I've really had a very good experience with AT&T Cable internet. The price is reasonable, the speed is quite fast (I downloaded some disk images last month at over 200KB/s, note: KB not Kb) they were quite prompt about getting the installation done. If I remember correctly, I called in on a Thursday and they came the following Wednesday, and it was a holiday weekend. Two working days later is a very good turn around time. Since getting service in July I've only had one network outage that I've noticed, and it lasted less than 2 hours. The only thing that I can complain about is that their mail and news servers are kind of slow and go down sometimes. I'd recommend not using the e-mail address you get from them for anything other than billing information. _____________
While it's true that this research is nowhere near making it possible to grow chicken legs in a vat it does not seem that such a thing will remain impossible forever. I'm directing this at you because you claim to be a vegetarian and I find it an interesting topic.
Suppose that we do become able to grow T-bones in a vat, not only that but really good, boneless, fatless, gristle free T-bones and cheap too. Wouldn't this remove pretty much all objections that vegetarians have to eating flesh? After all, it's now much healthier than our current meat products and didn't involve the slaughter of any animals to produce it, is it now a vegetable?
I'm not trying to be a jackass here, I'm just genuinely interested in the complex changes that are occuring due to genetic engineering. _____________
I agree with you totally that radiant heat and high frequency or nuclear radiation are totally different. However, the only effect that microwave radiation (note: microwaves are electro-magnetic radiation a very different thing from atomic decay) can have is to produce heating in moist materials.
As an interesting contrast to this thread I submitted an interesting interview from the New York Times this morning. Being that this is/. and all it got rejected. The scientist they interviewed has been researching the effects of microwaves on people for 25 years and has pretty much determined that they are harmless. Her research has gone as far as exposing monkeys and humans to large microwave fields and investigating the feasibility of microwaves for home heating.
I'll freely admit that my post was intended to be a bit over the top, but being trained in physics (now working in embedded systems programming) I know that there is very little likelyhood that microwaves could cause genetic mutations. Microwaves do not have sufficient energy to change the molecular structure on DNA. You must realize that visible light is many orders of magnitude more energetic. No one would even consider that keeping a light bulb over your head would be dangerous even if the UV emissions from said bulb are an actual risk of skin cancer from that radiation (ok, light bulbs tend to be a bit more toward the red side of the spectrum and thus emit rather little UV light, but my point stands).
As far as the saftey value of head-sets goes I remain convinced that their value extends only to keeping your hands free while driving and possibly to prevent neck cramps. The neck cramp problem though isn't unique to mobile phones and is probably more of a problem for those who use conventional phones since most people who work on the phone don't use mobile phones. _____________
Re:Steam Tunnels: what are they?
on
Infiltration
·
· Score: 2
What is steam being transported for?
Most large buildings are heated with steam radiators. It is therefore necessary to pipe that steam around so that it can be used. In the case of many college campuses and similar installations there often isn't a furnace in each building but instead a really big central furnace. The steam is then piped around the campus so that it can heat all the buildings. Usually tunnels are built to carry the steam pipes and communication lines and whatever else needs to go between buildings. Often times these tunnels are large enough for a man to walk in so that the pipes and cables can be serviced if necessary or in the case of tunnels built in the 1950's some were built even larger so that we could also use them to hide from the Russian bombers.
You can sometimes tell where the tunnels run in the winter since they will heat the ground above them and melt off the snow. If you went to college in a colder climate you can probably remember that there were a few sidewalks that were always clear of snow, that's probably why.
