bjnord

I started my history with computers on the PDP 11/40 at my Dad's university.

Years later when my company was writing Unix software and we were porting to all the major vendors, DEC loaned us an Alpha workstation so we could port to OSF/1. That machine was blindingly fast, way way better than any of the Sun, HP, IBM, etc. hardware we had in the office. It quickly became my desktop because it came with a gorgeous monitor. I strung out the loan as long as I could and was sad when it had to leave.

James Gosling spoke at our developer conference around that time, and talked about the Alpha design team (who got to create this fast RISC processor without worrying about the "embarrassingly large" backward compatibility footprint the modern x86 chips were saddled with), and how great the Alpha was as a platform for Java. DEC and Sun were my two favorite tech companies; I'm glad I got to use their products when they were at their height.

Now where did I put that Infinity Gauntlet...

Yes, and in the same way, once the AA execs realized how much it was costing them, they started looking for some way to get out from under the agreement they made.

I had something similar happen with a national tire-and-brake chain, from whom I bought a "lifetime alignment" for one of my cars for the cost of about 2 alignments. After a few years had passed, it was always a huge rigamarole: "I don't show that in the computer; do you have your receipt paperwork?" "We don't offer lifetime alignments any more." "This store has a new manager since then and we're no longer honoring that deal." They always gave it to me after I persisted, but never easily.

Look, I'm not responsible for your shortsightedness; I bought the deal on your terms, and now you need to honor the deal.

...and the scratchy static introduced by whatever tool they used to add that voice watermark.

Can Airfox and Earthfox be far behind?

You're assuming it works. Where I work we have an intranet-based web app that pushes the new password to all the various corporate systems. We're forced to choose a new password every 90 days. I'd say 1 time out of 3 something doesn't work, and I have to open a support ticket. While I'm waiting for support, I'm not getting emails, or can't log in to some systems, etc. Multiply that by hundreds of users at my company.

Twice, support resolved the issue by resetting my password and telling me the new one... which is my last name plus 4 digits. Then I can live with a very insecure password for 90 days, or try the reset app roulette again.

Seriously! That was awful. My heart rate is slowly returning to normal. (Long-time very satisfied EasyDNS customer.)

I'm a happy Newsblur subscriber. The developer has continued to extend and improve it since the days when he was suddenly mobbed by Google Reader refugees like me. It's got great uptime, I've hardly ever had an issue with it.

This takes me back; I first read this (in pieces) via the Unix fortune(6) program.

Reminds me of "pacifist" conduct in Nethack.