3"1/2 inch diskettes got their breakthrough with the IBM PS/2. Apple had nothing to do with it. Wrong. The 3.5" got their "breakthrough" (literally) with the original 1984 Macintosh. The PS/2 didn't come around until 1987, and by then several machines were using the drives, including Amigas and Commodores. The PS/2 commercialized the high density versions we were all familiar with until their demise.
often a pain in PC machines if they are not there. 2002 called; they want their update procedures back. I haven't had any floppy drives since 2001. First floppy-less machine in 1999. I once had to connect one for a one-off firmware update for a video card in '99 or '00. It's been nearly 7 years for me, and I haven't looked back. There is nothing that is exclusively floppy-only of any real importance anymore. BIOS flashes, SATA/RAID drivers, firmware updates, and the like are all possible through other means.
I wrote CD's in 1995. It cost a lot of money Where did the mass market appeal come from? The first Superdrives are the ones that got them to start appearing in the consumer space at non-early adopter prices. Undercutting Apple's upgrade prices was one of the major factors causing the prices to drop. That everyone wanted one is immaterial to how and when the devices came to the consumer market and creating uses for them.
Angle brackets should be banished from the face of the earth. Get with the program. 20 year old norms no longer apply in this field. It's out, just like phone line etiquette and dialup Internet access.
They confuse, are a true pain to copy/paste, and are wholly unnecessary. Slashdot has threaded responses and quote styling. At the very least, email should, too.
That's because people who do it (and further insist on plain text emails) create a mess of text that's impossible to follow. There are masses of angle brackets and no clear demarcation of where one starts and another stops. This is compounded by people who screw up the line breaks, making emails an impossible quagmire to reconstruct (without spending more time working out the structure of the email than it takes to read the damn thing). BBS and UNIX people are the worst about this, because they're militant about their plain text and hardcoded way of doing things.
Guess what? Interleaved posting and plain text email sucks too. It's no better than top quoting at the end of the day.
Proper etiquette here is to restate the question you're answering. Don't quote the entire message in your response at all. Email isn't a forum, and with people who refuse to use email features invented after 1990 (quote boxes, bar indicators, and/or colorizing quoted text), it's most aggravating when someone tries to make it one. Treat email as the written correspondence it is and the problems go away. Even one-line responses work.
Apple monitors have a bunch of non-standard sizes and resolutions What? 20, 23, 30 inch displays are non-standard sizes now? I'll grant you that 24" displays have tended to replace 23" panels lately, but apart from that, what's strange about them?
Not to mention the colors. You think there are standards for colors? And granting that, that silver/metallic isn't one of them?
The MacBook Pro uses a Matsushita UJ-857E DVD-RW drive. This is basically the UJ-85JE (Matsushita is Panasonic). This drive is used in a number of applications.
Floppy DVDs don't go in slot-loading drives. Apple is the highest-profile user of such drives. It's just doublespeak to claim that it's "Apple" slot-load drives that are affected. A quick search shows only 230 results for '"dvd forum" +ejection system'--the top results, of course, referring to this article, and the others referring to the emergency eject function (i.e. the paperclip hole). That is the "DVD Forum approved ejection system" and it is fundamentally incompatible with a slot drive--there's no tray to pull out manually even if it had such a trigger. Further, Matsushita is one of the four largest members of the DVD Forum.
Apple neither designed, engineered, nor manufactured the device, so while it's true Apple didn't build a device to comply with "standards", it's a tautology. There is no possible way for the statement to be UNtrue. The only way to have a "DVD Forum approved" ejection system is to have a tray drive.
Way to take the bait hook, line, and sinker, though.
Did you actually pair the remote? Just enabling the IR on the computer doesn't restore previous pairings in my experience, and they ship open to all Apple remotes by default.
That's not to say that you didn't happen to get two remotes with matching codes, but it would be unlikely.
It's also highly unlikely that this plays any role in why the remote isn't often used--mostly it's just because a notebook is something you keep at close range, and most people don't connect them to large displays, except those who give presentations...and I imagine they use the remote. I use mine all the time on my MBP, but mostly to skip tracks/chapters without reaching out when I'm reading.
Another issue is the fact that lots of Apple customers already have one by now--from an iPod dock, an Apple TV, or a current Mac (and this product is clearly geared toward people who have a different primary computer). They probably figured it would be redundant for many. Instead, the MBA includes video adapters, which have largely disappeared elsewhere in the product line.
It's a notebook, so it's a 6-bit panel, like all the others, except some 17" notebooks that use what are basically desktop panels.
I don't know where people get the idea that notebooks come with 8-bit panels, because it certainly wasn't true a few months ago, and if something that major changed, it would have made waves somewhere.
If you're cheap, wait for the ~$75 batteries to surface on the Internet and do it yourself. It's not that hard if you're not afraid to open up your devices.
iPod batteries are $30. Installation takes 5 minutes. It's a tired argument...right up there with the one button mouse crap.
So you're saying that their SEC filing was misleading? No, I'm saying you don't know how to read, even on the PDFs you yourself link. The SmartMeters are REPLACEMENT METERS. They are part of the normal INFRASTRUCTURE REPLACEMENT CYCLE. This MONEY WOULD BE SPENT ANYWAY. The meters PROVIDE A WIDE RANGE OF ADDITIONAL SERVICES, JUST ONE OF WHICH IS THE REMOTE CUTBACK DISCUSSED IN THE ARTICLE. It's not terribly complicated, but you keep boneheadedly trying to make it so.
Not a damn thing. Not one reference. Read the PDF you actually linked to. Since you can't, give this a whirl: DCSI SmartMeters.
You mean I'm asking questions concerning the long-standing California power crisis that you don't have the means to answer. Tough cookies. Don't get pissy with ME 'cause you can't produce any material that proves a word you've said. Perhaps instead of spewing more and more bullshit, you could look up at the topic of the discussion, or maybe even read the article. You see, we have these things called topical discussions. The topic here is peak demand. It is not baseline generation, population growth, renewable energy, or long-term abatement strategies. It is a response mechanism to short-term demand surges.
That's at least the seventh time it's been said, and you still can't quite manage to wrap your head around it. You want to talk about those other topics? Do it in response to an article about one of them.
I make decisions based on a variety of sources With your reading comprehension and critical reasoning, it's generous to represent them as informed decisions.
Your continued attempts to derail the discussion into something outside the bounds of the topic will not succeed, no matter how much baiting you lay on.
The issue isn't about green sources "generating a greater chunk of PG&E power than [I] think"--which is a remarkable position to take, considering green power hasn't been discussed at all here and you have literally no way of knowing what I think on the subject.
