Absolutely agree with what you say, most especially "...a better OS to get shit done on."
I've used everything; Apple II and III's, every Mac model there is, the Lisa, and NeXT machines from the Steve. I think at every strata of the evolution of Apple, there was a focus on getting shit done. And making the user interface better.
I'm not a fan of Apple or a Microsoft hater. I am most certainly a fan of things that work and work well.
That's why I've started switching the family to Macs. After the first MacBook, for the son in college, I had no takers for Vista, even though they would HAVE to get a new machine to run it. Everyone will replace their current laptop and/or desktop with a Mac as budget permits.
At work, not so rosy, by a long shot. I think it's more a function of overcautious upper IT management than the Mac isn't a viable alternative to Vista. We have about 40,000 PCs and laptops to support, so this does require some serious thought. Do we replace the estimated 25,000 machines that flat will not run Vista and upgrade a fair amount of the remaining 15,000, plus the cost of Vista itself? How much will ancillary impacts from upgrading other services like Remote Management, AV, Windows Update, and so on cost? User training costs? Will it break anything like internally developed applications?
The light at the end of the tunnel is that the numbers ARE scary, so we're doing studies with various Linux distributions and there's some serious thought to bringing Macs in. Linux looks good from the hardware standpoint as virtually all the current PCs in service can run Linux. The Mac looks good from a support overhead standpoint, which is not insignificant with the number of users we have.
I'd be happy with either at work myself. I have an old ThinkPad T-23 (a Celeron CPU) with SLED 10 on it now. It's good.
Still, I have 4 machines at work and I wouldn't mind trading them ALL in for Mac replacements!
The last thing a nation and its combat troops want is a fair fight and equitable risks. They want weapons that reach farther than the enemy's, armor that can stop the enemy's, and they would prefer to sneak up on the enemy and employ weapons before the enemy is aware of their presence. Combat is not a sport, there is and should be nothing fair about it. Amen! History would support that absolutely. Most wars, conflicts, et. al., demonstrate what you state quite well. In modern history, Germany and Japan did just that with the Blitzkrieg and Pearl Harbor. We returned the favor with Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few years later. In both Desert Storm and the beginning of the current war, we had bigger, faster, slicker, neater toys. Remember the Iraqis shooting at nothing in 1991? An F-117 is probably not "fair", but I'm glad we have them...and use them.
Ironically, both the F-117 and the B-2 are heavily automated. The airframes are unstable and neither plane is actually flyable by a human. The crews are the "man-in-the-loop", but they're flying robot "guns" in a very real sense. I think this is absolutely the current and future position of the military. I don't see a fully autonomous ground weapons system being fielded by the U.S. for at least 20 years. I think the state of the current hardware and software is about where speech recognition was 20-25 years ago. It worked, but wasn't great or even good for a long time after. Now, Ford has SYNC, you can buy pretty good software for dictation, etc. cheaply, and the hardware is very good. I feel a robotic ground weapon will take some time to mature and not pull an ED-209 or other similarly bad outcome. Plus, we may very well see some Frankenstein complex backlash that will serve to keep a human operator involved.
Where's Isaac Asimov when you need him? Oh yeah...dead.
I loved every word Mr. Denke wrote...freakin' brilliant. Kudos to him for fighting back.
Two things. I've had some high-powered lawyers across the table from me on 3 occasions and so far, I'm 3-0. There IS an assumption these big firms make along the lines of threaten and terrify people until they give it up. Sadly, that works pretty well...until someone like Mr. Denke comes along and says "wait just a damn minute!"
In my most "fun" case, I leased a new Jeep Cherokee for business use in 1984. I had it for exactly 35 days, several of which the Jeep spent in the dealer's service department. The thing was a TOTAL lemon. The first time I tapped the horn, the entire button, retaining ring, and spring flew off. The first cassette I popped into the "premium" audio system was eaten so badly the unit broke. Rear window defroster...no electrical connection. And so on. On day 35, I picked the Jeep for the 4th or 5th time...in a month...and discovered they hadn't fixed the latest problem, just ordered parts, and I was to "call every few days to see if the parts have arrived". I walked into the Leasing Manager's office, handed him the keys, notified him I was surrendering the vehicle under the terms and conditions of the lease in the Section for Early Lease Termination. I agreed to pay $900 to get out of the lease as the agreement stated a 6% charge on a 1st year termination. OK, $15,000 Jeep....that's $900. I walked out, got a cab, and bought a Nissan truck the next day.
A few weeks later, I get served. The leasing company WHOLESALED a new Jeep that had 400 miles of driving on it for $9500 and presented me with the difference...about $6000. And placed an entry with the credit bureaus that I had "defaulted" on a loan. I countersued the dealership, their employee, and the leasing company. We went to deposition...myself and my small-town lawyer...and sat down with about 15 people from the other side. Other than myself and the lady typing, it was all lawyers. The lead guy, "Rudy", did everything but punch me. I smiled, we presented our evidence, and left. In the hall, the dealership lawyers offered to pay the leasing company themselves if I would drop the countersuit against them. In the end, I paid them nothing. They even paid MY attorney. I still smile every day or so about that one.
2nd thing: Monster cables are NOT very good. I have an extensive background in electronics and have made thousands of cables of every description. I also play bass in a working band and run 3 basses during a big show. I tried a Monster Instrument Cable...at a premium price...and found it to be trash. A handmade "Radio Shack" special worked as well. I now use Planet Waves cutout cables and have never had a problem. In the studio, I'm going straight to the board and listening to the mix with Sennheiser phones and the PW cables sound as good as anything I've made or used. And before the "audiophiles" jump in with the "warm" and "bright" crap, MY former life was as an engineer for a major A/V firm that does work from coast-to-coast. Wire is wire. 12 gauge copper wire in bulk from the hardware store is just as good as the horrendously more expensive Monster Cable stuff. I only use the PW cables for my basses because of the cutout switch makes instrument changes on stage a QUIET snap and I'm too lazy to build my own....yet.
Keep in mind that I manage a corporate network, and while we are for all intents an ISP, our "customers" are all employees of the company. You'd think that would make things easier, but that's not the case.
I strongly recommended granular traffic management, including bandwidth caps, 8-9 years ago. Unfortunately, when management saw the cost to cover 8,000 sites, they backed off like scalded cats. We attempted to scale down to just covering major sites, but it was an "all or none" mentality.
In addition, we had Cisco telling our bosses "you can do it in the routers for FREE", which is not precisely true unless you add WAAS cards...which are definitely NOT free. And Information Security stating "the language of our policies will inhibit misuse and abuse by the employees", which is stupidly wrong.
I just pulled a trace from remote site that has a Point Of Sale PC intermittently crashing a few minutes ago. The user had over 20 HTTP connections open, NONE of which were company sites or business related. I get to send a report to a few folks and the employee MAY get admonished, but in the end, the behavior will remain the same.
Our traffic policies in the Cisco gear ARE good, but only to the point where a human being has to make a decision in favor of themselves OR the company. If we depend on the human factor, we're screwed. We are SLOWLY spinning up some Cisco WAAS and Riverbed Steelhead appliances to approach the granularity I think we need. Definitely a day late and a dollar short, but I'll take it.
