Lots of comments here about how this makes sense, about time, serves the warez kiddies right, so on and so forth...
I always thought the idea was that bandwidth would get *cheaper*, not more expensive. The pipes are only getting fatter all around, and anyway, prices are supposed to rise when a commodity gets scarcer, not more abundant. I can't believe that the best solution the cable companies have for shared bandwidth hogs is to meter everybody. So much for video over IP, huh?
I remember talking with my friendly local DSL ISP about how much I can reasonably transfer in a month without being a "problem" user. They shrugged and said, hey, download bandwidth is not an issue - you can pull down as much as you like and it's no big deal. It's the outbound bandwidth that costs us real money.
I can understand how that model works, but still, flat rates are a beautiful thing. The best part of the net is the free exchange of information... one person can set up a homepage and reach a practically unlimited audience. The average joe can compete with the big corporations, and all that. Personally, I would just as soon subsidize some MP3 and warez kiddies if it meant that my neighbor could also serve a popular webpage of something useful or beautiful and not have to worry about how he's going to pay for the bandwidth.
The only way I'd be cool with metering bandwidth would be if it prompted the rollout of alternatives. So what if the cable companies have a lousy distribution model -- as long as there's DSL, wireless, satellite and powerline broadband also available, then hey, no big deal. But as long as there are just barely a handful of companies setting themselves up to dominate the broadband market, metering bandwidth is just not cool. What'll you say when downloading from Time-Warner websites is unlimited, but everything else is metered? Where does that lead us?
That's awesome - I've looked for a long time for reasonably-priced binder pages. Thanks!
Still, though, even these aren't really all that cheap. Ballpark $500 for 2000 decent-quality blank CDs and $100 for binders, and that's $900 for 1.4 TB of storage. Not bad, but with 120gig hard drives going for $160 and all the "just-around-the-corner" massive mass storage devices they keep promising, I hope something better comes along soon. A 3-ft shelf of CD binders just reminds me of a wall of cassette tapes... soon to be obsolete and, if you move a lot, just one more PITA.
I haven't bought a major-label CD in years. Plenty of indie stuff (that I've immediately ripped for my own use), but the RIAA members don't sell what I want, so I don't buy. I no longer want physical media. I hate physical media. I don't know about other people, but I have way too much media as it is - and being relatively young, single and mobile, too much stuff is nothing but a PITA when you move a lot. I just picked up a couple of DVDs today and thought, geez, I can't wait until I can rip these things to a gigantic mass storage device and ditch this useless, irritating physical packaging (I know I already can, but I want to rip 'em complete with all the features).
I used to think that the media companies would have no choice but to offer a distribution model that would suit my needs, but I guess they don't plan on doing that. It's no one's loss but their own, and frankly, if they don't get paid and the artists don't get paid, then it's their own fault and I have very little sympathy. I'm perfectly willing to give them money. Just sell me what I want and don't treat me like a bitch, and you'll get paid... that's pretty much how this system works, last time I checked.
But it looks like that isn't going to happen any time soon. In fact, if things keep going the way they're going, I predict a lot more people are going to feel this way, and that means one thing: opportunity! Ironically enough, a clampdown from big media might be just the thing that destroys them, because there will be creators who WILL offer what we want, how we want it. The more people who are driven to those alternatives, the better... so I say, let the RIAA do their thing. Worst case scenario: there will always be a hack for whatever they try. But the best case scenario?
We'll route around them like damage, and we'll create new opportunities for creators and distributors.
Ah, yes, The Demon-Haunted World. While I agree wholeheartedly with the principles of baloney detection you quoted, it should be noted that The Demon-Haunted World itself is hardly a paradigm of objectivity. I regard Sagan's ideas from this book as a valuable skeptical tool, and applied appropriately (like I think you did here), can be extremely useful. The flip side of it, however, can be the casual disregard for anything that doesn't fit his predetermined worldview (the attitude of, "I don't need to look objectively at X, I already know X doesn't exist because I know X doesn't exist" can be a slippery slope). I think Sagan's skepticism, while again very useful in part, came off overall as smug, self-serving and dogmatic. Personally, I keep The Demon-Haunted World on the shelf (both literally and metaphorically) right next to Charles Fort and Patrick Harpur's appropriately titled "Daimonic Reality", which takes on a far more interesting and challenging question than Sagan did, namely, "how do we account for all aspects of human experience, and who decides what is real?" Fun stuff!
If you haven't already, I think you'd really appreciate reading Joseph Heller's "Catch-22", IMO the finest novel yet written. Sounds like you could relate to it, at least...
YES! That's excellent advice. I removed MS Messenger and installed Trillian, and I can't remember the last time I was so completely thrilled with a piece of software. Use Trillian. It does AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC, it's free, it looks awesome, it's updated often, it's easy to use, it works well, and did I mention it looks awesome? If there's any reason to use any other IM client, I don't know what it is...
I'm not into anime, so until now I never had a reason to bother hacking my DVD players. But with this and Northern Exposure only being available in Europe... what do they expect us to do?
Any refs for this? How was this calculated? I don't know the first thing about 3 Mile Island, but my impression is that it wasn't so much the actual release that freaked people out as the potential the situation had for releasing a whole lot more.
