Try re-read that sentence. You will notice that it is in two parts:
Part 1: A well regulated militia being nessecary to the security of a free State - this is the justification for what follows.
Part 2: the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed - removing the justification clause, this is the actual content of the second ammendment. It explicitly states the right of the people, with no mention of being limited to a milita.
I'd also like to know how can you seriously think that a constitutional ammendment like this could be meant to apply only to recognized members of the armed forces? The armed forces are an extension of the government - you don't need an ammendment to say that the government can have weapons - you'd only need one to say that they can't. Additionally, this is part of what is collectively called "The Bill of Rights" - namely the section of the US Constitution that was designed specifically to guarantee rights to citizens and limit the government. Your interpretation is completely counter to that idea.
Sliders : Cancelled at it's peak of popularity, and as I remember, it was the No. 1 rated show on the channel.
I was watching Sliders that season... it sucked. It sucked hardcore. It sucked so bad, that the star of the show quit (who, IIRC, was even an executive producer until that season), along with 1/2 of the rest of the regular cast.
MST3K : Cancelled because the show couldn't bring in more ratings, or because it was too expensive, depending on what time of day it is when you ask. Of course, the fact that Scifi never ran promos for the show helped.
Uhhhh... I'm pretty sure MST3K ran on Comedy Central, not SciFi. Also, while the show was making plenty of money, it was in, what, the 9th season? When a show runs that long, in many cases the re-runs are able to pull in as much viewership as new airings. (Especially when the old episodes are of a vastly higher quality than the new shows.) Another nail in MST3K's coffin was the fact that their production costs had risen dramatically in the last few seasons - simply put, they were out of old, cheap movies to use. With the popularity of MST3K, the studios that owned most old movies were raising the prices they were charging to incredibly high rates for movies that hadn't been seen in decades. And, finally, after so many years, nearly all the original staff was gone, and those who were left were looking to move on.
Farscape : Cancelled when it was the No. 1 rated show on the channel, because it was too expensive. How is it possible for your most popular show to be too expensive?
OK, this one I will agree with... the cancellation of Farscape was one of the stupidest things I've seen in a long time. The only possible justification I can think of for it is if they didn't have the budget to pay for BOTH new Farscape episodes AND new SG-1 episodes. (As another poster pointed out, SG-1 was cheaper to produce, and had better ratings, so if they could only do one show they picked correctly...)
Actually, part of DGHDA was a Dr. Who story... specifically, the time-traveller in it was a rewrite of a character in the Dr. Who episode Shada (the "unfinished" Tom Baker episode written by DNA).
In any case, I would absolutely LOVE to see a Dirk Gently movie - those were great stories, and I actually liked them better than the Hitchhiker's books.
--The Rizz
"Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines." --David Letterman
The ideal doctor is an experienced character actor, not a star. Don Warrington. Great voice, imagine him being sarcastic to a dalek, already done some Who IIRC.
I have to second that. He is a good actor with excellent personal presence, and he can bring out a sense of flair in his roles. Christopher Eccleston, on the other hand, has no flair and no presence. Watching Rose made me feel like I was watching a sub-B-grade American action movie, complete with the wooden actor in the lead role.
Don Warrington is absolutely perfect for a Doctor, unlike the current incarnation.
--The Rizz
"A performer is nothing without an audience." --Henry Rollins
If there is an activity that you swear off, and promise never to do, invariably it will be done and it will be done irresponsibly. The people in college who really burned out their brains on drugs were the ones in High School who swore they would never do any.
From my experience, that's not exactly true. I swore off drugs, and never "burned out my brain" in college. There have been other things that I have, to one degree or another, sworn off. The ones I have later actually done I did with caution, not irresponsibly, and never over-did to the point of causing a problem. I have also seen this in other people, so I know it's not just me who is like this.
On the other hand, I (and those others I mention) have generally sworn something off based on our own decisions, after considering actually doing it. Among those I have seen who swore something off because they were told to do it, your scenario is much more likely.