Many cities also use a similar arrangement for downtown buildings. It's a pretty common practice to pipe steam to downtown from a garbage incenerator. This arrangement pays pretty well for the city since they can charge the garbage haulers to dump trash at the incenerator then they burn the trash to produce steam that they can sell to downtown businesses. _____________
Headline: Washington - Microsoft, Dell and Unisys Executives Jailed for Treason After Announcing New System That Will Make Voting as Reliable And Easy to Use as a Home Computer. _____________
Even more likely than the production of microwaves is just that battery discharge causes heat and so does the operation of a power amp. Amazingly enough when you hold a warm object near to your ear, your ear begins to feel warm. See my previous post for a complete discussion. _____________
I'd actually be completely willing to stick my head in the microwave for 7 seconds straight on a daily basis. I really don't think that it would have any significant effect on me. I'm basing this on my experience with heating scrambled eggs in a microwave oven (scrambled eggs being the closest food item to brains that I can think of). When heating a small quantity of eggs (2-3 eggs worth at the most) in the microwave I've found that it takes significantly more than 7 seconds to produce any noticable heating. My head on the other hand is much larger than a typical serving of eggs (I'd estimate that it would take about 5 dozen eggs to make up the approximate weight of my head [based on 7 lb head and 50g chicken eggs]). Therefore I suspect that the heating effect of a full 1000W of microwave energy continuously applied to my head for 7 seconds on a daily basis would be minimal. Furthermore, my head has a built in liquid cooling system which would help to quickly dissapate any extra heat from my head and this energy is not being applied to my head all at once but rather spread over the course of 2 hours.
If you are actually concerned that the heating effects of microwave radiation from your cell phone are going to be dangerous to you, you should seek to remove other heat sources from near your head. The following may be reasonable precautions for you to take:
Never wear a hat
Carry a parasol
Keep your curtians closed at all times
Set your thermostat no higher than 55F
Avoid physical activity
Eat all your food cold
I could go on with other ways in which to prevent your head from being heated, but it's getting a little silly. If there is anything about cell phones that warms your head, it's simple conductive heating from the power amp and battery discharge. If your cell phone gets too warm for your comfort, talk less and/or use a headset. I just ask that you remember that this is a comfort recommendation and not a saftey requirement unless you're operating a motor vehicle. _____________
I'm a lefty too and I don't understand what you're complaining about on most of these things. Frankly when you listed these things I found most of them to be a lefty advantage. Let's have a look:
Mouse, generally use with right hand leaves left hand free for more important things.
Keyboard, all the good letters (well, A and E are the 2 most common letters and they're on the left) are on the left side seems a lefty advantage to me.
Stick shift, I can't really call this one. Depends on where you live. I find that the US style where the shifter is operated with the right hand is good for the lefty. It leaves the left hand free for steering, smoking, eating, phone talking and other tasks that require more finger dexterity than pushing a lever with a shoulder motion.
The roads, I'm not sure how this is a particular advantage one way or another except as to how it relates to the placement of the shifter.
Eating, advantage lefty here!! You get to start with the fork right under the hand you're going to use it with.
Doors, can be a little akward for leftys sometimes.
pr0n sites, advantage lefty! You're using the mouse with your right hand and your left hand is free for more important things;)
The only time when I have a real problem with being a lefty is when I'm using power tools. Most power tools are setup so that the dangerous part is away from your body when the tool is held in the right hand. This of course places the dangerous part right next to your body when operated lefty style. Not good!! _____________
The problem with nuclear power isn't that it's unsafe, in fact it seems to be quite a bit safer than burning coal, but that when an accident happens it has the potential to cause a very large number of problems all at once. The problem is therefore mainly one of perception, in a way it's quite similar to airline travel. Many people are nervous about traveling on an airline despite the fact that air travel is quite a bit safer than travel by private vehicle. This is because people are used to traveling along the ground but they are not used to traveling in the air. In addition, airliners tend to put a few hundred people in the same place at the same time so that when there is an accident (as will happen with any human endevor) it does a lot more damage (and therefore is reported on the news) than an accident in a private vehicle which probably only involves 5 people at the most. In a similar way, people are used to setting things on fire for energy, we've been doing that for thousands of years and it's just not all that scary to us anymore, on the other hand fission is a new and kind of scary thing. In addition, fission accidents tend to be disasters and put thousands of people at risk all at once while the by products of coal burning kill people very slowly and over a very long period of time. _____________
Not quite true. France was until fairly recently restriced in terms of crypto software. However, this wasn't a US based export restriction but rather a France based ban on use of crypto by their citizens.
