I use them for tiling bathrooms, floors and most recently for sawing walkway paver bricks (about 80 feet of curved walkway, every brick that touched the edge was saw cut.) I use the overhead ripsaw style, not the cheapo tiny Home Despot tablesaw style. I usually borrow a decent one from my father-in-law, but the last two times I've needed it, he's been using it for the bricks on his own house. It was easier to rent one than to wait. While at the store, I looked at the table saw style (it was cheaper than the rental) but decided against it.
A buddy of mine who is finishing his house bought one of those tiny ones a month ago thinking it'd be just fine for his three sections of floor and two bathrooms' walls. It served him for about 50 linear feet of sawing before it started acting up. Grit got in the fence locking mechanism, grinding it up and preventing it from locking tightly. That was just doing his entryway. He still has two bathroom floors plus the shower walls to go yet. He's going to return the cheap table saw, and he'll probably get one of the lower-end overhead saws. I suggested renting, but like me he's been having a lot of fun with tiling, so I think he'll buy it.
I've never had any problems with the bricksaw style cutters. They take a bit of maintenance to ensure the water pump is always submerged and clean, and delivering water to the blade. And things get loose and need to be tightened. But beyond that, I really prefer the rigid arm, large diameter blade and flood of water. When things start to mud up, they're really easy to take apart and clean. I also like the blade to fling the grit downwards into the tank, rather than upwards at me. (But I still build a booth every time I use one. Even outside, it's just easier to contain the mess.)
I suppose I've done about a half-dozen bathroom showers, a couple of floors and the paver walkway. I rented the saw for a couple days for the pavers, and for one of the showers. (Hmm... I'm pretty sure I borrowed tile saws for all the other work, so it probably wasn't four rentals. Whatever.)
I hate renting. I would much rather purchase something to use at my pleasure than to rely on some promise that the thing I want will be there five years from now when I want it again.
That desire falls off, of course, at a price point. While I might like my own tile saw, for the four times I've needed them I've rented them at $50/day, rather than spend $900 on a comparable quality tool (mostly because they're large and I don't want to store them.)
However, I definitely see it as a price point thing, not a percentage thing. Would I stop buying $10.00 DVDs if someone told me they'd always be available via on-demand for $2.00 in the future? No, because I don't trust companies to continue to make stuff like that available.
I'm probably suffering from 21st Century Affluent Consumer Mindset (Affluenza), but that's how I approach things.
wouldn't you be bitching about how the phone companies do not respect your privacy ?
I guess I don't bitch now if my email provider strips out both viruses AND spam, although that's just me. Some people probably have a problem with giving them that much power.
Oh, I agree it hasn't happened yet. But I'm hopeful that the consumers wronged by scams like this are able to bring a suit and bring an end to this dodging of responsibility.
I think something like this needs to be aired in a courtroom. While the phone manufacturers may not be found culpable, the cell providers might have demonstrated a willingness to drag their feet in order to maximise profits. And that would be a good start.
Good point. My understanding is this is an MMS virus, though. Can you inject an MMS anonymously via the web, too? Given the price they charge for the damn things, I'd sure hate to be spammed by web-generated MMSes.
It's not in the short-term best interests of the cellular providers to block the virus. First, it involves acknowledging the virus exists, which tends to scare people. Next, and here's the cynical greedy part, people who blindly pay their cell phone bills every month without complaint make up a large part of their customer base. If they can make a few million dollars off the virus, where's the incentive to shut it down? Willingly give out reimbursements to anyone who complains, but let the rest of them just continue to fork over cash.
Sorry to be so cynical, but I just see these "services" (and all cell phone costs) as tremendously overpriced. It's just data. The bandwidth has a fixed cost (it's just the sum of maintenance, capital investments, marketing, etc.) Throw in 10% or 20% over cost for a profit margin, and call it done. But no, they have to have "minutes" and "plans" and "packages", all of which are expressly designed to mislead the buyers into spending as much money as possible, regardless of the amount of "service" they "consume." And we, the sheeple, consume it readily.
If I had a phone like this and it was infected, and it ran up a huge bill, I'd first talk to my service provider. If they refused to waive the charges, I'd then talk to the cell phone manufacturer.