The issue also isn't spending the $1.7B on something else--for the umpteenth time, the capital costs are not solely for this project. They are part of ongoing infrastructure expansion and renewal, and they introduce other capabilities and features beneficial to PG&E's primary goals, just one of which is the one on topic for this discussion.
The topic at hand is also not getting people to change their consumption habits voluntarily, nor is it increased education. Like the baseline capacity argument, your spurious $5 million power plant claims, your repeated failure to recognize the structure of the new meter rollout, your ongoing refusal to recognize the different between short-term upswings and long-term growth, and your generic misunderstanding and ignorance of the organization, operation, and points of concern for the California power grid, this 'calculation' issue is irrelevant. You're attempting to force the discussion into irrelevant arenas.
What more information you could possibly want, I do not know. I do know, however, that you'd continue to misunderstand, misapply, and generally warp any information you're given. You haven't managed to properly use any source yet, so why should anyone expect you to start now?
I gave a rough guesstimate of around 13,000,000 units No, but nice attempted retcon. You gave an estimate of 13 million households in the *state* from a census fact sheet. You said this didn't include commercial customers. You worked your figures assuming PG&E was the only energy supplier in the state. The similarity (loose, at that) to the number of meters was entirely accidental.
Here I gave you the source and *page number* in the report from PG&E themselves, and you STILL couldn't be bothered to look. This issue was closed long ago. The SmartMeters are not being installed solely for the sake of this project.
That's funny. My profile name isn't "sunshine" That was a tongue-in-cheek response to your high and mighty "I pay my bill, you owe me and your problems are not mine" tone, something you started with, snide and ignorant, but have remarkably managed to keep up this whole time.
H'wever, what about the ones about to come online that I mentioned earlier? Those address generation needs for new customers and reduce general strain on the system. They are not demand-based plants to supplement summer highs caused by air conditioning. They are baseline generators. You just don't get it, do you?
Short-term demand upticks due to air conditioning cause a fundamentally different problem. Without creating such an excess of generation capacity that the upswings are easily buffered in (which would be wasteful and costly), the infrastructure requires short-term solutions. Long term capacity increases are not a complete solution. Until power really IS too cheap to meter and too abundant to worry about, there needs to be a multifaceted approach. Building plants dedicated to providing summer capacity (your apparent solution) is a tremendous waste and a terrible delay. The plants coming online are not part of that. The process to getting that capacity online was started many years ago and is part of a strategy to meet growing baseline needs. This is not the same as a need to meet peak demand.
Your one flippant and ignorant comment sparked this, but it's clear you weren't being glib. You really are just that dense.
Actually, looking at both figures, I was MUCH closer to the mark. Hardly! You more than doubled the service area, pretended it was merely residential customers, and arrived at an absolutely staggering amount of work time. My figure is representative of what deployment schedule could be followed, but that was purely hypothetical, since PG&E's actual priorities lie elsewhere.
At no point did you suggest an idle plan that is part of the normal replacement cycle (generally the scheme PG&E is following)--you created a bogus hypothetical that insisted they could get it done no faster than the allowance you made. This is patently incorrect.
BTW, "marveling" only has one "l". Check a dictionary. Either spelling is appropriate. Nice try, though.
...as contrasted with your need for name-calling... Sweet-cheeks, buttercup, pot, kettle...
Your comprehension difficulties and woeful errors in basic parsing aren't name calling. I'm questioning your competence. Your $5 million plan to provide power to a million customers, your math approach based on the entire service area of California (two and a half times PG&E's actual one--which puts your "guesstimate" that you're so proud of at 0.9 years, since PG&E services only 40% of the number of households you presumed and my response worked within your original assumptions, which, it is clear, are not based in fact.
You also, as is the norm with your kind, ignored the most important part of the prior post: That PG&E has NO idea whether this 1.74-billion-dollar pet project will show ANY kind of return WHATSOEVER. The "$1.74 billion" project is not solely limited to the project started by the article referenced here (comprehension errors are now beyond count with you!)--the meters and the capital outlay do not solely benefit this project discussed in TFA.
Predicting the savings of this plan cannot be modeled because it has never been tried before, and the procedural issues will have to be worked out. This is standard language--utility companies operate on a cost recovery basis in a decoupled system, so their assertions are guarded and conservative. Failing to meet projections is a far greater issue than not making projections. Keep harping on it all you want, but the "no one knows" answer doesn't carry the significance you seem to believe it does, and the project's costs are not solely dedicated to this "experiment."
Instead, you'd rather moan that the power generation ideas out right now are somehow less desirable than spending the better part of 2 billion dollars on a program Now you're just making things up. This issue of increased generation capacity is a wholly separate issue. Quit trying to shoehorn things into the discussion that aren't there. You're pushing a false dichotomy.
Gee... How many did CPUC allow to be installed? From someone who just learned what CPUC is, you're trying awfully hard to figure it out. Initial rollouts are usually part of pilot programs. In case you hadn't noticed, your information is quite out of date. Rollout has planned completion in the 2010-2012 range. Starting today, a new PG&E generation facility would not be available before 2017, and that's being optimistic.
Your vitriol It's yours. In case you hadn't noticed, you're the only one relying on crutches and cute names. Pointing out your continual incompetence is simply a matter of course. The basic errors you're committing are ones you'd expect of students.
What cracks me up is your stubborn need to be right. It's not a need to be right so much as marvelling at your ability to be off the mark entirely.
it states QUITE clearly on page 7 of said report that they've got 10,000,000 of these installs to carry out. [...]Seems to say that it'll be done in 5 years. Ah, but where was this in your initial calculus? It's your need to be a bigger and bigger dumbass that is problematic. Do you read and comprehend ANYTHING? PG&E has 5.1 million electric accounts and roughly 10 million meters--these began to be installed in 2006, with what I initially assumed to be half in place. Turns out it's closer to 40%, but it's a factor you utterly failed to include in this response or your original math! Introducing them in a five year plan also speaks to planned deployment, not possible deployment. They could have them installed much more quickly should the need arise or via an add-on to existing meters, and since we're on the subject, we're nearly halfway into that period already, with, it would seem, nearly four million units already installed.
Has your critical and logical reasoning center been so damaged that you can't process basic operations like this? You keep proving yourself to be an increasingly uninformed and boneheaded person. These meters are already in place in large portions of the service area with a feature that simply needs to be turned on.
