The case you are referring to was something that was never meant to happen, that is, the government going after people making biodiesel. What the government is checking for (especially at things like NASCAR events) is people who are using marine diesel in their trucks and motor homes, upon which road taxes are not excised, hence the dye which is added.
Actually, real 200 proof (not really such a thing, but...) contains denaturing ingredients mainly because that's the only way to get the additional couple of percentage points of water out of the alcohol. You can't remove all the alcohol through distillation, you can only get to about 96% pure (AFAIR). Chemical methods must then be used to get as close to 100% purity as possible, but again, AFAIR, 100% purity is practically impossible to achieve.
There is a BATF exception for home-brewed ethanol for fuel usage. I think it's 200 gallons a year, or some such, but I forget off the top of my head. The product is almost certain to include some method of mandatory denaturing, however.
Absolutely NOT. Radical and disruptive is what we have RIGHT NOW, in the form of the bizarre swing to authoritarianism that has taken place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and oddly enough, France.
What we need is a return to rationality, common sense and decency, real compassion for other beings, and respect for human rights.
The market forces that are the significant drivers of automotive technology are not, as some would like to believe, in the hands of the consumers. The real forces at work are the relative profits of the competing manufacturers. You severely underestimate the amount of investment it takes to create a new automotive product. Every time a manufacturer retools for a new product, massive amounts of money are required to shift the companies production and retrain workers, create new marketing and advertising, educate dealers and technicians, and so on and so forth.
The first manufacturer to step out of line with their competitors is going to face an incredible amount of risk, and the people that run these corporations rely on consistent profit growth to achieve their astronomical salaries. There is simply no incentive for our corporate leaders to accept the level of risk that such a project would require, given the current market climate.
It's nice to see other people out there avoiding certifications.
As for myself, I'm an independent technology consultant specializing in networking and communications infrastructures, and as a consultant I find that there is a serious conflict of interest involved in obtaining manufacturer certifications. Using such a certification (MCSE, CCNA, etc) to bolster your curriculum vitae creates something of an interest in the financial health of the providers of those certifications. How can a consultant claim to offer an unbiased opinion to a client when that same consultant justifies his fees based on his supposed level of knowledge about particular products rather than on knowledge of competing products? If you don't sell those products you've been certified in, then your certification is meaningless, and if you do sell those products when they aren't appropriate, not only is your certification meaningless, you're being dishonest. A consultant makes money on his reputation, and I'm not willing to compromise my reputation for Microsoft or Cisco's benefit, especially when their products are more often than not the worst possible choice for the client.
I've been out on my own for over seven years, and for five years prior to that, I worked as a systems engineer for an integration firm, where I was also responsible for founding their ISP division. I left that firm in a senior consulting capacity. Prior to that I managed a network for a prepress house. In total, I have about 15 years of experience in network and Internet systems design and administration, ranging from one man shops and small businesses all the way up to enterprises of 10,000 or so users.
Lately, I've been thinking about going back to work for another company as an employee, because it's sometimes difficult to deal with the ups and downs of the marketplace on one's own. Looking around at the job offers out there, it's clear that most of the people responsible for the job descriptions have no real clue what it takes to design a technology infrastructure, and write job descriptions based on whatever buzzwords are being bandied about. To make it even worse, many times I see companies looking for hard-core programming skills in a network architecture/engineering position, or database administrator skills, or some other equally irrelevant skill to a systems designer. Then you get to deal with the wildly unrealistic salaries that many companies expect to pay for someone of my experience level, and it gets even more frustrating.
As a musician and artist, I wholeheartedly agree with you that we have the right to some measure of control over our works. However, the form of the Constitution explicits denies that such control ought to be granted creators as a natural right, but rather as a time-limited power granted by the People in order to further the advancement of human knowledge. I personally am comfortable with a limited grant, as a strong case is made for the proposition that we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
The thing that disappoints me about this topic of debate is the assumption on so many commenters' parts that any serious student of so-called "intellectual property" actually believes that the term is anything more than a convenient fiction to describe the license granted to creators under the law, the which we refer to, variously, as "copyright", "patent", "trademark", "trade dress", and with other such terms. We all recognize that "intellectual property" is not the same thing as actual property, but because the license granted is an exclusive license, it may be treated to a certain extent similarly to actual property.
There is a very simple answer to the problems we as a society are encountering in this area. Return to the reasonable grants that the framers of the Constitution envisioned. In some cases, we should also revisit the time period of that grant to fit the nature of each specific market. Software is one such area. Software becomes obsolete so quickly that there is no real reason to offer a grant equivalent to that offered for artistic works. I will not get into specific time periods here, because such specifics aren't really relevant to the debate. What is relevant, however, is the de facto unlimited grant that has developed over time and which needs to be abolished immediately. There have been many excellent proposals for specific time grants, and they all have their advantages and drawbacks.
