why does this review seem very familiar...
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 1, Troll
I stopped reading this review and said to myself, "hmm, oh, wait, no, I didn't read this before". Why? Because I read a Boston Globe review that sounds just like this one. And why were they released on the same day?
Call me paranoid, but "reviewers" have been well known to post little more than regurgitated sample-reviews by companies for years, and this smacks of the same. If anyone else notices rather similar reviews in their regional paper, feel free to post a reply.
Dunno about that, but this reminds me of Bill Cosby's skit, "200MPH", where he jokes about Carol Shelby.
Shelby catches Cosby driving "one of them ferrin cars", and swears he's going to build Cosby a custom Cobra, the best that ever was. "Its gonna have du-al exhaust, du-al sup'chargers, du-al steerin' wheels, du-al fire extinguishers...du-al everything. I dunno how it's gonna work but goddangit everything gonna be DUAL".
I believe it was the F-16 which had a similiar problem with the artificial horizon, causing it to rotate 180 when crossing the aequator. It has (luckily) been found and fixed.
They tried that once. It worked about as well as a "field cannon". Everybody jokes about the Mac Portable. This was worse. It was actually passed off as a laptop.
The computer itself was little more than a regular pizzabox sparc painted black, a typewriter case handle, with a bad LCD screen and keyboard...and a car battery glued onto the back.
It had a power brick that needed its own high-speed fan, and was the size of half an unabridged dictionary.
One of two times I've ever seen one in person was when a NetApp sales engineer (sorry for the oxymoron) toted one to us to demonstrate solaris compatibility or something.
PS: were Sun's words "zOMG all your linux box are belong to us!", and "thrust vector calculations rule the OS!"?
Many car experts think that autonomous vehicles which avoid collisions and communicate wirelessly with other cars will be the norm in two to three decades
Hmm, okay...but my flying car already does that. Since I only have to pop my food pills in the rehydrator for about 10 seconds, I have much more time in the morning and so I'm not in as much of a rush to get to work.
...which is working for Jet & Teleport Inc, by the way. If my job isn't taken over by an automaton....
...is that editors be limited to one story about it per week. I'm sorry, but I'm just fed up after the tabloid-like fetish the editors had with the whole SCO thing that most of us didn't give a crap about, at least not on anything near that level. "Darryl sneezes!" "Assistant wipes his nose for him!" "IBM has no comment!" "Groklaw eloquently pontificates!" "IBM says 'bless you', is settlement around the corner?"
Wait- make that twice a week, if you count the inevitable duplicate because the editors can't be bothered to read their own site.
Absolutely false. The problem with CSI etc is that they foster a perception that:
The bad guy is always bad, always evil, always caught. We're catchin' terr'rists! Yeeeeeha!
turnaround time is hours, when it's really weeks or months
tests are done on a hunch or someone asking for them, when it's really a)if there's budget b)if there's a reasonable chance of getting results back in time c)if there's a REALLY good justification for it d)if it doesn't look like it won't be substantially in favor of the prosecution (time after time, we hear of DAs who didn't do tests that would have proved innocence, held results that were not favorable, etc. They're just as slimy as the defense attorneys)
tests are legal, reliable, etc. Often they're NOT legal, NOT reliable
In short, all the things our justice department WANTS us to think they are. It's a great bunch of PR, and it provides a justification to the public mind for increased legislation, fewer rights, etc. It says "look, here's all this whiz-bang technology that ALWAYS works and we NEVER abuse it. Give us more, we'll catch even MORE bad guys!" The public sees it on TV, believes it, and happily baahs when Patriot Act 3 (The Return Of Asscroft) rolls in.
It gets worse. Search warrants appear out of thin air. Everyone's good looking fashion models. No office politics. All the latest toys. No budget problems. No staff shortages. Everyone's personalities are exaggerated and simplistic because we're Dumb Americans and can't understand a character if they're not simple.