Ah France, just because the world needed someone to make US internet policy decisions look good. _____________
Aiwa doesn't make *anything* that qualifies as good. They are the shit that Sony is too embarassed to put their own name on when selling. Go ahead, pick up the Aiwa set of yours and squeeze the sides a little bit, did they bow in and creak? Thought so. Now grasp the volume knob, wiggle it up and down a little. Amazing how much it moves in ways it isn't supposed to ain't it.
Think about it, they didn't take the time to do a good job putting together the stuff on the outside of the box. How good do you think the stuff inside the box is? The only good thing that I can say about Aiwa is that at least it doesn't cost much. _____________
Right on the money there. Bass + Trebel only nothing in the middle (which is incidently where most human voices lie and that's pretty important for movies). Bose has done some cool things and you have to give them a little credit. If you want something that sounds pretty good and want it all in one piece and pretty small their wave radios are great. If you want a home theater system stay away like the plague. _____________
I have to dis agree with you a little bit here. No matter how good your speakers are it's going to sound pretty bad if you have a shitty amp.
However, spending an extra dollar on the speakers is going to get you more than spending the extra dollar on the receiver. If I were going to go out and buy an audio system today and was willing to spend $1.5k I'd be looking to spend about $400 on the receiver (the JVC RX-8000V I have sells for about this much and has quite good sound and lots of features) and the remainder on speakers.
I would avoid like the plague any sort of setup that has 5 tiny little speakers and a huge subwoofer to make up for their lack of bass and midrange response. I find that these setups leave a lot to be desired in terms of midrange and bass response. Boston makes some excellent speakers and are definately worth checking out in particular their VR series. _____________
From my standpoint $10 still qualifys as a high cost of media deterrent. I can buy most movies that have been out more than a month or two for $12-15 at Best Buy. Why would I rent a DVD at a cost of $3.50 so that I could burn it onto a $10 DVD blank? Despite the "perfect digital transfer" I've saved $2 at best, don't have the case or chapter guide and have the movie on media that scratches more easily. Sounds to me like playing by the rules is still the better choice to me. _____________
Companies in the US cannot (legally) do wiretapping. That's the whole point. It seems that a law exists that prohibits employers from reading the private communications of employees on stored information system (websites?) however its penalties are less severe than the law prohibiting them from listening in on private telephone conversations. The question at issue here is if the wiretap law has been violated as well. These laws are quite complex and more than a little vague given that the different options for personal communications have expanded greatly in the past few years and it is difficult (even for geeks) to forsee what privacy issues will arise with future communication technologies and what protections should be afforded to different groups of people. _____________
How does this kind of thing get moderated up? Just because the particular problem that you are most concerned about hasn't been solved yet doesn't mean that it won't ever be. The fact that the world continues to have problems does not mean that this isn't a valid and useful solution of something that has been a problem in the past. Frankly, if you're not interested in the topic being discussed go somewhere else. There are about 20 different topics being discussed on this board alone on any given day so there's no real need to come here and belittle the achievements of others even if you aren't particularly interested in them.