It is of the utmost importance that we recognize that our entire culture is stagnating because of the removal of the incentive to create new works due to this effectively unlimited grant.
The second most important action in this area is to repeal any such laws as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which effectively remove the Fair Use rights of the public, and furthermore, outlaw any such technology that would prevent the public from the reasonable exercise of those rights.
After sixteen years of service, my still-working Sony CPD-1302 monitor is moving on to the Great CRT Heaven. It was my first computer monitor (aside from the TV's that I used with my Atari 800 back in the 1980's). I purchased this monitor used in 1992 along with a Macintosh IIsi. It had a slightly burned-in screen and a 9-pin VGA output (for which I searched a long time for an adapter to a 15-pin VGA connector). It served as my only monitor for many years until I acquired an Apple 17" Studio Display (also a Trinitron). For the last few years, it has served as my server monitor for a couple of OpenBSD boxen that ran my household network until yesterday, when I finally replaced their functions with Mac OS X Server running on a couple of old iMac DVs.
The only other CRT monitors I have are from my old eMac (a shadow mask), and the monitor I purchased for my music production station, a Power Mac G5 with a LaCie electron 19 blue IV (also a Trinitron). Of course, my television is also a Trinitron, a Sony KV-32FS100 that's about 5 1/2 years old and still gives a fantastic picture in 16:9 mode with its 480i component input driven by a DVD player or my AppleTV. If I could have afforded it in the past year, I would have replaced the 32FS100 with the KD-34XBR970, that last of the Sony CRT HDTVs, but my money has been going to more important things, since the 32FS100 has such a wonderful picture I can't justify replacing it until HD discs and players become the norm. I dread the day when I will be forced to buy a non-CRT television.
I will use my Apple Studio Display and my LaCie until they bite the dust, although the LaCie may be replaced for the music production tasks once LCD monitors drop enough in price to justify them. As it is, even 3 1/2 years after I bought the LaCie for $250, I'd have to spend at least two to three times that price to get an LCD with an equivalent or better resolution and picture quality.
Sony Trinitron. The king is dead! Long live the king!
What strikes me as astonishing about this topic, other than the fact that the majority of the discussion seems to revolve around the utility of assembly programming, is that the list itself displays a marked lack of understanding of the ongoing utility of low technology devices. For instance, one of the items listed is "Buttoning one's trouser fly". Perhaps the author of that idea has never heard of Levi's 501 Jeans? I submit that the 501's are some of the most popular trousers in the world, and the skill of buttoning them could hardly be considered obsolete. The rest of the list is rife with items that only the most technologically-blinded among us could possibly think of as obsolete.
Even the summary contains a dubious suggestion, "Changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor". Perhaps the author is unaware of the vast numbers of motorcycles and small engines sold each year that incorporate carburetors?
"Cast lead bullets"? Thousands, if not millions, of ammunition reloaders would disagree. "Changing vacuum tubes"? Millions of musicians would disagree. "Darkroom photography skills"? "Developing photographic film"? Obviously, this person is not a photographer!
That's as far as I can get without becoming even more disgusted with the state of humanity, or at least the supposedly tech-savvy people who probably are contributing to this list.
There's an easy solution to this problem. The seller should maintain contact with the buyer in order to ensure that the item was in fact received and that the buyer is satisfied. Then the seller can leave positive feedback. Feedback is more important for sellers than it is for buyers, and we should go the extra mile to receive positive feedback. For the buyer, if they want the positive feedback, they should contact the seller and explain that the item was received and the buyer is satisfied, and request that the seller leave feedback before the buyer does so.
One of the early competing auction sites did this. The item would only close when there were no bids for five minutes once the set closing time had passed. My company purchased quite a lot of equipment through that site, but I think they were bought out by another company and their policies changed. I wish I could remember more clearly, but this was over ten years ago.
I've been on eBay a number of years, both as a buyer and a seller. As a musician, I deal primarily in relatively high priced items. The feedback system is very important to me as a seller, as should be obvious to anyone who deals on eBay. I am a honest person and a never misrepresent the condition of an item, but I have been burned several times as a buyer by relatively dishonest sellers. That said, I have never left negative feedback for anyone on eBay until recently (more about this below). As feedback is much more important for sellers than for buyers, I feel it is incumbent upon a seller to leave feedback first (and to always leave it for buyers), and I feel it is equally incumbent upon buyers not to leave negative feedback if they are dissatisfied with a purchase until and unless they have attempted to resolve the situation with the seller. I my self have never left negative feedback as a buyer, even though I've been burned, because I elected not to contact the seller and return the items, even in a case where I received a $1000 amp and speaker cabinet combination damaged and in much worse condition than was represented that cost me over $100 in shipping from California.
