It's called apple engineering... Most of their shit is poorly engineered. They just hide it behind marketing, ignorant customers, and pretty cases.
Just some of the poorly engineered pieces I have come across as working as an apple authroized service provider for 4 years:
-Apple 5300 Laptop hinges all broke.
-Apple Laserwriter printers wer re-bagged HP LJ4's with redesigned paperflow pathways. Serious paperflow issues and sensor issues in every single unit shipped. This was never an issue on the HP model.
+ Apple PB G3 Laptops: (Black keyboard) Serious PMU (power management unit) where it looked like a bad C-Mos battery but almost all failed black KB g3's needed a replaced PMU Board.
- the PMU board was also the hardest part to replace, requiring the entire LCD, motherboard, chassis, and cabling to be removed before you get access to the board. This caused other major problems to repaired machines.
- This problem was so bad that many laptops that went in to apple for repair came back with bad LCD backlight inverter cables. Why? Because the cable was ment to be installed once and forgotten about. Apple never sold the inverter cable without the entire LCD pannel so they were virtually impossible to get replaced out of warranty. This inverter cable was a ribbon data cable carrying high voltage DC Current. Very bad design (the next model, bronze kb, fixed it with better gague wiring for this cable).
-Most PB G3 Black KB laptops eventually lost their friction in the clutch so the display hinges went limp. Usually after 1-2 years of use (thank god for apple's 1 year warranty+90 day tech support):
Thus, everyone who got a PB G3 black KB got the shaft.
- Origional iMac motherboards mostly went out after 1 year. Everyone knows it, but apple wouldn't repair them because nobody pressed a class action. Solution: pay an ASP 400$ for them to repair it out of warranty.
- All 14" iBook white G3 laptops had faulty motherboads whereas the video went bad. This issue is still not resolved, but after being served with a class action, apple was forced to honor out of warranty repairs for all white iBook 14" laptops.
- iPod origional. Faulty battery problem and no way to replace the battery without voiding the warranty.
- iPod Mini. Fautly solder joint on the headphone jacks. Blamed for the worldwide shortage of overpriced IBM Microdrives which come in blue, yellow, pink, and green and have apple DRM written all over it.
Those arej ust the ones off the top of my head. ones of which i have seen dozens of come through my shop and apple not fixing a single issue except the 14" ibook and only because they were forced to. And every single issue listed above was a known issue of those models within the first year of shipping the product. Still nothing back from apple. But they sure will have no problem collecting their paycheck every month from unsuspecting consumers.
Conclusion? Fuck apple engineering. And Fuck apple marketing. The mindset for apple users who got burned by the 14" laptop scandal: "Apple is getting a class action! Alright!! Now i can send this sucker in to get replaced and Ebay it, So now I can spend that money on a new PB G4!!!!"
Give me a fucking break. Idiot.
Clue to ebayers looking for laptops: People don't sell laptops or computers they are happy with on ebay. They sell garbage they have been burned on themselves. Unless you are buying them from a surplus warehouse, you are probably buying overpriced trash.
Pretty much everything you mentioned is not in a stable state when compared to intel and VIA offereings.
Sure it works.. sortof... nForce is still the least stable platform on all of linux x86 platforms. Until that changes, it will be hard to recommend nvidia chipsets for anything except windows OS.
It's not the democrats or the republicans that are fucking everyone... Well, depending on how you look at it...
Since the republican party caters to southern ignorance when it comes to their "learned" norms (war on drugs, abortion, economic policy, social bureaucracy, gun laws, religion, etc.) you could probably say that the reason republicans are powerful is because of their masses which buy into the taught accepted standard. Democrats on the other hand are always telling the poor joe (everyone who isn't rich or completely ignorant, plus some of those as well) to stick with them because of such issues as health care, taxes, natural resources and beauty, human and personal rights, privacy, etc.
Both sides are basically fueled by a bunch of masses who are having strings pulled behind the scenes while they watch the curtains stay in place. So the question becomes not what does conservatism or liberalism or democrat or republican mean. Because you can't define those. It is different depending on if you are poor, rich, greedy, compassionate, racist, or ignorant.
It all boils down to rich white men from the south running the Republican party with a platform that doesn't make sence to an educated person because it makes perfect sence to the ignorant. And then Democrats trying to do good for the poor guy because they are the only other masses left over, and they need votes as badly as possible. Poor and Ignorant are the only masses we have. The rest are all in a serious minority, and they are the ones running both parties. Republicans are always recruiting new poor people all the time though, because there is a large segment of poor people tend to be very religious on such issues as prayer in school and abortion. So these ignorant people will jump ship to the republicans on those issues alone, ignoring that they are poor and being stepped on when it comes to their natural resources, tax dollars, and big business CEO's ripping them off. Walmart, Dell, Microsoft, these are just the little guys, all banking because they control enough of their market that they can control minute details of how their much smaller competition runs their own business. Republicans have figured out how to get the ignorant vote: marketing marketing marketing. This is exactly how walmart, dell, and microsoft get those same exact votes.
You can't beat the money with intelligence. Because there is too much misinformation spreading from the deep pockets. This modern day marketing tactics is why the republican party is growing, and the democrat party is shrinking, and everything is slowly moving right. 10 years ago, most of today's democrats would be considered republicans in most situations.
I wouldn't blame it on the party itself. But the people running the party and the people who support it. Republian principle and Democratic principle are both very well thought out, they are just ruined by utter lack of respect, compassion, and a surplus of ignorance.
I don't know what party to recommend to you. They all run on the same principle. The smaller groups control the masses. Dictatorship, monarchy, democracy, and republics are all controlled the same way. They are all subject to corruption, and any way of government which is will eventually finish in corruption.
You can know approximately where on the physical disk the data is being stored by its address. If you know enough about the geometry of the disk, you can schedule what they call an "elevador sort" which means they queue up reads, sort them by address, and then read them all at once, in order they are on the disk.
Say you queue'd up 5 reads. All randomly placed on the disk. If you sort them from the center of the disk to the edge of the disk then they can be read much faster and with less movement of the head.
