So no, you won't need a sharp accountant to shield your dividends, capital gains, rental income, farm income, gambling winnings, stock option income, and imputed income from perks like the company jet. The bill says the only thing we're going to tax are wages, pensions, and unemployement benefits...
Actually, they thought of that: businesses would no longer get to tax deduct noncash benefits. See 11.(d).2.(A).(ii):
(ii) the amount paid for services (
other than for the services of employees, including fringe benefits paid by reason of such services) in connection with a business activity
The thing that makes taxes complicated is not the graduated rates, it's figuring out how much taxable income you have in the first place.
Graduated rates add complexity too. Look at all the journalists who got confused by the new 10% tax bracket. Most of them completely missed the point that folks at the bottom of the income scale who made enough to pay federal income taxes in the first place had their tax bills chopped by one third. Granted, the average old media journalist has the equivalent mathematical ability of a/. editor's grammatical ability, but the point stands.
The flat tax schemes might make that a tad easier for the "average" taxpayer, but their main purpose is to make it a whole lot easier for the above average taxpayer by making much of their income exempt from taxation.
Being able to do your taxes on a postcard rather than have people who couldn't figure out a frickin' butterfly ballot wade through the 1040 is a serious process simplification. The "rich" hire tax attorneys to do their taxes for them and find/write the necessary loopholes, paying appropriate sums of "campaign contributions" to Democrats if their inclined to pay protection money (or are masochistic), to Republicans if they're tired of being tax slaves, or some to each if they're completely gutless (your average Big Business executive). With the Flat Tax, the loopholes are gone. Subtract your personal and dependent deductions from your gross income and pay 17% of what's left, no matter how sharp your accountants are. BTW, it's working very well in Russia now (13% rate). It's pretty damn sad (for us) when a former KGB spook can implement a far saner tax code than America has.
Besides saving $billions in wasted compliance costs, you'd get rid of tons of wasteful behavior. Businesses lease gear because it's tax efficient. Individuals load up on mortgage debt (artificially inflating housing costs) because it's a tax deduction. It's like teaching to a seriously dysfunctional test. Tax codes should balance behavior neutrality with practicality and raise just enough money to run the government. They should not be social engineering torture devices.
Fair or simple - you only get (at most) one when it comes to tax laws
And we have neither now. We can argue about fair forever, but we could have simple now.
is that we shouldn't need to buy a complex software package to figure out how much money the government is going to take out of our hides every year. Pass the Flat Tax and put Intuit and a helluva lot of accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists out of work.
Though that still leaves Microsoft's product activation. Oh, right, I'm running Linux. Never mind.
Actually, Eugenics programs started in the United Stated and culminated with the forced sterilization laws found in many areas. The Nazis got the idea from Americans.
Sadly, that is partially true. See The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger, with introduction by none other than H.G. Wells. From the appendix:
"STERILIZATION of the insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive the individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him incapable of producing children.
EDUCATIONAL: The program of education includes: The enlightenment of the public at large, mainly through the education of leaders of thought and opinion--teachers, ministers, editors and writers--to the moral and scientific soundness of the principles of Birth Control and the imperative necessity of its adoption as the basis of national and racial progress.
POLITICAL AND LEGISLATIVE: To enlist the support and cooperation of legal advisers, statesmen and legislators in effecting the removal of state and federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding, increase the sum total of disease, misery and poverty and prevent the establishment of a policy of national health and strength."
I've only read Wells' intro and the appendix, fwiw. In all fairness to Sanger, Hitler added more than a few ideas of his own, but the National Socialists did use her writings as a starting point.
Re:Eugenics vs. Genetic Engineering
on
Speeding up Evolution
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Then there are the social issues. Genetic engineering is expensive. If we're not careful, it could become a way for the wealthy to reinforce their dominance over world affairs. It is natural to want to give your child every advantage in life that you can; but doing so can simultaneously disadvantage other people's children.
Or, as with every other new technology, the wealthy will pay for the privilege of being guinea pigs (aka "early adopters") which the rest of the population will benefit from later. Wealthy patrons (and/or governments) could be benevolent and sponsor poor and needy patients in need of genetic engineering (your cystic fibrosis example, for instance), if they don't mind risking being accused of using the poor as lab rats in their scheme for global hegemony or some other paranoid fantasy du jour.