I do charge a reasonable handling fee above the actual shipping charges, as I pack fragile items well and good packaging materials are expensive and constructing a good package is time consuming, not to mention the time and trouble I have to go through in order to ship an item. For instance I recently sold a bass guitar to a buyer in France. I charged a $20 packaging and handling fee in addition to the approximately $115 USPS shipping costs, on an item that sold for $800 (which was unfortunately much less than I would have hoped). The instrument was packaged in a sturdy carton with proper cushioning material on all six sides, and closed with the most expensive fiberglass reinforced 3M packaging tape available. This is typical of my sales.
In December, I listed another bass guitar, with a starting price of $800, a reserve of $850, and a Buy It Now price of $1000. One bidder insisted on pestering me to sell the bass at a vastly reduced price (with free shipping, to boot), a practice which I find repugnant. This bidder eventually bid up to the reserve price, but another bidder came in and bid more. The winning bidder had placed his bid almost exactly 72 hours prior to the end of the auction. Come the end of the auction, the winning bidder refused to honor his bid. An email exchange ensued in which I politely requested four times that the bidder complete the transaction, but was refused each time, first claiming not to understand how he had won the auction, then claiming an inability to pay for emergency reasons.
Now, this bidder had been registered with eBay for over a year, and had operated as both a buyer and a seller. It is certain that he understood the terms of his bid when he placed it, and for three days, neither retracted his bid, nor contacted me to request bid cancellation. Although I am a reasonable and compassionate person, I simply have no way of verifying that his bid was not fraudulent or that his situation is actually as he claimed. Bear in mind that this all took place just before Christmas. I explained to the winning bidder that if he did not honor his bid, my only option was to relist the item and file a claim with eBay. While eBay would obviously refund my Final Value Fee, given the circumstances, the still would not refund my listing fees (which is understandable, because eBay provided their service, and deserves to be paid). The trouble is, eBay will not allow me to file an Unpaid Item dispute until eight days had passed, and still requires that the buyer and seller attepmt to resolve the transaction. This means I would not have been able to relist the item until at least eight days had passed, even if the dispute was resolved almost immediately. After all, I cannot in all honesty relist an item and still allow the original winning bidder to resolve the transaction. That would not be fair to new bidders.
You seem to have some misconceptions about New Jersey's primary process. The primary is closed. The only exception is that unaffiliated voters who have never before voted in a New Jersey primary election, may declare a party affiliation at the polling place on election day. This by no means makes New Jersey "semi-open". You don't simply get to decide on a whim to vote in one party or the other. From that moment on, you are now an affiliated voter. While you may change affiliation later, this does not make New Jersey an open primary state. I have no interest in declaring a party affiliation (and certainly not a affiliation with either of the two popular parties), therefore, I cannot vote in a New Jersey Democratic Party or Republican Party primary election.
I entirely disagree here. I think it's quite clear that Hillary Clinton has a decisive edge in nearly all the most populous states, with their correspondingly high electoral college vote counts, including California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, and Michigan. You should remember that the delegates from Michigan and Florida have not been in the official counts because of the short-sighted decision of the DNC to refuse recognition in the primaries. There is no reason to suggest that Hillary Clinton will not continue this advantage into Ohio and Texas. As long as this continues, not only will Barack Obama find it increasingly difficult to bridge the gap, but more and more Democratic voters will come to realize that Obama's wins have been mostly in states where a Democratic candidate is unlikely to prevail in the general Presidential election.
I'm an independent, not a Democrat. The Democratic Party disgusts me quite as much as the Republican Party. I like aspects of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but the only candidates that I could have seen myself truly considering are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Barack Obama may be entertaining to observe in his oration, but talk is cheap. Results are what this country needs right now, and Obama simply doesn't have a reputation among the populace for experience or results. This is the choice of the Democrats--the sure thing, or the daring leap of hope. One thing I will hand to Obama...his speech last night was brilliant.
Since I'm an independent, I wasn't allowed to vote in the primaries in my home state of New Jersey. But come November, I don't see myself supporting either Clinton or Obama, because my generally libertarian values don't align closely enough with either of the Democratic candidates on key issues.
However, my belief at this point is that this contest is going to come down to a choice between Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Obviously, there will need to be a role for Barack Obama in a Hillary Clinton administration, given the strength of his support, but I think that the VP slot might not be right place--perhaps our next Supreme Court Justice?
