I work at the helpdesk for a large retail enterprise and one of the chains we owned (until recently) still uses ancient IBM cash registers over Token Ring networks. Fortunately, we just agreed to sell that chain a month or two ago, and the new owner is quickly replacing the horrible POS's with semi-modern technology. After another week I won't have to support them anymore. TR is finally dead in my company!
Well, if you guys want to get really technical, both capitalizations are correct but have slightly different meanings:
internet
is a noun, short for internetwork, meaning an interconnected group of independent networks.
The Internet
is a proper noun referring specifically to the current worldwide public internet.
> We the british public fund the BBC through our licence fee, it is because of this fee that we > have impartial, and world wide recognised excelelnt broadcasts from the BBC.
There is no such thing as an impartial broadcast. No human or group of humans is capable of being truly impartial, unbiased, etc. Everybody has an agenda. It is the way of things. I'm sick of high-and-mighty Europeans telling us how corrupt we are in America. You're all either hypocrites or even more naive than most Americans.
And FYI, NBC's prime time coverage is tape-delayed because "prime time" here is the middle of the night in Athens... I'm sure were missing whole lot of fascinating olympic action at 3 am! There are plenty of live events broadcast on NBC's cable networks between 4 am and noon our time.
I wish someone had told my installer where that common position is...
The geniuses at Best Buy put my "under-dash" override button in the engine compartment under the hood. They also didn't bother to tell me what secret number they programmed it for (you have to push it that number of times within two seconds or you're locked out).
Result: I better not ever lose my remote or park near a military base.
Re:"Clean Me" on the back of cars
on
Reverse Graffiti
·
· Score: 1
Well maybe if people kept their cars _gasp_ clean, there wouldn't be any dirt to write in...
Since this has turned into an HP-bashing session, I figure I'll throw in my 0.02 on HP. Overall I'd say that their hardware is generally well-engineered, with a few flaws here and there, but their software usually ranges from mediocre to downright awful.
A summary of the HP products I've owned, in chronological order: - HP 48sx graphing calculator Very powerful, even had a directory structure for the onboard memory, never did figure out how to use half of its capabilities. I couldn't get used to the reverse-Polish command syntax ("1 1 +" instead of "1+1"), so I replaced it with a TI-92+.
- HP 8110i CD-R/RW burner Worked okay for what it was advertised to do. Included software was crappy but worked. It was only capable of writing 650mb of data, though. I burned a few 700mb discs and it reported success, but then the discs which had more than 650mb of data were unreadable (burning less than 650mb on a 700mb disc worked, though). This drive has long since been replaced by a buggy generic 48x CD-RW and a nice Sony DVD+/-R/RW.
- HP deskjet 990cse printer The auto-duplexer is still the coolest feature I've ever seen on a consumer-level printer. I don't use HP's drivers anymore, WinXP now supports it internally, even the auto-duplexer. This is fortunate because the driver CD included with the printer did not work, and the updated drivers downloaded from HP refuse to recognize the printer if it's connected by USB. It also has an annoying tendency to jam anytime I use anything other than plain paper or try to print 2-sided with a lot of graphics. I still use this printer for text and heavy-duty printing, but now have an Epson 900 (very slow, but exceptional quality) for everything that needs to look good or use special papers.
- Last but not least - Compaq Presario 2175 laptop I bought this over a WinBook and a Dell because I wanted the Mobile Athlon processor. Big mistake. It works pretty well, but I wish I'd gone with a Centrino model instead despite the Intel pricetag. The 54g wireless works really well in Windows (no Linux support). I guess the only major design flaw is that they put USB 1.1 ports on it when 2.0 was the industry standard. The OEM Windows XP tends to corrupt itself even more quickly than normal, and I've had to reinstall several times. One plus is the 4+ hour battery life - I don't have to bring the power cord with me when I take it to school, even using the wireless LAN - but Centrino's purported 5-6 hours would be nicer if true. The system doesn't run nearly as fast as my Athlon desktop and it certainly doesn't run cool like AMD claims it should.
As you can see, my experience with HP products has been mixed. I won't say I hate HP or won't ever buy from them again, but I'll definitely evaluate all my options very carefully before I do. Also, I have a friend who has an old HP desktop PC and has had nothing but problems with it. And I can say from working in a PC repair shop that HP is the third most difficult company (of the major players) to deal with for parts and service. Apple is second and Sony is the worst.
I have an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV, and it has never worked as advertised. The drivers in the box only sort of worked and were very flaky. After upgrading to the latest Catalyst drivers off their web site, it now mostly works under Windows, but the ATI software is difficult to use and quite feature-poor. Linux support is virtually non-existent. When you can actually get the card and software to work, the image quality and tuner quality is quite good, but it's totally not worth the trouble.
I'm now in the process of switching to a GeForce FX video card with a separate Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 350 tuner card (with hardware MPEG encoder/decoder). From what I've read in various HTPC forums, this card is hands-down the best PC tuner card on the market. It also is fully supported by SageTV on the PC side and MythTV on the Linux side.
I will never buy another ATI product.
Maybe if there were no MS, we'd all have a SparcStation on our desks instead of a PC, and we'd be complaining about the latest CDE virus. There would be an ongoing religious debate over the merits of Apple vs Sun, and an ever-growing third faction would be educating both sides about the wisdom of Open Source.
Realistically, folks, if there wasn't a Microsoft, someone else would take their place. Perhaps we should be grateful for Microsoft's existence, because if someone more competent were in that position (say, some company that could write good code, for example), there'd be a whole lot less need for open source. So, thanks Microsoft for showing us all just how bad an operating system can be!
