Wait - you're saying that because they need to update the modem that they therefore should have access to his router? They're two separate devices. There's no reason for them to touch the router.
I found an awesome list created by ubuntu community (didn't find anything comparable from anywhere else)
Not sure why you couldn't find it, but Mandriva has had a database of supported hardware since before I started using Linux (which was Mandrake 9.2, in 2003). Having a list of supported hardware certainly isn't a new idea. http://www.mandriva.com/hardware/
installed ubuntu and it all worked out of the box. As it always does with Ubuntu.
Glad you've had good luck with it. Last couple times I've tried I couldn't even get the installer to boot. And when my brother tried it took 4 days to get his wifi card to work (a card which works out of the box with Mandriva.) Stuck with Mandriva for many years because of that, though I've recently switched to Arch. And while it takes a couple hours to get the system setup initially on Arch, I couldn't be happier. Haven't had a single problem since installing it.
Coming from another big football school (Penn State), I'd agree with that. Football gets a lot of money, but it also does bring in a huge amount. I haven't really looked into it, but I would be astounded if football was a net loss for PSU. Meanwhile, the administrators pull in 6 figure salaries and even the low end administrators (head of the campus police, secretaries, etc) are _never there_. People whose only job is to help students with paperwork will take off two days a week, not show up until 11, take two hours for lunch, and then leave around 3. What the hell are these people actually _doing_ to earn their salary?
The professors though I actually don't have a single complaint about. Well, except maybe my Calc II grad student who whispered with a thick accent, and maybe my Intro to Digital Systems prof who was about 80 years old and kept repeating lectures, but otherwise the profs have been great. My biggest complaints are the administration and the architects (some of these newer buildings had to be designed by someone smoking some heavy dope. We have a building that, for about 6 months of our 9 month academic year, it actually snows _inside the building_. I prefer the buildings they actually let engineering students design back in the 70s. Those ones mostly make sense.) Oh, and the fact that we have buildings that were originally constructed as temporary...back during World War II...and we still have engineering classes in them. Which isn't really terrible, except it's this row of tiny, maze-like structures.
Ah, and the worst of it is that they keep demolishing academic buildings in order to erect things like the Alumni Center - a building, pond, and garden that, for 95% of the year, has no function other than sitting there looking pretty. They tore down several engineering buildings and forced things like the century old Amateur Radio Club to move to a different section of campus (their building is still there, they just didn't want to see the antennas). Though to be fair, the room the club ended up with is probably a fair bit better, but it's out in the middle of nowhere in the ROTC building.
Well yea, because they either have above average cash to spend, below average storage needs, or above average performance requirements. That's like saying that iPads are ready to completely replace PCs just because some people have already done so.
Whereas QuakeLive is as good as the guys you're playing against, and given that it's full of clan players and people who've been playing quake for perhaps longer than they should have, it means that you're competing on level ground when it comes to player specs/weapons, but against people who know every last trick available (which you can learn should you be arsed).
That's exactly why I very rarely play games in online multiplayer. Some games are better than others - Call of Duty has a somewhat decent system that tries to balance teams a bit. Halo, if I remember correctly, basically just throws you together with whoever. Personally, I can't spend more than a few hours a week playing a game, _especially_ if it's multiplayer (no pause button). I'm not a huge fan of getting killed 20 times with headshots by people I never even saw. As I said, Call of Duty is one of the better games in this respect, as after a particularly lazy couple months playing 20+ hours a week I finally managed to get 2-3 kills per round (and 15-20 deaths), but I can remember playing the original Halo damn near nonstop for a month or two (probably 10 hours a day at least) and still being lucky if I got a single kill, or even managed to stay alive for more than 5 minutes, in a multiplayer match. I love offline multiplayer, but when a game throws a first time player in with people who play for 10 hours a day for months or even years on end, it generally doesn't work.