As for the Republicans, it is extremely hard to imagine John McCain requesting any of his rivals for the running mate on his ticket. My guess is he will seek to reinforce his strengths rather than minimize his weaknesses. Just as with Clinton, McCain is winning nearly all the high electoral count states. Voters in the predominantly Democratic states are choking on the idea of a Mormom President or a religious minister in the White House. McCain is clearly the choice of the old-line conservatives in these states, and I expect that will continue into states such as Pennsylvania, which in 2004 was won by Kerry by a slimmer margin than Ohio was won by Bush, a fact that seems to receive little play in the press. The rest of the Republican party will fall into line behind McCain. The alternative is too terrible for them to consider.
Still, it's Clinton with the edge. McCain may be the most palatable of the Republican candidates, but the entire Republican party still has the weight of the Bush Mistake around the neck of the entire country, and this will be difficult to overcome.
Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Linux was it.
Let me correct that for you...
Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Mac OS was it. The only that's change since then is that now, the only viable alternative is Mac OS X.
There, that's much more accurate.
Face it, Linux has only in the past year begun to reach a state where it might be a viable alternative to Windows, for a select few people running a select subset of the available hardware, and it's still not fully there, yet. Like it or not, wireless is a fact of life, and without access to drivers, Linux is spinning its wheels. Don't even get me started on playing DVDs under Linux.
As for myself, I'm not sure where I fit in, because my two primary machines are triple boot Mac OS X v10.5/Fedora 8/Windows XP Pro. Which means, of course, that they both came from Apple, Inc. These two machines meant wins for all three operating systems (yes, I personally paid for two full retail copies of XP Pro, curse you billg!).
My third primary machine is a music recording workstation, based on a Power Mac G5 that runs Logic Pro, and does double duty as a test server when I'm not recording (which means it runs either some form of Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server or Linux, depending on the task at hand). My regular servers are a mixture of Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, OpenBSD, and some form of Linux, with the occasional Windows Server throw in the mix when I need to test something.
On the other hand, an iPhone has replaced my Nokia Internet Tablet *and* my Palm smartphone.
Start with the original Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. Apple Computer put forth an extremely strong effort in researching basic human interaction with graphical user interfaces during the development of their products in the 1980's, and this book is still the gold standard, even if Apple themselves disregard much of its advice nowadays (mainly because Apple was taken over by the team from NeXT). Remember that when Apple was developing the Lisa and Macintosh interfaces, the general populace had never yet been exposed to this type of interaction with technology, and quite a lot of emphasis was placed on making available powerful features to expert users that were easily accessible, yet unobtrusive to novices.
Along the same lines, I would recommend the original interface guidelines manuals for many of the early graphical operating systems, especially those for early PDA's, like GO's PenPoint, Apple's Newton OS, and the manual for General Magic's Magic Cap.
All of the aforementioned books are out of print, but any serious student of interfaced design should own all of these.
What really bothers me about this is that the info page from the TSA provides only very vague information concerning exactly what is or is not permitted, and the rules seem to be defined so poorly as to beg for inadvertent violation of the rules by passengers as well as violation of passengers' rights by overzealous security personnel.
There is no distinction made between non-rechargeable and rechargeable batteries. This may be for a good reason, but the TSA page seems to refer primarily to rechargeable batteries.
Under the new rules, you can bring batteries with up to 8-gram equivalent lithium content. All lithium ion batteries in cell phones are below 8 gram equivalent lithium content. Nearly all laptop computers also are below this quantity threshold.
You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold. Examples of two types of lithium ion batteries with equivalent lithium content over 8 grams but below 25 are shown below.
For a lithium metal battery, whether installed in a device or carried as a spare, the limit on lithium content is 2 grams of lithium metal per battery.
Almost all consumer-type lithium metal batteries are below 2 grams of lithium metal. But if you are unsure, contact the manufacturer!
Note the specification of the word "aggregate" in the second item. That word doesn't appear in the first item. Does that mean I can bring *any number* of batteries that have an individual lithium content of less than 8-grams?
Note the specification of "lithium metal battery" in the third and fourth items. This term does not appear in either of the first or second items. The first and second items refer to "lithium ion batteries". What is the distinction between a "lithium ion battery" and a "lithium metal battery"? Even worse, in the second item, the term "lithium ion battery" is only referred to as an example. The operative phrase only says "up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold".
Can anyone cite the relevant regulations rather than this public info disaster?
Someone please tell me just who it is that's going to make sure that all these compact fluorescent bulbs are redesigned so as to eliminate the massive amounts of RFI pollution that most current designs emit?
The same Congress that keeps passing asinine laws like this one, while completely ignoring the low-hanging fruit of the energy efficiency tree? Perhaps the FCC, who more and more is beginning to sound like the marketing arms of multinational corporations? The manufacturers themselves, who don't give a damn about anything but short-term profits, even at the expense of the environment, our health, and their own corporate longevity?
