" I doubt it's true. That bastard Jobs still owes me $5 from high school."
You should send him a registered letter informing him of the debt, which has been accruing interest at prime, up until today. From this day forward, you should inform him, the aforementioned debt shall accrue interest at prime^(prime^prime) per quarter, assessed hourly. That should get him on the ball for repaying the debt, or at least get him working on lowering the prime interest rate for the rest of us. Figure by the time the letter reachs him, it'll probably have already accrued more interest than the national debt of the entire US Federal government.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this [points to presentation board] is a Penguin. It lives in very cold places and swims in near freezing waters. That does not make sense. Why would any animal live in such cold places, when clearly, a nice tropical beach would be a much nicer place to live?! It does not make sense! What does this have to do with copyright infringement? NOTHING! It does not make sense! A penguin lives in cold places, and it does NOT make sense. None of this makes any sense. If a penguin does not need mits, you must ACQUIT!
"While denying the state is playing 'Big Brother', the Revenue Department Commissioner, Alan LeBovidge predicted the state may eventually be able to track so much financial information on individuals that the state could complete the citizens' returns for them."
Automated government wallet-raping, coming soon to a tax office near YOU!.
[Avg Citizen] "Please just tell me how money I have to pay to not be thrown in jail."
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
·
· Score: 1
"Don't know about the heatsink falling but I have a computer that works 24/7 and exactly every year I need to change the heatsink fan."
Are you using the stock cooling? I've been running my AthlonXP 1700+ 24/7 since the 1700+ was about the fastest chip available, and I've never had to change out the stock cooler. I can certainly see where some third party coolers could fail, and I have seen where AMD used pretty cheap quality HSFs on some of the Durons around the time of the 1.1s. Other than that, I've always been pretty happy with the quality of the stock HSFs coming out of AMD. My only complaint for the Athlon coolers is that they occassionally pack some fairly loud fans with the higher end models.
"And there's also bad installation, like a space between the heatsink an the processor."
The installation complaints that many have raised are addressed in the new Athlon64 CPUs. The exposed die has been covered with a heat spreader (much like the P4s), and the HSF (at least for the AthlonFX, not sure about the others) is also a bit like the P4 stock HSF.
What many people don't really realize or think about is that the Athlons were not designed to compete against the Pentium 4s. If you remember way back when, the Pentium IIIs were basically brand new when the Athlon was introduced. All the sockets, HSF designs, chip packaging designs were done basically 5 years ago. Changing all of those things requires nothing less than a complete break of backward compatibility with older boards. While Intel has always been more than happy to do this (socket 423 was around for what, a year?), AMD has always worked hard to make certain that existing designs would last as long as possible. Socket 7 is a perfect example of this. While Intel was content to let socket 7 die with the 233MHz Pentium MMX, AMD continued with socket 7 (re-labled 'Super' Socket 7) all the way into the ~450MHz area. Thus, board makers didn't have to make huge changes to their manufacturing, nor toss out their older stock to continue supplies for AMD CPUs. This is why so many Super socket 7 boards ended up being used. AMD made one major split with the Athlon CPUs, which occurred when they went from Slot A to Socket A, about the same time the Thunderbird core was introduced. This was a rough change for AMD, and something its longtime customers weren't used to at all. That being said, it was both necessary and smart for them to dump the good-on-paper slot-style CPUs. What is truly impressive is that the Athlon family hasn't changed all that much in terms of board design from the 700MHz CPU that was competing against the PIII, to the AthlonXP 3200+ that now competes with the P4s. K7 has taken on two families of Intel's CPUs, and that's impressive by anyone's standards.
"It stays idle most of the time, so that's not a big thing (it don't heat very much), but it would be a big problem if it was a very used server."
If it were a very used server, it would be using a Xeon or an Opteron. Using anything else for a server merely invites trouble. If it's a low-end deal, I'd recommend either the AthlonMP, or the PIII Tualatin. Both are relatively inexpensive, and both are pretty reliable.
"I still go there for the forums, as there are a few people there who have good insight."
I think you'd enjoy the forums at Ace's a lot more. The folks tend to be more intelligent, less 'fanboyish', and come out with insights you won't find anywhere else.
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
·
· Score: 1
"Once you go thru the 'fine print', you find out that the chipset won't work with 3x DDR400 module at full speed. "
Asus lists exactly what they've tested each board with right on their site. For the low-end offerings, this generally isn't an issue at all. For higher end offerings, simply following the memory guide listed on Asus's page for the particular board yields zero problems, in my experience. The only boards I've had odd timing issues with were the nForce 2 boards. Those absolutely are picky as hell about memory.
By the way, just how much pinching are your penny pinching customers doing that they don't want to pay for a ~$60 board? (Asus A7V8X-MX) Heh.
I agree that it would be nice if AMD got into making their own chipsets and boards, but I also think it would put them back in the red - at least for a while. For the time being, I'm content to simply do a little bit of homework ahead of time to save both time and money getting the best performance per dollar.
"I'm assuming you're referring to AMD's "Performance Rating." If you are, you might be interested to know that AMD compares their CPUs to a 1Ghz Duron, and NOT any sort of intel chip."
I'm still not quite sure where this rumour started, but as I recall, AMD stated specifically that the rating system was relative to Thunderbird core Athlon performance, as it was the last Athlon produced prior to the introduction of the model number system. Thus, an AthlonXP 2600+ should perform as well or better, on average, than a Thunderbird core Athlon running at 2.6GHz.
This whole thing about it being relative to the Durons appears to have cropped up some time in the past 6 months or so. I suppose it's possible it could be correct, but I've never seen an AMD whitepaper stating as much. If you, or someone else, could point me in the direction of an AMD page to clear this up for good, it would be appreciated.
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"If you build an AMD AthlonXP box, it generally probably works, if you are lucky and you are using just the right brand of memory."
Quit using ECS and no-name memory and you won't have problems. I've been building AMD systems almost exclusively for about 3 years now, and I've had about the same number of AMD and Intel-based computers come back, nearly all for mainboard problems. Trying everything from ECS (crap) to FIC (almost as bad) to MSI, Gigabyte, and finally, Asus, I pretty much have run the gambit on different combinations. I've been using Asus boards exclusively for about a year now, and I haven't had a single one come back for any hardware or driver related problems. It doesn't take expensive memory or an expensive board to make it work - just decent quality stuff. The Asus A7V8X-MX is a good, inexpensive, entry-level board, which works very well with the Kingston value RAM. There's nothing about 'luck', merely doing a little bit of research ahead of time. I had tons and tons of problems with Intel CPUs on ECS boards, which is why I quickly learned my lesson not to trust that cheap garbage ever again. I've had similar problems with Intel brand mainboards, which seem to have quarky memory problems, especially with Rdram.
