Yeah, that's a helpful reply. Tell him everything his situation isn't. Maybe if he prints out your comment and takes it to his boss, his company will hire the magic data center faeries, who will poof a soundproof office in to existence just for him.
I have several friends who work as system operators, and they work right there next to the computers; they have to load and unload printers, swap tapes, swap drive carts, and perform other tasks that require them to be in the same room as the systems.
It's good that you told us about your fantasy world, though. Just so you know, the guys with the white coats are just here to talk...
It's about time we move to a more compact form factor for desktop systems. About 75% of the space in my PC cases is simply wasted. Yes, I'm a power user, and my computer has 4 HDD's, a DVD burner, a BD-ROM, and 4 internal PCI/PCI-e cards. But there's no reason those can't be set up with a Linksys-style stacking system.
We can make all of our drives external now, thanks to SATA. Figure there'll always be one internal HDD or SSD, then stack the rest.
Then get rid of the old-school internal expansion card, moving PCI-e devices outside the case as well. Give high-draw video cards their own PSU's.
No one SHOULD put Windows 7 on a 5+ year old computer. I'll say the same thing about W7 that I said about Windows XP, Windows 2000 before that, and Windows 98 and 95 before that.
If you buy a new computer, get the newest OS. If your computer is more than 2 or 3 years old, you will probably have compatibility issues, so consider waiting to upgrade your OS until you're ready to replace your hardware.
I know it sounds pedantic, but it's the same situation as outdriving your headlights. Depending on the conditions, you could be doing 30MPH in a 45MPH zone and STILL be driving dangerously.
Yep. But following the basic speed law (which is what you're referring to) doesn't negate your obligation to follow the posted speed limit, either. How can we claim to uphold any law if we pick and choose which ones we like and don't like? Anyone could simply argue, "I don't like this law" and choose not to obey it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should stand for unconscionable laws, but I think it's far better to obey a bad speed limit while working to fix it than to just randomly decide, "Hey, I know best, I'll go however fast I want."
After all, the guy parking in the handicapped space isn't hurting anyone. The man using the carpool lane by himself isn't harming anyone. Neither is the guy driving without a license or the girl putting on her makeup in the fast lane.
I'm just asking people to think about what they're doing and take a real look at the risks they take every day. Like I said before, we look at a gun and think "danger", yet an automobile going down the freeway has more energy than a bullet. However, people don't stop to think that they're guiding a deadly weapon down the road.
It wasn't speed that hurt your mother, it was an inattentive driver who didn't drive at a speed that allowed him to stop in time before the point where his vision ends.
He was going 60 or so and rear ended her, because he came around a curve, and there's a car blocking the lane, trying to turn left. He slammed on the brakes but couldn't stop because he didn't have enough room.
If he'd been going 45, he would have seen her and had time to stop.
My grandmother's accident was almost exactly the same. He didn't see her because he came around the curve too fast and couldn't stop in time.
Both accidents were caused by people driving too fast. If they had both followed the speed limit in force at the location, neither accident would have occurred.
How is that not related to speeding?
The problem with your assertion is that because limits are currently so arbitrary, there is no real way to tell when a limit is rational anymore, and thereby hard to judge how people would react if limits were set more rationally. Further complicating things is the fact that the speed limit should really vary from vehicle to vehicle as a corvette's speed limit shouldn't be limited by a Mac truck.
If you always comply with the arbitrary limits, what has it cost you? On the other hand, if you make a mistake, don't comply with a valid limit, and end up t-boning a little old lady or a kid, killing them, you'll be having that nightmare for the rest of your life. Which is worse? (And again, before you say "I'll know the difference" or "I can handle it", consider that the people who do end up in collisions also thought they could handle it. What makes you different?)
And the speed limit IS different for trucks. On the highway, it's still 55, and the basic speed law applies everywhere else: if a semi-truck is driving too fast for conditions with his vehicle, he can still get a ticket - even if he's driving less than the posted speed limit.
