I still don't understand why light and matter cannot be made of the same stuff.
Uh, they are made of the same stuff. Energy.
The idea that light (aka: really fast matter in this case) has infinite mass to me means that we just don't have the tools to measure it's mass and speculate with an approximated formula/number.
We have a formula, and it shows that an object's relativistic mass approaches infinity as its velocity approaches c. For arbitrarily small values short of c, we have arbitrarily large masses. Which makes more sense: That despite the fact that mass dilation means you can never accelerate an object with mass from some speed below c to the speed of light, if something is actually traveling at c then the asymptotic behavior ceases and mass is instead some tiny value? Or that no object with mass can travel at c, the only thing that does travel at c, light, has no mass, but that the two are nevertheless related via mass-energy equivalence?
The human immune system is a pretty potent beast to unleash. Getting it to attack cancer cells is genius. I would be worried about side effects, specifically the immune system getting confused or over-stimulated and attacking other things, but that's just speculation and surely for highly aggressive cancers like the ones they tested in the mice the risk would be more than worth it. We already use 'cures as bad as the disease' to treat cancer.
On the same note, though, I was encouraged by the teaser at the end where they suggest using similar techniques to 'reprogram' the immune system to correct auto-immune disorders. Learning how to put the immune system back in its cage could be just as useful as being able to send it after a target.
3 hour bus ride? That's a lot of time taken out of a terrorist plot. Do you have any idea how much evil can HAPPEN in three hours? Hot dang. That's a whole 8th of a season. Just ask Jack Bauer.
True, but that could be a great trick to get an uninteresting subplot out of the way and off the screen for a few episodes. Hazid and Bazid take a bus to another city to send the evil terrorist message via unsecured wifi. Don't worry about them for a while, back to Jack!
They could show it instead in a kind of special feature on the DVDs, where you see all the things that happen while the camera is elsewhere, or during the commercials. That's where you'd see Jack on the can*, the CTU director stuffing a patchouli in her face, and characters stuck in LA rush hour traffic. And then three straight hours of the two terrorists on a bus. One hour, one sleeps and the other sits up looking stern. Then the sleeping one wakes up, and gets out a portable Scrabble board.
I do have one worry, though: Stem cells, some research is starting to indicate, are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they allow new tissue to grow, but on the other, that new growth may end up being cancerous. One wonders whether the fact that we don't naturally produce stem cells at this rate reflects the optimal balance that evolution has found.
It is an interesting question, since our natural healing ability is pretty complex and sophisticated so obviously being able to recover from injuries well is highly selected for. I can naively think of at least one other explanation, which is that beyond a certain point the ability to regrow tissue faster doesn't confer much survival benefit since wounds large enough where it really makes a difference were often crippling enough that the organism would die anyway. Or a different take on the same idea, maybe the gene for increased stem cell production has shown up before and been beneficial, but the standard genes were 'good enough' that the better gene didn't spread through the population.
Increased risk of cancer and the current rate being at or at least within a range of more or less optimal levels sounds likely, though.
But hey, as a temporary one-time treatment for a serious injury in a hospital setting, this might be great. You risk increased cancer with every X-ray, but it's such a minimal risk that the diagnosis benefit is more than worth it. Maybe this could be similar, in nature if not degree of cost/benefit.
Just not having children is a much simpler solution---the absurd premise of "The Mark of Gideon" was that these people couldn't be sterilised, they healed so well.
Not just that, but they were also unwilling to use birth control like prophylactics... Space Catholics.
If the child had previously known issues (of some kind), father should not have left for work without waking up Mother. That's negligence.
It's much worse than that. He was under court order not to leave the kid alone with the mother, due to previous instances of neglect and the mother's mental issues. So the father shouldn't have woken the mother up, he should have made sure the boy was on his way to school, and by not doing so he's not just being a neglectful parent himself, he was also breaking the law.
The kid's only issue was that he wanted to get to school so that he could eat.
Isn't the only reason that they are charged with anything the fact that the KID took it on himself to do an illegal act rather than oh, say, wake up his mother, which any child is more than capable of doing starting from the age of childbirth? Yes, there was a previous order that the kid was not allowed to be left alone because he has some issues. Well, guess what, he wasn't left alone. His mother was there. So she was asleep. I'm sure that the order doesn't specify that one or the other of them has to spend every night being awake the entire time in case the kid acts up.
Yeah except the order was that the father should not leave the boy alone with the mother, apparently due to a history of neglect.