"If you build an Intel box, generally it Just Works."
This is such an amusing statement to me. It just reminds me of how, with sufficient marketing, you can cover up all the garbage being pushed out the door with little to no real effort. Take a look over here and let me know what you think about Intel 'just works'. How many times does Intel need to recall defective CPUs before you, and those like you, figure out that they're not the clean 'n pretty CPU maker their marketing droids have programmed you to believe they are?
What's next? Microsoft products as the pinnacle of security and stability?
Re:AMD have been better than Intel for some time..
on
AMD Back in the Black
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"Take, for example, the cooling required for AMD chips. Compare it to that of their pentium equivalents. When said cooling falls off (or stops working) - the pentiums don't burst into flames."
Wow, another TomBot, I see. Listen, reading dumbed-down consumer grade articles from a propaganda rag like Tom's makes you neither smart, nor informed. First of all, the problem was NOT with the AMD CPUs, but rather with the mainboard's non-spec design. Had the manufacturer designed the board to AMD's specifications, this would not have been a problem at all. The computer would have locked up, just like the Pentium 3 did. Why does it act like a Pentium 3? Because the K7 came out about the same time the P3 did. AMD's board specs called for specific thermal protection circutry on the board itself to help protect the board and the CPU. Arguably, AMD should have put all the thermal protection circutry inside the CPU itself, but the fact remains that Tom's took a board that was not built correctly, and used it to make an example out of AMD. In journalism, the technical term for doing this is, "bullshit".
Secondly, the chances of a heatsink falling off are virtually nil. Your statement is the equivelent of saying, "When the radiator falls off my Chevy, it still works semi ok - not like those Fords". Yeah, I sure do hate it when the radiator falls off my car. Happens what, 'bout once a week at least?
"their construction hasn't (in the past) been up to that of Intel.".. "That's the difference - higher manufacturing quality."... "They make cheap [quality] chips"
This just shows your complete lack of knowledge of the CPU industry's past. Or perhaps you're actually 10-second Tom from 50 First Dates, and you've forgotten all the many, many problems and recalls Intel has had over the years. That being said, I don't remember a single recall of AMD's Athlon chips. Let's see if I can remind you of Intel's shady past, shall we? Go read this from last year. I actually did my homework before opening my mouth - as opposed to reading some sellout's online rag (Tom's).
"Of course, there were the standard rumours going around before Prescott's launch that it was going to have a 64-bit layer, but that didn't happen. "
It's entirely possible that 64-bit extensions are within Prescott, but disabled. Intel did this with the P4's SMT for quite a while. Xeons had SMT, and it was enabled, while desktop P4s had SMT, and it was disabled. The 64-bit instructions might not yet be finished, to be finalized and debugged in a later stepping of Prescott, or they simply remain dormant, used only as a preliminary testing grounds for Intel, while they're waiting for viable engineering samples of Tejas. To my knowledge, no one has completely accounted for all the new transistors inside the Prescott chips. The speculative execution enhancements, larger cache, longer pipeline, etc all provide for some of the extra transistors, but certainly not all. There's something about these chips that Intel's not telling us, and 64-bit extensions is as good a guess as anything else.
"You mean once the OS and application developers have started using AMD's 64-bit extensions, Intel will come up with something to compete?"
No, he means that when x86-64bit support is there in software, Intel will have a CPU at the ready to support it. Since AMD's 64-bit extensions are the only game in town, and Microsoft has told Intel to go stuff a second set of x86-64bit extensions, Intel will be forced to either emulate AMD64 (a thoroughly bad idea), or include the instructions as the core of any 64-bit x86 CPU they release. Intel has already licensed the AMD64 technology, and thus will be forced to use its 'little brother's' technology to stay ahead of the curve. The interesting thing about that is that AMD can then choose the direction for future instruction sets. So long as the industry is working off AMD's instruction set, AMD calls all the shots.
Intel's big mistake was continuing to behave like a monopoly, and ignoring the breakout CPUs of its chief rival. Intel was banking on a 64-bit nosedive on x86, choosing to all but ignore the concept until it was too late. Intel knew that x86-64 would force Itanium into a small niche at the upper end, and would send 10+ years of R&D down the drain. Now, even HP is getting over its sunken Itanic - choosing to sell Opteron machines in order to remain conpetitive.
I can't believe anyone still reads that rag. Let me give you a hint: Tom's was bought and sold about 3 years ago. Since that time, it has descended to the ranks of online propaganda host for Intel and a number of other companies. Tricks with driver versions and other such foolery causes them to get benchmark results drastically different from those of almost every other hardware site. No one's bias is more apparent than Tom's himself. Many of the conclusions to their own articles are non-sequitur, and the articles themselves are often little more than a press release for the company doing the most advertising at the time.
The few folks left defending Tom's tend to either be Intelbots or those who like to feel they know something after having read a few dumbed-down for-public-consumption articles from the site. To quote them is to invite laughted upon yourself. You would do well to visit other sites instead for your hardware news. Anandtech, Ace's Hardware, and plenty of other sites provide good, in-depth and trustworthy analysis, as opposed to operating a propaganda machine designed to rake in cash.
"prodution yield is about 30%, it it expected to rise up to 60% after two years of production CPU's are just too complicated to be produced with yield of 98%-99%."
But I say that production yield is about 80%, and is expected to rise up to about 95% after three months. And best of all, I can make up numbers and formulas to make it look very official and correct. When I see Tom in a 'bunny suit' on AMD's FAB floor, I'll believe their 'analysis' of production yields. Until then, he's making up numbers and statstics, adding to the other 73.4% of statistics that are already made up.
The quote from the article, which you have parroted here, is as follows: "However, we doubt that AMD's yield will be any more than 30% - this is based on information from other chip manufacturers that use similar processes."
Now, let's put a little bit of brain power into dissecting this, shall we? First of all, the whole thing is rather vague - using words and phrases like 'we doubt' and 'similar processes'. Secondly, these so-called 'other chip manufacturers' aren't even named. Are they talking about IBM? Or are they talking about 'Phil's CPU FAB', which is run out of a basement in a townhouse in Idaho? Just what are 'similar processes'? Is there someone else making Opteron and Athlon64 CPUs? Someone really ought to tell AMD about that. Or perhaps they're referring to the 130nm 'process', which describes almost nothing about the chips themselves? Maybe they're even talking about the 'process' of getting from wafer to die. Well, so far as I, or anyone I've ever talked to knows, AMD didn't go out and re-write the book on die construction with the K8. The 'process' of getting from wafer to die for K8 isn't that much different from that of K7. I would assume then that Tom's is also asserting that Barton and Thoroughbred yields are also a mere 30%. Or perhaps there's an entirely new made-up number for their yields.
