I live outside of Lancaster, and I can tell you that this has nothing to do with crime, and everything to do with the mayor's power trip. Parris wants to be seen as the guy who ran the gangs out of Lancaster, and he does NOT care who else he hurts or what Constitutional rights he tramples to accomplish that (and he has said as much in interviews). See my other posts above.
My first thought was "I wonder which of the mayor's buddies will get the surveillance contract."
Rex Parris isn't gullible by any means. But he is one of the most aggressive jerks I've ever encountered in public office, and clearly cares NOTHING for average citizens NOR for our Constitutional rights, which he is perfectly willing to trample in pursuit of his goals -- he wants to be seen as the tough-on-crime mayor who ran the gangs out of Lancaster, and if everyone else suffers in the process, he couldn't care less. See my post in the first thread where I touch on that.
It's probably about that right now. It's usually about half-again to double the price of diesel or auto gas.
As to the Lancaster city budget, allowing for the usual gov't overruns this will cost around a million dollars a year. I'd like to know just where the hell we're going to get the money for this nonsense, when we can't pay for street maintenance and are presently building a HUGE expansion on the city sewage treatment plant.
See my post above, in the first thread. I can tell you from my face-to-face arguing with our Ruling Mayor that he is all about fear, via intimidation of anyone he doesn't like.
Our mayor (yes, I live in the AV) would indeed outlaw roofs if he could. This is the same guy who said that he would seize and kill law-abiding citizens' pets if doing so would discourage gang members from owning dogs.
High density 3.5" floppy WILL work if the adapter card supports it. I've got one in my 1986 vintage XT, works fine. Ditto in my 1988 vintage 286, which uses a similar adapter card.
Unless the system has some funky ROM (like Tandy used that locked in a specific OS) there's no reason not to use a modern DOS. I still have a working XT and 286, and they both run M$DOS 6.00 -- it's MUCH faster than the older versions and a lot more capable, and is extremely stable (my very busy 286 routinely ran for up to *two years* between reboots). M$DOS7 from Win9x is the same as M$DOS6 but adds FAT32 support, and would work just as well. I presume one of the free DOS replacements, like FreeDOS, would also work.
The standard MSCDEX and Mouse drivers (v8.20 is best) should also work. You can get USB-to-some-other-port gadgets -- try cablenbits.com or tekgems.com, both are reliable vendors and carry all manner of oddball connectors and adapters.
Trident VGA cards (ISA or VESA) will work in an 8-bit slot, and the speed boost over the usual dedicated 8-bit card is remarkable.
My 1986-vintage XT has a 16bit Trident VGA card, which roughly quadruples apparent system performance over Herc mono in the same machine. Goes to show how much lag was in some of those old video subsystems.
Somewhere around here I have an 8-bit SCSI card, but never had cause to try it. Might have to now -- would be fun to know what it can support.
Tho I haven't noticed that this improves the mapreading skills of those who never could read a paper map in the first place -- tho it does improve their ability-to-follow-directions skills.
Diff being with a map you have to figure out where you're going, whereas the GPS tells you where you'e going... no need to figure it out. Lets that part of the brain atrophy, or fail to develop in the first place.
We scream about the encroaching nanny state, then we invent gadget to nanny us... WTF?!!
When I was in grade school, we had to recreate maps of our state down to fairly fine detail. We also had to know the basic maps of the country and the world. As someone above says, it's empowering to know exactly where you are in the world, rather than just being an ant lost in the vastness, and I'm glad to have these skills.
And it probably contributed to my being a map freak.:)
Tell that to the 18-wheelers that get stuck on the hairpin turns on state highways in the Great Smokey Mountains. Those roads look like a straight cutoff on a low-res map, too. Are the twisty turns still irrelevant??
So.. damned if you do, damned if you don't. Do you want your screwing from one giant dildo or a thousand small ones??
Methinks a central repository of zero-royalty agreements is in order, so that any indie station can instantly learn which music they can and cannot play, and so an agreement doesn't have to be signed for each and every piece played.
I think what will happen is that there will suddenly be a much sharper demarcation between independent/royalty-free and chain/royalty stations, and that the lack of overlap will harm the traditional stations and their artists (since a whole segment of listeners will be lost to them), but will be all to the benefit of the royalty-free stations AND the artists they are thereby promoting.
One way I can tell who used my directions to find my place, and who used their GPS, is that the former get here in one shot, and the latter almost invariably call me enroute, being lost anywhere from half a mile away (where the best GPS will dump you given my address) to 10 miles away (some GPSs seem to have a problem with East vs West when there are not matching E and W streets). And I'm not hard to find, either... just not on a named street.
[I don't use a GPS. I carry vast maps in my head, and can read the ones I don't know yet.]
