Well, I thought the italics would make this clear.
As I said, we all make off-by-one errors from time to time. They are easy to make. Novices make countless ones.
BUT someone with 3+ years of CS education should not be making COUNTLESS off-by-one errors. Sure, sometimes. Rarely.
Further, they should be getting easier to debug for him at this point. "Oh, damn, I ran that pointer off the end of the array." or whatever.
I'm two years in, and I don't think I have made one all semester, using a new language (Intel ASM). Admittedly, ASM is kind of easy for avoiding off-by-ones:-P
I don't know. I didn't want to get too deep into this in the previous post, but I think there are a lot of people in CS ed who aren't cut out for it.
I also think that there are a lot of professors out there who are either 1. lousy programmers or 2. really good programmers and really bad teachers.
Really, CS programs are pretty badly designed. They spend semester after semester explaining syntax, leaving students to figure logic (the hard part), and very poorly explaining how the material is interrelated.
Anyone else find it weird that this Senior is generating "countless off-by-one bugs?"
I mean, it happens to everyone, but if you are generating "countless" ones (that's acutally a pretty good pun if you think about it . ..) you 1. don't really have your head in the language and 2. aren't really learning from your mistakes.
On a sort-of related note, I am THRILLED about the current state of the technology industry. I'm SO tired of people who are "in the industry" because it was "the thing" or because "I don't really like computers, but the money is good." Arrgh.
The next guy that tells me that he like MS because they provide job security (because they suck) is gonna be picking up his teeth.
Modern HDDs use "imbedded servo data" which basically means that there are magnetic "guide posts" or "mile markers" on the disk. This is a huge improvement. The sort of capacities that HDDs have today would be impossible without it. It has also cured the so-called "Monday morning blues." (For PCs anyway:-)
This is why many people used to think that you could perminately damage IDE hard disks with a low level format. You can't becuase 1. a low level format is really executed by the drive hardware, and is just initiated from software and 2. these drives have an electronic "interlock," which is to say they will "fail" on writing to the servo areas.
It is also important to understand that in modern drives the controller is the board on the drive. IDE isn't a controller, it is a simple data bus. (In fact, the original IDE ports were nothing more than stripped down ISA ports.) So the servo areas aren't externally addressable.
Bottom line, if you degauss, you'd better have a "factory" controller to re-write the servo areas if you ever want to store data on the disk again.
I'm not sure you really understood my post. First, I clearly stated that I don't understand who "we" is.
I think everything you said is fine. I think it is a cool experiment myself.
But the question at hand was are overlapping window window managers going to go way. I think the answer is clearly no.
I'm not saying that it shouldn't. I'm saying that it is not. I don't think I said anything about any conspericy to take the feature away. What I took issue with is that Fellgus really seemed to be saying that the option for overlapping windows shouldn't exist, and that my tastes in the matter are wrong.
I don't see how someones tastes can be wrong.
So, no conspiracy, no melodrama, I just don't like being told that I am wrong to like something aesthetic.
As I said, it is a personal preference. The actual question at had was "Does anyone else see a time when movable, tear-off docking and automated full-time tiling completely take over from the free-floating manually arranged desktops of today?" I don't think that I am unique in my preference for overlapping windows, so I don't think that they are going to go away.
Now, I'm not saying that your response or opinion is invalid, but why would you post what you did in response to someone who likes overlapping windows?
In other words, you seem to think that the fact that I like them is not a valid point of view so "we are going to take it away."
Do you really believe that I shouldn't have this choice?
The more I read your post the more trouble I have believing it. The "no" at the beginning seems to say "No, your reaction to this isn't valid. Your tastes are wrong."
That blows my mind. I mean, if someone asked slashdot "With all the cool new flavors of Doritos, does cool ranch have a future?" and I replied, "Yes, it does, because I (and people like me) like cool ranch. And you replied "With the advent of eXtreme Doritos there is no reason you should ever eat cool ranch." That's horseshit. Again, to be clear, I don't give a shit if you overlap your windows, or eat cool ranch doritos. The idea that "we" (whoever that is) should take that option away because you don't happen to see a need for it is horseshit too.
Now I'm hungry, luckilly I have some vanilla Blue Bell in the freezer!
Did you read the article? Intel moved from and old application running on UNIX to a NEW APPLICATION running on Linux. There wouldn't have been any "migration" costs.
