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Are we that litigious? How long before someone sues a restaurant because their steak was medium instead of medium rare?
This is absolutely insane.
This means that in meetings people will pay attention to me instead of their Blackberries. There's nothing I hate more than making some point and having to repeat it because half of the people in the room are checking their Blackberries.
I agree with what you're saying. I was really careful with my 3G iPod for about a week after I got it, and then I slid it across a not so clean table and scratched up the back a bit. After that I stopped caring. I fell on it while horsing around and crushed the white part into the alumninum part causing the sides slightly buldge out. Still works and that's all that matters to me. I'm still impressed with how tough it is.
I may be weird, but I really like my CRT. I spend all day working on LCD screens and coming home to my trusty Dell P780 is so nice. I haven't found an LCD that I really like that's affordable enough to replace my CRT.
My girlfriend used to use Linux before she got an iBook for school, and the only thing she misses from Linux is virtual desktops. It was one of those things she just got used to using over the course of her Linux experiment.
Many of my non-technical friends still refer to their tower as "the hard disk." I've tried to educate them in the basics of computing for years and I get hit with the classic "I don't care about that stuff, it's too complicated." They're the same ones who try to do computer repairs themselves and end up calling me when they break things. The best was my friend who wanted me to install a new HD in her computer and upgrade her from 2000 to XP. Presented me with an XP CD that was non-bootable with no serial number. Computing is such an important part of our lives these days people should have a basic knowledge of computing terms and concepts.
Dammit, now that I'm moving out of Albany tomorrow I find out about that site....
I've been frequenting the Panera over at Crossgates Commons since I got my PowerBook. I've also been to the Latham one a few times, but I'm much closer to 'Gates.
My company issued me a D600, I pull about 4-5 hours on battery. It's actually not a bad machine. I haven't had problems with it, yet.
I've got an Intel 2200BG in my work notebook. I can set up profiles for different wireless access points and then select the "Connect to profiles only" option in my configuration. This forces my wireless card to associate with only the connections I specify.
I can also do this on my Netgear USB adapter I have at home, hell I can even do it in Linux to connect to my AP that I don't broadcast. If the problem is that people cannot connect to the "official" wireless network because their wireless card seeks out the strongest signal, it's really a trivial matter to set your card to connect to the SSIDs you choose.
HP tech support told me my Windows XP CD wouldn't boot because I needed a new hard drive.
They send new hard drive, still won't boot. Spoke to another tech who just gave me the number to call for new CDs.
I learned all I needed to know about Perl and MySQL from the Perl Cookbook. I wrote a whole DB interface in CGI. It wasn't that hard. Once I learned the few commands necessary, it was really easy. I agree though, PHP is even easier.
Funny, I'm in a networking class, and the professor just got finished discussing the slashdot effect.
I'm running Fedora 1 on a kernel that I downloaded from www.kernel.org and patched it for prism54 support.
Haven't had one problem with it.
They make a nice PDA line that run WinCE. For full size ruggedized laptops, I swore by my CF-28 at my last job.
Not a bad idea for when I move from broke college student to the working world in two months.
I think Fedora is fine for the home desktop. I've got my relatively computer illiterate girlfriend using Fedora on an ancient Celeron. It's been up almost three months, and she uses it for everything, word processing, web browsing, email, etc.
I use Fedora with Gnome on my laptop for a variety of tasks. Once I tweaked it a little bit, it does everything I need it for. I'm actively looking forward to Fedora 2 to be released (not as a test release, test 1 didn't play nicely on my laptop) this summer.
I installed apt-get and Synaptic on my laptop running Fedora 1. I absolutely love them, everytime I fire up my machine and the RHN applet tells me I need to upgrade, I use Synaptic to do it. Easy, painless, and fast.
Where I worked this summer, I had an iPaq with a few software packages installed on it to do GIS tasks. One of the packages was ArcPad from ESRI and the other was StreetMap for ArcPad also from ESRI. When connected to a GPS unit, you could tell ArcPad a destination, and it could either use your current position or one that you entered to calculate driving directions. The accuracy of the maps was amazing, we went out and road tested them (read: drove around with the GPS unit on the truck and compared our path to the roads on the maps) and there was little or no discrepancy between our actual path and the street layer on the PDA. This seems much better than taking a picture of a building that looks like thousands of other buildings in the world. Interesting idea, just not very practial.
In the networking class I'm taking this semester, we've been doing exercises using Ethereal to study different protocols and layers of the TCP/IP stack. My professor is working on a book that uses Ethereal to study networks, but provides all the relevant captures and such to keep students from running traces on active networks. It's been a useful learning aid, for me at least. It's makes more sense to think about packets and such when you can actually see them and the data they contain.
I worked as a GIS tech one summer, and ESRI software running on MS Pocket PC on a HP iPaq and on a Panasonic Toughbook. We hooked up it to a small Trimble unit, worked as well as our big Trimble units. (PRO XRS, PRO XR) Our equipment got beat up pretty badly in daily use, so we were looking something that could take a beating. I'd use this on a daily basis if I was still doing that kind of work.
I got it as a gift. I knew it had a desktop chip, but had no idea it would be as loud as it was. Hindsight is 20/20. Oh well.
My laptop is so loud that if the fan(s) isn't/aren't running my roommate asks me if I turned it off. This thing generally has two fans running at times, and when it's really working hard, a third kicks in. My four year old desktop machine is much quieter than this thing.
Stupid HP. Had to go sticking a desktop chip in a laptop. Oh well, it still runs circles around my roommate's silent Centrino-based machine.
I hate verbose languages. My VB code would be much more readable if MS had decided to use curly brackets instead of words to end blocks.
That being said, I'd rather hack in perl any day of the week over most other languages. Stuff just gets done, and it gets done relatively quickly.
I'd be interested to know how many companies got the warning letter from SCO and tossed it in the circular file instead of replying to it.
If I'm not mistaken, SCO filed suit against DC because they never received a response to their letter. I wonder how many more they'll file based on lack of replies.
When I took the AP Calculus exam in 2000, there were large chunks of the exam where you couldn't use a caclulator. In the places that you could, you still had to show all work leading up to your solution.