It occurred to me this morning that driving on public roadways and surfing the public networks were identical experiences for the vast majority of people. That experience being; "mine, mine, ALL MINE!....hahahaha!" AKA "screw you...it's all about me!"
Now, I have the joy of managing a global network with links to 150 countries AND a 30 mile one way commute. So, I get to see, in microcosm, how the average citizen behaves in both instances.
From a network perspective, charge by usage...period. Fairness only works in FAIRy tales.
We do very good traffic shaping and management across the world. QoS policies are very well designed and work. The end user locations do get charged an allocation for their network costs. So, you'd think the WAN would run nicely and fairly. After all, if the POS systems are impacted, we don't make money and that affects everyone, right?
Hardly. While we block obvious stuff like YouTube and Myspace, we have "smart" users who abuse the privilege. So, when we get a ticket about "poor network performance", we go back to a point before the problem report and look at the flows. 99 out of 100 times, it's one or more users hogging the pipe with their own agenda. Now, the branch manager gets a detailed report of what the employees were doing and how much it cost them. Of course, porn surfers get fired immediately. Abusers of the privilege just get to wonder what year they'll see a merit increase, if at all.
So, even with very robust network tuning and traffic shaping, the "me, me" crowd will still screw everybody else...and be proud that they did. Die a miserable death in prison you ignorant pieces of shit.
Likewise the flaming assholes I compete with on the concrete and asphalt network link between home and office every day. This morning, some idiot in a subcompact stuck herself about 2 feet from my rear bumper...at 70mph. If I apply ANY braking for ANY reason, this woman will collide with me. So, I tapped the brakes so she'd back off. She backed off with the upraised hand that seemed to be "yeah, I know I was in the wrong and being unsafe" She then performed 9 lane changes, all without signaling once, and managed to gain....wait for it.... a whole SEVEN SECONDS of time over 10 miles of driving.
I see it every day. People driving with little regard for anyone else and raising the costs for the rest of us. On the network, or on the highway, same deal. And they feel like they did something worthwhile. I've talked to many users at work and the VAST majority are not only unapologetic, but actually SMUG. Many times, I'll get the "I do this at home, so it must be okay at work". To which I say, "well you cannot beat your wife and molest your kids at the office, now can you?"
My tolerance of, and faith in, my fellow man to "do the right thing" are at zero.
A technical solution (to TCP Congestion Control, etc.) is teaching the pig to sing; horrible results. Charge the thieving, spamming bastards through the nose AND constrain their traffic. That'll get better results than any pollyanna crap about "fair".
I own many excellent discs of vinyl that are mostly worshiped at a distance, including most of the Beatles discography. Nothing rare or cool in the Beatles stuff as I'm not a huge fan. I like a lot of their music, but I have quite a few artists above them in my favorite list. That said, most music sounds "warmer" or "fuller" on vinyl than CD; people have opinions for and against, but my ears shape my opinion and I'll go with that.
Had an interesting experience just today.
I play bass in a band made up of 45 y/o and older professionals who happen to play some mean licks when the sun goes down. We've gotten good enough to sign with a talent agency and needed a CD of material for the artist web page links, demos, and so on. I also record practices and burn MP3s for solo practice by the group since the day job intrudes on band time. My "rig" is an old Technics cassette deck with dbx noise reduction. With metal tape, I get a really clean recording. My "input stage" is 2 $24 Radio Shack SM-58 clone microphones, hanging from plant hooks in the ceiling. This is in a 22 x 40 upstairs game room I've turned into a studio. I record 3 guitars, 2 keyboards, a full drum kit (pushed to the far end of the room), and 5 vocals onto Maxell tape, on that old deck, using "Mr. Microphones", play it back into an XP PC and rip to MP3 with Audacity. Using the built-in RealTek audio on a $70 motherboard.
So, there's the setup. I have CDs with MP3s produced in a studio with the latest and greatest digital toys and CDs I built with the toy setup described above. A guy at work, who plays in another band, heard a new tune I had run from tape today and asked "how long did it take at the studio to do that one?" When I told it him it was recorded live on the Jurassic rig, he was surprised.
The belabored point here is that old analog, dinosaur stuff can and does work quite well and can STILL produce very listenable results.
Well, I read her blog. Most people, her included, tailor events to fit their memory. That said, nothing in her account suggests that she was in the wrong.
I would challenge the statement about the Best Buy employee creating a false repair record; how does she know that for a fact? That'll be a point in any instance where she has to provide evidence to corroborate that.
Overall, she got hosed by Best Buy; they should 'fess up and settle.
Personally, I've had very good luck with Best Buy and the Geek Squad. 3-4 years ago, I bought a close-out HP tower...new, in the box. The thing started randomly locking up after a few days. Reloaded it twice, scraped the bloatware off, and so on. Still died. So, I took it back and had them put it on the bench. Of course, it ran fine during their short bench test. I finally said, "I'm a much bigger geek than you kids and either the motherboard is flakey, the RAM is flakey, or (my diagnosis) the cheesey 250W PS is unstable and causing the problem. The guy looked at me for 30 seconds and quietly went to the back, brought out another sealed box, and we swapped machines. Done deal. One trip...about 30 minutes total time. I still have the PC and the PS is a POS (died last year)...replaced it with a 650W Antec PS and it's sweet.
Also had a new iPod Classic I bought for the wife's birthday go TU after a week in October; the Geek Squad replaced it instantly, no hassle, no problem.
Not the same situation in either case as the lady's stolen laptop, but I still shop at BB!
Hmmm....past 50 and still the proud owner of some 500 pieces of classic vinyl having and many more CDs.
I have many records...the original quadraphonic recording of Dark Side Of The Moon, for instance...that have been played ONCE. And that was to RECORD THEM to a more durable, portable media so I could enjoy the music as much as I wanted without damaging the original album.
Sure, vinyl isn't a CD. Doubt if the RIAA makes a distinction. And considering I have some excellent gear, and that I'm a professional musician with lots of studio time, and so on, many of my "copies" sound better than the CD version.
Of course, silly me...I assumed that when I bought an album...Led Zepplin IV...it was mine. Should I be penalized, brought to penury, and vilified simply because I've outlived some technology? If I could still get a sealed, cherry vinyl record album, I'd still buy them. That's not the case, so I feel well within my rights to record an irreplaceable piece of music every decade or so to the latest storage medium.
So, by my calculations, I can apparently offset the National Debt all by myself simply because I have old records.
I agree. This was a very decent review. We have kids in college and the youngest needed a new laptop. We were going to get it at Xmas, but decided to see if something like the Air would be announced.
After seeing it, and reading other reviews, we got him a tricked out MacBook with the DVI dongle for his big Samsung LCD display. With educational pricing, it was less than the Air by a bit. He gets a good compromise of weight and power for his needs.
What the author pointed out is basically what we came to; not practical as a primary machine and lacking some things.