The crime shows are all second-rate attempts at what Law and Order perfected; a story of a crime that creatively keeps you guessing until the last second thanks to a really good plot, not by withholding details from you as a viewer. A story that plays with your morals, prejudices, etc. A story whose ending isn't always happy, and often leaves you incensed. Law and Order was also strikingly realistic; real locations, realistic minor-role actors and joes-on-the-street, etc. Real attitudes (I think L&O pretty much nailed the half-disgusted, half-tired, half-disgruntled NYC detective). It really DID feel like you were tagging along with Lenny and Brisco. You -believed- everything, because it was realistic, without being "reality" TV (codename for poor acting and even worse production).
THAT is why L&O went a zillion seasons (it's a shame they had to reinvent it with SVU, which was so-so, and then again with Criminal Intent, which sucks). THAT is why I enjoyed Law and Order...well, ok, and Lenny's wisecracks:-)
Quality glass, such as low dispersion glass (I'm preferential to Canon's "L" glass) will create images with sharp edges, crisp focus, and good bokeh. Use cheap glass and you'll get the opposite.
Bokeh comes from the number of aperture leaves and their shape(there are some non-straight-edged aperture leaves). It has -absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the glass-.
Furthermore, Canon's $60 50mm/1.8 is plasticky, cheap, blah blah- but it's just as sharp as the faster, metal (heavier) L-series lens, and it doesn't suffer from the mild barrel distortion the L-series lens does. It has fewer aperture blades, so bokeh is not as great- which is pretty much the only reason pros buy the L version. Consumers buy it because they want a red ring around their lens and they don't want to be caught dead with a plastic lens.
You can stare at lens charts until the cows come home and argue about image quality. The L-lenses are slightly better in most image quality categories since they do generally use the very best of Canon's technology, but their chief advantage is that they are built with stronger but heavier materials, aimed at professional users who don't mind that the body is thick metal. Phil Greenspun claims he's dropped his 70-210/2.8 IS on the floor and it worked fine. I'm not about to try with mine, but I can tell you that the thing is built like a goddamn tank, and designed to be modular for easy servicing. Even the tripod mount screw is replaceable...
I think that "cyberlibel" punishments are wrong for one very simple reason:
It is exceptionally easy to frame someone.
...and did it occur to you that the entire concept of "framing people" is not new to the justice system? That we have standards of evidence and guilt? Granted the case was in Canada, but in the US, the burden of proof is quite high, at least in criminal cases- in civil cases, it's lower, but you've still got to prove well beyond, on average, what one of us would consider good enough proof.
It's one of the reasons computer crimes are hard to prove, and I think the system has dealt with it quite well. Methinks you've been watching Hackers too much.
Even with a fan in there the screen became washed out after a few hours of use.
That's because the LCD panel overheats and stops functioning. Yes, even with the fan, the internal temperature of the LCD at the layer where all the magic happens gets too hot.
I remember this was a problem with the LCD panels our teachers used with DOS PCs, Apple IIGS's, and very early Macintoshes...they'd have to be given a few minutes cool down time after just 15 minutes. Pretty sad considering they probably cost the schools a fortune at the time.
It is astounding given how much attention copyright gets here on slashdot that people still Don't Get It.
Yeah, I propose calling it "copyright" and setting up a US Copyright Office to enforce it.
The USCO does not enforce copyright. It registers copyrights.
There are no US Copyright Office boogeymen in black who run around arresting people either. If I steal your work, it is entirely your responsibility, in civil court (not criminal) to sue me and recover damages.
Further, copyrighting your code with the GPL license DOES NOT entitle you to expect the Free Software Foundation to go around suing people for you. They'll politely give you some suggestions on who to talk to and maybe a little basic advice, but that's it.
So many people don't get it- they whine about their code being stolen, but then don't do anything about it. As a result, corporations are fearless in violating the GPL license as has been proven again and again. The GPL license, as a result, is quickly becoming irrelevant.
When SCO claims Linus and others stole code, Linus and others need to sue them for liable(or slander, I forget). When Linksys fails to follow the GPL and steals code, the people who wrote the code need to immediately send them a cease and desist, and if they fail to comply, sue them to FORCE them to cease.
