Me too! I also find the foot pedal hard to use.

I've sort-of never had one die - I had one get loud as heck and need to be replaced, but it was still technically functioning. I've also had one stop, but after sucking the dust and spider webs out of it and the rest of the machine with a shop vac it started right up again. I've also replaced one where it didn't fix the problem (north bridge overheating, and I think it was shorting out).

Wish there were such an option for laptops. I replace mine due to critical component failure (usually display and/or graphics card) every 2-3 years. The last one lasted only 1 year and 3 days (3 days out of warranty) before having critical component failure (graphics card), but then I read if you pull it apart and push the nVidia card into the board, it fixed the problem. It did, but after having to do this every time I travel, some of the ribbon cables broke. Now it only works with a separate keyboard (some keys work, but not all) and mouse (the trackpad ribbon cable broke completely).

So far for laptops: ASUS (display), HP (display), ASUS (graphics card, and a known problem with that model - still sort of works as a desktop), Dell (power supply and disk drive, probably fried by the bad PSU, replaced under warranty twice within 6 months of purchase and then I sold the lemon before it was a year old). I'm on my third ASUS so we'll see how that goes. So far it is the best laptop I've ever owned both in construction and stability.

Hmm... my wife had a computer die due to its watch-like rechargeable battery on the motherboard failing (and the motherboard wouldn't start without it). That was an easy fix, at least. I diagnosed that one when the computer wouldn't keep proper time before it failed entirely.

I've had laptops die due to battery failure, but usually removing the battery got them working again. Not very useful for portability, but at least they worked.

Hmm... well I have a nearly decade old box running an OCZ power supply. Tested it a few months ago (November) with a multimeter and it runs closer 3V and 12V than my 3 year old Corsair (both are close enough to not worry about, though). My ancient B&W G3 mac power supply died in late October and it tested as 2V on the 12 volt line and after I learned how to test PS using a multimeter, did it on all of my boxes.

OCZ got bought by Toshiba last year, though. Not sure if that is a bad thing or good. I think their main focus now is SSDs.

Never had a CPU fail that wasn't self-killed. Specifically, I nuked one overclocking.

Of my 3 Apple computers, all three died with power supply failures. One I didn't count in my personal inventory because it happened after I sold it to a friend, but I diagnosed the failure and he replaced the component and used it at least another 3 years. On the plus side, my Blue and White G3 ran my web server from ~2000 to 2014 before its power supply failed. It got upgraded to a G4 but was switched to Linux around 2007 due to Apple ending support. My current web server is actually running in a Linux VM (running on Linux) since I lack other available hardware and have a huge desktop machine available that hosts Windows and Linux (and has hosted a hackintosh, but does not currently).

5 power supplies, 5 hard drives, 2 video cards (one laptop), 1 north bridge (motherboard - would overheat and crash the computer every 2 minutes despite the heatsink/fan, and no, it wasn't the HS/fan, I tried replacing that), 1 fan.

Missing option - display. I've lost display on 3 laptops and only one was video card related. It wouldn't win due to my rotten luck with power supplies (at least 3 died in warranty, two of those were on laptops and ZERO were on home-built machines - all were shitty components from the likes of Dell, HP, and Apple).

I gave my vote to power supply, mainly because aside from the four Death Star (IBM Desk Star) disks that all died under warranty, the Seagate was 15 years old. None of the PS were older than 3 years.

Yeah, I didn't particularly care for Discworld, but I liked Good Omens. My wife despised Good Omens but loves most Gaiman.

With a business major boss like I've had (not currently), it'd go something like this:

Boss: We need to synergize our efficiency and put a sustainable product in the cloud. First course of action, we need a language - I've heard html5/javascript is the one to use.
Me: Everyone uses that, but Intercal would make a much better choice for us
Boss: Great! I want a dynamic prototype in the cloud by morning!
Me: No problem... writes the program in perl, leave it on my dev machine, and proxy it from a cloud site.
Boss: This is fantastic! Great job!

My current boss would laugh at that joke and force me to write it in html5/javascript (which I don't mind, it just often takes me longer than perl for quick mockups).

C++ breaks the object model by not including encapsulation, so calling it object oriented is a stretch. It also lacks a primary object. Both of those can be worked around to make it more like true OOP, but I've seen few people do it. Personally I think C++ is a bit long of the tooth and there seems to be a lot of things poorly implemented, STL being a big one - this functionality should have been built into the language, not added with abstract functions leaving us with bloated code and incomprehensible errors. For a long time those same abstract functions also caused a massive performance hit, but that is better these days (but it was horrible 20 years ago - 600% slower than non-abstract in a chunk of code I wrote because of the lookup tables according to the profiling I did).

Yep - this is my problem with this case, too. This is like if everyone that played Samba had to pay the originator of Samba to play it or Soul had to pay the originator of Soul or Blues Blues. I certainly hope they appeal and get a better jury.

I've been there - just started jamming with a band and quickly knock out four songs on the 4-track (this was a while back, lol).

OTOH, I have another piece I've been working on off-and-on for 22 years because I can't find a transition I like between two sections. It is an absolutely lovely piece with lots of transitions and closely related key changes and on my bucket list to finish and record.

I heard the same thing - at the time Al was told by Coolio's record label that Coolio was OK with it. After the fact he apologized to Coolio about it.

In any case, parody is protected free speech and he doesn't even need to get permission to do it. He can even play the same music without having to pitch a dime to the original musicians (it is considered a separate performance).

I find it absolutely stunning that this court case lost. Usually the industry's mantra is that there are only so many notes (12) and chords so the music itself is not copyrightable unless there is a very distinctive passage that is unequivocally tied to a specific song. For instance, the bass line for Under Pressure that Vanilla Ice stole for Ice Ice Baby.

Yeah, I disagree with this one after listening to both. Honestly, I'd say it was a bad parody of Marvin Gaye and since parody is protected, you owe the original artist nothing.

Technically Canon in D is I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V and all of those other ones are a shortened version I-V-vi-IV (and yes, I've seen Pachelbel rant). You can throw in P!nk (like every hit), U2 (With or Without You), Taylor Swift (at least two), Of Monsters and Men (Little Talks), Lady Gaga (like ever hit), Nickelback (like every hit) just to name a few more.

Still, I-V-vi-IV and its inversions (particularly the "sensitive singer songwriter" vi-IV-I-V) probably have been around long enough to be able to cite prior art. Kinda like the 12 bar blues. We probably can find examples of the 50s progression of I-vi-IV-V (to name a few songs, Crocodile Rock [Elton John], D'yer Mak'er [Led Zeppelin], The Man Comes Around [Johnny Cash], Every Breath You Take [the Police], Heart and Soul [Larry Clinton], Lollypop [Ronald and Ruby], Earth Angel [the Penguins]), that predate the 50s too (in fact, Heart and Soul was recorded in the 1930s and covered multiple times, especially in the 1950s).