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Yeah, I big headphones from Thompson (or thompsonic or something like this, can't find it now) for 20$. For me they sound almost like one for 200$ (tested in one shop). But i'm talking about earbuds like this one.

They can sound better if you have a good turntable with a good cartridge, a good preamp and amp, and good speakers that are capable of resolving the differences between digital and analog audio.

The ones I laugh at are the ones who get a USB turntable because they don't like digital sound and want the analog experiance.

They get better sound simply because most vinyl isn't in the loudness war to kill the dynamic range. A CD with about 96 DB of dynamic range should sould better than the about 65 DB dynamic range of a turntable. Unfortunately the advantage of the CD format is often engineered out to sound louder.

The irony is a USB analog turntable outputs a digital signal on the USB cable. Often the sample rate is the same as a CD. Even more often they are sold to the clueless without even listing the sample rate or bits. Quick, can you tell me if this is an 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit, sample size at 16K, 44.1, 48, 96, 128 Ksamples/sec?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/mp3/90a0/
They advertise it on a geek website without posting the important specs.. Guys, what's the wow & flutter and rumble levels?

For me, I'm sticking to my 1980's moving coil linear track turntable with a good reciever plugged into a quality mixer (to set levels) which is then fed into a pro USB a/d converter. I capture at 96KHZ 24bit and downconvert to CD quality to burn CD's. It works for me.

Here is another USB turntable with no specs listed.
http://www.amazon.com/Ion-iTTUSB-Turntable-USB-Record/dp/B000BUEMOO
and another;
http://www.amazon.com/Numark-TTUSB-Turntable-with-USB/dp/B000G3FNVM

Here is one that is reviewed and the A/D stats are known..
The sound quality was as good as can be expected from old, scratchy records. The built-in audio card records 16-bit at 44.1khz
http://reviews.cnet.com/turntables/stanton-t-90-usb/4505-7860_7-32417457.html
Wow, no better than CD quality...

Some of these turntables get poor marks for their conversion to digital quality.
"The TTUSB10 as a Turntable
After my disappointing experience with the TTUSB10 USB turntable's recorded sound quality, I plugged it into the phono input in my stereo, hoping for some sweeter sounds. This time around, the TTUSB10 did not let me down: smooth, rich audio came through the speakers and my test headphones without a trace of the harsh digital noise that plagued my test recordings. It would be a bit of a waste of money just to buy it as a standard turntable, but if nothing else, the TTUSB10 makes for an excellent unit for playing your vinyl music collection on your stereo system."
  http://www.everythingusb.com/ion_ttusb10_usb_turntable_13231.html

They can sound better if you have a good turntable with a good cartridge, a good preamp and amp, and good speakers that are capable of resolving the differences between digital and analog audio.

The ones I laugh at are the ones who get a USB turntable because they don't like digital sound and want the analog experiance.

They get better sound simply because most vinyl isn't in the loudness war to kill the dynamic range. A CD with about 96 DB of dynamic range should sould better than the about 65 DB dynamic range of a turntable. Unfortunately the advantage of the CD format is often engineered out to sound louder.

The irony is a USB analog turntable outputs a digital signal on the USB cable. Often the sample rate is the same as a CD. Even more often they are sold to the clueless without even listing the sample rate or bits. Quick, can you tell me if this is an 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit, sample size at 16K, 44.1, 48, 96, 128 Ksamples/sec?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/mp3/90a0/
They advertise it on a geek website without posting the important specs.. Guys, what's the wow & flutter and rumble levels?

For me, I'm sticking to my 1980's moving coil linear track turntable with a good reciever plugged into a quality mixer (to set levels) which is then fed into a pro USB a/d converter. I capture at 96KHZ 24bit and downconvert to CD quality to burn CD's. It works for me.

Here is another USB turntable with no specs listed.
http://www.amazon.com/Ion-iTTUSB-Turntable-USB-Record/dp/B000BUEMOO
and another;
http://www.amazon.com/Numark-TTUSB-Turntable-with-USB/dp/B000G3FNVM

Here is one that is reviewed and the A/D stats are known..
The sound quality was as good as can be expected from old, scratchy records. The built-in audio card records 16-bit at 44.1khz
http://reviews.cnet.com/turntables/stanton-t-90-usb/4505-7860_7-32417457.html
Wow, no better than CD quality...