Now look at that, the fact that the mother decided to take a nap instead of take her kid to school or feed the boy, and that the boy was so desperate to get to school and get breakfast that he was still trying to reach school after he had crashed the car.
So yeah, just like every kid he knew how to wake up his parents since childbirth. Doesn't it seem likely that he had tried that before, and either been ignored or gotten in trouble and learned not to? Here we have a six-year-old boy who felt that he had to take matters into his own hands and take the family car just to eat, and you don't think the parents are to blame?
I say, blame the kid, give the other sibling back to the parents. The other sibling as far as we know doesn't have any of the same issues, and a child is far safer in the hands of moderately bad parents than in the hands of the state.
The father was under court order not to leave the kid with the mother due to a history of neglect and mental problems. The father disobeyed this, probably routinely since he always left for work before the boy would normally get on the bus, indicating his own neglect and irresponsibility.
So what makes you think the 4-year-old doesn't have the same issues? You think mom only neglects the older one? Maybe she actually feeds him and gives him rides to school when he misses the bus? Yeah, right! More like the 4-year-old just isn't old enough to act out in a way that garners national attention!
No, these aren't "moderately bad" parents, these are HORRIBLE parents, and both kids absolutely SHOULD be taken from them, and if this event was the necessary impetus then good and thank God nobody was injured in the process. It's good that this happened now, before those kids could be hurt any more by neglect.
Problem is, the number of poor countries that are stable enough to invest in is not large, and once a country becomes a wealthy, it rarely slides downwards very far. Thus, this should end relatively soon, as soon as corporations run out of countries.
Er, yeah, except there's a big difference between "wealthy" and "more expensive than some other country the corps could move jobs to". When you've only had your poverty level reduced a little, then what stops you from sliding back down when the corporation moves shop to an even poorer place?
I mean, Dell is pulling out of Ireland (for manufacturing at least), but all indications are that Ireland is not now "wealthy". In fact, it sounds like they're seriously concerned that this move combined with the global financial crisis are going to severely hurt their economy. They could end up poorer than when Dell came in the first place. Maybe after Dell et al bump up the standard of living in some other place a tiny bit, they'll find it economical to come back to Ireland and the cycle can continue.
Basically, what I'm saying is that there is no guarantee of a ratchet effect, and you should be watching the economy of Ireland in coming years to see if your theory has any validity.
Uh, isn't that backwards? Unless something's changed recently I believe the Intel TDP _is_ 'worst case', whereas AMDs figures are for 'typical use'.
No, AMDs TDP is a fairly true representation of maximum power. It has to be, since it is what OEMs use to design cooling solutions, and those cooling solutions must be designed around the worst-case scenario (at least in terms of processor power output, not necessarily other environmental factors).
Unlike Intel, AMD does not have a thermal clock gating circuit that will slow the processor down should it ever rise above the stated TDP number, so AMD's TDP must truly be a maximum. Intel on the other hand can pick a TDP that chops off most of the 'long tail' of high power but unlikely circumstance, and count on their clock gating to enforce the TDP value should one of those circumstances arise.
This is part of why AMD started using "average power" in their advertising, because Intel had an advantage in perceived power consumption based on TDP, since Intel's was much closer to average power. Starting with Phenoms they call this number ACP (Average CPU Power).
So you're not completely out in left field, just mistaken about the relationship between AMD's TDPs and "typical use" numbers.
If AMD wants to improve sales they should do what they did for the X2 line: lower power consumption. I don't care what any of the "experts" say - the moment I saw the whopping 130w listed next to the i7 920 I immediately decided I didn't want one. The Athlon 4850e already has the crown on the dual core front, so if they can manage a respectable 95w quad core, AMD could corner the efficiency market. I know they had to release this chip to generate revenue, but I'd hoping that low power quad is in their future plans.
Don't worry, AMD will keep the same power bands they kept in the past. They'll have their 130W, 95W, and 65W desktop parts. I've got a 65W Athlon X2 and it performs well and my CPU fan barely has to spin. When the Phenom II comes out I'll be grabbing a new one. Sadly I'd have to get a new mainboard to take advantage of its additional power features, but oh well.
No, it's because they're trying to line up with the nationally advertised date and give people time to get converter boxes. Stations everywhere are ready, some are switching a little early but most are waiting for the big go.
Ah so with only a month left to go, they're still concerned with not enough people having converter boxes, and thus not switching until the mandatory date.
Exactly my point.
Except there will not be any jobs lost.
