Of the three CFLs I purchased when they first became widely available in the 1990's, one is still working, 20 years later. On the other hand, the CFLs I've purchased since the turn of the century don't appear to last any longer than incandescents. It appears that CFLs have been "value engineered" around, say, 2005, much the same way that incandescents were in the 1920s. Following this pattern, I expect LEDs to have a tremendous life span during the first years they become popular, gradually decreasing to 1000 hours or so.
The problem with selling something that lasts forever is that you don't have any repeat business.
"Rough Service" incandescents, designed for outdoor hard to reach places in harsh conditions, where CFLs are not appropriate and LEDs have not yet made inroads, are still available, cost about $2 apiece, have a rated lifespan of 10,000 hours, and are not affected by the ban on incandescents. Just sayin'...
...from having your car repoed? Don't incur the debt if you can't afford the payments. Or talk to your lender if you need a few days extension. The real issue here is that too many people ignore the payment request instead of using communication to come to an equitable agreement.
I second this. Having been in tight financial spots a couple of times, I rapidly learned that the WORST thing you can do is ignore your creditors. That only leads to unpleasant escalation. Creditors (with a few exceptions that I won't mention here) don't want to escalate, that just increases their expenses. They want some reasonable assurance that they're going to get paid at some point. During the bad times (the dot com bust was one such time) I had to make arrangements with mortgage, utilities, internet (so I could continue looking for a job), the IRS, various loan companies, and medical services, and they all will talk to you and try to come to some reasonable solution, if you contact them early on. Just blindly missing payments is a really good way to get your stuff taken away, or turned off.
There are exceptions. My wife borrowed money once with a financial institution that was a real jerk to her for the entire time she had the loan, despite her best efforts to be on time and meet their expectations. There are institutions out there with which one should never do business.
Ok I get that the loan company perhaps shouldn't turn off the car randomly for a missed payment if it puts the driver at risk (for whatever reason). But I have to ask, how is this different from a car shutting down randomly when the driver missed a gas fillup? How is it different from a burner phone shutting down when the user misses adding minutes to the phone? If the user agreed to a high risk loan (or whatever they're calling it these days) they've agreed to what is essentially a "pay as you go" arrangement. You have to make a payment in order to continue driving, just as you have to continue to pay to put gas in the car, and you have to continue to buy minutes for your phone, or put more money in the account from which your debit card draws, or any other pay as you go scheme.
On the one hand, an argument could be made that turning off a car for nonpayment could be dangerous. (I happen to agree.) But on the other hand, it's essentially pay-as-go and works the same as any other pay-as-go scheme. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
You're right, but I was specifically addressing the complaint that steps to stop fraud will delay tax returns. If you're financially dependent on your tax return, you're doing it wrong.
Engineer your taxes so you don't get refunds. I calculate my deductions so that I end up owing something under $1K to the feds and a couple hundred to the state. That way, I'm never inconvenienced by late refunds, and the bills are small enough so they're not a hardship to pay.
Overpaying your taxes is not a savings account; you don't get interest on your investment.
> How is ubiquity of cameras making them inane exactly?
I don't mean to imply such a close cause and effect. I'm commenting that for whatever reason, we as a society are taking what is arguably a cool thing and turning it into something inane. It's not the ubiquity of cameras that's making them inane, it's the use to which they are put.
For every photo or video that makes headlines or brings down a crooked cop, there are millions of banal selfies or photos of burritos. It's just exactly as depressing as the popularity of celebs who are famous only for being famous, and for much the same reason.
I tell you, this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox -- we haven't seen any other civilizations because they all invented personal electronics, became irredeemably narcissistic, and civilization collapsed as a result.
There's something to be said for having a camera (no matter how feeble) with you at all times, but aren't we getting tired of pictures of food and blurry portraits taken in the bathroom? People are taking this great thing (a camera with you always) and making it inane. There will inevitably be a backlash. Personally I've stopped taking photos with my phone, except in emergencies (like for accident evidence) when I don't have a "real" camera on me.