Some of these turntables get poor marks for their conversion to digital quality.
"The TTUSB10 as a Turntable
After my disappointing experience with the TTUSB10 USB turntable's recorded sound quality, I plugged it into the phono input in my stereo, hoping for some sweeter sounds. This time around, the TTUSB10 did not let me down: smooth, rich audio came through the speakers and my test headphones without a trace of the harsh digital noise that plagued my test recordings. It would be a bit of a waste of money just to buy it as a standard turntable, but if nothing else, the TTUSB10 makes for an excellent unit for playing your vinyl music collection on your stereo system."
  http://www.everythingusb.com/ion_ttusb10_usb_turntable_13231.html

Disclaimer: IANSBHRAEBAT (I Am Not Swiss But Have Read An Excellent Book About This). The Swiss constitution guarantees the right of referendum, but a referendum is only called after a specific number of signatures have been collected. So the parties rule by default, but can be overridden by the population if some group feels strongly enough to collect the required signatures to hold the referendum. A lot of interesting decisions have been made this way, and referendums have been held on things like whether to abolish the Swiss secret service (when the population felt it had started becoming abusive). There is also a constitutional arrangement to prevent the "tyranny of the majority" that I predict some people will bring up now. Funding for campaigns in these referendums is allocated equally by the state to the different sides, so there are no problems with special interest groups. It all seems to work very well. This has got to be the best system of governing a country by far -- if we're serious about giving power to the people, then the Swiss system is the logical conclusion. It should scale pretty well too, just increase the number of required signatures and so on.

Then why the hell don't you make it at home now?

That's just the first in a list of results returned by a cheap search. There are many, many ice cream making machines out there. If you're worried about bisphenol-A from certain types of plastics, or are trying to boycott products from China ... or whatever ... there's probably still some kind of solution out there that will meet your needs. That is, if your post was anything other than a opportunity to moan and whine.

you should read This Book

THe fact that you watched Get Smart in the '80s and '90s doesn't change the fact that this was a '60s television show!

Sorry about that, Chief, I think he just meant that that was when he was a kid, not that he thought the show was produced in that era. It was syndicated a lot more heavily in those years than it is now, at least on any channel I have access to.

I was just about to type that the series still wasn't available on DVD, but I checked Amazon and I was wrong, it finally is: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000LXTPDY/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top. Looks like in the near future I'm going to be staying up for over fifty hours straight, living on caffeine and snack foods, not bathing, not shaving, while my body slowly atrophies, enduring potential cardiac arrest just to watch all 138 episodes in a row . . . And loving it.

If you've never read this book you should check it out. As far as being grounded for a month, property was damaged and people were hurt. I think he's going to get a bit more than "no TV for you, son!"

First Step:Get off the internet

We didn't take precautions when we played when I was growing up. And you know what? We survived. We did amazing crazy things. We played tackle football in the street. We threw rocks at each other. And no matter what we did we didn't wear helmets. And the worst that came from all of it is one of my friends got a broken arm once.

I have a friend that just recently had his fourth child (they are all 5 and under) and he said to me, "I need to buy a farm. I can't allow my children to do what I was able to do -- like ride my bike all over town." I asked, "why not?" Now, I want to mention that I wasn't allowed out of sight of my house on a bike until I was probably 12 and even then I had to be within earshot and 5 minutes of my father's whistle (which had quite a range). His reply, "They can't be trusted."

So it has nothing to do with litigious society, etc, it has to do with parents realizing what they got away with as kids (surviving, yes) and attempting to stop it for their children. What these people don't realize is that kids are still going to get hurt, get abducted, steal shit, fuck, drink and do drugs. All that's going to happen is that they are going to find ways that we didn't think of to get it done.