I don't know if this is the type of sorting they are doing, but it has been done in the past by scsi controllers, and this might just be moving this logic into the kernel.
"If there are specs, then the driver gets written."
Here is a list of examples which are partially supported in Linux which have full specs distributed. Notice that in most cases these are supported in less than stable form:
-nVidia motherboard chipset drivers -nVidia soundstorm chipset drivers -ATI motherboard chipset drivers -ATI video card chipset drivers for 3D -VIA Southbridge drivers (noteably IDE DMA) -A Variety of external USB adapter drivers -Most video capture chipsets except Booktree/Conexant.
And a list of mfg contributed drivers: -Intel Centrino wireless LAN chipset drivers (not sure of license?) -HP Inkjet and Laserjet PCL and photo printing drivers (GPL) -nVidia 3D drivers (closed source) -Creative Labs SBLive! (discontinued development with Audigy product line) (GPL)
The point is, the MAJORITY of hardware you find in CURRENT motherboards, PCI cards, or elsewhere in OEM machines is not reasonably supported under Linux by anybody except the manufacturers. Unless you are talking about network cards. But since they all use ancient chipsets and revisions of such chipsets, you can't really say they would be hard to come by after so long. In cases where modern chipsets are not supported by the MFG, there is virtually NO support (such as the ATI 3D Driver). In cases where the driver is supported by the Mfg, your mileage varries from total trash (nvidia 3D, CL Audigy) to high quality drivers (HP Inkjet driver).
Giving one or even many examples to the contrary only backup my point. Someone wrote those drivers. And in most cases, that someone was dedicated developers working for the company that produces the hardware.
No matter how many examples you give me, you still CANNOT PURCHASE a popular motherboard or OEM system with inkjet printer (note that is is what most everyone buys when shopping for a new PC nowadays) which is supported under Linux without the above listed drivers. In other words, my above point was right on, and your argument has no basis in reality. -
"The whole point about Linux is that we can Do It Ourselves, we don't want crappy binary drivers to come in the box, we just need the spec and we will design our own that can be distributed with the kernel, cups, or wherever else. A bit of support in doing this is even better."
No that isn't the whole point about linux. In linux, if someone doesn't write a driver, it doesn't get written. In linux, there is no stable high performance ATI 3d driver. In linux, there is one for nVidia, but nVidia wrote it. In linux, there is a sblive (emu10k1) driver for creative labs sound cards. But guess who wrote it? People who work for creative labs. And a few others helped with some details in their spare time.
In linux, nothing gets written unless someone writes them. In linux, nobody writes them unless they are written by their manufacturer, or someone who has a vested interest in that particular chipset. Normally, this never happens and only a few types of devices are supported very well in linux (namely network cards). But that's about it.
Look at VIA motherboard chipsets. VIA gives out 100% of their specs. But they don't help with the development, and now their IDE drivers have never been 100% compliant. There are always DMA bugs in it. Look at nVidia's motherboard chipsets. They give out specifications, but their onboard sound and IDE DMA controllers and network cards aren't really supported 100%.
Look at ATI's motherboard chipsets. The same story is true.
Look at the Intel Centrino wireless chipset. The same.
Look at EVERY SINGLE chipset that is anything modern, and chances are, it is unsupported unless the manufacturer developed the majority of the driver themselves.
Linux doesn't just magically produce drivers. Hardware manufacturers have had a significant pull on driver development. And if linux could just pull drivers out of its IO ports all day, there wouldn't be any battle for the desktop. Because 3D video support, 3D sound support, and IDE HW RAID support would have been integrated into the kernel YEARS ago.
None of this has happened.
And so most every day hardware doesn't work properly in Linux.
I'm sorry but music from the iTunes store is FAR FAR from "open standards". The ONLY PLAYER in existance which will play iTunes music is the iPod (unless you decompress it and re-encode it again). Soon, HP will have a player that playes iTunes music. That is exactly 2 players, in the entire players market, that can play iTunes music. Get real.
Nothing you say has any basis in factual information. It is all halfassed assumptions you have made which are entirely innacurate. And just plain ignorant.
Next time read the product advertisement before you comment on what you think iTunes can and cannot do.
Also, for those of you who want lossless music, and for no cost, check out archive.org
These people go and solicit permission from bands to post their recorded live content. There are tons of bands listed, and everyone should find people they like in there. It's not britney spears or michael jackson, but instead, its quality music.
You have to click on the Live Music Archive link to find what I'm talking about. Here is a list of the bands and links to all their content online.
Go check it out. FLAC and SHN songs everywhere. I keep them on my local hard drive, and any time i need to burn it to a CD, or MP3 CD, or to my portable mp3 player, I have automatic scripts which convert it and transferrs the data. LAME 128kbps ABR mp3 for my portable flash player, LAME Recommended VBR mp3 settings for CD-R MP3 disks for my in dash car player, and translation to.wav for audio CD creation. Someone could write a python program with drag n drop functions i'm sure, one probably already exists for this purpose. It could all be by the click of a button. Then any mixed CD you can imagine are at your fingertips at the quality you preferr depending on the media you want to carry it on. Lossless music archives are the way to go.
For those phish phans out there, archive.org decided to not post their content. But I would recommend to go to LivePhish for $12.99 soundboard and mastered recordings of their live shows in MP3 or FLAC lossless downloads. No DRM included:)
There are other sites with lossless non-DRM music. But these are my favorites. Everyone should check this shit out ASAP!
What do you think the draft is? WHat do you think happened in WWII and vietnam? Do you think people were trained in "facilities to house or train that many new recruits"? Do you live in 2004?
The draft is real, like it or not. The government maintains the selective service specifically so they can draft people immediately when needed. Volumes of poeple, Hundreds of thousands if needed.
You are sadly mistaken if you believe for one second that the US Government has no infrastructure to draft people. It can happen in a heartbeat. It doesn't take "years of planning and building"
It sounds like you are the one with the tinfoil hat on. I think the metal is seeping into your bloodstream and giving you poisoning.