It's amazing how you can throw a few numbers onto a website and everyone will believe you. It's almost as amazing that throwing a few numbers into a post will yield +4 Informative.
I saw it, but I believe they made one mistake. During the episode, they mentioned that of all the applications for search warrants and such to the FISA court, only four have been rejected. This, to my knowledge, is not the case. In fact, only one has been rejected, and it was overturned on appeal. By the way, this was the only time in history that the FISA appeals court had even met to discuss a case. There had never before been a need.
"If I never go to the doctor or hospital, should I be forced to subsidize some hypochondriac who drops in 10 times a week? What about roadways? If I don't drive, should I be forced to pay for the roadways for all those people that do? The list of this type can go on forever."
Sure it can, but everything you've listed can be summed up as 'government programs for the betterment of society at large'. Can the same be said of P2P?
I've got another one for you: should I be forced to subsidize T-Mobile if I don't even own a cell phone? How about if every time I bought a screwdriver, I had to pay a levy on it to every citizen and company in the nation because it's possible that it could be used to break into someone's house or take apart consumer products to steal secret intellectual property? How about if every time I buy oil for my car, I have to pay a levy to every car manufacturer, because I might use the opportunity to learn about the engine and steal auto manufacturer IP?
"Utterly unacceptable abridgement of my rights of equal protection of the law"
Equal protection? Assuming you're in the US, you've fallen into the very trap some have been setting up for quite some time. For Christ sakes, a company/corporation/conglomerate/etc is NOT, I repeat NOT a person. It is NOT a human being. It does NOT have a 'right to live'. It is nothing more than a business venture - albeit a large one. The moment you allow large companies to have 'rights', especially rights that equal those of the average citizen, is the day you surrender yourself to them.
"Except that the trade-off is that it made P2P downloading legal in Canada. I don't mind paying the levy as long as I can legally download from P2P. Distributing, on the other hand, is illegal."
And do you believe it's right for those who never use P2P to be forced into subsidizing your downloading? Or should Billy be able to send those pictures to grandma without paying money to the music industry?
How about this - when you purchase a CD at full price, you're paying a substantial amount of money (relative to actual costs) for that CD. Now, the recording industry is not going to provide you with substitute media should something happen to your CD. Thus, it is up to you to make a backup copy of your CD to provide for such an occurrence. Now, should you have to pay (again) money to the recording industry, simply to ensure you have access to music for which you've already paid? If your answer is yes, then it should also be yes to the question of whether you should have to pay a small amount of money each time you want to listen to a song. After all, the entertainment industry is entitled to your (and everyone else's) money, right?
" Why does Canada have to imitate the U.S. in all things?"
Because we tend to do very well economically, despite our mammoth military. Thus, the Canadian government apparently believes that imitating most of the US's policies will magically grant it prosperity.
"It would be nice to have our government to take a stand against the oppressive RIAA and stop this litigation before it gets going too far."
Your government is turning Corporatist just as quickly as ours' (the US).
"The Canadian people do not want Big Brother to be accusing and convicting the 12 year old swappers like the U.S."
Neither do people here in the US, but until you see rioting in the streets, I doubt much will come of it. There are only so many things you can make into election issues before you start looking for the 'perfect candidate', who simply does not exist.
"they should make sure the person they're suing is the right one and they should be reasonable about the penalties. But they certainly don't have to just stand by and bend themselves over a barrel."
This is certainly reasonable, but it does not make for a sustainable business model. What would you have the recording industry do once it has alienated so many customers that it starts bleeding money profusely? Shall we subsidize the entertainment industry like we subsidize the airline industry? Or shall we let the old companies with failing business models die out and be replaced by newer, smarter companies willing to sell a product that consumers like, packaged how they want, and at a price they can afford?
"This is the country that already has some pretty high media levies based on the assumption that illegal copies are being made. It's currently $0.21 (data CD) and $0.77 (audio CD), but there are proposed increases, including an $840 levy on each 40GB iPod! ($0.021/MB)"
The beauty of this levy is that it doesn't matter whether you're backing up Quickbooks or sending grandma some jpegs of your trip to Disneyworld - you're paying the music industry money for each CD-r. That's one of the best laws the entertainment industry ever bought.
"Well, there we have it. ISP attitudes on copyright and privacy issues are completely tied to how much content the ISP's parent company owns. Road Runner customers beware, and Comcast customers better hope the Disney deal doesn't go through."
Just working our way towards the reality of the 'Alien' series of films. What The Corporation wants, The Corporation gets. Human beings are expendable - profits are not.
Videotron is in a unique position because its parent company, Quebecor, also sells music, Videotron says it is concerned about copyright protection and considers file sharing to be "theft." "
It may consider file sharing theft, robbery, murder, rape, or operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated if it likes - it doesn't make it so. The day that it does, the CIA's world factbook needs to change the type of government in Canada to "Corporatist".
"Uh. Did I miss something? Did MP3 ripping from CD get banned in the USA while we weren't looking?"
It's more of a grey area in the US, especially since the DMCA. While it has historically been viewed as 'fair use' to create a backup copy of a copyrighted work, circumvention of a copy protection scheme (no matter how pathetic and ineffective it may be) was made illegal by the DMCA. Also, many CDs ship with a EULA of some sort, which often prohibits creating even a single copy of the works contained within.
Essentially, it's something for which arguments could be made either way based on previous rulings and copyright laws, but it's something which would probably never actually be prosecuted.
" The real problem here is that there is no Constitutional right to privacy."
And thus, you, like so many before you, have fallen prey to the most diabolical usurption of power in the history of government - that the Constitution grants rights to the people. In fact, the Constitution specifically enumerates a small number of things with which the Federal government is tasked, and goes on to specifically state that anything not mentioned IS a right of the states, or of the people. The primary argument raised against support for the Bill of Rights was that an enumeration of specific rights could, at some point in time, be construed by a corrupt Federal government leadership to mean that the only rights citizens have are those granted to them under the Constitution.
The problem with this line of thinking is that once you begin to argue with the government over which rights you do and do not have, the argument inevitably shifts to which rights the government chooses to grant you. The instant this becomes the topic for debate, you've already lost. A government that grants rights to its citizens is a government that can revoke those rights as soon as they become inconvenient or run counter to the particular goals at hand. Thus, we have government agents who may legally break into a citizen's home, confiscate their property, bug their computers and telephones, and may do so with a secret warrant obtained under secret proceedings where the burden of 'proof' is reduced to an agent's vague and generic answers to questions by a panel of judges whose hands are virtually tied into granting every application.