I don't mean for that to be a flame, I'm just trying to point out that intentions can be spun in all sorts of ways depending on a person's point of view. Given the heavy populist prejudice against "the rich" this issue is likely going to get very messy, as you described.
And this one is intended for public consumption. It's also written from the opposite side of the political spectrum (Newsday is notoriously lefty). Both articles are well worth reading and aren't as far apart as you might think. This one has additional commentary from Clinton and Gates.
SBC should run their own network. The cable companies should run their own networks. The government should make it easy (minimal/quick paperwork, not necessarily cost) for additional competitors to get right-of-way to build their own networks. Having the telcos and cable companies compete is good in and of itself, but throwing a new fiber-to-the-home data-only network into the mix would really do wonders. Or a WiFi provider with their APs linked by hardline. Whatever the crews putting up the money want to try.
George Gilder (lunatic that he is) said it best: "DSL is the equivalent of the Pony Express genetically engineering winged horses." Let's build some railroads already!
Exactly right. Enron did its damage using dizzying complexity, using the incomprehensable federal tax code (how many of you fellow Americans blindly punch your numbers into TurboTax and hope for the best?) to their advantage. Give the tax code a radical lawyerectomy and you'll wipe out a huge chunk of corporate and political corruption (corporations "contribute" to politicians to write advantageous lines into the current code). Corporations can't buy favors that Congress isn't selling.
Ending the double-tax on dividends will have a positive (though lesser) effect too: dividend payouts force discipline (can't fake cold hard cash). Plus it'll make it easier to raise capital with equity instead of debt, which will be a big help to manufacturers, which will be a big help to my home state of Michigan. One very smart thing: the double-tax is only dropped on income that was taxed to begin with. Play Enron games and tax shelter your income and ending the double-tax does you no good at all.
Fix the above two and IP laws become a much more exposed target for change. Technically the order they're tackled in doesn't matter, but I think changing IP laws will be the hardest (hardly anyone deals with IP laws directly but everyone deals with the tax code), so from a practical perspective we should deal with the tax code induced corruption first.
You want to talk about wolves guarding the henhouse? How many politicians used to be lawyers?
Worse, how many of them are trial lawyers, like Democrat presidential candidate Senator Edwards? These lawyers are so out of control that doctors are going on strike to protest the resulting six-figure malpractice insurance premiums. The loot from lawsuits bankrolls an awful lot of politicians, though, so I expect things to keep getting worse for quite a bit longer.
After replacing an IBM 60GXP series drive with a Seagate Barracuda V, besides eliminating the last high-pitch noise generator in the PC I noticed that the sides of the midtower case vibrated less, I assume due to the layer of sound dampening foam inside the drive package, with a major assist from the fluid (?) bearings. I guess the lesson is that things spinning at high RPMs need replacement or something to compensate for their speed?
Replace the AMD heatsink/fan kits with Thermalright SLK800's, YS Tech 80mm adjustable fans, and use Arctic Silver 3 thermal compound. The catch is that the pink crap AMD uses instead of proper thermal compound may be permanently attached at this point, though the right chemicals (Goof-Off cleaner followed up with rubbing alcohol) can probably remove it. I'm using SLK800's on my dual 2400+ ASUS A7M266-D board and with the fans adjusted to 2000RPM the system is very quiet, the most annoying noise is from the fan on the Ti4200 card and there's no room for one of those neato Zalman heatpipe GPU coolers. With this setup I'm getting lower CPU temps than I was with 1800+ chips and the retail box heatsink/fan kits (using AS3, scraped off the pink stuff).
See 2CoolTek for this gear. I've been buying from them for years and highly recommend them.
You could go with one of those Vantec fan speed adjusters (handles 4 fans) instead of variable-speed fans... might be a better choice in your case.
Perfect tower: one of the Lian-Li aluminum cases, probably an extended length model (extra 10cm of space). See NewEgg, etc. Actually, they've got the cooling gear too.
turns out i have a bloodflow impairment in the right half of my brain; it can't properly process information (like pins and needles when you make a leg go to sleep). i get almost no rem sleep and no stage 3 & 4 sleep at all. i'm sleeping 10+ (sometimes as much as 16) hours a day and not feeling rested.