I haven't yet, I just make gaming boxes and workstations out of microATX.
I want to do a media center PC but i haven't really been happy with the state of video on linux as of yet. Too buggy to work reliably and I can't stand messing (on a daily basis, no problem if its one time only) with something that should "just work" when it comes to an appliance.
But if I were to do it, I would definately use 5400RPM Drives (honestly i don't know if they make larger capacity 5400RPM's anymore ):, and probably scale down to a slower speed Pentium4 (P4 has the most efficient video encoding of x86 processors so far). But I would still be using 80x80mm heatsinks with 92-> 80mm adapters on it. I would probably want to choose an aluminum desktop case rather than a tower case, as this would allow it to fit in with my set top equipment by my TV.
With a desktop case, I would probably be forced to get rid of the 120mm fans and stick with 80 or 92mm but that wouldn't be a problem considering it won't be the highest end cpu's and video cards in it.
Uhh... And what is preventing you from having the same problems in C? You said yourself, it is like using tons of globals.... So don't do it if its not good to do.
Have you ever worked on a program with tons of globals? Ok then, there are stupid programers everywhere. Using C and using C++. That doesn't make the idea of "C with classes" any less usefull or any more wrong.
Just use slow spinning 120mm, 92mm, and 80mm fans rather than fast spinning 70mm and 40mm fans.
My microATX system runs with a 120mm fan in its ATX power supply. When idle it spins at about 1,000 RPM's. It's maximum rating is 2,000 RPM's. It self adjusts depending on load. That is less than 20db once the case is closed up.
Then I modded that same case for a 120mm fan in the front of it (from the normal 80mm fan) and I run it at 1,200 RPM's (I use a rheostat to adjust its voltage/RPM). Then I use a 92->80mm fan adapter on the cpu heatsink with a large Alpha 8045 (80x80x45mm) heatsink with copper inlay. This fan runs at about 1,000 RPM's, but it has a heat sensor on a wire that I can place anywhere. I chose to tape it to the side of the heatsink and that keeps the fan at about 1,800 RPM's under load and 1,000 RPM's idle. If you tape the thermal sensor for this fan to another area, it will run at a slower or faster rate, depending on how hot that surface gets.
Then I modded the back of the case (click on the "back view" to see it) to allow a 92mm fan in there rather than 80mm. I run it at 1,000 RPM's.
Now, every fan in a normal default factory case runs at about 2,500-4,000 RPM's by default and are only 60-80mm wide. A 120mm fan at 1,000 RPM's pushes the same amount of air (provided there is little restriction in the airflow pathway, and the shape of the finns, but on average...) as an 80mm fan running at 3,000 RPM's.
Also, using the built in fan grill in your case (the ones they just punch out small holes in a pattern the shape of 60 or 80mm fan) is the worst thing you can do, even if you are going to use default sizes. You should always dremel out the built in grill and use a standard wire grill rather than those fancy air restricting/turbulence creating grills.
Then use a 5400RPM Hard drive. If you want to blow money you can even get a heatpipe cooler for your hard drive that screws into a 5.25in bay with rubber washers, and isolates the HDD from the case. Then the heatpipes keep the drive cool. This works up to even with 10krpm drives. But I use 7200RPM's on my desktop systems.
That is the basics. On top of all this you can do even more: Rubber washers between each fan and the case to prevent oscilations. If you use 2 identical fans, don't allow them to both run at the same voltage, as they will give you a beating effect because they will never spin at EXACTLY the same rate (unless you buy expensive computer controlled fan regulators which are only available in servers). Put a rubber washer between the power supply and the back of the case before screwing it in. Then put thin padding on all the joints of the case (like where the side pannel touches the rest of the case). This will dampen the oscillations throughout the case, and regulate all oscillations to be contained in a single pannel, rather than the entire case.
There is much more you can do, but this post is getting long. You handy people should get modding. You don't have to be fancy and rice out your case with glowing lights to be a case modder. I don't, and my mods are what draws the attention when my friends compare computer systems with eachother. They just don't see how I can pack the fastest video card, the fastest CPU, and the best everything in such a small case, overclocked, and still keep it quieter than a Mac G5.
" they get line access sold to them at BELOW COST"
Below cost by who's measure? If you are taking the word of SBC, you haven't heard the whole story. SBC claims that "below cost" is the entire cost of laying the line and maintaining it, including upgrades over time. This might sound true... until you take into consideration two gotcha's:
1) Universal service fund: this fund pays out to local telco's to help maintain their phone lines. They get this money in exchange for laying quality landlines to homes (in which they profit from their business) Without this fund the telco's would not have laid the wires in the first place. Add in the universal service fund, and their cost of profiding the physical line, including maintenance, drops dramatically.
2) Lines run through public land: Without free, monopolized, unobstructed access to public and private land (which is granted to them by law free of charge) their actual cost of maintaining the landlines would skyrocket. The public is granting them free access to land they would normally have to lease and/or purchase. When the telco pays me rent each month for the wires in my yard, then and ONLY then will it be ok for them to not share those wires with my alternatives.
SBC claims are BS. They are FAR from leasing the lines at "below cost".. they are still making profit from it. The problem with the bells is that they are losing business so their (normally) more profitable half is tanking(their services profits have turned to red ink). They are trying to say that cost to provide copper has increased. But in reality, they are trying to make up for the red ink on their services side by jacking up prices on a completely unrelated segment of their "assets": the copper. They are in red ink and have been for quite some time. mostly due to loss of customers because of overcharging. Almost ALWAYS, any time a business loses marketshare, they end up in red because of restructuring. This is exactly why SBC et al are losing money and it has NOTHING to do with leasing landlines "below cost".
What should happen is the baby bells should be forced out of all end user markets and regulated to landline providers. The exact reason SBC has been in red ink for 2 years is the same reason this spinoff is needed: they overcharge for the copper and services to end users, so they have reason to go to their competition. They should be forced to spin off their services as long distance/ISP companies which lease from the landline providers, just like all other services telco's. This would keep the price of copper steady, universal, consistant, and priced at actual costs. No more overpricing copper to offset losses in other business segments unrelated to the cost of the lines.