The problem is not the insistence that you will not do something so much as having that decision forced on you. If you decide upon such a thing yourself, that generally means you have considered the information and are aware of the risks involved, as well as the possible precautions to be taken if you are involved in the activity. Those who have such things forced upon them are generally lacking in the basic knowledge of what you can do to be safe while doing that activity - after all, if you tell someone they will never, never be allowed to do something, why would you bother to tell them how to do it safely? (Yes, logically you should - but the situations we are talking about are generally forced by people who are are not looking at things logically, but rather as a matter of dogma.)
That is the date of manufacture, not the date of sale. Few CDs have more than one pressing, so they'd pretty much all have the same date. And even that's based on the assumption that all CDs have this datestamp on them (they don't).
Then, let's consider how much work it would take to go through every single CD you own, and look at every single date... not very likely they'd both - they'd just look at what you own, and take it at face value.
By that logic, let's compare littering to a bank robbery.
Littering = Very easy to avoid being found out. It's not like people really notice someone drop something on the ground. Bank robbery = Security cameras, guards, silent alarms, FBI involvement.
So, by your logic, since it's much, much easier to get caught robbing a bank than littering, you should get a much much stiffer penalty when caught throwing a gum wrapper on the ground.
Shall we say a $500 billion fine, and 4000 years in jail? That should keep your d = pc formula balanced...
The linked page shows average decompression times of 6-8 seconds for 600-800 KB files, rising with the size of the file. Who would benefit from this?
Any websites with the primary purpose of hosting images would benefit greatly from this - such as art & photography sites. (Yes, and porn sites, too.)
Why? Because 99% of the traffic they generate is for their images. Of those images, 99% of them are in JPEG format. So this compression would give a good savings in bandwidth on all those pictures.
At large sites, a 30% cut in required bandwidth could mean a very large savings. Now, if they can take a large cut off their operating expenses, and all they need to do that is to make the users wait a few extra seconds for their pictures, I think we know what they'll do.
As for the decompression time, one thing to remember is that with how slow internet connections are (even broadband), you're much more likely to be waiting for one of these images to transfer than you are to be waiting for it to decompress (so long as it allows you to start the decompression without waiting for the end of the file, of course).
--The Rizz
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." -Denis Diderot
Or, print the CD information in (slightly raised) braille on the label side.
Unless you're a complete idiot, you should be able to figure out taht the side iwth the bumps goes up. (Of course, this may lead to fingerprints on the wrong side of the CD, but a disc cleaning cloth an take care of that.)
Re:been doing this for ages
on
TV Piracy is Next
·
· Score: 3, Informative
That's funny... I used to grab copies of SG-1 from the UK since they were (for a while) broadcasting them there 1 week before they were broadcast in the US. (This was back when I had Showtime specifically for SG-1, too!)
However, I do have to agree that there are many shows that, if you want to stay current, you have to download. I am always watching the UK/EU download sites and grabbing the first few episodes of their TV series. There have been several shows that I got that way that I would never have found otherwise.
As for the creators getting paid? Amazon.co.uk has seen me buy several box sets. It looks to me that my "piracy" has generated them more revenue than they would have had otherwise.
I think that while loss of revenue from commercials may hurt things in the short run, sales of box sets will more than make up for it in the long run. In the meantime, the losses are small (while a large % of movie-goers are the correct demographics for downloading, on TV the % is much smaller) and will not have a large impact on ad revenue. This will worsen over time as more people figure out the technology (and that Tivo can skip the commercials), but this is a good thing: It will force the industry to quit being so stagnant and actually figure out their new business model, but affect them slowly enough to give them time to do it.
The Secret Service is not just for protection of President / etc.
They also are charged with various other jobs, including (according to their website): laws relating to counterfeiting of obligations and securities of the United States; financial crimes that include, but are not limited to, access device fraud, financial institution fraud, identity theft, computer fraud; and computer-based attacks on our nation's financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure.
Since it looks like this site was pretty much a lot of identity theft and forging passports, that would be the reason the Secret Service got involved...
