Heh. Think 40mpg off boost. Try THAT in your mustang. You can commute AND have something that'll suprise the little go-getter in a v8. And nothing, but NOTHING beats the look on the face of someone who's been sleepered.
Anyhow, to each their own, the effect is the same. Working on a Honda Prelude now. Not everyone has one, and that's part of the appeal. Money really isn't an issue. I could just go buy a vette, but messing with 4 cylinders is more fun. I'm sure your opinion varies.
FWIW, you will get much more bang for the buck with a built B18C when power/weight are factored in. And 35-40mpg.
You don't quite know the feeling of satisfaction you get when someone who has spent 3 times what you did on a car gets the doors blown off by your 15psi turbo honda with custom engine management. You'd be suprised by who's out there, wings and all. Of course, most of them are posers. But not all of them;).
3G is so going to fail! Telephone companies are greedy! Anyone who pays $0.25 for a email message has more money than brains!
Digital services are slow to catch on here because the interface sucks, and the telcos screw you over on charges. Unlike Japan, there is no model (i-Mode services) for third parties to bring on their own revenue models. The greedy telcos want to provide everything for everyone, because they know best. That's why they're doing so well on the markets right now *cough cough*
This apathy on the part of telcos (and don't forget the greed) is allowing alternatives like 802.11 to gain hold. Don't forget that it's not just the technology, but social acceptance of the technology. If people just get used to there being 802.11 hotspots around a city where they stop - say, at the mall, grocery store, coffee place - and the devices to provide that access - say, handhelds and notebooks instead of cell phones - get entrenched, then 3G is dead in the cradle. I already see this happening, because the cost to set up a 802.11 access point is so small.
Another wildcard is a crackdown on PtP. It would be very easy for communities to set up their own PtP networks for this purpose - I know of a few university residences doing this to combat draconian rules on usage. More people get used to wireless, the more places it appears.
I'm sure everyone is aware that Nokia isn't without a vested interest in what's going on here right? If the concept of freely available or at least tolerated wireless 'borrowing' catches on, it -will- hurt the adoption of horribly overpriced 3G solutions which they have an extremely large investment in seeing through. In many ways, a decentralized wireless infrastructure makes a lot more sense and it is feasible with things like 802.11 and the derivative technologies that will happen.
It is definately in their self-interest to make this activity heavily illegal, but everyone should remember they are far from a casual onlooker.
Minor omission - get a in-line fuse
on
Portable Hubs?
·
· Score: 2
I've done what you've said with a variety of hardware - notebooks, all sorts of test equipment, etc. You -must- use a in-line fuse if you are powering something off a battery source that isn't going to have one internally. If there is a short, the battery can easily source enough current to cause a fire hazard. An in-line fuse will run you a few bucks.
I definately think the way to go is just get the smallest hub you can find (d-link has a great one) and then put batteries on it. Just don't forget that fuse. One thing companies do to protect their equipment is use a reverse-connected diode on the power supply pins. If for some reason you ever hooked something up backwards, for example, that diode can draw enough current to vaporize of a battery. With a in-line fuse, you'd just blow that. Most electronics are fine with a.5A or 1A fuse.
The optimal solution is to go wireless, but this requires a little more long term planning on the part of all your friends.
A former roomie of mine had a similar problem - no IT budget here, but when you live in a dorm room, every little square foot counts. So, toss toss toss go the monitor boxes. When the monitor failed, they are picky about the box because most companies will have the monitor destroyed before it gets to the destination in any other enclosure. So, there was a $20 or so fee to get a monitor box (Approved) sent to him. I would imagine a polite request probably would have gotten you a reasonably priced box sent your way.
If that didn't work, a couple more calls probably would have done the trick.
YMMV. I believe the company was viewsonic, but I might be wrong.
How does killing the show translate into killing robot fighting? IIRC there are several groups popping up that fight robots in the street, parking lots, a variety of locations. I know when I was in university there were a lot of people who were talking about this and building bots - there are already lots of organizations looking at other robot sports, like robot soccer and AI kart racing.
You could get enough bucks for one of those notebooks to almost cover the cost of a small 15" panel which is going to be MUCH brighter than a notebook screen, which is optimized for battery life, not vivid color. Then all you need is a good quality extended VGA cable, a drill, and some creativity to mount a PC whereever you want. It will also look quite nice, and is very easily dissassembled - with proper connectors.
Hide the motherboard someplace, it's not that difficult - nail it to the wall, stash the case behind a sofa, get a miniATX board - many choices. Configure the hard drive to spin down and load the images into memory, which the slideshow program should do easily. Most older machines will run low-intensity tasks a-ok, espeically under linux, with no cpu fan attached - remove it. PC gear, especially used, is so damn cheap it's almost stupid.