Let there be no mistake - the FISA court is nothing more than a single degree of seperation between the FBI and the KGB. It is a rubber stamp court whose sole purpose is to lend a sliver of credibility to something which would otherwise provoke riots in the streets.
I don't need an amendment to tell me which rights I have - I need an amendment to punish those who violate my rights with our most severe penalties. I want to see an amendment that provides for life in prison for members of congress who vote up legislation that blatantly violates the God-given/creator-granted/natural-born rights of the citizens of this country. Seeing as some see fit to ignore the highest laws of our land, I think it's time we spelled out specific and severe criminal punishments for those who just can't seem to keep their hands off the rights of the people. While it might be inconvenient to imprison every member of congress who voted up the PATRIOT ACT, it would certainly set the tone for further debate. While we're at it, I think we need a nice, long-winded amendment discussing just which things the Federal government can and cannot stick its nose into. Once we've cleared out all the crap that's accumulated over the past 100 years or so, (things like the 'War on Drugs', Corporate welfare, most of current welfare other such programs), I think we'll find that paying down the national debt is rather simple. Once that's payed down, we can rescind the Federal income tax - an unconstitutional 'head tax' that was passed under the pretext that it was a temporary emergency measure. Your state taxes will go up substantially, but will be nowhere near what they are now, when combined with Federal taxes.
Wiping out 60 - 70% of the Federal government's current tasks, jobs, budget, and powers would bring this country to a century of unparalleled prosperity and freedom. The Federal tyranny began with Lincoln's unconstitutional war against the break-away southern states, and continues to grow in size and power even today. At this point, the titanic beast bleeds money, spits fire, and does little to no good for the American people. Let's give most of this money to the states and get people in state governments who are responsible enough to use it well.
"That means it answers to the President and Congress."
Who answers to us (the people/voters/whatever). A programmer may have his mid-management boss, but when the CEO comes down and tells him to get a cup of coffee, his ass better respond with, "cream or sugar?" or expect to be out in the street.
"Other than that, NASA does not and should not listen to you."
Not to me, but to the vast, vast majority of the American public. If they can come out and get every shuttle-ready astronaut to say publicly that they're not up to the job, or that they're unwilling to do the mission because of safety concerns, then I'll let it be. No one should be put into a life-threatening situation against their will as a matter of policy. That being said, if we have astronauts ready to go and the eggheads tell us it's safe, then what we're looking at is a simple middle-management policy decision - a bad one. NASA doesn't answer to me alone, but you bet your sweet bippy they answer to the American people.
"Don't expect NASA to make policy decisions about space. They do the job that elected officials tell them to do."
That's odd, did you see anywhere that someone instructed NASA to not save the Hubble telescope? What I've seen and read is that some idiot managers made a decision to let the thing fall into the ocean - nay - to force it to fall into the ocean at great expense and then hid behind safety concerns. Now that this ridiculous assessment has been debunked by the egghead community at NASA, they've responded with a simple 'no'. NASA even admitted that they 'reconsidered' ditching the Hubble and looked at possible plans to save it. Gee, does that sound like they're not able to make decisions? Or rather, does it perhaps sound like they made the decision?
The President has signed no public Executive Order forcing NASA to ditch the Hubble.
The Congress has passed no law, and the President has signed no law that forces NASA to ditch the Hubble.
NASA (or rather managerial elements therein) decided to ditch the Hubble.
You're a publicly-funded, publicly-mandated government agency. If the public tells you to go to the moon, you go to the moon. If the public tells you to land on the sun, you'd best figure out some damn good materials that'll hold up.
If the public tells you to save a telescope that's told us more about the universe in the few years it's been active than we've learned in the previous 2,000 years, you save the damn thing. When you have 300,000,000 bosses, telling them all 'no' is not a good plan. The eggheads are saying safety isn't an issue, and the public is saying money isn't an issue. Hubble's budgetary requirements are infintesimal compared to its value to mankind and the three hundred million people who sign your damn paychecks.
Don't reconsider your decision, change it. Otherwise, you'd best get started calculating the trajectory for optimal burger flipping; got it?
I wouldn't worry too much about "wasting" your younger years in a quest for purity. Should you decide to remove yourself from the situation you're now in, you would have the opportunity to see both sides of the fence, as it were. You've gone the route of purity, and you can go the route of indulgence. Perhaps you'll have better luck behind door number two. Don't take my language or phrasing to mean that I think it's easy for you to walk away from this. I completely understand that reality, for you, is far from being at ease with either decision, and I most certainly do not envy you.
I've had plenty of relationships, but I fell absolutely head-over-heels in love with someone years ago. When we were together, the rest of the universe was nothing more than a passing illusion, and she was the only thing that was real - the only thing that mattered. So long as I had her, there was nothing in the world that could be anything other than just 'right'. When she broke things off (for reasons I won't get into, but suffice it to say it was beyond either of our control), I was more crushed that I had ever imagined possible. I went down hard, and it literally took months before I could even feel somewhat 'normal'. It took me two years before I could look at another woman in 'that way'; I simply had no interest. But what I can tell you is that no matter what you're going through, and no matter what you're feeling right now, it all fades with time. As hurt, betrayed, and crushed as you no doubt feel about this whole thing, it can and does settle - even if it never does quite heal. What I found out was that while she was in my life, I couldn't possibly let her go in my mind or my heart. The fact that she moved across the country was probably the most healing thing that could have come out of the breakup. What I'm trying to say is that if you do decide to move on with your life without your wife, putting some distance between you two would probably be very beneficial for you.
As for purity being 'worth it', I would have to say that it depends entirely on the individual. I know of many couples who regularly have sex with others (they're called 'swingers'), and who have very happy, satisfying relationships. I think that the secret to being happy is to take nothing more serious than is absolutely necessary. Some of the most serious people out there were the Puritans. As was once remarked, Puritanism is the overwhelming fear that someone, somewhere will be happy. If you're stuck in this marriage with all these bad feelings about the whole thing and no end in sight, I think it's just about impossible to not take the whole thing far too seriously. That's just downright unhealthy for you. Aside from that, as I said before, you most certainly don't deserve to be punished for her mistakes and her problems. The only word I can think of to describe what it must be like having to see her and interact civily with her every day, knowing what she's done to you and to your relationship, is 'punishment'. The sooner you decide to stop accepting that punishment, the sooner you'll be able to get on with whatever it is you do.
In any event, good luck with that whole thing. For what it's worth, I agree with your post a few levels up suggesting a move to NYC for you. Go there, meet interesting people - have sex with them. Just remember that there are plenty of younger women who really get off on that whole older, more mature boyfriend thing. Instead of reading my silly posts, you ought to be locked in the arms of a 22 year old hunny who's asking if you'd like a three-way with her blonde roomate.;)
Slashdot Mirror
" I doubt it's true. That bastard Jobs still owes me $5 from high school."