Read a post up above about a station catering to latinos around LA. They're certainly concerned.
It's not arbitrary, it's the second date set - and one set many years ago.
Why Feb 17th and not April 17th? That's arbitrary.
Just the job loss alone from dropping the plans for the spectrum going forward would dwarf any problems from the switch (that BTW is what is so important about the current date, much capital has been expended all around).
Oh please. Like Verizon and AT&T have never had a product slip a couple months without having to lay people off.
Even if you delay people are never going to be more ready than they are now (not very ready) - that's how people are. But people also adapt quick when things actually change.
Unless they're hoping they can get a coupon, in which case delaying the switch and funding the coupon program would cause people to be more ready than they are now.
That's all we're talking about here. You can talk about how it's now or never and nobody will ever be more prepared, but that's bologna. People are much more prepared than they were a year ago or six months ago. Allow this demonstrable rate of change to continue until the number affected is small, not 8 million homes.
Uh not exactly, some of the CO2 is released, but much of it is converted into hydrocarbons via photosynthesis and used for various things like the plant's structure. There's a hell of a lot of carbon sequestered in the trunk of a large tree. When the plant life dies (or partly so, like when trees drop leaves in winter) that CO2 gets released, but should get sucked up in the next growth cycle, meaning that while it follows a cyclical pattern there's less carbon on average in the atmosphere and it isn't increasing.
Increasing the amount of carbon locked up in biomass is certainly a valid (if not perfect) way to reduce atmospheric CO2.
That's still $40 he could have used on something else, for something that he shouldn't have to, and wouldn't have had to were it not for government mandate, and which they said they were going to offer coupons for so guys like him wouldn't have to face this arbitrary burden.
So let's push back the date a little more, dig into the profit the government made selling this spectrum to private corps, and actually make good on that promise so everything goes smooth and everybody's happy.
I've help my friend out all the time. This is something where le gov, who made $20bil off this largely unpopular move, was supposed to step in and help the people out. If it comes to it, I can get him a converter box. Doesn't change the fact this is bullshit.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say that no one could get a converter box because they were always sold out. Either a good number of people got a box, thus causing them to be sold out. Or no one got boxes.
That would make sense if I had said nobody could get boxes.
I said "a lot" couldn't get boxes because they were sold out, and that's absolutely true.
Enough that 8 million homes still don't have one.
Of the three, only the first have ANY claim of injury here. And of those people, ONLY the ones who can legitimately say "I can't afford a $40 box" have my sympathy. I don't see that as an overwhelming majority. Nor, given that the local churches and other charity organizations are running drives to get boxes into those homes too, do I really see THAT as an issue.
That's funny, I see having to spend $40 just so that the government could raise $20bil to shift spectrum from the "public good" into the private possession of AT&T and Verizon as a legitimate claim of injury, and successfully using the $40 coupon as mitigating that injury.
It's two fucking DVD's man.
Didja know that some people don't buy DVDs due to the cost, and that their favorite thing about analog TV was that it was free?
And gee, if it's so cheap, then maybe the government should tap into some of the remaining 18.7 billion they made on the spectrum auction and hand out some more coupons?
And if you are, then I guarantee you there is someone out there who would love to put one in your hands.
Well your guarantee doesn't seem to be worth its weight in pixels, since it's in particular poor families that are seen as not having the converters.
They have successfully delivered a program to get low cost converter boxes to anybody who was paying any attention.
You didn't actually try to get one, did you?
I did.
Got coupon. Tried everywhere in a reasonable distance. All were sold out. Stocks trickled in, and sold out immediately. Coupon expires. Then what?
Think of it as trying to buy a Wii around Christmas 07, maybe that'll connect with you.
Poor people shouldn't be watching TV anyhow. If they got off their ass and actually learned something they might not stay poor.
Okay, that gets a huge FUCK YOU for not knowing a fucking thing about poverty. Lots of people are hard working, even quite knowledgeable, but still poor, and when they get home at night they would like to relax with some cheap-as-in-free entertainment. Leisure time is not the sole pervue of the rich nor poverty solely the realm of the ignorant, you bourgeoisie prick.
I swear, if this economy keeps getting worse there's only going to be one upside and that's knocking certain priviliged asshats off their high horse.
Bullshit, even big-box retail like Best Buy caries coupon-approved boxes, and I'm sure RadioShack and whatever mom 'n pop stores that are left are cashing in as well.
