"Those specs are actually pretty close to what my OEM ThinkPad A31 was, when it was shipped." "It's also a perfect way to learn linux, if you don't already have an old(er) computer lying around you can toss the OS onto. I will probably buy it for that exact reason."
I'd buy another used A31 instead. Having two of the same lappy is nice (common batteries, spare parts for when one dies) and Thinkpads are solid machines. I'd not mind having a second A31 myself.:) At least wait for someone else to get scr3w3d before sending probable scammers your money.
The weapons are still "line-of-sight" (pun inevitable), so they would be severely limited in closed terrain and cities. Beam weapons don't spit fragments, produce blast waves, etc. They will be just another tool in the toolbox.
Protecting weapons can be as vital as protecting people. They aren't assigned the emotion-driven value given people, but functionally they may be worth more. For example, an aircraft carrier is "worth" far more than one human if the metric is military effectiveness. As the trend toward extremely expensive force-multiplier weapons continues (driven by the desire to reduce own casualties) the value of the individual weapon increases. An old Harrier may not be "worth" a human. A B-2 is. functionally, worth many. We don't want to value humans so lightly that we use them for VBIED guidance systems, but every military mission requires weighing human loss against potential gain.
Laptops are an ergonomic nightmare, and their format means that will never be different. This is easily solved by buying a full set of desktop peripherals...at which point I may as well have a full tower.
"3. Vendor lock-in. Even if upgrading is possible, you often need very specific Dell/IBM/Toshiba-only parts that fit only in this brand of laptop, often also only in this series (anyone who ever wanted to up their ram in the IBM notebooks knows what I'm talking about). This is unlikely to change, since companies DO want you to be locked in. I highly doubt they'll agree to a standard."
Shortsighted, given the positive effects of standard form-factors in the desktop world. Notebook makers confuse product styling-identity with nonstandard design.
Here's my take on the lack of outrage. It may help you understand some things before it is modded to oblivion.
I and many others are not outraged because we have a solid idea of how such legislation will be used, and it will NEVER be against "us", nor is there historical precedent for that in the US. (No, we don't care about the Pastor Niemoller quote either. That is not how things work _in practice_.) The people it has a high chance of being used against are our enemies, or at least fall into groups we don't care about.
We aren't blind idealists. We are fine with excluding our enemies from protection by "the rules", because we consider ourselves to be in a cultural war with Islam that excludes neutrality. Our solution to the rules under which our enemies deliberately shelter is to Zippo the rulebook as it applies to them.
Most folks could care less. If they want it and can get it they will have it. Many of us who know how laws are made will only respect the threat of punishment, but have contempt for law.
"official records suggest that more than 10% of the population can't afford enough food to support a healthy lifestyle."
Er, "choose not to buy"/= "can't afford enough". None of my "poor" friends have the slightest idea about healthy lifestyles nor do they care. I realize the plural of anecdote is not data, but stand in line ay your local grocery store and note who buys what. The US has plenty of obese "poor" because of the choices they make and the things they refuse to learn.
Collaterals and blue-on-blues have been going DOWN steadily as tech advances. IMO the main reason for current focus on "friendly fire" and collateral damage is that now there is a reasonable expectation we can do something about it. Consider bombing missions. As weapons become more precise, air forces reduce their number of aircraft. They can do this because they aren't wasting ordnance blowing up large areas in an attempt to hit small targets. Increased situational awareness allows far more precise targeting than in the days of reconnaisance-by-fire.
"I predict more collaterals and blue-on-blue's as it becomes easier to kill than to think." It was ALWAYS easier to kill than to "think" (care what's on the other end of the muzzle). Casualty rates now are far less for both sides than in previous wars. Consider WW1 for an example of the opposite end of the spectrum. Little precision, vast bombardments, and static battlefields that devoured millions of dead. Gimme PGMs, drones, and quicker resolution (at least against conventional opponents) any time.
"I hate to say this, but you can't change the past."
No one knows the past. Our perception of the past is an illusion. What ones "knows" is their memory of the past, and that can be changed or even be completely confabulated.
Doing something that is inherently dangerous when one is unaware of the danger or thinks it is perfectly normal is not heroic. It takes no special effort or personal self-mastery to plod along with the herd.
