I know that intense gamers and some professional web designers have specific requirements for CRTs, but I bought my first TFT-based laptop in 1997 and after that I couldn't throw my CRTs away fast enough. I still own a CRT television, but I'm about to fix that.
"I'd much rather have more expensive calls, and a lower per-month fee. I have no trouble with paying 5 cents a minute to make a call; it's paying $25+ a month for no calls that pisses me off."
I use 'iconnecthere.com'. I pay $8.95/month + 3.5c per minute.
This $8.95 includes: a pots-number in the city I choose unlimited incoming calls caller-id voice-mail (that I can listen to on my mac)
Call quality is generally good, once in a while some latency is noticable. There is no 911 service that I'm aware of - it wasn't on my list of required features.
I used to go to movies. Not a lot, but I did go. When "Fellowship of the Ring" came out, I went.
The experience was pretty awful. From the house lights not going down on time and the light from the left-open doors shining on the screen to the sticky floor and talking/sneezing/coughing.
I watched, and muttered those now immortal words "I can do better than this at home"
A year later I had a DLP projector under the couch (852x480) and a 100" screen at the living room wall. It lives up to my claim - I've never even looked at a movie theater since.
My costs for the first couple of years works out to be $3-4/per hour of viewing. Cheaper than a movie theater and a lot more rewarding.
"There is actually a bonus to having a DJ on a station, it gives it a more "human" feel to it, whereas no DJ starts seeming like Muzak."
There is some truth to this. Listening to radio with a DJ talking to you once in a while reminds you that you're part of a larger group of people all listening to the same music.
Unfortunately today 'DJ' == 'Some idiot with a microphone blathering inanely through the beginning and end of a song' - seemingly only to hear himself speak.
A. (who remembers cleaning his room one afternoon in 1974, listening to the radio. The DJ came on and said 'stop what you're doing, sit down, and put on your headphones. I did. The DJ proceeded to play Autobahn, by Kraftwerk. All of it. Right in the middle of the day. I'll never forget it. Sadly, *that* era of radio is long dead.)
Don't for an instant think that everyone considers touchpads a good thing. I'd own multiple Powerbooks if they licensed IBM's Trackpoint technology. As it is, I own no Powerbooks and seven Thinkpads (eight, if you count the tablet, but that doesn't have a trackpad *or* a Trackpoint).
A. (who hates touchpads with a passion that cannot be described in mere words)
I use several of these machines at work. The ones here have standard Intel motherboards in a black case. The motherboard has Phoenix BIOS with EMP, 2xU160 SCSI, 2xP-III, etc.
But seriously, what would you like to know that you can't find at Phoenix or Intel?
I think the word you want is 'solder', pronounced 'sodder' (don't ask me why).
It melts at several *hundred* degrees. Oh, by the way, it's usually made of tin and lead. Some players might not survive the first game. Literally.
How about this as a less deadly alternative:
Build a suit where all the areas around joints (knees and elbows, maybe hips and wrists too) are made of or contain some inflatable material and a CO2 cartridge. You get hit, a valve is opened which fills the suit joint with CO2 - instant stiff joint. Depending on the design and pressure, you might really not be able to move.
I don't think it's practical, but it won't actively kill off the players.
"Crank up the gain, your antenna becomes more and more dipole- it broadcasts very well onto one plane but not anywhere else with a strong signal"
The propogation pattern of a dipole is a torus, not a plane. As you increase the gain, the pattern becomes elongated in the forward direction. As the gain increases, the antenna acts less like a dipole, not more.
A. (who could have modded, but made you read this post instead)
"Let me ponder on that thought while I delete my 200 + spam mails a day, that I need to sort through manually to inspect that it does not contain any of my friends."
It's my belief that Yahoo, Netscape, and likely others have purposely given out your email address in exchange for money. As far as I am concerned, we should all save our spam in a special non-trash folder for the sole purpose of running their servers into the ground.
The worse example I know if is Netscape. I had an email address with them for years - with no spam. The day I 'confirmed' my email address with them (so I could get at the email preferences page) I was deluged with spam which never stopped. That email address became useless (Netscape doesn't have any spam filtering, as best I can tell).
