My brother's Satellite M35 is also a lemon -- worst recommendation I ever made. We spent $600 in December 2004, which I thought was cheaper than a Dell deal -- turns out that we had to buy an extended warranty for $150, so a Dell would have been just as good a deal. So far they've replaced the motherboard (once but for three separate reasons: display flickering, loose power jack, and dead hard drive connector), and it's back into the shop again because the WiFi no longer works and it's getting BSODs.
Yes, and it would give a lot less performance too. As the article from Tom's Hardware that has been posted in these comments multiple times says, When overclocked (and still using only about 35 watts), the Pentium-M beats even the P4EE and Athlon 64 FX-55 in almost all benchmarks. It's especially strong in gaming benchmarks.
BTW, this is old news... I was lusting after one of these back in February.
I actually get much better milage cruising at 80-90 MPH than I do normally... because normally, to get my underpowered car to go anywhere, I almost redline regularly, say, trying to accelerate on the highway up a hill. A constant 80 to 90 MPH is much more efficient for my engine, especially considering it's sitting at 4000 RPM for most of that time.
I hate having to reply to an earlier, unrelated post to get noticed, but it seems like I'll have to here...
By far the best way to get students involved is to offer them some time in your shoes. As a freshman at a private school, the instructional technology coordinator somehow noticed that I was both interested in and somewhat competent with computers, and offered me a volunteer summer internship assisting the Computer Services department with various tasks. That first summer, I did a lot of manual labor and not so much technical stuff, but I started learning the ropes, and was hired as an hourly staffmember (part-time during the year, full-time during the summer).
My previous computer experience had really only involved administering a very basic home network. At school, I learned about NT domains, network hardware and infrastructure, deployment of software, servers, group policy, zones and subnets, and numerous minor details specific to my school's network. I also honed my hardware and software troubleshooting and optimization skills. But most importantly, I learned about dealing with ornery clients -- most often older faculty -- and minor network sabotage by students.
By the time I left for college this fall, after my fourth summer of work, I was far more competent in dealing with computers than I could ever have hoped to be had I not had the opportunity to work in CS.
It might be a little risky to just kind of open up tech internships to every student at your school/district -- you'd have too many people applying and among those applicants would be too many incompetent ones. So my suggestion would be to have a screening program that would involve fixing various problems; an interview process; and a provision that (like me) the student would have to work a period of time as a volunteer. You'd end up with a program that would only allow a select number of students to participate, but that would both help you and would help those students skilled enough to get the job.
I go to Harvard University, and am a User Assistant -- basically, a student-employee of Computer Services who helps undergrads with computer problems. Our policy whenever someone comes in with a problem, be it a virus or spyware or even a simple problem with Eudora, is to install Firefox. I have never had a user object, and when I show them some features like tabbed browsing, they really warm to the browser. One girl even said that she used DeadAIM primarily for the tabs and loved it that Firefox came with such a feature too.
Of course, the best thing is that once the user is firewalled and virus-protected and has SP2 and Firefox, he or she will probably never come into the Clinic again!
Oh, please. I have the exact same monitor and have not had any problems with it. It works great for everything, including movie-watching and gaming, and basically does everything you expect a $1000 monitor to do. I have never seen my cursor lag, ghost, or degrade at all visually. I have a feeling, as others have said, that the problem does not lie with the monitor, but rather with the computer.
Incidentally, the fact that both Tom's Hardware and Maximum PC said that this is a great monitor tells me that it's not the same old Dell crap that we all know and hate. I will never buy a Dell computer, but Dell does not cut corners on their high-end flat panels.
You're right, my background is in Windows and not OS X, but you don't have to be insulting about it. Calling people ignorant doesn't get you anywhere.