Just because he has been asked for some input into possible future projects doesn't mean he doesn't have a well defined job.
It is defeintely possible that this job is very well defined, but those doing the hiring know that, as it currently is, it will not take him 40 hours/week. In this case, it is the opposite of what you're saying - they are trying to make sure they get the most for their money.
Or, perhaps he's being hired as their website director. Again, this is hardly "wasting money" just because they ask him what types of projects he sees in the future for the website.
Well, then, maybe you can explain to me what the heck the ending of The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer is supposed to mean... that one I've never been able to figure out.
While I have to agree that Philip K. Dick has written some of the best scifi ever, it is also important to note that he was also quite insane, and as a result many of his stories make little to no sense.
The main thing about PKD is that he wrote large numbers of stories in varying states of lucidity. Many of them work wonderfully, but others either just fall completely flat, or build up to what looks like it will be a profound ending, but rather just leaves you wondering what the hell he was thinking.
If you have never read PKD before, I would suggest you try Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for Blade Runner).
Actually, I'm willing to believe that those last 20 minutes were in the original script. I've read some of Brian Aldiss's other stories before (he is the author of the story that A.I. is adapted from), and this sort of ending seems a lot like his writing from the 70's.
And I checked - the original publication date of Supertoys Last All Summer Long (title of said short story) is in 1969.
While I'd have to say the movie pretty much sucked.
Too much of the movie felt like a non-sequitir, like the scene with Box (the robot in the ice cave). Most of the rest just felt unrealistic, like a simple logic error in a computer causing an entire city to explode for no aparrent reason. (No, the city was not made of C4.)
The book (written by W. Nolan & G. Johnson), on the other hand, makes much, much more sense. After reading the book, many things in the movie that seemed like they were added for no reason become much clearer - they are taken from the book, but twisted into nonsensical versions of themselves (such as Box).
Don't forget to "review" the other copies, too!!!
on
The Saga of Katie.com
·
· Score: 4, Informative
While the link in the parent post is getting a lot of moderation done, there are pleny more at Amazon.com that people need to write reviews for, and mod up:
Yes, it does require Windows, as it does not actually use SMB or any other type of network shares. The software is actually a re-encode/streaming program that is required for the set-top box to play anything over the network.
For some more information look at my post lower down in this article.
--The Rizz
"I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific." --Steven Wright
When I was looking into these DVD players that could handle DivX/etc. earlier this year, I noticed these networked Gateway models and looked into them.
Aparrently, they cannot actually play DivX/XviD/etc. The way they actually work is to require "streaming server software" on a Windows machine. What this "server" actually does is convert any AVI types the computer can play into mediocre-quality MPEG-1/2 streams to send to the DVD player (which is why there is a particular OS and minimum processor speed required). This will often result in lower resolutions than the original video clip, and always lower quality (due to recompression).
If you're looking for a real solution for a DivX / XviD / etc. set-top player, I suggest you look into a modded XBox (with XBMC or similar), a Lite-On LVD-2010, or the inexpensive Philips DVP642 (if you don't need networking).
--The Rizz
"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!" --W. C. Fields
Actually, if you're willing to do some rebates, you can generally get wireless 802.11b routers for about $20.
Every one of these I've seen also has a 4-port 10/100 switch built in.
Just remember to set up wireless security or, if you have no wireless devices, turn the wireless connections off entirely.
--The Rizz
"Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them." --Ed Howe
Suppose one wanted a home machine with Windows XP Pro and some Linux/BSD variant. Are there any software/hardware solutions for that configurations? Does a raid array have to be dedicated to a single OS?
Grab a good hardware-RAID card (I suggest a 3ware card) rather than a software-RAID card (which most of the onboard cards are nowadays). Most of these hardware-RAID cards have BIOS support on them, so you can generally use them on any OS you want. (Or even under multiple OSes - the RAID array shows up as a hard drive in the OS and can be partitioned just like any other drive.) In the case of a 3ware card, it sets itself up as a SCSI controller (even though it uses IDE drives), so on more modern OSes you need a driver disk or special boot option to get it running during the setup process, while older OSes will just treat it as a generic non-DMA drive. (For the 3ware card I have, in Win9x it shows up as a generic int13 drive during setup, in Linux you just need to use the SCSI boot option during setup, and for WinNT/2k/XP you need a driver disk.)
