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Tax Waste, Not Work

Hey! Being weird is a good thing! -> http://tr.im/beweird-go

There's a company called HACEDuino that makes Arduino kits if you're interested. Cheap, they sell them on Ebay out of Australia. Neat little kits, I have one myself.

Apress just put out a new book called "Practical Arduino: Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware". I've been tempted to pick it up, since it looks like a pretty interesting, but wasn't too sure how expensive it would be to get into another hobby programming kit.

I'm pretty partial to Corsair and Cooler Master PSUs. I've also bought a few Antec ones as well. I was using Thermaltake for a while, but it seemed like every PSU of theirs I had died after about the warranty life + a month or two. I've had 3 die on me. Antec, only ever seen 2 dead ones, let alone one I purchased. Corsair seem to have a really high build quality, same goes for the newer Cooler Master modular psu's. Generally I tend to buy in the $50 to $120 range for my PSU, around 600W if I don't intend on dual GPUs, and around 800W if I do.

There's also a large difference between a cheap PSU sold at 600W when that is their theoretical max, and a Cooler Master psu sold at 600W when that is their working max (700W input at about 85% efficiency).

With motherboards, it's really hard to tell when it's a new series. I bought the first eVGA i680 nvidia board which wasn't cheap, and had a lot of problems with it. If you can wait a few months until feedback hits, the ranking on newegg seems to be a fair indicator, I'll usually Search by chipset and size (mATX vs ATX) and then sort by best rating. I won't necessarily buy the #1 slot as I'm partial to Gigabyte UD* boards lately, and if there's less that 25 reviews then read them. One or two idiots can skew the results when there's only 5-10 reviews, and they don't understand the product.

For CPUs, I currently go for dual cor, or higher, and for vx (virtualization) ability. Speed for most CPUs these days at more than 2Ghz is more than most people need for most tasks. If you want to do video, get the fastest you can afford. IMHO the best value today is probably an i5-750 or an i7-860, unless you want dual GPUs. If you want dual GPUs it depends on your other needs, but at that point an AMD Phenom 2 965 is a good option, or pay the money and jump to an i7-920.

For GPU, I usually shop around the $150-180 mark, because I find it tends to be the best value point. Right now an AMD 4870, or 5770 are both good choices in that range. nvidia's cards seem to be running out of stock at a lot of etailers, so a refresh is probably around the corner, right now the 250 or 260 range is nice, if you have an app that uses CUDA (nero recode).

And as suggested, if you can afford it, go with an SSD, I'd recommend a 60-80GB SSD paired with a 1-2TB HDD. OS and apps on the SSD, games and media on the HDD. My new SSD after all my apps were installed and my profile migrated (without media files) took up about 35GB, and I wanted room to grow. 60-80GB will give you that head room... 30-45GB really won't for most use today, and you'll need to stay on top of it. You can install apps to your HDD, or move your installed paths and mklink the directory over, but that's more work for a typical user.

Other than that, get a nice case. I just put together my new desktop this weekend, I have all my parts listed, and some rundown of what I liked/disliked about them. I've linked to amazon via affiliate, but to be honest, most of the purchases were via newegg. Imho newegg has the best end user review system out there.

You forgot to put on your sunglasses, but I can still take the cue:
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Here's a link to the phone in case anyone's interested: Motorola Motofone F3 Unlocked Phone with Dual-Band GSM 850/1900--International Version with No Warranty (Black)

In America there is no system in place today that forces people to remain separate or keeps one Class subservient to another.

If you were born the son of a street sweeper, but excelled, you could become a doctor or lawyer or some celebrity or entrepreneur - and at the same time you would be fully accepted by your peers.

Not so in India. The Caste system freezes everyone in place. It is extremely difficult - almost impossible - for someone from the lowest Caste to rise in education and social status.

A Dalit would never be allowed to marry into one of the higher Castes and would never be accepted as an equal.

And for a Dalit to make it into MEDICAL school or opening a RESTAURANT or become a PRIEST in a temple or become a member of high SOCIETY in India is very rare indeed.

http://tr.im/MErO

They already have Catan on the iPhone (warning: link launches iTunes).

is the iPod Touch worth buying just for games available on the platform?