Sure, if you're a hardcore gamer who spends a couple hours every day playing FPS games, then yea, you want multiplayer. But those of us who can only squeeze in a couple hours on the weekends would really prefer a longer campaign mode. And I hardly think that they have to cheat to make the computer better - they just have to cheat less in favor of the player. I mean why is it that on _every single FPS I've ever played_, I can kill them in one shot, but if they shoot me once with the same weapon, at worst I have very low health - more than likely I can stand several shots before I die.
Same thing in Pennsylvania - We have 4-5 levels of classes (below average, standard, high, advanced) as well as AP classes. Though it also differs by subject. For example, in Math, if you're advanced, you're just taking the same classes as the grade above you. And if you're one of about 10 kids (out of ~200) who are _really_ good, you may be two grade levels ahead. But in English classes, if you're really good you're still pretty much studying the same topic, you just maybe do more of it or go more in-depth. And then we had a pretty simple system to allow students to take classes at the local university - generally there were 10-20 each year. For most classes they pay all the tuition, for a small selection they'll pay for the textbooks and everything too. But for certain areas that doesn't work out so well - the 400-level comp sci classes at the local uni (IUP) were easier than the AP Comp classes I had already taken in highschool.
But earlier than 6th grade - if you're really good at math you maybe get moved up a level, but that's the only differentiation that there is.
And it's also pretty difficult to move between sections. The people who were taking the advanced math classes senior year were pretty much the same people who had been taking them since 5th grade. Once you're in middleschool they don't really look for students performing above or below their level. Sometimes if you get a really good teacher they will (I was asked if I wanted to move up to advanced English twice - 8th and 11th grade - but it was the same teacher both times), but generally kids just stay where they are. I mean, nearly anyone can schedule APs, but if you're in normal math in 5th grade, you'll probably still be in normal math in 12th.
Right now we are 40 years behind on reactor design. It would take several *expensive* pilot plants to prove that the idea works (I like molten salt reactors, with a Th or U fuel cycle and a unity breading ratio and in situ reprocessing).
True, but those 40 year old reactors are still working fine. While we will eventually need to improve reactor design, the old designs would work for the immediate future at least. We've got a couple decades to get those sorted out. Not that we shouldn't start trying immediately, but I think improved efficiency would make improved designs worth researching anyway.
Once a pilot plant has been run for a while we can then produce cheaper plants. In that a proven design (so it worked well for 20+years) can then be built without having to revalidate the design. However the bulk of the cost for nuclear is still the containment building. That cost will not go away and does push the economics towards larger reactors.
Yes, the economics push it to larger reactors. Which is fine. Large reactors have a lot of advantages. And sure, the reactor is expensive, but the fuel is relatively cheap. When you add it all up, unless you live somewhere where coal is extremely cheap, the cost per watt over the entire life of the reactor is lower for nuclear than pretty much any other kind of power generation. That's what I mean when I say cheap. High initial cost, but once it's running the power is cheap enough to offset that.
Saying nuclear won't fulfill our needs because of "peak Uranium" is at best stupid, at worst a lie to try to stop development of nuclear power. We likely have enough fuel (Uranium, Thorium, Plutonium, etc) for _thousands of years_ at our current energy consumption. That's the electrical grid, cars, everything. If we can just make everything run on electricity and build the best reactors our scientists can design, we would be fine for hundreds of years at a _minimum_. And I think it's safe to assume we'd be switched over to fusion by then:)
The problem is not the technology, it's not the resources, it's the regulations and the industry. We aren't building new plants because power companies aren't willing to invest large sums of money. Because regulations make it hard for them to _acquire_ large amounts of money (limits on how much profit utilities can take in.) We can't build breeder reactors because, for an extremely short period of time, they produce enriched uranium. Without breeder reactors, we can't take care of the waste problem because it lasts freakin' forever (without breeder reactors) and nobody wants it stored or transported anywhere within a thousand miles of them.
If you got a bunch of engineers and said "figure out how to solve our energy problem", they could throw together a nuclear power system that could power the world into the next millennium - and it would be cheap, it would be clean, and it would be safe. It's only restrictions like "you can't create highly radioactive products, even for a few seconds, you can't build anything big, you can't build anywhere near populated areas, and you can't use the word 'radioactive' or 'nuclear'" that causes problems.