Back on topic:

While what McDonald's UK douche says is true, it's also very true that the "Fast Food Nation" (sponsored heartily by communities like the one I live in where the little guy is ignored while the big box and chain restaurants are encouraged to thrive by the Council) is also killing us. I've read several books like Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally and similarly Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life which mention the advantages of local eating, home cooking, and healthy lifestyles. I'm really going to attempt to get into Community Supported Agriculture, get out to our local farmers' market more than 1x a month, and stop eating out nearly as much as I was.

We've traded dangers from biking without a helmet, pads and an orange flag with blinking LEDs to eating foods with 50% of your daily need of fat, 75% of your calories and loaded with high fructose corn syrup. One might take 15 to 20 years to kill you rather than 15 to 20 seconds but we need to decide which is better.

Happy Meals need to be replaced with Happy Medium.

We didn't take precautions when we played when I was growing up. And you know what? We survived. We did amazing crazy things. We played tackle football in the street. We threw rocks at each other. And no matter what we did we didn't wear helmets. And the worst that came from all of it is one of my friends got a broken arm once.

I have a friend that just recently had his fourth child (they are all 5 and under) and he said to me, "I need to buy a farm. I can't allow my children to do what I was able to do -- like ride my bike all over town." I asked, "why not?" Now, I want to mention that I wasn't allowed out of sight of my house on a bike until I was probably 12 and even then I had to be within earshot and 5 minutes of my father's whistle (which had quite a range). His reply, "They can't be trusted."

So it has nothing to do with litigious society, etc, it has to do with parents realizing what they got away with as kids (surviving, yes) and attempting to stop it for their children. What these people don't realize is that kids are still going to get hurt, get abducted, steal shit, fuck, drink and do drugs. All that's going to happen is that they are going to find ways that we didn't think of to get it done.

Back on topic:

While what McDonald's UK douche says is true, it's also very true that the "Fast Food Nation" (sponsored heartily by communities like the one I live in where the little guy is ignored while the big box and chain restaurants are encouraged to thrive by the Council) is also killing us. I've read several books like Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally and similarly Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life which mention the advantages of local eating, home cooking, and healthy lifestyles. I'm really going to attempt to get into Community Supported Agriculture, get out to our local farmers' market more than 1x a month, and stop eating out nearly as much as I was.

We've traded dangers from biking without a helmet, pads and an orange flag with blinking LEDs to eating foods with 50% of your daily need of fat, 75% of your calories and loaded with high fructose corn syrup. One might take 15 to 20 years to kill you rather than 15 to 20 seconds but we need to decide which is better.

Happy Meals need to be replaced with Happy Medium.

P.S. Namely I am dying for track 13 on this album (which I haven't found as a torrent). I collect recordings of Soviet and Russian national anthems, this is why I want to get it. Online music stores other than now-squashed allofmp3.com have never been a big help in getting records for the collection: there is always some pesky restriction that doesn't let me use them, either geographic or file format or payment method... I always ended up forced to use P2P for actual downloads (or mailorder the CD, but this quickly gets expensive for a project like this when you need only one track from the album and there are hundreds of tracks on my website).

Enter Napster. Kids are copying music and distributing it over the internet. These corporations are now trying to sell a product that is often easier to get for free online. The iPod becomes the Walkman of the 00's. The labels fear P2P and mp3s and demand copy protection, which Apple offers them in the iTMS. Now they can sell their music online, which makes it easy to find, but control how it's copied and distributed. And it will play on the majority of players. Everything is getting back to normal, but they need more money. So they want to raise prices.

But things have changed. The labels no longer control the distribution channel of their product. Apple does. And Apple refuses to raise prices. The labels have tried other online stores, including creating their own (which is probably still their end goal), with little success because Apple will not license their copy protection, nor support other methods of copy protection on the iPod. While some governments are working to legislate this, the labels can not afford to wait for legislation to solve their problem. They are forced to make a choice.

1. Concede to Apple, sell all songs at a fixed price
2. Sell unprotected, iPod compatible files at other online retailers
3. Lose more market share

At the moment, the labels have opted to sell unprotected files on Amazon.com. If the labels can restore the retail market to at least what it was, then they can more tightly control the "authorized" distribution of their product. And for the unauthorized... While it doesn't accomplish their end goal of complete control of the distribution and retail sale of their music, it's a step closer. Apple loses some of its bargaining power, and the labels can call the shots again.