The warm fuzzy I have with Google is that they won't give my email address to their spamming 'partners'.
Really... I want my stereo to be a set of speakers for my Mac, all digital to boot. Yes, I could do this today with $100 of add-on PCI card and another $100 of fiber cable, but a little box and some Cat-5 would be soo much cheaper.
I have no wired phone line. I use VoIP as my primary phone and a cell phone as a backup. That said, I am not aware that any VoIP provider meets the same level of reliability as a POTS line.
My own requirement was that my VoIP provider support my choice in SIP devices. That eliminated several of the vendors on your list as they require use of a Cisco-ATA and lock you out of it. I wanted a more 'open' service. I currently use IConnectHere. For $8.95/mo they provide unlimited incoming calls, Caller-ID, Voicemail, Call-Waiting, Call-Transfer, etc. Outgoing calls cost 3.5 cents/minute.
Addaline (http://www.addaline.com) has recently started offering DID service and has a very economical outgoing rate.
"I can't think of a single good reason why a user needs to run their own outgoing mail server and not relay through the Comcast server."
How about because I want to? I'm the customer, I'm paying my $60/mo for Internet access. How about because host-to-host direct SMTP connections is how it is supposed to work? How about because you shouldn't needlessly punish innocents because of the abuses of a few? The argument that you shouldn't source SMTP from a DHCP-assigned IP address is specious at best.
I and a small number of friends send email back and forth between ourselves. Host to host. There's no good reason to give those files to Comcast for delivery. Of course firewalls don't have to allow SMTP from just anyone:-)
Who thought up centralized, overburdened and flakey mail servers anyway? Personally, I think the world would be better off with fewer central servers and more peer-to-peer mailing.
"Godamnit, I'd just started to get over those fink morons and their/sw tree, now we gotta put up with an/opt."
Where do you think it should go?
It is a long-standing philisophy in some software development circles that you never install your software into system directories (/bin,/usr). If you're adding something yourself it goes into/usr/local./opt was used for other software providers stuff.
I think/opt and/sw are much better than installing into system-provided directories (which is an insane practice).
"You do know that there are exits on the LEFT side of 128 too, right?"
Sure, at either *end*, but what's your point? The electronic sign in Burlington regularly reminds drivers that there is a $100 fine for clogging the left lane.
"Unless you're in the process of passing someone, you should never be in the far left lane of a 3-4+ lane highway..."
The exception being that you're on Route 128 around Boston, and you have a Rhode Island plate, in which case you are expected to move from the on ramp to the far left lane (even when there is no other traffic) and stay there at a stately 50MPH.
Ummn.. I don't think so. This case is about a man who refused to identify himself, not a man who refused to produce identification. This is not the same thing.
"I was recently told that it's illegal for an adult to walk round in public without some form of government id such as a driver's license. I was in California at the time."
If might be true in California, but I do not believe it's true in New England. I've lived in a few states there and I have never encountered such a law.
You might be required to identify yourself to an officer. That is not the same thing as carrying a picture id ("Yes Officer, I'm Joe Blow, and I live at 372 Main St. How are you today?").
Slashdot Mirror
" the cysted causative agent for BSE ("mad cow disease") can survive cooking heat"
Cysted? It's not even *alive*. What are you talking about?
A.
Ramsey siren kits are always well-received.
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com
A.
"Refresh rate."
Not a problem for 99% of the population
"Colour reproduction"
ditto
"Viewable angle"
ditto
"Brightness"
You're kidding, right?
"Contrast"
Maybe...
I know that intense gamers and some professional web designers have specific requirements for CRTs, but I bought my first TFT-based laptop in 1997 and after that I couldn't throw my CRTs away fast enough. I still own a CRT television, but I'm about to fix that.
A.
(who aims to be CRT-free by 2005)
"Just because you can't see the laser doesn't mean it isn't dangerous."
Just because it's a laser doesn't mean it's dangerous.
A.
Since you asked:
> What exactly do you do when you are:
> - Applying for a job?
A driver's license is not a requirment, merely one of the options.
> - Applying for a loan or bank account?
Ditto.
> - Writing a check or using a credit card?
Write a check? You're kidding, right? As for credit cards, the
vendor contracts often *prohibit* any requirement other than
the signature.
