It's okay, the official mirror seems to be working better now, and I switched to it because it has far more seeds than the Pirate Bay. Also, someone posted a magnet:// link which is supposed to be immune to this kind of thing. (I wish it was supported in more torrent implementations..)
Cool, thanks! Once I get the ISO i'm going to put it on the server for everyone in my department to grab, instead of everyone downloading it themselves.
Hm, unfortunately I'm getting "connection refused" messages from the tracker. I guess they're getting much more traffic than they expected.. (or something). Isn't it possible to have redundant trackers for a torrent?
Anyways, the pirate bay link (posted in a comment above), seems to work better, though not exactly blindingly fast. (Aaarr)
Wow. Stories like this remind me of the huge BALLS it takes to strap yourself onto a rocket and fly straight into orbit, and then come back down again. We like to think that technology has progressed so far that things like space travel are safe, and to a large extent it is. But with the shear number of things that can go wrong and the calculations that have to be *just so* in order to get back safely, I am seriously humbled to remember that astronauts are still explorers, and, frankly, still Heroes to mankind. Let's not forget it.
If you have customized your menu.lst you will also have problems the next time a kernel update happens as the update will wipe out your customization, so if you have modified the menu.lst file to make change the order in which the menu displays your choices and which os is the default, that will be wiped out and you could loose access to one or more of your partitions (hence OSes). I have see this repeatedly, and in the latest situation I have had to turn off all updates so it didn't brick this retired gentleman's system.
I used to thing this too, until one day I noticed the following note in the menu.lst file:
# # Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST
### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
So... it helps to read things. *that said*, I agree that the kernel update auto-grub thing could use some more user-friendly customization options.
Yes, this is great. Forget the bad / stolen / whatever review, a look at the product..
I've been looking forward to them integrating GEGL for some time now, and it looks like they've finally done it. This is going to be the single best thing to happen to open-source image manipulation in a long time.
GEGL will take care of almost all the current complaints from image professionals related to image bit depths, printing features, etc. It'll make layering effects much easier to apply and it makes everything related to image manipulation completely modular.
Also, think about how REALLY nice it is that the image manipulations routines are now librarified (is that a word?)... It means that we'll likely see other new applications pop up here and there taking advantage of this nicely-designed back-end. So don't worry about the lack of changes to the GUI, this will come in time, and even the GUI-related complaints (though I don't understand them) will likely be eventually moot.
I think it's great that they've finally achieved this long sought-after goal of redesigning the GIMP back-end and integrating it into the application. We should all be very excited about this! I use the GIMP all the time for my (non-professional) needs, and it's an amazing piece of software.
So if a theory of god appears tomorrow which conforms to scientific principles (I'm not saying it will - I am merely hypothesizing) then we must reject it because it refers to supernatural beings. I'm sorry but that lacks the plain objectivity of the scientific mind.
But listen to yourself: the word "supernatural" means "not explainable by nature"., i.e., not conforming to scientific principles. ("Science" being observations of the natural.) So how does your argument make any sense?
It basically is, genius. Or do you want it so contact-based that they have to shoot a couple of amps through your chest in order to make the pacemaker respond ? Hint: Think of a vital organ that's very, very close to the pacemaker and reacts very badly to having current shot through it.
While I agree with your post, don't forget that electricity and radio are not the only ways to communicate..
This seems like a situation where ultrasonic (or even just sonic) communication might be very useful! You could attach a voice coil to the inside shell of the pace maker. Then have a device which you press up against the chest of the patient. The pace maker and the device could easily communicate through physical vibrations without penetrating the skin! I wonder if this is already done..
After all, it's not like telling a pace maker to go to a new BPM setting requires a high bit rate.
'People should think of a computer interface less as a tool and more as a extension of themselves or as extension of their mind.'
I wish people could learn to think of their computers more as "just a tool". Half the time I see people having problems with computer usage, it's because they're expecting the thing to read their mind. I have to explain to them just how dumb a computer is, and that you really have to tell it what to do because it's just a machine.
