PalmOS is a rather antiquated system. No memory protection, no native multitasking, clunky APIs...

Depending on your personality type and the coding experience you have, it's either going to be a TON of fun, or you're going to want to smash and break things on the very first night.

Or maybe both. :) I don't have any pointers, but as a former Palm OS user, godspeed.

(Palm IIIxe from 2000-2005, Palm Treo 650 from 2005 to 2009)

Have these problems actually been happening a lot?

When I first started to help manage a computer lab, I was concerned users would behave really badly and do horrible things. The truth is, very few users did, and we just talked to those users and told them how to behave.

If you get the occasional repeatedly defiant user, locking out their account can be the final solution. But most people (at least at our site) aren't jerks and listen. Most "bad things" are due more to incompetence than malice, and educating students is easy.

Also, as someone with experience in these matters, allow me to recommend AGAINST Fedora for production systems. I like to call Fedora the self-breaking distro; updates break things CONSTANTLY. You're much better off running Ubuntu (even non-LTS is more stable than Fedora) or the RHEL clones like CentOS or Scientific Linux.

It must be horrifyingly frustrating to work for a company like Verizon as a tech, know that you can fix a problem by adding a few more links between two switches, and being told my management that you cannot because of idiotic reasons.

I'd be half tempted to just fix the issue behind their back, but then of course I'd likely be fired for insubordination!

Imagine that, fired for improving network performance. Might even be worth it if the tech doing it had another job lined up at a company that isn't as evil.

Or even a low end receiver. You don't HAVE to use all the fancy featues. And as an added bonus, most receivers have toslink inputs so you can avoid analog signal degradation between the computer and amplifier.

Any money spent on a sound card is better off spent on speakers and a good DAC, which often come together.

High end sound systems and speaker systems these days have digital inputs, thus an onboard DAC. If you're using a digital output on your motherboard to connect to a digital input on the speaker, the onboard sound card has ZERO effect on the quality of the audio. The bits are traveling directly, unmolested from the application generating them to the amplifiers in the speakers.

Now, if you have audiophile-type equipment that uses analog inputs, then YES, the analog sound you feed into those inputs needs to come from a high quality DAC. High end sound cards tend to have good DACs, but you can get the same effect by using an outboard DAC, which has a digital input and analog outputs, and is also AWAY from your PC, so your analog audio is less likely to be affected by interference from the motherboard or power supply.

You can get DACs with USB inputs, but USB adds latency so is best avoided for gaming. For music, go to town with a USB DAC; it won't matter there.

The gist of it is, the most important component is the DAC. The DAC completely determines the quality. Everything else is just hype. :)

...one good thing DID come out of this. We now know that DC are a bunch of heartless asses.

I guess finding this out is good for society. Makes me want to be their customer less, that's for sure.

It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

If they had not asked, DC probably would never have noticed that their logo was used there. On top of that, even if they had, I doubt they would have acted on it. Suing a grieving family over a harmless supposed trademark violation isn't too good for the company's reputation.

If they tried to use the logo now, after having been denied permission, DC would probably have no choice but to sue since this is in the public spotlight.

This would have been a total non-issue had they just done it and not asked anyone or publicized it.

Anyone else getting tired of sites demanding that you log in to see photos?

I don't care if it's a FREE account; I'm not going through the trouble of making an account I'll never use again just to see some photos!

Whoever came up with this practice needs to be forced to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special on infinite repeat. With the Boba Fett cartoon cut out.

I may be the product for Google, which provides services for free, but last I heard, you have to pay for Windows.

If I'm paying for it, I'm the customer. Done. If they think otherwise, I will simply continue to not use Windows.

I know, ridiculous, right?

Microsoft could have avoided all this mess by simply listening to people who were beta testing and using 8 and complaining about the horrible start screen. I'm sure they got PILES of feedback, but they were so stubborn they even went out of their way to keep people from bringing back the traditional start menu.

What happened to listening to your customers? To providing options? Historically MS has always been all about that, and *Apple* has been the "our way, or the highway" company. It was really strange to see things reversed for Windows 8.

Also, MS really should break free of their "we are the only OS that exists" philosophy. Other operating systems support a wide variety of filesystems and networking protocols out of the box. Windows still only supports its own and assumes nothing else exists. It's time to knock that shit off, Microsoft.

The problem is simple:

1) Old boxes just won't die.
2) Cable companies don't want to replace equipment unless they absolutely have to.

Comcast still supports the old VCR-sized, power guzzling GeneralInstruments/Motorola cable boxes that they gave out when digital cable just started. These fuckers are huge, heavy, consume ridiculous amounts of energy and spew out tons of heat.

I had one for a few years in the early 00s until I got rid of cable.

They don't even support HD, they're THAT old. Yet there's still millions of them out there, mostly owned by people who don't care about HD, and they won't be replaced until they die or the cable company stops supporting them, which is likely to be not until they do die. Good luck with that.

Telling people that you'll come arrest them when they speak out against you is admitting that you're not acting in the best interest of the people. Hence people will be less likely to support you in the long run than if you just allow and *gasp* maybe even listen to criticism.

These people act more like playground bullies than adults governing a nation. It's pretty sad and despicable. Imagine if they just came out and said "You may say whatever you like about us; tell us how you really feel. No harm will ever befall you for stating your opinion." The good will that would generate would be FAR more effective than arresting those who disagree with you!

I recall that back in the day, when people started charging for computer software, it was treated as a book. If you paid for the book, it was yours and you could use it for whatever you want.

Then someone came along and decided that copying the software from disk into memory was considered copyright infringement, and thus you needed a license to do so. Hence the software license and all its associated pain in the ass restrictions was born.

So basically, these idiots are trying to use the same concept to add additional legal hurdles to simply browsing the web. At least this time, unlike back in the day with software, sanity ended up being victorious.

We had an OCZ drive fail at work and kill the iMac it was installed in.

Yes, KILL. The machine would no longer power up at all.

At that moment we didn't know it was drive's fault, so we moved the drive to a different iMac. (These are older iMacs, out of warranty.)

*POP* a second dead iMac.

I will NEVER buy an OCZ product as long as I live. I don't know how the heck the drive killed the machine, and I have no easy way to find out. Maybe I'll sacrifice an ancient PC to see if the drive kills it as well.

MMS has been around for many years. Google really has no excuse to not support receiving it.

This is entirely Google's fault.