If you've got HP blade servers and call in with something even as mundane as a hard drive or mezzanine card failure, they will often insist you upgrade the firmware before agreeing "yes the hard drive is fuxxored" and sending the replacement part. Even more ridiculous is depending on the tech they might actually ask you to update the motherboard firmware when a motherboard has failed (Um, yeah.), or the iLO firmware even though it is totally unrelated to the problem (fortunately on HP iLO/LOM updates usually don't interrupt services).

The problem with that is even though you might be able to keep the services patched (and even kernel if you use ksplice) and measure uptime in years, updating motherboard or even NIC firmware requires downtime. Even an active/active cluster can introduce down time for some users so downtime of a server is best avoided. Why update the motherboard firmware if there are no bugs blocking production or introducing security issues?

I understand why support reps go through the script and ask you to update firmware so they're dealing with what matches their one test system in their lab, but if it worked as deployed for months or years with the older firmware until the HDD or card croaked, why require a firmware update to a known-stable system before agreeing "Yup, $foo has failed, I'll dispatch a rep with the FRU within four hours" even when S.M.A.R.T reports a hugeassed list of errors, or it's simply not even powering up?

As far as drive firmware goes, I've had to update firmware only twice: once on an SSD, and once on Seagate drives which would freeze during recalibration, which would break arrays (I think it was the infamous 1.5TB drives but it's been a while).

He's not talking about the ACTUAL dress, he's talking about the photographic portrayal of a dress is the crappily exposed and presented JPG that everyone is looking at. The dress, as recorded in the JPG, is a barely-blue-tinted light grey, and the black elements have a demonstrably uneven RGB that makes them look gold (because that data represents a color low on blue ... which is to say, it's a golden hue).

It isn't ISP monopolies. It's cable monopolies. And a franchise agreement isn't a grant of a monopoly.

Franchise agreements can say a lot of things without granting a monopoly. They're a contract. But any city that handed out an exclusive franchise was stupid. If they did, it's the fault of the city, not the cable company.

I've never seen one. Every time this discussion comes up I ask for a link, but I've never seen a response. I can only attribute this repeated claim of their commonality to a misunderstanding of what a franchise actually means.

For some value of "pretty much". HFCS both changes the mix of the simple sugars by tilting it towards fructose, but it provides them in partially-digested form. That bypasses the normal first step of splitting glucose, and creates an immediate overload of the rest of the process.

Our bodies were designed to store extra energy for use later. If the carbs digest slowly then they don't swamp the system and the storage systems aren't triggered. A slower release of glucose means there isn't a heavy demand for insulin to deal with it and less stress on the pancreas, and then lower stress on the cellular insulin receptors.

It's kinda like the difference between taking a two hour walk around the park and trying to run the distance in ten minutes. If you keep making your body run the race you will wear it out faster than if you let it stroll the same distance.

USB serial port plus Zmodem and your good to go.
I don't see the big issue.

Nor are Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, or most of the other ISPs that this net neutrality bill is aimed at. In fact, the last ISP I mentioned, and which you recognized as not being in a "free market", is the one with the MOST competition and least regulation. It's a grown-up mom and pop dialup operation so there's no franchise fee or last-mile wired/wireless infrastructure to support. It resells DSL and supports Windows, mostly. Even so, they've found a convenient way to tack on the costs of regulatory compliance, which will almost certainly go up.

Claiming that the costs that will be created by compliance with the new neutrality regulations won't be passed on to the consumer because the free market won't allow it is kinda disingenuous when you realize that none of the players that will be subject to this cost are in a truly free, competitive market. They will all find a way to pass it on, either in higher rates or an added line-item fee.

I'm looking at my Comcast bill. Not only have the rates gone steadily up, but there are all kinds of add-ons: Franchise fee, PEG access fee, FCC regulatory fee. They don't have to hide the costs of reglatory compliance in the rates, they simply add a fee to recover the cost. That way the customer knows why they're paying more.

And what is the customer going to do, call Time Warner to get service?

Churn is already a market fact of life. Passing the costs of compliance with new laws onto the customer will have little effect on that. Given that anyone else that the customer can call will ALSO have those fees, there is little incentive to change. (My other ISP I use regularly has its own "Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee", too.)

Telcos got their status under other rules and long ago. Cable franchises are not government granted monopolies. The only reason there is a defacto monopoly for most cable companies is economic, not legal.

I've served on two local cable commissions and dealt with franchises. Non-exclusive means another competitor is free to enter the market, as long as they go through the same franchise process.

That may be, but when the monopoly is defacto and not dejure there is a difference in the solution.

I never had an issue with Windows 7 on a core 2.
But then a core 2 is three generations back I am talking about Sandy-Bridge or higher but even a Core2 is probably going to be just fine.
If you are talking about one of the first gen Atoms yea they where terrible but modern ones are pretty good.

If your fiance could not afford to pay the cost of insurance before, then she was in a high-risk group where the insurance company could not afford to pay her potential claims unless she paid a higher rate. If she has insurance now that she can afford, then you know that she's being subsidized somehow.

Here's the definition of "subsidy" as used by the exchange:

Subsidies are "subsidized" by the federal government and are paid for through taxes.

So, while you think you are "paying your way", and while you aren't getting a tax credit or other federal subsidy, your fiance truly is being subsidized by all the lower risk participants in her plan. Just because the taxpayers as a whole aren't subsidizing her healthcare, a lot of other people are. That includes the guy whose rates went up because of ACA who thinks you owe him a "thank you".

I'm responding to your claim that her insurance coverage isn't subsidized. You brought it up, not me. Truth is a reasonable straw to cling to.

This sounds very much like Icom's way dealing with their "open" D-Star protocol. The protocol definition is open but the chip to actually implement is it closed and single-sourced.

And I hate to say, if it's open for hams, then the Chinese will have it before most hams do. Do you ever wonder why the early Chinese amateur knock-offs worked very much like existing amateur radios? And why FTDI felt compelled to release a windows driver update that bricked a lot of USB/serial adapters? (I.e., whatever part of your hardware is closed they'll just reverse engineer.) It would be a shame if you have to dedicate a large part of your income from this to paying lawyers to deal with Chinese IP infringement.

It worked; the economy is dead.

Windows 10 has windows that look like they're from Windows 1.0, with icons that look like they're from OS/2 2.0.

Wow, that's a pretty stupid idea for a metric currency system. Can't get rid of the nickel AND the dime.