I'm sorry if I'm coming across as really harsh, but I think that it's something that needed to be said. I'm looking forward to playing around with this technology. It looks really interesting and quite a bit more flexable than using screen shots of MathCAD. _____________
There really isn't any easy way to upgrade the m100. That's part of why they can be sold so damned cheap. If you want to upgrade the memory on your m100 or IIIe you need to take it apart and desolder the RAM chip from the board. There is a description of this process here given the domain name on this link I'd say that it's probably a pretty reliable source. I've not tried to do this yet either with my IIIe or with my girlfriend's m100 since my soldering skills aren't all that I'd like them to be. _____________
The problem with carrying around a badge around at home is that I wouldn't do it. My patterns at home are vastly different than when I'm at work or school. When I'm at work it can be assumed that I'll be doing various things that make the carrying of tracking devices fairly unobtrusive, however most of the ways of tracking this assume that I am wearing pants. This is a very reasonable assumption at work when I am at work I do wear pants and the accompanying wallet, key ring, cell phone and PDA. However, this all changes when I get home. The wallet, key ring, cell phone and PDA get deposited on the coffee table and the pants with pockets get dropped in the hamper then I put on cutoff sweat pants (no pockets and eat dinner, watch TV, surf the net, talk on the phone or whatever I'm planning on doing that evening. How is the system going to effectively track what room I'm in without the items that I customarily carry? Is it going to be confused that my shoes (yeah, just like in Enemy of the State) are on the mat by the door, the wallet/cellphone/PDA pile is one the coffee table, the pants/belt is in the hamper, the watch is behind the kitchen sink (took it off to wash dishes)? Rest assured that I am not standing by the front door for hours, nor am I standing on the coffee table or hiding in the hamper or swimming in the kitchen sink. Well, come to think of it, I might do those things but it's not the normal case.
I don't object to carrying identifying items with me when I go out, but I just don't do it at home. _____________
Well, that's pretty much what this project is trying to do. The clickable map is here. only problem is that it's really not all that complete now. Mostly it just highlights places where there are a lot of people with too much money to spend.
It does make for a kind of fun afternoon out doing a little hiking. My contributions can be seen here and here. Hopefully I'll get the chance to visit a couple of other random places when I go on vacation this summer. _____________
Hint: nobody chooses their next OS based on what they saw someone in some crappy movie/tv-show using.
I'd suspect that you're kinda wrong about this one. Computer makers (I'm talking mostly hardware here) pour big bucks into television for product placement. Every computer on ER has a Gateway logo on it. Every time someone on that show is putting something into a box, it's got cow spots. Drew Carrey hauls an i-book around with him on his shows. Guess what... It's not an accident. Someone must think that it's worth the money.
On the other hand, graphic designers love macs. Pretty much every (screen shot|simulated screen shot|I want this to look high tech) graphic you see in print ads has MacOS widgets in it. You even see this in ads for MS products sometimes. Overall, I'd that that that hasn't convinced all that many people to switch from windows. _____________
As for "Blacks are naturally better athelets than whites" I think it's a bunch of bunk.
Well, it all depends a bit on the sport in question. A read an interesting article in Runner's World Magazine several years ago that examined the dominance of several east African countries in running events. It seems that persons from this area of the world have a rather unique shape to some of their leg muscles which appears to be an advantage in running and jumping.
It seems fairly apparent that skin color is not the only genetic difference between people from different areas of the world. For example, I would be rather surprised to see a large increase in the number of Asian players in the NBA or NFL despite the population of in the US being made up of an increasingly large Asian minority. Is this because the NBA and NFL are racist organizations? No, it's because persons of Asian descent are usually shorter and slimmer than persons of African or European descent. This puts them at a disadvantage on the basketball court or football field, however it's not a particular disadvantage on a baseball diamond and we are seeing an increasing number of Asians in the Major League. _____________
Ok, get a grip here! 802.11b is actually a pretty secure standard. The over the air portion is encrypted. The access point acts more like a switch than it does like a hub (not exactly like either, has a bit of bridging and router thrown in as well). There really isn't any way to set your 802.11 card into promiscious mode since everyone else's traffic is encrypted and couldn't be read by you anyway. Overall I'd say that this system is quite a bit more secure and easy to use than an ethernet LAN.
Yes, I do work for a company that makes access points. No, I haven't done much work on that product line myself.
