Kinda off topic, but relating to personal experiances with age. My girlfriend (I know, I must not be a true/.er *ducks*) when I first asked her out on a date felt that I was too young for her. She discriminated against me for my age, as many of her friends of my age group were immature, and she felt I would be the same way. I told her that it is maturity, not age, that matters, and that you cannot discriminate against someone's maturity level if you don't even know where that level IS on someone. She agreed to go on a date with me and has learned a valuable lesson, for we are still together (a month or two now), and we are happy with one another.
Let us not discriminate against someone just for their age, but rather understand them for who they are and judge then. Discriminating against someone's age is like saying that a black person couldn't be better than a white person b/c of the skin color.
I personally own a PowerMac 6500/250Mhz w/128 MB RAM. I've had my share of problems on that outdated OS 9, but it seems to run circles around any PC equivilent. If the computer is taking 20min to copy 17MB, then the problem is probably a corrupted disk or OS. Your filesystem may be out of whack or something. I have a friend who has a 350Mhz PII and that thing can't even play a CD using Windows Media Player w/o skipping constantly, let alone try to render visualizations. My PM runs iTunes flawlessly with increadible visualizations for how old the computer is.
Now, we come to a major issue. If you are using a Pre-G3 Mac, and a pre-OS X OS, you are going to have a lot of problems. You fall under a common misconception that "Macs are old" b/c you haven't used a semi-modern one. I'm wondering if the OS you are using is even above 8.1.
Next, we come to the question of stability. Yes, pre-Mac OS X OSes were prone to crashing, but compared to Wintel machines, the crashes were a million times easier to fix. It is a sinch to remove an extension and solve a conflict.
Finally, we come to the idea of how to solve the problems. Fist, run disk first aid. Second, install a semi-modern OS (9.1 should suit your needs). Third, give the computer a chance, and it'll probably grow on you.
I'm guessing it takes at LEAST 20 hours of your life over the course of the refund being on the phone and documenting everything and such. So, let's say that you DO go for the refund. THat is $200 divided by 20 hours. So, we are making about $10 an hour for this process. Factory workers make more than that.
You walk into the bookstore. Two army officers approach you with AK-47s. "Excuse me sit, could you step into the office here? Thank you. Now, you have been chosen at random to be strip-searched. This is not racial profiling. Please remove all of your clothes and bend over."
Something like:
"Your product doesn't have a guarentee on the box. Customers want that. Calling to them. Comforting them. 'Pick me, I won't let you down.'" The problem with that is, how great is the support at most places anyway? You end up with your "daughter knocked up" (aka a new problem) and the "change is missing from the dresser" (aka, to get it done right, you have to spend an extra arm and a leg).
Just my two cents (since I have no sense;-) )
With the limited range of WiFi, they'd need a station in every house, and the financial burden of an undertaking like that would be immense. I'd imagine that, since they have broadband, they can cut some pretty cheap bulk deals around maybe $50 per station, but the costs would still be astronomical, and from the looks of the article, they are saying that there is a blanket of WiFi over the ENTIRE island. Essentially, everywhere you see a transformer on a telephone, you'd have to see a base station, but really, the interference from such electricity would cause problems, so they probably alternate. I am guessing that other than by taxes, the biggest way they are paying for all of this is from tourism, which apparently is large for such a small island. I'm betting that within two years, they'd be able to pay off the addition, and after that, it would merely be a matter of the funds to maintain the system, which will also get costly.
WHA!? You mean everything I read on the net isn't true? *gasp* My world is crumbling before me.
Now the trick is, how can you always tell if it is true or not? Heck, my mother, a 7-8th grade advanced science teacher did a test with the class showing them an online article about the evils of hydrogen hydroxide. At the end of the class, over half the class believed that there was a serious problem in the world with hydrogen hydroxide that needs to be dealt with. Only one student in the class knew the truth of what hydrogen hydroxide really is: water. Now, if we can so easily be tricked into believing water is evil, how the heck are we suppose to be aware of what is true or not? Make a professional looking page and sound smart, and the masses will follow!
Just a thought
There are a million ways molecule can attach to another depending on a number of variables such as placement of electrons and atoms in the molecule. I'm thinking, with all those possibilities, it would seem that the best way to simulate all those possibilities and pick out which molecules to use to bind with certain parts of DNA would be to develop a distributed computing project such as folding and Seti. I don't entirely understand HOW they are able to detect such deformities in the DNA with a single molecule, but given they can develop a method to accurately sense them, I'd imagine that it would take a heck of a lot of computing power to match the deformity up with a molecule. Just my tired two cents worth.