Option A will reinforce a reasonable business model that will benefit the industry, the artist, and you.

I disagree. While I would rather purchase non-DRM'd music over DRM'd music, simply because I like to play music on a number of devices; I don't believe the lack of DRM benefits artists. It may benefit me in the short term, but then again the labels might just be fattening me up to eat me. I would suggest that a solution that truly respects artist and consumer needs would: decentralize the production, marketing, and distribution chain; acknowledge that technology has lowered the cost of bringing an album to market, and pay artists appropriately; and stop intimidating law abiding citizens.

To accomplish this, we must:

1. Stop purchasing music from labels that support the RIAA
2. Support independent and local musicians. Go to their shows, buy their music.

By doing this, the artists get paid more, you often get DRM-free music, and innocent people

"In free countries it is not normal to punish civilians for ignoring the petty crimes of their fellow citizens."

  That's assuming that there are petty crimes and hence petty consequences.

I suggest you read this.

Rendezvous with Rama has a particulary stunning description of an asteroid hitting earth on its first pages (which can be seen here in Amazon). The book as a whole is fantastic, but i always found that snippet very powerful and visual. In the book, it triggers the creation of an near-earth object monitoring system which sets the events for the rest of the story.

I agree, maybe we need such a wake-up call.

Dr Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia wrote a really interesting book that devotes some time to this subject, called A More Perfect Constitution. He talks about the gerrymandering (fixing districts so the incumbent, or at least the same party, always wins) that goes on, and proposes some interesting solutions, including making the House 1000 members to be more representative of the actual population. This, he says, would have the effect of producing smaller constituencies, require less money for someone to run for office, and invite more non-politicians into the process. It was a fairly easy read, and he provides historical perspective on why the Constitution is the way it is, and what we might do to make it better. One of his primary arguments in the book is that it is a living document, meant to be changed over time - that the founders never intended it to be so static for so long.

At least maybe it will brew a decent cup of Coffee? (for those who don't get the joke; read the book: http://www.amazon.com/Mote-Gods-Eye-Larry-Niven/dp/0671741926

Also note that New Hampshire was a focus of the 1992 book Votescam (full text) regarding the 1988 election:

Then came a widely reported promise made by Bush to his campaign manager, Gov. Sununu. It happens that Sununu's computer engineering skills approach 'genius' on the tests. If Sununu could "deliver" New Hampshire, and Bush didn't care how and didn't want to know how -- then Sununu would become his chief of staff in the White House.

[...]

Washington Post: [...] For Vice President Bush and his supporters, Tuesday's 9-percentage-point victory over Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) in New Hampshire was a delightful surprise; for Andrew Kohut, it was a horror story.

Kohut is president of the Gallup poll, whose final New Hampshire urvey was wrong by 17 points: it had put Dole ahead by 8; Bush won by 9. "I was dismayed," Kohut acknowledged yesterday.

32-bit x86 is not scary at all (16-bit x86 is fairly scary). You can get started with my book.

Even with unlimited, clean energy, growth still leaves an environmental footprint. Increases in population demand more food, and more living space, both of which would involve expansion into unsettled habitats (e.g., cutting down the rain forests, developing grasslands).

The Dark Greens, who would prefer to not see any this destruction of habitat occur. Unlimited energy however would make expansion into undeveloped habitats cheap, and therefore easier and more likely. Thus, as a sect of the environmental movement that primarily favors preserving undeveloped territory (over reducing pollution), Dark Greens by necessity would have to be opposed to finding cheap, clean, unlimited energy.

I surmise that they would much rather see energy prices skyrocket, and no new sources be developed. This would necessitate a worldwide Powerdown scenario, which would effectively halt, if not at least dramatically slow, worldwide growth. Only after this state, would their vision of society be palpable to the masses. In a nutshell, they are eco-Marxists.