Your remarks on the cost are also misguided and selective. The capital outlay involved is part of a PG&E strategic plan that involves replacing aging meters. The particular capability outlined in the article is one feature of the new meter installation, which adds a cost, but a marginal one. It's not a $1.7 billion experiment in cut-load power--it's a CPUC-authorized expenditure to replace old meters with one benefit being the SmartRate metering technology.
But no one expects you to be able to reason, clearly.
Now, with PG&E having around 20,000 employees, we might figure about 10% of that will be actual install techs. That's actually par, as they'll only deploy around 2000 of them at a time for any outages/installs. Dividing 274,466 by 2000 gives you an answer of around 137 days, 24/7. Can't do 24/7, of course. 8-hour shifts, lets say, and only half of their day will be installing these; the rest is dealing with whatever emergencies arise. So, you're telling me that in 2.25 years, (figuring $15/hour, at a cost of around $98,807,835), you'll have a solution. There are so many holes here I don't know where to begin. For starters, PG&E services roughly 40% of California's population, so you're dealing with about five million accounts TOTAL, including all corporate customers. PG&E also contracts out work to HVAC companies for supplemental features and installations such as these, in addition to operating a number of partner programs with corporate customers that involve little interaction with PG&E technicians at all. Being conservative on their ability to farm out work, we'll say PG&E actually does half of these installs (probably it would end up being closer to 1/3 or less). You're down to 2.5 million homes. This works out to 1.15 million man-hours. Dealing in 10-hour shifts (the actual work schedule) and using 2000 general purpose technicians (which already excludes the reserves for dealing with primary infrastructure problems and emergency staff), devoting half of their time (a THIRD excessive concession to your thought-problem), results in an end result of about 115 days, or less than four months.
PG&E technicians are salaried, so those costs are fixed. There is an opportunity cost of added strain on scheduling, and that's certainly a cost factor, but a recoverable one.
Maybe you should use your head a little more. No $5 million project is going to provide power to a million customers...you've clearly misread the materials. The cost for the machinery alone to supply that amount of power vastly exceeds $5 million, not to mention astronomical service costs (divers, submersibles, etc.) and the boring and excavation needed to connect services to the land power grid. That's completely ignoring the fact that starting today, such a facility would NOT be online in 2.25 years' time (your original figure).
Like your short-sighted citation of Texas (which also has its own rolling blackout problems in summertime), your head just isn't screwed on straight and you continually fail to grasp the entirety of the situation. It's complex, but you're not succeeding in the slightest.
Still doesn't change the fact that you're too dumb to run the numbers before you run your mouth. Maybe you should finish before running yours, especially when you've laughably compared a $5 million *pilot project* to an actual full-scale deployment and operations plan for production and connection to the grid.
I mean, really. How much deeper a hole can you dig for yourself here?
PS - There is no such place as 'San Fran'--just like 'Cali' doesn't exist.
As for the way it "should be"? You need to know where you're going before you get there, Princess. Knowing where you "should be" is a good start. I can't tell if you're trolling or incompetent. Knowing that you need additional generation capacity has absolutely no bearing on the fact that current demand outstrips supply and you need some method of managing it. It does nothing to address the fact that part of that management solution is a forced curbing of available power--rolling blackouts or reduced feeds into homes are the only options. Purchasing power is not feasible on the scale you describe.
New solutions are needed...and where do they start? Quit changing your tune. New solutions have nothing to do with the article or the current discussion. If you want to talk about long-term solutions, do it elsewhere. This is about management of immediate needs, not talking about something that will help in five to ten years.
"Wait, there's power, but we don't want to PAY for indulging our excess!"
Make up your mind. Yeah, I guess it is just incompetency on your part. There is not sufficient generation capacity in California. Purchasing power from elsewhere is part of a management plan, but it is not practical or viable as a solution to the rolling blackouts. There is not enough surplus power available, nor would that much purchasing fall within voter-supported legal mandates. It is also a disastrous notion to suggest that reliance on emergency transfer capabilities and the availability of excess power.
If Nevada wants to build a bunch of power plants for the sole purpose of selling the capacity to California with guaranteed availability and can do it without some of the extenuating roadblocks in California, then fine. Otherwise, purchasing power cannot meet the demands. It is not a solution, period. Power is already purchased as is practical, available and allowed. It is not sufficient.
I was simply refuting your assertation that "OMGPONIES, THERE'S NO POWER!!!" It's assertion, genius, and no such assertion was made. Generation capacity is insufficient. Fact. Rolling blackouts are the current solution. Fact. Purchasing power from elsewhere in the grid is not viable, either in the short term or the long. Fact. Regulating demand by cutting the load a small amount across a large number of customers is doable (despite your mistaken rail against field staff capacity), cheap, and low-burden.
You're not getting any traction. Texas is all the gluttony, none of the environmental concern, and none of the conservationist spirit of California...sitting on oil fields with vast expanses of empty space. It is not a model for anything.
PG&E, the folks you seem to tout as having a solution Nothing of the sort. You are truly dense beyond compare.
Ye gads, man... Just because "that's the way it is at current" does NOT mean that it's as it SHOULD be. When was the last time you showed up at a meeting of your local utility board? Local utility board? Somebody doesn't understand PG&E at all. For what it's worth, they have been contacted, as have state legislators. Don't assume complacency. The way it SHOULD be is irrelevant to solving the immediate problems. It's philosophical hot air. The problem needs to be addressed now.
You want to complain about infrastructure, do it. But to do so at the expense of ignoring the current situation in places like California and New York, which is a preview of what other states face in the coming decades, is an egregious error.
There's power to give, but they'd rather inconvenience their customers rather than hitch up their drawers, bite the bullet, and listen to gripes about rate increases. There isn't power to give. Purchasing power at astronomical rates is not a solution. It's an emergency stopgap that is already used at a sensible level. The transmission system can't support the kind of plan you have for continuous purchasing from other states, and it's not a solution. Excess capacity is not as extensive as you believe, especially when margins for emergencies are taken into account.
"Refused to buy" at outrageous markups isn't exactly the case. Clearly your understanding of legal, capacity, financial, political, and practical issues is lacking. Yet another blowhard jackass who doesn't live in California, doesn't understand California, and offers no solution to a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
Bond issue. New plants vs. increased rates for power purchases from other grids. NEXT! Okay, but "increased rates for purchases" isn't a solution to a capacity problem in the near term or the long term. It is at best a supplement for peak demand in isolated cases. The expense involved is several times the normal rates, and with low efficiency and no term stability. As for the other, what about for the next five to ten years before those plants and grid modifications are online. You are not solving the problem of RIGHT NOW. There are two options, unless you've got some "just add water" power plants in your pocket.