Seems like the cell providers could kill this quickly. Can't they recognize the virus signature in the messages that are transmitted? And can't they trace them back through the links to find out where it originated? Are there really holes that big allowing people to upload crap like this anonymously?
No kidding. I took a minor in History (of all the useless degrees, it ranks right up there with the least of them) for the simple reason that I love reading and studying history. It certainly hasn't held me back from anything I've wanted to do. It was simply for fun.
I am, however, seriously looking at going back to school for a masters in Software Engineering. A BS in CSci from 1986 seems about as relevant to today's programming as a mechanic learning to fix Chevy Chevettes. Both software development and cars have evolved a long way since then.
The two things I'd recommend are:
#1. Don't stop learning. Even if you end up in a programming job where it's a highly specialized environment that seems to have no room for new procedures and practices (or a firmly entrenched staff who sees no reason to change,) keep current on your own. Subscribe to trade magazines (most are free for corporate developers,) attend training classes, browse the bookshelves at Barney Snowball, hit the web for free training, find free seminars (if you're into.NET Microsoft offers a ton of MSDN events for developers, check their web page for showtimes near you.)
#2. Take a job you like. I really pity people who get up in the morning and say "god, I hate my job, but it pays the bills." Life is way to short to hate 50% of it. If you can, hold out for an exciting or interesting job with a company you respect. If you can't hold out, well, you'll have to take it but keep your eyes open.
Oh, I recognized that he was using a far less stringent definition of "stable" than I would have chosen. Four hours of Doom 3 or DivX encoding at these speeds and I would have been a bit more impressed. The author is obviously a bright-eyed kid instead of any kind of researcher.
While he never provided application evidence of a real "stable" speed (other than claiming his system was "rock solid",) even getting windows to boot at a 33% overclock is fairly impressive. (Hell, getting it to boot with underclocked hardware is hard enough.)
BTW, I don't agree that only hopeless, clueless wannabe losers "overclock". There may not be a practial reason (I don't consider a framerate improvement in a video game to be very 'practical') but that doesn't mean overclocking is "crap." Chipmakers stamp speeds on their chips that are a guarantee of X performance under known conditions. Overclockers simply take advantage of the fact that there is a bit of "safety factor" built into this number. They know the risks, and that there are no guarantees at anything other than rated speeds and voltages. What they choose to do with their chips is their own business.
Disclaimer: I do NOT overclock my gear, and I told my kid that if he overclocked his that he'd be buying his own damn CPU when this one burned up. He's watercooled his system (for noise reasons), but he is not overclocking it.
I have subscribed to that plan at my house now for at least five years. My electric co-op calls it their "Cycled Air Program." There is a control box and a separate electric meter for the air conditioner. When the control box gets the signal from the power company, it goes into a 40 min on / 20 min off cycle. The different customers' boxes are not synchronized, and randomly choose which 20 minutes to be off, with the net controlled power load dropping by 33% overall.
Last year, they activated the Cycled Air Program on 7 days, for a total of 31 hours (an average of about 4 hours per hot day.) They seem to activate it when the heat index climbs above 90 degrees, or on especially bright cloudless days. Honestly, I can't say that I ever even noticed it kicking in.
For this, the coop sells me all my A/C electricity at their wholesale cost (not just during the cycled air periods) which is somewhere around ~5.6 cents / kWH, whereas my normal electricty costs me about 8.65 cents / kWH. Their newsletter indicates that participants in the Cycled Air program have helped them delay building a 400 megawatt peak power plant by 10 to 15 years.
You're definitely right in that a lot of overclocking is a "badge" among the aficionados. By way of analogy look at some of the sports cars out there that can top out over 190 MPH; yet they sit there on I-35 in traffic, same as the rest of us. They just look much cooler doing it.
Anyway, yes, overclocking used to be about gaining 100 MHz here or 200 MHz there (hell, I remember overclocking a PC-AT from 6MHz to 8MHz.) But according to TFA, the Vapochill let him take his P4 540 up an additional 1200 MHz, from 3.2GHz to 4.4GHz (that was stable, he actually was able to boot at 4576 MHz but the system was not stable.)
33% is still a huge boost. And unlike the sports car analogy, he can actually use all those horses every day of the week, (drawing 13 extra FPS in Doom 3, for example.)