If your grandmother was nearly killed making a left hand turn - that is her fault not the traffic's that she was pulling out into. Old people making left hand turns into traffic kill far more people than speeders. The person making the left into traffic is responsible for doing so safely. Sounds like grandma didn't. She shouldn't have been cutting it so close that a 15 mph delta could make the difference between life and death.
I've been on that road, I've made that turn, and a 15 MPH delta is the difference between seeing someone rounding the corner and not seeing them until it's too late and you're in their lane.
The problem is this "reason" has more do to with revenue generation than your protecting your grandmother.
That may or nay not be the case, but the problem is that when there IS a posted limit, people expect other drivers to follow that posted limit. By exceeding it, you're causing a danger just by acting contrary to others' expectations.
If everyone who speeds on a "revenue generating" street strictly drove the limit on places where the limit was set rationally, that would be one thing, but people aren't usually that discerning... and they often don't even notice the danger they put others in. There are ways to fix bad speed limits. But there's no way to fix your conscience when you develop the habit of speeding and then maim or kill someone because you thought the "Speed Limit 45" sign was just another "revenue generating" sign.
How many people who have killed someone else due to their recklessness thought they could handle it? I'm guessing the answer is pretty close to 100%.
I wasn't saying this guy is a squatter, anyway. The general practice of squatting is reprehensible. This guy is obviously using this name to protest, which is supported by the First Amendment. Besides, as others have pointed out, the correct TLD for a government entity is.gov.
The problem is that when people pick and choose where they want to obey the law and where they don't, they quickly tend to disregard that law altogether, and they treat the speed limit as a suggestion, rather than a law. There are actually some pretty profound psychological principles involved there. The only antidote for that problem is to always treat a speed limit as a limit and work to get bad speed limits fixed.
Your issue isn't the speed limit then. Your issue is the poorly designed highway that has a high speed limit and left turns. Any reasonable highway should have on/off ramps, lights, caution signs, cloverleafs, etc. Most of the people on here talking about the flow of highways are talking about properly designed ones that are meant to have several lanes, handle high speeds and don't have people making random turns.
The roads I speak of all have rational speed limits for the road's condition. But the drivers don't follow the limits.
My point is that there are always going to be random, unexpected situations on any highway. Something as simple as a newspaper blowing out the back of a pickup can cause a 10-car pileup. If you're going 65, you can respond to that situation a lot better than if you're going 80. If you do have a collision, you're also safer at 50-60 than you are at 70-80. There are plenty of statistics to show that fatalities rise dramatically as speed does. You're even at higher risk of a single-car accident: I've seen tires and bearings fail at highway speeds. The faster you're going, the more likely it is that your car will roll.
But what I really don't get is why we can't exercise a little self-control. On a 20 mile trip, you're only saving 2.3 minutes by driving 75 instead of 65. Why push the gas pedal down that much harder when there's really no need?
There's a difference between investment, where you buy something from someone else who already owns it, and the practices of cyber-squatters. Squatters are acting in bad faith: they have no intent of running a business or providing real content with that name; they simply want to make money for doing nothing. Real estate prospectors are providing service at both ends of a transaction: buying from someone who needs to sell and selling to someone who needs to buy. The value of a real estate plot also is in line with its neighbors.
Squatters pluck something out of thin air and hold it hostage for hundreds or thousands of dollars - just because they can.
If I saw a retail store opening up down the street, then quickly registered their business name and sat on it, forcing them to pay me to get their own name, how is that anything BUT extortion?
WTF is that supposed to mean? People die every day because of other people's irresponsible behavior, and your response is to make a bad joke.
I'm not being melodramatic: Her car was totaled, she was in the hospital and spent several months in a cast, and the other guy admitted he was at fault.
I've also lived on winding roads. I've had a couple of very close calls, and my mother was rear-ended by a moron who didn't see her when he came around a curve (marked 45) at 60+ MPH. I've been in a collision with a speeding driver who I pulled out of a ditch on the same road a week later. My neighbor and friend was killed by a man driving his truck too fast in a residential zone.