Theoretically, a dual processor machine for chess WOULD be twice as fast as a single processor machine, unlike in normal tasks where dual doesn't mean double. Chess is full of interger operations, but at the same time, conditionals up the ass. To calculate the best move, the computer has to check every possibility a move can have and the possible consiquences several moves ahead. The nice thing about a dual processor machine is that each processor can focus on the branches of moves pending from different pieces. While one is calculating what one of the rooks can do, the other can calculate what one of the knights can do. One thing I see, though, is that hyperthreading would probably not do any good for such a game b/c all of the integer ALUs on a processor would be used by one thread, so there wouldn't be any ALUs open for another thread. I think in this sort of application of the Xenon, turning hyperthreading off would help boost performance, although I can't be 100% sure of it. Just a thought.
Actually, the credit beuru once accidently typed in the wrong SSN of a convicted felon. After that, the man's SSN that they typed in was suddenly not able to find a job or get credit for anything. After at least 10 years in the gutter, one of the people he looked to employment said to him "we don't hire people with your history". The man began inquiring what that must mean and found out that the credit bearu screwed up his account by saying he was a convicted felon. He then sued the bearu for a good 20-50million dollars and is now living on easy street.
All I was really trying to say is that if someone wants to get your SSN, all they have to do is act like an employer and do a credit check. There are a million other ways, too. When I worked at CVS, our login code was our SSN. All someone had to do would be watch closely a few times, and wham, they've got it.
If you really want to find someone's social security number, you can do it a million ways. Every business they work for has it on record, the credit beuru has it, your D/L has it tied in for police. All anyone really has to do is do a credit check on you, claiming to be a possible employer and such. I am not afraid of my SSN being released. Yeah, someone could really screw with my life, but then, I could sue the heck out of whatever company released it. Anything in life either has to have a SSN or a Birth Cirtificate anymore. Why not just implant babies with chips and call it a day?;-)
About a year ago, Popular Science did an article on nanotech motors. They said that the biggest drawback of even the best Li-batteries is that no battery has even hit the 1% efficiency rating. Reasearchers hope that with these mini-engines, we may finally see power devices as small as a battery that can produce over 1% efficiency. I believe that 10% is their ultimate goal, although anything over 1% would still be worlds better than batteries. Granted, use in such devices as portable phones would actually mean that the micro engines would just be recharging the batteries, which would limit the overall efficiency to less than a 10th of a percent, but given other applications and better technology, such nano engines could replace Li-batteries in laptops and other high performance appliances. No more plugging your laptop into the wall, just go to the gas station and filler up;) .
Sorry about the whole "Username"/"Screen name" mixup. lol. And if you want to know what the KingArthur10 thing is, well, Arthur is my real name. I have used the AIM SN KingArthur10 since the 6th grade (7 years ago). On almost every one of the message boards I visit, I use the same name, so for the most part, if someone wanted to know how to reach me, it would be pretty darn easy to find me/contact me.
My first introduction into the wonderful world of programming came with TI-83 Basic. Some friend of mine had downloaded a game or two off the net that were written in the calc basic code. I ran the games, and started altering code little by little, understanding what each element in the program does. I began programming very short programs to do various things, then began my embark on my first game, StarTrek. lol. It was horrible and took up around 10k. Over the next couple of years I refined my programming skills and ended up making that same game with no bugs and it only took up about 3k. lol.
Anyway, I tought myself everything I knew, using the horrible TI-83 book to learn what some commands did. Then I came on to Q-Basic in my programming class in HS. I was like a fish in water. I used the help files to know what I should use as substitute commands for what I hasd used on the calc. In no time, using just the help function and a couple of programs I downloaded off the net, I was teaching my computer programming teacher new material. He would ask me how to get something done, and I'd figure it out. Programming is 25% your ability to learn new material, and 75% your ability to figure things out on your own.
I agree whole-heartedly with this statement. Anyone who purposely posts an off-topic statement with derrogitory intent should not be alowed to use a computer, let alone post on a web-board dedicated to computers. And the fact that you are not willing to post using your screen name shows that you are not man enough to stand up for what you believe in. If you wish to post something like this in the future, at least have the decency to submit your name with it and own up to what you say.
I've used iTunes for a number of years (although my 6500 can't handle anything above iTunes2). I believe the best way to handle data loss is to convert it the fewest number of times. Use VBR for best results and for the most part, you will have to decide on your own what format you like the best to encode into. Remember, also, that every genre of music has different qualities using different encoding rates and formats due to the variances in bass and treble. You may find you like one format for your classical, yet another completely different one for rock. Since you don't have to put up with a girlfriend or anything of the sorts, you can spend that extra time alone encoding the origional 320kbps copies into various formats. Also, once you have chosen specific formats for your songs, I am not sure, but you may be able to script the encoding action so that it does it automatically based on genre or something. Not sure there, you'll have to check on the iTunes scripting abilities. This process takes a lot of time, but once you establish your base of what formats you like, things'll be a lot easier. Hope I have been helpful:-)
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Kinda off topic, but relating to personal experiances with age. My girlfriend (I know, I must not be a true /.er *ducks*) when I first asked her out on a date felt that I was too young for her. She discriminated against me for my age, as many of her friends of my age group were immature, and she felt I would be the same way. I told her that it is maturity, not age, that matters, and that you cannot discriminate against someone's maturity level if you don't even know where that level IS on someone. She agreed to go on a date with me and has learned a valuable lesson, for we are still together (a month or two now), and we are happy with one another.