I wouldn't say it's worth buying as a gaming platform alone, but it is definitely an added incentive. In my opinion, an iPod Touch is worth buying since it's a music player, web browser, email client, address book, calendar, calculator, note pad, photo album AND you can play lots of cool games. I've sold my DS since I got my iPod touch, because several of the games I owned on the DS are available on the iPod Touch for a fraction of the price. For instance, there's Civilization Revolution for $6.99 or Puzzle Quest for $4.99 (Warning: Links launch iTunes). Both of these are a fraction of the cost of the DS versions, and the graphics are as good, if not better, and the game play is about the same, though you don't get multi-player with Civ Rev or the game of the week. I also like not having to carry around game cards, so that's an added bonus.

is the iPod Touch worth buying just for games available on the platform?

I wouldn't say it's worth buying as a gaming platform alone, but it is definitely an added incentive. In my opinion, an iPod Touch is worth buying since it's a music player, web browser, email client, address book, calendar, calculator, note pad, photo album AND you can play lots of cool games. I've sold my DS since I got my iPod touch, because several of the games I owned on the DS are available on the iPod Touch for a fraction of the price. For instance, there's Civilization Revolution for $6.99 or Puzzle Quest for $4.99 (Warning: Links launch iTunes). Both of these are a fraction of the cost of the DS versions, and the graphics are as good, if not better, and the game play is about the same, though you don't get multi-player with Civ Rev or the game of the week. I also like not having to carry around game cards, so that's an added bonus.

Unfortunately, the answer is likely "no one." A huge part of the problem is the fact that our current privacy laws are completely outdated. Law enforcement agencies can request geolocation data and other private information from companies with little or no court oversight, and the customer is unlikely to ever even know that their information was disclosed. You can read more about the issue at our Location Information page here: http://tr.im/GkQT. ACLU of Northern California – dotRights Campaign

Firstly, tr.im is still working, and even better, it's now open source (on github). Secondly, although this backup stuff sounds good, there's probably a much easier solution: put your link database online and release it under a free license. That's exactly what ur1.ca did (and this one is open source too).

True. Here is the proof

for e.g. in India there is no corruption free delivery system.

Economic Growth != Socio-economic Growth

UNHRC Resolution
US Congress Resolution
Prime Minister of India

Economic Growth != Socio-economic Growth

UNHRC Resolution
US Congress Resolution
Prime Minister of India

Economic Growth != Socio-economic Growth

UNHRC Resolution
US Congress Resolution
Prime Minister of India

And Machiavelli Was Right

One could easily say the same about Objective C on the iPhone. It's no Sunday walk in the park.

A programming language is a programming language. They all have features that people like and dislike. With Obj. C 2.0, Apple has made quite a few strides in making Obj. C programming much easier, with things like properties replacing your standard setter/getter methods & allowing for dot notation. The only real pain is that the iPhone doesn't support garbage collection due to performance issues, so you still need to manage your memory. Obj. C is also pretty verbose, but with CodeSense that doesn't matter much. Most people who complain about Obj. C probably haven't spent the week or so it takes to learn all of the nuances. There's even a book out now called Learn Objective-C for Java Developers which helps to bridge the gap.

• An armed society is a polite society.
• It is not fear that keeps us polite -- it is responsibility.

Quran abused Jews 20 times and Christians 14 times. No true Muslim should believe that Allah will abuse Jews or Christians via Muhammad's (PBUH) Quran.

I believe Inter-Faith marriages will ease the tensions in the region.

No true Muslim should believe that Allah will abuse Jews or Christians via Muhammad (PBH) via Quran.

Hindus must apologize horses for raping them.

Case in point:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002DHLV8S/ref=s9_simz_gw_s8_p65_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=10Y89T4V261QMCTNJ4VJ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

Oh, sure. I can make a link out of it, which works fine on a web forum, but does not fucking work on a telephone or a newletter or a postcard or...

"Yeah, Jeff. Amazon's taking preorders on Windows 7. Can you believe how much they want for that shit? No, really: Just go to double-yoo-double-you-double-you dot amazon dot com forward slash gee pee forward slash product forward slash capitol b zero zero two dee aitch ell vee eight five forward slash are eee eff equals-sign ess nine underscore ess eye emm zee underscore gw underscore ess eight underscore pee sixty-five underscore eye one questionmark pee eff underscore are dee underscore[...], and see for yourself."