People drive like idiots and then have the balls to complain about tickets. How many accidents are caused by people driving too fast with limited visibility? How many accidents are caused by people racing a yellow light? How is getting to your destination five minutes sooner worth the added risk of getting someone else injured or killed?
If anything, the penalties for moving violations aren't harsh enough. People don't realize that a car going 60MPH has more potential for damage than a bullet. People get shot every day and live; you don't walk away from being body-slammed by a pickup truck at 60 MPH.
Technically, squatting isn't competition. It's extortion: they're forcing you to pay an excessive amount for something that should cost $6.
I was looking for a business domain a while back, and I couldn't believe how many domain names were being squatted on. Anything even remotely related to business was already taken, most of them by squatters. We ended up paying a squatter $1000 to get the name that this business legally owned a trademark to.
I wonder what would happen if the first-time registration costs for.com was raised significantly and the "free refund" policy was revoked, forcing squatters actually pay for resources they're effectively stealing.
Apparently, a lot of squatters play the float - they register and then unregister domain names just inside the free refund period. Between that and the $6 registration fee, one person can tie up hundreds of domain names very cheaply.
If the speed limit is 50, it was set there for a reason.
My grandmother was nearly killed by a driver going 70 in a 55 zone. Sure "everyone" drives that fast on that mountain highway, but that means that "everyone" is also running the very real risk of running in to someone turning left in an area with rather limited visibility.
Interestingly enough, Verizon's data plan was around $40 a month until recently; I think they dropped the price so they could compete directly with the iPhone. Currently, the most basic iPhone package and the most basic Verizon Android package cost the same.
However, AT&T has a monopoly on the iPhone, which is still a status symbol. As long as they are the sole carrier for iPhones and iPads, they'll be able to get away with charging more. If Verizon tried this, people would simply move to Sprint or T-Mobile (I know I would.)
There's nothing wrong with charging users less for less product. But this actually doubles the price per byte, those people who actually want or need to use 3 or 4 or 5 GB of data will end up paying quite a bit more. Even using 2.001 GB will get you hit with the $15 overage, costing more than on the old, unlimited plan.
I'm willing to bet that most users don't use less than 2GB. I'm betting that only about half of the users use less than 2GB, and that AT&T is going to make up the difference in the $15 per GB overage charges.
AT&T offers an unlimited talk plan, why no unlimited data plan?
If there were additional tiers that scaled up while bringing down the cost per MB, that would make sense. This approach seems to simply be a way to punish heavy users.
But how about this: Apple iPad Catching Up On Android In OS Market? If true then iPhone OS is ahead of Android, iPads use the same OS.
I already said that, but you obviously didn't read the whole comment.
Compared to the iPhone, Android phones are catching up.
If you're going to compare the iPad to anything, compare it to netbooks - which still kick the iPad's butt in sales. Next year, you can compare it to the Android tablets coming out this summer.
If you're going to compare the iPod Touch to anything, you have to compare it to other PMP's - and of course there's no credible competition for the iPod at this point.
As to Android tablets: I don't think it's fair to say Android is a crippled OS. They'll be running a "different" OS. It's in no way crippled: unlike iPhone apps, which are limited to Steve Approved Functions, Android apps can do just about anything; we've already seen quite a few apps on Android that Apple flat-out banned. Android isn't a crippled OS. It's just an OS without desktop apps... yet.
$10 says that by this time next year, there will be at least one app (but probably more) that let you develop native Android apps right on the device. Once that happens, what's next? Add in a personal server, also running Android, and the entire ecosystem becomes self-hosting.
haha! Then the metaphor is even more apt!
Despite the fact that we never got a Flash Gordon sequel, *someone* picked up Ming's ring of power at the end of the movie, and Ming himself was rather forcefully removed from power. Does this mean we need to drop a giant, green robot on top of WWDC?:-)
Yeah, all told, worldwide, there were more iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads sold than Android phones. However, when you compare oranges and oranges....