I think you are right about that, having observed the same myself.
Me, I do much better with a map than with directions (I don't get lost, cuz I carry a vast set of maps in my head and always know about where I am on the "overhead projection" view). Just show me the map and I'll figure it out. But tell me turn left where? oh, you meant my OTHER left!
Not only that, but it was often the kids' job to read the map and figure out where we were, or how to get to where we wanted to be. Back before the Interstate system, it wasn't quite so simple as "pick the obvious route".
I've noticed that nowadays most people can't make sense of a map unless they've actually been to the location. They can't *figure out* how to get somewhere just from the map itself. This is kindof like the "whole word recognition" reading system vs phonics -- one relies on rote knowledge, the other on your ability to figure stuff out.
Disclaimer: I am a map freak. I don't use a GPS. And I never get lost.
I've noticed that too. I'd wondered if that's a function of how Windows handles WAVs -- that is, is WinAmp passing the volume control on to Windows rather than actually handling it itself?
I seem to recall a similar issue with MIDIs. But not with MP3s, which Windows doesn't handle natively.
I'm just pulling explanations out of my ass, but those are what came out.:)
I've known a number of schizophrenics who were sufficiently low-key that they would never be diagnosed -- but in some way they don't relate properly. The low-key ones don't necessarily hear voices, but they may have other issues, like "feeling like my skin is crawling" when stressed. Some fake normal so well that you have no idea there is a problem -- til you realise there's a coping mechanism at work, such as rehearsing every action til it's "perfect" to avoid embarrassment... and completely losing it (eg. panic attack) when 'caught' being imperfect.
Two strong common factors are a black/white mentality (inability to deal with shades of grey) and a need to be the center of attention, while simultaneously never ever being *seen* to do anything 'wrong' or otherwise embarrassing. Being 'caught' at being wrong is the single most reliable trigger for a bad episode, for those that do have episodes (not all seem to).
I started putting that together with kids when I realised that kids do so many of the same behaviours, but in kids we think it's just -- being kids. And it is NORMAL in kids -- until they outgrow it. You can probably predict which kids will NOT outgrow it by observing which are most intolerant of adults interfering with the way they order their small worlds, those that cannot cope with ordinary embarrassments, etc.
Ever notice kids ordering all their books or toys just so, and getting terribly upset at someone who disorders them? Disorder something an adult OCD has fixated on and watch the same behaviour erupt. OCD in this form is a need to pigeonhole everything, because grey areas cannot be dealt with.
Ever notice how almost all teenagers have manic and nadir periods, sometimes with only the most trivial trigger?
Ever noticed little kids playing with imaginary friends?? How many actually think they hear those 'friends' talking??
Failure to outgrow all this, lack of the chemical triggers that comprise adult behaviour, is what I'm talking about... and if it isn't outgrown, it gets worse, since it doesn't work in Adult Life, and the automatic defense mechanism is to BE EVEN MORE NUTSO.
And then yes, there is that disconnect from reality -- in the clinical cases. But I've known enough socially-functional schizos that I now believe the clinical/obvious cases are a minority, and that it is actually about 10x more widespread than that -- but we chalk it up to someone being odd or childish rather than recognising that it is a failure to mature compounded by adult stresses. (The math and programming communities are rife with the behaviours... but note that both professions are fundamentally "pigeonholing the universe" ie. OCD.)
I've been saying for years that they are not separate disorders but rather a continuum, with OCD at one end, bipolar in the middle, and schizo at the other.
I've also noted a cyclic pattern -- typically a crazed episode, followed by a brief apologetic period, then some unpredictable time of being apparently-normal. If the cycle is not interrupted, or if it is in any way enabled, it trends toward worse with each cycle.
I also content this: ALL children are schizophrenic, and progress thru bipolar and OCD phases as they mature. NORMAL children eventually leave all of these behaviours behind. We notice people "going wrong" in their teens and twenties not because they are "getting sick" but because they are failing to outgrow these normal childhood behaviours, which don't work so well once you leave the nest.
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I live outside of Lancaster, and I can tell you that this has nothing to do with crime, and everything to do with the mayor's power trip. Parris wants to be seen as the guy who ran the gangs out of Lancaster, and he does NOT care who else he hurts or what Constitutional rights he tramples to accomplish that (and he has said as much in interviews). See my other posts above.
My first thought was "I wonder which of the mayor's buddies will get the surveillance contract."
Rex Parris isn't gullible by any means. But he is one of the most aggressive jerks I've ever encountered in public office, and clearly cares NOTHING for average citizens NOR for our Constitutional rights, which he is perfectly willing to trample in pursuit of his goals -- he wants to be seen as the tough-on-crime mayor who ran the gangs out of Lancaster, and if everyone else suffers in the process, he couldn't care less. See my post in the first thread where I touch on that.