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The case you are referring to was something that was never meant to happen, that is, the government going after people making biodiesel. What the government is checking for (especially at things like NASCAR events) is people who are using marine diesel in their trucks and motor homes, upon which road taxes are not excised, hence the dye which is added.
Actually, real 200 proof (not really such a thing, but...) contains denaturing ingredients mainly because that's the only way to get the additional couple of percentage points of water out of the alcohol. You can't remove all the alcohol through distillation, you can only get to about 96% pure (AFAIR). Chemical methods must then be used to get as close to 100% purity as possible, but again, AFAIR, 100% purity is practically impossible to achieve.
There is a BATF exception for home-brewed ethanol for fuel usage. I think it's 200 gallons a year, or some such, but I forget off the top of my head. The product is almost certain to include some method of mandatory denaturing, however.
Absolutely NOT. Radical and disruptive is what we have RIGHT NOW, in the form of the bizarre swing to authoritarianism that has taken place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and oddly enough, France.
What we need is a return to rationality, common sense and decency, real compassion for other beings, and respect for human rights.
Yes, it's quite clear that you don't get it.
The market forces that are the significant drivers of automotive technology are not, as some would like to believe, in the hands of the consumers. The real forces at work are the relative profits of the competing manufacturers. You severely underestimate the amount of investment it takes to create a new automotive product. Every time a manufacturer retools for a new product, massive amounts of money are required to shift the companies production and retrain workers, create new marketing and advertising, educate dealers and technicians, and so on and so forth.
The first manufacturer to step out of line with their competitors is going to face an incredible amount of risk, and the people that run these corporations rely on consistent profit growth to achieve their astronomical salaries. There is simply no incentive for our corporate leaders to accept the level of risk that such a project would require, given the current market climate.
It's nice to see other people out there avoiding certifications.
As for myself, I'm an independent technology consultant specializing in networking and communications infrastructures, and as a consultant I find that there is a serious conflict of interest involved in obtaining manufacturer certifications. Using such a certification (MCSE, CCNA, etc) to bolster your curriculum vitae creates something of an interest in the financial health of the providers of those certifications. How can a consultant claim to offer an unbiased opinion to a client when that same consultant justifies his fees based on his supposed level of knowledge about particular products rather than on knowledge of competing products? If you don't sell those products you've been certified in, then your certification is meaningless, and if you do sell those products when they aren't appropriate, not only is your certification meaningless, you're being dishonest. A consultant makes money on his reputation, and I'm not willing to compromise my reputation for Microsoft or Cisco's benefit, especially when their products are more often than not the worst possible choice for the client.
I've been out on my own for over seven years, and for five years prior to that, I worked as a systems engineer for an integration firm, where I was also responsible for founding their ISP division. I left that firm in a senior consulting capacity. Prior to that I managed a network for a prepress house. In total, I have about 15 years of experience in network and Internet systems design and administration, ranging from one man shops and small businesses all the way up to enterprises of 10,000 or so users.
Lately, I've been thinking about going back to work for another company as an employee, because it's sometimes difficult to deal with the ups and downs of the marketplace on one's own. Looking around at the job offers out there, it's clear that most of the people responsible for the job descriptions have no real clue what it takes to design a technology infrastructure, and write job descriptions based on whatever buzzwords are being bandied about. To make it even worse, many times I see companies looking for hard-core programming skills in a network architecture/engineering position, or database administrator skills, or some other equally irrelevant skill to a systems designer. Then you get to deal with the wildly unrealistic salaries that many companies expect to pay for someone of my experience level, and it gets even more frustrating.
Sorry to reply to this so late...
As a musician and artist, I wholeheartedly agree with you that we have the right to some measure of control over our works. However, the form of the Constitution explicits denies that such control ought to be granted creators as a natural right, but rather as a time-limited power granted by the People in order to further the advancement of human knowledge. I personally am comfortable with a limited grant, as a strong case is made for the proposition that we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
The thing that disappoints me about this topic of debate is the assumption on so many commenters' parts that any serious student of so-called "intellectual property" actually believes that the term is anything more than a convenient fiction to describe the license granted to creators under the law, the which we refer to, variously, as "copyright", "patent", "trademark", "trade dress", and with other such terms. We all recognize that "intellectual property" is not the same thing as actual property, but because the license granted is an exclusive license, it may be treated to a certain extent similarly to actual property.
There is a very simple answer to the problems we as a society are encountering in this area. Return to the reasonable grants that the framers of the Constitution envisioned. In some cases, we should also revisit the time period of that grant to fit the nature of each specific market. Software is one such area. Software becomes obsolete so quickly that there is no real reason to offer a grant equivalent to that offered for artistic works. I will not get into specific time periods here, because such specifics aren't really relevant to the debate. What is relevant, however, is the de facto unlimited grant that has developed over time and which needs to be abolished immediately. There have been many excellent proposals for specific time grants, and they all have their advantages and drawbacks.