You should send him a registered letter informing him of the debt, which has been accruing interest at prime, up until today. From this day forward, you should inform him, the aforementioned debt shall accrue interest at prime^(prime^prime) per quarter, assessed hourly. That should get him on the ball for repaying the debt, or at least get him working on lowering the prime interest rate for the rest of us. Figure by the time the letter reachs him, it'll probably have already accrued more interest than the national debt of the entire US Federal government.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this [points to presentation board] is a Penguin. It lives in very cold places and swims in near freezing waters. That does not make sense. Why would any animal live in such cold places, when clearly, a nice tropical beach would be a much nicer place to live?! It does not make sense! What does this have to do with copyright infringement? NOTHING! It does not make sense! A penguin lives in cold places, and it does NOT make sense. None of this makes any sense. If a penguin does not need mits, you must ACQUIT!
"While denying the state is playing 'Big Brother', the Revenue Department Commissioner, Alan LeBovidge predicted the state may eventually be able to track so much financial information on individuals that the state could complete the citizens' returns for them."
Automated government wallet-raping, coming soon to a tax office near YOU!.
[Avg Citizen] "Please just tell me how money I have to pay to not be thrown in jail."
"Don't know about the heatsink falling but I have a computer that works 24/7 and exactly every year I need to change the heatsink fan."
Are you using the stock cooling? I've been running my AthlonXP 1700+ 24/7 since the 1700+ was about the fastest chip available, and I've never had to change out the stock cooler. I can certainly see where some third party coolers could fail, and I have seen where AMD used pretty cheap quality HSFs on some of the Durons around the time of the 1.1s. Other than that, I've always been pretty happy with the quality of the stock HSFs coming out of AMD. My only complaint for the Athlon coolers is that they occassionally pack some fairly loud fans with the higher end models.
"And there's also bad installation, like a space between the heatsink an the processor."
The installation complaints that many have raised are addressed in the new Athlon64 CPUs. The exposed die has been covered with a heat spreader (much like the P4s), and the HSF (at least for the AthlonFX, not sure about the others) is also a bit like the P4 stock HSF.
What many people don't really realize or think about is that the Athlons were not designed to compete against the Pentium 4s. If you remember way back when, the Pentium IIIs were basically brand new when the Athlon was introduced. All the sockets, HSF designs, chip packaging designs were done basically 5 years ago. Changing all of those things requires nothing less than a complete break of backward compatibility with older boards. While Intel has always been more than happy to do this (socket 423 was around for what, a year?), AMD has always worked hard to make certain that existing designs would last as long as possible. Socket 7 is a perfect example of this. While Intel was content to let socket 7 die with the 233MHz Pentium MMX, AMD continued with socket 7 (re-labled 'Super' Socket 7) all the way into the ~450MHz area. Thus, board makers didn't have to make huge changes to their manufacturing, nor toss out their older stock to continue supplies for AMD CPUs. This is why so many Super socket 7 boards ended up being used. AMD made one major split with the Athlon CPUs, which occurred when they went from Slot A to Socket A, about the same time the Thunderbird core was introduced. This was a rough change for AMD, and something its longtime customers weren't used to at all. That being said, it was both necessary and smart for them to dump the good-on-paper slot-style CPUs. What is truly impressive is that the Athlon family hasn't changed all that much in terms of board design from the 700MHz CPU that was competing against the PIII, to the AthlonXP 3200+ that now competes with the P4s. K7 has taken on two families of Intel's CPUs, and that's impressive by anyone's standards.
"It stays idle most of the time, so that's not a big thing (it don't heat very much), but it would be a big problem if it was a very used server."
If it were a very used server, it would be using a Xeon or an Opteron. Using anything else for a server merely invites trouble. If it's a low-end deal, I'd recommend either the AthlonMP, or the PIII Tualatin. Both are relatively inexpensive, and both are pretty reliable.
"I still go there for the forums, as there are a few people there who have good insight."
I think you'd enjoy the forums at Ace's a lot more. The folks tend to be more intelligent, less 'fanboyish', and come out with insights you won't find anywhere else.
"Once you go thru the 'fine print', you find out that the chipset won't work with 3x DDR400 module at full speed. "
Asus lists exactly what they've tested each board with right on their site. For the low-end offerings, this generally isn't an issue at all. For higher end offerings, simply following the memory guide listed on Asus's page for the particular board yields zero problems, in my experience. The only boards I've had odd timing issues with were the nForce 2 boards. Those absolutely are picky as hell about memory.
By the way, just how much pinching are your penny pinching customers doing that they don't want to pay for a ~$60 board? (Asus A7V8X-MX) Heh.
I agree that it would be nice if AMD got into making their own chipsets and boards, but I also think it would put them back in the red - at least for a while. For the time being, I'm content to simply do a little bit of homework ahead of time to save both time and money getting the best performance per dollar.
"I'm assuming you're referring to AMD's "Performance Rating." If you are, you might be interested to know that AMD compares their CPUs to a 1Ghz Duron, and NOT any sort of intel chip."
I'm still not quite sure where this rumour started, but as I recall, AMD stated specifically that the rating system was relative to Thunderbird core Athlon performance, as it was the last Athlon produced prior to the introduction of the model number system. Thus, an AthlonXP 2600+ should perform as well or better, on average, than a Thunderbird core Athlon running at 2.6GHz.
This whole thing about it being relative to the Durons appears to have cropped up some time in the past 6 months or so. I suppose it's possible it could be correct, but I've never seen an AMD whitepaper stating as much. If you, or someone else, could point me in the direction of an AMD page to clear this up for good, it would be appreciated.
"If you build an AMD AthlonXP box, it generally probably works, if you are lucky and you are using just the right brand of memory."
Quit using ECS and no-name memory and you won't have problems. I've been building AMD systems almost exclusively for about 3 years now, and I've had about the same number of AMD and Intel-based computers come back, nearly all for mainboard problems. Trying everything from ECS (crap) to FIC (almost as bad) to MSI, Gigabyte, and finally, Asus, I pretty much have run the gambit on different combinations. I've been using Asus boards exclusively for about a year now, and I haven't had a single one come back for any hardware or driver related problems. It doesn't take expensive memory or an expensive board to make it work - just decent quality stuff. The Asus A7V8X-MX is a good, inexpensive, entry-level board, which works very well with the Kingston value RAM. There's nothing about 'luck', merely doing a little bit of research ahead of time. I had tons and tons of problems with Intel CPUs on ECS boards, which is why I quickly learned my lesson not to trust that cheap garbage ever again. I've had similar problems with Intel brand mainboards, which seem to have quarky memory problems, especially with Rdram.