If you look around on eBay, you can pick up 8-port 3ware RAID {1, 10, 0, JBOD} cards for around $30-50, and 4-port 3ware cards that support RAID5 for about $75-125. (The 4D and 5000 series are the former, and 6000 and newer series are the latter.)
--The Rizz
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." --John F. Kennedy
This change simplifies the tax system: Instead of having a special tax exemption for "custom software", there is one sales tax which applies to all software.
You're wrong about that. There is no "special tax exemption" in place here - custom software development is generally a "work-for-hire" situation. If someone develops custom software for a company, they get paid for the time spent on it. This is paid either as an employee of company (i.e. the standard paycheck), or as an independant contractor (billable hours).
In neither case is a bill of sale presented by the programmer to the company in question. In fact, in most (all?) states, you aren't even required to get a sales tax license if all your work is consultant in nature (which this would be considered).
Also, it is already taxed - namely income tax. This payment is even reported to the IRS - either as a paycheck to the employee (W-2) or as an outside programmer (1099-MISC).
What this bill is proposing (among other things) is add a new tax to custom development, by requiring the payment of sales tax in addition to the income tax already being paid on it.
I can easily make a mechanical means that a kid with a hammer cant break.
the key is to simply limit the travel of the rod.
if I slam the button with a sledge hammer but it will only let it move 1/16th of an inch, it does not matter how hard you hit it.
Yes, it does matter how hard you hit it.
By your logic, he should just weld the rod to the button... after all, if shorter distance = less possible force, then 0 distance = no force at all, right?
Travel distance before an object strikes another object is completely irrelevent to the damage it can do (mass * velocity). Now, putting some sort of padding in place that is firm enough to transfer the "button push", but soft enough to take the brunt of the shock from someone hitting the button with a sledgehammer would be a better idea.
--The Rizz
"The larger an object is, the less stable it is. Tokyo, being extremely large, explodes on a fairly regular basis." --anime law of physics
Slashdot Mirror
Try re-read that sentence. You will notice that it is in two parts:
Part 1: A well regulated militia being nessecary to the security of a free State - this is the justification for what follows.
Part 2: the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed - removing the justification clause, this is the actual content of the second ammendment. It explicitly states the right of the people, with no mention of being limited to a milita.
I'd also like to know how can you seriously think that a constitutional ammendment like this could be meant to apply only to recognized members of the armed forces?
The armed forces are an extension of the government - you don't need an ammendment to say that the government can have weapons - you'd only need one to say that they can't.
Additionally, this is part of what is collectively called "The Bill of Rights" - namely the section of the US Constitution that was designed specifically to guarantee rights to citizens and limit the government. Your interpretation is completely counter to that idea.
Actually, I rather enjoyed that episode.
It may not have been a great episode, but it was just so surreal I couldn't help but love it.
Sliders : Cancelled at it's peak of popularity, and as I remember, it was the No. 1 rated show on the channel.
... it sucked. It sucked hardcore. It sucked so bad, that the star of the show quit (who, IIRC, was even an executive producer until that season), along with 1/2 of the rest of the regular cast.
I was watching Sliders that season
MST3K : Cancelled because the show couldn't bring in more ratings, or because it was too expensive, depending on what time of day it is when you ask. Of course, the fact that Scifi never ran promos for the show helped.
Uhhhh... I'm pretty sure MST3K ran on Comedy Central, not SciFi. Also, while the show was making plenty of money, it was in, what, the 9th season? When a show runs that long, in many cases the re-runs are able to pull in as much viewership as new airings. (Especially when the old episodes are of a vastly higher quality than the new shows.)
Another nail in MST3K's coffin was the fact that their production costs had risen dramatically in the last few seasons - simply put, they were out of old, cheap movies to use. With the popularity of MST3K, the studios that owned most old movies were raising the prices they were charging to incredibly high rates for movies that hadn't been seen in decades.
