I say the whole thing is BS. Let's break this down...

I never had any of the drives that exhibited the dreaded "click of death" - implies that he's owned more than one zip/jaz drive.
but once I was foolish enough to buy a CD-RW drive made by someone else but in an Iomega box - so he got a Mitsubishi or other OEM drive that happened to have an Iomega face plate? In that case he should be bitching about the OEM manufacturer. Or does he really mean just the "box", as in, it's a TEAC drive, but the cardboard box said Iomega and you said, "Seems legit"? In which case, you should really be bitching about TEAC.
I later learned that the manufacturer had firmware updates for their version - So there was a fix for the hardware
but even years later there were never firmware fixes offered for the Iomega version - But since the "box" said Iomega, he waited until Iomega said go. Unknown if he tried the drivers of "someone else".
First and last thing with the Iomega name on it that I'll ever buy. - Because the box it comes in is all that matters.

Nope... doesn't add up.

Personally, I've owned and used the parallel version of zip and it worked great on both Mac and PC. Installed a few IDE versions of the zip and they worked like a charm too. Recently had to fire up a system with the internal zip, and out of 10 disks I tried reading, only one failed to be read. And it's possible that that disk was a left over Mac format.

I miss the old zip disks but they didn't scale, weren't as portable, and cost more than the up-and-coming USB flash disks.

So anything that benefits me is 'income' and therefore taxable? What kind of strawman thinking is that?

I get Vitamin D benefit from the sun - not income
I get oxygen benefit from the trees - not income
I get psychological benefit from people smiling at me - not income
I get the benefit of time and enhanced productivity when people hold open the door for me - not income
I get nutritional benefit when I buy lunch - not only not income, but an expense!
I listen to a CD a friend let me borrow to help me relax - not only not income, but a possible fine of up to $22,000 and jail time!

Just because you get something out of it, doesn't make it an income.

"Hi, this is the Microsoft Vacuum Inspection Division. I see you're trying to turn on your vacuum. Let me just double check to make sure everything is in order."

"Oh? That's cool. So you're looking for defects, making sure that my device is going to give me a great experience?"

"Ah... yeah... no. That's not what we do."

"Oh. Well then you're going to double check the settings to make sure that I'm not using the wood floor setting on my shag rug, right?"

"Not so much."

"Are you at least going to make sure that the filter is installed correctly and warn me that it needs replacing?"

"No, but we will make sure that you're using official Microsoft Filters. Use of any other brand will void your warranty and cause the vacuum to overheat and burn a red ring into your carpet."

"I see. Well, speaking of carpet, I had to change out the wheels because the default wheels keep getting snagged on my rug. But I figure, I'm only vacuuming my own rug so it's no big deal."

"Oh? Is that so? Guess we're done here."

"Thanks for stopping by! Time to get back to... Hey... How come my vacuum doesn't work any more? I can turn it on, but nothing is getting clean."

"Since you modified the vacuum, that would give an unfair advantage to your abilities, so we had to stop you from using your vacuum."

"Unfair advantage? I'm cleaning my house. My own house! What does that give me an advantage over?"

"I'm sorry but we need to make sure that all customers of the SuckBox 720 have the same experience. Allowing you to use yours would cause problems if you ever vacuumed with your friends."

"Vacuumed with..? You really think I'm going to bring this to a friends house and have a race of who can do suck dirt better?"

"Sorry, but your vacuum is equipped with an Always-On Dirt Regulator Mechanism to prevent tampering so Microsoft can monitor vacuums to make sure no one is cheating or trying to give a bad experience to other owners."

"How do I cheat at vacuuming? And it's just MY OWN F'N CARPET! Who cares how I do it? Fine. I'll put the old wheels back."

"Sorry. But your vacuum has been marked as banned and will never work on our system again. If you wish to purchase a new vacuum, we will allow you get back on-line. However, we also flagged your registration information, and the credit card used to buy the vacuum. You'll have to register under a different name and use a different credit card or your new vacuum will be deactivated also."

"Hello, big name electronics store? I'd like to order a DysonStation 4..."

Yes, yes you are deceiving people.

Someone comes in and says, "I need help with this." They are assuming that you are an Apple employee, and since you did not correct them, and you KNEW, or at least had a pretty reasonable certainty that they considered you an employee, you are deceiving them.