Then you have a much more functional unit that can do other things.. I was thinking of putting something like this in the kitchen, except set up to display the current weather forecast, the status of my servers, and a couple webcam shots of my workplace so I can see what's going on.
IMHO this is a pretty poor application for an unwanted notebook. They're great for a email machine or something to surf channel listings in the TV room, though. Especially if you get 802.11 on the go for your house, which I absolutely love.
It's my own opinion that there's little or no need for the live-motion video in it's current form. It just plain sucks. The National Research Council did some work with HDTV videoconferencing that was incredible, and really gave the impresion you were right there with the person. The problem is they needed some major bucks and heavy use of CANet, Canada's high speed research and education network. This is a long time off, and is amoung the things that super high bandwidth everywhere will bring. Without the government backing that initiative, it'll never happen, though.
I argue your opinion on the webcams, though.
Like most of you out there I talk to a lot of people online.. I have a decent quality digital camcorder connected via firewire to my powerbook. I just use it to snap a picture (in high res) and upload it every couple minutes when I'm talking to someone. They can check via the web whenever if they care. Same thing applies to my PC with a cheaper, but still nice (640x480) webcam. If I have a problem, this is usually sufficient to send a picture of what I'm working on. I wish there were more tools that focused on this approach rather than the netmeeting style blurry mess.
If it's not convienent to use a webcam, a video phone is likely to be equally as inappropriate. I'd much rather one really nice frame every couple minutes or when the sender wants than the sick low-res joke h.263 and it's friends provide.
UNB does the same thing, or did in 1994 when I started. It was hell, but I got through. I'm so glad I didn't do CS now - and that's one of the reasons, I feel all those all nighters and stress (my hair started turning white) was worth it in the end.
The attrition rate I believe is higher than 3/5, too.
I switched. I run a powerbook G4 as my primary machine, although I work with Sun hardware, Windows 2000 boxes and Linux boxes. My gaming machine is going to be x86 for the forseeable future.
On the desktop, I don't have time to fiddle with things anymore. I like being able to snap in my digital camera and download it's contents in 5 seconds, without a kernel recompile. All of the apps and command line programs I got used to on linux have for the most part been ported - ah, the power of open source. OpenGL works flawlessly, and it comes with a nice set of developer tools and great developer support. Sockets even work right! It is bsd, after all:).
That said, I still use my linux box under the desk all the time as a server and for more industrial programming jobs. I will say the main reason for that is I haven't been able to justify getting a powermac yet - the new dual machines are very attractive, and if EDA tools became available they would make a more attractive platform for some things than Sun even.
As far as cost goes, the hardware isn't that bad relative to the time and productivity increase. The 10.2 upgrade, for what it offers, is a pittance, and most people in the target market have no problem justifying the expense. Propietary hardware is no big deal either. I use the computer to get work done! If (computer.doingJob()) { happy++; }
Say it with me : Computers are a tool. Tools make work easier. This is a new, novel viewpoint for myself, coinciding with using the mac for awhile. Beware! hehe.
There was a time in my life where I had time and inclination to fight with everything, but I don't have that luxury now. OS X arrived just in time.
My $0.02, you think powermacs are expensive, try it in fake money (www.apple.ca).
If they really annoy you, then find a constructive use for that band that happens to interfere with 802.11 and they'll go away. It's the ISM band, and it's unregulated other than power limits (although, that's not exactly difficult to cheat on). You could be even more malicious and do some driver hacking to malform 802.11 control signals. The 802.11 protocol from my preliminary investigations appears to be very vulnerable to such attacks.
I'm not advocating any of this, but jessums, it's one of the few unregulated bands because it's largely too noisy for much useful stuff. If you want to have a band all to your self, there are plenty of ways to go about that.
This is a non issue.
It's called a GFCI, and you need one to watercool!
on
Watercooling Made Easy
·
· Score: 2
First off, I've posted my experiments with watercooling about a half dozen times on slashdot. It's old. It's been done. Nobody has considered any safety issues whatsoever. I am not an expert, so don't sue me if your machine, home, signifigant other, cat, and car erupt into flames. None of the commerical kits really detail how to do a professional installation. For most people, it is more work than you want to even THINK about. It took me a solid day of testing and another solid day of construction to get my kit installed.
You need to install a GFCI to protect against a ground loop. If there is a short to ground, this will kill the power instantly. You MUST have one if you connect liquid to a mains supply, as most systems do.