Not only does this Vapochill have to emit the waste heat somewhere, but it comes with extra heating coils you need to put in your PC to prevent condensation from forming!
I bet half the noise emitted by this device is the spinning sound of your electric meter zinging along like a ninja throwing star.
I have one stupid site that I frequent that uses a lot of flash, and it's been worth it to me to click on the many flash-block icons. Now that flashblock has a whitelist, I could even do without the "click-to-play" aspect!
As a user, I only see Flash as a tool to shovel ads in my face in novel yet annoying ways. As if animated gifs didn't make pages hard enough to read...
Agreed. I broke the tip off my Wave's pliers under similar circumstances, but the piece I was twisting was a rubber shock cord down a small hole in a tent pole. I didn't think that pinching rubber counted as abuse.
The only problem I had with getting service was trying to find a week where I could live without it. I ended up delaying it so long that at Christmas my wife just bought me a second tool. They repaired/replaced my old tool within a week. Now I have a backup that I keep in my truck.
Agreed. I've had a series of Victorinox Swiss Army knives, but in the last few years I've given them up for the older-style Wave. You can't beat the utility of a pair of pliers and a wire cutter. Plus, I wear it on my belt rather than filling my pockets with the tool.
For comfort, I strongly recommend the Wave over the older style PST handle. With the Wave, they rolled the corners so that when the tool is opened in the pliers configuration, there are no sharp edges to bite your hand. I can squeeze the handles on the Wave much harder than the handles on the old PSTs.
But regardless of which tool you choose, be aware that you'll pay for a good one. The cheap ones universally are cheap for a reason. The quality tools will hold their alignment over time, and the springs won't wear.
ATSC Standard A/80:
Modulation and Coding Requirements for Digital TV (DTV) Applications Over Satellite
17 July 1999, Download PDF File
This document defines a standard for modulation and coding of data delivered over satellite for digital television contribution and distribution applications. The data can be a collection of program material including video, audio, data, multimedia, or other material. It includes the ability to handle multiplexed bit streams in accordance with the MPEG-2 Systems layer, but it is not limited to this format and makes provision for arbitrary types of data as well. QPSK, 8PSK and 16 QAM modulation modes are included, as well as a range of forward error correction techniques.
it is unable to record digital cable or digital satellite signals
And what led you to believe that? It can record the unencrypted HD cable signals straight up, right from the cable or antenna. If you have an encrypted stream, you'll still need to decode it with your normal HD cable or HD satellite receiver. This card can then record it via its S-Video line-in.
Just in case redigitizing the S-Video isn't good enough, there's Yet Another Standard looming out there, the so-called CableCARD. A CableCARD-ready TV has a legitimate cable decryption unit built into it. You simply plug your cable company's CableCARD (probably just a smart card-like device containing your decryption key) into your TV set, and now your TV is (mostly) cable ready, including premium channels. I can easily imagine a new release of the pcHDTV card being made CableCARD ready.
Unfortunately there is no card that will allow me to record HD signals from a cable or satellite box.
You mean the pcHDTV card doesn't exist? Or do you mean that since they only offer full Linux support (Xine and all Linux drivers are included; they also provide unsupported Windows drivers; but they offer no Mac drivers as of right now) that it's still worthless to you?
By the way, this card (that doesn't exist) does NOT support the Broadcast Flag saying "you can't record this."
Disclaimer: I do not even own one of these cards yet so I can't swear that their functionality meets the specs they promise on the web page.
U.S. laws do not apply outside of the U.S. Asian or European manufacturers could manufacture and distribute such cards outside of the U.S. I can imagine a gray market quickly developing for importing them.
I can also imagine the U.S. sending local officials to shut down these manufacturers (think DVD Jon.)
Slashdot Mirror
Man, you must be doing something right!
Well, I came up with the perfect name for the practice: eFixing.
A buddy of mine who is finishing his house bought one of those tiny ones a month ago thinking it'd be just fine for his three sections of floor and two bathrooms' walls. It served him for about 50 linear feet of sawing before it started acting up. Grit got in the fence locking mechanism, grinding it up and preventing it from locking tightly. That was just doing his entryway. He still has two bathroom floors plus the shower walls to go yet. He's going to return the cheap table saw, and he'll probably get one of the lower-end overhead saws. I suggested renting, but like me he's been having a lot of fun with tiling, so I think he'll buy it.