Re:Make the switch from Dual Booting
on
Wine 1.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
Last time I attempted to try Ubuntu, I tried for several days but couldn't get it to install either. Though that was several years ago, it's probably improved since...but anyway, I prefer Arch. Somewhat recently converted from Mandriva, but I'm pretty sure the Mangler issue was on Arch...though maybe not...
Re:Make the switch from Dual Booting
on
Wine 1.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
I tried Mangler, but gave up after I couldn't get the damn thing to even install after several hours. And yea, PA sucks. That's why I don't even have it installed.
Re:Make the switch from Dual Booting
on
Wine 1.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
Well, after my initial problems with Vent I found Mangler and decided to give it a shot. I spent a couple hours trying to get it to even install, then decided figuring out my problems with Wine would be easier. Which it was.
Yea, you could _maybe_ find a copy of Windows 98 for $10...which isn't a bad idea, but I find that the apps that will run on that are also the apps than run flawlessly on Wine. Or Dosbox. Unless it's a pirated copy, there's no way in hell you're getting WinXP, Vista, or 7 for $10. More like $100+. And if you're gonna go pirated, you might as well just go to TPB and get it free.
Re:Make the switch from Dual Booting
on
Wine 1.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
No idea about Steam, but I used to use Vent for WoW on wine without too many problems. Took a while to configure it properly, but it was more a problem of configuring audio on Wine than configuring audio for Vent (i.e. audio wasn't working for any apps). The fact that I have several soundcards didn't help...
Actually, you bring to mind another interesting point - what if those 20 fingers aren't fingers at all, but game pieces of some kind? More difficult on a capacitive screen than a resistive one I think, but it should still be fairly simple. The tough part would be if you needed to distinguish one piece from another. My imagination is rather limited at the moment, but at the very least you could combine a huge portion of all the classic board games into a single small device. Monopoly, Clue, any games of that general style.
Now we just need 100+ touch screens with very high resolution (to distinguish different pieces) so we can use them to play Axis and Allies with real game pieces. But then again, the worst part of Axis and Allies was always setting up the board, so maybe we don't want real pieces for that:)
Wait, why do they _need_ to out-compete the others? Depending on exactly how the trait is passed down and such, wouldn't it be possible to spread it after a couple of generations through mating of malaria-proof mosquitoes with the local population?
Yes, but remote graphics is much more difficult to do over WiFi. When you already have a router, why buy wireless USB or UWB devices, which you need a special dongle or card for, when you can just buy one with WiFi and be done with it. Plus, if you're doing wireless, you're likely using it for multiple PCs, which is even more reason to go with something you already have. Who's going to buy a separate $20-$50 dongle for every computer they want to print from, for example, when they don't need to? 802.11g offers plenty of speed for printing, cameras, and while it's a far cry from USB2.0 for remote storage, I would imagine that 54Mb/s is good enough for a large portion of users.
.I wonder if they have to worry about ticks, with all the fun stuff they carry, as well over there on that island.
Bah, I live right beside the state game preserve, and walk my three dogs through the woods all the time. I've pulled two ticks off me in the last week alone. Big deal. They're nasty little things, but I haven't known anyone who's ever actually gotten a disease from one. I'm pretty sure the risk is way overstated. The poison ivy and such are what I would be more worried about. But then again, I believe it said they were walking in a park. So you stay on the path and you won't have to deal with ticks or ivy or anything like that.
Sure, their service isn't as good as the old Gateway (who replaced a motherboard, free, more than a year after the warranty expired), and their customer service sucks for software problems (they try to blame _everything_ on a virus. Even if you _just_ reformatted, and haven't even connected the internet yet). But when the motherboard on my Vostro 1000 died a couple months ago, it took less than 20 minutes on the phone to get them to mail me a box to mail it back, all paid for, and I had it back in about a week. Quite possibly the easiest RMA I've ever had to deal with.