My wife is next on the laptop upgrade list. With a birthday in the fall and Xmas just after, she's lusting after a Pro. She IS a road warrior, but she needs horsepower, connectivity, and screen size. She lugs a big HP and/or a tiny Dell (that's almost huge compared to the Air!) now, so unless Apple does mate the Pro with the Air, she is not a potential Air buyer.
I can absolutely see executives with these things at the office for meetings and such, but real users, like my wife and son, will probably opt for more capable machines.
Actually, I have been in Management mode at several places in the past. What I found was that my technical skills were underutilized as I was spending more time being a politician than a nerd.
Hated it. And I feared it would actually make me LESS employable down the road.
I've been at my current Fortune 500 gig for 12 years. Turned down the management slot 3 times. After that, they don't ask anymore. Which is fine. I get to actually WORK instead of pushing paper, attending endless meetings, or other trivial crap that gets in the way of rolling up the sleeves and having fun.
NOTE: not the completely stupid remake, but the brilliant and overlooked 1975 Norman Jewison film with James Caan as Jonathan E.
Seriously, if the idiots don't get a clue soon, America will have signs at every port stating "Owned and operated by" some multi-national company like the Carlisle Group.
I'm past 50 and have owned 2 different software companies, hold 26 copyrights and patents, and have done technology consults on the B2 bomber and the Trident sub.
Taught martial arts for decades; retired from fighting full contact 3 years ago.
Just had a physical last month. BP excellent, EKG "like a metronome", and so on.
No, haven't been in a study either, but available evidence would suggest that I'm pretty healthy, sane, and lacking any detectable cancers.
And cannabis works far better on my infrequent migraines and is MUCH safer than Imitrex and the other trash I've been on.
I bought a TI SR-10 calculator in 1972. At the time, it was $99.95 plus tax. It did come with a zip up carrying case with a belt loop. I worked for months mowing lawns, picking up pop bottles, using the school's IBM 360 to handicap football games and selling the results, and so on to get that $100.
Yes, I was the penultimate nerd on that first Monday of school following my glorious purchase. Pocket protector, calculator, horn-rimmed glasses, hair with permanent cowlicks...I was something to behold. BUT, I had my CALCULATOR!! It could do things my slipstick couldn't. I, too, wondered when the school would "outlaw" this technology.
And, I was the coolest nerd in school...for a whole week whereupon my best friend Bill showed up with HIS TI SR-10. I wanted to kill him, preferably in a chem lab explosion, for several days. We spent the next year and a half trying to one-up each other with the cool stuff we could do with our magic black boxes with red numbers.
The first solar panel I used was an amazing 5% efficient, so 13% is just not bad. Still, it makes me long for "Douglas-Martin Sunscreens", private space vehicles, and MY FLYING CAR!
I grew up in the '50s and '60s and read every issue of Popular Science. As they still do today, there was always an article about some cool thing that would lead to warp engines or flying cars. Reading Heinlein and Asimov further stoked me for a future with electric cars, clean sparkling cities, plenty of food for everyone, routine spaceflights to the Moon, Mars, and on out into the Belt.
Sadly, we're not even close.
No, I don't really want a flying car as the idiots with 4 wheels on the ground are terrifying enough just commuting to work. And while I do drive 30+ miles one way every weekday, flying just seems stupid. But, I do wonder if George Jetson ever really appreciated his car that folded up into a briefcase.
My feeling (*GASP*, I didn't do the math!) is that unless we go much, much, much further towards clean energy in a big hurry, we may just render this planet useless to live on. And since the warp engines (hell...our only "impulse" engine is a chemical rocket) are seemingly scarce, we don't have a lot of options on where to move humanity.
Better solar cells are certainly a step, albeit a small one, in the right direction.
Very similar to the experiences I've had with Apple; if it's broke, they'll fix it.
In my case, it was an iPod Shuffle and an iPod Mini. In both cases, I opened a ticket on the Apple website, had a brief "chat" with a tech, and had a new iPod the next day.
Shipped the broken unit back in the provided packaging (nice!) and that was that.
We (the wife and I) are going to the Apple store this weekend for new Pods to replace the above units. She's completely taken with the Touch while I'm leaning towards the Classic.
Funny, we went by the Apple store on June 29th...didn't want to get an iPhone that minute, but wanted to see one. Since then, I did get a new Samsung A727 phone because I really felt that a $3-400 iPhone was more in my price comfort zone. I got the Samsung for $30 after rebate, but I'm also thinking I might just throw it a drawer and get an iPhone now.
Personally, I don't get the uproar over the price cut. I have a box (a BIG box) of various computer parts...including quite a few graphics cards...that I've ended up with over the last 20 years. Without looking, I'd venture that 99% of the stuff is worth about 99 cents now. All of the graphics cards got cheaper by the minute and there are several hard drives I'd paid more for than whole systems cost now. In a few cases where there was a price drop close to my purchase date, I opted for price protection from either the retailer or Amex, etc. Beyond that, I figured the use case outweighed the angst. I had the thing, used the thing, liked the thing. Whatever it cost was no longer important.
If there are iPhone owners STILL bitching after the $100 credit, I'm deaf to them. Grow up and shut up.
No, I'm not an Apple fan or apologist. They didn't do anything wrong or evil, unless capitalism is suddenly a crime.
While I was less enthralled by the Matrix than a lot of folks, I did like "V For Vendetta" quite a bit.
I have no idea whether their involvement "helped" the film or not; I didn't sit through it trying to spot their influence, I just watched the film. Came away moved and angry, mostly for personal reasons, and did something I rarely do...bought the DVD when it came out.
Very, very few movies make my "must own" list and this is one. Just got the Criterion Collection releases of "House Of Games" and "Ace In The Hole" recently. Neither one was a blockbuster or widely acclaimed when they were released. I have electic taste in movies, so perhaps "V" is just a personal deal.
And since my now adult son and I loved the campy "Speed Racer" cartoons when he was growing up, I imagine we'll go see the Wachowski's take on it when it comes out.
I use XP Pro and Win2K for all of my machines with the exception of the wife's HP laptop running XP Home. I have used everything from TRS-DOS (and TRS-Xenix) to NeXTStep to RedHat Linux to dorking around with the AIX 6 Beta. I own an original IBM XT box, a NeXT Cube (with the NeXT Dimension board), various Macs, PCs, and a ton of parts for all.
Basically, after 30 years in IT, I'm an agnostic as far as OS and even hardware. I use XP Pro because it works "OK", not because I have any love for it. It's the standard at work, so I use it at home. Our VPN clients are modified to require a specific firewall, so it's easier to deal with XP than rigging up something on a Mac or Linux box.
Plus, I'm a cheap bastard, and my current game machine is an AMD Athlon 3500, 2GB of RAM, and an old ATI Radeon 9800 Pro mated to a 22 inch 16:10 LCD at 1680 x 1050. I play FarCry, COD2, Tribes 1 and 2, Alien Arena, Quake 3, etc. with decent framerates. Upgrading to Vista would likely kill the box as it stands right now. When SP2 for Vista comes out, I'll be ready to build out a new game PC, and I'll probably do a clean install and leave my "old" XP Pro machine for a backup.