However, as you say, the cabinet is important. To avoid using another power connector I especially wanted a USB speaker, even though I know that these can be pretty sucky. I listened to the ultra-flat speakers (I guess using NXT), but it screws up all the depth of the music you're listening to. I tried some strange unstable conic device, but it just created noise at higher volumes. Then there is a pretty expensive yamaha USB bar, but I wanted loose speakers.

I finally bought a jaytec USB speaker set, the only USB speakers I could find that come in a pretty decent MDF cabinet, 2-way even (separate tweeter). It is amazing. No hi-fi of course, but just the result of some people who put in a little bit of effort to build a speaker cabinet that has the prerequisites to sound well, and you can hear that immediately.

Ron Paul was good friends with Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, I'm sure you would consider him a "respected" economist. http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul352.html Ron is also a follower of the Austrian School of Economics, a very respected school of economic thought. Ron Paul is a true student of Economics, likely the only candidate that truly understands Economics. I hope you realize that the federal reserve is a PRIVATE enterprise. It has been responsible for the latest housing and dot-com bubbles. I suggest you look at the History of federal banks or reserves and who the federal reserve truly represents. Andrew Jackson has written "I killed the Bank" written on his tombstomb. His reasons for wanting to kill the Second Bank of the United States: "It concentrated an excessive amount of the nation's financial strength in a single institution. It exposed the government to control by foreign interests. It served mainly to make the rich richer. It exercised too much control over members of Congress. It favored northeastern states over southern and western states. " from wikipedia. You think anything has changed??? The current Federal Reserve was by the top families(Morgans, Rothchilds , rochefellars) in Jekyll Island (look it up). Do you think they were looking out for the good of the public? http://www.amazon.com/Thieves-Temple-America-Federal-Reserve/dp/0975965484 Just one point, and this is really scary, especially since I've been studying economics for years and never heard of this until recently. The way CPI was historically calculated is that if a typical basket of goods is steak and wine, they would track the prices of steak and wine over time. BUT, in the early 1990s, the FED decided that if steak and wine became too expensive, people would substitute it with Hamburger and Coke. So the new CPI was not the adjustment for the cost of livings, but instead, it measures the adjustment for the COST OF SURVIVAL. http://www.shadowstats.com/article/56 This is a (still??) free society, so you are allowed to criticize Dr. Paul, but I ask everyone to do some research, his views are soundly footed in economics and history

Does TOSLINK optical audio not count as a DIY network? I didn't pay anyone to hook up my AV stuff.

Because my favorite cable is a TOS-LINK cable with a clear sheath, over the fiber optics.

(Yes, I am a nerd with a favorite kind of cable.)

Granted there it is a step up to go from a 6-foot cable to 100 feet, but it isn't that big of a deal. Bi-directional communication is another thing that would be needed to make a real network.

Amazon.com has a bunch of 100-foot fiber optic cables, so I don't think that fiber itself is the issue, getting the network cards cheap enough is more of an issue, I think.

• Clients for Life
  
• Trust-Based Selling
  
• The Trusted Advisor
  

• Clients for Life
  
• Trust-Based Selling
  
• The Trusted Advisor
  

I don't "buy into the upstate/downstate nonsense", I recognize the truth of the dichotmy. I wouldn't expect a downstater to understand. (Not that the Southern Tier doesn't get boned by the whole situation.) Upstate, Downstate, Western NY and the City all have very different interests but the overwhelming population is in Downstate and the City. The narrow Republican majority in the Senate is the only thing keeping our issues from complete obscurity.

As far as the Legislature, this isn't a Bruno/Silver issue. The "Three Men in Room" problem is a reality of the state budget process. I'd suggest reading this: http://www.amazon.com/Three-Men-Room-Betrayal-Statehouse/dp/1595580328.

Perhaps not, but Antipatterns: Identification, Refactoring, and Management does. See Antipattern for a partial listing and watch out for the Cage Match Negotiator, sometimes it really is better just not to play that game.

It seems like this ?

I bought one of these for my Nephew this last Christmas... not sure if he's lost all of the parts yet or not...

The book came out in 1999, that's almost nine years ago. And yet, a review finally appears here. Well, at least the book was good, in the the Amazon reviews the average rating is almost five stars.