In this case, the Asterix developers need to pay a lawyer to file suit against the offending company, seek evidence by court order (if they are using GPL code, it'll be very easy to prove once you're in the door with a court search order), and if they find evidence, hammer them into the ground.
This is in bold because people need to wake up and get a clue. YOU NEED TO START BACKING UP THE GPL WITH LAWSUITS OR IT WILL BECOME COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT AND UNENFORCEABLE.
You left out "yet" after "SUV"- Cheney still has work to do.
See, Ashcroft wasn't hiding in those Secret Undisclosed Locations. That's why he got his shit done.
(no, he didn't really- he's just trying to claim he did. The nation will NEVER be "secure", which is why we should be wasting time on all that shit anyway. Risk is the price you pay for freedom).
I hate to be cynical, but all these review sites "like"/"don't like" products based on:
how soon they get the review unit compared to other competing sites
whether or not they can keep the review unit
whether their sponsors (online stores) sell the item in question
whether a product their sponsors sell would be threatened by the item in question
whether a manufacturer they really really like (say, a hot system is rumored to be just around the corner, everyone's abuzz about it) would be threatened by the item in question
...and a zillion other things unrelated to actual product quality or suitability. Meanwhile, of course, they're all getting played by the companies, who reward good reviews by bumping those sites up on the list of who gets Hot Product A in what order.
Which is why this has no business being on the front page. Put it in games.slashdot.org and make it a non-frontpage for slashdot.org....or something...
You can damn well bet that if they wanted to 'like' the unit, the PSU figures would not have been mentioned, the onboard audio problems dismissed as moot because "we all install soundblaster audigy boards anyway", so on etc. You get the idea. The review remains technically accurate, but the bias clearly swings.
Okay. Someone want to explain how "why should we buy a sony vaio rebranded instead of just a regular sony" is a)funny b)not a valid question?
I ask, as someone with excellent karma and the holder of 4 mod points right now, if I'm missing something as a moderator and slashdot user, because I just don't get this.
Am i the only one who looked at the beveled base, the color of the plastic, the three buttons in back with the mech grill...and thought..."Oh, it's a Sony VAIO"?
So...um...what's the point, when you can just go out and buy a Sony VAIO, probably for cheaper, since it's not being sold as a niche product? I'd also be amazed if whoever actually made that laptop gave Linux Certified a better price per unit than Sony...so they're making less of a margin than Sony or they've passed that price increase right along to you.
The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it.
Many years ago, I worked as an intern for Ready To Run Software, which did something similar; they'd take common packages such as GNU textutils or gcc (which were not part of ANY Unix back then, and Linux was still in its infancy), clean 'em up, make a good installer (again, before the days of autoconf and clever install scripts), provide some decent documentation, and package it all with an executable wrapper onto the tape medium of your choice, for just about -any- Unix in use. Lastly- they supported the product with various contracts and telephone support. Now, they have a porting center with a zillion different Unixes, all set up to play nice, where you can port stuff from Odd Box A to New System B.
I couldn't find it now, but I know back then you could search on a couple of RTR employee email addresses and find stuff in changelogs for most of the core GNU software packages; often times they were one of the very few companies doing actual QA work on these packages (I know, my internship was in QA) and submitting patches and bug reports; they're probably responsible for a lot of the improvements in portability in these packages. RTR also did all the behind the scenes work for the Oreilly powertools CD...
Cool company. I liked working for them- and not just because of the Free Candy table with lots of chocolate (all the machines, and there were almost 50 of them, were named after chocolate. My powermac running linuxppc was 'orange', which took some finagling- "Orange chocolate?").
isn't it a bit of a waste to spend to much on a set of speakers almost in vain to reproduced already degraded music...?
It's a bit of a waste to spend money on Bose equipment. Usually audiophiles are stuck up pontificating snobs, but on Bose, they're right- Bose's technique is to use cheaply made speakers and EQ the hell out of them. Why make a $20 driver, when you can buy a $2 driver and for 50 cents of electronics, make it boom and squeak enough to fool a casual listener?