> - Getting into a bar or purchasing alcohol or gambling or any
> other activity with an age requirement?
I haven't been carded in a while, if some establishment is that silly, I'll go across the street to the one that isn't.
A.
(who carries his driver's license *only* when driving)
"I'd much rather have more expensive calls, and a lower per-month fee. I have no trouble with paying 5 cents a minute to make a call; it's paying $25+ a month for no calls that pisses me off."
I use 'iconnecthere.com'. I pay $8.95/month + 3.5c per minute.
This $8.95 includes:
a pots-number in the city I choose
unlimited incoming calls
caller-id
voice-mail (that I can listen to on my mac)
Call quality is generally good, once in a while some latency is noticable. There is no 911 service that I'm aware of - it wasn't on my list of required features.
A.
I used to go to movies. Not a lot, but I did go. When "Fellowship of the Ring" came out, I went.
The experience was pretty awful. From the house lights not going down on time and the light from the left-open doors shining on the screen to the sticky floor and talking/sneezing/coughing.
I watched, and muttered those now immortal words "I can do better than this at home"
A year later I had a DLP projector under the couch (852x480) and a 100" screen at the living room wall. It lives up to my claim - I've never even looked at a movie theater since.
My costs for the first couple of years works out to be $3-4/per hour of viewing. Cheaper than a movie theater and a lot more rewarding.
A.
"There is actually a bonus to having a DJ on a station, it gives it a more "human" feel to it, whereas no DJ starts seeming like Muzak."
There is some truth to this. Listening to radio with a DJ talking to you once in a while reminds you that you're part of a larger group of people all listening to the same music.
Unfortunately today 'DJ' == 'Some idiot with a microphone blathering inanely through the beginning and end of a song' - seemingly only to hear himself speak.
A.
(who remembers cleaning his room one afternoon in 1974, listening to the radio. The DJ came on and said 'stop what you're doing, sit down, and put on your headphones. I did. The DJ proceeded to play Autobahn, by Kraftwerk. All of it. Right in the middle of the day. I'll never forget it. Sadly, *that* era of radio is long dead.)
"Touchpads on laptops?"
Don't for an instant think that everyone considers touchpads a good thing. I'd own multiple Powerbooks if they licensed IBM's Trackpoint technology. As it is, I own no Powerbooks and seven Thinkpads (eight, if you count the tablet, but that doesn't have a trackpad *or* a Trackpoint).
A.
(who hates touchpads with a passion that cannot be described in mere words)
I use several of these machines at work. The ones here have standard Intel motherboards in a black case. The motherboard has Phoenix BIOS with EMP, 2xU160 SCSI, 2xP-III, etc.
But seriously, what would you like to know that you can't find at Phoenix or Intel?
A.
"Existing VoIP services are through proprietary protocols controlled by the host companies"
Last I knew, Skype was one of the few that fit that description.
Vonage uses SIP (RFC3261 et al) and RTP (RFC2833), as do most VoIP providers.
A.
"Fill most of the inside of the pipe with sauter"
I think the word you want is 'solder', pronounced 'sodder' (don't ask me why).
It melts at several *hundred* degrees. Oh, by the way, it's usually made of tin and lead. Some players might not survive the first game. Literally.
How about this as a less deadly alternative:
Build a suit where all the areas around joints (knees and elbows, maybe hips and wrists too) are made of or contain some inflatable material and a CO2 cartridge. You get hit, a valve is opened which fills the suit joint with CO2 - instant stiff joint. Depending on the design and pressure, you might really not be able to move.
I don't think it's practical, but it won't actively kill off the players.
A.
"Crank up the gain, your antenna becomes more and more dipole- it broadcasts very well onto one plane but not anywhere else with a strong signal"
The propogation pattern of a dipole is a torus, not a plane. As you increase the gain, the pattern becomes elongated in the forward direction. As the gain increases, the antenna acts less like a dipole, not more.
A.
(who could have modded, but made you read this post instead)
"I've gone through at least 6 InFocus projectors in the last 1.5 years due mainly to bulb failure."
Are you following their recommended cool-down procedures? Ie: you aren't just unplugging the thing when you're done using it? (that's a bulb-killer).
