First three digits of ZIP codes fall evenly within states. Still, if they're going to do it for State Sales Taxes, what about local taxes? Where I live there's like 0.25% municipal sales tax, which makes the 7.75 state an even 8%. Oh, and we just raised it on the last ballot, so it'll be a tad more. Come visit us or shop here over the web, we'll still get ya! >8-)
Undoubtably states which would fight such a bill would be those hosting a significant number of businesses which benefit from people not reporting mail/internet orders on their state taxes where they should pay them. When I lived in Michigan it was the honorable thing to do and it's the same in California. You buy without paying sales tax, you're supposed to record it and pay it at tax time. A wink and a nod and people not paying sales tax has been the way of business for decades and why camera dealerships prospered in New York City over the last several decades.
The business can still survive if they can reduce margins enough that, with shipping, they're still less than your local shop.
As for the local shop, well, I'm in the market for an Asus A7V8X in three weeks and you can bet on a motherboard I'm _not_ going through the mail! I'll be getting some other parts locally, too. Usually I go out of state if I can't find someone carrying what I want nearby.
I've got a Samsung 172T on order, but have received word that Samsung, and many other asian manufacturers have been hammered by the Oakland dock lock-out. Hope it gets resumed soon, or you can expect shortages of lots of goodies.
Not mine. I've been a vegetarian for over 10 years. I buy most of my food at the local farmers market, and organic to boot, since the price there is pretty much the same, or from some of the co-ops, costs less! Great stuff too, not all beat up like the stuff at Safeway and Ralph's.
The TB thing, though, likely has to do with living and working in an area with a significant population flow from Asia. One cough on a crowded bus and you're hit. Chest X-rays were negative, but because I tested negative two years ago and now test positive, I'm on the program.:-P
I thought HIV was the virus and AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) was the name of the disease. I may be a bit off there, but here's the rest of my thoughts on the advancement of HIV...
Douglas Adams wrote something along the lines of 'some believe once someone has figured out the universe it will be immediately replaced with something stranger and more inexplicable. Others believe this has already happened.' (sorry for slaughtering it, but it's the gist of this I'm using here.)
I find it unlikely that the HIV virus has remained in its present state of evolution, unchanged, for years. I think humans have come into contact with it many times before, but it wasn't quite so clever and immune systems disposed of it or it didn't kill the host. At some point it mutated into the unsuccessful disease (a successful disease doesn't kill it's host) that has since, mutated to be resistent to current treatments.
I had something respiratory (read: lungs) which resisted amoxicillan (sp?) and I was put on something extremely toxic which did work.
More recently I had a positive reaction to a TB test and am on INH (Isoniazid), which makes me feel like crud. I'm 12 days into it with 6-9 months to go.
Same plan as standard penecillin treatment, take it all, to prevent drug resistent strains.
You can probably thank all those ranchers who load up their cattle, pigs and chickens with with antibiotics before bringing them to market, as those which don't break down get stay in the meat and enter your body. Nothing like a good training ground for weeking out the weaker strains of disease.
The only HD I have handy is a WD Caviar, with foil side exposed. I have an older HD at home with small, pill sized aluminum caps, though I'm familiar with the surface mount electrolytics, from checking out Rubycon's page a while back. I can see one surface mount unit, which may be a cap, from the side.
Consider where Fujitsu is making and/or supplying parts from.
HD units can generate considerable heat, which is deadly to electrolytic caps. A sudden rash of defective drives strongly suggests something is bad in the supply chain. I wouldn't be too stunned if it turns out Fujitsu has some bad taiwanese suface mount caps failing on the drive control boards. (note: this is the controler on the HDA, not on your MB or in a PCI or other slot in the MB)
I wish I could remember where, but I've read about this already somewhere some time ago.
I've been wondering if the recently revealed electrolytic (ha, spelt it right that time) capacitor problem (bad taiwanese electrolytics) was related.
On a different note, Seagate's ST380023AS and ST3120023AS (Serial ATA) drives which were expected in Mid-October, then late-November, are now, according to a Cnet article a Seagate employee who shall remain nameless, pointed me to, is indicating shipping dates in Mid-December.. hopefully the two are unrelated.
Surely Leibniz should be considered an initial suspect.
Oh come on! Be serious for a moment, will ya? This is obviously the work of Saddam Hussein acquiring the means to build Weapons of Mass Destruction and just one more reason Bush will use to back up his regime change plan!
For the non-physicists among you, Newton first published his famed three laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation in "Principia" in 1687. I'm surprised this theft hasn't attracted more attention in the mainstream media, since "Principia" is generally considered the most important scientific works in history."
So what you're saying is: A theft of significant large magnitude did not meet with an equal response by the media... I'm sorry, didn't anyone ever explain the three laws of Media to you?