Which "obvious" concessions were you thinking of? Hospitals, datacenters, certain kinds of factories and warehouses...
I choose to live in a state with a healthy power grid. So what country do you live in? 'Healthy power grid' is oxymoronic in the United States.
Failure to plan upon their part should in no way necessitate a remedy on our part. Well, sunshine, that's how the world works, though here and in most other examples, the remedy is coming from them, not you.
Regardless of whether it is poor planning, poor policy, poor enforcement, or some uncontrollable outside force (greedy people chilling McMansions while they're at work, for example), power is a finite resource. It runs out when it runs out. This is an unavoidable fact. If there is no power to give, your philosophical argument is meaningless. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Did you support proper planning and capacity by encouraging best performance practices on the utility company? Or did you just ask for the lowest possible bill? Exactly. You're paying for service; we're all paying for service. It's not like you get billed for power during your blackout block time, so your payment is irrelevant.
How would you rather manage it? Either way we're talking about forcibly reducing demand to keep the grid online. That can either mean a few tens of thousands of customers get their power cut for a while, or 38 million people have their thermostat reset five degrees up (with obvious concessions where applicable) for a few hours?
I choose the latter, if for no other reason than that I hate resetting clocks and get annoyed when the DVR or Internet cut out while recording/downloading. Most sensible people would, too.
Yeah, if there's 1000 people and 1000 fillups of gas available, I'd say it's fair to dictate 1 per person as a general rule.
Most of your other examples don't deal with scarcity. If you change the facts to 500 cable subscribers on a line that can only support 480, then yes, there is going to be some bandwidth throttling or random dropouts. That's basically what you've got here.
If there are six light bulbs and seven people needing one, someone's not getting a lightbulb, but it's probably not fair to let one person take all six. If food supply is down, rationing will hit sooner or later. Placing limits on usage where multiple people have a need for an essential service is a basic part of living in a community.
"Cranking up supply" isn't that simple. That's obviously the long-term solution, but it does absolutely nothing in the present to address the problems of the present for the customers of the present. Your choices are (a) no power or (b) a system which overrides your preference to force greedy and ignorant bastards to conserve. The amount of power available to you is going to work out the same. Instead of black hours and all-or-nothing, there's a possibility of some slightly grey time which keeps your appliances on.
It's not big brother, it's not an arbitrary intrusion. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't require much new infrastructure. It's got quite a bit of potential for abuse, but that's a separate issue.
No one wants blowhards saying some people should sit in the dark so that they can run their A/C at 65 if they want...because those same asses are the ones that bitch loudest when their blackout block comes up. That is, unless you can wave your magic wand and increase capacity and grid management in the blink of an eye.
No. The budget is not legislation per se. The president submits his budget proposal directly to Congress under 31 USC 1105. It does not get handed off to a member of the House to be delivered.
The budget is a request for funds, granted by the constitution to the President of the United States. No, it's not. It is granted by the Constitution to Congress. They have delegated by implicit consent (i.e. lack of objection) to the presidents of the 20th and 21st Century who have assumed the duty of wrangling the agencies and departments of the United States government and producing a request which Congress can ignore.
The president has no Constitutional powers over the budget; Congress is free to ignore the request and write one of their own. The difficulties in passage (getting the president's signature) and the labor of doing this work (as opposed to OMB and officials distributed throughout the Executive) this would entail is the only procedural block.
whether or not the line item veto is constitutional (IANAL)? Can a president sign a budget bill and scratch off the bridge to no-where in Alaska? No and no, as of the current state of affairs. The Republicans didn't want Clinton having that power, so they took it away. Having a line item veto for the budget puts power back in the president's hands--power that he shouldn't have, since Congress controls the budget. It also conveniently protects pork and pet projects.
Moving from 14 to 19 is a much smaller increase, rate-wise, but still a far more significant one. Percentages are always easily manipulated either way. Raw numbers, in the hands of people who understand them, are more precise and less misleading.
3% increase means that the number of new Macs is roughly FIVE TIMES the total number of *all* Linux boxes. That's not a Linux victory. It's a good showing, but doubling near-nothing is still pretty close to nothing.
That's not to say I believe the numbers reported are actually correct...I believe the Linux share may be higher. I don't doubt the 7% Mac figure--I've seen that number bounced around from multiple tracking sites, and their corporate sales have been gangbusters for quite some time.
Is OS X killing desktop Linux? Maybe. "Desktop Linux" just isn't a realistic dream. Linux doesn't need to be on a third or even a tenth of the world's PCs. It has its own benefits, and for people who want to use it on their desktop, go for it. For developers who want to try to make it a facsimile of a good experience, it can only help keep OSes innovative. It's not on a mission of conquest. Likewise, Apple will never be the new Microsoft--it is not on a war for dominion. It's on a mission to increase sales. As a company, it's doing remarkably well with a smaller share, and that's all it needs. The "midtower Mac" is irrelevant. The price is irrelevant. Not releasing their OS to generic hardware is irrelevant. None of these fits with Apple's business model, which is the most successful one in the industry.
Even your dubious source of information, which is geared toward property in an academic distinction, where only in surveys does it intersect with IP, contains a number of such concessions.
You are a fool. You have not provided a full OR legal definition of property, and your ability to read what isn't even legalese is outstripped in the instant sources. Perhaps you are tired of "Family Law" and "Agency Law" too, since they describe things that also don't exist. Your tired lay excuses and obtuse reasoning spins no wheels. The only people sewing confusion and drama lie here, between RMS and hypocrisy, in that path of irrelevance known as Slashdot.
also includes any intangible right considered as a source or element of income or wealth.
It is the right to enjoy and to dispose of certain things in the most absolute manner as he pleases, provided he makes no use of them prohibited by law.
property, considered as an exclusive right to things, contains not only a right to use those things, but a right to dispose of them,
But property in personal goods may be absolute or qualified without ally relation to the nature of the subject-matter, but simply because more persons than one have an interest in it
Property is again divided into corporeal and incorporeal.
he latter consists in legal rights, as choses in action, easements, and the like
Personal property is further divided into property in possession, and property or choses in action.
It doesn't matter if it was one page or ten pages, what matters is the reasonability of expectation. No, it does not.
When the contract terms state the procedure fully, in a concise, non-obscure form, there is no "reasonable" gap to fill unless you're arguing unconscionability, which in turn would require indication that it is standard practice to return parts when conducting a service repair. Such is not the case.
"Meeting of the minds" is a component of the Objective Theory of Contracts. It does not fail to be satisfied because an idiot customer didn't read the terms or had unusual expectations.