I will note that the latest versions of iTunes will momentarily cripple my XP box, especially when ripping or burning CDs. This was not the case with pre-v7.x iTunes, so I'm not thrilled about that. My network throughput doesn't suffer, however. Since I do forensic network analysis for a living, I'm real aware of what's happening on the wire (and in the air on my wireless segments), so I would be very perturbed with the described behavior in Vista.
So, I'll pony up the bucks for Vista someday...just not anytime soon!
Well, I've had the same unit for 14 months, had a 200GB eSATA drive on it until the Seagate 500GB went on sale.
I routinely have > 100 shows and movies recorded at any one time. My wife has the whole season of Grey's Anatomy, last season's Commander-In-Chief, most of this year's The Unit, Heroes, NUMEROUS poker shows and movies, mostly in HD (my stuff...woo hoo!) I record a ton of stuff from TCM like 20-25 movies from Oscar month a while back.
I do have my HT gear on a Monster Power line conditioner and 4 fans cooling the gear down. I've observed that the 8300HD is a "hot" box and I have a ton of stuff in my system. So, everything is kept cool and fed clean juice. That may be why I've had zero issues while others have been less fortunate.
That said, I HATE the software and overall performance of the thing. Cox supposedly has licensed TiVO software, but I've never heard of or seen it deployed as of yet. That "rumor" was one reason I stuck with this setup...along with zero tech support for the family. If the hardware keeps working and they get TiVO software on it, then I'd stay with it.
Funny...this thread got me thinking about the stuff I have, and I talked with an A.T.&T. "Home Solutions Consultant" (seriously) about U-Verse, their HD/DVR solution on Motorola hardware that replaces their DiSH offering, just yesterday. I got some info and I'll surf for customer comments, but I may move to that and of course, ditch the 8300HD. The demo of U-Verse was kind of neat; the interface certainly looked and behaved better...at least on the demo. I'd like to actually SEE it and play with it in someone's home before I get too excited.
Anyway, I agree the SA stuff is mostly junk, but it's my junk (for $9.99 a month...forever) and it's still ticking, so I'll keep it for a while longer.
I have friends with TiVO, DirectTV, cable (Cox in our area) or Dish. Some have built their own MCE boxes, Linux setups, etc. I've dinked around with all of this stuff, but the reality is I have a wife (and 3 sons that drop in at random intervals) that aren't techy in the least.
So, I got a SciAtl 8300HD from Cox, plugged in a Seagate 500GB eSATA drive, and now have 660GB of recording space. In addition, Cox still leaves all the outputs "live" on playback, so I have the S-Video out going to a Panasonic DVD recorder. I can watch, burn, timeshift, etc. all I want or have time for.
Initially, the software was nearly useless. Many updates later, it's almost average. BUT, the family gets it, so I can't bitch too much. They only recently added the ability to watch a show being recorded from the beginning. Basic stuff TiVO, etc. had long ago, but hey it works.
Be aware that a friend got a new Seagate FreeAgent 750GB eSATA drive and it would not initialize to the SciAtl DVR. Same result with a WD MyBook drive. Both have pre-loaded backup software and other trash, which may be the issue. "Older" models of both brands work fine...90 seconds from connection to usable. Earlier this week, Amazon and a few other places had the 500GB Seagate drive (silver case, 500GB capacity with a bundled PCI SATA card) for around $150. With 16MB of cache and 7200RPM, I get zero artifacts and noise during playback, even when other shows are recording.
And the bottom line is, no tech support overhead. I should mention that I have a Harmony Remote that I've done custom programming on (love this thing!), so that definitely makes life easier for the whole Home Theatre system I have. The DVR is basically "invisible" to everyone else at my house. So, while I wish TiVO software would land on the Cox hardware, and soon, this setup isn't bad.
It is NOT a "MAC Address request"....it is most likely ARP traffic. I'd bet some piece of the WLAN infrastructure at Duke is doing UNICAST instead of MULTICAST, and the resultant flood is overwhelming the uplink switchport for the respective access point.
Could be the iPhones or something else, but I'd bet if they pull a trace from the NAMs on the Cisco chassis', they'll see a UNICAST flood. ID the source address, and either have the admin change the box or write an access list to drop the traffic.
Or not....with no more info than this, it's a WAG. One from experience on a large Cisco network, but a WAG nonetheless.
I'm past 50, so my perspective may be a little different.
Basically, I think privacy is largely ignored, especially in the U.S., and it's appalling. Heinlein touched on privacy as a persistent societal mode in some of his works, notably 'Methuselah's Children'.
I think we need a new social contract that encourages and respects privacy. I don't care if Britney is wearing panties, or who's cheating on who, or what my neighbor paid in taxes last year. NONE OF MY BUSINESS! And none of what I do...in private...is anyone else's business.
I'm not advocating an ostrich approach and ignoring the meth lab across the street...the cooks have, by their actions, abrogated a broader social contract and rescinded their personal right to privacy. But on the whole, we need to re-learn the concept of "keeping your nose out of other people's business" and do just that.
In addition, I'm sick of pointless, bloated rhetoric and spin as practiced by the media, politicos, advertisers, etc. The list includes....everyone, I guess. So, I wish (and that's about all it is or will be) for CLARITY. Speak and/or write clearly and to the point. Tell it like it is and be done. To me, imprecise communication, especially on purpose (Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky debacle and virtually EVERYTHING Dubya has uttered) is too close to lying. Be precise and concise, then shut the hell up.
Couple this concept of being as clear as possible with a profound respect for privacy, and the world might actually be a better place.
I don't think it's a big issue. We have multiple iPods and cell phones that are well over 2 years old and we've never had a battery failure with any of them.
We also have a ton of rechargeable AA and AAA batteries for cameras, remotes, wireless XBox and PS controllers, etc. Many of them have had hundreds of charge cycles. We've yet to pronounce one of them "dead".
I'm glad Apple published the price and plan. If the battery fails, I know the cost. BUT, I doubt that I will have a failure before I get the 2G or 3G version of the iPhone.
The wife and I went to a favorite restaurant for an early dinner that's adjacent to a mall with the local Apple store and a Cingular/AT&T store. They're on the ground floor about 200 yards walking distance apart.
Wow! What a circus. The Cingular store was sold out in minutes, then started taking orders for delivery in "2-3 business days".
The Apple store apparently had quite a few. There were local PD and mall security managing the LONG line. They would allow 3-4 people in at a time, whereupon, all the shiny, happy Apple folks would applaud. As people left with their iPhones, in little black iPhone bags, again with the applause. It was surreal.
Went down to the Cingular store and got to actually see and touch a demo model, chained to the big display showing iPhone videos. They had 3, but one apparently DIED...refused to sync and/or charge when connected to the iPhone kiosk/display. I overheard one Cingular staffer say "we CAN'T take it down to Apple...they're still swamped!" They finally took it the back to connect it to a PC. They didn't come back while I was there.
First impression...as cool as advertised. The touch screen is an instant hit with everyone that uses it for more than a few seconds. They get it.
Didn't order one...I'd like one, but I think the 2nd or 3rd one will be crazy good.
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Absolutely agree with what you say, most especially "...a better OS to get shit done on."
