And yet they can work pretty well.... owner builder here, my house was shingled 30 years ago. They are in good shape for that age, but I need a new roof in the next five years.
I built the house with the correct slope for max solar gain (8 in 12 pitch, interesting to work on!). Still deciding between a roof installation and a ground array (26 acres, not many trees, so I have my choice of locations -- also no money, so not something happening immediately). I looked at the solar roof when it was announced, and again yesterday. Still no technical details on the website.
Meanwhile, I've been refreshing my memory on the measurements. I have a very basic roof: about 36' x 22' facing south, and the same facing north. (there is also a two car garage, but I'll ignore that for now). So 8 square (100 sq ft) south, 8 square north. 1600 square foot of roofing materials total. I was looking at what I thought were good quality shingles, about $110 per square. Shingles equal $1760. As a DIY job, probably $2000 total (nails, etc)
Alternately, I could go with a metal roof. No estimates on that yet. I suspect very similar price.
For a roof sloped like mine, I figure a 30 year life expectancy for shingles is a fair figure. Maybe even 40 if I buy ultra premium shingles. At any rate, past my life expectancy. So the replacement in 2050 is not my problem.
I'm waiting to get the rest of the story on the Tesla solar roof. But if Elon is right and I can get one for $2000, it is a strong candidate. (my suspicion is that it is more of a taxpayer $$ to Musk move, aren't solar panels unlimited in the 30% tax write-off you can get? So instead of $6000 for 5000 watts of panels, you pay $15,000 for 5000 watts of shingles and then the government gives you 3X the money back?)
PS - I ran the numbers for a north facing roof thru PVWatts, there seems to be about a 40% hit for having solar facing north. I don't know how that plays out, Tesla shingles that are cheaper without the solar, just so the roof matches? Or solar shingles so cheap that you don't even care.
fullback, I have a little research project, please contact me at my ID at MSU.edu (the project is just to satisfy my curiosity about how fast these high speed connections in Japan, etc are once you get out of that country)
thanks
I heard that one of the nice advances of the D510 Atom is that it is both dual core and hyperthreaded. So it shows up as 4 cores. Also Intel tried to cripple the previous version with a max of 2GB RAM, now that is up to 4GB.
If you are interested in playing, any card 8xxx series or above works. (Nvidia) For instance, this Macbook has 9400M and I was able to download the CUDA stuff and run the sample programs with no trouble. RE the double precision and # of shaders (or performance), it really depends on what your code uses and how fast you need/want it. Easiest to get something running and then see where the bottleneck is, and how much it costs to fix.
Mostly my GPU usage is for folding (folding.stanford.edu), I like the new boards because they run cooler. Just ordered a Gt240 for about $65 after rebate. An advantage is that the 240 doesn't need the extra power cable. I think it will fold proteins as fast as about ten Core2 2Ghz CPUs. The best card I have so far is a 250, it equals about 20 of those Core2's. Last summer I picked up some 9600gso cards for about $35, those have similar performance to the 240, but require the extra power plug.
I would like to do something like atlasfolding.com , but with much less $$. It looks like this new 480 is about 4X's the 295 performance for ~same cost. Sounds good to me.
PS - if you get some good GPGPU code running and need more performance, try to hook up with a.edu HPCC. Most of them are getting into CUDA and might have spare cycles. You might have to switch to linux.
Knowledgeable people in the wireless ISP industry say whitespaces gear won't be available for at least another year. If it works out as expected, you would just buy it and use it, similar to today's wifi gear. It would require an Internet connection, to lookup the available channels database (daily) in your location.
As an alternative available today, you might consider the WISP 3650Mhz spectrum. The license for that costs $210. A brand I have looked at is Tranzeo, they sell Wimax gear in that frequency. (about $2000 for the AP, $250 for client radios). There are some exclusion zones that you aren't allowed to use 3650 within, so do a little research first.
And there is, of course, the usual wifi based gear. For example, see StarOS/Lucaya (my choice), or Mikrotik. And Motorola Canopy seems to work well at 900MHz.
Congratulations on being in the desert! You have a big advantage there with the lack of trees.
Ditto on spamd. My little departmental mail server was getting about 1000 messages per day. I turned on spamd and that dropped to about 100. Spam is now a small enough problem (less than 10 spams/day for about six accounts) that I haven't had to resort to other methods.
Do you have a reference for this 10% figure? I usually rely on theoildrum.com for accurate stats, for instance, they claim "transportation" is about 67% of oil consumption. And light vehicles are about 2/3s of that. So our automobile use is about 45%.