That sounds similar to me. I've never really discussed it with a doc. It usually feels like something is slowing blood flow to my head when I lie down. I tried one of those "memory foam" pillows (it seemed to help) but had to return it because it outgassed so badly. I've noticed that if I only try to sleep for a 4-5 hours instead of 8-10 I'll often be much more alert for the first few days until the sleep deprivation catches up to me. I do my best thinking late in the day, my brain is usually not working real well for the first few hours after I get up. If I sleep in (like I did today) I get awful headaches. I've been dismissing this on the theory that if it really was a circulatory problem it would have killed me by now, but maybe not?
Feel free to email me, maybe we should compare notes. Your situation sounds much more serious than mine though.
I'm curious if you actually overloaded a Dell powersupply using PCI-compliant equipment, or if you you just jacked-off to "Tom's Hardware" and actually believe the Bogo-Watt numbers on those cheap Chinese shitbox supplies.
We had several Dell Optiplex 1GHz Celeron boxes (200W power supplies) at work with dual Barracuda IV IDE drives (configured by Dell) that were flakey with both drives hooked up and stable with only one drive powered. Installing Intel's Application Acceleration drivers, basically fancy drive caching, also fixed the problem; whether it was a software bug the IAA drivers fixed or a power supply overload the caching masks (the crashes usually occurred when all drives were hit at once, like when you first fire up Explorer) is hard to say and I walked away at that point. Why we should have had to hunt down drivers from Intel's website to get a stable machine is another question. In either case, Dell sucks.
On a 185W IBM/Antac supply, I'm currently running 2 600Mhz Katamis, 6 PCI + 1 AGP (including a WinTV), and 3 10K SCSI drives. No problems at all. I'm sure Dell's stuff is the same way.
That's nice. Two relatively low power sub-GHz CPUs, an AGP video card that likely draws a LOT less power than a GeForce4 Ti-series (Radeon 9700 Pro's have external power connectors and the GeForceFX might have one too), far slower bus speeds and higher latencies. Your system isn't as picky about voltage regulation and isn't drawing the power that a modern GHz-class machine is. Swap in a P4 and watch it choke. Oh, you can't do that, your power supply doesn't have the additional four-pin 12V connector the P4 (and dual processor Athlons) require. Silly me. Do yourself a favor and run Motherboard Monitor so you can watch your voltage levels bounce around.
Conclusion: Go play with your Turbo Button, clone-master.
Says another 13-year-old AC with overindulgent parents and too much time on his hands. Yawn.
Re:Just give me a damn Flat Tax. YES! flattax.gov
on
TurboTax Activation Fiasco
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Flattax.gov has the info. Yes, we definitely need to switch to this. It replaces the mortgage deduction with much higher personal and dependend deductions too, ending the tax discrimination against renters. That mortgage deduction artificially drives up real estate costs too (gotta maximize that deduction! Except you're paying the bank $3 to save $1 on your taxes... but real estate only appreciates in value, right? Right?). I wouldn't want to own a McMansion if this ever passes though:-).
If you try loading up a Dell PC with HDTV gear (card, extra hard drive(s), etc) you're likely to overload their weak power supplies (250W on a P4?!), at which point you'll probably think you can just swap in an Antec 550W from your local toy store and be on your way. Think again. Dell uses a nonstandard pinout on their ATX power supplies for no good reason.
If you must buy a prebuilt machine from a big vendor, MicronPC offers a better than average component selection, including industry standard 300W ATX power supplies (which is still low by my standards but better than most other big vendors) and nVidia nForce2 motherboards. I still custom build my PCs though.
FWIW, I have an AccessDTV card in my dual CPU Athlon rig. They've shaken most of the bugs out with the latest beta software. There's no Linux support though. I'm not aware of any HDTV card that's Linux-friendly (anyone?). There's a neat 1024p mode that works great with 1280x1024 res monitors.
/* I know, I know, I should write more unit tests, but I've only got six days until my long vacation on the 7th and I'm not taking homework with me. Oh well, if I missed anything, it'll evolve. */
The trouble with being smart is that you're intellectually malleable enough to be taught to do some really stupid things. Normal people (and below) just nod their head and more or less do what they were going to do. High IQ types are taught to focus on their careers, be politically correct, only have one child if they get married at all, and assorted other things that would confuse the hell out of Darwin, and all too often we listen to it.
And you're really screwed if you fit the profile for Asperger's Syndrome.
The top 2 things you can do to quiet your AMD system:
1) Get an Antec TruePower series power supply. Two big fans running slow/quiet. They're also the best power supplies you can buy short of the atrociously expensive and noisy PC Power & Cooling power supplies (which I've also used).