(The other half, of course, is due to shitty software.)
This isn't limited to computer science students. From the FAQ: "Computer Science does not need to be your field of study in order to participate in the program."
For example, my program of study is Music Technology, where we have lots of students working on audio-related software projects, and many which become contributions to open source. It's a graduate program, so we have lots of students who came from other disciplines in a previous life, many which were CS, but not all. One student last year wrote an extention to Audacity for more easily tagging parts of audio files, for example. (Come to think of it, I'm not sure if he ever contributed the patch.. I'll have to bug him about it..;-)
Anyways, just to say, not everyone who can code is filed under Computer Science, even though that's what we do.
The GIMP might be very powerful and feature packed, but the learning curve to get into it is cliff shaped. That makes for a vey significant barrier for newbies.
I sorry, I don't get this at all. There certainly are many ways in which Photoshop beats the pants off of GIMP. Support for CMYK, for example, or 16-bit colours, (if that's accurate), really are legitimate complaints for professionals. I understand that these are clear deficiencies.
But the "hard to use" argument... I just do... not.. get.
Photoshop has a window with a picture in it. GIMP has a window with a picture in it. Photoshop has a menu where you can choose to open or save a file, or apply an effect. GIMP has a menu where you can choose to open or save a file, or apply an effect. Photoshop has a tool box where you can select a tool to use on the image. GIMP has a tool box where you can select a tool to use on the image. Photoshop has a panel that you can use to manipulate image layers. GIMP has a panel that you can use to manipulate image layers.
In fact, there are so few differences in the GUI layout between GIMP and Photoshop that I completely fail to see why GIMP is seen as "hard to use", specifically vs Photoshop. I mean, the one thing that bugs me about GIMP is that I can't attach the toolbox to the image window, so it floats around and sometimes gets behind the image window. Admittedly this can get a little annoying. But that is a pretty damn minimal inconvenience, and you could easily make the same-but-opposite argument for Photoshop, that the toolbars annoyingly get in front of the image and hide it so you have to move them around or close them. That's literally the only thing I can think of where they really significantly differ.
So, please, can you explain exactly what it is about the GIMP that is hard to use?
I'm not really trying to defend it here, everyone likes some constructive criticism, but I just don't understand this argument at all. What is so freaking hard about the GIMP? I don't understand. Maybe I'm just thick.
He didn't say File systems were complex, he said Ole compound documents were complex. Look it up on MSDN. It's a tad painful to work with.
I didn't say this. I said I don't see why the fact that OLE documents being like file systems (according to TFA), means that they must necessarily be complex. i.e., I'm saying file systems aren't necessarily complex concepts, and therefore it's not an excuse for a convoluted file format. Anyways, maybe it's straining his analogy further than he intended, so I'll give you that.
Wholly out of context, Batman! They made a design decision to ignore interoperability and optimized towards small memory space. What part of that is hard to understand?
What makes you think I don't understand it? It's still bad programming. Not that I have statistics, but there were plenty of examples of software that used the same or less memory than Word but managed to have better document formats.
Ah, now your post makes sense. You completely lack perspective. The Word/Excel doc formats were around 10 years before you. You lack the knowledge about why dumping C data structures directly to disk was necessary--even though Joel spells it out. You don't understand what OLE truly solved (not just embedding spreadsheets inside of word, by the way). And most importantly, you seem to lack the ability to understand design trade-offs.
No, I understand them. I just don't think they made the right trade-offs. It's not like they had no competition at the time, other companies that a lot of people other than me still claim had better software. Anyways it's sort of a moot argument, since what's done is done. We don't really need to write these formats any more, just read them.
It's interesting you give a nicely egotistical critique of a well-regarded expert's article, but don't suggest a single alternative to how M$ could have met their design goals, nor explain why the no-interoperability assumption was unreasonable at the time. If you can't appreciate the design goals, nor suggest a way to meet them, what's the point of the rest of your post?