"If you build an Intel box, generally it Just Works."
This is such an amusing statement to me. It just reminds me of how, with sufficient marketing, you can cover up all the garbage being pushed out the door with little to no real effort. Take a look over here and let me know what you think about Intel 'just works'. How many times does Intel need to recall defective CPUs before you, and those like you, figure out that they're not the clean 'n pretty CPU maker their marketing droids have programmed you to believe they are?
What's next? Microsoft products as the pinnacle of security and stability?
"Take, for example, the cooling required for AMD chips. Compare it to that of their pentium equivalents. When said cooling falls off (or stops working) - the pentiums don't burst into flames."
.. "That's the difference - higher manufacturing quality." ... "They make cheap [quality] chips"
Wow, another TomBot, I see. Listen, reading dumbed-down consumer grade articles from a propaganda rag like Tom's makes you neither smart, nor informed. First of all, the problem was NOT with the AMD CPUs, but rather with the mainboard's non-spec design. Had the manufacturer designed the board to AMD's specifications, this would not have been a problem at all. The computer would have locked up, just like the Pentium 3 did. Why does it act like a Pentium 3? Because the K7 came out about the same time the P3 did. AMD's board specs called for specific thermal protection circutry on the board itself to help protect the board and the CPU. Arguably, AMD should have put all the thermal protection circutry inside the CPU itself, but the fact remains that Tom's took a board that was not built correctly, and used it to make an example out of AMD. In journalism, the technical term for doing this is, "bullshit".
Secondly, the chances of a heatsink falling off are virtually nil. Your statement is the equivelent of saying, "When the radiator falls off my Chevy, it still works semi ok - not like those Fords". Yeah, I sure do hate it when the radiator falls off my car. Happens what, 'bout once a week at least?
"their construction hasn't (in the past) been up to that of Intel."
This just shows your complete lack of knowledge of the CPU industry's past. Or perhaps you're actually 10-second Tom from 50 First Dates, and you've forgotten all the many, many problems and recalls Intel has had over the years. That being said, I don't remember a single recall of AMD's Athlon chips. Let's see if I can remind you of Intel's shady past, shall we? Go read this from last year. I actually did my homework before opening my mouth - as opposed to reading some sellout's online rag (Tom's).
"Of course, there were the standard rumours going around before Prescott's launch that it was going to have a 64-bit layer, but that didn't happen. "
It's entirely possible that 64-bit extensions are within Prescott, but disabled. Intel did this with the P4's SMT for quite a while. Xeons had SMT, and it was enabled, while desktop P4s had SMT, and it was disabled. The 64-bit instructions might not yet be finished, to be finalized and debugged in a later stepping of Prescott, or they simply remain dormant, used only as a preliminary testing grounds for Intel, while they're waiting for viable engineering samples of Tejas. To my knowledge, no one has completely accounted for all the new transistors inside the Prescott chips. The speculative execution enhancements, larger cache, longer pipeline, etc all provide for some of the extra transistors, but certainly not all. There's something about these chips that Intel's not telling us, and 64-bit extensions is as good a guess as anything else.
"You mean once the OS and application developers have started using AMD's 64-bit extensions, Intel will come up with something to compete?"
No, he means that when x86-64bit support is there in software, Intel will have a CPU at the ready to support it. Since AMD's 64-bit extensions are the only game in town, and Microsoft has told Intel to go stuff a second set of x86-64bit extensions, Intel will be forced to either emulate AMD64 (a thoroughly bad idea), or include the instructions as the core of any 64-bit x86 CPU they release. Intel has already licensed the AMD64 technology, and thus will be forced to use its 'little brother's' technology to stay ahead of the curve. The interesting thing about that is that AMD can then choose the direction for future instruction sets. So long as the industry is working off AMD's instruction set, AMD calls all the shots.
Intel's big mistake was continuing to behave like a monopoly, and ignoring the breakout CPUs of its chief rival. Intel was banking on a 64-bit nosedive on x86, choosing to all but ignore the concept until it was too late. Intel knew that x86-64 would force Itanium into a small niche at the upper end, and would send 10+ years of R&D down the drain. Now, even HP is getting over its sunken Itanic - choosing to sell Opteron machines in order to remain conpetitive.
"According to this article in Toms hardware,"
I can't believe anyone still reads that rag. Let me give you a hint: Tom's was bought and sold about 3 years ago. Since that time, it has descended to the ranks of online propaganda host for Intel and a number of other companies. Tricks with driver versions and other such foolery causes them to get benchmark results drastically different from those of almost every other hardware site. No one's bias is more apparent than Tom's himself. Many of the conclusions to their own articles are non-sequitur, and the articles themselves are often little more than a press release for the company doing the most advertising at the time.
The few folks left defending Tom's tend to either be Intelbots or those who like to feel they know something after having read a few dumbed-down for-public-consumption articles from the site. To quote them is to invite laughted upon yourself. You would do well to visit other sites instead for your hardware news. Anandtech, Ace's Hardware, and plenty of other sites provide good, in-depth and trustworthy analysis, as opposed to operating a propaganda machine designed to rake in cash.
"prodution yield is about 30%, it it expected to rise up to 60% after two years of production CPU's are just too complicated to be produced with yield of 98%-99%."
But I say that production yield is about 80%, and is expected to rise up to about 95% after three months. And best of all, I can make up numbers and formulas to make it look very official and correct. When I see Tom in a 'bunny suit' on AMD's FAB floor, I'll believe their 'analysis' of production yields. Until then, he's making up numbers and statstics, adding to the other 73.4% of statistics that are already made up.
The quote from the article, which you have parroted here, is as follows: "However, we doubt that AMD's yield will be any more than 30% - this is based on information from other chip manufacturers that use similar processes."
Now, let's put a little bit of brain power into dissecting this, shall we? First of all, the whole thing is rather vague - using words and phrases like 'we doubt' and 'similar processes'. Secondly, these so-called 'other chip manufacturers' aren't even named. Are they talking about IBM? Or are they talking about 'Phil's CPU FAB', which is run out of a basement in a townhouse in Idaho? Just what are 'similar processes'? Is there someone else making Opteron and Athlon64 CPUs? Someone really ought to tell AMD about that. Or perhaps they're referring to the 130nm 'process', which describes almost nothing about the chips themselves? Maybe they're even talking about the 'process' of getting from wafer to die. Well, so far as I, or anyone I've ever talked to knows, AMD didn't go out and re-write the book on die construction with the K8. The 'process' of getting from wafer to die for K8 isn't that much different from that of K7. I would assume then that Tom's is also asserting that Barton and Thoroughbred yields are also a mere 30%. Or perhaps there's an entirely new made-up number for their yields.
