A lot of the tests that were done would have benefited from having Hard Float. Ubuntu ARM port does not have Hard Float. They should have used the Debian HardFloat port to get more accurate performance metrics of what the hardware can do.

I'm not arguing over semantics or fractions of percentages - Hard Float would have given an easy 20% increase in performance for some tests! For example here's an engineer from Genesi showing off the Debain Hard-Float work a few months back... 300% increase in some places?

Would you benchmark cars giving all the others high-octane fuel except one?

Please let it Soft-float fucking die already. It's horrible.

The earth has a widely varying radius.

I'm with ARP too. They're excellent. The offering is good and the service is great. I'm not changing any time soon as I've already tried Linode,VPSLink and a couple of others. A big reason for going with ARP is if you care about IPv6, good network (peers, and good APAC service). You have complete control over your OS as they run KVM virtualisation.

The IRC channel is great too and you can chat with the guys who run the servers and some pretty knowledgeable customers. There's a few names in the IRC you may recognise too. The only downside I can see is that their provisioning process is definitely handled manually instead of a fully automated system that can pop out a new VPS in 30 seconds - so if you're used to that you may be annoyed. It's not that slow, and if you're in the USA you're in the right timezone at least.

I'm running 768 MB, 20 GB, 400 GB USD $20/month and I've been with them about a year and a half.

A site you may want to browse is http://www.lowendbox.com/ as they get some good deals from satisfactory providers.

I'm an IT professional. I'm serious. I've never spent over $1000 on any of my computers. IT pros make more than most musicians... I don't know how the assertion that they should spend more if they're serious makes any sense.
Unless an instrument is completely different (as is likely with an acoustic guitar), the reason most guitarists have multiple guitars is just wankery.

Don't over-analyse this. Yes, there are no patents that make this necessary, there is a hellava lot prior art too. Anybody can make a guitar, and the amount of study required is not that much and all the information is easy to find (I've looked).

I had a look at the guitar, its gorgeous. I'd like to see people play with the style that he has started and make a whole range of open, gorgeous models.

Having an easy base to build off allows the artist to just get-on with the art. Hopefully the frame and the neck can be bought for a reasonable price. Currently you can buy necks fairly easily and of-course you can mod them.

Customer/User satisfaction. If problems are solved in a reasonable way (in terms of time considering your workload, budget and expertise) then that's the only thing management should care about. You're not running a support call center where your job is to read solutions from pre-written scripts - you're solving real problems with real people. There is no script.

Management should be surveying their employees and your reports and work out if more people are needed to do general support. Are you finding time to do project work? If no, then maybe they need to hire somebody to keep users off your back a few hours a day while you do projects.

Please keep all your limbs and appendages inside the quota.

from my cold dead hands.

Though, being fair - I could see a way that it could be implemented while causing the least amount of distress. Also, you may be able to just turn it off, or have it pipe everything out into a nice text based log with FUCKING USEFUL ERROR MESSAGES. I don't run Windows because I can't fix it when it breaks (constantly) mostly due to the fact that you do not get useful error messages like you do in a Unix-like OS.

I could see the proposed system being useful in a large server setup where you care about logging I/O.

As much as I like their intention, I think this is crossing the line.

They're clever people - surely they can come up with a campaign that would be more respectful and probably more successful. I'd like to see the power of anonymous used in a clever/funny/positive way. Remember when 4chan thanked a 90 year old war veteran?
Personally I'd be looking into doing something to communicate the message that "99% can effectively support the 99% by being open, considerate and sharing". Why should they steal from the 1% when they really don't have to?

This campaign is also pointless on a practical level. They're not stealing gold which can only be in one place at a time they're stealing credit. The banks can just re-credit the rich bastards!

The problem is that non-IT people generally view computers as a tool and nothing more. Perhaps people should be trained to use computers rather than applications and writing off anything else to do with computers as magnets/magic. If people are trained to use computers rather than applications then they will be able to choose the appropriate tool (application) for the job. Everybody wins.

XKCD has already pinned blame for this trend. http://xkcd.com/683/

If this is true, then perhaps I am wrong. If the will, culture and training is there then this could be a great start.

This is not how things work though. When the network goes down, suits get really agitated and demand that it be "fixed". This would mean replacing the Linux systems with Windows which the poorly trained staff know how to manage.
Their lack of organisation or focus shows that this is *meant* to fail.

If they're actually serious I applaud them. However forcing both a change of platform/infrastructure is not going to work well without changing the support staff. A bunch of Microsoft monkeys simply can't handle the transition. The biggest roadblock besides having to replace support staff is surely the culture change.
Could this be a ploy to force Microsoft to come to the "rescue"?

Liquid water is wet!