With a cable modem, aren't you sharing bandwidth with all your neighbors (since the neighborhood or apartment is usually on the same subnet)? Whereas with DSL, I believe the bandwidth you pay for is yours alone. If I'm wrong, please correct me. But if that's the case, that's yet another reason I'd prefer DSL over cable modems: my connection won't slow when my neighbors sign up.
You share with some group of neighbors. However, if the cable company is any good they'll keep this small enough so that your part of the shared bandwidth is still higher than what you could get with DSL even if you were right next to the phone company's office. Note also that unless your neighbor sets up an MP3 archive or something like that you'll have few problems with bandwidth - 30Mbps covers quite a few people browsing web pages.
Don't rule out cable modems just because of some stupid companies. Others are quite good - Cox here in San Diego has been extremely reliable, very responsive on billing issues and it's an order of magnitude cheaper than the significantly slower DSL the phone monopoly's pushing. Find someone in your area who's got the service you're considering and ask them....
Perhaps this is because you didn't properly RTFW? I've never received in spam from Amazon over the years I've been a customer. This might possibly have something to do with the fact that I read the pages and uncheck "Email me" options before sending them. I've never met anyone who's done that and received email they didn't request.
It took me all of five minutes to read the cited paper which carefully listed the exact configuration of all hardware and software used, with justification.
While I quite agree with your comments about posters who don't read the article first, there is the possibility that the hardware specs listed were lies. Remember - they tried the same thing on video during the trial. It would not be surprising to learn that an "accident" was made somewhere along the line. ("Gee, we never realized that our rogue packet generator might have messed up the webserver performance for linux. Sorry!")
Rob's word wrapper appears to wrap URLs, too. That should have been http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/04/12/20172 09&threshold=0&commentsort=3&mode=nested &cid=2890 without a space between mode= and nested screwing it up.
The coffee, maintained at a scalding 180F-190F because the customers supposedly "like it hot", caused severe third-degree burns. She spent seven days in the hospital and was treated with skin grafts.
[snippage] nitially she only wanted payment for her medical bills but McDonald's refused to even negotiate with her. Consequently she contacted an attorney who had settled another coffee burn case with McDonald's. In the course of the trial company documents revealed that "in the past decade McDonald's had received at least 700 reports of coffee burns ranging from mild to third-degree, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000."
In the interests of conserving bandwidth, please read my reply to another message in this thread that does the math your "facts". A 1 in 7 MILLLION problem rate does not indicate a problem with the company selling it.
BTW - they're absolutely right when they say "There are more serious dangers in restaurants." What next? Taking care of the one in a million moron who pokes himself in the eye with a fork?
Check out the following link for the facts of the case: http://caoc.com/mcdonald.html
That would be only the facts which don't support McDonald's, as you expect from a group of consumer attorneys who are in the business of suing large companies, often on questionable grounds. For instance:
McDonalds also said during discovery that, based on a consultants advice, it held its coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees fahrenheit to maintain optimum taste. He admitted that he had not evaluated the safety ramifications at this temperature. Other establishments sell coffee at substantially lower temperatures, and coffee served at home is generally 135 to 140 degrees.
This is debunked in the alt.drugs.caffeine FAQ: 2.1.- What is the best temperature for drip coffee? According to chemical studies, the optimal water temperature for drip coffee is 95-98C. According to my notes, colder water doesn't extract enough caffeine/essential oils from the beans, and above such temperature the acidity increases wildly. (Note: 95-98C = 203-208.4F)
During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved thirddegree burns substantially similar to Liebecks. This history documented McDonalds knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard.
McDonald's did know about the extent of this hazard - namely that it's almost nonexistent. That article claims that the $2.7 million in punitive damages is roughly equal to two days of McDonald's coffee sales. At a buck a cup that works out to 4,927,500,000 cups of coffee sold over that 10 year period or 7,039,284 people who managed to survive the Boiling Coffee Of Death for every single problem!
(Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.)
Note how they attempt to seem fair by disproving a pointless argument. If anything, this makes it look even less like McDonald's problem - she couldn't even pour the coffee without spilling it in a stopped car!
Imagine the massacre that'd happen if a statistically significant number of the millions of people surfing for dirty pictures did start killing people: "Your son only shot 4 people? We're too busy to come out for anything less than 10 casualties before next June, so we'll mail you a form to complete."
I wonder if the companies being sued can file a countersuit for poor parenting. I'd be amazed if those porn sites didn't have some sort of "You must be old enough to legally view the contents of this site" verbiage up - couldn't they sue the kid for violating their terms of usage? Besides - aren't those the sites that are supposedly making tons of money on subscriptions? What's a 14-year old doing with a credit card?
Sure YOU may know the line between computer and reality, but do kids?
Question - has anyone ever found any evidence that supports the "violent videogames == violent kids" theory and has stood up to peer review and been corroborated by other studies?
Anyway, conclusion time. These games should be restricted from children. There is a reason why people below 18 are not allowed to vote. There is a reason why people below 18 cannot have sex with people above 18, without the older person going to jail. There is a reason people below 21 can't drink.
Which goes to prove this approach doesn't work. When was the last time you heard of some high school kids having trouble finding booze or cigarettes? Ever meet a minor who isn't sleeping with an adult because of the law?
This is the same problem so many ligitation-happy people forget - the people who will follow a new law are the kind of people who wouldn't have been causing problems in the first place.
Without responsible parents new laws will be about as effective as the 65MPH speed limit unless you carry enforcement to Big-Brother levels. Of course, it's easier to pass a law than do something that actually works...
Around here we get the usual Huge-Conglomerate-Station pablum. Everything is decided by computer and they've completely lost station loyalty because their program doesn't consider that the top songs in a genre will be from several subgroups. It's unlikely that many people's tastes are matched by the Top X bestselling songs. Personally I find that I like about 50% of what a station plays, so I switch stations frequently when the crap comes on. Most people I know consider my tastes rather broad and yet there's not a single station around here I can listen to for more than 2-3 songs in a row.
You're right, a good DJ could do so much better than that. For some reason the big stations decided we'd all be better without them and we're stuck with these overhyped wannabes. It's like they decided to take the most popular items on the menu and make a single dish from them and are wondering why "Steak mousse pasta" isn't selling well...
True, but the important distinction is how they make it. Offering better services is good; screwing people over because they have a monopoly is not. It's possible to be ethical and profitable but NSI isn't even trying...
While I'm ranting, to hell with META tags, too. When's the last time you tried to look up something pertaining so some technical amusement and got 800+ porn ads? META should die, even before BLINK and MARQUEE
I think that would be a mistake. Only META KEYWORDS should be eliminated as the search engines can extract their own keywords. META DESCRIPTION serves a useful purpose but should only be used when displaying a page summary to the user (the original purpose).
(Other than that, I don't think the internet should become hobbyist-only again but I do wish they were so quick to import the worst parts of TV and print.)
I was about 14 when Windows 3.x came out, and I can assure you, most people I knew were *NOT* saying how neat it was, they were busy deleting it off their drives.... BBS SysOp's especially in that era will understand. DesQView was usable for multi-node BBS', Windows was not. OS/2 was better still, but then the Internet caused many people to just forget about BBS' altogether (and OS/2...)
I was one of those weirdos, too. The problem were the little wannabes who liked cute icons and were talking about how cool Microsoft was. It might have been local to Southern California but I remember seeing a lot of them. (Roundly flamed by those who understood technology, but they were there nonetheless.)
Wow, do you have any *idea* how long the "no support" thing was the basis for nearly all anti-Linux FUD? Am I the only one deeply disturbed by Linux advocates attacking other platforms, especially using the "no support" tactic? Times have sure changed. At one time Linux was about embracing diversity, not becoming MS mark 2. Pretty soon people will start chanting about "Linux Everywhere"... oh wait, they already have: "World Domination" (too bad so few seem to be aware that Linus' comment was a joke).