Pray tell, what goods got cheaper as a result of the layoffs of the 80s? I think you're a little too optimistic about the powers of capitalism.
I actually agree with a substantial part of your premise, but here's where it falls down for me: "requires everyone to be educated enough to learn whatever trade is needed at a given time."
So who's educating the populace in this manner? There's always the upper percentile who can do this, but the vast middle and lower percentiles sure aren't getting trained this way. It may not even be possible, for all we know - after all, this is a new experiment. Lots of people, maybe even most, may only be capable of 40 years of fastening rivets. Where do they fit into this new paradigm you're talking about? Are they really going to be bootstrapped up somehow, or are they just fodder for a new populist redistribute-the-wealth movement?
And the current trend in education is exactly the opposite of giving people the kind of skills they need. The trend is to train them specifically for standardized tests and get 'em out the door as efficiently as possible. How very capitalist, really. A sufficient education in science, tech and business just isn't in the cards, especially when they currently can't even provide a sufficient education in reading, writing and math.
Seems to me the problems of capitalism as practiced in America, particularly, are only going to get worse. It's a feedback loop. If anyone in American government or business had any kind of long-term vision or a concern about anything but next quarter's bottom line, I'd feel more optimistic...
Ignore the people posting here telling you to buy a Mac. There's lots of blah blah blah, but your bottom line is $1000, so forget about it. And it isn't necessary anyway.
Like others have said, a good monitor is important. They go on about color matching and so on, and yeah, that's key for some things. You don't say exactly what your friend is going to be doing, though, so ultra-super-precision color might be not as critical for her as it is for some people. And given your budget, that level of color precision isn't really an option, anyway.
I'd go with a 19" Samsung SyncMaster monitor. I picked one up from Buy.com a few months ago for a friend for about $250. Great monitor for the money (sorry I don't recall the model number offhand).
Now, this is as much a religious topic as any, but as far as monitors go I'd make sure to get her a shadow mask. Get her a Trinitron tube and I'll lay odds she'll be calling you to complain about those two funny lines on her screen. It ain't worth the potential headache, trust me.
Also, make the damn computer quiet! She'll probably also hate it if it sounds like a jet engine. Grab a couple of Silencer fans from PC Power and Cooling, and use a 60-to-80mm adapter on the heat sink and put a Silencer at the top of it. Use a Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive - almost completely silent - and an Antec SX630 case, which is a nice size, reasonably decent-looking and has an excellent and quiet PS. Plus, if you're building this thing, trust me, it's worth spending a few extra bucks here. Anyway, just using these components will leave you with a nearly-silent PC for not a whole lot of extra scratch. For her, it's probably well, well worth it.
MATROX. She's not going to be firing up Wolfenstein, right? So get her a Matrox G450. No fan, no noise, cheap, and it's the best 2D image quality going. You shouldn't even consider anything else (unless she games).
Give her a healthy amount of RAM. Fortunately, it's cheap. CPU: whatever. Everything else: whatever. She ain't gonna care about it. If she'll be listening to music, you can still get the Ensoniq AudioPCI for dirt cheap, and it's better than onboard audio. Audition speakers at the local store and let her decide how much audio quality she wants to buy.
Good luck! I think you can pull off a real nice system for her even given your budget constraint.
I keep seeing people say, use the original packaging... but even that isn't good enough sometimes.
My company ordered a Dell PPro back in the day that showed up with a little dent in one corner of the box. No one even noticed it - looking at it from the outside, even upon inspection it just looked very slightly damaged. Like maybe someone had let the corner hit the ground while setting it down.
But the case on that machine was wrecked. Permanently kinked. The fascia was badly cracked and when I wanted to add another CD drive in it, it was impossible because of the out-of-wack geometry. Ended up buying a new case.
Yeah, I KNOW it should have been opened and checked before accepting the delivery. If I'd been there when it was delivered, I would've. The point is, even the factory shipping containers aren't necessarily a sure thing. Think carefully before you ship anything you care about!
I've thought about this, but I came to the conclusion that I'd rather use a high-bitrate LAME MP3 encode (like the dibrom -insane setting). It's still significantly better than 2 to 1, and completely transparent with everything I've checked so far (with moderately good gear and midrange Sennheiser headphones, but not the ultra-wanker audiophile stuff).
As far as I'm concerned, a good LAME encode is still the best solution for music - the resulting MP3 will work on any platform, the sound can be perfect, file size is reasonable and speed is terrific. Until we all have REALLY high-speed bandwidth and practically unlimited storage and can store things uncompressed, I'm sticking with MP3.
I'm running an Asus A7M266 with 512mb Crucial and a Matrox G450 and original SBLive with Win2K. I've been playing heavily since it came out and have yet to have a crash or glitch of any sort.
I finished my first game last night. It was probably the first game of Civ I've ever played where I actually wanted to win one of the "peaceful" ways. Even after winning, I chose to keep playing to check things out. It didn't take long for all the other civs to gang up and attack me, and they did a good job - I hadn't built up much of a defense at all, and I was thoroughly getting my ass kicked. The AI is improved in this game.