Secondly, pure water is a insulator. Aren't YOU smart. Put it in an average watercooler for 15 minutes and you now have a very good conductor. Hella good, probably. In a few months, even better. Water isn't called the "universal solvent" for anything - it will pick up enough ions to be conductive from just about anything. Hint; you're running it though copper blocks in most cases, and the other surfaces aren't pristine.
There are many other precautions. I've run for almost a year without a problem, but I took my time. I am looking to watercoool my home games machine now, as I believe you can probably get away without any fan on the system whatsoever. The noise reduction IS worth it when the girlfriend gets bitchy that your desk is whining like a supercharged honda when she's trying to sleep - and it's down the hall! Heh.
Other experiments I'm thinking about include using a convection system that might stabilize at mid-50's C with no pump or fans whatsoever.
Have a long hard look at that first link before you ignorantly dismiss this person's opinion.
There is a lot of research into this - the ability for thought to influence the outcome of random calculations and events. It's been years since I looked into any of this, the most common experiment is a depiction of a random number generator that you can make devitate from a true random distribution over time by willing it to do so.
Maybe there's something there, maybe there isn't, but you don't just dismiss or accept it out of hand without looking at experimental evidence yay or nay.
Re:I've done this over the past 10 months..
on
Exercise for Geeks?
·
· Score: 2
I tried some whey protein. It was largely a waste, when I tallied up the protein intake and whatnot I was better of with milk and water. Water good. They're largely hype unless of course you like the taste. Protein suppliments taste n-a-s-t-y. Just drink more milk:). I am for at least a liter to 2 liters of milk a day, which is pretty easy to do.
Weight is a slow process. I can eat whatever I want and not gain a pound, so I'm not the typical case. The 30lbs or so I put on is all muscle, and it helps. If I don't have muscle fiber to repair though I gain almost no weight, but that's just me.
The biggest thing is consistancy. 20-30 minutes a day, small numbers of reps (6-8). You don't need anything else.
I've done this over the past 10 months..
on
Exercise for Geeks?
·
· Score: 2
I went from a pathetic 125-130lbs to a much more respectable 155-160lbs over the last 10 months. My target is 185lbs by Xmas. I'm 6'2 btw, and previously, I had more in common with a stick than a body builder. I got into racing cars and karts, and that means you need upper body strength. Besides, being able to smash stuff is cool. Ugh ugh ugh. Once you see results it is very encouraging, but it takes a LONG time.
My advice is to get yourself the cheapest set of weights walmart has and the cheapest bench you can get. I spent about $200 total to start. Get some gloves. Forget clubs, forget fancy diets. Eat mad protein. Cows provide it. It's called milk. Put the bench someplace you'll use it, and religiously use it EVERY SECOND DAY for 6 months. You absolutely must stick to it. Like the poster said, that is the most important thing. You MUST stick to it. Get yourself a $20 chinup bar. If it's in your house, nobody needs to know you can't bench 50lbs.:)
The most important thing is STICKING WITH IT. Do NOT make excuses, and do NOT deviate from the plan.
If -and only if- you can stick with that for 6 months, upgrade to something more sophisticated. I want a bowflex for christmas, those things work like magic - sprung weight means you can push limits without worrying about a bar falling on your neck.
After that, without being cliche: "I know kung-fu" - go get into a contact martial art. This is my next step, more for the thrill of sparring than anything else.
It was pretty obvious to anyone who looked at this that all of those companies produced little real world value or services, with few exceptions. At the end of the day, did you end up holding something in your hand? Probably not.
To this end, there were a lot of jobs created where people got paid a lot of money doing nothing. Sounds good? On paper. Until after a few years you're watching your life tick away, and you're accomplishing nothing besides making a lot of money. That would make me very depressed, and I think sooner or later you'd realize it somewhere in your soul. Once the jobs ended, working someplace where you got to produce something would be a real psychological uplift! Nevermind the freedom of leaving work at work, not constantly worrying about problems and deadlines.
This shakeout is good for the industry. People who are better off doing something besides IT will end up doing something else. It's happened before, and it'll happen again. If it's your calling, then you accept that. I've never had a problem finding a job for the market rate if I was willing to move around. Welcome to the sad employment future, sucks if you want a family.
IT was never about producing things, that's the point. IT is about helping people produce things and solve problems. Now that we're through with the madness, business as usual for 10 years or so.