BTW, any landline provider that threatens to cut off your service because you switched to their competition has commited a federal offence. You should report them to your state's attorney general and the nearest FCC office.
Not only do they have their cake (landlines laid that they "own" paid for mostly by the federal government ie. your tax dollars) but they get to eat it too (full controlled monopoly which was origionally granted and regulated by the federal government specifically because of this universal service fund tax payment).
In your post you claim to have heard about "universal Service" fund but then in the last sentence you talk about the government "forcing" them to lease out this service because of money they accepted from the federal government to pay for this equipment...
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you accept federal funding for your landlines, you are required by law to lease it at cost to competitors. This is because the federal government grants the company a monopoly on the copper because it would be impractical for many competitors to lay the lines everywhere too.
The system is well defined and it has worked a long time. Now that some yahoo judge thinks he can tell competitors that they can't lease the lines that the federal government subsidised SIGNIFICANTLY this whole shithouse will go up in flames..
No landline provider was ever "Forced" into sharing their lines at "below cost". This is an outright LIE.
Look at your telephone bill sometime. It's about $9 per month on mine. You pay for a federal fund which gets dispursed to the local landline providers. Landline users are the people who have paid for these landlines using a federal tax which gave significant funding for the landlines in the first place.
ANY local phone company who "owns" the landline and isn't sharing them for wholesale prices is breaking the law because they accepted federal tax dollars to pay for those landlines. Period.
Now... all that business about "leasing them below cost" is just hogwash. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the $40 you pay per month (before taxes and regulartory fees) doesn't go tward the cost of the physical copper and copper maintenance in any significant amount. It mostly all goes to the day to day cost of operation of the local telco. The copper fraction is an insignificant figure in the calculation of your bill's cost.
I have it worse...
Where I work, they still use the Q&A Database.. Its for dos, and it was discontinued way back.. heh.. its not even Y2K compliant but the bosses don't care cos it doesn't control any money, just work order data.
either way, we use it cos it works. but its still a POS.
Most people call this game Wolf ET, or just ET. Don't let the name fool you. It is full blown WW2 saving private ryan style FPS. Its awesome...
Here are some quick tips for newbies:
- Start out as a medic. You can revive people with the needle, and lay down health packs for other players. If you do this well, people will start to help you by protecting you when u get into trouble. As a medic, stay in the back or middle of the pack when you spawn so you don't have to fight first. Insted, play cleanup, and finish off the enemy and revive teamates. Reviving teamates is the easiest way to get a good score and get yourself on the scoreboard if your a newb (but don't let this fool you, most of the top players play medic regularly) Another good reason to start medic is that your health automatically replenishes, so you will live longer.
- Learn the maps. All the maps have objectives. After completing the first objective, there is usually a second main objective. As a medic, you will be able to follow the better players around.
- teamplay teamplay teamplay... This is the name of the game. Don't run off by yourself or you will die and have to wait for respawn. As a medic you start out with smaller levels of ammo. You will have to be nice to your teamates or they will not give you any ammo. Also, without medics, everyone dies faster. Without fieldops, there isn't enough ammo for the team. Without engineers, there is nobody to complete the objectives. This game requires teamwork. Cover the engineer while he is planting the bomb. stay behind as a medic so the guy in front of you will have a backup in case he gets ambushed, etc etc.. Teamwork is the name of this game (most of the teamwork is pretty straightforward so the basics should come naturally, this is the best part of the game and why most people play it) If you are in it just to get frags, ET probably isn't the game for you...
- Try not to talk shit. Its probably OK to talk shit sometimes, but this game isn't like CS where 24/7 shit talking and unfair gameplay is tolerated. People doing lame shit will be booted by most server admins if they see it. This is also a good reason why its such a popular game for both newbies and hardcore clan players.
- Since this game isn't like quake*, you only have 1 main weapon, not 9 of them. So it will be easier for you to learn your loadout. There is pistol, main weapon (usually sub machinegun) and then your special weapons (needle and health packs for the medic) This simplicity means you can learn the gameply much faster. The drawback is that you have to navigate the "limbo" menu before you can join the game. This is the hardest part for most newbies: just select which team you want to be in, and select which class you want to go (medic, fieldops, soldier, covert ops, engineer) and then select your weapon. Thats it! Jump in the game and start going
- Try not to get frustrated when your respawn timer is high. That is part of the game and if everyone had instant respawn, the gameplay would be way less fun. It keeps people from doing rambo rushes and gives value to your life. One small problem is that the enemy might try to "spawn camp" you in which case the game is no fun. If you are a serious newb, try another server, or if you get better, kill the spawn killer and your problems are solved.
above all, have fun. This game is awesome and free. Go download it ASAP!
Not everyone would like their girlfriend to blow 300 bux on an ipod trash. Some people think its awesome, most don't. If you are playing the odds, any geek who wants an iPod already has one or is too poor to get it. That pretty much leaves out any significant chance that an iPod would be a good valentines day present (unless he dropped a hint).
What would be the best way to ensure I have the right to re-license a project of mine which others contribute to? Must I request that all contributers assign the copyright of their patch to me? Or is there a way that they can give me partial ownership of that segment of code, so that way both of us have full rights to the code?
thanks...
I am currently implementing 2.2 milestone 2 into a project. I would like to hear about your negative experiences with it. So far I have a test system up and running perfectly, using exactly what we need and so far no malfunctions...
Does yours have dual antennas? If so, its the older version which overheats and is a known problem. Get in contact with phone support and they will replace it (they did for mine). They won't replace it over email support, you have to call their end user line and wait on hold...
good luck.
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This was also mentioned in an other post... Again, a result of a class action lawsuit against apple.
you do realise....
... right?
This is a result of a class action settlement...
Apple would never help a customer on an out of warranty issue if this were not the case.
Just want to feed you the relevant information before you start making invalid assumptions.
It's called apple engineering... Most of their shit is poorly engineered. They just hide it behind marketing, ignorant customers, and pretty cases.