I've used everything; Apple II and III's, every Mac model there is, the Lisa, and NeXT machines from the Steve. I think at every strata of the evolution of Apple, there was a focus on getting shit done. And making the user interface better.
I'm not a fan of Apple or a Microsoft hater. I am most certainly a fan of things that work and work well.
That's why I've started switching the family to Macs. After the first MacBook, for the son in college, I had no takers for Vista, even though they would HAVE to get a new machine to run it. Everyone will replace their current laptop and/or desktop with a Mac as budget permits.
At work, not so rosy, by a long shot. I think it's more a function of overcautious upper IT management than the Mac isn't a viable alternative to Vista. We have about 40,000 PCs and laptops to support, so this does require some serious thought. Do we replace the estimated 25,000 machines that flat will not run Vista and upgrade a fair amount of the remaining 15,000, plus the cost of Vista itself? How much will ancillary impacts from upgrading other services like Remote Management, AV, Windows Update, and so on cost? User training costs? Will it break anything like internally developed applications?
The light at the end of the tunnel is that the numbers ARE scary, so we're doing studies with various Linux distributions and there's some serious thought to bringing Macs in. Linux looks good from the hardware standpoint as virtually all the current PCs in service can run Linux. The Mac looks good from a support overhead standpoint, which is not insignificant with the number of users we have.
I'd be happy with either at work myself. I have an old ThinkPad T-23 (a Celeron CPU) with SLED 10 on it now. It's good.
Still, I have 4 machines at work and I wouldn't mind trading them ALL in for Mac replacements!
Ironically, both the F-117 and the B-2 are heavily automated. The airframes are unstable and neither plane is actually flyable by a human. The crews are the "man-in-the-loop", but they're flying robot "guns" in a very real sense. I think this is absolutely the current and future position of the military. I don't see a fully autonomous ground weapons system being fielded by the U.S. for at least 20 years. I think the state of the current hardware and software is about where speech recognition was 20-25 years ago. It worked, but wasn't great or even good for a long time after. Now, Ford has SYNC, you can buy pretty good software for dictation, etc. cheaply, and the hardware is very good. I feel a robotic ground weapon will take some time to mature and not pull an ED-209 or other similarly bad outcome. Plus, we may very well see some Frankenstein complex backlash that will serve to keep a human operator involved.
Where's Isaac Asimov when you need him? Oh yeah...dead.
I loved every word Mr. Denke wrote...freakin' brilliant. Kudos to him for fighting back.
Two things. I've had some high-powered lawyers across the table from me on 3 occasions and so far, I'm 3-0. There IS an assumption these big firms make along the lines of threaten and terrify people until they give it up. Sadly, that works pretty well...until someone like Mr. Denke comes along and says "wait just a damn minute!"
In my most "fun" case, I leased a new Jeep Cherokee for business use in 1984. I had it for exactly 35 days, several of which the Jeep spent in the dealer's service department. The thing was a TOTAL lemon. The first time I tapped the horn, the entire button, retaining ring, and spring flew off. The first cassette I popped into the "premium" audio system was eaten so badly the unit broke. Rear window defroster...no electrical connection. And so on. On day 35, I picked the Jeep for the 4th or 5th time...in a month...and discovered they hadn't fixed the latest problem, just ordered parts, and I was to "call every few days to see if the parts have arrived". I walked into the Leasing Manager's office, handed him the keys, notified him I was surrendering the vehicle under the terms and conditions of the lease in the Section for Early Lease Termination. I agreed to pay $900 to get out of the lease as the agreement stated a 6% charge on a 1st year termination. OK, $15,000 Jeep....that's $900. I walked out, got a cab, and bought a Nissan truck the next day.
A few weeks later, I get served. The leasing company WHOLESALED a new Jeep that had 400 miles of driving on it for $9500 and presented me with the difference...about $6000. And placed an entry with the credit bureaus that I had "defaulted" on a loan. I countersued the dealership, their employee, and the leasing company. We went to deposition...myself and my small-town lawyer...and sat down with about 15 people from the other side. Other than myself and the lady typing, it was all lawyers. The lead guy, "Rudy", did everything but punch me. I smiled, we presented our evidence, and left. In the hall, the dealership lawyers offered to pay the leasing company themselves if I would drop the countersuit against them. In the end, I paid them nothing. They even paid MY attorney. I still smile every day or so about that one.
2nd thing: Monster cables are NOT very good. I have an extensive background in electronics and have made thousands of cables of every description. I also play bass in a working band and run 3 basses during a big show. I tried a Monster Instrument Cable...at a premium price...and found it to be trash. A handmade "Radio Shack" special worked as well. I now use Planet Waves cutout cables and have never had a problem. In the studio, I'm going straight to the board and listening to the mix with Sennheiser phones and the PW cables sound as good as anything I've made or used. And before the "audiophiles" jump in with the "warm" and "bright" crap, MY former life was as an engineer for a major A/V firm that does work from coast-to-coast. Wire is wire. 12 gauge copper wire in bulk from the hardware store is just as good as the horrendously more expensive Monster Cable stuff. I only use the PW cables for my basses because of the cutout switch makes instrument changes on stage a QUIET snap and I'm too lazy to build my own....yet.
Keep in mind that I manage a corporate network, and while we are for all intents an ISP, our "customers" are all employees of the company. You'd think that would make things easier, but that's not the case.
I strongly recommended granular traffic management, including bandwidth caps, 8-9 years ago. Unfortunately, when management saw the cost to cover 8,000 sites, they backed off like scalded cats. We attempted to scale down to just covering major sites, but it was an "all or none" mentality.
In addition, we had Cisco telling our bosses "you can do it in the routers for FREE", which is not precisely true unless you add WAAS cards...which are definitely NOT free. And Information Security stating "the language of our policies will inhibit misuse and abuse by the employees", which is stupidly wrong.
I just pulled a trace from remote site that has a Point Of Sale PC intermittently crashing a few minutes ago. The user had over 20 HTTP connections open, NONE of which were company sites or business related. I get to send a report to a few folks and the employee MAY get admonished, but in the end, the behavior will remain the same.
Our traffic policies in the Cisco gear ARE good, but only to the point where a human being has to make a decision in favor of themselves OR the company. If we depend on the human factor, we're screwed. We are SLOWLY spinning up some Cisco WAAS and Riverbed Steelhead appliances to approach the granularity I think we need. Definitely a day late and a dollar short, but I'll take it.
WARNING ~! Core dump follows.
It occurred to me this morning that driving on public roadways and surfing the public networks were identical experiences for the vast majority of people. That experience being; "mine, mine, ALL MINE!....hahahaha!" AKA "screw you...it's all about me!"
Now, I have the joy of managing a global network with links to 150 countries AND a 30 mile one way commute. So, I get to see, in microcosm, how the average citizen behaves in both instances.
From a network perspective, charge by usage...period. Fairness only works in FAIRy tales.
We do very good traffic shaping and management across the world. QoS policies are very well designed and work. The end user locations do get charged an allocation for their network costs. So, you'd think the WAN would run nicely and fairly. After all, if the POS systems are impacted, we don't make money and that affects everyone, right?