(Yes, I live here......)
It's probably about that right now. It's usually about half-again to double the price of diesel or auto gas.
As to the Lancaster city budget, allowing for the usual gov't overruns this will cost around a million dollars a year. I'd like to know just where the hell we're going to get the money for this nonsense, when we can't pay for street maintenance and are presently building a HUGE expansion on the city sewage treatment plant.
(Yes, I live there.)
See my post above, in the first thread. I can tell you from my face-to-face arguing with our Ruling Mayor that he is all about fear, via intimidation of anyone he doesn't like.
Our mayor (yes, I live in the AV) would indeed outlaw roofs if he could. This is the same guy who said that he would seize and kill law-abiding citizens' pets if doing so would discourage gang members from owning dogs.
Think I'm making this up??
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/26/local/me-dogordinance26?pg=1
======
"What happens when these gang members that you're trying to target move on to Dobermans or German shepherds? You going to restrict them too?" Listman asked the council.
"If they move on to cats," Parris responded, "I'm going to take their cats."
======
He's an ambulance chaser by profession, which means in his worldview, there is only one solution for every social ill: SOMEONE MUST PAY!!
The man is a menace to the Constitution.
When I got into computers, that sort of scrounge-and-upgrade was challenging and very worthwhile. Now P4s rain from the sky...
But my XT still works, while I've had 4 or 5 P4s die on me. Says something about disposable construction vs value, eh? :(
High density 3.5" floppy WILL work if the adapter card supports it. I've got one in my 1986 vintage XT, works fine. Ditto in my 1988 vintage 286, which uses a similar adapter card.
Sometimes they're happy to get the publicity: "Our systems are so reliable, they last decades!!" It's a marketing gimmick but often a good one.
Unless the system has some funky ROM (like Tandy used that locked in a specific OS) there's no reason not to use a modern DOS. I still have a working XT and 286, and they both run M$DOS 6.00 -- it's MUCH faster than the older versions and a lot more capable, and is extremely stable (my very busy 286 routinely ran for up to *two years* between reboots). M$DOS7 from Win9x is the same as M$DOS6 but adds FAT32 support, and would work just as well. I presume one of the free DOS replacements, like FreeDOS, would also work.
The standard MSCDEX and Mouse drivers (v8.20 is best) should also work. You can get USB-to-some-other-port gadgets -- try cablenbits.com or tekgems.com, both are reliable vendors and carry all manner of oddball connectors and adapters.
What was the question again? :)
Trident VGA cards (ISA or VESA) will work in an 8-bit slot, and the speed boost over the usual dedicated 8-bit card is remarkable.
My 1986-vintage XT has a 16bit Trident VGA card, which roughly quadruples apparent system performance over Herc mono in the same machine. Goes to show how much lag was in some of those old video subsystems.
Somewhere around here I have an 8-bit SCSI card, but never had cause to try it. Might have to now -- would be fun to know what it can support.
Tho I haven't noticed that this improves the mapreading skills of those who never could read a paper map in the first place -- tho it does improve their ability-to-follow-directions skills.
Diff being with a map you have to figure out where you're going, whereas the GPS tells you where you'e going... no need to figure it out. Lets that part of the brain atrophy, or fail to develop in the first place.
We scream about the encroaching nanny state, then we invent gadget to nanny us... WTF?!!
When I was in grade school, we had to recreate maps of our state down to fairly fine detail. We also had to know the basic maps of the country and the world. As someone above says, it's empowering to know exactly where you are in the world, rather than just being an ant lost in the vastness, and I'm glad to have these skills.
And it probably contributed to my being a map freak. :)
Oh, now that's the kind of map I really enjoy!!
I love the old USGS/Forest Service maps for the same reason .. they show every little building, logging road, goat track, streambed, etc, etc.
Tell that to the 18-wheelers that get stuck on the hairpin turns on state highways in the Great Smokey Mountains. Those roads look like a straight cutoff on a low-res map, too. Are the twisty turns still irrelevant??
So.. damned if you do, damned if you don't. Do you want your screwing from one giant dildo or a thousand small ones??
Methinks a central repository of zero-royalty agreements is in order, so that any indie station can instantly learn which music they can and cannot play, and so an agreement doesn't have to be signed for each and every piece played.
Something like this
http://www.digitalgunfire.com/radioplayrelease.rtf
except worded to apply to all stations.
One internet station's solution -- royalty-free AND not-crud:
http://www.digitalgunfire.com/radioplayrelease.rtf
I think what will happen is that there will suddenly be a much sharper demarcation between independent/royalty-free and chain/royalty stations, and that the lack of overlap will harm the traditional stations and their artists (since a whole segment of listeners will be lost to them), but will be all to the benefit of the royalty-free stations AND the artists they are thereby promoting.