Yeah. Sure. That's so much easier than saying it like "Yeah, Jeff. Amazon's taking preorders on Windows 7. Can you believe how much they want for that shit? No, really: Just go to tr.im/wHMJ and see for yourself"

(I'd write a conclusion here, but really don't think my point needs one.)

The original use of URL shortening services was to prevent link breakage in e-mail and nntp clients that linebreak after 80 characters. They still work great for this. http://tr.im/wGhA works a lot better in e-mail than http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1600+pennsylvania+ave,+dc&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=49.624204,58.359375&ie=UTF8&ll=38.898732,-77.038515&spn=0.012007,0.014248&z=16 . I've also heard shortened links used to good effect on internet radio, where it's easier to direct listeners to a tinyurl than a long forum URL, when there's discussion about a certain thread.

They serve no purpose other than giving people a way to distribute malicious links

Just because some people abuse something doesn't mean that everyone does. I use tr.im all the time, and find it extremely useful, especially since it allows me to send the URL's straight to Twitter. tr.im URL's are only 17 characters long (ex. http://tr.im/aaaa) as opposed to tinyurl's 25 character minimum. When you only have 140 characters to work with, the extra 8 characters to spare can help a lot. I really can't figure out why anybody would use bit.ly or tinyurl over tr.im, at least for Twitter.

No TRUE Muslim will believe that Allah will abuse Jews or Christians or communities via Quran.

A little googling found the following.

Odds of being...
-killed in school shooting: 1,700,000 to 1 (*1)
-struck by lightning in entire life: 5,000 to 1 (*2)
-a boy sexually abused before adulthood: 6 to 1 (*3)
-a girl being sexually abused before adulthood: 4 to 1 (*3)

Without even delving into it or doing any research at all, you could probably already construe that your child is more likely to be molested by a teacher than struck by lightning or killed in a school shooting. If there are an estimated 50mil school aged children right now, fewer than 30 will be killed in a school shooting, fewer than 10,000 will be struck by lightning (in their *entire* life), and 10mil will be sexually abused.

So even if only one-tenth-of-one-percent (.001) of molestations are ever committed by teachers, that is still 10,000 -- which is more than are struck by lightning in their entire lives and far more than are killed in school shootings.

Sexual abuse is often an issue of proximity. Family, friends, mom's boyfriend, trusted authority figures with opportunity, etc. Far more often than just being abducted and molested by some random stranger in a scary white van.

Now, while exact statistics on sexual molestation done by teachers are hard to come by, the anecdotal evidence is aplenty. And remember that a lot of teachers are never reported or caught. And often when they are, the school district covers it up (you can google plenty of stories where that has happened). And, while sometimes it may be the only single offense, there are plenty of those who have molested MANY times over their careers and either never got caught at all or eventually got caught for just one. Who knows how many they molesed before being caught.

Hell, simply count how many stories you see about a teacher molesting a student in a year versus being hit by lightning. And then remember that everyone is likely to come forward about being struck by lightning, but far fewer will report molestation. Hell, I even new girls who were involved with teachers when I was in school. And even as a young adult, I still knew at least one girl who wasn't even old enough to drive but was involved with a phys-ed teacher in her district. I suspect almost everyone knew of at least one kid in school that was involved with at least one teacher.

You could spend days finding story after story about it. Here's just one drastic example of a teacher who admitted to molesting more than *200* students in ONLY THREE YEARS: http://crime.about.com/b/2006/08/06/teacher-claims-he-molested-200-students.htm

Here's a google search for "teacher accused of sex with student": http://tr.im/uYYk

Go ahead and browse through page after page after page of the 2.5 million results.

(*1) http://www.arsafeschools.com/Files/ProbabilityFactSheet.pdf
(*2) http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm
(*3) http://www.darkness2light.org/KnowAbout/statistics_2.asp

• True Muslims must remove UNSOLICITED Jewish (20 times) and Christian (14 times) references from Quran
• True Muslims must review,refine and rewrite Quran

• True Muslims must remove UNSOLICITED Jewish (20 times) and Christian (14 times) references from Quran
• True Muslims must review,refine and rewrite Quran

If you intend to be a responsible citizen in India, you need a licensed Beretta Pistol and NOT an Unique Identification Number.

As per research studies there is no such thing as intrinsic motivation. http://tr.im/mKH0

Iran is "just about the most open Muslim nation"

• We can DISAGREE with other religious beliefs.
• We must not DISRESPECT their religious beliefs.