Just some of the poorly engineered pieces I have come across as working as an apple authroized service provider for 4 years:
-Apple 5300 Laptop hinges all broke.
-Apple Laserwriter printers wer re-bagged HP LJ4's with redesigned paperflow pathways. Serious paperflow issues and sensor issues in every single unit shipped. This was never an issue on the HP model.
+ Apple PB G3 Laptops: (Black keyboard) Serious PMU (power management unit) where it looked like a bad C-Mos battery but almost all failed black KB g3's needed a replaced PMU Board.
- the PMU board was also the hardest part to replace, requiring the entire LCD, motherboard, chassis, and cabling to be removed before you get access to the board. This caused other major problems to repaired machines.
- This problem was so bad that many laptops that went in to apple for repair came back with bad LCD backlight inverter cables. Why? Because the cable was ment to be installed once and forgotten about. Apple never sold the inverter cable without the entire LCD pannel so they were virtually impossible to get replaced out of warranty. This inverter cable was a ribbon data cable carrying high voltage DC Current. Very bad design (the next model, bronze kb, fixed it with better gague wiring for this cable).
-Most PB G3 Black KB laptops eventually lost their friction in the clutch so the display hinges went limp. Usually after 1-2 years of use (thank god for apple's 1 year warranty+90 day tech support):
Thus, everyone who got a PB G3 black KB got the shaft.
- Origional iMac motherboards mostly went out after 1 year. Everyone knows it, but apple wouldn't repair them because nobody pressed a class action. Solution: pay an ASP 400$ for them to repair it out of warranty.
- All 14" iBook white G3 laptops had faulty motherboads whereas the video went bad. This issue is still not resolved, but after being served with a class action, apple was forced to honor out of warranty repairs for all white iBook 14" laptops.
- iPod origional. Faulty battery problem and no way to replace the battery without voiding the warranty.
- iPod Mini. Fautly solder joint on the headphone jacks. Blamed for the worldwide shortage of overpriced IBM Microdrives which come in blue, yellow, pink, and green and have apple DRM written all over it.
Those arej ust the ones off the top of my head. ones of which i have seen dozens of come through my shop and apple not fixing a single issue except the 14" ibook and only because they were forced to. And every single issue listed above was a known issue of those models within the first year of shipping the product. Still nothing back from apple. But they sure will have no problem collecting their paycheck every month from unsuspecting consumers.
Conclusion? Fuck apple engineering. And Fuck apple marketing. The mindset for apple users who got burned by the 14" laptop scandal: "Apple is getting a class action! Alright!! Now i can send this sucker in to get replaced and Ebay it, So now I can spend that money on a new PB G4!!!!"
Give me a fucking break. Idiot.
Clue to ebayers looking for laptops: People don't sell laptops or computers they are happy with on ebay. They sell garbage they have been burned on themselves. Unless you are buying them from a surplus warehouse, you are probably buying overpriced trash.
{/RANT}
" What functionality is missing from these?"
Pretty much everything you mentioned is not in a stable state when compared to intel and VIA offereings.
Sure it works.. sortof... nForce is still the least stable platform on all of linux x86 platforms. Until that changes, it will be hard to recommend nvidia chipsets for anything except windows OS.
Too bad IDE, sound, and NIC only work fully in MS Windows...
oh well.. There is always hoping that VIA will start to make stable chipsets for linux + AMD systems.
It's not the democrats or the republicans that are fucking everyone... Well, depending on how you look at it...
Since the republican party caters to southern ignorance when it comes to their "learned" norms (war on drugs, abortion, economic policy, social bureaucracy, gun laws, religion, etc.) you could probably say that the reason republicans are powerful is because of their masses which buy into the taught accepted standard. Democrats on the other hand are always telling the poor joe (everyone who isn't rich or completely ignorant, plus some of those as well) to stick with them because of such issues as health care, taxes, natural resources and beauty, human and personal rights, privacy, etc.
Both sides are basically fueled by a bunch of masses who are having strings pulled behind the scenes while they watch the curtains stay in place. So the question becomes not what does conservatism or liberalism or democrat or republican mean. Because you can't define those. It is different depending on if you are poor, rich, greedy, compassionate, racist, or ignorant.
It all boils down to rich white men from the south running the Republican party with a platform that doesn't make sence to an educated person because it makes perfect sence to the ignorant. And then Democrats trying to do good for the poor guy because they are the only other masses left over, and they need votes as badly as possible. Poor and Ignorant are the only masses we have. The rest are all in a serious minority, and they are the ones running both parties. Republicans are always recruiting new poor people all the time though, because there is a large segment of poor people tend to be very religious on such issues as prayer in school and abortion. So these ignorant people will jump ship to the republicans on those issues alone, ignoring that they are poor and being stepped on when it comes to their natural resources, tax dollars, and big business CEO's ripping them off. Walmart, Dell, Microsoft, these are just the little guys, all banking because they control enough of their market that they can control minute details of how their much smaller competition runs their own business. Republicans have figured out how to get the ignorant vote: marketing marketing marketing. This is exactly how walmart, dell, and microsoft get those same exact votes.
You can't beat the money with intelligence. Because there is too much misinformation spreading from the deep pockets. This modern day marketing tactics is why the republican party is growing, and the democrat party is shrinking, and everything is slowly moving right. 10 years ago, most of today's democrats would be considered republicans in most situations.
I wouldn't blame it on the party itself. But the people running the party and the people who support it. Republian principle and Democratic principle are both very well thought out, they are just ruined by utter lack of respect, compassion, and a surplus of ignorance.
I don't know what party to recommend to you. They all run on the same principle. The smaller groups control the masses. Dictatorship, monarchy, democracy, and republics are all controlled the same way. They are all subject to corruption, and any way of government which is will eventually finish in corruption.
[/rant]
Not really...
You can know approximately where on the physical disk the data is being stored by its address. If you know enough about the geometry of the disk, you can schedule what they call an "elevador sort" which means they queue up reads, sort them by address, and then read them all at once, in order they are on the disk.
