Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Expensive, ultimately disposable infrastructure (Score 1) 216

The idea that you'd rip up hundreds of miles of road between two North American cities to fit complex electrical systems under them so a few dozen trucks an hour could drive along there using electricity rather than diesel is simply laughable.

More like a hundred or more every hour during the day, and a few dozen an hour late at night. The number of trucks traveling over the highway system in Oklahoma is staggering, and having electrical systems under the highways would be well worth the money. As for ripping up the highway, they do that anyway on a regular basis to ensure maintenance and safety. If half the vehicles on the highway converted to electric it would be worth the money in the end.

Comment Re:First Task (Score 3, Informative) 38

I worked for Dell tech support in Oklahoma City Oklahoma about 8 years ago. They have since expanded from one facility to three facilities in the area in addition to all the other US phone support campuses throughout the USA. They also provide support centers in South America and various parts of Europe and Asia to better serve their customers.

Comment Re:Go for it (Score 4, Interesting) 314

Where I work we've transitioned network staff to programming in their 40s and cobol programmers to C# in their 50s, and not once have we had any of them fail. Age related issues can hinder learning, but that doesn't mean everyone who is over 35 is doomed to fail in IT. The capability to learn new languages and programming techniques is different from person to person, and age by itself is not going to stop anyone.

Comment Re:The actual reason (Score 1) 375

I remember reading somewhere that the purpose for the Surface was originally to force developers to stop dumping out crap devices. Sort of a "Hey, we're going to release a nice piece of hardware with our next OS, and if you can't drop something better than a netbook to compete with it then I guess we don't need you." MS depends on their hardware providers to step up and compete with the iPad and iPhone, and up until the Surface none of them tried to do that effectively (not that they had a great OS for it with win7, but it was fairly good for touch). Now we see a ton of hybrids, slates, and touchbooks that all run Win8 with pretty nice features.

Comment Re:The actual reason (Score 2, Insightful) 375

I don't believe they are selling poorly. They've sold around 1 million units, and they've only been out for around 1 month. It sounds great to say "less than 1 million units in a quarter!" but the truth is they haven't even been out for a quarter, not even half a quarter. But lucky for slashdot plenty of people are around to make accusations based on incomplete information and an extreme bias against a company that actually produces something (unlike most of the posters).

Comment Re:Classy (Score 5, Insightful) 402

So you had multiple copies flagged as unlicensed or as invalidly licensed, and they gave multiple warnings that the issue existed so you could fix the problem but your employees failed to notify you, and somehow that is MS being a dick? After that they help you fix the problem by giving you new CD keys and appologizing to you, and they still aren't nice to pirates? That makes no sense at all. Also, considering you started by saying it was half a dozen machines and followed it up by saying "most of our computers" I'll bet you're a small business which means they didn't exactly apologize because they had to, they did it because it was the right thing to do.

It seems to me that they were pretty damn fair the whole time.

Comment Re:Classy (Score 4, Insightful) 402

Microsoft provides free updates to their OS even if you're using a copy they know is pirated. I'd say that has a bit of good will to it, especially since most people just get a "you may be a victim of piracy" warning and a black desktop background. When it comes to being polite to people who pirate or infringe on your work, MS isn't exactly slashing throats.

Comment Re:Absolutely amazed by this decision (Score 1) 385

He isn't saying at once, he's saying on multiple consoles in the same house at different times. For example, you're watching a movie in the living room so your child/sibling/mate takes the game into their room to play it. This is a common and legitimate use of the game, but would require a household to buy multiple 'licenses' to be able to use the same disc just on different consoles.

Comment Re:My Internet Sucks (Score 1) 72

The UK is a horrible example to use as a measurement of how long it takes for an area to change from 2Mbps to 100Mbps. The parts of the UK that have shifted are relatively dense and have a high HPM (homes per mile) to warrant the massive spending required to get equipment capable of supporting this kind of change. The physical topology of the UK when compared to other areas is miniscule (USA? India? China? Australia?) and relatively trivial. On the other hand, in the USA there are not only higher upgrade costs, but incentives to NOT upgrade (i.e. local monopolies for every city) since there is little or no competition for internet. Sure, AT&T 'competes' with cable and satellite, but you don't see cable companies overbuilding eachother (and you won't thanks to franchise contracts and gentlemen's agreements) to get your money. No, your options are normally between one of two evils and the pricing is usually about the same (especially since many small-medium size MSOs actually lease their connections from AT&T to save money).

Bandwidth won't be shooting up over night, or even in the next decade for most people. The price will double long before the bandwidth does.

Comment Re:Is that the so called "american dream"? (Score 4, Interesting) 164

The tone you're setting is wrong, because it implies that all white people are racist and somehow dedicate every waking moment to ruining and isolating non-white people. In reality most of the wide array of cultures and ethnic groups in America tend to bulk together out of comfort and stability by choice, not because they are rounded up and placed in isolation camps. People want to spend time typically with other people that are like them which includes taste in art, skill set, and (tada) ethnic origin. You see this all over the world and it establishes unique and interesting subcultures.

On the note of racism though which is always applied to white people oddly, I'd like to point out that non-whites are equally racist and (unlike white people) are often more willing to admit it because there is no focus on shaming them for it. One example is the shooting in Florida where the man is half hispanic and half white. The man claims himself to be hispanic as his primary race, but the minute people started saying he was racist they started calling him white or "half white". They completely stripped him of his willfully claimed ethnicity, mostly because saying a white man hates black people will sell better than a hispanic hates black people.

Slashdot Top Deals

Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock instead of the sword.

Working...