A story at rest or in motion remains at rest or in motion unless acted upon by some editorial force
The rate of public interest in a story is proportional to the number of times reiterated in the story, or in some cases use of the phrase "for the first time since..."
If the media attempts to educate the public, in the process of telling a story, the public will respond with and equal and opposite attempt to find something else to watch, read or listen to.
Of course, if it affects Greenland, which has 9% of the grounded ice in the world, then there are some potential effects, but the article didn't say much about that possibility...
Exactly, and because we're blessed with brains it shouldn't be too difficult to make the leap of Greenland/Northern Canada and Antarctic melts, because of rising average temperatures and changing sea currents. "El Niño" being an example (moving to California's central coast in mid '97 was quite an education when the winter rains came. The Pajaro river was about 3 miles from where I lived, though most people hear about the Russian River, due to it's proximity to wine country.)
Also, much is still speculative, but we (collectively the industrialized and rainforest slash/burn world) are certainly doing plenty to change the composition of the atmosphere, where even changes in small percentages can have significant longterm effect.
Destory the environment so my grandson's console will arrive in time for Christmas.
It's rather like saying, "One fringe benefit of cancer is you'll lose weight." Problem is getting people to take risks seriously until they've got the disease, once they've got it, they're all eyes and ears, wanting to know how to make the problem go away. Well, on the bright side, maybe the flooding will clean the streets of D.C., NYC, SF, etc.
That's nothing. Honestly. My dad's been an amature radio operator for about 60 years and his entire basement is loaded with O-scopes, radio receivers, parts of analog computers, early digital computers, and manuals. Shelves and shelves of manuals. At least 4 workbenches and more boxes of electronic parts than you could shake a Weller soldering gun at.
I just attended the Findlay, OH hamfest for the 30th time (only coming away with a few odd bits and a working Elsa Gloria XL and a non-winmodem 56k) I think we financed Heath for a few years, as he's got several nice powersupplies, etc. and... we had one of the first microwave ovens in town, he put it together as a Heathkit.:-)
Lets not forget the beneficial nematodes, insect warfare and the green manures.
Indeed. Figuring out how to attract predators, discourage pests was pretty enlightening and really cool to see in action. When I was young I was constantly grounded for coming home muddy, late, with too many pond creatures, etc, and punishment was working in my mom's vegetable garden. She was cool with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. After a run-in with cancer several years back I reconsidered what I was using in lawn and garden and eating without question. The organic path appealed and was fun while it lasted, and highly productive! I didn't have to visit the grocery store for produce for a summer, living out of an 18' x 32' plot. Amazing how simple it really can be, once you begin to understand what's happening above and below ground.
Years ago I embarked upon an organic garden (which you can really get into) in my back yard. Learning about the ins and outs of soil, composting, sympathetic planting, etc. much of it through USENET gardening groups before there were even web browsers. Hacking an organic garden can be no less rewarding or involved than any coding project. Including the internet (as it was at the time) and assistance from several gardening buffs who know how to get to USENET (and a few university extension offices (Ohio State, Michigan State to name a couple)) made it all the more cool. Too bad I now live in a townhouse, with no garden option.:-(
Wanted: Original Amiga Joystick, the tiny one that Amiga made to fund development of the chipset around which the Amiga 500 would later be built. These were, IMHO, the best joystick _ever_ as they were small enough that movement was limited, unlike the giant ones everyone else eventually made, which required long arcs to move back and forth. Also, much easier to use that these new style video game controllers.
I just want one to build an adapter so I can play my old games on a PC emulator!:-)
The Leonids happen every year, but on some years, they're brighter and fall at a greater frequency.
Known.
My favorite remains the Perseid, usually around Aug 12, every year. 1997 was a great year for it in central west coast USA. Last year's Leonid coincided with vacation, unfortunately not this year.
Yeah, because NO ONE has EVER made a lot of money hitching themselves to the Windows platform...
Problem is, when Microsoft takes an interest in what you do and decides to try it themselves, or just as bad, determines they don't need you anymore and dumps your product for another vendor's.
The tablet idea is hardly new and hardly revolutionary. Specialized hand held units for industrial use and PDA's do pretty much what you'd gain from lugging one of these beasts around.
Anyone remember the Epson HX-20? Or Tandy 100? Funny how they never became mainstream, as cool as I thought they were at the time...
Freedom of speech, sure, your freedom to talk your head off on any issue. Seems the First Amendment is bypassed, though, by the current regime. You may have the right to speak, but they reserve the right to keep track of what you say and who listens to you. See any limitations on that in the Constitution?
Surely this sort of thing is exactly what the US DOJ is avidly against - using overwhelming market share (in, say, office products) to gain overwhelming market share...
Didn't we all just read, a few weeks back about the following dumping MS Works for WordPerfect Office on consumer PC's?