Say you queue'd up 5 reads. All randomly placed on the disk. If you sort them from the center of the disk to the edge of the disk then they can be read much faster and with less movement of the head.
I don't know if this is the type of sorting they are doing, but it has been done in the past by scsi controllers, and this might just be moving this logic into the kernel.
"If there are specs, then the driver gets written."
Here is a list of examples which are partially supported in Linux which have full specs distributed. Notice that in most cases these are supported in less than stable form:
-nVidia motherboard chipset drivers
-nVidia soundstorm chipset drivers
-ATI motherboard chipset drivers
-ATI video card chipset drivers for 3D
-VIA Southbridge drivers (noteably IDE DMA)
-A Variety of external USB adapter drivers
-Most video capture chipsets except Booktree/Conexant.
And a list of mfg contributed drivers:
-Intel Centrino wireless LAN chipset drivers (not sure of license?)
-HP Inkjet and Laserjet PCL and photo printing drivers (GPL)
-nVidia 3D drivers (closed source)
-Creative Labs SBLive! (discontinued development with Audigy product line) (GPL)
The point is, the MAJORITY of hardware you find in CURRENT motherboards, PCI cards, or elsewhere in OEM machines is not reasonably supported under Linux by anybody except the manufacturers. Unless you are talking about network cards. But since they all use ancient chipsets and revisions of such chipsets, you can't really say they would be hard to come by after so long. In cases where modern chipsets are not supported by the MFG, there is virtually NO support (such as the ATI 3D Driver). In cases where the driver is supported by the Mfg, your mileage varries from total trash (nvidia 3D, CL Audigy) to high quality drivers (HP Inkjet driver).
Giving one or even many examples to the contrary only backup my point. Someone wrote those drivers. And in most cases, that someone was dedicated developers working for the company that produces the hardware.
No matter how many examples you give me, you still CANNOT PURCHASE a popular motherboard or OEM system with inkjet printer (note that is is what most everyone buys when shopping for a new PC nowadays) which is supported under Linux without the above listed drivers. In other words, my above point was right on, and your argument has no basis in reality.
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"The whole point about Linux is that we can Do It Ourselves, we don't want crappy binary drivers to come in the box, we just need the spec and we will design our own that can be distributed with the kernel, cups, or wherever else. A bit of support in doing this is even better."
No that isn't the whole point about linux. In linux, if someone doesn't write a driver, it doesn't get written. In linux, there is no stable high performance ATI 3d driver. In linux, there is one for nVidia, but nVidia wrote it. In linux, there is a sblive (emu10k1) driver for creative labs sound cards. But guess who wrote it? People who work for creative labs. And a few others helped with some details in their spare time.
In linux, nothing gets written unless someone writes them. In linux, nobody writes them unless they are written by their manufacturer, or someone who has a vested interest in that particular chipset. Normally, this never happens and only a few types of devices are supported very well in linux (namely network cards). But that's about it.
Look at VIA motherboard chipsets. VIA gives out 100% of their specs. But they don't help with the development, and now their IDE drivers have never been 100% compliant. There are always DMA bugs in it. Look at nVidia's motherboard chipsets. They give out specifications, but their onboard sound and IDE DMA controllers and network cards aren't really supported 100%.
Look at ATI's motherboard chipsets. The same story is true.
Look at the Intel Centrino wireless chipset. The same.
Look at EVERY SINGLE chipset that is anything modern, and chances are, it is unsupported unless the manufacturer developed the majority of the driver themselves.
Linux doesn't just magically produce drivers. Hardware manufacturers have had a significant pull on driver development. And if linux could just pull drivers out of its IO ports all day, there wouldn't be any battle for the desktop. Because 3D video support, 3D sound support, and IDE HW RAID support would have been integrated into the kernel YEARS ago.
None of this has happened.
And so most every day hardware doesn't work properly in Linux.
And so Linux isn't being used all that much.
Your point doesn't hold true in the real world.
I'm sorry but music from the iTunes store is FAR FAR from "open standards". The ONLY PLAYER in existance which will play iTunes music is the iPod (unless you decompress it and re-encode it again). Soon, HP will have a player that playes iTunes music. That is exactly 2 players, in the entire players market, that can play iTunes music. Get real.
Nothing you say has any basis in factual information. It is all halfassed assumptions you have made which are entirely innacurate. And just plain ignorant.
Next time read the product advertisement before you comment on what you think iTunes can and cannot do.
Also, for those of you who want lossless music, and for no cost, check out archive.org
.wav for audio CD creation. Someone could write a python program with drag n drop functions i'm sure, one probably already exists for this purpose. It could all be by the click of a button. Then any mixed CD you can imagine are at your fingertips at the quality you preferr depending on the media you want to carry it on. Lossless music archives are the way to go.
:)
These people go and solicit permission from bands to post their recorded live content. There are tons of bands listed, and everyone should find people they like in there. It's not britney spears or michael jackson, but instead, its quality music.
You have to click on the Live Music Archive link to find what I'm talking about. Here is a list of the bands and links to all their content online.
Go check it out. FLAC and SHN songs everywhere. I keep them on my local hard drive, and any time i need to burn it to a CD, or MP3 CD, or to my portable mp3 player, I have automatic scripts which convert it and transferrs the data. LAME 128kbps ABR mp3 for my portable flash player, LAME Recommended VBR mp3 settings for CD-R MP3 disks for my in dash car player, and translation to
For those phish phans out there, archive.org decided to not post their content. But I would recommend to go to LivePhish for
$12.99 soundboard and mastered recordings of their live shows in MP3 or FLAC lossless downloads. No DRM included
There are other sites with lossless non-DRM music. But these are my favorites. Everyone should check this shit out ASAP!
Are you on fucking crack?
What do you think the draft is? WHat do you think happened in WWII and vietnam? Do you think people were trained in "facilities to house or train that many new recruits"? Do you live in 2004?
The draft is real, like it or not. The government maintains the selective service specifically so they can draft people immediately when needed. Volumes of poeple, Hundreds of thousands if needed.