2) Get a Thermalright SLK800 copper heatsink, YS Tech Rheostat 80mm fan, and Arctic Silver 3 thermal compound. I recommend buying from 2CoolTek. The YS Tech fans are adjustable, so you can try a slow/quiet setting and if that proves inadequate crank it up a bit. I've found 2500RPM to be a good balance of noise/performence on my 2400+ CPUs (which do run cooler than your 2100+ CPU, assuming it's the old Palamino core), and at 2000RPM you won't hear the fans at all. 60mm fans have to run at much higher RPMs than 80mm fans to move the same amount of air.
Point #2 is the best place to start. It's probably all you need.
Steve Forbes (probably the most visible supply-sider around these days) is always talking about the stupidity of the IMF, most recently:
The IMF, with its lethal prescriptions of devaluing currencies and raising taxes, continues to wreak havoc around the developing world. Turkey--critical because it is a pro-American, secular Muslim nation whose help we need in the war on terror--is writhing under the IMF's economic treatments. So is Brazil.
Why the IMF and World Bank survive is beyond me. I'm not hopeful that anything will change in the near term, given that Bush picked a Goldman Sachs alum to be his economic advisor, against the wishes of supply-siders, likely in part to smooth things over with the opposition Democrats (Goldman Sachs is an overwhelmingly Democrat company, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin came from there, as did current New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine). Hopefully I'm wrong about this.
Note that an American is never appointed to head the IMF. Usually a European gets the job, never mind that America puts up the largest share of funding. I don't know why we let them get away with this.
OK, I should have said "nVidia posted their first publically available Linux graphics drivers for the Athlon 64". My bad. I should also have highlighted the fact that while Linux Athlon 64 drivers are posted, Windows Athlon 64 drivers aren't, though I'm sure the people who actually have x86-64 hardware are able to get them. It's still nice to see Linux get official driver support first for a change.
It is also abundantly clear that my smartaleck sense of humor doesn't translate well to Slashdot. Geeze...
Slashdot Mirror
If we could round up all the politicians in DC, we could power the world.
Shhhhhh! If this technology gets out, it could make France a world power again!
Actually, they thought of that: businesses would no longer get to tax deduct noncash benefits. See 11.(d).2.(A).(ii):
Only cash wages are deductable by the business.
The thing that makes taxes complicated is not the graduated rates, it's figuring out how much taxable income you have in the first place.
/. editor's grammatical ability, but the point stands.
Graduated rates add complexity too. Look at all the journalists who got confused by the new 10% tax bracket. Most of them completely missed the point that folks at the bottom of the income scale who made enough to pay federal income taxes in the first place had their tax bills chopped by one third. Granted, the average old media journalist has the equivalent mathematical ability of a
The flat tax schemes might make that a tad easier for the "average" taxpayer, but their main purpose is to make it a whole lot easier for the above average taxpayer by making much of their income exempt from taxation.
Being able to do your taxes on a postcard rather than have people who couldn't figure out a frickin' butterfly ballot wade through the 1040 is a serious process simplification. The "rich" hire tax attorneys to do their taxes for them and find/write the necessary loopholes, paying appropriate sums of "campaign contributions" to Democrats if their inclined to pay protection money (or are masochistic), to Republicans if they're tired of being tax slaves, or some to each if they're completely gutless (your average Big Business executive). With the Flat Tax, the loopholes are gone. Subtract your personal and dependent deductions from your gross income and pay 17% of what's left, no matter how sharp your accountants are. BTW, it's working very well in Russia now (13% rate). It's pretty damn sad (for us) when a former KGB spook can implement a far saner tax code than America has.
Besides saving $billions in wasted compliance costs, you'd get rid of tons of wasteful behavior. Businesses lease gear because it's tax efficient. Individuals load up on mortgage debt (artificially inflating housing costs) because it's a tax deduction. It's like teaching to a seriously dysfunctional test. Tax codes should balance behavior neutrality with practicality and raise just enough money to run the government. They should not be social engineering torture devices.
Fair or simple - you only get (at most) one when it comes to tax laws
And we have neither now. We can argue about fair forever, but we could have simple now.
is that we shouldn't need to buy a complex software package to figure out how much money the government is going to take out of our hides every year. Pass the Flat Tax and put Intuit and a helluva lot of accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists out of work.
Though that still leaves Microsoft's product activation. Oh, right, I'm running Linux. Never mind.