What sucked, though, is that my tech was way far out ahead of everyone else, but I didn't have any oil. The only source of oil on my continent quickly dried up after I finally nabbed it, so I went over to the other big continent where there was plenty of oil. It seems like the only decent government for fighting that huge endgame war is Communism, which is supposed to give a flat-rate corruption... but once I started taking over the other continent, I noticed my cities there weren't doing anything - because ALL of their shields were going to corruption! At first I chalked it up to an effect of conquering, but it never got any better.
Fortunately, that's when I got nukes. But anyway, I'm looking forward to a Fascism patch for Civ3 like there was for 2 - that rocked for conquering the world.
Sleep paralysis - commonly known as Old Hag - is indeed a very real phenomenon, and seems to exhibit surprisingly consistent symptoms. Supernatural or physiological quirk, or both? Who knows...
Look for a book called "The Terror That Comes in the Night" by David J Hufford, if you're interested in learning more.
I'm just finishing up a new quiet PC here for my girlfriend. Despite my best efforts, it's no Mac Cube... you can still hear it. But at least it's tolerable.
First stop: case. For my money, nothing beats the Antec SX630/830/1030. You can keep your fancypants Lian Li, I'll take the Antecs any day of the week at half the price. This particular machine is the 630 - I greatly prefer the 830, but the 630 ain't bad. Comes with an extremely quiet 300w power supply and the case is an absolute joy to work in.
Next: fans. I tried the PCP&C Silencer and the Papst 8412NGL. The Papst is twice as expensive ($10 vs 20), but it is slightly quieter and better built. I've got one Silencer here that's badly out of balance, and when attached to anything sets up a nasty vibration. The Papst fans actually have little metal tabs in the hubs - apparently they custom-balance each fan. For that reason alone, I think I'll use Papst in the future, but the Silencers aren't a bad choice, either.
Hard drive: the Seagate Barracuda IV is 7200RPM and doesn't need a Silent Drive enclosure. It's absolutely positively dead quiet and fast. I haven't heard anything else that comes close.
CPU cooler: I tried a Molex Radial Fin on one PC and it was OK. For this machine, I used a stock retail AMD heatsink (a leftover) and a 60-to-80mm adapter, and a Silencer fan. I would've switched it to a Papst, but it's kind of a PITA so I didn't bother. Even the Antec 630 has plenty of room for this towering beast, and obviously it's quieter than the Molex or any of the other solutions out there. Might not be appropriate for higher clock speeds, though. For that I'd probably go with a Zalman.
As far as temperatures go, I don't give a fuck. This CPU is a Duron 900, not overclocked. It's like a $50 part. The temp was well within normal parameters last time I looked. I don't grok the heat geeks around here bitching about one temperature or another being too high - it's the nerd version of a 0-to-60 time, and it matters in my life not one little itty bitty tiny iota.
CD drive is an extra Teac 16x burner I had. Great drive, and reasonable on the sound front, although certainly not as quiet as a Toshiba DVD drive. I'm waiting for a recordable DVD, too.
The last part of my quiet PC is installing grommets on the Seagate. It's dead quiet, but it does vibrate. Once that's done, I'm convinced this machine will be about as quiet as any fan-cooled PC can possibly be. And the price? I didn't add it up, but it's quite reasonable.
I note that you posted this even after Keenan's reasoned response. Nothing wrong with hating Saddam, but you and your pal there are simply underinformed. If you really hate Saddam so much, why would you want to support sanctions that hurt the common people while only helping empower and enrich Saddam? Doesn't make any sense.
Of course, it makes sense if the goal is to keep Saddam in power, which may or may not be the actual intent of US foreign policy in that region. One hates to attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by simple incompetence, and that's got to be more true in the State Dept than just about anywhere else on the planet, but in this case there should be enough lingering, unanswered questions to raise a doubt. Stop and ponder: is there any potential reason why the US might want to have an excuse to maintain a large military force in the Middle East?
Crazy talk? Maybe. Makes more sense than what you guys have posted, though.
MAN, I wish there were more people in the media and elsewhere talking along these lines. Good work. So what are the solutions?
The first grievance, the creation of a Palestinian state, should be a no-brainer. The devil's certainly in the details of that issue, but conceptually, there's no doubt that a peaceful creation of a permanent Palestinian homeland should be a top foreign policy priority. Regardless of the sticky realities, strong US support for a Palestinian state should go a long way in the Arab and Muslim world.
The second and third grievances, Iraqi sanctions and the apparently permanent US military presence on Saudi soil are indeed intertwined. I think there is much more to this situation than we've been told, and resolutions may be more complicated than one might expect. It's all tied into a fourth grievance that goes even more frequently ignored than the first three...
The fourth grievance would be the longstanding US policy of propping up oppressive regimes in foreign countries when it suits our own agendas. Nothing pisses off a population like this one, and someday, some way, I bet Saudi Arabia is going to go the way of Iran and once again we'll have our own screwed-up policies to blame. The hypocrisy alone of supporting regimes like this should be enough to gall any American. I know how I'd feel if I lived in a place with an oppressive government being backed by the "land of the free" Americans: pretty damn bitter and pissed off.
