Different guy here: I would love to get one of those but they are significantly more expensive (granted the hardware does look very nice, it's probably worth it). I'm tempted to pick up a Libreboot X200 sometime soon, with 8GB RAM and an SSD it should be more than adequate for running a lightweight desktop and doing all the stuff I typically do. The keyboard looks very nice.
UPDATE: The wind industry in the US is big but it's also tight-knit...everyone knows what everyone else is up to. Not 100% sure, but what I'm hearing on the grapevine is the company who did this deal is Hirschfeld and the site is near San Angelo.
Could be, not sure. I know that over here in my neck of the woods, the farms are being sourced by one large US producer and 3 from overseas. The article mentions that only the turbines would be Chinese-sourced, but all the companies I know of with farms here produce their own turbines. If they struck up a deal with a Texas company to build the towers and slap Chinese turbines on them, my best guess is that it would be Trinity. But there's not really any details in the article, so who knows. Like I said, this will be interesting to watch:)
...where the hell are they going to put them? I'm sitting here in West Texas in an office of a major tower manufacturer; and we have 80 towers worth of sections sitting in our storage lot (which is being expanded) that the company purchasing them can't find a home for. A couple of sites have been proposed, but they fell through because it would cost too much to build the infrastructure to connect them to the grid. Now they're trying to find a site in a different state. And Mr. Pickens reportedly has 200 towers built that he can't site either, my favorite quote is "Well I damn sure can't put 'em up in my yard".
So good luck to the Chinese I guess. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Thank you. I was searching the thread for a mention of digital ham radio modes. No need to resort to pigeons when we can take ride on the airwaves ourselves. It may not be faster (considering a 4GB stick tied to a pigeon's leg, but at least you'd have actual packets to deal with.
I haven't been able to access the site since 7AM CST, but as of now (11AM) I can get to my page. It took 3 tries but I made a tweet. Thank goodness, I was beginning to think I wouldn't be able to post useless information to a useless site today!
Yeah, they're pretty good at eliminating just about any decent product in the store. Those Linaeum tweeters were great, I'm really surprised that they've not reappeared in other products. Years ago when they were ditching all of their Optimus home theater products (which was the last good stereo lineup they've had), I bought the whole set on clearance at a bargain price: 12" floor speakers, 500 watt receiver, Linaeum center channel and satellites, big honkin' subwoofer, 100 disc changer. It's still working great to this day and sounds awesome. After that they started their crappy partnership with RCA which bombed a few years later, and have never had any good audio equipment since. And that's just one example of the idiotic business decisions they've made. How they're still around is anyone's guess. Even when I worked there I couldn't figure out how the company managed to exist, let alone look good in financial papers. They're really an enigma in the electronics world.
That's what we used to cal it back when I worked there. They have a pretty lax return policy which is often heavily abused. People come in, buy a radar detector, camcorder, digicam, etc. They take it with them on a vacation or other event and bring it back when they're done. As long as the packaging is in good shape, they have a receipt, and it's within 30 days, we had to accept it. My manager would frequently try to fight it, even complaining to corporate, but of course nothing happened. Towards the end of my time there, when people would walk in with an item all boxed up, receipt in hand, smiling, I'd just ask "So, have a good vacation"?
They look beautiful to me as well, because to me they look like money! I'm in the wind power industry in Texas, but not with GE. And I don't think Pickens is alone with the site woes. It seems everyone is having trouble picking a site in TX at the moment.
Correct. Also in the event that you do actually have to send your phone off, you can just pop out your SIM card and get a cheap ATT "Go" phone (their prepaid service). Put your SIM in it and use it while waiting on your phone to come back. Then when you get the phone back, you can put the prepaid phone on Craigslist or Ebay and get some of your money back.
Note: That's how it was when I was selling phones a couple years ago...I'm pretty sure it's still the same.
Well yeah, I thought of that. But if my battery was low and I didn't have a charger, simply leaving it in a windowsill or something would be a pretty handy feature.
"Harvesting" is cool and all, but what I've been wondering is why manufacturers haven't been putting solar panels in phones. Such as my Casio G-Shock watch I bought 3 years ago...it has solar panels built into the watch face and a rechargeable battery, and works fantastic. I was looking at the iPhone the other day and thinking they could probably do the same thing with the large surface area of the "face" of the phone. Seems like a logical, relatively easy addition if you ask me.