And, finally, after so many years, nearly all the original staff was gone, and those who were left were looking to move on.
Farscape : Cancelled when it was the No. 1 rated show on the channel, because it was too expensive. How is it possible for your most popular show to be too expensive?
OK, this one I will agree with... the cancellation of Farscape was one of the stupidest things I've seen in a long time. The only possible justification I can think of for it is if they didn't have the budget to pay for BOTH new Farscape episodes AND new SG-1 episodes. (As another poster pointed out, SG-1 was cheaper to produce, and had better ratings, so if they could only do one show they picked correctly...)
Actually, part of DGHDA was a Dr. Who story ... specifically, the time-traveller in it was a rewrite of a character in the Dr. Who episode Shada (the "unfinished" Tom Baker episode written by DNA).
In any case, I would absolutely LOVE to see a Dirk Gently movie - those were great stories, and I actually liked them better than the Hitchhiker's books.
--The Rizz
"Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines." --David Letterman
The ideal doctor is an experienced character actor, not a star.
Don Warrington. Great voice, imagine him being sarcastic to a dalek, already done some Who IIRC.
I have to second that. He is a good actor with excellent personal presence, and he can bring out a sense of flair in his roles.
Christopher Eccleston, on the other hand, has no flair and no presence. Watching Rose made me feel like I was watching a sub-B-grade American action movie, complete with the wooden actor in the lead role.
Don Warrington is absolutely perfect for a Doctor, unlike the current incarnation.
--The Rizz
"A performer is nothing without an audience." --Henry Rollins
From my experience, that's not exactly true. I swore off drugs, and never "burned out my brain" in college. There have been other things that I have, to one degree or another, sworn off. The ones I have later actually done I did with caution, not irresponsibly, and never over-did to the point of causing a problem. I have also seen this in other people, so I know it's not just me who is like this.
On the other hand, I (and those others I mention) have generally sworn something off based on our own decisions, after considering actually doing it. Among those I have seen who swore something off because they were told to do it, your scenario is much more likely.
The problem is not the insistence that you will not do something so much as having that decision forced on you. If you decide upon such a thing yourself, that generally means you have considered the information and are aware of the risks involved, as well as the possible precautions to be taken if you are involved in the activity. Those who have such things forced upon them are generally lacking in the basic knowledge of what you can do to be safe while doing that activity - after all, if you tell someone they will never, never be allowed to do something, why would you bother to tell them how to do it safely? (Yes, logically you should - but the situations we are talking about are generally forced by people who are are not looking at things logically, but rather as a matter of dogma.)
Then, let's consider how much work it would take to go through every single CD you own, and look at every single date... not very likely they'd both - they'd just look at what you own, and take it at face value.
Six words: I don't have my receipt, jackass.
How dumb do you have to be to keep the receipt and show it to them rather than claim you bought it years ago?
By that logic, let's compare littering to a bank robbery.
Littering = Very easy to avoid being found out. It's not like people really notice someone drop something on the ground.
Bank robbery = Security cameras, guards, silent alarms, FBI involvement.
So, by your logic, since it's much, much easier to get caught robbing a bank than littering, you should get a much much stiffer penalty when caught throwing a gum wrapper on the ground.
Shall we say a $500 billion fine, and 4000 years in jail? That should keep your d = pc formula balanced...
The linked page shows average decompression times of 6-8 seconds for 600-800 KB files, rising with the size of the file. Who would benefit from this?
Any websites with the primary purpose of hosting images would benefit greatly from this - such as art & photography sites. (Yes, and porn sites, too.)
Why? Because 99% of the traffic they generate is for their images. Of those images, 99% of them are in JPEG format. So this compression would give a good savings in bandwidth on all those pictures.
At large sites, a 30% cut in required bandwidth could mean a very large savings. Now, if they can take a large cut off their operating expenses, and all they need to do that is to make the users wait a few extra seconds for their pictures, I think we know what they'll do.