" What is more likely do result in death and injury: being deployed to Iraq or driving to work every day? Driving to work."
Depends on your branch of service and military specialty. There is a difference between fobbits and the folks who go out and kick ass, or expose themselves to danger because our strategy makes them roadbound gallery targets.
All is situational. When our party wins, we rightly expect it to do what we asked for and use corruption toward that end. Our politicians are what WE, the public, demand them to be. They must pander to our bigotry, ignorance, vanity (such as thinking we aren't ignorant or bigoted or corrupt!), superstition, personal and group-serving agendas, and so forth. We get the government we deserve, and to quote Spock (since this IS Slashdot), "Inaction is still a choice".
"perhaps one just barely good enough to support the iPhone and make sure the cheap iMac integrates easily with PCs through some convenient means like, say, a USB datalink cable or some such."
With simple instructions for file and bookmark transfer that would be a great deal for non-geeks who might switch even with out the iPhone. Call it an iSwitchkit.
If you are poor enough that the money matters (I sure am!) then do the geek thing and perform some computer work for the money. I upgrade computers for other people, and part of the fee is the hardware I replace. I now appreciate why everyone (else) NEEDS bleeding edge hardware.
"Works for cars too." Boy howdy it does! Fix them yourself and you move from saving some money to saving a sh1tload and paying for top-quality tools while you are at it.
"There's always a dogleg increase in cost for the latest and greatest." My "doglegs" are cheap too. $60 per neuter = $15 per dogleg. We only get rescue animals, often from a$$holes who wanted a "fashionable" animal and lost interest. I have all the computers/vehicles/critters I want, and didn't break my wallet to do it.
OT Corvair anecdote: In my younger days, a friend had a '64 we bought for the engine. We didn't care about the body so we took it to a large parking lot and tried to flip it. We gave up after about an hour. The tires were decent, but all it would do is break loose. I can understand why 'Vairs were once used in autocross. Granted, outside of the excellent drivetrain it was a poorly built deathtrap (no frontal crash resistance) but with more care from GM it could easily have been Americas Porsche. For some reason GM insists on doing rear/mid engine cars with poor build quality (Fiero...) which prevents them being popular over time.
The religious nutcase factor is often discounted by modern people sophisticated enough to hold superstition in proper contempt.
Wake up people! Religion is for violent, brutal simpletons who are not interested in conventional logic. When a persons only way to describe spiritual experience is the language of a violent, militant religion, their worldview will reflect that. Reformation into a spiritual talking shop took hundreds of years for Christianity, and there are still plenty of Christian "Taliban" about. Islam is raw religion, and its popularity among the backward (not an insult-an observation-note the countries involved) is no accident. Religion is calculated to help the worthless imagine they have worth. That is why the most fervent are usually the least educated. Religion is also inherently anti-democratic. No one who believes the universe is a monarchy run by an omnipotent deity-monarch can believe that a secular republic is the best form of government, though they may say so as propaganda. That's why the threat of Fascism in the US is primarily posed by militant Christians. It's also why democracy cannot work in Iraq because people who do not want to share power will use it as Hitler used it to remove the Weimar Republic.
I'll use it to avoid high-traffic areas and other places I'd rather bypass. I can eyeball the proferred route and change it by dragging instead of typing "waypoints" to route around hassles. BTW: If I want more details of a given location, I screencap "hybrid" views so I can view or print them with the background photos. "Hybrid" is a useful way to take a virtual drive to your destination.
Funny, when I toss such items as pcs and monitors into scrap cars (packed with toxics themselves) bound for the crusher, the scrapyard does not mind. When the crushed cars hit the shredder, the appropriate shred-and-sort process takes place and they are recycled.
Record stealhily. You don't have to flaunt what you do, and you can dump the video anonymously through the press or the ACLU. The best ideas towards that end would make a dandy Ask Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes they do. I apply a blob of clear RTV to secure them, but shouldn't have to.
Too bad they aren't more like RJ-45 connectors.
"Those specs are actually pretty close to what my OEM ThinkPad A31 was, when it was shipped." "It's also a perfect way to learn linux, if you don't already have an old(er) computer lying around you can toss the OS onto. I will probably buy it for that exact reason."
:)
I'd buy another used A31 instead. Having two of the same lappy is nice (common batteries, spare parts for when one dies) and Thinkpads are solid machines. I'd not mind having a second A31 myself.