Although I am unencumbered here in backwoods Canada, most places you are VERY restricted in what you can do to a car you buy if you want to use it on public roads (public internet, hrmmm?). You can't do much that isn't emissions certified with the infamous CARB being the evil culprit. Governments have gone after quick fixes (legislating emissions) rather than potentially more efficient fixes like reducing the number of cars on the road.
So, while mildly off topic, you can't do whatever you want to a car you buy if you feel like driving it. Grandfathered in cars, classics, etc are exceptions, but, you get my point.
Remember that if you have sufficient cooling, LEDs respond well to upping the supply voltage and current levels. There are also tricks you can use, for example, pulsing the LEDs faster than you can see, but giving them enough time to cool down. You can also find very high intensity white LEDs on the cheap if you shop around the surplus houses.
Why not just give citizenship to anyone skilled enough to be remotely recruited!? Just let them be citizens if they like, they have already proven their value to the economy. Would you have a problem with that?
If the USA was really genuinely interested in adding these workers to the talent pool, then the proper thing to do would be to grant them citizenship at the same time. H1-B visas have a number of characteristics which unduely hurt the rights of the workers and for whatever reason, founded or not, cause problems when it's layoff time. To tell someone who's been in a country for 5 years - paying taxes, I might add - that they have 10 days to leave? That seems very extreme.
If the USA is not willing to grant these people citizenship, then it should be asked why. That will be more revealing than anything else, I think. North America is unique in that it's modern form is completely the work of relatively recent immigrants, in some way, shape, or form. The demographics in Canada and the USA will change drastically over the next few years as immigration is going to be needed to provide the next generation of consumers. People just aren't having kids the way they used to in Canada, and it plays out in the USA as well. Immigration is the only alternative.
That said, they do guarantee employers access to intellectual capital - people - at a market rate without relocating to another country. Many american corporations, particularly call-centers and the like, relocate to Canada because it much easier to get an affordable educated workforce, and the phone systems are largely integrated. Do not assume that by denying a H1-B a job, you necessarily provide one to an american worker at twice the rate of pay. At some point, it's cheaper to move operations. This doesn't mean some sweatshop in India either, as many people seem to assume. There is a signifigant advantage to relocating operations in Canada (very close, great exchange rate - chop salaries by 45%!, native english speakers, etc etc). Same can be said for Ireland, Scotland, England, etc.
The issue is complicated. I have a EE degree, and have never had a problem finding work if I was willing to accept the salary the market was willing to bear, and be willing to move where the jobs are. Anyone with a EE degree who can't find work has another superset of circumstances working against them, IMHO. Welcome to the new economy, (tm) (r) (c).
Be interesting if Gates thought to be forward looking enough to spend some of his untold fortunes on funding a program to look these and maybe figure out ways to do something about them. If the tech gods aren't that visionary, you can bet that government isn't going to be.
It's interesting that most people assume that intelligent life has to be a sack of water, and that independant human-style thought is the way to go. It also is a much closer fit for observed data.
> I was an EE major before switching to CS...let's just say that Diff EQs, helped me make the switch.
Arrgh. I don't like this. I have a EE degree. I used to think math was hard, until one day, I thought of something very obvious I had completely missed: What do those equations mean? I had spent the better part of my life at the time playing with equations without really understanding what anything actually meant. Once I started to visualize WHAT the equation was trying to tell me (que mathematica, maple, matlab), things started to get exponentially (ha-ha) easier.
Most of the time people who I have tutored or talked to and helped through engineering (or helped me!) hit on one of the following as a fundamental problem which causes difficulty down the road (or right away, depending on how determined you are).
The big one. Inability to really come up with an answer to "what is math". What do those equations mean? What does their picture (set) look like? What is that differential equation trying to describe to me? What does that field gradient tell me?
Second, is crummy algebra skills. You need to know VERY LITTLE algebra to get concepts. You also need to know VERY LITTLE trig. What is important is that your really, really, understand what those little pieces you know mean. Then, simplify! Most of engineering is based around very simple cases, and you can certainly have rough approximations of even complex systems without needing a table of trignometric identities. This stops a lot of students cold, especially people who hate rote memorization.
You can get a pretty good picture of what calculus really means with x, x^2, and maybe e^x and sin. Really complicated things get approximated and simulated in a computer (in the real world). It's important that -what the math means- is conveyed.
Maybe that will help someone, or maybe I'm just tired, but -math is not difficult-. It is just taught in a miserable forum in most schools because the people teaching it don't understand either. And I still hate my grade school teachers for making ANY kid do 200 simple addition problems.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. Think 40mpg off boost. Try THAT in your mustang. You can commute AND have something that'll suprise the little go-getter in a v8. And nothing, but NOTHING beats the look on the face of someone who's been sleepered.