Hardly. While we block obvious stuff like YouTube and Myspace, we have "smart" users who abuse the privilege. So, when we get a ticket about "poor network performance", we go back to a point before the problem report and look at the flows. 99 out of 100 times, it's one or more users hogging the pipe with their own agenda. Now, the branch manager gets a detailed report of what the employees were doing and how much it cost them. Of course, porn surfers get fired immediately. Abusers of the privilege just get to wonder what year they'll see a merit increase, if at all.
So, even with very robust network tuning and traffic shaping, the "me, me" crowd will still screw everybody else...and be proud that they did. Die a miserable death in prison you ignorant pieces of shit.
Likewise the flaming assholes I compete with on the concrete and asphalt network link between home and office every day. This morning, some idiot in a subcompact stuck herself about 2 feet from my rear bumper...at 70mph. If I apply ANY braking for ANY reason, this woman will collide with me. So, I tapped the brakes so she'd back off. She backed off with the upraised hand that seemed to be "yeah, I know I was in the wrong and being unsafe" She then performed 9 lane changes, all without signaling once, and managed to gain....wait for it.... a whole SEVEN SECONDS of time over 10 miles of driving.
I see it every day. People driving with little regard for anyone else and raising the costs for the rest of us. On the network, or on the highway, same deal. And they feel like they did something worthwhile. I've talked to many users at work and the VAST majority are not only unapologetic, but actually SMUG. Many times, I'll get the "I do this at home, so it must be okay at work". To which I say, "well you cannot beat your wife and molest your kids at the office, now can you?"
My tolerance of, and faith in, my fellow man to "do the right thing" are at zero.
A technical solution (to TCP Congestion Control, etc.) is teaching the pig to sing; horrible results. Charge the thieving, spamming bastards through the nose AND constrain their traffic. That'll get better results than any pollyanna crap about "fair".
Absolutely, dead solid, perfectly correct.
I own many excellent discs of vinyl that are mostly worshiped at a distance, including most of the Beatles discography. Nothing rare or cool in the Beatles stuff as I'm not a huge fan. I like a lot of their music, but I have quite a few artists above them in my favorite list. That said, most music sounds "warmer" or "fuller" on vinyl than CD; people have opinions for and against, but my ears shape my opinion and I'll go with that.
Had an interesting experience just today.
I play bass in a band made up of 45 y/o and older professionals who happen to play some mean licks when the sun goes down. We've gotten good enough to sign with a talent agency and needed a CD of material for the artist web page links, demos, and so on. I also record practices and burn MP3s for solo practice by the group since the day job intrudes on band time. My "rig" is an old Technics cassette deck with dbx noise reduction. With metal tape, I get a really clean recording. My "input stage" is 2 $24 Radio Shack SM-58 clone microphones, hanging from plant hooks in the ceiling. This is in a 22 x 40 upstairs game room I've turned into a studio. I record 3 guitars, 2 keyboards, a full drum kit (pushed to the far end of the room), and 5 vocals onto Maxell tape, on that old deck, using "Mr. Microphones", play it back into an XP PC and rip to MP3 with Audacity. Using the built-in RealTek audio on a $70 motherboard.
So, there's the setup. I have CDs with MP3s produced in a studio with the latest and greatest digital toys and CDs I built with the toy setup described above. A guy at work, who plays in another band, heard a new tune I had run from tape today and asked "how long did it take at the studio to do that one?" When I told it him it was recorded live on the Jurassic rig, he was surprised.
The belabored point here is that old analog, dinosaur stuff can and does work quite well and can STILL produce very listenable results.
Well, I read her blog. Most people, her included, tailor events to fit their memory. That said, nothing in her account suggests that she was in the wrong.
I would challenge the statement about the Best Buy employee creating a false repair record; how does she know that for a fact? That'll be a point in any instance where she has to provide evidence to corroborate that.
Overall, she got hosed by Best Buy; they should 'fess up and settle.
Personally, I've had very good luck with Best Buy and the Geek Squad. 3-4 years ago, I bought a close-out HP tower...new, in the box. The thing started randomly locking up after a few days. Reloaded it twice, scraped the bloatware off, and so on. Still died. So, I took it back and had them put it on the bench. Of course, it ran fine during their short bench test. I finally said, "I'm a much bigger geek than you kids and either the motherboard is flakey, the RAM is flakey, or (my diagnosis) the cheesey 250W PS is unstable and causing the problem. The guy looked at me for 30 seconds and quietly went to the back, brought out another sealed box, and we swapped machines. Done deal. One trip...about 30 minutes total time. I still have the PC and the PS is a POS (died last year)...replaced it with a 650W Antec PS and it's sweet.
Also had a new iPod Classic I bought for the wife's birthday go TU after a week in October; the Geek Squad replaced it instantly, no hassle, no problem.
Not the same situation in either case as the lady's stolen laptop, but I still shop at BB!
Hmmm....past 50 and still the proud owner of some 500 pieces of classic vinyl having and many more CDs.
I have many records...the original quadraphonic recording of Dark Side Of The Moon, for instance...that have been played ONCE. And that was to RECORD THEM to a more durable, portable media so I could enjoy the music as much as I wanted without damaging the original album.
Sure, vinyl isn't a CD. Doubt if the RIAA makes a distinction. And considering I have some excellent gear, and that I'm a professional musician with lots of studio time, and so on, many of my "copies" sound better than the CD version.
Of course, silly me...I assumed that when I bought an album...Led Zepplin IV...it was mine. Should I be penalized, brought to penury, and vilified simply because I've outlived some technology? If I could still get a sealed, cherry vinyl record album, I'd still buy them. That's not the case, so I feel well within my rights to record an irreplaceable piece of music every decade or so to the latest storage medium.
So, by my calculations, I can apparently offset the National Debt all by myself simply because I have old records.
Brilliant.
I agree. This was a very decent review. We have kids in college and the youngest needed a new laptop. We were going to get it at Xmas, but decided to see if something like the Air would be announced.
After seeing it, and reading other reviews, we got him a tricked out MacBook with the DVI dongle for his big Samsung LCD display. With educational pricing, it was less than the Air by a bit. He gets a good compromise of weight and power for his needs.
What the author pointed out is basically what we came to; not practical as a primary machine and lacking some things.
My wife is next on the laptop upgrade list. With a birthday in the fall and Xmas just after, she's lusting after a Pro. She IS a road warrior, but she needs horsepower, connectivity, and screen size. She lugs a big HP and/or a tiny Dell (that's almost huge compared to the Air!) now, so unless Apple does mate the Pro with the Air, she is not a potential Air buyer.
I can absolutely see executives with these things at the office for meetings and such, but real users, like my wife and son, will probably opt for more capable machines.
...from last Sunday's strip.
Donate your brain to a gum museum!
Actually, I have been in Management mode at several places in the past. What I found was that my technical skills were underutilized as I was spending more time being a politician than a nerd.
Hated it. And I feared it would actually make me LESS employable down the road.