_____________
They seem to be really stuck in the MS mindset where you buy the OS and that's all you get. If you're lucky, they throw in a calculator and an address book. A linux distro is different. It comes with everything that you need to get your work done. To get the functionality that I have in my default Mandrake 7.2 install (yes, I have a good firewall) in a MS environment I would need a hell of a lot more than 2 CDs and that's just for the things that I use. Let's make a list:
MS Windows - 1 CD
Visual C++ & MSDN docs - 3 CDs
Paint Shop Pro | Photoshop - 1-3 CDs
MS Office - 3 CDs
Various Drivers for my hardware - 3-5 CDs
In addition, there are a bunch of things that I'd have to download right away. Let's think about those:
ICQ
AIM
WinAmp
PGP
Putty
There are probably some others that I've forgotten but it's pretty obvious which is easier to be productive at. I'd estimate that this whole process would take me at least 5 or 6 hours by the time that I got everything installed, setup with my ISP and so forth. My last Mandrake install from 2 CDs took me only about 2 hours from inserting the CD to the point where I was using the Linux equivalent of all the programs listed above and that's mostly because I have a slowish CD reader. _____________
Well, there are some points about installing too much on the system at once and installing a lot of things that most users will never need. However, even with the fancy new package managers and their pretty graphical front ends, most new users users are very intimidated by installing new programs. "Is this going to work with the widget set I use?" "Is this.rpm compiled for my processor?" "Do I have the libraries I need to compile this program?" and so forth. It's a really scary thing.
Hard drive space being really cheap and all it's not that big of a deal if your distro loads some programs that you won't use much. It's comforting to know that they're there if you need them. My suggestion would be to install a distro (e.g. Mandrake) that's designed with the desktop user in mind. This will give you a mix of programs that is most useful to the desktop user.
I'm in no way saying that the other distro's aren't any good, just that they might not be the best choice for the newbie desktop user. If I were installing a web server I'd probably use Slackware or Stormix. If I were wanting a geeky machine to play with I'd try Debian. And If I owned a lot of stock in hard drive companies I'd encourage the use of SuSE. _____________
Rather than passing line-item veto, they should pass something that says any rider tacked on must be related to the main bill.
The US House already has such a rule. An explanation of this rule can be found here. However the Senate has subjected itself to far fewer rules than the House. Therefore Senator Hatch is within the rules to suggest a stupid thing like this. If you want this changed, now is your chance. Matters of agenda rules are adopted individualy by each house of Congress. The rules for the upcoming Senate session have not been approved yet and won't be until sometime next month. Write to your Senator(s) now and express your concerns.
Make the salary of a congressman equal to the average salary of the American worker, and then we'll get the right kind of people in there.
It is interesting to note what the salaries of the US representatives are.
While these salaries are substantially higher than the average salary in this country they do not seem to be excessive given the responsibility of the position. It has always been held as an important value that our representatives be paid well. Our founding fathers valued the idea of a paid legislature as a means to keep Congress from being populated only by the super rich who can afford not to work. This has been fairly successful, particularly in the House. _____________
I've really had a very good experience with AT&T Cable internet. The price is reasonable, the speed is quite fast (I downloaded some disk images last month at over 200KB/s, note: KB not Kb) they were quite prompt about getting the installation done. If I remember correctly, I called in on a Thursday and they came the following Wednesday, and it was a holiday weekend. Two working days later is a very good turn around time. Since getting service in July I've only had one network outage that I've noticed, and it lasted less than 2 hours. The only thing that I can complain about is that their mail and news servers are kind of slow and go down sometimes. I'd recommend not using the e-mail address you get from them for anything other than billing information.
_____________
Suppose that we do become able to grow T-bones in a vat, not only that but really good, boneless, fatless, gristle free T-bones and cheap too. Wouldn't this remove pretty much all objections that vegetarians have to eating flesh? After all, it's now much healthier than our current meat products and didn't involve the slaughter of any animals to produce it, is it now a vegetable?
I'm not trying to be a jackass here, I'm just genuinely interested in the complex changes that are occuring due to genetic engineering.
_____________
As an interesting contrast to this thread I submitted an interesting interview from the New York Times this morning. Being that this is /. and all it got rejected. The scientist they interviewed has been researching the effects of microwaves on people for 25 years and has pretty much determined that they are harmless. Her research has gone as far as exposing monkeys and humans to large microwave fields and investigating the feasibility of microwaves for home heating.
