For various hysterical raisins two of my primary guitars have old-school Stratocaster tremolo bridges.
However, I hate them. I don’t use them, I don’t have the bars screwed into them, I’d basically rather not have them. But there’s always been the problem of what to replace them with.
Hardware manufacturers seem to be obsessed with rejiggering the internals of their products without putting any markings on the packaging (or hell, on the card, or even in its top-level PCI information) to indicate that something has changed. This screws Linux users on a regular basis.
The particular case in point–which I suggest you avoid–is the Netgear WG511. The original (v1) iteration of this Cardbus 802.11g card used the Intersil PrismGT/Duette chipset which is well-supported under Linux–it has a driver (prism54) that’s been in the kernel for several months now and it’s apparently fast and reliable.
Unfortunately, some time recently, Netgear (and apparently other manufacturers, including SMC) started using the Intersil Frisbee in these cards. This chipset, though it declares the same PCI ID (but a different “subsystem ID”), is not compatible with the GT/Duette chipset.
So, to review: the external packaging has no distinguishing markings, the card itself has no distinguishing markings, and the PCI information only indicates that it’s a different “subsystem”.
Avoid this card at all costs!
So, in an amusing coincidence–given that I had just spent three months among ex-Amazonians–Anne’s friend Chapman got me a copy of this book as a birthday gift.
It is not the book I was thinking it was–there is apparently some other Amazon insider that mentions my friend Alex by name. It’s a quick, light read. A fair amount of dot-bomb silliness can be recognized.
Yet, at the same time, I guess it’s the final proof that I’m not a slacker that I find the main character unlikeable. Self-centered, uninterested in doing work, a dilettante who doesn’t even do a good job of that, he pretty much offended me.
I mean, it’s not like I have some relentlessly Puritan work ethic–I regularly lose an hour or so each Thursday afternoon after I get back from the comic shop. I don’t always get started all that early. Even when I’m working long hours, I don’t necessarily get a whole lot done.
But at least I don’t think of this as my right, that I shouldn’t have to work.