My current dipole won't tune very well on 30 meter. I have mostly been operating on 40 and 20. But soon, next week actually, I'll have a much better antenna put up. I've dabbled in PSK and enjoy it, and plan on using it more after I improve my station a little bit.
Hah, I came in here to make this same post. I got licensed January '08. HF propagation has been absolutely miserable for the most part. We've had a few brief flurries of prop where I got a small taste of things to come, and I want more. I look back at the previous peak around 2001 and I'm kicking myself for not getting licensed sooner...come on, Sun! Oh well, more time to get better equipment and improve my antennas I suppose. If one can get a good enough setup to work in these conditions, just imagine how well it will work once the cycle picks up!
I have an MSI Wind, which is pretty similar (if not the same) spec as the eeePC. Windows XP runs on mine flawlessly. Nice and quick, rock solid, and I'm averaging about 5 hours battery life depending on what I'm doing. I may eventually put Win 7 on it, but I'm taking an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" stance in that regard.
Unless the poster is exaggerating, I doubt XP is running as terrible as he says it is...UNLESS Asus put some bloatware or just plain bad drivers on it by default. And he doesn't even mention exactly what XP is failing at, other than it's "a giant piece of crap" and "terrible". I love Linux as much as anyone else here, but XP is more than capable of satisfactorily running a freakin' netbook.
Another ham chiming in here. Even though this isn't the same as BPL, I still wish someone would review this system with a 0-30MHz receiver to see how bad the RFI spewing from it is.
Much like astronomy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live in a city of decent size and operate on the HF bands due to QRM (man-made interference).
Device manufacturers these days don't seem to give a flip about RFI. A lot of the worst offenders (such as cell phone chargers and laptop power bricks) wouldn't be an issue if their internal design would simply include a 50 cent metal shield.
Back when I lived in an apartment, I could tell when my upstairs neighbor turned on his cable box because it would litter RFI all over HF, -and- VHF/UHF. It's just ridiculous that a "simple" device such as that puts out more RFI than my PC sitting right next to the radio.
I'm certainly having fun with mine. I think a lot of the naysayers and people who are disappointed with theirs probably got a little too much caught up in the hype. We've known ever since the Wii was in development that it wasn't meant to be a graphics monster or a hi-def showcase system. It's just an inexpensive console with a cool new controller, and I think it's doing very well.
I'll admit, I've been playing mine sporadically lately. Sometimes I'll play for a week straight almost; and then it might sit for another week untouched. But I am very happy with it overall and I'm pleased with my purchase. Lately I've been playing Marble Mania, Paper Mario, Heatseeker, Godfather, Mercury, and of course Zelda. In my "downtime" when I get bored with those games I fire up the virtual console and play some of my favorites from long ago. Actraiser has been keeping me occupied since Monday; I never did beat that game...
Anyway, I think people who say the Wii doesn't have "staying power" are wrong. The only way it won't stay around is if companies quit making games for it, and I just don't see that happening. As for the lack of Hi-Def support, I don't think that's an issue either. Aside from myself, I only know 2 other people who have an HDTV. Most people are satisfied with their nice large sets that they bought before the HDTV craze, and I seriously doubt the adoption rate will be as great as the internet thinks it is. And speaking of the internet, I would take what people say on the net about the Wii with a grain of salt. There's a large gap in opinion between people in the real world and people who read gaming forums. Everyone I talk to about the Wii has no gripes, and those without one are planning on getting one soon. My "hardcore" gamer friends will probably end up buying one to go with whatever other "mega" console they get this generation; which is why I call the Wii a Complementary Console. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of other systems, but for $250 it has a lot of appeal and bang for the buck; and I think even those who look down upon it will probably end up getting one anyway...especially later this year and through next year when we really start seeing more A+ games come out for it.
When I lived in Beijing, my g/f needed Windows reinstalled on her comp but didn't have a CD. We went to a local market in Chao Yang district and bought a copy of XP for 8 yuan ($1). They have boxes of cd's in shrinkwrap...Autocad, Photoshop, Flash, whatever you need. And if you buy a bunch you can bargain for a discount. Don't even get me started on DVD's...