Sick of stable data centers inland, free from the excitement that comes from not knowing whether your data center will survive the latest hurricane or tropical storm? Tired of never meeting interesting longshoreman on your way to work? Try our new data center model!

On the other hand, think about the marketing potential when you can pitch this sort of data centre to nerds brought up on Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash as the Raft come to life. And didn't glimpses of the future in old popular science magazines tell of the coming generations living on or under the water (commuting in flying cars)?

Now you are starting to get to the MEAT : Feng Shui despite all the laughter I am now hearing in tech-land starts to focus on the harmony of the place. Simply is this a nice environment to work in. Just because its an IT environment does not mean it has to resemble and feel like a mortuary even if Sun and other computer companies specify similar environments to protect the hardware..

Do yourself a BIG favor take a weekend of to look at some feng shui examples and get Chris Alexanders book A pattern Language http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Language-Buildings-Construction-Environmental/dp/0195019199/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199828727&sr=8-1 then sit down and list all the things you hate about work environments and all the things you like and your favorite work habits and only include features around the positive.

Paramount importance get good natural light or full spectrum minimum 75 foot candles non glare reflective , excellent air quality and not just C02 controls - CO the works and monitor it , the first three control you work temp the racks like 60deg and 30% humidity but humans don't, Get low pressure air flow from the floor to the intake vents mounted on the top part of the wall or ceiling superior acoustics no more than 50DB in your sit down and concentration and reflection spot.

All the other Feng Shui comments are spot on. Once you have this lined out then slap in the technology racks routers colored wiring whatever. Just a a side hint Gensler the architect has started to design buildings around what makes them great places to work instead of the normal archicrap and these companies are getting 20 - 30 % increase in productivity. http://www.gensler.com/news/2006/07-20_workSurvey.html you can also experiment with this by making simple sketchup models http://www.sketchup.com/ which you will find also great for mapping all the rest of your data setup

Primarily think " HOW YOU WORK " not whats in your workspace

When you get the AHHHHHHHHH effect and people start to congregate in your office with smiles you have made it

Design well Design for yourself / Great post by Qbertino

( : ( : pete

Look at the amazon's best DVD sales ranking that combines DVD, BR, HD DVD.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/dvd/ref=pd_dp_ts_d_1

It's updated realtime.

I proceeded to make a little count yesterday.
The first HD DVD was only 34th, while the first premier Blu-Ray was second.
Roughly a first of the 30 first BR/DVD/HD DVD sales are Blu-ray title, so even compared to DVD, BR is doing well.

Only taking into account the BR and HD DVD, you would see BR titles in first ten places then the first HD DVD title in the 11th place.

That was before the Warner announcements starts to have a effect on sales, just wait a few weeks.

Sales of HD DVD are performing worser and worser comparatively to BR, Warner only took notice of the reality and acted accordingly.

From now, the demise of HD DVD can only accelerate, last studios ignoring BR won't be able to continue doing so for long I mean how could you explain to your shareholder you'll significantly reduce your profits for supporting the format the market excluded ? Too bad for those studios that are to strongly tied with HD DVD.

You absolutely and without a doubt have to read Charles Stross, it's about 10 minutes into the future and it's based on your life, if it's anything like most ./ readers. His most recent one is Halting State

Fundamentally, writing is wordflow, & if
one is wrestling with formatting while wrestling with wordflow, then
one is sabotaging one's success in writing.

Unfortunately, basic formatting is required to get the wordflow right
( italics, etc. ).

One thing I've learned, with word-processors, is to use hard page-breaks to
force the damn things to respect my intent.

But Scrivener only may be becoming available for Linux,
if the contributors who posted on this page are able to make it so. . .

Right Now(tm), however, there's a writing-environment that already
works in Linux & is available as a demo version.

I consider writing environment to be crucial for effective & fluid writing, & also
there is one other killer app: Stein On Writing ( Sol Stein )
http://www.amazon.com/Stein-Writing-Successful-Techniques-Strategies/dp/0312254210/

NO writing-book I've ever read gave me as much as that one did.
Think William Zinsser's "On Writing Well", except instead of
the high-school level stuff, the university-level stuff:
techniques for reading for writing,
techniques for torquing words into communication-strength,
even techniques for concisification. . .