Dell
HP/Compaq
Gateway
Sony
Seems slightly less onimous the more I think about this. All Adobe has to do to counter MS is jump into bed with Corel and make sure the above listed companies include the pdf viewer (Acrobat) on their PC's.
Even still, it seems like an against the current swim for MS.
but I find.pdf files a *major* ballache. I often find the computer I'm on doesn't support loading them so I have to go and install some v.slow and large application to load them.
They're our standard document retention format and pdf is sweet. It's also cross platform, so long as you have an Adobe pdf reader, and since Adobe should by this time be playing no favorites with MSFT (et to, Brute?) all major players (Win/X/OSX + PDA's) should have such ability, whereas Microsoft will probably only support Windows and OSX, so, what's the difference between XDOC and Word format? Loads in your browser? Only if it's got the plugin.
Besides, pdf is so well entrenched, xdoc will be the odd-man-out.
If these XDocs (can't resd artcile, slashdotted) load into Office automatically, all the better.
Ah, how I remember trying to integrate various document and drawing formats into Word. All the crashing, the swearing, how slow the PC slogged through these complex messes. Ok, I knew there had to be a reason the average Joe or Jane would need a 3 GHz P4/K7 on their desk.
Slashdot Mirror
How's this for something else amusing?
First three digits of ZIP codes fall evenly within states. Still, if they're going to do it for State Sales Taxes, what about local taxes? Where I live there's like 0.25% municipal sales tax, which makes the 7.75 state an even 8%. Oh, and we just raised it on the last ballot, so it'll be a tad more. Come visit us or shop here over the web, we'll still get ya! >8-)
That would probably be ...
The business can still survive if they can reduce margins enough that, with shipping, they're still less than your local shop.
As for the local shop, well, I'm in the market for an Asus A7V8X in three weeks and you can bet on a motherboard I'm _not_ going through the mail! I'll be getting some other parts locally, too. Usually I go out of state if I can't find someone carrying what I want nearby.
I've got a Samsung 172T on order, but have received word that Samsung, and many other asian manufacturers have been hammered by the Oakland dock lock-out. Hope it gets resumed soon, or you can expect shortages of lots of goodies.
Not mine. I've been a vegetarian for over 10 years. I buy most of my food at the local farmers market, and organic to boot, since the price there is pretty much the same, or from some of the co-ops, costs less! Great stuff too, not all beat up like the stuff at Safeway and Ralph's.
The TB thing, though, likely has to do with living and working in an area with a significant population flow from Asia. One cough on a crowded bus and you're hit. Chest X-rays were negative, but because I tested negative two years ago and now test positive, I'm on the program. :-P
Douglas Adams wrote something along the lines of 'some believe once someone has figured out the universe it will be immediately replaced with something stranger and more inexplicable. Others believe this has already happened.' (sorry for slaughtering it, but it's the gist of this I'm using here.)
I find it unlikely that the HIV virus has remained in its present state of evolution, unchanged, for years. I think humans have come into contact with it many times before, but it wasn't quite so clever and immune systems disposed of it or it didn't kill the host. At some point it mutated into the unsuccessful disease (a successful disease doesn't kill it's host) that has since, mutated to be resistent to current treatments.
More recently I had a positive reaction to a TB test and am on INH (Isoniazid), which makes me feel like crud. I'm 12 days into it with 6-9 months to go.
Same plan as standard penecillin treatment, take it all, to prevent drug resistent strains.
You can probably thank all those ranchers who load up their cattle, pigs and chickens with with antibiotics before bringing them to market, as those which don't break down get stay in the meat and enter your body. Nothing like a good training ground for weeking out the weaker strains of disease.
Consider where Fujitsu is making and/or supplying parts from.
HD units can generate considerable heat, which is deadly to electrolytic caps. A sudden rash of defective drives strongly suggests something is bad in the supply chain. I wouldn't be too stunned if it turns out Fujitsu has some bad taiwanese suface mount caps failing on the drive control boards. (note: this is the controler on the HDA, not on your MB or in a PCI or other slot in the MB)
I've been wondering if the recently revealed electrolytic (ha, spelt it right that time) capacitor problem (bad taiwanese electrolytics) was related.
On a different note, Seagate's ST380023AS and ST3120023AS (Serial ATA) drives which were expected in Mid-October, then late-November, are now, according to a Cnet article a Seagate employee who shall remain nameless, pointed me to, is indicating shipping dates in Mid-December.. hopefully the two are unrelated.
Oh come on! Be serious for a moment, will ya? This is obviously the work of Saddam Hussein acquiring the means to build Weapons of Mass Destruction and just one more reason Bush will use to back up his regime change plan!
"Mom! Saddam stole my physics book!"
So what you're saying is: A theft of significant large magnitude did not meet with an equal response by the media... I'm sorry, didn't anyone ever explain the three laws of Media to you?