It cannot be said--cannot--that the return of broken parts is customary practice on the part of retail repair establishments or that the expectation that the defective parts will be returned is typical of the course of trade. The absolute best you can hope for is a provision that the repair facility should honor an express condition to return the old parts if initiated by the customer at the onset of repair.
The practice is not unusual, was not concealed in any way, and certainly fails far below any threshold standard of unconscionability used in the law.
Your experience is with independent repairs, not large firm retail/OEM repairs. This is precisely the sort of place you should take your machine for a better deal when it's outside of warranty--something any smart customer should also know. A small repair shop charges lower labor rates and something approaching the fair market value of the drive. A vendor does neither. This is not news.
Even the Geek Squad bills out at $75 an hour. Your obtuse comment about charging the customer the price for the drive that it would cost for them to buy it in the store also shows you're not talking about a retail/OEM repair. You know how the 40GB upgrade in your laptop was $100 extra even though the drive itself is only $15 more online? That's how it works. Vendors often charge 100% or beyond on their components and upgrades--this too is a known, standard practice. Of course you're going to pay an outrageous sum for the drive and for the labor if you take it back to HP, or Dell, or Apple, or Toshiba. Still, the cost of the repair is wholly separate from the issue of the return of broken parts. Unless there is a surcharge of some sort being applied that directly modifies your understanding, it is not conventional to return parts.
The outrageous frequency of your misuse of legal terms simply goes to show a lack of expertise in the subject, as does your bizarre take on labor rates--what you pay the employee is not the sole basis for a labor rate charge.
And again, there was a reasonable expectation that he would be able to keep his old drive, given that he was paying way over retail for the new one. You can't impose any condition you please just by burying it under 10 pages of fine print. Moderators notwithstanding, this is simply not true.
Reasonable expectation? That a defective device would be returned without any indication to that effect? That simply does not make sense. The condition wasn't buried anywhere. It was on the back of the form he signed--less than one page, end-to-end, containing clear and plain English terms.
"Oh yeah, the ten page contract you signed stipulates that we get to keep your old car," when nothing of the sort was mentioned before. That is contrary to industry practice and therefore unconscionable. It's not the same. Industry practice here is that you get your repaired system back. There is no standard practice that involves you getting the bad parts back--it's not even standard in the automotive market. The option to request return of replaced parts exists, when you ask ahead of time. That's really the best you can shoot for here.
The price for repair was much greater than the cost of typical drive, so there is no way that the customer could have reasonably expected that the $160 was based on the store keeping his old drive. I think the customer could easily win this in small claims court. He didn't have to reasonably expect anything. A reasonable man standard is not applied to what that customer expected, but what a fictitious straw man in that position is expected to know. You are talking "honest belief" and that's simply not a factor. "Reasonable man" also applies in contracts to fill gaps and to judge jarring, surprising terms.
Neither of these things exists here. The repair form is less than a page and is consistent with industry practices--you don't "automatically" get bad parts back, ever. $160 doesn't even cover the typical labor and retail price of the job--not at $85 typical minimum labor charge and a drive with a price markup of at least 100%--you're looking at a fairly standard retail repair rate. Take it to an independent shop for a lower price, or replace the stupid thing yourself.
You don't need a "reasonable expectation" when it's spelled out in front of you. Yours is an absurd conclusion and a tragic misapplication of contract norms.
He owned the old disk until the new disk was installed, at which time he owned the new one and surrendered the broken one. A condition of the installation was that installer got the old drive in the process. The user paid for a replacement unit, labor, and repair warranty (at least 90 days). Customer did not pay for the return of the old unit, the continued title to the old unit, or the continuous possession of the unit; he did not specify he wanted the old one back, did not condition his acceptance on that return, and did not ask whether he would be receiving the old unit.
If he wanted the old drive, he should have said so up front. He may or may not have had to pay extra for such an option, and they may have informed him that they did not offer the option. In such a case, he could have had the replacement done anywhere else--since he paid for it, the machine is out of warranty anyway, so there's nothing to lose by going somewhere else.
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Angle brackets should be banished from the face of the earth. Get with the program. 20 year old norms no longer apply in this field. It's out, just like phone line etiquette and dialup Internet access.
They confuse, are a true pain to copy/paste, and are wholly unnecessary. Slashdot has threaded responses and quote styling. At the very least, email should, too.
That's because people who do it (and further insist on plain text emails) create a mess of text that's impossible to follow. There are masses of angle brackets and no clear demarcation of where one starts and another stops. This is compounded by people who screw up the line breaks, making emails an impossible quagmire to reconstruct (without spending more time working out the structure of the email than it takes to read the damn thing). BBS and UNIX people are the worst about this, because they're militant about their plain text and hardcoded way of doing things.
Guess what? Interleaved posting and plain text email sucks too. It's no better than top quoting at the end of the day.
Proper etiquette here is to restate the question you're answering. Don't quote the entire message in your response at all. Email isn't a forum, and with people who refuse to use email features invented after 1990 (quote boxes, bar indicators, and/or colorizing quoted text), it's most aggravating when someone tries to make it one. Treat email as the written correspondence it is and the problems go away. Even one-line responses work.
Wow.
The MacBook Pro uses a Matsushita UJ-857E DVD-RW drive. This is basically the UJ-85JE (Matsushita is Panasonic). This drive is used in a number of applications.
Floppy DVDs don't go in slot-loading drives. Apple is the highest-profile user of such drives. It's just doublespeak to claim that it's "Apple" slot-load drives that are affected. A quick search shows only 230 results for '"dvd forum" +ejection system'--the top results, of course, referring to this article, and the others referring to the emergency eject function (i.e. the paperclip hole). That is the "DVD Forum approved ejection system" and it is fundamentally incompatible with a slot drive--there's no tray to pull out manually even if it had such a trigger. Further, Matsushita is one of the four largest members of the DVD Forum.
Apple neither designed, engineered, nor manufactured the device, so while it's true Apple didn't build a device to comply with "standards", it's a tautology. There is no possible way for the statement to be UNtrue. The only way to have a "DVD Forum approved" ejection system is to have a tray drive.
Way to take the bait hook, line, and sinker, though.
Did you actually pair the remote? Just enabling the IR on the computer doesn't restore previous pairings in my experience, and they ship open to all Apple remotes by default.
That's not to say that you didn't happen to get two remotes with matching codes, but it would be unlikely.
It's also highly unlikely that this plays any role in why the remote isn't often used--mostly it's just because a notebook is something you keep at close range, and most people don't connect them to large displays, except those who give presentations...and I imagine they use the remote. I use mine all the time on my MBP, but mostly to skip tracks/chapters without reaching out when I'm reading.