I think the design goals were flawed. That's my point. Their design goals should have included, how can we ensure that our customer's data will be (usefully) readable in the future? Sure, back then maybe it was worth it to skimp on validation in order to squeeze out a few extra microseconds of processing time, because the competition would avoid doing this and beat you with claims of efficiency. I guess we've all learned a lot about how to deal with data since the 90's. A big part of that was learning the importance of metadata. (ie., tagged, extensible formats)
Anyways, just because it was done years ago, under different conditions, doesn't mean it wasn't bad programming. Maybe everyone else would have done it the same way, maybe I would have too. Still doesn't mean it wasn't bad programming. (I shouldn't say "bad programming" of course, the code could be fine for all I know.. I should say "bad design", in hindsight. Like a lot of things.)
By the way, "the no-interoperability assumption" is _always_ unreasonable. (IMHO of course.)
You see, Excel 97-2003 files are OLE compound documents, which are, essentially, file systems inside a single file.
I don't see why just because something is organized filesystem-like (not such an awful idea) means it has to be hard to understand. Filesystems, while they can certain get complicated, are fairly simple in concept. "My file is here. It is *this* long. Another part of it is over here..."
They were not designed with interoperability in mind.
Wait, I thought you were trying to convince us that this doesn't reflect bad programming...
That checkbox in Word's paragraph menu called "Keep With Next" that causes a paragraph to be moved to the next page if necessary so that it's on the same page as the paragraph after it? That has to be in the file format.
Ah, I see, you're trying to imply that it's the very design of the Word-style of word processor that is inherently flawed. Finally we're in agreement.
Anyways, it's no surprise that it's all the OLE, spreadsheet-object-inside-a-document, stuff that would make it difficult to design a Word killer. (How often to people actually use that anyway?) It would basically mean reimplementing OLE, and a good chunk of Windows itself (libraries for all the references to parts of the operating system, metafiles, etc), for your application. However, it certainly can be done. I'm not sure it's worth it, and it can't be done overnight, but it's possible. However you'll have a hard time convincing me that Microsoft's mid-90's idea of tying everything in an application to inextricable parts of the OS doesn't reflect bad programming. Like, what if we need to *change* the operating system? At the very least, it reflects bad foresight, seeing as they tied themselves to continually porting forward all sorts of crud from previous versions of their OS just to support these application monstrosities. This is a direct consequence of not designing the file format properly in the first place, and just using a binary structure dump.
It reminds me of a recovery effort I tried last year, trying to recover some interesting data from some files generated on a NeXT cube from years ago. I realized the documents were just dumps of the Objective C objects themselves. In some ways this made the file parseable, which is good, but it other ways it meant that, even though I had the source code of the application, many of the objects that were dumped into the file were related to the operating system itself instead of the application code, which I did _not_ have the source code to, making the effort far more difficult. (I didn't quite succeed in the end, or at least I ran out of time and had to take another approach on that project.)
In their (MS's) defense, I used to do that kind of thing back then too, (dumping memory structures straight to files instead of using extensible, documented formats), but then again I was 15 years old (in 1995) and still learning C.
Re:how common is lying to avoid replacing laptops?
on
The $54 Million Laptop
·
· Score: 1
2) In the future, I guess you should bring a witness, and ask for a tech to open the laptop in your presence, you take photos, confirm there is no "liquid", physical damage, etc. (kind of like an apartment inspection pre/post lease)
Hard when they send the laptop out to another city to get it repaired. I neglected to mention in my post that they actually made me call a long-distance number just to find out what was up.
There's more to say, but I'm tired and I doubt anyone will read this anyway...
Just thought I'd ask if any people have personal stories related to these big stores refusing to replace their laptops.
Normally I'd just read quickly over a story like this and feel bad for the person who got ripped off, but something similar happened to me recently..