Buy a set of decent headphones like Grado's SR-60s, or pick up some CSW speakers on clearance. The older brands made by Henry Kloss's companies prior to CSW are often a steal as well, though you'll need an amp of course.
I purchased three Intel white-box computers for $800 each containing 2.6Ghz processors 512MB ram and 40 GB hard drives
Anyone who recommends greybox PCs with non-raid storage for a financial institution...even a small one with only three branches...is not thinking very clearly. If it's for a business-critical application like the phone system, they're categorically insane.
Folks- there's a reason those telco boxes cost lots of dough. They Just Work if they're left alone (in 7-8 years of working with telco equipment, 99% of the problems have been telco line provider problems; hardware failures are extremely rare). There are books upon books written with guidelines for what is considered telco grade, but the common theme is "keeps going, and if it breaks, it does so gracefully".
$2500 can, even for a small bank, be PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR when the system goes down for even a few hours. If you've got a Lucent phone system and a support contract, they find stuff before you do, and no matter what time of day- there's a tech on your doorstep in an hour if they can't remote in via the system's POTS admin modem.
You want a cheap phone system, you get what you pay for. It's remarkably irresponsible for the authors of that article to advocate Asterisk without mentioning that reliability and support pale in comparison to 'real' telco equipment.
so, now that Bush thinks God wants him to be president and he things God is telling him how to govern, we are in deep shit during his Legacy term.
Can't be any worse than Regan, whose wife told him what to do, even during press conferences- microphones repeatedly would "accidentally" pick up her whispering to him what to say, probably because the press was so horrified but knew they've be kicked out of the WH press core if they told anyone about it.
How did Nancy Regan make her decisions? Naturally, her astrologer.
People say Regan was the greatest president ever- he was absolutely nothing of the sort. The idiot couldn't even speak in public without his wife, much less make a decision without her and her fucking astrologer. It's no wonder he drove the country into the ground and it makes me want to throw up when I hear anyone recount him as a great leader.
Slashdot Mirror
I stopped reading this review and said to myself, "hmm, oh, wait, no, I didn't read this before". Why? Because I read a Boston Globe review that sounds just like this one. And why were they released on the same day?
Call me paranoid, but "reviewers" have been well known to post little more than regurgitated sample-reviews by companies for years, and this smacks of the same. If anyone else notices rather similar reviews in their regional paper, feel free to post a reply.
Glad to see everyone's sense of humor is alive and well.
Dunno about that, but this reminds me of Bill Cosby's skit, "200MPH", where he jokes about Carol Shelby.
Shelby catches Cosby driving "one of them ferrin cars", and swears he's going to build Cosby a custom Cobra, the best that ever was. "Its gonna have du-al exhaust, du-al sup'chargers, du-al steerin' wheels, du-al fire extinguishers...du-al everything. I dunno how it's gonna work but goddangit everything gonna be DUAL".
Don't anybody show Shelby that picture :-)
Dear Slashdot,
It's spell chequer has been fixed ass will.
Celery,
You're bodies hat Lockheed
Watch me meta-bitch-slap your asses from "moderators" down to "readers".
(Burning karma, and proud to do so.)
...thanks for the fin.
[ducks, runs for cover]
They tried that once. It worked about as well as a "field cannon". Everybody jokes about the Mac Portable. This was worse. It was actually passed off as a laptop.
The computer itself was little more than a regular pizzabox sparc painted black, a typewriter case handle, with a bad LCD screen and keyboard...and a car battery glued onto the back.
It had a power brick that needed its own high-speed fan, and was the size of half an unabridged dictionary.
One of two times I've ever seen one in person was when a NetApp sales engineer (sorry for the oxymoron) toted one to us to demonstrate solaris compatibility or something.
PS: were Sun's words "zOMG all your linux box are belong to us!", and "thrust vector calculations rule the OS!"?