Actually, Eugenics programs started in the United Stated and culminated with the forced sterilization laws found in many areas. The Nazis got the idea from Americans.
Sadly, that is partially true. See The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger, with introduction by none other than H.G. Wells. From the appendix:
"STERILIZATION of the insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive the individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him incapable of producing children.
EDUCATIONAL: The program of education includes: The enlightenment of the public at large, mainly through the education of leaders of thought and opinion--teachers, ministers, editors and writers--to the moral and scientific soundness of the principles of Birth Control and the imperative necessity of its adoption as the basis of national and racial progress.
POLITICAL AND LEGISLATIVE: To enlist the support and cooperation of legal advisers, statesmen and legislators in effecting the removal of state and federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding, increase the sum total of disease, misery and poverty and prevent the establishment of a policy of national health and strength."
I've only read Wells' intro and the appendix, fwiw. In all fairness to Sanger, Hitler added more than a few ideas of his own, but the National Socialists did use her writings as a starting point.
Then there are the social issues. Genetic engineering is expensive. If we're not careful, it could become a way for the wealthy to reinforce their dominance over world affairs. It is natural to want to give your child every advantage in life that you can; but doing so can simultaneously disadvantage other people's children.
Or, as with every other new technology, the wealthy will pay for the privilege of being guinea pigs (aka "early adopters") which the rest of the population will benefit from later. Wealthy patrons (and/or governments) could be benevolent and sponsor poor and needy patients in need of genetic engineering (your cystic fibrosis example, for instance), if they don't mind risking being accused of using the poor as lab rats in their scheme for global hegemony or some other paranoid fantasy du jour.
I don't mean for that to be a flame, I'm just trying to point out that intentions can be spun in all sorts of ways depending on a person's point of view. Given the heavy populist prejudice against "the rich" this issue is likely going to get very messy, as you described.
And this one is intended for public consumption. It's also written from the opposite side of the political spectrum (Newsday is notoriously lefty). Both articles are well worth reading and aren't as far apart as you might think. This one has additional commentary from Clinton and Gates.
SBC should run their own network. The cable companies should run their own networks. The government should make it easy (minimal/quick paperwork, not necessarily cost) for additional competitors to get right-of-way to build their own networks. Having the telcos and cable companies compete is good in and of itself, but throwing a new fiber-to-the-home data-only network into the mix would really do wonders. Or a WiFi provider with their APs linked by hardline. Whatever the crews putting up the money want to try.
George Gilder (lunatic that he is) said it best: "DSL is the equivalent of the Pony Express genetically engineering winged horses." Let's build some railroads already!
Exactly right. Enron did its damage using dizzying complexity, using the incomprehensable federal tax code (how many of you fellow Americans blindly punch your numbers into TurboTax and hope for the best?) to their advantage. Give the tax code a radical lawyerectomy and you'll wipe out a huge chunk of corporate and political corruption (corporations "contribute" to politicians to write advantageous lines into the current code). Corporations can't buy favors that Congress isn't selling.
Ending the double-tax on dividends will have a positive (though lesser) effect too: dividend payouts force discipline (can't fake cold hard cash). Plus it'll make it easier to raise capital with equity instead of debt, which will be a big help to manufacturers, which will be a big help to my home state of Michigan. One very smart thing: the double-tax is only dropped on income that was taxed to begin with. Play Enron games and tax shelter your income and ending the double-tax does you no good at all.
Fix the above two and IP laws become a much more exposed target for change. Technically the order they're tackled in doesn't matter, but I think changing IP laws will be the hardest (hardly anyone deals with IP laws directly but everyone deals with the tax code), so from a practical perspective we should deal with the tax code induced corruption first.
You want to talk about wolves guarding the henhouse? How many politicians used to be lawyers?
Worse, how many of them are trial lawyers, like Democrat presidential candidate Senator Edwards? These lawyers are so out of control that doctors are going on strike to protest the resulting six-figure malpractice insurance premiums. The loot from lawsuits bankrolls an awful lot of politicians, though, so I expect things to keep getting worse for quite a bit longer.
After replacing an IBM 60GXP series drive with a Seagate Barracuda V, besides eliminating the last high-pitch noise generator in the PC I noticed that the sides of the midtower case vibrated less, I assume due to the layer of sound dampening foam inside the drive package, with a major assist from the fluid (?) bearings. I guess the lesson is that things spinning at high RPMs need replacement or something to compensate for their speed?