Combine that with the fact that beer is cheaper than water over there and you can see I obviously had a good time:)
Slashdot Mirror
Different guy here: I would love to get one of those but they are significantly more expensive (granted the hardware does look very nice, it's probably worth it). I'm tempted to pick up a Libreboot X200 sometime soon, with 8GB RAM and an SSD it should be more than adequate for running a lightweight desktop and doing all the stuff I typically do. The keyboard looks very nice.
http://www.hirschfeld.com/news_item.asp?ID=18
UPDATE: The wind industry in the US is big but it's also tight-knit...everyone knows what everyone else is up to. Not 100% sure, but what I'm hearing on the grapevine is the company who did this deal is Hirschfeld and the site is near San Angelo.
Nope! Pretty close (physically) though :)
Could be, not sure. I know that over here in my neck of the woods, the farms are being sourced by one large US producer and 3 from overseas. The article mentions that only the turbines would be Chinese-sourced, but all the companies I know of with farms here produce their own turbines. If they struck up a deal with a Texas company to build the towers and slap Chinese turbines on them, my best guess is that it would be Trinity. But there's not really any details in the article, so who knows. Like I said, this will be interesting to watch :)
...where the hell are they going to put them? I'm sitting here in West Texas in an office of a major tower manufacturer; and we have 80 towers worth of sections sitting in our storage lot (which is being expanded) that the company purchasing them can't find a home for. A couple of sites have been proposed, but they fell through because it would cost too much to build the infrastructure to connect them to the grid. Now they're trying to find a site in a different state. And Mr. Pickens reportedly has 200 towers built that he can't site either, my favorite quote is "Well I damn sure can't put 'em up in my yard". So good luck to the Chinese I guess. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Skype worked fine when I lived in China. And their "Great Firewall" was easily bypassed by my "Great Proxy".
3G Unrestrictor alone was worth the jailbreak for me. Skype calls over 3G FTW.
Thank you. I was searching the thread for a mention of digital ham radio modes. No need to resort to pigeons when we can take ride on the airwaves ourselves. It may not be faster (considering a 4GB stick tied to a pigeon's leg, but at least you'd have actual packets to deal with.
I haven't been able to access the site since 7AM CST, but as of now (11AM) I can get to my page. It took 3 tries but I made a tweet. Thank goodness, I was beginning to think I wouldn't be able to post useless information to a useless site today!
Thanks for the link! Some good stuff on there,
Yeah, they're pretty good at eliminating just about any decent product in the store. Those Linaeum tweeters were great, I'm really surprised that they've not reappeared in other products. Years ago when they were ditching all of their Optimus home theater products (which was the last good stereo lineup they've had), I bought the whole set on clearance at a bargain price: 12" floor speakers, 500 watt receiver, Linaeum center channel and satellites, big honkin' subwoofer, 100 disc changer. It's still working great to this day and sounds awesome. After that they started their crappy partnership with RCA which bombed a few years later, and have never had any good audio equipment since. And that's just one example of the idiotic business decisions they've made. How they're still around is anyone's guess. Even when I worked there I couldn't figure out how the company managed to exist, let alone look good in financial papers. They're really an enigma in the electronics world.
That's what we used to cal it back when I worked there. They have a pretty lax return policy which is often heavily abused. People come in, buy a radar detector, camcorder, digicam, etc. They take it with them on a vacation or other event and bring it back when they're done. As long as the packaging is in good shape, they have a receipt, and it's within 30 days, we had to accept it. My manager would frequently try to fight it, even complaining to corporate, but of course nothing happened. Towards the end of my time there, when people would walk in with an item all boxed up, receipt in hand, smiling, I'd just ask "So, have a good vacation"?
They look beautiful to me as well, because to me they look like money! I'm in the wind power industry in Texas, but not with GE. And I don't think Pickens is alone with the site woes. It seems everyone is having trouble picking a site in TX at the moment.
Correct. Also in the event that you do actually have to send your phone off, you can just pop out your SIM card and get a cheap ATT "Go" phone (their prepaid service). Put your SIM in it and use it while waiting on your phone to come back. Then when you get the phone back, you can put the prepaid phone on Craigslist or Ebay and get some of your money back. Note: That's how it was when I was selling phones a couple years ago...I'm pretty sure it's still the same.
:raises hand: I've still got an unopened Win 3.1 box somewhere. 3.5" diskettes. Wonder if it's worth anything now?
Well yeah, I thought of that. But if my battery was low and I didn't have a charger, simply leaving it in a windowsill or something would be a pretty handy feature.
"Harvesting" is cool and all, but what I've been wondering is why manufacturers haven't been putting solar panels in phones. Such as my Casio G-Shock watch I bought 3 years ago...it has solar panels built into the watch face and a rechargeable battery, and works fantastic. I was looking at the iPhone the other day and thinking they could probably do the same thing with the large surface area of the "face" of the phone. Seems like a logical, relatively easy addition if you ask me.