It's the same problem any new product experiences when it becomes popular. Remember all those 14 year-olds who were crowing about how neat Windows was when 3.x was first out? Remember the OS/2 advocates who claimed things even OS/2 loyalists denied? Remember the Amigans and their almost cultlike advocacy?
Linux is just the next hot trend for the technology groupies to infest.
>As for the "Alpha" port. Does MS still support >that ? And what apps have been ported to >it besides minesweeper ??? Quite a few actually applications. RTFW some time - almost all of the high-end NT benchmarks are using Alphas, proving that there are few things that 16 667Mhz Alphas can't accelerate. Microsoft has pledged support for a long period of time and their 64-bit development is being done on the non-vaporware Alpha. Merced might be as fast as a half-decade old Alpha when released, so I doubt they'll be dropping the architecture that gives Microsoft their only remotely legitimate claim to enterprise-class servers.
Also note that an NT / Linux capable Alpha box will run your $2000 these days. Something to think about the next time Intel chips seem rather slow...
BTW - read up on FX!32. It's an emulator / translator that converts x86 to Alpha and runs at about 70% of Alpha-native performance on average, placing the Alpha as the fastest x86 system.
You don't have to give a hyper-accurate location. Just report the city. If you're still worried at that point, the black helicopters will chase you down before you can run far anyway...
If you can't write good code in COBOL, you are the moron. Except for a few pathalogical cases (e.g. INTERCAL) a good programmer can write good code in any language.
I've used a number of different languages (including x86 assembler, C, C++, Java, Pascal, REXX, COBOL) and while COBOL has certain pecularities so does every other language in that list. They all have their own strengths and a smart programmer picks the right language for the job.
Nope. Mainframes are fast reliable and maintainable. COBOL is a braindead language invented in the 1950's.
When you leave school and enter the real world, take a look at how much of the world economy runs on COBOL. It's still there because it works. The phone company here does their billing in COBOL. Some of the modules have been running since the '60s without modification! It may not be trendy enough for a k3wl d00d like yourself but it's got a rather impressive track record.
Oh, and please RTFM before you post. COBOL was first used in the 50s, but it's no more out of date than C or Unix - the last standard was approved in 1985 and there will be another revision in 2000. It's kept pace with the times rather well.
People certainyl aren't using COBOL because it's trendy. They use COBOL because it's reliable, fast and maintainable. COBOL is actually the opposite of VB.
In the letter to Archie comics, her dad asks why archie hasn't registered veronica.edu or betty.edu or archie.edu; perhaps someone should tell him that these are reserved for educational institutions (and as Archie Comics doesn't hold classes, they probably wouldn't qualify.)
That just possibly might have been his point. Archie already owns veronica.com and it is ridiculous for them to worry about a non-commercial site that in no way pertains to them. I could understand somewhat if he was running something like ibm.org but trying to claim sole rights to a commonly used name? Registering every possible domain that shares the same name as a character in a comic book is insane!
Personally, I don't see any problem with this sort of thing. Now, going on the offensive with DoS attacks in retaliation is another matter, but really this is more of an amusement than anything else.
More importantly, this is a very good solution because it doesn't harm innocent users and it doesn't attack the user unless they ask it to. The attacker has to request the page before they get nailed. This is like a burglar cutting himself while breaking your window...
No, it's not. Some people have addictive personalities. They can get addicted to all sorts of things - including food, hobbies, sex, TV, and web surfing. The term "Internet addiction" refers to nothing new or interesting. It's just much harder for individuals who would otherwise be stuck doing useful work to get money hyping an article about, say, the scourge of turnip addiction.
Marketing types still don't understand the Internet but think it's very cool and sexy, which is why semiliterate babbling can get published if you remember to include "Internet" or "web" at regular intervals.
