Right. Good work, son.

Now come back and see me when you have a solution that can profitably be applied to $0.50 laptop speakers.

Look, don't code. Don't encourage your kids or students to code. It'll make those who do more valuable. Do mechanics worry about everyone on the planet knowing how to fix their car? Do carpenters spend countless hours navel-gazing about bringing carpentry to school children and girls and the average CEO? Do HVAC specialists?

Look, I don't code either (unless you count hacking Perl every few years "coding"). I don't encourage kids to code.

But not because it makes those who can/do code more valuable, because that's closer to eugenics than my username might suggest I'm comfortable with.

And yet, I am mechanically-inclined. I fix my own cars. I fix other people's cars. Professionally? No. (Could probably be a "real mechanic" if I wanted to be, but I'm OK with it being a hobby.)

And when I'm saving some friend $400 on a simple front brake rotor/pad replacement, I implore them to help. To kneel down on the stones with me, and at least see what I'm doing...and turn wrenches if they're game for that. It's easy and very straight-forward work, and anyone should be able to do it themselves.

Household HVAC is also simple. I learned enough in a couple of months as a grunt under a brilliant mechanical engineer working on HVAC that there is no mystery to the why's and how's of it.

But coding? Coding is closer to painting a portrait or a landscape, than it is to automotive or HVAC repair.

When I start working on a car, I have constants: The car itself is a (big, expensive) constant. The problem that I'm solving is a constant. Normally the only variables are the cost, quality, and availability of parts.

When I start hacking Perl, I have few constants. I have a problem to solve, which may or may not be constant. And I have so many options for dealing with that problem that it's a creative process moreso than an iterative process.

So, I guess: Should people try to teach other people (kids, perhaps) how to code? Yes, they should try to do so, if only to allow their minds to know what creative opportunities they might have in the world.

Should it be pushed and required? No, or at least no more-so than sculpting, painting, or sketching or [...]. Art is useful to some people, and coding is also useful to some people. Most people aren't good at these things.

Should it be squandered so that existing coders, or those who find it naturally on their own, are allowed to be in (artificial) demand? No. Knowledge should never be squandered: If it's really easy enough that anyone can do it, then we're doing ourselves a disservice by not showing everyone how to do it.

No art has ever been advanced through being purposefully reluctant to share information.

Because you can redistribute them with your software to allow it to be installed on windows systems that don't yet have those components. That doesn't mean you are allowed to redistribute them in other contexts.

Indeed. From here (which I picked at random after typing "microsoft redistributable license" into Google -- this particular one being for .NET Framework)

NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALID EULA FOR ANY "OS PRODUCT" (MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98, WINDOWS ME, WINDOWS NT 4.0 (DESKTOP EDITION), WINDOWS 2000 OPERATING SYSTEM, WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL AND/OR WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION), YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO INSTALL, COPY OR OTHERWISE USE THE OS COMPONENTS AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER THIS SUPPLEMENTAL EULA.

That said, I have an old XP license.

So it's not a problem for me in the first world, nor might it be a problem in the third world where such license is likely to be glued to the side of the computer.....

(IANAL, etc)

Given that Dell has full control over the amount of power being used to drive the speakers, they have no excuse for throwing too much at them.

That's a little bit short-sighted.

Without knowing the nature of the failure, it's impossible to say what the problem actually is. Were the loudspeakers destroyed through mechanical stress or thermal stress?

Limiting the power output of an amplifier for the purpose of preventing loudspeaker damage is not a trivial thing to do.

In terms of damage, loudspeakers don't care (within reason and obvious mechanical limits) about instantaneous power. They care about long-term heating.

If you just clip the signal, you generate an approximation of a squarewave (which loudspeakers hate): This reduces peak power (which isn't normally a problem), and increases average power (which is always a problem), and reduces cooling, AND it sounds terrible (though some listeners seem to not care). Clipping, therefore, at any stage -- including within software (ala VLC), or even during the recording process -- is a problem.

If you add a simple limiter, you've got the same problems all over again, although with less harmonic distortion: Peak power goes down, but average power stays high. Voice coils cook.

If you add a complicated multiband limiter that understands heating, you might have a shot at solving it, but you're into real money in engineering dollars and DSP parts....over some $.50 laptop speakers.