The fact is that NT and commercial UNIXes have some of the same downsides. License costs, license compliance costs, etc. Whereas all OSes have some maintenance and support costs. Surely you have to look at each situation, but the FUD that says "MS software has lower TCO in all situations" is patently false. Witness your own example, migrating from another UNIX. (BTW, NT is supposed to be a POSIX OS. Given this claim by MS it shouldn't be any harder to migrate from a commercial UNIX to NT than from a commercial UNIX to Linux.)
Anyway, how does cost explain away the author using a quote about the lack of an acceptable office suite to explain how Amazon and Intel not switching to NT for their servers isn't a bait-and-switch? And loss for MS? (Assuming that this is a zero-sum game, which it must be given the finite nature of hardware.)
The bottom line, I think, is that this guy is wrapped up in MS, and thinks that anything trumpeting Linux successes is somehow "anti-microsoft." I wouldn't have been so put off by this, but his article is basically accusing the "anti-Microsoft" press (InfoWorld!) of dishonestly pushing some anti-MS agenda, and backs up his argument with an intellectually dishonest argument.
Finally, let me say that I'm not "anti-microsoft." I am "pro" software that gives me more freedom. I am against MS illegal business practices. But I think you are trying to take the easy way out by just labeling me "anti-microsoft" rather than addressing my complaint.
Paul Thurrott, who's carer is clearly wrapped up in the success of MS products, pulls a nasty bait-and-switch in this story.
He talks about how Amazon and Intel switched some servers from $$IX to Linux, and says that the "anti-Microsoft" press has been mis-representing these moves.
Then he quotes an Intel executive saying that they haven't even considered switching their MS based systems to Linux. The implication being that NT is doing a great job in their back office. But the reason given for not making the switch is "lack of 'robust office packages'"!
So, the story, apparently, is that neither Amazon nor Intel dare run NT in the FIRST PLACE.
Or, to put my own bias on the shelf for a moment, Amazon and Intel see Linux a preferable alternative to NT/Win2k as a server platform.
Huh? Are you a Jedi or a Stormtrooper? Or Batman? I don't get it.
The only thing I ever saw on a Jedi's belt (which doesn't look like any kind of "utility belt" to me, more like a strip of burlap) is a lightsaber.
Not to say that they don't have cool shit with them, but I've never seen one with a utility belt. Maybe that happens in the books. I'm not into the books.
I have a Logitech optical wireless (M-RM67A) (not mman:-(
It is often sluggish in Windows, and sometimes is unusable when the sysetm is under a load (and I have to resort to using the trackpoint).
Under X (on Linux 2.4) it is sharp as a tack.
I think that the windows USB driver isn't really designed for input devices. (Well, not designed for them to work without being frustrating as hell, anyway.)
In case anyone is wondering, this mouse "just works" with Linux 2.4.12 (usb-uhci and uhci both work fine for me) with the hid driver. It is so nice to be free of the cord and the ball!
Oh, and the wheel "just works" with the Debain unstable X packages (Xfree 4).
Which should be called "Free-trialSSL" since, like the stereotypical dope-man "the first one's free."
And this really wouldn't have impressed me any more then the self-signed cert did, since GeoTrust isn't built into mozilla. Not that being built into Mozilla is my ultimate standard, but that I would have still been aware that the company had made the tradeoff mentioned in my erlier post.
I'm all for people making their own certificates too. In fact I did. But that's not what we are talking about, is it?
Anyway, it looks really bad for a company to do it. I'm not saying that I love Verisign (I hate it, but what can I do? Aww, Alderan is so far away . ..), I'm just saying that I find any business that makes the trade off of saving three hundred bucks in exchange for looking very questionable deserves to look, well, questionable.
Finally, take a look at your browser (makes almost no difference which one) and you will find that Verisign is far from a monopoly. There are dozens of SAs in most browsers. Mozilla 0.9.5, for example (since that's what I'm running), has about 100 keys (or "built in object tokens") from about 32 CAs, about 25 of which look to be acutal seperate companies.
And of course you can add more. So, to draw a parallel, let's say you could buy a new computer with any OS out of 100 from about 25 different companies. Wouldn't seem like much of a monopoly, would it?
Acutally, I used to be a Dell server support tech, so am am very familiar with the DRAC.
But we're talking beer budget, remember. Sure, you could buy a PowerEdge with a DRAC, or a high-end SuperO setup, but that isn't really on topic is it?