Yeah, and they also carried Wiis but good luck trying to buy one in December of '07. Get it? They were sold out and you were left holding your coupon in one hand and your member in the other.
One of my best friends depends on their rabbit ears, and they're poor enough that the cost of a converter box is kind of a big deal. And before some asshat who knows nothing of poverty opens their yap about how he shouldn't be watching TV, he busts his ass then comes home and would like to relax in the evening, okay? He and plenty of other people are in this position, and they never wanted to have to drop $40 just so the government could raise $20bil.
But the stations all want to now - because they have planned and already expended the funds to switch, long before now. Any station not ready now was planning to shut down in a month.
They didn't want to before, and that was part of the delay. But the delay now would be ALL about giving consumers more time, and not because some broadcasters are not ready.
That's true, but if they have the equipment now, and haven't switched, it's because they still don't want to until they're forced. Unless their plan was to get the digital equipment shipped in on the 15th, set up on the 16th, and turned on the 17th, then they're ready now and waiting for the mandatory switchover on purpose. Most likely because they know that their viewers are not ready and need more time so if they switched early they'd lose those viewers.
But that's why you cannot compound the mistake by screwing over companies too, especially not heading into the downslope of a recession. Money wasted right now means jobs lost. The lack of ability to carry forward plans for the freed up spectrum mean jobs lost. It seems to me taking away jobs screws over people a lot worse than making them wait a bit for a cheap converter box for TV.
Okay, that's possibly true for some employees of Verizon or AT&T.
Now what about the jobs lost when the switch occurs, and all these stations lose most of their viewers and thus their ad revenue?
Look, I understand we can't let this wait forever. When it was first proposed, what 7 years ago, it would have been idiotic to switch then, because all OVA viewers and thus all stations would have been screwed. Now, today, at least we know the number of people who have converters is increasing (enough that the coupon program is out of money). But it's not sufficient. We're still screwing people -- and stations, jobs and all -- for an arbitrary date. Let it be an arbitrary date a little further in the future, so that more people can get converters. I'm not talking indefinitely. I'm talking about letting the current trend continue until those who'd be affected by the change is noise level. we've been waiting many years, what's so important about Feb 17 that it must be done then?
Correction: What you really meant was "what the broadcasters wanted in the first place: Nothing.
Because I can damn well tell you that I've wanted them to go digital since the change was first suggested the first time around and contrary to your assumption, I and many others like me are viewers.
Well gee, if your view represents a significant portion of OVA viewers, then why aren't they all ready and chomping at the bit for the switch? Sorry for not using a qualifier like "most", but fact is that most OVA viewers don't care about the switch other than it breaking their TV, and never wanted to switch in the first place.
the select group of people who... still haven't bothered to get a converter box wanted". Which would also be true. And fuck them too.
You mean all the ones who couldn't get a converter box because there weren't any on the shelves when they had a valid coupon in hand, and now can't get a new coupon because its out of money, and don't want to pay full price for a converter box for the change that they never wanted in the first place. Yeah fuck them, and fuck you too. If hope you didn't use a coupon if you were so eager to get digital broadcasts. Those were for people who were using antennae because they couldn't afford anything else.
The spectrum is a public good. It should be used in the most effective way possible. What are AT&T and Verizon going to do with their blocks? I don't care. Not because it's not important, but because it's not relevant to this discussion.
Yes it is relevant to a discussion where you're bitching about the "public good" and "public resources... being used responsibly and effectively". If you don't know and don't care if these private corps are doing something beneficial to the public, then how the fuck can you complain about it's current use? By being a huge fucking hypocrite, that's how. At least now it is being used for public good, even if inefficiently. You don't know and don't care if that will be the case in a month, though we both know it's going to be used for the benefit of AT&T and Verizon exclusively, so don't tell me you care now.
Not hand hold a bunch of people who aren't going to give a shit ever, until the day everything actually stops working.
"Hand-hold" as in "not fuck over". You surely care about the "public good".
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I still don't understand why light and matter cannot be made of the same stuff.
Uh, they are made of the same stuff. Energy.
The idea that light (aka: really fast matter in this case) has infinite mass to me means that we just don't have the tools to measure it's mass and speculate with an approximated formula/number.
We have a formula, and it shows that an object's relativistic mass approaches infinity as its velocity approaches c. For arbitrarily small values short of c, we have arbitrarily large masses. Which makes more sense: That despite the fact that mass dilation means you can never accelerate an object with mass from some speed below c to the speed of light, if something is actually traveling at c then the asymptotic behavior ceases and mass is instead some tiny value? Or that no object with mass can travel at c, the only thing that does travel at c, light, has no mass, but that the two are nevertheless related via mass-energy equivalence?