It is of the utmost importance that we recognize that our entire culture is stagnating because of the removal of the incentive to create new works due to this effectively unlimited grant.
The second most important action in this area is to repeal any such laws as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which effectively remove the Fair Use rights of the public, and furthermore, outlaw any such technology that would prevent the public from the reasonable exercise of those rights.
After sixteen years of service, my still-working Sony CPD-1302 monitor is moving on to the Great CRT Heaven. It was my first computer monitor (aside from the TV's that I used with my Atari 800 back in the 1980's). I purchased this monitor used in 1992 along with a Macintosh IIsi. It had a slightly burned-in screen and a 9-pin VGA output (for which I searched a long time for an adapter to a 15-pin VGA connector). It served as my only monitor for many years until I acquired an Apple 17" Studio Display (also a Trinitron). For the last few years, it has served as my server monitor for a couple of OpenBSD boxen that ran my household network until yesterday, when I finally replaced their functions with Mac OS X Server running on a couple of old iMac DVs.
The only other CRT monitors I have are from my old eMac (a shadow mask), and the monitor I purchased for my music production station, a Power Mac G5 with a LaCie electron 19 blue IV (also a Trinitron). Of course, my television is also a Trinitron, a Sony KV-32FS100 that's about 5 1/2 years old and still gives a fantastic picture in 16:9 mode with its 480i component input driven by a DVD player or my AppleTV. If I could have afforded it in the past year, I would have replaced the 32FS100 with the KD-34XBR970, that last of the Sony CRT HDTVs, but my money has been going to more important things, since the 32FS100 has such a wonderful picture I can't justify replacing it until HD discs and players become the norm. I dread the day when I will be forced to buy a non-CRT television.
I will use my Apple Studio Display and my LaCie until they bite the dust, although the LaCie may be replaced for the music production tasks once LCD monitors drop enough in price to justify them. As it is, even 3 1/2 years after I bought the LaCie for $250, I'd have to spend at least two to three times that price to get an LCD with an equivalent or better resolution and picture quality.
Sony Trinitron. The king is dead! Long live the king!
What strikes me as astonishing about this topic, other than the fact that the majority of the discussion seems to revolve around the utility of assembly programming, is that the list itself displays a marked lack of understanding of the ongoing utility of low technology devices. For instance, one of the items listed is "Buttoning one's trouser fly". Perhaps the author of that idea has never heard of Levi's 501 Jeans? I submit that the 501's are some of the most popular trousers in the world, and the skill of buttoning them could hardly be considered obsolete. The rest of the list is rife with items that only the most technologically-blinded among us could possibly think of as obsolete.
Even the summary contains a dubious suggestion, "Changing the gas mixture on your car's carburetor". Perhaps the author is unaware of the vast numbers of motorcycles and small engines sold each year that incorporate carburetors?
"Cast lead bullets"? Thousands, if not millions, of ammunition reloaders would disagree.
"Changing vacuum tubes"? Millions of musicians would disagree.
"Darkroom photography skills"? "Developing photographic film"? Obviously, this person is not a photographer!
That's as far as I can get without becoming even more disgusted with the state of humanity, or at least the supposedly tech-savvy people who probably are contributing to this list.
Thank you for that post. I have added you as a friend, because you display more insight into this problem than the vast majority of people.
There's an easy solution to this problem. The seller should maintain contact with the buyer in order to ensure that the item was in fact received and that the buyer is satisfied. Then the seller can leave positive feedback. Feedback is more important for sellers than it is for buyers, and we should go the extra mile to receive positive feedback. For the buyer, if they want the positive feedback, they should contact the seller and explain that the item was received and the buyer is satisfied, and request that the seller leave feedback before the buyer does so.
And what prevents buyers from leaving fraudulent negative feedback?
+5000.
One of the early competing auction sites did this. The item would only close when there were no bids for five minutes once the set closing time had passed. My company purchased quite a lot of equipment through that site, but I think they were bought out by another company and their policies changed. I wish I could remember more clearly, but this was over ten years ago.