I mean, I know I said you can't find it. Like every infatic statemnet (including this one) it is fundamentally false. If you are going to point out "answers" to questions that don't meet the original premise of the question you have a never-ending task ahead of you. And if I try to preemtively point out every possible situation like this my posts would never end.
To summarize, I stand behind my statements within the given problem domain.
Anyway, if this guy really "needs" all these features I really think he is best off with a used Sun box.
Someone else mentioned the weasel, it does exactly what you want, but they aren't cheap.
PC MBs aren't going to give you LOM or BIOS via serial.
Either get a second-hand Sun, or learn to live without this stuff (or fork out the $$ for the weasel).
Living without it isn't that bad. How often do you really need to mess with the BIOS? You can get arount boot options with "lilo -R [label]" (change the default boot image for the next boot only) and if it never comes up just pop in your boot floppy, get it up and try again. Worst case you have to schlep a monitor over to the system.
My dad called me the other day because Win2k wouldn't let him delete a particular file. I found this article Q246026.
Notice that the resolution is "backup, format, restore becuase we are too lame to write a filesystem integrity checker that acutally works." (or words to that effect.)
If that's state of the art, I'll keep tried and true, thanks.
As far as the Linux driver never going "stable" don't you think that it might have something to do with the facts that 1. NTFS is a moving target 2. NT and NTFS have bugs that "cooperate" making it very difficult for someone else to write a compatable driver?
From the FAQ/HOWTO
also make sure, you install LILO to the boot sector of the linux partition. do NOT install it to the MBR. otherwise it will conflict with XOSL.
From the story
XOSL, an alternative to Lilo amd Grub
Clearly this is a usage of the word "alternative" whith which I wasn't previously familiar.
The first application of Jabber technology is an instant messaging system focused on privacy, security, ease of use, access from anywhere using any device, and interoperability with IM, phone, and web-based services. The result? Jabber is quickly becoming a standard component of Internet infrastructure.
How do I get "we are a company (that uses a.org domain name) built to provide commercial support" out of this?
It is sort of implied at the very end of the page, and there is a link to support.jabber.org that gives some info, but it hardly seems like they are prepared to answer an RFP.
So, 1. You lied about the content of the site. 2. I really didn't know about Jabber, and said so. 3. They don't give any indication that they are in a position to provide the sort of support that this guy needs. 4. The primary benifit of Ask Slashdot is to help people with an entire class of question, so even if my response was not very appropriate for Jabber, it is still good general advice. 5. Get a fucking login.
You probably ought to send the RFP to some consulting/professional services firms who specialize in OSS.
There are some cases where the developers are the guys to go to, such as PHPGroupWare, but they are the exception. (I don't happen to know about Jabber, but the odds are they don't have the professoinal structure to properly respond to an RFP.)
First they don't (or at least didn't) design or manufacture notebooks. Therefore notebook support is not at the same level as the other products.
Second, Dell used to very much pride itself on customer service. Dell happily took significant losses on a given system (like replacing an entire system with a newer model a year or two after the initial purchase) regularly.
Then the "Customer Experience" initiative happend, and support when to shit. I don't know what the exact cause was, but they happened at the exact same time. Interestingly, the stock basically stopped growing a couple of months later. I hung around for another year/year and a half, but it got so bad I just quit. (I worked in the server department and it came to a point where the way I learned of the existance of a new, shipping product is when a customer called in with a broken one.)
Notice on the recent commerical with the "cool kid" trying to talk the nerdy kid's mom into buying a Dell he says something like "no one has won more awards for quality support in the last five years." because the rate of these awards has slowed considerably. Dell support isn't really number one any more, it's number two, like all the rest.
I guess I shouldn't be saying all this, I still have an ass load of stock that isn't doing squat:-(
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I thought the italics would make this clear.
:-P
As I said, we all make off-by-one errors from time to time. They are easy to make. Novices make countless ones.
BUT someone with 3+ years of CS education should not be making COUNTLESS off-by-one errors. Sure, sometimes. Rarely.
Further, they should be getting easier to debug for him at this point. "Oh, damn, I ran that pointer off the end of the array." or whatever.
I'm two years in, and I don't think I have made one all semester, using a new language (Intel ASM). Admittedly, ASM is kind of easy for avoiding off-by-ones
I don't know. I didn't want to get too deep into this in the previous post, but I think there are a lot of people in CS ed who aren't cut out for it.
I also think that there are a lot of professors out there who are either 1. lousy programmers or 2. really good programmers and really bad teachers.