Sometime last spring an Australian reseller magazine interviewed the VP in charge of software at IBM. One of the questions they asked was why IBM hadn't killed OS/2 since they didn't seem to want to promote it.
He answered that their top 2000 OS/2 sites had generated $23,000,000,000 in the last fiscal year. Microsoft's total revenues were ~$12 billion...
Slashdot Mirror
Don't rule out cable modems just because of some stupid companies. Others are quite good - Cox here in San Diego has been extremely reliable, very responsive on billing issues and it's an order of magnitude cheaper than the significantly slower DSL the phone monopoly's pushing. Find someone in your area who's got the service you're considering and ask them....
Rob's word wrapper appears to wrap URLs, too. That should have been http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/04/12/20172 09&threshold=0&commentsort=3&mode=nested &cid=2890 without a space between mode= and nested screwing it up.
BTW - they're absolutely right when they say "There are more serious dangers in restaurants." What next? Taking care of the one in a million moron who pokes himself in the eye with a fork?
I wonder if the companies being sued can file a countersuit for poor parenting. I'd be amazed if those porn sites didn't have some sort of "You must be old enough to legally view the contents of this site" verbiage up - couldn't they sue the kid for violating their terms of usage? Besides - aren't those the sites that are supposedly making tons of money on subscriptions? What's a 14-year old doing with a credit card?
This is the same problem so many ligitation-happy people forget - the people who will follow a new law are the kind of people who wouldn't have been causing problems in the first place.
Without responsible parents new laws will be about as effective as the 65MPH speed limit unless you carry enforcement to Big-Brother levels. Of course, it's easier to pass a law than do something that actually works...
You're right, a good DJ could do so much better than that. For some reason the big stations decided we'd all be better without them and we're stuck with these overhyped wannabes. It's like they decided to take the most popular items on the menu and make a single dish from them and are wondering why "Steak mousse pasta" isn't selling well...
(Other than that, I don't think the internet should become hobbyist-only again but I do wish they were so quick to import the worst parts of TV and print.)
SSE requires an entirely new processor mode, not just a mode switch. Think "Kernel Level Support Required".
Linux is just the next hot trend for the technology groupies to infest.
Also note that an NT / Linux capable Alpha box will run your $2000 these days. Something to think about the next time Intel chips seem rather slow...
BTW - read up on FX!32. It's an emulator / translator that converts x86 to Alpha and runs at about 70% of Alpha-native performance on average, placing the Alpha as the fastest x86 system.
Isn't that what Clinton does all day?
You don't have to give a hyper-accurate location. Just report the city. If you're still worried at that point, the black helicopters will chase you down before you can run far anyway...
I've used a number of different languages (including x86 assembler, C, C++, Java, Pascal, REXX, COBOL) and while COBOL has certain pecularities so does every other language in that list. They all have their own strengths and a smart programmer picks the right language for the job.
Oh, and please RTFM before you post. COBOL was first used in the 50s, but it's no more out of date than C or Unix - the last standard was approved in 1985 and there will be another revision in 2000. It's kept pace with the times rather well.
People certainyl aren't using COBOL because it's trendy. They use COBOL because it's reliable, fast and maintainable. COBOL is actually the opposite of VB.
Besides, there's always the old standby:
- Rob is a nerd. He finds it interesting.
- You didn't pay anything to Rob. He never promised anything
- You are not the sole arbitrator of what constitutes a nerd.
Grow up - not everyone feels the same as you do. Learn to deal with it.Marketing types still don't understand the Internet but think it's very cool and sexy, which is why semiliterate babbling can get published if you remember to include "Internet" or "web" at regular intervals.
Sometime last spring an Australian reseller magazine interviewed the VP in charge of software at IBM. One of the questions they asked was why IBM hadn't killed OS/2 since they didn't seem to want to promote it.
He answered that their top 2000 OS/2 sites had generated $23,000,000,000 in the last fiscal year. Microsoft's total revenues were ~$12 billion...