I don't see "plastics" broken out there, but I'm pretty sure that is a minor component, maybe 5% at most.
Here's a link to the Oil Drum article: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3814 Scroll down to the charts under "US oil consumption by sector". The stats are actually from EIA, which has a bad reputation for estimating oil reserves, but I suspect they do a good job of breaking down consumption.
Maybe storage is something these companies have thought about, or other ideas will be funded in the future. I don't know squat about eSolar, but maybe they can heat a liquid during the daytime and continue using it at night? Or maybe there could be a stored water pond in the hills, pump water with cheap solar, then release it at night to spin a turbine.
There might also be some demand side modifications: if your daylight kWh cost a dime, and your night time kWh was 50 cents, could you re-arrange things to emphasize the cheaper source?
You should look hard for wireless (not satellite) providers. If none are available, maybe you should consider starting a business or coop.
There is quite a variety of good wireless gear available now in the unlicensed spectrum (900Mhz, 2.4, 5.2, 5.4). I looked at this stuff two years ago and it didn't seem ready, but now it is. Depending on topography and trees, you might be able to shoot a connection from 15 miles away - is there broadband available within that radius?
Ok, the client is an old PC running Xfree. Sounds reasonable.
And Win2003 with terminal services enabled. So you need client CALs for TS, right?
And Office is installed on the server. Do you need some sort of additional license to run that on clients. Seems like you must, but I've never checked (thinking there is no way MS would allow it)
And finally, I don't understand the functionality you get by having a webserver and telnet server on the client?
As a diesel fan, I was happy to see the new research that claimed particulate size was also important. Big particles are less a problem than small. Diesel puts out big, gas engines put out small. This might reverse the popular wisdom that diesel particulates are worse than gas.
And maybe biodiesel is the future. The Minnesota dept of agriculture did a study that showed gas was a 20 percent net energy loss (diesel was 16% loss), while biodiesel was 220% net energy gain.
Finally, I'm not so sure why 90MPH is so important? Of the last 30,000 miles I've driven, maybe a half hour of that was over 85. I know different parts of the country drive at different speeds, but the limit here is 70MPH and driving over 80 puts you at great risk of being ticketed.
Re:Why Hunt? A hunter responds.
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 1
The deer population is so high around my farm due to the great availability of food (corn, soybeans, alfalfa). I'm not sure what the natural predators would be - we have coyote, I don't think wolf and bear would fit in too well with the human population. (in the lower third of Michigan) Before white settlement in Michigan this was 99% mature forest lands, with a very low deer population.
I've nearly given up on planting trees or a garden. The deer eat everything (or kill the trees by rubbing antlers on them). To my mind, the deer population is about three times too high. I think I'll have to put up a tall fence, but that will be expensive and ugly.
(there is also the tuberculosis and chronic wasting issues -- if the deer pop. isn't cut way back, there will be more finacial problems for cow farmers, and you'll be paying more for cheese, milk & steaks)
> so fix the laws. If Finland can get it right, why can't separate states in USA get it right?
Well, you say Finland gets it right, but can you prove it?
For instance, it looks like you get a piece of paper with your ballot that has a bunch of numbers, one for each candidate? Can you say with certainty that the poll worker didn't slip you a different piece of paper with the numbers in different order. Maybe you say that is impossible at your voting place, but who was watching for something like this happening, all day, at every location? And what about a person with sloppy handwriting? You have people hand-tabulating the ballots, this sounds similar to our hanging chad issues, where people needed to determine the "intent of the voter".
Also, here the parties in power have a fair amount of control over the elections and how they are changed. Possibly they would like to see the status quo maintained, so they stay in power longer? An example of this might be the district boundaries in Pennsylvania. I'd like to think that things are improving here, but it is a slow process, with frequent setbacks.
>... If I move, I let them know what my new address is (required by law), and they send the voting-letters there in the future. I haven't heard of cases where someone does not receive their letter.
A good number of Americans would disagree with such a law. "I have to register my address with the state - sounds like communism" Males of draft age theoretically have to do this, but I question how many do. (I'm not saying I agree with this, I'm just providing some viewpoints that wouldn't be unusual to hear) And "haven't heard of cases", does that mean none have occurred, or nobody is looking? Has there been a close election, where a fanatic postal employee could sidetrack a liberal neighborhood's letters to make it harder for them to vote. (as apparently happened here in Florida) If Finland has 100% perfect postal employees, great!