Another issue is the fact that lots of Apple customers already have one by now--from an iPod dock, an Apple TV, or a current Mac (and this product is clearly geared toward people who have a different primary computer). They probably figured it would be redundant for many. Instead, the MBA includes video adapters, which have largely disappeared elsewhere in the product line.
It's a notebook, so it's a 6-bit panel, like all the others, except some 17" notebooks that use what are basically desktop panels.
I don't know where people get the idea that notebooks come with 8-bit panels, because it certainly wasn't true a few months ago, and if something that major changed, it would have made waves somewhere.
Battery service: $129. Problem solved.
If you're cheap, wait for the ~$75 batteries to surface on the Internet and do it yourself. It's not that hard if you're not afraid to open up your devices.
iPod batteries are $30. Installation takes 5 minutes. It's a tired argument...right up there with the one button mouse crap.
That's at least the seventh time it's been said, and you still can't quite manage to wrap your head around it. You want to talk about those other topics? Do it in response to an article about one of them. I make decisions based on a variety of sources With your reading comprehension and critical reasoning, it's generous to represent them as informed decisions.
Your continued attempts to derail the discussion into something outside the bounds of the topic will not succeed, no matter how much baiting you lay on.
The issue isn't about green sources "generating a greater chunk of PG&E power than [I] think"--which is a remarkable position to take, considering green power hasn't been discussed at all here and you have literally no way of knowing what I think on the subject.
The issue also isn't spending the $1.7B on something else--for the umpteenth time, the capital costs are not solely for this project. They are part of ongoing infrastructure expansion and renewal, and they introduce other capabilities and features beneficial to PG&E's primary goals, just one of which is the one on topic for this discussion.
The topic at hand is also not getting people to change their consumption habits voluntarily, nor is it increased education. Like the baseline capacity argument, your spurious $5 million power plant claims, your repeated failure to recognize the structure of the new meter rollout, your ongoing refusal to recognize the different between short-term upswings and long-term growth, and your generic misunderstanding and ignorance of the organization, operation, and points of concern for the California power grid, this 'calculation' issue is irrelevant. You're attempting to force the discussion into irrelevant arenas.
What more information you could possibly want, I do not know. I do know, however, that you'd continue to misunderstand, misapply, and generally warp any information you're given. You haven't managed to properly use any source yet, so why should anyone expect you to start now?
Short-term demand upticks due to air conditioning cause a fundamentally different problem. Without creating such an excess of generation capacity that the upswings are easily buffered in (which would be wasteful and costly), the infrastructure requires short-term solutions. Long term capacity increases are not a complete solution. Until power really IS too cheap to meter and too abundant to worry about, there needs to be a multifaceted approach. Building plants dedicated to providing summer capacity (your apparent solution) is a tremendous waste and a terrible delay. The plants coming online are not part of that. The process to getting that capacity online was started many years ago and is part of a strategy to meet growing baseline needs. This is not the same as a need to meet peak demand.
Your one flippant and ignorant comment sparked this, but it's clear you weren't being glib. You really are just that dense.
At no point did you suggest an idle plan that is part of the normal replacement cycle (generally the scheme PG&E is following)--you created a bogus hypothetical that insisted they could get it done no faster than the allowance you made. This is patently incorrect. BTW, "marveling" only has one "l". Check a dictionary. Either spelling is appropriate. Nice try, though.
...as contrasted with your need for name-calling... Sweet-cheeks, buttercup, pot, kettle...Your comprehension difficulties and woeful errors in basic parsing aren't name calling. I'm questioning your competence. Your $5 million plan to provide power to a million customers, your math approach based on the entire service area of California (two and a half times PG&E's actual one--which puts your "guesstimate" that you're so proud of at 0.9 years, since PG&E services only 40% of the number of households you presumed and my response worked within your original assumptions, which, it is clear, are not based in fact. You also, as is the norm with your kind, ignored the most important part of the prior post: That PG&E has NO idea whether this 1.74-billion-dollar pet project will show ANY kind of return WHATSOEVER. The "$1.74 billion" project is not solely limited to the project started by the article referenced here (comprehension errors are now beyond count with you!)--the meters and the capital outlay do not solely benefit this project discussed in TFA.
Predicting the savings of this plan cannot be modeled because it has never been tried before, and the procedural issues will have to be worked out. This is standard language--utility companies operate on a cost recovery basis in a decoupled system, so their assertions are guarded and conservative. Failing to meet projections is a far greater issue than not making projections. Keep harping on it all you want, but the "no one knows" answer doesn't carry the significance you seem to believe it does, and the project's costs are not solely dedicated to this "experiment." Instead, you'd rather moan that the power generation ideas out right now are somehow less desirable than spending the better part of 2 billion dollars on a program Now you're just making things up. This issue of increased generation capacity is a wholly separate issue. Quit trying to shoehorn things into the discussion that aren't there. You're pushing a false dichotomy. Gee... How many did CPUC allow to be installed? From someone who just learned what CPUC is, you're trying awfully hard to figure it out. Initial rollouts are usually part of pilot programs. In case you hadn't noticed, your information is quite out of date. Rollout has planned completion in the 2010-2012 range. Starting today, a new PG&E generation facility would not be available before 2017, and that's being optimistic. Your vitriol It's yours. In case you hadn't noticed, you're the only one relying on crutches and cute names. Pointing out your continual incompetence is simply a matter of course. The basic errors you're committing are ones you'd expect of students.
Has your critical and logical reasoning center been so damaged that you can't process basic operations like this? You keep proving yourself to be an increasingly uninformed and boneheaded person. These meters are already in place in large portions of the service area with a feature that simply needs to be turned on.
Your remarks on the cost are also misguided and selective. The capital outlay involved is part of a PG&E strategic plan that involves replacing aging meters. The particular capability outlined in the article is one feature of the new meter installation, which adds a cost, but a marginal one. It's not a $1.7 billion experiment in cut-load power--it's a CPUC-authorized expenditure to replace old meters with one benefit being the SmartRate metering technology.
But no one expects you to be able to reason, clearly.
PG&E technicians are salaried, so those costs are fixed. There is an opportunity cost of added strain on scheduling, and that's certainly a cost factor, but a recoverable one.
Maybe you should use your head a little more. No $5 million project is going to provide power to a million customers...you've clearly misread the materials. The cost for the machinery alone to supply that amount of power vastly exceeds $5 million, not to mention astronomical service costs (divers, submersibles, etc.) and the boring and excavation needed to connect services to the land power grid. That's completely ignoring the fact that starting today, such a facility would NOT be online in 2.25 years' time (your original figure).