Hence, TRUE Muslims must remove Jewish and Christian references from Quran.

If you're responding to Iran being "the most Islam nation", are you considering all the secular Islam-majority nations that came out of the former Soviet Union (that are much more secular), or are you making a separate point?

Iran is "just about the most open Muslim nation"

• We can DISAGREE with other religious beliefs.
• We must not DISRESPECT their religious beliefs.

Hence, TRUE Muslims must remove Jewish and Christian references from Quran.

There is NO science behind Religion, Race Class, or Caste. Because all current living humans mtDNA is derived from a SINGLE woman.

There is NO science behind Religion, Race or Caste. Because all living humans mtDNA is derived from a SINGLE woman. http://tr.im/kWFv

"..damning official report which revealed 80 per cent of CCTV footage is of poor quality and that the cameras are mostly used to trap motorists rather than catch criminals."

Jason Liszkiewicz
Executive Director (NYC), Earth Intelligence Network 501(c)3
Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
www.earth-intelligence.net
EIN Twitter Feed
Cyber Scout Hyper Link-Table
Free Collective Intelligence Book
http://re-configure.org
http://smart-city.re-configure.org

"..damning official report which revealed 80 per cent of CCTV footage is of poor quality and that the cameras are mostly used to trap motorists rather than catch criminals."

Jason Liszkiewicz
Executive Director (NYC), Earth Intelligence Network 501(c)3
Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
www.earth-intelligence.net
EIN Twitter Feed
Cyber Scout Hyper Link-Table
Free Collective Intelligence Book
http://re-configure.org
http://smart-city.re-configure.org

"..damning official report which revealed 80 per cent of CCTV footage is of poor quality and that the cameras are mostly used to trap motorists rather than catch criminals."

Jason Liszkiewicz
Executive Director (NYC), Earth Intelligence Network 501(c)3
Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
www.earth-intelligence.net
EIN Twitter Feed
Cyber Scout Hyper Link-Table
Free Collective Intelligence Book
http://re-configure.org
http://smart-city.re-configure.org

True Muslims must remove Jewish and Christian references from Quran.

• Christians have corrected BIBLE on Slavery.
• Hindus have corrected VEDAS on Untouchability.

True Muslims must review, refine and rewrite QURAN

• Prevent Ponzi scams in Corporate Management and Stock Markets
• Will open markets for start-ups resulting in millions of new jobs

http://tr.im/juqj
"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, REGULATE it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."-- Reagon

This wasn't a troll, and neither is this. I'm actually curious. How many mods are not Judeo-Christian?

If 80% of the US is of Christian faith, with the majority of the remaining 20% of the Jewish faith, you would think that post deserves at least a mod +1 Funny...

According to the 2008 demographics collected by one of the most conservative private Christian colleges around (Trinity), almost 25% of the US is NOT Christian, with over 15% of this group in my personal segment, "Agnostic or Atheist", (those of Jewish faith are about 1.2% of total). Your 80/20 percentages are not only misleading, they are also just plain wrong.

source: http://tr.im/jH4c (trincoll.edu)

If you set your Google SafeSearch filter on "strict filtering" and search for clitoris, you get zero returns.

But if you try a Google SafeSearch "strict filtering" search for penis, you get...

33,000,000 returns.

That's because "clitoris" is on Google's list of naughty words which are never, ever "safe." Penis is just fine, however. http://tr.im/2tee (susiebright.blogs.com)

This double standard continues through many body part images. It would seem in today's morality, Men's breasts are totally acceptable, and can be published in photos and videos completely uncovered. Womens breasts however, are dirty and must be covered, even when feeding a child..

Several folks have posted comments to the effect to "take it to the bathroom" for breastfeeding mothers. Don't know about anybody else, but my wife is NOT feeding my son in the bathroom. Do you go to a stall in the bathroom for every meal you eat in public? (please don't tell me if you do). Nobody in my family is being forced to eat in the bathroom, including my nursing son.

If you don't like an infant's method of eating, you have personal problems, and should see someone about it. It is NOT sexual, it is NOT dirty, it is NOT something that needs to be done behind closed doors, it is SIMPLY A BABY EATING. jeesh. Grow up.

um...no, actually, Nymh was the first 80 to be recognized by Blizzard... The world's first 80 was banned temporarily for doing it too fast... http://tr.im/151t [this is a youtube link]