I'll freely admit that my post was intended to be a bit over the top, but being trained in physics (now working in embedded systems programming) I know that there is very little likelyhood that microwaves could cause genetic mutations. Microwaves do not have sufficient energy to change the molecular structure on DNA. You must realize that visible light is many orders of magnitude more energetic. No one would even consider that keeping a light bulb over your head would be dangerous even if the UV emissions from said bulb are an actual risk of skin cancer from that radiation (ok, light bulbs tend to be a bit more toward the red side of the spectrum and thus emit rather little UV light, but my point stands).
As far as the saftey value of head-sets goes I remain convinced that their value extends only to keeping your hands free while driving and possibly to prevent neck cramps. The neck cramp problem though isn't unique to mobile phones and is probably more of a problem for those who use conventional phones since most people who work on the phone don't use mobile phones.
_____________
Most large buildings are heated with steam radiators. It is therefore necessary to pipe that steam around so that it can be used. In the case of many college campuses and similar installations there often isn't a furnace in each building but instead a really big central furnace. The steam is then piped around the campus so that it can heat all the buildings. Usually tunnels are built to carry the steam pipes and communication lines and whatever else needs to go between buildings. Often times these tunnels are large enough for a man to walk in so that the pipes and cables can be serviced if necessary or in the case of tunnels built in the 1950's some were built even larger so that we could also use them to hide from the Russian bombers.
You can sometimes tell where the tunnels run in the winter since they will heat the ground above them and melt off the snow. If you went to college in a colder climate you can probably remember that there were a few sidewalks that were always clear of snow, that's probably why.
Many cities also use a similar arrangement for downtown buildings. It's a pretty common practice to pipe steam to downtown from a garbage incenerator. This arrangement pays pretty well for the city since they can charge the garbage haulers to dump trash at the incenerator then they burn the trash to produce steam that they can sell to downtown businesses.
_____________
Headline:
Washington - Microsoft, Dell and Unisys Executives Jailed for Treason After Announcing New System That Will Make Voting as Reliable And Easy to Use as a Home Computer.
_____________
Even more likely than the production of microwaves is just that battery discharge causes heat and so does the operation of a power amp. Amazingly enough when you hold a warm object near to your ear, your ear begins to feel warm. See my previous post for a complete discussion.
_____________
If you are actually concerned that the heating effects of microwave radiation from your cell phone are going to be dangerous to you, you should seek to remove other heat sources from near your head. The following may be reasonable precautions for you to take:
- Never wear a hat
- Carry a parasol
- Keep your curtians closed at all times
- Set your thermostat no higher than 55F
- Avoid physical activity
- Eat all your food cold
I could go on with other ways in which to prevent your head from being heated, but it's getting a little silly. If there is anything about cell phones that warms your head, it's simple conductive heating from the power amp and battery discharge. If your cell phone gets too warm for your comfort, talk less and/or use a headset. I just ask that you remember that this is a comfort recommendation and not a saftey requirement unless you're operating a motor vehicle._____________
Mouse, generally use with right hand leaves left hand free for more important things.
Keyboard, all the good letters (well, A and E are the 2 most common letters and they're on the left) are on the left side seems a lefty advantage to me.
Stick shift, I can't really call this one. Depends on where you live. I find that the US style where the shifter is operated with the right hand is good for the lefty. It leaves the left hand free for steering, smoking, eating, phone talking and other tasks that require more finger dexterity than pushing a lever with a shoulder motion.
The roads, I'm not sure how this is a particular advantage one way or another except as to how it relates to the placement of the shifter.
Eating, advantage lefty here!! You get to start with the fork right under the hand you're going to use it with.
Doors, can be a little akward for leftys sometimes.
pr0n sites, advantage lefty! You're using the mouse with your right hand and your left hand is free for more important things ;)
The only time when I have a real problem with being a lefty is when I'm using power tools. Most power tools are setup so that the dangerous part is away from your body when the tool is held in the right hand. This of course places the dangerous part right next to your body when operated lefty style. Not good!!