Like your short-sighted citation of Texas (which also has its own rolling blackout problems in summertime), your head just isn't screwed on straight and you continually fail to grasp the entirety of the situation. It's complex, but you're not succeeding in the slightest. Still doesn't change the fact that you're too dumb to run the numbers before you run your mouth. Maybe you should finish before running yours, especially when you've laughably compared a $5 million *pilot project* to an actual full-scale deployment and operations plan for production and connection to the grid.
I mean, really. How much deeper a hole can you dig for yourself here?
PS - There is no such place as 'San Fran'--just like 'Cali' doesn't exist.
Make up your mind. Yeah, I guess it is just incompetency on your part. There is not sufficient generation capacity in California. Purchasing power from elsewhere is part of a management plan, but it is not practical or viable as a solution to the rolling blackouts. There is not enough surplus power available, nor would that much purchasing fall within voter-supported legal mandates. It is also a disastrous notion to suggest that reliance on emergency transfer capabilities and the availability of excess power.
If Nevada wants to build a bunch of power plants for the sole purpose of selling the capacity to California with guaranteed availability and can do it without some of the extenuating roadblocks in California, then fine. Otherwise, purchasing power cannot meet the demands. It is not a solution, period. Power is already purchased as is practical, available and allowed. It is not sufficient. I was simply refuting your assertation that "OMGPONIES, THERE'S NO POWER!!!" It's assertion, genius, and no such assertion was made. Generation capacity is insufficient. Fact. Rolling blackouts are the current solution. Fact. Purchasing power from elsewhere in the grid is not viable, either in the short term or the long. Fact. Regulating demand by cutting the load a small amount across a large number of customers is doable (despite your mistaken rail against field staff capacity), cheap, and low-burden.
You're not getting any traction. Texas is all the gluttony, none of the environmental concern, and none of the conservationist spirit of California...sitting on oil fields with vast expanses of empty space. It is not a model for anything. PG&E, the folks you seem to tout as having a solution Nothing of the sort. You are truly dense beyond compare.
You want to complain about infrastructure, do it. But to do so at the expense of ignoring the current situation in places like California and New York, which is a preview of what other states face in the coming decades, is an egregious error. There's power to give, but they'd rather inconvenience their customers rather than hitch up their drawers, bite the bullet, and listen to gripes about rate increases. There isn't power to give. Purchasing power at astronomical rates is not a solution. It's an emergency stopgap that is already used at a sensible level. The transmission system can't support the kind of plan you have for continuous purchasing from other states, and it's not a solution. Excess capacity is not as extensive as you believe, especially when margins for emergencies are taken into account.
"Refused to buy" at outrageous markups isn't exactly the case. Clearly your understanding of legal, capacity, financial, political, and practical issues is lacking. Yet another blowhard jackass who doesn't live in California, doesn't understand California, and offers no solution to a serious issue that needs to be addressed. Bond issue. New plants vs. increased rates for power purchases from other grids. NEXT! Okay, but "increased rates for purchases" isn't a solution to a capacity problem in the near term or the long term. It is at best a supplement for peak demand in isolated cases. The expense involved is several times the normal rates, and with low efficiency and no term stability. As for the other, what about for the next five to ten years before those plants and grid modifications are online. You are not solving the problem of RIGHT NOW. There are two options, unless you've got some "just add water" power plants in your pocket. Which "obvious" concessions were you thinking of? Hospitals, datacenters, certain kinds of factories and warehouses... I choose to live in a state with a healthy power grid. So what country do you live in? 'Healthy power grid' is oxymoronic in the United States.
Regardless of whether it is poor planning, poor policy, poor enforcement, or some uncontrollable outside force (greedy people chilling McMansions while they're at work, for example), power is a finite resource. It runs out when it runs out. This is an unavoidable fact. If there is no power to give, your philosophical argument is meaningless. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Did you support proper planning and capacity by encouraging best performance practices on the utility company? Or did you just ask for the lowest possible bill? Exactly. You're paying for service; we're all paying for service. It's not like you get billed for power during your blackout block time, so your payment is irrelevant.
How would you rather manage it? Either way we're talking about forcibly reducing demand to keep the grid online. That can either mean a few tens of thousands of customers get their power cut for a while, or 38 million people have their thermostat reset five degrees up (with obvious concessions where applicable) for a few hours?
I choose the latter, if for no other reason than that I hate resetting clocks and get annoyed when the DVR or Internet cut out while recording/downloading. Most sensible people would, too.
Yeah, if there's 1000 people and 1000 fillups of gas available, I'd say it's fair to dictate 1 per person as a general rule.
Most of your other examples don't deal with scarcity. If you change the facts to 500 cable subscribers on a line that can only support 480, then yes, there is going to be some bandwidth throttling or random dropouts. That's basically what you've got here.
If there are six light bulbs and seven people needing one, someone's not getting a lightbulb, but it's probably not fair to let one person take all six. If food supply is down, rationing will hit sooner or later. Placing limits on usage where multiple people have a need for an essential service is a basic part of living in a community.
"Cranking up supply" isn't that simple. That's obviously the long-term solution, but it does absolutely nothing in the present to address the problems of the present for the customers of the present. Your choices are (a) no power or (b) a system which overrides your preference to force greedy and ignorant bastards to conserve. The amount of power available to you is going to work out the same. Instead of black hours and all-or-nothing, there's a possibility of some slightly grey time which keeps your appliances on.
It's not big brother, it's not an arbitrary intrusion. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't require much new infrastructure. It's got quite a bit of potential for abuse, but that's a separate issue.
No one wants blowhards saying some people should sit in the dark so that they can run their A/C at 65 if they want...because those same asses are the ones that bitch loudest when their blackout block comes up. That is, unless you can wave your magic wand and increase capacity and grid management in the blink of an eye.
No. The budget is not legislation per se. The president submits his budget proposal directly to Congress under 31 USC 1105. It does not get handed off to a member of the House to be delivered.
The president has no Constitutional powers over the budget; Congress is free to ignore the request and write one of their own. The difficulties in passage (getting the president's signature) and the labor of doing this work (as opposed to OMB and officials distributed throughout the Executive) this would entail is the only procedural block. whether or not the line item veto is constitutional (IANAL)? Can a president sign a budget bill and scratch off the bridge to no-where in Alaska? No and no, as of the current state of affairs. The Republicans didn't want Clinton having that power, so they took it away. Having a line item veto for the budget puts power back in the president's hands--power that he shouldn't have, since Congress controls the budget. It also conveniently protects pork and pet projects.