Really, CS programs are pretty badly designed. They spend semester after semester explaining syntax, leaving students to figure logic (the hard part), and very poorly explaining how the material is interrelated.
Anyone else find it weird that this Senior is generating "countless off-by-one bugs?"
.) you 1. don't really have your head in the language and 2. aren't really learning from your mistakes.
I mean, it happens to everyone, but if you are generating "countless" ones (that's acutally a pretty good pun if you think about it . .
On a sort-of related note, I am THRILLED about the current state of the technology industry. I'm SO tired of people who are "in the industry" because it was "the thing" or because "I don't really like computers, but the money is good." Arrgh.
The next guy that tells me that he like MS because they provide job security (because they suck) is gonna be picking up his teeth.
Okay, not really, but I feel better.
-Peter
but don't the slits have to be within half a wavelength of eachother?
-Peter
Modern HDDs use "imbedded servo data" which basically means that there are magnetic "guide posts" or "mile markers" on the disk. This is a huge improvement. The sort of capacities that HDDs have today would be impossible without it. It has also cured the so-called "Monday morning blues." (For PCs anyway :-)
This is why many people used to think that you could perminately damage IDE hard disks with a low level format. You can't becuase 1. a low level format is really executed by the drive hardware, and is just initiated from software and 2. these drives have an electronic "interlock," which is to say they will "fail" on writing to the servo areas.
It is also important to understand that in modern drives the controller is the board on the drive. IDE isn't a controller, it is a simple data bus. (In fact, the original IDE ports were nothing more than stripped down ISA ports.) So the servo areas aren't externally addressable.
Bottom line, if you degauss, you'd better have a "factory" controller to re-write the servo areas if you ever want to store data on the disk again.
-Peter
I'm not sure you really understood my post. First, I clearly stated that I don't understand who "we" is.
I think everything you said is fine. I think it is a cool experiment myself.
But the question at hand was are overlapping window window managers going to go way. I think the answer is clearly no.
I'm not saying that it shouldn't. I'm saying that it is not. I don't think I said anything about any conspericy to take the feature away. What I took issue with is that Fellgus really seemed to be saying that the option for overlapping windows shouldn't exist, and that my tastes in the matter are wrong.
I don't see how someones tastes can be wrong.
So, no conspiracy, no melodrama, I just don't like being told that I am wrong to like something aesthetic.
-Peter
Well, that's why they make vanilla and chocolate.
As I said, it is a personal preference. The actual question at had was "Does anyone else see a time when movable, tear-off docking and automated full-time tiling completely take over from the free-floating manually arranged desktops of today?" I don't think that I am unique in my preference for overlapping windows, so I don't think that they are going to go away.
Now, I'm not saying that your response or opinion is invalid, but why would you post what you did in response to someone who likes overlapping windows?
In other words, you seem to think that the fact that I like them is not a valid point of view so "we are going to take it away."
Do you really believe that I shouldn't have this choice?
The more I read your post the more trouble I have believing it. The "no" at the beginning seems to say "No, your reaction to this isn't valid. Your tastes are wrong."
That blows my mind. I mean, if someone asked slashdot "With all the cool new flavors of Doritos, does cool ranch have a future?" and I replied, "Yes, it does, because I (and people like me) like cool ranch. And you replied "With the advent of eXtreme Doritos there is no reason you should ever eat cool ranch." That's horseshit. Again, to be clear, I don't give a shit if you overlap your windows, or eat cool ranch doritos. The idea that "we" (whoever that is) should take that option away because you don't happen to see a need for it is horseshit too.
Now I'm hungry, luckilly I have some vanilla Blue Bell in the freezer!
-Peter
So Apple is "ahead of the curve" by being the first to abandon the technique that they developed the Mac specifically for?
I'm I the only one who thinks this sounds like crazy talk?
-Peter
but this falls into the "I want the computer doing what I say, not what it thinks I want." category.
I mean, it is a personal preference, but I don't want a system that refuses to arrange windows the way I want because "it knows what's best" for me.
So, my answer to your question is "no."
-Peter
Even if I presume that this is all true it:
1. Has nothing to do with the "anti-Microsoft press."
2. Doesn't address the hypocracy of an article that complains that the "anti-Microsoft press" is abusing its position by abusing his postion.
It seems like you both are having difficulty seeing that "server" and "desktop" are two different things.
Oh, and I forgot to mention before, get a fucking login.
-Peter
Did you read the article? Intel moved from and old application running on UNIX to a NEW APPLICATION running on Linux. There wouldn't have been any "migration" costs.