> Rumor has it that Satya has personally delivered a massive smackdown to the management team responsible for Win8 fuckup. The user sat numbers were sad indeed.
Must have: Useable start menu, (a button to dump us into the "start screen" was just plain insulting) a useable desktop, and the ability to not run any metro (or whatever it's called) apps whatsoever.
Important but not a deal killer: Put all the control panel functions back in the control panel. You can keep the charms bar for tablet compatibility, but I'd want some way to turn it off on a desktop. In fact, I would like a way to turn off all hot corners, hot sides, and swiping gestures while on a KVM machine. Registry changes to do this would be fine, as I would intend to do it once and never revert back.
Sounds like you want to try Linux Mint. It does all of that right out of the box. For free. Seriously, try it if you are going to change OS anyway.
You have a point, and Mint is on my list to try. I have an older machine I can use for evaluation.
Truly, the only reason I keep Windows around is for the Adobe creative suite (which I use daily). The moment Adobe ports Linux, I'm done with Windows.
Yes, I've read that. I'm waiting for the punchline, (like, you have to use gestures to log in! C'mon it'll be fun!) but what I've heard so far make me cautiously hopeful. I'm fine with 7 for now, but know I need to upgrade eventually, probably to 9 when it's on SP2 or 3, and when 10 comes out and is obviously a POS. And then, we wait until 11...
Must have: Useable start menu, (a button to dump us into the "start screen" was just plain insulting) a useable desktop, and the ability to not run any metro (or whatever it's called) apps whatsoever.
Important but not a deal killer: Put all the control panel functions back in the control panel. You can keep the charms bar for tablet compatibility, but I'd want some way to turn it off on a desktop. In fact, I would like a way to turn off all hot corners, hot sides, and swiping gestures while on a KVM machine. Registry changes to do this would be fine, as I would intend to do it once and never revert back.
Wait, now that I think about it, we might be thinking along legacy lines. Perhaps the future is more like: managers with liberal arts degrees presiding over completely outsourced technical resources.
Maybe I should go back to school and major in art history.
i think you have described sci-fi in general. from it's earliest beginnings, it was meant to foster caution about technology or shine a light on the ills of society. the upbeat Star Trek, Star Wars, and Stargates were really anomalous blips.
I think I disagree. Read any Heinlein, Asimov, Smith, Anderson, Blish, Simak, Van Vogt, Cutner, during the "golden age" in the 1940's and 1950's, up to maybe 1964. Generally positive in outlook. A positive view of the future is not something Star Trek invented -- it was par for the course up until the mid sixties. If anything, Star Trek in 1966 was riding the trailing edge of that positive outlook in scifi, before everything turned dreadfully depressing.
Anyone remember the seventies pre-Star Wars? You couldn't produce an SF film unless it had a downer ending. The magazine of fantasy and science fiction was full of depressing dystopian stories. Dangerous Visions, Last Days of Man on Earth, Driftglass... The book stands were loaded with depressing scifi. It wasn't a particularly uplifting time. I remember wondering at the time whether the industry go through cycles, where to differentiate yourself you have to write depressing fiction, and then everyone follows along, and then to differentiate yourself you have to go with, I dunno, a happy ending, and everyone follows suit, back and forth. Or whether literature and media tend to track some manic-depressive cycle of society. Or drives it.
In my experience, even blu-ray isn't big enough. And it's really slow. Raw hard drives are cheap enough that it makes sense to use them as backup media. (Just don't drop one.)
Agreed. Mirroring is not a backup either, because data corruption or erroneous deletion happens on both drives.
A true backup goes to media (which could be another drive) which is then disconnected from the computer and stored somewhere else. The further away (within reason) the better.
A good plan might be to cultivate a friend who also has data he doesn't want to lose, and store each other's backups, thus protecting both of you from local disaster (like a house fire).
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently he tried (unsuccessfully, so far) to commit suicide, so job prospects were probably not part of his agenda.
Of the three CFLs I purchased when they first became widely available in the 1990's, one is still working, 20 years later. On the other hand, the CFLs I've purchased since the turn of the century don't appear to last any longer than incandescents. It appears that CFLs have been "value engineered" around, say, 2005, much the same way that incandescents were in the 1920s. Following this pattern, I expect LEDs to have a tremendous life span during the first years they become popular, gradually decreasing to 1000 hours or so.