Fortunately, with the Cold War gone, there's not as much incentive for America to do this sort of thing. Unfortunately, we still have reasons (or at least excuses) to engage in activities like the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grievances in the Middle East. The best resolution to these grievances starts here at home: we need to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. If we can pull that off (and, someday, we'll have to whether we're ready or not, so it only makes sense to do it on our own timetable), then we don't have to muck around in these nation's business so much. One of the many tangible, beneficial side effects, of course, would be a reduction in the money available to the governments in the Middle East for things like building nuclear weapons and vast armies. Pull the oil plug, and the Middle East becomes Africa - poor and strategically non-critical.
I'd like to see a Cold War-scale, moon-race kind of program set up to explore alternatives to fossil fuels. There's too many angles that fit into such a program to go into here, but theoretically, at least, America could do it. The benefits could be astro-fucking-nomical. And, we could flush above grievances 2, 3 and 4 down the toilet. Goodbye Arab terrorism.
Of course, all discussion of such a fantasy program is moot at this point. Won't happen, thanks to... America. Way to go, chumps. Nice sort-of election of a President Oil Money and Vice-President Oil Executive, with National Security Advisor S.S. Condoleeza Rice (had a supertanker named after her, after all - how's that for national security). Such an elegant solution to a bundle of problems, a grand engineering exercise that would make those NASA boys look like weenies, a noble national goal that could provide far-reaching, permanent improvements for every single person on this planet... and fat freakin' chance.
No, I think what'll happen instead is, none of those four above grievances will be addressed in any meaningful way. President Gump and pals will manage a pretty good war, make it look like we accomplished something (and get rid of the Taliban, which I'm excited about, but it's not really a long-term solution to anything), probably nab some bad guys, America will cheer and we'll go on about our business and nothing will change for the better. Then there will be another terrorist attack and another clampdown on our personal freedoms and so on and so forth...
All it would take is just one leader with vision, integrity and wisdom. Who? Beats me. But we sure haven't seen the likes of that guy in a long, long time. And I bet if he shows up again, America will just elect another Gump anyway.
Cheerful thoughts for the start of a new war. Happy bombing, everyone!
OK, how about this, then... how about Aiwa or Kenwood or whoever mounts a USB2 jack onto the face of an in-dash MP3 CD player, and let it read MP3s off a USB2-connected external hard drive?
It's already got the screen, controls and codecs. Add the ability to read a few basic hdd formats and the USB jack, and you're golden. Adds, what, $10 to the cost? And then I can haul a 160GB external Maxtor wherever I want - home, car, and office. Plus, you can use the Maxtor for other stuff besides MP3s - never know when 160GB of pr0n's gonna come in handy.
No pun intended.
Thank you! Good night!
But fo' real. I ain't buyin' til someone does it right.
All I want is a little box with an LCD screen and a few basic controls. Give it 1394 and USB2 interfaces. Let me drop my own damn hard drive in there, whatever size I want. And give it RCA or minijack out, so I plug it in wherever I want. And let it play Ogg and MPC and crazy-high-bitrate VBR LAME rips.
Just the box with the little screen, controls, interfaces and codecs. Let me add my own hard drive (and update the codecs). Is it so much to ask?
I propose a new Constitutional amendment. The Three-Constitutional Strikes And You're Out amendment.
That's freakin' brilliant. Too smart to ever get anywhere in America, that's for sure, but man, I like the cut of your jib.
I'd even go one step further, though. Things like this get passed (or written) to further a political agenda, often with no apparent consideration for the broad impacts on the citizenry. I'd say, someone who's actively working against the best interests of the people of the US in a political arena is guilty of treason.
OK, OK, so that wouldn't really work, blah blah, I know, I know. Lighten up. But still. Wouldn't you like to see some of these guys swing from lampposts like pirates, as a warning to others? Or am I just feeling particularly barbaric these days?
My bad. My source is "The Man Who Tried to Save the World", about the disappearance in Chechnya of humanitarian Fred Cuny - hardly a doctrine of Chechen history, but I think it's reasonably trustworthy as far as it goes. The year of the deportation is far more likely a mistake due to my faulty memory than the book - I thought it was post-WWII, 46-47, somewhere in there, for some reason. I'm surprised Stalin devoted the resources for such a vast operation during 1944, but it makes sense how they were able to pull it off, if the men were off at the front lines.
I'm not sure I agree with the genocide solution anymore, though. 50, 100 years ago, maybe you could wipe out an entire population and get away with it, but these days, the world's too small and no population is entirely isolated. People will hold grudges for a long, long time. Wipe out the Chechens, and you'd have to keep wiping all the way to Tunisia in one direction and Manila in the other to prevent "problems". Just ain't doable. Force has its place, no doubt about it, but it's going to be the very rare problem from now on that gets permanently solved using only that tool.
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Lots of comments here about how this makes sense, about time, serves the warez kiddies right, so on and so forth...