You are sadly mistaken if you believe for one second that the US Government has no infrastructure to draft people. It can happen in a heartbeat. It doesn't take "years of planning and building"
It sounds like you are the one with the tinfoil hat on. I think the metal is seeping into your bloodstream and giving you poisoning.
I haven't yet, I just make gaming boxes and workstations out of microATX.
I want to do a media center PC but i haven't really been happy with the state of video on linux as of yet. Too buggy to work reliably and I can't stand messing (on a daily basis, no problem if its one time only) with something that should "just work" when it comes to an appliance.
But if I were to do it, I would definately use 5400RPM Drives (honestly i don't know if they make larger capacity 5400RPM's anymore ):, and probably scale down to a slower speed Pentium4 (P4 has the most efficient video encoding of x86 processors so far). But I would still be using 80x80mm heatsinks with 92-> 80mm adapters on it. I would probably want to choose an aluminum desktop case rather than a tower case, as this would allow it to fit in with my set top equipment by my TV.
With a desktop case, I would probably be forced to get rid of the 120mm fans and stick with 80 or 92mm but that wouldn't be a problem considering it won't be the highest end cpu's and video cards in it.
Uhh... And what is preventing you from having the same problems in C? You said yourself, it is like using tons of globals.... So don't do it if its not good to do.
Have you ever worked on a program with tons of globals? Ok then, there are stupid programers everywhere. Using C and using C++. That doesn't make the idea of "C with classes" any less usefull or any more wrong.
Just use slow spinning 120mm, 92mm, and 80mm fans rather than fast spinning 70mm and 40mm fans.
My microATX system runs with a 120mm fan in its ATX power supply. When idle it spins at about 1,000 RPM's. It's maximum rating is 2,000 RPM's. It self adjusts depending on load. That is less than 20db once the case is closed up.
Then I modded that same case for a 120mm fan in the front of it (from the normal 80mm fan) and I run it at 1,200 RPM's (I use a rheostat to adjust its voltage/RPM). Then I use a 92->80mm fan adapter on the cpu heatsink with a large Alpha 8045 (80x80x45mm) heatsink with copper inlay. This fan runs at about 1,000 RPM's, but it has a heat sensor on a wire that I can place anywhere. I chose to tape it to the side of the heatsink and that keeps the fan at about 1,800 RPM's under load and 1,000 RPM's idle. If you tape the thermal sensor for this fan to another area, it will run at a slower or faster rate, depending on how hot that surface gets.
Then I modded the back of the case (click on the "back view" to see it) to allow a 92mm fan in there rather than 80mm. I run it at 1,000 RPM's.
Now, every fan in a normal default factory case runs at about 2,500-4,000 RPM's by default and are only 60-80mm wide. A 120mm fan at 1,000 RPM's pushes the same amount of air (provided there is little restriction in the airflow pathway, and the shape of the finns, but on average...) as an 80mm fan running at 3,000 RPM's.
Also, using the built in fan grill in your case (the ones they just punch out small holes in a pattern the shape of 60 or 80mm fan) is the worst thing you can do, even if you are going to use default sizes. You should always dremel out the built in grill and use a standard wire grill rather than those fancy air restricting/turbulence creating grills.
Then use a 5400RPM Hard drive. If you want to blow money you can even get a heatpipe cooler for your hard drive that screws into a 5.25in bay with rubber washers, and isolates the HDD from the case. Then the heatpipes keep the drive cool. This works up to even with 10krpm drives. But I use 7200RPM's on my desktop systems.
That is the basics. On top of all this you can do even more: Rubber washers between each fan and the case to prevent oscilations. If you use 2 identical fans, don't allow them to both run at the same voltage, as they will give you a beating effect because they will never spin at EXACTLY the same rate (unless you buy expensive computer controlled fan regulators which are only available in servers). Put a rubber washer between the power supply and the back of the case before screwing it in. Then put thin padding on all the joints of the case (like where the side pannel touches the rest of the case). This will dampen the oscillations throughout the case, and regulate all oscillations to be contained in a single pannel, rather than the entire case.
There is much more you can do, but this post is getting long. You handy people should get modding. You don't have to be fancy and rice out your case with glowing lights to be a case modder. I don't, and my mods are what draws the attention when my friends compare computer systems with eachother. They just don't see how I can pack the fastest video card, the fastest CPU, and the best everything in such a small case, overclocked, and still keep it quieter than a Mac G5.
" they get line access sold to them at BELOW COST"
Below cost by who's measure? If you are taking the word of SBC, you haven't heard the whole story. SBC claims that "below cost" is the entire cost of laying the line and maintaining it, including upgrades over time. This might sound true... until you take into consideration two gotcha's:
1) Universal service fund: this fund pays out to local telco's to help maintain their phone lines. They get this money in exchange for laying quality landlines to homes (in which they profit from their business) Without this fund the telco's would not have laid the wires in the first place. Add in the universal service fund, and their cost of profiding the physical line, including maintenance, drops dramatically.
2) Lines run through public land: Without free, monopolized, unobstructed access to public and private land (which is granted to them by law free of charge) their actual cost of maintaining the landlines would skyrocket. The public is granting them free access to land they would normally have to lease and/or purchase. When the telco pays me rent each month for the wires in my yard, then and ONLY then will it be ok for them to not share those wires with my alternatives.
SBC claims are BS. They are FAR from leasing the lines at "below cost".. they are still making profit from it. The problem with the bells is that they are losing business so their (normally) more profitable half is tanking(their services profits have turned to red ink). They are trying to say that cost to provide copper has increased. But in reality, they are trying to make up for the red ink on their services side by jacking up prices on a completely unrelated segment of their "assets": the copper. They are in red ink and have been for quite some time. mostly due to loss of customers because of overcharging. Almost ALWAYS, any time a business loses marketshare, they end up in red because of restructuring. This is exactly why SBC et al are losing money and it has NOTHING to do with leasing landlines "below cost".
