I build PCs on the side for a little extra spending cash. I will not sell a PC with windows, even if a client wants it. I only sell machines either naked or with some flavor of Linux on them. If a client wants windows, I sell them the machine naked and tell them to go to CompUSA and buy their own copy of Windows and install it themselves.
I will take no part in the purchase or sale of Windows.
and hardly ever drive... not because of this mythical global warming, but because GAS IS FREAKIN $3/GAL!
I've read MANY of the papers by Overpeck and his ilk and not a single one of them make an assertive statement that global warming is because of our fossil fuel habits - not one. They all say it is "likely" or "very possible" or whatever, but they don't say IT IS.
Regardless of WHY the Earth is getting warmer, it is still getting warmer. It has been warmer than this in the past, and without the help of fossil fuel usage.
This is not to say that I am against phasing out fossil fuels in favor of carbon-cycle fuels, nothing could be better. But, the alarmist approach the "it's our fault" crowd takes simply removes any credibility, IMHO.
But I have no idea what a computer, an O/S, linux, apache, a webserver, the intarweb, or any of those things are!!! I'm calling the FBI!! AAYYYYIIIIEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
Get ready for a profound decrease in quality, Indian tech support (if any tech support at all), and all kinds of other headaches.
I work in a large office and we use Dell for all of our PCs, and let me say that these are the WORST PCs I have ever used. The flat panels are the shittiest I've ever seen. If you just put up a gray screen, there is this wash of crap in all of them - looks like black clouds against a gray background - ALL of them are like that. We have HUNDREDS.
Their LCD panels also suffer from Burn-In, which is not supposed to happen on LCD panels. Thank GOD I didn't buy that Dell flat panel TV they were pushing at the mall kiosk the other week.
especially when you start reaching the write-cycle life of the FLASH. Hopefully it at least reallocates data and dynamically shrinks the size of the disk in a way that Operating Systems can understand. Most O/Ses expect the partition table to be constant, but if you start running out of cells and the disk starts shrinking, the partition will also have to shrink with it and the OS will need to be aware of that fact.
1) Stop associating IT with Development Engineering. The two are completely different fields. Almost every post here immediately goes into a diatribe about offshoring of programmers and developers.
2) Make this actually not BE a myth, because it most certainly is.
... and if we modulate the subspace fields around the magnetodynamic plasma conduits while simultaneously emitting bursts of tachyon particles, we can spin the double-helix around and make it do a little dance...
It's a matter of national security, plain and simple. We can't go around telling everyone how we do the things we do. If the UK is that suspicious of us, and thinks that we would interfere with their own defense like that, then I am sure they are welcome to defend their damned selves with the *cough* French hardware...
There's one thing the US undisputedly does better than anyone else, and that is to design and build effective weapons. There's a reason we can be the most powerful nation on the planet with a standing army of only about a million people, and that reason is because we are the most effective integrators of technology in warfare.
Let's take a 300GB System that needs to be backed up:
900GB at $0.20/gb = $180.00 transfer fee Monthly at $0.15/gb = $135.00/month recurring charge Weekly incremental of 30GB = $6.00/wk = $24/mo recurring charge
So $180.00 + $159/month = $2088 just for the first year, plus whatever you have to pay your ISP for abusive bandwidth charges.
Let's look at it from another perspective:
4 WD3200SD 320GB Raid-Edition SATA Drives: About $600 1 4-Port SATA Raid Card: About $250 Expected Lifetime: 5 years
So, buying a whole other raid-5 array to mirror your 900GB of stuff costs nearly $10K to store for 5 years on Amazon versus $850 to store locally. Hell, even if you were paranoid and replaced one of the hard disks every 3 months, you'd still be at less than half the cost.
I won't even get into which is more secure. If it's not on your site or some place you have physical control over, it is not secure.
"There is a big difference between screwing around with electricity and mechanics"
Not 200 years ago there wasn't. Electricity was just as unknown to us in 1800 as quantum physics is to us now. We had no idea back then that electricity was predictable and capable of being controlled to a high degree of accuracy. Similarly, we have no idea (relatively) about quantum physics, but if history serves as an indicator at all, then we know that we'll have just as much control over the quantum universe in 200 years as we do over electricity now.
Generally, I think your attitude stems from you watching too many movies that fantasize about killer bugs, quantum experiments run amok, or whatever...