The problem with selling something that lasts forever is that you don't have any repeat business.
"Rough Service" incandescents, designed for outdoor hard to reach places in harsh conditions, where CFLs are not appropriate and LEDs have not yet made inroads, are still available, cost about $2 apiece, have a rated lifespan of 10,000 hours, and are not affected by the ban on incandescents. Just sayin'...
...from having your car repoed? Don't incur the debt if you can't afford the payments. Or talk to your lender if you need a few days extension. The real issue here is that too many people ignore the payment request instead of using communication to come to an equitable agreement.
I second this. Having been in tight financial spots a couple of times, I rapidly learned that the WORST thing you can do is ignore your creditors. That only leads to unpleasant escalation. Creditors (with a few exceptions that I won't mention here) don't want to escalate, that just increases their expenses. They want some reasonable assurance that they're going to get paid at some point. During the bad times (the dot com bust was one such time) I had to make arrangements with mortgage, utilities, internet (so I could continue looking for a job), the IRS, various loan companies, and medical services, and they all will talk to you and try to come to some reasonable solution, if you contact them early on. Just blindly missing payments is a really good way to get your stuff taken away, or turned off.
There are exceptions. My wife borrowed money once with a financial institution that was a real jerk to her for the entire time she had the loan, despite her best efforts to be on time and meet their expectations. There are institutions out there with which one should never do business.
Ok I get that the loan company perhaps shouldn't turn off the car randomly for a missed payment if it puts the driver at risk (for whatever reason). But I have to ask, how is this different from a car shutting down randomly when the driver missed a gas fillup? How is it different from a burner phone shutting down when the user misses adding minutes to the phone? If the user agreed to a high risk loan (or whatever they're calling it these days) they've agreed to what is essentially a "pay as you go" arrangement. You have to make a payment in order to continue driving, just as you have to continue to pay to put gas in the car, and you have to continue to buy minutes for your phone, or put more money in the account from which your debit card draws, or any other pay as you go scheme.
On the one hand, an argument could be made that turning off a car for nonpayment could be dangerous. (I happen to agree.) But on the other hand, it's essentially pay-as-go and works the same as any other pay-as-go scheme. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
You're right, but I was specifically addressing the complaint that steps to stop fraud will delay tax returns. If you're financially dependent on your tax return, you're doing it wrong.
Engineer your taxes so you don't get refunds. I calculate my deductions so that I end up owing something under $1K to the feds and a couple hundred to the state. That way, I'm never inconvenienced by late refunds, and the bills are small enough so they're not a hardship to pay.
Overpaying your taxes is not a savings account; you don't get interest on your investment.
I wonder what would happen if you don't allow a dog to align north-south.
It explodes.
On our walk last night, my dog defecated while facing west. Clearly he's broken.
If I'm not a "real" photographer, I sure have enough people fooled to make a decent living.
> How is ubiquity of cameras making them inane exactly?
I don't mean to imply such a close cause and effect. I'm commenting that for whatever reason, we as a society are taking what is arguably a cool thing and turning it into something inane. It's not the ubiquity of cameras that's making them inane, it's the use to which they are put.
For every photo or video that makes headlines or brings down a crooked cop, there are millions of banal selfies or photos of burritos. It's just exactly as depressing as the popularity of celebs who are famous only for being famous, and for much the same reason.
I tell you, this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox -- we haven't seen any other civilizations because they all invented personal electronics, became irredeemably narcissistic, and civilization collapsed as a result.
There's something to be said for having a camera (no matter how feeble) with you at all times, but aren't we getting tired of pictures of food and blurry portraits taken in the bathroom? People are taking this great thing (a camera with you always) and making it inane. There will inevitably be a backlash. Personally I've stopped taking photos with my phone, except in emergencies (like for accident evidence) when I don't have a "real" camera on me.