What should happen is the baby bells should be forced out of all end user markets and regulated to landline providers. The exact reason SBC has been in red ink for 2 years is the same reason this spinoff is needed: they overcharge for the copper and services to end users, so they have reason to go to their competition. They should be forced to spin off their services as long distance/ISP companies which lease from the landline providers, just like all other services telco's. This would keep the price of copper steady, universal, consistant, and priced at actual costs. No more overpricing copper to offset losses in other business segments unrelated to the cost of the lines.
BTW, any landline provider that threatens to cut off your service because you switched to their competition has commited a federal offence. You should report them to your state's attorney general and the nearest FCC office.
Not only do they have their cake (landlines laid that they "own" paid for mostly by the federal government ie. your tax dollars) but they get to eat it too (full controlled monopoly which was origionally granted and regulated by the federal government specifically because of this universal service fund tax payment).
Way to go and fuck you SBC.
In your post you claim to have heard about "universal Service" fund but then in the last sentence you talk about the government "forcing" them to lease out this service because of money they accepted from the federal government to pay for this equipment...
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you accept federal funding for your landlines, you are required by law to lease it at cost to competitors. This is because the federal government grants the company a monopoly on the copper because it would be impractical for many competitors to lay the lines everywhere too.
The system is well defined and it has worked a long time. Now that some yahoo judge thinks he can tell competitors that they can't lease the lines that the federal government subsidised SIGNIFICANTLY this whole shithouse will go up in flames..
Time to have our kicks first though...
No landline provider was ever "Forced" into sharing their lines at "below cost". This is an outright LIE. Look at your telephone bill sometime. It's about $9 per month on mine. You pay for a federal fund which gets dispursed to the local landline providers. Landline users are the people who have paid for these landlines using a federal tax which gave significant funding for the landlines in the first place. ANY local phone company who "owns" the landline and isn't sharing them for wholesale prices is breaking the law because they accepted federal tax dollars to pay for those landlines. Period. Now... all that business about "leasing them below cost" is just hogwash. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the $40 you pay per month (before taxes and regulartory fees) doesn't go tward the cost of the physical copper and copper maintenance in any significant amount. It mostly all goes to the day to day cost of operation of the local telco. The copper fraction is an insignificant figure in the calculation of your bill's cost.
I have it worse... Where I work, they still use the Q&A Database.. Its for dos, and it was discontinued way back.. heh.. its not even Y2K compliant but the bosses don't care cos it doesn't control any money, just work order data. either way, we use it cos it works. but its still a POS.
Most people call this game Wolf ET, or just ET. Don't let the name fool you. It is full blown WW2 saving private ryan style FPS. Its awesome...
Here are some quick tips for newbies:
- Start out as a medic. You can revive people with the needle, and lay down health packs for other players. If you do this well, people will start to help you by protecting you when u get into trouble. As a medic, stay in the back or middle of the pack when you spawn so you don't have to fight first. Insted, play cleanup, and finish off the enemy and revive teamates. Reviving teamates is the easiest way to get a good score and get yourself on the scoreboard if your a newb (but don't let this fool you, most of the top players play medic regularly) Another good reason to start medic is that your health automatically replenishes, so you will live longer.
- Learn the maps. All the maps have objectives. After completing the first objective, there is usually a second main objective. As a medic, you will be able to follow the better players around.
- teamplay teamplay teamplay... This is the name of the game. Don't run off by yourself or you will die and have to wait for respawn. As a medic you start out with smaller levels of ammo. You will have to be nice to your teamates or they will not give you any ammo. Also, without medics, everyone dies faster. Without fieldops, there isn't enough ammo for the team. Without engineers, there is nobody to complete the objectives. This game requires teamwork. Cover the engineer while he is planting the bomb. stay behind as a medic so the guy in front of you will have a backup in case he gets ambushed, etc etc.. Teamwork is the name of this game (most of the teamwork is pretty straightforward so the basics should come naturally, this is the best part of the game and why most people play it) If you are in it just to get frags, ET probably isn't the game for you...
- Try not to talk shit. Its probably OK to talk shit sometimes, but this game isn't like CS where 24/7 shit talking and unfair gameplay is tolerated. People doing lame shit will be booted by most server admins if they see it. This is also a good reason why its such a popular game for both newbies and hardcore clan players.
- Since this game isn't like quake*, you only have 1 main weapon, not 9 of them. So it will be easier for you to learn your loadout. There is pistol, main weapon (usually sub machinegun) and then your special weapons (needle and health packs for the medic) This simplicity means you can learn the gameply much faster. The drawback is that you have to navigate the "limbo" menu before you can join the game. This is the hardest part for most newbies: just select which team you want to be in, and select which class you want to go (medic, fieldops, soldier, covert ops, engineer) and then select your weapon. Thats it! Jump in the game and start going
- Try not to get frustrated when your respawn timer is high. That is part of the game and if everyone had instant respawn, the gameplay would be way less fun. It keeps people from doing rambo rushes and gives value to your life. One small problem is that the enemy might try to "spawn camp" you in which case the game is no fun. If you are a serious newb, try another server, or if you get better, kill the spawn killer and your problems are solved.
above all, have fun. This game is awesome and free. Go download it ASAP!
Not everyone would like their girlfriend to blow 300 bux on an ipod trash. Some people think its awesome, most don't. If you are playing the odds, any geek who wants an iPod already has one or is too poor to get it. That pretty much leaves out any significant chance that an iPod would be a good valentines day present (unless he dropped a hint).
What would be the best way to ensure I have the right to re-license a project of mine which others contribute to? Must I request that all contributers assign the copyright of their patch to me? Or is there a way that they can give me partial ownership of that segment of code, so that way both of us have full rights to the code? thanks...
Could you please describe to me what is buggy?
I am currently implementing 2.2 milestone 2 into a project. I would like to hear about your negative experiences with it. So far I have a test system up and running perfectly, using exactly what we need and so far no malfunctions...
Does yours have dual antennas? If so, its the older version which overheats and is a known problem. Get in contact with phone support and they will replace it (they did for mine). They won't replace it over email support, you have to call their end user line and wait on hold... good luck.