Anyhow, to each their own, the effect is the same. Working on a Honda Prelude now. Not everyone has one, and that's part of the appeal. Money really isn't an issue. I could just go buy a vette, but messing with 4 cylinders is more fun. I'm sure your opinion varies.
FWIW, you will get much more bang for the buck with a built B18C when power/weight are factored in. And 35-40mpg.
Steve
You don't quite know the feeling of satisfaction you get when someone who has spent 3 times what you did on a car gets the doors blown off by your 15psi turbo honda with custom engine management. You'd be suprised by who's out there, wings and all. Of course, most of them are posers. But not all of them ;).
Steve
3G is so going to fail! Telephone companies are greedy! Anyone who pays $0.25 for a email message has more money than brains!
Digital services are slow to catch on here because the interface sucks, and the telcos screw you over on charges. Unlike Japan, there is no model (i-Mode services) for third parties to bring on their own revenue models. The greedy telcos want to provide everything for everyone, because they know best. That's why they're doing so well on the markets right now *cough cough*
This apathy on the part of telcos (and don't forget the greed) is allowing alternatives like 802.11 to gain hold. Don't forget that it's not just the technology, but social acceptance of the technology. If people just get used to there being 802.11 hotspots around a city where they stop - say, at the mall, grocery store, coffee place - and the devices to provide that access - say, handhelds and notebooks instead of cell phones - get entrenched, then 3G is dead in the cradle. I already see this happening, because the cost to set up a 802.11 access point is so small.
Another wildcard is a crackdown on PtP. It would be very easy for communities to set up their own PtP networks for this purpose - I know of a few university residences doing this to combat draconian rules on usage. More people get used to wireless, the more places it appears.
My $0.02..
I'm sure everyone is aware that Nokia isn't without a vested interest in what's going on here right? If the concept of freely available or at least tolerated wireless 'borrowing' catches on, it -will- hurt the adoption of horribly overpriced 3G solutions which they have an extremely large investment in seeing through. In many ways, a decentralized wireless infrastructure makes a lot more sense and it is feasible with things like 802.11 and the derivative technologies that will happen.
It is definately in their self-interest to make this activity heavily illegal, but everyone should remember they are far from a casual onlooker.
I've done what you've said with a variety of hardware - notebooks, all sorts of test equipment, etc. You -must- use a in-line fuse if you are powering something off a battery source that isn't going to have one internally. If there is a short, the battery can easily source enough current to cause a fire hazard. An in-line fuse will run you a few bucks.
.5A or 1A fuse.
I definately think the way to go is just get the smallest hub you can find (d-link has a great one) and then put batteries on it. Just don't forget that fuse. One thing companies do to protect their equipment is use a reverse-connected diode on the power supply pins. If for some reason you ever hooked something up backwards, for example, that diode can draw enough current to vaporize of a battery. With a in-line fuse, you'd just blow that. Most electronics are fine with a
The optimal solution is to go wireless, but this requires a little more long term planning on the part of all your friends.
A former roomie of mine had a similar problem - no IT budget here, but when you live in a dorm room, every little square foot counts. So, toss toss toss go the monitor boxes. When the monitor failed, they are picky about the box because most companies will have the monitor destroyed before it gets to the destination in any other enclosure. So, there was a $20 or so fee to get a monitor box (Approved) sent to him. I would imagine a polite request probably would have gotten you a reasonably priced box sent your way.
If that didn't work, a couple more calls probably would have done the trick.
YMMV. I believe the company was viewsonic, but I might be wrong.
How does killing the show translate into killing robot fighting? IIRC there are several groups popping up that fight robots in the street, parking lots, a variety of locations. I know when I was in university there were a lot of people who were talking about this and building bots - there are already lots of organizations looking at other robot sports, like robot soccer and AI kart racing.
YMMV.
You could get enough bucks for one of those notebooks to almost cover the cost of a small 15" panel which is going to be MUCH brighter than a notebook screen, which is optimized for battery life, not vivid color. Then all you need is a good quality extended VGA cable, a drill, and some creativity to mount a PC whereever you want. It will also look quite nice, and is very easily dissassembled - with proper connectors.
Hide the motherboard someplace, it's not that difficult - nail it to the wall, stash the case behind a sofa, get a miniATX board - many choices. Configure the hard drive to spin down and load the images into memory, which the slideshow program should do easily. Most older machines will run low-intensity tasks a-ok, espeically under linux, with no cpu fan attached - remove it. PC gear, especially used, is so damn cheap it's almost stupid.