Let us not discriminate against someone just for their age, but rather understand them for who they are and judge then. Discriminating against someone's age is like saying that a black person couldn't be better than a white person b/c of the skin color.
That's just my two cents
I personally own a PowerMac 6500/250Mhz w/128 MB RAM. I've had my share of problems on that outdated OS 9, but it seems to run circles around any PC equivilent. If the computer is taking 20min to copy 17MB, then the problem is probably a corrupted disk or OS. Your filesystem may be out of whack or something. I have a friend who has a 350Mhz PII and that thing can't even play a CD using Windows Media Player w/o skipping constantly, let alone try to render visualizations. My PM runs iTunes flawlessly with increadible visualizations for how old the computer is.
Now, we come to a major issue. If you are using a Pre-G3 Mac, and a pre-OS X OS, you are going to have a lot of problems. You fall under a common misconception that "Macs are old" b/c you haven't used a semi-modern one. I'm wondering if the OS you are using is even above 8.1.
Next, we come to the question of stability. Yes, pre-Mac OS X OSes were prone to crashing, but compared to Wintel machines, the crashes were a million times easier to fix. It is a sinch to remove an extension and solve a conflict.
Finally, we come to the idea of how to solve the problems. Fist, run disk first aid. Second, install a semi-modern OS (9.1 should suit your needs). Third, give the computer a chance, and it'll probably grow on you.
"This post brought to you by a PROUD member of the FTGNAA" If you are so proud of being a part of it, you would not post as an anonymous coward.
I'm guessing it takes at LEAST 20 hours of your life over the course of the refund being on the phone and documenting everything and such. So, let's say that you DO go for the refund. THat is $200 divided by 20 hours. So, we are making about $10 an hour for this process. Factory workers make more than that.
You walk into the bookstore. Two army officers approach you with AK-47s. "Excuse me sit, could you step into the office here? Thank you. Now, you have been chosen at random to be strip-searched. This is not racial profiling. Please remove all of your clothes and bend over."
Something like: "Your product doesn't have a guarentee on the box. Customers want that. Calling to them. Comforting them. 'Pick me, I won't let you down.'" The problem with that is, how great is the support at most places anyway? You end up with your "daughter knocked up" (aka a new problem) and the "change is missing from the dresser" (aka, to get it done right, you have to spend an extra arm and a leg). Just my two cents (since I have no sense ;-) )
With the limited range of WiFi, they'd need a station in every house, and the financial burden of an undertaking like that would be immense. I'd imagine that, since they have broadband, they can cut some pretty cheap bulk deals around maybe $50 per station, but the costs would still be astronomical, and from the looks of the article, they are saying that there is a blanket of WiFi over the ENTIRE island. Essentially, everywhere you see a transformer on a telephone, you'd have to see a base station, but really, the interference from such electricity would cause problems, so they probably alternate. I am guessing that other than by taxes, the biggest way they are paying for all of this is from tourism, which apparently is large for such a small island. I'm betting that within two years, they'd be able to pay off the addition, and after that, it would merely be a matter of the funds to maintain the system, which will also get costly.
WHA!? You mean everything I read on the net isn't true? *gasp* My world is crumbling before me. Now the trick is, how can you always tell if it is true or not? Heck, my mother, a 7-8th grade advanced science teacher did a test with the class showing them an online article about the evils of hydrogen hydroxide. At the end of the class, over half the class believed that there was a serious problem in the world with hydrogen hydroxide that needs to be dealt with. Only one student in the class knew the truth of what hydrogen hydroxide really is: water. Now, if we can so easily be tricked into believing water is evil, how the heck are we suppose to be aware of what is true or not? Make a professional looking page and sound smart, and the masses will follow! Just a thought
There are a million ways molecule can attach to another depending on a number of variables such as placement of electrons and atoms in the molecule. I'm thinking, with all those possibilities, it would seem that the best way to simulate all those possibilities and pick out which molecules to use to bind with certain parts of DNA would be to develop a distributed computing project such as folding and Seti. I don't entirely understand HOW they are able to detect such deformities in the DNA with a single molecule, but given they can develop a method to accurately sense them, I'd imagine that it would take a heck of a lot of computing power to match the deformity up with a molecule. Just my tired two cents worth.