I've been on eBay a number of years, both as a buyer and a seller. As a musician, I deal primarily in relatively high priced items. The feedback system is very important to me as a seller, as should be obvious to anyone who deals on eBay. I am a honest person and a never misrepresent the condition of an item, but I have been burned several times as a buyer by relatively dishonest sellers. That said, I have never left negative feedback for anyone on eBay until recently (more about this below). As feedback is much more important for sellers than for buyers, I feel it is incumbent upon a seller to leave feedback first (and to always leave it for buyers), and I feel it is equally incumbent upon buyers not to leave negative feedback if they are dissatisfied with a purchase until and unless they have attempted to resolve the situation with the seller. I my self have never left negative feedback as a buyer, even though I've been burned, because I elected not to contact the seller and return the items, even in a case where I received a $1000 amp and speaker cabinet combination damaged and in much worse condition than was represented that cost me over $100 in shipping from California.
I do charge a reasonable handling fee above the actual shipping charges, as I pack fragile items well and good packaging materials are expensive and constructing a good package is time consuming, not to mention the time and trouble I have to go through in order to ship an item. For instance I recently sold a bass guitar to a buyer in France. I charged a $20 packaging and handling fee in addition to the approximately $115 USPS shipping costs, on an item that sold for $800 (which was unfortunately much less than I would have hoped). The instrument was packaged in a sturdy carton with proper cushioning material on all six sides, and closed with the most expensive fiberglass reinforced 3M packaging tape available. This is typical of my sales.
In December, I listed another bass guitar, with a starting price of $800, a reserve of $850, and a Buy It Now price of $1000. One bidder insisted on pestering me to sell the bass at a vastly reduced price (with free shipping, to boot), a practice which I find repugnant. This bidder eventually bid up to the reserve price, but another bidder came in and bid more. The winning bidder had placed his bid almost exactly 72 hours prior to the end of the auction. Come the end of the auction, the winning bidder refused to honor his bid. An email exchange ensued in which I politely requested four times that the bidder complete the transaction, but was refused each time, first claiming not to understand how he had won the auction, then claiming an inability to pay for emergency reasons.
Now, this bidder had been registered with eBay for over a year, and had operated as both a buyer and a seller. It is certain that he understood the terms of his bid when he placed it, and for three days, neither retracted his bid, nor contacted me to request bid cancellation. Although I am a reasonable and compassionate person, I simply have no way of verifying that his bid was not fraudulent or that his situation is actually as he claimed. Bear in mind that this all took place just before Christmas. I explained to the winning bidder that if he did not honor his bid, my only option was to relist the item and file a claim with eBay. While eBay would obviously refund my Final Value Fee, given the circumstances, the still would not refund my listing fees (which is understandable, because eBay provided their service, and deserves to be paid). The trouble is, eBay will not allow me to file an Unpaid Item dispute until eight days had passed, and still requires that the buyer and seller attepmt to resolve the transaction. This means I would not have been able to relist the item until at least eight days had passed, even if the dispute was resolved almost immediately. After all, I cannot in all honesty relist an item and still allow the original winning bidder to resolve the transaction. That would not be fair to new bidders.
You seem to have some misconceptions about New Jersey's primary process. The primary is closed. The only exception is that unaffiliated voters who have never before voted in a New Jersey primary election, may declare a party affiliation at the polling place on election day. This by no means makes New Jersey "semi-open". You don't simply get to decide on a whim to vote in one party or the other. From that moment on, you are now an affiliated voter. While you may change affiliation later, this does not make New Jersey an open primary state. I have no interest in declaring a party affiliation (and certainly not a affiliation with either of the two popular parties), therefore, I cannot vote in a New Jersey Democratic Party or Republican Party primary election.
I entirely disagree here. I think it's quite clear that Hillary Clinton has a decisive edge in nearly all the most populous states, with their correspondingly high electoral college vote counts, including California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, and Michigan. You should remember that the delegates from Michigan and Florida have not been in the official counts because of the short-sighted decision of the DNC to refuse recognition in the primaries. There is no reason to suggest that Hillary Clinton will not continue this advantage into Ohio and Texas. As long as this continues, not only will Barack Obama find it increasingly difficult to bridge the gap, but more and more Democratic voters will come to realize that Obama's wins have been mostly in states where a Democratic candidate is unlikely to prevail in the general Presidential election.
I'm an independent, not a Democrat. The Democratic Party disgusts me quite as much as the Republican Party. I like aspects of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but the only candidates that I could have seen myself truly considering are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Barack Obama may be entertaining to observe in his oration, but talk is cheap. Results are what this country needs right now, and Obama simply doesn't have a reputation among the populace for experience or results. This is the choice of the Democrats--the sure thing, or the daring leap of hope. One thing I will hand to Obama...his speech last night was brilliant.
Since I'm an independent, I wasn't allowed to vote in the primaries in my home state of New Jersey. But come November, I don't see myself supporting either Clinton or Obama, because my generally libertarian values don't align closely enough with either of the Democratic candidates on key issues.