Now imagine the advice you gave backfired. The customer comes back and says, "Your genius said I should do this, and now my device is bricked. I demand a new one!" After someone back and forth they discover that you were not an employee, but your attire and your attitude convinced them you were. And since the customer did something that bricked the device, and it was not under the advice of a true Apple employee, the warranty is void. Or at the very least, Apple is off the hook and can choose whether or not to fix the problem.

It would have been simple to say, "Yes, I can try helping you with the problem. But just for the record, I am not an Apple Genius," for the sake of clarity and remove any possibility of deception.

The difference is simple; everything else the consumer takes on faith, but the hard drive is something quantifiable. No one is going to use an oscilloscope to double check the speed of the CPU. Nor can can they exactly check the throughput to be exactly 1GB as the numbers flux enough to cover the difference. Even memory is always abstracted enough that people can never be sure what the exact count is.

But any one can check the properties of a hard drive and see that what was labeled as 1GB is really 1GiB. As noted in someone else's post, once you start reaching Gigas, Teras, and Petas, the percent difference between the two scales is quite noticeable.

That's why woe--I can "see" the difference in this format.

Since the article is all about counting and picking nits.. Do you mean 5 lines as in 5 statements/commands, or 5 lines as in a script with 5 carriage returns/line feeds? Or should this be tomorrows article?

What the article calls math, I refer to as "Zerg Rush"

"Hack" #1: So that I'm not tethered to a wall outlet, or go off the grid, I stay up late so I can manually swap out batteries and wear out the plastic clips that holds them in. Assuming I own a phone that has changeable batteries.
Better solution #1: Buy a universal external battery charger which is usually a small box that can easily fit in your pocket with a 9-volt battery and a charging cable.

"Hack" #2: Empty an entire bookcase of books, buy a bulky and expensive holding bracket, and jury-rig the whole thing together just so I can watch a movie that I may or may not even enjoy. But at least I put some of those books to good use as a counter-balance. Although I hope I don't sit up quickly in bed and headbutt my expensive tablet.
Better solution #2a: Read one of the books on my bookcase. When tired, or when I have stopped enjoying it, put it down. Plus now I can get out of bed much easier.
Better solution #2b: If I really need to watch movies at night, but a $20 goose-neck lamp and use some bent coat hangers to suspend the tablet. Or if I don't like the movie, take the coat hanger bracket off, and use the lamp to be a bedside lamp so I can read a book. See #2a.

"Hack" #3: Buy milk crates (hey another place I can put all those books I displaced and don't read), and attach failed device from "Hack" #2.
Better solution #3a: Use a portable music player and listen to music or listen to an audio book.
Better solution #3b: Using a bungee cord and a decorative plate holder, and place the tablet over the console. You don't really need to watch the clock.
Better solution #3c: Buy a sheet music holder (under $40 for even an expensive one) and place it just in from of the elliptical. It collapses down much more compact than 4-5 milk crates.

Depending on what is being deleted, I flip-flop back and forth between commenting out chunks for a revision or two and then deleting, and just deleting. For small sections, I tend to just straight delete. In rare circumstances I'll delete but replace the code with a comment like "Used to do X here, but now it's covered by Y" but only until Y becomes the standard and then those tend to drop off.

For larger sections or whole functions I tend to comment out first until I'm sure the new code is working then deleting it. There are a few reasons behind this:
1) There is an advantage to having the old code instantly available (no diffs, no downloading to a separate directory, etc) to make sure that all the functionality that was previous there is still in the new code. It's very nice to go back and look when the new code isn't working right to flow through the old code and see what's missing. "Oh, we used to set this flag, but when I optimized I did away with it. Apparently, someone is using it much later in the code. Guess I need to put it back." *

2) There is a standard of, when creating new database functions (a new table), that there be a set of default functions; Create the table, Load Defaults (if applicable), Insert a record, Update a record, Load a record, and Delete a record. But as time goes by developers may create more specialized versions of these functions (JOINing other key tables, for example). More updates and soon no one is using the regular functions as the specialized ones work for what they need and then some. So if I see a function not being used any more I comment it out saying, "Deprecated; try using FunctionName() instead." If nothing breaks immediately, and no one complains for a few revisions, the extra functions go away.