Enjoy, eh?

As for the Linux installs easily & doesn't force headaches theory -shudder-
I've been living in Linux since 1996 ( Slackware, back then ) &
consider Ubuntu to be nearly evil:
what it did to Linux-itself is unholy.
That it Microsofts any previously-installed Linux distro's boot capability, too, is comical.
I've fought with more damn config problems & hw problems in Linux than in MS-Windows, but once it's set-up then its stability rocks.

Why don't you go look up the Deacons for Defense? Here are a couple of links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335034/

http://www.amazon.com/Deacons-Defense-Resistance-Rights-Movement/dp/0807857025/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199740596&sr=8-3

Blacks in the south who used guns to defend themselves from a corrupt government -- state, county, city elected officials, police, judges -- who were in league with the KKK. They shot back and stopped the outrages, and that was the ONLY reason the federal government stepped in -- niggers with guns freaked them out.

You read up on them, and then tell me guns have no use except evil. You explain how blacks defending themselves against a corrupt oppressive government is anything but good, and then explain to me how all the patronizing whites looked the other way and pretended Martin Luther King completed his march to Selma without armed patrols around the nightly camps.

You nanny staters with your smug patronizing attitude that individuals must defer to the almighty government, whose Supreme Court has ruled several times that police are not obligated to defend individuals -- yes, you, who think everyone should follow your moral guidelines, that you are a superior thinker for the ages and conditions can never change -- go ahead, I dare you -- read up on the Deacons for Defense and Justice of just 40 years ago, and then tell me how your patronizing smugness can prevent a repeat today.

You can't, because it will happen again, and I hope there are heroes like the Deacons to come save your sorry ass.

They aren't still selling *new* PS2s.

Yes they are.

Last/Current/Next/Latest Generation vocab aside, the PS2 has built an enormous library of titles and new titles continue to be released for it. PS2s will remain on many store shelves for some time to come. There are quite possibly still more PS2s out there, functioning, and connected to TVs (not packed away in a closet) than all 3 "new gen" consoles combined. It's in decline, to be sure, game studios have finally (and very recently) begun shifting their primary focus away from PS2 to the new consoles. But there's definitely still some life left in the old girl.

My understanding from reading the book was that the sodium would be radioactive. This could be a misperception on my part, or intentional on the part of the author. http://www.amazon.com/Almost-Lost-Detroit-John-Fuller/dp/0345252667 In any case, burning sodium circulating directly within the core of a fast breeder reactor would certainly help to breach the containment.

apparently all is lost.....

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_binding_browse-b_2?ie=UTF8&rs=404276&keywords=opera&rh=n%3A404276%2Ck%3Aopera%2Cp_n_binding_browse-bin%3A387548011

For the electronics part, start with Radio Shack. They have several simple books to get you started with hobby electronics. I once knew a very intelligent electrical engineer who first became enamored with electronics by doing exactly that and still recommended it as a good way of getting into electronics without getting overwhelmed. If you ever want to gain even more practical knowledge about electronics I would recommend the ARRL handbook (used by ham radio operators everywhere).

BD prices are generally $5-$10 more than their HD DVD counterparts. Only in the last 2-3 weeks have BD prices dropped on sale to HD DVD prices.

Sorry, but I've been tracking Blu-Ray prices on Amazon for about a year and that's just plain wrong. Sure BOGO's have reduced costs on both discs but I'm talking MSRP *and* actual retail prices which were generally a few dollars lower.

$200 usually, on sale Not a standalone player. A PC drive, and that price is MSRP!!! You obviously are not keeping up with CES.

How does no region control vs any region control = greater consumer acceptance for the latter? You're using double-speak now.

Do you honestly that that DVD (not HD-DVD) had *no* region controls? Read what I said again! We are talking Blu-Ray vs. DVD here as far as what consumers are willing to accept, since obviously DVD represents a baseline for mass acceptance.

