Usually the problem is something like, "it isn't giving me the newest driver" or simply the poor quality of the drivers in the first place. (For awhile there, if I clicked on the start button, it would cause my screen to reset!) And a lot of "your driver stopped responding so we turned it off, then back on again."

In some ways, I like that the drivers are being pushed to me automatically, but at the same time, if I'm doing multiple reinstalls in a single day, I've already downloaded the drivers... I don't need them to be downloaded YET AGAIN, every install...

(1) Do it under layers and layers and layers and layers. And have a cod.

Seriously, I can not take you anywhere.

I have to agree.

One of the "You Have Arrived" indicators for success for a technical person in Silicon Valley is not having to wash your T-Shirts unless you want to keep them, because you are getting, on average, a new T-Shirt every day or so. It's a lot less that way these days, but you could, if you are sought after technically, go an entire month without doing laundry, and wear one to two T-shirts a day, with little effort to solicit shirts.

I had an intern in a button-down collar, at Google, engage me in the following conversation:

Intern: "Who's the old guy in the T-shirt"
Me: "Vint Cerf"
Intern: "Is he the token really old guy? Why do they keep him around?"
Me: "He invents things. He's a Distinguished Engineer."
Intern: (not hearing the Caps) "Like what?"
Me: "The Internet."
Intern: "Yeah, but what on the internet?"
Me: "That's it. He invented the Internet."
Intern: "You're shitting me!"
Me: "Someone had to. Do you really need me to explain who Vint Cerf is? Because if that's true, I'm willing to do the job, but you should probably 'us' it."
Intern: "What's 'us it' mean?"
Me "Google it."

Frankly I expected defibrillators would be involved at that point, but he recovered.

He moved to machine learning after that, but I think the lesson improved him.

Fuzzing is useless, if you can't reproduce the bug.

It's the same as saying "There's a bug in there *somewhere*, but I will be damned if I can tell you where!".

Eng: "You mean 'It's broke'?"

Test: "Yeah."

Eng: "Thank you very F'ing much!"

Test: "What are you typing?"

Eng: "I'm closing your bug as 'Can not reproduce'; there: done!"

I say we rename it.

I vote for "The Ralph Wiggum Is Really A Genius He Just Has Not Been Educated Forcefully Enough Act".

Because, as we all know, everyone is educable; you're just not trying hard enough if they fail,because all failure is the fault of society, and no blame rests with the child.

My big question now...

Can I still run the debugger on running binaries, or does the debugger now need work done on it?

Same question, but for core dumps.

My experience dressing down at a business meeting:

I was one of three technical persons presenting to the customer. I didn't go first, so there was no initialization bias. Everyone was in business casual, but me; I was wearing khaki pants, but I was also wearing my "turtle" Hawaiian shirt I had picked up in St. Croix on recent vacation. Anytime the customers had a technical question, even when someone else was presenting, they asked it, and then looked at me to answer the question.

Dressing down at a business meeting means one of two things:

(1) They are the customer in the room; if you are there for a customer meeting, and it's not technical, then the person dressed down is the actual customer. Forget the guys in the suits, they are not the customer. They will ask questions, but the answers will ultimately be judged by the decision maker. The person who looks like they just stepped off the golf course or off the windsurfer? She or he is the decision maker. This is emphasized if the meeting doesn't start until they arrive.

(2) They are the technical talent; they don't dress up, because they don't have to. If you want a technical question answered, they are the person who will give you the answer that's going to stick. If they follow up someones else's answer with a "Well...", you'd better listen.

We all have our uniforms.

P.S.: Highly technical fields require that you forget everything but the intellectual problem in front of you; you can't do that to the same depth, if your collar is constrictive, or you can't otherwise ignore your physicality. It's the clothing equivalent of working in an Open Plan Office: the distractions detract from the work product.

You're asking like you will be implementing it... don't.

Gather all their requirements, gather your requirements on top of it (I'm pretty confident that some of those requirements were your additions for "you'd be an idiot to have that, but not also have this...", possibly including the backup).

Then put out an Preliminary RFP to the major storage vendors, including asking them what they'd say you'd missed in the preliminary.

Then take the recommendations they make on top of the preliminary with a grain of salt, since most of them will be intended to insure vendor lock-in to their solution set, revise the preliminary, and put out a final RFP.

Then accept the bid that you like which management is willing to approve.

Problem solved.

P.S.: You don't have to grow everything yourself from seed you genetically modify yourself, you know...

At Facebook, it's memcached, with an HDD backup, eventually put onto tape...

At Google, it's a ramdisk, backed up to SSD/HDD, eventually put onto tape...

For anyone who can't afford half a petabyte of RAM with the commensurate number of computers? I have no good ideas... except maybe RAM cache of SSD, cache of HDD, backed up on tape...