As for the decompression time, one thing to remember is that with how slow internet connections are (even broadband), you're much more likely to be waiting for one of these images to transfer than you are to be waiting for it to decompress (so long as it allows you to start the decompression without waiting for the end of the file, of course).
--The Rizz
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." -Denis Diderot
Or, print the CD information in (slightly raised) braille on the label side.
Unless you're a complete idiot, you should be able to figure out taht the side iwth the bumps goes up. (Of course, this may lead to fingerprints on the wrong side of the CD, but a disc cleaning cloth an take care of that.)
That's funny... I used to grab copies of SG-1 from the UK since they were (for a while) broadcasting them there 1 week before they were broadcast in the US. (This was back when I had Showtime specifically for SG-1, too!)
However, I do have to agree that there are many shows that, if you want to stay current, you have to download. I am always watching the UK/EU download sites and grabbing the first few episodes of their TV series. There have been several shows that I got that way that I would never have found otherwise.
As for the creators getting paid? Amazon.co.uk has seen me buy several box sets. It looks to me that my "piracy" has generated them more revenue than they would have had otherwise.
I think that while loss of revenue from commercials may hurt things in the short run, sales of box sets will more than make up for it in the long run. In the meantime, the losses are small (while a large % of movie-goers are the correct demographics for downloading, on TV the % is much smaller) and will not have a large impact on ad revenue. This will worsen over time as more people figure out the technology (and that Tivo can skip the commercials), but this is a good thing: It will force the industry to quit being so stagnant and actually figure out their new business model, but affect them slowly enough to give them time to do it.
The Secret Service is not just for protection of President / etc.
They also are charged with various other jobs, including (according to their website):
laws relating to counterfeiting of obligations and securities of the United States; financial crimes that include, but are not limited to, access device fraud, financial institution fraud, identity theft, computer fraud; and computer-based attacks on our nation's financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure.
Since it looks like this site was pretty much a lot of identity theft and forging passports, that would be the reason the Secret Service got involved...
It is defeintely possible that this job is very well defined, but those doing the hiring know that, as it currently is, it will not take him 40 hours/week. In this case, it is the opposite of what you're saying - they are trying to make sure they get the most for their money.
Or, perhaps he's being hired as their website director. Again, this is hardly "wasting money" just because they ask him what types of projects he sees in the future for the website.
Well, then, maybe you can explain to me what the heck the ending of The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer is supposed to mean... that one I've never been able to figure out.
While I have to agree that Philip K. Dick has written some of the best scifi ever, it is also important to note that he was also quite insane, and as a result many of his stories make little to no sense.
The main thing about PKD is that he wrote large numbers of stories in varying states of lucidity. Many of them work wonderfully, but others either just fall completely flat, or build up to what looks like it will be a profound ending, but rather just leaves you wondering what the hell he was thinking.
If you have never read PKD before, I would suggest you try Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for Blade Runner).
Actually, I'm willing to believe that those last 20 minutes were in the original script. I've read some of Brian Aldiss's other stories before (he is the author of the story that A.I. is adapted from), and this sort of ending seems a lot like his writing from the 70's.
And I checked - the original publication date of Supertoys Last All Summer Long (title of said short story) is in 1969.
While I'd have to say the movie pretty much sucked.
Too much of the movie felt like a non-sequitir, like the scene with Box (the robot in the ice cave). Most of the rest just felt unrealistic, like a simple logic error in a computer causing an entire city to explode for no aparrent reason. (No, the city was not made of C4.)
The book (written by W. Nolan & G. Johnson), on the other hand, makes much, much more sense.
After reading the book, many things in the movie that seemed like they were added for no reason become much clearer - they are taken from the book, but twisted into nonsensical versions of themselves (such as Box).
While the link in the parent post is getting a lot of moderation done, there are pleny more at Amazon.com that people need to write reviews for, and mod up:
US: Amazon.com, Amazon.com
CA: Amazon.ca, Amazon.ca, Amazon.ca, Amazon.ca
UK: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk
Yes, it does require Windows, as it does not actually use SMB or any other type of network shares. The software is actually a re-encode/streaming program that is required for the set-top box to play anything over the network.