Apple skews the numbers by including the non-phone variants in with the phones.
Here's the real deal
And yes, I forgot to qualify: in the United States. Worldwide, iPhone is still selling better, but that's probably got something to do with being in the market longer. Give it another year and see what the picture looks like, especially with all the cheap tablets coming out. Who needs a Kindle or Nook when you can get an Android tablet for less than $200?
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Is the punctuation mistake intended as irony? ;-)
Yeah, that's a helpful reply. Tell him everything his situation isn't. Maybe if he prints out your comment and takes it to his boss, his company will hire the magic data center faeries, who will poof a soundproof office in to existence just for him.
I have several friends who work as system operators, and they work right there next to the computers; they have to load and unload printers, swap tapes, swap drive carts, and perform other tasks that require them to be in the same room as the systems.
It's good that you told us about your fantasy world, though. Just so you know, the guys with the white coats are just here to talk...
It's about time we move to a more compact form factor for desktop systems. About 75% of the space in my PC cases is simply wasted. Yes, I'm a power user, and my computer has 4 HDD's, a DVD burner, a BD-ROM, and 4 internal PCI/PCI-e cards. But there's no reason those can't be set up with a Linksys-style stacking system.
We can make all of our drives external now, thanks to SATA. Figure there'll always be one internal HDD or SSD, then stack the rest.
Then get rid of the old-school internal expansion card, moving PCI-e devices outside the case as well. Give high-draw video cards their own PSU's.
No one SHOULD put Windows 7 on a 5+ year old computer. I'll say the same thing about W7 that I said about Windows XP, Windows 2000 before that, and Windows 98 and 95 before that.
If you buy a new computer, get the newest OS. If your computer is more than 2 or 3 years old, you will probably have compatibility issues, so consider waiting to upgrade your OS until you're ready to replace your hardware.
Yep. But following the basic speed law (which is what you're referring to) doesn't negate your obligation to follow the posted speed limit, either. How can we claim to uphold any law if we pick and choose which ones we like and don't like? Anyone could simply argue, "I don't like this law" and choose not to obey it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should stand for unconscionable laws, but I think it's far better to obey a bad speed limit while working to fix it than to just randomly decide, "Hey, I know best, I'll go however fast I want."
After all, the guy parking in the handicapped space isn't hurting anyone. The man using the carpool lane by himself isn't harming anyone. Neither is the guy driving without a license or the girl putting on her makeup in the fast lane.
I'm just asking people to think about what they're doing and take a real look at the risks they take every day. Like I said before, we look at a gun and think "danger", yet an automobile going down the freeway has more energy than a bullet. However, people don't stop to think that they're guiding a deadly weapon down the road.
He was going 60 or so and rear ended her, because he came around a curve, and there's a car blocking the lane, trying to turn left. He slammed on the brakes but couldn't stop because he didn't have enough room. If he'd been going 45, he would have seen her and had time to stop. My grandmother's accident was almost exactly the same. He didn't see her because he came around the curve too fast and couldn't stop in time. Both accidents were caused by people driving too fast. If they had both followed the speed limit in force at the location, neither accident would have occurred. How is that not related to speeding?
If you always comply with the arbitrary limits, what has it cost you? On the other hand, if you make a mistake, don't comply with a valid limit, and end up t-boning a little old lady or a kid, killing them, you'll be having that nightmare for the rest of your life. Which is worse? (And again, before you say "I'll know the difference" or "I can handle it", consider that the people who do end up in collisions also thought they could handle it. What makes you different?)
And the speed limit IS different for trucks. On the highway, it's still 55, and the basic speed law applies everywhere else: if a semi-truck is driving too fast for conditions with his vehicle, he can still get a ticket - even if he's driving less than the posted speed limit.