But onto your points. The fact is that we're simply able to build a very robust network infrastructure rather cheaply, and that this network infrastructure, as pointed out by the other poster on this thread, does not play well with Macs. Also, I'd like you to find me a tool that is as simple as RIS -- you press F12 on boot, type in your Active Directory username and password, and select the type of image from a list (I believe we have six right now -- Upper School, Middle School, Faculty/Staff, Terminal, Media Lab, and WinPE), and you're done. Come back two hours later and your system is built up with anywhere from six to fourty applications. I'm not familiar with NetRestore, but I highly doubt it can do that.
There we get into more cost-benefit. First of all, we buy exclusively Dell servers now, because we can get them off Refurb quite cheaply. Suns are quite expensive, and we don't want to deal with trying to get up to speed on Linux/hire somebody with the knowledge. Two of our staff are MCSE certified, so we use that. Then we get into the fact that Mac servers just aren't enterprise-class (no, not even the XServe -- no redundant power and uses IDE drives). And Acive Directory is very robust -- certainly htere are other tools that perform the same functions, but they cost money above and beyond our MEEC licenses of 2000 Server/Server 2003, which we get quite cheaply. LDAP is a subset of AD which we do utilize, and as I'm not a network guru myself (I'm just a recent high-school graduate), I'm not familiar with NFS and IMAP.
And how does our choice of AD weaken my point about RIS, cost of machines (and derived upgrade benefits), etc?
I work in the Computer Services department at a private school from which I graduated this June. As we speak, we are looking at ways to phase out our remaining Macs. When I started nearly four years ago, we were buying new Macs like crazy -- for multimedia and art in the upper school and for all purposes in the lower school. Now we're phasing them out. We took delivery of Dells to replace the Macs in our multimedia lab this spring, and we're getting a delivery of twelve new Dells with 17" flat panels tomorrow afternoon to replace the Macs in upper school art. In two year's time, the only Macs on campus will be ones in the lower school classrooms that we will have rigged up to run Citrix and connect to a Windows server.
Why are we doing this? There are several reasons.
1. Administration. Macs don't play well with PC networks, even with OS X on them. As we are implelmenting things like Active Directory, hard-drive-based backup of network storage, web caching and filtering, and the like, we're having to jump through hoops to get our Macs to work with these new systems. Instead of hiring three Mac specialists to maintain the machines, it's cheaper to move to an all-PC environment.
2. Administration again. We've implemented RIS of all PC machines that can PXE boot, which is most of the ones on campus. If a machine is acting funky, we just PXE boot and walk away, and two hours later, all of the OS components and applications are restored to their original state -- the hard drive has been wiped clean and redone. Macs just can't do this. Every time a Mac is acting funky, we need to spend several hours of our valuable IT time redoing it and reinstalling apps. We can't afford that.
3. Cost. Macs cost a lot. The machines that are getting delivered tomorrow are Dell Dimension 4600s with 2.8 GHz processors, 512 MB of dual-channel RAM, 80 GB hard drives, and 17" Dell UltraSharp flat panels. We got them for $800 a pop. You just can't compare a $900 eMac to that kind of value.
4. Upgrade cycle. This ties in with cost. We buy most of our PCs from Dell Refurb. We generally get them for about $400, upgrade them for another $100, and we have cheap, capbable machines. That means we can upgrade twice as often as if we buy $1000 Macs, and that translates to better experiences for students.
5. Compatibility. It's true -- there are more applications for PC and those that are cross-platform often run better on a PC. Even my die-hard Mac friends admit this. That means that if we buy PCs, we get an assurance that they will meet our needs. Also, our student-coded ColdFusion-based website barely runs on Macs -- so it's a no-brainer. PCs for all.
I get an even worse recommendation. Once I built a computer for one of my friends; now all of HIS friends ask me to build computers for THEM. It's sort of getting annoying, even though I like building computers.
To defend my articles: look at the other Wired story in the posting (the one that the whole thing was about). That one deals with problems with actual e-voting machines in precincts.
It's better to have an oversensitive car alarm than one that has the chance of not going off if the car is being legitimately broken into. A car alarm saved my parents' Infiniti G20 (not the most desirable car in the world to start with, considering that it's a stripper G20, with a stick and clth seats, and considering that G20s are seriously underpowered) on at least a couple of occasions. Imagine how many Mercedes S-classes or Lincoln Navigators would get stolen if their alarms didn't go off because they were programmed for fewer false alarms and this resulted in less sensitivity to legitimate threats?