The fact is that NT and commercial UNIXes have some of the same downsides. License costs, license compliance costs, etc. Whereas all OSes have some maintenance and support costs. Surely you have to look at each situation, but the FUD that says "MS software has lower TCO in all situations" is patently false. Witness your own example, migrating from another UNIX. (BTW, NT is supposed to be a POSIX OS. Given this claim by MS it shouldn't be any harder to migrate from a commercial UNIX to NT than from a commercial UNIX to Linux.)
Anyway, how does cost explain away the author using a quote about the lack of an acceptable office suite to explain how Amazon and Intel not switching to NT for their servers isn't a bait-and-switch? And loss for MS? (Assuming that this is a zero-sum game, which it must be given the finite nature of hardware.)
The bottom line, I think, is that this guy is wrapped up in MS, and thinks that anything trumpeting Linux successes is somehow "anti-microsoft." I wouldn't have been so put off by this, but his article is basically accusing the "anti-Microsoft" press (InfoWorld!) of dishonestly pushing some anti-MS agenda, and backs up his argument with an intellectually dishonest argument.
Finally, let me say that I'm not "anti-microsoft." I am "pro" software that gives me more freedom. I am against MS illegal business practices. But I think you are trying to take the easy way out by just labeling me "anti-microsoft" rather than addressing my complaint.
-Peter
Paul Thurrott, who's carer is clearly wrapped up in the success of MS products, pulls a nasty bait-and-switch in this story.
He talks about how Amazon and Intel switched some servers from $$IX to Linux, and says that the "anti-Microsoft" press has been mis-representing these moves.
Then he quotes an Intel executive saying that they haven't even considered switching their MS based systems to Linux. The implication being that NT is doing a great job in their back office. But the reason given for not making the switch is "lack of 'robust office packages'"!
So, the story, apparently, is that neither Amazon nor Intel dare run NT in the FIRST PLACE.
Or, to put my own bias on the shelf for a moment, Amazon and Intel see Linux a preferable alternative to NT/Win2k as a server platform.
How is this a win for MS?
-Peter
PS: This post was generated on a Linux desktop.
Huh? Are you a Jedi or a Stormtrooper? Or Batman? I don't get it.
The only thing I ever saw on a Jedi's belt (which doesn't look like any kind of "utility belt" to me, more like a strip of burlap) is a lightsaber.
Not to say that they don't have cool shit with them, but I've never seen one with a utility belt. Maybe that happens in the books. I'm not into the books.
-Peter
I have a Logitech optical wireless (M-RM67A) (not mman :-(
It is often sluggish in Windows, and sometimes is unusable when the sysetm is under a load (and I have to resort to using the trackpoint).
Under X (on Linux 2.4) it is sharp as a tack.
I think that the windows USB driver isn't really designed for input devices. (Well, not designed for them to work without being frustrating as hell, anyway.)
In case anyone is wondering, this mouse "just works" with Linux 2.4.12 (usb-uhci and uhci both work fine for me) with the hid driver. It is so nice to be free of the cord and the ball!
Oh, and the wheel "just works" with the Debain unstable X packages (Xfree 4).
-Peter
Which should be called "Free-trialSSL" since, like the stereotypical dope-man "the first one's free."
And this really wouldn't have impressed me any more then the self-signed cert did, since GeoTrust isn't built into mozilla. Not that being built into Mozilla is my ultimate standard, but that I would have still been aware that the company had made the tradeoff mentioned in my erlier post.
-Peter
I'm all for people making their own certificates too. In fact I did. But that's not what we are talking about, is it?
.), I'm just saying that I find any business that makes the trade off of saving three hundred bucks in exchange for looking very questionable deserves to look, well, questionable.
Anyway, it looks really bad for a company to do it. I'm not saying that I love Verisign (I hate it, but what can I do? Aww, Alderan is so far away . .
Finally, take a look at your browser (makes almost no difference which one) and you will find that Verisign is far from a monopoly. There are dozens of SAs in most browsers. Mozilla 0.9.5, for example (since that's what I'm running), has about 100 keys (or "built in object tokens") from about 32 CAs, about 25 of which look to be acutal seperate companies.
And of course you can add more. So, to draw a parallel, let's say you could buy a new computer with any OS out of 100 from about 25 different companies. Wouldn't seem like much of a monopoly, would it?
-Peter
of companies with self-signed certificates!