However, my belief at this point is that this contest is going to come down to a choice between Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Obviously, there will need to be a role for Barack Obama in a Hillary Clinton administration, given the strength of his support, but I think that the VP slot might not be right place--perhaps our next Supreme Court Justice?
As for the Republicans, it is extremely hard to imagine John McCain requesting any of his rivals for the running mate on his ticket. My guess is he will seek to reinforce his strengths rather than minimize his weaknesses. Just as with Clinton, McCain is winning nearly all the high electoral count states. Voters in the predominantly Democratic states are choking on the idea of a Mormom President or a religious minister in the White House. McCain is clearly the choice of the old-line conservatives in these states, and I expect that will continue into states such as Pennsylvania, which in 2004 was won by Kerry by a slimmer margin than Ohio was won by Bush, a fact that seems to receive little play in the press. The rest of the Republican party will fall into line behind McCain. The alternative is too terrible for them to consider.
Still, it's Clinton with the edge. McCain may be the most palatable of the Republican candidates, but the entire Republican party still has the weight of the Bush Mistake around the neck of the entire country, and this will be difficult to overcome.
Let me correct that for you...
Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Mac OS was it. The only that's change since then is that now, the only viable alternative is Mac OS X.
There, that's much more accurate.
Face it, Linux has only in the past year begun to reach a state where it might be a viable alternative to Windows, for a select few people running a select subset of the available hardware, and it's still not fully there, yet. Like it or not, wireless is a fact of life, and without access to drivers, Linux is spinning its wheels. Don't even get me started on playing DVDs under Linux.
As for myself, I'm not sure where I fit in, because my two primary machines are triple boot Mac OS X v10.5/Fedora 8/Windows XP Pro. Which means, of course, that they both came from Apple, Inc. These two machines meant wins for all three operating systems (yes, I personally paid for two full retail copies of XP Pro, curse you billg!).
My third primary machine is a music recording workstation, based on a Power Mac G5 that runs Logic Pro, and does double duty as a test server when I'm not recording (which means it runs either some form of Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server or Linux, depending on the task at hand). My regular servers are a mixture of Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, OpenBSD, and some form of Linux, with the occasional Windows Server throw in the mix when I need to test something.
On the other hand, an iPhone has replaced my Nokia Internet Tablet *and* my Palm smartphone.
Excellent book! I second this recommendation.
Start with the original Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. Apple Computer put forth an extremely strong effort in researching basic human interaction with graphical user interfaces during the development of their products in the 1980's, and this book is still the gold standard, even if Apple themselves disregard much of its advice nowadays (mainly because Apple was taken over by the team from NeXT). Remember that when Apple was developing the Lisa and Macintosh interfaces, the general populace had never yet been exposed to this type of interaction with technology, and quite a lot of emphasis was placed on making available powerful features to expert users that were easily accessible, yet unobtrusive to novices.
Along the same lines, I would recommend the original interface guidelines manuals for many of the early graphical operating systems, especially those for early PDA's, like GO's PenPoint, Apple's Newton OS, and the manual for General Magic's Magic Cap.
All of the aforementioned books are out of print, but any serious student of interfaced design should own all of these.
There is no distinction made between non-rechargeable and rechargeable batteries. This may be for a good reason, but the TSA page seems to refer primarily to rechargeable batteries.
Note the specification of the word "aggregate" in the second item. That word doesn't appear in the first item. Does that mean I can bring *any number* of batteries that have an individual lithium content of less than 8-grams?
Note the specification of "lithium metal battery" in the third and fourth items. This term does not appear in either of the first or second items. The first and second items refer to "lithium ion batteries". What is the distinction between a "lithium ion battery" and a "lithium metal battery"? Even worse, in the second item, the term "lithium ion battery" is only referred to as an example. The operative phrase only says "up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold".
Can anyone cite the relevant regulations rather than this public info disaster?
Energizer AA (L91) ~.98 grams
Energizer AAA (L92) ~.5 grams
Energizer 123 ~.55 grams
as per Energizer technical data PDF's
Please see:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=219840&threshold=-1&commentsort=1&mode=nested&pid=17831786
and
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/02/037258&tid=126
Someone please tell me just who it is that's going to make sure that all these compact fluorescent bulbs are redesigned so as to eliminate the massive amounts of RFI pollution that most current designs emit?
The same Congress that keeps passing asinine laws like this one, while completely ignoring the low-hanging fruit of the energy efficiency tree? Perhaps the FCC, who more and more is beginning to sound like the marketing arms of multinational corporations? The manufacturers themselves, who don't give a damn about anything but short-term profits, even at the expense of the environment, our health, and their own corporate longevity?
I have no hope for the Great Experiment.
Yeah, definitely Emacs. The only eBook reader that can read things to you with a Lisp...