But stuff that's just slow by modern standards, like 802.11b gear, may well find a happy owner in someone who ideologically likes recycling and doesn't need more speed (and quite a few people don't).
I know this is probably entirely unnecessary, but I feel it's good to point out that even 802.11b equipment is going to be faster than most people's home internet connections (assuming you're in the US anyway)...so for people who aren't transferring files between PCs on WiFi (aka 90%+ of users), the only difference between b and g is the range. So assuming it's not too energy efficient, anyone with a low income would probably be just as happy with b as they would with g.
Now all Apple needs to do is make a commercial with MC Hammer.
"Can't touch this!"
Best part is, they could use the same video - it's already people dancing in front of a white background. Just crank up the contrast until the people turn into silhouettes, and add some headphones. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4L4CPfQY8
What carrier are you on? On Verizon (at least when I got my phone), it won't let you do _anything_ with your voicemail until you've set a password. This kind of 'hack' has been around for many, many years. Any carrier that doesn't require a voicemail password is being _extremely_ negligent.
AT&T _still_ doesn't require a voicemail password? I thought pretty much every carrier did because of exactly this kind of trick. It surely didn't start with Android - I remember reading about it years ago, and it was old news even then.
But hell, anyone stupid enough to still use AT&T, when it seems that every week they're losing thousands of customer records, deserves anything that happens.
The FCC _will_ go out to investigate people interrupting ham traffic, even mild interruptions to non-important traffic. I don't see why wifi would be any different. I know of a case (though I don't recall many details) where they went out to investigate and caught someone who was just occasionally breaking in and talking over top of casual ham traffic. To me that seems like a much less important and much harder to trace case than wifi interruptions at a regular time. I think they spent a week or so tracking that guy down, this wifi problem shouldn't take more than an hour or so. So yea, if there are multiple complaints, I'm pretty sure they would investigate. Sure, ham traffic is a bit different than wifi because it's licensed, but for practical purposes I don't see any significant difference.
Again, it's important to find out who else this is affecting and get as many complaints as possible (and as specific as possible in terms of when it happens and how long it's been occurring), but I would think that if there are a few detailed complaints, they'll send someone out.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait - you're saying that because they need to update the modem that they therefore should have access to his router? They're two separate devices. There's no reason for them to touch the router.
Most people lease modems, yes, but I've never heard of anybody leasing a _router_. I've never heard of an ISP offering it either...
I found an awesome list created by ubuntu community (didn't find anything comparable from anywhere else)
Not sure why you couldn't find it, but Mandriva has had a database of supported hardware since before I started using Linux (which was Mandrake 9.2, in 2003). Having a list of supported hardware certainly isn't a new idea.
http://www.mandriva.com/hardware/
installed ubuntu and it all worked out of the box. As it always does with Ubuntu.
Glad you've had good luck with it. Last couple times I've tried I couldn't even get the installer to boot. And when my brother tried it took 4 days to get his wifi card to work (a card which works out of the box with Mandriva.) Stuck with Mandriva for many years because of that, though I've recently switched to Arch. And while it takes a couple hours to get the system setup initially on Arch, I couldn't be happier. Haven't had a single problem since installing it.
Coming from another big football school (Penn State), I'd agree with that. Football gets a lot of money, but it also does bring in a huge amount. I haven't really looked into it, but I would be astounded if football was a net loss for PSU. Meanwhile, the administrators pull in 6 figure salaries and even the low end administrators (head of the campus police, secretaries, etc) are _never there_. People whose only job is to help students with paperwork will take off two days a week, not show up until 11, take two hours for lunch, and then leave around 3. What the hell are these people actually _doing_ to earn their salary?
The professors though I actually don't have a single complaint about. Well, except maybe my Calc II grad student who whispered with a thick accent, and maybe my Intro to Digital Systems prof who was about 80 years old and kept repeating lectures, but otherwise the profs have been great. My biggest complaints are the administration and the architects (some of these newer buildings had to be designed by someone smoking some heavy dope. We have a building that, for about 6 months of our 9 month academic year, it actually snows _inside the building_. I prefer the buildings they actually let engineering students design back in the 70s. Those ones mostly make sense.) Oh, and the fact that we have buildings that were originally constructed as temporary...back during World War II...and we still have engineering classes in them. Which isn't really terrible, except it's this row of tiny, maze-like structures.