You're confusing PCI-Express x1 (normal peripherals such as NICs, sound cards, RAID controllers, etc.) and PCI-Express x16 (graphics cards only). Although card manufacturers will doubtless produce x1 graphics cards (just like some GeForce2 MXs, GeForce FX 5200s, and ATI Radeon 9000s are PCI designs at this point), most new GPUs (such as the R423 mentioned here) will be designed for and will run only in x16 slots.
Then you get into chipset design -- all PCI-Express chipsets will include only one x16 slot, and the currently pending ones will not include AGP slots. One example of this is Intel's Grantsdale chipset, which includes support for one x16 slot, three x1 slots, and a couple more regular PCI slots. So in summary, if you want to get a state-of-the-art motherboard, you'll also have to upgrade your graphics card.
With that said, a site I saw on the BTX formfactor showed a computer with a PCI-Express x16 to AGP adaptor -- but I doubt that will make it to production; it was probably just because no PCI-Express cards are available at the moment and they needed a stopgap solution for their demo box.
Well, it's 16 channels and not four, but you have the right idea. PCI Express for Graphics is going to end up being analogous to AGP -- chipsets will only support one slot. However, the fact that PCI Express x1 slots will themselves have such high bandwidth will mean it won't be as much of a problem for those who want to run multiple graphics cards.
Like I said in another reply to this article, CyberGuys has screws and a whole bunch of other useful things (slot covers, rubber case feet, organizer boxes, anti-static wrist straps, etc.).
Well, not actually a personal experience; it was an experience that my grandparents had while in Europe. They had rented a Renault of some type (not sure of the model) and were driving in the Alps with it. Specifically, my grandfather was driving down a mountain, and all of a sudden he couldn't modulate the brakes. He also couldn't downshift the car to use engine braking. It turns out that the transmission had literally broken apart and a piece had severed a brake line, meaning that both systems were no longer working. He did manage to slow the car somehow and they finally got down to level ground where he could use the handbrake, but it was such a hair-raising experience that they have sworn never to touch French cars again.
I don't think that's true at all. I'm currently looking at colleges, and althought the CS professors I have talked to are generally disdainful when I say I want to be a network admin, the consensus is that CS is a good place to start in terms of getting the technical and critical thinking skills that I would need. Also, at Tufts, the professor (of CS) that I talked to was a foremost expert in the network administration field. The skill sets may not be completely interchangeable, but there's enough overlap that CS is useful.
I think that video is much more of a "killer app" than wireless. Wireless is only useful when you're within range of the host transmitter (which is another reason why 1.5 GB is limiting -- who's going to keep a portable audio device within range of their computer 24/7? You can't have unlimited storage if you don't have the wireless access). However, video capability can be useful anywhere, most notably on a long car or plane ride. Imagine watching The Matrix or Family Guy on a transcontinental flight; just like the current iPod circumvents crappy airplane music channels, a new video-enabled one will circumvent crappy in-flight movies.
Also, my friend has the new video-enabled RCA Lyra, and despite the fact that it has terrible software, an antediluvian interface, and abysmal battery life, it's amazingly cool. I can't wait to see how Apple implements video -- I've been holding out on buying an MP3 jukebox because my MP3 CD player works fine, but if the Video iPod lives up to the hype, I'm sold.
It seems to me that Microsoft did a lot more focus-grouping than you give them credit for, albeit at a time before Windows XP. Consider things like the taskbar and Start Menu, which represented a revolution in UI design when they came out back in 1995; the Quick Launch bar; and the layout of the Control Panel (certainly different from the old Mac OS layout and in my opinion more intuitive). Furthermore, Microsoft still focus-groups, but they occasionally come up with a really bad idea (like taking My Computer, My Network Places, My Documents, IE, etc. off the desktop in the WinXP default layout -- what kind of crack were they smoking?). I personally think that there are a lot of things that Microsoft could improve in the WinXP UI, but that doesn't change the fact that much of the stuff in it was put in as a result of testing and not just copied from the Mac.