Both formats support the same audio codecs: TrueHD, whether Dolby or DTS.

Correct. Both formats support the same audio codecs. But lacking the space, very few movie titles on HD-DVD include lossless codecs - Transformers being the most egregious example.

When you have more space to spare you can actually make use of all the standards your format supports. HD-DVD is an OK format for HD TV shows which are smaller, but it's not a great format to shoehorn whole movies into.

As I covered in another post, the going rate for CDs is about $9.99. Prices have indeed dropped. They were in the $18 range about five years ago, but due to piracy, competition from other forms of entertainment, etc. etc. they've dropped significantly.

They drop in sales etc. ... but the list price is will ~$19. Go see: Amazon's Music Top-100, and they are the best selling Music they should be cheaper than average. I guess if you only buy current Top-10 Music, you can probably get close to a $9.99 average ... but some of us have, ya know, taste ;p.

We've heard this before. There's a presentation in AFIPS 1966 in which someone from Control Data was saying that each metropolitan area would have one giant, shared supercomputer.

"Grid computing" was a flop commercially, once the vendors started charging for it. Sun's service is still around, but they don't talk about it much any more. That was more like an effort to find something to do with their unsold server inventory. ResPower Render Farm has a real but very specialized business, quietly rendering 3D frames for the film industry.

Amazon has been making some noise lately, but they don't promise much: "Without limitation to Section 11.5, we shall have no liability whatsoever for any damage, liabilities, losses (including any loss of data or profits) or any other consequences that you may incur as a result of any Service Suspension." Clearly they're not serious about offering a service to businesses.

There are successful services, like Salesforce, but those offer more than raw compute power.

Earthweb is a novel by Marc Stiegler.

In Earthweb prediction markets have a major role in the plot. Prediction markets are used to harness the wisdom of the crowds over the whole planet; this is what the title references. The book also speculates on some of the problems that might happen with prediction markets, such as people who just try to figure out an expert's prediction and just bet the same as that expert. (This expert-following skews the results; the followers are not adding any more insight to the market, and they might be lending their support to someone who might be wrong.)

The book is really a bunch of cool future Information Age ideas, with just enough plot to stitch them together. The action sequences are as energetic and implausible as a Tomb Raider game. It's not Shakespeare but I enjoyed it.

P.S. The book also tells, as part of its backstory, about a bunch of inexpensive computing devices with networking built in being air-dropped over the poorest parts of the world, to give poor children some sort of an education. He wrote this years before OLPC.

steveha

Earthweb is a novel by Marc Stiegler.

In Earthweb prediction markets have a major role in the plot. Prediction markets are used to harness the wisdom of the crowds over the whole planet; this is what the title references. The book also speculates on some of the problems that might happen with prediction markets, such as people who just try to figure out an expert's prediction and just bet the same as that expert. (This expert-following skews the results; the followers are not adding any more insight to the market, and they might be lending their support to someone who might be wrong.)

The book is really a bunch of cool future Information Age ideas, with just enough plot to stitch them together. The action sequences are as energetic and implausible as a Tomb Raider game. It's not Shakespeare but I enjoyed it.

P.S. The book also tells, as part of its backstory, about a bunch of inexpensive computing devices with networking built in being air-dropped over the poorest parts of the world, to give poor children some sort of an education. He wrote this years before OLPC.

steveha

Also buy into Norman Spinrad's balloon/bicycles

Why exactly are you comparing two last gen players? The HD-A3 is $179.98, and the Panasonic DMP-BD30K (the only shipping 'final spec' BD standalone) is $414.99. From the announcements at CES it sounds like the gap will be narrowing shortly (with reasonable playerrs running $350 and crap off-brands around $300), but Toshiba still has a significant price advantage.

Why exactly are you comparing two last gen players? The HD-A3 is $179.98, and the Panasonic DMP-BD30K (the only shipping 'final spec' BD standalone) is $414.99. From the announcements at CES it sounds like the gap will be narrowing shortly (with reasonable playerrs running $350 and crap off-brands around $300), but Toshiba still has a significant price advantage.