Ah, and the worst of it is that they keep demolishing academic buildings in order to erect things like the Alumni Center - a building, pond, and garden that, for 95% of the year, has no function other than sitting there looking pretty. They tore down several engineering buildings and forced things like the century old Amateur Radio Club to move to a different section of campus (their building is still there, they just didn't want to see the antennas). Though to be fair, the room the club ended up with is probably a fair bit better, but it's out in the middle of nowhere in the ROTC building.
Well yea, because they either have above average cash to spend, below average storage needs, or above average performance requirements. That's like saying that iPads are ready to completely replace PCs just because some people have already done so.
Whereas QuakeLive is as good as the guys you're playing against, and given that it's full of clan players and people who've been playing quake for perhaps longer than they should have, it means that you're competing on level ground when it comes to player specs/weapons, but against people who know every last trick available (which you can learn should you be arsed).
That's exactly why I very rarely play games in online multiplayer. Some games are better than others - Call of Duty has a somewhat decent system that tries to balance teams a bit. Halo, if I remember correctly, basically just throws you together with whoever. Personally, I can't spend more than a few hours a week playing a game, _especially_ if it's multiplayer (no pause button). I'm not a huge fan of getting killed 20 times with headshots by people I never even saw. As I said, Call of Duty is one of the better games in this respect, as after a particularly lazy couple months playing 20+ hours a week I finally managed to get 2-3 kills per round (and 15-20 deaths), but I can remember playing the original Halo damn near nonstop for a month or two (probably 10 hours a day at least) and still being lucky if I got a single kill, or even managed to stay alive for more than 5 minutes, in a multiplayer match. I love offline multiplayer, but when a game throws a first time player in with people who play for 10 hours a day for months or even years on end, it generally doesn't work.
Sure, if you're a hardcore gamer who spends a couple hours every day playing FPS games, then yea, you want multiplayer. But those of us who can only squeeze in a couple hours on the weekends would really prefer a longer campaign mode. And I hardly think that they have to cheat to make the computer better - they just have to cheat less in favor of the player. I mean why is it that on _every single FPS I've ever played_, I can kill them in one shot, but if they shoot me once with the same weapon, at worst I have very low health - more than likely I can stand several shots before I die.
Same thing in Pennsylvania - We have 4-5 levels of classes (below average, standard, high, advanced) as well as AP classes. Though it also differs by subject. For example, in Math, if you're advanced, you're just taking the same classes as the grade above you. And if you're one of about 10 kids (out of ~200) who are _really_ good, you may be two grade levels ahead. But in English classes, if you're really good you're still pretty much studying the same topic, you just maybe do more of it or go more in-depth. And then we had a pretty simple system to allow students to take classes at the local university - generally there were 10-20 each year. For most classes they pay all the tuition, for a small selection they'll pay for the textbooks and everything too. But for certain areas that doesn't work out so well - the 400-level comp sci classes at the local uni (IUP) were easier than the AP Comp classes I had already taken in highschool.
But earlier than 6th grade - if you're really good at math you maybe get moved up a level, but that's the only differentiation that there is.
And it's also pretty difficult to move between sections. The people who were taking the advanced math classes senior year were pretty much the same people who had been taking them since 5th grade. Once you're in middleschool they don't really look for students performing above or below their level. Sometimes if you get a really good teacher they will (I was asked if I wanted to move up to advanced English twice - 8th and 11th grade - but it was the same teacher both times), but generally kids just stay where they are. I mean, nearly anyone can schedule APs, but if you're in normal math in 5th grade, you'll probably still be in normal math in 12th.
3G is GSM.
Right now we are 40 years behind on reactor design. It would take several *expensive* pilot plants to prove that the idea works (I like molten salt reactors, with a Th or U fuel cycle and a unity breading ratio and in situ reprocessing).