I always thought the idea was that bandwidth would get *cheaper*, not more expensive. The pipes are only getting fatter all around, and anyway, prices are supposed to rise when a commodity gets scarcer, not more abundant. I can't believe that the best solution the cable companies have for shared bandwidth hogs is to meter everybody. So much for video over IP, huh?
I remember talking with my friendly local DSL ISP about how much I can reasonably transfer in a month without being a "problem" user. They shrugged and said, hey, download bandwidth is not an issue - you can pull down as much as you like and it's no big deal. It's the outbound bandwidth that costs us real money.
I can understand how that model works, but still, flat rates are a beautiful thing. The best part of the net is the free exchange of information... one person can set up a homepage and reach a practically unlimited audience. The average joe can compete with the big corporations, and all that. Personally, I would just as soon subsidize some MP3 and warez kiddies if it meant that my neighbor could also serve a popular webpage of something useful or beautiful and not have to worry about how he's going to pay for the bandwidth.
The only way I'd be cool with metering bandwidth would be if it prompted the rollout of alternatives. So what if the cable companies have a lousy distribution model -- as long as there's DSL, wireless, satellite and powerline broadband also available, then hey, no big deal. But as long as there are just barely a handful of companies setting themselves up to dominate the broadband market, metering bandwidth is just not cool. What'll you say when downloading from Time-Warner websites is unlimited, but everything else is metered? Where does that lead us?
That's awesome - I've looked for a long time for reasonably-priced binder pages. Thanks!
Still, though, even these aren't really all that cheap. Ballpark $500 for 2000 decent-quality blank CDs and $100 for binders, and that's $900 for 1.4 TB of storage. Not bad, but with 120gig hard drives going for $160 and all the "just-around-the-corner" massive mass storage devices they keep promising, I hope something better comes along soon. A 3-ft shelf of CD binders just reminds me of a wall of cassette tapes... soon to be obsolete and, if you move a lot, just one more PITA.
Where's my $50 terabyte storage card, dammit?!?
I haven't bought a major-label CD in years. Plenty of indie stuff (that I've immediately ripped for my own use), but the RIAA members don't sell what I want, so I don't buy. I no longer want physical media. I hate physical media. I don't know about other people, but I have way too much media as it is - and being relatively young, single and mobile, too much stuff is nothing but a PITA when you move a lot. I just picked up a couple of DVDs today and thought, geez, I can't wait until I can rip these things to a gigantic mass storage device and ditch this useless, irritating physical packaging (I know I already can, but I want to rip 'em complete with all the features).
I used to think that the media companies would have no choice but to offer a distribution model that would suit my needs, but I guess they don't plan on doing that. It's no one's loss but their own, and frankly, if they don't get paid and the artists don't get paid, then it's their own fault and I have very little sympathy. I'm perfectly willing to give them money. Just sell me what I want and don't treat me like a bitch, and you'll get paid... that's pretty much how this system works, last time I checked.
But it looks like that isn't going to happen any time soon. In fact, if things keep going the way they're going, I predict a lot more people are going to feel this way, and that means one thing: opportunity! Ironically enough, a clampdown from big media might be just the thing that destroys them, because there will be creators who WILL offer what we want, how we want it. The more people who are driven to those alternatives, the better... so I say, let the RIAA do their thing. Worst case scenario: there will always be a hack for whatever they try. But the best case scenario?
We'll route around them like damage, and we'll create new opportunities for creators and distributors.
Either way, they're meaningless in my life.
Ah, yes, The Demon-Haunted World. While I agree wholeheartedly with the principles of baloney detection you quoted, it should be noted that The Demon-Haunted World itself is hardly a paradigm of objectivity. I regard Sagan's ideas from this book as a valuable skeptical tool, and applied appropriately (like I think you did here), can be extremely useful. The flip side of it, however, can be the casual disregard for anything that doesn't fit his predetermined worldview (the attitude of, "I don't need to look objectively at X, I already know X doesn't exist because I know X doesn't exist" can be a slippery slope). I think Sagan's skepticism, while again very useful in part, came off overall as smug, self-serving and dogmatic. Personally, I keep The Demon-Haunted World on the shelf (both literally and metaphorically) right next to Charles Fort and Patrick Harpur's appropriately titled "Daimonic Reality", which takes on a far more interesting and challenging question than Sagan did, namely, "how do we account for all aspects of human experience, and who decides what is real?" Fun stuff!
If you haven't already, I think you'd really appreciate reading Joseph Heller's "Catch-22", IMO the finest novel yet written. Sounds like you could relate to it, at least...
YES! That's excellent advice. I removed MS Messenger and installed Trillian, and I can't remember the last time I was so completely thrilled with a piece of software. Use Trillian. It does AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC, it's free, it looks awesome, it's updated often, it's easy to use, it works well, and did I mention it looks awesome? If there's any reason to use any other IM client, I don't know what it is...
I'm not into anime, so until now I never had a reason to bother hacking my DVD players. But with this and Northern Exposure only being available in Europe... what do they expect us to do?
>...radioactive release on a per person basis...
Any refs for this? How was this calculated? I don't know the first thing about 3 Mile Island, but my impression is that it wasn't so much the actual release that freaked people out as the potential the situation had for releasing a whole lot more.