I've never had any problems with the bricksaw style cutters. They take a bit of maintenance to ensure the water pump is always submerged and clean, and delivering water to the blade. And things get loose and need to be tightened. But beyond that, I really prefer the rigid arm, large diameter blade and flood of water. When things start to mud up, they're really easy to take apart and clean. I also like the blade to fling the grit downwards into the tank, rather than upwards at me. (But I still build a booth every time I use one. Even outside, it's just easier to contain the mess.)
I suppose I've done about a half-dozen bathroom showers, a couple of floors and the paver walkway. I rented the saw for a couple days for the pavers, and for one of the showers. (Hmm... I'm pretty sure I borrowed tile saws for all the other work, so it probably wasn't four rentals. Whatever.)
I hate renting. I would much rather purchase something to use at my pleasure than to rely on some promise that the thing I want will be there five years from now when I want it again.
That desire falls off, of course, at a price point. While I might like my own tile saw, for the four times I've needed them I've rented them at $50/day, rather than spend $900 on a comparable quality tool (mostly because they're large and I don't want to store them.)
However, I definitely see it as a price point thing, not a percentage thing. Would I stop buying $10.00 DVDs if someone told me they'd always be available via on-demand for $2.00 in the future? No, because I don't trust companies to continue to make stuff like that available.
I'm probably suffering from 21st Century Affluent Consumer Mindset (Affluenza), but that's how I approach things.
I guess I don't bitch now if my email provider strips out both viruses AND spam, although that's just me. Some people probably have a problem with giving them that much power.
I think something like this needs to be aired in a courtroom. While the phone manufacturers may not be found culpable, the cell providers might have demonstrated a willingness to drag their feet in order to maximise profits. And that would be a good start.
-
"Enemies of Linux"?
-
"They say that too many patches and we are not secure"
-
"unnamed vendors are trying to scare firms"
Sounds like the tinfoil under his beanie may have become dislodged, and is allowing the CIA's paranoia rays to get into his mind!Good point. My understanding is this is an MMS virus, though. Can you inject an MMS anonymously via the web, too? Given the price they charge for the damn things, I'd sure hate to be spammed by web-generated MMSes.
Sorry to be so cynical, but I just see these "services" (and all cell phone costs) as tremendously overpriced. It's just data. The bandwidth has a fixed cost (it's just the sum of maintenance, capital investments, marketing, etc.) Throw in 10% or 20% over cost for a profit margin, and call it done. But no, they have to have "minutes" and "plans" and "packages", all of which are expressly designed to mislead the buyers into spending as much money as possible, regardless of the amount of "service" they "consume." And we, the sheeple, consume it readily.
Seems like the cell providers could kill this quickly. Can't they recognize the virus signature in the messages that are transmitted? And can't they trace them back through the links to find out where it originated? Are there really holes that big allowing people to upload crap like this anonymously?
I am, however, seriously looking at going back to school for a masters in Software Engineering. A BS in CSci from 1986 seems about as relevant to today's programming as a mechanic learning to fix Chevy Chevettes. Both software development and cars have evolved a long way since then.
The two things I'd recommend are:
Minnesota, about 15 miles south of Minneapolis. Yes, I drive 35W most days. And yes, it sucks most days, too.
While he never provided application evidence of a real "stable" speed (other than claiming his system was "rock solid",) even getting windows to boot at a 33% overclock is fairly impressive. (Hell, getting it to boot with underclocked hardware is hard enough.)
BTW, I don't agree that only hopeless, clueless wannabe losers "overclock". There may not be a practial reason (I don't consider a framerate improvement in a video game to be very 'practical') but that doesn't mean overclocking is "crap." Chipmakers stamp speeds on their chips that are a guarantee of X performance under known conditions. Overclockers simply take advantage of the fact that there is a bit of "safety factor" built into this number. They know the risks, and that there are no guarantees at anything other than rated speeds and voltages. What they choose to do with their chips is their own business.
Disclaimer: I do NOT overclock my gear, and I told my kid that if he overclocked his that he'd be buying his own damn CPU when this one burned up. He's watercooled his system (for noise reasons), but he is not overclocking it.