I've been at my current Fortune 500 gig for 12 years. Turned down the management slot 3 times. After that, they don't ask anymore. Which is fine. I get to actually WORK instead of pushing paper, attending endless meetings, or other trivial crap that gets in the way of rolling up the sleeves and having fun.
But, if you must be King, good luck to you!
1) Shall not allow a human to have any actual fun.
2) Shall not teach any actual knowledge, unless it is the knowledge of not having fun.
3) Shall protect itself by running Windows XP.
...could be easily fulfilled with a robot.
Especially if there's a short in "Betty" or "Billy" somewhere.
"911...state the nature of your emergency"
"Uh, my neighbor screamed something like OMIGOD, then all the lights in the neighborhood went out. Now, I smell roasted nerd coming from his house"
...Rollerball !
NOTE: not the completely stupid remake, but the brilliant and overlooked 1975 Norman Jewison film with James Caan as Jonathan E.
Seriously, if the idiots don't get a clue soon, America will have signs at every port stating "Owned and operated by" some multi-national company like the Carlisle Group.
With no penalities and no time limit..........
Add me to the "Geezer Ganja Club".
I'm past 50 and have owned 2 different software companies, hold 26 copyrights and patents, and have done technology consults on the B2 bomber and the Trident sub.
Taught martial arts for decades; retired from fighting full contact 3 years ago.
Just had a physical last month. BP excellent, EKG "like a metronome", and so on.
No, haven't been in a study either, but available evidence would suggest that I'm pretty healthy, sane, and lacking any detectable cancers.
And cannabis works far better on my infrequent migraines and is MUCH safer than Imitrex and the other trash I've been on.
I bought a TI SR-10 calculator in 1972. At the time, it was $99.95 plus tax. It did come with a zip up carrying case with a belt loop. I worked for months mowing lawns, picking up pop bottles, using the school's IBM 360 to handicap football games and selling the results, and so on to get that $100.
Yes, I was the penultimate nerd on that first Monday of school following my glorious purchase. Pocket protector, calculator, horn-rimmed glasses, hair with permanent cowlicks...I was something to behold. BUT, I had my CALCULATOR!! It could do things my slipstick couldn't. I, too, wondered when the school would "outlaw" this technology.
And, I was the coolest nerd in school...for a whole week whereupon my best friend Bill showed up with HIS TI SR-10. I wanted to kill him, preferably in a chem lab explosion, for several days. We spent the next year and a half trying to one-up each other with the cool stuff we could do with our magic black boxes with red numbers.
*SIGH*
The first solar panel I used was an amazing 5% efficient, so 13% is just not bad. Still, it makes me long for "Douglas-Martin Sunscreens", private space vehicles, and MY FLYING CAR!
I grew up in the '50s and '60s and read every issue of Popular Science. As they still do today, there was always an article about some cool thing that would lead to warp engines or flying cars. Reading Heinlein and Asimov further stoked me for a future with electric cars, clean sparkling cities, plenty of food for everyone, routine spaceflights to the Moon, Mars, and on out into the Belt.
Sadly, we're not even close.
No, I don't really want a flying car as the idiots with 4 wheels on the ground are terrifying enough just commuting to work. And while I do drive 30+ miles one way every weekday, flying just seems stupid. But, I do wonder if George Jetson ever really appreciated his car that folded up into a briefcase.
My feeling (*GASP*, I didn't do the math!) is that unless we go much, much, much further towards clean energy in a big hurry, we may just render this planet useless to live on. And since the warp engines (hell...our only "impulse" engine is a chemical rocket) are seemingly scarce, we don't have a lot of options on where to move humanity.
Better solar cells are certainly a step, albeit a small one, in the right direction.
Very similar to the experiences I've had with Apple; if it's broke, they'll fix it.
In my case, it was an iPod Shuffle and an iPod Mini. In both cases, I opened a ticket on the Apple website, had a brief "chat" with a tech, and had a new iPod the next day.
Shipped the broken unit back in the provided packaging (nice!) and that was that.
We (the wife and I) are going to the Apple store this weekend for new Pods to replace the above units. She's completely taken with the Touch while I'm leaning towards the Classic.
Funny, we went by the Apple store on June 29th...didn't want to get an iPhone that minute, but wanted to see one. Since then, I did get a new Samsung A727 phone because I really felt that a $3-400 iPhone was more in my price comfort zone. I got the Samsung for $30 after rebate, but I'm also thinking I might just throw it a drawer and get an iPhone now.
Personally, I don't get the uproar over the price cut. I have a box (a BIG box) of various computer parts...including quite a few graphics cards...that I've ended up with over the last 20 years. Without looking, I'd venture that 99% of the stuff is worth about 99 cents now. All of the graphics cards got cheaper by the minute and there are several hard drives I'd paid more for than whole systems cost now. In a few cases where there was a price drop close to my purchase date, I opted for price protection from either the retailer or Amex, etc. Beyond that, I figured the use case outweighed the angst. I had the thing, used the thing, liked the thing. Whatever it cost was no longer important.
If there are iPhone owners STILL bitching after the $100 credit, I'm deaf to them. Grow up and shut up.
No, I'm not an Apple fan or apologist. They didn't do anything wrong or evil, unless capitalism is suddenly a crime.
While I was less enthralled by the Matrix than a lot of folks, I did like "V For Vendetta" quite a bit.
I have no idea whether their involvement "helped" the film or not; I didn't sit through it trying to spot their influence, I just watched the film. Came away moved and angry, mostly for personal reasons, and did something I rarely do...bought the DVD when it came out.
Very, very few movies make my "must own" list and this is one. Just got the Criterion Collection releases of "House Of Games" and "Ace In The Hole" recently. Neither one was a blockbuster or widely acclaimed when they were released. I have electic taste in movies, so perhaps "V" is just a personal deal.
And since my now adult son and I loved the campy "Speed Racer" cartoons when he was growing up, I imagine we'll go see the Wachowski's take on it when it comes out.
I use XP Pro and Win2K for all of my machines with the exception of the wife's HP laptop running XP Home. I have used everything from TRS-DOS (and TRS-Xenix) to NeXTStep to RedHat Linux to dorking around with the AIX 6 Beta. I own an original IBM XT box, a NeXT Cube (with the NeXT Dimension board), various Macs, PCs, and a ton of parts for all.
Basically, after 30 years in IT, I'm an agnostic as far as OS and even hardware. I use XP Pro because it works "OK", not because I have any love for it. It's the standard at work, so I use it at home. Our VPN clients are modified to require a specific firewall, so it's easier to deal with XP than rigging up something on a Mac or Linux box.
Plus, I'm a cheap bastard, and my current game machine is an AMD Athlon 3500, 2GB of RAM, and an old ATI Radeon 9800 Pro mated to a 22 inch 16:10 LCD at 1680 x 1050. I play FarCry, COD2, Tribes 1 and 2, Alien Arena, Quake 3, etc. with decent framerates. Upgrading to Vista would likely kill the box as it stands right now. When SP2 for Vista comes out, I'll be ready to build out a new game PC, and I'll probably do a clean install and leave my "old" XP Pro machine for a backup.