For a given temperature T, the peak wavelength of emitted radiation is at 0.0029/T nm. For example, our sun's surface temp is what, about 5800 K? So the peak is around 500nm, which is in the green spectrum. Betcha didn't know that...
A couple of hundred years ago, your statement could just as easily have been:
"Indeed. I love science, and in general I have tremendous faith in most scientists and physiscists. But science has progressed to a state where we are starting to venture into areas where there are huge swaths of unknowns, in electricity, mechanical propulsion, and medicine."
Point is, there were people in the early 1800's that were scared to death that electricity would make the earth vanish from existence, or that the steam locomotive would somehow kill everyone who rode in one. Medicine? Fuhgettaboutit.
The current way the US Legal system handles class action lawsuits is incredibly flawed. Basically, for a scant 90 million bucks, Google is buying the right to continue to commit criminal fraud without fear of financial accountability.
If I were a GOOG shareholder, I'd say that sounded like a pretty damn good deal. I could care less if someone went to jail over it so long as the company didn't have to pay financially.
"There has been some talk of alternatives such as biodiesel, grass, corn, and who kows what. The problem with these sources is that they geneate CO2, but even worse, their energy efficiency is almost 0, and they deplete the top soil."
You should probably go read up on the carbon cycle. Plant matter removes CO2 from the air in order to grow. When you burn plant-derived fuels, you are simply reintroducing CO2 that was taken out before, so there is no net increase in the amount of CO2 in the air.
Where are you getting your "almost 0" efficiency number from? Can you cite a credible source or is that just your political point of view talking?
What exactly is depleted from the soil when plant matter is grown? Doesn't it logically follow that if soil depletion were a naturally occuring problem, plant matter would eventually stop growing? Millions of years of history seem to contradict your theory that soil becomes depleted when plant matter grows. Again, credible source please?
Either way, I'm paying it off before the statement date - just in many smaller payments spread over a few days. I don't think they'd be smart enough to put 2 and 2 together and see that I'm still making a huge payment. I'm not completely convinced this isn't a hoax anyway. I couldn't find any relevant law to support the claims made in the article. I think the more likely case is that the CC company screwed up applying his payment and blamed it on the government.
Re Hillary:
I think it's certainly a valid point that we've seen a rabid assault on personal freedom, but what we get from the left is more subtle - and that is an attack on financial freedom, which leads to the loss of personal freedom.
Under the right wing fascists, we lose personal freedoms through direct legislation. Under left wing socialists, we lose our financial freedom, and as a result we cannot afford personal freedoms.
Either way, the government's goal is control either through authoritarianism or through socialist subservience. One other thing that bothers me about Hillary and her ilk wrt terrorism is that they have a completely unrealistic worldview. They do not at all understand the problem that underpins terrorism, and that is fanatical extremism - the problem is that we do not understand them or do not "feel" them... the problem is that the foundation of their belief system is the death of the Infidel. It's not negotiable. It's not dependent upon us "understanding" them or "feeling" their pain. It's about the fact that they want all non-Muslims dead. To some degree, Bush doesn't understand the problem any better. Spreading freedom and democracy is not going to change the underlying beliefs of the terrorists. Spending a trillion of my grandchildrens' dollars on a war to "free" the people of Iraq isn't going to do much to undermine the terrorists as they will just move somewhere else.
What's worse is that the left would have you believe that terrorism only really got started in November of 2000 when they didn't get the outcome they wanted from the SCOTUS. The grim reality is that terrorism has been around for decades and in many forms.
Both sides are really only politically motivated anyway. They will both simply try to capitalize on current events for personal gain. I am not convinced either side really gives a damn about anything except consolidating power and becoming more wealthy therefrom.
I still challenge anyone out there to name for me one single politician who could conceivably be classified as "poor."
Slashdot Mirror
If republicans support a bill backed by the largest of corporations, they're evil.
If republicans defeat a bill backed by the largest of corporations, they're evil...
Just making sure I have it right..
I build PCs on the side for a little extra spending cash. I will not sell a PC with windows, even if a client wants it. I only sell machines either naked or with some flavor of Linux on them. If a client wants windows, I sell them the machine naked and tell them to go to CompUSA and buy their own copy of Windows and install it themselves.
I will take no part in the purchase or sale of Windows.
and hardly ever drive... not because of this mythical global warming, but because GAS IS FREAKIN $3/GAL!