It's amazing how you can throw a few numbers onto a website and everyone will believe you. It's almost as amazing that throwing a few numbers into a post will yield +4 Informative.
I saw it, but I believe they made one mistake. During the episode, they mentioned that of all the applications for search warrants and such to the FISA court, only four have been rejected. This, to my knowledge, is not the case. In fact, only one has been rejected, and it was overturned on appeal. By the way, this was the only time in history that the FISA appeals court had even met to discuss a case. There had never before been a need.
Rubber-stamp court indeed.
"If I never go to the doctor or hospital, should I be forced to subsidize some hypochondriac who drops in 10 times a week? What about roadways? If I don't drive, should I be forced to pay for the roadways for all those people that do? The list of this type can go on forever."
Sure it can, but everything you've listed can be summed up as 'government programs for the betterment of society at large'. Can the same be said of P2P?
I've got another one for you: should I be forced to subsidize T-Mobile if I don't even own a cell phone? How about if every time I bought a screwdriver, I had to pay a levy on it to every citizen and company in the nation because it's possible that it could be used to break into someone's house or take apart consumer products to steal secret intellectual property? How about if every time I buy oil for my car, I have to pay a levy to every car manufacturer, because I might use the opportunity to learn about the engine and steal auto manufacturer IP?
"Utterly unacceptable abridgement of my rights of equal protection of the law"
Equal protection? Assuming you're in the US, you've fallen into the very trap some have been setting up for quite some time. For Christ sakes, a company/corporation/conglomerate/etc is NOT, I repeat NOT a person. It is NOT a human being. It does NOT have a 'right to live'. It is nothing more than a business venture - albeit a large one. The moment you allow large companies to have 'rights', especially rights that equal those of the average citizen, is the day you surrender yourself to them.
"Except that the trade-off is that it made P2P downloading legal in Canada. I don't mind paying the levy as long as I can legally download from P2P. Distributing, on the other hand, is illegal."
And do you believe it's right for those who never use P2P to be forced into subsidizing your downloading? Or should Billy be able to send those pictures to grandma without paying money to the music industry?
How about this - when you purchase a CD at full price, you're paying a substantial amount of money (relative to actual costs) for that CD. Now, the recording industry is not going to provide you with substitute media should something happen to your CD. Thus, it is up to you to make a backup copy of your CD to provide for such an occurrence. Now, should you have to pay (again) money to the recording industry, simply to ensure you have access to music for which you've already paid? If your answer is yes, then it should also be yes to the question of whether you should have to pay a small amount of money each time you want to listen to a song. After all, the entertainment industry is entitled to your (and everyone else's) money, right?
" Why does Canada have to imitate the U.S. in all things?"
Because we tend to do very well economically, despite our mammoth military. Thus, the Canadian government apparently believes that imitating most of the US's policies will magically grant it prosperity.
"It would be nice to have our government to take a stand against the oppressive RIAA and stop this litigation before it gets going too far."
Your government is turning Corporatist just as quickly as ours' (the US).
"The Canadian people do not want Big Brother to be accusing and convicting the 12 year old swappers like the U.S."
Neither do people here in the US, but until you see rioting in the streets, I doubt much will come of it. There are only so many things you can make into election issues before you start looking for the 'perfect candidate', who simply does not exist.
"they should make sure the person they're suing is the right one and they should be reasonable about the penalties. But they certainly don't have to just stand by and bend themselves over a barrel."
This is certainly reasonable, but it does not make for a sustainable business model. What would you have the recording industry do once it has alienated so many customers that it starts bleeding money profusely? Shall we subsidize the entertainment industry like we subsidize the airline industry? Or shall we let the old companies with failing business models die out and be replaced by newer, smarter companies willing to sell a product that consumers like, packaged how they want, and at a price they can afford?
"This is the country that already has some pretty high media levies based on the assumption that illegal copies are being made. It's currently $0.21 (data CD) and $0.77 (audio CD), but there are proposed increases, including an $840 levy on each 40GB iPod! ($0.021/MB)"
The beauty of this levy is that it doesn't matter whether you're backing up Quickbooks or sending grandma some jpegs of your trip to Disneyworld - you're paying the music industry money for each CD-r. That's one of the best laws the entertainment industry ever bought.
"Well, there we have it. ISP attitudes on copyright and privacy issues are completely tied to how much content the ISP's parent company owns. Road Runner customers beware, and Comcast customers better hope the Disney deal doesn't go through."
Just working our way towards the reality of the 'Alien' series of films. What The Corporation wants, The Corporation gets. Human beings are expendable - profits are not.
" correction : we want to keep on making money...
Videotron is in a unique position because its parent company, Quebecor, also sells music, Videotron says it is concerned about copyright protection and considers file sharing to be "theft." "
It may consider file sharing theft, robbery, murder, rape, or operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated if it likes - it doesn't make it so. The day that it does, the CIA's world factbook needs to change the type of government in Canada to "Corporatist".
"Uh. Did I miss something? Did MP3 ripping from CD get banned in the USA while we weren't looking?"
It's more of a grey area in the US, especially since the DMCA. While it has historically been viewed as 'fair use' to create a backup copy of a copyrighted work, circumvention of a copy protection scheme (no matter how pathetic and ineffective it may be) was made illegal by the DMCA. Also, many CDs ship with a EULA of some sort, which often prohibits creating even a single copy of the works contained within.
Essentially, it's something for which arguments could be made either way based on previous rulings and copyright laws, but it's something which would probably never actually be prosecuted.
" The real problem here is that there is no Constitutional right to privacy."
And thus, you, like so many before you, have fallen prey to the most diabolical usurption of power in the history of government - that the Constitution grants rights to the people. In fact, the Constitution specifically enumerates a small number of things with which the Federal government is tasked, and goes on to specifically state that anything not mentioned IS a right of the states, or of the people. The primary argument raised against support for the Bill of Rights was that an enumeration of specific rights could, at some point in time, be construed by a corrupt Federal government leadership to mean that the only rights citizens have are those granted to them under the Constitution.
The problem with this line of thinking is that once you begin to argue with the government over which rights you do and do not have, the argument inevitably shifts to which rights the government chooses to grant you. The instant this becomes the topic for debate, you've already lost. A government that grants rights to its citizens is a government that can revoke those rights as soon as they become inconvenient or run counter to the particular goals at hand. Thus, we have government agents who may legally break into a citizen's home, confiscate their property, bug their computers and telephones, and may do so with a secret warrant obtained under secret proceedings where the burden of 'proof' is reduced to an agent's vague and generic answers to questions by a panel of judges whose hands are virtually tied into granting every application.