A laptop I've had for only 1 and a half years just kind of died on me.. the screen would go black and it wouldn't boot up for a day or so, until finally it just wouldn't boot altogether. So I brought it to Future Shop, since I'd purchased the 3-year warranty. Maybe I'm naive to have bought it, but I know they just "don't build things like they used to", so for some reason I thought it would be wise to have the warranty in case something went wrong.
Anyways, I brought it in and they didn't give me any problems, but said they'd call me.. Finally they got back and claimed that they had found evidence of "liquid" inside the computer, and thus it is not covered by the warranty and I should pay them $650. (I'm not paying that of course, I'd rather just buy a new one for that much money.) But the kicker is that I was _really_ careful with it, and I never ever spilled anything on the keyboard. I tried to contest it, and they said they'd get back to me, so I have yet to see what happens.
But any ways, it has made me realize that, as a customer, there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do in a situation like this. From my point of view, they must be lying, since I never got liquid on it, but from their point of view, all they have to say is, "yes, we found liquid on the computer, which is outside the terms of the warranty. Here are some photos to prove it." Of course, if it's that easy to damage the computer, what good is the $300 warranty I purchased if it won't cover it. Bleah.. and if I'd taken it apart to take pictures of the inside to prove that there's nothing overtly wrong with it, I'd void the warranty. So it's their word against mine, and face it, they can afford better lawyers. Anyone know what I can do in a situation like this?
All I can think of doing is complaining to the manager, but I doubt that would get me very far.
How awesome is that, to do some really interesting work, and finally get some world-wide recognition and even get your name on the front page of Slashdot!
Oh, wait...
Common people, let's give credit where credit is due. Thanks. The guy's name isn't even mentioned until the 11th paragraph of the story! Somehow when it's something cool like this it's enough to say, "mathematics did it!", as if this restoration technique of identifying the hum of a 1949 power supply to help guide a dynamic warping and interpolation technique just dropped out of thin air.
(It's Kevin Short by the way, although if I understand the article, this sound engineer Jamie Howarth played a large part as well.)
XP was also a 0.1 upgrade to windows 2000; it wasn't that different at all. It used the same drivers and so forth. Businesses had relatively few troubles migrating because it was essentially the same platform.
On the other hand, a lot of businesses didn't bother to upgrade at all, because it was essentially the same platform, until they were forcibly cut off.
Now that I know that natural selection is even considered as one form of evolution, I'm down with the idea of evolution.
Interesting. What form of evolution doesn't involve natural selection?
I think a lot of Creationists would bite on evolution if the spark of life wasn't part of the equation.
A lot of Christians are uncomfortable with the 'clockmaker god' theory, which stipulates that God set up all the mechanics, hit "go", and walked away. They believe God plays an active role in their life.
I'm no doctor, but I am certain that there is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding the word "addiction". Sometimes when we say something is addictive, we mean that it is exceptionally fun and we want to do it again and again... this is psychological addiction. You can get psychologically addicted to anything, including sugar, or salt.
On the other hand, chemical addiction is what happens when a certain chemical that you ingest causes long-term changes to how your body works. Your body literally demands more of that chemical in order to feel like it's functioning properly. These drugs tend to include long periods of withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking them. Opiates, such as heroin, as well as nicotine and (I believe, to a degree) alcohol fall into this category.
In fact, I've been told by a professor (of media, not a doctor) that cocaine does _not_ fall into this category. Most people who do cocaine are occasional users. People often ignore this fact because they've heard stories through friends and through the media about individuals getting highly addicted to cocaine use. But you cannot draw conclusions like this based on individual stories! You have to look at the statistics.
And I mean purely at the statistics, because 'war on drugs' style publications and web sites constantly misrepresent them. In looking for some statistics to back up what I'm saying here (I just visited about 10 websites), I discovered that it's actually very difficult to find information about drug use that is not surrounded by anti-drug rhetoric.