The human immune system is a pretty potent beast to unleash. Getting it to attack cancer cells is genius. I would be worried about side effects, specifically the immune system getting confused or over-stimulated and attacking other things, but that's just speculation and surely for highly aggressive cancers like the ones they tested in the mice the risk would be more than worth it. We already use 'cures as bad as the disease' to treat cancer.
On the same note, though, I was encouraged by the teaser at the end where they suggest using similar techniques to 'reprogram' the immune system to correct auto-immune disorders. Learning how to put the immune system back in its cage could be just as useful as being able to send it after a target.
On the plus side, your original post is much funnier to me now that I know you were actually confused and not just making fun. :)
3 hour bus ride? That's a lot of time taken out of a terrorist plot. Do you have any idea how much evil can HAPPEN in three hours? Hot dang. That's a whole 8th of a season. Just ask Jack Bauer.
True, but that could be a great trick to get an uninteresting subplot out of the way and off the screen for a few episodes. Hazid and Bazid take a bus to another city to send the evil terrorist message via unsecured wifi. Don't worry about them for a while, back to Jack!
They could show it instead in a kind of special feature on the DVDs, where you see all the things that happen while the camera is elsewhere, or during the commercials. That's where you'd see Jack on the can*, the CTU director stuffing a patchouli in her face, and characters stuck in LA rush hour traffic. And then three straight hours of the two terrorists on a bus. One hour, one sleeps and the other sits up looking stern. Then the sleeping one wakes up, and gets out a portable Scrabble board.
* Just kidding, nothing escapes Jack Bauer.
I do have one worry, though: Stem cells, some research is starting to indicate, are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they allow new tissue to grow, but on the other, that new growth may end up being cancerous. One wonders whether the fact that we don't naturally produce stem cells at this rate reflects the optimal balance that evolution has found.
It is an interesting question, since our natural healing ability is pretty complex and sophisticated so obviously being able to recover from injuries well is highly selected for. I can naively think of at least one other explanation, which is that beyond a certain point the ability to regrow tissue faster doesn't confer much survival benefit since wounds large enough where it really makes a difference were often crippling enough that the organism would die anyway. Or a different take on the same idea, maybe the gene for increased stem cell production has shown up before and been beneficial, but the standard genes were 'good enough' that the better gene didn't spread through the population.
Increased risk of cancer and the current rate being at or at least within a range of more or less optimal levels sounds likely, though.
But hey, as a temporary one-time treatment for a serious injury in a hospital setting, this might be great. You risk increased cancer with every X-ray, but it's such a minimal risk that the diagnosis benefit is more than worth it. Maybe this could be similar, in nature if not degree of cost/benefit.
Just not having children is a much simpler solution---the absurd premise of "The Mark of Gideon" was that these people couldn't be sterilised, they healed so well.
Not just that, but they were also unwilling to use birth control like prophylactics... Space Catholics.
If the child had previously known issues (of some kind), father should not have left for work without waking up Mother. That's negligence.
It's much worse than that. He was under court order not to leave the kid alone with the mother, due to previous instances of neglect and the mother's mental issues. So the father shouldn't have woken the mother up, he should have made sure the boy was on his way to school, and by not doing so he's not just being a neglectful parent himself, he was also breaking the law.
The kid's only issue was that he wanted to get to school so that he could eat.
This is a very sad case.
Isn't the only reason that they are charged with anything the fact that the KID took it on himself to do an illegal act rather than oh, say, wake up his mother, which any child is more than capable of doing starting from the age of childbirth? Yes, there was a previous order that the kid was not allowed to be left alone because he has some issues. Well, guess what, he wasn't left alone. His mother was there. So she was asleep. I'm sure that the order doesn't specify that one or the other of them has to spend every night being awake the entire time in case the kid acts up.
Yeah except the order was that the father should not leave the boy alone with the mother, apparently due to a history of neglect.
Now look at that, the fact that the mother decided to take a nap instead of take her kid to school or feed the boy, and that the boy was so desperate to get to school and get breakfast that he was still trying to reach school after he had crashed the car.
So yeah, just like every kid he knew how to wake up his parents since childbirth. Doesn't it seem likely that he had tried that before, and either been ignored or gotten in trouble and learned not to? Here we have a six-year-old boy who felt that he had to take matters into his own hands and take the family car just to eat, and you don't think the parents are to blame?