I will note that the latest versions of iTunes will momentarily cripple my XP box, especially when ripping or burning CDs. This was not the case with pre-v7.x iTunes, so I'm not thrilled about that. My network throughput doesn't suffer, however. Since I do forensic network analysis for a living, I'm real aware of what's happening on the wire (and in the air on my wireless segments), so I would be very perturbed with the described behavior in Vista.
So, I'll pony up the bucks for Vista someday...just not anytime soon!
Well, I've had the same unit for 14 months, had a 200GB eSATA drive on it until the Seagate 500GB went on sale.
I routinely have > 100 shows and movies recorded at any one time. My wife has the whole season of Grey's Anatomy, last season's Commander-In-Chief, most of this year's The Unit, Heroes, NUMEROUS poker shows and movies, mostly in HD (my stuff...woo hoo!) I record a ton of stuff from TCM like 20-25 movies from Oscar month a while back.
I do have my HT gear on a Monster Power line conditioner and 4 fans cooling the gear down. I've observed that the 8300HD is a "hot" box and I have a ton of stuff in my system. So, everything is kept cool and fed clean juice. That may be why I've had zero issues while others have been less fortunate.
That said, I HATE the software and overall performance of the thing. Cox supposedly has licensed TiVO software, but I've never heard of or seen it deployed as of yet. That "rumor" was one reason I stuck with this setup...along with zero tech support for the family. If the hardware keeps working and they get TiVO software on it, then I'd stay with it.
Funny...this thread got me thinking about the stuff I have, and I talked with an A.T.&T. "Home Solutions Consultant" (seriously) about U-Verse, their HD/DVR solution on Motorola hardware that replaces their DiSH offering, just yesterday. I got some info and I'll surf for customer comments, but I may move to that and of course, ditch the 8300HD. The demo of U-Verse was kind of neat; the interface certainly looked and behaved better...at least on the demo. I'd like to actually SEE it and play with it in someone's home before I get too excited.
Anyway, I agree the SA stuff is mostly junk, but it's my junk (for $9.99 a month...forever) and it's still ticking, so I'll keep it for a while longer.
I have friends with TiVO, DirectTV, cable (Cox in our area) or Dish. Some have built their own MCE boxes, Linux setups, etc. I've dinked around with all of this stuff, but the reality is I have a wife (and 3 sons that drop in at random intervals) that aren't techy in the least.
So, I got a SciAtl 8300HD from Cox, plugged in a Seagate 500GB eSATA drive, and now have 660GB of recording space. In addition, Cox still leaves all the outputs "live" on playback, so I have the S-Video out going to a Panasonic DVD recorder. I can watch, burn, timeshift, etc. all I want or have time for.
Initially, the software was nearly useless. Many updates later, it's almost average. BUT, the family gets it, so I can't bitch too much. They only recently added the ability to watch a show being recorded from the beginning. Basic stuff TiVO, etc. had long ago, but hey it works.
Be aware that a friend got a new Seagate FreeAgent 750GB eSATA drive and it would not initialize to the SciAtl DVR. Same result with a WD MyBook drive. Both have pre-loaded backup software and other trash, which may be the issue. "Older" models of both brands work fine...90 seconds from connection to usable. Earlier this week, Amazon and a few other places had the 500GB Seagate drive (silver case, 500GB capacity with a bundled PCI SATA card) for around $150. With 16MB of cache and 7200RPM, I get zero artifacts and noise during playback, even when other shows are recording.
And the bottom line is, no tech support overhead. I should mention that I have a Harmony Remote that I've done custom programming on (love this thing!), so that definitely makes life easier for the whole Home Theatre system I have. The DVR is basically "invisible" to everyone else at my house. So, while I wish TiVO software would land on the Cox hardware, and soon, this setup isn't bad.
It is NOT a "MAC Address request"....it is most likely ARP traffic. I'd bet some piece of the WLAN infrastructure at Duke is doing UNICAST instead of MULTICAST, and the resultant flood is overwhelming the uplink switchport for the respective access point.
Could be the iPhones or something else, but I'd bet if they pull a trace from the NAMs on the Cisco chassis', they'll see a UNICAST flood. ID the source address, and either have the admin change the box or write an access list to drop the traffic.
Or not....with no more info than this, it's a WAG. One from experience on a large Cisco network, but a WAG nonetheless.
I'm past 50, so my perspective may be a little different.
Basically, I think privacy is largely ignored, especially in the U.S., and it's appalling. Heinlein touched on privacy as a persistent societal mode in some of his works, notably 'Methuselah's Children'.
I think we need a new social contract that encourages and respects privacy. I don't care if Britney is wearing panties, or who's cheating on who, or what my neighbor paid in taxes last year. NONE OF MY BUSINESS! And none of what I do...in private...is anyone else's business.
I'm not advocating an ostrich approach and ignoring the meth lab across the street...the cooks have, by their actions, abrogated a broader social contract and rescinded their personal right to privacy. But on the whole, we need to re-learn the concept of "keeping your nose out of other people's business" and do just that.
In addition, I'm sick of pointless, bloated rhetoric and spin as practiced by the media, politicos, advertisers, etc. The list includes....everyone, I guess. So, I wish (and that's about all it is or will be) for CLARITY. Speak and/or write clearly and to the point. Tell it like it is and be done. To me, imprecise communication, especially on purpose (Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky debacle and virtually EVERYTHING Dubya has uttered) is too close to lying. Be precise and concise, then shut the hell up.
Couple this concept of being as clear as possible with a profound respect for privacy, and the world might actually be a better place.
I don't think it's a big issue. We have multiple iPods and cell phones that are well over 2 years old and we've never had a battery failure with any of them.
We also have a ton of rechargeable AA and AAA batteries for cameras, remotes, wireless XBox and PS controllers, etc. Many of them have had hundreds of charge cycles. We've yet to pronounce one of them "dead".
I'm glad Apple published the price and plan. If the battery fails, I know the cost. BUT, I doubt that I will have a failure before I get the 2G or 3G version of the iPhone.
FWIW.....
The wife and I went to a favorite restaurant for an early dinner that's adjacent to a mall with the local Apple store and a Cingular/AT&T store. They're on the ground floor about 200 yards walking distance apart.
Wow! What a circus. The Cingular store was sold out in minutes, then started taking orders for delivery in "2-3 business days".
The Apple store apparently had quite a few. There were local PD and mall security managing the LONG line. They would allow 3-4 people in at a time, whereupon, all the shiny, happy Apple folks would applaud. As people left with their iPhones, in little black iPhone bags, again with the applause. It was surreal.
Went down to the Cingular store and got to actually see and touch a demo model, chained to the big display showing iPhone videos. They had 3, but one apparently DIED...refused to sync and/or charge when connected to the iPhone kiosk/display. I overheard one Cingular staffer say "we CAN'T take it down to Apple...they're still swamped!" They finally took it the back to connect it to a PC. They didn't come back while I was there.
First impression...as cool as advertised. The touch screen is an instant hit with everyone that uses it for more than a few seconds. They get it.
Didn't order one...I'd like one, but I think the 2nd or 3rd one will be crazy good.
And there you have it...back to the newsroom.