Then you have a much more functional unit that can do other things.. I was thinking of putting something like this in the kitchen, except set up to display the current weather forecast, the status of my servers, and a couple webcam shots of my workplace so I can see what's going on.
IMHO this is a pretty poor application for an unwanted notebook. They're great for a email machine or something to surf channel listings in the TV room, though. Especially if you get 802.11 on the go for your house, which I absolutely love.
My $0.02cdn
Steve
It's my own opinion that there's little or no need for the live-motion video in it's current form. It just plain sucks. The National Research Council did some work with HDTV videoconferencing that was incredible, and really gave the impresion you were right there with the person. The problem is they needed some major bucks and heavy use of CANet, Canada's high speed research and education network. This is a long time off, and is amoung the things that super high bandwidth everywhere will bring. Without the government backing that initiative, it'll never happen, though.
I argue your opinion on the webcams, though.
Like most of you out there I talk to a lot of people online.. I have a decent quality digital camcorder connected via firewire to my powerbook. I just use it to snap a picture (in high res) and upload it every couple minutes when I'm talking to someone. They can check via the web whenever if they care. Same thing applies to my PC with a cheaper, but still nice (640x480) webcam. If I have a problem, this is usually sufficient to send a picture of what I'm working on. I wish there were more tools that focused on this approach rather than the netmeeting style blurry mess.
If it's not convienent to use a webcam, a video phone is likely to be equally as inappropriate. I'd much rather one really nice frame every couple minutes or when the sender wants than the sick low-res joke h.263 and it's friends provide.
My $0.02cdn..
UNB does the same thing, or did in 1994 when I started. It was hell, but I got through. I'm so glad I didn't do CS now - and that's one of the reasons, I feel all those all nighters and stress (my hair started turning white) was worth it in the end.
The attrition rate I believe is higher than 3/5, too.
I switched. I run a powerbook G4 as my primary machine, although I work with Sun hardware, Windows 2000 boxes and Linux boxes. My gaming machine is going to be x86 for the forseeable future.
:).
On the desktop, I don't have time to fiddle with things anymore. I like being able to snap in my digital camera and download it's contents in 5 seconds, without a kernel recompile. All of the apps and command line programs I got used to on linux have for the most part been ported - ah, the power of open source. OpenGL works flawlessly, and it comes with a nice set of developer tools and great developer support. Sockets even work right! It is bsd, after all
That said, I still use my linux box under the desk all the time as a server and for more industrial programming jobs. I will say the main reason for that is I haven't been able to justify getting a powermac yet - the new dual machines are very attractive, and if EDA tools became available they would make a more attractive platform for some things than Sun even.
As far as cost goes, the hardware isn't that bad relative to the time and productivity increase. The 10.2 upgrade, for what it offers, is a pittance, and most people in the target market have no problem justifying the expense. Propietary hardware is no big deal either. I use the computer to get work done! If (computer.doingJob()) { happy++; }
Say it with me : Computers are a tool. Tools make work easier. This is a new, novel viewpoint for myself, coinciding with using the mac for awhile. Beware! hehe.
There was a time in my life where I had time and inclination to fight with everything, but I don't have that luxury now. OS X arrived just in time.
My $0.02, you think powermacs are expensive, try it in fake money (www.apple.ca).
If they really annoy you, then find a constructive use for that band that happens to interfere with 802.11 and they'll go away. It's the ISM band, and it's unregulated other than power limits (although, that's not exactly difficult to cheat on). You could be even more malicious and do some driver hacking to malform 802.11 control signals. The 802.11 protocol from my preliminary investigations appears to be very vulnerable to such attacks.
I'm not advocating any of this, but jessums, it's one of the few unregulated bands because it's largely too noisy for much useful stuff. If you want to have a band all to your self, there are plenty of ways to go about that.
This is a non issue.
First off, I've posted my experiments with watercooling about a half dozen times on slashdot. It's old. It's been done. Nobody has considered any safety issues whatsoever. I am not an expert, so don't sue me if your machine, home, signifigant other, cat, and car erupt into flames. None of the commerical kits really detail how to do a professional installation. For most people, it is more work than you want to even THINK about. It took me a solid day of testing and another solid day of construction to get my kit installed.
http://www.nyx.net/~smanley/watercool
You need to install a GFCI to protect against a ground loop. If there is a short to ground, this will kill the power instantly. You MUST have one if you connect liquid to a mains supply, as most systems do.