I say, blame the kid, give the other sibling back to the parents. The other sibling as far as we know doesn't have any of the same issues, and a child is far safer in the hands of moderately bad parents than in the hands of the state.
The father was under court order not to leave the kid with the mother due to a history of neglect and mental problems. The father disobeyed this, probably routinely since he always left for work before the boy would normally get on the bus, indicating his own neglect and irresponsibility.
So what makes you think the 4-year-old doesn't have the same issues? You think mom only neglects the older one? Maybe she actually feeds him and gives him rides to school when he misses the bus? Yeah, right! More like the 4-year-old just isn't old enough to act out in a way that garners national attention!
No, these aren't "moderately bad" parents, these are HORRIBLE parents, and both kids absolutely SHOULD be taken from them, and if this event was the necessary impetus then good and thank God nobody was injured in the process. It's good that this happened now, before those kids could be hurt any more by neglect.
Well, I think it's perfectly valid to say that Dick Cheney's friend was injured by a tool.
Problem is, the number of poor countries that are stable enough to invest in is not large, and once a country becomes a wealthy, it rarely slides downwards very far. Thus, this should end relatively soon, as soon as corporations run out of countries.
Er, yeah, except there's a big difference between "wealthy" and "more expensive than some other country the corps could move jobs to". When you've only had your poverty level reduced a little, then what stops you from sliding back down when the corporation moves shop to an even poorer place?
I mean, Dell is pulling out of Ireland (for manufacturing at least), but all indications are that Ireland is not now "wealthy". In fact, it sounds like they're seriously concerned that this move combined with the global financial crisis are going to severely hurt their economy. They could end up poorer than when Dell came in the first place. Maybe after Dell et al bump up the standard of living in some other place a tiny bit, they'll find it economical to come back to Ireland and the cycle can continue.
Basically, what I'm saying is that there is no guarantee of a ratchet effect, and you should be watching the economy of Ireland in coming years to see if your theory has any validity.
If you can smell something outside the outside the cabin of a pressurized airplane, you have bigger problems than being offended by the smell.
Look, I realize that, but when I'm desperately clinging to the tail fin, having to smell the stinky exhaust isn't helping any either, okay?
Uh, isn't that backwards? Unless something's changed recently I believe the Intel TDP _is_ 'worst case', whereas AMDs figures are for 'typical use'.
No, AMDs TDP is a fairly true representation of maximum power. It has to be, since it is what OEMs use to design cooling solutions, and those cooling solutions must be designed around the worst-case scenario (at least in terms of processor power output, not necessarily other environmental factors).
Unlike Intel, AMD does not have a thermal clock gating circuit that will slow the processor down should it ever rise above the stated TDP number, so AMD's TDP must truly be a maximum. Intel on the other hand can pick a TDP that chops off most of the 'long tail' of high power but unlikely circumstance, and count on their clock gating to enforce the TDP value should one of those circumstances arise.
This is part of why AMD started using "average power" in their advertising, because Intel had an advantage in perceived power consumption based on TDP, since Intel's was much closer to average power. Starting with Phenoms they call this number ACP (Average CPU Power).
So you're not completely out in left field, just mistaken about the relationship between AMD's TDPs and "typical use" numbers.
If AMD wants to improve sales they should do what they did for the X2 line: lower power consumption. I don't care what any of the "experts" say - the moment I saw the whopping 130w listed next to the i7 920 I immediately decided I didn't want one. The Athlon 4850e already has the crown on the dual core front, so if they can manage a respectable 95w quad core, AMD could corner the efficiency market. I know they had to release this chip to generate revenue, but I'd hoping that low power quad is in their future plans.
Don't worry, AMD will keep the same power bands they kept in the past. They'll have their 130W, 95W, and 65W desktop parts. I've got a 65W Athlon X2 and it performs well and my CPU fan barely has to spin. When the Phenom II comes out I'll be grabbing a new one. Sadly I'd have to get a new mainboard to take advantage of its additional power features, but oh well.
and the "on a flatscreen!" thing is no more valid than the "on the internets!" patent suffix.
Ah, but "on a flatscreen internets!" is pure patentable genius!
Expensive compared to what? Have you managed to find a non HDTV on sale somewhere. Are you sure that wasn't a firesale.
Compared to what I paid for my SDTV in the 90s.
Compared to buying a used SDTV today.