When the GOP stops spending money like a drunken sailor on crack I might.
2.23 Trillion USD budget? Are they fscking crazy?
And the Democrats are still screaming that it's not enough.
Replace the AMD heatsink/fan kits with Thermalright SLK800's, YS Tech 80mm adjustable fans, and use Arctic Silver 3 thermal compound. The catch is that the pink crap AMD uses instead of proper thermal compound may be permanently attached at this point, though the right chemicals (Goof-Off cleaner followed up with rubbing alcohol) can probably remove it. I'm using SLK800's on my dual 2400+ ASUS A7M266-D board and with the fans adjusted to 2000RPM the system is very quiet, the most annoying noise is from the fan on the Ti4200 card and there's no room for one of those neato Zalman heatpipe GPU coolers. With this setup I'm getting lower CPU temps than I was with 1800+ chips and the retail box heatsink/fan kits (using AS3, scraped off the pink stuff).
See 2CoolTek for this gear. I've been buying from them for years and highly recommend them.
You could go with one of those Vantec fan speed adjusters (handles 4 fans) instead of variable-speed fans... might be a better choice in your case.
Perfect tower: one of the Lian-Li aluminum cases, probably an extended length model (extra 10cm of space). See NewEgg, etc. Actually, they've got the cooling gear too.
turns out i have a bloodflow impairment in the right half of my brain; it can't properly process information (like pins and needles when you make a leg go to sleep). i get almost no rem sleep and no stage 3 & 4 sleep at all. i'm sleeping 10+ (sometimes as much as 16) hours a day and not feeling rested.
That sounds similar to me. I've never really discussed it with a doc. It usually feels like something is slowing blood flow to my head when I lie down. I tried one of those "memory foam" pillows (it seemed to help) but had to return it because it outgassed so badly. I've noticed that if I only try to sleep for a 4-5 hours instead of 8-10 I'll often be much more alert for the first few days until the sleep deprivation catches up to me. I do my best thinking late in the day, my brain is usually not working real well for the first few hours after I get up. If I sleep in (like I did today) I get awful headaches. I've been dismissing this on the theory that if it really was a circulatory problem it would have killed me by now, but maybe not?
Feel free to email me, maybe we should compare notes. Your situation sounds much more serious than mine though.
Vote for Jobs: make 2004 way hipper than 1984.
(I'm trying to think of how they'd update the infamous "1984" commercial for a Jobs presidential run, but it's just not coming to me... help, anyone?)
I think, therefore, iVote
But with the Opteron shipping in April they said "Aww, what's the point."
It would be intresting to be on a retrofitted 777 with two of these strapped on. Can anyone say 'supersonic'?
I can see the Darwin Award (JATO Category) description now, though more likely involving an old Impala than a plane:
"When the Greens, auto shop, and rocketry club got together, we knew something was about to go horribly wrong..."
I'm curious if you actually overloaded a Dell powersupply using PCI-compliant equipment, or if you you just jacked-off to "Tom's Hardware" and actually believe the Bogo-Watt numbers on those cheap Chinese shitbox supplies.
We had several Dell Optiplex 1GHz Celeron boxes (200W power supplies) at work with dual Barracuda IV IDE drives (configured by Dell) that were flakey with both drives hooked up and stable with only one drive powered. Installing Intel's Application Acceleration drivers, basically fancy drive caching, also fixed the problem; whether it was a software bug the IAA drivers fixed or a power supply overload the caching masks (the crashes usually occurred when all drives were hit at once, like when you first fire up Explorer) is hard to say and I walked away at that point. Why we should have had to hunt down drivers from Intel's website to get a stable machine is another question. In either case, Dell sucks.
On a 185W IBM/Antac supply, I'm currently running 2 600Mhz Katamis, 6 PCI + 1 AGP (including a WinTV), and 3 10K SCSI drives. No problems at all. I'm sure Dell's stuff is the same way.
That's nice. Two relatively low power sub-GHz CPUs, an AGP video card that likely draws a LOT less power than a GeForce4 Ti-series (Radeon 9700 Pro's have external power connectors and the GeForceFX might have one too), far slower bus speeds and higher latencies. Your system isn't as picky about voltage regulation and isn't drawing the power that a modern GHz-class machine is. Swap in a P4 and watch it choke. Oh, you can't do that, your power supply doesn't have the additional four-pin 12V connector the P4 (and dual processor Athlons) require. Silly me. Do yourself a favor and run Motherboard Monitor so you can watch your voltage levels bounce around.