I am not trying to encourage drug use here, only proper dissemination of truthful information. Almost every website I have just visited mentioned the number of people reported to have tried cocaine, but never mentioned the percentage that subsequently became addicted.
Aha, here we go. This survey reports that about 1% of the adult population has tried cocaine, and that, "among the general population, cocaine use seems to be occasional, occurring mainly at weekends and in recreational settings (bars and discos), where it can reach high levels."
Is this surprising? No. Is this worrisome? Sure. No one argues that cocaine is healthy. Is it worthy of being called a highly addictive substance? Personally I don't think so, but I'm not a clinical researcher.
Here's a good insert in the article I linked to that is relevant to the TFA:
In contrast to heroin addiction, which can be treated with agonists such as methadone or antagonists such as naltrexone, there are currently no medical treatments available for cocaine addiction. The reason for this would appear to be the mechanism of action through which cocaine exerts its effects on the brain neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. Whereas heroin binds to brain opioid receptors, such as the mu receptors, and therefore mimics the action of the brain's own endorphins, cocaine inhibits the reabsorption of dopamine (and indeed serotonin) from the neuronal synapse once it has had its effect, leading to a build-up of the transmitter, thus prolonging and strengthening its effect.
This does not necessarily mean that it is not possible to develop a medical treatment for cocaine addiction, only that it may be more difficult to do so and may involve different concepts from those used in the development of treatments for heroin dependence.
One exciting strand of research is the use of immunotherapy, i.e. the development of a vaccine that would effectively 'neutralise' the action of cocaine by preventing the drug from reaching the brain. The basic concept has undergone limited testing. A vaccine developed in the United Kingdom was tested in a small number of cocaine addicts, 18 in total, over a period of 14 weeks. It was found
Slashdot Mirror
It's okay, the official mirror seems to be working better now, and I switched to it because it has far more seeds than the Pirate Bay. Also, someone posted a magnet:// link which is supposed to be immune to this kind of thing. (I wish it was supported in more torrent implementations..)
Cool, thanks! Once I get the ISO i'm going to put it on the server for everyone in my department to grab, instead of everyone downloading it themselves.
*thanks*
Hm, unfortunately I'm getting "connection refused" messages from the tracker. I guess they're getting much more traffic than they expected.. (or something). Isn't it possible to have redundant trackers for a torrent?
Anyways, the pirate bay link (posted in a comment above), seems to work better, though not exactly blindingly fast. (Aaarr)
Wow. Stories like this remind me of the huge BALLS it takes to strap yourself onto a rocket and fly straight into orbit, and then come back down again. We like to think that technology has progressed so far that things like space travel are safe, and to a large extent it is. But with the shear number of things that can go wrong and the calculations that have to be *just so* in order to get back safely, I am seriously humbled to remember that astronauts are still explorers, and, frankly, still Heroes to mankind. Let's not forget it.
I used to thing this too, until one day I noticed the following note in the menu.lst file:
#
# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST
### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
So... it helps to read things. *that said*, I agree that the kernel update auto-grub thing could use some more user-friendly customization options.
Yes, this is great. Forget the bad / stolen / whatever review, a look at the product..
I've been looking forward to them integrating GEGL for some time now, and it looks like they've finally done it. This is going to be the single best thing to happen to open-source image manipulation in a long time.
GEGL will take care of almost all the current complaints from image professionals related to image bit depths, printing features, etc. It'll make layering effects much easier to apply and it makes everything related to image manipulation completely modular.
Also, think about how REALLY nice it is that the image manipulations routines are now librarified (is that a word?)... It means that we'll likely see other new applications pop up here and there taking advantage of this nicely-designed back-end. So don't worry about the lack of changes to the GUI, this will come in time, and even the GUI-related complaints (though I don't understand them) will likely be eventually moot.