Hmm, okay...but my flying car already does that. Since I only have to pop my food pills in the rehydrator for about 10 seconds, I have much more time in the morning and so I'm not in as much of a rush to get to work.
...which is working for Jet & Teleport Inc, by the way. If my job isn't taken over by an automaton....
...is that editors be limited to one story about it per week. I'm sorry, but I'm just fed up after the tabloid-like fetish the editors had with the whole SCO thing that most of us didn't give a crap about, at least not on anything near that level. "Darryl sneezes!" "Assistant wipes his nose for him!" "IBM has no comment!" "Groklaw eloquently pontificates!" "IBM says 'bless you', is settlement around the corner?"
Wait- make that twice a week, if you count the inevitable duplicate because the editors can't be bothered to read their own site.
Metaediting, anyone? Jolly good!
Absolutely false. The problem with CSI etc is that they foster a perception that:
In short, all the things our justice department WANTS us to think they are. It's a great bunch of PR, and it provides a justification to the public mind for increased legislation, fewer rights, etc. It says "look, here's all this whiz-bang technology that ALWAYS works and we NEVER abuse it. Give us more, we'll catch even MORE bad guys!" The public sees it on TV, believes it, and happily baahs when Patriot Act 3 (The Return Of Asscroft) rolls in.
It gets worse. Search warrants appear out of thin air. Everyone's good looking fashion models. No office politics. All the latest toys. No budget problems. No staff shortages. Everyone's personalities are exaggerated and simplistic because we're Dumb Americans and can't understand a character if they're not simple.
The crime shows are all second-rate attempts at what Law and Order perfected; a story of a crime that creatively keeps you guessing until the last second thanks to a really good plot, not by withholding details from you as a viewer. A story that plays with your morals, prejudices, etc. A story whose ending isn't always happy, and often leaves you incensed. Law and Order was also strikingly realistic; real locations, realistic minor-role actors and joes-on-the-street, etc. Real attitudes (I think L&O pretty much nailed the half-disgusted, half-tired, half-disgruntled NYC detective). It really DID feel like you were tagging along with Lenny and Brisco. You -believed- everything, because it was realistic, without being "reality" TV (codename for poor acting and even worse production).
THAT is why L&O went a zillion seasons (it's a shame they had to reinvent it with SVU, which was so-so, and then again with Criminal Intent, which sucks). THAT is why I enjoyed Law and Order...well, ok, and Lenny's wisecracks :-)
Bokeh comes from the number of aperture leaves and their shape(there are some non-straight-edged aperture leaves). It has -absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the glass-.
Furthermore, Canon's $60 50mm/1.8 is plasticky, cheap, blah blah- but it's just as sharp as the faster, metal (heavier) L-series lens, and it doesn't suffer from the mild barrel distortion the L-series lens does. It has fewer aperture blades, so bokeh is not as great- which is pretty much the only reason pros buy the L version. Consumers buy it because they want a red ring around their lens and they don't want to be caught dead with a plastic lens.
You can stare at lens charts until the cows come home and argue about image quality. The L-lenses are slightly better in most image quality categories since they do generally use the very best of Canon's technology, but their chief advantage is that they are built with stronger but heavier materials, aimed at professional users who don't mind that the body is thick metal. Phil Greenspun claims he's dropped his 70-210/2.8 IS on the floor and it worked fine. I'm not about to try with mine, but I can tell you that the thing is built like a goddamn tank, and designed to be modular for easy servicing. Even the tripod mount screw is replaceable...
...and did it occur to you that the entire concept of "framing people" is not new to the justice system? That we have standards of evidence and guilt? Granted the case was in Canada, but in the US, the burden of proof is quite high, at least in criminal cases- in civil cases, it's lower, but you've still got to prove well beyond, on average, what one of us would consider good enough proof.
It's one of the reasons computer crimes are hard to prove, and I think the system has dealt with it quite well. Methinks you've been watching Hackers too much.
That's because the LCD panel overheats and stops functioning. Yes, even with the fan, the internal temperature of the LCD at the layer where all the magic happens gets too hot.