At least wait for someone else to get scr3w3d before sending probable scammers your money.
The weapons are still "line-of-sight" (pun inevitable), so they would be severely limited in closed terrain and cities.
Beam weapons don't spit fragments, produce blast waves, etc. They will be just another tool in the toolbox.
Protecting weapons can be as vital as protecting people. They aren't assigned the emotion-driven value given people, but functionally they may be worth more.
For example, an aircraft carrier is "worth" far more than one human if the metric is military effectiveness.
As the trend toward extremely expensive force-multiplier weapons continues (driven by the desire to reduce own casualties) the value of the individual weapon increases. An old Harrier may not be "worth" a human. A B-2 is. functionally, worth many.
We don't want to value humans so lightly that we use them for VBIED guidance systems, but every military mission requires weighing human loss against potential gain.
Laptops are an ergonomic nightmare, and their format means that will never be different.
This is easily solved by buying a full set of desktop peripherals...at which point I may as well have a full tower.
"3. Vendor lock-in. Even if upgrading is possible, you often need very specific Dell/IBM/Toshiba-only parts that fit only in this brand of laptop, often also only in this series (anyone who ever wanted to up their ram in the IBM notebooks knows what I'm talking about). This is unlikely to change, since companies DO want you to be locked in. I highly doubt they'll agree to a standard."
Shortsighted, given the positive effects of standard form-factors in the desktop world. Notebook makers confuse product styling-identity with nonstandard design.
Here's my take on the lack of outrage. It may help you understand some things before it is modded to oblivion.
I and many others are not outraged because we have a solid idea of how such legislation will be used, and it will NEVER be against "us", nor is there historical precedent for that in the US.
(No, we don't care about the Pastor Niemoller quote either. That is not how things work _in practice_.)
The people it has a high chance of being used against are our enemies, or at least fall into groups we don't care about.
We aren't blind idealists. We are fine with excluding our enemies from protection by "the rules", because we consider ourselves to be in a cultural war with Islam that excludes neutrality. Our solution to the rules under which our enemies deliberately shelter is to Zippo the rulebook as it applies to them.
"Because they want to become legal?"
Most folks could care less. If they want it and can get it they will have it. Many of us who know how laws are made will only respect the threat of punishment, but have contempt for law.
"official records suggest that more than 10% of the population can't afford enough food to support a healthy lifestyle."
/= "can't afford enough".
Er, "choose not to buy"
None of my "poor" friends have the slightest idea about healthy lifestyles nor do they care.
I realize the plural of anecdote is not data, but stand in line ay your local grocery store and note who buys what. The US has plenty of obese "poor" because of the choices they make and the things they refuse to learn.
There are plenty of usable "khauyeung" and "PE" CD images on P2P for download. They have been available for years.
"With Bush in office you can only expect more of the same."
When, eventually, there is a Democrat in the White House, don't expect any meaningful rollback.
Neither party is likely to renounce useful tools.
Collaterals and blue-on-blues have been going DOWN steadily as tech advances. IMO the main reason for current focus on "friendly fire" and collateral damage is that now there is a reasonable expectation we can do something about it.
Consider bombing missions. As weapons become more precise, air forces reduce their number of aircraft. They can do this because they aren't wasting ordnance blowing up large areas in an attempt to hit small targets. Increased situational awareness allows far more precise targeting than in the days of reconnaisance-by-fire.
"I predict more collaterals and blue-on-blue's as it becomes easier to kill than to think."
It was ALWAYS easier to kill than to "think" (care what's on the other end of the muzzle).
Casualty rates now are far less for both sides than in previous wars.
Consider WW1 for an example of the opposite end of the spectrum.
Little precision, vast bombardments, and static battlefields that devoured millions of dead.
Gimme PGMs, drones, and quicker resolution (at least against conventional opponents) any time.
"I hate to say this, but you can't change the past."
No one knows the past. Our perception of the past is an illusion.
What ones "knows" is their memory of the past, and that can be changed or even be completely confabulated.
Easily dealt with.
Build a working model, and offer it and the plans to build more for public inspection by a variety of scientists.
Doing something that is inherently dangerous when one is unaware of the danger or thinks it is perfectly normal is not heroic. It takes no special effort or personal self-mastery to plod along with the herd.