I've read MANY of the papers by Overpeck and his ilk and not a single one of them make an assertive statement that global warming is because of our fossil fuel habits - not one. They all say it is "likely" or "very possible" or whatever, but they don't say IT IS.
Regardless of WHY the Earth is getting warmer, it is still getting warmer. It has been warmer than this in the past, and without the help of fossil fuel usage.
This is not to say that I am against phasing out fossil fuels in favor of carbon-cycle fuels, nothing could be better. But, the alarmist approach the "it's our fault" crowd takes simply removes any credibility, IMHO.
As opposed to just four retarded naked people running into the street screaming, "oo-blah-dee, oo-blah-dah etc..." ?? :)
In a recent interview, Seven of Nine respondends said, "Hell yes! We want blond cyborgs!!!"
But I have no idea what a computer, an O/S, linux, apache, a webserver, the intarweb, or any of those things are!!! I'm calling the FBI!! AAYYYYIIIIEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
Of course... I was making a thinly veiled reference to Tannenbaum... you should have seen that right away...
In fact, I'll bet a U-haul truck loaded with DVDs would still be faster.
Get ready for a profound decrease in quality, Indian tech support (if any tech support at all), and all kinds of other headaches.
I work in a large office and we use Dell for all of our PCs, and let me say that these are the WORST PCs I have ever used. The flat panels are the shittiest I've ever seen. If you just put up a gray screen, there is this wash of crap in all of them - looks like black clouds against a gray background - ALL of them are like that. We have HUNDREDS.
Their LCD panels also suffer from Burn-In, which is not supposed to happen on LCD panels. Thank GOD I didn't buy that Dell flat panel TV they were pushing at the mall kiosk the other week.
Run... fast...
especially when you start reaching the write-cycle life of the FLASH. Hopefully it at least reallocates data and dynamically shrinks the size of the disk in a way that Operating Systems can understand. Most O/Ses expect the partition table to be constant, but if you start running out of cells and the disk starts shrinking, the partition will also have to shrink with it and the OS will need to be aware of that fact.
1) Stop associating IT with Development Engineering. The two are completely different fields. Almost every post here immediately goes into a diatribe about offshoring of programmers and developers.
2) Make this actually not BE a myth, because it most certainly is.
Development != IT...
... and if we modulate the subspace fields around the magnetodynamic plasma conduits while simultaneously emitting bursts of tachyon particles, we can spin the double-helix around and make it do a little dance...
It's a matter of national security, plain and simple. We can't go around telling everyone how we do the things we do. If the UK is that suspicious of us, and thinks that we would interfere with their own defense like that, then I am sure they are welcome to defend their damned selves with the *cough* French hardware...
There's one thing the US undisputedly does better than anyone else, and that is to design and build effective weapons. There's a reason we can be the most powerful nation on the planet with a standing army of only about a million people, and that reason is because we are the most effective integrators of technology in warfare.
Oh come on, whose MP3 and Netflix Movie collection is only 5GB??? ;-)
Let's take a 300GB System that needs to be backed up:
900GB at $0.20/gb = $180.00 transfer fee
Monthly at $0.15/gb = $135.00/month recurring charge
Weekly incremental of 30GB = $6.00/wk = $24/mo recurring charge
So $180.00 + $159/month = $2088 just for the first year, plus whatever you have to pay your ISP for abusive bandwidth charges.
Let's look at it from another perspective:
4 WD3200SD 320GB Raid-Edition SATA Drives: About $600
1 4-Port SATA Raid Card: About $250
Expected Lifetime: 5 years
So, buying a whole other raid-5 array to mirror your 900GB of stuff costs nearly $10K to store for 5 years on Amazon versus $850 to store locally. Hell, even if you were paranoid and replaced one of the hard disks every 3 months, you'd still be at less than half the cost.
I won't even get into which is more secure. If it's not on your site or some place you have physical control over, it is not secure.
I've often wondered if Coke still laces Coca Cola with Cocaine to "relieve pain." I guess maybe now we can find out.
If you have 8 cores in there along with a full load of RAM and a couple of 10krpm hard disks, how THE HELL do you get all of the heat out?
How about making going to the movies affordable again??
The last time I went to the movies, there were 5 of us and the total bill was $60 just for the tickets, and another $60 for a tub of popcorn...
Ridiculous... now I just wait for the movie to come out on Netflix...