-Peter
If you are spoofing the famous Linus soundbite it should be "Hello, this is Leon Brooks" not "my name is."
:-)
Funny though
-Peter
Acutally, I used to be a Dell server support tech, so am am very familiar with the DRAC.
But we're talking beer budget, remember. Sure, you could buy a PowerEdge with a DRAC, or a high-end SuperO setup, but that isn't really on topic is it?
I mean, I know I said you can't find it. Like every infatic statemnet (including this one) it is fundamentally false. If you are going to point out "answers" to questions that don't meet the original premise of the question you have a never-ending task ahead of you. And if I try to preemtively point out every possible situation like this my posts would never end.
To summarize, I stand behind my statements within the given problem domain.
Anyway, if this guy really "needs" all these features I really think he is best off with a used Sun box.
-Peter
. . . because it isn't out there.
Someone else mentioned the weasel, it does exactly what you want, but they aren't cheap.
PC MBs aren't going to give you LOM or BIOS via serial.
Either get a second-hand Sun, or learn to live without this stuff (or fork out the $$ for the weasel).
Living without it isn't that bad. How often do you really need to mess with the BIOS? You can get arount boot options with "lilo -R [label]" (change the default boot image for the next boot only) and if it never comes up just pop in your boot floppy, get it up and try again. Worst case you have to schlep a monitor over to the system.
Welcome to the world of cheap hardware!
-Peter
You mean the DCMA would allow his ISP to poke his eyes out?!
Or do you expect us to believe that you work at a lawfirm without enough grasp of the language to know the difference between sight and site?
-Peter
My dad called me the other day because Win2k wouldn't let him delete a particular file. I found this article Q246026.
Notice that the resolution is "backup, format, restore becuase we are too lame to write a filesystem integrity checker that acutally works." (or words to that effect.)
If that's state of the art, I'll keep tried and true, thanks.
As far as the Linux driver never going "stable" don't you think that it might have something to do with the facts that 1. NTFS is a moving target 2. NT and NTFS have bugs that "cooperate" making it very difficult for someone else to write a compatable driver?
-Peter
From the FAQ/HOWTO
also make sure, you install LILO to the boot sector of the linux partition. do NOT install it to the MBR. otherwise it will conflict with XOSL.
From the story
XOSL, an alternative to Lilo amd Grub
Clearly this is a usage of the word "alternative" whith which I wasn't previously familiar.
-Peter
The site says:
.org domain name) built to provide commercial support" out of this?
The first application of Jabber technology is an instant messaging system focused on privacy, security, ease of use, access from anywhere using any device, and interoperability with IM, phone, and web-based services. The result? Jabber is quickly becoming a standard component of Internet infrastructure.
How do I get "we are a company (that uses a
It is sort of implied at the very end of the page, and there is a link to support.jabber.org that gives some info, but it hardly seems like they are prepared to answer an RFP.
So, 1. You lied about the content of the site. 2. I really didn't know about Jabber, and said so. 3. They don't give any indication that they are in a position to provide the sort of support that this guy needs. 4. The primary benifit of Ask Slashdot is to help people with an entire class of question, so even if my response was not very appropriate for Jabber, it is still good general advice. 5. Get a fucking login.
-Peter
You probably ought to send the RFP to some consulting/professional services firms who specialize in OSS.
There are some cases where the developers are the guys to go to, such as PHPGroupWare, but they are the exception. (I don't happen to know about Jabber, but the odds are they don't have the professoinal structure to properly respond to an RFP.)
-Peter
First they don't (or at least didn't) design or manufacture notebooks. Therefore notebook support is not at the same level as the other products.
:-(
Second, Dell used to very much pride itself on customer service. Dell happily took significant losses on a given system (like replacing an entire system with a newer model a year or two after the initial purchase) regularly.
Then the "Customer Experience" initiative happend, and support when to shit. I don't know what the exact cause was, but they happened at the exact same time. Interestingly, the stock basically stopped growing a couple of months later. I hung around for another year/year and a half, but it got so bad I just quit. (I worked in the server department and it came to a point where the way I learned of the existance of a new, shipping product is when a customer called in with a broken one.)
Notice on the recent commerical with the "cool kid" trying to talk the nerdy kid's mom into buying a Dell he says something like "no one has won more awards for quality support in the last five years." because the rate of these awards has slowed considerably. Dell support isn't really number one any more, it's number two, like all the rest.
I guess I shouldn't be saying all this, I still have an ass load of stock that isn't doing squat
-Peter