_____________
The problem with nuclear power isn't that it's unsafe, in fact it seems to be quite a bit safer than burning coal, but that when an accident happens it has the potential to cause a very large number of problems all at once. The problem is therefore mainly one of perception, in a way it's quite similar to airline travel. Many people are nervous about traveling on an airline despite the fact that air travel is quite a bit safer than travel by private vehicle. This is because people are used to traveling along the ground but they are not used to traveling in the air. In addition, airliners tend to put a few hundred people in the same place at the same time so that when there is an accident (as will happen with any human endevor) it does a lot more damage (and therefore is reported on the news) than an accident in a private vehicle which probably only involves 5 people at the most. In a similar way, people are used to setting things on fire for energy, we've been doing that for thousands of years and it's just not all that scary to us anymore, on the other hand fission is a new and kind of scary thing. In addition, fission accidents tend to be disasters and put thousands of people at risk all at once while the by products of coal burning kill people very slowly and over a very long period of time.
_____________
Ah France, just because the world needed someone to make US internet policy decisions look good.
_____________
Think about it, they didn't take the time to do a good job putting together the stuff on the outside of the box. How good do you think the stuff inside the box is? The only good thing that I can say about Aiwa is that at least it doesn't cost much.
_____________
Right on the money there. Bass + Trebel only nothing in the middle (which is incidently where most human voices lie and that's pretty important for movies). Bose has done some cool things and you have to give them a little credit. If you want something that sounds pretty good and want it all in one piece and pretty small their wave radios are great. If you want a home theater system stay away like the plague.
_____________
However, spending an extra dollar on the speakers is going to get you more than spending the extra dollar on the receiver. If I were going to go out and buy an audio system today and was willing to spend $1.5k I'd be looking to spend about $400 on the receiver (the JVC RX-8000V I have sells for about this much and has quite good sound and lots of features) and the remainder on speakers.
I would avoid like the plague any sort of setup that has 5 tiny little speakers and a huge subwoofer to make up for their lack of bass and midrange response. I find that these setups leave a lot to be desired in terms of midrange and bass response. Boston makes some excellent speakers and are definately worth checking out in particular their VR series.
_____________
From my standpoint $10 still qualifys as a high cost of media deterrent. I can buy most movies that have been out more than a month or two for $12-15 at Best Buy. Why would I rent a DVD at a cost of $3.50 so that I could burn it onto a $10 DVD blank? Despite the "perfect digital transfer" I've saved $2 at best, don't have the case or chapter guide and have the movie on media that scratches more easily. Sounds to me like playing by the rules is still the better choice to me.
_____________
Companies in the US cannot (legally) do wiretapping. That's the whole point. It seems that a law exists that prohibits employers from reading the private communications of employees on stored information system (websites?) however its penalties are less severe than the law prohibiting them from listening in on private telephone conversations. The question at issue here is if the wiretap law has been violated as well. These laws are quite complex and more than a little vague given that the different options for personal communications have expanded greatly in the past few years and it is difficult (even for geeks) to forsee what privacy issues will arise with future communication technologies and what protections should be afforded to different groups of people.
_____________
I'm sorry if I'm coming across as really harsh, but I think that it's something that needed to be said. I'm looking forward to playing around with this technology. It looks really interesting and quite a bit more flexable than using screen shots of MathCAD.
_____________
There really isn't any easy way to upgrade the m100. That's part of why they can be sold so damned cheap. If you want to upgrade the memory on your m100 or IIIe you need to take it apart and desolder the RAM chip from the board. There is a description of this process here given the domain name on this link I'd say that it's probably a pretty reliable source. I've not tried to do this yet either with my IIIe or with my girlfriend's m100 since my soldering skills aren't all that I'd like them to be.
_____________
I don't object to carrying identifying items with me when I go out, but I just don't do it at home.