Pray tell, what goods got cheaper as a result of the layoffs of the 80s? I think you're a little too optimistic about the powers of capitalism.
I actually agree with a substantial part of your premise, but here's where it falls down for me: "requires everyone to be educated enough to learn whatever trade is needed at a given time."
So who's educating the populace in this manner? There's always the upper percentile who can do this, but the vast middle and lower percentiles sure aren't getting trained this way. It may not even be possible, for all we know - after all, this is a new experiment. Lots of people, maybe even most, may only be capable of 40 years of fastening rivets. Where do they fit into this new paradigm you're talking about? Are they really going to be bootstrapped up somehow, or are they just fodder for a new populist redistribute-the-wealth movement?
And the current trend in education is exactly the opposite of giving people the kind of skills they need. The trend is to train them specifically for standardized tests and get 'em out the door as efficiently as possible. How very capitalist, really. A sufficient education in science, tech and business just isn't in the cards, especially when they currently can't even provide a sufficient education in reading, writing and math.
Seems to me the problems of capitalism as practiced in America, particularly, are only going to get worse. It's a feedback loop. If anyone in American government or business had any kind of long-term vision or a concern about anything but next quarter's bottom line, I'd feel more optimistic...
Ignore the people posting here telling you to buy a Mac. There's lots of blah blah blah, but your bottom line is $1000, so forget about it. And it isn't necessary anyway.
Like others have said, a good monitor is important. They go on about color matching and so on, and yeah, that's key for some things. You don't say exactly what your friend is going to be doing, though, so ultra-super-precision color might be not as critical for her as it is for some people. And given your budget, that level of color precision isn't really an option, anyway.
I'd go with a 19" Samsung SyncMaster monitor. I picked one up from Buy.com a few months ago for a friend for about $250. Great monitor for the money (sorry I don't recall the model number offhand).
Now, this is as much a religious topic as any, but as far as monitors go I'd make sure to get her a shadow mask. Get her a Trinitron tube and I'll lay odds she'll be calling you to complain about those two funny lines on her screen. It ain't worth the potential headache, trust me.
Also, make the damn computer quiet! She'll probably also hate it if it sounds like a jet engine. Grab a couple of Silencer fans from PC Power and Cooling, and use a 60-to-80mm adapter on the heat sink and put a Silencer at the top of it. Use a Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive - almost completely silent - and an Antec SX630 case, which is a nice size, reasonably decent-looking and has an excellent and quiet PS. Plus, if you're building this thing, trust me, it's worth spending a few extra bucks here. Anyway, just using these components will leave you with a nearly-silent PC for not a whole lot of extra scratch. For her, it's probably well, well worth it.
MATROX. She's not going to be firing up Wolfenstein, right? So get her a Matrox G450. No fan, no noise, cheap, and it's the best 2D image quality going. You shouldn't even consider anything else (unless she games).
Give her a healthy amount of RAM. Fortunately, it's cheap. CPU: whatever. Everything else: whatever. She ain't gonna care about it. If she'll be listening to music, you can still get the Ensoniq AudioPCI for dirt cheap, and it's better than onboard audio. Audition speakers at the local store and let her decide how much audio quality she wants to buy.
Good luck! I think you can pull off a real nice system for her even given your budget constraint.
That's telekinesis, Kyle!
How about the power... to move you?
Hey, one of my best friends played one of the nerds in Sorority Babes. Cool to see it's got a following... I still haven't even seen it...
I keep seeing people say, use the original packaging... but even that isn't good enough sometimes.
My company ordered a Dell PPro back in the day that showed up with a little dent in one corner of the box. No one even noticed it - looking at it from the outside, even upon inspection it just looked very slightly damaged. Like maybe someone had let the corner hit the ground while setting it down.
But the case on that machine was wrecked. Permanently kinked. The fascia was badly cracked and when I wanted to add another CD drive in it, it was impossible because of the out-of-wack geometry. Ended up buying a new case.
Yeah, I KNOW it should have been opened and checked before accepting the delivery. If I'd been there when it was delivered, I would've. The point is, even the factory shipping containers aren't necessarily a sure thing. Think carefully before you ship anything you care about!
I've thought about this, but I came to the conclusion that I'd rather use a high-bitrate LAME MP3 encode (like the dibrom -insane setting). It's still significantly better than 2 to 1, and completely transparent with everything I've checked so far (with moderately good gear and midrange Sennheiser headphones, but not the ultra-wanker audiophile stuff).
As far as I'm concerned, a good LAME encode is still the best solution for music - the resulting MP3 will work on any platform, the sound can be perfect, file size is reasonable and speed is terrific. Until we all have REALLY high-speed bandwidth and practically unlimited storage and can store things uncompressed, I'm sticking with MP3.
I'm running an Asus A7M266 with 512mb Crucial and a Matrox G450 and original SBLive with Win2K. I've been playing heavily since it came out and have yet to have a crash or glitch of any sort.
I finished my first game last night. It was probably the first game of Civ I've ever played where I actually wanted to win one of the "peaceful" ways. Even after winning, I chose to keep playing to check things out. It didn't take long for all the other civs to gang up and attack me, and they did a good job - I hadn't built up much of a defense at all, and I was thoroughly getting my ass kicked. The AI is improved in this game.