" What is more likely do result in death and injury: being deployed to Iraq or driving to work every day? Driving to work."
Depends on your branch of service and military specialty.
There is a difference between fobbits and the folks who go out and kick ass, or expose themselves to danger because our strategy makes them roadbound gallery targets.
All is situational. When our party wins, we rightly expect it to do what we asked for and use corruption toward that end.
Our politicians are what WE, the public, demand them to be.
They must pander to our bigotry, ignorance, vanity (such as thinking we aren't ignorant or bigoted or corrupt!), superstition, personal and group-serving agendas, and so forth.
We get the government we deserve, and to quote Spock (since this IS Slashdot), "Inaction is still a choice".
"perhaps one just barely good enough to support the iPhone and make sure the cheap iMac integrates easily with PCs through some convenient means like, say, a USB datalink cable or some such."
With simple instructions for file and bookmark transfer that would be a great deal for non-geeks who might switch even with out the iPhone. Call it an iSwitchkit.
If you are poor enough that the money matters (I sure am!) then do the geek thing and perform some computer work for the money.
I upgrade computers for other people, and part of the fee is the hardware I replace. I now appreciate why everyone (else) NEEDS bleeding edge hardware.
"Works for cars too."
Boy howdy it does! Fix them yourself and you move from saving some money to saving a sh1tload and paying for top-quality tools while you are at it.
"There's always a dogleg increase in cost for the latest and greatest."
My "doglegs" are cheap too. $60 per neuter = $15 per dogleg.
We only get rescue animals, often from a$$holes who wanted a "fashionable" animal and lost interest.
I have all the computers/vehicles/critters I want, and didn't break my wallet to do it.
OT Corvair anecdote:
In my younger days, a friend had a '64 we bought for the engine. We didn't care about the body so we took it to a large parking lot and tried to flip it. We gave up after about an hour. The tires were decent, but all it would do is break loose. I can understand why 'Vairs were once used in autocross.
Granted, outside of the excellent drivetrain it was a poorly built deathtrap (no frontal crash resistance) but with more care from GM it could easily have been Americas Porsche. For some reason GM insists on doing rear/mid engine cars with poor build quality (Fiero...) which prevents them being popular over time.
The religious nutcase factor is often discounted by modern people sophisticated enough to hold superstition in proper contempt.
Wake up people! Religion is for violent, brutal simpletons who are not interested in conventional logic.
When a persons only way to describe spiritual experience is the language of a violent, militant religion, their worldview will reflect that.
Reformation into a spiritual talking shop took hundreds of years for Christianity, and there are still plenty of Christian "Taliban" about.
Islam is raw religion, and its popularity among the backward (not an insult-an observation-note the countries involved) is no accident. Religion is calculated to help the worthless imagine they have worth. That is why the most fervent are usually the least educated.
Religion is also inherently anti-democratic.
No one who believes the universe is a monarchy run by an omnipotent deity-monarch can believe that a secular republic is the best form of government, though they may say so as propaganda. That's why the threat of Fascism in the US is primarily posed by militant Christians. It's also why democracy cannot work in Iraq because people who do not want to share power will use it as Hitler used it to remove the Weimar Republic.
I'll use it to avoid high-traffic areas and other places I'd rather bypass. I can eyeball the proferred route and change it by dragging instead of typing "waypoints" to route around hassles.
BTW:
If I want more details of a given location, I screencap "hybrid" views so I can view or print them with the background photos. "Hybrid" is a useful way to take a virtual drive to your destination.
"The US still is under the impression that sanctions and trade embargoes will actually cause regime change in these countries."
No, but Cuban exiles vote, controlling the keys to Florida, and US policy toward Cuba.
Funny, when I toss such items as pcs and monitors into scrap cars (packed with toxics themselves) bound for the crusher, the scrapyard does not mind.
When the crushed cars hit the shredder, the appropriate shred-and-sort process takes place and they are recycled.
Record stealhily.
You don't have to flaunt what you do, and you can dump the video anonymously through the press or the ACLU.
The best ideas towards that end would make a dandy Ask Slashdot.
As the BBC is funded by the TV tax, it's customers have every reason to "demand" appropriate non-proprietary formats from their government provider.