I think it's great that they've finally achieved this long sought-after goal of redesigning the GIMP back-end and integrating it into the application. We should all be very excited about this! I use the GIMP all the time for my (non-professional) needs, and it's an amazing piece of software.
But listen to yourself: the word "supernatural" means "not explainable by nature"., i.e., not conforming to scientific principles. ("Science" being observations of the natural.) So how does your argument make any sense?
While I agree with your post, don't forget that electricity and radio are not the only ways to communicate..
This seems like a situation where ultrasonic (or even just sonic) communication might be very useful! You could attach a voice coil to the inside shell of the pace maker. Then have a device which you press up against the chest of the patient. The pace maker and the device could easily communicate through physical vibrations without penetrating the skin! I wonder if this is already done..
After all, it's not like telling a pace maker to go to a new BPM setting requires a high bit rate.
I wish people could learn to think of their computers more as "just a tool". Half the time I see people having problems with computer usage, it's because they're expecting the thing to read their mind. I have to explain to them just how dumb a computer is, and that you really have to tell it what to do because it's just a machine.
(The other half, of course, is due to shitty software.)
... as long as that train doesn't go through a tunnel under a mountain.
I am a computer, you insensitive clod!
This isn't limited to computer science students. From the FAQ: "Computer Science does not need to be your field of study in order to participate in the program."
;-)
For example, my program of study is Music Technology, where we have lots of students working on audio-related software projects, and many which become contributions to open source. It's a graduate program, so we have lots of students who came from other disciplines in a previous life, many which were CS, but not all. One student last year wrote an extention to Audacity for more easily tagging parts of audio files, for example. (Come to think of it, I'm not sure if he ever contributed the patch.. I'll have to bug him about it..
Anyways, just to say, not everyone who can code is filed under Computer Science, even though that's what we do.
I sorry, I don't get this at all. There certainly are many ways in which Photoshop beats the pants off of GIMP. Support for CMYK, for example, or 16-bit colours, (if that's accurate), really are legitimate complaints for professionals. I understand that these are clear deficiencies.
But the "hard to use" argument... I just do... not.. get.
Photoshop has a window with a picture in it. GIMP has a window with a picture in it.
Photoshop has a menu where you can choose to open or save a file, or apply an effect. GIMP has a menu where you can choose to open or save a file, or apply an effect.
Photoshop has a tool box where you can select a tool to use on the image. GIMP has a tool box where you can select a tool to use on the image.
Photoshop has a panel that you can use to manipulate image layers. GIMP has a panel that you can use to manipulate image layers.
In fact, there are so few differences in the GUI layout between GIMP and Photoshop that I completely fail to see why GIMP is seen as "hard to use", specifically vs Photoshop. I mean, the one thing that bugs me about GIMP is that I can't attach the toolbox to the image window, so it floats around and sometimes gets behind the image window. Admittedly this can get a little annoying. But that is a pretty damn minimal inconvenience, and you could easily make the same-but-opposite argument for Photoshop, that the toolbars annoyingly get in front of the image and hide it so you have to move them around or close them. That's literally the only thing I can think of where they really significantly differ.
So, please, can you explain exactly what it is about the GIMP that is hard to use?
File->Open.. click paint.. draw draw draw, File->Save. Blend, Effect, etc..
I'm not really trying to defend it here, everyone likes some constructive criticism, but I just don't understand this argument at all.
What is so freaking hard about the GIMP? I don't understand. Maybe I'm just thick.
I didn't say this. I said I don't see why the fact that OLE documents being like file systems (according to TFA), means that they must necessarily be complex. i.e., I'm saying file systems aren't necessarily complex concepts, and therefore it's not an excuse for a convoluted file format. Anyways, maybe it's straining his analogy further than he intended, so I'll give you that.
What makes you think I don't understand it? It's still bad programming. Not that I have statistics, but there were plenty of examples of software that used the same or less memory than Word but managed to have better document formats.