I hate to defend our voting, since there is considerable room for improvement, but I would say:
1. we are the "united states", so each state's laws on voting are different. 2. our population is about 58 times greater than Finland, so the magnitude of the election is larger. 3. your sample ballot looks like you are voting for one office? My ballot last week included about 30 different offices, plus two proposals. It covered 2 pages. I understand that some states have you voting on several pages worth of offices/proposals. 4. I would hate to have to hand tabulate our ballots, it would be very time consuming and tedious. 5. Here in Michigan, no campaigning is allowed within 100 feet of the polls. For instance, parties are allowed a "poll watcher" person, they have to remove any campaign buttons, etc outside the poll.
Also, I think the statistic is something like 10% of Americans move every year, so keeping up with changes of address is a problem. And maybe 10% of Americans don't speak English very well?
We previously used the big lever voting machines, this year we upgraded to the scanned paper ballots. That seems like a good method to me. The only fault I can see with them are more complicated to make them bi-lingual and you couldn't hit a button to increase the font size for people with poor vision. ================ In your system, how do you register, so they know where to send the letter? And what would happen if the letter never showed up?
You might try out your Dell with a copy of XP+sp2. I understand that the firewall feature (don't get on the Net without it) grabs about 48MB. Or is it 64MB?
http://www.californiacoastline.org//www.californiacoastline.org/
According to the site, Barbara lost and had to pay him about $150,000 for legal costs.
And they used a Powerbook w/Firewire connection to the camera, the computer also had a connection to the plane's GPS.
I think there was a standalone device sold a few years back similar to this. (USB?) Basically when you hit a button, it noted the time and station (or maybe you had to supply the station later?). Hooked up to your computer, it searched the radio station's playlist and came back with the song title. (stations have to report their playlist, so the money gets back to the RIAA, ASCAP or whatever)
I always hate to give Microsoft any more $$$ than is necessary... she might check at her school and see if they have the "Student Select" version of Office. Here that costs $60.
But it looks like the latest version isn't available yet. Maybe use the 30 day demo until then?
"OFFICE2004 MAC WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE THRU THE STUDENT SELECT PROGRAM UNTIL MID-LATE FALL. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS PRODUCT YOU WILL HAVE TO PURCHASE THE SHRINKWRAP/BOX PRODUCT"
I watch over the air programming. We use rabbit ears and have for about 22 years. No cable or satellite since 1981. I think we have avoided paying about $6000 to cable companies.
I think about 6% of Americans don't have cable/sat tv. And about 2% don't have TV at all.
Now for your DTV equipment... go to Target! I've been watching for widescreen digital TV's with built-in tuners for years. They have finally started showing up. I found a 31" Samsung model recently listed on Amazon listing for about $1300. I was tempted by that, but it didn't seem to be in any stores around Lansing, MI.
But then I was at Target 3 weeks ago. They had a Samsung 26" tv on sale for $699. The model # is TXN2670WHF, they had a demo model sitting on the shelf. Our largest TV at home is 20" (the other one is 13"), this 26" Samsung widescreen is about the same height as our 20" tv, but of course wider.
I think these tv's, (smaller, cheaper) with built-in tuners are only starting to be available now because of cheaper tuner chips. About two years ago, Phillips came out with a HD tuner chip that they said would be under $10 in quantity. I tried to get one to make a tuner card for a computer, but you had to sign a Macrovision license to even get a sample.
I'm still up in the air about TiVo vs DirecTV vs a small HDTV set, but this set is the sort of thing I've been waiting for.
PS - get 10% off a Target purchase by signing up for their credit card.
I'm not sure you are thinking more clearly at 11am... SUS is Software Update Services (a method of automatically running Windows Updates) and doesn't have much to do with ASR, Sysprep or bootable Windows.
And SUS does work with non-domain computers, you just have to push some registry entries to the clients instead of using group policy. I'm pretty sure the Microsoft white papers on SUS document the registry entries, but they can certainly be found near the top of a Google search.
Slashdot Mirror
"Traditional shingles set a very very low bar."
And yet they can work pretty well....
owner builder here, my house was shingled 30 years ago. They are in good shape for that age, but I need a new roof in the next five years.
I built the house with the correct slope for max solar gain (8 in 12 pitch, interesting to work on!). Still deciding between a roof installation and a ground array (26 acres, not many trees, so I have my choice of locations -- also no money, so not something happening immediately). I looked at the solar roof when it was announced, and again yesterday. Still no technical details on the website.