A story at rest or in motion remains at rest or in motion unless acted upon by some editorial force
The rate of public interest in a story is proportional to the number of times reiterated in the story, or in some cases use of the phrase "for the first time since ..."
If the media attempts to educate the public, in the process of telling a story, the public will respond with and equal and opposite attempt to find something else to watch, read or listen to.
It's a sad sad sad sad world
Exactly, and because we're blessed with brains it shouldn't be too difficult to make the leap of Greenland/Northern Canada and Antarctic melts, because of rising average temperatures and changing sea currents. "El Niño" being an example (moving to California's central coast in mid '97 was quite an education when the winter rains came. The Pajaro river was about 3 miles from where I lived, though most people hear about the Russian River, due to it's proximity to wine country.)
Also, much is still speculative, but we (collectively the industrialized and rainforest slash/burn world) are certainly doing plenty to change the composition of the atmosphere, where even changes in small percentages can have significant longterm effect.
It's rather like saying, "One fringe benefit of cancer is you'll lose weight." Problem is getting people to take risks seriously until they've got the disease, once they've got it, they're all eyes and ears, wanting to know how to make the problem go away. Well, on the bright side, maybe the flooding will clean the streets of D.C., NYC, SF, etc.
I just attended the Findlay, OH hamfest for the 30th time (only coming away with a few odd bits and a working Elsa Gloria XL and a non-winmodem 56k) I think we financed Heath for a few years, as he's got several nice powersupplies, etc. and... we had one of the first microwave ovens in town, he put it together as a Heathkit. :-)
Indeed. Figuring out how to attract predators, discourage pests was pretty enlightening and really cool to see in action. When I was young I was constantly grounded for coming home muddy, late, with too many pond creatures, etc, and punishment was working in my mom's vegetable garden. She was cool with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. After a run-in with cancer several years back I reconsidered what I was using in lawn and garden and eating without question. The organic path appealed and was fun while it lasted, and highly productive! I didn't have to visit the grocery store for produce for a summer, living out of an 18' x 32' plot. Amazing how simple it really can be, once you begin to understand what's happening above and below ground.
Not just one, but one of many!
Years ago I embarked upon an organic garden (which you can really get into) in my back yard. Learning about the ins and outs of soil, composting, sympathetic planting, etc. much of it through USENET gardening groups before there were even web browsers. Hacking an organic garden can be no less rewarding or involved than any coding project. Including the internet (as it was at the time) and assistance from several gardening buffs who know how to get to USENET (and a few university extension offices (Ohio State, Michigan State to name a couple)) made it all the more cool. Too bad I now live in a townhouse, with no garden option. :-(
I just want one to build an adapter so I can play my old games on a PC emulator! :-)
Known.
My favorite remains the Perseid, usually around Aug 12, every year. 1997 was a great year for it in central west coast USA. Last year's Leonid coincided with vacation, unfortunately not this year.
Push the earth so that it will spin faster,
so that I'll see the "rain" here in sweden too
On 3
1
2
3 PUUUSH
Ok, that was Turnwise, right? Not widdershins, right?
Doh!
That was sooo last year!
and it was pretty cool to watch while lying in the back of my pickup in the Mohave desert, hundreds of miles away from cloudy home!
Problem is, when Microsoft takes an interest in what you do and decides to try it themselves, or just as bad, determines they don't need you anymore and dumps your product for another vendor's.
Anyone remember the Epson HX-20? Or Tandy 100? Funny how they never became mainstream, as cool as I thought they were at the time...
Freedom of speech, sure, your freedom to talk your head off on any issue. Seems the First Amendment is bypassed, though, by the current regime. You may have the right to speak, but they reserve the right to keep track of what you say and who listens to you. See any limitations on that in the Constitution?
Didn't we all just read, a few weeks back about the following dumping MS Works for WordPerfect Office on consumer PC's?
Dell
HP/Compaq
Gateway
Sony
Seems slightly less onimous the more I think about this. All Adobe has to do to counter MS is jump into bed with Corel and make sure the above listed companies include the pdf viewer (Acrobat) on their PC's.
Even still, it seems like an against the current swim for MS.
They're our standard document retention format and pdf is sweet. It's also cross platform, so long as you have an Adobe pdf reader, and since Adobe should by this time be playing no favorites with MSFT (et to, Brute?) all major players (Win/X/OSX + PDA's) should have such ability, whereas Microsoft will probably only support Windows and OSX, so, what's the difference between XDOC and Word format? Loads in your browser? Only if it's got the plugin.
Besides, pdf is so well entrenched, xdoc will be the odd-man-out.
If these XDocs (can't resd artcile, slashdotted) load into Office automatically, all the better.
Ah, how I remember trying to integrate various document and drawing formats into Word. All the crashing, the swearing, how slow the PC slogged through these complex messes. Ok, I knew there had to be a reason the average Joe or Jane would need a 3 GHz P4/K7 on their desk.