No, I understand them. I just don't think they made the right trade-offs. It's not like they had no competition at the time, other companies that a lot of people other than me still claim had better software. Anyways it's sort of a moot argument, since what's done is done. We don't really need to write these formats any more, just read them.
I think the design goals were flawed. That's my point. Their design goals should have included, how can we ensure that our customer's data will be (usefully) readable in the future? Sure, back then maybe it was worth it to skimp on validation in order to squeeze out a few extra microseconds of processing time, because the competition would avoid doing this and beat you with claims of efficiency. I guess we've all learned a lot about how to deal with data since the 90's. A big part of that was learning the importance of metadata. (ie., tagged, extensible formats)
Anyways, just because it was done years ago, under different conditions, doesn't mean it wasn't bad programming. Maybe everyone else would have done it the same way, maybe I would have too. Still doesn't mean it wasn't bad programming. (I shouldn't say "bad programming" of course, the code could be fine for all I know.. I should say "bad design", in hindsight. Like a lot of things.)
By the way, "the no-interoperability assumption" is _always_ unreasonable. (IMHO of course.)
I don't see why just because something is organized filesystem-like (not such an awful idea) means it has to be hard to understand. Filesystems, while they can certain get complicated, are fairly simple in concept. "My file is here. It is *this* long. Another part of it is over here..."
Wait, I thought you were trying to convince us that this doesn't reflect bad programming...
Ah, I see, you're trying to imply that it's the very design of the Word-style of word processor that is inherently flawed. Finally we're in agreement.
Anyways, it's no surprise that it's all the OLE, spreadsheet-object-inside-a-document, stuff that would make it difficult to design a Word killer. (How often to people actually use that anyway?) It would basically mean reimplementing OLE, and a good chunk of Windows itself (libraries for all the references to parts of the operating system, metafiles, etc), for your application. However, it certainly can be done. I'm not sure it's worth it, and it can't be done overnight, but it's possible. However you'll have a hard time convincing me that Microsoft's mid-90's idea of tying everything in an application to inextricable parts of the OS doesn't reflect bad programming. Like, what if we need to *change* the operating system? At the very least, it reflects bad foresight, seeing as they tied themselves to continually porting forward all sorts of crud from previous versions of their OS just to support these application monstrosities. This is a direct consequence of not designing the file format properly in the first place, and just using a binary structure dump.
It reminds me of a recovery effort I tried last year, trying to recover some interesting data from some files generated on a NeXT cube from years ago. I realized the documents were just dumps of the Objective C objects themselves. In some ways this made the file parseable, which is good, but it other ways it meant that, even though I had the source code of the application, many of the objects that were dumped into the file were related to the operating system itself instead of the application code, which I did _not_ have the source code to, making the effort far more difficult. (I didn't quite succeed in the end, or at least I ran out of time and had to take another approach on that project.)
In their (MS's) defense, I used to do that kind of thing back then too, (dumping memory structures straight to files instead of using extensible, documented formats), but then again I was 15 years old (in 1995) and still learning C.
Hard when they send the laptop out to another city to get it repaired. I neglected to mention in my post that they actually made me call a long-distance number just to find out what was up.
I did, and thanks for the cleaning tip.
Just thought I'd ask if any people have personal stories related to these big stores refusing to replace their laptops.
Normally I'd just read quickly over a story like this and feel bad for the person who got ripped off, but something similar happened to me recently..
A laptop I've had for only 1 and a half years just kind of died on me.. the screen would go black and it wouldn't boot up for a day or so, until finally it just wouldn't boot altogether. So I brought it to Future Shop, since I'd purchased the 3-year warranty. Maybe I'm naive to have bought it, but I know they just "don't build things like they used to", so for some reason I thought it would be wise to have the warranty in case something went wrong.