You name two reasons why bias against women doesn't exist that actually disprove your point. The reason why companies make policies that favor women and don't have "sensitivity to males" training is that males are in a much better position for advancement and face much less harrassment and bias than women do. Face it: harrassment of men by women generally isn't an issue. Furthermore, how many woman CEOs do you see? How about woman executives of any sort? There are certainly exceptions to the rule, but the rule still is that men generally hold these jobs because women (often equally qualified ones) are discriminated against. The glass ceiling is alive and well.
They tried that with Metric too (Interstate 19 being the notable example). It didn't get off the ground either. Furthermore, it is a lot more expensive to convert to automated highways than it is to convert to Metric... think about it for a second. Interstate and other road signs have to be replaced periodically anyway, so why not print out a new one with Metric instead of US units? As to other stuff, most engineering and manufacturing, all science, etc. is already done in Metric.
In contrast, with automated freeways, they would have to put a bunch of expensive magnets in the roadway that wouldn't have gone in there before. The cars would also have to have much more equipment, what with a sensor to follow the magnets, adaptive cruise control, automated steering, electronic brakes.... There's a reason why they only put these things on Mercedeses and BMWs--they're really expensive. Imagine if a base-model Honda Civic cost, say, $25,000!
With that said, this stuff is probably going to get cheaper over the years, and we've already seen the trickle-down effect with things like ABS, now available at your neighborhood Yugo dealer, practically:p . So the economies of scale will eventually allow all of the infrastructure except the magnets in the highways to fall into place. Maybe if our presidents would stop cutting taxes there would actually be enough money in the coffers to implement such a large-scale infrastructure change.
On the topic of automated highways, read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast, which contains something like a good picture of the infrastructure and implications.
Why don't they have cars that drive themselves on the interstate? Actually, 5 or 6 years ago there was a pilot program where they deployed magnets in 13 miles of California freeway and equipped Buicks (yeah... go figure...) to do the whole automated driving thing. But that never got any farther than those 13 miles, as far as I know. Why?
Well, I'd have to guess it's a similar reason why we never converted to the Metric system--infrastructure problems. Simply put, there are far too many miles of highway (46,000-somthing at last count), far too many sensors per mile, and far too few tax dollars to spend on the project. It was the same thing with Metric in the 70s--the government said we'd be metric in five years, only to find out the hard way that there were too many miles of freeway, too many die changes, too much opposition from corporations... you get the idea.
XP Home boxes have them too. The ironic thing is that we buy an assload of XP Home boxes at my work (Dimensions off outlet.dell.com), because they are cheap and we have a tiny budget and lots of things we need to do with it. We then click through the intro screens on the way to booting off the XP Pro install CD or doing an RIS boot. We then fail to use any of the Dell-provided software.
Frankly, though, even if you were a home user and had no choice but to use the software, it's not a big deal, for several reasons:
1. The EULAs are pretty much unenforceable unless the software has copy-protection of some kind that checks back with a server, which most OEM software lacks (with the notable exception of Windows and Office).
2. If the software does have copy-protection, there is no need for the EULA in the first place, because the software manufacturer can carry out its own enforcement in the form of feature-limiting (Microsoft has done this with cracked copies of WinXP).
3. Have you ever read these license agreements? Pretty much the worst penalty they contain is that the company can terminate the license at any time, i.e. prohibit you from using this copy of the software. Not a big deal. Just go buy the next version.
Not to mention the fact that my mom bought a Dell with this message about a year and a half ago and Dell/Microsoft/whoever has yet to come after her for using the illegal copies of Office, etc. that I put on there for her...:D
Slashdot Mirror
My brother's Satellite M35 is also a lemon -- worst recommendation I ever made. We spent $600 in December 2004, which I thought was cheaper than a Dell deal -- turns out that we had to buy an extended warranty for $150, so a Dell would have been just as good a deal. So far they've replaced the motherboard (once but for three separate reasons: display flickering, loose power jack, and dead hard drive connector), and it's back into the shop again because the WiFi no longer works and it's getting BSODs.
FYI, there is a A70/A75/M30/M35 class-action suit pending.
Yes, and it would give a lot less performance too. As the article from Tom's Hardware that has been posted in these comments multiple times says, When overclocked (and still using only about 35 watts), the Pentium-M beats even the P4EE and Athlon 64 FX-55 in almost all benchmarks. It's especially strong in gaming benchmarks.
BTW, this is old news... I was lusting after one of these back in February.
I actually get much better milage cruising at 80-90 MPH than I do normally... because normally, to get my underpowered car to go anywhere, I almost redline regularly, say, trying to accelerate on the highway up a hill. A constant 80 to 90 MPH is much more efficient for my engine, especially considering it's sitting at 4000 RPM for most of that time.
I hate having to reply to an earlier, unrelated post to get noticed, but it seems like I'll have to here...
By far the best way to get students involved is to offer them some time in your shoes. As a freshman at a private school, the instructional technology coordinator somehow noticed that I was both interested in and somewhat competent with computers, and offered me a volunteer summer internship assisting the Computer Services department with various tasks. That first summer, I did a lot of manual labor and not so much technical stuff, but I started learning the ropes, and was hired as an hourly staffmember (part-time during the year, full-time during the summer).
My previous computer experience had really only involved administering a very basic home network. At school, I learned about NT domains, network hardware and infrastructure, deployment of software, servers, group policy, zones and subnets, and numerous minor details specific to my school's network. I also honed my hardware and software troubleshooting and optimization skills. But most importantly, I learned about dealing with ornery clients -- most often older faculty -- and minor network sabotage by students.
By the time I left for college this fall, after my fourth summer of work, I was far more competent in dealing with computers than I could ever have hoped to be had I not had the opportunity to work in CS.
It might be a little risky to just kind of open up tech internships to every student at your school/district -- you'd have too many people applying and among those applicants would be too many incompetent ones. So my suggestion would be to have a screening program that would involve fixing various problems; an interview process; and a provision that (like me) the student would have to work a period of time as a volunteer. You'd end up with a program that would only allow a select number of students to participate, but that would both help you and would help those students skilled enough to get the job.
I go to Harvard University, and am a User Assistant -- basically, a student-employee of Computer Services who helps undergrads with computer problems. Our policy whenever someone comes in with a problem, be it a virus or spyware or even a simple problem with Eudora, is to install Firefox. I have never had a user object, and when I show them some features like tabbed browsing, they really warm to the browser. One girl even said that she used DeadAIM primarily for the tabs and loved it that Firefox came with such a feature too.
Of course, the best thing is that once the user is firewalled and virus-protected and has SP2 and Firefox, he or she will probably never come into the Clinic again!
Oh, please. I have the exact same monitor and have not had any problems with it. It works great for everything, including movie-watching and gaming, and basically does everything you expect a $1000 monitor to do. I have never seen my cursor lag, ghost, or degrade at all visually. I have a feeling, as others have said, that the problem does not lie with the monitor, but rather with the computer.
Incidentally, the fact that both Tom's Hardware and Maximum PC said that this is a great monitor tells me that it's not the same old Dell crap that we all know and hate. I will never buy a Dell computer, but Dell does not cut corners on their high-end flat panels.
You're right, my background is in Windows and not OS X, but you don't have to be insulting about it. Calling people ignorant doesn't get you anywhere.
But onto your points. The fact is that we're simply able to build a very robust network infrastructure rather cheaply, and that this network infrastructure, as pointed out by the other poster on this thread, does not play well with Macs. Also, I'd like you to find me a tool that is as simple as RIS -- you press F12 on boot, type in your Active Directory username and password, and select the type of image from a list (I believe we have six right now -- Upper School, Middle School, Faculty/Staff, Terminal, Media Lab, and WinPE), and you're done. Come back two hours later and your system is built up with anywhere from six to fourty applications. I'm not familiar with NetRestore, but I highly doubt it can do that.
There we get into more cost-benefit. First of all, we buy exclusively Dell servers now, because we can get them off Refurb quite cheaply. Suns are quite expensive, and we don't want to deal with trying to get up to speed on Linux/hire somebody with the knowledge. Two of our staff are MCSE certified, so we use that. Then we get into the fact that Mac servers just aren't enterprise-class (no, not even the XServe -- no redundant power and uses IDE drives). And Acive Directory is very robust -- certainly htere are other tools that perform the same functions, but they cost money above and beyond our MEEC licenses of 2000 Server/Server 2003, which we get quite cheaply. LDAP is a subset of AD which we do utilize, and as I'm not a network guru myself (I'm just a recent high-school graduate), I'm not familiar with NFS and IMAP.
And how does our choice of AD weaken my point about RIS, cost of machines (and derived upgrade benefits), etc?
I think using a public terminal to get off is not what any school would intend.
I work in the Computer Services department at a private school from which I graduated this June. As we speak, we are looking at ways to phase out our remaining Macs. When I started nearly four years ago, we were buying new Macs like crazy -- for multimedia and art in the upper school and for all purposes in the lower school. Now we're phasing them out. We took delivery of Dells to replace the Macs in our multimedia lab this spring, and we're getting a delivery of twelve new Dells with 17" flat panels tomorrow afternoon to replace the Macs in upper school art. In two year's time, the only Macs on campus will be ones in the lower school classrooms that we will have rigged up to run Citrix and connect to a Windows server.
Why are we doing this? There are several reasons.
1. Administration. Macs don't play well with PC networks, even with OS X on them. As we are implelmenting things like Active Directory, hard-drive-based backup of network storage, web caching and filtering, and the like, we're having to jump through hoops to get our Macs to work with these new systems. Instead of hiring three Mac specialists to maintain the machines, it's cheaper to move to an all-PC environment.
2. Administration again. We've implemented RIS of all PC machines that can PXE boot, which is most of the ones on campus. If a machine is acting funky, we just PXE boot and walk away, and two hours later, all of the OS components and applications are restored to their original state -- the hard drive has been wiped clean and redone. Macs just can't do this. Every time a Mac is acting funky, we need to spend several hours of our valuable IT time redoing it and reinstalling apps. We can't afford that.
3. Cost. Macs cost a lot. The machines that are getting delivered tomorrow are Dell Dimension 4600s with 2.8 GHz processors, 512 MB of dual-channel RAM, 80 GB hard drives, and 17" Dell UltraSharp flat panels. We got them for $800 a pop. You just can't compare a $900 eMac to that kind of value.
4. Upgrade cycle. This ties in with cost. We buy most of our PCs from Dell Refurb. We generally get them for about $400, upgrade them for another $100, and we have cheap, capbable machines. That means we can upgrade twice as often as if we buy $1000 Macs, and that translates to better experiences for students.
5. Compatibility. It's true -- there are more applications for PC and those that are cross-platform often run better on a PC. Even my die-hard Mac friends admit this. That means that if we buy PCs, we get an assurance that they will meet our needs. Also, our student-coded ColdFusion-based website barely runs on Macs -- so it's a no-brainer. PCs for all.
I get an even worse recommendation. Once I built a computer for one of my friends; now all of HIS friends ask me to build computers for THEM. It's sort of getting annoying, even though I like building computers.
To defend my articles: look at the other Wired story in the posting (the one that the whole thing was about). That one deals with problems with actual e-voting machines in precincts.
It's better to have an oversensitive car alarm than one that has the chance of not going off if the car is being legitimately broken into. A car alarm saved my parents' Infiniti G20 (not the most desirable car in the world to start with, considering that it's a stripper G20, with a stick and clth seats, and considering that G20s are seriously underpowered) on at least a couple of occasions. Imagine how many Mercedes S-classes or Lincoln Navigators would get stolen if their alarms didn't go off because they were programmed for fewer false alarms and this resulted in less sensitivity to legitimate threats?
You're confusing PCI-Express x1 (normal peripherals such as NICs, sound cards, RAID controllers, etc.) and PCI-Express x16 (graphics cards only). Although card manufacturers will doubtless produce x1 graphics cards (just like some GeForce2 MXs, GeForce FX 5200s, and ATI Radeon 9000s are PCI designs at this point), most new GPUs (such as the R423 mentioned here) will be designed for and will run only in x16 slots.
Then you get into chipset design -- all PCI-Express chipsets will include only one x16 slot, and the currently pending ones will not include AGP slots. One example of this is Intel's Grantsdale chipset, which includes support for one x16 slot, three x1 slots, and a couple more regular PCI slots. So in summary, if you want to get a state-of-the-art motherboard, you'll also have to upgrade your graphics card.
With that said, a site I saw on the BTX formfactor showed a computer with a PCI-Express x16 to AGP adaptor -- but I doubt that will make it to production; it was probably just because no PCI-Express cards are available at the moment and they needed a stopgap solution for their demo box.
Well, it's 16 channels and not four, but you have the right idea. PCI Express for Graphics is going to end up being analogous to AGP -- chipsets will only support one slot. However, the fact that PCI Express x1 slots will themselves have such high bandwidth will mean it won't be as much of a problem for those who want to run multiple graphics cards.
Like I said in another reply to this article, CyberGuys has screws and a whole bunch of other useful things (slot covers, rubber case feet, organizer boxes, anti-static wrist straps, etc.).
CyberGuys sells both every type of screw conceivable and a bin with a screw assortment (just in case you need a particular kind).
Well, not actually a personal experience; it was an experience that my grandparents had while in Europe. They had rented a Renault of some type (not sure of the model) and were driving in the Alps with it. Specifically, my grandfather was driving down a mountain, and all of a sudden he couldn't modulate the brakes. He also couldn't downshift the car to use engine braking. It turns out that the transmission had literally broken apart and a piece had severed a brake line, meaning that both systems were no longer working. He did manage to slow the car somehow and they finally got down to level ground where he could use the handbrake, but it was such a hair-raising experience that they have sworn never to touch French cars again.
I don't think that's true at all. I'm currently looking at colleges, and althought the CS professors I have talked to are generally disdainful when I say I want to be a network admin, the consensus is that CS is a good place to start in terms of getting the technical and critical thinking skills that I would need. Also, at Tufts, the professor (of CS) that I talked to was a foremost expert in the network administration field. The skill sets may not be completely interchangeable, but there's enough overlap that CS is useful.
I think that video is much more of a "killer app" than wireless. Wireless is only useful when you're within range of the host transmitter (which is another reason why 1.5 GB is limiting -- who's going to keep a portable audio device within range of their computer 24/7? You can't have unlimited storage if you don't have the wireless access). However, video capability can be useful anywhere, most notably on a long car or plane ride. Imagine watching The Matrix or Family Guy on a transcontinental flight; just like the current iPod circumvents crappy airplane music channels, a new video-enabled one will circumvent crappy in-flight movies.
Also, my friend has the new video-enabled RCA Lyra, and despite the fact that it has terrible software, an antediluvian interface, and abysmal battery life, it's amazingly cool. I can't wait to see how Apple implements video -- I've been holding out on buying an MP3 jukebox because my MP3 CD player works fine, but if the Video iPod lives up to the hype, I'm sold.