What sucked, though, is that my tech was way far out ahead of everyone else, but I didn't have any oil. The only source of oil on my continent quickly dried up after I finally nabbed it, so I went over to the other big continent where there was plenty of oil. It seems like the only decent government for fighting that huge endgame war is Communism, which is supposed to give a flat-rate corruption... but once I started taking over the other continent, I noticed my cities there weren't doing anything - because ALL of their shields were going to corruption! At first I chalked it up to an effect of conquering, but it never got any better.
Fortunately, that's when I got nukes. But anyway, I'm looking forward to a Fascism patch for Civ3 like there was for 2 - that rocked for conquering the world.
Sleep paralysis - commonly known as Old Hag - is indeed a very real phenomenon, and seems to exhibit surprisingly consistent symptoms. Supernatural or physiological quirk, or both? Who knows...
Look for a book called "The Terror That Comes in the Night" by David J Hufford, if you're interested in learning more.
I'm just finishing up a new quiet PC here for my girlfriend. Despite my best efforts, it's no Mac Cube... you can still hear it. But at least it's tolerable.
First stop: case. For my money, nothing beats the Antec SX630/830/1030. You can keep your fancypants Lian Li, I'll take the Antecs any day of the week at half the price. This particular machine is the 630 - I greatly prefer the 830, but the 630 ain't bad. Comes with an extremely quiet 300w power supply and the case is an absolute joy to work in.
Next: fans. I tried the PCP&C Silencer and the Papst 8412NGL. The Papst is twice as expensive ($10 vs 20), but it is slightly quieter and better built. I've got one Silencer here that's badly out of balance, and when attached to anything sets up a nasty vibration. The Papst fans actually have little metal tabs in the hubs - apparently they custom-balance each fan. For that reason alone, I think I'll use Papst in the future, but the Silencers aren't a bad choice, either.
Hard drive: the Seagate Barracuda IV is 7200RPM and doesn't need a Silent Drive enclosure. It's absolutely positively dead quiet and fast. I haven't heard anything else that comes close.
CPU cooler: I tried a Molex Radial Fin on one PC and it was OK. For this machine, I used a stock retail AMD heatsink (a leftover) and a 60-to-80mm adapter, and a Silencer fan. I would've switched it to a Papst, but it's kind of a PITA so I didn't bother. Even the Antec 630 has plenty of room for this towering beast, and obviously it's quieter than the Molex or any of the other solutions out there. Might not be appropriate for higher clock speeds, though. For that I'd probably go with a Zalman.
As far as temperatures go, I don't give a fuck. This CPU is a Duron 900, not overclocked. It's like a $50 part. The temp was well within normal parameters last time I looked. I don't grok the heat geeks around here bitching about one temperature or another being too high - it's the nerd version of a 0-to-60 time, and it matters in my life not one little itty bitty tiny iota.
CD drive is an extra Teac 16x burner I had. Great drive, and reasonable on the sound front, although certainly not as quiet as a Toshiba DVD drive. I'm waiting for a recordable DVD, too.
The last part of my quiet PC is installing grommets on the Seagate. It's dead quiet, but it does vibrate. Once that's done, I'm convinced this machine will be about as quiet as any fan-cooled PC can possibly be. And the price? I didn't add it up, but it's quite reasonable.
I note that you posted this even after Keenan's reasoned response. Nothing wrong with hating Saddam, but you and your pal there are simply underinformed. If you really hate Saddam so much, why would you want to support sanctions that hurt the common people while only helping empower and enrich Saddam? Doesn't make any sense.
Of course, it makes sense if the goal is to keep Saddam in power, which may or may not be the actual intent of US foreign policy in that region. One hates to attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by simple incompetence, and that's got to be more true in the State Dept than just about anywhere else on the planet, but in this case there should be enough lingering, unanswered questions to raise a doubt. Stop and ponder: is there any potential reason why the US might want to have an excuse to maintain a large military force in the Middle East?
Crazy talk? Maybe. Makes more sense than what you guys have posted, though.
MAN, I wish there were more people in the media and elsewhere talking along these lines. Good work. So what are the solutions?
The first grievance, the creation of a Palestinian state, should be a no-brainer. The devil's certainly in the details of that issue, but conceptually, there's no doubt that a peaceful creation of a permanent Palestinian homeland should be a top foreign policy priority. Regardless of the sticky realities, strong US support for a Palestinian state should go a long way in the Arab and Muslim world.
The second and third grievances, Iraqi sanctions and the apparently permanent US military presence on Saudi soil are indeed intertwined. I think there is much more to this situation than we've been told, and resolutions may be more complicated than one might expect. It's all tied into a fourth grievance that goes even more frequently ignored than the first three...
The fourth grievance would be the longstanding US policy of propping up oppressive regimes in foreign countries when it suits our own agendas. Nothing pisses off a population like this one, and someday, some way, I bet Saudi Arabia is going to go the way of Iran and once again we'll have our own screwed-up policies to blame. The hypocrisy alone of supporting regimes like this should be enough to gall any American. I know how I'd feel if I lived in a place with an oppressive government being backed by the "land of the free" Americans: pretty damn bitter and pissed off.