I have a three-year old Plus projector, and am still on my first bulb.
A.
"The remaining science fiction notion was terraforming humans, instead of planets, and making us survive on what is now a very alien world."
Read:
"Man Plus" (c) 1976 by Frederick Pohl
which deals specifically with the idea of modifying a man so as to enable him to live unaided on the surface of Mars.
A.
"Let me ponder on that thought while I delete my 200 + spam mails a day, that I need to sort through manually to inspect that it does not contain any of my friends."
It's my belief that Yahoo, Netscape, and likely others have purposely given out your email address in exchange for money. As far as I am concerned, we should all save our spam in a special non-trash folder for the sole purpose of running their servers into the ground.
The worse example I know if is Netscape. I had an email address with them for years - with no spam. The day I 'confirmed' my email address with them (so I could get at the email preferences page) I was deluged with spam which never stopped. That email address became useless (Netscape doesn't have any spam filtering, as best I can tell).
The warm fuzzy I have with Google is that they won't give my email address to their spamming 'partners'.
A.
Really... I want my stereo to be a set of speakers for my Mac, all digital to boot. Yes, I could do this today with $100 of add-on PCI card and another $100 of fiber cable, but a little box and some Cat-5 would be soo much cheaper.
A.
"Look, I liked LOTR as much as the next guy..."
Um... obviously *not*...
A.
I have no wired phone line. I use VoIP as my primary phone and a cell phone as a backup. That said, I am not aware that any VoIP provider meets the same level of reliability as a POTS line.
My own requirement was that my VoIP provider support my choice in SIP devices. That eliminated several of the vendors on your list as they require use of a Cisco-ATA and lock you out of it. I wanted a more 'open' service. I currently use IConnectHere. For $8.95/mo they provide unlimited incoming calls, Caller-ID, Voicemail, Call-Waiting, Call-Transfer, etc. Outgoing calls cost 3.5 cents/minute.
Addaline (http://www.addaline.com) has recently started offering DID service and has a very economical outgoing rate.
A.
"I can't think of a single good reason why a user needs to run their own outgoing mail server and not relay through the Comcast server."
:-)
How about because I want to? I'm the customer, I'm paying my $60/mo for Internet access. How about because host-to-host direct SMTP connections is how it is supposed to work? How about because you shouldn't needlessly punish innocents because of the abuses of a few? The argument that you shouldn't source SMTP from a DHCP-assigned IP address is specious at best.
I and a small number of friends send email back and forth between ourselves. Host to host. There's no good reason to give those files to Comcast for delivery. Of course firewalls don't have to allow SMTP from just anyone
Who thought up centralized, overburdened and flakey mail servers anyway? Personally, I think the world would be better off with fewer central servers and more peer-to-peer mailing.
A.
"Godamnit, I'd just started to get over those fink morons and their /sw tree, now we gotta put up with an /opt."
/usr). If you're adding something yourself it goes into /usr/local. /opt was used for other software providers stuff.
/opt and /sw are much better than installing into system-provided directories (which is an insane practice).
Where do you think it should go?
It is a long-standing philisophy in some software development circles that you never install your software into system directories (/bin,
I think
A.
"You do know that there are exits on the LEFT side of 128 too, right?"
Sure, at either *end*, but what's your point? The electronic sign in Burlington regularly reminds drivers that there is a $100 fine for clogging the left lane.
A.
"Unless you're in the process of passing someone, you should never be in the far left lane of a 3-4+ lane highway..."
The exception being that you're on Route 128 around Boston, and you have a Rhode Island plate, in which case you are expected to move from the on ramp to the far left lane (even when there is no other traffic) and stay there at a stately 50MPH.
A.
Ummn.. I don't think so. This case is about a man who refused to identify himself, not a man who refused to produce identification. This is not the same thing.
A.
"I was recently told that it's illegal for an adult to walk round in public without some form of government id such as a driver's license. I was in California at the time."
If might be true in California, but I do not believe it's true in New England. I've lived in a few states there and I have never encountered such a law.
You might be required to identify yourself to an officer. That is not the same thing as carrying a picture id ("Yes Officer, I'm Joe Blow, and I live at 372 Main St. How are you today?").
A.