It seems to me that Microsoft did a lot more focus-grouping than you give them credit for, albeit at a time before Windows XP. Consider things like the taskbar and Start Menu, which represented a revolution in UI design when they came out back in 1995; the Quick Launch bar; and the layout of the Control Panel (certainly different from the old Mac OS layout and in my opinion more intuitive). Furthermore, Microsoft still focus-groups, but they occasionally come up with a really bad idea (like taking My Computer, My Network Places, My Documents, IE, etc. off the desktop in the WinXP default layout -- what kind of crack were they smoking?). I personally think that there are a lot of things that Microsoft could improve in the WinXP UI, but that doesn't change the fact that much of the stuff in it was put in as a result of testing and not just copied from the Mac.
You name two reasons why bias against women doesn't exist that actually disprove your point. The reason why companies make policies that favor women and don't have "sensitivity to males" training is that males are in a much better position for advancement and face much less harrassment and bias than women do. Face it: harrassment of men by women generally isn't an issue. Furthermore, how many woman CEOs do you see? How about woman executives of any sort? There are certainly exceptions to the rule, but the rule still is that men generally hold these jobs because women (often equally qualified ones) are discriminated against. The glass ceiling is alive and well.
They tried that with Metric too (Interstate 19 being the notable example). It didn't get off the ground either. Furthermore, it is a lot more expensive to convert to automated highways than it is to convert to Metric... think about it for a second. Interstate and other road signs have to be replaced periodically anyway, so why not print out a new one with Metric instead of US units? As to other stuff, most engineering and manufacturing, all science, etc. is already done in Metric.
:p . So the economies of scale will eventually allow all of the infrastructure except the magnets in the highways to fall into place. Maybe if our presidents would stop cutting taxes there would actually be enough money in the coffers to implement such a large-scale infrastructure change.
In contrast, with automated freeways, they would have to put a bunch of expensive magnets in the roadway that wouldn't have gone in there before. The cars would also have to have much more equipment, what with a sensor to follow the magnets, adaptive cruise control, automated steering, electronic brakes.... There's a reason why they only put these things on Mercedeses and BMWs--they're really expensive. Imagine if a base-model Honda Civic cost, say, $25,000!
With that said, this stuff is probably going to get cheaper over the years, and we've already seen the trickle-down effect with things like ABS, now available at your neighborhood Yugo dealer, practically
On the topic of automated highways, read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast, which contains something like a good picture of the infrastructure and implications.
Why don't they have cars that drive themselves on the interstate? Actually, 5 or 6 years ago there was a pilot program where they deployed magnets in 13 miles of California freeway and equipped Buicks (yeah... go figure...) to do the whole automated driving thing. But that never got any farther than those 13 miles, as far as I know. Why?
Well, I'd have to guess it's a similar reason why we never converted to the Metric system--infrastructure problems. Simply put, there are far too many miles of highway (46,000-somthing at last count), far too many sensors per mile, and far too few tax dollars to spend on the project. It was the same thing with Metric in the 70s--the government said we'd be metric in five years, only to find out the hard way that there were too many miles of freeway, too many die changes, too much opposition from corporations... you get the idea.
XP Home boxes have them too. The ironic thing is that we buy an assload of XP Home boxes at my work (Dimensions off outlet.dell.com), because they are cheap and we have a tiny budget and lots of things we need to do with it. We then click through the intro screens on the way to booting off the XP Pro install CD or doing an RIS boot. We then fail to use any of the Dell-provided software.
:D
Frankly, though, even if you were a home user and had no choice but to use the software, it's not a big deal, for several reasons:
1. The EULAs are pretty much unenforceable unless the software has copy-protection of some kind that checks back with a server, which most OEM software lacks (with the notable exception of Windows and Office).
2. If the software does have copy-protection, there is no need for the EULA in the first place, because the software manufacturer can carry out its own enforcement in the form of feature-limiting (Microsoft has done this with cracked copies of WinXP).
3. Have you ever read these license agreements? Pretty much the worst penalty they contain is that the company can terminate the license at any time, i.e. prohibit you from using this copy of the software. Not a big deal. Just go buy the next version.
Not to mention the fact that my mom bought a Dell with this message about a year and a half ago and Dell/Microsoft/whoever has yet to come after her for using the illegal copies of Office, etc. that I put on there for her...