Anyways, I brought it in and they didn't give me any problems, but said they'd call me.. Finally they got back and claimed that they had found evidence of "liquid" inside the computer, and thus it is not covered by the warranty and I should pay them $650. (I'm not paying that of course, I'd rather just buy a new one for that much money.) But the kicker is that I was _really_ careful with it, and I never ever spilled anything on the keyboard. I tried to contest it, and they said they'd get back to me, so I have yet to see what happens.
But any ways, it has made me realize that, as a customer, there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do in a situation like this. From my point of view, they must be lying, since I never got liquid on it, but from their point of view, all they have to say is, "yes, we found liquid on the computer, which is outside the terms of the warranty. Here are some photos to prove it." Of course, if it's that easy to damage the computer, what good is the $300 warranty I purchased if it won't cover it. Bleah.. and if I'd taken it apart to take pictures of the inside to prove that there's nothing overtly wrong with it, I'd void the warranty. So it's their word against mine, and face it, they can afford better lawyers. Anyone know what I can do in a situation like this?
All I can think of doing is complaining to the manager, but I doubt that would get me very far.
That would be crazy!
With that kind of mouth, it'll certainly happen before "you bang you" an earth girl.
Congratulations, "A Mathematician"!!
How awesome is that, to do some really interesting work, and finally get some world-wide recognition and even get your name on the front page of Slashdot!
Oh, wait...
Common people, let's give credit where credit is due. Thanks. The guy's name isn't even mentioned until the 11th paragraph of the story! Somehow when it's something cool like this it's enough to say, "mathematics did it!", as if this restoration technique of identifying the hum of a 1949 power supply to help guide a dynamic warping and interpolation technique just dropped out of thin air.
(It's Kevin Short by the way, although if I understand the article, this sound engineer Jamie Howarth played a large part as well.)
On the other hand, a lot of businesses didn't bother to upgrade at all, because it was essentially the same platform, until they were forcibly cut off.
So, sex isn't natural?
I believe that sexual selection is considered part of natural selection, though I guess I could be wrong.
Interesting. What form of evolution doesn't involve natural selection?
A lot of Christians are uncomfortable with the 'clockmaker god' theory, which stipulates that God set up all the mechanics, hit "go", and walked away. They believe God plays an active role in their life.
Glad that someone said it.
I'm no doctor, but I am certain that there is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding the word "addiction". Sometimes when we say something is addictive, we mean that it is exceptionally fun and we want to do it again and again... this is psychological addiction. You can get psychologically addicted to anything, including sugar, or salt.
On the other hand, chemical addiction is what happens when a certain chemical that you ingest causes long-term changes to how your body works. Your body literally demands more of that chemical in order to feel like it's functioning properly. These drugs tend to include long periods of withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking them. Opiates, such as heroin, as well as nicotine and (I believe, to a degree) alcohol fall into this category.
In fact, I've been told by a professor (of media, not a doctor) that cocaine does _not_ fall into this category. Most people who do cocaine are occasional users. People often ignore this fact because they've heard stories through friends and through the media about individuals getting highly addicted to cocaine use. But you cannot draw conclusions like this based on individual stories! You have to look at the statistics.
And I mean purely at the statistics, because 'war on drugs' style publications and web sites constantly misrepresent them. In looking for some statistics to back up what I'm saying here (I just visited about 10 websites), I discovered that it's actually very difficult to find information about drug use that is not surrounded by anti-drug rhetoric.
I am not trying to encourage drug use here, only proper dissemination of truthful information. Almost every website I have just visited mentioned the number of people reported to have tried cocaine, but never mentioned the percentage that subsequently became addicted.
Aha, here we go. This survey reports that about 1% of the adult population has tried cocaine, and that, "among the general population, cocaine use seems to be occasional, occurring mainly at weekends and in recreational settings (bars and discos), where it can reach high levels."
Is this surprising? No. Is this worrisome? Sure. No one argues that cocaine is healthy. Is it worthy of being called a highly addictive substance? Personally I don't think so, but I'm not a clinical researcher.
Here's a good insert in the article I linked to that is relevant to the TFA: