You sir need to be modded up. Very few people seem to understand what you have described. There will always be those at the bottom who are envious, jealous or otherwise indigent about what those "above them" have. A portion of those at the bottom will do whatever they feel justified doing in order to survive with as little effort as possible. The government serves as a buffer between the haves and the have nots. The government provides the social programs and the safety net to keep everyone at a basic standard of living that they can survive at. The government provides the police and the prison system to deal with those who don't want to play by the rules that the majority agree upon. Either way the people who pay taxes do so for safety.
I see it as a good thing. One of the large social maladies facing this country seems to be a lack of involvement in the community. Parents allow their children to stay at home and be babysat by the idiot box. The parents themselves could care less about their community. I know that here on/. we have kind of a skewed perspective because most of us are affluent and live in good neighborhoods. As a consultant I got to work in a lot of segments of society that I otherwise would never have any reason to interact with. I worked with non-profits that organized voter drives in South Central LA. I worked with an organization that dealt with helping mainly Salvadorian immigrants come to America. I worked with a trash company that employed pretty much 98% Latinos. I can see where Obama is coming from. I'm going to go into some stereotypes here, so don't get all freaked out. Black families are typically very strong when you get beyond the "missing baby daddy" syndrome. Hispanic families are very strong and close knit. Despite strong family structures they both have very little appreciation for the community as a whole. Forced community service would help. I don't know where the rest of you guys live, but here in California we have a huge "problem" with the children of non-tax paying immigrants putting a huge strain on the educational system. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that they contribute something back to society. Another factor to consider is that with the economy spiralling into a serious depression, the more people who are busy doing something is a good thing. It isn't good for social stability to have a lot of people with nothing but time on their hands. "Idle hands do the devil's work." and all that.
FWIW, I've found it easiest to get to Control Panel through My Computer. Everyone has a My Computer icon and the Control Panel is always near the bottom of the drive listing. I definitely understand what you are talking about with the UI being changed. I tried to give Vista a chance but when I opened Control Panel and they had moved everything around I gave up. I've relearned how to use Windows too many times already.
I think that you aren't giving yourself enough credit. What you do actually requires a lot of training and very few people are naturally intuitive enough to accomplish the same thing. I can do similar things but I spend large quantities of time meditating and I've also done some pretty intensive bio-feedback training that really helped me tune into consciously controlling my awareness. I also do a fair amount of martial arts training, specifically tai chi and kung fu. The training definitely requires a certain type of awareness and focus to do well. I don't know about your experiences but I've found that even things like my diet influence my ability to achieve the levels of concentration that I want. From what you've written I get the impression that you've spent a large portion of your life honing your abilities and probably continue to hone them all the time, albeit probably on a subconscious level for the most part.
Most people do not have the time, knowledge, inclination or ability to develop heightened levels of control over their senses and awareness. In fact our culture encourages the exact opposite and television serves as a primary example of that. Television overwhelms the senses. Television programming has been developed to bombard the senses with so much input that the conscious mind shuts down and the programming goes straight into the subconscious.
Your original post said something to the effect of, "I don't know why everyone can't do what I do." The fact that you can do it makes you abnormal. The ability to hyper concentrate is outside of the norm. It happens to be one of the symptoms of ADHD. "Normal" people are distracted by television.
Television is more than just a box with noise and motion. The programs and especially the commercials are developed in a way that they draw the attention. They are called "programs" for a reason. They program the viewer to pay attention. Most of the programming takes place on a subconscious level and has to do with alternating the volume levels (a simple example of that is that the commercials are always louder than the shows) and also with the frequency that the images are displayed and changed.
You may be able to tune it out but the vast majority of the population cannot. You probably have a form of ADHD that allows you to become hyper concentrated. It is definitely an asset, but decidely outside of the "norm". Television programming is way more intrusive than normal conversations.
"...Cogent has driven down the price of bandwidth to the point that all of the TIER 1 ISP's are a bit miffed at them."
The way Sprint represents the situation is that Cogent hasn't paid them. How much of Cogent's ability to drive down the price of bandwidth comes from them not paying whatever the true cost of the bandwidth is?
Are Sprints peering arrangements really unfair? It seems like they're peered with the other tier 1 ISPs and aren't threatening to cut them off, or be cut off by them. Why are the only having a problem with Cogent? How much of it has to do with what someone else was saying about Cogent being new to the game and buying up a couple other ISPs with already established peering arrangements?
That IS the problem. Cogent's ONLY connection to the internet came through Sprint. Despite Sprint giving them ample notice that they were going to disconnect Cogent for FAILURE TO PAY THEIR BILLS, Cogent ALSO failed to arrange other peering agreements with other carriers to mitigate the effects of the disconnect.
I don't understand where all of the support and sympathy for Cogent is coming from. Is it because there is a general hatred toward peering in the community? From a strictly moral and ethical point of view it seems pretty cut and dried to me.
Cogent went into the ISP business and selected Sprint as their carrier. They entered into a TRIAL agreement with Sprint during which it would be determined if they met the requirements to have a free connection into Sprint's network. It turned out that they didn't meet the requirements. Sprint told them that they would (Gasp!) have to PAY for the services that they use. Sprint further told them that if they weren't going to pay that they had to voluntarily disconnect from Sprint's network. Cogent didn't pay. Cogent didn't disconnect. Sprint gave them ample notice that they would be disconnected and gave them time to setup agreements with other carriers. Cogent decided to hire a PR firm and some lawyers. Oops, bad business decision.
If we were talking about anything besides bandwidth and internet connectivity would we even be having a discussion here? If someone went into business selling water with the agreement that he would send empty bottles to the water company in exchange for free water, but then failed to send the empty bottles, would the water company be wrong for charging him for water? If someone gives me a "free" car with the understanding that I am to give them a ride whenever they want it or else I have to pay the car payment, are they wrong for wanting me to pay the payment after I refuse to give them a ride every time they ask for one?
This whole topic seems so innane. Sprint provided Cogent with a service "for free" with the understanding that Cogent would meet certain terms or conditions. Cogent didn't meet the terms therefore they weren't entitled to the "free" service. Isn't this standard contract law 101? Either you live up to the terms of the contract or you don't. If you do, you get the "benefits" specified in the contract. If you don't, you don't.
I don't understand how "the internet is broken". If I lease portions of my home DSL line from Verizon to my neighbors and charge them for it, but then fail to pay Verizon to maintain the circuit and it gets disconnected, is the internet broken, or am I just a schyster who ripped off my neighbors by charging them for a service that I couldn't provide? How is that any different than Cogent leasing a bunch of network capacity to a bunch of providers and then failing to pay for the cost of their infrastructure? It seems to me like the CEO and some others at Cogent need to be sued.
Read the article. Sprint gave Cogent ample advance warning. Cogent did nothing to mitigate the problem. The way the article is written gives the impression that Cogent's only connection to the internet came through Sprint. At one point Sprint had 10 interconnects up with Cogents network. Over the course of close to two months they gradually reduced the number of interconnections with Cogent's full awareness of what was taking place.
Where is there any precident that Sprint has to maintain routes for their customers (or anyone else) to Cogent? Look at the phone system. If someone doesn't pay their phone bill, when you dial their number you are told, "This number is no longer in service." You paying your phone bill doesn't guarantee that you will be able to reach people who refuse to pay their bills. That is the exact same thing that happened here. Cogent refused to pay their phone bill and Sprint terminated their service.
I'm sure that the export has been going on for a long time now. Right now what we are seeing that the government needs more revenue. There are hundreds of laws on the books that never get enforced because doing so has been perceived as being too costly. With the Fed facing huge short falls I predict that we are going to see more and more sitautions like this one. Where as the Fed used to turn and look the other way in "good times", they are now going to be taking extra steps to rein in these sorts of operations.
"They are also -- perhaps not by coincidence -- burdensomely expensive."
I've been using Exchange since 5.5 and have dealt with every revision up to the current one. When the organization that I worked for developed a need for in house IM the first place I went to look was Exchange. They had built in IM in Exchange Server 2000. We're running 2003 and surprise, surprise... IM is gone. Now Microsoft expects us to purchase some Office Communications Server or some BS like that to have the functionality that was previously free.
Given that experience with Microsoft and IM, I don't think that they're really in the business of giving free functionality to people using their software.
As long as I'm posting this, can anyone recommend some good, hopefully free IM clients for internal use? We only need to support about 50 users.
If you have a job that requires you to wake up when the sun comes up then wake up when the sun comes up. If you can only work when you have available light then stop working when the sun starts to set. We live in a 24/7 world these days. We can do what we want to do when we want to do it. The whole idea of setting the clock back and forth has outlived its usefulness.
Just ask the school teachers in Los Angeles Unified how they feel about having their payroll system rewritten in a new language. For the ones who got paychecks three times larger than they should have been I think they liked it. For the others who didn't get paid or got paid significantly less, I think they're pretty upset. See the article below.
Pay attention to the quote about "union work rules" being part of the "problem" with implementing the system. Those kind of situations are the types of "business logic" that have been built into old systems and long since forgotten about. Nobody thinks about those things and they don't come up during the development process because they aren't very visible. People don't realize how much they didn't think about until the a wrong paycheck shows up for the tenured teacher with 13 years of seniority, who was hired as part of a Federal grant, whose contract was negotiated to include stipulations X, Y and Z. Then all of a sudden you have a room full of project managers and developers sitting around Toilet and Douche wondering, "How are we going to code THAT logic into SAP?"
If the computer is a member of the domain then it has RPC and SMB turned on in order to communicate with the rest of the network. All it would take would be a trojan or other exploit with a payload crafted to exploit the current vulnerability. Workstations these days run many vulnerable applications. Flash seems to be a common target these days. So random dumb user gets an email directing them to or gets curious and browses to OwnMyBox.com. That site exploits their unpatched Flash player, installs exploit code to search the local network for machines vulnerable to the SMB/RPC exploit and it's game over. Time to restore from backup.
Enough will be enough when there are viable alternatives for ALL of the functionality that Windows provides. ALL might be a bit of a stretch but not too much of one. The OSS world continues chugging along but if you look closely they are spending a lot of time recreating the wheel, or improving the wheel in ways that don't change the fact that it is still a wheel... a wheel that has been spinning for a while on the Microsoft platform. You can whine about how Microsoft sucks all day long but the harsh reality is that there are too many applications that rely on it to simply dump it.
As an example I work at a non-profit. We have a membership/fundraising application that tracks all of the development activity for the organization. That package ties into the accounting system so that as funds are raised and budgets are projected and what have you the systems interact with each other. Another component ties into the ticketing system so that when members come to visit the box office their account details are available. Did I mention the online component that allows membership renewals and ticket sales? It sure the hell isn't running on *nix. Now that isn't because a similar program can't be written for *nix. It simply hasn't been done yet. But hey... maybe one day, all of these super duper bad Microsoft security holes will pile up to the point where there are hundreds of non-profits out there looking to come up with a million or so dollars to completely rip out their Windows foundation and replace it with a super, duper, ooper better Linux way of doing things.
Until the cost of sticking with the status quo significantly outweighs the cost of switching to something else, the status quo will remain. Despite the flaws, Microsoft does keep getting better, although it often times seems like a one step forward, two steps back process (got Vista?). Look at this latest exploit. On Vista and Server 2008 the exploit doesn't work without popping up a warning dialogue. Obviously some group at Microsoft is forward thinking to have realized the potential for badness. If they hadn't, the dialogue box wouldn't pop up.
Shouldn't be an issue? What world are you living in? What happens when it gets crafted into an email or web exploit and someone inside the permimeter visits SeeMyBoobs.com and their now zombied desktop owns your servers?
You're right on target. All OS zealotry aside, there are some applications that are simply better on Windows. Conversely there are some applications that you'd never want to put anywhere near Windows. In the real world there is a middle ground. Maybe your ERP system needs to output some numbers for the managers to play with in Excel. It can toss them onto a Samba share and everything is good. That's just an example off of the top of my head. I'm sure there are hundreds of others.
It seems like a lot of the replies all seem to acknowledge that the flashes of inspiration come when we're not directly involved with whatever the task at hand happens to be. Often times I find it helpful to get up and go for a walk. There seems to be something about shifting from actually working directly on the issue, to stepping away from it while still being able to ponder it. The brain seems to shift out of actively doing mode and into pondering how else to do it mode.
They barely ever get to use it. They probably live longer too. The Taoists have a whole internal mind/body philosophy that involves holding onto the sperm and recycling the energy through the body to reach enlightenment.
Because all of the regular poor people buy their hardware at back to school sales. The ultra-uber hipster Apple using folks can whine to daddy for new hardware whenever it comes out. On a slightly less condescending note, we are going into the Christmas season. The UUH Apple users can whine to daddy about wanting one for Christmas.;)
It may or may not be defective. In my opinion, any device that gets so hot that its uncomfortable to type on is defective. The AppleCare warranty doesn't cover accidental damage. Only a fool would buy an extended warranty that doesn't cover drops or spills.
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You sir need to be modded up. Very few people seem to understand what you have described. There will always be those at the bottom who are envious, jealous or otherwise indigent about what those "above them" have. A portion of those at the bottom will do whatever they feel justified doing in order to survive with as little effort as possible. The government serves as a buffer between the haves and the have nots. The government provides the social programs and the safety net to keep everyone at a basic standard of living that they can survive at. The government provides the police and the prison system to deal with those who don't want to play by the rules that the majority agree upon. Either way the people who pay taxes do so for safety.
I see it as a good thing. One of the large social maladies facing this country seems to be a lack of involvement in the community. Parents allow their children to stay at home and be babysat by the idiot box. The parents themselves could care less about their community. I know that here on /. we have kind of a skewed perspective because most of us are affluent and live in good neighborhoods. As a consultant I got to work in a lot of segments of society that I otherwise would never have any reason to interact with. I worked with non-profits that organized voter drives in South Central LA. I worked with an organization that dealt with helping mainly Salvadorian immigrants come to America. I worked with a trash company that employed pretty much 98% Latinos. I can see where Obama is coming from. I'm going to go into some stereotypes here, so don't get all freaked out. Black families are typically very strong when you get beyond the "missing baby daddy" syndrome. Hispanic families are very strong and close knit. Despite strong family structures they both have very little appreciation for the community as a whole. Forced community service would help. I don't know where the rest of you guys live, but here in California we have a huge "problem" with the children of non-tax paying immigrants putting a huge strain on the educational system. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that they contribute something back to society. Another factor to consider is that with the economy spiralling into a serious depression, the more people who are busy doing something is a good thing. It isn't good for social stability to have a lot of people with nothing but time on their hands. "Idle hands do the devil's work." and all that.
FWIW, I've found it easiest to get to Control Panel through My Computer. Everyone has a My Computer icon and the Control Panel is always near the bottom of the drive listing. I definitely understand what you are talking about with the UI being changed. I tried to give Vista a chance but when I opened Control Panel and they had moved everything around I gave up. I've relearned how to use Windows too many times already.
...before we have enough troops to deal with the situation in Afghanistan. Now, if we can only get the Taliban to watch CNN.
I think that you aren't giving yourself enough credit. What you do actually requires a lot of training and very few people are naturally intuitive enough to accomplish the same thing. I can do similar things but I spend large quantities of time meditating and I've also done some pretty intensive bio-feedback training that really helped me tune into consciously controlling my awareness. I also do a fair amount of martial arts training, specifically tai chi and kung fu. The training definitely requires a certain type of awareness and focus to do well. I don't know about your experiences but I've found that even things like my diet influence my ability to achieve the levels of concentration that I want. From what you've written I get the impression that you've spent a large portion of your life honing your abilities and probably continue to hone them all the time, albeit probably on a subconscious level for the most part.
Most people do not have the time, knowledge, inclination or ability to develop heightened levels of control over their senses and awareness. In fact our culture encourages the exact opposite and television serves as a primary example of that. Television overwhelms the senses. Television programming has been developed to bombard the senses with so much input that the conscious mind shuts down and the programming goes straight into the subconscious.
Your original post said something to the effect of, "I don't know why everyone can't do what I do." The fact that you can do it makes you abnormal. The ability to hyper concentrate is outside of the norm. It happens to be one of the symptoms of ADHD. "Normal" people are distracted by television.
Television is more than just a box with noise and motion. The programs and especially the commercials are developed in a way that they draw the attention. They are called "programs" for a reason. They program the viewer to pay attention. Most of the programming takes place on a subconscious level and has to do with alternating the volume levels (a simple example of that is that the commercials are always louder than the shows) and also with the frequency that the images are displayed and changed. You may be able to tune it out but the vast majority of the population cannot. You probably have a form of ADHD that allows you to become hyper concentrated. It is definitely an asset, but decidely outside of the "norm". Television programming is way more intrusive than normal conversations.
That clears things up a lot, thanks. From reading the press release it wasn't clear that Sprint and Cogent were on the same tier.
"...Cogent has driven down the price of bandwidth to the point that all of the TIER 1 ISP's are a bit miffed at them." The way Sprint represents the situation is that Cogent hasn't paid them. How much of Cogent's ability to drive down the price of bandwidth comes from them not paying whatever the true cost of the bandwidth is? Are Sprints peering arrangements really unfair? It seems like they're peered with the other tier 1 ISPs and aren't threatening to cut them off, or be cut off by them. Why are the only having a problem with Cogent? How much of it has to do with what someone else was saying about Cogent being new to the game and buying up a couple other ISPs with already established peering arrangements?
That IS the problem. Cogent's ONLY connection to the internet came through Sprint. Despite Sprint giving them ample notice that they were going to disconnect Cogent for FAILURE TO PAY THEIR BILLS, Cogent ALSO failed to arrange other peering agreements with other carriers to mitigate the effects of the disconnect.
I don't understand where all of the support and sympathy for Cogent is coming from. Is it because there is a general hatred toward peering in the community? From a strictly moral and ethical point of view it seems pretty cut and dried to me.
Cogent went into the ISP business and selected Sprint as their carrier. They entered into a TRIAL agreement with Sprint during which it would be determined if they met the requirements to have a free connection into Sprint's network. It turned out that they didn't meet the requirements. Sprint told them that they would (Gasp!) have to PAY for the services that they use. Sprint further told them that if they weren't going to pay that they had to voluntarily disconnect from Sprint's network. Cogent didn't pay. Cogent didn't disconnect. Sprint gave them ample notice that they would be disconnected and gave them time to setup agreements with other carriers. Cogent decided to hire a PR firm and some lawyers. Oops, bad business decision.
If we were talking about anything besides bandwidth and internet connectivity would we even be having a discussion here? If someone went into business selling water with the agreement that he would send empty bottles to the water company in exchange for free water, but then failed to send the empty bottles, would the water company be wrong for charging him for water? If someone gives me a "free" car with the understanding that I am to give them a ride whenever they want it or else I have to pay the car payment, are they wrong for wanting me to pay the payment after I refuse to give them a ride every time they ask for one?
This whole topic seems so innane. Sprint provided Cogent with a service "for free" with the understanding that Cogent would meet certain terms or conditions. Cogent didn't meet the terms therefore they weren't entitled to the "free" service. Isn't this standard contract law 101? Either you live up to the terms of the contract or you don't. If you do, you get the "benefits" specified in the contract. If you don't, you don't.
I don't understand how "the internet is broken". If I lease portions of my home DSL line from Verizon to my neighbors and charge them for it, but then fail to pay Verizon to maintain the circuit and it gets disconnected, is the internet broken, or am I just a schyster who ripped off my neighbors by charging them for a service that I couldn't provide? How is that any different than Cogent leasing a bunch of network capacity to a bunch of providers and then failing to pay for the cost of their infrastructure? It seems to me like the CEO and some others at Cogent need to be sued.
Read the article. Sprint gave Cogent ample advance warning. Cogent did nothing to mitigate the problem. The way the article is written gives the impression that Cogent's only connection to the internet came through Sprint. At one point Sprint had 10 interconnects up with Cogents network. Over the course of close to two months they gradually reduced the number of interconnections with Cogent's full awareness of what was taking place.
Where is there any precident that Sprint has to maintain routes for their customers (or anyone else) to Cogent? Look at the phone system. If someone doesn't pay their phone bill, when you dial their number you are told, "This number is no longer in service." You paying your phone bill doesn't guarantee that you will be able to reach people who refuse to pay their bills. That is the exact same thing that happened here. Cogent refused to pay their phone bill and Sprint terminated their service.
I'm sure that the export has been going on for a long time now. Right now what we are seeing that the government needs more revenue. There are hundreds of laws on the books that never get enforced because doing so has been perceived as being too costly. With the Fed facing huge short falls I predict that we are going to see more and more sitautions like this one. Where as the Fed used to turn and look the other way in "good times", they are now going to be taking extra steps to rein in these sorts of operations.
"They are also -- perhaps not by coincidence -- burdensomely expensive."
I've been using Exchange since 5.5 and have dealt with every revision up to the current one. When the organization that I worked for developed a need for in house IM the first place I went to look was Exchange. They had built in IM in Exchange Server 2000. We're running 2003 and surprise, surprise... IM is gone. Now Microsoft expects us to purchase some Office Communications Server or some BS like that to have the functionality that was previously free.
Given that experience with Microsoft and IM, I don't think that they're really in the business of giving free functionality to people using their software.
As long as I'm posting this, can anyone recommend some good, hopefully free IM clients for internal use? We only need to support about 50 users.
Or every soda swilling coder on the planet.
If you have a job that requires you to wake up when the sun comes up then wake up when the sun comes up. If you can only work when you have available light then stop working when the sun starts to set. We live in a 24/7 world these days. We can do what we want to do when we want to do it. The whole idea of setting the clock back and forth has outlived its usefulness.
Just ask the school teachers in Los Angeles Unified how they feel about having their payroll system rewritten in a new language. For the ones who got paychecks three times larger than they should have been I think they liked it. For the others who didn't get paid or got paid significantly less, I think they're pretty upset. See the article below.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=576
Pay attention to the quote about "union work rules" being part of the "problem" with implementing the system. Those kind of situations are the types of "business logic" that have been built into old systems and long since forgotten about. Nobody thinks about those things and they don't come up during the development process because they aren't very visible. People don't realize how much they didn't think about until the a wrong paycheck shows up for the tenured teacher with 13 years of seniority, who was hired as part of a Federal grant, whose contract was negotiated to include stipulations X, Y and Z. Then all of a sudden you have a room full of project managers and developers sitting around Toilet and Douche wondering, "How are we going to code THAT logic into SAP?"
If the computer is a member of the domain then it has RPC and SMB turned on in order to communicate with the rest of the network. All it would take would be a trojan or other exploit with a payload crafted to exploit the current vulnerability. Workstations these days run many vulnerable applications. Flash seems to be a common target these days. So random dumb user gets an email directing them to or gets curious and browses to OwnMyBox.com. That site exploits their unpatched Flash player, installs exploit code to search the local network for machines vulnerable to the SMB/RPC exploit and it's game over. Time to restore from backup.
Enough will be enough when there are viable alternatives for ALL of the functionality that Windows provides. ALL might be a bit of a stretch but not too much of one. The OSS world continues chugging along but if you look closely they are spending a lot of time recreating the wheel, or improving the wheel in ways that don't change the fact that it is still a wheel... a wheel that has been spinning for a while on the Microsoft platform. You can whine about how Microsoft sucks all day long but the harsh reality is that there are too many applications that rely on it to simply dump it.
As an example I work at a non-profit. We have a membership/fundraising application that tracks all of the development activity for the organization. That package ties into the accounting system so that as funds are raised and budgets are projected and what have you the systems interact with each other. Another component ties into the ticketing system so that when members come to visit the box office their account details are available. Did I mention the online component that allows membership renewals and ticket sales? It sure the hell isn't running on *nix. Now that isn't because a similar program can't be written for *nix. It simply hasn't been done yet. But hey... maybe one day, all of these super duper bad Microsoft security holes will pile up to the point where there are hundreds of non-profits out there looking to come up with a million or so dollars to completely rip out their Windows foundation and replace it with a super, duper, ooper better Linux way of doing things.
Until the cost of sticking with the status quo significantly outweighs the cost of switching to something else, the status quo will remain. Despite the flaws, Microsoft does keep getting better, although it often times seems like a one step forward, two steps back process (got Vista?). Look at this latest exploit. On Vista and Server 2008 the exploit doesn't work without popping up a warning dialogue. Obviously some group at Microsoft is forward thinking to have realized the potential for badness. If they hadn't, the dialogue box wouldn't pop up.
Shouldn't be an issue? What world are you living in? What happens when it gets crafted into an email or web exploit and someone inside the permimeter visits SeeMyBoobs.com and their now zombied desktop owns your servers?
You're right on target. All OS zealotry aside, there are some applications that are simply better on Windows. Conversely there are some applications that you'd never want to put anywhere near Windows. In the real world there is a middle ground. Maybe your ERP system needs to output some numbers for the managers to play with in Excel. It can toss them onto a Samba share and everything is good. That's just an example off of the top of my head. I'm sure there are hundreds of others.
It seems like a lot of the replies all seem to acknowledge that the flashes of inspiration come when we're not directly involved with whatever the task at hand happens to be. Often times I find it helpful to get up and go for a walk. There seems to be something about shifting from actually working directly on the issue, to stepping away from it while still being able to ponder it. The brain seems to shift out of actively doing mode and into pondering how else to do it mode.
Yup, pretty much. Or a chick into tantric yoga. Double cultivation is what you're looking for.
They barely ever get to use it. They probably live longer too. The Taoists have a whole internal mind/body philosophy that involves holding onto the sperm and recycling the energy through the body to reach enlightenment.
Because all of the regular poor people buy their hardware at back to school sales. The ultra-uber hipster Apple using folks can whine to daddy for new hardware whenever it comes out. On a slightly less condescending note, we are going into the Christmas season. The UUH Apple users can whine to daddy about wanting one for Christmas. ;)
It may or may not be defective. In my opinion, any device that gets so hot that its uncomfortable to type on is defective. The AppleCare warranty doesn't cover accidental damage. Only a fool would buy an extended warranty that doesn't cover drops or spills.