Fortunately, with the Cold War gone, there's not as much incentive for America to do this sort of thing. Unfortunately, we still have reasons (or at least excuses) to engage in activities like the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grievances in the Middle East. The best resolution to these grievances starts here at home: we need to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. If we can pull that off (and, someday, we'll have to whether we're ready or not, so it only makes sense to do it on our own timetable), then we don't have to muck around in these nation's business so much. One of the many tangible, beneficial side effects, of course, would be a reduction in the money available to the governments in the Middle East for things like building nuclear weapons and vast armies. Pull the oil plug, and the Middle East becomes Africa - poor and strategically non-critical.
I'd like to see a Cold War-scale, moon-race kind of program set up to explore alternatives to fossil fuels. There's too many angles that fit into such a program to go into here, but theoretically, at least, America could do it. The benefits could be astro-fucking-nomical. And, we could flush above grievances 2, 3 and 4 down the toilet. Goodbye Arab terrorism.
Of course, all discussion of such a fantasy program is moot at this point. Won't happen, thanks to... America. Way to go, chumps. Nice sort-of election of a President Oil Money and Vice-President Oil Executive, with National Security Advisor S.S. Condoleeza Rice (had a supertanker named after her, after all - how's that for national security). Such an elegant solution to a bundle of problems, a grand engineering exercise that would make those NASA boys look like weenies, a noble national goal that could provide far-reaching, permanent improvements for every single person on this planet... and fat freakin' chance.
No, I think what'll happen instead is, none of those four above grievances will be addressed in any meaningful way. President Gump and pals will manage a pretty good war, make it look like we accomplished something (and get rid of the Taliban, which I'm excited about, but it's not really a long-term solution to anything), probably nab some bad guys, America will cheer and we'll go on about our business and nothing will change for the better. Then there will be another terrorist attack and another clampdown on our personal freedoms and so on and so forth...
All it would take is just one leader with vision, integrity and wisdom. Who? Beats me. But we sure haven't seen the likes of that guy in a long, long time. And I bet if he shows up again, America will just elect another Gump anyway.
Cheerful thoughts for the start of a new war. Happy bombing, everyone!
Airbus computers are freakin' scary. I avoid flying on their airplanes just like I avoid using IIS. Thanks for another data point for my paranoia.
Man, tough moderating crowd.
OK, how about this, then... how about Aiwa or Kenwood or whoever mounts a USB2 jack onto the face of an in-dash MP3 CD player, and let it read MP3s off a USB2-connected external hard drive?
It's already got the screen, controls and codecs. Add the ability to read a few basic hdd formats and the USB jack, and you're golden. Adds, what, $10 to the cost? And then I can haul a 160GB external Maxtor wherever I want - home, car, and office. Plus, you can use the Maxtor for other stuff besides MP3s - never know when 160GB of pr0n's gonna come in handy.
No pun intended.
Thank you! Good night!
But fo' real. I ain't buyin' til someone does it right.
All I want is a little box with an LCD screen and a few basic controls. Give it 1394 and USB2 interfaces. Let me drop my own damn hard drive in there, whatever size I want. And give it RCA or minijack out, so I plug it in wherever I want. And let it play Ogg and MPC and crazy-high-bitrate VBR LAME rips.
Just the box with the little screen, controls, interfaces and codecs. Let me add my own hard drive (and update the codecs). Is it so much to ask?
I propose a new Constitutional amendment. The Three-Constitutional Strikes And You're Out amendment.
That's freakin' brilliant. Too smart to ever get anywhere in America, that's for sure, but man, I like the cut of your jib.
I'd even go one step further, though. Things like this get passed (or written) to further a political agenda, often with no apparent consideration for the broad impacts on the citizenry. I'd say, someone who's actively working against the best interests of the people of the US in a political arena is guilty of treason.
OK, OK, so that wouldn't really work, blah blah, I know, I know. Lighten up. But still. Wouldn't you like to see some of these guys swing from lampposts like pirates, as a warning to others? Or am I just feeling particularly barbaric these days?
My bad. My source is "The Man Who Tried to Save the World", about the disappearance in Chechnya of humanitarian Fred Cuny - hardly a doctrine of Chechen history, but I think it's reasonably trustworthy as far as it goes. The year of the deportation is far more likely a mistake due to my faulty memory than the book - I thought it was post-WWII, 46-47, somewhere in there, for some reason. I'm surprised Stalin devoted the resources for such a vast operation during 1944, but it makes sense how they were able to pull it off, if the men were off at the front lines.
I'm not sure I agree with the genocide solution anymore, though. 50, 100 years ago, maybe you could wipe out an entire population and get away with it, but these days, the world's too small and no population is entirely isolated. People will hold grudges for a long, long time. Wipe out the Chechens, and you'd have to keep wiping all the way to Tunisia in one direction and Manila in the other to prevent "problems". Just ain't doable. Force has its place, no doubt about it, but it's going to be the very rare problem from now on that gets permanently solved using only that tool.