Let there be no mistake - the FISA court is nothing more than a single degree of seperation between the FBI and the KGB. It is a rubber stamp court whose sole purpose is to lend a sliver of credibility to something which would otherwise provoke riots in the streets.
I don't need an amendment to tell me which rights I have - I need an amendment to punish those who violate my rights with our most severe penalties. I want to see an amendment that provides for life in prison for members of congress who vote up legislation that blatantly violates the God-given/creator-granted/natural-born rights of the citizens of this country. Seeing as some see fit to ignore the highest laws of our land, I think it's time we spelled out specific and severe criminal punishments for those who just can't seem to keep their hands off the rights of the people. While it might be inconvenient to imprison every member of congress who voted up the PATRIOT ACT, it would certainly set the tone for further debate. While we're at it, I think we need a nice, long-winded amendment discussing just which things the Federal government can and cannot stick its nose into. Once we've cleared out all the crap that's accumulated over the past 100 years or so, (things like the 'War on Drugs', Corporate welfare, most of current welfare other such programs), I think we'll find that paying down the national debt is rather simple. Once that's payed down, we can rescind the Federal income tax - an unconstitutional 'head tax' that was passed under the pretext that it was a temporary emergency measure. Your state taxes will go up substantially, but will be nowhere near what they are now, when combined with Federal taxes.
Wiping out 60 - 70% of the Federal government's current tasks, jobs, budget, and powers would bring this country to a century of unparalleled prosperity and freedom. The Federal tyranny began with Lincoln's unconstitutional war against the break-away southern states, and continues to grow in size and power even today. At this point, the titanic beast bleeds money, spits fire, and does little to no good for the American people. Let's give most of this money to the states and get people in state governments who are responsible enough to use it well.
Who answers to us (the people/voters/whatever). A programmer may have his mid-management boss, but when the CEO comes down and tells him to get a cup of coffee, his ass better respond with, "cream or sugar?" or expect to be out in the street.
"Other than that, NASA does not and should not listen to you."
Not to me, but to the vast, vast majority of the American public. If they can come out and get every shuttle-ready astronaut to say publicly that they're not up to the job, or that they're unwilling to do the mission because of safety concerns, then I'll let it be. No one should be put into a life-threatening situation against their will as a matter of policy. That being said, if we have astronauts ready to go and the eggheads tell us it's safe, then what we're looking at is a simple middle-management policy decision - a bad one. NASA doesn't answer to me alone, but you bet your sweet bippy they answer to the American people.
"Don't expect NASA to make policy decisions about space. They do the job that elected officials tell them to do."
That's odd, did you see anywhere that someone instructed NASA to not save the Hubble telescope? What I've seen and read is that some idiot managers made a decision to let the thing fall into the ocean - nay - to force it to fall into the ocean at great expense and then hid behind safety concerns. Now that this ridiculous assessment has been debunked by the egghead community at NASA, they've responded with a simple 'no'. NASA even admitted that they 'reconsidered' ditching the Hubble and looked at possible plans to save it. Gee, does that sound like they're not able to make decisions? Or rather, does it perhaps sound like they made the decision?
The President has signed no public Executive Order forcing NASA to ditch the Hubble.
The Congress has passed no law, and the President has signed no law that forces NASA to ditch the Hubble.
NASA (or rather managerial elements therein) decided to ditch the Hubble.
Next question.
Earth to NASA - come in NASA...
You're a publicly-funded, publicly-mandated government agency. If the public tells you to go to the moon, you go to the moon. If the public tells you to land on the sun, you'd best figure out some damn good materials that'll hold up.
If the public tells you to save a telescope that's told us more about the universe in the few years it's been active than we've learned in the previous 2,000 years, you save the damn thing. When you have 300,000,000 bosses, telling them all 'no' is not a good plan. The eggheads are saying safety isn't an issue, and the public is saying money isn't an issue. Hubble's budgetary requirements are infintesimal compared to its value to mankind and the three hundred million people who sign your damn paychecks.
Don't reconsider your decision, change it. Otherwise, you'd best get started calculating the trajectory for optimal burger flipping; got it?
I wouldn't worry too much about "wasting" your younger years in a quest for purity. Should you decide to remove yourself from the situation you're now in, you would have the opportunity to see both sides of the fence, as it were. You've gone the route of purity, and you can go the route of indulgence. Perhaps you'll have better luck behind door number two. Don't take my language or phrasing to mean that I think it's easy for you to walk away from this. I completely understand that reality, for you, is far from being at ease with either decision, and I most certainly do not envy you.
;)
I've had plenty of relationships, but I fell absolutely head-over-heels in love with someone years ago. When we were together, the rest of the universe was nothing more than a passing illusion, and she was the only thing that was real - the only thing that mattered. So long as I had her, there was nothing in the world that could be anything other than just 'right'. When she broke things off (for reasons I won't get into, but suffice it to say it was beyond either of our control), I was more crushed that I had ever imagined possible. I went down hard, and it literally took months before I could even feel somewhat 'normal'. It took me two years before I could look at another woman in 'that way'; I simply had no interest. But what I can tell you is that no matter what you're going through, and no matter what you're feeling right now, it all fades with time. As hurt, betrayed, and crushed as you no doubt feel about this whole thing, it can and does settle - even if it never does quite heal. What I found out was that while she was in my life, I couldn't possibly let her go in my mind or my heart. The fact that she moved across the country was probably the most healing thing that could have come out of the breakup. What I'm trying to say is that if you do decide to move on with your life without your wife, putting some distance between you two would probably be very beneficial for you.
As for purity being 'worth it', I would have to say that it depends entirely on the individual. I know of many couples who regularly have sex with others (they're called 'swingers'), and who have very happy, satisfying relationships. I think that the secret to being happy is to take nothing more serious than is absolutely necessary. Some of the most serious people out there were the Puritans. As was once remarked, Puritanism is the overwhelming fear that someone, somewhere will be happy. If you're stuck in this marriage with all these bad feelings about the whole thing and no end in sight, I think it's just about impossible to not take the whole thing far too seriously. That's just downright unhealthy for you. Aside from that, as I said before, you most certainly don't deserve to be punished for her mistakes and her problems. The only word I can think of to describe what it must be like having to see her and interact civily with her every day, knowing what she's done to you and to your relationship, is 'punishment'. The sooner you decide to stop accepting that punishment, the sooner you'll be able to get on with whatever it is you do.
In any event, good luck with that whole thing. For what it's worth, I agree with your post a few levels up suggesting a move to NYC for you. Go there, meet interesting people - have sex with them. Just remember that there are plenty of younger women who really get off on that whole older, more mature boyfriend thing. Instead of reading my silly posts, you ought to be locked in the arms of a 22 year old hunny who's asking if you'd like a three-way with her blonde roomate.