Still, even a partial solution (e.g. one that matches the train's GPS location, if known, against a table of specified maximum-safe-under-any-circumstances speed limits for that location) would prevent a train wreck in certain cases (such as the recent one that prompted this article). I'm all for full PTC, but I don't think the perfect needs to be made the enemy of the good here.

They suffer from a condition called "being human". It causes occasional failures in an otherwise operational controller-human, some very small percentage of the time. Even the highest-quality controller-humans have a non-zero failure rate.

That is actually a pretty good idea, and it's more or less what PTC is intended to do, at least as far as the "avoid accidents" part of the job is concerned. Automating things further than that is also possible, although probably not really necessary.

I'm actually dishing out good advice, not that it does any good here. Oils are cheap. Mine still pay out 4%. Heck, Intel is cheap. Very few people that I have met have ever grasped the concept of compounded rate of return. Ah, well, makes life easier of those of us who do.

Online copies are just RAID done at the file level instead of the block level. The reason that RAID is not considered a substitute for a backup is that user error or a compromise can damage all online storage. If your backups are online, they are not backups, they're just redundancy.

A gasoline odor coming from a car? That NEVER happens, despite an 8 - 30 gallon tank of gasoline being in the car. It sure is grounds for probable cause. >_>

(in case you missed it: NOT)

and I suppose the M3800 is glued together like the newer Macbooks, making it near impossible even for seasoned techs to replace without warping or breaking parts during disassembly or at least baking the crap out of it with a heat gun?

> Worst thing ever. White-LED backlight. Why? Shit color gamut with RGB. White LEDs are near-blackbody in emission spectrum, have been for ages.

That would be true if white LEDs didn't have a very notchy color spectrum. The whole point of RGB-LEDs is that they cover the full Adobe color gamut. White LED backlights do not. Read up on backlight tech - RGB-LED is acknowledged as the best backlight. To get better you need a plasma screen (unworkable in a laptop unless you want crap battery life)

I don't buy the Facebooks or the Teslas. Sentiment stocks dangerous. When these companies crater, and the rest of the market with them, I will be waiting with cash to buy big oil, big pharma, industrials..., just like in 2008. I am getting rich doing this.

Oh other things I have done to the notebook:

* Upgraded to a Core 2 Quad Extreme (did that a week after buying the notebook - as usual it was many hundreds cheaper to buy the upgraded processor separately so I ordered it with a mid-range Core 2 Duo)
* Replaced both heat sink thermal transfer pads with copper shims when I replaced the motherboard after the lightning strike (and of course cleaned ALL of the dust out of every nook and cranny of the notebook while I had it torn down to the bare chassis)
* About six months ago the screen hinge FINALLY started to loosen up so I disassembled the screen assembly to tighten all the internal screws on the screen frame. Feels like new.
* Upgraded to hybrid hard drives about six years ago (so, not long after buying the laptop)
* Upgraded the RAM about four years ago

Aside from the above all I've done since is maintain the Windows 7 install (including defrag of MFT and shrinking/defragging registry hives) and update the Linux install (OpenSUSE - my preferred Linux distro for workstations). The processor is still plenty fast for sysadmin work, and even for software builds on occasion.

It has what is by far the best laptop screen I've used - and I do credit that to the RGB-LED backlight array, I've worked with newer Precisions, HPs, Asus, Lenovo, and other desktop/workstation replacement and gaming laptops and none of the screens compare. :-(

I'd like to see a real upgrade to the m6x00 line (their 17" mobile workstations). I am still running an M6400 Precision Mobile Workstation. Why? Because I like a full keyboard, dual pointer options, and the 17" screen. I check the Precision lineup every few weeks hoping an upgrade comes out. The problem with the current models is that they are downgrades; the laptop I have has a WUXGA (1920x1200) RGB-LED backlit display while the current models top out at 1080p, with white LED edgelights. I want to see them go back to the RGB-LED backlight, and more importantly, offer a 1440p or higher resolution display.

They manage to offer WQXGA+ (3200x1800) and UHD (4K) displays in the 15" models - why are those of us who want the flagship 17" worksation left out in the cold when it comes to decent screens now? I also checked the Alienware line (since they're pretty much Precisions/Latitudes with a gamer case and gaming video card rather than the Quadro line) but even they top out at 1080p in the 17" model.. :-(

Until Dell gets their act together with screen offerings on the m6x00 I'll keep my M6400 going. It paid for itself hundreds of times over and it is still going strong. I did have to replace the motherboard after a lightning strike but other than that it has been absolutely flawless. It's dropped from a 4' high ledge onto a tiled concrete floor while running and never skipped a beat; you cannot tell it was ever dropped and the hard drives scanned clean and STILL scan clean (SMART long test and surface scans with CHKDSK and fsck respectively) to this day. It's been an absolute tank for me, and aside from video resolution and video performance (I can't really use it for current games, plus it'd be nice to drive an external 3D display when at home) I am still very happy with it. I am still even on the original battery and still get decent life (almost two hours - when new it would get almost three hours) with the thing. :-)

Dell please throw m6x00 customers a bone - offer a 1440p or higher resolution display, then shut up and take my money.

15" laptops? Not interested. I like larger screen models (since it allows for close to full-size keyboards) with as high of a resolution as possible.

The India space program is JV at best.

<Morbo>Touch screens do not work that way! Good night!</Morbo>

There were a few things (GDI handles and suchlike) that had very small limits. Once you exhausted them, the system was basically unusable. There was a little program you could run that would show the number allocated vs allowed. By the time you'd launched one program, they were normally 60-90% gone.

These two are related. OS/2 needed 16MB of RAM to be useable back when I had a 386 that couldn't take more than 5MB (1MB soldered onto the board, 4x1MB matched SIMMs). Windows NT had the same problem - NT4 needed 32MB as an absolute minimum when Windows 95 could happily run in 16 and unhappily run in 8 (and allegedly run in 4MB, but I tried that once and it really wasn't a good idea). The advantage that Windows NT had was that it used pretty much the same APIs as Windows 95 (except DirectX, until later), so the kinds of users who were willing to pay the extra costs could still run the same programs as the ones that weren't.

I never ran 3.0 on a 386 to try that. On Windows 3.1 it wouldn't work, because the OS required either (286) protected mode or (386) enhanced mode. Running 3.0 on a 386, the DOS prompt would use VM86 mode (yes, x86 has had virtualisation support for a long time, but only for 16-bit programs). Windows 3.0 could run in real mode, so would work inside VM86 mode. In real mode, it didn't have access to VM86 mode (no nested virtualisation), so probably couldn't start again.