"There is a big difference between screwing around with electricity and mechanics"
Not 200 years ago there wasn't. Electricity was just as unknown to us in 1800 as quantum physics is to us now. We had no idea back then that electricity was predictable and capable of being controlled to a high degree of accuracy. Similarly, we have no idea (relatively) about quantum physics, but if history serves as an indicator at all, then we know that we'll have just as much control over the quantum universe in 200 years as we do over electricity now.
Generally, I think your attitude stems from you watching too many movies that fantasize about killer bugs, quantum experiments run amok, or whatever...
That would be Wein's Law, not Planck's Law.
For a given temperature T, the peak wavelength of emitted radiation is at 0.0029/T nm. For example, our sun's surface temp is what, about 5800 K? So the peak is around 500nm, which is in the green spectrum. Betcha didn't know that...
A couple of hundred years ago, your statement could just as easily have been:
"Indeed. I love science, and in general I have tremendous faith in most scientists and physiscists. But science has progressed to a state where we are starting to venture into areas where there are huge swaths of unknowns, in electricity, mechanical propulsion, and medicine."
Point is, there were people in the early 1800's that were scared to death that electricity would make the earth vanish from existence, or that the steam locomotive would somehow kill everyone who rode in one. Medicine? Fuhgettaboutit.
The current way the US Legal system handles class action lawsuits is incredibly flawed. Basically, for a scant 90 million bucks, Google is buying the right to continue to commit criminal fraud without fear of financial accountability.
If I were a GOOG shareholder, I'd say that sounded like a pretty damn good deal. I could care less if someone went to jail over it so long as the company didn't have to pay financially.
"There has been some talk of alternatives such as biodiesel, grass, corn, and who kows what. The problem with these sources is that they geneate CO2, but even worse, their energy efficiency is almost 0, and they deplete the top soil."
You should probably go read up on the carbon cycle. Plant matter removes CO2 from the air in order to grow. When you burn plant-derived fuels, you are simply reintroducing CO2 that was taken out before, so there is no net increase in the amount of CO2 in the air.
Where are you getting your "almost 0" efficiency number from? Can you cite a credible source or is that just your political point of view talking?
What exactly is depleted from the soil when plant matter is grown? Doesn't it logically follow that if soil depletion were a naturally occuring problem, plant matter would eventually stop growing? Millions of years of history seem to contradict your theory that soil becomes depleted when plant matter grows. Again, credible source please?
Either way, I'm paying it off before the statement date - just in many smaller payments spread over a few days. I don't think they'd be smart enough to put 2 and 2 together and see that I'm still making a huge payment. I'm not completely convinced this isn't a hoax anyway. I couldn't find any relevant law to support the claims made in the article. I think the more likely case is that the CC company screwed up applying his payment and blamed it on the government.
Re Hillary:
I think it's certainly a valid point that we've seen a rabid assault on personal freedom, but what we get from the left is more subtle - and that is an attack on financial freedom, which leads to the loss of personal freedom.
Under the right wing fascists, we lose personal freedoms through direct legislation. Under left wing socialists, we lose our financial freedom, and as a result we cannot afford personal freedoms.
Either way, the government's goal is control either through authoritarianism or through socialist subservience. One other thing that bothers me about Hillary and her ilk wrt terrorism is that they have a completely unrealistic worldview. They do not at all understand the problem that underpins terrorism, and that is fanatical extremism - the problem is that we do not understand them or do not "feel" them... the problem is that the foundation of their belief system is the death of the Infidel. It's not negotiable. It's not dependent upon us "understanding" them or "feeling" their pain. It's about the fact that they want all non-Muslims dead. To some degree, Bush doesn't understand the problem any better. Spreading freedom and democracy is not going to change the underlying beliefs of the terrorists. Spending a trillion of my grandchildrens' dollars on a war to "free" the people of Iraq isn't going to do much to undermine the terrorists as they will just move somewhere else.
What's worse is that the left would have you believe that terrorism only really got started in November of 2000 when they didn't get the outcome they wanted from the SCOTUS. The grim reality is that terrorism has been around for decades and in many forms.
Both sides are really only politically motivated anyway. They will both simply try to capitalize on current events for personal gain. I am not convinced either side really gives a damn about anything except consolidating power and becoming more wealthy therefrom.
I still challenge anyone out there to name for me one single politician who could conceivably be classified as "poor."