Secondly, pure water is a insulator. Aren't YOU smart. Put it in an average watercooler for 15 minutes and you now have a very good conductor. Hella good, probably. In a few months, even better. Water isn't called the "universal solvent" for anything - it will pick up enough ions to be conductive from just about anything. Hint; you're running it though copper blocks in most cases, and the other surfaces aren't pristine.
There are many other precautions. I've run for almost a year without a problem, but I took my time. I am looking to watercoool my home games machine now, as I believe you can probably get away without any fan on the system whatsoever. The noise reduction IS worth it when the girlfriend gets bitchy that your desk is whining like a supercharged honda when she's trying to sleep - and it's down the hall! Heh.
Other experiments I'm thinking about include using a convection system that might stabilize at mid-50's C with no pump or fans whatsoever.
My $0.02..
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/index.html/ www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/
http:/
Have a long hard look at that first link before you ignorantly dismiss this person's opinion.
There is a lot of research into this - the ability for thought to influence the outcome of random calculations and events. It's been years since I looked into any of this, the most common experiment is a depiction of a random number generator that you can make devitate from a true random distribution over time by willing it to do so.
Maybe there's something there, maybe there isn't, but you don't just dismiss or accept it out of hand without looking at experimental evidence yay or nay.
I tried some whey protein. It was largely a waste, when I tallied up the protein intake and whatnot I was better of with milk and water. Water good. They're largely hype unless of course you like the taste. Protein suppliments taste n-a-s-t-y. Just drink more milk :). I am for at least a liter to 2 liters of milk a day, which is pretty easy to do.
Weight is a slow process. I can eat whatever I want and not gain a pound, so I'm not the typical case. The 30lbs or so I put on is all muscle, and it helps. If I don't have muscle fiber to repair though I gain almost no weight, but that's just me.
The biggest thing is consistancy. 20-30 minutes a day, small numbers of reps (6-8). You don't need anything else.
I went from a pathetic 125-130lbs to a much more respectable 155-160lbs over the last 10 months. My target is 185lbs by Xmas. I'm 6'2 btw, and previously, I had more in common with a stick than a body builder. I got into racing cars and karts, and that means you need upper body strength. Besides, being able to smash stuff is cool. Ugh ugh ugh. Once you see results it is very encouraging, but it takes a LONG time.
:)
:)
My advice is to get yourself the cheapest set of weights walmart has and the cheapest bench you can get. I spent about $200 total to start. Get some gloves. Forget clubs, forget fancy diets. Eat mad protein. Cows provide it. It's called milk. Put the bench someplace you'll use it, and religiously use it EVERY SECOND DAY for 6 months. You absolutely must stick to it. Like the poster said, that is the most important thing. You MUST stick to it. Get yourself a $20 chinup bar. If it's in your house, nobody needs to know you can't bench 50lbs.
The most important thing is STICKING WITH IT. Do NOT make excuses, and do NOT deviate from the plan.
If -and only if- you can stick with that for 6 months, upgrade to something more sophisticated. I want a bowflex for christmas, those things work like magic - sprung weight means you can push limits without worrying about a bar falling on your neck.
After that, without being cliche: "I know kung-fu" - go get into a contact martial art. This is my next step, more for the thrill of sparring than anything else.
Chicks really do notice, too.
This poster is absolutely correct. I had no idea what a "conflict diamond" was, but I certainly know the history of blood diamonds.
If she wants a diamond, get her a diamond, and don't be cheap about it.
It was pretty obvious to anyone who looked at this that all of those companies produced little real world value or services, with few exceptions. At the end of the day, did you end up holding something in your hand? Probably not.
To this end, there were a lot of jobs created where people got paid a lot of money doing nothing. Sounds good? On paper. Until after a few years you're watching your life tick away, and you're accomplishing nothing besides making a lot of money. That would make me very depressed, and I think sooner or later you'd realize it somewhere in your soul. Once the jobs ended, working someplace where you got to produce something would be a real psychological uplift! Nevermind the freedom of leaving work at work, not constantly worrying about problems and deadlines.
This shakeout is good for the industry. People who are better off doing something besides IT will end up doing something else. It's happened before, and it'll happen again. If it's your calling, then you accept that. I've never had a problem finding a job for the market rate if I was willing to move around. Welcome to the sad employment future, sucks if you want a family.
IT was never about producing things, that's the point. IT is about helping people produce things and solve problems. Now that we're through with the madness, business as usual for 10 years or so.
Although I am unencumbered here in backwoods Canada, most places you are VERY restricted in what you can do to a car you buy if you want to use it on public roads (public internet, hrmmm?). You can't do much that isn't emissions certified with the infamous CARB being the evil culprit. Governments have gone after quick fixes (legislating emissions) rather than potentially more efficient fixes like reducing the number of cars on the road.