Compared to not buying a new TV at all.
Compared to the metric used by the average family that's staring down a hard recession and the worst job contraction in half a century.
I gotta wonder why a statement like "HDTVs are expensive" needs justification.
No, it's because they're trying to line up with the nationally advertised date and give people time to get converter boxes. Stations everywhere are ready, some are switching a little early but most are waiting for the big go.
Ah so with only a month left to go, they're still concerned with not enough people having converter boxes, and thus not switching until the mandatory date.
Exactly my point.
Except there will not be any jobs lost.
Read a post up above about a station catering to latinos around LA. They're certainly concerned.
It's not arbitrary, it's the second date set - and one set many years ago.
Why Feb 17th and not April 17th? That's arbitrary.
Just the job loss alone from dropping the plans for the spectrum going forward would dwarf any problems from the switch (that BTW is what is so important about the current date, much capital has been expended all around).
Oh please. Like Verizon and AT&T have never had a product slip a couple months without having to lay people off.
Even if you delay people are never going to be more ready than they are now (not very ready) - that's how people are. But people also adapt quick when things actually change.
Unless they're hoping they can get a coupon, in which case delaying the switch and funding the coupon program would cause people to be more ready than they are now.
That's all we're talking about here. You can talk about how it's now or never and nobody will ever be more prepared, but that's bologna. People are much more prepared than they were a year ago or six months ago. Allow this demonstrable rate of change to continue until the number affected is small, not 8 million homes.
Uh not exactly, some of the CO2 is released, but much of it is converted into hydrocarbons via photosynthesis and used for various things like the plant's structure. There's a hell of a lot of carbon sequestered in the trunk of a large tree. When the plant life dies (or partly so, like when trees drop leaves in winter) that CO2 gets released, but should get sucked up in the next growth cycle, meaning that while it follows a cyclical pattern there's less carbon on average in the atmosphere and it isn't increasing.
Increasing the amount of carbon locked up in biomass is certainly a valid (if not perfect) way to reduce atmospheric CO2.
That's still $40 he could have used on something else, for something that he shouldn't have to, and wouldn't have had to were it not for government mandate, and which they said they were going to offer coupons for so guys like him wouldn't have to face this arbitrary burden.
So let's push back the date a little more, dig into the profit the government made selling this spectrum to private corps, and actually make good on that promise so everything goes smooth and everybody's happy.
I'm not sure why this is so controversial.
I've help my friend out all the time. This is something where le gov, who made $20bil off this largely unpopular move, was supposed to step in and help the people out. If it comes to it, I can get him a converter box. Doesn't change the fact this is bullshit.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say that no one could get a converter box because they were always sold out. Either a good number of people got a box, thus causing them to be sold out. Or no one got boxes.
That would make sense if I had said nobody could get boxes.
I said "a lot" couldn't get boxes because they were sold out, and that's absolutely true.
Enough that 8 million homes still don't have one.
Of the three, only the first have ANY claim of injury here. And of those people, ONLY the ones who can legitimately say "I can't afford a $40 box" have my sympathy. I don't see that as an overwhelming majority. Nor, given that the local churches and other charity organizations are running drives to get boxes into those homes too, do I really see THAT as an issue.
That's funny, I see having to spend $40 just so that the government could raise $20bil to shift spectrum from the "public good" into the private possession of AT&T and Verizon as a legitimate claim of injury, and successfully using the $40 coupon as mitigating that injury.
It's two fucking DVD's man.
Didja know that some people don't buy DVDs due to the cost, and that their favorite thing about analog TV was that it was free?
And gee, if it's so cheap, then maybe the government should tap into some of the remaining 18.7 billion they made on the spectrum auction and hand out some more coupons?
And if you are, then I guarantee you there is someone out there who would love to put one in your hands.
Well your guarantee doesn't seem to be worth its weight in pixels, since it's in particular poor families that are seen as not having the converters.
They have successfully delivered a program to get low cost converter boxes to anybody who was paying any attention.
You didn't actually try to get one, did you?
I did.
Got coupon. Tried everywhere in a reasonable distance. All were sold out. Stocks trickled in, and sold out immediately. Coupon expires. Then what?
Think of it as trying to buy a Wii around Christmas 07, maybe that'll connect with you.
Poor people shouldn't be watching TV anyhow. If they got off their ass and actually learned something they might not stay poor.