True, but those 40 year old reactors are still working fine. While we will eventually need to improve reactor design, the old designs would work for the immediate future at least. We've got a couple decades to get those sorted out. Not that we shouldn't start trying immediately, but I think improved efficiency would make improved designs worth researching anyway.
Once a pilot plant has been run for a while we can then produce cheaper plants. In that a proven design (so it worked well for 20+years) can then be built without having to revalidate the design. However the bulk of the cost for nuclear is still the containment building. That cost will not go away and does push the economics towards larger reactors.
Yes, the economics push it to larger reactors. Which is fine. Large reactors have a lot of advantages. And sure, the reactor is expensive, but the fuel is relatively cheap. When you add it all up, unless you live somewhere where coal is extremely cheap, the cost per watt over the entire life of the reactor is lower for nuclear than pretty much any other kind of power generation. That's what I mean when I say cheap. High initial cost, but once it's running the power is cheap enough to offset that.
Saying nuclear won't fulfill our needs because of "peak Uranium" is at best stupid, at worst a lie to try to stop development of nuclear power. We likely have enough fuel (Uranium, Thorium, Plutonium, etc) for _thousands of years_ at our current energy consumption. That's the electrical grid, cars, everything. If we can just make everything run on electricity and build the best reactors our scientists can design, we would be fine for hundreds of years at a _minimum_. And I think it's safe to assume we'd be switched over to fusion by then :)
The problem is not the technology, it's not the resources, it's the regulations and the industry. We aren't building new plants because power companies aren't willing to invest large sums of money. Because regulations make it hard for them to _acquire_ large amounts of money (limits on how much profit utilities can take in.) We can't build breeder reactors because, for an extremely short period of time, they produce enriched uranium. Without breeder reactors, we can't take care of the waste problem because it lasts freakin' forever (without breeder reactors) and nobody wants it stored or transported anywhere within a thousand miles of them.
If you got a bunch of engineers and said "figure out how to solve our energy problem", they could throw together a nuclear power system that could power the world into the next millennium - and it would be cheap, it would be clean, and it would be safe. It's only restrictions like "you can't create highly radioactive products, even for a few seconds, you can't build anything big, you can't build anywhere near populated areas, and you can't use the word 'radioactive' or 'nuclear'" that causes problems.
Last time I attempted to try Ubuntu, I tried for several days but couldn't get it to install either. Though that was several years ago, it's probably improved since...but anyway, I prefer Arch. Somewhat recently converted from Mandriva, but I'm pretty sure the Mangler issue was on Arch...though maybe not...
I tried Mangler, but gave up after I couldn't get the damn thing to even install after several hours. And yea, PA sucks. That's why I don't even have it installed.
Well, after my initial problems with Vent I found Mangler and decided to give it a shot. I spent a couple hours trying to get it to even install, then decided figuring out my problems with Wine would be easier. Which it was.
Yea, you could _maybe_ find a copy of Windows 98 for $10...which isn't a bad idea, but I find that the apps that will run on that are also the apps than run flawlessly on Wine. Or Dosbox. Unless it's a pirated copy, there's no way in hell you're getting WinXP, Vista, or 7 for $10. More like $100+. And if you're gonna go pirated, you might as well just go to TPB and get it free.
No idea about Steam, but I used to use Vent for WoW on wine without too many problems. Took a while to configure it properly, but it was more a problem of configuring audio on Wine than configuring audio for Vent (i.e. audio wasn't working for any apps). The fact that I have several soundcards didn't help...
Actually, you bring to mind another interesting point - what if those 20 fingers aren't fingers at all, but game pieces of some kind? More difficult on a capacitive screen than a resistive one I think, but it should still be fairly simple. The tough part would be if you needed to distinguish one piece from another. My imagination is rather limited at the moment, but at the very least you could combine a huge portion of all the classic board games into a single small device. Monopoly, Clue, any games of that general style.