Moving from 1 to 2 seats doubles your power.
Moving from 14 to 19 is a much smaller increase, rate-wise, but still a far more significant one. Percentages are always easily manipulated either way. Raw numbers, in the hands of people who understand them, are more precise and less misleading.
3% increase means that the number of new Macs is roughly FIVE TIMES the total number of *all* Linux boxes. That's not a Linux victory. It's a good showing, but doubling near-nothing is still pretty close to nothing.
That's not to say I believe the numbers reported are actually correct...I believe the Linux share may be higher. I don't doubt the 7% Mac figure--I've seen that number bounced around from multiple tracking sites, and their corporate sales have been gangbusters for quite some time.
Is OS X killing desktop Linux? Maybe. "Desktop Linux" just isn't a realistic dream. Linux doesn't need to be on a third or even a tenth of the world's PCs. It has its own benefits, and for people who want to use it on their desktop, go for it. For developers who want to try to make it a facsimile of a good experience, it can only help keep OSes innovative. It's not on a mission of conquest. Likewise, Apple will never be the new Microsoft--it is not on a war for dominion. It's on a mission to increase sales. As a company, it's doing remarkably well with a smaller share, and that's all it needs. The "midtower Mac" is irrelevant. The price is irrelevant. Not releasing their OS to generic hardware is irrelevant. None of these fits with Apple's business model, which is the most successful one in the industry.
You are a fool. You have not provided a full OR legal definition of property, and your ability to read what isn't even legalese is outstripped in the instant sources. Perhaps you are tired of "Family Law" and "Agency Law" too, since they describe things that also don't exist. Your tired lay excuses and obtuse reasoning spins no wheels. The only people sewing confusion and drama lie here, between RMS and hypocrisy, in that path of irrelevance known as Slashdot. also includes any intangible right considered as a source or element of income or wealth. It is the right to enjoy and to dispose of certain things in the most absolute manner as he pleases, provided he makes no use of them prohibited by law. property, considered as an exclusive right to things, contains not only a right to use those things, but a right to dispose of them, But property in personal goods may be absolute or qualified without ally relation to the nature of the subject-matter, but simply because more persons than one have an interest in it Property is again divided into corporeal and incorporeal. he latter consists in legal rights, as choses in action, easements, and the like Personal property is further divided into property in possession, and property or choses in action.
When the contract terms state the procedure fully, in a concise, non-obscure form, there is no "reasonable" gap to fill unless you're arguing unconscionability, which in turn would require indication that it is standard practice to return parts when conducting a service repair. Such is not the case.
"Meeting of the minds" is a component of the Objective Theory of Contracts. It does not fail to be satisfied because an idiot customer didn't read the terms or had unusual expectations.
It cannot be said--cannot--that the return of broken parts is customary practice on the part of retail repair establishments or that the expectation that the defective parts will be returned is typical of the course of trade. The absolute best you can hope for is a provision that the repair facility should honor an express condition to return the old parts if initiated by the customer at the onset of repair.
The practice is not unusual, was not concealed in any way, and certainly fails far below any threshold standard of unconscionability used in the law.
Your experience is with independent repairs, not large firm retail/OEM repairs. This is precisely the sort of place you should take your machine for a better deal when it's outside of warranty--something any smart customer should also know. A small repair shop charges lower labor rates and something approaching the fair market value of the drive. A vendor does neither. This is not news.
Even the Geek Squad bills out at $75 an hour. Your obtuse comment about charging the customer the price for the drive that it would cost for them to buy it in the store also shows you're not talking about a retail/OEM repair. You know how the 40GB upgrade in your laptop was $100 extra even though the drive itself is only $15 more online? That's how it works. Vendors often charge 100% or beyond on their components and upgrades--this too is a known, standard practice. Of course you're going to pay an outrageous sum for the drive and for the labor if you take it back to HP, or Dell, or Apple, or Toshiba. Still, the cost of the repair is wholly separate from the issue of the return of broken parts. Unless there is a surcharge of some sort being applied that directly modifies your understanding, it is not conventional to return parts.
The outrageous frequency of your misuse of legal terms simply goes to show a lack of expertise in the subject, as does your bizarre take on labor rates--what you pay the employee is not the sole basis for a labor rate charge.
Reasonable expectation? That a defective device would be returned without any indication to that effect? That simply does not make sense. The condition wasn't buried anywhere. It was on the back of the form he signed--less than one page, end-to-end, containing clear and plain English terms. "Oh yeah, the ten page contract you signed stipulates that we get to keep your old car," when nothing of the sort was mentioned before. That is contrary to industry practice and therefore unconscionable. It's not the same. Industry practice here is that you get your repaired system back. There is no standard practice that involves you getting the bad parts back--it's not even standard in the automotive market. The option to request return of replaced parts exists, when you ask ahead of time. That's really the best you can shoot for here. The price for repair was much greater than the cost of typical drive, so there is no way that the customer could have reasonably expected that the $160 was based on the store keeping his old drive. I think the customer could easily win this in small claims court. He didn't have to reasonably expect anything. A reasonable man standard is not applied to what that customer expected, but what a fictitious straw man in that position is expected to know. You are talking "honest belief" and that's simply not a factor. "Reasonable man" also applies in contracts to fill gaps and to judge jarring, surprising terms.
Neither of these things exists here. The repair form is less than a page and is consistent with industry practices--you don't "automatically" get bad parts back, ever. $160 doesn't even cover the typical labor and retail price of the job--not at $85 typical minimum labor charge and a drive with a price markup of at least 100%--you're looking at a fairly standard retail repair rate. Take it to an independent shop for a lower price, or replace the stupid thing yourself.
You don't need a "reasonable expectation" when it's spelled out in front of you. Yours is an absurd conclusion and a tragic misapplication of contract norms.
He owned the old disk until the new disk was installed, at which time he owned the new one and surrendered the broken one. A condition of the installation was that installer got the old drive in the process. The user paid for a replacement unit, labor, and repair warranty (at least 90 days). Customer did not pay for the return of the old unit, the continued title to the old unit, or the continuous possession of the unit; he did not specify he wanted the old one back, did not condition his acceptance on that return, and did not ask whether he would be receiving the old unit.
If he wanted the old drive, he should have said so up front. He may or may not have had to pay extra for such an option, and they may have informed him that they did not offer the option. In such a case, he could have had the replacement done anywhere else--since he paid for it, the machine is out of warranty anyway, so there's nothing to lose by going somewhere else.