My current dipole won't tune very well on 30 meter. I have mostly been operating on 40 and 20. But soon, next week actually, I'll have a much better antenna put up. I've dabbled in PSK and enjoy it, and plan on using it more after I improve my station a little bit.
Hah, I came in here to make this same post. I got licensed January '08. HF propagation has been absolutely miserable for the most part. We've had a few brief flurries of prop where I got a small taste of things to come, and I want more. I look back at the previous peak around 2001 and I'm kicking myself for not getting licensed sooner...come on, Sun! Oh well, more time to get better equipment and improve my antennas I suppose. If one can get a good enough setup to work in these conditions, just imagine how well it will work once the cycle picks up!
I have an MSI Wind, which is pretty similar (if not the same) spec as the eeePC. Windows XP runs on mine flawlessly. Nice and quick, rock solid, and I'm averaging about 5 hours battery life depending on what I'm doing. I may eventually put Win 7 on it, but I'm taking an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" stance in that regard. Unless the poster is exaggerating, I doubt XP is running as terrible as he says it is...UNLESS Asus put some bloatware or just plain bad drivers on it by default. And he doesn't even mention exactly what XP is failing at, other than it's "a giant piece of crap" and "terrible". I love Linux as much as anyone else here, but XP is more than capable of satisfactorily running a freakin' netbook.
Another ham chiming in here. Even though this isn't the same as BPL, I still wish someone would review this system with a 0-30MHz receiver to see how bad the RFI spewing from it is. Much like astronomy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live in a city of decent size and operate on the HF bands due to QRM (man-made interference). Device manufacturers these days don't seem to give a flip about RFI. A lot of the worst offenders (such as cell phone chargers and laptop power bricks) wouldn't be an issue if their internal design would simply include a 50 cent metal shield. Back when I lived in an apartment, I could tell when my upstairs neighbor turned on his cable box because it would litter RFI all over HF, -and- VHF/UHF. It's just ridiculous that a "simple" device such as that puts out more RFI than my PC sitting right next to the radio.
I'm certainly having fun with mine. I think a lot of the naysayers and people who are disappointed with theirs probably got a little too much caught up in the hype. We've known ever since the Wii was in development that it wasn't meant to be a graphics monster or a hi-def showcase system. It's just an inexpensive console with a cool new controller, and I think it's doing very well.
I'll admit, I've been playing mine sporadically lately. Sometimes I'll play for a week straight almost; and then it might sit for another week untouched. But I am very happy with it overall and I'm pleased with my purchase. Lately I've been playing Marble Mania, Paper Mario, Heatseeker, Godfather, Mercury, and of course Zelda. In my "downtime" when I get bored with those games I fire up the virtual console and play some of my favorites from long ago. Actraiser has been keeping me occupied since Monday; I never did beat that game...
Anyway, I think people who say the Wii doesn't have "staying power" are wrong. The only way it won't stay around is if companies quit making games for it, and I just don't see that happening. As for the lack of Hi-Def support, I don't think that's an issue either. Aside from myself, I only know 2 other people who have an HDTV. Most people are satisfied with their nice large sets that they bought before the HDTV craze, and I seriously doubt the adoption rate will be as great as the internet thinks it is. And speaking of the internet, I would take what people say on the net about the Wii with a grain of salt. There's a large gap in opinion between people in the real world and people who read gaming forums. Everyone I talk to about the Wii has no gripes, and those without one are planning on getting one soon. My "hardcore" gamer friends will probably end up buying one to go with whatever other "mega" console they get this generation; which is why I call the Wii a Complementary Console. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of other systems, but for $250 it has a lot of appeal and bang for the buck; and I think even those who look down upon it will probably end up getting one anyway...especially later this year and through next year when we really start seeing more A+ games come out for it.
You mean The People's Republic of China?
When I lived in Beijing, my g/f needed Windows reinstalled on her comp but didn't have a CD. We went to a local market in Chao Yang district and bought a copy of XP for 8 yuan ($1). They have boxes of cd's in shrinkwrap...Autocad, Photoshop, Flash, whatever you need. And if you buy a bunch you can bargain for a discount. Don't even get me started on DVD's... Combine that with the fact that beer is cheaper than water over there and you can see I obviously had a good time :)