* The better, but not real-world, solution would be contact whoever maintains the code that used the flag and see if we can they can update/optimize the code to work without the flag.

But how long is that in parsecs?

Seriously. If it takes me 10 minutes to read and understand it, then it take me 10 minutes to read and understand it. The fact that millions of other people are doing the same thing holds no value other than Adobe is wasting our time.

To watch (and understand?) an episode of Seinfeld takes 22 minutes. There were 180 episodes. With a made up average of 50 million people watched those episodes. That means that I'm creating a really big number but with no actual value other than all of humanity wasted a lot of time watching "nothing" and as I type this you should be reading it in a louder and louder, more excited voice until I finally end the sentence where I'm practically yelling in an effort to make this seem important!

If it takes one woman 9 months to have a baby, it still doesn't take 1 month for 9 women to have a baby. Move along folks... Bad math in the house.

Then show me in your "written basis for perpetuating your belief system so others may follow" where it says, "Thou shall not be tracked like cattle via radio waves". If you can, you might have a leg to stand on.

Now, if you're talking about "I believe that RFID is bad, bacon is good, and time is wibbly-wobbly", you're out of luck. See, you can tell the government to f-off based on "religious" belief, but your personal concepts are not protected. For instance, just because you believe in pacifism, doesn't stop the government from drafting you into the army. And even if you believe in your core that clothes are for sissies and free-ballin' is the way to go, don't expect to walk down the street very far before being tackled and arrested.

If you want religious protection for your ideas, you need to either get the government to recognize your religion, but that's a lot of paperwork, fees, and requirements, -OR- find an existing religion that says you don't have to wear an ID badge, but then you'll probably have to prove your devotion to show that you're not just faking it.

Good luck with that.

P.S. Right to privacy only goes as far as where you would have a reasonable expectation of having privacy. Showing up to a building where they already have my name and date of birth, where I can consuming their supplies, and expecting a document after a few years of proving I absorbed information well enough to earn a certificate of graduation blows that argument out of the water.

Zinda, his face black, his eyes red. Kadir beneath Mo Moteh.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Sokath, his eyes opened.

But then how could they make a profit on the interest of all the money they skimmed.. I mean, accidentally overcharged?

As someone who recently hired a lawyer to go over a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, I can assure you that what the average person THINKS should be in a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service are vastly different than what is needed to be legal, and most important, enforceable.

A good Privacy Policy should include not just what you store, but how you collect it, and how it is stored. Are you using cookies? Can I opt-out of using cookies? Can anyone else see those cookies? If I delete the app, does that delete my personal data? How can I request it be removed? What steps are you taking to protect my data? What about my financial data? All those in-app purchases, how much of my credit card information do you get? Can you see my personal data? What about employees? Partners? Advertisers?

There is no way to make a "safe" policy that will fit everyone. At best, the AG would put out a document that includes all possible verbiage and it would be up to each user to cut out what isn't needed. But odds are, people are going to screw it up and leave in contradicting clauses, thus nullify the whole thing.

Hire a lawyer. Even if it's just a one-time thing. Just like getting business tax licenses, trademarks, and dev tools, it is the cost of doing business.

In my code I have developed a certain style/guideline about comments
1) Always comment in detail the utility functions. They are the most likely to have obscure code, hacks, tricks, or otherwise confusing to read on first view.
2) Database functions should self document, both by the name of the function and a quick glance at the query. A function named Members_Load_All_By_Time( minutes, array ) kinda says it all.
3) Display functions get commented to break up sections; here is where navigation starts/end, here is where notes get displayed, etc.
4) Long If/Then/ElseIf/Else get one for each condition about why test for that specific condition.
5) If pulling in a feed, or otherwise getting a complex array/structure, have a comment block of what the input looks like. This could be an example of the XML, members to an array, or other non-standard information. Something to show what I'm working with.
6) If using a technique found on a forum or blog, include a comment to the URL/post, date it was published, name of author, and other info to get back to the posting. Not only to CYA in case of licensing issues, but check back occasionally to see if the author or a commenter has made an improvement. Or for me to submit an improvement I discovered.

As a side note, sometimes even better than comments is just good coding style. If the language allows it, use whitespace to your advantage; line things up, indent to show beginning and end of loops, and add blank lines to give visual breaks and convergence points.