Now we just need 100+ touch screens with very high resolution (to distinguish different pieces) so we can use them to play Axis and Allies with real game pieces. But then again, the worst part of Axis and Allies was always setting up the board, so maybe we don't want real pieces for that :)
Wait, why do they _need_ to out-compete the others? Depending on exactly how the trait is passed down and such, wouldn't it be possible to spread it after a couple of generations through mating of malaria-proof mosquitoes with the local population?
Yes, but remote graphics is much more difficult to do over WiFi. When you already have a router, why buy wireless USB or UWB devices, which you need a special dongle or card for, when you can just buy one with WiFi and be done with it. Plus, if you're doing wireless, you're likely using it for multiple PCs, which is even more reason to go with something you already have. Who's going to buy a separate $20-$50 dongle for every computer they want to print from, for example, when they don't need to? 802.11g offers plenty of speed for printing, cameras, and while it's a far cry from USB2.0 for remote storage, I would imagine that 54Mb/s is good enough for a large portion of users.
.I wonder if they have to worry about ticks, with all the fun stuff they carry, as well over there on that island.
Bah, I live right beside the state game preserve, and walk my three dogs through the woods all the time. I've pulled two ticks off me in the last week alone. Big deal. They're nasty little things, but I haven't known anyone who's ever actually gotten a disease from one. I'm pretty sure the risk is way overstated. The poison ivy and such are what I would be more worried about. But then again, I believe it said they were walking in a park. So you stay on the path and you won't have to deal with ticks or ivy or anything like that.
Sure, their service isn't as good as the old Gateway (who replaced a motherboard, free, more than a year after the warranty expired), and their customer service sucks for software problems (they try to blame _everything_ on a virus. Even if you _just_ reformatted, and haven't even connected the internet yet). But when the motherboard on my Vostro 1000 died a couple months ago, it took less than 20 minutes on the phone to get them to mail me a box to mail it back, all paid for, and I had it back in about a week. Quite possibly the easiest RMA I've ever had to deal with.
But stuff that's just slow by modern standards, like 802.11b gear, may well find a happy owner in someone who ideologically likes recycling and doesn't need more speed (and quite a few people don't).
I know this is probably entirely unnecessary, but I feel it's good to point out that even 802.11b equipment is going to be faster than most people's home internet connections (assuming you're in the US anyway)...so for people who aren't transferring files between PCs on WiFi (aka 90%+ of users), the only difference between b and g is the range. So assuming it's not too energy efficient, anyone with a low income would probably be just as happy with b as they would with g.
Now all Apple needs to do is make a commercial with MC Hammer.
"Can't touch this!"
Best part is, they could use the same video - it's already people dancing in front of a white background. Just crank up the contrast until the people turn into silhouettes, and add some headphones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4L4CPfQY8
What carrier are you on? On Verizon (at least when I got my phone), it won't let you do _anything_ with your voicemail until you've set a password. This kind of 'hack' has been around for many, many years. Any carrier that doesn't require a voicemail password is being _extremely_ negligent.
AT&T _still_ doesn't require a voicemail password? I thought pretty much every carrier did because of exactly this kind of trick. It surely didn't start with Android - I remember reading about it years ago, and it was old news even then.
But hell, anyone stupid enough to still use AT&T, when it seems that every week they're losing thousands of customer records, deserves anything that happens.
The FCC _will_ go out to investigate people interrupting ham traffic, even mild interruptions to non-important traffic. I don't see why wifi would be any different. I know of a case (though I don't recall many details) where they went out to investigate and caught someone who was just occasionally breaking in and talking over top of casual ham traffic. To me that seems like a much less important and much harder to trace case than wifi interruptions at a regular time. I think they spent a week or so tracking that guy down, this wifi problem shouldn't take more than an hour or so. So yea, if there are multiple complaints, I'm pretty sure they would investigate. Sure, ham traffic is a bit different than wifi because it's licensed, but for practical purposes I don't see any significant difference.
Again, it's important to find out who else this is affecting and get as many complaints as possible (and as specific as possible in terms of when it happens and how long it's been occurring), but I would think that if there are a few detailed complaints, they'll send someone out.