Meanwhile, I've been refreshing my memory on the measurements. I have a very basic roof: about 36' x 22' facing south, and the same facing north. (there is also a two car garage, but I'll ignore that for now). So 8 square (100 sq ft) south, 8 square north. 1600 square foot of roofing materials total. I was looking at what I thought were good quality shingles, about $110 per square. Shingles equal $1760. As a DIY job, probably $2000 total (nails, etc)
Alternately, I could go with a metal roof. No estimates on that yet. I suspect very similar price.
For a roof sloped like mine, I figure a 30 year life expectancy for shingles is a fair figure. Maybe even 40 if I buy ultra premium shingles. At any rate, past my life expectancy. So the replacement in 2050 is not my problem.
I'm waiting to get the rest of the story on the Tesla solar roof. But if Elon is right and I can get one for $2000, it is a strong candidate. (my suspicion is that it is more of a taxpayer $$ to Musk move, aren't solar panels unlimited in the 30% tax write-off you can get? So instead of $6000 for 5000 watts of panels, you pay $15,000 for 5000 watts of shingles and then the government gives you 3X the money back?)
PS - I ran the numbers for a north facing roof thru PVWatts, there seems to be about a 40% hit for having solar facing north. I don't know how that plays out, Tesla shingles that are cheaper without the solar, just so the roof matches? Or solar shingles so cheap that you don't even care.
fullback, I have a little research project, please contact me at my ID at MSU.edu
(the project is just to satisfy my curiosity about how fast these high speed connections in Japan, etc are once you get out of that country)
thanks
I heard that one of the nice advances of the D510 Atom is that it is both dual core and hyperthreaded. So it shows up as 4 cores. Also Intel tried to cripple the previous version with a max of 2GB RAM, now that is up to 4GB.
If you are interested in playing, any card 8xxx series or above works. (Nvidia) For instance, this Macbook has 9400M and I was able to download the CUDA stuff and run the sample programs with no trouble. RE the double precision and # of shaders (or performance), it really depends on what your code uses and how fast you need/want it. Easiest to get something running and then see where the bottleneck is, and how much it costs to fix.
Mostly my GPU usage is for folding (folding.stanford.edu), I like the new boards because they run cooler. Just ordered a Gt240 for about $65 after rebate. An advantage is that the 240 doesn't need the extra power cable. I think it will fold proteins as fast as about ten Core2 2Ghz CPUs. The best card I have so far is a 250, it equals about 20 of those Core2's. Last summer I picked up some 9600gso cards for about $35, those have similar performance to the 240, but require the extra power plug.
I would like to do something like atlasfolding.com , but with much less $$. It looks like this new 480 is about 4X's the 295 performance for ~same cost. Sounds good to me.
PS - if you get some good GPGPU code running and need more performance, try to hook up with a .edu HPCC. Most of them are getting into CUDA and might have spare cycles. You might have to switch to linux.
Any news on how much juice the Slim sucks? I heard it would be less.
And I assume that Stanford's Folding client still runs on them?
Knowledgeable people in the wireless ISP industry say whitespaces gear won't be available for at least another year. If it works out as expected, you would just buy it and use it, similar to today's wifi gear. It would require an Internet connection, to lookup the available channels database (daily) in your location.
As an alternative available today, you might consider the WISP 3650Mhz spectrum. The license for that costs $210. A brand I have looked at is Tranzeo, they sell Wimax gear in that frequency. (about $2000 for the AP, $250 for client radios). There are some exclusion zones that you aren't allowed to use 3650 within, so do a little research first.
And there is, of course, the usual wifi based gear. For example, see StarOS/Lucaya (my choice), or Mikrotik. And Motorola Canopy seems to work well at 900MHz.
Congratulations on being in the desert! You have a big advantage there with the lack of trees.
theaveng - please contact me, I was curious about your signature. email me at userid at msu dot edu
P.S. - channels 3 & 4 are off limits for white spaces devices; also 52 and above.
Ditto on spamd. My little departmental mail server was getting about 1000 messages per day. I turned on spamd and that dropped to about 100. Spam is now a small enough problem (less than 10 spams/day for about six accounts) that I haven't had to resort to other methods.
Do you have a reference for this 10% figure? I usually rely on theoildrum.com for accurate stats, for instance, they claim "transportation" is about 67% of oil consumption. And light vehicles are about 2/3s of that. So our automobile use is about 45%.