_____________
It does make for a kind of fun afternoon out doing a little hiking. My contributions can be seen here and here. Hopefully I'll get the chance to visit a couple of other random places when I go on vacation this summer.
_____________
I'd suspect that you're kinda wrong about this one. Computer makers (I'm talking mostly hardware here) pour big bucks into television for product placement. Every computer on ER has a Gateway logo on it. Every time someone on that show is putting something into a box, it's got cow spots. Drew Carrey hauls an i-book around with him on his shows. Guess what... It's not an accident. Someone must think that it's worth the money.
On the other hand, graphic designers love macs. Pretty much every (screen shot|simulated screen shot|I want this to look high tech) graphic you see in print ads has MacOS widgets in it. You even see this in ads for MS products sometimes. Overall, I'd that that that hasn't convinced all that many people to switch from windows.
_____________
Well, it all depends a bit on the sport in question. A read an interesting article in Runner's World Magazine several years ago that examined the dominance of several east African countries in running events. It seems that persons from this area of the world have a rather unique shape to some of their leg muscles which appears to be an advantage in running and jumping.
It seems fairly apparent that skin color is not the only genetic difference between people from different areas of the world. For example, I would be rather surprised to see a large increase in the number of Asian players in the NBA or NFL despite the population of in the US being made up of an increasingly large Asian minority. Is this because the NBA and NFL are racist organizations? No, it's because persons of Asian descent are usually shorter and slimmer than persons of African or European descent. This puts them at a disadvantage on the basketball court or football field, however it's not a particular disadvantage on a baseball diamond and we are seeing an increasing number of Asians in the Major League.
_____________
Yes, I do work for a company that makes access points. No, I haven't done much work on that product line myself.
_____________
- MS Windows - 1 CD
- Visual C++ & MSDN docs - 3 CDs
- Paint Shop Pro | Photoshop - 1-3 CDs
- MS Office - 3 CDs
- Various Drivers for my hardware - 3-5 CDs
In addition, there are a bunch of things that I'd have to download right away. Let's think about those:- ICQ
- AIM
- WinAmp
- PGP
- Putty
There are probably some others that I've forgotten but it's pretty obvious which is easier to be productive at. I'd estimate that this whole process would take me at least 5 or 6 hours by the time that I got everything installed, setup with my ISP and so forth. My last Mandrake install from 2 CDs took me only about 2 hours from inserting the CD to the point where I was using the Linux equivalent of all the programs listed above and that's mostly because I have a slowish CD reader._____________
Hard drive space being really cheap and all it's not that big of a deal if your distro loads some programs that you won't use much. It's comforting to know that they're there if you need them. My suggestion would be to install a distro (e.g. Mandrake) that's designed with the desktop user in mind. This will give you a mix of programs that is most useful to the desktop user.
I'm in no way saying that the other distro's aren't any good, just that they might not be the best choice for the newbie desktop user. If I were installing a web server I'd probably use Slackware or Stormix. If I were wanting a geeky machine to play with I'd try Debian. And If I owned a lot of stock in hard drive companies I'd encourage the use of SuSE.
_____________
The US House already has such a rule. An explanation of this rule can be found here. However the Senate has subjected itself to far fewer rules than the House. Therefore Senator Hatch is within the rules to suggest a stupid thing like this. If you want this changed, now is your chance. Matters of agenda rules are adopted individualy by each house of Congress. The rules for the upcoming Senate session have not been approved yet and won't be until sometime next month. Write to your Senator(s) now and express your concerns.
Make the salary of a congressman equal to the average salary of the American worker, and then we'll get the right kind of people in there.
It is interesting to note what the salaries of the US representatives are.
While these salaries are substantially higher than the average salary in this country they do not seem to be excessive given the responsibility of the position. It has always been held as an important value that our representatives be paid well. Our founding fathers valued the idea of a paid legislature as a means to keep Congress from being populated only by the super rich who can afford not to work. This has been fairly successful, particularly in the House._____________