For some more information look at my post lower down in this article.
--The Rizz
"I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific." --Steven Wright
When I was looking into these DVD players that could handle DivX/etc. earlier this year, I noticed these networked Gateway models and looked into them.
Aparrently, they cannot actually play DivX/XviD/etc. The way they actually work is to require "streaming server software" on a Windows machine. What this "server" actually does is convert any AVI types the computer can play into mediocre-quality MPEG-1/2 streams to send to the DVD player (which is why there is a particular OS and minimum processor speed required). This will often result in lower resolutions than the original video clip, and always lower quality (due to recompression).
If you're looking for a real solution for a DivX / XviD / etc. set-top player, I suggest you look into a modded XBox (with XBMC or similar), a Lite-On LVD-2010, or the inexpensive Philips DVP642 (if you don't need networking).
--The Rizz
"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!" --W. C. Fields
Actually, if you're willing to do some rebates, you can generally get wireless 802.11b routers for about $20.
Every one of these I've seen also has a 4-port 10/100 switch built in.
Just remember to set up wireless security or, if you have no wireless devices, turn the wireless connections off entirely.
--The Rizz
"Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them." --Ed Howe
Suppose one wanted a home machine with Windows XP Pro and some Linux/BSD variant. Are there any software/hardware solutions for that configurations? Does a raid array have to be dedicated to a single OS?
Grab a good hardware-RAID card (I suggest a 3ware card) rather than a software-RAID card (which most of the onboard cards are nowadays).
Most of these hardware-RAID cards have BIOS support on them, so you can generally use them on any OS you want. (Or even under multiple OSes - the RAID array shows up as a hard drive in the OS and can be partitioned just like any other drive.)
In the case of a 3ware card, it sets itself up as a SCSI controller (even though it uses IDE drives), so on more modern OSes you need a driver disk or special boot option to get it running during the setup process, while older OSes will just treat it as a generic non-DMA drive. (For the 3ware card I have, in Win9x it shows up as a generic int13 drive during setup, in Linux you just need to use the SCSI boot option during setup, and for WinNT/2k/XP you need a driver disk.)
If you look around on eBay, you can pick up 8-port 3ware RAID {1, 10, 0, JBOD} cards for around $30-50, and 4-port 3ware cards that support RAID5 for about $75-125. (The 4D and 5000 series are the former, and 6000 and newer series are the latter.)
--The Rizz
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." --John F. Kennedy
You're wrong about that. There is no "special tax exemption" in place here - custom software development is generally a "work-for-hire" situation. If someone develops custom software for a company, they get paid for the time spent on it. This is paid either as an employee of company (i.e. the standard paycheck), or as an independant contractor (billable hours).
In neither case is a bill of sale presented by the programmer to the company in question. In fact, in most (all?) states, you aren't even required to get a sales tax license if all your work is consultant in nature (which this would be considered).
Also, it is already taxed - namely income tax. This payment is even reported to the IRS - either as a paycheck to the employee (W-2) or as an outside programmer (1099-MISC).
What this bill is proposing (among other things) is add a new tax to custom development, by requiring the payment of sales tax in addition to the income tax already being paid on it.
the key is to simply limit the travel of the rod.
if I slam the button with a sledge hammer but it will only let it move 1/16th of an inch, it does not matter how hard you hit it.
Yes, it does matter how hard you hit it. ... after all, if shorter distance = less possible force, then 0 distance = no force at all, right?
By your logic, he should just weld the rod to the button
Travel distance before an object strikes another object is completely irrelevent to the damage it can do (mass * velocity). Now, putting some sort of padding in place that is firm enough to transfer the "button push", but soft enough to take the brunt of the shock from someone hitting the button with a sledgehammer would be a better idea.
--The Rizz
"The larger an object is, the less stable it is. Tokyo, being extremely large, explodes on a fairly regular basis." --anime law of physics