I don't see "plastics" broken out there, but I'm pretty sure that is a minor component, maybe 5% at most.
Here's a link to the Oil Drum article: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3814 Scroll down to the charts under "US oil consumption by sector". The stats are actually from EIA, which has a bad reputation for estimating oil reserves, but I suspect they do a good job of breaking down consumption.
Maybe storage is something these companies have thought about, or other ideas will be funded in the future. I don't know squat about eSolar, but maybe they can heat a liquid during the daytime and continue using it at night? Or maybe there could be a stored water pond in the hills, pump water with cheap solar, then release it at night to spin a turbine.
There might also be some demand side modifications: if your daylight kWh cost a dime, and your night time kWh was 50 cents, could you re-arrange things to emphasize the cheaper source?
At least Google is putting some money into this.
You should look hard for wireless (not satellite) providers. If none are available, maybe you should consider starting a business or coop.
There is quite a variety of good wireless gear available now in the unlicensed spectrum (900Mhz, 2.4, 5.2, 5.4). I looked at this stuff two years ago and it didn't seem ready, but now it is. Depending on topography and trees, you might be able to shoot a connection from 15 miles away - is there broadband available within that radius?
I thought your dad said that route was uphill both ways!
I was thinking how great it would be if Apple did a server version of the mini.
POE for power
optionally delete the DVD drive
add a second/gigabit network interface
These would be great for small clusters or dropping network management boxes at various places on the network.
Could you describe in more detail the components?
Ok, the client is an old PC running Xfree. Sounds reasonable.
And Win2003 with terminal services enabled. So you need client CALs for TS, right?
And Office is installed on the server. Do you need some sort of additional license to run that on clients. Seems like you must, but I've never checked (thinking there is no way MS would allow it)
And finally, I don't understand the functionality you get by having a webserver and telnet server on the client?
Oh, what country are you in?
As a diesel fan, I was happy to see the new research that claimed particulate size was also important. Big particles are less a problem than small. Diesel puts out big, gas engines put out small. This might reverse the popular wisdom that diesel particulates are worse than gas.
And maybe biodiesel is the future. The Minnesota dept of agriculture did a study that showed gas was a 20 percent net energy loss (diesel was 16% loss), while biodiesel was 220% net energy gain.
Finally, I'm not so sure why 90MPH is so important? Of the last 30,000 miles I've driven, maybe a half hour of that was over 85. I know different parts of the country drive at different speeds, but the limit here is 70MPH and driving over 80 puts you at great risk of being ticketed.
The deer population is so high around my farm due to the great availability of food (corn, soybeans, alfalfa). I'm not sure what the natural predators would be - we have coyote, I don't think wolf and bear would fit in too well with the human population. (in the lower third of Michigan) Before white settlement in Michigan this was 99% mature forest lands, with a very low deer population.
I've nearly given up on planting trees or a garden. The deer eat everything (or kill the trees by rubbing antlers on them). To my mind, the deer population is about three times too high. I think I'll have to put up a tall fence, but that will be expensive and ugly.
(there is also the tuberculosis and chronic wasting issues -- if the deer pop. isn't cut way back, there will be more finacial problems for cow farmers, and you'll be paying more for cheese, milk & steaks)
> so fix the laws. If Finland can get it right, why can't separate states in USA get it right?
... If I move, I let them know what my new address is (required by law), and they send the voting-letters there in the future. I haven't heard of cases where someone does not receive their letter.
Well, you say Finland gets it right, but can you prove it?
For instance, it looks like you get a piece of paper with your ballot that has a bunch of numbers, one for each candidate? Can you say with certainty that the poll worker didn't slip you a different piece of paper with the numbers in different order. Maybe you say that is impossible at your voting place, but who was watching for something like this happening, all day, at every location? And what about a person with sloppy handwriting? You have people hand-tabulating the ballots, this sounds similar to our hanging chad issues, where people needed to determine the "intent of the voter".
Also, here the parties in power have a fair amount of control over the elections and how they are changed. Possibly they would like to see the status quo maintained, so they stay in power longer? An example of this might be the district boundaries in Pennsylvania. I'd like to think that things are improving here, but it is a slow process, with frequent setbacks.
>
A good number of Americans would disagree with such a law. "I have to register my address with the state - sounds like communism" Males of draft age theoretically have to do this, but I question how many do. (I'm not saying I agree with this, I'm just providing some viewpoints that wouldn't be unusual to hear) And "haven't heard of cases", does that mean none have occurred, or nobody is looking? Has there been a close election, where a fanatic postal employee could sidetrack a liberal neighborhood's letters to make it harder for them to vote. (as apparently happened here in Florida) If Finland has 100% perfect postal employees, great!