I remember this was a problem with the LCD panels our teachers used with DOS PCs, Apple IIGS's, and very early Macintoshes...they'd have to be given a few minutes cool down time after just 15 minutes. Pretty sad considering they probably cost the schools a fortune at the time.
It is astounding given how much attention copyright gets here on slashdot that people still Don't Get It.
Yeah, I propose calling it "copyright" and setting up a US Copyright Office to enforce it.
The USCO does not enforce copyright. It registers copyrights.
There are no US Copyright Office boogeymen in black who run around arresting people either. If I steal your work, it is entirely your responsibility, in civil court (not criminal) to sue me and recover damages.
Further, copyrighting your code with the GPL license DOES NOT entitle you to expect the Free Software Foundation to go around suing people for you. They'll politely give you some suggestions on who to talk to and maybe a little basic advice, but that's it.
So many people don't get it- they whine about their code being stolen, but then don't do anything about it. As a result, corporations are fearless in violating the GPL license as has been proven again and again. The GPL license, as a result, is quickly becoming irrelevant.
When SCO claims Linus and others stole code, Linus and others need to sue them for liable(or slander, I forget). When Linksys fails to follow the GPL and steals code, the people who wrote the code need to immediately send them a cease and desist, and if they fail to comply, sue them to FORCE them to cease.
In this case, the Asterix developers need to pay a lawyer to file suit against the offending company, seek evidence by court order (if they are using GPL code, it'll be very easy to prove once you're in the door with a court search order), and if they find evidence, hammer them into the ground.
This is in bold because people need to wake up and get a clue. YOU NEED TO START BACKING UP THE GPL WITH LAWSUITS OR IT WILL BECOME COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT AND UNENFORCEABLE.
The American Dream isn't an SUV and [...]
You left out "yet" after "SUV"- Cheney still has work to do.
See, Ashcroft wasn't hiding in those Secret Undisclosed Locations. That's why he got his shit done.
(no, he didn't really- he's just trying to claim he did. The nation will NEVER be "secure", which is why we should be wasting time on all that shit anyway. Risk is the price you pay for freedom).
I hate to be cynical, but all these review sites "like"/"don't like" products based on:
...and a zillion other things unrelated to actual product quality or suitability. Meanwhile, of course, they're all getting played by the companies, who reward good reviews by bumping those sites up on the list of who gets Hot Product A in what order.
Which is why this has no business being on the front page. Put it in games.slashdot.org and make it a non-frontpage for slashdot.org....or something...
You can damn well bet that if they wanted to 'like' the unit, the PSU figures would not have been mentioned, the onboard audio problems dismissed as moot because "we all install soundblaster audigy boards anyway", so on etc. You get the idea. The review remains technically accurate, but the bias clearly swings.
Where is the relevance here, please? Did I miss something?
SIIIIIIGH.
Apple menu -> System Preferences-> Software Update. Uncheck "Check for updates", or pick from "Daily", "Weekly", or "Monthly".
"Mind-taxing time again, is it?"
That sounds handy. I can't think of how many times I've found an NBC weapon and wanted to shoot it with some buckshot.
The same company that makes those cute little household vacuuming robots now has a military robot that is equipped with a pump action shotgun
So all terrorists need to do is set up one of those obstacle wire things from the accessory store, right?
(cut to scene in cave) {BAM] [BAM] "ALL YOUR CAVE ARE BELONG TO US!"
"Dammit Akbar, I thought I told you to set up the obstacle wire! Someone go take its batteries out, for god sakes."
The Pacbot weighs about 40 pounds
Okay. So does it kill terrorists by hitting them with the buckshot, or with its body that flies through the air every time it fires the gun?
And, being ankle-height, what part of the body does it aim at? Ouch...
30% Funny
40% Informative
30% Overrated
Okay. Someone want to explain how "why should we buy a sony vaio rebranded instead of just a regular sony" is a)funny b)not a valid question?