Heh... that sounds about right :)
One way I can tell who used my directions to find my place, and who used their GPS, is that the former get here in one shot, and the latter almost invariably call me enroute, being lost anywhere from half a mile away (where the best GPS will dump you given my address) to 10 miles away (some GPSs seem to have a problem with East vs West when there are not matching E and W streets). And I'm not hard to find, either... just not on a named street.
[I don't use a GPS. I carry vast maps in my head, and can read the ones I don't know yet.]
I think you are right about that, having observed the same myself.
Me, I do much better with a map than with directions (I don't get lost, cuz I carry a vast set of maps in my head and always know about where I am on the "overhead projection" view). Just show me the map and I'll figure it out. But tell me turn left where? oh, you meant my OTHER left!
Not only that, but it was often the kids' job to read the map and figure out where we were, or how to get to where we wanted to be. Back before the Interstate system, it wasn't quite so simple as "pick the obvious route".
I've noticed that nowadays most people can't make sense of a map unless they've actually been to the location. They can't *figure out* how to get somewhere just from the map itself. This is kindof like the "whole word recognition" reading system vs phonics -- one relies on rote knowledge, the other on your ability to figure stuff out.
Disclaimer: I am a map freak. I don't use a GPS. And I never get lost.
Heh... my first thought was that it would make a nifty suit for Agent 007 to wear... or for industrial espionage... or general spying...
Great, now anyone wearing CLOTHES is suspicious!
I've noticed that too. I'd wondered if that's a function of how Windows handles WAVs -- that is, is WinAmp passing the volume control on to Windows rather than actually handling it itself?
I seem to recall a similar issue with MIDIs. But not with MP3s, which Windows doesn't handle natively.
I'm just pulling explanations out of my ass, but those are what came out. :)
I've known a number of schizophrenics who were sufficiently low-key that they would never be diagnosed -- but in some way they don't relate properly. The low-key ones don't necessarily hear voices, but they may have other issues, like "feeling like my skin is crawling" when stressed. Some fake normal so well that you have no idea there is a problem -- til you realise there's a coping mechanism at work, such as rehearsing every action til it's "perfect" to avoid embarrassment... and completely losing it (eg. panic attack) when 'caught' being imperfect.
Two strong common factors are a black/white mentality (inability to deal with shades of grey) and a need to be the center of attention, while simultaneously never ever being *seen* to do anything 'wrong' or otherwise embarrassing. Being 'caught' at being wrong is the single most reliable trigger for a bad episode, for those that do have episodes (not all seem to).
I started putting that together with kids when I realised that kids do so many of the same behaviours, but in kids we think it's just -- being kids. And it is NORMAL in kids -- until they outgrow it. You can probably predict which kids will NOT outgrow it by observing which are most intolerant of adults interfering with the way they order their small worlds, those that cannot cope with ordinary embarrassments, etc.
Ever notice kids ordering all their books or toys just so, and getting terribly upset at someone who disorders them? Disorder something an adult OCD has fixated on and watch the same behaviour erupt. OCD in this form is a need to pigeonhole everything, because grey areas cannot be dealt with.
Ever notice how almost all teenagers have manic and nadir periods, sometimes with only the most trivial trigger?
Ever noticed little kids playing with imaginary friends?? How many actually think they hear those 'friends' talking??
Failure to outgrow all this, lack of the chemical triggers that comprise adult behaviour, is what I'm talking about... and if it isn't outgrown, it gets worse, since it doesn't work in Adult Life, and the automatic defense mechanism is to BE EVEN MORE NUTSO.
And then yes, there is that disconnect from reality -- in the clinical cases. But I've known enough socially-functional schizos that I now believe the clinical/obvious cases are a minority, and that it is actually about 10x more widespread than that -- but we chalk it up to someone being odd or childish rather than recognising that it is a failure to mature compounded by adult stresses. (The math and programming communities are rife with the behaviours... but note that both professions are fundamentally "pigeonholing the universe" ie. OCD.)
You just THINK you're still in mom's basement.... ;)
I've been saying for years that they are not separate disorders but rather a continuum, with OCD at one end, bipolar in the middle, and schizo at the other.
I've also noted a cyclic pattern -- typically a crazed episode, followed by a brief apologetic period, then some unpredictable time of being apparently-normal. If the cycle is not interrupted, or if it is in any way enabled, it trends toward worse with each cycle.
I also content this: ALL children are schizophrenic, and progress thru bipolar and OCD phases as they mature. NORMAL children eventually leave all of these behaviours behind. We notice people "going wrong" in their teens and twenties not because they are "getting sick" but because they are failing to outgrow these normal childhood behaviours, which don't work so well once you leave the nest.