Last year, they activated the Cycled Air Program on 7 days, for a total of 31 hours (an average of about 4 hours per hot day.) They seem to activate it when the heat index climbs above 90 degrees, or on especially bright cloudless days. Honestly, I can't say that I ever even noticed it kicking in.
For this, the coop sells me all my A/C electricity at their wholesale cost (not just during the cycled air periods) which is somewhere around ~5.6 cents / kWH, whereas my normal electricty costs me about 8.65 cents / kWH. Their newsletter indicates that participants in the Cycled Air program have helped them delay building a 400 megawatt peak power plant by 10 to 15 years.
Anyway, yes, overclocking used to be about gaining 100 MHz here or 200 MHz there (hell, I remember overclocking a PC-AT from 6MHz to 8MHz.) But according to TFA, the Vapochill let him take his P4 540 up an additional 1200 MHz, from 3.2GHz to 4.4GHz (that was stable, he actually was able to boot at 4576 MHz but the system was not stable.)
33% is still a huge boost. And unlike the sports car analogy, he can actually use all those horses every day of the week, (drawing 13 extra FPS in Doom 3, for example.)
I bet half the noise emitted by this device is the spinning sound of your electric meter zinging along like a ninja throwing star.
Crap, I just did now. Sorry.
www.macromedia.com. Didn't you RTFA? :-)
I have one stupid site that I frequent that uses a lot of flash, and it's been worth it to me to click on the many flash-block icons. Now that flashblock has a whitelist, I could even do without the "click-to-play" aspect!
As a user, I only see Flash as a tool to shovel ads in my face in novel yet annoying ways. As if animated gifs didn't make pages hard enough to read...
The only problem I had with getting service was trying to find a week where I could live without it. I ended up delaying it so long that at Christmas my wife just bought me a second tool. They repaired/replaced my old tool within a week. Now I have a backup that I keep in my truck.
For comfort, I strongly recommend the Wave over the older style PST handle. With the Wave, they rolled the corners so that when the tool is opened in the pliers configuration, there are no sharp edges to bite your hand. I can squeeze the handles on the Wave much harder than the handles on the old PSTs.
But regardless of which tool you choose, be aware that you'll pay for a good one. The cheap ones universally are cheap for a reason. The quality tools will hold their alignment over time, and the springs won't wear.
ATSC Standard A/80:
Modulation and Coding Requirements for Digital TV (DTV) Applications Over Satellite
17 July 1999, Download PDF File
This document defines a standard for modulation and coding of data delivered over satellite for digital television contribution and distribution applications. The data can be a collection of program material including video, audio, data, multimedia, or other material. It includes the ability to handle multiplexed bit streams in accordance with the MPEG-2 Systems layer, but it is not limited to this format and makes provision for arbitrary types of data as well. QPSK, 8PSK and 16 QAM modulation modes are included, as well as a range of forward error correction techniques.
And what led you to believe that? It can record the unencrypted HD cable signals straight up, right from the cable or antenna. If you have an encrypted stream, you'll still need to decode it with your normal HD cable or HD satellite receiver. This card can then record it via its S-Video line-in.
Just in case redigitizing the S-Video isn't good enough, there's Yet Another Standard looming out there, the so-called CableCARD. A CableCARD-ready TV has a legitimate cable decryption unit built into it. You simply plug your cable company's CableCARD (probably just a smart card-like device containing your decryption key) into your TV set, and now your TV is (mostly) cable ready, including premium channels. I can easily imagine a new release of the pcHDTV card being made CableCARD ready.
You mean the pcHDTV card doesn't exist? Or do you mean that since they only offer full Linux support (Xine and all Linux drivers are included; they also provide unsupported Windows drivers; but they offer no Mac drivers as of right now) that it's still worthless to you?
By the way, this card (that doesn't exist) does NOT support the Broadcast Flag saying "you can't record this."
Disclaimer: I do not even own one of these cards yet so I can't swear that their functionality meets the specs they promise on the web page.
U.S. laws do not apply outside of the U.S. Asian or European manufacturers could manufacture and distribute such cards outside of the U.S. I can imagine a gray market quickly developing for importing them.
I can also imagine the U.S. sending local officials to shut down these manufacturers (think DVD Jon.)