Theoretically, a dual processor machine for chess WOULD be twice as fast as a single processor machine, unlike in normal tasks where dual doesn't mean double. Chess is full of interger operations, but at the same time, conditionals up the ass. To calculate the best move, the computer has to check every possibility a move can have and the possible consiquences several moves ahead. The nice thing about a dual processor machine is that each processor can focus on the branches of moves pending from different pieces. While one is calculating what one of the rooks can do, the other can calculate what one of the knights can do. One thing I see, though, is that hyperthreading would probably not do any good for such a game b/c all of the integer ALUs on a processor would be used by one thread, so there wouldn't be any ALUs open for another thread. I think in this sort of application of the Xenon, turning hyperthreading off would help boost performance, although I can't be 100% sure of it. Just a thought.
Actually, the credit beuru once accidently typed in the wrong SSN of a convicted felon. After that, the man's SSN that they typed in was suddenly not able to find a job or get credit for anything. After at least 10 years in the gutter, one of the people he looked to employment said to him "we don't hire people with your history". The man began inquiring what that must mean and found out that the credit bearu screwed up his account by saying he was a convicted felon. He then sued the bearu for a good 20-50million dollars and is now living on easy street. All I was really trying to say is that if someone wants to get your SSN, all they have to do is act like an employer and do a credit check. There are a million other ways, too. When I worked at CVS, our login code was our SSN. All someone had to do would be watch closely a few times, and wham, they've got it.
If you really want to find someone's social security number, you can do it a million ways. Every business they work for has it on record, the credit beuru has it, your D/L has it tied in for police. All anyone really has to do is do a credit check on you, claiming to be a possible employer and such. I am not afraid of my SSN being released. Yeah, someone could really screw with my life, but then, I could sue the heck out of whatever company released it. Anything in life either has to have a SSN or a Birth Cirtificate anymore. Why not just implant babies with chips and call it a day? ;-)
About a year ago, Popular Science did an article on nanotech motors. They said that the biggest drawback of even the best Li-batteries is that no battery has even hit the 1% efficiency rating. Reasearchers hope that with these mini-engines, we may finally see power devices as small as a battery that can produce over 1% efficiency. I believe that 10% is their ultimate goal, although anything over 1% would still be worlds better than batteries. Granted, use in such devices as portable phones would actually mean that the micro engines would just be recharging the batteries, which would limit the overall efficiency to less than a 10th of a percent, but given other applications and better technology, such nano engines could replace Li-batteries in laptops and other high performance appliances. No more plugging your laptop into the wall, just go to the gas station and filler up ;) .
Sorry about the whole "Username"/"Screen name" mixup. lol. And if you want to know what the KingArthur10 thing is, well, Arthur is my real name. I have used the AIM SN KingArthur10 since the 6th grade (7 years ago). On almost every one of the message boards I visit, I use the same name, so for the most part, if someone wanted to know how to reach me, it would be pretty darn easy to find me/contact me.
My first introduction into the wonderful world of programming came with TI-83 Basic. Some friend of mine had downloaded a game or two off the net that were written in the calc basic code. I ran the games, and started altering code little by little, understanding what each element in the program does. I began programming very short programs to do various things, then began my embark on my first game, StarTrek. lol. It was horrible and took up around 10k. Over the next couple of years I refined my programming skills and ended up making that same game with no bugs and it only took up about 3k. lol. Anyway, I tought myself everything I knew, using the horrible TI-83 book to learn what some commands did. Then I came on to Q-Basic in my programming class in HS. I was like a fish in water. I used the help files to know what I should use as substitute commands for what I hasd used on the calc. In no time, using just the help function and a couple of programs I downloaded off the net, I was teaching my computer programming teacher new material. He would ask me how to get something done, and I'd figure it out. Programming is 25% your ability to learn new material, and 75% your ability to figure things out on your own.
I agree whole-heartedly with this statement. Anyone who purposely posts an off-topic statement with derrogitory intent should not be alowed to use a computer, let alone post on a web-board dedicated to computers. And the fact that you are not willing to post using your screen name shows that you are not man enough to stand up for what you believe in. If you wish to post something like this in the future, at least have the decency to submit your name with it and own up to what you say.
I've used iTunes for a number of years (although my 6500 can't handle anything above iTunes2). I believe the best way to handle data loss is to convert it the fewest number of times. Use VBR for best results and for the most part, you will have to decide on your own what format you like the best to encode into. Remember, also, that every genre of music has different qualities using different encoding rates and formats due to the variances in bass and treble. You may find you like one format for your classical, yet another completely different one for rock. Since you don't have to put up with a girlfriend or anything of the sorts, you can spend that extra time alone encoding the origional 320kbps copies into various formats. Also, once you have chosen specific formats for your songs, I am not sure, but you may be able to script the encoding action so that it does it automatically based on genre or something. Not sure there, you'll have to check on the iTunes scripting abilities. This process takes a lot of time, but once you establish your base of what formats you like, things'll be a lot easier. Hope I have been helpful :-)