Conclusion: Go play with your Turbo Button, clone-master.
Says another 13-year-old AC with overindulgent parents and too much time on his hands. Yawn.
Flattax.gov has the info. Yes, we definitely need to switch to this. It replaces the mortgage deduction with much higher personal and dependend deductions too, ending the tax discrimination against renters. That mortgage deduction artificially drives up real estate costs too (gotta maximize that deduction! Except you're paying the bank $3 to save $1 on your taxes... but real estate only appreciates in value, right? Right?). I wouldn't want to own a McMansion if this ever passes though :-).
If you try loading up a Dell PC with HDTV gear (card, extra hard drive(s), etc) you're likely to overload their weak power supplies (250W on a P4?!), at which point you'll probably think you can just swap in an Antec 550W from your local toy store and be on your way. Think again. Dell uses a nonstandard pinout on their ATX power supplies for no good reason.
If you must buy a prebuilt machine from a big vendor, MicronPC offers a better than average component selection, including industry standard 300W ATX power supplies (which is still low by my standards but better than most other big vendors) and nVidia nForce2 motherboards. I still custom build my PCs though.
FWIW, I have an AccessDTV card in my dual CPU Athlon rig. They've shaken most of the bugs out with the latest beta software. There's no Linux support though. I'm not aware of any HDTV card that's Linux-friendly (anyone?). There's a neat 1024p mode that works great with 1280x1024 res monitors.
/* I know, I know, I should write more unit tests, but I've only got six days until my long vacation on the 7th and I'm not taking homework with me. Oh well, if I missed anything, it'll evolve. */
The trouble with being smart is that you're intellectually malleable enough to be taught to do some really stupid things. Normal people (and below) just nod their head and more or less do what they were going to do. High IQ types are taught to focus on their careers, be politically correct, only have one child if they get married at all, and assorted other things that would confuse the hell out of Darwin, and all too often we listen to it.
And you're really screwed if you fit the profile for Asperger's Syndrome.
The point of life is more life.
I wish I actually followed that philosophy.
The top 2 things you can do to quiet your AMD system:
1) Get an Antec TruePower series power supply. Two big fans running slow/quiet. They're also the best power supplies you can buy short of the atrociously expensive and noisy PC Power & Cooling power supplies (which I've also used).
2) Get a Thermalright SLK800 copper heatsink, YS Tech Rheostat 80mm fan, and Arctic Silver 3 thermal compound. I recommend buying from 2CoolTek. The YS Tech fans are adjustable, so you can try a slow/quiet setting and if that proves inadequate crank it up a bit. I've found 2500RPM to be a good balance of noise/performence on my 2400+ CPUs (which do run cooler than your 2100+ CPU, assuming it's the old Palamino core), and at 2000RPM you won't hear the fans at all. 60mm fans have to run at much higher RPMs than 80mm fans to move the same amount of air.
Point #2 is the best place to start. It's probably all you need.
Steve Forbes (probably the most visible supply-sider around these days) is always talking about the stupidity of the IMF, most recently:
The IMF, with its lethal prescriptions of devaluing currencies and raising taxes, continues to wreak havoc around the developing world. Turkey--critical because it is a pro-American, secular Muslim nation whose help we need in the war on terror--is writhing under the IMF's economic treatments. So is Brazil.
The IMF Has Lost Its Way by Stephen Hanke makes a solid case for killing the IMF.
Why the IMF and World Bank survive is beyond me. I'm not hopeful that anything will change in the near term, given that Bush picked a Goldman Sachs alum to be his economic advisor, against the wishes of supply-siders, likely in part to smooth things over with the opposition Democrats (Goldman Sachs is an overwhelmingly Democrat company, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin came from there, as did current New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine). Hopefully I'm wrong about this.
Note that an American is never appointed to head the IMF. Usually a European gets the job, never mind that America puts up the largest share of funding. I don't know why we let them get away with this.
OK, I should have said "nVidia posted their first publically available Linux graphics drivers for the Athlon 64". My bad. I should also have highlighted the fact that while Linux Athlon 64 drivers are posted, Windows Athlon 64 drivers aren't, though I'm sure the people who actually have x86-64 hardware are able to get them. It's still nice to see Linux get official driver support first for a change.
It is also abundantly clear that my smartaleck sense of humor doesn't translate well to Slashdot. Geeze...