I ask, as someone with excellent karma and the holder of 4 mod points right now, if I'm missing something as a moderator and slashdot user, because I just don't get this.
I suppose I need to metamoderate more...
Am i the only one who looked at the beveled base, the color of the plastic, the three buttons in back with the mech grill...and thought..."Oh, it's a Sony VAIO"?
So...um...what's the point, when you can just go out and buy a Sony VAIO, probably for cheaper, since it's not being sold as a niche product? I'd also be amazed if whoever actually made that laptop gave Linux Certified a better price per unit than Sony...so they're making less of a margin than Sony or they've passed that price increase right along to you.
The boxes include documentation and the code on CD with the money going back to support the communities building it.
Many years ago, I worked as an intern for Ready To Run Software, which did something similar; they'd take common packages such as GNU textutils or gcc (which were not part of ANY Unix back then, and Linux was still in its infancy), clean 'em up, make a good installer (again, before the days of autoconf and clever install scripts), provide some decent documentation, and package it all with an executable wrapper onto the tape medium of your choice, for just about -any- Unix in use. Lastly- they supported the product with various contracts and telephone support. Now, they have a porting center with a zillion different Unixes, all set up to play nice, where you can port stuff from Odd Box A to New System B.
I couldn't find it now, but I know back then you could search on a couple of RTR employee email addresses and find stuff in changelogs for most of the core GNU software packages; often times they were one of the very few companies doing actual QA work on these packages (I know, my internship was in QA) and submitting patches and bug reports; they're probably responsible for a lot of the improvements in portability in these packages. RTR also did all the behind the scenes work for the Oreilly powertools CD...
Cool company. I liked working for them- and not just because of the Free Candy table with lots of chocolate (all the machines, and there were almost 50 of them, were named after chocolate. My powermac running linuxppc was 'orange', which took some finagling- "Orange chocolate?").
It's a bit of a waste to spend money on Bose equipment. Usually audiophiles are stuck up pontificating snobs, but on Bose, they're right- Bose's technique is to use cheaply made speakers and EQ the hell out of them. Why make a $20 driver, when you can buy a $2 driver and for 50 cents of electronics, make it boom and squeak enough to fool a casual listener?
Buy a set of decent headphones like Grado's SR-60s, or pick up some CSW speakers on clearance. The older brands made by Henry Kloss's companies prior to CSW are often a steal as well, though you'll need an amp of course.
I purchased three Intel white-box computers for $800 each containing 2.6Ghz processors 512MB ram and 40 GB hard drives
Anyone who recommends greybox PCs with non-raid storage for a financial institution...even a small one with only three branches...is not thinking very clearly. If it's for a business-critical application like the phone system, they're categorically insane.
Folks- there's a reason those telco boxes cost lots of dough. They Just Work if they're left alone (in 7-8 years of working with telco equipment, 99% of the problems have been telco line provider problems; hardware failures are extremely rare). There are books upon books written with guidelines for what is considered telco grade, but the common theme is "keeps going, and if it breaks, it does so gracefully".
$2500 can, even for a small bank, be PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR when the system goes down for even a few hours. If you've got a Lucent phone system and a support contract, they find stuff before you do, and no matter what time of day- there's a tech on your doorstep in an hour if they can't remote in via the system's POTS admin modem.
You want a cheap phone system, you get what you pay for. It's remarkably irresponsible for the authors of that article to advocate Asterisk without mentioning that reliability and support pale in comparison to 'real' telco equipment.
Can't be any worse than Regan, whose wife told him what to do, even during press conferences- microphones repeatedly would "accidentally" pick up her whispering to him what to say, probably because the press was so horrified but knew they've be kicked out of the WH press core if they told anyone about it.
How did Nancy Regan make her decisions? Naturally, her astrologer.
People say Regan was the greatest president ever- he was absolutely nothing of the sort. The idiot couldn't even speak in public without his wife, much less make a decision without her and her fucking astrologer. It's no wonder he drove the country into the ground and it makes me want to throw up when I hear anyone recount him as a great leader.