That all said, companies have been selling and folks have been buying integrated audio systems for well over half a decade. If this is 1949 and I crank up my RCA tube set so I can listen to music in the garden and cook the loudspeaker, that's my fault -- not RCA's fault. The best I can hope is that RCA is willing to sell me a replacement speaker at a reasonable price.

Same with a 1980s Fisher "rack system," or a wall full of modern Krell and Martin Logan gear. Or any random boombox. And, I dare say, a laptop.

It is traditionally the job of the listener to ensure that an audio system is performing within its limitations, and not the job of the audio system to protect itself from the listener.

If I crank VLC up to 120 or 200% or whatever the maximum is, and it starts clipping samples and generating square waves, and I turn the other volume controls up so I can hear that distorted drone over the drone of my hot tub, and something breaks...gosh, I guess I'm going to say that it was my own fault for not hearing the plain and obvious distortion that was occurring, and you know, just turn things down. Just as with any other audio system, big or small.

Back to legal stuff: The Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act does not protect consumers from their own stupidity. If I drop my Jeep down a 4-foot embankment and break a front control arm, that's my own dumb fault -- it's certainly not the manufacturer's fault for failing to ensure that I would be unable to perform such maneuvers in MY Jeep (yes, emphasis: If I owned a Jeep, it would be MINE).

HOWEVER, what MMWA does do is ensure that if the manufacturer suspects that a failure is due to end-user modification, that the the onus is on the manufacturer to prove that this is the case. I can be rock-crawling in my Jeep with its trick aftermarket suspension, and if the engine dies from a broken pushrod, it's the manufacturer's responsibility to prove that it's either not a warranted fault OR that my modifications caused the pushrod to break.

Likewise, the onus is on Dell to prove that some software (such as VLC) caused the failure...or that the speakers aren't warranted to begin with due to signs of abuse. Dismissing a warranty claim out-of-hand because of the software installed on a computer, or the shocks on a Jeep (even IF it might be the case that the software did in fact cause the problem, as VLC might be capable of doing) is illegal in all 50 states.

Just as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, for every anecdote there is an equal and opposite anecdote. See also: Quantum entanglement.

That said, it's a lovely story that you have. But what are you adding?

You're offered something for nothing at a time when you say you don't make enough money to qualify for insurance from the Exchange, and even that's not good enough?

What planet are you from? And why do you hate yourself so?

I would love to support your cause, but I need to ask you a question. What is the linux equivalent of this "go to your windows" step?

fvwm95

(To remain on topic: fvwm95 is about as about as ugly and uninspiring as /. beta. NASA itself hates fvwm95 almost as much as it hates /. beta.)

Every attempt to improve Slashdot's display -except- for the Threaded view introduced by Taco well over a decade ago has been a dismal and utter failure that nobody actually likes.

Even those that thought they liked the previous round of UI "improvements" because they had never seen Slashdot in its glory breath a sigh of relief when shown how to enable "Classic" with the old D1 discussion system.

Seriously, Dice: We're all leaving once "beta" becomes the only reality. We'll build something else. And we'll slashdot every article with comments telling folks about the new place, and moderate all such comments as "Informative" while moderating any topicful commentary as "Offtopic."

Once we find a new place to hang out (and we will -- many hands make light work), we'll all be doing our best to destroy whatever value the ghost of Slashdot might have once had.

Do you know how I know that this will happen? Because this is the first time that the folks on Slashdot have actually agreed on anything, ever, in the history of these pages. It is an unprecedented and historic event. And any time you get this number of disagreeable people disagreeing in unison, change is inevitable.

Fuck your beta.

I'd have modded you up, but already posted a "fuck beta" comment.

As you and another poster correctly pointed out, a which tap-tap of the highbeams serves primarily as a warning. It could mean that there is a carcass of a semi tire strewn all over the roadway, that there is a large animal meandering about, that there is a pedestrian on the shoulder, or a dark parked car, or a big rock, or a couch, or standing water, or ice, or something -- anything -- that the oncoming traffic should be alerted to. (Yes, even a cop.)

Laws be damned, it's simply communication. And it primarily serves to say "Hey stranger, look out ahead."

Fuck beta.

Medicaid, at least in my part of the country, is administered by private companies.

When I dealt with them recently, it was the same sort of game as choosing any other insurance provider. I got to pick a plan that best suited my family's needs and which allowed us to see the same doctors we would normally see -- just like choosing most private insurance these days.

The main difference that I could detect between medicaid and private insurance was that the premium was $0.