> Rumor has it that Satya has personally delivered a massive smackdown to the management team responsible for Win8 fuckup. The user sat numbers were sad indeed.
This gives me hope.
Must have: Useable start menu, (a button to dump us into the "start screen" was just plain insulting) a useable desktop, and the ability to not run any metro (or whatever it's called) apps whatsoever.
Important but not a deal killer: Put all the control panel functions back in the control panel. You can keep the charms bar for tablet compatibility, but I'd want some way to turn it off on a desktop. In fact, I would like a way to turn off all hot corners, hot sides, and swiping gestures while on a KVM machine. Registry changes to do this would be fine, as I would intend to do it once and never revert back.
Sounds like you want to try Linux Mint. It does all of that right out of the box. For free. Seriously, try it if you are going to change OS anyway.
You have a point, and Mint is on my list to try. I have an older machine I can use for evaluation.
Truly, the only reason I keep Windows around is for the Adobe creative suite (which I use daily). The moment Adobe ports Linux, I'm done with Windows.
Yes, I've read that. I'm waiting for the punchline, (like, you have to use gestures to log in! C'mon it'll be fun!) but what I've heard so far make me cautiously hopeful. I'm fine with 7 for now, but know I need to upgrade eventually, probably to 9 when it's on SP2 or 3, and when 10 comes out and is obviously a POS. And then, we wait until 11...
Yeahhhhh.... we're staying on Server 2008 until Server 2012 or some future version behaves in a reasonable fashion.
Must have: Useable start menu, (a button to dump us into the "start screen" was just plain insulting) a useable desktop, and the ability to not run any metro (or whatever it's called) apps whatsoever.
Important but not a deal killer: Put all the control panel functions back in the control panel. You can keep the charms bar for tablet compatibility, but I'd want some way to turn it off on a desktop. In fact, I would like a way to turn off all hot corners, hot sides, and swiping gestures while on a KVM machine. Registry changes to do this would be fine, as I would intend to do it once and never revert back.
Unless you finagle your way into management.
Wait, now that I think about it, we might be thinking along legacy lines. Perhaps the future is more like: managers with liberal arts degrees presiding over completely outsourced technical resources.
Maybe I should go back to school and major in art history.
Thank you. I didn't understand his response either.
i think you have described sci-fi in general. from it's earliest beginnings, it was meant to foster caution about technology or shine a light on the ills of society. the upbeat Star Trek, Star Wars, and Stargates were really anomalous blips.
I think I disagree. Read any Heinlein, Asimov, Smith, Anderson, Blish, Simak, Van Vogt, Cutner, during the "golden age" in the 1940's and 1950's, up to maybe 1964. Generally positive in outlook. A positive view of the future is not something Star Trek invented -- it was par for the course up until the mid sixties. If anything, Star Trek in 1966 was riding the trailing edge of that positive outlook in scifi, before everything turned dreadfully depressing.
Life does tend to imitate art, although the cycles are a few decades out of sync.
Anyone remember the seventies pre-Star Wars? You couldn't produce an SF film unless it had a downer ending. The magazine of fantasy and science fiction was full of depressing dystopian stories. Dangerous Visions, Last Days of Man on Earth, Driftglass... The book stands were loaded with depressing scifi. It wasn't a particularly uplifting time. I remember wondering at the time whether the industry go through cycles, where to differentiate yourself you have to write depressing fiction, and then everyone follows along, and then to differentiate yourself you have to go with, I dunno, a happy ending, and everyone follows suit, back and forth. Or whether literature and media tend to track some manic-depressive cycle of society. Or drives it.
In my experience, even blu-ray isn't big enough. And it's really slow. Raw hard drives are cheap enough that it makes sense to use them as backup media. (Just don't drop one.)
Agreed. Mirroring is not a backup either, because data corruption or erroneous deletion happens on both drives.
A true backup goes to media (which could be another drive) which is then disconnected from the computer and stored somewhere else. The further away (within reason) the better.
A good plan might be to cultivate a friend who also has data he doesn't want to lose, and store each other's backups, thus protecting both of you from local disaster (like a house fire).
Are you speaking from experience?