So, while mildly off topic, you can't do whatever you want to a car you buy if you feel like driving it. Grandfathered in cars, classics, etc are exceptions, but, you get my point.
Steve
Remember that if you have sufficient cooling, LEDs respond well to upping the supply voltage and current levels. There are also tricks you can use, for example, pulsing the LEDs faster than you can see, but giving them enough time to cool down. You can also find very high intensity white LEDs on the cheap if you shop around the surplus houses.
Steve
Why not just give citizenship to anyone skilled enough to be remotely recruited!? Just let them be citizens if they like, they have already proven their value to the economy. Would you have a problem with that?
If the USA was really genuinely interested in adding these workers to the talent pool, then the proper thing to do would be to grant them citizenship at the same time. H1-B visas have a number of characteristics which unduely hurt the rights of the workers and for whatever reason, founded or not, cause problems when it's layoff time. To tell someone who's been in a country for 5 years - paying taxes, I might add - that they have 10 days to leave? That seems very extreme.
If the USA is not willing to grant these people citizenship, then it should be asked why. That will be more revealing than anything else, I think. North America is unique in that it's modern form is completely the work of relatively recent immigrants, in some way, shape, or form. The demographics in Canada and the USA will change drastically over the next few years as immigration is going to be needed to provide the next generation of consumers. People just aren't having kids the way they used to in Canada, and it plays out in the USA as well. Immigration is the only alternative.
That said, they do guarantee employers access to intellectual capital - people - at a market rate without relocating to another country. Many american corporations, particularly call-centers and the like, relocate to Canada because it much easier to get an affordable educated workforce, and the phone systems are largely integrated. Do not assume that by denying a H1-B a job, you necessarily provide one to an american worker at twice the rate of pay. At some point, it's cheaper to move operations. This doesn't mean some sweatshop in India either, as many people seem to assume. There is a signifigant advantage to relocating operations in Canada (very close, great exchange rate - chop salaries by 45%!, native english speakers, etc etc). Same can be said for Ireland, Scotland, England, etc.
The issue is complicated. I have a EE degree, and have never had a problem finding work if I was willing to accept the salary the market was willing to bear, and be willing to move where the jobs are. Anyone with a EE degree who can't find work has another superset of circumstances working against them, IMHO. Welcome to the new economy, (tm) (r) (c).
My $0.02 (cdn)
Be interesting if Gates thought to be forward looking enough to spend some of his untold fortunes on funding a program to look these and maybe figure out ways to do something about them. If the tech gods aren't that visionary, you can bet that government isn't going to be.
2019! That won't happen in my term.
It's interesting that most people assume that intelligent life has to be a sack of water, and that independant human-style thought is the way to go. It also is a much closer fit for observed data.
> I was an EE major before switching to CS...let's just say that Diff EQs, helped me make the switch.
:-)
Arrgh. I don't like this. I have a EE degree. I used to think math was hard, until one day, I thought of something very obvious I had completely missed: What do those equations mean? I had spent the better part of my life at the time playing with equations without really understanding what anything actually meant. Once I started to visualize WHAT the equation was trying to tell me (que mathematica, maple, matlab), things started to get exponentially (ha-ha) easier.
Most of the time people who I have tutored or talked to and helped through engineering (or helped me!) hit on one of the following as a fundamental problem which causes difficulty down the road (or right away, depending on how determined you are).
The big one. Inability to really come up with an answer to "what is math". What do those equations mean? What does their picture (set) look like? What is that differential equation trying to describe to me? What does that field gradient tell me?
Second, is crummy algebra skills. You need to know VERY LITTLE algebra to get concepts. You also need to know VERY LITTLE trig. What is important is that your really, really, understand what those little pieces you know mean. Then, simplify! Most of engineering is based around very simple cases, and you can certainly have rough approximations of even complex systems without needing a table of trignometric identities. This stops a lot of students cold, especially people who hate rote memorization.
You can get a pretty good picture of what calculus really means with x, x^2, and maybe e^x and sin. Really complicated things get approximated and simulated in a computer (in the real world). It's important that -what the math means- is conveyed.
Maybe that will help someone, or maybe I'm just tired, but -math is not difficult-. It is just taught in a miserable forum in most schools because the people teaching it don't understand either. And I still hate my grade school teachers for making ANY kid do 200 simple addition problems.
No problem with software DRM. Click click off. Doesn't affect me doing work. Hardwre DRM that verifies code is a competely different bag of hammers.