Using something like HDFS to store your data in a Hadoop cluster of file requests, is likely the best F/OSS solution you're going to get for that...

Brilliant riposte. Not.

The judge went out of his way to state what type of argument he would accept.

Three times.

He gave as broad a hint as he could possibly have given, by dismissing all but the path to the argument for which he would rule in favor.

He put a big red sign in front of it, and then he tied a bow around it for the plaintiff.

He came dangerously close to judicial misconduct in so doing.

Then he left the door open from February, 2011, when he did all the pointing in his ruling, until December 2011, at which point it was clear that the hint was not being taken, and only then did he dismiss the last count of the class.

And *STILL* the PS3 plaintiffs failed to make the case the judge all but asked them to make.

Pardon me, but JESUS F*ING CHRIST, CAN YOU NOT TAKE A JUDICIAL HINT IN *TEN* MONTHS?!?!?

A lawyer would have to either be incompetent, guilty of malpractice, or outright corrupt to not make the argument the judge wanted them to make, after the number of times the judge tried to hit them over the head with a two by four, and tell them how to make their case, and then gave them TEN MONTHS to avoid getting a new judge, rather than a judge who had, effectively, promised to take the argument, if made, and rule in favor of the plaintiff!

Who is the "f*ckwit" here, again?

Here's how it's still legal...

The people who put on the PS3 3.2.1 lawsuit failed to hold forth a legal theory under which Sony was liable. Therefore, there is no case law in which a party was enjoined from doing what nVidia is now doing.

This is not to say that there is *not* a legal theory; only that the PS3 class action idiots failed to put one forth. I can think of several theories that would apply; several of them bear on the insistence these companies have on treating intellectual property as real property:

(1) An easement is a non-possessory right to use and/or enter onto the real property of another without possessing it. Sounds like a software license, doesn't it? In this particular case, the right to run the old software on the nVidia device -- or the right to run "Other OS" on a PS3 device -- would be either an implied easement (based on the practices and customs of use for a property), or an "easement by necessity", or easement by prior use.

(1)(a) The strongest claim for an implied easement in the case of a firmware update would be for persons who have had prior use of the easement (in the PS3 case, it means that you must have loaded an "other OS"; in the nVidia case, it means you must have periodically used or relied upon the features being removed).

(1)(b) The next strongest claim for an implied easement would be the intent of the parties; what was the intent nVidia had, when they shipped the features being removed in the update? What was the intent of the person purchasing the device, prior to the removal of the feature, and their expectation of non-removal, if any? Similarly, in the PS3 case, what was the intent of Sony in offering "Other OS"? Was it to drive sales, such that they received benefit from it? What was the intent of the person when they purchased the PS3? Was it only to run "Other OS" (in which case, not updating the firmware is not an issue), or was it use of both the "Other OS" feature *and* the features that would be removed as a result of *not* updating the firmware?

(1)(c) An Easement by necessity could be established in the PS3 case for "Other OS"; like a land-locked parcel without access to a public way, necessity may be established if there was no other way to reach the parcel *and* there was some original intent to provide access to the parcel. This argument would only be likely to be usable by someone who had in fact used "Other OS" on a periodic or regular basis. Given that I do not have the entire laundry list of features that currently exist which will and/or will not be lost when the nVidia update is declined, I can't state for a certainty one way or another whether this could apply in the nVidia case as well.

(1)(d) An Easement by prior use. You would be unlikely to be able to establish this in the PS3 or nVidia cases, given that three of the five elements to establish such an easement are not present: (i) common ownership, (ii) severance, (iii) continued use after severance. It bears mentioning, however, because the threshold for the definition of "necessity" is more lenient than in (1)(c), and a clever lawyer could /potentially/ construct an argument.

OK, what other theories are there?

(2) "Intentionally blocked view"; if your neighbor intentionally and with forethought, built a fence, or plants trees/bamboo that subsequently block your view, and thereby devalued your property or your enjoyment thereof; the legal term for this varies, but it's often called a "spite fence".

(2)(a) The "spite fence" argument, is clearly applicable in the Sony PS3 case, since you would lose access to existing features of the device should you *not* install the firmware update, and lose access to existing features if you *do* install the update could likely be easily construed by the court, especially with a little prompting as "malicious intent" -- a key factor required for judgement on your behalf. Again, I don't know if you could make an "either or" case with the nVidia update -- bu I expect you could, for people who bought the device after the update announcement, before the update was released, and the terms on the loss of the games revealed, on the basis of the forward compatibility.

All in all: the PS3 class action guys should have done a better job.

Technically, you can. There are three methods:

1. A surety bond

2. Funds deposited with the state

3. Certificate of self-insurance

Check with your local DMV to see which of these options are available; all three are accepted in California. Most multiple DUI offender movie stars utilize surety bonds.