I hate to defend our voting, since there is considerable room for improvement, but I would say:
1. we are the "united states", so each state's laws on voting are different.
2. our population is about 58 times greater than Finland, so the magnitude of the election is larger.
3. your sample ballot looks like you are voting for one office? My ballot last week included about 30 different offices, plus two proposals. It covered 2 pages. I understand that some states have you voting on several pages worth of offices/proposals.
4. I would hate to have to hand tabulate our ballots, it would be very time consuming and tedious.
5. Here in Michigan, no campaigning is allowed within 100 feet of the polls. For instance, parties are allowed a "poll watcher" person, they have to remove any campaign buttons, etc outside the poll.
Also, I think the statistic is something like 10% of Americans move every year, so keeping up with changes of address is a problem. And maybe 10% of Americans don't speak English very well?
We previously used the big lever voting machines, this year we upgraded to the scanned paper ballots. That seems like a good method to me. The only fault I can see with them are more complicated to make them bi-lingual and you couldn't hit a button to increase the font size for people with poor vision.
================
In your system, how do you register, so they know where to send the letter? And what would happen if the letter never showed up?
You might try out your Dell with a copy of XP+sp2. I understand that the firewall feature (don't get on the Net without it) grabs about 48MB. Or is it 64MB?
I still run Win2000.
http://www.californiacoastline.org/ /www.californiacoastline.org/
According to the site, Barbara lost and had to pay him about $150,000 for legal costs.
And they used a Powerbook w/Firewire connection to the camera, the computer also had a connection to the plane's GPS.
I think there was a standalone device sold a few years back similar to this. (USB?) Basically when you hit a button, it noted the time and station (or maybe you had to supply the station later?). Hooked up to your computer, it searched the radio station's playlist and came back with the song title. (stations have to report their playlist, so the money gets back to the RIAA, ASCAP or whatever)
I'm pretty sure that "possession of lock picking tools" is a crime in Michigan (unless you are a licensed locksmith?).
And I'm not sure what the definition of those tools is - a very small screwdriver? A dentist's pick?
I always hate to give Microsoft any more $$$ than is necessary ... she might check at her school and see if they have the "Student Select" version of Office. Here that costs $60.
But it looks like the latest version isn't available yet. Maybe use the 30 day demo until then?
"OFFICE2004 MAC WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE THRU THE STUDENT SELECT PROGRAM UNTIL MID-LATE FALL. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS PRODUCT YOU WILL HAVE TO PURCHASE THE SHRINKWRAP/BOX PRODUCT"
I watch over the air programming. We use rabbit ears and have for about 22 years. No cable or satellite since 1981. I think we have avoided paying about $6000 to cable companies.
I think about 6% of Americans don't have cable/sat tv. And about 2% don't have TV at all.
Now for your DTV equipment... go to Target! I've been watching for widescreen digital TV's with built-in tuners for years. They have finally started showing up. I found a 31" Samsung model recently listed on Amazon listing for about $1300.
I was tempted by that, but it didn't seem to be in any stores around Lansing, MI.
But then I was at Target 3 weeks ago. They had a Samsung 26" tv on sale for $699. The model # is TXN2670WHF, they had a demo model sitting on the shelf. Our largest TV at home is 20" (the other one is 13"), this 26" Samsung widescreen is about the same height as our 20" tv, but of course wider.
I think these tv's, (smaller, cheaper) with built-in tuners are only starting to be available now because of cheaper tuner chips. About two years ago, Phillips came out with a HD tuner chip that they said would be under $10 in quantity. I tried to get one to make a tuner card for a computer, but you had to sign a Macrovision license to even get a sample.
I'm still up in the air about TiVo vs DirecTV vs a small HDTV set, but this set is the sort of thing I've been waiting for.
PS - get 10% off a Target purchase by signing up for their credit card.
I'm not sure you are thinking more clearly at 11am ...
SUS is Software Update Services (a method of automatically running Windows Updates) and doesn't have much to do with ASR, Sysprep or bootable Windows.
And SUS does work with non-domain computers, you just have to push some registry entries to the clients instead of using group policy. I'm pretty sure the Microsoft white papers on SUS document the registry entries, but they can certainly be found near the top of a Google search.