Okay, that gets a huge FUCK YOU for not knowing a fucking thing about poverty. Lots of people are hard working, even quite knowledgeable, but still poor, and when they get home at night they would like to relax with some cheap-as-in-free entertainment. Leisure time is not the sole pervue of the rich nor poverty solely the realm of the ignorant, you bourgeoisie prick.
I swear, if this economy keeps getting worse there's only going to be one upside and that's knocking certain priviliged asshats off their high horse.
Bullshit, even big-box retail like Best Buy caries coupon-approved boxes, and I'm sure RadioShack and whatever mom 'n pop stores that are left are cashing in as well.
Yeah, and they also carried Wiis but good luck trying to buy one in December of '07. Get it? They were sold out and you were left holding your coupon in one hand and your member in the other.
One of my best friends depends on their rabbit ears, and they're poor enough that the cost of a converter box is kind of a big deal. And before some asshat who knows nothing of poverty opens their yap about how he shouldn't be watching TV, he busts his ass then comes home and would like to relax in the evening, okay? He and plenty of other people are in this position, and they never wanted to have to drop $40 just so the government could raise $20bil.
But the stations all want to now - because they have planned and already expended the funds to switch, long before now. Any station not ready now was planning to shut down in a month.
They didn't want to before, and that was part of the delay. But the delay now would be ALL about giving consumers more time, and not because some broadcasters are not ready.
That's true, but if they have the equipment now, and haven't switched, it's because they still don't want to until they're forced. Unless their plan was to get the digital equipment shipped in on the 15th, set up on the 16th, and turned on the 17th, then they're ready now and waiting for the mandatory switchover on purpose. Most likely because they know that their viewers are not ready and need more time so if they switched early they'd lose those viewers.
But that's why you cannot compound the mistake by screwing over companies too, especially not heading into the downslope of a recession. Money wasted right now means jobs lost. The lack of ability to carry forward plans for the freed up spectrum mean jobs lost. It seems to me taking away jobs screws over people a lot worse than making them wait a bit for a cheap converter box for TV.
Okay, that's possibly true for some employees of Verizon or AT&T.
Now what about the jobs lost when the switch occurs, and all these stations lose most of their viewers and thus their ad revenue?
Look, I understand we can't let this wait forever. When it was first proposed, what 7 years ago, it would have been idiotic to switch then, because all OVA viewers and thus all stations would have been screwed. Now, today, at least we know the number of people who have converters is increasing (enough that the coupon program is out of money). But it's not sufficient. We're still screwing people -- and stations, jobs and all -- for an arbitrary date. Let it be an arbitrary date a little further in the future, so that more people can get converters. I'm not talking indefinitely. I'm talking about letting the current trend continue until those who'd be affected by the change is noise level. we've been waiting many years, what's so important about Feb 17 that it must be done then?
Correction: What you really meant was "what the broadcasters wanted in the first place: Nothing.
Because I can damn well tell you that I've wanted them to go digital since the change was first suggested the first time around and contrary to your assumption, I and many others like me are viewers.
Well gee, if your view represents a significant portion of OVA viewers, then why aren't they all ready and chomping at the bit for the switch? Sorry for not using a qualifier like "most", but fact is that most OVA viewers don't care about the switch other than it breaking their TV, and never wanted to switch in the first place.
the select group of people who... still haven't bothered to get a converter box wanted". Which would also be true. And fuck them too.
You mean all the ones who couldn't get a converter box because there weren't any on the shelves when they had a valid coupon in hand, and now can't get a new coupon because its out of money, and don't want to pay full price for a converter box for the change that they never wanted in the first place. Yeah fuck them, and fuck you too. If hope you didn't use a coupon if you were so eager to get digital broadcasts. Those were for people who were using antennae because they couldn't afford anything else.
The spectrum is a public good. It should be used in the most effective way possible. What are AT&T and Verizon going to do with their blocks? I don't care. Not because it's not important, but because it's not relevant to this discussion.
Yes it is relevant to a discussion where you're bitching about the "public good" and "public resources... being used responsibly and effectively". If you don't know and don't care if these private corps are doing something beneficial to the public, then how the fuck can you complain about it's current use? By being a huge fucking hypocrite, that's how. At least now it is being used for public good, even if inefficiently. You don't know and don't care if that will be the case in a month, though we both know it's going to be used for the benefit of AT&T and Verizon exclusively, so don't tell me you care now.
Not hand hold a bunch of people who aren't going to give a shit ever, until the day everything actually stops working.
"Hand-hold" as in "not fuck over". You surely care about the "public good".