I've been on that road, I've made that turn, and a 15 MPH delta is the difference between seeing someone rounding the corner and not seeing them until it's too late and you're in their lane.
That may or nay not be the case, but the problem is that when there IS a posted limit, people expect other drivers to follow that posted limit. By exceeding it, you're causing a danger just by acting contrary to others' expectations.
If everyone who speeds on a "revenue generating" street strictly drove the limit on places where the limit was set rationally, that would be one thing, but people aren't usually that discerning... and they often don't even notice the danger they put others in. There are ways to fix bad speed limits. But there's no way to fix your conscience when you develop the habit of speeding and then maim or kill someone because you thought the "Speed Limit 45" sign was just another "revenue generating" sign.
How many people who have killed someone else due to their recklessness thought they could handle it? I'm guessing the answer is pretty close to 100%.
I wasn't saying this guy is a squatter, anyway. The general practice of squatting is reprehensible. This guy is obviously using this name to protest, which is supported by the First Amendment. Besides, as others have pointed out, the correct TLD for a government entity is .gov.
That may be.
The problem is that when people pick and choose where they want to obey the law and where they don't, they quickly tend to disregard that law altogether, and they treat the speed limit as a suggestion, rather than a law. There are actually some pretty profound psychological principles involved there. The only antidote for that problem is to always treat a speed limit as a limit and work to get bad speed limits fixed.
The roads I speak of all have rational speed limits for the road's condition. But the drivers don't follow the limits.
My point is that there are always going to be random, unexpected situations on any highway. Something as simple as a newspaper blowing out the back of a pickup can cause a 10-car pileup. If you're going 65, you can respond to that situation a lot better than if you're going 80. If you do have a collision, you're also safer at 50-60 than you are at 70-80. There are plenty of statistics to show that fatalities rise dramatically as speed does. You're even at higher risk of a single-car accident: I've seen tires and bearings fail at highway speeds. The faster you're going, the more likely it is that your car will roll.
But what I really don't get is why we can't exercise a little self-control. On a 20 mile trip, you're only saving 2.3 minutes by driving 75 instead of 65. Why push the gas pedal down that much harder when there's really no need?
Spoken like a truly amoral individual. Here's the Wikipedia definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting
There's a difference between investment, where you buy something from someone else who already owns it, and the practices of cyber-squatters. Squatters are acting in bad faith: they have no intent of running a business or providing real content with that name; they simply want to make money for doing nothing. Real estate prospectors are providing service at both ends of a transaction: buying from someone who needs to sell and selling to someone who needs to buy. The value of a real estate plot also is in line with its neighbors.
Squatters pluck something out of thin air and hold it hostage for hundreds or thousands of dollars - just because they can.
If I saw a retail store opening up down the street, then quickly registered their business name and sat on it, forcing them to pay me to get their own name, how is that anything BUT extortion?
WTF is that supposed to mean? People die every day because of other people's irresponsible behavior, and your response is to make a bad joke.
I'm not being melodramatic: Her car was totaled, she was in the hospital and spent several months in a cast, and the other guy admitted he was at fault.
I've also lived on winding roads. I've had a couple of very close calls, and my mother was rear-ended by a moron who didn't see her when he came around a curve (marked 45) at 60+ MPH. I've been in a collision with a speeding driver who I pulled out of a ditch on the same road a week later. My neighbor and friend was killed by a man driving his truck too fast in a residential zone.
People drive like idiots and then have the balls to complain about tickets. How many accidents are caused by people driving too fast with limited visibility? How many accidents are caused by people racing a yellow light? How is getting to your destination five minutes sooner worth the added risk of getting someone else injured or killed?
If anything, the penalties for moving violations aren't harsh enough. People don't realize that a car going 60MPH has more potential for damage than a bullet. People get shot every day and live; you don't walk away from being body-slammed by a pickup truck at 60 MPH.