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I work at the helpdesk for a large retail enterprise and one of the chains we owned (until recently) still uses ancient IBM cash registers over Token Ring networks. Fortunately, we just agreed to sell that chain a month or two ago, and the new owner is quickly replacing the horrible POS's with semi-modern technology. After another week I won't have to support them anymore. TR is finally dead in my company!
Isn't it mod_dav? Or is mod_webdav a different one I don't know of?
mod_dav is a standard apache module as of 2.0.
Well, if you guys want to get really technical, both capitalizations are correct but have slightly different meanings:
internet is a noun, short for internetwork, meaning an interconnected group of independent networks. The Internet is a proper noun referring specifically to the current worldwide public internet.> We the british public fund the BBC through our licence fee, it is because of this fee that we
> have impartial, and world wide recognised excelelnt broadcasts from the BBC.
There is no such thing as an impartial broadcast. No human or group of humans is capable of being truly impartial, unbiased, etc. Everybody has an agenda. It is the way of things. I'm sick of high-and-mighty Europeans telling us how corrupt we are in America. You're all either hypocrites or even more naive than most Americans.
And FYI, NBC's prime time coverage is tape-delayed because "prime time" here is the middle of the night in Athens... I'm sure were missing whole lot of fascinating olympic action at 3 am! There are plenty of live events broadcast on NBC's cable networks between 4 am and noon our time.
I wish someone had told my installer where that common position is...
The geniuses at Best Buy put my "under-dash" override button in the engine compartment under the hood. They also didn't bother to tell me what secret number they programmed it for (you have to push it that number of times within two seconds or you're locked out).
Result: I better not ever lose my remote or park near a military base.
Well maybe if people kept their cars _gasp_ clean, there wouldn't be any dirt to write in...
Since this has turned into an HP-bashing session, I figure I'll throw in my 0.02 on HP. Overall I'd say that their hardware is generally well-engineered, with a few flaws here and there, but their software usually ranges from mediocre to downright awful.
A summary of the HP products I've owned, in chronological order:
- HP 48sx graphing calculator
Very powerful, even had a directory structure for the onboard memory, never did figure out how to use half of its capabilities. I couldn't get used to the reverse-Polish command syntax ("1 1 +" instead of "1+1"), so I replaced it with a TI-92+.
- HP 8110i CD-R/RW burner
Worked okay for what it was advertised to do. Included software was crappy but worked. It was only capable of writing 650mb of data, though. I burned a few 700mb discs and it reported success, but then the discs which had more than 650mb of data were unreadable (burning less than 650mb on a 700mb disc worked, though). This drive has long since been replaced by a buggy generic 48x CD-RW and a nice Sony DVD+/-R/RW.
- HP deskjet 990cse printer
The auto-duplexer is still the coolest feature I've ever seen on a consumer-level printer. I don't use HP's drivers anymore, WinXP now supports it internally, even the auto-duplexer. This is fortunate because the driver CD included with the printer did not work, and the updated drivers downloaded from HP refuse to recognize the printer if it's connected by USB. It also has an annoying tendency to jam anytime I use anything other than plain paper or try to print 2-sided with a lot of graphics. I still use this printer for text and heavy-duty printing, but now have an Epson 900 (very slow, but exceptional quality) for everything that needs to look good or use special papers.
- Last but not least - Compaq Presario 2175 laptop
I bought this over a WinBook and a Dell because I wanted the Mobile Athlon processor. Big mistake. It works pretty well, but I wish I'd gone with a Centrino model instead despite the Intel pricetag. The 54g wireless works really well in Windows (no Linux support). I guess the only major design flaw is that they put USB 1.1 ports on it when 2.0 was the industry standard. The OEM Windows XP tends to corrupt itself even more quickly than normal, and I've had to reinstall several times. One plus is the 4+ hour battery life - I don't have to bring the power cord with me when I take it to school, even using the wireless LAN - but Centrino's purported 5-6 hours would be nicer if true. The system doesn't run nearly as fast as my Athlon desktop and it certainly doesn't run cool like AMD claims it should.
As you can see, my experience with HP products has been mixed. I won't say I hate HP or won't ever buy from them again, but I'll definitely evaluate all my options very carefully before I do. Also, I have a friend who has an old HP desktop PC and has had nothing but problems with it. And I can say from working in a PC repair shop that HP is the third most difficult company (of the major players) to deal with for parts and service. Apple is second and Sony is the worst.
Count me among the 'oddballs', too. I have two of their albums and still play them once in a while.
I have an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV, and it has never worked as advertised. The drivers in the box only sort of worked and were very flaky. After upgrading to the latest Catalyst drivers off their web site, it now mostly works under Windows, but the ATI software is difficult to use and quite feature-poor. Linux support is virtually non-existent. When you can actually get the card and software to work, the image quality and tuner quality is quite good, but it's totally not worth the trouble. I'm now in the process of switching to a GeForce FX video card with a separate Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 350 tuner card (with hardware MPEG encoder/decoder). From what I've read in various HTPC forums, this card is hands-down the best PC tuner card on the market. It also is fully supported by SageTV on the PC side and MythTV on the Linux side. I will never buy another ATI product.
Maybe if there were no MS, we'd all have a SparcStation on our desks instead of a PC, and we'd be complaining about the latest CDE virus. There would be an ongoing religious debate over the merits of Apple vs Sun, and an ever-growing third faction would be educating both sides about the wisdom of Open Source.
Realistically, folks, if there wasn't a Microsoft, someone else would take their place. Perhaps we should be grateful for Microsoft's existence, because if someone more competent were in that position (say, some company that could write good code, for example), there'd be a whole lot less need for open source. So, thanks Microsoft for showing us all just how bad an operating system can be!