Technically, squatting isn't competition. It's extortion: they're forcing you to pay an excessive amount for something that should cost $6. I was looking for a business domain a while back, and I couldn't believe how many domain names were being squatted on. Anything even remotely related to business was already taken, most of them by squatters. We ended up paying a squatter $1000 to get the name that this business legally owned a trademark to. I wonder what would happen if the first-time registration costs for .com was raised significantly and the "free refund" policy was revoked, forcing squatters actually pay for resources they're effectively stealing.
Apparently, a lot of squatters play the float - they register and then unregister domain names just inside the free refund period. Between that and the $6 registration fee, one person can tie up hundreds of domain names very cheaply.
If the speed limit is 50, it was set there for a reason.
My grandmother was nearly killed by a driver going 70 in a 55 zone. Sure "everyone" drives that fast on that mountain highway, but that means that "everyone" is also running the very real risk of running in to someone turning left in an area with rather limited visibility.
Interestingly enough, Verizon's data plan was around $40 a month until recently; I think they dropped the price so they could compete directly with the iPhone. Currently, the most basic iPhone package and the most basic Verizon Android package cost the same. However, AT&T has a monopoly on the iPhone, which is still a status symbol. As long as they are the sole carrier for iPhones and iPads, they'll be able to get away with charging more. If Verizon tried this, people would simply move to Sprint or T-Mobile (I know I would.)
There's nothing wrong with charging users less for less product. But this actually doubles the price per byte, those people who actually want or need to use 3 or 4 or 5 GB of data will end up paying quite a bit more. Even using 2.001 GB will get you hit with the $15 overage, costing more than on the old, unlimited plan.
I'm willing to bet that most users don't use less than 2GB. I'm betting that only about half of the users use less than 2GB, and that AT&T is going to make up the difference in the $15 per GB overage charges.
AT&T offers an unlimited talk plan, why no unlimited data plan?
If there were additional tiers that scaled up while bringing down the cost per MB, that would make sense. This approach seems to simply be a way to punish heavy users.
I already said that, but you obviously didn't read the whole comment.
Compared to the iPhone, Android phones are catching up.
If you're going to compare the iPad to anything, compare it to netbooks - which still kick the iPad's butt in sales. Next year, you can compare it to the Android tablets coming out this summer.
If you're going to compare the iPod Touch to anything, you have to compare it to other PMP's - and of course there's no credible competition for the iPod at this point.
As to Android tablets: I don't think it's fair to say Android is a crippled OS. They'll be running a "different" OS. It's in no way crippled: unlike iPhone apps, which are limited to Steve Approved Functions, Android apps can do just about anything; we've already seen quite a few apps on Android that Apple flat-out banned. Android isn't a crippled OS. It's just an OS without desktop apps... yet.
$10 says that by this time next year, there will be at least one app (but probably more) that let you develop native Android apps right on the device. Once that happens, what's next? Add in a personal server, also running Android, and the entire ecosystem becomes self-hosting.
They are kind of self-centered... but they don't work people to death in their slave-labor camps... have you heard about the latest death?
Not any longer... apparently, app removals aren't instant.
You haven't dealt with Apple as a reseller. They're evil, I tell you. Evil League of Evil class evil.
haha! Then the metaphor is even more apt! Despite the fact that we never got a Flash Gordon sequel, *someone* picked up Ming's ring of power at the end of the movie, and Ming himself was rather forcefully removed from power. Does this mean we need to drop a giant, green robot on top of WWDC? :-)
So far... but the one thing you can count on is that while good news travels fast, bad news travels faster.
Yeah, all told, worldwide, there were more iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads sold than Android phones. However, when you compare oranges and oranges.... Apple skews the numbers by including the non-phone variants in with the phones. Here's the real deal And yes, I forgot to qualify: in the United States. Worldwide, iPhone is still selling better, but that's probably got something to do with being in the market longer. Give it another year and see what the picture looks like, especially with all the cheap tablets coming out. Who needs a Kindle or Nook when you can get an Android tablet for less than $200?